Vash woke feeling groggy and disorientated, although only a few hours had passed. His bones felt as though they had been stress-tested to breaking point. He strained in the webbing, shifting uncomfortably as he became aware of the sensation of free-fall building in his stomach. He groaned as every joint in his body protested. Vash had never enjoyed spaceflight even in its most refined state – his lapse into unconsciousness had been a small mercy.

In the centre of the screens that surrounded him, an orbital habitat was drawing closer, its scale impossible to judge. The structure was cylindrical, spinning around a non-rotating axial hub. For a moment Vash almost convinced himself that nothing had changed, but the hab lights were dark and as the lander drew closer still he could see the signs of disrepair. Ragged holes pitted the hull where debris had blown through. Heavy dark shapes, like fluted columns tipped with knives, floated at various angles around the wheel. Dyn spacecraft; the product of a technology and a mode of thought utterly different to that of humanity. Less advanced, with their nuclear reactors and steam-jet nozzles, but more refined.

Stabs of thrust adjusted the course, flashes of hydrazine aligning the craft with the axial docking spine. There was a jarring thud as the docking clamps engaged. The silence was broken only by creaking as the lander settled. Vash had been unsure of what to expect, but it wasn’t this. He disentangled himself from the webbing and kicked off awkwardly in the direction of the airlock. He saw now that it had been repurposed from a human craft and crudely welded into place. The air that cycled into the lock was thick with moisture, a potent mix of exotic hydrocarbons and too much oxygen, all of which only worsened the nausea he felt in microgravity.

The corridor beyond was deserted and dark, the hub beyond that the same, lit only by the faint glow of what appeared to be a bioluminescent algae-analogue smeared over the walls. It had been painted in a rough trail leading deeper into the hab, guiding him to an elevator. He didn’t call out – something about the quiet watchfulness of the place cautioned against it. He felt the nausea of microgravity fade; it was replaced by the peculiar twisting sensation of coriolis.

As he descended the gravity increased smoothly up to a gee, then further still. One and a half gees, he guessed, but there was no way to tell. He could hear condensed moisture begin to trickle down the elevator’s walls. Vash came abruptly to a halt before the doors opened and was knocked back by the vista that confronted him.

The habitat interior was almost entirely open, broken only by the remains of hastily torn out bulkheads, arcing up over Vash’s head where it disappeared in a mass of storm clouds. Rain lashed down, stinging where it hit his skin. He squinted into the gloom and in the distance he saw someone; a human figure sat cross-legged, alone in the expanse. Apprehensively, he made his way forwards. The convoluted root networks of low Dynic flora threatened to trip him with every step. The figure was a woman of perhaps twenty.

‘Hello?’ he called, feeling faintly ridiculous. She remained motionless. Vash walked closer, his sense of unease worsening.

Her head was bowed, features obscured by long dark hair that hung dripping over thin shoulders. She wore a crudely cut smock, which was similarly soaked; the flimsy parasol she held was completely inadequate in the face of the torrential rain. As Vash approached, the girl looked up, flashing an imitation of a smile.

‘Welcome Ambassador Vash, it is good to see you,’ said the girl, her voice sweet, but flat, somehow off. The voice from the phone.

‘K’txl?’ he managed, stumbling over the transliteration.

‘That is my name, but I believe Liar to Animals would be the closest translation into your own tongue,’ the girl replied without the slightest trace of irony. ‘Please, sit.’ She smiled again, gesturing at the sodden imitation of a picnic spread.

He did as he was asked, drawing his coat around him. She passed him a teacup, full to the brim with tepid rainwater. A teabag sat at the bottom. In spite of himself Vash accepted it, his mind still racing to catch up and struggling to process the entirely unexpected reality he was confronted with. The rain eased off to a steady drizzle.

‘It is such wonderful weather we are having today,’ the girl remarked, making a show of looking around. ‘Would you like some more tea?’ She handed him another teacup before he could answer.

‘- I’m fine for drink,’ he replied, accepting the teacup and placing it to one side of him. She didn’t seem to even notice.

‘How about food? Are you hungry? Are you tired? Or would you like to have sex with me? Would that not be in the spirit of a mutually beneficial cooperative relationship?’ She grasped his hands in hers.

‘No, no, I’m good.’ Vash shivered, pulling away. The girl, Liar to Animals, was watching him, her head tilted to one side, her smile fading.

‘I realise you must have questions.’

‘You’re human,’ he said abruptly, but without conviction.

In response the girl delicately gathered her hair to one side, bowing her head. Vash leant forwards, his breathing shallow. Scar tissue showed beneath stubble. Thick cables sprouted from crudely implanted ports in the base of her skull and behind one ear. They snaked away across the plains towards a dense thicket of foliage. Vash withdrew unsteadily, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise as he scoured the shadows.

