Geiersburg Fortress

> "Every starship is built around a few guiding principles. One of the chief examples of this kind of universal design is the sealing door. Almost every room in a ship is equipped with a pressure sensor. If a drop in air pressure above a certain threshold is detected, the doors of that room will seal shut, preventing exposure of a large area of a ship to vacuum. The vast majority of doors on a ship can be sealed in this manner, or by command from the ship's control room. You may wonder what happens to a person trapped inside a room where the door has sealed due to a containment breach. After all, you do not want to be trapped in a hard vacuum. To prevent deaths in this manner, doors can still be opened manually. Most doors on ships are also bi-directional (opening usually via a sliding mechanism), which allows the user to open the door regardless of which side the pressure drop has occurred on."

>

> -from Starships: An Introduction to their Function and Design by Cye Migello

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"There's someone looking for you on the station," Shielder said, finding Sylva as she sat on the couch in Keep's suite, jiggling Trav on her knee.

Sylva looked up-- first excited, then worried.

"It's not Evie?" Sylva asked, using the name that Iri had used while aboard the Warrior II, pretending to be a pirate.

"I took the liberty of taking a photo for you," Shielder said. He held out his phone, and Sylva let out a whoosh of relieved breath.

"That's just Chanam," she said. "Good."

Her heart was beating quickly even still, but now it was out of excitement, rather than fear that there were enemy agents. She held Trav out, and the baby giggled as his father took him in his arms.

"Does that mean you're leaving us?"

"I bet Chanam would prefer to hitch a ride on the Warrior II, rather than carry me back out to where the First Star is hiding." She batted her eyelashes at Shielder, who rolled his eyes.

"I'll ask the captain if we can jump you out. Regardless, we'll need to spend some time getting all our people back on board."

Keep emerged from her bedroom. "Your people are here?" she asked.

"Apparently so," Shielder said, and passed her the baby as soon as she got close enough to take him. Keep sighed, then sat down on the couch. She handed Trav back to Sylva. Trav laughed at the game of 'pass the baby' that was apparently occurring.

"I'm gonna miss you," Keep said, elbowing Sylva.

"I'm not gone yet," Sylva said. "How long will it take before we jump?"

"Couple hours," Sheilder said with a shrug.

----------------------------------------

It was rather fast that Iri and Chanam ended up on board, having to awkwardly launch their shuttle out from Xuanhuan's bay and into the Warrior II's bay. Sylva met them as they came in, dragging the still pathetic looking Kino along behind her. Keep, Trav, and Sign were also in the bay, with Sign mostly there to coordinate the opening and closing of the airlocks.

It was a joyful reunion, on Sylva's end. Iri emerged from her shuttle and grinned, looking around. She spotted Sylva and pushed off towards her. The two crashed into a hug in midair.

"Missed you a ton," Iri said, disentangling herself from Sylva's embrace. "Welcome back, Kino."

Kino nodded at Iri silently.

"Good to see you again, Evie," Sign said, looking her over appreciatively.

"Unfortunately, it's a short visit," Iri said, poking him in the chest and sending him drifting back a little.

"You're not going to invite me aboard a ship of your own?" Sign asked, looking fake hurt.

"We could use some more crew," Iri said, sounding actually contemplative.

Sign laughed. "I have a life here, unfortunately."

"Sure you do." Iri waved her hand in dismissal. "And how's little baby Trav and mommy Keep doing?" she cooed.

Keep released Trav to float in the air, which he loved. He reached out for Iri's outstretched finger, giggling. Iri used the strength of his little grip to pull him around in a little circle, which made him shriek with happiness.

"Cutest baby I've ever seen," Iri said.

"Thanks," Keep said. "He's getting big."

"That's the point, isn't it?" Iri asked.

"Of course." Keep grinned. "You ever want one of your own?"

A weird look flashed over Iri's face. "Eh, probably not. My lifestyle's too chaotic."

"That's understandable."

Still, Iri was clearly enraptured by the presence of the baby, to the point where she was almost ignoring Kino. Looking at Kino, Sylva determined that she probably didn't mind being ignored that much. Sylva turned to Chanam, who had been closing the doors of the shuttle.

"How've you been, Mr. Spy?" she asked.

He smirked. "Been empty with just the few of us on the ship," he said in Old Imperial. His accent was still heavy, but the words slipped out more fluently than they had before. "Not very exciting."

"Excitement is a bad thing," Sylva said. "Is everyone on board?" she asked Sign.

"I believe so. We should be jumping out soon, as soon as one of you provides the coordinates." He nodded at Iri and Chanam.

"Happy to," Iri said. "I much appreciate the lift."

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Yan was frozen. A horrible agony gripped her. Sylva and Kino were captured. From the way that Sid was speaking, it seemed clear that Kino was already dead, since only Sylva was offered to be left "unharmed."

Every thought that she had crawled through her brain at a snail's pace, each one taking up her full attention.

First: Sylva had been captured, and Kino was dead or worse than dead. That alone nearly stopped every other thought in its tracks, but she pressed on, cataloguing it as a fact that drilled a knife into her heart.

Second: Sid was here and her enemy. A twist of the knife. She had maybe been prepared to face him in orbit around the Mother's planet, but not here, not now, not like this.

Third: He hadn't mentioned Iri and Chanam. That meant they were probably safe, either still hidden in their shuttle, or on Xuanhuan.

Fourth: Sid must be aboard a Fleet ship, one that was prepared to fight the First Star. Yan knew immediately that there was no hope of ever defeating a fully equipped Fleet ship, especially not by herself. All it would take would be for them to send out their dogfighters in a swarm, and she'd be taken out immediately. Even the Mother had been overwhelmed by large numbers of small enemies, and Yan was just one person alone on a starship.

