Cap­tain Mada Rui, for­mer­ly a Dji­panese no­ble­woman at least in name, was ex­act­ly the sort of woman who would nev­er see the con­se­quences of her ac­tions com­ing. Giv­en her 3-star Gold Qi core, it took an as­ton­ish­ing quan­ti­ty of al­co­hol to get her drunk, and yet she spent the mon­ey to do ex­act­ly that when­ev­er she made port, for as long as she was in port. If she were rich­er--and on those oc­ca­sions where she had a wind­fall, and the crew couldn't keep the mon­ey out of her pock­ets--she would spend the ex­tra mon­ey on tasti­er al­co­hol rather than any­thing sen­si­ble, like in­vest­ments, or even ship re­pairs.

Nev­er­the­less, the ship was hers, and her sec­ond and third of­fi­cers had learned when they could, and when they couldn't, sneak some­thing by her. In the case of that id­iot Il­lan girl, they didn't have to. She had been search­ing around for a while, ask­ing a bunch of ob­nox­ious ques­tion, and then sud­den­ly de­cid­ed that she had to trav­el to Djang. She was will­ing to work ship­board, so she could have made off on any re­spectable trade ship if one were in port. But she was im­pa­tient, and that brought her to Cap­tain Mada's sec­ond, and the brat even de­mand­ed to ask the cap­tain in per­son.

If Cap­tain Mada were sober, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly smarter, she might have seen an echo of her own past in the girl, but it was her past that she was spend­ing all of her mon­ey to for­get. That left her with an in­de­scrib­able ha­tred for the girl, and be­tween her sec­ond and her, it wasn't hard to share an un­der­stand­ing with­out words or even qi puls­es. So they ac­cept­ed the girl aboard, and as soon as she was asleep, tied her up, beat her to with­in an inch of her life, and set off to sell her to Djang slavers. The girl alone, plus some com­mon trade goods, would more than make a prof­it on the short jour­ney. Cap­tain Mada, in her way, thought of noth­ing but the drink­ing she would do with the ex­tra mon­ey, even as her sec­ond and third did all the real work to get her ship ready to sail.

The first sign of trou­ble was when the Third caught the girl mak­ing some weird kind of qi wave in the dead of night, and beat her for it. The Sec­ond brought it up with the cap­tain first thing in the morn­ing, but she was some­where be­tween hung over and new­ly sober, both of which were bad moods to ac­cost her in.

It was a good half a day lat­er when the sec­ond fi­nal­ly spoke again with his Cap­tain, look­ing more than a bit wor­ried.

"She should have bro­ken by now," he said, gruffly. "Seen peo­ple at High Sil­ver be­fore. They don't usu­al­ly have the spir­it to keep re­sist­ing. Not in the cage."

Mada Rui blew the man off and gave him scut work for both­er­ing her, as she of­ten did. But be­ing sober, af­ter a time, the words did sink in, and she checked the ship's brig. What she saw there was in­ter­est­ing, to say the least. The girl hadn't just re­sist­ed the abuse and the hos­tile qi of the prison seals; she seemed en­tire­ly out of place there. What­ev­er was go­ing on with her spir­it, it stood out from the sur­round­ings like a bea­con. From her qi alone, you would think that she was a princess mad about her break­fast, and not a pris­on­er about to lose her en­tire fu­ture.

Nat­u­ral­ly, this pissed Cap­tain Mada off.

"Well there, lit­tle bitch," she said, when she fi­nal­ly deigned to ad­dress the girl. "My boys say you aren't hap­py with your fine accommodations. Even af­ter we were kind enough not to re­quire you to work for us on this de­light­ful cruise." She sneered down at the girl, her eyes tak­ing in the cuts, the bruis­es, the knee that was bent awk­ward­ly. And yet, for all that...

"Sobon will de­stroy you," the girl said, the fire in her voice un­de­ni­able. "He is com­ing for me."

Mada Rui rolled her eyes. In truth, the girl's words echoed words she might have said, at an­oth­er time and place. They'll come for me. They'll save me. You'll suf­fer for this. She didn't need or want to re­mem­ber those times. She didn't need to re­mem­ber how wrong she had turned out to be. "And what makes you think any­one is com­ing for you?"

"The will of the world told me." Her voice was de­fi­ant.

Mada Rui rolled her eyes. As with many sailors, she had a para­noid streak to her, but she had long since put a clamp on it. It was the only way to keep the rest of the sailors on her ship in check; the last time she had let her­self show any kind of doubt or pan­ic, she'd had a mutiny on her hands with­in half a day. The cal­lous dis­re­gard for con­se­quences she'd learned af­ter slaugh­ter­ing her crew and tak­ing on a whole new one had served her far bet­ter.

