“I’ll share my thoughts on global pressure dynamics if you show me how to adapt the space station’s shields,” Sisi offered Pul.

Pul nodded and said, “And I’ll assist with preparing Chimera.”

The two left while Co silently began prepping the ship’s weapons systems. Augustus cracked his knuckles in front of the wheel. Ptolemy excused himself to configure the universal transmitter for the upcoming ruse.

Natalya understood their urgency, but hoped they wouldn’t burn out. They had a long way yet to travel.

It took several hours of work to get the ship ready. Natalya did her best to help where she could, but everyone stayed focused on their task. She remained on the bridge, coordinating the crew’s efforts and making sure that no one overused power or made adaptations to systems that would interfere with each other.

After she’d ordered shifts for the night, Ptolemy told her to get some sleep. He and Augustus volunteered to take the first watch while the rest of the crew slept.

Natalya sighed with relief as she sealed the hatch to her quarters. She pressed her back to the door, closing her eyes. A shudder ran up her spine.

Natalya unfolded her bed from the far wall, sitting on the thin mattress and wrapping her arms around her waist. She saw the plan, saw Farbind, saw the past and future and what waited for them coming together.

Her sheets were purple, folded and pressed neatly beneath a single, perfectly feathered pillow. Natalya stared at the bed. Exhaling through clenched teeth, she ripped the sheet off the mattress and punched the pillow, leaving her bed in disarray as she rocked back and forth.

“How am I going to make this work?” Natalya said, staring at the empty white walls of her quarters as tears blurred her vision.

A single knock echoed from the other side of the door.

“Natalya?” Jasper asked.

Natalya stared at the door, biting her lip. After a long moment, she rose from her bed and walked to the hatch, wiping her eyes before she opened it.

“What is it, Jasper?” Natalya asked.

Jasper blinked, smiling as his gaze fell upon the captain. Then he wiped away the smile.

“I wanted to thank you,” Jasper said.

“For what?” Natalya asked.

“For rescuing me. You didn’t have to do that.”

“We couldn’t have gotten this far without you, Jasper. Leaving you behind would have been wrong.”

Jasper nodded. “I also wanted to tell you…” His eyes drifted down, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry. You probably need to sleep.”

“No, stay. Come in a moment,” Natalya said, placing a hand on Jasper’s shoulder and pulling him through the hatch. He didn’t resist, and allowed Natalya to close the door behind him.

The two stood in the middle of Natalya’s quarters, empty save for her bare desk and freshly unmade bed.

“What do you think is going to happen, Jasper?” Natalya asked.

“I think you’ll do what’s right,” Jasper answered. “And I think the crew, and I, will follow you no matter what.”

Natalya looked into Jasper’s eyes and felt a shudder of a different kind run up her spine.

“It’s a wild plan,” she admitted. “And you’ll probably end up taken by the Prophets.”

“It’s a good plan. And it’s worth doing.”

“What’s worth doing? We’re saving a piece of metal from one man, maybe saving a few lives in the process.” Natalya started pacing, back and forth from white wall to white wall as her fingers twitched. “But will it be worth it? Will it matter, or will we kill more people than we save? And will those people matter when there are billions of others on hundreds of planets with…”

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Jasper put his hands on Natalya’s shoulders. He held her in place, while allowing her to break free if she wanted. She didn’t push his hands aside. She took a long breath.

Her legs felt tired, and she practically folded in on herself as she sat on the edge of her bed. Jasper paused, standing a step away before sitting beside her.

Natalya kept her eyes on the wrinkled sheets.

“Sisi told me what you said, the reason you came after me,” Jasper began.

“What did I say?” Natalya replied.

“You said it doesn’t matter if it’s only one life, if it’s meaningless to the universe. Do you still believe that?”

Natalya nodded.

“It doesn’t matter if there’s a billion people or two, we choose the ones who matter,” Jasper continued. “And regardless of why, regardless if we might lose them, no matter how many people and planets and ideas and beliefs there are in the universe, all we have is the people we care for.”

Jasper lifted Natalya’s chin with his finger and thumb, his touch light as a feather as he said, “And they’re worth any sacrifice.”

Jasper removed his hand and smiled, rising from the bed.

