Silverfleet and Claypool
Chapter 14: Back to Talis

Nine days later, Halyn Silverfleet returned to the Talis system. They had all been here before, except for Conna, who had never been further in than Marelon, and Tilla and Ginger, whose experience of planets with a million people or more was little and none. The pirates who had looted this system for several years, and Claypool and Silverfleet who had defended it for over a year, looked upon its five planets and its blue reflection nebula with bittersweet recognition.

“I sure hope we can do something about it,” said Jana Crown. “I hated Talis when I was growing up, but, you know.”

“I wonder how long it’ll take to get here,” said Vya. “It was just getting up to speed when we left.”

“We got here first, anyway,” said Silverfleet, “for whatever it’s worth. Let’s set down someplace. Anyone mind if we use the old pirate base?”

“Do you mean the forward hideout?” Cloutier replied. “Sure. Isn’t that where you slaughtered about a dozen of us, way back when we were shooting at each other?”

“It wasn’t a dozen. You’re exaggerating.” She laughed. All the former pirates flinched.

Twelve hours later, the eleven women were climbing out of their ships in a spacious and cleanly cut cave in an icy asteroid. It was black and empty inside—what little the pirates had left had been yanked out by the Talis starfleet.

“This really takes me back,” said Cloutier over the helmet comm.

“Yeah,” said Bell. “But I didn’t want to go back.”

“Me neither. We did a lot of work on this place, and we’d have to do it all over again if we ever wanted to live here.”

“So,” said Claypool, “no power?”

“Nope,” said Cloutier, “only what your ship brought with you. But it’s home, sort of. Let’s go find my, uh, room.”

“It won’t have any air,” Tilla pointed out.

“Yeah. And all my posters have probably been ripped off. Well, all the partitions along the way have been blasted through, so we should be able to fly, if we go slow.”

“You lead,” said Silverfleet, climbing back into Vanessa.

So she did, and the eleven fighters groped back along a hall designed for walking, passed through a large chamber and stopped just into the hall on the other side. Then Cloutier turned Giselle in place and scuttled forward into a chamber, where she set down.

“Two more inside,” said Silverfleet. “Mine, and Claypool’s. And Conna’s—since that cat doesn’t have a vac suit. The rest of you land out in the dining room there, or whatever it is. Four will be enough to restore air to Del’s boudoir.”

A few minutes later they had a membrane over the opening to Cloutier’s old apartment, and an airlock in the ice-rock wall, and the four fighters inside had pumped out enough air that they could take their helmets off. They had each brought in food according to their tastes and the programming of their ships, and a flask of Vanessa’s whisky went around, as did several pipes of Bell’s Yellow Roost special.

“So,” said Cloutier, “we wait for it to show?”

“No,” said Silverfleet. “I try to contact the local authorities.”

“But they already know what’s coming,” said Vya. “And why should they listen to you?”

“I told those people in the trench on that moon that I’d get help for them. So I have to do it. Besides, we know something that the people who got away before don’t know—the death toll.”

“So you’re going to call them?” asked Jana. “Or fly in to talk to them?”

“Word of advice,” Elan put in. “The White Hand Council on Marelon was pretty lazy. They didn’t pay too much attention to detail. But the Talis council was supposed to be real hard-core.”

“Lazy?” Vya repeated. “They killed Conna’s son.”

“And about a million other people,” said Conna. “But Elan’s right. The Talis White Hand had a nasty reputation. We heard all about how lucky we were not to have them in Marelon.”

“Everyone on Talis was like that, I thought,” said Bell. “Isn’t that why you left, Jana?”

“Exactly,” said Jana Crown.

“The old Talis government had a tendency to resist the facts, as I recall,” added Claypool. “That’s why Central won the battle, remember?”

“Wait,” said Tilla. “We’re going to help the White Hand?”

“Okay,” said Silverfleet, “that’s one in favor, ten opposed. Or are you on my side, Ginger?”

“I’ll fly second to thee,” Ginger replied. “And I fancy Helga agrees with thee.”

“Oh, I agree with you,” said Claypool. “You should go in—I doubt that calling will be enough. I’ll apply my second in command expertise to setting up our new HQ.”

“I’d volunteer to go with you,” said Cloutier, “but I used to have a reward on my head in Talis. Why don’t you take Ginger and Tilla with you? They weren’t the dreaded Talis pirates.”

“And me,” said Elan. “I saw what was happening on Marelon-3. How long do we wait?”

“Let’s party a little and then sleep on it,” Silverfleet replied. “Say, Del, nice big boudoir. How many women did you sleep with?”

“I had a girlfriend,” Cloutier replied. “I think you or one of your underlings killed her.”

“Oops. Sorry.”

“Forget it. She was a slob.”

A day later, Silverfleet, Elan Klee, Tilla Pool and Ginger Grandmaison took off from the asteroid for the starbase near Talis-3, four light hours away. They decelerated to a near-stop a hundred million kilometers from the starbase and opened casual negotiations for a closer approach.

“Talis base, this is Halyn Silverfleet and three companions. We have recently come from Marelon and we have news of the attack on the planet more recent than your freshest reports. We declare that we have no violent intent toward Talis or its citizens or toward the Central starfleet. We request safe passage for consultation.”

It took five and a half minutes for the transmission to race across the emptiness to the Talis-3 starbase, and exactly eleven minutes later they received—nothing. They marked time for another hour, and then detected four fighters emerging and heading toward them. “It can’t be an attack, can it?” asked Elan. “They can’t be that stupid.”

“It’s Fiona,” said Tilla. “It’s her fighter, anyway.”

Six minutes later, Fiona’s communication arrived, racing ahead of its sender, who was muddling along behind at a percent of lightspeed. “Halyn,” she said, “I’m glad you’re here but don’t get your hopes up. Let’s meet on T-4 beta.”

“Trust her?” asked Elan.

“By now, yes,” Silverfleet replied.

Silverfleet’s group reached the moon first and waited in orbit for a couple of hours for Fiona, and then they landed together. The tension lifted when they all got out of their fighters and exchanged hugs. “Nice to see you again, Dalsandro,” said Silverfleet, grabbing Fiona’s second.

“Elan Klee,” said Fiona, “the most underrated pilot in the galaxy.”

“Your secret’s out,” said Silverfleet. “They saw you in battle.”

“Aw, gosh,” said Elan. “Almost as good as Julie Dalsandro, and not as good as her at pool.”

“We’re going to have to round up a table soon, Elan,” said Dalsandro.

