The Washing of the Hands

October 487 I.C., Planet Castrop

It took two days to hike from their landing spot back to the city. The journey was exhausting and stressful. They tried to mainly walk at night, to avoid seeing people, and to avoid the heat of the day, since it was quite warm on Castrop’s planet. They hid during the day, sleeping in shifts in the forests away from the road. They stole food from fields as they walked by— it was mainly fruit that they could get their hands on, not quite ripe, or too-ripe and fallen from trees in the orchards they passed. It sufficed, at least, but it gave Hilde terrible indigestion, which didn’t help the walk go faster.

As they came closer to the city, kicking up dust along the path (at least it hadn’t rained at all during their long march), they had to be much more careful of being observed. Hilde wondered if they should try to steal outfits like the ones everyone on this planet wore, but they hadn’t passed any farmhouses at night with laundry hung out that they could steal, so the opportunity to change clothes had not presented itself. At least the airfield was on the far outskirts of the city, and, as they approached it at the end of the second night, they were able to hide and crouch in the scraggly bushes that lined the far edge beyond the wire fence. Security was, as it was in most places on Castrop’s planet, minimal.

Castrop’s ship still remained exactly where it had been. And, indeed, the whole scene was empty, except for a few bored looking guards at the front of the airfield. Hilde and Kircheis watched their patterns through their tiny pair of binoculars. The guards mainly stood in the single cone of light provided by the lights from the guardhouse, and smoked cigarette after cigarette. Occasionally, one or two of them would make a halfhearted circle of Castrop’s ship, but rarely did they do anything else.

Even if Hilde and Kircheis could have snuck up to Castrop’s ship easily, there was no way that they could get on board. There was a chance that within the little guard hut, there was a mechanism to remotely open the ship’s doors, but there was no way to be sure. Even if they did manage to open the ship that way, it would immediately lead to their detection.

She and Kircheis discussed this as they sat in their little hideout, a ditch hidden by brambles on the edge of the airfield. Kircheis propped himself up on his elbows and watched the guards through the binoculars.

“The only thing that we can do,” Hilde said, “is wait for them to open the ship themselves, and then I can sneak on.”

“ You can sneak on?” Kircheis asked.

Hilde frowned. “Think about it logically, Sieg. If they’re opening the ship, they’re going to be hanging out right next to it. You’ll need to cause a distraction that will let me on.”

“But why shouldn’t I go, and you cause the distraction?”

“Because if you got caught on the ship, they’d kill you.”

“And not you?”

“I’m valuable to Castrop,” she said, trying to keep fear out of her voice as she did. “He wouldn’t kill me.”

Kircheis clearly understood the logic, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant. “I’d still rather go myself. Captain Leigh and your father would rather—”

“I don’t care,” she said. “I appreciate that you want to protect me, but if there’s a greater chance of you dying by doing it, then I’m not going to let you. It’s as simple as that. And I still have Captain Leigh’s program.” She pulled out her data stick and held it up. It glinted dimly in the starlight. Kircheis looked at it, holding himself so tense and still that she was sure he was debating snatching it out of her hands, but he didn’t.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “How could I live with myself if I let anything happen to you?”

“Nothing will happen,” she said. “You’ll cause a distraction, I’ll run in, install the program, and run out.”

“And if you can’t get out?”

“Then I’ll just have to hide on the ship,” she said. “I can do that. I memorized all the layouts.”

Kircheis nodded. “What kind of distraction would you want?”

Hilde gestured for him to hand her the binoculars. With them, she peered out towards the guardhouse. Inside, it had electric lights, and the distant glow of a couple computer screens, visible through the windows. But outside, the light was provided by torches in brackets, which flickered and danced in the wind.

“Easy enough to burn something down,” she said. “It’s hot and dry. A fire would probably spread pretty quickly, and it would be something that they needed to respond to.”

Kircheis took the binoculars back. “But we just have to wait until they decide to open the ship.”

“When Castrop decides to leave…”

And that was the main issue: there had been no sign of Castrop looking to vacate the planet. So the Artemis Necklace must not have been destroyed yet. Hilde had no idea what it would look like from the ground, but Castrop certainly would know as soon as his defenses fell.

They waited and hid for another tense, hot day. They were sweltering without the protection of a truly leafy forest around them, and without the ability to leave to drink from springs and streams that they passed on the walk. Hilde hadn’t believed that it would somehow be preferable to be hiking than sitting still, but it was.

As she was trying to sleep, her head resting on one of the lumpy canvas bags, Kircheis was sitting watch, keeping an eye on the activities of the guards. Suddenly, he shook her awake, and she bolted upright.

“What?” she hissed, not wanting to be too loud in case the reason he had woken her was because they had to move.

“Look at that!” Kircheis said, also in a low voice, and he pointed directly up. The sky was a brilliant crimson, the sun on its way down and the heat of the day finally breaking, but what was truly spectacular was the light show that danced from zenith to horizon in blinding streaks.

The display was like fireworks, but silent and far too distant. It was like the dim stars themselves were bursting open. Hilde and Kircheis craned their necks to see it, staring wide eyed at first the beams that shot out across the expanse of space, and then the fiery explosions that followed.

“Captain Leigh must have figured out the Artemis Necklace,” Kircheis said.

