“Hey Flea!” Gilgamesh said as he walked into the cockpit. He smacked the top of the doorway arch with both hands on his way in.

“Wussup big man?”

“Cap wants to know the ETA, my brutha.”

“Tell the captain that the more he hassles me via you, the further and further away our quarry slips.”

“Say what?” Red Ten had slipped in quietly behind Gilgamesh.

Oops, thought Flea. “Oh, hey there Captain. I was just telling Huge A’ Mess here that we should be coming up on H1 any minute now.”

Red laughed. “Uh huh.”

“Hey Cap,” said Gilgamesh, “why haven’t we sent a dakine to Command? I’m sure the General will wanna know we found them.”

“Well, let’s make sure we found them first.”

“Captain,” said Flea, “I could see the outlines of their bodies in that scan, and there’s no mistaking Ishtar’s lower half.”

“You must get real lonely up in here, Flea.”

“C’mon Cap,” said Silhouette. She was just outside the doorway poking her head in. “Ishtar’s hot. You can’t give him flak for noticing that.”

Red turned to Silhouette and gave her one of his faux stern looks. “I can give Flea flak for anything I want.”

“Give Flea flak,” said Gilgamesh. “That’s a mouthful.”

“Ishtar’s a mouthful,” said Silhouette.

“Ya’ll know what’s full?” Flea said. “This room. But amen, Sil. Amen.”

She reached into the cockpit and they bumped knuckles.

“He’s right, kids,” said Red. “Clear out. Let the grownups work.”

“I’m sure they are,” Silhouette replied, “wherever they’re at.”

“Okay, Flea,” Red said when the other two were deeper into the ship, “how sure are you?”

“It’s them, Cap.”

Red smiled, then nodded. “Cool. That’s cool. I know they’re just one team…”

“But they’re not just any team.”

“No. No, they’re not. And bringin’ them back would heal a lot of wounds.”

“True dat, Captain.”

“I mean it, Flea. We bring them back, morale’s gonna be a lot better. ‘Cos all of Albion took a hit when we lost that battle.”

Flea started feeling nervous. “Fo sho, Cap. Fo sho.”

“So, I want you to take what I’m about to say in stride. You saw them floating in space, saw traces of their radiance. Did you see any sign of Speck?”

Flea’s stomach tightened up. “I mean… If they’re alive...”

“Flea. Harbingers died in that fight. Harbingers. And they went to the Verge, where the Archeus Knights came from. I’m not saying he’s dead. But he could be. Flea, you’re my boy. You’re one of the bravest fighters I know. I’m saying this because I need you sharp. There’s few things as dangerous as false hope. So I need you to be as real about this as you can be.”

Flea tried to suck down the stone rising up his throat. “Okay, Cap. Okay.”

“You jumpers are a tight clique. And Speck is a legend. He don’t know it, but he is.”

Flea laughed, but it was all nerves. “Yeah. Yeah, both them things you said is true.”

“First time I saw him fly through Thummim, I was like... wow.”

“Man, one time I saw him take this big ole’ tugboat through and he did a back flip. He went through both rings in one maneuver.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

“Heh heh, yeah. He’s the stuff. But he might be gone, Flea. He might be gone. I need you sharp, so be ready for it in case he is.”

“Cap, I saw those knights. I saw what they was doin’. I know I cracked once, but it won’t happen again.”

“That was a long time ago, Flea. You’ve lived it down a dozen times since.”

“Thank you, sir. I’m just sayin’ that I know we in deep.”

Red put his hand on Flea’s shoulder and squeezed. Flea felt a thousand times better, even though the truth was that he had assumed Speck was alive and was just now realizing how unlikely that was. His proximity alarm saved him from his thoughts.

“Okay, this is it,” he said over the intercom.

He saw Red before he saw them. He followed close, keeping an eye on the captain in the shuttle. He was jealous of the team they were rescuing, having heard about the printers on the newer jumpships. The clunky old shuttle Red flew in wasn’t half as maneuverable as the new printable craft, making the precise positioning needed to rescue people stranded in space extremely difficult.