“Speaking of pool,” said Silverfleet, “this is Tilla Pool and this is Ginger Grandmaison.”

“They look like they’re about sixteen,” said Fiona.

“And let’s see if I remember,” said Elan. “Carlys Cantrel, Carin Ringstrom?”

“Very good,” said Carlys Cantrel, a Central pilot with a Talis accent.

“Ringstrom?” Silverfleet repeated. “Like the Alcen Ringstroms?”

“I’m from Alcen,” said Carin Ringstrom, “so I suppose I must be some relation, but we were dirt poor. I’m sure we always voted for them.”

“So how do you feel about fighting for the White Hand?” asked Tilla.

The four women in Central-issue vac suits looked at one another. “You have to understand,” said Silverfleet, “Tilla’s grandfather was shot by Central starfleet at Three Star Station.”

“White Hand,” said Carin. “I don’t even say the words. I fight for Fiona.”

“I understand,” said Tilla. “I fight for Silverfleet.”

“I understand,” said Fiona. “Fighter pilots are different. I’m sorry about your dad.”

“Granddad.”

“Sorry. Are you from Central?”

“Yeah, like, New York, but I don’t remember it at all. I grew up at Three Star. This seems like a crowd to me.”

“New York?” asked Fiona. “I’m a Dubliner myself.”

“Ireland. Cool.”

“How about you—Ginger, was it?”

Ginger looked at Silverfleet, then said, “I come from somewhat further off.”

“Oh,” said Fiona. “You’re the one from New Home. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me and my core wing. Okay, Halyn, I think we’ve settled all the introductory issues. Now how are we going to deal with this, um, thing?”

“I have no idea,” Silverfleet replied. “I don’t suppose your Council will take any bold steps.”

“Oh, on the contrary. They’ve rounded up all the dissidents.”

“There are dissidents left on Talis?”

“There are always dissidents. Say, what are we calling this thing?”

“The end of the Talis colony, if someone doesn’t figure out something,” said Silverfleet. “There are what, ninety million people here?”

“Ninety-four,” said Julie Dalsandro. “Car and I were at Marelon with Fiona, and I didn’t see anything like a weakness in the thing. But it doesn’t matter. Admiral Kenney’s gonna throw all his ships at it no matter what.”

“So did he have any reaction at all to my message?”

“Just to allow me to meet with you,” said Fiona. “I’ll tell you, we had some words when the girls and I got here, what, eight days ago or whatever. Most of you know about my temper, but I have never been so angry, not at a supposedly superior officer anyway. The council has two bad traits—they’re dumb as toast and they’re complete assholes. Kenney’s better, he just has the book crammed up his ass, and he has the charisma of gravel. Other than that he’s a great commander.”

“The Talis White Hand Council,” Julie Dalsandro added, “they’re all true believers. They can’t do a thing without consulting the Prophets. The Prophets always indicate killing a few people.”

“Yeah,” Fiona went on, “that’s why they need lots of dissidents. And if they can’t get dissidents, then sacrificing some military will always do in a pinch.”

“Well,” said Silverfleet, “let’s make sure your girls aren’t part of the sacrifice. They can throw all the starfleet types away they want to. The White Hand’s all over Starfleet.”

“But we have to save Talis,” said Carlys Cantrel. They all looked at her and she added, “I was born here. I know the place sucks. But it’s home.”

“It doesn’t suck,” said Julie Dalsandro. “Just because it always has lousy governments. It always does, Commander Silverfleet. It’s not the Talians’ fault.”

“Maybe it is,” said Silverfleet. “But we won’t hold it against you, Cantrel. Hey, we have a Talian of our own—you don’t know Jana Crown, do you?”

“No,” said Cantrel. “Turned pirate, right?”

“You’ve heard of her. Well, don’t hold that against her.”

“I’m sure she wants to save her home world just like me, even if we both ran away from it.”

“We’ll see what we can do.” Silverfleet looked at Fiona. “Well,” she said, “it’ll be along soon. Maybe they’ll want to talk when they’re faced with it.”

“Again, don’t hold your breath,” Fiona replied. “What can we do, anyway? We can’t kill it.”

“Even if we can’t, we can save a lot of lives. You’d need to dig deep holes, save as much air and water inside the planet as you can. Start right in making as many air processors as you can. The sooner you start, the better. Maybe you can get them to at least plan for the possibility that what happened at Marelon will happen here.”

“Maybe,” said Fiona. “How many people could we save?”

“According to Vya’s and Tilla’s projections, maybe everyone, if you start now. I mean, the surface of Talis is going to go, and it’ll take a lot of work to make a new one, but if you start now you could save everyone in underground chambers. You need a lot of filtration, though.”

“And Commander,” Tilla said to Fiona, “every day delay could mean ten million dead.”

“Oh, I’m all over that,” said Fiona. “But the White Hand Council will only care about their own underground sanctuary.”

“And ten breeding women for each of them,” said Dalsandro. “But we’ll try.”

“Thanks,” said Silverfleet, “that’s all we can ask.” She looked at her friends. “Shall we go?”

“Hey,” said Fiona, “good luck.”

“You too.” Silverfleet gave Fiona a quick hug, and nodded at the other three Central pilots. “Nice meeting you guys.”

“The honor was ours,” said Dalsandro. They all shook hands, then they all hugged, then they all told each other to take care, and then the eight fighters split into two groups and flew off in different directions.

Silverfleet returned to the old pirate hideout, and she and her companions took to waiting. They patrolled, they communicated openly with Fiona’s fighters, and they theorized about the crystalline thing and what to do against it.

“I thought it was a ship,” said Vya de Har. “Or an illusion, or an astronomical effect. I never considered the possibility that it’s alive.”

“It certainly seems to be,” said Claypool.

“So it eats planets,” said Cloutier, “and it flies through hyperspace, and it’s bleeping huge. It can’t be from around here, or we would’ve noticed it, wouldn’t we?”

“What if there’s a whole population of them somewhere?” asked Tilla.

“Maybe it’s the only one of its kind,” Meena suggested.

“It could have some kind of weird life cycle,” Bell put in. “Maybe it sort of wakes up hungry every million years or so. Like my dad.”

“I’d like to say it’s from somewhere else,” said Elan, “but where? There’s nowhere beyond Marelon except Colfax and New Home, as far as liveable planets. I don’t think it came from Colfax, and it definitely didn’t come from New Home—did it?”

“Oh, nay,” said Ginger. “We ne’er saw it once, until ye came and we could fare in space.”