Hilde hastily started gathering up all of their equipment. “Castrop will be running as soon as he knows it’s over. You go get ready to make a distraction, and I’ll—”

“Good luck,” Kircheis said.

“You too.” She looked him in the eye. “Don’t stick around and watch for me to come out, if there’s people around. You keep yourself safe. We’ll meet back up by the farm down the road, the one with the pear tree out front. If we get separated.”

“Right,” Kircheis said.

There wasn’t much time for other discussion. Already the guards, who had been watching the display in the sky, were beginning to move in a chaotic way, clearly untrained for the situation at hand, having never expected it.

Hilde gave Kircheis one final grim smile, clasped his hand for just a moment, and then ducked down into their ditch that they had been hiding in, and began her trek around the perimeter of the airfield. She had with her just the few things that might be useful to her: the binoculars, a small pair of wire clippers to let her through the fence, her gun, and the data stick that would destroy Castrop’s ship.

After some time, Hilde became aware that she was hearing distant sounds of shouting, not coming from the guards but from the city farther away. Hilde couldn’t make out who or why or what the shouting voices were saying. They only seemed to be carried on the wind.

In the darkness at the edge of the field, she watched the guards perform various duties, but none of them had yet involved opening the great door that would allow entrance to the ship’s loading bay. Some of them were checking the exterior of the ship, while others were swarming around the guardhouse, or opening the gates at the entrance to the airfield.

The source of the shouting became obvious soon enough. From the city, there came a crowd of people, all heading towards the airfield. Most were on foot, but a few were riding horses. Hilde even heard the revving of the motorcycle that she had spotted when she and Kircheis had first been escorted through the city. She understood what was happening: all those who felt that they were in some kind of danger from an Imperial fleet were eager to board the only ship heading off the planet. These must have been mostly lower officials, people who worked directly for Castrop, or perhaps even regular peasants of the planet who feared the unknown more than they feared their lord.

Hilde had a sudden, vivid memory from her childhood— sitting down with Hank, while he described the chaotic evacuation of the planet El Facil, with all the civilians trying their hardest to escape in the face of an oncoming Imperial fleet. At the time, Hilde had been young enough that she hadn’t really understood what that would have looked like on the ground, and she had only been thinking of the cold movements of ships through space. Now she was old enough to recognize this terror and desperation for what it was. She wished that she could tell these people that there was no reason to be afraid: Captain Leigh in the sky above them bore them no ill will whatsoever. But of course, they had no way of knowing that.

Visible above the top of the crowd, there came Castrop’s entourage, or the first part of it. There were small trucks, military surplus from the looks of it, that pushed through the crowd, attempting to scatter the crowd as the trucks rolled up to the airfield gates, trying to get through. These must have been some of Castrop’s supplies, or select group of people who were chosen to accompany him. Hilde couldn’t tell if Castrop himself was among their number— maybe, maybe not.

As they came through the gates, all of the guards who had been assigned to the airfield were occupied in keeping the general population out. The trucks pulled up to the ship, and the ramp began to slowly descend.

Hilde watched this with increasing fear, waiting for Kircheis to make his move, whatever that move would be. Although the ramp was coming down, the guards and whoever else were in the trucks were still right there, and would prevent Hilde from being able to enter the ship.

“Come on, Sieg,” she whispered under her breath, every muscle in her body taught as she prepared to leap from her hiding place.

Cutting through the sounds of the crowd and the roar of the truck engines, Hilde heard the clear and unmistakable whine of a shot being fired. Things seemed to move in slow motion: down at the entrance to the airfield, one of the guards who had been holding back the tide collapsed. Then there was another shot, impossible to determine the direction from which it had come, and another guard collapsed, and another. This gave the crowd enough room and courage to burst through in one wave. The guards that remained opened fire on the crowd, but they were quickly overwhelmed by sheer numbers, and vanished under the wave of the stampede.

This had the intended effect: the guards who had begun unloading the trucks immediately had to abandon this task. If Hilde had been one of them, she would have run up into the ship and tried to close the door to stop people from getting in, but these guards were not well trained, and instead they also tried to take up defensive positions at the trucks. They shot randomly into the crowd with their sidearms, but they, too, were immediately overwhelmed.

Some of the crowd started tearing open the boxes of supplies on the trucks, while others began to swarm up into the ship. Hilde knew that this would be her only chance.

From down the airstrip, she heard the sound of more engines coming, this time not stopping at the gates. This was probably a better trained contingent of the guard, possibly Castrop’s personal vehicles. There was the sound of machine gun fire.

Hilde abandoned her hiding place and made the mad dash across the airfield, covering the short distance to Castrop’s ship faster than she would have thought possible. She was barely even cognizant of her own body; the distance melted away before her.The crowd ignored her, even though she was dressed oddly. Her feet pounded up the metal ramp, and her body was shoved side to side, surrounded by the crush of others attempting to enter the ship.

Hilde pushed through the screaming, urgent crowd. They had broken into the main section of the ship from the loading bay, and she found herself in strange hallways, a ship so different from the normal Imperial designs. Here, even the sounds of the crowd behind her as she ran were muffled. The floor was tiled with mosaics, and the walls were covered in drapes that ate the sound from the air.

