The King of Orion had a popular saying: A socialite is most in danger when silence becomes palpable. Yun wasn’t a believer in the mad monarch but her heart had just hit a hundred and thirty beats per minute and she knew because the room was quiet enough to count. There was someone else in her quarters.

It went by Strehin, Iron dragon or the evil witch. Her guest had many names, none of which she had known before her time on the City of Citadels. The bright light from the hallway illuminated her visitor and turned her into something larger than life. The once-celebrity wrapped her arms around her chest. Her room had a pleasant temperature but a chill had taken hold of her. Even her voice came out meek.

“Welcome to my room, Administrator Strehin”

The evil witch crossed the room with three long steps. When the once Star of Ashina leaned forward to get up, a firm hand pressed her back down.

“Twenty-seven hours, four minutes and ten seconds. The sum of your worth balanced against your resource drain”, Strehin let go and stretched to her full size. When the witch smiled, Yun suddenly realized that only one person would walk out of the door.

“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”

The Administrator sat down next to her and folded her arms behind her back. It was a curiously casual gesture for the stern woman but it served perfectly to draw attention to the pistol-holster and the loaded weapon in it.

“What do you think, girl?”, the older woman said and raised her voice, “Heart. Lock the door. When it next opens, someone will be dead”

Yun noticed the ambiguity in those words. Her gaze was drawn towards the weapon. With a boost from her IMBUE magic, she could grab it and kill the older woman in less than a second. It would be easy. She could. Instead, she pressed both palms together and held them out in the old terran gesture of surrender, from when handcuffs had still been a thing.

“Death is a curious thing”, said Strehin, “It’s never just the end of life. It can be mercy, just or a shame. I’ve seen many people die in my life and there’s something I’ve always wondered. When your life ends, will you be a foal or a dove?”

The young woman chuckled in response, “What kind of question is that? If I had to choose, I would pick the dove. It would mean to die like I’ve lived, soaring through the heavens, chasing an impossible dream. My death will be just, as was her death”

“An interesting choice. You’re awfully calm for someone that is faced with extinction. Have you made your peace?”

Yun stood up from the bed and walked two steps before spinning around in a graceful whirl. Her heart had calmed back down to a resting pulse. This was it. Her moment. She closed her eyes and let her voice come from deep within.

“Because I was born a nobody, raised as a copy and lived as a victim. Now the path ahead is clear but for the first time, it’s me that walks it.”

Strange energy reached her senses. Her eyes fluttered open and she stared down the barrel of the pistol. Sparks of blue energy ran alongside it. It was death’s scythe and the reaper had a gaze that would win a staring match with a black hole. Strehin’s finger was off the trigger but inched closer by the second.

“If that is your choice, so be it. Heart – open record. The criminal known as the Star of Ashina has been found guilty of normal murder as well as the murder of an Unvail. There is only one punishment for a crime of that magnitude”

Unvail. It was a shorthand for unavailable and had been shrunk along the centuries. They were the class of people you could never mess with. Yun had known that very well. When a normal person died, you got a trial and a chance. When an Unvail died, your life and that of everyone around you was done.

“What will your death be?” Strehin asked with a raised eyebrow.

The young woman stepped forward and pressed her forehead against the weapon. It was a futile gesture in that the miniature railgun wouldn’t leave anything of her head anyways. This was it. She saw the finger inch closer to the trigger when her perception of time suddenly slowed. The calm was gone, her body kicked into overdrive. Each beat of her heart was painful and desperate. Strehin’s finger touched the trigger and her skin deformed just so slightly when she started pulling it.

Meaningless! Grey god cursed meaningless is what it was. Maybe she was misery and had suffered. But she had also danced on the heavy clouds of Tau Cara and enjoyed the thrill of slinging an actual meteor. Millions had wanted to spend time with her and she had touched more dreams than there were stars in the galaxy. Probably. Math wasn’t her strong suit. She had even met genuine aliens and made unlikely friends. Her death would be meaningless. Her eyes suddenly opened wide. She didn’t want to die!

Yet that very second, a bright flash blinded her and then... nothing. A socialite was most in danger when silence became palpable. Why then was her heart still beating? A railgun wasn’t a weapon with a muzzle-flash, so what had blinded her?