What was that song? On a lonely, empty starship, all just waiting for to die, was the daughter, youngest daughter, of the captain, Alereye... The tune worked itself into her brain, competing for space among her rational thoughts. She wanted to laugh hysterically.

Fifth: She had two choices. She could surrender, or she could fight. If she fought, she would lose, and that would mean that she would die. So she could surrender, or she could die. If she surrendered, what would happen to her? The Emperor would take her power away. She would be placed in a prison, alone, because no one was supposed to know she existed. Halen might not torture or kill her, but she would never be free again, and that might be worse. No, it would be worse, for sure.

She could run, perhaps, but that would just move the battlefield somewhere else. Sid wouldn't have engaged her without having his jump ready. If she ran, Iri and Chanam would be left with no idea what happened to her. No, it was better to save her jump for a last resort. The main question she had was, how far away was Sid? Would he jump in, or would he save his jump to chase her, on the chance that she did run. It was impossible to know, though she could guess based on their shared past.

How stupid it all was.

How much time had she passed, thinking all of this over? Almost none, in reality. Her hand hovered over the broadcast button. She debated staying silent, wondering if it would be better not to reveal herself. But Sid contacting her proved that her invisibility had been worthless— he must have tracked her by some other means. She dropped the invisibility, feeling a rush of relief as the power came back to her, no longer stretched out like a rubber band.

And if she was going to drop that, she might as well make her peace with Sid, while she still could. There were no shuttles flying around her ship yet. He would probably jump in, then. She would see shuttles lighting up her scope if they were accelerating towards her.

She pressed the broadcast button and leaned back in her seat.

"I've missed you too, Sid," she said. He wouldn't hear the quaking in her voice, but probably everything she said was being recorded, and would be given back to Halen and Aymon at the conclusion of this little scuffle. Or, it would if she didn't quite succeed in the plan that was forming deep in her brain. Her hands shook. She continued to speak as she poked at the menus of her captain's console. "I know you probably think I'm crazy."

She knew exactly what she was looking for, though she didn't know how to find it, or if it existed. She knew this feature didn't exist on Guild ships, because the risk associated with it was far too high, but she wondered if the First Star might have the command built in, by virtue of being First Sandreas's personal ship.

Sid didn't respond to her, at least not right away, so Yan just kept talking. "You're probably going to jump in, like the Bellringer did. Don't worry," Yan said with a huff of breath that might have been a laugh under better circumstances. "I can't fight you like we fought the Bellringer. It's just me."

Sid's voice came back after a very long delay, sounding muffled. "Are you surrendering?" It made sense for him to disguise how long the radio travel time was between their two ships, so Yan put no stock into how long it took him to respond as an indicator of distance. Could have been half a light second, could have been a whole light minute. It didn't matter.

"I'm trying to make peace with you," Yan said. "You know I won't let someone put me back in prison." She smiled a bitter smile. "Where are you keeping Sylva?"

A long pause. "I'm not going to answer that question. Surrender, Yan, and she won't get hurt."

She should have looked for this function before, back when she wasn't on the very precipice of needing it, just in case she ever did. But she hadn't thought it would ever be necessary. Now she knew better.

When she had been at the Academy, and everyone had been taught against creating stardrives, they were given a dire warning. A stardrive, if made improperly, could, on its first use, swallow up a huge swathe of matter, as it would during normal operation, and simply... not deposit it anywhere else in the universe. It would be gone, deleted entirely. That was how the Edden Empire's homeworld had been destroyed: by inching a stardrive close enough to their star that a large enough chunk of it could be removed by this method. That destabilized the star, destroying it and all the planets around it. Yan wanted nothing quite so dramatic. After all, she was nowhere near the star of this system. All she wanted to do was create this effect locally. If Sid and his Fleet ship got close enough to her, she would destroy them, along with herself. A painless exit from the universe.

She wasn't going to goad Sid into attacking her, because she still hadn't found what she needed, but she would continue to talk to him. "I don't think you really understood what it was like, when I was in prison," Yan said. She spoke without rancor in her voice. "You wouldn't offer that if you did understand. It's worse than death, I think. You start to not feel like you're real."

She couldn't find the menu she was looking for. Maybe it didn't exist, but she felt like it must. If she were Sandreas, she wouldn't make a ship without a self destruct feature.

"I never wanted you to be my enemy, Yan," Sid said. "You could make this end."

"I wish you had been on Emerri, when this all happened," Yan said. "I maybe could have made you understand then."

Something changed in Sid's voice over the radio. He was colder now, meaner sounding, even than he had been in that first message. Yan had clearly said the wrong thing. Perhaps trying to convince him of her righteousness was the wrong message, or even just saying that there was a possibility that he could have been convinced. "This is your last chance to surrender."

Yan stayed silent now, trying to buy herself a little more time before Sid and his ship jumped in to destroy her. She muted her broadcast and muttered aloud, "Halen, could use some help here."

"And why would I help you do this?" Halen asked her. He was so corporeal, sitting in the chair next to her, leaning back in his seat with his eyes closed.

"Because I need it."

"I thought you said you don't want to die."

"In prison," Yan said. "I didn't want to die there. I'd rather it be on my own terms."

"And I'd rather you didn't destroy us both," Halen said airily. Yan gritted her teeth.

"You're my subconscious. Of course you'd say that."

He did nothing but smile serenely.

"Don't you see that there's no way to win? Best case scenario is that they kill me outright!" Yan's left hand was gripped so tightly on the arm of her chair that her knuckles ached.

