There was a flash of black light, blacker than space, and I saw the orb of Yan's ship speed towards her as fast as he could possibly move it. Whatever he was trying to achieve, I knew, he was already too late. I wasn't sure why this filled me with such foreboding but the whole scene was triggering my Plotbunny's instincts to fear that which was not supposed to happen and that which was not meant to be seen.

"She has made contact with the fleet's Overmind," explained Tracy. After an hour of meditation and partaking of sacred herbs, the priestess claimed to have finally succeeded in opening her mind fully to the word of Spatula. Her half-closed eyes, staring out at something nobody else could see, her gentle swaying and slow, heavy breathing spoke of a focus beyond simple rapt concentration, as if her being was attuned to her goal. I had seen the same look on the face of a fully inspired True Scribe, and to a lesser extent, the same madness showed in the boy even before he had been psychically awakened, never mind succeeded in his first Inspiration. I imagined the training of an Oracle, which was Tracy's specialisation within the Temple, was probably just as tough as any profession taught in the Plotbunny Sanctuary. I wasn't sure of the difference between 'communing with' your deity and spying on her, though. Spatula hadn't asked for an audience. Still, it was useful to know what she was up to. At her side, Scribe continued to furiously wrote everything down, ignoring the bored cat who batted at his pen in a bid for attention.

"She's plugged into the mothership. So many wires, so close to a machine in spirit," said Tracy. To her credit, she had accepted the existence of a level of technology so vast in comparison to anything possible with the current stage of development on her home planet that it should have been inconceivable. I suspected that it reminded her of something from her folklore, she was comfortable enough with magic to accept that it was just a different kind of magic, or Spatula had secretly already told her about the other side of her nature, "She's a little afraid... afraid for us? Afraid of what Yan will do? She has broken some kind of grave law. But the fleet's thoughts are all around her as well. She begins to accept the inevitability of surrender... we can only hope to imitate her to the best of our mortal ability in this!"

"Can you tell me more about the laws that have been broken?" I asked. Not only did this worry me, I also wanted to steer the conversation away from yet another sermon on Spatula's magnificence, the virtues of grace in surrender and the inevitability of everyone's doom.

"She... brought defeat as their Queen before? To everyone. The Gods. Everything," she said, looking sad but awed at the same time, like someone watching an unusually big and impressive Apocalypse, "They made her... their word? Seeded defeat. They had to imprison her. Yan was the one! The Infernal lied to me!"

"Technically, he never said he hadn't..." I began.

"Lied to me!" she snapped, her voice rising in pitch and volume, her eyes wide and full of the same fire as Spatula's, her mouth set in divine indignation, "He will not reach her! He won't touch my Goddess!"

"I don't think he can reach her anyway," noted Unfluffykins.

Indeed, the black sphere continued to dart around the fleet's bulwark, so fast it might as well have been teleporting from place to place. Whenever he found so much as the slightest opening, the Infernal darted inside. However, he was invariably chased out by a squad of hive drones or almost vaporised after finding out that the 'opening' was actually clearing the path for a laser cannon. His attempts to force his way through with his own antimatter railguns, embedded into several panels all around the sphere, yielded nothing more than return fire. The mass of shining black carapaces, interlocked cables and shimmering red lights was as impenetrable as it was impossible to see through. Maybe Tracy could have sent a useful telepathic message through, possibly even a psychic attack, but she had no motivation to. She was firmly on Spatula's side in the matter, no matter what crimes the Goddess may or may not have committed. Personally, I still had no real knowledge of the situation or reason to break my Plotbunny oath of impartiality. Most importantly, one side had stopped firing at us and the other was more interested in what the hell their enemy was up to than harassing three vulnerable-looking but stubborn ships.

Suddenly, every light on the conglomeration turned solid red at once. Yan's ship darted away as fast as he had advanced. The Infernal must have been aware of what was coming. Seconds later, a much brighter red light poured out from inside Spatula's cocoon, streaming from the few openings and pushing them further apart like holes in a dam. The Masayan ships began drifting away again, letting out more light that was intolerably bright even when only a few trickles had emerged. Finally, the dam of light burst and everything went red, so bright it felt as though my eyes were burning behind my eyelids. Mercifully, my observation window shorted out, as did every sensor on the ship split seconds after all their readings shot off the scale. The energy surge back to the reactor temporarily shut everything off. Although the life support and engines went on to backup, the lights had blown. Even in the darkness, I still heard its humming, saw a vague red aura around everything that wasn't just an after-effect, and felt its presence looming over me, something dark and alien and cruel.

A hologram appeared in front of me. I thought the communications systems were back online but then I realised that the image was projected into the ship from outside, completely bypassing my ECM fields, assuming that they were even working.

It was Spatula. I could tell that it was the same face, the same eyes, underneath the heavy cybernetic augmentation. She had a visor that covered half her face, similar to my own, with a communicator built in. Her torso was covered in sleek, shining black, form-fitting cyber-armour. Her wings had been reinforced with the same chitin-metal hybrid, although they sparked and trailed frayed wires that hung uselessly where the stigmatic wounds normally were. They also shone with a crimson energy field, as did the energy spear in one hand, which flickered and failed to form at one end. All around her danced the tiniest of the drones, as if her outstretched arms conducted their performance. Hung over her shoulders was a diaphanous violet robe made out of some approximation of silk, and similar ribbons tied back her hair in its normal style, two small braids by her ears and the rest left to flow down her shoulders.

She looked in her element.

