WHO LET THE DOGS IN

MISSION 8

“Captain’s log. August 23, 2591. The Arete is settling back into what I can only hope is a routine. We’ve departed Appalachia Colony with a hangar filled with planetside essentials catering to the needs of our multi-species crew, and efforts continue in sorting, organizing, and putting to use those acquisitions. The inaugural Arete Games have concluded, and winners’ names have been posted on a plaque outside the gymnasium. God willing, we’ll make this an annual event.

“On a personnel matter, we will be bidding farewell to guest wizard Hadrian The Brown, who will be returning to Oxford on Earth to resume his studies. On behalf of the whole crew, I wish him well.”

Not wanting to overcomplicate her logs, Jessie ended there. She huffed a sigh. Her ready room had begun to take shape with the delivery of more appropriate chairs, a camera setup and backdrop so she didn’t look like she was broadcasting from a haathee footrest, and a console that was meant for office use.

She’d actually grown accustomed to the mess hall ordering kiosk Trebla had pillaged for her. But there was no arguing that this pristine, ergonomically superior unit wasn’t an upgrade.

Afternoon coffee sat warm in her tankard. Governor Nikrat’s gift, plus the addition of a heating element in the bottom, had kept her in good company (and hot caffeine) all day. Reports, reports, reports. Everyone seemed eager to tell her what a good job they were doing and how they were putting their new toys to good use—probably so they’d get what they asked for next time they stopped by Appalachia Colony. The captain could tell by their tenor that this crew was a Christmas plus Hanukkah lot.

As a kid who grew up having to alternate years, she could appreciate the sentiment. As a captain, she intended to spoil her subordinates.

Her wrist buzzed.

Jessie checked her TeleJack. There was an alert from Lorenzo. He respectfully declined her offer to have dinner with his captain that evening.

A lump formed in the captain’s throat. He was right. It was wrong. She couldn’t both date and command him—well, not as captain, ethically. He was doing well as helmsman, and she shouldn’t ask or accept more from him than that. Bringing him onto the crew might not have been a mistake as such, but some of her motives for doing so… yeah. She wasn’t proud of that therapy session.

Things were looking up.

It was slow going, but she could feel this collection of misfits turning into Grosstet’s fabled “herd.”

The Arete Games had been a rousing success.

After Harmony’s surprise victory in free-form martial arts, they’d given the rules a good scrubbing for loopholes and oversights. Despite his advanced age, Jomek had taken the crown in both Ping-Pong and billiards. The obstacle course, in perhaps the least surprising result of the games, had been won by Chinochin—its designer and builder.

Speaking strictly as the Arete’s captain, Jessie found the revelations about her crew fascinating.

Gymnastics had gone to Drascz in a walkover—she’d taken years of lessons on Earth.

After all the trouble of freezing an ice rink for figure skating, it turned out that hardly any of the crew had been on skates before. But Charlotte was good. Like… probably had a shelf of trophies somewhere good. And despite Eric’s klutziness, they took the pairs award as well.

Uom’pe won the speed chess event. It reminded everyone that despite her slow hands moving the pieces, the tesud mind was as sharp as any species’. The finals against Tippitak had been a study in contrast. Slow, constant excellence versus frantic motion and fretting.

As one of the patrons of the games, Jessie tried to keep out of most events. Modeling things more along the traditional Earth Olympics would have been both xenoist and unfair. Anything requiring reflexes, coordination, and less than five years of youth training, Jessie would have dominated. Raw feats of strength would have been a series of competitions for second place without Grosstet even exerting himself.

The goofy, playful mix of events had been the most fun any of the crew had had since signing up.

Pessimism and years of military service warned her that the good times couldn’t last uninterrupted.

Draining the last of her coffee, Jessie refilled her tankard from the new unit in her ready room. Pre-creamed, pre-sugared, strong as lava and twice as hot, just the way she liked it. Jessie headed out to the bridge to oversee operations personally.

* * *

“Chief Medical Officer’s log. August 23, 2591. The Arete Games are over, and with them the never-ending stream of minor injuries, I trust. My unfortunate indiscretion in the martial arts competition has been immortalized in plaque form. Each time I pass by will be a reminder to do better. The solace I’d hoped to take in the chess event failed to materialize when I lost my semi-final match to Ensign Tippitak. I can only hope this log doesn’t reach Coach Kovalenko.

“In the meantime, I intend to devote all my available efforts to the study and replication of the eleven salvaged haathee medical micro-drones. I had hoped to find more, but I hesitate to rely on any units that might be salvaged from Wizard Eric. Exposure to that much magic may result in observations leading to errant conclusions.

“On the parenting front, Xrista seems to be thriving in an environment that exposes her to multi-xeno cultures. She has thus far comported herself admirably and shown no propensity toward insensitive behavior. Her curated exposure to certain elements of human culture appears to be working in that regard. I will continue to monitor her behavior for signs that she is picking up appropriate social cues from her various caretakers.”

Jessie was right. These logs were kind of fun to record. One day, perhaps, she’d go back and reference them and compare to how Xrista eventually grew up.

This being Med Bay, Harmony kept her door open unless actively seeing a patient.

Times like this, she regretted that openness.

“Hey, kid. Got a minute?” Carl asked, poking his head through the door before just waltzing in ahead of her reply.

“For you, always,” Harmony replied with a smile. If there was one thing Mom had warned her about when dealing with Uncle Carl, it was that he was going to get what he wanted. The trick was managing what he thought he wanted.

Rather than take the guest chair her office provided, Carl sat on the edge of the desk. Back at Harmony Bay, this was the sort of act that would have resulted in security relocating the perpetrator to the sidewalk in front of the building. Instead, the doctor made no mention of the rudeness or familiarity, and she well understood the subtle intimidation implied.

“I’ve got an embarrassing little problem I was hoping you could help me out with.”

“I’m a doctor. There’s no need to be embarrassed about anything. The human body is⁠—”

“Not that kind of problem.” Carl thumped his chest. “Old carcass is humming like a hot amp. No, what I need from you is a little insider info.”

“On…?” Harmony asked warily.

“You see, we picked up four recruits back on Shinjuku. Three of them turned out to be…”

“Dead.”

“No!” Carl protested quickly. “They arrested Leslie Suarez. Last I heard, she was on trial as an accessory in that kidnapping business.”

“I am looking the other way about Alfonzo Henderson because I can’t prove that engine malfunction wasn’t an accident. And I’m not naive enough to think I can change that finding. The game is rigged, and you’re rigging it. But you’re not fooling anyone. Is that clear?”

“Super. I expected nothing less. That’s why I think you’ll be willing to maybe help me save a life.”

A weary sigh escaped past her carefully erected “no sighing in the patients’ faces” barriers. “Just tell me what you want, so I can either do it or inform you of why it’s unethical and get on with my day.”

“Tommy Collins. C’mon… tell me that’s not an alias. But Yomin couldn’t find any dirt on him. Well, maybe she found nothing but dirt because that’s all the little colony he’s from is good for. He’s as clean as fertilized topsoil, and I mean that literally. Guy’s got the most boring past, and I’m worried that we went four-for-four on impostors with Jessie’s ill-fated attempt to hire outlaw crewmates off the omni. If I’d been aboard at the time, I’d have told her where to look for trustworthy scoundrels, but I’ve got this weird vibe off Tommy that I can’t put a finger on.”

“I’m not a private investigator. If your friend Yomin can’t dig up a criminal past on someone, consider the possibility that he doesn’t have one.”

“Sure. But it’s my job to be paranoid.”

“Your job is serving drinks.”

“My job is father to Jessie and Eric. I probably promised Esper some shit back when you girls were kids, too. And Yomin’s been out of the game too long. She caught John George, sure. But Mars and Earth militaries have left her in the ion wash. She cleared the other two.”

Harmony tented her fingers in a gesture that one of her professors had once claimed gave the impression of having all the answers. “I don’t see where I play into this.”

Carl grinned. “Check his DNA. Run a trace through that big, juicy database you docs all share. Someone can cook up a phony ID all they want, but unless they gene-modded him, he’s still going to have family out there. Figure out if his relatives are who they should be, and we’ll know if he’s a pipe-fitter with a taste for adventure or a deep-cover Earth Interstellar operative or some shit.”

Harmony nodded. “OK. So, we’ve gotten to the point and decided on ‘unethical behavior I need to quash.’ You see, that database is meant for specific purposes. Its use is governed by a treaty between Earth and Mars such that humans throughout former ARGO space can get access to medical records without jeopardizing healthcare. The use of it is not only unethical but also a violation of galactic law.”

“Treaties aren’t laws, per se.”

“Says the man who ought to know…”

“You’d be maybe saving the guy’s life if he’s legit.”

“Simply don’t kill him. It’s not hard. You’re doing it right now. Just keep not killing him, and he’ll be fine.”

Putting up his hands, Carl conceded her point. But then, just when she thought he was ready to give up on this silly notion, he leaned down, elbow resting on the leg he had up on her desk. “But are the haathee signatories to that treaty? Hmm? Just think about all the little guardrails keeping you in the low lane. How many guidelines are you following that were meant to rein in hacks and phonies? You’re here on a short timeline with access to H-tech that’s going to revolutionize the galaxy. Maybe it’s time to start reconsidering the rules and playing by your own set of guidelines… the Harmony Advanced H-tech Axioms.”

“H.A.H.A.,” she deadpanned, playing along with the obvious acronym. But something about the idea scratched a wound that had scabbed over but not healed. So many of the rules she followed were aimed at inexpert practitioners and corner-cutting scammers.

Carl slid off her desk. “You just give that some thought while you figure out whether Tommy Collins is the kind of guy we can trust around H-tech miracles or someone we need to maybe assign to pick up groceries and ditch at the next planet.”

Harmony sat for a long moment after his departure, chewing those words until they were soft enough to swallow.

Then, she logged into the old ARGO Medical Exchange Database and brought up Thomas Michael Collins’s recent med scans to cross-reference.

* * *

Hadrian surveyed his neatly made bed and the scattered mess atop it. He hadn’t brought this much with him. His stint aboard the Arete hadn’t even spanned the entirety of summer break. All that he had now wouldn’t fit in his luggage.

Three solutions presented themselves for consideration.

Firstly, the obvious: leave some of it behind. He had wealth aplenty and access to student credit at Oxford. He didn’t need extra sets of robes, athleisure-wear that Trebla had talked him into trying, or protective work environment gear that was a formality when toiling among the technologists.

But leaving things behind implied a return he didn’t intend.

He was done here. His work completed. Carl’s son could muddle through maintaining it all.

The second option, more practical: request someone provide him additional luggage. Even makeshift would do. His Oxford chums would find tales of his adventures all the more compelling with props, and one more embellishment in the form of some slapdash suitcase or other would fit the bill nicely.

However, the third option felt most appropriate: just cram everything inside, physical sizes be damned.

It wasn’t the hardest of magics. Simply keep shoving things inside, giving a good solid push, and continue adding contents until nothing remained outside that belonged in.

He’d tried twice.

What good would he be back at school if he couldn’t pack a damned suitcase?

Upon his return, Hadrian The Brown could expect his final undergraduate year to be dogged by the various Convocation Orders trying to lure him into their service. The Orders of Gaia and Prometheus each declared him a legacy recruit. But it didn’t end there. The Orders of Apollo, Hephaistos, Zeus, Athena, and Morpheus all schmoozed him with various levels of subtlety and oblique hints of special treatment in return for bringing his gravitas and name to their service. Even obscure smaller orders and upstarts took their chance at getting him interested.

No, Hadrian was not Order of Hermes material.

No, Hadrian did not think he was the perfect fit for the Society of Lucky Dragons.

No, Hadrian had not considered what a future with the Stewards of Pi-Ramses might entail.

Even the Grand Council couldn’t keep their guiding hands off his shoulder. No fewer than three councilors had suggested he come work for them directly, personally, under some kind of mentorship arrangement.

Those offers, that attention, his whole future could evaporate like morning dew if any of them saw him in this state.

He’d discharged a debt. That put him in good standing with the universe. To that end, he was covered. He no longer felt that he owed Carl Ramsey or his progeny any service.

But that woman…

She’d ruined him.

A scientist had utterly squelched his magic, and in front of the entire ship’s complement.

To top matters off, afterward she insisted on towing him down to Med Bay and treating his injuries with yet more science, exchanging injury for insult.

In yet additional humiliation, with science in hand, revealing his whole anatomical state to her, there was no way she could have overlooked his obvious attraction. Who could blame him? He was a collegiate wizard of some renown and stature, a veritable gourmet of wild oats, and out of a combination of professionalism and slim selection, had not indulged his appetites during his stint in the Black Ocean. The doctor was ten or perhaps fifteen years his senior—it would have been impossible to guess accurately—yet radiated glorious youth.

Sure-handed.

Quick-witted.

Trim and shapely and immaculately kempt.

And not only had he acted the preening fool before her, she’d unmasked him as a parchment tiger. She’d barely bruised those fine-boned hands of hers in knocking him senseless.

“I should apologize,” he concluded.

Not a foot moved.

“I should make a graceful exit and draw neither additional attention nor scorn,” he tried.

Nodding, he began the process of sorting which of his garments would make the trip to Earth and which would be left for the ratatoret housekeeping staff to disposition. What became of them mattered not.

Hadrian would be gone.

* * *

On a typical day, the Soundcheck Saloon was more club than culture. From live music to concert recordings to original poetry readings, the mics were open and the PA system blared. Aside from the head bartender’s Early Data pretensions, little of it had any value beyond the setting of a mood.

But the piano had helped.

Often overshadowed and used more as an additional drinking surface than an actual instrument, the baby grand occasionally plinked out drinking songs or background noise.

Today, Charlotte Webber played a masterpiece.

Though her own talents were a shabby medium to convey the majesty of Chopin, Charlotte felt that the softening of the oft-rowdy atmosphere could bring an element of salon to the saloon. And despite a lack of sheet music, she managed to play the pieces from memory.

Fingers flitted across keys of their own accord as notes flowed from mind to air to ears throughout the tavern.

At first, she’d received a few jeers and calls for someone to put on this genre or that in her place. But the sign-up for live performances was open to all, and Eric’s father was nothing if not a man open to cultural expression. After all, Carl allowed Figarus access to the microphone for his excremental free verse.

Charlotte couldn’t be certain what to make of Eric’s father. The two were little alike. And while all humans kept bits of themselves well hidden, she suspected he was more adept and kept his secrets held deeper than most. Yet for all those hoovering up science goop pressed into various sculpted imitations of food while treating Charlotte’s playing as mere noise, Carl was one of just two who appeared rapt.

The other, it came as no surprise, was Eric.

She could have played amid boos and tossed boots, threats and heckles, just to see the admiration glinting in those eyes. She’d have played for him alone if they had the piano in their quarters.

A wince.

She’d missed a note. The dissonant chord rang like a gong as she continued onward. Stopping to chide herself had been beaten out of her at a young age. “The show must go on.” And for this show, it appeared neither heathen nor hero had noticed her mistake.

It offended her, albeit mildly, that no one picked up on her gaffe. A lack of attention, a lack of understanding, a lack of musical taste or talent or discernment; all pointed to apathy on some front. Even Eric admired her more than her playing. To see someone wince in sympathy. To catch a sneer or the dainty sniff of offended sensibility at her shabby effort, that would have gratified her, knowing that when she received praise, it was praise that knew what it was offering.

Over the course of her engagement, Charlotte caught three more miscues.

No one said a word.

At the completion of each piece, Eric clapped.

It was embarrassing, in a way. Charlotte’s heart fluttered at the sound. This man of hers who could build planets and had a choir of caged birds to rival heaven itself, appreciated her performance.

Charlotte closed the cover, protecting the keys from spilled beer and impulsive attempts at Chopsticks alike.

Eric had a late lunch waiting for them. Though he hadn’t let anyone else in on the secret, he’d placed their plates into some form of suspended temporal state to keep them warm. He swept a hand as he held her chair for her.

“Mojitos and burritos, ready to eat-os.”

“Rehearsed, I take it?” she teased.

“Maybe…”

Her lunch was, as usual, fresh-from-the-kitchens warm. If anyone noticed the lack of smell during its brief interlude of chronological sequestration, they deigned not to make a fuss investigating.

The picante flavoring paired well with their bright, fresh drinks. He was getting better about food and liquor pairings, though his choice of burrito as the basis of a meal still hinted at his takeout spacer upbringing.

Public music resumed. While the piano had enough body to fill the saloon on its own, all other instruments and recordings blared over scientific horns around the ceiling’s periphery. The din and racket wedged itself into every space between tables and even between words of a conversation.

Charlotte glanced upward between bites. “And you were subjected to this regularly throughout your youth?”

“Almost nonstop,” Eric confirmed, less shy about combining the tasks of speaking and chewing.

“How is it that you turned out so…?”

“Normal?” Eric suggested with appropriate skepticism.

“Hardly that. I daresay neither of us would be the least interesting to the other were that appellation applicable. No, I think I was going to suggest… broad of mind?”

Eric shrugged as he ate. “I guess I just never accepted the premise that everything around me defined me. Uncle Enzio taught me that.”

Charlotte stared down at her plate. It wasn’t that the burrito was amiss. Her appetite simply waned. “I wish someone had told me that… really at any point in my life.”

“I did. Just now.”

“I know. I think meeting you was the first of a lot of me being who I am now.”

* * *

Around the sizable Briefing Room table, only two seats held officers of the starship Arete. At the head of the table, Captain Jessica Ramsey sat in full uniform, wearing facial cosmo and nail gloss in accordance with Earth Navy regulations, even if those rules no longer applied to her. She’d even had Harmony pierce her ears so she could put on a pair of plundered earrings that struck a balance between femininity and military professionalism.

While it wasn’t her first choice, having the Chief Technology Officer of a megacorp stoop to a Clara’s Accessories associate was better than doing it herself, botching the job, and needing her help fixing the resulting mess.

The whole look was an effort to portray herself as more than a spec-ops lieutenant who’d failed upward into command of the haathee ambassadorial vessel. All her cultural signaling was lost, however, on the meeting’s only other participant. Grosstet was her guinea pig for whether she could take herself seriously looking like this.

From his seat at the far end of the table, conversation would have been annoying if not for the twin facts of the haathee’s excellent hearing and his bellowing voice.

“THIS AREA APPEARS MUCH TOO SMALL.”

“Well, it’s what we agreed to,” Jessie countered.

The object of contention, at present, was the mapped region showing where they could travel while still being within their agreed-upon distance from Appalachia Colony to respond to military emergencies.

“PERHAPS WE COULD PREVAIL UPON YOUNG HADRIAN TO IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR ASTRAL TRAVEL DEVICE.”

“No. He’s going back to school. He’s a wizard, and he’s got a future ahead of him.”

“EVERYONE’S FUTURE IS AHEAD.”

“He’s got a good one lined up.”

“WHAT COULD BE BETTER THAN ADVENTURING ABOARD THE ARETE?” Grosstet parted his mouth in a grin.

A chime rang at the door. “Enter.”

In whooshed a small hover piloted by a ratatoret from the kitchen staff. The pilot—Numanak by the name plate on his uniform—swung around and offloaded two salads. Grosstet’s was ten times the size of hers, and she suspected it wasn’t going to be a filling dinner for either of them.

Yet another attempt at looking the part, Jessie planned a thorough inspection that night. Not getting salad dressing in her hair or on her uniform were priorities. The Caesar dressing would show up clearly. There was only so much braiding her hair could take until it was longer, and there was only so much vinaigrette she could stand. There would be times she’d have to eat at governors’ mansions and in front of visiting dignitaries aboard the Arete.

As she crunched leafy greens, Jessie shook a fork at the map with her next bite skewered on the end. “Look, for now, we’re operating between cracks in a brick wall. Earth and Mars are squabbling over planets. The League of Independent Planets may or may not tolerate us, but if we mostly stay out of trouble, they shouldn’t make too much of a fuss.”

Jessie understood the frustration. With their max travel distance mapped out, much of the territory available to them was warded off in red for political reasons. Mars and Earth to one side; the Eyndar Empire to the other. They were left with a barbell-shaped mess that nonetheless still contained hundreds of star systems. But percentage-wise, it was a lot less than they could reach. Looking beyond to what was too far to reach Appalachia Colony in time, and they were considering a pretty big restriction on movement.

“I LIKED THIS DEAL BETTER WHEN IT HAD NO MAP.”

“It always had a map. You just wanted to tell war stories and learn to play bridge.”

“MY PEOPLE HAVE A SIMILAR GAME, BUT IT IS FOR CHILDREN. I HAVE NOT PLAYED SINCE MY OWN WERE YOUNG.”

“Well, you had the chance if you were paying enough attention. The job now is figuring where we want to go next.”

“WHERE ARE THE BEST PIRATES?”

Jessie laughed aloud. “The best ones are where you least expect them. If anyone knew where they’d find pirates, the shipping companies would steer clear and the galactic navies would crush them.”

“WE ARE MORE CLEVER. WE SHOULD FIND THE BEST AND BEST THEM.” He opened his mouth again and left it that way for a beat.

“You’re trying to be funny. I get it. Yes, you’re better with English than half our native-speaking crew. I get that, too. But it’s not helping us set an itinerary.”

The toneless, shapeless, listless billowing of air that deflated the haathee was among his least common noises. “YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO DRAIN THE RESERVOIR OF MERRIMENT.”

“Tell me something: was it fun getting taken by militants on Appalachia and having to fight our way to that jamming station?”

Grosstet looked away.

“Was it fun getting shot at? Getting grenades thrown at us?”

The haathee laced his fingers together and clamped the paired hands around the end of his trunk.

“Did we have a fun little adventure in that—apparently terraforming—bunker?”

“YES?” Grosstet replied tentatively. “I HAD SENSED THAT YOU ALSO⁠—”

“Of course, I had fun too!” Jessie shouted back at him. “I was trained to infiltrate, assess, assault, kill. Someone points me at enemies and steps aside; I figure out the how. I just need a who and a where, and the why never really got mentioned. Above my pay grade. But now? Now I’m Miss Why-Where-Who-How-When, and you’re not helping.”

Chastened, Grosstet leaned forward and extended his trunk into the holo field. “HOW ABOUT THERE?”

“OK…” Jessie relaxed and adjusted the holo-projector. “Looks… Well, there are planets. Any particular reason?”

“I HAVE NOT BEEN THERE. IT IS WITHIN REACH OF OUR SHORT CHAIN. IF PIRATES COULD BE ANYWHERE, THEY COULD BE THERE.”

“Well, I guess that’s as good a reason as any. It’s in League space, so… fine by me, I guess. I’ll contact the bridge and let them know we’re heading for… buncha numbers.”

It was never a great sign when a system didn’t have a common name. But Grosstet’s flippant decision did point out one obvious perk: pirates could be anywhere, and the last place anyone would look was perhaps the best place to start looking.

* * *

Once upon a lifetime ago, Charles Ludwig Archibald von Habsburg-Lorraine had been a small man pretending to be larger ones. He’d been a prince of Denmark and King of Scotland. He’d eulogized Caesar and split the great families of Verona. His presence commanded ovations from crowds and melted the inhibitions of men and women alike.

Beyond the accolades, out of costume, on the streets in daylight, he’d been an anachronism. Unschooled in popular media. Oblivious to politics—a monarchist in an age of democracy—he’d never once voted. Long orphaned and childless, when his theater closed, he turned to confidence games for money.

When confidence games went sour, he found that a blaster could clean up witnesses and victims alike.

When law enforcement circled in, he took to the stars.

When pirates boarded his transport, they discovered a peculiar brand of misfit they could appreciate. Instead of killing or even enslaving him, they gave him a job.

Even that had been decades ago by this point. He barely remembered the Entenburg Theater or his final run of the Scottish play. But he could still recite every line. The Poet Fleet had encouraged the production and flew in the face of tradition by insisting the play’s name be spoken aloud. But here on the Batchem, in his little haven among the stars, Charles would not dare. He still feared the superstition, even if superstition feared Admiral Chisholm.

Thus, despite his years away at this point, he found himself still tethered by a leash longer than gravity.

It was with admixed respect and gratitude (the latter a result of his great lack of proximity) that he accepted the admiral’s comm.

She appeared on his flatpic display, ravishing as ever. Alabaster complexion. Silver hair coiffed just so. Eyes like twin storms. “I have need of you, Eleven.”

“Oh, don’t reduce me to that dreary number, Admiral. Please. I’m at your disposal for purposes personal or professional. For liaisons lewd, lascivious, and laughably legal. For deeds dastardly, devious, or downright devilish. Just kindly do me the courtesy of a name.”

“Very well, Charles,” the admiral replied with that faintest hint of a smirk that spoke of supreme amusement. Oh, the cities he would burn to hear that voice exult in ecstasy once more! “I’ve a task for you. My wayward poppet is venturing your way.”

“My way? I can be anywhere you like, Admiral, but ‘my way’ is currently⁠—”

“The Mtengo System. Yes. I’m aware of its obscurity and seclusion. I’m also aware that the Arete will go to some lengths to answer distress beacons. I will trust to your creativity and resourcefulness to attract a rescue effort on your own behalf.”

“To what end?”

“Employ your rough associates. Sneak them aboard. Take control of the vessel. Deliver both it and her to me.”

“Would it not be simpler to sneak myself aboard and invite them later? After all, I can be quite persuasive. I’d quite like to meet your… poppet.” He didn’t know why the admiral was being cagey about mentioning Charlotte by name or referring to their familial relationship, but he’d be damned if he was going to be the first to broach that subject.

“The fact that you’ve not is a prerequisite for this assignment. And I’ve had quite enough of doeskin gloves and goose feathers with this poppycock. She is to be returned to me, moderately unharmed and in short order. Is that understood?”

“That much, yes. But I must ask…” Well, he had half a hundred star systems to choose from should the need to hide arise, but the question had dogged him for years, only ever going dormant, never silent. “Are you choosing me for this assignment because⁠—?”

“She is no genetic relation to you. That much is certain. The timing of your departure from direct service was coincidental. You are neither so valuable nor essential that you could not be replaced on this task by someone who inquires less rudely into my affairs. Your connections may give you a unique opportunity, however, to buy a decisive end to this little rebellious phase. I expect that you will make all necessary arrangements. Compensation, should you succeed, will be lavish.”

Charles cracked a smile. He’d faked better ones. “Just what I wanted to hear, Admiral. I will not fail you.”

The comm ended on a scowling face that would haunt his dreams for months. Closing his eyes, he could feel her beneath his hands, smell the perfume she once wore—with nothing else to hide her. His experience was far from unique. This he understood all too well. But the way she commanded hearts as well as bodies, the admiral’s gift was making it feel, for a brief interlude, as if she’d been his and his alone.

After a moment to savor the nostalgia, Charles unlocked the secondary computer system of the Batchem, and composed a comm.

You lads looking for work? I’ve got a job, and I think you’re going to want in.

* * *

Sparks flew. Metal ground. Skandiddy of Larga wailed away on the sound system with saxophone and drums as a playlist of quadrijazz soloists educated Trebla on his roots.

Jomek had turned out to be a lot blastier than his age and occupation would have hinted. Trebla expected him to be a gruff, snarky old spacer like his dad. But instead of attempting to compensate with slick guitar riffs, Jomek had curated musical tastes that hit right in the palms of his lower hands.

“Alignment check,” Trebla announced.

The pair shut down their respective tools and took the workshop off protective power lockout. Goggles down, Trebla activated the microcircuitry etcher. A slab of silica on the bed served as a target for the etcher’s laser as it ran through a test sequence.

Jomek monitored the laser’s progress from too close and without any safety gear. The guy was likely going to need new lungs with how much silica, tinter, epoxy resin, and various plastic byproducts he huffed in passing. Then again, they had access to some primo galactic-grade medicine at the moment.

Soon, H-tech fixes could be back on the medical menu.

Whatever the final analysis concluded, Harmony was going to need them to produce robotic components on a sub-cellular scale. The micro-etcher wasn’t even planned to make those components; it was an intermediary step they needed to build the equipment small enough and delicate enough to, in turn, fabricate ones even smaller.

In the relative silence of the laser’s hiss and sizzle, Skandiddy blared.

Jomek, whose hearing loss was no mystery at all, bobbed along with the beat while Trebla grimaced. He’d been scolded on numerous occasions that hearing protection muddled the sound.

If he didn’t put in some earplugs, one of these days every other damn sound would be.

“Clear!”

Trebla shut off power. Jomek reached into the bed and removed the silica, blowing a couple times to cool it, though Trebla was certain that he’d have lost fingers trying to do that himself. “Much clarity; many overlap. Almost the right. Minor adjustments only.”

“Good, because with the degradation of the specimens Harmony scanned, we’re in for a long prototyping process to figure out a working version.”

“Soon. Not many left. Five tries. Ten terras. More, and you win.”

Trebla snickered. “Even taking the over, I’m not betting you.” This was a problem he could dodge all day. Jomek wanted to gamble on anything and everything. Trebla, having grown up around Dad and Uncle Carl, knew all the evasions to get out of participating.

Gambling was like using explosives to get onto the roof of a building. You were more likely to hurt yourself than get anywhere you wanted to be, and on the off chance you made it up to the roof, you’d just blow up the building trying to find the next highest roof to land on.

Trebla reviewed Harmony’s data and compared it to a fresh set of scans as he took custody of a now-cooler sliver of silica.

“Registration is good. Coaxial tunneling is off 4 percent. If this were commercial-grade work, I’d call this good enough.”

“Nope-nope. Two-er or fewer. That’s the rule of thumbs. And I think for H-tech, we say half or laugh.”

“Half a percent?” Trebla balked. “We’ll need an intermediary generation of production equipment to get that precise.”

Jomek didn’t move a muscle, just continued watching him.

“Fuck.”

“More work. Less fuck around. You have the same answer I make. Why the hurry, though? No one is dying now.”

“Don’t say that. Someone’s gonna die now because you jinxed it.”

Jomek shook his head. “Someday you read Gelaho of Stovi’s Treatise on Jinx Management. Explains everything.”

“I’ll get right on that,” Trebla lied.

“We have a job. Job don’t end when the work is done. More work right behind it. So, we do the job right, not fast. Gotcha-gotcha?”

Trebla sighed and slumped onto one of the little hammocks for relaxing around the workshop. “Yeah. I got ya. It just… it feels like we’re on the verge of a galaxy-shaping medical breakthrough and we’re the ones holding up the celebration.”

Jomek ambled over and placed a hand on Trebla’s shoulder. “You sound like you could use a puff-puff-pass-pass. Huh?”

“Actually… yeah. I think that might do the trick.” He’d held off on all but secondary imbibing of late. But what was he, a saint? He was a grown damn man, and he could decide for himself how to manage his shit.

Trebla slipped off the hammock and headed for the door.

“Where you going?” Jomek asked, not following.

“I was just…” Trebla pointed to the door. Figgy’s hookah bar was like a five-minute walk. Jomek knew damn well where to find it.

“Work now. Smoke after.” He shook his head as he powered up a plasma torch, muttering, “Lazy generation…”

* * *

Harmony’s office saw far less use than her laboratory. This was a place for recording logs, updating her findings, and generally organizing her thoughts. It was a place she could take a quick meal without contaminating patients or specimens.

It was also a place for meetings.

Her datagoggles had built-in bone-conduction headphones. A soothing swirl of pastels overlaid a track of harp music in an attempt to lower her stress levels. She took a sip of chamomile tea, then slid the mug away into a desk drawer when she heard the door alarm.

“Come in.” She tried to keep the steel in her voice, knowing that this wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.

Carl entered with a grin. “Hey, that was quick. You need more info or something?”

She had to tread carefully. “The ARGO Medical Exchange Database, or ARGO-MED, is not a centralized computer system tucked away on Earth, Mars, or any other planet. It is a network of interconnected, independent systems operating on a common guideline for data organization that has been operating in one form or another, under one name or another, since the founding of Mars.”

“Ooh, history lesson. Never a good sign.”

“If you know enough about your patient, you can target the search, and it generally comes back in a matter of minutes. For John, Jane, Jobek Does, the search can take quite some time. Discovering a DNA match for a criminal using an alias could theoretically take scanning every medical computer in the entire network, with the attendant lag in processing, transmission, and internal searches of each and every core containing personal medical data, and it could still fail in the face of targeted scrubbing of relevant systems.”

