Closing off the month with a larger-than-usual update for The Adventures of Scamper, wherein Skyler is settling in aboard her new home and making friends acquaintances among the crew, learning a bit more about Valerhas, its people and the creature that they know as 'the entity' or 'the beast', but she'll come to know as Moby. Enjoy!

Part 8:

Skyler kept her head down for the next week. She’d been assigned to Valerhas’s engineering section, which was as undermanned as the rest of the vessel, in this case to an alarming degree. As instructed, she’d reported to Daanz-Trep-Comp for assessment of her skills. A Builder, he had taken one look at her and laughed, then said she should check in with the chief engineer for ‘further evaluation’. It might have been a sixth sense, but somehow Skyler just didn’t think she and Daanz-Trep-Comp were going to get along.

The chief engineer was a Pedlar; his name was Izzak Ganloca and he was a bulky member of an already bulky species. Pedlars were something between an ape, and a hyena and a human with a hunched posture and a heavy, long head. They were normally covered in short, bristly hair but Valerhas’s chef engineer had lost most of his fur save for the ridge of thick quills that began on the top of his head, ran between his stooped shoulders and down his back, disappearing under his tunic. In place of the short, bristly carpet his people usually possessed, he had thin, sickly patches of wispy white hair smattered here and there over his gnarled skin, his baldness and extensive scarring caused by burn damage and radiation sickness. His dark blue eyes looked as clear and sharp as anyone else’s, but Skyler suspected that they weren’t the originals. His voice was as raspy as his skin looked.

Izzak looked her up and down. He glanced over her head. Skyler didn’t turn to look, but she guessed it was Daanz-Trep-Comp and whoever else had come to watch the show. Well, she hoped they were ready to be disappointed. The Pedlar looked back down at her. “You’re the new meat.” It wasn’t a question. She was the only human aboard the vessel and her rescue had made the rounds.

“Guess I am.”

“Heard you liked to tinker. Any good at it?” It wasn’t a question; it was a challenge she was expected to fail.

“My previous leaders thought so,” she replied, trying to stand as tall as she could to square off against the hulking alien. “I grew up on spaceships and drifts and learned a lot about them. By the time I was fourteen, I’d spent more time around power distribution systems than planetside. I’ve worked on orbital mirrors, traffic control stations and other installations until I transferred to a mining rig at twenty-eight, then eight years on starship engineering sections. Two of those on in-system travel, six on a deep-range miner.”

“The victim,” Izzak guessed.

Skyler clenched her jaw. “Yeah,” she replied. “I guess it was.”

The Pedlar flicked a datascroll at her. Skyler had good reflexes; she caught it before it could bounce off her forehead. She pulled it open; on the ‘scroll was a diagrammatic layout of an electrical grid.

“What is the problem and what’s causing it?” the engineer demanded. He pressed his hands to the sides of his stomach, the Pedlar version of a human crossing their arms over their chest.

The woman scanned the document. Despite her rank on Gohenghist, she was good at her job. She could have been an actual engineer and not just a tech, but that would have never happened. Too many of the ship’s actual engineering department would have gotten their flat noises out of joint over it and they’d already had it in for her. Being the first one the Kobolds called when they needed an engineer only added salt to the wound. “You’re losing efficiency through power redistribution,” she said.

Ganloca didn’t confirm her diagnosis. “And where is the fault?”

“This resistor...” she began. A sneer started to form on the engineer’s face, but she ignored it. She was up to the challenge he’d thrown down. “...looks like the main problem,” she finished. “But it isn’t. The way the line is set up makes it unnecessary and just slows down power flow for no benefit. Move this inductor here,” she gestured to one of the symbols, “up here in front of this system node to protect it from power surges, move the resistor to this line so it can cover the nodes at both ends of the fork, run an additional service line off the main and connect it to a battery so you can divert the excess power you’re prone to getting into reserves. The main fault,” she summarized, “isn’t on the map you gave me. It’s whatever is requiring you to add so many over-spec safeguards against power fluctuations.” She handed the ‘scroll back to the Pedlar, meeting his eyes levelly.

