“So you do stuff like this normally as a Prophet, huh?” Natalya asked, searching the ruins for signs of life.

“I have many roles. As a Prophet of Gold, protection is the preferred one,” Jasper answered.

The city seemed empty, but every once in awhile Natalya spotted a broken door, charred stonework, or bits of vine that had been hacked away, obvious signs of human presence.

“How do you become a Prophet?” Natalya asked.

“Many ways. I’m sure you’ve read about Prophets.”

“Some. Most say you’re meddlers.”

“And powerful. Reds with the power to kill, Whites with the knowledge of the universe, and Golds to protect others. Enviable beyond belief. But what finally convinced me was when a good friend joined the Prophets. I sought them out shortly after. She sponsored me. I was brought to Sevens and trained, then given my weapon.”

“Sevens anything like this?”

“Not at all.”

Sevens, the home of the Sevens Prophets. Supposedly it was one of seven homeworld planets, cradles of human civilization in the universe. The Zhou claimed the Prophets were lying, that Prosper was the only homeworld and Sevens was a long-lost colony, though no one knew exactly where it was. Prophets only traveled there and back through the White Prophets’ teleportation powers, called shifting, so there was little evidence to make the debate more than an opinion contest. Natalya wasn’t interested in philosophical debates about which was the first planet to birth humanity. All she cared about was that the Prophets were an element to be dealt with, to be used or opposed.

Gun to her head, she’d rather they kept to their own affairs. But Prophets seemed to want to butt in wherever they found conflict. Being able to heal a blast from point-blank probably encouraged such behavior.

“City’s big. Anyone here, my guess is they’re in there,” Co said, pointing to a large, rectangular building in the city’s center. It was twice as wide as it was tall, with a slanted roof that hung over the edges with a curtain of vines concealing the top steps. Stairs led all around the altar-like structure, and water flowed down its sides from broken copper pipes.

“Good,” Natalya said.

“And you, Captain Frazier,” Jasper said, raising his sword into a high guard as he looked around the corner of a stone wall at a four-way intersection. He found only more empty, ruined street on the other side. “How did you come to be the captain of smugglers of humanity?”

“Don’t beef it up with titles, Jasper, we’re moving cargo. And right now, we’re only looking for whoever’s left on this planet.”

Jasper lowered his sword when they came to a building that seemed out of place in the natural surroundings. Made entirely of marble, the green of the encroaching jungle stained its white edifice. Thick pillars ringed it all around. Dramatic carvings of people giving speeches, or battling each other with swords and spears, decorated the edges of the clay-tiled roof.

“Do you see anyone?” Natalya asked as Jasper ascended the brick steps to the pillared building’s entrance.

Jasper didn’t reply, and Natalya had to race after him as the Prophet stepped through the cracked, wooden door and inside the building.

“What do you see?” Natalya asked, squeezing through the narrow gap between the door and the wall.

Before Jasper could reply, the door cracked off its hinges behind them and fell to the floor. Co had kicked it open so she could join the others.

“What?” Co asked when Natalya glared at her.

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The room had a long, narrow pool in the center, with gilded pots for plants and lush seating all around. The pool was dried and cracked, the tiled image of a fish-tailed, naked woman broken by the growth of a small tree.

“I was here when this was… beautiful,” Jasper said. “Xia and I would swim together. She would feed me chocolates and I would tell her of the wonders of the universe.”

Jasper lowered his sword, staring at the broken pool.

“Yeah, sounds fun. Now what are we doing?” Natalya asked.

“Anyone in here?” Co asked, her voice echoing through empty halls. “No one’s home.”

“I wanted to see it. I’m not trying to hide what I’ve done, Captain, the mistakes I’ve made,” Jasper said. “But it is comforting to rediscover the thing you fight for.”

“A naked woman in a pool?” Co asked, and shrugged.

