Over the past few months, Jace had made the Luna Wrath his home. He never said so, and he rarely admitted it even to himself, but it was close enough.

He claimed the bottom bunk in the sleeping bays. The ship rattled and shook, and since they were so often travelling through hyperspace, hopping from planet to planet, he tried to sleep while they were in hyperspace. The ship rattled and rocked, and he often fell out of the small bunks and onto the floor. Best to leave the upper bunk to Lessa, who fit into tight spaces much better.

Kinfild, Jace soon learned, liked to sleep in the pilot’s seat. He’d just recline it, activate the viewscreen dimmers, and doze off as old men sometimes did. (Not even old men. Jace’s father would often get himself so tired that he’d fall asleep mid-sentence.) He’d been doing it for a long while, too.

They travelled to the star systems most in need of help. Cities where darklings had taken up residence, or contested planets where power and other infrastructure had been destroyed by the fighting between Starrealm and the Eastern Alliance powers.

In the mornings, when he could, he’d go for a jog around their landing site, keeping his mind fresh and his body active. After long flights, he tended to feel a little cramped. When he returned, he’d practice manifesting and activating technique cards until it became a habit, until he could do it by command.

Wherever he was, in whichever environment. No matter how tired or jetlagged or juggled around.

Then, he’d return to the Luna Wrath and practice his Vault runs. That was where his routine changed today.

They’d landed in the Illust System, at the planet Illu, for a routine stop to acquire more starcoals. They’d stopped in a dingy spaceport near the edge of the planet’s largest spaceport city, but by the time they’d arrived, it was evening, and they’d had no choice but to wait out the night.

In the morning, when Jace left for his morning run, Kinfild went to acquire starcoals from the spaceport operators. When Jace returned from a loop around the spaceport and stepped inside, the Wielder still hadn’t come back.

Jace had shrugged, then, in their circular spaceport bay, he’d simply practiced manifesting and hiding his cards. It’d become as natural as moving his fingers, and he could do it at will with a simple push of his will—and his Aes, of course. But it just felt like will at this stage.

When he’d finished that part of his routine, he stepped back inside the Luna Wrath, where Lessa was still sleeping on the upper bunk. She snored softly, and her segmented candle tail hung over the edge of the bunk, swaying gently in the draft.

Hesitantly, he tried to go about his next step of the routine: cooking.

He pulled down a section of the central room’s wall, folding open a tiny utilitarian kitchenette.

Cooking meals had become one his main duties aboard the ship. He’d found out that the others were pretty poor cooks, and he’d never considered himself amazing, but compared to them? Well, him putting cheese on eggs seemed like high cuisine to them, it seemed.

And he wanted to eat more than the pre-packaged rations that Kinfild kept in the main cabinet.

So, he pulled open the mini-fridge beside the kitchenette (or, as they called it, the Cooler) and retrieved a couple eggs. They weren’t earth eggs. They were slightly larger, with dark brown shells and flecks of red inserted into it.

He pulled down a pan from a hook on the wall, then placed it down on the flat, folding stovetop. There was only one element, with a single dime-sized chunk of starcoal placed beneath it. He flicked a switch below the coal, and it sparked, then ignited, heating the pan almost immediately.

Jace cracked the eggs, revealing a scarlet, oozing core with two yolks each. He spilled them into the pan and let them simmer. As they cooked, they turned from translucent red into pale gray, like overdoing a steak.

He sprinkled some salt over it, and it erupted in a savoury scent, and he was tempted to leave them as is. Have three fried eggs ready. But then one split and sent its guts rolling across the pan, so he gave up, and, with a stoutsteel spoon, bashed and stirred them until they were thoroughly scrambled.

He debated adding a little cheese, but he’d rather save it for a special occasion. Instead, he pulled a loaf of bread from the fridge. It was the cheapest, most industrial bread they could find—bland beige formed into a perfect cube of carbohydrates, and pre-sliced in the factory production line.

Still, when he heated it up over the element, toasting it, it smelled filling enough.

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“If this is high cuisine,” Jace muttered, “I’d hate to see what Lessa would make.”

He turned off the element by flipping the switch the opposite way, and a miniature puff of extinguishing foam quenched the coal.

After picking up the pan with a tattered rag, he scooped the eggs evenly onto three plates, then placed a piece of toast on each. With careful balance, he carried them over to the table and set them down, then plucked out a trio of forks from a kitchenette drawer and wedged them under the scrambled eggs.

Previously, Kinfild had made their old worker kyborg do the cooking, and they got as robotic of meals as was possible. But with Err-Seventeen, Jace didn’t intend on letting the robot cook—no matter if it could or not.

