---

Course / Vector: 68.9°-17.3°-91°

Velocity: 1,489 m/s

Navigation Status: Underway

Position check: 2 min ago

Position transmit: 8 months ago

GMO / SMSI: 9557433 / 215630000

Callsign: BT08LUA

Flag: Crystal League Corporate Navy

Length / Beam: 610ft-80.7ft

Fleet Tag: CRYT

Vessel: CLCN Adroit Animadvert

Current Tasking: Passive observation of Empire/NLR tension, Periphery Region, Jhurope
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If the Adroit’s advanced and dedicated covert role were described to those who had never laid eyes upon it, then many common traits would be assumed about its appearance. Silken, curvaceous perhaps, and attractive to all the wannabe pilots of the academies to void-cruise in style. Others may assume it to be perhaps angular and razor-like, bristling with advanced weaponry and bearing enormous dishes or arrays to spy on the furtive and decrypt the galaxy’s deepest secrets.

The truth was somewhat less romantic. Designed to never enter an atmosphere in its entire service life, the Adroit was a formless skeleton of mathematical efficiency. Three rings more akin to a pre-artificial gravity design held around its long eel-like centre. Each ring bore mismatching reflective-coated boxes and ugly antennae protruding to varying lengths. Some pointed outward, some directly ahead. Its engines, far from being the mighty afterburners of sexy spy films, were low impulse and shielded behind nozzle-shrouds, yet surrounding them was an entire battery of inactive fusion-engine outlets held within inelegant compartments betraying a powerful FTL capability. Ahead of them were racks of super-heavyweight beyond-visual-range torpedoes, unwieldy and bolted to the two rear rings in asymmetric volumes.

She would not dogfight majestically. She would never sit in orbit and make a statement with her mighty presence. She would never take place in a battleline. But she could outrun an interdictor, go dark amidst the void, and cripple anyone who dared think they could blunder around pinging to find her. She was one of the prized and yet utterly deniable classes of the Crystal League: a long endurance spy craft and a deep space apex predator.

Yet in the two years since a silent commissioning she had never operated in anger. For the last two years her cream of the new-age crop of graduates had been paired with long serving old-hands and drifted in the dark observing everything but their distant homes.

Everything. Every signal. Every stray bit of dust out of the normal in the Periphery that drifted by the Adroit’s ever-seeing eyes.

The Adroit’s bridge was dark as the slow hours of the night cycle crawled by. The black crept in from the backswept windows, crawling into the gaps between bright orange holograms, flickering consoles and deep reclined seats. The bridge held two levels with eight workstations in all, and a soft red carpet ran down a gentle slope from the upper section to the hunkered recess of the helm crew’s three stations at the fore. Despite the vessel’s size the bridge itself was intimate, housing only a portion of the system crew. Most were sequestered down in the sealed operations room, leaving only a handful with a view out to the stars. Most of those stations were empty, leaving only three present at the helm: a griffon, a deer, and a pegasus. They were all young, with only scant murmurs of chuckled banter and the quiet, soft-edged chiming of their consoles daring to breach the atmosphere of the silent watch.

One of them, the griffon, reached up at the ping of a console and pulled down a monitor on a hanging arm above her workstation. “Another imperial frigate enroute, Sir. AIS snatched it heading to Mothellum. Few hours yet.”

There was no reply from either of the other two. The griffon’s tone had been easy, like a short, bored sigh. But she turned, tilting her head as only a griffon could. “Maybe two hours, four if they make a refuel stop, sir.” Another pause. “Lieutenant Commander?”

The pegasus at the main helm station between the other two blinked and sat up as though coming out of a funk. He turned briefly with a long breath and a smile. “Oh, sorry. Had my head in. Confirmed, one FFG, two to four out. Thank you.”

The griffon nodded, going back to her work and thinking no more of it other than an assumption her friend and current officer of the watch had simply been engaged in another data-page of astrometrics.

The pegasus, however, was not. Nodding along with his thanks, he turned back to using one feather like a lazy finger upon his console’s centre touchscreen, sifting through the local reports and events of the Periphery. Predominantly pirate alerts, he had been trying to discern a pattern, spot routine methods of evasion, or identify new tactics to adopt from the always inventive rogues. However something had caught his eye and made his wing pause in mid-air between sips of strong Caliphate coffee.

“Lieutenant, can I have four-eight-six up please?”

The deer to his left nodded. “Four-eight-six, Sir, aye.”

After a moment the deer swept a dainty hoof toward the pegasus’ station, and a full brief of a listed event passed over to his terminal. Spreading feathers, he expanded it, opening it.

Port Medusa… Freighter M-Drive Malfunction…

His keen, focused eyes skimmed over the troubling details. They all knew that station well, for it had been the focal point of tensions lately. Was this sabotage? A false flag? From the details he doubted it based on their current intelligence of the situation, but he dug anyway. Alyssum seemed to have it all in hoof, and most of the supplementary reports had been crossed off already. All except one. He prodded it, already tuning out of a brief conversation passing over his head from the other two under his watch.

Confirmed shuttlecraft skiff incident… Found empty… Registered to Space Jammers Inc…

The report slid over an image of the shuttle class. Confederate. Then over to a blue freckled unicorn with a green mane as the missing persons report drew up.

Occupants one Captain Hair Trigger, one Pilot T-

He stopped; the mug of coffee froze midway to his mouth.

Occupants’ location unknown upon corporate recovery…

His eyes were unblinking.

Suspected kidnapping during illegal salvage operation…

The mug clattered down suddenly enough to spill.

The lieutenants on either side looked up as the helmspony got up sharply, his pressed, sharp uniform over a spruce blue coat catching the light from the glowing consoles. “Sir?”

The pegasus was frantically dragging every screen around, downloading the whole report to his multiband, along with an imprint of the local area readings, unclassified ship movements and public-source action reports. Then he was already moving, fixing up his navy grey mane into an organised ponytail with his wings as he went. He walked, but moved with an alarmed pace across the deadened sound of the bridge. “You have the bridge, Lieutenant Serro. I need to speak with the old stallion.”

“Yes… Sir?”

The pair exchanged a look, but by then he had already marched to the starboard side door and passed through. The moment it closed, he broke into a canter toward the nearest steps, proceeding to the upper deck directly above the bridge: the captain’s ready room. Without any hesitation he keyed a panel by the door. “Officer of the Watch requesting an audience, Captain.”

After a moment the panel gave a trio of rising bleeps and a deep, mature male voice rang out. “Come!”

The door slid aside, scarcely interrupting the silent ship’s noise discipline as it revealed a small but comfortable office divided across the middle by a metal desk lined with firm sound-dampening foam. In contrast with the lowered lights, the captain himself sat sparkling a bright azure glint, a crystal pony of his homeland, staring into a blue-hued monitor. Captain Sun Dodger.

He was old, approaching retirement and held back from admiralship only by choice and a lack of time for the political niceties and mandates it brought with it. He was an intimidating force of nature aboard, a thickly built maelstrom of expectation and demand bound up to a fierce paternal frankness and love for his crew. The perfect choice for a vessel intended to forge the imagination of newer generations in how stellar operations could be conducted together with old experience. He looked up at the young officer, nodded a firm greeting, then went back to his reading.

The officer knew better than to assume he was being told to wait, nor did he want to. “Sir, I…” He took a deep breath, steadying his heart. “I wish to request an absence of duty for personal reasons.”

The captain didn’t look up, and did not reply.

“I… I realise the duty of my command and the opportunities afforded to me are beyond the norm.” The officer spoke with a wavering, hastily thrown together justification. “That our secrecy, even from the academy onto this placement was in reward for our scores and efforts, but I have come into… into news regarding a personal issue that I wish to declare to match the requirement for mandated leave in other ships which I know isn’t-”

Captain Dodger finally looked up. The old dog’s glare was enough to halt the clutter of attempted sentences. “This isn’t you,” he said, his voice direct and honest, “you’ve been in deep space since you were offered this, grinning and talking the ears off the rest of the crew about the vessels and phenomena we see. Never a problem with time away or isolation.”

“I-” the officer began.

“And furthermore,” the captain continued, “we’re in the Periphery. We’ve not had any contact with our families for months to remain signals-dark. And your only family is in the League. So no contact from them gave you this impulse either.”

The pegasus remained quiet. His captain just nodded, firm and impassively weighted in confident knowledge. “But all that aside I know why this is, Lieutenant Commander.”

“Sir, I understand this is-”

Captain Dodger snorted loudly, interrupting him by noise alone. “You’ve been one of my aces this whole long journey, son. You’ve kept morale up; you’ve become something of a heart to many of the young officers. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the quiet talks you have with some of them when they’re faltering. That and what you’ve brought to the helm- well, you make me long to yank it away from you and get at it myself again.”

The tall, broad-shouldered crystal pony raised his multiband and tapped a few commands. “We’ve got a replenishment coming in on the next graveyard watch to restock consumables. You can transfer with them to the nearest station and meet back up with them after. If anything it’ll stop the bleeding hearts gang back home pinging me every contact meeting about the lack of leave for crews on this sort of posting. You’ll have two weeks to meet back up with us. Find the same solid replenishment ship again; it’s scheduled for our next one too.”

“Captain,” the officer began, swallowing, hardly believing what he was hearing. “Sir, I… I assure this isn’t just a holiday request. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me on this, I just need to assure this is a genuine-”

Captain Sun Dodger reached out and turned his terminal toward the pegasus. The screen was hazed with a glare-shield, but behind it lay the same thing he had seen on the bridge. The young stallion went wide eyed.

“I know, Commander Vair. I know.”

There was a brief silence between them, as the old captain regarded his lieutenant commander’s break of composure. A look of amazement, worry, shock.

“Don’t ever dare think I don’t pay attention to the histories of every officer I bring out here. Now the Periphery is a dangerous place off-board, so stop by the armoury on your way out. I’ve authorised you to carry.” Captain Dodger paused and grumbled. “I’d rather the right person stay with me eventually than the denied person leave me because they feel they need to go behind my back. Besides, what you see on the ground in Medusa might prove useful to us if you really want me to justify this further.”

“Sir…” The young pegasus tried to not let his voice hiccup. “Thank you.”

“Do what you need to do, lad. Now, graveyard’s in two. Get your skinny butt moving, Vantage. Out of my ready room! On the double!”

He barked the words, shattering the quiet of the vessel, leading Lieutenant Commander Vantage Vair to salute on reflex before turning and galloping out, with only one last look at the screen facing him.

Upon it lay an image of an orange-maned hippogriff, an eager explosion of a smile between soft cheeks, spreading across a heart-shaped face.

Ice in the veins.

Clamming, suffocating, entrapping. The frost felt like it had penetrated beneath her skin, pulling her body apart and leaving nothing but a numb void in its wake. A nightmare where legs would not run. Where digits could not work. Where eyes could not see. Crushing the heart and mind until the pressure would squeeze her frightened and weary soul from her body.

Waves crashed against her. Tussling forces tugging over, round, up, down. Then gentler ones, a sense of travel. Dull colours devoid of shape, like the scathing aftermath of bright light, lazily moulded and sundered upon each other. Sometimes many, sometimes none. Then suddenly, bursts of white noise. Painful undulating crackles and throbbing hums, like crinkling paper and voices through thick water.

It all congealed.

And then came a soft feeling. A painful icy burning, not recognisable until it had seeped below the skin, growing, growing, until it faded slowly. She felt something seizing at her. Pulling, grasping. More than one. She tried to grab onto them, to numbly grasp and squeeze for comfort. But none of them would hold back, none of them would comfort her.

And she felt warmth.

The last time she had known warmth, it had come from someone. The one she knew had saved her life. Who? Captain! Her captain! The last comfort she'd clung to. It had to be, that’s what it had to-

Her eyelid split open, and memories cascaded through her mind. Painfully bright colours rushed in through the slit of vision, melded among moving shapes. She pulled them closed for what felt like hours. And then, at last, there was quiet, and she dared to open them again.

Tami tried to rub her eyes, but her arms wouldn’t move. Her wings felt flat below her. She saw four bulbs above her, and realised she was lying on her back. Thick warmth squeezed from every side of her body, a body that felt alien and swollen and stung as blood flowed again through her veins. With a monumental effort, she lifted her head and saw the inflated foil-coated suit about her.

It was a survival and recovery bodysuit, slowly heating up from water coursing through it. She could feel its thermal gel-packs in her armpits, around her neck and between her legs to target circulation. Intravenous tubes were inserted into her forearm, with a clear fluid dripping through. She lay on a gurney in a glass-walled room with lines of chromed shelving and immaculate white cupboards, but everything was blurry and everything outside the glass melted into a wash of colour. Her head whirled and she lay back down again, focusing instead on her hearing. There was the beep of a health monitor and a familiar, reassuring sound of a reactor core’s hum. A ship. She could smell antiseptic. A sickbay or trauma room then.

Cautious relief began to trickle into her. Every detail spoke of safety. Rescue. Recovery. The fear that she would die began to fade for the first time in days.

The sharp hiss of automatic doors retracting to her left proved a sharp rebuttal. Whirring and clicking as the running pistons hit metal, they revealed a huge shape moving through. For a moment, her heart leapt at the silhouette. Wide, tall, with large feathers.

“Kif-”

Red feathers.

Her voice died in her dry, hoarse throat, leaving Tami to stare up and to try to focus on the newcomer. A griffon for sure, easily as large as Kerfuffle, with crimson feathers tipped in a creamy white. He was older than the mechanic and held a datapad, his talons tapping away at it. His claws were long and purposefully kept sharp on the end of scarred, muscular arms. There was a hazy discolour to one side of his face, like the feathers had regrown only weeks ago. He didn’t look at her.

“The captain…” she croaked, trying to breathe harder. Tami tried to sit up, pushing her pained body as far as she could, but found it quite impossible. “Is she-”

Then she realised it wasn't her condition keeping her flat.

She was held down. Zip ties were looped about her wrists, feeding down to the gurney’s bars. A medical strap looped over her chest. That alone would have been understandable, but together? Tami’s heart began to thump faster, driving a tingling pain in her every extremity as blood flowed. The griffon’s face was inscrutable behind the sharp glare of the lamps.

“You are Tammani? The pilot of that ship? Can you hear and understand me?” His voice was heavy, leery with uncaring disdain.

She nodded fearfully.

“Speak your reply,” demanded the griffon. He sounded restless - unwilling to extend any interaction with her further than he had to. Tami nodded more frantically.

“Y-Yes… Sir, please, my captain, is she ali-”

“You fly PNR class?” He wasn’t looking up from the datapad.

“Yes,” whispered Tami. Her throat felt sore. Words were clumsy in her mouth, her tongue thick and bloated from cold swelling. She squirmed, looking away as her vision slowly recovered, seeing the large glass walls looking out onto an opulent vessel’s common deck. A slick gym lay nearby, with a juice bar, large hot tub, and a recreation area with an enormous panel screen and expensive sofas. Crystal lighting rigs hung from the ceiling, and every surface was smooth and pristine, shining with patterned white rock and dark laser-etched metals. What was this place?

“With no licence?”

Through all the heat, a cold spike of terror now began to flow through her. What was this!? Who was this? Police? She never got to answer.

“Class A pilot error incident on record at Chrysolite VIP Pilot Training Academy. Forced to acquire a job somewhere that lacked legality to keep you away from the controls of a starship. Qualification training covers personal to sub-capital class vessels only with failed first year training in evasion maneuvers and protection flying. Is this all correct?”

Tami didn’t know what to say, but she saw his powerful eyes suddenly train on her. They promised so many things, chief among them impatience. She felt like prey, a victim, a target under those uninterested, uncaring eyes that gave away only a hint of his true nature. She knew that look.

She’d seen it on Whisper’s face once in the rogue agent’s most terrifying moods. She saw an unfulfilled hunter brimming below the surface, forced into duties that did little to slack the urge.

A thick hand hit the gurney, making her squeal at the clatter of metal and the bounce of the surface. “Answer me! Is this correct? Is this you?”

“Yes, yes!” she yelped, trying to squirm, but the bonds held her firm. She could feel the heating suit flex and bubble as she tried to turn away and clench her hands over her face, but her wrists just jarred at the restraints.

“Understanding of class three universal systems for flight control?” He paused, then slammed it again. “Answer!”

“Yes! Yes I-I do!” Tami felt herself start to hiccup. The posture, the lack of proper breath, it all clammed her up. She wanted to look away, but she didn’t now dare.

“Classes for close proximity flight routing and object interaction. Hmph - passed on the third attempt only?”