“So why didn’t it attack New Home? Or Colfax?” asked Bell. “It was obviously in the neighborhood—wasn’t it?”

“Maybe,” said Silverfleet, and they all fell silent. “Maybe,” she said again, for she hadn’t really been listening, “if we attack the connections to that spherical structure.”

They spent a little time fixing up more rooms, and that “night,” Silverfleet and Claypool lay on blankets side by side in their own room. Their fighters sat side by side resting.

“So,” said Silverfleet, “did it ever occur to you that this is the worst thing that could possibly have happened to the White Hand? I mean, we’re talking about millions of people dying, but you can’t tell me there isn’t a temptation to let it run amok for a while.”

“Oh, there’s definitely a temptation,” said Claypool. “But I took Ethics. No matter what your ethical philosophy is, you’ll have a hard time outweighing the painful despairing deaths of a hundred million people.”

“So we find ourselves on the same side as the Central starfleet, and not on the same side as the thing that likes to eat the Central starfleet?”

Claypool opened her mouth, then sighed. “Well,” she said, “it’s not as if we can just go right out and kill it, so it probably will run amok for a while.”

A few days later, the Crystalline Thing ambled into the system. A few days after that, Halyn Silverfleet, Fiona Rigan and Elan Klee were dropping into the atmosphere of Talis-3, then zooming over an endless patchwork of farms and swampy lakes, then hurtling up to a sky-scraping spire, to alight in an airy bay a kilometer above the streets of Talis City. Ten minutes later, Silverfleet was speaking to the twenty-three men of the White Hand Council of Talis. It was the same room where she had met the old Talis oligarchy, when they gave her a medal for defeating a band of pirates. The blue color scheme had changed to white, but the oligarchs looked much the same. She had a safe passage signed by Admiral Kenney, and she was, as usual, speaking her mind.

“You propose to attack it with your full starfleet,” she said.

“This council has not made public its course of action in the current situation,” the council secretary said, after a moment of glances and whispers among the members.

“No. But you plan to attack it with your full starfleet. And you don’t have to confirm or deny this, but you have a battleship, three or four T-39s and planetary cruisers, and a couple dozen fighters. No, Commander Rigan has told us nothing—everyone knows what the usual Central fleet looks like. So here they are, a full fleet against this thing that looks like the framework for a planet—where have I seen this before? Marelon, that’s where.”

“To the point,” Admiral Kenney interjected, “how can we do better than they did?”

“I don’t think you can. I don’t know—neither do you. We’re the galaxy’s experts on it, and we’ve identified one structure in its interior. Maybe it’s the brain, maybe it’s the engine, maybe it’s, well, take your pick. All we know is this one internal structure with lots of nerve connections—well, they look like nerve connections, anyway—well, we think they do.”

“Impossible,” stated one council member. “It’s not alive. It can’t have nerves or a brain.”

“Perhaps Commander Silverfleet speaks metaphorically,” said another.

“Perhaps I do. Perhaps I don’t. Perhaps no one in this room can say whether it’s alive or not—no, don’t yell at me, I know it’s against your beliefs to imagine an extra-human being that could have a mind of its own or be a threat. Extra-galactic, in fact—because one of the few things we’re sure of is that it came from outside the galaxy.”

“Impossible!”

Silverfleet shrugged. Fiona said, “It doesn’t matter where it comes from. What matters is that we stop it before it does to Talis what it already did to Marelon. We need to send some fighters in for another look at the inside—if we don’t fire any shots, it probably won’t attack us while we’re looking. We identify some targets, then we go in with force and take them out. And maybe we really can beat this thing. Because if we don’t, Talis is doomed. Take my word for it.”

“Central Starfleet has got the human race where we are,” said a council member. “I don’t hear anything here that says we shouldn’t trust Admiral Kenney to take care of the situation. We’ve all come to rely on him and he’s never failed us.”

“And whom should we trust?” asked another. “Admiral Kenney, or these—fighter pilots?”

“Yes,” said a third, “this whole story—eating air and soil and oceans and so on—it’s beyond belief.”

“Fine,” said Silverfleet. “Don’t believe your eyewitnesses. Or the video. What do I care? I have no great love for Talis. But there was a time when you relied on me to protect you, from the pirates.”

“And a lot of those pirates are fighting on your side, now, aren’t they?”

“That’s not on the agenda,” said Fiona in a controlled voice that spoke of trouble to come. “Over eleven million died at Marelon. There’s a hundred million here. After this, it’s en route to Midday, with what, another twenty million—and if you draw a straight line through Marelon and Talis and Midday, you hit Alcen next, then Central.”

“This is all ridiculous,” said one council member. “We have no reliable information except for the fact that this thing is a threat. Well, if it’s a threat, let’s attack it!”

“But if you have no information,” Elan Klee put in, “shouldn’t you investigate?”

“And have the fighters hold their fire?” said another member. “Isn’t that what Commander Rigan said? If it’s so dangerous, why should we waste our fighters on an unarmed scouting mission right into the enemy starship?”

“Because it worked,” said Elan. “At Marelon. It was the only thing we did that worked.”

“That,” said Silverfleet, “and telling people to get underground or sail out over the ocean trenches. Besides, it’s not a starship, it’s a living thing.”

“Absurd.”

“Ridiculous.”

“You’re out of order, Commander.”

“Admiral Kenney, what do you advocate?”

“I advocate,” said Admiral Kenney, a gracefully aging officer from Central, “that we give it all we’ve got, as far from the planet as possible, and put all our gusto into it, and evacuation plans and the like can wait until we see how we fare in open, honest battle.”

The three women looked at him like he was of extra-galactic origin, but the council felt he breathed an air of common sense into the deliberations, and several of them said so.

“So,” said Fiona, “if I may ask, do I have leave to inspect the thing, or not?”

“Commander Rigan,” said Admiral Kenney, “I appreciate your intentions, but we may need all our forces for this attack. I’m afraid I can’t permit any diversion of strength to such an effort.”

“So the answer is no?”

“The answer is no, Commander Rigan.”

“You don’t want to learn anything about it? You know nothing now.”

“Commander,” said Admiral Kenney, “we believe we can bring sufficient force to bear. That’s all this is a question of. And you and your wing are part of that force.”

“So you plan to attack it the same way they did at Marelon, even though you know what happened there. You don’t need any more facts, like where might it have weak points or what can you really do to harm it. But that’s not enough—you actually order me not to gather any more facts on my own. I suppose you want to keep Silverfleet from inspecting it, too.”

