By Jonathan S. Coolidge, D.O.

“We’re assassins?” Nialle gasped, looking at Danit and her Lykosan, Ehlan, and Cunan allies in the small, dimly lit bunker chamber.

“One of the roles,” Danit answered, “of a Lykosan Functionary is to restore Lykosan rule when it has been usurped by illegal means. And, we’re allowed to kill to do it.”

Nialle stepped back a few steps with disbelief. “…But, you’re a navigator! Shouldn’t your training be more in driving spaceships and stuff?”

“As of now, I’m also an assassin,” Danit replied, with acceptance.

“OK.” Nialle sighed. “Does everybody in the Lykosan Empire just major in Liberal Arts?” She turned towards Frellas, the young Lykosan who accompanied her and Danit to the planet. “Your mother was navigator, ship’s doctor, and science officer, all at the same time, right?”

“Yes,” he answered somberly-both of his parents, two fellow crewmembers of the Vidor, had died earlier that day in a terrorist bombing.

“Ah ha! Then, I’ve got you!” The others looked at Nialle with confusion. She looked back at them, one by one, smiling, and then continued. “I know for a fact that you happened to be the navigator; I read it in the crew manifest, while I was testing out the thingy that translated those funny scratch marks and little squiggles into something I can read.”

“Allow me to explain,” Danit answered. “Lykosans share jobs among family members. If anyone in your family is a navigator, you’re a navigator. It’s part of the pack-based Lykosan society-because Lykosans spend so much time with their families, what they learn naturally passes on from one family member to the next.”

“OK,” Nialle answered, kinking her head sideways. “So, if I’m in your family, I also become a Lykosan diplomat, with its job description of restoring Lykosan rule.”

Danit contemplated for a moment, affectionately approaching Nialle. “Yes, that is so. We will need to formulate our plan with our associates.”

Nialle attempted to roll her all-black eyes, managing to convey the intent of doing so in spite of a lack of visible eye whites. “In other words, I’m joining the Mob.”

“You’re human?” Nialle turned and asked one of the other people present in a modest briefing room, awaiting others to arrive. She was surprised to see the familiar features of an ordinary person amid a crowd of elves, werewolves, and whatever sort of creatures the Ehlan Sidhe resembled, if any.

“Yes; I am Diana Helen. I grew up in the Avarin system, but my parents were from Querta, one of the old Shann colonies.”

Nialle’s ears kinked. “Whatever; anyway, there’s a lot of humans where I’m from, too. I was one myself, until I ‘awakened.’” As she said the term, she gestured quotation marks with her four-fingered hands. “What brings you all the way out here?”

“I joined the Yuri faith, which began in the Cunae and Ehlan Sidhe regions.” Nialle shuddered for a moment, remembering images from the recording she saw earlier recently, of Koheen’s brutal assassination of the Yuri priesthood.

Danit walked into the room, displaying his full formal mane and feathers, taking a stance before a small, mixed group of creatures. “I am Danit of Cuna, Lykosan Imperial Functionary A-45, and Ambassador to the Crossover Realms. My purpose here is to demonstrate…”

At that moment, one of the beings in the front of the group stood up. It was also Danit, more relaxed, with a base V-shaped coat of fur across his body but otherwise mostly bare. “Torelvillegas, I’m afraid that identity is already taken.”

The formal Danit smiled and then shape-shifted into the strange, almost horrific form of an Ehlan Sidhe. Through a vertical slit in her chest, the creature continued speaking. “Forgive me; I was simply striving to understand you. This ‘crossover’ ability of yours and Nialle’s is quite an enigma.” She gestured with her divided forearm over a narrow pedestal, and an image of a reinforced sanctuary appeared. “This is where Koheen resides the majority of the time, when he is not making personal appearances. It is a facility he had constructed separate from the Capitol building and Colonial Square, on higher ground than the majority of the town. It is located fairly close to the aerospace-port, and I fear he probably intends to seize control of your landing craft, the L.I.A.S. Vidor.”

“Surely, Koheen knows by now that if one Imperial Armada ship has come, there will be others.” Danit answers. “And, he’s a fool if he thinks he has a chance once an imperial battleship gets here.”

“He probably suspects by now that your friends are coming. However, he is very arrogant, and he intends to entrench himself deeply here, literally and figuratively. He will want to make sure that no one else can use the Vidor’s firepower against him.”

Danit stood up and took a closer look at the projection of the building, as Torelvillegas displayed its interior passageways. The Ehlan Sidhe woman proceeded to describe the inner anatomy of the structure. “We only know about portions of this building; it was built in secrecy, and we have evidence that Koheen’s people have changed the interior somewhat since its conception. We do know that its internal security is extensive; as long as its computer network is operational, it is essentially impossible not to be visible on several security cameras at any given moment. That is where Levit of Ehlan comes in.”

“Check points five and seven are clear. Check point six, what’s your status?” A dark gray, furry Lykosan sat at a computer station, surrounded by floating oval screens suspended in space, while two other lupine anthropomorphs shared the cramped, dimly lit room, fiddling with blinking lights, touch-pads, track-balls, and other devices.

