"We need to find the senator," Wedge murmured to Biggs. Staff were thronging the lounge and the arcade, examining the body—a man from down the hall who hadn't been on the tour—and the guests were getting restless. "If there's a murderer out there—"

"Yeah," Biggs replied. "It's been too long anyway. We need to—"

"Attention, everyone, please!"

Wedge lifted his head. Rabene was back, clapping her hands fiercely and gesturing everyone towards her. He let himself and the Reds drift towards the sofas where all the other guests, some of them shaking with fear, were congregating. That kid, Luke, had only let the staff shunt him out of the arcade at the last moment. He still had a thoughtful look on his face.

"I know this is a difficult time," she said, slowly and clearly. "We are all very distressed by the discovery of—"

"A body," that unpleasant man from earlier—Hugh—spat. "There is a dead body on my pleasure cruise."

"We are disposing of it."

"Are you disposing of the killer?"

"We will. At this moment, staff—"

"I don't trust staff that let this happen in the first place!" Hugh snapped. Not, Wedge had to admit, entirely unreasonably. "Have you alerted the stormtroopers to this? I demand to have them patrolling the deck until further notice."

A muscle twitched in Rabene's jaw. A maid came up to her and murmured something in her ear; Rabene nodded and straightened up. "The stormtroopers have been alerted, yes, and they are on their way. Do not pin it on us if they are not prioritising this floor's safety over their own drinks."

Wedge had to breathe a sigh of relief, even as everyone else scowled at that. The last thing he wanted on this level was more stormtroopers—all of the Reds seemed to agree, though Biggs was looking at Luke again. The kid's brow was deeply furrowed. He flicked his gaze up to look at that other maid. She gave him a small smile, and he visibly relaxed.

"Until then," Rabene continued, "we ask that you all return to your cabins immediately. Lock the doors, for your own potential safety. Staff will be in touch once the culprit is apprehended and handed over to the Imperials for investigation."

Everyone nodded enthusiastically, but Luke frowned. Wedge kept his face straight and protested, "We need to look for our companion—she went to the refresher during the tour and hasn't come back yet."

Rabene looked at him with a faint, I'm-already-stretched-to-breaking-point-please-don't-do-this smile. "The red-haired woman? We can find her for you. I have to insist that you do—"

"We're not going back to our rooms until we've found her," he insisted. Some security detail he was already. Pilot or not, there was no excuse for being this sloppy.

She grimaced, glanced at the other maids, then gestured for Wedge to come aside with her. He stepped in as she lowered her voice.

Behind them, Luke was talking to the other maid. While Rabene opened and closed her mouth, trying to work up to whatever she was to say, Wedge heard him murmur, "Thank you. For keeping the stormtroopers away, I mean. You shouldn't do it for me—they're needed here, these people need protecting—"

"They're thugs anyway, Luke. They wouldn't help anything. And you know they wouldn't help against this threat."

"So, it is them?" Luke asked. The maid said nothing. "Suyan, that man was exsanguinated—"

"Get back to your cabin, Luke. You need to get out of the way. This isn't the first time this has happened, this is a night ferry, we can handle this."

This wasn't the first time this had happened?

"You need to go back to your cabin," Rabene said at last, bringing Wedge's attention back to her.

"I need to find my companion."

Rabene's bitter smile was truly exhausted. Wedge's mind was whirring. "We have a protocol for extreme cases like this. If you all remain calm in your cabins, we will return your companion safely. There doesn't need to be anymore fuss about this—there's no need for all of you to put yourselves in danger. We know the ship better than you. We can find her faster."

Wedge bit his lip, but Rabene did look stressed. Stressed, exhausted, but put together. She would be able to find the senator more easily than he could, get her out of danger; that much was true. He didn't want to admit it—protecting her was his job—but…

"I'd like to help you find her," Luke said, materialising at his side.

Wedge turned to him, scowling. "What use will you be?"

