"I am sometimes asked why I find the age of Xim so fascinating when its facts are lost to time, wreathed in mystery and obscured by legend. I am amazed how they can answer their own question and not realize it." S.V. Skynx, My Chrysalis: Personal Reflections of a Ximologist 14 ABY

Year 18 of Xim's reign

Year 526 LE

Makem Te was an isolated world on the edge of civilized space, populated by biologically bizarre aliens who only kept their hyperspace beacon active in order to drawn foreigners to a trading post that swung in orbit over a planet forbidden for outsiders to step foot. It offered little to satisfy Xim's ever-hungry empire and had, so far, been lucky enough to be ignored.

It therefore offered little to the crew of Gravity Scorned except a respite, but at the moment that was all they needed. After dropping out of hyperspace, Ajek Kroller docked his ship with the rotating space station, which lent its centrifugal gravity and allowed him to walk, rather than clamber or bounce, down the ship's central spine to his aft-section cabin.

Reina was giving him a cold shoulder, and it was easy to figure out why. Running from the conquest of Estaria had left her feeling guilty, which in turn made her angry towards him. Kroller couldn't really blame her. He didn't regret the choice to run but his thoughts kept falling back to the mediocre world and the friend he'd left behind, the friend who'd seemed uncharacteristically determined to throw his life away in a just and futile resistance to Xim's war machine. He might not learn Dorin's fate for months, even years. If he ever learned it at all.

Vaatus, thankfully, was not so sullen. The young Nikto helped Kroller run post-flight system checks and examined the fuel injectors one more time to make sure that repair job still held. Makem Te's port station didn't offer much in the way of repair facilities, so it was good Gravity Scorned had gotten through the fight unscathed.

"I think we got lucky," Vaatus said as they returned to the cockpit. Reina was no place to be found; probably she'd retreated to her cabin. "I was afraid we'd have to spend all those ingots fixing battle damage."

"You weren't afraid of getting blown up by one of Xim's missiles?"

"I had faith in your flying skills, Father." Vaatus bared teeth. It was his attempt to approximate a human grin, but that expression was foreign to his species, which lacked the facial muscles to really pull it off. It looked stiff and unnatural on his horn-covered mien. "What do you plan to spend that money on?" he asked.

Kroller settled into his chair and leaned back. "You sound like a man with ideas."

Vaatus leaned against the doorframe and tapped his green chin thoughtfully. "After an escape like that we could use a little vacation to calm us down."

"Well, we're close to Raxus Prime."

Vaatus shook his head. "It's Spirit Week and the planet's packed with tourists. But Reina wants rest and relaxation and we can even pay for it now."

"Well, there's also Derellium." Like Raxus, it was under Xim's banner, but unlike Estaria it had surrendered without a fight and enjoyed a decade-plus of peace and prosperity. Nonetheless, after the battle they'd just run from, he felt irrationally hesitant to leap back into the Empire's arms.

"It's possible," Vaatus said. "Pakuuni has some nice pleasure zones too."

Pakuuni was also outside Xim's territory. Kroller nodded understanding. "Pakuuni would also be good. You should ask Reina which she'd prefer."

"Go ahead, she's probably in her cabin."

Kroller didn't rise, didn't offer to go himself. He had a feeling she wasn't eager to speak with him right now.

Vaatus understood that too. "You made the right choice," he said. "Reina knows that, deep down."

"Well, don't go trying to convince her. She'll come around or she won't. She doesn't like being told what to think."

"It runs in the blood, yes?"

"Probably." Serena hadn't been good at taking instruction either. Kroller waved a hand. "Go ask her if you want. Or take some rack time. I won't push us off until we've decided together."

"I'll see what I can do." Vaatus slipped from the cabin, leaving his father alone.

Kroller settled back in his chair and sighed. It still sometimes baffled him how his adopted son, his alien child, could be easier to get along with than his human daughter, but it made sense in one way. They'd both fled their homeworlds and taken to space a young age, though Vaatus had been running from something much nastier than the slums of Arramanx. They'd gone out among the stars with hope and ambition, and also a pragmatic resolve to take what they were given and do their best with it. Reina, in contrast, hadn't chosen the life she had, and Kroller wondered if she resented it deep down.

Kroller sighed. "You're getting maudlin, you old fool," he muttered to himself, then turned his attention to the shipments systems.

A quick check on the Gravity's comm systems showed that he'd received within the past hour. It was a video recording too, a mild surprise. The hyperspace beacon system that connected known space doubled as a communication network, and while video and audio files passed just as quickly through it (that is to say, as just below light speed) the charge to send them out was higher. Which meant somebody really wanted to be seen.

He opened the message and saw a familiar head-and-shoulders appear. Though the video was in monochrome (full color was even more expensive) he could imagine the flame-red of Malanthazaar's beard and the piercing green of his eyes.