She closed her eyes. She remembered that one. It hadn’t been the test. It had been the instructor. Her fierce commands. The sight of others doing so well ahead of her. The pressure of her classmates all watching her go last. “Yes… B-but it wasn’t the test, it was-”

“Less than impressive qualifications,” he snapped, interrupting. “Excuses are only window dressing; you failed. Hrm, it’s less than I’d hoped. It will do, but I will investigate this further to ensure there are no further lies about anything else you lack.”

He looked up, but Tami didn’t reply. She felt like she’d been slapped. Excuses? They were reasons. Weren’t they? Tami felt an uncomfortable stirring in her heart. The griffon shook his head and looked down at her.

“You suffered acute hypothermia due to your mistake in flying into that rift. In three days you will be well enough to be moved after we arrive.”

“Arrive where?” Tami felt so small, her voice tiny in response to his authoritative, punchy tone. She could feel a welling up, something unseen. Through her gut. Her mind. “Wh-Where am I now? The captain, is she-”

The red griffon locked his datapad and turned away, long claws tapping at the clean metal floor.

“Who are you? Please! Is the cap-is Hair Trigger okay!? A-Am I in trouble? Under arrest? I don’t know where I am!” She babbled, panicking, the thought of being left without a single answer starting to truly terrify her. “What’s going on!? PLEASE!”

The doors slid shut behind him, leaving her alone. She realised the glass of the infirmary was soundproofed. Aghast, she watched the griffon move across to the bar. He wasn’t even going to do something else urgently. He just sat to get a drink, taking his time and working on his datapad. He had heard her, she knew that. He was choosing not to answer her. Choosing. Only after finishing did he finally leave through a quiet half-circle of a door that curled out into the walls at the far side of the open health deck.

Now, Tami felt true terror start to take hold. Police wouldn’t have said ‘it will do’ about her qualifications. She wiggled her arms in the restraints until her body screamed at her for moving too much and forced her down again with exhaustion and pain. She felt her eyes turn wet, stinging the areas where frozen tears had burned her eyelids in the shuttle. The quiet infirmary became filled with fearful murmurs of worry and sniffling. She shook deeply, feeling utterly helpless. Alone.

“Please…”

Direly wishing she knew if her captain was even alive.

“Please…”

If anybody knew where she was.

“Please…”

If anybody out there would ever come.

Space tore open violently, an incandescent tear in reality ripping through it with hanging barbs of white light. The ship didn’t even wait for the edges to slowly draw open before it fired out of the rift. Claudia streaked into Saphiban glowing hot on her nozzles and trailing a vapour of rainbow tinted Æther behind her. Ignoring the normal protocols of remaining still until neighbouring ships could plot the new arrival’s location, she turned for the great metal monster of Port Medusa in orbit of the second planet and burned hard for the docks. Engines screaming silently in the black, she rocketed along the tops of the long trade queues waiting for an assigned port and aggressively ducked in ahead of the leading vessel, prompting other ships to take evasive action. Radio traffic around the station lit up. Angered traders and freelancers squawked their outrage at a ship ramming to the front, met with harsh demands from docking control.

Claudia ignored them all; Claudia only girded her frame and moved with an impassioned purpose. She rotated her thrusters and began to kill her speed as she turned, lining up with the shielded entry to a dock. Spotting an empty space, she simply pushed through, silence becoming a roar as her vectors held her up. Her presence sent ground crew scattering before she could drop landing gear and slam onto the heavy, meters thick deck of the docking level between two mining vessels. Seconds after the clunk-hiss of her forced landing on heavy hydraulics, there was an enormous crash of metal from beside her. A frozen shuttlecraft had disengaged from the hull’s starboard cargo mount, dropping twelve feet to the hangar floor and spraying cold mist from the shattered ice on its hull. Its underside dented on the impact, almost rolling onto its side before it toppled back over, becoming still.

Behind her, Claudia’s main rear doors ejected a pillar of vapour and began to open, managing only a meter in width before four figures squeezed and hurried out. Volatility Smile sprinted ahead across the decking to the bay’s standing terminal by the bow of the ship. Normally used for payment of docking fees, it offered the fastest connection to the station’s internal network. Not trusting the time lag of a wireless connection in the crowded station, Smile jammed the wire from her multiband into the terminal. She immediately began scouring local pickups and rescues reported during their time away.

Logic said someone else had helped their lost crew first, that they had simply been the second rescue to arrive. Experience, however, told her they might have still been the first. And so, as she let the search continue through hundreds of gigabytes of galactic data, she brought up her shipboard application and started to dig into the shuttle’s owner to look further into the origin of the job. The freighter accident that had started this whole mess couldn't have been intentional, she knew, but something was worrying her about the vessel simply being left behind after picking up Hair Trigger and Tami.

“Who would not recover something worth that much?” she muttered, voice terse and clipped, speaking only to herself, ignoring the growing circle of stunned creatures surrounding Claudia, or the distant shouting of Raw Deal regarding ‘over there!’ to someone else.

Behind her, Kerfuffle grabbed one of the shuttle’s icy panels and bodily tore it off to expose the innards. His eyes were focused, his movements strong. Dropping the hundred kilogram slab of metal like a toy, he squatted down to peer inside at the shuttle’s flight systems near the nose cone. He parsed its layout for a few moments, then grabbed a broken water pipe, braced himself, and tore it clean out of its housing to expose a bank of electronics behind it. Normally, treating any vessel so harshly might have offended his sensibilities. Right then, though, it was but a distant concern. He pointed at the exposed circuits. “In there, Miss; this model’s always got it below the sensor suite. Thinkin’ this pipe burst, lost the cooling for the heat sinks, blew them out. No wonder she froze.”

Beside him, a soft blue mane atop a pink head pushed itself and most of a unicorn's upper body into the shuttle’s hull, reaching where the griffon could not. Eleven started to try and reactivate some of the vessel’s systems and bypass the damaged components, dragging a couple new wires and tools from Claudia in with her. She was unusually quiet. Something about the intensity of the flight back had felt uncomfortable in a way she’d rarely known. She liked quiet. Normally she found it settling. In this case though, the quiet had been from absence. From loss. She had sat and watched Kiffle and Smile and Verbena stare at the ‘time until translation’ in Saphiban for hours, wrestling with a gut feeling that felt oddly familiar and yet totally new.

It had taken most of the trip to realise this was the first time in her new life that some of her friends might not come back to her again. It was eerily similar to how she had felt in the long, lonely wait on an abandoned planet for them to collect her after the Starw-

Eleven clenched her eyes shut.

“Miss? Everything okay in there? Is it too broken?”

“Like a really broken puzzle. And-” She wiggled and turned onto her back, her upper half entirely squeezed inside the shuttle. With a spark, something restarted, and a glow from the cockpit lit up the misted window. She sucked up the feelings, pushing them down. Deep down. Ball them up and just shove them neatly in a corner. Keep them quiet. Think quiet. Quiet.

“This design is inefficiently archaic. Even a normal pony would find it s-simple to fix. Unless you can’t get outside the ship. Or have a spare pipe. They couldn’t have done it.” She spoke with a muffled sigh inside the bow, and the strained tinge was all too clear. “G-Go on, Kiffle! I’ll find its brain.”

Kerfuffle looked down, one eye looking in at her, about to open his beak to offer again. She nodded more firmly. “Go!”

He paused, then stepped aside. “All right, Miss.”

Gripping into the door, its panel buckled from the ejection from Claudia, he yanked the emergency release and tore it open along its rails. Pushing his heavy frame up, he hunched inside the craft itself to investigate the interior once again now he had an atmosphere to work in.

Verbena Mint stood between the group, looking left to right between the crystal pony and the unicorn-griffon team. Her eyes felt wet with worry. She hadn’t dared let the others see her lapse in composure on the way back, doing what her half-sister always had.

“I-I’ll go speak with sis’! See if she knows anything!”

“All right, go!” Smile was firm and didn’t look up; Verbena couldn’t blame her. She turned and threw herself into a gallop, a gallop that lasted about two feet. Running directly into an immovable wall of flesh behind her, Verbena bounced, falling back onto her rump on the decking. Dizzed, Verbena looked up to see a sculpted, monstrous mask of glinting metal and marred plate stared down at her with eyes hidden by opaque glass inserts. Hanging decorations adorned the armour, the brass metal mixing with a dark earthy coat and powerful wings into a vicious, yet stoically still terror twice her height and eight times her mass. The beast’s mere presence was holding back an entire squad of security from approaching the bay.

Blitz made a low, rumbling sound in his throat. “The Director sent me to collect you and to kill the others.” He looked past the small earth pony. “I believe she was being hyperbolic.”

“YES SHE WAS!” Verbena shouted up at him, then took a breath. “Blitz! Tami and Hair Trigger. They’ve been taken. By someone. I-I don’t think it was a rescue. They’re gone.”

She gulped, seeing no change to the mask, but she’d been around Blitz long enough to know that meant nothing on its own. The quiet pause and then lash of his thick tail on the floor behind him told her everything.

“Your sister asked me to bring you to her. Come.”

He lowered down, resting a wing like a ramp that Verbena clambered up. “Thank you. Smile! I’ll be back, I promise! I’ll see what else we can do!”

She didn’t begrudge Claudia’s current command not looking up, before holding on tight as Blitz surged off along the hangar, scattering the crowds as he went. Verbena’s presence gave the security detail a reason to pause and simply observe. With the director's sister involved, none of them felt encouraged to dare act against Claudia's crew without double-checking.

Back inside the shuttle, Kerfuffle regretted leaving Eleven to pull the sensor-drive on her own, but he couldn’t sit still with this. Not after before. Not now that he could finally contribute something too. And so with a methodical process in mind, he started yanking up floor panels, pulling aside furniture and hunting for all the clues he could - even if it meant just running his claws over the hull to look for any damage or hidden compartments. Some clue. Something he’d missed on his checks. Anything. A frantic nature filled his movements; usually so careful and respectful, they were now filled with a growing rush and dire need.

Food packets. An empty bottle. Rugs and torn fabric. They had taken survival measures. Gel-filled gaps in the hull. They had repaired it as best they could.

A red hat.

He picked it up carefully, reverently tucking it into a pocket. The sight was crushing. So much of her in one object, but not her.

Eventually he started tracing the damage, wondering if it had been deliberate. He followed the pipe’s track from the broken area back. His guess had been right. Liquid leaking and a lack of functioning heating elements had pushed it beyond its design limit. The fault hadn’t been deliberate or left to occur on purpose though, that much he could tell.

One way or another, this had been an accident - at least to some extent. But it didn’t add up. They would have been reported collected by now. He thought it through. Accidental damage didn’t mean accidental cause. A vandal didn’t always know what exactly their hammer would do to a machine. That meant there was some other angle. Some other clues. Throwing away the burst pipes from his plans, he stopped tracing them and looked for something else, something someone who had planned this might want.

Outside, Smile rarely blinked. She scanned the contract of the job, having held off pinging the buyer yet as to the nature of what had happened. Every instinct told her to get in touch, to demand if the shuttle’s owner had been contacted by a search party, but she held herself back. Wariness instilled by months of living under the threat of Sidewinder made her uncertain. Instead she took the shuttle’s details and ran a background check on ownership.

The job had leased it to the crew as a temporary vessel. As expected, it was to be returned afterwards. The owner was a business, ‘Providence Holdings Inc.’. It didn’t seem to link to any site or observable activity. Private, no presence on the stock market. A false company? Or just a rich owner’s personal indulgences given official means to transport rare goods to their pleasure? The latter would fit. She dug further, cycling dates of issue, before noting one thing. The shuttle had only recently been assigned to Medusa despite Providence having had a presence there for years.

Given a hook, Smile tugged hard. She went back on the shuttle’s history, watching Kerfuffle strip away a seating arrangement to check the navigational computer for any sabotage as she read the serial number below an engine nacelle. Inputting it, she snarled at the lack of mandated free access owner logs in the Periphery, paid for the immediate vessel tracking application and drew up its ownership history.

“Kerfuffle!” she shouted out, reading through it. “This ship… It was built in the Confederacy ages ago.”

He looked out, nodding. “Yes, Missus Smiles. She’s an enduring one.”

Behind him, Eleven pulled out of the front, carrying the operating boxes for the sensor suite with her. “But it’s not original!”

Briefly, Kerfuffle and Smile looked over to her. Eleven showed them what she was holding. “I don’t know what everything in a ship is called. Or what models are which like you or Tami do, Kiffle.” She held up one box, then the other. “But I can tell when someone’s putting two things together that weren’t originally meant to be that way and had to make an ugly join.”

She gulped and gave a worried smile. “It’s like what I do. Whoever built it didn’t intend these to be used with it. But it’s VERY amateurish work.” She sniffed, adding her opinion of it quickly as though to distance her own talent from this example, giving the irregular weld lines and taped wires a disgusted look. “They even have spare ports for automation systems that aren't even being used left in there, and their electrical levels on it were waaaay excessive.”

There was a brief silence. Both Kerfuffle and Smile had ceased moving, and were staring at her. Eleven looked from one to the other and felt a pang of guilt. “Sorry, did I say something wrong? I just meant it looked cobbled together, not normal...”

“Like it came from a scrapyard, Miss?” Kerfuffle offered, his eyes narrowing.

Eleven nodded, looking lost. “Yes. Why? What’s-”

Smile brought up her multiband. “Manufactured in the Confederacy, off-record for some time, then turns up here shortly before the contract… Wait, I can trace this further, see where the original buyer was taking it. The shuttle disappearing in its records for a time like that? It’s a sign of an internal private buyer. Wait a minute and I’ll have it.”

Kerfuffle, however, wasn’t waiting.

The moment Eleven had confirmed it, he had started moving over to the shuttle. He heaved the entire cargo out through the rear doors with a clatter of glass and plastic, then lifted a floor panel. From the inside, he tore up the soft shock-resistant foam flooring, accessing a side of the engine that would never normally be checked. There would be no reason. Unlatching it, he dug into the nacelle from the other side, fervently looking for something. Something specific.

Smile paused, and finally managed to dredge up the ship that took the shuttle to the buyer originally. Looking back through its known destinations, one of them stood out to her only because she recognised the Confederate warning placed on its transit choices.

“Kavala…”

Eleven arched an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

There was an ugly crunch inside the shuttle. Kerfuffle emerged, carrying a short, heavy rod laden with wires and a connector valve. An engine immobiliser. A device intended to retard the start-up motor of any propulsion system on remote command. One he’d found in a confederate shuttle before in an equally unusual fashion. He held it up.

“It means, Miss, that we know exactly who took them.”

Captain Hair Trigger very much felt like lashing out at the nearest, meatiest object in her immediate vicinity.

She couldn’t see. The sack over her head was pulled suffocatingly tight - so tight about her neck it almost garroted her. Every time the talons she could feel on her body pulled or shoved, clumsy hooves betrayed her and she would stumble and drop. What was but a simple forced walk in darkness felt like an obstacle course of stinging pain as her recovering body attempted to let blood flow feel normal again.

Nearly a day, she guessed. Nearly a day strapped to a rack with tubes in her forelegs and the sweating, searing discomfort of regaining feeling inside a clammy suit. Nearly a day of passing in and out of consciousness. She'd seen faces, heard voices - old foes, recent friends, distant family - until she'd lost all track in the drifting between reality and dream.

The murmured, confused response she’d given to a question from the blurry shadows if she was feeling well enough to walk had then given rise to this violent drag. That, and the answer that those hazy shapes hadn’t belonged to those with her best interests in mind.

She heard the clink of metal cutlery. She smelled strong coffee. She felt the tile give way to smooth marble below her dragged legs. Walking was more of a stumble and her captors weren’t willing to wait. She tried to aim a bucking kick roughly for where certain spherical objects on her assailant might be but her limbs didn’t want to move that quickly. Her joints still felt frozen.

Eventually there was a clean swish of a quiet doorway, and Hair Trigger felt her balance upturned as someone threw her through it and down to the ground. A hand grasped her neck and shoved her face into the smooth, hard floor. Then, a cold metal barrel pressed behind her right hindleg’s knee.

“Try anything and you’ll wish you hadn’t.” A male voice. Experienced. Mature. Familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

Hair Trigger coughed, lying still and trying to snort the bag out of her mouth and nose. “Sounds like leftovers day at Craz-AGH!”

The butt of a gun rattled into her side, making her ribs flare up in a reminder that feeling had indeed returned to her body, before she felt herself being yanked up and the hood ripped from her head. Light cascaded into her vision and Trigger gasped and winced, looking away from the blinding source. Her eyes ached in their sockets. She blinked and looked around the floor; the light from off to the side of her vision arced and spread into long flaring lines. Even the texture around her seemed hazy, shifting on the walls in a way she couldn’t grasp.

A voice spoke out from in front of her, effortlessly confident and particular. Well intoned with a touch of bemusement. “Welcome back, Captain.”

