•••

  Bianca did the piloting again, guiding the Show and Tell toward the monolith. This planet did have an atmosphere, but she was deft enough with the controls that the descent wasn’t too bumpy. “This atmosphere is breathable for all of our species,” Clec said, consulting readouts. “That seems... unlikely.”

  “Those towers we saw did something to the air. I think I told them what I needed, and just didn’t realize that’s what I was doing.” Bianca guided the ship down, and the irregularities on the surface turned out to be structures of different sizes and shapes, but with no visible doors or windows. The buildings were covered with glyphs, though – Mahact writing, she assumed. She couldn’t read the words, but it felt like she almost could: like there was a blurry film across her vision, and if she only stopped and rubbed her eyes for a moment, all would be revealed.

  She set the ship down on a clear spot, near the base of the monolith. A set of gleaming black-and-gold-flecked steps, just slightly too big for a human to climb comfortably, led up to the top of the obelisk, which must have been five hundred meters high. She turned in her chair. “Ashont, Clec… I think you should stay here with Heuvelt. If he wakes up alone, who knows what he’ll think? Even if we left him a message, he’d try to come in after us, and it might not be safe.”

  Ashont sighed. “Yes. I was thinking the same thing. We can’t leave our injured cub behind. Not now.”

  Bianca patted her furry shoulder. “It will make me feel safer, knowing you’re here to watch over him. We don’t know where we are, or what dangers we might encounter. I’ll stay in comms contact as long as I can, though I think I’m going pretty deep, so don’t worry if I lose connection.”

  “I’m hearing too much ‘I’ and not enough ‘we,’” Sev said. “I’m going with you.”

  “My Sev.” Bianca touched her hand. “Dear Sev. I knew you’d never leave my side.”

  “We have exploration packs prepared,” Ashont said. “Anti-grav harnesses for those hard-to-reach places, respirators, water, flares, distress beacons. It’s a shame Heuvelt isn’t awake. He loves all that stuff. There’s nothing he enjoys more than climbing into a weird hole in the ground and looking for wonders.”

  “We’ll take lots of pictures,” Sev said.

  Bianca helped Sev into her pack, then shouldered her own. “It means so much to me, Sev, the way you made my mission your own.”

  Sev shrugged. “I like to keep busy. The worst part about being locked up in the brig was the boredom. This gives me something to do. Besides. I admit. I am curious about what we’re going to find down there.”

  “I’m sure it will be worth the work and wait,” Bianca said.

  They passed through the airlock and marched down the boarding ramp. The gravity was lighter here than it was on the World of Stone, and Bianca went bounding up the steps that led to the top of the monolith. Sev came after her, more slowly, but steadily. “How many of these stupid steps are there?”

  Bianca glanced at the height of the step before her, then the height of the monolith. “Two thousand-one-hundred-seventy-four,” she said. “But every journey begins with just one, right?”

  “I don’t mind the first step,” Sev said. “It’s all the ones that come after. Why don’t we use our anti-grav harnesses and fly up there?”

  Bianca shook her head. “Come on, Sev. We came all this way. Where’s your sense of occasion?”

  “You’re one of those people who enjoys delayed gratification, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll take gratification any way I can get it,” Bianca said. “But sometimes it is a little sweeter when you have to wait.”

  •••

  “Why is that planet glowing?” Richeline said. “Archambelle, is Ixth supposed to glow like that?”

  The doctor stared at the screen for a long time. When she turned toward the others, her eyes were wider than Voyou had ever seen them.

  “I don’t know what that is,” she said. “But it is not Ixth.”

  Chapter 32

  At the top of the stairs they faced the monolith, a blank wall of smoothly gleaming black stone, with flecks of gold that seemed to float deep inside.

  Bianca walked across the short landing and pressed her hand against the wall. “I’m here,” she said, her breath puffing out against the stone. Some combination of her touch, her voice, and the air from her lungs set ancient machinery in motion, and the stone split vertically right down the middle, each half swinging silently inward, revealing a small chamber beyond.

