Life is surprising. Good, bad, sometimes just plain weird and inexplicable, in more ways that people can account for, life is capable of throwing curveballs that they don’t see coming. When he was young, that fact bothered Darius tremendously. Without predictability, he didn’t see how anything could make sense or have meaning. As he grew older, he was able to look back on his past self and see that his struggles with randomness stemmed not from a philosophical dilemma but from the very real concerns of a young boy whose whole life had been lived in a warzone.

It wasn’t order that he craved, it was safety. Osgood had illustrated the difference between the two for him at one point with a simple pack of cards. Together they had built a carefully constructed house, each piece in near-perfect balance with the ones around it. It was a monument to control and precision and predictability.

Thanks to their engineering prowess and steady reflexes, it expanded from a tiny hut to completely fill the dining room table they constructed it on.

Then a stiff breeze blew in through the window and all of the cards collapsed into a pile of two dimensional rubble.

Darius was young enough at the time that he made no effort to hold back the tears that came at the loss of his great effort. That was when Osgood introduced him to the concept of glue.

Their next card castle was much less regular. Cards were stuck wherever looked good and then affixed in position with a healthy dollop of fast drying adhesive. The result was as chaotic as only a child’s unrestrained artistic workings can be, but the castle managed to survive all of the gusts the open windows could throw at it.

That simple afternoon shaped more of the teenage Darius’ thoughts than he paid conscious attention too. Unlike many of his fellow students, he pursued a rigorous course of personnel development, honing both his natural Mental aptitudes as well as an unforeseen talent at manipulating Energetic anima. Those gifts were the “glue” he looked to for safety, and the strengths that made life on Hellsreach bearable.

Then he met Mel.

On an unsafe world, Darius had learned to take the “smart chances”. He’d learned to fight when he could win and evade when victory was uncertain. He was good at it, but he knew he needed to be a lot better than “good” in order to truly be safe.

In Mel though, he found something he’d never expected he could cherish. She didn’t take smart chances. She didn’t fight when she could win. Instead she fought when she needed to.

She fought when people were in trouble, or when there was something wrong that only she could put right. And she didn’t stop just because the odds looked long, or the path was fraught with pain and loss.

Darius knew people who tried to act like that, but he’d never seen anyone make it work before her. She somehow invested herself in what she did completely enough to bring her full strength to bear on the problem, but managed to maintain enough distance from it to be self-aware and able to adapt in ways highly driven people often couldn’t.

Though she never claimed to be, or appeared to have any understanding of it, Darius saw that as genius in Mel. He suspected if he ever tried to emulate her, even with his fairly well developed Mind skills, he’d fall short. Her brain had to be a maelstrom of activity, parsing and analyzing everything around her.

Or maybe she just listened to the people she knew when they offered improvements on her mad schemes or warned her she was going too far. That was a talent all unto itself, and one Darius knew he needed to work on quite a bit.

Whatever the cause of her success, Mel made Darius feel safe about discarding the need for safety. Or at least she had for the several years they’d been together. All of the old desires for safety had come flooding back in recent months though after a new life entered the picture.

“Not that we’re not delighted to see you, but why are you here?” Hector asked. Darius and his biological father had a strong, solid relationship, which meant that Hector was able to be blunt and straightforward with his son in place of the tact and circumspection his career as a politician demanded of him.

“We’re on the run,” Darius said.

“Then why didn’t you break in through the secret doors like we taught you?” Osgood asked as he waved Darius and Mel into the foyer.

“My fault there,” Mel said. “This barge doesn’t do well with squeezing through narrow spaces.”

“You’re not a barge,” Darius said, the words issuing as a reflex.

“Indeed,” Hector said. “You are quite lovely, and also quite wise. Dusty crawlspaces are unpleasant in the best of times. Now, should we be alerting Imperial command for reinforcements, or are you on the run from the Empire itself?”

Darius smiled at the question. From Hector and Osgood’s expressions, either alternative was acceptable. If they had to take on the galaxy for their son, he doubted either of his fathers would hesitate a moment before drafting their battle strategies.

“Neither actually,” he said. “We’re on unofficial leave for the next few months.”

“Unofficial leave?” Osgood asked. “Is this what we called ‘deserting’ on Hellsreach?”

“Less ‘deserting’, more ‘we talked with my boss and arranged for some dopplegangers to take our place for a little while so that we wouldn’t be targeted by a crazed deathcult’,” Darius said.

“I feel there’s a story here that needs telling, but the foyer isn’t the ideal spot for such things,” Osgood said. “Can we get you anything.”

“A place to sit and directions to the bathroom would be nice,” Mel said. “But not in that order.”

Minutes later, Darius found himself alone with his father’s who were waiting eagerly for the story he had to tell.

“This all started with a festival,” Darius said. “Or kind of a series of them.”

He related the tale of their original departure from the Horizon Breaker after Fari’s trouble with organizing one of the Crystal Empresses Gala celebrations. He told them of the various planets they’d visited to help her get an understanding of what people were really looking for, including the Frog Festival planet where they’d been transformed into amphibians.

“I could see that visiting festivals wasn’t getting at the real problem we faced though,” Darius said. “So I sent us on a random skipping path off a black hole and got us shot to the far side of the galaxy.”

Hector choked on the tea he was drinking.

“He obviously made it back,” Osgood said, patting Hector on the back to help him clear his lungs.

“We did,” Darius said. “Fari’s too good of a navigator for that to have been a long time problem. And I think it worked out well.”

“How so?” Osgood asked.

“We needed a break,” Darius said. “All three of us. We’d become so mission-focused that we kind of forgot how to connect with anyone outside a tactical planning room.”

“It would seem you managed to make some kind of connection with Guardian Watersward,” Hector said.

Darius blushed lightly. He didn’t mind acknowledging his relationship with her, but he wasn’t about to get into the specifics of his love life with his parents.

“That was…complicated,” he said.

“Children usually are,” Osgood said.

“We talked about it, having kids, but it wasn’t something Mel though was even possible for her,” Darius said.

“Why not?” Hector asked.

“She’s a Void anima caster,” Darius said. “It’s powerful stuff, but it causes her problems too, like needing special healing techniques when she’s injured and not being able to receive certain magical enhancements.”

“And not being able to bear children?” Osgood asked.

“She wasn’t sure,” Darius said.

“It seems like something convinced her to try though correct?” Hector asked.

“Three somethings in fact,” Darius said. “First there was Fari who pointed out the obvious thing neither of us had considered and set us on the path to figuring out whether it was possible.”

“And that was.”

“Mel’s mother was a Void caster too. She was so powerful of a Void caster that she sort of out-lived her own death,” Darius said. “And she had more children than just Mel, so it wasn’t a fluke pregnancy or a miracle.”

“I take it talking to Mel’s mother was the second ‘something’ that helped convince her to try?” Osgood asked.

“Yeah,” Darius said. “It wasn’t easy from the other side of the galaxy but between the maternal bond between them and the crystal bond between Fari’s gem and the Ravager gem that Mel’s mother inhabits they were able to talk for a little while.”

“And that’s how Mel discovered how dangerous a pregnancy could be?” Hector asked.

“For herself and for the baby,” Darius said. “It takes nine months of diligence and special trance sleeping to ensure that Void anima she carries is kept in check.”

“And there’s a danger to you as well, isn’t there?” Osgood asked, guessing from his son’s expression and what he knew of Mel’s courage that there was more to the story.

“Only as much as I chose there to be,” Darius said.

“What could happen to you?” Hector asked.

“Mel’s anima levels aren’t easy to keep balanced,” Darius said. “That’s true for a lot of pregnant human women, but in her case it’s a bit trickier since she can’t always be sure if what’s draining her strength is the baby, who needs it, or her own Void anima, which doesn’t.”

“So when she gets too low, you step in and offer her some of your energy,” Osgood said.

“As much as she’ll let me,” Darius said.

“And the danger is that she might take too much?” Hector asked.

“It’s a theoretical issue,” Darius said. “But no matter how much I tell her otherwise, she’s not actually the burden that she thinks she is. If anything she needs to let me help her more.”

“So what was the third thing?” Osgood asked. “And how does a crazed death cult factor into this scene of domestic bliss?”

“Well, despite the fact that we were on vacation, we decided to visit a planet named Kies that was holding an ‘Eternal Harvest Festival’,” Darius said. “As it turned out though it was less a ‘harvest’ festival and more a ‘fertility’ festival.”

“That sounds promising,” Hector said.

“We’d kind of decided to take things slowly and let Mel practice with the trance-sleeping techniques for a while before we made any serious efforts to expand our little family,” Darius said. “But then we went to the ‘Summer Crop Whispers’ room.”

“I’m going to guess that it wasn’t a market with talking lettuce?” Hector said.

“Not exactly,” Darius said. “It was a cavern on the seashore, and inside it we heard our daughter’s voice for the first time.”

“Your daughter?” Osgood asked.

“Oh, yeah, Mel’s pregnant with a girl,” Darius said.

“And you heard her speaking?” Hector asked.

“Kies has some odd Aetherial flows,” Darius said. “The Summer Crop Whisper’s cavern carries voices from the future in the present. Specifically the voices of children who will one day be part of your life.”

“But that would suggest your daughter could have been adopted no?” Osgood asked.

“She could have been,” Darius said. “Except when we got back to our ship, Fari ran a scan and, surprise, Mel was already pregnant!”

“A mystical pregnancy?” Osgood asked.

“No, no.” Darius said. “She was conceived quite naturally. We just didn’t think that would be something that could happen yet. Not without significant effort on both our parts.”

“It’s often easier than you imagine it to be,” Hector said. “It’s all the things that come afterward that require the significant effort.”

“Like the death cults that come after you,” Osgood said.

“You know, I was honestly hoping that would be an experience unique to us,” Darius said.

“I’m afraid not,” Hector said.

“It’s actually how Hector and I met if you recall,” Osgood said. “So it’s becoming something of a family tradition I guess.”

“That was a death cult?” Darius asked. “I thought you just rescued me from a bombing attack?”

“Yes,” Osgood said. “A bombing attack by a group that thought Hellsreach had to be purged of all life to regain its spiritual purity.”

“They managed to get themselves nice and ‘purified’ in the end, thankfully.” Hector said.

“But tell us about your death cult?” Osgood asked.

“Well, we made the mistake of telling people at the festival our joyous news,” Darius said. “And that’s when we learned about the prophecy.”

“Damn Aether casters,” Hector said.

“This one read; ‘A child of darkness will be born into the light, and when she claims her power the heavens will tear and a time of great destruction will be upon the galaxy’,” Darius said. “Which, apparently, some people on Kries took to be a reference to our daughter.”

“So Mel is bearing ‘The Chosen One’?” Osgood asked.

“Not as such. Apparently the Kries Old Keepers, as the cult is called, make it a point to kill any offspring of a Void caster who comes to their planet order to forestall the prophecy,” Darius said.

“And the Empire hasn’t stopped them yet why exactly?” Hector asked.

“Kries is outside the Empire, and the cult itself is slippery as hell,” Darius said. “We tried to help the Kries government track them down but we only managed to catch a few cells before we had to get back on duty.”

“A duty which is now being performed by doppelgangers you said?” Osgood asked.

“Yeah, that’s Fari’s present to us,” Darius said. “In order to give Mel and our daughter the best chance of making it through this we wanted to find a nice calm environment for her. Part of creating that was having Fari play puppet master to two doppelganger bodies of us on the Horizon Breaker. She’ll have them make appearances and be nice juicy targets for the Keepers while we spend a few months here seeing that our daughter makes it safely into this world.”

“About that nice, calm environment…” Hector began to say.

He was cut off by Mel’s return.

“I seem to have find some tiny saboteurs working on a nefarious scheme,” Mel said. On her shoulders she was carrying Quinn and Alendo. “They have taken me over and forcing me to demand both cake and pudding.”

The two children cheered at the notion and urged Mel forward like she was a giant robot they were driving.

“Uh, who would these be?” Darius asked, looking from one father to another in confusion.

“You were away too long,” Osgood said.

“Meet your new brother and sister son!” Hector said.

Life was just full of surprises.

Life in the Pryas household had never been dull. As the household had been established on a world given to constant warfare that wasn’t terribly unusual but even once they had relocated to the far more peaceful environs of Titanus, Hector and Osgood had kept up a busy and demanding schedule. They were used to laboring for long hours each day and getting to see far less of each other than they preferred.
Meals were sometimes eaten on the run and other times skipped all together in the bustle and roil of days that offered little in terms of downtime. It was the price they paid for building their new and (mostly) peaceful home world though. They’d thought a lifetime of such demanding schedules would prepare them for fostering the dozen children assigned to help with Osgood’s recovery. They were, of course, completely wrong in that belief.

“It wasn’t me!” Alendo said, his voice high and loud enough that distinguishing it from his sister’s was possible only because she cursed more.

“Yes, it was! I saw you break the painting! I saw it!” Quinn said. “I’m not letting anyone else get in trouble when you did it!”

Osgood sighed and shook his head. In the two weeks that the children had been with them, the house had become a warzone to rival the most ferocious conflicts on Hellsreach. The children were talented at their crafted, and any one of the might make a great healer someday, providing that they didn’t kill each other long before then.

From what Osgood could see, the children didn’t even dislike each other. The fights usually erupted over nothing and aside from the destruction of priceless relics from Hellsreach, rarely involved any actual damage being done. The only consistent thing about the battles was that the lines were drawn very clearly with Hector and himself as being “Out of Bounds”.