“What a waste of time this was”, said Strehin with a sigh, “Heart. Confirm the situation. One. My weapon was discharged. Two. It was aimed at the Star of Ashina. Three. The dead body of a mage now rests in our morgue. Conclusion, the Star of Ashina was killed for her crimes.”

Yun blinked. What kind of logic was that? The central command golem seemed to agree as the answer took an unusually long time.

.: Please be advised that one thought process has been terminated since your last inquiry 7.2 seconds ago. You are playing a dangerous game, Administrator Strehin. May you know the consequences. Conclusion. The accused has been executed according to the emperor’s extended umbrella law. Standard autopsy override due to exceptional circumstances. Deletion of associated files. Done. Deletion of drone footage. Done. :.

The semi-intelligent lifeform sounded annoyed. Not that Yun noticed it in more than a passing interest. She hadn’t moved after the shot had been fired. How was she still alive? Strehin suddenly threw her the weapon. The pistol was covered in grey particles and deformed by a block of carbon wedged at the end of the barrel. Jagged edges indicated that the damage had been contained within that tiny section. Stellar Magic. She looked up at the Administrator and saw the burns on the hands and the faint sweat on her skin. Broken mages like the iron dragon couldn’t cast magic – unless they risked electrocution when their circuits backfired. The witch of the Citadel locked eyes with her.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Ba... Sorry. I’m Yun. Nice to meet you. I’m a nobody but I’d like to be somebody. If you give me the time to grow, I’ll be of worth to you”

The two women exchanged a glance and at that moment, Yun realized that while both of them were alive, something really had died. When that shot rang out, her baggage had gone with it. She was no longer the double of the Star of Ashina. Now, she was just a slightly dull wallflower. Strehin held up a hand.

“Welcome aboard Yun”, the not so evil witch said and smiled. Okay, that smile was evil – but she wasn’t evil evil.

“Your first shift will begin in one hour. You are to clean up this room. Out of respect for the dead, you will burn all of it. Leave nothing behind. Balayuna died so that Yun may live”

As the administrator turned to leave, Yun suddenly raised her voice.

“There’s something I don’t understand, how did you know?”

Strehin wagged a finger in her direction, “The mad monarch once said to close your windows when your guests had a sport that involved throwing you out. Lock the window, girl. Keep it that way”

The administrator left in short order but the core of the question lingered in Yun’s mind. The old monster had known everything. It was like a thousand invisible eyes were watching her.

No one could say he was hiding. It was called working. The work just happened to be deep in the folds of a spaceship. Sovan was hidden from view in the tiny compartment that could only be reached by a crawl way. It was pure coincidence that someone tall, like for example Strehin, would have never fit inside. While his work usually consisted of fixing machines, right at that moment, his techniques included smacking his head against a panel and mumbling self-deprecating himself.

“Boss-man? Everything alright? Your heart rate just spiked”, said a voice in his ocular implant. One of his workers. Good man! If only he could remember the name. Sovan put up a smile and activated the transmission of images.

“It’s good, I’m just not good with tight spaces”, he lied.

“Want us to switch you out?” the man with the long beard said. Longbeard? That couldn’t be his name, could it? Sovan activated a minor screen to the side and browsed through a list of names until he got stuck on one. It wasn’t longbeard. When he refocussed on the conversation, he had already forgotten it.

“Everything is fine crewman. Just focus on the reactor and the other connections. I’ve got this relay covered. This baby needs to sing by this time tomorrow”

The short conversation had jolted him out of his self-pity. There was no doubt the dragon would roast him alive but right now, he had a job to do: one of the power junctions wasn’t returning any signals. He wiped the small blood smudge off and removed the panel from the machine. It looked like a bazaar for weird electronics inside. Several lines came in with thick cables and connected to a central module. Sovan pressed his trusty tool-cube against it and activated the scanning mode. Silver liquid sprayed out of the cube and crawled into the machine.

At the same time, a three-dimensional image floated above the cube. The module was a labyrinth of connections so small that only nanites could move through them. Their complex patterns served a logic that was near impossible to grasp for a human brain. He sent a quiet prayer to the grey gods that they would never have to fix something without nanites. Too much of their tech required it.