Carl leaned an elbow on the back of her guest chair rather than sit down. “You’re setting me up for disappointment or something? How long can these searches take? I’ll wait. How long? A week? A month?”

Blood pressure rising, Harmony resisted the urge to fling a certain datapad in his face and instead slid it firmly but nonviolently across the desk. “The search didn’t leave the ship. Of course, I had to do a little digging after. But I knew enough to quicken the search. Considerably.”

Scowling, Carl picked up the datapad to see for himself. She watched the flick of his eyes, across, back, across, back, scanning, reading, and by the furrow deepening in his brow, processing. “Huh…”

“IS THAT ALL YOU CAN SAY FOR YOURSELF? ‘HUH’?”

Carl shut the door and slipped into the chair. He tossed the datapad onto Harmony’s desk, out of the way. “Should I have gone with ‘well, I’ll be damned’?”

“HOW DO YOU HAVE A FIFTY-YEAR-OLD SON?”

“Usual way, I guess. Just had that birthday, too. Should I get him something?”

“Uncle Carl… what the hell have you been hiding all these years?”

He shrugged. The smug bastard just shrugged. “Look, I know your moms raised you in this sort of fairy-tale world⁠—”

“My mom was a prostitute.”

“Oh. You remember that, huh?”

“No, but unlike some parents, mine informed me of the general gist of their lives before I was born. How could you not tell anyone about this?”

Carl scratched the back of his neck. “Ya know, I probably ought to have you run me through that whole database. Never even knew it existed. Look, back before Amy… hell, back before Tanny, I… well, let’s just say I wasn’t exactly… careful about my love life.”

“You would have been, what, thirteen? Do you even remember the mother?”

A wistful smile came so naturally that she could hardly have believed it was an act… if this were anyone but Uncle Carl. “I plead the fifth.”

“The fifth what?”

He waved her off. “Old saying. Forget it. Look… do we have, like, doctor-patient confidentiality here?”

“No. The fallout of my illegal and unethical use of ARGO-MED to dredge up your sordid past is not covered by any confidentiality. I am not treating you presently. This is not a medical issue. If you want to talk to someone about it, I suppose you’re stuck with Charlotte. And bring your damned son along with you!”

“Charlotte’s sleeping with Eric. Their quarters might be a panda enclosure for all that’s probably going on in there, but the point is, he’s bound to hear about it if I talk to her.”

“HE SHOULD!”

“In due time. Sheesh. You know, you sound a lot like Esper. Just sayin’. Maybe dial the moralizing down a notch. We were kids. If anything, she was a year older than me. Jamie told me to check in on her if I didn’t want to be an asshole, and I did. Right after, and she told me—in the politest One Church terms—to keep my mouth shut and never mention our ‘mistake’ to anyone. And after that, she stopped taking my comms.”

Harmony watched him. An actor for whom “and all the world’s a stage” didn’t begin to cover his deceptions. “It’s an interesting story insomuch as it’s bland and mundane and so devoid of edges to pick at that I’m not sure I could tell whether you were lying even if you weren’t so notoriously good at it.”

“Would it help one way or another if I added a pirate hijacking? Because there’s a longer version of the story that had a pirate hijacking in it.”

She couldn’t. This was too much. Too big. Too… family holovid drama for her right now. “There are facts, and there are stories. Right now, all I have are some facts about a Benjamin Bradley Belotti, whom I cannot help overlooking shares one name with you, Bradley Carlin Ramsey. The rest lack corroboration by any trustworthy source. You have a child by a woman other than your wife, and by your reaction, she likely doesn’t know about him. You have three children, two of whom live aboard this very ship, who ought to be aware they have a half-sibling. In deference to Mr. Belotti—who I’m guessing committed no crime beyond what it took to meet his father under an assumed name—I will not reveal this information to anyone else at this time. But I will not be a party to this cover-up. Deal with your mess.”

Nodding, Carl stood up and backed toward the door. “Good talk. Just… uh… for the record… probably not going to be asking you to use that database again.”

* * *

“Raise, aim, squeeze,” Junior called out.

His charges, Mindy and Drascz, raised their blaster rifles and fired downrange. Their simple bullseye targets registered scores of 91 and 47, respectively.

“Again,” he ordered. “Raise, aim, squeeze.”

This pair of shots earned an 89 and a 50.

Drascz snarled in the back of her throat. “This is pointless. I’m not cut out for this work.”

Lisa, slouching against the side of the rack with the spare rifles, snickered. “Like fun you ain’t. Just ain’t trained.”

“My performance in the Arete Games… that’s all you’re going on. I work with my hands. I’m stronger than most of the crew. I still lost to⁠—”

“You lost to someone with legitimate military training and years of practice, and it was closer than you might think.”

“Jess ain’t for real,” Lisa said. “Mongeese give her the side-eye. You put in a li’l effort, you’ll be proper hard. Rowdies see this fine-boned bird, and they don’t think nothing of her.” She hooked a thumb at Mindy.

“Oi!”

“Nothing personal, missy, but you’re ferocious as a barista just lookin’ at ya.”

“The uniform and sidearm help,” Junior added.

Lisa nodded her agreement before continuing. “They sees you though…” She indicated Drascz. “Well, now, them tint-sniffers start reconsidering their livelihoods.”

“Well, I’m not reconsidering mine,” Drascz countered, taking her weapon by the barrel and shaking it for emphasis. “You look at me and you see a warrior or a hunter or a mercenary or something conjured by your imaginations. I look in the mirror and I see an Earthling who needs a few more weeks with a proper conditioner and badly wants for a spa and someone who knows how to use styling gel.”

Junior folded his arms. “I see a whiny outcast who’s got more to offer than patching bulkheads and welding frames.”

“I’ll be sure to let Jomek know how much you appreciate his department.”

“You’re still holding the rifle.”

With a snarl, Drascz jammed the weapon back into its rack.

“So, you’re saying you’re done here?” Junior asked. “Jomek assigned you to me for the day.”

“I’m done,” she confirmed.

He hooked a thumb at the azrin but spoke to Mindy. “That’s insubordination. Take her into custody. A couple weeks in the brig ought to⁠—”

“WEEKS?” Drascz exclaimed. She retreated a step, ears back.

Junior scratched his chin. “Overnight, you’d probably do it just to spite me. You need time to think. Go on, take her in.”

“Me?” Mindy scoffed.

“She’s a sculptor and an engineering grunt,” Junior pointed out. “You’re a lieutenant in security.”

“How’s about you bump me back to ensign and we call it square?”

“Not helping, luv,” Lisa commented.

Pupils wide, center of mass low, Drascz crept toward the blasters. “I’ll shoot targets, if you want. But you’re not making me into an azrin.”

“Why aren’t you in mag cuffs yet?” Junior mused aloud.

Drascz spared a glance over at Mindy. “She is a friend.”

“There’s that. But she’s a soldier. She takes orders. Mindy, tell me, why haven’t you just stunned, cuffed, and dragged this one down to the brig?”

“One shot don’t always do the trick. She’d have my throat in her belly before I got off another.”

“I don’t EAT meat! And I don’t kill people!”

“You seein’ you right now?” Mindy asked.

Junior, anticipating this very question, held out his datapad, screen blank. The glossy black surface shone as a reflection.

The azrin flinched. Because whether she was a kiddie art teacher, a welder, or a reluctant recruit to the security department, there was no mistaking the fighter showing through.

Her claws were out.

As soon as she realized, Drascz retracted them. “I… I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…”

“Dismissed,” Junior told her. “No charges. Go. Take some time to think. Tomorrow morning, either show up for training or crawl back to Jomek to do stuff he’s got thirty-something ratatoret he can rope in to help with. Your call. But I think we need trustworthy security officers more than another pair of hands in engineering support.”

Without coming within arm’s reach of the Arete’s whole security staff, Drascz slunk away and disappeared into the vastness of the haathee vessel.

* * *

As a child, Drascz had never been encouraged to work out. Exercise was meant to burn off excess exuberance, aggression, energy in general. Coordination came naturally with outdoor play. Short of feeding her to the point of impacting her health, there was little her adoptive parents could do to stop her becoming athletic. But they’d never intentionally tried to get her into fighting shape, either.

Her workouts had involved a hammer, chisel, and a moderately sized rock.

But as she strained under the mass of steel plates as she lifted them again and again, she felt a cathartic burn in her muscles. Before trying them for herself, she’d never appreciated what Jessie saw in these machines. Simplistic gravity and elastic resistance versus living muscle. There were more advanced devices that could simulate weight without dangerous amounts of mass, but the captain had opted for most historical and authentic—and easier to acquire—slabs of metal.

She’d fought the demon inside her all her life. At least, as far back as she could remember.

Now, after all the work she’d put into becoming a person instead of a brute, Jaxon Schultz Jr. thought he could take that away from her. No, he thought that she’d willingly throw away all that effort. All those lessons she’d sat through. All the punishments she’d endured when acting out. All the stigmas she’d fought to overcome.

All to prove she wasn’t azrin.

The gym doors slid open. Rather than sit up, Drascz took a good sniff and kept up her repetitions. It was just Lorenzo. In a refreshing change, he stank of no one else’s fluids for once. Drascz had often wondered how the humans’ showering habits might change if she just went around the mess hall one morning identifying who each of them had slept with the prior night.

“Oh, hey! New in town? If you need anything, just holler.”

Drascz finished counting in her head.

98…

99…

100…

That seemed good enough. She sat up and set a pair of 50 kg free weights on the floor beside the bench. “The equipment is simplistic enough.”

Lorenzo strolled over, clad in shorts and a tank top, all Arete Blue. He glanced down at her free dumbbells. “Pretty sure those are decorative. Meant to complete a set.”

“Not sure if I like this or not. The human weight range isn’t optimal.”

Lorenzo snickered as he headed to an adjacent bench and began transferring weight plates to a longer bar. “Hey, if you can’t find enough challenge here, try Grosstet’s gym.”

Despite her foul mood, Drascz couldn’t help also snickering. “A scrapyard could use his device for pectoral compressions to crush hovers.”

“Spot me?” he asked.

With a mere 35 kg of plates on either side of the bar, she couldn’t imagine he was in any danger. “Sure.”

The human helmsman didn’t stay long. He did a few sets of eight or ten repetitions of various middling weights. Drascz mimicked his routine, adding fifty to a hundred percent more weight to her workout.

“Catch you around,” he bid her when it became clear that she was remaining after he finished. The doors shut behind him.

Drascz hungered. Her starving muscles wanted protein. Instead, she drank from the gym’s water spigot and kept working.

Muscles burned all through her arms and back.

She ran on a treadmill until her legs might fall off.

Exiting the gym, she stumbled through the mess hall, devouring a three-bean chili that would haunt her digestion in the coming hours.

Without so much as changing from her workout clothes, she collapsed into the reclining chair in Counselor Webber’s office for her scheduled appointment.

“It appears we’ve had something of a day,” the counselor commented. Charlotte was demure, cultured, refined, controlled, everything her parents had wanted from Drascz. Except they’d never called her that.

She was their Daphne, and Drascz could feel Daphne slipping from her grasp.

“I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“I see.”

Drascz sat up. “Do you? What do you see?”

“I see you,” Wizard Charlotte countered, evading the question as she always did. “I see you as you present yourself. That’s all anyone ever sees, you know. Science cannot peer into the mind. And I lack any magic to take a look for you. Knowing oneself is a rare and fleeting gift.”

“I used to know.”

“I’m happy for you, but you’ve got to keep up.”

“Huh?”

“You see, we are not the statues you sculpt. We are not frozen in time and place. We living creatures change by our very nature. Some days, the change is so minor you’d never notice. Others can shatter whole lives. Generally, I talk to the you that’s here right now with me. But our recent selves—mine and yours—contribute to our conversations more than you may think.”

“I’m human,” Drascz insisted. “I was born azrin, and every bit of azrin that could be wrung out of me has been. All that’s left is an Earth girl from Toronto Prime.”

Charlotte laced her fingers. “If that’s the case, shall we arrange for a grammar school? Xrista is quite advanced for her age. We might compromise on a second- or perhaps third-grade curriculum.”

“Not funny.”

“If you’re human, you’re not an adult. You raced through an education that takes a human child twelve years to complete.”

“I’ve felt dumb for years.”

“I can only imagine. That sopping sponge of meat between your ears was so, so absorbent not especially long ago. But no human could relate. Our ability to learn wanes more slowly.”

“I’m becoming an azrin brute hanging around this ship. The danger. The fear. The officers who see me as wasting my potential.”

“Are you?”

“What? Am I a muscle-and-claw ruffian who peaked at age six?” Six didn’t feel like so long ago, but a quarter of her life had passed by in the meantime.

“Are you wasting your potential?”

“I’m not sure I want to live up to my potential.”

“Ah.”

“Ah? What’s ‘ah’ supposed to mean?”

“Well, you answered a question with more honesty and self-reflection than usual. You acknowledge that you could become a physical force, an assertive, authoritative presence aboard the Arete that made everyone safer… but you would rather not be that.”

“That’s not what I said?”

“Of course. You were more succinct.”

“You think I should become a security officer. Work for Jax Jr. Throw people in brigs and go over to pirate vessels and round up villains. Is that it?”

“If you weren’t conflicted, I daresay you wouldn’t keep coming back to me for advice.”

Drascz gulped. “You’re… you’re a good role model.”

“You wish my honest advice, then?”

“YES!” Someone to sort this all out was a Shangri-la that she hadn’t expected to find. Therapy was all about open-ended questions and passive-aggressive scolding, in her experience.

“Your parents have shaped you to be the person they hoped you would become. It is a vision of you that is clearly not without its flaws; otherwise you’d simply live that life. Thus, I advise this: try new things. You’re so afraid of becoming azrin when all anyone is asking is that you avail yourself of your natural gifts. If you don’t like security work once you’ve had a proper taste of it, ask for a transfer back.”

“I suppose I could try it…”

“And on the subject of tastes, we’ve got the nutrient spewer in the saloon now. Try meat. You’ve gone on about how your parents kept it from you. The stuff the machine emits is not actually meat, but I can vouch that it tastes like it. And it’s completely ethical, if that’s your concern.”

“They said if I ever ate meat, I’d turn back into a mindless azrin.”

“Yes. I suspect they told you a great many untruths to keep you from squirming as they fitted you into their mold.”

Those words stuck. They haunted Drascz from the end of her appointment right up until dinnertime, when she headed to the Soundcheck Saloon.

* * *

It wasn’t often these days that Jessie got to take time for herself. Always on. Always in demand. Her time wasn’t her own. Even in leisure, she felt the need to at least be tangentially productive.

Book. Beer. Bubble bath. Jax had been given the bridge for a shift, allowing Jessie some rest that didn’t involve being asleep.

Calling it “command training” and issuing a Do Not Disturb order, she’d bought herself a few hours to decompress.

She couldn’t remember who’d said it to her. Some officer on some assignment a couple years before her time jump. But it had stuck in the back of her mind: “A captain ought to know the classics.” At the time, she’d thought the guy was full of shit, basically making fun of officers who pretended to be cultured aristocrats rather than middle managers for war zones.

But the longer she filled the role, the more it felt like she was expected to know everything, to be everything to everyone. She was the final word on every decision from engineering to logistics to personnel. The crew all expected her to be their mother, basically.

What she needed to be was their boss.

She’d tried reading Homer, but that was just a little too classic for her taste. Yes. She got it. There were a lot of boats and a lot of kings and heroes sailing distances that, to her, felt pretty fucking short to be bragging about. Wow, Greece to Türkiye, your little sails must have gotten so tired.

Shakespeare was all stories she knew, told in the most garbled obsolete English possible.

Sun Tzu, they’d covered in officer training. At least conceptually. She hadn’t expected it to be as short as it turned out.

The Prince had been a little dark for her intended command style. She felt retroactively justified in declining to read Uncle Enzio’s paper copy.

But this Dale Carnegie guy had some shit to say. She wasn’t on the lookout for friends, but influencing people… that was a priority.

Her datapad was waterproof and, as it turned out, bubblesproof. She lazed and soaked and learned how shitty a job she’d been doing since very fucking little of this book sounded like anything she did naturally.

A door chime shattered her reverie.

Not budging from her hot tub, Jessie called out, “If it’s on fire, contact Lt. Cmdr. Jomek. If it’s firing on us, speak to the duty officer on the bridge.”

“I can wait the five or ten minutes until you’re done,” an all-too-familiar voice shouted back through the door. Everything from the intonation to the muffled barrier of a door between them brought back memories of locking herself in the Mobius washroom, getting caught taking a suspiciously long time brushing her teeth.

“I’m off duty, Dad. Can this wait?”

“Depends. Did you want to say goodbye at all?”

Goodbye? Shit! “Is it that time already?”

“Yup. Just gotta round up some passengers and it’s time to ride.”

“HOLD ON!” Scrambling, Jessie dropped her datapad into the water and slipped on the slick edge of the hot tub as she climbed out. She gritted her teeth as she absorbed a worse blow to her right knee than she’d gotten during the whole escape from the Appalachian dissidents. She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her, then slicked back her hair, squeezing as much water out as she could in one pass.

Bare feet slapping on the floor of her quarters, Jessie resolved that her father wasn’t worth putting in more effort than this to present herself.

“Hi, kiddo,” Carl greeted her when she opened the door. “Nice to see you haven’t put on airs.”

“I’m trying,” she told him as she took a quick peek to see whether anyone else was lurking outside, then closed the door behind him. “There’s a datapad with How to Win Friends and Influence People at the bottom of that tub.”

“It’s not a bath salt. You actually have to read a book.”

She ignored his usual idiocy. It was a distraction, a diversion. If she read enough books—maybe even more of her current one—she might understand half of what he did to wrap people around his finger. “You sure you want to take him back to Earth yourself?”

“Look, it’s not as dangerous as you think. Anyone can use that transit pass you wrangled out of the Convocation Liaison’s Office. But I know how to keep those sneaky weasels from pulling the welcome mat out from under us. And frankly, on the way out, I think Earth Navy and Earth Interstellar would be happy to just look away and let me go, pass or no pass.”

“How many warrants do you have?”

“None,” Carl protested with a thick coating of feigned indignity. “I’m an upstanding citizen.”

“Living in exile on New Garrelon.”

“About that,” Carl cut in right back at her. There was just no breaking his narrative flow. It was as if he’d rehearsed a hundred versions of this conversation and had a pithy segue for every eventuality. Except he couldn’t possibly plan out every conversation of his entire life. “I’ll be swinging by to see your mom after. Anything you want delivered, up to and including apologies for not coming in person.”

“Don’t risk life and limb on my behalf,” Jessie replied dryly. “I didn’t really think to collect knickknacks for her.” She gave her quarters a quick scan. “Anything you think she might like?”

“Comm. Her. Mom’s not rocket science. She just wants to hear from you once in a while. Hell, I’m going to get chewed right the fuck out for not getting you on screen with her more often.”

“Fine. I’ll… I’ll try.” Mom was among the least demanding parents a woman could ask for. But all the same, talking to her drained Jessie of all adulthood. How was she sleeping? Was she eating right? How was her love life? Mom never asked how many operational objectives she’d achieved, how her firing range scores were lately, or how she was acclimating to commanding a crew of fifty.

“Awesome, I’m sure she’s going to love the answer I deliver instead.”

“How soon until you depart?”

“Not sure. Mr. Oxford Senior isn’t too keen on chronos. He’s supposedly ‘putting my affairs in order.’”

Jessie smirked. “That’s not a bad impression.”

“Thanks. He sounds like his grandpa, so I’ve got practice.”

“Did you know his father well?”

“Nah. In passing. Guy moped around the ship a while, boned Esper, then he just⁠—”

“WAIT, WHAT?”

Jessie had known Aunt Esper most of her life. But for as far back as she could recall, she’d been married to Karen. The idea of her being with a man, let alone… well, a Hadrian, left Jessie flabbergasted.

“Focus here. Me. Leaving. Goodbye. Etc.”

“But…”

“Listen, you want the dirt, hit up Harmony. Those moms of her spilled everything, far as she tells it. You’ll get the other side of the story, but all my side knows is that we didn’t put a spare bunk in Esper’s quarters when he was staying with us, and she was a decrypted data file back then. In the meantime, I probably won’t see you again before I head out unless you plan on camping down in the hangar to see us off.”

“You coming back?” A lump had formed in the back of Jessie’s throat. She’d hated him for coming here and been almost constantly annoyed by his presence on her ship ever since. Yet at the same time, having him around was more comforting and less detrimental to morale than she’d expected.

“Remains to be seen. A lot’s going to depend on the debriefing.”

“Understood.” Mom was big on debriefings. After field trips and school dances while they were colony-hopping. After hanging out all day with friends. After dates. After doctor’s appointments when she was old enough that the nurses didn’t invite Mom into the exam room anymore.

After a secret mission to spy on her kids aboard a haathee exploratory vessel certainly seemed like a good time for one.

She hugged him, sopping wet, lightly soap-slick, and with a mop of soggy hair in his face. Dad didn’t so much as hesitate to hug back.

* * *

Good kid. She was going to go places. In a big ship. That she captained.

A starship captain. A wizard. A lawyer, one of these days in the near future. Carl Ramsey had won at parenting.

OK, fine. It was a joint victory. Amy had some input in how the kids turned out. But Carl numbered himself among a minority who thought Eric was doing OK.

Speaking of whom…

Carl caught himself reaching for the door chime, then knocked instead.

“Coming!” a cheery voice called from inside. The door slid open seconds later. “Hi, Dad!”

This time around, the hug came at the start of the visit. “Hey, sport.”

“You already said goodbye to Jessie, didn’t you? I can tell because you smell like bubble bath and she was bubble bathing today according to everyone who told me not to bother her.”

Carl peered past him. “Charlotte around?”

“Nope. She has a real job and the people on this ship… Are. A. Mess. Not that she tells me everything you all say to her in those confidential sessions, mind you. We’re not married, so there’s no marital privilege involved.”

“Just remember to make it official before you commit any major crimes together,” he advised. “Otherwise⁠—”

“Otherwise the district attorney will try to argue that the privilege doesn’t cover the acts. I know. I know. But we don’t have any plans for marriage or major crime sprees. Unless you consider our entire participation aboard the Arete to be a criminal act, which Trebla says a lot of people on the omni are saying but which fails in the face of the diplomatic argument. Given the fact that Grosstet is a mensch, I can’t see him hanging us out to dry by denying us diplomatic immunity on behalf of the Haathee Federation.”

“I really just stopped by to let you know I was taking Hadrian back to school.”

“Did you need me to give him a little pep talk?”

“Sort of a ‘here’s what I would have done if I’d gotten as far into my studies as you’?”

Eric scowled. “Well, when you put it that way…”

“I’ll tell him to lay off the chronomancy. Otherwise, I think you’re bad for his self-esteem.”

“As a The Brown, you’d think he’d be oozing with self-confidence.”

“Anyhoo, not sure how long I’ll be gone, so I figured I’d check to see if you wanted to send anything home.”

Eric’s whole face lit. “You’re going to see Mom?”

“Assuming she’s still speaking to me after leaving the Arete without bringing either of you with me. You’re… uh…”

“Staying here, thanks,” Eric replied. “But there is something you can give her for me.”

“Sure, anything. As long as it fits in the—” Eric interrupted him with a crushing hug. After a moment to realize that this was what he’d intended to ship to New Garrelon, Carl hugged back. “Right. I’ll make sure it gets there, no questions asked.”

Duties to his children discharged, he checked in with Trebla in case the guy wanted anything sent back to Fuzzball and Mrs. Fuzzball, but he was all good, too.

That left Carl at the door of a wizard who’d always struck him as eerily familiar.

“Enter,” came the reply to his knock.

“You ready to—?” Carl stopped himself when he saw the disarray. Clothes lay strewn all about in a scene out of a disaster holo, the kind where a tornado or hurricane blows through, then everyone comes out of their shelters to survey the aftermath while violins play the soundtrack. “Guess not.”

“I’ve reconsidered my departure.”

Carl stepped around a shoe with no mate, rumpled robes, paper books bound shut with leather straps, and a scattering of toiletries that everyone aboard the Arete had been issued after Appalachia Colony. “Did the… uh… evil spirit make that one of its conditions to going back to its own dimension?”

“There was no battle fought here. At least none against any external foe.”

Carl nodded in understanding. “Gotcha. If this is one of those Brain Hotel situations, I hear there’s an easy fix. Don’t remember exactly what, but⁠—”

“Carl, just stop. Your interference, while undoubtedly well intentioned, is demeaning. You’re not a wizard, and this is a decidedly magical problem.”

With a thumb, Carl pointed toward the door. “Right. And the place we’re headed is chock-full of magical experts specifically charged with teaching you. What am I missing here?”

“The point,” Hadrian replied acidly. “My humiliation at the hands of Dr. Harmony Richelieu has sapped me of much of my power.”

“A lotta guys get that.”

“I mean literally. I am capable of less today than I was a week prior. Markedly so. Should I return now… I don’t know. I’d risk considerable social standing and academic progress. Possibly ruin my prospects post-graduation. I need to regain what I’ve lost.”

“And… this somehow helped?” Carl spread his hands toward the mess on the floor.

Hadrian bristled. “I don’t need to justify myself to you.”

“Fine. But if you change your mind, I don’t know when—or if—I’ll be back. This might end up being a one-time offer.”

“Should I reconsider my sabbatical, I’ll see to my own transit.”

Carl shrugged. Arguing with wizards was a workout, and without a clear reason to want this win, he let the kid run his own life. Twenty… twenty-one… however old he was, Hadrian was legally allowed to fuck up his own life however he liked. Carl was just the guy who begged a favor and was looking to tie up the dangling end before anyone tripped on it.

Parting company from an angry wizard always came as a relief, even to someone who’d built much of his life around that constant presence. But there was a line between a guy who thought holovid remotes were a personal affront to be railed against at every opportunity and one in the midst of some kind of existential crisis.

With that thought, he paused at the door. “Maybe have a chat with the resident brain guru. I heard she used to be a wizard.”

After that, it was onward. The lack of one stop on his voyage wasn’t cause to dally. Any delays would be calculated, analyzed, and called to account. Carl had done his fair share of nav calcs, but Amy understood that shit. He’d always been an input/output, let the computers handle the rest kind of pilot. But Amy would recalculate his flight plan and figure out when he ought to be home.

Considering the nature of this visit, he needed a rocky start to this homecoming like he needed a snoring haathee roommate.

His lift trip deposited Carl in the hangar. Other than parked in a pilot’s seat, there was no place on a ship he felt more at home. There was just a difference between a hangar and a landing yard, even though, at the core, they were the same damn thing. But whereas a landing yard was a patch of planet that someone had roped off and started charging money to use, a hangar felt somehow grander.

Past a certain age, a sensible man didn’t much care what his ship looked like. Engines. Life Support. Nav computers. The rest was luxury and convenience. The Whitechapel was light on those last two, but damn did it look smooth. While he was getting special dispensations and all, it only felt right to get the Convocation to issue carte blanche for a heavily armed beetle of a starship.

Officers aboard an embassy ship, Jax Jr. and Lisa didn’t need this thing most of the time. Plus, Rachel and Jax Sr. would give their kids hell if they found out they’d let the old, decrepit Uncle Carl fly home to Aunt Amy in some cast-off pirate junker.

At least, that was the hint Carl had dropped in convincing them to let him borrow it.

And it’s not like he was rusty or anything. Past a certain sublime point, a pilot’s skills didn’t degrade with age or time. Like the tip-kie-mahl masters, he only grew wiser and more powerful with age. From his deathbed, he’d still be able to win a dogfight.

The boarding ramp was already down and waiting for him. A few of the ratatoret freight movers wished him farewell. Carl greeted them in turn by name and assured them all that he’d be back before they missed him. Sadly, that was likely true whether he returned to the Arete or not.

He called the boarding ramp up behind him with the thump of a plunger. Threading his way through pre-stowed luggage, he made his way to the pilot’s seat.

“Ready to head out?” he asked.

From the copilot’s seat, Tommy Collins—a.k.a. Ben Belotti—gave a nod. “Where’s the kid wizard?”

“Cold feet. Just the two of us. You OK, Tommy?”

The guy took a long breath. “Yeah.”

Carl casually flicked through pre-flight checks he’d done fully asleep on more than one occasion.

“Mind one thing?”

Engines powered up. The airlock was open and waiting. Carl paused before lifting off. “What’s that?”

“Can you just call me Ben?”

Carl nodded as they took off. “Yeah. We’re going to have to get our stories straight on a bunch of shit. But don’t worry, I’ve got your back. And your half-brother Ozzy’s pretty languid. And your stepmom will get over it once she hears the deal.”

The Whitechapel slid out of the hangar and away from the Arete.

“Whitechapel, you are clear. Have a safe trip,” Mindy informed them from the bridge. She could sound like a normal human on comms.

“Thanks, Arete. Whitechapel out.” Carl huffed a sigh of relief and punched in their destination. A quick astral drop, and he let the nav computer figure out where they needed to point this baby. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah. Sorry for the alias. Didn’t know what to expect. Mom was my grandmother all these years and never said a thing.”

“Planning on tracking down your mother?”

“Not sure. She didn’t want me…”

“That was a lifetime ago,” Carl pointed out.

“She left home and didn’t look back…”

“So does everyone who fucked up childhood.”

Ben sighed. “Maybe. Are you sure we shouldn’t have told Jessica and Eric first?”

“Definitely not. Those two have enough on their minds right now. Gonna ease them—and you—into this with the easy ones first.”

Tommy stared out the side window into the blank slate of astral space. “Wonder if I could’ve been a wizard…”

“Hey, if Eric could pull it off, anyone can.”

* * *

Jessie watched on scanners until the Whitechapel dropped into astral space. Eerie how shallow they were when the Arete lost track of them. Definitely a weakness she wasn’t eager to advertise. The project to bring the ship’s scanners into line with what a warship needed in this day and age was on Trebla’s Big List of Miracles Jessie Expects Me To Pull out of My Ass, but it wasn’t near the top.

Trebla swore she was never supposed to see that list. But the BLoM-JEMtPooMA became Arete lore almost instantly.

For now, her father was just gone.

Maybe for a few weeks. Maybe until some family reunion years down the road—possibly Ozzy’s graduation from law school. Maybe forever.

The Black Ocean was more dangerous than it had any right to be. One day, it might finally catch up with Dad.

For now, she had a ship to run.

“Status?”

Lorenzo spoke up from the helm. “All systems online and operational.”

Hearing that was just never going to get old.

She referenced Grosstet’s dart-throw of a destination on the galactic map. “Lay in a course for system 100907.”

“Um… you mind repeating that, Captain?”

“Oi, yeah. Bit of a heads-up when you’s gonna be spoutin’ off a load of numbers,” Mindy confirmed from her tactical station.

Reminding herself that she wouldn’t have recalled a surprise string of numbers either, Jessie repeated herself. “System 1-0-0⁠—”

“1-0-0-9-0-7, it’s not that hard,” Drascz snapped. She’d been on edge all shift, but she’d seen Counselor Webber earlier, so it wasn’t like she wasn’t dealing with her crap. Then, apparently realizing that while Mindy had been out of line with her own commentary, hers had at least been in support of a fellow officer, not simple griping—and interrupting the captain. “My apologies, ma’am.”

“As you were.”

To one degree or another, everyone on this giant savanna terrarium had a mess in their closet. If Jessie had to sit a shift at comms with the Arete’s shitty spam filters, she’d probably get snippy, too.

Improved incoming comm filtering… another item for the BLoM-JEMtPooMA.

Somehow, with Carl gone, Jessie felt truly in command of the Arete again. There was nothing like a parent to undercut authority. And there was no feeling quite so belittling as your dad showing up to help run a starship for you.

All the little behind-her-back end runs would cease. Problems Carl had been intercepting would finally make it to Jessie’s ready room desk. It was time to get back to work.

“Incoming distress signal,” Drascz reported. “Pirate survivors. Voice comm available.”

“Put them on.” Jessie sat straight in her command chair, same as if she’d be on video comm. Leaning and slouching came across in the voice.

“Hello? Anyone out there? Who is this?”

“This is Jessica Ramsey, captain of the Haathee Federation vessel Arete.” She’d been working on how to identify both herself and the ship. This version still didn’t feel like she quite had it. “How can we be of assistance?”

