“Please,” Admiral Sherwood said to his guests; “take a seat, my friends.”

“Friends?” asked Duke Bullwhip. “This,” he tugged at the collar they had placed around his neck, “is how you treat friends? You lock them up in interrogation chambers and send electricity through them until they give you a response that you like?”

“Mr. Bullwhip, please,” replied the admiral. “That was, by no means, a form of torture. The collars which you presently wear,” he vaguely gestured to them with his hand, “are simply scanners. We have yet to master the technology enough to actually extract facts from the Human mind, but we have developed it enough to be able to tell when someone is lying to us. The electric shock -- the ‘torture,’ as you put it, was nothing more than the device scanning your nervous system.”

“And I was called a liar because...? This was performed on me several times because...?”

“You, Mr. Bullwhip, gave the machine rather strange readings. The accusations of lying were simply used to stall you so that we could get more accurate readings.” He paused for a brief moment. “Please,” he said; “take a seat.”

The three men sat in chairs near the admiral’s desk.

“If we are truly ‘friends,’ what’s with the goons?” Duke Bullwhip jerked a thumb back at the members of Task Force Omega who stood in the doorway, with their blaze pistols aimed at the three visitors.

“Them?” asked the admiral. “Dismissed,” he said, and waved his hand.

The three black-clad men left, with the door to the admiral’s office closing behind them.

“Now... can we talk?”

Duke Bullwhip nodded. “Yes, admiral, we can talk.”

“You speak of a Renegade attack on this outpost, but the jump points are hidden by the nebula, and...”

“We got here, didn’t we?” replied Duke coolly.

“Indeed,” replied the admiral. “However, intelligence reports and scans by the sensor buoys have yet to report any activity like that.”

“We bring a warning. You can heed this warning or ignore it. The choice is yours, Admiral Sherwood.”

Admiral Sherwood’s comm-unit began to beep. “Sherwood,” he said. “What is it?” The admiral’s face dropped. “You’re positive? Yes, of course... Estimated time of arrival?” There was a brief pause. “All right,” replied the admiral. He closed the comm-unit and slammed it against the table. “I have chosen to heed your warning, captain. The question is: will you help me save the galaxy?”

“What’s in it for us?” asked Duke Bullwhip.

“Your ship, the Goliath could be unstoppable with standard Omega upgrades...”

Duke glanced at his two companions, and then shifted his gaze back on the admiral. “We’re in.”