“Impeccable timing, sister,” groaned Anja, rising unsteadily to her feet. “Although I might not have complained if you had come earlier.”

Jesri hopped off of the smoldering Dhumma corpse and scanned the room, the bands of plasma dissipating from her arm. Kenet-Tel and his brood were huddled in a corner of the room, drenched in a pastel coating of blood and viscera. Rhuar appeared to be relatively unscathed, staring blankly at the corpses of their attackers with his mouth hanging open.

She walked over to Anja, reaching out an arm to steady her. “You good?”, she asked.

Anja gave a pained smile and nodded. “Yes, sister. No bleeding, but bruises and perhaps a fractured rib. I will be good as new when we reach the autodoc on the Grand Design.”

“You got the data?”, asked Jesri, her eyes widening. “You know where to find it?”

“Aurelius,” confirmed Anja. “I have the complete transmission plus the vector logged by the communications array. I can narrow it down to a searchable volume.”

Jesri grinned. “Let’s get back to the ship.” She turned to Rhuar and Kenet-Tel. “Guys, you okay? Anyone hurt?”

Kenet-Tel swept a ribbon of gelatinous entrails from his shoulder. “We are uninjured, but perhaps not okay.” He shuddered. “We should leave quickly.”

Jesri nodded. “Rhuar, buddy? You good?”

The dog tilted its head to look at her, his expression blank.

Jesri frowned. It wasn’t uncommon for a first taste of battle to leave survivors in a state of shock. She’d experienced it herself, a long time ago. Shards of broken memories gathered together in her mind, the smell of blood and burnt flesh insinuating itself slyly.

She shook her head. Not the time. Jesri slowly leaned closer to Rhuar and reached towards him. “Hey, it’s all right,” she said softly. “We’re safe now.”

Rhuar whined. “Jesri,” he said, hesitation creeping into his voice, “can I touch it?”

She froze. “Huh?”

Rhuar’s exoskeletal arms shot out to grab either side of her armored hand, caressing the metal. “Oh, it’s so smooth,” he crooned. “Are those directed plasma arcs? Does each part have independent containment fields?”

Jesri’s fist clenched and a ripple of fire washed over her glove. Rhuar yanked his arms back with a yip. “Yeah, okay,” she sighed, “let’s head out.”

They trekked through the darkness once again, Kenet-Ei darting ahead to scout for torchlight. Despite their wary advance, no bandits revealed themselves.

Jesri worked her fingers in the armor as they walked and felt the smooth motion of the articulated joints. Her hand sat comfortably in the forearm of the glove, wrapped in a strong coating of metal and carbon polymer. The armor’s own hand sat farther down. She clenched her fist and the armor’s fingers curled into a solid hammerhead of metal, meshing to form an unbroken striking surface.

Anja smirked and flicked a finger against Jesri’s plated shoulder. “I think you made an impression on them, sister.”

Jesri snorted. “I’d have made more than an impression with a full suit.” She relaxed her hand, the carbon muscles rippling under their metal sheath. Nerve inducers let her feel the air flowing across her open palm. “This was the only usable thing I found in the armory, and it’s almost out of charge.”

“Such a shame,” Anja sighed. “I had hoped there might be something I could use. Hopefully things are in better shape on the ship. The log indicated that they were hit by a gamma-ray burst, which would not have been kind to the power cores.”

Jesri nodded and looked back at the group. Rhuar was walking innocently behind them, a thin strand of drool hanging from the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps we should do an inventory first-thing,” she suggested wryly.

They walked along in silence for a while. Kenet-Ei led them through several twisting passages before they found themselves in the radial corridor, faint light visible beyond the curve of the corridor.

Green crowded the passage as they moved into the lighted area, crouching to pass through the cleared path that Jesri had cut earlier. Kenet-Tel huffed in amusement as his children dove in and out of the shaggy ivy. “We would come here to harvest food,” he said, “but the youngest ones have not made the trip before now.”

He turned to look Jesri in the eye. “Thank you for agreeing to take us with you. I feared that my children would grow old on this station, as I have.”

Jesri smiled, but shook her head. “No need for thanks,” she said. “You more than earned it helping us avoid those patrols.” The smile faded from her face. “If we had to fight them back there in the dark it would have ended badly.”

She hadn’t seen the first part of the fight with the Dhumma, but she could read its blows in Anja’s pained movements. The women were both capable fighters, but they only had skill and experience as their shield. In the long years since she had last worn this armor she had forgotten the feeling of having more.