‘I am Liar to Animals. I am Dyn. This body is little more than a puppet.’ She – it – looked at him, meeting his gaze. And behind the empty eyes Vash swore he could see something alien looking out at him.

‘That tech is -’

‘Repurposed. Much of the functioning of old human technology remains opaque to us, but we have made significant progress through reverse engineering. The field of brain/computer interfaces has been of particular personal interest. We examine the human and Dynic brain, map how they represent concepts and sensations, and construct a bridge between the two. The barriers between our minds become porous, and the more that I experience the more I understand the perversities of human nature.’

‘What has happened to her?’

‘She lives. When I use this body she sleeps. And when she wakes she will not remember this meeting. You cannot help her.’

The girl sat completely motionless, hands folded in her lap. A silence stretched between them as she watched Vash. And then suddenly, without prompting, she asked the last question he would have expected.

‘Tell me Vash, do you consider me to be evil?’

He hesitated. ‘I think that it would be a mistake to moralise.’

‘You hate me for my part in what has been done to the people of Earth,’ K’txl said flatly.

‘I don’t hate you, no, though many do. I don’t consider you to be evil. But your goals are not my own.’

‘What are your goals, Vash?’ she asked, cocking her head to one side. He didn’t respond to that. K’txl merely smiled lifelessly and took a sip from her watery cup.

‘You fascinate me, Vash – in many ways you’re more human than any of them. When you talk of your goals, your motives, you don’t speak of self-interest do you? You appeal to something more fundamental. Do you remember what you said to me, the first time we spoke? You said you wanted to do what was right.’

K’txl reached out a thin arm, tracing the outline of Vash’s unshaven jaw with a cold finger as if he were a specimen of some fascinating, but dangerous animal. He sat calmly as the rain soaked through the coat, willing himself not to cringe away.

‘Right. Another story you tell yourselves, another thread of the mass hallucination that is human existence; like law or money or justice,’ she continued, speaking as though the very words were an affront. ‘You don’t live in the real world. You would kill each other for the sake of things which do not exist. War for the sake of ideas. When we learnt of your nature we were… baffled is too insubstantial. We found it impossible. It was insane. We were afraid.’

‘Is that why you attacked Earth without warning?’

‘No,’ she said, expression hardening. ‘We attacked you in self-defence.’

‘How can you claim that?’ Vash said, voice rising. He recoiled from her touch, pausing for a moment before he said something regrettable. ‘Were you truly so paranoid?’

‘Not paranoia, prediction. Humanity had a great knowledge of the rules that govern reality and with that came power. But you used that knowledge to contort reality so that it reflected your waking dreams. We knew that you would not be able to tolerate our existence, that our nature would have been another wrong that had to be righted. So we acted first.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I don’t understand you, Vash,’ she leant forward again, eyes focussing on his. ‘And that is the problem.’ Rain dripped from the tips of the parasol and ran down her face and hair. Vash watched a drop run over her forehead and drip onto her eyeball. She didn’t blink.

‘Was that why you brought me here, to study me in the flesh?’

‘Wars are fought over conflicts of interest, over differences. As my line flourished they competed with other lines for territory and resources. The victorious lineage would take what is desired. But that is not so with wars of ideas, not when it is our very nature that is the difference. It would be a war of extermination. That is why I must understand you. I must get inside your minds.’

‘That’s why you’ve connected yourself to the girl,’ Vash said. A horrible realisation was floating just beyond his awareness, like a forgotten word that defied memory.

‘Conflict between my domain and others is coming to a head. There are many who wish to end your world and the threat it represents. I must have a solution to the difference between our species. I must understand the decisions you make.’

‘The decisions I make,’ Vash breathed. ‘You really weren’t going to kill anyone in Conurbation One, were you? That was another experiment you performed on me?’

The girl clapped her hands together and let out a bark of delighted laughter.

‘Yes, now you understand! This thing you call right is the key – I observed and recorded your words as you deliberated my ultimatum. I saw inside your mind, just as I am now inside the mind of this human girl. And so we make progress.’

Behind Vash’s back, where his arms rested on the picnic mat, his hands curled together, knuckles whitening. It lasted only a moment, before the fingers relaxed. He was another conduit for the still-unseen K’txl, just like this girl; another experiment.

‘Hundreds of people died.’

‘Yes,’ K’txl said. She took another sip from the cup. ‘For us, there is no fear in individual death.’

‘The Dyn don’t fear death?’ Vash said incredulously. ‘All of evolution is against that -’

‘A line and domain may persist, even when a single Dyn is dead. If one dies for the sake of one’s line then all that matters continues after death. What is there to fear but the end of the line? And I do fear that Vash, make no mistake. I have been attacked.’

‘You’ve been attacked? When did this happen?’