"I don't know where you are now, Ajek, but I hope this thing finds you someplace," his friend said. "When you didn't show up at Santossa on-schedule I didn't think much of it, but then I heard about Estaria. I hope to hells you got out, so send me a message to let me know you're all right."

Kroller smiled faintly. It was always amusing when independent, rough-and-tumble spacer-types tried not to show they cared. Not that he wasn't guilty of the same thing himself now and then.

Malanthazaar went on, "Anyway, if you are still kicking, I got something that might be of interest to you, if you're looking for work. Just got word an object showed up in the Endregaad system. My guess, from the scans I saw, is that it's one of the old colony ships. Seems to have been pulled into orbit around the planet. I just found out myself, and I figure if you're in the neighborhood—if— you might want to check it out. And if you find any good salvage, you'd better remember who put you on the right trail." He said it with a grin. "Anyway, bounce me back a message if you're still alive. And if you're gonna check out Endregaad, you'd better get going fast before more vultures show up."

The video ended without any sign-off. Kroller settled back and thought. Endregaad was a nothing world, technically claimed by Xim's empire, but it sat on a barely-noticed fringe. Every few decades or so settlers tried to turn out good crop, but something about the local ecosystem resisted human colonization. If it wasn't used as a stopping-point en route to Raxus, they probably wouldn't bother to maintain a hyperspace beacon there at all.

It was lucky, in a sense, that the old colony ship (if that's what it was) had shown up there. Every so often, mammoth generation arks appeared over inhabited planets, usually carrying the cryogenically frozen bodies (most often, corpses) of brave fools who'd tried to ply the starlanes before the advent of hyperspace travel. Most of those ships dated back to the era of the Tyrants, where humans were mere slaves and journeys between stars were forbidden to them. Some ships were said to be even older.

Universities on Desevro, Chandaar, and Rudrig had entire departments devoted to recovering and studying generation ships; Kroller was no scholar but he'd heard the eggheads had endless debates on whether mankind had originated within known space or elsewhere, perhaps closer to the galactic core. It was endlessly politicized, with rich and powerful worlds desperate to claim themselves as the birthplace of humanity, and every time a generation ship showed up those planets sent paid scholars to scour the ancient ships and come up with evidence to back their preferred arguments.

At least, that's how it had worked until Xim started his glorious campaign to unify humanity. Now whenever a generation ship popped up, it was interdicted by one of his warships and taken into military custody. Kroller had no idea what happened after that, but he did know that Endregaad was a long way from any of the Empire's bases, and it would take them a while to dispatch a recovery team. Gravity Scorned, meanwhile, was in excellent position to go in and scout the thing.

You never knew what you could find on those arks. There were plenty of things to be concerned about, from booby traps to long-dormant diseases to calamitous malfunctions of millennia-old technology. But you could find great treasure on salvage work too.

Kroller knew that especially well; one time he'd salvaged himself a son.

He made a snap decision. Raxus or Pakuuni could wait. He shifted from his pilot's chair over to Reina's station, started up the navigation system, and began looking for Endregaad's hyperspace beacon. He'd send a message back to Malanthazaar later. He'd inform the kids later. If there was any chance of getting that ship's bounty (whatever it might be) they had to act fast.

-{}-

The aftermath of a conquest had become just as familiar to Jaminere as campaigning itself. While the Ascendant's crew scoured the ship in a post-battle check, envoys went down to the planet to harangue or cajole its leaders into submission. The envoys' report, as usual, came many hours later, at about the same time the dreadnought's checks were completed. Likewise, all the other ships in the fleet sent their status reports to the flagship, along with request for repairs where needed.

Jaminere had used those intermediate hours for a nap and was rested when time came to compose his complete post-battle report for Xim. The emperor of known space was a meticulous, exacting man and Jaminere had learned from the start not to shove off this tedious work on a subordinate. He needed to get everything right or face Xim's displeasure later.

When it was completed, Jaminere's report was dispatched not through the web of hyperspace beacons but via an unmanned courier drone that skipped through lightspeed at the fastest speed possible. The operation of those drones was a closely-kept secret within the Imperial military, as use of their extra-fast communication had been essential to Xim's conquest of the Livien League all those years ago.

Once the drone was away, Jaminere checked to see what personal messages had arrived through traditional messages. He was not surprised to see that a video message had arrived from Desevro, nor was he surprised to see the gold-framed face of his wife.