  “Ashont, Clec, we’re going in,” Bianca transmitted. “It looks like some sort of elevator.”

  “Keep us updated as long as you can,” Ashont said.

  Sev and Bianca stepped into the chamber, and a segment of the wall lit up with incomprehensible twisty symbols. “Are those buttons?” Sev said. “Which one do you press?”

  One of the glyphs glowed more brightly, and sent tendrils of force through the air toward Bianca, invisible to Sev. “This one.” She put her hand against the symbol, and the floor began to drop smoothly down, the ceiling and the spill of light from outside receding until they were lit only by the glow of the symbols on the wall, which somehow moved down with them.

  “How did you know that was the right symbol?”

  “I know lots of things, Sev. More and more every minute.”

  Sev went hmmm. “Do you think this Kor Noq Weer is really waiting down there?”

  “I’m really not sure. There’s something down there. Something I’m supposed to see. Something I’m supposed to do.” She watched spirals of invisible energy swirling all around her. This whole planet was a ship of sorts, she realized; and more than that, it was a shipbuilding facility, and a weapons factory, and more. It was not just a world in itself, but the seed of a greater world to come.

  She closed her eyes, and it was as if she moved through the darkened caverns and endless tunnels that riddled the sphere, a bodiless roving point of view. There were incubators here too. The same sort of machinery that had created her body waited deep below the ground, on a much vaster scale. Once she offered up a sample of herself, this place could make more of her. Bodies like hers, anyway. Bodies like hers was now, with all these new capabilities she barely understood. Enough new bodies to populate this planet. Enough to field an army. But to what end?

  “Do you know what you’re supposed to do yet?”

  “Something glorious,” Bianca murmured.

  They rode the rest of the way down in silence.

  •••

  “What do you mean it’s not Ixth?” Richeline said.

  Archambelle was chewing on the ends of her hair and staring off into space. “It’s a Mahact artifact, I’m sure, but… There aren’t many descriptions of Ixth, but there are a few, and it’s not like this. Everyone says it’s a paradise world, and this… it’s some kind of giant space station, can’t you tell?”

  “The scans definitely indicate something other than a natural planet,” Voyou agreed. “Our sensors can’t penetrate the surface to a very great depth, but even within those limits we’ve detected all sorts of tunnels, chambers, and cavities down there. No signs of life, though. Maybe this world is abandoned. The lights are on, but no one’s home.”

  “The dead outpost of a dead race,” Richeline said.

  “A necropolis,” Archambelle said. The idea seemed to cheer her up. “A city of the dead. A tomb that we can raid. So, it’s not Ixth. We misunderstood, or we were misled. It’s still a Mahact world, and it’s glowing, and that means it’s still operational. I’m sure we can find something here to give the Barony the kind of edge we’re looking for. Maybe we’ll even find directions to reach the real Ixth. We won’t know until we go inside.”

  Richeline sighed. “You know the captain’s in there already. She must be. If Bianca’s the key, the captain is the one who turned her. She might have killed the princess already by now.”

  “The captain certainly wouldn’t wait for us to arrive,” Voyou agreed. “She’s so decisive.”

  “I’ll bring my research assistants,” Archambelle said. “Richeline, call up a full complement of soldiers. We’ll need them to…” She gestured vaguely. “Carry stuff.”

  “I’ll bring my best surveying team,” Voyou said. “We might as well start making maps of the place.”

  “Just a small, manageable party of thirty people or so,” Richeline said sourly. “It’s practically a commando squad. I’ll get a shuttle ready.”

  •••

  Heuvelt sat up, gasping, and tore the oxygen mask from his face. Ashont was there, petting him with her immense paws, making soothing sounds, but he shouted over her. “Sev attacked me! She’s a traitor, a Letnev spy, Bianca is in danger!”

  Ashont immediately slammed the comms panel by the door and shouted, “Bianca, do you read me? Bianca, are you there?”