Trigger froze in place. Squinting, she turned her eyes back to face forward. The room wasn’t bright, quite the opposite in fact. The floor and walls were a twinkling black marble. Angular for the most part, blocky when they weren’t, immaculately clean and minimalist like the inside of an obsidian monolith. A deep, heavy desk rose from the floor to her right, built of the same material. An aquarium rose up on her left, its quartz glass polished so well that the water and the pony-sized ghostly translucent eel within seemed to float in mid-air. After a moment, Trigger’s adjusting eyes saw text scrolling across some of the seemingly normal blocks. Unseen projectors or transparent displays were rolling stock market numerics and predictions around her, shifting and transferring from one block to another as they changed. The lower they got, the closer they came to the great desk in the centre.

The stunning, painful light however, had come from the far wall. Or rather, its window. From the very bottom of the floor to the fifteen foot high ceiling was an enormous concave bulge from the side of the starship itself. Completely see-through with only four running support pillars to break up its shape, it gazed out into the cascading deluge of whirling colour that was M-space. Surging past from right to left in streaks of impossible rainbows and violent eddies, it told of a mightily powerful ship hurtling through the unusual dimension at speeds Claudia could never hope to match. It was the sole source of light in what was clearly an office.

And the sole source that backlit the one who now spoke again.

“I’m happy you could make our scheduled meeting.”

A slender figure stood staring out into the immaterial vastness, cast in shadow by the bright visage of M-space before her. She was tall, clad in an offensively well-fitted black and white suit that lit from her horn’s red glow. The tinge of cream coat and a two-tone green mane and tail contrasted the tailoring.

Trigger knew immediately that what she’d thought to be a confused dreaming image was indeed reality. The recognition was immediate. Even if it hadn’t been clear, the sheer arrogance to stand that way -the exact same way she’d once met in the past- was enough to let her know precisely who had found them and let her anger surge to the surface.

“Where is Tami you obsessed rich-bitc-HRRN!”

Hair Trigger had been standing up, but a rifle butt to the back of her hindleg dropped her fragile, still shivering body back to the floor. She winced, and looked up into the twisted, scarred face of a dark red hippogriff.

Garwyn didn’t hesitate. The finely suited hippogriff reached down and yanked Hair Trigger back up, faced her to Asset Margin again and planted his hands on her shoulders. Asset was approaching, swaggering with forelegs almost crossing over one another - somepony who could afford to take her time, to revel in life’s little moments, until she came just outside of hoof’s reach of Trigger.

“Oh, your pilot’s around. Alive, you’ll be glad to know. You should be thanking me really, neither of you would be without our intervention. I don’t think any other ship was closer than a few days from finding you.”

Trigger snarled back, not entertaining for a moment showing any gratitude. “I want to see her, I want you to prove sh-”

She gasped again as Garwyn struck her side with his open palm. His other claw grabbed her hood as she buckled over, wrenching her neck to keep her from falling over. “You don’t get to make any negotiations this time.” His voice was brimming with pent up aggression. Trigger could sense he was being held back by orders from striking again and again. But she also saw something else: a smirk was growing on Asset's face the more she pushed about Tami.

Instinct kicked into her cold, clouded brain. Neither Asset nor Garwyn knew Tami as anything more than a pilot in her service. They knew nothing of how close they were.

Of how much they could hurt Trigger by possessing her.

It went against everything Hair Trigger knew and desired to not demand over and over. She wanted to bargain and shout and refuse to do a damn thing until they let her see the hippogriff. Even so, she realized she had to reel back on it - to keep herself in the dark about Tami and just hope with all she had that her pilot was all right. It hurt to imagine, to not know, but she knew it had to be done to protect her pilot.

She met Garwyn’s eyes, then looked back at the smirking unicorn standing easily in the centre of the office. Asset made a rich, deep-voiced laugh and wandered off toward her desk, seemingly happy with Trigger being silenced on the matter. Trigger noticed with some satisfaction she still moved with a limp.

“I see I’ve not stopped being a pain in your ass in a while then?” She tried to make a chuckle, but her throat felt thick and clumsy. “Hope you think of me every time you sit down for the crap you pulled on us!”

Asset paused, and Trigger saw a steaming mug lift from the table and tilt toward her.

“That mouth will get you killed someday, Captain. You know, last time we met we got on famously. We shared morning coffee. We talked of leadership. We were in and out in under fifteen minutes; that’s fast in my world. It’s a pity you had to decide to be a little shit and ruin it all on the way out.” Her voice took on a poisonous, spitting anger, and Hair Trigger felt some subdued pleasure in knowing the mare was still so seethingly furious about losing. Asset whirled on the spot and glared daggers at her, the hoity expression clenching into an affronted disdain, her voice biting. “You didn’t really think I was going to ignore you forever, did you? Someone who put such a stain on my record on Kavala? Do you have any idea, any idea at all, how many competitors I’ve had to fight off in the wake of what you did? How much financial loss I incurred?”

Hair Trigger coughed and breathed out hard, glaring daggers at her with a hoof gesturing around at the extravagant room on the high performance ship. “Oh, I’m sure you’re struggling.”

Asset raised a hoof quickly as Trigger felt Garwyn raise his fist to strike again. The motion stopped him in his tracks. “Money is not the question. It is credibility, Captain. When a nobody from the Periphery can humiliate you, rivals start gathering. I would have come after you sooner but suffice to say I’ve had to handle more immediate problems first. Thankfully, now that I’ve reasserted my position-”

She spread her forelegs and did a small pirouette around while coming closer to Trigger. Her short ponytail and long fringe strands were so starched they barely moved. Pausing, she finished by kneeling down to Trigger’s height. “I could finally tie up some loose ends and make it very clear that you don’t just get to cash out and walk in this game.”

Asset went to tap her on the cheek, but Trigger shook her head away from it with a snort. The motion suddenly made her aware she didn’t have her hat with her. “Yeah? Almost killing an entire freighter to catch us didn’t seem like some game to me. Those were innocents you crazed bitch!”

The trillionaire scoffed and snorted. “Oh, you think I did that? Oh no, Captain. What do you take me for? Come, sit!”

She trotted away, and Trigger felt a shove from behind. Glowering back at the barely restrained Garwyn, she wandered in toward one of the jet black seats. Sitting wasn’t any more comfortable. The pressure on her skin was making her feel fragile, like paper that could rip as the swelling all over died down. Squirming, it took her a second before realising this office was almost identical in shape to the one on Kavala, just varied in its elaborate tricks. ‘How neurotically egotistical did you have to be?’ she thought.

Asset sat ahead of her in a tall-backed chair. She stared over, grinning smugly and rotating her chair left and right slightly. “I recall you dislike my coffee, so none for you I’m afraid.”

“Good, thought I was going to get tortured again,” Hair Trigger spat back at her without blinking, and felt rage elevate at Asset’s casual laugh.

“Garwyn asked to, you know? He’s a little peeved at you from last time. His brother’s not let him once forget losing to you and your griffon-friend in a fistfight, has he?”

“Every time we spar.” Garwyn sat behind Trigger, arms crossed. She could see he still bore a scar on his face. His beak looked off centre; it hooked a little as he stared down at her. “Just give me a reason.”

Asset chuckled. “Perhaps in time. But anyway, you asked about my coming for you! Honestly, it wasn’t all that complicated. Give a quick job again and again and lightly deny others until you took it, immobilise the shuttle, whisk you over after stun grenading the crew compartment and-” She clapped her hooves loudly. “-there we go. I didn’t expect to have to use my own vessel’s private transponder to relocate it out here but, well, I suppose it paid off. The freighter, I regret to tell your little conspiracy growing mind, was a legitimate accident. At least, I think so… Who knows, I hear a lot of people want your head these days. Maybe I crossed paths and didn’t know it.”

“You’d love to hear you’re not even top five.” Trigger leaned back in the chair.

“Please.” Asset winked. “I’ve done my research this time. I think I’m at least in the top three at this point. But right now, I’m the one you should be concerned about. Let’s see…”

She pressed a button, and Trigger groaned as the obsidian behind Asset lit up, hurting her eyes. The twist to avoid looking stung even more. She just wanted to lie down again, feeling weariness at even a short journey creeping in, but she doubted she could walk more than a few feet, let alone try to make an escape.

The blocks formed an adaptive screen, displaying a scrolling bill of credits.

MRSR-04 Mining Drone x5 - 60,000,000cAether Class Yacht (Platinum-Edition) - 457,000,000cConfederate PN-01 Shuttlecraft - 700,000cPlanetdrop Series Modular Colony Warehouse - 2,700,000cJump Scrambler Republic Police Model - 15,000,000c84mm by 618mm High-Explosive Rounds x 1,600 - 2,112,000cFuel Expenditures - 4,100,000cTraffic Collision Insurance - 315,000,000c

Hair Trigger scrolled her eyes over every forming line of the bill, feeling an intense sense of pride grow, moreso as she caught Asset’s frustrated, irked expression as the bill of their last encounter continued. But then the listings began to get rather specific.

Audio Systems Purge - 82,000cCrew Medical Expenditures - 900c (Insurance Excess Minimum)CEO Medical Expenditures - 900,000c (Private with cosmetic work)

“Oh I see you treat them VERY well compared to yourself, Ass-et.”

Asset spoke rather disinterestedly. “They signed the contract.”

Downtime Loss of Profit - 14,451,120,002cNovalite Leather Suitcase (Black) - 2,300c

“You HAVE to be joking.”

“It was a very good suitcase, Captain,” Asset Margin bitterly commented, and let it continue.

Complimentary Coffee - 20cBaking Soda - 150mg - 8cTomato Sandwich - 5c

“Oh COME ON!” Hair Trigger thumped the solid desk, then wished she hadn’t.

“I am merely surmising all of the payment due to the responsible party. It would be unprofessional of me to ignore the fine details of-”

“It would be unprofessional of me not to tell you to kiss my still distinctly un-shot ass.” Trigger spat the words over the table.

Asset paused, and Trigger saw the mug shake again as the unicorn fought to control her own temper. She took a breath, then leaned forward on the table to take a long sip of her coffee, but her eyes betrayed an internal fury and her voice took a more precision strike of whipcord cadance. “-of proper compensation. I shall presume you will pay now?” She raised an eyebrow before grinning at the anger on Hair Trigger’s face, her own temper simmering down a touch. “Oh come now, Captain. I’m not unreasonable. I’ve left the anger to Garwyn and Kreer. It’s only around fifteen billion credits really, and I’ve even left out the dozens of billions I lost in share sales and wetwork I had to conduct to keep my stability on Kavala. Shall we discuss recompense then?”

Hair Trigger held her mocking gaze. This was a show trial; Asset knew Trigger couldn’t produce that sort of money. She was enjoying this, and Trigger had no wish to play into her games. She kept quiet. Asset only smirked at her.

“Struggling? Tried down the back of whatever mangy couch you must have on that rusty ship?” Asset winked. “Can’t call your business friend for a little handout? What about Sweet Alyssum? Oh I’m sure she’ll bail you out to the sum of her entire quarterly earnings right now on that miserable station. Shall I give her a call?”

She wiggled a hoof beside her ear, then took another long sip of coffee, making a horrific sucking sound into it while waiting for a response. In the silence that followed there was nothing but the undulating warble of M-space warping around the hull. Eventually Asset sighed at Hair Trigger’s furious stare and shrugged. “Well then, I suppose we’ll have to discuss my repayment options more formally then. Thankfully for you, I predicted that you’d be a stubborn little brat and had one prepared earlier.”

Asset’s voice grew into a touchy, spitting annoyance. She lifted a remote idly in her magic, clicking. One of the jet black blocks fizzled and reformed. Trigger felt her heart clench as Tami’s smiling face looked back at her. The photo she knew her pilot used as photo ID. Qualifications ran down the bottom of it.

“My mining operation has grown a little understaffed as of late from recent expansion. I could always use another drone... pilot. So I’m more than happy to have a newcomer into the workforce as contracted servitude to pay off your debts to me. It’s legal on Kavala, you know? If one cannot repay what they owe? I mean, I effectively paid for the modern labour laws there so I would know!”

Her smile turned deadly. “If she’s half the pilot she was in your escape, oh I’m sure she’ll be able to work it off before retirement age. Maybe. Compound interest can be a bitch, can’t it?”

Hair Trigger fought hard to not launch herself over that desk. To not use her magic to tilt the coffee into Asset’s face. To not call her a savage bastard. She couldn’t. She could not dare let them think of Tami as anything other than a piloting asset. Even so, the mere thought chilled her blood all over again. Trigger knew Tami well enough to understand what such a thing would do to her. A lifetime sentence, cut off from everything she loved, doing nothing of passion and denying the wanderlust Trigger knew she sought, all while facing brutal, soulless treatment.

The thought was too terrible to contemplate.

She bristled. “You want us to pilot your drones? Be your little toys to laugh at on shifts?”

Asset Margin was barely listening. Her desk had beeped, and from its surface, an integrated screen rose out of it to display something for her. Trigger could see an incoming call on it, a fluid animation rolling waiting for a pickup. Reading it, Asset smiled. “Oh? Not ‘us’. Just her, as amusing as getting Kreer to be your floor manager would be. You? Oh I found a better use for you.”

“Let me guess. String me up? Torture me to death? Airlock me?”

Asset laughed, her deep, rich voice sounding oh-so enthused by the thought. “Oh you are so dramatic. Nothing so grandiose. I’m a businessmare, not a tyrant. I have something else in mind for you, but, alas, we have gone over time for our little standup, shall we say? I have a meeting to attend regarding just what to do with you, so I’ll be sure to let you know what’s happening as soon as I can. I’m sure its arrival won’t be too long. I’ll have the contract for Tammani drawn up, and you can rest and recover until we arrive.” Asset stood up from her desk and gave Trigger a sudden snorting look of anger. “This is what happens when you screw with me, Captain. I was never going to let you go for the shit you put me through, nor your crew, trust me I have things for the others too in due time! Take her away, Garwyn dear. Take that wretched little midget out my office!”

“Ma’am.” Garwyn didn’t hesitate or blink an eye at his boss’ anger, dragging Hair Trigger from the chair with savage strength. She was thrown down and shoved across the office floor before she could recover enough to turn and kick out at him. Hair Trigger felt her clothing slide on the marble and groaned as she got up. She breathed in, out, in, out, and felt a nasty streak turn up. She saw red. She swung around.

“HEY, ASSHOLE!”

Asset Margin whipped her head up from being about to accept the call. “WHAT!?”

Hair Trigger just gave her best shit-eating grin. “Nothing, just wanted to see if you responded to Ass-hole.”

Asset almost looked about ready to hurl the lamp from her desk, and only ceased when Garwyn suckerpunched Trigger’s gut for her, grabbed her, and flung her across the room. The unicorn thumped into the doorframe; she was promptly grabbed by her clothing and then forced back into the stifling black hood. Once again she found herself being dragged across polished marble, back to the dark isolation of the brig, with Asset's smug laugh ringing in her ears.

Port Medusa’s level four disembarkment terminal was still running more slowly than it ought to. Crowds pushed past huddles of bored, impatient visitors still waiting for their cancelled flights to be rescheduled out on the higher arrival deck. Aromatic street food stalls had been dotted against every wall, while some opportunistic marketeers had even set out their wares in the middle of the terminal floor or around the walls. Here and there, floating security drones broke up fights with barked threats. The cavernous terminal reeked of sweat and oil from its clamour, mixed with spice and grease from the street food, giving the air a thick, artificial cluster and making a normally very open space feel very close indeed.

Yet amidst its congregation of all species, age and walks of life stepped a figure in a dark sweater and jacket, a hood pulled up about his head. Sorting his saddlebags, he made its way through the crowds past the ramp of a landed vessel and followed the faded paint on the deck toward the check-in desk.

Thirty impatient minutes later, he finally moved up toward the very drained receptionist. An exchange of ID was performed. A declaration of armament was given. Papers were stamped.

As he waited for the papers to be handed back, his head turned to the colossal windows behind the desk. They were thirty feet tall, curving slightly to match the shape of the station's ring-shaped hangar level.

“Is there anything more I can help you with?”

A multiband rose, bearing an image of a Pioneer vessel. “Where is the cargo vessel, Claudia?”

Gold rim passed within millimetres of white ceramic. It did not touch. Slowly, it tilted and a clean, quiet stream of thin orange fruit tea flowed from a spout into the chalky cup. It was gentle, precise and elegant in its motion, and almost silent.

And it entirely mismatched the current ambience of Director Sweet Alyssum’s boudoir lounge upon Medusa.

“You can’t do nothing!” Verbena Mint slammed her hooves on the table, making the formal place setting of tea judder and shift. “Trigger’s one of your employees, and Tami’s my best friend out here!”

