Silverfleet and Claypool
Chapter 18: Death and Dismemberment at Alcen

“So came we to Colfax,” Ginger was saying, as they sat around in the freight section of the NT. “Tilla showed me a place on the other side of their great ocean from the colony, and we readied the tests. But, thou wist, we had been in fighters since Talis, so she also showed me about, what ye call, skinny-dipping.”

“And you got captured by the Colfaxers,” put in Silverfleet.

“Nay,” said Ginger. “We found the answer. I myself trod upon the answer.”

“The armored worms,” said Tilla. “I knew I’d seen them before. They were just like on New Home. The ocean on Colfax is made up of the same kind of stuff as the ocean on New Home.”

“What about the land fauna?” asked Conna. “Are they the same?”

“They’re all introduced, so, yeah,” replied Tilla. “But the sea fauna’s partly not from Central.”

“Aye,” said Ginger. “My grandam told me of the things of Earth that came with, and how there were things in the sea ere we came, the worms and the one-cells. But those things differ not at all betwixt Colfax and New Home. Not. At-all.”

“But how is that possible?” asked Klee. “The two systems are what, forty, forty-five light years apart? How did these armored worms swim from one planet to the other, or whatever? And while we’re at it, how does it help?”

“Well,” said Conna, “New Home and Colfax both have armored worms and the Beast passes them by. If only Marelon had imported water from Colfax.”

“Well,” said Silverfleet, “I’m still betting on the missiles, but you never know.” She bent to look into a tube of dirty water the size of her thigh. There was an oily discoloration, but there were also several dozen armored worms, a couple of centimeters long at most, along with hundreds of bug-like swimmers, millions of unseen plankton and even a few small dead fish. The armored worms, for their part, looked the picture of health. “How much of the sea water did you bring back?”

“Thirty liters each,” said Tilla. “Full of critters. What shall we do with them?”

“No idea. And we only have a few days to think about it.”

“I don’t get it,” put in Arn Vandenbrug. “How is the water supposed to help?”

“All we know is,” Claypool explained, “it didn’t attack New Home and it passed on Colfax too, even though they seem to be in front. It passed right by New Home. We were there.”

“We were fighting to protect it from the evil claws of Central and the White Hand,” said Silverfleet. “Mission accomplished. The White Hand is pretty much down to bits of bone and skin, and the Central starfleet is about 80% destroyed. Heck, we could turn around now and consider it a good job of defending New Home.”

“But the question is,” said Conna, hugging Helga in the lack of gravity, “what’s important to us? Ending the White Hand, or saving billions of human lives?”

“And kitty lives?” added Klee.

“No,” Arn insisted, “the question is, what’s in the water?”

“Do we need to know?” replied Fiona. “If it doesn’t like the water, why don’t we each take a bunch of it?”

“There’s not that much to go around, really,” said Claypool, “among eleven fighters, right?”

“Don’t forget us,” said a middle-aged woman in a vac suit.

“Uh, Parrott?” Silverfleet guessed. “Uh, Alcen starfleet?”

“Not quite,” said Fiona. “Jane Parrott, she flew with me, we left her at Talis but she seems to have caught up. I didn’t even see you, Parrott. Are—?”

“Blake and Jelly are with me,” said Parrott, indicating her two comrades. “We’re all that’s left of Kenney’s fleet. Um, Commander Rigan, we’d like to—?”

“Girls,” said Fiona, “really, it was I who rebelled against you. Halyn, this is Leah Jelly, and this is Ran Blake, they’re no Claypool but they’re good solid veteran pilots. I’m sorry we left you behind, ladies, I really am.”

“We would have gone over with you at Talis,” said Jelly, a small, chunky, dark-skinned woman.

“But you couldn’t have known that,” said Blake, a needle-shaped brunette. “Anyway, here we are.”

“I certainly appreciate you,” said Silverfleet. “So, fourteen—or is everyone repaired?”

“Well, not me,” said Meena Melville. “Nor Vya nor Selun. So, fourteen, yeah. We will be gunning alongside Kris.”

“All right,” said Silverfleet, “let’s spend a day or so testing this stuff to see if we can figure out what’s in it that might be distasteful to the Beast.”

“Maybe nothing,” said Arn Vandenbrug. “Maybe it was just coincidence. Maybe there was something about Marelon that it liked.”

