“I’m sure you will be,” she said. “You are a wise and capable captain now and will grow to be an even great leader.”

  She didn’t give praise often. With her, it was like pulling teeth, but when she did offer it, it was well-earned and sincere.

  He dipped his head and hoped his blushing cheeks didn’t show too much. “Thank you, Niath. That’s a compliment I will treasure.”

  A subtle smirk. “You better.”

  He bid her farewell, though he would see her again soon, of course. Once everyone was awake and returned to the ship, they would depart, as they had been on hiatus for long enough and couldn’t afford to let Red and the Lightbringers get too far out of their reach. He could only hope that one week was enough time for everyone to recover.

  Everyone, that was, aside from Vasya.

  Melias did a walk-through of the ship before heading to the station infirmary to see Vasya. Arke was back in her room poring through books and notes to find another Prime Ones site that might have another device. Tomi was out, as was Nummer. Aaron was sleeping, which was a shame because Mel was hungry, but he grabbed a quick breakfast pastry from their pantry and headed out, eating on the way.

  The infirmary wasn’t that far from the hangar bay. That was by design. If one of Thandriel’s squads came in hot with wounded, it wouldn’t do for them to have to travel through a long maze of corridors before finding help.

  The infirmary here wasn’t too large, though it was certainly bigger than the meager one on his ship. It was a low-ceilinged affair with a dark metal ceiling and walls, different from the sanitary and bright white that so many medical facilities favored. Melias had never liked those, since they overwhelmed the senses and hurt his eyes. Despite the darker hues, the room was brightly lit, and a long window dominated the opposite wall, looking down at the interior of Waystation and at the dazzling lights of the many markets, clubs, and homes.

  A team of medics attended to the few patients present. Melias recognized Thandriel’s chief medic, Pantellion, a large Avii like herself but with darker skin and darker wings. There was his second medic, a human man a few years Melias’s junior named Luc. He had severe features, small perpetually pursed lips, sharp angular cheeks, small blue eyes, and a slash of gelled blonde hair. Didn’t usually have a lot to say, but Melias knew his skill and credentials. He didn’t know the other two medics—a heavily cybernetically enhanced Cerelean woman and an older Othalli woman.

  Pantellion caught Mel’s eye as he came in. “Captain, I thought you’d be stopping by soon.” His voice was rich and deep.

  Melias nodded. “We’ll be off soon, so had to see my girl before we go.”

  “I’ll leave you to it then.”

  The medic turned back to his duties, as did the other medics who barely cast Melias a glance as he made his way through the room. There were seven beds on each wall, with a thin curtain surrounding them for privacy. Melias moved to the far end, where the last bed sat against the corner, one part looking out of the window. He pulled the curtain back to see the still form of Vasya.

  “Captain,” she breathed, her voice hoarse and weak. “I’m so…so glad to see…you.”

  Vasya had made out the worst of them when they were ambushed and betrayed by their fellow crewman Red. They’d all suffered a multitude of cuts, bruises, and some broken bones, but Vasya had not only had several bones broken and trauma to several parts of her body, her lung had also been punctured. The threat to her life was past, but she wouldn't be back to her old self for a while.

  Her usual veil, which her people the Ishalla normally wore, was off now.

  “Arke…told me what…happened. What you plan to do.”

  He nodded. “We can’t give up on Red. Not yet. She didn’t want to do this. Though I’ll understand if you feel differently. She didn’t leave you in good condition, but it’s what we all decided was right to do.”

  Vasya shook her head, though only barely. “When she…attacked me, she apologized. S-she didn’t want to…didn’t want to do what she did. I know this…. Vam alla coswa. She was…made to hurt. Not her choice.”

  “We’ll get her back, and then you’ll be better, and we’ll all be back together again. Normal.”

  She offered a bare smile, almost sympathetic. Motherly. Always the mother of their ship, even when they didn’t want it, even when they didn’t deserve it, even when she was broken and shouldn’t have had to.

  “I don't think things…will go back. Normal is…no more. B-but we can bring things…back to being tenable. To a…semblance of normal a-and order.”

  He gripped her left hand. Her olive-gray skin was colder to the touch than it should be. Two of her other three arms were wrapped tightly. He squeezed her hand firmly but gently and held her gaze, his resolve hardening.

  “I don’t know how long our mission will take, nor how long you will be out of commission, but come back to us, okay? That’s an order.”

  She offered a weak smile. “I will, Captain.”

  He nodded and released her hand. There was not much more to say, and not much more time to delay. He held her gaze for a moment longer, his lips a long line, then turned. He gave his regards to Pantellion before leaving the infirmary.

  2

  By the time he got back to the Goose, Tomi and Aaron had both returned from their little shopping trips, and Nummer was awake. Everyone was present in the main common room, which meant it was about time to head out.

  As they talked and joked, Melias watched them all, hoping that they were ready for this, ready to continue the fight and to find Red, despite everything they had been through already. Ixion shuffled around them, smiling warmly like a father watching his kids at play. His leg was still stiff and in a flexible biomechanical brace, which meant he had most of his regular movement, albeit a bit slow and awkward. His leg had been shattered when he fought Red, so this was a massive improvement.

