

Stars of Charon

A novel by Sam Coulson

Cover Art by Erik Castellanos

Thanks to my wife Allison for everything, and Carley, my oldest friend, for always being there, and always pushing me.

With a Special Thanks to: Ben "Loid" Burns, Hillary Wilkerson, and Claire Beganz Bone for helping me develop and edit my tale.
Chapter 1.

Simple, primal, inexplicable pain. Every organic inch of me was frozen solid, melted into to vapor, and flash-forged into something new a million times a second. The chemical fires roared around me in the dark as the final war raged out under the light of the sun. The air charged with cracks of lightning and the thick scent of sulfur. The winds of the apocalypse blew across the blue-green forests. They devoured the tideless oceans and the freshly plowed fields. Far above me, on the surface of the world, my family, my friends, the trees, and the beasts were ground into dust by the torrent.

And then, as the wind continued to blow, the dust was lifted and remade.

I was left with sensation only. And without thought there was no time. Only agony, and the agony was infinite. It took my body from me. It held my memories up as if written on a glass, and shattered every moment of my life into fragments that rained down around me. It was the end of a world, and I alone lived through the fires of the apocalypse.

And then, after time unknown, the apocalypse ended. But I remained.

There was no light when I awoke.

At first I thought there was nothing but the directionless dark.

Slowly, my mind returned.

I could think.

Feel.

Reason.

I knew which way was up. I knew that I was lying on large, smooth, stone. Cold. Yes. It was cold. I moved my fingers and toes, arms and legs. My body was responsive and lithe. I fit into it perfectly, but there was foreignness to the movements. My legs bent as they should. I stretched and flexed and felt my muscles respond readily and automatically. Like the varied components of a mill, or the perfectly aligned mechanics of a clock. My body did what it should, but I couldn't understand quite how.

I sat up and pulled my legs under me. I felt the elasticity of soft skin stretch over my knees. It was an odd sensation, one that I knew I had never felt before. But still, I could recall nothing else.

I sat in the dark trying to gather the few slivers of my memories that were still whole enough to grasp. Words were the first thing to come to me. As the sounds formed in my mind I used my tongue to give them shape, but they all sounded wrong. The deep vibration of consonants that echoed in my mind were slurred and ugly as my tongue tripped over the forms.

I do not know how long I sat there in the darkness, making silly noises and marveling at how my muscles moved. I do not believe I slept. Though my body felt new and untried, it knew its business. I could stand, walk, and balance on one foot. My mind recalled the world around me. I knew I was deep in a complex of caverns.

My throat was dry and the soft skin on my lips was cracked and parched. The taste in the back of my mouth was bitter and acidic. I was thirsty. Very thirsty. I heard the trickle of water in the distance, and I crawled slowly in the dark to find the outlet. I tasted the water. Somewhere in my mind, I knew from the taste that it was clean and safe to drink. Time passed, and as it did, I knew that the wrenching pain in my stomach was hunger. I'm not sure if I should call it intuition or instinct, but I knew that if I followed the stream to its source it would take me out of the caves to the surface where I could find something to eat.

So I climbed. Climbing out of the cave was easier than I expected. As I followed the sound of water, a dim and distant light began to illuminate my path. I found my body was agile. My arms were strong. The strength felt like it was part of a dream; an old man's long forgotten memory. When I encountered a steep slab of stone, I found that the tips of my fingers and toes could easily find a hold. My arms were able to swiftly pull me up. My fingernails and toenails were black with mud. It felt good.

As I leapt from stone to stone, I felt an incredible freedom, as if someone had loosed bindings from my feet and hands. I knew a word for what I was feeling: it was youth. I knew I had felt this way before, but the memory was old, so, so very old.
Chapter 2.

The memories come unexpectedly, like the bite of a small piece of glass that gets stuck in the sole of your foot. When I try to ignore them it only delays the inevitable. Their intensity grows like smoke, smothering my mind. Sooner or later I must stop and face the shades.

Sometimes they are images: a blue-tinged sunset in a soft gray sky, or the stars sliding across the night. Other times a tune will fill my head. I try to whistle or hum but my tongue and mouth cannot mimic the sounds. Other times I hear voices that are alien to my ears and mind. I see faces that are, pale, grotesque and frightening. But when I look closer, the faces fade into shapelessness. Like shadows cast across an uneven stone.

Always, the memories are more than just images and sounds. They are full of muddled and chaotic feelings. A joyful song inexplicably brings me to weep. The image of a desolate plain of green-crystal sand leaves me longing for something lost that I can never find or even remember. The dark faces with dim purple eyes, and thick calloused skin make my blood rush and my face flush red with physical desire.

There is an echo of something else deep inside me.

I clearly remember my first step from the cave into the light of dawn. The mountains in the distance were familiar. I knew the jutted points of each of the seven peaks. Their shapes made me feel safe. I saw the sea to the west, calm and still on a moonless world. The lines were familiar and comforting. Still, things were out of place. There was a thick grove of deep green trees where I expected to see light blue grasslands. The vast river delta in the distance leading to the sea was eerily empty and vacant. The birds in the sky make strange calls.

As I blinked, images bled through. For a fleeting moment I saw a village. It had low-profile buildings, half buried in the turf. The walls and roofs were made of beautifully polished greyish-blue wood. Above the buildings were banners in the air, shadows of figures walking, and lumbering creatures in the field. My heart leapt and I started to move toward it, but the ghosts left as quickly as they came. All that was left was an empty field with shallow waves of deep green grasses.

The opening to the cave I had come through was a narrow natural cleft, hidden in the shadows of large stone on the slope. As I stood on the verge of the cleft and looked out, the world around me was a paradox: familiar yet foreign. It was as if I were returning to somewhere I had once lived, but someone else had moved in, gotten a new table, and turned the bed against the other wall. The vague familiarity of the place felt ancient and unsettling.

I did not like the sensation.

I took a few steps into the light and looked down at my reflection in a pool of water. My eyes were almond shaped, and skin was tan with a pinkish hue. My eyes were cloudy green, and a wild growth of short sandy-blonde hair sat untamed upon my head. The face I saw was unfamiliar. Though I couldn't conjure an image of myself in my mind, I knew that the face looking up at me from the still water was not my own.

My stomach growled, reminding me of my hunger. I shaded my eyes and started to look around. I was standing on a hill. Below me at its base was a dense stand of trees with a broad river running through it. I could see a flock of birds flying from limb to limb. At the edge of the forest there were few bushes with what looked like berries. I set off hungrily toward them.

I was halfway down the slope when I heard something roaring over the western horizon.

Though moments ago I had been driven by clenching hunger, the deep and otherworldly rumble made my hunger seem distant and small. Fear and awe weighed down my feet. The sound came from behind the little hill where I stood, heading toward where the delta met the sea. It started as a low growl in the distance and grew into a roar like thunder. Unlike the stone of the cave, the sound of water, and the shape of the mountains, which had a veiled aura of familiarity, the thunder and fire in the sky was like nothing I had ever seen or heard before.

I stood with my wide eyes transfixed on the shape as the minutes passed. The entire sky grew louder and brighter as the mass of silver and thunder slid across the sky, leaving a wind-swept path of smoke in its wake. As it passed directly overhead it was low enough that I felt the searing flames. My naked body flushed red from the heat as I scurried to the nearest rock to shield myself from the worst of the heat. My nakedness made me feel weak and insignificant.

The birds were nowhere to be seen.

As the thing passed I could see that at its head was a shining cylinder sliding on its side with a tail of fire and a path of smoke. It slowed. Smoke was everywhere, and fire spewed from it like geysers in all directions as it slowly descended on a flat stretch of grassland at the heart of the lowland delta, the fires grew as the thing lowered. The grasses beneath it were incinerated and the soil turned to ash. Finally, after a slow, smoking, lumbering decent, it came to rest in the middle of the lowland field.

The fires went out and the smoke cleared. It had landed some distance from me, further down the grade. It was huge and angular. I could see that it wasn't all silver. There were paintings and symbols along the sides, and a series of onyx-black panels around the sharp point that seemed to be the front of it. It was not a meteor or stone. The shapes, the lines, were too clean and purposeful to be natural. Something in my memory named it. A ship. I recalled a small sailing vessel floating on an ocean, driving forward under the power of the wind and sun. But this was a ship of the sky, not of the sea.

The grasses were still smoldering when the ship's smooth silver sides began to split apart and open. Great lumbering machines, black and silver, groaned and began to spill out of the fire-ship in every direction like insects from a nest. Among the huge metallic shapes, I saw people. Most wore dark blue, and I could see the color of their faces and their hands: shades of tan and olive. I looked down at my own hands and legs. Whoever they were, they were something like me. But I wondered: if they are like me then why did they look so strange and so unlike the faces and images in my mind?

Forgetting my hunger, I hid and watched. The morning hours passed, and the fire-ship continued to empty. Eventually, the largest of the machines began to return, leaving huge crates and people behind. The people drew back beyond the ring of blackened grasses.

It was midday when the fires began again. The fire-ship disappeared behind smoke and flame until it began to rise swiftly into the air. After a few deafening moments, it was gone, leaving a streak of smoke drifting off into the sky. The smoke faded, and a tribe of people and piles of equipment was left behind. I crouched lower in my hiding place, afraid, and watched them late into the night.

I awoke the next morning to the sound of voices. One was high pitched, the other low. I tried to listen to the words, but the sounds rose and fell without meaning. Their voices were soft and nasal like my own.

I lay without moving under the bush where I had fallen asleep the night before. They were somewhere behind me. Maybe I was lucky and hadn't been discovered. I cautiously opened my eyes to see if I was in danger, and if escape was possible.

I slowly turned my head to see the two shapes speaking with animated gestures and angry intensity. The one with the low voice had slick black hair, and was the taller of the two by a hand span. His face was red, and he held some sort of weapon in his left hand. The other had a slight build and long brown hair, and small, quick, shifting feet. Though her hands were empty, the larger of the two seemed to back away from her as they argued.

The exchange was intense, and they didn't seem to notice me. I quietly began to move backwards, as silently as I could, not taking my eyes off of them. Crawling face-up on all-fours on my heels and hands, I moved slowly toward the deeper forest.

I'd made it about seven meters when my hand landed on something cold and metallic. I turned to see the shining tip of a steel-toed boot.

"Eh-hem," a voice above me was dry and rumbling.

I looked up to see another person. A man. Tall. Greying. Muscular. He had an air of authority.

The two who had been arguing were immediately silenced as they looked over and saw me, huddled at the other's feet, naked. The newcomer spoke toward me, his tone was questioning, his stance aggressive. Further off, the slight one laughed. The sound was harsh and mocking.

Again, the voice of authority spoke. After three short words, the other two fell silent. I looked back up at him as he reached down to his belt, drew out a smooth object, and pointed it at me. I saw a flash of light followed by darkness.

I awoke in a firm bed with stiff, starched sheets, surrounded by motion and voices. Soothing, quiet voices. I tried to sit up but the movement was cut short with a static crackle as I struck something I could not see. I opened my eyes but saw nothing but open air in front of me but a stark white ceiling. Again, I tried to lift my arm slowly, ten centimeters, twelve, fourteen, sixteen-the air crackled again and an unseen force pushed my hand back down.

"Now, now," the voice was reassuring. I looked to see another face wreathed with long brown hair and soft, caring eyes. Her smile put me at ease.

She continued to talk. Her speech was slow and kind. As she gestured toward things, I was able to discern the meanings of some of her words: bed, hospital, blankets, drinks, and force field. Her name was Kella.

She reached through a segment of the force field and pushed a small device against my arm. There was a small click and I felt a pinch of pressure on my arm.

"Sleep," she said.

And I slept.
Chapter 3.

I was a child, small, hobbling, fresh on my feet. The shadows that watched me were protective. Most of the interesting objects in the room were frustratingly high and out of my reach. I smelled something sweet wafting on the air, and instinctively followed the scent. There was a fire going in the far end of the room with a large pot slung over it. Steam was rising from the pot.

My mind was filled with singular intent as I began to walk toward it. My childish steps were small and clumsy as I toddled. Closer. Closer. My mouth was watering as I got near the source of the sweet scent. I was mere paces away when I was swiftly lifted into the air by a firm and protective arm. I made a sound in frustration as I was hauled back to the far side of the room. The faceless shadow that had grabbed me set me back down, handed me a wood-carved bird, and patted me gently on the head before turning away.

I woke up confused. I strained to sort out my dreams from my memories. I was still lying in the bed. I recalled my hunger on the day I left the cave, and remembered watching the ship come, leave the people and machines behind, and go. I'd been hiding in the forest and had found some berries on a bush, and hungrily eating them by the handful, and then, later that night, the horrible pain, like a stone in my stomach, leaving me in agony throughout the night until, eventually I slept. I remembered the voices. The three people in the forest, and then Kella's face. Whoever they were, the people from the sky were taking care of me.

Though my body was strong and young, I felt weak. I listened as other patients and doctors spoke. The doctors wore white coats, and the patients, like me, wore thin blue gowns. Often they would come and stand over me as I hovered between waking and sleeping. I listened, and as I listened, the words connected to meanings in my mind, and I began to see the patterns in the language.

They said that my stomach wasn't functioning. Though my organs were in order, my liver was fine, my pancreas was healthy. Scans showed my gallbladder was normal. Whatever a gallbladder was. The problem was that my organs were just sitting there. They weren't storing, creating, and transporting the insulin and bile that my body needed to break down foods and function. The doctors kept me alive with injections. Whether the medication kept me drowsy, or if my condition denied me energy I wasn't sure. But I could do little but lie there and exist in the moments between waking and sleeping. I watched. I listened. And I thought.

As they tried treatment after treatment, I found that I wasn't a prisoner, not quite. After a time, they extended the force field around my bed so that I could prop myself up and sit. Though the doctors were kind, but I could sense they were all being cautious around me. I never spoke, and was so weak I could barely move. I don't know if I could have spoken even if I was brave enough to try. I wasn't being guarded. But I was closely observed. I gathered that I wasn't a prisoner. I was a mystery.

One morning I awoke to see a sea of faces surrounding my bed.

"Approximately 16 years old, human male," one of the doctors announced with a brisk staccato tone. He was a small man with a bald head that the others called Chen. "Genetic tests say he's 100 percent Earthborn genome. So he's no hybrid. Generally healthy, strong muscle tone, heartbeat and blood pressure. The primary issue is that the patient's bile-producing organs, stomach, and digestive system are non-functioning."

"Did you say 'non-functioning'?" It was the gravel-voiced older man who had found me on the edge of the forest.

"Um, well, yes sir," Chen responded, flustered. "You may recall that when you found him he'd been eating raspberries. At first we thought it was food poisoning or an allergy, maybe something wrong with the terraforming. But the berries are fine. We tested them. I even ate a few myself. I conducted a full allergy panel, but it came back negative. The issue is that when he ate and swallowed them they just sat there in his stomach. It was a bit of a mess. The berries began to rot, and there was an infection. We had to pump his stomach to clean it out then flush him with antibiotics. But we still haven't managed to address the root cause. We are trying a variety of treatments to stimulate proper organ activity and jump-start his system. Until then, we're injecting nutrients directly in his bloodstream to sustain him."

"Do we know why?" the other man asked.

"Why his system isn't functioning?" Chen shifted, avoiding eye contact. "No sir. Our guess is that he was in a ship that crash landed before we arrived. Most of us believe that he may have been in some kind of stasis pod, and that the revival protocols weren't followed properly. That would possibly explain why his organs are healthy, but dormant."

"Scans haven't found any signs of a wreck, or stasis pods," the older man said bluntly.

"As I said, it's our hypothesis," Chen replied. "Medically, stasis is the only thing that seems to make sense. They could have crashed into the ocean, or the river, or somewhere deeper in the mountains."

The older man paused, considering.

He looked down at me intently. "You, where did you come from?" he asked.

"Oh, sir," Chen broke in. "He doesn't speak. Though our scans show that he has high level of brain activity, we don't think he is cognizant or cogent enough to understand what is going on around him. Whatever happened to him, it left him in a severe state of shock."

"Not cognizant or cogent?" the old man chuckled. "Look at his eyes Chen. He may not be responding, but he's far from catatonic. No, he's choosing not to respond. I've seen men in shock. Their eyes have a glazed unfocused intensity, but not his. Oh he's cogent alright. If I were him and had been lost, naked and confused, and found by some strangers on a newly minted Eden, I'd be playing dumb too."

He disengaged the force field and leaned over me, his chin was covered by a layer of grey stubble.

"So, enough of your silence boy. Speak. How did you get here?" He questioned me with the quiet and self-assured intensity of a man who was not used to being disobeyed.

So I spoke.

"I, I don't know how I came to be here," I'd been working on shaping the sounds of the language quietly at night, I may have muddled the words, but the man seemed to understand.

"See there?" The old man grinned with self-satisfaction as he stood back up. "Alright lad, well we'll sort you out in time. For now, you need a name. The entire settlement is calling you 'Twig and Berries,' and I thought you would want something a bit more dignified."

Name. I hadn't asked myself the question of what my name was. I searched my mind, and tried to sort through the shadows and fragments of my memories. One idea came, so I made it into a sound.

"Elicio," I spoke the name like a question.

"Elicio?" The man considered a moment and shrugged. "That's a new one, but it's as good as any. I'm Lee McCullough."

"You're the chief?" I responded.

"You could call it that," Lee answered. "Though officially I am the Governor of this colony, I prefer just Lee."

I nodded my head up and down, a gesture I had seen the nurses use. He nodded and patted my shoulder, the warmth of his touch lingered.

"Elicio, hmm, that's much better than Twig and Berries. When we found you, you were confused, frightened, starving and alone on a freshly terraformed rock a few dozen light years from the closest civilized starsystem. The MineWorks Corporation just cleared this place for habitation, so you couldn't have been here long." He paused watching me intently as he spoke, searching for signs of recognition. "I contacted the MineWorks orbital monitoring crew just before they left, they were adamant that there hadn't been any anomalies, and that no other ship, aside from our own and the three other colony dropships, had been seen in system. Yet, here you are. And here I am, charged with helping the 1,934 colonists in this town to secure, build, and survive."

My mind was absorbing his words: terraforming, corporation, colonists. All of them were unfamiliar to me.

"So, you see I have a bit of a conundrum," Lee continued. "When I was in the Protectorate Fleet, I had one rule: simple is safe. If you avoid complications, anomalies, and mysteries, you avoid problems. You, you're a mysterious complex anomaly. The trifecta of bad luck. So I'm going to ask you this question once and only once: where did you come from?"

"I...I."

There was something dangerous in his placid calm. Lee was not a man to trifle with, but somehow, I felt there was also something in him I could trust. He exuded self-control. As my mind reeled in fear and uncertainty, his confidence drew me in like a moth to the flame. I couldn't help but trust him.

"The first thing I remember is pain, horrible pain, and then I woke up and walked out of the cave. I don't know how long I wandered, hours. Maybe more. But then I saw the fire from your ship, your colony ship. I saw it come down and land. I started to go toward it, but I was afraid and tired and hungry. So I hid watching you. Then I fell asleep and woke up to those others arguing, then you found me."

"And that's all? Nothing before? Your home world, your family? Nothing?"

"Nothing that makes sense," I responded slowly. "I have memories, but they are strange and broken into bits and pieces. A valley with blue-green grass, a village on a river, and grey sunsets. But not much else."

"Blue-green grasses, grey sunsets. Could be one of a dozen worlds across either the Earthborn Protectorate or the Domari Collective." He considered me for a long moment. I held his gaze. I wondered if he knew I was holding back. I dared not mention that the village in my memory was on the very spot where we now sat, and that the edge of the forest where they had found me had been a field of blue-green grasses.

"Could the Draugari have had him?" The voice belonged to Kella, the nurse who had sedated me when I first arrived.

"The Draugari?" Lee repeated with a scoff. "We are a long way from Draugari raiding territory. What makes you ask that, any signs?"

"No," she responded. "Nothing physical if that's what you mean. No scars or cuts. I've just heard stories."

"The Draugari may be half-human savages," Lee responded. "But they fight with honor of a kind. Abduction isn't their way."

"Yes, well," Chen interrupted, gesturing Kella to the side, moving in front of her so that he stood between her and Lee. "It was a theory. For now though, I can say that the boy seems normal by all measures. Aside from the non-functioning organs, that is."

"Very well," Lee straightened up and prepared to leave. "We can make it 1,935. Chen, do what you need to do to jumpstart his system. I know our supplies are limited, but if you need to use some of the synthetics to replace his organs, do it. He may not be telling us everything he knows, but I don't see any harm in young Elicio here. He has a strong back and a quick enough mind, both of which are things we need. Give him a Slate and access to the archives, maybe it will help jog his memories."

He turned back to me, "When the docs have you up and ready, we'll put you to work. You can stay, but you will have to carry your share."

And he was gone.
Chapter 4.

"Beyond the stars?" It was my own voice speaking through the shroud of a memory.

"No, not beyond them. To them. The stars do not just hang above us as if on a sheet. Look at them. Some are brighter, some are darker, some rise, some fall. No, they do not hang above us like a tent, or dome us like a roof, they are out there, each independent, flaming as distant from each other as they are from us."

I stopped and pondered the thought while my teacher poured another steaming cup for us to share.

"No, there is more out there beyond our own sky. There are worlds and people. Some may be sitting as we are now, looking from the other side of those stars. Who knows, Elicio, there may be creatures out there who have learned to leap beyond the mountains, bounding from star to star, and world to world. Some may be good and kind, others may be driven by a ravenous need to devour and destroy. But they are out there."

"You really believe that?"

"Yes, yes I do. Our people have memories, tired and ancient memories, which some teachers are charged to carry and guard. They are the stories of our people, handed down through generations. Some of them are memories of flying through the stars."

"Will you tell me?"

My teacher smiled and patted my hand gently, "perhaps someday Eli, those will be your stories to know, but not today. It's not a story to be told with words. It's a part of the Charon. The Charon is a memory legacy, which is fully formed and whole, and passed on only in death. A Charon is a story that is told all in one gulp rather than tiny sips. Perhaps someday you will be the one to take my place as teacher and carry mine on. But, that day is not today. Now we must continue your lessons—"

The Slate was a fine thing. Kella brought it to me after Lee left and explained how I should use it. It had thin transparent screen, like glass, and fit easily into my hands. The Slate responded to the slightest touch of my finger and the sound of my voice. I could ask it anything and it would show me the answer. Learning the letters of the language came to me easily. I began to study the words and names that I'd heard since coming here.

I said Lee's name and it showed me his picture. The photo was some time ago, Lee was a young man, uniformed and unsmiling. Enlisted in the Earthborn Protectorate in 2409. Assigned to Alpha Centauri regional garrison in 2414, decorated for bravery at the battle of Alpha Centauri in 2419, demoted to Lieutenant Commander 2426. Retired 2427. 2432, contracted to be Governor of MineWorks Corporation's Eridani III colony.

"Eridani III colony," I said quietly.

As I did, Lee's picture disintegrated and reformed into the shape of a planet. There were nine large and irregularly shaped green and brown landforms surrounded by a deep blue-green ocean. I slid my finger over the image and the planet spun on its axis. I tapped again and the image came to an abrupt halt, an additional window expanded and hovered above the image:

Eridani III: Class M planet, 23 EH/D, 432 ED/Y, gravity near Earth normal. Initial environmental scans indicated atmosphere breathable, native vegetation minimal and protein structure uncertain. Biological scan and observational protocols bypassed by approval of MineWorks Senior Vice Presidential of Advanced Projects and Analysis group, Mr. Hoonan Growd.

Notes: Upon initial survey, Eridani III met all requirements of a Stage 3 terraformed world, and was determined to be an optimal target for terraforming at minimal cost. Technicians instituted Stage 4 terraforming procedures to ensure maximum success of colonization. Biochemical terraforming operations executed to replace native flora with Earth-standard vegetation, and seed Earth-standard fauna using an accelerated 15-year growth cycle condensed into a two week treatment.

Terraforming completed 4.3.2432 and Authorized for immediate colonization to support refugees from the sixth planet of the Lagrange system, which was deemed unsafe for continued habitation resulting from unintentional industrial pollutants being released into the atmosphere.

Terraformed. I'd heard that word before, something Lee had said. My hands shook as the realization slowly began took hold. I closed my eyes again and saw flashes of blue-green fields, the strange alien faces, the quiet city settled on the delta.

"Terraforming," I spoke, this time my voice was barely more than a whisper.

The Slate's screen changed again, illustrating the scientific process of terraforming:

Earthborn Terraforming is achieve through the execution of four discrete stages (Note: full four-stage terraforming is prohibitively expensive and rarely executed, most terraforming occurs on uninhabited worlds that already meet the base-environmental requirements for later terraforming stages to reduce associated costs and time delays.)

Stage 1 Magnetic Shielding: An expensive and difficult process of charging the planetary core to create a magnetic shield which protects the planet from solar winds and other interstellar phenomena. A variety of methods are used involving large scale orbital operations and intensive sonic manipulation to optimize the planetary core environment. Prohibitively expensive and rarely employed. Process may take up to ten years.

Stage 2 Atmospheric Balancing and Climatization: Terraformers use large-scale deployable and reusable surface factory modules to process existing gasses and generate carbon, nitrogen and oxygen to build an earth-standard breathable atmosphere. During this stage robotic workers may be used to locate and unlock (thaw when frozen, or chemically create when necessary) liquid water for the planet. In some extreme circumstances, asteroids containing vital minerals and/or frozen water are diverted to the planet to provide a rich source for liquid water. Process typically takes between four and twelve years.

Stage 3 Carbon Seeding: An Earth Standard terraformed world requires an abundant source of carbon, often in the form of biomass. When a terraformed world lacks native vegetation and carbon deposits, large amounts of carbon is imported in the form of biological waste, and deposited throughout the planet. Depending on available shipping resources and proximity to nearby carbon sources, this process may take from two years, to several decades.

Stage 4 Environmental Optimization: Environmental Optimization (EO) process is the final stage in the terraforming process, only instituted after the magnetic field is established, an Earth-standard atmosphere is in place, and adequate liquid water and carbon exist on the surface. The EO process uses a series of high-atmosphere explosives to disperse aggressive viral nano-genes throughout the planet. The nano-genes perform restructuring of all carbon-based material, seeding the planet with earth-standard flora and fauna. By drawing upon a full genetic library of balanced earth-born genetic options, this process is able to rapidly disperse and provide an incubated growth period, aging all plant life fifteen years within the short period of the EO. After the process is complete, usually in two to three weeks for standard sized worlds, the planet will be fully vegetated.

After the flora is seeded, the terraforming ship will then seed the world with cryogenically frozen fauna, including insects, birds, fish, and small animals to populate the newly formed world.

My hands began to shake. I flipped back to re-read the article on Eridani III: "Eridani III met all requirements of a Stage 3 terraformed world, and was determined to be an optimal target for terraforming at minimal cost. Technicians instituted Stage 4 Terraforming procedures..."

I was having trouble breathing.

"Stage four terraformed," I said it aloud to myself as a whisper. The Slate heard me, the screen changed again:

Stage 4 terraforming is a complete and absolute process. Scientists have verified conclusively that it is impossible for any biological forms, including single-celled organisms and all native surface and subterranean life up to 600 feet below the planet surface, to survive the process intact. During this process, all carbon-based matter is eradicated and replaced with Earthborn standard varieties.

Eradicated.

The slices of a life I remembered. The village. The world. The teacher. The life.

My life.

My body.

Dissected, destroyed, and rebuilt.

Replaced.

My hand went to my face and felt the soft skin. The horrifying reality overcame me. Whatever I had been—the strange purple-eyed faces in my memories—had been taken from me. I was left with only fragments of the mind I used to have. And what of the world? What of the others? The faces in my memory?

Again, I pictured the village and imagined the sky changing and going dark. The beautiful polished wood buildings, the men, the women, the children playing in the fields, they all turned to dust before my eyes. The dust fell to the ground, and moved and shifted, and turned into seeds, and grass, and trees. What was here once was now gone.

My muscles tensed and convulsed against my will. My eyes burned. I turned on my stomach, my face into my pillow, and I wept.
Chapter 5.

"Vengeance, violence, and victories are archaic abstractions. We have the words for these things because they were prevalent in our distant past. They are the actions of the unenlightened, those whose lives are just a brief flame in the fire. Such things are fleeting, like a name written upon still water, they will ripple and curl, but soon they will become shapeless and slip out of memory."

"But what of the stories you've told me?" my voice asked. "Of how Tinaeas first crossed the tundra and settled the lowland valleys. Those were victories, and there was violence, when they fought off the packs of kargs in the night."

"Ah, Eli." my teacher responded. "How many kargs did they fend off on the sixth night?"

"When you tell it there are eight, but when Jonar used to tell it there were sixteen."

"My point exactly," my teacher nodded. "Memories of words are fleeting, the number of kargs changes in the telling, as do the number of days they traveled between rains. Such tales are stories that have lost their truths. They are fun to tell around the campfire, but the real story was lost the day that Tinaeas died alone on Canter's hill, and his Charon slipped away unmet. All we can do is guess what truly happened.

"The truth of his victories is brief and fleeting without the truth of his life that was never remembered. Do not hold tight to stories of adventure, and do not hold onto anger when you are wronged. For vengeance and violence are fleeting and weak."

On Lee's orders, Chen began the synthetic therapy the next morning. There were injections and sonar treatment sessions that shifted around my entrails. It wasn't painful, but it was uncomfortable. As Chen explained it, they were using synthetic stem cells to build new organs to take over for my own organs which Chen referred to as "ornamental."

After two weeks my artificial liver began to function. Chen was excited when it seemed to rouse the rest of my systems. Within three days I was a fully functional, eating and defecating human being.

"Well now Elicio, it seems we fixed you up right," Chen was rightfully proud of his success.

"Thank you Chen," as I spoke I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled. It was a gesture I had seen him make several times when conferring with other patients.

He smiled broadly, "Well, off to work with you! It was a pleasure having you here for the last few months. They are saying we have 190 days until winter sets in, so we'll need to make sure that we're ready. Lee said he'd send someone down to set you-ah, there she is. Ju-lin! Over here."

Ju-lin was young and pretty with long brown hair and a small mouth. She looked familiar. I thought she had been another patient at some point; I'd seen dozens of people coming in and out of the hospital with scrapes, bruises, and broken bones.

"I see you found some clothes," she said with an unceremonial nod. "Good. The green jumpsuit's an improvement over the whole naked covered in mud and leaves thing."

I flushed red with embarrassment. Of course, that's where I knew her. The smaller one of Lee's companions who had found me in the woods.

"Still haven't learned to talk, eh?" She rolled her eyes and gestured for me to follow her.

She didn't wait, and was halfway across the room before I caught up to her.

"Chen says you understand Common well enough," she continued as soon as I got within earshot. "So first, let me say, welcome to the Downs, as we have taken to calling it. Not the best name. But it's a name, and every place needs a name."

As she spoke we stepped out through the hospital doors into the sunlight. Ju-lin absently pulled a pair of dark sunglasses from her jacket and slipped them over her eyes. I squinted and shaded my eyes as I struggled to adjust to the light and look around. What had been a pile of storage crates unloaded from the colony ship a few weeks before had exploded into a small city. I turned behind me to look at the hospital, it was one of a dozen prefabricated buildings in the Downs. From my time with the Slate I had learned that most colonies landed with a dozen or so basic prefabricated structures, including a hospital, several sleeping barracks, a hydroponic greenhouse, cafeteria, a number of utility support structures to handle waste, water purification, and a 3D printing facility to create any tools the colony may need.

"Keep up Berry," Ju-lin called over her shoulder without looking.

I decided to ignore the nickname and again jogged ahead to catch up.

"So, old man McCullough's first rule of the colony: work. His second rule: work. And his third rule, any guesses?"

"Work?"

"See there, you can talk," she nodded to the left and we turned between two large buildings, barracked by the look of them. On the north wall there was a large lean-to shelter where a small group was working on assembling some large equipment.

"What's that?" I gestured toward the group of mechanics.

"You don't know a hover-skiff?" for the first time, she turned and studied my face, her eyes hidden behind my reflection in her glasses. After a brief moment she turned forward again and kept talking. "It is a high-load hovercraft with some fancy gear attached, a crane, basic mineral processing, that sort of thing. It can chew up raw stone and shit out concrete. We have four for the colony, this one broke down. The other three are working up the river on the dam."

"You're damming the river?" I asked. "Why?"

This time she stopped and turned to face me. She was shorter than me, her head coming up roughly to my nose. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but a stray strand was flitting lightly across her forehead in the breeze, she curled her lip upward and sent a brief puff of breath to blow it to the side. She exuded an anxious energy that made me feel both exhilarated and unnerved.

"You really don't know anything do you?" She held out her arm, palm up, making a grand sweeping gesture at the colony and land around us. "This place may look all great and shiny, nice trees, fertile land, birds in the sky, berries to eat, but it's not natural. More importantly, most of what you see doesn't belong here."

"You mean—" I stammered, her abruptness caught me off guard. "You don't belong on this world?"

"Belong on this world? You are dense." She rolled her eyes. "No, what I mean is that this world was probably a useless hunk of stone before MineWorks came along and terraformed it. The terraforming process may seed a world for life, but it doesn't do it intelligently. Look around, see that forest of pines? It's in the heart of the delta. That's wrong. Do you get it?"

I didn't, and said so.

She sighed dramatically.

"Next spring, inland snow will melt up in the mountains. The river will rise and this valley to flood. Now, tell me, if this was a natural world, how in the name of the Sower would there be a stand of trees right there?"

"I'm not sure I follow."

"Look," she was losing her patience. "If this were a natural world, then this valley would look completely different. There would be a field of thick grasses there. Every year, the river would flood, and every year, new grasses would grow. But instead, this world was terraformed. Terraforming may 'plants the seeds of life' across the world, but it does it stupidly. Most of what is on this world won't survive the winter. There are tropical trees planted in the tundra, there is warm-water algae in lakes that freeze solid."

I began to understand what she meant. All I could manage was a nod as I recalled the blue-green grasses and the world as it used to be. She was more right than she knew.

"This may be the new Garden of Eden, but without our help, and without our hard work, the garden will wither and die, taking us with it," she turned back forward and started walking again, satisfied that she had gotten my attention. "You don't talk much do you?"

I didn't answer.

"So we work," she continued. "We're using the large hover-skiffs to build a dam upstream so that we can control the flooding of the river. We'll also use the dam as a power source. There are three other colonies like this one. One of them is Ridgecrest. We're working with them and pooling our resources with Bodford, their Governor, to build the dam. The hydroelectric will provide more than enough power to keep both colonies humming-as long as we get it built before the wet season comes and washes us all out to sea."

"I'd like to see that." Hydroelectric dams, hovers, concrete: I was making a mental list of all of the things I would look up on the Slate next time I had the opportunity.

She threw me a startled look.

"I mean the dam."

"I bet you would," she smiled wickedly as we approached a broad stretch of land on the edge of the colony. "Especially after you're done today. Here we are. The Governor wants you on plow duty. We need to get some fruits and vegetables planted. Tomatoes and peas. You can see there that the surveyor has already marked out the lanes, it's up to you to get the field plowed for planting."

I looked around, there was a sharp-bladed plow blade lying in the grass nearby. On one end were two handles, the other had hitches to connect it to a beast of burden, or perhaps a small hovercraft of some kind.

"Well?" She looked at the plow and then back at me, impatiently. "What are you waiting for? The bio group hasn't finished bringing the livestock out of cryo yet. So we won't have any oxen to help pull the big plows until next spring, and we need to get the seeds in the ground soon if we're going to have anything to eat when the stocks of freeze dried rations start getting low."

"Isn't there a machine or something?" I looked out; the survey marks on the field seemed to stretch out forever.

"Machine? Yes there are. But none to spare, not until we get the dam built. The Governor wants us all to minimize our power use. Besides, as he'll tell you, 'the human machine is the only machine that you can count on'."

She turned to leave.

"Ju-lin," I hesitated. I wasn't sure why I had spoken.

"Elicio." She turned and looked at me. Her voice was tinged with mockery. Her eyes were brown with specks of yellow mixed in. After several breaths she continued. "You do know that it's customary to say something after calling someone's name?"

"Th-thanks."

"For what? Assigning you to hard labor?" Her demeanor softened further. "Look, you're not the only one that is stuck here without understanding why. Believe me, the last place I want to be is a land-locked flowerpot on the edge of civilized space. Hell, the Collective traders don't even come out this far, and they go everywhere. But it doesn't seem like either of us have a choice."

"Not even you? I thought you were in charge?"

"In charge? Me? Ha-" she threw her hands up. "That's rich. No, I'm only here because I had no choice. I'm 17, which means that even though I passed my secondary course tests early, I need my parent's permission to enlist in the fleet. My mother's dead, and my father decided to drag me and my brother out here to the ass-end of space to make sure that we can't have a life of our own."

"Your father?"

"Ju-lin McCulloch, at your service," she raised her hand as if to tip an imaginary hat and turned to leave without another word.

I stared dumbly as she walked away. I was startled to realize that her absence made me feel particularly alone. I picked up the hand-plow and began to work.
Chapter 6.

"A tired body houses a contented mind," the memory of my voice echoed in my mind as I repeated the mantra. I was using a plane to mold the length of the log. I worked the edge of a knot, layer by layer I shaved through the deep rings of the tree until the knot was ground down and the section of the log was smooth. The muscles in my arms burned as the sun was setting.

"A tired body builds a contented mind," I repeated again as I looked up the length of the log. I still had a third of the way to go. It would be a long night. I was tempted to speed up and not take as much care, but then I remembered what had happened before. There had been imperfections in my plane, I had crossed the grains. The log was imperfect, and had to be burned. So I had been sent to do it again, and do it right.

"A tired body builds a contented mind," I continued to carve, slowly, and evenly.

I spent several weeks plowing, tilling, planting, and weeding the field. Through the work, I let my fear, confusion, and anger melt out through the sweat of my brow. There was something ancient, familiar, and calming about working the land. Most days I worked alone. Everyone in the colony had a job to do. The engineering crews were busy building the dam and installing power, electric, and sewage lines: all of the basic components of civilization. Other teams were busy at work following the plans that Lee had laid out for the city. The core of the Downs was the prefabricated buildings: the workshops, the cafeteria, and barracks. Though, aside from the dam, Lee's second priority was to build houses. Three construction teams were working daily to build the simple three bedroom wooden-log homes.

Workers cleared the stand of misplaced trees that Ju-Lin had pointed out, and used the lumber to build new homes. The cleared land would be used to grow wheat. It was an efficient operation, well planned, and well executed. Lee was a man of vision and direction, and the colonists were all former miners and did not seem to be strangers to hard work. At night I returned to the men's barracks with the bachelors as the families moved into the newly built houses.

And so I worked day after day, and used my Slate to learn about my new humanity each night. I learned about the long history of wars on Earth, about the Great Expansion and the founding of the great Earthborn Society which now claimed three dozen star systems, and the Earthborn Protectorate Fleet that stood guard to keep it safe. In studying history, I found that leadership was a fickle thing. Many times, the people best suited for leadership were the ones who wanted it least. The people who were clever and creative avoided responsibility and authority, while the brutish and strong craved power.

Weeks passed, and I didn't see Ju-lin again after she left me in the field, and the mid-level work-team bosses, whom I dealt and lived with, tended to be the more brutish sort. They would take authority where they could. The bosses and foreman would order others around and take extra rations, using the power they could obtain to get as much as they could. But Lee was different. I found that, though the colonists would complain about him, they would never contradict his direction. Where some men worked to gain and hold authority over others, Lee simply held it.

In the evenings I spent my time listening to the other colonists talk and studying the Slate. I found that nearly all of the colonists were from Lagrange VI, a small mining world owned and operated by the MineWorks Corporation. The whole planet was devoted to chemical processing and mineral refining. In order to meet the ever-increasing demand for processed minerals and precious metals, MineWorks had steadily increased production at the refinery since it was first colonized over a hundred years ago. The refining was so intense that the outdoor air on the world had become toxic. When the conditions got bad enough that the colonists started to get sick, MineWorks ignored their complaints. Not long after that two young children died, and the colonists banded together and threatened to take their story to the media if MineWorks didn't relocate the four small mining communities on Lagrange VI.

At first, their cries were ignored, but when there were more deaths, the colonists began to complain louder and more often. And then there were rumors around the NewsNets that MineWorks had been engaging in illegal trade with the pirates and smugglers operating outside the law of the Earthborn Protectorate. Unable to handle the growing surge of bad coverage, MineWorks folded to the colonists' demands to keep them quiet.

It took two years for MineWorks to locate a suitable planet that was far enough from existing shipping lanes and system traffic so that the colonist's story wouldn't spread. Eventually, everyone from Lagrange VI was settled onto Eridani III. It was a planet that required minimal terraforming that was located in a remote series of starsystems known as the Nymphs on the edge of the Protectorate territory, far from the heavily-traveled frontier worlds between the Protectorate and the Domari Collective. Eridani was close enough that Mineworks could monitor the colony, but far enough to keep the colonists out of the public eye.

The colonists were a tight-knit community. On Lagrange VI, they had all supported the refineries in one way or another; most were mechanics or industrial workers. They were not particularly well educated, but all were hardworking. On Lagrange VI, the colonists had grown their own food using hydroponic pods and lived all of their lives within an isolated series of buildings and tunnels in the shadow of the huge refinery facilities. There were a lot of things they were not used to: wide open spaces, clean blue skies, and strangers.

I was surprised to learn that t I wasn't the only stranger in their midst. The McCulloughs were also outsiders. Colonists regularly complained about Lee, but they did so without malice or anger, more like how a child complains about their parents or a teacher. He was a man of vision and purpose. From the moment they stepped out of the colony ship, he had assumed command easily and efficiently. Overwhelmed by the clean new world and the hard work ahead of them, they didn't have time to question him.

By the time they had gained their footing on the new world, Lee had already helped them to build and establish a growing and thriving community. Daily the ranks in the barracks grew smaller as new houses were finished and more families were able to settle into their new homes. Lee knew how to get tangible results, and it won him the colonist's respect, if not their love.

Though they quickly learned to accept Lee's direction, the men in the barracks still complained when the lights went out. But their complaints were mixed with a sense of shared pride. Lee may be a pain in the ass, but he was their pain in the ass. His success was their success. Though the colonists learned to accept Lee as one of their own, the colonists weren't quite as accepting of Ju-Lin, or her brother, Marin.

Lee had tasked Ju-Lin with leading the team to install the power infrastructure from the new dam to the Downs. Ju-Lin led her team of 15 at a breakneck pace, pushing them to regularly work over 10 hours per day knee-deep in the mud. Though she worked harder than anyone else, she did so with contempt. She made it clear every day that "being in the ass-end of space on some nameless rock with a two thousand refugee grease monkeys" wasn't her idea of a good time.

Marin had been the third person with Lee and Ju-Lin when they had first found me huddled under the bush. He was a few years older than Ju-Lin, and recently graduated with a post-secondary degree from an academy on one of the central Protectorate worlds.

He was a brisk young man, always purposeful and direct. While most of the colonists, including myself, wore light and comfortable jumpsuits and were always covered in mud, grease, or worse, Marin always wore crisp black pants and jacket. Lee had put him in charge of compliance. He monitored all of the work crews to make sure they were on schedule and following the colony development plans, but Marin took it a step further.

"Fancies himself as the Marshal of the Downs!" The voice belonged to a man named Jager who worked as foreman for one of the building crews. I was lying silently on my bunk, listening. "He came down this afternoon with his Slate and surveyors scope, checked our sightlines, and told us we had to move the foundation because we were off by six inches. Six damned inches. He didn't bother to ask why we had moved it, or he would have found out about the boulder just under the surface. But bastard just assumed we couldn't read the plans."

"Well, Jag, to be fair, I'm still not convinced that you can read at all," the second voice was another tech they called Boils. His arms, neck and face were scarred from a chemical leak that had occurred in his youth.

Several of the men chuckled as they lay back in their bunks listening.

"Well, not all of us can get by with our looks like you can!" Jager retorted with a friendly jibe. "It's too bad MineWorks decided to put us out here, maybe if they would have landed us in some Domari commune you could have found a willing Olsterian female to take in that ugly mug of yours—"

The men laughed again.

I didn't.

Nearly every night Jager, Boils, and a few others would talk into the late hours, exchanging insults and telling stories that most likely never happened. Though I tried, I couldn't quite see what was funny in the back and forth. Although Boils didn't seem offended when they made fun of his looks and laughed harder than anyone, I just couldn't manage to feel a part of their conversations. Jager had mentioned the Domari though, that was a new one.

I pulled up my Slate and typed in "The Domari".

Domari / The Domari Collective:

The Domari Collective is a society comprised of humanoids originating on four discrete worlds. The Collective was founded in the namesake Domari system, a solar system containing twin habitable worlds that traveled in similar orbits: Hoken and Laster. The Lasterian natives (similar to Earthborn humans, though with particular grooming styles and thick hair on their forehead that reaches down to the tip of their nose) first developed manned spaceflight in the Earth-year 1302, and set off to explore the nearby planet of Hoken. They were stunned to find that Hoken was already inhabited with an intelligent (though pre-industrial) race of humanoids. Genetic testing determined that the two peoples shared a common genome, though they had evolved separately for millions of years. This gave rise to the theory of Panspermia, the now pervasive school of thought that the human genetic seed had been scattered across the universe by an unknown force and left to evolve separately on different worlds (See Article on Origin Debates: Random Dispersion, or Sown Seeds?).

The Lasterian's recognized the Hoken people as cousins. The two worlds began trading, intermarrying (interbreeding), and mingling their two societies over the last millennia to the point where the two races have become culturally indistinguishable. As time and science progressed over the next few centuries, the Domari Collective developed the first known gravitational flux drive, and began traveling between star systems by exploiting the randomly occurring static gravitational anomalies that connect neighboring star systems (see Flux Points). Over the following centuries, the Domari encountered and integrated two additional pre-space flight humanoid races into the Collective: the natives of the Noona and Olster systems.

Though physically similar to Earthborn humans, evolution (and 400+ years of interbreeding between the human subspecies within the Collective) has resulted in a number of physical differences between humanoid variants. For example, due to stronger-than-Earth-normal gravitational field on the planet Olster, many who carry Olsterian heritage are notably shorter, squatter, and physically stronger than Earthborn humans. Natives of Noona (See Noonan) evolved in subterranian complexes and have pale and sometimes nearly translucent skin and are extremely sensitive to bright light. Noonan often wear long cloaks to protect themselves from bright lights on space stations and other worlds.

Researcher's note: Members within the Collective prefer to identify themselves by their home planet rather than specific humanoid subspecies. This emphasis on identity relative to community, rather than socioeconomic class or racial/species affiliation, is a stark difference to the Earthborn, who have a long and violent history of racial conflict.

First Contact between the Earthborn and Collective:

In 2167, the Earthborn developed their first gravitational flux drive. Over the next 85 years, the Earthborn charted 15 star systems, and expanded with permanent settlements (orbital and terrestrial) on six solar systems, including two successfully terraformed worlds. On 11.9.2252, an Earthborn prospector was scanning a mineral belt in Tau Ceti when a large, unidentified vessel approached, signaling the prospector in an unknown language.

The newcomer, a merchant cruiser from the Domari Collective, was nearly triple the size of the technologically inferior Earthborn mining vessel. Assuming that the miners were a competitor moving in on his established territory, the Domari nearly fired upon the Earthborn ship. Luckily, the Domari conducted a thorough scan before firing (to ensure that there were no valuable goods on board), and held their fire long enough for the Earthborn pilot to make first contact. In the weeks and months that followed, the people of Earth learned the truth: not only were we not alone in the universe, we were not the only humans.

I tried to wrap my head around it all. Flux points. Gravitational drives. Panspermia. The universe was so much larger than the muddy field and stale bunkhouse. There were ships slipping silently in the blackness from star to star on dozens if not hundreds of worlds. There were humans, people like me, living their lives scattered across the darkness. I once again recalled sitting with my teacher staring out at the faint twinkling stars in the night.

"Elicio?" The sound of Jager saying my name pulled me from my thoughts. "The weird kid from nowhere? Yeah, he's over there in the corner, probably asleep by now, he never says much. What did he do, Marshal? Steal something?"

There was no answer.

I turned my head to see a shadow of a man walking between the bunks over to me. Even in the dimly lit room it was easy to tell who it was. His slender frame and the stiff cadence of his steps were unmistakable. Marin McCullough.

"Elicio," he gave a slight nod as he saw me watching him approach. "Put on some clothes and meet me outside. We need to talk."

I heard a few whispered comments throughout the barracks.

"Um, sure," I stammered.

"I'll be waiting," he said as he turned back toward the door. "Be quick."
Chapter 7.

"Our most ancient Charon tells a story about how, long ago, our people could move through the nothingness between the stars. The memories are our most ancient. We know that we were powerful. But there was tragedy, sadness, and death. We also know that, in the end, there was guilt. Guilt that was far greater than the good that could be achieved. So we retreated from the skies and made a quiet home here on this ground."

"Do you have those Charons? The memories of when our people flew? Do you hold it in your mind?" I asked, anxious to know more.

"No, no," my teacher responded. "Those memories are kept by other teachers, silent and safe, and not often visited. They say they are stories of stars, and suns, and worlds. Of fire and power and the endlessness of the void. We traveled a long way to find this world. It's those memories that I am charged to keep. Memories of our first days on this new world."

"But we came from some other world?"

"Yes, though somewhere distant. So far away that you cannot even see it's speck in the night sky. As each generation rises and falls, the Charons fade. Our oldest memories are held by a few teachers. It's like an old song where the notes change with the voices of the singer. We do know that we gave up the old life to live here, quietly, and simply."

Marin was outside standing by the door and looking out at the stars when I quietly shut the barracks door behind me. It was about ten at night and the sky was speckled with stars. The colony was setting in, quiet and still.

"Elicio. Elicio." He said without turning. "Elicio what? Do you have a surname?"

"Not that I can recall."

"Hm, it's not proper," he made a note in his Slate. "We have two Elliots and an Egbert, but nobody else on this world answers to Elicio. So I suppose it will do for now. If you ever venture to make it off-planet, you will have to come up with something." His tone was crisp and businesslike.

"Off-planet?" I asked dumbly. "Where would I go?"

"Yes, well, right now we are on the edge of civilized space, but space is always moving. The Earthborn Protectorate is spreading out and discovering new flux points every day, finding new connections between worlds. Back at the university I attended a lecture by Stratus-nominated astrophysicist who calculated each star system may have up to a dozen anomalies floating around waiting to be discovered. Everyday babies are being born, resources depleted. It is not a matter of us going back into the heart of the Protectorate. The light of civilization is always expanding. It is a matter of the Protectorate coming to us."

There was a slight curl of a smile on the edge of his lips, and a sound of anticipation in his voice. It was the first time I had heard anyone speak of the expansion of the Protectorate without distrust or outright hatred.

"Soon," he continued, "sooner than most think, the Protectorate will spread out into this region. And here we are. The first on a new planet. 7,934 people spread over four small, colony towns on a brand new world. We are here to carry the torch."

"For Earth?"

"For Civilization," he finally turned to look at me. He was tall like his father, with rough, angular features and friendly brown eyes. "The path to power in the Protectorate is paved by those who strive to bring order and peace to the wildness of the universe. That's why I'm here. To do something meaningful. To matter." Marin paused to scratch his cleanly shaven chin, before continuing with a slight trace of bitterness in his voice. "My father came to this rock to run away from the Protectorate, and dragged my poor sister with him. I came because I wanted to: I will build this world into what it could, and should be."

"Th-that sounds noble," I responded clumsily. This was the longest conversation I'd had in the last several weeks that wasn't about turnips.

"You don't say much," it was a statement, not a question. Marin surveyed me, his dark brown eyes were calculating. "I suppose that is for the best when you are living with that lot. I'm already saying more than I should. Talk of the Protectorate makes these simple types nervous. They don't yet understand how the Protectorate will improve their world and their lives. They will someday. For now, we need to move. My father sent for you."

He abruptly turned and walked away.

As I hurried to catch up with him and matched his pace I could see why the colonists looked at Marin with distrust. Nearly every night in the barracks I listened to the men complaining about the Protectorate and the power of the central government, distrust for the corporations, and about how they would never allow their children to be educated at one of the Protectorate's central institutions. The colonists felt that the Government had looked the other way as the air and water on Lagrange had been polluted and turned toxic by the "progress" of unchecked industry. Where Marin saw grandeur and progress, the colonists saw decadence and corruption.

Marin and I walked the streets of the Downs in silence. The town was laid out neatly in a grid, with the river along the north edge of town. Unsure of myself, I had not ventured further than the field, barracks, hospital and cafeteria. So I wasn't sure where we were going until we made an abrupt left turn after a machining shop toward a freshly built log house that was nestled on the edge of the river.

Marin knocked loudly on the door.

"In!" Lee barked from the other side of the door. "Shut it behind you."

I had expected the interior of the house to match the rustic exterior, but was surprised to see that the walls had been insulated with the same thin ceramic plating that served as the interior walls of the barracks and, I would later discover, the interior of most starships. The main room was large, well lit, and clean. There were windows on the wall looking out over the river. The furniture was simple and utilitarian, like we had everywhere else on the compound. In the corner was a small kitchen with a stove and cold-cabinet. There were three doors to other interior rooms, all of them were closed.

Lee and Ju-lin were sitting a table viewing a holographic relief of a map on the electronic tabletop. I'd seen similar technologies in the hospital, but was fascinated by its use as a map. I immediately recognized the nine peaks. I followed the thin blue trail of the river down the valley and into the delta. The Downs was marked on the map by a series of lines and roads, some of the roads I knew, there were others that were yet unbuilt.. It was Lee's plans for the city.

"Come, sit." Lee said without looking up. "Both of you."

I followed Marin and took the last available seat between Ju-lin and Marin, opposite Lee. Ju-lin glanced at me briefly. Her long hair and gold-flecked eyes had found their way into my dreams once or twice. I was glad to see her.

"Here," Lee traced the edge of a mountain with his finger, leaving a bright blue trail on the holographic image. "If you cross the ridge it should be a straight and easy shot to the site without coming too close to New Haven."

"That's nice, though I still need to know what I'm doing." It seemed Ju-lin's irreverence was universal.

"Patience, Lin," Lee answered. "Save the scan."

She sighed as she pulled a small disc from her pocket and pressed it against the edge of the table. As she did so, the map dissipated, leaving a glossy black tabletop.

"Elicio," Lee looked up at me. "You've recovered well, you look strong. Glad to see it."

"Thank you sir," I replied.

"No sir. Just Lee."

I nodded, unsure what to say. After weeks listening to the colonists, I had begun to be comfortable with the cadence and tone of their speech, but the McCullough's accent and speech patterns were different. They elongated their vowels slightly, putting emphasis on the long 'a' sounds and spoke more quickly than the colonists. I wasn't sure if it was because they were from another world than the colonists, or if it was just part of being a McCullough.

"Relax boy," the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth turned into a bit of a smile. "You're not in trouble."

"Unless you've done something wrong?" Marin's eyebrow was raised. I realized that Jager was right about Marin fancying himself as the marshal.

"Oh give it a rest Mar," Ju-lin rolled her eyes. "You'd think that we were running a prison colony, or a Third Division interrogation camp. The kid's already about to piss himself."

"I can't say I blame him," Lee broke with a chuckle. "Half of these poor devils probably have nightmares about being dragged out of bed by 'Marshal Marin'."

Marin sneered and Ju-lin laughed at Lee's use of the nickname.

"But then, we have an odd situation and I don't want to spook the colonists," Lee continued. "So first and foremost, everything said stays in this room. Understood?"

All three of us nodded.

Though the room was cool, I found myself wiping a bead of nervous sweat from my brow.

"As you are aware, MineWorks deployed four colony sites on the surface. The closest is Ridgecrest, about forty kilometers to the northeast. We are working with them to build the dam. Progress is going well, and our relationship with Governor Bodford is good. We should be done on time. The other two are Riverfront, which is about 220 kilometers up the river, and then to the north-east further up in the mountains is place they are calling New Haven, about 640 klicks away as the ship flies.

"Each of the four colonies are strategically placed to maximize the local resources and help us develop a basic trading economy between us. We are the breadbasket. The reason we've been working so hard to plow and plant fields is to maximize our food production. As soon as we are done building up the town, our teams will get to work on constructing some seaworthy ships so that we can start fishing the bay when spring hits.

"Ridgecrest is in the foothills, good land for grazing and livestock. They also have access to several groves of hardwoods. Our little delta-forest will soon be gone, and we'll begin trading with them, food for lumber, so we can start building the fishing boats.

"Riverfront is near several large stone and mineral deposits, by next spring they will have a quarry and stone mill fully operable. Their Governor, a woman named Katia, is intent on first developing a high-end ceramics facility and then moving on to steel and more advanced alloys in the next few years. They are the industrial park to our garden.

"Lastly, there is New Haven," he paused. "New Haven is led by one of MineWork's own, a fellow named Hollace Growd."

"Growd, I've seen that name somewhere," I spoke without thinking.

"Yes you have," Lee nodded. "His father is a man named Hoonan Growd, one of MineWork's Senior Vice Presidents. He is the one who authorized the colony."

"Interesting," Ju-lin broke in. "It's the first I've heard of that."

"The colonial charter notes that this world is independent and not part of MineWork's holdings," Marin broke in. "Installing one of their middle managers as a Governor is in clear violation of the chart—"

"—Marin," Lee interrupted. "We are a few systems beyond the Protectorate's umbrella. The planetary charter may as well be written in the air. As far as I'm aware, nobody outside of this room knows that he has ties to MineWorks. The colonists believe that he's a graduate in civil development from Centauri. Which is true enough."

"How do you know about Growd?" I asked.

"I never make a move without knowing all the angles," Lee smiled. "He's a crafty one, and no doubt looking to follow in his father's footsteps in the corporation. From what I understand it was his idea to name their site New Haven, after the city they lived in back on Lagrange, in a thin attempt to rally the colonists behind him."

"So what's his game?" Ju-lin asked, the conversation was going too slow for her taste.

"New Haven is up in the mountains," Lee continued. "I'm going to guess that MineWorks located some high-value minerals in the mountains, and Hollace has a mind to set-up a mining operation to stockpile and export whatever bits of shiny they can find off-world for a profit."

"They move the colonists off of Lagrange and ship them out here to be free labor for a new mining operation, nice scam." Ju-lin said, glancing over at me. "Though I don't see why we're having a secret meeting in the middle of the night, or why he is here."

"MineWork's mineral development plans are not our concern," Lee shrugged. "Corporations do what corporations do, and everyone who lives and dies in the shadow of the Protectorate's Dreadnaughts is out to flip a few credits and fatten their wallet. If any of the colonists believed that there wouldn't be any strings attached when they boarded up those colony ships for a brand new world then they need to get their heads out of their asses. MineWork's motivations are not our worry. What concerns me is that it looks like Hollace has already began prospecting and found something that seems... let's say unusual."

"Unusual?" Ju-lin sat up, her interest piqued.

"Yes," Lee nodded toward his son. "Marin intercepted a coded wave that Growd sent up to the orbital relay. The message was addressed to MineWorks corporate."

From what I could recall from my nights with the Slate, signals could not be sent directly through the flux points that ships traveled between worlds, so colonies relied on an unmanned long range communications courier drones. If the colony needed to send a message, they could send a priority signal to the unmanned orbital communications relay, and it would dispatch a communication drone to the destination and deliver the message.

"Intercepted?" Ju-lin's eyebrows raised and she looked over at Marin, amused. "You? Mr. Legalist?"

"As Dad points out, we're far from the umbrella of the Protectorate's law." Marin was clearly proud of himself for bending the rules. "When we docked at the orbital terraforming station I got access to their comsat system and added a coded redundancy."

"You bugged MineWork's orbital monitoring station?" Ju-lin leaned back in her seat. "Okay brother, I'm almost impressed."

"What did you find?" I tried to make the question sound as nonchalant as possible. My mind burned with questions: Did they know where I came from? Had they found others like me?

All three paused and looked at me, startled by the unintended urgency in my voice.

"Expecting something?" Lee gave me a long and probing look.

I was silent. Lee continued, watching me as he spoke

"They found some kind of ruins buried in a hillside. Growd's report didn't include any pictures or vids. He says that the terraforming had scoured most of it and that there isn't much left, but some stonework remains. He seems to be certain that whatever is there is very, very old, but dating the area is impossible because the terraforming process corrupted any carbon on the site."

"What kind of ruins? Did it say?" I blurted out, though I wanted to be quiet and patient, I found I couldn't help myself.

"No, his report didn't provide any details," Lee either didn't notice, or chose to ignore my anxiousness. "He did, however, find what he thinks is some sort of writing. He notes that he intends to get a scanning crew down there within the week because, in his words: 'it may be here after all'."

"It?" Ju-lin asked. "What is it?"

"That's my question," Lee answered. "He's sent the same message twice more over the following days. Whatever it is, he wants to make sure that MineWorks gets the message."

"This is all well and interesting," Ju-lin broke in. "But we're not archeologists or linguists. Hell, I barely passed basic human history."

"Ah, but you're wrong there," Lee interrupted and turned to look at me. "One of us is a linguist."

Ju-lin and Marin looked at me, and then exchanged skeptical glances.

"The kid?" Marin asked.

"Elicio," Lee nodded toward me. "When we found you, you didn't understand a word we said, I could see it in your eyes. Doctor Chen did some scans. He couldn't find any brain trauma, and he saw a high level of activity in Brocha's area: the language center of your brain. After we talked in the hospital, I had him conduct regular scans, and they told a story. As you recovered, you didn't remember how to speak Common. You learned it."

My mind was raced, but I said nothing.

Lee continued, "When Chen noticed it, he thought that it was some kind of anomaly, some side effect of an unidentified trauma, a concussion, or other traumatic event that caused memory loss. But when we looked at the scans your brain activity was consistent with language acquisition."

"He was only in the hospital for a little over two months before he was released," Ju-lin said. "And he talked to you after two weeks. You're telling me he taught himself to be fluent in Common after a few weeks of lying in a bed?"

"More or less," Lee answered. "Eli, I looked through the search logs on your Slate. At the end of every day you started making seemingly random searches. At first I thought it was just that, random. But then I put it together. You were learning the language as you went."

All three McCulloughs sat quietly, waiting for me to say or do something. All I could manage was a nod.

"I don't buy it," Marin said. "You can't just learn a language by lying there, you need to read gestures, context clues, I took a xenolinguistics course at the academy. Do you have any idea how rare that kind of ability is?"

"They say that when we first encountered the Collective it took them weeks to learn our Common speech, but it took us months to learn Domari," Ju-lin countered. "What's that face Marin, I said I almost failed human history."

"Yeah, well, he's not any subspecies in the Collective," Marin retorted. "Genetic scans say Elicio's one hundred percent Earthborn."

"Enough," Lee silenced then and looked at me. "Speak for yourself."

"I learned it," I paused. "Maybe I re-learned it. But I sure don't remember any of it. In the hospital, I wasn't just lying there. My body was weak, but everyone was constantly talking to me. At first I had no idea what they were saying, but after a while it started to make sense. You're right about the Slate. Once you let me have it in the hospital learning the language became easier. But, what you're talking about, deciphering a written language, it's not the same thing. In the hospital I was surrounded by people talking, and I had the Slate to look things up and help bridge the gap between the spoken and written word. You want me to go and try to decipher a language off some scratches on a wall?"

"We don't even know if it's language. It could be art. It could be a random natural occurrence. It could be pornography. We won't know until you two go and check it out," Lee said, his tone shifted as he looked at me intently. "Look, I don't know where you came from. But my gut says there may be some kind of connection there."

"Between me and the writing?" I stiffened. Had he somehow guessed where I had come from?

"Don't look so nervous," Lee said, his tone was light and easy. "Listen, I've found that when strange and inexplicable things start happening in the same place at the same time, that there's most likely some kind of connection, even if we don't understand it at the time. Most of the time we never understand it. But if you can make sense of the writing, that would be a helluva thing. But that's not the only reason I want your help. I called you here because you're not one of the colonists. They are a tight-knit group, and they've been through a lot. Did you know that 20 percent of their population died from illness before MineWorks relocated them? There aren't many kids, and there aren't many grandparents. That's because the young and old didn't survive. They don't trust outsiders, and with good reason. I'm sure you've felt a bit of that yourself. And if they don't trust me, I can't trust them."

"But you can trust me?" I asked.

"Let's just say I don't distrust you," Lee answered. "I've been around. I know when a man is hiding something. And you," he paused, leveling his gaze at me, searching my face, "You're definitely hiding something. But I also know how to judge a man's intent and purpose. I've worked with enemy agents, double agents, and deployed a few of my own. Hell, we once had a triple agent aboard a dreadnaught who confessed to being an enemy agent, and then faked a sabotage operation to fool the other side, only as a means of getting access to a secure weapons area so that he could make off with a prototype warhead and use it to frame a weapons dealer. That one took some serious time to sort out. I'm still not sure whose side he was on.

"Those types of men are different. They have a sense of purpose, misplaced and convoluted as it may be. You look like you have more questions than answers."

I felt a rush of self-confidence and a swell of loyalty toward Lee. I hadn't realized that, in my isolation, I had been so hungry for acceptance and approval.

"So what do you want me to do?" my voice sounded more anxious than I'd intended.

Lee smiled.

"Based on his report, Growd's site is a cave southeast of New Haven. When you walked in, Ju-lin and I were plotting a clear path to get there. A quiet route beyond the range of prying eyes. Tomorrow afternoon, you and Ju-lin will take a small hover-skiff. It will take a few hours overland to get near the site. Hollace may have it under guard but I doubt it. However, I would expect that they will be monitoring all electronic activity in a three kilometer circle around the site from the orbital station. So, at nightfall, you two will park five klicks away and walk in so that you don't trigger any tech scans in the area. Then, you should be able to have a look around without being noticed.

"This is a simple in and out job. Get in there, take some high-res scans, and slip on home, then we'll see what you can figure out. You may not be a trained linguist, but you're clearly clever and have a head for languages. See what you can find. The message was sent a few days ago, so it won't be long before MineWorks has a research team swarming the area."

"Why bother?" Marin asked. "I mean, MineWorks will take the place apart and figure it all out anyway."

"True, but this is our world, too, and I want to know what we are dealing with. Besides, if whatever we find is important enough for Hollace to send three messages to corporate, it's worth finding out what has him so excited." Lee stood up from the table and looked at Marin and me expectantly. That was his final word.

I got to my feet.

"Go to work as usual in the morning, I'll send someone to pull you off your weeding in the early afternoon," Ju-lin nodded toward me. "And take a shower before meeting me at the garage. I don't want to be cooped up in the cab of the skiff with someone who smells like stale fertilizer."

"Sure," I replied, smiling stupidly at her insult. I was too busy grappling with the sudden joy that came with my new sense of belonging. It was as if Lee's trust and knowing kindness had filled a void within me that I hadn't known existed. I felt simple, childlike, and happy.

"I will put in an authorization for Ju-lin to take one of the fast skiffs," Marin said. "I'll say that you are verifying security grid scanners. Elicio is a strong back in case you need to do some digging. That way you can take some survey scanning equipment with you and nobody will raise an eyebrow."

"Settled," Lee said. "Elicio, I'm glad to have your help. You have a quick mind. Quick minds are useful."

I thanked him.

"Now, Elicio and Marin, please see yourself out. We'll sit down again when you're back to go over what you found. Lin, to your room, and so help me, keep the music down."

When I returned to the barracks nobody questioned me, but I could tell Jager and Boils wanted to. I smiled to myself in the darkness, anxious for the following day.
Chapter 8.

We stood on opposite ends of the field at dawn, at least eighty paces apart. Barefoot, as was the custom. Across the tall grasses our eyes met and held. Though her features are shadowed in my memories, I knew she was beautiful. My certainty of her love came like an echo.

I took one step. She took one as well. When I took another, she did the same. For forty paces, we kept the slow and even pace. The slowness was agony. The slowness was tradition. In each step, our eyes never wavered. We were locked together in silence.

On my thirty second step I nearly stumbled. My nerves were getting the best of me. I was ashamed. Then on her thirty-second, she stumbled as well. Her purple eyes smiled. I had loved her since we were children, but I loved her even more in that moment. She would always find the places to fit in the smallest kindnesses. On our fortieth step our eyes parted as we passed. Shoulder-to-shoulder.