“The memory of the woman I loved. And those who killed her for…”

Jasper’s eyes widened. He raised his sword, gripping it with two hands an instant before bricks cascaded from the ceiling and a black-painted robot landed on the floor. Its legs were backwards compared to a human’s, its knees bending the opposite direction as it recovered from its fall. The robot’s round torso righted itself on its gyroscopic waist and turned its twin blasters, positioned on both sides of its body, at the three intruders.

“Hopper!” Natalya shouted, using the shorthand name for these patrol bots. But Co had shot the thing before it touched the ground, blasting a second hole in its gyroscopic middle that cut it in two.

Co fired a third shot into its upper body, just to make sure the light behind its black sensor node went completely dark.

“Out. Now!” Natalya ordered as another hopper fell through the hole.

Co blasted the second robot as Natalya and Jasper ran out the door, where a third hopper stood waiting, guns leveled. It fired a storm of blasts, but Jasper raised his sword, deflected the energy harmlessly into the air, and swept his glowing blade in a wide arc.

He was too far away to actually hit the robot, but his swing fired a golden wave of energy that knocked the hopper off its feet. Jasper leapt from the top of the steps and plunged his sword into the robot’s sensor node, sparks of electricity flying into the air.

Natalya had never seen a Prophet at work. She would have been impressed if there wasn’t another hopper leaping at them from further up the street. She blasted it with her carbine, downing it as Co joined her and Jasper in the street.

“Auggie, we got hoppers,” Natalya said into her communicator, the device buzzing in her ear as Augustus shouted in annoyance.

“Jinx, Tally!” Augustus said as Chimera flew over Natalya’s head, a dozen hoppers clinging to its hull. The ship spun and fired its weapons, shedding the robots as it twisted and turned.

“No touchie! Bad robots!” Augustus shouted as he flew close enough to a nearby tower to scrape the hoppers off the ship’s wing, sending an avalanche of stone and pieces of machinery tumbling to the streets.

“Co, blast us a hole to the landing zone!” Natalya shouted, spotting more hoppers bounding toward them.

“Captain, our mission is still the same,” Ptolemy said in Natalya’s ear.

Jasper waved his sword in a golden whirlwind, deflecting blasts from the robots, cringing only slightly when a shot struck him in the arm or leg.

“Ptolemy, there’s no one here! And if the hoppers are here they’ll have finished off any survivors!” Natalya shouted.

“Qin wanted to salt the land,” Jasper added.

“She’s here, Natalya. Find her,” Ptolemy countered.

“Don’t worry, Captain, I got ya,” August said, piloting Chimera back toward the collection of hoppers. He fired the ship’s cannon and turned the street into a crater, hoppers leaping at the low-flying ship as Augustus turned Chimera back toward orbit. “We’ll lose them in the sky!”

Natalya found solace in the kick of her carbine as she imagined Ptolemy’s face on the hopper she blasted. “Co, cover us. To the center,” Natalya ordered, turning to run.

A second later, Natalya heard twin explosions and the rumble of collapsing stone. She turned and saw two tall, narrow towers collapsing, a precision shot on their weathered sides from Co’s cannon causing them to fall like trees.

Jasper lowered his sword, blinking through the cloud of dust.

“Did you want to cut us off from the landing zone?” Natalya asked.

“No. I wanted to hit them with a cannon-slug, but they kept using the buildings for cover,” Co answered.

Natalya didn’t bother replying, as the hoppers were already leaping over and around the pile of rubble. With the dust concealing their progress, they ran toward the center of Teal City and reached the vine-covered steps of the massive, central building.

Jasper cut through the thick vegetation, knocking back a charging hopper with a glowing swing of his sword. Natalya finished it off and Co leapt forward, the reinforcements in her legs allowing her to reach the top of the steps in a single jump. She fired away at the swarming hoppers below and gave Jasper and Natalya time to reach the sealed, copper doors.

Natalya shoved at the door, her shoulder burning with the effort.

Jasper pulled her away and struck the barrier with his sword, the copper doors ringing like a gong and cracking wide enough for Jasper to wrench them open. He led the way inside.

Natalya shouted, “Co!”

Co tossed a grenade down the stairs, the explosion heralding her way through the doors as Natalya shoved them closed behind her.