“Putting aside the amount of times I feel like I have this conversation every day-” Alyssum held the pot steady until the cup stopped shaking, then continued. “-I did not say I would do nothing. I said that there was little I could do.”

Verbena narrowed her eyes. “Don’t play words with me to my face! I’m not an employee begging for a handout! We have proof! Come on, you’ve got a fleet gathering with Karme-”

Suddenly, her half-sister’s voice crept upward, and Alyssum sat up straighter. “Your foreknowledge of that deal is regrettable, Verbena. Regardless of the situation with a single ship I will not reveal my entire hoof to the galaxy to handle one petty revenge from a far off rival. I. Am. Sorry. But this is the Periphery and you knew that coming out here. I will not ruin this sector’s chances to come together by jumping the gun on this, and I will not have you making an outburst of that aloud where others might hear! Am I understood?”

She didn’t expect Verbena to kowtow and apologise or even agree or ‘understand’. Alyssum was quietly proud to see that she did not.

“Then what CAN you do?”

‘That’s better’, thought Alyssum. Verbena made to speak, but the triple bleep of her comm-panel on the antique desk at the other side of the colourful, elaborately carpeted and tapestry-ridden room caught her attention. She carefully sipped her tea. “I did ask not to be disturbed. Can you remind them of that, Verbena?”

The young earth pony huffed at the delay, moving over to jab the button with a hoof. “What!?”

A startled receptionist replied, “Volatility Smile, Kerfuffle and er-one other here to see you, Direc-er-Miss?”

Verbena locked stares with Alyssum across the room and spoke without breaking eye contact. “Send them in immediately.”

She let go of the communicator and advanced back to staring at her sister across the table, her own tea sitting completely untouched. Alyssum didn’t move anything other than to tilt the cup upward in a long drag of the fragrant, sweet-tart drink, her eyes remaining thin and inscrutable. There were thirty seconds of silence between them ahead of the bloop from the door signifying visitors.

“Come in!” Verbena moved aside, leaving room beside the table and the heavy fabric cushions surrounding it.

While the room itself was layered in fabric, criss-crossing rugs and hanging drapery, the door ground and hissed when it opened; heavy machinery characterized every level of Port Medusa, no matter the status of a given deck’s occupant. Behind it came the trio. Volatility Smile strode in confidently, followed by Kerfuffle and then Eleven. The pink unicorn wore a large cyan hoodie over her head, looking like an exceptionally reluctant and moody teenager.

“Director, we-”

“Verbena has already briefed me, Miss Smile. She got your message about the identity of the kidnapper some minutes ago.” Alyssum put down her tea and gave a flat look to her half-sister. “Indeed we have just been discussing it.”

Smile stopped short. ‘Stars bless that young mare’, she thought. The receptionist had been aiming to deny them for a moment. “Then I’m sure you’re aware of the severity of the situation, Director. Asset Margin is not only a rival attempting to pull one over you by taking two of your employees, she did so after attempting it in your own backyard.”

Alyssum remained quiet, watching Smile, before looking down. “As I recall, I suppose I should say Acting-Captain Smile, your deal that went awry with Asset Margin was against my own recommendation to stick to the Periphery and not to indulge in the rivalries and temptations of private system owners amidst the empires. And that this plot was a result of your personal interactions with her unrelated to me. Would that be correct?”

“Sis!” Verbena shouted out, but Kerfuffle’s voice was louder.

“This ain’t just about contracts, Missus Alyssum!”

The outburst was short, and even the griffon seemed surprised by the effect his own voice’s volume and power had for a moment in silencing the room. He quickly regained his footing. “This is two folk who don’t deserve this gettin’ taken from you and us. You know the sorts of stuff going on with us these days.”

Beside him, Eleven looked up with wide eyes before sucking in air and planting one hoof down. Her own voice was gentler, more appealing to an emotional pull. “The Captain and Tami are what keep that ship together, Mis-Mrs? Just as much as Smile and Kiffle. They’ve helped me stay away from Sidewinder-”

Smile raised her eyebrow. “Eleven, should you-”

But the pink unicorn pulled down her hoodie, letting her ears spring up. She turned her head to gesture at the two with her. “They and the others kept me safe from a group who wants to take me away too, Mrs Director! And they did it because they just felt it was right - they didn’t come asking you to help with it then! That’s how good they can do, and-and I don’t think you would want to lose them so, please! Please give them a chance!”

Kerfuffle looked down at her in shock. Eleven being willing to reveal herself and her situation to push the issue? His drive momentarily hiccuped in admiration of her heart, even if he knew there was little chance Sweet Alyssum hadn’t figured her out days ago. He nodded, picking up from her. “An’ it matters to us, Mrs. And it matters to your own sister.”

Kerfuffle looked over at Verbena, seeing the earth pony quivering, worried like any of them. “An’ you don’t let a sister down. Ever. Not unless you wanna’ lose all respect forever.”

Eleven reached up, stroking the griffon’s arm with a hoof. Smile looked back pensively. She didn’t expect emotional plays would work with Alyssum, but she couldn’t have stopped those two if she had tried.

Sweet Alyssum took one more long draught of tea, and inhaled its scent.

“Asset Margin has, since your last visit, substantially enhanced her operations.”

She opened her eyes and touched her unlatched multiband on the glass table, making it project a small holographic image of Kavala and the substantial asteroid field around it. “I don’t know if it’s where she’s taking your friends, but it is most likely. Kavala is her fortress after all and the only place I know of where she exhibits utter control… and where she needs to be seen to make an example. Since you last visited the mining operations have increased, despite her facing heightened tensions from her corporate rivals, and I have observed her taking new holdings in unspecified trade, highly protected and not listed on public markets. Very ‘know a friend of a friend’ type, and one I have not yet penetrated. With its profits, she has set up a new station in orbit handling the drone fleet, security drone perimeters running automated protocols that the Confederacy really aren’t too happy about and recently spent almost thirty billion on something I cannot actually determine.”

Alyssum pointed to the new station amidst the asteroid field, and a construction convoy moving near the moon. “She may not have the influence - the soft-power - I do, but I won’t deny she certainly has the financial advantage. And that’s why there is actually little I can do. I can find her hidden accounts out here and crash them, but that’s of little consequence to someone who makes their fortune from in-system mining. I can provide you with her recent purchases I identified, but I cannot go sending hired pirate ships into a war on Confederate territory, particularly not as they would have to pass through the Republic en-route at this moment in time.”

Smile pursed her lips, sitting on a cushion to observe the hologram. “We’ll take that at least. What you sound like you're telling us is that getting in there is impossible, and that we won’t know where to even start looking once there. There’s a whole planet, and now even more of an orbital infrastructure”

“That won’t stop us tryin’, Missus.” Kerfuffle quickly added. “They would for us.”

“Quite.” Alyssum reached down to the table’s touchscreen control, sending the data Smile’s way. “But you’re a single unarmed ship with - forgive me for the insult but I saw your landing - a non-specialised pilot and only three aboard.”

“Four,” Verbena techily muttered to herself.

Sweet Alyssum ignored the comment. “I can’t stop you from trying. I can even provide you with some aid in the form of intelligence. But at present I see a suicide mission, Volatility Smile.” Alyssum put down her tea, sat up, and gave a very firm, very frank look with a level, mature tone. “Perhaps it’s time to cut your losses? You of all ponies I know are familiar with the concept.”

There was silence in the room. Verbena looked horrified at the suggestion. Eleven held on to Kerfuffle, who glared with an intensity matched only by his last visit to the director. Volatility Smile stood still. She met Alyssum’s eyes head on. There was a subtle tremble about her, and then her mouth opened with great care and precise volume.

“Thank you for your time, Director.”

She turned, trotting toward the door. Something about her declaration, her motion, carried the others along with her. Kerfuffle looked distinctly unhappy, Eleven glanced between them all as though wondering why there wasn’t more. Several awkward seconds later, Verbena was the only one left by the door itself. She gave her half-sister a disappointed look.

“I can’t believe you.”

Alyssum caught her eye with a firm, meaningful look. “You ought to.”

“They’re still going to try, you know that right? Whether or not you believe they can!”

Verbena left, slamming a hoof into the controls to close the door behind her, leaving Sweet Alyssum alone. The director took a sip of tea in the refreshing quiet, then keyed her multiband, tapping into the cameras in her own reception area.

“On the contrary, my beloved sister. I’m rather hoping they do.”

She put down her empty cup and watched Smile go from a maintained walk to a head down, determined canter toward the elevator, shoving a stallion out of the way to collect her rifle, pack, and get out of there. Alyssum smiled to herself.

“Oh dear. I think I may have pushed her a little too hard.”

“Now arriving: Kavala.”

As though on command, the cascading aether of faster than light travel sharply cut to a sedate black on all sides of Asset’s vessel, a transition so quick and sharp that Tami instinctively braced on the gurney for the jolt. None came. Instead, the ship glided through the translation from M-space to its destination with the grace of a ballet dancer. Tami scarcely felt a thing below her in the deck.

The curved starboard corridor of black marble she was being rolled down was lined with long rounded rectangular windows of clear polymer out to the void, each of them embossed with injected golden lines forming images of alicorns, wyrms and other magical beasts. She’d barely noticed them before with the light of M-space, but in the black they stood out and contrasted to flourish magnificent artwork along every meter of the long, spacious route. Briefly, Tami had wondered why a vessel had such a wide running compartment on its side, until she’d realised that this was a pathway for staff to roll giant tables, grand pianos and lavish sculptures down to events. She’d already been taken past side doors to a grand ballroom that would give the Silver Dome serious rivalry in its opulence. This was no rescue vessel, nor a military ship. It was an enormous yacht, a luxury tour ship for the megarich of the kind she’d often wanted to see. Just not like this.

Every muscle in Tami's body still stung. They had removed the heating suit an hour ago and instead dressed her a thick set of padded navy blue overalls. Ill-fitting, they pinched at the waist but, along with a heat-retaining blanket, were keeping her shivering body steady. That said, Tami had a worrying feeling as to how uniformly mass produced the overalls looked, like something she’d seen deck workers wearing before. Worrisome speculations as to her captors' intentions whirled through her mind, making her close her eyes. Whining, she turned her head to see the quiet stars, just for a moment to-

“Be quiet, girl.”

The simple words shocked Tami out of her distractionary tactics, and instead mounting fear twisted her gut. They weren't loud, but they were forceful. They carried a rough, threatening undertone that clashed with the sophistication of the luxury vessel. Kreer. She’d figured out who it was after her muddled brain had finally put together the clues and remembered what the others had told her. Kavala was the final confirmation of who had taken them. The massive griffon was right behind her, his movements eerily quiet. She’d been surprised to not be tied up or cuffed. He wasn’t even armed. It quickly occurred that she posed no threat to him; his physical presence was all the security necessary.

The outer passage of the ship led to a curved door of gilded frames, large enough for a small vehicle. Yet Tami could see the mandated warning stickers by its control panel, indicating that it was a sealant door, one that would lead to a disembarkment chamber with an airlock. It slid apart gracefully, and beyond it Tami witnessed the true extravagance of wealth. What on most ships would simply be a utilitarian compartment beside an airlock was an enormous entrance lobby. A trickling fountain of a suggestive, fluffy deer, spouting water from her pursed lips rose up from the very centre of a patterned and paved slab floor. To her left, arching staircases ran up each to a higher level, like a mansion’s main hall rather than some mere receiving gantry for onboarding guests.

Fighting the urge to whimper as she realised this meant a departure from the ship, Tami glanced to her right instead. Through the heavy glass surrounding the airlock she could already see the gold and orange planet glowing in the dark, spotted and surrounded by a whirling cascade of asteroids on all sides that became increasingly clear as they closed in. They’d arrived at the same unique jump point Claudia had once used, the planet’s loophole from Confederate law, and Tami could see massive cargo freighters laterally shifting to permit this VIP vessel’s entry through the narrow corridor. She hid within those details, evading the terror at her situation gnawing inside by stargazing and following the whizzing drones that surrounded the space lane they kept clear of asteroids. She saw yellow-armed handlers that could drag the shifting rocks around or recover smashed drones, star-shaped omni-directional ‘roid-cutters’ with powerful orange beams, dull gun-metal grey brutes the size of cruisers that acted as mobile recharging and repair stations with flat hulls to mount and land smaller craft upon.

As Asset’s yacht rolled and turned them down toward an auxiliary pathway in the cluttered, dangerous field, she saw something else. Something new.

In the inner layers she could see the same orbital stations with their reaching cables and long, thin arms extending from bonsai-tree shaped hulls: freighter mounting points and docking tethers. Beyond them the rolling, knurled cylinders of reprocessing plants spun and lines of waiting vessels dotted the void between them all - Kavala’s gargantuan mining operation. But between it all she spotted trios of small remote vessels gliding on smooth patrols, not as erratic and active as the mining drones, these had larger vector engines on each of the four sides like a cross around a central sphere, and as one group passed by them she saw what could only be a traversable twin-cannons mounted in a rotating gimbal at its centre. There weren’t many, but Tami winced as she easily identified the hole in drone security from last time had been closed.

They escorted the ship’s arc into the asteroid field with tiny puffs of vapour from their engines as Tami felt their destination change. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the rocks and planet whirl out of sight. She’d expected to go to the surface, but now it all silently swung away.

“What? What’s happening, where are we going?” She sat up, the motion causing her to gasp from lack of breath.

Kreer interrupted. “Quiet. You’re not going planetside. You’ve got other plans waiting for you.”

Tami turned and looked up at him with wide eyes, her pupils shaking. He didn’t look back, but just stared above her head. Her imagination did leaps of horror, but there were scant seconds before she finally saw where the ship was headed.

Through several side routes in the orbital field, cleared by drones for smaller vessels than the ‘cargo monsters’, Tami could see another station hanging in orbit, as large as any of the refuelling or mineral processing facilities. But while they were blocky, modular and at best had sheets of pre-made curved metal on their bulbous tops, this was cohesive in its design, with no prefabricated modules, universal sockets or mismatching silhouettes of different eras on its greater silhouette. It looked as though it had been hand-crafted as a singular, one off creation. Something by a designer who had an artistic vision rather than quotas to meet. Each side of its top third curved over in great arches like the pauldrons of some ancient suit of armour. Lines of clear glass rolled across them, shining through to layers of internal levels behind them with castle-like protrusions and towers rising up from between them, making for a maze of observation decks and sensor arrays, shaped to look like an orchard of trees around the bases of the towers from afar and shielded between the thick shoulders of the upper hull.

The lower section was made of two great monoliths of hull with an adjoining bridge, forming an ‘H’ shape. Their monolithic sides were built from vertical flat extensions, layered and thickened until they reminded her of an uneven stack of paper standing on their end. All of it bore a long worn bronzed pallor that once might have shone in gold and brilliant cream paint. The whole station was ringed with docking lights of sapphire blue guiding arrivals into the upper and lower gaps of the ‘H’ underside where she could see great bays and docking gantries. Crystal shaped elevators traversed on the outside of the hull, shunting vertically and horizontally around cavernous spaces and glinting when they caught the light of the moon.

Yet as Asset’s yacht closed in toward it on a docking vector and drew closer to one of the extended gantries for large vessels, the sheer natural beauty began to taper off and Tami saw the truth.

It was devastated. Her eyes had been enraptured by the greater shapes, but she could see holes in the station’s hull between the restored bays, void-ridden compartments open to the black. One of the pauldrons was shattered, a dozen decks inaccessible behind it. Racks and racks of mining drones were haphazardly bolted onto recognisable Confederate mounting points, disgustingly inconsistent with the aesthetic. The art that had formed the shape of the upper docking bay was now an ugly, automated assembly line in perpetual motion to repair and replenish the drone fleet. It all almost prevented her from finally identifying what the station really was.

A great moulded symbol worn down by time and erosion was emblazoned on the middle join of the large ‘H’ shape, a symbol she’d not seen since her time within Æther Corps on Equestria’s moon. Two alicorns in a spiral around one another, both of burnished hull plate to stand out in separate colours when the reflected light from Kavala or it’s shattered moon caught it. Portions of the symbol looked bent and torn. Then she realised, almost all of the damage was on one side of the station, the side facing the exploded moon itself, giving Tami the last confirmation she needed.

It was a pre-wyrm orbital station. Asset had restored, no, ruined a pre-wyrm artifact of rare significance to expand her drone operations. There were perhaps only single digits of such pieces left intact in the entire galaxy.

Affronted, Tami almost missed that the station wasn’t alone in this separate area of Kavala’s operation. Hanging in space perhaps twenty kilometers distant from it Tami could see something unusual in the distance. It was large, the size of a small station unto itself, merely dwarfed by the monolithic giant beside it, shaped like a massive satellite dish. Angled downwards with great mirrored frames extended from its edges, it gave the impression of a colossal chandelier hanging in the darkness. It was surrounded by what Tami recognised as science vessels, their articulated arms working on its unusual technology.

