Severed heads weren’t commonplace, even in one of the crime-ridden shantytowns that sprawled along the rims of Hegira’s surface canals. Winny frowned, her gut churning when Bex plunked the dripping bagged thing down on her counter. Just as Winny got to wondering whether her human foster-sister had finally gone far enough ’round the bend to forget that a headhunter’s job wasn’t supposed to be taken quite so literally, there was a choked oomph, which suggested that something was, impossibly, still alive in there.

Since Bex’s Lloran sibling was clearly the only living being who’d dare threaten and, in fact, could slap her silly, Winny didn’t hesitate to make her displeasure with the grisly gift known.

 “Got a death wish, do you?”

Bex was hardly intimidated. She was blue, not a natural blue. Her skin had been dyed in a pattern of planet-side ocean waves, decades ago when skin re-pigmentation was all the rage among Llorans who fostered human children. She was rough and wiry, armed to the teeth. The red fur collar and tail of her jacket didn’t do much to soften that sharp countenance.

Her voice was gravely, a souvenir from when a Merchant guild metal-head had tried to crush her windpipe when she was twelve.

“Problem?”

“There’s a bleeding head leaking into my breakfast.” Winny’s charcoal palm came slamming down, the embedded blue-gold intricate pattern adorning her skin glinted. “Yes, there’s a fraggin’ problem! Plus, you boarded the Koros tower to catch a bounty?”

 “Yea-why not?”

 “… in the middle of a hostile takeover.”

 “Attempted hostile take-over,” Bex qualified “I had to shoot a few Guild metal-heads too, so it’s not like I was taking sides.”

That wasn’t much of a qualification. The Merchant Guild’s hired guns were famously violent and stupid, hence the ‘metal-head’ moniker. Bex had been nursing a lifelong hatred for both Koros and the Merchant Guild, the two mercenary factions presently vying for absolute control of their shared domain. The hunter’s parents had been murdered right in front of her during a forced relocation by some trigger-happy metal-head, when she was just knee-high.

Indifferent to the turmoil raging within her, the legendary ship, Hegira, tumbled through the void. A great ghost dreamed up by ancients obsessed with chasing the stars, their kind had mostly died out long ago and what remained was a wonder. She was old and she was dark. Her fount overflowed with mythologies.

The aging behemoth spun a magical web of mysteries across galaxies. She dipped her toes into slipstreams and toyed with wormholes like a child with a jump rope. She collected intelligent beings like rare jewels and made her bones a haven for endangered creatures and conquerors alike.

Yes. Hegira was a wonder, but you couldn’t exactly call her paradise.

When Hegira’s systems started to gradually fail five decades earlier, the reason was easy enough to ascertain. Her pilot, Sesili, was dying. It wouldn’t be long now, until she wouldn’t be capable of sustaining Hegira’s systems at all. Once that bit of news got out, everyone-Koros, the Merchant Guild, and even a few independents with a little influence-had jumped headlong into the race to scrounge up a viable candidate for pilot who’d be under their control.

Tribes such as Koros and the Merchant Guild had built their towers and towns, crushed thousands beneath their heels. They manipulated economies, relegating Hegira’s powerless citizens to languishing in the squalor of haphazardly constructed ghettos and work camps. The Merchant Guild’s metal-heads killed anyone who so much as hinted at dissent but, at the end of the day, their efforts were meaningless. Neither Koros, nor the Guild, possessed the means to influence the one at the helm.

Only a descendant of the Starchasers, the great ship’s original governors, could actually pilot Hegira. Bex supposed that was their idea of a fail-safe to keep their legacy from falling into ill-meaning hands. A few factions had tried to force the ancient genes into test subjects, in an attempt to artificially create a pilot. On occasion, they managed to produce children who looked like Starchasers but most were fundamentally inadequate. The Merchant Guild had been the first to announce the ‘discovery’ of Sumida, a truly viable candidate for pilot. Coming in a close second, Koros had tasked the Llorans to foster the second, named Laila in secret.

Laila had gone missing during Hegira’s stopover in the Bentokal planetary system. Sumida also went missing from the Merchant Guild’s stronghold, shortly thereafter. Her disappearance threw suspicion on Koros, thereby adding fuel to the feud between the two factions.

Winny palmed her face in dismay as Bex recounted her shenanigans aboard the Koros tower. “You were party to a trans-provincial incident?”

“I was not!” The hunter spluttered. “Not really.”

A beady-eyed monstrosity wriggled partially out of the opening in the sack Bex had dropped onto the table. Its visage was dark-green like the moss from the Molokai woods and mottled with yellow and orange spots.

