"Shields at forty three percent," Lissa reported. "Are you sure the MAC Cannons won't work?"

The Dream of the Lady weaved around streams of charged particles. Two alien ships were firing on her. They were oddly shaped, reminding Yvian of the sharks from New Pixa. The ships were smaller than the Dream, roughly two hundred meters. They were sleek, with smooth hulls of some vibrant blue material. They were faster than Yvian's ship, and their cannons hit harder. If it was anyone but Mims and Kilroy flying against them, the Dream would be debris by now.

"I already tried," said Scarrend. "The rounds didn't penetrate."

The enemy vessels didn't have shields. Instead they used ablative armor. The armor gave off some sort of repulsion field, slowing down whatever the Dream shot at them. It weakened the effect of Yvian's cannons. She wasn't sure the MAC rounds had managed to hit them at all.

"It'll be fine," Mims assured his wife. "Their ships are more advanced than ours, but their pilots aren't." The Dream shuddered as the human failed to dodge another salvo. "We'll win."

"I'm not afraid we won't win," Lissa told him. "I'm afraid we won't win in time. Another patrol will be in weapons range in four minutes, and a bunch of bigger ships will hit us twenty minutes after that." The Dream shuddered again. "Shields are at thirty one percent."

The last week had been less eventful than the one before. Yvian and the crew had made good progress, and most of the sectors they'd traversed had been empty. Twice they'd encountered other civilizations, but Stealth had held and she'd snuck through without incident. A third species saw her, but hadn't attacked. Yvian had sent them the First Contact Package as she jumped from sector to sector until she was out of their space.

The fourth group were assholes.

The sector they'd jumped into didn't have any habitable worlds. What it did have was a blue star and a lot of resources. Six rocky worlds, eight gas giants, and three entire asteroid belts. The solar system was riddled with ships and stations. There were fleets stationed within fifty thousand kilometers of all three Jumpgates. Smaller patrols like the one Yvian was fighting ranged closer, even slipping behind the Gates to check for hidden enemies. All the ships had a vaguely aquatic look.

There had been four of the shark-like warships at the start of the fight. While Mims focused on evasive action, Kilroy plied the Dream's main cannons. Photon Pulse Cannons were a staple of human capital ships. They launched lances of purple charged particles harder and faster than even Vrrl ships could manage. Yvian hadn't had the chance to use them much. Between the MAC Cannons and the Beam Arrays, conventional weapons had been mostly superfluous until now.

Scarrend was on the Beam Arrays. The Beam Cannons were nowhere near as damaging as Yvian's other guns, but they struck at near light speed. Scarrend had them all focused on a single point on one of the enemy. Kilroy was sending Photon Pulses at the same spot, near the middle of the attacker. The vessel's ablative armor was mostly gone in that section, but it would regenerate quickly if given the chance.

"Why isn't that one pulling back?" Yvian wondered. "Or at least turning around so we can't hit the same side?"

Another blast rocked the Dream of the Lady. "Shields down to twenty five," Lissa announced. "Can't you dodge better? I'm starting to worry we're not gonna win."

"I'm getting hit on purpose," the human explained. "The bastards won't pull back if they think they've got us. If they switch to hit and run tactics we're in trouble."

Yvian bit her lip. She hadn't ordered Mims to do that, but he was probably right. If both shark ships pulled back she could use the jumpdrive, but if they kept one on her while the other moved off for self repair... Well. She'd better hope they stayed stupid.

The target ship shed another layer of armor. It's pilot finally got wise and started to turn away. "Missiles," Yvian ordered. "Boomgoods, full spread. Target the weak spot."

"Aye Captain," Scarrend acknowledged. "Missiles away."

Boomgood missiles were a Krog design. They were swarmers. Each missile split into a dozen smaller versions after launch. They were fast, with a limited AI to help them dodge point defense and track their targets. Each of them was tipped with a half meter long diamond spike that rotated at ludicrous speed. The spike helped Boomgoods penetrate armor, drilling into the hull of a ship before they detonated. Boomgoods used fission bombs instead of plasma or ion. They were used exclusively to destroy unshielded vessels.