She hadn’t a clue what it was, and Tami knew well that she was a passionate expert at void-structure identification.

“Admiring my latest commission there, Tammani?”

Tami froze at the sound of the voice, her body feeling rusty and unwilling as she turned to see what had to be Asset Margin looking directly at her. The tall, green maned unicorn wore business attire, lacking only the jacket, leaving her black waistcoat and brilliantly clean and smooth shirt visible below. Tami could see its tips lined with something, like a gentle hint of silver, a soft highlight of expense. If the tone hadn’t been clear enough, Tami saw the limp, remembering her captain’s grinning story. With the door below the stairwells closing with a hiss, she was flanked by two others, both female, one an earth pony carrying the suit’s jacket for her, the other a zebra rapidly working on a multiband.

“It-It’s…” Tami stammered.

“Delightful, I know.” Asset strode on long legs around the fountain and sauntered closer, patting Tami’s chest, turning her to look at the station again and standing far too close for the hippogriff to be comfortable. “Repurposed from a colony to emergency use when Kavala began work against the Wyrm threat, then left derelict when the moon exploded. They called it The Sun of the Night. Ostentatious perhaps.”

Tami briefly considered the gilded framing and marble across the mansion of the yacht.

Asset continued, “It’s a nightmare to buy stations into Kavala, so I had the simply brilliant idea to take an old relic and use it as a spare hull. Drones don’t care if half of it’s sealed to the black now, do they? And I promise...”

She leaned in to whisper. Tami screwed her eyes closed.

“The insides are just as splendid; you’ll enjoy your time flying for me there. I am told you love your ships. I expect great things from you.”

Tami gulped, looking away from her and trying to muster words. “The… The Captain, where is-”

“And I presume you saw my other little project waiting just off it?” Asset pointed to the satellite. “Well I can’t say too much but… Well, it’s wonderful what you can dig up on Kavala sometimes.”

She purred a small laugh out and clapped Tami’s back, making the hippogriff go stiff with pain as her recovering hypothermia stung through her body. “As for your ‘captain’...”

She turned and gestured to one of her aides. The zebra spoke, looking panicked. “She… She will be here in about five minutes, Miss. I sent the request as you asked to Kreer to-”

Asset’s brow stiffened. “I recall asking you some time ago to have her ready for my being here at eleven shipboard time, Amari…”

Amari gulped, noticing her earth pony companion shuffling away from her. “It’s still five to eleven though, she’ll-”

“And I am here. Amari, Amari, Amari - when I say I want someone there for when I am there, I mean when I am there. The schedule moves around me, not you! Do you not think, filly?” Asset groaned. “In fact, get out of here! You’re fired! Go!”

“Miss-”

“GO!” Asset roared across the hallway. “Get out of my sight!”

The zebra, terrified, turned and galloped away up the gilded staircase behind her. Tami, cowed by the shout as much as the poor mare, heard Asset grumble and was surprised to see the unicorn looking at her as she spoke. “Typical. The day somepony invents a drone-assistant…” She rubbed her face with a hoof. “Kreer, open recruitment for a new intern. There’s always more where that came from.”

Tami swallowed deeply, risking a nod to placate the short-tempered trillionaire.

“Ma’am,” the huge griffon rumbled, tapping onto his oversized multiband. “Garwyn’s coming up now.”

No sooner than he spoke did the doors opposite where she had come from slid silently apart, and Tami’s eyes erupted in size. Behind them was a red hippogriff, a similar shade to her own captor, but she barely noticed, her eyes spotting only the blue coated unicorn staggering ahead of him in restraints. They both saw one another at the same time.

“Tami!”

“Captain!” Tami’s legs moved before she could think, clumsily dropping from the gurney. She hit the floor, gasped, and bounded forward. Emotions swelled in her. Relief. Safety. Gratitude for saving her life. Enough to drive the weak, poorly hippogriff to throw herself into Hair Trigger’s grip and momentarily believe if she did, then all this would be fine.

Kreer’s hand, however, stopped her short. The huge griffon had bounded along behind her, and Tami yelped as claws grabbed the back of her collar, stopping her dead. Her hooves skidded on the smooth floor as her top half stopped dead above them, almost falling on her side, her stretching hand missing her captain’s reaching hoof by inches.

“Tam! It’s all right! You’re going to be fine, okay? You will be fine! Don’t struggle, just-”

“Captain! Captain I-I don’t know what’s going on, what’s happening? They aren’t telling me it’s-it’s-” she panted.

“Well isn’t this precious?” Asset’s chuckle cut anything Hair Trigger had to say short. The suited unicorn trotted idly over by the fountain, putting herself between her prisoners and smiling at Trigger’s furious look. The great station loomed behind her, and an extending umbilical was moving closer to the airlock. “I thought you’d want to be here, Captain. See your pilot away.”

“Away?” Tami breathed, momentarily struggling in Kreer’s grip. “What’s happening!?”

Asset raised an eyebrow, dragging her hoof through the crystal clear water. “What? You think I’d want this excuse for a farm-tractor pilot working my drones? Perish the thought.”

“Flew well enough to show your toys up last time.” Trigger spat the words at her, throwing her head to the side to try and shake Garwyn’s claws from her shoulder without much success.

“As I remember it, they were ready to rip your ship apart with you in control, Captain.” Asset smirked.

“As I remember it, you once had an intact ass a mare might want to hit, or do your drones do that for you now too?” Trigger gave a furious, biting look.

Asset sharply inhaled, her face screwing up. “Garwyn?”

Tami witnessed the hippogriff viciously smack her captain around the head with an open palm, drawing an angered snarl from the unicorn.

“That mouth of yours is going to get you punished sometime, Captain. You’re like a broken record.” Asset bitterly spoke, before the yacht rumbled at the station’s umbilical connecting to it, the airlock hissing open moments later. The earth pony assistant coughed lightly. “Ready for disembarkment, Ma’am.”

Asset recovered her composure enough to take a deep breath and smile. “Well, as I said, I thought you’d want to be here, Captain. To see your pilot away to her new career. Wish her luck. After all...”

She reached over, wrapping a foreleg around Tami’s shoulders to pull her in, as though for a joint photograph. “It’s probably the last time she’ll ever see you.”

Tami’s eyes went wide - her blood ran cold at the calculated tone in Asset’s voice. Heedless of the pain, she beat her wings hard and flung herself forward. She felt claws scratch through her heavy overalls and heard Asset’s annoyed intonation, but Tami didn’t stop, not until she could throw herself onto the unicorn, grabbing tightly and feeling forelegs wrap around her.

“Captain no, no no no… I-I-I-” she mumbled into Trigger’s shoulder, and felt a hoof pat her back and stroke through her mane.

“Don’t worry, Tam.” Trigger’s voice was low, immediately comforting, and Tami could sense the depth of effort to keep it level and quiet. “This ain’t the last. It ain’t.”

The hippogriff couldn’t form words, just a mumbled whine, and held tighter.

“Just stay safe. It’ll be okay. It will.” A pause. “You’ll make me proud. You always have.”

Tami wanted to reply. Wanted to think of the words to say, but claws grasped at them both and tore them apart. Tami felt herself being dragged back onto the gurney by the umbilical, and wheeled off through the airlock, toward the great pre-wyrm station.

She loved her captain’s confidence in her - she always had. But right then Tami had another cloying feeling in her gut as they were separated. One she recognised, and had never wanted to feel ever again.

A friend was being taken by those who would do them harm.

Volatility Smile had little break in her stride. Crowds parted if they had any sense, and those who didn’t care or didn’t notice quickly found there were ways to physically shove past someone without actually lifting a hoof. Most who saw her face, even those hardened to a hard life in the void, quietly made room in advance. Every few steps she looked down at her multiband and tapped three or four times, then proceeded onward. She ignored a shout from behind. She ignored Crazy D’s loud call of greeting.

What she did do was stop to terrify the vendor of Medusa’s small-arms and on-board protection licence provider into taking a downpayment, slam her multiband into the contactless pay screen, and walk away with a dubiously legal authorisation to carry laser weaponry across the NLR border for the next month. There would be no halts at the border.

Volatility Smile wouldn’t accept anything halting her now.

She rounded the top of the heavy steel staircase onto -rather purposefully- one of the quieter levels of Port Medusa, an observation ring. Situated the deck above the market and the docks Claudia rested in, it bore predominantly digital businesses; navigation assistance agencies, independent banks and insurance outlets blazed their wares in vivid blue and purple neon. The lights reflected from the single window running around the entire circumference on the outside, the viewport that gave the deck its most common use to the layman, a place to come to get away from the crowds. A handful of other occupants were scattered here and there, laid back on the benches or sipping hot drinks near the bubbled windows. Most were just seeking a place to sit, either in small groups or in one case, a grey-blue stallion simply sitting by himself.

Through an inner window between the modules containing the varied businesses, Smile could see the bustling, steamy marketplace below where they’d exited the elevator. Crazy D was serving a veritable horde, and fear of NLR blockades was leading to more crews crowding the station. The noise had made it impossible to think. And right now she had to do just that.

“Missus Smiles, wait up!”

Volatility Smile turned her head, seeing Kerfuffle, Eleven and Verbena round the stairwell to the same level. The griffon was holding the unicorn’s hoof to help her through the crowds surrounding the steps.

“What did you find out?” Smile’s tone cut right to the chase, the trio stopping sharply.

Kerfuffle shook his head. “Ain’t no bounties offered or claimed, Asset’s stayin’ quiet.”

“Damn it.” A small vibration on Smile’s foreleg led her to pause outside of a mercenary escort hiring guild, its pricing board casting her crystal body into an azure hue. Looking down, she scowled at the screen.

Space Jammers Inc. Public Message Service:

Inter-Sector Message Update complete:

Inbox;

No new messages present
Sent;Outgoing;

Mailing Lists;

No new messages present

The pause gave the trio a chance to gather around her, Eleven still huffing gently at the effort she’d taken to push through the hordes below. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. That’s the point. I’d hoped incoming mail after a full reconnective update would maybe give us something. Or the bounties. A clue. Asset’s ego driving a ransom or wanting people to know. Some information. Anything.” Smile bitterly snorted and lowered her hoof. “No. If she cares about us, she isn’t showing her hoof yet.”

“She’d want money? Like a ransom?” Verbena looked from Smile to Kerfuffle, eyes wide and hopeful. “It sucks to give in but Tami’s boyfriend could-”

Kerfuffle shook his head, briefly looking regretful that the suddenness of his movement had hushed the young earth pony. “Sorry, Miss. That’s not how she does things. Money won’t do it, this is revenge.” His face turned, his cheeks tightening with his eyes growing hard to look at Smile. “An’ you know it wouldn’t work to offer, she’d just laugh.”

“I know.”

“An’ we need to get them back. We’re gonna’ do it.”

“We will. We did it with Whisper, we’ll do it with Hair Trigger and Tami.”

Smile seemed distracted, looking down at her multiband again. She hadn’t looked up much since storming out of the director's office. All the way down the elevator, even in the market’s crush. She moved apps around, her hoof sliding and tapping at great speed on the glass screen.

Eleven, quiet as the others carried forth their better knowledge on this second enemy apart from Sidewinder, trotted softly in place from nerves before sighing. “So… Sorry, what are we doing then? I didn’t realise there were so many enemies out here after you. What’s different here, though? We’ve done everything else, we can do this!”

Her hopeful spirit stood out at odds in the quiet observation lounge. Kerfuffle nodded. “We will. It’s just…”

Smile momentarily paused, then smacked her own multiband with her hoof, dropping down to sit on the closest bench by the window and leaning the back of her head on the cool glass. “It’s just that based on what the director gave us that place is a fortress now. Stations, planetside facilities, security drones. Stars, there's even records of an electromagnetic lockdown device for any vessel they don’t want doing its own thing.”

She closed her eyes, grimacing. “And we’ve got one unarmed, highly recognisable cargo ship with no real pilot, only four crew and no idea where those two are even being kept, if they’re even still together. Any friends we have either don’t have the resources to change things, or if they do, they aren’t close enough to help us right now. So if I sound tense it’s because I am not letting this day end without having a plan for when we do go in. Because we are.”

Volatility Smile fell quiet, the rush of anger and adrenaline that had kept her rushing to collate information finally starting to peter out. She raised a hoof down the deck to the mercenary booth. “So we need to start preparing immediately.”

Kerfuffle shifted a little uncomfortably. “Missus Smiles, this is a crime. We shouldn’t need to do it ourselves. This ain’t Sidewinder. The Confederacy don’t like her either. There’s the police.”

Verbena nodded. “Yeah, Tami told me about the loophole! They’d take any chance to throw her under!”

“We’re Periphery based, the incident didn’t occur in their space so it won’t give them a legal mandate. But yes, the Confederacy would no doubt be happy to - with a small bribe - give us some intel on Kavala. They monitor her much closer than Alyssum does.” Smile looked back down at her multiband and started sifting through contacts again. “The wonder of the Confederacy and how to pass any barrier.”

Kerfuffle gave a somewhat perplexed look at her comment on his home, Volatility Smile just smirked. “I’ll get started on that. Verbena? Show me somewhere I can get a cross-sector communication.”

Verbena proudly smirked and blew a raspberry. “As if I haven’t figured out the ways into Medusa’s database on foreign police forces yet.”

“Good. Kerfuffle, Eleven?”

The unicorn, looking unusual in her hoodie, spoke up first with a definitive and eager stamp on the decking. “You need us to do what creators do and come up with a way in and out of a place that doesn’t want us there, right?”

“Right.”

“We can do that! Kerfuffle knows all about Claudia and how to hook anything up to her better than anyone in this galaxy.”

“An’ you know more about every other bit of invention better than anyone in this galaxy, Miss.” Kerfuffle stood taller. “We’ll get back to Claudia an’ we’ll get to work, Missus Smiles. We’ll come up with somethin’. Together. In fact, while you were trottin’ ahead we had some thoughts.”

Smile held up a hoof. “Let me guess, Eleven’s going to break what I know of physics.”

Both the large griffon and the grinning pink unicorn nodded eagerly in perfect sync. His claw turned to a thumbs up.

“And this has never been done before?”

The joint nodding shifted to a proud shake.

Smile narrowed her eyes. “And this has no chance of splicing timelines, creating a self-cascading singularity, shattering the fragile veil of sane-space or otherwise irreversibly affecting the galaxy’s stability of physics at large on a macro-scale?”

There was a pause. Kerfuffle turned his head to Eleven. She screwed up her face in an innocent shrug, hooves upturned. Turning back to Smile, his claw leveled out flat and tilted side to side.

Smile sighed. “Bring it to me once you have something.”

“We will. Promise.” Kerfuffle lowered himself down and, with a ballet dancer’s grace, Eleven turned and hopped up onto his back. Kerfuffle tensed as though to move off, but paused on the spot. “And, er… I’ll…” Resolve stiffened his form. “I’ll figure out what to tell their families. The report that they’re missing will get to them before any good news does. It oughta’ come from us.”

Smile saw that Eleven bore a warm smile behind his head at his thoughtful awareness, and gave a slow nod. That wasn’t an easy task he’d set himself. “You’re the best of us sometimes, you know that?”

“Well…” replied Kerfuffle, scratching his head.

“He is.” Eleven held onto his back and pushed her head over his shoulder. “Let’s go! I’ve got several ideas forming and I need my design palace back on Claudia for it.”

Smile hesitated. “You mean the cargo bay.”

Eleven just shrugged. “When was the last time you ever used it for that? My name is more accurate these days.”

Kerfuffle smiled. “To the design palace it is. We’ll stay in touch!”

The pair rocketed off, the pink unicorn holding on tightly for dear life as the griffon swerved to avoid a blue stallion getting up from a bench. Left behind, Verbena Mint smiled after them, feeling eased by their confidence. After what she’d seen Eleven do lately, she had just enough hope to feel whatever the unicorn had cooked up would work.

“Verbena? Come on.”

Nodding, Verbena turned and pointed down the observation deck. “All right, far side! There’s an admin station there separate from the main resources deck, we can log in from there and get whatever sis’ has on the Confederate police.”

The pair took a fast stride around the opposite edge of the station from where Kerfuffle and Eleven had departed back to the hangar, the look on Smile’s face giving any would-be salesperson reason to stand away. Verbena felt a touch awkward to walk in such quiet, until eventually the temptation to break the ice was overwhelming.

“Do you really have a plan?”

“Yes,” replied Volatility Smile, “to get intelligence first, then see what help might be worth a damn if there’s any way through.”

