Deafening booms erupt around Tria as she sprints through the battlefield. She steps on the fingers and heads of the fallen, acutely aware of every body around her. The earth is carpeted in shells, blood and bodies. Weapons, some human and some not, tear apart the field.
Tria clutches a cloth close to her chest as she runs. The item within is to be protected, even more so than herself.
Nearby, the leaders of the two warring factions stood, locked in a deathly glare. One was a cyan-skinned man, lanky in form but with highly pronounced muscles. His face was intense, battle-hardened with a steely gaze, yet not a single blemish or scar marred his complexity. The other was an enormous man with toxic greenish skin, large spikes erupting from his battle suit along his spine. The experience of battle shaped his face too, intense scars covering almost every inch of skin. Both men stood in front of each other, exhausted from their battle, the spined man significantly more bloody than the first.
“Zero, you son of a bitch,” the spined man cursed. “Just what does it take to kill you?”
“You can’t,” Zero spat in return. “I’ll never be killed by the likes of you or anyone in Talo. You’re a disgrace of a leader, Spine.”
Spine lunged towards Zero just as Zero did the same, the fury and chaos of war clouding everything but the view of the opponent. Accelerating in motion, they clashed.
A crack, a flash of light, and a rumble. All was silent except for the sound of a body falling to the earth. Only it wasn’t Zero or Spine—it was Tria, falling between the two, dead.
The men looked down at the body in horror.
“TRIA!”
FIVE YEARS LATER
Not again.
Just above the corpse of a middle-aged man floated a ghost, looking down at the body with disappointment. It was the ghost of a young boy, bluish and translucent, bulkily dressed with a gun at his hip. He cursed himself at losing yet another body, staring at the bullet hole in the corpse’s head.
There was a shout nearby that caught the ghost’s attention. His comrade, Aurein, had noticed the ghost’s corpse as well.
“Dammit, Flint! Now’s not the time to die!” Aurein shouted. He was grappling with a gun-wielding guard, trading blows and exchanging punches.
Despite his ghostliness, Flint still existed in the material world. Only he had the physical power of a child at best, and in most situations would be useless. Possessing a body was his only way to help, and with his vessel now unusable, Flint could do little more but watch the fight from the sidelines.
Unless…
“Get away from him!” Flint shouted to Aurein. His young voice sounded ethereal, as if it was only half there, but it was loud enough for his comrade to hear.
Aurein obliged, pushing away his opponent. Flint, still floating above his corpse, whipped an ethereal pistol out of its holster by his hip and pointed it at the guard. He fired, the gunshot resembling a screech, and the bullet hit the guard dead in the head. The guard collapsed.
“So much for an easy job,” Flint remarked, approaching Aurein. Still bound by gravity, he floated only millimeters above the ground when he walked, but his footfalls were silent.
“We were messy,” Aurein pointed. “We might not have alerted every guard in the building if we hadn’t screwed up the assassination. Now we have to get you another body.”
Aurein had a short figure, yet still stood significantly taller than Flint in his true ghost form. His face maintained an almost permanent scowl, bright, shining gold eyes giving him an unusual appearance and a sharp glare.
“Shame,” Flint said, looking over at the body once more. “That one got me far.”
“Let’s get the proof and get back to Talo. We need to leave.”
Aurein stepped over the body of the guard, looking across the room to their late assassination target, a weapons dealer of an enemy faction. An insignia was sewn onto the weapons dealer’s uniform, the text “Vior” visible underneath.
Aurein pulled a vial out of his pocket and leaned down towards their victim, holding the vial over a spot where blood pooled on the weapons dealer’s chest. Aurein put on a rubber glove and then scooped up some of the blood into the vial, sealing it and then turning towards Flint.
“Got it. Let’s go.”
Sitting heavy and dark on the runway was a medium-sized gunship, spacious enough only to seat two—the rest of the space in the craft was occupied by bulky, unfoldable armaments of all kinds. This alone indicated the ship’s age—it was built in the days where warfare was conducted using primarily non-human weapons.
Flint passed behind the ship on his way in, eye-level with the primary thruster whose opening was at least as tall as him. He noticed, for what had to be the thousandth time, the melted-off faction insignia on the ship’s side, which was hastily replaced with his own faction’s insignia—Talo’s. Above this melted-off insignia was the ship’s name carved directly into the hull and adorned with silver-blue paint—the Lucre Main.