Halen sighed and turned to her. "Do you think that Aymon and I would have put that system in place for anyone poking through the menus to access? After all, I know far more about the workings of a stardrive than you do. I wouldn't need..." He trailed off and vanished as Yan's head jerked up, staring at the big screen in front of her. She had felt that telltale rush of power crash over her, that unmistakable feeling of a ship jumping in. Sid, then.

He wasn't trying to be subtle, or whoever the captain of his ship was wasn't trying to be. It was huge, and it was lit up, and all the shuttles and dogfighters and missiles swarmed out of it like little stars. There was still some time before they reached her properly, so Yan was able to get the First Star's automatic targeting and defenses working. It surprised her for a second that the First Star was so ready and willing to target even Fleet ships and shuttles, but then she realized that Sandreas must have planned for the possibility of a coup.

Before the first wave arrived, Yan opened the bridge weapons cache. She had known it was there (after all, the bridge was often the last stand of captains in besieged ships, while other parts of the crew defended the engine room or the saferoom), but she hadn't opened it before, not having had the need. She found more than enough there, but took out merely a sidearm and one of the heavy utility style knives that spacers favored for both emergency use and hand to hand combat. She hadn't ever been very good at that, but it didn't hurt to strap it around her waist anyway. She hefted the gun in her hand, wanting to test how it felt. Her hand quivered slightly, and she felt like she had two separate trains of thought. In one, she was completely cold and logical, doing everything that she needed to do. In the other, she couldn't bear the idea of holding the gun up to her head of her own volition, feeling like she was back on the rocky hillside of Olkye. Yan kept these two parallel thought processes, and tried not to let the second one overwhelm her.

She loaded the gun, then sat back down in her seat.

She pressed the broadcast button. "Remember that first time we met?" Yan asked. She expected no response from Sid, but until the shuttles and missiles came close enough for her to use her power on them, there was no harm in talking. "I mean when we were waiting outside Sandreas's office. I had no idea what I was getting into." Talking about something so mundane kept her mind off the fact that she would likely be dead within the hour. She understood how Kino felt, the day they had both gone to see the Emperor. "It's all gone so crazy, Sid. I think we were excited to meet eachother then, weren't we?"

She shook her head. "I wish you could be here with me. You know what I mean. Kino thought that you might understand someday, I think. You'll have to ask her, if she's not already dead.

"I guess I should ask you the same favor that she asked me. Don't let anyone hurt my family, okay? They're really not involved, I promise. And Sylva. Don't hurt her. I know that was a condition of my surrender, but I'm not going to do that, and you're just going to kill me here, so, just, don't hurt her."

She didn't quite know what else to say to Sid, but there was still a little time, a few seconds that seemed to stretch into eternity, before the shuttles arrived. They were accelerating so much that they would shoot past her, and then have to turn around and come back, she thought, but that was of no consequence. "I hope you're not on a shuttle," Yan said. "I always felt so bad about the Bellringer. I think about it basically every day." She laughed, shakily, but it was a sad sound that came out with no conscious thought. "Well, I guess I'll know exactly what it feels like."

Ten seconds, maybe.

"If it matters that I say this," Yan said finally, "which, I know it probably doesn't, but... I think you have the ability to change things for the better, you know?" She sighed, now feeling resigned. The shuttles had resolved into clear detail on the scope, and she stretched out her power, feeling it come to life, itching and eager inside of her, as though it knew that this was its last chance to experience use. "Tell Sandreas and Halen I said hi, alright?"

She killed the broadcast, then closed her eyes. The power hummed in her hands, and it felt so natural to simply understand without conscious thought where all the shuttles were. She picked one, any one, and tore its engines off, leaving it spiralling away into space. Someone could pick its pilots up later.

Then she chose another, and another.

But more came, more than she could deal with, and more than the First Star's automatic targeting could handle as well, and they came closer, and closer, and closer, firing to knock out her ship's guns.

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Sylva, Iri, Chanam, and Kino had all been invited onto the bridge of the Warrior II for the jump. Iri for the purpose of providing jump coordinates near to where the First Star was supposed to be, Sylva because she wanted to use the radio to talk to Yan, and Kino and Chanam because the other two were coming along, so they might as well. Keep and crying Trav had been banished from the bridge, but the rest of the bridge crew, including Sign and the captain, Respect, were amicable to their guests' presence.

All of the visiting group had grown quite comfortable with being on the bridge of ships, having spent so long working on the First Star by themselves, but it still felt somewhat like an honor to Sylva, even if the actual goings on were no longer mysterious.

"You must have had a long trip in," Respect said, looking over the jump coordinates that Iri provided.

"It wasn't so bad," Iri said. "I'm used to the acceleration. Still thankful for the ride out, though."

"Not an issue. I'll be glad to get a chance to talk with your captain." Respect was a tall, hard looking woman with blonde hair that she wore pulled into a severe looking bun at the back of her head. Despite that, and despite being the long-time captain of a pirate ship, she was a warm and affable woman to talk to. Sylva hadn't had much chance to interface with her while she had been the doctor on the Warrior II, as the captain was always very busy, but she had developed a healthy respect (hah) for her.

"Are we clear to jump, Sign?" Respect asked.

"We are indeed. Surrounding area is empty and connection to Xuanhuan has been removed. They gave us the clear to jump."

"On my mark, then," Respect said. "Three, two, one, mark."

As with all jumps, there was no feeling or indication that the ship had moved at all, and for about half a second, everything was peaceful. Then every alarm on every console on the Warrior II's bridge began to blare at once, a caterwauling, horrible sound, accompanied by flashing lights.

