It wasn’t technically an order Natalya could make.

Her status as Duke had never been taken away because it hadn’t been transferred to anyone else. According to government records, she was dead. And the planet she’d governed was a cracked chunk of rock and metal. The title was dead as the planet.

What’s more, if Sisi worked at a private facility, Natalya had no real authority over her, even if they were standing on Farbind’s formerly intact ground. Natalya wasn’t aware of any non-government research stations, but she hadn’t had command of the planet for long.

Jasper led the way out the doors. He held his golden sword in both hands, sweeping it back and forth like a torch warding off wolves. “Nothing but parts as far as I can see,” he said.

Co exited next, stepping over the broken pieces of hoppers as her targeting visor scanned in a variety of visual spectrums.

“Clear. Though if we detonate this building, it’ll give us better cover. Plenty things to use as fuel in here,” Co said.

“Your tactics are noted, Co, but I want to give these people a safe refuge if we can’t find them all,” Natalya said, joining them outside the copper doors.

“I left most of the stuff voice activated, but not all of it’s usable,” Sisi said, hefting a cylindrical chunk of metal. The thick, cable-strewn cylinder hummed in her hands, a metal disc at the tip making it resemble a miniature version of the gravity wells she’d disassembled. She also had a stuffed penguin, whose orange beak stuck out of her pocket.

Sisi used her portable gravity well projector to close the doors behind them and switch off the lights, smiling with satisfaction as she made an adjustment on the device’s myriad switches and knobs. She used the penguin to make squawking sounds of approval.

“You don’t have a gun?” Co asked.

“I’m no good with them,” Sisi answered. “Plus, Pili doesn’t like guns. Isn’t that right, Pili?”

Sisi squawked as if the penguin answered.

“This is a gravity well projector,” the scientist explained. “I call it a welpro for short. I thought about calling it a goose but then nobody would know what I was talking about.”

“Should probably get a gun,” Co reasoned.

“And upset Pili?”

“Use the gun to shoot the penguin.”

Sisi gasped in horror.

“Alright, Sisi, which direction?” Natalya asked.

“That way,” Sisi answered, pointing down the narrow front of the rectangular building, toward an ever-widening street ahead. It cut between pyramid-like structures and ended with a high-walled square that glistened blue where the stones and bricks weren’t covered in vines and weeds and debris.

“Co, watch our backs. Jasper, front. Sisi, stay close to me. Let’s move.”

Natalya found it somewhat shocking that she trusted Jasper, and was actually relying on him to protect them, when she’d tried to kill him less than two days ago. She never liked the idea of Prophets, and was sure they always had an ulterior motive. But since he wasn’t attached to the Prophets at the moment, she saw Jasper as nothing more than what he was: a skilled man trying to prove his worth.

She told herself they weren’t in the same position, that she wasn’t also trying to prove her worth to a greater power. But she knew better.

Sisi, Jasper, they had goals, clear objectives. Even Ptolemy was cooking up something that would move his life forward. If helping him would redeem her and put her back on the track of career and prosperity, Natalya was happy to have them. She told herself helping them would be enough to redeem her, but all she heard was the silent screams of millions dying because of the decisions she’d made.

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They journeyed to the square without incident. They passed through the shadows of the widening street as twilight set in on the blue planet. Co scanned each crumbling archway, each debris-strewn alley, each dark window. Nothing moved. Natalya began to wonder if the hoppers had all been destroyed.

“How many hoppers are here?” Natalya asked Sisi.

“They set up a mobile manufacturing center near the landing zone,” Sisi answered. “No clue how many there are.”

Just my luck, Natalya thought.

When Jasper pointed to a staircase, Natalya thought he’d spotted a hopper waiting in ambush. The Prophet ran up the stairs that bisected the stepped, temple-like structure, and knelt beside a man who lay face down on the stone. Jasper touched the body, and shook his head.

“There are a few people left. I told them they shouldn’t have left my building, but people are afraid of things they don’t understand,” Sisi explained as Jasper rejoined the group. “Especially if those things do admittedly emit radioactive isotopes that are totally safe when—”

“We get it. People are scared. People do stupid things when they’re scared,” Natalya noted, urging the group forward.