He didn’t look at the document at all, instead eyeing the small woman with newfound respect. “New meat,” he croaked. “Perhaps you are good at tinkering after all.”

“Thanks,” she told him. “And you can call me Scamper.”

~

Skyler quickly found herself sent on repair jobs to the command deck and just as quickly, she figured out that on Valerhas this was not the sought-after position that indicated trust and respect for one’s abilities that it was on other ships, although she wouldn’t learn the exact reason for that until much later. Until that incident, she appreciated the lack of hostility. Every time she’d shown up on Gohenghist’s bridge, Leader Ar’vansma or whoever had been in the command throne had glowered at her by way of greeting and given curt instructions to ‘get on with it’. On Valerhas, Ashi’wi simply looked up at her, blinked out of synch and went back to her instruments. It occurred to the human that she’d never seen the other woman anywhere but here at her station. Maybe she’d taken root.

The Leader was not on the bridge – Skyler had heard mumbling from behind the door to his officers. Whoever or whatever the Judiciary was talking to, she had no desire whatsoever to interrupt. She’d seen him a few times in the halls, but he spent most of his time in his quarters, his office or on the bridge. He would give her an acknowledging grunt in passing, but rarely more than that. In most of their interactions, he was gruff and straightforward, a veteran and venerable ship leader, but she’d seen the obsession lurking within those large, dark eyes and it never truly went away.

“He likes you,” that had been Risi Eller-taun. The Didact was one of the few other maintenance techs in Valerhas’s engineering department. She was about five years younger than Skyler. Half her right ear was missing and the fur on that side of her face had turned white, presumably a result of the same injury that had cost her the upper part of that ear. She was guarded, but more willing to talk to the ‘new meat’ than many others.

“I haven’t done anything,” Skyler had protested.

“That,” the other woman told her, “just means you haven’t disappointed him yet.” She looked down at her right hand. It was completely covered in a black glove. “Most of us have.”

~

The problem, at least this time, was a minor fault in the connections between the sensor console and the data feeds, preventing incoming data from being properly displayed. It had taken a bit of time but Skyler, everything but her lower shins buried under floor panels and tucked snugly among cabling in a crawlspace meant for drones rather than people, was able to resolve the issue. She didn’t even mind the claustrophobic surroundings. She’d always been small and she liked being able to put that to use.

On Carvein, one of the other engineers had offered to take her caving. She’d gone once and then never again. For some reason those confines bothered her, but the cramped passages aboard ships or stations never had. Wriggling her way out of the small area, Skyler emerged dusty but triumphant. “There,” she proclaimed. “Refresh your connection to the sensors.”

It took a moment, but Ashi’wi blinked slowly in affirmation. “System restored,” she noted, then looked directly at the human tech. “Datastream is 7% higher quality than before. Competently done.”

That was high praise from any Thoughtful to one of the ‘lesser’ ‘uncivilized’ species, but especially from this one. Skyler didn’t say anything back. She wasn’t a cultural expert by any means – her experiences were fellow humans, Tribunes from Rally and Workers and Kobolds from Gohenghist – but she knew a little about most other species. One of those tidbits was that it was a faux pas among Thoughtful to verbally acknowledge certain levels of praise, regardless of context.

To Skyler’s mild surprise, Ashi’wi continued the conversation, tilting her head towards her. “What was the issue?”

“Faulty component. This ship’s more advanced than what I’m used to and I’m guessing your other engineers have had to learn as they go. Someone installed a circuit adapter to let the ship’s systems talk to the more customized pieces here, but it wasn’t up to the task and it burnt out. I pulled the adapter and just made a direct link, which is all you needed to begin with.”

Another slow blink. “You diagnosed the issue surprisingly quickly.”

