“Don’t say that,” Pul said.

“If the Prosperite changes his mind, you will need to find another heading. I won’t last to the next one,” his mother replied.

A Prosperite named Qin had sent a transmission to Liao once it reached the outer edges of the Farbind system. Even though the Prosper-owned planet was being colonized, Qin welcomed the Khitans, saying they could join the colonists. The Duke of Farbind, the planet’s Prosperite official, had agreed months ago as well.

Pul’s mother had told him a new Duke had arrived on the planet, and hadn’t replied to their requests to land. Pul didn’t think that would be a problem, however. The Prosperite Qin was the superior, and it was his words that brought them closer.

“Don’t say that, Mother. This will be our home,” Pul added.

“I’m not hoping for anything. The stars still glow, and I soon won’t,” Pul’s mother repeated.

A buzz from the communications console announced they’d reached the coordinates the Prosperite had shared. Pul stood at the console and broadcasted a signal, pulling Liao to a halt.

“Do you think they’ll let us land?” Pul asked.

“I hope not. There’s no way Liao would be able to set down in one piece,” Pul’s mother said.

“I didn’t mean put the ship on the ground, I meant…” Pul’s console buzzed and the viewscreen in front of him showed several blinking dots of light approaching the ship. “Proximity warning.”

“It seems they’re sending shuttles.”

“Weird-looking shuttles. Do you suppose—”

The lights went out in Liao. Just before the backup generators kicked in, Pul’s mother said, “That came from the shuttles.” Her eyes widened as she ran for the controls. “Missiles!”

The cylinder Pul had just repaired crashed to the deck as a needle-shaped torpedo embedded itself into the bridge. The narrow hole sucked air into the gap and knocked Pul and his mother off their feet. Pul screamed, grabbing the control arms.

“Evasive maneuvers!” Pul’s mother shouted as a second torpedo pierced Liao’s hull. The controls exploded in Pul’s face and he fell back.

Blood covered his eyes, but he could still see the hole in the bridge, his mother nowhere in sight. He tried to scream, but instead he coughed a sickening gust of air out of his lungs. He heard the hiss of gas spewing from the torpedoes…

He felt the vague sense of being picked up, brought onboard a shuttle, of gravity, natural, not artificial, and then stout straps on a cold, metal bed.

Pul awoke in a world of darkness and pain. He screamed, and let the darkness take him.

When he dreamed, he dreamed only of the stars. They still glowed in his dreams.

Each time he woke, only darkness greeted him. The glow was gone, replaced by burns and needles and shocks of electricity that sent him fleeing to the stars in his mind.

He had no idea how much time had passed. Whenever he opened his eyes, he saw dark glass or blinding light, along with Prosperites sweating through their medical masks as surgical robots jabbed him like a broken fuel cell.

The first time he opened his eyes and could see clearly, he smelled smoke.

He lay on a flat, metal bed in a glass-domed chamber, surrounded by long-armed repair robots, stacks of machinery, and bloodstained lengths of wire. Shards of glass had fallen on him, and he wiped the fragments from his face as he tried to get his bearings. Three other Khitan from the Liao lay on metal beds beside him. They weren’t breathing, and the wires and devices sticking out of their bodies were equally dead.

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“Song… Minyak…” Pul said, tears in his eyes as he spoke the names of his shipmates.

He gritted his teeth, fists shaking as he stared at the blood-soaked equipment around him. A woeful scream burst from his heart, along with a pulse of energy that shattered the rest of the glass dome above him. Pul thrust his hands out and a shield appeared, protecting him from the shrapnel.

The sound of gunfire echoed above him.

Pul stared at his hands, saw the wires all over his body, felt the power surging through his limbs. A glowing shield hovered in his open palm, a miniature star of energy. Pul scowled.

When it was over, and he stood in the wreckage of the laboratory he’d destroyed, Pul thought he’d simply lie down and die. But after days, maybe weeks, Pul heard footsteps approaching.

“Quite the damage you’ve done here,” said the intruder.

Pul didn’t open his eyes. He could tell from his accent, and sterile-smelling clothes, the intruder was Prosperite.

