“Zip, no!”

I cradled the body of the mare I loved as the life slowly left her. The blood pouring from the gaping hole in her chest was like a river, and within seconds, I was soaked to the bone. Her blood was thick like sludge and sticky as glue; I felt like I was being buried alive in cement. The interior of the dam twisted around me, turning into a cage of pipes and concrete, isolating me from the world outside.

Zip coughed and covered her chest; it sounded like she was choking on stones. “Why?” she wheezed out, gurgling as blood filled her throat. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I didn’t know!” I screamed at her. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Please, don’t go! I can make it better! I can! I know I can!”

Her face disappeared beneath the blood, and I felt like I was in a grotesque swimming pool. I started flailing as the blood continued to rise and rise, and soon I found myself treading in it just to stay afloat. More and more blood poured into the tiny cell, and I looked up at a grate covering the opening. Even in my panicked state, it didn’t take much to piece it all together. “Help!” I screamed, clinging onto the bars above my cell as the blood rose past my shoulders. “Help! Help! Help me!”

My next screams were drowned out by Zip’s blood pouring down my throat. I spasmed, convulsed, choked, gagged…

…and woke up.

It took me a few seconds to figure out where I was. Rubbing my eyes, I picked out the coats of my friends all lying around me. Gauge and Nova held each other tight, though I noticed that Nova was sleeping on the side with her flesh and blood wing as opposed to the metal one. Ace was off to the side, snoring loudly; I doubted anything short of me kicking her in the crotch would wake her up. But most surprisingly of all, I could barely sense Surge in my mind. I mean, sure, I could feel her sitting in the back of my skull, for lack of better terminology, but she seemed a lot less active than she had been. I guess even she had to sleep some, though with my mind more active now, I didn’t know how long she’d be asleep for. I felt like if I thought too much or too loudly I’d wake her up, like she was sleeping in the same room with me and I was making too much noise or something.

Yeah, I know it’s weird. Try to avoid sharing your brain with somepony else. It gets annoying real fast.

But I knew with the usual dream that I wasn’t going to be sleeping again any time soon. Lacking anything better to do, I slid out of my bedroll and snuck outside, taking a cigarette with me. I could still feel the tiniest hint of nicotine in my blood from the last one I took before I went to sleep, but the usual nightmare had shaken me up enough that I needed another hit if I was going to have any chance at calming down. What I’d seen in my mind’s eye was making my jittering so much worse.

I decided to go sit where I’d seen Nova and Gauge go earlier that night before I’d passed the fuck out; it had to be a good spot, right? It certainly had a great view of the river below, though I was a little uncomfortable in the shifting wind and the misting rain. It was probably going to get a lot worse by morning, that much I knew for certain.

A trivial thought was all it took to light up the cigarette, and I stuck it between my lips, angling the end out to my left. I fought a small cough back down as the smoke and tar hit my lungs, then felt myself loosen up as that blissful drug hit my blood. The jitters and shaking immediately went away, and I hummed a random melody to myself as I worked on the cancer stick. Yeah, I knew by then that I was heavily addicted, but I just didn’t care anymore. There were worse things to get hooked on, and by comparison, cigarettes weren’t all that bad. I honestly didn’t know how I survived without them… but then again, I didn’t have to deal with this much insane world-ending bullshit on a daily basis when I lived in Blackwash.

My eyes turned toward the moons… or I guess, moon. Argenta was out there, sitting low on the horizon, but the smaller one, Platina, was nowhere to be seen. I thought I saw the faintest glow on the horizon, but I couldn’t really be sure. Still, Argenta was full enough that I could easily see the land around me, and I found myself looking inwards as I sat up there, alone.

I fucking hate it when I do that. Life’s so much easier when you just go and don’t take the time to think.

As they always did whenever I was alone for too long, my thoughts drifted to Zip. Though the wound would never go away, the knife in my heart had just turned into a throbbing heartache that gripped me in the quietest hours of the night. And whenever that happened, I always found myself torn. One part of me wanted to break down and cry about this mare I loved, this mare whom I’d had a lot of sex with and close moments together. The other part wanted me to push it all away. I hadn’t even known Zip for a month before she died and I was treating her like we’d been married and in love for years. And while yeah, I thought we were in love, I just… I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. What we had was real, I knew that much, but the cynical part of my mind wanted to argue with me that we hadn’t been together long enough for it to really be ‘real’. Why should I care about some mare who I fucked a few times before she died?

