The Luna Wrath descended through the blood-red clouds of Braka, approaching the surface at speed. A mane of flames formed around the starship’s bow during the descent, but faded in moments when Kinfild pulled back on the control yoke and levelled the starship out.

The surface below was a patchwork of steel and rust. Half-broken starships scattered across the surface. Sparks glittered across their hulls where cutting teams scavenged valuable parts and resources. Repeller-cars hovered around, foremen watching from high above, and kyborgs took only the most dangerous tasks—dangling down ravines of deep, rusty debris.

Jace leaned forward in his seat, pushing as far as the crash harness would let him. “Looks like a bunch of scrap fields.”

“Indeed,” said Kinfild. He lifted one hand from the control yoke and pointed ahead.

At first, it looked like a mountain, but so many layers of steel covered the surface that Jace wondered if there were any mountains left of the original world.

No, it was a towering lump of metal. An old starship so massive its hull stuck up from the ground like a range of mountains. A steel ribcage hung out, gaunt and empty like a long-decaying darkling. Panels of rusty steel clung to its wedge-shaped hull, smokestacks stuck out sideways like cigarettes. Most of the solar sail spars were gone. Probably the most valuable part of the ship, or one of them.

“That’s the headquarters of the Brakmen Scavenger Sect?” he asked.

“Where else would scavengers be hiding but the hollowed out hull of an ancient gloryship,” Lessa said.

“Gloryship?”

“Giant starships of old. They haven’t made big ones like that for a while.” Kinfild shook his head. “Though they’ve been trying.”

“Trying?” Jace leaned forward. Any moment, he thought they’d reach the sect headquarters, but it just kept getting bigger.

“Doing,” said Lessa. “The Starrealm began their Dreadnought project a few years ago, and even we heard about the kerfuffle it made.”

“You sure the other candlefolk heard about it?”

“Alright, maybe I pestered a spacer at the inn until he told me about it. Caused Koedor-Terginian, Phélae, and all the Ironband dwarves to try making their own, too. Bit of an arms race.”

Kinfild returned his hands to the control yoke. “Still, the Starrealm’s hyperturbine is a well-guarded secret.”

“If it’s a secret, then how come you know about it?” Lessa asked.

“Its inner workings are a secret, wax-mind,” Kinfild grumbled. “In theory, it will be faster than any other gloryship in realspace. They can’t escape it, they can’t defeat it head-to-head, and its heavy weapons will shred any target from a distance.”

Jace glanced over. “How does that hyperturbine work?”

“I’ve no idea,” said Kinfild. “Their scientists have been working on it for a while.”

“They’re…calling it the Dreadnought?”

“It’ll fear nothing.”

“Yeah…” Jace gulped. “I see. Name was familiar, but…guess not. Probably heard someone talking about it before.”

He shut his eyes, recalling his high school days, trying to recall anything from his lessons that might have been familiar. It didn’t work. He hadn’t paid close attention to the humanities—only enough to get himself a decent enough grade—and had explored STEM classes to the bare minimum as well. Nothing clicked, nothing clung to him.

Too comfortable. Too stale.

But they had bigger concerns at the moment than the name of an under-construction Starrealm starship.

“When we land,” Jace said, “we’ll need a way in. I don’t suppose you’ll just have connections with the Brakmen Sect.”

“I have no connections,” Kinfild said. “However, I will distract them.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Pardon?”

“You heard me,” said Kinfild. “I will cause a commotion, and they’ll send Wielders after me. I imagine they’ll be around level thirty, thirty five. It is the standard level for a Wielder to reach, and only the truly strong break past it.”

A pit welled up in Jace’s stomach. He was…average, wasn’t he? Back on earth, sure. Aside from his height and build, he was of average intelligence, of average demeanor. Perhaps too average and bland.

If he didn’t advance any higher than level thirty, he’d be done for.

So he had to go faster. He had to keep pushing himself, keep striving to new heights. “That works,” he said. “Then Lessa and I will need to find the card to get us through the torpedo net.”

“I’ll bring my calligraphy gear,” said Lessa. “Might need to make adjustments.”

Kinfild steered the Wrath around the edge of the crashed gloryship, then dipped under its leaning stern and swooped up the other side, where a gash in the hull allowed starships into the open interior hall.

A city filled the guts of the scavenger haven. Cobbled-together houses clung to enormous girders or hung from bulkheads, and offices leaned up against the bottom of the ship’s walls like snowdrifts.

