Tooley kept her eyes firmly locked on the Empyrean Absolutist until Morrakesh’s ship finally drifted out of sight. She didn’t remove her hand from the flight controls until they picked up the purple vessel exiting the system on their long-range scanners.

“Alright, that nightmare is over,” Kamak said. “Back to our regularly scheduled nightmare.”

“Oh, don’t act like we’re done being terrified yet,” Tooley said. “Now we know Morrakesh wants to eat To Vo or something, and he’s been digging around on Corey’s homeworld even more than we thought.”

“Yeah,” Corey said, nodding along. “He even knew my name. Sort of.”

“What do you mean, sort of?”

“I mean he was only sort of right,” Corey said. “He tried to use my middle name, but he said ‘Anathedus’. My mom changed my middle name to ‘Amadeus’, not whatever that is.”

To avoid “the sinful temptations of modern pop culture” members of the Church of the Guiding Truth were only allowed to listen to hymns and classical music. It had been another form of oppression, but Corey’s mother had found some genuine joy in the works of old masters like Mozart, enough so that she had paid tribute to them by changing her son’s middle name. It was certainly better than being named after his grandpa, at least.

“So he asked a question and misheard the answer, or something,” Tooley said. “Maybe Anathedus is a common name where he’s from and he just assumed.”

“Yeah. There’s a lot of things that could’ve happened,” Corey said. “It’s just weird that he’s been outsmarting everyone in the universe so far, but he couldn’t get my middle name right.”

“Nice to have a crack in the armor, however small,” Kamak said. “But there ain’t much we can do with that right now. Better to get a move on. Tooley, do you know our location?”

“Give me a second,” Tooley said. She tried to manage the location controls without taking her hands too far from the steering controls. She didn’t trust that there wasn’t some ambush waiting in the wings. “Looks like we’re in...Arkenne. Not far from Centerpoint, even.”

“Don’t like that,” Kamak said. “We need to get out of here, fast.”

While Morrakesh apparently planned to change that soon, the Arkenne galaxy was still the center of the universe, and the entire universe hated them. Such a crowded neighborhood would get them caught sooner rather than later.

“Well, hold on,” Corey said. “What about To Vo?”

All eyes turned to the Hard Luck Hermit’s newest passenger, and she shrank back under the attention.

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“What do you want to do, go to Centerpoint and drop her off? That’s not a fucking plan, unless the plan is to get shot.”

“There’s got to be outlying stations, or something,” Corey said. “We swing by, get her off the ship, get out before anyone even notices.”

“Even the least crowded stations around here are still packed,” Kamak said. “We’ll get spotted anywhere we go. Look, I want to get rid of her as much as anyone-”

“Hey,” Doprel said, on To Vo’s behalf.

“What? She never should have been here in the first place, and I mean that in every possible meaning of the phrase,” Kamak said. “It’s not her fault, It’s Corey’s-”

“Hey,” Corey said, on his own behalf.

“Oh, fuck this,” Kamak said. “To Vo! Do you even want to leave?”

He sincerely hoped that she would just say no, but To Vo was being worryingly contemplative about the question. After stewing in her own thoughts for a moment, To Vo crossed her furry arms across her chest defiantly.

“As an officer of Galactic Council Law Enforcement, I am obligated to respond to any threat to public safety,” To Vo said. “I cannot view Morrakesh’s plot as anything but a threat. I wish to continue helping you and your crew.”

Kamak felt that “helping” might be a strong word for what To Vo was doing, but he relented for the time being. For the moment, it was riskier to get rid of her than to keep her. Maybe once they got to a more secure galaxy they could drop her off, but Centerpoint was not the place for a quick handoff.

“Great. Just try to be a little bit less of a cop.”

“I’ll try?”

Kamak grunted at her non-committal answer. For some reason, he had pulled up a calendar to go with his star chart. As Tooley very obviously spied on his personal planner, she noticed that he had a date marked in the upcoming swaps. No clue why that specific swap was important, though. Kamak finished doing some charting calculations and then transferred the data to Tooley.

“Plug in these coordinates and get us moving,” he ordered.

Tooley looked angry at the notion for a second, then sighed and shrugged.

“Sure, whatever,” she grumbled. “Maybe someone there will finally kill us.”

Doprel looked over at the map, and recognized the coordinates plugged in.

“Kamak, shouldn’t we be going somewhere less populated?”

“It is less populated,” Kamak snapped.

“Ventan is not less populated.”

“We’re not going to Ventan,” Kamak said. “We’re landing on Tannis.”

“That’s literally one planet over, what’s the difference?”

“About thirteen billion people,” Kamak said. He pointed emphatically at the piloting controls as he stormed out of the cockpit. “We need a place to park and repair the ship. Space stations are too crowded, so we need a habitable planet with broad swathes of unpopulated territory. Tannis fits the bill. Just do it.”

Corey did the requisite sideways lean towards Farsus.

“What’s Ventan? And Tannis, I guess.”

“Two planets in the home system of the Gentanians, Kamak’s species,” Farsus said. “Tannis is their original world, Ventan is where most of the species migrated after Tannis became less hospitable.”

“So is this a visit home, or what?”

“Unlikely. Kamak was born on a corporate colony world, remember?” Farsus said. “He does visit this planet often, though. I have never inquired as to his reasons. He often becomes more...temperamental, during these times.”

“Oh, great, that’s just what we need,” Corey said. “Kamak in a bad mood.”

In the cargo bay, Kamak was already fully in a bad mood. While waiting to be dropped off, they had double and triple-checked the supplies Morrakesh had given them. Everything had passed muster three times over, but Kamak still felt bad about having to use it. He felt even worse about giving it to someone else.