Clemency for the Wizard Kino

> “On the day my love left, I lost all the stars. They turned all grey in my eyes. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’ll never return. My lover is gone from the skies.”

>

> -from “Oh, Where Has My Love Gone?”, traditional spacer song

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The plan crystallized in Yan's head as she broke the problem up into its component pieces. She needed to get Kino out of there, alive, and then she needed to get as far away as possible. Everything else was secondary.

It was clear from the way that Halen was behaving that there would be no mercy for Kino, not even if Yan begged. Possibly if she did beg, she could get Halen to kill her quickly, but Yan hadn't wanted that when she was in the Emperor's chambers, and she didn't want it now. She didn't even really want Kino to live and be imprisoned for life.

What she wanted was to go back to the past, before any of this had happened. But that idyllic past had never existed, since it had been a carefully constructed lie, and it would never exist again. All Yan could do was make the best choices with the tools that she had.

So, step one was getting Halen to stop before Kino died, or was broken beyond repair. Time was of the essence.

“Iri, call Halen back. Now. Tell him I'm missing, that I vanished and you can't find me and you're afraid I'm about to do something drastic.”

“There's security footage of you walking in here,” Iri objected.

“Then let him search the building. There won't be security footage of me walking out,” Yan said.

“Fine,” Iri pulled out her phone and dialed.

They watched on the monitor, delayed by a few seconds, as Halen stopped what he was doing and took his phone out of his pocket, getting blood all over it.

“Halen, I wouldn't call you if it wasn't an emergency,” Iri said. “Yan's gone. She was extremely upset, and she locked us in here and ran out, and I'm worried that she's about to do something drastic.” She used Yan's exact words. Might as well leave as much as possible up to Halen's imagination. The Halen on the screen visibly blanched.

“I'll be there as soon as possible. Have you checked the security footage?” Yan heard Halen say over the phone, his voice tinny. There was an echo of a groan in the background. Yan's stomach churned.

“She's not on it,” Iri said. “I don't know what she's doing.”

“Is Calor there?” Halen asked.

Yan nodded at Iri's questioning look.

“Yes.”

“Can she track Yan with the power?”

Yan shook her head and indicated with her fingers 'a little bit'.

“She can try, but she hasn't had any success so far,” Iri said.

“Are you still in her apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Stay there. I'll meet you,” Halen said and hung up the phone.

“Good,” Yan said as they watched Halen say something to Kino, strip off his bloody gloves, throw them in the trash, and leave the room, turning the light off on his way out. “He'll be here in a few minutes. When he gets here, you need to pretend like you have no idea where I am. I suggest that you split up to cover a wider area.”

“Okay.”

“I don't really care where you get Halen to go, as long as it isn't Stonecourt or the airfield,” Yan said. “Maybe tell him that you think I went to the forest where we found Sid.”

“The airfield?”

“That's where I need you two to meet up,” Yan said. “When I get there, there needs to be a ground-to-space shuttle ready to take off.”

“I don't have the clearance to just take a shuttle,” Iri said. “I don't think I can do that.”

Yan reconsidered. “Fine. I will get myself to the airfield and steal a shuttle. Once I've done that, then someone will be perfectly willing to fly you up to the top of the elevator.”

“Yan, this plan is insane,” Iri said.

“I don't care. Are you going to go along with it?” Yan asked.

Iri chewed her lip. “Yes.”

“Do you know how to fly a shuttle?” Sylva asked.

The thought was so funny to Yan that she almost laughed out loud. “I've been flying shuttles since I was twelve, Sylva.”

“Ground-to-space?” Sylva asked again.

“I can do it,” Yan said firmly. It was true that she had never technically done a ground takeoff, but she had been allowed to do a ground landing once or twice, and she knew that the shuttle's computers took care of most of the grunt work.

“And what are we going to do when we get up there?” Iri asked. “Assuming we make it? Assuming you make it?”

“We're going to steal the First Star,” Yan said. Not waiting to see Iri and Sylva's reactions, even though that was quite the bombshell of a statement, she stood up and went to the bedroom. As quickly as she could, she stripped off her pajamas and replaced them with her Iron Dreams uniform, hung neatly in the closet. She put on her shoes with magnetic soles. Around her waist, she strapped her holster, and checked that the gun was loaded. It was lucky, perhaps, that she hadn't brought it with her to the Emperor's chambers. If she had, Kino might have already been dead.

“You look so sexy when you're dangerous and crazy,” Sylva said, watching Yan from the doorway. “I never realized that before.”

Yan ignored her for a second, and located the spare ammunition and tucked it into her pocket.

“You understand what you have to do? Meet me at the top of the elevator, and make sure Halen doesn't come. I don't think I can face him, so he needs to be as far away from me as possible.”

“We'll do our best,” Iri said.

Yan nodded. Her neck hurt. “I'll see you at the top, then.”

“How are you going to get out without being seen?” Sylva asked.

“I spent a month keeping a star hidden,” Yan said. “I think I can hide myself.”

“Are you sure you can do what you need to, Yan?” Iri asked. She sounded calm, but she looked at Yan with real concern written in her face. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

“I never wanted this,” Yan said. “But I've always done exactly what I need to.” Her hand went unconsciously to the back of her neck, where the thick scars lay.

“Good luck,” Iri said.

“Thanks. You too.”

“And Yan, if you end up on the First Star, and we can't make it, you leave. You do what you have to do,” Iri said.

Yan nodded once, sharply. Then she brought the power up from inside herself. It woke like a flowing stream, happy to be used once again, happy to have a purpose. It buzzed underneath her fingertips.

Hiding herself was exactly like hiding a star, except without the ease of working with a perfectly circular region, and the difficulties of contending with an atmosphere. Still, after a solid month of practice within the Mother, and the benefit of her hundreds of years of experience, Yan was able to do it without a problem. Sylva gasped in surprise as Yan vanished, and brought her hand up to touch the region of space where Yan had been standing visible a moment before. Yan twined her invisible fingers in Sylva's for a second, then let go and walked towards the door.

She took a last long look around her apartment, feeling like she understood what Kino had been doing just that morning, trying to put off the act of leaving this life for as long as possible.

“Iri, open the door so I can leave,” Yan said. “Walk me out to the front.”

Iri did, so that suspiciously opening doors wouldn't be caught on the security footage. Yan left, heading down the street at a jog, leaving Iri and Sylva in the lobby waiting for Halen to arrive.

Yan actually passed him on the street, or at least his car. She was good at recognizing which of the speeding black cars in the Imperial Center belonged to security people, and Halen's driving stood out. He was probably going too fast to catch a whiff of her power, but even still, Yan increased her speed, trying to get out of his detection radius and towards Stonecourt.

She went in the staff entrance, waiting for some unsuspecting staff member to open doors and enter so that she could slip through. It was nerve wracking, to move as quietly as possible, disguising her steps to match the cadence of the young man that she was following, having a slight moment of panic as she worked extra hard to keep her invisibility secure as she slid through the security screening right behind him. Because her work with the Mother had involved blocking all forms of radiation, not just visible, she didn't have that much trouble fooling the machine, but it was the place where her disguise, if one could consider complete invisibility a disguise, was most likely to fail. If she had her power structure just a hair wrong, the machine would know.

But she didn't, and she passed through without trouble, following the young man into the halls of Stonecourt. She split off from her unintentional escort almost immediately.

She hadn't thought to ask Iri where exactly Kino was being kept, which was a definite oversight on her part, and she couldn't simply use her power to try to find Kino (her damn invisibility!) but Yan remembered that one time, far back, during the Governor's dinner, where Halen had disappeared underground and returned wearing a different outfit and a grim expression. Yan hadn't wanted to think about the fact that he had been torturing a would-be assassin then, and she still didn't like to think about it, but she remembered where she had felt him, and she used her instincts to guide her down, down, down underneath the halls of Stonecourt.