"There's no need for either of you to find her," Rabene insisted, voice straining. "We will do it. You need to go back to your rooms—"

"We'll go back after we've found her. You gave us that excellent tour; it won't take long to search the level, then we'll go," Luke argued. "But we need to do it quickly, so we can't waste time here."

The other maid, Suyan, rolled her eyes behind Luke's back and exchanged a look with Rabene.

"I can't stop you," she said tightly.

Luke gave her an apologetic smile and turned to Wedge. "Are you ready to go?"

Wedge let himself be led away—at least this green farm boy had got him out of that debate—but he still shot him a suspicious look. "Why are you helping? What can you help with?"

He hesitated when they got back to the gang of Reds. Hobbie and Diric were talking quietly with each other, while Biggs stared into space, but they all looked at the new guy when he came in next to Wedge. "I might know something about the killer."

"Because you think they drained their blood?" Wedge scoffed. "Are you personally acquainted with a serial killer who does that, or…?"

"Shouldn't we just get going, boss?" Biggs said. "Not waste time arguing? It's good to use all the help we can get."

Wedge tried not to bite his lip—or to accuse Biggs of having alternate reasons for wanting Luke with them. Channelled irritation again, because that was easier to channel than gentleness when he was this stressed and concerned about not seeming weak. He mentally apologised for all the times he'd complained about Narra being a miserable old thing. "You're right. Let's go."

They hadn't even made it out of the lounge, the maids all giving them annoyed looks, before Diric asked Luke hesitantly, "What do you know about the killer?"

Diric was new blood, the first recruit Red Squadron had made after the catastrophe of the battle at Arkanis that had wiped out Narra and half the squad. If they'd only been able to bring a few Reds, he hadn't wanted to bring Diric, but experience was important to gain. He still looked so small next to Biggs, though—the same height as Luke. They were just kids.

Luke swallowed. "I'm not sure you'll believe me."

"I don't have the patience for nonsense," Wedge warned.

Biggs scoffed. "You don't have the patience for anything."

"Have any of you heard of vampires?" Luke asked.

Diric went pale. "Bloodsuckers?" he whispered.

"The hell?" Biggs blanched at that description.

Wedge stormed ahead down the central corridor of the floor, scowling. "Is that some sort of myth?"

"Yes," Luke said. "And it's true."

"What is true?"

"Immortal beings of the night," Diric said, "who bite mortals and drain their blood to feed, they can hypnotise you, move at unnatural speeds, they have ridiculous strength—"

"We're looking for a serial killer, not a horror story."

"I thought we were looking for Senator Mothma?" Luke said quietly.

Wedge took a deep breath. "We are. So, let's focus on that. Are we clear?" But Luke had frozen, staring down the corridor of cabins directly to their left. They were all identical; Wedge didn't know what he was staring at. "Are we clear?"

"He looks like a horror story," Luke said. All the bravado was gone from his voice; it came out in a squeak.

Wedge turned to look. There was a stocky, grey-skinned humanoid figure at the end of the corridor, just where the floor met the shining white bulkhead. He had a brown-haired woman—a maid, by her uniform—by her neck in his fist. At Luke's gasp, he turned to look at them, nostrils flaring.

His clothes were black, but the front seemed darker. Dark and sticky.

He threw the maid back. She landed back on the floor without so much as a gasp. Wedge didn't have time to think as he started charging at them. The only thing he could do was let Luke and Biggs grab him and run.

Luke's chest was about to explode, feet pounding the metal floor. Wedge and the others kept close on his heels, Biggs's eyes wide with terror in a way that struck Luke with guilt.

"Come on," he muttered, pushing more of the Force into his limbs, shoving himself forwards. "Come on, come on, come on—"

"Who is that?" Wedge demanded. He wasn't objecting to Luke's executive decision to run, though. Clearly, the sense of wrongness than emanated from that figure when he bared his teeth was strong enough to be felt even by a non-Force-sensitive. "Is that the killer?"