"As spirits we pass without touching, and in passing are eternally bound." we both said the ancient words as we kept walking. As was tradition.

When I met Ju-lin at the garage, she had changed out of her work clothes and was wearing tan pants, a blue shirt, and a fitted dark brown leather jacket. It was a little warm out for the jacket, but she didn't seem to mind. I noticed that she was more anxious than usual. Instead of restlessly shuffling her feet, she was pacing steadily.

"Where have you been?" She asked as she rolled a rubber band off her wrist and pulled her hair into a pony tail. "I sent Kuric to get you at least fifteen minutes ago. How long of a shower did you have to take?"

Instinctively I put my hand to my hair, smoothing it out.

"Oh never-mind," She sighed and stepped toward the hover-skiff. "Get in. No not that side, those are controls. I'm sure as hell not going to let you drive. Hurry up."

The powered-down hover-skiff was still sitting on the ground. I opened the door and slid myself down awkwardly into the seat.

"All set?" She had settled quickly into her seat and shut her door.

"I guess so," I responded. "Anything I should know or do?"

"Enjoy the ride?" She said playfully as she reached over her shoulder and attached a safety harness to a latch near her hip.

She started flipping switches on the control panel and the skiff leaped upward and began to float. Before it had fully stabilized, Ju-lin grabbed the controls and jammed the throttle forward, sending the skiff leaping forward. I was pressed firmly into my seat, and decided it may be a good idea to put on my safety harness.

Within seconds we were outside of the Downs. She easily wove between trees with inches to spare as we crossed the valley. I held onto my seat so tightly that my knuckles were white. My heart was racing in my chest, I was certain that she had lost control. I had heard the colonists talking about hover accidents: jammed throttles, or blown actuators, all of which ended with vehicles crashing to the surface at murderous speeds. I held my breath, ready for death, but it didn't come.

I spared a glance sideways to find that Ju-lin didn't look worried. In fact, she wore an easy smile. I was getting used to Ju-lin's anxious energy: the shifting feet, the rapid speech, and her universal impatience. But I realized that it wasn't truly universal. As she steered the hover across the rugged landscape at breakneck speeds she looked calm and peaceful. This was her in her element.

"You-you enjoy this?" I sputtered.

"What's not to enjoy?" She laughed loudly we crested a steep rise, sending us further into the air.

My stomach was in my throat and my body tensed. The skiff, which is configured to float about half a meter off the ground, dove down and bottomed out on the rocky ground before leaping back in the air and leveling out.

She glanced over at me, flashing a wicked smile.

"You know, the colonists say you're just an icy wench," I said, trying to sound conversational. "I guess that's not true."

She slammed on the controls, sending the hover into a tight left turn. Caught unprepared, I slid sideways. The centripetal force pressed my face against the window.

After completing two full spins, she righted us back on our path.

"Why did you do that?" I asked.

"You really have no idea how to talk to people do you?" She tossed me a sideways glance.

"I'm trying to make conversation, what did I say wrong?"

"You've been listening to the grease monkeys in the barracks too much," She paused and down-shifted the hover to a more comfortable pace. "You aren't kidding, are you? You don't remember anything from before?"

"Nothing complete," I said.

"Nothing complete?" she repeated. "That means you remember something, but you didn't remember Common? I still can't quite believe that. Though the more I hear you talk it gets more believable. So, if you remember 'nothing complete,' what do you remember?"

"I remember weird things, as if they had happened to someone else."

"Do you remember anything about what kind of ship you were on?" I could see her tone lighten with the mere mention of a ship.

"No, nothing like that. Memories of walking in fields. Strange alien faces."

"Aliens? Maybe the Celestrials captured you and experimented on you or something. They may be human, but they're strange looking."

"I read about the Celestrials," I said. "But I haven't seen a picture to compare."

"Yeah, the Governor didn't want to waste precious data storage with images, so the colony archives are mostly text. So, let's see. The Skins are humanoid, more or less like us except they have no hair whatsoever. Smooth skin, angular faces, big eyes. Serious bastards. Pretty decent pilots though."

"Skins?" I asked.

"Slang. That's what most of the jocks call them back on Tantatern Station," she answered. "That's where my father was stationed before he resigned from the fleet. Back before we moved out here to the middle of nowhere. Back where stuff happened. Back when I had a life."

She shifted her grip on the controls.

"You really don't like it here, do you?" I asked. "It seems nice. It's pretty."

"Pretty. Yeah, sure," she responded. "It's something to look at, but there is nothing to do. We're stuck alone out here. We're half-dozen fluxes from the nearest trading lanes, almost a dozen from Nexus, probably twice that from Earth. Nothing ever happens. I want to be out there. I want to fly. I was about to join the fleet when Dad decided to sign us up to be gardeners out here. Not that I really want to join the fleet. Marin cares about all that, politics, citizenship, expanding the Protectorate. What a load of crap. All I want is to be free. Not land-locked on a world that doesn't even have a paved landing port. The fleet was the only way Dad would have let me go, but now that he's moved us out here that's not going to happen."

I looked up at the clouds in the sky. A shadow of memory passed over me, I felt a longing to leave the world and see the stars. I heard an echo of my old teacher's voice telling calmly saying the "skies are no longer for us."

"I guess I sound a bit mad," she admitted.

"No," I answered, pulling myself out of my memories. "Not at all. You've seen the larger world beyond this place. I can't imagine having to bottle myself up and not reach for the edges of the sky after having seen what you have."

"Maybe you've got a bit of a poet in there somewhere?" Her thin lips curled into an amused half-smile. "Anyhow, at least this is something. A mysterious cave, sneaking around at night, it's the first interesting thing to happen since we landed on this rock. It'll probably be nothing. I'll bet it's some old fish fossils in the stone or something. But at least it gets us out of the colony for a bit."

"And gives you a chance to drive?" I smiled.

"There is that," she slammed the throttle down, once again pressing me into my seat.

Our route took us in a broad loop around the other colonies, to bring us in on the far side of New Haven. As we traveled, I saw that Ju-lin had been right about the terraforming. Though it was late spring and we'd had a good amount of rain, everywhere I looked there were brown and dying trees. There was evidence of mudslides on the steeper hills. What had been a lush paradise just months before was beginning to look like a land cursed by drought and blight.

Our destination was on the edge of a stand of aspen trees. Tucked away in a small valley, the aspens were tall and healthy. They quaked softly from side to side as their leaves clattered in the evening breeze. We sat on the hover and ate our dinner of dehydrated vegetables and dried meat. It was standard fare. It would still be a few weeks before we had the first harvest of vegetables from the fields.

"The locator puts us about six kilometers out," Ju-lin commented, looking down at her handheld. "From the SatMaps it looks like a bit of an uphill climb, so we shouldn't waste too much time. I have some night-vision gear for the trip back, but I'd rather get up there before it gets dark so we can scope the place out and make sure nobody is there."

"I think I'm ready," I packed up what was left of my dinner and stood up.

"Have the scanner?"

"Yeah," I answered as I hefted the pack onto my back, I had to fight to keep my balance under its weight. "And the field scope, first aid kit, spare rations, water, and about two dozen gadgets I've never seen before."

She smiled sweetly and stepped behind me to reach into a side pocket of the backpack and pulled out a smooth device.

"Like that one, what is it?" I asked.

"This," She held up a small cylinder, "is a modified plasma torch." Like most of the tools, it was made of high-grade ceramics, about ten centimeters long. She pointed it at me. The end had a steel firing bore about the width of my thumb, and in front of the bore was a silver pin. She flipped her thumb and a yellow cartridge dropped out from the handle into her other hand. "The cartridge has a chemical cocktail that gets shot out the end. The little pin on the end sparks it up. It's designed for metalworking and welding, but I decided to have some fun, so I super-pressurized this one. Instead of a small, controlled stream, this one spits out one big wad of superheated plasma."

My eyes widened.

"Oh don't look at me like that," she jammed the cartridge back in the torch and slipped it in her belt. "A girl has to make her own fun around here. I brought it on the off chance we run into trouble, not that it's likely. I can't imagine they have someone guarding cave paintings in the middle of nowhere, and as far as I know MineWorks didn't introduce any predators onto the world larger than a tree-fox."

"What's a tree-fox?" I asked.

"Oh lord," she sighed and gestured to the west. "Let's talk and walk."
Chapter 9.

"When we came to this world, we became part of it." An elder was speaking, standing above four still bodies, covered in shrouds. I sat on a stone floor. "We learned to build with fallen trees, we plant and gather rather than hunt, and so we return to the world, part of it—"

It was a eulogy.

"But why?" It was another voice somewhere in the darkness, filled with undefined passion.

"Why?" The elder stopped.

"Why do we live like this? They tell us that the ancient teachers keep Charons of the old times, memories of tools and technologies. They tell of technologies that could help us control the floods and the storms, to bring water in drought. Things that could have saved-" The voice broke off in a low and sorrowful wail.

"Why indeed," the elder spoke. "There is no evil in an honest end. These four souls lived on top of the dust and under the sun, and their Charons passed into the sky in peace. Anything that you wield as a tool may just as easily bring harm as it will help. Your desire to control the things you do not understand is noble, but ill placed. Seek to control your own body and mind. That is the way to answer the pains you feel."

Several others in the darkness tapped their fingers in approval.

We reached the top of the ridge to the east of the cave just as the sun began to slip behind the mountains in the west. I found that, despite the difficulty of navigating the overgrown and difficult path, I enjoyed the rugged contrast of the mountains. On the rocky crags we were able to look out over the hills in all directions, the air was sharp and fragrant. It felt good to be away from the same familiar peaks, and the ghosts of my memories that haunted me in the Downs. All the while, Ju-lin talked and answered my questions. She told me about the Earth, where humanity had begun. Though she had never been there, she tried to recall all she knew. As we walked she pointed out which of the trees and plants around us were adapted from ancient samples from humanity's native Earth.

"I'd like to see it someday," I said.

"Even if you have the chance," she responded. "It's not like the stories. Not anymore. My father was born there and refuses to go back. He says it's a used-up rock. Cities have been built upon cities. The current residents live within the bones of civilizations that have long since passed. Though they have worked to clean it, the air's still close to poison and the skies are dark from millennia of waste and soot."

"Still," I said, imagining the ancient history of the world. "I would like to see it."

"Shh," suddenly, Ju-lin pulled me down next to her, and dropped her voice to a whisper. "If this thing is right, then the site is about forty meters ahead, somewhere in those rocks. Keep low."

She gestured for me to hold still while she stepped behind me and reached into my backpack. As she rummaged through the pack, I looked where she was pointing, down the slope below to a group of rocky outcroppings. There was a broad clearing; in the center was a towering stand of chalk-white stones sticking up out of the ground like jagged teeth. The slope down to the rocks looked easy going, but it was open and exposed.

Crouching beside me, she held up the digital monocular that she had retrieved from the backpack and studied the area.

"No heat signatures, no signs of tech," she said. "That's good. But don't trust it. Something could still be out there. The scanner won't be able to pick up much with all that Tevarite."

"Tevarite?" I asked.

"The white stones," she responded. "It's pretty uncommon, and puts off a low level, but inconsistent, electromagnetic field. It's interesting, but from what I hear it's so weak that it's generally worthless. No real technological applications, it just sits around and messes with scanners."

"It's quiet," I commented uneasily.

"That's just because we're up on this ridge," she said dismissively. "You got used to hearing the trees rustling and the birds singing. Don't get jumpy."

She was right, of course. For most of the hike we had been in the trees or undergrowth. I tried unsuccessfully to shrug off my uneasiness.

"Well," she slipped the monocular back in the backpack and pulled out two flashlights. "Let's find this thing, take some pictures, and get the hell out of here."

She stood up, but then froze stiff.

"Something wrong?" I asked.

She cocked her head to the side listening a moment, then shrugged.

"No, just-eh, yeah. It's nothing. Let's go."

I stood up and caught up with her in a few strides. Her forced confidence didn't make me feel any better, but I wasn't about to be left behind.

Dusk was settling in as we stepped into the shadow of the first stone. What had looked jagged and forbidding from a distance was downright terrifying up close. The rocks surged up from the ground at all angles. With dusk fully upon us, the shadows cast by the stones had a deep and abyssal darkness to them.

"Ah hell," Ju-lin said as she flipped on her flashlight. "I let your nerves get to me."

I turned my light on as well. The shadows began to twist and turn as we swung our lights from side to side. I wasn't sure which was more frightening, the stillness of the dark or the shapeless and twisting shadows.

"From the report, it sounded as if the cave entrance was in the middle here, under a large white stone," Ju-lin was speaking louder than necessary.

"Right," I said as I followed her, slowly sweeping my light from left to right. In the shadows I thought I saw flashes of shapes: hooded forms walking slowly between the stones. But when I turned my light toward them, they were gone.

"Well I give Growd some credit," Ju-lin commented. "He may have found the creepiest place in this side of the galaxy. I wonder what they expected to find."

She reached out and slapped one of the stones as she passed.

"Don't touch the stones," the words slipped through my lips before I knew they were coming.

"What?" Ju-lin spun and flashed her light in my eyes. "Why not?"

"I—I don't know," I stammered. "I just mean that we don't want to leave any traces that we were here. You never know what all they will scan for."

"Hm, right," she lowered her flashlight for a moment and then swung it back up at my face, blinding me.

"What gives?" I held up my hand to shield it.

"Something about your voice," she lowered her light again and turned back forward. "It was like you knew something about this place. Do you?"

"No," I thought I saw the glint of a pair of purplish eyes to my right, I flipped my flashlight to the spot. Nothing but a clean white stone. "Only that I want to get out of here."

"Well, I won't disagree there," Ju-lin responded. "Look, there, one of the Tevarite stones."

I followed her light. The stone was distinct, where the others were leaning at angles, the pure white stone stood perfectly straight up from the ground, towering eight to ten meters above us and was at least four meters across. As I looked up toward the pinnacle I saw the sky had changed, thick cloud cover was moving in. I followed Ju-lin as we circled the stone. On the far side we found the entrance to the cave nestled into its base. The entrance looked tall enough for us to walk into, but the path was steep.

We paused and both took a deep breath. Ju-lin shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"Well, why not?" Ju-lin flashed a forced smile as she took a few steps into the cave and started lowering herself into the passage.

For a moment, I was left alone at the mouth of the cave. I flipped off my light and looked up at the stars. The air was clear, and aside from a small breeze, the night was calm and still. There was something familiar about this place. I was certain of that. And the familiarity made me uneasy.

"Get a move on Berry-boy," Ju-lin jeered from below.

I ended up sliding more than climbing into the cave. Looking back up, I saw that the entrance was steep, but scalable. The dirt was dry, and there were plenty of good handholds, so at least getting out wouldn't be too much of a chore. I looked around. The cavern was broad, much larger than I had expected. It was about ten meters wide with plenty of room to stand. The path inside was obscured by the sloped surfaces of the stone.

"Looks like those surface rocks go deep," Ju-lin commented. "Still, as far as caves go, it could be worse. At least it's dry. There are footprints here, leading deeper into the cave there. This is the spot."

"Looks like quite few of them," I said noting several different shapes and sizes of prints on the dusty floor.

"Still, it's odd," her voice was quiet. "It's peaceful in here. I wouldn't think that, especially how it was up there with those damned stones. Almost like a church."

"Or a crypt," I responded.

Ju-lin shook her head, "you know, Eli, I'm beginning to think you are trying to make this as creepy as possible. I mean really, I was fine until you started getting spooked by the stones, and now you're afraid of ghosts. Hm, yeah, Eli." She glanced at me. "That's better than Elicio. Elicio sounds so formal. Maybe if you loosen up a bit we can get that nickname to stick. Everyone's got a nickname back on the colony. The Governor, Missy-T, Jager, it's like nobody even has a real name anymore."

"And 'Ju-lin' isn't?" I was pretty sure she was talking just to fill the silence, but I didn't see any harm in it. "I notice nobody gives you a nickname."

"Ju-lin is my nickname," she responded.

"It is?"

"Yeah, my full name is Juliette Linnaea McCullough, and if you ever use it I will burn you down."

"Juliett-"

She spun around, flashlight in one hand, and plasma torch in the other. "Burn. You. Down. Not another syllable!"

"Not a word," I couldn't help but smile.

"God, why did I even say anything?" She turned back forward and kept walking. "Clearly that you're so damnably pitiful, you got me feeling bad for the village outcast. I'm such a sucker sometimes."

Or maybe you have more in common with the village outcast than you want to admit, I thought to myself.

"Ho-now," she jogged a few paces forward and stopped. "What do we have here? Oh hell, look at that. That's no fossil. Growd may be onto something, look at those-"

As I approached, she pulled a pair of thumb-sized bulbs out of her pockets. She twisted them both, as she did, the little orbs began to glow brightly. She tossed them both to the rocky ceiling above us, they stuck to the stone, casting light all around us and illuminating the cavern.

With the lights I could see that the cave had opened up into a large room, the walls, for the most part, were the same dark stone as the rest of the cavern, but the far wall was sheer and white like the stones on the surface.

"More Tevarite, but look at it, it's flawless." Ju-lin was right. Though the stones on the surface were cracked and worn, this one was as smooth and flat as steel with a clean shine on the surface. "There, see in the middle, that must be it. I've never seen writing like that."

I stood next to Ju-lin, looking at the shapes etched onto the center of the Tevarite. There were two of them about a meter apart. The core of each of the shapes was a perfect circle, with a series of bisecting lines and small twisted shapes throughout. There were common shapes between them, but they were individually distinct and I did not see a pattern. Where one had blank space, the other had a patchwork of jagged lines, where the first had two parallel lines that twisted like snakes, and the other had a rough patchwork of chaotic shapes.

"Does it make any sense to you?" I had expected her tone to be teasing, but instead it seemed hopeful.

"No," I paused. "Maybe it's not even writing. It's hard to tell, but they look too intricate to be pictures of something, maybe it's a diagram, or a schematic?"

"A schematic of what?" she asked glibly. "Maybe a super weapon? Or maybe it's instructions on how to bake a cake."

"Or maybe they are stories," I said absently.

"A story?" Ju-lin questioned, looking at the pictures. "I don't see how you would get that. Unless each is somehow telling a scene-"

"They are both different from the other, maybe the message somehow tied to what is missing between the two rather than what they have in common," I offered.

"Well," she looked over to me thoughtfully. "I have no idea if you really know what you're talking about, but at least that sounded clever."

"Thanks," I paused. "I think."

"Let's unpack this gear, get some scans of this place and get out of here. If we hurry we can be back at the Downs in time for breakfast."

I slipped the heavy pack from my shoulder and started to assemble the tripod while Ju-lin configured the scanning sensors. As Ju-lin had explained to me on the hike up, the sonic resonance scanner would do more than take pictures. By using a combination of ultrasonic waves, and full spectrum visual scanning the scanner is able to take and store a full holographic image of the area, including subsurface features, Lee had figured that we would have one chance at getting in, so he wanted us to capture as much data as we could.

"Just about set," Ju-lin said as she snapped the last of the panels in place. "There we go, hold the tripod, and activate."

The scanner, which was roughly the size of my head, began making a series of high, then low pitched buzzing noises and flashing lights in all directions.

"Here, stand back so we don't get in the way," Ju-lin grabbed my arm and pulled me several steps back.

As we stepped quietly back, our eyes met for a moment. For the first time, inches apart. I felt a rush of warmth as the blood rushed to my face. I quickly turned back to watch the scan. We were back in the shadows now. Hopefully she didn't see that my face was flushed.

"How long will the scan take?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," she said quickly, and more loudly than usual. "The indicator on the top turns green and it's supposed to give a long and even tone when it's done. That's what the instructions said at least."

"You've never used one of these before?"

"No, Dad had to borrow it from the surveyor group, we're lucky we had one on the colony, they are mostly used for-"

There was a series of distant but distinct thumps above us. Each thud brought a burst of dust from the roof of the cave. We glanced at each other nervously.

"Earthquake?" I asked nervously. The colonists had talked about how there were earthquakes back on Lagrange IV. They said that the earthquakes became more and more frequent as the mines gutted the precious minerals from the ground below. They had told one story about six miners who were trapped in a cave for five months after a quake before they were rescued and found. Only two had survived, the story had given me nightmares.

"Shh," Ju-lin stood still, her hand up to silence me and her head tilted to the side.

They came again, three more thumps they sounded closer.

"That's no earthquake, those are charges."

"Charges?" I asked, not understanding. "You mean they're mining in here already?"

"No, I mean charges," she said. "Bombs."

"Bombs?!" I couldn't contain my panic. "Why would the colonists be bombing us?"

"They aren't," she said. "Those are a few klicks off. I think somebody is bombing them."

Another series of charges went off, a huge cloud of dust rose from the floor and small rocks were falling from the ceiling.

"Okay now they are bombing us," she said as she looked back toward the cave entrance.

"We need to get out of here." I said.

"And go where?" she said. "If we run out there, then all we are is just moving targets."

I looked at her; she had a fine layer of dust on her face. Like earlier that afternoon in the skiff, she lit up as danger grew near. Her eyes were wider, and her lips slightly apart. And, in spite of myself, I couldn't help but think that she was incredibly beautiful. I shook off the thought.

Another charge sounded, the air grew thick with dust.

"On second thought," she said. "Being a moving target sounds better than being crushed in a cave-in."

I looked back at the symbols on the wall. I couldn't read them, but I knew they meant something. They were a clue, a story, a truth: something that would tell me more about where I came from.

"We can't leave without the scanner," I said urgently.

She opened her mouth to say argue but stopped; she must have seen that I was serious.

There was a low whistling sound coming from the mouth of the cave and getting closer.

"What is that?" I asked, taking a step back.

"That's—ah hell!" she once again grabbed my arm as we stepped back against the wall.

The sound grew louder, then we saw a flashing light at the entrance of the tunnel. Ju-lin drew her plasma torch and crouched down, but she didn't fire.

The blinking light was coming from a smooth silver orb the size of a fist that was whooshing down the tunnel and across the room. With a crash the device imbedded itself against the far wall near the symbols with a deep thud.

"The Sower be damned," Ju-lin said as she jumped up and ran across the room to look at it. "Um, we need to get out of here. Now."

"What is it?"

"You remember how I said my plasma gun works?"

"Yes."

"Well, this will be like that, but a whole helluva lot bigger," she grabbed the flashlights and began running toward the cave entrance.

The plasma charge began beeping.

I looked back at the scanner as it continued to flash and buzz.

"What are you waiting for?" She screamed back at me. "Forget the scanner, we have seconds before that thing blows."

The beeping was becoming more frequent.

"Do you hear that?" She yelled. "Faster beeps means it's about to turn us into vapor, we need to go, now."

"But I need-" as I said it the scanner on the top of the light flipped green and it started sounding a soft tone. "There!"

I ran over and grabbed the scanner from the tripod and started running toward the entrance of the cave. Another bomb struck the surface nearby. Dust was so thick in the air it was sticking to my lips. I could see Ju-lin, about ten yards ahead of me scurrying up the rise out into the open air.

I threw the scanner up through the cavern entrance and I began to climb. My hand slipped and I slid back down, I fought my way back up. Again my hand slipped as the handholds came loose. I fell hard against the jagged floor. I got up once more to see Ju-lin leaning back over the top.

"Get up here!" she screamed as she offered me her hand. I pulled myself up once more, desperate as the echoing beeps seemed to meld into a continuous sound. She caught my hand and, with her help, I pulled myself the rest of the way up. After one final heave, I was clear.

We laid on the grass under the great grey stone, panting to catch our breaths through the cloud of dust. For a moment, the sky was still and silent. Too silent. I realized that the beeping had stopped.

The cave started to whistle as if taking a deep breath, and then it exhaled fire.
Chapter 10.

"We keep our stories in song, and we protect our Charon to pass on the truths of life and the stories of our past," the voice said. "We discarded the written word long, long ago."

"But why?" I asked. "Wouldn't it help us preserve the stories? We could record our thoughts, build upon our knowledge."

"Eli, you answer your own question," he cut me short. "For what purpose would we need to keep our knowledge beyond our stories and songs? Our people came out of the darkness to live on the surface of this world. We left our records, our words, and our machinations to burn in the stars. There are few now who recall the symbols and language, and they keep the most sacred of our Charon. They are the keepers and guardians of our past. Both to keep it safe from destruction and to keep it safe from discovery. We do not want to slide back into the darkness.

A pillar of flame shot up out of the mouth of the cave. The heat was scorching. Sweat ran down my face, and I could feel the metal on my belt and the buttons on my shirt growing hot. Too hot. Scalding. I crawled away from the fire, frantically looking for cover. My eyes stung from the smoke and salt of my sweat, blurring my vision.

"Here!"

I followed Ju-lin's voice to my left, I felt her grab the tail of my shirt and pull me to the ground. After a few seconds, the cave coughed twice more, and the flames disappeared. There was a backdraft as the cool night air returned, followed by silence.

I wiped the sweat and dust from my face and blinked as my eyes readjusted to the dim light of dusk.

"You alright?" Ju-lin asked as she got up, dusting herself off.

"I think so," I responded. My eyesight was returning. Ju-lin had pulled me to the cover of one of the nearby stones. "You weren't kidding about that plasma."

"Next time maybe you'll listen when I say run," she retorted. "You almost got us cooked going after that scanner."

"The scanner!" I scrambled to my feet and ran back toward the cave.

The ground around the mouth of the cave smoldering red, the white stones surrounding the site were blackened. My heart sank.

"Where is it?" I yelled, frantic. "I tossed it up in front of me."

"There," Ju-lin pointed to a lump of slag. "Not much left of it."

I ran over to where she had pointed and fell on my knees. I reached for the scanner and yelped in pain. It was searing hot. The sensor panels had melted and the metal components were charred.

"It's wasted," I felt my stomach drop. Whatever secrets that those symbols hid were gone. I lowered myself to the ground, sitting next to the remains of the scanner and hung my head.

"Wow," Ju-lin commented. "That's toast. Still, here, let me see it. There could be something left of the memory card."

Ju-lin pushed me aside. She pulled a spanner from her belt and began poking and prodding at the still smoking pile of melted plastic and charred metal.

"Come on you little bastard," she muttered as she shoved in the spanner next to a small slot and twisted. A small card, the size of a fingernail popped up from the slot.

"Brilliant!" a wave of relief swept over me.

She turned with a smile "It's charred a bit, but something may be recoverable. Here."

"Thanks," I said as a surge of relief and excitement ran through me. "I'm surprised there was anything left of it."

"I'm surprised there is anything left of us. I thought we were—" she stopped and narrowed her eyes, tarring into the dark sky. "Wait, they're coming back."

I followed her gaze. There were a series of three lights in the sky to the north, moving fast.

"Interplanetary fighters. Those signal lights don't look like any Earthborn ships I know."

"If they are coming back—" I began.

"—we need to get some cover, fast." She concluded.

I slipped the memory card in my pocket, and we began scrambling through the maze of rocky outcrops. We pressed ourselves against the closest stone as they made a low and slow pass overhead.

Though I'd seen the hulking colony ship land, and spent quite a bit of time studying starships on the Slate, I couldn't help but be in awe of the small, agile ships as they soared overhead. Unlike the ships I had studied, which were fearsome steel behemoths designed by the Earthborn, all of them bristling with weaponry. These ships were sleek and angular, even beautiful.

"Those are Celestrial fighters," Ju-lin gasped. "Celestrials attacking a colony! Blowing up the cave? What in the void do they think they are doing?"

As she spoke I saw another trail of fire coming from the darkness somewhere above the strafing Celestrial fighters. It was coming in fast, heading straight for the lead Celestrial. Before I could say anything, it struck. There was a flash of light and a burst of flames as the fighter disintegrated into fire.

"What was that?" I asked.

"A missile. Someone else is here! Look, there," she pointed, another ship was descending through the cloud. This one was much bigger than the others, and, I thought, much uglier. "A Carrack. Thank the stars, someone is looking out for us."

Carrack, I recalled, was a large Earthborn-designed, four-man fighting and cargo ship used throughout the Protectorate. The huge ship lumbered forward, though it was slower and less maneuverable than the Celestrial fighters, it more than made up for it in firepower and armor plating. Its four large rear-mounted engine pylons burned as it thundered down from the clouds.

Two smaller vessels shot out through the clouds on either side of the Carrack, moving fast toward the Celestrial ships. The two newer ships were different still than the others. While the Celestrial ships were sleek and rounded, these two were sharp and asymmetrical. The core of the ship was a long, smooth fuselage with a second stunted wing jutting from the base. Even in the dim light, the ships looked seamless, as if they had been molded out of a single piece of metal.

As the ships flew closer and began firing, I saw that I had had it backwards. The fuselage was a large rocket engine with a weapon system, and the smaller, stunted wing was the cockpit. It was as if the entire vessel was designed to be a weapon. While the Celestrial ships were designed to hide their weaponry, the newcomer's ships seemed to be designed around theirs.

As I watched, a name came to my mind.

"Draugari," I said softly.

Ju-lin spun around to look at me, stunned, then back up at the ships. "Can't be, the Draugari never come out this way. They're territory is on the far side of the Protectorate passed the wild worlds, light years away. But, damn. Those are Slires."

Slires, I recalled the name as well. Back in the hospital there had been talk of the Draugari, they had been one of the first things I studied on the Slate. The Draugari were a half-human hybrid race of unknown origins that lived on the fringe, feeding off of the civilized worlds. Though the bulk of Draugari craft were stolen and pirated and retrofitted Earthborn, Celestrial, and Collective vessels, they maintained their own, highly advanced long-range fighter craft, the Slires. According to the Slate, the Draugari were migratory with no known homeworld, how and where they built their own fighters was a mystery.

"Why are they attacking the Celestrials?" I asked.

The two remaining Celestrial ships broke from their tight formation as they moved to engage the Draugari. There were flashes of light and explosions crackled like thunder. I couldn't tell who had come out better from the encounter.

We watched as the four fighters continued to engage. Stray shots struck the ground nearby, trees erupted in flames. I remembered the thudding explosions back in the cave and looked to the west toward New Haven. All I could see now was a pillar of smoke.

"The Carrack," Ju-lin searched the sky. "Where is it? Those Slires must have been chasing it."

"I'm not sure, I lost it," I paused. "Did the Slire's shoot it down?"

"No," she said. "Not that I saw anyway. A Carrack wouldn't go down that quietly. It looked like they flew right past it. Wait! Look there, to the north."

I looked to where she was pointing, there were lights on the ground just over the slope, and out of view.

"They must have set down," she said. "They probably picked us up on the scan and are trying to get us out of here, let's get moving. We have some time while the Celestrials and the Draugari are having it out."

I nodded and followed her as we took off in a run across the clearing toward where the Carrack had landed. As we ran, there were explosions as the Celestrial and Draugar ships continued to their dance.

"The Celestrials are winning this," Ju-lin said breathlessly over her shoulder as we ran. Just then one of the Slires flew overhead. As it passed, the Celestrials fighters closed on one on each side. Lasers lit up the sky as the Celestrial gunners found their mark. The first Slire disintegrated violently into a shower of blue-green fire and debris began raining down on the aspen grove.

Too late, the second Draugari fighter came to the other's aid, sending a stream of fire across one of the Celestrial ships. The Celestrial faltered as one of its three rear engines blinked dark, but it continued to fight.

"Here!" Ju-lin was waved her flashlight toward the landed Carrack as we closed the distance. Two of the crewmembers were outside of the ship. They stopped and looked toward us.

Looking up, I saw that they wore full space suits, helmets still on. They saw us and began running toward us. Something was wrong. They had weapons in hand, and were tall. Unnaturally tall.

"Ju-lin!" I called as I looked back at the Carrack. The exterior of the ship was covered in wiring and extra plating. There were two large scars across the hull that looked as if they had been welded together.

Ju-lin looked up with a flash of realization.

Before she could act, the lead of the two figures drew a weapon and fired. Two flashes of light struck Ju-lin in the chest. She crumpled to the ground in a heap, and then the figure turned toward me. Before I could react, there was a flash of light, then, darkness.
Chapter 11.

Through the haze of my memory I could vaguely feel the pain. My leg throbbed at the knee. There were several faces hovered above me in the twilight. My teacher. My wife. I was lying with my back on a plank.

"Tie the leg down," a voice instructed. "It will set in time, perhaps a month."

"But I have work to do, the fields need to be plowed," I heard myself say.

"Then your wife will do twice the work, or they will go unplowed," the voice responded harshly. "You were foolish Eli. You took an unnecessary risk by moving the log alone. You must now pay the consequence."

He put his hand on my knee, applying pressure.

The pain grew, but I said nothing.

"There are consequences for our actions," This time it was my teacher. "We follow the way of our people. Walk the path of prudence and patience. You should have waited for help. You acted impetuously. And your pain is the result. Now, you must stay and lie down until the bone has set."

"I don't see why I can't put on a splint. I can still work, I can still contribute." I was pleading.

"Contribute?" spat the other voice. "You cannot contribute, for you have not learned. You took the short path. Those who take the short path seek to circumvent the realities of the world for power, status, or convenience. They think that they are taking a risk upon themselves, but they do not pay the price. The people around them do. No, you stay on the board. You can watch out the window as others toil all the harder without your hands, and they will toil together. A community is not about one soul acting alone for the sake of his own achievement, for his own glory. Community is submission to your own weakness to the greater strength of the whole so that we can thrive under the great dark sky."

I woke up face down on a cold steel floor. My chest was pounding. I shook off the haze and tried to sit up, but I found my hands were tied together under me and my feet were bound. There were several smears of red-black handprints on the floor beneath me. Dried blood. I gasped, only then did I notice the stench of death and rot. The stink of rot was so thick I could taste it and my eyes watered. I gagged.

I heard a series of quick thuds and a muted explosion. The floor below me shook, and then world pitched sharp to the right. I slid across the floor, slamming my right side against a wall, no, it was steel. A bulkhead.

Less than a second later something hit my left side.

I groaned in pain as I rolled over to see what had struck me, it was Ju-lin. Her hands and feet were bound like mine, and she had a bruise on her forehead, but seemed to be breathing normally. There were two blackened marks on her shirt where she had been shot, I looked down and saw two similar marks on my own chest.

"Stunners," she grunted, her eyes flickering open. "You alright?"

"I'm alive," I said. "I think."

"A joke? That's good." She grunted. "At least you're not going all terrified on me."

She rolled over and spun around on her back, leaning forward into a half-sitting position to look around.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"Best guess?" she said. "I'd say we are in the main hold of the Carrack."

The ship shook violently. A siren sounded for a few seconds and was silenced.

I pulled myself up to lean with my back against the bulkhead. The cargo hold was large and filthy. There were blast scars and blood splatters on the wall. On one end was a large cargo bay door, the other was a closed hatch leading further into the ship.

"Those weren't human," I said, afraid to ask the question.

"Not completely," she said as she pulled herself across the floor toward a computer terminal next to the hatch. "Those were Draugari."

Every Draugari raid and attack that I had read about on the Slate, and every tale I had heard the colonists tell about the Draugari ended in swift and brutal death. "But I thought the Draugari don't take prisoners."

"Today they did," she said. "Who knows, maybe they just didn't have time to kill us on the surface. Look at the blood on the walls. We're not the first people to get locked up in here. Maybe they're saving us for dinner."

The ship lurched with another series of explosions, the engines thundered in response. This time I managed to grab a cargo strap to keep from sliding across the floor. Ju-lin wasn't as lucky; she slid the length of the empty hold, slamming against the cargo door with her left side.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, just fine," she groaned and she started working her way back across the hold, this time she was clumsily gripping the handholds. "They must either have not expected us to wake up, or didn't think of us as much of a threat, or they would have done more to secure us. I need to activate that terminal and find out what the hell is going on. See if you can find something to cut these bindings."

There was a loose coil of thick canvas cargo strapping mounted on the wall. It looked like it was the same stuff they had used to tie our hands. A scattered pile of trash was sliding around the floor, some packing foam, a shoe, several ceramic shards that looked like they could have once been part of body armor. I looked closer, the shards were small but they could be sharp enough. I turned and pushed off from the wall, sliding toward the debris.

"Got something?" Ju-lin called, she was nearly back to the console.

"Maybe," I said as I fumbled through the pieces, too small, too dull. The third piece sliced the tip of my finger as I picked it up. I couldn't get in a good position to use it to cut my own hand bindings, so I began using it to saw at the bindings on my feet. "This should work, but the straps are thick. It won't be quick."

"Well, hurry," she said dryly as she reached up to a cargo strap to pull herself to her feet next to the console. She looked from the terminal to the cargo strap and back down to her feet. If she let go of the strap, another hit would send her tumbling across the room again. "Well hell, now what?"

The cutting was agonizingly slow. Twice I lost my grip and had to fumble to recover the shard. I was only halfway there, and could tell that Ju-lin was getting impatient.

I looked back up to see that Ju-lin had bitten down on the strap to stabilize herself as she began to work the terminal controls with her bound hands. There was another jolt as the Carrack took fire and pitched again. Ju-lin made a muffled cry followed by a stream of unintelligible curses. She was red faced and wild eyed, but her bite held.

Finally, the strap on my feet came loose. I struggled to my feet and hobbled toward Ju-lin. She spit out the cargo strap and took ahold of it with her hands to steady herself.

"Sonuva—" she stretched her jaw.

"Here." My hand still bound, I reached my arms up over her head and brought my arms down around her shoulders, drawing her close.

"What the hell are you trying to do?" she spat. "This is not the time, and it is definitely not the place." She didn't struggle or try to move out of my arms, though.

I kept hold of the ceramic edge with my left hand, and grabbed the cargo strap with my right, securing her against the wall.

"Oh," she said. "Sorry, I thought that you were—"

"I figured this would be easier, now get the terminal going."

Hands still bound, but with her head free to keep an eye on what she was doing, she continued to work the controls. The screen changed several times as she scrolled through the ship's logs and systems. Finally a three dimensional locator grid appeared.

"We're in low orbit now. Looks like those two Celestrials are on us. No sign of those two Draugari Slires. Either the Celestrials took them out, or they buggered off."

We heard another eruption of rapid fire from somewhere on the forward decks. One of the Celestrials signals blinked out and disappeared.

"The good news is it looks like now the Draugari are winning," she said.

"The bad news is it looks like the Draugari are winning," I replied.

"Boy you ain't kidding," she said. "See if you can get my hands free."

She shifted in my arms to turn her back to me and bring her hands closer to mine. Her hair tickled my face. A new sensation. I was amazed that even in the stench of the cargo hold, her hair managed to smell sweet like the blue flowers that grew along the edge of the fields back on the colony. I shook the strange thoughts from my head and worked to get the ceramic edge in position to start cutting her bindings.

"So, no chance you know how to fight?" she asked, her voice was calm and conversational.

"Fight?"

"Yeah. Thought not."

The ship took another hit, a series of explosions rang somewhere above us.

"The power systems took a hit," Ju-lin said.

For a few seconds there was complete silence, and then a few clicks and a hum as the lights came back on. But the deep hum of the engines did not. There was one more series of thuds as the attacking ship came around again, and then another burst of fire from the Carrack's guns, followed by a triumphant yell from the cabin above.

"The scope is clear," I said nodding down at the terminal. "They must have gotten the last Celestrial."

"Yeah, and the engines are silent," she responded. "We're just drifting in orbit. Let's hope they focus on fixing the ship before they come to check on us."

With a final slice I finished cutting through Ju-lin's bindings, freeing her hands.

"Ahh, finally," she ducked down and slipped out from under my arms and hopped away easily on her still-bound feet. "At least the artificial grav systems are still working. Here hand me the shard."

She took the piece of armor from me and quickly got to work cutting through the bindings on her feet.

"A little help?" I said, holding up my hands.

"You can't fight, remember?" she asked. "My feet are more useful than your hands. Priorities." She didn't sound sorry at all. "The ship's dead in the water, you can let go of the cargo loop."

I'd forgotten that I was still gripping the strap on the bulkhead. I took a few steps, stretching my arms.

"Okay, let's see what we have," she said looking around as she worked on freeing her feet. "They took all my gear, what do we have, the spool of cargo cable, maybe we could use that for something."

They had taken her gear. My thoughts went immediately to the memory card and I began to panic. I checked my pocket; it was still there tucked safely away. There was noise in the forward cabin, doors opening and closing and muffled voices.

"What's that?" I said, a small blip had appeared on the edge of the scanner. "Another Celestrial ship?"

"There we go!" Ju-lin tossed the last of the ties aside and leapt to her feet. "What is it? Oh, no, that's not Celestrial, maybe it's one of the Slir-no, wait, that's an Earthborn signal designation."

"Someone sent for help?"

"We're too far for help. It has to be from the surface." Her hands flickered over the controls. "I'm glad they didn't lock out this terminal, let's hope they aren't watching the scopes. Wait, the ship is broadcasting a signal."

She hit a few keys and a stream of characters crossed the screen.

"Coded?" I asked.

"Yeah," she tried to access the message and the system prompted her for a key. She typed in a series of numbers whispering "Oh, please, please."

The message decoded: L.M. en route. Ackno and Disab Scans.

"Dad," she smiled.

"Lee's coming?" I asked. "Is he going to attack with the shuttle? Can he do that?"

"No," she answered as she accessed the ship's system control. "It's just an interplanetary shuttle, no weapons. It's designed to perform satellite maintenance and dock with orbiting craft."

"Dock?"

"Yup," she said.

She typed: J.L.M. Ackno, mak'n nois, be quik.

"But won't they see that message?"

"The Draugari use their own communicators, something in their helmets. They won't be monitoring our coms, especially with the power plant offline and the Celestrials out of the way."

With that, Ju-lin entered another series of commands. The screen began to flash scanners offline.

"Alright," Ju-lin said, still typing furiously on the keyboard. "As long as they aren't looking out the windows they won't see him coming."

"And if they do?"

"It's our job to make sure they don't," she answered. "And to make enough noise that they won't notice when the docking clamp locks."

"How are we going to do that?" I asked.

"We're in the cargo bay. Through that hatch and up the access tunnel is the living area. Seats, beds, kitchen, the usual. From there if we continue to the foredeck we will pass through the airlock where the docking collars are, and then the cockpit in the front."

"Okay," I responded. "You didn't answer my question. We're unarmed and hurt and they are eight feet tall and heavily armed. And my hands are still bound."

"Yeah. No time for that," she tapped the controls and the access hatch opened, revealing a ladder. "Aside from a few access panels, there isn't much in the living areas that they would need to get to for them to bring the main power back online. Most of that will have to be done through the main controls in the cockpit, so that's where they all should be. We can probably find some weapons that we can use to hold out and get their attention long enough for dad to make his approach."

"And if one happens to be accessing one of the panels?"

"They won't be," she said with certainty as she stepped toward me, looking at me squarely in the eyes. "Look, I know you're new at, well, at everything. But listen to me clearly right now. If we do nothing, my Dad dies, and then we die."

I looked around the room at the blood-stained walls and took a deep breath, doing the best I could to calm my nerves. For a second, I was glad my hands were still bound, that way she wouldn't notice them shaking.

She turned abruptly and started climbing carefully up the access ladder. I followed close behind, using my elbows to augment my still-bound hands to climb. She paused at the access hatch at the top, looked down at me and nodded. Bracing herself against the side of the narrow access tunnel, she lifted both hands, easily twisted to unlock the hatch and slowly pushed it open.

The room above was quiet. After taking a slow survey of the deck, she nodded to me and climbed silently to the top and hopped out, setting the open hatch down silently on the deck.

I followed her up, pulling my torso up onto the deck on my elbows so I could look around. The living area was a long room segmented into several parts. We came up in what looked like a small kitchen area. There was a half stack of rations tucked cleanly in a transparent compartment on the wall. A few steps away was the foredeck access door which Ju-lin had said would lead to the docking lock and cockpit. The aft section was dark. The lights must have been blown out. I could see shadows of four sleeping pods mounted on two-on-a-side against the bulkheads. I wondered when and where the poor crew had run into the Draugari. And how long they had suffered before they were killed.

I reached up awkwardly, still trying to climb up out of the access hatch. Midway through the last heft of pulling my torso up to the deck, my foot slipped on the ladder. I slid back with a thud and a grunt, catching myself with my arms at the shoulders with my legs dangling for a moment as I fought to regain my footing.

"Quiet!" Ju-lin whispered as she dove to help me, and then she froze, her face white. "Shit."

I turned my head to see a pair of white eyes glowing in the darkness of the aft compartment just past the sleeping pods.

The Draugari made a low growl as he moved slowly toward us. He was tall enough that his figure took up the entire passage. As he drew nearer, I could see his armored suit and hear his rebreather slowly and evenly drawing the air in and out. I recalled that the Draugari do not breathe Earth standard atmosphere and wore rebreathers with nitrogen infusers.

He took another step and his hand went to his belt, drawing out a long, black blade.

The sight of the weapon jolted my survival instincts. I once again pushed off, trying to climb out of the access hatch. With a final heave I pulled myself up onto the deck with a flop. I turned around. I was between Ju-lin and the Draugari, my hands bound, completely helpless.

I heard Ju-lin shuffling around behind me as he approached.

He looked at her and made a noise that sounded like a cross between a growl and a laugh, and then turned toward me, flipping the knife around in his hand, preparing to deliver a downward killing blow. I tried to move away, but with my hands bound, I slipped to the floor again. I rolled onto my back as he took another step. He lowered himself to one knee and brought the blade up for a downward slash.

There was a blinding flash and I felt a fire burn on my chest, I screamed in pain and rolled over in agony. Then I realized the burning was just that, burning. I looked down to see a tiny glowing metal cinder on my chest. I shook it off. There was no knife wound. There was no Draugari.

"Close one," Ju-lin stepped over and offered me her hand.

I took it and stood up. I began to ask what had happened when she held up her other hand: her plasma torch. "Sorry there, I think a bit of the splashback hit you."

"You got him?"

"You could say that," she said nodding back toward the sleeping pods.

I took a step to look around the kitchen countertop to see the Draugari lying several feet back from where he had been. His chest was now concave, blackened and smoldering; the air was thick of the stench of cooked flesh.

Doors were opening somewhere behind us toward the cockpit.

"They heard," I said.

"Get some cover, back there behind the sleeping pods."

"Can't you just shoot them?" I asked.

She shook her head. "One shot is all I had."

"Damn," another door opened behind us as we scrambled deeper into the ship. Ju-lin and I slid into the darkness, each crouching behind sleeping pods on opposite sides of the deck.

The door opened and the first Draugair slowly walked in, he had his blade in his right hand and a gun in his left. I took a long look, he was built like a human, though taller, with broader shoulders and a barrel chest. His arms and legs were a patchwork of black armor. Though his shape and movements looked human, his rough skin and luminescent white eyes were undeniably alien. He saw the opened hatch and paused, then called out. He took another step and saw his fallen comrade.

"Un'chan!" he called behind him as he slowly walked toward us, peering into the darkness.

Two more Draugari appeared behind him to answer his call, all three with weapons drawn. They were huge, menacing, and fearsome.

Ju-lin was breathing heavily beside me, but I could see her hands were still steady.

The lead Draugari stopped on the far side of the sleeping pods, looking side to side. He made another sound, and there was a grunting response. With a sudden thrust he punched forward with his knife hand, slamming his fist against the far end of the sleeping pod that Ju-lin was hiding behind. Neither of us was prepared for the strength of the blow. It broke the sleeping pod from its mounting, sending it flying forward into Ju-lin. She screamed in pain as it struck, pinning her against the rear bulkhead.

Without thinking, I stepped between Ju-lin and the Draugar.

They made another sound, eerie and unsettling like a chirping baby bird being smothered by a pillow. I realized they were laughing.

"Un'ta'pa" he replied back and made a slight bow as if in salute, and then he began to advance.

With my hands still bound, I looked anxiously around for a weapon, a tool, anything I could use. I saw a lever down by my feet to my right, under the remaining sleeping pod. It wasn't much, but it was a chance.

The Draugari stepped forward, going around the remaining sleeping pod that I had been crouching behind. One more step. He took it. I turned and kicked the emergency release lever-the locks on the sleeping pods disengaged and they tumbled onto the Draugari, knocking him to his right against the bulkhead.

He cried out, but I suspect it was more out of anger than pain. With a snarl he lifted the pod and it aside. He rose to his feet.

There was another cry, this one was pain. One of the other Draugari behind him dropped to his knees, and then the other. Smoke was rising from their backs. Behind him I saw Lee, still in his colonial jumpsuit, holding a laser pistol.

Lee was quick, but the lead Draugari was quicker. Before Lee could make his third shot, the Draugari was moving swiftly to the side and returning. The Draugari gun made a loud pop as it fired. His first shot flew high over Lee's head, sending sparks of slag.

As Lee returned fire, the Draugari leapt to the side with startling agility, Lee's shots streaked harmlessly through the dank air. The Draugar's second shot struck Lee in the shoulder, sending the laser pistol flying from his hand. The Draugari dropped his gun, and advanced toward Lee with his long, jagged blade drawn.

Before, I had stood up between Ju-lin and the Draugari without a thought. Maybe out of fear, maybe it was out of duty. But as I heard Lee cry out in pain and held his shoulder, his eyes wild with desperation, something in me changed. What I did next, I did out of savagery.

"Come and get me!" Lee hollered at the oncoming Draugari.

Without hesitating, I bounded with two steps and took a wild leap at the Draugari, throwing my weight at him from behind. Unprepared for such a wild attack, I knocked him forward. As he fell, his flailing hand struck the galley table, sending his blade sliding across the floor. The Draugari roared in pain as he flipped over to grab me. He didn't need his knife to kill me, I was certain that he would be able to rip me limb for limb if he caught me. I kicked back against him, making a desperate face-first dive across the floor.

I heard Ju-lin scream a warning.

He was on me in seconds, kicking my side and sending me rolling onto my back. He threw himself on me reaching for my neck, but I had found what I wanted. As he came upon me I thrust his knife upward at his neck with both hands. The blade pierced the soft spot of his armor, slicing through his respirator, sinking into the soft tissue.

The Draugari gasped for breath, making a sickening bubbling sound. The light of his eyes flickered once, twice, and then faded to black. As the life left him, I felt a surge of energy coming through the handle of the knife. It began as a soft tingle, and elevated to a throbbing pulse. It spread from my hands and filled my whole body, coming in intense waves. With each wave my vision clouded. I saw ships. I saw worlds. I saw faces, Draugari faces. I felt joy. I felt fear. I felt agony. I felt a deep and ancient longing.

In the last moments, I saw myself through his eyes. I shared his last thoughts. My throat burned with pain. I felt a surge of fear, of shock, and then, at the end, regret.

Chapter 12.

"The Charon is our immortality. Upon death, we are able to pass on the core of ourselves to another so that knowledge and experience is preserved. It is a moment of connection, and the fleeting moment of our lives and deaths where we are no longer alone. The spirit of the passing mingles with the spirit of the one still waiting to pass, and there is peace."

I looked down at my teacher. My hand shook.

"Do not be afraid Eli. My Charon is the gift I offer you, the last thing I can teach you. I have told you all I have to tell, and my life has passed its course across the sky. I am weak now, and old, so very old."

"I do not know what to do," my voice was strange and distant.

"There is nothing to know, all there is, is the doing," he responded, slipping the knife into my hand. "Now, quickly, before my time passes. The greatest loss in the universe is a Charon that slips away unmet, and mine will soon be slipping. So strike, Eli, strike now, and live well."

My head was spinning and temples throbbing. My throat burned, I am choking. I gasped for air. My throat was clear. I could breathe easily. My mind swam with strange and new images, an old Draugari handing me a knife, a filthy pile of rags in the corner, the rush of a kill and the satisfaction of feeling my enemy's warm red blood rushing over my hand.

The world shifted, Ju-lin and Lee were standing above me. The Draugari's body was off to the side. I still held the Draugari's knife, and my hands were soaked in blood. Not the warm red blood from my memory, but cool purple blood of a Draugari.

"Those were his memories," I gasped.

"What?" Lee looked down, his shoulder was blackened and bleeding, and was leaning on Ju-Lin to stay standing.

"I saw myself. I saw me kill me, ur, I mean him," I fumbled.

"You saw yourself?" Ju-lin was startled.

I fought to regain my mind. I was myself.

Eli.

Human.

Mostly.

I looked again at the Draugari. Lor'ten. His name came to my mind as easily as my own.

"We need to get control of this boat," Lee broke in. "We can sort this out later. Lin, help me get to the cockpit."

I nodded. Without thinking I flipped the blade in the palm of my hand, it cut through my bindings with a whisper. The hilt felt natural in my hand, as if it were an extension of myself. Ju-lin eyes were curious as she watched me. She looked like she was about to say something, but then turned to help Lee toward the front of the ship.

I started to stand up, but stumbled back to my knees. "I need a minute, my head is still spinning."

"You don't have a minute," Lee barked back.

"That's not your head," Ju-lin called back over her shoulder as they passed through the hatch. "It's the ship!"

The ship? I stumbled up to my feet, using the bulkhead to steady myself. We were spinning, and it was getting faster. Warning lights were flashing along the floorboards. I absently slid the Draugari knife into my belt, and stumbled toward the hatch. I felt a brief surge of rage as I passed the bodies of the other two dead Draugari. I heard their names in my mind, Jen'tak and Kel. I shook off the thoughts and hurried to follow Ju-lin and Lee.

"Hell no I can't," Lee grumbled as I entered. "Not with this arm. Get me strapped in, you take the stick."

Ju-lin opened her mouth to respond, but he silenced her with a look.

The cockpit was much larger than I had expected. It was broad with a long and angular viewport that afforded an amazing range of visibility. At the edge of the viewport were three seats with command controls. I struggled to maintain my orientation as we spun faster and faster.

"Eli, take the seat on the right, that's the engine control," Lee called. "Get me to the nav station."

We were in a flat spin, and picking up speed and losing altitude. Alarms were sounding everywhere. I came forward to help Ju-lin get Lee into the seat on the far left. Once he was seated and strapped in, I made my way to my seat, and Ju-lin slid into the captain's seat. There were control pads on either arm of my chair, and as I sat, a holographic heads up display appeared floating in the air around me. Almost everything was flashing red.

"Okay, Eli, your control pad," Lee instructed. "You will find an engine control status, what does it say?"

I looked at the control pad and tried to call it up, but it wasn't responding. Whenever I tried to enter a command, a strange symbol appeared on my display.

"I can't," I responded. "The controls aren't responding. It's asking for an access code."

"Well, boy, try it again," Lee hollered back.

The spinning was getting worse, completing full revolutions once every three seconds.

"No, Dad," Ju-lin shouted over her shoulder. "We're locked out. I can't read it. Pull up your display."

Lee pawed at his controls with his good hand.

"I can't read the symbols," Ju-lin said desperately. "Did the Draugari do something to the ship's computers?"

"Sa'cara," Lee said, his voice flat.

"What is Sa'cara?" Ju-lin responded.

"That's what the Celestrials call it," Lee replied. "A boobietrap. Sometimes when the Draugari pirate a ship, they install a failsafe tied to their own life signs. If the Draugari crew is killed, the ship goes into a self-destruct sequence."

"Okay," she answered as she looked over the controls. "How do I override it?"

Lee didn't respond. Another series of alarms started flashing. Artificial gravity systems were failing.

"Dad! How do I override it?" Ju-lin repeated. Her voice was shrill and frantic.

"We don't," Lee responded flatly.

"Then we need to get back to your shuttle," Ju-lin unlatched her belt.

"Not in this spin, there is no wa-" Lee's words were cut short by a loud pop and grinding sound. A field of debris flew from the ship. I saw the shuttle floating free, every rotation I caught a glimpse of it, sliding off into the horizon.

"There is no way that the shuttle's docking clamp will hold," he finished.

The force of the spin pushed me back in my seat.

"We're hitting the upper atmosphere," Ju-lin said. "We'll burn up without the heat shields in place!"

"Eli," Lee broke in. "You said it was asking for an access code?"

"Yeah," I responded. "It says right here."

"No it doesn't," Ju-lin yelled back. "It's in, what is that written in? Draugari? It's not Common."

"You said you saw his memories," Lee said. "And now you can read Draugari? Nobody in the Collective or the Protectorate has ever translated it."

I looked again, only then did I realize that the letters weren't in Common.

"I don't know what the hell just happened back there," Lee said. "But, you need to think, and think hard, boy. What is the code?"

I stared at the screen. I could read it. But I couldn't think of the code.

"We have less than a minute before the atmo burns us into nothing!" Ju-lin called.

As if to emphasize her point, I saw the blur of an explosion in the distance. It was Lee's shuttle burning up in the atmosphere.

"I don't know it," my voice was shaky. "I'm trying to remember, but I just don't know."

"Don't think about it," Lee called back. "Just enter the code."

"I don't know what it is!"

"Elicio," Lee's voice was suddenly low, calm, even soothing. "Don't think. Just type."

The evenness of his voice helped to melt my panic. It was smooth, reassuring, fatherly. Without another thought, I put my hand on the keypad and typed in a series of eight digits.

"Emergency power back online!" Ju-lin yelled triumphantly. "Dad, the heat shield!"

"Heat shield up, stabilizers up in three, two, one!"

With a sudden and violent jolt, the ship stabilized and the spinning stopped.

"Systems coming back online," Ju-lin said. "I have basic flight control."

"Well done kid," Lee looked over at me. "I am not sure what the hell happened back there, but that's twice you've saved our lives."

I looked down at my hand, still stained with Draugari blood. Lor'ten's blood. My blood.

"Engines," Ju-lin broke in. "Main engines are offline, I don't have enough power. Eli! Status?"

Roused from my thoughts, I looked down and focused on the engine controls.

"All four main engine thrusters are damaged, power reserves at seven percent," I called back. "System says we have enough power for a ten second burst at twenty percent thrust from the primary thrusters."

"That's not enough to get back into orbit," she responded, her voice shaky as she handled the controls trying to keep the ship steady as we continued to plummet.

"That's not enough," Lee agreed. "Not nearly enough. And it looks like my shuttle took off some of the hull plating on the number three thruster. If we fire the main thrusters even for that long we'll burn her out."

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"We can't go up," Ju-lin responded.

"We go down," Lee answered. "Lin, keep the nose up as best you can, we can use the maneuvering thrusters to angle our decent."

We had passed through the upper atmosphere; I could see the sea and green hills through the clouds below us.

"I've never landed anything this big before," Ju-lin said.

"You aren't going to land this either," Lee responded. "We're going too fast, and we're going straight down. Nose up!"

Ju-lin cursed as she fought the controls, "I just lost lateral maneuvering thrusters. All I have is pitch."

Cracks started appearing across the viewport as we broke through the top of the cloud cover.

"She's not designed for this kind of descent," Lee broke in. "Our angle is too steep. Nose up Lin, nose up. We're going to hit the ground head first!"

"Nose up," she repeated softly. "Eli, you say we have ten seconds of burn?"

"Yes, but your dad says it will burn up the engines," I responded. "And wouldn't that just send us down faster?"

"Nose up," she gave me a sideways glance. "Full thrusters on my mark."

"Three thousand meters," Lee called. "Lin-"

"Trust me dad," without another word, she engaged the remaining maneuvering thrusters and pulled up hard on the stick. The cracks spread around the viewport as the ship struggled against her commands, but then, with a swift flip, the ship turned. The maneuvering thrusters weren't enough to alter our descent, but she had flipped us a full 180 degrees: cockpit toward the sky, and engines toward the ground.

"Mark! Thrusters full!" she called.

I flipped the thrusters to full power.

Behind us, the Carrack's four engines fired their last. At first, there was no effect. Two, three, four seconds passed.

"Fifteen hundred meters!" Lee called.

"Six seconds left on the burn!" I called.

"Seven hundred!"

"Come on dammit," Ju-lin muttered.

"Three hundred," Lee said. "Rate of descent decreasing."

The Carrack shook violently and her structure groaned as her thrusters fought against our momentum and the planet's pull.

"Two hundred!"

"Two seconds left on burn!"

"Fifty meters!" Lee announced.

"Descent slowed to twelve meters per second!" Ju-lin called triumphantly.

I looked out the cracked viewport. I could see mountains on the peripheral. They seemed to hover there, still in the air.

"Six meters and holding!" Lee called.

There was one last cough and the engines fell silent.

"Hold on!" Ju-lin yelled.

For a second, a hundred tons of steel hung still in the air, mere meters above the surface. The ground below was blackened from the last gasping burn from the engines. The air was full of smoke and the smell of sulfur. And then, after a breath, gravity regained her hold, and finally pulled the Carrack crashing down to the surface.
Chapter 13.

The Master's backhand slap sent me flying wildly across the room. There was a loud clank when I hit the deck and I felt the sharp grates press painfully against my bare back.

"Incorrect form, Lor'ten!" The Master spoke abruptly to me without looking. "A Draugari warrior must never lose focus!"

I bowed low. My cheek stung and something on the floor was digging into my back, but I didn't move. I'd learned weeks ago to stay where I am until the Master releases me. Some of my ribs were still sore from that beating.

The Master continued his lessons. Kal, Jen'tak and Tren didn't flinch or break form, and nobody else made the same mistake I had. I was glad that they had learned from my error. As the Master says, one misstep is an accident, two missteps is a pattern. Your enemy will use those patterns to destroy your clan.

It was a good lesson.

I watched as the rest of my cadre continued to follow the Master's maneuvers, thrust, feint, parry. All with empty hands. It will not be long now; we are all almost of age. Soon we will travel to our clan's bladestones where the elder warriors will hand forge blades of our own. Blades that we will carry in honor until death.

When I came to, I was suspended upside down, still strapped into my seat. I looked around the smoky air and saw that the cockpit of the Carrack was still mostly intact. Over half of the viewport was shattered and missing, and the several of the display panels were shattered, but the main structure had held firm. A testament to Earthborn engineering. Ju-lin had managed to slow our descent before we crash landed, but that last brief freefall had been more than the haggard ship could sustain.

I reached up, grabbing my shoulder straps firmly, and clicked the emergency release. I had intended to use the straps to swing down gracefully, but it didn't quite work out that way. I ended up face down on what had been the ceiling of the now overturned ship.

I groaned.

"That has to be the sorriest way to land a ship I've ever seen," Lee grumbled.

"Any landing you can walk away from, right dad?" I heard a click and a soft thud as Ju-lin landed easily on her feet next to me. She had a cut above her left eye and fresh blood smeared across her cheek, but she was smiling.

"So it would seem," he responded. "Lin, I'm proud of you."

From the corner of my eye, I saw Jun-lin hiding a proud smile as she looked up at her father as he hung from the ceiling, still strapped into his chair.

"Come on, get to it," he barked as his face was turning red, I wasn't sure if that was from the sentimentality of the moment, or blood rushing to his head. "Both of you get your asses over here and help me get down."

It took a little work, and a lot of cursing, but we got Lee back down and made our way through a hole in the shattered viewport and out into the sun. Once we were clear of the wreckage, we dropped to the short, dry grass, exhausted, and looked back at what was left of the Carrack.

The command deck had broken off from the fuselage and was lying next to the rest of the ship, which remained upright, engines down, and nose up. The four long engine tubes that had been mounted on the rear of the vessel were crushed to less than a third their original size, they had taken the brunt of the impact. It looked like a body, still standing, with its severed head lying on its side. There were pools of chemicals and hydraulic fluid at the base of the ship, and debris was scattered throughout the little valley where we'd landed.

Now that we were out in the sun, I could tell that Lee's wounds were serious. The shot to the shoulder hadn't been just an energy weapon. Whatever had hit him was still lodged in his shoulder. Though the bleeding had stopped, his face was pale and his teeth were set in a grimace.

"Oh, don't look at me like that boy," he waved his good hand. "I've had worse."

"How did you know find us?" Ju-lin asked. She seemed to be comforted by his dismissal. I wasn't so sure.

"Growd," Lee responded. "He sent a distress call to the other colonies when the Celestrials started bombing New Haven, and then a few minutes later he made a second call, saying that he had spotted Draugari fighters engaging the Celestrials. We didn't know what to make of that, I figure the Celestrials and the Draugari must have been in a battle, and a few stray shots hit the colony."

"No," Ju-lin responded. "There were three Celestrial fighters making bombing runs on the colony before the Draugari arrived. The Draugari showed up with two Slires and this Carrack, got the drop on them. Ghosted one before the Celestrials knew they were there."

"Why would the Celestrials would come out this far and cross the blockades at the Furies just to attack a defenseless colony?" Lee asked to no one in particular. "Where were you when they attacked?"

"We were in the cave when the bombing started," I said.

"Yeah," Ju-lin broke in. "And then they fired a plasma drone into the cave. We barely made it out."

"They fired into the cave?" Lee turned toward her, his voice incredulous. "Sure it wasn't a stray shot? Dumb luck?"

"No," Ju-lin answered. "We saw them bombing, they were using standard charges on the colony, what hit the cavern was a semi-autonomous drone. It was targeted."

"The Celestrials attack an archeological site, and the Draugari sweep in behind them?" Lee asked. "It doesn't make sense."

"It does if the Draugari were protecting something," I said.

They both turned to me.

"Protecting what?" Lee raised his eyebrows, expectantly.

"I don't know," I said sorting through my memories. "I'm not even sure why I said that, but somehow, I know it. They were protecting something. I just don't know what. Maybe they didn't know what."

"And the Celestrials?" Lee pressed.

"I have no idea," I responded.

"You intercepted Growd's message when he sent it to the orbital com station. Maybe they intercepted the communications drone after it left the coms relay," Ju-lin broke in. "We're close enough to the Celestrial frontier that we should expect that they would intercept any coms drones they can."

Lee looked at Ju-lin, considering for a moment before shifting his focus back to me.

"You know the Draugari were protecting something, but you don't think they knew what." He said, his voice was metered, he was calculating his words. "On the ship everything happened quickly. When you killed that Draugari, something happened. I saw it. There was, well, I don't know what it was. It looked like some kind of energy transfer. There was electricity in the air. I've never seen or heard of anything like it. And when you got up, you said you'd seen yourself kill him."

I looked down at the grass. I knew the question that was coming, though I didn't have any of the answers.

"And then," he continued after a pause. "You could read the Draugari symbols. The best minds in the fleet haven't made heads or tails of the fragments of Draugari writing we've found. But you read it. And you knew the code to override the self-destruct sequence. Where did you learn to reroute power to the engines for that last burn? You did it without thinking. But it's a complex procedure on a Carrack. You did it in seconds. You didn't learn how to do that by plowing a field and planting peas."

"I did it without thinking," I realized that he was right. I hadn't thought about it at the time, I had just acted.

Ju-lin sighed uneasily.

"So, Eli, in the last hour we have saved each other's lives." Lee was solemn, serious. "That means something where I come from. I've asked you before, and so now I'm going to ask you once more, and I want as much of the truth as you yourself understand. Where are you from?"

I was silent for a long time, staring at the grass. Ju-lin and Lee waited. The grasses were brown at the base, dying. I pressed my finger into the soil, it was sandy. I put the tip of my finger to my tongue, salt. The terraforming had planted grasslands on a salt plain. I looked around, we were in large valley like a bowl. There had been a lake here, long ago. But it was gone. Gone with everything else from this world, save for me.

"I was born here. On this planet." I didn't look up. "The site where you built the Downs was once a village. A quiet village. I used to farm and cut wood. The grasses were blue-green, not green. I lived there. My family lived there."

They remained silent, waiting for me to continue.

"I wasn't in the village when the terraforming started. I don't remember why. My memories are scattered into pieces. I just know that I woke up in a cave up in the hills, alone."

"My god," Ju-lin whispered. "People had already colonized the planet."

"Not people," Lee answered, and then paused. "Well, I'm sorry, yes, people. But I suspect, not Earthborn."

"What are you talking about?" she blurted. "Not Earthborn? We're a dozen fluxes away from the Collective, with all of the Draugari attacks Collective traders are sticking to the trading lanes. The Celestrial worlds are closer, but look at that hair on his head, he's no Skin. He's not just human, he's Earthborn. Chen's tests said so. You two must have knocked your heads back there."

"Ju-lin," I looked up, leveling my gaze at her.

She met my eyes and held my stare. A wave of realization swept over her.

"You cannot possibly mean," she broke off.