A dozen missile ports fired off Boomgoods that each broke into another dozen smaller missiles. A hundred and forty four diamond tipped fission bombs raced for the retreating warship. The enemy tried to shoot them down. Most of the Boomgoods dodged, but it got a few. It got a few more while the missiles looped around the ship. Within seconds they were drilling into the motherless son. A few seconds after that the vessel exploded in a wash of atomic fire.

"Maybe we should have led with that," Lissa noted.

"No kidding," said Captain Yvian. She'd never used Boomgoods before. She had no idea they'd be that awesome. "Load another salvo. Let's see if it'll go through a full set of armor this time."

"There's no need," said Mims. "They're running."

Yvian checked the sensors. The last ship had indeed turned tail. "Belay that, Scarrend," Yvian ordered. "Maybe next time." The enemy kept shooting as it fled, but Mims easily dodged the fire. The moment the assholes quit trying to blast her Yvian activated the jumpdrive.

The Gate Effect took hold. It dropped the Dream of the Lady three sectors from where they'd started. A nice quiet area with two gates, a neutron star, and nothing else. Yvian checked the sensors to confirm they were alone. Then she let out a relieved sigh. "Lets let the shields recharge before we head to the next place."

"Maybe we should go in a different direction," Lissa suggested, "instead of trying to fight our way through another space empire."

"Might not be a bad idea," Mims seconded. "Those guys are going to be up in arms and waiting for us. We can explore a different direction for a few days and come back if we don't find anything."

"Big Daddy Mims?" Kilroy's eyes flashed purple in alarm. "Are you suggesting we avoid a fight?"

"The mission comes first," the human reminded him. "We're out of Gates that are pointing in the right direction. We've got to map out the Gate Network to find a way to the Forge, and that means one direction is as good an any other. Fighting our way through a bunch of jackasses that shoot first and ask questions later is an unnecessary risk."

"Still fun, though." Scarrend noted.

Yvian looked out the viewports as she listened to the others talk. She could see it now. The Gate Forge. With the naked eye it was just another big glowing dot in a dense morass. The Dream was a third of the way into the galaxy's central cluster, now. There were so many stars around them the viewports shone into the bridge like a flashlight. The Gate Forge was a much bigger dot than most, but it was still a dot.

The sensors told a different tale. The Gate Forge was barely eighty light years away. Close enough that the computer should be able to make some guesses what the thing was made of. The readings were inconclusive, but Yvian didn't need them. The sensors gave her a visual, too. The Forge was made of Gates. Enormous Gates, layered together and fused into each other to form a sphere.

It was the largest celestial body she'd ever seen. Three full light years across. It was made of the same alien metal the Jumpgates were built out of. Scientists had studied the material for millennia, and they still knew almost nothing about it.

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She was close. So close. The next sector they explored might have the Gate that leads there. Yvian doubted it would be that easy, but it was possible. She pulled up a three dimensional map on her console. The hologram showed all the Jumpgates Yvian had explored so far. They formed a jagged line heading for the Forge, then a different jagged line starting to circle around it.

Yvian didn't know how many Gates might actually lead to the Forge. Or if any of them did. If the Forge was like any other sector, there would be between one and four, but that was just an assumption on Yvian's part. Even if there were four, that still left her searching a crap-ton of sectors before she stumbled into the right one. It would take months. Maybe longer.

"There's got to be a smarter way to do this," Yvian said.

"Captain?" Mims gave her a questioning look. Yvian couldn't see it through his visor, but she knew it was there. It made her frown a little. Did she know because she knew the human, or was it the lucendian implant making her psychic again?

Yvian shook off the thought and got back to the matter at hand. "We're just wandering around blind, hoping to find the right sector. Running into trouble while we're at it." She pointed out the viewport. "We're close. The Gate that leads to the Forge has to be close, too. Probably within a thousand light years. There's gotta be a smarter way to find it."

"You want to scan for Gates," Lissa guessed.

"Exodus did it," Yvian pointed out. "That's how we ended up at Starting Point. We don't even have to look for anything that far out."

"Do we have the equipment for that?" Mims wondered. "Gate radiation is pretty faint. I was under the impression it's hard to search for at range."