And then there was Ace. As I sat there on that hill, I realized that yeah, she was attractive, and yeah, I wouldn’t mind letting her stick her tongue under my tail. Somehow I’d even gotten past her abrasive, hardcore, badass ‘outlaw’ personality. She could be really sweet and friendly when she wanted to, and hearing her say that she wanted to be a part of my team really made me happy for some reason. But I couldn’t bring myself to like her. I’d loved a mare, and our love was like a firework. It was brilliant, bright, and beautiful, but then it was over in a bang and a flash. Now, Zip was feeding the worms, and I was left behind to carry the scars. After feeling that heart wrenching pain at watching her die, in my forelegs no less, trying to bring myself to love and care for another pony just seemed like a short road to misery. Auris was dangerous, and Ace could die any second; could I bring myself to deal with that sort of agony again, knowing full well that I could have prevented it if I’d only stayed detached?

I shivered as I felt the blood pouring down my throat once more. I didn’t think I could take twice as many nightmares. I’d never be able to sleep again. I was better off just staying single, at least until this all was over.

Yeah, it’s nuts thinking about romance at a time like this, especially after all I’d been through and what I’d just woken up from. But then again, almost every single waking moment since the Crimson razed Blackwash to the ground had been pure insanity. If I could hardly make any sense of the world around me even when I wasn’t getting shot at, then my own thoughts stood no chance.

I heard hoofsteps and oiled metal approaching from the camp. I didn’t even have to look to know who it was. “How come everytime I wake up in terror, you’re the one who’s there for me?”

Nova sat down next to me and fidgeted with her metal wing. “Ember, we’ve known each other since we were infants. What kind of best friend would I be if I wasn’t here for you?” She offered me a comforting smile, which I did my best to return. Then, sighing, she slid a little closer and put her shoulder against mine while her flesh and blood wing enveloped my back. “I don’t even have to ask, do I?”

“No.”

Her wing tightened a little more around my shoulders. “I wish I could help you,” she said. “That Synarchy bitch can’t help make the nightmares go away?”

I blinked in shock; Nova never swore like that. “Where’d you learn pretty words like that?” I teased her.

“Just this foul-mouthed forgemare that I travel the world with,” she said, flashing her teeth. Her expression turned sour. “Well? Is she there or what?”

“She’s asleep… or something,” I said, shaking my head. “I can feel her there, but she’s in her own little world. It’s weird.” Sighing, I added, “And I don’t know. I don’t want her messing with my mind any more than she already has been.”

Nova nodded along. Her hoof tore at a tuft of grass in front of us. “I wish we could get rid of her.”

I raised my eyebrow at that. “Any particular reason why?”

“I don’t know, she’s just so… so…” she shrugged in frustration.

“Bitchy? Racist? Like, super racist?”

“Xenophobic would be the correct term, but… technicalities.” She waved that away. “She’s a jerk, and I don’t trust her. You heard her earlier when Ace explained Thatch and the Ivory City to her, right? She’d sooner turn over the code pieces to Reclaimer than keep them for us and the Sentinels. She wants to bring back the Synarchy, in all of its dystopian, hate-mongering, fascist and fearful ways. She wants to turn Auris into a place ruled by right of might instead of a better world. Given the chance, I think she’d turn on us if it meant bringing her world back.” Teal eyes warily watched my horn. “We all know that she can control you, Ember. Maybe only for short bursts, but that might be all it takes to derail everything.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “When I first came to after she jumped into my brain, I couldn’t control myself at all. She had complete control over my body. It felt like I was watching the world through a window, stuck inside my own skull. It’s… really hard to explain what that feels like, because it’s like your body isn’t your body anymore. It’s just some machine that your mind is trapped in and somepony else is behind the wheel.” I rubbed at my eyes and hung my head. “It doesn’t quite feel like she’s got a gun to my head, but she’s certainly got it visible. I mean, she fried the wailer growth right out of my brain. It wouldn’t be too much effort on her part to turn what tiny brain I have into mush.”

“But didn’t you say that she needs you to survive?” Nova asked, to which I nodded. “So she won’t do that at least. Still, I can’t say that I envy you.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Which is why we should get rid of her.” When I looked to her with an eyebrow raised, I saw determination born from lots of planning and thinking—you know, the kind of shit I’m fucking awful at. “If she can jump into circuits and stuff, then she can be trapped there, right?”

I pursed my lips. “Where are you going with this?”