“Oh yeah-yeah she was!” It chortled maliciously. “I know,” it added gleefully. I was there.” 

“Shut your trap, Mizer!” Bex growled.

“Look what you did to me,” it whined yet gain. “Didja really have to do this? It’ll take me ages to regenerate!”

“Why’d you run then?” The hunter asked. “I told you not to.”

Winny sighed. “Do you really have to go all out on the small fry too?”

“What are you grumbling about?” Agitated, Bex yanked her side arms out of their holsters and handed them over to her foster-sister, who swapped them out for a fresh pair. “We have to eat one way or another don’t we?” 

“Maybe so but-“

A horrified shriek came from across the room. “Wh-wha-what is this horrible thing?”

Bex turned to glare at Sumida, the other bone of contention between her and Winny. In Bex’s book, Chokobi House’s latest denizen was a most unwelcome sort. Sumida seemed content to traipse around in rough territory, clothed in something as showy as dainty slippers and a nearly translucent gown. The prissy little aristocrat fluttered about as if oblivious to the fact that two of Hegira’s most violent factions were on the verge of starting a war, due to her disappearance from the Merchant Guild’s sanctuary. Bex didn’t even want to begin to imagine what would happen if they learned that their missing ward was just slumming it with the locals.

As if tolerating the mere presence of her ilk were not enough, Bex had been cajoled into ignoring the massive price on her head and instead, providing protection and shelter. In short, Bex was harboring a fugitive, a fugitive who had both Koros and the Merchant Guild frothing at the bit to take possession. Playing breadwinner and maidservant to a runaway brat wasn’t exactly a headhunter’s secret for success, was it now?

The fact that Sumida regarded her with a wide-eyed kind of anxiety and skirted carefully around her only served to irritate her more. What was there to be so bashful about anyway? It wasn’t as if Bex was completely uncivilized.

The girl was carrying a watering pot nearly half her size. Bex wondered why someone who couldn’t possibly be accustomed to physical labor seemed to be doing something like that so effortlessly.

Mizer shot Sumida a hideous facsimile of a one-eyed wink. A forked tongue flicked out of what was supposedly his mouth. “Mmmm’hey. You look kinda tasty.”

“Shut up!” Sumida spat. “You disgust me.” Water sloshed over the top of the pot as she scuttled away.

Sumida possessed an unusual kind of beauty. You could hardly call her human. She was pale, and wraith-like. Bex figured she’d even glow in the dark. This striking trait had been inherited from her long-extinct progenitors.

The Starchasers had once been human but no more. After sailing across oceans of stars for thousands of years, they’d done so much and changed in so many ways that they’d become too different to be considered human. They were old, a very old and nearly dead species.

“Put that down, Sumida.” Winny called over. “Come and eat.”

Sumida had a dazzling smile for Winny, which made something inside Bex boil.

“It’s alright, I’ll finish watering the plants and the chokobi’s water has to be changed before mid-morning, else…” Her nose scrunched thoughtfully. “Its growth will be stunted, right?”

“You remembered.” Winny nodded approvingly. “Good child.”

Bex’s gut twisted. Why was Winny indulging Sumida so much? Wasn’t the little twit responsible for the exile of Laila, Winny’s own adoptee?

Sweet and cheerful Laila was gone, left behind in some faraway place where they couldn’t touch her or even comfort her if she was crying. She was gone because people like Sumida and those she served made her feel like Hegira was no longer a place she could call home. Laila, who had never had any grand ambitions of succeeding Sesili, and who had never asked to be born Starchaser’s kin.

Bex simply couldn’t abide it.

“Is this really all it takes for you?” She grumbled at Winny. “As long as she has the right kind of blood running through her veins and looks like a Starchaser. That’s enough, is it?”

“You think I’m betraying Laila by helping Sumida?” Winny fixed Bex with a confounded look. “Laila’s the one who–“

“Starchaser, you say?” Mizer’s words made all three women’s heads turn.

“Hell to pay when the Guild gets wind of this.” He eyed Bex with malevolence. “I told you that you’d regret being so nasty to me.”

What was left of him rolled until he tumbled right off the counter and onto the floor with a sickening splat! The quivering eye started to glitter in a most unnerving way. The beastly head started emitting a high-pitched wail.

“Oh no,” Bex breathed, realizing the mess they were in. “Oh, hell.”

“Ohohoh!” Mizer sang. “Too late.”

“You stinking little turd!” Bex yanked out one of her side arms and shot the cackling head. “You absolute, frigging lowlife!”