Silverfleet sighed. “The missiles might work, but we probably don’t have enough. The water could be something, or not, but if it is, we don’t know what. Put the water in the missiles, maybe? Too bad we didn’t think to engineer them to carry liquid. Then there’s the photon adjustments—who knows? Maybe that’ll do something. It’d be nice if it did.” She looked around at the fighter pilots and the freighter crew. “Or maybe nothing will work. Maybe Alcen’s going to get eaten, just like Talis did.”

“We’ll stop it somehow,” said Claypool. “It’s just like when you go into a battle, Commander. You don’t know how you’re going to do it, but you know you’re going to do it.”

“All right,” said Silverfleet, “speaking of which, tell me about the battle.”

“Well,” said Selun Ro, “we had a great view of it all, on the video in that control room. They just threw themselves at it from all sides. Those ships from Midday had just got here when the Thing arrived, and every single one of this big old fleet just went right in firing everything they had.”

“And it took them all,” said Vya de Har.

“Except some of the fighters,” said Ro. “After the bloodbath, which took all of about a minute, there were twenty-eight left. They sort of hung out there for a while trying to work out what to do next, and then most of them sort of followed it to the planet. These three came out to check us out—we thought they were going to blast us in space, since they didn’t have any big ships to carry us in. But they got real close and opened a private channel. Fiona, Parrott was real apologetic.”

“We’re here to do the right thing, Commander,” said Parrott. “I, well, I don’t know about those other fighters. They had some weird talk going.”

“Yeah, it was pretty strange,” said Jelly. “They’d about decided it must be some sort of God. When Parrott volunteered to come out this way, me and Blake were thrilled to go with.”

“We were even more thrilled,” said Blake, “when we found out you guys were on your way back. We’re honored to serve under you again, Commander.”

“And under you, Commander Silverfleet,” said Jelly.

“Well, we can use every fighter we can get,” said Silverfleet. “And when did you show up?”

“About a day before you,” replied Vandenbrug. “We’d just come to full stop when you winked in. We skipped Marelon—hey, don’t worry, we sent a bunch of freighters that way with supplies. I didn’t want to miss this.”

“I can understand that,” said Silverfleet. “It should be quite the show. Okay. Let’s send our results from Luna to the Alcen starbase. They still have a couple days to make modifications. And while you’re at it, send along the official pardon for the Ringstroms.” She looked up at Arn Vandenbrug. “If you don’t mind. I really don’t mean to tell you what to do.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he replied, looking over his shoulder at Kris Bell, who was concentrating on some calculation. “My new gunner treats me that way all the time.”

Six hours later, Silverfleet and Tilla went to visit the water expert onboard. “The profile on the water,” said the NT’s engineer, a big woman with a minor in biochemistry, “is basically like a lot of colonies with intro life. If we had a sample from the other place—”

“Sorry,” said Silverfleet, “New Home’s a bit far to send someone now.”

“I’m sorry, Commander,” said Tilla. “We found the armored worms and stuff, and we thought that meant the two were the same.”

“You couldn’t have made it to New Home and back by now, Tilla. You barely made it back on time as it was. You did fine. So, are there any weird compounds in the worms, or the exoprotozoa?”

“Let’s see, the usual array of amino acids, a few we don’t have, but it’s hard to see how they could be poisonous. Of course who knows? Proteins are a bit different. Not much for fat cells. Cells are about a tenth the size of Central-originated ones. That wouldn’t mean anything.” She frowned, raised her eyebrows and looked at Silverfleet. “What can I do? I’d love to wave a magic wand and come up with some sort of miracle.”

“Well,” said Silverfleet, “why not make a guess? Pick out an amino acid you think might be offensive to the Thing, and replicate a bunch of it. Can you do that?”

“Sure. How long do I have?”

“Hey, Arn,” Silverfleet called out the door of engineering control, “how’s it moving?”

“It should make orbit in thirty-one hours,” the captain replied over the comm. “We’ll be there a few hours ahead of it.”

Silverfleet looked back at the engineer. “There’s your answer. Is it something we can load into those missiles, in the padding?”

“I suppose so. I’ll have a look at one and see what I can do.”

“This is Alcen Starbase,” the comm told them a few hours later. “We appreciate your intent, but please do not attempt to interfere with the approach of the World of God to Alcen.”

“What?” Cloutier blurted. “Don’t interfere with the thing eating a world of eight billion?”