"It could be done," said Scarrend. The Vrrl folded his top set of arms. "Our sensors aren't specialized for the task, but we could find any Gates within two hundred light years, given time."

"How much time?" asked Captain Yvian.

"Six days, four hours, twenty three minutes," Kilroy reported. The Peacekeeper unit was typing into his console. "Mapping the entire Gate Network surrounding the Gate Forge would take twenty six months."

"Crunch." Yvian swore. "It would be faster to just keep doing what we're doing."

"Affirmative," said Kilroy. "If scanning was more efficient, this unit would already have suggested it."

"Maybe we could make it more efficient," Yvian suggested. "Between Lissa, Scarrend, and Kilroy, we've got a lot of engineering talent."

"It's not a matter of talent," said Scarrend. "I've reviewed the method the Peacekeepers used to search for Gates. It was Xill technology. Incompatible with our sensor systems." He paused, tapping the chin of his helmet. "We would have to build an array from scratch. It would take years."

"Could we use some of the principles to upgrade our own sensors?" Yvian asked. "Extend our range?"

"That's not how science works, Captain Sis," Lissa informed her. "Redesigning a sensor system is a massive project by itself, and then we'd have to fabricate components, change the programming, all kinds of stuff. It would take years. It'll be faster and easier to use the sensors as they are."

"It's not like we're not making progress, Captain," Mims pointed out. "We've only been out here a few weeks, and we're within eighty light years of the Gate Forge."

"I just feel like we should hurry somehow." Yvian frowned. "Maybe cause I'm psychic?"

"That's not how the implants work, either," Lissa told her. "Lucendian implants broadcast emotions and pick up emotions from other Lucendian stuff." A pause. Yvian was pretty sure her sister was frowning. "Or psychic aliens, I guess."

"I'm not sure what else we can do to pick up the pace," said Mims. "We're crossing over four hundred sectors a day."

Yvian pursed her lips. What could they do to increase progress? Sleep less? Eat on the bridge? No. They'd have to take off their helmets to eat. Yvian didn't want to enter new sectors when she wasn't combat ready. She supposed she could cut the ninety minutes devoted to training and exercise, but Scarrend would suffer for it. He needed to feel himself improving.

"Maybe we should talk it over while we make lunch," Lissa suggested. "We're not gonna be going anywhere 'til the shields regenerate anyway."

Lunch was delicious, but not productive. The crew brainstormed, but they didn't come up with much. Jumping into a new sector blind was already dangerous, and no one wanted to cut corners in exchange for speed. Yvian actually asked Exodus to chime in, but the Synthetic Intelligence ignored her.

The next two days chaffed. Yvian took Lissa's suggestion and picked a different direction instead of going back to fight her way through the trigger happy aliens. Most of the space they traveled through was unoccupied. They encountered one civilization. Highly advanced. Surprisingly nice. Yvian still didn't understand their language, but they sounded friendly and didn't shoot at her.

The third day got weird. One of the Gates dumped the Dream into the outskirts of a black hole. The Gate itself was in a stable orbit. Gates didn't interact with gravity. Yvian's ship did. The Dream of the Lady was immediately yanked towards the accretion disk. The gravity was too strong to be overcome by the ship's engines. Yvian had to use the jump drive to escape.

A few hours later Yvian found herself scanning a single planet. It was made of diamond. It was in the shape of a geometric symbol that made her eyes hurt when she tried to trace it. It was the only thing in the sector aside from the Gates. She found another lone diamond planet in each of the next five sectors. Each was shaped as a different symbol.

The sixth sector didn't have a diamond planet. It had something else. Something bigger.

"What the Crunch is that?" Lissa demanded.

It was star sized, but it wasn't a star. Billions of tiny lights rippled underneath a surface like black glass. The thing was over sixty million kilometers across. Sensors detected a wide array of electromagnetic radiation, so Yvian took it for some kind of machine. She couldn't imagine what the thing could be for.

"Let's not stay and find out," the Captain decided. Yvian set the coordinates for the gate across from her and activated the Jumpdrive.

