Xim Len tried to steady herself, pushing the pounding fear back until her vision cleared and her breath slowed somewhat. Trelir was studying the interior of the crate with keen interest, completely disregarding her. He prodded experimentally at the reinforced sides with a skeletal finger.

“Yes,” he mused, “no wonder I’ve been unable to call out, this is quite the arrangement. Did you have a hand in putting this together?” This last he addressed to Xim Len directly, his skull swiveling to fix her with his black, empty sockets. How he could see, she didn’t know, but it was obvious that he had no trouble picking her out in the dim lighting. The red glow reflected dimly off the contours of his face, and in the span below the orbits of his eyes she could see her own distorted, terrified form. She stared at it, oddly mesmerised.

“Excuse me,” Trelir said, a thread of irritation creeping into his voice. “I feel I’ve been quite polite under the circumstances. Please answer my question. Are you part of the team that has been analyzing me, yes or no?”

Xim Len’s mind raced, but she could see no viable way to escape. The door mustn’t open, or Elpis would be destroyed. She found her thoughts focusing on the detonator in her coverall pocket. “Ah,” she managed, her voice thready and weak. “Yes?”

Trelir had no face to speak of, but the set of his arms and shoulders belied his satisfaction at her response. “Wonderful,” he crooned, sitting back down in a relaxed pose. “Did you learn anything interesting?”, he inquired.

“You’re a very, ah, remarkable machine,” Xim Len stammered, shifting her body slightly to the side to obscure the detonator’s pocket from view. Her hand drifted upward to rub one of her wings nervously.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Trelir said indulgently, “but I’m already aware of how amazing I am.” He leaned forward, placing his hands lightly on his legs. “For example,” he murmured, “I’m quite able to see you reaching for that item in your pocket. I would suggest that you leave it alone.”

She froze, and Trelir let out a low, buzzing laugh. “I don’t know why you’re surprised,” he admonished her, “you’ve been studying me, you should know my capabilities far outstrip your own. There’s no shame in it. You may be one of the only organics who will ever study Confluence technology, actually, so you can at least feel proud about that.”

“What,” she said, her voice catching in her throat. “What will you do now?”

Trelir stood up once more, looking down at her from black sockets rimmed with shining metal. “Well, as you don’t seem to be in a particularly talkative mood I believe I’ll leave this room, send a message to the Confluence and perhaps see if I can accomplish anything of value before an Emissary arrives to destroy us.” He cocked his head to the side. “Those two violent Terran sisters wouldn’t happen to be around here, would they?”

Sick thrills coursed through Xim Len’s gut and she could feel her fingers trembling once more. Jesri had been right, none of her seemingly-paranoid caution had been misplaced. There were no options left to her. It was time for the failsafe. She took great care not to move a muscle as she noted the position of her hand, thinking of the precise series of movements she would need to make.

Her hand blurred towards her pocket. Just as she felt her fingers close around the remote, however, a hammerblow struck her left side and sent her spinning. She slammed into the crate wall and slid down, falling onto her struck side when she moved to brace her fall with an arm that was no longer there. She twisted her head in uncomprehending pain to look at the mangled stump of her shoulder, then once again at Trelir as he held her arm up to the light for study. Pale blood ran down its length to drip off her fingers still curled around the detonator.

“Fascinating structure,” he murmured, “So delicate. I’ve never had a chance to see one of your species up close before, the Ysleli were anything but cosmopolitan. If we had more time…” He looked at her wistfully, then shook his head. “But we don’t. May I infer that this device will harm me somehow?” He placed her arm carefully on a crate, high out of reach, then turned to study the door. Xim Len’s vision was blurry, her breath rapid as spikes of pain started to skitter out from her ruined shoulder.

Trelir balled up a fist and punched at the door, sending a resounding slam echoing through the confines of the chamber. The noise sounded dull and muffled to Xim Len’s ears, cloaked behind the rushing blood pounding in her head. He studied the indent made by his bony fingers, then shook his head.

“Remarkable, this is really quite well-constructed,” he said approvingly. “You should feel accomplished.” He walked back towards her, then bent down quickly to grab her by the neck. She was hauled inexorably upward until her feet left the ground, kicking weakly as she struggled against his cold, inflexible grasp.