“All has come to pass as it must,” the message went on. “We of the Central Starfleet of Alcen accept whatever judgement God chooses to impose. It cannot help being just.”

“Oh, that’s a convenient philosophy,” Klee put in.

“Therefore we ask that you depart from our system rather than attempt to damage the World of God. Our fighters stand ready to defend it. Alcen Starbase, out.”

“Sorry, that makes no sense whatsoever,” said Cloutier. “They can’t think of a way to fight the Thing, so they’re going to fight us to defend it.”

“Like they have any better chance against us,” said Vya de Har.

“Great,” said Silverfleet. “Just great. We might just be able to take on this thing, but now we also have to take on what, twenty-five fighters? Against fourteen?”

“You have an armored merchant behind you,” said Arn Vandenbrug.

“Oh, you have to be kidding. They’d take you apart.”

“Hey,” he replied, “I happen to be a very seasoned pilot. And,” he went on, grinning at Bell, Ro, Vya and Meena, simulating away madly at their combat stations, “I have four gunners who trained with the Great Silverfleet.”

“We’ll come up on the back of the thing,” said Silverfleet as the crew and the pilots gathered one more time in the freight section. “Del, you have the missiles with the amino acids in them. Who knows? Maybe it’ll work. Me, Elan, Fiona and Dalsandro have the rest of the missiles. We’ve all adjusted our photon guns. Fiona, Del, Claypool and, um, Carin, you each get fifteen liters of the water. My theory is that it just doesn’t like the stuff, and it won’t eat you. It’s a good theory, don’t you think?”

“Sounds like this whole attack is pretty much of a sure thing,” said Arn Vandenbrug.

“Well,” Silverfleet replied, “I’d say we have a better chance than that whole fleet did.”

“I’d have to agree,” said Bell. “Compared to them, we’re looking good.”

“Now here’s how we’re going in. Arn, you’re in back. We’ll take off six hours before contact, but we’ll stay with you. When we get there, Elan, Julie, Fiona, Del, um, Carin, Suz and I are going in against the Thing. That leaves Conna, Jana, Ginger and Tilla, and, um, Parrot and Blake and Jelly and the NT to take on the fighters, if they get there after we do. If they’re at the point of contact first, then we’ll just cut our way through. Remember, your job is to distract them, not to get yourself killed. Okay? Everyone hear me? No sacrifices to those fighters.”

“But against the Thing?” asked Cloutier.

“If I can really hurt it by dying, it’s worth it,” said Silverfleet. The other pilots gasped and shook their heads. “What? Is that something strange? Am I more important than eight billion Alcenians?”

“You are, I’m not,” said Elan Klee.

“Me first,” said Cloutier.

“But listen,” Silverfleet went on. “It’s going to be a lot easier to be its appetizer than to self-sacrificingly kill it. In fact, I don’t see any way we can kill it by dying. So don’t be stupid.”

“What are our targets?” asked Julie Dalsandro.

“Okay, I’ve marked about a hundred nodes from our computer map. They’re all up near the, um, spherical organ. We have missiles enough for fifty of them—I’m hoping taking out twenty or thirty will be enough to mess it up. So that’s where the missile people are going. The, um, Ringstrom sisters here will take their photon guns to the ovary. Maybe that’ll work—I hope so, because by the time we catch up with it, it might just be close enough to lay some eggs.” She looked around. Everyone looked fairly serious until she met Cloutier’s eyes, and Cloutier looked up at Elan Klee, and the two women laughed. “It’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it?” said Silverfleet.

“It’s all we have,” replied Suzane Claypool. “Central can fend for itself if we fail.”

“Looks doable to me,” put in Kris Bell.

“Troops out,” said Arn Vandenbrug. “Who knows? Maybe when we all get swallowed it’ll turn out the Thing’s got hash oil for blood.”

“That’s the spirit,” said Silverfleet. “How long till we reach it?”

“Nine hours,” said Meena Melville.

“Okay. Get some rest. We’ll need every reflex we can muster.”

Three hours later, the eleven pilots gathered in the freight section, along with Captain Vandenbrug and the former pilots who were manning his gun stations.

“Come on, baby,” Conna said as she attempted to pass her huge cat, Helga, on to Kris Bell. The cat growled and clawed in a little, but finally gave in. “She doesn’t know she’ll be safer here, does she?”

“If she’ll be safer,” Bell replied.