“She can do what she wants,” said one council member, but another said, “Perhaps she’s right. If Silverfleet’s pirates find something we don’t know, they could have an advantage over us,” and another agreed and suggested that Silverfleet might know more than she ought to already. “What is it to her?” he asked. “Just ask yourself. It’s an awfully big ship. Have you ever heard of a big ship going anywhere without a fighter escort?”

“Excuse me,” said Fiona, flushing, “are you saying—?”

“Commander Rigan,” said the secretary of the council, “you and your fighters will remain on alert status here at Talis until Admiral Kenney calls you out, and you are to have no contact with Commander Silverfleet until—!”

“Oh, I don’t believe it!” shouted Fiona. Silverfleet looked at her: her face was so red her freckles had disappeared. “I don’t believe it! You’re about to order me to take her on to keep her from learning more about the thing!”

“Just because you’re afraid of her,” one started.

“Just because you’re fecking morons! Just because you’d rather fecking sacrifice a hundred million people than admit Humanity might have an enemy it can’t fecking blast out of space.”

“Now, Commander,” said Admiral Kenney, “we really do have the situation—!”

“Under control? Really?” She pulled her Central Starfleet pin off her vac suit. “Well, you can feckin’ take control of this. Because I’m done taking orders from you assholes. Have a nice fecking week—because that’s about how long Talis has left!”

She threw her pin at the secretary of the council and stormed out, followed by Silverfleet and Klee. They were ten levels away, getting off the starbase lift, when they spoke again.

“Good job, Fiona,” said Silverfleet. “No, I’m really proud of you.”

“Oh, shut it. I’m such a bimbo. I can’t believe I bent over for those guys all these years, bent over and told them I liked it that way. Well, come on, let’s get out of here.” She stalked up to a comm unit on the wall and punched out her code. “Julie,” she barked, “get the wing to the bay and let’s get out of here. The core wing, Julie. Rigan, out.”

“The core wing?” Silverfleet repeated.

“The ones I can rely on.” A minute later, they were all in the bay, and there, along with Klee’s fighter and Vanessa, were six others and five women in Central vac suits. Fiona went up to her second and saluted. All five saluted back. “You were ready awful quick,” said Fiona.

“A good second plans on the likely eventualities,” replied Dalsandro.

“Dalsandro, Cantrel, Ringstrom you know. Cera Celaren, Selun Ro, this is Commander Halyn Silverfleet and Wing Second Elan Klee. Julie, the others—?”

“These are the ones we can rely on,” said Dalsandro.

“It’s plenty. These, Halyn, are the best fighter pilots currently flying for Central.” She smiled at the five. “Girls, get those Central pins off. We’re going over the fecking wall.”

They were pursued, by another dozen fighters, but when they turned to face them, the Central fighters sensibly turned and went the other way. An hour after they left, the Central fleet put out from the station, but their destination was 40° to the right of the pirate hideout—the angle along which the Crystal Being was approaching Talis. The fighter pilots relaxed and conversed.

“So,” said Fiona, “what’s it like, being a pirate?”

“I have no idea. I’m a freelancer. And it has its good points and its bad points.”

“Hey, Wing Second Klee,” called Selun Ro, “you aren’t from Veldar, by any chance?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“It’s your tan complexion,” Ro replied.

“You’re both from Veldar?” Silverfleet put in. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in the company of two different people from Veldar, except when I was there myself.”

“Where did you go to school?” asked Elan Klee.

“District 441,” said Ro. “The Fighting Tigers. We were winless in girls’ basketball and soccer my last year in school.”

“What year would that have been?” asked Elan. “I was on the soccer team.”

“I graduated in 3347,” Selun Ro replied. “I was born in 3330.”

“Hey, me too. I think I left the system in 3347. I never did graduate, but my dad got killed mining and I got hired away to work the Marelon asteroids.”

“So,” asked Fiona, “have we established that although you share the same home world and the same birth year, you two never once met?”

“I guess not,” said Selun Ro. “I might have seen her on the soccer field. I mean, it’s a planet of fifteen million. But I have to say, I never thought a daughter of Veldar would ever fly with Silverfleet.”

“Or Rigan,” said Elan Klee. “I guess you and I have now done both.”

“What an honor,” said Silverfleet. “And to think, an innkeeper’s daughter from Bela grew up to fly with the Great Klee.”

“So they didn’t listen,” summarized Suzane Claypool. The eight fighters had landed in the old dining chamber, and their pilots had just crowded into Cloutier’s old boudoir.

“No, of course not,” Silverfleet replied. “But it was worth it just as a recruiting trip. Look at the quality recruits I brought back. So, any questions arise from my report?”

“Well, we still have no idea what to do. There’s that.”

“Suz, I did everything I could. The only thing left is to go in and have a look around.”

“In its guts?” asked Selun Ro with distaste.

“At Marelon we flew right through it, um, me and Del and Vya, and we never got attacked. It didn’t know we were a threat.”

“That’s because we weren’t,” Cloutier pointed out. “We’re still not.”

“Well,” said Claypool, “in that case we still have nothing to worry about.”

“That sphere thing,” said Vya. “I’m sure that’s something.”

“I know, I know,” Silverfleet replied. “But what, and how do we hurt it?”

“The only questions,” said Claypool, “are how many of us, and how soon. You passed it on your way out, and the fleet’s on its way in, so they should be—well, if you believe in simultaneity, they’ll be in battle in about half an hour. And if they haven’t figured out anything new, it’ll still be on course an hour from now. We can get to it before it drops its fangs into Talis if we leave right now.”

“So do we try to fight it?” asked Silverfleet.

“Well,” Claypool went on, “if we’re going to have any chance at all of saving Talis, we’d better make this more than just a recon mission. We’ll need everyone, even Miss Central Loyalist here.”

“Fine, call me names,” said Fiona. “I deserve all of them. I can think of a name for you.”

“What name would that be?” asked Silverfleet.

“Uh, Killer, for one, as you know very well. Or you, Commander Selkirk, oops, I meant Silverfleet. But at least you left off that medal you won at Taraadya for beating me again.”

“Now, now,” said Silverfleet. “That medal’s safe back at New Home. In a nice jewelry box, the first I ever owned. Suz, you should’ve seen her tell off the Council. Suz, she’s on our side now.”

“Do we really have to trust her?” asked Cloutier.