“I would let you live a little longer,” Trelir said conversationally, drawing back his free arm and holding his fingers stiff. “Unfortunately, it seems I will be occupied for some time breaking through this door. I can’t have you getting into any mischief while my attention is elsewhere, so - goodbye.”

There was no time to react; his arm flashed forward in a lightning blow that tore through the center of her chest like a railgun. A cold, colorless light flashed across her vision, and she barely registered the impact when Trelir dropped her to the floor in a heap.

She couldn’t feel her legs. All sensation in her body converged to a humming static that mingled with the red dark of the crate closing around her. Dull pounding echoed in her ears, rhythmic and slow. Trelir, hitting the door. A blinding pinpoint cut through the haze in her vision as the door bent to show the light of the cargo bay beyond.

A wave of nauseating, shuddering energy coursed through her as she saw it, crystallizing the fog in her mind to a single razor-edged thought. He must not escape. The light pulsed brighter as Trelir hammered the door again, slipping his fingers through the gap. Her dimming eyes saw a flash of pale wet green amidst the red, illuminated by the light from outside. Her arm. The remote.

Her right arm strained as she levered herself up. Wings spread wide from her back and pushed with her last burst of strength. The screech of bending metal came as Trelir pulled at the door, but Xim Len didn’t hear it. She soared.

“You’re kidding,” Jesri said, blinking in disbelief. The two sisters hunched low over a too-small table, tucked away behind a market stall as the swirl of daily shoppers spiraled around them.

Anja shook her head, chewing vigorously on a muffin-like pastry as she tried not to laugh. “Mmph, nm,” she said, swallowing hard. “No, I swear. Tiln says most of them have spent their whole lives in secluded training programs, and then they were obviously underway after that. Leral was the first female Ysleli their age any of them had-”

A shuddering explosion shook the station, raising cries of alarm from the crowd. Jesri locked eyes with Anja as a lump of cold dread coalesced in her heart. “Trelir,” she said. “Oh fuck.”

“This way,” Anja said, shooting to her feet and sprinting out of the secluded nook. Jesri followed, nearly tripping over the baker as the portly Kita tried his best to hide under his cart. The two sisters raced through the crowd with grim faces, paying little attention to the cries of passers-by as they were shoved roughly out of the way or bowled over entirely.

Anja slammed at a door panel, rushing into a bare room with a cracked screen still mounted to the wall. “David!”, she called out, her voice echoing from the walls. “Helene!”

The screen activated only seconds later, a frazzled-looking Helene still in the process of sitting down when the feed connected. “Anja, Jesri, thank God you’re okay,” Helene said somberly. “We got the detonator signal just seconds ago, I was just about to trace you.” Her face paled and her voice took on a hoarse quality. “The explosion… It must have been Xim Len.”

“Do you have any feeds?”, Jesri asked, clipped and terse. “Any logs from the time of the explosion?”

“Working on it!”, shouted David from far offscreen.

Helene looked up from her own console, her face grey. “I can’t get any of the cargo bay cameras,” she said. “None of the outside halls either.”

“Cameras are irrelevant,” Anja snarled. “We need to know if Trelir got a signal off. The logs-”

“Fucking working on it!”, David yelled.

There was a pause while they waited, the silence punctuated only by the noise from Anja’s irritated fidgeting. Finally, the image on the screen flickered and shifted to show the interior of the cargo bay with the large containment crate in the center. For several seconds nothing happened, then an impact sent a puff of dust shuddering from the metal surface. The reflection of the bay lights on the metal jumped and skittered as more impacts followed, and the door began to noticeably deform.

“Fuck,” Anja swore. “That door was hull alloy.” Jesri ignored her, leaning in closer to the screen as the seam of the door lifted away from the crate, bending out to show a sliver of darkness along the edge. There was another pause, then a series of sharp impacts that widened the gap even further.

She felt a chill lance through her as skeletal fingers spidered out to grip the twisted edge. They gripped hard, deforming the metal as they pulled the gap wide-

Then there was static, and nothing. The two sisters exchanged a glance as the display shifted back to show Helene’s pallid face. “That was a breach,” Jesri said. “We have to assume he got a signal off, he had several seconds and a clear line to the outside.”