The two boarded the Lucre Main, one stepping and one floating inside, and Aurein began the bootup sequence. With no physical body to ground himself with, and ample time as Aurein began to take off, Flint found himself lost in his thoughts, chief among them, disappointment.
His own death had not relieved him of the woes of the material world. Although he was no longer alive, he could never truly pass into the realm of the dead. This bothered him very much, particularly due to the fact that his parents, who had died with him, were forever locked behind a barrier. Flint could approach the barrier between living and dead, put an ear up to it and hear the whispers of those who were gone, but he wasn’t permitted to cross through.
He had tried many times to pass the veil, hoping to see his late parents again, even getting as close as hearing remnants of their voices, but he could never reach them. He lacked even the smallest fraction of the power necessary to break through the veil.
His existence as a ghost wasn’t a mistake between life and death, Flint assumed, but rather a byproduct of his own supernatural power, commonly called a Val, which had rested dormant inside him before his own death.
While he’d given up on trying to find his parents in the world of the dead, he hadn’t stopped existing in the world of the living, hoping he could find a difference to make, a purpose to give his immortality. He’d joined Talo, the faction that ran his home planet, in the hopes of finding meaning.
But as of yet his efforts were fruitless. The loss of this body seemingly told him he still couldn’t protect anything, and while the assassination mission turned out a success, it still left a bad taste in his mouth.
And the mission—why had he joined Talo in the first place, of all the options there were? He never truly understood the politics of it, even after so many years.
A colossal band of space-faring criminals called the Domain, united and powerful, arriving at and conquering an entire galaxy before splitting into five warring factions after a mysterious event. He never understood or asked any more than that while remaining on his secluded home planet except for the fact that Talo was one of those five factions, and that his missions were all towards a greater good for Talo. That “greater good” helped give him the only sense of purpose he could muster.
The Lucre Main reached hyperspace, temporarily distracting Flint from his thoughts as he watched thousands of stars whip by the windows with bright flashes. As quickly as it started, it stopped, and the pinpoints dotting the blackness of space became stationary once more.
Now occupying the front window of the spaceship was the gargantuan planet Epstrum, old capital of the Domain and current headquarters for the Talo faction. For a rocky planet it was unusually large in size, swirling with strands of white clouds large enough to be spotted from orbit and donning on its surface wide patches of navy blue surrounded by green-tinted seas.
While it was heavily disputed territory—the old capital of a galactic empire—only Flint’s faction of Talo held a major base on it. Epstrum’s immensely dangerous geography and climate made it a difficult choice of battleground, its natural features providing protection to the faction’s headquarters among a wide desert.
The Lucre Main orbited closer to the planet’s surface, bringing into view a plethora of other Talo ships coming and going from their own assignments. Aurein navigated into the flow of incoming traffic, following cargo ships and cruisers and frigates of every size down into the thick, hot, and heavy atmosphere of Epstrum.
While the desert surrounding the Talo headquarters was made of sand like most, it wasn’t the traditional tanned orange color of most deserts. The towering, sunset-blanketed dunes were a sun bleached navy blue, somehow both pale and dark at once. In the midst of the rolling sand and bordering dust storms was a series of gargantuan domes, silvery and reflective, an oasis among the hellish cobalt wasteland.
Their ship descended lower and lower, the domes consuming the view of the desert, Aurein navigating right by a vast number of sand-covered flak cannons and defensive weaponry atop towers between the domes. He entered into a large box-like chamber in a dome in which, upon landing, sealed out the sandy desert air with large steel doors. They closed with a core-shaking clank, then another set of doors ahead of them began to clatter open, opening a view into Talo’s main hangar. Their ship rolled slowly into the hangar, Aurein searching for a place to park amidst the countless ships around them, until it came to a shuddering stop and Aurein popped open the door.
They walked and floated past fellow members of Talo down long corridors and through massive chambers, making their way to the large mission station chamber. Through the keycard-locked doors of the station was a huge glowing screen near the ceiling displaying cascades of information, the most prominent of which being a long list of available missions. There were assassination jobs, like the one Aurein and Flint had returned from, there were weapons deals, pickups and escorts. There was a hit list of most wanted persons, all of which belonged either to higher-ups in an enemy faction or ex-Talo traitors who were on the run. There were cash prizes next to each and every job, some menial and some with enough digits to make nearby factionmates stare and drool. The numbers and text were constantly changing and shifting as members took jobs, finished jobs, or new jobs were added to the list.
