“That’s… a lot of gold.” Damon looked at the stacks of coins placed in neat rows within a metal box the size of his fist. “I’m pretty sure this is too much gold.”

He glanced at Idina. The young woman was looking at the box with very wide eyes. Within the room they’d rented, there was only Han left to try and contextualize exactly how much money had been thrown his way, and the blond man had his eyes wide like plates just as much.

“Definitely too much.” Damon frowned. “You guys sent me to scare the knight-lady, didn’t you?”

“She is a knight, but not by role. She’s a user that was anointed into the job of a knight. It is similar but different, since users cannot take on any roles.” Han stroked his beard, chuckling. “But it is true that we’d thought it a… minor balancing of scales to send you to meet her.”

That got a frown. “What happened?”

“She was less than helpful when we were trying to get information about the order of knights.” With a gruff shake of his head, he crossed his arms.

“Intentionally?”

“She wanted to be a bother in much the same way many petty people with important positions tend to be.” A wry smile followed. “But I must admit to amusement to hearing her hymn’s panic upon meeting you.”

Damon laughed, shaking his head. “Next time, either give a heads up or be ready for things to blow up in your face.”

“I will do you one better.” Han nodded. “I will invite you to a drink in celebration of our good fortune.”

With a moment of hesitation, he glanced at the gold coins. “Isn’t this, erm…”

“It is a very generous reward for killing a veritable horde of monsters. But not to a degree that one might believe it to be excessive.” Han patted Damon’s back. “As far as I’m concerned, Chosen by the Gods or not, you’ve shown to be a true user through and through.” He laughed. “Such a thing requires a celebration, even a modest one. Let us wait for Sybil’s return before we toast for this windfall that fell on your lap.”

The hesitation remained as he glanced at Idina and then down at his hands. There was that gnawing sensation of wrongness. The last time he’d drank he’d drank too much, and… well, he’d woken up in a cave God knows where or how. But could he really just keep himself knotted into a ball like this indefinitely?

“Fine.” A deep sigh and a nod. “Why not?”

 

---

 

Damon took a sniff of the mug of what he’d been told was beer. It had a smell to it that felt potent in a way that didn’t quite match what he thought it ought to be. On either side of him, Han and Sybil drank from their respective much smaller mugs. Idina had turned down participating and instead had remained in the room.

There was a tension in the air neither of the two wanted to acknowledge. They eyed Damon every handful of seconds while nursing their own drinks. Sybil, in particular, had a glint to her gaze that had the stench of mischief.

“This is the strongest stuff they have, isn’t it?” Damon finally concluded, taking a single gulp of the amber liquid.

It was like someone had put a shot of vodka into a beer. The taste certainly wasn’t bad. It had a slight sweetness to it he hadn’t expected. There was something wrong, but right about the mix that didn’t quite seem to disagree with him. Damon could see himself drinking something like this from time to time.

Both of the users waited for a heartbeat, looking intently.

“Damn.”

Han slapped a silver coin on the table, shoving it over to Sybil. She chuckled, pulling the coin into her pockets.

“A bet?”

“I told him you wouldn’t choke on the nectar-booze.” Sybil spoke, voice full of mirth. “He thought you would. Uneven ears here did when he first tried it.”

“It had caught me by surprise. And my ears are perfectly even.” Han shot a mock glare.

Damon rolled his eyes. “This is strong stuff, definitely gives beer a run for its money, but I’ve had stronger. Just not at this volume.”

That got the other users sharing a glance, and then at him. “So you are not just more resistant to poisons in general, but the ones in beverage form as well.”

“I bet he will still be able to stand after the mug.” Han quickly slapped the coin on the table, his eyes glinting as he focused on the human. “I will split it in half with you, of course.”

“That’s a fool’s bet.” Sybil rolled her eyes. “The impressive part would be if he could stand after the second.”

“Let’s not go off betting how much booze I can take.” Damon raised the mug and took a second gulp. “We have to hit the road tomorrow. Let’s not go overboard.”

 

---

 

Floating in space, suspended in the void and entirely too sure that things weren’t going well, the first obstacle in Emilie’s way had been the blast-doors to the cockpit. They’d been meant to protect the pilot in the worst-case scenario, and it had taken her a whole day-cycle to pry it open to a point she could safely squeeze through.

The only source of light within the spaceship were the headlights on her EVA suit. Darkness in every direction, not even the safety-lights were on, which was foreboding to say the least.

Still, her first order of business was to check the atmosphere as she moved weightlessly across the corridors. She had to ensure there were no leaks, that the pressure remained constant, and that there wasn’t anything like toxic fumes floating around. After she was certain she could remove her helmet, Emilie rushed off to the fridge to eat and hydrate. Once certain that the biological needs were met well enough, she set out to confirm everything else.

She wanted to head out and check on the generators right away, to get them back online, but every scrap of training she’d received forbade her from doing that.

