The flight to Ynncha went smoothly. They had one lightning-quick stop at a grotty little station that probably survived only due to pirates having need of it, and had a brief radio chat with another asteroid dock in passing.

Both confirmed that, yes, the freighter had passed by. The lead it had was on the worse end of their early estimates. It was slower than the Ranger ship, but still quite quick for its size and age. The second confirmation had Lesi assuring them that they could catch up, but it would definitely be a close thing.

Zamm was anxious. Not for his own sake, Saketa knew, but for the captured villagers. She saw less of Lesi, as the woman busied herself in the ship’s bowels. And the three girls did what they could to stay distracted, by taking advantage of the ship’s entertainment options. At one point, Emma even found the spirit and energy to dance to music. But they were nervous.

Saketa repaired the gashes in her suit, using a jar she’d brought from home, did her calisthenics, and meditated. It was all she could do for now, and so she did it. The sword was her balance, and with it she walked between the great energies she’d learned to tap into, and came out the other side ready for more.

And then they arrived at Ynncha. The notorious Gangster Rock.

Its sun was old. Not the point that it was starting to die and expand, but enough for the light that reached it to be weak. As Zamm had said, there was no real government, but being so close to Scorchspace meant there was little in the way of large-scale planetside conflicts. Everyone had to be on alert to dangers from the void, and so small fleets patrolled in relative harmony, and large ground-guns were pointed skywards.

Saketa had never been here before. But it was a frequent topic in the stories that Wardens brought back with them to Kalero, either through direct conflict, or as a dark, insidious influence in wider troubles.

Ynncha was too dependent on imports to be truly anarchic. But it was still a place where people who did not flag important connections could easily disappear, without anyone batting an eye.

“What a vacation this is,” Zamm mused, as he steered them on a drift course towards the planet itself. “New experiences. New people. New places. And what lovely places they are.”

His humour hid, though not really, nervousness. From what she’d come to learn of the man, she suspected it had to do with the vulnerability of not being able to bolt from trouble. The ship needed a quick charge, and a cool-off. If something went badly wrong, they simply didn’t have the capacity to retreat out of the system. And certainly not to blast on ahead, after the freighter.

They started receiving all the usual mess of signals one got while approaching a decently-populated world. Warnings, advertisements, coordinates, and just directionless radio chaff on a slow, slow course into nothingness. The usual response was to set the computers to blocking out the irrelevant nonsense, and signal back for a docking space.

“Is there something in particular that is bothering you?” Saketa asked.

There was an extra pinch to his eyes that hadn’t been there earlier.

“That ship,” he said, and tapped a screen, at a little dot surrounded by numbers, in a sea of other little dots and their numbers.

“What about it?”

“Around the time I picked it up, and they in turn had a chance to pick us up, it started a direct drift towards the planet. It had a good lead on us, but it hasn’t landed. It is just drifting back away, via a different route. It is the sort of thing you do when sending a message to the surface.”

“You think Captain Qwern has allies here?”

“Just about any evil can potentially be traced back here, from what I understand,” the Ranger replied darkly. “There is no limit to what the syndicates have gotten tied up in. This close to Scorchspace… it’s not like any half-sane entities are going to invest in the place. So it’s just underworld stuff. An entire planet’s worth of it.”

He turned to look at her.

“You… sense things. In a way that I can’t understand, and you refuse to elaborate upon-”

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“It is less a refusal and more an inability. Because as you said, you can’t understand.”

“If you say so. But do tell me if it is telling you anything right now.”

She didn’t need to sit down and meditate to have an answer for him. Because she had already been keeping careful track. In ways no one who wasn’t an adept could understand.

“This IS a bad place,” she told him. “As people experience it. There is a lot of discord here. Suffering, fear, want, cruelty, danger. But you knew that already. For something relevant to us…”

She closed her eyes and tried one more time to grab the slippery fish that was her vague sense of dread.