Having memorized the layout of the generic type of ship she was on, she had at least an idea of where she needed to go, towards any place that would have computer terminals that controlled the ship. She felt the engine room was likely to be emptier than the bridge, so she tried to make her way in that direction. But as she ran, she realized that extensive modifications had been made to the ship in its layout, and hallways ended randomly, or twisted unexpectedly. She wasted precious minutes trying to get her bearings.

By the time she had made it to the engine room, she could no longer hear the crowd in the ship. She felt completely alone.

The engine room was locked, as she had expected that it would be, but Leigh had told her the generic passcode that was installed on ships of this class, and she tried it. It did not surprise her that Castrop, for all his aesthetic work on the ship, had never bothered to update the passcodes for the doors.

The engine room was dark, and cavernous, and for the moment, silent: the engine was turned off while the ship was still sitting quiescent on the airfield. Her footsteps clanged over the diamond pattern metal floor panels, and she located one of the first maintenance computers.

She hit a few keys to wake it up, and before it even presented the login screen, she jammed the data stick into its port. The program that Leigh had given her was one that needed nothing other than bare access to the computer, and she could see it begin to work, the screen flashing black and a single loading bar crawling across it.

She alternated her attention between the computer and the door of the engine room, listening for any sounds of footsteps. The yelling of the crowd was coming closer again, she caught distant strains of it as it echoed through the ventilation shafts and corridors.

It took three minutes for the program to install itself, and when the loading bar flashed green and the screen cleared to show the harmless login, Hilde ripped out the data stick and turned back the way she had come. She needed to get out.

This, however, proved to be impossible.

As she moved back towards the front of the ship, she tried to avoid being seen. Now, mixed amid the chaotic yells of the crowd rejoicing in getting aboard, there were the sounds of gunshots, and terrified screams. The passage back seemed blocked, and she might just have to find a place to hide on board the ship.

As carefully as she could, she crept through the hallways, turning whenever she heard voices or footsteps or any other sound. As she went, she felt herself losing track of her position in the ship relative to the drawings she had memorized earlier. Her anxiety mounted and she moved faster, not even sure if she was looking for the way out or a place to hide. She should have stayed in the engine room, which would not have much traffic passing through it, but it was too late now.

As she went, she felt a sensation that made her blood run cold: the strange twist in her gut that was the gravity engine at the center of the ship waking up, and beginning to lift them off the planet. At this point, she knew, there would be no escaping the ship.

The best place to be was the emergency shuttles, she realized. Ideally, Lord Castrop would not know that she was on board his ship, and when time came to evacuate onto the shuttles, she would still be safe. She turned in the direction she thought they were, but then realized that there were footsteps behind her. She hastened her pace, and ended up in another narrow corridor where she could hear voices in front of her, as well.

Hilde looked back and forth, frozen, pulling back the drapes from the walls to see if there was somewhere she could slip into, but there wasn’t.

The footsteps and the voices came closer and closer, and the footsteps turned towards her. Hilde whirled on her heel and found herself face to face with guards with raised guns. They pointed their weapons at her. An involuntary yelp of terror left her mouth. “Please—”

The guards, although it didn’t stop them from aiming their guns, seemed momentarily surprised by her appearance. She didn’t look like the rest of the crowd who had broken into the ship: she was something completely different. It made them hesitate before shooting, and this was what saved her from becoming a victim of the guards, who had all been ordered to hunt down intruders.

From the other end of the corridor, the voices she had been hearing turned into running feet, and two women, dressed in Castrop’s preferred fashion, appeared. Hilde recognized them as some of the dancers that Castrop had made perform at dinner. They recognized her as well, blanching like they had seen a ghost.

“What—” one of the dancers said.

“Rudy! Put that gun down!” the other commanded.

One of the two guards, Rudy, did lower his weapon. The dancers glanced up and down the hallway, checking to see if anyone else was around.

“You too, David,” the first dancer said. She had red hair, and long, dangling earrings. David, the second guard, was more wary, but also lowered his gun.

The situation had immediately deflated into something still dangerous, but less outright fatal to Hilde, and she recognized that the dancers were her allies here, or at least people she could get some sympathy from.

“What the hell are you doing here?” the black haired dancer asked. “We had all assumed you were dead.”

“I—” Hilde began, and she realized that she was going to have to change her posture. If she wanted sympathy, she couldn’t be someone who had broken onto the ship to destroy it— she had to be more pathetic than that. “I wanted to find my father,” she said, and the choked sound in her voice, even if she had let it come out on purpose, was all too real.

“You know this person?” Rudy asked.

“It’s that count’s daughter,” the black haired dancer said. “Did you not see her the other day?” It galled to feel like it was only her noble status and usefulness to Castrop that was about to keep her alive, as opposed to the hapless peasants who were being gunned down in the corridors, but that was the reason she had gone on the ship in the first place.

“I don’t recognize people,” Rudy muttered, but he looked at Hilde with fresh eyes. “I did hear that you were dead.”

Hilde just shook her head, not going to explain anything, pretending to be too choked up and overwhelmed. The dancers and guards looked at each other.

“How old are you, girl?” the redhead asked.

“Sixteen,” Hilde lied. That was probably the youngest she could get away with.

The redheaded dancer looked up and down the hallway again. “What the fuck are we going to do with you?” she muttered.

The guard David, said, “Give her to the lord, obviously.”