“Check point six is clear,” a wolf-faced creature answered on one of the oval screens. “Perimeter is secure at time index 23.79. Will recheck at time index 23.85.”

“Roger that, central station out.” As the Lykosan replied, the floating window in front of him blinked out of existence, and he turned to face the others. “This beats working for a living, huh?” The others chuckled slightly, and one of the other two gnawed on a long, narrow, stick-like snack as he sat back in his chair, his hind paws resting on his workstation. At that moment, a wide-eyed fourth Lykosan walked into the room, carrying an oblong cylindrical case.

“I’m here to install the upgrades you ordered.” He abruptly barged in and knelt down in front of the main computer station and its floating windows, opening a panel at the base of the wall, revealing a cluster of beating organ-like devices, pulsing wires and vessels, and blinking lights. The gray-muzzled security officer seated there moments earlier grabbed his shoulder, getting his attention.

“What upgrades?”

“You haven’t heard?” He stopped what he was doing and turned around, looking at the other three, staring at him. “Vormeer’s people want to upgrade the security of this place, now that the Empire is starting to make noises about Koheen. I’m here to put in the telepathic firewall and install the new A-35 server.” He opened up the cylindrical case, revealing a device that vaguely resembled a brain in a glass jar, slowly swelling and shrinking with a rhythmic pulse while numerous lights blinked on and off around its container. “She’s a real beauty, too. It’s got the new RS-75 direct protein polymerase, so your parallel computing times will be 300% faster than this old DNA conversion system. She’s also got built-in wireless VRX-compression support psionic multilinking capability-in a few days, you’ll be so spoiled, you’ll have to get one for your home systems, too!” He knelt back down and crawled into the wall, pulling out trinkets, baubles, and wires. He then backed out and reached into his case again, drawing out a thin, metallic triangle decorated with ornate iridescent patterns. “Check it out! This is your new CBC universal mediator router! I’ll have your network running in Tera-squares in no time!”

The others looked at him, blinking their eyes.

“OK, I’m really a spy who teleported past all seven levels of security by way of beings from a parallel universe. But, you still really need to replace this old hybrid molecular stuff.” He knelt back down, crawling further into the wall, until only his legs and tail were visible. As his tail swished back and forth, he mumbled to himself out loud. “Oh, man, this crap’s only one or two steps above silicon.” He reached for the triangular metallic device and continued. “Just keep doing what you’re doing; I’ll let you know when to reboot the system.”

Danit, Nialle, and Torelvillegas hid several feet away from an entrance to the compound, hidden among a cluster of bushes. Nialle was in black, while the other two blended into the background. Each had a small instrument clipped to an ear; Torelvillegas’ device was at the base of his eyestalk.

“Ever since my Awakening, not standing out hasn’t exactly been my strong point.” Nialle sent this thought through her ear clip to the other two, without moving her lips. She looked up. “Don’t we have to worry about spy satellites?”

“That’s why we have to keep a close eye on the Vidor,” Danit answered through his artificial telepathy. “Its scanning equipment could catch just about every conversation on the planet.”

“Then how do we know this Koheen guy didn’t already overhear our assassination briefing?”

“Assuming his people have gotten into the Vidor in the first place,” Torelvillegas answered, “they’d have to first locate our base and then know the proper codes to compensate for the sonic buffering system around it.”

“For every layer of the onion there’s always another potato peeler. Don’t tell me; you also know about every song I’ve downloaded off Blotster, too.”

The three of them then heard a signal through their telepathy devices. “This is Levit; I’m in the system. Just follow my instructions. When I tell you, make a run for the first checkpoint; I’ll have the guards out and the entry open. In the mean time, switch your earpieces to code 99.” For several moments, the three sat motionless, waiting.

As they squatted down, Nialle looked at a small, hand-held gun she had been issued, unholstered from a utility belt she wore. The instrument was somewhat futuristic, designed to fire energy bursts rather than bullets; however, it was unmistakably a weapon. She had never used one before, and was unaccustomed to the situation. Contrary to the criticism of Traditionalists back in her world, the simulated violence on Internet games and streaming media broadcasts did not soften her to the genuine experience; she felt very uneasy holding the instrument.

“Now.” As they heard the words, the three ran around the corner, darting towards the building unseen. An iron door slid open, leading into the structure, into a large hallway. “Go to the third door on the left.” The three of them quietly scampered part-way down the vast foyer, running by marble columns and to a large oval door, slinging it open and jumping inside. “Now wait here until my next signal. Then you’ll go back into the grand hall and go through the end doorway. There will be a single guard; you’ll catch him by surprise. Be sure to shoot him before he can react.”

Danit handed Nialle a small cylinder. “I’ll show you how to attach this silencer.” As he spoke telepathically through his earpiece, he pulled out his pistol and screwed on an identical appliance. “We’ll all fire at the same time to make sure at least one of us hits.”

“Danit, I’ve never fired a gun at a living target before.”

“It’s not any harder than Seism or Apocalypse.”

“But, it’s different-those are games. This is real. I still can’t see why we can’t just Crossover straight in.”