“I’m Ken Palomino, captain of the much humbler Greenwich. I was robbed by pirates. My engines have been disabled, but aside from the damage and my lost cargo, I’m unharmed. Financially ruined, mind you, but unharmed. If you’d be so good as to offer a lift or a repair, I’d see what I can do about getting First Galactic Insurance to reimburse you on my behalf.”

That was a new angle. Jessie hadn’t considered hitting up insurance companies for their expenses. Plenty of those shipping companies and independent captains out there were likely getting payouts from incidents where she and her people had done the heavy lifting.

She shook aside the whole concept. The first inkling any media outlet got that this was a financial operation, hard-fought public sentiment would snap back against them.

“Not to worry, Captain Palomino⁠—”

“Please, Ken is fine. I’m a solo operator. I don’t put on airs.”

“Well, Ken, we’ll be there as soon as we can.”

“No need for haste. Don’t burn out any critical systems on my account. I’ve got full life support and two bottles of Black Barrel Rum to keep me company. My thanks in advance for the rescue, and apologies in advance should you find me in a depressive state of drunkenness when next we speak.”

Drascz gave a nod. “He’s off.”

“Change course. Locate his signal and intercept. 5 AU. And can we just verify the ship ID?”

“Already got it, ma’am,” Mindy reported. “Earth regs. Our chum Kenny’s listed as owner. Clean bill. No priors. Hobby job, by the look. Not a serious businessman.”

“A fool in the middle of nowhere,” Drascz grumbled.

“Is there a problem I need to know about?” Jessie inquired.

Drascz slumped in her seat. “No.” She hastily amended a “ma’am.”

It wasn’t until the end of the shift that Mindy took her captain aside for a whisper. “Don’t mind her being a bit off her sorts.”

Jessie ventured a guess. “Cyclical issue?”

“Them azrin don’t got that kind of bother. Naw, we just had us a bit of steak for a snack. First taste. Weren’t even McCoy. But my sister in Christ, I swear, you ain’t never seen nothing like it.”

“She liked it, I take it?”

“Full-blown carnivorous crisis. Like if you ain’t never had chocolate before.”

Jessie nodded. “I’m tasking you with making sure she doesn’t go feral on us.”

“Oi. Safer working with the ruddy mad engineers playing with H-tech.”

* * *

The door slid open. Hadrian found himself growing accustomed to just what it took to work these haathee doors, and it seemed as if that skill would continue its relevance for the foreseeable future. Beyond, a spacious chamber, partially furnished, pretended to be a consultation office.

“Have a seat. You indicated this was urgent. I trust that if it were not, you’d wait to find proper advice back at Oxford.” Wizard Charlotte—an honorary title at this point—sat with her ankles crossed in a high-backed chair, fingers laced atop her lap. She regarded him with piercing eyes as Hadrian crossed the threshold into her domain.

Of its own accord, the door shut behind him. He spared it a sudden glance but composed himself quickly so as not to appear spooked by haunted technology. “I’ve applied for a sabbatical. My transport has already departed without me.”

“Ah.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That’s not how this works,” Charlotte explained. “I’m here to analyze your problems, not hand you answers. Your own answers will provide you far greater insights; I’m just here to help you discover the right questions.”

Hadrian took a seat. The chair was… sufficient. He’d grown accustomed to worse aboard the Arete, but it failed to live up to the standards of… Something fit together in his mind. “I am this chair.”

“Indeed? I can already tell this will be a more insightful conversation than most. Enlighten me. How is this chair presently troubled?”

“I am a compromise. In coming here, I lowered my standards, debased my function. I am still a chair, but little was asked or expected of me. In time, I expected little of myself. To be sat upon. I needed no greater purpose. I did not support great thinkers or host fireside debates. I was a convenience; in a land of stools, I was a chair. Slouched upon. Eaten in. Left for the naps of pets. I can no longer be placed by the fireside and expect great thinkers to perch upon me; I am too stained.”

“You accepted a summer internship below your abilities,” Charlotte summarized prosaically. “With the simplest of stories from this place, you could drink for free at Cosmic Drake’s for the remainder of your time at Oxford.”

He scowled. “I forget that you attended.”

“Graduated.”

“Right. It’s Eric who was expelled. You merely gave up your power.”

“We’re not here to discuss either Wizard Eric or myself.”

“He’s not a wizard.”

Wizard Charlotte didn’t so much as flinch at the dig against her boyfriend. “Neither are you. Yet here we’ve established the honorific based on merit, not education. You’re Wizard Hadrian here. Perhaps you don’t like the idea of giving that up?”

“Please. There’s more honor in attending Oxford than being chief wizard of this wayward comet.”

“But you’re not.”

“I could be. Nepotism and eggs left out in the sun give off the same reek.”

Charlotte laughed, a tinkling, merry sound equally joyous and mocking. “So that’s it, then? You wish to commandeer a pond with only one other fish to oppose you rather than swim back to the big scary ocean of Earth?”

“NO!” Hadrian protested. “I… I can’t go back. Not the way I am.”

Wizard Charlotte tilted her head. “And what way are you?”

“That SCIENTIST broke me!” Hadrian sprang to his feet, fists clenched. He paced. Jaw set. Feet pounding. As Wizard Charlotte sat impassive, he railed. “They finally, finally acknowledged me as a descendant of Merlin himself. A proper Brown. I can recite a genealogy that stretches millennia. My father fought the vaieen incursion. My great-grandfather headed the Order of Gaia. My great-great-grandfather was both Guardian of the Plundered Tomes and head of the Grand Council.

“And here I am, unable to defend myself against a tinkerer of bodies. A reluctant physician only here to plunder the secrets of haathee science.”

“You had made quite a spectacle of yourself. Do you regret that?”

“I ought to have won. I ought to have frozen her in her tracks, toppled her with the push of a finger. Claimed victory with no harm but to her pride.”

“‘Ought’ is fraught. You’re making suppositions about the universe that it doesn’t generally appreciate.”

Hadrian paused in his pacing. “Isn’t that the point? My relationship with the universe has always been coercive. How can a woman whose own mother practices magic oppose it with more force than my own will?”

With nothing but her eyes, Wizard Charlotte guided Hadrian back to his seat. Still fuming, he slowed his breathing in the silence that followed.

Only once he’d exercised a modicum of self-control did the counselor answer. “Belief isn’t contingent on a particular viewpoint. Scientists can be just as powerful in their convictions as wizards. It’s simply infrequent that a wizard encounters a strong-willed scientist; we’ve so little in common.”

Hadrian tried to reconcile. He sat with his elbows on his knees, not even looking at the chamber’s only other occupant. “I’ve had my magic held in check before. Testing. Training. Bowling against peers.”

“But never while someone punched your lights out, I take it.”

Hadrian looked up. “Yes! And for it to be by⁠—”

“If you say a woman, I’ll break that nose of yours again.”

“By a scientist so young,” Hadrian finished. “And it was a bruised cheekbone.”

“Propose me a solution,” Wizard Charlotte told him, letting him off the hook for both his injury and who’d inflicted it upon him. “I cannot imagine this little incident will convince you to give up on magic⁠—”

“Ha!”

“—so tell me… what do you think it will take for you to regain your confidence?”

“There’s nothing wrong with my confidence, just my power.”

“They are, in this instance, one and the same,” Wizard Charlotte countered. “What would instill the necessary vigor to your belief in your own power that you could show your face at Oxford once again?”

Hadrian fell into his own thoughts. If confidence was his problem, what could the solution be?

“Defeat a worthy foe?” he suggested, sounding lame even to his own ears. In this modern era, wizardly battles came up so rarely, but this difficulty he faced struck him as more than a simple bowling victory might cure. “I don’t suppose Eric would⁠—”

Wizard Charlotte burst out laughing.

“What?”

“My apologies. Entirely unprofessional of me. It’s just… well… Please don’t take this poorly, but if you’re looking to boost your confidence, at least pick a fight with someone who’ll fight back. A statue of the Buddha may appear a formidable adversary, but not only would it not fight back, it would not need to. Choose better. Choose wisely. And for the love of Merlin, choose someone who isn’t on our side.”

* * *

Charles scowled at the alert. It was much too early for the right ship to be here. He stood and excused himself, picking his way through tight quarters on his way to the cockpit. Just before shutting the door to ensure his privacy, he called back, “I counted those chips.”

A chorus of wheezing snickers met his warning.

The privacy door—little more than a curtain of steel with a latch—slid shut, muffling if not outright silencing his mercenary companions. For a crack strike team, they were awful gamblers, and if he could get back to the game with time enough to continue the session, he might end up with them paying him for this job.

Whoever this was, their timing was abysmal. Charles checked the comm log. A simple freighter. Taking a damn roundabout way to wherever they were to and from, that was certain.

Well, they were going to investigate at this point regardless of his reply. Best to coax this mess into a self-tidying arrangement.

“This is the Greenwich. Thank God! I didn’t know whether anyone would ever stumble on me out here!”

“Greenwich, this is Alvin Chow of the Ganymede Soup Company ship Chicken Noodle. How’d you get stranded out past the edge of nowhere?”

“The simple answer: pirates. The longer answer, I’ll share over rum if you can bring me aboard. Black Barrel. What little of my cargo I was able to squirrel away from those animals.”

“Not a problem, Greenwich. We’re twenty minutes inbound. Can you hold on that long?”

“Yes. I imagine I’ll be fine. Life support is holding out. Too well, I’d feared. Better a quick death out here than kept alive in the vain hope of rescue, slowly starving.”

“I hear ya, Greenwich.”

“Please, call me Charlie.”

“Sure thing, Chuckie-boy. And don’t worry about starving; we’ve got plenty to share.”

Oh, goodie. Factory-brand soup. Good thing he had no intention of staying rescued. Ending the comm, he hurried back and opened the privacy door.

“Put away the chips, my lads. Time for a dry run against a softer target. Well, a wet run, but I’m not about to tell you lot your business.”

The Chicken Noodle was soon to suffer for their goodwill.

A pity, but unavoidable.

The Arete needed to save them, and they couldn’t very well get saved twice.

* * *

Charlotte preceded Eric into their quarters. While the two of them often dined in the Soundcheck Saloon for the wider and weirder variety of feastable fare, tonight had been Uom’pe’s spicy rice noodles in the mess hall. Of late, she seemed to be trying to outdo the machine for customers. Not that anyone got paid around the Arete, but she had a competitive streak.

“I know that, to a tesud, those noodles probably seemed pretty hot, but⁠—”

The door closed, and immediately, Charlotte fell into Eric’s arms. She drew a shuddering breath.

“Are you all right? You were fine just now at dinner.”

“I am, in fact, not fine,” she replied in a timid voice. “I haven’t been in some time. I fool them all when they come to my office. I hide behind a careful facade when out among the crew. Even when we’re in your land of wonders, I’m only escaping into a beautiful, perfect fantasy. I’m happy there, but it’s not real.”

“It’s pretty real,” Eric countered.

“No. It feels like it, but out here matters in ways it can’t there.” Eric led her over to the couch, where she shed her shoes and tucked her feet up under her as she nestled against him. “But all I want is to crawl back there and stay forever.”

Eric swallowed hard. This wasn’t good. She was the only person he’d ever invited for longer than a quick look around, and she was the only one who hadn’t either become a permanent resident or left their memories of the place behind. “I’m going to come out and say it: that’s probably not a good idea.”

“Oh, I know that,” Charlotte snapped without the least bite or vitriol. “Doesn’t stop the wanting.”

“You’ve been coping all this time. What changed today?”

“A small series of nothings. Misplaying three notes of Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number 1 because I couldn’t conjure the sheet music in my mind’s eye from the little library of my mental palace. Drascz coming to me with an identity crisis because she was made to be a creature she wasn’t born to be. Hadrian… well… I suppose it’s either tell you or bottle it up inside me, but he’s bereft over the simplest of magical stiflings.”

“Harmony did clock him pretty good, and his face was changing colors when she stopped choking him.”

“And yet, with a hundred times—no, ten thousand times—the magic I now possess, he comes whining to me about not being able to show his face at Oxford. And I sit there, polite as circumstances physically allow, and advise him that he’s simply lacking for confidence.”

“I could talk to Trebla about that bowling alley. For a scientist, he’s pretty good, so I think I might be able to get him to nudge it up the BLoM-JEMtPooMA a little. Maybe if he won a game or two, he’d⁠—”

“He’d trounce anyone but you, and I doubt the universe would believe for a hummingbird’s blink that he beat you by anything but charity.”

Eric shook his head. Hadrian was Hadrian’s problem. As a college senior, he was adult enough to solve his own problems. Charlotte needed his attention herself, not for anyone’s vicarious issues. He took her by the wrist. She limply allowed her arms to be used as props. “These are the problem.” The metal was always a curious temperature, too warm for steel, too cool to be mistaken for skin. “We’ve hemmed and hawed and made promises and settled for waiting. It’s not working, and it’s time we took action.”

Charlotte perked up. She looked at him with strange distance in her eyes, as if seeing him for the first time. “Well, now. There’s an Eric we don’t see out here often. All right, mighty wizard, what plan have you to part me from these infernal shackles? And I daresay that Dr. Richelieu’s promise of freeing me via a near-complete vivisection best be off the list.”

“I have two potential plans. Let’s call them… just for argument’s sake, Plan K and Plan W.”

“Do those stand for anything in particular?” she inquired with that endless curiosity he adored.

“No. I’ve just given thought to a lot of plans.”

“Let’s hear K.”

Eric put up his hands in pre-surrender. “Hear me out before flyswatting this one.”

“When do I ever?”

“Fine. Here goes. We travel to Earth. Arrange an audience with Emperor Khosrau. He’s maybe the only wizard I can think of who’s guaranteed to be strong enough to simply break the enchantment through sheer force of will.”

“Why would he do this?”

“Well, on the off chance he’s not just a mensch, I can barter the secrets of time travel for your freedom. Maybe he’s responsible with it; maybe he’s not. But if I can extract a vow from him, he should hold up his end, and you’d be free.”

“How adorably cataclysmic. Have you considered what he might do with that knowledge?”

Eric shrugged. “My best guess would involve pterodactyl knights and volcano fortresses, and I’m not sure that would be all bad.”

Charlotte sighed from her toes. “Let’s hear Plan W.”

“W is the simple one. We track down your mother. We get Wizard Patroclus in front of us. I make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

Charlotte shifted on the couch, leaning back against Eric and wrapping his arms around her. “I’m ready to be rid of this mobile cage, but there are fatal flaws in both plans.”

“How so?” Eric had already nixed A through J and L through V on those grounds. He didn’t relish starting over at X.

“Firstly, your plan involving Earth’s emperor is quixotic at best.”

“All my best work is quixotic. It’s my specialty.”

“His own people wouldn’t let us near him. Last thing they can allow is you jettisoning their monarch a century into the future. Even a month would potentially destabilize the imperial government upon which they all rely for patronage. And if we fell into his power, Khosrau would bargain for our lives, not our freedom. That same power you cite as the reason to go to him is the reason we’d lack all leverage.”

Eric ground his teeth in frustration. If he was right about the emperor’s identity, Mordecai The Brown was still alive in that body, Eric’s vow remained in place, and he couldn’t reveal that information even to Charlotte. But if that was Mort, he’d free Charlotte in a snap.

“No moping. It’s a sweet thought. As for Plan W, it would necessitate a willingness for bloodshed that I can’t imagine you resorting to. And if I can’t, my mother won’t. If she doesn’t believe you’d kill, our plan to extort her cooperation will fall flatter than the soles of Grosstet’s boots.”

Eric snickered at the image; his haathee friend really did have flat feet. But then he composed himself. “Well… I mean… I guess I’ll just maybe have to kill a few people to prove I’m serious.”

“You’re not a killer, Eric.”

How many times had he told himself that?

How many more times had he heard it from Uriela?

Who needed a mantra to hammer the thought into place that they didn’t kill?

Killers. That’s who.

Maybe the Village of Eternity wasn’t THE afterlife, but it was AN afterlife. After. Life. You got past life by dying, and Eric wasn’t picking up lost souls off city sidewalks. Maybe those lives weren’t gone gone, but he’d separated them from the lives they’d been living.

Nearly all of them had gone willingly.

OK, most.

Well… as he considered it, quite a number of them had been choosing between dying the regular way or dying this new, improved, magical way that Eric had offered as an alternative.

Fine. At least a FEW of the residents of the Village of Eternity had jumped at the opportunity.

But the rest…

Well, Eric had to face some facts here if he was going to convince Charlotte that he could pull this off.

“You know that’s not true.”

Charlotte turned and hugged him. “You can finally admit it?”

She knew? Since when?

Eric just held onto her. Reclined together on the couch, her weight atop him made it slightly harder to breathe. But she wasn’t heavy. And her presence, from the softness of her body to the scent of her hair to the acceptance of his… well, his years-long killing spree and soul collecting…

She made breathing worthwhile.

“Let’s go talk to Jess about taking a little time off work.”

* * *

Not that Eric came down to the hangar a ton. But there was a look the place had. A “right” that had slipped over to “wrong” since his last trip down. Jax and Lisa’s ship was gone, and it was no secret that Dad had taken it. With permission. That part was important. Dad got a bad enough rap in galactic circles without unfounded accusations of shipnapping.

Harmony’s fancy ship stood out, too. It was the biggest ship they’d kept, even if some of the cargo deliveries had come from vessels that barely fit through the floor hole.

Other than that, the landing yard inside the radiating rings of warehouse storage held a junk drawer of assorted ships.

Trebla peeked out from behind one of the smaller hulls and waved Eric and Charlotte over. “Packing light?” he asked as they approached.

“We’ll be traveling quick,” Eric replied. “We can grab extra clothes at our destination if we decide we need them.”

“What destination might that be?” his laaku cousin asked. The sly wink came clearly implied. “If you don’t mind me asking. Jess was kinda cagey on where you two are headed.”

“We do mind,” Charlotte informed him.

Eric nodded. “No offense. Just… privacy.”

Trebla shook his head. “Wizards… I don’t know how you convinced Jessie to give you a ship, no questions asked. But whatever. Above my pay grade.”

“Sibling magic,” Eric answered cryptically.

The truth had been much simpler. He’d simply lied by omission.

He and Charlotte needed some time away: Truth.

To find the Poet Fleet and surrender to them: Omission.

They hadn’t picked a destination, but they’d pick something once they’d departed: Truth.

Because Charlotte wasn’t going to contact her mother about a rendezvous until they were away from the Arete: Omission.

We don’t plan to be gone terribly long, but we’ll be back: Truth.

Assuming neither of us is killed or imprisoned: Omission.

It was easy once you learned which bits to leave in. The stuff to snip out practically took care of itself.

“OK, well, Jess’s letting you have the Tumbleweed.”

Charlotte ducked on her way through the door at the top of the flimsy ramp. “How quaint.”

There was a cargo compartment, basically just a spot behind the pilot and copilot’s chairs too small to fit extra seating. Trebla wedged himself into it as Charlotte took the spot with the flying controls and Eric took the only remaining chair.

“Cozy,” Eric pronounced.

“Now…” Trebla began. “This ship is too small to have sex in.” Eric shot him a puzzled look. “If… you know… that’s going to be a problem… I can see about hooking you two up with something a little roomier. Jess can find out post facto. Just a little favor from me to you.”

“This’ll be fine,” Eric assured him. Charlotte nodded her agreement.

Shaking his head, Trebla launched into a tutorial. All of the words were English, yet they poured through Eric’s head like rinsing out a twisty straw.

“…and last but not least, you will note that if you attempt to pull the little lever there labeled Star-Drive, nothing will happen.”

Eric brightened. “This is the ship we got the bendy-flippy bit from!”

Trebla rolled his eyes. “Yes, the Tumbleweed did, indeed, contribute its induction stabilizer to our efforts to produce a viable star-drive for the Arete. And thanks to Jessie’s kilometer-long list of shit for me to make, fix, or install, getting a little two-seat joyrider astral capable wasn’t a prio. You good with that?”

“Course!” Eric proclaimed. “See astral space like nature intended…”

“Well, we’re not planning on stopping. Jess says you can vamoose as soon as you… how did she put it… ‘rub two brain cells together and figure out the flight controls.’”

“I’ll muddle through,” Charlotte assured him.

“Well, take care. And whatever you two decide to do for fun… hope it goes great.”

With that, Trebla worked the stair retractor for them and hopped out.

As soon as the laaku was safely out of earshot, Charlotte cringed. “If I can navigate us out that bloody chasm in the floor, we’ll be all right. Lost a good two thirds of that tosh he was peddling. This is basically an escape pod at this point. We’ll give a guess and a nudge and comm for a pickup once we’re in realspace and have science working again.”

Alone.

Together.

Trebla’s tutorial had come with black and red markers written directly on the dashboard. Charlotte pressed a button that scientists had labeled Engine Startup Sequence, but which Trebla had annotated START THE SHIP.

She followed a red arrow connecting that button to another, formerly designated as Navigational Shields but now marked HIT THIS NEXT.

Another arrow to the steering handle told her TURNS AND POINTS, and a branch off from that one said FORWARD IS FAST, BACKWARD IS LESS FAST OR STOP on a sliding bar big enough to grip in a fist.

Charlotte followed the sequence.

The Tumbleweed rose and the whole hangar appeared to wobble around them. The floor, walls, and ceiling all slowly rotated.

Rotated…

Rotated…

“There it is!” Eric pointed excitedly as the aperture allowing them to depart into the astral gray beyond drifted across their view.

“I know! I know! Hold on just a moment! Drat! Well, circles being circles, it’ll come ’round again.”

Rotated…

Rotated…

The aperture passed by twice more at varying speeds as Charlotte attempted to line them up with it.

A voice crackled from the dashboard. “You two chuckleheads need a chauffeur?”

“Can’t talk now. Piloting,” Charlotte replied in a crisp, businesslike tone.

“Copiloting,” Eric added as an excuse not to elaborate.

Eventually, after carefully stopping with the nose pointed out, Charlotte nudged the ship forward.

Like a fawn taking its first steps, they wobbled and course-corrected and managed to escape the Arete without killing anyone or causing major property damage.

A pure win.

Trebla’s voice came over the comms again, this time more professional. “Bridge, this is Commander Trebla. Tumbleweed is clear of the hangar.”

“Tumbleweed, this is Arete. You are clear to set heading and get underway. Enjoy the holiday!”

“That was nice of Mindy.”

“Think we’re broadcasting.”

“Oh. HI, MINDY! How do we turn it off?”

“There’s a red button labeled—” Trebla started.

“Aha!” Charlotte located and hit the button labeled TURN COMMS OFF.

Eric let out a tense breath. “What now?”

The Arete, traveling a zillionty kilometers an hour, whizzed out of sight.

“Well, first off, cheers. We did it. We’re away from your sister’s ship.”

“Hard part’s over,” Eric agreed. “If you can bring us to a stop…”

Charlotte scowled at the controls. “Yes… about that… This here says we’re rifling through the cosmos at… well, quite a large number and ever changing.”

“What about that?”

“Ah. Good eye.” Charlotte pulled back the lever to the spot marked STOP THE SHIP. Numbers shrank. Well, the font stayed the same size, but the numerical value decreased rapidly. “There we are. Zero. That’s one we can all agree on. At your leisure, my wizard.”

Eric plunged them off the proverbial cliff, and astral space grew red.

Every beep and whir and hum and thrum all died at once.

In the silence, they could hear one another’s breath.

“How long you expect this might take?” Charlotte asked.

“Dunno. New ship. Kinda chintzy.”

“I rather find it drab.”

“Well, it could be a minute or two or it might take hours.”

Charlotte reached out and took him by the hand. “Time enough for a quick lifetime?”

Eric smiled. “Sure.”

* * *

“I eat all this?” Xrista asked.

Seated beside the girl, her mother nodded. Xrista didn’t see the nod, of course. Her eyes were glued to the microscope’s optics. “Yup. When you eat celery, that’s what you’re eating.”

“Do all my foods look like this?” Xrista asked.

“Not exactly, but similar, yes. It’s late, so we’re not going back to the kitchen tonight, but tomorrow we can look at more foods if you want.”

“Why is celery green?” Xrista asked.

“Chlorophyll. That’s the substance plants use to convert light into nutrients. The chlorophyll itself is green. So, if you see a green leafy vegetable, the leaves are what collects sunlight for the plant.”

“Is Uom’pe made of color-oh-fill?” Xrista asked.

Harmony accepted the pronunciation as within her daughter’s median linguistic elocution. “No, tesuds appear green due to the pigmentation of their dermal chromatophores.”

“Oh.” Xrista looked up from the microscope’s optics. “If they’re green anyway, why not make food from sunlight?”

“Well, it’s not that easy. Just being green doesn’t mean you’re made of chlorophyll. Captain Jessie has green eyes, but she can’t make food by staring at a sun.”

Xrista scowled. “She really shouldn’t look right at a sun.”

“No, she shouldn’t. And I think she knows that.”

“Good.”

Harmony reached over and shut off the microscope. “That’s enough for tonight. Let’s head back to the ship.”

“Can I sleep here tonight?” Xrista asked. “There’s lots of beds.”

Five constituting a “lot” was debatable, but that wasn’t the argument to be made here. “Those beds are for sick people.”

“Nobody’s sick right now. You fixed them all.”

Well, didn’t that just beat all. Harmony apparently needed to keep her med bay overrun with patients to keep the place from being viable options at bedtime. If she was going to consider this request, she was going to make her daughter work for it. “Why do you want to sleep here?”

“If I go to sleep on the ship, you won’t be there.”

“I’ll be right here. I’ll stay until you fall asleep, but I have work to do still.”

“If I sleep here, you can do work and still be near.”

Damn. That was a good point. It hurt to hear it.

Before she could respond, Xrista elaborated. “Uom’pe says you’re very important, so you have to work a lot.”

Harmony swallowed and forced a smile. “Yes. I am important.”

“Very important?” Xrista asked.

Harmony picked up her daughter and hugged her. “Yes. Very important. I wouldn’t be your mother otherwise. It takes a lifetime of hard work to get to be a mom to a special little girl like you.”

“So can I?” Xrista asked. “Can I stay here tonight?”

“Well, since I did go and fix everybody so there aren’t any more sick people around, I suppose. But no playing with the equipment. No monitors. No scanners. No wearing the smocks for pajamas; we are going back to the ship for those, plus your toothbrush and hairbrush. That sound fair?”

A tiny mop of pink hair nodded furiously.

As they rode the lift down to the hangar to retrieve Xrista’s overnight effects, Harmony started to wonder. The ship was, without a doubt, the nicest, coziest human-compatible living space anywhere aboard the Arete. She’d purchased it as a temporary hotel for the duration of their time here. But with months left on her assignment from the Harmony Bay board of directors and uncertainty over how long she might need to actually finish that assignment properly, maybe that arrangement wasn’t going to last.

With empty space aplenty, maybe it was time to move into some quarters near Med Bay.

* * *

Back in uniform. Back on the bridge. They were hours away from the distress signal. Jessie didn’t need to be here. But with all her family off the ship, she felt this weird parental responsibility settle over her. Maybe she didn’t need to be present at all times on the bridge. Yet anything that went wrong while she was off reading or working out or fucking felt like a personal failure. She needed all three, but only some bare minimum to recharge her brain or chase away various demons, then back to work.

Back to the bridge.

The command chair was her spot, with the ready room a close second.

“Captain’s log. August 23, 2591, supplemental. We are still hours away from the Greenwich, a small personal vessel stranded after a pirate attack. The captain claims to be in no immediate danger, which is good because he got caught out in galactic no-man’s-land. With adequate life support and the remnants of the liquor he was transporting for company, Captain Palomino should be fine while he waits.

“An update on the personnel situation: Wizard Hadrian will be remaining aboard the Arete to expand his practical understanding of magic in a starship environment. My father, in typical fashion, rounded up one of our support staffers, Thomas Collins, to keep him company on a voyage that will now only include a stopover at New Garrelon. His use of the Whitechapel leaves us tactically deficient in small-craft maneuvers until his return.

“Against my better judgment, I also granted temporary leave to Ship’s Wizard Eric and Counselor Webber for what they claim is a much-needed vacation. I don’t know what they’re actually planning to do with their time and have chosen not to press the issue. With Wizard Hadrian and Dr. Richelieu covering the respective functions, I wish them well.”

Jessie closed the recording.

“My fam’s got a chalet down in Anti,” Mindy chimed in. “Ain’t the darkest of void no more. Ain’t been in forever.”

“Sorry. I was raised on dusty old lingo. I’ll try to avoid disparaging your family’s adjunct properties in the future.”

“Ain’t never said not to disparage the dump. Rotten lot o’ snow and putting up with the sorts who ski for kicks. Mum got a deal on the chalet and fancied herself a snow bunny. Ain’t flatterin’ none.”

“ETA on the Greenwich?” Jessie asked. Any excuse to change topics. She’d known enough rich people that she didn’t need to hear more of their own unique brand of pseudo-problems.

“Hour fifty,” Mindy shot back. “If’n you want me to shut the fuck up, just say it.”

“Ideally, you learn when to without being told,” Jessie replied but couldn’t keep the smirk off her face or out of her voice.

“Eh, just you and me for now. Take fewer lumps on a bridge shift than down training with the twins.”

Jax and Lisa weren’t twins, but the nickname was catching on shipwide—in no small part thanks to Mindy.

“How’s that going?”

“Better than if I was azrin, tell ya that much.”

“Drascz struggling?”

“Ain’t heard it from me, but I’m not sure she’s got it. Sweet as honey, that one. Melt in your tea. Jax’s tryin’a get her riled. Comes out a bit. Got her tryin’ a bit of that red meat earlier. Then we had supper, back to beans. For the best, you ask me.”

“I’m surprised. Thought you, of all people, could appreciate having an azrin fighting by your side.”

“Fighting, yeah. For sure. But they’s limits, see? You want to squeeze answers out of someone, suddenly it’s all ‘Oi, we needed a location out of that fella, why’s all his blood on the outside of ’im?’ Bit of a voice filter and no vid, you’d never know Drascz weren’t some prissy human schoolteacher from Toronto Prime.”

Surprisingly, it wasn’t hard picturing Drascz in that role, not the least of which was her teaching Xrista how to do papier-mâché. “I mean… we’re all how we’re raised, right?”

Mindy got a chuckle out of that. “Or loitered about with off hours.”

“Did more than my fair share of loitering.”

“Yeah… turned out same as your old man, near as I reckon. He’s a bit of all right, though, so’s I wouldn’t take it hard.”

Maybe it wasn’t fair to fraternize with lower ranks. But Jessie had set this system up. She could navigate it however she saw fit. And Mindy was as close to a woman her own age as she had aboard. “Could you imagine if it was your father on the Arete?”

“Sure. He’d’ve had this place parceled up and auctioned off, leased the rest back to ya, and set up a payment plan so’s you never missed a month. Them trees o’ Grosstet’s be chopped up for timber. All the while, Mum would be fillin’ ya up with tea and biscuits, nice as you please. Team effort. Gotta give the ’rents props for that. No broken home ’ere.”

Jessie mulled that over.

There were worse parents out there.

Maybe Jessie hadn’t had it so bad.

Time ticked by.

“ETA to the Greenwich?”

“Here. Lemme just…” A giant holograph filled the bridge. In three-meter-tall letters, a countdown displayed 1:43:07. The seconds ticked by in realtime.

“Thanks…” Jessie replied tightly.

She deserved that.

* * *

Operator Obscura 11, they called him. Nothing obscure about this mess. Blood all over. If they’d been quite fortunate, the Chicken Noodle hadn’t managed a distress call before the Greenwich blocked their comms. There was, at present, no way to be certain of that. The local logs were locked, and Charles had many skills, but data reconstruction failed to number among them.

Quickly arranging one accident to look like another… that he could manage.

The Chicken Noodle had been placed on a course to take them to Nerban VI. Not on a crash course. Just close enough to get noticed. It would be nearly two years in realspace, still well within the shelf life of the soup the vessel shipped. By that time, trifling matters of forensics and investigations would seem pointless.

And Nerban VI wasn’t a colony one might describe as faring particularly well. Perhaps in the time it took for the Chicken Noodle to meander into its vicinity, the colony would turn things around. Not that Charles expected they would.