  Only static crackled in reply. Ashont lowered her hand and shook her head. “They descended a while ago. Bianca and Sev. We’ve lost contact.”

  “Descended into what?” Heuvelt said.

  “The depths of the alien planet, or planet-sized space station, maybe, that we landed on while you were unconscious. Ixth, or whatever.”

  “That’s all Sev wants, is access to this place, this power! She’ll kill Bianca if we don’t stop her!”

  “Bianca is hard to kill,” Ashont said. “But if Sev took her by surprise… hrm. Yes. All right. We’ll go in after them. We were just waiting for you to wake up anyway. Clec! Did you get all that?”

  “I did,” Clec said over the comms. “But we have a bigger problem. A Barony warship, all spikes and cannons, just came through the wormhole, and it’s hovering above the planet now.”

  “Sev made a transmission before she attacked me. She must have been calling them. They were following us the whole time!” Heuvelt rose, cursing as he tore off various bits of diagnostic equipment, to a chorus of squawking machine alarms. “Clec, get our ship out of sight, and then we’re going after Bee.”

  •••

  The elevator stopped at last, opening onto a corridor hacked roughly into black stone, lit by fist-sized glowing crystals protruding at random intervals from the ceiling and walls. “It’s very rustic down here, isn’t it?” Severyne said.

  “Who can judge the aesthetics of the Mahact?” Bianca strode along, Severyne at her side.

  The tunnels weren’t particularly small – they could walk abreast with plenty of room, and the ceiling was a meter above their heads – but Severyne still enjoyed the comforting weight of rock all around her. “This reminds me a little of home,” she said.

  “I read all about your homeworld,” Bianca said. “The Letnev don’t even have a word for ‘claustrophobia.’”

  “I had a bit of trouble comprehending the concept, until someone explained it as the opposite of agoraphobia. That I can understand.”

  “Maybe that’s why the Letnev are so obsessed with controlling everything,” Bianca said. “It all stems from their basic fear of wide-open spaces.”

  “You’re smart these days, princess, but psychologically assessing an entire culture is a stretch, even for you.”

  “It’s just a hypothesis,” Bianca said. The corridor split, one path angling right, the other left. Bianca didn’t even break stride, just bore right, and when the path split again, she went left, and when it diverged into three possibilities, she went straight.

  “Your yearning is guiding us now?” Sev said.

  “Hmm? Oh. Yes. It’s a maze down here. This world is remote and hidden away, but it’s still possible someone could stumble across it, and I get the sense it’s sort of vulnerable, when it’s not fully operational. If some explorer or treasure hunter like Heuvelt found it, they could ruin everything. Whatever everything entails. Plus, if enemies ever invaded in force, the layout would frustrate their attempts to take control. This is the safest path. The others are more dangerous.”

  “A tomb full of traps, then? Marvelous.”

  Their “safest path” led them to a room with no floor, just a pool of bubbling, hissing liquid, with a few pillars of black stone sticking out of the goo, spaced several meters apart. There was no ledge around the sides, and the ceiling was so far above it couldn’t be seen. “Even on the proper route, there are little challenges like this,” Bianca said. “Places that are tricky to navigate, unless you have the right capabilities.”

  “Ah. I see. You jump from pillar to pillar. A bit pointless as a deterrent, since I have an anti-grav harness in my pack.”

  Severyne began rummaging for it, but Bianca shook her head. “It won’t work. There’s a dampening field here. None of your tech will work, actually.”

  Severyne frowned. She tapped at her wrist gauntlet, but it was just a piece of jewelry now. “Oh. Well. Leaping to and fro is all well and good for you, but how do I get across?”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “I do.” Severyne didn’t hesitate. She wasn’t trustworthy, but Bianca was.

  “Great. Hold on tight.”

  “Wait. What are you doing?”

  Bianca picked up Severyne, pack and all, and held her in her arms. Without even taking a running start, Bianca jumped from the edge to the first pillar. She didn’t pause there, either, but sprang off to the next, and the next, and the next. A few terrifying seconds later, they were safely on the other side, and Bianca deposited Severyne gently on the floor. “There.”