The further down she went, the fewer people that she saw, which was both a blessing and a curse. She didn't enjoy dodging out of the way so that no one would accidentally brush her invisible form, and she didn't like having to disguise her footsteps. It was particularly tricky because she had such an odd gait. But people being around did give her better opportunities to slip through doors.

She had to go through several doors, and since she didn't want to use her identification card that would allow her through (since using it would immediately alert Halen to her presence underneath Stonecourt, and leave an easily traceable trail), she thought about jimmying the locks with the power. She decided against it, because she didn't feel ready or able to deal with alarms. Instead, she waited by one of the doors for some unsuspecting person to come out, and very, very gently, she lifted the woman's ID card out of its place on her belt keychain with the power. The woman didn't notice, and her keys jingled in their normal way as she walked away down the hall.

Yan snatched the ID out of the air and quickly included it in her invisibility.

She had to risk that no one was looking closely and comparing security footage of doors opening with the act of swiping the security card to get in. Making the door appear closed while she opened it was a fairly difficult extension of her invisibility trick, especially since she would need to apply it to both sides of the door but could only see one herself.

Yan reached across the door with the power, made sure that there was no one coming, and tried to get as good of a mental image of what the door looked like as she could. The effort of applying the illusion to the door was so much that she was worried that it would make her own invisibility waver. The only thing worse than the image of a door opening by itself on the security cameras would be the image of the door being opened by Yan. She slapped the keycard against the access panel, dropping the invisibility on just that so that the door's sensor could activate, and slipped through the door as quickly as possible.

Wherever she could, she slid through doors behind people and waited for hallways to be clear and empty before she snuck around. All of her senses were on high alert. The sound of footsteps made her half-jump and catch herself as she remembered that she needed to be completely silent in order to stay undetected.

Yan knew that it was just her imagination, but the deeper she went, the colder she felt it become. She was, for once, glad to be alone. Descending underneath Stonecourt, against all logic and reason, felt like her own personal pilgrimage.

Trying to be as silent as she could didn't stop her thoughts from rolling thunderously around her head. She could still turn back now and leave Kino to her fate. But she kept walking.

Yan knew immediately when she had reached the right place, because there were two members of the Imperial Security Force standing on guard outside the door. Yan's hand crept to the gun on her hip. She didn't want to shoot them, but... She considered her options.

She didn't have the skill to do something elegant with the power, like pretend to be Halen. It was a shame that he had never gotten around to teaching the three of them how to do big illusions, or how to manipulate other people's bodies. Both of those skills would have come in pretty handy, right at that moment.

It was with a stabbing sadness that Yan thought about Halen. He would never get to teach her anything again.

Yan brought her thoughts back to the present. How had Sid, ages ago, managed to incapacitate all the people watching him, when he had run away? He had tied them up. Maybe Yan could grab them with their clothing, like what Yuuni Olms had done so long ago. It was the best plan she had.

She scoped out the scene. Both of the guards had communication devices tucked into their ears, and they were sure to be monitored. Yan saw a camera just a little ways down the hallway. The longer she stood there, agonizing over the situation, the more clear it became that her little stealth game was going to be up pretty soon.

She didn't think there was any way she could get past the guards and get Kino out without somebody noticing. So she changed her plan from being quiet to being quick.

First things first. Yan reached out with the power and shattered the lens of the camera. Simple. Quiet. Someone would probably notice, but maybe not for a minute, especially if the guards weren't reporting an alarm. They wouldn't be reporting anything, because quick as lightning, Yan tugged their communicators out of their ears, sending them skittering across the floor.

The guards immediately realized something was wrong, and they whipped their guns out, but Yan was invisible and thus presented no target. She ripped the guns out of their hands next, since getting shot at was not really something she wanted, even if she could avoid it.

Once they were unarmed, they were much less dangerous, which made Yan relax a hair. Still, they dove for the guns she had tossed down the hall heedlessly, and they yelled for backup. Yan caught them by their clothes, using their pants to bind their legs, forcing their arms to their sides. She forced their undershirts up out of their collars and shoved them into their mouths as gags. That wasn't particularly effective, because they shut their mouths as soon as the intrusion came, so Yan just wrapped the shirts around their heads as tightly as possible to muffle the sounds. They would probably be able to rip out after a minute of struggle, but she wasn't planning to stay here for very long.

She swiped her stolen card against the door. It didn't work. She pulled a different card off of the keychain that one of the guards was wearing as he flopped around on the floor. That one didn't work either. This was wholly predictable. Yan wouldn't have left the door key with the people right outside the door either.

Still, opening doors was something that sensitives tended to be particularly good at. Yan placed her palm flat against the door. A cool calmness was filling her. She needed to work fast, but the seconds were ticking by so slowly that she felt she had as much time as she needed to force the deadbolts of the door open. She no longer cared that there was probably an alarm sounding somewhere.

She went in, and pulled the guards along behind her by holding the collars of their shirts with the power. She deposited them in the corner, then went over to Kino, still tied to the table. One small mercy was that she was fully clothed.

Kino blinked and strained her eyes to look around the room, but clearly whatever she had been drugged with was still in full effect, because her body was limp and frozen in place. Yan, still invisible, placed a hand on Kino's cheek so that they could communicate through the power.

Kino's eyes widened when Yan touched her.

“Kino,” Yan sent through the power. “It's me. Yan. I'm unbelievably pissed at you right now, but I'm also rescuing you. You need to be absolutely silent so we can get the fuck out of here. Do you understand?”

Kino's thoughts as they came through to Yan were somewhat muddled. Yan mainly got feelings of pain, confusion, and also a wild fear.

“I'm not going to kill you, idiot,” Yan sent. She dropped her hand off of Kino's cheek and went around to untie her from the table. When she got to Kino's left side, she stopped for a second.

Halen was a professional, Yan supposed.

Kino's hand was a bloody mess everywhere, and was also missing two... two and a half fingers. Yan ripped Kino's cassock sleeve (how ironic that she was the one to destroy Kino's sleeve this time) and wrapped it as tightly around Kino's destroyed hand as she could. She wasn't particularly gentle, because speed was of the essence, but she didn't want Kino dripping blood everywhere, either. That would make her invisibility significantly less useful, if she was leaving a trail.

Once that was accomplished, she struggled for a second with how to best get Kino out. She was already juggling so many different things with the power: the invisibility and keeping both struggling guards wrapped up in their own clothes. She didn't think she had the concentration to add in figuring out a powered way to carry Kino. So she did the best she could and pulled Kino's arms up over her shoulder, hoisting her limp body in a fireman's carry. Kino was shorter than Yan by at least half a foot, but she was solidly built and Yan was not very strong. She staggered under Kino's weight, but she didn't have a choice.

Now that Kino was in full body contact with her, communication was inevitable, if somewhat slurred.

“You should leave me here,” Kino said in the power

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you,” Yan sent back, covering Kino with her invisibility, though she could feel it fraying on the edges. She stumbled towards the door. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you...” Yan repeated it like a mantra, forcing her feet forward. At the door, she pulled it shut with the power, leaving the guards inside.

She could hear people coming down the hallway, fast. Yan couldn't exactly run, but she stumbled her way forward, away from the oncoming guards. Plausible deniability was gone at this point, but they could at least avoid getting apprehended.

Halen probably wouldn't be that mad at Yan if they got caught. Probably.

But she didn't want to get caught.

Kino groaned on Yan's shoulder.

