“Rhuar!”, Jesri yelled, snapping her fingers in front of the dog’s glassy eyes as the last of the tremors faded. “Come on, we need a status report!”

Rhuar blinked, then shook his head to clear it. “Ah, sorry,” he said, his voice high and nervous. “I was looking through the sensors when it hit and I slipped too far into it, I could see everything, everything about the debris and the bodies, and the way they tried so hard to breathe…” He shuddered, then seemed to collect himself. “Sorry,” he repeated quietly. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m good.”

“We need a status report,” Jesri said gently, although urgency danced in her eyes. “What’s our situation?”

“We’re pretty fucked,” Rhuar admitted, his voice strained. “Emissary ship just like the one from Ysl popped in about five kilometers down from the central axis and fired their bullshit cannon into the station core.” He tilted his head, and a display changed to show a diagram of the station. A massive, kilometers-wide hole had been blasted into the superstructure near the central core, sending an avalanche of debris fountaining outward into open space.

“Holy shit,” Jesri breathed, leaning closer. “Okay, we need-” She cut off as a segment of the mid-ring exploded on the display, the unreal scale of the destruction underscored by the eerie silence of the bridge. Bare seconds later the rumbling came again, sending the ship swaying and raising a chorus of moans from the stressed support beams in the dock.

“The dock isn’t going to take too many more of those,” David said hastily, looking at a display somewhere offscreen. His face was pallid and his eyes were red, sunken deep. “The open space is a weak point, if they hit closer-”

“We need to leave,” Anja said brusquely. “Now.”

Rhuar’s ears flattened back against his head in distress. “No, wait, please,” he said plaintively. “The Captain, he’s still out there-”

Jesri dropped to one knee and took Rhuar’s head in her hands, looking into his eyes. “I know,” she said softly, “but we need to leave now.” She scratched behind one of Rhuar’s ears lightly and straightened up. “I’ll call Kick up and make sure he’s okay in a minute,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can to help him get out, but you’re the only one that can get us out. You ready?”

“Fuck no,” Rhuar said shakily. “Jesri, we’re going to get splashed the second we poke our ass through the exit.”

“Let’s splash back,” she said, sliding back into her chair. “Close the hatches, give me a slow reverse then kick it to full right after the next shot. We’ll toss everything we have at it before it can recharge, see if we can make it blink.” She paused for a moment, considering. “David, can you fuck with their targeting?”

“No guarantees,” he replied nervously. “We’re a lot closer than the last engagement, the offset needed for a miss would be huge. If you can go fast enough I might be able to get us a timing error. Speaking of getting shot, shouldn’t you guys be on the battle bridge?”

“Are you joking?”, Anja asked. “If this part of the ship takes a shot from the Emissary we die no matter where we sit. At least up here there are viewports.”

Clangs reverberated through the Grand Design as the clamps disengaged, leaving it floating free in the dock. The hum of the engines intensified, and outside the viewports the walls began to slide past.

“To, ah, all of our guests,” David’s voice rang out over the intercom, “we’re leaving Elpis in a hurry. Stow your tray tables, strap in and hang on.”

Rhuar shot Jesri a confused look. “The fuck is a tray table?”, he asked quietly.

“Later,” Jesri said, absorbed in the weapons controls on her console. “Get ready, the next shot should come any second now.” The bridge fell silent as they drifted slowly backward, bereft of speech or the low vibrations from the clamps. Jesri stared at the station diagram waiting for the Emissary’s next shot to lance through the ship, spill their air, torch their flesh-

The display flared as another portion of the station’s midsection exploded into a cloud of twisting metal fragments. Sudden acceleration pulled Jesri away from her chair, the walls of the dock speeding into a blur as the colossal ship thundered aft towards the exit.

“Exit in ten seconds!”, Rhuar said sharply. “Jesri, you need me to roll?”

Jesri’s fingers danced over the console, locking in the Emissary’s ovoid form as a target. It was precisely to the fore and below the ship, so her options were…

A feral grin split her face. “Hold it like this!”, she replied. “This is perfect.”

“Five seconds!”, Rhuar called. Jesri toggled a switch on her display and a shuddering groan reverberated through the ship from below. They were only a few hundred meters from the exit when the shock from the last shot hit the bay. A rain of debris tumbled from the ceiling along the length of the cavernous space, massive girders slamming into the slip where they had been docked seconds before. Pings echoed from the hull where the scrap struck them, and Anja gripped her chair tightly.