“Ow!” He hooted, too elated by the prospect of Bex getting what was coming to her to give a rat’s ass about his own pain anymore. “You should really do something about that itchy trigger finger there.” He taunted.

Bex emptied both of her guns into him. It wasn’t enough. She caught the fuel cells that Winny threw at her and reloaded in a blink. She shot a few more times, gooey bits and pieces scattering everywhere. She paused. Had she heard something?

“Bex!” Winny growled, when the hunter aimed at Mizer again. “Stop wasting time. Grab Sumida and run!”

Sumida was plastered against the wall, valiantly battling the urge to hurl the contents of her stomach.

“Run?” Her head reared up. “Right now?”

There was a rumble like thunder over the falls of Asura, except this was closer. It grew louder and louder. Winny hurriedly strapped on a couple of holsters, her ready-made versions of a weapon heavy survival kit. Her frantic hands froze at the sound of a heavy mechanical roar.

“Is that a juggernaut?!” 

“Who cares?” Bex snarled. “Just get ready!”

Something came crashing through the wall directly behind Winny. A ragged spike poked out of her gut, staking her to the cruel machinery. Sumida started screaming. : Showered with blood and guts, Bex could only stand there, rooted to the spot. The chunks of flesh and blood still warm on her skin. Going cold, too quickly.

That was the curious thing about Llorans. They looked like humans. They bled like humans. They died like humans.

“Well, not quite…” Winny croaked, reading Bex’s mind. “…still conscious, aren’t I?”

“Winn-“

“Why… just standing there?” Winny coughed up more crimson. “Help me dow-” She managed, struggling to breathe. 

The walls shook, clogging the air with dust and debris. Bex leaped forward, grabbed Winny’s shoulders and pulled her from the spike. Her Lloran sister’s screech was deafening. They toppled over, Bex slammed to the ground. She rolled upright to straddle her wounded sibling.

“That hurts!” Winny railed. “Fraggin’ stars, that hurt.”

“Sumida!” That harsh sob from Bex silenced the screaming girl. “I can’t think with you shrieking like that!”

There was too much-too much blood streaming out, everywhere. Winny’s eyes slowly shut. There was a gurgling moan.

“Winny!” Bex shook her, hard. Vision blurring. “Open your eyes. Please!”

Her eyes stung and, for the first time in her whole life, Bex Atria didn’t know what to do. She was already lost. Already lost without her compass: without Winny, without her sister.

“Stupid child!” Winny spat hoarsely. Her eyes were already hard and clouded, she was blind. “Why come undone when you must not?”

Bex wiped uselessly at her runny nose with her bloody hand. “You’re right,” she swallowed jerkily. “Right. We need…we need to–“

She fumbled in her pouch for anesthetic. She pressed the tip of the injection device against Winny’s carotid and administered two full doses of anesthetic. It started working immediately, dulling the Lloran’s pain.

The flesh-covered battering ram clattered to the ground as the outer barrier to the dwelling activated, hopefully destroying the Mecha outside. That bought them time but not much of it. It wouldn’t be long until the gun’s companions forced their way in.

“Thank the stars you made me shell out the cash for that shield.” Bex whispered.

“Wake Tirr. I need him.” Winny grimaced. “Sumida,” her voice was barely audible. “On the console behind you, turn the knob.”

A nervous nod and the girl scrambled to obey. A column shot up out of the ground. Coming up to waist height, there was a liquid containment field. There was a creature inside that had an elongated body, two triangular protrusions at its sides: Wings perhaps, or maybe fins? Its eyes were black and shiny. It quivered madly, like something scared. On its back was the same metal-accented pattern that was tattooed all over its keeper’s skin.

“Teruun,” Sumida’s sniveling stopped. “Why is there a Teruun here?”

Winny motioned Sumida over, and grabbed the pale little chickie by the scruff of her neck when she knelt dragging her down close to her mouth.

“Don’t waste this,” she ordered. “Do you hear me?”

Sumida’s eyes widened as the import of Winny’s words drove home. Stricken, she made a weird noise in her throat, eyes already wet and red. A flood of tears soaked her cheeks. Bex lifted Winny and carried her over to the console before putting her down. She stepped aside at a nod from Winny, who clung to the cylinder as she spoke to the one inside. “Tirr, so sorry I made you wait all this time.”

The Teruun emitted a wordless tone. The cylinder brightened. Its supple body became suffused with light. Both Bex and Sumida simply stared, slack-jawed.