Respect bolted upright in her chair. "Status?" she demanded, voice calm and firm but body tense.

"Proximity alarms, we're being lit up with tracking radar," Sign said. "We're in some kind of debris field that's clogging our instrumentation."

"Are we in immediate danger?" Respect asked. "Do we have a visual?"

Someone entered a command that made the big screen split up into four quadrants, each showing a hugely wide angled view of space. Sylva's heart felt like it was stopping in its chest.

The First Star was being swarmed by shuttles, each hooking what looked like harpoons into its surface. They were too far away to see completely clearly, but Sylva knew that from those shuttles would emerge soldiers bearing tools that would cut the First Star's sides open and allow entry. Far off in the distance was another ship, a huge thing, very clearly a Fleet ship.

"Why is it spinning?" Respect asked. "That's insane."

Indeed, the First Star was rotating madly, possibly in an attempt to shake off its landers.

"Captain Yan's the only one onboard," Iri said. "She doesn't have to worry about conditions on the rest of the ship."

Respect glanced around at the rest of her crew on the bridge, her face neutral. She certainly saw the pleading, desperate look on Sylva's face, but Sylva couldn't beg her. In a way, she had condemned the Warrior II to this fight: they were stuck in it, like it or not, ready or not, because they couldn't jump out. The Fleet ship was likely to treat them as an enemy. The question of if a single pirate vessel could overwhelm the might of a well prepared military ship was about to be answered.

"Sign, send out the dogs," Respect said. "Get our main guns up and running. I want everyone else in the safe room, strapped in, in case we need to use engine power. MOVE."

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There was a general scramble as every bridge crew member hurried to comply.

"You," Respect demanded, turning to look at Sylva and Iri. "Get on the radio. Figure out what's happening."

Sylva was only too glad to do that. She and Iri crowded around the radio, though most of her visual attention was on the screen up front, watching the First Star continue to spin. "Broadcast's on," Iri said.

"Yan!" Sylva practically yelled into the mic, although it wouldn't make much of a difference. "I'm here! Are you—"

"Sylva?" Yan's voice coming back over the radio sounded horrible— thick and rasping. Sylva hoped it was just due to the pressure the spinning ship must have been putting on her body, and not due to some other kind of pain.

"I'm here, and Kino, and Iri, and Chanam— we're on the Warrior II!" Sylva said. "Captain Respect is sending out the dogs!"

"Iri?"

"I'm here, Yan," Iri said. "Sylva, you should go help Captain Respect. Yan, are you in immediate danger?"

"They haven't breached the hull yet," Yan said. "Are you really there, Sylva?" The incredulity in Yan's voice worried Sylva.

"Yes, I'm really here."

"She needs to go help the captain," Iri said, shoving Sylva away from the radio. Sylva complied this time, going back to where Respect was speaking with Chanam. Kino stared up at the screen, her breathing shallow and rapid.

"The three of you are sensitives?" Respect confirmed, motioning to Chanam, Kino, and Sylva.

"Yeah," Sylva said.

"Can you take down a Fleet ship?"

"I've done it before," Chanam said, sounding dismissive.

Respect looked at him, narrowing her eyes. "I'm not here for hubris."

"He's not lying," Sylva said, trying to diffuse the situation, though it was not one that was easily diffused. "But that was a very different situation."

"What are you proposing?" Respect asked.

Sylva didn't exactly have a tactical mind. Her first few thoughts were jumbled, brute force kinds of ideas. She didn't know how many dogfighters Captain Respect was willing to throw at the problem, or even able. Right now, the few dogs that had been able to launch quickly were speeding across the screen, headed towards the First Star, going to shoot down the interlopers clinging to its side.

Sylva wished that there was a large supply of mass around, that they could throw, make it become a power struggle between the sensitives on one ship and the other, but they were truly in the void of space; the only debris around were the shattered remnants of shuttles that Yan had been methodically destroying. That wasn't nearly enough to make an impact against a ship so big, even if Sylva could gather it all together.

"Which ships have their jumps?" Iri asked Yan over the radio.

"Just me," Yan said.

"Commitment actions," Iri said under her breath.

"There might be another one, hiding," Yan said. "You know the Guild was chasing us."

"I have an idea," Kino said, in a voice rusty with disuse. Sylva looked at her, shocked. "What are the jump timers?"

Captain Respect put the Warrior II's up on screen, an ominous red 7:45, typed in manually 0 for the First Star, and then Yan relayed over the radio that the Fleet ship had jumped in two and a half hours ago. Respect set a timer for it saying 5:30. It amazed Sylva that Yan had been able to hold out on her own for so long, but maybe she shouldn't have been surprised by that. Yan was, after all, the most talented person she knew.

"If there is another ship, where are they?" Sylva asked.

"Hiding and waiting for a message, I'd assume," Iri said.

On the screen, the Warrior II's dogfighters began engaging with the ones around the First Star. Sylva didn't know why she was shocked at how agile they were. They seemed to get the upper hand in several of the quick engagements, their opponents turns seeming too slow, their shots going wide. She wondered why this was, then she saw Chanam with his eyes closed, fists clenched, using the power to aid them.

"Waiting for a message?" Sylva asked.

"If they weren't keeping radio silence, we would have known they were here before we jumped," Respect said. "They're still not broadcasting. That means they either have some other method of communication, are waiting, or there's no other ship out there. They would have reported us jumping in, if there was someone they were reporting to. And from here, we'd be able to pick that up." Respect turned to Kino. "What was the plan you had?"