“Absolutely not,” the black haired dancer said. “He— I can’t have that on my head.”

“Then what?” Rudy asked. “You gonna put her in your room?”

This proposition made both dancers wince. “No,” the black haired one said. “Look— David—”

“Is this” —he gestured at Hilde— “really what you want to fight with the lord over?”

“No,” she hissed. “I don’t want anything to do with this.”

The redhead spoke up. “Give her what she wants,” she said. “Put her in the cell with that count. Lord Castrop doesn’t need to know the details right now. And if he finds out— maybe he’ll think someone told him she was there while he was drunk.”

“That’s the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” Rudy said.

Hilde stood there and listened to this argument, wide-eyed.

“Look, if we do that, none of us can get in trouble for it— it’s what Lord Castrop wanted in the first place,” the redhead hissed. “And it won’t be my problem anymore. At least there will be time to think about what to actually do with her. Unless you have a better idea.”

“It doesn’t have to be anyone’s problem,” David said, and waved his gun. The black haired dancer shoved past Hilde and whacked his arm.

Hilde decided the situation was getting out of hand. She didn’t love the idea of being imprisoned with her father, but she couldn’t very well tell the four to hide her somewhere else and let her wander— she wasn’t in any position to be making demands. “Please can I see my father?” she said, letting her voice stay pathetic.

“See,” the redhead said. “It’s better for everyone. As long as one of you brings the food there and whatever else—”

“You really want to put this on us, hunh?” Rudy said. “You’re asking for a lot. You’ll owe me.”

“Whatever,” the redhead said. “You’re going to have to deal with this one way or another. It’s your problem. You figure something out.”

“Fine, fine,” Rudy said. He glanced up and down the hallway now, and grabbed Hilde’s arm. She stayed loose and floppy as he tugged her along, heading somewhere into the ship.

The dancers walked ahead, and the other guard, David, took a lookout behind, making sure that no one was coming up behind them as they walked. If someone had come, Hilde didn’t know what they would do.

As they went, Hilde flinched as she saw a few bodies of other people who had broken onto the ship, lying shot dead on the floor, blood seeping through the grout cracks in the tiles. She knew it wouldn’t help her to feel guilty for surviving this where these people hadn’t, but she couldn’t help it. The faces of the dead were agonized, or terrified, or surprised, and their open eyes followed her in her imagination as she walked.

Guilt could become resolve. That was what she needed right now. If what she was doing right now could play a part in never again letting Castrop have power over people like this, then she would do it. It wouldn’t make a difference to the dead, but it would make a difference to someone.

The sight of these bodies hastened the guards and dancers along, none of them wanting to look at them too closely. This distraction let Hilde quickly divest herself of the various incriminating objects she was carrying while no one was looking, dropping her gun and data stick into the spread arms of a few corpses they passed. She wished that she could have kept the gun, but she figured if she was going to be searched at any point, it would be better for her not to have it on her person.

The room where her father was being kept was in an innocuous hallway, hidden behind a curtain. David pulled it open, unlocked the door, and shoved Hilde inside. Realizing that they weren’t going to bother to search her, she wished she had kept the gun. This was the stupid thought her brain fixated on as she fell to the floor, and the door shut behind her, leaving her in total darkness.

Her father had not said anything, and probably hadn’t had a chance to even see her face in the light. She glimpsed him sitting on the floor in the corner before they shut the door, looking haggard but not visibly wounded. She crawled over towards him.

“It’s me,” Hilde said.

“Hilde?” His voice broke.

“Yeah.” His hand fumbled for her, and found her arm. She leaned on him. “We’ll be out of here soon,” she said. “Hank’s plan is going alright.”

Her father was silent, except for his choked breathing. He could tell that the confidence in her voice was false. She was so grateful to him for not deciding to yell at her for being here. It was too late for telling her to stay safe to make any difference, and so chastizing her about it only would have served to make both of them feel worse.

But she could feel his arm trembling against her; he was shaking with the kind of misery that couldn’t be put into words. Again, the growing combination of guilt and resolve that this made her feel churned her stomach. Maybe it wasn’t that he chose not to yell at her— maybe he couldn’t form the words, being overwhelmed by the idea of her as Castrop’s captive.

“Really, Dad,” she said, and she sounded more reassuring now, knowing that she had to be stronger. “Everything’s in place. As long as we can hold out for a few days…”

After they both slept, it was much easier to talk to her father about the plan, and convince him that it really was going to be alright, that Hilde had not doomed herself by coming to rescue him. As her father grew more confident in Leigh’s plan (though never fully), Hilde grew less, but she didn’t let that into her voice. As long as she and her father were both able to act rationally, they would be fine.

It was miserable, being trapped in the dark there with him, but it was better than being alone. The passage of time was difficult to discern, only knowable through the intermittent delivery of meals and the changing of the chemical toilet. The guards who delivered their meals were always Rudy and David.

For their efforts in keeping her safe, she wanted to warn them about the ship’s impending doom, to make sure that they and the dancers got a spot on the shuttle when the ship was to be evacuated, but if she had done that, the whole plan might have been revealed.

Since no one other than Rudy and David knew that there were two prisoners, only one meal was ever brought for both of them to eat. She and her father split it as evenly as they could, but she was sure that each of them were subtly trying to give the other the better half of their bread and cheese and water. The food and water were meager for even one, and her father had been subsisting on this diet since he had arrived on Castrop’s planet, so he was suffering more.