His marriage to the Duchess Erissa of Livien had been a political thing, urged on by Xim after the conquest of the League. Jaminere had entered into it loyally but without enthusiasm; after the upbringing he'd received, love seemed farcical and marriage poisonous. He'd expected Erissa to be as greedy and empty-headed as his father's concubines and was surprised to find a young woman who'd chafed at the aristocracy she'd been born into, resented its stagnant ways, and wanted something more. She was less enamored with Xim, conquerer of her world, than her new husband, but she'd nonetheless approached their partnership with a pragmatism Jaminere had found himself admiring.

In addition to a sharp mind and level head, she was also as beautiful as any of his father's more vapid courtesans. He watched her full lips and bright blue eyes as she spoke to him across light-years, saying, "I'm glad to hear the conquest at Estaria went well. Hopefully you won't be too long cleaning up and can get back here for some relief. Not that Desevro ever rests, of course," she added, "My father and Maslovar are putting together a plan to import workers for the administration complex. They want to draw in laborers from Thanium and Galidraan, but D'Arsan and D'Epern are throwing a fit." She sighed. "But you can hear about all that later. I'll yield a minute to Marco."

She shifted out of view, and a moment later her place was filled with the face of a boy nearing youth, still soft and round but starting to lean toward features similar to Jaminere's. The fact that he'd given life to a son seemed like the grandest of cosmic ironies

"Hello, father," Marco V said. His voice was getting deeper, but he still had the careful diction of a boy who knew how young he was and tried to act older. "Mother says you might be back soon. I hope so. I took second place at the archery competition this week, but I'll try to do better next time." He paused and thought hard for something else to say. "Hesjin D'Epern says his father wants to talk to you about something. When you get back we can visit their estate. I've always wanted to see what it's like." He paused again and looked at his offscreen mother.

Erissa swooped in. She squeezed beside him, arm around his shoulder, and said to the camera, "As you can tell, there's plenty waiting for you when you get back to Desevro. But I swear it won't be all busy. I'll reserve a few days at one of the resorts at the Holchas islands. We can watch the ocean, drink something pleasant, and pretend all the stars and cities out there don't exist."

Yes, that sounded very pleasant indeed. Erissa gave a fond sign-off, and young Marco waved at the camera, and then the recording stopped. Their faces were replaced with a black screen reflecting Jaminere's own image. Staring at himself, he felt a tiny ache in his heart.

Did he love them? He'd asked himself that many times over the years but he wasn't sure he knew what the word meant. He'd never felt delirious with desire, nor physically pained by emotional need, but he'd come to think of Erissa and Marco as a refuge, a shelter, a warm place he could return to in between Xim's endless conquests. It might not have been love as the poets described it, but it was likely the closest Jaminere would ever get, so he valued it.

Before making a reply, he checked for other messages. One had come down just minutes ago from the bridge, flagged as medium-priority. He brought up a screenful of text and skimmed it over. The navigational buoy at Endregaad had picked up the appearance of one of the old generation ships that sometimes intruded on modern civilization as relics from the pre-Liberation days. Even though they were almost always ghost ships, their passengers killed by some age-wrought technical meltdown, Xim had a keen interest in them and had ordered each new appearance to be seized and analyzed. The occupation fleet over Estaria was the nearest major force to forlorn Endregaad, which meant one of Jaminere's ships would have to be dispatched.

It was the kind of thing he was eager to put off, but Xim really was insistent on this matter. Jaminere knew he was hoping to find more remnants of the Tyrants' technology drifting through the stars. So he went back to his status reports, selected a suitable ship, and wrote up quick orders for the polyreme Harridan to investigate immediately.

Then, with necessity done, he set about composing a reply to his family.

-{}-

Endregaad was a nothing world, and at first glance its new arrival looked like nothing too. From the porthole window in Gravity Scorned's cockpit it was just a glinting streak cutting high above the planet's green-gray ecliptic, barely larger than a nick in the glass.

Kroller's sensors showed a keener picture, but still left plenty uncertain. The generation ship was nearly a kilometer from bow to stern and massed three times as one of Xim's feared dreadnoughts. Roughly cylindrical, it might have been capable of spinning to generate artificial gravity but it wasn't doing so now. No engine-flares emitted from the aft of the ship, but Kroller couldn't tell if they'd shut down recently or been dead a long time, leaving the ship to coast through the interstellar medium until arrested by a planet's pull.

The closer he got, the more data he pulled and the stranger things appeared. The Gravity's scanners couldn't identify the material used in its exterior. When they reached the range for visual examination, the magnified images showed a smooth-hulled craft bearing no familiar markings. No exterior markings at all, actually, though as he slowed to pull alongside the ship he recognized framed portals that must have been airlocks. His sensors picked up no heat signatures, but it was impossible to tell if they were penetrating that strange hull metals.

Vaatus and Reina were in the cockpit with him, watching their boards silently as data feeds rolled in. Neither of them had complained when Kroller had unceremoniously flung them after this drifting ark, but he knew they'd both rather be relaxing groundside somewhere. Well, if they were lucky they were soon to fill their hold with enough ancient artifacts to fund months of vacation time.