For a faction of criminals, the operation was awfully civilized—members were rewarded with money upon completing missions, there was food, water, shelter, even recreational centers. The former rough-and-tumble nature of the Domain was lost here in favor of comfort, community, and collaboration. Members were no longer taken from their families at young ages to be built into perfect soldiers, but rather enticed by Talo’s protection from the other factions and its surprisingly rewarding lifestyle. Work for the faction and its goals and be rewarded, was what everyone here innately understood.
Aurein and Flint approached a large, intricate machine built strongly into the ground with four large openings on each side. A screen at eye level flashed on at Aurein’s presence, welcoming him back to Talo and requesting a retina scan. Aurein leaned down towards a device beside the screen, opening an eye wide as the device scanned it with several flashes of light.
A green check mark filled the screen, allowing him access and displaying a condensed list of available missions. Aurein pressed a button by the list which took him to another screen, then another button, and another, until the screen displayed in large letters:
INSERT PROOF BELOW
An LED light flashed by the opening in the machine and a quiet clanking sound was audible from within. Aurein pulled the vial of their assassination target’s blood from a pocket and dropped it into the opening.
PROCESSING. PLEASE REMOVE HANDS AND LOOSE CLOTHING FROM OPENING.
Thin metal flaps closed the hole and several more clicks and creaks came from the machine.
A nearby “ugh” distracted the two. On another side of the proof machine they were using was a fellow Talo member holding a severed hand in a bag. He dropped it into his respective opening and then looked at his hands with disgust where a bit of the previously-bagged blood had leaked onto them. He vigorously wiped his hands on his uniform and then turned to Flint and Aurein with scrunched eyebrows.
“I can’t believe we still use these morbid things,” the man said. “It’s archaic. We’re not barbarians, we shouldn’t need DNA to verify missions anymore. Spine’s no longer our leader—I thought those days were long gone.”
Neither Aurein nor Flint responded to this, instead replying with a stoic silence. What was there to say?
The LED light briefly turned red, and then after a short wait, turned off and the flaps opened once more.
DNA VERIFIED. ASSASSINATION ASSIGNMENT #3395 “RENISS ONGOTT” CONFIRMED DEAD.
WELL DONE!
REWARD: 2,055.00 IB
They walked away from the proof machine, having electronically accepted the payment, and made their way back to their quarters.
On the way back, passing through a bulkhead into one of Talo’s largest residential domes, the two came across the only information more well-known than the current assignments—the massive faction ranking board. It ranked the number of planets each faction controlled, an ever-changing statistic. The ultimate goal of each and every member of Talo, the objective thousands upon thousands dedicated their entire lives to, was to get Talo’s number up—even just by one.
The current rankings read:
#1: KEILA - - - - - 215 PLANETS
#2: VIOR - - - - - 136 PLANETS
#3: TALO - - - - - 102 PLANETS
#4: TYMIN - - - - - 59 PLANETS
#5: AIKAJO - - - - - 43 PLANETS
Every mission, every soldier, everything everyone fought for was represented on that board—and everyone in the Domain wanted to be on top. The control of every planet and every moon was representative of that faction’s power.
Flint glanced at it as he passed, wondering if any of those numbers would change in his brief reading of the board, but they remained stagnant.
Another long walk later and the two entered the heart of Talo’s residential district, a series of long, tall hallways with wide windows that looked into empty white rooms.
Aurein walked to the nearest empty room and pressed a screen next to the large, floor-to-ceiling window. It sprung to life, displaying a number of buttons and options. Aurein pressed a button with a 3D model of a room on it.
The featureless white box that the window displayed was suddenly disturbed by a vast number of blackish robotic arms emerging from the walls, each tightly wrapped with countless tubes and wires and tipped with a sharp nozzle. The arms got to work, roving around the canvas-like box with urgency, filling the room with a constant mechanical whir. Their purpose was not immediately apparent, but after a few seemingly pointless seconds of movement their work became visible. At incredibly high speeds they were 3D-printing an entire room, slowly turning the stark whiteness into a jumble of color.
Flint’s unusually long time in the material world had him bored of most everything the galaxy had to offer. He’d seen countless sunsets over countless seas, space travel had lost its novelty, especially after joining the spacefaring Domain, but the level of futurism present in Talo’s 3D-printed quarters still sparked a hint of amazement.
In order to provide the comfort of living Talo has recently prided itself upon, while still allowing for the flexibility of traveling between Talo bases across the galaxy, Talo started its 3D-printed quarters—a customizable room that could print itself and deconstruct itself into raw materials in any Talo base. Any stark white box could be converted into home and then back again with relative ease.
