(I need the cross-crank again.) Andra held out a hand expectantly and was pleased to felt the familiar handle land in her palm without hesitation. (Thanks.

(This is surprisingly calming,) Cygnus replied as he worked busily on a panel nearby. He was between meetings, and had taken to coming down to help her with her ship whenever he had some free time. Andra still hadn’t figured out why, and he still hadn’t deigned to answer when she asked. (Is that why you’re always down here?)

They were far enough away from each other that they would have had to yell. Fortunately, Cygnus was more than powerful enough to hold a mental conversation link between them, even when they were both focused on separate, intricate, tasks.

(I’m always down here because I would really rather not be noticed by anyone important,) Andra told him dryly, and heard him snort from the other side of the ship. (Besides you, anyway. Why do you think I haven’t told anyone I saw your vision?)

(I assumed it spooked you,) Cygnus said, not exactly hesitant, but aware of her discomfort about the matter. They hadn’t discussed the vision at all. (High-level precognition is rare, and mine can be… overwhelming, even when the subject isn’t as distressing as this was. Also, I need the crank back unless you want me to risk ripping this panel off entirely.)

His telekinesis was as powerful as his other gifts, but that much power often had control limitations.

He could probably crack a moon in half, if he was willing to burn himself out to do it. But lift a teacup, or screw in a bolt? Completely beyond his abilities.

Not for the first time, Andra was glad that her own telekinesis was so minor. She might not be able to do the big stuff, but the little stuff was usually more useful.

She wrenched three more bolts into place and floated the crank back to him with a thought. He caught it easily and began unscrewing the panel with quick pulls. (I’ll need you here in a moment. This is more complicated than I can learn and do at the same time.)

(One minute.)

Andra finished with her bolts and slid out from under the ship. Her coveralls were spattered with oil and space dust, and she wiped off her hands before she joined Cygnus at the panel. A large orb of woven wires, insulation, papers, and buts of plastic dominated most of the interior “Crap. That looks like a chimma nest.”

It was jarring to go from mental speech to verbal, but the connection still buzzed between them, carrying images and concepts that made the words come easier.

“Chimmas?” He kept his hands well away from the woven next of wires and insulation even as Andra eyed it, mind flavored heavily with irritation at the previous owner of the ship. “What are chimmas?”

“Little, annoying,” Andra summed up, grumbling even as she dug in her tool chest for the tough syn-leather gloves she kept handy. “Can bite through just about anything. They’d be cute, if they didn’t destroy wiring so fast.”

She grabbed a bucket and set it under the nest. Slime poured out as she began scraping the nest out of the wiring cavity. Tiny glowing rodents scattered in every direction and she caught as many as she could before they could escape.

Cygnus was appalled, and a little disgusted as slime and wiring drizzled off her gloves and into the bucket. “This thing is a death trap. How is this the ship your Edge Leader chose to get here?”

“I’m one of the best pilots we have,” Andra said, and cursed when one of the chimmas decided to go on the attack. She batted it into the bucket with more force than was strictly necessary, and it chittered at her furiously with the rest of its’ kind. “And my ship might be beat up, but it’s mine, free and clear.”

“You paid for this flying death trap?”

Cygnus was growing significantly more horrified by the moment. Andra flicked a chimma at him and had the distinct pleasure of watching him scramble to catch it, before he managed to scrape it off him and into the bucket with the others.

“Yes, I paid for it,” Andra told him, and sighed when she got the last of the nest out of the wiring. “I saved for months to buy this ship. Don’t knock it. Close that up, yeah?”

“You know I’m the most powerful Psion on Vega Base, right?” Cygnus said darkly, but he tapped the bucket lid down when she pointed at it. “I could explode your head with a thought.”

“If you’re gonna, you’re gonna,” Andra told him and eyed the panel considering, before reaching in with her limited telekinesis. One by one, she diverted the almost-microscopic converters from the damaged wiring until the panel lit up a healthy green. When she turned around, he was staring at her, with an odd color to his mental ‘presence’ in her head. “What?”

“What you just did,” he said, and leaned in close to the panel to examine the converters. “You said you were tested, yes?”

“Precog and ‘path,” Andra confirmed, and decided that she could work and figure him out at the same time. With most of the chimmas contained, it was safe to close up. “Why? Cyg, you’re being weird.”

“Were you tested on telekinesis too?”