“We need your Crossover ability to get us back out. I had to get enough control of the security system to give us enough time to try to find Koheen before everyone was on our tail. It won’t do us any good crossing in without knowing where to go, only to have to run past a legion of armed guards to get there….”

“Now!” As Levit’s signal interrupted, the three ran into the hallway. In an instant, Nialle saw her two companions shoot at a statue-like lupine anthropomorphic figure. The Lykosan guard stumbled down, but did not drop completely. He held himself up on his knees and one hand, looking up for a split second.

And then, Nialle fired twice. The first shot missed, but the second struck through the being. As it burned a hole in his belly, it caused him to drop, bleeding and unconscious. Nialle felt a strange sense of detachment as the events unfolded. The act of Crossover had been unsettling to her before, and her experiences in alien landscapes such as the Shohan colony and the building’s interior added to her growing displacement.

“Continue straight ahead,” Levit’s voice told the three in their minds. “Torelvillegas, visualize this image I am sending you; it is Koheen’s left retina. Ahead, past the second hallway to the right will be a doorway with an access scanner. Enter the number 1620 after assuming Koheen’s likeness, including the left eye.”

As they marched, Torelvillegas’ features shifted from the bizarre shape of an Ehlan Sidhe to a form indistinguishable from Viceroy Koheen. They came to the secured door and terminal post, and the disguised Ehlan faced a circular light emanating from the computer panel. The light shone in his eye, creating a ghostly afterglow. The bluish image of a Lykosan retina appeared on the wall panel screen, with a series of scratch-mark symbols. Torelvillegas touched them with his furry, Lykosan hand four times in different places, and the door opened into a luxurious indoor garden flanked by more passageways, each lined with ornate artwork; complex abstract, coiled and twisted sculptures and distorted, elegant Lykosan statues suggested cultures from Lykosa’s northwestern continent.

“I’ve got his two personal guards chasing after osqueri, but I can’t be sure how long a time interval you have.”

The three glanced around, surveying for their target. Nialle felt herself trembling inside as she held her weapon close to her, scanning over a cluster of bushes. Torelvillegas became dark gray, sprouting bluish tendrils over her skin to camouflage herself beside a second bank of shrubbery. Danit knelt down and likewise shapeshifted, assuming the color and texture of the tan and black marble walkways leading to a large, square indoor pool.

As the three made their way to the pool, they noticed a single large, muscular dark brown Lykosan wading comfortably, his suit of armor and articles of dictatorship draped over a bed nearby in a semi-open second chamber. Koheen swam to the edge of his pool and then stood up, his ears twitching. He smelled the air, and then turned his head towards Nialle.

She stood up and fired at him, repeatedly. The creature fell back into the pool, limp. Swirling red color opacified the water around the now lifeless body. Nialle looked at the others, saying out loud, “No, this is not like Seism.” She came over, looking at the result of her weapon fire. “In the game after you shoot, the body disappears.” Then, she reached out to touch the water.

Suddenly, the body, the blood, and the water in the pool vanished in a shimmer of iridescent light. Nialle’s glassy black eyes bulged as Torelvillegas and Danit jumped back. “It’s a hologram; they know we’re here!” Levit shouted, telepathically through his link.

“Vek thogh hagh!” Danit cursed. He then connected telepathically to Levit. “We have to leave now! We’re being set up!”

As Levit replied, his answer became garbled through distorted sound and static. “I shall attempt…rendezvous at…I think they’re…” At that moment, he became cut off.

“If we knew where he was, I could save him,” Nialle stated with some regret. At that moment, four tall, armed soldiers stormed in, hosing the garden with a combination of machine gun fire and energy blasts. As statues blew apart and cyan shrubbery jostled, a deafening noise flooded the chamber. Danit, Nialle, and Torelvillegas scattered to the ground as the air split around them.

“We can’t get to him from here!” Danit answered Nialle. “We have to withdraw!” He then looked around. “Torel, get closer to Nialle; we’re crossing out!” Danit and Nialle both looked towards the Ehlan Sidhe, who rested motionless on her side. “Torel?” They then saw a pool of indigo fluid spill around him. “Scortagh!” He swore. “We’ve lost her!” Danit and Nialle reached out and grasped each other’s hands, and Nialle concentrated. A swirling blue and white light emerged from the ground beneath them, opening up into a whirlpool of light, dissolving them. Abruptly after they vanished, the ground ruffled apart as a spray of bullets tore through the garden soil.

As Danit and Nialle laid on the ground, their hands clinched together, a blue and violet forest surrounded them. Danit rolled over to his side and pulled himself upright, sitting. Nialle took a deep breath, rolling onto her back.

“We lost Levit, too.” She dropped her head back. “I’m not exactly cut out for changing professions like socks the way you Lykosan people seem to.”

“Somehow, either someone on Koheen’s side anticipated our action or they figured out the Vidor’s orbiting probe.”

“Or, maybe we were betrayed,” Nialle answered. She looked around, sighing, pulling herself up and changing the subject. “It was the only place I could think of with all the gunfire around us.”

