The Athame was silent as I found myself unable to sleep any longer. The Iskar and Sally were bunked out and Sally was snoring lightly. Pulling on my boots I walked quietly up to the control cabin and found Lady Silver on watch. I walked past her and locked the console controls as I sat down facing her. She was alert but seemed to be staring at memories rather than out the plas-glass canopy. "You're like the Iskar," I said quietly. "Not really human." The green gems of her eyes turned to look at me and then she glanced back out to the emptiness of space. Smiling slightly she turned back to look at me. "Do you really wish to know?" "Yes, but I won't have hurt feelings if you don't want to tell me." "Efra, whom you call The Iskar, is far closer to human than I am." She glanced out the window again and then back at me. Her smile turned wry. "I've seen some 22,000 of your years and yet I am considered but a child by those of my blood." I sat and considered what she said and I had a sense of both pride and pain in what she told me. Steepling my fingers I gazed at her. "So what are we chasing after that has these ancient ones chasing us?" "A legend, Captain. The Elders would have us believe that in the darkest depths of time they tricked a demon and locked it in a place outside of this universe." "So we are chasing after a 'Demon' are we?" "I don't believe so. Much of what the Elders have taught me I have found to be filled with lies. They would have us treat your kind as mere chattel, things to be used for our amusement. Yet I have lived among you and seen that your kind, despite the fleeting existence that is your fate, are more than that. When I treat with you as an equal you rise above what I am told to expect from your kind and thus you put a lie to those teachings I have had." She looked out the window once again. "I think we chase something which was good and which the ancestors betrayed in some fashion. It fits too well with their fears when I think about it." She looked back at me earnestly. "And I have dreamed disturbing dreams. I hear echos of a cry for help, for release. And it does not strike me as being of evil." I thought about what she said for a few minutes. Then I grinned. "I certainly hope you have the right of it, then." I rose from my seat and started back to the berthing area. As I came even with her seat I stopped and looked down at her. "Thanks. I wasn't sure you would answer me. I'm glad that you did." She smiled widely. "This is why I know the Elders are wrong and have lied to us." "You sure we're going to find anything in this search of yours?" I asked her. "I can only hope so." "But you believe so," I stated bluntly. "Why?" "Because the Eldest is after me. My simple disobedience to their will would not have her doing that. So I believe. And the River Wytch tells me that this is more than a fairy tale to my kind." I started to say goodnight but I was interrupted by a flashing light and a gonging alarm from the detection panel. I turned and jumped for the command chair as I snapped orders to Lady Silver. "Get everyone up, seated and strapped in. We have company and it's definitely not friendly." I had to give her credit. She didn't even ask the questions that I knew were ringing in her head but she jumped up and headed aft to wake Sally and The Iskar. I threw on my harness as I dropped into the command chair and then snapped over my shoulder, "Sally, full inertials and gravity control. This is going to be rough." She was giving vocal commands to the consoles even as she was snapping on her safety harness before her hands were free to input the commands. We were out of time. I hit the drive and threw in a random (I hoped) vector as The Athame rode her drive energies away from the spot we had been in. "Brace yourselves," I yelled. "This is going to get really ugly, really fast." To Be Continued.......