“It’s like I told you,” Skyler said as she replaced the floor panels she’d removed to get under the deck. “I’m not an idiot. I know how to do my job, often better than-” she paused, remembering the crew of Gohenghist. They hadn’t all been assholes. Luskire had been one of the mining ship’s engineers. He’d never had a problem with her and his crew had followed his example. He’d said he’d vouch for her if she ever wanted to take certification to become a full engineer.

I never got to say goodbye to any of them.

“-better than a lot of people think.” She concluded. The grief came and went. Some days it was almost crippling to the point that she had to force herself out of bed and not just shut down and wallow in it. Other days it didn’t seem real, like this was all some bizarre dream and she’d wake up any minute now. The disjunction between her new reality and the old one made her feel like she was losing her mind. Maybe she already had, maybe all of this was the hallucinations of an oxygen-starved brain as she lay on the floor of the saviour pod, slowly asphyxiating.

If that were true, it wouldn’t hurt this much.

Skyler turned to the viewscreen. The asteroid was still there. It hadn’t been taken off the main viewer since the ‘feeding event’. Hartsyn’s obsession, and the whole reason she was alive. If he hadn’t been tracking it, then he’d never have been in position to rescue her... but he’d also been willing to let it eat Gohenghist. He hadn’t cared who it took, just as long as he could learn more about it.

It was probably time she did, too. “Can it... see us from this distance?” After the ‘feeding event’, Valerhas had backed off to six hundred thousand kilometers from the fake asteroid, orbiting it like a strange, sullen moon.

Ashi’wi was silent a moment, debating whether or not to answer the question or tell the Broken to leave the bridge now that she’d fulfilled her purpose. “I’m not certain,” she told Skyler. “While the entity appears to lack augurs of comparable power, range and resolution to standard ship-based systems, it does possess sensory systems of notable capability. Our stealth systems are quite advanced, so it should still be unaware of our presence. If it is, however, it is because we breached stealth protocols to intercept your saviour pod.”

“I’m sorry saving my life inconvenienced you.”

“If the entity is aware of us, it will become far more than an inconvenience, Broken.”

Skyler raised her head. “Will it attack us?”

“Doubtful. Unless we provoke it or draw close enough that it can ensnare us, it’s unlikely to take action. The entity’s primary form of predation is aggressive mimicry. It rarely actively pursues prey items, preferring to wait for them to come to it.” The Thoughtful paused. “It took us months to track the entity to this system and weeks to get this close without losing contact again.”

“How long have you been studying it?” the human pressed.

There was a moment of silence. “Too long,” the Thoughtful breathed. At her admission, the helm officer tilted his head in her direction. He had no eyes, but the sensory organs that ringed his head somehow still managed to convey a sharp look. Skyler couldn’t have guessed at the best of times what it meant and doubly so now. “But not long enough to be certain about any but the most basic conclusions,” the Thoughtful added, sounding frustrated. “The entity’s physiology defies classification. When we do learn something concrete, it frequently invalidates or complicates pre-existing theories. Studying the entity is the most intellectually invigourating project I have ever taken on.” She let that statement sit for a few beats. “And when we kill it, it will be the most emotionally satisfying moment of my life.”

Skyler didn’t say anything to that at first, recalling the other woman’s condolences for the loss of Gohenghist. She opened her mouth to say something, but Ashi’wi cut her off. “Your duties are complete, technician Scamper. I have made a note in your personnel file of the competency you have displayed, but I have indulged your apparent desire for conversation long enough. Your presence is no longer required. You are dismissed.”

The brunette closed her mouth with a click, then nodded. There was no point arguing with the woman, and she’d already learned more than she’d expected. She gathered the rest of her tools and left the bridge. On her way down the corridor to the elevator, she paused outside Harstyn’s office. It was as quiet as the grave inside. She glanced around and then hurried back to engineering.

She didn’t know what she’d gotten herself into on this ship, but she also didn’t have much choice about that, did she?

No, she answered her own question. No, I don’t.