His companions had already reboarded the Greenwich. Their part was done—and done thoroughly. The last thing a covert operative needed at this point in a job was the dubious “help” of the muscle.

Charles wore gloves. He breathed via a portable life-support mask. Oh, Phabian Investigative Services would suss out his identity in short order, but he rather suspected that the fine Nerbanian colonists would find themselves more concerned over the contents of the vessel rather than its fate.

Datapad out, Charles performed a series of calculations.

Opening rates. Closing rates. He had to omni those up from the manufacturer.

Airlock vent times.

Interlock delays.

Gravity controls.

Evacuation forces.

This would all have been so much simpler if he’d been able to disable his engines convincingly yet allow them to be toggled back on with the flick of a switch. But re-enabling the engines on the Greenwich took the better part of an hour, and he had no idea when his time might run out. Not only did he need to be out of the Chicken Noodle’s spacious cargo hold, but he needed the damned ship good and gone so the Arete didn’t catch sight of it on scanners.

Too many variables. Too little time. His university calculus professor had worn that slogan on a t-shirt once to break up the tension of Finals Week.

Professor Jeong would have shat a binomial expansion if he’d been faced with this dilemma.

Finally, after more minutes than he feared he could spare, Charles had all his triggers set, his timings worked out, and his deadline fixed. Wheezing through the mask, he backtracked his path. Off the bridge. Through the galley. Past the bunks. Through a series of three independently locked-out cargo holds, none of which had a working door any longer. He pranced aboard the Greenwich with mere moments to spare, bringing the ramp up behind him.

Crowding past his now-languid companions, he grumbled excuses and planted himself back in the cockpit.

The cargo door opened. Atmosphere remained in place thanks to a force field. He didn’t relish the thought of any portion of this plan going awry. Going back out in an EV suit, unsure whether the containment might go at any second, just to verify that, yes, the ship had blown out the airlock a touch on the late side, hadn’t it—and so had he.

Charles shuddered at the thought.

However, all calculations had been correct. The airlock force field dropped. As the only unsecured object in the rearmost cargo bay, the Greenwich was jolted free. Unbound air dispersed throughout the cosmos.

Then, after what Charles had deemed a safe buffer, the Chicken Noodle, on full autopilot, without any crew, in violation of all interstellar shipping regulations, powered up and left the site.

“The admiral does not pay me enough for this nonsense.”

* * *

Two ratatoret ran on all fours down a life-support duct, paralleling the tram track that occupied the same duct. They pulled up short at a louvred vent.

“Remarkable-I-could-barely-hear-your-feet-tapping-the-floor-the-entire-way,” Makket remarked.

Chinochin nodded enthusiastically. “I-expect-that-this-will-address-the-major-concerns-regarding-the-operation-of-the-tram-Especially-overnight-We’ve-had-a-number-of-requests-to-route-our-trams-around-certain-quarters-during-certain-spans-of-hours-which-has-vastly-overcomplicated-what-ought-to-be-a-straightforward-system.”

“How-much-longer-until-the-entire-system-can-be-coated?” Makket inquired. He had a ship to run, and if he could route the new Ventilation Tram Service anywhere, anytime, he’d be able to accomplish that task all the more efficiently.

“We-have-sufficient-quantities-of-the-anechoic-spray-Our-limiting-factor-is-the-need-to-selectively-activate-and-deactivate-sections-of-the-system-in-order-to-properly-apply-then-cure-the-coating.”

Makket tugged at his tail. “Yes-yes-yes-Good-I-can-make-sure-that-Trebla-and-Jomek-facilitate-the-necessary-selective-outages-Are-you-certain-that-all-disgruntled-parties-are-satisfied-with-your-solution-I-only-say-this-because-the-rather-unfortunately-acute-hearing-of-one-particular-pachyderm-accounts-for-over-sixty-percent-of-our-noise-complaints.”

Chinochin’s twiddling fingertips betrayed his excitement. “This-is-precisely-the-purpose-behind-my-choosing-this-particular-stretch-of-ventilation-ducting-for-my-demonstration-If-you-remain-silent-I-invite-you-to-peer-out-through-the-vent.”

Makket crept over, aware that no amount of anechoic spray coating was going to dampen the sound of him speaking out the louvres of a vent. He hadn’t paid attention to their route as he followed Chinochin blindly down turn after turn. If his underling wished to dispose of him quietly, in a remote portion of the Arete, he could damn well explain to his sister why her husband was dead.

Thus, he was mildly surprised to discover that this was Grosstet’s chambers they were spying upon.

Not only was this the haathee busybody’s personal abode, he had company.

Both ratatoret pressed right up to the louvres, both hands over their mouths to muffle the sound of their breath.

“YOU SEE? THIS IS WHY YOU COME TO GROSSTET FIRST. THE MAGICLESS WIZARD IS CONCERNED WITH A MYTH OF THE HEALTHY MIND.”

“She does purport to address my issue at the source,” Wizard Hadrian replied cautiously. Both he and the haathee had pitchers of beer, and the wizard drank from his. “But your science is mightier than hers. By that logic, I should have faltered against you even more so.”

“YET YOU TURNED ME LIKE A GRIDDLE CAKE. I SEE YOUR CONUNDRUM. YOU BESTED THE BEST, THEN DISCOVERED A FOIL IN A FORM YOU DID NOT EXPECT.”

“I’m half wondering whether she might secretly be a wizard and simply masquerading her powers as technological breakthroughs. Given her mother’s pedigree, a secret prodigy might account for her ability to stifle my magic.”

“I ADMIT TO A GAP IN EMPATHY WHEN IT COMES TO MATING AMONG YOUR SPECIES. BUT I HAVE HEARD FROM NUMEROUS SOURCES THAT DR. RICHELIEU IS BOTH DESIRABLE AND WITHOUT MATE.”

Hadrian took a deep swig, enough for a ratatoret to drown in. “See? That’s an area I understand a little. I’ve had my share of success with… my species’ mating habits. I detect no signals on her part, and scientists and wizards are not so different in that regard.”

“YOU MISTAKE ME. I DO NOT IMPLY THAT SHE WISHES YOU FOR A MATE. THERE IS AN EXPRESSION I HAVE NOT DISCOVERED AN EQUIVALENT TO FOR HUMANS. TRANSLATED LITERALLY, IT IS ‘GUNK OF THE LOINS.’ IT IS A METAPHORICAL MALADY OF THE MIND. SHE SOUGHT COMBAT, WHILE YOU DESIRED TO MATE. YOUR LOINS INTERFERED WITH PROPER THINKING.”

“There is an expression that covers it. With Wizard Eric as your primary tutor, I can understand the gap in your idiomatic vocabulary. The phrase is, however, crude, and I don’t wish to impart it on those grounds. Your version will convey sufficient understanding with a more unique cultural context.”

“CLEAR THE GUNK. RESTORE THE MIND.”

“Is there a particular method your people use?”

Grosstet parted his mouth in amusement. Then, he closed it. “OH. YOUR QUESTION WAS NOT IN JEST. THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE: FIND A PARTNER. MATE. DO NOT FIND YOUR OWN TRUNK.” The haathee wagged his trunk with the end coiled into a small loop. “TO REMOVE GUNK REQUIRES HELP. SEEK IT. THERE ARE HUMANS APLENTY.”

“Not that plenty…” Hadrian grumbled into his beer.

“HE SPEAKS THE QUITTER’S TALK. HE WHO BESTED A CHAMPION! GO! DRAIN YOUR BEER AND BEGONE. CLEAR YOUR MIND AND REGAIN YOUR POWER.”

Real-life gossip was better than any holovid. Makket backed away from the vent, snickering.

“Well-was-that-sufficient-demonstration-that-we-have-a-working-solution-to-the-VTS-Not-In-My-Life-Support-Ducting-problem?”

Makket shook his brother-in-law’s hands. “Yes-yes-Entirely-satisfactory-Now-if-you’ll-excuse-me-I-have-to-make-the-books-on-this-new-potential-liaison-with-Wizard-Hadrian-before-he-inevitably-arrives-at-the-Soundcheck-Saloon.”

“Inform-me-the-instant-you-post-the-odds-I-have-my-suspect-in-mind-but-do-not-wish-to-influence-the-betting-line.”

Makket assured Chinochin that he would do so, but the fact that this was the man who’d invented silent spying aboard the Arete gave him great pause when it came to publishing odds.

However, there was one bet that Makket most certainly was not going to take bets on: Wizard Hadrian failing to find company at all that night.

* * *

By mutual agreement, Jessie and Mindy read while waiting for the Arete to reach the target coordinates for the Greenwich. Mindy kept half an eye on comms with a Rex Treadman mystery on her station. Jessie watched nav scanners and picked back up with Carnegie.

“Fuck me, we’re there!” Mindy reported. “Just thinkin’ I had this one figured, too. Best not let the moment catch me up. Gotta remember me clues.”

“So, Lt. Sedgwick, who do you have as your murderer?” Jessie asked with a little smile.

“Oh, gots to tell myself that it’s all twists on twists. Right about now, seems Rafferty got his hand in the cookies and shut up the duke about it. Five pages on, might be it’s looking like Lady Stephanie again. Oh, and afore it gets lost in the shuff… maybe we oughtta deal with our lost friend out there.”

“Right.” Jessie maneuvered the arm of her command chair and hopped down to access the helm. “Keep me on task on these long shifts. Thanks.” She brought them to a halt, then cranked back the astral depth, gripping the console against the mild vertigo. When realspace appeared around them, distant stars glimmered out the viewscreen.

“Getting hailed.”

“Put him through.”

“Ah, Arete, gods praise thee. I await my deliverance at your leisure.”

Jessie keyed the comm for her response. “Hold tight. We’ll maneuver to bring you in.”

“Couldn’t hold tighter were I glued to the void.”

“You hauling anything hazardous we should know about?”

“Not unless you’re teetotaling zealots with limited self-control. Not that my remaining stores could cause much harm even then. Alas.”

“All right. We’ll have you aboard shortly.” Jessie closed the connection and turned to her lone bridge officer. “Any issue just bringing him into the hangar?”

Mindy scowled at her console. “Naw. Could park it in the corridors with room to get by on both sides. But…”

“But…?” Jessie echoed.

“Wonky scans. Nothing reading clean. Got one bio aboard. Energy flow’s… dunno. Hard to say.”

“Put in a work order with Trebla. Top prio for the morning. In the meantime, I’ll get an escort down there to ‘assist’ Captain Palomino in exiting his vessel. I think we can handle one rum-running drama queen, even if he’s hiding something.”

“Right oh, Captain. On it.”

Jessie selected another comm channel, this time internal use. “Jax, we’ve got our wayward smuggler ready to bring aboard. Can you get down to the hangar and roll out the welcome wagon, a pat-down, and a quick search of his vessel?”

A yawn preceded the reply. “Yup. On it. I’ll grab a spare set of hands just to be safe.”

“I’ll send down medical, too. Survived a pirate attack. If he hasn’t at least got a scar to show for his troubles, it’s not going to net him much in terms of stories to tell.”

“Roger that.”

Jessie flicked over to Harmony’s personal comm ID even as she maneuvered the Arete over to grab the tiny Greenwich. “Hey, Harm. Got our pirate survivor on hold. I can drag out the intake process if you need, but I’d like someone on hand to check him out.”

Harmony’s voice was distant, distracted. “Kind of in the middle of something. Unless he’s in dire shape, I’m going to pass this along to Chik-ta. He can handle a wellness check and first aid.”

“All right. Let him know to get down there on the double.”

It was hard to be mad at Harmony for, in essence, blowing her off. Delegation was her prerogative. And she was working during what could only be generously described as “after hours.” Most of the crew were asleep. But she just… didn’t even seem to be paying Jessie her full attention.

A problem for later. Harmony’s entire presence on the Arete could alter the course of human history. It was easy to forget that when it was just… Harmony. Former babysitter. Esper and Karen’s eldest. Sister of Grace, Summer, Autumn, and Minuet, for whom Jessie had been deemed “not babysitting material,” which had offended her at the time but in retrospect sounded like a kind and accurate euphemism.

The Arete could have swerved above the Greenwich in seconds. Jessie instead drifted over to it, giving Jax and Chik-ta time to get down there.

An internal comm from the hangar came to her directly. “We-have-the-Green-Witch-inside-the-Arete-You-are-clear-to-resume-normal-maneuvers.” The speaker didn’t identify herself, and Jessie was bad enough telling her ratatoret subordinates apart by sight, let alone voice.

“Very good,” she replied. “Cmdr. Schultz will be handling the intake.”

Unless this fucker needed Med Bay, he wasn’t leaving that hangar. Jessie was about done with security leaks on this ship.

* * *

The hangar of the Arete never really shut down. Overnight shifts packed and repacked the cargo, making certain goods more or less readily accessible based on Makket’s mad speculations about upcoming needs. Half of it—no, more like 90 percent of the activity here—Junior considered to be busy work. Justification for Makket’s inflated staffing numbers.

Junior had his sidearm and full uniform, but he’d left most of his alertness up in his quarters, where a pillow and the remainder of his night’s sleep awaited him.

He watched as the crane operator and riggers took the Greenwich in via the floor airlock. As something of a connoisseur of small craft, this Palomino character could have done worse for himself. Bichon-class. Didn’t look too badly damaged. If the pirates disabled his engines, Junior suspected that they’d come aboard and manually removed some key component.

Assholes.

Pirates were a general blight on interstellar society, but some of them were just dicks for the sake of dickisheness. Kill the guy, if that’s what it took. But to leave him stranded well off most traditional shipping and travel lanes was just cruel. Then again, either they’d left him comms to call for help or he’d fixed the astral antenna himself.

Lisa exited the lift and swaggered over to join him. With Mindy on a late bridge shift at tactical, she’d been the clear choice over long-term-project Drascz as backup for this little endeavor. They’d spent too long around one another for her to even bother trying to hide her mood.

“So… scale of one to ten?”

Lisa stopped beside him, watching the maneuvering as the ratatoret parked the little ship. “Eh, four, I s’pose. Job’s done. Say that much for ’im. Tall bugger. Helped. But got that whole too-young-to-know-much goin’ on. I’d say take a crack yerself; more your speed. But I reckon he’s a bit traditional.”

“Pity,” Junior remarked.

A flapping of vestigial wings heralded Dr. Chik-ta’s arrival. The squawking that came next preceded a mechanical translation. “Sorry I’m late. Dr. Richelieu woke me with instructions to lend aid. Where is the patient?”

“Still aboard.” Junior pointed to the vessel. “So you’re not late at all.”

“Do we know what’s the problem?”

Lisa laced her fingers and stretched overhead. “Nope. Don’t even know if he’s got one.”

“I was awakened as a mere precaution?”

“Sucks, don’t it?”

“Can it, you two,” Junior ordered. This might be a slapdash operation from the top on down, but they could at least pretend that they ran a tight ship. Helping hapless spacers out of jams was meant to eventually lead to good public relations galaxy-wide, but if this Captain Palomino gave interviews someday, they needed to be flattering.

The boarding ramp dropped.

“Ah, friends, thank you!” Captain Palomino declared, appearing at the top of the ramp with immaculately coiffed gray hair and beard and a tailored tactical suit that fit him like a second skin. Though he had his hands out in an elaborate gesture of welcome and gratitude, he had no fewer than four blasters holstered within easy reach.

Junior took point. “You’re quite welcome. If you wouldn’t mind, just slowly place those weapons on the floor, one by one.”

“Oh, I don’t think that shall be necessary, my good man.” Behind the spacer, four dogs emerged from the ship’s interior.

Dogs?

Why hadn’t the scans shown that? Funny readings happened all the time. Trebla still couldn’t explain the vast majority of how H-tech worked, and the scanners were among the chief mysteries. But for four dogs not to appear while a lone human showed up just fine on the readings seemed… convenient?

The dogs fanned out, two to either side of Palomino. These weren’t simple guard dogs. Eyes flitted, scanning the hangar. They sniffed tactically, assessing their surroundings. Large, dark-furred, and muscular, any one of them appeared more than a match for a human in a physical confrontation.

Then they grew.

Junior went for his blaster. If he could take out the human, maybe the others would panic and surrender. Giant bodies blocked his line of sight, interposing themselves. And by the time he had a bead on the human, one of the dogs was staring him down.

It spoke. “Put the toy away or I’ll swallow you whole.”

Lisa put up her hands.

Dr. Chik-ta fainted. The translator around his neck entered some kind of emergency mode. “User has lost consciousness. Contact medical help… User has lost consciousness. Contact medical help…”

It was desperate, stupid even. But as Junior carefully set down his blaster, he surreptitiously opened a comm to the bridge.

* * *

Everything in her book sounded obvious. Jessie had to seriously self-reflect along the way to see that it wasn’t her natural inclination to be curious about other people, that she didn’t center them and pay attention to the minutiae of their lives and try to make them feel important to her. She took care of her shit; other people dealt with their own.

Butting into other people’s business was a good recipe for getting punched, in her experience. Then again, much of that experience came from being the one delivering said punch. Compliments were generally phony, but again, that was because she was the one lying to butter someone up. Listening to people was an exercise in timing her own comments to get a word in edgewise on a ship where outflowing verbiage was currency. Avoiding arguments and confrontation was as good as capitulation.

Everything that was wrong with her, that this book contradicted, was the fault of Dad and Uncle Enzio, she decided.

Not that it made her any less an asshole, but it wasn’t her fault this way.

Her reading concentration broke when a comm popped up from the hangar. Before she could inquire how things were going down there, she heard an unfamiliar voice.

“Shut that thing off or I’ll step on it.”

“User has lost consciousness. Contact medical help… User has lost consciousness. Contact⁠—”

“What’s—?” Mindy tried to ask, but Jessie cut her off with an imperious, upraised finger.

“There now. I’m sure the in-tik will be fine. Every-thing will be fine. Contact whomever you must. Reassure them that all is well, and we can continue this without any fatalities.”

That last voice Jessie recognized. That was Captain Ken Palomino, the piece of shit they’d just rescued from the Greenwich. That is, if Palomino or Greenwich weren’t both just aliases. Somehow, the guy had gotten the drop on Jax.

Fumbling with her console, Jessie managed to mute her end of the comm. It would be a good default setting, one of these days, not to have an open mic anytime someone raised the bridge on comms. “Shit! Boarders! Those funky readings were no accident!”

Mindy tapped madly on her controls. “On it! Shutting down lifts shipwide.”

The comm was still open on the other end.

“What do you want?” Junior asked. He was fishing for info that would get passed along to the bridge.

“I’m taking over the ship. That’s all you need to know for the time being.”

“Where’d you get four megalodogs to do your dirty work for you?”

A snarl sent a chill down Jessie’s spine. “We are NOT dogs. We are klemekoo.”

Mindy heard it, too. The two officers stared wide-eyed at one another.

Earth Navy had a passing specialization in ridding the galaxy of pirates. To many outsiders, it was their only benevolent function. But Jessie had been on the inside. She’d participated in drills. She was schooled in repelling boarders. For every major enemy of humanity, for every splinter faction of allies, for anyone who might potentially threaten an Earth Navy vessel from the inside with a boarding force, there was a protocol.

The protocol for a megalodog incursion was grim.

Heavy weaponry. All hands to the defense of the ship. All but engineering, whose job it was to prepare to scuttle any vessel that looked about to fall to enemy hands—or in this case, dexterous paws. The real plan for dealing with megalodog raiders was simply to destroy them ship to ship before anyone got close enough to board.

“That won’t stop them long,” Jessie warned. “The hangar is the only part of the ship accessible only by lift.”

“Least that’s where they’re at. Slow ’em up some, right?”

Jessie grimaced. She could hope, but hope was a thin defense at best.

Junior had done his job. He’d warned the bridge. Whatever situation played out down in the hangar, Jessie’s next duty was clear.

She keyed the comm for a shipwide announcement.

“RED ALERT! ALL HANDS, PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS! MEGALODOGS ARE ON BOARD AND HOSTILE! CIVILIANS, TAKE SHELTER! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”

The klaxon alert was a system the haathee didn’t use; the Arete’s was a surprisingly quick-to-add upgrade Trebla had put in place weeks ago.

“Oi! My ears!”

“What’s that, now? Damn, they noticed us. Wait… oh, you clever bastard! Give that here!” Junior’s comm cut out. She could only hope that was all that had been cut out.

Jessie headed for her ready room, where she kept a trophy rack of confiscated pirate weapons and her personal sidearm. “Anyone who doesn’t like the klaxon can kill four megalodogs and that asshole who smuggled them onto my ship.”

* * *

Far from the chaos of the Arete, the Tumbleweed did its namesake justice. Stars rolled past the windows at a dizzying rate. As Charlotte leaned the aiming stick, the rate increased.

“I think that made it worse,” Eric reported.

“I saw!” Charlotte snapped. “The… the attitude control may just need an attitude adjustment. Let’s leave it be. Perhaps a moment’s peace is all it needs, like allowing a top to spin itself out. And while I can appreciate it as a gesture, possibly allowing me the use of both hands would make this task less onerous.”

“But—”

“If. You. Please.”

With a sigh, Eric released Charlotte’s hand. Immediately, her eyes bulged, and her cheeks puffed. The next instant, her vomit coated the window in a splatter.

Eric reclaimed her hand even as she wiped her mouth with a sleeve, looking pale (well, paler than usual) and a little green (more metaphorical than lizardy).

“As I was saying, I was holding us still so the universe’s spin didn’t get to us.”

Charlotte blinked and squeezed shut her eyes. “Still feeling the aftereffects.”

“No hurry. I can hold out as long as it takes to get us under control.”

“I’d make for a poor builder of carnival rides.”

“You’d be great at it,” Eric assured her. “You just need practice.”

The stars left streaks in their eyes if either of them stared long enough.

Charlotte wasn’t much of a milk drinker, but she hadn’t packed snacks. She accepted one of Eric’s little plastic bottles of CowwieZowwie brand chocolate explosion milk to wash away the aftertaste, then resumed her efforts to still their craft in space.

After several minutes and many attempts that objectively made everything worse, the stars finally settled back into gently drifting pinpoints. Charlotte reclaimed her other hand and browsed until she relocated the comms.

“Well, here goes nothing.”

“Where do we start looking?”

“We don’t. I managed to wrestle this overcharged teakettle to a standstill, but I think our plans to locate the Look Upon My Works Ye Mighty and Despair may exceed my ability to maneuver us. No, our best bet is to issue a call for collection, then wait.”

“Hope I brought enough food.”

“I’ve a suspicion that my mother has not let me so far from her sight such that we might starve.”

Eric read over her shoulder as Charlotte tapped out a message to a comm ID she punched in without hesitation.

Mother,

I have left the Arete. I am presently adrift in a small craft, prepared to come aboard and discuss my future freedom and the nature of our continued relationship.

-Lotti

“Nice and vague without actually lying,” Eric commented once she’d hit Send.

“Assuming she receives it, and I didn’t Send that missive to some electric repository for refuse.”

Eric nodded in sympathy. “We can only hope. Really, so much science would be fine if they just explained it a bit better.”

“May as well hope for galactic peace.”

“I do.”

“Well, your hoping needs help from plenty of others. Now, as I’ve no idea how long we might be required to wait⁠—”

He pulled a chessboard out of his bag.

“Oh. Seems as if you’ve got it all planned out.”

Eric grinned. “No. But I have some ideas on how to deal with your French Defense.”

“Well, with that sort of preamble, I suppose I’d be remiss not to take the black pieces.”

The board hovered between them, and as quick as Eric fished two sets of pieces from his bag, they set up the game.

* * *

When the alert came, Trebla popped upright in his hammock.

“RED ALERT! ALL HANDS, PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS! MEGALODOGS ARE ON BOARD AND HOSTILE! CIVILIANS, TAKE SHELTER! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”

He held on with his lower hands as, in shock, he overbalanced, ending up dangling with his head just above the floor. When the worst of the swinging stopped, he put his upper hands down, let go of the hammock, and rolled upright.

These weren’t his quarters. This was…

He spotted the hookah.

Figgy and Jomek, who’d both imbibed far more than him, slept right through the honking klaxon that he was, even now, regretting ever installing.

“Wake up! WAKE UP!” He shook Jomek’s hammock but only set the slumbering mechanic into a lulling rocking motion.

In a sleepy voice, Figgy called out from the far side of the room. “Been telling… for years… Galactic capitalist… hegemony… wake up… quacktivists.”

Realizing that the lingering effects of various chemicals were responsible for their lethargy more than his lack of volume, Trebla resorted to less subtle coercion. After all, he couldn’t just let them ignore a damn megalodog incursion.

Even off duty. Even kicking back and smoking a little. Even going to sleep fully clothed afterward, Trebla was carrying a multi-tool. He flicked out a vibro-knife attachment and cut one side of the support holding up Jomek’s hammock.

The mechanic hit the floor limp but stirred and came around—barely. He held his head. “Much fuck; very off.”

Not pausing to soothe hurt feelings, he did the same for Figgy. Amazingly, not only did the philosopher manage to grab onto his hammock and swing down with it, near as Trebla could tell, he remained asleep.

A kick to the midsection cured that.

“Ugh.”

“Do you hear that?” Trebla demanded of both of them. “We’re under attack! There are klemekoo on the ship! RIGHT! NOW!”

“Much headache; many words.” Jomek presented an upper palm while he searched his pockets with three others. Discovering a pill, he popped it into his mouth. “Short wait. Then I help.”

Figgy came to his groggy senses with less fuss and more rhyming. “A poet, a kid, and mechanic; were sleeping just fine in their hammock; But then came a sound; that brought one of them ’round; and the other two, woke in a panic.”

“Very nice. Veerryy nice. Now get… the… fuck… UP!”

Jomek ambled over, blinking and stretching a crick from his neck, and shoved a pill straight into Figgy’s mouth. The philosopher didn’t even question its origin, contents, or purpose. By the muscular contraction of the throat, it was clear he’d swallowed it.

“I’m an officer. I… I need to help.” He looked all around. “I need a blaster.” That was about the point where he realized that he wasn’t tip-top, either. This was a smoking lounge and flophouse for up to nine, not any kind of armory or even security station. He inclined his head at Jomek. “You got another of those?”

One pill and about five minutes later, Trebla’s thoughts cleared. The klaxon wore his nerves thin, but that was the least of anyone’s problems right now.

“We need to do something.”

“Workshop,” Jomek stated. He opened the door and looked both ways like he was expecting a tram to whoosh by at any second. “Follow me.”

“I shall decline,” Figgy declared. “I’m adjunct crew. Captain Ramsey humors my presence at best. I will sequester myself in some remote nook whereupon I can make peace with our imminent demise.”

“Great,” Trebla told the philosopher. “You do that.” He raced to catch up to Jomek, who was no slouch for a geezer.

They ducked into the workshop. Trebla’s pride and joy. The door slid shut behind them.

“What’s the plan? Convert one of our power relays into a bomb? Overcharge a plasma torch into a laser weapon?”

Jomek rummaged through the bins of spare parts. “We must destroy.”

“Fuck yeah! No klemekoo’s gonna fuck with engineers!”

Jomek looked up and regarded Trebla like a simpleton. “Not them. Here. Much science; many plunder. Can’t let pirates walk off with H-tech goodies.”

Trebla stood there in shock. “Destroy the workshop? Are you CRAZY?”

“Crazy? Yes. Wrong? No. Find anything that blows up.”

“No! We’re unlocking miracles that’ll help generations to come! I won’t even risk losing that. Better for pirates to make trillions selling H-tech to the highest bidder. Better that than lose it entirely.”

Jomek nodded along. “Much healthcare; many weapons. You’re only thinking half the stuff. The other half… not so good to give pirates.”

Trebla turned the problem over and around, regarding it from all angles. Jomek was, to a degree, correct. Pirates with access to some of Grosstet’s zappier toys was a bad look for the galaxy. But starting down that path led to a grimmer conclusion.

“We can’t let them take the ship.”

Jomek pointed to himself. “Not a soldier.” He pointed to Trebla. “Also not a soldier.”

“Yeah, but I don’t mean us personally booting the invaders off the ship. I mean, blowing up the workshop won’t do shit. You think the klemekoo care about tiny medical robots? I don’t. I think they’re going to be a lot more interested in a ship that can go toe-to-toe with Earth Navy battleships—at least in theory—plus a bunch of other stuff we don’t even understand yet ourselves.

“We need to blow up the Arete.”

“I… am no longer happy with the plan.”

“Happy? Do I come across as happy right now? If so, you might need another couple of those wake-me-up pills because I am seriously not happy right now. But this isn’t about happy. It’s about duty. And we can’t let this ship fall into the wrong hands.”

“Noggana lie. Already kinda in the wrong hands. Our hands.”

Damn. “OK. Maybe we are outlaws. But… well, the crew of the Arete is a bunch of responsible outlaws. Except… for the impostors. And Eric letting those pirates go… Oh, and Uncle Carl’s always been kind of shady. But… FUCK IT. Fine. You know what? I didn’t want to blow up the Arete anyway. We’d all die. You looking to die today?”

“Much not; very unsure what day it even is. But no. Don’t plan on dying.”

“Great. So let’s start hiding some of the important shit, just in case Jess scares ’em all off and they try a grab-n-run.”

“Better plan. Liking it already.”

* * *

Grosstet dreamed of ducks. He had a great many ducks back home. Only interstellar travel restrictions prevented him from having them aboard the Arete for his voyage. He held his trunk just above the water, straight as a log, as he waded a placid pond without so much as a ripple on the surface, and ducks lined up atop it.

They swam up, waddled out of the water, settled in. Little feet tickled delightfully.

And the quacking.

Few noises so soothed the soul.

Grosstet basked in his paradise.

But the cracks began to show. While these ducks looked and felt like proper ducks, their quacking struck Grosstet as peculiar at first, but his assessment shifted gradually until he became convinced that something was dreadfully wrong. First off, all the ducks were quacking at once. In unison. Eerie, eerie unison. The rhythm, too, betrayed a degree of organization and coordination that belied the ducky mind.

However, what finally broke the illusion was that these ducks didn’t sound like ducks at all. Briefly, Grosstet considered that these ducks sounded more like geese, but even that wasn’t quite accurate.

They sounded like Jessie’s emergency honks.

Grosstet groaned and sat up in bed. His slumbering assessment, eventually, turned out to be correct.

“WHY HAVE YOU DECIDED TO CREATE THIS NOISOME RACKET WHILE I ATTEMPT TO SLUMBER?”

When the ceiling failed to answer, he tried the next best thing. From the wall panel, he contacted the bridge.

“WHY ARE WE ON ALERT?”

Mindy’s voice came back promptly. “Did you not just fucking hear the captain? We’s got a load of megalodogs aboard. Come in the hangar with the Greenwich. That bugger we was rescuing was bait.”

“MEGALODOGS? THE KLEMEKOO PEOPLE HAVE COME ABOARD MY SHIP WITH ILL INTENT?”

“Yeah. Sums it up, don’t it? Grab what you can and get to it. Jess’s already gearin’ for a square-up. Might appreciate the help.”

“I WILL GIRD MYSELF FOR BATTLE!”

Already feeling the warmth of heroism rise up, Grosstet threw back his head, lifted his trunk, and blew a tremendous blast.

“Oi! Watch it with that. Deaf in one ear now.”

“APOLOGIES, LT. SEDGWICK. COMMODORE GROSSTET WILL MAKE IT UP TO YOU THROUGH A FRESH BATCH OF VICTORY BEER WHEN WE HAVE FREED OUR BELOVED HOME FROM THESE WRETCHED INVADERS!”

“Holdin’ you to that. Bridge out.”

This night was dire, indeed. His studies of the League of Independent Planets indicated that their continued independence from humans relied chiefly on two factors. The first was that the laaku built quite excellent ships by local reckoning and would prove formidable in battle. The second, and more immediately relevant, factor was the presence of Poltid in the alliance. For while the laaku contested the stars and planets with fleets, the klemekoo were this region’s most fearsome sentient creatures.

But the second thing cannot come before the first. Nudity was all well and good for lovemaking and sports, but combat demanded proper attire. Hastily scrolling through his wheel of tunics, he selected a white with gold trim that would strike fear into the digestive sac of the most stalwart wuugon. Boots he slipped into while buckling on his shield belt. He made a quick check of the charge.

100 percent.

He then girded his loins with a thigh wrap that his human friends had called a “kilt.”

Oh, this would be glorious.