Kino's hands twitched at her sides, grasping at the fabric of her borrowed jumpsuit. She looked up at the screen, not meeting anyone's eyes. "No one will like it."

"Say it," Respect demanded.

"How much of an impact could the First Star survive?" Kino asked.

Sylva looked at Iri for the answer to that question, because she was the only one who had a hope of knowing. "It depends," Iri said. "But I'm not an engineer. If the stardrive isn't damaged..." She shrugged, rather helplessly.

Kino stared her down, then shook her head. "Doesn't matter. You are betting that there is a second ship?" She asked this of Respect.

"I'd err on the side of caution."

"If a second ship comes, will you be able to hold out until your jump timer is up?"

Respect thought about it. "What choice do I have?"

"None," Kino said. "I just want to know."

Respect's face darkened. Sylva stepped in, as Kino clearly wasn't picking up on that signal. "Kino, the plan."

"The sphere of influence of a stardrive when it's jumping is larger than the ship itself, isn't it?"

"It can be," Respect said. "It's complicated. We use that if we need to tow something that won't fit in a bay. It's a parameter that you can set."

Kino nodded shortly. "But not much larger."

"You can't tell it to stretch infinitely. And a physical connection is required."

"That's what I thought." She paused for a second, looking at the still spinning First Star. "If we crash the First Star into that ship, at the moment of impact, Yan can jump. That will rip a hole in it."

There was a moment of strained silence from everyone as they processed what Kino said.

"You can't—" Respect began.

"But Yan—" Sylva said.

Iri cut through them both like a knife. "You think that they wouldn't move?" she asked. "They're not stupid.

Kino had an answer for this. "We can cut off their sensors. That's what we'll use the power for. They won't be able to see Yan coming."

"Not at this distance I can't," Sylva said, momentarily forgetting about her protests to the full part of the plan.

"We'll need to be in a shuttle, then," Kino said.

"You would sacrifice a whole ship and stardrive?" Respect asked.

"The outer part of the First Star will be damaged," Kino conceded. "But the stardrive should survive. After the jump, the mass that goes with it will be far less than the mass of the full ship. I believe the impact will be survivable, at least for Yan, as the only person on board." Kino's tone was flat and dead sounding.

"You're betting a lot on that," Respect said.

"There's one person in the First Star," Kino said. "A person to whom I owe my life. But I know that she would tell me that there are three hundred people on this ship. The First Star is the most versatile weapon we have."

"Yan has to agree to this plan," Sylva said. "She's the one—"

"She's been listening," Iri said. "Yan?"

"I'll do it," Yan said over the radio. Her voice was sad but firm. "Tell me when."

"Do you consent to this plan, Captain Respect?" Kino asked.

"It's not my ship," she said, which settled it. Sylva didn't have a better plan, and no one else spoke up with one, so that was what they were going to go with.

Iri leaned over to Sylva and whispered in her ear. "Does he need to come to deal with this?" She indicated Chanam.

Sylva shook her head.

"Alright," Iri said, taking the lead. "Kino, Sylva, we'll get you onto a shuttle. Chanam, you stay."

"Why?" he demanded, his eyes still closed, focused on the battle outside.

"Because you're already making yourself useful here. Don't need more than two to disrupt their sensors," Iri said.

"Don't die," he muttered, then went back to ignoring them. His aiding the dogfighters by slowing down the Fleet's little ships was keeping the Warrior II superior in the battle, despite the Fleet's obvious technological advantage. Perhaps the Fleet's onboard sensitive was too far away to help, or had already been killed by Yan in the previous phase of the battle. It didn't really matter. All that mattered was that Chanam was helping the dogfighters blast the Fleet ships apart, one by one.

"Captain, you'll have to coordinate from here," Iri said. "Feed the First Star a jump coordinate, and we'll let you know when we have their sensors blocked and can put the plan in motion. If you could clear all the shuttles off the surface of the First Star, as well, that would probably make this easier."

"We'll do our best," Respect said. "Do you need a dog?"

"I'll take my own shuttle," Iri said. "No sense stealing one of yours. Besides, it's the only kind I know how to fly." She said this with a bitter looking grin on her face. "Let's go, ladies."

So Sylva, Kino, and Iri ran down the halls to the bay where Iri had parked the First Star's shuttle. They climbed in and launched in record time. Before they launched, Kino threw the invisibility they would need over the shuttle. There was no sense in leaving only to get targeted by the Fleet. Sylva kept her power up as best she could to divert projectiles, but since they weren't seen, they weren't being fired upon, which made it easier. Even though she was smushed back into her seat by the acceleration, going as hard as they could, Sylva still felt better being back in a shuttle Iri was flying. Despite the terrible circumstances, and the idea that the First Star would soon be smashed to bits (intentionally), Sylva felt like she was going home, finally, in a way. The whole trip to Hanathue had been grueling, exhausting, and just plain long. She wanted to see Yan again. She wanted to be back on the First Star (which she still pictured as whole, and didn't imagine what it might look like after impacting the Fleet ship).

Iri matched velocities and killed the acceleration when they got close enough to the Fleet ship that Kino and Sylva would be able to do their work. They were actually scarily close to it, and it loomed to their side like an ominous beast, taking up their whole field of vision. Kino was good at the invisibility, then, to keep their tiny shuttle moving unseen.

"You do what you need to do," Iri said.

"We should, uh, synch up," Sylva suggested, looking over at Kino. Kino nodded, though her eyes were downcast. Sylva realized that she had never meditated with Kino before, and she wondered what it was like. Yan had, in that big group mind during the attack on the Gatekeeper, but Sylva had been intentionally left out of that. And who knows what Yan and Kino did together during their little "practice sessions". She felt a weird twitch of jealousy at those thoughts, but clamped them down. Now was not the time.