~

Skyler’s first self-appointed job was to get used to her new ship. She’d known every inch of George Carvein and Gohenghist, the latter probably better than anyone else aboard. No matter what the future had in store for her, knowing Valerhas’s layout could only help, and she was curious about the vessel. Despite its eccentricities and the modifications its crew had made, it was the most advanced starship she’d ever been on. In any other circumstances, being assigned to a ship like this would have been a dream come true.

Likely due to her upbringing on spaceships and stations, Skyler had a mild (and occasionally not so mild) case of agoraphobia. Walking the ship helped with that. Memorizing the deck plan kept her mind busy, which also helped. She’d felt herself start to spiral towards full-on panic attacks a few times already, but surrounding herself with walls and bulkheads helped stop it in its tracks. The last thing she needed was for anyone to start thinking she was unreliable, so she was doing her best not to fall to pieces. It was working... so far. Not enough to stop the ghosts from coming in. She also couldn’t help comparing Valerhas to Gohenghist, though the vessels were nothing alike.

Gohenghist had been nearly two kilometers long, thick and heavy with mining modules to let it dice up asteroids and small moons, consume the chunks and extract the valuable minerals and metals within for transport back to processing centers and paying customers. It had been a sluggish, swollen beast, its insides a warren of worn-down bulkheads and mechanisms twice as old as Skyler. Its reactor, old but powerful, had chugged along like a beating heart. Its corridors had been filled with crew, Workers and Kobolds alike. The former had run the ship and the latter had been the mining crew.

By contrast Valerhas was much more modern, probably less than a decade old. It wasn’t a labourer like Gohenghist, but a studious researcher. Its systems hummed quietly, while on the mining ship there had almost always been an audible background noise from aged gravity plating and slightly out of tune power conduits, rattles in the air ducts and the low, pervasive roar of the mining systems at work. Though Valerhas was much smaller than the mining ship, it felt larger. Part of that was the quiet. The other was the architecture.

The smaller ship’s hallways were long and kept clear of crates, dolleys and discarded gear. Its bulkheads were clean and unmarred by generations of work. Seeing other crew was a rarity rather than a common occurrence. Skyler could go for hours without encountering another living being. She was too used to the heavy footfalls of the Workers or the tak-tak-tak of chitinous feet on decking, and the silence unsettled her. It left too much room in her head for other thoughts.

Valerhas seemed to be equipped as a science vessel. The axe-shaped prow module laden with sensors, laboratories and analysis systems made that a given, as did the wall decal the Mercasus Scientific Guild she came across. A dashed-line triangle with a globe sat inside those borders. Half of the planet was filled in with landmasses and the rest was an empty grid pattern. A stylized hand, angled so you couldn’t see how many fingers it actually had, hovered over the globe, a drawing tool in hand as it painstakingly filled in the unknown parts of the planet.

It was the only symbol of its kind that she’d found on the entire ship, tucked away in a back corridor. Her intuition told her that there’d been others, most likely painted over or removed from where they’d once sat. Even the dedication plaque on the vessel’s bridge was missing. Not every society honoured their vessels like that – it was one of the few cultural touchstones humanity had in common with Tribunes – but it was rare to find a ship without one. Or, more specifically, to find that it had been removed. She wondered why someone would do that, and she didn’t like the answers that she’d come up with.

George Carvein had had mountings for a single pair of point defence turrets – one dorsal, one ventral – but they’d never been installed. As an ice miner who travelled on a continuous loop throughout the Rally system, defensive systems beyond some rickety shields had never really been needed, and those were more to protect it from debris during active operations than from any potential attack.

Gohenghist, operating on the frontier far from any chance of timely assistance, had had three defensive turrets and a single ventral laser mount that was more for cutting large asteroids or destroying dangerous debris than engaging in ship to ship combat. It wasn’t up to the lowest standards of the most backwater planetary militia, but in a pinch it could bite back if it absolutely had to. There’d just never been a time when it could have done any good. The Unbound that boarded them had outgunned the mining ship by an order of magnitude and the wildcatters that killed them never even gave them a chance to fight back.