“Whenever we get to the next installation, we dump her off into a simple circuit or something so she can’t really force us to take her back. Then we just get you as far away from her as possible and leave her there.” She swallowed and added, “We could destroy the circuit, too. She might be… well, a not nice pony, but she doesn’t deserve to spend any more time suffering in some horrible limbo between life and death like she has been for the past two centuries. Then we go on our way and forget this happened.”

“That’s… surprisingly dark, coming from you, Nov,” I said. She bit her lip and looked away, so I left that remark hanging. “She saved my life, you know. She killed that wailer fungus eating my brain.”

She hung her head. “I know, and I’m really happy that she did, but...”

“And even still, she knows a lot of things about what life was like before the Silence. She lived it. Wouldn’t killing her and losing all that knowledge be awful?”

Nova seemed to deflate a bit. “Sometimes it’s hard to separate the useful bits from the hateful, xenophobic diatribe, but I just think it’s too risky to keep her around, especially as we get closer to the Ivory City.” She swallowed hard. “Just because she saved your life now doesn’t mean she’s going to have any loyalty to you. She might jump ship if she gets the chance when we’re in the City. You know that we’ll have to go there at some point to get the last piece, right?”

“Something I’m really not looking forward to…” I shook my head. Who knew what that was going to be like? Somehow we’d have to sneak into the heart of the bad guy’s power and shit and snag a closely guarded and secret code fragment out from under his nose. But seeing as how I basically didn’t know shit about the Ivory City other than that it was bad news, I used that as an excuse to not think about it. We’d get there in time. The time simply wasn’t right now.

We sat together, watching silvery clouds come rolling in, outlined in moonlight. “What do you think of all this shit?” I asked her. “You think we can do it?”

Nova giggled. “Em, a couple days ago, this giant lizard thing mangled my wing so bad that you had to cut it off to save my life. I never thought I’d fly again.” She extended her metal wing, and I saw the edged blades of the ‘feathers’ glint like diamond knives. “Now I can fly again, and I can do incredible things with this wing. As far as I’m concerned, we can do anything.” She sighed and added, “So long as we’re not tripped up from within.”

I leisurely nodded along. “Your thoughts on our lovable outlaw companion?”

Nova pursed her lips. “I like her,” she said after a moment. “I really didn’t trust her at first, but… well, she has a nice heart. Soft, even, but I’d like to see you tell her that and keep your head.” We both laughed, and Nova shrugged her shoulders. “After I lost my wing, she talked to me. She was the only other pegasus there; she was the only one who understood what our race has, how tightly the sky is entwined with the fibers of our souls, and what it meant to me to lose that. And I mean, she didn’t have to—she didn’t owe me anything—but she did it anyway. That’s when I realized that she cared, she actually cared.”

“Even if she doesn’t want ponies to know it,” I finished for her, smiling.

White teeth responded in kind. “She’s a softy. I bet she’d look the cutest in a dress.”

“Maybe if we got her to trim back the edgy emo manecut,” I said with a bemused snort. “Seriously, she’s got the shaved-down super short crest and that curtain that swoops in front of her eyes. She keeps her tail short, too, just barely long enough so that you can’t actually see her cunt if you’re standing behind her.”

“You been looking?” Nova snickered.

“No… I just happened to be looking at something else but her ass was between me and it.” We giggled like naughty fillies, but my ears fell with my laughter. “Am I a bad pony for thinking about this shit?” I asked Nova. I thought I’d settled that internal argument once tonight, but I felt like I could confide in my best friend about it. Maybe she’d help stop this thing from eating me alive. “Is it okay to be thinking about another pony’s ass and having all these thoughts when the pony you thought you loved hasn’t been in the ground for much longer than a month?”

“I mean, you’ve always been one to fling yourself head first into something and only worry about it later,” Nova said, trying to lighten the atmosphere with a joke. I smiled and shook my head, but it was half-hearted. She could sense that, because her ears drooped alongside mine and she shuffled a little closer. “I can’t speak for you, Em. You know that. I think you first need to make peace with yourself if you’re gonna start thinking about a new crop of flank to harvest.”

That got a surprised (and amazed) snort out of me. “Stars, Nov, if I knew I was this bad of an influence on you, I would’ve tried harder!”

“I’m just trying to put it in terms that you’ll understand,” she teased, gently tapping my skull.

I giggled and brushed her hoof away. “Careful, you’ll wake the roommate.”

“Right, right.” Her expression gradually became more serious. “If you’re worried about what Zip would think, Em, don’t be. If she really loved you, then she’d want you to move on. Find another pony to love. Somepony who makes you feel like you did when you were with her.” She opened her mouth, stopped herself, then laughed. “Please don’t make me speak in any more Ember-isms.”