"Probably," Luke got out. "But there's more to it than that—"

"If you try to talk about those things, what, vampires, again—"

Luke threw out a hand before he'd even registered why. When Wedge and Biggs made to skid past them anyway, he seized hold of them in the Force to slow them down.

The grey-skinned vampire grinned at them, blocking their retreat back to the lounge and their rooms.

The retreat would've been useless anyway, Luke reflected bitterly. They were trapped on a metal ship with a monster, hurtling through hyperspace. There was no escape but to stand and fight. But he'd at least hoped to pick his own battleground.

"How the hell did he overtake us?" Wedge hissed. "There's no way he could run that—"

Luke yanked himself back, bashing into a couple other Rebel pilots, as the vampire lunged, white teeth gleaming. Biggs, the tallest, was the farthest ahead despite Luke's attempt to grab him. The vampire grabbed him instead. His hand was so fast it blurred.

Diric screamed. Wedge choked. For a horrible moment, Luke stared, utterly transfixed, as the vampire scrunched a large, muscular hand around Biggs's throat. He yanked him up effortlessly, as if he were made of papier-mâché. He bared his teeth.

"No!" Luke shouted, starting forwards. The vampire's gaze snapped to him, and his smile widened, sharpened, showing even more teeth. His fangs themselves were as long as Luke's fingers, but even his other teeth were serrated like a shark's, like the edge of a knife. Luke started forwards, heedless of Hobbie and Diric reaching to hold him back, but the vampire just laughed. Biggs choked.

"Stop it—"

But, fortunately or unfortunately, the vampire was only just beginning to play with them. Luke ducked. Biggs's graceless body tumbled over them like a puppet, colliding with Wedge and Hobbie with an almighty thud. The slap and crack of them all hitting the floor in a tangle of limbs made Luke wince.

"Easy prey," the vampire said, still grinning.

"No!" Luke threw himself between them and the vampire. He got only an amused appraisal in response, those flinty eyes lingering on the thumping pulse in his neck before he made to run at Luke, seize him in his jaws, drink him dry—

The vampire didn't move. No matter how hard he pushed, and his muscles bulged with the effort, he couldn't so much as twitch his limbs.

Luke flexed his fists at the side, clenching his jaw, straining. He stared the vampire down. His father had always said that the Skywalkers were some of the most powerful Force-wielders in the galaxy; Luke was going to use that. He could feel the vampire probing him in the Force, looking for weaknesses, something to break the immobile hold Luke had on him, but this was one trick Luke definitely knew how to use. His father used to use it on Luke and Leia when handling the chaos of twins as a single father was too much, and he just needed them to stay still for a moment. However Luke felt about that—and he'd felt furious about it at the time—from that moment on he'd trained himself on the finer points of it. How to do it, how to break it.

Biggs and the others disentangled themselves together in a panicked sprawl of limbs, stumbling to their feet. "Are you alright?" Luke asked Biggs, not breaking eye contact.

"I'm fine"—lie, his voice was rasping like hell—"we need to get out of here, what are you doing? Let's run."

"You," the vampire said, looking Luke up and down. He said it again: "You."

Luke didn't want to know what that meant.

Wedge came to the rescue. Luke hadn't noticed the weapons he and the Rebels were hiding at their sides but stars, he'd never been so grateful to hear the crackle of blasterfire.

Red erupted between them. Luke let Biggs yank him out of the firing zone as it lit up, exhausted, wanting to let go of that dark, oily presence that had smirked like that as he looked at Luke. Terrified or not, it seemed wrong to hold someone immobile while they stood in front of a firing squad—

He shouldn't have bothered.

The blaster bolts punched holes in the vampire's torso, his neck, even his skull. Luke stared, lips pressed tightly together, and tried not to be sick. He could see the raw red of burned flesh turned inside out, but there was no blood. Was that because blasters burnt and immediately cauterised the wound? Was that because vampires had no blood? For the first time, it occurred to him that he had never asked his father how vampiric biology worked. Curses were curses in kids' horror stories.