As long as one of the adults in the house was present the children confined their quarrels to cutting remarks against each other which they seemed to believe the adults were incapable of noticing. As outsiders, Hector and Osgood also enjoyed the privilege of being beyond the scope of the children’s ire.

In part that might have stemmed from the reputation that Osgood was developing as “the Ambassador who took on a whole pirate fleet” (the tale of his involvement in rescuing their ship having grown wildly out of proportion with reality). A lifetime of politics had taught Osgood to recognize the motivations that people kept hidden even from themselves though.

For as much as they sparred with each other, this was a vacation (of sorts), and none of the children wished to endanger that.

“We don’t have to tell anyone,” Alendo said, lowering his voice so as not to be heard. It was a strategy which would have worked better if he hadn’t been screaming a moment earlier, and might have had some small chance at success if Osgood didn’t have a listening spell cast so that he could keep an ear on what the youthful destroyers of his house were up to.

“They’re going to notice the painting is ripped in half,” Quinn said.

“I can fix it! They’ll never know!” Alendo said.

Osgood was tempted to speak up then and defuse the argument before it escalated to physical blows. The painting was a one-of-a-kind from Hellsreach, but that didn’t mean it was any good. Hector had a fondness for cheesy artwork. Osgood did not. The painting outside their room was all Hectors and if it was as damaged as the children claimed, Osgood was considering whether a monetary reward and the suggestion of where they could find other painting’s Hector had hung up would send the wrong sign.

“You can’t fix it, you’re a klutz with mending spells,” Quinn said.

“I am not,” Alendo said. “I only failed the last test because it was stupid.”

“You’re just going to make it worse if you try to put it together again.” Quinn said. “And you don’t have time. We’re only here till tomorrow morning.”

“Then I’ll do it tonight!” Alendo said.

Osgood considered whether jinxing the painting would do any real damage to Alendo’s development. Odds are Quinn was right and the boy would mangle the painting beyond all hope of repair on his own but Osgood felt the need to be certain of that. It really was an awful piece of work.

“Fine,” Quinn said. “But if you don’t make it look perfect, I’m telling Mr. Pryas and the Sisters that it was you, and they can leave you here.”

“Fine,” Alendo said. “Maybe I want to be left here!”

“They’re not going to leave you with the Ambassador you know,” Quinn said. “They’ll send you to gem mines cause you’re a kid and they can stuff you in narrow places.”

“That’s stupid,” Alendo said. “They don’t have gem mines here.”

“Of course they do you idiot,” Quinn said. “Didn’t you read anything the Sisters gave us.”

“Why would I?” Alendo asked.

“So that you wouldn’t be dumb,” Quinn said. “The gem mines are what people come here. It’s the big deal for why everyone is coming to this place. The whole planet is one giant gem that they just keep chipping off pieces of.”

Osgood frowned at that. Titanus was not a gem world, although such things did exist. Either Quinn was making things up to mess with Alendo or there were rumors circulating about Titanus that could lead to nothing but trouble in the long run.

From his time on Hellsreach, Osgood concluded that the most likely scenario was that both options were true. What Quinn could make up, many other people could too. For the vast majority of the galactic citizens the idea of moving to a different world was a dream that they would never actually be interested in seeing made true.

New worlds were dangerous, scary and uncomfortable. Titanus in particular had issues of strife above and beyond the usual difficulties encountered by a new planet. For many people who’d led comfortable lives on planets where real peace  had reigned for decades, the idea of bearing the burdens of settling a new colony had to be motivated by something they could understand. Like greed. That was something humans and most other sapients could understand on a primal level.

That was fine so long as the people believing that were content to stay home. Osgood knew that was unlikely to remain true forever though. Whether by force of arms or financial duplicity, people would turn their eyes towards exploiting “the gem planet Titanus”. As Ambassador he was in the position to head that sort of thing off, but he had to balance his efforts so that he didn’t make Titanus look too unattractive or it wouldn’t be able to attract the sort of tourism and trade that was vital to developing a new colony.

That was a problem for another day however and as such it joined a rather towering mountain of similar problems that were stacked on Osgood’s metaphorical desk. So long as he was recovering in bed however all those issues were out of his reach. Instead, he was forced to turn his attention to more immediate matters.

“Hector?” he asked on their telepathic link. “When you have a moment, I’ve got something that I need to talk with about.”

It was always best to broach difficult topics in person, but that was a luxury that they were rarely afforded.

***

Later that night, after the children had, in theory, gone to bed Osgood wove a simple spell and waited. As he expected though, he didn’t need to wait long.

“The workshop was a good choice,” Osgood’s projected image said.

Alendo stopped dead in his tracks and turned to look at the ghostly blue image that Osgood had conjured. Remote presence spells had a wide variety of uses, a fact Osgood had come to appreciate more during his weeks of enforced rest. In this instance however, the very simplest use of the spell would suffice.

“I’m not feeling sleepy?” Alendo said. As excuses went it was weak, and the rising, questioning tone Alendo finished with sapped away what little strength it might have possessed.

“So I can see,” Osgood said, nodding towards the pieces of the painting that Alendo had in his hands.

“Oh, umm,” Alendo said. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“It looks like you’re trying to repair a priceless artifact of pre-relocation Hellsreach art,” Osgood said, smiling at the wheels that he saw turning in Alendo’s mind.

“Priceless?” Alendo asked.

“Technically, yes,” Osgood said. “I mean, honestly, could you imagine anyone buying that hideous thing?”

Alendo’s flush of rising panic turned to a blinking gaze of confusion.

“Wait, so it’s not important?” Alendo asked.

“Art is always important,” Osgood said. “It’s just that some of it shows what not to do when being creative.”

“I…I don’t understand,” Alendo said.

“Don’t worry, it takes a while to see things like that,” Osgood said. “The question is what are you going to do with that, and why?”

Alendo looked around, glancing quickly over the room as though searching for a hole to bolt into or a path of escape. With no options presenting themselves, he sighed and looked down before speaking.

“I’m going to fix it,” he said.

“Why?” Osgood asked.

“Because I broke it, and it’s not right to leave it like that,” Alendo said.

“You’ve broken a number of things here in the last two weeks,” Osgood said.

“Yes,” Alendo said. “I can pay for them. Someday.”

“Is that what’s important?” Osgood asked.

“Yeah, I guess,” Alendo said.

“Why? Because you’ll be punished if you don’t?” Osgood asked.

“No, I’ll get punished no matter what,” Alendo said. “It’s just not right. I mean I didn’t break everything, but you still don’t have all that stuff and someone should make up for it.”

“And why would that be you?” Osgood asked.

“Cause you caught me?” Alendo said.

“So if I hadn’t noticed you would have left without saying anything,” Osgood asked.

“No,” Alendo said. “I don’t know. Maybe? It still wouldn’t be right, but sometimes I do the wrong things. Like breaking paintings. And yelling at people.”

“Would you like to change that?” Osgood asked.

“Yeah, but it’s hard,” Alendo said.

“I know of something that makes it easier,” Osgood said.

“What’s that?” Alendo asked.

“A family.” Osgood said.

“I’ve got a sister and she just makes everything worse,” Alendo said.

“So you wouldn’t mind if she stayed behind here while you left?” Osgood asked.

“What? No! You’re not going to send her to the gem mines are you?” Alendo asked.

“That’s an interesting thought,” Osgood said. “And one I’ve spent a bit of time pondering today.”

“No! You can’t do that!” Alendo said. “She’s not good with tight spaces. She gets really freaked out. Send me there instead. I was the one who broke most of the things.”

“I was thinking we might send you both there,” Osgood said. “I’m afraid there’s not much mining being done these days but the Life Crystals do offer some lovely tours if you get to know them and the trust you.”

“Uh, what?” Alendo asked.

“Yes, we could make it a day trip,” Osgood said. “I’m supposed to be getting up and about again soon and I’ll need to find things to do with my time while I wait to be cleared by my doctors. A short visit with the Life Crystals seems like exactly the thing in this case.”

“But we’re leaving tomorrow?” Alendo said.

“Only if you wish to,” Osgood said.

“What do you mean? We can stay?” Alendo asked.

“The short answer is, yes,” Osgood said. “The long answer involves forms and interviews and evaluations, but I can assure you that if you decide you want to stay with us the answer to all of those will be yes as well.”

“Are you…are you going to adopt us?” Alendo asked.

“That’s up to you,” Osgood said. “I’ve talked it over with Hector and we’re both willing to start the process, but ultimately it will be your choice pending final approval by the adoption review specialist.”

“Oh…that’s…” Alendo said and then fainted mid-sentence.

“Apparently better news that you were hoping for?” Osgood finished for him.

***

Morning found the Pryas’ + 2, seeing the other children back into the care of the Sister’s of Water’s Mercy. Several more would be staying on Titanus as well, having found potential adoptive families during their stay. The rest were set to resume their training as healers under the tutelage of the Sisters and while there were tears at the departure, the promises to stay in touch were heartfelt and followed up on in more than one instance.

Hector wandered over to massage his husband’s shoulders once the mob was gone and Alendo and Quinn were upstairs, taking in their new rooms.

“The house is going to feel a lot more full with those two here,” Osgood said.

“Too full?” Hector asked.

“No, just about right I think,” Osgood said.

“I’m just glad our lives will be able to get back to some semblance of order again,” Hector said just in time for their bell to ring.

With a puzzled expression, Osgood turned to look up at his husband.

“Are we expecting anyone else?” he asked.

“No,” Hector said, frowning in confusion.

“Well, it’s not assassins,” Osgood said. “They never ring the bell.”

“Just in case, how about I get the door?” Hector said.

“Just in case, how about we both answer it together,” Osgood said.

Together they marched to the entrance to the house and, with defensive spells at the ready, threw open the door to reveal…their son.

And the woman he loved.

Who was very clearly pregnant.

“Hi Dads,” Darius said. “I know this is kind of unexpected, but well, surprise you’re going to be grandfathers. And we need a place to hide. But just for a few months.”

The Ambassador’s ship tumbled into the endless dark, fires blossoming within to consume what little breathable air the small fighter could produce and Osgood could only think of one thing to remark on.

“This would be an embarrassing sort of end to come to.”

The fire suppression spells had been dispelled when the ship suffered catastrophic damage at the hands of the Purist’s secondary defense batteries. To the credit of the Imperial spellwrights who crafted the fighter, personal scale craft like the one Osgood was trapped in were rarely capable of standing up to a single barrage from a capital ship much less the half dozen that Osgood’s had weathered. That he wasn’t a fine smear of space dust was a testament to the durability the Empire had always required in its fighting craft.

The advantage to that sort of design philosophy was that while the ship had been reduced to a mismatched collection of metal and wood scraps with less than ten percent of its original spell framework remaining, the pilot within was still capable of action, and in Osgood’s case that meant he wasn’t out of tricks to play yet.

“If my luck was good, I’d still have the primary engine crystals that I could draw on for another spell,” he said into the flight recorder in case someone was curious what an Imperial Ambassador tried to do when he was otherwise adrift in space. There wasn’t anything in the official Ambassadorial playbook for that situation, so Osgood took a few pages from his old “Hellsreach Critical Situations Manual”.

Keep fighting.

That’s what the Hellsreach Critical Situations Manual said. It was pretty much the beginning and end of the manual, and Osgood had never had cause to disagree with it’s wisdom.

“Primary engine crystals jettisoned,” the analysis imp said.

Osgood cursed. Rigging engine crystals to explode on contact with the enemy was an old Hellsreach trick. It had a long and venerable heritage and was, in part, why no one in their right mind stole vehicles on Titanus. The colonists didn’t have a good reason to leave their vehicles as fully primed death traps, but some old habits die hard. Especially ones that produce such wonderfully colorful light displays.

“Secondary crystals?” he asked the imp.

The secondary engines on a fighter couldn’t produce anywhere near as much of a bang as the primaries but they would at least let him control the flight of the craft to a degree.

“Secondary crystals ejected and detonated,” the imp reported. “Fifty percent damage to enemy dreadnaught forward capture array detected.”

So, on the good side, the Purists weren’t going to be able to haul Osgood in. On the bad side, he had few options for getting anywhere useful himself. Normally that wouldn’t have been the case. Real fighter pilots were chosen for their capacity at Physical anima manipulation to ensure that even if the ship lost all of its engine power, the caster onboard would be able to get it home, slowly, with their own magics.

Unlike a real pilot, Osgood had many skills, but a talent for Physical anima casting was not one of them.

“Wonderful,” he said. “We get to do this the hard way then.”

For a Mental anima caster, replicating the effect of physical spells involved playing within the rules of physics and finding a method to outsmart them. This often involves explosions when great amount of force were required. In Osgood’s case though such pyrotechnics were not an option. His own ship was rapidly dwindling to possess as much power as a dim matchstick and the only other ships which had the energy to arrest his flight into the void were all busy trying to blast each other into microscopic particles.

All of them except the colony ship.

“This is Imperial Ambassador Pryas to Colony Ship,” he called out on a wide focus telepathic spell. “I will be within range of your aft capture beam within one minute and thirty seconds. Bring me on board.”

“Ambassador?” a panicked young man replied back. “What are you doing out here?”

“Getting that dreadnaught off you, I hope,” Osgood said.

“You did,” the young man said. “They’re fighting the ships that came from the station and the blocking field around us has dropped.”

“Yes, the Void caster who was channel it is have a nice enchanted nap,” Osgood said. “One minute to capture beam contact.”

“I don’t think we’re going to be able to catch you Ambassador,” the young man said. “I read you as passing just outside out our projection cone.”