"The terraforming," I said. "The cave must have protected me from the worst of it, but it found me. It changed me."

"Is that even possible?" she gasped. "That can't be possible. Stage 4 terraforming wipes out all life forms down to the smallest microorganisms and then repopulates the world using earth-born DNA. What you're saying is that—No fucking way!"

"Lin," Lee snapped. "Language."

"But he's saying that he survived the terraforming and that it turned him from—something else into a human," she continued , her hands flailing in the air wildly as she spoke, as if the more she moved, the more what I was saying would make sense. "That's crazy! It's impossible!"

"It's the only thing that makes sense," Lee said. "Your people, Eli. Were they another branch of humanoid, something from the Collective? Maybe from Noona or Olsterians who settled a few hundred years ago?"

"No," I answered. "I am, I mean, I was, something else."

"You were?" He pressed. "Why do you say it like that?"

"I know they're my memories, but it doesn't feel like it's me." I said. "The faces I see aren't human. Sometimes they frighten me. The stories, the moments, the world, they all feel strange to me. They may be my memories from before, but they are alien to me now. It's as if someone else had poured their memories into my own."

"Like stealing someone's memories?" Lee responded.

"Something like that," I answered, looking back at the dirt.

"Like with the Draugari," he pressed.

"Yes. But no." I answered keeping my eyes locked on the ground as I sorted through waves of confused emotions. "My memories from before, the ones from my life on this world. They are like background music to a song you know. Something that plays deep within. They somehow fit into my head. Like the beat of a familiar song. The thing with the Draugari, that was different. It's like a marching band running around inside my head, it's out of control. It's something, I think my people, well, the people I used to be, called it the Charon."

"Charon?" Ju-lin repeated the word.

"Yes," I said. "It's hard to sort through all the words, but a Charon is the energy of your life that slips away in death."

"The soul," Lee said.

"No, but—well yes. Something like that," I answered. "I really don't understand it."

"When you killed the Draugari," Ju-lin eyes were wide. "You are saying you captured his soul? Okay, that's crazy and creepy."

"Captured isn't the right word," I said. "The best way to describe it is that, well, as I held the knife it felt as if his energy was pulled through it and passed through me, making an imprint as he went."

Lee shifted here he sat, he winced in pain as his hand went to his shoulder.

"This is all insane," she said.

Lee didn't disagree as we sat in silence. Looked up at Ju-lin, she was staring off at the wreckage with a furrowed brow, avoiding my gaze.

"The knife," Lee looked at the blade tucked into my belt.

"Yes, I suppose I shouldn't keep it."

"No you should," responded Lee. "You killed a Draugari with your bare hands. The Draugari may seem barbaric, but they live by a code. If you kill a Draugair, his blade is yours."

"My weapon is my honor, in my defeat my honor is yours," as I spoke the words, a shadow of a memory passed through the forefront of my mind: I was on a ship, and an old Draugari passed the blade into my hands. I shook my head. The Draugari's memories in my head were difficult to manage and control.

"That was unsettling," Ju-lin commented with a low breath.

Lee didn't disagree. Honestly, neither did I.

"So, back to the question at hand." Lee said. "You said that the Draugari were protecting something."

"Yes, I know they were." I answered. "But I don't know what."

"If they were, then they'll be back."

"Possibly," I answered.

"And the Celestrials," he continued. "We still don't know why they were here. If they intercepted Growd's coms, there is no telling what piqued their interest. Maybe it was the message about whatever he thought he found, but maybe it was the colony itself. This system may have some strategic importance we don't understand. Rare minerals, undiscovered flux points, something we don't know about."

"But then what about the Draugari?" Ju-lin asked.

"It's hard to say," Lee answered. "Eli says he doesn't think that they themselves knew what they were protecting. It could be they were a just a simple patrol watching the flux point. They picked up the incoming Celestrials on the scan and got lucky. From my experience, Draugari tactics are straightforward: fight when you have the advantage, run when you do not. The Draugari had the Carrack which gave them the upper hand in the fight, so they attacked."

"Makes sense," Ju-lin said. "So the real question is, what were the Celestrials doing?"

"Whatever it was, they may be back," Lee said. "We need to know when and why. And we need to be ready to defend ourselves."

"I wonder if Growd knows," Ju-lin asked.

"I wonder if Growd survived the attack," Lee said. "There were casualties in New Haven, the wave he sent said that at least half of their structures were hit. We were loading up the skiffs to go help them recover when I checked the weather satellite footage to see if I could find you. I saw where the Carrack had landed, and figured out that they had taken or killed you two. Then I caught the damaged Carrack on long-range scans, so I took the shuttle up to go after it."

"I'm glad you did," she said. "Thanks Dad."

"Don't thank me yet," he said. "We're on the wrong side of the world, and unless we can salvage some coms equipment from the wreck, we may be here for a while."

"I think the first thing we need is to see if we can find a med kit," I said. "That shoulder looks bad."

"Bah," he grunted gruffly. "I'm fine. Look for coms equipment. If you happen to see a first aid kit, bring it on over, but don't go out of your way."

Ju-lin pulled herself up and was dusting herself off when she paused and turned, looking behind us

"A ship," she said as she scanned the sky, zeroing in on a silver spec in the distance. "There, heading toward us."

We watched as the ship descended and made a broad loop around our position.

"A Scotsman," Lee commented, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"More Draugari?" I asked. Aside from the knife on my belt, the rest of the weapons were buried somewhere in the wreckage.

"I don't think so," Ju-lin answered. "Scotsman's are human ships, tough, but old, not too many of them flying anymore. But this one's hull looks clean and intact, and it's approaching cautiously. If it were Draugari they would attack us straight away."

"The only thing more cold blooded than a Celestrial, and more desperate than a Draugari," Lee commented with distain. "Scavengers come to pick the bones of the dead."

Stranded, and wounded, we had no choice but wait for the ship to land.

The Scotsman, as they explained, was a cheap, but effective Earthborn-designed and built merchant and fighting ship commonly used by traders, scavengers, and ill-equipped pirates. When docked side-by-side, the Scotsman is narrower and more slender than the Carrack. The Carrack's broad three-seat cockpit with a top-mounted turret, reminiscent of a cobra's head, and a stout body with four exterior-mounted engines make it look imposing and dominant. Meanwhile, the Scotsman has a rounded, narrow cockpit, and it's two main thrusters are tucked tightly against the rear of the fuselage, creating a much tighter and compact aesthetic. From that first day I saw the Scotsman land next to the hulk of the Carrack's wreck, I liked the look of it. However, that's not to say that I was drawn to this, specific Scotsman.

The ship set down softly on her landing skids about forty meters from the edge of what was left of the Carrack. As the dust settled and the maneuvering thrusters powered down, we could clearly see a painting on the bow of the ship like a figurehead: a large and excessively voluptuous blue-eyed human woman with a slight, clever, smile and a mess of long, wild orange hair that swirled around her ample body, providing the barest coverage to the woman's most intimate areas.

Written beneath the woman was the ship's designation: Tons-o-Fun.

"You've got be kidding me," Ju-lin shook her head in disgust.

Lee pulled himself to his feet to stand between Ju-lin and I to meet the pilot.

The hatch opened and loading plank extended. The pilot looked Earthborn, shorter than me, but not by much. He was so square at the shoulders and hips that he looked like he could have been carved from a brick. He a pair of goggles pulled up over his forehead, and two pistols on his belt.

"What a pleasure," he made a grand sweeping motion with his hand. "It seems congratulations are in order. That has to be the worst landing I have ever witnessed. I mean really, you do know that the Carrack has landing skids and is supposed to land on its side, not its ass-end down? Well, let me back-up, that was a Carrack, right?"

"Who the hell do you think-" Ju-lin's face burned red.

"Lin," Lee put his hand on her shoulder, pulling her back.

"Tsk, tsk. A shame. The Carrack is such a proud vessel, fearsome even," he continued. "Not much left of this one, not much left of value anyway."

"Yet you saw enough profit in it to land," Lee responded.

"Well yes, of course," the pilot responded, absently running his hand through his thinning black hair. "I'm a good citizen after all. Well, not an upstanding citizen, but you take my meaning I'll expect. I'm not a big fan of Government and rules and the like, but then I'd wager you all aren't either, being out here in the middle of nowhere on an empty rock. What I am is neighborly. You're lucky I happened to catch you on my scanners."

"This isn't an empty rock," Lee responded gruffly, "and you didn't just happen by."

"Well now Gramps," the pilot stopped, leaning back on his heels with wide, innocent, grey eyes. "I do not believe I take your meaning."

"You caught a scan on the Celestrial ships a few systems back, and then saw the Draugari in pursuit." Lee responded. "You figured there would be a firefight and decided to follow at a safe distance and pick apart what was left once the dust settles."

"Well, that too," the pilot smiled easily. "I'm a curious man. If I see a curious thing, I am inclined to take a look. And I will say, you three walking away from that after being in the middle of a firefight between three high end Celestrial fighters followed by a shipboard brawl with gang of Draugari is one hell of a curiosity."

"Where did you pick up the signal?" Lee asked.

"Pardon?" The pilot responded.

"The Celestrials," Lee continued. "Where were you when you caught their signal, and what was their most likely point of origin?"

"Woah now!" the pilot held up his hand. "We've moved from greetings to negotiations already! Slow down Gramps, we're just getting warmed up here. I'll tell you what I know, but nothing in the verse is free my friends."

"We ain't your friends," Ju-lin sneered.

"Ah, now Twiggy, that's just because you haven't gotten to know me," the pilot waved Ju-lin off as he surveyed the three of us. "See now, we haven't even had proper introductions. I'm generally called Loid Burns. You are, let's see, Gramps, Twiggy, and—oh my—half-covered in purple Draugari blood with a new blade on your belt—I'll just call you sir I think."

"Twiggy?!" Ju-lin seethed. "Dad, we don't have to put up with this, we can just take his damn ship and—"

Loid drew his gun and had it primed steadily at Ju-lin's face before she finished the sentence.

"Now that's not a neighborly way to talk," Loid's smile was gone.

"Enough," Lee tensed. "Lin, backoff. You, Loid, put that thing away."

Loid considered for a second, and slipped the pistol back into its holster.

"See, much more neighborly." Loid smiled once again.

"I'm Lee McCullough, that's my daughter Ju-lin, and the other is Elicio." Lee said. "I'm the Governor of the Downs."

"McCullough?" Loid interrupted. "Like the whiskey?"

Lee paused a second, "My grandfather owned a distillery back out on Pentos. It burnt down back when I was just a kid and he never rebuilt."

"A shame he didn't," Loid laughed softly to himself. "Sorry, go on."

"The Downs is one of the colonies on the far side of this world. I'm sure that you, being the good neighbor that you are, saw the Celestrials bombing one of our colonies last night. Eli and Ju-lin were off visiting the other colony when the attack hit, and the Draugari captured them in the Carrack. So we overtook it and killed them." Lee finished.

"And a marvel you've done with it," Loid nodded back at the wreck. "Remind me never to let you three do any of my valet parking."

"Pompous bastard," Ju-lin blurted. "He watches innocent people die and then he mocks us—"

"Look," Loid stopped her, his tone turned from jesting to earnest. "There was nothing I could do about the colony. Lee here was right, I was doing some surveying and picked up the Celestrials the next system over, and then saw the Draugari coming in behind. I kept my distance. I was halfway across the system when the bombing started. Even if I was closer in, my odds alone against three Celestrial fighters would have been slim, and against the Draugari with that Carrack even worse."

Lee considered him a moment. "That's true enough."

"And about the Carrack," he continued with a flash of his smile returning. "Well you can't argue that it's seen better days. But I will say, I hadn't expected to see anyone crawling out of that wreck. The inverted burn was a nice touch. I'll have to remember that one."

"Thank you," Ju-lin said haughtily.

"You're the pilot then? So you're the anxious young woman eager to prove herself to the verse." He raised his eyebrow. "You, Gramps-er-Lee, is the Governor of a tribe of outcasts on this little spinning marble, gruff, ex-military, running from civilization. All that fits, and then you, Elicio? Odd name. The evidence suggests that you killed one of those Draugar with your bare hands, that's quite the thing now isn't it. What's your story?"

I wiped my hand against my pants absently as I fumbled with something to say.

"He's the muscle," Lee responded for me.

Loid looked over my thin frame with a half-raised eyebrow, "Indeed."

"The Carrack is yours," Lee said. "With conditions."

"Well there isn't much left of her," Loid shook his head slowly. "What are your conditions?"

"You allow me to use your coms to contact the colony and get a skiff out here to pick me up," Lee responded. "And some food and water would be good."

"Easy enough so far. I'll even throw in some bandages for that shoulder and let you use the shower rigged over on Tons' port side for you all to clean up, you all need it." He added looking at me, "Especially you, you reek of Draugari."

Lee nodded.

"You said a skiff to pick you up," Ju-lin broke in. "What about us?"

"And safe passage for these two," Lee kept his focus on Loid. "You will help them backtrack that attack group to Celestrial space and find some answers."

"You want us to go with him?" Ju-lin was incredulous.

Lee ignored her, keeping his focus on Loid.

"I'm no baby sitter," Loid countered.

Ju-lin opened her mouth to respond, but Lee caught her by the shoulder and pulled her back once more.

"Lin," Lee finally turned toward her. "We don't know why they attacked, and they may be back. The colony isn't safe. That's about 8,000 innocent lives. When we moved here, we took on responsibilities. We need to know why the Celestrials were here, and why they attacked. This shoulder is a mess, and I need to attend to the colony. And after what's happened, it only makes sense that you and Eli are the ones to go looking."

"'What's happened'," Loid echoed Lee's words. "Hey, now that's sounding a bit serious, besides, a smoldering wreck in exchange for me to chauffeur some pups out into hostile Celestrials territory isn't exactly what I consider a favorable exchange."

"We're not sitting in a giant crater, which we both know means that the munitions on that Carrack are still intact," Lee responded dismissively. "The Draugari load up their own ordinance when they take a ship, and their warheads will sell well on the Celestrial black market. And judging from the Celestrial Empire's markings on your tail fins, and that your cargo hold is half packed with crates of Kevarian Ale. Isn't that one of the Celestrial's preferred Protectorate bootlegs. I'd think it's a pretty safe bet that you were heading that way, and that you have a few useful contacts that wouldn't have a problem tracking down who sent the ships."

I followed Loid's gaze as he looked back at Tons-o-Fun's open hold. Squinting, I could just make out the label on a crate of Kevarian ale. He looked back from Lee to Ju-lin, and then to me, momentarily at a loss for words. I'd read that smugglers who travel between the Earthborn Protectorate and the Celestrial Empire were rare, but not unheard of.

"We have a deal?" Lee pressed.

"The warheads will get them out to Celestrial space, but then I'm left with an empty hold," Loid quickly recovered. "One of your colonies has a sizable logging operation going. If I do this, when we get back you fill up my hold with some treated oak. I have a guy on an orbital mining colony who will pay top dollar for some real oak paneling on his mining station. A Collective guy, Noonan-Olsterian cross-breed I think, a bit temperamental, but he's got a fancy for hardwoods. Something about making his station more livable."

"Deal," Lee responded.

"Good then," once again Loid smiled widely. "Twiggy, the bandages and food are in the secondary hold, stay to your left. Take care of Gramp's shoulder."

"Do not call me 'Twiggy'." Ju-lin countered.

"So, muscle is it?" Loid turned to me, ignoring Ju-lin. "Then you won't have a problem giving me a hand sorting through this wreck, will you? Careful though, Draugari missiles are almost as temperamental as some young ladies."

Ju-lin gave Loid an icy look as she started off toward Tons-o-Fun.

Loid winked at me as he watched her go, then he nodded to me. "I'm serious though, be careful. I'm not interested in getting vaporized today."
Chapter 14.

Even through my environmental suit, the softness and unevenness of the dirt beneath my boots felt unnatural and uncomfortable. I missed the steel floor and the knowing embrace of a fuselage. I wanted to make this landing as short as possible.

I walked across a meadow. The fine grass got caught between the scale-joints of my boots. I would have to clean that. I cringed in disgust. Dirt. Grass. Rain. Wild animals. I wondered at how the humans lived like this. Why would anyone want this kind of life?

I kept walking in the direction of the wreck. I had not been part of the battle, but they said there was little glory in it, anyway. When we approached, the fighters fled, leaving the transport alone against our clan. Typical human cowardice. The transport took damage and went down on the surface. I was sent to search the remains.

When I crested the hill I saw what was left of it. It had not gone down well. The angle was too steep. A black trail of fire and debris fifty meters wide and two hundred meters long spread across the little valley. I activated my visual scanner which indicated that most of the remains were biological. Deceased. A passenger ship. We should have known, the human mercenaries stay to protect the cargo ships. They always run when escorting passenger vessels. Their loyalties never lie with the living. There would be nothing useful here. I turned back to begin the walk back to my ship.

While searching the wreckage of the Carrack, Loid and I managed to recover nearly a dozen warheads. Though the missiles themselves were damaged, he expertly separated the smaller explosive payload from the casing and packed them up. Aside from the warheads, we found a number of other useful items, a case of rations, a spare plasma rifle, and two sleeping pods that had managed to come through more or less intact. After loading up the equipment, I helped Loid secure the warheads into Tons-o-Fun's secondary storage area.

"I take passengers every so often," Loid noted as we lifted the second sleeping pod onto the wall-mounting. "Most of the time they are the less-reputable types trying to get off their worlds fast. You know how it is, so I haven't bothered with any fancy accommodations. They are happy enough with a bulkhead to lean against. But, seeing as these pods are ripe for the taking, we may as well grab em'. Besides, afterwards I may be able to use these to help smuggle a higher class of refugee."

"You usually travel alone?" I asked.

"For the most part, yeah," Loid leaned around the corner into the galley and pulled out two cold bottles of Kevarian Ale. "Want one? Personally it's not my favorite. Cheap local brew from Epsilon Minor, but the Celestrials pay top dollar for it, and its cold."

Loid used a notch in the butt of his pistol to pop the top off the bottle and slid the gun back into his holster fluidly.

"Cheers," he held up his bottle.

Unsure what to do, I lifted my own. He grinned, clinked the bottles together, and took a large swig. I did the same and almost choked as the taste hit my tongue.

"Ha!" he said. "Don't worry about that, the first kiss is always a bit awkward, but it's the gateway to better things, as my daddy used to say." Loid paused to take a long swig of ale. "Anyhow, yeah, I travel alone a lot, Tons and I can get along just fine between the two of us, and as long as it's just me, I don't have to split my profits. Every now and then I end up out at Smugglers Run and partner up with some rogue or another if the pay is good or the customers are too rough. But, I'm a simple man who does simple things. Now you, you're interesting. You're an outsider, yeah? Twiggy and Gramps seem like they're looking out for you, but you don't quite fit. From what he said on the coms when he called in to get picked up, it sounds like the colonies are full of refugee miners. You're no miner."

Loid stopped drinking and seemed to be taking me in. Measuring and calculating. I took another drink, this one going down only slightly smoother than the first swig.

"No," I answered. I made a mental note not to gamble against him.

He waited for me to say more, but I didn't.

"Fair enough," Loid shrugged as he finished off his bottle. "I can respect a man who keeps to himself. The fact is I made a deal with the old man to help you out. There's money in it, and I'll admit, I am a bit curious as to why the Celestrials and Draugari are so interested in this rock. It's unusual for either of them."

"What do you mean?" I leaned back against the bulkhead, trying to mimic Loid's casual stance.

"The Celestrials are a deliberate people. I doubt they ever wipe their asses without planning how many up and down strokes they intend to make. Though, come to think of it, I'm not sure if they wipe their asses at all. Hm. Anyhow, the Draugari may seem like mindless killers, but they are all about honor of the individual and the needs of the Clan. Something brought them both here. We're far from Draugari space, and we're on the wrong side of the Furies, and a few fluxes too close to the Society for the Celestrials to go traipsing about. That's more than a bit peculiar. Whatever they want, they want it bad. There may be some real money to be made in all this, but there's probably also a few plasma bolts to catch. If I were you I'd think twice about getting too involved, I know I am. Once we see what we can find out, I'm taking my cargo and shipping off."

"Thanks, but I don't really have a choice."

"No choice? Everyone has a choice. What is it? The girl? Duty?" Loid shook his head and took a long swig of ale. "Look, kid, I'm not one to tell another man his business. But, let me give you a bit of advice: You don't belong here, that's clear enough. Gramps and Twiggy may be your friends, and she's not bad looking if you're into the skinny ones, but that will only last as long as you are useful, and that's the cold hard truth of the verse. Loid's first rule: always look out for your own neck, because nobody else will. It's a good rule, one that's kept me alive longer than I care to say. You would do well to remember that."

The console on the wall lit up.

"Ah, saved by the bell," Loid said as he accessed the terminal. "Looks like a skiff approaching. Gramp's ride finally got here. Good, we can load up and get moving."

When we returned, Lee was resting comfortably in the shade of Tons-o-Fun's bow sitting on a folding chair that Loid had supplied. Ju-lin had treated and bandaged his shoulder the best she could, but she was pretty sure that there were fragments lodged in the bone from the Draugari weapon. Lee had shrugged her off, and promised to go directly to Chen once he returned to the Downs.

"A skiff is approaching," I told Lee as we approached him.

"Good," he was still pale, but the strength in his voice was returning. "When I got him on the wave, Marin said that there were over 300 dead in New Haven. A damned shame. Most of their supplies were vaporized, so the construction skiffs are packing up the colonists and moving everyone to the Downs."

"300?" I repeated. "That's almost 15 percent of the population."

"Yup, and they lost seventy percent of their supplies." Lee answered. "Poor devils. Naturally their Governor Growd is just fine, and intends to make my life as difficult as possible, no doubt. Marin managed to delete the weather-sat feeds that showed you and Ju-lin near the cave, and then came up with some story about how I ended up in a crashed Draugar ship 3,000 kilometers from the colony."

"Now that's interesting," Loid broke in. "Deleted weather-sat footage? Sneaking around caves? You will have to tell me more about that one."

"No, we won't," Ju-lin was walking toward us from the wreck. She had recovered her homemade plasma torch, and had added a laser pistol to her belt.

"Hey, Twig-er, sorry, what was your name again?" Loid asked."

"Ju-lin," she said flatly.

"Right, well, if you want my help, I will need to know at least something about what's going on. Sure, the Celestrials flew into this system with guns blazing, but tracking down where three ships came from won't be easy without some more information."

"I remember seeing a four-pointed silver star on the tail fins of the Celestrial fighters," I could recall the image of the fighter strafing past me in in a hail of plasma fire.

"Now," Loid raised an eyebrow. "How in the seven Hoken slums did you see the tailfin? I thought you said you were on the ground when the Celestrials hit."

"They made a few low runs," Ju-lin threw me a quick glance as she lied to cover for me. "I saw it too."

"Right," Loid looked from Ju-lin and back to me. "Because we all know it's easy to see a tail marking on the top of a speeding starship in the dead of night from below. If you two keep lying to me, at least be creative about it."

"There was a four-point silver star on the tail," I affirmed.

"Oh, I have no doubt about that," Loid replied, looking back out over the horizon. "Your skiff is coming in. I'm going to start prepping the ship so we can get off this rock. The sooner, the better."

As Loid disappeared back into the ship, Lee turned to us his expression was deathly serious.

"I need you two to understand, this is not a game," Lee said. "People are dead, and more will die. The Celestrials will be back. I need you two to find out what you can, but I also need you to stay safe. Make up a story of where you came from when you're out there. Not here, that's for sure."

"I don't trust Loid," Ju-lin said.

"Good," he said flatly. "You shouldn't. But as long as there is profit in it for him to get you there and back, he'll do what he promised. His ship is light on supplies and in need of some repair. He may act confident, but he needs the credits. He'll get the job done as long as there is money in it for him."

"I don't like just leaving you here," Ju-lin pressed.

"That discussion is over," Lee replied.

While Loid and I sifted through the wreckage of the Carrack, I had looked back several times to see Lee and Ju-lin had been arguing. Ju-lin later told me Lee had grudgingly promised to request help from MineWorks in hopes that they would help set-up defenses around the planet. When Ju-lin had pressed and suggested petitioning the Protectorate for help, he had spat on the ground and flatly swore he had come out this way to get away from the long arm of the Protectorate's bureaucracy, and that he would never go to them for help.

"I still think it's a bad idea for you to stay here, you have no defenses until help arrives," she pressed. "I don't see why you can't go with us."

"The safety of the colony is my responsibility. We've been over this, and I'm not leaving." he replied with finality as he turned to meet the incoming skiff.

The parting was brief and unceremonious as Lee boarded the skiff. It was larger than the one Ju-lin and I had taken to the cave, and I didn't recognize the driver, he must have been one of the refugees from the New Haven colony. Lee gave Ju-lin a tight embrace and a few quiet words. Both tried to try to appear tougher than they really were. Ju-lin wiped her eyes as she took a backpack of her clothes that someone had loaded into the hover for her. They didn't bring anything for me. All I had was my blue jumpsuit back at the barracks anyway.

Lee watched her go, and then motioned for me.

"Eli," Lee leaned in to speak quietly as he shook my hand. "Be careful, and take care of her."

"I will," I answered. "And, thank you. You didn't have to take me in, you didn't have to trust me. But you did."

"We're all lost now and again in life," he replied. "Though, granted, I think you may be a little more lost than most. There are answers out there."

Without another word he patted me on the back and I turned to follow Ju-lin back to Tons-o-Fun. As we were walking up the ship's power-plant hummed to life and Loid came skipping down the ramp.

"She'll be ready to lift in five," he called back over his shoulder as he walked past us toward Lee in the skiff. "I need a word with Gramps, and then we'll be good to go, so strap yourselves in."

I ducked through the cargo entrance and stepped into the large cargo hold. Though the majority of it was filled with pallets of Kevarian Ale, there were a number of other items strapped down to the walls. A few black crates, several laser cannons that looked large enough to mount on a ship, and a dozen or so items I couldn't identify. I followed Ju-lin into the main hold of the ship, and then up through the hatch to the secondary hold where Loid and I had stored the warheads in crates that Loid had then secured against the wall. Given how readily Loid took to salvaging, I figured that Lee was right about him needing the money.

As Ju-lin turned I noticed that her tears were gone, replaced by a broad smile.

"Come on," she said gesturing toward the cockpit. "There should be a couple of jump seats in the cockpit."

I couldn't help laugh a little at her giddiness.

"What?" she asked.

"You," I said. "You're so, happy."

"Oh shut it," she gave me a playful shove before passing from the secondary cargo area to the small but functional galley. Just past the galley were four crew berths. Unlike the modular sleeping pods from the Carrack, the Scotsman's sleeping berths were built into the fuselage of the ship. There were two on each side of the passage, and all four berths had room for a person to crawl in and lie down. An accordion-style retractable curtain to offer some degree of privacy.

"No, I mean it." I said. "You really hate being on the colony don't you?"

She didn't say anything for a moment. As we entered there were two jump seats with retractable control panels on either side of us. Further forward and up a few small steps was the pilot's seat and all of the primary ship systems controls.

"It's not quite that," she answered as we passed into the cockpit. "It's just that I don't feel right when I'm stuck on a world, there is something about the curve of the ground—"

"It's because she has Void Soul." Loid broke in from behind us with a cheerful tone. "Take a seat."

"A what?" I asked.

"Celestrial folklore," Loid answered. "They have a bunch of stories about the Thar'esh, a kind of a dark force or ghost-demon that haunts and torments people. They say that the Thar'esh will sometimes come and take a bite out of a child's soul. It creates an unfillable gap that they call a Void Soul. The bitten become discontent with everyday life, and are only happy when they are out in the black of space where the endless void of the universe can equalize the emptiness of the void within."

"I didn't know the Skins had stories like that," Ju-lin said.

"They say that Void Souls were what drove the Celestrials to expand into space in the first place," Loid said as he slid into the pilot's seat. "That's the problem with most Earthborn, we're so full of their own stories that they don't listen to anyone else's."

"How do you know them?" I asked.

"Oh," Loid began powering up the engines. "The Celestrials get a bad rap most of the time. Granted, they come off pretty sticky and humorless, but that's mostly because Earthborn don't take the time to get to know them. That will change though. Last I heard the Celestrial Imperial Council has been quietly starting talks with a faction of senators looking to establish an official peace with the Collective and the Protectorate."

"The Prime Minister and the corporatists would never hear of it," Ju-lin replied.

"Yes, well," Loid answered. "The Prime Minister wants to keep people afraid to make sure he can keep his power consolidated. As long as he keeps the Protectorate scared that the Celestrials may attack, he can keep the Protectorate Fleet close at hand. Mark my words, the winds are changing. The Earthborn have been run by fear for far too long."

"You sound like my father," Ju-lin commented. "He always said that the only reason the Draugari attacked Centauri was because we had kept pushing into their territory after we'd cleared the Wild Worlds. But then the Protectorate Command just used the attack as an excuse to double our deployments and push even further into Draugari territory."

"We'll see" Loid continued. "I'm all for peace, but I can't say I'm looking forward to it. If every schmuck with a starship starts hauling goods between the Protectorate and the Celestrial Empire my profits are going to go to shit."

The engines roared to life as Loid finished the ignition sequence. The cabin lurched backward as we lifted off the ground, and then surged forward as he began burning the thrusters to take us up into orbit.
Chapter 15.

I pressed my tongue against the roof of my mouth and gripped the turret controls with white knuckles. I hated the waiting. The caravan slowly crept into view, but still we waited. Our ship was silent, nestled in the shadow of an asteroid. I glanced out across space, the other ships would be there, also, hiding, waiting for our prey.

The caravan included seven vessels. Four were fighter escorts, we would target them first, and destroy them before they have time to react. The larger combat vessels would come second. Two of them, with markings from the Collective. Their armor is thick, but weaponry small. But with our Slires hiding in the shadows, waiting to strike, the fight would be quick. We will leave the cargo vessels untouched. Kill the crew. Take our prizes. Victory through honor.

Today the weak will feel the power of the strong, and they will be punished for stealing from the worlds that do not belong to them.

Once we were clear of orbit, Loid spent several minutes adjusting our trajectory with maneuvering thrusters, and then set in a slow thruster burn to send us in the toward the flux point to Aurae, the next system on our journey. Once he was done, the ship settled into soft whispers and creaks as we seemingly drifted through space. After the thunder of the Scotsman's lifting off and pulling free of the planet's gravity, the silence of space travel was unsettling.

Ju-lin, true to form, was quick to break the silence. We were discussing interplanetary navigation when I asked about one of the terms she used: flux points

"What are fluxes?" Loid echoed without turning around as he made final adjustments to our course. "Eli, what cave did you crawl out of that you don't know what flux points are?"

Little did Loid know how close his sarcasm was to the truth.

"He was sheltered," Ju-lin covered for me as she began to answer my question. "A few hundred years ago, back when we were confined to the Sol system we discovered several random gravitational anomalies floating around. Some scientists thought they were randomly occurring micro-singularities, but a few others had other theories. They thought that the anomalies weren't random, and set about to find a way to open them."

"Open them? Isn't a singularity another word for black hole?" I asked "Wouldn't that have just expanded it and devoured everything?"

"That's what the first scientists thought," Ju-lin answered. "They said that if the micro-singularities were naturally occurring and that manipulating them could be disastrous. It was before the Earthborn Society was founded. The United Nations Interstellar council was in charge of setting policies and standards in space back then. They forbade anyone from experimenting with the micro-singularities. But, of course, a small group refused to listen, and went ahead on their own to build the gravitational flux drive and started hopping between solar systems."

"How does it work?" I asked.

"Think of space like a large flat sheet. It's not, but think of it that way. Then you imagine folding the sheet and stitching together two points. The grav drive briefly props open the micro-singularity—the things that we call flux points—wide enough for a ship to enter, and the ship passes through, slipping through the stitch between two points in space."

"Where do they come from?" I asked.

"That's still the question," Ju-lin answered. "When we first discovered them we thought we were the only humans in the universe, possibly the only intelligent life. We didn't know about the Celestrial Empire, or the Domari Collective. The thing about the flux points is that they are clearly not random occurrences. A flux drive opens the anomaly, a ship passes through, and then it shrinks back to size. Those first scientists were right. If the singularities were naturally occurring, they would collapse in on themselves or expand infinitely. But they don't do either. After the grav drive's field passes through they just snap back to how they were. Given that, scientists universally agree that the flux points were built, or at least created by someone or something else."

"The same thing that spread out the human genetics across the worlds?" I asked.

"Some say so," Ju-lin answered. "Others disagree, they say the flux points are likely a few billion years older than the oldest evidence of human habitation on any known world."

"But that's just one theory," Loid broke in. "Over in the Collective, the natives of Hoken believe that they are the footsteps left by the God Iagen, the Great Fat Druid. After creating the universe, Iagen visited every world by leaping from star to star, but there were some points that could not hold him when he landed, so he fell through the universe and landed in another point. The holes remained."

"Or yes, there is that, if you prefer superstition to science," Ju-lin rolled her eyes.

"You never know," Loid answered. "The Domari mastered the grav drive 900 years before the Earthborn, they may know something we don't," Loid answered as he spun around in his pilot's chair to face us. "Besides, I've seen a lot of strange things in the 'verse. When I first heard stories about the Giant Space Whale I thought they were completely ridiculous."

"A Giant Space Whale?" I asked, astonished.

"Oh you're just full of fables," Ju-lin sighed. "The Collective integrated three pre-industrial species and took them from their mud huts and gave them the stars. So now we have to suffer the primitives, and listen to stories about Space Whales. And then over on the other side we have the Celestrials and their, what was it, the Thar'esh taking bites out of children's souls? What's next? The ancient Earth stories about time traveling doctors, or how about the Draugari apocalypse calendar?"

"The Doctor!" Loid grey eyes lit up with a smile. "That's one of my favorites. I have all of the old vids saved on my Slate if you want to watch, great stuff."

"Who?" I asked.

"Nevermind," Loid chuckled to himself.

"Dear lord," Ju-lin unstrapped herself and got up. The artificial gravity had engaged once we left the planet's atmosphere. She turned to head back toward the galley. "I'm starved, I don't suppose you have anything besides protein packets and recycled bilge water?"

"Actually, I'm a man of comforts," Loid responded. "Above the stove you'll find freeze dried foods of all colors of the rainbow. Stay away from the Orion peppers though. They're hallucinogenic, so I'm saving them for a special occasion."

"Right," she said as she slipped through the passage back into the living quarters.

"Ah," Loid said as she was out of earshot. "To be so young and so sure. I used to be that, but the 'verse has a way of undoing our certainties."

"I can't say I'm too certain about anything," I answered.

"Yes, I can see that," Loid answered. "That's a better way to be I think, a skeptic is rarely surprised. Though you seem to be hovering between skepticism and ignorance. That's a bit more hazardous."

"Does the Collective really have stories about a space whale?" I asked.

"The whale? Oh yes, the stories are real, and true enough," he answered. "I was out prospecting once with Mith, an old Hoken friend of mine that I used to travel with, we were scanning an asteroid and found huge beams lodged in the stones. At first we thought it was a huge wreck of a ship. The scans came back that the remains were biological. There wasn't enough to prove what it was, and then we lost the exact location on our return trip when we tangled into an ion storm and our computer systems were fried. But I am certain it was a Space Whale's rib cage. Sometime I'll retrace that trip and see if I can find it again. Too bad the Draugari moved into that region after the battle at Centauri, or I'd be back searching right now. There is a fortune to be had if a traveler can bring back proof of a Space Whale, but there's no profit to be had if your head gets stuck on a Draugari pike before you make it home."

I looked at him, skeptical.

"Oh, yeah," Loid dug around for something. "I almost forgot, I found this in the wreck, figured you could use it."

It was an empty Draugari sheath.

"Thanks," I answered as I took it. I turned it over in my hand. It was made of some kind of leather and there were ornate designs scrawled throughout. Its smoothness felt like an old friend as I slid my blade into it.

The flight through the Eridani system to our first flux point took almost three hours. When we reached it, I found that the flux point from Eridani to Aurae was just empty space. Loid explained that flux points in populated systems are often controlled by local authorities, stationary outposts, or patrol fleets. But here, off the beaten path and a few fluxes removed from civilized space, it was nothing but a blip on a display screen. When we arrived at the location, Loid spun up the grav drive and we fluxed.

My stomach whirled as space outside turned into a shifting blurred pattern of nothingness. Gravity seemed to spin as I lost my bearings, not only on direction, but on time, and reality itself. After a few agonizing moments, it was over. When the flux completed, it seemed like not much had changed. We were still floating in the blackness of space, but instead of a distant yellow star, there was a bright white one.

"I was scanning an asteroid belt out here when I caught your Celestrial and Draugari friends passing through," Loid said. "It looked like they were coming from Hyades, luckily the flux point isn't too far. You can end up with a long slog between fluxes out here in the Nymphs."

"The Nymphs?" I asked. "What are they?"

Loid paused again to look at me sidelong before he continued.

"You're in the Nymphs," he answered, turning back to the controls. "It's a patch of eight systems. Aurae, Hyades, Maia, Celaeno, and, damn there are a few others, there on the map. Back in ancient times on Earth there was a paganist religion that believed in all sorts of gods and spirits, the spirits of nature were called nymphs.

I leaned back and studied the starmap. There were dozens of blue, yellow, and orange spheres representing different stars. Aurae, where we were flying, was marked with a green dot. I followed a connecting line from Aurae and saw Eridani, my home system that we had just left. Up and to the right I saw a long string of connected stars, large, floating green letters labeled the region the Earthborn Protectorate. I followed another dotted line further upward and to the left from our position to three closely packed stars with the label "The Furies." Beyond the furies was a series of unnamed stars accented by bright red.

"The Furies," I repeated. "I've heard of those before."

"I'd bet," Loid answered as he moved the display to focus in on the three pale-blue stars. "The Furies are one of the two gateways between the Earthborn Society and the Celestrial Empire. Both sides have fleets patrolling and keeping guard over their flux points. The Celestrials like to keep to their borders secure and do most of their trading with the Protectorate and Collective through the trading hubs in the Nexus system. They've been in the stars longer than most, and don't trust most outsiders and like to keep their borders closed."

"But you have Celestrial markings on your tailfin," I recalled Lee noticing them during our conversation earlier. "That means you can get in and out?"

"My access is minimal, but I can poke my nose into the Empire," Loid said, his voice tinged with self-satisfaction.

"How is that? If they don't trust outsiders?" I asked.

"Most outsiders," Loid corrected me. "We'll deal with that when we get there. In the meantime, I think it's time to grab some lunch."

He set our course for Hyades, a 10 hour trip. The food stocks that Loid maintained were far better than anything I'd eaten back at the colony. The colonial rations were all processed protein molded and flavored to look and smell like other foods. Loid's food, on the other hand, was freeze-dried versions of the real thing. I was amazed at the depth of flavor and texture as I bit into a rehydrated apple. After we ate, Loid showed us around Tons-o-Fun and gave us a primer on the flight, control, and combat systems.

As he walked us through the ship, he told us how he came from an overcrowded moon on the edge of the Protectorate's border with the Collective. He left his family and signed onto a fuel hauler bound for the Collective when he was 14. Eventually, he somehow managed to save enough to purchase Tons-o-Fun, a rundown Scotsman that had been bound for the scrap pile. Over the next ten years he had flown Tons-o-Fun from one end of the known universe to the other, picking up tricks, technology, and, of course, stories, along the way.

Loid wasn't a simple scavenger. He had run with pirates, and he had run from pirates. I gathered that he did his fair share of smuggling using scan-shielded compartments for hauling illegal goods, but he also had official (looking) trade authorizations for dozens of systems.

By the time we reached the second flux point, Ju-lin's the initial distaste and distrust in her tone began to subside as her respect for Loid grew. Void soul or not, she had always wanted a life in the stars. There was a lot she could learn from Loid, and Ju-lin wasn't too proud to admit it.

We fluxed again, this time, when we came through we were facing a star that burned deep blue.

"A blue giant," Ju-lin said with more than a little awe in her voice. "I've never seen one that bright before."

The blue giant was certainly bright. Even through Tons-o-Fun's dimmed viewport I had to squint to look at it. But yet, somehow, it didn't seem to cast off as much light as the yellow sun had. The distant worlds floating in orbit were sheathed in shadow, nearly indistinguishable from the black.

"Get used to it, we're going to be here awhile," Loid answered from the pilot's seat. "My best guess is that the Celestrials came from through the Furies, which means we need to pass through Magaera, a contested system that borders Protectorate and Celestrial territories. Unfortunately, to reach the Magaera flux point we've got to cross half the system."

I saw Ju-lin stiffen at the mention of traveling into Celestrial territory.

"Not to mention—oh hello there," Loid broke off. "A hydrogen gas giant, close too. Just a few hours away. Looks like we'll have a detour."

"We need fuel?" I asked. Ju-lin had explained earlier that most long-range ships like the Tons-o-Fun use hydrogen based fuel, and that refilling the hydrogen compression tanks was a matter of swinging into the upper atmosphere and activating the ship's fuel scoops.

"Loid's rule seven of long distance space travel: you always need fuel," he replied. "Which is followed closely by rule eight: never pay for what you can get for free. There are no known settlements in this system and no ships on the scopes. The only thing I see anywhere near the gas giant are two lifeless moons."

"So it's safe?" Ju-lin asked.

"It looks safe," Loid answered. "All that means is that, well, it looks safe. We'll see. Either way, we only have enough fuel for a few fluxes, and we don't want to pay to fill up in Celestrial space if we can help it. That would eat up all my profits. Eli, read those coordinates."

I repeated the series of numbers off my console, and Loid set our course toward the looming gas giant.

"Alright Twiggy," Loid tossed a glance over his shoulder at Ju-lin. "You say you can fly anything?"

"I have hundreds of hours flying interplanetary shuttles and used to spend six hours a day in flight simulations before we moved out to the colony," Ju-lin answered. "Dad used to let me fly in his Raven between escort runs, and I flew that Carrack."

"I don't know if I'd call what you did in that Carrack flying as much as falling," Loid didn't look back, but I saw his lips curl into a smile.

"If you didn't notice, I brought that ship from a flat spin in low orbit and-"

"Relax," Loid spin in his chair and cut her off. "I'm just ribbing at you, you really need to lighten up a bit. You ever flown an upper atmo fuel scoop?"

"I've done it a few dozen times in the simulator."

"So, that's a no," Loid answered. "Well there is a first time for everything. Hop up here in the big chair kid, let's go over it."

I sat and watched for the next two hours as we made our approach to the gas giant, listening as Loid talked Ju-lin through the procedures for operating the hydrogen scoops. Though she already knew the basics, such as the angle of entry and the critical velocity, Loid pointed out that she didn't have a feel for flying outside of the simulator. There would always be factors that you don't account for, such as shifts in planetary winds and swift changes in atmospheric density.

"The simulators tend to be forgiving," Loid added. "They're designed to teach you how to think and operate in open space. But when you're sliding along the top of a gas supergiant, the science of navigation becomes secondary to the art of flying. If you make a mistake you could ignite the compression tanks, burn up your maneuvering thrusters, or, in the worst case, get caught in a the gravity well of a giant whirling planet that's atmosphere is nothing but a toxic cocktail of explosive gas. Not ideal."

Ju-lin listened impatiently but intently. By the time he finished going through it all, the planet was looming so close that it filled nearly our entire field of vision. Loid patted Ju-lin on the shoulder and strapped himself into the jump seat next to me.

"She's all yours Twiggy," Loid said as he adjusted his secondary command console. "Ease her in, and do exactly as I say."

Ju-lin took the controls and eased the stick up, Tons jerked upward swiftly. Further than Ju-lin had meant to, she pushed back and overcorrected the other way. After fifteen seconds of tug of war with momentum she had the Scotsman evened out and on course.

"She's sensitive," Loid said. "You gotta use a steady hand with her. Nice and easy. Some ships are brutes that you have to dominate, like the Carrack. Flying them is a battle of wills. But Tons-o-Fun, she's a more elegant lady. A soft word and a caress goes a lot further than a stern word and a cuff."

"I'm beginning to think you spend too much time out here alone." Ju-lin said, rolling her eyes. As she became more confident at the controls, Ju-lin's attitude was starting to come back.

"Probably true," I saw Loid smile as he gently patted his armrest. "Probably true."

We flattened out, flying above the horizon of the atmosphere of the gas giant. As we drew closer I saw that the atmosphere was churning with activity. Clouds of gases twisted and collided chaotically. I could see the risks of dipping down too far.

"Now ease her up, we need to slide into the upper atmo and then hold her there. You should get just low enough so that the stars are faint through the clouds above. If you lose sight of the stars, you're in trouble."

"Right," she said. "So I just ignore the altimeter?"

"No, you don't ignore anything," he answered. "But remember that there are a million natural and unnatural things that can throw off your sensors. Don't trust them. Your eyes are always your best instrument."

We continued to ease down, gliding on the top of and endless sea of clouds with the stars bright above us. A dark grey moon was rising on our port side. It was beautiful and surreal.

"Steady her out now and drop speed," Loid said. "You're doing great, nice and steady."

We continued to descend into the blue-green haze. The brightness of the stars began to fade, and then we leveled out.

"Are we ready for the scoops?"

"You tell me," Loid answered. "You're flying this bus. Rule two: the decisions rest with the pilot. If you think you have us at the right place at the right speed, and can hold us here for 20-30 seconds to activate the scoops, call it."

A bead of sweat trickled down Ju-lin's forehead.

"Trust your gut Twiggy," Loid said.

"Engage scoops," she said.

I turned to see Loid was sitting back with his hands folded behind his head.

"That's you Eli," he nodded at my control console. "I'm just along for the ride."

Rattled, I turned and looked at the console. Loid had showed us through the computer system earlier, but I hadn't expected this to be a test. I flipped through the menu looking for the hydrogen scoop deployment system controls.

"Almost found it," I said, now sweat was trickling down my brow.

"I can't hold us here forever," Ju-lin's voice was tense.

"Got it, engaging," I initiated the cycle.

There were a series of clicks and the sounds of a whirling motor behind us as the hydrogen intakes opened and began the process of capturing and compressing hydrogen from the gas giant's atmosphere into the ship's compression tanks.

"Twenty seconds," I called as the computer counted down.

"Fifteen seconds," I said. "Tank reading at 75 percent capacity."

"Roger," Ju-lin said, holding steady as she peered up through the canopy at the dimly lit stars above.

"Five," I continued to count. "Four—three—two—one—full. Completing cycle, vents closing. And—clear."

"Pulling up," Ju-lin eased the stick up and Tons-o-Fun began to regain altitude.

"You know," Loid was casual, he kicked his feet up onto his consol. "You two aren't too bad at this. I mean, I wouldn't take all on a smuggling run out in Odin just yet, but still—"

Tons-o-Fun's proximity alarms started to go off just as two blasts struck our port side.

"What in the hell was that?" Loid flipped his feet onto the ground and pulled his console into his hand. "Two marks coming in fast. What the hell, the scopes were clean when we went down there. Twiggy, bank starboard and get us up out of this soup, now."

Ju-lin pulled the controls sharply and we spiraled upward away from the planet, the exhaust from two small fighters flew past us on either side in a flash.

"Watch out, I have a third mark, bearing—ah hell," Loid called. "They must have been hiding behind the moon."

"I see it," Ju-lin called back. "What is it?"

I looked up. Directly in front of us between us and the planet's moon was a hulking dark shadow. Two smaller shapes had broken away from it, fighters. They had three symmetrical wings and were coming in fast.

"Big, well-armed. Corvette class, a Starchaser by the look of it. Its signal beacon says it's designated the Allegro IV. Allegro, that may not be a good thing. Those two fighters, Drakes by the look, are hers," Loid's voice was flat and serious. "Pirates. They sit on the blind side of that moon and wait for poor saps to fly in to refuel."

The ship rocked as the fighters made their second pass, peppering Tons-o-Fun's underbelly.

"Allegro?" I asked. "Do you know the ship?"

"That's the Allegro IV. I knew a guy who piloted a ship called the Allegro III."

"Should we ask what happened to the Allegro III?"

"Last time I saw it, it was on fire in the wake with a very bad antimatter leak. Though it was just a transport, not a damned Starchaser. If it's who I think it is, we're in trouble," Loid sighed. "Looks like lesson three comes early: how to survive when you're outmaneuvered and outgunned."
Chapter 16.

After the long wait, sitting and sweating in the dark, the rush of battle came quickly. The signal was sent, and we unleashed fire. Our first barrage was devastating. Two of the enemy fighters dissolved into dust. But the others reacted quickly. I tracked them with my turret, but their movements were unpredictable.

I tracked the lead fighter, small, silver, and feeble in the sky. I squeezed the trigger and my turret sent a volley of explosive rounds, but the rounds hit nothing. The fighter had shifted abruptly, closing on one of our Slires.

I tracked him again, he pitched, I followed, I pulled the trigger again, but my own ship banked abruptly to the right. My shots went wide. I watched helplessly as fire streaked from the little silver fighter, one of our Slires erupted in flames. I felt excuses erupt within me. The targeting computer had been misaligned, my pilot should not have banked, but I forcefully silenced the voices in my head. A brave and worthy warrior, dead because of my ineptitude.

I swiveled my turret, tracking the fighter again, this time I would not miss.

"Do you want this back?" Ju-lin's knuckles were white on the stick as she sent us into another diving roll.

"Nope," Loid said as he continued to rapidly work his console. "Looks like you're doing just fine to me."

"The guns are offline. I can keep these Drakes off of us for a while, but the more I maneuver the closer that Starchaser gets. If I had some guns it may be useful."

"Guns? Naw," Loid answered. "Their plan is to send in the gnats to keep us busy, then sweep in with the mother ship to fire a few well-placed bursts and disable your power systems. Then it's a simple matter of boarding and looting. Pretty standard really."

"I suppose there is a reason why you don't sound concerned?" she asked. "Do you have a plan?"

"Well, this might work," he said, still focused on his console.

"What?" I asked. "Did you get the guns online?"

"Guns?" he asked. "Oh no. No point in that. The gun bays are still flooded with hydrogen, firing them up is not the best idea. Even if we did, those Drakes are well armored, that's why pirates love them. We may be able to disable one of them before the Starchaser gets us, but there's no beating them toe-to-toe. Better to put all of that power to engines and shields to buy us time."

"Buy us time for what?" Ju-lin asked.

Tons-o-Fun shook as another shot struck home.

"For this," he said as he pushed his console back. "Eli, route all power to engines and shields to give Twiggy everything we got. Turn off non-essential systems, including artificial gravity. Turn it off, and route all power to engine systems."

"Artificial gravity only uses about an eighth of a percent of the power output," Ju-lin retorted. "What good will that do?"

"Oh, you never know," Loid turned to me and winked. "Eli, turn off gravity, and follow me. But mind your gravity. Twiggy, grab your headset and stay on coms, you too Eli."

He grabbed a wireless headset, unhooked his harness and disappeared through the hatch toward the back of the ship.

"Where are you going?!" Ju-lin howled as she pulled up hard.

"Oh, right," Loid popped his head back in the cabin. "They'll hail you in about twenty seconds and demand you surrender. When they ask what your cargo is, claim you're empty. They won't believe it. The secondary cargo hold is shielded, so unless they are complete dusters they will figure we have something valuable onboard and lay off the big guns, hoping for our surrender. Tell them you are the captain and bought the ship on scrap or something if they ask, and whatever you do, do not mention my name."

"What do I tell them when they ask for our surrender?" Ju-lin asked.

"Just be your charming self and do what comes naturally," he nodded at me. "Get the gravity off and get your ass back here."

I put on my headset, disabled the artificial gravity, routed all power to engines, and unhooked myself from my seat.

"Incoming wave from the Starchaser," Ju-lin said as she slipped her headset on and punched a few buttons on her console.

As soon as I unfastened my harness I began to rise up out of my seat. My stomach churned. Though I had thought turning off the gravity would be a simple matter, the biological fact of it was incredibly disorienting. I grabbed my chair to steady myself and started pulling myself back toward the hatch.

"Yes, this is the pilot of the Scotsman Tons-o-Fun," she answered into her headset. "Yes, it's my ship. No, I won't power down, why the hell would I do that?"

With a push I floated back and drifted between the jump seats and into the hatch.

"Look, really boys, I'm just passing through here," I heard Ju-lin taunt back. "Your pilots? Look, buddy, I don't know where you picked up these putzes, but you're lucky they have those Drake's flying forwards. I'm more concerned about one accidently running into me than I am their rail guns."

I couldn't help but laugh, Ju-lin was being herself alright. I hoped Loid knew what he was doing.

Loid was in the secondary cargo deck unpacking one of the Draugari warheads when I got there. Even without standard gravity I was still standing upright in the passage. Loid had abandoned the conventional notions of up and down and was standing on the wall.

"Can we launch that?" I asked.

"Nope," he answered as he unlatched the casing. "They require a sizable rocket, which we don't have. This is just a payload."

The ship shook from another hit. The sudden jolt sent the ship shifting around me as I floated, my head slammed against the doorway. As I shook it off I saw why Loid had chosen to stand on the wall: his feet were tucked into the hand railings, offering him some stability.

"Volatile too," he said as he pulled the warhead from its casing, it was a mess of wiring with black-coated steel making a ball a little bigger than my fist.

"How powerful?" I asked.

"Powerful enough that if we make a wrong move we will have the pleasure of knowing that at least one of those Drakes that are blasting at us will probably be vaporized along with us."

"Right," I said, feeling more than a little unsettled.

"Toss me the spanner, there in the case mounted by the door," he nodded, never taking his eyes off of the warhead that was now floating gently in front of him.

I recovered the spanner and tossed it gently toward him. Loid caught it easily and started to unscrew a control panel.

"What else can I do?"

"Do you know how an electromagnet works?"

"No, not really," I answered.

"Oh," the ship's lights flickered as we took another hit. "Well, the lesson can wait. See those boots on the wall? The white ones, those are electromagnetic clamps for when you have to get suited up and do mid-space repairs. Not fun stuff, I don't like to do it."

"You're not going out there?" I asked, stunned.

He grinned and raised his eyebrow.

I felt the blood leave my face, "You don't expect me to go out there?"

At this he let loose a hearty laugh.

"Hell no, but I need the electromags, toss me the boot and some of that tape," he said. "Good, now we need some cable from that bag there, cut me two lengths about, oh a meter each."

"They hung up on me," Ju-lin's voice broke in over the coms. "The Drakes scored a few good hits, the power output from the engines dropped to 70 percent, shields are holding at 40 percent. The Starchaser is going full speed towards us, though the Drakes are hanging back. I can still outrun the Starchaser I think."

"Negative," Loid replied. "If you kick in full power and start outrunning the Starchaser they will just send the Drakes back in to slow us down and bang up my ship. Act like you're running, but go slow enough that the Starchaser will catch us."

"Slow enough that they will catch us?" She repeated.

"That's what I said," Loid answered. "No sense in letting them beat up the Tons any more than they already have. Two minutes from now, I need the Starchaser to be between 200 and 250 meters directly behind us."

"Their main guns will be able to disable the engines at 200 meters," Ju-lin responded. "I don't see how that helps."

"You're the pilot, you make the call of when the ship is ready. I'm the Commander, so your job as the pilot is to get the ship where I want it. And I want the Starchaser to be 200 to 250 meters directly behind us in two minutes. Do you copy?" Loid responded as he spliced together a wire from the boot into the circuits on the warhead.

"Affirmative," she answered. "Crazy bastard."

We were thrown sideways as the shipped abruptly banked to port. I was ready that time and managed to grab a hand rail before being thrown against the crate containing the rest of the warheads. I looked up to see that Loid had barely managed to grip the end of a wire to keep the warhead from flying across the room and impacting against the bulkhead.

"Damnit to hell," Loid said into his coms. "Keep her steady."

Ju-lin snapped something back about not taking a collision course with a moon, but Loid ignored it.

As soon as we stabilized again, I used my knife to cut the lengths of cable.

"Alright, cable, good." Loid said as he spun the warhead in the air in front of him, pointing to two small latches. "Here, tie them here and here, and be careful not to touch the blue or black wires."

I pushed off to propel myself across the room to where Loid was standing. Following his lead, I stood on the wall and slid the toe of my boot beneath the handrail for stability.

My hands were shaking as he handed me the warhead and I began to tie the knots. I was surprised to find how easily the knot tying came to me. In the moment I wasn't sure if it was a skill that I had had before the terraforming, or if it was knowledge inherited from the Draugar I had killed. Either way, I was thankful that my hands seemed to know what they were doing.

By the time I had finished, I looked up to see that Loid had retrieved a vat labeled Jantar Nectar from one of the forward storage compartments.

"Go to the back of the main cargo hold," Loid nodded forward. "Carry the warhead by the cables, there yeah like that. Make sure it doesn't hit the sides."

I took the cables, one in each hand, and held the warhead suspended in front of me. Then I began pushing toward the rear hatch with my legs, using my elbows and alternating my grip on the cables to free my hands and steady myself.

I passed through the hatch into the main cargo hold. The lights were flickering, casting shadows around the secured stacks of crated ale.

"Move to the back, there is the waste airlock," Loid gestured toward the back of the cargo hold as he came through the hatch behind me. "I had it installed in case I needed to dump less-than-legal goods."

"Okay, so what is Jantar Nectar?" I asked as I moved slowly through the compartment.

"Depends on who you ask," Loid answered. "It's from a native plant on one of the Collective worlds. Stickiest stuff in the 'verse, smells horrible. The Domari use it as an industrial sealant. I've seen them use it to shore up hull breaches. The Celestrials, on the other hand, consider it a delicacy. They really like the chewy stuff I guess, who knows."

"They are gaining," Ju-lin's voice came back over the wireless. "The Starchaser is at 260 meters and closing, and those Drakes are coming in close again. I don't like just sitting here waiting for them to pop us."

"We're working on it. Get them talking or something, we are almost set," Loid answered.

"Work faster!" Ju-lin responded.

"Now what?" I asked as we caught ourselves on the far wall next to the waste airlock.

"Now the sticky part," Loid chuckled to himself as he slipped his arm through a wall strap, and flipped around, holding the vat of Jantar Nectar between his legs. "I'm going to pop this open, and you are going to set a timer on the boot's maglock, dip the warhead in nectar, and then we are going to take it and position it so that it is floating in the middle of the airlock without touching the sides."

I looked at the device, Loid had hastily taped the electromagnetic boot, sole out, to the side of the warhead. The two cables I had attached floated limply on either side of the bomb like errant pigtails. The entire apparatus looked ridiculous.

"There, the command pad on the boot, set a timer delay to, let's say fifty seconds," Loid said. "Once you do that, take the bomb by the cables, and dip it into the nectar. Be damned sure not to get any on you, or anything else. If that thing comes in contact with anything then we're humped."

"Fifty seconds?" I asked.

"Yup, do it."

I set the timer to fifty, and clicked begin.

As quickly and carefully as I could I grabbed the two cables and pulled the warhead downward into the vat of nectar that Loid had opened. The smell surprised me. It wasn't the sickening stench of death that I had experienced in the hold of the Draugari's Carrack, it was much more floral. At first smell, it was actually pleasant, but after the second or third breath, the sheer power of the scent made me gag.

"Yeah," Loid said. "It's bad. There are worse things than a simple stink. Quickly now, dip it and spin, we have forty seconds."

I turned the warhead in the goop as best I could. After five seconds, most of it was covered.

"I think that's good enough," I answered.

"It will have to be," Loid said as he secured the lid onto the vat and let it float off into the cargo hold. "Now, nice and easy, give me the other side of the cable."

With Loid holding the cable on the left, and me on the right, we slowly moved the warhead into the meter-square waste disposal chute. Now I knew why he had told me to disable the gravity. If the warhead touched any part of the disposal compartment it would be stuck on the ship.

"Twenty five seconds," I said.

"Hang on," he said, as he worked to position the warhead directly in the middle of the compartment. "Almost got it."

He nodded to me and we both let go, the warhead hung suspended in zero gravity. He tapped the control console and the interior door to the compartment slid shut. I peered through the small viewport, the warhead was still floating perfectly in the middle of the compartment.

"Ju-lin," Loid clicked his wireless on. "Distance to the Starchaser?"

"Two hundred and twenty meters and closing," she answered.

"On my mark, punch engines to full." He reached out to the controls.

"Fifteen seconds," I said, reading off the display timer through the viewport.

"Mark!" Loid tapped a code into the console, opening the exterior doors to the waste chute. The sudden exposure to space created an instant vacuum that sent the warhead flying out the back of the ship like a cannon ball.

The Tons-o-Fun lurched forward as Ju-lin activated the thrusters. Without artificial gravity, the push of the thrusters slammed, and held us against the wall.

"Is it away?" Loid grunted into his coms.

I watched out the rear viewport, following the warhead as it sped away.

"It looks like it's going wide," I said.

"Come on," Loid muttered.

"Wait," the warhead suddenly shifted directions as the timer hit zero and the boot's magclamp activated, pulling it directly toward the Starchaser. Seconds later the warhead slapped against the Starchaser's forward bulkhead and stuck. "It's on."

"Ha!" Loid reached for a nearby control panel. "Let's get some gravity back on, there we go."

He and I both fell to the deck as the artificial gravity re-initialized.

"What the hell did you guys do?" Ju-lin called over the wireless. "I have a pressure release warning."

"See if you can get them on video coms, we're on our way," Loid and I got to our feet and ran back through the cargo areas into the flight deck. "And get out of my chair!"

"The Starchaser is hailing us," Ju-lin was sliding back into her jumpseat as Loid and I entered the cabin.

"Nice job Twiggy," he said as he slid back into the pilot's seat and clicked on the video coms.

A face appeared floating on in the holographic heads-up display in front of him. He was an older human with silver-black hair and a scar on his chin.

"Alonso," Loid said casually. "Sorry I missed you earlier there, I was napping."

"Burns," the face squinted. "A pity, your girlfriend there said you were locked up on weapons smuggling charges in Tau Ceti."

"Yes," Loid responded. "You know how it is, I can't take every call or I'd be spending all day chatting away and never get anything done."

"Enough of the shit, Burns." Alonso sneered. "You're damaged, and my boys have you locked down. Power down the engines and prepare to be boarded and I may let you live."

"Eh," Loid glanced back over at Ju-lin. "I think I'll pass."

"It's that or get ghosted," Alonso retorted. "We may have made some money together back when we were running stims for the syndicate, but that was a long time ago, and I won't forget how you cut me out. I really should just turn that flying cigar of yours into dust here and now, but seeing as I'm feeling charitable, I'll settle for your cargo."

"Cut you out? Now that's not quite how I remember it." Loid answered. "I remember you installing a trace on my ship and trying to hand me over to the authorities. "

"Who knows who did what to whom," Alonso answered. "What I do know, is that you left me for dead with my credits in your pocket. You owe me cargo."

"Sorry mate I'm empty."

"Don't even try," Alonso answered. "I picked up energy signature fluxes a few minutes ago. You have something on board. And if nothing else, we may just take your girlfriend, she seemed like—"

"I seem like what, you greasy bastard?" Ju-lin leapt from her seat and pulled in over Loid's shoulder into the video chat's field of view. "What do I seem like?"

"Now, now," Loid put his hand on her shoulder and gently pushed Ju-lin back.

"His girlfriend my ass," she muttered as she slipped back.

"She seemed like a spirited young thing," Alonso said with a smile. "She's right, though, she's not your type Burns."

"Yes, and she managed to keep your Drakes dancing around for the last four minutes," Loid added.

"She can fly that hunk of junk better than you can," Alonso replied to Loid. "I'll give her that, but it doesn't change the fact that you're now in range and that I have my fighters primed on your wings."

"No," Loid continued with a placid calm. "But, there is something missing. You said you picked up an energy signature flux? What happened to it?"

Alonso glanced over, making a gesture to someone out of view.

"It dissipated," Alonso said after a pause. "Power signature looked Draugari, some kind of trick? Whatever you tried to do, it didn't work."

"All those sensors on that great big ship and that's all you got?" Loid countered. "Sometime you will have to tell me how you managed to get it, or who you're flying for. But for now, you have more important concerns."

"Like sifting through the debris of your ship?" Alonso answered. "I'm getting tired of this shit, cut engines or I'll open fire."

"No, actually, why don't you try a more localized scan. For grins, focus it on your port bulkhead just before your main thrusters. See if anything unusual comes up."

Alonso looked down at his console, after a few seconds, his brow furrowed.

"That, my friend," Loid broke in with a smile. "Is a primed class four Draugari dissipation warhead stuck to my magclamp boots and coated with Jantar Nectar. By now the nectar has probably solidified, it will take a few hours with a laser chisel to scrape it off your hull. You'll have to be careful though, I wired up the trigger in a hurry so it may be temperamental."

"You sonuvabitch," Alonso sneered.

"Ah, but I can save you the trouble," Loid lifted up a small device. "This is a remote detonator that I have wired into the explosive."

Alonso's face was white.

"See, now we can negotiate," Loid's voice turned serious. "Have your Drakes disengage. Now. And power down all weapons."

Alonso made a few gestures off screen. A few seconds later the Drakes pulled off to a safe distance from us. I noticed they were keeping their distance from the Starchaser as well.

"There now," Loid continued. "I think this qualifies as your surrender doesn't it? How nice. It's time to talk demands."

"Demands?" Alonso sneered. "I swear if you so much as touch this ship I will track you down cut you limb from limb."

"Whoa," Loid held up his hand. "Easy there. I'm not a pirate, well, not today at least. Today I'm a man in need of information. Did you guys pick up any Celestrial ships flying through this system in the last few days?"

"Skins?" Alonso retorted. "Yeah, there were a few fighters passing through a few days ago, nothing special. Well-armed, not worth our time."

"Where did they come from?"

"They came in through the Megaera gav point," Alonso answered. "Why are you hunting Skins? I thought you were all sweet on their kind."

"Who knows, maybe they're family friends. Let's just say that's our business," Loid answered.

"What about communications drones?" I asked.

Loid glanced sidelong at me. I couldn't tell if he was more annoyed that I interrupted him or that we hadn't told him about the communications drone.

"You have two crew?" Alonso's eyebrow raised. "What, Loid, you flying with a girlfriend and boyfriend? So much for the old lone wolf, looks like you're turning into an old dog! Or maybe den mother?"

"Answer the question," Loid said coldly as he shifted the detonator in his hand. "Intercepted any communications drones?"

"Communications drones?" Alonso shrugged. "Could be, we intercept pretty much everything that flies through this system."

"It would have been about a week back, corporate markings from MineWorks," Ju-lin pressed.

"MineWorks?" Alonso scratched his head. "Yeah, we plucked up one about eight days ago. We couldn't break the encryption, so we sold it to some dealer on Shindar II who was willing to take a chance that it may have some maps or mineral scans they could steal and sell. Made some easy money, which you can't have."

Loid muted the call.

"So are you two going to tell me what the hell this is about?"

Ju-lin and I exchanged glances.

"One of the other colonies found something, and then sent a message offworld," Ju-lin answered. "We figured the Celestrials intercepted and decoded it, and that's why they attacked."

"'Found something?'" Loid repeated. "When were you going to tell me about that?"

"When you needed to know," Ju-lin countered.

"Fine, we'll talk about this later," Loid turned and flipped the mute back off. "I need a name. Who did your man sell the drone to?"

"How should I know? These types don't use business cards," Alonso shrugged. "My man was on Shindar II, there is a market off the main docking yard. My man says he traded with a Noonan."

"A Noonan at the market on Shindar II," Loid sighed. "Thin. That's all you got?"

"That's all I got," Alonso replied. "You know what I know, so disable your firing mechanism and bugger off."

Loid flipped the firing device over in his hand, staring at Alonso's face on the display, considering.

"I will disable it once we're clear," he answered after a pause. "The Starchaser, and the Drakes stay powered down, or I blow it."

"Yeah, yeah, just get gone," Alonso leaned forward. "But I won't forget this."

"Forget what?" Ju-lin broke in. "That you and your mini-fleet of halfwits had to turn tail?"

Loid glanced over at Ju-lin and smiled, "I think she has a point. Stay dark until I'm nothing but a speck, or I detonate."

Loid disconnected the video.

"Buckle up, let's get out of here," Loid engaged the engines to full burn. "Looks like we're going to Shindar II."