"If the will of the world wants to talk to me, she can," scoffed the cap­tain, then raised her hand. The light­ning qi that she sum­moned had a lot of dark­ness cling­ing to it, as it had for years. She didn't un­der­stand, al­though she knew some­where in­side of her that if she stopped car­ing, the dark­ness would con­sume her en­tire­ly. She didn't let it, but that wasn't any kind of kind­ness or good­ness in her heart. She just didn't trust any­one--not peo­ple, not gods, and cer­tain­ly not nasty black qi that was try­ing to creep into her.

She played her light­ning over the girl for a good half an hour, lis­ten­ing to her scream, then went back to the top deck.

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

It was near mid­night when Sobon had re­ceived a ping from the Coro­na. If Sobon had been a full Cy­borg, she would have been awake in­stant­ly, but it took Alas­si's fleshy body too long to ful­ly parse the mes­sage that came in.

[ (Ur­gent) Re­lay from (Aether sig­na­ture of Ki'el): Help ]

Sobon cursed flesh and blood more that day than she had since she had first ar­rived in Jom's scrag­gly, gan­g­ly street-rat body on the verge of death. In­stant­ly, she was col­lect­ing the quartz rods she had made, her mind run­ning through what she could, and could not, en­grave on them to turn them into weapons. Mean­while, she pinged the Coro­na back. [ (Ur­gent) Re­quest rel­a­tive bear­ing and dis­tance. ]

The re­sults of that re­quest were not pos­i­tive. Ki'el was far away, per­haps four thou­sand kilo­me­ters. Sobon forced her­self to calm, and redi­rect­ed her ef­forts to the most ob­vi­ous tool. She fused three quartz rods to­geth­er into a tri­an­gle, one that would fit across her back, and wrote in a se­ries of scripts that would pro­vide in­tense thrust, oth­ers to cre­ate vari­able-sweep wings from force planes, and a third set to at­tach the rig to her body. The re­sult was a sim­ple, user-con­trolled flight suit, one not dis­sim­i­lar to stan­dard Ma­rine rigs, if with­out the com­put­ers, weapons, de­fens­es, and com­mu­ni­ca­tions.

It took Sobon per­haps two min­utes to de­cide that she was go­ing to in­scribe many quartz rods each with with the aether ri­fle pat­tern and an in­de­pen­dent pow­er source script, so in­stead of do­ing them each by hand, she cre­at­ed a tool to copy that ex­act pat­tern onto a stretch of rod, and broke off six­teen pieces of equal length, and en­graved them all in bulk. Then she took two rod sec­tions and carved bar­ri­er blades into them, just in case.

When she came out of her fugue state to look around, Sobon was only half-sur­prised to find that Mian and Lui had wok­en and were look­ing at her. They hadn't in­ter­rupt­ed; Sobon looked at the sky to see that she had been work­ing for hours, and that dawn was al­ready ap­proach­ing. In­stead of think­ing too hard about that, Sobon added an­oth­er script to the wing suit to cre­ate a di­men­sion­al pock­et, for stor­ing all of the weapons she'd made, and then used up the rest of the un­script­ed area to add a telekine­sis pat­tern.

"Ki'el is in dan­ger," she fi­nal­ly said. "I will save her, no mat­ter what."

"I was won­der­ing," Mian just said, his voice hav­ing only a touch of hu­mor, and much more con­cern. "You care for that girl a lot?"

Sobon paused. Al­though her ef­forts were laugh­able if you sim­ply looked at them--a quartz tri­an­gle with some scratch­es on it--she had wok­en in the mid­dle of the night and gone into an ab­solute fury all for a young girl she had met once, for a cou­ple weeks at most, who was le­git­i­mate­ly thou­sands of kilo­me­ters away--hours away even at top speed. On a cer­tain lev­el, as a cy­borg, Sobon could see the in­san­i­ty of throw­ing every­thing into a res­cue mis­sion. And on a cer­tain lev­el, as Alas­si, some part of her was com­plete­ly de­tached, un­in­ter­est­ed.

None of that sat­is­fied the anger in Sobon's heart. The anger that came from see­ing a good girl aban­doned and bro­ken by her cir­cum­stances. A girl who, at least at one point, had only had Sobon to look to for help. A girl--a per­son--who she had giv­en hope to, and who might now be on the verge of los­ing all hope.

