“Why would he do that?” Pul asked from the bridge’s hatch.

Natalya paused to think a moment. “I don’t know. It would take months of work to reconfigure Prosper ships so they look like colony ships on scanners.”

She thought about what Qin had been doing since the battle on Farbind. She remembered how she’d destroyed the planet to keep the peace, and how Qin had sabotaged it. She hadn’t thought about his end game, though, had been so focused on getting away and staying alive, that she couldn’t see the bigger picture.

Now, with nothing between them and Ptolemy’s space station, she could see what Qin was after.

“He’s been trying to build up for war since he got on the Zhou council,” Natalya said. “Augustus, your family pleaded for peace years ago.”

“Silent protests and sit-ins may not have worked, but they made for a heck of a good time,” Augustus replied.

“And Jasper, you were blamed for killing Xia, who was trying to stabilize relations with the colonial governments.”

“She was working on opening further trade negotiations when she was assassinated,” Jasper said with a nod.

“And he used Co’s assassination attempt to justify building up the military.”

“You tried to assassinate Qin?” Sisi asked.

“No. I tried to blow him up,” Co corrected. “I was a cop, he was a corrupt killer. Politics had nothing to do with it.”

“And then he uses Sisi and me on Farbind to bring Gaozu and Changyu to war,” Natalya continued.

“Why?” Jasper asked.

“To weaken them. Qin wants to bring the colonies back under Prosper rule. By force.”

“Invasion of Gaozu and Changyu territory would be costly, difficult, and all but suicidal on a large scale,” Ptolemy reasoned. “Even the colonies are just fighting over border worlds. Maybe he could get a system or two, but not the whole hegemony, and not—”

“He wouldn’t need to invade any planet. Not if he had a space station that could destroy one.”

Ptolemy’s mouth clicked shut.

“If the Gaozu see a Changyu fleet coming toward Farbind…” Jasper said.

“And the Changyu see a Gaozu fleet, they’ll think the DMZ is threatened, and send a fleet to take them on,” Natalya explained. “Gaozu and Changyu, both fleets destroying each other again on Farbind, only this time Qin will have a Prosper fleet there to finish off any ships that survive.”

“There are still those on the Zhou who want peace, though,” Ptolemy said.

“They won’t after this. If Qin’s fleet poses as colony ships, he can say he was protecting Prosper territory from an invasion, that he followed them into the DMZ. He’ll have the perfect justification for war, he’ll have crippled both colony fleets, and he’ll have a planet-destroying space station.”

Pul left the bridge, storming down the stairs.

Ptolemy opened his mouth to say something. After closing his eyes to think a moment, he leaned back on the console, crossed his arms, and let out a deep breath. “Checkmate,” he said, shaking his head.

“I should share this with the Prophets,” Jasper said. “Millions will die.”

“Will they believe you?” Natalya asked.

“Not likely. But they should know.”

Natalya nodded. “Don’t let them trace the signal.”

“So what do we do? We can’t let Qin get the space station! That’s for Prosper-forming colonies, not conquering other colonies,” Sisi insisted.

“How much time will it take to get the station up and running?” Natalya asked.

“Long enough,” Ptolemy replied.

“We could blow it up,” Co suggested.

Ptolemy blinked.

Everyone stared at Co.

“What?” Co asked. “We can’t blow it up?”

Ptolemy rubbed his chin. Then he nodded and said, “It’s the only way to keep it from Qin.”

“But you can’t blow it up! It’s the future of colonization!” Sisi insisted. “Qin killed the scientists and they destroyed the data we used to build it. It’ll take—”

“It was the work of my life. Therefore, it is my decision to destroy it.” Ptolemy looked at Natalya, and corrected himself. “It’s our decision.”

Natalya nodded. “We’ve done a good job running so far. We can keep running. We can keep living. And we can stop Qin. Maybe not kill him, but we can keep planets safe.”

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“People will call you a destroyer! People will hate us,” Sisi lamented.

“They already do. Co, I want you to go over the space station’s schematics with Ptolemy. I’m assuming you have them?”

Ptolemy nodded.

“Good. Find a way to destroy it,” Natalya ordered.

“Should be simple. Overload the opal-plant. Big explosion,” Co explained. “It has an opal-plant, right?”

“It does,” Ptolemy said.

“Hopefully we’ll be there in time to do it and get clear before Qin’s fleet shows. And before the colony fleets arrive,” Natalya said.

“This is the right decision, Natalya,” Jasper said.

Ptolemy, Augustus, and Co nodded. Sisi bit her lip but nodded as well.

“Thank you,” Natalya replied. “Let me know when we’re close.”

Natalya couldn’t do anything more, so she exited the bridge and left the rest of her crew to argue over her decision. She didn’t want to blow up Ptolemy’s space station. She didn’t want to admit defeat. Ptolemy’s work was the only thing that had survived her experience on Farbind. Saving it would mean she hadn’t entirely screwed up.

But something else had survived what happened on Farbind: her crew. And even sacrificing their lives wouldn’t save the space station.

Natalya focused on the comforting clank of her boots on the stairs as she made her way into the ship’s corridor. She thought she needed to be alone, but the second she laid eyes on her empty quarters she turned away.

