"Very well. And collect the stones. Don't worry, they won't do much to you if you just collect them and put them out of the way."
Joshua nodded and gave a slight bow. It was going to take a lot more than he had to make this cabin presentable, but he would do the best he could.
The creature in An Li's body went back to the showers and took a look at herself in the mirrored reflection before beginning what was obviously going to be quite a chore washing this stuff off. Well-toned, superior reflexes, but this was going to take some getting used to.
As it turned out, it wouldn't be much of a trip back to the Agrippa. As soon as the missing shuttle was discovered, Chung had initiated a close-in search of the immediate vicinity and had no trouble finding it parked in orbit around Balshazzar. It was a curious thing to do, after all this time and trouble, but she lost no time in pursuing it with the intent of bringing it back aboard or shooting it if need be.
Maslovic didn't want it damaged, since after the stripping it was the only space-capable vehicle that could handle more than two people, but neither was it any good to him in enemy hands.
They approached cautiously, but saw no signs of the shuttle building up power or taking any action at all.
"I don't like it," Darch commented. "Macouri's crazy, but why steal it and get away, however the hell he managed it, and then just park? He's a sitting duck."
"Could be a trap," Maslovic warned. "You never know." He was very much concerned with the fact that Macouri now had a defenseless young woman with him. The little man had only one history with that kind of person.
Randi shook her head. "Somehow, I just don't think so. It's hard to explain, but when you've been practically saturated by those stones for so long you get a kind of sense of them. Something's wrong. Not for us. For them. I can sense it."
Before they could close to capture range, Darch turned and called, "We're being hailed!"
"Put it on."
"This is Joshua. I am bringing the craft back and will dock. Do not fire on us, please," came the somewhat familiar voice of the big man.
"Joshua, where is Macouri? Put him on."
There was a pause. "I don't think that's possible, sir. In fact, I doubt if that will ever be possible again, unless he is correct about an afterlife."
"He's dead?"
"Yes, sir. It is difficult to explain. Far easier for me to just bring the craft back. I simply cannot imagine how I personally could clean this up. It will have to be your ship's maintenance systems."
Randi was suddenly alarmed. "What about An Li? Did he hurt her?"
"No, ma'am. Not that he didn't try. It is simply going to be much easier to show you. There is no threat here that I can determine, except for an incredible number of those execrable stones."
"Shit! The portable stash! I don't even know why I bothered," Jerry Nagel said, mostly to himself. "I'd forgotten all about them."
Maslovic wasn't buying anything until he had the full story. "Sanchez, Nasser. Cover the shuttle when it docks in Bay One. Take no guff from anybody. Understand?"
The truth was, neither they nor he did understand. Why quit and give up when you walked through security and a cyberlinked ship without being noticed? Did Joshua kill Macouri? Had they misjudged him? Or what?
The truth, such as it was, was soon plain when the shuttle docked and the hatches hissed and then opened. Joshua emerged first, and was clearly both unarmed and no threat. In fact, he looked to the marines as if he had suddenly grown very tired and very old and beyond any of this.
Nasser gestured for Sanchez to keep a watch on Joshua and went inside. He wasn't gone long, and when he emerged he had a look that no marine had shown for a very long time.
"It's a butchery in there," he told his partner and by extension the others waiting above. "I've been in a few nasty fights, but I've never seen anything like that."
Behind him, a tiny figure emerged, dark, weathered like the others of Melchior and, like them, almost a stick figure in spite of long and still messy-looking matted hair trailing down its back.
The one who was once An Li looked neither shocked nor traumatized in any way, although she did have a little bit of that pissed-off look she'd had from the start.
"I may have to get used to this for a while," she said, "but I don't have to sacrifice. Anybody on this tub smoke cigars?"
"That's not Li," Nagel commented. "It may be her body, but that's not her. Not even before. The face, the walk, the movements, all different."
"Wake Murphy up and get him up here," Maslovic instructed Broz. "We may just be making a first contact here and, if so, this is definitely right up his alley."
The one in An Li's body sat there in the ward room looking at the rest and somewhat enjoying it. Even Murphy hadn't been able to come up with a cigar, but he did have some Irish-style whiskey that the little one seemed to find very much to her liking.
"Well, I see you all gathered round and hovering like scavengers over dead meat, so we might as well get this over with," she said. "I admit right now I expected to feel a lot better than I do. I think I've got bruises in places where until not long ago I didn't have places."
"Needless to say, you are not An Li," Randi Queson attempted a more casual beginning.
"No, hardly. But I'm not the folks I suspect you're looking for, either. Let's just say I'm from Balshazzar, or at least I've been there a very long time. This is a trick we'd discovered and practiced quite often down there over the years, although it's no mean trick to do, let me tell you, even face-to-face, and from surface to orbit-well, I'm surprised it worked. Whether I'm pleased I don't rightly know. I'm not used to being this, well, diminutive, let's say, or to be assembled in quite this fashion. However, when the watchers below observed the ship and zeroed in on it and immediately saw what was about to go on in it, we just had to do something. Much good came of that decision, which was made in quite a hurry. Karl Woodward, the founder of the group below, was dying, and dying ugly. By millimeters. Slow and painful. Mostly it was age, together with a lot of things that we carry with us. He could have used this method. Young people were willing to give their bodies to save him, but he wouldn't have it. Now he's got one. Not as young as it should be, but younger, and in better overall condition. And I have performed an excellent operation and surgically removed an extremely evil man from this plane of existence. Karl would be shocked to hear me say that, particularly in that manner, but it's true nonetheless."
"And An Li? What of her?" Randi asked.
"I don't know. There was precious little home when I moved in, I can tell you that, and it had noplace to go so it's still here. I can access it, and there really isn't anything there. You thought it was trauma, but I think the old An Li was too tough for that. I think you all went to bed in that mountain of Magi stones and in the mental seizures it caused, she either was wiped clean or, maybe like me being here inside this shell, she went somewhere else. Where? Who knows? But it gives me some peace that I didn't destroy or force a cohabitation with anyone to pull this off." She looked around. "Pretty small crew for a ship this size."
"We're the suicide brigade," Maslovic told her. "Mostly automated. A shuttle couldn't have made it, and it was too risky to bring through the fleet. That left us." Quickly, he introduced everyone. "And you are…?"