"Nice work with the bomb," Ju-lin said. "Honestly, I'm impressed."

"Yeah," I agreed. "What about the detonator though? When did you rig that up?"

"I didn't," he said, tossing the small box over his shoulder. "It's a broken medical scanner."
Chapter 17.

A secondary explosion shook the ship and the power flickered off. Once again, I waited. But this time it didn't come back on. My gunnery display was black. The ship's comm were silent.

I watched out my viewport as the last of our Slires fought against their remaining fighters. Two had regrouped and were coming toward the last Slire. Without power, I could do nothing to help him. He knew his life was lost, I was certain. But he fought on. I cursed my gunnery station. Out there, in the cockpit of that Slire was where glory and honor lie. Not here floating in the belly of a dead ship.

The Slire dove, evading the human ships, and then turned, I saw his main engines fire to full thrust as he angled toward the last of the cargo caravan. The humans saw what he was doing, they must have, but it was too late to stop him. With the full force of his thrusters engaged, that pilot met glory as he rammed the vessel.

The Slire melted into the larger ship and became nothing. But then, as I watched, the cargo ship began to falter. Fires burst, hull plates split, the glory was his as both myself and the human fighter pilots watched, helpless.

Ju-lin and I retired to the galley as we continued across the system. So far it looked as if the pirates had held up their end and stayed powered down back by the gas giant, waiting for their next victim. When we asked Loid to join us to eat, he waved us off, his mind elsewhere.

"So," I leaned forward to ask Ju-lin as we began eating. "What should we tell him?"

"There isn't much more to tell," she answered. It was true. Aside from the datacard in my pocket with the scan of the writing in the cave, we didn't have any more secrets left.

"True," I said, pausing. "But he is bound to ask what Growd found, and what we found when we were sent to investigate."

"We didn't find anything," she said, narrowing her eyes and glancing at my pocket where I had the datacard hidden. "In reality, he knows as much as we do, which isn't much at all. Dad sent us to find out why the Skins attacked us, before we can do that, we need to find out who did it. Once we find out who it is, then we should be able to figure a lot more about the why, without bringing Loid into it. Besides, Dad said not to trust him, and I don't."

"He did get us out of that mess," I answered.

"We all got us out of that mess," she countered. "In case you didn't notice, I was the one flying this tub."

I nodded.

"And you'd think that Loid would be more careful," she continued. "Maybe done some extra scans or something before going into refueling. Walking into a trap like that seems like a rookie mistake."

"Maybe he's saving that for rule nine," I commented.

She looked at me a moment, cocking her head to the side, "Wait, did you just make another joke?"

I felt the heat as much cheeks flushed red.

She smiled again, not her typical mocking grin, but a genuine smile, kind, and soft. Our eyes met for a moment, then she turned, slid into her bunk, and pulled the curtain closed.

I sat there, staring up at the empty space where her smile had been.

The rest of our journey through Hyades was uneventful. Though Loid kept checking the scanners, there was no sign of pursuit. By the time we made the flux to Magaera, one of three Furies, he was relaxed and casual. We had been traveling through the system for several hours before Loid buzzed the ships coms and called us up to the cabin.

"Take a seat," he said quietly.

I looked out the front viewport to see a massive hulk in front of us. He must have heard my sharp intake of breath.

"It's from the Earthborn Protectorate patrolling the Furies," he nodded. "A Dreadnaught on patrol. Fearsome bitch. Hundreds of crew, a few flight groups of fighters."

"It's the Dante," Ju-lin came in behind me. "I saw her in dry dock a few years back."

A light flashed on Loid's control panel.

"They are requesting our identification and authorization," Loid said quietly. "Eli, I showed you how to access the coms package the other day, do you remember?"

"Yup," I answered as I accessed the console.

"Good, send our Earthborn credentials," he said. "Make sure it's the Earthborn credentials, sending my Celestrial ident tags would be awkward."

I laughed, though I wasn't sure if I was supposed to. I pulled up the digital credential package, checked four times to make sure it was the Earthborn Protectorate Identification data package, and sent it.

"She's clean," Ju-lin studied the hull as we passed beneath the Dante. "They haven't had action in a while."

"Good sign," Loid nodded. "Clean ships means clear sailing."

"Scotsman designation Tons-o-Fun," a voice crackled over the coms. "Package received, and authorization accepted. Watch your back out there. Dante control out."

"Acknowledged," Loid said simply, flipping off the coms.

"I thought you said Magaera was contested, what was it you called it, no man's land?" I asked.

"Officially, yes," Loid answered. "But that more or less turns it into every-man's land. Even with all the patrols, the Furies are the only viable path for sneaking between the Celestrial Empire and the Society, it's thick with pirates, smugglers, traders, and even the occasional honest folk."

"Which are you?" Ju-lin asked.

"All of the above," Loid said wistfully.

"Even the honest folk?" Ju-lin asked.

"Sometimes," Loid answered.

"Did they scan us?" I asked.

"No," Loid said. "As long as your paperwork is in order, a small cash transaction to an unnamed account floating around out here in space will encourage the operator to look the other way."

"Why bother?" Ju-lin asked. "I mean, Kevarian Ale is illegal to transport, but they wouldn't be able to identify it on the scan, and you have cargo shielding around the secondary bay, hiding the Draugari warheads."

"Call it caution," Loid answered. "Or call it simple math. I give away a few credits to secure that I'll make a few thousand. The best profit is the one that you make sure you can spend."

"Still," she answered. "The more coin in your hand the better."

"You would be amazed how many good smugglers get caught by a lowly docking bay clerk for sloppily forged manifests," Loid answered. "That woman up there manning the scanners, she's bored. Badly paid. And is anxious to get off duty. Her job is unimportant and monotonous. If you had to do that, what would you be doing? She wants to find something to make her life interesting. Better to toss her a few credits and keep on moving than risk that she increases the power on her scan or happens to detect any unusual radiation signatures. When you're running on the edge of the law, bored and low-ranking paper pushers are the most dangerous people you can encounter."

"I guess I never thought about it like that before," Ju-lin answered.

"It's the little mistakes that will hang you," Loid said. "It always is."

"Where are we heading now?" I asked.

"Well, right now we're going to continue on our course to make it look like we're heading to Tisiphone which has connecting grav points back to the Protectorate," he answered. "But, once we're clear of the Dante, we'll adjust our course for Alecto, the third Fury, and the border system. Alecto has four flux points: two leading back to Earthborn space, and two leading into the Celestrial Empire. From there we'll flux over into Celestrial territory, the Shindar system where Alonso said he sold the drone, and see what we can see."

I looked up, studying the Dante. She was a hive of activity. Small fighters whirled around her hulk, making regular patrols. There were other ships flying point defense on all sides, cruisers, destroyers, corvettes.

I watched the Dante and her fleet slip off beyond us and out of view.

The rest of our trip through Magaera and then to Alecto was uneventful. Though there was traffic, the travelers all seemed to want to keep their quiet distance. That was just as well for us. Though it was a fair distance, the trip through Alecto went quickly. I spent most of my time in the flight deck talking with Loid. He seemed to have a story for everything, and answered my questions readily and fully. Unlike Ju-lin, Lee or the other colonists, he didn't so much as raise his eyebrows when I asked him questions about common things. I enjoyed that.

Ju-lin came and left, sitting with us in the flight deck for as long as her shifting feet would allow.

"Preparing to flux to Shindar," Loid called over the ship's loudspeaker some hours later. "You two may want to be up here for this."

Once we were both in our jump seats he spun around in his pilot's chair.

"I'm going to assume neither of you have had direct dealings with the Celestrials before?" He glanced at both of our faces. "Yeah, thought not. Okay, The first thing you will realize when we get to Shindar II, is that the Celestrials love order and organization. There are processes and procedures for everything. So follow my lead, do what I do, and try not to say anything."

"How will we find out about those ships?" Ju-lin asked.

"We'll start by tracking down the Noonan trader that Alonso mentioned," he answered. "Odds are the trader didn't have the tech he would need to decode the message. They probably just sold it whole to the first person to come along with a few coins."

"How do we track them down?" I asked.

"I imagine that there aren't too many foreigners on Shindar who would deal in corporate secrets. There is too much risk there. The Noonan look for an easy profit. If there is anyone desperate enough to buy Alonso's stolen drone, it's a good bet they will also be willing to help find a buyer for stolen Dragauri warheads."

"Which you need to sell anyway," Ju-lin added. "Efficient."

"Or laziness, whatever you want to call it," Loid said with a laugh. "Which reminds me, the most important thing to remember about the Celestrial: they love efficiency, but they are also steeped in ritual and culture. They've been fluxing through grave points for five hundred years, and their sciences are well beyond anything that anyone in the Collective of the Protectorate have developed. The story goes that the environment on their home planet was so harsh that they actually developed terraforming technologies and mastered their control over the planetary environment before they even launched a satellite into orbit."

"What do you mean how the story goes?" I asked

"That's what they tell us, we've never seen the Celestrial homeworld," Loid answered. "Hell, few have survived past the first few seconds of a flux into Celestrial territory. They are patient, and have a long memory. Each Celestrial can live to be 130 years old. Most don't start out on their own until after they turn 70s. Now, if I make it to 100 I will just be a toothless old rogue plugged into a dozen life support systems on some resort station with half of my marbles left. Not a Celestrial. We are children to them. Every one of them are required to spend fifteen years in military service, and twenty years in post-secondary education."

"Required military service?" Ju-lin looked disgusted.

"Yes. So, you, keep your sass tied up," he turned from Ju-lin to me, "And you, just don't ask so many stupid questions. Eli, load up the credentials for Celestrial space and have them ready. They aren't quite as patient as the Dante was."

"No bribes this time?" Ju-lin asked.

"Bribe one of them?" Loid laughed. "That would be a damned fool thing to do, and I'm serious, tie up that damned sass."

The engines whirled as he powered up the drive, and we fluxed.

Where the hulking shape of the Dante had been intimidating in its bulk and power, the Celestrial defense fleet monitoring the grav point inside of the Shindar system was equally intimidating through sheer numbers. As soon as we fluxed in, four sleek Celestrial fighter craft, similar to the ones we had seen back on the colony, pulled in tightly, boxing us in. As I looked out the viewscreen, I saw dozens of ships, some were floating still, while others ran patrols and practiced maneuvers in tightly packed formations. Although none of the ships were nearly as large as the Dante had been, between their numbers and the level of coordination, I was reasonably certain that the Celestrial fleet would be just as formidable.

An alien voice speaking a smooth, foreign language came on the comms. The flow of the language was so fluid and lyrical that it was difficult for me to discern one word from another.

Loid answered back, speaking back in their native language. After the Celestrial's clear tones, Loid's rendition was halting and jarring.

"Send the authorizations," Loid nodded.

I sent the codes. A few moments later the voice came back on, and the fighters peeled off, allowing for us to go on our way.

"Their formations are perfect," Ju-lin's voice was low with awe. "I mean perfect. I grew up around fighter pilots and lived in fleet stations my whole life, and I've never seen anything close to this level of coordination with the Earthborn Protectorate fleet."

"Impressive," Loid answered. "Isn't it?"

"How do they do it?" She asked.

"At first we thought they were all psychic because we couldn't fathom that another race could be so much better at something than ourselves. But in reality, there are no psychic powers. It's just that the Celestrial culture focuses patience and control," Loid said. "They are far more disciplined than any other branch of humanity."

"Then why haven't they beaten the Protectorate?" I asked.

"Pardon?" Ju-lin turned sharply.

"I mean," I stammered. "The Protectorate has been fighting the Celestrial Empire for a long, long time, right? Those fighters look much more advanced than any Earthborn ships I've seen, you yourself have commented about how much more maneuverable they are than most Earthborn ships," I nodded toward Ju-lin. "The Protectorate ships may be bigger, but this fleet looks like more than a match for the Dante."

"First, don't confuse good looks with effectiveness," Loid said. "The Celestrials ships are sleek, slender, beautiful even, but their weapons don't hit any harder than ours. When the force of a large Dreadnaught battle group like the Dante's encounters a Celestrial defense group like this one, there will be no winner. The system will be littered with debris, bodies will float out in the black, and the few who survive on either side will limp home to speak of the horrors of war."

"That's how every large action between the fleets went," Loid continued. "The Protectorate and the Celestrials are on even ground when it comes to war. The discipline of Celestrial training meets the unpredictability of the Earthborn instinct, and death is all that follows."

"So the fleets along the border just mirror each other," Ju-lin added. "Nobody wants a war like that. There's no money in it. When we build up our forces, so do the Skins. If we were to wage complete war, we may take their systems. Hell, we may even defeat them, but the cost would be too high."

"So everyone just floats on either side of the flux points with loaded guns?" I asked.

"Pretty much," Loid answered. The levity was back in his voice. "And so we bribe the Earthborn and tiptoe around the Celestrials and travel between them to turn a profit. Well, I do at least. I'm still not sure what you two do."

"I'm a pilot," Ju-lin's haughtiness had returned.

"Mind the sass," Loid responded.

"Mind the cargo ship," Ju-lin retorted.

Loid pulled up as he realized that he was coming a little close to the hulking hauler that was crawling in front of us. As he pulled up, a planet filled our viewscreen. The oceans were light blue, the single large landmass that was visible was lush and green.

"I love it when grav points are close to civilization," Loid smiled. "Some systems you have to fly about for hours to get to anywhere interesting, but not in Shindar. Boy and girl, I'd like to introduce you to Shindar II, our port of call. Now, if you two will be kind enough to keep your mouths shut for the next fifteen minutes, I will set us down and we can get to work."
Chapter 18.

"Lor'ten!"

I stood in answer to my name, and stepped forward through the crowd of my kinsman. They moved out of the way as I passed. My legs felt numb as they carried me. At last I was there, standing beneath the clan Chieftain.

"Lor'Ten," he spoke in Draugari, his voice was loud and sharp, stabbing at my ears. "You met the enemy in battle. And witnessed many honorable ends. You walked the fires of fate. You stood to tell the tale."

I recalled myself curled, huddled in the remains of the ship, shivering against the cold of space. Alone and defeated. I remained silent.

"You showed true courage and strength. You, and you alone breathe after the battle!"

My lie once again haunted me. I remembered the human fighters, circling the debris searching for their survivors, and then leaving me out in the black. When my clan had found me, I told them that there had been none others to survive. It gave me the honor of victory. It was a lie.

"So rise, Lor'ten," the chief continued. "Rise to your station as you rise in honor. To the survivor, victory!"

"To the survivors, victory!" the clan repeated in unison as they honored me.

Before landing on Shindar II, my memories of cities were all of small communities. I could recall my old village, full of narrow, twisting streets that were built by thousands of footsteps on the soft soil; the paths did not follow a plan or design, they were natural lanes that formed as a result of use as they were walked over and over again. My memories of the Draugari home-ships were of metal and ceramics, stations stitched together from cargo ships and wrecks. Steel walls with paintings of great battles and noble deaths. Those memories—Lor'ten's memories—were shaded, old, dull, and unremarkable.

My clearest memories were of the Downs. The streets were clear and orderly and buzzing with the chaotic hum of business as people and equipment moved about with the bustle of life.

I wasn't prepared for what I saw on Shindar II. I quickly learned that the Celestrials make a different kind of city.

"Dear god," Ju-lin gasped as we stepped out and she surveyed the brightly colored buildings. "Are they color blind?"

"Hush," Loid snapped as he led us through the cargo hold and opened the bay doors. "This is a Celestrial production system. And by that I don't mean supply chain, I mean system, as in star system. The five habitable worlds, all of them terraformed for a specific purpose. One world produces food, another water and biomass, then there is a refinery, another is an assembly world. You get the idea. Shindar II here is the trading hub and machining shop. They gather supplies and make tools."

We stepped into into the light of the distant yellow setting sun.

"No I don't," Ju-lin retorted. "Why do they paint all of the buildings like that? Everything to the east is that wretched burnt orange, those six are blue, then a straight block of green. It's wretched."

"I said keep down the damned sass," Loid said between clenched teeth. "People know me here."

As if to punctuate his remark, a Celestrial stopped at the edge of the landing pad and raised his hand "Eti'katc'kahn!"

Even though I had seen pictures of the Celestrial and heard stories and descriptions for the last several weeks, I was still startled by their appearance. People said they were hairless, but I suppose I didn't fully understand that wasn't limited to their head. They had no eyebrows or eyelashes. Their noses were narrow, and their faces were much more angular than any other human I'd seen. The smoothness of his skin made it look as if his head was plastic. His sunken cheeks and pronounced chin, and short forehead accentuated his large and colorful eyes. As I looked, his eyes drew me in, they were unlike any I had ever seen, blue with streaks of gold. He was clothed to the neck in tight-fitting layers, giving an appearance of modesty and functionality.

"Jan, Eti'katc'kahn," he said again.

"Jan te', Kit'po!" Loid raised his left hand in reply and quickly turned back to us. "I told you, the Celestrials are orderly. They paint every building on the world to color code what the building is for. This district is devoted to industrial fabrication, so every building is yellow."

"You can' be ser-"

Loid flashed Ju-lin a sharp look before turning back to the Celestrial.

As I watched Loid speak with the Celestrial I was unsettled, though for some time, I couldn't figure out why until I realized that neither Loid nor the Celestrial were moving their hands, and facial expressions were minimal. Apparently the Celestrial were not an emotive people. I was glad I wouldn't have to learn to speak their language on my own. The Earthborn speak as much with their hands and faces as they do with their voices, it had made Common easier for me to learn.

After a few minutes Loid once again held up his hand and said a parting phrase.

The Celestrial returned the gesture and turned back on his way.

"Good, that's settled," Loid gestured us in. "Kit over there is going to fix up the damage to the Tons and clean her up while we're out. We should be able to find some rooms to stay the night."

"So we're not staying on the ship?" the idea of sleeping in an alien hotel clearly made Ju lin uneasy.

"The Celestrial only live in their ships when they are in flight. If you are on land, they sleep on land. And if they do it, we do it while we are here."

"Great," Ju-lin muttered.

"See, that was a little less sass!" Loid smiled. "Progress. That's good. Run on back into the ship and get anything you will need, and Eli, stow that Draugari blade back in the ship. I won't question your right to own it or carry it, but the Celestrials may."

Three minutes later we were back on the flight pad. Loid and Ju-lin had packs slung over their shoulders, I was empty handed. Without the knife in my belt, I felt exposed and uneasy. I wondered if that was my own instincts, or Lor'ten's I was feeling.

"Alright, first things first, it's getting late and the market will be shutting down soon. We need to track down the Noonan trader before they close up shop," Loid nodded. "One more thing, walk single file. Ju-lin in the middle. No, no it's not a sexism thing. It's an efficiency thing. To the Celestrial, streets are for travel, not idle conversation. Most walking paths are designed for walking single file."

"And why am I in the middle?" Ju-lin asked. "Afraid someone is going to snatch me?"

"Good lord no," Loid answered. "I'd pity whoever abducts you! No, the locals walk in order of station. I'm the captain, you're the pilot, so you go second, and Eli is, well, Eli. So he goes third."

Being referred to as the pilot was more than enough to satisfy Ju-lin, she followed behind Loid happily. I began to feel offended, but then I realized that I really couldn't argue, I wasn't sure what I was either.

"Watch the first step," Loid noted as we stepped out onto the walking path, I didn't understand why until I got to the edge and saw that the walkway was already moving at a steady pace. In the interest of efficiency, the Celestrials had created moving sidewalks throughout the city to speed pedestrians on their way. It made sense, and probably helped reduce the public's need to take their own hover to get across town.

As we delved into the city, I found that, though busy, it wasn't at all bustling. During the day, the Downs always had a sense of urgency and energy. People were walking down the streets, but they were also standing, talking, telling stories, and moving about. But here on Shindar II, the streets were quiet and orderly. It reminded me of walking down the streets of the Downs that night with Marin to go meet with Lee. It felt like an eternity ago, had that only been a few days?

"Jan, Eti'katc'kahn," a Celestrial woman greeted Loid as we quickly passed.

"Jan'te, Ten'ant," Loid responded without slowing.

"What is all this etch as catch—whatever?" Ju-lin muttered quietly.

"I told you, they know me here," Loid replied under his breath.

"That's Loid in Celestrialese?" Ju-lin replied.

"No, and they don't call it Celestrialese," Loid quickened his pace.

Ju-lin turned and flashed me a questioning look.

I shrugged back.

I found that as we turned down the various walking paths through the city, I became more and more disoriented. The uniform burn-orange buildings in the district made everything look the same. Though Loid seemed to know where he was going, I couldn't be certain that he wasn't taking us in circles. Eventually, we turned another corner and saw what I was certain was the market Alonso had directed us to.

The rest of the buildings we had seen were more or less square, with sharp utilitarian angles and sloping roofs. Some had landing pads for shipping and unloading goods and large steam exhaust ports, but all of them had the look of buildings designed to suit the specific purpose. When looking at them, I could imagine that the exterior walls were built to conform to the interior form of whatever factor of processing equipment was within. Whereas humans tend to build one size fits all buildings, and then adapt their uses to fit within the building, the Celestrials built the building around their purpose.

The Grand Market, however, had a much different aesthetic. The first thing that I noticed was that there were no walls, it was a large open-aired area covered by a sweeping sculpted roof that reminded me of rolling hills. As I swept my eyes across the scene I couldn't find any supports holding the roof up, I figured it must be some sort of hover technology.

We stepped off of the moving sidewalk and paused. The stalls below were buzzing with activity as traders and vendors moved from stall to stall. Though most of the faces I saw were Celestrial, smooth and hairless, there were a few rough-looking humanoids, some were short and squat with square shoulders, another had a thick V of slick and styled hair covering his brow and reaching down to the tip of his nose where it was tied into three braids that dangled around his chin. He definitely wasn't Earthborn. Probably Lasterian or some mix of Lasterian. After the calm, orderly streets, the chaotic market seemed out of place.

"For all things a place and a purpose," Loid said.

Roused from my thoughts, I glanced over to see that Ju-lin was also puzzling over the scene.

"The Celestrials are organized," he continued. "That doesn't mean they are up-tight. You will find that streets are for travel, markets are for trading, and, later on, you will see that taverns are very much for drinking."

Loid rubbed his hands together happily in anticipation.

"There have to be three hundred stalls down there," Ju-lin said. "How are we going to find whoever it is we're looking for?"

"Eti'katc'kahn?" the word came from a small, high voice behind us. I turned to see someone wearing a brown robe. I saw a flash of pale, white skin and red eyes under the hood. I recalled what Ju-lin had said about the Noonan, they were a humanoid race that had been discovered by the Collective nearly two hundred years earlier. Their homeworld orbited a dying brown-dwarf star, and they had evolved nearly completely underground.

"I am Eti'katc'kahn," Loid stepped toward the cloaked figure.

"I hear you have some goods to sell? Yes?" The small voice said in Common with a thick, guttural accent.

"Word travels fast apparently," Ju-lin whispered.

"It does when you want it to," Loid quickly replied

I remembered his conversation with Kit, the Celestrial Loid had spoken to at the landing pad.

"I assume you have somewhere we can conduct our business quietly?" Loid asked as he gave a curt bow.

"Yes, oh of course yes," the hooded figure responded, nodding to us as it turned. "Your servants as well, come along. No need to linger."

"Servants?" Ju-lin seethed quietly as we fell in behind as Loid followed.

"Actually, I told my friend back on the landing pad you two were my slaves, something got lost in the translation I suppose," Loid answered.

I couldn't help but laugh, and was rewarded with Ju-lin's elbow violently being thrust into my side.

"We're not going into the market," I noticed. "Where is he taking us?"

"She is taking us to the other market," Loid answered.

"Oh boy," Ju-lin replied.

"No, not quite like what you're thinking, no shadowy back alleys. Crime is different here in the Empire. It's just another kind of business, and like with all things, everything has its place. Now if you two will shut your damned traps and play your part, I have weapons to sell and information to barter for."

As we approached, Loid explained that the other market was an area that the locals referred to simply as the Hub; and he was right, it wasn't dingy or seedy. If anything, it was more luxurious, designed to cater to a different type of client than the common market traders.

The Hub was built beneath the Great Market, what it lacked in overall size it made up for in style. The grey ceiling support pillars were made of some kind of dark blue smooth stone or polished ceramic, the floor was a matte grey. The structure of the halls flowed with a natural direction, like a river or a forest path, and was full of small well-lit private alcoves and comfortable couches. Instead of booths, there were storefronts built into the wall. Some had windows with equipment on display, body armor, weapons, various computer components, though most of them had only small signs on the door written in a foreign language..

As we followed our cloaked Noonan, I noticed that the Celestrials and other scattered aliens in the Hub were much less formal than those I had seen on the streets. I saw small groups speaking in corners. In front of one shop front, a wrinkled Celestrial and old grey-bearded human who looked like he could have been Earthborn were sitting taking turns puffing on some kind of curled pipe. The place had an air of uniform suspicion. Everyone's eyes darted side to side warily. You knew you were watched, but few of the eyes seemed to be prying. This was a place where beings would let you go about your own business as long as you let them go about theirs.

"I'm sure glad they didn't make all of this yellow too," Ju-lin said as she dropped back to walk with me.

"Are there places like this back on the worlds in the Protectorate?" I asked.

"Yes," Ju-lin replied nodding to her left. "But they tend to be illegal, so not nearly as nice as this. That guy there is selling stims, out of a storefront. That's crazy. Over there, those rifles in the back? Those are acidic micro-railguns, they shoot a few hundred tiny, and I mean tiny, half a millimeter long glass containers per second. Each one holds a tiny bit of acid. The containers burst on impact and the acid will eat right through any armor you have and then continue to chew right on through the skin."

"That sounds horrible," I said, shuttering.

"That sounds illegal," Ju-lin retorted. "You'd have to go out beyond the Protectorate to somewhere like Smuggler's Run to find something like that sold out in the open."

Our guide stopped in front of one of the windowless store fronts and gestured us inside.

Loid bowed again to the Noonan before giving us a warning glance, and entering the store.

Ju-lin, finally took a cue from Loid's lead. She and I each took our bows in turn and followed him into the shop.

The interior was in sharp contrast to the exterior. While the Hub had the smooth and elegant style that I was beginning to expect from the Celestrials, the interior of the shop was not. I would soon learn that if the Celestrials are the perfectionists of the universe, the Noonan are the improvisationalists. One of the wall panels had been pulled up from the floor and bent forward to act as a display table with all sorts of alien gadgets, the chairs were fashioned from buckets, and the desk in the center of the room looked like it was made from the hood of a land skiff.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome," a figure slightly taller than myself stood up behind the desk and gave three brief bows. Though I had read that the Noonan were albinos with very pale skin, white hair, and reddish eyes, I wasn't ready for the truth of it. The figure in front of us had thin arms and legs with thin joints a square chin, sunken eyes, and thin golden hair. Beneath the loosely fitting robe and shadowed hood, I couldn't spot any of the tell-tale signs that would indicate their gender. I glanced sidelong at Ju-lin, she met my questioning gaze with a brief shrug.

"Please, please, please, sit down." The Noonan waved us forward with skeletal fingers.

The three of us returned hurried and inelegant bows, and then pulled up the closest available bucket-stools to sit opposite side of the desk.

"They call you Eti'katc'kahn," the Noonan nodded solemnly and leveled it's eyes at Loid. "The Skins do not lend their own language lightly. It's quite an honor to hold."

"Some misunderstandings work out better than others," Loid said sharply.

"I would bet that's an interesting story to hear, yes it is," the Noonan responded.

"There isn't much to tell, and it's far too late in the day, and far too early in the evening to tell them."

The Noonan gave a sharp bark-like sound that I assumed was a laugh.

"The Skins say you keep your business almost as well as you keep your drink." The Noonnan pulled two cups from the drawer of its desk, filled them up with two glugs of a thick, almost syrupy black liquid.

Loid took one of the glasses and held it up.

"To profit, to prosperity, to happiness, to drink!" the Noonan clinked Loid's glass and they both drank.

I saw Loid wince as he took his drink as he choked it down, I could only imagine what was in it.

"To profit," Loid croaked out as he tried to clear his throat.

The Noonan clicked its long fingernails against the desk. I couldn't tell if it did so out of annoyance or approval.

"I am Joof," the Noonan said, taking Loid's glass from him and nodding toward the hooded Noonan who had guided us from the market. "Tolo tells me that you have weapons to sell."

"Yes ma'am," Loid answered, I was curious if he added the 'ma'am' for mine and Ju-lin's benefit, but I was thankful for the clarification. "But I also look to buy, or hopefully, trade."

"Ah! A real deal, now that's more fun," Joof replied. "What is it I can interest you in? Cargo scanners? I have a boarding clamp modification system that is nearly silent, perfect for those times when you need discretion."

"Actually I'm looking for something a bit more particular, a messenger drone," Loid answered.

"New messenger drones?" Joof scoffed. "You should be looking upstairs in the market, we down here in the Hub don't trouble with such common trifles."

"I didn't say I was looking for a new drone," Loid answered. "I'm looking for a specific drone, one that was intercepted by some pirates, and one which you purchased sometime within the last week, and promptly resold."

"There it is," Joof's eyes twinkled. "Eti'katc'kahn, the Skins are right to say you are half mad. Though I would say more than half if you think that you can get me to give you information on my clients. That is, if I had seen or sold any messenger drones, and I honestly do not recall anything of the sort."

"I think you have," Loid answered. "The man who sent me to you isn't very well loved by the Celestrials. He wouldn't go to them, he'd go to you."

"Eti'katc'kahn, there are more outlanders on this world than just me," the Noonan responded sharply. "He could have gone to Kraven the Olsterian, or perhaps the Earthborn fellow they call Titters, he's a hacker who works out of the west end, I hear he dabbles in all sorts of work."

"Kraven moved to Nexus, and Titters was air-locked six months back because of some bad debt."

"Oh my, oh my," Joof held up her hands, palm up. "See I don't even know who you would go to. After all, you are Eti'katc'kahn, and I'm just poor Joof."

"Indeed," Loid said icily. "So you no memory of the drone?"

"No," Joof responded. "Dearly no, Tolo, have you heard anything?"

The younger Noonan standing in the corner made a low croaking sound.

"Yes, see, I think you may have come to the wrong place Eti'katc'kahn," Joof continued. "I'm sorry to disappoint. Now to the matter of the goods you have to sell, did I hear correctly that you have Draugari hardware? Unexploded and unharmed? That is a rare find indeed. Are they stable? Dare I ask how you came by such treasures?"

"As your business is your own, so is mine," Loid's face was expressionless.

"Yes, well," Joof responded quickly. "What is your price?"

Loid paused and tapped his finger on the desk, mimicking Joof.

"Come to think of it, today I am trading first, then selling," he said at last. "The drone. You're certain you haven't seen one? If you happen to recall anything, or even know of who may have sold or purchased it, then I may be more inclined to deal."

"I do not deal in names, I deal in hardware," Joof returned, rising back to her feet. "And I have no information to trade. If that is what you're after, I think it is time for you to leave."

"Another day then," Loid gave a short bow and stood up. "Can you recommend any good lodging nearby?"

Joof paused a moment, and tapping the side of her chin with a finger, "Karsh's is the closest, but Talash Hall is much nicer and more private, A better value for certain."

"Talash Hall it is," Loid gave another brief bow.

"Safe journeys to you," Joof returned the bow.

"Come along," Loid snapped his fingers at his to follow him, and turned and left.
Chapter 19.

The bio-reactive armor was a sign of honor. I slipped the armor plates on over my shins, arms, legs, and chest. The clasps caught, automatically retracting and fitting themselves to my form. The feeling was strange, foreign. For a moment I missed my clothes and simple armor. I looked over in the corner where I had tossed them aside. They were the markings of my old life, nothing but a pile of rags in the dark.

I tried to stand slowly, but I found the suit had a mind of its own. My legs straightened too swiftly, and I toppled face-first onto the steel floor.

The bio-reactive suit did its work. My smallest movements were amplified in strength. Slowly, I moved again. I put my arms down, and, this time, with control and patience, I rose to my feet. Once stable, I began to walk. Whatever motions my muscles began, the suit finished with doubled force.

After several minutes of stepping, lunging, and jumping in my quarters, I felt more confident. At last, I came to look at myself in the reflector. My armor made me look fearsome. Strong.

I quieted my mind and felt the rage within and threw my fist with all my strength. The suit, fed on my energy and enhanced my rage. The bulkhead rang as I my fist struck steel. I stepped back, rubbing my knuckles and looked back at the dented steel plate.

Ju-lin and I followed Loid out of Joof's shop in silence, walking at a brisk pace. We were about twenty paces away when Ju-lin grabbed Loid's arm and pulled him aside.

"What the hell was all of that?" She demanded. "Why did we leave? She had to have known those two were dead, she was testing you. We all know she had the drone, or at least knew who did. I've been around enough Noonan to know that she was opening negotiations, not shutting us down. If you would have bartered, she would have given us everything we needed."

"Hands off," Loid pushed her hands away, speaking in low tones. "You're servants, remember?"

"I thought it was slaves?" Ju-lin quieted her voice a little, but was still seething. "What we are is your clients. Even Eli was surprised you gave up that easy."

I couldn't disagree. We both looked at Loid, waiting for an explaination.

"Look," Loid grabbed both of our shoulders and pulled us in closer. "Those Celestrial fighters that the Draugari destroyed at the colony should have been back a few days ago, right? So whoever sent them is probably getting anxious, and when the Celestrials get anxious, they cover their tracks. Remember, they are always methodical, especially when they are scared. I'd bet my ship that they are watching Joof's shop trying to find out where she got the drone and if she's been in contact with anyone who may know what happened to their pilots."

"Then why did we go here?" I asked. "I don't see what we can gain. Now they may know that we are looking for it. If they were willing to bomb a colony, won't they just hunt us down and kill us?"

"Not only that," Ju-lin added. "If they were watching her shop, they probably have it bugged. They will know where we are planning to stay."

"Now you're getting it," Loid answered. "Actually, I would be surprised if Joof hadn't sent out a wave and sold us out already. They would offer more for us than we could have paid for the information, and she knew it."

"First those pirates at the gas giant, now this, do you make a habit of walking into obvious traps?" Ju-lin asked. "They probably have assasins around the corner waiting for us right now."

"We're not going to stay at where she suggested," I broke in. "That will throw them off."

"No, we are going to go exactly where she suggested," Loid answered.

"What good does it do if we go exactly where they expect us to be?" I asked, irritated.

"Maybe it gives Loid a chance to sell us out?" Ju-lin asked.

"Sell you out?" Loid answered. "To whom? For what? You're some kids from a backwater colony. I don't mean to sound cold here, but I don't see why the Celestrials would want to bother with you two at all. You don't have anything of value."

"We saw what they came for before the ships destroyed the cave!" Ju-lin had said it loudly, too loudly. A pair of Celestrials down the passageway moved their heads, they were watching us.

Her face flushed red.

"Quiet!" Loid snapped. "Dammit, not another word. You saw something, you don't tell me about, and then decide to scream it so that half of the Hub can hear you? You may have some crazed death-wish, but don't drag me into it."

"I'm sorry," she stammered, more to me than to Loid.

"Not another word," Loid said flatly. "Nobody will kill us, especially not now that everyone knows you might have something of value to them. They'll prefer to slowly torture you until they find out everything you know. So shut up and follow me. I know what I'm doing, unlike you two."

After Ju-lin's outburst, we went to Talash Hall as Joof had suggested. Loid reserved a two-bedroom suite, one for him, one for Ju-lin, and a mat on the floor of the main room for me.

When we were shown to our room, he immediately complained about its smell, demanding another. I couldn't smell anything odd, and from her sideways glance, I don't think Ju-lin did either, but this time we both held our tongues and followed Loid's lead.

The concierge, a small, young looking Celestrial with flower tattoos on the back of his hairless head, couldn't identify or locate the smell, but then, that's normal enough. One trick of evolution is that what one human sub-species finds putrid the next species may find delicious. We were shown to a second room without hesitation, Loid pronounced the second room to be adequate.

"There, they probably didn't have a chance to bug this room yet," Loid turned to us as the door shut. He made a sweep of the room, running his fingers along the windows, looking under the low-mounted desk, and moving around the cushions that were arranged on the floor that I could only assume were the Celestrial versions' of chairs.

Once he was finished, Loid turned to us, his arms folded across his chest expectantly.

"What? Ju-lin asked defensively.

"Time to talk: what did you find?"

"There was a cave," I began.

"Eli," Ju-lin cut me off.

I hesitated.

"Look, you've put me in the middle of this mess," Loid said. "When it was just a simple run to track who bought a stolen drone, that was one thing. But ever since we left your little world, things have been making my life more and more complicated."

"If you're so afraid, why did we come here?" Ju-lin's sass came completely untied now that we were behind closed doors.

"I think we were followed," I interjected. "There was an old man who looked Earthborn with a Celestrial, two that had been smoking down in the Hub, they left after we did. I thought I saw them behind us a few times on our way here, and then I swear we passed the human in the street."

"How can you tell one Celestrial from another?" Ju-lin turned to me hotly. "They all look the same to me."

"Their eyes," I said. "The patterns are different."

"Their eyes have patterns?" Ju-lin asked, surprised.

"Eli's right," Loid said, ignoring the tangent. "We were followed, by those two for sure, and I saw two or three other faces once too often. Ju-lin, you're clever, so think it through. Let's assume that Joof was either bugged, or sold us out for some coin. Most likely both. If we didn't come here, then whoever is following us would be suspicious. If they are suspicious, they will be more careful, and we will never be able to figure out who they are. Though crime is different here, there are still laws. Intercepting and selling stolen coms drones is something that the Celestrial military would not be happy about. They are trying to build peace with the Earthborn, the last thing they want is a scandal."

"Okay, I give you that." She uneasily.

"Back in the Hub I saw some Celestrials react when Ju-lin mentioned the cave," I said. "Won't they come looking for her? Won't they want to know what we know?"

"Yes, and that's a problem," Loid answered. "But first, tell me what the hell did you see back in that cave?"

"Writing," I answered. "Well, we think it was writing, ancient shapes drawn on the walls. We couldn't read it."

"Writing?" Loid scratched his chin. "And they destroyed it?"

"Yes," Ju-lin answered. "They flooded the cave with plasma."

"Okay," Loid dropped himself down onto one of the cushions on the floor. "So you saw some ancient writing on the walls of a terraformed world. That's interesting. What about the messenger drone?"

"The Governor of the colony that found the cave sent it out to notify their corporate leadership that they had found something," Ju-lin said.

"Was it just a message, or did it have images?" Loid asked.

"The one we saw just had a message," Ju-lin answered. "My dad intercepted the message when it was uploaded to the orbital coms relay, no images. Just a description."

"So then, Alonso intercepts it, sells it to Joof. Joof sells it to some Celestrials, and then the Celestrials send some ships to bomb the colony and destroy the cave," Loid said as he paced back and forth. "That all makes sense, except the part where it doesn't make a damn bit of sense at all."

"Why not?" I asked.

"For starters, a coms drone would take time to decrypt. The Celestrials would have had to scramble the fighters immediately after breaking into it to make the time frame we're talking about here." Loid answered. "No preparation, no planning, they would have had to just send those fighters armed and ready to burn the site out."

"That's not in their character," I said tentatively, following his line of reasoning.

"Damned right it's not," Loid said. "An Earthborn will respond quickly for passion. A Noonan will jump on a quick profit. The Draugari will move decisively for the sake of tradition and honor. But the only time a Celestrial responds that quickly is out of self-defense."

"How could some ancient symbols be a threat to the Celestrials?" I knew that my question would go unanswered. As my words hung in the air I pulled up a cushion and sat down. Loid was laying on his back, seemingly relaxed. Ju-lin paced the room.

"The writing isn't the threat," she said. "It can't be. Not on its own. It's whatever MineWorks is after on the world. Maybe it wasn't the cave, maybe whatever it is, it's still on the planet."

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"Why else would they be monitoring Joof?" she asked. "Why would anyone be following us? If they destroyed what they were after in the cave, they wouldn't bother with trailing us. There is something else to it. Maybe it has nothing to do with the writing at all."

"I think it still has something to do with the writing," Loid said. "It means something to the Celestrials. But you're right about the rest. They didn't attack just to destroy the cave. If that was the case they wouldn't have bothered to bomb the colony. Maybe it was to scan the area, maybe it was to frighten off the colonists. Either way, Gramps was right to send you two out looking. The colony is still in serious danger."

"We still don't know how to figure out who sent the ships," Ju-lin said.

"Ah, but we don't need to," Loid jumped to his feet. For such a squat man, I was surprised by his agility. "All we need to find out now is who is paying to have us tracked."

"And that's easier?" I asked.

"Remember I told you that, to the Celestrials, crime is just another business?" Loid stretched. "The thing about business is that it's regulated."

"Regulated? Are you telling me there is some kind of registry for shady lurkers and spies?" Ju-lin was skeptical.

"Not quite, it's nothing so bureaucratic." Loid answered as he walked toward the door. "But there is a place for everything, even for shady business. And besides, I'm hungry. Come on Eli, you're coming with me. Sorry Twiggy, you will have to order room service. Just be sure not to order off the second half of the menu, the Celestrials sometimes like it when their food is still struggling."

"You're not going anywhere without me!" She barked.

"The Celestrials are not a welcoming society, and they really don't allow Earthborn women your age into the Par'eth." Loid answered.

"Par'eth?" Ju-lin looked disgusted. "You're going to a Celestrian whore house?"

"The Par'eth is nothing so crude as that," Loid answered, nodding to me. "And the translation isn't whore house, it's 'pleasure house.' It's a place for food, drink-"

"—and all sorts of disgusting interspec—"

"Look Twiggy," Loid cut off Ju-lin before she could finish. "It's also the place you go on Shindar II when you want to hire some local color to do your dirty work for you. I have a few friends there, and a cargo hold full of Kevarian ale. Between the two we should be able to pump some of the locals for information."

"Oh disgusting," Ju-lin rolled her eyes at Loid's inflection on the word pumped. "I want none of that."

"Good, it's settled then. I'd best go freshen up!" Loid said as he turned to go into one of the bedrooms.

"I don't like the idea of leaving you alone," I turned to Ju-lin.

"Sweet of you," she said, patting the weapon on her belt. "Me and my plasma torch will be fine."

She looked at me like she was going to say something else, but hesitated.

Once we heard Loid had the water running she leaned forward quietly, "You still have the memory card, right?"

"Yeah," I answered. "I stashed it back on the ship."

"Good, let's keep it quiet," she said. "And be careful."

Her tone was kind, almost affectionate. All I could manage was to smile back at her stupidly.

"Alright Eli!" Loid came bounding into the room. His hair was wet down and slicked back. "Time for some Par'eth!"
Chapter 20.

The four of us stood in the dim light as the battle raged around us. Our ship shook as our guns fired. Soon, I said quietly to myself. Soon.

I looked across to Kal, Jen'tak and Tren. Kal was checking his weapons again, Jen'tak was tightening his armor, and Tren was just standing there, holding the handle on the bulkhead as we waited.

There was a howl of triumph from the gunners, and the message went out over the shipboard comms. The ship had been disabled, we were going in to board. Kal, Jen'tak and Tren looked to me, waiting for my signal. They treated me with the deference that I used to hold for my elders. I was no longer their equal. The honor of the last battle was mine.

I felt the soft impact of the boarding clamp and turned to the hatch. I had survived my last battle through luck and cowardice. And the failure of my survival had been commended as victory. I felt as if I were buried beneath the shame of it. But today, I would redeem myself. Today I would lead a boarding party and reclaim my honor.

I opened the hatch, and leapt down into the enemy ship, knife in hand.

It was well into evening when we left the hotel and made our way across the city. As the sun was setting, the city's harsh yellows melded with the oranges and greens in the sky, creating a mellow and serene skyline. The surface of the moving walkways were covered with some sort of solar-luminescent paint. They glowed a soft shade of blue in the darkness like streams or veins. The overall effect was incredibly beautiful.

I had no idea of what to expect from the Par'eth. The Celestrials were so aloof that it was hard to imagine what a pleasure house would be like. It wasn't a concept that I recalled reading about on the Slate, nor could I remember any sort of thing in my memories And between Loid's enthusiasm and Ju-lin's disgust, I became increasingly concerned that it wouldn't be the sort of place that I would enjoy.

"Here we are," Loid said as we neared a large domed building. "The local Par'eth. Now, I would warn you about what you will find in here, but that would ruin the fun."

Loid grinned at me, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

"Can you at least tell me what we are looking for?" I asked.

"Not what, who," he replied. "I have a history with the Matron of this particular establishment. She owes me some favors."

"A Matron?" I asked. "Is she Celestrial?"

"Of course. She owns and operates the Par'eth, but when I first met her she operated a trading outpost out on the verge near Collective space."

"How can she help us?" I asked.

"The Celestrials treat a Par'eth like a kind of sanctuary," Loid answered. "Think of it as neutral ground. Everyone has to leave their weapons at the door and is scanned as they come in. Rival shipping cartels, fringe groups, and all manner of unseemly folk use it to buy and sell goods and services. If we can find anything anywhere, it will be here."

With that, Loid stepped forward to the door and pushed it open. Four well-armed Celestrial guards were standing just inside a small, well-lit entryway. There was a desk to the left, and the walls were lined with small cubbyholes with steel doors. I presumed they were for checking weapons.

"Shesuren, Eti'katc'kahn," one of the Celestrials said reverently before switching to Common. "Welcome, it's been awhile since we've seen you out this way old friend."

"It's been too long," Loid replied. He took his pistols from his belt and handed them to one of the guards who turned and locked it in a steel storage cubby on the wall. "Far too long for me. I have a shipment of Kevarian Ale back on my ship. Are you in the market?"

"We're always in the market for Kevarian." The guard seemed pleased. "The usual price?"

"That's what I was hoping," Loid answered. "I had the landing crew unload it at the docks, it should be there for you to pick up at docking pad CX-23."

"Such a pleasant surprise," the guard answered as he pulled a tablet from his belt. "We will open a tab for you and your friend."

"Please," Loid said. "How is the Matron this evening?"

"She is well, I will notify her that you are here, I'm sure she will be pleased to see you."

"We'd like that," Loid smiled. "Now, if you will permit?"

"Your friend," the Celestrial paused. "You vouch for him?"

"Of course," Loid said. "There been trouble lately?"

The guard paused, looking at me from head to toe.

"No more than usual. Go ahead then. Enjoy." The guard motioned for the others to step aside, allowing us to enter.

We passed through a narrow doorway into another short hallway. There was a slight humming sound coming from the walls.

"Scanners," Loid commented. "If they detect any weapons they seal the doors, trapping you inside."

"Efficient," I said.

"Very," Loid turned and flashed a smile. "Now, shall we?"

When he pushed open the next door the small scanning room was immediately flooded with music and lights.

Stepping into the Par'eth was like stepping into another world. Which, I found out, was precisely the intent. A purple-tinged sky was projected on the dome above us with multiple overlays, simulating six low-orbiting moons. I wasn't sure if the sky was modeled after a real world, or if it was an artistic creation. Either way, the effect was stunning.

In the center of the dome was a circular bar where patrons of all races were standing around, drinking and chatting openly. A stream flowed around the bar, creating a self-contained circle that acted as a boundary. From the bar, patrons could cross one of a dozen decorative bridges and find private tables surrounded by lush foliage. Some tables were open to the air above, while others were protected by smaller cloudy domes that offered the diners more privacy. A number of uniformed Celestrial guards were positioned throughout the area, though if they were armed, I couldn't see any weapons.

Beyond the bar on the far side of the dome was a dimly lit , and more secluded area. There were privacy domes here as well, but instead of tables, I saw round beds. As I watched, I saw a tall Celestrial male walk up to one of the beds. He was greeted by a slighter Celestrial wearing a flowing robe. Something exchanged hands, and then they stepped inside as the dome swept to a close.

"Helluva place," Loid commented as he patted me on the back. "Come on, let's get up to the bar. Hopefully the Matron will have time for us soon. In the meantime, let's see what we can find out from the locals. Stay close."

Loid and I walked down the main path that led from the entrance to the bar. I saw that a number of the patrons were wearing various uniforms. Off duty workers I guessed. I scanned each as we walked by, looking for four-pointed silver stars. I didn't see any.

Loid nodded to the bartender and spoke rapidly. The bartender was a willowy Celestrial female with a jeweled piercing in her nose and starbursts tattooed on her temples. I was surprised to see that she had a shapely form similar to Earthborn women. In a moment she turned around and handed us two tall glasses.

Loid said something back to her and smiled. I lifted my glass and took a tentative sip. The first taste was bitter and with a floral air to it, as it slid to the back of my tongue the aftertaste was sweet and fruity.

"That's not bad," I said.

"Nope, not at all," Loid said. "Don't hit it too hard though, three of those and you will be crawling home."

"Loid Burns," a voice boomed behind us.

Loid's hand instinctively went to his empty holster at the sound of his name. As we turned, I saw the largest human being I had ever seen. He had deep brown skin and light brown eyes. His head was shaved and his stubbled jaw line was sharp and forehead pronounced. Between his stubble, eyebrows, and lashes I was certain he wasn't a Celestrial. He was possibly even Earthborn. He was wearing a tight-fitting jacket with light-green luminescent stripes down each sleeve, and a metallic band across his forehead resting on the tops of his ears. Given his size, I was pretty certain he could rip me limb from limb if he felt like it.

"That is you, you jackal!" The voice boomed.

"Cway!" Loid's face lit up when he saw the giant. "You're the last face I expected to see way out here, did the circuit finally kick you out?"

"Kick me out?! Bah, the circuit would be nothing without me," the man smiled, fine lines curled up from the corner of his mouth. "Naw, I just met with some Celestrial engineers who came up with some new thruster tech. They want me to help endorse it back in the Protectorate and Collective. They are kitting out my ship now so I can give them a whirl."

"Ah, a sellout then!" Loid smiled as he turned to me, it was the most relaxed I'd seen him since we left Tons. "Eli, this hulking piece of humanity is Cwaylyn Jones, one of the fastest racers in all the human systems."

"He misspeaks, I'm the fastest racer in the human systems," Cwaylyn responded. "I have a hangar full of gold medals to prove it. Just for that, Loid gets to buy me a drink."

"Whatever you want," Loid nodded to the bartender. "I have a tab started."

"I bet you do," Cwaylyn answered with a booming laugh. "The Matron still comping all of your drinks?"

"We have an arrangement," Loid answered with a smile.

"Yeah, I bet you do," Cwaylyn laughed harder.

"Eti'katc'kahn!" A short Celestrial separated from the crowd and clasped Loid on the shoulder.

Loid greeted the newcomer and began speaking rapidly.

"Eti'katc'kahn," Cwaylyn turned to me, laughing. "Goofiest damn name I've ever heard. If the Skin-er, Celestrials ever decide to honor me I hope that they don't call me something that stupid. But then again, the reason they even decided to give him a name in the first place is ridiculous enough, am I right?"

"Eti'katc-what does it mean?" I asked.

Cwaylyn raised one of his bushy eyebrows, "You don't speak Celestrialese? And Loid hasn't hooked you up with a ComBand?"

"A what?" I asked.

"ComBand," Cwaylyn tapped the silver band across his forehead and laughed. "Or maybe he is trying to keep things from you, who knows. Here, just a second, bartender!"

He leaned across the bar and spoke to the bartender and tapped on his ComBand. She nodded, and a moment later pulled one from under the counter and handed it to him.

"Here you go," Cwaylyn said as he glanced back at Loid who was still engaged in close conversation with the Celestrial. "Hold still. I put it on his tab, the Matron never charges him anyway."

Cwaylyn took the half-circle band and pushed it against my forehead. It fit tightly around my head, spanning from the top of each ear. After sliding it snugly over my forehead, Cwaylyn smiled once more and tapped the side. I felt it warm up slightly as it turned on.

"Now, Eti'katc'kahn," he said.

As he spoke the ComBand came to life, there was a slight flash of light, and the words "Man with stone-crushing breasts" floated above Cwaylyn head.

I laughed.

"It's a translation matrix that uses the same basic holographic projection technology as a heads-up display in a cockpit," Cwaylyn explained. "If you focus your eyes on someone the sensors will tag them and begin translating what they say. It's Celestrial tech, pretty clever."

I moved my head from side to side and saw that the words "man with the stone-crushing breasts" stayed fixed in their position above Cwaylyn's head as they slowly began to fade.

"How did he get that name?" I asked, still laughing.

"I was back years ago," Cwaylyn responded. "Before I got into the pro racing circuit Burns and I used to team up from time to time. We had a few scams and some good times. My favorite was taking a ship, rigging it up for speed, and then loading in some cargo to give it a false positive of illegal goods on a cargo scan. It's pretty easy to do actually, most customs and flux point patrols focus on trying to make sure that their sensors don't miss any illegal goods. They are so eager to detect something illegal, that it ain't that hard to spoof their sensors to make them think I have a cargo hold full of weapons-grade uranium when it's really industrial cotton swabs. Anyhow, I would run the blockade and lead the local fuzz on a chase, meanwhile Loid would slide right in behind me with the Tons loaded down with illegal plasma rifles and stims behind cargo shielding and nobody would give him a second glance."

"Sounds effective," I took another drink.

"Piles of coin my friend, piles of coin. Anyhow, we'd delivered a bunch of supplies for a Celestrial asteroid mining facility," Cwaylyn continued. "We were drinking our wages when an alarm went out across the station that there had been a cave-in on the far side of the asteroid, and that a crew of a few dozen workers were trapped, stuck in their environmental suits and running out of air."

He paused to order another drink, and then continued.

"Well, Loid saw that the young and shapley Celestrial woman who was running the operation, the one that's now the Matron of this joint, was worried, and, well, you know Loid. That was all it took. He fired up Tons-o-Fun and went around the asteroid. Nobody is quite sure what he intended to do, but he was drunk enough that I was surprised he made it out of the docking bay. Well, anyway, he went in for a closer look and forgot to ease off the throttle and actually rammed his hull right into the rock, getting the Tons half stuck in the damned asteroid."

I laughed, harder than I had meant to. The drink was potent.

"By luck or by fate, he had managed to punch a hole right in to where the miners were trapped without collapsing the whole thing. They thought it was another cave in, and they were all huddled waiting for death when the Ton's bow came crashing into the cavern. All those poor saps saw when they turned on their flashlights was the nekid woman painted on Ton's bow!"

"Oh lord," Loid cut back into our conversation. "Not this again."

"See," Cwaylyn continued. "Since the miners all had their environmental suits on, they were alright. Though in another hour they would have been out of air, Loid managed to kick in the reverse thrusters to pull the Tons out and save the miners, completely by accident, and it all somehow made him famous among the Celestrials."

"It was not an accident," Loid answered flatly. "I scanned their location and was going in to save them."

"Oh what a bucket of centi-hound piss," Cwaylyn roared. "With the lead content in that rock your scanners couldn't penetrate shit! So there you have it, the legend of Loid Burns, the man behind the stone-crushing breasts! The great Eti'katc'kahn!"

As I laughed, I saw Loid's eyes shift from left to right. Several heads turned toward us at the sound of his name.

"Cway," Loid took the big man by the arm. "A bit more discretion."

"Or what little man?" Cwaylyn laughed stepped forward, chest bumping Loid back into the short, stout frame of a grumbling humanoid.

Loid said a quick apology, and looked over to me, "How many did he have?"

"Just two that I saw, but I think he's been here a while," I answered.

"Oh a bit, yes a bit," Cwaylyn laughed for no apparent reason. "Don't look so sour there Loidy! Loidy, heh, Loidy sounds like lady."

More faces turned to look in our direction.

"We need to shut him up," Loid pulled me close. "The man I was just talking to is an old friend. He says that there is a hit out on Ju-lin. They have a picture, detailed description, place of birth, everything. There is a contract is out for her."

"A hit? Like to kill her?" I stumbled. "Who? How?"

Fear began to creep into my chest, constricting my breathing.

"Oh, what, plotting a scam without me eh?" Cwaylyn leaned into our conversation and whispered loudly. "Don't leave me out! I'm in! I'm in! What are we doing?"

Loid rolled his eyes and handed Cwaylyn his half-finished drink. Cwaylyn took it, and with a drink in both hands, was quiet again.

"From what it sounds like, they have rough descriptions of us," Loid said quickly. "I'm sure as hell glad that Ju-lin stayed back at the room, we would have never made it out of here if we'd brought her."

"MineWorks," I said. "It must be MineWorks. They would have full records on Ju-lin."

"But not you?" Loid asked. "The thought crossed my mind, but you were a colonist too, they would have full records on you as well."

I was silent a moment.

"What are you hiding now?" Loid hissed, incensed that we had kept yet another secret. "I'm really tired of this 'don't tell Loid until someone is about to start shooting at us' thing."

As he said it, there was a high pitched squeal behind me followed by a flash of light just over my left shoulder. I flinched and looked up to see a smoking hole in the pagoda behind Loid, the blast had narrowly missed his head.

Cwaylyn dove over both of us, pulling us to the ground as a second shot sizzled through the air where Loid's head had been.

"Are you kidding me right now?" Loid yelled as he pulled himself back to his feet.

Cwaylyn turned on all fours, and threw himself in the direction of the shooter. There was a crushing hit and another high pitched squeal.

"I got you, ya villain!" Cwaylyn howled as the crowd closed in around him.

"You okay?" Loid offered a hand to pull me to my feet.

"Yeah," I said. "What was that?"

"I got him!" Cwaylyn got back to his feet, lifting a wiggling and screaming sack in his left hand. A makeshift laser pistol was in his right hand, he snapped it in two.

"Got her you mean?" Loid said, stepping forward as he straightened his jacket

In the dim light of the bar I looked up and saw the familiar face of the young Noonan, Tolo, who had led us to Joof's shop.

The crowd stepped back as the security staff closed in.

"Murderers!" I read the scrolling words above her head as she squealed. "You killed my Joof! Right there in her shop!"

"Killed your Joof?" Cwaylyn shook her vigorously. "What the hell is a Joof?"

Loid and I exchanged quick glances.

"Joof's dead?" Loid asked in surprise, his face was turning white.

"You killed her!" Tolo screeched and pointed to Loid as she dangled from Cwaylyn's grip. "Snuck back in because she wouldn't tell you what you wanted!"

The crowd stepped back further as four security guards closed in.

"We didn't kill anyone," I answered.

"When did she die?" Loid asked.

"Within an hour after you left," Tolo was convulsing now in some kind of fit. "I left to get dinner and you came back, she was, oh! You killed my Joof."

"Oh that's not good," Loid muttered.

"Now listen little mole-person," Cwaylyn said, swung Tolo around to face him. "My buddy Eti'katc'kahn didn't kill nobody, well, not today at least. At least if he says he didn't do it, he didn't do it." Cwaylyn swayed a little as he held the Noonan dangling above the floor. "Now that you mention it, I'm not certain myself. Loidy did you kill a Joof?"

"Remind me to find a new drinking buddy," Loid sighed.

"Mr. Jones," one of the uniformed guards said in flawless common. "Please set the Noonan down."

"Like hell," Tolo squealed again as Cwaylyn shook her vigorously. "This thing tried to shoot my friend!"

"Mr. Jones, we are aware of that. She smuggled a laser weapon into the Par'eth, an offence we take very, very seriously." The Celestrial responded. "Which makes her our responsibility to deal with."

"Oh, right. Yeah." Cwaylyn dropped Tolo on the floor unceremoniously. "Here, take this little blast cannon she had too, as evidence or whatnot. Some kind of plastic I think. I busted it up."

The Celestrial said something as he took the remains of Tolo's laser cannon while two other guards stepped forward and quickly grabbed Tolo by each arm, taking her away.

"We apologize," the Celestrial bowed low. "We are ashamed of this intrusion into the sanctuary of the Par'eth. A round of drinks on the bar, compliments of the house."

"Well now," Cwaylyn patted the guard on the back. "Good thing too, I dropped mine!"

"Sirs," soft voice called. Loid and I turned to see a female Celestrial, with smooth, young skin wearing a softly flowing dress and a light green veil. "The Matron will see you now, please, come with me."

"Of course," Loid answered.

We turned to follow her

"Hey boys, where are you heading?" Cwaylyn lunged forward to catch us. "The party's just warming up!"

"Cway, thanks for the help, but we got it from here," Loid answered, and then waved for the barkeepers attention. "My free round to Mr. Jones here!"

The bartender with the nose ring snorted, but nodded in assent.

"There we are!" Cwaylyn's face lit up with a smile. "We'll have to catch up later then Loid, you too kid. Whatever your name was. Enjoy the Matron! Hah!"

With that, Cwaylyn turned back to make his way to the bar, and Loid and I turned to follow the young Celestrial to meet the Matron.
Chapter 21.

I entered the cockpit. The damage from the battle was evident. Warning lights flashed, there were cracks on one of the displays, a plate of food was scattered on the floor. My cadre followed me as we continued to the galley, again, empty. Nobody hiding in the shadows, empty sleeping pods, nothing. Nobody.

Tren caught my attention with a low growl, pointing to a hatch that led to the cargo hold. He was about to enter but I gestured him to stand aside. He did so without question. I slowly opened the hatch and leaned forward, increasing the audio sensitivity on my suit. Breathing. The crew was there. I opened the hatch completely without a sound, and slowly lowered myself into the cargo hold.

There were three of them. Human men. They were huddled in the far side of the cargo bay, staying in the shadows. I enhanced my visor, darkness would not hide them from me. These humans—this ship—this was my redemption. I drew my blade and stepped toward the nearest of my prey. A human holding a lead pipe.

I stepped forward and faked to my right. Fooled, he moved to his right to avoid me, and in that moment, I struck. He screamed as my blade was bathed in his blood.

I turned to the others. They were frightened. They knew their death had come. I had come.

Redemption.

Loid and I followed our guide as we left the bar and walked quietly through the dimly lit and twisting paths in the rear of the Par'eth dome. This was clearly the heart of the "pleasure house." Though most of the beds were covered with domed privacy shields, a few were still uncovered. Nearby a variety of humanoids dressed in form fitting, gossamer robes. Waiting for clients I assumed. As we passed by a small group, I was momentarily surprised to see that there were equal numbers male and females in the group.

Not far ahead, a dome slid open. A grey-haired woman was finishing buttoning up her coat to leave, behind her I saw a muscular Celestrial man and a female Noonan with a voluptuous body and soft golden hair still lying on the bed. Apparently they were hiding more than pale skin beneath those robes. I paused, momentarily stunned.

"The Par'eth is devoted to catering to all appetites," our guide said quietly as we passed. "No matter how voracious or unusual they may be."

"Apparently," Loid whispered as he nudged me forward.

We continued down the path toward the rear of the dome. Ahead was another privacy dome, this one much larger. Two armed guards stood out front. As we approached, our guide gave a curt nod, and the guards parted. A section of the privacy dome faded into mist and our guide gestured to us to enter.

As I passed through I realized that what I had thought were glass domes were actually some kind of soundproof force-field with a murky sheen. I wondered at the possibility of using a shield like that to visually cloak a ship from view, sure, the electronic systems would still be visible on a scan, but visually-

Loid's elbow in my gut interrupted my train of thought.

I glanced over to see that he was bowing low, I fumblingly did the same. After a moment, I slowly raised my head to see the Matron watching us. She was wearing the same sheer robes as the consorts I had seen out in the Par'eth, though hers was more ornate with intricate designs, symbols and glyphs sewn into the lapels. She was a broad woman, but she carried her weight lightly and with an undeniable air of grace and authority. She wore a circlet decorated with sparkling luminous gems across her forehead and a thin blue veil.

"Guards, thank you. You may leave us," I read the ComBand's translation as she spoke.

The Matron regarded us silently as the guards left and the force field made a whispering sound as it sealed shut behind them.

"Loid," her eyes smiled as she spoke in crisp, clear Common. "It's good to see you old friend.'

"And you too Matron," Loid stepped forward to meet her embrace.

I looked away, awkwardly.

"It's been too long," she said. "I hope you are okay? Lati just told me about the Noonan girl, I'm not sure how she was able to smuggle a laser into the Par'eth."

"Oh we're fine," Loid answered, waving away her concern. "It looked like it was made of some composite plastic, you may want to adjust your sensors to scan for ammunition energy signatures rather than just weapon components."

"They already do," she answered.

"Oh, well," Loid paused. "Then that's—"

"Troubling," she finished. "I already ordered a full review of our security protocols. And your companion, I'm sorry for the delayed introduction, it has been a long time since I have seen my good friend here. I am Matron of this Par'eth. A friend of Loid's is a friend to this house."

"Thank you ma'am, er madam," I fumbled, beneath her veil I saw her eyes had streaks of blue along with amber and gold.

"This is Elicio," Loid cut in, saving me from my momentary embarrassment. "And we need your help."

"Something tells me this isn't just about an angry little Noonan and a dead merchant," she sighed as she sat down. "Please, have a seat."

Loid and I lowered ourselves onto two seating pillows that were laid out in front of her large and ornate throne-like seat.

"You know that I will help you as I can, what do you ask of me?"

Loid and I exchanged glances, and he began telling her the story about the colony, and the duel between the Draugari and the Celestrial ships. Loid outlined the events from the last several days, though he left out several details, such as Ju-lin's name and the contract out on her life, and the cave. Loid trusted her, but only so far.

"So what is it you are asking of me?" she paused. "I do not who killed this Noonan, what was the name? Joof? You say it wasn't you, and I believe you. I can see if any of my people know who did, and who is following you. Regarding identifying who bought the message drone, I can probably find out, but that may take some time, a day perhaps."

"That would be a start," Loid answered.

"Though the real question," she continued, and looked at me. "The question you haven't asked, what is it?"

Loid shifted in his seat.

"Eti, I know you too well for this. I know you won't tell me everything, and that's fine. I would be doing the same in your situation. But this messenger drone and whoever killed this poor Noonan are just leads. You're grasping at straws. Anyone could have killed the trader. According to my logs she owed money all over the system and was known to supply pirates. She even owed the Par'eth a goodly amount. And anyone could have bought the drone and cracked the encryption. You know how business is around here, the drone and the data could have been sold and resold at least a dozen times after the Noonan had it. What else do you know? What is it you are really looking for?"

"The Celestrial ships that attacked the colony," I swallowed hard. "They had silver stars on their wings."

"Stars?"

"Four points," I answered, holding up my hands to make the shape. "Symmetrical."

"I'd never seen that kind of marking on a ship," Loid said. "We want to know whose marking it is."

She leaned back in her seat a moment. She was so still I wasn't sure if she was breathing.

"If you don't know then we'll follow the other leads, any information you can find by tomorrow morning on the drone or the Noonan's killer," Loid continued. "But we probably won't stay in-system very long."

"The symbol is called the Vasudeva, it represents a star, a lost star," the Matron said slowly, quietly. "There is an old legend, a very, very old legend, about the star system Vasudeva."

"Never heard of it," Loid said. "I thought I knew them all."

"When my people first set out from our home world, Vasudeva was one of the first star systems we found. It was home to fifteen worlds, six of them habitable. We settled there and thrived. The stories say that there were over fifteen billion of my people living in peace around Vasudeva."

"Why have I never heard of it?" Loid asked.

"It is one a story our people do not tend to share," the Matron replied flatly. "The stories tell of something that came out of the black in those times. Ships started disappearing, thriving new colonies started to suddenly go silent. It happened over and over again. Our people call it the Thar'esh."

"Thar'esh," I interrupted. "Isn't that the creature that took bites out of children's souls?"

"The myth of the void souls, yes," the Matron nodded gravely.

"I love folklore," Loid said. "And I know well enough that the old legends all grew from some seed of truth. The story about void souls is hollow enough, but disappearing colonies and ships: there has to be some truth in that. What was the Thar'esh? A disease? An alien? The Draugari maybe?"

"We do not know for certain," the Matron answered. "Some of the stories of the Thar'esh include descriptions of blades flying through the dark of space. Because of the blades, many believe that they are about a feud we once had with the Dragauri, but not all are convinced."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because of Vasudeva," she answered. "The stories say that Thar'esh pushed in, erasing ships and colonies. With every Celestrial the Thar'esh killed, they grew stronger, always moving toward Vasudeva. Our greatest generals and strongest ships couldn't stop them. The Thar'esh always knew just where to strike. When the Thar'esh finally came to the world, the leader of Vasudeva, the serving Emperor's granddaughter, a Celestrial scientist named Navali, tried to defend her worlds but failed. The Thar'esh attacked, and the star, Vasudeva, blinked out of existence. Fifteen billion souls. Gone. They say that the darkness of the Thar'esh consumed the star, and with it all of her worlds."