“Shut up!” Yan sent urgently through the power. The running footsteps were coming from both directions now. Yan pressed herself and Kino flat against the wall, and a group of five Imperial Security guards rushed past, all armed to the teeth. Yan held her breath, didn't breathe, didn't move an inch. They passed by without brushing against her. As soon as they were far enough away that Yan's staggering footsteps wouldn't be heard, she continued up the hallway.

Unsurprisingly, the elevators had been shut down, and the stairwell doors had automatically locked. Yan chanced it. She needed to get out of here as quickly as possible at this point. She dropped Kino to the ground, crouched in front of her, and used the power to rip the stairwell door off its hinges. It kicked up a massive cloud of dust from the exploding concrete. Alarms blared, and Yan immediately heard the shouting of the security force turn around and come towards her. She dragged the limp Kino by her armpits and dropped her onto the flat surface of the door, then used the power to hover the door in front of herself. It was unwieldy, but it was better than carrying Kino.

Yan ran up the stairs two at a time. Kino was no longer covered by her invisibility, and Yan did not have the mental energy to spare to put up a shield against bullets, so she was just going to have to hope that no one started shooting at them.

Yan's hopes were dashed pretty quickly when she heard more guards begin to come down from the front of the stairs. She was surrounded now. Yan kept running up the stairs. She didn't really have a choice. Her breath was coming in choked gasps, and she was distantly aware of the feeling of her heart pounding faster than it ever had.

She grabbed Kino's arm so that they could talk through the power.

“Can you use the power? At all?”

Yan caught a brief feeling of Kino's pain through their mental connection, then a timid feeling “yes”, accompanied by a half-instinctual explanation of the way that Kino felt while using Vena. She wasn't drugged with Vena, currently, but if she thought she could break through whatever drug was in her body, all the better. Perhaps the adrenaline of the situation was helping clear Kino's mind enough for her to use the power.

“If you don't want to get shot, you'll put a shield up now. Keep it up, no matter what happens.”

A feeling of grim determination from Kino.

And then the first bullets came down into the stairwell, louder than thunder, ricocheting off the concrete walls. Something crashed into Yan's face. Not a bullet, but a chunk of rock from the wall. She yelped, unable to stop the sound, and dropped low. She touched her forehead and came away with blood.

It was clear that even if Kino thought she was stopping bullets, she definitely wasn't. Yan didn't know what she had expected. If there was one thing Halen wasn't stupid enough to do, it was leave a prisoner able to use the power. Kino was probably just a little delirious at the moment.

Yan put up her own power structure to block the bullets. It was inelegant, only protected her a tiny bit, and the mental strain was getting to her, but it was better than nothing. She was forced to drop the door that she was carrying Kino on, sacrificing that in order to keep up the invisibility. She picked up Kino physically once again, grabbing her underneath the armpits and covering her with the invisibility. It was slow going up the stairs.

The bullets rained down around them, being fired from the front and behind, but Yan's power structure held. Her invisibility held. She held on to Kino, grimly. If anyone had come towards her, they could have simply pulled Kino out of her arms, but they didn't. The guards seemed somewhat afraid to approach closely, since they stayed at the top and bottom of the stairwell. Yan couldn't see their faces; they were wearing protective masks.

A faceless wall of guards, blocking the exit, guns firing uselessly into the air. Yan kept walking forward. Forward and up.

Kino's thoughts were leaking into hers, from their close contact and Kino's loosened mental state. Yan could feel the pain in Kino's hand as clearly as if it were in her own, but she had the comfort of knowing that the pain wasn't real. Given that, it wasn't any worse than what she had felt under the Green King. She gritted her teeth.

“Sorry,” Kino thought. They felt everything bounce back and forth between them, the pain reverberating and echoing, the beating of their hearts falling into place, their lungs working in panicked sync.

They were both filled with guilt and despair, but Yan was also spurred forward by determination, so she shoved those emotions to the back of their brains. Now was not the time. They could think about that later.

Even though Kino's thoughts were blurred by a haze of drugs, she was lucid enough to turn some of her brainpower over to Yan. Yan trudged up the stairs, and at the top, with Kino's own power under her fingers, shoved the guards back, sending them stumbling. She put on as much speed as she could while bearing Kino's weight and passed through the hole she had made in the guards. They immediately tried to seize her invisible form, but she kept them at bay with their own clothes, pinning them to the wall so that they couldn't reach her.

In the flat hallway, Yan could stumble forward much faster, and she knew exactly where she wanted to go. She kept the guards trapped until she came to an intersection in the hallway and lost sight of them. She heard them pursuing, but didn't hear any more gunshots, so she felt like they might have succeeded in losing them.

It wasn't long before Yan came to another locked door, and she also ripped that one apart. No sense in subtlety now. None at all. The guards heard and the footsteps came towards her again, but Yan was through, running with heavy steps, hauling Kino along with her remaining ounces of strength. Her goal was in sight.

The car park.

Yan ripped that door off its hinges as well, and skidded out into the big underground garage. There were guards there, as she knew there would be, but they had all taken cover at the sight and sound of the door bursting open. Yan took the briefest moment to survey her surroundings. She had been here many times, and she knew where the keys to all the official cars were kept, over in the little guard station. She desperately wanted to put Kino down, but she couldn't because the gunfire started again, the guards shooting somewhat randomly in the hopes of catching her off guard. She was probably lucky that no one seemed to have gas or grenades, because she didn't think she would have been able to fend those off.

In the guardhouse, there was one young woman, crouching behind the desk, holding a gun. She shot at Yan as Yan pulled the door open with the power; the bullets clattered to the ground uselessly. Yan used the power to rip the gun out of her hands and throw it backwards into the parking lot. She pinned the woman to the desk with her own clothes, which left Yan somewhat free to investigate the keys to the cars. They each bore a tag that matched up with a license plate. Yan peered out the guardhouse window to see which car was closest, or at least which license plate was visible.

Her brain felt foggy, but that was probably Kino's leaking influence. She took a set of keys, and trudged out.

“Kino, I need your brain,” Yan thought, wheezing as she hauled Kino to the car. Kino gave as much as she could, and Yan extended the shield power structure to cover the car, rather than just a tiny radius around herself and Kino. As soon as she opened the door, the guards knew where she was, and began shooting. She was glad she had covered the car, because she didn't want the tires to get blown out. Yan deposited Kino in the passenger side. She dropped the invisibility on Kino, and ran around to the driver's side of the car, mercifully unburdened. She clambered in and took a deep breath, jamming the key into the ignition.

The real problem was that she had no idea how to drive. But she wasn't going to carry Kino to the airfield, so she was just going to have to learn, quick. Yan started the car and fumbled around to put it in reverse. She slammed on the gas, maybe a bit too hard, and the car jerked backwards. She heard a loud crunch and the car ground to a stop as she hit the car parked next to them. Kino's limp body slid around in the passenger seat, her head whacking into the window.

Yan pulled the wheel hard in the other direction and freed the car. She was still going backwards and still going way too fast. She tried to put it in drive, but the shift wouldn't move. She kicked around until she found the brake pedal, and the car slammed to a stop. The driver's seat was pushed up way too close to the steering wheel for Yan's long legs to be anywhere near the correct position, but she didn't know what the correct position was, and she didn't have time to fiddle around with the seat either.

She got the car in drive, and floored the gas. One guard, stupidly in the way of the car, dove out of the way. Yan swerved to avoid hitting him, but swerved a little too much, and the car skid and sideswiped the next row of parked cars with a sickening crunch and lurch. Kino's head was really taking a beating against the car door, but Yan didn't have time to readjust her position. She pulled the wheel hard, too hard still, over correcting, and drove crazily down the row of cars, hauling the wheel in both directions every time she felt like she was going to crash.