A shuttle had crashed in the middle of the square, cutting a trench through the brick surface. The pieces of metal and shattered stone that dominated the square couldn’t have just come from this one craft, though. Charred remnants of surface vehicles also littered the ground. Co tapped Natalya on the shoulder, tilting her head toward the wrecked shuttle.

Natalya pulled Jasper and Sisi to the ground behind a large stone that had broken off from a nearby building, covering Sisi’s mouth before the woman could ask what was happening. Co widened her stance, eyes focused on a hopper that had emerged from the other side of the shuttle.

Two more appeared on either side of the square, the pistons in their legs pounding away as they searched the brick-lined forum.

Natalya pointed out Co’s and her target in a simple hand motion, the two using familiar signals as they readied their sights. Natalya held up three fingers and leveled her carbine, beading in on the hopper poking around what looked like a burnt-out bus. Two fingers. One.

A sound like a giant bumblebee buzzing beside her made Natalya blink. She lost her aim as Sisi pulled a lever on her welpro.

The stone Natalya leaned against rolled forward, the gravity well not powerful enough to do much more than make a lot of noise as the rock rolled end over end.

Natalya shot at the hopper, missing. She fired repeatedly as the hopper opened up on her. Co hit her target, the hopper on the shuttle tumbling to the ground, but the third opened fire.

Jasper deflected the two hoppers’ blasts, but stepped in Natalya’s crosshairs. The Prophet deflected the shots back at one of the hoppers, slowing it as holes peppered its side. Finally, the man got out of Natalya’s way so she could blast a hole through the hopper, but this was only because Sisi had shoved Jasper in the back with her welpro.

“Oops,” Sisi said, making further adjustments to her device.

The Prophet rolled and came up near the hopper on the bus. It blasted at him, and he deflected a stream of ammunition.

“Jasper!” Natalya shouted, trying to take a bead on the hopper but once again finding the Prophet’s back in her way.

Before she could aim at the hopper’s legs, or get Jasper to move, blood sprayed out of a hole in the back of Jasper’s leg and the Prophet went down. A moment later, a cannon-slug turned the hopper into burning chunks of metal, the debris raining down and adding to the mess already in the square.

Natalya stared wide-eyed at Co.

“What? I had to shoot him. He was in the way,” Co replied.

Natalya shoved Sisi out of her path and ran into the square, carbine pointing all directions as she ensured they were alone. “That’s the last thing I need. Incompetent crewmembers who shoot each other,” she said as Co and Sisi joined her.

“Hey! At least mine was on accident,” Sisi countered.

Co made no apologies.

By the time they reached him, Jasper had healed his leg, the red splash nothing more than a stained hole in his jeans.

“You okay?” Natalya asked.

“Fine,” Jasper replied, breathing deeply as he held his sword to his chest.

“Good. Sisi, the Key Core.”

“It’s beneath the shuttle!” Sisi said, disappearing inside the wreck. She tore through heavy bulkheads with focused gravity wells and emerged a few moments later with a large safe held aloft in front of her welpro.

“Found it,” Sisi said, beaming.

“Your luck improving, Natalya?” Jasper asked.

“Don’t count on it. Stay on the Core, Co. Sisi, which building are the others in?” Natalya asked.

“This is the only Key Core we made,” Sisi replied.

“I meant the people who were hiding here! They weren’t on the shuttle, were they?”

“Oh! No, the tunnels they hid in are in that building, the one with the flat roof. There,” Sisi said, and pointed to the lowest level of a stepped, layer cake-like structure. A tiny hole, a circular window, was the only opening. The door had been caved in long enough that moss grew over the broken stones.

“Co, stay with Sisi and signal me if anymore hoppers come. Keep a close eye out,” Natalya said. “Jasper and I are going to get the refugees out of that building. Hopefully Augustus can take off directly from here.”

“Ooh! I’ll clear a landing zone,” Sisi said, firing her welpro at the ground and sending chunks of brick and metal into the air.

“Just don’t shoot her, Co.”

Co scanned the area and replied, “No promises.”