It must have been days that they were trapped in their little cell. As time passed, Hilde wondered when Leigh’s program would activate, and what would happen when it did. The stress mounted, but with no signal from the outside world, it was hard to feel like she could do anything about it.

“I wish there was a way for me to tell Hank that I was able to activate his program,” Hilde said. “Maybe he thinks that I didn’t get the chance. Or maybe he hasn’t told Castrop yet because he thinks he wouldn’t be believed— that it’s a bluff.”

“I don’t know. I trust Leigh.” This was a sentiment that her father repeated, clinging to it. She clung to it, as well. It was about the only thing that they had.

Without an easy way to track time, Hilde had no idea of how long it was taking them to get to the other side of the galaxy, or what would happen to them if they arrived there before Leigh’s plan went into action. Possibly, Leigh had changed his mind about the plan, and would try to get his spy on Phezzan to save them. That was a long shot— they probably wouldn’t even land on the planet, just pass through that corridor. Leigh’s battleship wouldn’t be able to follow them. Without pursuers, her father would lose value as a hostage.

Some time into their captivity, there were loud voices outside the door of their cell. Hilde recognized them, muffled though they were: it was Rudy, the guard, and Lord Castrop. Hilde shook her father awake and whispered to him. “What’s Lord Castrop doing here?”

Rudy’s voice grew louder, and he was taking a long time to unlock the door. He must intentionally be giving her time to compose herself, or trying to find a way to get Castrop to leave.

“He’s probably asleep, my lord. It’s not usually the time I feed him.”

“Well, wake him up,” Castrop said. “We’re getting close to Phezzan. I think it’s right for me to say my goodbyes.”

“He’s going to kill—” Hilde whispered.

“You need to get out of here,” her father whispered back, and he stood. Hilde stood as well. “When that door opens, you run. Find some place to hide or get in the shuttle, whatever you need to do, Hilde.”

“But—”

The door swung open, blinding light spilling in on both of them. As it did, her father leaped at Lord Castrop, swinging his fist. Castrop reeled backwards, stunned, and it gave Hilde the tiniest window to slip out between them, run past the startled Rudy, and scramble down the hallway.

Her eyes were watering with pain in the bright hallway lights, and her legs were unused to so much movement after having sat on a floor for days, but she ran, stumbling over her own dress. She wasn’t sure where she was in the ship, but she knew that the shuttle was in the lower area, and so every time she had an opportunity to descend a set of stairs, she took it.

As she ran through the hallways, she flew past startled men and women, no one expecting her to run by them. This gave her some time, the element of surprise working in her favor.

She even made it to the shuttle, in the unlocked bay where it sat. It was shiny and clean, alone on an empty floor, one of the few areas of the ship untouched by Castrop’s decorations. But the shuttle itself was locked, and none of the combinations she tried punching into the number pad could open the door. She stood there, pulling at it uselessly, and she could hear footsteps pounding down the halls now, coming after her. She wanted to barricade the door of the shuttle bay, but there was no way for her to lock it from where she was, and even if she had locked it, that would have just enabled someone to open the other, rear doors, and pull all the air out of the room to kill her.

So, as the footsteps came closer, she straightened, and although she was filthy and unkempt, tried to appear as imposing as she could. Or at least as uncowed.

The guards were the first to enter the bay, and they aimed their guns at her, but didn’t shoot. Among them was David, and Hilde didn’t meet his eyes. He had a blank expression on his face, and there was no point in her getting him in trouble, or in more trouble than he was going to be in already.

Lord Castrop took a minute longer to appear. His normally so smooth hair was ruffled, and his bare arm had a long, clawed scratch down it, visibly bloody.

“You and your father never cease to amuse me, Lady Mariendorf,” he said, his voice cold.

Hilde stayed silent. There was absolutely nothing she could say that would help her, so it was safer to say nothing at all.

“My guards did say they found you breaking into my ship and took care of you. I suppose I made a wrong assumption about what that had entailed. I should have asked to see the body. That’s twice now I’ve assumed you were dead. If there comes to be a third time, I suppose I will have learned my lesson.”

Castrop waited for her to say something, but she simply stood there and stared at him.

“What are you doing here, trying to get into a shuttle?” he asked. “You came all this way for your father, and you’d just leave him behind?”

“He told me to go,” Hilde said.

“And you’re such an obedient daughter of his. What a wonderful quality.”

“Is he alive?”

“He’s useful until we get past Phezzan, which shouldn’t be long. After that, of course, he won’t be useful anymore.” Castrop looked at her. “But you might be.”

She didn’t speak.

“Don’t you want to know what I’ll use you for?”

“No.”

“How was my Artemis Necklace destroyed?” Castrop asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think you still won’t know if you’re asked very nicely?” Castrop asked. “The rebel territories— you know, they have their own Necklace around their capital planet. I think they will very much want to know what its weaknesses are. You’ll be valuable to me, in telling them. I don’t know what methods they’ll use to get it out of you, but I’m happy to let them try.”

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“We’ll see about that,” Castrop said, with a very smug expression. He turned away. “Take her away. Make sure she can’t escape this time. I don’t need any more fuss.”