“No worries there,” Osgood said. “My ship and I will be separating in fifteen seconds. Just look for me, I’ll be within the beam’s capture radius.”

Exhaling heavily, Osgood activated the environmental shield on his suit, used what little Physical anima prowess his had and the remnants of the ship’s maneuvering jets to position himself properly and then pulled the ejection seat cord.

Ejection seats in a space craft are, generally speaking, not a standard option. At best they can’t impart much velocity to the pilot and de-orbiting in just an ejection seat is something only a very few spellcasters are capable of safely. Osgood had selected one of the fighters that contained an ejection seat though because sometimes you don’t need a lot of power, sometimes you need just a little bit exercised at exactly the right time and in the right manner.

The blast from the ejection seat was significantly weaker than it should have been due to the damaged state of the craft but even so it was enough to send Osgood hurtling into space and towards the colony ship, while the remains of his fighter drifted ever farther away.

Sitting in a depowered chair, with only the analysis imp to keep him company, Osgood stared at the sheer magnitude of the cosmos that surrounded him. Billions of points of light. So much life in so many different varieties and yet the close life forms to him, the Purist dreadnaught, were obsessed with murdering everything that wasn’t life them. Or that sympathized with those not like them.

If he’d possessed the power, Osgood would have crushed their ship like tinfoil and reduced them all to space jelly, and for that he was very glad to be as powerless as he was. It was a flaw in his species, and the Garjarack too, that destruction was wired into their psychology on a primal level.

Destroying things felt good. Destroying things that posed a danger felt better, and it was far too easy to convince oneself that people who were different were a danger.

Far away, little more than a pale dot, though, Osgood saw the light shining off of Titanus. In just a few years it had become his home in a way that Hellsreach never had been. It wasn’t a perfect place by any stretch of the imagination. The Purists they were fighting called it home as well for one thing, and they weren’t the only source of conflict on the planet that played host to three major racial groups and dozens of smaller ones.

Osgood remembered Hellsreach though. For everything that was wrong with Titanus, Hellsreach had been worse. Especially in the early days of the war there that predated his birth by over a century. Titanus wasn’t perfect but it was proof that people could change for the better, which, if anything, placed a heavier burden on them to make sure events like the one unfolding before Osgood never occurred. On Hellsreach this sort of attack was expected, accepted and even (occasionally) applauded. People had the excuse of “being at war” and “not knowing any better”. None of that could be the case on Titanus. There was no reason to expect this kind of violence, no reason to accept it and no excuse for people not knowing how to be better.

That was Osgood’s last thought before the capture beam grabbed ahold of him. If he’d been able to feel the force of the beam, he wouldn’t have been surprised that it was like getting pummeled with a sledgehammer over every square inch of his body. It was meant to capture other ships for docking after all, not tiny things like a single human body. As it was though he was unconscious well before the first blow had any chance to register in his awareness.

A wish for better days was Osgood’s last thought before the capture beam bludgeoned him unconscious and, in a rare case of a wish being granted, his first thought on awakening was how nice it was to see his husband’s smiling face waiting for him. Even if Hector was wrapped up in healing bandages not unlike a mummy.

“This doesn’t count as breakfast in bed,” Osgood said.

“It would if it was breakfast time,” Hector said.

“How long have I been out?” Osgood asked.

“Almost two days,” Hector said. “You looked about as bad as I feel, but they managed to put most of the important bits back where they belong.”

“I should hope so,” Osgood said. “I’m rather attached to my bits.”

“And fortunately for me, they’re still attached to you!” Hector said with a devilish smile.

Osgood tried to smirk in response but even that simple motion hurt. He’d calculated everything about getting into the capture beam correctly, but it occurred to him that he hadn’t run a full set of data on just how good or bad an idea that would be. Given that the alternative was burning up, and then freezing to a popsicle in the far reaches of the solar system though, he guessed that whatever the numbers said he would have been stuck making the same choice.

“It looks like you could use some more pain killers,” a young man, the same one from the colony ship if Osgood was hearing his voice correctly, said.

Looking around Osgood noticed that he wasn’t alone with Hector. There was a small army of children assembled in the recovery room.

“Yes, that would be nice,” he said and then glance at his husband to setup a telepathic link. “And who would all of these little people be?”

“These are the colonists,” Hector said, telepathically, “Some of them at any rate.”

“Why are they all children?” Osgood asked.

“It was the wrong colony ship,” Hector said.

“It was the what?” Osgood asked.

“The wrong ship,” Hector said. “Not, technically, a colony ship at all I suppose, but still big enough to count as one I guess. A small one.”

“Yes, ok, but…children?” Osgood asked.

“The Mist Runner, your ‘colony ship’, was registered to the Sister’s of Water’s Mercy,” Hector said. “It’s an orphanage ship.”

“The Purist’s attacked an orphage? Are you kidding me?” Osgood asked.

“I wish I was,” Hector said. “And so do they. News reports up to a hundred systems out are having a field day with this.”

“Oh…oh no,” Osgood said, envisioning what that meant in one horrible moment of clarity.

“Yes, ‘Hero Ambassador Saves Ship Full of Orphans!’, and since you were acting in an official capacity, they’ve been plastering your name all over every broadcast they can,” Hector said.

“Oh gods, that’s ridiculous though,” Osgood said. “I fired one shot! My squadron did all the real work. Wait, my squadron, how did the battle turn out?”

“Fourteen fighter craft were lost, nine of those pilots are in critical condition still, the rest were healed and returned to duty yesterday,” Hector said.

“And the Purists?” Osgood asked.

“They breeched their warp crystals rather than be taken in,” Hector said. “That explosion is what took out six of your squadron.”

“Did any of them hit the escape pods before that?” Osgood asked.

Hector grimaced and shook his head.

“Damn,” Osgood said. “Still not quite at that better tomorrow then.”

“Maybe not,” Hector said. “But recruitment in Purist movements on both sides are down. We’ve even had some people stepping forward to turn in cells that were planning attacks in the next few weeks.”

“Hopefully that’ll last,” Osgood said.

“It won’t, not all of it, not right away,” Hector said. “But it’s a step in the right direction.”

“And a great big target on my back,” Osgood said.

“You’ve got quite the collection back there,” Hector said. “I’m trying to remember if I ever took my own bullseye off you?”

“You’ve had plenty of opportunities to catch me if you wanted to to,” Osgood said.

“What makes you think I don’t have you right where I want you?” Hector asked and bent over to give his husband a quick kiss.

The children tittered at the display of affection and went back to their original activity which was, apparently, softly humming.

“So, I get that we saved them, but why are they here, in my room?” Osgood asked.

“They’re helping you heal,” Hector said. “The Sister’s train the children that they take in. These are in the early stages of learning to be Clerics. They can’t do much spell casting yet, but they can channel their physical anima, so they’re surrounding you with a dense field of it so that your body has plenty to draw from as it repairs itself. Or at least that’s what the Sister who stopped in earlier explained.”

“That’s very nice of them,” Osgood said. “But what’s going to happen to them next?”

“The Mist Runner is being repaired but it’s going to take a month to get it space worthy again, so they’re going to need a place to stay in the interim,”  Hector said.

“Has a spot been selected yet?” Osgood asked, a dim premonition worming into his mind.

“Well, now that you mention it…” Hector began, and smiled broadly at Osgood.

Between his exposure to the vacuum of space, the damage from the capture beam and the madness of the battle it took Osgood a moment to catch on to what Hector was saying. As he did his eyes widened in shock.

“You’re not really thinking…” he began.

“It’s just for a month,” Hector said. “And you could use the day-to-day care.”

“Gods help me,” Osgood. “An entire house full of kids.Only madness can await us!”

Osgood’s calling was not to be a fighter pilot. His skills lay in planning, and communication, and coordination. Hurtling through the the silent, all-encompassing dark of space though, it was the long forgotten combat flying lessons that he was betting on for not only his life but the lives of every pilot flying with him.

“I’m going to regret every space combat class I ever skipped,” Osgood said aloud, trusting to the vacuum that engulfed his small craft to keep that sentiment private.

“I’ve got links to the guilds forming,” Hector said, his telepathic voice flat and expressionless which only served to warn Osgood of how worried his husband was.

“And the Life Crystals?” Osgood asked, keeping his mental voice similarly neutral. They’d been in desperate situations before but for the last twenty years they’d met them together.

“We need time,” Hector said. “And strong links to send their power through.”

Strong sympathetic links were the key to working magic at interstellar distances. Spells with that sort of range needed connections that were so tightly bound together that the two parts still felt like a single whole even if they were separated by light years.

There were various rituals that could craft objects like that. It was how the Empire had created the warp space ley lines that serviced Titanus and allowed easy transit to other parts of the galaxy. Unfortunately, Osgood had neither the time nor the spellcraft to manufacture a suitable link between the Titanus space fighters and the planetary pool of anima that Hector was putting together for the fighter pilots to draw on.

With meant he was going to have to do things the hard way.

“We’ll buy you as much as we can,” Osgood said. “A lot’s going to depend on how tough that colony ship is though.”

“We’ve got an advanced processing crew on the telemetry that’s coming back,” Hector said. “The colony ship is putting up a fight, but the attack ship is tearing them apart. It’s like the colony ship’s shields aren’t even there.”

“They probably aren’t,” Osgood said. “They’ve got Void casters on the attack ship. I’ll bet you breakfast in bed tomorrow that they’re stripping every bit of anima shielding the colony ship has.”

“How is it still flying then?” Hector asked. “Without any shields, the ship would be like an eggshell before the attacker’s kinetic guns.”

“Colony ships are huge. The inner hulls and framework must be reinforced too,” Osgood said. “That’s not going to do them any good if the attackers can tear a path through to the warp crystals though.”

“With the energy blasts we’re seeing that won’t take long,” Hector said. “How long until your squadron can engage them?”

“We’ll be in weapons lock range in just under a minute,” Osgood said. “How long until the Spell Power Pool comes online?”

“Fifty minutes,” Hector said.

“It’d be really nice if you could make that fifty seconds,” Osgood said. “I don’t think we can hold off that kind of firepower for an hour. Not with the fliers we have and the last generation ships we’ve got here.”

“I’ll make it happen faster,” Hector said.

“Then I’ll get us to the colony ship faster,” Osgood said.

He changed mental channels to the attack squadron’s and sent a notification bell tone for the other pilots to pay attention.

“Accelerate to full attack speed and unlock all weapon systems,” Osgood said.

“What attack formation are we using?” one of the veteran flyers asked.

“Chaos pattern,” Osgood said. “Fly erratically.”

“We won’t be able to cross link our shield sir,” the veteran said.

“Correct,” Osgood said. “Disable shields entirely. All available anima to weapon systems.”

“We’re going to be awfully fragile out there sir,” the veteran said.

“The enemy ship is using artillery-class Void casters. Our shields aren’t going to mean a thing to them,” Osgood said. “We need to get in there and get them off that colony ship.”

The attackers were still outside of Osgood’s visual range when his sensors chirped that they’d achieved a targeting lock.

“Guided kinetic missiles only,” Osgood instructed his fellow pilots. “We can’t risk hitting the colony ship and the Purist Void casters will just absorb any energy blasts we try to hit them with. Fire when ready!”

At his command, millions of tiny projectiles were spat from the guns on the fighter craft, their material forms conjured into being by the anima furnaces that drove the small vessels. Each projectile had its own guidance and propulsion system as well as a warhead primed with conjured explosives. Osgood couldn’t see the attackers, but he was able to make out the bright orange-red fireball of an explosion as the tiny missiles impacted the attacking dreadnaught’s shields.

“Minimal damage detected,” the tiny analysis imp on the control board reported.

“They’ve noticed you,” Hector said. “They’re increasing firepower against the colony ship.”

Osgood swore.

“Maintain speed and full fire volume,” Osgood said to the other pilots.

Full attack speed left the fighter’s able to maneuver and line up accurate shots. With no time left for subtlety, Osgood pushed his ship up to its full transit speed and flashed forward from the rest of the fighter group, foregoing accuracy and maneuverability for raw speed.

“What are you doing?” Hector asked, his voice still rigidly neutral.

“We need to get their attention, and I need to be really close to bring my personal spells to bear.” Osgood said.

“What personal spells?” Hector asked.

“Don’t tell Darius about this,” Osgood said. “I really don’t want him ever trying anything this stupid.”

“You’re going to try to disable their Void caster,” Hector said.

“Just a sleep spell,” Osgood said. “Light and easy to manage at range, but it’ll scare the hell out of them.”

“You’re going to be too close in there,” Hector said. “You need to put some power towards shields or they’ll blast you to pieces.”

As if to demonstrate the truth of Hector’s words, the Purist dreadnaught began targeting Osgood’s incoming fighter with its secondary weapons batteries.

Space is silent and vast and empty. Or at least it’s supposed to be. The dark night around Osgood lit up like a bonfire the moment the dreadnaught’s energy cannons fired. Searing blasts of plasma exploded in overlapping patterns that Osgood wasn’t entirely able to avoid. The explosions rocked his ship like the fury of a tempest and he felt a weird claustrophobia coming on when he saw how small the gaps in the projected explosions were on his targeting screen. Despite that he threw more power into the engines and plunged forward.

“I can’t risk any shields,” he said. “If a Void caster gets a link to my power I’ll never get the sleep spell off.”

“Yes, well, I can’t risk losing you,” Hector said.

On the control board, Osgood saw his shield meter start to climb.

“What are you doing?” Osgood asked, panic slipping into his voice.

“The Terraformer’s guild is fully online,” Hector said. “I’m sending you the power they’re volunteering.”