“Well, wish us luck,” said Silverfleet. “If we all get eaten, Captain, your moral duty is to get to Central and let them know what’s coming. But be warned, it’s a mess there.”

“Worse than usual?”

“A lot worse. Or better, since the White Hand was evaporating when we were there.”

“Well, you’re not going to all get eaten,” said Vandenbrug.

“If you say so. Well, girls, shall we go?”

“Halyn,” said Fiona, “in case we don’t both get through this—thanks.”

“For what?” Silverfleet asked, but Fiona’s only response was to grab her in an energetic hug. Soon there was all sorts of hugging going on. Claypool and Silverfleet shared a long one.

“Be careful,” said Claypool.

“You be careful,” said Silverfleet. “You are under orders not to risk your life beyond what’s clearly necessary. Suzane—” She stopped and gathered herself again. Still holding Claypool, Silverfleet said over her shoulder, “No one’s allowed to risk their lives beyond what’s clearly necessary, okay?”

“Sure,” said Cloutier, lining up to hug her commander. “What’s that mean?”

“Just don’t get killed, Del,” Silverfleet said, grabbing her and holding her so tightly that tears sprang to their eyes.

“Gotta go, baby-cakes,” said Conna, still trying to part from her cat, who was giving her full-power eyes of guilt.

“Okay,” said Cloutier, freeing herself, “it’s time, folks, let’s go.”

“Okay,” said Silverfleet, “you know your assignments. We fly alongside for six hours, then take it to the Beast and pray to the Goddess something we have will work.”

The fourteen climbed into their fighters and sealed up, as the NT crew called out goodbyes. Then the crew evacuated the freight bay, the bay door slid open and the fourteen fighters scooted out into space. They formed up and immediately began decelerating to stay with the freighter, which returned to braking at full as soon as the crew were back in their surround-padding. Before them, the Crystalline Beast eclipsed Alcen’s one terraformed planet.

“This is Alcen Starbase. Please remain at least ten thousand kilometers from the starbase. Do not attempt to interfere with the World of God. You have been warned.”

“No,” Silverfleet replied, “you’re warned. This is Silverfleet. If that thing really is from God, why do you need to protect it, anyway? Don’t be stupid. Just stay the hell out of the way. You have been warned. Silverfleet, out!”

The fourteen fighters came into the shadow, as it were, of the Beast. The twin suns of Alcen were hidden behind its struts and tubes, which glowed and scintillated in a million colors. The armored merchant hung back, watching for other enemies. Silverfleet began dividing her forces.

“Jana, Conna, Tilla, Ginger, take up your positions. Parrott, Blake, Jelly, hang close to the NT. Suz, Carin, you’re going in first. Good luck against the eggs. Fiona, Del, Elan, Julie, we—”

“Fighters!” shouted Conna, who had just moved out to one point of a square around the others. “They’re in the Beast!” As she spoke, a dozen fighters emerged from the depths of the Thing and made for Silverfleet’s party.

“Don’t let them deter us,” said Silverfleet. “Let’s hit our targets.”

But around her the fighting was already breaking out. Conna and Jana were faced with eight fighters, Tilla and Ginger another four as they tried to hold the enemy off from Silverfleet’s group. More fighters leaked out of the glowing structure behind the first dozen. Silverfleet, Claypool, Cloutier, Fiona and the rest hesitated, then went on in when they saw the armored merchant fire off its first volley of missiles. But they couldn’t keep their eyes off what was going on behind them. They could see Parrott, Blake and Jelly suddenly start into the weave and fire of stationary combat. In front of them, Tilla and Ginger were back to back, firing defensively, and a few months with Silverfleet seemed to have imbued them with a skill for the ballet of survival.

But Conna and Jana were separated. Jana knocked out one fighter and took on two more, bravely dodging and shooting as they tried to coordinate their attacks. Her shell went, then one of her foes went in a bright little explosion; she turned on her other foe in a good approximation of dogs fighting. But Conna Marais was up against five of the enemy, and in a second her shell was gone, and in another second her ship went black. While Vanessa worked her way into the Beast, Silverfleet was watching, tempted against her judgement to go back to stop them from joining the attack on Jana Crown in a six-on-one. But they did no such thing: instead, the five fighters stood and blasted Conna’s fighter. It went to tiny pieces in a silent, black dissolution.