Her words were curt and clipped, and again gave way to a silent progression between synth-trees and thick bulkheads. Verbena sighed. “Smile, be honest… Is Asset the type to hurt them? Will Tami be-”

“We’re going to get them, Verbena.” Smile turned her head to look at the shorter teenager. “That’s all that matters. If Asset’s made one great mistake, it’s thinking capturing the captain means she put us out of action. She didn’t count on the brains still bei-”

Then she paused, and Verbena saw Smile’s eyes glance backwards once, before rounding to the front again. “Verbena, listen very carefully, don’t stop trotting.”

She certainly hadn’t been stopping. “What? What’s-”

“Does your sister normally have you tailed to protect you?”

Verbena felt a sudden chill of imminent worry pass through her. “Usually Donner, but I kinda rushed off to be with you and- Wha- Wait, lemme look and-”

“Don’t turn!”

“Trust me.” Verbena whispered, and then shouted out loud. “Selfie!” She grabbed the crystal pony around the shoulders. Laughing too loudly, she held out her multiband in front of them both but rather than taking a like-baiting pursed lip and ‘cheeky eyes’ image, she scanned the reverse facing camera toward herself. At first she saw nothing, but after re-angling her multiband her eyes caught a figure coming right behind them, slowing as they did. Snapping a picture, she let go, and held it between them.

Blurred, hooded, alone.

Not one of the types her sister would assign to guard her, particularly not since Blitz and Donner had arrived. Verbena shook her head to Smile, and cursed under her breath. “They’ve been tailing us since we started moving. I saw them come up the stairs and sit down, didn’t think much of it but...”

They rounded the corner to the admin wing, a blocky station module that jutted out from the circular hull of Port Medusa. A large sealed door separated it from the main walkway, flanked by an info-board displaying tech support numbers and cross-sector price-rates. Verbena ran up to the blinking door console while Smile kept an eye on the windows, using the reflection to spot the figure moving in after them as they shifted to the mismatching floor of the new and empty area.

“So what do we-” Verbena began.

Smile’s tone was hard. “We take the gift we’ve been given.”

She slowed, and Verbena felt her worried protest fall flat as she saw Smile subtly reach for her laser rifle’s strap. Since the kidnapping, other than leaving it aside on the executive level, she’d never taken it off. Pausing, she waited until the hooves behind her came closer, motioned with her eyes to the nearest corner and hard cover for Verbena, and then swung around, rifle coming up.

The instant she did, she saw the pony behind her throw aside their coat. A shortened weapon similar to Whisper’s SMG flipped open and extended its buttstock automatically, a stubby barrel pointing her way.

“STOP!” She swung the weapon to bear on their head, and found herself staring at a stallion hunching into a trained posture to point his weapon back up at her.

“Put the weapon DOWN!” he bellowed out in response, his hood falling back. A navy grey mane, well trimmed and kept, spilled out above focused, intense eyes. “NOW!”

“You first.” Smile didn’t let up, slowly trotting aside to get the line of fire away from Verbena behind her. The stallion, a pegasus she now saw, did the same.

He shook his head by the tiniest of fractions. “Volatility Smile, of Claudia and the Space Jammers?”

“Who’s asking?” she replied firmly.

His face tightened. “Where is Tammani? What have you done with her!?”

The atmosphere in the entranceway of the data centre fell silent. Slowly, Verbena crept around the side, eyes on the stallion. She blinked, looking deep in thought. “Wait…”

“Now I need to know who in the stars is asking me.” Smile didn’t take the glowing sight atop her rifle away from centre mass on the stallion. Something tugged at her mind, something stuffed deep down in memory, but with a barrel in her face and her radar to trickery strung too tight to dare fall for a possible misdirection. “Tami’s been taken from us-”

“To who!? Sold?”

Smile caught a hint of worry in his voice, daring to lower her rifle by a couple inches. “Listen, I think you’ve got it wrong! Tammani is our friend! She’s been kidnapped and-

Verbena stepped forward. “Yes, I do know you!” She carefully moved forward hoof by hoof, and Smile saw the stallion’s barrel jitter side to side. “It’s… your name, it was-”

That was it! Smile’s memory finally dredged up the face. The spruce blue, the slim body and the broad shoulders. She'd seen him before - in Tami's prom photo.

“Vair…” Verbena spoke triumphantly with a pointed hoof. “Vantage Vair.”

‘Bless that young mare’s memory’, Smile thought. She saw the stallion’s eyes react in genuine surprise, but the gun didn’t lower. Below the coat, Smile could see a bulletproof vest, Crystal League issue she guessed. Navy. He looked uncertain, disbelieving. She had to keep pushing.

“Tami’s not even supposed to be out here, she-”

Smile cut him off. “We’re not lying! We’re on the same side here, I promise! Look, I'll prove it.” She thought quickly, trying to find something of worth, before remembering one thing. She raised her voice. “Final exam in Basic Flight for spacecraft, you were both together in a shuttlepod since you were the two top students. It’s where you both, well, culminated your growing relationship after sneaking on board treats”

Vantage stared back at her, one eyebrow shooting up in off-guard confusion. “What!?”

Smile just nodded again, a confident smile creeping on her face. She had this now. “First time.”

“You know- But-” His focus wavered, looking utterly bewildered, wings drooping. He shook his head and stood up straighter, quickly reasserting his aim. “Okay, how drunk did she get to tell anyone that story?”

Smile didn’t miss a beat. “Two shots and half a cider.”

Vantage Vair stood rock still, and then dropped the barrel, clicking the safety back on. “All right, that’s definitely Tami.”

He stood up more fully as Smile relented in turn, looking twitchy from adrenaline and nerves, and more than slightly embarrassed as he glanced and saw Verbena’s ‘hey, I knew too’ shrug. He sighed. “Lieutenant Commander Vantage Vair, Crystal League Corporate Navy. ”

“Volatility Smile, Acting-Captain of Claudia.”

“Verbena Mint, official bestie. What are you doing here? How do you know about Tami? Was it my message to you?” She bit her cheek, muttering quietly. “Please don’t be because of my message from her multiband, look there was vodka and-”

“Another time to explain that, Verbena.” Smile cut her off, trying to hide her own smirk at the outcome. She had always aced interviews. This had been no different. It was always about who you knew, not what you knew, they said.

Smile knew best that it was really what you knew about who you knew.

Vantage looked behind him, folding his weapon away, something Smile recognised as a League Naval PTW: a shortened carbine with a blocky magazine and extending stock that could be held quietly under a weather-cloak of the uniform and auto-folded into a firing state within seconds. True to form, it whirred as it collapsed into itself to tuck under his coat.

He spread his hooves. “Volatility Smile, I have a lot more questions for you about all this.” His face had lost its confrontational edge, but it still held accusations and intense worry. “Forgive me but I have to question why I should trust that she’d even be in some Periphery cargo operation to begin with. Tami’s one of the best pilots I ever saw. She should still have a year of teaching left in the Chrysolite VIP Academy before qualification to something, again forgive… more than this? How could she have even been here?”

With a long breath, she slung her rifle and glanced at Verbena; the earth pony seemed to come to the same conclusion. “Well…”

Volatility Smile hung her head, the gradual realisation taking hold. She nodded in agreement. “I think you’d better come with us. There’s- there’s a lot you need brought up to speed on about Tami.”

Amid the cluttered debris of Kavala III, the Asset Margin's extravagant yacht shone greater than any object surrounding it. Reflective heat-tiles enabling the twenty five thousand ton vessel to enter an atmosphere twinkled in creamy spiral patterns, while its ruby solar fins trailed glitter in their wake thanks to artificially coloured vector nozzle outlets. A star of sophistication, it glided between asteroids as automated drones left their workplaces to manually attach and thrust the rocks clear of its lazy path, enabling the thick, nigh-impassable barrier above the surface to be bypassed by a ship many times outside the safe size limit.

It was not, however, headed for the surface. Instead, as it moved away from the ancient pre-wyrm station, the vessel angled toward another object in space. One much larger and eerily closer to the planet than something of such mass ought to be; the cause of its desolation.

Asset’s yacht instead headed for Kavala III’s shattered moon.

Growing in size until it dominated the bridge’s viewports, the bone white corpse of the gutted satellite emitted a faint rumble into the silent void; a rumble that could only be picked up by sensors looking to hear it. All around the moon, cracks in the exposed mantle stretching the size of continents groaned and shifted as they had for centuries. Ghosting drifts of white dust that had hung for hundreds of years flowed into the wake of the luxury vessel, twisting in unusual contrails and following it from the transfer of momentum. The yacht turned, gravity reasserting its will as the vessel shunted below the level of what was once the surface, into the great crater from which a full third of the moon's mass had been torn. The crater that had exploded out to become the very field that now made the ship’s owner rich beyond measure. As it approached, hanging security drones with electromagnetic pulse generators in domed dishes turned with focused intent. Waived by a signal to permit right of passage being sent to the drone station in the asteroid field above, the automated units turned back to their waiting positions.

Now alone, a single speck above a yawning darkness so wide the ship could no longer see its edges, Asset’s yacht began its long descent into a crater so deep its bottom was obscured in a deep cosmic gloom. The slopes to the surface became a high horizon, one that stretched higher than a planet’s sky from the ground. The effect was uncanny; the sheer scale threw off the senses until those looking up from within would feel like the crater was much thinner than it could possibly be, or that the edges simply disappeared and seemed closer than they really were. It formed a world lit only by the planet itself, an inverse of how celestials were normally lit from their parent star, creating spectacular views when the crater pointed directly at Kavala and had it fill every inch of what passed for a sky.

The missing gap in Kavala’s moon was a legacy of desperate madness to combat the seemingly unstoppable by testing things of scales unknown, only to find that very ambition becoming its own destruction to the power they’d sought to match.

Upon the very site of that great hubris, Asset had built her most exclusive endeavour.

The floor of the crater was a mass of void canyons and mountainous shapes, and upon the side overlooking the black above and the deepest point below now lay a silvery-white structure. Luminescent, it glowed in the devastated, cragged fracture of the moon like coral reef, shaped like mushroom caps on the wall of a cave. Circular complexes of several decks each surrounded a low, wide, flat-topped central structure, all of them supported by a framework of enormous legs embedded into the surface. Bubbles of poly-glass covered balconies that ringed the lush decks, while the top of some structures bore clear sheets through to lush agroponics gardens. When the planet passed by, it would all glitter like diamond, and when the crater was enveloped in darkness it would shine like a lonely beacon of safety in a past galaxy’s devastation.

The structure was, however, incomplete. Scaffold still spoiled much of its right hand side, while a skeletal framework implied a still far-off dream of what would someday be a hanging landing platform without any visible support. Holographic images flickered on approach as the yacht levelled out, projected from hanging beacons to guide the vessel into a yawning, open hangar. The main dock was split between a cavernous lower section for storage and maintenance of ships, and a resplendent upper quarter that served as a passenger terminal. Shaped and styled like the front of a mansion, with glassteel umbilicals ready to extend, the terminal waited to greet VIPs in the most luxurious terms as they were dropped off. Their vessels would then slide by and drop downward into the less prestigious docks waiting below to wait on their charges.

The complex, once complete, would be exclusive beyond measure. A place of meeting for those who wanted to be seen and to talk, but only to their peers and strictly in unobserved private. A club for the unthinkably wealthy and the ethically malleable.

An Equestrian hymn praised the glory of the stars themselves as great doors rose and swept away like wings before the entering party, sharply dressed freelancers in gleaming uniforms of viridescent jade-green snapping to a formal poise. Beyond lay twin arch-laden mezzanines running down a white marble reception hall with a grand display of natural flowers and a pricelessly old antique life-size sculpture of all four Princesses together atop a clear fountain. Grand staircases rose towards event halls, a palatial spa that was still under construction, and accommodations to make a president envious. Relics of all six major civilisations were displayed in glassteel boxes in an effort to stun and attract those who could afford anything, from thousand year old Zebrahan amulets to a hull plate from the Confederate’s first FTL capable ship after the Wyrm Wars to a fragment of the Crystal Empire’s castle on Equestria. Most ostentatious of all, a secure box atop one of the imperial staircase landings contained an open display - a magenta cushion bearing several fragments of Nightmare Moon's armour. These were once-in-a-lifetime salvage, salvaged from one of the Grey Fleet ships that had tried to smuggle them from the Solar Empire to the nascent New Lunar Republic only to be intercepted and destroyed in Mothellum.

Hair Trigger saw none of it.

Blinded by the coarse bag over her head, she was getting very deeply sick of being shoved, cajoled and talked down to upon this entire journey. Instinct told her she wasn’t planetside, and this didn’t feel like any station she’d visited, leaving an unusual sense of displacement. None of the clues her ears and nose gave her suggested anything other than a hidden asteroid base amid Kavala’s field.

Around her she could hear the rapid cantering of assistants or waiting staff. The floor felt too smooth for an office or prison. The heavier snaps of guards coming to attention were obvious, and yet the sounds echoed. Large rooms, then, she presumed, with Asset’s tendency for minimal overworked staffing. She felt an elevator, then more walking and a stairwell. Every so often she could hear Asset’s limping gait and annoying tendency to make a half-hearted toneless hum as she led them, clearly appreciating whatever place she’d made. Garwyn kept a tight grip on Trigger, directing her and standing ready to stop any deeply wished attempt to shut that humming up every time it started.

Trigger very quickly began to find new depths of hatred for this mare. In a way she was glad for it. Anger was better than fear. Adventures lately had taught her to lean into that, Asset simply made it much easier to do.

Garwyn caught her neck, preventing her from advancing any further. A moment later, the hood was yanked from her head. Searing brightness shone into her eyes and blinded her all over again. Wincing, grunting and turning her head away, she muttered bitterly, “If I open my eyes and see a stage...”

“Hardly, Captain,” replied Asset with impatient eagerness.

Painful brightness in her eyes, Hair Trigger opened them by a slit. Several bright lights shone from high above. Spotlights. Focusing her sight, Trigger nearly recoiled.

They were not in a corridor, nor a mere room, but an enormous hall, flanked by thick colonnades of dark jade-green atop a shimmering, black marble tiled floor dotted with white speckles. Arched balconies ran around its edges above spiral staircases, and she could see cloisters to either side leading to display halls with huge windows into a dense black.

What had made her react was not the wondrous architecture, but the great glass cases that filled the hall. Atop crafted wood lay artefacts of all shapes and sizes - relics of a time that by her reckoning should probably remain lost. She saw unusually designed firearms and their ammunition from centuries ago, sets of thick void-armour bearing emblems of lost civilisations, inactive monomolecular blades and a case of shimmering magical orbs. There were blank-eyed wrecks of automata between the colonnades, posed to stand guard. Arcane crafters of a kind never since replicated without magic sat with example three-dimensional prints ready to demonstrate. Vials of ominous substances sat behind triple layered glass near warheads of a kind Trigger knew had been banned even by the Solar Empire.

And above everything, between hanging examples of ancient void-automata, dominating everything below the spotlights was a colossal skeleton, its mighty feet resting on two platforms in the middle of the museum-like cloister: the bones of what Hair Trigger knew had to be that of a dragon. Its mighty jaws were supported open and twisting, howling silently.

A moment later, and Hair Trigger’s eyes found the truly horrifying detail of this lost technology. Every case, every item, bore a magnetic seal bearing a digitally displayed number.

Price tags for the unearthed horrors created to fight gods.

Suddenly she remembered the pre-wyrm station, and before that the entire peninsula of ancient crashed vessels on the surface of Kavala. Asset had the resources, the time and the freedom to dig and dig…

“Oh… Oh you’ve gone off the deep end now you crazy bitch.” Hair Trigger couldn’t even muster up any volume to her words, her eyes wide with shock and wonder.

Asset strolled behind a glass counter, opening it to retrieve a gilded pistol. Trigger recognised it from idly browsing articles on old age firearms; it was a needle-firing model, intended for a poison she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemies. Asset stroked it with one hoof as though it were a delicate flower.

“One small find in my trash pile and that would be eighty million credits, thank you very much. Minimal effort, pure profit.” She grinned. “Welcome to the Desideratum, Captain, my recent venture. In a few months I’ll have my first party here, you see. The invited kind who might be interested in this sort of thing. Purely by recognition of course; a clientele so small and elite that even the Silver Dome would be jealous.”

Hair Trigger wanted to protest, wanted to speak of what some of these things could do, but there was no world where Asset didn’t also know. She’d no doubt priced them accordingly. “All the digging, the mining? It was-”

“-intensely profitable, Captain. Hardly just a means to an end, but also a useful process to unearth what else was buried in the ruins and wreckage.” Asset held the thin-barrelled pistol like it were a foal, before floating it back inside its container. “The best of those in affluence know you always need your next expansion ready before it occurs. I’m sure your suited and shining friend might have lent you such entrepreneurial guidance.”