“We need more than one link for that!” Osgood said. “You’ll burn yourself up.”

“Let me worry about that,” Hector said. “Just start casting the Sleep spell.”

Osgood swore again, but did as Hector said.

Flying a ship while simultaneously casting any sort of spell was challenging. Space fighters, like most combat craft, were linked to their pilots to provide sharper responsiveness. Damage to the craft registered as pain to the crew, but only at very low levels. It would be idiotic to design a ship that crippled its pilot when the fight was turning against them after all. Even that low level of discomfort though could be enough to throw an inexperienced caster’s concentration off, especially when combined with the fearful insanity of live battle.

Osgood had an advantage there however. He had experience. Not battlefield experience, but casting in the midst of a violent political debate had given him some preparation for centering his mind when everyone else was dead set on disrupting his thoughts.

He called on that experience as he wove together the essence of his mind into a weapon. In his mind’s eye, he crafted a spear of shimmering purple light. It wasn’t a normal sleep spell. It couldn’t be or else the Void casters would simply absorb it. To avoid that, he submerged the spear’s form into the cosmic aether that surrounded them. Unless the Void casters were also excellent at manipulating mental anima, they would never see the attack coming. All he had to do was survive and get close enough to actually cast it on them.

A blast hit Osgood’s fighter square on the nose and shattered the shield that Hector had put up.

“Shield source terminated,” the analysis imp said and Osgood’s heart froze.

“We’re…we’re still here, most of us,” Hector said, his voice sounding hollow and stretched out. “Resuming transmission now.”

Shields reformed around Osgood’s shift and he went back to weaving the sleep spell while trying to dodge as much of the incoming fire as he could.

In the space of ten seconds, the incoming barrage stripped the shields away three times and each time Hector reformed them and each time he sounded weaker afterwards.

Ten seconds was all Osgood needed through. With a final burst of speed from the overworked engines, he closed the distance to the dreadnaught and felt the minds within it at last. As he’d hoped they were working with a set of telepathic links similar to the ones he shared with his squadron and Hector. The links were protected and he didn’t have the godlike spellcrafting talent needed to hack into them at range and in the time available but, fortunately, he didn’t need to hear what they were saying. All he needed was to do was match the threads of the links to the minds he could detect and looks for the threads that let to nothing.

One of the problems with being invisible is that the environment will still show signs that something or someone is present. In this case, the Void casters stood out sharply due to the fact that Osgood couldn’t see them via Mental anima sensing.

“We’ve got three Void casters on the enemy ship,” Osgood told the group. “Neutralizing one of them temporarily now.”

With that he loosed the sleep spear and felt it stretch out from his hand to spiral into the ship.

To the attacker’s credit they did have mental shielding in place on the dreadnaught, but with the infrequency of that sort of attack they’d only bought the basic variety that represented the strongest return on investment in terms of protection rating vs. gold expended. Since this was the most typical choice for a combat vessel to make, it was also the most typical thing Osgood had fought against in his years on Hellsreach, so he knew exactly how to bypass that sort of defense.

His sleep spear phased right past the shielding, right through the hull and even right underneath the Void anima shields their casters had in place.

“Be bound in eternal slumber!” Osgood said, his voice carrying to the enemy Void caster and quenching their consciousness like a heavy rain dousing a candle.

Osgood put all his will and all of his power behind the spell. It was easily the most powerful spell of any variety that he’d ever cast, but even so he knew it wouldn’t really induce an endless sleep. The Void caster would need to be disenchanted to wake, but that was going to readily available no matter which side won the battle.

Exhausted from the victorious spell casting, Osgood’s focus on dodging with his ship faltered for a second. Once again his shields shattered only, this time, they didn’t reform.

“Hector?” he called out on their telepathic link.

No answer greeted him, the world was silence and emptiness.

Then fire filled the darkness and Osgood felt his ship buckle and start to sheer apart.

“Ambassador Command to all Imperial ships,” Osgood said as power failed on one component after another on the control board. “We’ve got their attention now. Keep bloodying their noses, whatever it takes. And reach back to Titanus to your loved ones. All Imperial channels are open for your use.”

“What’s the plan sir?” the veteran flyer asked.

“They have us outgunned and outclassed,” Osgood said as sparks turned into open flames in the cockpit. “But there’s a lot more of us than there are of them. Let’s show them what it means when we stand together and how much power we can really bring to bear. Give them hell folks. Osgood out.”

Osgood Pyras, former member of the Hellsreach Common Council and current Imperial ambassador to the colony world of Titanus woke with the gentle laziness that greets one in the early hours of the day. Beside him, his husband Hector lay blissfully unconscious.

Blissful for Hector that is. The moment Osgood dispelled the deafening spell he’d cast on himself, the roar of Hector’s titanic snores filled Osgood’s ears with the familiar melody with which he’d greeted the day for nearly twenty years.

It wasn’t a bad trade-off, Osgood decided. Against twenty years of snoring and sheet stealing and sheer pig-headed stubbornness stood twenty years of kindness, support and shared commitment. Together they’d overseen years of warfare and kept their people safe and whole. They’d brought a new world to life and said goodbye to an old one. And they’d raised a son.

Darius was only biologically related to Hector, but in so many more ways he took after Osgood. The two of them, Osgood and Darius, had been constant companions in Darius’ youth and so it was wound up being even harder on Osgood than Hector that Darius had flown off to the stars to chase dangerous dreams and amazing women.

As he slipped out of bed, trying to suspend his thin frame over the creaky floorboards as much as possible, Osgood thought of his absent son and sighed. It had been too long since Darius’ last letter, which suggested the boy was neck-deep in a world of trouble. Again.

Stepping into the shower, Osgood longed for the days when he could set boundaries on his son’s world. The fencing had never been enough to keep the child safe. No children were ever safe in the warzone that Hellsreach had been, but at least while Darius was nearby, Osgood had been able to perceive the dangers that threatened his child and act against them. With Darius off in whatever dark corner of space he’d disappeared to, he was beyond the reach of anything except Osgood’s prayers, and no matter how many of those Osgood sent, he never felt like it was enough.

Despite his ghost-like attempt at leaving the bedroom without disturbing Hector, Osgood wasn’t surprised when his husband joined him in the shower a few minutes later.

“I had the weirdest dream,” Hector said as he stepped into the tiled area and pulled the glass door closed behind him.

“I warned you about the Calfrey Eel last night,” Osgood said. “If it’s not cooked right, the hallucinogens don’t break down fully.”

“The Eel was cooked wonderfully,” Hector said. “And it wasn’t that kind of weird. It was weirdly vivid and solid, not trippy. Almost like a premonition.”

Despite the warm water pouring over his shoulders and down his back, Osgood felt a chill run through his spine. Both he and Hector were talented with Mental anima. They didn’t have the precognitive abilities that Aetherial casters sometimes did but their subconsciouses could be inhumanely talented at putting together pictures of the future from small clues that their conscious minds missed. A Mental caster’s vivid dreams weren’t guaranteed to become tangible realities but it was dangerous to ignore them.

Osgood had woken thinking about Darius, which mean his own subconscious had worked something out too and any premonitions in direction of their missing son weren’t likely to be good ones Osgood feared.

“What did you see in the dream?” Osgood asked.

“Darius,” Hector said and Osgood’s stomach plummeted down to his feet. “But dozens of him. We’d turned our house into a daycare center and there were more of him running around than we could possibly keep track of.”

That was not the kind of premonition that Osgood had expected to hear. And not the kind that he would have expected Hector to take seriously. Usually premonitions were for dire, life changing sorts of events. Not silly fantasies.

“I don’t believe the local zoning would allow us to run a daycare center out of this house,” Osgood said. “Or will that be the next thing the Terraformers Guild formally requests be added to the Titanus by-laws?”

At one time, the two of them had been members of opposing factions in the Hellsreach Common Council and Osgood had never entirely given up his love of needling Hector over political issues, especially ones that weren’t actually important to either of them.

“I suppose that would depend on the Crystal Empire’s official stance on the matter,” Hector said. A laugh accompanied the words, but Osgood wondered for a moment if his husband was actually joking.

“Local zoning is an area which the Empire does not chose to form an opinion on,” Osgood said, playing along with the surface mood of humor. “Although it will be happy to provide knowledgeable advisors as requested.

That was the official Imperial policy on virtually everything in regards to planetary affairs which made Osgood’s job as Ambassador a particularly easy one. On most days.

“We’ll see what today brings I guess,” Hector said. “Wouldn’t want to bother the advisors if it was just bad Calfrey Eel I suppose.”

The rest of the shower and the breakfast afterward passed with the usual pre-day chatter. There was a void of silence in the house that each filled in as best they could. It wasn’t the painful emptiness of true loss but rather an awareness that a harmony of two voices would never be the same as the blending of three.

“Are you headed up to the station today?” Hector asked as he finished the poached eggs Osgood had prepared.

“Unfortunately,” Osgood said.

“I thought you were supposed to be planet-side all week?” Hector asked. “Did something come up?”

“Distress beacon, very faint though, and but close enough to the line that anyone who warps into the system could possibly pick it up.” Osgood said.

The line in question was one of the celestial ley lines that connected Titanus to the rest of the galaxy. Most ley lines were naturally occurring paths of anima that stretched between the stars. Titanus had one of those but the other dozen or so which led to it were all of Crystal Empire origin, constructed by spell casters gifted in working magic across unfathomable distances.

“Pirates?” Hector asked.

“Not likely,” Osgood said. “The Empire kicked the Dispraxia League out of here pretty hard. Last I heard they were still hunting down the stragglers. No, this is probably homegrown.”

“Purists,” Hector said, fatigue washing over his face. After a lifetime of warfare over inter-species hatred, Hector was done with people who wished to cling to the “old times”. The world was new and changing. Its people needed to be as well.

“Probably,” Osgood said. “Just because we came halfway across known space to get away from Hellsreach doesn’t mean people actually wanted to stop fighting. Not when we have such a clean and wonderful planet here that we can ruin.”

“They’re not that bad,” Hector said. “Most of them.”

“The humans or the Garjarack?” Osgood asked.

“Both.” Hector said. “Most of them want to make a new start of things. We’ve seen that time and again.”

“I know,” Osgood said. “But we’ve also seen that simply transplanting people from one ball of dirt to another doesn’t make all their old wounds go away.”

“I thought our intelligence said that the Purist movements were dying out?” Hector asked. “How can they have enough influence left for something like this?”

“There are always people who can profit off unreasoning hatred, and the fewer of the Purists there are the more virulent they’ll become,” Osgood said.

“So what is the Crystal Empire going to do about this particular pocket?” Hector asked.

“I don’t know yet,” Osgood said. “It’s going to depend on what sort of support I can requisition.”

“Here’s to hoping you get a giant gift box from the Empire then,” Hector said.

Osgood spent the flight up to the orbital station considering exactly what he’d want to find in a giant gift box. His early military training wanted to see a “sun killer” scale fleet show up to make it clear in no uncertain terms that Titanus’ space lanes were not to be interfered with. The Council member he’d once been was quick to point out the numerous ways that kind of show of force could go horribly awry though. Not the least of which being the likely upsurge in recruitment for the various “Purist” groups on both sides of the species divide on Titanus as the fear of the “Empire taking away all our rights” became easier to envision.

By the time he arrived at the station, he had his actual requests in mind. A small set of fast response ships, capable of tracking down the erratic signal and locating its source before the Purists behind it found a target to their liking. He had the requisition drafted and gave instructions for his staff to meet him first thing for a review but by the time he arrived at the station it was already too late.

“What happened? Why are the fighters scrambling?” Osgood asked as the Imperial stations docking bay surged in chaos around him.

“We picked up the distress beacon five minutes ago sir,” one of the station’s seers said.

“Are there any other ships in the area?” Osgood asked, already knowing what the answer had to be.

“Yes sir, a colony ship from Kezzela,” the seer said.

“Have we instructed them not to respond to the distress beacon?” Osgood asked.

“We can reach them Ambassador,” another caster said. “There’s a blocking field around the ship.”

“It activated at the same time as the beacon didn’t it?” Osgood asked.

“Yes sir,” the communications caster said.

“How many pilots do we have on duty?” Osgood asked.

“This was a light shift sir, the colony ship wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow, so we adjusted our staffing to account for that,” the communications caster said. Which meant someone had set this up.

“Do we have any readings on what’s happening to the colony ship now?” Osgood asked.

“We’re seeing unusually high Energetic anima readings and telemetry is showing its approach speed has increased,” the caster said.

“They’re under attack and trying to make a run for it,” Osgood said. “Can we see what’s attacking it yet?”

“No sir, all we’re seeing is shadows out there.”

“Shadows?” Osgood asked and then figured out what that really meant. “Oh no no no.”

He started running towards the fighter bays and the seer and the comm caster ran with him.

“What is it sir?” the comm caster asked.

“They have Void casters shielding their ships,” Osgood said. “That colony ship is never going to make it here and our fighters are going to get slaughtered.”

“Should I call them back?” the comm caster asked.

“No, but tell them to proceed at three quarters speed and get me every Mental anima caster on the station,” Osgood said. “If they’re not rated for flying then pair them up with someone who is. Or someone who thinks they can fake it. I don’t care. Just get me all of them in space in the next two minutes.”

“I’m flight certified sir,” the seer said. “And I’m a 6th rank Mental caster.”

“Same here sir,” the comm caster said.

“Good, pick out your favorite fighters then. We’ve got a colony ship to save.”