The vampire stumbled like he'd been punched. Luke saw the bright, fierce lights of the corridor behind him, through him, the hole in his chest where his heart should be gaping. He stifled a scream.

Vampires were sensitive to natural starlight, not artificial light. But how well-lit the fight scene was made even more bile gorge in his throat as he was forced to stare and see, in excruciating detail that no shadows tried to hide, how the vampire's body mutilated and crumpled under the rain of fire, and how he walked it off like it was nothing.

He sensed Luke's gaze and grinned at him again conspiratorially. Luke knew all about vampiric charm, but it still took a moment before he realised he was frozen still, as thoroughly as he had frozen him. He shook his head, shook off the haze and the overwhelming desire to stay put, to embrace whatever was coming, and leapt to the side—

Too late. The vampire lunged for him. A clawed hand wrapped around Luke's shoulder and slammed him against the wall—no, the door to someone's cabin, Luke processed dizzily. They were doing this in a tight corridor. Where terrified people were likely sleeping, or hiding, having heard about the murder.

What was strange was that they were the only people around that he could sense.

His head hit the door hard: reverberations clanged through his skull. He blinked the stars out of his eyes, trying to… trying to…

Another hand came up to shove his cheek against the door, immobilising his head, while the other hand seized his shoulder. Exposing his neck.

Luke's heart tripled its pace. He heard the vampire chuckle.

"Calm down."

Strangely enough, the charm didn't work that time. Luke did not calm down.

Teeth flashed. Luke kicked and shoved back against the vampire, but it was like trying to fight a machine. All the physical strength he could muster did nothing, with his head pounding the Force danced out of his grip, and those teeth were soaring for his neck, and this was it, Luke would either die or be as good as dead and, proactively, he wondered if blood would still taste so strange if it was all he could eat. He opened his mouth in a silent scream.

A bang. Something flopped into that mouth—something soft and gross. He gagged and spat it out, yanking his gaze up to his vampiric doom, and saw the vampire turning to glare at— at Biggs and his still-smoking blaster. There was a hole in his head. Brains decorated the wall.

Luke gagged again. But he fumbled along the wall with his left hand while he did.

The vampire spat, "Shoot yourself instead, mortal," at Biggs. Biggs's eyes clouded over as he looked from the blaster to the vampire, and lifted it towards his head…

Luke yelped, "No!"

He shouldn't have. The vampire turned back to his, teeth bared again. His eyes gleamed gold.

Luke's shout had done nothing, but Wedge picked up the slack, shoving Biggs's arm away. Biggs frowned, shaking his head, looking down at Wedge, then at Luke, in horror.

Luke's hand found what he was looking for. Just as the vampire's teeth grazed his neck, he hit the button to open the door.

They both tumbled inside, Luke twisting to the side to avoid being crashed by the vampire's massive bulk. He was expecting the fall; he was on his feet again in a moment, hands up to ward off… something, anything… while the vampire teetered in shock on the floor for a moment. Biggs snarled and shot him in the head again, dirtying more floors with brains. The vampire hissed at him; Luke grimaced and hit the button again with the Force. The door slid shut.

The vampire clearly felt the touch of the Force. He leapt to his feet and surveyed Luke again. "It's definitely you," he decided, grinning again. "You shouldn't have done that."

"Who am I?" Luke asked, backing away. The cabin was identical to his: there was a refresher, a bed, a charging port… There wasn't exactly an easy way out of here. But there was something else he'd been hoping for.

Opposite the bathroom, behind the hooks where you were meant to hang your coat, was a safe. A big safe, the size of a walk-in closet, prepared for the sheer volume of riches that wealthy travellers might bring with them. Luke hadn't bothered with the safe in his cabin; he had nothing of value. He still didn't. But the safe itself was valuable enough, right now.

"There's no point in fighting," the vampire said. "They want you. And they'll get you." He smiled. "Give me a meal, and I'll make it quick and painless."

Luke's mind spun. He was a personal target? Why?

