“So who are what are… is the Bane Sidhe?” Mike said, tilting his head as he tried to figure out the grammar.

“The Bane Sidhe is an underground group of rebels against the Darhel,” Wes said. “That’s the simple answer. They are mostly among the Indowy…”

“Wait,” Mike said, giggling. “Indowy rebels? What do they do, send pointed memos?”

“They penetrate the Darhel for information,” Wes said, his face blank. “Very, very thoroughly.”

“Oh,” Mike said, suddenly serious. “And they pass that information to… ?”

“Mostly they just seem to collect it like misers,” Wes said with a sigh. “Look, we don’t know a lot about the Bane Sidhe. They also have a very serious counterintelligence capability. But this is what we know and suspect. First of all, there’s the name. Does it sound familiar?”

“It doesn’t sound Indowy or Darhel,” Mike said. “Or Crab for that matter.”

“It’s not, it’s Gaelic,” Wes said. “It translates as Killer of Elves. The Darhel Killers in other words.”

“Why Gaelic?” Mike asked. “I take it that’s the name for the human component.”

“No,” Wes said. “It is the name of the overall group, which existed prior to this contact.”

“So there was prior contact,” Mike said, nodding. “That was pretty evident but…”

“But now we get back around to why the Bane Sidhe matter to Fleet Strike,” Tam said. “First of all, they’re a rebel group against the Federation as it’s currently constituted. As I pointed out, much as we may both hate the Darhel, taking them out is out of the question absent creating something to replace them and having it in place beforehand. Otherwise we’re faced by a widespread civil war. Which would give the Posleen time to recover and then, depending on how long the war took and what replaced the Federation, we’d be back in a hole. Given the weapons that could be used in such a war, Earth might not survive. I don’t want that sort of war. Not now. Not absent some way to make sure it doesn’t go insane.”