Kino must have noticed the emotions making themselves plain across Sylva's face, because she asked, "Are you ready?"

Kino's more willing speech today was a positive sign, Sylva thought. "Yeah."

"You do the call," Kino said, and closed her eyes and held out her hands for Sylva to take. Sylva took them. Kino wasn't wearing gloves. Her hands were soft, but the prosthetic that wrapped around her left hand was sharp and cold.

Sylva floundered for a moment, not sure what to use. She thought the last time she had actually meditated with another person, aside from sliding into Yan's dream (which didn't count) might have been when she had quit her apprenticeship, with her mentor. That was a long time ago, and she somehow doubted she had gotten much better at it since then. Still she picked a simple tune one that everybody at the Academy knew.

"Yora girls they have no charm,

hoorah, hoorah.

They'll knock you down and break your arm,

hoo-rah, hoo-rah, hey!

I'm a-goin' out,

No more at school to stay,

I'm goin' to a place where there's none like me,

No more Academy.

Yora boys all look like hogs,

hoorah, hoorah.

You'd think they'd all crawled out of bogs,

hoo-rah, hoo-rah, hey!"

It was a song that no one was supposed to sing, but somehow all the Academy students learned it through osmosis within what seemed like minutes of their arrival in their first year. There were a shocking number of verses. Luckily, with only really two lines to work with, they tended to be on the tame side.

Kino's mouth twitched in something that might have been a ghost of a smile and then Sylva closed her eyes, focusing as best she could on just the words of the stupid children's song. Was it easier, using the power now that she had been through so many life and death situations? Maybe. It may have just been that aside from her own singing, the interior of the shuttle was dark and quiet, and there were not distractions other than the feeling of Kino's slender hands in her own chubby ones. She pushed that feeling out of her mind, and sank down into that shared space with Kino.

She had known, before now, that Kino didn't quite think in words, that her mind would be full of the same vivid, focused imagery that she had presented to Sylva while on Hanathue. Still, Sylva felt like when they entered the shared mind space, their thoughts were like oil and water, Sylva's floating atop Kino's recollections, as though she were looking down upon them through some kind of barrier. She exerted a mental effort to push her way through that barrier, felt herself be repelled, then allowed in, ever so slightly. They stopped singing. Kino opened her eyes, and Sylva looked out through them.

"You'll have to do this," Sylva said in their shared space. "You're better at this than I am." The feeling attached to those words was one of a personal inferiority, and Kino seized on that feeling and turned it over and over in their minds. It brought up several flashes of images that went by too fast for Sylva to truly examine, though she was certain that one of the images was of Bina, forcing her to feel her own pang of guilt. "Come on," Sylva thought, trying to pry the feeling out of Kino's mental grasp, focusing their shared thoughts on something else. "Now's not the time."

A snatch of music sounded in Sylva's ears: a woman's voice, one that she had never heard before. It said, "This is the time, and this is the record of the time." It was clearly some fragment of a thing that Kino remembered, and Sylva couldn't tell if Kino was trying to use it to say something to her, or if these thoughts just flashed into Kino's head whenever certain words were said. Sylva knew that trying to control her own thoughts was often like herding cats, so she couldn't judge Kino too badly, but it was distracting, and they had a job to do. She tried to form an image of the reversed invisibility that they would need to impose over the whole Fleet ship, and held it out to Kino.

Kino considered it, then slowly rejected it, showing Sylva how her idea of not allowing any radio or visual transmissions through would quickly alert the Fleet ship that something was up. The power structure she presented instead was much subtler, and Sylva picked it apart. They were going to leave most of the visual information in tact; the only thing that they would have to carefully track and block out was the motion of the First Star. They could leave the visuals of all the dogfighting ships alone, so long as they didn't start to scatter obviously when the First Star moved. Then, they were going to flood the radio spectrum with a false noise. It would be obvious, but it would appear as though the Warrior II had the usual means of blocking communications, in order to make it harder for the Fleet ship to coordinate their own battle. It wouldn't obviously appear that the Fleet ship had been put in a bubble, keeping them from knowing about the massive ship that would soon be hurtling on a collision course towards them. Infrared and other spectra that could betray the First Star's position were covered the same way that visuals were covered. Sylva was a little worried about radar: if the Fleet ship was sending out targeted pulses, they might be able to cut through the noise, but Kino presented an image of the First Star in the visual spectrum, along with a sense of incredulity. Why would they need to use radar targeting when they could just look at it? Neither of the two of them were technology experts, but they hoped that this would be enough. It only had to work for a few minutes as the First Star accelerated.

"Ready?" Sylva asked. She held her power out, as if it were a silver thread, for Kino to work with. Kino directed her to the portion of the power structure that was supposed to flood the area with radio noise. Sylva took the hint and settled her focus on that.

"Ten seconds, we're putting this power structure down, Iri," Sylva said out loud, though she might have said it through both her and Kino's mouths, as the distinction between them was less and less as time went on. "Send the go signal." Kino was forced to momentarily drop the invisibility on their own shuttle, in the one radio band they were using for communication. Sylva had almost forgotten that she had been holding that up. It spoke to Kino's almost effortless use of the power. Kino presented a wry image of herself fading away into the darkness: she had always been good at being invisible, after all.

She didn't see or hear Iri's response, but she waited the requisite time before she brought her full force to bear on the segment of the power structure she had been handed. Perhaps it was surprisingly easy to allow her mind to create chaotic, formless noise.