Danit looked at the forest, orienting himself. “We’re a bit of a walk away from anywhere.”

Nialle sighed with a tone of grief. “I wanted to keep us safe but still on the planet, and I couldn’t get a clear image in my mind of either the town or our secret base camp.” As the two beings looked around, still shaken from the combat, the shrill of small animals filled the atmosphere. “But, I couldn’t forget that little lizard thingy that jumped me. You know-the one with the eyestalks.” She looked around, frantically, and then sat back. “I’m not used to this.” She drew her knees to her chest, curling up, looking up at Danit as she began to shake. “I don’t think I’m meant to be the token female action movie character. Can we cross over into some kind of cute kiddie show? Or, how about one of those heartwarming dramas about rediscovering something about yourself?”

“I wish it were that easy, too,” Danit answered, folding himself up next to Nialle in an eccentric, cat-like manner. “I knew I would see strange things when I enlisted in the Lykosan Imperial Armada, but I never would have imagined the roles I’ve landed in. I’m supposed to be a navigator.”

“But,” Nialle blurted, “you seem perfectly OK with being an ambassador, an assassin, and a crossing-over person thing. How do you do it? I’m still just getting used to being a skinny not-quite-human whatever-I-am thing with mousy ears.”

“Over time, you get used to it. There is a certain moment in which you realize that all that you knew was simply one side of yourself viewing one side of existence as you have known it. After you see the other sides of yourself and of the worlds around you, at some point you find yourself less unsettled and more at peace with the flow of things.”

Nialle sat back, releasing her grip on her knees as she straightened her legs before her, sighing. “So, now I’m a mouse-eared thingy, on an alien planet, sitting next to an assassin, talking about Zen.” Danit grimaced, his skin assuming a green tint from his subconscious reactions.

“It does get easier, Nialle.” He reached for her hair, brushing it out of her face with his spider-like four-fingered hands. “It’s just a matter of letting go of certain assumptions...of unlearning the...” Danit stopped speaking as Nialle’s small backpack floated and bobbed along the ground in a manner similar to a deflated helium balloon. As his mouth hung open, Nialle heard his eyes blink. Nialle stretched her leg out, catching her drifting purse under her left heel.

“It’s got my flying outfit inside.” She stood up and started reaching for her satchel as it began wandering along the ground away from her. “The spiked werewolf thing and his nudist girlfriend back on the fifty mile long flying mountains made this winged body suit for me.” She grabbed the purse, wrapping it around her, continuing. “It looks really cool-it makes my arms into wings. But, it’s very tight and has no sleeve openings or even separate leggings. When I have it on, I have no hands and my legs are stuck together. So, I kind of have to ask the spiked werewolf thing, ‘what were you thinking?’ But, it was a gift, and who really needs legs when you can fly? I thought I’d bring it along just to be sure that we don’t need it.”

Danit’s spindly form stood up, making his way towards Nialle, still somewhat speechless. After several moments of silence, Nialle finally answered.

“Hey, you get used to it.” She smirked and then stumbled downward, squeeking a yell of surprise.

Danit looked into a hole in the ground where Nialle hd stood moments before, and then bent down, looking inside. Below, inside a cavern lit by the hole above, Nialle looked up, faintly visible some ten meters below. She was clutching her purse, ungracefully squatting with her heels and rear on the floor. “But, of course, in all the stupid action movies, if you bring it, you conveniently do need it!” She folded her arms, rolling out her lower lip. “Now somewhere around here in hieroglyphics is the solution to all of our problems,” she muttered.

Nialle opened up her satchel, taking out a folded stack of vinyl-like material. She unrolled it out into roughly a triangular shape, and then began undressing. “So after I come up, we’ll have to look around.” She slid her feet together into the thin, slick, alien flying garment, struggling to keep her balance as her lower body became weightless inside the tight wrapping. As she pushed her arms into the outfit’s wings, the dress’ opening fused together over her back, wrapping her tightly, locking her hands inside wings and merging her legs as if she had a mermaid’s tail. She pushed her arms back once, levitating upwards through the ground, hovering in front of Danit. “I’ll need your help getting my stuff out of the cavern.” She held out her wings, pressing her fingers against their membranous binding. “I’ll also eventually need help getting out of this thing.” She circled Danit, floating around him weightlessly, and leaning her head over his shoulders. “This time without the padlock.” Danit climbed onto her back, and she floated down again into the cavern.

Danit looked around in the dim light, jumping off of Nialle and collecting her other clothes, tossing them into her satchel. He then inspected one of the cavern walls more closely. “Well, you were right about this place telling us something. This is an underground Yuri temple.”

“I knew it!” Nialle sputtered, hanging over Danit, bobbing about buoyantly. “Now, where does it tell us how to solve all our problems?”

Danit replied soundlessly by raising his hand. All was quiet for a moment, and the two could hear the sound of footsteps. A figure carrying a lantern turned around one corner in the stones in the distance, revealing herself to be a human.

“Diana?” Danit asked.

“What are you doing here?” She answered. “How did you find this place?”

