Adam is looking through the viewport of the Love Bug, and watching the stars pass.
The ship is moving thousands of times faster than the Longshot was when using its rockets, but it’s far more peaceful. He knows why. The race was to test sublight engines, for those critical moments when a smuggler has to get off a planet and into warp before the law can catch up.
Adam doesn’t feel at peace.
He thinks about the way he found Tim, the starship engineer. The emotional filters he ended up using were built around two things: confidence in success, given a chance to try, and desperation at feeling like that chance would never come.
That’s how Adam feels right now.
He wants to bring peace to a universe that doesn’t seem to want it.
The Blot are still at war. They conquer the weak, and leave the survivors scarred and scared. Like Platana and her tree people. Like that waitress at the Phantom Parsec.
Other space empires have invaded Earth in the past. They’re still out there, probably fighting each other or invading other unsuspecting planets. Not all of them will have superheroes the way Earth does.
In the badlands and gaps between these stellar societies, in places like the Pleiades, crime syndicates and smugglers and thugs rule however they wished. Although men like Machen enforced order, it was just a veneer over dirty business. If you crossed the powerful, they’d hire a group of thugs to come kill you and take your ship. The ship you’d stolen to begin with, of course.
He thinks about the excuse he gave Machen. I want to help my sister with her powers.
He remembers his conversation with his parents, about letting Jordan keep Anty around.
It would be better if she never got into this business, he thinks. I never wanted to. But she wants it because she looks up to me.
He has a sudden, powerful impulse to block Jordan-as-Peri from re-manifesting on the ship. Trap her on Earth, don’t let her astral projection come here, out into this lawless universe. It would make her very sad, but it would keep her safe.
He’s distracted by Space Bug, who has left the controls on automatic to come find him.
“Adam Amari, you are a coward,” the bug says. “I am taking over as Captain of this ship.”
The alien doesn’t have their weapons out, but their tone is curiously conversational.
“What makes you think I’m a coward?” he asks.
“You could have led us in destroying those Redshift Racers. We would then have the Longshot, yes. Machen would have his ship, good. One less team of smugglers, yes. We are leagues beyond them in ability, kilometers, light years. It would have been no contest.”
“It would have been wrong,” Adam says wearily.
Space Bug tilts their head and does their equivalent of blinking at Adam for a few seconds. “Explain wrong.”
“Wrong is…” Adam sits up and frowns. “You have to know right and wrong.”
Space Bug ticks off items on extended digits. “Right is: achieving financial stability. Obtaining shiny and valuable loot, treasure, windfall, plunder, swag. Outwitting superior opposition. Destroying inferior enemies. Wrong is: failing. Being captured. Looking foolish, awkward, incompetent. Yes. I know these things.”
Adam struggles. “What about… making people happy?”
Space Bug blinks again. “I happy. I have ship, you are not currently enemy, we are not being hunted. Well, my imminent captaincy makes us enemies, but you are a coward anyway so that will be fine.”
“What if… what if someone was trying to make you unhappy?” Adam suggests. “What if they were trying to hurt you, and you couldn’t do anything about it? What if someone intervened - and protected you? Made sure you felt safe and comfortable, instead of hunted and unwanted? Wouldn’t that be good?”
Space Bug shakes their head rapidly. “Nobody do that for me, Adam Amari. Nobody.”
Adam sighs. He has no idea how to handle this, or how to explain morality or justice or anything when he’s struggling to believe in it himself.
With a brief gesture, he bubbles the blaster Space Bug brought along. “I’m sorry. I want to help you. I want to help everyone. But right now, I need to think about some things, okay? We’ll talk about who is captain later.”
With their weapon so casually put out of reach, Space Bug reconsiders their all-too-brief coup and returns to the cockpit, and Adam returns to his thoughts.
The Love Bug’s navigation systems report that the destination coordinates are approaching.
Everyone gets the alert. Everyone rouses from their lethargy.
With an hour to go, Peri materializes in the cockpit next to Adam.
“Good mornin!” she calls out happily.
The rest of the crew, still weary from the turmoil of the race, can’t and don’t match her energy, and she looks around nervously.
“Good… evenin’?”
Adam smiles and pats her gently on the shoulder. “We just finished a pretty tough space race. But we’re almost here.”
He looks out through the forward viewport, at the stellar scene through which the ship flies. Newly born stars - in stellar terms - are all around them.
He thinks also of his impulse earlier, to have Jordan stay home and safe. Even if she’s not physically at risk here - she is, basically, dreaming, and her mind is projected into a Shard-created construct - she’s at emotional and moral risk.
I’ll send her home if I think things get too much, he tells himself.
The Love Bug drops out of its space warp and homes in on the final coordinates.
Their destination is a thicket of asteroids. Adam is realizing these are a common feature of the Pleiades Cluster. Many planets haven’t finished forming yet, and their raw materials are these rocks floating everywhere in space. In time, gravity will pull it all together, and a new world will be the result. Give it even longer, and life might evolve.
We’re flying through the heart of a planet that could someday be born.
Somehow, the thought puts a smile on Adam’s face.