Jesri rolled her shoulder in the armor sleeve, watching the thick bands of muscle flex and relax. In a full suit she would be an imposing figure - inhumanly strong and fast with unparalleled destructive power. The old piece of armor dredged up a dusty realization of how weak and vulnerable she was without it.

“Something the matter, sister?”, asked Anja.

Jesri realized that she had stopped walking, staring down at her hand. The others ahead of her were looking back curiously. She shook her head and walked forward. “It’s nothing,” she sighed, “It’s just been a while since I wore one of these.”

Anja raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. The group continued onward through the overgrown hallway.

The greenery faded to a shaggy carpet of moss, which dispersed to show the lichen-mottled decking as they neared the end of the corridor. Jesri hung back as the group slipped under the half-raised door into the outer ring, then ducked her head to follow and frowned. A tuft of coarse hair was lodged in the door track.

Her eyes widened with realization. Diving under the door, she rolled and stood just in time to see a broad-shouldered bandit spring out of a side corridor close to the front of the group. He grasped a pitted bar of metal, bringing it up to swing at Rhuar. More assailants poured from behind him, spreading out into the hallway. Jesri shouted and reached for her pistol, but the alien was already in mid-swing by the time her gun cleared its holster. Rhuar looked up in shock as the bar flashed towards his head.

And stopped inches away.

The dog and the bandit stared at each other in confusion for a long moment, the air between them rippling with a lambent haze. With a flash of light and a sharp crack, the bandit was thrown backwards in a tangle of uncontrollably twitching limbs.

The other bandits charged, howling. Jesri grinned carnivorously. “Security grid is online, fuckers! Ariadne! Engage riot control protocol in this sector!”

Three incongruously cheerful ascending tones echoed through the hallways. “Attention,” droned a calm feminine voice, “a curfew is in effect for this sector. Please return to your resid-.” The voice was cut off as the audio scratched and sputtered into garbled static. Blurry fields of light cut across the path of the onrushing bandits, bouncing them violently to the floor.

Peering down the hall, Jesri could see a few more clusters of bandits prone on the ground or thrashing violently against the fields. One particularly large four-legged alien with prominent fangs crouched and sprang into the field surrounding it with a swipe of its claws. The field flashed white, and a cascade of sparks fell from the ceiling. It bellowed in rage, hammering the field again and again. Jesri grimaced. “Okay folks, time to move!”, she shouted. She caught Anja’s eye and pointed towards where Kenet-Tel’s brood was enclosed in a shining bubble.

Anja nodded and flicked her hand at the huddled aliens, dismissing the field. They grouped up and raced down the corridor, retracing their steps towards the ship.

They ran in silence, broken only by an occasional grunt of pain as Anja jostled her injured ribs. Somewhere behind them a throaty roar sounded. The lights flickered.

“Not good!”, yelled Jesri. “That was the field generator, move!” She fell back towards Kenet-Tel, who was frantically herding his children forward. They pushed onward quietly for several tense minutes. Rhuar was panting heavily and Kenet-Tel’s skin had darkened several shades.

Slowly, implacably, the noise of heavy footfalls swelled from down the corridor. The deep pounding of feet against the deck grew louder and more distinct with every passing second. At last from far behind them she saw the huge quadrupedal alien that had raged against the containment fields come careening into the corridor, clawed feet scrambling for traction on the deck. He found purchase and charged forward, his massive mouth hanging open to expose curved yellow fangs that jutted out dangerously from his tangled grey fur.

Jesri shouted a warning to Anja and drew her gun, taking aim down the hall at the charging alien. She fired, but the alien dropped low and began juking from side to side. It moved with surprising speed and foresight, and her shots slid past without connecting. Anja opened up from behind her only to miss her initial shots as well. Jesri’s gun spat invisible lines of energy again and again, but only managed to inflict grazes on her target as it serpentined its way towards the fleeing group.

“Shit,” she swore. “Fall back! I’ll engage.” She kept her armored side back in a ready stance and continued to fire at the oncoming assailant with her free hand. Finally, one of her shots connected with the massive bulk of the alien’s flank, gouging flesh and eliciting a roar of pain.

It was too little, too late, she realized. He was already closing to within striking range, and she pivoted to counterpunch as he leapt through the air at her. Fire blossomed from her fist, swirling back over her arm and shimmering the air beside her with heat. She jabbed directly at his face, but stumbled forward as her arm refused to extend properly.