“What are you waiting for?” Winny snapped, eyes unfocused. She couldn’t see them but she knew they were still there. “Leave or you’ll both die long before those guns get here.”

Particles of light spilled out from the cylinder, filling the whole room. It bit into their skin. If they stayed it would slowly shear their cells apart. The sound that came from the Teruun was like music: beautiful but terrible at the same time. Spurred into action, Bex opened the trap door in the floor behind the chokobi tanks, ushering Sumida downward.

“Run blind,” she ordered. “Do everything exactly as I say.”

A shaky nod, Sumida jumped down and bolted ahead. The walls of the domicile were already bursting apart. Bex jumped down after Sumida. The trap door slammed shut above her. She plunged into the darkness of the dank corridor. There was a boom behind them, tremors endlessly reverberating. Bex heard a mechanical wail. It sounded too much like a human in agony for comfort.

Could a Teruun’s final scream really rip a mechanized juggernaut to shreds?

They ran at full tilt. Bex’s lungs were burning, nearly to bursting. A part of her was floored by Sumida’s stamina. She darted ahead like a light-footed and flightless bird, neither faltering nor betraying any sign of tiring. Hadn’t she been raised as a delicate flower?

The muck on the ground was ankle-deep. The passageway they were in must have been a waterway once, that or another terminal that had deteriorated and fallen to rot. The sludge sloshed up, splattering Sumida’s shins. Strangely, she didn’t seem bothered by it at all. It really didn’t mesh with Bex’s image of a pampered princess of the Merchant Guild.

Sumida inspected the walls where gray and brown slime oozed from cracks in the metal. Secretly thankful, Bex bent over gasping to catch her breath. She looked on in horror as Sumida daubed her fingers into the stinky mess. She watched the girl rubbed it between the soft pads of her fingers, before she lapped at it with the tip of her tongue. Sumida muttered darkly to herself but Bex couldn’t understand what she was saying.

“Keep going,” Bex straightened at length. “We really shouldn’t be stopping.” She shook her head when Sumida veered left. “No! This way.”

Sumida became uneasy. She stopped but didn’t go as far as doing what Bex said.

“What did I say about doing as you’re told?”

“Not that way,” Sumida insisted, anxiety palpable. “They’re already waiting.”

Bex had already considered that likelihood and had resigned herself to the not very promising prospect of fighting their way out. “I realize that but if we go any deeper, we’ll get so lost we might never find our way out.”

Sumida shook her head. “Every crack and crevice in this vessel–I know them, like I know the palm of my own hand.” Her eyes took on a green glow in the near dark. “It’s impossible for me to become lost within Hegira.”

Bex stared down at Sumida. There was a pang of disconcerting realization, which struck home. Something about the way Sumida carried herself was starting to make her hair stand on end. Why was it that even in the slumping bones of Hegira, Sumida was completely at home?

“You don’t just look like a Starchaser, do you?” She breathed. “You’re the real thing.”

A hair’s breadth ahead of the predatory sensors of their mechanized pursuers, the duo emerged from the stink into the blue village of the Forii. The thorny creatures, shy of the surface light, were known to weave their webbed dwellings into the grooves above remote waterways. Spindle-legged juveniles drooped down, with a chorus of shrill greetings for the newcomers. They were shooed back into hiding by fretful adults.

A bold watchman-type sidled up next to Sumida chittering anxiously in the Forii tongue. Bex watched the way his countless little legs glided along the ground, the way his horned back scrunched and surged as he moved in the way of a worm. He was talking too fast; Bex couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. Sumida answered in kind though, gesturing emphatically.

“What did he say?” Bex watched the creature hurry away.

“Something big is coming. It’s coming for us.”

“We already know that,” Bex shrugged. “Didn’t expect them to follow us this far in though.” They were exiting Forii territory across a power distribution network by way of a shaft with rungs that seemed to go up forever and ever.

“What did you tell him?”

Sumida’s arms were trembling as she grabbed hold of one rung after another as she hauled herself up. She was finally showing signs of exhaustion, although she had incredible stamina to have come this far. Bex was beginning to suspect that Sumida was the sort who’d obstinately keep going until she completely crashed without warning. If that were the case, she’d need to be ready to catch the idiot.

Sumida glanced down sheepishly. “I told him that when the soldiers come, the Forii should remain in hiding and let them pass. I told them not to offer up any resistance.”

“What?” Her enraged shout reverberated through the tunnels. “The forii are really fierce fighters. Did it not cross your mind that they could actually be of help to us?”