“No,” replied Fiona. “No, you don’t. We fought against each other—I would’ve killed you at Taraadya, if Halyn hadn’t been around to monopolize my attention. Of course it was you who knocked me out instead, Cloutier. No, you don’t have to trust me. I’m not sure I would.”

“I’m not sure I do. No, I’m sure I don’t.”

Fiona’s wing objected vociferously. “Look at her,” said Julie Dalsandro. “Look at her the way we see her. She’s the best commander I’ve ever had. She’s never failed me. She even got me out of Taraadya, when she had no advantage at all—she told them she wouldn’t go without her second.”

“We don’t have much choice, Del,” Silverfleet pointed out. “We have eleven. Wouldn’t you rather have seventeen?”

Cloutier looked at Claypool. “She’s right, of course.”

“Of course she is,” said Elan Klee. “Look, why would I trust her? But I do—if Halyn trusts her, then I do. I trust all of these girls.” She looked at Dalsandro, then Ro, then Cantrel. “Besides,” she went on, “we really don’t have a choice.”

“Look,” said Silverfleet. “We’re not going to have a vote on this. We may just possibly have a chance at saving a hundred million lives. A hundred million, okay?” She looked around. Everyone nodded. “Okay. Here’s how it’s going to work. We’re going to split three ways. Let’s have the top nine pilots go for that sphere thing, as Vya calls it. It’s the only differentiated internal organ we’ve identified, so hey, do you suppose it’s important or anything?”

“And the other eight?” asked Cloutier.

“Vya takes four and, um, any of you guys have science?” she asked, looking at Dalsandro.

“Cera did exobio at University of Siri,” replied Dalsandro.

“Perfect. Vya, you take Ginger and Tilla and, um, Jana.” Jana Crown started to complain, then shut her mouth. “Cera—Celaren, is it? You take, um, let’s see.”

“Ro and Ringstrom,” said Celaren. “Um, sorry, girls, but you know.”

“Oh, no problem,” said Selun Ro.

“Okay, and Meena, she has science—well, space engineering, right, Meena?”

“It is sort of an engineering problem,” said Meena.

“Okay. Vya, Cera, you’re wing commanders. Your two groups are on recon. Look for any kind of structure, anything that’s different from the rest of it. Stay way out of the way of those tentacles, though. I understand they eat fighters too, when they notice them.”

“No doubt,” said Dalsandro. “Boggs got chomped by one while she was blasting at close range. I don’t think she even made a dent on that node, but one of those things got the front of her fighter and another got the back and they met in the middle. And another one ate Frieda whole, I think just because she gave it a dirty look.”

“Well, then, don’t give it any dirty looks,” said Fiona. “Understand?”

“Yes, Commander,” said Vya and Cera.

“Now,” Silverfleet went on, “that leaves—me, Del and Kris; Suz, Elan and Conna; Fiona, Dalsandro and, um, Cantrel. We’re going straight for that spherical organ and seeing what we can do to it. But we have to strike a delicate balance between risking our lives and possibly saving those hundred million, okay, ladies? Because even if we all get ourselves killed trying, I’d say we have a snowball’s chance in a blue giant of actually stopping this thing.”

They packed up everything they owned, and then seventeen fighters were out of the hideout and accelerating toward Talis-3. In the first hour of flight they got to witness another Central starfleet being taken apart by the Crystalline Thing. The major difference this time was that the remaining Central fighters seemed anxious to prove their bravery by contributing to the thing’s nutrition. By the time Silverfleet and company were in pursuit, a battleship, three cruisers and eleven fighters had been eaten. A cruiser and five more fighters were fleeing toward the Midday system.

After the fight, with the thing an hour away from the planet, troopships began taking off as well, thirty-four altogether, enough to carry over four thousand troops. They would be out of its reach if they hurried and it dallied over its prey, but the thing might just pass them on the way to Midday. Freighters arose from the planet like a flock of geese off a lake, at least four dozen.

“Fools,” said Fiona. “Why are they going to Midday? That’s where it’s going next.”

“It’s nice on Midday,” replied Dalsandro, who came from there. “Besides, maybe they have high hopes of us.”

“These five,” said Silverfleet of a smaller flight of freighters, “they’ve got more the right idea. They’re headed for Veldar.”

“It has to be pretty bad on Talis to make Veldar look good,” said Elan Klee.

It was another twenty hours before the seventeen fighters caught up with their quarry. It was now only a few hundred thousand kilometers from Talis-3, and only a few minutes away from attacking the starbase, which had been evacuated, anyway; it was now blasting away with all guns on automatic.

“Okay, pick your targets, Vya, Cera,” called Silverfleet. “Keep your eyes open, ladies, and make sure your sensors record everything. Any little detail might be enough to save a billion lives.”

“Yes, Commander,” Vya and Cera replied together, and then they turned their comms to their own little wings. In another minute they had turned aside to enter the beast at different points, while Silverfleet led her nine straight into the wide avenue in its middle. They spread into three rows of three and flew on up what seemed to be its colon in academy-perfect formation. At five kilometers a second, it would take them twenty minutes to reach its center. Around them, the pulsing lights of the beast kept their own quiet rhythm of digestion and locomotion.

“It’s coming up,” called Cloutier from Silverfleet’s left. “I marked the spot. Sending.”

The other eight signaled their receipt of the mark. “Okay, ladies,” said Silverfleet. “Keep formation till we get there.” She paused to make the sharp turn upward into the thicker mesh of the beast’s innards. “Then, we spread out around the sphere and take readings for a hundred and twenty seconds. I’ll send a five second countdown and we’ll start blasting the connecting tubes. Tail of each wing—that’s Bell, Marais and Cantrel—is responsible for warning us about tentacles.”

It was another fifteen minutes before they had picked their way to the vicinity of the spherical body. It consisted of at least two dozen layers of gridwork, connected to the rest by struts and girders as well as many thin tubes. The material was the same as everywhere—a hodgepodge of metals and ceramics and plastics—but the energy signatures here were intense and complex, and the light show around them was quite hypnotic.

“It’s thinking,” said Fiona. “This is no propulsion unit. It’s not accelerating or decelerating much right now, and yet this thing is obviously busy.”

“Some fluid or something in these tubules,” Claypool noted.

“No tentacle nodes nearby,” said Conna. “No sign of danger.”

“Yeah, that’s what the admirals at Marelon were saying,” Fiona replied.

“Halyn,” said Cloutier, “if I’m reading the surface spectra right, we won’t do much to it with photons. I think we could at least chip it with explosive.”

“Okay, you heard that,” Silverfleet told them. “Get your missiles ready. One more minute. Kris, where are Vya and Cera right now?”

