Weeks passed in their journey from Prosper to Gaixia. They spent the first few days setting up the universal transmitter, Natalya sighing with relief that her bio-access still registered her as the Duke of Farbind. Corruption was once again exploitable.

They spent the time talking with each other, laughing, sharing stories. It was resting, comfortable, and Natalya couldn’t help but enjoy herself in the company of her crew. And when she slept, she dreamed.

Natalya only ever dreamed about Farbind. Every once in awhile she’d see the grass-roofed building where she grew up on Prosper, faces of relatives, or even just the colors of space. But everything, from the opalescents that brought her away from the planet, to seeing the family members who’d disowned her, made her remember Farbind.

Now a new dream entered her subconscious. She saw Dana screaming in fright as Natalya picked her up and handed her to Qin. They stood in Natalya’s quarters, though the bare walls were filled with pictures, datasheets, and framed diplomas.

Qin took Dana with a smile, holding the crying child under the crux of his arm.

The second the man took hold of Dana she fell silent and limp in his arms. Natalya screamed, crying out in anguish, before she remembered Jasper. She ran through Chimera, which took on the shape of the Zhou building in the twisted transition of dreams. She couldn’t find Jasper anywhere.

Natalya opened her eyes as sleep fell away like the switching off of a light. She sat up and took a deep breath, shaking her head clear of the familiar images she’d become used to in her dreams. This new dream made her pause, her bare feet on the cold, white floor. She flicked on the lights and found comfort in the familiar remorse of her bare-walled quarters.

She used the facilities, then passed a vibro-brush through her hair. After three strokes, she’d restored her bedraggled mane to acceptability. She donned her metallic green top and baby-blue leggings, both padded carbon nano-fibers. She did her best not to care that the colors didn’t match.

As she opened the door to her quarters and stepped into the corridor, lumbering toward the galley for food, she paused mid-step. Familiar sounds ran through the ship, the click-clack of mismatched pipes delivering cooling liquids and oxygen, the hum of the artificial gravity. But a sound was missing from this harmony. Natalya trained her ears and failed to hear the soft chime of the opalescents.

So much time spent on Chimera had taught her every sound the ship could make. It also taught her that just because a sound wasn’t present didn’t mean the tone hadn’t changed. The many repairs needed to keep the ship from falling apart altered its song ever-so-slightly.

Natalya went to the bridge to investigate. Her feet added to the soft hum of the ship’s song as she climbed the clanging metal steps. When she reached the bridge, however, she found a sealed hatch barring her path.

The door was thick titanium, meant to keep the bridge intact if the rest of the ship was compromised. Natalya looked through the tiny viewing hole, frowning when she saw empty consoles. The viewscreens also showed empty space. Either the opalescents weren’t on, or the viewscreens were malfunctioning.

With no one on the bridge, one thing was certain: something was wrong.

“Augustus?” Natalya asked, first out loud and then into her communicator as she placed the device in her ear. “Augustus.”

No response.

Paranoia since Farbind had made her always sleep with a pistol nearby. Natalya put her hand to the weapon holstered in her leggings. Further paranoia made Natalya return to her quarters and fetch her carbine.

“Augustus?” Natalya asked, knocking on the man’s quarters. They were just across the hall from her own. No response came from the locked hatch. She walked further down the corridor and knocked on Ptolemy’s door. Once again, she only heard the sound of her unanswered voice, and the chorus of the idling ship.

Each section of the vessel had come from a different dockyard. Constructing Chimera out of broken pieces of other ships meant most of the sections were self-contained and detachable, with sealable hatches between them. As she reached the galley’s entrance, Natalya had to stop at another sealed hatch. She couldn’t see more than an oval-shaped table through the door’s porthole.

The small laboratory and medical bay, a box-like room, was open. Sterile lights shone off a white, plastic floor with two hospital beds on one side and a stout table surrounded by cabinet-lined counters on the other. A thin shield could be projected between the beds, allowing for safe use of the equipment if someone wanted to dissect an unknown species of plant life or modify a grenade launcher.

Sisi had gravitated to the lab as soon as she’d had the chance to explore the ship. Natalya half expected to find her soldering a shield emitter onto her welpro. All she found were frayed wires on the table, however, and a still plugged in welding torch.

Two prongs touching one another at a high frequency created the heat necessary to weld objects together, so the torch was harmless unless compressed against something. Still, Sisi was obsessive about proper tool utilization and storage. Even Natalya grunted with annoyance as she unplugged the torch.

“Sisi?” Natalya asked, making her way to the cargo bay.

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She descended the path to the cargo bay, eyes searching for a sign of the crew. She felt the desire to call out to Jasper or Co, someone. The cold grip of her carbine offered small comfort for her fears as she kept her weapon shouldered, arriving at the cargo bay’s aperture hatch.

The hatch was sealed, but when Natalya approached, it twisted open. Natalya stepped inside the cargo bay. A metal catwalk ringed the rectangular chamber, big enough to shelter a couple hundred refugees. Natalya took one look at the far side of the room before the lights blinked off.

Natalya froze, heart pounding. She inhaled through her nose, holding her breath and waiting for the lights to come back on, praying it was just a power shortage.

She exhaled, and Natalya heard the faintest hint of a footstep. She ducked and a blast ricocheted off the hatch as it sealed behind her. She rolled to the side just as another blast hit the deck, and when she came up an invisible pulse of energy knocked her against the bulkhead.

Natalya fell on her back and pulled the trigger on her carbine, blasts ringing throughout the cargo bay as she screamed in defiance.