"Where's my father?" Luke demanded. He was so caught up he barely noticed the door burst open again, Wedge and Biggs levelling their blasters. "What did you do to him?"

The vampire did notice, but he just flung out a hand. Their blasters skidded along the floor, down the corridor. They cursed.

He said, "He's lost to you so long as you fight."

Rage snapped something in Luke's chest.

"I don't know why I asked," he bit out. The door to the safe behind the vampire flung open. He jerked, staring—and Luke planted his hands on his broad chest and shoved him in.

He was unbalanced; that made it easier. He was strong; that did not. Luke shoved with all his might, the Force picking up what he couldn't to fling him like a leaf in the wind. When he slammed the door shut again and locked it, a couple of fingers were caught in the slam. Luke didn't care. It shut, all the same.

Wedge burst into the room. "What—"

Luke reached up a hand, summoned Wedge's blaster into his and shot the electronic lock. It smoked and burst. Nothing was unlocking that—not even the Force. The vampire's roar of fury told him he knew it.

He handed Wedge his blaster back. Wedge took it with trembling hands.

"You're a Jedi?" he said.

Luke rubbed his neck. The vampire's teeth had barely brushed it, but it felt hot, violated, like something was seeping through his veins and turning him into a new person anyway. This was the sort of thing he would never have done on the farm. Leia would hardly recognise him.

He said, "Do you believe me about the vampires now?"

Wedge tightened his lips as the others streamed in. "Tell me everything, kid. Now."

They set off again, trying to put as much distance between them and the still very angry vampire as possible. Luke explained along the way and navigated for them by his sense of where people were. Mothma had to be somewhere. He'd sense her if she was on this level.

"This is strange," Hobbie said, watching him tilt his head and frown.

Wedge rubbed his temples. "That thing wanted to eat you?"

"I don't know," Luke said. "Maybe he wanted to turn me into another immortal servant of darkness."

"Are you—"

"No, kriff off."

"You're looking for your mother?" Diric asked.

"I found her. It's my father I'm—" He widened his eyes, snapping his gaze in down the corridor. "There's someone down there. It might be Senator Mothma."

"Might be?"

"I don't know her well. I can't tell from here. But…" He trailed off. "It's strange. This is the only person on this side of the deck who isn't shut away in their cabin."

"Then it probably is the senator. Our cabins are way down there." Hobbie pointed back the direction they had come. Luke shook his head and tried to navigate the maze of identical-looking corridors in his mind. "She couldn't have got back there without us noticing."

"Why is it strange that everyone's shut away in their cabins?" Biggs asked, picking up on Luke's concern. "That was the order. Stay put until the vampire was found."

"Murderer, the official language was," Diric said.

Luke bit his lip. "Because almost all of these cabins are empty. And there's still no one around."

Silence fell as that sank in.

"It's a fancy floor," Hobbie suggested. "We've got the private pool and all that—other floors don't get that. Only the people with money to spare are getting rooms on this deck."

"They'd still price it so that they'd fill every room. They don't want to lose credits." He'd listened to Leia talk about her economics classes too much not to know that.

Maybe Luke shouldn't have taken up the offer to switch decks, after all. But if he hadn't, he wouldn't have been here to help, or have met Biggs, so he couldn't be too disappointed.

"It's probably the quiet floor."

"We don't know what's going on," Wedge broke in sternly. Luke and Hobbie shut up. "We don't know anything. Luke told us a lot more than we knew, but he still hardly knows much." Luke made to protest, but Wedge's glare dissuaded him from that. "We need a plan—we need someone to tell us how to handle this."

"Go on then, boss," Biggs said. It wasn't sarcastic: Luke could see the faith in his eyes. "We're all listening."

Wedge stiffened. "Vampires didn't make an appearance in any of the briefing reports I read," he said, "so we're gonna improvise. We'll go and find the person that Luke… sensed." He stumbled over what to call the Force. Luke felt bad for being amused; he pulled himself back together. "I bet it's the senator. From there, she can call the shots: she's more sensible than us, for one—"

"Hear hear," someone muttered.

