Then, at last, the black sea of stars beyond the transparent steel viewport smeared into a stream of white light as the Hermes dropped into the Fold.
She drifted in and out of a dreamless half-sleep for the next few hours, jerking awake each time the hull shuddered, until the fourth wake-up sent her reaching for the auto-injector strapped to her thigh and driving another dose of synthetic adrenaline into muscle that already had a dozen identical punctures in it. She exhaled hard as the drug hit her blood. The bags under her eyes had gone the colour of old bruises, and she had to hold her left hand still with her right to stop the shaking.
She'd been volunteering for back-to-back postings for months now, one after another with barely a day between them, mostly so she wouldn't have to spend too many of those days alone with her own thoughts.
Across the aisle, Ensign Alita slept curled against the bulkhead, blue-skinned, her traditional Quinian headwrap slipping loose over one shoulder, the standard maroon flight suit rumpled from hours in the same position. She looked younger asleep than she ever did awake.
Lyn watched her for a moment, then hauled herself up toward the cockpit.
"Status report," she said to the pilot.
"Status is, we're fucked," Frank said cheerfully. "Nav, comms, sensors, telemetry. All of it, gone dark."
"Enough to reach the station at Lorax?"
"Maybe. Maybe not. We'll find out the fun way."
"Colonel, might I ask you to sit with the Captain a moment while I go survey the hull?" Link asked, already rising from the co-pilot's seat.
"Do what you can," she said, sliding into the seat he'd vacated.
Once the sound of his footsteps faded aft, Frank let out a long breath and sank back against his headrest.
"I think I'm calling it after this one. Retiring."
"Because of the Krell attack?"
"Not entirely. Didn't help." He rubbed at his jaw. "We've been chasing demons ever since Masako, and I don't know that I've got the legs to keep up with you much longer, Colonel."
"I understand," she said, and meant it. "You've been a good pilot. A better friend."
"You're taking this awfully calm. Figured you'd at least call me a bastard for jumping ship."
"I've changed." She managed something close to a smile. "I wouldn't ask you to burn yourself down for my sake if you're done. You've got a wife. A kid. Least I can do is get you home in one piece to them."
The console lit up in a kaleidoscope of alarms before she could finish.
"Hyperdrive's out. We're dropping into regular space," she said, watching the stream of white collapse back into the black.
Ahead of them: a red planet, two moons, and a Skyforge sitting in high orbit like a second, smaller sun.
Link's heavy metal feet pounded up the corridor a half-second later.
"Captain, I couldn't bring anything back online, and the hull damage is worse than I first read it. We're minutes from critical failure, not hours."
"We have no choice but to land, then," Lyn said. "Oxygen readings down there are workable. Water's scarce."
"Doesn't look civilised at all," Frank said, scanning the barren red terrain rushing up to meet them. "We'll set down, get a distress call out, and hope whatever's living down there doesn't notice us before help arrives."
Lyn didn't answer. Her eyes had already gone to the Skyforge.
"Last time I saw that thing, I was a little girl, and it was a dead ruin sitting in the Caladas system. Didn't work. Just took up space."
"It's working fine now," Frank said, eyes on his readouts. "Look at these numbers. It's throwing off more electromagnetic energy than a small star."
The Hermes made her descent through a nearly cloudless sky and settled, gently enough, onto open desert sand.
"Going to check the antenna damage from outside," Link said, already at the hatch.
"I'll come with," Lyn said, following him out.
Alita fell in behind them both. "Can I come too?"
"Wait here, Ensign," Lyn said without slowing.
"Yes, ma'am." A beat of hesitation. "May I ask you something, ma'am?"
Lyn rolled her eyes and turned to face her properly. "If you must."
"Have I done something to offend you? You've kept me at arm's length this whole trip and I genuinely don't know what I did."
"Not the time," Lyn said, already moving again. "We'll discuss it later."
"Um. Colonel?" Link's voice, from somewhere ahead.
They rounded the hull to find him standing with both hands raised, a curved dark blade held to his throat by a robed, white-haired man who had apparently been waiting there the entire time without any of them noticing him arrive.
"He was here when we landed," Link said, motioning with his chin, since his hands were occupied.
It was only then that Lyn and Alita realised they were completely surrounded. Robed, hooded figures stood in every direction, blades already drawn, and not one of them had made a sound getting into position.
"We human people. With me come," the man at Link's throat said, in badly garbled Basic. "Not harmed you will be. You all guests of the desert fox are."
"We are scientists of the United Nations of Earth," Lyn said, drawing herself up. "We're protected under the Inter-Galactic Convention for unarmed civilians. I want your identities."
"No more talk. We must run, reach village before night comes fast."
Most of the figures around them wore hair down past their shoulders, all except the one who'd spoken, whose hair was cropped close and short.
They were marched to a black tower of red granite, built like some medieval sceptre thrust into the desert floor, windowless as far as Lyn could tell, and canted a full thirty degrees off true, as though the whole structure were mid-collapse and had simply given up on finishing the job. In the last light of the Kharsat evening it seemed to burn brighter rather than dimmer, throwing its long shadow across the sand like something imposing itself on the coming night on purpose.