He was watching her closely, and Andra finally turned to give him her full attention. “No, I’ve never been able to lift more than a few pounds.”

“It’s not all about weight,” Cygnus said slowly, and waved a hand. Her whole ship lifted off the ground weightlessly. “Who tested you?”

“Lyr Kort, on Asteroid Base forty-two,” Andra said dubiously. “He tested all the Edge kids who showed any sign of Psi abilities. He got me into pilot training.”

“He’s a hack,” Cygnus muttered, and sighed when he felt her confusion. Among his other abilities was low-grade Empathy, for all that he rarely used it. “Andra, micro-manipulation takes more power than macro-manipulation. It’s much harder to move very small things than it is to move big ones.”

“It’s not a big deal,” she defended herself uncomfortably, and pulled off her gloves. “I mean, it’s useful, but-“

“You don’t understand,” Cygnus said. Excitement tugged at the edges of his mind. “Compatible minds always have paired abilities, or they run the risk of burning each other out when they go into syzygy. I have macro telekinesis in spades, but my micro telekinesis is nonexistent. I explode things, usually. But you- if you’re doing electro-mechanical adjustments with your micro, your abilities are off the charts.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Andra said, and leaned against her tool chest to consider what he was saying more seriously. On one hand, he was the leader of the psionic mercenary group, and probably knew what he was talking about. On the other… “What about my ‘path abilities? Still crap.”

“You’re probably a receiver, not a projector,” Cygnus said thoughtfully, although he still had interesting bursts of excitement going off in his mind. Andra thought he was probably blowing things out of proportion a little. “Easy enough to test, when Ursa goes back to the capital. Now that I know you’re out here, I can reach for you, and if you can hear me, that will prove it.”

“I’ve never heard of being a ‘receiving telepath’,” Andra told him dubiously, although her education as an Asteroid-Base orphan and grease monkey left plenty of education to be desired. There was only so much she could learn on her own in her spare time. “I can tell you for sure that my precog isn’t as strong as yours.”

“Different doesn’t mean weaker,” Cygnus muttered, and scanned through his memory, fitting puzzle pieces together at light speed. “I bet yours is more reliable than mine, even if you don’t see as far ahead. You saw what mine looks like, and didn’t lose yourself in it. Point of fact, you pulled me out.”

“Is that odd?” She wouldn’t know. Almost no one in the Edge Revolution had serious precog. They tended to go insane.

That might explain some of Cygnus being so weird.

“I heard that,” he told her, but he was too pleased with himself and her to care. “I’ve never been in syzygy with anyone during a precognitive incident.”

“It sounds so fancy when you say it like that.”

“Just because I’m using the correct language-“

Whatever else he was going to say froze on his tongue as that same, terrible, yawning pit opened in his mind.

Andra only had a moment to anchor herself in her own self before Cygnus was falling away into the vision, gasping for breath and already starting to seize. Blackness devoured the hanger port and the ship until there was nothing but stars and open space around them.

A ship, oddly smooth and laden with weapons loomed over a glowing blue planet.

A single rocket, tiny, compared to the ship, left a comet trail as it fired down, and vanished through the clouds far below, and billowed a perfect, terrifying circle though the soft white.

There was no sound, but Andra wished there was. The silence was almost worse as a shockwave rippled outward from the planet and hit them like a drum inside their chests. The force of it almost shook her loose, but Andra held onto her anchor and Cygnus determinedly, unwilling to lose either of them in the vision.

For a long moment after the shockwave faded, everything was absolutely still.

And then deep, fire-lined cracks appeared blazing red-orange against all that blue.

Spouts of molten stone shot into space in every direction, creating vast pillars as they hit the cold of space, but the eruption on the surface continued, viciously exploding continent after continent away into the black, still glowing with the heat of a fiery planet core.

Limed by the death of a planet, something on the massive ship noticed them, and suddenly Andra was drowning in raw, directed hatred.

(Hold on,) Cygnus whispered in their mind, and gathered himself. Andra showed him the anchor she held them by, and felt him understand.

With a hard push against the vision, they were out, breathing hard on the greasy floor of the hanger.

“They’re coming for us,” Cygnus rasped, and struggled to his feet, before helping Andra to hers. “We have to tell command.”

“So much for staying under the radar,” Andra said, and steeled herself before she nodded firmly. “Okay. Let’s go.”