Luke frowned. The person he'd sensed was on the move. Instead of hanging out somewhere nebulous up ahead, their presence shrill with sharp, fearful thoughts, they were slowly moving. Moving back towards them.

"—and she's in charge. We can refer to what she'd prefer we do. I for one think we should find a way off this ship."

"We can't leave until the negotiations are done, though."

Luke lifted his head and stepped back, edging towards a bend in the corridor. His heart pounded. The footsteps he was starting to hear, still too subtle for the distracted Rebels to notice, flickered at the edge of his memory, familiar…

They quickened.

Wedge closed his eyes. "Right," he said sharply. "We can't do that. So, we'll find the senator that Senator Mothma was meeting with and get her out too. But first we have to find—"

"Luke!"

A breath burst out of Luke's lungs. Padmé saw him as she turned the corner, then immediately strode for him. He nearly slipped from the force of their collision, but she caught and steadied him, surprisingly strong in her desperation.

She gripped his wrist and brushed hair out of his face. Her voice was furious. "Why are you covered in blood?"

"And brains," Luke said. "Mother, you shouldn't be out of—"

"I heard about the murder! And I heard that you went tramping off in the middle of the curfew! When I hear on the intercom that there's a lockdown, I try to find out what happened, and I don't want to hear that my son tripped over a dead body!" Her nails were digging into his wrist. He winced, and she relaxed her hold. "Are you alright? Brains?"

"We ran into the murderer," Luke said. "He's a vampire. But—"

Padmé went still. "They are here, then."

"Yeah, I—"

"I didn't actually think that Anakin was right about that," she said, tone low. "I didn't think they'd actually be after me."

They might be after Luke as well, he remembered.

He'd break that to her gently.

"Is that why you're out of your cabin?" he asked. "You shouldn't be."

She squeezed his wrist more tightly. "I'm not losing you again," she vowed.

Wedge said, "You didn't tell us that Senator Amidala was the mother you were talking about."

"You didn't ask," Luke said.

Padmé laughed, though. "Thank you for keeping my son alive, Commander Antilles."

Wedge shifted, not sure what to say to that, clearly. "He did more…"

Padmé saved him again. "Why are you out here in the first place?"

That question he could answer more readily. "Senator Mothma was separated from us during the tour," he said, eyes flashing. "We need to find her, if there's a threat on the ship."

"Why did Mon go on the tour in the first place?" Padmé demanded. "Surely that would be antithetical to—"

"I don't know, my lady. But I need to find her."

Padmé sighed. "Mon is sensible. Tours or not, she knows how to react in a crisis. Have you actually checked her cabin yet?"

They all shifted awkwardly.

Padmé had the grace not to tut at them. "Go back to your cabins," she ordered. "Check them. That's the best place you'll find her." She glanced at Luke. "And Artoo will have finished charging by now. He'll be furious at you."

"For adventuring without him, not for putting myself in danger."

"Of course, but still furious."

"He has no space to judge."

She smiled. Before Luke realised what she was doing, she had kissed his cheek, and he was flushing at the novelty of it. He didn't know how to behave when he had a mother.

"I'll go back," he conceded.

"I'll come with you." She looped her arm through his. "You need to wash that gore off of you, anyway."

Luke flushed again, this time from embarrassment. He'd forgotten about that. "Is it—"

"Nothing a shower won't fix."

"I can't shower when there's a murderer on the loose."

"No," Padmé agreed. "But I can't let you try to catch them."

"I already did."

She snorted. "Then I definitely can't let you do it again."

The Rebels' quarters were sufficiently far away enough from Luke's that they said goodbye a few minutes before Luke and Padmé reached his cabin, arms still tightly entwined. Padmé was a solid, cool weight against his side—like Leia always had been, especially when they were kids, except with fewer teeth and nails to bite or scratch him with.

