They stepped out of the monumentally oversized cable-car and stepped onto an unloading platform that was teeming with robots and other people. Cargo began to unload and people began arguing. Prices, costs, money. It was a battle of merchants with at least a hundred or so people bargaining even as the cargo was being unloaded by workers or robots or both.

Damon kept his hood and mask on, walking unperturbed out of the giant box with Idina close at his side. Though he did notice Sybil and Han taking part in the haggling, they waved the duo off, pointing at an area relatively away from the hustle and bustle. There were some guards there, but the moment they saw Damon, they very promptly pretended he wasn’t there.

A meager ten minutes later, Han and Sybil caught up.

“Just a friend that owed me money.” The sasin declared. “We should head over to my home and put everything down.”

“You actually own a place?”

“There are houses to spare. The king gifts them to citizens that have become users.” Han shook his head. “It took me about a year to pay for the repairs for mine.”

“The king's gifted broken homes?” Damon laughed. “Why are they broken?”

“It’s what you get from a handful of thousand years of misuse and looting.” Sybil explained. “The city was built during the age of heroes, but was mostly abandoned shortly after.”

“Because the cable-cars broke down.” Han pointed out. “It was impossible to sustain anything more than a hundred people or so when you couldn’t get water or food up here. The Golden King put a lot of resources into fixing the cable-cars shortly after the age of Ruin, sending expeditions to salvage parts from the other pieces. It was thanks to him that trade between the west and east of the continent was reconnected. His successors fixed the Thalaring temple during the age of… um…” He grimaced, scratching his temple, trying to recall the name.

“Yeah, they fixed it, things have been improving since.” Sybil interrupted, grinning from ear to ear as she reached out to grab Damon’s hand and pull him closer. “The city is basically centered around the Goddess’ temple since it doubles as the royal palace. There’s a main road connecting the two cable-car transports at each end of the city, but get far enough from either and you’ll start seeing the empty homes. We should-.”

There was a jolt and a pause. Her eyes went wide from underneath the hood as her head shot skywards. And it was a gesture everyone around them had caught onto. There was a sudden silence, all heads turned upwards. “What is-.”

“Shh.”

Han made a quieting gesture. His posture was relaxed but his expression was somewhat shocked. Damon looked in Idina’s direction and she was confused, keeping her voice to a whisper. “There’s… a hymn. It is… so loud.”

“It’s the Goddess of smithing, Irsi.” Sybil hissed, wide eyed and full of shock.

A sizzling wheezing sound soon made itself heard, and Damon’s eyes turned upwards in the direction everyone had been looking at. The contraption looked like a V22 Osprey, except one that had its proportions all wrong. The wings were closer and the body was too narrow, with the rotor replaced by the jet engine. The first actual set of jet engines Damon had seen where everything that flew had rotors in some shape or form.

Painted in pearly white, gold, and ochre, the machine was circling around the tower at the center of the city. One, two, three, then it started making larger circles, sweeping over the city in a growing outward spiral. Many people around them fell to their knees, bowing their heads when the machine passed over them.

Damon half expected for the show to be over in a handful of seconds once it had gone wherever it was going. Instead, the pearly white machine stopped and swerved as soon as it had passed over them, turning the lazy route into a tight spin, aiming itself in their direction. It was getting lower and closer.

“… it’s coming our way.” Damon spoke with dawning realization and horror.

The approaching robot had halted. And it aimed.

At him.

There was a crackle as the speakers on the machine came to life.

“Welcome to Sky Bridge Two, Administrator Damon.” The synthetic voice, one that crackled and popped as if being spoken through a radio with too much static interference. “Unfortunately, the network array is still under repairs. Please visit the workshop for a detailed breakdown of the situation.”

Nervous looks from his three companions were followed by all three simultaneously stepping away from him. “Hey!” He hissed, even as the flying robot broke its attention from him and turned to leave.

“The Goddess spoke to you!” Sybil hissed, eyeing the robot as it flew off. “Called your name, and used that weird title.”

“Did you understand what she said?” Idina asked, looking at him in exactly the same way she’d been staring at the grand monuments just a couple days prior.

“She… uh… invited me to her workshop.” His gaze wandered, finding everyone else in the area looking his way with no small amount of interest. “I think we should leave.”

Han glanced about and nodded. “Let’s.”

 

---

 

Deep in space, well outside any planet’s atmosphere, Emilie’s scouting ship continued its unseen trajectory through the void. Its sole live occupant could have been worried about a potential destination, but instead focused on the pieces of scrap, cabling, and unused parts that floated around.

The room had been lined with the thin resin casings typically used to protect and insulate devices. All to isolate the space within the room itself from the rest of the ship. It was as good as she could go in terms of preparations for her set-up. She couldn’t afford a mistake, not here, so she had rationed her lukewarm water and stale meals while working on the entire thing.

In the corner of the room, the water recycler floated listlessly. She had checked the documentation, which was obviously not enough for what she wanted to do. So she’d had to focus on the parts she already knew, adapt the connectors, seal tubing, set up an improvised pumping system. She’d bought herself time by getting water out of the pipes of the ship, the pipes the machine had been connected to.