“No!” cried Elan Klee. She hauled her ship around and made for the spot, weaving around the phosphorescent struts and tubes and tentacles, while Claypool’s and Cloutier’s voices rang from the comm. She didn’t hear them. She was shouting, “No! No! No!” as she emerged from the Beast and accelerated at full for the place Conna had been. Before Klee could reach the vicinity, three fighters intercepted her and her impetuous charge was turned aside in a welter of shots and shell damage.

Only Silverfleet had time to notice a floating speck, a vac suit in the empty cubic kilometers among the fighters and the Beast, quietly flashing Conna’s sign. She had ejected safely.

The fighters that had almost killed Conna had turned to face Jana Crown, and she was taking heavy damage. Nine were now around her. Then eight, then seven: Vanessa came out of the bright shadow of the Beast and cut into them with a knife of blazing light. The formation turned to take her on. Beyond Jana she could see Parrott, Jelly and Blake advancing to challenge six more fighters. Now Silverfleet faced ten, now twelve, as the reserves came up to join in. But she did not try her dash and dodge. She did not pursue any plan at all. She found a fighter before her and blew it up, then she found another and did the same. Boom, boom, boom, boom, and she was face to face with Jana Crown, who had been doing her best, leaving two ships dead in space.

“Behind you!” came Jana’s voice. Silverfleet dropped and Jana shot past, gun blazing out death for another Alcenian pilot. But when Silverfleet had whirled around again, Jana Crown was floating in space just like Conna, and four Alcen fighters were hurtling past. Silverfleet’s shell took a hit, then went down. The extra mass of the missile rig, which she hadn’t noticed at all in the first heat of her rage, began to feel like lead weights. Her shots were missing.

Then one of the enemy went, then another, and it was Suzane Claypool’s fighter coming in from the side. The other two went. There was silence. Klee hung in space nearby, in the midst of three victims’ wreckage. A little way away, Ginger and Tilla had been joined by the others, and with the aid of the NT’s pinning fire and cloud of missiles, they had wiped out their side of the enemy. Blake was blasted to dust, Tilla and Jelly were disabled, Cloutier’s fighter was dead in space and Dalsandro had lost her shell and had damage to her systems, but the freighter was already moving in to pick them up. Vanessa counted and listed the fighters left running: Silverfleet, Claypool, Fiona, Elan Klee, Ginger Grandmaison, Jane Parrott.

“Conna’s floating,” shouted Silverfleet. “Arn, don’t forget her, okay? So’s Jana Crown. Where’s Carin?”

“I told her to go keep an eye on the eggs,” said Claypool. “Someone had to remember that we had a mission.”

“Screw the mission,” said Silverfleet. “Those people deserve—!” She took a breath. “They got what they deserve. But it won’t bring Blake back.”

“Commander,” said Elan Klee steadily, “we have a mission.”

“Commander,” said Fiona, “the damn thing’s coming for us.”

Indeed, tentacles were now waving toward them and around them. “Crap, crap, crap!” cried Silverfleet. “Okay, let’s see, we still have the same targets—”

But Klee and Fiona were already using their missiles just to keep from being chewed up. Fiona unleashed a missile at a node, it struck and exploded, and the node came apart, its tentacles waving listlessly as they flew off. Klee’s missiles, loaded with amino acids, were no deadlier nor any less deadly. Claypool and Grandmaison and Parrott were firing away with the modified photon guns, but these seemed to have little effect.

“Commander,” came the voice from the comm: a screen showed Carin Ringstrom’s fighter, on the far side of the Beast. “It looks like it’s dropping its ovipositor.”

“Let’s go!” shouted Silverfleet. “Save your missiles! Elan, Fiona, that’s an order!” But as they backed out of the morass of tentacles, the thing stretched toward them. They were recognized now as an enemy, and it had them nearly surrounded. Gritting her teeth, Silverfleet fired off her first three missiles and opened a small hole to the sky. She could see the armored merchant through it, blasting away with its modified photons to no obvious effect. There was a shout over the comm, and an electric crunch. Parrott’s fighter had been eaten.

“Come on,” Silverfleet called, “let’s get out!”

Vanessa zoomed through the opening, followed by Claypool and Grandmaison. Klee and Fiona were still holding off the tentacles behind them. “Fiona! Elan! Go!”

“I can’t,” Klee replied. “We have to hold them back.”