A few minutes passed, watching the room rapidly build itself line by line, until after just over five minutes of waiting, it was done. Before they entered their freshly-printed room, however, a notification popped up on the adjacent screen.
ATTENTION: YOUR YEARLY FREE ROOM PRINTS HAVE EXPIRED. NEW COST TO PRINT PER ROOM:
550.00 IB
“Five hundred and fifty!” Flint exclaimed at the same time as Aurein’s quiet “Dammit…”
“They raised the price again!” Flint complained to Aurein, who only looked blank-faced at the screen. “Can we even afford that?”
The reminder of how little money the two made put Flint deeper into his state of hopelessness, as if affirmed that his aspirations of success within Talo were going nowhere.
“It is what it is. There’s nothing we can do about it but do better,” Aurein commented.
The door beside the glass window unlocked with a click and they entered.
Without a corporeal body, Flint had a hard time physically feeling things. Since he could phase through lower-density objects, his sense of touch while in ghost form was barely present, but as he floated into his freshly-printed quarters he could still feel the heat of the room. Having just printed from superhot materials, the air inside the room was warm and humid, and every surface was hot to the touch.
He instinctively approached his bed to lie down on but found himself sorely disappointed by his lack of a body to do so. Force of habit.
But Aurein had already gotten into his own bed and was turning off to sleep, leaving Flint no choice but to do the same without the luxury of feeling the warm covers.
He gradually sank down onto the soft covers, studying the room around him, until the exhaustion of the day overcame him and he fell into restless sleep.
Flint hovered a few millimeters off the ground next to Aurein, some light from the bright bluish assignment board passing through his translucent body. Having captured the attention of the two was a new mission in the vast list. It read:
MISSION TYPE: ASSASSINATION
TARGET: LIGEIA MARE
REWARD: 5,800.00 IB
The reward was tempting, and both of them knew well that they specialized in assassination.
Aurein turned away from the massive assignment board overhead and to a smaller screen on a proof machine, where he selected the mission they’d been studying. Silently, he pressed a button reading “MORE INFO.”
LIGEIA MARE IS A TYMIN SPY RECENTLY DISCOVERED WITHIN TALO. FOLLOWING DISCOVERY TEN HOURS AGO, LIGEIA ESCAPED THE EPSTRUM SUPERDOMES AND FLEW ON A CLASS-4 LASK CRUISER INTO DEEP SPACE. LIGEIA ENTERED HYPERSPACE APPROXIMATELY 2 HOURS AFTER DISCOVERY AND IS ESTIMATED TO BE HIDING WITHIN THE SULKA DISTRICT OF TYMIN ON THE PLANET VERKO OR TUNNIS.
Below was a brief description of Ligeia Mare beside a picture of a green-haired woman with a scar down her neck.
NAME: LIGEIA MARE
GENDER: FEMALE
VAL: UNKNOWN
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: GREEN HAIR. PALE GREEN SKIN. SHORT, WITH A 5-INCH SCAR ON THE LEFT SIDE OF HER NECK.
OTHER INFORMATION: LIGEIA IS A SUSPECTED VALIN. HER ESCAPE RESULTED IN THE DEATH OF A TALO MEMBER AND THE INJURY OF THREE. WANTED DEAD.
Flint looked at Aurein and Aurein looked through him. Neither needed to say it—they wanted the job done. They needed the money. Plus, if he was lucky, Flint might be able to find himself another body on the way.
Aurein turned back to the screen and pressed “accept.”
The streaks of stars whizzing by the Lucre Main suddenly came to a halt, signaling the end of their trip through hyperspace and their official entrance into enemy territory. It was an outskirt, sure, a district of planets Tymin maintained without building any major bases, but enemy territory nonetheless. Flint was acutely aware that similar assignments to the ones he was familiar with taking at Talo would be tracking him and Aurein should they overstay their welcome.
One star in particular held prominence over the new set of stars staring down on the Lucre Main, the host star of the solar system they’d now entered.
“According to the maps,” Aurein started, “both Verko and Tunnis are in this solar system. They’re both rocky planets. Verko has a full-fledged native civilization on it and Tunnis is smaller and has a science outpost for Tymin. Do you care which we go to first?”
“Which is closer?” Flint prompted.
“Verko.”
“Let’s go there. I don’t want to risk getting captured by Tymin, so let’s do this as quickly as possible.”