“We were looking for a place to hang out, but your roof wasn’t the best choice,” Nialle answered.

Diana Helen, the lone human on the Shohan colony, looked up at Nialle in her strange, flying body suit as the elfin being lowered herself towards the ground, dropping her winged arms to her side. “We met at the briefing,” Diana addressed her. “You’re the one who came with Danit from another realm?”

“Yes,” Nialle replied. “So, this is where the Yuri hang out?”

“The Yuri traditionally keep our temples underground; it goes back to both Ehlan and Cunae Sidhe legends, about moving underground to avoid conflict with another people.”

“And,” Danit answered, “that piece of lore applies quite well in this place and time.”

“So it seems,” Helen replied.

Nialle tossed herself into the air, floating in a somersault over Helen, and then lying in the air on her back, her head hanging down, facing Diana. “So,” she asked, “what’s a human doing in a Cunae Sidhe religious practice?”

“I came to it while pursuing the human legend of the Faerie Realms, a central theme of a number of my species’ religions.”

“Must be a different group of humans than where I’m from,” Nialle answered. “My guys think that faeries are men who sleep with other men.”

Diana paused for a moment. “Among my people, there are legends of beings who lived along side humans back on our home world, visiting from a parallel reality. The Cunae and Ehlan Sidhe both have legends of their ancestors coming from such a reality as well, one called ‘Fahri.’ The pronunciation is similar, and there are a lot of uncanny parallels among Cunan, Ehlan, and human legends regarding a common alternate realm.” She then turned towards Danit. “Ambassador, if it could be allowed, I’d be very interested in knowing more about this ‘crossover.’ It’s a very important piece in my puzzle.”

Nialle rotated herself upright, answering Diana as she floated around. “I’m not sure you really want to go there right now. It’s pretty messy.” Nialle brought herself to the ground, standing upright, trying to keep herself from drifting too far upwards. She wriggled slightly inside her wrapping as she balanced herself. “And another thing,” she asked. “What is this stuff about the Cunae Sidhe and Ehlan Sidhe being related? Danit’s a Cuna, and he looks kind of like whatever I am. The Ehlan, however, are these weird looking, skeletal, crab-like, praying mantis-like, giant chest-mouthed things with eyestalks and things. What could the two possibly have in common?”

“According to Yuri lore, Cuna and Ehlan were brothers who came to the twin worlds from Fahri. Both founded civilizations, the Rath of Cuna and the Rath of Ehlan, respectively, connected to each other by a magical gateway. Their sons and daughters, however, who were shape shifters like the brothers themselves, exchanged features so frequently that no one could tell anyone apart. Soon, people found themselves exchanging not only appearance, but also identity. The two colonies became more and more alike, to the point that they could no longer tell where the gateway was between them anymore. Ehlan and Cuna eventually decided to trade and split their two people, each choosing a completely different set of features to assume, thus giving rise to the people known today.

“Modern Ehlan and Cunan science corroborates many aspects of this legend, suggesting that some sort of space fold conduit did at some point in the past link the Ehlan and Cunan home worlds. The separation was long enough ago that a minor amount of evolution could have occurred-enough to account for the Ehlan’s greater shape shifting powers. Actually, it seems that the Cunan were the ones who lost some of their transformation abilities.”

“It was a trade-off,” Danit replied, “in order to have a strong sense of identity. We define ourselves by that which separates us from infinite other possibilities.”

“Spoken like a true Faerie being,” Diana answered. “The wars between Cuna and Ehlan were of identity. Each side was so similar to the other that it felt a need to hate the other for some small difference, so it could continue to have its own sense of identity.”

“Now that the Lykosan Empire is here, however, we have a common enemy they can be different from.” Danit thought out loud, inspecting the Yuri scripture along the walls. “Our pettiness comes to light in the face of a grander conflict.”

“So,” Nialle replied, “Lykosans change jobs and Cuna Sidhe change faces. This is a universe made of identity crises.” She looked at her arms embedded in wing membranes. “And, now I’m doing it. I’ve gone from human to elf-thingy and now bobbing about in wings and a tail. Can’t anyone just be happy being something for awhile?”

Suddenly, several Lykosan soldiers rippled into view, deactivating personal invisibility devices and aiming weapons. “Drop all weapons!” One of them shouted. Several more armed soldiers began storming in. Danit responded by grabbing both Diana and Nialle.

“Nialle, fly us out!” As Danit shouted, Nialle responded by propelling herself and her two passengers upwards, through the opening in the ground, and upwards into the sky.

“Crap!” Nialle cursed. “It’s really annoying the way they keep knowing our every move!”

Helen grabbed on tightly to Nialle’s waist, watching the ground drop beneath her. “They’ve got Imperial intelligence devices of all types, no doubt; they probably can hear just about any conversation on the planet.”

“There they are!” A shout came in Lykosan, from the ground, as several blasts of weapons fired upwards.

“And I’ve already used up our last crossover for the day,” Nialle added. She then smirked and giggled as a flash of light struck her. “That really tickles.”

Danit, holding onto Nialle’s shoulders, looked at her, stunned. “You were just shot in the back!” A second blast struck Nialle, barely missing Diana.