Valerhas, like most civilian ships could hardly be called heavily armed, but she packed five defence turrets on a hull a dozen times smaller than Gohenghist. The science ship didn’t have any standard armaments that Skyler could identify, but she wasn’t so sure that it was harmless. There was a long tram line that ran from the front of the ship to the engine decks at the rear, with stops to access the attached modules. Skyler took the tram a few times, hoping to get off at the locked module to get a better idea of what was inside. She wasn’t dumb enough to try and break in, but she hadn’t been told not to go near it, either. The tram didn’t even slow down, breezing right past the dock and continuing on its way. Skyler tried everything short of triggering an emergency stop, but the best she could get was for it to stop there and immediately start up again without enough time to get off the car. Without the leader’s clearance, that module might as well not exist.

“Stop it,” Risi told her during a lunch. There were only a half-dozen people in the cafeteria. Gohenghist’s main mess had been packed at meal times. Workers didn’t like synthesized food, so it had had a full staff of cooks working to keep the bellies of crew full. The Kobolds had had their own mess halls. Skyler had split her meals between her few friends in the Workers’ mess and with Travis and the other the seven-foot subterranean mantises. On Valerhas she’d been eating alone.

Skyler raised her head. “Stop what?”

The Didact clicked her teeth rapidly, then sat down across from Skyler. She had a salad from Valerhas’s hydroponics bays and some high-protein tubers. “I saw you going back and forth on the tram. You were trying to get into the sealed cargo decks. Stop.”

“Why?” the human woman pressed. “What’s in there?”

Risi’s ears half-lowered. “I don’t know,” she replied. “But you haven’t been on Valeras long enough to start digging in the roots.”

“I’m not digging in... anywhere,” Skyler protested. “I’m just trying to learn about the ship I’m on.” She paused, half nodding towards the nearest spaceward bulkhead. “You know what’s out there?”

“Better than you do, asasjjik” the woman replied. Skyler didn’t know what that word meant, but she didn’t think it was an endearment. “Enough to know why the leader is the way he is and enough to know not to snoop where I haven’t been sent.” The harshness in her voice softened. “Everyone on Valerhas owes a debt to the leader,” she added. “Everyone understands why we’re here. Take that into consideration as you go forward.”

Skyler didn’t say anything at first, recalling the conversation she’d overheard between the cooks days earlier. Not everyone seemed quite as loyal as Risi was claiming. “How long have you been on this ship?”

“Coming up on three years now.”

The human blinked. “Harstyn said Valerhas hasn’t made port in four years.”

Risi nodded slowly. “Yes.” She was quiet for a long moment. “You’re not the only stray he’s taken in, nor the only one who owes him her life.”

Skyler considered that. She was on the verge of asking Risi how she’d come to Valerhas, but something in the Didact’s tone stopped her. “You said I haven’t disappointed him yet. What did you mean by that?” she asked instead.

The Didact’s ears sagged, her tail going limp. “We all have, foundling,” she said. “You will too. It’s just a matter of time.”

“And then what?” Skyler pressed. “What happens?”

Risi’s eyes shifted from her to her right hand. It was, like always, covered by a black glove. “Our mission is important,” was all she said at first. In a nervous tic, Didact massaged the synthetic leather with her left hand. She’d done it before, often when reporting bad news to Izzak or another officer, but this time Skyler caught a better glimpse of the shapes under the fabric’s surface. The hand was a prosthetic. Skyler only saw the impression of the mechanical knuckles and tendons for a second, but it looked almost as crude as Harstyn’s own secondary arm.

The Didact’s gaze rose back to meet Skyler’s brown eyes. “You have a chance, assasjjik,” was all the other woman said, gathering up her tray and unfinished meal, “not to disappoint him. I suggest you make the most out of it – and stop digging under trees that aren’t yours.”

