Our next mission was supposed to be relaxing, though I do not know why anyone would think ballet was relaxing. We were assigned to provide escort and guard the Qin ambassador when he visited Russia to attend the ballet. We were also tasked to find out more about the Qin if the opportunity arose.

We travelled to Russia and met with the Qin delegation. Hey consisted of the ambassador Soub-Jur, his ade Llou-Aub, and three bodyguards, Vrol-Hhum! Laa, Ren-Hath and Thar! Tha.

The plan was to show the Qin various sights in Moscow during the day then attend the ballet during the evening. While we drove around I took the opportunity to engage the Qin in conversation to find out more about them. They answered many of my questions but not all. They did not get upset when asked questions they did not want to answer, just replying that it was 'classified'.

I learned Some Qin do not trust humans as we 'created aberrants'. They live in the present, and do not keep any history such as museums. The Qin do not have entertainment, they get fulfilment by improving Qin society, however some elements of society are disruptive. How they deal with 'the impaired' is classified. Their society is organised into houses. If there is disagreements between houses it is resolved in a 'convocation of houses' which is similar to the UN. When asked whether houses ever fought they replied it was classified. They said the houses had political standing which could rise or fall. Broadly speaking the houses represented classes, e.g. farmers. There were 6 major houses, 24 minor houses and other states outside the convocation which were geographically separate. Soub-Jur's house was Lli-Ji, house of roads (travellers class). A child’s house was determined at birth, with parents and child always of the same house. Whether anyone could leave their house and go to an outside state, whether the Qin had ever been at war and whether they had contact with other alien races were all classified. The Qin considered themselves to have evolved further than humanity, and beyond aesthetics. Everything to them was practical.

As we left the theatre we were attacked. The attackers had a device which disabled bioware, but we were able to repel them. During the fight we learned Qin armour was self repairing. We reviewed security footage of the fight and identified one of the attackers as having worked at the Qin embassy on Luna. Some of the attackers possessions we recovered gave a lead that suggested they were members of 'AOS', a pro Russian terrorist group, specifically from a splinter group called Pamyat lead by an Andro Hope.

The Qin left for Luna, and the local police raided the Pamyat HQ. They were captured, but claimed they were not involved, and no further evidence linking them to the attack was found.

We travelled to Luna and met with the Qin ambassador in their embassy. When we left John spotted some people outside acting suspiciously. He started a fight and they were killed. The bodies were not human, rather an unknown species similar to a small octopus inside biosuits.

As these unknown aliens appeared to have Qin technology we were tasked to infiltrate the embassy and discover what was going on. For the task we were assigned prototype camouflage suits that were powered with psi.

We entered through a hatch on the lunar surface behind the embassy. Inside the air was hot and it appeared the Qin were tapping heat from the lunar core. We explored where we could, finding mostly store rooms to start, but then came across a chamber containing tanks full of creatures. One was just a large blob, but the others were the strange octopus creatures. Rodregiz took one, and for some bizarre reason thought it would be a good idea to assimilate it into his body using his psi abilities. We left the embassy the same way we entered, then arranged for a priority flight back to Earth.

The creature was surgically removed from Rodregiz. We then travelled back to Luna to confront Soub-Jur. He told us they were bio creatures called Ewr-Bes. They were bred as servitors. The large creature was a factory breeder. The politics on Qin meant one of the other houses was trying to increase their standing and the expense of the Lli-Ji. He would investigate further. We convinced Soub-Jur that thee Qin should be more open with humanity and we should share more technology to prevent future misunderstandings. We agreed to discuss trading jump technology for advance bioware technology.