“...confirmed,” David said dully, walking into view behind Helene. “We caught a signal trace. No idea about the contents, but he sent a burst for three seconds after he breached the door. Elpis is on a clock. Days, hours, I’m not sure - it depends on how close the nearest Emissary is.” He met Helene’s stricken glance backwards, his own face bleak. “We’re dead.”

Helene held his gaze for a moment, then nodded and turned back to face Anja and Jesri with a pinched expression on her face. “So we are,” she said flatly. “Let’s focus on mitigation. David, your priority is dumping our archive. Make sure the last batch of notes is backed up, then get the others and start mirroring it to as many other stations as you can.” David nodded sharply and walked off.

“Anja, Jesri,” she continued, “We have to tell the guild leaders, convince them to evacuate as many people as possible. I can have Chris and Deepti help route traffic through the launch ramps and the gate-”

“No,” Anja said grimly. “The gate leaves now. The Emissary could arrive at any time and the gate is irreplaceable.”

Helene stared at her. “We’re already going to have issues handling the volume of departing ships,” she protested. “We can keep the gate on standby to jump and send it out at the first sign of Emissary activity.”

“Not happening,” Anja replied, shaking her head. “There is no fallback option if the gate is destroyed, it needs to leave now. If we lose our incursion capability against the Gestalt we lose everything.”

“It’s a risk,” Helene acknowledged hoarsely, “but we have to take it. By removing the gate you will kill thousands, maybe tens of thousands. Do you want that blood on your hands?”

Anja shot a withering look back through the screen. “There is a difference between what I want and what is necessary,” she spat. “I will do everything I can to save the civilians on Elpis, but I will not jeopardize the work of five millennia for them. The nature of the risk is irrelevant. If we fail, they die anyway.”

“Call David,” Jesri said abruptly. “Eta-one, I mean. We’ll dock the Grand Design, there’s no point in hiding it now. It has space for passengers and can self-jump.”

“Sister, the Grand Design is also irreplaceable,” Anja objected. “It would be too great of a risk to bring it here.”

Jesri shook her head emphatically. “It can maneuver and it can enter hyperspace more quickly than the gate. It’s still a risk, yes, but we have to do something.” She looked at Helene, then back to Anja. Her sister’s face was implacable. “Anja, we did this. There’s no choice here, we made our decision when we brought Trelir on the station.”

“The Emissary could arrive at any time,” Anja repeated stubbornly. “It could be hours-”

“-or it could be days,” Jesri retorted, glaring back at her. “We’re Marines, Anja. We fight for, not against.”

Anja stared at her sister coolly. “We are also Valkyrie, sister. You know what it means if we fail. With the fate of the universe in the balance, avoidable risks are to be avoided. Would you feel satisfied explaining to the billions that the Gestalt has killed so far that you threw away our chance at victory to avoid one more drop of blood in the bucket?”

Jesri glared at Anja, fuming. “Don’t feed me that utilitarian bullshit!”, she shouted angrily. “We’re not just soldiers anymore, we make the fucking calls and we don’t get to hide behind the mission when people die on our watch.” She stalked closer to her sister, her voice dropping to a low growl. “We’ve only made it this far because we’re part of the legacy that humanity left behind, and that legacy comes with obligations. If that means we have to jump off the safe path and trust in our luck, then I say we fucking roll the dice.”

Anja gave her a strange, exasperated look. “What is it with dice?”, she muttered. Jesri shot her a questioning glance, but Anja waved her off. “Fine, dammit,” she said irritatedly. “Tell David to bring her in. It may be a mistake, but that only matters if someone is around to call us on it.”

“Thank you,” Helene said gratefully. “I’ll send him the message.”

“Tell him to hurry,” Jesri said. “Once we brief the guilds on the situation things are going to escalate very quickly.”

“Wait, come back, where are we going? What do you mean, ‘destroyed?’”, Kvkitt asked irritatedly. The station administrator rushed after Anja as she paced down the corridor to the station’s largest dock, his legs clacking against the deck in a rapid beat. “This is a transit station, it’s not going anywhere.”

Anja didn’t break her stride. “Is the translator not functioning well today?”, she asked icily. “I will provide some context. When I say ‘destroyed’, I mean that the station will shortly come under attack by an advanced warship. Said warship will fire its weapons at the station, likely causing complete structural failure and the death of any living creatures aboard.” She tilted her head to glare back at him. “That is what ‘destroyed’ means. That is what will happen here, probably before the day is out.” She stopped at the door to the dock, tapping at the keypad.