The screen unwrapped the internal schematics while various lights indicated the state of the module. Most connections were still green, some had minor damages that a jolt from the self-healing protocols would fix. Sovan nodded and disconnected his cube. That was not the source of the damage. He reached for the central module and carefully removed it from the casing, then moved out of the way so that the bright light could illuminate the deeper areas.

He had betrayed Strehin. It didn’t matter that he had a change of heart at the end. When he visited the Star of Ashina, he had every intention to keep the murder a secret. Sovan brushed a hand over his forehead and sighed. What he had done hadn’t been rational. For a moment he considered whether he had taken a fancy for the Star but shook his head instead. That wasn’t it. The answer came from deeper within and felt like a lot of buried guilt. He sighed and concentrated on his work instead.

The back revealed a complex metal mesh that looked an awful lot like what Mages grew on their bones. Sovan reached out but thought better than to touch it. Magecrafts were special and this was one of the reasons why. They had mage circuitry laced throughout the hull, woven into every compartment so that the spellcaster and their ship could become one.

“No point in scanning that, it’ll just feed me random junk”, he mused and instead placed the cube at the top end. There, he activated the scan mode again. With the central module intact, the damage had to be somewhere else. Yet all the lines reported back with little or no damage until the scan stopped.

“Heart? What’s critical error E-19?”

.: Organic matter detected in sufficient quantities to trigger nanite-shutdown. :.

Sovan frowned. He grabbed another device from his tool belt and placed it down on the ground. One side had simple joystick controls while the other showed a miniature drone locked away in a translucent cover. He flicked it open and activated the tiny machine. It whirred up and then followed the motions from his joystick as he guided it deeper into the machine. The light on top illuminated the way while a tiny screen showed what the camera recorded. In terms of technology, this thing was archaic but it was one of the tools that didn’t require literal space magic to function.

“I’m coming to realize that our reliance on nanite machines might be more fragile than I thought”, he mumbled as the mini-drone paced deeper into the section.

“Alright, there it is. Definitely organic. Looks like a big... oh you’ve got to be kidding me!”

A groupie. The dead animal turned out to be one of the aliens. A dead one but not by long. Sovan’s frown deepened. He would have to talk to her. Right now. Regardless of what had happened.

“Give me the... Administrator”

His body shivered. The old woman would be furious, most likely. She knew he had betrayed her. Rumours said that people died for less on the City of Citadels. Not that he had ever seen it happen. He would be professional, inform her of the groupie incident and then get back to work. There would be no word lost about the situation with the Star of Ashina. A blinking light on his ocular implant signalled the established connection.

“Sorry for back then, I should have come to you immediately. It wasn’t my intention to betray you, it’s just that... and...”

Strehin’s stare took his sentence, brought it out the back and massacred it with nothing but a frown and narrowed eyelids. Sovan began to stutter.

“Uh... I... the thing is... ahem, we’re currently repairing the Odyssey and we’re having some trouble with the power routings. The problem is...”

“Have you tried getting to the point?” said Strehin.

“Yes, madam. I will successfully locate the point in short order. Groupie infestation. One of the buggers has managed to crawl into the Odyssey Caliburn without any of us seeing it happen. He even chose a power router for a spectacular death. Frankly, I’m impressed”

The administrator, however, didn’t seem to share the sentiment.

Sarina felt stones pelt her metal body. The heavy lifter was back in the habitat module and stood within sight of the groupie colony. Their guests were upset. Fluffballs jumped back and forth and every couple of seconds, they moved back like a wave and then proceeded to attack with a barrage of whatever they could grab. Stones, random cutlery they had stolen and even other groupies became their projectiles.

“OY SHUT IT, I’M THINKING HERE!” her drone bellowed across the colony. The groupies shivered momentarily and then resumed with renewed vigour. It had been a simple idea. To get them to leave, they would project a video of groupies entering their insane rockets and taking off. The procedural generation made that an easy prospect and one of the projectors was still working.