“Hmm,” Sumida admitted disappearing from view as they finally reached a horizontal level. “That’s why I asked them not to. This should be their harvest season, but the moss fields are empty. There are still signs of damage from when Ocean Thirteen broke containment, last rotation. All of their crops must have been destroyed by the flood, back then. They’re too proud to admit it but too many Forii warriors would needlessly die, if they had to fight in their present state.”

Bex clambered over and lay there seething but too drained to slap Sumida silly. This kind of attitude was exactly why she hated the upper crust. What about an ounce of practicality? Was that really too much to ask?

“Of all the high-handed and idiotic–Laila has better sense than this!” Bex was suddenly and unbelievably angry. At Winny, for being gone so suddenly. At Sumida, for being here. For being the one Bex now had to risk her life to protect. For looking so much like Laila, while being the one who’d chased her away.

“Unbelievable,” Bex spat. “Laila’s a far better candidate for Hegira’s pilot than you.”

“She is that,” Sumida shocked Bex, answering quietly. “A better candidate. Laila is so much cleverer than I am, stronger too. Even so, it’s mine.” She leaned forward slightly. “My birthright.” Her eyes glittered fiercely. “Mine!”

When Bex and Sumida crossed into the territory of the Borja, they were given a pair of personal fliers. They were ancient models and low on fuel. They wouldn’t get far but they would get them up through a gap in the honeycombed outer walls of the Borja colony to the next vertical level while giving them a chance to rest. Bex was grateful for the convenience but it didn’t lessen her exasperation.

“You’ve been telling everyone from the Forii colony to kingdom come, not to fight.” Bex had to yell to be heard over the din created by the whirring motors. “Back at Chokobi House, you’d flinch every time I fired my weapon. But I think maybe you’re not…the sort who breaks easily. What gives?”

“I’m a pacifist.” Sumida yelled back boldly. “I don’t like things that do damage.”

The sidelong barb didn’t escape Bex. She scowled over at Sumida. Snarky little twit.

“But you know it already, don’t you?”

Bex couldn’t help tossing the brat another bitter little dose of reality. “If you want to grab hold of what you claim is yours, you are going to have to do some damage too.”

Sumida shot Bex a hunted look. “I’m aware of that!” She yelled as she stopped ascending. Her craft subsided to a low hum as she let it hover.

“I’m…I’m aware of that.” She muttered distractedly as Bex’s craft came to rest, undulating in the air currents beside her.

Sumida was in a standing position now, feet still planted in the craft’s footholds, one hand bracing her weight against a handlebar and the other shielding her eyes from something blinding that only she could see.

“What now?” Bex squinted up into the nothingness ahead. “I don’t see anything.”

The words were barely out of her mouth when noise came raining down. The air became electrified. Flakes of starlight drifted down, swallowing up the darkness.

“It was a trap, you know.” Sumida’s head twisted slightly. “But don’t blame the Borja.”

She said it like she’d known this would happen all along, like Bex was the one who’d been the complete idiot for trusting the Borja just because they’d been so friendly and had gladly given Sumida shelter for a few minutes.

Bex racked her brain. What did she know about those dusty buzzers? The only Borja she’d ever encountered before today was Twelfth Bost from Kolona Tower.

The bug-eyed bastard was as shifty as contacts got. From time to time he’d provide intel or shelter for Bex, but she’d long ago learned that he’d sell her out in a heartbeat, and without apologies. She’d always assumed that was a peculiarity unique to him but what if it wasn’t? What if it was just good old Borja rationale?

“Sumida, tell me…do you know what makes the Borja tick?”

“So many waterways have dried up in this area,” Sumida’s voice echoed eerily in the wavering air. “The engine in this sector lost its power generator, what, ten years ago? Unlike other refugees who migrated to the surface, people like the Forii and the Borja couldn’t even move their settlement closer to a functioning engine. They must have been worried about their chances for survival.”

“Did you know?” Sumida’s head tilted in the way Bex was beginning to recognize as a habit.

“The Borja are a self-resurrecting species. They bury their dead in these mazes built along the old pipes. They let them lie to fallow. Something inside each corpse gestates over the course of a few thousand years and those old graveyards are slowly transformed into larval catacombs. It’s quite a fascinating process, actually.”

Bex listened in stunned silence. She’d never heard Sumida talk this much before. She’d never imagine that such a frail and soft-spoken person could say such terrible things, so easily. 

Winny…

Winny always said-she kept forgetting-that she saw things that Bex couldn’t, that some things needed to be explained with words. Bex was only human, and always judged wrongly. Too quickly. Now that her eyes were opened, everything Bex figured that she knew about the runaway Starchaser was being turned upside down.