She felt Kino's part of the power structure take shape. Kino's mind was of a singular focus that Sylva had to admire. She could feel herself getting distracted, watching the other woman work, and she refocused.

From where they were, they couldn't see the battle, or the First Star begin to move, but Sylva almost felt like she could feel it, beginning to barrel towards them, as fast as its engines could push.

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"You're really doing this?" Halen asked.

"Yes," Yan said and gritted her teeth. She hadn't invited her Halen apparition here, but he was with her anyway, sitting in the chair next to her, leaning slightly sideways towards her with an expression of resignation.

"It will hurt," he said.

"And so would the alternative," Yan said. "I think--"

"You might not get out alive," Halen said. "I might not get out alive."

And that was an odd distinction for him to make, but Yan didn't pay it much attention. The acceleration pressed her into her seat as she input the commands to the engines, so rarely used. At least the ship wasn't spinning wildly anymore. She had turned off the rings, so she would have been floating if they weren't accelerating. And she strapped herself into her chair. Her hands dug into the fabric on its arms. She stared ahead of herself, at the big screen, completely unblinking.

Alarms were blinking on her console, some telling her that communications were being jammed, some telling her that parts of the ship were damaged, and others yelling about the strain of acceleration.

"Are you ready?" Halen asked.

"As I'll ever be," Yan said. The jump coordinates had been set, including setting the inclusion radius as far as it would go. That, too, had caused warnings to flash on the dashboard, but she ignored them, feeling a confidence that this would work. That was, if she wasn't smashed into a pancake on impact. The part of the ring that she was on was on the far side of the ship; she had purposefully oriented and secured it there, but that didn't mean that any ship was meant to stand a strain like the one she was about to put the First Star through. No one ever considered ships would intentionally accelerate into each other. It would be catastrophic for one ship to even just bump another in a docking accident. And yet, here she was. Captain of her ship, about to almost certainly destroy it in totality.

The acceleration caused her head to throb, or perhaps that was just the pounding of her heart, and the immense, sudden stress she was under. She wished she had gotten to say goodbye to Sylva and Iri and Kino, and even Chanam, and even the surprise rescuers aboard the Warrior II, but it had all happened so fast.

The Fleet ship was coming even more fully into view, taking up a massive section of the view screen. She wished she could say goodbye to Sid, but communications were jammed, and she wasn't going to give away the game like that.

Closer.

She couldn't help doing two things. Despite herself, Yan muttered a prayer under her breath, a kind of reflex that she had thought was long buried. "Lord of all creation, keep all wanderers on their journeys, keep all blades in their sheathes, keep all fires in their hearths..."

And the second thing that she couldn't help but do was stretch out her power in a line, as far as it would go, searching for the man she knew was on the other ship, trying to send him some kind of final message even if it was pointless, even if she was giving the game away. He was there, a burning spark in her mind's eye, even after all this time and distance. Through her power, she tried to send him whatever feeling she had for him, all wrapped up in a kind of guilt and pain. She was sorry, but not sorry enough not to do this.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

The impact was beyond horrible, but by time she felt it fully, the stardrive had already thrown its power up in a great and terrible wave, and had taken her out into distant, empty space.

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"We've lost contact with our dogs," one of the crewmembers said. Sid jammed his hands deeply into the pockets of his cassock, trying to contain his nervous energy.

"Why?" Captain Slater asked.

"There's someone broadcasting noise on all frequencies that we use," the crewman said. "I can't cut through it. It's completely overwhelming."

"That doesn't seem right," he said. "Every frequency?"

"Yes, sir."

"Figure out where it's coming from and destroy it," Slater said. "Send out more dogs if necessary." He leaned forward and watched the action unfolding on the big screen.

"It's probably from the pirate ship," Sid posited.

"Of course it is, but I have no idea why pirates would have that kind of tech."

Sid shrugged. He was deeply concerned, since this pirate ship jumping into the fray indicated that it had some relationship to Yan at best. At worst, it had Calor and Kino on board, which he did not want to deal with. The Vortex's sensitive had gone out with the dogfighters, which meant that Sid was alone on board the Vortex. He had almost asked to go out as well, but then he remembered how nothing good had ever seemed to happen to him on board shuttles, so he kept that touch of desire firmly to himself.

He wished that Ervantes was on the bridge, but Captain Slater had made it clear that there was no room for his liaison. Apparently, despite Ervantes's position, he was still too junior to merit a bridge placement on a ship on which he was not a member of the crew.

Sid watched the fight progress on the monitors. "Will they be alright without instruction?" he asked, watching the dogfighters battle the ones which had come off the pirate ship.

"They're well trained," Slater snipped. Sid had accidentally insulted his crew. Oh well, Sid thought. It had been a valid question. The battlefield seemed to be moving away from the surface of the First Star, as the pirates' dogfighters had been easily able to pick off the shuttles that were clinging to its surface, unable to move (aside from the rapid spinning of the ship they were clinging to). They had relented and moved back, to be more mobile to fend off this advancing force. Unfortunately, that left them more vulnerable to attacks from Yan. Even as Sid watched, one of the Fleet dogfighters spiraled out of control, through no mechanism that he could discern, meaning that a sensitive had grabbed the shuttle. It was painful to watch, and he imagined it was even more painful to be inside the shuttle. He was too far away to lend any help; the only reason the image was so clear was that the scopes had a great deal of magnification. He felt impotent, really, watching the whole scene, and in an attempt to see if perhaps he could reach that far, to lend some aid, he stretched out his power in a vast bubble, pushing it out past the bounds of the Vortex's sides, into the vast and subtle emptiness of space.