“This planet’s broken too,” the man continued. “I know you wanted to settle here, but the Duke’s sabotage has cracked the planet to its core. Its atmosphere is deteriorating as we speak.”

“So leave me,” Pul said.

“I don’t think you want me to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to kill the one who betrayed you.”

“The Prosperites,” Pul growled.

“Yes, but specifically, the Duke of Farbind: Natalya Frazier. I could use someone of your… talents.”

Pul didn’t reply. He’d found many bodies, scanned the planet’s orbits. There was no sign of Liao. All the other Khitans save him had been mutilated experiments, killed by the scientists who’d created them. He had no hope. But hearing the name of the Duke who’d betrayed him made his hands turn to fists.

“I can give you something,” the man continued, kneeling beside Pul.

“What’s that?” Pul asked.

“Revenge.”

“That’s when I became Qin’s dog,” Pul explained, hopping off the opal-plant.

Natalya hadn’t moved. She stayed close to the door just in case Pul decided to attack her. She’d had to bite her lip and hide her shaking hands behind her back throughout Pul’s story, fully aware of her part in it.

It was that Khitan ship, Natalya thought. Why didn’t I help them? Why didn’t I take a moment out of my useless preparations to…

“I’m sorry. It’s no excuse, but I didn’t know. I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. I’m sorry we couldn’t save Dana. I’m sorry we couldn’t save… lots of people,” Natalya said. “I didn’t know Qin would capture you and do that to you.”

“How could you?” Pul asked. “How could you know he’d deceived everyone? How could you know he’d presented a fake offer of asylum to my family, and that our ship would be destroyed, our people used as experiments? How could you know he’d blame you, and convince me you should be held responsible for all this suffering?”

Natalya crossed her arms. Part of her knew she deserved worse punishment than Pul’s disapproval, and wanted him to lash out at her further. But she suppressed those feelings of arrogant despair, and took a step toward him.

“We’re going to destroy the space station. We’re going to stop Qin. And then we’re going to escape,” Natalya explained.

Pul didn’t reply.

“It’s the best we can hope for,” Natalya continued. “The war will probably continue, but at least Qin won’t get everything he wants.”

Pul turned and looked Natalya in the eyes for the first time. “Why not kill him?” he asked.

Natalya chuckled. “Gladly. But that’s not possible.”

“We’ll just have to make it possible. We blow up the planet.”

Natalya blinked.

“We bring them in close,” Pul said, approaching Natalya with slow, deliberate steps. “If they want that station, bring Qin straight at it. We’ll use it to turn the planet’s core into a lit fuse. Then blow the planet and Qin’s whole fleet with him.”

Pul slammed his fist into the opal-plant’s figure-eight side. The lights flashed a moment, the engines humming a little louder.

“Blow up a planet?” Natalya asked.

“A dead planet. A planet you, I’m told, helped break. Finish the job then, Duke Natalya Frazier,” Pul said. “Blow up Farbind. Stop Qin’s fleet and all the fleets in the system, and end this war you started.”

Natalya swallowed.

“Take on three fleets? With a wrecked ship and a space station?” Natalya asked.

“You’d rather run?”

Natalya bit her lip.

“I don’t have to hear your answer to know,” Pul said. “Let me tell you, Duke. I made a vow to sacrifice my life for vengeance the moment I discovered who did this to me. I thought it was you, but that was a lie. So I will do anything to kill the man who deceived me. Give me this chance.”

“It’s impossible, Pul,” Natalya said.

“That video log, I stole it from your quarters. There was a recording of your true decisions there as well, called the Treaty of Tether. You were willing to sacrifice your life to save others, to prevent a war from happening. Are you willing to make the same sacrifice to end it?”

Natalya thought about the monument to her failure in the Zhou. She heard the chorus in her mind of billions of people cursing her name. She clenched her fist, but instead of answering Pul, she said into her communicator, “Ptolemy, assemble the crew and meet me in your quarters.”

“Captain?” Ptolemy asked.

“I have an idea.”