“It’s interesting.” Sumida sank back down onto the seat of her craft. “Not an entirely bad way to die.”

In the falling light, she was comically mucky, scared and yet she smiled. Stars….when she smiled, everything tilted. The girl was a menace, an irresistible and unbalanced wreck, Bex thought. Were the old Starchasers insane too? Was it this strangely endearing quality that had drawn so many other races to them and allowed them to make a menagerie of their massive ship?

Bex blinked, vaguely alarmed by the sudden, sharp pang in her already bruised heart. “So those shiny things falling ever so slowly toward us are–“

“Hungry Borja babies.” Sumida announced, sounding disgusted and fascinated at the same time. “Hundreds of them.”

“We’re meant to be their first meal?” Bex balked. “I can think of a thousand other ways I’d rather die than this.”

“No worries there,” Sumida tilted the nose of her flier downward. “Do you hear that?”

The noise washing over them had changed in tone ever so slightly. It was the sound of their pursuers harmonizing with the voracious buzzing of the infant Borja.

She nodded at Bex, eyes looking upward. “Good. They’re almost here too.”

Incredulous, Bex snapped. “Which part of this are you classifying as good, exactly?” She was having to yell to be heard again. “We’re about to be either shot or eaten alive!”

“You might get shot. I won’t.” Sumida smirked. “Anyway, it’s your turn to do as I say.”

Bex scowled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know. Follow me.” Sumida shouted, tightening her grip on the handlebars. She kicked her flier’s motor into gear. “Try not to die!”

She torpedoed headlong into the armed soldiers gunning for them-well, for Bex.

The Guild would have ordered their brainless lackeys to capture Sumida without killing her. There were no points for knowing that. Any idiot could figure it. What really threw Bex was the realization that the girl had the gumption to use it against them.

The metal-heads surging upward had no choice but to shield Sumida, along with Bex who followed closely in her wake. Bex squeezed her eyes shut against the assault of wind and acrid heat from the passing fliers. The starving, winged things were drawing close on their tails. Bex emptied one side arm into the oncoming crowd, forcing a hole in the formation below. Weapons fire and screams erupted all around. The metal-heads were forced to contend with the Borja instead of Bex and Sumida.

Good thing, Bex thought. Speed was their only salvation at this point. The metal-heads were firing wildly as the Borja infants closed in, clawing and ripping at their flesh with their sharp teeth. Blood and ruined Borja bodies rained down. Wounded soldiers toppled from their fliers, plummeting down alongside the escapees.

Sumida’s flier slowed. Bex barely caught its odd wobble out of the corner of her eye. Her gaze flicked to Sumida’s face and was shocked to see that it was drenched with red. The other craft upended, the unconscious girl flipping with it. Bex sent her flier careening sideways. She threw her weight against it, slamming Sumida into the decaying walls of the shaft, barely in the nick of time.

They crashed through onto a flattened surface. Bex heard a sickening crunch of bones. Pain lanced through her right shoulder. She managed to cling to Sumida, hauling her one way as their rides skated the other and clattered into a wall. Sumida was out cold, blood streaming from her mouth and nose. Bex swiped at the mess with her good arm.

“Sumida?” Bex shook her. “Sumida. Wake up!”

Sumida moaned. Her eyes flickered open. She was still dazed. Her voice was cracked. “What happened?” She grimaced when she tried to move. Bex wasn’t the only one who’d hit the surface hard. 

Insanely relieved, Bex took a shaky breath. Her injured shoulder was twitching. “You idiot. Next time you feel like playing the hero–“

Something massive came crashing through the wall in the opening they’d made behind them. Bex scrambled to her feet, hauling Sumida up with her. They had to get as far away as possible before she became completely useless.

Bex tossed her spent sidearm, shifted the good one to her good side. “We have to go. Can you keep standing?”

Sumida nodded but she was still a little out of it. Her legs went wobbly when she tried to stand on her own. Bex half carried her, half dragged her further down the dark corridor and around the bend. The space widened. There was a dim light here. The ground dipped and became muddy. They were in the off shoot to another dried-up waterway.

Behind them, they could still hear soldiers fighting with the Borja. Screams tangled together: human, alien and machine. There was another boom. The walls shook and the ground buckled. The heavy tramp of machinery was getting closer by the minute.

It was useless and beneath Bex to ask something like this of anyone but considering her charge, she doubted her Lloran sister would have disapproved. She retrieved a small orb from a pocket in the side of her tunic. It lit up when she squeezed two points marking the top and bottom between her thumb and forefinger, sending out a plea to a very old friend.

