The trail of bodies led from Rächerin’s main hatch back to the raider's main compound. The diseases triggered by Persephone’s altered DNA varied from one victim to the next; some had died almost immediately, while others had survived long enough to carry the contagion back to their brethren. Given the state of the corpses, at least some marauders had realized too late what was happening and tried holding off the infected, but the damage was already done. All they’d managed was to delay the inevitable.

Once again Samara was on her own as she explored the camp, the others left behind due both to their frail nature, but also to try to repair the damage done to Rook. While neither Gideon nor Kalypso were Tinkers or mechanics, between the two of them they hopefully had enough skills to at least get him back online. If they could manage that much, they hoped he could finish the rest on his own.

Samara made her way through the docks, as the eerie silence as she searched the camp for anything useful started getting to her. There was no threat here, at least none that she could see, but even for someone as hardened to death as she was the sheer number of deceased strewn about was downright unnerving. But until they could get Rook up and running again, they weren’t going anywhere, and Terra knew they could use anything he might find.

She spotted a powered cart and began loading it up with whatever caught her eye; spare parts, anything valuable enough to be resold or traded, plus various odds and ends that she couldn’t readily identify. One item she could retrieve was the antimatter they’d handed over to pay for repairs, given the situation there was no sense in leaving it behind now.

There were plenty of items Samara did leave behind, though not without a few regrets. Weapons systems she would have loved to graft onto the ship, for example, though with no one skilled enough to handle the job they were nothing but dead weight, not even worth the price of salvage.

Maneuvering the cart back to the ship, she got a call on her suit radio. “Rächerin to Samara, please respond.”

She clicked the helmet mic. “Rook? Is that you?”

“More or less,” he acknowledged. “Your friends located the corrupted file that crashed my system. Once it was deleted I could reboot in Safe Mode. I am running a self-diagnostic now to check my program for infected subroutines.”

“Well, as strange as this may sound, it’s good to have you back,” she grinned. “Mostly because without you we’d be stuck here.”

“Your gratitude overwhelms me as always,” he sniffed. “I understand you are scavenging the compound for supplies?”

“That’s right,” she agreed. “I’ve filled up a cart with some odds and ends that might prove useful. Still haven’t found where they keep their valuable gear, though.”

“Hmm...perhaps I may be of some assistance,” Rook said. “Scanning local vicinity now.”

Samara waited as the Avatar checked the area with tools unavailable to her. “I believe I have found something,” he said after less than a minute. “A section of the encampment that is heavily shielded, though not against radiation or other environmental hazards. There appears to be a vault located at its center. I am sending you the coordinates now.”

A blinking icon appeared on her Head’s-up display. “Got it,” she replied. “Soon as I dump this load off, I’ll go check it out.” She thought for a moment and then keyed her mic once more. “Tell Kalypso to suit up and meet me at the main hatch. If there is a vault, I’ll need her talents.”

“Informing her now,” Rook answered. “If you deposit the cart inside the main hatch, I will dispatch my remotes to offload and store your salvage.”

“Like I said, it’s good to have you back.”

“According to the map Rook sent me, it should be right through here,” Samara informed the other woman, as they entered a smaller structure off the main complex.

“...There,” Kalypso pointed, shining her flashlight at a sturdy-looking metal door. “That has to be it.”

The pair approached the vault as Samara gave it a once over. “Biometric security access,” she grimaced. “Will your abilities let you spoof something that sophisticated?”

“I can bypass the biometrics,” she assured her, placing her hands against the bare metal. “It doesn’t matter what kind of security measures they use; they still have to interface with the locking mechanism. I’m able to manipulate that directly.”

“Then be my guest,” she chuckled, stepping aside and allowing Kalypso full access to the vault door as she watched with interest.

She managed a quick half-nod, as her attention was already focused elsewhere. Her gloved hands slid around the face of the hatch, searching for…something...but after a few minutes she seemed to have found it, taking a moment to focus before making the attempt. Samara watched as twin vortices of blue energy formed on the metal surface beneath her palms, glowing and swirling as her forearms disappeared into the door. She couldn’t imagine what it must be like for her, interacting with a solid object at the quantum level, but before she had time to consider the difficulties involved, Kalypso cried out, “Got it!”, as the hatch swung open.

Directing her helmet-mounted light into the vault itself, she realized it was smaller than she’d first imagined, little more than a narrow closet. They had arranged stacks of hard currency on the shelves, along with data chips and a few other items that defied simple description; relics picked up or stolen from Terra knows where.

One item in particular caught her eye. A burnished metal cube seemed to beckon to her, its surface etched with intricate lines and patterns. Samara reached out and plucked the strange object from the shelf, surprisingly heavy given its size. She could sense a faint vibration through her suit gloves, and as she turned it over in her hands she was struck by an incredible sense of age, as if they had crafted it long before Man had taken to the stars.

“What is that?” Kalypso asked, peering over her shoulder.

“No idea,” Samara shrugged, “but if they thought it was valuable enough to lock away, it must be worth something. Help me empty the safe and we’ll head back to the ship.”

Between the two of them it didn’t take long to secure their plunder, a lavish sum in total and more than enough to keep them flying for the foreseeable future. Arriving back at the Rächerin with their loot, they were hailed once more.

“Were you able to locate the vault?” Rook asked.

“Right where you said it would be,” she told him, “and there’s enough here to buy a whole other ship.”

“I believe we can put it to better use,” he admonished her. “Have you decided what you will do about this place once we depart?”