“You have no idea…” Trigger deadpanned, before grunting to avoid any single sentence sounding too familiar. “So eighty million credit question. The fuck did you bring me here for then? Test dummy for your kit during the show?”

Asset made a teasing smile, tutting with a waved hoof that set Trigger’s blood boiling. The audaciously strung out answers were getting to her, but she swallowed her frustration down to deny a reaction. Asset’s waved hoof signalled Garwyn to drag Trigger forward again. Shaking him off, Trigger made to trot on her own, but felt him grasp hold.

“You’re not walking in here alone. Not a chance, small fry,” he growled, and held on to her as they approached the far door. Hair Trigger felt the hood once again thrown over her. She groaned aloud.

“Starting to feel like you’re scared of me knowing something.”

“Please Captain,” replied Asset smoothly, the inconsistent tap-tap-taptap of her hooves obvious ahead of her on the smooth floor. “Garwyn?”

“You’re a unicorn,” he grunted, giving Hair Trigger a hard shove. The texture of the ground changed. “You have magic that can grasp things, and you’ve got a habit of breaking things belonging to Miss Margin. You’re not seeing anything fragile unless we want you to.”

Stairwells proved a painful exercise in the hippogriff's impatience. After three flights there was a set of heavy-sounding doors. Trigger lost track of her memory of the route after an elevator. Eventually there was a quiet, lacking the gentle chimes and jingles of the great halls. The complex sounded deserted, with nothing but the occasional group of roughly bantering guards standing-to at Asset’s passing or the hum of something automated. Along the way, she listened to the exchanges.

“Take us down, Linear.” Asset spoke to an unseen pony.

“Down to which floor, Ma’am?” A young stallion’s reply.

There was a sigh. “Garwyn, strike him off, find me another intern. This one’s no good.”

She felt Garwyn shove the pony out and hit the button himself.

“Keep good employee retention don’t you?” Trigger snarked.

“And now you know why I prefer drones. Which one of us is the trillionaire, Captain?”

More walking. Round in circles. After one final clang of a door, Hair Trigger felt the oppressive quiet of a smaller chamber. One much smaller. Claws grabbed her forelegs and dragged her upward until her hindlegs dangled. She kicked out, but found nothing but air. Tight, biting pressure squeezed about the fetlocks of her foreleg. Chains. They tightened and raised, until she felt herself hanging a couple feet above the floor.

Only then was the hood torn from her head.

The room was made of dark metal, hexagonal in shape with one side extended in a short rectangle where Hair Trigger had been turfed into. A faint amber light overhead failed dismally to light the corners. But it did illuminate the top of Garwyn and Asset Margin ahead of him.

“Welcome to your waiting room, Captain.” Asset routinely spouted the title in a mocking twist of every sentence, bobbing her head side to side. “You’ll stay nice and safe here until such a time as… Well, I come to claim my profit.” She leaned closer. “I’m just dying to know what you’re thinking right now. You must be shitting yourself more than you were before you came into my office the first time. What’s going through your head, hmm?”

Trigger looked back, making heavy breaths as she felt her forelegs pinching and her shoulders aching already. She could see a table to her left, unusually rustic by Asset’s standards, bearing metal toolboxes, rope and chains. There was a browned drain right below her, and the door looked heavy and reinforced. It didn’t look like a designed cell, more an unfinished shell of some future storage room. She breathed in the rust and damp, exhaled through her nose and looked Asset dead in the eye.

“What I’m thinking is, whether I’m in deep trouble or in for a hell of a good time depends entirely on what side of that door has a lock.”

There was a twitch in Asset’s eye, and the smile creaked out with great effort to not scowl. “Well, you’ll get to know it. You’ll certainly have enough time. But now I leave you.” She turned and moved off to the door, a splendidly dressed guard opening it for her from the outside. Trigger hadn’t even seen there was one under the hood. “Garwyn would like a ‘chat’ of his own.”

The scarred hippogriff crunched his knuckles together in none too subtle an implication.

“Restrain yourself to just some overdue catharsis, Garwyn. Don’t damage the goods like your brother usually does. I mean it.” Asset whipped her head toward her security chief at the warning, the two long strands of mane over her forehead wavering. “I’ll be back in a while, Captain. Enjoy your stay.”

She exited the door, slamming it closed, leaving Trigger alone with Garwyn. The hippogriff shuffled over, his face at Trigger’s hanging head height. “And just so you don’t try anything surprising, Captain, that brother of mine? He wouldn’t hesitate to do much worse than I ever would.”

He grabbed her rapidly deteriorating hooded top and held her closer. “He’s with that pilot you care for so much. If you or any of your friends try anything? He wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Immediately. So let's keep things professional, shall we?”

The fury encapsulated within Hair Trigger’s weary body had been building enough. She snarled and lashed her forehead forward to jab with her horn, finding the most intense lack of result when he simply leaned back, picking up the plank of wood in one claw.

“But for now? This is payback for last time.”

“Didn’t put me down for good then,” Hair Trigger muttered, and steeled herself for the first impact she saw being swung in.

Vantage Vair didn’t need to be told who lived on the bridge.

He had walked alone onto Claudia’s nerve centre after half an hour of hearing things he was still struggling to maintain his composure over. In a lull, he’d had to ask Volatility Smile to pause. He had needed a moment to collect his thoughts. Now finding his way to the bridge, in the last two full minutes he hadn’t moved more than a few feet from the thick plate door other than to stand and stare.

He saw the paintings - deep purples, ocean blues and raging crimsons banding across a sparkling, multicoloured haze over black the way he knew she saw space, differently from anyone else he knew. The colours meshed and blended better than any he remembered, betraying years of personal improvement.

“Hey, instructor’s asking us to come down for a brief and-oh wow.”

Vantage could see the hippogriff between her dorm room’s bunks. He didn’t know her name yet. She was gently applying a streaking azure trail behind a comet arcing through the deep black. The length of its glittering tail told of a huge velocity in deep space, free of tugging gravity holding it down. He stepped in with a smile, relaxing his posture at her skittish wince.

“I… Uh, yeah I guess. I know I’m not very-”

“It looks great, really got it moving. What is it? The League Chaser? Wait, no, blue. Gotta be the Wonderbolt Comet then?”

She looked at him with big, blinking eyes. “Yeah… How, wait, you know?”

Vantage smiled and held out his hoof. “Vantage, think I’m in the room just upstairs.”

“T-Tammani.”

Warily, she took it. And cast against the streaked yellow sunset of Chrysolite, Vantage saw the most incredible smile creak onto that face as he spoke of his photos of that same comet he could show her.

He’d always loved Tami’s paintings.

Gently, Vantage picked up that same brush, fallen and placed it on the easel’s lip. Years of service had seen it gradually reduced from doing smooth, trailing detail into a messy spread drybrush. Rugs and hanging tarps covered the bridge in comfortable, soft materials. It made it homely. Warm.

Like her.

Looking toward a side of the bridge, he couldn’t resist a small, weary smirk as he recognised the off-hand vector control window by the right-side console, swapped with the power-regulation tab.

“So why do you always arrange it like that in every shuttle anyway?”

He reached across the cockpit, tapping the single panel display in front of Tami.

“Like what?”

“Backwards? You’ve got the vectors there. Left clawed?”

Tami giggled and shook her head. “Nah! See, the Gleaner RB-Eight was laid out like this by default before the single-panel refit came for it. Aaaand that’s the one I learned about first at home from my dad’s tech-manuals.”

“The Tammaran.” He grinned wolfishly, and saw her cheeks glow.

“Doooon’t,” She flustered and waved a wing at him.

“It is adorable, that you’re-”

She squealed in embarrassment and curled away from him in her seat, giggling uncontrollably. “No! Don’t say it!”

“-named after a ship.”

She batted his face with a wing. “Vantage!”

They laughed together.

The console recognised his proximity, chiming and lighting up from his hoof passing over it. The touchscreen glowed in the quiet bridge, raising a login screen wallpaper of Orbit lying on his side amidst a Hearthswarming celebration. It cycled through various images of astral phenomena and ships he knew she’d adored.

‘How could I have not been there for her when she needed me?’

The question pierced his mind by surprise, and Vantage realised he’d been reminiscing to trick himself. To dodge the guilt he knew would be coming. He’d wandered up here to feel closer to her. Like he’d caught up now. Like he was there to help. The thought disgusted him. His secretive career boosting choice to join the Adroit program had cut him off, but still he’d believed she was having as much fun, as much success as he had been.

Turning from the console, he saw her hammock. He saw the blanket upon it, stars and moons of all brilliant colours. Compass Rose, Tami’s mother, had bought it for her.

“I can’t do it! I can’t!” Tami’s voice cracked under choking sobs that made her convulse and incoherently grasp at nothing in front of her. “It all messed up! I didn’t mean to it-it-it just-”

Vantage didn’t even consider hesitating. He’d grown up the eldest of five under a single mother; it was built into him to react. He dropped beside the hippogriff that had fast been becoming a close best friend and wrapped his forelegs around her. Her claws squeezed him tightly, and she buried her face into his chest. “A-And then it all went wrong! I panicked and-”

“It’s okay…” He breathed the words and rocked his body to sway her. “It wasn’t your fault. The master alarm was set way louder than it should have been, I checked. Someone playing a stupid prank.”

“I-I couldn’t! I just froze when it-it-I-just- If anything like that happens I’m going to fail and it’ll all go wrong!”

“No it won’t.”

“It might...”

He squeezed her tightly, rubbing his cheek on top of her head, into her mane. One of his wings pulled her blanket from home over both of them, stars and moons shielding them in gentle warmth. He had tuition in a few minutes, but it could go to hell right now for all he cared.

“But it might not. And if it doesn’t, it’ll be because you’re being the pilot I know you are.” He looked down and saw her damp, wavering eyes staring back up at him. “Take your time. It’s okay to feel like that. Hey, how ‘bout we go sneak into the simulators and do it again, just us? The janitor owes us anyway to look the other way. What’dya say?”

Sniffling, Tami held onto him much closer than he expected. “Mhm, okay… They’re set to the Despair system I think.”

He stroked her mane before even realising he’d dared be so forward to do so. “Then how about we set it to Confidence instead?”

Vantage felt his jaw tense, and he stared at the floor.

He’d found all the confidence in the world, not even knowing Tami had fallen into the depths of despair for years. The thought that he’d ever laughed and smiled, completely and guiltlessly ignorant as to her state brought actual, physical pain to his gut.

He raised a wing to his eyes, rubbing gently with a sharp sniff.

“I’m so… so sorry, Tami...”

Behind him, the sharp clip of hooves on metal made him turn his head. Volatility Smile briskly trotted into the bridge, stern eyes glaring at him. In the artificial light, Vantage was surprised to see what looked like winding scars coming up from below her collar, like a lightning strike’s jagged edges etched into her glittering body. She seemed to assess his state in seconds, opening her mouth while casting a hoof about the bridge-turned-living space.

“We try our best to help her since we saw her worries first hoof. We love her here, Vantage.”

“So do I.” He looked at the floor, words but a whisper. “And I wasn’t there when she was in pain.”

Smile showed little reaction to the battle he waged to remain steady before her, but gave him time. Right now, with her captain and Tami on the line, he knew her offering a brief silence was as valuable to her as anything. Already he was grasping the disciplined, driving force in this mare. That, and her eye for opportunity. The bridge felt somehow cold and empty, despite no change in lights or running. Vantage wasn’t even a crewman and yet he could feel it. There was a void in here with those two chairs empty, that drained it all to a dreary, cold compartment of a simple ship.

“I want to help.” The words came suddenly. Quietly.

Smile nodded. “You can pilot a ship?”

“Almost as well as her,” Vantage said quickly, raising his head to look at her with wavering eyes. “I’m not going to leave her alone this time, Volatility Smile. I’m not.”

She advanced, and he was surprised to see her extend a hoof toward him. “I’m sorry about what happened, Vantage.” Her voice was steady, firm, poised, but he felt the honesty. “If it helps, Tami never spoke of you as abandoning her. Not once. I know for a fact she doesn’t see it like that.”

Vantage took her hoof in his, surprised at the strength in the shake. “Thank you.” He took a steadying breath. “PNR-03. Pioneer. I could figure her out. And then I’ll make her dance for you if you need it. Whatever it takes.”

Smile sucked her bottom lip, angling her head to the bridge stations. “You’re free to go for it. Might have to use the port side station though; I don’t know her password.”

He considered that statement, seeing the personalised items on the port side too. “But you know your own captain’s if that’s her side?”

“Admin has to have backups.” A wry smirk came across her face.

“Thank you Miss, but I have a feeling I might be able to guess hers quickly enough.” Vantage turned and looked at the console again.

Smile rolled her eyes. “Oh please, I have that enough from others. ‘Smile’ is fine.”

He didn’t hear her. His eyes were staring in sunken realisation at the scrolling wallpapers of Tami’s console. The goofy, conditionless love of a golden retriever was on many; Orbit had judged him worthy of barreling him over several times before. But the canine had moved to a new photograph. One of-

The stars shone from the balcony outside the dorms of Basic Flight. They shone just the way they’d always loved staying up far past lights out to watch and talk.

‘Quiet Time’ they’d called it. Anything but. Excited chatter about stellar phenomena, about mysteries, about whether a new ship would be popular. He’d never had anyone to be so open and passionate with. She’d given him an outlet to a love he’d never known he had so strongly.

And he stared into her eyes as she gaped at a sky unpolluted by light and saw a face as though she’d never even seen it before. Endless, self-reviving adoration and need. Her want, no need to go up there had dragged him along, inspired him, pushed him beyond his own limits just to keep up with her scores.

He felt nervous. An impulse was building in his gut, his foreleg around her shoulders. He wanted to say her name, try to hint something. Imply it. Make this easier to control.

“Tami-” He started, but when he saw her bring her attention to him on that bright, heart-shaped face, he just knew. He leaned in and bumped his lips to hers, holding his foreleg around her in a gentle squeeze. There was a surprised squeak, and then a gentle pressure of warm lips. Clumsy, he felt their teeth collide with a jarring knock, and he quickly retracted.

“Sorry! Sorry… I just, uh-” He began, until he saw her staring back at him. “Tami?”

“Ah-” Her shock turned to blinking disbelief, and then she breathed in sharply. She stared at him in a new way, and then stiffened up as though her mind switched gear from idle to FTL in seconds. She leaned in an inch. Then again. “Sorry-sorry-wait-wait I was just surprised I-”

“Are-”

He never finished his sentence before she unexpectedly dove against him, as though he might have suddenly said no if she hadn’t, and they tumbled together, her soft mouth finding his again.

The photo showed her as happy as he’d ever seen her, squeezed cheek to cheek with a unicorn of sable black coat and bright amber eyes. A well kept mane of teal, blue and rosy pink draped his head, his foreleg squeezed about Tami’s shoulders as she held her multiband up in front of them for the photograph.

He knew the look on her face. He knew.

Vantage Vair felt a deep hollowness in his chest, sighing openly with closed eyes. He nodded and didn’t really know why, but felt a hoof come to his shoulder. He turned back to see Volatility Smile’s carefully firm but honest face. “It was over three years, Vantage. You know that she-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s just… Yeah.” He let out a long breath through his nose and swiped the login screen to replace the photograph with the password entry field. “It’s all a lot to process. That’s all.”

It had always been ‘till then’. Naive for two such young people, perhaps. He’d not found anyone since, not in his environment. Almost once. Almost. He understood. He understood. He was happy someone had been there after this crew had stepped in to help her. But some deep part of him that had imagined she’d been happy all the time he’d been away had always thought-

“You sure?” Her eyebrow raised questioningly.

“Yeah,” he lied.

She looked disbelieving, and pulled him back. “Ship’s not leaving yet. I was going to hunt through the Confederate records for any intelligence on Asset Margin before we met you. That still needs done. Now. And from what you tell me about yourself, you could give me more of an ‘in’.”

Vantage pulled his eyes from the screen. His voice was terse and direct, feeling like just a junior midship officer again. “I cannot utilise the CLCN’s full intel bank, but I brought several reports with me on the local area and its rivals, and recent open-source shipping databases of vessel AIS pings to public systems. More than you’d find without our processing power. All legal.”

“Then you better come with me. If you want to help, we need to know what we’re facing first before we start trying to ask who or how.” She turned and strode for the door, before pausing. “And Vantage, look. I said Tami doesn’t blame you.” She shrugged. “And for what it’s worth, I’ve chased ambition too. Even if it meant leaving somewhere, not knowing when I’ll be back to ease people who might be worr-” She paused, as though rethinking. “To that extent at least, I understand.”