Osgood hadn’t flown a combat mission in over twenty years and even then he’d been nothing more than boy press-ganged into service by an extreme circumstance. As far as he could see that was the only thing that was ever going to get him behind the controls of a fighter craft. As his tiny ship lurched out into the void, he had to wonder if seeking out a job less prone to putting him in extreme circumstance might not be a wise idea.

“The time for wisdom is past,” he said before turning his comm link on, “but perhaps there’s still room for cunning.”

Placing his palm on the the communication panel, he gave the authorization for a special Ambassadorial channel. It would consume a ton of precious concentration from the communication casters but in this case Osgood felt his use of power could be justified.

“Os? What’s up?” Hector asked in response to the Priority Alert message and the long range telepathic link that formed.

“Typical day at the office,” Osgood said. “Our old office.”

“Oh hells,” Hector said. “What can I do?”

“I need you to get in touch with some people for me,” Osgood said.

“Who do you need?” Hector asked.

“Basically, everyone.”

Yael’s contact from the Silver Saucer had the good sense to wait a full week before arranging another meeting with her. Any sooner and he would have looked desperate. Also he wouldn’t have had time to run a myriad of background checks on her to determine that she was indeed connected with an underworld weapons distribution clan. This was fortunate because if he hadn’t run those checks, Yael wouldn’t have been able to corrupt them and secure his near unquestioning acceptance of her entirely falsified position.

The week delay wasn’t without cost though. Yael was forced to stay in one of the most opulent private suites on Uronos in order to maintain her “visiting princess” disguise. Zyla, meanwhile, was stuck with their previous apartment, mice and all, while she developed her cover as an off-world prize fighter. The two prong approach gave them a much wider insight to the nature of the conspiracy but after a week apart, neither had a particularly deep well of patience to draw on for further delays.

“I could sponsor you,” Yael said over her telepathic link to Zyla. “Princesses do that sort of thing all the time.”

They were on opposite sides of the city but it felt like they were on opposite sides of the galaxy and Yael felt a growing hunger to change that state of affairs. Still, she told herself, they’d waited years to be together another day or two would be bearable.

“That would raise dozens of red flags in our targets,” Zyla said. “Which I’d be fine with but you won’t let me take them apart. Metaphorically speaking of course.”

“It’s not that I object to the idea, but it’s sort of a chore putting them back together,” Yael said. “And we still need them until we have the organizations they’re fronting for under control here.”

“After tonight, the weapon suppliers aren’t going to be a problem anymore,” Zyla said.

“You have your part of the fate spell complete?” Yael asked.

“As complete as I’m going to get it,” Zyla said. “I’ve enhanced the long standing flaws in each of our ‘competitors’ designs and set them against each other as strongly as I could without provoking an open war.”

“And they haven’t figured out that they’re being manipulated?” Yael asked.

“They’re well aware that there are Aetherial spells compromising them,” Zyla said. “The vast majority aren’t mine though. Once things started falling apart for the first weapon supplier, they turned on their nearest rivals all on their own. I think I spent less anima pitting them against one another than you did getting clean water for our apartment.”

“You’re amazing, you know that?” Yael said.

“What kind of luck are you having with Sub-Minister Nerill?” Zyla asked, referring to the man Yael had met at the Silver Saucer.

“He finally took the bait,” Yael said. “We have a meeting tonight at 7:00.”

“He’s convinced you can be trusted?” Zyla asked.

“More than the other sovereignties who are vying to supply his movement with a warp capable space armada,” Yael said.

“And they’re not trying to assassinate you why exactly?” Zyla asked.

“As far as Nerill knows, they’re trying very hard to assassinate me,” Yael said. “That none of the assassin’s he knows about have managed to enter the atmosphere much less get within striking range of me adds to the allure I think.”

“And are any of these assassins actually real?” Zyla asked.

“None of the ones he knows about,” Yael said. “I’ve dealt with others more quietly than that. As far as the other armada vendors know, they each think they’re in the lead for the sale.”

“Who are they actually selling to?” Zyla asked.

“I cheated,” Yael said. “I’ve got a team of Auditors working on them already. From what I gather we’re going to buy the ships from them using their own money.”

“That will hurt their bottom line a bit,” Zyla said.

“Yes, I expect heads will roll,” Yael said.

“You probably only mean that figuratively don’t you?” Zyla asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Yael said, tickled by Zyla’s disappointment.

The Warlord’s daughter wasn’t as bloodthirsty as she claimed to be, but the hard exterior was something Zyla had put a lot of energy into developing. It had been required for her survival while growing up, and Yael felt a warm, aching, thrill when she considered that she was the first one Zyla had let see the person underneath that shell.

“Will you need any backup for the meeting tonight?” Zyla asked.

“That would be delightful,” Yael said. “But we’re almost at the end here.”

“All the more reason to be careful,” Zyla said.

“I agreed, but in this case my cover would be in more danger than I am,” Yael said. “From what I can foresee lining up tonight, I’m pretty certain I can take care of myself.”

“Of course you can,” Zyla said. “You’re amazing too.”

There was a mischievous under-current to Zyla’s words that the telepathic link conveyed with perfect clarity. Shared memories came too, but only for a fleeting second, with the notion that Zyla was eager to see them repeat.

“Ok,” Yael said, her breath catching in anticipation, “We’ll wrap this up as soon as we can then right?”

“Right,” Zyla said and signed off from the link.

Yael stalked immediately into the shower to prepare for her meeting with Nerill and set the water to its coldest possible setting. She emerged, shivering and slightly blue but no less determined to end their assignment sooner than later.

Despite the urge to rush through the evening’s engagement though, she gritted her teeth and took the requisite time to assemble her princess costume correctly. The complexities of the garment, and the need to conjure animated servants to help reassemble it around her, gave Yael the opportunity to also reassemble her poise and the bearing she wished to project.

By the time she made it to the table at the floating restaurant Nerill had specified for the meeting, Yael the Crystal Guardian had been replaced by Her Royal Highness of the Court of the Autumn Throne.

Her Royal Higness was patient, calm and calculating. That was why she didn’t throttle Nerill when he arrived a half hour late for their dinner discussion.

“My apologies for being tardy,” the minister said. “Debate on the current appropriations bill went longer than anticipated.”

“So long as you are appropriating the funds to seal our arrangement, I won’t hold that against you,” Yael said.

“There are no worries on that account,” Nerill said. “Funding for what you offer has already been secured.”

“From where?” Yael asked.

“Excuse me?” Nerill asked.

“Where are these funds coming from,” Yael said. “We have demonstrated our capabilities in good faith to you, if we are to proceed we need to know that your funding isn’t going to dry up when it’s most needed.”

“I assure you that it won’t,” Nerill said. “This is an effort which cannot fail.”

“Our apologies then,” Yael said. “But we will have no part in plans which cannot fail, as they always somehow manage too.”

Yael rose to leave but Nerill placed his hand on hers before she could go. With the wary expression of someone who was certain she had no further interest in the proceedings, Yael sat down once again.

“Please, there is no need for such dramatics,” Nerill said. “I believe we are both too invested in this transaction to back out now.”

“It is never too late to back out of a bad deal,” Yael said. “You’ve seen the weapon caches we can supply and the capital ships. All of it Imperial grade merchandise. It’s not immodest to say that our competitors cannot come close to offering comparable materiel.”

“And that is why we are willing to meet your rather ‘premium’ rates,” Nerill said.

“We have concerns whether you will be able to continue to afford those rates,” Yael said. “Your initial order volumes are notably smaller than we calculate you would require for the conquest of Kremkin’s Reach.”

“We will not need to conquer the Kremkin system in order to pay for your products,” Nerill said.

“You are upgrading a local militia to a fully capable military,” Yael said. “The only target within reach which can return that investment is Kremkin’s. Unless you have another source of funding? One perhaps you would care to share with us?”

“What do you know Uronos, Your Highness?” Nerill asked.

“You are an independent world,” Yael said. “One without the friends and allies required to stand as a player on the galactic stage.”

“Yes, and that is a position which we chose over two decades ago,” Nerill said. “Do you know why?”

“We imagine you are about to enlighten us?” Yael said.

“Political dogma,” Nerill said. “The people who ruled Uronos at the time, and the ones who rule it still, would not give up any measure of their power. So they hid behind ancient treatises on philosophy, and political party platforms, and mindless patriotism and anything they could find to convince the sheep of this world that remaining independent was the only option and that joining the Empire meant submitting to the worst sort of tyranny.”

“But you disagree with that assessment?” Yael asked.

“Of course I do,” Nerill said. “As does every other merchant on the planet who would benefit from trading in the galactic markets.”

Yael watched as the lines of fate shifted around Nerill illuminating moments from the future he sought to grasp. There would be fire, and bloodshed. Thousands or perhaps even millions dead but for Nerill those events passed by in the blink of an eye. Those flames and the screams of the dying would bring the stars to Uronos. Literally the Crystal Stars of the Empire. The High Council of the planetary government would be brought up on formal charges for violating the Imperial Peace. Without any meaningful fighting, Uronos would be brought into the Empire and a new government elected by the people. Immigration would become trivial and the population would shift. More importantly to Nerill though, commerce would grow and he and those connected to him would become wealthy far beyond the limits of what they could attain on an isolated and unconnected planet.

“So you wish to be part of the Empire?” Yael asked.

“Yes, and that is why this plan cannot fail,” Nerill said. “If the conquest of Kremkin’s Reach is successful then we will have expanded Uronos’ reach exponentially. In the far more likely case that it fails however, it will be because the Empire has stepped in and once they take an interest in Uronos we will have access to all the resources and connections that two decades of isolationism have denied us.”

“And you think the Empire will treat you kindly when you’re admission offering is a mountain of the dead?” Yael asked.

“We’re purging the radical and unstable elements from society with this move,” Nerill said. “The Empire conquered countless systems and allied itself with thousands of warlords. They will not be so squeamish as to reject us because of a little blood on our hands.”

Yael watched and caught the threads of fate as he spoke. Each time he referred to “we” or “our”, the threads grew more clear until she was able to tag each one so she could follow it later and retrieve the conspirator at the far end of it.

“And what of the dead of Kremkin’s Reach?” Yael asked. “Do you think the Empire will overlook them?”

“I am counting on the fact that they won’t,” Nerill asked. “Without a crime of heinous proportions there would be no need to make the High Council a scapegoat after all.”

“I see you’ve thought of almost everything,” Yael said.

“Not ‘almost’ everything,” Nerill said. “Everything. There is no outcome to this which does not result in historic levels of profit for all involved. Is that enough to satisfy your concerns?”

“Just to be clear,” Yael said. “You plan to indirectly overthrow the existing government by using the Crystal Empire as your catspaw after you arrange for the murder of potentially millions of Uronos and Kremkin’s Reach citizens. And this doesn’t strike you as too audacious of a plan to succeed?”

“Not at all,” Nerill said. “The mere fact that we are able to put it in motion will ensure its success. The Empire cannot overlook an action like this.”

“And if they try to prevent it?” Yael asked.

“By the time they catch wind of it, it will already be too late,” Nerill said.

“Excellent,” Yael said. “I think that’s all I need.”

“Then you’ll move forward with this deliveries as we discussed?” Nerill asked.

“Oh, I wasn’t speaking to you,” Yael said. “I was speaking to them.”

She pointed over Nerill’s shoulder to  a squad of High Council agents who were advancing through the restaurant.

“What have you done?” Nerill asked.

“Broadcast our discussion to the High Council,” Yael said.

“But why? What could you possibly have to gain from this?” Nerill asked, panic racing behind his eyes.

“By my calculations, roughly 3.2 million lives,” Yael said.

“But your home world’s economy will crash without this! And the Empire will confiscate your stolen goods! And your family will hunt you down to torture you for the rest of your life!” Nerill said. “You can’t throw all that away! It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Perhaps I have another buyer?” Yael said.

“Kremkin’s Reach!” Nerill exploded with rage and reached across the table to throttle Yael. Fortunately for his sake, the High Council agents were close enough to them that they caught Nerill before he could lay a hand on Yael. “You’re selling us out to Kremkin’s Reach!”

Yael simply smiled and sipped her wine as Nerill was led away by the High Council agents.

As satisfying as it can be, sometimes it best not to let your opponents know that all of the checks they did were subverted by Imperial Intelligence. Or that the weapon caches they saw were largely generated by illusion spells. Or that the capital ships were on loan from the Imperial Navy.

“But why didn’t we want Uronos to join the Empire?” Zyla asked later as they lay cuddled up and exhausted in bed.

“We do want Uronos to join the Empire,” Yael said, “But not like that.”

“I guess I can see why millions of dead might be a problem,” Zyla said in a teasing tone.

“That and it shouldn’t be through trickery,” Yael said. “Anyone can be part of the Empire, all they have to do is ask.”

“And what if they never chose to ask?” Zyla said.

“They can chose that too,” Yael said. “But there are some decent enticements for joining.”

“Yes, even if takes far too long to see that sometimes,” Zyla said and snuggled closer into Yael’s embrace.

Yael hated princess costumes. The best ones were posh, and ornate and made her look like a dazzling beauty. Not one part of that matched who she felt she was though.

In her mind, Yael wasn’t a broken nosed brawler but neither was she a delicate royal flower. Her Guardian robes were just about the right level of formality for her. Simple, functional and appropriate for a wide variety of situations. Sadly, mingling with the elite of a non-aligned world was not one of those appropriate situations. Especially not when she wanted to keep any hint of Imperial involvement in their affairs a secret.