“Why not? You’re good at them!” I protested, but Nova just shook her head and crossed her forelegs. I let her be and softly sighed. “What if I don’t want to make it awkward in the afterlife? It wouldn’t do to show up and have multiple ponies fighting over me.”

“The afterlife lasts forever; I’m sure you’d work something out.”

“Yeah, like an angelic threesome,” I said. Even though I couldn’t see it in the dim light, Nova ducked her head like she was hiding a blush. I nudged her ribs and leaned up against her. “You’re imagining me and Zip and Ace all fucking each other on a big, puffy white cloud with little halos over our heads, aren’t you?”

“N-No!” Nova protested. “But now I am! Eww! Ember!”

“Oh come on, Nov, it’s not that bad! I bet I look super pretty and shit with a little halo and a set of fluffy white wings on my back!” Of course, that thought led down a random tangent that I’d always wondered about. “But, like, if angels are ponies with wings, what do pegasi get? Double wings? Please don’t tell me you get four wings like a fucking shrike or something.”

“By the stars, Ember, you are insufferable sometimes!” Though she sounded irritated, I knew she was just playing around. “Your cutie mark should’ve been a pain in the flank!”

“It is; why do you think it’s a flaming coal?” I bumped my mark against hers a few times. “I’ve got a fire literally stamped on my butt. I swear and make lewd jokes all the time to cover up the fact that my ass is in constant pain.”

Nova slammed her forehead into the grass and covered her head with her hooves. “Stars, spare me…”

I chuckled a few more times, but that ultimately ended in a yawn. Icy fingers ran down my spine, and I could feel Surge’s consciousness starting to get restless in my brain. If I stayed up much later shooting the shit with Nova, I was probably going to wake her up. And besides, I needed the sleep, too. “Thanks for the talk, Nov,” I said, nuzzling her behind the ear. “You’re like my own therapist, except I don’t have to pay you shit.”

“I’m starting to wonder if I should start charging.” She hummed and nuzzled me back. “Think about what I said. Don’t let your guilt drag you down and keep you from being happy. I can’t bear to see you suffering like this.”

Her wing brushed my shoulders one last time as she stood up and started walking back to the camp. “Maybe I’ll get some sleep by some miracle or something. I keep rolling onto my side and poking myself with the feathers of this thing. I feel like I need a sheath for it when I’m not using it.” Yawning, she waved her natural wing at me. “Sleep well when you go to bed, Em. Long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

I waved back to her, but lingered at the cliff a little longer. I really wanted to sleep… but at the same time, I didn’t want to. Now that Nova had once again put my thoughts at ease, I just wanted to look at the sky.

Auris is a lot of things, most of them bad. I know I’ve complained about them. But one thing I don’t really give it that much credit for is its beauty.

After listening to tales of a homeworld torn apart by war and hate, the quiet buzzing of cello bugs under an alien moon on a foreign planet was the most peaceful thing I could imagine.

I woke up again to find myself already sitting in front of a fire in the early hours of the morning. A canteen and a bundle of dried fruit floated in my magic, though I immediately dropped both as I came to. I was confused and disoriented, to say the least, and for a moment, I wondered if everything I’d been through last night was merely a dream.

Then I felt Surge’s presence in my skull as she moved my mouth. “She’s awake.”

“I guess that settles that question,” I mumbled to myself, picking up the food and water Surge had me snacking on before I came to. Now I really felt like my body was just a vehicle or something either of us could control while the other was asleep or absent. Surge hadn’t woken up when I talked to Nova last night, and I hadn’t woken up when she moved me from my bedroll and started eating by the fire.

“Good of you to join us,” Gauge said. He sat next to me, and when I looked over at him, he passed me a stick of stone hare jerky. I greedily took it and all but shoved the thing down my muzzle; I needed some real protein to deal with all this bullshit. “I knew right away when your body got up and started calling me ‘Stripy’ that Surge was in charge, not you.”

Surge wanted me to roll my eyes, but I didn’t let her. “Maybe we should call her ‘Sparky’,” I countered, earning an amused snort from Gauge. I could feel Surge glowering at me from within my skull as I added, “She says she likes it!”

“I have said no such thing,” Surge spat.

Gauge shrugged and went back to his meal. “Whatever, Sparky.”