He followed as close as he could, then held back. The jumpships were somewhat large for their crew and passenger capacity, due to the nature of even Albion designed wormhole generators. For all of Eno’s advances, they still operated on the same basic principles as the jump gate network the rest of the galaxy depended on for most of their superluminal travel.

Flea tapped his vector controls, then feathered his port cone thruster, nudging the ship a little closer but keeping clear of the shuttle. A couple more nudges, then he stopped. Speck might have gotten closer, but Flea was only the third or fourth best pilot in the fleet. And most of his skill came from smuggling in a stolen quantum folder. Once the cost and power usage were added up, the only appeal of those vessels was that tracking their FTL jumps was prohibitively hard to do. The Harbinger jumpships were a different animal altogether; built for combat as well as commuting and designed with precision maneuvers in mind. Flea took to them quick, but sometimes he felt like he’d hit his ceiling early.

Red banked the shuttle below the team. It couldn’t have been easy, given that they were spaced in every direction, but he managed to carefully drop below Revol and place himself in the middle of them. Flea watched anxiously as the shuttle remained perfectly still for what felt like a very long time. Red would be adjusting his controls to keep the shuttle in a relative position to them all as they slowly drifted. Sweat beaded on Flea’s brow. He wiped it with the sleeve of his flight suit. Ishtar was turning over end, and that had him worried. She would have stopped herself. For that matter, none of them were responding to the captain’s hails. In fact, they weren’t showing any signs of consciousness at all.

The rear door to the shuttle opened. Red came out slowly, dragging a tether behind him, then jumped first for Catalyst. He managed to get him hooked to the tether fairly quickly, which relieved Flea.

“Hey,” Sil said quietly.

“’Sup.”

She sat down behind him to his left and leaned forward. “How’s it goin’?”

“Cap’s moving slow and smooth.”

The space around Red Ten glowed bright blue as he propelled himself to the shuttle.

“Must be nice to be made out of light,” Flea said.

“Whaddaya mean?”

“Isn’t that what radiance is?”

He saw her shrug in the reflection of the window.

“What’s your blood made out of? It’s not just water, is it?”

He nodded. “True.” Then he turned towards her and smiled. “I thought you was made of light because of how much you shine.”

“Ha! Whatever. Watch the captain, you creep.”

He laughed, then looked back out the window. Red was trying to hook Ishtar before she drifted too far away.

“Nimbus,” red said over the comms, “grab the other shuttle and come out here. I don’t wanna take any longer than we have to.”

“Aye, aye, Captain,” said Nimbus.

She was a better shuttle pilot than Red, and was out there right away, hooking her tether to Revol.

“I wonder why they’re knocked out,” said Sil.

Nimbus stopped outside her shuttle. She’d caught a glimpse of Revol’s visor and froze.

“You good, Nimbus?” Flea asked.

“His eyes,” she said. “Cap, you see their eyes?”

“Keep moving,” said Red.

Nimbus secured Revol inside her shuttle and went for Forge while Red was tethering Aster. Next was Haruspex, and when Nimbus was done loading her up, they both went after Eukary, who’d drifted rather far away.

Nimbus stood by while Red hooked his tether to her belt. It looked surreal to see them moving slowly against the strangely vibrant colors that were bleeding out of the Verge. Flea couldn’t shake the feeling that he wasn’t in space anymore, but in some dream-like world that was invading his own.

“Cap,” Nimbus said urgently. “Cap, look.”

She was pointing to Eukary’s back, then traced a line towards the milky black wall of the Verge.

The light from the Phrastus Belt glowed white hot against the right sides of their armor, the bleeding colors of the Verge on their left. What Flea kept one eye on was the inexplicable void between. He was glad they found Harbinger One where that void was at its thinnest. There were spaces where it stretched out wide enough to swallow entire solar systems. Here it was barely the girth of an average sized moon.

Nimbus drew her knife and cut at something. Eukary’s body winced and flailed for a moment. Nimbus hacked again, and Eukary almost twisted into a knot.

“Stop,” said Red. “This isn’t working. Take them back out.

Nimbus turned and flew back to her shuttle, then began dragging the team out one by one. Red did the same.

”Hey,” Flea said, “is it just the Harbingers?”

”Yeah,” the captain replied. “I’m sorry, Flea.”