  Severyne looked back at the bubbling acid – if it was even something as simple as acid. “Don’t get killed in here, princess, or I’ll never make my way out again.”

  “Oh, I don’t know, Sev. You’re pretty resourceful. You escaped one prison, didn’t you?”

  “Letnev security has nothing on the Mahact, it seems.”

  They followed more branches, and Sev did her best to keep track of their route, but it was hard, especially when they spiraled down a corridor that went past several identical doors leading to descending ramps before Bianca picked one that looked just like the others.

  They reached a room filled with a greasy-looking green fog, the borders of the mist perfectly, eerily regular. Bianca stuck her head into the fog, sniffed, and pulled back. “It’s harmless to you unless you inhale it. Put on the respirator – that’s not a machine, just filters, so it should work even with the dampening field. But hold your breath and close your eyes just in case, okay?” Bianca picked Severyne up and ran her through the fog, too.

  She carried Severyne when she leapt from a platform into an opaque swirl of cloud and landed, barely bending her knees with the impact, some ten meters down.

  She raced with Severyne through a corridor where spikes thrust out of the walls at intervals that seemed perfectly random to Severyne but must have revealed their pattern to Bianca and her time-slowing perception.

  She stepped between Severyne and a wall that spat a dozen tiny needles, all embedding themselves in Bianca’s back instead. “Pull those out for me, will you, Sev? But put on your gloves, and careful, don’t touch the tips. From the smell, it’s a toxin that would unravel your DNA, like suffering acute radiation poisoning.”

  The next obstacle was a long room full of bubbling fluid again, but this time, there was a metal cable about three meters overhead. “I guess I jump up, grab that, and then make my way across hand-over-hand,” Bianca said.

  “Should I climb on your back and just hold on tight?” Severyne opened her pack. “Actually, there are climbing harnesses in here. We could clip them together, and then–”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Bianca said. “This is as far as you’re going.”

  Severyne thought about acting confused, but she could tell from the look on Bianca’s face that the time for all subterfuge was past. “I see. When did you figure it out?”

  “I sensed a transmission back on the World of Stone, sent from the Show and Tell. Then, moments later, Heuvelt had an accident that conveniently knocked him unconscious.” She shook her head. “It was too many data points. I couldn’t ignore the obvious conclusion anymore. You are a spy.”

  “Why not take me out on the ship, then?” Severyne said. “Why bring me here?”

  Bianca shrugged. “I know you’re dangerous. I saw what you did to Richeline. I didn’t want to risk you hurting Ashont or Clec or Heuvelt in those close quarters. I figured I’d take you down here and strand you instead.”

  “You could have just killed me, and then I wouldn’t be a danger to anyone.” She shook her head. “But you don’t have the will. You’d rather let the Mahact do the killing for you.”

  “Oh,” Bianca said. “You think I’m being weak. No. I wanted to bring you to the very edge of fulfilling your mission, and then watch it crumble before your eyes. I’m being cruel, Sev, because I’m very, very angry, and very, very hurt.”

  “I see.” Severyne smiled. “In that case, I’m very, very impressed.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You don’t? I have a reputation for being difficult to impress. I’m surprised you didn’t hear about that, with all the time you spent with my crew.”

  Bianca frowned. “Your crew?” It clicked. “Wait. You’re the captain?” She groaned. “You faked the personnel files, just so you could trick me later? You knew I was hacking your systems all along?”

  “I make a point of knowing everything,” Severyne said. “Be flattered. The Barony sent the very best to look after you.” She dropped her pack and reached for the Argent Flight blade tucked into the small of her back. The knife wouldn’t help her now – Bianca could take it from her in the space of an eye-blink, since her only hope at besting the woman was by surprise – but she’d rather die in a fight than sit here waiting to starve.

  Bianca staggered away when Severyne brandished the blade, shading her eyes with her hand as if something was blinding her. “What – where did you get that horrible thing?”