“Three!”, he shouted. “Two!”

Jesri’s fingers were poised over her display, her eyes fixed on the Emissary’s red pip. A single line of green text appeared as the system gained target lock, illuminating her fingers with verdant light. The whine of giant servos stopped. For an eternal moment there was only the roar of the engines and the drum of her heart.

“One!”, Rhuar yelled. “Clear!”

“WARP CANNON (MULTIPLE LAUNCH) - AUTO [CONFIRM?]”, asked the cheery green text on her screen.

She pushed a button.

The shaking stopped, and Qktk climbed out from under the low workstation. A girder had fallen across the second row of desks, pinning the Arrigh who had been working behind him. Thick, pale fluid oozed from its cracked carapace, and it wheezed piteously with each labored breath.

“Control, this is Pride of Raffa, come in!”, a voice crackled, issuing in a panicked hiss from his headset. “Control, we are in position on ramp two but the rail is inactive, please advise!”

He turned away from the dying Arrigh and took his workstation, not bothering to locate his chair. “Pride of Raffa, Control,” he rasped, “Hold for transit. Routing power to the rail now.” Scanning through the litany of errors and warnings from ruptured conduits, Qktk retasked a power substation to feed one of the two remaining launch ramps. The capacitors drank in the power thirstily, and he saw the bright green telltale of a ramp in use.

“Thank you, Control!”, the voice cried out, the words muffled by interference from the building hyperjump. “You’ve saved five hundred of us just now! Thank y-”

The rail power drained once more and the channel lapsed into silence. Qktk turned from his workstation to check on the trapped Arrigh, but it was already dead. He stood looking for a moment, then hastily dove under his desk as the room began to shake once more.

“How many?”, a weak voice asked from beside him. Qktk looked, startled, to find a glistening pseudopod slithering from beneath a pile of wreckage.

“Manifold!”, he exclaimed. “I thought you were…” He paused, contemplating the Caran’s gelatinous form. “I suppose you would be hard to crush,” Qktk mused.

Its surface quivered in amusement. “It was a good effort,” Manifold said. “How many ships?”

Qktk straightened up to stand at his console once more, tapping at the screen. “Still an undetermined number of stragglers yet to depart. Sixty-two self-jumped, eighty-five on the ramps. Reported totals of about seventy-five thousand and eighteen thousand refugees, respectively.”

“Hmm,” Manifold croaked, extruding more of itself from the rubble pile. “Fewer than my models predicted,” it said contemplatively. “Has your friends’ large ship not - oh, wait, there it goes.”

Qktk turned to look at the relevant display just in time to see the fore quarter of the Grand Design slide from the bay with a cloud of dust and debris glittering behind it. A warmth spread through him to see the familiar ship, although he didn’t recognize the two protrusions trailing from the aft-

“Control, this is Stop Staring with seventy-nine aboard, we’re on approach to ramp three!”, his headset squawked. “Get us the fuck out of here!”

Qktk tore his gaze from the display and spun back to his panel, making the necessary changes to charge up the third ramp from their dwindling power sources. “Stop Staring, we are rerouting power for you. Clear to jump in ten,” he replied.

“What are they doing?”, Manifold wondered aloud, still watching the display.

The button lit up under Jesri’s finger as a thrill of power shot through the ship, her bones seeming to tremble in time with banks of capacitors surging to unimaginable levels of energy - then a titanic blast, coruscating arcs of fire leaping from the Emissary’s hull. The backsplash of the impact shot white-hot debris from the wound, leaving bloodred streams of cooling particles in its wake.

Bare milliseconds later the second capacitor bank released to hurl two more meter-long metal sabots down the rails - where they disappeared in an actinic flash of light. In nearly the same instant they tore out of the inky depths of hyperspace right on top of the Emissary, the bow shock of their chaotic exit sending a destabilizing ripple through spacetime just as the projectiles ripped even further into the rent hull.

“Get fucked!”, Jesri crowed ecstatically, queueing the close-quarter railguns to fire en masse even as her ears rang from the first shots. Thunder roared and stipples of fire dotted the Emissary’s hull as the low capacitor whine built to a rumbling crescendo. Four more shots ripped out in an eyeblink to slam into the Emissary, the fists of an angry god crashing into its hull and venting its glowing lifeblood to space.

“Energy spike!”, Rhuar cried out, shouting over the din of the cannons. “It’s firing!”