Something passed through his awareness, just off the "northwest" quadrant of the Vortex, about a kilometer distant. Sid opened his eyes, which he hadn't realized he had closed, and looked around at the bridge.

"Do we have a shuttle sitting off our northwest?" he asked. "About a kilo out?"

"What?" Slater asked.

"There's something out there. I can feel it in the power."

Slater pulled up a camera on his console, which he showed to Sid. "Nothing there. Feel free to move the view, if you like."

Sid did, twisting the camera to look all around in the direction which he had felt the object. "Weird." He closed his eyes once again and directed his power out, this time searching it out deliberately. He found it easily, making a mental image for himself of what the object was, passing his power through layers of metal, the fuel of the engines, and, yes, two sparks of life.

"There's definitely a shuttle out there," Sid said. "I'm worried that there's a sensitive on it, keeping it invisible like the First Star was. It has a crew of two."

Slater sighed heavily. "And for what reason is there a shuttle lurking off my side?"

"Probably jamming our radios."

"I'll have someone shoot it down, if you can give me the targeting data."

"I could try to destroy it from here," Sid said.

"Give me the data, so I can deal with it, in case you can't. But you're welcome to try."

Sid used the console to select the area of space in which the shuttle was invisibly lurking. "Okay, give me a minute, I'll let you know if I've done it or not."

"We should see it come back into visibility if you succeed, should we not?"

"Oh. Yeah." Sid closed his eyes, again searching out that shuttle. He was about to grab onto what he thought were its engines, when he felt something else, someone else, reaching out to him in the power. It was a familiar feeling, one that struck him instantly as Yan, and it felt so sorrowful, and like it was moving incredibly fast. A faint feeling, but one that came towards him faster and faster and faster, growing louder and more pressing every second. Sid threw his power out in a wave, trying to pinpoint Yan, where she was. Had she escaped on a shuttle from the First Star?

But what his power encountered made his blood freeze in his chest. The most massive object he could have imagined his power passing through was barreling towards him, so close.

Sid's eyes snapped open. "Shut all emergency doors now! Brace for impact!" he yelled, startling the bridge crew. "Do it now!"

"What?" Slater asked.

"Just do it! Three seconds!" Sid yelled, unable to control his tone or volume. It was too late for him to fasten the seatbelt of his chair; he just didn't have time.

"Do what he says," Slater said, apparently believing Sid, though he had provided no real reason. "What's going--"

Sid had managed to get a power structure up that glued the back of his cassock to his chair, which was the best seatbelt he was going to get under the circumstances, but then it hit, and Sid felt like his chest was being crushed by a million ton weight, and his neck snapped sideways, horribly twisting in a way that was excruciatingly painful but not immediately life threatening. Sid fared better than most of the rest of the people on the bridge. The lucky ones who were sitting managed to, for the most part, merely fall to the floor, but anyone who had been standing ended up smashing into the nearest object, mainly face first.

Sid's glasses flew off his face, and he lost sight of them in the chaos.

The shock event was less bad than he had anticipated, and didn't... continue. It was an instantaneous thing, and Sid thought for a brief second that that meant that the ship had made only a glancing collision, and had thus been spared from too much damage. That hope was short lived, though, because, after a few seconds of people scrambling to their feet and looking around, dazed, the power went out completely, and the whole floor moved with a sickening rumble that Sid could feel in his bones. He couldn't imagine what it sounded like, and he didn't want to. Perhaps for the moment the safest place to be was in his chair.

Every room on a ship could be sealed off, even in the interior rings, and each one had an independent battery that could provide a bare minimum of emergency lighting in case of power loss. It wasn't much, especially if airflow was restricted, but it was better than nothing. The emergency lights kicked on, casting the scene in a dull red glow. Sid saw his glasses on the floor, though someone had stepped or fallen onto them, and the left arm of it was broken off. He summoned them towards himself anyway, and they flew into his hand. He jammed them onto his face where they sat crookedly across his nose, making it hard to read what people were saying, but at least he had that as an option.

"Status report," Slater demanded.

"The First Star just hit us," Sid said. "I think."

All of the monitors at the front of the room were down, though the majority of the consoles appeared to still be working. It made sense: the bridge of a ship was one of the rooms one would want to keep most operational during a catastrophic event. He had no idea if they were getting data feeds from outside, though.

"Is it still in the area?" Slater asked.

"I don't know. It must not have hit us directly, or we would be in worse shape," Sid said. "I can look with the power."

That sense of Yan he had had was gone, but that might have just meant she had stopped broadcasting her preemptive apology. Sid stretched out his power through the Vortex, then stopped short as he realized that the Vortex was no longer the rough sphere it had been at the outset. He moved his power to the outside of the ship's form, sensing the massive chunk that had been ripped from it. Roughly a third of the ship was gone. The shape was reminiscent of a clumsy image of a crescent moon, though three dimensional.

He tried to contain his panic, and stretched his power out into space, to see if that debris was nearby, or if the First Star was still rocketing past on its course. But there was nothing. Space was empty.

Sid opened his eyes.

"--Engines completely offline. Stardrive giving no status update. No power is being transmitted to the rings..." Someone was going through a long litany of terrible things that their console was reporting. The horrible rumbling of the ring continued, punctuated by occasional jerks and sliding feelings, and accompanied by a gradual lessening in apparent gravity as the ring spun down. Sid ignored that, turned to Slater.

"Is the radio working?" he asked.

"Unknown."

"We need to call for the Son of Emerri to rescue us," Sid said. "Or we're not getting out of here alive."