Deep Space
Windward Passge
Thrynn Frigate Jussru

Sensor operation is hardly a science. Too many variables and too much guesswork to be anything but an art. On the red-lit bridge, a junior officer watched the collage of patterns and deviations that cascaded continuously across his screen. Something was irregular at the junction of the Windward Passage, the Confederacy and Gazurtoid Space.
There.

Deep Space
Uhlek Badlands
G’Nunk Warship Regepple

“Vile G’Noon!” roared Dozelord Gannuzo. “Watch the G’Nunk chosen feed on the rotting carcass,” he continued, smacking his executive officer on the back. Subdozelord Bikk unleashed a hearty bellow in response, though half choking at the same time. “With our new living weapons, we shall tear a bloody swath across the cosmos!” Through the window they watched as various strains of G’Nunk in vacuum suits scavenged for loot in the cooled wreck of an unfortunate Spemin vessel. Unswerving sentinels, a halo of Leghk vessels encircled the Regepple and its prey.

As they always had, they waited.

“Enough of this—further tests await us,” declared Gannuzo with a flurry of dramatic gestures. “We depart!” Marooning a few greedy stragglers in the wreck’s cooling bowels, Regepple flew off with its silent entourage. Several light years behind, ISS Negelle dropped a time-delayed message buoy, then spun its engines to follow the maurading G’Nunk.

Deep Space
Windward Passage
The Shanghai

Heavy drives sent the behemoth warship and the attached Belfast Windfall bolting across open space. Senator HvHuss stood with Arella in a dank cargo bay, each with a piece of the same puzzle. “Here,” he said, reaching into his deep pockets and pulling out the small globe artifacts. “Both are of Thosss. On one, the messsage I cannot decipher: ‘From the constellation of the hill-bound sea, the path to truth.’ On the other, a sset of coordinatess that lead nowhere on all the ssstarmapss to which I have access.”

Hill-bound sea. “This has to be the one,” offered Arella, unfolding the St. Christopher map from the cathedral and spreading it on a table in front of them. “The hill-bound sea. Galilee, senator.” The aging lizard looked at her inquisitively as she punched up an animated picture of a planet on her data pad. “Galilee is on the trailing edge of the largest continent on Old Earth, senator. It’s a small sea—a lake, really—surrounded by high hills that fairly burst out of the ground.”

“Earth…the Pythagorasss Conssstellation?”

“The Cross Constellation. Galilee’s shores knew the frequent visits of a man known as Christ. He drastically altered the dynamic of human history, of philosophy and faith. Billions believed he was the Son of God Himself—the religion still exists, though somewhat diminished by the Second Wave disaster,” explained Arella. She reached up into a cabinet above one of her lab stations and pulled down an artifact from one of the excavated Mars stations. She displayed it for the senator. “The symbol of his faithful was the cross.” HvHuss was silent, comprehending, as he studied the Orthodox artifact. Arella turned her attention back to the map. “In any case, this map keys for zero on the Cross nexus. What are the coordinates? Perhaps we’ll find a fit.” The senator read them from the scale that circled the second green globe. Arella traced her fingers across the worn paper, arriving at a single point. She blinked.

“That’s impossible.”

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Next: “Staging Ground”