“I think there is something here. Danger, specifically to us. But it is faint. There are different ways to interpret that. Perhaps… perhaps it is a weapon drawn, but not aimed.”

She opened her eyes, and looked at the planet itself. It wasn’t a very pretty thing. The dim sunlight meant scarce vegetation, and substantial polar ice caps and widespread glaciers over bleak mountains. Even the cities were fairly under-lit, compared to typical metropolises. Perhaps it was to save on power. Perhaps the locals just appreciated moodiness.

Their message reached the surface. A counter on the ship’s instruments ruled out all doubt. And yet any kind of response was oddly slow in coming. Saketa was starting to suspect they were simply being ignored. Then came the rejections. ‘No vacancy’ was the most common excuse, when people even bothered with those.

One by one, sometimes two by two, or more, the docks denied them landing. And trying to force the issue would get them nowhere. Saketa still considered it, as a desperation ploy, or perhaps the option to outright steal a ship and put Zamm at the controls. Just long enough to catch up with the freighter, and finish this whole task.

And then, finally, they got one green light, complete with directions. There was no voice or face or even images attached to it. Just barebones text, and numbers. They had their charging station.

Supposedly.

“One more little threshold,” Zamm said under his breath. “One last little hoop to jump through.”

“Let’s hope there’s no dogshit on the other side of it,” Lesi said, voice echoing out of the engine hold.

“Let’s,” Saketa agreed.

Zamm flew them towards the dock.

# # #

“Yes, Konno, what is your complaint?” Qwern said as he saw the man approach.

“Man, don’t be snide,” Konno replied.

“You are here to complain,” Qwern told him. “Let’s just get it out of the way.”

He hadn’t really intended the bite in his voice. Not as such. But he was tired, and the moment of truth with Chief Brals was nearing. The prospect was fraying nerves, slowly but steadily. And he really wasn’t in the mood for this.

“It’s the freaks you brought on board,” Konno said.

“I think we brought little else on board at that last stop.”

Konno clearly wasn’t in the mood for that, himself.

“You know what I mean! Those… cartoon savages!”

“I sure hope one of them isn’t passing close by right now,” Qwern replied dryly.

It gave Konno a slight flinch. A quick flash of irritation then passed over the man’s face, before he pushed on. A bit more quietly than before.

“No. They are sticking to the main body of the ship. They are, I don’t know, preparing. Or something. They are chanting, drawing blood, and drawing images on floors and walls.”

“They do that. Leave them to it.”

“Th-”

Konno threw his arms out in a fit of frustration.

“They are wigging everyone out, Qwern. They are weird, and they are vicious. We have three men in the infirmary. And four men missing from the roster entirely, in case you forgot.”

“Just tell people not to provoke them. Let the Muans do the work I hired them for.”

“Oh, I’ve been telling people to leave them. It hasn’t been easy; some guys want to gang up and get back at them. But I feel we have had enough casualties for one job, so-”

“Yes, Konno, yes we have!” Qwern snapped. “And I don’t mind throwing some expired, uncooked meat at feral animals to keep things from getting even worse! You saw what the Warden did in an urban area. And on the bridge, during her little pop-in. What do you think she’ll do in the hallways here? Look, we ran into an unexpected complication, and I am dealing with it. This is just what it takes. So quit whingeing at me, and let’s just both see this through.”

“I’m not whingeing,” Konno whinged.

“And the specialists I hired aren’t acting at random. So, good. Great. Things are as they should be.”

He rubbed his face and took a deep breath.

“Look,” he then added, in a more even tone. “I don’t have any kind of answer to Chief Brals. Because unlike all the other factors in play, he has warships. This needs to go smoothly. So… just stay cool, give the Muans their space, and help me get this done, so we both have a future in this business. A future at all, in fact. Got it?”

Konni sighed, aggravated but defeated.

“Got it,” he grumbled.

He left, and Qwern was free to get back to his worrying.