I actually had to stop Surge from grabbing hold of my horn and tearing him in two. The river of racism runs deep, it seems, and I really didn’t need it killing my friends.

Gauge wisely shut up and fell back to his own meal while I waited for Surge’s temper to cool off. “Where did Nova and Ace go?” I asked him, noting the absences of our two winged friends.

“Off to scout,” he said. “Getting into the mountains is one thing. Going through them is another. And Surge said she didn’t have any maps of the area in her photographic memory, so they’re getting a feel for the land before we set off.”

I nodded and went back to my meal, but I flinched when a raindrop struck the tip of my right ear. Tilting my head back, I stared up at the blanket of clouds descending on us, promising much more to come. Gauge did the same, and his ears folded back even as he climbed to his hooves. “Looks like we’re gonna be hiking in the rain. Think between the two of you, you can put together a rain shield?”

“Can I leave a hole in it for you?” Surge asked.

“My horn, my rules,” I insisted. “Between Surge’s magic and my own, it shouldn’t be a sweat to keep up a rain shield for four.”

“Five,” Surge insisted. “Don’t count me out just because I share your body.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” More rain began to fall on me, so I followed Gauge’s example and tried to finish my breakfast as fast as I could. As soon as that was done, I started collapsing our tents and supplies and getting them ready for travel. I didn’t want to have to pack and keep a rain shield up at the same time.

Within minutes, the rain began to fall, steady and even. It wasn’t a hard rain, but it was enough to get us soaked to the bone in a matter of minutes. Thankfully, I didn’t let that happen; with mana freely flowing from my horn, I engulfed the campsite in a rain shield that swirled a mixture of orange and blue. It was like when I helped Warped Glass make the airtight shield that let us sneak into the dam, only this time, both sources of magic were flowing through my horn. The only downside is that my horn began buzzing so hard that it was rattling my teeth.

Gauge noticed me working my jaw from side to side as we sat together, our things long since packed. “You okay?”

“Really bad horn buzz,” I said. “When a unicorn moves a fuckload of mana for an extended time, it can get our horns all buzzy and shaky. It’s like taping a vibrator to your forehead. A strong one. I’m sure Surge could explain why that is, but I know that neither of us care.”

“You may not care, but this is an important field in manatronics,” Surge protested.

“I’m actually interested,” Gauge said. “It’d help pass the time.”

Though I knew Surge wanted to talk more about manatronics and shit, Gauge simply saying that he was interested shut her up. She apparently didn’t want to entertain him if she could help it. And I’m sure Gauge noticed that while most of the shield was an even distribution of blue and orange, the part immediately over his head was mostly orange.

I wondered if we were ever going to teach Surge the magic of friendship and all that shit. How do you take apart ingrained racism in a mare more than two hundred years old?

Nova and Ace returned after a few minutes, both little more than soggy bodies attached to a pair of wings. They immediately ducked within my rain shield and began shaking themselves off, accidentally splashing me and Gauge a little. “How was the flight?” Gauge asked, nuzzling Nova’s dripping cheek.

“Wet,” Ace grumbled, answering first. “It ain’t storming, but it’s certainly hitting hard all round us. Clouds are wide, too; storm’ll probably last the rest of the day, maybe tomorrow as well.”

“We can keep this shield up for a while with the two of us, but I’ll have to stop eventually,” I warned them. “I don’t think I could take this much horn buzz for more than a few hours.”

“The good news is that we found a good way out of the mountains,” Nova said, standing up tall. I lit a patch of grass on fire to make some heat for the two of them, and both pegasi gratefully huddled around it and began warming themselves up. “Maybe a day’s hike to the south and we’ll be at a large river. Ace says that it’s about a two days’ walk from there to Three Rivers. If we just follow that river downstream, we’ll be in the town in no time.”

“Hopefully it won’t be swollen by then,” Surge said. “This area was known for its persistent rainfall. The rivers often breached their banks in the spring and well into the early summer.”

“We’re in the early autumn now, or right around it,” Gauge said. “We shouldn’t have to worry about meltwater runoff, but it’ll still be good to start moving in case the rain just keeps coming.”

I nodded in agreement and shouldered my load of the supplies. “Yeah. I want to get to Three Rivers as fast as possible so we can find this next piece before Yeoman gets there. Speaking of which, you guys didn’t see him, did you?”

Ace shook her head. “The bastard’s probably long gone by now. Probably flew south as fast as he could when we chased him out of that installation. He weren’t gonna stick around and try to take on four of us by himself.”