“Ooh, not the feet!” She smiled crazily, wriggling and chuckling. “I think this thing is plasma-proof!” She pushed herself upwards, feeling the weight of two other people riding her as she floated upwards through the opening in the ground. Down below, Lykosan soldiers continued to shoot at Nialle as she flapped her tail fin, absorbing the blasts, pushing her upwards.

“Has surveillance technology evolved so much that no conversation is safe?” Diana thought out loud as Danit paced around her in the thick cover of dense blue forest foliage. Nialle floated nearby above them, rolling about in the air.

“This is proving to be frustrating,” Danit answered. “I underestimated just how easily we could be tracked.”

“We could really use Melody’s weirdness right about now,” Nialle added, sinking in front of Danit momentarily, attempting to stand upright in spite of her weightlessness. “Where the Vek-something-argh did she, Suidhne, and Pengarthe go?”

“If we tried looking for them tomorrow morning,” Danit replied, “we would lose both our Crossover portals for that day, and we’re going to need them.”

Nialle sighed. “What’s wrong with our portalling out of here and coming back in a few days, after the Lykosan Armada gets here? At this rate, we’re not going to be able to assassinate Koheen before then anyway.”

Diana looked at Danit and then at Nialle, eyeing each with puzzled interest. “You mean you can teleport through ‘Crossover’ daily?”

“Yes, but we have certain limits,” Danit answered. “We can each port about five people once a day, but we have to have a clear mental image of where we are going. Without having seen Koheen’s hiding places, we can’t get to him directly. But, as long as he’s chasing us, we may be able to stave off any additional damage to the population.”

“Well,” Nialle answered, flipping up her left wing, “Melody told me a few weeks back about how you can home in on someone with a sample of their body-a bit of hair, a drop of blood, or so forth. With that on hand, you can home in on that being’s present location without having seen wherever they are.”

Danit’s black eyes sparkled with renewed energy. “What if we made our own sample? Diana, do you have access to Koheen’s DNA profile?”

“Not offhand, I’m afraid.” She then assumed a more optimistic note. “However, he made a public appearance downtown yesterday; he may have shed a few epithelial cells there. If nothing else, we could at least get hair proteins, if that would be enough.”

Nialle nodded. “That should work.”

Against the backdrop of colorless evening light, Danit’s chameleonic form shifted textures silently as he moved soundlessly around the Shohan colony. He glanced along stone street ways, emerging from and fading into surrounding shadows, his skin matching the darkness around him. Danit leapt from tower top to tower top, jumping across pillars and antennae, unseen by an occasional village patrol guard.

His erratic path was purposeful; he sought to make his course harder to follow should he be spotted. Danit timed his movement such to coincide with motions around him, to make the task of following his footsteps more difficult for anyone chasing him via surveillance cameras or spy satellites. He made his way towards a public appearance balcony in the downtown area. Danit climbed along the wall, his hands and feet modified into climbing instruments. With fluid motion, he made his way into the balcony. Once inside, he reached into a metal plated collar around his neck, removing a small panel, revealing a cluster of electronics on its underside. A small light emanated from the rectangular device he held, producing floating symbols in space as it scanned the floor. Danit swept at dust along the balcony and then touched a stone strut. The device beamed dim amber light over the stone rests, causing a grouping of fingerprints and claw marks, previously unseen, to glow. Danit scraped the fingerprints with a second instrument drawn from his collar, and then reinserted both instruments into his choker necklace band. Danit then jumped onto the balcony, looking around at the downtown landscape before him.

He noticed a bright yellow star overhead, twinkling erratically. A small, pinpoint yellow light appeared on the balcony behind him, moving towards him. “Spy satellite,” Danit whispered to himself out loud. He jumped off the platform, soaring downward into the downtown landscape below, sprouting a quickly improvised gliding membrane between his arms and legs. Behind him, the balcony burst into flames as a pillar of light blazed downward from the sky. Down below, several Lykosan guards appeared out of the surrounding darkness, dressed in black armor and brandishing firearms, pointed towards the Cunan glider. Danit found himself sinking into peril even as he wriggled in his descent, trying to redirect his fall away from the swarm of troopers. A vague black shape flew in underneath Danit, and then he heard a series of loud explosions as the Lykosan soldiers fired.

The triangular black shape had come between him and the weapons fire, and Danit fell on top of it. “Hang on,” Nialle told Danit as he grabbed onto her. She chuckled slightly as several rounds of ammunition deflected off of her belly. “I’m bulletproof in this thing, too.” She shrieked as a shot struck her cheek. However, she was unharmed. “I think it even protects my uncovered face.”

“What are you doing here?” Danit asked, as Nialle lifted him upwards to safety.

“Diana and I hacked into the spy satellite’s camera and saw it looking for us. Then, it stopped over the balcony where Koheen made his speech, and I knew it was a matter of time before you showed up there.” She flipped over suddenly as she rose into the air, and then curled up, tightly wrapping Danit inside the folds of her wings as she did so. Danit had little chance to squirm in protest before he felt a warm pulse emanate around him. Nialle then opened up again. “That was from the spy satellite. They’re onto us...again.”