The lights flipped on, and Natalya saw her attacker.

Pul stood in the center of the cargo bay, his arms at his sides and a pistol in each hand. The shields around his body shimmered a moment as the after-effects of Natalya’s blasts faded. The man looked down at Natalya with a narrow-eyed, baleful stare.

“Oh, what sins you’ve committed, fair Duke,” Pul said.

Natalya didn’t wait for him to move. She dove for cover behind the catwalk stairs. Pul made a punching motion with his right pistol and fired a blast that ricocheted against the steps. He punched with his left and fired again, pumping his fists with each blast.

Pain seared through her calf as Natalya took a blast in the leg. She inhaled through her teeth to steady her aim as she fired back at the intruder.

Pul punched at the blasts with one hand, firing his pistol on automatic with the other as he ran across the cargo bay.

“Look what you did to me! Look what you did to my people!” Pul roared.

“I didn’t…” Natalya said, trying to land a clear shot. Each time she shot at the man, Pul leapt back or thrust a shield at the incoming blast, deflecting it harmlessly into the ceiling.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Natalya shouted.

Pul stopped, guns once more trained on the floor. “The Liao. Asylum. Granted and destroyed and turned into an abomination. Don’t lie to me!” Pul shouted, and fired both guns at Natalya.

Natalya ducked beneath the staircase and fired her carbine over her head. Pul punched forward and a shield pulse ripped the gun out of Natalya’s hands. Pul was on her before Natalya could draw her pistol, sending a pulse that knocked her into the wall.

Pul trained his pistols on the captain. Natalya had half an instant to stare at the barrels, wondering if she could deny she deserved the man’s wrath.

A flash of light blinded Natalya, and when she blinked her vision clear she saw a golden sword on the floor, Pul’s pistols clattering across the cargo bay.

Jasper stood in the doorway, a hole cut through the aperture hatch. He held out his hand and the glowing sword returned to his grasp.

“Get away from her,” Jasper threatened, and charged.

Pul made a punching motion and fired a shield pulse at the Prophet. Jasper held his sword before him and absorbed the blow, his feet scraping against the metal deck with a grinding screech.

This gave Pul just enough time to leap for one of his pistols and come up with a punching blast. Natalya drew her pistol and shot at the man. Pul deflected her shots with his shields, but this gave Jasper the chance to close, his golden sword whirling through the air.

Pul backed to the center of the cargo bay, grabbing hold of Jasper’s sword and firing a pulse into the blade. The sword flew through the air and Pul blasted several holes in Jasper’s chest.

The Prophet extended his hand and the sword returned to him, slicing Pul across the face. He didn’t lose a step as he brought the sword down again and again onto the Pul’s upraised hand. Jasper’s wounds healed, but Pul’s shields flared brighter and brighter with each golden sword strike.

Natalya fired her pistol at the man too, and thought she saw Pul draw another weapon from his shield emitter-clad leg. But the device in Pul’s hand wasn’t a weapon: it was a detonator.

The ceiling erupted in a deafening roar as a hole opened in Chimera’s hull. Loose boxes of sundries flew into outer space, along with the rapidly escaping artificial atmosphere.

The blast engulfed both Jasper and Pul. The Prophet fell to the ground, his shirt burned away and his pants in tatters as his scorched body began healing itself. Pul’s shields protected him from the explosion, and instead of taking out Jasper, he trained his gun on Natalya.

With a scream of pain, Jasper lunged for Pul, grabbing him by the arm as they struggled for the gun.

Natalya braced herself against the staircase as the ceiling crumpled outward. Alarms blared. The lights flickered with fluctuating power from exposed, sparkling wires. She saw her carbine slide across the deck and get caught in a cargo compartment by the airlock, next to the safe with the Key Core. The secondary shield emitters tried to seal up the hull, but the explosion had caused too large a gap, and cracks were already spreading all over the cargo bay.

Oxygen flew out the aperture hatch from where Jasper had cut a hole in it. But an emergency seal, a bulkhead meant to keep the rest of the ship protected if the cargo bay needed to be jettisoned, lowered from the other side.

“Jasper!” Natalya shouted, crawling toward the descending door. “Jasper, we have to get out of the cargo bay!”

“You’re not going anywhere! You and the scientist!” Pul threatened.

The explosion must have jostled the emergency systems, opening the doors throughout the ship. Natalya saw Augustus running through the corridor toward the cargo bay.

“Captain!” Augustus shouted.

Co barreled past Augustus. She was a step away from the descending bulkhead when Pul leapt at the opening and fired a shield pulse that shoved her backward. He stood between Natalya and the rest of the ship as the bulkhead sealed shut.

Natalya raised her pistol to shoot Pul in the back. The man turned around an instant before she fired and deflected the blast. He grinned, and raised his own pistol.

Before Pul could fire, another wave of light struck Natalya blind. She thought the opalescents had detonated, or the secondary fuel inside the cargo bay had exploded and she was staring at the white light of oblivion.

Through the light came a voice like that of a silver bell ringing in a cathedral. “Jasper. So this is where you’ve been hiding,” it said.

Natalya wiped her eyes clear and saw a woman standing before her. She was dressed all in white, with a flowing dress covered in pearls and shimmering crystals. Her blonde hair was cut short, and she wore a headband that held a glistening diamond against her forehead in a spider web of silver threads.

“Erika,” Jasper said, panting.

“You will come with me. Willing or not,” the White Prophet declared.