Anja snarled a curse. “David, make it miss!”, she shouted. “Rhuar, keep charging the hyperdrive-”

The emissary disgorged a twisted, rippling mass at the fleeing ship, distorting the stars as it raced across the Grand Design’s bow. It brushed mere meters away from the hull, the distortion ripping away huge swaths of armor plating and sending screaming vibrations through the superstructure.

The deck heaved with the blow, pitching Jesri to the floor even as the guns exacted their retribution on the Emissary with a third volley. “Hold her steady!”, Jesri yelled, struggling back into her chair. “Let me have a few more shots, we’re hurting it!”

“We’re not moving fast enough to dodge,” David objected. “I barely shifted that last shot, if we keep running-”

The rest of his sentence was lost in the crash of the next volley. “-drive still charging, I need ten seconds!”, Rhuar yelled.

Another roar from the cannons shook the ship, another fountain of debris gouted from the Emissary. They were doing damage, yes, but the ship was so massive that she wasn’t sure it would matter. Jesri gritted her teeth, gripping the console as if she could squeeze more power from the guns.

“-spike!”, Rhuar shouted. “We’re not goi-!”

The distortion began to form just as the cannons fired again, their shots ripping through space to materialize against the scarred hull. Masses of distorted space flowed apart as a glowing crater appeared, then seemed to convulse as the second pair of shots lanced inward. Huge, jagged plates of hull bulged and tore - and froze. The next flurry of railgun shots spattered ineffectively from a gossamer cocoon of light that wove itself around the ship.

“What the fuck?” Jesri yelped, retargeting the guns. “Rhuar, what is it doing?”

Rhuar shook his head. “No clue, it’s-” He frowned, his eyes defocused. “Aborting jump!”, he cried out suddenly.

“What?”, Anja and Jesri shouted, rounding on him as the whine of the hyperdrive died down to silence. The two sisters stood from their chairs, glaring at Rhuar as he held up his exoskeletal arms in a placating gesture.

“Notice,” he said shakily, “that we are currently not being blown up.”

Anja stepped down from the dais to loom over Rhuar with crossed arms and a murderous expression. “Explain,” she said quietly.

“There’s a, uh, barrier,” Rhuar said quietly, pointing to the display. “We can’t shoot it, it can’t shoot us.”

“You’re sure?”, Jesri asked pointedly. “Because I’ve only tested half that statement, and the other half remains quite concerning to me.”

Rhuar gave her a hurt look. “I’m not an idiot, you know,” he retorted. “I have no idea what that shell is or how it’s doing it, but the last thing I saw before it went up was a gravitic spike coming from inside the Emissary ship, tearing it apart. Your last volley really fucked it up, so it did…” He trailed off, gesturing lamely towards the ship. “Ah, this. I think it’s like a panic button.”

“You think,” Anja said dangerously. “And why did this merit aborting the jump?”

“The Captain is still on the station,” Rhuar said mutinously, “and now we have time to rescue him.”

Anja’s hands twitched. “At some point,” she grated, “we will have a discussion about our bridge communication.” She paced back to her chair, slumping down with a tired look. “Call the station, we need to complete the evacuation before reinforcements show up. We got lucky this time.”

“Reinforcements aren’t going to be our problem,” Rhuar said, shaking his head. “I’m not able to see much inside the shell, but the gravitic sensors show that the ship’s mass is kind of…” He squinted, cocking his head. “...pulling itself together?”, he concluded uncertainly. “I think it’s repairing itself.”

Jesri blinked. “Well, that’s just not fair,” she groused. “How long do we have?”

“Hard to say,” he replied. “It’s moving stuff around pretty fast, but I can’t see any detail. Could be hours, or an hour. Or less, depending.” He shrugged helplessly. “This is my first glowy panic sphere.”

“Shit,” Anja spat, punching controls on her display. “Flight Control, this is Grand Design.”

“Hi, Anja,” Qktk replied, his face swimming into view on the display. The room behind him was a chaos of smoke and fallen equipment but the Htt captain looked healthy enough. “That was quite the exit.”

Anja flashed him a smile. “She has some punch,” she said proudly. “You still in flight ops? Any other survivors? We can send a shuttle to the nearest bay, I think it is about fifteen minutes at a quick pace from your position.”