“Appreciated.” His voice felt breathy. “Genuinely, I mean, sorry I’m just-”

“I know. Come on, let’s put that drive to better use, hm? Don’t worry, if anyone asks, I’ll just tell them it’s shock at your meeting Eleven and, er, what she can do. Sorry, we forgot to give you a heads up about that.”

He made a brief snort of amusement, but it was without any real mirth. “Magic… Not lying to say that’s a shock. I’m still trying to process that one.”

“You’ll get used to it, we’ve had to go through that a few times. Sudden yelps and cries like that are normal around such unicorns. Now, let’s go. Stuff to do.”

She left the bridge at a fast trot, and he heard her speaking to Verbena below. She was right. Today had brought a horrid truth about his best friend’s life to him, only to then reveal it was but a stage of a greater pain she was fighting. One he’d always known Tami was battling inside even from the first days he’d known her. He'd always respected her resilience, and wished that she would someday take pride in it.

He’d missed the start of this battle.

He wouldn’t miss the end.

Vantage Vair rolled his shoulders and cantered after Smile. He almost managed to avoid looking back once more at the bridge.

Almost.

The interior of the Sun of the Night was unlike any other Tami had walked within. Unlike the brutal sheer faces of Port Medusa, the angular VIP Pilot Academy, the cosmopolitan stretch of the Crystal Heart or even the relic of Isla del Dragón.

Lying on the rolling gurney, flanked by two griffon guards in murky green ceramic-composite plate, Tami was moved from between floors away from the airlock’s musty, moulded lobby by a circular floored elevator. Broken murals of ponies playing together lined the insides, but their faded wonder paled as the doors opened into a tall atrium that made her gasp with its scale.

A hundred people flew and galloped and ran. They climbed, hammered, cut and welded. Around them, a multi-domed ceiling rose four floors up with spiral staircases running between fence-like brass railings on each of the open plan mezzanines. Huge gaps with rounded sides were cut into the walls along the wings of the atrium’s connecting compartments. Tami at first thought they had been burned through by tools, until closer inspection made it clear they had once held stained glass, long shattered and in mid-cleanup from the ground. Pillars mirrored the external design of layered vertical metal in what once might have been gold and cream, arching above in complex weaves to join the dome’s form. Between the golden lines she could see cracked illustrations of painted day and night skies mixed above on the insides of the domes, like the roof of some grand castle or palace.

What once might have shone in metallics and polish was now rusted and marred by centuries adrift as a wreck. Wall and deck plate might once have been silver-lined white, but now they were a scarred black and at best a muddy beige. Ancient balconies had fallen, now supported by newly erected frameworks that mismatched the ancient style so sharply that it only magnified how obscure this style was in the modern day. Many compartments were sealed entirely with flashing biohazard warnings. Others were open to the void, their walls behind the glass doors exploded to the edge of the station.

Being wheeled by the works to install new wiring and repurposing the compartments, Tami felt a great sense of loss. Where modern stations had a sense of practicality and economy, the Sun of the Night, conversely, felt alien. The word had little use within the developed galaxy, but in this case it fitted well. Little was sharp-edged. Everything bent in complex arcs, even the corridors might once have looked like angular masterpieces, but in the void-torn decay and inadequate lighting they were more like ancient and darkened bones. The Sun of the Night was being gutted one deck at a time, as though grafting inelegant cybernetics to a once dignified corpse from a lost race.

Beyond the atrium’s busy centre lay colossal windows, their holes patched and sealed, looking out into the massive construction and docking space in-between the sides of the station. She could see dozens of robotic arms collecting, dismantling and repairing drones before returning them to their mounting recharge points, ready to be held in the void for their pilots to take control. Others wound and built drones from scratch out of plate metal. A production line to replace, repurpose, repair and relaunch the casualties from asteroid mining. She let her eyes go wide at the sight - what she saw outside the window was only part of a massive hangar. Through its shielded exit, four hundred metres away, a second dock was also under construction.

“What… What was this place?” she croaked, curiosity overcoming her nerves.

“Your place of work,” Kreer snapped, either mishearing or deliberately ignoring the tense of her question. He walked beside the gurney, having passed over to one of the hard faced guards to push it. They moved by the high windows into a curling side corridor of rib-like framing. It arced down in a long slope to cross between decks, something virtually unseen in most stations. “The drones you saw are what you will pilot in indentured service to Asset Margin’s mining operations.”

“I’ve never-” Tami whispered, and was cut off as a warning siren suddenly shattered the already bustling noise of the atrium. She yelped and hid her face away when a PA system barked overhead.

“Intruder alert! Section eight! Section sight!”

Kreer keyed his multiband. “The hell is going on up there?”

As he listened to the reply, the alarm ceased.

“Then GET it fixed!” he snarled. Tami began to wonder just how badly damaged this place still was.

He pushed Tami on. “Now, your limited qualifications still make you viable for piloting. Kavala has no strict mandate.” Kreer’s voice continued from behind her. “You will learn and you will perform. I’ve been told to make sure of it and to keep an eye on you while you’re here. You are our only indentured worker, so you’ll get ‘special’ security.”

There was a bitter hint to his tone that Tami decidedly did not enjoy. The sloping corridor came to more cramped conditions of black and brass, a crossroads on the edge of the manufacturing line. The noise was horrific, hissing and clanking shaking the industrial passageways as Kreer directed them deeper into the station.

“You will be provided accommodation and meals that will be deducted from the commission made from mineral acquisition. So don’t worry about starving. We don’t want you to fail to pay back your debt.”

Kreer sounded mocking, and Tami wasn’t certain if it was to her or to the whole idea.

“H-How much?”

“You will see.”

A thick door juddered as it opened, stalled, and then ground the rest of the way. Tami couldn’t see them, but she heard rampant chatter as they moved by accommodation racks for other mining workers. She could smell the latent sweat and thick scent of caffeine from kitchens. Immediately, she felt a clenching terror at being thrown in amongst those she didn’t know, an outcast ‘criminal’ to them.

She needn’t have worried, but the reality was no better.

Under the audible calls of changing shift patterns and assignments, she was wheeled out of their area, by a stairwell marked for ‘Secondus Drone Control Room’, and through to a quieter side of the station’s deck. Here she saw red runes of ancient script above locked doors, each bearing an observation window into a brig. Identical compartments of cells fanned out from the central chamber like the vanes of a leaf; two levels with five doors each. At the foremost door, Tami found them pausing.

“This is where you’ll stay whenever you are not on shift.” Kreer dragged her with a shocked yelp off the gurney, walking with his claws painfully around her wrist. Stumbling, sick, Tami whined and struggled to get him to let go, but found herself being sharply turfed through a barred door.

The compartment was dark, half-hexagonal in shape with a cell on each of the three walls opposite the main door, gunmetal and obsidian facings lit by the faint white of Kavala III through the long, narrow window lining the outer edge. Thrown in the leftmost cell, Tami found a light sheeted bunk, a bare metal chair and desk both welded to the floor and a small access terminal bolted to the desk itself. Strip lighting above, offering a dismal halogen glow, barely helped.

“The computer contains details on what you need to pay back and on drone control. You’re already a pilot.” He scowled. “Apparently.”

“I… I’m actually-”

He knocked the door closed. “So your training shift begins in eight hours. Then maybe they’ll finally see this is a stupid idea.”

Tami hunched against the desk, looking over at the deep red griffon peering through at her. The guards waited outside. “W-Wait, I’m still not recovered, I feel sick! I-I’m not ready for that!”

“No, apparently you’re not.” Kreer pointed at the computer. “And your flight history makes that obvious. I don’t expect much, but if you can avoid crashing another object in training you’ll maybe be able to earn Miss Margin something at least. Learn quickly.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Or it’s me you’ll be hearing from. I am not a babysitter, and I don’t want this task to linger around you. So if you fuck up again, it’ll be me and I’ll not be pleasant, understand?”

Tami could already feel a deep shivering overtaking her. She didn’t understand. This was all too quick. Too sudden. Too big.

“Eight hours till first shift. Clothes will be collected, provided, and cleaned. Food will be delivered three times per day between shifts and before lights out.”

“But-”

“This is your life now. No-one knows where you are. There’s no-one left to come for you. Get used to it and get your head down, and don’t fail another employer.”

And just like that, he turned and stalked off unhappily. Tami got the sense of a predator stuck behind bars just as much as she was. One who longed to let out darker urges. She finally let out her breath when he disappeared.

And was met with silence.

A dark, bare, and utter silence in a warped, alien construct.

That last remark had hit her like a slap. Holding herself, she numbly hit the keyboard on the desk out of a will not to ruminate on those words. She saw a basic UI display. The login - simply a collection of numbers for username and password - had been left for her on a note. Entering after three failed attempts from her unsteady claws, still sitting beside rather than on the bare chair, she saw it was less a computer and more simply an extremely limited workstation for datasheets and shift patterns.

She saw the large numeric displaying how much she was debited by, and her heart nearly stopped.

She saw the average mineral worth intake quota expected per day by most of the voluntary workers on the station. Modifiers for types of mineral, collection rates, repair costs of broken equipment.

Good with numbers like any FTL user, Tami did a mental calculation, taking the averages and applying them to a seven day working week, applying the modifiers, worry welling up inside as each number fell into place.

Twenty eight years.

Twenty eight years.

By the time she worked off the debt Asset expected of her, she would be almost fifty.

Clutching her sore, still chilled body, Tami whimpered and huddled up on the cold floor. The events since waking up had been all so fast. From the infirmary to the captain and Asset, then the station, now here. She barely grasped what was even happening. She hadn’t even begun to piece together her feelings on the certain death she felt she’d evaded. Already she could feel it all congealing, forming into a heavy ball of stress ready to lay on her shoulders.

It had all been so… clinical. Brought here, given a job, told that was it. No drama, no last effort. Just that’s it, you’re a slave now in some backwater independant.

Twenty eight years.

She didn’t even realise how long she sat trying to process the horror of that, until she screamed at the sharp siren alert of food being delivered. The door opened, an automated, tracked aid winding through and placing it through a hatch on her cell door. It left silently.

Tami shook terribly, the one mundane event pulling the trigger. Gripping her head, she felt it all collapse, all crash upon her like a wave. The terror and the sheer utter solitude of her lonely cell, so far from help. So far from warmth. It was everything she had known before. The loss of her ability to go where she wanted. To be trapped.

Panic rose, like a cloying demon stretching its claws over her shoulders, seeping in like the moulded, broken decor of the station’s brig. It crept down the walls like those rib-like bulkheads, winding toward her. The old feelings began to come back, and she felt her already horrified mood edging closer and closer to a precipice she knew she couldn’t dare fall in again. One she couldn’t imagine the effort to stay away from on her own for twenty eight years.

She hadn't even realised she’d started crying until her effort to shake her head broke the sob into a stuttered hiccup. No, no she couldn’t. The thought of being back there, back where she had been three years ago; she couldn’t face it. Heedless of the pain, she got up and paced. What would the captain do? What would Kerfuffle do?

She paused. What would Whisper do?

Tammani looked around.

The Sun of the Night was still in mid reconstruction. It lacked things. Electronics were still being fitted; Asset had prioritised industry above prisoners. Tami was the first. Mind racing, she sat on the bed and tried to wipe her eyes. Figure out the logic - it was what Kerfuffle would do, right? Find something until-

There’s no way they can find you here.

She whined and forced air through her teeth to shove the thought away. What might the station lack? What was the route to have something to do here? Whisper would know; an Agent would know. Eyes blurring, she looked about the chamber. Dared to look at its drooping arches and long broken patterns to search for what felt wrong. Her eyes scanned. Something felt like it was missing, but she couldn’t figure out what. Everything was so unnatural and half-broken that it melded together. Then, finally, she saw it.

There were no cameras.

No-one was watching her. They had left her to her own misery, to wait obediently. They thought her a defeated coward.

They’re right.

Reluctance surged. Fear. Fear of what this thinking would do. The urge to do nothing, do what they said, to not risk it, to just let them win to avoid any consequences; it was overwhelming. Tami froze, summoned up all the courage she could, and went to war within. Quiet. Personal. Yet savage and hard fought. Shivering, claws gripping her sickened, weary body, she remembered everything they’d told her. She wouldn’t let it take her. Not again.

She almost had it. Almost-

A siren hammered into her ears from just above her cell door. The PA system crackled.

“Intruder alert! Intruder alert, section nine!”

Sheltering, she waited till it cut off again, the horrifically loud noise having startled her frantic, hurting nerves.

“Think THINK! I won’t let them-” she whined and beat the side of her head once, a claw over her turning, clamping stomach. “No camera… No cameras! It means… It means… They can’t see if I-I-I-”

She turned and saw the computer station.

And started trying to find something that could unscrew a bolt.

“So if Claudia's main capacitor banks redirect the excess charge into the auxiliaries-”

“-since they're not needed for the BIG jump across any stellar distance-”

“-then it'll give her enough space to handle this activatin' much quicker than normal, right Miss?”

“Yes! That’s it! And by doing it this way, it’ll prime the fold in space. Then it can pop in more quickly and stagger the expenditure to just what we need. Ah, come on-oof!”

Eleven almost fell as she hopped from the rusted hull of an orbital tug to the discordant mess of pulled circuitry heaped up opposite it. Wires and connectors tumbled down the side in a miniature avalanche, rolling to a halt by Kerfuffle’s claws. The big griffon heaved, dragging out an enormous cable over four inches in diameter and lined with insulant, bending polymer. He checked the tri-bar output on its tip, then started hefting eighty kilograms of it onto Claudia’s cargo-sled behind him.

“Careful up there, Miss!”

“I’m fine! Oh!” Eleven circled, before leaping up and diving down into the fifteen foot high pile of discarded parts, hips wiggling in the air as she dug and scrounged. The enormous junk heap was just one of nine of Port Medusa's obsolescence bay, the graveyard for unsellable scrap and the worthless possessions of those, well, ‘repossessed’ by its owner. Beaming spotlights from above shone down on it, giving stark contrast between a spectrum of hull colours and deep shadow in the crevices between. Kerfuffle moved in the quiet, deep valleys of heavy chassis and fallen reactor housings, carefully muscling over the bulkheads fallen between the slopes. Eleven bounded and skipped between peaks and through the scrappy heights.

They’d been hunting for the past hour for materials to use in their plans. Schemes, as Verbena had put it after seeing Eleven clap her hooves and rub them above the drawn schematics, but Kerfuffle had gently opposed applying a negative tone to anything Eleven created. Requirements arranged, they’d come to the lower decks to assemble their shopping list. Eleven was trailed by a sparkling row of transistors, switches, diodes and resonators that all mimicked each jump and prance she made, like school children following their teacher in a game. Every so often two of them would press together and, if they connected, floated down to the grav-sled. For his part, he would check the type of what she found, and ensure to attain the supporting frameworks that could connect them to Claudia.

“Kiffle, what about this?” She held up a red-encased superconductor. “I could do a lot if I could use one of these!”

He tilted his head and peered up. “Sorry Miss. Claudia ain’t really meant to work with them.”

“Not work with, or not work with until I try?”

He smiled at her. “Sorta like if you asked me to grow hooves, Miss.” He felt a brief well of contentment at the giggle he heard echo down from far above. “But if you can find one like it, except green, and connect ‘em together then it’ll be able to understand her better.”

“Okay!” There was a rustling as she started digging among the smaller components up top, like a foal at Hearthswarming being told the entire tree’s presents were for them. Kerfuffle almost had to remind himself to keep looking for a number of tungsten alloy restraints. At least, until the voice came again from up top.

“Soooo… That pegasus? That was Tami’s other mate? I didn’t assume she had more than one.” Eleven didn’t really look down as she floated two things to her hooves and took a deep look into them.

A blue and grey pegasus had followed Verbena and Smile into Claudia earlier. Kerfuffle had felt awkward at his initial wariness. At that moment, unknowns felt like threats, but the moment he’d heard who it was he felt like they’d been thrown a lifeline.

He’d heard Tami talk about Vantage. And whatever chance had brought him to them, he hadn’t needed to hear him say he’d help to know he would for one simple reason. That as far as he considered it, anyone Tami trusted that much and who had helped her with her problems simply had to be a good person. He shook his head gently. “I don’t rightly know every detail, Miss. Didn’t see fit to go askin’, but Mister Vantage and Miss Tami weren’t able to stay together. Seems he’s a good one though. Still cares about her enough to come out here right now.”

“And he’f helfing?” She tilted her head, voice muffled from holding several tools at once in her lips, magic picking out the individual ones she needed out to pry apart a device she’d found.

Next Chapter: The Impenetrable Fortress Estimated time remaining: 1 Hour, 22 Minutes