It looked real. Hundreds of groupies were shown climbing into their rocket. It’s just that somewhere in their interspecies communication, this had turned out to be a declaration of war. One side had sticks and stones while her side had railguns and massive robots. A sharp sting indicated sudden damage. Sarina refocussed her attention on the groupies while her internal systems showed her an overlay of her body. There was a tiny yellow mark in her paint. Minor damage but damage nonetheless. While she searched for the source, another sting hit her. This one had hit on the other side of her drone.

Sarina frowned and stretched her metal body to its full size. As if on signal, the groupies suddenly picked up dozens of leather sleeves from the ground and pointed them at her. Weapons!? She ducked her drone but it turned out unnecessary. Several of the weapons hit but their damage was on the level of fleabites. She grit her teeth and her drone blinked a furious red cadence on both observation domes along with it.

“Send a message to the Administrator. The groupies have just opened fire. Damage minimal, no threat to drones but they could potentially hurt humans”

Where had it gone wrong? Why were these fluffballs so angry? Sarina decided to walk her drone back from the colony but that only spurred them on. Her pulse suddenly quickened as thousands of the aliens poured out of the buildings. More and more of the tiny stings scorched her hull until all her damage indicators turned yellow. She compacted her legs and then jumped onto the translucent walkway but even there, more groupies waited for her. Several of them clung to her legs and climbed up her body. She unfurled all of her tool-arms at once and began smacking them back. For every fluffball she sent flying, more came flooding out of the buildings. A strange sensation took hold of her senses when one of the creatures wrapped its limbs around her upper observation dome.

“NO YOU DON’T!” she screamed and snatched the alien with her humanoid hand. Another alien was already in place. It pointed one of the alien weapons at what she considered her face and began shooting. Again and again. Parts of her vision blinked out and Sarina groaned in frustration. She prepared another jump and fired her thrusters at the apex. With the patience of a saint, she plucked the last remaining groupies off her body and threw them down.

“WHAT’S GOTTEN INTO YOU?”

Thousands upon thousands of the aliens swarmed the streets below her. Not all of them had weapons but enough had them to paint her belly with new damage indicators. A comm-line suddenly opened and showed the face of Strehin. The administrator scowled.

“Lieutenant Sarina, we will take over. You are to immediately disconnect from your drone”

“I’m not leaving my baby to these monsters!”

“You will also not be present for what comes. Disconnect. Now – or you will be forcibly ejected”

“Why?” Sarina shouted over the comms. No reply came. She reached one of her limbs down to pick up another groupie when her connection suddenly vanished. Her mind felt like it was torn into a thousand pieces as it fell back to her body. Pain flushed her real body with the majority of it focused on her neck. There was blood around her and a small woman locked down both her arms.

“Calm down, you’re back in your body. You are lieutenant Sarina and you’ve had to be ejected from your drone”

She heard the words and understood. It’s just that she didn’t accept them. Her mind was a storm of random thoughts while her body instinctively tried to find the connector needle for the neural interface again.

“Sarina!” shouted the stocky doctor and let go of her hands to hold up the head, “Your drone will be fine. We will retrieve it after the purge and I promise you that we’ll have your friend Sovan repair it with priority”

Sarina stared up at the eyes of Kathrain and felt sudden tears on her face. Through her sobs, she noticed that the doctor had wiry hair laced with sweat along with some bruises.

“What happened to you?” mumbled Sarina.

“You did”, said Kathrain and smiled, “Don’t think about it. Natural result of forced ejection. I’m sorry for putting you through this but Strehin had to act fast, the groupies were flooding out of the habitat module”

“But why? My drone can survive much more than just a few alien weapons!”

“On my orders”, the dwarven tormentor said, “Sometimes we do things that stain our soul for the rest of our life. It’s not your burden to bear. Leave that to the real monsters”

One of those monsters stood silent in a lone storage room that had been overgrown by trees. She was dressed in a high collared uniform and was equipped with a pistol holster that now held a deformed weapon. The images still played in Strehin’s mind. Death, quick and brutal, had come. It rode in on a single command uttered towards the command golem.

