“Approaching,” one of the new Submasters offered. “Washen took a wrong turn, it seems.”

The officer was a Remora named Conrad. Barely human, in other words. The Remoras lived on the ship’s hull, their bodies permanently encased in lifesuits woven from hyperfiber. Surrounded by vacuum and raw radiations, they were subjected to endless mutations and odd cancers, but not only did the Remoras accept the damage, they used it. Each mutation was an act of Creation, full of potentials and possibilities. To the good Remora, the body was a ripe and holy vessel meant to be reshaped without end—a perfect canvas on which endless brushstrokes of gaudy paints could be applied at will.

Conrad’s single eye looked human, but it rode a muscular stalk, allowing it to pivot as he winked at his associates, joking, “It’s not a good sign, having your First Chair lose her way.”

The Master stared at him while saying nothing.

“Perhaps,” one of the AIs sang out. “Begin without them?”

The golden woman shook her massive head, and from a position of utter weakness, she had to say, “No, we’ll wait. We have to wait.”

Everything was different now.

Everything.

THE TWO MISSING officers walked a narrow trail, working their way toward the black point of rocks. Pamir’s grin betrayed a rare good humor. He nodded at the security troops standing watch, and with a sly grin, he asked, “What would you guess? If we walked into every house in this city, how many deserters would we trip over?”

Washen remained silent, concentrating on other matters.

“Ten or twelve no-goods,” Pamir offered. Then with a genuine laugh, he added, “It’s always been easy, vanishing.”

“Should we make it more difficult?” she inquired.

Pamir had considerable experience with desertion. A great portion of his life aboard the ship had been spent hiding, in one fashion or another. Only a general amnesty had coaxed him out of his self-imposed exile. Given the chance, he would be the first to admit that his rise to the Second Chair’s post was astronomically more unlikely than finding a little criminal making himself drunk inside Washen’s childhood kitchen.

“Perhaps disappearing should be more difficult,” he offered. Then with a breezy laugh, he added, “If only to cull out the amateurs.”

They were still smiling when they reached the crest of the hill. The Master remained sitting while the other high officers stood. Washen offered a smile and a curt nod, saying, “Madam. All. My apologies. Shall we begin?”

The Master bristled silently.

In truth, this had always been Washen’s intention. By arriving late, just this once, she would show her colleagues the new order. The Master couldn’t complain about her tardiness. Washen and Pamir had saved both her life and her command, and she ruled today only because they had decided to allow her golden round face—that very familiar face—to continue to speak for the Great Ship.

“Welcome,” said that face.

Humans nodded, and everyone repeated the word, “Welcome.”

Washen, then Pamir occupied the final two chairs, flanking the Master Captain.

“We’ll begin with reports,” the golden face continued. “Conrad? Please.”

The epaulets of the Remora’s new rank had been fastened to his hyperfiber shoulders. The single stalked eye stared out through the diamond faceplate, glancing at each of his equally anointed colleagues. Then with a wide, elastic mouth, he described the state of the ship’s hull. “It’s shit,” he assured them. “We took a huge pounding after the lasers and shields went down. We’ve got some awful craters to patch, and the shields and lasers are barely at half strength. And because our telescopes and other sensors were pounded to dust, we’re flying close to blind now. It’ll take years to rebuild our eyes, and decades more to patch the craters properly. Except for the monster crater, which could eat up a full century of hard work.”

At the height of the war, after the shields and lasers had abruptly failed, a fat comet had collided with the ship, and at one-third lightspeed, ice and tar and frigid stone had turned into a bubble of white-hot plasma, those wild energies absorbed by the hull until the hyperfiber had no choice but to melt, forming a temporary lake that splashed outward in a kilometer-high wave.

“We’ve got a genuine mess,” Conrad declared. “The comet struck on top of an old scar. Our biggest scar, as it happens. Where some moon-sized something hit, maybe five billion years ago. Although you know how tough it is to measure anything about hyperfiber. Its age, or when it was damaged. Anyway, my ancestors patched that old crater as fast as humanly possible, with the best grades of hyperfiber available … and because of our lousy luck, this new blast seems to have made the old damage worse …”

“Are we risking a breach?” the Master inquired.

“If a Kuiper-class body hit at a greater velocity, at the very worst angle, yes. There’s a small but ugly possibility of a hole punched clear through the hull.”

But it was a minuscule risk. Through his nexuses, Conrad fed his full report to the others, and for a few moments, he allowed them to ponder his rough estimates and his hand-drawn, surprisingly lovely maps. The new crater was a tiny ring compared to its ancient predecessor, but it overlapped the central blast zone, fractures reaching deep inside the hull, compounding a host of subtle weaknesses made in some ancient, faraway place.

“Of course work could be done faster,” Conrad promised. “But Remoras don’t have the hands anymore.” The war had decimated their ranks, and if anyone had managed to forget, he reminded them now. “It’s going to take thousands of years and a lot of babies before we match our old demographics. And maybe a million years before we forget these last few days.”

The Master remained silent, angered by his tone but forbidden to say so.

Washen turned to another of the new Submasters. “Aasleen,” she said. “Perhaps you have something to offer here.”

Aasleen had been placed in charge of the entire engineer corps. She was one of the captains who had gone to Marrow, and unlike some, she had remained loyal to the ship. Rising to her feet, she showed the humans a warm smile, gave the harum-scarums a well-received glare, and spoke for a little while about the sorry state of certain engines and the various reactors that supplied power to billions of passengers and crew. Then with a genuine affection, she reminded them, “We are, however, sitting inside a marvel, an ingenious mix of design and craftsmanship. Whoever the Builders were, they created a machine that seems meant to be repaired, refurbished, and when necessary, remodeled. I can have every reactor in full service inside eight months and the engines within eighteen. Then my engineers can start helping the Remoras.”

As a rule, Remoras accepted no aid from outsiders. The hull was their realm and their responsibility, and their only home, which was why it was a surprise to hear Conrad mutter, “Any good hand would be a blessing.”

Just how badly damaged was the hull?

Silently, with a renewed paranoia, the other Submasters began reexamining the report. And lifting her tail, the little fef happily said, “My species will help. Many hands at the ready!”

The single eye closed, and opened.

“Of course,” said the Remora. “And thank you.”

Days ago, Washen had met alone with her chief engineer, Conrad, and the fef. This little moment was the outcome of reason and blunt commands delivered during that earlier meeting. The hull was weakened slightly and would remain vulnerable for decades, regardless what was decided today. But the hull was not the point. Washen wanted to build cooperation among these diverse souls and establish what would serve as her personal authority, and she had to achieve both goals while honoring the best of their hoary traditions.