“This ship is rigged to explode,” Hilde said as the guards came towards her. “You need to evacuate.”

Castrop smiled thinly. “I doubt it.”

The guards stepped up and surrounded her, dragging her away. This time, she struggled against them, but this didn’t earn her anything other than bruises where their hands crushed her arms to keep her still. They went all the way to the top of the ship, to a place that Hilde had not been before, and where the decor was much richer, even for the standards of this already gaudy vessel. When the guards opened the last door, leading into some sort of living suite, she realized that she had been brought to Castrop’s private quarters. She struggled against her captors, but no matter how she kicked, she couldn’t get free.

The suite was comprised of a bedroom and a living room. The living room had a water fixture on the wall, a fountain that rushed down in a small, tame waterfall, and one of the guards plunged his hand through the water and pressed a secret button, so that the whole wall opened like a door, revealing another small room. They tied Hilde’s arms behind her back, attached the tie to a clasp on the wall, stuffed a gag of fabric in her mouth, and slammed the door shut. Her ties were far too tight, and they bruised her arms.

Laying there in the dark, she couldn’t get her heartrate down or her breathing under control. She couldn’t decide if it was herself or her father she was afraid for. How far away were they from Phezzan? She wondered if there would be any chance for her to escape this. If they did make it past Phezzan, she would try to kill Castrop herself. Even if the ship was going to explode, she’d do it with her own hands if he came in here. She ran through whatever scenarios her mind could come up with— none of them were pleasant, but it was the only thing she could think about. That, and her father, but it was better— easier— less painful— to think about herself. She struggled to undo the ties binding her hands, but this only seemed to make them tighter, and they bit into her skin.

Time passed strangely, made worse by constantly expecting Castrop to reappear. Perhaps he was busy enough that he couldn’t spare time for her.

It was so much worse to be a prisoner alone.

After what felt like, or maybe was, hours, Hilde heard noises outside. These noises didn’t sound like Castrop at all. In fact, the voices she heard, past the burbling of the water fixture, didn’t even sound like they were speaking the Imperial language. Had they bypassed Phezzan and made it into the rebel territories directly? This thought elated her and terrified her— if they were in the rebel territories, her father was probably dead. But whoever these rebels were might be more sympathetic to her than Castrop. She would rather be a prisoner of war than a prisoner of Castrop.

Hilde tried to yell, but the gag muffled any sound she made. She yanked even harder at her restraints, trying to inch her way forward so that she could kick the door to signal her presence. The wall was just out of reach of her foot, no matter how she twisted her arms behind her back to give herself the maximum distance.

The voices faded away, and she almost cried. But she kept her wits about her, and she listened very closely, hoping that they would come back. Time passed, and still she strained against her bonds.

Hilde almost gave up hope that someone else friendly, or at least not Lord Castrop, would come and find her. But then, very faint, she heard her father’s voice, calling her name. If she had been a less realistic person, she might have thought it was the voice of a ghost. But she had never been prone to that kind of flight of fancy.

“Hilde!” her father cried. “Hilde!”

Desperate, Hilde tried to make any noise, but it was muffled by the gag. She did the only thing that she could think of, which was to slip her feet out of her shoes, and blindly fumble for the edge of her shoe with her toe. She almost lost it, letting it slip away out of her reach, but she found it again. She was able to pick up her shoe with her feet, and whack it against the door— it gave her just a few extra inches of reach, which was all that she needed.

“Do you hear that?” her father asked. He was speaking in the language of the rebel territories— which he wasn’t very good at.

“No,” said someone else in that same language.

“Hilde!”

“Fraulein Mariendorf! Where are you?” yelled the other voice, switching to the Imperial language.

She renewed her whacking on the door with her shoe.

“The door opener! Give it to me!” the other voice said, now back in the rebel language.

There was a fumbling, knocking sound at the door, and then the seal broke open, and water splashed into the room, along with a blinding light. Hilde dropped her shoe and squinted at her rescuer.

There was a young man in the doorway, wearing a rebel fleet uniform. He was, quite possibly, the most beautiful man Hilde had ever seen, but that might have just been the impression she got from the way the light haloed his braided blond hair, and the fact that he was saving her. Her father shoved past him and crouched down on the floor, untying her gag. He didn’t say anything, just looked at her with an almost unbearable love and concern.

“Are we in the Alliance?” Hilde asked, speaking in the rebel language. The relief she felt made it so easy to ask practical questions, and she hoped that her father would understand that this meant she was fine.

“Phezzan,” her father and the rebel fleet soldier said simultaneously.

The soldier came over to her and inspected the ties binding her hands. They were thick wire ropes, so, rather than trying to cut through them, the soldier pulled out a pocket knife and pried the crimps apart to let her free. She sat up and rubbed some circulation back into her hands— of all the parts of her, they had fared the worst. The skin on her wrists was ripped open from her trying to escape, and her hands were swollen.

“Thank you, Mr…?”

“Lieutenant Commander Reinhard von Müsel,” the soldier said. “Can you stand up?” he switched into the Imperial language— from his name and how fluent he sounded, she was sure he must have been an Imperial expat of some sort.

She struggled to her feet, supporting herself on her father. “Oh, I’m dizzy,” she said, but then she realized, in the light, that her father looked quite haggard. “Are you alright?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m fine now. Are you?”