Not to rush. This was not his first battle, nor would it be his last… unless he rushed. Mindset was key.

A few quick taps of his trunk on the wall console filled his bedchamber with music. While the piece was a famous choral composition, this rendition, entirely instrumental, was meant for the listener to supply his own vocals, and Grosstet obliged.

Though it lost something in translation, he switched the words to English on the fly in honor of his multi-species comrades-in-arms.

“OH, WE ARE THE PEOPLE… THE PEOPLE OF THE FLAT… LAND.”

Goggles. Yes, goggles would be handy for seeing despite the splatter of blood all around.

“AND WE… WILL NOT FAIL… WE WILL NOT FAIL THE HERD…”

The toots and trumpets would have all matched up if he’d been singing in his own language. Human rhyming was fun, but he hadn’t taken the time to properly compose this. Rather than reconsider—after all, when might be the next time he faced a truly formidable foe?—he sang onward as he gloved his hands with spiked, fingerless gauntlets. While traditionally used for cracking wuugon environmental suits, they worked splendidly against a variety of fleshy foes as well.

“TOGETHER WE FIGHT… WE FIGHT TOGETHER FOR HONOR AND… THE HERD.”

Having listened to, by this point, quite a variety of human songs, he was hearing the discrepancy in quality between their compositions and his own impromptu translation. Perhaps when Carl returned, as a proper musician, he could be of some assistance.

A vest allowed him pockets for a variety of mid-battle snacks. He’d decanted a few cases of Vanillawberry Snakki Bars into a pouch to be grazed upon. Now was the perfect time to bring them along.

“NOT TO FLEE, NOT TO FALTER, NOT TO FAIL… WE WILL WIN AND LIVE TO TELL THE TALE!”

Aha, he’d worked in a rhyme.

He tied on the little woven bracelet Eric had made him. A gift from an absent comrade would serve his spirits well.

Distracted, he switched to his native tongue to finish out the anthem. Checking the functioning of his primary firearm was too important to allow himself the indulgence of playing with languages at the same time.

Deeming the weapon fit for duty, he rested the barrel on his shoulder as he marched out of his quarters, prepared to defend vessel 2-1-1-5-0-8—and his friends who’d renamed it Arete—with his life.

* * *

“RED ALERT! ALL HANDS, PREPARE TO REPEL BOARDERS! MEGALODOGS ARE ON BOARD AND HOSTILE! CIVILIANS, TAKE SHELTER! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!”

Harmony froze.

Some of her earliest and fondest memories had been of a big, slobbery, playful, fun-loving Kubu keeping her company at daycare. Time, perspective, and some forensic family history had led to a few uncomfortable conversations that resulted in her knowing the daycare was a lift ride up from the brothel where both her mothers had been working. But tawdry as the origin of those memories might have been, it had still left Harmony somewhat less terrified of klemekoo than most humans.

But there was a galaxy of difference between the Kubu she’d known as a girl and the marauders who plagued the modern galaxy. She’d been Xrista’s age back then.

Xrista…

Harmony sat stiff and still while her mind raced in a torrent. Obviously, she knew that the Arete was bound to get into mischief. That had been, by the nature of Jessie captaining it, a given. Thus, she’d come up with a basic contingency plan for the safety of herself and her daughter in the event of a battle more dangerous than bullying pirates.

Get to the ship.

Close it up tight.

Raise shields.

Even if the Arete crumbled to pieces around them, there was a reasonable chance of flitting away to safety afterward.

But that had been a plan for an attack on the ship, not in it. Harmony was no soldier. She wasn’t supposed to know every possible danger a ship could face. How did klemekoo raiders get onto the Arete in the first place?

Recriminations could wait.

Xrista was her priority.

Harmony had sent Chik-ta down to the hangar in her place. If they’d been boarded by the silly little vessel they’d been bringing aboard, that suggested the in-tik doctor had been either captured or killed. She would be the only medical officer left to treat any casualties. Everyone on the ship would be depending on her.

Everyone on the ship could get fucked.

Harmony was a mother, first and foremost.

Until her daughter was safe, nothing else mattered.

Shaking from a stupor that lasted only a few heartbeats, with the klaxon’s blare chasing her, Harmony bolted from her lab and over to the borrowed medical bed she’d allowed the girl to use. The decision to allow Xrista to sleep close by felt fateful now. As if someone was watching over them.

And perhaps…

Just perhaps…

Someone was.

Xrista was gone.

Upon the rumpled sheets, a datapad the size of a playing card had been left with a text comm displayed.

Even squinting at the tiny text, it was easier to parse than the shrill, mumbling, breathless little voices of the ratatoret.

Dr. Harmony,

We have taken your daughter. She will be safe with us in the VTS (Ventilation Transportation System) until the current crisis abates. Rest assured that she will be looked after despite her predilection for tail-petting that we would much appreciate you addressing in the near future. We have access to sufficient supplies to keep her fed and comfortable until such time as it is safe for us all to resume normal daily activities.

Yours sincerely,

Ensign Chinochin, Material Handling Specialist

It hadn’t been thirty seconds from Jessie’s broadcast to Harmony picking up that datapad. When the hell did they have time to awaken Xrista—without startling her enough for a scream, no less—get her out of Med Bay without Harmony noticing, and write this detailed and properly punctuated not-quite-a-ransom-note?

Ventilation Transportation System…

Harmony kept her nose out of ship’s business. If it wasn’t related to H-tech, treating stupid injuries that stupid crew members should have known not to incur, or educating a glorified hen-herder into a proper twenty-sixth-century physician… if it wasn’t related to being the best mother she could be under these extenuating circumstances… Harmony mostly ignored the goings-on throughout the rest of the ship for the sake of her own sanity.

But ratatoret were nothing if not plainspoken and straightforward. The Ventilation Transportation System was either repurposing the ship’s life support ducting, or there were cute little dirigibles flying around the Arete and she’d yet to notice them.

The klaxon faded to background noise.

Harmony found an emergency kit and pillaged the old-fashioned manual scalpel. In lieu of a multi-tool, she employed the blade to loosen the vent cover for the room’s filtered blower. Patients here could expect to recover peacefully, safe from bacterial or viral infection due to unsanitary particulate being spewed from the very walls of their Med Bay accommodations.

But as implausible as she found the thought of ratatoret freight handlers hoisting a 15 kg girl up to the room’s four-meter ceilings—without Harmony noticing—she found it less likely that they’d have disturbed sensitive medical-grade filtration systems to do so.

The air return vent near the floor, however, proved to be a different story entirely.

Behind the loose vent, Harmony peered inside on hands and knees. She shined the tiny datapad’s screen as a flashlight. Inside, in a space very believably large enough for a four-year-old (or adult laaku even) to crawl around, she found a tiny tram rail. Model tram enthusiasts had always amused her, but this was larger than the tabletop toy trams she’d seen in store displays. In spray tint on the wall behind the tram, in an alcove clearly added to the original system, which had most certainly not needed benches and a snack bar when only haathee lived here, was a designation.

TRAM STOP 37-B

MED BAY

The human occupants of the Arete had occasionally joked that the ship was the size of a city. But the ratatoret were adding city infrastructure right under their noses!

Harmony stuck her head inside. “It’s OK, pumpkin! Mommy’s going to be fine. You just stay with your ratatoret friends until I come get you, all right?”

There was no reply.

Then, the tiny datapad hummed.

Harmony glanced down. She’d received a message.

Xrista wishes to convey her assent to your admonition and a promise that she will not consume a diet comprised entirely of ice cream. However, as an addendum, I must inform you that if we have access to the laaku machinery in the Soundcheck Saloon, nutrient-rich ice cream will be supplied on demand. The risk of tantrums in these enclosed spaces is simply too great a risk for my people.

Ensign Chinochin, Material Handling Specialist

If someone needed cybernetic legs or a tail transplant, Harmony was going to hook a fuzzy little brother up.

Harmony closed up the vent cover.

What now?

Med Bay was a bullseye in want of a shooter. It was a high-value, high-priority target for both sides in any conflict. Treaties had been signed between kings, nations, and planets over access to medical care in wartime.

Should she stay put, relying on goodwill to keep her safe while she awaited the inevitable injuries that would flow from this conflict? It certainly sounded noble.

It also sounded dumb.

Harmony collected a med kit, stuffed a few extra supplies into it, locked down her computer, tucked in a comm earpiece, and headed out.

She’d remain mobile. So long as she could get back to Med Bay, she could meet anyone who needed its extended suite of services. In the meantime, she’d stay on the move.

Unarmed.

During a boarding action.

Ready to respond to any update on the wounded.

She needed to survive, no matter what. H-tech needed to get to the masses. But more importantly…

Xrista needed a mother.

* * *

A brisk wind blew Makket’s fur into his eyes. His car raced down the track with five passengers aboard. Safety indicators cleared him for the next stretch. No impediments would endanger his charges. Behind them, a second car filled with bed linens kept this trip from being deemed inefficient.

The Primrose-Randall Interoffice Message Organizer was intended to manage small parcels throughout a large office complex. Since Primrose-Randall was headquartered on Appalachia Colony, slipping in a system sized for a fifty-story human office complex had been a simple matter of adding it to his already extensive and eclectic requests.

The company touted ease of routing, smart updates to traffic flow, and automated path selection. What they left out were key factors like ride comfort, acceleration smoothness, and how fun they were to pilot.

Lost marketing opportunity.

If Makket could invest sufficiently in the company’s stock, he’d leverage the board to market this as low-cost transportation on fledgling ratatoret colonies and make a killing. His investment could pay off in triple-digit returns.

But all that was for later.

The honking klaxon only came through the anechoic coating’s protection as the car passed by vents. The rest of the journey was smooth and fast and felt like freedom. His people would escape this madness. Megalodogs were too large to deal with ratatoret. They fit places the large canids wouldn’t conceive of looking. And the haathee were not what any sensible sentient would consider to be efficient with space.

Nooks and gaps and crevices abounded. Walls acted as permeable barriers with the unfastening of a few bolts or the application of a plasma torch. While the large residents of the ship viewed it as a series of giant tunnels connecting chambers, he and his fellows recognized that every cubic meter of the vessel was habitable—with minor exceptions for major power systems and other such hazards.

They’d go to ground.

By routing the blowers in a certain configuration, they could even keep their scent from reaching the megalodogs.

His friends and relatives would survive.

The only problem was that this only applied to his ratatoret and laaku friends. The others would be too large to employ his methods of escape-without-escaping. They’d be stuck out there, sitting nuts to be collected by the huge predators at leisure.

In time, the raiders would grow bored or frustrated or simply sell the Arete to someone better able to make use of its wonders. Then, Makket and his people would address whatever problems the new owners presented.

Hide. Survive. Thrive.

It wasn’t a brave plan or a kindly plan or even a plan with a high likelihood of success. But it was the plan he had right now, and the thrill was indescribable.

* * *

Hadrian, like most wizards, consumed his entertainment media via science and made by scientists. One curious phenomenon he’d noted that ran common among them was the herald of doom. Science loved to portend dire fates, badgering and berating the damned to wrest and wring all dignity and decorum from their demise.

From signal fires to military gongs. From smoke alarms to fire engines. Sirens ranging from tornado to air raid. Red alerts.

Science claimed not to believe in Hell, but at every sign of coming catastrophe, they announced it with fire and cacophony.

To his best understanding, Hadrian had no official role in defending the Arete. He was a student, a guest, a family friend, not one of Captain Ramsey’s officers.

Yet, at the same time, he’d passed his Convocation Self-Defense Certification with a D rating.

Unlike his classes, graded on the traditional A through F spectrum, the self-defense assessment categorized student wizards as H for Harmless (those who needed protection), C for Competent (those who could look after themselves), and A for Adept (those who could be relied upon to aid others in a crisis). Hadrian’s rank of D stood for Dangerous. Though regarded as a mixed blessing, it also came as no surprise, given his pedigree.

A student ranked as Dangerous would not necessarily be pressed into service in a time of crisis in any kind of organized defensive effort. They would not be seen as a source of solace and protection for those in trouble. A Dangerous wizard was not to be trifled with. If met in combat, friend and foe alike were advised to reconsider the necessity of their presence nearby.

If only Hadrian felt Dangerous. If he retook the assessment today, he imagined he might be deemed Competent.

With some persistence, he’d persuaded his academic adviser to look up his ancestral line. Being designated Dangerous had felt like a black mark against him until he’d confirmed that, instead, it was very, very Brown of him. Dating back eleven generations along his paternal line, only two had been ranked Adept, and in the ledger, it was plain to see where someone had blotted out the original record for Alastair The Brown and written in Adept.

He wondered now where Eric and Charlotte had ranked. If he lived to see them again, he’d make a point of asking.

However, for the first time since coming aboard the Arete, he wished for Eric’s shadow to stand within.

Now was no time to wish. It was a time for decisiveness.

At the best of times, he was deemed a threat to those around him. At present, he was a threat to essentially no one.

He decided to write a letter.

As a persistent blaring honk faded to background noise, blocked out by a crystal focus of an intellect entering its prime, Hadrian collected parchment, quill, and ink from his unpacked belongings. A simple gesture flattened the rolled sheet onto his breakfast table.

Mother,

There exists a slender chance between utter annihilation and victory of any sort in which this missive will somehow find its way into your hands. It is in that narrow hope that I pen this missive.

My time at Oxford has taught me much about myself. Chief among these revelations is that I am my father’s son despite his persistent absence in my life. Brown blood is not a scab that had formed upon my flesh but runs hot in my veins. I now realize that it always has.

But I have also learned how unlike him I am. How much I owe you, how much you’ve kept from me the worst of my apparent nature, I’ll never fully comprehend. Though I’ve only ever had one mother, I cannot help but conclude from my dealings with others and their descriptions of disparate childhoods that you have done an exemplary job.

My fate is of my own making. My choices have been my own. You prepared me to make my own way in life, and I have, at some point I cannot precisely identify, misused that privilege. I think that remaining on the Arete may not have been a mistake, but coming here in the first place may have been.

In any event, if you are reading this, allow yourself grace in grief. You are blameless here, and I wish you to understand that. In the interest of ensuring the best chance of that happening, I must foreshorten this letter and prepare its grim journey.

I have always loved you and have never appreciated you more,

--Your Hadrian

Wiping his eyes, Hadrian rolled the parchment and sealed it with wax. He scribbled his mother’s last known address, though even he couldn’t be certain where she might be now.

With Father?

Dead herself?

In some sort of misbegotten attempt at resisting or protesting or campaigning for some cause?

The Convocation Liaison’s Office could concern themselves with that. Those nosy ninnies would read it, of course, but they’d also recognize it as a dying bequest, and they’d put real effort into seeing it delivered.

Would anyone deliver Hadrian?

He took a stroll around his quarters and contemplated.

It remained to be seen.

* * *

Charles Ludwig Archibald von Habsburg-Lorraine was a man who could appreciate resourcefulness even when it turned against him. He wagged the comm earpiece at its owner while using his other hand to hold the man at blasterpoint. “I can tell you’re trouble, but which of the two of you is in charge?”

Neither of the humans spoke up. They stood like scarecrows at a bank robbery, eyes murdering him a dozen times over, yet neither of them dared to budge. His associates tended to have that effect on people.

Jon-gar circled them, his one good eye narrowed as he hoovered up a series of sniffs. “They’re related. Siblings. One of them has mated recently… Something smells off.”

Despite her predicament, the sister twisted away, scolding the megalodog shaman in a delightfully upscale Earth accent. “Bugger off, you! Keep that snout out me fanny!”

Charles waggled his blaster barrel, and Jon-gar allowed the woman a modicum of privacy from invasive olfactory searching. “You may wish to speak with a physician, I expect.”

The brother pointed with the toe of his boot, indicating the insensible in-tik lying at some hazard of trampling nearby. “That’s him. He’s the doctor we brought. You know, on account of we were here to help you.”

“Passive aggression is so unbecoming. I prefer the overt sort. Now, the consequences of your sister’s inadvisable romantic entanglements can be easily looked after once this is all over. I’ve no intention of killing anyone. Despite appearances, neither do my associates.”

“We aren’t opposed,” one of them grumbled in a bass that rumbled the bowels.

“I’m just taking the ship. And you’ll help me, I think.”

“Why would we?” the sister asked. “Just gonna kill us later than sooner if’n we hand it over.”

“Not that we could,” her brother interjected. “We’re just mid-ranking officers. Not ours to give.”

Charles walked away, arms outstretched to the rather impressive heights of the hangar ceiling. “A ship. A ship! My kingdom for a ship. Who dies for a ship? In this day and age, when a ship is the most base form of commodity, the last thing anyone ought to give their life for is a mode of transport. And if you help me, there shall be no need for me to take one, either. And I could. They could.” He glared meaningfully at his companions. Brutes though they appeared, the megalodogs knew to play along and not squabble or kibitz in front of the hapless.

Jon-gar growled on cue.

“But let us not focus on the unpleasant. This is, for you, simply a shift to the next phase of your lives and careers. Fortunes rise and fall. You both look old enough to have seen a dip before and are young enough that certainly you’ll come out the better from this affair.”

“This your swan song, then?” the sister inquired. “That the angle here?”

“One last hurrah to make it all seem worthwhile?” her brother added.

Charles realized that they were having a bit of a laugh at his expense here, and moreover, he knew why. “Oh, the old ‘delay until help arrives’ maneuver. A classic. Timeless. But I’ve been made aware of the threats I may be facing here. Your crew complement and exploits are perhaps less secretive than you let on. Let me assure you, other than my own impatience and professional desire to be prompt in my hijacking, there is nothing delay can gain you. My associates are experts in their field.

“Now, if you’ll be so kind as to escort me to the bridge of this vessel, I wish to parley with this Captain Ramsey of yours and negotiate terms for the transfer of command.”

Neither sibling budged.

Charles threw up his hands. “What part of ‘chain of command’ are you failing to comprehend right now? Whatever feeble protest you may feel you are lodging at present, this is not your decision to make. My intent is to negotiate face-to-face with Captain Jessica Ramsey. And my opening offer will include the release of all of her passengers and crew, unharmed, with the possible exception of whatever injury this poor fellow may have suffered when he fainted.”

Everyone looked down at the in-tik. For a supposed doctor, he could have been a touch more stalwart. Still, there were difficulties in crewing an outlaw vessel. The more prestigious a profession, the more difficulty in staffing it. Why, Charles had been treated by one medic who’d started his professional life as a butcher and another who’d been a nude art model. If this in-tik could sew a straight line and knew names for muscles other than cuts of beef, he couldn’t be hopeless.

“She won’t negotiate,” the brother promised.

“A problem of mine, not your own. Do not concern yourself, my good man.”

“Schultz,” Jon-gar said. “His name is Schultz.”

Charles tilted his head. “Come now. You mean to tell me that’s not just the off-brand manufacturer of these tawdry excuses for uniforms?” They both wore the moniker emblazoned on their chest. On that basis, you couldn’t simply go around calling people “Ichabod,” “Zattz,” or “Stellar Navy.”

Jon-gar pointed a claw. On the in-tik’s uniform, in the same spot, it read, “Chik-ta.”

“Well, then, Mr. and Mrs. Schultz.”

“Miss,” the sister snapped.

“Miss Schultz,” Charles allowed with an apologetic bow. “If you’ll lead the way, I won’t be forced to leave one of you here as a chew toy. Those jaws break legs quite easily, I assure you.”

The pair relented. If the in-tik wished to play decoy on the floor, he was welcome to do so. Better acting than he’d seen in years, were that true. Charles and his megalodog escort meandered to a pair of doors that appeared to be some kind of exit. As they drew near, he allowed his guards to take the fore. That shaggy coat of theirs was resistant to most blaster fire in ways that Charles could only dream of matching.

And for what he was paying them, they could take a few minor scorches for him.

Doors opened. Rather than a corridor, a lift car awaited them.

“A lift? You take me for a fool?”

“I take you for a ride on a lift or we’s all stayin’ put. Aside from this here, only other way out’s the way ya come in.”

Reluctantly, and ready for this to be a trap, Charles stepped inside amid his protective pack of giant dogs.

* * *

Speaking strictly from a mental health standpoint, using confiscated pirate weaponry, armor, and tactical tech as office decor probably wasn’t a great look. Back on Appalachia Colony, she’d had more important matters on her mind than slipping off to a Bells & Buckets for some kitschy wall hangings and floral-scented wicker baskets. And her ready room was meant to relax and inspire her, not cater to the sensibilities of guests (or therapists).

And it needed work. Serious work. But Jessie’s collection of junk taken by force from wicked men would serve a purpose no embroidered throw pillow or potted indoor herb garden could match.

Armored, blaster-resistant (notably not blasterproof) helmet? A size too large and stank of someone else’s sweat, but better than nothing.

Bandolier of power packs to a blaster rifle she hadn’t recovered intact? She knew how to rig them as improvised explosives.

A set of five combat knives? Each had its own sheath and a strap. She buckled them along her thighs, three on her dominant right side, two on the left, offset so drawing one wouldn’t get in the way of the others.

She made a mental note to stop by her quarters for her ablative camisole and a further note to make wearing it part of her everyday attire. While it wasn’t the most comfortable of undergarments, she’d get used to it if she made it a habit, and somehow she doubted this would be her last emergency where she wished she had it on.

Two blaster rifles she slung over her shoulder by the straps. Her personal sidearm plus two others. The weight began to add up, but its bulk reassured her at the same time.

Should Jessie have kept a live fragmentation grenade in her office? Probably not.

Should she have kept a small display of them like a basket of fruit? Definitely not.

Was she adding this to a growing list of strange behaviors she would talk to Charlotte about during her next one-on-one session? Yes.

A calm urgency overcame her. There was a fill-in-the-blanks sort of familiarity from all her training. Swap out the species of the invader, the layout of the ship, the comrades at her back, and this could have been any number of exercises on dealing with a facility breach. All the principles remained constant.

Assess enemy strength.

Establish communication with fellow defenders.

Organize defensive perimeters.

Launch counterattack.

There were other variables, and certain elements could supersede, given the circumstances. Also, there was no one above Jessie to establish her mission objectives for her. Thus, she came up with her own master plan.

Plan A…

Noncombatants to safety. She’d assign that to Mindy as soon as she grabbed one last grenade…

Lock down the airlock controls so none of the invaders could escape. Sounded like a job for Trebla with Jomek as a backup.

Separate the megalodogs from their handler, Ken Palomino (or whatever his name might really have been). That was one she’d likely have to handle personally. Too important to delegate.

Isolate the megalodogs in a nonessential section of the ship and either convince them to surrender or kill them. This would be a team effort for sure, but Grosstet was the perfect foil for an unknown number of megalodogs. He was the only one who remotely matched up physically, and his H-tech toys would be a surprise for raiders not used to being the underdogs.

Her plan had more holes than a sponge. But this was a tactical defense, not a proactive plan. Decisive action was more important than full information. Confusion got good people killed. Good people Jessie was responsible for. Cared about.

Eric and Dad might have been gone, but Trebla and Harmony had been part of her herd for as long as Jessie could remember. The rest of them… they were growing just as precious to her.

She couldn’t let anything happen to them.

Marching out of her ready room, Jessie headed straight for her command chair but didn’t sit.

Mindy gawked. “How you carryin’ all that without snapping in half?”

This was no time for witty banter and camaraderie. “Mindy, I need you to round up all noncombatants and get them to safety.”

“Where’s that?”

Jessie clenched her jaw. Her adversary had access to hearing that even an azrin might envy and a sense of smell better than most scanners. How could they de-prioritize the civilians? “Get them to the life-support hub on Deck 5. Open the maintenance ducts.”

“They’ll smell us for sure!”

“They’ll smell you all over through vents too small to traverse. They’ll have to scour this whole vessel to find you. By then… hopefully, I’ve come up with a more permanent solution.”

Mindy nodded toward the array of gear draped all over her captain. “That gonna do the trick?”

Jessie heaved a sigh. “It’s going to have to.”

With that, she set out.

The Arete was her ship, dammit. And if Ken Palomino and his megalodog cronies wanted to take it from her, they were going to learn a hard lesson about fucking with Earth Navy special forces.

* * *

Charlotte hung a bishop.

Eric spotted that it was a trap. Unfortunately, at the same time, she had revealed an attack on the knight that was defending his king. To save the knight, he’d have to sacrifice a rook, and that would leave him down a major piece heading into the endgame.

Rather than resign, Eric captured, allowed her to play out the remaining five forced moves in short order to secure checkmate.

“One of these lifetimes, I’m going to get good at this game,” he promised.

“You are good,” Charlotte insisted. “I’m merely better.”

Oh, if only she knew… “Actually, neither of us is really that great. I’ve got a Galactic Master living in the village, and she mops the board with me even worse than you do, and she insists that she’s not even really that impressive at the game.”

“Really? Who?”

“Ilya.”

“The gardener?”

“Yup. She likes plants, no matter what life I put her in. I always make sure she’s got something special to cultivate and grow. But she’s aces at chess, and I’m about 0–100 against her.”

“Shall we set up for another, or have you despaired of victory yet?”

Eric put up a finger. “Hold on. Was that light blinking before.”

“I’d say not, but I’ve been a touch preoccupied. You do tax me, you know. Your defeats come at no small expenditure of concentration. I’m used to being able to picture the board in multiple theoretical states at once and visualize the potential areas of danger with fading intensity ahead up to five moves.”

“I used to be able to talk to the pieces for advice, but Uncle Enzio pointed out that the pieces don’t really know the strategy of the game. I’d have to play with a really old set that got used by top players.”

“I think he was having a laugh at you.”

“He was right, though! The store-bought plastic pieces we had on the Mobius all knew how to move, but all of them wanted to be the piece that moved every turn. We got an old wooden set at one point, and there was this wise old knight that⁠—”

“I do think we ought to check on that blink, dearest.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah. Go for it.”

Charlotte peered down her nose at the comm panel. “Ah. It appears as if our rescue is imminent. Remember, you’re not here.”

Eric pantomimed a zipper across his lips.

Charlotte’s fingers hesitated. About to press one button. About to tap the screen. Not quite making a choice. Finally, and decisively, she pressed a spot on the dashboard.

Mariachi music filled the cockpit at a volume that had both of them covering their ears reflexively.

Pawing blindly, she managed to silence the din.

“Sorry.”

“Happens all the time,” Eric assured her.

Another, even more faltering, search resulted in a familiar voice coming out of the dashboard speakers.

“Ah, about time you figured it out. A little time away from magic hasn’t un-rotted your brain, it seems.”

“Mother, if you’ve come just to insult me, I fear we may both be wasting our time.”

“No, poppet. In mere moments, I shall arrive to collect you. Remain where you are, do nothing. My people will bring you aboard.”

“Yes, Mother,” Charlotte replied like a weary echo. She tapped a button, then spoke closely to the dashboard. “Can you hear me? Mother? Are you still there? Good. I think I’ve shut the thing off properly.”

Eric held up one finger on each hand. “Can I point something out?”

“Yes, I sound ever so much like her.”

“I was going to say she sounds like you, but I suppose that’s close enough. It really is uncanny. I don’t sound that much like Dad.”

“You and your father have a great deal in uncommon.”

Eric was already distracted. “Then again, when Mom gets mad, she does kind of sound an awful lot like Jessie…”

A ripple tingled through him, resulting in a shiver. Out the front window of the Tumbleweed, a much less Tumbleweedy ship appeared from astral. Like the old ghost pirate ships of yore exiting a fog bank, it brought menace and portended doom. But one inescapable fact struck Eric instantly upon seeing it.

“That is one pretty ship. You know me. I’m not big on ships in general. Useful. Not really aesthetic. Old wooden ships had all the crazy sails and flags and a cat’s cradle of ropes all over them. Those were nice. I’m actually getting a hankering for a sailing world just thinking about them. But starships? Usually just blah blah bland and ugly. That! Is a work of art.”

“Mother will be so glad you approve,” Charlotte deadpanned.

“Will she?”

“Not in the slightest.”

“Darn.”

“Need I remind you of our goals here?”

Eric counted off on his fingers. “No more stealing your magic. No more involuntary accessories. No more attacking the Arete. No more…”

“No more being a snotty, controlling bitch intent on either dictating my life or ruining it.”

Eric scowled. “You mean your mother, right?”

“Since when have I ever indicated that you might be a snotty, controlling bitch?”

“I dunno. I do kind of dictate our lives in the Village of Eternity.”

“I have picked five of the last seven worlds we’ve created. And the theme park planet was an utter delight. This plan relies heavily on you, and I am at your mercy for its outcome. If you are having any second thoughts, there is still time to plummet into astral space and evade them.”

“Oh, I’ve had a lot more than two thoughts about this whole business, and all of them end up deciding that freedom for you is the only option.”

Charlotte swallowed and grew quiet. “Aren’t you the least bit worried that once I can work magic again, I won’t need you?”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too, but⁠—”

“No buts,” Eric insisted. “Freeing you from this horrible situation is important. If, once you’re free, you decide that you’d be happier somewhere else than with me, be happy. I’m hoping you’ll be happy with me, but that’s just my opinion. I won’t keep you prisoner just so… I don’t know… you’d need me or something. Not that I’m accusing you; it just feels like you’re trying to accuse me of accusing you when there’s no reason for accusations at all in either direction. I’m⁠—”

Further rambling cut short when Charlotte crushed him in a hug that smacked of desperation. She was breathing hard, and Eric could barely breathe at all. He patted her back before just settling in and gently hanging on.

“You’re the only one—the only one—in my life who’s ever told me that and meant it. Be happy. So many people have wanted so many things out of me—not the least of which that harpy mother of mine. The perfect student. The perfect apprentice. The perfect musician, perfect singer, perfect poet. The most expensive tutors. Bespoke wardrobes. Servants for every whim and need but only to be used as carefully directed. My path in life has been tightrope thin and my tenuous balance enforced by the threat of sharp spikes to either side. Oxford expanded my options, widened my expectations, and when I graduated and went home, I couldn’t stand the threats any longer.

“That’s when she arranged these for me.” Charlotte sat back into her own seat and held up her shackled wrists. “You’ve cut the tightrope. You’ve filled in the pit of spikes with soil and let wildflowers grow atop it. Are you prepared to do what it takes that we can put this whole sordid mess behind us?”

Eric had asked himself this question so many times.

“Yes.”

“Even killing?”

He gulped, then nodded.

“Well, time to introduce you to my mother, then.”

The Look Upon My Works Ye Mighty and Despair had approached during the hug and subsequent chat. There was no other view out the front window but the Poet Fleet flagship. Through the hangar force field, a retinue of questionable welcome awaited them.

* * *

Danger made even ship’s air smell sweet. Grosstet swung his trunk as he strode through the corridors with a spring in his boots. What a glorious, glorious day this would be. Jessie was a good friend, an able captain, and a better manager of all the disparate species aboard the 2-1-1-5-0-8 than he could ever be. She also played too safe at times. Wrongs got righted, but many miscreants got away, as well.

Not today.

Ruffians were aboard his ship. Ruffians who said “ruff.” He chuckled at his own silent jest while reminding himself that these canines were, in fact, reportedly just as sentient as any others. Quadrupedal sentients were a rarity, but their exceptionalism only served as further warning not to underestimate them. They’d somehow evolved despite continuing to walk on all fours.

Hmm…

Perhaps a straightforward assault on the hangar wasn’t the approach to be taken here.

Grosstet paused in the middle of the corridor outside the Briefing Room. There were believed to be multiple foes. That suggested a confrontation in a narrow space. Egad, the hangar would have played right into the hands of any ambush by thinking creatures. Unacceptable. He was soot stained from too long without a good brushing. That little human renegade compound had inflated his ego, and it was too flimsy a barrier to shelter behind.

Good that he caught himself before it was too late.

Time enough to come up with a proper tactical plan, making use of what was truly his most valuable asset: his superior intellect.

Peeking inside one of the wall panels by the Briefing Room door, he accessed the lift logs.

A car had just opened in the hangar moments ago. It was still there.

Well, well, little foes! Time to teach you the folly of relying on another species’ technology to traverse a strange vessel. There was a good reason that the only way in and out of the hangar came via lifts.

Lifts could be operated remotely.

Grosstet programmed in an override. Whatever commands the riders of that lift entered, the lift would give every appearance of compliance, even so far as to display progress along the requested journey.