“It’s just Manifold here with me,” Qktk said somberly, looking behind him at the tangle of fallen girders. “And I’m afraid there are some logistical complications.” The view shook as he grabbed the camera, tilting it to show the room’s exit. Just beyond the doorway was a wall of sparking conduits and twisted metal filling the corridor.

“Oh, shit,” Jesri muttered, standing up to walk closer to the display. “All right, we already have an armor suit loaded on the Huginn,” she said. “I’ll jump in, I should be able to shift most of that debris if I’m suited up.”

“How soon can we expect Gestalt reinforcements?”, Qktk asked, some of his eyes shifting to inspect a console. “If the station isn’t under any immediate threat, we should help the rest of the stragglers get off the station. Manifold thinks there’s several thousand people left, either in unlaunched ships or in the handful on approach to the remaining ramps.”

Anja’s lips pressed into a thin line, and Qktk tilted his head. “You don’t know,” he observed.

“The Emissary is repairing itself,” Rhuar called out. “Captain, you and Manifold need to get out of there now. I’m not sure how much time we have, but it could be less than an hour.”

“I see,” Qktk replied, swiveling his eyes to stare at Anja, then at Jesri.

Jesri glared at him, pointing a finger at the display. “Kick, we can get you out in time,” she said warningly. “You’re not the first one to give me that fucking look, so don’t start.”

“I know you could, and I can’t express how much I appreciate that you would,” Qktk said, “but we both know the math doesn’t make sense. You have thousands aboard, we can save thousands more by keeping the ramps operational - but it will take time. Manifold-”

He looked off to the side, and Manifold said something indistinct. Qktk nodded and turned back to the camera. “Manifold is staying too,” he said. “With the Grand Design gone it’s entirely possible that the Emissary will leave us and warp off.” He clattered his mandibles and shook his head. “Unlikely, but possible. We’ll work with whatever time is available.”

“Captain, no!”, Rhuar shouted, unhooking his shipjack and bounding up to the dais. “Come on, I can warp the ship out and we’ll pick you up in the Leviathan. It’ll be no risk.”

“Except to you, Mr. Rhuar, and everyone else involved in the operation,” Qktk replied. “I’ve made my choice. It’s not sacrifice, or penance, or anything like that. It’s just something that matters.” He swiveled a few eyes to stare pointedly at his pilot. “A chance to tip the scales, for once.”

“You fucker,” Rhuar choked. “Fine, but when the Emissary goes on its merry fucking way and we have to swing back to pick you up I’m going to rub it in your googly-eyed face the whole way back.”

“That sounds fair,” Qktk chittered. “And in the event that it doesn’t,” he said, looking back at the two sisters, “there are still seven subsegment reactors active.”

Jesri nodded despite the pang in her chest. “I can send you something, quiet and fast enough that the Gestalt won’t see it coming,” she said hurriedly. “I’ll patch your access and rank, too, set you as station commander.” She dashed down the dais towards her console, her fingers racing across the controls.

Qktk looked over to Anja, who was still staring levelly at him. “I’ll keep you updated if there’s a change in the Emissary’s status,” he said. “If it leaves-” He broke off to look over at Manifold, who was shouting something at him.

“Of course,” Anja said. “Just let us know.”

“Thanks,” Qktk said sheepishly. “I’d feel silly sitting here starving after all this. I’m going to help route the rest of the ships, they’re coming out again now that the fighting is over.” He looked at Anja, then at Rhuar. “Good luck. I hope to see you again.”

“You’d fucking better,” Rhuar muttered, his ears laid back against his head. “Good luck, Captain.”

Anja nodded, inclining her head toward the viewer. “Good luck,” she echoed softly. “Terra invicta, brother.”

The feed winked off, and Rhuar shot her a look. “You don’t think he’s going to make it,” he said accusingly.

Anja raised an eyebrow, looking down at him. “I think that the decision is out of our hands,” she replied, walking back to her chair and settling down. “In either case, we need to prepare to leave. Can I count on you, Rhuar?”

He held her gaze stubbornly for a few seconds, then dropped his head. “You can,” he replied miserably. “I know what we have to do. No matter which way this shakes out the Gestalt has to answer for Xim Len and the Resistance, for Elpis, for Ysl, for-”

Rhuar shot a look back at the blank viewer. “For everything,” he said dully. “I know what we have to do.” He stalked back down to the shipjack, violently clipping it back into the port on his exoskeleton.

Rhuar’s eyes defocused, the feed of information sweeping him from the bridge. The ship shuddered and the stars outside shifted as the engines flared to life once more.