“But that’s impossible,” Kvkitt insisted. “The station is the size of a small moon, and there’s no profit in destroying it even if you could. All of the major factions have agreed that station infrastructure is not to be targeted in combat. Even pirates wouldn’t risk breaking that rule.”

Anja stepped into the dock and sighed, ignoring Kvkitt for a moment to take in the awesome scale of the room. The large craft dock on the station stretched nearly two kilometers back from where they stood, a huge cylinder with triple rings of mammoth clamps that were designed to anchor even the largest Terran ships. They sat empty and waiting like the fingers of dead giants stretching inward towards the center of the bay.

“Kvkitt,” she said tiredly, “Who am I?”

“You are Anja Tam,” Kvkitt replied testily. “Currently the largest troublemaker on this station, since Tarl has thankfully taken his leave. Your point?”

“I am Major Anja Tam,” she corrected him. “Terran Naval Marines, Kvkitt. Do you know what that means?”

Kvkitt stared back at her. “That you’re delusional, but I already knew that. I admit that you have a way with human technology and your appearance is… disconcerting, shall we say, but you and your sister are just two mercenaries. There are no Terran Naval Marines. There is no Terran Navy. That all died a long time ago.”

“Indeed it did,” Anja said softly. “Do you know why?”

“Some massive cataclysm,” Kvkitt said crossly, waving a leg in irritation. “It happened thousands of years ago, Anja Tam. I fail to see why-”

Kvkitt stopped and winced as a blinding ray of sunlight issued from the far side of the dock to paint a thin line of blazing gold on the bulkhead. It widened as he watched, the light intensifying as the gargantuan doors protecting the bay from the void heaved open. Their motion sent a low reverberation through the deck, and the ship seemed to tremble under him.

“It was an attack,” Anja said, “not a cataclysm.” Kvkitt’s eyes flicked nervously between Anja and the far end of the dock. “There were plenty of people back then who thought just like you did, that our planets and stations were safe and that the universe operated according to some set of rules we could depend on.” She gave him a thin smile. “You can see how that turned out.”

Kvkitt’s retort died on his mouthparts as the light from the far end of the bay winked out. The bay doors were fully open, and the blinding sun was blocked by an immense shape making its way towards the opening.

“Wh-”, Kvkitt gaped, tripping over his words. “What is that?”

“The Terran Navy,” Anja replied with an odd smile. “Here to evacuate this station, because that is what the Terran Navy does. Someone remembered that earlier.” She clapped the dumbfounded Arrigh on the back. “This is a day for old legends, Kvkitt. I am here, my ship is here, and our ancient enemy will be knocking at the gate sooner than you would prefer. Begin the evacuation. Get your people on my ship and I will keep them safe.”

Kvkitt stared speechlessly as the Grand Design slid through the distant bay doors, its prow angling towards the aged grasp of the docking clamps. With some difficulty, he looked away from the ship at Anja. “Why?”, he croaked weakly. “You could do this without me. The guilds report to you now, everyone knows that.”

“Everyone also knows that you do not,” Anja replied wryly. “Jesri is telling the guild leaders the same things I told you, but people will be reluctant to leave on their word alone. They will think the same things you thought just now.” She flashed a smile at him, small but genuine. “As much as we may disagree, Kvkitt, you were only ever a problem because you had too much integrity for a bribe. People pick up on these things. If you tell the station they need to evacuate, they will listen.”

She stepped closer to him, and the bulk of the Grand Design loomed behind her like an encroaching glacier. Kvkitt shifted nervously as the fleeting warmth left her face. “Convince them, Kvkitt,” she said softly. “I will not risk waiting for long. Get them on the ship.”

Jesri paced back to the front of the bridge, punching numbers on her display with a frown. Video feeds showed huddled groups of refugees clutching cloth-wrapped bundles and comforting frightened children. “We’re getting pretty full,” she muttered, shooting a glance back at Rhuar. “How’s the line looking?”

Rhuar scratched idly at his shipjack, his eyes defocused and glassy. “Seems like we should be okay,” he replied. “Neryn jumped the Cormorant out half an hour ago, he said they were full-up. That was the last of our other ships on-station. Only a handful more waiting to board on our end. It looks like more people left on private ships than we estimated, Captain Qktk has been working double-time with Manifold’s team to help manage the ramp queue.”