Instead, Grosstet would be directing them on a roundabout route that would deposit them…

Where?

Somewhere remote. Somewhere damage could be repaired without disruption to the rest of the ship. Perhaps somewhere with access to large power supplies in case he needed a little something showy and explosive to finish the job. After all, these megalodogs were said to be even larger than himself.

Starboard Fire Control.

Direct access to power conduits that fed the armaments of vessel 2-1-1-5-0-8. Redundant with the same systems on the port side. They’d be fighting one-handed if a ship confronted them, and Grosstet liked their odds against anything in this region of space ship-to-ship, even if it came to a battle of ramming. Trebla and Jomek could enact repairs at leisure.

Grosstet headed out.

He’d set himself a hike and had occupied most of the lift tunnels with his Rally-the-Pigeons pathing of the invaders. Best not to look a laggard as he arrived late to his own ambush.

But excitement provided the boost he needed. And while Jessie’s people tried to assign particular layers to his ship, in truth, it all wound and looped and interconnected in a lovely intermingling of ramps, aesthetically beyond his creation but easily within Grosstet’s ability to appreciate as both an art critic and a jogger.

Grosstet was winded when he arrived at the designated lift drop-off.

He’d caught his breath by the time the doors opened, only for the sight within to take it right away from him again.

The megalodogs were magnificent. Black fur shone. Brown eyes narrowed. White teeth were bared. They blocked his view of what appeared to be three humans wedged into the back of the lift car underfoot.

“COME NO FURTHER!” Grosstet ordered, leveling his blaster but hoping not to have to fire it. Those human feet could have been nearly anyone, and Grosstet couldn’t think of a human just then whose life he’d willingly risk. “YOU ARE BOLD AND YOU ARE BRAZEN, BUT NOW, YOU ARE SIMPLY BEATEN. SURRENDER, INVADERS! I HAVE NO WISH TO DESTROY YOU, BUT REST ASSURED, I HAVE THE ABILITY—AND THE RESOLVE, SHOULD YOU TEST IT.”

A quartet of snarls answered his pronouncement. The megalodogs exited the lift with their heads held low and ears back, advancing two abreast since no more than that would fit shoulder to shoulder. One of the pair in front had an eye missing, lending it a feral, primitive visage. Any advanced species would have gotten something like that fixed.

It occurred to Grosstet as he fell back, hoping to lure the megalodogs along the ship’s curved corridors to the point where he no longer had allies as a backdrop, that his understanding of English may have been rather exceptional in terms of non-native speakers. So many of his small friends had remarked upon his easy grasp of a language that was more memorization than hard rules. Perhaps these invaders needed a clearer message.

“STOP OR I’LL SHOOT.”

“We heard ya, Rope-Nose,” the lead dog with two good eyes told him. “You gonna put down the blaster or we going to rip off that arm with you still holding it?”

All righty, then. They understood just fine.

From behind the pack, a clarion human voice called out. “Surrender, and you will not be harmed. I make this offer to all.”

“Don’t!” Jaxon Jr. warned him. Ah, so he was one who’d been taken to work the lifts for the invaders. A casualty without a death. “They can’t be trusted!”

“Kill ’em, big boy!” Lisa coaxed. That now accounted for all three pairs of feet. Though he would regret injuring them, he knew that the Schultz siblings would not forgive him if he placed their safety over the entire crew. All the crew and passengers of the Arete were counting on Grosstet.

“MY FRIENDS RELY ON MY PROTECTION. I WILL NOT ALLOW THEM TO FALL INTO YOUR HANDS WITHOUT COMBAT.”

“He said it,” the two-eyed dog told his one-eyed companion.

“He did,” one-eye agreed.

With baying that hurt sensitive haathee ears, the four megalodogs stampeded toward him.

Grosstet fired.

Twice.

In rapid succession.

By long experience and a feel for this sort of combat, he expected the shots to each pass clean through the first megalodog they struck, then the second, and inflict considerable damage to the wall beyond.

He didn’t even hit them.

Both shots behaved bizarrely, twisting and following a path that particle physicists would decry as impossible. Only magic could explain such a reaction.

Grosstet’s shock and horror didn’t allow him a third shot before the blaster was knocked from his hand as the lead megalodog bowled him over.

His personal shield lit solid as the bulk threatened to press him into the floor.

A mighty heave of hands, feet, and trunk in concert flipped one of the dogs off him. The next one into the fray caught a tusk to the shoulder. The yelp and recoil allowed just enough time for Grosstet to regain his footing.

Battering paws set off the shield time and again, sending him stumbling as the reaction force couldn’t be offset entirely by the device.

A high-pitched warning beeped, informing him that battery power was running low.

Already?

Grosstet spotted his fallen blaster and dove, trunk outstretched, to retrieve it. In close quarters, an erratic flight path wouldn’t matter. He could fire point-blank.

One of the dogs stepped on his trunk. Grosstet’s reflexive toot of pain and surprise cut off abruptly.

Jaws of another snapped.

The shield failed.

In single combat, he would have bet his life against these simple brutes. But outnumbered four against one, he could do little to stop them.

“JAXON! LISA! RUN FOR THE LIFTS! IF YOU⁠—”

A pair of impossibly strong jaws closed around Grosstet’s throat.

He struggled a second or two longer, then, in a hot, wet gush that left the rest of his body cold, he lost consciousness.

* * *

Mindy split off from Jessie at the lifts just outside the bridge. They had wildly different objectives. While Mindy would be taking noncombatants (i.e. most of the crew) away from potential conflict, Jessie needed to seek out and draw the attention of the invaders.

The farther she got from the bridge, the more she felt like her old self. Away from command. Away from responsibility for anyone besides herself and any duty other than her mission. This was her comfort zone, sick as that sounded, even to her.

In her mind, she began to see the ship as firing sight lines, escape routes, cover.

But she had to remind herself—repeatedly—that while she might be her own chief operative, she was also command and control for this ship.

One nice feature of the TeleJack was that, while holding a blaster rifle ready, its position on the nondominant forearm made it convenient as both a comm routing station and a holographic HUD. Jessie had the ship on overlay as she advanced with her sights up, stalking down the corridors with the ship’s natural internal curvature working to give her maximum cover from the leftmost wall.

She sorted a special set of contacts. Her officers. The people she needed to get working together to end this crisis.

“Ramsey to Trebla. Do you read me?”

“Yo, Engineering here. What’s the lowdown?”

Good. None of Trebla’s usual bullshit. Just his flippancy as a defense mechanism, and she wasn’t going to address that, of all things, right now. “Tactical situation is unclear. Any visuals?”

“No. And, fuck me, I hope it stays that way. We’re working on something to go boom if need be. You got enough boom?”

“Probably not.” Jessie knew the rough yield on everything she was toting with her. Short of delivering her ordnance internally, she doubted it could inflict lethal wounds. Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t get a grenade inside one of those dogs. It just meant it would be harder work. “What’re you cooking up?”

“This is more potluck than ordering off the menu. We’re looking for power sources that can be overloaded.”

“This is why we need those internal scanner upgrades,” Jessie snapped with more vitriol than she’d intended. “If you knew you had a clear shot to the hangar, there are plenty of engines and fuel rods down there to rig.”

“Well, we’ll keep working from an undisclosed location. Those big ears aren’t going to give me away. Contact with updates as needed.”

Jessie switched channels. “Harmony? You there?”

“Dr. Harmony Richelieu is in Do Not Disturb Mode. Please leave a message and⁠—”

With a snarl, Jessie switched again.

“Makket? Are your people on lockdown?”

“The-Ventilation-Transportation-System-is-fully-operational-and-currently-at-82-percent-capacity-We-have-relocated-all-reasonable-sized-crew-to-the-VTS-depots-This-includes-Dr.-Chik-ta-who-fainted-and-required-minor-first-aid-which-has-been-provided-While-he-is-not-on-our-designated-list-of-passengers-for-the-VTS-we-were-able-to-bring-him-in-supine-He-is-currently-displeased-and-unable-to-communicate-effectively-The-hostiles-damaged-his-translator.”

“Keep him there with you. Good work. Anyone have eyes on our hostiles?”

“They-managed-to-take-Commander-and-Lieutenant-Commander-Schultz-hostage-I-have-ordered-my-department-to-avoid-lift-exits-Last-the-hostiles-were-spotted-they-were-entering-the-lift-with-our-officers-guiding-them.”

Where would they be? Where would they go? If they had Jax and Lisa guiding them, where would they lead them?

If there were preset security booby traps aboard the Arete, Jessie hadn’t been informed—and she damn well should have been. If it were her as hostage, she’d have let them kill her before getting into a lift in the first place. But that wasn’t the point. She needed to think like them, not herself.

Jessie came up blank.

There was an option, and she didn’t like it.

“Lisa? Do you read me?”

“Ah, so, Lisa, is it? A pretty name for a… well, a fit lass, at any rate. Young Lisa Schultz cannot answer your comm at present.”

“What do you want, Palomino?” Jessie demanded.

“A meeting, first and foremost. End this skulking and… well… to be honest, this interminable walking. Your ship is far too large for its crew. I’ll be doing you a favor, taking it off your hands.”

Jessie came to a halt. She flopped back against the wall, banging her helmet. “All this… and you’re just a simple hijacker?”

“I may be many things, but simple is one to which I would not condone to stoop. Meet with me. Sit down and negotiate.”

This was back to psy ops. She needed to buy time for her people to implement their various plans. Trebla and Jomek’s explosives might be key to taking this out. She connected Trebla on mute so he could listen in. If she needed to be the bait for a room rigged with explosives, so be it.

“Fine. You’re holding a hand of aces. I can bargain. Where do I find you?”

“Blast me if I know. This ship is a Gordian knot. You there. Where’s a meeting spot fit for polite company?” In the background, Jessie could barely make out Junior’s voice. “(Dining lounge). Ah, you have a restaurant of some sort. Don’t play fancy on my behalf. I’ve long since learned that the best foods in the galaxy come from the unlikeliest of kitchens. Be there in… (take us about fifteen minutes to get there). Egad, really? Well, so be it. You shall meet us there, and we will discuss the terms of your surrender. No tricks, no traps, I must say it for form’s sake. The safety of your crew will be guaranteed so long as you can comply with that simple requirement.”

Damn, this guy loved to hear himself talk. That might be a way for her to buy additional time. “Not sure I can be there quite that quickly.”

“I suggest you run.”

Shit. Maybe the guy wasn’t so full of himself that it’d be a weakness she could exploit.

She ended the comm. There was one more individual she needed to check with, least of all to stop him from attempting to fight four damn megalodogs himself along the way.

“Grosstet? Grosstet, can you read me?” Jessie started out, mindful that if the fifteen-minute deadline wasn’t a hard line in the sand, at the very least, she needed to be close to on time. “Grosstet, this is a big deal. You’d better not be fucking sleeping through this damn klaxon. IT’S NOT DUCKS!”

Realizing that the klaxon was beyond being a help at this point, Jessie shut it down. The crisis was far from over; she just needed to hear herself think.

* * *

Datagoggles down, Harmony brushed aside alert after alert as they popped up. Unless someone specifically mentioned a medical emergency, every other damn thing on the Arete was someone else’s problem. She hadn’t done twelve years of post-secondary education in five, bore every charge of nepotism, suffered slings and arrows from those who held her mothers’ pasts against her, and altered the course of research at Harmony Bay just to abandon her daughter’s fate to… not to put too fine a point on it… a bunch of cute little rodents.

Chinochin may have been well-intentioned—she assumed he was—but he couldn’t absolve her of maternal responsibility so easily.

“I realize you have a tactical responsibility to remain secretive, but I’m coming to claim her. Where. Are. You?”

She switched channels again. This was the fourth ratatoret she’d contacted, and she had contact information for every last resident of the Arete.

“Tippitak… I know you’re a mother. You have kids on this ship yourself. I need to find Xrista.”

This time, Harmony got a reply. “Please-Dr.-Richelieu-return-to-Med-Bay-where-you-might-be-of-the-most-help-to-anyone-and-everyone-who-would-require-medical-assistance-We-have-Dr.-Chik-ta-here-with-us-and⁠—”

Harmony ended the comm. They had Chik-ta with them. Great. He would know better than to stonewall her.

“Dr. Chik-ta, this is Chief Medical Officer Dr. Harmony Richelieu. I am searching for my daughter, and I believe you have knowledge of her whereabouts. Please reply with your location immediately.”

While the doctor did, indeed, respond, all that came through was an unintelligible garble of caws, chirps, and squawks. Dammit! Among her innumerable professional tasks, her personal development plan did include learning basic conversational in-tik. At some point. When she had nothing better to do. Ideally once she’d unlocked the key to replicating and programming H-tech robotic medical drones and all she had left on her plate was finishing out her agreed-upon training of her in-tik colleague.

“Slow down, I can’t understand you. Listen, if you’re… on the upper half of the ship, chirp twice.”

A single chirp came back.

“OK… if you’re… on the starboard side of the ship, chirp twice.”

A whole, complicated series of in-tik noises, loud, fast, and clearly irritated, came instead of a useful reply.

Harmony’s aimless, forward-leaning march to keep herself from pausing long enough to get truly worried ground to a halt at the sound of a familiar voice.

“Mommy? Is that you?”

“YES!” Oh, praise be, they put Xrista on Chik-ta’s comm. “Where are you, pumpkin? I’ll come find you.”

“They said it’s scary out there and that I’m safe here. But you can’t be safe because you have to help people.”

“You-do-have-people-to-help-don’t-you-Dr.-Richelieu?” Tippitak cut in.

They were all together. All of them. All this time, not a one of them had said a peep in the background while she harangued them one by one.

Her mouth dry, Harmony realized that the ratatoret were a unified front here—and also that they were right. At best, she might lead the megalodogs right to their hiding place. Her search was a security risk. Harmony’s own peace of mind could get them all killed, Xrista included.

“Tippitak is right, pumpkin. It’s scary out here, but I’ll be brave as long as you’re OK. Be good. Listen to Tippitak.”

“I will, Mommy. I love you!”

“Love you too, Xrista.” Harmony cut off the comm. Then, after lifting her datagoggles to wipe her eyes, she made her way back to Med Bay.

* * *

Six small devices lay in a line on the floor. Different forms. Different materials. Roughly the same slapdash haste in their construction. All shared a common purpose with the one that had just blown up a few meters away.

From behind the shelter of an overturned workbench they’d tack-welded to the floor, Jomek and Trebla uncovered their ears and exchanged a speculative look through protective goggles.

They got up and peered over the workbench. The wall of the hapless vacant chamber they’d commandeered had been scorched and scratched but remained otherwise intact.

“Any idea on the yield?” Trebla asked.

Jomek already had the broom out, giving a hasty and perfunctory sweep of the path to and from the test site. “Who cares? Not big enough. You’re too much scientist, sometimes. Best part of engineering is ‘Who cares? It worked.’”

Trebla retrieved what they hoped might be a promising explosive rig. “Next up: two drill power packs and a plasma torch for ignition.” Aesthetically, this was his favorite of the bunch. With the long handle of the torch protruding, it resembled an old pre-spaceflight Earthling stick grenade like in the old flat holos. Unfortunately, it was also a manual trigger device, so to set it off, they’d had to wire up the thumb switch with a tethered detonator.

He set down the explosive gingerly and was unspooling the last of the signal wire as Jomek joined him behind the workbench.

Flick.

Trebla covered his ears as he triggered the remote switch with his lower hands.

Nothing…

Nothing…

The two engineers exchanged a worried look. It was a little soon to peek over and check whether anything was wrong. Maybe they needed to risk a datapad in the line of fire for a visual feed.

Nothing…

Nothing…

The room shook with the blast. Startling as the concussion was, it came as more of a relief.

Waving acrid smoke away from his nose and mouth, Trebla took a look. The wall was dented, and hot chunks of plastic casings had scattered everywhere.

“Too slow. Not enough boom,” Jomek declared.

Trebla nodded along with the assessment. This was always going to be hit or miss. Every design was new and untested, with the exception of the trick Jessie had taught him for rewiring a blaster as a bomb. That experiment was second-to-last in line. He’d seen them blow up, knew they worked, but was also aware that it wasn’t the highest-yield explosive in the galaxy.

Their next device in line was a hybrid.

In limited experimentation when determining safety protocols in working with H-tech power systems, Trebla had investigated the flammability of the transmission medium the haathee piping systems used. They were meant to transmit acoustic energy, but under sufficient laser pressure, he got the stuff to produce an exothermic reaction.

He’d only ever tried it with a few droplets.

As he stared through the clear plastic of a mouthwash bottle with a power pack floating inside, he wondered whether this would work at all—or if he’d used too much.

“Much work; little time,” Jomek scolded as he plucked the explosive from Trebla’s hands. The mechanics ambled over on three hands, placed it against the wall, and twisted together the wires that would start the overload.

Trebla ducked behind the workbench and clamped all four hands over his ears.

He waited. With his ears muffled, all he heard were the internal biological noises of his own body. The hiss of quickened breath. The wet gulp. His pounding heartbeat. Waiting for either a tremendous blast or a smaller one that splattered incompressible goo all over the chamber.

Next thing Trebla knew, he was staring at the ceiling.

Ears ringing.

Head spinning.

Eyes unfocused.

When he was able, he rolled over and climbed to all fours. Still struggling with balance and vision, he wobbled over to Jomek.

The elder mechanic lay on his back, sprawled out, a trickle of blood pooling beneath one ear.

“(Jomek?)” he couldn’t even hear himself. For whatever reason, he tried shouting. “(JOMEK!)”

The chest rose and fell. He wasn’t dead. Eyes still closed, Jomek lifted his head a centimeter before giving up and collapsing back to the floor.

Just as Trebla decided to find his comm and summon medical help, he caught a faint smile on his mentor’s lips. The gray-furred mechanic had his eyes open and a vantage that allowed him to peer past the workbench to the site of the test blast.

There was a hole the size of a human open to the adjoining chamber.

Jomek gave four thumbs up.

They’d found their megalodog killer.

* * *

To say that Charlotte landed the Tumbleweed was probably giving her too much credit. Eric wasn’t generally shy with kudos, so he didn’t feel bad denying her this little win. But clearly, the personnel aboard her mother’s flagship had more to do with them setting down safely in the hangar.

“Remember,” Charlotte warned as she approached the big button labeled in Trebla’s marker: PUSH TO EXIT. “I’ll need to do most of the talking. I know these people. And no nonsense. They may seem outlandish on the surface, but none of them got here other than by being capable and deadly.”

“Right. Got it.”

The foldy stairs unfolded, allowing a way off the Tumbleweed. Charlotte went out first and paused before descending the ramp.

“Wizard Charlotte, so good of you to join us,” a smarmy voice greeted her. Eric really wanted to see who it was, but like a minor character in a play, he wasn’t meant to take center stage and merely waited for his cue.

“What? The admiral wasn’t in the mood to greet me herself?” Charlotte countered.

A second, different, unfamiliar speaker chimed in, melodic and dripping phony sweetness. “My dear, you’ve been away so long. The admiral has made clear that your galaxy slumming has most assuredly rendered you uncouth in both smell and appearance. She has commanded you thoroughly bathed and properly attired before you see her.”

“Has she now? I daresay I’ve indulged less decadently aboard the Arete, but I’m freshly showered as of shortly before my departure—though I might be obliged for a breath mint. As for my attire, the dress is to my liking, and as an expression of my free spirit and whimsy, I expect her to accept it as such. However, if she expects me to dress for her, I would do so on the condition that these be removed first.”

“You know that won’t be possible, my lady,” the smarmy one stated.

“Well,” Charlotte declared in a huff. “Then I insist you bring us to see my mother at once.”

Oh! That was it! His cue!

Eric stepped out from his hiding spot hunched around the corner in the only plausible place to hide in a tiny little ship like the Tumbleweed.

Blasters rose. There had been more people out there than had been speaking, and all of them were armed.

“Who is that?” the sweet one demanded. Her voice matched the phoniness, not the underlying threat. She was a mop-top redhead wearing leather and feathers more befitting a stage dancing act than violence. Then again, that was the whole motif of the Poet Fleet as both Charlotte and Uncle Enzio’s old stories portrayed them.

“This is Eric. Eric Ramsey, ship’s wizard of the Arete and my beloved. Eric, these are my mother’s brainless ruffians.” She phrased it as a formal introduction.

Eric played along. “Pleased to meet you.”

“He is here as my protector and advocate. If the admiral thinks I came here unprepared or begging, she is one step closer to retirement than she realizes. We will see her presently. If, as I suspect, she sent you to delay because she has someone stuck in her, pry them out promptly or I’ll be forced to do so myself. You may escort us if decorum demands, but you will neither prevent nor further delay this reunion. Is that understood?”

“What she said,” Eric added, hands tucked in his sleeves.

“Is… that the chronomancer?” the smarmy one asked. He was a storybook villain from his waxed mustache and pointed goatee to his skull-and-crossbones chest tattoo. The tricorn hat failed to detract from the impression, but it did frame his villainy as distinctly nautical.

Charlotte breezed down the ramp. As promised, she didn’t let the assemblage stop her, and they didn’t seem intent on trying. She smiled without showing her teeth or raising her eyebrows as she passed Mr. Chest-Tattoo. “Ask me that again in ten years…”

Eric pulled one hand from his sleeve, and five pirates flinched away from him.

An intrusive thought chased him through the halls of the Look Upon My Works Ye Mighty and Despair as he followed in Charlotte’s trail.

These guys would be great in the Villain Intervention Program.

* * *

She’d come from the bridge. She’d checked in with Harmony in Med Bay. Now, the engine room was clear as well.

Soon her adversary was going to get suspicious if Jessie didn’t make it to the dining lounge. Showing up to that meeting was a death sentence, but the hope that she might was all that was presently staying the hand of the hijackers.

Her Plan A was falling apart for lack of coming together. At least her portion. A quickie text comm from Trebla that he and Jomek might have something was her tiniest shred of hope, at the moment.

Plan B had been catching up with Grosstet, but poking a head into his quarters revealed him gone, along with his weapon. If the whole crew died because he’d neglected to bring his comm, she’d ghost her way across the galaxy to haunt him on his homeworld.

Plan C was blowing up whatever portion of the ship it took to get Palomino and his dogs chewing on vacuum.

Plan D, showing up and dragging out negotiations as long as possible, relied on the dubious assumption that she wasn’t kibble for walking through the door to meet them.

For Plan E, Jessie would remain on the move, keep the invaders waiting, and hope someone else fixed this shit for her. It was bad captaining, bad friending, and bad commandoing. She only entertained it for the purpose of target practice shooting it down and feeling her resolve harden.

Plan F… Whenever Uncle Enzio caught her or her brothers formulating plans, he offhandedly joked that his Plan F was always Fire. Much as he annoyed her growing up, Jessie wouldn’t have minded Uncle Enzio’s help right about now. But he was dead, and her ship’s wizard was off on a couples getaway with her ship’s counselor.

Wait.

Jessie had another wizard aboard.

Hadrian hadn’t wanted to go back to Oxford after getting his testicles presented to him on a platter by a mere scientist.

Jessie had a potential for a Plan F, and she was going old school. Plan F would be Fire.

She had to browse comm logs on her TeleJack to find out where Makket had assigned him a bunk. It hadn’t helped that Makket had delegated the task to Chinochin, so the message came from him. But she discovered the location of Hadrian’s guest quarters.

It was seventeen minutes since Palomino had given her fifteen to meet up. With any luck, Jax and Lisa had contributed to delays on their end. By the time Jessie arrived at the young wizard’s door, she was nineteen and a half minutes from the start of her fifteen count.

She hoped it would be worth it.

* * *

When they arrived at Admiral Mom’s quarters, the escorts remained outside. Charlotte marched in with Eric following close behind.

The quarters were decadent in the extreme. Inlaid tile floors. Silk bedspreads. Wood furniture. Artwork of all manner decorated shelves and walls and little alcoves, mostly of an erotic bent. Beside the tub set into the suite’s floor, a barefoot woman with sopping-wet gray hair tied the belt of a thigh-length terrycloth bathrobe before turning to face them.

Eric’s eyes fell out of his head.

Figuratively. Not literally.

Though if he’d stared any wider, he might have managed literal as well.

“Mother, Eric Ramsey. Eric, my mother, Emily Dickinson Chisholm, admiral of the Poet Fleet.”

“I ought to have known you wouldn’t be back without a plan. Contrition never suited you.” In addition to looking like an older version of Charlotte, the admiral sounded just like her. “And I see that you’ve eschewed my invitation to tidy yourself before dinner.”

Eric wanted to point out that, while they were in no hurry, there was no need to stand there in a bathrobe. The two of them could wait while she took a moment to get dressed. But he kept quiet; this wasn’t his fight until Charlotte said so. It was like a relay race, and she had the baton, or a tag-team wrestling match where he wasn’t the one in the ring.

Or doubles tennis, and the ball had been hit to her side.

Or a two-person bobsled, and Eric was just the one who helped push and ducked in the back until it was time to brake.

“This isn’t a social call,” Charlotte insisted. “I’ve had my fill of—hold on a moment. Mother, dismiss your bathers.” She pointed to the water’s surface, where bubbles burst at the surface.

“They. Aren’t. Finished,” Admiral Mom replied coldly. “I was in the midst of a pleasant soak when I heard that you’re being petulant and leading Ulf and Adriannesta here at magical blasterpoint.”

“I think you are misunderstanding the dynamic at play here, Mother,” Charlotte said as she marched over to the tub herself. Her mother didn’t stop her from hitting a button that started a slurping noise from beneath the water. “I’m not here to beg or bargain. I wish Wizard Patroclus brought here at once. I want to be freed from these infernal shackles. And then, and only then, shall Eric and I depart to live free of you.”

Eric watched the water recede, then averted his eyes when he saw there were two whole people under the surface. He ought to have inferred that, but who knew what technology might be in rich pirates’ bathtubs nowadays. In any event, the people were nude except for some kind of science snorkels with the goggles blacked out.

“And he’s shy,” Charlotte’s mother scoffed. She flourished a hand at him. “You know I cannot abide inhibitions. Send him away, and we’ll have a talk about resuming your duties here.”

Eric wandered to the impressive view out the suite’s windows. “Oh, I’m not going anywhere.”

“He speaks! But this is a shabby plan, poppet. Beneath you. It simply reeks of desperation. I’ll have this one in shackles just like yours soon enough. When he can’t bear to witness your suffering any longer, he’ll obey just to see your agony pause. If you insist on keeping him, he’ll share your leash, and I’ll train him to be a proper Poet wizard—and lover.”

Charlotte smirked.

“What? No snappy comeback, poppet? Did your sojourn run dry your wit and blot the acid from your tongue? I employ twelve wizards on this ship alone. I can’t imagine how you thought this would end well for either of you. Best if you’d left your plaything at home, but it’s a boon to me.

“Unless he’s a gift?”

“Wizard Patroclus. Freedom. Departure. That is my offer, Mother.”

The admiral waggled her fingers dismissively as she made her way to a nearby wet bar—one of three in the room, Eric counted. “We had an agreement. Five years’ obedient service with no incidents, and Patroclus will free you from your bondage. You didn’t make it two. You shall be starting from a fresh slate, but the offer remains in effect.”

“I am amending the terms.”

“Are you, now?” The admiral attempted to snap, found her fingers too wet, dried them, and succeeded on the second try.

The adjoining rooms of the suite disgorged half a dozen wizards in a variety of colorful garb.

“If your little companion were any wizard worth reckoning with, he’d have noticed I was not in any danger. Perhaps he is an odd duckling and in some demand by Mars and Earth for his illicit tinkerings with occult forces.”

The wizards closed in tentatively, as if awaiting leave to pounce but ready for that order at any moment. One of them bore a rather stylish wooden box.

Realization dawned when Eric considered the size. “Oh, they brought the case to put away your bracelets!”

Charlotte’s mother smirked. “No, young man. Those are yours.”

The wizard bearing the box opened it to reveal a second set of the suppression bracelets. While the idea of wearing a matching pair had a faint hint of romance about it, Eric was not so foolish as to entertain the first notion of putting those on.

“No way.”

“How dreary and predictable,” the admiral told him. With a wave of her hand, one of the wizards stepped forward and clenched a fist.

Instantly, Charlotte fell to her knees, gasping in agony, too wracked with muscular contraction to even draw breath for a scream.

“STOP THAT!” Eric ordered.

The wizard loosened his hand, and Charlotte fell to her hands, panting for breath.

“That’s the first demonstration of the power I hold over Wizard Charlotte. She will obey. She knows she cannot resist. But you will comply as well, or she will suffer for your conduct.”

With renewed effort, the wizard—presumably Patroclus—squeezed his hand. Charlotte collapsed onto her side, eyes wide and watering but unable to even struggle.

Eric fought back a rising fury. They’d come in with a plan, and she’d expected this. He couldn’t stand seeing it, and his own tears needed wiping to see clearly as he delivered his ultimatum. “It’s my understanding that the bracelets will come off if this guy dies…”

Charlotte’s mother laughed heartily. “Full points for bravado. Patroclus, leave Charlotte be a moment and humble this one.”

“With pleasure, Admiral.”

Charlotte was left sobbing on the floor. Eric knelt to comfort her. “It’s all right. We’re almost done.”

“That much is true,” Patroclus taunted. Then, he began a chant in ancient Greek. Around the chamber, the other pirate wizards joined him, each cursing and chanting and invoking in their preferred languages.

Eric felt their presences clinging, pressing, dragging him down.

Marbles.

The word barely escaped his thoughts when six wizards around the room choked at once. Coughing, spluttering, spitting, a rain of colorful glass balls clattered to the tiles. As the six of them struggled to draw breath without inhaling one or more marbles, Eric helped Charlotte to her feet and guided her to the bed to recover. He sat beside her as Charlotte slumped against him.

“Where are all these marbles coming from?” Admiral Mom demanded.

Eric looked over. “I’ve never known where marbles come from, and I’m not about to start now.”

“I need to finish this,” Charlotte managed to speak in a whisper.

“If I stop the marbles, I think I can persuade him to—” But Eric caught himself. Charlotte was shaking her head.

On wobbly legs, she got up and stalked over to her tormentor. Wizard Patroclus was holding onto a cosmetics table for support as he added a stream of cheap glass to the expensive jewelry and tints on display. With both of them unsteady on their feet, Charlotte nonetheless pulled Patroclus away from the table and wrestled him to the floor.

Flat on his back, the wizard struggled to clear the marbles from his airway. Gasping and choking, physically feeble, the wizard could do nothing as Charlotte covered his mouth with both hands. Eric may have interfered slightly, pinning the wizard’s arms to the floor.

The gasping sounds cut off. Wizard Patroclus thrashed ineffectually. Then, after a few moments, he went limp. Perhaps fearing a ruse, perhaps out of sheer spite, Charlotte drew a ceremonial knife from the dead wizard’s belt and slashed it across his throat. Marbles and blood poured from the wound.

Eric snapped his fingers, and all the marbles went back to wherever it was where marbles came from.

The other five wizards panted for breath.

“I did that with children’s toys,” Eric pointed out. “There’s a theory that if you go far enough ahead in time, it loops around. Anyone here a minute from now gets to see dinosaurs.”

Panic shone on five faces.

The admiral gave the faintest nod.

Five wizards fled. The one with the box took it with him. Another with a ribbon-wrapped box left it behind.

On the floor by the dead wizard’s side, Charlotte gritted her teeth in pain.

“Are you all⁠—?”

“YES!” she snapped, gasping out the answer. After a moment’s struggle and sweat, she wrenched first one, then the other of the bracelets off. The first thing she did thereafter was throw her freshly freed arms around Eric. “We did it!”

Stepping carefully, the admiral retrieved the package and untied the ribbon. She withdrew a bundle of cloth and laid it out upon her bed. “I’d hoped that you’d wear this for dinner. You’ve had a long trip. The offer of a meal still stands.”

Charlotte pawed through the outfit. Her scowl spoke volumes.

“You’ve always been inexplicably prudish,” her mother explained. And when Charlotte held up the glossy green bikini top and then the diaphanous pants, he could see perhaps how Charlotte and her mother didn’t get along.

“I wouldn’t mind seeing what I look like in this,” Charlotte replied, sounding more like herself, albeit one with blood stains on her hands. “How about you wear it so that I can see.”