“Heart, depressurize the lower habitation module”

It had been done. Click. Like that. Death of an alien colony. The first encounter between species had ended in utter catastrophe. With the protective membrane gone, the groupies had died in what she could only describe with the word pop. Their deflated carcasses were dragged out of the tear in the hull, along with the drone of Lieutenant Sarina. The machine was covered in nightmare fuel and it would take days to get it clean again.

Had she done the right thing? She sank to the bottom and pressed her hand against her face. Emotions welled up inside her. Sadness. Anger. Frustration. There was a rational explanation for her actions. Groupies could bring diseases, they had repeatedly caused damage to the station and put humans at risk. When they refused to leave and attacked instead, she acted. It being rational didn’t help with the fact that she felt awful for it.

.: Administrator Strehin, your guest has arrived. :.

“Thank you for the warning”, she answered the golem.

.: It would do no one good to see you falter. By my calculation, your course of action was an inevitable result starting with the destruction of my reactors. :.

Strehin stood up from the ground and brushed the dirt off her cheeks. When she stretched her shoulders and took a deep breath, she became the iron dragon once more. She signalled for the door to open and heard the soft steps of someone walking in. A plain looking woman with brown short hair came in wearing a nondescript uniform. She was tall as most mages were but still a bit smaller than Strehin herself.

“Yun”

The young woman nodded, “I’ve come for the requested demonstration of my abilities as an IMBUE mage”

Strehin examined her from a distance and scratched a finger along her neck. The high collar uniform she wore wasn’t a fashion statement but rather a neat little trick. It served well to hide the small bone conduction headset mounted to her neck. The finger tap had been a signal and she saw a tiny metallic speck in the air bob once and then land on a nearby tree. From the point of her awakening till now, the former Star of Ashina had been under constant drone observation. Observe her at all times, she had said and it had been done.

“Subject is unarmed”, told her the vibrations conducted through her bones. Strehin stretched her arms and legs again and then put one foot forward. While the IMBUE mage opposite of her kept her legs close together. Both of these stances served a purpose. Yun stood the way she did because it emphasized her hips and allowed them to sway in an alluring way with each step. Strehin stood like a warrior with legs apart, one foot forwards and her torso turned sideways to minimize her profile. Both stances were purpose made for war - it was just a different type of battle.

“We will spar”, Strehin said, “One round lasting five minutes or until you manage to hit me.”

She saw the young woman gasp, “But you’re... you can’t be serious, no one can stand up to a fully powered mage but another mage? You’re not... any longer...”

The iron dragon felt a pang of anger and clenched her fists, “If you deem it that easy, our spar will be short. Strike me.”

Yun exploded in a sudden cloud of light. It was a pretty sight that might distract a normal human. Strehin found herself unimpressed. Excessive leaking of energy, she judged. The cloud of light malformed when a human-shaped bullet shot out of it. Yun approached at a ridiculous speed with arcs of lightning running along her legs. Strehin saw the clenched right fist and noticed the thumb hidden beneath the other fingers.

Amateur. When Yun swung for Strehin’s shoulder, the older mage didn’t even dodge. She simply put the back of her hand towards the blow. The younger girl struck with all her strength but Strehin took the hand and feathered the blow to prevent damage. Not to her but rather to the girl’s thumbs. Yun still yelped in pain.

“That’s not how you form a fist. The thumb never goes under your finger, otherwise, kinetic energy from the blow will dissipate along the bone and break it.”, Strehin said and then went on the attack herself. She flashed a step forward with her fists raised to cover her torso. One, two - quick hits against a shoulder while the IMBUE mage was still befuddled from her earlier pain. Yun flopped onto the ground with a painful yelp.

“Get up. Strike again. I’m nearly three times your age and not as good as I used to be. Bring the thunder, girl. You’re an IMBUE Mage, a goddess of fire and lightning. So bring it! Strike, attack, prove your worth!”

Her words struck the woman on the ground like strikes of their own. She watched her get up. Yun brushed dirt off her clothes and concentrated on the fight again. Like before, a spectacle of light announced their fight. Lines of energy traced after Yun’s limbs. She actually whirled like a figure in an action movie!

Strehin grunted in disgust and simply punted a fist into Yun’s stomach. The graceful motion stopped mid-air as the young woman folded, smacked to the ground and whined from the impact.