There might have been another reason for the awkward quiet. Serena had never liked salvage jobs, and she'd flat-out refused to do generation ships. She'd called it grave-robbing, and to be honest it was hard to disagree. The people who'd boarded these arks centuries or even millennia ago deserved better than to drift through eternity until foreign strangers disturbed their metal tombs, but Kroller was a practical man. Somebody was going to pry this thing apart and he'd rather get first pick of what was inside. Even now, despite the sepulchral calm over empty Endregaad, they couldn't afford to dawdle. There was no telling when Xim's people would show up to steal their prize.

To fill the quiet, Kroller said, "I'm going to give it a once-over, then try to find a place to dock."

"I saw airlock portals," said Vaatus. "We'll probably have to adjust our docking tube to get a good fit."

"Do we have any idea where this thing came from?" asked Reina. "Does it even look… human?"

Kroller could tell that question was meant for him. "I don't know. It's not like anything I've seen before. Might just mean it's really old."

"It could be from outside known space," suggested Vaatus.

There was, of course, only one way to find out. Before trying to dock, Kroller cut engines and used directional thrusters to nudge his Gravity around the generation ship's midsection. He wanted to see all sides of this thing, just in case.

It was a smart precaution. His sensors noted the anomaly and he pivoted the Gravity to get a look through the porthole. What he saw confounded him again. It was the same color as the generation ship, with the same type of hull: smooth, gray, unmarked. It almost looked like a growth bulging out of the ark proper, but as he nudged the Gravity closer he saw that two flat protrusions, shaped like mandibles but nearly as long as the bulge itself, were jutting out from the opposite side. When he got closer still he saw what might have been engines nacelles facing him, at the moment dark.

Vaatus and Reina were seeing it too. The Nikto asked, "What do you think that is? An escape ship?"

"Or somebody got here first," Reina said.

Kroller shook his head. "That's like no ship I've ever seen. I can't get a reading on its hull composition either."

"What about heat signatures?" asked Vaatus.

Kroller checked his sensors. "I'm not sure… I'm picking up faint traces but those might have been from us. I didn't see anything before."

"Then it probably belongs with the ark," Vaatus reasoned, though he sounded far from sure.

"I'm going to look for the nearest airlock," Kroller said, and began maneuvering the Gravity again with a series of gentle nudges.

With the outer hull so uncluttered, it was easy to find a portal. Adjusting the Gravity's course to match speed with the ark was a little more difficult; the hardest part was extending and manually adjusting the docking tube to seal tight around the airlock's frame. He had to rely on one of his exterior cameras to get the shape and size right, and when he'd thought he'd gotten it, he activated the electromagnetic clamps on the tube's outer rim.

To his shock, nothing happened. The rim refused to lock with the generation ship's hull. According to his readouts the clamps were receiving power, and by all right they should have easily latched onto the ark's exterior. Aside from being incredibly frustrating, it made him wonder all the more where this ship had come from and what it was made of.

When Vaatus saw what was wrong, he began unlatching himself from his chair. "There's got to be a way to lock onto that ship. We'll use cables and hooks if we have to."

"Be careful down there," Kroller said. "Make sure your suit's on tight before you open the airlock."

"Really? I was going to go out like this." Vaatus nimbly pushed from his chair, drifted two meters to the nearest wall, maneuvered himself to touch boots to bulkhead, then kicked off and shot straight through the cockpit's door, down the spine corridor.

The agility of the young and weightless, Kroller thought with a touch of melancholy.

Reina unbuckled herself as well, then made a more leisurely drift to her father's chair. Hanging off its back, looking at his screens, she asked, "Where do you think this came from? It can't be from known space."

"It's hard to tell for sure," Kroller said. "The airlock portal's roughly human-sized."

"That doesn't mean it didn't come from somewhere else. Or maybe it was built by aliens."

"Anything's possible. Can't do more than guess until we get inside."

"Maybe not even then." Reina bent forward, resting her chin on the back of the chair. "Maybe somebody's alive in here," she said softly.

It was always possible. The vast majority of generation ships that got rediscovered were floating mausoleums. Over the centuries systems had broken down, time had taken its toll, and finely-crafted life-support systems failed. That wasn't to say all these ships were failures; Kroller had been to a few worlds where the locals proudly claimed descent from arks that had launched pre-Liberation, but all of those successful journeys had been completed within a century or two of the Tyrants' defeat. The arks that popped up nowadays were usually ones that had missed their initial marks and doomed themselves to extra centuries in the void, where nothing could help them when things went wrong.

But maybe this strange vessel was different.