The shipyards of Gaozu and Changyu used different materials from one another, variations of titanium alloys and nano-fibers that resonated with a slightly different tune when walked upon. Natalya always imagined that when she strolled the hodge-podge ship she played a massive instrument, the clangs of her steps like mallets on a xylophone.

She wandered the vessel, doubt and fear walking beside her, until she heard the sound of muffled screams from the engine room. Frayed as her nerves were, Natalya ran down the steps into the engine room. She stopped at the hatch, recognizing the sound as a recording.

Chimera’s engines were harvested from a Changyu frigate. While most of the tech that actually moved the ship was on Chimera’s bat-like wings, the opal-plant that powered them was secured beneath the bridge. The engine room was claustrophobic, with zigzagging pathways running through the packed-in machinery. The opal-plant resembled an inverted eight with a sphere at its center. Dozens of colorful lights flashed around the sphere, showing the status of the billions of reactions underway to keep the ship opalescent.

Pul sat straddling the opal-plant. He held his arm in front of him, projecting a holographic image through the devices in his body. The sound Natalya had heard was the screams of scientists, Pul watching Sisi’s video log.

“I improved your opal-plant’s efficiency by twelve and a half percent. We should arrive earlier to Farbind than expected,” Pul said without turning around, his eyes focused on the holographic destruction.

Natalya stayed at the doorway, not sure if Pul wanted to be alone or if he had questions about the video.

“Also, you had two shield emitters stuck between a welded bulkhead. I can displace them if you’d like. Should improve Chimera’s defenses,” Pul explained as the video ended.

“How did you find them?” Natalya asked. “Augustus and I have been tinkering with Chimera for months and haven’t—”

“I’m a Khitan. We know how to fix ships.”

Pul focused on the blinking opal-plant, keeping his back to Natalya.

“I’m sorry for what happened,” Natalya said, breaking the silence.

Pul didn’t reply.

“If I’d known—” Natalya began.

“You didn’t,” Pul said. “But it was the fault of the Khitan for thinking Prosperites could be trusted.”

“What happened?”

Pul stared at the opal-plant, tinkering with it as he shared his story.

They searched every planet they came across. Only the slow-burning hope of countless failed journeys pressed them forward. Pul was no different than the other Khitan, although he’d be hard-pressed to say what made them similar. They were no race, simply a collection of people. They shared only one thing in common: they were garbage.

“Don’t call it garbage,” Pul’s mother scolded as they watched the Farbind system grow larger in their static-laden viewscreen.

They stood on the bridge of the Liao, a freighter ship laden with people and swarming with smaller craft. The little ships were needed to fix bulkheads, reseal cracks, and reprogram fluctuating shield emitters. Pul himself hung from the bridge’s pipe-strewn ceiling, welding a leaking pneumatic cylinder.

“It was a freighter drifting toward a scrap yard. That’s the very definition of garbage,” Pul replied.

His mother put her fists on her hips in reply. Her clothing was ragged and torn, just like Pul’s, but she wore her rags with pride. She stood tall, wiping dust off the colorful patches on her skirt like they were badges of honor. When Pul let go of the ceiling, finished with his repairs, he hunched over, shrugging his shoulders to adjust a poorly stitched collar.

“Garbage doesn’t smell near as nice as Liao. Now apologize to her,” Pul’s mother insisted.

Wide-leafed ferns decorated the bridge from floor to ceiling, an old-fashioned method to maintain oxygen levels, along with a few tomato plants. It was a small bridge, a rectangular box with a single viewscreen, a navigation console, and a communications console. The freighter wasn’t designed for quick maneuvers, but that didn’t stop the Khitan from welding a pair of metal arms into the main systems. These controls allowed the bulky freighter to fly like a fighter, instead of a brick.

Pul’s mother was Matriarch of Liao, one of the ship’s two leaders. They worked in council under a Captain, who was effectively the single leader but relied on the Matriarch and Patriarch for most decisions. Captain Tsara was making final preparations for their arrival.

“I’m sorry, Liao,” Pul apologized, not wanting to upset the ship’s spirit.

“She accepts your apology, and your love,” Pul’s mother said with a smile, inspecting the repaired cylinder.

“Will you miss her when we settle?”

“I will miss her dearly, but I will be thankful she got us to our new home.”

Despite being born, raised, and typically dying on spaceships, the Khitan constantly searched for a home. Liao was one of hundreds of Khitan vessels, and though they helped each other if they crossed paths, there was nothing in the way of a unified government. They agreed, however, that if a hospitable planet could be found, it would be shared with all Khitan.

The Matriarch and Patriarch had been searching this part of the galaxy, far away from the non-Khitan, for years. Khitan ships had scanned planets for centuries, but the habitable ones were settled long ago by Prosper colonists. These, and the Prosper-formed planets, always turned the Khitan away, the Khitan buying, fixing or outright stealing what ships they could in their unending search for a home.

They’d learned of Farbind nearly a generation ago. Lacking opalescents, the Khitan had spent decades in a slow approach to the planet. Farbind had been Prosper-formed long ago, the Prosperites abandoning it before it could be colonized. But they’d returned before the Khitan could reach it.

The Khitan had an expression when they learned a planet was no longer usable, or open to them: The stars still glow. No matter where they went, the stars were always there to welcome them, a blanket of jewels offering cold comfort.

“The stars still glow,” Pul’s mother said as she looked at Farbind on the viewscreen.