They were coming up on the exit now, and Yan saw two things: the closed garage doors in front of them, and the line of spikes that had risen out of the ground, designed to prevent exactly such a getaway.

“Hold on tight,” Yan said to Kino, even though that was about as useless of a thing as she could say to a girl who had no control over her body.

Yan did just about the only thing she could. She dropped everything else she was holding up with the power, the invisibility, the bullet shield, and ducked as low as she could behind the steering wheel. Still with her foot on the gas, Yan first ripped the heavy doors open, hauling them up with the power, then closed her eyes and lifted the car off the ground. Her stomach lurched, the car barely cleared the spikes, and she dropped it back down heavily.

Her own head crashed into the steering wheel, but they had made it past that obstacle, and the next. A bullet shattered the rear window of the car. Yan hastily put her shield back in place, and, breathing heavily, her invisibility again. She turned the car sharply to get it out onto the road that would take her away from Stonecourt.

The big gates she also ripped open, and she laid on the horn to warn every pedestrian on the streets outside to get away. Security people peeled out after her in their own cars, but Yan had the power of absolutely insane reckless driving on her side. She didn't know how to get to the airfield exactly, but she let instinct guide her. Keeping her hand on the horn the entire time, along with the wail of pursuing sirens did a lot to clear the streets, which was a good thing, because Yan was going full tilt and did not have the greatest control over her steering. She took corners so sharply that she ended up half on the sidewalk half the time, and it was a miracle that she didn't hit a tree or a parked car enough that her car was destroyed. Whenever another car got too close, Yan shoved it out of the way with the power.

The airfield was in sight. Again, there were spikes on the ground, and this time the airfield security was here blocking the gate, but no one had yet found a sensitive to challenge her. If anyone did, she wouldn't get very much farther, but as of now, she was almost unstoppable.

As she shoved emergency vehicles blindly out of the way, forcing everyone to dodge out of her careening path, Yan wondered vaguely how Iri and Sylva were doing.

She knew from experience where all the ground-to-space shuttles were parked, and she could immediately identify which ones were part of the Imperial cohort. That was important, because, unless someone had thought within the past half hour to revoke her privileges, Yan had access to them. Yan drove directly across the runway, then across the grass around it, the car lurching up and down. She slammed to a stop right in front of a shuttle.

She left the car running, got out, ran around to the passenger side, and hauled Kino's limp form out of the car. She used the power to unlock the door of the shuttle, and painfully dragged Kino inside. She pulled the door shut as quickly as she could. Outside the shuttle, she could feel bullets impacting her shield, and through the window she caught a glimpse of vehicles coming up to surround her and prevent her from taking off.

Yan slid into the pilot's seat, feeling at home at once behind the yoke. She turned on the computer and entered her access credentials. It let her through, and she let out a panicked laugh. She buckled her seatbelt. She definitely should have buckled Kino into a seat, but she needed to take off. She needed to get this ship into the air.

Yan did not go through the pre-flight checklist, and simply trusted that since no major warning lights were coming up on the dashboard that the shuttle was ready to take off.

“Clear the runway, or so help me God,” Yan said over the radio. At this point, she had probably, definitely, been identified, so she really didn't care if anyone heard her voice. She didn't wait for people to respond, and she got the shuttle rolling. The vehicles blocking her path were shunted aside in the power much the same way that she had when she was driving, but she was far more confident with the yoke of the shuttle under her hands than she was with the steering wheel.

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“Hold on tight, Kino,” Yan said again. She heard Kino's body roll and tumble around in the back of the shuttle as Yan pushed forward on the throttle, centering herself on the runway as best she could. The shuttle's engines whined.

Yan had no idea what this shuttle's takeoff distance was, but she hoped it wasn't too far. She could see on the display that other planes were approaching, probably Imperial forces scrambled to get her. Yan really, really, really, didn't want to be on the receiving end of military grade ordinance. Bullets were already bad enough to try to deal with. She wasn't sure how easily she could divert a missile, not if she was also busy trying to fly the shuttle.

The shuttle lept into the air with the feeling of Yan's stomach dropping out from underneath her. Shuttles behaved very differently in the atmosphere than they did in space, so she had to trust the computer to not let her go into a death spiral or stall out.

It was unfortunate, but as soon as she was in the air, the navigation began to jam as the air traffic control sent out meaningless signals to try to confuse her computers. Yan held the yoke steady, kept climbing, and reinforced the power structure she was keeping up around the shuttle. It was a good thing she did, because something came screaming down behind them, and exploded when it hit her power structure. The heat and blast it caused knocked the shuttle sideways, and Yan screamed as the shuttle went into a spin. She held the yoke for dear life and was able to correct, though she lost a scary amount of elevation. Kino tumbled around in the back.

Yan kept flying, trying to move slightly less predictably so that she would be harder to hit. She knew she had to head up and due south. If she got into orbit, she'd be able to find the elevator. When she got there, well, she had no idea what she would do. At this point, they had definitely been alerted that she was on the way. She didn't know how much of a pirate she was ready to become.

Well, the plan was to steal a ship, so she guessed she was going to be a pirate all the way.

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Sylva was nervous. Petrified would actually be a better word for it, but she had Iri next to her, so that made things a little bit better.

Halen came up to the apartment building and found them both in the lobby.

“You didn't see where she went?” he asked immediately.

“I already told you that,” Iri said, impatient. “But I have some guesses.”

“Which are?” Halen asked. “Get in the car.”

Sylva and Iri both got in the car, Iri in the passenger seat, Sylva in the back. Halen was wearing a black jacket, but on his pants, she could see dark(er) spots on his clothing, bloodstains, she supposed. It made her breath catch in her throat, but Halen didn't seem to be paying much attention to her.

“Yan's attached to the past. I would imagine she went to some place she feels a connection with,” Iri said. Sylva couldn't actually tell how much of this was bullshit. It probably was true that Yan would have sought out a comforting place, if she hadn't being going off to break into Stonecourt.

“Such as?”

“Remember when Sid ran away?” Iri asked. “I'd put money she's going to find a clearing in the forest.”

“Not the Academy?” Halen asked.

“I don't think there's anything left for her there. Maybe she would head for the ocean, though,” Iri said thoughtfully. “The planet she was trapped on, it was all ocean.”

“Forest is closer. Calor,” Halen barked, turning around in his seat as he started the car. “You know what she feels like in the power?”

“Uh,” Sylva said, cringing a little. “I do, but...”

Halen sighed and turned around. “I'll keep the lookout. You said she locked you in her apartment. Why?”

“She didn't want to be stopped,” Sylva said. “She just took her gun and ran.”

Halen swore under his breath. “Did she tell you what happened?”

“I know,” Iri said. “The general idea, anyway.”

“That's all you need for now. What a fucking mess.” Halen brought the car out into traffic, driving significantly faster than was safe. Sylva clutched her seatbelt. “Calor. What's going on with you? What are you scared of?”

Sylva did not like being put on the spot like that, but she hadn't pretended to be a doctor for so long without picking up a few acting skills.

“Yan was more upset than I've ever seen her, and that includes the day we got her off that planet, and she took a gun and ran out of the house. What the fuck do you think I'm scared of?” The note of hysteria in her voice was real, even if she wasn't afraid of Yan going off and killing herself. She was a bit afraid of someone killing Yan, but that was a little bit different.

All they had to do was keep Halen away from Stonecourt. That was their goal. Whatever she had to do to make that happen, she would do. She would lie herself to death if she had to.

“This is worse than when we were on the Sky Boat,” Iri said quietly. “And that was bad.”