“Vya’s down near the bottom, flying just inside its outer boundaries. Cera’s picking her way through, about a hundred kilometers in, on the far side from us.”

“Picking up node activity,” called Carlys Cantrel. “On the side facing the station. It’s preparing to attack.”

“Good. It’ll be distracted. Suz, keep an eye on that fluid. Cantrel, call out when it starts the attack.”

“It just did, I think.”

“Okay, Suz, note that. Okay—five, four, three, good hunting ladies, let’s go.” She whipped Vanessa around toward the inside of the sphere and fired off four missiles, her maximum load. Now thirty-six tiny missiles wove their way around the complex, found targets and struck. As soon as her missiles were gone, she fired four more, and then four more.

Before they could tell if they were having any effect, Bell and Conna both gave a cry. Silverfleet turned and saw a skinny tentacle holding the front of Bell’s fighter in its toothy mouth. Another came from behind, open to chew the back of her fighter off. Before it could, Cloutier whirled and put three missiles inside the mouth, and it retreated in apparent disgust. But Bell wasn’t home free: the mouth in front closed tight on her fighter. She hit full power in reverse, and two thirds of her fighter tore loose and shot backwards, her vac-suited feet dangling out the front.

Silverfleet whirled and saw Conna dodging and weaving against four little mouths. Claypool and Klee fired missiles and then followed them in, distracting them enough that Conna got out. They turned ten kilometers away in the middle of the body and started back toward the spherical organ. More roving nodes began to approach, tentacles waving.

“Node activity in the area,” Cantrel called somewhat unnecessarily. She was facing a node swaying on a neck a hundred meters in front of her, when another emerged from the tubework twenty meters behind. Four of its tentacles went out and laid hold of her fighter before she knew what was happening, and in moments, Carlys Cantrel had been swallowed.

“That’s it, we’re out of here,” called Silverfleet. “Everyone out in different directions. Meet up over the north pole of the planet.”

“And fecking watch where you’re going,” Fiona added. “Come on, Julie, let’s go.”

She practically had to bump Dalsandro into leaving the scene. Behind her, Claypool’s wing was scattering, Claypool calling to the other wings to relay the rendezvous point.

“Where are you going, Halyn?” asked Cloutier.

“Following Bell,” said Silverfleet. “Look.”

Bell’s fighter had been backing through the beast when it ricocheted off another node and was grabbed by a toothy mouth. Bell pulled herself out of her seat and shot out of the hole in the front of her ship a moment before it was eaten. Ten seconds later, Silverfleet slammed to a stop a few meters from her, and then eased up and until Vanessa’s nose poked Bell in the stomach. “Hang on,” she called over the suit-to-suit comm.

“Oh, yeah, right,” said Bell, but she did. From there it was a nerve-racking half hour’s flight out of the creature, at a maximum speed of two kilometers per second, with Cloutier flying shotgun and Bell hugging the smooth skin of the fighter, but finally they were in space. The other fighters had joined up at the Talis-3 north pole, but now they broke off and joined Silverfleet.

“I don’t know how long I can do this,” said Silverfleet. “And I’m sure Kris feels the same way.”

“It’s okay,” Dalsandro replied. “That freighter over there—the captain owes me a favor.”

So they turned their wing for a slow flight toward the armored merchant that sat a hundred thousand kilometers away, while for about three hours Kris Bell hung on to Vanessa’s nose. “At least tell me,” she said over her helmet comm, “that we learned something worthwhile.”

“We learned,” said Conna, “that it goes for the lookouts. You and I were lucky—it ate Carlys.”

“We learned it doesn’t like having missiles shot into those little mouths,” said Elan Klee.

“It definitely has internal liquids,” said Conna. “No idea what they are, of course.”

“We looked at those attack nodes,” said Vya. “There’s something around two thousand of them, all around the outside, and dozens of tentacles in each. On our way out, we tried shooting missiles at them, but we didn’t do them any damage we could see.”

“Except,” said Jana Crown, “that I picked up some debris.”

“Debris?” Silverfleet repeated.

“Yeah. But it might just be bits of missiles.”

“Or it could be bits of the Thing. That’s great, Jana! Good job! Keep that stuff handy!”

“Commander Silverfleet,” said Cera Celaren, “I’m not absolutely sure, but we found a structure that may well contain embryonic forms.”

“Oh. Great. Oh, just great. It could lay eggs. How big are they?”

“The structure was about a hundred kilometers across, and the inner structures, what we could see of them, I don’t know—this is all guesswork, Commander—maybe ten or twenty kilometers.”

“Small, compared to ten thousand. Goddess. Baby crystalline things. That’s all we need.”

“We were on our way to Veldar,” said Captain Arn Vandenbrug. “But when Julie Dalsandro asks us for help—!”

“When Wing Second Dalsandro asks for help,” Julie Dalsandro filled in, “Captain Arnie remembers when I held off six of the Talis pirates while he took a load of spices to Veldar. Look around, Arn—there’s what, five of those pirates right here in your hold?”

“I don’t think I was in on that caper,” said Cloutier, “or we’d have scattered that load across a hundred cubic kilometers of space.”

“Not the way I fly,” Vandenbrug replied. “I’d be more likely to crash it into an asteroid.”

“All before I took over the Talis defenses, I guess,” said Silverfleet. “Well, Captain Vandenbrug, I’m glad to meet you. Quite the ship you’ve got—did you know I always wanted to fly a freighter?”

“No, but I never wanted to fly a fighter.”

“You wouldn’t fit in one, anyway,” Silverfleet replied. “You have a spot in your crew for a former pirate who’s lost her ship?”

“She any good on gun? My gunners are my freight officers.”

“Of course I’m good on gun,” Bell replied. “You any good on pilot?”

“Yes,” said Silverfleet, “I can vouch for her on gun. So, not to move the conversation along, but what’s the latest on Talis?”

“The atmosphere’s 90% gone,” said Vya de Har. “It’s just starting on the ocean.”

“I thought you said it was getting full,” said Cloutier.

“We estimated it was nearing its capacity,” Vya replied. “We could only guess, you know. If we underestimated the inner radius of its tubes by 30%, that would about double its capacity. Besides, it must use a lot of energy to locomote.”

“No doubt,” said Cera Celaren. “A biological entity that can bend space, and as massive as a planet. It’s strange, isn’t it, to think it might be as dumb as an animal?”