Natalya grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled his lips to hers. A dizzying warmth spread from her toes to her bristled neck as she kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close.

Her hands caressed his face as Natalya looked him in the eyes and said, “I care about you, Jasper. I do.”

Jasper enveloped his fingers with Natalya’s and said, “To me, you’re the most important person in the universe.”

The bare, white walls of her quarters transformed into a sea of color as Natalya closed her eyes and fell onto her bed.

The crew assembled on the bridge as they approached Farbind.

They were only minutes away, the opalescents humming in a million colors on the viewscreens.

“Heading, Jasper?” Natalya asked, standing in the center of the consoles.

“We should come out of opalescent within visual distance of Farbind’s defensive perimeter,” Jasper replied, standing at the navigation console. He smiled back at Natalya.

Natalya returned the smile before facing Ptolemy. “How’s that transmitter?”

“Broadcasting Zhou-level entrance requests from the Duke of Farbind,” Ptolemy answered. “Green light from all defense drones.”

“Good. Sisi, Pul?”

“We’ve got a net ready,” Pul answered from the engineering console.

“It’s more a metaphorical net, and not even a solid one. Like a spider web if you really want to, um, I mean…” Sisi chimed in next to Pul. “All systems go.”

“Alright, Augustus, take us out of opal. Co, you’re my backup in case one of these drones starts shooting,” Natalya said.

“Going black,” Augustus said with a chuckle as he flipped off the opalescents.

The viewscreens faded from glorious color to star-studded night. A thick array of defense drones swarmed like an asteroid belt in front of them. They flashed green lights on top of their missile tubes, bursts of thrusters making them part to allow Chimera passage.

“Alright, Sisi. Reel them in,” Natalya said. “Ptolemy, begin reprogramming.”

“Activating welpro,” Sisi said, and dialed a command into the engineering console.

The opal-plant-empowered welpro projected millions of invisible tendrils into space. Jasper’s guidance calculations and Co’s targeting helped lock onto the vast array of drones.

With Ptolemy’s reprogramming, they were able to take control of the drones, pulling them behind Chimera like baby ducks following their mother.

“Step one down. Now to Farbind. Take us in, Augustus,” Natalya ordered.

A planet of scarred, crimson rock came into view. Millions of tons of debris orbited in a metal sea, the tumbling remnants of the battle Natalya couldn’t stop. The Prosper-formed atmosphere had once allowed plants and crops to grow at the edges of Farbind’s metallic continents.

Now the planet looked like it had been struck with a hammer. A great crack, centered on where the platinum mines had once been, nearly split Farbind in half. The planet’s burning core shone through the center of the crag, a pinprick of light in the kilometers-deep trench that added broken crust and mantle to the debris field.

If Prosper had acted quickly enough, the crag could have been repaired, the atmosphere, and people, saved. But Qin had had no interest in saving Farbind, only using it.

Natalya swallowed at the sight, forcing herself to not look away.

“Ptolemy, confirm the best scanner interference location,” she said.

“Between the crag and the moon. Enough interference there to hide a Prosper fleet,” Ptolemy answered.

“As expected. That’s where Qin will come. We need to put the drones on the other side of the planet, draw the colony fleets in before Qin has a chance to turn tail.”

“Think he’ll disengage when he sees the two fleets coming at him?” Jasper asked.

“Not if he sees the space station up and running. Ptolemy, is he ready for us?”

“He is,” Ptolemy answered. “Powering up remotely now.”

Chimera weaved through the debris field toward the planet. Augustus maneuvered around melted bulkheads and whole capital ship engines, gravitational forces turning larger blocks into asteroids of compressed metal. The hijacked defense drones, reprogrammed and propelled on their course, stayed clear of the debris as they made their way to the far side of the planet.

Chimera flew through the discharged pieces of Farbind’s crust, entire continents orbiting like small moons.

“X-ray scanners, Ptolemy,” Natalya said.

The viewscreens turned black and white. Natalya peered through Farbind’s crust. On the left she saw the glowing white ball of the planet core. On the right she spotted an upside-down pyramid that glowed nearly as bright as Farbind’s core as its opal-plants turned on. Ptolemy’s space station.