  They had all suffered wounds, some more severe than others—such as Aaron’s bad concussion—but now they all seemed to be okay, at least on the surface. He knew Ixion was doing his due diligence, and if he was confident they could all continue, then they would.

  Still, Melias wondered and worried about how much more they could endure. They were not immortal. They’d made it by the skin of their teeth for a long time. How much longer until their luck ran out for good?

  That isn’t something to worry about now, though, he told himself. They are healthy, and we have a mission to focus on.

  They had a purpose that they couldn’t fail at. First, they needed to decide on a course of action. Red or a new device. That wasn’t an obvious answer. His feelings wanted him to try to get his valued friend and crewmate back, but the logical side of him knew they couldn’t let the Lightbringers continue to collect the devices, combining them to make their terrible weapon even more powerful and widespread. Still, it was hard to deny his heart.

  He was the captain, but his command was not a dictatorship, and he always liked to have a discussion among his crew. So, it was time for that talk.

  “All right, everyone. Gather round. It’s time.”

  Their talking slowly faded as they all turned to face him. Some lost their merriment while some kept simmering smiles. They shifted in their seats so that their bodies and faces were all turned to him with their full attention.

  “It’s been a long week, and I know we all wanted to leave as soon as possible, but as much as none of us wanted to admit it, least of all me, we were in no condition to leave. It eats me up inside knowing that Red is out there, with them. She needs us, and we can no longer sit around. The time to move is now. First things first though, we need to figure out what our heading should be.”

  His eyes shifted to Arke, who sat between Nummer and Aaron, her legs up on the seat, crossed beneath her. “Arke, I understand you have something for us on that front?”

  “Right!” she chirped as she hopped up. She squeezed past Nummer and Lyra to join him standing before the crew. She cleared her throat and held her hands clasped tight together. “I’ve been going through my father’s old notes and books, as well as the books and notes gifted to me by my uncle, and I believe I have found another world that might have a device on it. Like with Bo’kole, there is no guarantee, but I believe it will be there, with a major caveat. There is another option…”

  When she didn’t continue, he asked, “What’s the other option?”

  She bit her lips as her eyes flicked to Tomi. His gaze followed hers. Tomi ran a hand over her bald head. “The other option involves Red. Potentially. Not guaranteed.”

  He crossed his arms. “Explain.”

  “As you know, Red has a tracking device, a homing ping on her suit, as do most of our combat suits, for if we get separated. I had forgotten that hers had one and that she had allowed me to have the signal code. I input it into the system and found her location.”

  “Well then, if we know where she is, let’s go get her!” Aaron said enthusiastically. Melias appreciated his eagerness, and felt similarly, but he knew it wouldn’t be that easy.

  Tomi said as much. “It isn’t so simple. I don’t know if she still has it on her, or if she found a way to disconnect it from herself. So, we might be flying into a phantom chase or a trap. We could go there and find all of the Lightbringers’ forces with the devices and might be ill-equipped to fight them. If we go after her now, we need to be ready.”

  “So, you suggest we take the device first?”

  “I think that would be the wiser course. But we could still go to the coordinates of Red’s ping, which I might add hasn’t been moving for quite some time. I don’t know if we could take on the Lightbringers in our current state, but we could jump to the system and scout the area. We need not jump into a trap.”

  Melias considered that. It would be a simple thing to scout it first before making a decision, but depending on Red’s location and that of the device, they could be taking a lot of time potentially chasing a phantom.

  “So the choice is, go after the device or go after Red.”

  Niath cleared her throat to speak, and they all quieted to listen. “Those are the basic choices, but we know very little besides. As Tomi said, we don’t know if Red is there, or if it’s a trap, and going all the way there just to scout could waste a tremendous amount of time for nothing, on top of the time we’ve spent here. However, given what we’ve had to face when finding the other devices, it’s safe to say that won’t be easy either. And if I recall, Arke said that there was a major caveat regarding the device.”

  All eyes went to her. Melias raised a brow. “I must not have caught that. Care to elaborate?”

  “I was going to. Hold on.” She turned from him and went to the holoprojector. “The world isn’t an abandoned one like the others. In fact, it is very populated.”

  As she started to input the coordinates into the navigation terminal, Mel padded back and leaned an elbow against the edge of the booth. Tomi lounged beneath him as his eyes intently watched his navigator work.

  “Really? What world is it? If it’s so populated, then how hasn’t the device been found?”

  She paused, her hands hovering over the input screen. Her eyes shot up and snagged on his face with a serious expression. “It’s an Arachnoid world.”

  Melias chewed on that as she finished punching in the coordinates. A few of the others groaned. Arachnoids were exactly what they sounded like. A huge spider-like race. Of course, “Arachnoid” was a bit of a colloquial term adopted by humans. They called themselves something else, something far more elegant and less offensive. They were master architects and made wondrous constructs, but given their appearances, many species found them unnerving, so they didn’t venture beyond their home system very much. Except for Othalli systems, as the onyx-skinned race shared a home star with the Arachnoids and were close allies. They often shared systems and worlds with one another.