“Did you hear they were debating closing down the arenas?” said a nearby woman who was drinking from a long stemmed wine glass.

The viewing lounge at the Silver Saucer was packed, as Yael had expected, with various politician and their hanger-ons who were prominent in the local government. It was the sort of establishment where the local elite could enjoy “common recreations” while remaining above and apart from the general rabble. On the floor below the balcony Yael was on, a crowd of the less wealthy were milling about and at the center of it all, behind glass-steel walls, was the fighting pit where the night’s action would take place.

“It’s well past time, but what sort of plan do they have for the displaced fighters?” a woman standing beside the first said.

“A plan? Do they ever think these things through that far?” the first woman asked.

“I suppose not,” the second woman said. “Perhaps I should speak with the Commissioner of Education about allocating some additional funds for our Adult Education programs.”

“That wouldn’t hurt,” the first woman said. “I’ve been looking into a variety of competitive sports leagues they could transfer into, but so far none have shown an interest in developing a franchise here.”

Yael didn’t envy the two women the dilemma that faced them. Uronos had a large number of arena-style combat theaters. The gladiators who fought in them ranged from commoners hoping to score a lucky victory to the seasoned professionals who were minor celebrities in their own right. Transitioning all of them to a different career could involve more bloodshed and pain than the arena fights produced in a year.

Yael leaned back and tuned in to a different conversation. She wasn’t at the Silver Saucer to eavesdrop. At least not on purely local matters. She was hunting for a bigger catch than that, but to lure it in she had to be careful not to give herself away. So she sipped from a suitably exotic beverage, as was expected of an off-world princess, and appeared to be waiting for an official entourage to come and collect her. That she was positioned at the proper spot to overhear a wide variety of conversations throughout the nearby area had nothing whatsoever to do with luck though.

“Is the buyer here yet?” Zyla asked on their telepathic link.

“I believe so,” Yael said. “There’s no contact on the Aether thread leading back to our arms dealer but it’s suspiciously blurred.”

“That’s sloppy,” Zyla said. “Did they even try to tie the thread to someone else?”

“Not from what I can see,” Yael said. “This is pure obfuscation.”

“Not quite pure,” Zyla said. “If they were serious about it, they would have obfuscated the thread back at the corpse, just like they did with the murder site.”

“You raise a good point there,” Yael said. “How are preparations for your Arena bout going?”

“Well enough,” Zyla said. “I’m through the qualifying matches and have a place in the real show.”

“Your opponents are all still breathing I hope?” Yael asked.

“Yes. Unfortunately,” Zyla said. “I may not enjoy the Empire’s strictures against killing but I can control myself, even when my foes so richly deserve a less kind fate.”

“Thank you,” Yael said. “Has the new arms supplier made an appearance yet?”

“They’re here and meeting with the ring manager now,” Zyla said. “They should be calling me in to speak with them in just a few minutes.”

“Which weapon system will they offer you?” Yael asked.

“I’m an off-worlder,” Zyla said, “So I’ve set it up that they’ll sell me one of their competitor’s ‘fine’ products.”

“While  the actually working models are all going to the locals right?” Yael asked.

“Right,” Zyla said. “And I’ve already got a contact lock spell on the sellers. When the deal falls through and they try to inform their home office we’ll have a solid path back to the people who are behind this.”

“On one side anyways,” Yael said. “The local angle here is just as important.”

“Yes, but I’m not the one stuck dealing with people I’m not allowed to punch in the face now am I?” Zyla said. The emotional layer of joy and teasing that underlay her words had no problem coming through on the telepathic link.

“It’s going to be best two out of three next time,” Yael said.

“They’re calling me in to offer me my ‘special advantage’,” Zyla said. “Good luck with the locals.”

Yael sighed. It wasn’t that she particularly enjoyed fighting, but she had to admit that between the two of them, Zyla had nabbed the better job. Frowning, she began delicately knitting out a tiny, almost inconsequential, fate spell.

“Pardon me, but it looks as though you are waiting for someone,” a tall man in plain suit said.

Yael turned to look at him. One of the loops from her tiny spell had snared the man around the shoulders. More incriminating though was the small curl of connection that she saw leading away from him into a quickly blurred haze.

“I am,” Yael said. “Though I have to confess I expected him to be older and more wrinkly.”

“I see, this is your invitation then I take it?” the man asked, gesturing to the micro-fine thread from Yael’s spell.

“I’m impressed that you noticed it,” Yael said and let the spell dissipate into pure Aether again.

“it was a fine piece of workmanship,” the man said. “Did you suppose that no one here would be able to appreciate that?”

“Let’s say instead that I am delighted to find a fellow practitioner of the subtle arts who has spent the time required to master the discipline,” Yael said. She spoke in her “princess voice”, which she was admittedly rusty at using, but given that her training as a Crystal Guardian had included a several month stint where she served as a real princess in the Court of the Autumn Throne, it was a role she was reasonably sure was she could play with some authority.

“I’m sure our schooling here is but a shadow of the royal academy you trained at,” the man said. “Ours focus too long on the practical aspects of magic I am afraid.”

“I’ve always found the practical aspects of the non-tangible fascinating,” Yael said.

“And is that what you’ve come to observe tonight?” the man asked.

“In a sense, yes,” Yael said.

“There may be little to see,” the man said. “Our fighters are not generally gifted in anything but the physical arts.”

“Is it not customary here to augment the combatants?” Yael asked.

“Yes, to a limited extent,” the man said.

“Perhaps there will be less call for my attention to these exhibitions then,” Yael said.

“It would be a mistake to think of these contests as mere exhibitions,” the man said. “These are serious matches intended to try the competitors skills to the utmost.”

“My apologies for misspeaking then,” Yael said. “I was referring to the exhibition of the augmentation gear.”

“You have a keen eye,” the man said.

“Not for all things,” Yael said. “Just those which intersect my areas of interest.”

“Are you an aficionado of material enchanting as well?” the man asked.

“No, my interest is more financial in nature,” Yael said. She watched as the connections began to shift around the man.

He was tied to the government on Uronos, but only indirectly, which was a surprise. Yael had expected him to be one of the minor functionaries doing the bidding of a more empowered master.

There were threads that suggested he had power and obscured backers, but from the direction and resonance of the harmonies on those threads, Yael guessed that the man sitting beside her was more than a minion or a catspaw. To some extent he was the architect and shaper of the plan that was unfolding on Uronos.

“And what sort of concern do you represent?” the man asked.

“At the moment, none, as I have no contracts on Uronos,” Yael said. “I am, at present, merely observing the competition.”

“Are you sure there is an opportunity for competition here?” the man asked. “All of the enchanted material in the area is donated.”

“So I gather,” Yael said. “And I am not interested in charity work at present.”

“It seems a shame that your evening will be wasted then,” the man said.

“Not wasted, at the least my curiosity will be assuaged,” Yael said. “I’ve lost a few opportunities now to less reputable sorts who promise quality they can’t deliver. I am most interested to see how your contestants fare given that you’ve set an even playing field for them to fight on.”

“It seems you won’t have to wait long,” the man said. “The first match is beginning now.”

Yael watched Zyla enter the ring from one side while man at least half again as tall as she was entered from the other direction.

“As you see they both are outfitted with standard quality armor, shields and bolt casters,” the man said.

“And yet, the gear carried by the male contestant has been modified to include a more sleek appearance. It certainly appears to be higher quality than what his opponent is forced to work with,” Yael said.

“I guess that might yield some psychological advantage,” the man said.

“But not a material advantage,” Yael said.

“What do you mean by that?” the man asked.

“Watch how he moves, compared to his opponent. I’ve seen this sort of bait and switch before,” Yael said. “The seller claims that an enchanted piece has all manner of properties, but once it is in the field the thin veneer wears off the actual performance of the object is exposed as woefully inadequate..”

“You will forgive me for believing that you might be a somewhat biased source for those claims?” the man asked.

“Of course, but you needn’t take my word for it,” Yael said. “The proof is in the performance.”

“I fear this performance will not be so telling,” the man said. “This seems like a decidedly uneven match.”

“That is the first sign I would point you towards,” Yael said. “The fight program says that the woman is a first time fighter in this arena. That seems to be a poor match-up with the reigning champion for the past three weeks. The only reason I can see for it would be to show off the shiny new gear the champion is wearing on a stage where the odds are stacked in their favor.”

“There will be other matches,” the man said. “Perhaps they’ve reserved the more interesting line ups for later in the evening.”

“Perhaps, but see how the woman moves?” Yael said. “She’s avoiding all of his blows and she’s not even accelerating much. That’s a classic sign that the targeting enhancement in the fighter’s armor is failing. My competitors always did have problems with that spell. The real thing to watch for however is all of the weak spots the armor displays.”

“Such as?” the man asked.

“The arm for instance,” Yael said. “It looks like a minor blow caused it to seize up. Unless I miss my guess the knees will lock up next, more or less on their own.”

As Yael spoke, Zyla laid a smackdown on her opponent, locking his leg joints with the barest casting of a physical spell, to make it look like she’d disabled him with nothing more than a series of weak strikes.

One final blow from Zyla caused the armor her foes was encased in to shatter into it’s component pieces and drop off him leaving the fighter in little more than a loin cloth.

“It’s nice to see people who test the products they plan to invest in,” Yael said.

“It can certainly prevent troubling surprises later,” the man said.

“If you should know anyone who is in the market for somewhat higher quality merchandise, you’ll know how to contact me,” Yael said and spun a thicker more obvious loop around the man letting it settle on his shoulders like a mantle.

Or a noose that hadn’t yet been contracted.

Yael Clearborn, Guardian of the Crystal Empire and Arch-Mage class Aetherial spell caster glared at the mouse that stood in the grime covered bathroom with her.

“I’m not getting out of this tub until you leave,” she told the non-magical, non-sapient rodent.

It froze in place and twitched it whiskers at her.

Even naked and unarmed, Yael knew she was more than a match for the mouse, but she wasn’t interested in killing the small creature, and her more subtle abilities weren’t worth using on so small an adversary.

If only it saw itself like that.

It wasn’t a question of the mouse being trapped. The tiny creature had plenty of bolt holes to scamper into. The hotel room Yael and Zyla had rented might have earned a one-star rating at some point in the past but it had long ago sold that star and anything else it could pawn. Where the money the hotel took in went was a mystery, with the only clear answer being that none of it was invested in upkeep or accommodations for the guests. The base boards showed that neglect clearer than a building inspector’s condemnation order. Or at least clearer than the order which somehow always wound up buried under a small pile of money before it could be officially served to the hotel owners.

“Seriously, you need to go,” Yael told the mouse and loomed over it, careful to stay on the far side of the tub’s small wall as she did so.

She wasn’t scared of the mouse. She’d wrestled rodents the size of small houses and survived swarms of creatures that covered entire mountain ranges. She just didn’t want to squish the little thing. It was kind of cute. And it probably had a variety of plagues or whatever that would be a hassle to be treated for. And she was finally clean after a week of trudging through slimy streets and meeting with slimier people.

But mostly it was that the little thing was cute. With it’s big black eyes and pale violet fur. It’s little hands rubbed over each other like it was waiting to speak but had to fight crippling shyness to do so. Yael imagined it asking why a giant monster was in it’s home and had to concede that she was more the interloper than the mouse.

“We’re only here for a little while longer,” she said. “Just put up with us and I’ll leave you some food when we go.”

The mouse glanced away, reviewing its exit options, but stayed frozen in place.

At least until Zyla came in a moment later.

Zyla saw her partner standing in tub, below the dripping shower head, with a towel wrapped around her, and a small mouse sitting in the middle of the small bathroom blocking Yael’s escape.

The rodent turned to look at the new arrival and Zyla locked eyes with it.

“Leave,” she said. Her voice held the annoyance of a royal command and just enough heat to unfreeze the mouse. It flinched in surprise and bolted into the nearest hole in the wall boards it could find.

“My hero,” Yael said, stepping out of the bathtub at last.

Zyla shook her head.

“Truly a fearsome beast to have held you at bay.”

Zyla started to undress, being careful to place her clothes on what few surfaces were both off the floor and relatively clean.

“Did you have any luck tracking down the arms merchant or the ship contractor?” Yael asked as she toweled herself dry.

“Yes and no,” Zyla said, adjusting the water to her preferred, near freezing, temperature. Frosty but clean water gushed from the aging faucet into the tub. “The arms dealer was easy to find. He’s in the city morgue, currently occupying collection bins five through thirteen and awaiting processing. Our ship contractor has fled the planet, for perhaps understandable reasons.”

“And just so I can report on this honestly,” Yael said. “The arms merchant was at the morgue before you found him correct?”

“He hadn’t made any threats against you,” Zyla said. “So yes, that’s an accurate guess on your part.”

Yael wrapped her towel around Zyla and drew her in close.

“What would I do without you to protect me?” she said.

“A lot more damage,” Zyla replied and kissed her on the nose. “Let me get clean though. Morgues aren’t nice places to visit and I can feel the preservatives still clinging to my hair.”

Yael breathed in, inhaling the scent of Zyla’s hair. After a second she wrinkled her nose.

“Yeah, that could use a little shampoo,” she said and released Zyla from the towel grapple.

“We’ll want to hit the Silver Saucer tonight,” Zyla said. “There’s a thread leading back there that resonates with both of our revolutionaries.”

“That’s what I expected,” Yael said. “We tracked them this far separately, but there had to be somewhere their paths crossed.”

“Oh, and one other thing,” Zyla said and beckoned Yael closer.

Given that they could fall back on telepathic communication for secure communication, Yael was puzzled over the need to whisper anything. Puzzled until Zyla pulled her in for a kiss that is.