Nialle dove into the shadows of small skyscrapers surrounding the downtown area, flying alongside a cluster of stone constructs and oval frames. A cluster of several patrol vehicles appeared around them, beaming out searchlights as they hovered about. Nialle sank lower, hovering along the ground, with Danit on top of her. He stretched himself out over her wings and took on the color of the roads below him, rippling his back skin to match their movement over the ground below. The two without words slipped out quietly.

“It’s been about 24 hours since your last cross.” Danit stated as he sat in the woods, his skin covered with leafy blue projections.

Nialle was in a seated position as well, her toes inside her tail fin hooked under a root branch, holding her about half a meter above the ground. She sat curled up, still in her weightless body suit. Her knees, tightly bound together, rested against her chest. Nialle wriggled her fingertips, which were still tightly wrapped inside wing sleeves. “I haven’t felt hungry or thirsty yet; I think this flying straight jacket of mine handles bodily functions as well.”

Danit stood up. “As I recall, when Wolven One gave you that outfit, he mentioned something about antimatter weapons.” As he spoke, he pointed upwards towards the sky.

Nialle nodded. “Uh, yes, gotcha.” She winked silently. “I think he did. I’ll keep that in mind when we go after Koheen.”

Danit quietly revealed the tip of a weapon handle hidden among his leafy outgrowths and projections. “So far, we’ve been playing defensively, but we really need to take advantage of your true offensive capabilities.” As he spoke, he opened up a panel in his collar and detached a small device, holding in its grasp a cluster of fully formed hairs and a tiny vial of dark red fluid. “I’ll come along to help portal you back out when the mission is done.”

Danit dropped the hairs onto the forest floor before him and then crushed the vial in his hand, releasing several drops of its blood contents onto the pile. Nialle started to concentrate, but Danit shook her shoulder as she floated upright. He then looked intently at the cloned debris and caused to emerge into existence a swirling blue crossover portal, leaving Nialle’s ability unspent.

Nialle dove in first, flying into a dimly lit bunker, surrounded by armed soldiers, with Viceroy Koheen seated in a crude throne close by. The soldiers fired thunderous volleys of machine-gun fire at her, but she simply rolled back in the air, gritting her teeth as though being hosed with water. She then swept forward, raising her arms upward. She pointed her wing tips forward towards Koheen.

The Viceroy lept up and ducked away. Amidst the chaos, Nialle noticed that Danit had slipped through the crossover portal as well, but the bulk of attention was on her. As one of the guards grabbed her feet, she raised him up and flicked her joined legs, knocking him stumbling to the floor. Another guard tried striking at her with a sword blade, but she felt only a mild, blunt shove as the impenetrable black material enveloping her soaked the blow.

Danit quickly drew his pistol from his skin and fired at Koheen. One of the guards had jumped in his path at the crucial moment, however, and the plasma burst burned into the soldier, leaving Koheen alive. The Viceroy then drew two long, slender, jagged blade weapons, joined them end to end, and charged at Danit, growling.

Danit jumped upwards, deflecting off Nialle and landing on the shoulders of one of Koheen’s guards, who tried to grab at him. At the same time, several other guards fired at Danit, hitting instead the Lykosan soldier he used at that moment as a pedestal. Viceroy Koheen spun his twin blade weapon with rapid, dexterous precision, forcing Danit to jump off or lose his feet, and causing him to drop his pistol. He tried to grab at it, but Koheen blocked him.

Nialle responded by diving at Koheen, squinting her eyes as she flew into his spinning blades. They glanced off of her, and Koheen fell back, losing his balance. Danit could not reach his weapon, however, as one of the guards began firing plasma bolts at him while two others responded with machine gun fire. Nialle grabbed the pistol with her mouth and then flew upwards.

She wriggled her hands inside her tight wing sleeves, trying to manipulate the weapon. As she rolled about, Danit continued to dodge and run about the room, causing weapons fire towards him to ricochet. A stray shot hit Koheen’s arm, and then he raised his other arm, growling in Kalenhian for melee weapons only. With one hand, he continued brandishing his own twin-blade instrument, chasing Danit around the room, trying in vein to corner him.

Nialle held the pistol between her wings as she folded her legs up. She struggled to pry a toe free from her others and tugged on its trigger with the extremity. A bolt struck Koheen’s weapon, breaking it into seperate blades, one of which slipped from Koheen’s grasp. Danit grabbed it and parried the Viceroy’s blows. The two fought rapidly and furiously as the others stood back. Danit deflected blow after blow in rapid succession, and then responded. Koheen matched his dexterity, however, and both exchanged clashing sparks without being able to make contact. Nialle squirmed with her pistol again, missing Koheen several times. However, the shots distracted the Viceroy long enough for Danit to strike his good arm. Koheen roared out as his arm bled out. Then, a spark of light blasted from Nialle’s direction and Viceroy Koheen’s neck burned into cinders. Danit picked up the charred remains of his head, and the guards stood back. Nialle uncurled, floating downward beside Danit, trying unsuccessfully not to drop the pistol. However, Danit grabbed it as it fell towards the ground in front of him.