  The Arachnoids came in many shapes, colors, and sizes, though the smallest adult was about the size of a large Earth dog. At their largest, they could be as big as an elephant, but those were rare, and they usually became valued builders or joined the small Arachnoid military. Most were about the height of a horse and the width of a small speeder. For many, that would be considered much too big, but Melias didn’t mind them. As fearsome as they may have looked, he’d found the eight-legged beings to generally be quite courteous who didn’t like to lie, contrary to centuries of Earthen folklore about spiders.

  Like Earth spiders, whom they viewed as distantly related cousins left by the Prime Ones, they had eight long, multijointed legs. Large back thoraxes and glands that allowed them to spew thick strands of super tough, flexible webbing that they used to build much of their dwellings.

  Where they differed from Earth arachnids, besides size and intelligence, was that some actually had two arms on their main torso, more similar to the arms of bipedal races. Also, their heads could have a wide range of eyes from four to two dozen in different sizes, colors, and ocular intensity. Had Melias been an xeno-arachnologist, he might have found them so fascinating.

  The reason they were a bit hesitant about going to an Arachnoid world wasn’t that they were afraid of them or bigoted. No, it was that the Arachnoids were fiercely fanatical about the Prime Ones. They worshipped the Octopoids, viewing them as sort of a progenitor race for their people, so they valued their ruins as sacred and holy. Cerelean Pathfinders and academics often clashed with them—culturally and bureaucratically—over ruins. Getting the Arachnoids to let them into the temple and see the device would be tricky business.

  “Do you think it will be an issue?” Melias asked.

  Arke finished with the nav terminal, then let out a huff as she leaned over the screen, a line of short midnight blue bangs obscuring her eyes until she tilted her head up.

  “Hard to say. This world is a colony and has more spaceports than those of their home sector, so they’re less likely to be quite as militantly zealous as the bugs of their home system.”

  “I doubt they’d like to hear you call them bugs, Arke,” Ixion said.

  “Yeah, yeah, sorry,” she replied, shaking her head, cheeks flushed. “M-my dad had some issues with them in the past. Had a big find stolen from him by an Arachnoid claimant. They’ve popped up a few times in my own Pathfinder journeys before I joined the Sentinels. I’ll be professional, though.”

  Melias knew that wouldn’t be an issue. He had full confidence in her and in his crew to not do anything stupid or provoke any outrage if they did go to this world.

  “We shouldn’t refer to them as Arachnoids while we’re on the surface,” Niath added. “It isn’t considered a slur, but it also isn’t very respectful either. Best to call them by the name they call themselves. The Malvali.”

  None of the crew argued with her. Though the Malvali were not a particularly violent species, they didn’t need to cause problems if there was no reason to. Now, if they weren’t allowed to get to the device… Well, they would pass through that wormhole when they came to it.

  Arke didn’t argue either, even if her feelings about them were mixed. She waited for everyone to quiet again, then looked back at the terminal, pressed a button, and the holoprojector flared to life. The blue lights shone and created the image of a planet.

  “This is Alak Tal’Vusk,” she said, “or Narvote, in the Arachnoid language.”

  The world they were looking at seemed like a mass of swirling gold and rusty yellows, and it was hard to tell what was what. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought it was a gas giant because at first, he couldn't make out any discernable landmasses. After a moment, he spotted some peeking through the yellowy atmosphere, strips of browning red land, dark grays, browns, though it became hard to tell what was land and what was sea. Arachnoids were hardy and could live in worlds that other species might not have found very suitable. In that respect, they were similar to the Prime Ones, who had sites on many worlds in many biomes.

  As they looked at the world, Aaron leaned forward, eyes fixed on it with an intensity Melias knew to mean he had a thought.

  “If it’s a populated world,” Aaron began, “then would that mean that we won't have to deal with constructs? Surely they would have long ago run into problems of that sort.”

  He was probably right. Arachnoids tended to build their cities in, around, and over Octopoid ruins if they were able. So, they would have likely dealt with any defense. The issue became if they would allow the Sentinels to see the device or take it, assuming they had it at all.

  “They probably have dealt with any old security measures,” Arke agreed.

  “There’s another issue that we’re not considering,” Ixion said.

  “What would that be?” Nummer asked.

  The medic cleared his throat and walked around from behind the booth, arms clasped behind his back. “The books and notes Arke is pulling this information from is almost certainly accurate to a point. I have no doubt that the device was on this planet at one point, but if there are Arachnoids there, and if they have been there for many years, then it is entirely possible that they not only found this device, but had it moved off-world.”

  Silence for a moment as they all considered that. He had a good point. Arachnoids didn’t have a hard and fast rule about moving artifacts or leaving them where they found them. He did wonder if they had found it, because wouldn’t they have messed with it to the point that the device would have been activated?

  So, either they hadn’t found it yet, or never bothered to try and activate it for religious reasons, or Arke’s notes were wrong and the device was never on the planet.

  There were too many unknown variables between their two potential destinations.

  “So,” Melias said, putting his thoughts together, “we might be going to a world without the device, thus making it a wasted trip, or we’ll go to another world where Red might be, but it might be a trap or she discarded the homing beacon, thus making it a wasted trip.”