"Yes," Sobon de­cid­ed, plac­ing the quartz tri­an­gle on her back and ac­ti­vat­ing the scripts. The suit clamped com­fort­ably into place, the en­gine script warm­ing up. She ac­ti­vat­ed all of her dy­namos, feed­ing the ap­pro­pri­ate ones into the en­gine, and reached into the di­men­sion­al pock­et to start charg­ing all of the weapon rods. "I may be gone for a few days. I hope it will not be more than that."

"Good luck, Grand­ma Alas­si. And... Sobon." Lui was stand­ing in her door­way, look­ing wor­ried but de­ter­mined. "We'll be here."

Sobon looked back at them, and then, as an af­ter­thought, sent a ping to the Coro­na. [ Please mark this ex­act lo­ca­tion for me. ] A mo­ment lat­er, the ship sent back a co­or­di­nate pack­et, which Sobon filed away.

And then she lift­ed off, through the aether de­fens­es of her home, into the sky.

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

What fol­lowed was not hero­ic, as the jour­ney part of a jour­ney of­ten isn't. Her wing­suit was sim­ple enough that she had to main­tain some amount of con­trol over it con­stant­ly; the physics of her en­gine place­ment meant that she had to ad­just the sweep of her wings when she added or re­moved throt­tle, and she ad­just­ed her course by mov­ing the whole wing struc­ture in­stead of ad­just­ing pan­els on it. She also hadn't added any kind of far­ings or wind screens to pro­tect her­self, which was fine, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en her own body's strength, but it made it too in­con­ve­nient to fly faster than about half the speed of sound. If she'd brought spare rods, she could have at least giv­en her­self a hel­met, but she didn't have any­thing on her con­ve­nient to en­grave, and de­cid­ed against stop­ping.

Still, she made good time. Rac­ing east meant that she was rac­ing into the ris­ing sun, and Sobon knew that sev­er­al of the pow­er­ful qi users be­low and around her no­ticed her pass­ing. Some, doubt­less, were con­cerned, al­though none rose to in­ter­fere. A few did flare their qi as she was ap­proach­ing, or raised de­fens­es, but she passed them all by, mere­ly giv­ing them ex­tra room if they seemed par­tic­u­lar­ly para­noid.

The biggest prob­lem was that she passed too close to what Sobon came to re­al­ize was the enor­mous mil­i­tary block­ade zone around the Coro­na it­self. She did not, in fact, pass close to the Coro­na; Sobon bounced mes­sages off the ship's AI and found that she was per­haps fif­teen hun­dred kilo­me­ters away at clos­est ap­proach, but she still had to de­tour out of the way of the mil­i­tary con­trolled land and sea.

From the mor­tal side of things, the block­ade was much more im­pres­sive than it had been in the Be­yond. Sobon flew high and fast over the area, but it was ob­vi­ous that there were enough ships in the sea to make sure no mon­sters slipped by. Clos­er to shore, there were of­ten mas­sive py­lons dri­ven into the coastal shelf which linked into a mas­sive bar­ri­er, but fur­ther out, there were qi users con­stant­ly main­tain­ing bar­ri­ers.

Sobon even got a chance to see sev­er­al ships in a bat­tle with a mas­sive sea crea­ture, which must have been a par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful Star­beast, though she couldn't dwell on it much.

Af­ter get­ting around the bar­ri­er, Sobon re­quest­ed and got an­oth­er bear­ing on Ki'el's lo­ca­tion, and when she thought she was close enough, she cast her own track­ing pat­tern. It took her a while to get close enough to find any sign of a sig­nal; with­out any kind of prop­er an­ten­na, Sobon's range was prob­a­bly not more than a hun­dred kilo­me­ters, if that. When she did fi­nal­ly get a read­ing, she made a sharp turn to­wards it, and be­gan flar­ing all of her aether dy­namos, and all of her qi. And she ac­ti­vat­ed the telekine­sis pat­tern, pulling her weapon rods out of stor­age.

By the time she got close, the ship she found her­self fol­low­ing was clos­ing in on an­oth­er, and it was get­ting dark. Her tar­get ship seemed in­con­se­quen­tial; small­ish, in poor re­pair, and the strongest qi sig­na­ture was be­low her own lev­el, which seemed like a nov­el po­si­tion to be in af­ter all this time. The oth­er ship, though, had black sails, and a qi sig­na­ture that was some­thing Sobon hadn't yet seen, though by the col­or alone, Sobon as­sumed it was what Alas­si had called Ti­ta­ni­um Qi. It felt... brighter than Gold, some­how. For all that it was sil­very white, it had a qual­i­ty all its own, one that set it­self so far off from iron or sil­ver that it could only be a realm be­yond them. The oth­ers on that ship were also no slouch­es, with more than two at Gold Qi.