Anja settled back in her chair, still looking at the hunched, piteous form of her pilot. “For everything,” she murmured. “Welcome to the fight.”

A bosun’s whistle blew three notes, crackling with static through the room’s single remaining speaker. “Confirmed,” the computer said, its calm tones contrasting starkly with the chaos around it. “Command transfer to ranking officer aboard. Command authorization given to Captain Qktk.”

Qktk looked over at Manifold bemusedly. “I’ve been promoted,” he said.

“Congratulations,” replied the gelatinous Caran. “Should I salute?”

“With what?”, Qktk muttered, turning to face his console once more. A blinking notification informed him that he had a new message, which he tapped with one dust-flecked arm. A few lines of text blinked onto the screen:

Reactor control routines are attached. Five seconds between activation and overload. If you have to use it, make it count. Good luck, Kick.

A voice from his headset jolted him out of his introspection, hissing overloud into his ear. “Control, this is Gargantuan, we’re near ramp three with fifteen aboard. Is it safe to proceed?”

Qktk suppressed an amused chitter as he dismissed Jesri’s message to call up the tiny ship’s signature on his screen. “Proceed to the ramp, Gargantuan,” he broadcast. “We can jump you in twenty seconds.”

“Thank you, Control!”, came the relieved reply. “Standing by for jump.”

His headset pinged as he switched channels. “Control, this is Box of Trinkets with two hundred aboard, queued on ramp two.”

“Control, this is Urist Deep with ten families-”

“Is anyone alive? This is the Sunflare, we’ve got wounded!”

His arms raced over the console in concert with Manifold’s shifting tendrils, shunting power back and forth to keep the queue moving along. The tiny swarm of civilian ships clung to the topside of Elpis like hatchlings to their mother’s shell, hiding from the luminous orb of the Emissary waiting silently beneath the shattered station. One by one, each flew into position and disappeared in a splash of crackling fire.

Finally, his headset fell silent. The station’s battered traffic control system reported no additional pending ships, and the bays left intact had no more terrified captains hiding within waiting to see if the coast was clear. Elpis hung ravaged and silent in the void, surrounded by a cloud of glittering debris and the haze of a thousand drive traces slowly wafting outward as the glimmering sunlight struck them.

Qktk found an intact chair and slumped into it, exhausted. “Your turn,” he said wearily. “What’s our count?”

“Sixty five self-jumped, one hundred twenty nine on the ramps,” Manifold replied. “Ninety two thousand for the former, twenty seven for the latter. That falls well within acceptable margins.”

Qktk swiveled an eye towards his companion. “With two notable exceptions,” he observed wryly.

“Of course,” Manifold replied. “Three, if you count the glowing ball. Any change on that front?”

He tapped one of the traffic control screens, switching it over to a grainy view of the Emissary wrapped in its filamentous cloak. “Still glowing,” he sighed. “Still a ball.”

“Pity,” Manifold remarked, collecting itself into a blob on another remaining chair. “It would be satisfying to see it destroyed.”

Qktk looked curiously at the quivering blob. “You never struck me as the vengeful type,” he observed.

“Your observation is accurate,” it replied. “But there’s satisfaction in permanent solutions.”

They sat in silence for several minutes, watching the pulsating light from the display. “Do you regret it?”, Qktk asked.

“Regret what, staying?”, it replied.

Qktk sighed. “All of it, I suppose. Our coming to the station.”

Manifold considered for a moment before replying. “I can’t say I enjoy how it’s ended up,” it admitted, “but I also can’t fault my decision to work with your crew. The things we’ve done since you arrived, the sheer amount of technology and information we were able to export - there are dozens of other stations that will fare better in the long term. My organization, at least, will be better off even accounting for my absence.”

“And Elpis itself?”, Qktk asked, nodding at the debris around them.

“Do I think it was worth the trade?”, Manifold asked. “I don’t know that there’s a straightforward answer to that question,” it admitted. There was another pause as the station creaked around them, rivulets of dust and metal shavings trickling from gaps in the ceiling. “I decided to take the risk when I saw Anja and Jesri,” it said after the noise had subsided. “I’ve always had to work hard to understand solidform body language and gestures, to read the little things about them that come naturally to solids. There are reliable indicators of all types of emotions, for those that have them, as well as things that show the history of the being you’re observing. I’ve made a study of it my whole life, and I’ve become very adept at it,” it said.