“Wouldn’t want to accidentally burn a power conduit or something.” She mumbled under her breath, sealing the EVA suit and rummaging through her locker for the diagnostic tools. The detonation had clearly rattled things, but fortunately, nothing was broken.

She grabbed a hold of the “Boom-cube”, a miniature hand-held reactor, and maneuvered her way back into the cockpit, ignoring the floating pieces of metal she’d left there after having managed to force the doors open.

Emilie began making popping sounds with her lips as she removed the protective panels connecting to the spare intelligence core. Plugging in the boom-cube, she paid close attention as the metal box began humming softly. “At least something works as it should… for once.”

It didn’t go unnoticed that the boom-cube was one of the few ‘critical’ pieces of a ship’s diagnostic toolbox that she’d purchased herself rather than trust the cheapest-alternative the bosses had at hand. Keeping with the popping sound, she plugged in an interaction screen to the intelligence core once the booting sequence had been confirmed. The green light from the screen bathed the mostly dark room.

“Now let’s see the damage…”

The screen lit-up, and Emilie blinked repeatedly, the popping sound coming to a halt.

“Well, there’s my problem. Half of the ship’s missing.”

Or maybe not.

For all she could tell right now, the ship’s diagnostic systems could have been damaged, so the intelligence-core wasn’t catching any signals from the rest of the chunk of junk that was now moving through space in who knew what direction.

A quick check of acceleration and space-deformation confirmed that at the very least, she wasn’t within any large object’s gravity well just yet. The outside censors were an entirely different sub-system, however. “And better handle the horrors one at a time.”

Besides, if she was hurtling towards an asteroid or something else that might kill her, what could she do while the ship was entirely offline? So the priority remained the same: figure out how to get control on the ship. Particularly the water recycling system. Emilie had enough water for roughly a week and enough food for a month. The EVA could cover her air-needs for at least thrice that. Going into hibernation might help prolong it further, but if nothing was operational, her days were counted anyway.

So unless she was currently on a crash-course that would get her to smack onto something within the next week, then water had priority.

Emilie had been about to almost turn off the diagnostics tool when she noticed a flicker.

It had been only a split second, something that could have been little more than a glitch. But for a moment, another part of the ship had disappeared from the readings layout. Frowning, she reached for the playback, and it confirmed it hadn’t been a glitch in the software or the ship.

“It’s not supposed to do that.” She muttered, popping her lips. A hunch pushed her to recheck the diagnostic recordings all the way back since the emergency disengagement of the warp bubble.

It was a play-by-play of pop-up alarms and self-repair systems. The main generator had taken a huge hit, but it had still been working. The ship had cut all thrust and begun handling the atmosphere leaks. But as it did this, something else had started to happen, tiny glitches and bugs, the diagnostic system temporarily losing connection to parts of the ship before they were repaired, and then lost again.

And then lost permanently.

Within an hour of the explosion, the main generator went offline for no apparent reason.

As if the conduits had been severed… “But that doesn’t make…”

Emilie lunged for the intelligence core and yanked the connection to the boom-cube.

It whirled in complaint. But she was far more concerned with the intelligence box, watching it attentively as she feared the worst. A part of her hoped she’d been wrong, that her fears weren’t being realized.

And yet, under the light of her EVA suit illumination, she saw it, as the intelligence core, that once indistinct gray cube, began to slowly dissolve. It took only seconds, pieces of the computer turning to dust, floating in the lack of gravity before the process slowed and stopped half-way through.

“Nanomachines.”

Her chitin itched at the thought.

The ship was invaded by nanomachines.

This was the worst. A class four technology destroyer.

Emilie took a deep shuddering breath, moving slowly, oh so slowly, as she covered the intelligence core with the panel. She wanted to avoid having the cloud of shredded computer and nanomachines spread throughout her cabin, but at this point, it seemed like they were all over the ship.

Tiny robots roughly larger than a cell, programmed and built to chase electrical currents and use that very same charge to keep themselves powered. And while powered, they’d attempt to either make more of themselves or to break down everything within reach down to particle-sized chunks.

Until they ran out of charge.

If they were within the cables of the ship, then anything that made the current run through them would trigger the machines, they would continue breaking down every powered system on the ship.

Emilie’s breathing quickened to a near-panicked wheeze.

She shuddered, chitin itching under her suit. She was dead, she couldn’t do anything, the bots had invaded the ship. The moment something went online, the current would power them back up, draw them in, and they would destroy everything. The ship would be reduced to nothing more than one giant piece of debris.

Were there any active defenses within the system, the helpless ship would’ve been destroyed by now. But it didn’t matter.

“I’m dead.”

Whispering the words, the young Zuun drew her knees close to her abdomen and hugged them tightly, floating in the absolute lack of gravity.

The sound of her breathing echoed within the shadows and metallic corridors of the ship.