~

Skyler was once again buried in a crawlspace meant for a service drone when Harstyn came to see her. When she shimmied out of the small access shaft, the leader was waiting for her, squatting on his wide-set haunches, his primary arms’ elbows resting on his knees. Skyler’d had superiors who’d stared at her for all the wrong reasons in the past, but the Judiciar’s manner was neither hostile nor lascivious. He looked like a man evaluating a newly-installed part to see how it was performing among the rest of the components.

The woman dipped her head towards him. “Leader.”

“Technician.” He nodded towards the hole she’d just climbed out of. “What were you doing?”

“Installing a new junction casing,” she answered, holding up the old one. “Quick job, nothing special.”

“We have drones for tasks that simple,” the larger man pointed out.

“You do, but you don’t have enough of them.” She wiped a bit of sweat from her forehead. It had been hot in there. “Which is surprising on a ship this heavily automated.”

“We lost many of the drones early on,” Ehaaayd told her. “And production queues are strictly prioritized.”

Skyler was quiet for a moment, then asked the question that had been bouncing around in her head since she’d seen the scientific guild’s symbol on the walls. “Did you lose them when you stole this ship?”

The Judiciary looked at her. “You told me you talked your way onto Valerhas,” Skyler said. “But that’s not entirely true is it?”

The surprise on Ehaaayd’s long face shifted slowly to something else and the man chuckled. It was a low, humming series of pops that made his throat ripple. “You are a clever thing, aren’t you?” He didn’t wait for an answer from the woman before he continued, his demeanour quickly sobering. “After Heghmarve I tried to report what I had seen, but no one believed me. Because I had nothing beyond the transmissions I picked up, there was no evidence of the fate of my wife, daughter and the other hundreds who died upon that ship. Heghmarve is still listed in official documents as ‘missing, cause unknown, presumed destroyed’.”

The Judiciary pressed his secondary hands together, mechanical and organic fingers steepling. “I joined the guild to find a way to the truth,” he said. “For years I served on mission after mission, always looking to go farther, to return to the place where my family was taken from me. I also searched for anyone who had experiences to match my own, digging through tales of fantastical beasts and claims of ‘Naiads’. Most were nothing but wild imaginings or drunken gossip swapped between crews like hand-me-downs. Some,” he paused, his large fingers drumming on his knees. “Were not. Others had seen what I had seen. Others had suffered because of this beast. I recruited those I could, promising them the vindication and revenge that I have sought.

“On this vessel’s last excursion from the guild, we found the monster. Two dozen light-years from here.” He paused for a moment, eyes drifting over Skyler’s shoulders. “The Leader at that time was a man by the name of Kelet’op. I had served under him many times before Valerhas. He was a good man and a capable officer, but unimaginative. He was not convinced by the plain evidence before him. I thought he would see the truth, but he revealed what kind of man he truly was. He would not listen to reason. He refused to alter our mission, refused to pursue the beast. I, and the other members of this crew who had experienced the predations of this creature, were forced to take action.”

“You mutinied.”

“To reject an immoral order is the rightful duty of all, Broken. Denying what is before your eyes and allowing this thing to escape is negligence so severe that it becomes immoral. He would not act, so I did. We took the ship and those who sided with Kelet’op were imprisoned.” Another brief pause. “It was then that I made another costly mistake.” Twitches rippled across his snout, down to his lips. “I showed kindness that Kelet’op would not have afforded us and took his loyalists back to known space rather than set them adrift. As a reward for that, Merasus security forces attempted to hijack Valerhas. When they failed, they placed a sector-wide bounty on our heads.”

He sighed heavily, but the sound wasn’t one of regret. “During the vessel’s liberation and our escape, many of Valerhas’s original systems were damaged. I have had to find replacements or do without for much of our mission. Worst of all, by the time we returned from our fool’s errand, the beast had moved on. As I said, it took years before we were able to find it again. Years of searching an entire sector, seeking out any clue, trace or trail, adding to our ranks with those who knew of it as we sought to avoid the petty rage of slighted bureaucrats, dodging the mercenaries looking for us and doing whatever was necessary to survive. Years in which it continued its slaughter of innocents.”