The admiral heaved a melodramatic sigh. “I suppose. There’s a room available for the two of you to wash up. Kimiko may serve the fleet’s finest sushi, but she’s a touch squeamish about human blood.”

“I could do sushi,” Eric suggested, drawing a scowl from the newly freed wizard. “I mean… this might be my only chance to get to know your mother.”

Of course, he hadn’t expected to get to know quite so much about Emily’s mother, but the pirate admiral shrugged out of her bathrobe without warning and got changed into the outfit meant for Charlotte. “What?” she demanded when the two of them gawked. “I’ll be lucky to make it to dinner at all, what with my hair in this state. Be ready in half an hour.”

With that, the admiral stepped around the corpse of Wizard Patroclus to retrieve an ivory-handled hairbrush.

Eric followed Charlotte out of the suite to find an escort waiting to take them to guest quarters.

Charlotte smiled.

* * *

As a child, Hadrian’s mother had introduced him to the idea of a blanket fortress. Constructed from bits of household furnishings ranging from couch cushions and kitchen chairs to the eponymous blankets, it could serve as medieval castle, military bunker, or lost catacombs per the whim of the day’s play. In more practical terms, it gave young Hadrian somewhere to hide when the cleaning drone ran its daily patrol.

Hadrian and the cleaning drone had never seen eye to eye, chiefly because the obsessive hemispherical techno-beetle possessed none.

The blanket fort provided solace, sugared in whimsy.

Today, Hadrian had employed blankets once more, this time with a more serious intention.

This haathee ship, this Arete, did not stock much in the way of flammable materials, nor had his private quarters been furnished with candles, incense, or even simple firewood. Had he intended at the time to remain, he might have received an allotment alongside the bric-a-brac requested via Makket and the Appalachia Colony quartermasters. Alas, he had not foreseen the first domino of this collapse.

Thus is was that Hadrian sat cross-legged in a circle of bedding. All the fabric had been doused in liquor—a substance available in abundance. His dampened hand, he’d already burned clean.

His vantage a few yards from the door afforded him what could only be surmised as his best potential to ambush whoever might come to slay him this day.

He had learned a trick or two.

The Convocation hated the Order of Prometheus. Every vile and counterproductive stereotype of wizards was embodied in the rampant pyromania and casual extinguishing of lives the order was known for. Yet by the same token, they were utterly essential. The backbone of wizardly security and overt power. The Convocation’s tribute to Earth Navy. The casually cleared throat when anyone raised a voice in anger to a lesser wizard unable to defend themselves. Far more young wizards sought to join the order than were ever accepted into their ranks.

Those young wizards practiced.

Stolen secrets. Overheard rites. Throughout the basements and catacombs beneath Boston, Oxford, Shanghai, Cairo… the would-be practitioners of the fiery arts gathered to hone their skills with fire.

Many minor injuries occurred.

The well-connected got these incidents brushed under the rug, sometimes as legal infractions, other times as literal ash to be swept up.

Hadrian had never joined these cabals of the aspiring.

He didn’t want to.

Wouldn’t need to.

The fire called to him.

It was in his blood.

Even now, with his life hanging by a thread and his flesh about to be devoured at any moment, blood begged him to light the flames. The wafting scent of the alcohol-soaked sheets and blankets asked for but a spark. Hadrian had more than a spark to offer, but that was all it asked.

He breathed.

Meditation eluded him, but the deliberate exchange of air with the room around him kept the rising panic at bay. Keep breathing. In. Out. Manage that for the rest of his life, and he’d be all set.

Gallows humor.

That’s what Hadrian had been reduced to.

Without warning, his door opened.

The blankets burst into flame, forming a protective barrier he’d never tested against anyone actually trying to kill him. But as he lifted a hand to direct those hungry fires to consume flesh, he realized that this was no invader.

“HOLY FUCK! IT’S ME! IT’S ME!” Jessie shielded her face with a forearm.

Hadrian recalled the flames. The blankets extinguished, only minorly scorched. “Apologies. I might not have recognized you except for the small patches of uniform showing beneath all that…” He lacked a proper word to describe her getup. Had a mercenary black marketeer but a single mannequin upon which to display their wares, Captain Ramsey might have performed admirably in such a role.

“Apology accepted. Now, get up.”

Hadrian climbed to his feet, scowling. “Is there an evacuation afoot?”

“Not unless you plan on evacuating some megalodogs through the hull.”

“I wouldn’t know how…”

“Well, you’re ship’s wizard at present, and I need all the firepower I can get my hands on. In this case…” She nodded toward the circle of damaged bedclothes. “… literally.”

He swept a hand toward the mess. “A measure of last resort. I had little choice but try something. I don’t know that I can be relied upon to⁠—”

“You’re with me. That’s an order.”

“But I don’t officially⁠—”

“An. Order!”

He was no officer. Hadrian had been lured here by Carl Ramsey to repay debts his father and grandfather had incurred. How easy it would have been to refuse, had his own curiosity and adventurous spirit not conspired with this woman’s father to drag him out here. He was a passenger. A dignitary wizard. An Oxford senior on sabbatical.

Something in the back of his mind knew that this same woman bossed around Eric Ramsey, ten times the wizard he’d ever be. And thus, through a transitive property of authority…

“Yes, ma’am.”

He followed as Jessie led them out into the hallway.

She girded herself in plastic and steel, fabrics so technological he had no proper name for them, and enough weaponry that she might start her own militia. Of course, she already had one. This ship was hers. A military vessel, no matter what Grosstet claimed were its origins. And he was part of that militia.

Hadrian was armed with magic. And he felt himself by far the better protected.

“Where are we going?”

“I arranged a meeting in the dining lounge to negotiate a surrender.”

Now it made sense. “You need me there to ensure you are not harangued into taking an unfavorable deal.”

“No. You’re my opening offer.”

“WHAT?”

“They get the fuck off my ship or you set them all on fire.”

“Oh.”

Despite her shorter legs, Jessie set a punishing pace through the ship’s corridors. “You got a problem with that?”

“I… I just don’t know that I can deliver on such a promise.”

“Those blankets say otherwise.”

Hadrian scoffed. “Inanimate. Judge a boxer by his thrashing of a heavy sack, why don’t you?”

Jessie stopped. So did Hadrian, especially since she’d taken a handful of his collar and pulled his face close to the glassy visor of her helmet. “Listen up, sad sack. You got your magic stomped on by the most powerful scientist you’ve ever laid eyes on, raised in a house with a wizard trained by your own grandfather. We’re about to go take on a con man and four megalodogs that couldn’t operate Harmony’s datagoggles, and they sure as FUCK aren’t going to stop a Convocation legacy brat descended from Merlin himself!”

She turned him loose with a shove and stalked off.

Hadrian blinked.

Then, he followed.

* * *

Mindy raced through the corridors at the controls of a grav sled. Uom’pe and Figgy clung to the railings in the back. Both were armed, for what little good that might do.

“What were you two thinking?” she demanded.

“Better. To. End. On. A high. Note,” the old tesud joked.

Figgy, baked to just shy of useless, grinned stupidly. “Last-minute checks off a list. Until we were forced to desist. A life worth defending; but one happy ending, most certainly wouldn’t be missed.”

“Order from Big Mum. All noncombatants is gettin’ got to safety. No ifs, ands, or whatever the bloody hell you two were on about.”

She’d found them in the hookah lounge, discovering new ways to fry their brains on the way out. It was a coin flip if they needed transport to a shelter or Med Bay. Considering Harmony could put just about anything back together—hopefully including a gaggle of disconnected brain cells—Mindy opted for security over screwing two heads on straight.

Even the concept of “shelter” seemed implausible. She’d never faced down megalodogs, but she’d seen enough holos to know she didn’t want no part of being between them and whatever they was after.

It had been radio silence a while now. Jess had too much shite on the brain right now to worry about this part of the operation. Mindy needed to take care of business or more people might get hurt—assuming the captain manage to get this mess sorted and they didn’t all die. Thus, she’d forgotten about her comm earpiece until it shouted suddenly, startling her into scraping against a corridor wall.

“MINDY! I require aid!”

Drascz! Shit! She sounded terrified.

“What’s it? Where you at, luv?”

The line between combatant and noncombatant was interrupted by a scribbled circle around the azrin.

“Starboard corridor level 4, Section 72-A. Bring a grav sled.”

“I’m piloting one now. How many you got?” Mindy’s mental inventory was already a mess, and it didn’t help none that the squirrels were playing real-life Chutes and Lifts in the walls.

“One!”

“Just you, or⁠—”

“Grosstet. He’s down… he’s…”

“Oh, fuck me.” Mindy slammed on the brakes. She hopped out, helped Uom’pe down, and gave Figgy a swat that got him to somersault off the flat bed and onto the corridor floor alongside the tesud. “You two, get behind the nearest door. I’ll be back. Injured first.”

Bloody hell. She hoped that girl was stronger than she looked by miles, since there weren’t no way Mindy was getting the big fella up here.

She slung herself back into the pilot’s chair and jammed open the accelerator. Hunkering down was half a feeble attempt at making the boxy contraption more aerodynamic and half not popping her own noggin off against the ceiling as she bobbed around the ship’s curvature in three dimensions.

Wondering what she might find upon arrival, it wasn’t… this.

Drascz knelt in a lake of blood, her fur more red than gray when she looked up at Mindy’s approach. Grosstet lay limp on his back, the source and center of the pool. His neck had been torn open, and Mindy didn’t really know how to tell the azrin that wounds like that… people don’t get back up.

“I’m sorry,” she said somberly as she climbed down.

Drascz was hearing none of it. She raced to the back of the grav sled, leaving crimson footprints and dripping all the way. She leapt aboard, rummaged in the little supply box tucked behind the pilot’s seat, and came away with the sled’s set of tie-down straps.

“Kitten, there ain’t no point tryin’. We gotta get you somewheres safe. Be time for… you know… dealin’ with this… once skies have cleared after the storm.”

Drascz had her by the collar. The look in her eyes… manic… feral… murderous… almost had Mindy thinking she’d been the one to tear the haathee’s throat out. “He’s. Not. Dead. Now help me!”

Unable to resist being bodily towed into the blood, Mindy splashed along, stumbling behind Drascz. Half the straps got shoved into her hands.

“He’s too heavy to lift. We’ll have to drag him behind the sled. Apologies in advance, friend. But I think you’re better off scraped up and in Med Bay than left here bleeding.”

“Oi, he can’t hear ya, Drascz, he’s⁠—”

“Daphne,” she insisted. “There is no Drascz. She is fiction. This blood is no concern of mine. A friend needs help. Nothing is more human than helping another.”

All right, then. Losing it. Happens to the best. Traumatic shite, no arguing that. If rescuing Drascz meant getting her to Med Bay for sedation herself, so be it. And if that meant dragging along a million kilos of dead haathee, so be it.

“All right. I guess under the arms, then, with—” A flutter of the haathee’s eyelids had Mindy jumping out of her skin. “Uaaaaggh! It moved!”

“He’s not going to crawl to Med Bay by his eyelids. Get helping!”

Mindy grimaced all the while as she reached under the haathee’s armpit and laced a cargo strap through. Desensitized to a bit of blood now and then? Sure. Loads of it? Yeah, sure enough. Practically swimming in the stuff? Now, that was a shore too far.

“You sure this isn’t bothering you none?” Mindy asked as they finished securing the haathee to the back of the sled. Drascz climbed onto the flat bed as Mindy took the helm, wiping her hands on her uniform shirt just to get them dry enough not to slip off the controls.

The azrin’s pupils were so wide Mindy wouldn’t have guessed her eye color had she not already known it. “I’m. Fine.”

Mindy took off, slowly at first, making sure they weren’t doing any additional harm to a guy who was just short of corpsey to start with. When she turned around to check on the haathee, she caught a sight that would haunt her.

Drascz crouched at the back of the grav sled, licking blood off her claws.

* * *

Jessie entered the dining lounge with her hands up and empty. Not that she wasn’t still armed a dozen different ways, but she wasn’t here to start a fight if she could avoid one. Inside, she spotted Jax and Lisa, hands bound at their backs, presumably by their own damn mag cuffs, perched on stools.

Around the central table, though none sitting at it, four megalodogs ate… well… everything.

The months they’d spent shoring up their food stockpiles and arranging sustainable supply lines… devastated in a matter of moments. Heads of lettuce lapped up like kibble. Fresh fruits, unwashed, unpeeled, unappealing, slid down greedy throats. Frozen slabs of meat crunched between powerful jaws before going down like ice cream to melt in those inferno stomachs the megalodogs were known for. Entire kegs of Grosstet’s beer guzzled like shots. Eric’s Snakki Bar reserves went in, plastic wrappers and all.

A lone, unbound human in tactical garb, silver haired and silver tongued, sat with his legs crossed and his back to the table, drinking coffee with a cup and saucer. “Ah, take a wrong turn?”

“I brought a negotiator,” Jessie countered.

“Your brother, I take it?” Palomino asked with a smirk. “Jon-gar, keep this upstart from working any magic. Good lad.”

A one-eyed megalodog ceased his gorging and regarded them with a cocked head. “They don’t smell alike.”

Jessie matched the pirate’s smirk with one of her own. “This isn’t my brother. This is Hadrian. And my opening offer to you is to get off my ship before he has to do something it’ll take a long while to repair.”

The mention of long times to repair reminded Jessie that Trebla and Jomek would be getting to work any time now on placing their improvised explosives on the other side of this floor. The utter racket of the giant canines’ gluttony was a far better cover for the work than her own meager voice, but she couldn’t have risked them going out searching for her, either.

“He may appear as the brawn of the operation, but let me assure you, Jon-gar is quite an adept. No mere boy wizard is going to threaten us. Bring him back for revenge when he’s old enough to shave.”

Jessie was all ready to jump in with an indignant response on the wizard’s behalf, but before she had a chance, the snuffling of four noses distracted the human conversants.

“Do you mind?” Palomino demanded.

“Smell that one,” one of the non-wizard megalodogs insisted.

“I’m drinking this coffee black so that I don’t have to endure the reek of your feast,” the pirate shot back. “I’m not about to begin speculatively sniffing humans. There is a time and a place for such explorations, but she’s not even my type.”

“Not her,” Jon-gar insisted, narrowing his one good eye at Hadrian. “Him.”

The other giant dogs nodded in agreement.

Jessie felt like she was losing the narrative here, but she also got the impression of budding tensions in the enemy camp. What could they possibly be smelling on Hadrian other than cheap, beer-scented cologne and maybe a permanent odor of paper books?

“I’m willing to bargain your cooperation for the safety of the remainder of your crew,” Palomino offered in an attempt to regain the spotlight.

Jon-gar was having none of it. He crept forward with surprising grace for a creature that size. He sniffed again, then nodded. Jessie imagined she could feel the test of wills taking place beneath her senses between the two very different wizards. “This one’s strong. Might be able to hurt us.”

“What, then? Are you cowards all of a sudden?”

Jon-gar continued as if his human partner hadn’t spoken. “Not going to hurt a The Brown, though.”

The others nodded.

A chill ran up Jessie’s spine. She finally understood.

“A what?” Palomino demanded. “What nonsense are you spewing?”

Jon-gar turned on his human companion. “Why did you have us attack a vessel with the blood of the First Speaker on it?”

“First Speaker?” Hadrian echoed. “No. I’m a Convocation wizard. Aspirant of the Order of Prometheus. You would do well to fear me!”

Shut up! Jessie willed. You’re going to ruin everything!

“I agree with the wizard!” Palomino snapped. “Well, all but the fearing him nonsense. Whoever you think he is, he’s not. He’s no one but one of Ramsey’s little lackeys. Snap his neck, and let’s see if that changes the good captain’s tune.”

“I have smelled The Sweatshirt,” one of the megalodogs claimed.

“As have I,” another agreed. “The First Speaker’s blood is definitely in this one.”

“We refuse,” a third stated firmly.

“How dare you, Charles?” Jon-gar asked. “How dare you bring us here to endanger a descendant of Mordecai The Brown, first human to ever communicate with the klemekoo and forever friend of Kubu the Rakur?” He turned—still facing ass-end to both Hadrian and Jessie—and addressed the wizard. “My apologies, young scion of The Brown. This is a violation of the Raiders’ Credo. We will take this one back to Poltid. He must answer for this.”

“That’s… it?” Jessie asked, incredulous. “You’re just going to leave now?”

“This was a mistake,” Jon-gar explained. “We must make sure no other raiders trouble you.”

Jessie gulped and nodded. The megalodog’s face was so close she could smell the carrion stench of a hundred or so Bananaberry Snakki Bars with each breath. “Thanks.”

“This is an outrage!” Palomino—or Charles, or whatever the hell his name really was—bellowed. “For what I’m paying you, I expect results, I expect obedience, and I expect⁠—”

“To be eaten before we reach Poltid if you don’t shut up,” Jon-gar told him. “Walk or be carried.” He turned to Jessie. “If you would, return function to the lifts and have someone repair our vessel, please? It’s not badly damaged; he rigged it as a decoy.”

Jessie nodded. Keeping her motions slow and deliberate, she lifted her TeleJack. “Trebla? This is Captain Ramsey. Change of plans. We’ve come to an agreement.”

“What kind of agreement?” the laaku teased. He was fishing for a keyword.

“Fuck’s sake. I’m serious. Do. Not. Blow. Anything. Up. Understood?”

“Gotcha.”

“Apparently, there’s an injunction against endangering Mort’s decendents. The meg—the klemekoo people don’t allow that. Get down to the hangar and undo the phony damage to the Greenwich. They’re taking Palomino back to Poltid.”

The defeated invader lifted his head. “I am Charles Ludwig Archibald von Habsburg-Lorraine. I’ll have it be known that you could have bargained me down to leaving with Charlotte Chisholm in custody.”

“Charlotte WHO?”

Before she could get an answer, Jessie got another comm, this one from Med Bay. “Got a high-prio casualty, Captain. Grosstet has been… well, I don’t know how he’s even alive, but he is. Find Dr. Chik-ta. Get him to cover any other casualties that come in.”

“Got it. Thanks, Harmony. I… I think we’re past the point of new casualties, but I’ll track him down.”

“I’m glad to hear your friend was not fatally hurt,” Jon-gar said, casting a glare at one of his companions. “He was very formidable. But… I cannot help overhearing… Was… was that Harmony the Harmony?”

Mind still whirling from the realization that Grosstet was in Med Bay, mauled by these very same klemekoo, it was hard to process the frantic wagging of four tails, all excited to meet a woman who’d been friends with Kubu when she was… well, probably close to Xrista’s age.

“Yeah,” Jessie deadpanned, resolved to just ride out the weird turn this hijacking had taken. “We can work something out.”

* * *

The face on the other end of the comm was familiar, even with the gray fur around the muzzle. She could paint it from memory, and earlier in life, during various artistic phases, Dr. Harmony Richelieu indeed had. Kubu had been the first friend she’d ever had—or at least the first one she still remembered. And who could ever forget a friend like that? One big enough to ride on. A talking dog (though she’d never call him that anymore) and a pony all in one big, playful, lovable package.

“You really should comm more often,” Kubu told her. In the background, his own grandchildren wrestled with a length of rope in a full-effort tug of war.

“You’re busy running a planet. I’ve got my research and corporate responsibilities.” The fact that she had more employees than Poltid’s entire population made it hard not to feel like she had the more important work. “Between work and motherhood, I’ve hardly got any time to socialize, let alone travel.”

“The offer stands. You’re VIHs on Poltid any time you want to visit. My home is your home. My planet is your planet.”

“It’s not your planet, my love,” Nakla called out in the background, drawing a snicker from the klemekoo speaker.

“I have heard many loud noises in my years,” Kubu explained. “But her ears are still very good.”

In the wrestling match, one of the little klemekoo puppies went sprawling, hitting his head and starting a yowl.

“I’ll let you attend to your little ones. Thanks again for taking that pirate off our hands.”

“He will be dealt with severely. It would have been worse for him if your haathee friend hadn’t survived. Don’t worry. The Raiders’ Credo has been updated. The Arete is off-limits.”

“I wish you didn’t allow them to raid at all.”

Kubu huffed. “Yes, but if I don’t, they’ll do it with no rules at all.”

She hadn’t seen what set the other one off, but now both puppies were howling in dismay.

“Good luck. Give the little ones kisses for me.”

“Same,” Kubu wished her.

The comm ended. Harmony sighed from her toes, allowing a moment of pure joy to seep through her.

A soft whuffling trumpet from Examination Room 1 reminded her that she had other duties.

“Coming,” she called out.

Grosstet lay facedown on the giant medical table, clamped in place by a veterinary sterile barrier—even stuunji-made models didn’t come close to fitting him.

“Let’s see how we’re progressing.”

The normally bloviating, exuberant haathee spoke in a whisper, which was still more talking than she might have liked, given that she’d recently put his throat back together from a leather jigsaw puzzle. “I am bored, and I am saddened by the noises the tiny dogs made.”

“Your hormone levels are probably wobbling all over the place…” She took a moment to check her speculation against the scanners she had him hooked up to. “Yeah. Most of your sadness is neurochemical.”

“That does not make the sadness less real…” the haathee whined.

“Maybe not, but it does mean I can counteract it.”

“Make the puppies happy!”

“Kubu’s working on that. A hundred planets away. In his own house. Taking care of his own grandpuppies. And you’re lucky you know the right humans, or those klemekoo raiders could have been the end of us.”

“I am confident…”

Harmony continued checking through a wide variety of vital functions, as much curious to watch the haathee physiology in action as she was monitoring the actual progress of her work. “I know you are. It’s one of your defining characteristics.”

But that was a sentence only partially finished. “… that young Hadrian would have prevailed.”

“Mr. Tap-Out wasn’t on my list of saviors for 2591,” Harmony retorted. She circled the table, pausing to boop him affectionately on the trunk as the haathee used it to tap away at a datapad with a game of Prox-Blox set to educational mode. It was Xrista’s datapad she’d let him borrow, after all, after roughly his thirteenth complaint of boredom, and it hadn’t quelled all future objections to his confinement in Med Bay.

“I am commodore… this is unseemly.”

“I outrank you until you’re well enough to return to duty.” For a guy with such an acclaimed memory, it was his third attempt to pull rank on her. “Them’s the rules.”

“Those are,” he corrected.

“My language. I know exactly how and when to break the rules. We each have a job to do here. Yours is to recover from what should have been fatal trauma and blood loss.” She’d never again complain about the thousand liters of haathee, antigen-neutral blood plasma taking up space in her storage area. “Mine is to figure out exactly how your body is able to replenish those nanoscale drones and replicate the process. I’ll be harvesting a batch once they’re done putting you back in working order.”

“I hate you…”

“Nope. Just the neurochemicals. Frankly, your agitation is throwing my hormone infusions off. I think it might be better for both of us if you took a nap.”

“I’m not sleepy… My contortions make it impossible to get restful… I require my blanket…”

“Fortunately, I have a solution to that, too.”

Harmony plunked a beta wave inducer into his head and powered it up. The haathee skull was twenty times as thick as a human’s, but that only required an adjustment of the focal length of the waves. The bone itself was entirely permeable.

Grosstet was asleep in seconds.

As Harmony sat down to monitor the detailed scanning of the haathee’s microscopic physiology, she witnessed hundreds of thousands of robotic drones circulating freely. Sooner or later, she’d backtrack them to their mysterious origin.

Then, and only then, would Dr. Harmony Richelieu’s work aboard the Arete truly begin.

* * *

“Who does your tile work?” Eric asked, leaning over the arm of his seat to admire the floor beneath them.

The admiral sighed wearily. “I can provide you the construction firm. I do not recall it from memory.”

Eric nodded as he dipped his nigiri in ketchup and popped it into his mouth. He’d had to specifically request the ketchup, which seemed shabby for an otherwise top-notch dinner service. “Thanks. All the floors of the Arete are metal. Or dirt. But the dirt’s just in the arboretum, and nobody lives there. I think. Actually, I haven’t checked in a while. Occasionally sneaking in to ripen an apple or two is about the only time I get in there these days. Um. Don’t tell anyone I pilfer the odd fruit now and then?”

“Your secret is safe…” Charlotte’s mother assured him. She turned to her daughter. “You are unaccustomedly quiet. Perhaps I should not invite your gloating, but I’m frankly surprised to be breathing unobstructed.”

Charlotte hadn’t blinked in the past five minutes, though she’d been eating along with the two of them. Her first blink brought her back to the conversation. “To what end, Mother? Kill you, and this murderous mummery will turn to me as your heir. I’ve been unable to organize my thoughts for some time. I’ve spent the soup and entree courses setting things back to rights.”

“My brain is very cluttered,” Eric added.

“I’d never have guessed,” the admiral assured him.

Charlotte dabbed daintily at the corners of her lips. “Mother, you have been gracious in defeat, and I must admit that I would look quite fetching in that ensemble, even if I’d have advised the addition of pants underneath. Simply not my preference to parade around displaying myself. But I think it is time to discuss the terms of our arrangement.”

“Depart, I believe, came next. I should have you know that there was a miserably inept attempt to capture your ship while you were—unexpectedly—not present.”

Eric huffed. “I thought you could keep people from robbing our ship in your own hangar.”

“Not that ship, dearest,” Charlotte corrected.

“Oh.” Then, realizing the only other ship to which she could be referring, he added, “What did you do to the Arete?”

“Sadly, nothing. It ought to have been my new flagship. If I could not get Charlotte off it, I’d have had the whole vessel for my own. She is destined to succeed me, and she has much to learn in the meantime, things that cannot be learned by happenstance and kismet.”

Eric chuckled. “You’d be surprised what kismet can manage.”

The admiral raised one eyebrow. “Indeed.”

“Mother, I shall not succeed you. I would not ask Eric to slay everyone aboard this vessel—though I strongly suspect you couldn’t stop him. Any future attempts to capture, coerce, or recruit me to this life will result in us having another conversation—our last. Should I, through subterfuge, mishap, or simple expiration of the sands in an hourglass, find myself inheriting your pirate fleet, I shall see it disbanded, sold off for scrap, and the proceeds invested in Blasterburger stock.” The admiral winced. “However… should you wish to continue acting as my mother, I have terms of my own.”

“Do you, now?”

“When Eric and I depart, you may have either one hug or kiss (no tongue). You may contact me aboard the Arete or wherever my travels may take me to wish me well on holidays or my birthday. Presents, if one must, may not be sentient creatures⁠—”

“You could have any number of willing slaves, my dear. They would form queues to serve you…”

“You will—today—release Margery from service as your bather. Don’t think I didn’t recognize her in your quarters.”

“She betrayed me. I only kept her alive this long to force you to execute her.”

“Have you slain her yet?”

The admiral’s facial muscles tensed. “No.”

“Then we’ll take her with us. Drop her wherever. You’re not to seek her out for retribution.”

“This arrangement is turning decidedly one-sided,” the admiral argued.

Eric wished he hadn’t just popped half a gyoza into his mouth. “I could make it zero-sided.”

“We’re the side, dearest,” Charlotte informed him. “Mother is feeling left out. Very well, have you any terms? Bear in mind that I shall refuse anything I find unacceptable—a novelty for you, I’m certain.”

The admiral stood and retrieved a stylish, lacy tricorn hat, clasped her wrist behind her back, and paced. “I have listened to your demands and taken time aplenty, in my darkest hours, to contemplate this unthinkable outcome. I have heard all the options I am allowed, and I shall opt for none of them. You shall receive no well-wishes or gifts. I shall not mete out the barest of affections with an eyedropper. You come to my flagship parading around with this infantile virgin just to humiliate me, murder one of my chief magical advisers, and reject your legacy.

“You are my greatest failure, my greatest disappointment, my greatest hope dashed before my eyes. Here are my terms: You will forget that you ever bore the name Chisholm. Your false ID was good enough to fool Earth Interstellar and Oxford admissions; you may continue using it indefinitely. I had thought your teenage rebellion to be merely a phase, but now I see I ought to have smothered you in your sleep at age thirteen and saved myself a decade of trouble.”

“Mother…?” Charlotte asked.

“Who?” the admiral inquired, making a melodramatic show of looking behind her. “No mothers here. I’ll have to start that arduous process from scratch, now.”

“You’re too old, Moth—Admiral.”

“None of your concern, I’m afraid.” She glanced at the table. “You appear to have finished your meal. Begone.”

Eric, still chewing, scowled.

“What about—?” Charlotte tried to ask.

“Your traitorous lady’s maid will be waiting for you in that dismal little conveyance you arrived in.”

Charlotte stood, her face a porcelain mask. She extended a hand toward Eric without ever taking her eyes off the admiral. “Come along, Eric. I think we’ve overstayed our welcome.”

Eric popped one last nigiri into his mouth before taking that hand and fleeing the private dining room with her.

Out in the hall, no pirates awaited them as an escort. Luckily, Charlotte appeared to know the ship well enough without help.

“That was brave. You took it well.”

Charlotte kept a brisk pace, cutting off the blood flow to his hand, though Eric said nothing about it. “One of the benefits of having my powers back… I need not experience my emotions externally.”

When that sunk in after a second to process, Eric squeezed back as hard as her superior grip allowed.

All through the corridors to the hangar, the Look Upon My Works Ye Mighty and Despair was a ghost ship. Not a soul to see them off or ogle or spy on them.

“I… Well… you remember how we talked about never needing to get married or anything mundane and traditional and all that?”

“I do. And I don’t think this changes that.”

“No-no-no. But I’m just saying… what with kind of not having a mother—officially, at least—I just… well…”

“Whatever it is, say it. I’m not so fragile.”

“I bet my parents would be OK with you calling them Mom and Dad.”

She was silent. When Eric glanced over, counting on her hand to guide him without careening into walls, he noticed the tear running down her cheek. With a slight sniffle, she gave a faint nod. “I might like that…”

* * *

The discovery of a terrified and disheveled woman in the back of the Tumbleweed upon their return to the hangar broke Charlotte’s already shaky resolve. The two of them hugged and cried and swapped apologies for all that had taken place. While their bags had been returned, the ship was so cramped for space that they decided to leave their suitcases behind.

Stuff could always be replaced. They had a person to bring.

Margery, it turned out, knew how to pilot a starship.

“You do the flying,” Charlotte told her.

“Yes, Mistress,” Margery replied without hesitation, lowering her head in the only bow tight spaces allowed.

“Please, Charlotte is fine. Lotti, even. I’m no one’s mistress, not even his.”

They all scrambled around. Margery got the pilot’s seat, of course. Eric hunkered in the little cargo area in back of the seats so that Charlotte could have a chair and more easily converse with her old friend.

Not even automated systems contacted them. The blast shields simply opened for them once they were all sealed up and airtight. The force field let them through.

Margery’s hands were unsteady on the controls. Eric guessed that it had less to do with not knowing how to fly a ship and more with her harrowing last few hours.

“Thank you, Mist—Lotti,” Margery said, smiling to cover her near mistake. “I was having my last meal. I…”

“Anything good?” Eric butted in. “Because the food on the Arete is hit or miss if you don’t like laaku machine food.”

Margery appeared flustered.

“It’s all right,” Charlotte assured her. “Eric’s very dear to me. You can trust him. He’s the only reason either of us is free right now.”

“Free…” Margery gave a nervous chuckle, shaking her head. “Two hours ago, I was breathing through tubes up my nose, chained to the bottom of a tub. I reek of bath salts and can still taste your mother’s⁠—”

“Not my mother,” Charlotte cut in. “She’s disowned me. Emily Chisholm is the admiral of the Poet Fleet. I am Wizard Charlotte Ophelia Webber, ship’s counselor of the haathee vessel Arete. There is no relationship between us.”

“Where are we headed?” Margery asked, taking a hint and changing the subject. “At… well, I see by the indicator we have 1 AU max, and even that’s not operational.”

“Don’t worry,” Eric said, then—before anyone had a chance to wonder why they might need worry and, in a self-fulfilling prophecy, start to—he dropped them into astral space.

Margery screamed.

Eric apologized.

Charlotte hugged.

When everything sorted itself back out and the tech came on, Margery shook her head at the dashboard. “It can’t find us. It can’t even tell what astral depth this is. If… this is still astral space and we didn’t end up in hell.”

“The red is more common lower down,” Eric reassured their pilot. “As for not finding out where we are, I have a thought.”

“Eric…” Charlotte warned. “This had best not be hare-brained. This is neither the time nor the place.”