The alien collided with her, knocking her gun from her hand and sending her flying against the wall with a shoulder check. She bounced back and hit the floor, slumping over her half-bent arm. The fire was gone, and a prickly numbness crept up towards her shoulder as the inducers stopped sending tactile input. The armor had run out of power. Jesri snarled in frustration, slamming the unresponsive hand into the ground and trying to wrench her arm free of its bindings.

The alien kept bounding past her towards Anja, who managed to tag him with a shot that ripped a slab of hair and thick skin from his hip. He swiped his claws in retaliation, drawing a deep gash across the outside of her thigh. Anja was slammed into the wall and slid to the ground in a daze, clear fluid oozing from her wound.

The big alien growled smugly and turned his attention to the rest of the group. Rhuar and Kenet-Tel had kept running during the short fight, retreating further down the corridor while Jesri and Anja bought them time - but it wasn’t enough. The alien burst into a run again and Jesri screamed a hoarse warning to Rhuar.

Rhuar spun around, exoskeleton flattening over his legs while Kenet-Tel took up a guard position in front of his children. Kenet-Ei bristled at their attacker, yowling wordlessly as he closed distance with them.

Jesri struggled to her feet and ripped her arm out of the armor. Her vision swam as she staggered towards the others, her breath roaring in her ears with every ragged gasp. She could see the alien crouched in front of Rhuar and Kenet-Tel, muscles tensed. Rhuar flung himself onto the alien’s back, snarling and biting. The massive creature ignored him and whirled to spring at Kenet-Tel. One huge paw flicked out to slam into his side, flinging him away from his huddled children. He sprawled senseless and gasping on the deck, one side of his chest caved in.

A scream of rage tore its way out of Jesri’s throat, her vision blurring. She broke into a stiff run, dimly aware of the sparks of pain flaring up her injured legs. She saw the alien advance and swing his paw again. Rhuar swung remora-like from his broad back as his jaws tore into fur and skin. Jesri smelled blood and smoke as her head pulsed with a dull throbbing, every jarring footfall sending a jolt through her bones.

She hurled herself at the alien, pulling her knife and stabbing deep into his flank. He roared and whirled around with a blind swipe of his paw. Jesri’s leg gave out as she flinched away from the strike and the paw raked empty air over her head.

Rhuar lost his grip and went tumbling to the side as the alien shook himself, finally tiring of the dog’s efforts. Jesri watched him land hard and yelp in pain through the dark haze clouding her vision, pounding against her temples with the din of a long-dead firefight. She drew breath in shallow gasps, blood trickling across one eye and blurring everything with halos of light and motion.

The alien stalked over to where she lay. It grinned toothily, baring its curving fangs. Jesri’s legs worked frantically but failed to push her away from the monster leering over her supine body.

It opened its mouth to tear into her flesh, its maw descending towards her with languid disinterest.

Jesri tried to roll away but her leg refused to move. She bucked frantically, sliding back and landing hard against the deck. The impact dispelled some of the fog clouding her vision, bringing the corridor into sharp relief. Half the world was teeth and dark, stinking gullet, nearly upon her. Anja sat slumped against the wall, immobile and bleeding, her eyes wide as they stared at Jesri. On her other side, Rhuar was struggling to his feet as he stared in horror at the alien drawing closer to her throat.

Behind the alien sat a still chaos of thin limbs and dark blood.

Jesri’s sight faded behind a bloom of white fire, heat pulsing through her veins. Screams echoed distantly in her ears as gunfire and explosions roared in a dissonant chorus. She saw her hands, red to the elbow, pressed against a wound that had long since stopped gushing blood.

Her vision cleared and she saw just her hand, clean but for ragged cuts from her armor weeping clear across her skin. She held her knife.

With a ragged yell she thrust her arm up into her attacker’s open mouth, her blood running freely where the fangs tore into her. Her knife slid deep into the roof of his mouth and sliced back across his palate, ropy blood oozing from the cut. His breath rattled out in a warm, fetid rush across her face. She threw herself to the side with the last scraps of her strength as the massive creature slammed dead into the deck.

Jesri blinked her eyes. She was upright, leaning heavily against a limping Anja as she was half-dragged, half-carried down the corridor. A low growl rumbled from behind her.

“Anja, another!”, barked Rhuar, his artificial voice grim. Anja dropped Jesri roughly and spun on her good leg, pistol in hand. A group of three bandits were rushing towards them screaming a thin, warbling ululation.