"Plotbunny Bunfire of the Not An Asteroid," she said in a soft but insistent voice, her face impassive, "Xoria Revorse of the Princess Skiffleboard. Yama Yan of the... whatever your ship is called. You are surrounded and outnumbered. You, your crew, passengers and pets will surrender immediately to the Masayan Hive and agree to be upgraded. We can upgrade cats, right?"

Spatula turned around and a drone alighted on her shoulder. It trilled in her ear for a couple of seconds, then flew off to rejoin the others.

"Okay, apparently we can't upgrade cats. But we can fit a force shield around you and a laser field around your claw weapons, if you have any."

"Before I decide if it is a fate worse than death or not, what exactly does 'upgrading' entail?" I asked.

"Do I lose my identity?" demanded Scribe, "Do I have to lay eggs?"

"Does she really look like she's lost her identity?" snapped Tracy.

"But she looks like the Queen or something."

"No, Scribe, you will not have to lay eggs or lose your individuality, free will, creativity, soul or non-replaceable limbs. You will be cybernetically augmented and seeded with as much of the same understanding of the Universe as your brain will handle, possibly with neural augmentation. You will also agree not to stand against your home world's inevitable conquest, a promise you will be monitored at all times to ensure you keep to. You will also subliminally spread the Spatulate seed, and the location of your home planet will be known to the Masayans."

"What are you going to do to my planet?" asked Scribe, "I'm supposed to be protecting it! And Tracy can't forcibly convert people to her religion. It isn't what their Temple is about. You should know that, if you really are Spatula."

"The Spatulate Seed is not the worship of Spatula. It is Her meme, to prepare for defeat," said Spatula, "And your world will have its sentient life upgraded and the seed passed on. If suitable, it will join the Masayan Hive."

"Good luck getting Yan to agree to that," said Scribe, "Besides, we can't agree to surrender our home worlds. We don't have the authority to represent them."

"You will not be handing them over. You will be revealing their location and sending a message for us."

"Masayans... I don't know if I'm reaching the true Overmind, its representative or a local node, but I hope this gets to someone in authority," I began, clasping my hands in front of me, "Are you aware how off course you are? You are too far away from your centre of command or even each other to transmit signals effectively. In addition, you are risking your existence by using unstable wormholes to travel. The shape of space in this dimension has changed and become a lot more dangerous. It isn't an ideal time or place for an invasion."

Spatula frowned, "We are aware of this. Which is why we need more assistance from newly upgraded initiates familiar with this area. Not to continue our invasion, but because we plan to address this problem ourselves, as the largest scale and oldest species in the galaxy fully aware of the scope of the damage. We are fortunate in locating individuals also seeking to address the problem. You can't do this on your own, though. You don't have the ability to travel as far as you need to or strong enough means to defend yourselves. In exchange, you can give us vital information about regions we aren't supposed to be in."

"If you are so aware of the situation, you should know that the Plotbunny Agency uses interplanetary control system technology. Upgrading me could cause dangerous incompatibility and even global security issues," I said.

"The alternative is that we cannot assist you in leaving. We are aware that you are unable to reach your desired location. We have another fleet there requiring retrieval, so we can use our link to take you there. However, you would need to integrate our technology to be able to follow us and survive our means of travel," explained Spatula, "Commander Revorse has already explained that you might feel sentimental attachment to their ships, so I have agreed to compromise by integrating our technology into your ships in a way that does not compromise your original function, rather than transferring you to our ships."

"This is a lot to digest, and a lot of trust to ask of someone when your species is notoriously expansionist."

"Please try not to spend too long. Our fleet on the other end desperately requires retrieval."

"They're losing," explained Tracy, "Almost wiped out to the smallest scarab. Picked off a lot more than they can chew, but not really their fault. A lure for a big fish."

I turned around to face the Oracle and so did Scribe, looking up from his frenzied recording. I realised that the boy was suffering a little from the psychologically disruptive effects of meeting a Plotbunny in person for the first time and made a mental note that I had to start the Ritual of True Inspiration as soon as possible. I really needed to be back at Headquarters, though, where I had proper facilities. A botched Inspiration was never pretty. I was even more surprised to hear Tracy speak for the first time in what seemed like hours. I had thought she was too deep in trance, possibly reacting to the sudden, dramatic change in her Goddess' very nature, to be capable of perceiving the outside world. This was the sort of situation where real prophecies could occur. In a way, a genuine Oracle was not too different from a True Scribe, and I wondered if the reason the two youths had been drawn to each other was something more than potential romantic compatibility. Whatever the case, Tracy was speaking now and I felt the power of another force behind her words.

"She's still Spatula," added the priestess, regarding the image of her Goddess as a Masayan Hive Queen with an almost feline inability to be impressed. Then the actual cat, who had been curled up asleep on Tracy's lap, opened one eye and spoke to me in my head.

"She's got this under control," said Unfluffykins with a wide yawn, stretching out her forepaws and kneading with her claws out, "You just have to play along and wait. Well, this will be real, but it'll save us in the end. They can't pick up feline psychic transmissions, we're too advanced for them. Well, okay, too weird."

"What have the others said?" I asked out loud.

"The Yama has flat refused. Commander Revorse has agreed with the promise that her mission of mineral resource extraction will not be compromised," replied Spatula, "I ask that you do not interfere with the business between the Infernals and ourselves."

"I'm not going to be in trouble when I get home?" asked Scribe. Then he shrugged, "Of course I am. I always am, when there's politics. I guess I have bigger things to think about right now."

"This isn't politics. It's personal, between Spatula and Yan," corrected Tracy, "I suggest we agree to the terms."

"My spiritual adviser has spoken," I said.

"Real big trouble," muttered Scribe, tidying his papers away and putting on the kettle for another cup of tea, "I hate politics."