Halen's knuckles were white on the steering wheel. “Was she a danger to herself then?”

“No. But she had Sid then.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.” They drove in a tense silence, the sounds of the car and traffic the only noises.

“How far could she have gone?” Halen asked. “Did she leave right after you called me the first time?”

“She left before then. It depends on if she took a bus,” Iri said. “If she's on foot, she probably didn't go that far.”

“Did you trace her card?”

“Obviously. But she would be smart enough to use a prepaid charge card. Untraceable.”

“Why would she have something like that?”

“You don't keep spares around, in case you lose your regular charge card?” Iri asked. “It's a normal thing to do.”

They drove on. It was a sunny day, and the forest was the light green of spring. There were plenty of people walking around. Halen parked the car. “Could she be more than a kilometer deep in there?” he asked. “That's about the extent of my range.”

That was a long way. Sylva's sensing range was, in the atmosphere, and assuming she could get the power to cooperate at all, maybe a tenth of that. Again, the fear went through her. She used that to her advantage.

“You don't think, if you can't feel her, she could already be--?”

Halen didn't respond, but the way he closed his eyes briefly, as if he was in pain, said enough. “Where did you find Sid?”

“This way,” Iri said. She led both of them down the path, into the forest.

Halen's phone buzzed. He ignored it.

The trees made dappled shadows on the ground, and the pine needles smelled rich and earthy. Sylva had always liked coming here, and Yan had as well. She thought, perhaps morbidly, that if Yan had really been coming here to kill herself, this was a fairly pretty place for it. They walked deep into the woods.

Halen's phone kept buzzing, and then it rang, loudly. “Sorry,” he said. “I have to take this.”

They stopped walking, and Iri leaned against a tree. Sylva went to stand next to her. She knew that whatever was coming down the phone line was not going to be good. Her heart was beating about a million times a second.

“Halen here,” he said.

“Of course it's not fucking good news.”

“So, she's gone?”

“A sensitive?”

“Casualties?”

“Only destruction. Okay.”

“And she's going where?”

“I'll be right there.”

Halen smiled, hung up the phone, and reached underneath his jacket. He pulled out a gun and aimed it at Iri. Iri's posture didn't change, exactly, but the muscles in her arms stiffened up.

“I assume you're in on this?”

Iri bit her lip. “What tipped you off?”

“The fact that she didn't kill anyone.”

“Yan's capable of killing,” Iri said. “But yes. We're in on it.”

Iri looked remarkably calm, for all that she was being threatened at gunpoint. Sylva was about as scared as she had been when she was dropping a broken shuttle down through the atmosphere into the ocean of an unknown planet. Sure she was going to die.

“Why?”

“Halen,” Iri said, looking him in the eye. “I owe Yan. I owe her far more than I owe you. I'm sorry that I ever had to make that clear.”

“And why is she doing this?”

“I don't know,” Iri said. “I couldn't explain it.”

“Is she working with Kino? Is she in on this?” Halen raised his voice, suddenly angry.

Iri laughed bitterly. “No. It would be more understandable if she was.”

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn't kill you both,” Halen said.

“You came out here because you thought that Yan was about to kill herself,” Sylva said, unable to quash the note of panic in her voice. “What do you think she would do if you killed us?”

“You care about Yan. You might care about Aymon more, and I respect that,” Iri said. “But I don't think you could bring yourself to hurt her like that.”

“You don't know what I'm capable of,” Halen said.

“I, of all people, know what you're capable of,” Iri said. “But I'm putting my life on you not crossing that line. Not right now, anyway. Yan's betting my life on you not crossing that line.”

Sylva did not think that Yan had considered this very thoroughly. It was true that she had agreed to go through with it, and would have even if Yan had said that she might die, but she didn't think that Yan had thought through the consequences very much at all.

Halen's gun wavered, and he held it pointed at Iri for a second longer, then put it away. “Is there any chance I can convince her to stop this?”

Iri stared at him. “You have blood on your hands.”

That was as much physical as it was metaphorical. Halen's phone, which had been covered in blood, had gotten his hands dirty.

“Is there any way that you can convince her to stop this?”

“I doubt it.”

“Are you willing to try?”

“I'm willing to accompany you up to Emerri station, and we can see how this plays out,” Iri said.

“What's she planning to do there?” Halen asked.

“If I were Yan, I'd be hoping my family showed up. They'd be right on schedule.”

“They would have sent an ansible message,” Halen said.

“I don't know Yan's family. But she put on her Dreams uniform when she left.”

“That doesn't mean anything.”

“I don't know what anything means,” Iri said. “But she's going to Emerri station, and we'd better go too if we want to catch her.”

Sylva's heart was still pounding in her ears. She was shocked that they weren't about to die. Halen could change his mind, but Iri seemed to have a decent handle on his moral code, whatever that actually was. It was a tense, miserable walk out of the forest, and an even worse car ride. The sounds of sirens only got louder as they drove, and Sylva peered out the car windows to see what was going on. She couldn't see much. Everything looked mostly normal, except for the lack of traffic. As they got closer to the airfield, though, the destruction became more apparent, with rather dented looking cars shoved haphazardly to the side of the road.

Halen drove recklessly fast, but people got out of his way, and he was a good driver. Unlike Yan, apparently. Sylva didn't know why she was surprised that Yan couldn't drive for shit, at least according to the skid marks on the road. It wasn't like she had owned a car while attending the Academy, and she definitely didn't have a family who had taught her to drive at any point. Well, she did, but her family taught her to fly shuttles instead of drive cars.

Maybe she was being unfair. If she had been in Yan's position, maybe she wouldn't have been driving very cleanly either. At least no one had died, she kept telling herself. Yet.

The airfield was equally in disarray. The main runway actually had bits bombed out of it. Yan hadn't done that, but she had definitely been the target. Sylva had to wonder, was Halen okay with his people attacking Yan, since he seemed to know that she would be able to dodge it? Was he going to call off all her pursuers?

Someone already had a shuttle ready for him, and he climbed in, strapping himself into the pilot's seat. Sylva wanted to ask if he actually knew how to fly it, but she would have definitely gotten an even snippier answer than the one she got from Yan, so she kept her mouth shut. She strapped herself in to the passenger seats in the back and Iri sat in the co-pilot's seat. Iri's piloting skills were not very good, but Halen didn't say anything in complaint, so Sylva didn't bring it up.

Halen radioed air traffic control and got them smoothly airborne. His phone rang. Sylva was slightly surprised that it worked while they were in flight, but he probably had the most comprehensive communication device that money could buy. “Iri, hands,” he said.

“Hands,” Iri said back, putting her hands on the yoke and taking control of the shuttle.

“Halen here,” Halen said into the phone. Sylva could only hear half of the conversation, but it was clear that he was talking to First Sandreas.

“Glad you're alright.”

“Yes, I'm on my way.”

“Four hours? It depends on how this goes.”

“Do you have any instructions?”

“No, I don't think you should ask the Emperor.”

“I don't know.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I'll get her back if I can.”

“I understand.”

“Yes, this is a nightmare.”

“I don't know why.”

“I don't think she betrayed you, no.”

“Well, that depends on what you'd call betrayal.”

“She was messed up, Aymon. She probably hasn't been thinking straight for months.”

“You felt her power.”

“Yes, I did.”

“I'll just shoot her if I get a clean shot.”

“Yan can hate me if she wants.”

“She probably already does.” A long pause.

“Why did you save my life?”

Halen sighed. “I'll talk to you about it later. We're all just going to have to make the best of a bad situation.”

“Yes. Love you. Bye.”