‘My other, the next of my line,’ K’txl corrected. ‘The night after I summoned you here he was abducted from my domain by a group of rebels.’

‘This other, he is your son?’

‘The first of my sons, the one who will become Liar to Animals when this self dies. I have invested much in the shaping of his mind, and would not wish to see his life go to waste. You will recover him for me.’

‘I’m not your soldier.’

‘You will lead a party… I come to you directly because those that would challenge me cannot be allowed to know. They are a threat to us both. Consider this the next experiment, if you like.’

‘What happens if I fail?’

The girl’s lips twisted up again in that pale imitation of a smile.

‘I will be forced to call for a more immediate response to our differences.’

The image on the memory machine’s screen was gray and blurred by compression artefacts. Vash watched the drone footage for a second time, almost unable to believe what he was seeing.

A heavily modified crawler, the kind isolated conurbations used to move essential supplies and lay roads, was framed in the centre. It burst from a warehouse, a blurry but unmistakably alien figure lashed to the top of it like Prometheus chained to the rocks, before ploughing into the jungle as it travelled north-east, leaving behind a trail of destruction. Corbin’s finger tapped on the screen.

‘That’ll be our missing Dyn. The first reports arrived while you were off-world; a breach in one of the largest reservations, not far from Conurbation Fifteen. We tracked their vehicle back to the warehouse but by the time Enforcers arrived it was too risky to engage – it’s not as though we can use restraint and precision against a mobile fortress. I checked the crawler’s registration – it was pulled out of circulation for maintenance just over a fortnight back…’

‘Do we still have eyes on the crawler?’

‘Yes, they didn’t seem to have any problem with the drone. They’re not trying to hide, but I’ve ordered the Enforcers in pursuit to hang back.’

‘Good,’ said Vash, taking a deep breath. ‘Good work.’ Corbin nodded. Grey afternoon light filtered into his office through the broad window.

‘No matter what weapons those revolutionaries have improvised or stolen from us, they can’t expect to hold out for long… Just how important is this Dyn? As diplomatic incidents go, it can’t get much worse than a bunch of rebels driving around with the equivalent of a giant middle finger pointed at the sky. It would be much simpler if we could just-’

‘Don’t even consider it,’ Vash interrupted. ‘The Dyn have demanded we recover it – him – alive and unharmed. She implied if we didn’t there would be dire consequences.’

‘She?’

‘The Dyn leaders are female.’

‘You actually met it, face to face; what was that like?’

‘I’d rather not say.’

Vash typed more commands into the keyboard, freezing the feed with bulk of the vehicle in the middle of the screen. A sigil like a jagged mountain was visible, daubed across the entire top deck. It was hauntingly familiar.

Corbin broke the silence.

‘Sir… this entire situation doesn’t make sense. Hijacking a crawler, kidnapping a Dyn and daubing that sign on the deck – it’s insane. The whole thing is so overt that it’s as if they want us to notice.’

Vash stared, transfixed at that symbol. It didn’t belong in this time or place. He’d last seen that symbol on the hand of a man long-dead, who’d spoken of ‘warseeds’ and ‘dragon’s teeth’. What was it doing here?

‘Are you alright?’

‘Does that symbol mean anything to you?’ Vash asked.

‘I spoke to the local Director. The enforcers have been scraping that sign off the walls of conurbations in the region for a couple of months. This new rebel group has clearly emerged recently. Why, is it important?’

‘Perhaps it is just coincidence. If not, it may be more important than anything else.’

‘You’ve lost me, sir.’

Vash reached beneath to the keyboard, shifting the image to frame the symbol in the centre.

‘Is that a mountain or a jagged tooth?’ Vash asked, innocently. ‘Could it be, say, a dragon’s tooth?’

Corbin sighed, squinting down at the image.

‘Now that you’ve put the suggestion in my mind I can’t be sure what I’m seeing. I suppose it could be the canine of some predator. What’s the significance of that?’

Vash let out a hollow laugh then abruptly cut himself off when he saw Corbin’s expression.

‘I suppose the Enforcer academies skipped the classical education. It’s an old myth. The goddess of wisdom, Athena, devised a plan to sow dragon’s teeth into the ground and the teeth grew into fully-fledged warriors.’

Corbin didn’t say anything for a moment, weighing his words.

‘Sir, with all due respect, the Dyn ships are already descending into lower orbits – look at the sky and you can see their drives flaring. We don’t have time for pondering the origins and implications of the symbols of various insurrectionist groups. Just tell me what your point is in plain Americano and I’ll lead the party – I’m sure you could do with a rest.’

Vash considered for a moment whether to share his suspicions, but something stopped him.

‘Get gunships prepared for departure,’ he said, switching off the memory machine with a dull whirr. ‘We’re going to meet the revolution.’