“For crimes against the Lykosan Empire and the Cunae and Ehlan Sidhe,” Danit finally stated, gasping, “we declare Viceroy Koheen removed from office.”

Danit sat down on the Viceroy throne as several Ehlan creatures stood next to him, guarding him closely. Around ornate formal attire, he textured his skin with complex spiral designs, signifying in Cunan a stance of mental focus and control. Nearby, a mixed group of Ehlan, Cunan, and Native Lykosans escorted out several members of Koheen’s regimen. Danit activated a panel on his seat, and keyed in a series of computer codes in the Lykosan language.

In orbit above the planet, a surveillance satellite self-destructed in an explosive burst.

Nialle, still wrapped in her winged body suit, flew into Danit’s lap and sat back. “This was my first presidential assassination. I really hope you don’t get the idea that I’m any good at this.”

Danit simply commented in reply. “Once Koheen himself was gone, his regime leaders realized that the Empire is on its way, and that anything they did to try to maintain their status quo would only be added to their list of war crimes.”

“Of course, maybe I’d have been a little better if I had my hands or legs back.”

A young Cunan approached the two. “Acting Viceroy, our long range telemetry monitors have detected several spatial warp shells approaching-almost certainly the Treyella and the Imperial fleet.”

In space, above the planet, the Lykosan battleship Treyella cast off her warp shell, rippling into normal space as a ghostly after-image trailed away behind her. Her elongated, pointed forward hull advanced aggressively towards the blue and white planet Shohan, followed by three other vessels emerging from warped space. Though the others were smaller, they, too, carried aggressive Lykosan design elements, including visible large spatial disrupter weapon arrays.

“Great timing!” Nialle tried to roll her all black eyes. “They couldn’t have come a few days ago.” She then looked at Danit as she wriggled, settling into his lap more comfortably. “And, we still haven’t heard from Suidhne or the others. Where are they?”

Before Danit had a chance to postulate in reply, a large oval window display appeared across the room. “This is Treveska, Captain of the L.I.A.S. Treyella. We are here with the Lykosan Imperial Armada Starships Khovek, New Horizon, and Biancasol, to deliver Torvolds of Cuna to assume role of Viceroy of the planet Shohan for the Lykosan Empire.”

Danit stood up before the image. “Greetings; I am Danit of Cuna, Acting Viceroy to Planet Shohan, Lykosan Imperial Functionary A-45, and Ambassador to the Crossover Realms. I believe we have met before.” He stood up, his hands on Nialle’s shoulders as she drifted upright. “And this is Nialle, my co-functionary and enforcer. She carried out Koheen’s termination.”

Nialle floated up to the oval projection and kinked her head back towards Danit. “He made me do it…. I’m really not a professional hit-man woman…elf-thing that flies through the air, thing. I just Awaken, Cross over, and stuff.”

“I see…” Treveska nodded, viewing Nialle closely. “Viceroy Torvolds and I will be coming down shortly to transfer the throne and deliver a quantum synchronization array-instant communications and data access with the rest of the Empire was on Shohan obviously long overdue. Afterwards, I will be happy to escort both of you back to the homeworld.”

“Unnecessary; as we have our own means of transportation,” Danit answered. “And, we have a few missing friends back in Nialle’s realm of existence.”

“Very well, then. However, you have once again gained favor from the Imperial Parliament and the Throne-though I must caution you that pro- and anti-Cunae/Ehlan Sidhe sentiments are both at an all time high, so don’t be surprised if you get a few bomb threats wherever you go.”

Suidhne Dreamsail pounded her fists again several times against the transparent barrier between her, Melody’s, and Ocelot’s lush, foliage-filled enclosure and the room outside. She shouted at the young, pointed-eared lady outside, who sat in a couch next to a coffee table, sorting various leaves. “I’m a living person, not a collector’s item! Let us out!” She pounded again, and then paced back and forth. “You’re Awakened, too; why can’t you see what’s wrong with this?”

The lady walked over, carrying a cluster of dried leaves in one hand. “William and I are saving you from extinction. We’re doing this for your species.” She placed one of the leaves into her mouth, eating it. “Is keeping you here any worse than letting you out into Collinwood’s air, eating their food, and having to take these herbs just to be able to endure all of the toxins?”

“Well, then, you get in here!” Suidhne replied.

“William needs me to help him gather information. Besides, I’m no where near as valuable as any of you.”

Ocelot, the thick-maned feral maiden, scratched at her hexagonal cage within the larger enclosure, and then patted her hands against the glass-like barrier, addressing the lady outside. “I’m not bite anyone…. Please me out?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” the lady outside answered. “But, you can’t grab, either.”

Suidhne’s horn clicked against the glass as she tilted her head forward, sighing. Melody stood up from a corner where she had made out bedding of grass and leaves, and walked over to Suidhne. As she placed her hand on Suidhne’s shoulder, she looked towards the woman outside discerningly with her three eyes. “We have powerful allies, and they will be looking for us.”