"What happened to the Thar'esh?" I asked.

"After that? Nothing. The stories say that after consuming the system and all of her souls, the hunger of the Thar'esh was finally satisfied and they killed no more."

"What was the Thar'esh?" Loid pressed. "An alien? An astronomical anomaly?"

"Mysteries," she shrugged.

"The Celestrial Empire has starships and records. They had to have the flux point coordinates for Vasudeva. You're telling me nobody ever went looking to see what had happened?" Loid asked.

"We have the flux point coordinates, but there no longer is a flux point," the Matron answered. "They say the Thar'esh swallowed it as well."

Loid pondered a moment, "So Vasudeva went supernova, destroying the system, and destabilizing the flux point?"

"Yes and no," she answered. "There is nothing burning where Vasudeva once was. No black hole. No anomalies. There was no nova. The star was replaced with black. Though if you look out in the sky you can still see where she burned. It will be a few more hundred years before her last light reaches us and fades. But without an active flux point, we cannot find out more. Vasudeva was the home to our archives and records. So much was lost."

Loid and I were silent for a moment, absorbing her words.

"So," I said after a moment of silence. "The ships with the star, with Vasudeva on their wing, who are they?"

"They are the Collegiate," she answered. "You know that the Celestrials must go to the academy and study for at least twenty years? Well, the Collegiate is comprised of those who attended forty or more. It's a selective group."

"A Celestrian secret society?" Loid asked. "Haven't heard of that before."

"I suppose that's the point of a secret society isn't it? But it's nothing like your Earthborn mafias or some Domari pirate gang," she continued. "It's more of a brother and sisterhood. The markings on the ships you saw were removable. When a member of the Collegiate is called upon, they act in secret. They would have removed all other markings from their ships except the Vasudeva."

"So someone called the Collegiate to go attack the colony?" I asked. "But why?"

"It all goes back to Vasudeva itself," she answered. "The Collegiate are historians. They don't just study the old stories, they are like your friend Loid here. They believe that the old stories hold the deepest truths, both factually and metaphorically. They believe there is truth behind the stories of Vasudeva and the Thar'esh "

"If they were historians, why did they attack?" I asked. "Shouldn't an historian be someone who tries to preserve and record history, rather than vaporizing things?"

"That is the Earthborn way of thinking," she answered. "Your lives are shorter and you do not look as far down the road as my people do. We have many histories that we have chosen to forget. My father lived for one hundred and forty four years. In that time he saw many things. Some things he remembered and cherished, other things he chose to forget. Like a starship, our direction forward as a people is determined by the forces behind us that have propelled us on our way. When a pilot wants to change directions in space, she does not only turn her head. She must alter the thrust that pushes her to truly change direction."

"But these Collegiate chose not to forget?" I asked. "And then they attacked the colony for no reason?"

"If they, indeed, attacked the colony, then there was a reason."

"I don't know if I buy all of this. If they are so secret, how do you know of them?" Loid asked.

"It is my business to know everything," she answered. "We can leave it at that."

Loid paused, his mouth shifted as he bit his cheek absently. He didn't seem satisfied with her answer, "So then, these Collegiate folks get their hands on the messenger drone, and decide they need to go burn down the colony within hours. I still don't get it. Celestrials don't ever rush off without planning. We still don't know why they did it."

"What if they had planned it in advance?" I asked.

"What?" the Matron turned to me, her large eyes narrow and severe.

"You mean they were watching for whatever was in the message drone?" Loid asked.

"Something like that, maybe," I answered. "I don't know. You just said they don't do anything without planning, so it makes sense that they may have been executing some contingency plan."

"To burn down your colony?" Loid pressed.

"Well, no, maybe not," I answered. "It's just a thought."

"Not a bad one either," Loid added as he considered. "But it still doesn't add up. If they were following a protocol, you can be sure they will come again, this time with proper planning. And if that's the case, then those colonists don't stand a chance."

I shivered at the thought of the Downs being incinerated.

"What brought you into this?" the Matron leveled her gaze at Loid.

"What do you mean?" He asked. "I told you, I was hired to help track down the Celestrial ships, so that's what I'm doing. Can you help us or not?"

"I can't help," the Matron paused. "Not today at least."

"Not today?" Loid asked. "Tomorrow then?"

Once again the Matron was quiet and still. After several minutes of silence she tilted her head to the side.

"Yes," she said at last. "I will find out what I can and meet you tomorrow at dusk. Though not here. Meet me at hangar bay XG-9. It will afford us more privacy."

"More privacy than this?" Loid raised an eyebrow gesturing to the force field surrounding us.

"Here nobody knows what we say, but everyone watches the comings and goings. They know that we talk," she answered. "If I ask questions, I will be watched. I have no doubt that word is getting around that you had something to do with the death of the Noonan merchant. The Collegiate got the drone from her, yes? As soon as the Collegiate knows that there is a connection between you and the Noonan, they will be watching you. I cannot afford that."

"I understand," Loid answered. "I am grateful for your help."

"Yes, well, consider it another payment on clearing the debt I owe you," she answered solemnly. "I will have Lati retrieve your weapons and show you the back way out. Lay low until tomorrow, and meet me at landing pad XG-9."

"Thank you Matron," I said, bowing low as I got up.

"Oh, and Loid," she called as Lati entered to lead us out. "Bring your other companion as well, the girl you mentioned. I should like to meet her as well if I could."

Loid agreed, and we parted.
Chapter 22.

I was on the flight deck when Tren approached.

"We have finished with the others, Lor'ten," he said. "Thank you for sharing the glory of the kill."

"The clan must share glory as we share pain," I responded.

Tren repeated the oath back to me and nodded.

"We are almost finished with repairs," he continued. "Soon we will return to the clan with our prize."

"Yes, the prize," I responded looking around the cabin of our newly won Carrack. "The Chieftain will honor us."

"The Clan will honor us," Tren answered.

"Yes," I said. "And we will continue to fly. We will continue to fight. We will continue to kill. We will gain honor."

"And soon," Tren nodded greedily. "Soon we will win the honor to breed."

A surge of desire boiled my blood as I licked my lips hungrily.

"Soon," Tren repeated.

"But today," I said as I rose. "Today we will celebrate our victory, and drink the blood of our slain enemies. Today we will take our trophies with honor."

"Well said Lor'ten, well said."

Lati led us through a secret back exit that led to a long passageway that emerged behind a factory two blocks away from the Par'eth. Loid and I didn't speak much as we glided along the moving sidewalks on the empty streets. Our journey back to our room at Talash Hall was quiet; though our return to our room was not.

"I thought you were going to be gone all night," Ju-lin had been pacing so much that there was a clearly worn path on the soft carpet. "I mean really, how many of the locals did you end up pumping for information? Did you find anything out? Did you see those guys who were following us? Were you followed back here?"

"Ease up Twiggy, take a breath," Loid said as he walked in and flopped himself down on a pillow.

Ju-lin was silent for several seconds, waiting with expectant eyes for Loid to continue.

"Well!?" She held her hands up.

Loid looked up at her blankly.

"Joof is dead," I said. "The other Noonan, the one who met us at the market, is saying we killed her."

"What?! Now you're wanted for murder?" Ju-lin began pacing again.

"Nobody's wanted for murder," Loid said. "The little Noonan from the shop thinks we did it, but there's no proof or records. Thankfully, the Celestrials don't tend to jump on hearsay."

"Besides, she got locked up after she shot at us." I added. "So that's the least of our worries at the moment."

"Good, at least you aren't wanted. We do not have time to deal with that," Ju-lin answered. "Wait, she shot at you?"

"She smuggled a laser into the Par'eth to try to ghost me, it happens." Loid shrugged casually as he grabbed some small red fruits off of the table. "But you're only half right, nobody is wanted for murder. But you're wanted: there's a contract out on your life."

"What?!"

"I were you, I'd keep it down," Loid took another bite.

"Why do they have a contract out on my life? For what? How do they even know who I am? Who the hell are they?"

"Not sure, not sure, not sure,and not sure" Loid answered, annunciating each time with a nod.

"We think it could be MineWorks," I volunteered.

"But we're not sure," Loid said, his mouth full of fruit.

"Why would MineWorks want me dead?"

We were silent.

"Well, what do you know?!"

"We know who attacked the colony," I offered.

Ju-lin turned to me expectantly.

And so it went through the night, Loid and I recounted everything that had happened over the evening. Loid's contact, Tolo shooting at us, and our conversation with the Matron. Eventually, Ju-lin stopped pacing and sat down. We talked through everything well into the night. We all agreed that meeting with the Matron the next day was our best chance for finding out what was behind the Collegiate's attack.

As we talked, I couldn't help but think we were missing something important. We didn't know how the Draugari fit into the equation. Though Loid insisted that the Draugari attack on the Celestials must have been a crime of opportunity, the Draugari's shifting memories in my head told me differently. Though I was beginning to trust Loid, I wasn't about to let him in on that secret.

When we finally went to sleep late that night, we had yet to solve the question of how we were going to get Ju-lin across town without her being recognized. Loid and I had breakfast delivered the next morning, and were trying to come up with a way to smuggle her across the city when Ju-lin's bedroom door finally opened, and we saw that she had already taken care of it.

Her shoulder-length chestnut-brown hair was gone, in its place was a haphazard mess of deep blue hair that fell to her jawline. Her unassuming clothes were replaced with skin-tight black pants and matching long-sleeved, high-necked shirt that had a speckled line of silver along the sleeves. Her belt had a large silver clasp and she wore her plasma torch on her hip.

"What?" She said as Loid and I stared at her dumbly.

"No-nothing," I stammered and looked away, though I quickly looked back, stealing another glance at her soft curves.

Loid didn't bother looking away as he gave her a very long up-and-down.

"Enough gawking," she said as she stepped forward and grabbed a fruit from the tray.

"You should be passable," Loid said, nonchalantly turning back to his breakfast. "Though put on some eyeshadow. The Celestrials spent the last few million years of evolution just looking at each other. Since none of them have hair, and their facial structures tend to be more similar, they tend to recognize each other by focusing on the eyes. A little extra color will be distracting enough that they won't recognize you from your pictures."

Ju-lin gave Loid a scalding look before turning to me.

"Eli, what do you see?" She asked as turned her hips slightly to offer me a profile view of her feminine shape and tilted her head slightly to the side and smiled at me.

"I—well—" I stammered as my face flushed red.

"Fair point," Loid laughed. "If everyone is looking at you they won't be looking for you."

"Exactly," Ju-lin said with a sly smile.

"I'm serious about the eyeshadow though," Loid said as he turned toward me. "Oh, here. I had room service bring up some gear for you as well, the whole 'lost colonist' thing doesn't do much for you."

He tossed me a sealed package that was on the bottom of the room service cart. It was a pair of folded thick grey pants and a dark green shirt made of a thin interwoven fabric.

"I don't know how fashionable it is, but at least you won't look like an out of work mechanic," Loid said.

By midday we were all ready to go, but still had several hours to wait. Though I had assumed that Ju-lin would want to go outside and explore the city instead of sit around, I found that she was eerily content to stay in our room. The knowledge that there were hired killers after her had an unexpected calming effect. We spent most of the afternoon in silence, reading the local news and chatting idly about unimportant things.

After the slow hours passed, Loid finally checked the small computer on his wrist and indicated that it was time to go. Quietly and quickly we gathered our belongings and left. After checking out at the front desk, we took to the streets to the Matron's landing bay.

Ju-lin got more than a few looks as we crossed the city, but I noticed that the eyes that followed her tended to be more appreciative than suspicious, and none seemed to notice Loid and myself. The sun was beginning to set into dusk by the time we reached the XG landing pads. The landing area was larger and nicer than where we had set down Tons-o-Fun. When we reached the main gate an armed guard checked us against his manifest, which identified us as Loid Burns and guests. After thoroughly checking Loid's identification against his computer system, the guard waved us through the gates and gave us directions to landing pad nine.

As we passed the sign for landing pad seven I noticed that Loid's hands were tapping on the butt of his holstered pistol.

"You look nervous," I said quietly. "Are you sure we can trust the Matron?"

"I'm not worried about her," Loid answered. "If I can't trust her, I can't trust anyone."

"Then what?" I asked.

"It's quiet, too quiet," he answered. "Her disguise was good, but not that good. Have you noticed anyone following us?"

"No," I answered.

"Neither have I," he replied, the fine lines on his forehead were clearly pronounced.

"Isn't that good?" I asked.

"Maybe," he answered absently as he nodded ahead to the landing pad. "Here we are."

"Loid!" the Matron was standing out in front of landing pad XG-9. She was wearing a long purple cloak with a flipped collar and a dark yellow fringe. "Right on time."

"Wouldn't miss it," Loid smiled and looked over at the landing pad. "That thing yours?"

I looked over to see a large vessel, nearly the size of Alonzo's Starchaser. The ship was a deep cobalt color with golden specks in the finish. The base of the ship was two large, angular fuselages with ovular windowed cabin mounted directly between them. As with most Celestrial ships I had seen, there were no exterior-mounted weapons, though I saw the outlines of several hatches along the surfaces that I was sure would pull back to reveal weapons. On the far sides of each of the fuselages there were bulges that looked like they could be turrets. The center cabin had four levels of windows, state cabins most likely. A boarding ramp was extended from the bottom of the cabin. Two armed guards stood at the base.

"One of the perks of being a Matron," she responded. "I have access to some of the finer things. It belongs to a friend of mine. He lets me use it on occasion."

"Perks? I should say so," Loid answered as he slowly looked over the ship from bow to stern.

"She's a custom-built pleasure yacht made at one of my people's shipyards," the Matron said. "You like?"

"Celestrial shipyards," Loid said absently. "Someday you'll have to take me into the interior worlds and give me a tour."

"Ah, Eti'katc'kahn," She gave a harsh laugh. "You are a friend to the Celestrial, but even you would be burnt down if you came anywhere near our core worlds. We are a private people."

"Someday," Loid unleashed his most disarming smile. "For now we have business. Did you find anything?"

"Yes, more than I had expected," she answered as she turned to me. "But let's not talk here. Eli, it's good to see you again."

I took her hand and took it and kissed it lightly as Loid had instructed.

She smiled gracefully.

"And you must be the young lady," the Matron smiled and turned. "I love your hair, that's one thing that our Earthborn cousins have that I envy. You can do so much with it. Now, if you will join me, let's talk inside."

Ju-lin beamed a smile as the Matron put her arm around her and began walking toward the ship.

Loid and I followed them. Something made me uneasy, but I couldn't figure out what. I looked over at Loid. He was calm and relaxed as he studied the ship. I shook off the thought and tried to relax as we walked past the guards and up the ramp. At the entrance the Matron paused and gestured for me to come forward.

"Eli, Ju-lin, youth and beauty first," the Matron nodded forward.

Glowing with the complement, Ju-lin stepped into the ship. I smiled and followed her, I had just passed over the threshold when the echo of the Matron's words caught in my head. She had called her Ju-lin. Loid and I had never said her name.

Before I could turn around I heard the sliding as the exterior door slid shut behind me, locking Ju-lin and I in darkness.

Ju-lin realizing the trap, spun and drew her plasma torch, and aimed it at the door. I barely had time to jump aside before she pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

"Damnit, they must have some kind of dampening field," Ju-lin hissed as she threw the plasma torch clattering into the darkness. "They're jamming all electronics in here, it's useless."

"Loid!" I called pounding on the door.

"Loid! Get us out of here! What did you do!" Ju-lin's voice as shrill and urgent.

I pounded my fists on the blast doors and yelled, but there wasn't even an echo of sound. The steel was too thick.

"Can you find the handle?" Ju-lin asked in the darkness.

"I don't know if I can even find the door," I said as I felt along the sheer sides of the hold. "It's too dark."

There was a low rumble from somewhere below, the ship's engines were engaging.

"Where are they taking us?" Ju-lin's voice was a whisper.

There was a click above us and a humming sound as the ceiling began to glow, dimly illuminating the hold.

As our eyes adjusted to the light, I saw that we were in a large cargo area. A few paces away was a staircase that led up to a sealed door, most likely to the state cabins above. There were several empty alcoves, most likely designed to hold passenger's luggage. On the far end of the hold was a row of four empty jump-seats mounted against the bulkhead.

I turned back to look at the entrance, it was sealed. The control console next to it was deactivated and non-responsive.

"Dammit," I cursed.

"Eli," Ju-lin whispered.

I turned and saw her staring at something at the far side of the hold, I hadn't noticed it at first in the dim light, but above the jump-seats there was a large, four-pointed silver star.
Chapter 23.

Just weeks before we had been in the lower caste. I had stood against the side of the bulkhead with lowered eyes as our proven warriors passed. But today, the untried or unproven stood aside for me.

My strides were long, my steps purposeful. I turned a corner and climbed up through an access hatch that had once been an airlock, but now served as a connection between the many ships that my clan had fused together to create our home. I turned down another passage and approached the Chieftains door. The two warriors guarding the door: the Chief's sons. They nodded and let me pass.

The inside of his cabin was large. It had once been the command deck for a large Domari cruiser, now it was the Chief's grand hall. My bravado faded as I was humbled by the trophies on his wall. There were dozens of skulls mounted in a line, most were from humans of every shape and size, and two other creatures I did not know. I saw weapons hung on the walls, broken swords, and a large plasma rifle that had been hewn in half. There was a large cage built into the wall on one corner. I heard a low grown and heard the rustle of chains.

"Lor'ten," the Chief entered the room from the far side.

I bowed my head and waited quietly for him to speak.

"It was not long ago that you knelt by the bladestones to receive your honor and give me your pledge. And now you stand before me once again. You have done well, you have earned honor, and now your clan has need of you."

It is difficult to gauge the passing of time when you are sealed inside the cargo bay of a traveling starship. Ju-lin and I talked, sat, and waited, as the dull hum of the engines droned. We were hungry and tired. Though the heat of the engines staved off the freeze of deep space, the cargo hold was not climate controlled. The chill in the air grew as the hours passed, and we huddled together for warmth. We were both exhausted, and lost in our own thoughts. Eventually, Ju-lin leaned against my shoulder and slept.

The only thing that marked the passing of time was the vertigo that we felt as we fluxed. The sensation had made my stomach flip when I was in the cabin of Tons-o-Fun, but it was much worse in the enclosed cavern of the ship's hold.

When she awoke, we talked. She told me about her life growing up, and I told her about my memories and the different lives that I remembered. I had thought she would be disturbed by the notion that I could recall a full life lived, of the wife and family that I had had before the terraforming, of the strange faces and intense feelings that haunt my dreams. But if she was bothered, she didn't let it show.

She asked thoughtful questions about my memories that helped me stitch the patterns of my past together. She told me about that her mother, who was a pilot herself. She had died when Ju-lin was young during the Draugari invasion of Alpha Centauri. Ju-lin talked about how she learned to live with loss. The anger, the fear, the loneliness.

It was strange for me, but there, captive in the dim, chilly hold of the Collegiate's ship, with the four-pointed star Vasudeva on the wall above us, I felt warmer and happier than I could remember. I held Ju-lin close for comfort as well as warmth, and for the first time, I didn't feel alone.

We had gone through six fluxes, and countless hours in the dark before there was a jarring series of metallic clanks against the hull and the engines went silent.

"We're docked," Ju-lin said, raising her head. I had thought she was asleep.

"With a ship?" I asked.

"More likely a station," she answered. "Those sounds were magnetic clamps holding the ship in place."

"Right," I shivered involuntarily.

"Eli," she said. "Do you think they know what you are?"

"I don't know. I don't think so," I answered.

"What do they want from us?"

It wasn't the first time on the flight we had asked ourselves that question. Her tone wasn't fearful or nervous. It was calculating.

"It must be just about the colony then," she said. "Something about the symbols."

"How do they even know we saw them?" I asked.

"Maybe Loid told them?"

"Loid didn't know much."

"He knew enough," she answered. "And now he's going to be rich enough, I'm sure they paid him well for the information."

I didn't reply. My mind raced through everything that the Matron had told us about the Collegiate. They were a group of historians. Historians who abduct. I thought of Joof. Historians who kill. None of it added up.

Another series of popping sounds reverberated through the ship. The control panel by the door we had entered through came to life, and as we scrambled to our feet, the door swung open and flooded the hold with light.

We squinted our eyes and tried to adjust to the brightness, six shadows separated themselves and entered the hold. All were Celestrial. All were armed. Though the six were not wearing any p uniform, I saw small silver stars pinned to their lapels. The Collegiate

"What do you want from us?" Ju-lin was on her feet, walking toward the nearest guard.

The guards all stood motionless and silent.

"What?" Ju-lin stopped a few paces away from the guards. "Oh I get it, you're all just grunts right? No authority? Well then, who's in charge? Hm? How far into Skins space did you take us? Further than any other Earthborn has ever been I'd bet. What are you going to do? Torture us? Do you even know what you are doing?"

One of the guards stepped forward, whipping Ju-lin across the face with his pistol and sending her tumbling backwards. I took a few steps to catch her, three of the other guards stepped forward with rifles aimed squarely at my chest.

"The Collegiate is not a gang," a tall Celestrial with white white swirls in his grey eyes spoke in thickly accented common. "We are not a crime syndicate. We are not thugs."

"Could have fooled me," Ju-lin spat back as she held her cheek, I could already see bruising along her jaw-line.

The Celestrial regarded her silently. He raised his hand and made a quick gesture. Four of his compatriots came forward, two held Ju-lin by the shoulders and cuffed her wrists behind her back. The other two did the same to me.

"You will answer our questions," it was not a question. "Then we will decide what we can do with you. Perhaps your existences will prove useful. But I think not."

The guards shoved Ju-lin forward toward the door as she strained against them, fighting to get free.

"Ju-lin, no!" I called as I lunged towards her..

My words were muffled as the guard behind me shoved the barrel of his weapon deep into my side. I doubled over in pain.

I gasped and looked up, Ju-lin turned briefly as they led her through the door, our eyes met for a breath. I think she was trying to tell me something, maybe it was an apology, or maybe it was an encouragement. I wasn't sure. But then she was gone.

One of my captors pulled a thick black hood over my head, and everything went dark.

At first I tried to keep track of the twists and turns. Twenty paces and turn left. Ten more paces and turn right. But as the guards led me through turn after turn I lost track. I did know that the air was getting more stale, the smells of fuel and grease that I had grown accustomed to in the hold of the ship was being replaced by the sharp stink of burnt sulfur. The further we walked, the dull drone of engines was replaced by the distant clattering of machines.

Eventually, we came to a stop. One of them removed the bindings from my hands, and pulled the hood off of my head. I was just beginning to get my bearings when I was shoved from behind. By the time my eyes had readjusted to the light they were gone and the door behind me was shut. I was in a small, square room that was barely wide enough for me to lie down. The floor and walls were grey steel with black scuff marks on the wall. The only piece of furniture was a short stool with a plate of food on top. I couldn't remember the last time I ate. My stomach gnawed, growling as soon as I got sight of the food.

The meal wasn't much, simple bread, water, and some sort of raw green vegetable with an excellent crispness, but I couldn't think of ever having tasted anything better. After devouring every crumb, I sat down on the stool to examine my surroundings and gather my thoughts.

Ju-lin's greatest fear was that they had taken us into the Celestrial core worlds, a series of systems that are unknown to either the Protectorate or the Collective. Only full blooded Celestrials were allowed into the interior systems that are home to countless billion Celestrials and their core shipyards, Ju-lin said it was a good bet if we were taken to the interior that there would be no hope of escape or release. However, from what little I knew about where we were being held, that seemed less and less likely.

To begin, I was held in a small storage locker rather than a formal prison. The scuff marks on the walls and dirt outlines on the floor were clear indications that I was put in a makeshift cell that was typically used for storage. Also, as I looked up, I noticed that the room was lit by a low-hanging bulb mounted from the center of the ceiling. All of the Celestrial construction that I had witnessed on Shindar and aboard the ship that had carried us involved the use of luminous surfaces rather than the lamps and bulbs.

Perhaps they didn't take us to the interior after all. Though I doubted they had taken us to an Earthborn installation, maybe it was a Collective facility? Or a captured human ship or station that they had turned into a secret prison? Or maybe the Celestrials only used luminous surfaces to light their cities and newer ships and this was merely an older model. Was I overthinking everything?

My mind whirled through the possibilities, but every thought brought me back around to the realization that I didn't really know anything at all. And even what I did know, was secondary in my mind to my concern over what was happening to Ju-lin. I had gotten used to the feeling of her next to me, and I missed it.

As the hours went on I paced, stretched, and eventually lay down on my back. The floor was cold, but I was tired, and somehow I slept.

I was jolted awake when the door swung open and slammed against its mountings. By the time I had scrambled to my feet the guards were next to me. One held and bound my hands while the other slipped the hood over my head, plunging me back into darkness. Once again, my silent captors led me through a series of turns, after a few moments we came to a stop in a lift. We traveled upwards for several moments before it came to a stop.

When we exited the lift the sounds and smells changed. I had grown accustomed to stale air and the drone of distant machining echoing through the halls. Here there was the soft, dampening quiet of insulated walls. The air held a light floral scent and seemed fresher, cleaner. I inhaled the clean air deeply as we walked.

After another dozen paces, a deep voice spoke melodiously, and I was led forward and pushed roughly into a softly padded chair. My hands were left bound in front of me as they pulled the hood off from over my head.

I was seated in the middle of a large room, sitting opposite an L-shaped desk with an antique lamp on the corner. An older Celestrial with greying skin sat at the desk, not looking up, his eyes focused on the tablet in front of him. I decided it would be best to wait for him to speak first, and began looking around the room.

Three of the walls were interior to the station, and decorated with all kinds of objects. Most were foreign to me, but I recognized a display with at least a dozen Draugari blades in cases on the wall. I remembered my own, still stashed back on Tons-o-Fun where I had left it. Elsewhere there were scale models of ships, including one that looked like the Protectorate Dreadnaught that we had seen while traveling through Alecto. There were colorful masks, sculptures that fluidly shifted their shape, flags, helmets and armor. The place reminded me of the Draugari trophy rooms that I had seen in my memories. Though notably less gruesome, I was pretty sure that it seemed to serve the same purpose. This was a memorial to enemies and triumphs.

When I finally got around to the fourth wall my mouth dropped open. Though I was sure that there was glass, it looked as if it were open into space. In the distance I saw a swirling hazel world surrounded by a translucent white ring. Looking downward I saw a ridge of blue-grey rugged stone outcroppings beneath us. So we were on an orbital asteroid station, maybe a mine.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" the Celestrial's voice was low and his Common crisp and clear. "The world is called Kalaedia, the only planet in the system. The rings are a wonder, they contain flecks of a rare crystalline composite that some in the primitives within Domari Collective prize for its beauty and clarity, but serves no technological or industrial purpose."

"Who are you?" I asked.

"We are on what is left of Kalaedia's moon," he continued as if I hadn't spoken. "Eons ago, this small moon collided with a comet. The moon was cracked, and the pieces were sent into a wide orbit. The remains of the comet shattered and the eons turned them into dust while Kalaedia's gravity shepherded them into rings. The Collective built this place, and ended up surrendering it to us some years ago in a border dispute. Travel six jumps in any direction and you will not find a sight as beautiful. The Collective was sorry to lose it. But, such is the price of peace: sometimes we must surrender the things we admire to save the things we cherish."

At last he looked up at me, the skin on his forehead was flakey and dry. Unlike most of the Celestrials I had met, his eyes were grey and dull with the exception of a few slivers of silver that seemed to explode from the deep black of his irises like the flares of a sun behind an eclipse. My silence didn't seem to bother him.

He leaned forward, regarding me intently.

"Eli, you are called," he continued. "Or Elicio, but nothing more. No family name. Curious. Serana, that is to say, the Matron, says she does not know who you are, and that her pilot friend said only that he picked you up on the colony with Ju-lin. And ah, yes. Ju-lin. I had a, how shall I say, spirited conversation with her earlier."

He paused as he studied my reaction, I tried to bury my surge of anger.

"The funny thing about the spirited ones: those whose passions burn hottest are also the most brittle and easy to crack."

"What do you want?" I asked.

"But you, you're not on fire," he reached up and peeled off a flaked piece of skin from his forehead and gently set the remains on the table. "You are reserved. Well, more reserved than the girl. That makes you interesting to me. There is such variety in humans. I find it fascinating. Take the natives of Olster for instance. Did you know that all native Olsterians cannot discern the color green from blue? Two hundred and six years ago when Olster was first discovered by the Domari Collective the penultimate technological achievement was a two-masted sailing ship. And today? Nearly all of the best freighters in the Collective are designed and built by Olsterians. Though they still can't tell green from blue."

He stopped again, and adjusted the collar of his shirt.

"You have learned what the Collegiate stands for? Serana described us as historians I believe? That is a simple and, I will say, inelegant description. We are so much more than that. You see, Earthborn historians record and preserve records of the past. You work to rediscover what you have lost, found, and lost again. It is a perpetual cycle, you find a coin, you forget where you left it, you stumble back over it years later and say 'Oh my! Look at this coin!' You're like children. It happens over and over again. An endless cycle of rediscovery. It's really quite absurd when you look at it."

He picked another flake of skin off his head, he set it neatly next to the last.

"An acolyte of the Collegiate does not gather history," he continued. "We are Celestrial. History is not some distant ephemeral thing. We have lived it. It is the Collegiate's duty to discern which books should be written, which books should be forgotten, and which books should be burned."

"Why am I here?" my hand was starting to shake, I took a breath to calm myself.

"Yes, well, impatience is one of the most base of all human traits. I shall answer your questions. I am called Alume. Like the Matron, it is a title, not a name. I have a position of trust within the Collegiate, a position of power. And I will use that power to do what must be done. You are here because you know things that I must know. I want you to answer my questions fully and completely."

"Or?"

"Or?" he sighed. "I will not lower myself to base and simple threats. I'm sure the famed Earthborn imagination can fill in the blanks of what I may do with you or your pretty young friend if you prove to be unresponsive or uncooperative. But really, details aside, this all comes down to a simple thing: you will tell me what I want to know."

"What do you want to know?" I asked without hesitation. I felt the burning fear and uncertainty in my stomach dissipate, replaced by simple resolve. Alume knew about the drone, he had been responsible for sending the fighters to attack the colony. I was confident he knew more than I did. Maybe I could learn something from him.

Alume paused, blinked, and reasserted his gaze.

"Rational thought? How unusual for an Earthborn," he tapped his fingertips against the table. "I want to know what happened to the ships I sent to the colony."

"The Draugari destroyed them," I answered briskly, seeing no harm in telling him the truth. "Two Draugari Slires and a pirated Carrack came in behind your ships as they were making a bombing run over an innocent and unarmed colony."

"You saw this?"

"Ju-lin and I saw the first one of your ships destroyed," I answered. "After that I saw them exchanging fire with the Slires. I didn't see the second of your ships destroyed, but I heard the Draugari celebrate when they destroyed the third."

"You heard them?"

"Yes, we were taken prisoner aboard the Carrack," I replied.

"And then you escaped?"

"They underestimated us," I said as nonchalantly as I could. "Ju-lin and I took over the ship ourselves, but it was too damaged. So we crashed it on the surface."

He stopped a moment, pondering what I'd said.

"Ju-lin didn't tell you anything." I said slowly.

"No," he scratched his chin. "No, as I said, the high spirited burn brightly but flame out quickly. Her flame is still bright."

"So that is what happened to your ships," I said. "The Draugari destroyed them."

"And it leads me to only more questions." My statement had roused him. "How did the Draugari defeat my pilots? What were the Draugari doing there?"

"Your pilots were too distracted with the mission you sent them on," I answered confidently. "They were busy firing the plasma drone into the cave and bombing an undefended colony. Maybe they forgot to check their scans?"

Alume's forehead wrinkled as he stopped to study my eyes. "Plasma drone," Alume leaned forward.

I stopped, studying him in return. I couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement. His eyes widened slightly.

"Go on," he pressed.

I leaned back in my chair as my mind raced. Ju-lin and I had assumed that the plasma drone that had incinerated the cavern had come from the Celestrial ships, but we hadn't seen it launched. I had assumed Alume had given the order. Was it possible that it wasn't launched by the Celestrials? If not, could it have been the Draugari? I delved into Lor'ten's memories. I saw that night through the eyes of the Draugari: I saw the deck of the Carrack as it and the Slires used the clouds to mask their approach, closing in on the unsuspecting Celestrial fighters. I felt the rush of the chase, the thrill of first blood as the first fighter disintegrated into fire. No, I was certain that the Draugari hadn't launch the drone. If the Celestrials hadn't either—

"Please continue" his voice changed. "This, plasma drone I ordered destroyed the cave successfully then?"

"Yes," I said quietly.

He tapped his fingertips rapidly against the table. "You don't think the Draugari raiders fired it? I can see that in your eyes. How intriguing. And the cavern and the symbols were destroyed then?"

He knows. My mind raced. He knows what the symbols meant, or at least, he would know how to read them. I thought back to the memory card stashed away back on Tons-o-Fun. Part of me wished I had it with me now to show him so that then, maybe, he could tell me what they meant.

"Do you know what was in the cave?" Though I was fighting back my anticipation, my voice faltered.

He blinked slowly and stretched out his fingers flat on the table and then curled his left hand into a fist and studied it for a moment.

"Know?" He said finally. "No, I can't say I know what it was. But my people have our suspicions, and our suspicions lead us to our beliefs."

"And what part of these suspicions led you to ordering your pilots to attack a defenseless human colony in the dead of night?"

"Suspicions are powerful," he snapped back. "Suspicions led your colonists to send the messenger drone, and to keep the symbols on the wall a secret. Suspicions brought the Draugari out of the darkness."

"So what do you suspect?" I asked.

"That your little planet holds secrets and stories," he stood up sharply. "That that is a book that should not be written, or even forgotten. The planet holds a book that should be burned."

His serene demeanor had slipped, and for a moment, I saw that the Celestrial's cool and even calm covered a deep seated rage. Loid was right, though they may seem stoic, the Celestrial were a people full of passion, and Alume in particular, was full of fear and hate.

He walked over to the window and looked out at Kalaedia and her rings. He was shorter than the other Celestrials I had met, and he was bent over with age. After a long moment, he turned back toward me.

"The symbols," he said. "You saw them."

"Yes," I answered. "Only briefly, we were only there a few moments before the drone flew into the cavern and we had to leave."

"Can you describe them?" Alume asked. "Were they lines like letters? Mathematical formulas? Pictographs?"

"I do not know," I answered.

"No, no, now that is a lie." he shook his head slightly. "Now is the time where you need to decide what it is you admire, and what it is you cherish. The things we admire are things that we enjoy, but can live without. The things we cherish are the shining few things that give us the strength and purpose to exist. Your friend, the girl. An Earthborn would say she is pretty I think. Yes? And young, surely she is young."

I shifted in my seat.

"You will tell me what you know, or she will find pain. She will not die, but she will live with agony. You are not simple, I can see that clearly enough. Even though you are nothing but a child, I think that, perhaps, you may have already experienced the darker side of life. Yes? Do you want her to experience it as well? And, more profoundly, do you want to be the cause of her misery?"

I felt rage within me, a rage I didn't know existed. My fists clenched as my mind went back to the Draugari blades in the display case on the wall. I pictured myself taking them and cutting Alume apart, limb from limb. I fought down the urge, trying to remain calm, remain quiet and think clearly.

"Take my lamp there on the desk. The lamp is one of my favorite pieces. It's an original Earth artifact that I purchased from a Domari trader some years ago. The story goes that it once belonged to the Earthborn queen of some long dissolved country, if you will believe it. I know, sometimes it's difficult to believe what a Domari trader tells you, but the experts I consulted say that it could be true. Whether it's true or not, the fact is that I like it. I like the look of it, slender neck and ornate, yet elegant design. But what is it to me? It is an object of beauty, and an object of use. But it is not an object of necessity. Though may never find another lamp quite like this one, I can always find another lamp. I admire it, yes. But cherish? No."

I bit my cheek, the pain helped me to fight off my rage.

"So Eli, is she something you admire? Or is she something you cherish?"

I was silent, searching for a response as I fought back my fear.

"I admire her for her fire," Alume said slowly. "But she means nothing to me next to the things I cherish. My people. My culture. If I must, I will destroy her. Slowly, and completely. So, Eli, tell me what I want to know. I think you will, because I think she may be a thing you cherish."

My mind whirled. Alume had ordered the colony to be bombed, I had no doubt that he was capable of torture. Though I was fairly certain that, whether I cooperated or not, torture would be the inevitable end. Perhaps if I shared at least some of what I knew, I could get a passing glimpse at the truth.

"Circles," I said at last.

"So easy to break," Alume clicked his tongue. "So like your Earthborn kin. What kind of circles?"

"Two circles," I answered. "They were full of symbols and patterns."

"They were full of symbols?" he asked. "As in the symbols were on the inside of the circle, rather than the exterior? You are certain?"

I nodded in assent. He was surprised. It meant something.

He pulled a tablet from his desk and hastily typed a message. When he was done he tossed it back across the desk. Alume turned once again to look out the window. After several minutes of silence, he said something in his native tongue. It was flowing, rhythmic, and beautiful.

"What was that?" I asked.

"As the dying light flashed, and the fire filled the void with death, a sliver of the darkness fled and lived," Alume replied without turning. "It's an old poem. The translation from my tongue to yours is poor I'm afraid."

"The sliver of darkness?" I asked.

"The remnants of the Thar'esh. The darkness that once haunted my people and destroyed Vasudeva," he answered. "Fifteen billion souls died at the hands of the Thar'esh. They destroyed the star, but the Thar'esh endured. It is the Collegiate's duty to find the last remnants of the shadow, and cleanse it with the light of fire so that their terrible power can never be wielded again."

As he finished speaking there was a low rumble somewhere deep below us. Alume quickly turned and picked his tablet up off of the desk. As he accessed it a second rumble shook the room, this one was closer. The artifacts lining the walls rattled in their cases, and the lamp wobbled side to side.

"What is that?" I asked.

Alume tapped a control panel on his desk and spoke quickly, within seconds, the guards reappeared at the door. There was a third explosion, this one closer still. The lights blinked out for several seconds before the backup power activated.

"Our conversation is over," Alume nodded to the guards. "It's a shame we couldn't speak more, Eli. It's just as well, you have given me all I need. Draugari raiders are attacking the station. Don't worry though, because you've been cooperative, I won't leave you to their mercy. I'll have my men show you to the nearest airlock instead. I hear that the death, though unpleasant, is a quick one. The girl will meet the same fate, don't fret. It's a better than you would get from them."

The guards jabbed their weapons into my back and Alume turned to leave.
Chapter 24.

The halls were empty as I walked back and forth. My boots scuffed against the floor. At the far end of the passageway a light flickered, casting shadows. I focused on the flickering light as I paced. There must be a pattern I thought. I counted to three to three, it flickered twice. I counted to eight, it flickered once.

I was in the hall for an hour. The flickering light never formed an identifiable pattern. It was always random. Unreasoned. Unpredictable.

At last the hatch swung open. It was a young warrior, one of the chief's sons. He nodded to me, he nodded to me as he took in a breath. He started to speak but instead made a low growling sound.

I kept my gaze on him, his eyes were a cloudy grey.

"Take your ship," his cloudy grey eyes were intense, seething. "Take your cadre' as crew, and two Slires. Patrol these systems."

He handed me a datacard.

"A system patrol? Patrols are for the world dwellers. A warrior does not sit and wait for his prey. What are we looking for?" I asked.

"That's your orders, does it matter?" he grunted as he turned and left.

I tried to struggle, but it was useless. Even if my hands hadn't been bound, the guards were several inches taller, and much too strong for me. The lead Celestrial held my bindings, half-dragging me down the hall. The other followed behind me, his gun leveled at my back. They took me down a hall and shoved me into the back corner of the lift. After all three of us were in, one of them jammed the controls and the lift sped downward.

They spoke back and forth to each other in brief, tense tones. So far, the Celestrials I had met had held a calm and even demeanor. But these two had to throw me out of an airlock before they could evacuate, and their tension was beginning to show. From what I gathered, the second seemed intent on killing me where I stood. The other argued back, gesturing up toward the upper decks. The first seemed to stand down. Apparently their loyalty to, or fear of Alume was stronger than their fear of the Draugari raiders.

There was another booming explosion, followed by a swift change in pressure that caused my ears to pop. That one was close. The lights blinked out for several seconds and the lift grinded to a halt.

One of my captors worked the control panel while the other used the butt of his rifle to try to wedge open the door to the lift. Both had their backs to me. The one working the door had set his rifle down in the corner. It would be difficult, but it was possible I could grab it and turn. But with my hands bound there was little chance that I would be able to kill one, let alone both of them. Still, I thought grimly, they are about to throw me out of an airlock.

I had to make my move.

I was girding up my courage when the door began to open with grinding screech.

As the Celestrial at the door looked up into a dark hallway, there were three quick flashes of light. The guard flew backwards against the wall next to me, his face and chest smoldering. The second guard reached for his gun, but wasn't quick enough. More laser fire streaked through the air and he stumbled backward, pinning me into the corner.

The lift was filled with the smell of charred flesh and plastic. The sound of running footsteps echoed down the dark hallway. They were coming. I looked around frantically for the second Celestrial's gun until I saw it lying over on his right side. With my hands still bound I shoved his body aside and lunged for the weapon. The footsteps were getting closer; I didn't dare to spare a moment to look. Finally, my bound hands found the hilt of the gun. I grabbed it and spun to face the open door, ready to fire.

"There, see, I told you I wouldn't hit him," Loid called over his shoulder, smiling. "He's fine. Eli, seriously, lower the hand cannon."

Ju-lin came in behind him and breathlessly pushed him aside. She grabbed my arms and helped me up. Her grip was stronger than I expected, and I stumbled.

I found myself face-to-face with Ju-lin. My eyes were drawn to her lips as she opened her mouth to say something, but then she leaned forward and kissed me instead. The kiss was brief, soft, simple, and made my head spin. She pushed me back gently and looked up at me with a quick smile.

"Are you okay?" She asked breathlessly.

I grunted in reply, as I smiled back at her stupidly.

"Seriously you two?" Loid interrupted. "It won't be long before the station security realizes what's going on, or rather, what's not going on. When they do they will stop evacuating and start hunting us."

"What is going on?" The smell of burnt flesh and an alarm sounding in the distance were bringing me back to reality. "The Draugari—"

"There are no Draugari," Loid answered. "I placed a few of the old warheads around this rock, disabled long range sensors and main power systems. Their sensors will recognize the explosives as Draugari, so their first guess will be that they are under attack. But they aren't stupid. After they scramble security and their fighters they will figure out that it's a distraction."

"How long will that take?" I asked.

The siren suddenly stopped, it was quiet for a few seconds as we all exchanged glances, and then another, different siren started to sound.

"Not as long as I had hoped," Loid answered. "They know they've been breached."

"That alarm would be for us I guess?" Ju-lin said picking up the other guard's gun.

"Safe bet," Loid answered as he reached behind his back and pulled out my Draugari blade. "Saw this back in the Tons and figured this may come in handy."

He slid the knife out of the scabbard and sliced my bindings.

"Thanks," I said, taking the knife and slid it back in my belt. "Where to now?"

"Good question," Loid answered. "Finding Twiggy was easy enough, but then your cell was empty, so we had to go wandering around a bit. Now we have to get back down to the lower decks to catch our ride out of here."

"The lift is fried," Ju-lin said, inspecting the controls.

"Looks like we'll do it the old fashioned way," Loid sighed, looking down at a small display on his wrist. "There are some access hatches nearby, hopefully they aren't on lockdown. When the explosions hit they will have scrambled all of their fighters and most of their marines. We have three, maybe four minutes before their ships dock back in and they start sweeping the station. We need to be gone when they do. Hold tight, I'm going to take a look."

"Right," I said, taking the guard's gun in in my right hand as Loid snuck down the dark hallway.

Ju-lin leaned toward me, her warmth and scent drew in my attention like a singularity.

"The Celestrial," she nodded toward the guard whose body had pinned me into the corner. "Did you? Did his memories? You know the, what did you call it, Charon?"

"What?" startled out of my thought, I looked at the body. "Oh, no. I didn't feel anything."

"So it wasn't like with the Draugari?"

"No, I think it has something to do with the knife," I answered. "I have an old memory of it from, before, there was a knife then too."

"So you have to stab them to death?" she sounded much more comfortable with the idea than I felt.

"I hope you don't plan on stabbing me to death," Loid said as he slipped back into the lift. "I'm sorry about the Matron. I didn't know what she was planning. I probably should have. But I'm here now, hell I'm not even sure quite why I'm doing this. It made more sense to just take the money and run."

"You did take the money though," I said.

"Well, yes, and I did run," he smiled. "Just not in the direction I thought I would. Let's get moving. Down the hall about twenty yards on the right there is an open access panel in the wall that we can use to get to the ladder in a maintenance shaft. We need to go down six levels to the lower docks. A lot of traders come and go down there, so we should be able to make our way from there to the docking bay. Docking bay eighteen. Got it?"

Ju-lin and I nodded.

Loid tapped the display on his sleeve.

"We have three minutes. Eli, you go first, then Twiggy. I'll cover the rear and seal the panel behind us. I don't just want to get out of here." Loid said. "I want to get out of here cleanly. Just because I was willing to come back for you guys doesn't mean I want the Collegiate, or whoever it is to know it was me."

"Loid," I slipped the pistol into my belt. "Thank you for coming back."

"Whatever kid," he turned to scan the hallway. "I figure my deal with Gramps is null and void if I don't make it back at least with Twiggy. A good load of treated oak is hard to find."

Ju-lin pushed forward and gave Loid a light kiss on the cheek, "Thanks."

"God, you two get sappy when you're about to die, don't you?" he wiped off his cheek roughly, though the corners of his eyes betrayed a smile. "Okay, let's move."

We stood there awkwardly unmoving for a second before I realized that I was going first. Loid gave me a slight nudge, and I drew my pistol and started to walk as quickly and quietly as I could down the hallway.

It was dark except for a dim glow from a few dark green emergency lights that illuminated the floor. Though the hallway was quiet, we could hear activity in the distance, shouting voices, clanging metal echoing over the droning of the alarm.

Before long we reached the access panel. I leaned inside to look down, it was darker than the hallway and had a musty scent.

"Looks empty at least," I said quietly as Ju-lin and Loid came up beside me.

"Grab the top there and swing in, feet first. There should be a ladder," Loid said in whisper, he had a pistol in each hand and was peering into the dark hallway.

"Should?" I asked.

"This was not plan A," Loid answered. "It's all should, may, or could from here on out."

I glanced over at Ju-lin, who was looking at me expectantly, so I slipped my pistol back in my belt, grabbed the top ledge across the top of the access hatch, and lowered myself through it feet first into the darkness. After kicking my legs around wildly for a few moments I found metal, ladder rungs. As I kicked, the laser pistol slipped out of my belt, and clattered as it tumbled down the seemingly bottomless access tunnel. Once my feet felt stable, I slipped my right hand out, groping in the darkness until I found a handhold, and began to lower myself down.

"You okay?" Ju-lin asked.

"Yeah, I'm good. The ladder is just a little further than you would expect," my whispered words echoed back at me from somewhere in the darkness. I continued to climb down. My eyes were adjusting to the almost complete darkness of the maintenance shaft. I could make out a few shadows of pipes and wires along the wall.

The darkness intensified as Ju-lin hoisted herself up through the access hatch, eclipsing the light. I was looking up, doing my best to help guide her to finding the ladder when a series of bright flashes came through the access panel.

"Get a move on," Loid called. "They're coming."

I heard another series of shots.

"I'm in, come on Loid!" Ju-lin called as she started to climb down the ladder.

"Get moving," he answered. "I'm right behind you."

I could hear shouting in the distance, but with Ju-lin above me and nowhere to go but down, I continued my descent. I kept climbing down, ten, twenty, thirty rungs of the ladder. Six levels down Loid had said. I squinted in the darkness trying to count the access panels. I think I had passed three floors.

Somewhere above I heard a wild yell, there was another wave of darkness as Loid's body occluded the access hatch, and then a series of clangs and curses.

"You okay?" Ju-lin called.

"I'm, oh, dammit, I'm okay," Loid grunted. "You weren't kidding that this thing is wider than I thought. Hold on kids. This may be a little loud."

"Why?" I asked.

There was a deafening explosion from above, the light all but faded as smoke billowed through the access panel.

"That," Loid answered. "A concussion grenade. It should slow them down. Keep moving."

I continued climbing as quickly as I could, another ten rungs, fifteen, I looked over my shoulder.

"I think this is six levels down," I called. "But it's too dark to be certain."

I could hear voices far above as the smoke began to clear and the guards were working their way into the access tube.

"I don't think we have a choice at this point," Ju-lin answered.

"Right," I said.

The access panel was on the far side of the tube, I could reach it with my hands, but barely. I pulled myself up and kicked outward at the panel. It gave on my third kick, calling inward with a clatter. Light flooded the access tube.

I spun around, at least nobody was waiting on the other side with a gun.

"Go," Loid said. "Hurry."

I reached out as far as I could while still holding the ladder, and just caught the edge of the access hatch. I let go of the ladder and managed to pull myself up and through into what I hoped was the right level. I quickly turned around to catch Ju-lin's hand and help pull her up, a few seconds later, both Ju-lin and I pulled Loid out as well. I could hear the guards climbing down the stairs somewhere above.

I looked around, the hallway we were in was similar to the one we had left, and was luckily vacant.

"Alright, time to waste these bastards," Loid drew one of his guns and moved toward the panel.

"What are you doing?" Ju-lin caught him and pulled him back. "You can't just go blasting them."

"In case you didn't notice," Loid replied. "They didn't hesitate to open up at me, so yes, I can."

"You said we had three minutes, how much time do we have left?" Ju-lin snapped back.

He looked back down at his screen on his sleeve.

"Not enough," he answered. "Fine, throw that access panel back up there, yeah like that."

He flipped the setting on his laser pistol and fired an extended beam across the top, melting the metal and fusing the panel back in place.

"Happy now?" he said over his shoulder to Ju-lin as he turned.

"Happier," she answered. "Where to?"

"We're one level off I think, down the hall there should be a way to get to the docking bays."

We took off in the direction he'd pointed, halfway down the lights came back on.

"They are restoring primary power," he said. "We're really running out of time, come on."

We turned the corner and ran down a flight of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs, the passage opened up into a large room, crates and equipment were scattered all over. Dozens of figures were hustling about, some Celestrial, but I also spotted several shorter figures that I took to be Olsterian, and a few hooded Noonan. On the left wall there were large docking collars, most of them were extended. Workers with small hand-carts and hovers were hurriedly loading goods onto their ships.

"Act calm, try to be casual," Loid said as he slowed to a fast walk, trying to catch his breath. "The Collegiate doesn't own this station, they just have a lease on the upper levels. We're on a border system, it functions as a major trading hub. Most traders don't want trouble, they'll be trying to get out of here with their cargo now that the station has signaled that there are no Draugari ships in the area. Commotion is bad for business."

I wiped the sweat off my forehead and took a few deep breaths. I glanced back over my shoulder, nobody was following us, yet.

Ju-lin holstered her gun and caught up beside me. She tousled her hair.

A pair of pilots in faded red flight suits walked passed us, Ju-lin flashed a smile. They smiled back and kept walking.

"You said we were at bay eighteen?" I asked as we passed docking bay seven.

"That's right," Loid answered as we kept walking.

Looking ahead I saw that docking bays one through ten were for large haulers, the extendable docking collars were wide enough to drive a hover through. Between the bays were large windows where I could see the hulking shadows of cargo vessels that were attached to the magnetic clamps on the exterior of the station. The clamps then would hold them in place as the docking collar was extended and a hard-seal created so that they could load and offload their goods.

Beyond that there were a dozen much smaller loading docks, small enough, I was certain, for Tons-o-Fun.

"Wait," Ju-lin stopped. "Won't they know to look for Tons-o-Fun? It won't take long for the Collegiate to check the docking logs and figure out you were here. Hell, they probably have already cross referenced the docking manifests and are there waiting for us."

"Keep moving," Loid answered. "What do you take more for, an amateur?"

"Let's see, so far since we left the colony we've been ambushed, followed, framed for murder, betrayed, captured, and shot at," Ju-lin replied hotly. "So yes, amateur does come to mind!"

"Look Twiggy," Loid grabbed her arm and kept walking. "It's not my fault that you two are walking and talking trouble magnets with more secrets that the Third Division. You've lied to me, kept things from me, and got one of my oldest friends to betray me. If the Collegiate had any idea that I followed you guys out here they would mark me for death, and I wouldn't be able to come near Celestrial space again. So give it a rest for a bit, neh?"

Ju-lin started to say something, but was cut short by shouting somewhere behind us. The three of us turned around to see the group of Collegiate guards running toward us.

Loid tapped the screen on his sleeve and spoke into it. "Have her ready, we're going to have to burn out of here hot. You'll probably need to blow the mag-clamps."

"Roger that," a voice crackled on the other side.

"Who was that?" Ju-lin asked.  
"Dammit move," Loid growled as he drew his pistols and turned to run.

This time Ju-lin didn't take more coaxing. All three of us took off at a run towards bay eighteen.

The sight of us running and the clatter of the guards behind us caught the attention of everyone on the docking level. Within seconds all of the technicians and pilots had cleared out of the middle, opening up the path. It made it easier to run, but it also gave our pursuers a clear line of fire.

I felt the heat as the first three shots sizzled just over my head. I looked over, we were at docking collar twelve. We still had six to go.

"We're not going to make it," I gasped.

"Keep going," Loid said as he turned his head sharply to look at a group of six large steel vats that were about to be loaded through docking bay collar thirteen. "I have an idea."

Ju-lin and I kept running, side by side, keeping our heads low to avoid the occasional bursts of laser fire from behind.

"Alright, then," I heard Loid stop behind me just as we passed the steel vats.

I turned and watched as he leveled his laser pistols at one of the containers and began firing a low-level continuous beam. The metal became superheated and began to buckle.

A short woman with long braids and a purple and white uniform ran down the docking collar, screaming and waving its hands wildly at Loid. It was too late, a great glug of sticky sludge came spewing out of the vat, covering the floor. With it came the unmistakable smell, Jantar Nectar. Loid dodged to the side to avoid another stream of fire from the Celestrials, and began firing at the second vat. Within seconds, it too gave, sending a wave of nectar covering the floor of the docking bay. There would be no way for the guards to follow us.

A dozen other crewmen wearing purple and white uniforms rushed out with scrapers, trying to contain the spill. Our pursuers were stuck behind them without a clear shot.

Loid turned and started running toward us.

"Not bad," Ju-lin commented breathlessly to me. "Come on, we're at sixteen, almost there."

I looked ahead and saw the docking collar eighteen ahead to our right, the door was open and unguarded. The Celestrials who were chasing us screamed angrily behind as we passed out of range.

"I think we're clear," Loid said. "Keep moving!"

I heard another series of shots from behind us, though it wasn't the soft hum and sizzle of a laser bolt. It was a rapid ticking that sounded like a piece of plastic flapping in a windstorm. It fired again, and I heard an unmistakable scream of pain.

I spun around to see Loid falling to his knees and spinning sideways, there was a line of small blots of blood beginning to spread across his chest and back. I looked around frantically, the guards that had been chasing us were far behind, stuck on the other side of the expanding pool of Jantar Nectar, well out of range.

Then I saw them, two figures stepping out from docking bay fifteen. A Celestrial and a bearded man. My memory flashed back to the Hub and the human and Celestrial who had been smoking in the dark. They were the same faces I had seen following us when we were traveling the streets of Shindar II.

The bearded man saw me and shouted, the Celestrial turned and raised a large rifle up to his shoulder.

"Run you idiots!" Loid called as he collapsed onto the floor. His face was red and contorted in pain.

Ju-lin grabbed my arm and pulled, "Eli, there's nothing we can do! Come on!"

I turned with her and ran. Her hand slipped from my arm down to my hand, and I held it tight as we ran past docking collar seventeen.

The gun fired again, I heard them whistle passed wide and track in toward me as we turned to enter the docking collar. As I followed Ju-lin into the passageway, I felt a series of sharp stings on my shoulder followed by intense burning.

As we passed into the next docking collar, Ju-lin spun and worked the controls, the door slid shut and locked.

"Get in here!" I heard a booming voice call from the far end of the docking collar.

"Come on," Ju-lin nodded as she hurried down the long, accordion-style concourse. I followed, behind her, though after a few steps I stumbled, my head spinning.

I reached up to feel my shoulder, it was burning hot, I pulled back my hand and it was wet with blood.

"You're hurt," she ran back and helped me along.

"It's not bad, I said. "Well, it's not much at least, it burns."

She looked back at my shoulder, her eyes narrowed, "micro-rail gun."

"Not that acid stuff you told me about in the hub?" I felt my stomach go cold with the thought of acid slowly burning through my flesh and into my bones.

"That?" Ju-lin answered. "Oh, probably not, your skin would be melting by now if it was acidic. No, probably just an irritant, something to either put you asleep or cause enough pain to debilitate you."

"That's not very comforting," I said as I fought to keep my focus.

There were voices and a loud banging on the sealed door behind us.

"Hurry up Loid!" the voice called again, this time I recognized it.

"Cwaylyn?" I called.

"Yeah, it's me, get your asses onboard and strap in!"

"Who?" Ju-lin asked.

"Loid's friend from the Par'eth, some kind of professional racer or something."

"Cwaylyn Jones?" She asked, her eyes widened. "The Cwaylyn Jones? You said you met a friend of Loid's at the bar, you didn't say it was Cwaylyn Jones!"

"Yeah, maybe," I answered, I felt a twinge of jealousy at the light excitement in her eyes.

At last we reached the end of the concourse and turned to the left where the collar had a hard-seal on Cwaylyn's ship. There were open viewports on either side of the airlock, the ship was definitely not Tons-o-Fun. It was long and sleek, painted dark blue with a luminous line painted along the wings that matched the stripe that had been on Cwaylyn's jacket at the Par'eth. The ship's back wings were folded up into an "A" shape near the back, on the rear tail a jagged lightning bolt was stenciled.

"What the hell is that?" Ju-lin said in a low appraising tone as she scanned the ship from bow to stern.

"It's a prototype some friends of mine are developing, hoping to start their own company actually. I'm their test pilot. Where's Loid?" Cwaylyn's large head popped out through the hatch. "Oh and you must be Ju-lin, Loid had said there was a girl, not a beautiful woman."

"Loid got hit," I answered, choosing to ignore his second comment.

"Micro-rail gun," Ju-lin blushed slightly as she followed Cwaylyn through the hatch. "They got Eli's shoulder too. They weren't shooting to kill. Loid's probably still alive."

"Damn," Cwaylyn said as he leaned over and gave a quick look at my shoulder as he sealed the hatch. "Let's hope they want him that way, because there's nothing more we can do for him now."

I crouched as I moved forward through the cramped cockpit, Cwaylyn was sliding into the pilot's chair, which was protected by a low glass canopy and an array of knobs, switches, and displays. There were three small passenger seats behind the pilot's chair. The Carrack and Tons-o-Fun had been larger cargo ships, intended to support small crews. Cwaylyn's prototype was much smaller, from what I could tell, it was even smaller than the Drakes that had been with Alonso's Starchaser. Sweat dripped down my forehead and my left arm was starting to tingle.

"I have a medpack behind the seat there," he said. "Throw some salve on that shoulder and strap in."

Ju-lin quickly unpacked the medpack and squirted a tube of something that smelled like mint all over my shoulder. At first it stung bad enough that I nearly cried out in pain, though, after a few breaths the pain subsided, the tingling in my arm subsided and my headache started to pass.

"They locked our mag-clamp," Cwaylyn muttered. "So much for subtlety. You two set?"

Ju-lin commented an affirmative as she clipped her safety harness while I fumbled with mine.

"Good, three, two, and pop!" Cwaylyn flipped a switch and I heard a thud somewhere above us. The ship shook violently. After a second, we started to drift as the docking bay and the mag-clamp disengaged. "Collective-designed docking lockdowns: nothing a few well-placed charges can't solve. Hold on, they already have fighters scrambling. We ain't near out of this yet."

With that, he jammed the throttle to the stops. The engines fired and the little ship leapt forward, pressing me back into my seat just as I got my harness to click securely.
Chapter 25.

Kal, Jen'tak and Tren met me at the ship. I handed Tren the datacard and he slipped it into the nav computer. The starmap appeared in the holographic display.

"Eighteen jumps away," Jen'tak commented. "Far from our Clan's territory."

"Are we shifting our migration?" Kal asked. "Is the chieftain looking to expand our reach?"

"Why would we?" Jan'tak answered. "Our systems are plentiful. The Human scourge has yet to spread into them. The systems they are sending us to are close to the surface-dwellers. Why would we shift our migration so far to somewhere already infested with world-dwellers?"

Kal looked at me expectantly, but I said nothing.

"There was a courier yesterday," Tren spoke up.

Everyone turned to listen.

"A courier?" I asked.

"Yes," Tren continued. "One of the novices overheard and told me. A courier came in late last night from the conclave. He went straight to the Chief and left again just after second watch."

"You were given these orders at mid-third watch," Kal said quickly. "This isn't from the chief, it is from the conclave."

We were all silent, staring at the holographic map.

"What could it be?" Jen'Tak's voice was low and hungry. "Could the clans be moving to war? Are we finally going to stand together and exterminate the dweller's spreading infestation?"

Again, we were silent. Kal smacked his gums hungrily.

"We follow our orders," my voice was steady and resolute.

Cwaylyn calmly handled the controls, pitching and rolling the little ship between the massive cargo ships lumbering out of the docking bay. Within the first ten seconds of our flight I had been certain that we were going to crash three times; but, on every occasion, Cwaylyn maneuvered at the last possible moment, leaving mere inches between us and the other ships as we passed.

To our right one of the large cargo ships fired their thrusters, pulling away from the station. The docking collar detached and swung sharply upward toward our flight path, Cwaylyn pulled up lightly, avoiding it by inches.

"Make sure you're strapped in," he said conversationally. "Looks like I get to put this new engine through her paces."

I had thought I knew what space combat was like after our fight with Alonso's Starchaser. The first thirty seconds riding with Cwaylyn Jones taught me how wrong I was. We pitched downward and rolled sharply to the side, flying into a long, narrow gap between the station and what looked like a barge docked long-ways along the station. At the end of the passage I could see faint stars. I looked upward through the cockpit canopy; we were going so fast that the cargo barge above us was nothing but a blur. I realized I had been holding my breath. With effort I forced myself to slowly exhale.

As we burst out into open space Cwaylyn racked the controls and sent us into a tight barrel roll just in time to avoid a barrage of plasma. I spun my head around to see a small fighter in pursuit.

"Four o'clock high!" Ju-lin called, I looked over to see her face lit up with the rush of the battle as she scanned the sky. "He's coming around."

"Thanks sweetheart," Cwaylyn said to Ju-lin, smiling as he flipped a switch.

My rising jealousy was replaced by fear as Cwaylyn disengaged our engines so we were riding our forward inertia. Cwaylyn fired the maneuvering thrusters to flip us around on our axis to face the other fighter. We had barely stopped spinning when Cwaylyn thumbed the controls, firing two tightly focused particle beams on the left wing of the enemy ship. Cwaylyn kept the beams perfectly on target for several seconds before the wing started to glow hot and hull plating began to fall away and the fighter began to spin out of control out into the void.

Satisfied, Cwaylyn spun us back around and re-engaged the engines.

"Four more coming in," Ju-Lin said as she craned her neck back toward the station. "We can't fight them all."

"Well we could," Cwaylyn answered. "But that's not the plan. Those little fighter jocks have nothing to do with the thugs that kidnapped y'all and I think we've made enough enemies already."

"They are going to dust us," Ju-lin snapped back. "You can't just ignore them."

"Like hell I can't," Cwaylyn chuckled as he pulled up and turned us back around toward the station. I was pressed back in my seat as he fired the thrusters, leaving the fighters in our wake.

"That forward thrust is incredible!" Ju-lin said.

"Ain't it though?" Cwaylyn responded. "I'm telling you, when my guys get their funding figured out and start going to mass production, everyone who's anyone will be flying one of these birds."

"So what is the plan?" I interrupted, feeling left out. "How are we getting out of here?"

"Well, the good news is that it looks like the Collegiate, or whatever they call themselves rely on local defense forces," Cwaylyn said conversationally. "These poor local jocks aren't well equipped. The Collegiate only send their own guys when it's something big I guess. Either way, we're on the edge of the Celestrial Empire, one quick flux from the Domari Collective. Lots of traders and travelers pass through here, a good place to go to stay away from prying eyes. What did they want you two for anyway?"

Ju-lin and I exchanged quick glances but didn't answer.

A yellow light on the console started to flash, each tick was accompanied by a high pitched beep.

"Oh, they have missiles," Cwaylyn said calmly as he steered the ship toward the oncoming fighters in the distance.

The yellow light was blinking more frequently.

"We're going toward them?" I felt panic rise in my stomach. "I thought we weren't going to fight."

"So, tell me, Ju-lin was it?" Cwaylyn turned in his seat to look at Ju-lin. "That's a pretty name."

"Yes, thank you," she fumbled, blushing.

The yellow light was more frequent almost two blinks per second.

"Aren't you going to do something about that?" I asked, pointing to the light as I wished she would stop looking at him like that.

"Oh fine, you're no fun," Cwaylyn said as he spun around. He adjusted our trajectory slightly and fired are particle beams, to streams of green shot out from the bays along our wings. There was a series of three explosions as his shots struck home, igniting the oncoming missiles.

While the missiles were still exploding, Cwaylyn thumbed down our thrusters and turned directly back toward the station and once again slammed the throttle to full. For the first time, I got a full view of the station. When Alume had described how the moon was struck by the comet, I had imagined that the moon would have shattered and spread out into space. In reality, the gravitational pull of the largest remaining mass of the moon would pull the rest of the debris behind it in orbit. As a result, the large chunk of grey-brown ore that made up the core of the moon had been hollowed out to build the station where we had been held captive. The remaining mass of the shattered moon trailed along behind in a thick and dense asteroid field. The bounty of ore and rare minerals that had once made up the core of the moon and were now trailing the station was worth a fortune. The Domari Collective had given up a lot when they yielded the system to the Celestrials.

"Those fighters are closing in," Ju-lin commented.

"They won't catch us in time," Cwaylyn answered. "When the Celestrials took over the station for some reason they didn't bring in new fighters. They kept the old Domari defense ships. They are well armored and decently armed, but slow."

"But where are we going?" I asked, thinking back to our arrival, it had been an hour or two between our last jump and when we had docked. "The flux point can't be back toward the station."

"Excellent observation Eli," Cwaylyn boomed. "Loid said that if anything happened to him that we should still follow the plan. So I'm following the plan."

"Which is?"

"I'm going to lead the locals on a goose chase and drop you two off to take the Tons out of here," he responded. "Oh, that reminds me, I'm going too fast, can't lose them just yet."

He pulled back on the throttle as we approached the back side of the station, angling toward the long stream of asteroids following in its orbital wake.

"How are you going to be able to drop us off if we're being followed by the Celestrials?" I asked. "Aren't they going to notice when we stop and dock?"

"Yeah, about that," Cwaylyn responded. "Under your seats you will find some environmental suits, you should start getting those on."

I reached into the cubby under my seat and found the curved dome of a helmet. I pulled it out and looked over at Ju-lin.

Ju-lin looked skeptical.

"Is he serious?" I asked.

"Of course I'm serious," Cwaylyn replied as he pulled up to avoid fire from the oncoming fighters. "Remember back at the Par'eth I told you about how Loid and I used to pull smuggling scams? This is one of them. I would run the goods out, and then drop them at a prearranged location and Loid would sweep in and pick them up. That way even if I got caught my ship would be clean. Meanwhile, Loid would skip right out of the system with the goods without a care in the world."

"Have you done this before? With people?" Ju-lin asked.

"Well, kinda," Cwaylyn answered. "Well once with a dead guy, but he was dead before I dropped him."