Jesri nodded. “Tell him to get his ass down here soon,” she said. “We’re not going to be able to stick around for long after the refugees are on.”

Rhuar nodded and returned his attention to the shipjack. He was fully occupied directing the flow of refugees through the ship, unlocking doors and cargo holds to hold the tide of frightened merchants and laborers. David had taken over coordination of the fleet of maintenance robots, now repurposed as guides and markers for the terrified crowds. Jesri compulsively checked the feeds once more before pacing back over to Anja on the command dais.

“The gate has reported in from Ysl,” Anja said. “No issues with the jump, I have given Tarl authority to unlock the drive again if needed.”

“Did he say anything?”, Jesri asked.

Anja grinned at her sister. “He assured me he would take vengeance in our place if we fell protecting the unworthy,” she replied. “You know, the usual. Did we hear anything from the salvage crew?”

“Yes sir,” David’s voice confirmed, his image winking to life on a display. His normally jocular manner was subdued, and the day’s stress was written deeply into his face. “The debris plume shot out pretty far when the failsafes blew, so they’re still working on it. They recovered some of the sealed containment boxes intact, but no sign of either body.”

“I would expect only one body,” Anja said grimly. “At least part of Trelir would have survived that blast. He was far too well-constructed to be totally destroyed.”

Jesri shook her head, fatigue nibbling gently at the periphery of her awareness. “Hopefully Xim Len didn’t have all the tablets out, if we can’t find Trelir we can at least use the original data from our scans.”

“Just make sure they leave the crates under seal until we have a chance to set up containment,” Anja grumbled. “I think it would be prudent to harden our security protocols, given the circumstances. Speaking of...” She leaned over and flicked a control, causing Helene’s face to shimmer into being on the display in front of them.

“Hi, you two,” she said, giving them a bleak smile. “Evacuation going all right?”

Anja nodded. “Just about finished. More people than expected left on their own ships.”

“They’re trying, anyway,” Helene said with a worried frown. “We’ve got quite a lot of ramp traffic. Deepti and Chris have been working to smooth out power management, keep the recharge cycles short. It’s going okay for the moment, mostly thanks to Manifold coordinating things.”

Jesri raised an eyebrow. “You introduced yourself to Manifold?”, she asked. “How’d it go?”

“Oh, fine,” Helene said wanly. “There was some grumbling about secrecy being ‘non-optimal’, but that was the worst of it.” She shook her head, then gave them a more serious look. “Listen, I’ve had David transmit a list to the Grand Design. There are three nearby stations that have resistance cells and capacity to offload your refugees. I’ve already transmitted our archive to the network for backup, they’ll have our research data.”

“Thank you, Helene,” Jesri said, “but we’re not going to go anywhere populated right away. We’ve discussed this with our David already. Showing up in the Grand Design with a boat full of refugees will draw attention and we don’t want to risk dooming another station.”

Helene frowned again. “Surely you’re not considering keeping them on the ship?”, she said incredulously. “You’ll be going into combat before long.”

“They will stay on Ysl temporarily,” Anja said. “I ran the numbers by Tarl, and he says the underground base can handle it after the improvements they made. The base is secure, self-contained and damn near undetectable from orbit.” She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. “The refugees will be ferried out to nearby transit stations on Ysleli ships over the next several weeks. Not the best solution, but it will at least be quiet.”

“Sounds like you have it all figured out,” Helene said. She gave them a sad smile, looking at each sister in turn. “The others will-”

Helene trailed off distractedly and tensed up as David shouted something indistinct. She turned back to the viewer and opened her mouth to speak just as the feed cut out. Jesri stared at the vacant space, her vision still filled with the afterimage of Helene’s terrified eyes.

Anja stood up from her chair with a grim look. The dock began to shake around them, a rumbling basso vibration carried through the metal from elsewhere in the station. The Grand Design swayed in the docking clamps as the tremors hit. The low vibrations rocked them gently for a handful of seconds before fading into eerie silence. Rhuar stood horrorstruck, fully engrossed in the shipjack feed as the two sisters exchanged a glance.

“Well,” Anja said quietly. “Time to go.”