“Thank you for getting the water running,” Zyla said and pulled away to step into the tub. A series of fortunate (read: Aetherial magic sponsored) accidents had occurred which ensured the delivery of nice fresh water to the otherwise dilapidated hotel. This despite the fact that neither Yael nor Zyla could afford to alert anyone that a new Aetherial caster had arrived on the planet. In Aetherial battles it was often the caster who used the least magic who won, but clean showers were worth the risk of detection.

Yael smiled and touched her lips which buzzed with a pleasant energy. Zyla was still reserved, still quiet and shy in her stern and stoic way, but little by little she was starting to trust the commitment they’d made to each other and take advantage of what that meant.

Yael stepped out of the bathroom before she could let herself be lured into the icy blizzard that Zyla called a shower.

By the time she was done with dressing and a simple set of her daily anima exercises, Zyla was out of the shower too and ready to go over the casefile they’d spent the better part of two weeks assembling.

“This is starting to paint the kind of picture we didn’t want to see,” Zyla said, spreading the key documents out over the spare bed in the small apartment.

“It is but something still feels off,” Yael said. “We’ve got proof of not only mass weapon sales but also capital ships being requisitioned and parked out of system.”

“More that out of the system,” Zyla said. “In direct striking range of two of the neighboring systems.”

“We’re missing a ‘why’ though,” Yael said.

“There’s an obvious answer to that,” Zyla said.

“Yeah. Conquest,” Yael said. “But does that feel right?”

“Consider who you’re asking,” Zyla said. “Do you want the answer I’d like to believe, or that one I was trained to believe from birth?”

“Both,” Yael said.

Zyla looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m serious,” Yael said. “You don’t have to throw your old life away. It gives you a lot of skills I don’t have, and it made you who you are today.”

“In other words someone I’m trying not to be anymore,” Zyla said.

“As in someone amazing, who’s a lot better than she gives herself credit for,” Yael said, laying her hand on Zyla’s.

There was a time when Yael would never dared to speak so intimately with Zyla. There was a time when Zyla would have instinctively jerked her hand away from the gesture. Yael smiled when Zyla didn’t flinch. The old days were fading away, as old days always do, and Yael liked what the new days were bringing.

“A warlord would find being confined to a single world unbearable,” Zyla said. “Having all of your holdings on one world makes them too vulnerable. Conquest was a necessity for a secure reign.”

“But Uronos has been at peace for close to a century,” Yael said. “Well before the Crystal Empire appeared.”

“That’s true,” Zyla said. “But it’s an unaligned world. The Empire’s rules don’t apply here.”

“Not here, but Barstow Sigma is the closest system and that is Imperial territory,” Yael said.

“Which means an attack there would definitely draw an Imperial response,” Zyla said. “So that won’t be their target. The strong do not attack the stronger.”

“Kremkin’s Reach is the next nearest system and that’s unaligned too,” Yael said.

“A viable target then, except Kremkin’s has a defense treaty with the Empire as well,” Zyla said, finding the dossier on the solar system in question. “Could they think the Empire won’t honor the treaty?”

“Maybe, but that’s a large bet to make and Kremkin’s seems like a poor system to make it for,” Yael said.

“Perhaps not,” Zyla said. “A good warlord doesn’t look at a conquest solely for its own sake. They look for the position it can put them in.”

“And what would conquering Kremkin’s get Uronos?” Yael asked.

“By itself very little,” Zyla said. “Some slaves if the civilians survived, some resources too, but Uronos still has plenty of those to mine from the asteroids and planets of its own system. On it’s own there’s not much reason to move against Kremkin’s, or there wasn’t until half a year ago.”

Zyla passed a folder over to Yael. It was one of the documents that Imperial data analysis techs had forwarded to them this morning so the contents were new to the Crystal Guardian.

“What am I looking for here?” she asked.

“A set of celestial ley lines were discovered recently in near orbit to Kremkin’s,” Zyla said. “They’re long routes but they open up dozens of new ‘neighbor’ systems.”

“So Uronos wants to build an empire of their own and now they’ve got the portals to do it with?” Yael asked.

“Maybe,” Zyla said. “It is a possible motive, but I think you’re right. Something feels ‘off’ about that.”

“For Uronos’ sake, I hope the feeling is correct,” Yael said.

“We can’t let them attack anyone can we?” Zyla asked.

“No,” Yael said. “And worse than that, if they do try to attack Kremkin’s, we’ll have to step in and place them under Imperial censure.”

“Or in other words, conquer them,” Zyla said.

“It’s not as simple as that,” Yael said. “Revoking the government of any planet, independent or otherwise, is considered a cataclysm level event. They’ll lose their independence and there’ll be teams of Imperial Auditors and socio-engineers working on the planet for years after that.”

“I thought the Empire revoked millions of governments though when the Empress swept into control of the galaxy?” Zyla asked.

“That’s the ultra-simplified version of the story,” Yael said. “The reality was much more complex than that. The Empress and her forces didn’t ‘conquer’ most of the worlds in the Empire. There were military actions but those were mostly limited to the most aggressive of the Galactic Warlords and their supporters. Peaceful systems like Uronos were approached diplomatically.”

“The Empire took over systems with diplomacy?” Zyla asked.

“In many cases, yes,” Yael said. “The Empresses forces had, and still have, a tremendous amount to offer member worlds. Especially for relatively poor worlds, becoming a member of the Crystal Empire meant receiving celestial infrastructure they could never have afforded on their own and they were given a voice in galactic affairs when otherwise they would have been ignored.”

“And the ones that refused to join?” Zyla asked.

“They stayed unaligned like Uronos,” Yael said. “The Empresses goal wasn’t to unite the galaxy. She just wanted to stop the stellar scale bloodshed that kept knocking planets back into the galactic dark ages.”

“My father claimed she’d overextended herself and had to pull back to delay the Empire crumbling through her fingers,” Zyla said.

“That sounds like the kind of story a defeated warlord would cling to,” Yael said. “You’ve seen the range that we can patrol though. And that’s with spell casting on a human level still.”

“Well, mostly human,” Zyla said. “They’re still worshipping you on Drexden as the Grand Harvest Goddess.”

“That was such a mistake,” Yael said, shaking her head. “My fake divinity aside though, the Empress and the Prime Guardians are on a whole different level than we are.”

“You’re saying they could subjugate the entire galaxy if they wanted to?” Zyla asked.

“Not subjugate,” Yael said. “From what I’ve seen, the Empress does have limits and removing free will from another seems to be definitely beyond her abilities.”

“That’s inconvenient for a ruler,” Zyla said.

“I’m not sure it’s even fair to call her a ruler,” Yael said. “She’s more a living symbol of the Empire, but when you look at who makes the real decisions, that’s all done by the Galactic Parliament.”

“How does that help us here?” Zyla said.

“It doesn’t,” Yael said. “If anything it puts us back to questioning what the motive for the military build up here could be.”

“With how well this was obfuscated by Aetherial anima, I think we’re left with only one option,” Zyla said.

“The Silver Saucer,” Yael agreed.

Zyla reached for her anima blade and flicked it to life. The deadly red brand hummed in her hands and illuminated her face as she spoke.

“So that means we get to fight it out to see who gets to be the visiting princess and who has to brave the gladiator pits.”

Yael called her blade into her hand from across the room, but the fight had already begun.

Darius looked at the rainbow array of crystals on the flight control panel before him. He’d been rated as “Flight Capable” since he was six years old. Originally it had been flight under his own power, thanks to his natural talent at Energetic Anima. Being able to soar through the air like that was an awesome experience but not without its downsides.

Bugs, for example, were not tremendously fun to fly through at a few hundred miles an hour. The same was true of rain storms. And, with rare exceptions (one of which was snuggled up next to him taking an unplanned but much needed nap), flying like that with others involved a lot more lifting and carrying than Darius was comfortable with.

That was why he’d learned to operate as many different sorts of flying craft as he could, an interest which had led to his current role as the team’s warp space pilot.

For a normal flying craft, you needed to worry about only three dimensions. There were controls for pitch, and yaw and while the experience of moving through the air wasn’t one humans had an inherent talent at, it was something they could learn with practice.

Warp flight was a rather different story. The benefit of warp space was that it was both cotangent with regular space but not co-equal. That meant distances in regular space which were measured in light years were sometimes measured in miles in warp space. And sometimes not.

In general, the less mass there was present in an area in regular space, the more condensed the area was in warp space. Or in other words, big empty distances became tiny little gaps.

The problem was they didn’t become tiny little gaps consistently and they didn’t stay tiny all of the time either. In some cases the changes were predictable, in others a potential traveler simply had to react to changes as they occurred.

That was why Darius had dozens of controls in front of him, rather than the handful he would have needed for a flight in regular space. Each smooth polished wooden lever and cool gleaming crystal button controlled a different aspect of the ship’s trajectory. They offered an unbelievable amount of control but at the price of being more than a single human could keep track of.

In that sense, Darius was lucky. He couldn’t have flown the ship alone, and thanks to Fari he didn’t have to. She supplied the navigation and signal processing that a full team was usually required to perform. He, in turn, supplied the physical conduit to the ship and the moment to moment reflexive adjustments while they were in flight.

Together they made a good team.

“How’s it going?” he asked the translucent blue girl, keeping the communication purely on their telepathic link to avoid waking Mel.

“We’re making excellent time,” she said. “We’ve almost entirely around the event horizon for the black hole in the Velar system and after that it’s clear sailing till we reach the spaceport on Nova Helios.”

Blackholes, despite being singularities in regular space, cast huge shadows in warp space and were an inordinately common problem to stumble across (at least compared to the chance of running into one in regular space). Fortunately for travelers they also tended to stabilize warp space in their vicinity, so while they were dangerous to encounter, venturing near them was often safer than following other paths.

“And how about this trip in general?” he asked. “You seemed a bit reluctant when Mel was dragging you out of the planning room, and I can’t imagine the Frog God made this any more appealing.”

“It wasn’t so bad for me,” Fari said. “I didn’t have to deal with getting slimed after all.”

“That sounds like you’re coming around to enjoy this little vacation,” Darius said.

“I have to admit it’s got its appealing points,” Fari said.

“You’ve got holos recorded of the whole frog-thing don’t you?” Darius asked.

“Don’t worry, my blackmail rates are very low,” Fari said.

“Is it wrong that I’m tempted to get into a bidding war with Mel so that Black Team can see the frog holos of her?” Darius asked.

“Only if you win and can’t make your payments,” Fari said.

“I suppose I might have trouble with that,” Darius said. “What with Mel killing me before the holos could get out.”

“Then I’d have a bidding war over who gets to help hide the body,” Fari said.

“I’ll claim a posthumous cut of the proceeds,” Darius said.

“That’s the worst get rich quick scheme I’ve ever heard of,” Fari said.

“I’d say I was a prodigy at making bad plans, but I think this one here,” he nodded at the still sleeping Mel who was slumped against his left arm, “she’d probably try to contest that.”

“Funny how her terrible ideas tend to work out well so often though isn’t it?” Fari asked.

“Yeah, I may be part of ‘Team Engineering’ but I’m pretty sure I don’t have the cleverest brain on this ship,” Darius said.

“You’re brilliant though!” Fari said.

“So all of my test scores claim,” Darius said. “But what you and Mel can do is scary smart.”

“I think I’d rather I wasn’t so scary,” Fari said.

“Is that why Mel dragged us out here?” Darius asked. “Still worried you’re not a real girl?”

“No,” Fari said. “Maybe.”

“You’ve struggled with that for a while haven’t you?” Darius asked.

“It’s a hard question to answer,” Fari said. “There’s so much I can do, but so many things I can’t do too.”

“Do any of them matter?” Darius asked. “I mean who you are isn’t defined by your capabilities.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m defined by the function I was created to fulfill more than anything else though,” Fari said.

“I see why we’re out here then,” Darius said. “And why Captain Hanq was so eager to have us leave.”

“He thought we were a danger to the ship?” Fari asked.

“He thought the ship was a danger to us,” Darius said. “Or at least to you and Mel, and he knew I’d be miserable without you two around.”

“We tend to get in a lot more trouble away from the Horizon Breaker than we do when we’re on it though,” Fari said.

“Yeah, this is more the danger of burning out,” Darius said. “Neither of you have had a break in years, you’re long overdue for one.”

“That makes sense, but I have to confess, I kind of feel like we’re still on a mission,” Fari said.

“I guess we are, somewhat,” Darius said. “So maybe it’s important that we define the mission parameters well.”

“The original plan was to learn about festivals through first hand experience,” Fari said. “And we’re only a few hours away from the next one Mel had on her list.”

“On a scale of one to ten, and bearing the Frog God in mind, how much are you really up for going to another festival?” Darius asked.

“Honestly?” Fari asked. “Maybe a one, or a one and half.”

“Kind of what I thought,” Darius said. “New destination then.”

“What? Where are you taking us?” Fari asked.

“Do you trust me?” Darius asked. “Because there’s still time for me to get back on the original course if not.”

Fari started to speak, caught herself and then sighed.

“You know, for better or worse, I do,” she said.

“I’m glad,” Darius said. “I spend so much time focused on Mel, that I think I forget to tell you how much you mean to me too.”

“That’s ok,” Fari said. “Sometimes I think I siphon away too much of her time, especially on crazy quests like this.”

“There’s nothing crazy about that taking care of you,” Darius said. “And you know, I’ve never minded the time you two spend together.”