Reine was still in a thoughtful mood. She supposed, "If something went really wrong on that thing, they would have taken that back-up ship, right?"

"Maybe. But they didn't."

"You didn't see any hull fractures, right?"

"Everything looks intact. But again—"

"We can't know sore sure until we get inside. I know."

It was hard to tell if she was still mad at him, or just impatient. So they hung in mutual silence until Vaatus's voice scratched over the internal comm.

"I've got us hooked in," the young Nikto said. "The docking tube should hold. There's an exterior handle on this thing. I'm going to try and get it open."

"Hold on," Kroller replied. "Wait for us to suit up and get down with you."

"Dad, you should stay in here." Reina said. "Somebody's got to keep the ship manned. Plus, you never know if somebody else is going to come looking for this thing."

It was, he admitted, a valid point, but he still wanted to object. Reina leaned forward so her hair brushed his face and said, "Don't worry, I'll help Vaatus. We'll be fine."

With that she placed a dry kiss on his cheek, then pushed off and maneuvered down the spine corridor.

Was he forgiven, or was she just scared? Kroller figured he'd take it either way. He settled back in his chair, in the silent cockpit, and waited. Eyes on the scanners, hands still on the Gravity's control yoke. Because as Reina had said, you just never knew.

-{}-

For Vaatus, entering the ark was like stepping back in time, in more ways than one.

The first way was obvious. This generation ship had been drifting through space for uncounted centuries. If it was anything like the other arks that were periodically discovered (and based on its design, that was quite an if) it had probably launched in the pre-Liberation era, more than half a millennium ago. He might be the first living, waking, sentient to enter its corridors in all that time.

The second way was more personal. The long, plain, pitch-black hallway stretched before him now inevitably reminded him of another dark and drifting ship. That one had been much younger and smaller but it had been derelict all the same, left to drift by pirates outside the Taskored system.

Vaatus didn't know how long he'd spent on that dark ship, huddled amidst the corpses, taking shallow breaths, counting them, wondering how many more he had left before he used up dwindling air. He only knew that it had seemed like eternity, and he'd spent it all cursing himself for picking this ship as the one to stow away on. Better to have stayed on Kintan, he'd thought, and die beneath a sadist's knife than suffocate on a dead ship in empty space.

He should have died there, by all rights. Kroller's rescue still seemed like a miracle.

It was hard not to think of that other ship as he entered this one. He and Reina were both in full vacuum suits. The bulky, beige things obscured their differences in height and build; even their faces were obscured by the mirrorlike tint to the transparent helmet domes. The footpads of these suits were equipped with electromagnetic clamps that should have locked onto the ark's deck, but again the strange metal refused them. So they drifted, using hands and feet to edge themselves down the long straight corridor, relying on their helmet-mounted spotlights to shine the way deeper into a silent, airless shaft.

It was not a promising start. Vaatus still hoped there might be some pocket of the ship that still had power, lights, atmosphere, and even life. He hated to think that thousands of sentient beings had died in cold stellar darkness, and he nearly had.

Despite his creeping dread and the echo of haunting memory, Vaatus had an active imagination, and he tried to guess that kind of people had built a ship like this. A long, plain, pitch-black corridor wasn't much to judge by, but that only fired his imagination. Whoever built this thing had been roughly the same size and shape as a Nikto or human, but the design was different from anything he'd ever seen, and he'd seen a lot.

Perhaps, he dared think, this ship belonged to the Tyrants themselves. The aliens who'd once ruled this part of space were draped in mystery; nobody even knew what they'd called themselves, and the only images were passed-down sketches and engravings of tall bipeds with jutting eyestalks and cone-like heads. Yes, they were the ones who'd mastered faster-than-light travel, but this ship could still have been something left behind and cast adrift for five hundred years.

He and Reina pushed deeper and deeper into the ship. When they reached an intersection with another corridor they pushed their way toward the aft section, and toward the mysterious alien ship that clung to its hull. All the while they bounced off blank walls and glided down empty, airless, weightless corridors.

"Do you know what's weird about this?" Reina asked.

Vaatus had gotten so used to the silence that he jerked at the sound of her voice. He took a breath, calmed himself, and replied, "No. What?"

"It's so… clean. I'm not even seeing footprints, handprints, anything."

"We might be the first people down these halls in centuries."

"Still, it looks like they've never been used at all."

"Maybe everyone was already in deep cryosleep when it set off."

"Maybe there's no crew or passengers at all," Reina wondered. "Maybe the whole ship is… one machine. A big synthetic lifeform."

Vaatus wasn't much pleased by that thought. "What does that mean? We're crawling down, what, it's throat?"

"Better than up the other end."

Better, but not by much. It was a disquieting line of thought, and it ended as soon as they found the first crèche.