Padmé insisted on waiting just outside the room when Luke went in to shower, allowing him to undress outside the refresher in peace. Artoo was indeed awake and shrieked at him the moment he saw him.

"I know, I know—hey, I know! Look, I gotta shower. If you wanna interrogate someone on what's happening so badly, go outside and talk to Mother." Luke grimaced. "I think I still have vampire brains in my mouth."

Artoo replied that that was a highly concerning thing for any humanoid to say.

"But not for a droid?"

Artoo rolled out rather than answer that. Luke sighed and, wincing, ran a glass of water to wash out his mouth. When it tasted less… bloody… he stepped out of the tiny refresher again and reached up to unbutton his shirt. He touched a scrap of fabric that was stiff with dried blood.

Vomit erupted in his throat. He gagged and swallowed it down, feeling it burn. His eyes burned suddenly as well, the galaxy burning.

The rough, stiff patch of fabric on his shirt rubbed against his throat. For a moment, he could feel that vampire's teeth against his skin again, seeking purchase—

No. He fumbled for the button, movements rapid and antsy. No, it… it hadn't happened. It wouldn't happen. This threat would pass. His father was out here somewhere. And if there was one thing Luke had faith in, it was that his father would always come to rescue him. No matter what chaos Luke had caused. No matter what trouble he'd found.

There would be yelling. There would be lectures. Luke would resent him and resent him some more for overriding Luke's decisions when Luke was independent enough to make up his own mind. But every time he cried into his shirt, anyway, he was grateful he had saved him and was grateful that he would always be there to.

He'd come back when Luke needed him. He had to. There was no other way Luke was getting out of this on his own. He didn't even know anything about vampire biology.

The sickening thwack of blaster bolts travelled through flesh and bone, and that flesh and bone not even pausing to react, rang in his ears.

His hands were shaking too much. He gritted his teeth and yanked on the button. It snapped off, tumbling out of his numb fingers. Snarling, he reached to catch it, but it bounced on the floor. For a moment, Luke stared, transfixed: the hyperspace beyond the transparisteel viewport cast flickering lights over the polished floor, and the button bounced through them like a swimmer through the waves.

It rolled to a stop next to the viewport. Luke made to reach for it, but something dark and cold paralysed him where he stood.

He looked up.

That hand he had seen against the viewport in the lounge earlier curled around the viewport frame. Milk-white and gauntleted with black, it edged into view with claws as long as needles, separated from him only by inches of transparisteel. Transparisteel was meant to be one of the strongest substances in the galaxy, but Luke lost faith in that after he saw how just one of those claws left a long, deep scratch in it.

It was not strong enough to save him.

Luke tried to move, tried to force his legs to get him out of there, bloody shirt or not, but he stayed paralysed. Not by charm or power. He could feel that, with a shame that sank into his veins. Terror kept him glued to the spot.

The whole figure crept out until they were clinging to his viewport, and Luke got a full look at the vampire that had been terrorising them since even before that man had died.

Their face was locked behind a plasteel mask, the light of hyperspace playing across its dead red eyes eerily. The left hand clung to the viewport with the claws dug in; the right was sheathed in a glove. A cape whipped behind the figure, and Luke's brain broke for a petty few seconds as it tried to conceive what forces were keeping such a dramatic cape on the shoulders of such a dramatic figure in hyperspace.

But blasters were nothing to vampire. What was gravity? What was spacetime?

The cold reached out to envelop Luke, and that was when he found the strength in his legs to back away. Slowly—at first. Slowly, until the vampire placed their gloved right hand on the transparisteel viewport, and everything began to shudder.

Cracks spiralled from the centre of the window. It created a stunning vista, for the part of Luke's mind still cognizant enough to appreciate it: silver fractures forming a vast, intricate web across his viewport, growing thicker and more numerous until they drowned out the view of the hyperspace tunnel beyond. And the black-clad vampire like a spider at their heart.

Luke stopped moving slowly. He abandoned his button, pivoted, and bolted for the door.