He hung up the phone. “Hands,” he said to Iri. They switched who was flying the shuttle.

The dashboard had a little glowing navigational panel, and Sylva watched as they closed in on Emerri station. It took a long time, and Halen stared dead eyed and silent out the front window, steering the shuttle up out of the atmosphere. The transition from atmosphere to space was unpleasant, and Sylva hated the rocketing feeling of acceleration that it took.

“If she was waiting for her family,” Halen began, breaking the hours long silence, “she'd take the shuttle and hide. Run cold for a while, and radio them when they came in. She's not planning to do that, though.”

Iri didn't respond.

“I wish you hadn't insisted on lying to me,” Halen said. “This isn't going to end well.”

“I never expected it to,” Iri said.

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Yan knew that she was being followed, and she knew exactly who was following her. It had to be Halen, because she had covered the shuttle with her invisibility as soon as she had left the atmosphere, and he seemed to know where she was going. Additionally, there were plenty of shuttles with defensive capabilities that could have followed her out of the atmosphere, but none did. The only pursuer she had was a single shuttle, and it made no attempt to radio her. She pushed her own shuttle as fast as it could handle, trying to get to Emerri station and the top of the elevator. It was a pretty long trip, several hours.

All the while, she was thinking about what was going to happen. She didn't think that Emerri station had that much in the way of defenses. It had never once needed to defend itself against pirates, so it probably only had minimal shuttles. But it was probably on total lockdown. There would be no way she was going to be able to land her shuttle in the bay. There would be no peaceful docking and transfer to the First Star.

All things considered, her plan had been going spectacularly well. No one had died. Kino was alive, if seriously injured. The muscle relaxant and everything else she had been dosed with were even beginning to wear off, enough that she was able to get herself off the floor. Yan felt a little bad for having left her there, especially during all of the rocky acceleration, but she was also supremely pissed at Kino, and it had been dire circumstances.

Yan put the shuttle on autopilot and got up to investigate what resources she had at her disposal. Kino was passed out on a chair, and Yan spared her a glance as she went to the back of the shuttle. In the lockers back there, with the emergency supplies, Yan found a couple of the flimsiest space suits imaginable. They would be able to protect someone from a vacuum, but not much else. She shook one out and checked to see if it would fit. After all, this shuttle wasn't outfitted with spacers in mind; being of Imperial issue it was designed for far shorter planet-dwellers.

The suit was stretchy enough that Yan felt that she could get it on, and the helmet was functional. The emergency oxygen packs were right where she thought they would be. Yan glanced behind her at Kino, then went to go wake her up.

Yan shook Kino's shoulder, her right one, to not jostle her wounded hand so much. Even that simple touch sent Yan halfway into Kino's dream, and Yan jolted back. It was as though the boundary that Kino had carefully been maintaining around herself had fallen down. Perhaps at least that part of her invisibility was less instinct than it was careful practice. Kino woke and blinked in the dim light. Tears that had been pooling in the corners of her eyes detached themselves and floated away.

Yan didn't know if Kino was crying from pain, or she just had watery eyes when she slept, or what.

“You okay?” Yan asked.

“No,” Kino said.

“We're almost there.”

“Where?”

“The First Star,” Yan said. “Emerri station. Can you get up?”

Yan felt the ghostly touch of Kino's power, apparently free of the drugs' influence enough to operate independently, and watched her detach her seatbelt. The makeshift bandage around Kino's left hand was coming loose, and the smell of blood filled the air as she moved. Yan tried not to look at it, feeling nauseous.

“We're going to have to do something stupid,” Yan said, feeling like her mouth was moving far slower than her brain. “They're not going to let us dock. So we're going to have to board the First Star from the outside.”

“You shouldn't have brought me here,” Kino said.

“Can you just be grateful? I'm trying to save your life, okay?” Yan snapped. She didn't know if she had ever been this mean to Kino, but she didn't have the time to process her own emotions, and that absolutely not dealing with Kino's guilt, or pain, or whatever was going on. Yan needed them both to be rational actors.

Kino looked at her with eyes that seemed too large and too pathetic, magnified by tears. “Okay.”

“So we're going to board the First Star,” Yan said. “Do you understand what that will look like?”

Kino just looked at her.

“Great. So we're going to suit up. Will you be able to do that?”

Kino nodded.

“And I'm going to fly us a bit closer to the First Star. This shuttle doesn't have a harpoon, I don't think, so we'll just have to stationkeep. Once we're close...” Yan stopped and considered for a second. “We have two choices. Do you want to stay in the shuttle, and fly it in once I get the doors open, or do you want to come out with me?”

Neither option was ideal. Yan didn't trust Kino to be able to fly the shuttle, but she equally didn't trust Kino to survive a spacewalk. She left it up to Kino to make the choice.

“I'll go with you,” Kino said, very quietly.

“Fine. That's probably easiest. There's suits in the back. Let me know if you need help getting one on.” Yan returned to the pilot's seat.

Since no one could track her shuttle, Yan wasn't particularly worried about being shot at as they came in, at least not until she released the invisibility. She was worried about someone, somewhere, coming to their senses and ordering the First Star to jump away. That would have been the first thing that Yan would have done, if she thought that someone was about to try to steal her ship.

She didn't know if people did think that, but Halen wasn't stupid, and the shuttle that was following her was tracking a direct course to Emerri station. Halen probably knew better than anyone else about stealing ships, since he was a pirate.

Yan wondered again how Iri and Sylva were doing.

When she got close enough to Emerri station, she could see that the First Star was still docked there. Yan considered the possibilities. She didn't really like any of them.

Number one: people were just being stupid enough to not realize this was her plan, or they still hadn't figured out her identity, or everyone was just being generally incompetent. That didn't seem likely.

Number two: there was some other reason why the First Star couldn't jump away. There was a distinct possibility that the captain of the First Star was down on the planet, and was only just now coming up on the elevator or a shuttle.

Number three: it was a trap. The First Star could be a tempting bait to lure her in. She could be delayed there for long enough for someone to get a sensitive after her to stop her. That was what Yan was most worried about.

There was one other possibility, but thinking about it made Yan's heart beat strangely. Halen had said to her, not even a full day ago, that there was nothing that would make him stop caring about her. Perhaps this was Yan cashing in on that care. This was Yan making the choice that Halen said she could make. This was Halen, allowing her.

Kino, now suited up, sat down in the co-pilot's seat. She had her wounded arm tucked up into her chest. Yan spared her a glance, and felt another incomprehensible twist in her gut.

“We're lucky,” Yan said after a minute. “The First Star is still there.”

Kino didn't respond, which annoyed but did not particularly surprise Yan.

“Have you ever spacewalked before?” Yan asked.

“No.”

“Great.” It was not great. “I'm going to tether you, then.”

“Okay.”

“Buckle up. I'm going to decelerate.” Kino obeyed, using the power to fasten her seatbelt rather than her hands. Yan strapped herself in as well, then began to slow the shuttle down so that they could match orbits with Emerri station. She wanted to have the shuttle cold, and fairly far away from their actual destination. She was going to have to release the invisibility on the shuttle after they left it, and she didn't want to bring too much attention to her actual location. The farther away from Emerri station that she dropped the shuttle, the better her chances of getting them to the First Star undetected were.

They were still several kilometers away from the First Star and the station, but they had matched orbits with it, and the shuttle's engines had had time to radiate away their excess heat. Yan didn't want the shuttle to be lighting up like a star in the infrared view, and she had moved the shuttle so that it wouldn't be in between the station and the planet, so even in the visible it would be less... obvious. It unfortunately would be catching some reflected light, so once she dropped the invisibility it would be pretty easy to spot for people who were looking, but it was better than nothing.