“No,” shouted Fiona. “Go!” Klee fired off her second-to-last missile and turned to escape. Behind her, Fiona fired her last three and turned to follow. A tentacle swung out of a field of debris beside her and took her tiny ship in its jaws. While Silverfleet watched, Fiona Rigan was swallowed whole.

“Fiona! No!” shouted Elan Klee.

“Klee! Mission!” shouted Silverfleet. “We’re the only ones left with missiles!”

Then time sped up. They were sailing around the great belly of the Thing, gleaming and scintillating. They saw the Alcen starbase, already half eaten. There were tentacles already hanging into the air of the planet. There was Carin Ringstrom, intact, blasting ineffectively at the crystal spheres that cascaded down a crystal tube to bob in the atmosphere.

Silverfleet dove after them, dropping what remained of her shell to better navigate the air. The hindmost egg lazily descended, and Silverfleet approached it, went in among its dense mesh. Vanessa’s computer was as befuddled as Silverfleet’s brain: seven missiles, seven eggs, what one thing should she hit?

Then she saw it: a spherical body, just a dozen meters across in the twenty kilometer egg, just above the central line. She turned aside and approached it, feeling like a little girl on Bela crawling through the brushy woods at night. She was within a hundred meters of it, now fifty, now ten. She fired off a missile, and guided it at its slowest speed until—and then a silent boom, and the spherical body blew apart, and instantly the whole egg went soft. Silverfleet backed out and left it behind, disintegrating in the atmosphere as it fell.

She caught the next and the next and the next, giving death to each more quickly than the last. The fifth was ten kilometers from the ground when she reached it, the sixth was five kilometers up, and the last one was already drinking in the stuff of the clouds. Then it was falling, and coming apart, and Silverfleet was racing up out of the Alcen gravity, worn out by battle and emotion and death beyond anything she had ever felt.

“Halyn!” said Claypool. “You did it!”

“Ohh. Ohhh, am I tired. Oh, Suz. I’m out of missiles and—”

“I don’t call it permanent,” said Klee, “but I think I stopped them coming for a while. And we still have Dalsandro’s and Cloutier’s missiles.”

“What? Oh. Oh. Yeah. Good job.” While Silverfleet had been using her seven remaining missiles to blast the seven eggs already laid, Klee used her last to break a node well up the ovipositor, causing it to bend like a broken reed and jam. The tentacles shot out and waved menacingly at them, but Silverfleet, Claypool, Carin Ringstrom, Ginger Grandmaison and Elan Klee had pulled away to a safe distance.

“Think twenty more missiles might kill it?” asked Klee doubtfully.

Silverfleet sighed. Twenty missiles, well-placed—might give it a slight headache. She was completely at a loss: the only prospect that appeared to her was to sit here and wait for it to fix itself, and chew through the planet while it did so.

“Halyn, look,” said Claypool. “It’s—what’s it doing?”

It was scintillating differently now. It retreated, or it contracted. The Thing suddenly seemed content to sit in orbit for a while. “It’s recuperating,” said Silverfleet. “Let’s get back to the NT, if it’s still there, and see if we can fix up some more missiles.”

In another day it was clear the Thing was not well. Had they wounded it so badly after all? And in another day, while the fighters and the freighter patrolled the skies around it, it began to lose altitude. Silverfleet thought it was going back to drink of the planet again, and she ordered the wing out—nine, including Julie Dalsandro, Del Cloutier, Tilla Pool and Leah Jelly, whose fighters had been repaired. There were no new missiles yet, but Dalsandro and Cloutier had ten each they hadn’t had the chance to use, and these were shared about.

But when they flew around to the planet side, there were no tentacles out. It was simply lolling, losing its buoyancy and slipping into the atmosphere. Its glow was duller now, and its pulsations looked tired and sickly. Over the course of another day, the Crystalline Thing entered the top of the air, and began coming apart as it fell. Its drift downward became a plummet, and in another few hours its remains began plunging into the seas and plains of Alcen.

“A grateful planet wishes to honor you,” came the message from the ground. “And we understand that one of your number is in fact the lost Renna Ringstrom. Great honor indeed there will be!”

“You can keep your honor,” said Claypool. “I’m not coming back. This is Renna Ringstrom, saying goodbye. Don’t you know? My name’s Suzane Claypool, and I hail from Enderra, and my home planet is called New Home.”

A few minutes later, they came back aboard the NT, and Claypool and Silverfleet stumbled out of their fighters to hug, in full vac suit, tears streaking their visors as they held each other tight.

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