“Damn. If only he was stupider.” I waited for Ace and Nova to pick up their stuff as well, and then I started moving, taking my rain shield with me. The other three fell in around me, not wanting to leave the safety of my magical umbrella. “Nothing at his camp?”

“We didn’t check his camp, Em,” Nova said. “That’s in the opposite direction of where we want to go. And only Ace would’ve been able to put up a fight if he still had ponies there. I’m a lousy fighter.”

Ace slapped Nova’s shoulder. “Lousy fighter, eh? You did okay during that stand behind the waterfall.”

“I didn’t like it…”

“Ain’t gotta like it. You just gotta do it.” Nostrils flaring, Ace’s wings sagged a bit as she added, “I’ve done tons of things I weren’t proud of myself for. I did them anyway because if I didn’t, I’d die.”

Nova hung her head slightly. “I hate this planet.”

“Because Equestria sounded so much better,” I said, sticking a barb at Surge. The doctor (scientist? Engineer?) remained silent, though I got the feeling it was more because she felt like a teacher that couldn’t take anymore stupidity from her retarded students and had just given up more than anything else.

“We’ll make Auris better,” Gauge insisted. The zebra stuck so close to Nova’s side that the two of them often bumped shoulders together. I did notice that he’d chosen the side with her flesh and blood wing to stay near as opposed to the shiny slice-y death wing. I wondered how that’d interfere with their sex, much to Surge’s disgust.

“Hopefully,” Ace said. “It’s what this code thing’s supposed to be for. I just hope that you’re right.”

“At the very least, it can make things a fuck of a lot worse,” I said. “Whether or not it’s the key to a doomsday weapon or the planet’s supply of food, medicine, and textbooks, all I know is that we want to end up with it, not Reclaimer.”

“Maybe she knows,” Gauge said, pointing at me, or probably more realistically, Surge. “Didn’t Yeoman say something about what it was supposed to do?”

“He said it would ‘awaken the Azimuth’,” I said. “What the Azimuth is, I don’t know, but I don’t like the sound of it. What do you think, Sparky?”

I felt her anger, but she answered anyway. “It’s not manatronics, and I wasn’t on the war board, so it’s not familiar to me,” she said, much to our collective disappointment. “It could be a code name for a secret project of some kind or the name of a ship. Either is just as likely.” Then a hole appeared above my head, dousing me with water before I patched it up. “And don’t call me Sparky.”

Gauge snickered, and Ace openly laughed at me. Only Nova seemed more interested in Surge’s words than my dripping mane. “A ship?” she asked. “You mean, like a starship?”

“A traditional ship would be a rather poor superweapon for a signal sent from our homeworld to unlock, don’t you think?” Surge shook my head. “The Synarchy stockpiled weapons on this planet for years. I think they’d include a few spacefaring vessels here to be activated into an emergency reserve navy if ours was ever destroyed back home.”

Ace and I just looked at each other. We’d seen the orbital munitions stockpiled in secret at the foundry. That explosion Ace had set off probably flattened the entire hillside. If Reclaimer got his hooves on a starship capable of attacking from orbit, then there wouldn’t be anything any of us could do. The Sentinels had the means to resist orbital bombardment from the Bastion, but as far as I knew, they didn’t have anything that could kill a starship in orbit. We’d all be fucked, and Reclaimer would win.

“What kind of ship?” I asked. “Is this like a little frigate or a fucking battleship?”

“Again, I wasn’t in the navy at the time, so I wouldn’t know,” Surge said, an irritated edge in her (my?) voice. “I only served in it during my mandatory service, but I never grew too attached. But the Synarchy sent ships of all kinds here, and they weren’t going to let just anyone know what they deployed.”

“Even so, anything that can blast us to pieces from orbit ain’t good for us,” Ace said. “Even if it’s just a rinky-dink corvette, he could level Thatch unchallenged from that high up. Auris would be his.”

Gauge cleared his throat. “Assuming it even is a starship,” he said once he had our attention. “Like Surge said, it could be something else. ‘Waking’ certainly could have a lot more connotations than simply powering something up.”

“Whatever it is, we won’t find out from here,” I said, picking a path that led down the mountains and around a craggy peak. A small tributary gushed out of a crack in some rocks ahead; hopefully it’d lead us to the river that we wanted to follow. “Let’s worry about Yeoman and the code for now. If we can get one of these code pieces before he does, this whole conversation means nothing. It won’t matter anymore.”

Ace pointedly nodded and fell in alongside me. “That, I can agree on.”