“Oh, it’s smart,” said Fiona. “At Marelon, it scared the freighters into pulling out the opposite side of the starbase, and it had tentacles waiting for them. It’s got at least the cleverness of a Helga.” Conna’s cat looked up at the mention of her name, and glared at Fiona as if trying to read her mind.

“What’ll it do with the energy from Talis?” asked Claypool. “Especially if those really were eggs.”

“It’s not going to lay them on Talis,” said Silverfleet. “Pretty soon it’ll be an airless desert.”

“Maybe a couple of hundred thousand could find refuge in the mines,” Carin Ringstrom added. “You can bet the Council is well-represented there.”

“Yes,” said Fiona, “along with ten young fertile women apiece. I’ve seen their contingency plan, if you can believe that they actually have a contingency plan for planetary disaster. Those assholes. They could have saved everyone, you said.”

“Jana, are you okay?” asked Claypool.

“I’m fine,” said Jana Crown, startled from her reverie in the crowd. “I, uh, heard from my brother. He and my niece are on another freighter, headed for Veldar. They’re safe.”

“Your brother?” asked Conna. “Was he what you had for family still on Talis?”

“Uh, no.” The raven-haired Talian met Silverfleet, brown eyes to blue. “No. There was my folks, and some uncles and aunts and cousins. My brother told me. I doubt any of them made it.”

“Jana,” asked Silverfleet, “do you need to go look at the planet?”

So they went for a look at the planet. The freighters were gone or going, the fleet destroyed. Only Claypool and Cloutier and Conna and Fiona, and Arn Vandenbrug’s armored merchant, stayed in space. They hovered near Talis-4, an affable mid-size ringed gas giant. The other eleven—Silverfleet, Klee, Crown, Vya de Har, Meena Melville, Ginger and Tilla, Dalsandro, Celaren, Ro and Ringstrom—came in around the fringe of the Crystalline Beast, its waving tentacles and pulsating nodes oblivious to them.

They dropped toward the ground, and at first the only difference from Silverfleet’s previous arrival on the planet was that they dropped lower and lower and still met no air. The quilt of farms and squared-off streams and ponds, the well-heeled landscape of field and pasture and village and lake, the mountains in the distance clad in quiet pines, the run-up to the towering city, it was all the same, only the light was a quarter tone more intense. But the Thing hung in the sky, 90° away from the sun’s zenith, thousands of tentacles sinking to the ground, sinking into the many waters, which now cascaded here and there as though the plain had been lifted and held at a slant. Ahead of them, the tall tower of the Council Hall, a kilometer and a half high, stood in futile opposition, but fifty nodes hung out unfolded from the Thing, a hundred tentacles dropping from each into the maze of the city.

The fighters flew down the main avenue, over crowds of strangled, desiccating dead, and over blocks that were strangely clean. They saw not a single living human. Crown and Silverfleet flew in front, saying not a word, while behind them Elan Klee kept up a sparse commentary from her readings of atmosphere, temperature and biological and electrical activity. “Node down along this side street,” said Klee, and without discussion they slowed and turned. Before them, five tentacles worked the next three blocks of the street, chewing trees out of their plots and sucking at a pile of the dead. The fighters turned and filed back out and up the avenue. Just before they turned, Silverfleet thought she saw a face at a window. As they retraced their path out of the city, she reran her video. There was the face indeed, a girl of ten or twelve, propped up in her twentieth floor window, her skin turned blotchy and faintly blue, her eyes bulging as if to take in every detail of the death of her planet.

So many. But there was that one, that red-haired girl, the age Silverfleet had been when she had started pilot training. But there were so many, ninety million and more. Did she have to stand for all? Was there any way to comprehend this? And just as she asked it, she found they were passing over a dead river, and she caught the glint of water, and something else, just downstream to her left. She turned, and the others turned, and in a minute the eleven fighters were hovering over it: a long lagoon of water stuck behind the base of a high and dry dam. People had jumped into the river, perhaps, seeking refuge in the deepest place they could find, and then, as the water hurried downstream, they were brought here. The entire surface of the water, acres and acres of it, was clogged with their bodies.

They were like insects, their brief lives over with the night, fallen in their millions on a pond. They were like leaves on a lake, in Bela’s long and beautiful autumn from Silverfleet’s youth. They were like weeds caught in a drain. But no. They were people, men, women, children, short ones, tall ones, fat, thin, dark, light, big, small. And here they had come, in their tens of thousands, to float in the cold at nightfall at the end of the world.

Thirty minutes later, the eleven pilots stood on bare rock. The forests of pine had been chewed from the mountains: the pilots all had their vac suits and helmets sealed. The sky above them was black and full of stars—it was the view from a moon or an asteroid. In the plains below them, the tentacles had turned their attention to the crops and soil of Talis’s last summer.

“It’s pretty bad,” said Dalsandro.

“Yeah,” said Crown, Talis’s daughter. “It’s worse than I could have ever thought.”

“And Midday’s next,” said Dalsandro, Midday’s daughter. They all looked at each other, then at Silverfleet. But she had nothing to say, and they climbed into their fighters and flew back into familiar, reliable space.

“How many people got out, all told?” asked Claypool, when the pilots got back to Vandenbrug’s freighter, and strode into the hold to find eighty people waiting for their news, fighter pilots and freighter crew and a bunch of very lucky Talian escapees.

“Oh, four thousand marines, five fighter pilots,” said Ringstrom.

“Seventy freighters took off,” said Arn Vandenbrug. “If they were all chock full of people, that’s maybe a hundred each, maybe several hundred on the superfreighters. We’ve got eighty-four onboard NT, not counting crew and, uh, this pirate here. So that’s, what, maybe ten thousand?”

“But most of them are headed for Midday,” put in Kris Bell. “What’s up with that? The thing’s headed straight there.”

“You’re for sure it won’t decide to head for Veldar?” asked Vandenbrug.

“Yes,” said Claypool. “Marelon and Talis are almost in a straight line for Midday—and then Alcen and Central. Those two planets are where what, seventy percent of the human species lives. Eighteen billion people. And air, and water, and soil. Do you know that the death of ninety-four million here at Talis was the worst single human holocaust ever? In all our millennia of killing each other, we’ve never done anything this bad? But that’s nothing. Nothing! Compared with seventy percent of the total human population.”

“If it wants to eat people,” said Cloutier, “Central is certainly the place to go.”

“Whereas Veldar has—what, Elan?”

“Rock,” Elan Klee and Selun Ro said together. “And air processors,” Selun Ro added. “And water processors. They supply a lot of systems. That’s where both my mom and dad work, and both my brothers, making air processors.”