“Klang!” she spoke quickly. “These are my coordinates. Come and get me.”

Was it her or Sumida who screamed? Bex couldn’t tell. A massive beak with teeth clamped on to her arm and sent them crashing to the wall. She tried to shield Sumida, who crumpled to the ground. Bex froze at the sight of the metal-head who’d followed them into the corridor. It was a Collector, a hulking monstrosity with multiple extensible arms and a cylindrical body, piloted by a child-sized creature. He was a Tollan, a beady eyed and generally malevolent sort. Bex’s childhood nightmare, come to life. It was a Tollan that had nearly killed Bex when she was twelve. They were merciless. Vicious.

One of those long mechanical arms lashed out. It clamped around Bex’s wrist, tightening until the sphere was forced from Bex’s fingers. It rolled a few feet away before dying. One of the Mecha’s massive feet came down, grinding the orb into powdery bits.

“Sumida, my gun!”

Another metal arm lashed out. It ripped Bex’s holster away and tossed it aside before going for her neck. Bex’s fingers clawed desperately at the appendage constricting her throat.

“Sumida!” Again. “Take my gun! Aim for the operator’s head!”

More serpentine arms shot out. Two coiled around Bex’s legs, hoisting her off the ground. The arm around her neck tightened, cutting off her air supply. Every heartbeat hurt. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. The sound of gunfire barely penetrated the fog.

Suddenly, she could breathe again. Bex lay on the ground, her vision blurry, and taking its sweet time clearing.  Sumida knelt a short distance away, Bex’s weapon clutched in both hands. Her eyes were wide and full of fear. The mean machine lurched sideways; its dead operator slumped over the controls.

Bex half-crawled over to her. “Sumida? Are you–“

Sumida nodded; teeth clamped down on her lower lip but it was still trembling. Bex placed her palm atop the one on the gun.

“Heavier than you thought, isn’t it?”

Sumida nodded jerkily again, still wordless. Her silvery eyes brimmed with tears she couldn’t seem to shed. Bex tried to take the gun but Sumida’s grip tightened. She made a ragged sound, clutching the weapon against her stomach. It wasn’t simply stubbornness. She couldn’t seem to bring herself to relinquish it.

“I know the feeling.” Bex’s cracked lip bled again as she smiled. “Keep it. You sure as heck earned it.”

They clung to each other as a sudden barrage of gunfire ripped through the tunnel, blasting what was left of the Collector unit to ragged chunks. Sumida began sobbing, a helpless kind of half-screaming. Honestly, if Bex still had the strength, she’d be doing the same.

The assault stopped as abruptly as it had started. Bex dared to look up, eyes stinging from the acrid smoke that filled the air. There was a blast of wind. The smoke cleared, revealing the battered nose of a neat little spaceship. 

 Bolens had buggy doe-eyes and steely skin. They were a beautiful kind, and streamlined like many-armed elves, sans the pointy ears. They were almost twice as tall as humans. Klang was four armed, quadruple jointed and deceptively delicate. He knelt over Bex and Sumida, quiet but anxious.

He had a singsong, feminine sounding voice. “Both so bloody!” He exclaimed. “I don’t like this at all.”

The light in his human-eye was wild and even in her dire state, Bex kind of liked it, in fact, she liked it a lot. Klang was generally a neurotic mess, given to bouts of panic and tantrums. As his human partner, Bex was supposed to be the firm hand and voice of reason that soothed him but honestly, she couldn’t help goading him, on account of being immensely entertained by his antics.

Klang’s human eye was blue, not a natural blue, more like polished cobalt with a slightly darker iris. Bolens had a skewed perception of the human color spectrum so he could never tell the difference and Bex just never quite had the heart to tell him the truth. She often wondered why her partner had made the firm choice to only look at her from out of his human-eye.

Years ago, she’d asked about it, tried pulling the eye patches from over his Bolen orbs. “Klang, what is it…that you don’t wish to see?”

He’d promptly squeaked, hyperventilated and passed out.

When Bex told Winny about it later, the Lloran had only laughed and declared. “You know, sometimes I think a Bolen could actually die of embarrassment.”

In all other respects, Klang was stalwart-like how he’d come flying to her rescue having muscled his ship through the maze to get to her, just now. As he carried them to his ship, each cradled in a pair of his spindly arms, Bex muttered incoherently. She knew she wasn’t making sense but couldn’t seem to stop.

“I’m sorry,” she sobbed idiotically. “Klang, I’m so sorry if you die because of this.”