“Been better.” But it was delivered cheerfully, as much as the situation would allow, and she smiled at him.

Müsel, who had been listening to this exchange, said, “I’m sorry to rush you, but we really do need to get off this ship as soon as possible. Can you walk?”

“Let me put my shoes back on,” she said, and did her best to slip them back onto her feet, struggling with her dress as she did. “Gods, I hate this stupid dress.”

As soon as she had her shoes on, Müsel hustled them out of Castrop’s suite, and down the hallways of the ship. There was evidence that the ship had been searched: many of the drapes that lined the walls were pulled back, revealing hidden closets, and probably the place where her father had been held.

As they walked out towards the entrance of the ship, they passed various members of Castrop’s entourage, all filing back in. They must have emptied out for the rebel fleet soldiers to search it. They watched Müsel leave with her and her father with strange expressions. Hilde stared straight ahead, keeping her mouth firmly shut. Perhaps she should have tried harder to warn them all about the damage that she had done to the ship, but she didn’t. It seemed like her last chance to take revenge on Castop, for both her own sake, and for the sake of all the people he had ordered killed. If she had uttered this train of thought aloud to anyone, especially Leigh, she knew she would feel guilty. But she wasn’t going to say a word.

When they finally reached the exit of the ship, and stumbled out into the overwhelm of the busy Phezzani spaceport, Müsel waved over a few other rebel fleet soldiers. To them, he said, “Take the Mariendofs down to the High Commissioner’s Office. Get them any medical treatment that they need, and clean clothes, and lodgings for at least the night. I need to stay here in case I need to deal with Castrop himself, but I’ll want to talk to them later.”

Her father, who knew enough of the rebel language to understand the conversation, said, “Am I your prisoner now, Lieutenant Commander?”

“No, sir. This is Phezzan. I have no authority to take prisoners.”

“I’ve been finding that authority to take prisoners is not something that is really necessary. Force will suffice.”

“Dad, we can cooperate.” At the very least, staying on the good side of these soldiers was the safe thing to do for the moment. On Phezzan, if they were treated badly, the Imperial embassy would certainly find out and have some way of dealing with it.

“Yes, alright,” her father said.

“Thank you,” Müsel replied. The soldiers escorted Hilde and her father away, and her father kept her close, pulling her to his side and putting his arm around her shoulder. She didn’t mind that at all.

They were brought down the long space elevator to the surface of Phezzan, and, as Müsel had said, were taken care of. Hilde was able to shower, for the first time in many days. A doctor looked at her wrists and wrapped them in bandages with ointment. Someone asked what size clothes she wore, and she told them to get her a pair of pants, please. She felt like a human again, when she finally got to sit down and eat something, some takeout food that a soldier procured.

They were stuck in the Alliance’s offices, sat in a conference room with huge plate glass windows. Occasionally, soldiers walked by and looked at them curiously, but no one was hostile to them, and hardly anybody bothered them. The man in charge of the whole operation, a commodore by the name of Blackwell, stopped in briefly and asked them about what they had been doing on Castrop’s ship. Her father answered in generalities, describing his trip to the planet, to negotiate with Castrop, and how that had gone wrong. The commodore didn’t seem enthused about this answer, but didn’t press further, and instead left after a few minutes.

He reappeared later, outside the door, with Müsel. Hilde couldn’t hear the conversation he had with the lieutenant commander, but both parties could see each other. A mutual observation.

Müsel came in, which made both Hilde and her father stand. He waved at the table and took a seat across from them. They both sat back down, wary but not too afraid.

“Castrop left for Heinessen,” he said. “How’s your dinner?”

“Good, thank you,” Hilde said.

“I appreciate the Alliance’s hospitality very much,” her father said. He spoke in Imperial, but he dipped into the rebel language to name their country, which made Hilde smile, though she hid it behind her cup of water. Müsel smiled, too. Her father was diplomatic as always.

“Well, you’re on Phezzan,” Müsel said. “It’s in everyone’s best interest to be hospitable around here.”

“Will we be allowed to leave?” her father asked.

“I assume you have no desire to immigrate to the Alliance. You’re welcome to, of course, or you can stay on Phezzan and do as you please.”

“No, I don’t believe that would be in anyone’s best interest. I’m very grateful that I will have the opportunity to return to my own life, with my daughter.”

Müsel pulled a pad of paper from the center of the table, and wrote something down on it, before passing it to her father. “When you walk out of here, go see Lieutenant Commander Neidhart Muller, over in the Imperial Embassy. He’ll make sure you get where you need to go.”

“You know him?” she asked. It seemed very odd that a man whose nation was at war with hers would be friendly enough with the enemy to have a personal recommendation of who to speak to.

“Phezzan is a very small planet. It’s inevitable that you cross paths with your counterpart on the other side, on occasion. He has a reputation for being dependable, anyway.”

“Thank you,” her father said. “May I ask a question?”

“Of course.”

“You said that you knew Captain Leigh. Could you explain how?”

“You know Hank?” Hilde asked. Was this Leigh’s spy on Phezzan? Her heart leaped— Leigh must have sent him personally to rescue her and her father.

“That’s a strong word for it,” Müsel said. “I fled the Empire when I was ten, with my mother and sister. My next door neighbor, when I was a child, was one of Captain Leigh’s students.”