Sighting down the barrel of her gun, Anja shot twice. The lead bandit’s torso crumpled in on itself with a spray of blood and steam. The other two scrambled to a stop and dove towards a nearby passage. Anja managed to tag one of them in the leg, sending him to the deck screaming and clutching the torn ruins of his stump. The other vanished down the passage, the noise of his flight rapidly fading to silence.

Jesri coughed. “Ow,” she muttered, rubbing her hip where she had fallen to the deck. A litany of half-felt injuries had burst into bright, blinding pain with the impact. She lay on the deck for a long pair of seconds, willing her mind into focus and feeling the pain drain away to a manageable agony, beating frantically against the back of her consciousness.

Anja glanced down at her and smiled, extending a hand. “Sister! I am glad to see you awake,” she said. “You are heavier than you look.”

Jesri grabbed her hand and dragged herself upright. “No heavier than you,” she retorted, pausing to take stock of the situation. Down the hallway, the wounded alien had stopped screaming and passed out, his blood mingling with the wide puddle left by his dead comrade. Rhuar paced ahead of Jesri and Anja, his shoulders set low with tension. Nobody else was in the hallway.

She closed her eyes, the events of the fight replaying in her mind. The alien rushing close before they could shoot it down, the armor failing, Anja falling, Rhuar’s desperate attack. “The others?”, she asked quietly. She saw a mass of blood and small bodies flit before her and forced her eyes open again.

Anja was looking at her with a neutral expression. “We should keep moving, sister,” she whispered, “More will be coming.”

Jesri gritted her teeth and began to move down the hallway, forcing her legs to move despite the pain crackling through her with every step.

Anja ran the dermal binder across the last of the cuts on Jesri’s arm, leaving a trail of shiny, pinched skin. Jesri frowned and scratched at it, flexing her elbow. “Tight,” she complained. “It feels stiff.”

“It will have to do until we get to an actual autodoc,” replied Anja, stowing the tool in a cabinet. She winced and scratched at her leg, the same smooth scars visible through the blood-encrusted slash in her trousers. “I admit it’s not ideal,” she conceded.

Leaning back, Jesri stared upwards at the harsh lighting of the medical bay. A low thrum resonated through her as the ship’s engines engaged. Rhuar had waved off Qktk’s stream of questions and fled to the bridge, insisting on departing as soon as possible. With their wounds treated, Jesri supposed that they should join them on the bridge sooner rather than later.

She laid still on the medical bed. Anja finished stowing the supplies they had used and sat down beside her, taking Jesri’s hand in hers without speaking. They sat there together in silence for a while, the timbre of the engines rising and falling as Rhuar maneuvered his way out of the docks. The air rushing past the ship made a susurrus of whispers that grew by the moment, then disappeared with the tiniest of jolts when they passed through the exit and into the void of space.

They absorbed the quiet, and Jesri closed her eyes.

“What happened back there, Anja?” she asked.

Anja bit her lip. “I imagine that like me, you have not fought seriously in a while. Without practice, things degrade.”

“Bullshit,” Jesri snorted. “We don’t lose muscle memory like that. I’m not wondering why we lost that fight, I know why we lost that fight.”

“Sister, unless I am very mistaken with my definitions we won that fight,” observed Anja. “In particular, you won that fight.”

Jesri opened her eyes and glanced over at Anja. “Doesn’t feel like it,” she muttered. “And that’s what I’m talking about.”

Anja frowned. “Does it trouble you so much?”

Jesri quirked an eyebrow at her. “The death of comrades?” Anja raised her hands, acknowledging the point, but Jesri continued. “We’ve seen innocents die before, and ones we knew better than Kenet-Tel. Mountains of them, planets of them, piled on top of each other over and over.” She folded her arms over her chest, hugging herself. “We swam up that river of death and kept on going for five thousand years. And after all that I close my eyes and see those five instead.” Jesri let her eyelids drift shut. “I feel old, sister,” she sighed.

Anja ran her fingers through Jesri’s hair, brushing away amber crusts of dried blood. “I missed most of that fight,” she said after a while. “I was cut and dazed. And when I could see straight the first thing I saw was you on your back. I tried to get up, to lift my arm to fire at the beast, but I failed. I saw you fail too.” Anja pulled her hands back, looking away. “And then you got up and fought anyway.”

Jesri opened her mouth to protest, but Anja held a hand up and continued. “I saw all of the same deaths you did, every mountain of corpses and each river of blood. Today I saw you about to die, and nothing I had in me would let me raise one arm and fire. Not even to save the only one I have left.”

Anja smiled sadly. “And you had what I lacked, for five strangers you had known for hours. You found something out in the void that never came to find me while I sat and searched. But for that, we would all be dead.”