“What are you doing girl? We’re not dancing! You’re a minute into our spar and I haven’t even moved yet!”

She watched the former celebrity do as she was told. Yun had guts, she was willing to give her that. It’s just that everything else was a complete mess. The young woman swayed from the impacts but Strehin remained watchful. When her opponent suddenly launched into a lightning-fast attack, she felt a modicum of respect. Not many had the presence of mind to try a feint after being broken before.

This time, the IMBUE mage came flying with a high kick accentuated by flames. It was still an excessive amount of energy. Strehin leaned her torso back just in time and snatched the leg out of the air, she twisted her torso, moved her hands and then let momentum carry the younger woman forward. A loud crash rang out when Yun smacked through a tree. The iron dragon looked over her shoulder and Yun slumped over chips of wood. The sudden stop at the end hadn’t gone well. Neither for the tree nor the young woman.

“The damage to her body is rising. You’re overdoing it Strehin. A couple more attacks like that and she might break a bone”, vibrated the headphone on her jaw. It wasn’t like she didn’t know it either.

She watched the young woman get back on her feet and stumble over. Magic sparked out of her opponent in random patterns. When the strike came, it had absolutely zero strength to it and Strehin could snatch it out of the air. This time, she simply forced the hand down.

“That’s enough. You’ve survived the full five minutes. Congratulations”

It had been less than one and a half but there was no need for the defeated girl to know that. She gently pressed the girl onto the ground and then sat down next to her.

“You’ve got two basic problems with your fighting. One, you leak excess energy not just from your Gates of Magic but with every move you make. Your training worked well to turn you into someone’s dream – but it failed you for combat. We will change the way you walk, think and act”

Strehin watched her reaction but the girl just panted for air.

“Two. You’ve picked up a bunch of ugly habits from improvised battles. It’s true, most enemies are wowed by the light but you can’t rely on it. Let’s get down to the basics. See that tree stump over there? Strike it with lightning without getting up. Let me see your manifestations”

She pointed at a tree and then wrapped her arms around her chest. Yun looked at her with wide eyes.

“How?”

“What do you mean how? Form the connection, excite the particles and pour magic into the spell!”

The young woman lowered her head and bit her lips, her voice was a weak whisper, “I’ve never learned any of that. My magic just... comes. It’s there at all times and reacts to what I feel”

Now it was Strehin’s turn to be stunned. There was no way a mage wasn’t trained in using her magic. That was their entire purpose for being. From the moment their tiny bodies survived the bath in the nano-fluid to the day they left their cradle for other worlds, every second was geared at making them understand how the circuits in their body worked and how they could manifest their power.

“So right now, all you can do is leak energy and amplify your body to a degree?”

“I’m sorry...”

Strehin sighed. What would the doctor do? Probably hug the other woman but that had failed once already. The iron dragon held out both of her knotted hands and frowned.

“Don’t be sorry for something that is not your fault. You will be taught and you will learn. But at the point you’re at, you will need a different teacher. Do you understand the chemical excitement theory?”

“No?”

“Your friend Sovan will teach it to you then”

“But he’s no mage?” said Yun.

“What part of theory makes it necessary for someone to be a mage? Chemical excitement theory is simply chemistry and physics. You will learn how to start a fire and create lightning from the vector of elements and reactions. There’s no point in showing you how to manifest when you don’t know what to do with it”

She watched the other woman slump over and sob. Strehin reached out but stopped herself short from touching her. She was the iron dragon, not a mother hen.

“You may learn at your own pace. However, I expect you to take on missions as presented. Case in point”, Strehin said and stood up from the ground, “Tomorrow at this time, you will lead an expedition down to the planet. You will be without drones since we have no working hub ship. The nano-forge is your goal. We need it”

She patted the woman on her head and then left the storage room. They really did need it. It had been an act of desperation to vent the groupies into space. That part had worked well and all that remained was to clear eventual remaining nests on the station. However, Strehin took a deep breath and already imagined she was feeling a decline in air quality. The air vented along with the aliens had been enough to put them on the fast track for collapse.

“We better find the parts to fix our life support”