As soon as they pushed open the door and drifted into the chamber, Vaatus's thought of a bunch of eggs lined up in a carton. Dozens of smooth ovoid capsules lay in rows across a broad chamber. Each was about three meters long and each seemed to be hooked up to an independent computer console. Vaatus had never seen a cryogenic freezing chamber before but he'd heard stories and seen pictures. He knew this for what it was.

Which made the next step all the more grim. He approached the nearest capsule and shone his spotlight onto its surface. As expected, the capsule's smooth roof was transparent. Beneath the shell he could make out a humanoid body lying flat on its back. In the vacuum-tight container the corpse had not rotted so much as dried out and withered. Parchment-like skin was desiccated and curled tight around a skeletal structure that looked, at first glance, perfectly human.

When he tore his eyes off that body he looked at the other capsules. Rows and rows and rows of capsules. There must have been a hundred in this chamber alone, and how many such rooms were there throughout the ship? Vaatus might have guessed, but didn't want to.

Reina was at the capsule beside his, shining her light down. He couldn't see her face but her voice was brittle. "We should check the other ones… just to be sure."

"Right," Vaatus agreed, but before moving on he stepped away from the capsule, tapped the control panel on his right wristpad, and tried to call the Gravity. He wasn't sure if this ship's strange metals would interfere with the comm and was relieved to hear his father's crackling voice.

"I read you," Kroller replied. "Report."

"We've found bodies," Vaatus said. "Lots of bodies. They're all in defunct freezing chambers."

"I expected as much. Are they still sealed?"

"Yes. We haven't found any power source on this ship yet. It might have been out for a long, long time."

"And idea how long?"

"I have no idea when this ship might have come from, no. Or where."

"What are the bodies like?"

"It's hard to tell from the desiccation, but they look human."

"What are you talking about?" Reina's voice cut in. "They don't look human to me."

"What do you mean?" asked Vaatus.

"Look at this one here," She waved him over. "I don't know what this is."

Vaatus pushed himself to her side and looked into the next capsule. The body looked almost human, but two fleshy appendages, now withered like dried vines, curled out from the top of the creature's skull and fell down to wrap around its collar.

Vaatus drifted to another capsule. He shone his light onto a body that looked much more human, with no head-tails at all.

"What in M'dweshuu's name..." he muttered. In his shock the old curse slipped out.

"What's going on?" Kroller sounded alarmed. "What have you found?"

"I'm not sure," Reina said as she looked into yet another capsule. "This one has… four arms."

"Four arms?" Vaatus went over to her and looked in. Sure enough, that corpse had two sets of hands folded over its chest and a long-snouted face ending in two pairs of nostrils. In addition, what looked like shed hairs—shed fur, really—was scattered across the bottom of the container.

"What are you seeing?" Kroller pressed. "Can you explain it to me?"

"There's a lot of different species here," Vaatus said. "Some of them look human, but the rest..."

"I have no idea," Reina said. "I've never seen aliens like these in my life. How did they all get on the same ship together? Where did they come from?"

"Wherever it was, I'm guessing it's nowhere near here," Vaatus said under his breath. "Father, we'll keep exploring."

"All right," Kroller said grudgingly. "No sign of any company. Take your time and be careful."

"We will." Vaatus tapped off the link and said to Reina, "Are you alright?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't I be? It's just a room full of corpses."

"It doesn't look like they suffered."

"Yeah… Well, that's something anyway." Reina turned from her capsule and looked to the far side of the room. Her spotlight swept over curved glass and flat walls until it illuminated a second door.

Not a door: just the frame. That portal was already open; they could make out the walls of another corridor beyond.

"Um," Reina said, "How did that happen?"

"Maybe some technical glitch," Vaatus offered hopefully. "Something triggered it to open. A blown fuse, maybe."

They approached the portal carefully, and when they drew near they saw it couldn't be. The sliding door had been forced aside, and more roughly than they'd been pushing doors so far. Even though the thickness of his glove, Vaatus could feel the deep scrape made into the door's edge at its midsection. It was as though somebody had pried it open using a bar of hard metal.

"I don't like this," Reina said.

"I don't either."

"That hallway… do you think it leads to the other ship?"

Vaatus thought. The best he could say was, "There's only one way to find out, isn't there?"

She didn't argue. They swung into the next hallway and pushed onward. It was another long plunge into the dark, and this one felt far more dangerous.

It was Reina's suggestion to turn off their spotlights. When they did, they drifted through total blackness. They watched and waited for other signs of light, cast by other explorers, but found nothing. So they turned their lamps back on and continued, more tense than ever.

They pushed ahead until Reina found another door, also pried open. As a precaution they turned off their lamps before swinging into the next room, only to find themselves in utter blackness again. When their lamps turned on they saw a bleakly similar sight as before. More capsules were spread across the floor. As Vaatus and Reina drifted across the room their shone their lamps through the glass to see more desiccated bodies, once more mixing human-like forms with those of non-humans totally unfamiliar.