“How do you know that? Which student?” Hilde was leaning forward over the table.

Müsel raised an eyebrow, so her father explained, “My daughter weasled her way into attending some of Captain Leigh’s classes when he taught at the Imperial Officers Academy. She might have been his classmate.”

Müsel smiled. “Were you following the news of— not this most recent February, but the one before that— when Rear Admiral Reuenthal attacked Condor Base?”

“Yes, I know about that,” Hilde said.

“I don’t believe Imperial papers carried the full story. Rear Admiral Reuenthal took the base staff prisoner. I was stationed there at the time, and, with a friend of mine, Lieutenant Commander Greenhill, we were able to commandeer a ship and rescue the prisoners. During that process, I overheard a conversation between Rear Admiral Reuenthal and Captain Leigh, talking about his students. That’s how I knew of Captain Leigh.”

“Oskar never told me about that,” Hilde said, glancing at her father and leaning back in her chair. “I’ll have to beg him for details, next time I see him.”

“I’m sure the rear admiral does not want to regale you with that story,” her father said.

“He won the engagement,” Müsel pointed out.

“Wait, but who is the student of Hank’s that you know?”

Müsel put his hand on his chest. “Siegfried Kircheis. Do you know him?”

Hilde laughed aloud. “Oh, gods, yes, I know him. He’s my closest friend. He was just—” Her happiness was cut off when she realized that she had no idea what had happened to Kircheis after she left Castrop’s planet. She had been assuming that he was fine, but she had no way of knowing.

“Small universe,” her father said. “Sub-Lieutenant Kircheis is a good man.”

“Please give him my fondest regards.”

“I will, I promise,” Hilde said.

“What were you doing on Castrop’s planet, if I may ask?” He looked at her, specifically.

“There was the idea that I might be able to negotiate for my father’s release. Obviously, it failed.”

“And how did you end up being taken prisoner?”

“I knew Castrop was going to use my father as a bargaining chip for as long as he could. So, I was attempting to free him, and I ended up trapped as well.”

“I see. And what caused Castrop to leave his planet?” This was a very pointed question, and her father deliberately stepped in.

“I don’t know. Neither of us were in much of a position to observe what was going on, when we finally ended up on his ship.”

Müsel’s eyes narrowed, but he nodded. “Castrop said that the Artemis Necklace that was protecting his planet— the same one that protects Heinessen— was destroyed, and that caused him to flee. Do you know anything about that?”

“If anyone could do something like that, it would be Hank,” Hilde said.

“But you don’t know how he did it.”

“No,” her father said confidently.

“I lost contact with him before everything happened. I don’t know what he did.”

“Alright,” Müsel said. “I appreciate your honesty.” He stood, and Hilde and her father did as well. Müsel offered his hand to her father, and then her, shaking their hands. “If you need anything else while on Phezzan, don’t hesitate to contact me, or anyone else at the High Commissioner’s Office.”

“Thank you,” her father said. “I owe you a great debt, for myself, and for my daughter.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Müsel said with a smile. “I have developed something of a reputation for freeing captives, it seems.”

Hilde laughed. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Lieutenant Commander. I wish I could get to know you better.”

“This war won’t last forever, Fraulein Mariendorf. When it ends, perhaps we can be friends.”

“I would like that very much.”

She and her father were let out of the Alliance’s offices, and onto the bustling streets of Phezzan. It was so different from Castrop’s planet and Odin that Hilde had difficulty taking it in for a minute, just standing on the street corner and listening to all the noise. People rushed by hither and thither, and neon lights buzzed from every window, and cars had to fight with pedestrians for passage on the streets. The buildings rose up so high at points that the thick evening clouds surrounded them.

“Should we go directly to the embassy?” Hilde asked her father after she had taken stock of her senses.

Her father nodded silently, and pointed down the street, beginning to walk. He had been to Phezzan before, for business and pleasure, and so was familiar with it where Hilde was not. He seemed morose, or at least lost in thought, despite the fact that they were free.

“Is something the matter?” she said after a few minutes of walking, dodging in between other pedestrians. “Are you okay?”

It took a moment for her father to answer. “I won’t question your decision,” he said, “but you didn’t tell the rebels that you sabotaged Lord Castrop’s ship.”

She lifted her chin, looking up in the black sky above. “No, I didn’t.”

Her father nodded.

“I’ll tell Lieutenant Commander Muller, in the Imperial Embassy,” she said.

“You know that he won’t do anything with that information.”

“Probably not.”

He looked over at her. “Did Castrop hurt you?”

“No,” she said. She wasn’t sure if her father believed her, but she was telling the truth. “I was very lucky, or there just wasn’t time.”

After a moment, her father said, “Captain Leigh would not want those people to die for no reason.”

“I’ll tell Lieutenant Commander Muller,” she said again. “If he doesn’t do anything with it, then it’s the crown’s decision.”

“One that you’ll have to live with.”

“He was going to kill you!”

“He didn’t.”

“Do you want me to turn around and go tell the rebel fleet to pull Castrop off his ship?”

“No,” he said. “If I really wanted that, I would also do it myself.”

She nodded. There was a part of her that had been convinced to change her mind, but she stopped herself. The guilt was heavy in her stomach, but she tried to twist that feeling into resolve.