Yan went and suited up herself, struggling to get the suit situated. She plugged in an oxygen pack to the back, and did the same to Kino. It was annoying, but the helmets didn't even have radio. Yan supposed it didn't really matter, since she wouldn't want to be broadcasting anyway as that would immediately give away their position. If Kino was any good at sign, and didn't have a wounded hand, that would have been Yan's preferred method of communication, but as it was, they were going to be tethered together, so Yan could just grab Kino and use the power if she needed to say something. Not that she was particularly in the mood to talk to Kino.

Yan found the boosters, tucked against the back wall of the shuttle. She checked their fuel level and strapped them on to herself. The pack fit snugly on her back, and the thumbsticks that controlled direction and acceleration snapped into place on the palm of her suit's gloves. The tether was just a long cord, and Yan tied it so that it was far shorter than it normally was. It fastened onto the web of straps that encircled the suit, distributing any pulling pressure across her whole chest. Yan attached one end to herself, and the other to Kino.

“Now or never, Kino,” Yan muttered and handed her a helmet. Kino struggled to put it on with her one hand, so Yan reached over and fastened it in place, then put on her own helmet.

They made their way to the airlock. Yan put her hand on Kino's arm, and though the suit made it a little difficult, they were able to speak. Now that she was awake and more lucid, less of Kino was leaking through to Yan.

“We're going to go out, and I'm going to fly us to the First Star. Once we get there, we're going to make our way across the outside to the airlock. I think I'll be able to open the doors.”

“Don't ships stop you from using the power on them?”

“At a distance. We'll be touching it.” Yan had always been able to use the power while inside of a ship, so she doubted that hanging on the outside would be any different. She thought that it was similar to the way that contact facilitated communication. The ship was like the body of the stardrive, which was resistant to being meddled with, but if she became part of the body of the ship by touching it, or by being within its boundaries, then it was rather like how Sid could easily change his tattoos. Maybe just a little bit different.

She had to think that, anyway, because she didn't have an alternative. This shuttle definitely did not have the high powered torches that pirates tended to use to cut through airlocks and enter ships.

Yan and Kino crammed into the airlock. It was a tight fit, and even through the tint of Kino's helmet, Yan could see the way she cringed when her wounded arm was pressed up against Yan. It took half a minute for the air to bleed out of the airlock, and when it did, Yan turned the wheel to open the outside doors.

It was so weird to be back in space. How long ago had it been? She didn't remember if she had spacewalked during her last summer on the Dreams, so it might have been a long time. But even still, the feeling of it was aching and familiar.

“Hold on,” Yan sent, touching Kino on the shoulder. Kino grabbed the tether with her uninjured arm, and Yan gently engaged her boosters, dragging them both forward. She managed to keep the invisibility on both them and the shuttle until they were about half a kilometer away, but the mental strain grew the further away the shuttle slipped in her vision, so she abandoned keeping that invisibility and focused on just herself and Kino.

They came closer and closer to Emerri station, with its long straight tether tying it to the planet. Yan kept a very careful watch, to make sure that there weren't any flying objects around. The last thing she wanted was to be hit with a shipping container, or a shuttle, or a missile. The whole area around the station seemed to be deadly still, and the only sounds Yan could hear were her own tight breaths, the faint hiss of the oxygen pack, and the thudding of her heart in her ears. She wished for the crackle of the radio and any friendly voice.

Yan decelerated as they got closer and closer to the First Star, aiming for the still and rocky surface. Her hands brushed it, and she dragged her feet along it to slow them down. Kino crashed into her, but steadied herself with her right hand. Cautiously, Yan dragged them along, half using the broken surface of the ship, and half using little bursts from the booster pack to navigate them towards the nearest airlock.

She had never been on the First Star, but something about the way it felt in the power was familiar. Maybe it was just the way that all stardrives felt, the warm divot they made in the fabric of the universe. Yan stopped them at the surface of the door.

“You ready?” Yan asked Kino, who had her hand on Yan's back.

“Yes,” Kino sent back.

Yan put her hands on the door, feeling the warm power beneath her hands. It wasn't as difficult as she had feared; the whole ship seemed to welcome her. She tugged the door sideways, pulling it open. Air rushed out, catching her slightly off guard, but it wasn't enough of a flow to knock her anywhere. It was only the volume of the air that had been in the airlock, and since it had such a wide hole to exit through, it dissipated quickly and without much pressure. A bright red alarm light was flashing, and Yan was sure that people were aware of their presence now. They could hardly not be.

She dragged Kino inside the airlock, used the power to shut the outside door behind her, and used the power once again to open the inner door. The air of the ship rushed in, and this time it did knock Yan slightly backwards. She bumped into Kino, and the pain of that impact that leaked through their connection was enough to make Yan's vision go hazy for a brief moment.

With the air in, they could hear the alarm going now. Yan pulled off her helmet, then helped Kino get hers off as well, and undid the tether that was keeping them together. Yan had the advantage in this space, since she was still wearing the booster pack, so she pulled Kino along on her uninjured arm. They were in a small bay, not one used for shuttles, but an area that was used to send out maintenance people to the outside of the ship. It was mercifully empty. Yan didn't know where people were. They were definitely around here somewhere, though.

“First stop is the bridge,” Yan said aloud. “If we meet people, don't kill them. Got it?”

“Okay,” Kino said.

“We're going to jump this ship out of here.”

The first problem was finding the bridge. The hallways of the First Star were much like the hallways of the Impulse in their ordered cleanliness, but they were much smaller and less well labeled. This was not a Fleet ship; it was Sandreas's personal vehicle, an unimaginable luxury.

The alarms were still screaming, making it hard for Yan to think, and every time they came to a door, she had to force it with the power. They didn't have to go very far before they encountered resistance. Imperial security, who had probably been stationed on Emerri station, came looking for them, but Yan had kept her invisibility up, and the only evidence of their passing was the trail of forced doors that she was leaving. Even with the number of doors that she had opened, there were plenty of intersections, so it was fairly easy to avoid people. Easier, even, than on the ground, because in zero gravity, she had no worries about her footsteps being heard. It was much quieter to shove off a wall than it was to walk down a hallway. Kino stayed blessedly silent as well, and made no move to attack the guards when Yan squeezed her arm.

They transferred into the rotating ring, only a single one aboard this ship since it was so small, which took some effort. Typically, one would ride an elevator to match the rotation of the ring, and meet up with one of its entrances. Since everything on the ship was on lockdown, however, what Yan had to do was pry open one of the doors in the elevator shaft, then watch as a door to the ring went sliding by. She pried that one open, too, but then it was too far away for her to dodge into, so they waited for it to come around again, then dove in, ending up crashing hard into the wall before stabilizing on the floor.

It was a little easier to navigate after that, and since stealth had mostly been given up, Yan and Kino dashed down the corridor, searching out the bridge. It was easy to find. The door was locked, of course, but Yan forced it like she had all the others, and then forced it closed on the other side.

Surprisingly, it was empty. Maybe it was true that the real crew of the First Star lived planetside, as most people would, and only came up when Sandreas needed to take a trip. If they were still making their way up the elevator... Well, in any event, it made Yan's life easier.

The bridge was dark, only the emergency lights were on, and the whole place felt dim and ghostly. Yan looked around for a second, taking in the weird feeling of being alone (or nearly alone, since Kino was there) on the bridge of a ship. She didn't have very long to contemplate, though, because she heard the sound of running footsteps in the hallway from outside.

“Kino, you need to stop anybody from getting in here. I'm going to jump us out.”

Kino nodded, and stationed herself in front of the door. Yan dropped all her invisibility and everything else she was holding up. Kino could take care of this. Hopefully.

