NARRATOR: Parnassus Dom, one handbrain-assisted teraport later...
PETEY: Captain Tagon, welcome back. Various accounts of your exploits are racing from one end of the hypernet to the other.
TAGON: People will talk, I guess.
PETEY: My favorite version has you capturing a bioweapon from Gavcorps, and then deploying it against the Morokweng, which subsequently self-sterilized in a final, heroic, sacrificial act.
TAGON: That's not how it happened.
PETEY: I've seen Kevyn's report. I'd love to hear it in your words, though.
TAGON: Tagii blew up the Morokweng. They iced their annie plants to hide from the Pa'anuri, and underestimated just how desperate our A.I. was to kill things.
Tagii would have killed us next, but Ventura had laced the processors with thoomite.
PETEY: *on screen* How do you feel about that?
TAGON: Oh, is this a therapeutic debrief? Fine. I don't like secrets that I'm not in on.
I have to give the girl credit, though. The kill switch wouldn't work until she was out of the shielded restraints, so she baited Tagii into releasing her.
TAGON: We only suffered two casualties. Three if you count Tagii.
And four if you count Sergeant Schlock, Mark I. I'm amazed any of us lived.
TAGON: We got attacked by squadrons of warships, zombie soldiers, nanny-plague, a U.N.S. battleplate, an ancient Pa'anuri prisoner, and our own ship.
PETEY: Indeed, though the squadrons of warships appear to have been drone fleets.
TAGON: Probative attacks from the U.N.S.?
PETEY: Exactly. Also, I do not think that you faced an ancient Pa'anuri.
TAGON: Oisri looked pretty old to me. What's your definition of "ancient?"
PETEY: Oh, Oisri is certainly ancient, but the Pa'anuri inside it may not have been. To my analysis, Oisri is not a vessel for imprisoning a dark-matter creature.
PETEY: *Narration* "It is a machine for creating one."