“There’s only one thing to do,” she sighed, “unless you want to unleash a plague on the galaxy.”

Rook scowled at that. “Obviously not. Though it seems something of a waste.”

“It has to be done,” she replied. “I’ll make sure everything’s in place before we lift.”

It didn’t take long to place the explosives, and thankfully she’d been spared coming up with a triggering device. Given the munitions she was working with, any mistake could have catastrophic consequences for both herself and the ship and crew. With his inherent talent for mayhem, Gideon could easily handle the job, though she regretted giving up the antimatter again.

Unfortunately, it was the only thing they had able to do the job.

Rook assured them he had purged the last of the corrupted files from his program, so with a few mumbled prayers they lifted from the surface and broke orbit, putting as much distance as they could between themselves and the rock they’d just departed.

Samara watched the navigation plot, closely supervised by Rook, waiting until there was a comfortable distance between them and the planetoid before setting off the bomb. A quick message to Gideon, consisting of nothing more than “All right, now,” as a white flash shattered the rocky outpost, sending fragments in all directions as the asteroid disintegrated.

Glazing over her shoulder he spotted Xeno quietly observing her, if one could describe a blind man doing such a thing. “So? Think there’ll be repercussions?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” he replied with an easy shrug. “I find it unlikely they were operating in a vacuum, without support or patrons of their own. Though I believe you have done an excellent job of covering our tracks,” he said with smug satisfaction.

“Unless they radioed someone with our description before we eliminated them,” Samara pointed out.

”It is a little late to be worrying about such things now,” he pointed out. “What’s done is done. We survived, and that is all that matters.”

“I’d like to believe there’s more to life than just surviving,” she replied, as she stared out into the depths of space.

“As would I,” Xeno nodded, “but I’ve learned not to ask the universe for more than it is willing to give.” She looked up at him, as he shrugged once more. “Hope is a dangerous thing, Samara. You know that better than I do.”

Samara looked away, closing her eyes. “Then what’s the point?” she whispered.

“I still haven’t heard how we’re planning on sneaking into Qiqougii,” Kalypso pointed out. “If this Azrael is out there…”

“...he is. You can be certain of that,” Samara interrupted.

“...like I said, if he’s out there,” she continued, “then he’s looking for this ship. How do we get past him, or anybody else that he’s warned?”

“I don’t suppose Qiqougii has some deserted stretch of the outback where we could land?” Persephone asked from the monitor.

“It does, but that is not the problem,” Xeno countered. “The planet’s sensor grid will track our signal the moment we are within range, no matter where we land.”

“Can we modify our transponder?” Samara asked.

“We can, but it would not be sufficient,” Rook explained. After the business at Star’s End, he’d been grudgingly allowed admittance to their planning sessions, though he was still on probation with the rest of the crew. “Simply altering our IFF code would not affect our radar profile, our heat and radiation signature, or any of the other identification methods used by most worlds.”

“Bringing us back to my original question,” Kalypso sighed. “How do we get in?”

“We could attempt to spoof Qiqougii’s planetary tracking system,” Xeno suggested, “though to do so we would have to be well within detection range, with no guarantee of success.”

“Let’s call that Plan B,” Samara decided, “especially when it seems to me there’s a much simpler way to solve the problem.”

“Which is?” Persephone asked.

“If they’re looking for this ship, then we arrive in a different one,” she smiled. “Rook, is there any place between here and there we could find another ship? It need not be anything fancy, or even have much endurance. A shuttle would be perfect.”

“We have all those funds we ‘acquired’,” Xeno smiled. “A used sublight orbiter wouldn’t put that large a dent into our take.”

The Avatar looked away for a moment as he checked his files. “There is a system that would require only a minor course correction en route to Qiqougii that might be acceptable,” he said at last, “though there is no way to tell prior to our arrival if they have the right ship.”

“A chance we will have to take,” Xeno agreed.

“And what do we do about Rächerin?” Kalypso asked.

“We’ll find some out-of-the-way spot to park her,” Samara told her. “A moon orbiting one of the outer planets would be perfect.”

“Wait a minute...if we’re buying a sublight craft, how do we transport it from there to here?” Persephone interjected.

“We should have no difficulty tractoring it to the hull,” Rook replied after a moment, “provided it falls within the standard mass range.”

“All right, that gets us to the planet,” Samara said thoughtfully, “but Azrael’s no fool. The customs and entry points to the planet will be watched.”

“Meaning?” Xeno asked.

“Meaning I’m the only one who has a prayer of getting past him,” she explained. “Unless someone else here can shapeshift?” she smirked.

“Samara, Azrael knows you,” Xeno said carefully. “In fact, you might say he has intimate knowledge of both you and your abilities. Surely he has planned for this somehow? DNA testing at customs, perhaps?”

“I can fool a scanner,” she assured him, “long enough to get in, anyway. Look, we’re operating at a disadvantage no matter what we do, which means taking a few risks. Otherwise we might as well turn around right now and head back the way we came.” She looked around at the others. “We’ve come this far, and we may not get another chance. Jibril is there now, and I’m not giving him a chance to slip through our fingers.”

“We always knew we’d be forced to cut corners,” Kalypso sighed. “That doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“I don’t like it either,” Samara admitted, “but what other choice do we have?”

“And if Azrael tries to stop you?” Rook said point-blank.

The others all looked at her as her eyes went hard and cold. “Then I stop him. Permanently.”