Aurein nodded and turned the Lucre Main sunbound, pointing it towards a blue-purplish planet with dense clouds. Like any planet viewed from orbit, Verko was stunningly round, but witnessing such geometric perfection had lost its effect on Flint decades ago. It had been a long time since his first spaceflight.
A few hours later their ship had reached Verko’s sphere of influence, the area in which Verko’s gravity was more powerful than any other gravitational force nearby. They entered into orbit around Verko, keeping a close eye on the glowing cities beneath for a spaceport to land in.
Slowly, the glowing lights of the nighttime cities of Verko grew larger and more pronounced, and the star-speckled void of space took a backseat to the man-made wonders below. The ship shook through the atmosphere, through a thick layer of clouds, until it broke through the dark water vapor and into the light-filled city beneath.
Compared to the high-tech world of the Talo headquarters, this city was underdeveloped—but it was still a sight to behold. Skyscrapers jutted out into the clouds above, unfamiliar architecture possessed every structure, and vehicles circulated the streets like veins of yellowish light. Jutting into the expansive city was a large spaceport, lined with blue-green light instead of the usual yellow-white light of the rest of the metropolis. From the stark difference in color to the more modern, advanced architecture and technology, it was apparent which part of the city belonged to Tymin and which belonged to the original, native society.
The ship turned as Aurein navigated it towards the glowing blue-green runway. It passed by a tall control tower, the Tymin insignia and name on it in large letters. He flew lower and lower, circling above the runway, until landing with a bump and decelerating until he came to a stop. A massive facility of spacecraft was illuminated to their left, which he rolled the Lucre Main into.
They parked, got out, and walked through the hangar until they entered a Tymin security office. Flint quickly phased through a wall, hiding himself from the view of the officer. A ghost wouldn’t make a good first impression.
The security officer was slumped behind his desk, a clear panel with a small slit dividing him and Aurein. Aurein’s golden eyes briefly flashed towards the Tymin badge on the officer, and the officer’s bored eyes took a fleeting glance at the newcomer before leaning forward and grabbing a sheet of paper and a pen.
“Name?” the officer asked tonelessly.
“Regar Harian,” Aurein answered without hesitation.
Still without looking up, the officer asked, “transiting from?”
“Polyuria.”
“Duration of stay?”
“A few days.”
The officer scribbled a few more things down and then looked into Aurein’s eyes.
“Faction affiliation?”
“None.”
The officer slid the paper through the slit in the divider. Aurein took it, nodded, and then walked out of the office and into the city beyond.
Here, it had to be dead of night—but the city was still bustling. The blanket of clouds overhead reflected some of the city’s yellow-white light as if a cream-colored sunset was perpetually on the horizon. Cars—or this civilization’s version of them—rolled across the wide streets with the occasional beep, and the towering skyscrapers overhead loomed menacingly as if they were ever-so-slightly leaning towards Aurein.
The ground was wet as if it had just rained, reflecting a portion of the city’s lights and culminating into poorly-drained puddles that littered the roads, sending splashes onto the thin sidewalks every time a vehicle ran over them. The warm, humid air made the spaceflight suit concealed under Aurein’s clothing stick to his skin, and the smell in the air—a mix of something metallic and jet fuel—faintly burned his nose.
A few dozen steps out of the office was an arch about triple Aurein’s height with glowing letters that read in Modern Zystinian:
WELCOME TO MEGALO CITY
Flint emerged from the wall of the security office and quickly floated to Aurein’s side.
“So much for security,” commented Flint, looking back at the office.
“This is an outpost. Tymin doesn’t care much about a solar system this far from their corner of the galaxy as long as its inhabitants pay their dues. Anyone can get through as long as you have your identity straight.”
Flint looked at Aurein with raised eyebrows.
“And provided you have a body. You need to get a new one, and soon.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s a hassle.”
“Don’t lose your next one on this mission,” Aurein warned. “I need you back in action.”
The two dodged frequent splashes from uncaring cars as they walked around Megalo City’s streets, making their way to the nearest hotel. This time, Flint didn’t bother hiding—no Tymin officials were likely to be found here.
They opened the door with a ding and, after being blasted by cold air conditioning, walked to the concierge at the desk—the hotel was comfortable and clean, heavy with a crimson-red color scheme spliced with cream-colored textiles on the carpeted floor.
The concierge seemed far less mentally distant than the Tymin security officer—and as expected, without the faction’s blue-and-green badge—but still tired thanks to the late hour.