"There's probably rooms like these all over the ship," Reina said bleakly. "I don't know how many more I can take."

"What do you want to do? Turn back?"

She considered. "Maybe… maybe we can try to find the power core to this place. It's probably back by the engine section."

Vaatus was good with technology, but he had a feeling this ship's designs would be as alien as the rest of it. Still, it was better than looking at bodies. They might even find something valuable to salvage, something that would make this grim mission into history's depths worthwhile.

He scoured the rest of the room with his spotlight and found another door opposite the one they'd entered through. That one was still sealed tight, and he asked Reina, "What do you think? Back the way we came, or take a new route?"

She was a long time in replying. "Let's go back the way we came."

Back down that long hallway, toward the engine section and that mysterious spacecraft clinging to the ark's hull. As they resume their plunge down the black-bottomed shaft, Vaatus found himself wishing he'd brought some kind of weapon. Slug-throwers were useless in a vacuum, and beam-tubes were too cumbersome (plus Gravity Scorned had none anyway) but he really could have used a melee weapon. A kis'kor sword maybe, or a char'ka with a nice long reach. He didn't miss much about Kintan, but Niktos made fine blades. And really, a blade was all you needed to cut open your enemy's vac suit and kill him with decompression.

Vaatus silently prayed (not to M'dweshuu, not to any specific god) that he and Reina were the only living souls on this ship.

Disappointment was almost immediate. He and Reina had progressed less than a hundred meters when the lights came on. Two thin parallel lines running down the center of the hallway's opposing walls became suddenly luminous. The artificial glow blinded at first and they struggled to shield their eyes and shut down their spotlights.

"Gods damn it," Reina panted, "Where did that come from?"

"They must have found a power generator and turned it on."

"I'm going to call Dad. Hold on," she said, and Vaatus listened as she tried to add a third party to their link.

All they got was interference. He heard Reina curse under her breath and watched her stab her wrist panel to no avail. While she struggled, he turned his eyes to one end of the suddenly-illuminated hallway, then the other. At the far end of the path down which they'd been traveling he marked another doorway, already pried open.

"Do you think they're jamming the signal somehow?" Reina asked after giving up.

"I have no idea," Vaatus allowed. "It might… be accidental. Turning this thing on might have—"

"Scrambled something, I get it..." Reina cursed again. "What should we do?"

Vaatus pointed past her shoulder, to the waiting door. "We know which way they went."

"And you want to follow them?"

"Yes." Even though his heart was pounding with fear. Even though whoever had turned on this ship was probably as alien and inscrutable as the strange civilization that had built it. They'd come too far to run away without understanding what they'd found.

Still, he badly wished he had a weapon. Even a blade would do.

"Oh hells," Reina exhaled. "Let's see what we've got."

They pushed ahead cautiously this time. When they reached the portal they peered through carefully before going in, but no caution could prepare them for the sight beyond. Interior lights laid bare a massive circular chamber over fifty meters across, run through the center by a great shaft of collocated machinery like the spoke of a wheel. Vaatus realized it was just that, and that they'd found the fulcrum point on which the generation ship was set to spin.

Reina grabbed the threshold and swung herself into the new area first. Vaatus followed, but his body wasn't even through the gate when he heard an alarmed yelp. His sister grabbed him by the sleeve of his vac suit and pointed with her free hand to the great central spoke. Vaatus spotted the glow of a lit-up console where the pillar met the aft bulkhead.

Then he saw two figures in vacuum suits of their own, both standing in front of the console. Yes, standing. Somehow the magnetic clamps on the soles of their boots were able to attach to the bulkhead. After an initial second of shock, Vaatus realized they were both facing away from him, and in this airless chamber they were deaf as well as blind to his presence. That gave them a chance, a chance to come up on these people from behind, to surprise them, maybe even to—

Hope died again as both figures, in inexplicable unison, turned to face Vaatus and Reina.

Two against two, they stared at each other across a twenty-meter gap.

"What do we do?" whispered Vaatus.

After a long heartbeat Reina offered, "Maybe we can talk to them. Maybe..."

She didn't finish her thought. She was already typing on her wrist pad, setting her comm unit to broadcast on all possible frequencies.

Even before she got a word out they received another nasty surprise. One of the figures drew something out of his suit's metal frame. It was long, it was thin, it gleamed in the chamber's bright lights, and it was sharp along one side. It was the blade of a sword.

Really, this wasn't fair at all.

"Wait, wait!" Reina cried. "We're just… we're just salvagers! We mean you no harm!"