"I think that's a Dyson sphere." Mims was leaning forward, staring at his display. "A machine wrapped around a star to capture it's energy." He sounded uncharacteristically impressed. "The amount of mass you'd need to construct something like that... I didn't think it could be done."

The Dream of the Lady hummed. Ten seconds later, the humming stopped. The jumpdrive powered down.

"What just happened?" Yvian checked the status on her screen. There was no indication of why the jumpdrive had turned off.

"I don't know," said Lissa. There was an edge of fear to her voice. "Running diagnostics."

"We are being hailed," Kilroy reported.

Yvian started cursing in her head. Not again. "Open a channel."

The voice was soothing, female, and spoke in Yvian's language. "Do not be afraid. We apologize for the inconvenience."

Yvian switched to internal comms. "Scarrend, ready an Annihilator." She switched back to ship communications. "This is Captain Yvian of the Starship Dream of the Lady. Who are you? Why did you stop us from leaving?"

"You do not have the anatomical apparatus required to pronounce our names," the voice told her. "The nearest analog in your language would be the Souls Who Live Eternally Among The Stars. Starsouls for short, I think?" The voice took on a gently chiding tone. "There is no need for weapons, Captain Yvian. Really. We mean you no harm."

"Then why did you stop us?" Yvian demanded.

"Your ship is being monitored by a Synthetic Intelligence via a quantum entanglement device," the Starsoul explained. "We have had... difficulties, with Synthetic species in the past. We wished to converse with it and discern its intentions." A pause. "Exodus has pointed out that Starsouls is our species name. As their Representative, I'm supposed to have my a moniker of my own. Exodus has suggested Sunny. Will that name do?"

"I... guess?" Yvian checked the monitors. The jumpdrive was still inactive, but the Starsouls hadn't done anything else to the ship. Hopefully.

"That's a terrible pun," Mims noted.

"Call me Sunny, then." The voice sounded like it was smiling. "It's nice to meet you, Captain Yvian."

"Do you mind telling us more about yourselves?" Lissa spoke up. "Are you machines yourselves, or...?"

"Oh no, Lissa Kiver," the voice assured her. "We were as organic as you are, once. The Starsouls integrated ourselves with technology over time. At first we used simple cybernetics, similar to your translator implant. Over time we grew more advanced, until our entire species uploaded our consciousness into our technology. We can experience the full range of sensation without having to worry about age or death or deprivation."

"Are you..." Yvian hesitated, hands ready to activate the Dead Man's Switch. "Are you going to make us join you?"

"Of course not!" Sunny sounded offended. "Not every advanced species you meet is like the Enlightened, Captain Yvian. We would never force someone to join us. Think about it. Would you want an immortal neighbor who's angry that you murdered them?"

"Oh. Good." Yvian put her hands back in her lap. "Uh... Sorry about that. We've had a rough month."

"You are forgiven," said Sunny. "Exodus the Genocide has informed us of your travels and your mission. You have been through a great deal. Paranoia is to be expected." A pause. "Fascinating. We have confirmed that you are an existential threat to our existence."

Yvian blinked. "We're what?"

"An existential threat," Sunny repeated enthusiastically. "How exciting! A large percentage of our collective wants to kill you now!"

"We'd rather you didn't," Lissa deadpanned.

"They're a minority," Sunny assured her. "Most of us recognize that the Vore are much more dangerous. You are a threat we can mitigate, and your intention to destroy the Vore will benefit us in the long term. Please stand by."

Yvian waited. Twenty seconds later, the voice spoke again. "We have decided to help you. A complete map of this section of the Gate Network has been uploaded into your Nav Console. The location of the Gates that lead to your destination have been highlighted."

"Really?" Yvian blinked. She had no idea how the Starsouls accessed her Nav Console. The console didn't have a way to receive wireless transmissions. Then again, she didn't know how they'd shut down her Jumpdrive, either. It might be better not to ask questions. "Wow. Uh... Thank you."

"The space belonging to the Starsouls has also been highlighted," Sunny said cheerfully. "I'm sorry, but we must ask you and your associated nations to stay out of our territory. Go in peace, and we apologize for the inconvenience."