After what felt like a week’s worth of effort but had probably been closer to four cycles without sleep, Emilie plugged the recycler to the cables that connected to the Boom-box. She turned it on. And waited, keeping a keen eye on the diagnostic tablet for any and all glitches or signs of anything anomalous. The error messages and software complained about the clearly illegal utilization of company property, and Emilie thanked her stars about the time she’d spent in her younger years bypassing such restrictions on gear stolen for her clan.

With bated breath, she kept waiting.

And waiting.

The lights were green, nothing was twitching or changing or happening.

Slowly, she turned on the vacuum pump and poured some water, watching the floating blob of liquid being sucked up into the tube and into the recycler. The machine acknowledged the income, and…

Done.

It worked, the new clean water being dumped into a separate container.

Emilie waited another minute, holding her breath.

Turning off the boom-box generator, she stood, hands trembling. She’d done it. It worked.

It worked.

With a scream and a flailing of limbs, floating in zero gravity, Emilie shouted and trembled. The pressure of days of work crumbled down on her chitin as she kept screaming and flailing until she ran out of breath. Her whole body was shaking, all the way through and into a final heaving stop.

“Ok, water works, I have water, I can… now last until the food runs out.”

Her food supplies consisted of what had been available in the fridge, which would run out within a dozen or so cycles, and what was in storage. Storage being in the rear of the ship, it had been one of the areas that had received the most damage during the explosion. The ship had gone offline while in the process of fixing that. There was little doubt the area would have lost its atmosphere, though the question was whether it had lost its cargo as well.

Emilie had delayed going there. Opening doors to that area could mean losing some or a lot of her air. And sure, her EVA suit could recycle her breath for months, but how would she drink or eat if the room didn’t have air?

Maneuvering carefully, she left the ‘clean room’ that had once been her personal quarters, and closed the doors in a slow, achingly exerting effort. Then she prepared. If the storage area was in a vacuum, then opening the door would cause strong air currents until the pressures were equalized. But if there was a leak or a hole, then that equilibrium would only be achieved until all air ran out.

To avoid decompressing the whole ship, she’d have to make do with an improvised ante-chamber, to minimize air loss. One that could withstand the pressure differential.

She got to work.

 

---

 

Five cycles, an unreasonable amount of scrapped panels, and Emilie’s favorite new toy the resin gun and she’d made herself a cozy closet dividing the corridor with the doors leading to the cargo area.

And thus, once safely strapped to the wall, she started the process of opening the doors. Within seconds, she heard a hissing sound, and her suit warned her of external depressurization. Emilie opened the breach a bit more, allowing for the air to escape a bit faster. She waited until her suit confirmed near total vacuum. Then moved to sprinkle some metal dust around the improvised wall she’d built.

The dust remained suspended. Which was good, it meant there were no air currents.

Her wall worked.

“That’s good.” She mumbled to herself, working to finish opening the door. Once at the other side, she closed it and checked her surroundings to see the damage. “Oh.”

The cargo bay had been breached, pierced open, a gaping hole in the side. There were signs of abrasive damage, with some of the metal melted and deformed. But what drew Emilie’s attention was the smooth, flat hole in one of the walls. It matched exactly the sort of damage the nanomachines made when eating up the ship.

“So that’s how they got on board.”

It had hit one of the diagnostic sub-systems. She’d take the time to figure out what that meant at a later time. For now, she tethered herself against the wall with the largest length of rope she’d been able to find. With barely more than a little impulse, she jumped out of the ship to look at the external damage.

“Oh, my dear Sussie…”

Emilie grimaced at the state of her ship.

The engines were just about ready to get thrown to the scrap heap, the damage to the thrust modules would’ve likely turned the whole thing into a bomb if the engine ever turned on… though she doubted it would be able to, as the engine was tied directly to the main generator. The nanomachines no doubt would have made quick work of the thing.

She activated her EVA suit’s magnetic boots and untied the tether.

The rest of the ship looked mostly untouched, even if there was heavy scorch damage on the front. With the assessment complete, she sighed and looked outwards. The darkness of space was all that met her. The twin stars that occupied the center of the system twinkled in the distance.

By the looks of things, she’d been dumped quite far off in the system, probably not too far from the edge of the heliosphere. There wasn’t really anything that could catch her attention other than the stars and nebulas lightyears away.

Besides, if she could actually spot a planet or large object with her suit’s meager sensors, then it would definitely mean it was too close for comfort. Still, she took as many pictures and recordings of the ship and its surroundings as she could. Emilie did not want to come back out here unless strictly necessary, so being able to review the information from the safety of the interior would be preferred.

Returning to the storage area, she began to check what part of the cargo hadn’t flown off into the vacuum of space. Just about everything she’d been carrying had been strapped down and secured, but a good chunk of it was missing.

Using the tablet to check on the box codes, she began to sift through it all.

“Some spare parts, some spare gravitonic floor modules, cryo-chamber?” What was that doing on her ship? She shook it off, continuing through the boxes. “Food!” Another small cheer, this bought precious time. She made sure to mark the metal container as a priority to bring inside.

Actually, she’d want to pull everything inside.

She’d find a way out of this mess, for sure.