There was a small jerk. Klang stopped in his tracks, presumably contemplating the validity of her claim. He did that a lot.

“I won’t die today,” he declared solemnly, after a few moments. “Nor you, nor her.”

When Bex came around, she was seated with her back against cold metal. Klang peered at her anxiously, his legs folded up so that he could kneel before her. The familiar vibrations of his ship tickled her skin. They were still in the same space as Hegira. She could tell by the engine’s resonance.

Her throat was raw when she summoned the effort to talk. “Sumida?”

“I’m here.”

Bex’s eyes darted over to where Sumida stood, enthralled by the creature floating in the cylinder connected to the heart of the ship. Klang’s navigator was a brown-bodied Teruun. It floated in its liquid containment cylinder, watching Sumida curiously with bright, black eyes.

“It’s said that Teruun are the best navigators in the universe…” Sumida bowed and, emphatic, added. “I’m very sorry about your friend!”

The Teruun tilted, rocked from side to side and looked to Klang. It made a sound like a question.

“Bikki doesn’t understand why you’re apologizing.” Klang explained.

“Stands to reason.” Bex smirked. “Sumida, what Tirr did was by his own choice. Teruun have their pride too, you know.”

Sumida reached out to touch the cylinder.

“Be careful with your arm.” Klang called out.

She turned briefly. “My arm feels fine.”

“It’s broken,” Klang contradicted her hastily. “I anesthetized it, so be careful you don’t make it worse.”

The walls around suddenly them fell away and they were enveloped by nothingness. The inky darkness wavered. A glittery sea of stars came into view as Bikki produced an enhanced collage of distant images. Ahead was a receding well of brilliance. It was Hegira shouldering her way through the void, indifferent to their departure.

“Klang, you know about Winny, right?”

The Bolen’s antennae quivered, human-eye darkening. When he said nothing, Bex slumped back against the wall. She closed her eyes, pouring all of her energy into breathing. She became convinced that if she didn’t, she would simply stop and her heart-full as it was-might burst.

“We’re not being pursued and it’ll be a while until we get to the Tarq gateway.” Klang ventured at length. “You’ve been holding it in this whole time.” He helped her up. “It’s alright to cry now, I think.”

“Thanks.” There was a tremor in her voice. “Honestly, I’m afraid to start now. I might not be able to stop.” She reached up to touch his cheek.

He only flinched slightly before wheeling away nervously. There was a time when he would have recoiled violently whenever she tried to touch him like that. He’d come a long way over the years too, hadn’t he?

She went to stand beside Sumida and was vaguely tickled to see her gun slung in a makeshift holster on Sumida’s hip. “Are you really alright with leaving like this?”

Sumida’s gaze moved from Klang, who was now suspiciously busy at the controls, to Bex. She opened her mouth as if to say something but seemed to change her mind. She turned her attention back to the distant vessel.

“The feud between the Merchant Guild and Koros was about to escalate into an all-out war. Hegira would never recover from that kind of damage. Not even with a new pilot in her heart.” Sumida drew in a shuddering breath. “I know I’m useless and weak. Running away was about all I could do.”

Bex’s shoulders drooped. She sighed. “I didn’t mean it like that, you know.”

Honestly, it was the opposite. Of course, she’d rather pry her own tongue loose than give voice to those words

“I know but it’s the truth.” Sumida’s sighed. “Laila was never my enemy, you know. Before she left, she told me to run. Just keep running, until we find each other again.”

So, Laila had told Sumida to run. What exactly had the little imp been plotting? Bex wondered.

“There’s my ship, flying off to who knows where without me.” Hegira had fallen away from view but Sumida was still staring intently at the spot where it had been. “I’m supposed to be Hegira’s next pilot. Sesili won’t be able to rest until I go back.”

“Why do you want that kind of power so much anyway?” Bex frowned down at her. “What use could you possibly have for it?”

“Oh, I don’t want that.” Sumida laughed softly, though there was a hint of bitterness in the sound. “I suppose in your eyes that must make me seem like the biggest fool in the universe.” But then the light in her eyes intensified, her expression still serious. “Hegira must never fall into the hands of those who seek power. That’s all.”

Bex softly palmed Sumida’s cheek. She peered into her eyes. She made herself content with doing only that. Nothing more. This was not the time.

“You perceive more than you let on.”

“Hmm.” A brief nod. “Always.” 

Sumida was preoccupied, peering into that darkness. Bex wondered if she could still see it with those atavic eyes, the dark and wondrous place from which they’d come.