"What?" I asked.

"True story!" Cwaylyn said as we leveled out along the rugged stone surface of the mangled core of the moon.

Cwaylyn jammed the controls left to right as he avoided a spire of stone. We were reaching the edge of the core remnant of the moon, ahead of us the view port was full of asteroids. I saw lights and ships connected to some of the larger ones, miners I assumed, though the bulk of the field was littered with misshapen hunks of dark stone and minerals ranging from the size of a pebble to a few dozen times the size of our little ship.

"We're going into the asteroid field?" Ju-lin didn't sound nearly as terrified as I felt.

"Technically this isn't an asteroid field," Cwaylyn responded as he pulled up to maneuver between two large chunks of stone. "All of the debris is locked in the trailing orbit behind the chunk of moon that the station's built into. It's a debris cloud."

"So the rocks are more or less stationary and it's easier to navigate?" Ju-lin asked.

"Exactly," Cwaylyn responded as he pulled in closer to one of the larger asteroids. "Not nearly as fun as the real thing. How are they doing?"

I craned my neck to look behind us, four of the station's defense fighters were falling in behind us, but the shooting had stopped. They were struggling to keep up.

"They're still with us," Ju-lin answered. "We're pulling clear though, we'll lose them in here soon."

"Don't want to lose them quite yet," Cwaylyn eased up on the throttle a bit more. "Are you two getting those suits on?"

I looked over at Ju-lin.

"I can't say I've ejected into open space before. Should be fun." Ju-lin said as she reached down to grab her suit.

I didn't share her idea of fun.

I reached down and pulled the rest of the suit out and started to put it on over my clothes. I unbuckled my harness and held myself as steady as possible as I slipped into the suit. It was awkward. After a few seconds I spared a glance forward out of the cockpit and immediately regretted it. We were in the center of the debris field now. Cwaylyn was shifting left and right and spiraling while slowly increasing the throttle.

"Hurry up," Cwaylyn said. "Tons is parked out at the edge of the field here. I'll shoot both of you together in her general direction."

"Her general direction?" Ju-lin repeated.

"Shoot?" I asked

"Yeah, well, sweetheart, believe it or not this is a little harder than it looks," he pitched downward avoiding a cloud of gravel. "Look, I've been around the verse a few times, rescues are messy business. I tend to avoid them as a rule, high risk and no credits to show for it. But Loid called in a favor, so here I am."

The Matron, Cwaylyn. Iit seemed half of the galaxy owed Loid one kind of favor or another. I remembered his face as he fell to the ground, his chest covered in blood and the face of the old human and the Celestrial. They weren't with the Collegiate, I was nearly certain. I hoped that whoever they were they wanted him alive.

"I don't see how ejecting us into open space in the general direction of the ship will qualify as much of a rescue," Ju-lin countered.

"To be fair," I said. "The Collegiate goons were on their way to throw me out of an airlock when you guys found me. At least we'll have suits on."

"Good point," Ju-lin answered as she slipped her arms into the suit and zipped it up. "It could be worse."

"There should be a magnetic grappler back there somewhere," Cwaylyn answered. "Once you hit open space, find the Tons, grapple her and reel yourself in. Like playing darts at the bar, easy-peasy."

Ju-lin turned to me and helped me slip my arms into the suit and zipped it up. As the zipper hit the top the suit made a hissing sound as the airtight seals engaged. I caught Ju-lin's eye and tried to smile reassuringly. I wasn't sure how reassuring it was since I was fairly certain we were about to die, but I gave it my best effort.

"Helmets on," Cwaylyn said as he grabbed his own and popped it over his head.

I reached down and slipped it on. Like the rest of the suit, as soon as the helmet nestled into place, the automated seals engaged, clamping the helmet firmly in place. Stale but breathable air began to circulate through my helmet.

"Almost time," I heard Cwaylyn's voice over the helmet speakers. "I have a good twenty second lead on these guys. Did you find the grappler?"

"Got it," Ju-lin answered through her helmet mic.

"Okay, get in your seats and keep your arms in," Cwaylyn continued. "You don't want to catch anything on the way out. It should launch you more or less straight out the top here, and I'll have you angled as close as I can to where I remember where we left the Tons."

His words echoed in my head: More or less. Should. Close. I wasn't feeling very confident.

"What about you?" I asked, trying to focus on anything except for being ejected out of the top of a speeding spaceship with a dashing pilot who was flirting with Ju-lin while on the edge of the remnants of a ruined moon full of hostile aliens.

"Me? Oh, I'll be fine. The cabin will re-pressurize and I'll just kick in the boosters." Cwaylyn answered easily. "They won't have a chance to keep up with me, poor devils."

"Then why are we bothering with this at all?" Ju-lin asked. "Why not just skip the whole, ejection and fly through space thing and just skip the system?"

We were reaching the edge of the debris field, the question sounded perfectly reasonable to me.

"The Celestrials will have an alert out for this ship," Cwaylyn answered. "I'm going to hightail it to the far end of this system and make the flux over to the Collective and disappear. But from what Loid said, your colony's in a bit of trouble. If you come with me you will have to travel through a dozen or so Collective systems before getting back to Protectorate territory, it will take at least three days, and you may notice there's not much room in here, no food or supplies. But if I scuttle you two into the Tons, you can make a straight shot through the Furies and make it back out to your little world."

"So they will just let us go?" Ju-lin asked.

"The whole system is focused on me at the moment, they won't be looking for you. Look back there at the station, after the explosions half of the traders are preparing to flux on out of here. Even a fake Draugari attack is enough to spook em'. Your suits sealed?"

"Mine is," Ju-lin answered as she checked a display on her wrist.

"I am not sure how to tell," I answered as I tried to make sense of the little display on my wrist.

"Now where is that spot-oh hell," Cwaylyn muttered. "Hands in!"

"What did you sa-" I didn't get the sentence out before the canopy above us slid open.

The rockets in our seats ignited, firing Ju-lin and I into space.
Chapter 26.

"The cadre is ready," Tren said as he opened my cabin door.

"The Slires?" I asked.

"The Chieftain assigned two pilots. Kilan and Lertic," Tren responded. "Lertic has two kills, Kilan has one."

"Fighters?"

"A convoy," Tren answered shaking his head.

"I would have preferred pilots with more experience," I answered as I continued to sharpen my blade with my white whetstone. "But they will do."

"Did the Chieftain tell you anything about what we are looking for?"

"No," I answered. "But this is not an exploration or scanning mission, we are going to hunt. The conclave believes that there may be ground-dwellers coming into the system. I've been studying the route and the flight pattern. I think we are being sent to watch over one little world."

"One world? Three ships to attack a world?" Tren asked.

"You misunderstand, our mission is not to attack the world, it is to protect it."

"Protect a world? Like a common dirt-dweller?'" Tren turned his head and spat.

"There is something more to this," I kept my focus on my knife. "Time will tell us what."

"Good luck, don't forget-" the radio faded to static as Cwaylyn's little ship disappeared in the distance, arching toward Kalaedia's silver ring.

"Don't forget what?!" I shouted back fruitlessly as Cwaylyn soared out of range of our helmet coms.

I turned and watched as the four defense fighters flew after him.

"Over here," Ju-lin's voice spoke into my coms. "To your left."

I turned, Ju-lin was floating next to me just a few feet off. I reached out but came up a foot-and-a-half short of her outstretched hand.

"Hold on," I said, remembering that I had seen a length of cable wrapped around the right thigh of my suit. I reached out and unhooked a latch the end and started to unwind it. I was halfway through unwrapping it when I became fully aware that I was actually floating out in space.

I froze, staring out into the vast expanse of nothing below me, above me, all around. The black was lit up with specks of stars, each with their own worlds. A flash of Lor'ten's memories flooded my mind, images of stars, worlds, huge ships, blazing lights, explosions, and death. I shook off the images.

"Eli," Ju-lin's voice was calm and reassuring. "I know. Amazing isn't it?"

I didn't answer.

"My dad first took me out on a space-walk when I was nine. He said I'd been begging him to take me out since I was four. I floated out there with him for an hour before he dragged me back to the airlock."

I stayed silently transfixed as I looked out at the stars. Any one of the stars could have been dead for a few hundred years, and the light would still be shining bright. I wondered if one of the distant twinkles held the world that my people had come from. I wondered if one of the bright stars was really the last gasping light of the long-dead star Vasudeva. I shivered.

"Eli, we don't have all evening," Ju-lin continued. "So unwrap that damned cord and toss it over here."

Roused, I looked over at her, through her thin visor I could see the intensity and urgency in her eyes, I finished unwrapping the cord, then wrapped one end around my wrist, and flung the other end toward her. After swatting at it wildly, she finally grabbed it, wrapped it around her own wrist, and reeled herself in toward me.

"Good," Ju-lin smiled. "Now, I don't mean to freak you out, because I know it feels like we're just floating here, but we're not."

She looked over my left shoulder, I shifted to follow her eyes and saw the debris field. We were heading toward it. Fast. Far faster than I thought possible.

"Holy hell!" I gasped.

"Don't panic," she said. "The first thing dad taught me about space is that all motion is relative. Relative to you, I am not moving. Relative to the rest of the universe, we're flying about one hundred meters per second. The second thing was to never panic."

"Okay, a hundred meters per second. Not panicking," I tried to sound as convincing as possible as I latched on to her. "What do we do?"

"Find Tons," she said. "Cway said he would fire us toward her, she should be around there."

I turned to follow her gesture, scanning the rocky field of debris that was steadily growing closer.

"I don't see it," she whispered, her voice starting to shake.

Sweat from my forehead stung my eyes, instinctively I reached up to clear it and ended up clumsily tapping the side of my helmet. I blinked three times in rapid succession and squinted into the darkness. I saw a flash of steel, and then it was gone. I waited a breath, blinked, and looked again, it was there. I saw a faint streak of red among the lumps of grey.

"There," I pointed. "Right there, on the underside of the crescent shaped stone."

Ju-lin followed my finger, searching.

"Damn," Ju-lin said with a wry smile. "How did you see that?"

"Now what do we do?" I asked. Although we were angled close to where Tons was drifting, if we didn't adjust our trajectory we would soon be slamming into the broad side of the asteroid instead.

"I don't know if I can hit it from here," Ju-lin said, pulling the magnetic grappler out of the holster on her belt.

"If you miss, I won't tell," I said as I tried to force a laugh.

"I'd appreciate that," she made an equally pathetic attempt to laugh. "Hold on to me."

We spun and I swung around behind her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders and chest as she held the grappler with both hands. I watched over her shoulder as Ju-lin took careful aim at Tons-o-Fun's hull, aiming at the buxom woman with the bright red hair painted on the Tons' bow.

I felt Ju-lin take a deep breath in, and as she exhaled, she fired.

We both watched as the grappler flew through the void. Behind the magnetic grappler trailed a microfiber string that fed out the barrel of the gun. At first, it looked like it was going to miss, but then, like the sticky-bomb that Loid had used against the Alonso's Starchaser, at the last minute the grappler began to arch toward the ship as the magnet found steel, striking home square on the bow.

Ju-lin laughed sharply.

We were closing fast, within seconds we would crash into the side of the asteroid.

"Hold on!" Ju-lin called as she flipped a switch and the grappler began to retract.

With a snap the grappler picked up the slack in the line and shifted our path, pulling us toward the Tons. I held my breath as it swung is in just enough to narrowly miss the edge of the asteroid.

"I can't believe that worked!" Ju-lin shouted as we swung in toward Tons-o-Fun.

We had avoided the asteroid, but we were still coming in fast. Too fast I thought.

"What about the landing?" I asked as we rushed in toward the hull.

"Umm, yeah," was all Ju-lin could say before we slammed, side first, against the hull.

I gasped for breath, my right arm and leg throbbed. I couldn't breathe. For a few seconds, I thought that my suit had ruptured. I imagined the vacuum of space devouring the precious oxygen in my suit. My lungs started to burn and my ears were screaming. Slowly, I opened my eyes. I took a shallow breath. There was still air. My suit hadn't ruptured. There was still screaming though.

"Did you see that?!" Ju-lin whooped. "That was incredible! I've never seen anything like that even on the vids on the nets back home! Eli? Eli are you okay?"

"I think so," I answered, still gasping for breath. We were nestled against the large bust painted on the nose of the ship. I looked up to find that I was face-to-face with the buxom red-head's sly and seductive smile.

"Whew," Ju-lin pulled off her helmet and tossed it casually on a rack in the Tons' main hold. "You good?"

"Yeah," I pulled off my helmet, trying to sound much more relaxed than I felt. I sat down to hide my quivering legs. After being shot out of Cwaylyn's fighter and repelling onto the bow of the Tons, scaling across the outside of the ship from the bow to the stern air-lock had more or less shot what was left of my nerves.

I pulled off the suit and tossed it into the corner. Aside from our breathing and the soft hum of the lights and the air scrubbers, the ship was silent.

"It's eerie in here," Ju-lin said as she stood in the middle of the empty hold.

"It's quiet," I stood up, rubbing my shoulder that had taken the brunt of our impact against the hull. I saw a cloud of my breath as I exhaled softly. "And it's cold. Can we turn on the heat?"

"Yeah," she answered. "Loid probably left her on standby mode with just critical power systems going. Let's get to the cockpit."

"I hope he's alright," I said as I followed Ju-lin across the empty hold.

"Well he did get us into that mess in the first place," the harshness in her tone sounded forced. "Maybe he deserves to spend some time with his friend's in the Collegiate."

"I don't think it was the Collegiate that got him," I replied. "They couldn't get past the pool of Jantar goop on the flight deck. I saw the guys who shot him, they were the same ones who were following us back at the Hub outside of Joof's shop."

"You're sure?" Ju-lin turned around, her eyebrows raised.

"Pretty sure," I said as we passed into the secondary hold. "One of them was Earthborn, well maybe from somewhere in the Collective, either way he had a beard so he wasn't a Celestrian. I don't get the impression that the Collegiate work closely with the other races."

"Maybe they were hired?"

"Or maybe they work for MineWorks and were the ones who put the hit out on your life," I suggested. "Who knows, maybe they were the ones who killed Joof too, to try to frame us for murder to get the Celestrials to lock us down and keep us quiet."

"You're full of theories today," Ju-lin responded as she opened the hatch into the living quarters, I ducked through the doorway and followed her in.

"It was something that Alume said right before the Draugari, 'er I mean Loid, attacked the station. He sounded surprised that his pilots destroyed the cave. Maybe they didn't, maybe it was—"

"It was nothing, really," I jumped as I heard Loid's voice behind me. "Nothing at all, don't mention it."

I spun around to see Loid's torso hovering above the dining table.

"Clearly, something didn't go as planned," he continued. "If you are seeing this then for one reason or another, one or both of you made it off of that rock, but I didn't."

"A hologram," Ju-lin's voice was soft behind me. "He must have set it up to automatically trigger when we came through."

"First, you should know that the Tons is on lockdown for another twelve hours," the hologram continued. "Standard Celestrial protocol dictates that they will maintain a heightened security posture for 12 hours after a security breach. So, I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of hard-wiring the ship to keep you two locked down here for your own safety, so have a drink and get comfortable. Once the time is up you should be able to fire up and slip on out to the nearest flux point without a problem.

"Second, you should probably want to know why I went back for you in the first place. I didn't know what the Matron had planned. We've been friends for a long time, and I've never known her to make a move like that. She would only do it if there was a gun to her head. Whoever these Collegiate guys are, the powerful and have a long reach. She must have felt as if she hadn't had a choice. I'm going to guess that, because at least one of you was here to trigger this message, they didn't kill you. So that's the good news. The bad news is that if the Matron was scared of these bastards, they are more than capable of some serious violence, which brings me to my next point-"

Loid stepped out of view, the empty air above the table crackled. A moment later he reappeared.

"Eli, you did a pretty good job of stashing this thing on the ship, but, she's my ship. I know every corner and crevice," he held up the memory card from the survey scanner that we had used in the cave. "Really, I told you two you needed to stop keeping secrets from me. But, you never listened. Fair enough I suppose, I doubt I would have trusted me either in your shoes. However, you should have."

He took the memory card and pushed it forward out of view, a moment later his image was replaced by the holographic image of the cave from the point of view of the camera I had setup. The scanner had done its job well, we were looking at a detailed three dimensional digital mockup of the entire cave.

"You see here," Loid's voice continued as the view zoomed in on the two symbols on the wall. "These are your mystery aren't they? These are what your friend's at MineWorks saw and what you two went to investigate in the first place, right?"

He paused long enough that both Ju-lin and I nodded, waiting for him to continue.

"Well I have news for ya kiddies," Loid said. "This isn't some cryptic code or ancient language. These things aren't a big mystery at all. Any border pilot who has done a bit of smuggling will be able to read them. Yours truly included. See, I told you that you should have trusted me."

The image faded, and Loid's torso reappeared.

"It's a starmap," he continued. "In the old days traders used diagrams like this to identify the locations of flux points within a system. See, watch this."

His image faded again, replaced with two floating circles with symbols along the outside edge.

"The two rings combine at a ninety degree angle, like so, and then they would match up the symbols like this, so that the marker is aligned with the first orbiting planet. From there, this symbol means there is a flux point out that direction, this other symbol here, on the edge, indicates the distance from the sun."

As we watched, the two shapes fit together and three bright points of light appeared in mid-air, scattered away from the central star.

"So it's a navigational chart," Ju-lin whispered.

"But wait a minute," I said. "Those aren't our symbols. The rings he just showed us had symbols along the outside edge of the circle, but the ones in the cave were all inside the circles."

"Now here is where it gets interesting," Loid's face reappeared once again. "If you were paying attention at home, you noticed a subtle difference between the traditional nav rings, and yours, namely that the symbols you found were inverted into the ring. That's because your maps don't show the way to a flux point out in space, they point the way to something else, something on the planet itself. Take a look."

The holographic screen shifted back to the image from the cave and the symbols on the wall. As we watched, the symbols separated from the wall, and slid together as the others had in the simulation that Loid had just played, except this time, instead of highlighting distant points in space, a bright point appeared at the surface of the planet near the northern pole.

"See there? Your symbols were a map pointing to internal coordinates. Pretty smooth actually. Too bad you two didn't come to me with that in the first place, could have saved us all quite a trip and probably saved me from whatever happened to me back on that station. Not that you should feel guilty."

"Hell," I sighed.

"Oh, and there is one more thing," the view shifted back toward the entrance to the cave. "You said something about the cave getting blown up, so I took a look, see that there, that blur, that's your bomb. Now, if we enhance it like this, yeah, there. No more blur. A nice scanner you guys used there. See, now we can see that the little guy is a pretty nifty plasma drone. Now, zoom closer here with me—"

Ju-lin and I leaned forward as the image zoomed in toward the drone, filling up almost the entire display. The focus adjusted until we could make out the finest details and scratches on the stainless steel surface.

I peered at the small nameplate that was bolted onto the side of the drone: Mark II Strip-mining Plasma Drone, MineWorks Ltd.

"No way," Ju-lin gasped.

"Hell," I repeated.

"It looks like some of your friendly neighbors weren't that friendly," Loid broke in again. "It wasn't the Celestrials, or even the Draugari who melted down the cave and almost killed you two."

"But why?" Ju-lin asked.

We both stumbled backwards as Loid's face reappeared.

"Why is the question," Loid said as if responding to Ju-lin. "The MineWorks goons who blew it up must have some clue of what the symbols meant, or at least that there was something of value that they didn't want the Celestrials to get ahold of. Why else would they use the drone to destroy the cave rather than, I don't know, use it to defend the colony? What I do know is that there is something back on your little world that MineWorks, the Collegiate, and maybe even the Draugari will kill for. Now there's a sober thought. Especially since I'm guessing they already killed me for it and I don't even know what it is. Ain't that a pisser?

"Anyway, well now you two kids are stuck here for a bit," Loid's tone sobered as he continued. "I know Twiggy is probably already clawing at the hull to get moving, but seriously, take this time to think through what you're doing. You're young. You have a ship. A fine ship at that. Don't think that your only option is to run back over to your little world and get yourselves killed. I've seen a lot of worlds, and I haven't found a single one I wanted to die on. So run in, get your family, and get out."

His image moved out of range of the projector.

"Oh, and one more thing," his head popped back into view, large enough that I was sure his head must have been inches from the camera. "Just in case I'm not dead, you keep this ship safe. I'll be back for her."

There was a flash of light and the projector went dark.

We were silent for several breaths, listening to the soft hum of the lights.

"At least the Collegiate doesn't know that whatever it is is on the planet," Ju-lin broke the silence. "I mean, MineWorks may know, and Growd may have a scan of it, but he never sent out the images in the drones. At least that means dad, Marin and the colonists are safe. Hopefully the Collegiate think that the cave is destroyed and there is nothing left to worry about."

"They know," I said slowly, my stomach churned as my conversation with Alume replayed in my head. "I told Alume about the circles. He asked about the symbols, if they were inside or outside the circle. I told him."

"What?" Ju-lin's face was white.

I slid into a chair, my arms and legs felt numb.

"I thought if I told him a little I could learn what they were after," I breathed slowly. "I thought I was being clever, but I gave him everything. He knew that the symbols were a map, and now he knows that it pointed to a location on the planet itself. And he knows about the plasma drone. I thought that the Celestrials had fired it. When I mentioned it he sent a message immediately. He knew his pilots didn't fire it, he must have known as soon as I said it."

"If he knows there is something hidden on the planet, he will move to either retrieve it or destroy it," Ju-lin said, the tenor of her voice was flat. "What it is doesn't matter. He's bombed the colony once, he may do it again."

"He will do it again," I said quietly. "And because of the drone, he knows that MineWorks may be there to defend it. He's going to go in with force."

"How do you know?" Ju-lin became animated again. "Maybe it's some artifact or something. Now that he knows it's on the world he may just go look for it, retrieve it, and leave."

"That's not his plan," I said. "He said so. Whatever is on that world, he doesn't want to see it retrieved or saved. He wants to see it burn."

"They're historians," Ju-lin countered. "That can't be right. They wouldn't just destroy something like that."

"They would if they know it's the last remnant of the Thar'esh."

"Thar'esh?" She echoed. "Now you're worried about Loid's boogie-man? You're not making any sense."

"I am Thar'esh," the words slipped through my lips uneasily. The thought had been racing relentlessly through my mind, I finally turned to face it. "Or at least I think that's what I was. Vasudeva, the four-pointed star, the Collegiate use it as their symbol because the Thar'esh destroyed the entire system. The Collegiate are sworn to take vengeance and destroy any surviving memory of the Thar'esh."

"You are Thar'esh?" She asked, not believing. "That's a stupid thing to say. It isn't possible. Your world didn't have any tech. None. That's why the terraformers didn't know the world was inhabited. We talked about it all before. Your memories are about farming, no starships, no electronics, nothing. How could those people who hadn't even mastered metalworking have been the same race that the Celestrials have nightmares about, and once destroyed an entire star system? The Thar'esh are just stories. Nobody has that kind of technology. It's all hokey. Fairy tales. How can you believe that? It's absurd."

"You may be right, but Alume believes it," I responded. "That's all that matters. He will act on it, he is acting on it. He will destroy everything."

"What do you mean 'destroy everything'?" Ju-lin said. "He clearly doesn't know that you are, whatever it is you are. You're the only one left, you're safe. He will go, scan the world, see that it's only inhabited by humans, and leave."

"It's not just that. The circles. The map. Even if he doesn't know where it is, he knows there is something left on the planet. And maybe there is, maybe it's a ship or a weapon," I said. "Maybe that's what MineWorks is after as well. You didn't see how he was talking. Alume, the Collegiate; they don't just want vengeance, they want to erase the last remnants of the Thar'esh from existence. He won't just go scan the planet, I think he will—"

I didn't finish the sentence.

"Dad," Ju-lin said breathlessly as she turned and pushed her way into the cockpit.
Chapter 27

"Seven days of fluxes," Jen'tak muttered as he sat across from me in the navigator's seat.

We were resting comfortably in the cabin of the Carrack, looking out at the endless black of space. I sat in my gunnery seat, flipping through the long-range scans of the system.

"Seven days and nothing, nothing at all," Jen'tak continued. "Are you sure this mission wasn't a punishment? What did we do to deserve this?"

Kal grunted something from the pilot's seat.

"What Kal?" Jen'tak leaned forward. "Bah, he's asleep. We're on a mission to nowhere to sit and watch nothing."

I should wake Kal, I thought, but why bother? Jen'tak was right, there was nothing to see. I flipped through the ship's internal diagnostics. The Slires were both docked securely, the pilots and Tren were taking their shift sleeping.

"How many more days of this?" Jen'tak asked. "Lor'ten?"

"In eleven days we will be relieved, but we stay until then," I answered. "Our orders were clear. We wait."

"Wait? Wait for what? We are warriors, it is not in our blood to wait."

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blink of red on my display. I turned my head, squinting, there it was again. Now two, then three.

"The wait may be over, Jen'tak," I answered as I activated the shipboard intercom. "Battle stations, three Celestrial fighters just entered the system."

The wait for Loid's 12-hour lockdown to expire passed with agonizing slowness. For the first two hours Ju-lin tried to override the controls and access the engines, but Loid had done his job well, the ship wasn't going anywhere. Eventually, she gave up and slipped back into the pilot's seat to pour through the local system maps to plot out the fastest jump path back to the colony.

"We can do it in six jumps, but that will take us back through Shindar, not sure if that's the best idea," Ju-lin spoke quickly to herself. "There are some longer options that will avoid most of Celestrial space which would take 38 hours. Too long. What if we go back over through the Furies, we could run into a patrol that could stop us for an inspection, but then they would probably think we stole the ship. But then, Loid's credentials seemed to work well enough, and it looks like he has a file here on what to transfer where to pay off the different Earthborn patrols, if we pay them off we should be able to slip past—"

Ju-lin continued for hours staring at the heads-up display and talking to herself as she plotted different paths. I could see the lines of concern on her face. She had already lost her mother, and now her father and brother were left sitting on the colony with no way to defend themselves from what we were certain was coming.

With Ju-lin focused on her task, I was left quietly to my own thoughts. Though I was afraid for the colony, and the faces I knew there, I was ashamed to find that my curiosity of what was hidden on the world outweighed my concern for the 8,000 human lives that hung in the balance. I found Loid's simulation of the symbols from the cave on the ship's computer and studied the coordinates. What could it be? I wracked my memories. I recalled being in caves with my teacher, for funerals, ceremonies. My first memories as a human were from a cave. The cave had saved my life. But in all of my memories the caves were empty. The walls were sheer. There were no alters, or books, or technology. The only images I could ever recall seeing on a cave wall were the symbols I saw with my human eyes.

Whatever was hidden, was hidden well. I didn't know what it was.

"Get up," Ju-lin smacked my cheek lightly, waking me up in my bunk. "We have five minutes."

I opened my eyes, I hadn't slept.

Ju-lin proudly handed me a cup of overbrewed tea. It was bitter but I smiled and thanked her. I noticed that she wasn't drinking one herself.

"Did you get any sleep?" I asked.

"Sleep?" she scoffed as she used one of the bulkhead handholds to stretch, my eyes lingered on her bare stomach. "About an hour maybe."

Again I couldn't help but be amazed at Ju-lin's surge of energy now that we were about to get moving again. When I had left her in the cabin some hours ago she looked exhausted and worn. But now, with a perilous path in front of us, she was chipper and even cheerful.

"I optimized a route," she turned away as she switched positions to stretch her other leg, I stole a lingering look at her backside. "It should take us a total of 27 hours flying time to get back to the colony. Nine jumps total. I figured we could take shifts on watch so the other can get some sleep as we go, I have a schedule worked out. Oh, I found these protein bars, they taste more or less like cardboard, but it's breakfast."

"Looks like you thought of everything," I said as I tore off the edge of the wrapper and took a bite of the protein bar. I'd never tasted cardboard, I knew then that I never wanted to.

"More or less," she grinned. "I also found all of the ship's gunnery schematics and a simulation system. I have it wired into the consoles if you want to give it a run through and check it out. I have to say, Loid has this bird rigged up to fight. When we ran into those pirates he made it sound like we wouldn't have had a chance against those Drakes, but we have enough firepower on this thing to—"

The ship's lights flickered off for a half-second and then came back on, brighter than before. Deeper in the ship I heard a deep whirl followed by the soft reverberations of the engines powering up.

Ju-lin smiled.

"Looks like it's time to go," I said as I pulled myself up out of the chair.

"So it does," she responded.

I gestured grandly toward the cockpit and made a small bow, "after you, captain."

Her smile broadened as she stepped past me and through the hatch.

The fighters that had followed Cwaylyn out into the black were nowhere to be seen. They were replaced with a steady flow of cargo ships and couriers coming and going from the station. The local NewsNet was broadcasting a warning looking for an unidentified modified racing vessel that had stolen technical design schematics.

"Design schematics?" I asked.

"The Collegiate must be covering it up," Ju-lin answered. "Interesting."

"At least it means we're safe," I answered.

"Relatively," she replied as she turned up the throttle and set us on course to the first flux point.

After two hours we made our first flux into a well patrolled Celestrial system. We were hailed by Celestrial patrol ships three times, each time we sent our credentials, they scanned us, and sent us on our way. After seven hours we made another flux into a system called Gateway. Positioned on the edge of the Celestrial Empire, Gateway serves as the main trading hub between the Celestrial Empire, Earthborn Protectorate, and Domari Collective. I watched out the viewport in awe as dozens upon dozens of huge cargo vessels and swarms of Celestrial patrol fighters slid through the darkness between the flux points. We were stopped and scanned once on our flight through Gateway. Between our empty cargo hold and Loid's flight credentials, we were allowed through to the flux point to the Earthborn system of Nexus.

As we fluxed into Nexus my jaw dropped in awe at the sight of the twin blazing blue stars in the distance.

"Yeah, it always gets me too," Ju-lin said quietly from the pilot's seat. "Binary star systems are something else. Welcome to Nexus."

"I read about Nexus," I answered. "It has two terraformed super-earths, right?"

"Yeah, and about a dozen orbital trading platforms." Ju-lin answered. "Dad always says that if Earth is the heart of the Protectorate, Nexus is the stomach. There are seven flux points in system, two lead to the Domari Collective, that one behind us back to the Celestrial Empire, and the other four take us back deeper into Protectorate territory. If it's legal, and it's traded, it comes through Nexus."

"And the illegal?"

"You saw all the security back on Gateway, look over there," she pointed to the distance.

I turned my head and saw the hulking shapes of two Protectorate Dreadnaughts floating nearby.

"Smugglers are too smart to try to run through this mess," Ju-lin continued. "They take the long way around and go through the Furies instead. It's a dozen more fluxes to go through the Furies, but you have a helluva lot better odds dodging patrols or bribing customs officers out there like Loid does than you do here."

I nodded in agreement.

We talked for a while longer about Nexus, and the twin-terraformed super-earths, Artemis and Apollo, that were silent spinning in distant orbit around the binary stars. Though she had never been to Artemis, Ju-lin told me about a class trip she had once taken to Apollo. She talked about buildings two hundred stories high that shot up from the ground like shards of mirrored glass, she described the Earthborn Protectorate's Grand Stock Market, and a performance hall where she had slept through some rendition of an ancient-earth opera.

As she spoke I could see her relaxing slightly. Though she had tried not to let it show, I realized that being in Celestrial space had made her nervous. Now that we were in the shadows of the familiar shapes of the Protectorate Dreadnaughts, she allowed herself to relax. After a few minutes she began to yawn, and grudgingly slipped back into her bunk to sleep as we began the seven-hour trek across Nexus to our next flux point.

Our trip across the system was the first time I had access to the Protectorate's NewsNets. I quickly realized that it more than a localized news network. It was a federation of networks that connected humanity from system to system. News traveled slowly. The latest news from the border worlds was still days old. Though ships could travel from system to system through flux points, information didn't have it quite so easy and had to be carried rather than transmitted. I recalled the communication drone that MineWorks had sent and figured that the NewsNets had to operate using some sort of distributed delivery system.

Time passed quickly. To keep myself awake I browsed the net. There were stories of a few Draugar attacks on unprotected shipping lanes, an in-depth look at a contested element of a trade agreement between the Protectorate and the loosely controlled Domari Collective, and extensive coverage of the conflicts between the Prime Minister and the Senate on everything from military spending to licensing and registration fees for hovers. Intermixed between articles were flash commercials for new starships, gourmet freeze-dried treats, exotic getaways, and localized planetary alerts for wanted criminals or suspected smugglers.

I found myself fascinated by the endless complexity of the Protectorate. The colonists had spoken of the Protectorate as a distant and foreboding thing: like the cloud of an expanding storm that they were trying to avoid. But despite their distaste, the colonists still devoured any vids that made their way out to the colony. They didn't want to be part of the corruption and waste of the Protectorate itself, but they wanted to be close to it. I began to realize that most people wanted both freedom and stability, but in a dangerous universe, you could not have both. Those who ventured out beyond the border worlds suffered through the harsh realities of space and the untamed wilds. Draugari raiders, Domari smugglers, Earthborn pirates, Celestrial reformists, and Osterian scavengers were out waiting in the black.

So I realized that each man and woman struck a bargain: sacrifice some of their freedoms for the safety and prosperity of the Earthborn Protectorate. Some were true believers, like Ju-lin's brother Marin, who sought to become part of the system to shape it from within. Others, like the colonists, treated the central government of the Protectorate as a necessary evil, and still others saw the vastness of the federated worlds as an opportunity for profit.

Again I thought of the small slice of the human universe that I had come to know. I thought of Lee. I was pretty certain that, like his son, he had once believed in the Protectorate. He had joined the Protectorate Fleet and excelled, but then, somewhere along the way, something happened. I wondered if it was the death of his wife, or something else he had seen. But he had lost his faith.

My thoughts drifted back to Ju-lin, who was sleeping silently in the cabin behind me. Call it whatever you want, a void soul or just restlessness, she would never resign herself to embracing the Protectorate like Marin. I wanted to think that I was like her, but I wasn't sure. As I thought about it, shades of memories swept through me. I felt Lor'ten's loyalty to his clan, a deep sense of unflinching and undying devotion to the betterment of the whole. I also recalled my teacher's lessons and lectures: "Community is submission to your own weakness to the greater strength of the whole."

Though I wanted to be more like Ju-lin, I realized I had too many other lives in my head. It was like I had to constantly contend with the memories of two other minds within my own. The community of the living, no matter who they were, was far too important. And I could not just walk away. I recalled Loid's parting words about going to get Ju-lin's family off planet and running. I knew I couldn't do it. There were too many lives at stake, and too many unanswered questions.

"My shift," Ju-lin's voice made me jump.

"You're up early," I fumbled an answer.

"Ah, reading up on the local news," she asked as she looked over my shoulder. "Anything interesting?"

"Everything actually," I answered honestly.

"Oh yeah, you're new to the NewsNets," she answered as she sipped on a cup of tea. "Don't worry, it will get old after a while. It's always the same old stories, a war breaking out here, Draugari raiding there, a dispute with the Celestrials, and some new fancy piece of unnecessary tech that the Domari Traders are trying to sell. Did I get it all?"

"Pretty much," I smiled as I pulled myself out of the pilot's seat. "I guess it's my turn to get some sleep."

"I'll wake you up when we're getting close," Ju-lin smiled as she slipped happily into the chair and flipped the controls to activate some additional scanners. "Sleep well."
Chapter 28.

"No," I said. "We wait."

"Yes, of course," Jen'tak nodded heartily. "Make sure that they cannot run back and hide in the flux point, close in around them and feast on the glory of battle."

"No," I repeated, "We wait. Maintain minimal energy signatures. See where they are going, if they continue to the target system, we follow them."

"And if not?" Tren raised his arms as his voice thundered. "What? We let them go? Blast that, we go now, the Skins are there for the taking."

"We wait," I stood up out of my chair and stepped toward Tren. "I am in command of this Cadre, my orders will be followed."

Tren stepped up to me, pulling off his helmet. I did the same. The human air was stifling. But I ignored it.

"Your orders?" Tren echoed as he raised his lips, bearing his teeth.

"Yes," I snapped back, parting my lips. "I follow the commands handed to me by the Chieftain, sent directly from the Conclave. Do you question their authority?"

"Their authority was never in question," Jen'tak stood and drew off his helmet.

"We are a long way from our migration Lor'ten," Tren responded. "We will not be denied our hunt because you do not have the stomach for it."

Tren's hand slid to the hilt of his knife.

"You know what I have the stomach for," I answered as I drew my knife.

"Course change," Kal called, breaking the tension of the moment. "The Skins are breaking off, heading toward the flux point. They are heading toward the target system."

"We follow them at a distance. Keep power signatures low," I ordered.

"And then?" Tren asked.

"If they go near the planet, we destroy them."

Tren made a clicking sound with his lips and pulled his helmet back on.

I heard a woman scream, and I raced forward. I was in a dark corridor lit by faint flashes of light. The walls were rusted steel. The scream came again, echoing down the hall. The scream was no longer the thin voice of a woman, it was the low howl of a dying beast. I kept running toward the sound, and the walls changed. Instead of steel and rust, there was stone and wood, I was in a cave. The flickering chemical lights were replaced with thin flickering flames from hanging candles. Somewhere, someone started to scream my name, but the sound was cut short as they began to choke. I heard thin gurgling. They were drowning. I felt my own throat fill up and I tasted blood, I coughed and spat to try to clear my throat, but I still couldn't breathe. Horror gripped me as I panicked as I looked for help. Faces emerged in the dark. Some were Draugari, some were Thar'esh, others were human, and all were pale, cold, and dead. The scream came again—

"Eli!"

I continued to shake as the darkness raced around me.

"Dammit Eli! Wake up!"

The voice wasn't faint, distant, wasn't monstrous, wasn't dying.

I opened my eyes, I was on my bunk, covered in sweat. Ju-lin was leaning over me, concern on her face.

"It's alright," she said softly. "You were having a nightmare, I heard you screaming from the cockpit."

"Screaming?" I asked as I propped myself up. "What was I saying?"

"Hell if I know," Ju-lin answered. "You weren't speaking any language I'd ever heard. What did you see?"

"Shadows," I replied as I tried to shake the images from my memories. "The dead, the dying, I don't want to talk about it. Where are we?"

"On route," she sat down on my bunk, and put her hand briefly on my shoulder. "It's quiet, well, it was quiet, except for you."

"Yeah," I replied. "Sorry."

"You have a lot going in your head apparently," she said with a grin.

I chuckled.

"Here, I'll get up and let you take a rest," I said. "I won't get any sleep anyway."

I shifted, waiting for her to get up so I could slide out of the bunk.

She didn't.

"Slide over," she said as she kicked off her shoes.

I shifted with my back against the bulkhead as she leaned toward me and kissed me lightly on the cheek and looked at me with her lips still parted. I could feel my heart thumping in my chest as I looked back at her. Then she flashed her wicked grin, and rolled over, and nestled her back against me, I put my arm around her and held her. Her warmth and smell chased away the shadows from my nightmare, and eventually, I slept.

When I woke up, she was gone, but the feeling of comfort remained.

"After this jump we only have two more and we will be there," Ju-lin said hopefully as I stepped into the cockpit, still shaking off my sleep.

"Still no sign of trouble?" I asked.

For hours now, Ju-lin had been quietly scanning the local Protectorate Fleet channels listening for any hint that the Collegiate were on the move. So far, we hadn't heard anything.

"The next two systems are undeveloped no-man's land, it should be nice and quiet," she added as she initiated the flux sequence. "If the Collegiate was going to attack, they would have to cut through the Furies I've been listening to traders and Protectorate alerts, but there's been nothing about a flight of Celestrial ships. It looks like we were just worried for nothing. A few more hours and we'll be back home, we can get Dad and Marin, and tell the colonists to evacuate."

The ship's power surged as it slipped into the flux point, sliding into the narrow void that stitched the solar systems together. In order to fight off my churning stomach, I thought back to the Domari myth that Loid had told us about the god jumping from system to system, poking holes in the universe. Ridiculous as it was on the face, I wondered if there was some truth buried in it. If somewhere out there, there was another alien race who had created the network of flux points that allowed us to travel from system to system. After all, the Domari Collective had been the first humanoids to make it into space, perhaps there was a seed of truth in the stories. Like the Celestrials telling stories about the void souls. I knew well enough that the Thar'esh were not some mystical, ethereal beasts. But, over time, they had become symbols of things that the Celestrials didn't understand. Like the humans and their gods.

As we sat I quietly pondered if the flux points were created by some long-forgotten race. What if that technology once existed to burrow these holes through the vastness of space? What if that technology could be found again?

My head stopped spinning as we slid back into normal space. I realized that I had been holding my breath. The scopes were clear. I settled into the jump seat as we continued to slip through the black.
Chapter 29.

"They fluxed," Jen'tek said as he licked his lips hungrily. "Follow!"

"Follow them, but keep our distance," I said. "We don't act until they reach the planet."

Jen'tek clicked his tongue in disapproval, Kal shifted in his seat.

"We will attack them in the atmosphere," I continued. "We can use the world to mask our approach. The lizards will not know what hit them."

Tren and Kel voiced their approval, even Jen'tek seemed placated. He would soon have blood.

But, I thought to myself, I have another motive. The Cheiftain did not know why we were sent out here. We did not know what we were sent to protect. The Conclave was keeping it from us. If they would not tell us, we will have to fly in and find out for ourselves.

"Tren, tell the pilots to detach the Slires and prepare to flux," I ordered.

"All's quiet, I guess all the worry was for nothing," Ju-lin smiled as we moved toward the final flux point. "Maybe we've been overreacting about all of this anyway. We'll explain it all to dad. He'll either figure out how to evacuate or see if we can get MineWorks to provide a defense force. Either way, he'll know what to do."

She didn't turn back to look at me, so I didn't have to force a reassuring look. Maybe Loid was wrong about the Collegiate. Maybe Alume didn't have the power he implied. Maybe we were would slip back into the system and land on the colony without incident. But try as I might, I couldn't quite convince myself. I took a deep breath and prepared for the worst.

Tons-o-Fun's core rumbled to life as Ju-lin activated the jump drive. She let go of the controls and leaned back into her seat as the ship's computer followed the pre-programmed path through the void. Ju-lin and I were silent as the seconds passed. For once the swirling disorientation of the void didn't bother me. I was too intently focused on what we would find on the other end of the flux.

We returned to normal space with a jarring suddenness. The black of open space surrounded. For a half of a second, everything was quiet and calm. I was just starting to let out my breath when my console began to flash. A half-second later two different alarms sounded.

"What the hell is that?" Ju-lin said as she took the controls.

Before I could respond the Tons shook violently, two more alarms began to sound.

"It's a proximity alarm," as I said it the alarms silenced. "Wait, no, not anymore."

"What do you mean not anymore?" Ju-lin asked as she engaged the engines as she searched her display.

"I mean it gave a proximity alarm, but now it's gone," I said. "It looks like something hit us, the hull wasn't breached. Systems are showing green. Maybe whoever it was shot us and fluxed out behind us?"

"Only one way to find out," Ju-lin said as she jammed the controls violently, engaging the thrusters to turn us around 180 degrees.

Looking back in our wake we could see a cluster of debris. Two larger pieces drifted nearby. One looked like an engine, the other large segment was a smooth, angular line of a hull.

"Oh hell," Ju-lin sighed.

"Whatever it was," I said slowly. "It didn't make it to the flux point."

"We must have jumped in right on top of him," she said. "Poor bastard never had a chance."

"Not much left of it," I said. "The scanners can't identify it, but it was small."

"I can," Ju-lin said. "See what's left of the fuselage there, there is only one race in the verse that builds a ship with lines like that."

"Celestrial," I sighed. "Do you think he just got here? That's a little ship to be all alone out here—oh."

"What?" She craned her neck back to look at me.

A loss for words, I continued looking out the viewport to the lights in the distance.

She turned back forward, following my gaze and froze.

"Look at them all," her voice was barely more than a whisper.

Eridani III was an easily recognizable speck in the distance, but between us and the colony was what looked like a massive grey and silver thunderhead complete with splintered flashes of lightning and flashing explosions.

"S-scanning," I managed to pry my eyes away and look down at my console. "Ships, a lot of ships. The computer is reading between 150 and 300. The numbers keep adjusting as more ships appear. All sizes, looks like Celestrial. Wait, no, Celestrial and Draugari."

"Draugari?" Ju-lin repeated as she engaged the thrusters to full, sending is barreling toward the raging battle. "Any Earthborn ships? What the hell is going on?"

"The computer is reading all signals as alien. Some Earthborn ships, but no Protectorate transponders, probably pirated Draugari vessels. I don't know, but it looks like the Draugari are deployed between the Collegiate and the colony."

"Are you sure?" She asked as she pulled up the long-range scans. "They are. Maybe the Draugari haven't had a chance to raid it yet."

"They are defending it," I said.

"The Draugari are defending the colony?" She asked hotly. "You sound certain."

"I am," I said simply.

Once again Ju-lin spared a glance over her shoulder. She held my eyes for a moment before turning back to the controls. She turned back and spent a long moment studying the fleets. At last she took a long and measured breath.

"See if you can plot a path that will take us around the bulk of the fighting. There," she said. "See the debris and burnt out ships? It looks like the battle is moving over there to the left. That's the thing about space battles, they have to shift away from the debris. If we head into where all the wreckage is floating we should have some cover. We need to make it down to the colony. They will be focused on each other so we should have a chance to slip through on the fringe. And keep your eyes out for a rear-guard. Fleets tend to leave a scout behind to make sure they don't get outflanked."

"Well we're lucky there, I think we already ran over him," I said.

"Good point," Ju-lin replied. "At least he didn't have time to get a signal out. Hopefully that's not all of our luck today. We'll need all we can get."

"Alright, now steady on, there is a large wreck of something at about your three o'clock low. Can you make it down there?"

"There's some debris but I should be able to," Ju-lin answered as she fired the thrusters, sending us spiraling downward to narrowly avoid the broken wing of a Draugari Slire. The big wreck, it looks like some sort of old retrofitted hauler. Protectorate, but very old by the lines. I wonder how long the Draugari had been limping that thing along."

"Got a live one up ahead," I said as my hand went to the weapons controls. "A damaged Celestrial."

"He's powering weapons," Ju-lin answered. "I have to give him credit, he's not giving up. Without our transponder going he probably just thinks we're another Draugari."

"Hold steady, I have him."

I worked the controls to line up the targeting reticule over the ship. It was one of the small Celestrial fighters, there were black scars along the hull and it looked like one of its twin engines had gone dark. He was working his thrusters to bring his guns around. The ship's rocket launcher rotated as it prepared to fire.

I pulled the trigger. With the shields already down there was nothing to protect the little fighter from the blast of the Tons' mass driver cannon. The ship dissolved into dust. As soon as it hit, Ju-lin swung us hard to port and punched the thrusters and angled us toward the hauler's wreck.

Ju-lin had been right about disengaging the transponder. She had explained that in large fleet actions all ships make sure to have their fleet transponders on so that they can easily tell friend from foe. The commanders require it so that they can keep a clean and accurate view of the battle. It's incredibly useful to make sure you don't accidentally wander too far from friendly guns. For us, it served as a kind of cloaking device. With the Collegiate and Draugari focused on watching their scopes to track enemy ships, they weren't looking out for untagged vessels. As Ju-lin had said, "without the transponder, the computer can't tell the difference between us and the other lumps of burning wreckage."

Although Loid would have strongly objected to her referring to Tons-o-Fun as "wreckage," I was reasonably certain he would have appreciated the tactic. I felt a pang of guilt as the memory of his face as he went down went through my mind once again. Somewhere he was being held prisoner, tortured, or even dead. Though, granted, I thought to myself as Ju-lin adjusted our course to avoid what looked like the body of a dead Draugari floating listlessly in the debris field. Loid may have it better off than we do right now anyway I thought.

"Can you tell how the battle is going?" Ju-lin asked as we came alongside the wreck of the hauler. There were blast marks and occasional bursts of flame as the last pockets of air fed the dying fire. I could see makeshift gunnery seats rigged along the bulkhead. Most of them were shattered with the now-dead Draugari still at their guns. I pushed the rising wave of memories down and focused on the task at hand.

The Draugari had significantly more firepower, but the Celestrials were well equipped and better coordinated. Though most of the wreckage we had seen were Draugari, we saw the remains of nearly a dozen or Celestrial fighters. I had seen four-pointed star of Vasudeva on the wings of two of them. Most of the Celestrial ships were single-man fighters, though there were a number of larger bombers and several larger corvette-class vessels that the computer couldn't identify still in the fight.

"From the wreckage I'd say that the Draugari took a beating on the first clash," I answered. "They pulled back and are being more defensive now. The Celestrials don't have a lot whole lot of firepower, but they have numbers and they seem to be a lot better organized."

"Sounds about right," Ju-lin responded. "The Draugari normally use hit and run tactics, I've never heard of them standing their ground. They are migrants, they never have any territory to defend. It's just weird."

"It is," I said quietly.

"What are you thinking?" She asked. "You sounded like that before."

"Nothing. Well," I paused. "Nothing I can make sense of. Lor'ten, the Draugari I killed. I know he was sent here to watch the world. There is something they want to protect. I just wish he had known what it was."

"Because if he would have known you would know?"

"More or less," I answered.

Ju-lin said something under her breath.

I let it pass, if she was uncomfortable with the idea I couldn't blame her. Having to sift through other people's memories made me plenty uncomfortable.

"I take that back," I said as I studied the scanner display, we were close enough now that the scanners were able to identify more of the vessels. "Those larger ships in the rear of the Collegiate fleet aren't corvettes. They aren't even combat vessels, they are haulers. I have a good look at one right now, it's reading as a terraforming vessel, computer shows six of them, each carrying ten atmo field generators attached externally."

"Atmo field generators?" she echoed. "That fleet has sixty atmo generators?"

"Yeah, computer says that they are used in the terraforming process to develop hospitable atmospheric conditions for colonization," I read. "They are capable of processing native gasses to produce a wide variety of necessary atmospheric elements, including nitrogen, oxygen, and greenhouse gasses."

"I have to give the Skins points for creativity," Ju-lin sighed. "Celestrials are the masters of Terraforming. Usually they only need ten of those things to replace a planet's atmosphere. But if they just drop them all and fire them up spewing greenhouse gasses-"

"They will cloud over the planet and either freeze or burn out the surface."

"It would be inhospitable within a week," Ju-lin added. "If they overload the atmosphere they would turn the surface into a wasteland, superstorms would cover the world. Anyone down there would die, and anything down there would be wiped out or irrecoverable."

We continued flying along in silence as we paced along the wrecked hull of the hauler. By navigating the debris field, we had managed to bypass most of the fighting. I looked up and watched as the Draugari and Celestrial fleets shifted in formations. There were sporadic flashes of light as they occasionally exchanged fire. The initial clash was over, both sides were regrouping and strategizing their next move.

The Draugari fleet clustered defensively around four large vessels, most looked like converted haulers like the wreck we were passing. Each would be crewed by dozens of Draugari warriors. Honor, strength, honor, strength. I remembered chanting the words in my mind, over and over as I waited on the edge of battle. No, I hadn't. Lor'ten had. It wasn't me. I looked down at my hands resting comfortably on the Tons' weapon controls. No, I realized, it was me. Lor'ten was a trained gunner, so I was a trained gunner. His thoughts, his skills, his memories. They were my own. They were my skills, my memories. I shivered involuntarily as I struggled with the thought.

"It's just a matter of time," Ju-lin said. "See how the Skins are spreading out and slowly surrounding them? Even though the Draugari have the advantage in firepower they are tightening up formation as if they are just waiting to be slaughtered. Dad always said, when you give up initiative, you give up the battle."

"The Draugari won't stay in formation," I said. "Not for long. They don't like inaction. They will attack."

"Yeah, probably." Ju-lin replied. "And when they do the Skins will be in position to wipe them out them. They've lost, they just don't know it yet."

We finally slipped past the bow of the wreck, Eridani III loomed clearly in front of us. With the Collegiate and Draugari fleets still engaged, we had a straight shot in. Ju-lin fired the thrusters.
Chapter 30

"There," I said softly. "Send the signal, have the Slires stay on us close, focus fire a missile on the lead fighter."

Kal leveled out the ship as we continued to follow the signal of the Celestrial fighters. We'd managed to keep our energy signatures hidden as we followed them, now that they were within the planet's lower atmosphere, we were moving to strike.

"There's something down there," Jen'tek interrupted. "A colony."

"A colony? Out here?" Tren asked.

"Human," Jen'tek said. "The Celestrial are bombing it."

"Surface rats bombing surface rats?" I repeated. "Good, they are distracted. Focus on the fighters first, then we will deal with the humans."

Jen'tek made a low growl, showing his approval.

I charged the Carrack's weapon systems as we came in range. The Slires were keeping tight on our wing, waiting for my signal to attack. Clouds filled the viewscreen as we continued our descent, my finger hovered above the trigger as I waited for the shot.

At last, the clouds cleared and I saw the ships. Three of them were flying in loose formation. Smoke was already beginning to rise from the burning settlement in the distance. I took careful aim and fired.

The missile fired, trailing cleanly across the night sky. The lead enemy disintegrated in a ball of fire. First blood. The Slires rushed passed us, driving hard toward the two remaining fighters.

"I have three marks coming in fast. Slires. Coming in along the horizon," I called as I read the scope. It had been quiet for the last thirty minutes since we had cleared the battlefield and set our course for the planet, if either of the fleets had noticed our passing, they were too intent on each other to worry about us.

"I see them," Ju-lin answered.

"Looks like the Collegiate weren't the only ones with a rear guard."

"That's unfortunate," she remarked as she studied the scopes. "Damn they're fast. Hold on, I'm going to drive us down and break atmo. The entry will be rough, but if they want to follow us they will have to slow down or they will be torn apart when they hit the troposphere. It should give us a chance."

"As long as you promise that it will be smoother than the last time you tried to land on this planet," I joked as I shifted power to the front shields.

"No promises," I saw the corner of her lip curl into a grin.

With that she sent us into a steep dive toward the surface. The ship began to shake as we hit the upper atmosphere and Ju-lin reversed thrust to start slowing our descent. As we slipped through the horizon and into the world, she pulled up and began to level us out as the computer plotted a course to the Downs.

The scopes were clear. I'd lost radar contact with the Slires when we passed the magnetosphere, but just because we couldn't see them, didn't mean they weren't there. I kept my hands on the gunnery controls.

"This is incoming vessel designation Tons-o-Fun," Ju-lin thumbed on the radio. "Requesting landing rights outside of the Downs, anyone out there?"

The radio was silent as we listened to the steady hum of the engines.

"This is Ju-lin McCullough, is anyone down there?"

Again silence.

"Maybe nobody's near the coms station?" I suggested. "They may not even know there's a battle going on up there."

"Possible," Ju-lin answered. "But Dad always has someone assigned to monitoring coms. Someone has to be there."

"Incoming vessel, this is the Downs. You have multiple hostile contacts closing in on you, break off your approach."

"Break off my approach?" Ju-lin snapped. "This is Ju-lin McCullough. Who is this? Darin? Jace? Get my father, now."

"Your father is indisposed," the voice responded.

"Indisposed? What the hell does that mean?"

"The Slires are coming in at our six o'clock," I said quietly. "We have maybe two minutes."

"It means he is not available to take your com," the voice snapped back. "Break off your approach."

"My brother then. Marin McCullough, he always has his radio on him, route me to his personal comm."

"Marin McCullough is offworld," the voice responded flatly. "This is your last warning, break off your approach. You are leading hostiles toward the colony."

"Offworld?" Ju-lin said breathlessly. "Where did Marin go? When did he leave? And who the hell is this?"

Again, there was silence.

"Ninety seconds until those Draugari are in range," I said. "If we let them get in behind us we won't be able to shake them."

"I know," Ju-lin snapped back as she worked the controls.

"Their shields aren't modulated for atmospheric combat, they will operating at maybe sixty-present strength," I added.

"Really, that's good to know," she responded. "I'm going to bring us around, open up on them full bore, our shields should hold for one good pass, maybe we can even up the odds."

"Ju-lin! I'm so sorry about that," a new voice broke in over the coms. "This is Governor Hollace Growd, we met back on the colony ship."

"Growd?" she repeated as she brought the Tons around to face the incoming Slires. "Where is my father?"

"Since he was nice enough to take us in after the raid on New Haven," Growd responded. "I've been helping him out by taking over some of the more menial duties of managing the Downs, that's all. My man here tells me that you're being followed by, er, wait what? She just turned toward them? Miss. McCullough, you do realize that there are three Draugari fighters closing on your position?"

I took a deep breath, focusing on the display as the Slires neared. Almost in range.

"Yes, I've seen them," Ju-lin responded. "Where did my brother go?"

"Well now, that's complicated," Growd responded. "You don't seem too concerned, you should probably take some evasive action, the Draugari aren't coming by for tea."

"Almost in range," I said quietly. "Hold steady as long as you can."

"You don't sound too concerned, Growd," Ju-lin countered. "Why is that? You know that after they get us they will come for you?"

The Tons' large guns had a longer range than the Slires, I knew I would have a few precious seconds of shooting before they were in range. The reticule went green and I opened fire on the first ship. With his shields already weakened, it took mere seconds for Tons' powerful guns to slice through the ship's armor. Its main wing broke off from the hull, sending the ship spiraling downward.

"A lot has transpired in the little time you were away," Growd replied. "After what happened we contacted our benefactors at MineWorks, they provided us with a small but adequate defense force. A few raiding Slires aren't really too much of a concern. But we would prefer to keep them away from the colony. So I repeat, divert your course"

As they closed into range, the remaining Slires opened fire. Our shields were holding, but couldn't take much more. I adjusted my aim to the second ship.

I pulled the trigger, but this one was ready. He made a tight roll, avoiding my fire. I adjusted, but again, the Slires evaded. Our shield indicator went from green to yellow as the energy field continued to absorb the Draugari' fire.

"A few Slires?" Ju-lin mimicked his voice. "Do you have any idea what's out there?"

"Out where?"

"Out there!" Ju-lin snapped back as she threw us into an evasive roll just as our shields began to buckle. "About a half-million miles above the surface there are a few hundred Draugari and Celestrial ships blowing the hell out of each other! It's a matter of time before the Skins push through and drop enough atmo gens on this planet to turn it into a toxic soup by dinner time tomorrow."

I had almost gotten a steady track on the Slires when Ju-lin sent us into a roll, my volley flew wide as Ju-lin once again kicked the thrusters into full. The Slires began coming around to pursue.

"Really child," Growed responded with a barking laugh. "A few hundred, eh? Not just one fleet, but two fleets? Draugari and Celestrial? Overplaying our hand a bit, aren't we?"

"Overplaying my-what hand? Are you thick?" Ju-lin snapped back. "When the Skins are done with the Draugari they will come here and finish what they started when they bombed your colony to the ground! You have to evacuate, now."

"Ah, there it is," Growd responded. "So they were right. You do know where it is hidden and are trying to get me to panic so you can get it for yourself. Interesting. Captain, dispatch the Draugari and escort Ms. McCullough to the surface. I want her alive."

"We know where what is? Bring us in? What the hell are you talking about?"

Her only response was silence.

"Six new marks coming in fast," I said. "Looks like they were using the planet's magnetic field to hide their signatures. They are good-sized, about 30-tons, well-armed, fusion engines. System identifies them as Falcons. Some kind of heavy fighter?"

"Nice ships," Ju-lin said over her shoulder as she thumbed off the coms. "I guess he wasn't bluffing about a defense force."

I watched the scopes as first one, and then the second Slires blinked out of existence as the Falcons overtook them.

"I hope there's a lot more where those came from," I said. "They are coming up fast."

There was a flash as four lasers streaked passed our cockpit as the two lead Falcons flew by. All of the ships were painted black with yellow and green stripes on the tail fins. MineWorks' colors were blue, these were hired mercenaries I guessed. The ships themselves were wider and shorter from bow to stern than others I had seen, shaped like the tip of a spade or an arrow-head. The lines from the cockpit at the front ran smoothly from bow to stern. If it weren't for the bulky gun mountings on the nose and under the wings I could have mistaken it for a Celestrial vessel.

"Starship Tons-o-Fun," a new voice broke in. "We are taking up positions on your wing and will escort you to the landing pad on the eastern edge of the Downs. You will comply or be fired upon. Understood?"

Ju-lin looked at the two Falcons as they slid into formation in front of us as the others pulled in behind and boxed us in.

"Understood," she said sharply and flipped the coms back off.

My mind raced. Growd somehow knew we had figured out where the map would lead us. He would try to make us take him to the site. Whatever it was. I was torn between my curiosity of what lay hidden, and my fear of what it could do in the wrong hands. And what was it? A matter of time, minutes? Hours? Certainly not more than that before the Celestrials would outmaneuver the Draugari and come streaking into the atmosphere.

"I don't like this," I said feebly.

Ju-lin kept looking forward. Her knuckles were white as she gripped the controls, and her jaw was clenched tightly. She said nothing.
Chapter 31.

"The other two fighters are coming around," Kel called. "They are focusing on the Slires, but staying low. They're too fast for us, but we're moving into position to cover our ships."

"These pilots are trained," I replied. "They're staying too low for our targeting systems, I can't isolate them. Order the pilot's to raise altitude."

"Lor'ten," Tren said, his voice was unusually low. "Look at the scan, below us, there-"

"Bladestones," I said softly as I looked out the viewport at the huge white stone spires jutting out from planet's surface.

"Huge bladestones, bigger than I've ever seen," Tren replied. "Do you think that is what we were sent to protect?"

"Why would they send us this far to protect bladestones?" Jen'tar asked. "There are bladestones on dozens of worlds."

"None that big," Tren countered. "Take a look."

I looked out the viewport and saw bladestones below, somehow, even in the dim starlight, they were starkly visible. They were reaching up to the sky in spires like arrows fired into the ground.

I had just looked away when the night lit with a flash of yellow-orange light, I turned to see a pillar of fire rising from the center of the bladestones.

"What happened?"

"Fire, that's all I can see," Tren said as he continued his scan. "Wait, I have two lifesigns, humans right next to the flames, sonar pulse is showing there's a cave."

"Maybe this is what we were sent to protect," I mused out loud. "Signal the fighters to continue the fight. Break off pursuit and set us down."

"Why?" Kel asked. "We should just kill the humans from here."

"What if those two just destroyed what we were sent to protect?" I asked. "The chieftain and the conclave will want answers."

Two of the Falcons hovered at a distance, keeping their guns trained on us as Ju-lin set Tons-o-Fun down. They held position until Ju-lin finished the shutdown sequence and our powerplant went silent.

"A bit paranoid aren't they?" Ju-lin said as she unlatched her harness, pulled herself out of her seat, and took a step up toward the cockpit window.

I joined her and followed her gaze. There was a small crowd of about a dozen armed men waiting. They all wore dark green uniforms. MineWork's colors. In the center was a middle-aged human wearing a dark grey suit with a purple tie. His jet-black hair had faint wisps of grey coming from his temples and was neatly combed.

We were on the edge of town. A mere 10 days ago this had been a grassy field, now it was a dusty staging area and makeshift starport. There was a row of new prefab structures that looked like parts and equipment. Nearby I saw mechanics working on one of six other Falcons: they had an even dozen.

In each of the four corners of the field were ground-based laser turrets, each of them manned. On the western edge of the clearing was a large command structure. The roof was covered in antennas, satellite dishes, and other equipment.

"All that tech, but they still can't see the fleets?" I asked.

"The first thing the Skins or Draugari would have done would be to disable the orbital communications relay. Without an eye in space we're as good as blind sitting down here."

"They are getting restless," I said, looking down as the guards, laser rifles at the ready, shifted their feet nervously and pointed up at us.

"I don't see my dad," she said softly. "I don't see anyone I know. They have fences up around the landing area, MineWorks is running this place like a military installation."

"We won't find out what's going on by sitting here," I said.

"True, but we may get shot out there," Ju-lin turned to me and smiled. For a moment we stood, inches apart. I remembered the soft touch of her kiss when she and Loid had rescued me back at the station.

"There is always that," I pulled myself back into the moment and tried the best I could to force a rakish smile.

Her shoulders bounced as she chuckled. She reached up and lightly touched my arm as she walked past me back toward the cargo bay.

A few minutes later we stepped down the cargo ramp back onto the dusty surface of the world. The guards spread out, and kept their weapons trained on us as we walked toward Growd.

"Now here we are. Good to meet you two at last. Been having quite the runaround now haven't we kids?" His smile had an unquestionable air of condescension.

Neither of us spoke as he stepped forward.

"Silence?" He continued. "I guess that's to be expected, it is a virtue after all. Well now let's see, I can't say I like what you did with your hair Juliette. Though I guess it could just be the style these days. But blue really isn't your color."

Ju-lin's lip curled in a sneer at the use of her first name.

"And you, the mystery boy, quite the knife you have there." He stepped next to me, tilting his head to the side as he looked at the blade on my belt. "A notable weapon. I'm sure you understand when I say my men will keep that for you."

One of the guards stepped forward and pulled the knife out of my belt.

"Now then," Growd continued. "That's better, less hostility, eh?"

"You still have a dozen guns pointed at us," Ju-lin snapped. "We are citizens of this colony, you have no right to take us prisoner."

"Ah, and there you are right, well, half-right," Growd smiled once again. "Juliette Linaea McCullough, citizen of this Earthborn colony, you are under arrest for theft."

"Theft?" Ju-lin's tone was incredulous.

"Yes," Growd said as he took a step backwards. "Don't you think we'd notice that you just landed a stolen starship? Do you have a legal deed of sale? Certificate of ownership? A signed notice of salvage reclamation? Anything?"

"You know damn well we didn't steal it," Ju-lin pressed forward. The nearest guard closed in before she made it two steps. With a deft move he pinned her arm behind her back and held her. A second guard closed in behind me and pressed the end of his rifle into my back.

"Little girl," Growd stepped forward, eye-to-eye with Ju-lin. "I know nothing of the kind. I know that the rightful owner of that starship is a known smuggler with quite a lengthy yet somehow unimpressive dossier of minor legal infractions to his credit. As the duly appointed and authorized Governor of this colony I have the-"

"You are not," she snapped back. "Lee McCullough is the governor of this colony. Where the hell is he?"

"Ah, yes," Growd stepped back and sighed slowly. "After New Haven was bombed and my people moved here, we had a bit of a rearranging of responsibilities. Lee abdicated his position as Governor to me."

"I doubt that," Ju-lin answered. "Where is he? What did you do to him?"

"Pretty girl," Growd turned and looked at me. "But not too trusting is she?"

Though part of me wanted to agree, I said nothing.

"The simple answer is that your father has been ill. He wasn't up to running the day-to-day operations of the colony, so he asked me to step in."

"Asked you to step in? Bullshit, take me to him!"

"You don't quite understand what being under arrest means do you?" Growd shrugged. "Take her."

"I won't go anywhere until you let me see my father," Ju-lin struggled against her captors, he twisted her arm in response and she cringed in pain but said nothing.

"You're clearly distressed about all this," Growd said slowly. "So how about a deal, if you cooperate and calmly and quietly go through processing and get to your cell, you can see the doctor who has been treating your father. Chen I believe it is, you know him?"

"I know Chen," she snapped. "How can I trust that you will do what you say?"

"You don't have a choice," the forced softness of his demeanor fell. "I don't have the time or the patience for this. Get her out of here."

"But what about the Celestrial fleet?" She called back as the guards pushed her forward.

"Oh not that again," Growd waved his hand dismissively.

"Sir," someone in the back spoke up, he was wearing a different uniform with blue and yellow stripes on the shoulder. It was the same colors that I had seen on the tail-fins of the Falcons.

Growd looked at him, pausing expectantly, "Well?"

"This morning we did lose contact with the orbital comms relay," he said slowly. "If there is something out there, we won't be able to see it."

"Oh don't tell me you're buying this crap," Growd answered. "You told me that it got hit by solar flares. You and your pilots were not hired to think, Commander Teigan. You were hired to do as I say. Bring your ships in and remain on alert. Understood?"

Teigan nodded.

After Growd turned, Teigan lifted his hand and rapidly spoke a few words into the comlink on his lapel.

"You damned fool!" Ju-lin called as they prodded her forward, leading her toward the command building and out of sight.