“Those two were so different from everyone else I’ve met that I couldn’t even tell why at first,” Manifold continued, its surface rippling in agitation. “I thought it was all about power or confidence, but it wasn’t until I saw Helene for the first time that I really understood what it was. They were born into civilization. Not the word like we use it today, for tiny patches of light in the dark, but a structure so profound and far-reaching it’s like another law of nature. They have these fundamental assumptions about order and society that seem ridiculous until you put them in that context.”

Qktk chittered. “I believe I know what you mean. When I first encountered them Anja scared me half out of my shell, but afterward they were oddly considerate in every respect. It was only later when I learned how capable they are, how easily and inconsequentially they could have taken my ship. I don’t know that they truly understand how unusual they are.”

“I think they know more than you give them credit for,” Manifold said. “I believe they’re painfully aware of what they have that we don’t. That’s probably of why they were so oddly willing to deal with the guilds rather than simply using Tarl as an occupying warlord. They certainly could have, after seeing their ship in action I know Tarl was right when he said the Arrigh had no chance against them.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Qktk shuddered. “I have to wonder if the ‘profound structure’ you mentioned isn’t the natural result of a society with that much raw power at their disposal. When the tap of a screen can kill thousands, millions, I find myself… insufficiently deliberative, let’s say.”

Manifold rippled with amusement. “Not an accusation you hear often, I’d imagine.”

“Hah! No, I suppose not,” Qktk chuckled. “Yet I found myself twitching at noises and acting on instincts with destruction in my wake. Qktk the savage.”

“And yet here you are,” Manifold countered, “ready to tap on that rather dangerous screen. I doubt your base instincts agree much with that plan.” It burbled happily in a round ball, sloshing against the chair’s backrest. “There may be some hope for the savages yet.”

They sat for another long moment of contemplation, watching the Emissary’s shifting shell until thin strands of golden light began to unravel and dissipate into space. Qktk straightened up in his chair, all eyes focused on the screen. “It’s starting,” he murmured.

“And ending, perhaps,” Manifold quipped. “What are we doing, just waiting to see if it shoots us?”

“That’s the general idea, yes,” Qktk deadpanned. He reached over and tapped the first of the subroutines Jesri had sent him, beginning an overpressure in the reactor cores. He felt an odd sense of calm, despite the circumstances. The two sat and watched as the cocoon unraveled, faster now, thick swatches of gold blazing and fading as they drifted from the seamless and unmarred hull of the Emissary.

“Terrifying,” Manifold remarked, a thread of awe snaking into its voice. “It’s completely restored. I wonder if blowing the reactors will actually kill it.”

Qktk gave a lengthy, multi-limbed shrug. “Jesri seemed to think so,” he said quietly. A low rumble was audible from the station as the reactors continued to build in pressure, the tiny stars within them straining at their confinement.

“Do you think they can win?”, Manifold asked soberly. “You know them better than most, and you know their enemy. Are we fooling ourselves to think we can stop what’s coming?”

He didn’t answer right away, studying another long tendril slowly dissolving against the starfield. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “The enemy is impossible to defeat, but those two are impossible to predict. And,” he remarked wryly, “they’re having a bad influence on Rhuar, he’s almost as crazy as they are. As poor as the chances are, I wouldn’t bet against the three of them together.”

Manifold shifted. “Not a very satisfying answer,” it complained. On the screen, the torn remnants of the golden shell suddenly fractured and drifted off in a cloud, leaving behind the smooth ovoid of the Emissary’s hull.

“Keep an eye on the energy readings,” Qktk warned. “We’ll only have seconds after the buildup starts. And it’s not like you answered my question either,” he shot back. “Was it worth it?”

Manifold pondered for a second, bloblike tendrils hovering low over the scanner display. “For the technology and goods alone, probably not,” it admitted. “But for the glimpse at what we lost? Yes, absolutely.” It hastily withdrew the tendrils from the scanner screen, seeming to flinch back. “Ah, it’s spiking,” Manifold remarked.

“Jim’s balls,” Qktk swore, a sudden sense of manic unreality sweeping over him. “All right, one more time.” He tapped the second subroutine and the rumbling in the background increased dramatically in volume. He looked over at Manifold, who had collected itself into a smooth lump on the chair. “Should we say something?”, he asked, plopping down in his own seat.

“I believe we did,” Manifold replied.

There was a moment of silence, then a moment of light.