Too late. The one with the sword had already kicked away from the bulkhead and was soaring through empty space toward them. In fact he was coming faster than his push-off should have allowed and would be on them in seconds.

A falling blade; a loved one in its path. Memory and instinct took over. Vaatus waited until the sword-bearing figure was almost on them, then shoved his sister aside and kicked off from the wall. Vac-suited bodies collided; metal clacked and fabric scraped, and Vaatus grabbed his attacker by the wrist and held out the sword-arm to keep the weapon away. At the same time the globe of his helmet nearly touched his opponent's, and in the chamber's bright light he could see through the tinted glass and discern the face beneath. It was a human male, maybe as young as Reina.

He had just enough time to register that before the human twisted his body and wrenched his sword-hand free. And then, suddenly, Vaatus was flying away. He didn't understand how; he didn't even think the human had kicked him. He sailed through the vacuum toward the central pillar, only to find himself jerked against the side of his suit as he changed direction again. Nothing made sense; it was like he'd ricocheted off an invisible wall.

And now he was sailing toward the second figure, the one still magnetically clamped to the aft bulkhead. At least this one didn't have a sword.

Vaatus swung his feet ahead and bent legs to absorb the impact. As soon as he landed he kicked off and closed the gap between himself and the second figure in seconds. Bodies collided again but this time Vaatus had momentum on his side. He slammed his opponent, grabbed both wrists and twisted arms strong enough to wrench them from their sockets. At the same time he kicked the figure back against the console. Again he leaned in close enough to peer through the bulbous helmet and see the face beyond—

—a face that was almost human but so very different. In the bleak bright light there was no mistaking the horns jutting from the woman's brows and the smaller ones dropping beside her chin, nor could he miss her skin's scarlet hue.

Who were these people?

Shock slowed him. The red-skinned woman broke one arm free and punched him in the stomach. The layers of the vac suit absorbed the worst, but it still stole his breath and knocked him away. The woman wrenched back, violently, and slammed into the console again.

Lights flashed. The vast chamber shuddered around them. For a moment Vaatus was terrified he'd just destroyed them all.

Then the trembling stopped. He braced himself against the bulkhead and faced off against the woman whose red mien was obscured once more by tinted glass. His heart pounded and breath rasped within his helmet's bubble.

He also, finally, heard Reina yelling at him, "Vaatus, wait! Please, just stop!"

He looked back toward the entrance and saw the shape of his sister hovering at the doorway. The sword-bearing human floated beside her but did not touch her, was not trying to harm her in any way.

Then he heard a new voice. The man said: "Please, stop attacking. We are not here to hurt. We are… investigate. We are like you."

He spoke Tionese with an accent, but none Vaatus could place. As well-traveled as Vaatus was, that was confounding too. The Nikto glanced at the other stranger and saw the red woman was tensed and ready to spring. "Where did you come from? Who are you people?"

The next voice was the woman's. She snapped something to her comrade in a language Vaatus had never heard of. The man gave something in reply, then said in Tionese, "It is a long story and it does not concern you. You should leave now."

Frankly, that sounded like an excellent idea, but before Vaatus could response his comm channel burst into static. For a second it roared in his ear, and then heard the familiar, frantic, voice of his father: "Reina? Vaatus? Respond! What the hell is going on down there?"

It was the most welcome sound Vaatus had ever heard.

-{}-

"Do you read me?" Kroller pleaded. He wanted to tear off his belt, jump into a vac suit, and plunge in after them, but he knew they'd be deep inside the generation ship by now and impossible to find. All he could do was keep calling their names in desperation until something availed him.

And when he heard Reina's voice, rent by static, say to him, "Dad, we're okay! We're fine!"

Even with the distortion he could tell she wasn't fine at all. "What happened inside the ship? What did you see?"

There was another wash of static, but he heard Vaatus ask, "What did you see? Did something happen outside?"

"Lights started up all along the hull," Kroller told them. "And something ejected from the ship."

"What do you mean ejected? Like an escape pod?"

"I don't know." He glanced at his sensor board. Whatever it was that had broken off from the ark, it was falling toward the planet and would probably burn up in the atmosphere unless it had good ablative shields. "It wasn't that weird ship we saw. That thing's still docked to the main hull."

"Yeah, we figured that," Reina said huskily.

"What's going on in there? Listen, if you need help—"

Kroller stopped mid-sentence. A marker had come onto his sensor board. It was inbound from the outer edge of the gravity well and its icon was blinking yellow as Kroller's computer tried to get a read on it. Any kind of ship could have just decanted from hyperspace but Kroller knew he wouldn't be so lucky.

And so he wasn't. The computer proclaimed it clearly: one polyreme bearing the command sigil of the Imperial navy, designation Harridan.

"Time's up," he told his children. "You have to get out of there now."