Sobon cut off her en­gine be­fore she was close enough to re­al­ly see any­thing aboard close­ly. It hard­ly mat­tered; both ships were more than alert enough to no­tice some­one clear­ly mug­ging for them. Sobon wasn't sure whether she was hap­py that the sec­ond ship, which Sobon as­sumed from the black sails alone was a pi­rate of some kind, seemed to an­gle to in­ter­cept her. For Sobon, her at­ten­tion was first and fore­most on Ki'el.

It took some ef­fort to halt her mo­men­tum in a suit­ably dra­mat­ic way. Most­ly, she flared the telekine­sis scripts to cre­ate a gi­ant air­brake, but by the time she was close enough to stop, peo­ple board both ships were clear­ly on edge and pre­pared to strike at her. She looked down, suit­ably in­tim­i­dat­ing, and am­pli­fied her voice with an aether wave. "You will give the girl to me."

For what­ev­er rea­son, the cap­tain of the ship re­spond­ed by fir­ing light­ning at her. Sobon didn't have a ready shield against that kind of at­tack--re­al­ly, she'd for­got­ten to put to­geth­er any shield items, but since her weapons were in­de­pen­dent­ly pow­ered, she could use her own aether for that. In­stead of wor­ry­ing about it, Sobon took her six­teen ri­fle rods, arranged them in two cir­cu­lar sets of eight, and sim­ply checked how many shots it would take to com­plete­ly shat­ter the cap­tain's de­fens­es and burn a hole straight through her chest.

That num­ber was four. The fourth shot burned through about half of the ship, but as far as Sobon could sense, didn't punch a hole in the bot­tom of the ship. Just as well, for now. The next two strongest aboard the ship also fired back, if only with poor­ly-con­trolled qi blasts, the kind that sug­gest­ed they were not used to re­al­ly long range com­bat. It only took two shots for one, and three for the oth­er.

When no one else shot at her, Sobon swept in, tak­ing one of her bar­ri­er blades in hand and ac­ti­vat­ing it be­fore she land­ed on the deck. The crew on deck, what­ev­er else they'd been through, were too cow­ard­ly to chal­lenge her, al­though some­one be­low deck was dumb enough to come at her with a knife, and got cut in half at the waist for his trou­ble.

By the time she saw Ki'el, in a dank and dark sec­tion of the bot­tom of the ship, Sobon was ready for this all to be done. She felt an im­me­di­ate and in­tense re­ac­tion when she saw the state of the girl, who was stand­ing there, look­ing back at her, a look on her face that start­ed out very con­fused, but then so­lid­i­fied.

By the time Sobon cut open the door, she knew the girl had rec­og­nized her, and when Ki'el leaped at her and grabbed her into an enor­mous hug, she re­turned it.

"I knew you'd come," Ki'el whis­pered, and Sobon felt the girl's con­trol over her dy­namos lessen, as she stopped flood­ing her­self with right-hand aether. Sobon glanced at the cell, not­ing the en­grav­ings that flood­ed the whole place with ugly, sin­is­ter qi, and bristled at it, but closed her eyes and just held the girl. "I knew you'd come."

"Sor­ry I'm late," Sobon said, then squeezed the girl for a mo­ment be­fore let­ting her go. The girl's knee was bent bad­ly, and Sobon could see the pain in her face as she put weight on it. "I'll heal your in­juries lat­er. For now, we should get out of here."

Ki'el just nod­ded, in­tense­ly. Sobon picked her up with telekine­sis, putting the girl on her back, and strode out on deck, where the crew of the ship gave her wide berth. And... she knew that she could have just left. She even thought that she prob­a­bly ought to have.

But that oth­er ship was clos­ing fast, and the war­rior at the head of it didn't even both­er wait­ing. He leaped from that ship to this one, the whole ship rock­ing heav­i­ly with the im­pact, and two high-Gold lieu­tenants fol­lowed quick­ly, their leaps timed well enough that they land­ed be­side their cap­tain de­spite the heav­ing deck.

"You've come a long way," the pi­rate cap­tain said, draw­ing a black-coat­ed saber from his belt. "Why don't you stay for a bit? We'd love to... en­ter­tain a cou­ple of ladies like you."

Sobon spent all of her own per­son­al qi on a bar­ri­er around her­self and Ki'el, and lift­ed all six­teen ri­fle rods. As ex­pect­ed, the man and his lieu­tenants didn't stand still to be shot--but that was why Sobon didn't fire all six­teen at once. Even miss­ing more than half her shots, the four she land­ed on the Ti­ta­ni­um-Qi cap­tain shred­ded a qi shield of some kind, and left painful but not dead­ly marks on his skin.