His solemn tone became rougher, rumbling like rocks grinding against each other. “Our mission is a sacred one. Many claim that there is no such thing in this universe as true evil, but those who’d say such things have never looked into the soulless visage of the beast that sits beyond our hull. I have spent more than half my life searching for this abomination and I will not be denied the revenge that is mine. Once we have a way to kill it, all the screaming dead,” the muscles around his eyes tightened like an involuntary tic, “will at last know peace.”

Skyler was silent for a moment. “You’ve been through a lot,” she said, choosing her words cautiously. “But where do I come in?”

Harstyn stared at her for several seconds. “Destiny sent you to me,” he finally pronounced. “At first, I’d not intended to intercept your pod, but I heard Deuuna’s voice. She speaks to me at times, just as my daughter will. She told me I must act, though it might reveal our presence to the beast. When I pulled you from it, limp and bleeding, I thought she might have been wrong, but I have heard from Faithful Ganloca and Ashi’wi that you are capable beyond what I expected for your species.”

“A lot of people underestimate me,” Skyler said, carefully avoiding the fact that Harstyn just admitted that he was hearing the voices of his dead wife and daughter. “I always do my best to prove them wrong.”

The leader nodded slowly, each set of nostrils closing and opening in sequence. “Yes,” he murmured, though it seemed more to himself than to Skyler. “She was right. She’s always right. You have a part in play, but what... perhaps Aksyyyl will tell me...”

Goosebumps ran down Skyler’s back. “I’m grateful you saved me, Leader,” she told him. “And while I might not really understand... all this right now, I can learn. I’m good at that, and I’m good at my job.”

The leader stood as tall as his wide-splayed legs would let him, which was still half again Skyler’s height. He wasn’t big as a Worker, but he was more than tall enough to tower over the small technician. “Yes,” he agreed. “It seems so. You’ll be a great help to us, I’m sure.” He turned to leave, then paused. “You said on the bridge that your old crew called you ‘Scamper’, Broken. What is your real name?”

“Skyler,” the small brunette woman replied. “Skyler Crowley.” Before she could stop herself, a second question blurted out from her lips. “After you took the ship, you said you returned those loyal to Kelet’op, but you didn’t mention him. What happened to him?”

A shadow crossed the Judiciary’s wide, long face. Skyler didn’t know enough about the species’s facial expression to say what it could have meant, but she thought it might be regret. “What was necessary. Continue your work, Technician Crowley,” Harstyn told her. “Every day we come closer to revelation and all of us must be ready. Your fate will be unveiled in that moment, along with all of ours when we strike down this beast down and free the galaxy from its unrelenting evil. When we return, we will be hailed as heroes all.” He put one of his large primary hands on her shoulder. “Trust in destiny. Trust in me. We will get through this, little one. Together.” The Juidicary turned and left, leaving Skyler alone in the corridor with her toolkit, her skin clammy and damp with cold sweat.

“Yeah...” she whispered. “I’ll do that...”

Throughout a life spent working on ships and stations across Rally and on Gohenghist, Skyler had encountered many different dangerous men and women. A quartermaster obsessed with her, a smuggler who implied that she could suffer the same ‘accident’ as her predecessor if she caused trouble. Some of the Workers on Gohenghist had threatened her with full intent behind their words. Ar’rezan had once slipped into a berserk rage state and tried to murder her. There’d also been the Unbound that had beaten Trusmor bloody. Not a one of them had frightened her as much as Harstyn did.

I have to get off this ship... but as she’d known since she’d walked out of the leader’s office a week ago, there was no way out. She was dozens of light-years from the nearest colony with no friends or allies on a ship controlled by a madman.

Sitting down against the bulkhead, Skyler drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. Obsession clung to every wall aboard Valerhas, staring back at her like it expected something from her. She didn’t know what that was, and she was scared of what would happen when she couldn’t provide it. In the silence that followed, the advice Risi had given her echoed back and forth through her head.

Don’t disappoint him.