Growd ignored her as he turned toward me.

"Now, the girl, I can arrest," he said softly. "She is a registered and certified member of this colony and her father is a full-fledged decorated Protectorate war hero. But you, you're not on the colonial manifest. You're not in the Society's register. You, I don't have to arrest. You don't exist. And like you're friend Loid, nobody will miss you when you're gone."

"Those were your thugs who shot him back at the station?" I seethed, recalling the grey-haired human and old Celestrial who had shot Loid and followed us back on Tal. "And Joof, they killed Joof."

"What the hell is a Joof?" Growd laughed dismissively. "Whatever it is, it was a detail, and I'm a big-picture guy, not a detail guy."

"Nice way of rationalizing it."

"Rationalizing? No, you miss the point. We all have our role to play," he said. "Commander Teigan's role is to provide some basic security against marauding Draugari and the snooping Skins. Trent and Ki'nathi, the two fine gentleman who you so crudely referred to as 'thugs', are expert trackers."

"Assassins you mean."

"Two sides of one coin," Growd smiled once again. "One does not track one's prey just to observe it."

"And you?" I asked. "What is your role?"

"Me?" he paused. "I'm just an administrator, a clerk. Wholly uninteresting, I assure you. But you. You are interesting."

Fear crept through me. Fear that he knew what I was and where I had come from.

"Oh don't look like that," Growd said. "There is honestly no reason that we cannot be friends, or that this whole thing won't work out in your favor. I don't know where you came from, maybe you hitched a ride in on the colony ships, maybe you bribed some smuggler to drop you off out here, maybe you did something horrible and got marooned on this world. I have no idea, and I couldn't care less. What matters is that you have information that I need."

"Which is?"

"The location," Growd licked his lips. "My workers had just discovered the symbols, but didn't get a scan of it before we had to destroy it to keep it out of the hands of the Skins and Draugari. Thinking back now, I know I overreacted when I launched the drone. But I couldn't be too careful, we couldn't have such a treasure falling into the wrong hands. There is far too much at stake. But you. You saw the map room, you know where it pointed. You know where it leads. You know where it is."

"Where what is?"

"Power," he said simply. "Surely you know by now that this world was once inhabited by an ancient race of non-humans. There are clues scattered throughout the sector if you know what you're looking at. Some time ago a few of these clues started falling into our hands, and so we hired an expert to help us track down the signs and solve the pattern. A treasure hunter that fancies herself as an archeologist. Either way, she's very good. We found signs carved into standing stones on one of the moons in Aegle. We collected some images and pictographs found onboard the remains of a Draugari freighter, and dozens of other signposts scattered in the cosmos: all of them pointing here, to this world. What? Did you think the Company would send me out here just to colonize a mineral-poor world this far from Collective trade lanes and this close to Celestrial space just to run a relocation site? Do you think that we were really concerned about how a few sick colonists fare out here after the relocation? We own more than enough Senators to insulate us from any problems, believe me on that."

"So what do you think is here?"

"The Skins have their fairytales," he continued. "Evil monsters who can devour minds and gobble up worlds. Most of it is mythological trash, but I believe there is some truth in it. The story of the destruction of the star Vasudeva is true enough. Though the flux points have all collapsed and we cannot see it first hand, we know that there was once a young and vibrant star, and that it was destroyed. Think about that. The power to destroy a star. Whoever they were, the aliens who lived here had technologies that far outstripped our own."

I breathed slowly.

"As the legend goes, after they blew up Vasudeva, their command ship escaped," he continued. "The stories become a patchwork at this point, but all of them point here. They fled with all of that knowledge, and all of that technology. For the longest time, nobody knew where. But we know, don't we boy? They came here, to this little world. And don't get me wrong, it's not the power to destroy worlds I'm after. To get to that point they would need advanced manufacturing, a grasp of energy physics well beyond our own and a host of technical and scientific disciplines that would make life easier throughout the Protectorate and the Collective."

"So why terraform it?" The question that burned in my mind slipped out through my lips. "If you knew this is where they went, why move the colonists out here?"

"Well, yes, that was unfortunate. It complicated things," he paused to take a breath. "Originally, we had decided to terraform this world as an agricultural center to help support mining operations we plan on developing in this region. We didn't come across the final clues that pointed to this world until after the terraforming had begun, horrible timing really. I came out here in hopes that maybe something remained. Our scans showed evidence that there may have been a network of unnaturally formed underground tunnels up in the mountains, and I set my prospecting crew to start scanning the area for mineral deposits. I had a bit of luck when they found the chamber."

"What about the people who were here—the aliens?" I pressed. "What happened to them? Did you just kill when you terraformed the world?"

"Ha! Don't be absurd," Growd waved his hand dismissively. "They were long dead before we got here. Maybe their numbers were too few, maybe they died of disease, or infighting. The aliens were already weak, maybe the Draugari clan that used to hunt in this sector found them and wiped them out."

"How do you know they didn't move on?" I pressed. "The records said that the Terraforming crew found no active technology on this world. If you didn't find any technology here, what makes you think they were here at all? The keys could have been wrong, you could have misread the signs."

"The evidence we found is irrefutable." He answered coolly. "We've found stone carvings, magnetic imprints, alien debris, and all sorts of other clues. Clues left by the aliens themselves calling their brethren home. All of them are signposts pointing back to the safety of this little world as their haven. They were here. There is no question. The symbols in the cave prove it. And we both know that the map they left in that cavern pointed to a location here on this world. They may have died off here a few hundred years ago. They may have gathered what is left of their people and moved on. What happened to the aliens doesn't matter. What matter is that they are gone, and symbols on that cave say they left something behind. And I will find it."

"And if you're wrong?" I asked. "And nothing is here, or what if they come back?"

"We're hunting for treasure here boy," he responded. "Wealth and power. Fortune and glory. Nothing is for certain. But, if there is a chance, some slim chance, that they hid one of their vessels, or a cache of their technology here on this world, then I will move moons to find it."

"And you think I will lead you to it?"

"Drop the act," Growd answered. "I think you are as curious as I am, why else would you come back here? Besides, the choice is pretty clear, if you don't help me, I will kill your pilot friend and torture the girl."

"Pilot? Loid?" I asked. "He's alive?"

"For now, yes," Growd answered. "Talkative fellow, he told us all kinds of interesting things. He told us that you were the only one who knew the way, that you would be back, and that if we tortured the girl, you would do anything we asked. So now, let's get to it."

My mind raced. Loid had said I was the only one who knew the location. Clearly, this wasn't true. Loid himself knew. He had run the simulation and left us the location on the map. What was his game? Had he been lying to buy himself time, or did he have a plan?

I realized that it didn't matter. I thought of Ju-lin, Loid, and the burning question of what lay hidden. Growd was right. I would help him.

"Sir," Commander Teigan approached, he was holding his arm up to his ear.

"Yes, what is it now Teigan?" Growd barked back as he continued to focus on me, his lips were pursed tightly together as he waited eagerly for my answer.

"I sent my pilots into high orbit to conduct long range scans."

"And I told you not to waste the fuel," Growd, slowly and deliberately, turned to look at Teigan. "I don't think you understand our arrangement, you work for me."

"The girl was right," Teigan answered, ignoring Growd's scowl. "There are well over 200 vessels in high orbit, Celestrial and Draugari, they are engaged as we speak. We need to evacuate."

"What?" Growd's eyes widened. "Evacuate? That's absurd. Soon we'll have the most advanced technology in the galaxy in our possession. What are a few dozen fighters? Commander, prepare to scramble your ships for colonial defense if needed. Keep four in the air and have them ready to escort my shuttle."

"Yes sir," Teigan said coldly as he looked at Growd. He began to turn, looked back and glanced at me, and left.

"You," Growd nodded at the nearest armed MineWorks guard. "Have my shuttle prepared, we'll leave immediately. Hovers would take too long."

Finally, he turned back to me.

"You see, if there was nothing here, than why are the Skins rushing to find it? Why is there a Draugari fleet?" Though his voice was calm, his eyes looked anxious as he turned his attention back to me. "What will it be? Torture the girl, kill your friend, and wait for the Skins or the Draugari to come down and bomb us to dust, or join me in the shuttle and lead me to our salvation?"

I took a deep breath.

"It's really not a choice boy," he bared his yellow teeth as he smiled.

"Let's go," I responded.
Chapter 32.

We set down the Carrack a few hundred meters from the bladestones, smoke still filled the air as I watched from the command deck.

"Tren and Jen'tek," I ordered. "Go and retrieve them."

"Retrieve?" Tren asked. "You mean Capture? You want to take them alive?"

"Yes," I answered. "I know it's unusual, but we're far from home, the whole mission is unusual."

"I can't argue with that," Tren grunted as he got to his feet and turned to leave. Jen'tek grunted in agreement as he got up and followed him out.

Once they had left I stepped up passed Kel, who was still resting in the pilot's seat, to look out over the surface of the world. It was easy terrain, flat, trees, plenty of good stones for cover. The blaze from the fire was gone, and the bladestones were now blackened with soot and char. As I stared out into the distance I saw two shapes moving. So small, so frail.

"Evolution was not kind to them," I said quietly.

"What?" Kel asked.

"Look, there, the humans," I pointed out the viewport. "They are so small, so weak, and so stupid. Unarmed and running toward us. Running toward the enemy. How are there so many of them out there? How do they survive?"

"Maybe they survive because there are so many of them?" Kel suggested. "Our people understand the value of breeding, only those who prove themselves the strongest and wisest are given the honor. The humans breed at will like mar-rats. It's disgusting."

I grunted in agreement as I watched the two humans continue to run toward Tren and Jen'tek. As they grew closer, Tren fired twice and the first one fell, the second continued running forward! Tren shot again, and the second dropped to the ground.

I couldn't help but laugh.

Growd's shuttle was a luxury model, designed to carry over a dozen passengers in stately comfort. Though two guards maintained a close eye on me as we boarded the shuttle and settled into our seats. Growd ordered them to holster their weapons by explaining that I "was not a captive, but rather a partner from here on out."

As soon as we were on-board I was led to a comfortable seat next to an older woman, she had deep set eyes and dark brown hair peppered with stands of gray.

"Lexin Piter," she offered her hand. "So you're the navigator that Growd's been looking for?"

"Navigator?" I asked. "If you call it that."

"Enough Piter," Growd grumbled as he approached and handed me his Slate with a detailed map of the planet. "Piter here is our archeologist."

"Xenologist," she corrected him.

"Treasure hunter," he countered. "And a mercenary one at that. I hired her to piece together the clues that led us to this little rock. She did her job well. Just like you will do yours."

He nodded to the map of the world floating on the Slate screen.

I slid my fingers of the display, spinning the image of the world until I was looking at the northern pole. A minute later I had the image zoomed in to the spot that the map had indicated. The high resolution scan showed what looked like the mouth of a cave that had collapsed in a landslide.

"Take us," Growd said as he handed the tablet to the pilot. "You four, unpack the sonic imaging kit, prepare the laser drills and have some explosives on hand, we need to get through it as quickly as possible. Also, order four of the fighters to join us as escorts."

"Sir," a tall man in a flight suit who I took to be the copilot responded. "Shouldn't we leave the fighters to defend the colony in case the Skins or Draugari break through?"

"Priorities," Growd waved his hand dismissively. "Just do as I say."

The other man nodded as he followed the pilot to the cockpit. A minute later we were airborne flying toward the site.

The trip from the Downs, which was located near the equator, to the northern pole would have taken hours in a land-based hover, but as our shuttle's thrusters engaged and I saw the landmass sliding below us in a blur, I was realized that in the shuttle the trip would take mere minutes.

"So," Growd said conversationally as he leaned back in his seat, looking across at me thoughtfully. "Elicio isn't it? You sure fell in with an interesting lot. The McCullough girl will have some legal trouble to sort out, ship theft is a serious charge. And we will most likely turn Loid over to the authorities. He's wanted for smuggling by a minor colonial legal authority near Orion. It's not a serious charge but he will be put away for a few years, long enough."

A pretty young woman came up the aisle with a tray with two drinks, Growd took the first and immediately brought it up to his thin lips and took a long and savoring sip. I took the glass as she offered it, but didn't drink.

"Of course, whatever we find down there will be the physical and intellectual property of the MineWorks corporation," he continued. "I can't cut you in in that. But I don't see why this has to go badly for you. With Loid's legal trouble that still leaves us with, what I believe we can call: an abandoned and derelict vessel. Legally, we'll have to leave it on the landing pad for three weeks before we can declare it abandoned, but at that point, the law says that anyone can claim it as salvage. And I, as colonial governor, can issue you official documentation of salvage to give you ownership free and clear. Though I'd get it repainted if I were you, the figurehead is a bit gaudy. So, how about this: once we have finished this little trip, we will put you up in a comfortable room, and fill your account up with a respectable credit balance. The three weeks are up, you can claim his ship and the sky is yours. How's that for a deal?"

While he was talking, my mind was racing as I searched for an opening or opportunity to take over the shuttle. I had to protect whatever my people had hidden. I had to save Ju-lin and Loid. I had to figure out how to get the colonists to safety before the Collegiate fleet overcame the Draugar fleet and buried the colonies in flames. But I saw no options. There were a dozen crew and guards on the ship.

"Sounds fair," I was certain he knew I was lying.

"Excellent," he thrust out his hand. "A deal then?"

As I shook his hand I was fairly sure that he was planning on having me killed the second we gained access to whatever lie buried ahead of us.

"Coming around now," the pilot's voice broke in over the speakers. "We'll be setting down at the site in two minutes."

I sat quietly, looking out the window as we made our approach. The area was rocky and the soil was thin and barren. As the pilot struggled against the crosswind on his approach, I realized that whatever the terraforming had seeded in the area had already died and blown away.

"What a wasteland," Growd commented casually as he leaned over beside me. "Still, the scans show that these stones have abnormally high lead content, and there is an unusual concentration of Tevarite which would shield the area from any orbital scans. A Thar'esh command ship or weapons cache could be down there, buried for centuries."

I looked over at him, the corner of his lips twitched.

"All that technology, ready to be reverse engineered, used, sold, it's the dawning of a new age my boy, and you're here to see it."

I glanced over at Piter, her face was an expressionless mask.

He patted me on the back as the shuttle set down with a jolt. As it did, everyone in the cabin of the ship went into motion. The four survey technicians immediately opened the rear-bay doors and began hauling equipment, two of the four armed guards that came with us went down the ramp as well, I watched out the portal window as one of them walked around with his gun at the ready, surveying the area. The guard circled out of sight.

"It's clear," one of the two remaining guards nodded to Growd.

"Good, let's see what we've got," Growd got up, nodding to me.

I got up and followed him out. The two guards fell in behind me, weapons at the ready. Apparently the hospitality ended when we left the ship. I looked up and saw the four Falcons circling overhead.

I squinted against the afternoon sun as we walked down the ramp, the dry wind whipped across my face. Growd slipped on some mirrored sunglasses and walked forward. We were standing at the side of a large crag, boulders were piled against the southern side of the ridge.

"Piter, what do we have?" Growd asked.

"There is a cavern beyond the rubble," she said as she read her scanner. "It's large, can't tell what's in it, but there is definitely an open air space, the walls are sheer."

"Sheer?" Growd's eyes raised.

"Yes," Piter answered. "It doesn't look like a natural geological formation, someone, or something, carved this out."

"Clear it," Growd nodded.

At Piter's direction, the two other engineers opened up a case containing what looked like a steel-plated backpack with a large, stubby laser attached. As I watched, the second engineer slid the backpack on and took the laser in hand.

"Digging through the rubble would take far too much time," Growd commented as he handed me a pair of thick sunglasses. "The laser-mining drill will handle it quickly. Put these on."

I slipped the glasses on as the engineer leveled the laser at the pile of rocks and flipped on the power. Though the beam itself was invisible, I immediately felt the heat radiating off of the stones. As I watched, a meter-wide section of the stones toward the top of the pile began to lose their shape, and melt down into the stone below. The engineer made slow and steady passes, left to right and the stones continued to melt. After about ten minutes. He'd carved through four meters of rubble. He powered down the laser drill and stepped aside. The air stunk heavily of sulfur, but the drill had done its work. I stepped forward to get a better look and saw the darkness of a cavern beyond where the wall of stone had stood.

The stone had melted into slag and was spilling out from the mouth of the cave, black and smoking.

"Now we're getting somewhere," Growd said as he squinted into the darkness. "Cool off a path, we need to get in there."

Without question or hesitation, the engineers returned to the ship and came out with a long hose and attached it to the shuttle's water system. The first spray of water sent huge plume of steam and further spread the sickly sulfurous scent. As the newly melted stones began to cool, they cracked loudly. After a few minutes, the water had ceased to evaporate and began trickling down the hill to our feet.

"That's enough," Growd ordered.

As the steam cleared I could see that beyond the newly-made hole there was a square corridor about six meters wide and high carved cleanly at a downward angle. A clean and level floor led down into the depths.

"We can get in how it is. Piter, you two guards, and you, kid, come with me. Everyone else, work on expanding this entrance to the full size of the passage, we need to make sure that we can get out whatever the aliens left in here."

"It's deep," Piter commented as she looked down at a scanning device she was holding. "It opens up about a half-mile into a large chamber."

"Perfect," Growd said as he took a flashlight from his belt in his left hand and a laser pistol in his right. "Let's go."

Growd and Piter went first, running quickly over the first eight meters of recently melted and still-cooling stone. Once they were on the other side, he signaled me across. I went, with my two guards close behind. The stones were still hot. By the time I reached the other side the hard rubber on the sole of my shoes was soft and malleable.

As we crossed into the deeper cavern it was clear that this was the place. The walls had been cleanly carved through the bedrock and there were shapes carved along the wall.

"See now, look at that," Growd, Piter, and the guards shone their flashlights over the image. It took up the entire wall from top to bottom.

The carving was an incredibly detailed relief of a battle near a ringed planet. There were ships of all sizes, fighting, exploding, or broken and drifting. As I leaned forward I could make out the tiny shapes of bodies floating out in space near one of the damaged ships. From my human perspective, the bodies looked ill-proportioned, with shorter torsos and elongated arms.

"I wonder how long ago the battle took place. Asymmetrical designs, heavy weaponry. I've never seen ships like these, but they are all same style," Piter said breathlessly. "This isn't a war between civilizations."

"A civil war," Growd commented and took a few steps down the tunnel, moving his flashlight to the other side of the wall. "Here is a damaged fleet passing through two sides of a flux point. Survivors."

"Or refugees," I said.

"A history," Piter answered as she pulled out a scanner from her pocket and snapped a few pictures. "They carved their entire history on the cavern walls."

Growd turned his light to shine deeper down the corridor. Both sides and the ceiling were all covered in etchings as far as we could see.

"Look here," Piter leaned close, studying the small shape of a body floating out in space. "Look at the shape, the truncated torso. The extra joint there on the legs. They don't look like any humans we've encountered.

"Are you saying these could be the Sowers?" Growd paused, narrowing his eyes.

"Sowers?" I asked.

"The Sowers of Life," Piter sighed as she looked over at me. "Damn schools aren't teaching you kids anything? Every known alien race we've encountered shares the human genome. Celestrials, Lasterian, Noonan, Earthborn, even Draugari, we're all cousins. The human genome didn't randomly evolve on a half dozen worlds. A few million years ago someone, or something, scattered the seeds of humanity across this corner of the universe. Scientists search for them, and some people worship them."

"We're not here for a history lesson," Growd snapped. "Could it be them?"

"It's unlikely," Piter said as she ran her hand over the carvings. "Most scientists believe they would have been humans themselves. Sowing their own seeds. These people, they don't look human at all. This could be proof that non-human intelligence can evolve on its own. Proof that humanity isn't the only thing out there. It's groundbreaking. It's Incredible."

"It's not what we came for," Growd said. "We don't have time for this. Get moving. Piter, you and your historians can have their turn at all of this once we're done. We're here for the prize."

Grudgingly, Piter pulled her hand away and followed Growd.

As Growd and Piter walked forward at a brisk pace, I found that I couldn't take my eyes off the tiny etchings of the bodies drifting in space. I blinked my eyes and tried to recall the strange faces from my memories, grey skin, purple eyes, short torsos, long legs and arms. I worked to build the image in my mind of what they-what I-had once looked like.

One of the guards jabbed his rifle into my back, pushing me forward.

"Look bud, we don't have time to stand around gawking," the guard growled. "This place is creepy enough, let's get moving so we can get the hell out of here."

"I'm with you there Dex," the other guard muttered as he turned his flashlight away from the etching. The carvings disappeared into the shadows. "Get moving kid,"

So, with a gun at my back, I walked through the halls that my ancestors carved. As we descended into the cavern, my eyes rarely strayed from the etchings on the walls. Though it was clear that Dex wanted to get in and out of here as quickly as possible, the other guard, who was called Lars, was curious. As we passed his flashlight would linger on some of the etchings, giving me a precious few seconds to study the stories that they told.

Many of them were pictures of star systems. Etchings of stars, planets, and moons were easy to recognize, as were asteroids, gas clouds, and comets. All of the star systems included at least two additional hexagonal shapes, but sometimes as many as nine. The interior of every hexagon was intricately carved with a series of twisting and turning lines. Maps to and through the flux points. The cave showed the locations of all the flux points they found, and the path they took. As we passed another I looked closely at the interior designs of one of the symbols. The twists and turns from one to another were unique, but the styles were different.

The first etchings had been the homeworld of the Thar'esh. The hallway was a vast catalog of their journey across the cosmos. System after system, flux after flux.

Maps to distant worlds, the entire collected astrological knowledge of an ancient civilization was scratched onto the walls was there; but Growd walked on, his pace quickening as we continued walking into the darkness.

"We're almost there," Growd's voice echoed down the corridor. Not far ahead of us, the walls opened away into a vast darkness.

"I've lost contact with the surface," Piter said, her voice sounded nervous.

"Of course you did," Growd responded happily. "We're too deep. The terraforming wouldn't have affected anything this far underground. Whatever they buried down here is intact."

Piter's flashlight lingered on another image, fragments of a star, broken ships. Vasudeva. I blinked and tried to strain my vision to peer into the darkness for a better look, but all of the flashlights were aimed forward into the vast darkness ahead as we neared the end of the passage.
Chapter 33.

"They are nothing but children," Tren argued. "I carried that one with one hand. They're just boney sacks of meat. There wasn't even any fight to them, they came to us as if they were seeking slaughter."

"Pathetic," Jen'tek agreed as he closed the cargo bay doors.

I looked down at the two shapes that Tren and Jen'tek had dropped onto the hull plating of the cargo deck. They did look weak. Their skin was soft and thin.

"Bind their hands and feet," I ordered.

"You can't be serious?" Tren laughed. "What are you afraid of? That the little starving dwellers will sneak up and eat all of the rations?"

"Maybe," I answered. "Just do it."

"I will," Tren answered. "Cornered and frightened prey is dangerous. We should take no chances."

"Then we should slit their throats now and be done with it," Jen'tek countered, but as he said it he handed Tren a spool of loose cargo strapping to bound their hands.

Engines fired and the ship tilted upward as we lifted back off the surface.

"Make it quick," I said as I turned to climb back up to the main deck. "And lock the hatches behind you. We still have the ships to deal with."

I stopped beside Growd and Piter where they stood on the edge of the chamber. The air was thick and humid, creating a curtain of misty darkness that the flashlights struggled to penetrate. Around the edges of the room there were square and squat shapes in the shadows, and one, large, hulking mass in the center. As Growd waved his flashlight across the room, I saw dim bluish flecks of light in the darkness. The flickers were too faint and sporadic to be reflections, and only lasted a second or two before disappearing. They were fleeting enough that I wasn't even certain I had seen them before they faded.

"What is that, there in the middle," Growd grunted greedily. "It's here. Piter, lights?"

"Right," Piter responded. She pulled the backpack off of her shoulders and rummaged through the various pieces of equipment until she pulled out five small round balls. I recognized them as the same lights that Ju-lin had used when we first saw the markings on the wall.

Piter activated the first orb and threw it out into the center of the room. Before the first orb stopped she threw two more, one to the left, and another to the right. After about ten seconds, they began to burn brightly, illuminating the chamber.

I squinted as my eyes struggled to adjust to the flood of light. The chamber was far larger than I had expected. It was shaped like a hexagon similar to those I had seen carved on the walls, with steep walls and a rounded dome-shaped roof. The vast ceiling was covered in more carvings: images of stars, planets, jump gates; except instead of being arranged as sequentially to show their journey as the hallway had been, the carvings were integrated into a whole: it was a sprawling map of the universe.

"My stars," Piter said breathlessly. "Look at the map. There are flux points we don't know, whole systems that we haven't discovered."

"That's not a ship. It's stone." Growd blustered as he crossed the floor, focusing on the large stone in the center of the chamber. "What the hell is it? An altar? There's nothing here."

"That's not nothing," Piter said, still studying the map on the ceiling. "Don't you see? This is a starmap, a guide to new worlds we haven't yet seen!"

"A starmap," Growd snorted. "Goodie. We have plenty of worlds already. We already have a two-hundred year corporate colonization and mining plan. Hell, we've even secured most of the mining rights. We can only breed so fast. More worlds just means more opportunities for our competitors. We don't need more planets, what we need is technology. Stop fiddling with that, we have a fleet closing in on us as we speak. What we need is a weapon."

"But the maps could lead us back to their home world," Piter insisted. "Think of what lies there?"

"You're daydreaming," Growd grumbled. "Even if you could follow the scratches on the wall and find it, why do you think they left it in the first place? These aliens had the ability to obliterate stars. You saw those first etchings of their civil war. The world was scarred from war. Do you honestly believe there would be anything left of their homeworld? Besides, decoding their maps and backtracking that journey would take years. We would be fending off competing corporate agents for years, and the Celestrials would be floating behind us at every turn."

Piter sighed quietly and resigned herself to silence.

"The question is what is this," Growd looked back at Piter, pointing at the large stone formation in the center of the room. "And what are those little sparkly jars sitting on that center stone? Remains? They have to have some archeological significance. The big white stone doesn't look like it belongs. Does it open? There has to be something here, plans, schematics, another chamber? Scan the area, see if there is anything hidden."

I lowered my eyes from the engravings on the ceiling to watch as Piter walked forward, taking out her sonic resonator as she approached the stone formation in the center of the room. Growd was right about one thing, compared to the clean, square lines of the passageway and the precise angles of the hexagonal room, the center-stone looked out of place.

The center stone shone pure white. It was so bright that it was hard to believe that it could ever be fully consumed by shadows in the dark. It was Tevarite. The same type of stone as the spires Ju-lin and I had found above the cave. Bladestones, as Lor'ten knew them. But unlike the others. Those had all been sheer and straight, the center-stone had an organic and twisting form. It reached about three meter's high, halfway to the ceiling. It had smooth, rounded edges that created shadowed alcoves on all sides. I couldn't tell if it was a naturally occurring formation, or if it had been shaped. But if it had somehow been carved or sculpted, I couldn't see any symmetry to the shape.

Formed or not, there was purpose to the stone. In each of the dozens of alcoves housed small objects ranging from ten to twenty centimeters high. These were the flickering lights I had seen when we first entered the chamber.

"Any theories?" Growd asked as he casually reached out and picked one of them up and held it up against the light. Like the center stone, its shape was organic and random with soft, rounded edges. "If it's a container or something I don't see a lid, whatever is inside is moving around."

Piter and I walked up and either side of Growd for a closer look. The object looked like it was made of glass. The substance inside had a faint blue-green tint, and scattered throughout were shimmering flecks of light.

"They absorb the ambient light," Piter observed. "That was what caused the residual shimmering before. This must be some sort of ritual room. I wonder if these are biological remains, maybe genetic time capsules? Or maybe they are biological, something to do with their breeding?"

"Biological?" Growd crinkled his nose as he handed the object to Piter dismissively as he turned to the two guards. "You two, check the perimeter, see if there is anything else in here that looks out of place."

"Out of place," I heard Lars mutter under his breath. "The damned place feels like a tomb. We're the ones who are out of place."

Dex grunted in agreement as they broke off and began to walk around the edge of the chamber.

"Piter, quit playing around with that, jar, thing, whatever it is. You can have it for your museum or whatever it is you do with things when we're done. For now, get out the sonic resonator and help me find out what else is down here."

"Fine," Piter responded as she confided with me an annoyed look.

Piter set down her pack again as Growd walked around the center stone and out of sight.

"It feels warm," Piter said quietly as she shifted the object in her hand. "Come here, hold this. Growd is a damned fool, surrounded by priceless artifacts and a map of the universe well beyond what we've charted, and he's obsessed with finding a weapon. I want to do a quick bio-scan to see if there is anything biological in these; it won't take but a second."

As I reached out my left hand and took it from her, my head swirled. My peripheral vision was immediately clouded with same star-flecked blue-green light that filled the object. I felt as with my body was being flooded by another's essence, and I had to struggle to remain in my own mind. I was buried under images, sounds, scents, and feelings that came in brief and forceful waves.

I wasn't myself. I huddled in the dark, pressed between other bodies and the cold steel of a bulkhead. I heard the sharp crack of an explosion in the distance, and felt, more than heard, it reverberate through the bulkhead that I was pressed against. The lights flickered just long enough for me to see the shapes of dozens of quivering bodies hunkered down, fearful in the dark. One small voice screamed and then there was quiet except for a chorus of tense, uneven breaths.

There were two more explosions, both in quick succession. Somewhere below us the steel creaked under the strain of battle.

The scene shifted. The ground under my feet was scorched and dry and the sky above was thick with smoke and haze. I was standing behind someone. His name was Kand. I don't know how I knew. His legs and arms were long and his torso thin. His hair was dark brown and grew in thick strands like grass.

Kand turned. His skin was grey, and his eyes were purple with flecks of gold. His mouth was wide and he separated his thin lips as if to speak, but no words came. I found myself walking forward. I met his eyes and was overcome with a wave of sorrowful agony. We both collapsed to the ground in each other's arms and wept.

"We must leave," he said as his body shook with a sob.

I was standing on the bridge of a ship. Out the viewport I saw another vessel, long, angular, and unfamiliar.

"See now, after all we have seen and left behind: there is peace and goodness to be found, our new friends will give us a home." I looked down to my left to see Kand was speaking, older now. He sat comfortably in the captain's seat with a restful smile as he spoke to the image on the screen in front of us. It was a strange face with large, glossy-black eyes, scaled green skin, and a long snout. Words filled the bottom of the screen as the computer translated the alien's speech. They were words of peace, friendship, and welcoming.

My cheek burned, it was wet with blood. I was running as explosions shook the ground beneath my feet. Dirt, I was on a planet. In my left hand I held a knife, and in my right I held the severed end of a chain. The other end was affixed to the clamp-like shackle around my neck. I ran between two thick trees with yellow-green bark and saw a wall ahead of me. Two of the green-skinned reptilian aliens. My mind called them Slavers. They walked along the top of the wall, armed and on patrol. I crouched my long legs and leapt.

The force of my weight on his back sent the first of the two tumbling forward, his head crushed against stone with a sickening thud, I turned to the other. As he drew his weapon, I swung the loose end of my chain and his gun clattered to the ground. I thrust with my left hand, my blade passed into him, delving deep.

"Slave scum!" the alien hissed as he bled warm over my hands.

His empty black eyes stared back at me as the last of his life left his body. I swam in his memories and knowledge as his Charon passed and searched for what I wanted. In seconds I found it. I knew where they were holding my people and where the weapons were kept. I withdrew my knife and kicked his body off the wall.

There was a distant thud and a soft wheeze of air as below as his body struck the ground and the last breath left his corpse.

Kand lay on a bed before me, his chest rattling as he exhaled his breath, "I was wrong to trust them. You were brave, and fierce, and acted with dignity and justice. Do not regret it."

I reached out my hands to hold his as they quivered.

"Filian, you have been a faithful daughter and a true leader. You have strength well beyond my own. Take the Slaver's ships and their weapons. Take their knowledge, and use what we have taken to protect our people. I let my hope blind me. I trusted like a child. Go, and do not make the same mistakes that I have made. They have cost us far too many lives. And now there are few of us, far too few. Keep your people safe."

"I will," I spoke the words softly.

"Now leave me," Kand pulled back his hands. "You have your own weights to carry. You should not be burdened by this dying man's mind. Go. This is the last order I will give you. Leave and let my Charon be free."

I stood up, silently and slowly. My cheek was hot as a tear slid down my face. With one more look, I turned, left, and closed the door behind me.

"Eli!" A high-pitched voice was calling.

My cheek stung, it was the soft warmth of my tear. It came again, no, it wasn't the tear, it was far more acute and painful. My cheek stung, something hit me. I shook my head as the memories I had seen began to fade away.

"Eli!" The voice said again. "You're having some kind of fit."

With effort, I opened my eyes. Piter was crouched over me her brow furrowed.

"What happened?" I was laying on the floor.

"You alright?" Piter asked. "Sorry about the slaps, but you were in some kind of trance, babbling about war, slaves, ships, and justice."

"I saw memories," I fumbled. As I recovered my mind I was relieved to know that I had not absorbed all of Filian's mind as it had been with Lor'ten. Only the brief flashes of her memory remained in my mind.

"You saw them?" Piter asked. I saw a spark of realization in her eyes.

I sat up and looked around. The object that Piter had handed me lie a few feet away, rolling on the ground. It was still intact. I knew then what it was. These were Charons that my teacher had spoken of. These were the Charons that the elders kept. In my memories I had imagined that all Charons had to be held within a living mind. But now, I realized, that that wasn't true. I looked back at the center stone. I saw six, eight, thirteen, sixteen, more. There were dozens. This was a time capsule, a collection of memories somehow imprinted into the objects and stored here.

"You also said ships, weapons, and technology." Growd's back was to one of the lights, and his face was cast in shadows, but I could see a glint in his eyes. "You said 'lets take their technology.' What did you see? And how did you see it?"

As I fumbled for a reply, Growd stepped over and tentatively picked up the Charon. He closed his eyes and stood quietly for several seconds, and then opened them back up and shook it.

"How?" he demanded.

With Piter's help, I got to my feet, my legs were still shaky.

"I-I don't know, I just grabbed it, you saw," I answered. "You know as much as I do."

"Piter, scan it," he said, as he handed her the Charon.

She took it, sat it down on the floor in front of her, and pulled her hand-held scanner from her pack. She swiped a few commands on the touch screen, pointed the scanner at the Charon and slowly moved it up and down as it processed.

Growd stood over her shoulder, watching hungrily, while the two guards stood back at a distance, their weapons were holstered as they watched with interest. With the memory still fresh I could still feel the strength of Filian's legs as she leapt onto the wall. They were close enough, I could be on the first before he would have time to draw his weapon. I caught myself and reigned in my thoughts. I was not Filian, I did not have the body of a Thar'esh. I was human.

"The scanner can't get a consistent reading," Piter responded. "I'm getting intermittent biological signs in there, but it's not because it's biomatter. The material is reading as non-organic."

"But you're getting positive readings?" Growd pressed.

"Positive for life signs, yes," Piter answered. "But it's not consistent. One second it detects a life sign, the next it doesn't. I'm getting some residual energy fluctuations too. When I get this back to a fully equipped lab I can make more sense of it."

"We don't have time for that," Growd snapped. "Wait, how can residual energy flux? Residual energy should show decay. You're saying its residual energy is increasing? I'm no physicist but I understand enough to know that that shouldn't happen."

"Yes, well, yes and no," she answered. "That's what the scanner is telling me, but I think it's just not equipped to make sense of the signals. As I said, when I get this back to a fully equipped lab I can make sense of it. In-depth analysis of alien artifacts is as much guesswork as it is science when you're out in the field. I need instruments, a control group, experimentation."

"Experimentation," Growd interrupted. "Good idea. Eli, go grab another."

"What?" I asked.

"You heard me, go grab another one and tell me what you see."

"You can't be serious," Piter said. "You saw him last time, he fell and his eyes went all glazed and he fell and started convulsing."

"He didn't fall," Dex interjected. "I saw it, he was standing just fine until you came up and pulled it out of his hand."

Piter shot him a scathing look.

"Well," Dex continued. "It happened pretty quick, but he was just standing there dreamy-eyed and jabbering, then you took it out of his hand and his body went all rigid, like you unplugged him."

"Unplugged him?" Piter echoed. "We're talking about a person here. This isn't science, we don't know why he's seeing whatever it is he's seeing. Who knows if he will even see anything if he picks up another. All of this needs to be done in a controlled environment, right Eli?"

I heard her gasp as she turned to find that I was standing back at the center stone. I looked from one to another, deciding which Charon to hold. I knew that Growd wanted me to access the Charon's for his own greed, but I had my own reasons. The burning question of who I was and where I came from had been consuming me. I needed to know more.

"You can't be serious!" Piter gasped.

"Have at it boy," Growd said softly.

I took a breath reached for the Charon on my left.

The blue-green haze of the Charon closed over my eyes again. But this time I was ready.

As I held it, I realized that each Charon was an imprint of a living thing, complete with our primal instincts: fear, happiness, anger, and love. Filian's Charon had thrust her most powerful and potent memories upon me in response to my resistance. It met my fear with fear. Instead of fighting to maintain control, I submitted my will to the Charon, and I was rewarded.

The memories knew the mind that bore them. This Charon belonged to a man named Taro. His self-image swirled around my mind. His presence was nervous and cold. He held a mantle of power and responsibility, but he did not have the depth of strength that I had felt when I was within Filian's memories. Taro's mind was clouded in fear. The fear all sprung from one place in his memory, I reached for that moment:

I stood on the bridge of a ship to the left hand of the captain's seat. The ship was similar to the one I had seen in Filian's memories, but things were changed. The technology was improved, vastly so. Each display and console was so different from the last that my only conclusion was that the ship had become a collage of alien technology. New wiring was run along the bulkheads. There were new terminals and high resolution holographic displays throughout the command deck that were not there before. A dozen Thar'esh sat at their terminals.

I looked up, my eyes scanning the displays. There were ships approaching, several dozen. They were Celestrial. The captain gave on order, clear and calm, and I stood and watched as fire streaked out from above and one by one, the Celestrial ships dissolved into dust. The Captain gave a satisfied grunt, and directed the ship toward the nearest world. As the ship turned, I saw a blue star blazing in the distance.

The memory shifted, time had passed. I was still on the command deck, though the air was changed. Two of the consoles were unmanned, blood was on the floor, and a section of the viewport was blackened from fire. In the distance I could see spinning hulks of red-hot debris floating out in the black. One Celestrial ship remained, alone and distant.

The Captain keyed a command and a holographic face appeared in front of us. It was a Celestrial, female. She was young, but her eyes looked hard.

"I am Navali, commander of the Celestrial defense forces," I saw her arm was in a sling, her shoulder bleeding. "I want to negotiate."

"We do not seek your surrender," my Captain said icily.

"I do not intend to," she snapped back. "I demand yours."

My chest rumbled with laughter, and several of our crew clicked their tongues in response.

"Surrender? Our surrender?" the Commander replied, his eyes widened fractionally. "You fleet is lost. You are beaten. Take your end with dignity."

"So be it. I will," her response was barely more than a whisper, the display blinked black.

"She is firing," a voice said.

"Evasive action and return fire, finish them," the Captain barked.

"They aren't firing at us, sir," the voice replied. "She fired at the star."

"Idiot children," the Captain muttered. "Close in, destroy her."

As we closed in on her ship, I watched her missile as it hurled through space. It was closing in on the system's star. Just as we came into range of her vessel, the missile disappeared into the sun.

The memory dissolved into blinding light and debilitating pain. When, at last, it cleared, I was lying on the cold steel of the floor. I opened my eyes to see the Captain lying in front of me, his eyes open but lifeless, blood dripping from his mouth.

Alarms were sounding as I rose to my feet. Systems were offline, most of the ship's armor was dissolved. Entire decks of the ship had been swept away. I looked out the viewport and saw darkness and a cloud of smoldering ash. All of it was gone, the Celestrial ship, the star, the worlds, all of it. Gone.

With my hand shaking, I put the Charon back in its place.

"Well?" Growd's voice sounded distant.

Growd, the Collegiate, all of them were wrong. It hadn't been the Thar'esh. The Celestrials themselves had destroyed Vasudeva. The thought of that kind of power in the hands of the Collegiate gave me a chill up my spine, but then, if they had the technology, surely the Collegiate would know about it? How could they not know? Navali and her people must have developed it. When they destroyed the system, the secret died with them. Perhaps Navali decided to destroy her entire star system than risk the Thar'esh gaining control of such a weapon, and in doing so, she killed billions of her own people and all but destroyed the Thar'esh.

"Boy!" Growd called again. "What did you see?"

I struggled to sort out the new memories, there was still something missing, something that didn't fit. The Draugari. Why were they here? Why was their fleet far above, fighting the Celestrials and defending this world? Taro would have known. He survived that day. He must have taken the ship and slipped through the flux point before it collapsed with what was left of the Thar'esh.

I reached back for the Charon, but Dex caught me and pulled me back, pinning my arms painfully behind me.

"No, no more," Growd's face was inches from my own, his eyes narrow, his breath smelled like stale coffee. "Now you talk."

"Damnit!" I yelled, struggling against Dex's grip. "I need to know what happened!"

"You need to know?" Growd howled back as he swung back his hand and hit me with a backhand across the mouth. "What you need, is to tell me everything you saw, now."

The inside of my cheek was bleeding where it had cut against my teeth.

"It wasn't the Thar'esh who destroyed Vasudeva," I stopped to spit blood on his shoes. "It was the Celestrials."

"Bullshit."

"I saw a Celestrial, I heard her say her name was Navali. Her ship launched the weapon into the star to hide their secrets and destroy the Thar'esh, but they survived, a few survived."

"Navali?" Piter broke in. "Navali Can'tar? She was one of the most celebrated and revered scientists in their history."

"You've heard of her?" Growd paused.

"Of course," Piter sounded annoyed. "She's well known. Famous even if you know anything about the history of fusion systems."

Growd scoffed.

"She was the Emperor's granddaughter and a genius," Piter ignored him. "Her research on power systems was what helped the Celestrial to redesign and optimize their fusion drives. When the Earthborn came in contact with the Celestrials their fusion technology was centuries ahead of our own because of it. Of course, that was over 500 years ago."

"A genius with power systems?" Growd turned back to me. "So I'm supposed to believe that you just had some out-of-body experience where you saw a dead Celestrial scientist blow up her own star and kill billions of her own people? Do you have any idea how absurd that is?"

"Given the mix of biological and energy readings I'm getting off of those things," Piter said nodding toward the Charon that Growd had set aside "It may be possible they are some sort of memory storage device. I have no idea how, but it is possible."

"Then why can't you or I see or access them?" Growd retorted. "And don't tell me you need to get back to a lab to find out. There has to be some reason why nowhere-boy here can experience them but nobody else can."

Nowhere boy. His words hung heavy in the air. I think I preferred being referred to as Twig and Berries.

I felt Dex's grip slacken.

Taro's Charon was just two feet away, I thought. I would only need seconds to draw out his memories of the Draugari.

"So tell me now, where did you come from?" Growd pressed. "Who are you?"

Growd hit me again across the face. Harder this time. Blood began running from my nose. I allowed myself to slump back. Dex shifted his feet and adjusted his grip to hold me up rather than restrain me.

I glanced over at Piter. She was a historian. She would know the legends. She may have put it together. If she knew, her dark eyes didn't betray it. She just stood there, watching me with cold, dispassionate eyes.

"Someone's coming," Lars called. "The passageway, they're running in."

Growd, Dex, and Piter turned their attention to the hall. I knew it was the only opportunity I would have, so I set my feet and jabbed my elbow backward, knocking Dex backwards and off balance. Then, with a desperate lunge, I leapt forward and grabbed Taro's Charon and called on it to show me the memory I sought.

I was back on the ship's command deck. I was older now, and stood in front of the Captain's seat. I bowed gravely. As I rose, I saw four Draugari warriors in front of me. A dozen Thar'esh stood around the room, quiet and solemn. I stepped forward and stood face to face with the leader of the Draugari. His armor was simple and not nearly as advanced as Lor'ten's had been, on his belt was a gun, but no blade.

"Why did you call us here?" the Draugari said in a low growl.

"We will give you the technology you need to feed and protect your people," I spoke evenly in the Draugari tongue. "We will show you how to make powerful ships, and navigate deeper into space than you have ever been before."

"You will give us ships like yours? Ships like this one?"

"Yes, this very ship," I responded. "But this is more than just a ship, it is also a factory. We have fighter craft, small, agile, and powerful. We will not just give you this ship. We will show you how use it to build starfighters by the dozen, even the hundred. We will show you how to survive."

As I spoke, a holographic display activated and the image of an asymmetrical fighter craft hovered in the air between us.

The Draugari studied the image, nodding his head in approval, "A powerful gift, what do you demand in exchange?"

"Your silence," I said. "Your silence, and your protection. Like you were once, we are a hunted people, and there are few of us left. Far, far too few. We are traveling to a world."

The display changed to a starmap, a bright blue light isolated a single system.

"We mean to live there, quietly, where our enemies will not find us."

"You have power and ships such as this," the Draugari said, gesturing his arms around the room. "You do not need to hide."

"We do not need to," I answered. "But we choose to."

"Why?"

"Our reasons are ours," I answered. "Perhaps your people will one day follow in our footsteps, but not today I think. Your species is young. Impossibly young. Do you accept?"

"We accept," he replied without hesitation. "Your secret will be kept, and your world will be protected by me and my kin, I swear it."

With that, the Draugari reached for the pistol on his hip. I felt Taro's heart quicken for a moment before the Draugari reached out and offered the gun to me. He explained: "When my people make an oath, the two leaders exchange that which is most dear to them: their weapons. This pistol has been passed down from chieftain to chieftain for four hundred years. It has slain foes beyond number. Take it as a symbol of my trust."

I looked down at the gun. It was primitive, but the gesture was not.

"This blade was forged on my home world, far, far away. It has been carried by my predecessors for generations beyond counting." I said as I reached down to my belt and withdrew my dagger.

The Draugari eyes widened as the golden inlay flashed in the lights.

"It is the weapon of a warrior," I said solemnly. "I have no more use of it."

The Draugari bowed as he took my blade. He began to turn away when I stopped him.

"And take this as well," I pulled a pure-white stone from its place on my belt. "This is the bladestone. My people use to forge and sharpen our blades to keep them honed to kill."

"I know stone like this," the Draugari took it and turned it over in his hand. "I will carry them as symbols of honor."

The memory was ripped from me as my body was pummeled to the ground, I gasped, trying to breathe as Dex's knee pressed against my chest. It fit. My head spun with the revelation. It all fit together. As I struggled to regain my sense of self, I opened my eyes to see what was left of Taro's Charon lying a few feet away, shattered. The memories gone forever. I heard faint voices rising up in the air as the whisper of his memories dissolved into nothing.

"What did you say?" Growd's howling voice cut through the haze. I turned my head to see that, this time, he wasn't looking at me.

"Sir, I said the escorts pulled off," the copilot said breathlessly, still panting from the run down to the chamber. "They said the Draugari are defeated, and the Skins were approaching the planet, and that they were ordered to leave us here and return to defend the colony."

"I didn't order that!" Growd's face was red with fury. "The fools have left us defenseless!"

"I reiterated your command," the co-pilot responded. "They said that they took their orders from Commander Teigan, sir. And that Teigan called them back to defend the colonists."

Growd's face reddened even further.

"The escorts are gone?" Lars broke in. "The Skins will find us, we'll be dust! We need to get out of here!"

"Don't panic," Growd snapped. "Piter, it looks like we will do it your way. All of you, empty your packs, grab as many of the artifacts as you can, we will take them back with us and get to a lab. Now!"

Piter didn't need any more urging. She immediately turned her bag upside down, sending an assortment of electronic devices clattering to the ground. She took off her sweatshirt and began grabbing Charons, using the sweatshirt to securely pack them in.

"Dex, let him up and grab as many as you can carry," Growd instruction as he drew his pistol and leveled it at me. "You. Keep your hands behind your head and start walking, you're not touching a thing. I don't know how you were able to do that, and I really don't care. You may be unusual, but you cannot be the only one who can access those things. Someone, somewhere, or some piece of equipment will be able to read and decode the data, and I will find it."

"Then why not kill me?"

"Leverage," Growd sneered as he picked Filian's Charon off the ground. "I may still need a gun to your head to get Lee and his bitch daughter to cooperate."

"So he didn't just abdicate his position as Governor to you after all?"

Growd scoffed in reply as he turned to the co-pilot, "Once we are onboard the shuttle, fill this cave with plasma drones. Wipe it off the face of the world."

"Yes, sir."

My heart sank.

Piter glanced over at me, and then reached down to retrieve her camera. She held it up, and snapped two more pictures. One of the great stone in the center of the chamber, and another at the ceiling. She slipped the camera into her pocket and gave me a curt nod before turning to leave.

With Growd's gun to my back, we left the chamber and began walking back up the passage at an urgent pace. Piter and Dex were in front of me, I could see her backpack was bulging with Charons and she held two in each hand. Likewise, I saw Dex had several jammed into the pockets of his cargo-pants as he held two in his left hand, and the flashlight in his right. Behind me, I knew, Lars, the co-pilot, and Growd were all carrying more.

I eyed the Charons they carried. What else was locked away inside? They would be more than just stories, I knew. The technology would also be there somewhere, buried in the recesses of those minds. They would tell the story of how the Thar'esh knew the Draugari, they may even contain the knowledge of where the Draugari came from. All of their memories of dozens of lives were locked within those containers. Not just their memories, but all of the minds of those they killed, all of the minds and memories that that they took. The thought made me shiver. While in Filian's Charon, I had seen into the mind of the slaver alien she had killed. Cold and reptilian. She had taken it all in a brief moment. All of his knowledge, his skills, his life and history, all of it was there.

It wasn't just the knowledge of the Thar'esh: it was also the collected knowledge of every being they had come in contact with, every alien they had fought and killed.

Though Growd did not understand what he had, I knew that he was right: Though it may take years, MineWorks would find a way to access the memories and swim in the vastness of the knowledge. My teacher's voice once again echoed in my head, and, finally I understood his lessons. Walking in my second life, with a gun to my head and surrounded by the last remaining whispers of a great and powerful race, I learned the lesson that the elders had tried to teach me in those weeks I'd spent lying as my leg mended and I was stuck watching my wife toil in the field: the Celestrials had brought us—them—the Thar'esh—to the brink of extinction at Vasudeva because the Thar'esh had stolen on the knowledge of others and taken the short path to power. They lived by fear, and taken power wherever they could. As a result, their unearned might had corrupted them, and others had paid the price. What had it cost? Tens of thousands of Thar'esh, and billions of Celestrials—gone in an instant.

I looked greedily at the Charons that the others were carrying, I thirsted for the knowledge, the truth, the history, the power. But as we neared the light at the end of the passage, I fought back my hunger. And as I did, I could feel my teacher's presence next to me, and felt the strength of Lor'ten's cold discipline. The Charons held the keys to power. Too much power. The knowledge had destroyed the Thar'esh, as surely it would destroy humanity. One cannot wield strength that one did not earn. The words echoed through my mind. Was that something my teacher had said? Or was it Lor'ten's master? Did it make a difference?

I am not a schizophrenic collage of minds, I told myself. I am the sum of my parts. I am Thar'esh, I am Draugari, and I am human. The Charons contained centuries of knowledge, untapped technologies, and the keys to countless secrets lying hidden in the depth of the black. Though I wanted them, hungered for them, the memories were not mine to take. Likewise, they were not humanity's to devour. Alume was right. Some books needed to be burned.

As I stepped back into the light and was ushered onto the shuttle with a laser pistol to my back, I knew what must be done.
Chapter 34.

"We should have stayed with the Slires instead of going down to grab those two surface rats!" Tren howled.

"The two fighters are coming in," Kel called as he fired the thrusters.

"Gain altitude, get into orbit," I ordered as I tracked the lead ship. "Our weapon guidance systems can't compensate for the gravity."

"You mean you can't!" Tren growled as he rerouted our shields to the rear to meet the coming assault.

"I see no sign of our Slires," Jen'tek noted. "The Skins must have destroyed them."

"I knew the chieftain should have given us more than inexperienced children as escorts," I growled.

"Or maybe given us a leader with half a brain in his head!" Tren countered.

I would have to face his challenges this time. A leader does not allow such insolence. But first, we had to survive.

The ship shook as the Celestrials came into range. As they strafed around, I adjusted the missile guidance. We were high enough now for them to track, or so I hoped. I locked on and fired. The Skins saw it coming, engaged his engines, and dove into a spiral, using the planet's gravitational pull to outrun the missile. Twenty, thirty seconds passed. The missile was closing, but not fast enough. I watched with clenched fists. I knew his plan: he would soon pull up and bank sharply, a maneuver that the missile could not duplicate. The warhead would fall uselessly to the surface.

Unless-

I entered the override code for the missile and waited. I waited until I saw him begin to bank upward. The instant he did, I self-destructed the missile. At range, the ordinance was not nearly powerful enough to damage the ship directly, but the shockwave had enough force to send the already diving fighter hopelessly into a tailspin toward the planet.

I watched, satisfied, as the Celestrial ship lost control, and tumbled end-over-end down to the surface of the world.

At last Tren was silent.

I turned my attention to my last remaining enemy.

The return flight to the Downs was short, but tense. As soon as we boarded the shuttle, Growd turned me over to his guards and shoved me into the back of the cabin while he and the others furtively discussed their plans in hushed tones. Aside from Piter, who occasionally glanced my way as she cataloged and stored the Charons into secure storage crates, nobody but the mouth-breathing guard who was keeping his pistol leveled at my chest paid attention to me.

As we lifted off, I watched out the narrow viewport as the plasma drones exploded, burning out what was left in the chamber and melting the carvings into slag. All that was left of the Thar'esh was here in the shuttle. I wiped dried blood from my face and let myself sit back into the comfort of the luxury padded seat as I tried to come up with some way to escape, or at least crash the shuttle: destroying myself and the Charons with me. But without my blade, or without help, I couldn't see any way to manage it. And still, even if I could, Piter and others on-board were innocent. There had to be another way. So, as we returned to the Downs, I watched for an opportunity that never presented itself.

As we set down on the landing pad my spirits sank further. On the ground I would be surrounded by Growd's thugs with the shadow of the Collegiate's fleet coming in from above. There would be no escape.

I can at least take comfort in knowing that the Charons die with me, I thought. Alume would see to that. Though everyone would die. The colonists, Lee, Ju-lin. My stomach sunk under the shadow of hopelessness as the shuttle's doors opened and the afternoon light flooded the cabin.

With his gun at the ready, Lars and the mouth-breather ordered me down the ramp as they followed close behind. Maybe it was my eyes adjusting to the brightness as I stepped out into the sun, but I didn't realize that anything was wrong until I was about twenty paces from the shuttle. The air was still, the colony was quiet. From what I had overheard on the ship, the Celestrials were regrouping and due to break atmo within the hour. It was the calm before the storm, but still, it was too calm.

I felt the shots before I heard them. It was a sudden burst of scorching heat just to my left. I turned and looked over my shoulder to see Lars crumpling to the ground, his chest smoldering. A second shot came from somewhere low on the ground, near one of the storage containers to my left, it would have burnt down the mouth-breather where he stood had he been a half-second slower. The shots went wide as he sprinted for cover.

Behind me, back in the shuttle, I heard Growd shout, and the heard the blaze of return fire. I turned my head and squinted to see that the storage container where the first shots had come from was now scarred and black from Growd's men returning fire.

"Eli! Hit the ground!" I heard a man's voice, deep and familiar.

I obeyed without a second thought, and as soon as I did, all hell broke loose.

The landing pad was hot with laser fire and the air popped with the forceful bite of conventional weapons as Growd and his MineWorks crew exchanged fire with their invisible assailants. There were more shouts to my right. I raised my head to see about a dozen armed men spilling out of the command center, joining the fight to protect Growd and his men, who were seeking cover inside the shuttle and behind several nearby shipping crates.

The MineWorks security team never knew what hit them. As soon as they were in the open, bullets and lasers rained down from all directions. Four dropped in the first salvo and the rest broke for cover and began to haphazardly return fire. The assailants had the element of surprise, but the MineWorks forces were well trained. They quickly regrouped to counterattack with deadly accuracy.

I was lying prone in the dust with the battle raging above me for several minutes before, at last, the exchange of fire began to wane.

"Growd!" a deep voice bellowed from somewhere unseen. "Growd! Answer me coward!"

"Is this what it comes to, Lee?" Growd boomed back from behind the crate where he was crouched for cover. "Attacking your own kind so we are all forced to all sit here as the Skins close in for the kill? All of our blood on your hands!"

"You wanna talk blood?" Lee retorted. "What did you do to the fighters? Have a kill switch installed? Reactivate the fighters so that Teigan and his men can get up there!"

"Commander Teigan was in breach of contract," Growd's voice cracked as he called back. "He is paid to do as I say. He undermined my orders, so I disabled his ships. It's perfectly legal."

Grounded the fighters? I looked around and saw a long row of tail fins in the distance. The Falcons were still on the ground. We were defenseless. Growd was going to let the Celestrials do his dirty work by leaving us to die. To Growd, I realized, the colony was just a loose end.

"Legal?!" Lee's voice was thick with rage. "You want to leave 8,000 people down here to die?"

"The risks of colonization," Growd responded. "It's not my preference, believe me. But, as you can see, we have a limited number of vessels. There is no way to evacuate the entire planet."

"So allow me and my men to defend it!" Teigan's voice echoed across the airfield.

"Ah, now Commander Teigan," Growd replied. "Now you have to choose. There are what? Well over 100 Celestrial ships closing in? What do you expect to achieve by going up against them outnumbered almost 10-1?"

"Ten to one my ass!" Another voice broke in. "The Tons counts for at least twelve herself!"

I smiled,, relieved. Loid was here, and he was alive.

"Teigan," Growd continued. "You owe your men more than a glorious and pointless death. Come with me, escort my shuttle clear. The Skins aren't here for us. They want this world. Let them have it."

"And leave the colonists to burn?" Teigan scoffed back.

"That's life on the frontier," Growd snapped back. "This is your last chance Teigan. Drop your arms, and come with us, or I will have no choice."

"No choice but to what?" Lee called back.

Growd slowly stood up and stepped around the crate where he had been crouching, stepping clearly into the open.

"Or what?" Growd responded. "Why not shoot me now, Lee McCullough? If you shoot me the activation codes to re-initialize those Falcons are lost, aren't they?"

His words were met with silence.

"Ah, yes," Growd continued. "Now you understand. The Celestrials, no doubt, have located your fighters and are at this moment homing in on this position. So I will tell you what I will do: my people and I are going to board my shuttle, unharmed. We are going to lift off, unharmed. Once we are clear, I will transmit the unlock signal so you can re-initialize the Falcons and make what fight of it you can."

"What bullshit! He won't send the signal, we don't have to listen to this!" I heard Ju lin seethe. "Can't we just beat it out of him?"

"Lin, quiet," Lee said.

"Yes, little girl," Growd spat back. "Listen to daddy."

"I say trust him," it was another voice, Loid's. I turned to see him stepping out from around the edge of a building not far from where I was laying, pistols in their holsters. His left jaw was bruised and swollen and he was walking with a limp. "What do we have to lose? If we stay here with our guns pointed at each other, the Skins will disintegrate us. If we start shooting, most of us will die, and then the Celestrials bombs will disintegrate us. If we take him at his word we at least have a chance."

"You can't be serious?" Ju-lin howled again. "After everything he did to you, you want to trust him?"

"Do the math Twiggy," Loid responded flippantly. As he turned and caught my eye I thought I saw him wink.

Again there was silence.

"Lee, you have no choice, and you know it," Growd holstered his own weapon and turned toward the MineWorks security forces. "Load up, now, we're leaving. I will transmit the signal once we are a safe distance; you have my word of honor."

Lee and the others remained silent as Growd and his people shuffled into the shuttle. Within a minute the door was sealed and the engines began to whirl. Only then did the colonists and Teigan's pilots emerge from their cover. I caught sight of Lee and Ju-lin on the far side of the field walking towards us. Lee's shoulder was still bound in a sling, but he held a rifle in his good hand and was standing straight and walking with purpose. Ju-lin was on his left.

"Ho there Eli," Loid greeted me jovially as he approached, he offered his hand to help me up, but I ignored it, pulling myself roughly to my feet.

"He won't send the signal, he'd just as soon have us all dead so he won't have anyone to answer to. And now he has the, well, he has what he was looking for."

"He has it all there in the shuttle?" Loid's eyes widened fractionally. "So you ignored my advice yet again, and led him to the spot? Can't say I wouldn't have done the same thing. What did you find?"

"Truth and power," I replied bitterly as I watched the shuttle rise off the ground. "He now holds a millennia of history, and secrets that were supposed to remain hidden. And we're about to be, how did you say it, disintegrated?"

"Oh, yeah. About that," Loid's grin returned as he smacked me on the back. "Lee! Where are you? Get your best mechanics together and have them bring about forty feet of fiber cabling, quick. Teigan, have your men wheel one of your fighters over near the Tons."

"What are you playing at?" Lee barked back as he and Ju-lin approached. "You've left us stranded, and now that bastard is going to get away!"

"Survive when you must, and take vengeance when you can. Vengeance can wait." Loid turned aside to me. "I like that, I think that will be rule fifteen. Now, perk up, I need your help. Go run ahead and get Tons' computer systems fired up and pray this works. I need to take a look at one of those Falcons and see if I can actually pull this off. I'll explain when I get there."

My eyes met Ju-lin's briefly before I left. For once, I noticed, she wasn't questioning Loid, but instead had a wistful smile as she walked next to her father. Now that he was closer, I could see that Lee's face looked gaunt.

"Quit gawking at the lady and get your ass moving," Loid shot over his shoulder to me as he threw his arms in the air, muttering to himself. "Seriously, he leaves me to be tortured for days and I have to explain myself, but he leaves her for an hour and acts like it's been years. Pathetic Eli, just pathetic."

I had just gotten the Tons' computer systems online when Loid came in, followed by Jager and Boils, my old bunkmates.

"Twig and Berries!" Jager smiled widely as he slapped me on the back. "Good to see ya kid."

It was, by far, the friendliest greeting I'd ever gotten from one of the colonists. I stared back at him, unsure how to respond.

"Twig and Berries?" Loid raised an eyebrow as he swiped a series of commands. "You there, Boils was it? Plug into the conduit in the access panel behind the main console and run the other end out to Teigan's ship. What's this Twig and Berries?"

"Ha!" Jager's laugh sounded almost like a cough. "You don't know? When we first got here the Govn'r found the kid hiding in a raspberry bush, buck nekid."

"Really? Just a twig was it?" Loid's tone was light and joking, but when he glanced my way his eyes were narrow and questioning.

I was thankful when Ju-lin rushed into the cabin. Trying hard to mask her breathlessness, she hopped lightly over the tangle of cables that Boil's was unspooling and hugged me tightly.

"I thought they were going to kill you," she said softly into my neck. I thought for a second that I felt her shake with a sob, but as she released her eyes were dry.

"Pick your jaws up off the floor boys," Loid jibed at Boils and Jager, whose eyes and focus had wandered, appraising Ju-lin as she passed.

The two turned back to their task, though they continued to toss fleeting glances from time to time.

"We found it," I said quietly. "It wasn't a weapon, not exactly. Not something Growd could use right now, but in time he will. He took it all with him. If he slips passed the Collegiate we'll never find him. We have to catch him, it needs to be destroyed."

"Destroyed?" Ju-lin questioned.

"It contained—" I fumbled with my words, acutely aware that Loid, Jager, and Boils were straining to listen and didn't want to say too much. "I know the truth. I know who I—er' where they came from, who they were, why the Collegiate were hunting them, and why the Draugari were here."

Her eyes widened.

I wanted to say more, but didn't dare. Loid was sitting in the pilot's seat, accessing a program I hadn't seen before. He was seemingly absorbed in his task, Jager and Boil's talked quietly to each other as they continued to unravel the cable, but I was sure that all three were hanging on our every word.

"How did you get free?" I decided to change the subject.

"Oh, it was amazing," Ju-lin's face lit up as she began recounting what happened after I had left. "Of course Growd was lying when he said he would send Chen to talk to me after they locked me up, but luckily-"

"I had heard the whole conversation," Jager broke in. "I passed the word back to the Govn'r that Lin' was back. He was shut up in the hospital from that nasty hit he took on his shoulder. But he wasn't nearly as sick as he was making out. He snuck out of the hospital, got some of us colonists together, and organized a rescue."

"The attack was brilliant," Ju-lin continued, glowing with pride. "Dad sent Chen into the storage area where they were holding me and Loid. Chen made up something about how I needed a high dosage of antibiotics to make sure that I wasn't carrying any diseases or pathogens that could disrupt the planetary ecosystem."

"Smart," I nodded.

"Chen managed to dose the guards with some meds he said would help contain the risk of infection and broke us out, nice and quiet."

"Every guard in the place was piled up and snoring in the cells as we left," Loid added without looking up. "Quite a clever piece of work. Chen may not look like much, but the little man's got some stones."

"By the time we got back to Dad, Teigan had found us. He and most of his mercs are fleet washouts with families on other worlds like this one. They refused to leave us undefended, so he called his ships back home."

"And when they landed to refuel for the fight," Loid said. "Growd sent out the drop-dead code that his crew had managed to install on all of the fighters, bricking their computers and making them useless. That is, unless-"

"Unless?" I queried.

"Unless this works," Loid hopped up out of his chair with a smile.

"And if it doesn't?" Ju-lin asked.

"Well," Loid answered. "Then I promise I will save you a few minutes to gloat about how I walked into a trap again before your buddies fly through the valley and rain down some death."

"You had better get your ass moving if you think you can do this," Lee called from outside. "We have thirty minutes at the most before the Skins set this delta on fire."

"Right on time," Loid patted me on the back. "Jager, Boils! Run the cable out through the secondary storage bay. We need to jack it into the fighter's main nav systems."

I was the last to follow Loid out into the sun. Teigan's fighter was resting about ten meters off of Tons-o-Fun's port side with a dozen people waiting around. Lee stood in the center, watching Loid with a stoic gaze. Next to him was Commander Teigan, the rest were either colonists or Teigan's pilots.

"We're all set." Loid took a few steps forward, leaned against the tail of Teigan's Falcon, and pulled out his Slate.

"You really think you can override the lock-down?" Teigan asked.

"I'm not going to override it as much as I am going to bypass it," Loid answered as he leaned over to make sure that Jager had secured the connection properly. "She all plugged in there? Good, alright, initiate the protocol. Now we wait."

"Bypass?" Teigan raised an eyebrow.

"You can't bypass a system lockdown like this without completely re-flashing the flight computers," one of Teigan's pilots interrupted. "I doubt you have updated flight system software for the Mark II Falcon just sitting around in that rust bucket of yours."

"Rust bucket?" Ju-lin interrupted. "Watch your mouth flyboy!"

Loid smiled broadly.

Teigan gave a quick gesture to silence his man, "So what are you doing?"

"You ever heard of a hackjack?" Loid asked.

"Hackjack?" Lee muttered. "You brought us out here for that? Dammit Burns! I thought you had a plan, not some half-assed gutter-thief's hover-jacking kit."

"Hackjack?" I asked.

"Hover-jacking kit?" Loid echoed. "You don't give the hackjack enough credit. You see, Eli, its software that goes in and makes a complete image of the software configuration for the ship, and then uses a complex algorithm to remove any aftermarket security specifications."

"Like security codes?" I asked.

"And lock-out codes," Loid added.

"Except it's designed for stealing hovers," Teigan broke in. "Not top-of-the-line starfighters. This will never work."

"I don't see why not," Loid said.

"My cousin got pinched while using a hackjack on Artemis," Teigan continued. "He said that even the best jacks took five to ten minutes to complete the process, and that's just for a hover!"

"Yes, that's when you run it off of a Slate," Loid answered, nodding toward the buxom red-head painted on Tons' hull. "The equation changes a bit when you are routing it through the navigational processors and weapons system controllers of a particularly well-endowed Lady."

"I still don't think it will—"

Teigan's voice was drowned out by a high pitched whirl as the Falcon's power systems came to life.

"I'll be damned," Lee said with a tight smile.