“How can I help you?” she asked, her accent noticeable but her Modern Zystinian accurate—like countless others, it wasn’t her native language. The concierge did a double take upon seeing Flint’s floating body, but was ultimately unsurprised—Tymin, like the rest of the factions in the Domain, was full of Valins like him with a host of different strange abilities.
“Room for two. Three nights, please,” Aurein said.
The concierge typed away on a small computer for a moment and then shuffled around some papers, writing on a few of them. Aurein gave her his transponder, which she connected to the computer with a cable, and transferred the funds necessary for the stay.
It was custom for faction-provided money to be accepted in faction-owned planets, as a way to reward members for their services. Flint never saw the exact amount paid, but the thought of their diminishing funds put a knot in his chest.
“Here you go.” She held out two necklaces, the room keys tied to the bottom. Aurein took both and left without another word.
“Ligeia could be in this city,” Flint told Aurein as he called an elevator. “It looks like the only spaceport for this planet is here.”
“She couldn’t have gone far. It’s only been about half a day since she escaped Talo.”
The elevator came with a beep and the two stepped inside. Aurein pressed their floor number.
“I estimate we have about a day before Ligeia escapes deeper into Tymin territory, in which case it’s a lost cause.”
“She didn’t expect to be found out. Her ship probably wasn’t full of fuel when she escaped, which is why she stopped in this solar system in the first place—to refuel. We could probably find her ship in the Tymin spaceport,” Flint commented.
They arrived at their floor and walked into their room, unpacking their few belongings and turning off to bed. But neither was tired.
“Can you sleep?” Flint asked.
“I can’t sleep.”
“Spacelag. It’s day at Talo and night here.”
“Let’s just look around. The odds are good that Ligeia is awake as well.”
“Ligeia Mare? No, I’m afraid she’s not in this hotel. Why do you ask?”
“Family friend,” Aurein lied. “We’ve been looking for her.”
The concierge looked at her computer again with a frown.
“I’m sorry, but there’s never been a ‘Ligeia Mare’ here. Maybe check the all-day bar a few blocks down? I don’t know what kind of person your family friend is, but that place has all sorts. You might find her there.”
“Never heard of her. But we have had a few chicks with that color of green hair over the years. Bunch of those Tymin types,” the bartender added with a scowl.
“When’s the last time a member of Tymin has been here?” Flint prompted.
The bartender looked Flint up and down again with pursed lips, still processing his ghostliness.
“Oh, they come all the time. Take what they can get from the city. Tymin demands we—everyone in Megalo City—charge every faction member less as repayment for their ‘protection.’” The man gave what Flint assumed to be their planet’s culture’s equivalent of exaggerated air quotes. “I ain’t seen none of their protection so far; they just want to make excuses to live more conveniently. I heard some people say the Domain’s more peaceful than it was at its peak—doesn’t stop them from being a band of outlaws.”
Aurein and Flint stared at the bartender silently.
“But, sorry, I haven’t seen any Ligeia Mare. Hope you find her.”
“Us too,” Aurein said.
They stepped out of the bar and back into the artificially lit cityscape.
“I don’t think we’re going to get much out of the locals. We have to look at Tymin itself,” Flint suggested.
“Unfortunately, I think you’re right.”
“You want to go back to the hangar and look there?”
“You think they’re just going to let us look around people’s ships?”
“Maybe. You said it yourself, Tymin doesn’t really care about security here.”
The security officer squinted his eyes at Aurein at the question. He bit his lip as if choosing his next words carefully.
“Well, yes, there has been a Ligeia Mare here. But her ship isn’t parked in the spaceport anymore.”
Aurein showed no outward sign of excitement. “She’s a family friend. Is she still around?”
“No, I’m afraid not. Wherever she was going, she was going in a hurry.” The officer looked at an empty portion of his desk. “She stole the emergency contact line and ran. Never brought it back.”
Aurein was silent, watching the tired officer as he slowly pieced together the situation.
“Wait…” The officer looked at Aurein. Aurein promptly turned around and walked out of the door before anything escalated further.
“We’re found,” Aurein said without looking at Flint, who had joined him by his side. “Time’s running out.”
“That was fast, we didn’t even last a day. Did we find Ligeia?”
“Yes. She called an emergency hotline to Tymin right after arriving here. We need to go to wherever they handle calls here before the chaos starts.”
Aurein looked over to Flint to see a wide smile on his translucent face.
“Stop smiling. Chaos is not good.”
“Hey, you don’t know that. Maybe I’ll find a new body in the meantime, who knows?”
It was what he had been waiting for. The one thing that still excited him after being dead for so long was a good battle.