Yan located the navigator's console and sat down. The computer displayed a lock screen, which didn't even offer a space for Yan to put in a password. She stood up and went over to the captain's chair. There, at the command console, there was a space to put in credentials. Yan thought for half a second, the used the only credentials she knew: her own.

The console lit up. No one had shut her out yet. The twisting feeling in her stomach grew more intense, because this definitely was the work of someone looking out for her. If Halen and Sandreas weren't ordering her shut out, then that was probably because they believed... She didn't know what they believed, but it would probably hurt them all the worse that she actually was betraying them. Stealing Sandreas's ship, taking Kino away.

As quickly as she could, Yan put in the commands to cut off accepting all incoming signals. She definitely did not want someone sending whatever kill command could lock her out at this point. She also brought up the ship's status, showing the long docking tube that connected them to Emerri station. It was unfortunate that it was attached, but safety protocols always dictated that both ends would be closed except during actual transfer of people and equipment from one end to the other, so Yan wasn't worried about jumping and leaving a wide vaccuum hole in the ship.

The biggest problem was that this ship was crawling with people. Imperial security forces, at the very least, who were currently sawing open the door that Kino was holding shut. Yan blocked the keening whine of the door melting and focused on what actually needed to happen. She pulled up the navigation panel.

It all slid so easily, all the past lessons, into her brain. It was so natural for her to perform the calculations, set the drive up. She could practically feel the First Star's drive, ready and waiting, eager to be used. Happy to be leaving port. So was she, in a way.

She double checked her commands, definitely not wanting to drop them into occupied space, and then punched the go button. The power surged, high and joyous, and they jumped.

They barely moved at all, in the grand scheme of things, and immediately alarms flashed on her console, telling her that the docking tube was destroyed, but she ignored that. They were approximately eight hours of conventional travel away from Emerri station.

Yan killed the ship's alarms as she was tired of hearing them, which left only the sound of the door breaking down. Yan glanced behind herself. Kino was sweating, but keeping the door in place with the power.

Yan got on the ship's intercom. “Attention, everyone aboard the First Star. This is, well, this is Yan BarCarran. We have just jumped approximately eight hours of travel away from Emerri station. Please stop trying to destroy the door. I'm not going to hurt you. My goal is to get you off of this ship as peacefully as possible, and then leave. If you cooperate, we shouldn't have any problems.”

She was rambling into the microphone, and she knew it. Her brain was exhausted and foggy. She had been using the power a lot, and she had been doing way too much. It felt like, now that she was in control of the ship, the big problems should be over, but they definitely were not.

The people attempting to break down the door did not stop attempting to break down the door. Yan wasn't super concerned about that. Kino was handling it well enough at the moment.

Yan pulled back up the radio interface, making it so that the only messages she could receive were plain voice. She still didn't want anybody sending kill codes to the First Star, but maybe they couldn't. After all, if she was Sandreas, she didn't know if she would want anyone to be able to remotely disable or alter her ship.

Yan mentally prepared herself to send out the message that she needed to send, then she pressed the button to broadcast out into space, back towards Emerri.

“Halen, is it you in that shuttle?” she asked. If anyone was going to be chasing her down, it would be him. She hoped that Iri and Sylva were with him, and not trapped in jail on Emerri.

It took a long time, several minutes, for the radio to go out and the response to come back. The sound of Kino holding the door was almost unbearable. Yan rubbed her temples.

“Yes, Yan,” Halen said back, sounding resigned. “Please come home.”

“I can't,” Yan said. “Where are Iri and Sylva?”

Again, the agonizing wait for the response. “Kino, are you feeling up to actually going out and stopping them from doing that?” Yan asked. “I can't really deal with the door right now.”

“Okay.”

“Don't kill anyone.” Yan didn't know why she kept having to tell Kino that. After all, Yan had killed... way more people than Kino had. As far as she knew, Kino's body count was zero, actually. But Yan didn't trust her.

The door burst open, and out of an abundance of caution, Yan put up a power structure to keep bullets off of her, but Kino had the situation well under control. She easily stripped the guards of all their weapons, tossed them into the bridge, and gathered the guards up by their clothes and dragged them off down the hall. The door, half destroyed, closed and blocked some of the sounds of struggle, mostly yelling and hands and feet pounding on the floor. Kino had it under control. A sensitive in their right mind and paying attention was really more than a match for basically any traditional attack.

The reply came from the radio. “They're here,” Halen said. “Please, Yan.”

“I have to make this choice,” Yan said. “Let's not waste too much time. There are people on this ship, I'm sure they'd much rather be returned to Emerri, and I'd much rather have Iri and Sylva. You're about eight hours away. When you get here, let's do an exchange.”

The long wait for the reply. “Please don't cross this bridge. We can make this right. I don't want to lose you.”

“I'm sorry,” Yan said. And in the empty silence, waiting for the reply, she kept talking. “All I wanted is for things to go back to the way they were. But they can't- it's not possible, and it never will be. I can't go back and pretend like it's okay, and I can't go back and pretend like this didn't happen. I feel like-- I feel like I'm seeing things for the first time, and I hate it. I never wanted it to be this way.”

“It doesn't have to be this way.”

“It does,” Yan said. “I--” and she stopped, because Kino came back into the bridge, and her thoughts collapsed out from under her. Her tone changed. She had to be professional, now. “When you get here, we'll put the people we have on a shuttle. We'll trade. You take them, you give me Iri and Sylva. Iri will pilot the shuttle back to me, and you can return to Emerri.”

“You're making a mistake.”

“Do you agree to this exchange?” Yan asked. Yan was negotiating from a position of power, a little bit. She doubted that even Halen could attack a starship, and she was in control of it. He would probably come out to her and try to use Iri and Sylva as bargaining chips, but she felt like he had enough of a heart that he wouldn't abandon all the people trapped on this ship with Yan.

The reply took far longer to come than usual.

“Yes. I agree,” Halen said.

“Then we have no need for further discussion,” Yan said and killed the radio. She hated this, but trying to talk to Halen would only hurt more.

Eight hours later, after searching every inch of the ship for people and loading everyone they found onto a shuttle, Yan watched Halen's ship come towards her. It had been pretty easy to corral everyone, once Yan made it thoroughly clear how large the power imbalance was between them was, and how little she actually wanted to hurt them. A few people had required rougher handling, shoving them around by their clothes or threatening at gunpoint, until they cooperated, but by far most people had been eager to climb into the shuttle to escape the First Star.

It was almost anticlimactic, the silent exchange. The two shuttles flew right up next to eachother, the one from the First Star being remotely piloted by Yan over the radio. It was clunky and awkward, but it would do. Over the radio, Yan directed everyone on her shuttle to leave. One by one, the suited group left the airlock.

“Send out Iri and Sylva,” Yan ordered over the radio.

“Please don't do this, Yan,” Halen said again. He really was begging; Yan could hear it in his voice.

“Send them out,” Yan said again. She was sick and miserable, but the professional face and voice were always there for her, and she put them on.

Iri and Sylva filed out of Halen's shuttle. Yan reached out with the power, easy outside of the atmosphere, to confirm they were who they said they were, and that Halen wasn't sending decoys to trick her. Satisfied, Yan opened the airlock doors on her shuttle. Quickly, the groups traded places. As soon as Iri was behind the pilot's seat, Yan gave over command to her, and she accelerated the shuttle back towards the First Star. Yan let her in.

Yan glanced at Kino, and then at the lone shuttle, sitting still and silent out in space before her.

“I'm sorry, Halen,” Yan said, then jumped the First Star away, out into the vast and untraceable distances of empty space.