Ambassador Kel’Rae wasn’t sure how to feel about his official summons. He was apprehensive about how seriously the Humans would take this “crisis.” From Kel’Rae’s perspective, it was simply a “Public Relations” problem that was easily fixed. But all of the easy fixes still cast a pall on the integrity of the internal Inteligence Bureau of SICON itself, and Kel’Rae certainly didn’t think Intel would find the easy fixes to be as “easy” as he did.

Rico’s Roughnecks were his official “escort” aboard the SICON shuttle. He had been told that he was needed for some sort of public announcement which, for reasons which would become clear, had to be broadcast from the Night side of the planet Tophet (they never called it the Dark Zone, for some reason). He had been apologized to by professional apologizers, repeatedly and often, for any discomfort or inconvenience this might cause the Ambassador personally, so Kel’Rae had reason to be in high spirits. They would not apologize so readily if they suspected he already new about Intel’s little pet project. In fact, Kel’Rae didn’t see any reason why the top secret weapons cache couldn’t stay right where it was, or why it couldn’t remain a secret. But of course, the threat of exposure is what the Humans feared, so no doubt they intended to go public with the news in order to diffuse the threat. It was what they perceived to be in their self interest.

Kel’Rae opened his wireless lap-top computer and logged on. There was no one to observe him here in the front passenger seat, but what if they did? They would only see a kindly old ambassador checking his email. Kel’Rae emailed Du’kra the launch command and double checked to make sure that the ghost account deleted itself as soon as the message was sent.

It was going to be an interesting afternoon.