“Brakmen City,” said Kinfild. “No better place for scavengers to gather.”

“Not all a headquarter complex,” Jace muttered. “Got it.”

“It’ll make our job easier!” Lessa chirped. “Less room to explore, hunting for cards and the like.”

Kinfild slowed the wrath, then flew through a column of starcoal smoke. A kilometer-long cargo-hauler parked on a landing pad below them, still belching gray smoke from its smokestacks, and every house’s chimney spewed ash. It was a wonder the air wasn’t smoggier inside the hull, but there were enough gashes in the gloryship’s outer hull to let light through and smoke out.

They flew toward a complex hanging from the ceiling like a stalactite—an angular, reddish brown stalactite with glowing blue windows and yellow lights glimmering along its length. It was a few kilometers from its pointy tail to its upper peaks, the sections that joined with a girder and wrapped around it.

Kinfild circled down to a landing pad near the bottom of the complex, then extended the landing gear and halted the starship. “We’ve arrived.”

“This is the headquarters?” Jace asked.

“Yes.” Kinfild unbuckled his crash harness and stood up, then hoisted his staff from where it rested on the wall.

“Well, if you’re going to distract them, you lead.” Jace also pulled off his crash harness, then walked back from the cockpit to the main hold. He peered out the slid on the currently folded-up boarding ramp. Already, a host of [Level 10 Scavenger]s (with a little give and take) approached, holding plasma rifles and shielded sabres, approached the starship.

They wore mismatched armour and helmets. Almost all of it rusted, and the pastel paint jobs were chipping or rusted. Leather belts held their armour in place, but it hadn’t been taken care of, and Jace could practically see it degrading as he watched. Even their plasma rifles were unique—some bolt-action, some lever-action, one just held a pistol. The only commonality between them was that they all wore a bright orange poncho.

Kinfild opened the boarding ramp, and Jace and Lessa scampered to the side, hiding themselves from view.

Kinfild, still wearing his Crimson Table robes and carrying his staff, still exuded the presence of a Wielder—even if the scavengers couldn’t see the tags or interact directly with the Split.

“Greetings!” Kinfild called. “I am Kinfild of the Crimson Table Sect, and I have business with your patriarch! If you could please—”

“What business?” a scavenger demanded. His helmet altered his voice, turning it into a mechanical drone that barely sounded like English—or whatever they called their common language here.

“Wielder business,” Kinfild asserted, then stamped his staff down on the landing platform. Orange sparks flew from the impact, before the wind caught them and dragged them off the edge of the platform. “I need to speak with your sect’s leaders. It is in regards to the current Ifskar situation, if you would tolerate me.”

The two scavengers in the lead shared a glance, then nodded and motioned toward the doorway into the complex. Jace peered out beyond the edge of the starship’s boarding ramp, watching the scavengers walk away. They approached the wall of the hanging structure, and a door hissed open, shooting up into the wall with a puff of steam. They stepped inside—every single one of the scavengers, then sealed the door behind them.

“Not too organized, are they?” Jace whispered. “Didn’t leave anyone to guard the ship? I would’ve…”

“You also know our plan,” Lessa replied. “Besides, they aren’t an organized military, and though those guys might have been kinda strong, they’re the best the scavengers have to throw at us. Their specialty is ripping apart spaceships, not fighting.”

Jace nodded. He patted his sword, then hoisted up his backpack and fastened it to his shoulders. “I’m ready. We make a dash for the door?”

Lessa held up a simple bolt-action plasma rifle she’d stolen a few months ago on some distant planet at the edge of Starrealm space. It was a military-issue rifle, so spare shots were easy enough to find.

With Jace’s mismatched armour and sleeveless gambeson, he wasn’t fitting in, and neither was Lessa with her high-cut tank-top, a few sizes too small for her (according to her, she was tired of wearing baggy hand-me-downs, and when she found it, she’d jumped at the opportunity). They needed to go fast.

He stepped down the boarding ramp and glanced side-to-side, then sprinted across the landing pad to the closed door. It was only a couple seconds of running, but it felt a lot longer. When he reached the door, it didn’t open automatically, but Lessa pressed a button on the control panel beside the door, and it hissed up into the ceiling.

Jace ran into the hallway beyond and pressed his back up against the wall, and Lessa followed moments later. The door slammed shut behind them again.

Jace whispered, “Time to find that card…”