He caught the subtle emphasis on time and realized she didn’t want any plans that involved chronomancy. Since becoming a respectable member of the crew back on the Arete, she’d been quietly trying to get him to cut down. Little did she know that he’d sped up his miso soup at dinner just to cool it.

“Nothing like that,” he promised. “I may be no great shakes as an oracle, but I think we can ask for a little guidance.”

“What are you humming?” Charlotte asked. “I can’t identify the melody by your rendition.”

Eric explained.

He worked out the adjustments to the lyrics.

He employed backup singers.

After two rehearsals, he added magic to the mix, and the three of them implored the universe to guide them, with Eric beatboxing and providing the invocation as Charlotte and Margery sang a duet of a modified Dionne Warwick classic.

“Do you know the way to Arete…?”

* * *

The Arete felt smaller than it had when he’d arrived. Hadrian stood in the hangar with his bags packed. The Greenwich had departed, and in its place, the little Tumbleweed rested. Most of the crew, it seemed, had turned out to see him off.

He endured a receiving line of awkward hugs and stilted well-wishes from those to whom he’d barely spoken in his time here.

Chik-ta he patted gingerly on the back.

Figarus offered a handshake and a nod. “Teach Earth a thing or two.”

Lorenzo clasped his wrist.

Drascz pulled him in for one of those short-armed hugs with elbows tucked, holding onto the other’s shoulders, that was peculiar to North American private schools.

Mindy did the combination handshake/backclap. “Say ‘hullo’ to the old country for me.”

Jomek took his hand in his two upper ones and bowed his head. Some kind of old Atik blessing, if he recalled his Earth-like history lessons.

Uom’pe’s hug lasted too long.

Makket and most of the other ratatoret indulged him with the species’ compromise of two fingers and a thumb for handshaking purposes.

Wizard Charlotte offered the faintest of approving nods. Ever since her return, he could feel her presence, cold and hard and without the first hint of an edge snag, like a diamond made of human spirit. He didn’t dare look her in the eye. Pedigree or not, she was a graduate and a member of the Order of Morpheus. Even if he trusted her—a dubious stance at best—it would be a professional discourtesy.

Wizard Eric flung himself around Hadrian’s neck. He was forced to stoop or support the mystical savant’s whole body weight. “We hardly got to know one another on account of you being so busy doing actual work here and then I was gone for a bit and klemekoo threatened the whole ship and you stepped up and protected Jessie and everyone and I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you but if you ever decide to come back I’ll make sure they don’t touch anything in your quarters, all right?”

“I…” Hadrian didn’t know how to respond. The idea that there was a place for him here struck him weirdly. He had a future ahead of him. On Earth. Or Mars, if he tracked his rebel mother down. Power. Prestige. Luxury. That he might weigh every option among those and decide that this—this shabby retrofit castoff from a mighty but distant xeno-empire—might somehow be his choice seemed ludicrous. But he could at least demur graciously. “I don’t know what my future holds. I’ve got the best part of a year to see.”

Grosstet loomed. He dropped to one knee. “I HAVE YOU TO THANK FOR MY VESSEL REMAINING A HOME TO ALL.”

Captain Ramsey saluted. As Hadrian awkwardly waffled between a nod or returning a salute or what-have-you, she switched up on him and wrapped him in a hug. Unlike her brother, she had the sense to wrap her arms around his chest, where at least he could return the hug properly. She whispered into his ear. “I know you could have taken them.”

He knew as well.

In the moment the megalodogs recognized his scent, he could see it in Jon-gar’s one good eye. They were outmatched. Shamanistic magic had its limits, and Jon-gar was a raider, not a great spiritual master. When they identified his ancestry, their outrage—or at least Jon-gar’s—was feigned.

They saved face.

Rather than be destroyed. Rather than roll over and surrender. Rather than lose everything they had worked for, they used that pretense to turn on their handler.

With the social necessities clear, he made his way over to his ride.

The Security Schultzes intercepted him. At the boarding steps.

“You’ve got clearance for Earth. Not Orion. Not any Earth-loyal colonies. Not even Luna,” Jaxon Jr. told him.

“I’m not the one you need to inform.”

Lisa snickered. “Yeah. Ya says that now, but out there in the Black Ocean, if you change your mind, that’ll be that. Don’t. Just head to Earth. Them feet get cold enough, holler and we’ll hoover you up again. No harsh feels.”

Hadrian nodded and climbed inside. The passenger seat awaited.

“Ready to go?” Margery asked him. She was an utter vision. Though haggard upon her return from captivity, a few good meals, a fresh change of clothes from Charlotte’s wardrobe—a lucky coincidence, them being identically sized—and a new outlook, and she was a new woman.

“I am. Proceed.”

Deft, sure hands flicked through a ritual of technological preparations. Despite watching, and the faint remnants of insufficiently washed reminders written beside a few, the blur of motion bewildered him.

Trebla’s voice came from the dashboard. “That repair to the star-drive’s got maybe two or three trips in it. If it turns out it’s got less than one, I assume you can handle transits?”

Margery tapped something, then nodded that Hadrian was clear to reply.

“I am familiar with manual travel.” He’d never done it, but he was familiar.

“Then you’re clear for takeoff. Arete out.”

The little Tumbleweed rose without any sense of motion. It drifted forward, sank through the hangar’s central aperture, and flitted away from the Arete.

With the pull of a lever, they hopped down into astral space. Even overcharging the original unit to allow 2 AU travel, they were barely a tiptoe in the water.

Hadrian breathed a sigh. It had seemed like he might never make it off that vessel. “I wish to express my thanks for chaperoning me back to school, Miss Brennan.”

“No need to be formal. We’ve got four days ahead of us. These chairs recline, but that’s about all the room we’ve got. We’ll be eating, relieving ourselves, all that… just maybe get used to the idea that ‘formal’ isn’t an option until you set foot on Earth.”

“Well, apologies in advance for all my upcoming affronts to your sensibilities,” he joked.

Pale gray space stared back at them from the windows.

A constant hum from the ship and their breathing were the only sounds.

The chrono on the vessel’s dashboard had a prominent display of their remaining travel time: 98h37m with an ever-updating count of even the remaining seconds.

Hadrian cleared his throat. “I… suppose we have one another for entertainment on this journey. Perhaps an exchange of tales?”

“I’ll go first,” Margery volunteered. “A bunch of months ago by now, I helped a friend sneak away in the night from her mother’s clutches. When said mother discovered my involvement, I was punished. I was restricted from certain activities, required to perform others. My hormone regulator was hijacked and given some… frustrating settings. I was still being punished when Charlotte showed up with Eric.

“That was meant to be the end of my torment. Admiral Chisholm was planning to force Charlotte to flog me to death.”

Hadrian swallowed, suddenly aware just how easy a life he’d had. He’d heard stories, of course, but never in person, and certainly never as the lone member of such an audience. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I… uh… just… sorry, I guess.”

Margery took a deep breath. “It’s all right. Charlotte… she did something. Disconnected the memory from the feelings about it. I can look back, objectively see it was horrible, but I’m not… I guess… I guess I’m OK?”

“That’s good to hear.”

“And your doctor fixed my hormone regulator.”

“That’s… also good?”

“OK, either you’re not picking up some signals here, or you’re not interested and being polite. I haven’t had sex in half a year. We’re in this little tub for four days and change. All you have to do is say the word ‘yes.’”

“‘Yes’?” Hadrian ventured tentatively. He’d heard so many rumors about the decadence of those Poet pirates. He didn’t quite dare say “no.”

She reached over. The backrest of Hadrian’s seat fell to a forty-five-degree angle. “Best we’re going to do.” Margery climbed over to his seat. Feet and elbows and knees and shirts all tangled.

Hadrian lost sight of the dashboard chrono, and Margery had her back to it.

They let time slip past unobserved.

* * *

“Captain’s log. August 29, 2591. We’ve received word that the Tumbleweed successfully delivered Hadrian The Brown to Earth. Our wizard friend only missed his first few days of classes; I presume his academic career can handle the blow. As for Margery Brennan, she was taken into Earth Interstellar custody as part of a plea agreement. With any luck, she’ll get full protection and never be heard from again under that name.

“In local news, Wizard Charlotte is now actually a wizard. She has tentatively been reinstated as ship’s counselor, but I don’t know whether I’ll be able to sanction that long term.”

Jessie ended the entry there. Certain matters would stay off the record, even if no one ever checked these logs but her.

The two of them had been remarkably forthcoming—after the fact. Bringing back a prisoner had made their trip to the Poet Fleet hard to omit.

Charlotte Chisholm.

The alias Webber had better hold up.

Jessie browsed through Earth Navy records, and the images they had on file for the pirate admiral ran back decades. Enough decades that the family resemblance was a blaster to the face. When Palomino—or Habsburg-Lorraine—had called her by name, Jessie’s first instinct had been: granddaughter. But the admiral apparently had Charlotte late in life.

No records existed of a Charlotte Chisholm in any galactic registry. Entries for Charlotte Webber dated back authentically to the era of her birth, but to anyone who knew better, there wasn’t a word that wasn’t fiction there.

Would Jessie continue attending therapy sessions with this woman?

Now that she was a wizard again?

Now that Jessie knew her identity?

Eric had sworn up and down that she wasn’t a threat. Without Hadrian around, he was the only one who could make that statement true.

But at her core, was Charlotte any different? Jessie had examined her relationship with her father in a new light. She’d identified her insecurities so that she could recognize when she was acting out of fear rather than knowledge. She’d been sleeping alone more and more often and been OK with that.

Jessie had even been drinking less.

Well… still a lot. But less was relative, after all.

Would she continue seeing Wizard Charlotte regularly? Jessie supposed she’d find out at 0900 tomorrow.

Her ready room console emitted Drascz’s voice. “Captain, comm from Appalachia Colony.”

“Trouble?” she inquired. There was never going to be a good time to drop everything and race across the galaxy to defend the little independent outpost.

“I’ll… uh… I think I’d better let them explain.”

“Put them through,” Jessie ordered as she buttoned the collar of her uniform and gave her hair a quick comb with her fingers.

The screen on her desk flashed on. “Governor—” Jessie cut herself off. This wasn’t Governor Nikrat, but it sure as hell looked like his office in the background.

Staring back at her was a cosmo-young woman with light hair that could have been any mix of platinum blonde and gray. The suit was Earth-cut and her blue-marble pin boded ill. “Captain Ramsey, I’m Aileen Oslo, newly appointed governor of Appalachia Colony. I thought it was a good time to have a talk.”

“Congratulations, Governor,” Jessie replied, unsure how to handle the protocol here. Was she expected to attend an inauguration or something? Was this a gift-giving occasion? “The Arete is always happy to hear from our friends on Appalachia Colony.”

The new governor tented her fingers. “Yes. I’m sure. However, the terms of your agreement with the previous administration are now invalid.”

“Invalid? How?” Jessie demanded. For fuck’s sake, if this had been ye olden days, the ink on that treaty would still be drying in the sun.

“Earth policy forbids any economic sanctions or blockades and most certainly does not allow for any colony to exclude Earth Navy from orbital space.”

Oh.

Shit.

“You crawled back to Earth?”

“Crawled makes it sound like we went begging. Earth welcomed us home. All humans are Earthlings if you go back far enough. The Martians are well-meaning dupes. Patriots, even, in their own misguided way. But independence was always a foolish dream of isolationist misfits like Nikrat and his cronies. If the Arete returns to Appalachia Colony, Earth Navy will be alerted immediately. Any of your people found planetside will be arrested and extradited to Earth. We don’t want trouble from you. Stay away. Am I making myself clear?”

Rather than reply verbally, Jessie drew her sidearm and pointed it at the screen. She had the satisfaction of seeing Governor Oslo duck involuntarily before she fired.

A few seconds later, Drascz rushed into the ready room. “Is everything all right?”

“Minor disagreement. We’re not welcome on Appalachia Colony, it seems.”

“Shall I put in a repair request with Engineering?” her comms officer offered diplomatically as she followed Jessie onto the bridge.

“No. I’ll mention it to Jomek in person. Don’t need an official record on that one.” She sat down at the helm and entered coordinates.

“You mind me asking where we’re headed?”

Jessie finished nav calculations and altered course. Then, she climbed into her command chair. “Eyndar Empire territory. Fuck Earth. Fuck Mars. And to hell with the League of Independent Planets. If we’re going somewhere we’re not wanted, let’s go somewhere we’re really not wanted.”

And where she’d be free to fire back at anything that pissed her off.

All right. This was the point where Jessie decided that she’d be keeping that 0900 appointment, after all.

* * *

Far off, in League space, in a little neighborhood bar in the human immigrant section of New Garrelon, a father and son shared a beer.

Well, each of them had their own beer.

Actually, they were on their third apiece by this point.

“It’s all right,” Ben said, clapping a meaty hand on his old man’s back. “You can crash at my place.”

Carl shook his head as he stared into his beer. “First time I’ve been kicked off the ship since Jessie showed Amy the nude holos of that groupie that followed the band for a while. What was I supposed to do? Delete them? That was art! And by one of our only fans.”

“You had to expect some blowback. I mean, I’m sorry and all. But all I did was get born. She shouldn’t be mad at me.”

“She’s not. She’s mad at the situation,” Carl explained. He’d known Amy his whole adult life. He felt confident explaining her brain to a—well, if there was a familial relationship between her and Ben, she was maybe a stepmom. “And since she can’t kick a situation out of bed, here I am. And thanks for the offer, but I’ve seen those migrant housing units. Even if I took the bed, it’s more comfortable on the Whitechapel.”

And that was saying something. The Schultzmobile was built for practicality. Hose downs after prisoners and orgies alike. Sterile steel surfaces. The washroom should have been too tiny to echo but somehow managed anyway.

“With my back? I couldn’t survive a night on my own couch,” Ben joked.

Carl wagged a half-empty pint glass, sloshing the contents with a practiced hand that didn’t spill a drop. “The one she should really be mad at is your mother.”

“The real one or my grandma?”

Carl gave that a moment’s consideration. “Both. Anyone but us. I didn’t choose to be a dad. Well… I mean…”

“Just the kids you knew about. I gotcha.”

“If I’d only known…”

“Grandma knew all along. She could’ve come clean before I was born.”

That was a sticky question. What would he have done at the time? A couple years older, and he could have whisked May Belotti away to a life of outlaw adventure among the stars. Clearly, that hadn’t been in the cards.

Rather than draw any conclusions, Carl threw back the rest of his beer and ordered another round. The stuunji keeping bar for the human clientele gave a nod. Glaa Fon knew Carl was good for his tab. Maybe when his stock deal for a chunk of Harmony Bay came through, he’d buy the place out and give everyone a fat raise.

Bar ownership seemed like a noble hobby for a billionaire.

Trillionaire?

He hadn’t even gotten to the point of explaining that little windfall. Didn’t want to get Amy’s hopes up if it fell through. Boards of directors could be nasty organizations, and 5 percent of their company was nothing to sneeze at.

And once he was filthy rich, Carl would have women throwing themselves his way. Amy couldn’t help but be impressed by the sheer volume and quality of the gold-diggers he planned to shoot down. More shooting down than in his piloting days, that’s for sure.

“Carl? Dad?” Ben was snapping his fingers a few centimeters from his face. “Hey, there you are. Lost you for a minute. Think this is the last round tonight. Let’s get you to bed, OK?”

Carl leaned away as a hand came for his beer. He chugged it, then allowed himself to be robbed. “No wasting beer we already paid for.”

“It’s just beer.”

With one of his arms draped across Ben’s shoulders, he used the other to wag a finger. “Donchu-dare say that. No… no son of mine wastes beer.” Then, he remembered that one of his sons was Eric, who always seemed to leave half of one whenever they drank together. Constantly cleaning up after that kid. Jessie and Ozzy… those two knew how to drain a glass.

Didn’t need Ben turning into another Eric.

Galaxy only needed one Eric, and Carl had nudged them right up to the limit.

The immigration board housing was closer, and Carl was in no mood for extra work. He fell asleep face down on his eldest son’s couch.

* * *

In the middle of the night, arbitrarily assigned aboard the Arete, Dr. Harmony Richelieu worked quietly at a terminal in her lab. On the floor, Xrista slumbered on one of the doggie beds the ratatoret had picked up from Appalachia Colony. With the addition of a pillow, it was just big enough for the girl to sleep curled up.

Xrista had insisted she hadn’t been scared during the klemekoo hijacking attempt. She hadn’t even seen the fighting or any of the klemekoo themselves. But she also hadn’t wanted to sleep away from Harmony ever since, preferring this suboptimal arrangement over a bioresponsive soft gel mattress available on the ship. Even the medical beds, unoccupied at present, were too far for her liking.

Harmony humored her daughter, confident that, in time, the phase would play itself out.

On her display, she reviewed scan after scan, different angles, different cross-sections, different spectra, as she worked to unlock the mysteries of the tiny factory for even tinier robots.

Eventually, she’d located it in Grosstet’s pelvis. The size of a human thumbnail, it treated the robots like an addendum to the lymphocytes in the bloodstream. It drew metals from the body… likely dietary supplements that would be administered to patients bearing such a factory, and it spat out a steady stream of miracle bots.

It also programmed, coordinated, and monitored the bot swarm.

Removing it from Grosstet’s pelvis would have been a step too far, and she didn’t know what the loss of it might do to him.

But she was beginning to understand.

Scans of his other metabolic systems during her search had led her to a number of fascinating conclusions.

Haathee should only have had a natural lifespan of sixty or seventy years. Every test, every anatomical analog, every risk factor and DNA marker and metabolic reading agreed.

Also, based on muscle fiber analysis and total muscular volume, he was at least thirty percent stronger than he should have been based on previously observed feats and his pre-Arete Games evaluations.

What accounted for his phenomenal memory and lightning-fast language adaptation? The brain was a harder organ to measure, but Harmony suspected that the nanobots played a role there as well.

Decentralized life support.

Metabolic optimization and enhancement.

Increased cognition.

These bots weren’t an all-purpose first aid kit. They weren’t just an emergency cure for nearly any injury.

She was looking at the next phase in the evolution of mankind. The cure for death. The barrier between machine and biology. If she could get these things communicating with her datagoggles, she could monitor her own biology in real-time. At that point, she might install optical implants and get the system linked to those. From there, it would be a simple matter to program the body not to reject any implanted technology. Hybridization would be inevitable.

Harmony gazed down lovingly at the girl curled up on the bed with the little doggie logo on the side.

Motherhood had given her life’s work a clear purpose. She would change the galaxy for that girl.

She would change what it meant to be human.

* * *

Merlin’s beard, it felt good to be back to normal again!

A week and a day. He’d have catching up to do, but Hadrian The Brown wasn’t irreparably far behind in his studies. Now, he’d reached the weekend, and studying could wait until the daylight hours returned.

Hadrian and a few fellow seniors had gone down to a new pub within walking distance from campus. The Belching Bear showed some promise as the new popular watering hole for undergraduate wizards. His throat was sore from drinking songs, and a committee of three, all arms across shoulders, steered through the streets on the way back.

Hovers weren’t allowed on campus, least of all right outside the dormitories. A delivery now and then wasn’t unheard of, but a blacked-out limousine blocking the student entrance was beyond the pale.

“Come on now,” Peter bellowed, and Hadrian winced as the beer-soaked complaint issued from right beside his ear. “Get that rotten barge off the lawn!”

The doors opened.

Hadrian hadn’t known what to expect. Definitely not two wizards in Earth Empire livery. A man and a woman. Each wearing a golden helmet. Each with robes cut off at the shoulder with separate sleeves tied on that started at the elbow, allowing them to both hide their hands and show off impressive biceps.

Each carried a sword sheathed at the hip.

Order of Athena.

“Hadrian The Brown,” the woman called out. Within seconds, Hadrian was standing alone, his drinking companions having vanished faster than the head blown off a pint of beer. “Please come with us.”

“What’s this about?” he demanded. No point in denying his identity after having to wrangle the Convocation into admitting it.

“This is about you coming with us,” the male wizard stated firmly, and he could feel the smothering press of two wills keeping his magic in check. The two Athenians approached to flank him.

Fire lit in Hadrian’s palm, despite their efforts, as the haze of drunkenness burned off. He narrowed his eyes. “You’re going to have to do better than that if you expect me to come quietly.”

The pair stopped. The woman spoke. “I am Wizard Alejandra of the Order of Athena. By the command of Khosrau the First, Emperor of Earth and all planets home to humankind, you are to appear in his presence without delay.”

Hadrian stared.

The emperor… wanted to see him? “For what purpose? Have I done something?”

Hadrian remembered that his great-grandfather had died at the emperor’s hand. The Brown line had grown thin. He had cousins with Brown blood in their veins but who didn’t bear the name. Someone interested in ending the patriarchal line had only to slay him before he fathered children.

“Emperor Khosrau will tell you, or he will not, as is his will. Wizard Astarius and I have our orders, and we didn’t question them. Get in the hover.”

In no galaxy could Hadrian have been unobserved in this moment. Windows lit as the standoff continued. Pedestrian traffic, even at this late hour, was not inconsiderable. Egad, Peter and Nigel wouldn’t have fled into the night from the doorstep of their own dormitory.

Aware of his audience, Hadrian snapped his fist closed, and the flame extinguished.

“Very well.”

Wizards Alejandra and Astarius went around opposite sides of the limousine. Astarius herded him in from the near side while Alejandra blocked him from sneaking through the far side as if Hadrian were some petty rapscallion.

They lifted off as soon as the doors were shut.

“Can you tell me anything at all? Speculation, even?”

“Speculation is a dangerous habit in our line of work,” Alejandra pointed out. Hadrian caught her fidgeting in her seat.

“Am I making you nervous?” he inquired. He couldn’t even remember who’d given him that advice, but pointing out that someone was uneasy around you tended to amplify the effect. And fear was a powerful tool if he needed to combat these two. Then again, had he wished to become an outlaw and shrink from Convocation and Earth authority, he’d recently given up a prime opportunity to do so.

If Hadrian had to speculate, his time aboard the Arete had to be at issue here.

Alejandra stilled her body. “That little stunt made us look bad in front of a lot of aspiring young wizards.”

“You shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Astarius added. “We’re not your enemies. There’s no need for displays like that.”

“I’m a mess,” Hadrian admitted, changing the subject before he said something that started a fight back here. His blood was already running hot. “Will I have a chance to wash up? Maybe a change of robes?”

“I can’t tell you what he wants to see you about, but I can tell you this much,” Astarius said. “Emperor Khosrau is no wilting flower. He hates ceremony and pretension. Showing up reeking from a pub crawl will do you better than primping and preening and smelling like apricots or whatnot.”

“It wasn’t a crawl. We were breaking in the snooker tables at this new place called the Belching Bear. Opened and closed it. Come to think of it, what time is it in Boston?”

“The emperor keeps late hours.”

“You’d have to stay quite a long while to keep him up.”

There wasn’t time for a nap. The limousine arced up to orbital space and back down on the eastern seaboard of North America within half an hour. Penned in between his escorts, Hadrian didn’t even get the fun, map-of-Earth view when they were high enough.

But they did catch up with the waning sunlight in Boston.

Despite attending school on Earth, Hadrian wasn’t well traveled around the home globe. The Oxford environs and the continent, to be sure, but he’d only been to Boston once, and that was to petition for his name change.

And that trip certainly hadn’t involved a visit to Faneuil Hall.

Wizards Alejandra and Astarius led him to the door, where Wizard Vincente, the emperor’s right hand, took custody of him.

“You shouldn’t worry,” Vincente assured him. “Emperor Khosrau was quite clear on that point. You are in no danger here, and you are neither in trouble nor liable to come to any.”

The skeptic in Hadrian pondered whether someone who offered no cause for worry should be so keen to reassure him. That sounded like the motive of a man with ulterior motives.

The imperial palace was abuzz with activity of all sorts, but nothing felt tense or out of place, merely the bustle of a busy imperial seat going about its routine.

Vincente offered neither freshening up nor refreshment of any sort; he didn’t even inquire whether a young man recently back from the pub could use a stop by the washroom before his audience.

Fill a man with beer.

Present him before a terrifying despot.

It was a recipe for mopping up imperial floors and discreet services from the palace laundry staff.

Stairs and hallways. Hallways and stairs. Hadrian tried to reconcile the layout with historical images of the place he’d seen, but it had been so heavily remodeled and restyled that he failed utterly. But the attempt distracted him along the way.

“Here we are. Allow me to introduce you.” Vincente used magic to sweep open a pair of grand double doors. “Emperor Khosrau, may I present Hadrian The Brown.”

Hadrian stepped tentatively inside, and the door swung shut behind him.

A tingle and a shiver marked the sealing of a barrier reinforcing that door.

“Don’t mind the ward. We need to talk. Privately. And now we can.” Emperor Khosrau looked like the images of him, but those images, flat and posed, portrayed a stern, overbearing ruler. This flesh-and-blood version appeared relaxed, casual, borderline slovenly despite his finery. His close-fitted suit was half unbuttoned. He’d rolled the sleeves to the elbow. By Hadrian’s judgment, two days’ stubble darkened the emperor’s jawline.

Hadrian bowed. “Emperor Khosrau, I’m⁠—”

“Fuck off with that shit,” the emperor snapped, but not angrily, just annoyed. “I didn’t drag you all the way here to kiss my boots and polish my ego. I’ve got people for that.”

“Why, then?” Hadrian dared to ask.

Khosrau grinned. “That’s more like it. Have a seat.”

Two steps toward the high-backed chair the emperor indicated, Hadrian thought better of it. “Um. Your people grabbed me on the way back from a night at the pub. Is there any⁠—?”

“Pisser’s right through there. Seen its share of beer, so you won’t confuse any of the plumbing.”

Hadrian scurried into the emperor’s private washroom to relieve himself. As his bladder relaxed, the rest of him grew a case of the jitters. Sobriety settled over him in earnest, and he realized that he was alone with the man who’d killed Alastair The Brown—and so many others.

When he exited the washroom, the emperor had already taken the other seat. Hadrian joined him after receiving a nod of permission.

“What was it like?” the emperor asked.

“What, specifically?”

“Getting out there among the stars. Deep in the Black Ocean. Just you and a mismatched silverware drawer of galactic-grade vagabonds. On your own with half—well, more than half—the galaxy against you. What did it feel like?”

Unsure how to answer, Hadrian opted for the truth. “Terrifying. Bewildering. I never knew where I stood or what I should be doing. I… I don’t know whether anyone liked or trusted me, though I feel like maybe that changed right before the end.”

“When you graduate, would you go back out there?”

“Where? To the Black Ocean?”

“The Arete specifically.”

Hadrian shook his head. “Not if I had any prospects at all here on Earth. Is… is that what this is about?”

Rather than answer him, the emperor popped from his seat. “Why does it feel like I’m the only one who likes it out there?”

“Pardon?”

“Rhetorical. But it plays into a larger point. Do you consider me to have the more enviable position? I mean, between the two of us.” The emperor rummaged beneath his wet bar and came out with a can of cheap, Martian-brand beer that no pub on Earth would dare serve him.

“Also rhetorical?”

“No. I want an answer. Do you consider me better off than you?”

If all his exams were this easy, Hadrian could have earned his degree freshman year. “Of course.”

“Why?”

“You’re emperor.”

“What’s so great about that? Come now. I want a damn list. Be thorough.”

Hadrian gulped. Somehow, unseen, there had to be a headsman’s axe poised to strike. Why else get him to sing the emperor’s praises to his face? “You’re the most powerful wizard alive. You… have the fealty of Earth and, let’s face it, nearly every colony worth setting foot on, with the exceptions of Mars and maybe Barnard’s Star—not that I’d care to visit either, personally. You can make laws by decree. You have a harem of beautiful wives.”

“Ha!” Khosrau scoffed. “Skin-deep, I assure you. But I’ll admit, it’s less a bother than I expected. So, you think you’d enjoy being me?”

“With all due respect, Your Majesty⁠—”

“Bah! Enough Majesty. Just call me Khosrau. And no respect. Straight, unvarnished truth. If I hear that from you, I’ll return the favor.”

“Yes. I… I couldn’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t. Dominion over all of Earth has been a dream too far for conquerors all throughout history. What wizard hasn’t wished for that kind of power?”

“What wizard, indeed?” Khosrau dissolved the beer can in an impressive display of tightly controlled Promethean Fire. He retrieved two more cans and handed one to Hadrian.

They cracked them open in unison, and both drank.

“I don’t understand. Are you offering me some kind of position?”

“Yeah. This one.”

Hadrian blinked. “Who would accept me as Emperor of Earth?”

“Who’d know? Except Vincente… he’ll have to know to smooth things out for you.”

“Everyone would know!” Hadrian protested.

Khosrau shook his head. “Job comes with the body. It’s only a few years older than yours, and the liver’s broken in.”

“Even if I look like you, no one will believe I’m Khosrau Blackstone.”

“They believed me.”

“But you ARE—wait. What? Are you not Khosrau Blackstone?”

Khosrau shook his head. “Have another drink.” Hadrian took another long chug. The emperor used the time to remove a cloth covering from a glass case in the corner of his chambers. Inside, a book propped on display, nailed shut with iron spikes and bound in chains. “If you ever need any inside info about Khosrau Blackstone, here’s the man himself.”

“Is that…?”

“Yup. Bound his spirit there. Constant torment. Very happy to help for even the slightest reprieve.”

Hadrian backed away. “Why? Wha… who… who are you?”

Rather than answer directly, the false emperor levitated the glass case off the pedestal and laid a hand on the book. It emitted a muffled scream. “Years ago, I was visiting Earth for some sordid business that was not germane to this discussion. While I was here, the uprising broke out. My estranged wife, rest her soul, answered the call to defend Earth from the imperialists. She fell in battle to this sniveling piece of SHIT!” He slammed a hand down atop the cover of the book, eliciting an even louder attempt at a scream.

Hadrian listened in horror.

“I didn’t find out in time to do anything of actual use about it. But I enacted Necronomicon levels of vengeance. From there, I simply carried out the remainder of the imperialists’ plans.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because the alternative was burning this planet to the ground. Cockroach infestation, the lot of them. I’ve since softened on the species a little. Humans aren’t all bad. Just most. And most of that most aren’t worth the trouble of killing.”

“How do I play into this? At all? I just don’t see it?”

“There’s a young wizard—not much older than yourself—who may hold the key to bringing my wife back. You know him, I believe.”

Hadrian shook his head. “Eric would never teach you chronomancy.”

“Why not? I taught him everything else he knows about magic. Least he can do is return the favor.”

“You’re… Enzio Stiles?”

“I was him for a while, but I was no more Enzio Stiles than I am Khosrau Blackstone. The would-be emperor died because he killed my Nancy.

“I’m Mordecai The Brown.”

Hadrian froze, mind and body.

A missing piece of a puzzle whose very existence had nagged at his thoughts, never fully comprehended.

His grandfather approached. “You can have the empire. I’ll finish college for you. Bring me around any time you need advice. But once I’ve gotten your professional life on track and my empire running smoothly, I’m off to the stars.”

“I don’t understand,” Hadrian protested. “You have it all!”

“Soon, you’ll have it all. I never wanted it. Dumb as it sounds, I conquered Earth by mistake. Got full of piss and vinegar and did it out of spite. Right place. Right time. The damned planet was falling one way or another. I just happened to bully enough corpses out of my way to catch it. Now, I hand it off. Rest assured, I’ll take good care of this body. But once we swap, it’s mine. Understood?”

“I…”

“No takebacks. The adulation and fear of whole star systems will buoy your personal power. Vincente knows how the whole operation runs. I’m giving you the keys to the empire, and all I want is another crack at life and a chance to maybe, just maybe, bring back Nancy. Even I know that’s unlikely to happen. But I haven’t been truly happy since I was last in the stars.”

“This is a lot to think about.”

“And right now, I’m your emperor. Make a decision. Yes, or no? Do you want unlimited political power and more magical power than you’ve ever wielded? Deal comes with a palace and four wives; taking them’s nonnegotiable.”

No lottery in human history had paid out such a prize. Hadrian could hardly believe his good fortune. Believing that his notorious grandfather had cheated death… somehow, that came as less of a shock.

There was, of course, only one answer.

“What do I have to do?”

Mordecai The Brown smiled. “Easy. Just look me in the eye.”