“Why is that?” Fari asked. “I mean, I feel the same way with her and you, but I wasn’t sure if that was just more of my programming.”

“Well, for me it’s pretty simple,” Darius said. “She loves you. Being with you makes her happy. You’re family to her and that’s something she’s needed all her life I think.”

“But you’re her guy,” Fari said. “You’re the one she really loves.”

“The one she ‘really’ loves?” Darius asked. “Have you met Mel? Do you think she’s really only capable of loving one person in the whole galaxy?”

“I don’t think there’s much of anything that’s beyond her,” Fari said. “In the thousands of years I’ve been…whatever I am, I’ve never known anyone like her.”

“Maybe that’s why you two are so well matched,” Darius said. “Because I don’t think there’s anyone as amazing as either of you. And not because of what you can do. There’s lots of people with phenomenal amounts of power. You both have something more than that though. Even without any of your powers, I’d still be blessed beyond measure to have you in my life.”

“What if I’m just a reflection of her though?” Fari asked. “Before I met Mel, I wasn’t…kind.”

“Before you met Mel, you were literally bound in terms of what you could think and do,” Darius said. “I’ve read the reports, even the classified ones.”

“How did you get those?” Fari asked.

“I’m not the brains of this team, but I’m not exactly slow either,” Darius said. “Remember, I grew up on a war planet where slicing into the other sides protected files was considered required subject matter for five year olds.”

“Then you know the kind of things I did,” Fari said.

“And I know the kind of things you’ve done since you gained the ability to chose for yourself,” Darius said. “So I stand behind my assessment. You’re as wonderful as Mel is, and neither of you is a copy of the other.”

“Thank you,” Fari said. “I don’t know why, but that means a lot somehow.”

“You’re welcome,” Darius said.

“But that still leaves one question open,” Fari said. “Where are you taking us?”

“I have no idea!” Darius said.

“How can you have no idea?” Fari asked. “We’re drifting back towards the event horizon of the black hole!”

“That does seem to be the case,” Darius said. He slid an amber crystal a quarter turn clockwise, increasing their displacement from the real space gravitational plane. The ship rumbled in response as it’s hold on warp space grew more tenuous. On his shoulder, Mel grumbled and stirred as well.

With the choice of waking up his beloved when she was likely to be in a cranky state or risking being devoured by an inescapable singularity, Darius made the choice that experience and wisdom agreed was the only viable option.

“We’re closing into a peek slingshot orbit,” Fari said. “I don’t have enough data to plot where we’re going to wind up except to assure you it’s going to be at least halfway across the galaxy.”

“Sounds perfect, doesn’t it?” Darius asked. He wanted to keep the mischievous smile off his face but that it was too hard to fight that and the blackhole’s devouring maw at the same time.

It took a mad genius to handle warp space navigation under most circumstances. The one exception to that rule was when you didn’t care where you ended it. In that case all you needed to be was mad.

“How is being lost somewhere random in the galaxy perfect?” Fari asked.

“Because then we definitely won’t have any missions to work on!” Darius said.

Fari started to object and then paused. Outside the window of the ship, the weird swirls of warp space contracted into impossibly dense coils with the paths beyond them unpredictable by any science, magic or math that she knew. A slow smile spread across her face as a sense of freedom spread through her.

“You know, you just might be on to something,” she said as their ship passed the slingshot point and was hurled away, across the light years, to a place they’d never planned to go.

The rain that fell on Targrav carried carried both the cold touch of the day’s misery and the warm memories of past delights. Underneath his gloved fingers, black sand glittered like each grain held a nebula of stars. The faintly shining beach ran down to brilliant azure waves that lit the stormy night with a magical glow that had nothing to do with any spell cast by a sapient.

Targrav had never been to a beach like the one he lay broken on. Across the million, or billion, worlds in the galaxy, he doubted another like it even existed. Despite that, the serenity of that barren stretch called back memories from his earliest childhood.

Midnight swims on a far less lustrous beach with Mera, his best friend and earliest love. Thanks to her, even those early memories sparkled with a light to match the luminance of the otherworldly shore before him.

The rain did nothing to dim the glow of the ocean, or the sparkle of the sands, just as a far distant rain, long before, had done nothing to dim the time he and Mera had spent together. He couldn’t help thinking about her as the warmth in his body faded and a darkness with no connection to the night closed ever inwards around him.

She was above him, above the clouds, above even the night itself, safe and jetting across the vast reaches of warp space. That thought filled him with a fierce heat that the cold rain and the puncture wounds could never touch. It was a heat that could carry his spirit on forever, but unfortunately it offered no support to his body.

The crash had been terrible. They’d hit a storm in warp space that was born from no natural source. Their ship had been forced back to normal space at the perfect spot for the ambush. A distant system, a warp gate close in to a planetary moon. Optimal conditions for attackers to lay in wait for passerby.

Targrav shuddered at the memory of their first sighting of the pirate fleet. Three ships. Broad beamed and running under pure Anima power. No celestial sails for these vessels, just iron plates and engines of fire. Atop the decks of the marauders lay a motley collection of guns and shields that had been scavenged off a dozen better vessels. In place of proper enchanted runes, the pirates had carved crude sayings and blasphemies, as much to inspire themselves as to shock their prey.

Targrav flinched as the storm turned violent. Lightning crashed down from the heavens and split the sea, darkening the waters where it struck them. Thunder followed, booming over the beach and rumbling through Targrav’s flesh to shake his bones. The rage of the clouds was right above him, the storm seeming incensed that he clung to life, despite his injuries and exposure to the elements.

The pirates had screamed in a similar rage. The craft Mera and Targrav flew couldn’t out match even one of the pirate ships, much less three of them. It was a comfortable little bubble boat meant to float on the seas of space and convey the couple to their destination. Mera’s curses couldn’t make it fly faster or dodge more nimbly, but her skills as a pilot almost pushed the little craft’s performance far enough.

As an enchanting engineer, Targrav had known the moment his wife had run to her limit. There were too many bolts, too many beam attacks, too much in the sky to avoid and not enough shielding to cover them. The cascading failure of their meager defenses had left him with only an instant to act and only a single path that he could see.

Warp engines store a tremendous amount of anima. Even for little bubble boats. Without the proper constraining circles, it was still possible to open a portal to warp space but the results were volatile at best. Targrav didn’t have any functional constraining circles to rely on but he also didn’t care if the end result of the transit spells that he cast yielded “energetic” results. All that mattered to him was that the ship’s piloting platform be left in a state where it was capable of acting as a life pod.

In terms of that, every hour of practice he put in, every boring book he ever studied, and every miserable test he ever prepared for finally paid off. The warp portal formed flawlessly. Inside its volume the storm of enemy fire died away, whisked into the aether by the warp portal’s exposed skin.

For a brief moment Targrav felt hope flair that he might reach the flight deck in time but before he could take even a single step in that direction, the warp spell failed cataclysmically, as unbounded warp spells always do.

The explosion rent the bubble ship in half, with the flight deck and what was left of the engines rocketing into warp space and far beyond the reach of the pirates when the engineering deck and the rest of the ship were shot in the other direction, down to the surface of the moon the pirates had made their base on.

It was not an easy descent or an easy landing. The remains of the ship included too many small, sharp objects moving at too high a velocity. Even with the protection of his enviro-suit, Targrav had not been spared.

But neither had the pirates.

The damage the exploding warp portal did to the bubble boat was trivial compared to the effect it had on the three warships.

The pirates were greedy, where proper military tactics were to engage warp capable targets at range, they’d all raced towards the bubble boat, eager to be the first to board, and the first to claim the spoils of plunder.

All three of the warcraft paid for that. Their shields were woefully inadequate to repel a blast of the magnitude that hit them and each popped like a soap bubble. The iron plating they were armored with didn’t fare any better, crumpling to foil and shattered slivers of metal which would have been a danger if any of the pirates had survived being popped and crumpled and shattered themselves.

In the wake of the warp portal’s silent explosion in normal space, there had been only isolation. The remains of the bubble boat had fallen to the surface of the moon, inertial dampening spells struggling to retain their coherency until the impact with the surface dissipated them in one final burst.

The spell burst had saved Targrav from the trauma of the crash landing, a fact for which he would gratefully write a long and heartfelt endorsement for the bubble boat’s manufacturer, except that he could tell from the pain in his side and the numbness in his legs that he wasn’t likely to write anything for anyone again.

All in all though, he felt good. The pain was there but as long as he lay still and let the rain wash over him, the cold helped numb it away. He could picture drifting off to sleep under the rolling, roaring drone of the cloud choked sky. Sleep seemed peaceful and eternal sleep even more so. All he had to do was close his eyes, listen to the thunder and rest peaceful in knowing that Mera was safe.

Pushing himself to a sitting position was agony. Sheer, pointless agony. He was stranded with no ship, no food, no anything on an unexplored moon that was off the standard warp lines and unlikely ever be visited again.

He tried to stand and fell over, fresh waves of pain radiating from the stabbing pain in his side. From his new position, helmet down in the sand, Targrav noticed the faint scent of ozone mixed with the salty tang of the ocean.

The pain was bad but the scents were much worse. The enviro-suit was supposed to be sealed.

Targrav held his breath and looked for the hole but there wasn’t “one” to find. The suit was ripped in a hundred places and the helmet’s visor was missing more pieces than it retained.

On a more positive note, he decided, the air hadn’t killed him in a single breath. Under the circumstances, that didn’t seem to leave him much choice, so Targrav drew in another lungful of air. If the pirates lived here, Targrav hoped the moon’s atmosphere wouldn’t contain anything too toxic. When he didn’t immediately start coughing or choking, he counted the gamble as a victory.

In a few moments, the pain became more manageable and Targrav rolled onto his side. The black nebula sand spread softly beneath him, forming a welcoming bed.

Or a grave.

The thought pushed Targrav back to his knees.

However comfortable the beach was, he couldn’t stay out in the rain.

Strewn around him were pieces of the bubble boat. Bits of glass-steel and fragments of wood. Each was valuable even in their present state, but the thing that caught Targrav’s eye was the smooth and almost intact observation dome from the bubble boat that lay half buried in the sand.

He and Mera had spent many nights together in that tiny space, watching the stars and planning for their future. The cold space outside had done nothing to steal away the warm words they shared or cool the heat of their touch.

Targrav rose again, slower this time, but even more determined. The transparent dome would be cool, the warmth it once held forgotten in destruction of the bubble boat. Even if it was as cold as the rain though, it could protect him. Provide shelter from the wind. Hold in what little body temperature he had left.

The trek across the sands was no more than fifty feet, but it felt like a journey of hours.

With each step, Targrav asked himself what the point of continuing was. Each moment he bought himself was another moment of pain. He knew if the end came like this, if he struggled against it, he’d leave nothing but a messier corpse.

The wind confirmed that belief by spearing through the rents in his enviro-suit and chilling him to the point where he was left trembling.

So much easier to lay down in the soft, inviting sands.

With one wobbling step after another he pushed on though.

The observation dome called to him. It held more than the promise of warmth. It held memories of the future. The one he planned to see with Mera.

Searing pain so bright it eclipsed Targrav’s vision burned through him. He was not all right. Not by any stretch.

But he was alive.

Step by step, faltering, weakening, but always advancing he continued until he rested his hand on the glass-steel dome and discovered it was warm enough to almost burn him through the enviro-suit’s glove.

The ship’s heat had been lost, but the fire of re-entry still lingered in the durable material.

Heartened by that stroke of luck, Targrav eased himself to the ground gently and pulled himself into the dome.

It was shelter. It was all that he had left of home. It was enough for moment.

He rested, blackness sweeping over him for the blink of an eye that lasted either a few seconds or a few hours. However long it was, Targrav felt some of his anima had been restored by the time he opened his eyes. His wounds had worsened, but with the energy he’d recovered and his minimal training in healing magics, he was able to halt the degradation and temporarily deal with the worst of the injuries. Even that small exertion though drained him to the point where sleep overwhelmed him again.

In his dreams, he saw himself, alone on a tiny, forgotten pebble. His struggles for life condemning him to an eternity of loneliness and isolation. Without Mera, he wasn’t sure why he’d fought so hard to continue on.

The storm was raging when he woke next. And the sun was shining.

Targrav took several seconds to fit those two things together in his drained and pain-addled mind before successfully reframing the first of those impressions.

The storm wasn’t raging.

A ship was descending with full thrusters blaring as it screamed into a landing position.

Targrav thought about the pirates and tried to rise. He might have to fight them off.

The ship was on the ground when he regained his senses from falling again and people were running towards him. He struggled to stand once more, but before he could there were reassuring voices and soft hands turning him over so that he could breath more easily.

“This is him,” a woman said. “The enviro-suit matches the description Mera gave us.”

At the mention of his wife’s name Targrav felt new life stir in him. It was either that or the influx of healing anima that the woman sent surging through his body.

“My name is Ilya,” the woman said. “I’m a healer from the Imperial fast response ship Horizon Breaker and we’re here to rescue you.”

“How did you know?” Targrav asked, his voice rough with the damage from sand and wind and rain.

“We got your wife’s rescue beacon signal,” Ilya said. “She jury-rigged it to transmit back both of your locations. Crazy thing I guess. Rescue beacons are the last thing in the world you want to mess around with.”

“Is she safe?” Targrav asked.

“Sort of,” Ilya said.

“What do you mean?” Targrav asked.

“Well, she kind of kidnapped the rescue party we sent for her,” Ilya said. “And stole their ship. She’s about an hour behind us and we’d like you to help us talk her into not breaking any more galactic laws in trying to rescue you.”