"Well shit," was all Teigan could manage to say.

"Next!" Loid shouted casually. "If I heard right we have 11 more fighters to reprogram, I'm making a few changes to the hackjack, I think I can speed it up a bit."

"Nine more," Teigan said shaking his head. "I lost one of my pilots in the firefight, and another took a hit to the leg. Lee's man is taking care of them, but he can't fly as he is."

"Nine it is," Loid answered.

"No," Lee broke in. "All twelve. If Teigan will have us, Lin's more than capable, and I've spent more hours in the cockpit of a Falcon than some of you have spent living."

"I can vouch for Twiggy-er, Ju-lin," Loid nodded. "She can handle herself."

Ju-lin barely stifled a squeel.

"It would be an honor," Teigan nodded as he extended his hand to Lee.

"Enough of this crap," Loid broke in. "Now you boys, get this bird out of the way and wheel over another."
Chapter 35

"So what will it be?" Tren's voice was thick with anger. "Jen'tek? Kel?"

The other two looked from Tren, to me, and back to Tren.

"We destroyed the Skins," I said. "And captured the others."

"And lost two Slires, and left us stranded in orbit!" Tren countered. "It will take hours to restore full power. Your leadership has failed, Lor'ten!"

I stood, meeting him eye to eye, fury built within me.

"Jen'tek, Kel!" He called again. "You must decide, are you with me, or with Lor'ten!"

Again there was silence, I met Tren's stare as we waited.

"The Chieftain chose Lor'ten," Jen'tek replied. "It is not our choice to make."

Tren growled, "Kel?"

"We are alive," he replied. "We have victory. I follow Lor'ten."

Tren roared in anger and slammed his fist down against the navigation console. For a second I thought he was going to draw his blade. At the last moment, he turned and stormed off out of the command deck.

After he left, Jen'tek, Kel and I exchanged glances, but said nothing as we set to work to repair the ship. I was in the middle of rerouting the power from the weapons systems to engines when there was a blast from somewhere behind us.

I sprang to my feet and pushed my way through the cabin door and through the docking collar. As I opened the door to the main cabin I saw Tren's body lying on the deck, his chest was blackened and smoldering.

"Alarm!" I shouted back over my shoulder toward the command deck. Jen'tek and Kel came running, immediately at my back. When I turned back I saw them. Two small, fragile, shapes cowering behind the sleeping pods.

The humans had broken free. I drew my blade.

"To your death," I said with a nod as I moved to attack.

After fifteen minutes Loid had reset eight of the Falcons and was jacking into the ninth. Teigan had authorized the fighters to go up in pairs as they were armed and ready. He was sending regular reports as he monitored the Collegiate's progress.

"According to Teigan, they are closing in slowly and deliberately." Lee had set up a communication post nearby under a shadowed overhang. He was leaning over a sketched map while absently twirling a rusty bolt in his hand. "There are two waves, the first will be small one-manned fighters, looks like they are arranged in a three wings of a dozen each. The rest are holding back with their haulers and bombers to clean up once they wipe out our defences. Teigan is staying low and holding off engaging them as long as possible so we can get more birds in the air. You two pilots, Trasher and Skunks, right?"

The two pilots nodded.

"You should be getting up there right as the shooting starts. Lin and I will take the last two up."

While watching the pilots as they waited their turn to lift off, I realized that Ju-lin's nervous energy wasn't unique, it seemed that all fighter pilots felt the same restlessness. Skunks' Falcon was already reset, he was sitting in the cockpit, waiting while Loid's hackjack restored the systems on Trasher's ship so that they could join the fight. Meanwhile Trasher kept walking back and forth double, triple, and quadruple checking the external systems on his fighter as he waited. Ju-lin, for her part, stood next to her father with her usual shifting feet.

"Lin, they are wheeling your bird up now. Go climb in and get yourself acquainted," Lee paused as he looked down at the map. He gently set the rusty bolt that he had been fidgeting with on the corner. "I'll be there in a few minutes."

She flashed me an excited smile as she skipped away toward her fighter.

"Does that girl have any idea what we're about to face up there?" Trasher asked after Ju-lin disappeared into her ship. "I mean, no offence, Lee, if she can fly then I want her up there. We'll need every gun we can, but this is a suicide run."

"Her mother was the same way," Lee replied.

"Her mother was a pilot too?" Loid piped in. "That explains things."

"Damn fine one too," Lee answered. "She was a wing commander for a regional defense deployment, she was on the first response team when the Draugari attacked Alpha Centauri."

Trasher let a low whistle, "That was a helluva battle. Would have been amazing to be there. They put up a fight."

"It was a slaughter," Lee retorted, his tone was dry and even. "Her entire wing was destroyed. Ju-lin was only three years old."

"But they held off the invasion until the regional battle group made it back, with all respect sir, she was a hero."

"Boy, I was with the regional battlegroup," Lee's voice was cold. "The sky was full of Draugari. There was no glory that day. Just wreckage. The regional battle group should have never been pulled out of the system. It cost my daughter her mother."

"And on that sunny note," Loid broke in. "Trasher, you're good to go. Get your preflight going so you and Skunks can get up there."

Without a word, Trasher grabbed his flight helmet off the table and entered the ship, a few seconds later, it began rolling forward with Skunks as they prepared to lift off.

"I'm going to go talk to Ju-lin," Lee nodded to Loid. "Get me if anything changes, and Eli, don't go anywhere. I want to talk to you next."

Without waiting for my reply, he turned and walked toward Ju-lin's fighter.

Loid signaled Jager's work crew to push up the last two Falcons. As they brought them up, I saw Lee leaning over Ju-lin's shoulder in the cockpit speaking rapidly and pointing to various systems.

"So what do you think?" Loid asked as he initiated the hackjack cycle on his Slate. "Bravery or stupidity?"

"Is there a difference?" I wasn't sure if there was.

"You're learning."

"You're still here," I said. "What happened to Loid's rule one? Bravery or stupidity?"

"Neither," Loid answered. "Necessity. There is nowhere to run."

"Growd ran," I replied.

"Sure he ran," Loid answered. "But where? The Celestrials are thorough. They have the world covered. Trust me, they will find him."

"I hope so."

"Wow, gained a little bloodlust?" he asked. "What did Alume do to you?"

"It wasn't that," I answered. "Well, maybe it was. I don't know. It's not that I want Growd dead. It's that what he's carrying needs to be destroyed."

"Even if it costs the lives of the two dozen mostly innocent people on-board that shuttle?" Loid raised an eyebrow.

I didn't reply.

"There we go again, not trusting old Loid," he paused. "I think I've earned a bit more than that kid."

In that moment, I wanted to explain it all. I wanted to tell him about what I was, and what I had seen, but it was just too much. I was trying to find the words and figure out where to start when his Slate sounded. Ju-lin's fighter was ready.

"Swap the cable, boys!" Loid called over the roar Falcon's power systems initializing.

I looked over to see that Lee was coming down the ship's landing ramp and walking toward us.

"Don't just stand there boy," Lee said gruffly. "Get up there and tell her good luck, but not goodbye. It's bad luck, fighter jocks are superstitious. Once you're done, go grab Chen and meet me in the hangar here. I need to see him before the last ship's ready."

Lee turned away and I walked towards Ju-lin's Falcon docking ramp.

Thirty seconds later I was walking up the docking ramp of Ju-lin's Falcon. After Growd's luxury shuttle, the Falcon looked Spartan and rough. Like the Tons, the Falcon is a workhorse, designed for a singular purpose. Power conduits were run along the ceiling, and every corner was packed with power and weapons systems. I squeezed through to the cockpit and saw a tuft of Ju-lin's blue hair protruding over the back of the pilot's seat.

"Hi," even I was amazed how stupid I must have sounded.

"Eli," she turned in her seat and smiled reassuringly. "We will get out of this, don't worry. The way I figure it the Skins are tired from their fight with the Draugari and they will be cutting into atmo as we engage. We have the tactical advantage."

I was glad that she mistook my awkwardness for nerves.

"Waiting is the worst part," she continued. "I have another minute and a half on the pre-flight initialization, but then Dad told me to get in the air immediately and form up with Teigan's wing. The first wave of the Collegiate fighters are almost here."

"You're going up before he's ready?" I asked.

"Critical mass is key in aerial combat," she responded. You need every available ship when the first clash hits. Barely over a minute now."

She looked at me expectantly.

I'm certain that my face flushed red when I realized what she was waiting for. My palms immediately began to sweat.

"I won't be far behind you guys," I said as I took a step toward her tentatively. "Loid will need a gunner."

"Uh-huh," she responded as she leaned forward slightly.

We sat looking at each other for several agonizing seconds before I took a breath, leaned down and kissed her. It was sweet and gentle, but all too brief. I smiled at her as I pulled away, she slowly pursed her lips and then curled them into a crooked smile.

Her console buzzed and blinked green.

"Your systems are set," I broke the silence, nodding toward her console.

"Mm-right."

I turned to leave, then stopped, "Good luck."

"You too," she answered.

I whirled through a wave emotions as I left the ship. Happiness was there, but also fear. Fear for her, fear for myself, fear for the thousands of lives on the planet's surface. My legs felt rubbery as they carried me across the landing field to the hangar where they had brought the wounded after the firefight. I found Chen just as Ju-lin's Falcon's engines fired, rocketing her into the air to join the others.

When I told him that Lee needed to see him, Chen immediately handed his Slate to the nurse, grabbed a medpack, and followed me to the hanger.

"I told him not to get up out of bed," Chen muttered as we crossed the airfield. "That Draugari poison is nasty stuff."

"Poison?"

"Didn't you notice?" Chen asked. "Well, no you probably wouldn't. He's had me pump him so full of stims that he could probably run a marathon in a half hour. No, the hit he took fighting the Draugari when they leveled New Haven. That one in the shoulder. It wasn't a clean wound. Did he say why he needed me?"

"No, just to get you," I answered. "Maybe he needs some pain meds so he can fly."

"Fly?" Chen asked, incredulous as we neared the hangar. "You mean pilot something? If he thinks he's going to be piloting anything in his condition he's lost his damned mind."

As we entered the hangar we saw that Lee was there, leaning heavily on a table, waiting.

"I haven't lost my damned mind," Lee repeated with a gruff chuckle. "Well, maybe I have."

"Governor—" Chen's voice was forceful and urgent as he approached Lee and took his wrist, feeling for a pulse. "I told you last time, your body can't take any more stims, I shouldn't have given you that last dose."

"Yes well, hindsight," Lee said dismissively.

"I'm serious," Chen persisted. "Whatever that Draugari hit you with got in your bones and is spreading like a hyper-aggressive cancer. What you need is rest, not running around with a laser pistol or piloting an Eagle!"

"Falcon," Lee corrected him. "If you knew what it was that got in my bones could you have reversed it?"

"Reversed it?" Chen asked. "I doubt it. Contained it? Possibly. But I would need a proper hospital. We just don't have the facilities for this kind of thing. That's why I tried to convince you to go back to petition the Protectorate for protection instead of sending Marin. They may have treatments for this on the core worlds."

That answered the question of where Marin went. I wondered how long ago he'd left.

"Your ship will be set in two minutes," Loid said as he entered the room behind us. "Teigan says they are about to engage. I'd best get moving."

"Close the door behind you," Lee said. "No, Burns, you stay too."

Loid closed the door and leaned with his back against it.

"So, what was it?" Lee asked, leveling his gaze at me. "What was it that the Draugari fired that splintered into my bones? What is it that is that's slowly killing me?"

Loid and Chen looked at me, puzzled.

"You're asking him?" Chen asked.

The forgotten memory had been swimming in my mind since Chen had mentioned the poison. I took a breath.

Lee held my gaze. His eyes were intense, but tired.

I delved into my memories.

"It's a biogenically developed cancer tied to a slow-decay radioactive agent." I said slowly. "The radioactivity infects all neighboring tissue and creates a cascading effect."

"Treatment?"

"The Draugari don't have any," I answered as I drew upon Lor'ten's memories. "I don't think they developed it, they just know how to create it. Once it's set, it is irreversible. But then the Draugari don't really focus on coming up with a cures, sickness is weakness. Lee, please believe me that until just now, I didn't know. I didn't remember."

Lee nodded his head slowly, satisfied.

"Oh, so now he's a doctor?" Chen asked. "I don't see how he could possibly know that."

"Oh," Lee said as he slipped his weight onto a bench. "He knows."

"I hate to interrupt this very strange and confusing moment," Loid broke in. "But I need to get my ship prepped for a fight. Can I go now?"

"I suppose it's time," Lee replied as he slowly got to his feet. "Eli, I have something of yours. Growd's guys had it locked up."

He reached behind him and pulled out my blade, still in the sheath.

"Chen, Loid, you're here to witness this, and let me apologize in advance for that. The law says I need a medical expert and an unaffiliated third party," Lee said slowly. "Eli, this thing in my shoulder is going to kill me. Chen's right, I shouldn't be out of bed, and to be honest I'm on enough stims that I'm having trouble seeing straight. Back there in the fighting I couldn't see shit, didn't even take a shot."

"Then how are you going to fly?" I asked.

"I'm not," he said flatly as he held out my blade to me. "You are."

It took a few seconds for the weight of his words to sink in.

"The kid?" Chen looked from Lee to me. "No offence, but you don't know how to fly one of those things, do you?"

I shook my head softly, my eyes locked on the knife in Lee's hand.

"He will," Lee said softly.

Somewhere behind me Loid took a steep intake of breath followed by a curse.

"I won't do it," I said flatly.

"Yes, you will," Lee answered. "I can't fly that last bird, and we need all twelve in the air. We're out numbered. One ship can well be the difference between life and death for us all. And I wasn't kidding, this shoulder is killing me anyway. You know that, Eli."

Despite my best efforts to maintain control, a tear ran down my cheek.

"Eli, I think now is the time for you to explain," Loid said softly from behind me.

Again there was silence as I struggled with the words.

"I am the last Thar'esh," I said softly. "I was on this world when the terraformers came, we were living here. And I somehow survived."

"A Thar'esh," Loid whispered with an air of finality that sent a shiver up my spine. "And what did Growd find out there?"

"Charons," I responded. "Memories. The collected memories of the history of the Thar'esh. I looked into them, I saw some what they held."

"Memories? You 'looked into' memories?" Chen asked. "This is all nonsense."

"No, it's not," Lee approached me face to face. "I saw him with the Draugari who shot me. Eli killed him, stole his memories, and saved our lives."

"Stole his memories?" Chen echoed.

"So," Lee continued, facing me. "Thar'esh is it? And I thought those were just fairy-stories. Shadows and darkness. I'm glad you found some truth out there."

"Wait, you're telling me that when we found you, you were recovering from somehow surviving the terraforming event?" Chen asked as he put it all together. "It turned you from what did you call it? A Thar'esh? What is that? It turned you into a human? That's not possible."

"Forget that it's not supposed to be possible," Lee answered. "Does it fit?"

"Fit?"

"Does what he just said make sense against what was wrong with him when we found him?"

Chen was silent, "Well, maybe. Maybe theoretically! But not seriously!"

"Take the knife," Lee held it out to me.

I didn't.

"Dammit boy, my daughter is up there, I can't help her, but you can."

I reached out and took the blade by the hilt. My hand shook. Lee pulled the scabbard, laying the blade bare.

"Chen Kerber," Lee said quietly. "As my attending physician, I want you to verify that my condition is terminal, and bear witness that I am asking Eli to perform my legal euthanization in accordance with the method I choose."

"You're insane!"

"I am sound of mind and failing body."

"Sound of mind? You're asking the boy to stab you to death?"

"Just say yes," Loid said, putting his hand on Chen's shoulder.

Lee turned his head from me, met Loid's eyes, and nodded.

"I witness," Chen said, his voice weak. "But I cannot condone."

"Loid Burns," Lee continued.

"I witness and verify," Loid answered. "I will take care of them. Both of them."

Without another word, Lee stepped forward, wrapping his hand around my own, and positioning the blade against his gut.

"Elicio the Thar'esh," he said quietly in my ear. "People's lives are at stake. Lin's life is at stake, and I'm dying either way. This gives all those people a chance."

"I'm sorry," I said quietly.

"No boy, I am," he drew a breath. "I don't want to make you do this, and I don't want to saddle you with the burdens I already carry. But there is no other way. Maybe if you live through this day you will succeed where I failed."

Before I could ask what he meant, his grip over my hand tightened, and with a powerful yaulp, he screamed as our hands together thrust the blade up beneath his ribs into his chest.
Chapter 36.

I paced.

Endlessly paced.

My eyes traced along the floor, looking at the grout where the ceramic plates were fused to the walls. Every time I walked passed my eyes lingered on one small notch where the grouting was missing, a shadow, an imperfection. The workers probably had to switch to a new batch at that point. It was nothing. It was irrelevant. Six millimeters of grout amongst miles of corridors on the ship. But I couldn't take my eyes off of it. Every time I passed, my mind fixated on that one little notch.

"Lieutenant?"

I spun to see an orderly. She looked young, far too young to be here.

"Lieutenant Lee McCullough?"

"Yes, that's me," I wiped my sweaty palms on the pants of my uniform and straightened my lapel.

"Your wife is fine, as is your daughter," she said with a slight smile. "Please, follow me."

My feet carried me lightly down the hall behind her. Halfway down the hall she stopped, opened a door, and gestured me inside.

My heart jumped as I saw the empty bed, but I caught my breath when I saw Linaea in the rocking chair by the window. The chair a dark wood, synthetic I was sure, but a reasonable facsimile. For all the rough living, the fleet took pains to make the hospital facilities on carriers as comfortable as possible.

"Lee," Linaea's voice was soft. "Everything is fine, she's fine, I'm fine. Where is Marin?"

"With Corporal Graves," I answered. "I figured you would want some quiet. I will bring him later today."

"Thank you," she said without looking up. "Come here, hold her."

She shifted the little bundle of cloth that she was cradling, a small arm poked out from between the folds. Five little fingers, I quickly counted. I reached down and took her without hesitation. My right hand could almost reach completely around her. So tiny. So fragile. I gently pushed aside the blanket. Her skin was pink, eyes closed, on the top of her head were a few rogue strands of dark hair.

"How do you like the name Juliette?" She asked.

"Eli," Loid's voice was distant.

I kept my eyes clenched shut, fighting through the waves of memories. Sixty four years, two hundred fourteen days and twelve hours and eighteen minutes. The number came from somewhere within. I knew of worlds I had never seen, space stations, children, Ju-lin toddling across the floor, a wife, there were waves of crippling sadness, fleeting arrows of joy, and a heavy pall of guilt and regret. I pushed them aside. Searching. I recalled stars, ships, engines. My mind raced through my knowledge of ships, shuttles, hovers, and the layout of a Dreadnaught.

"Elicio," Loid called again, his voice seemed more near.

The Falcon? I questioned myself, and the thoughts came. Platform Dynamics Falcon Mark II. Fusion engines, ten ton cargo capacity. Power by one class seven fusion thruster, and fourteen XL9 maneuvering jets.

"Hey kid," I felt Loid's hand on my shoulder. "Breathe."

"Um, yeah," I said softly as I finally opened my eyes. "I'm here."

I was on my knees, Lee lay in front of me. His face was ashen, but somehow looked restful in death, despite the blood pooling beneath him. I still held the hilt of my blade, which was still lodged in his chest.

"Are you alright?"

"She'll never forgive me for this," I whispered hoarsely, looking up at Loid.

I wasn't sure what I wanted him to say, if anything. He just looked back with sympathetic eyes. It was just as well. There was nothing to be said.

I took a deep breath and pulled my knife from Lee's chest. The sound was sickening. I didn't look back down as I stood up. My arm was covered with blood up to my elbow. I wanted to wash. I wanted to cry. I wanted a drink. I wanted the last five minutes to be erased and reset. I stared down at his body, feeling empty. He had taken me in, given me a chance, put faith in me. Faith right up until the end, he had faith.

"Did it work?" Loid asked as he looked at me hesitantly.

I nodded.

"They will have engaged the Collegiate by now."

I looked around and saw my scabbard lay a few feet away where it had fallen from Lee's hand as he died. I stepped over, took it, wiped my blade on my pants, and sheathed it.

When I was done, Loid wordlessly turned and headed to the hangar door. When he got there, he stopped and waited for me. I heard Chen say something as he moved toward the body. I didn't look back. I couldn't look back.

With nothing else to do, most of the colonists had left and returned to their homes. The few that were left froze as we walked out onto the field. Jager and Boils finished unhooking the fuel lines from Tons-o-Fun and stopped to stare. I had no idea what they thought. Had they heard Lee's final scream? Surely they saw the blood on my clothes and the knife on my belt. I couldn't bring myself to make eye contact with any of them.

"Eli will be taking the last Falcon up," Loid announced matter-of-factly.

Maybe it was the look on his face, or the smeared blood on mine, but nobody questioned us.

"Are both ships prepped?" Loid followed up.

Jager looked from Loid, to me, and back to Loid, "Yeah, the Falc is ready. So's the Scotsman."

"Why are you two still hanging around here?" Loid asked.

"Eh," Jager shrugged. "Most of thems got families around here to go back to. I'm on my own, aside from ugly over there."

"Up yours," Boils grunted jovially.

"Well, if it's all the same to you two I could use a few extra hands," Loid called back. "Know your way around ship's weapons systems?"

"I was a trained as a fleet gunner before I washed out," Boils answered.

"Naw, not me. But I spent a few years working power systems on a Domari tanker, I know my way around a ship."

"Interested?" Loid asked, nodding toward Tons.

"Though I'd prefer dying in a soft bed next to the warmth of a few beautiful ladies, I don't think that's in the cards today," Boils answered. "So blaze of glory sounds like a decent second."

"My thoughts exactly," Loid smiled. "Get her prepped."

He turn to me.

"Are you okay?"

I wasn't sure how to answer. My eyes scanned across the makeshift airfield. The rest of the colony stood in the distance, behind it the hill with the cave where I had found myself, alone and naked a few months ago.

"Eli?"

"Yeah, I think I am," I met his eyes for a second, but couldn't hold them. I glanced away and my eyes found the communication station that Lee had been using. I remembered him standing there fiddling with a rusty bolt just moments ago. I glanced down and saw the blood on my hand. The sight brought on a flash of his last memory. I saw myself holding the blade as he pulled it in toward his chest—

I pushed the memory away, shaking my head forcefully. As I did, I saw something else.

"The table," without knowing why, I turned and walked over to the coms station.

Loid followed.

I looked down at the table. Lee had taken a grid and drawn up a map showing the world. There was a mark for the location where the Celestrial haulers waited to come in and terraform the world. A pile of rocks representing the debris field. Halfway between the haulers and the planet was a handful of stones, representing the fighters and where he thought they would clash and where the battle was currently raging. Teigan and Lee had figured that the Collegiate pilots would be tired from the battle with the Draugari, and possibly low on fuel, so they decided to push the battle to the debris field, hoping to use the wrecks as cover, and to hopefully push the Collegiate pilot's into making mistakes.

"Come on kid," Loid said, putting his hand on my shoulder. "They're outnumbered up there."

I almost turned to leave when I saw the rusty bolt sitting on the corner of the map.

"Wait," I said quietly, taking in a slow breath. "He knew."

"He knew what?"

"That we were hopelessly out numbered," I said quietly.

"Yes, well we all know that," Loid countered.

"Yeah, but the debris field," I continued. "He didn't just want to push the fight there to give Teigan's pilots the tactical advantage. Moving the fighters out here to the debris opens up a clear path here, between the planet and the Collegiate's haulers."

"Yes, but what's the-"

I pointed to the bolt, resting idly between the planet and the haulers.

Loid paused.

"That's supposed to be Tons?"

I nodded, "His plan was for us to go after the haulers."

"Well now, that is an interesting idea."

"How many ships were left up there protecting the haulers?" I asked.

"He wasn't sure, some, but not many," Loid answered. "The Collegiate will send the bulk of their force to take care of our defenses. Okay, so if Lee had this planned, why didn't he tell Teigan."

"Alume," I answered. "The guy who's running the Collegiate. He's up there somewhere, and he's clever. He'll be tapping all of our coms. Lee didn't tell Teigan his plan because the pilots may say something on air and ruin any surprise we may have."

"Compartmentalized," Loid replied. "He thinks like a Protectorate Fleet officer alright. He even used his daughter as a pawn. Crafty though, I give him that."

"There wasn't any other option," I snapped back defensively.

"Maybe not," Loid answered. "Just promise me you won't go all fleet on me, I was just beginning to like you."

"Yeah, well we're probably about to die anyway," I forced a smile.

"Probably," he answered. "If you're right about Alume, we should maintain radio silence on the way up, it may buy us some time."

"Agreed," I answered.

I took one more glance over Lee's map, exhaled, and turned back toward my ship.

"I'll try to save some for you," I called over my shoulder as we separated. The words were thick with bravado and swagger, and slipped out before I knew I had said them. It wasn't something I would have ever said before. I thought back to Filian's memory, of how she killed the slaver and absorbed his memories in a moment without hesitation. It had been so easy for her. I wondered if it would ever get easier for me. I looked down again at Lee's blood on my hand. I didn't want to know.

Initiate guidance computers. Bypass pre-flight navigational thruster. Align the convergence point for the three laser cannons. Verify payload for the two under-wing missile launchers. The process came as naturally to me as breathing. I let Lee's habits, which had now become my own instincts, take over. I took one last glance out over the field. Dust was starting to rise as Loid eased Tons-o-Fun up off the ground. There was a soft beep and the board turned green.

I took a deep breath and reached for the stick, easing up the thrusters. Thirty-two tons of guns and steel lurched and lifted lightly into the air. Maneuvering thrusters were firing within norms. Satisfied, I punched the main thrusters, following Loid's conn trail upward.

It is difficult to describe the blending of nostalgia and newness that I experienced in those first thirty seconds of flying. I was equal parts confident and terrified. I found that my mind knew every inch of the ship, and though the knowledge gave me a sense of mastery, I couldn't help but feel overwhelmed by my doubt, guilt, and uncertainty. Chasing on the heels of the wave of doubt was something else that was new to me, a devotional sense of responsibility. Something far more powerful than my own personal need or want.

An alarm sounded as I broke through the atmosphere. The radar lit up as I looked out into space to see the battle raging ahead in the debris field. The first thing I did was count the signals. To my relief, all eleven Falcons were still flying. Ju-lin was still out there. It was only then that I reached over and turned on my coms to listen.

"Three more incoming low, watch it Pinkie," a voice broke over my headset.

"I see them, breaking right, cover me."

"Roger that. Holy hell did you see that?!"

"Dammit watch your cross-fire Kit! You almost toasted me."

"Get this thing off of me!" it was Ju-lin.

"Break right, on my mark, two, one, mark."

I saw a flash of light in the distance as the fighter disintegrated.

"Thanks."

"Watch two more ahead!"

"I can't see shit in this swarm."

"Lucky, hold it off, stay with me!"

"I'm trying!"

There was another flash and fire as Lucky's ship burned.

Silence followed.

"They are trying to wear us down."

"Yeah, well Skunks, it's working."

"Cut the cross-chatter," Teigan snapped. "Focus. Koda and Ju-lin, on me, let's pull some of them off from the pack."

I had to fight the instinct to change course and burn into the fray as I watched the battle rage in the distance. But I kept on course, locked in a tight formation with Tons' underbelly to try to mask my signal as long as possible as we angled out to meet the rest of the Celestrial fleet.

Minutes passed. We were nearly a third of the way to the haulers, but still, the Collegiate hadn't broken off any of the fighters to intercept. I was beginning to wonder if they were too focused on the battle with Teigan's wing to notice us when I saw them: a dozen small ships pulling out from the radar shadows of the larger haulers. Most were small single-pilot ships, but not all. Four were larger two-man vessels. My heart sank. Bombers.

That's going to be a problem, I thought to myself as I powered up weapons. Tons-o-Fun, with her reinforced armor and stronger powerplant, would be able to take a beating from the small, one-manned fighters. But the bombers were each equipped with dozens of warheads, and were capable of firing salvos of up to a half-dozen missiles at once. The first wave of warheads would buckle the Tons' shields, the second would disintegrate her armor.

I flipped over my coms to a private channel with Loid.

"You were right about your pal Alume being ready for anything," Loid's voice crackled over the speaker. "They will intercept us well before we're in range to hit those haulers."

"I know," I answered. "We'll have to deal with them."

"Easier said than done, I expect you know what those bombers are capable of? Tons can take a beating but not that big of a beating. I'll need you to run some serious interference."

"Ship to ship at close range. You should be able to pound those bombers with your mass driver," I replied.

"You do know that getting in range will be kinda a problem, right kid?" he answered. "Depending on the loadout, those things have six to ten times my reach."

"I know," I answered.

"Yeah, they are acquiring targeting lock now," he added.

"No chance you've mounted a flack cannon?" I asked jokingly.

"Since yesterday? Sorry no, that's why I brought you along."

"Incoming," Loid broke in. "Missiles, bloody hell. Six, twelve, eighteen, twenty four. They're coming out full barreled. Nice to know they didn't spare any expense."

I looked down at my scopes. Four full salvos a few seconds apart, one from each of the bombers. For several precious seconds, I froze. My hands resting in my lap. I didn't know what to do. What was I doing? Stolen memories be damned. I'd never driven a hover, let alone flown in combat. I could still hear the chatter in the background from Ju-lin and the rest of Teigan's forces, someone's voice called out and was silenced. We'd lost another ship. Their voices were distant. Everything was distant. Panic began to well in my gut. I wrestled with the panic, the fear, the doubt. The worries like white noise filled my head, drowning out the world.

"Elicio," Loid broke in over the coms. "I kind of need you here buddy."

I wasn't sure if it was my name, the sound of another voice, or the simple reminder that I was not alone, but I found my left hand curl around the throttle, and my right around the control stick. It felt new but natural.

"Cut speed to half," I instructed as I pushed the throttle, leaping ahead of Tons. "It will buy us another second or two before impact. Focus fire on the incoming missiles, don't worry about hitting me."

Loid's reply was drowned as I focused on the incoming missiles. I could clearly see the four cascading streaks of fire ahead. Closing, closing, closing. I pushed my throttle back to full stop and took aim. My lasers streaked, miss-hit-hit-miss-miss-hit, I spun the Falcon on her axis and jammed the throttle, positioning myself for the next salvo. Miss-miss-hit-hit-hit-hit. I pulled up, they were coming too fast. The first half of the third salvo was passed me before I got around, trailing the missiles I managed to toast the last two. I searched the sky, the last salvo had already passed me. Too many had gotten past me. Too many.

I jammed the throttle to the stops and adjusted the convergence of my lasers to give me maximum range and fired. One, two, three more muted explosions as my shots struck home and the rest slid out of range. I watched helplessly as the first explosion shook Tons-o-Fun, then the second. Loid was firing as well, intercepting some of the oncoming missiles. But not all of them. The explosions closed in on the Tons, a half dozen in rapid succession, I squinted through the flashes of fire and debris. There was one more flash and a streak of bright red hair as Tons-o-Fun plowed through what was left of the missiles and dust. Her hull was scared, but intact.

"Alright, my turn you bastards!" Loid broke in over the coms.

The Tons main cannon glowed green as it began to charge, firing three bursts of super-velocity matter from the mass driver cannon. I came about just in time to see the first of the bombers burst into flames.

"Watch yourself Eli, the fighters are coming in fast."

"I see them." I pitched, avoiding streaking laser fire from one of the bomber's rear turret as they passed.

"Do what you can," he said. "I need to get these bombers out of commission before they can unload like that again."

Either I'd managed to keep my Falcon hidden within the Tons radar signature, or the Collegiate had figured that the bombing run would wipe us both out. It didn't matter which, but I was grateful. The fighters had hung back as the bombers engaged and now were still a minute out and scrambling to join the fight.

As Loid burned in pursuit of the lead bomber, the other two came about to set up for another firing run. I spiraled again avoiding their defensive blasts and opened fire with my lasers on one of the bombers. His shields began to falter, but not nearly enough. I thumbed my rockets. The two blasts struck home and his rear shields collapsed. For two precious seconds, my lasers pummeled his armor, the rear turret stopped firing. His starboard thrusters went black. The pilot broke off hard to port back toward the haulers. I let him go as I shifted my focus back to the oncoming fighters.

The following moments moved quickly. My body, which had just moments ago felt so distant, seemed to meld with the ship. The wings and thrusters felt like an extension of my own body as I dove, cut, rolled, and fired. I gave into my instincts: instincts born of a lifetime of training and dozens of battles that I had never fought. Instincts that I had stolen from a friend's blood.

Four were coming at me. The others, I knew without looking, were moving toward Tons-o-Fun to support the two remaining bombers. My ship shook and shields faltered as the wave of fighters came into range as I evaded the oncoming onslaught. The Celestrial fighters were smaller, and significantly faster and more maneuverable than my Falcon; though what my ship lacked in agility, it made up in armor and firepower.

The black seemed to be full of enemy fighters as they swarmed around me. A steady stream of fire pounded my defenses from all sides. Their speed combined with the short range rendered my rockets useless. The fight would be all guns. I scanned the sky and picked my mark, one of the fighters was coming up behind me preparing to fire. As he approached, I began strafing left, and then turned hard right and dropped the throttle. The fighter took the bait, and shifted his course. A half second later he realized his error and pulled hard to port to avoid a collision, overcorrecting.

I pulled up to bring my guns in line with his flank and opened up with my lasers. It took mere seconds for my guns to burn through his shields. I focused fire on his thruster bank. Two, three, four hits landed. His evasive dive stalled out as he lost lateral control. I lined up my guns and fired a rocket, relying on line-of-sight rather than the targeting computer. The rocket hit home and the fighter dissolved into dust.

I was filled with the thrill of the fight, but my surge of glory was quieted by Lee's sense of practiced calm. The precious seconds that I had spent tracking and destroying the fighter had surrendered any defensive advantage that I had had. The other three had formed up and were on approach, coming fast on my flank. I engaged my thrusters, but I was no match for their speed, and there was nowhere to run.

I looked over my shoulder as they approached at my eight o'clock. I squinted as the orange lasers began streaming down. I saw my energy shields ripple and fade. My console beeped to tell me what I already knew. Rear shields were down. There was nowhere to go. I banked upward again, trying to protect my vulnerable engines and give my rear shields a chance to regenerate.

I saw another series of flashes, something was different. It wasn't the orange blaze of the Collegiate's lasers. These were blue-white. A mass driver. As I turned, two of the three fighters burst into flames. The third pulled up, narrowly avoiding destruction.

"I owe you one Loid," I said as I exhaled a rough breath.

"Care to return the favor?" Loid asked over the coms.

I looked up to see Tons-o-Fun tearing across the sky with three fighters and two bombers in pursuit.

"Angle twenty degrees to port," I said as I set-up my approach. "Break off low on my mark."

I gave into my instincts as thrusters and lasers lit up the darkness. The Celestrial's battle with the Draugari fleet had been an organized and disciplined battle of attrition. Orders were given and followed. The Celestrial's trained precision, discipline, and coordination had won the day. But now they were off-balance. This wasn't a fleet-to-fleet engagement against an organized enemy. This was a bar-room brawl. In a knock-out-drag-out fight, Loid was in his element. As the battle wore on, I was more than a little surprised to discover that I was as well.

The minutes passed by me as if I were in a trance as we fought. My Falcon took hits, but not nearly as many as I gave. After what felt like hours but couldn't have been more than minutes, we had turned the tide of the battle.

I fired and launched the last of my rockets. They struck home, severing the left wing of the enemy fighter, his there was a burst of flame as his cockpit ruptured, sending his body spinning silently into the night. There was a flash to my left, I turned to see a flame-spurt burn out the cockpit of one of the bombers. Tons-o-Fun came in low beneath the wreck and leveled out on my wing.

I scanned my scope.

Three fighters and one bomber were limping back toward the haulers, all registering significant damage. The rest were scrap in our wake.

"That went better than expected," Loid broke the radio silence. "Looks like the old man wasn't kidding when he said he could fly."

"Now what?" I asked. The haulers stood in the distance, menacing and undefended. Meanwhile, the rest of the Falcons continued to wrestle with the swarm of Collegiate fighters amongst the burning wreckage of the Draugari fleet.

"I count seven Falcons still flying," Loid answered. "And still nearly two dozen Celestrials. It looks like Teigan and his wing are playing hide and seek in the debris, doing more running than shooting."

"Hopefully they can keep running for a bit," I said as I turned my ship around, angling toward the haulers.

"Those haulers have some serious armor," Loid said. "I'm still flying, but I took a beating back there. Powerplant is running at 60 percent, I have two or three missiles left."

"And I'm out of rockets," I said. "What happened to all those Draugari warheads?"

"Gone. I used them to bust you out of Kalaedia, remember?"

I sighed. We were running out of cards to play.

"So what's the move? It will take us a few hours to bang through their hull with your little pea shooters," Loid pressed. "We should get over there and help out Teigans' boys, and Twiggy."

I didn't respond as the voices in my head argued. I searched for an opportunity, an advantage, something that would give us a chance to take control of the situation. Amidst my cluttered mind, one idea stood out. This one wasn't Lee's, or Lor'ten's, or my teachers. It was wholly mine. It was bold. It was reckless, but it had a chance.

"I have an idea," I said.

"Are you going to share?" Loid questioned after several seconds of silence.

"No time. Flip back over to the other com channel and follow my lead," I said as I closed the link just as Loid began to argue, and tuned back in to Teigan's flight group.

"Watch your ass, those are the two that got Skunks!" I thought it was Trasher, but I couldn't be sure. "Rockets!"

"I'm empty," Ju-lin answered. "I spent my last two saving your ass two minutes ago."

"Damnit, lost Links," Teigan broke in. "I'm alone over here with five on my tail. Report?"

"Pots and I just dusted a pair off by the big wreck. We're clear and coming back in. If you need a hand angle up toward us.

"Roger that, thanks Bing," Teigan answered. "Everyone, keep tight."

"Captain Teigan," I broke in, hoping the static would disguise my voice. "Sorry we're late to the party. Tons-o-Fun and I ran into the re-enforcements."

"Lee, about damn time, status?" Teigan answered.

"We're clear, took care of their bombers and a few snub fighters," I answered.

"Good, at least we won't have to contend with missile boats," Teigan responded. "We're falling apart. Get your asses over here and give us a hand. We can't last much longer."

"Negative," I answered. "Tons is loaded with a dozen stolen Draugari ordinance and the haulers are undefended."

"Draugari?" He echoed.

"Disintegrators," Loid follow my bluff. "We lifted them off the ship that attacked the colony a few weeks back. I'm loading them up now, should be in range in two minutes. We can burn down the haulers and take the terraforming equipment with them. The colonists will be safe."

There was dead air for several seconds.

"Do it," Teigan answered.

I watched the scopes and waited. We were close enough to the haulers that the fighters engaged with Teigan and the Falcons would have no chance to intercept us, and even if they did, turning their backs to Teigan's wing would be suicide.

One minute. Nothing. I began to doubt. They either weren't listening, or they were calling my bluff. Maybe I'd made one too many guesses. I'd assumed that Alume would be with the fleet. A man like him wouldn't allow something this important to carry on without him. I'd also figured that, if he was here, he would have found the Falcon's coms channel and broken the encryption key. He would be listening.

One and a half minutes passed. I had assumed too much. Why would he believe we had the warheads?

No, I swallowed. Despite my doubt, I was certain. Alume was here directing the battle. He had to be. And he may be the fully devoted to his cause, but he was also the center of the circle. The Mastermind. The General. The man who sends others to their deaths, but never risks his own. One minute forty-five seconds. Time was almost up.

"Prepare to fire," I said over the air.

"Roger that," Loid answered. "Preparing a full spread, I should get the lead three in one go."

Two minutes.

"Humans?" a smooth, alien voice crackled over the radio.

I was momentarily too stunned to respond.

"Are you human? Domari? Earthborn?"

"Tons-o-Fun, stand down. This is Commander Teigan, identify yourself."

"Oh my, no, you are human? Not Draugari?" the voice responded. "Stand down, please, I am ordering my fleet to stand down."

"Who is this?"

"Commander Teigan is it? My name is Caleeb. My cohorts and I were on a terraforming mission to this system when we were set upon by a party of Draugari raiders."

"Yes," Teigan responded. "You dealt with them and then attacked us."

"Attacked you?" Caleeb answered. "I hardly think so, we would never attack our human friends! You and your fleet set upon us, we thought that it was another wave of the Draugari."

"The Draugari flying Falcons?" Teigan snapped back.

"If you will pardon sir," Caleeb answered. "But most of the vessels the Draugari fly are stolen from Earthborn hands. We saw you on approach and could not take the risk. Please understand, we are part of a peaceful organization. Our goal was to build an academic commune and we came to this remote world."

The voice had a familiar air of elitism.

"You don't fight like a peaceful organization," Teigan countered.

"Well yes," Caleeb responded smoothly. "As I'm sure you know, my people are required to submit to military service. Every adult is a trained warrior. But please, believe me, our intentions here are peaceful. This entire situation is a horrible misunderstanding. This world is not on the Protectorate's or Collective's colonial register, we did not know that human colonists had claimed it."

Clever, I thought. I was certain that the voice belonged to Alume. Was Caleeb another title? Another alias? Or his real name?

"This world is home to three human settlements, there was a fourth, but it was destroyed. By Celestrial raiders," Teigan pressed back.

I looked at my scopes and saw the Collegiate fighters drawing away out of the debris field and back toward the haulers. Teigan and the five remaining Falcons had formed up and were on their way to rendezvous with Loid and I as we held position between the Collegiate and the colony.

"Celestrial raiders?" Caleeb responded. "As I said, we are a peaceful concern of academics. I don't have any knowledge or responsibility over the actions of outlaws and rogues. Commander, I'm sure that you would object to being judged by the actions of your race's less scrupulous members."

Teigan said something back in assent.

An indicator light flashed on my dash, a message from Ju-lin:

I don't like this, he's stalling, Dad. We can't trust him.

A pang of guilt passed through me as I saw her words. At least she hadn't recognized my voice. She was right, though, of course. My bluff had worked so far, but Alume wasn't ready to give up. His fighters swarmed back around the haulers, rotating into docking clamps as they refueled. Refueled and rearmed. Eighteen fighters still in fighting condition, I counted, twenty-three against our eight in open space. If Alume moved to strike with his ships refreshed and rearmed, the battle would be quick.

"Caleeb," Teigan hailed. "As you can see, this world is inhabited. If it was missing from the colonial register, it was clearly in error. I am going to ask you to withdraw from the system."

It was silent for a long moment.

"I can't do that Commander Teigan," he answered.

Another message, this one from Loid: I'm being scanned. They are calling our bluff.

"Come again?" Teigan answered. "Are you having trouble with your flux drives?"

"No, nothing like that," Alume continued. "Inconvenient as this may be, we came for this world, and this world in particular."

"What's so important about this world?" Teigan asked.

"No other world will do," Alume responded flatly.

"It is occupied by nearly eight thousand human colonists."

"Unfortunately, no other world will do." As Alume spoke, the Collegiate fighters reformed into three flight groups, positioning themselves to attack.

My bluff to stall for time was working against us. It had given Alume a chance to refuel and rearm his ships while drawing us out into the open.

I looked out my viewport at the Falcons flying in close formation. They were pock-marked and blackened. I could see burnt out-maneuvering thrusters, empty rocket launchers. The pilots were tired, ships low on fuel. Nerves, lasers, and a bluff had gotten us this far, and all three were nearly spent. I had one card left to play.

I thumbed my coms: "You're too late Alume."

"Who?" Teigan asked.

"The Thar'esh are long dead, but we found what they left, and destroyed it."

"Destroyed?" He asked.

"Yes, but not until after we found the truth," I continued.

"The truth?" Alume replied his voice hissed. "Elicio? That is you isn't it? You found your way back. Compelling. But the truth? What truth did you find?"

"Eli?" my heart froze as Ju-lin broke in over the coms. "If you're here, where is my fath-"

Her voice stopped as the truth choked back her words. She knew. I was certain she knew it all. I shook off the thought, and pushed back the waves of emotion, of guilt, of rage. With all of my strength, I focused.

"I found the truth of what happened at Vasudeva," I said.

Again, there was silence.

"You know what happened too, don't you Alume?" I pressed. "You know what Navali did. The power she wielded. It wasn't the Thar'esh who destroyed those worlds."

"Oh it was the Thar'esh," Alume answered. "Make no mistake. They were a blight. Their shadow destroyed Vasudeva, and with it they nearly destroyed the beating heart of my people."

"It isn't the heart of your people that you should be worried about," I replied. "It is your souls. Navali developed the weapon. And she took fifteen billion lives to keep it from the Thar'esh. She knew if a single one of her people was left alive that the Thar'esh could have taken their memories and technology. And you, you choose to hide the truth."

"As I told you," he answered. "It is our duty to discern which books should be written, which books should be forgotten, and which should be burned."

"Fear," I said slowly. "It's all about fear isn't it? You think it's better for your people to be afraid of what is out there than know what their own people are capable of, don't you? Scare them with stories of the Thar'esh, and uphold the stoic endurance of the Celestrials?"

"This is all very moving," Alume said dryly. "But immaterial. I won't be lectured by a child. You say you destroyed whatever it was the Thar'esh left behind? I want to believe you. I honestly do."

"Yes," I answered as I keyed in and broadcast the coordinates. "Run a long range scan, you'll see the after-effects of a plasma bomb."

There was silence for several moments. The Collegiate fighters remained, poised for attack.

"I see remains, yes," Alume responded. "Splendid. Then our job is half done."

"Half?" Teigan interrupted.

"You and your pilots have fought bravely commander," Alume said solemnly. "Take your end with dignity."

In the distance there were flashes of light as the Collegiate fighters ignited their thrusters.

"Damn you!" Teigan roared.

"They're incoming," Trasher called. "All of them. Three minutes to intercept."

"What about those Draugar warheads?" Someone asked.

"A bluff," Loid answered flatly.

"A bluff?" Teigan snapped back.

"It was the best idea we had," Loid answered. "At least it bought us some time."

"It also bought them time," Teigan replied. "Now they're re-armed and fueled."

I looked out at the wave of oncoming fighters. There was nowhere to run or hide. They would be on us in minutes. Like the Draugari fleet, we had already lost, and the Celestrials only needed to come in for the kill.

Despair began to set in when I saw it, a faint flash somewhere distant to my right, and then another, and another. It took me several seconds to realize what it was: the flux point. As I craned my head and peered into the blackness. I saw a shadowy bulk lumbering forward. The shape was huge, ominous, and unmistakable against the stars even at that distance.

A message was being broadcast on all channels:

"This is Earthborn Protectorate Dreadnaught battle group Dante. The Protectorate has granted a petition to deem this system as a provisional colonial outpost. All register Protectorate and non-Protectorate vessels, please cease and desist any activities, and either petition for a temporary authorization, or observe and acknowledge that you have eight hours to vacate the system."
Chapter 37

It was a clear, bright day. I was one in three-hundred, standing at attention. Our uniforms were crisp white. Our shoes polished to a perfect sheen. I held my chin high and ignored the sweat on my palms. Face forward. I quickly straightened the new badge on my chest that read Private McCullough.

The Admiral walked to the podium with deep solemnity.

"Ladies and gentlemen, today you become more than men and women," his voice boomed. "Today you take your first, real step from being just boys and girls, toward becoming a piece of something more, something greater."

I swallowed back the lump in my throat.

"Because today, you take your first step toward joining the highest cause for the Earthborn. You follow the worn, proven, and noble path of the fleet. This is a tradition that draws back distant to the days before when we were stuck floating along the oceans back on Earth. Today, we sail further, faster, and bolder than we ever have before. We reach for the heavens that our ancestors dreamed of."

He paused.

"Men and women, today you become soldiers and sailors. From today on, you are the Protectorate of the Earthborn."

The grandeur of the Dante's entry dissolved into anticlimax as the bureaucracy settled in. We were ordered to remain in orbit for the next two hours while the Dante crossed the system and began to inspect each ship's registration and what their business was. As I sat in my ship, I ran scans, trying desperately to find any sign of Growd's shuttle, but there was nothing. If Alume's fleet had caught him in their net, there would be nothing left. If he had made his way toward one of the flux points he would still be on long range scans. The shuttle was nowhere to be found.

Alume, once again calling himself Caleeb, went back to his story about how he and the Collegiate had come to the system to start a new colony, only to run into a roving band of Draugari, and ultimately find that the planet was already colonized by the humans. Though he acknowledged that his ships and the colonists had exchanged fire, he insisted that any engagement was in error, and that they had mistaken our defense force for another wave of Draugari.

For our part, we didn't argue. The Collegiate were withdrawing, and the Dante promised to leave a garrisoned defense force in system. The colony was safe. Whether the Dante's commander believed the tale or not didn't much matter. As Loid pointed out to me later that evening, relations between the Protectorate and the Empire were tenuous, nobody was willing to risk open war; not even Alume.

Especially not Alume, I realized as I brought in my Falcon down to the landing field. Both the Empire and the Protectorate were ruled by fear. Whether it was the threat of Draugari invasion, or myths of the Thar'esh hiding in the dark, fear is what kept the common men and women quiet and in line. I thought back to Filian and Taro's memories. Fear had ruled the Thar'esh, there was no question of that. Maybe the fear was universal? Was fear the pillar that holds up the structures of nations? I hoped not. There had to be another way.

I was lost in my thoughts as I powered down the Falcon and stepped back out onto the landing field. As soon as my boots touched the dust, reality of what I had done closed in around me like a noose.

The first person I saw was Ju-lin. Teigan was with her, smiling and talking. Her hair was matted from the sweat in her helmet. I stood some distance off, watching and waiting. But she never looked my way. I was certain she knew I was there. How could she not? I wanted to talk to her, to see her, to hold her like I had before. But my desire was mixed with a rising sense of paternal care, and even pride. Lee's fatherly feelings shadowed my own. What would I say to her? What could I say to her?

"Helluva day," a friendly hand was on my shoulder. I turned to see Loid. He looked haggard, and for the first time, old.

"You aren't kidding," I responded with a sigh.

"Keep your distance," he said following my gaze. "Trust me on this one."

"I don't want to keep my distance," I answered. "I need her to know what happened. I need you and Chen to explain it to her."

"Explaining won't help," Loid answered. "Her head already understands it all. But her heart is another matter. She will need some time to process it all."

"Some time?"

"Okay a lot of time," he answered. "You did kill her father."

I turned, glaring.

"Gallows humor, sorry," Loid responded. "It's my way. All that said, that was some magnificent flying today kid. You saved our asses up there."

"So what's next?" I asked. For some reason the last thing I wanted to do was rehash the battle. "Picking up your lumber and flying off to sell it to your friend?"

"I think so," Loid said as he shrugged. "I'm stuck here for the next week until the Dante lifts the lockdown."

I nodded.

"I'd invite you along, but-"

"But what?" I asked.

"Ju-lin," he said. "She already asked to come with me. This world's too small for her, that's for sure. And the fleet isn't her speed. The structure would strangle her. And I promised the old man I'd make sure she was alright."

"Oh," I said sullenly. "Right."

"If I didn't let her sign on she would probably fall in with Teigan and his boys. Don't get me wrong, they are some good fighter-jocks, but the life of a merc turns you cold."

I nodded again.

"So hey," he said, trying to pull me out of my mood. "I'm going to go check out the whiskey that Jager says he's been secretly brewing in an old ceramics kiln. Interested? It will help."

"I'll pass," I said, looking down at the blood under my fingernails. "I need to clean up anyway."

Unsure where else to go, I was heading back to the old dormitory when Chen caught me in the street and led me back to the hospital. He showed me to a quiet room, the same one that they had brought me to when Lee had first found me. After a long shower and a hot meal, I laid down and finally slept.

Over the next week, the colony was transformed. The crew of the Dante set to work finishing the hydro-electric dam and replacing the dusty field with a proper spaceport capable of berthing a few dozen large combat vessels. The provisional defense force wasn't large, but it was enough: a dozen fighters, two corvettes, and an armed orbital supply and monitoring station.

I also learned that Marin McCullough, who had returned with the Dante after petitioning the Protectorate for help, had been installed as the provisional planetary governor. He quickly went to work, coordinating aid from the carrier group, and establishing the seeds of the great Earthborn Protectorate on the little colony world.

During most of the week, I stayed to myself in the hospital. Ju-lin turned away when she saw me on the street, avoiding my eyes by miles. Loid came by once or twice a day to check up on me, and Chen made sure I was fed and comfortable. But it was clear that my stay was temporary. Chen had seen to it that few people knew what had really happened with Lee. Though I wasn't sure what story he gave out, it was clear that the colonists were no more or less skeptical of me than they had always been. Chen told me that there were only two other people besides himself and Loid who knew the truth, Ju-lin and Marin.

I knew all the questions he must have had. I'd expected, if not dreaded, the moment when Marin came to see me.

But when the time came, I was surprised by what he had to say.

"I know what happened," he said easily. "I've spoken with Loid and my sister. I know all of it. I was here those first few days after you left, I saw the change in him. The poison the Draugari used was vicious. My sister doesn't understand, because she didn't see him then, but he was dying already. Slowly for sure, but he was dying. A slow, painful death that would rob him of all he was would have been heartbreaking for him. For us. This is what he wanted, I know it. I can accept it."

I nodded.

"When Chen first told me what you had done, I didn't understand any of it. But then I talked to Loid. It's pretty unbelievable. You survived a terraforming event. Not only that, you were reborn whole, with the ability to see into other people's minds. Pretty miraculous."

It wasn't the word I would have used.

"What I want to say is that I'm grateful," he said.

"Grateful?" I choked out the worlds, not quite believing what I heard. "After what I did?"

"As I said, I knew my father was dying, and I know what he can be like. He decided that you doing—that—was the only way. Nobody could have changed his mind. But no, that's not what I meant. I was talking about the fight. I'm grateful for what you've done for the colony."

He paused.

"You will have heard that Admiral Mjonor of the Dante has installed me as the provisional planetary governor?" he asked.

"I heard," I answered. "Congratulations."

"Yes, well the position has some perks," he said as he pulled a card out from his pocket and held it out to me. "I got something for you."

I took the little card, it was made of thick plastic with a digital interface on one end. I flipped it over in my hand. It had my picture, next to it was the name "Elicio Thar'esh."

"An official Earthborn Protectorate Identification card," Marin smiled. "You're now in the system. Loid came to me yesterday and told me that you didn't exist on any of the Protectorate or Collective records, so we put this together."

"It says that I was born on Leir II. Never heard of it."

"Some creative fiction," Marin nodded. "Leir II is a colony on the border with the Collective, populated by Earthborn, Noonan, Osterian, Lasterians, there may even been a few Celestrials. It was founded by a religious fringe group that worships the Sower of Seeds. They believe that someday their God will come back to see what each branch of humanity has achieved and judge us for it."

"Why there?"

"The colonists shun any connections to the Protectorate or the Collective, but they don't cause any trouble and stick to their own little world, so they are more or less left alone. They don't maintain any birth or death records, something about wanting to avoid touching the greater sins of humanity. It's all superstitious garbage. The official story on your records goes that you were an orphan on Leir II and stowed away on a cargo ship. When they noticed you were onboard, they marooned you here. We've added some notes in the planetary records to match up."

I looked down at the ID card and couldn't help but smile at the last name: "Thar'esh." I had little doubt that that had been Loid's idea.

"The ID is tied to bank accounts, property transactions, everything," Marin continued. "You really can't do much in the Protectorate without one."

"Thanks," I said sincerely without looking up. "You didn't have to do this."

"No," Marin answered. "I didn't, but I wanted to. The sky is yours."

"Thanks," I said quietly. "Though I'm not sure what I'll do with it.

"You know, I've been meeting with a lot of people from the Dante. Most of them are bureaucrats or Protectorate officers. But there are also some others who are with the Third Division."

"Third Division?" I'd heard the word before.

"The Third Division is the covert branch of the Earthborn Protectorate Fleet. Some call them spies, some call them assassins. But what they really are is an intelligence agency working to keep the peace across the Protectorate and between us, the Domari Collective, and the Celestrial Empire," he answered.

"Why tell me?"

"Because I think you should talk to them."

"What did you tell them about me?"

"Oh nothing about that," he answered. "Your secret is safe. I just told them that you were a genius with languages, and a natural pilot. Enough to pique their interest. Either way, the man's name is Fanto Rings. Odd name, I know. Odd guy. But interesting. I just figured you would need somewhere to go and something to occupy your mind, and they are always looking for recruits, especially recruits like you who don't have any family."

His last words bit.

"I'll think about it," I answered. "Thanks Marin. I appreciate you talking to me."

He shook my hand and turned to leave. At the door, he stopped and turned.

"You know, when they first told me what happened with my father, I was furious," he paused. "It was Ju-lin who explained it all to me. Who you are. What you are. She cares. She just can't handle it all, not right now. But if you give her enough time, she'll come around."

Before I could summon the words to manage a response, he was gone.
Chapter 38

"So what's your bet Jitters?" The man to my left paused to take a bite of a protein bar as he leaned against the dingy, rust-covered bulkhead. "This one going to have more molded provisions? Or maybe something more interesting, maybe some rusted out power cores?"

"Toys," Jitters said as he worked the plasma torch on the edge of the steel door. "This one will have a load of those stuffed alligator-bear things that you always see the Hoken children carrying."

"Ha! Toys!" The first man barked a laugh. "Can you imagine what the Draugari pirating a ship, slaughtering the crew, and then going in and finding they'd stolen toys? I'd pay to see that one. What about you, McCullough, what's your bet?"

"I don't bet," I answered solemnly as I looked from left to right down the long, dank corridors. The air was thick with mist and mold.

"'I don't bet'," he repeated in a mocking tone. "Always so serious Lee. Relax, what are you afraid of? This old derelict is abandoned. The engines are stripped, most of the electronics, weapons systems. Judging from the rust on this hulk the Draugari abandoned it at least ten years ago. There's nothing to worry about. Waste of time even searching it."

"We're nine fluxes from Centauri," I answered. "I'll relax when we're back on the Cypher and back in Protectorate space instead of floating out here in the middle of the Draugari's back yard."

"I second that," Jitters muttered. "This is the last hatch. Once I'm done cutting we can poke our heads in, report that there's nothing but a bunch of toys or moldy piles of whatever the hell that stuff was in the last two, and get off this cursed ship."

"I guess that's why they call you Jitters," the other man laughed a bit harder than the moment deserved.

Jitters ignored him as he moved his plasma torch to the last hinge.

"Getting all worked up over nothing," he continued.

"Nothing?" I repeated. "You don't think it's strange that the Draugari stripped this ship but left the cargo bays and backup power systems intact? That they swapped out the power couplings to lower the voltage, added dozens of new cable conduits that track back and forth across the ship, and upgraded the heating and life support units?"

"Who's to say when those systems were upgraded and modified," Darl scoffed. "This bucket was registered to a group of Olsterian traders, those hairy bastards tinker with everything."

"Or how do you explain that we set out and have made a straight line from flux point to flux point through supposedly unexplored and uncharted space, and happen to go directly to this wreck?" I continued. "This isn't just some exploration mission. Command sent us here for a reason. To this ship. Some ten year old tanker wreck. That doesn't strike you as odd?"

There was a loud clang as the steel door dropped from the hinges. I let my rifle sling back over my shoulder as I stepped forward to help Jitters move the door to the side to clear the passage. As Jitters and I eased the steel door down, leaning it against the bulkhead I heard Darl gasp.

"What in the name of the Sower is that?" Darl's voice shook. His weapon hung loosely in his hand.

I pulled my rifle to the ready and stepped around the corner, ready for a fight.

"Dra-" the words choked back in my throat as I peered into the storage bay. Instead of the deep, dense, misty darkness I had expected, there was a soft green light and soft hum emanating from something in the center of the room. The cargo hold was as spotless as an operating room.

I took a step over the threshold, but Jitter's caught my shoulder.

"Those tanks," he said softly. "There on that-thing, in the middle. What is in those tanks?"

"Call it in," I said as I raised my light, peering through the mist. The light was coming from tanks laying end to end on top of each other. Each three feet wide, two feet high, and nine feet long. They looked like caskets. Through narrow windows on each I could see shapes. Bodies. Each body was floating gently in the tank.

"Is that the crew of the ship?" Darl whispered. "In some kind of stasis?"

"There are dozens of them," Jitters whispered. "Stacked one on another. There's at least fifty in here. This thing's crew was only eight."

"Slaves then?" Darl asked. "Were they transporting slaves?"

I stepped into the room, Darl and Jitters didn't follow. Minutes passed as I walked from tank to another, peering in. The faces were gaunt, the skin was pale, but they were unmistakably Draugari. Human, but not entirely. Something different. Something bestial. But these were not like any Draugari I'd ever seen. Their faces were gaunt. Their eyes less sunken.

"Draugari," I said slowly as I stepped into the room. "And they are alive. All of them."

"Those don't look like any Draugari I've ever seen," Jitters said as he crept up next to me. "Look, they are more broad than usual, shorter by a foot. But, Lee you may be right. Those faces. They look like Draugari. Just not like one I've ever seen."

"Commander on deck!" Darl barked.

I spun around and snapped to attention to see Admiral Lakota walk through the door, followed closely by a man in a black uniform with the symbol of the Third Division on his lapel.

"Well done gentleman," Lakota's said in a sharp staccato as he walked past me and approached the tanks. "We've been after this for a long time. You're right, of course. Those are Draugari, but they aren't like any we've ever seen before. We've only ever seen the males."

"The males?" Jitters echoed. "You mean, those are the females? Kept here in stasis tanks? Why?"

"We believe it's the only way to keep them alive." The Admiral responded. "Take scans and bring one of them back to the Cypher. The only way we'll stop these beasts is by cutting them off at the source. Set charges and blow the rest."

"Look who's out and about!" Loid called as he caught up behind me. "You look like hell."

"Nightmares," I answered. "Or memories. I haven't figured out which."

Loid narrowed his eyes, "You alright?"

"I think so," I said as I continued down along the road. "Lee had been through a lot. I don't quite understand it all."

"Need to talk about it?"

"Naw, I'm alright."

It was still morning, the air was crisp. Most of the Dante's temporary landing crew had returned to their ships the night before. The colony already seemed to be returning to its old quiet bustle.

"Were you able to find out anything about Growd's ship?" I asked the question had been gnawing at me.

"Actually I have," Loid answered as he pulled his slate out of his pocket. "I was having a few drinks last night with some of the Protectorate flyboys, and they said that they encountered some wreckage floating in high orbit near the southern poles. The wreckage looked earthborn, and it was nowhere near the fight, so they thought it was strange."

"Did they know if it was his ship?" I asked, mind whirling. "It could have been a Draugari ship that limped away from the battle, or-"

"No, they didn't," Loid cut in as he flipped through his Slate. "That's why I took Tons up this morning to take a look. Here, I took some high res pics of it. There, you can see what's left of the fuselage, and there one of the engines. If you enhance it and go in tight you can see half of the MineWorks logo from the port fuel tank. It's his ship."

I stopped and took the Slate, peering intently into each of the pictures. Aside from a few larger pieces of the ship, most of it was dust. Whatever had hit it, had hit it hard.

"I don't see any signs of bodies," I said. "Or the Charons, though they were small, maybe ten centimeters high, hard to spot in the black."

"Must have been some kind of armor piercing round," Loid added. "The wreckage looked like it blew up from the inside out."

"From the inside out," I snapped. "They could have been boarded. Or they could have met up with another ship to escape."

"Naw kid, don't look at me like that, that shuttle was lightly armored. There are a half-dozen warheads that I know of offhand that would make an explosion like that. Draugari or Celestial." Loid said with an air of finality. "Besides, some of the guys I was drinking with were sitting out covering the rear-guard monitoring the flux points. Nobody came or left after the Dante arrived. That's Growd's ship, no doubt about it. They are gone."

I took one last look through the images on Loid's slate before handing it back and beginning to walk again. I wanted to believe that they were destroyed, but I still felt a shadow of doubt in the back of my mind.

"Did you talk to Marin's guy?" Loid asked, breaking the silence.

"Fanto?" I asked. "Yeah, I met with him this morning."

"And?" he pressed.

"I'm deciding," I answered.

"What would he have you doing?"

"I can't say," I said with a grin.

"Bah," he threw up his hand. "You have one fifteen minute meeting, and now you're all cloak and dagger."

"I already have the dagger, why not the cloak too?" I joked as I looked him over. "You're leaving."

"Yeah," Loid answered. "The Dante lifted the lock-down this morning, traffic is free to come and go. The stars are open for business."

"Ju-lin?"

"She's already back in the Tons," he answered as he stopped. "Itching to go. Speaking of which, I shouldn't wait too long, she may lift off without me."

I smiled.

"Loid, thanks."

"Hey, no problem kid," he answered. "Take care of yourself."

"You too," I said. "And take care of her."

"As best as I can," Loid answered as he turned. "Oh wait, I almost forgot."

He pulled out his Slate and keyed in a few commands.

"There we go," he said, slipping the tablet in his pocket. "I just gave you your share."

"My share of what?"

"The bounty that the Matron paid me when she handed you and Twiggy over to the Collegiate," Loid answered. "I figured you needed some running cash, and besides, it was yours anyway."

"Thanks."

"No problem at all kid."

I leaned forward to shake his hand, but he bypassed it, giving me an awkward hug.

"Um," he said, straightening himself back up. "Yeah that was uncomfortable. Won't do that again. Until next time."

"Keep her safe," I said.

He nodded solemnly, and without another word he turned back toward the starport.

I kept walking through the Downs aimlessly the rest of the morning. Thinking of Ju-lin, of Loid, of Growd and the memories that he had stolen. I didn't set out in any direction in particular, but I found myself on the edge of town at the base of a hill. I looked up toward the outcrop of stones that marked the entrance to the cave I had woken up in. I knew that it was more or less inevitable. If I was going to leave the Downs, there was one more answer I needed to find.

I pulled a flashlight out from my belt as I entered the cave and began to carefully climb down. My exit from the cave seemed like a lifetime ago. I recalled Lor'ten and Lee's faces. Two lifetimes ago to be exact. I kept climbing down, hand over hand. My body was rested again, agile, quick.

The cave was deeper than I remembered, and darker. I flipped off my light. I was left in nearly complete darkness. I turned it back on and I continued climbing down. Further and further, until I came to the spot. I dropped down the last cleft and landed easily and shined my light down on the stone below me.

Below me the stone was smooth, pure, white. Tevarite. Bladestone. I knelt down and slid my hand over the surface. I should have known. I recalled what Ju-lin had said: "Tevarite puts off a low level, but inconsistent electromagnetic field." Her words echoed against the memory from Taro's words as he handed his blade and whetstone to the Draugari chieftain: "this is the whetstone made of the stone that my people use to forge our knives and keep them honed to kill."

The stone. I reached down and absently touched the hilt of my knife. The Draugari had listened closely to Taro, all those years ago. They had found bladestones and used them to forge and hone their blades just as the Thar'esh had. The energy field in the Tevarite was part of the process of capturing a Charon. It had been the stone itself that had somehow saved me and preserved my mind so that it could reenter my body after the terraforming was complete.

"So it was just an accident," I whispered softly into the darkness. "I happened to be in just the right place when the terraforming began. But why was I here?"

I turned around as the question swirled in my mind, and then, a glint in the darkness provided me the answer. I think I knew what it was from that first moment. I walked slowly, moving my light from side to side. On the edge of the Tevarite was a shard of metal. On one end was a hand-spun leather handle grip, the other a half-forged blade.

There were scratch marks on the Tevarite nearby. I had been forging the blade.

As I turned the knife in my hand, I could see the memories that had been hovering just out of reach. The face of a young Thar'esh, a boy sleeping on a feather bed at night. A ceremony that never was.

It had been for my child.

My son.

I had been forging his blade when the terraformers hit.

I fell to my knees and wept for my son who was gone. I wept for all the lives that had been swept away that day when I had been spared. I thought of Lee, of Lor'ten, of Filian and Taro. But most of all, I thought of Ju-lin.

When I was done I set the unfinished blade in the center of the Tevarite and buried it under a pile of stones. It was one, small, grave to mark the passing of a fallen people who were once great.

When I got to my feet, my eyes were dry and my spirits were light. Fanto's ship lifted off at noon, and I would be on it.