"You might be dan­ger­ous," snarled the cap­tain, "but you're only a woman. Weak and worth­less, you don't un­der­stand any­thing about what it takes to be a war­rior!" He con­tin­ued mov­ing quick­ly about the deck, and Sobon let him, pass­ing one of her bar­ri­er blades to Ki'el, then step­ping for­ward her­self, her oth­er blade in her hand.

The cap­tain clear­ly thought that she was ex­pect­ing a straight­for­ward duel. He ap­proached as if to give her one, then dodged and made for Ki'el. Sobon had nev­er ex­pect­ed him to fight fair, and had four ri­fle rods al­ready point­ed in al­most ex­act­ly the right spot. A lit­tle ad­just­ment was all that was re­quired for all four to strike home, al­though only the first two en­coun­tered any re­sis­tance.

The oth­er two had ex­pect­ed her to be dis­tract­ed by the cap­tain. Both were in the air, leap­ing at her. Sobon swung her blade, cut­ting deeply into one of them, but the blade was re­al­ly the wrong tool to cut through both at once; it was only a bar­ri­er in the shape of a blade, with­out any sort of dis­in­te­gra­tion or force planes to let her cut deeply through a tough tar­get. She lost most of the mo­men­tum be­hind her swing in the ac­tion of cut­ting into him, and the oth­er tried to ma­neu­ver in to get her while she was dis­tract­ed.

She bare­ly need­ed to step back, though, be­fore she had room to fire her ri­fle rods at the two of them, putting more holes in each of them than was re­al­ly re­quired.

While that should have been the end of it, the pi­rate ship it­self had ma­neu­vered it­self to bring its can­nons to bear. Sobon glanced at it, see­ing the crew al­ready chan­nel­ing into large, script-lined can­is­ters along the rail, and start­ed to raise her shields, and her ri­fle rods, when Ki'el did some­thing she didn't ex­pect.

She leaped back across to the en­e­my ship, her bar­ri­er blade ac­ti­vat­ed and shin­ing in her hands, a look of fury on her face.

Sobon felt some­thing like a smile across her face, al­though she wor­ried. The girl's leg had look at least sprained, if not dis­lo­cat­ed or bro­ken. In­stead of con­tem­plat­ing, she moved for­ward, putting her bar­ri­er blade be­tween her and the clos­est can­non. It fired, and the bar­ri­er blade frayed as it took a sub­stan­tial hit in her stead; some parts of it re­mained, but not near­ly enough to take an­oth­er hit.

Not that Sobon was even con­sid­er­ing fight­ing canons at range with a sword, or stand­ing in front of them when she could fly.

A mo­ment lat­er and Sobon was above them, her ri­fle rods drilling through crewmem­bers when­ev­er they threat­ened her or Ki'el. With six­teen self-charg­ing rods, she could have tak­en on an army of peo­ple at Sil­ver Qi or be­low, at least un­til the rods start­ed to over­heat. And they did; quartz had been Sobon's choice for re­in­forc­ing her home sim­ply be­cause sil­i­con was abun­dant, and not be­cause it was ide­al. From the very first shots, the rods had been hot, and the in­scrip­tions were al­ready start­ing to fray, al­though some of her rods had only fired two or three times.

It was more than enough. Be­fore long, Sobon and Ki'el were on a ship that was doubt­less go­ing to sink, as a few of Sobon's shots had missed and gone straight through. Ki'el, ex­haust­ed, col­lapsed, and Sobon was by her side in a mo­ment.

"You did well," Sobon said. "Give me a minute to check the ship. There are oth­ers be­low deck."

"Let them die," Ki'el said, caged fury in her voice. She clear­ly had not missed the signs that the ship was go­ing down.

"If they are pi­rates," Sobon said. "If they have oth­er pris­on­ers..."

Ki'el waved her off, and Sobon spent only a mo­ment. There were, in fact, no oth­er pris­on­ers; the oth­ers be­low deck, per­haps be­cause of the ship's ugly black aether, tried to at­tack her on sight, and she shed no tears to end their mis­ery. By the time she was back on top, Ki'el had walked to the edge of the ship and stared out over the wa­ter, her fin­gers white as she gripped the rail­ing as hard as she could.

Sobon came up to find her do­ing breath­ing ex­er­cis­es, try­ing to calm down.

"We should go," she said. "And... this will feel a lit­tle weird."

But Ki'el just looked at her, eyes as straight­for­ward as they had ever been, and nod­ded, let­ting Sobon pick her up and fly away with­out com­plaint or com­ment.