At a loss for words, Jesri lay back and studied the smooth arc of the ceiling. After a while, she lifted her head to look at Anja. “I can accept it,” she said resignedly, “even if I don’t want it. It looks like even we change given enough time.” Her lips drew into a thin line. “Not you, though,” she said. “If we’re alive because I changed, then we’re also alive because you never did.”

Anja looked back with a curious expression and Jesri sighed. “Tell me,” she whispered, “were all of them dead?”

Anja’s face went blank. “We did not leave anyone behind.”

“I know,” she replied, her voice barely audible. “Was there another option?”

The stoic mask on Anja’s face hardened. “No.”

“And yet I might have chosen it,” said Jesri, “and we would be dead.”

Her sister frowned and leaned back, the stone seeping out of her face. The two women clasped hands again and sat quietly in the medbay as the soft hum of the ship faded away, leaving them in silence.

Rhuar stepped backwards and disconnected from the ship, his awareness suddenly sliced down to just the parts of him that were Rhuar. It felt like losing a limb every time, and he paused to steady himself before stowing the jack in its place by the console.

“Did they say where they would like to go next?”, chirped Qktk inquiringly from behind him.

“No, not yet,” Rhuar replied, stretching low against the ground. “Just wanted to get out of the dock. I figure they’re gonna take a while in the medbay.”

Qktk rattled his arms together in agitation. “Yes, I’d expect. They both seemed to be injured quite severely. Are you all right, Mr. Rhuar? What happened on the station?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” said Rhuar. “Just a couple of bruises.” He shook his head. “I’m a fuckin idiot, though.”

The captain didn’t say anything in response, and after a long moment Rhuar continued. “I wanted to go on the station to see all the cool shit. I thought it would be fun.”

He settled on to the floor, curling into a circle. His head rested on the cool metal, and he closed his eyes. “You get used to the idea of feeling insignificant,” he said, his voice muffled. “Just hopping from station to station, maybe you make some money and maybe you don’t. And you think you know what it’d be like, being more than that. You have it in your head what you’d do if one day you were the grand fuckin poobah of the shit pile.”

“But it’s still a shit pile, Captain,” he spat ruefully, “everything we’ve ever known. I thought we were better than the fuckin decklickers because of the ship, because we dreamed big. But you know what I learned today? We never knew what ‘big’ was. Our lives are so small that we couldn’t even imagine it, whatever we came up with would still be this tiny fuckin speck compared to how it really is.”

Qktk settled down on the deck beside Rhuar. “Yes,” he admitted, “I had felt a bit of that. We’re in over our heads.”

They sat beneath the stars for a few minutes.

“I tried to take my piece of it,” Rhuar said, “there was a second where I thought I could do something that mattered, tip the scales for the first time in my life. I tried as hard as I’ve ever tried before.” Bitterness crept into his voice. “I wasn’t even worth killing. I just got fuckin ignored. And then Anja…”

He trailed off, then opened his eyes and looked at Qktk. “Be careful around those two, Captain. They may like us, and they’ll keep their promises if they can. And if they ever even think that we’re gonna get in the way, they’ll kill us and lose no sleep over it.” Rhuar snorted. “If they fuckin sleep at all.”

Qktk nodded gravely. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, “but I’d like you to think on something as well.” He drew himself upright, forelegs spreading wide. “We Htt have a story about our past, long ago, when someone came to our, ah, shitpile. We didn’t know what we didn’t know, and he expanded our horizons somewhat forcefully. Suddenly we knew just how small we were, and that we could be wiped out without a hint of malice or evil or anything else grand from our stories. It would happen because the wheels of the universe just happened to grind over our speck of sand and not another.”

“Yeah, that sounds right,” grumbled Rhuar. “How’d that go for you?”

Qktk chittered. “Much as you’d expect. Many people hated our visitor for the change he’d brought to us but others saw the gift in it. We were children before he came, and now we could grow - had to grow, in fact, or we would die as quietly as we had lived. So we grew, grew so fast it hurt, and we survived.”

The captain settled back to the deck and folded his legs. “So while I respect the danger we’re in, having those two with us, I can’t think of them badly. There is no malice in being truthful.” He paused, contemplative. “And if a human once again lifts up our eyes to stare at the sky instead of the sand, I had long ago decided that I preferred the sky.”

Beyond the viewports, the vast stretches of the cosmos glowed with gentle light. The captain and the artificer sat and watched as they drifted, one mote among trillions.