Free Battleground by Terry A. Adams

impossible. She had decided regretfully, however, that she could not really pass her own people off as alien. So Glory had gone to Uskos, where she looked like just another human, and there weren’t any secondary sexual behaviors for her to absorb and mimic, because there weren’t any sexual behaviors at all. Her appreciation of the intrinsic differences between humans and nonhumans was genuine, though, and she never minded for long when a D’neeran poked at her ego. That ego was too healthy to be permanently damaged; it might sustain a minor dent, but would repair itself quickly.
    Which left Hanna, who had not even started to do her job.
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    She knew quite well why she had postponed trying to get a sense of the whistling beings. A fear that could not be vanquished in twelve years’ time had deep roots. Time was kinked. There was a ghost at her shoulder.
    She reported to the team. Team members could not keep secrets about things like ghosts. A ghost that could keep you from acting needed to be made visible. You did not want it slipping up on you and paralyzing you at the wrong time.
    Team protocol. No argument.
    â€œThe ghost is me,” she told her team. “I’m thirty-six now, in Standard years. The ghost is still twenty-four. She hasn’t figured out true-humans yet, and she’s the only one of her kind among them. This is
Endeavor Three,
but she still thinks she’s on the first
Endeavor.
She’s expecting to breathe and sense unrelieved hostility from almost everyone around her. No one on that ship invited her. They didn’t want her. She was forced on them.
    â€œWe’re looking for beings we’ve designated Species Y. That sounds too much like what the ghost was looking for; it was called Species X, then. Now we call them Zeigans. And she knows what Species X did to her when she found them.”
    She watched them think it through. Dema had tears in her eyes. They all knew what had happened to the ghost, the wraith of a Hanna who had been almost destroyed in body and in mind.
    Bella Qu’e’en said quietly, “H’ana, as long as you know the ghost is there, you should be all right. And with a little time, so will she.”
    Hanna nodded.
    â€œJust don’t forget she’s there,” Hanna said. “You don’t want her commanding this team. She’s far too young.”
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    Communications put together an audiovisual loop, at first an hour long but extended constantly, starting with the oldest electromagnetic traces from Species Y that
Endeavor
could detect. It would be updated as
Endeavor
movedin. Hanna watched perhaps two minutes of it, and then went to Communications and with absolute sincerity told the men and women there that she honored them for their skill and dedication.
    Then she called her team together and they went to the auditorium and stayed there for days, watching the ever-lengthening loop.
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    Their faces are small,
she thought.
It was not so apparent in that old holo.
The beings’ heads altogether were proportionately small, mounted above slender necks, and the breathing tubes were covered with an insulating layerof downy hair or fur. The mouth, the eyes, and the bony plates that hid other eyes crowded faces that looked like afterthoughts.
    Someone appeared at the corner of Hanna’s own tired eye and she glanced up. Cork or Cock? She had been on
Endeavor
long enough to pick up the crew’s nicknames for Officers Corcoran and Cochran. One or both of them accompanied Captain Hope Metra everywhere.
    â€œCaptain wants to see you, ma’am,” this one said. Corcoran.
    Finally,
Hanna thought, but she got up without saying anything. Her attempt to report to the captain on boarding had been diverted to Cochran, a later attempt at a courtesy call to Corcoran.
    Jameson had gotten some information