Lessa still slept, and Kinfild was still out, so Jace settled down and ate breakfast alone—at first. After a few minutes, Err-Seventeen rolled out from the Wrath’s engine room, holding a trowel in-hand. It rolled around on miniature tank treads and had a boxy body with mechanical arms out the sides, just like Aur-Six had been. Its head was a little wider, and rusty plates covered all the gears in its head, but it still only had a single eye.

“Morning, bud,” Jace said, then patted the kyborg on the head.

It rolled over and nudged him gently with its head, then hooked its trowel onto a spoke on the side of its body. Spinning around, it let out a series of clanks and hisses.

“Still working on my…uh, what’s it called? Kyborg speak? I know there was a word for it, but…” He scratched the back of his head awkwardly. “What was that? Good morning?”

Err-Seventeen nodded its head furiously, then tapped Jace’s shoulder with its mechanical hand consolingly. After a few seconds, it let out another chain of clunks, rattles, and finally, a whistle.

“We’re out of coals?”

Clank, click.

“Almost out?”

Err-Seventeen nodded.

Jace heaved a sigh. “Kinfild will be coming back with them soon. I hope.”

They’d picked up Err-Seventeen from a scrap auction a while back, and it had a much more gracious temperament than Aur-Six. No idea why. He certainly hadn’t tampered with its internals.

“Well, thanks for keeping an eye on it, regardless.”

Click click click.

“He’ll be back soon. All I know.”

With a whir, the kyborg turned on its tracks and raced back to the engine room, then sealed the door behind it.

Once Jace finished his plate of eggs, he closed up the kitchenette and cleaned off his plate in the water-recycling sink beside it. When there was no trace of his meal anymore, he walked back to the couches and sat down, then dropped his backpack in his lap.

If they were heading to the scavenger’s guild, going to steal from them, he’d need to do what he could to prepare. They’d left the holographic map on from the day before. A couple planets glowed orange on the map and expanded larger than any of the other worlds. Highlighted.

Ifskar, a tropical mining world, previously poorly explored up until a recent mine collapse revealed an ancient dungeon. The Brakmen Sector Scavenger Sect would’ve laid claim to it, projecting an anti-hyperspace net to keep the planet clear of any rival competitors.

Their ‘in’ would be to steal a technique card, and that meant they’d need to travel to Braka, the Junk Moon, head of the guild, to acquire the technique card that’d let them pass through the anti-hyperspace net unharmed.

Supposedly, simple.

In practice, it wouldn’t be so easy. They didn’t have a plan. They’d have to come up with one when they arrived; neither Kinfild nor Lessa knew the scavenger stronghold very well. But there’d be Wielders.

Jace pulled open his backpack and plucked out a single accumulator node. Its presence still inflicted a weight on his core, doubly when he was staring at it, and it burgeoned with spiritual power.

Pure Aes, refined from a planet’s Split well.

He wrapped his hand around its bottom. It fit in neatly, like the pearl orb had always supposed to belong to him. There was power in it, and he needed to draw it out.

He inhaled, then passed it a tendril of Aes, like he would when fuelling a Vault Core.

The node accepted it, swirled the hyperspace Aes around in a bubbling central chamber, like a porous sponge, then shot it back out into his hand. He winced, like he’d just received a static shock, but for a brief second, he envisioned his core.

It pulsed, swaying and receding. But with each pulse, it was growing dimmer and dimmer, venting its substance into his channels. He wasn’t losing his power, nor his ability to cycle. But it was almost as if his life force was diminishing and leaking out his spine.

That’d be the core degradation.

With a sigh, he pushed himself up, then dropped the node back into his backpack. Before he could reach in and pluck up another one, though, a shout rang out from outside the Wrath.

Jace dropped his bag on the couch and sprinted to the boarding ramp. His hand hovered over the hilt of his Whistling Blade.

Kinfild sprinted into the spaceport landing bay, lugging a repeller-cart full of starcoals behind him.

But he wasn’t alone. A second later, two Watchmen charged into the bay behind him, their own Whistling Blade’s drawn.

“Jace!” Kinfild yelled. “Get the starship up!”

“What?” Jace exclaimed.

“You fly while I fill the coal bunkers! Go!”

Jace didn’t know what Kinfild had done to piss off the Watchmen—or to even attract their attention—and he didn’t want to. They’d encountered a few watchmen, though, and had always escaped scott-free. He ran to the cockpit and dropped down in the pilot’s seat, then gripped the control yoke and, when Kinfild set a foot on the boarding ramp, lifted up.