“So,” Vandenbrug filled in, “I suppose you want me to go to Veldar and trade all these folks for air processors?”

“Yes,” said Silverfleet. “Take the processors to Marelon first. Marelon’s mineshaft dwellers will be running out of air pretty soon. Tell any other freight captains you see at Veldar to do the same, and then go on to Midday—they’ll need them soon enough.”

“You know,” said the captain, “this is called trade, and we don’t do it for free.”

“I’m not asking you to. They still have their mine products at Marelon. I’m sure they’ll pay you well. Tell the Veldarians they can have your hold full of rare earths and trans-actinides if they give you processors on credit. Look, I’m just trying to save lives.”

“Hey,” said Vandenbrug, “I’m with you. I’m just wondering. I mean, obviously you’re not, like, a starfleet admiral or something.”

“The White Hand’s dead, as far as I’m concerned,” said Julie Dalsandro. “Silverfleet’s the only admiral we’ve got.” She looked at Fiona. “If it’s okay with you, Commander.”

“I agree,” said Fiona. “For the duration of the crisis, anyway. It’s obvious to me the only people who have any chance of stopping this thing are right here.” There was a murmur of assent from the forty people crowded into the hold, half of them Talis refugees, and then the fighter pilots turned it into a ten-second round of applause.

“Okay, okay,” said Silverfleet, holding up her hands and struggling to have her high voice heard. “I’m not sure I like that word ‘admiral’,” she went on. “And we haven’t done a thing even yet against this creature. But in case you really do trust me, I have some ideas for what we should do.” She looked around at her colleagues. “Come on, someone act surprised.”

“Tell us what to do, Commander,” said Cloutier.

“Okay. Bell, since Babe got eaten by the Thing, you’re now A-gunner on the NT. Sounds like light duty, but you never know when some pirate’s going to see an opportunity.”

“Glad to have you,” said Vandenbrug. “I hope you’re a good gunner—the way I fly, you’ll get plenty of open shots, but you better make them count.”

“You got it, Captain,” Bell replied. “If you concentrate on the piloting, I can concentrate on blowing crap up.”

“The rest of us,” Silverfleet went on, “let’s see, that’s my wing, which is me, Del, Jana and—well, that’s my wing, I guess, and Suzane’s wing, which is her, Elan, Conna, Meena and Vya, and Fiona’s wing, which is Fiona, Dalsandro, Celaren, Ro and Ringstrom—that’s what, thirteen?”

“Um,” said Tilla.

“What about Helga?” asked Conna. The big cat was sitting in her arms, alert and only lightly clawed into her sweater in zero gravity.

“I guess you’ll have to take her with you,” said Silverfleet. “You may want to sedate her.”

“Um, but,” Tilla tried.

“Oh. And you two. Tilla, Ginger, you’re going on a little side trip. The question has arisen as to why the thing skipped several likely spots further out—New Home, Taraadya, Colfax, Henryopolis. I think we can suppose Yellow Roost was off its list—even if it couldn’t detect the toxin in the air, from wherever Crystalline Things come from, it wouldn’t see any water or much life. And Taraadya’s just a terraformed moon, and Henryopolis is just slightly terraformed. But what about Colfax? Or New Home? This thing obviously came from outside our galaxy—you’d think New Home would be the first thing it’d notice. There’s plenty of air, plenty of water—”

“They’re covered with stuff it likes,” said Tilla.

“So you guess,” Fiona interrupted, “that there might be something in their air or water that it could detect from far away, and that it didn’t like.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Halyn,” said Claypool, “you know it’s a long shot. Just because it doesn’t like something in the air doesn’t mean we can find what it doesn’t like, or even that it’ll be useful. Just because the creature doesn’t like something doesn’t mean it’s poisonous. Besides, it might just be coincidence. It may be so drawn to Central and Alcen that it didn’t notice anything else, except Marelon and Talis, which are in almost a straight line to Central.”

“So—you’re against sending them off to look?”

“Oh, no. No. I think we have to send someone just in case. And Tilla knows Colfax, and Ginger knows New Home. We have no other idea about how to attack the thing, so what else can we do? I just don’t want us to expect too much.”

“So,” said Tilla, “we get the exciting job of flying to Colfax.”

“Yes,” said Silverfleet. “Get air samples, water samples—whatever. Then go on to New Home, unless you find something really obvious.”

“We could throw some of the Colfaxers at it,” Claypool suggested. “They seemed rather poisonous. But, Halyn, have you thought how long this could take?”

“Yes. Of course. Here to Marelon to Black Rock to Colfax, that’s doable in three jumps, and then back in three jumps, with a stop along each way to refill batteries, so that’s what, six, forty-two, add four, and maybe four days at Colfax, so that alone is fifty days. From there to New Home is, let’s see. Colfax to Adamantine to Henryopolis to New Home, that’s another three jumps, so, fifty days just to Colfax and back, or a hundred to New Home and back.”

“In a hundred days,” Claypool pointed out, “the Crystalline Thing will be done eating Midday and already having its way with Alcen. Maybe even finding a nice warm place to lay an egg or two.”

“Or on to Earth,” said Silverfleet. “Yeah, I know. So, hurry, girls, okay? And listen, Tilla, Ginger, I’m not sending you out there to keep you out of battle. I’m sending you out there because you guys know that region, and I think I can trust you on your own.”

“We’ll ne’er fail thee,” said Ginger.

“And the rest of us?” asked Cloutier. “We’re going to Midday to do what?”

“Destroy the beast and save civilization,” said Silverfleet. “Would you expect less of us? But, failing that, we’re going to try and get Midday to do what Talis refused to: save their own hineys.” She looked around. “So—any thoughts?”

“When do we leave?” asked Tilla.

“Well, I’d love to stay and party with Captain Vandenbrug, I really would, but we’re all headed in opposite directions, so let’s settle for passing the flask for a farewell toast, and then taking off.” Cloutier, prepared as always, grinned and handed her the flask. “Here’s to all of you,” said Silverfleet, waving it at the close circle of fighter pilots and then wider, at the refugees and freighter crew behind them. “We can’t see the end of this, or how many more blackened planets will be left in the wake of this beast, or the incompetent zealots who rule those planets. But at least we know who we’re up against.” She put the flask to her lips, then pulled it back. “And as Myrrh used to say back at the Academy, before we went out on practice—may the Goddess draw our paths together again when our enemies are all dead.”

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