“Where are we going?” she asked.

O’Layle laughed at her.

“But there is a better question,” he warned.

Mere looked down. In her hand, slick and a little heavy, was the timepiece that Washen had slipped to her. Just a few days ago, it happened. Yet the event seemed very distant now, while a million other, far better days felt as if they had ended just half a moment ago.

“Who is in charge now?” she asked.

“Precisely” he gushed.

Mere looked up. She breathed in and held the breath, and after a long moment, she asked, “Have you seen any captains?”

“Not one.”

“Who then?”

“No one. Myself, I have only seen our guards.”

“Tell me.”

He had to smile, enjoying the suspense. Then with a little tip of the head, O’Layle told her, “They are being spotted, here and there. Back from extinction, and looking the place over, I’d imagine. Now that they’re the ones in charge—”

“Who?”

“They haven’t given a name yet,” he admitted. “But then, the !eech were never the most outspoken of souls.”

Mere absorbed the news.

“But isn’t that the best news?” O’Layle had to ask. “You and I … we know this species, and we have worked well with them, in the past … and probably in the future too, I would think …”

A narrow finger opened the silver lid of the timepiece, great brown eyes staring at the moving arms and silent numbers. Then after another little while, Mere put on a smile, and she lifted her gaze, and quietly she said, “So tell me. How exactly can we slip out and away?”

“Contingencies,” Pamir said. Then with a rumbling tone, he added, “Two centuries of making ready modeling and planning, and we still didn’t imagine anything quite like this.”

His companion refused to respond.

No matter. He led her down the hallway, on foot, watching the back of one of Osmium’s favorite sons. It was only the three of them slipping into Port Alpha. The rest of the security team were elsewhere, making their presence obvious. At a juncture with another hallway, they paused. No one else was visible. Two sealed doors and a hundred meters of open floor were all that remained between him and his goal now.

“Twice,” the woman muttered.

“I know.”

“I have lost the ship two times now.”

Pamir showed her the barest hint of compassion, then swept it away with a glare. “We lost it for you, this time. Washen did. I did. But if you think any of us could have predicted this mess …”

The mess remained too enormous to measure. But clearly the Great Ship had survived the polypond. Others had taken hold of the helm, and by incomprehensible means, they had twisted the ship slightly. Feeling an irresistible pressure, the damaged Sword was warped, and with twenty Earth masses bearing down on its cutting edge, its blade had slipped sideways. In the end, it cut the Great Ship into two unequal pieces, doing untold damage in the process. But the core and Marrow were spared And in any other scenario, that would be a good enough reason to celebrate.

But in the midst of one attack, another enemy had risen. And with an ease that terrified every captain, the nexuses were disabled, while the reactors and pumps, and the waste disposal and environmental controls, were each being stolen away by quick hands that still refused to show themselves.

Reaching the first door, Pamir paused. Using a simple radio transmitter, he said, “Status?”

“We still have control,” Aasleen said through a clutter of static.

“I need a door opened.”

“Isn’t it?”

Pamir turned to the harum-scarum. “Burn it open!”

“We’ll expose ourselves,” the Master warned.

“We’re pretty damned exposed as it is,” he countered Then to the soldier, he said, “Burn it, and anything or anyone that gets in our way.”

That door and the door standing behind it were obliterated Running through the smoldering mess, Pamir led them out onto the floor of one of Port Alpha’s secure berths. The vessel looming over them was a strange contraption, resembling a submarine more than a starship—a heavily armored machine ready to burrow its way through long stretches of dangerous water. Only after it passed through the polypond would it shuck off that exterior. Inside was a streakship, fully fueled and in perfect repair, with a small picked crew and an AI pilot that Pamir knew well. The Al spoke across a shielded radio channel, telling his old friend, “Hello. Welcome. Another journey, is it?”

“Not today,” Pamir replied.

The Master walked heavily her significant bulk not only useless but taxing. Yet despite her own anguish, she began to run, broad legs swishing, almost matching Pamir’s near sprint.

“I’m staying behind” he told the pilot.

“But why?”

“I’ll do more here.”

The AI accepted that judgment without comment. “Then what is my mission?” it inquired.

“Someone has stolen our ship,” he replied “It is human property by law and rights, and my species needs to be warned. Who else should deliver that news but the unseated Master?”

There was a pause—an eternity for an AI.

Then the voice said “Agreed.”

The trio had reached the sealed vessel. A single hatch blossomed open, and feeling all of her weight, the Master Captain bent low and began to climb inside. Again, with a mournful voice, she said, “Twice I have lost this ship.”

“And twice in the past you have taken it,” Pamir replied. “For yourself, for humankind For the Milky Way.”

The golden face nodded.

Silently, the open hatch began to melt at the edges, flowing back together again.

A moment later, for no apparent reason, the lights inside the berth died away, and from the Port’s control came a sputtering, sloppy voice saying, “Hurry, hurry. They’re coming, we’ve got to launch now … !”

Near the ship’s center, a seamless night had been born.

Contingencies continued to play out, relentlessly and in every corner of the universe, and who could count how many plans were unfolding?

Washen had given up trying. What remained, for now and maybe for always, was the belief that the Great Ship had been built by wise minds, and it was meant to be an enduring, perhaps everlasting creation. And wrapped around that belief was the hope, probably innocent and flawed … but still the keen perfect hope that for all of its problems, Marrow was meant to serve as the castle’s keep. Desperate good warriors could make a final stand here, and maybe they could try to take back the sky, eventually.

Years ago, spurred by imagination and inner voices, Washen had ordered a narrow and secret tunnel to be reopened, reaching almost all the way back to Marrow. In the last few days, using equipment at the bottom of the shaft, she and a few selected companions had finished the excavation, and in another few minutes, with more luck, they would collapse everything that lay above again.

That would stop no one from following, of course. But then again, whoever was in charge of the ship had been on board for millennia, and none of them had taken so much as a stroll across the world below.

The world below.

Washen’s long legs hurried, carrying her and her pressure suit down a set of temporary stairs. The stairs had been cut into the wall of the hyperfiber tube, leading everyone to a place that Washen knew well—a place she had barely left in any fashion but physically.