Their destination doesn’t look much bigger than Tim’s “tin can”. It’s just a string of small habitats sitting on top of - or embedded in - free-floating asteroids.
To Adam’s surprise, there’s a bubble of atmosphere encompassing a big chunk of space around this cluster of asteroids. The Love Bug decelerates to a mere 30 mph - indistinguishable from a full stop at stellar speeds - to slide into the bubble.
There’s not even a proper space dock here. There are ships, but they’re literally just floating in space alongside a series of connected metal plates, like a dock on Earth for sailboats.
Space Bug maneuvers the ship next to one of these docks. Adam is the first to cycle the airlock. The air is breathable, and the plates provide artificial gravity, allowing him to walk. He gestures to the others in invitation.
By now, people are starting to emerge from the nearer habitats. All of them are as alien as anything Adam has seen: some humanoids, some creatures with features reminiscent of Earthly animals, some with more exotic body plans or features. They span every color the human eye is capable of discerning, and Adam suspects there’s colors he can’t see that are still represented here.
Their apparent leader is humanoid. Whatever his normal skin color, it’s been replaced with an animated depiction of a starry night - as though the cosmos itself were reflected back from him. His glowing white eyes at least give Adam something to focus on. He dresses in what Adam feels is some combination of an Indian sherwani with an elaborate pirate’s hat.
He’s the leader because when he approaches, the others make room for him to pass. And when he arrives at the dock, he greets Adam with an acknowledging nod, as an equal.
“This is your ship?” he asks. Adam can feel the translation, mediated through a Concordance-type Shard rather than the standard AI-enabled translation tech in use elsewhere.
“Yes,” Adam says uncertainly.
The man claps his hands together. “Grand!” he exclaims. “Simply grand.”
Turning to his allies and companions, he shouts in what sounds like a joyful call. “All ye Dark Drifters! Swords, swords, one and all! Kill them!”
Adam has to think extraordinarily fast.
He’s here to be one of these people. It looks like he has to fight them - but he has to fight them their way. If they’re outlaws, he and his crew have to be outlaws too.
His Continuum Sword flashes into existence. “Swords out, guns out!” he shouts to his friends, and broadcasts his resolve to them as well. There can be no room for confusion here.
Space Bug, of course, is the first to respond. The bug has even obtained a backup blaster from somewhere. Adam realizes in the moment he forgot to unbubble the one from earlier. Oops.
Armiger is next, with Excalibur warping into his waiting hands. “Yeah!” he shouts.
Peri doesn’t really follow Adam’s thought, but she’s happy enough to have some proper princessing to do. Her own sword manifests. Even without Anty to guide her, Adam realizes that she’s actually gotten a bit good at fighting - and for the moment, he’s confident.
Jaycee pulls out her own blasters. Although not a trained fighter, she can shoot and people must respond to that. Good enough.
Keri is the only member of the party who doesn’t have a weapon, and doesn’t need one. She balls up her fists, drops into a crouched fighting stance, and flashes a feral grin.
There’s about two dozen of the Dark Drifters, including the Captain. All of them, every last one, manifests a Continuum Sword.
Adam suddenly feels doubt. But he’s committed.
The Drifters leap - and fly - and run - toward the party.
Armiger, seeing more enemies, simply manifests more swords. He starts throwing them up and about, giving himself more weapons to use as needed. Beside him, Jaycee opens fire with her twin blasters. More targets means better chances to hit, right?
Some of the Drifters opt to shield themselves with Concordance-type bubbles. Others teleport out of the way. A few manifest illusionary duplicates, like Adam has seen Peri do.
Unlike Jaycee, Space Bug actually is a crack shot with their blaster. The little bug seems to have an intuitive knack for spotting the illusions, and pops them with shot after shot.
The Lamb launches off the dock and into the air. The Drifters who did the same are suddenly on the defensive as she starts plowing through them like a living battering ram. They switch tactics, using teleportation to avoid her, and she begins moving faster and less predictably to compensate. The whole thing is like an aerial dogfight, but with bodies instead of planes.
Peri wastes no time in deploying her own illusions, and readying her sword to receive the attacks coming at her. They do come, in numbers, but they don’t count on Jordan’s formidable determination to be a fightin’ princess. She mastered her own tools long ago, and now illusions, barriers, and blasts weave together in a spectacular dance.
For his part, Adam tackles the Captain, plus a couple of lieutenants that have come to join him. Fortunately, he didn’t spend the whole flight here moping. He hoped this would go well, but his growing pessimism made him prepare for the case where it didn’t.
He’s built a couple new tools, and he uses the first of them now. It’s a simple enough machine, just a fusion of two standard Concordance tricks: the bubble and the teleport. He creates a bubble around himself, and spreads more around the area. When one bubble takes a hit and is about to fail, it teleports him to another one. It’s inspired by how he’s watched Armiger fight.
The Dark Drifters are pretty good at sword-work. Adam isn’t, but he has two Shards to help him with that. What he really has to focus on is their own tricks.
In the moments he’s able to watch his friends fight, he gets the impression that the Drifters are kind of like Peri. Someone gave them a Shard and maybe some basic training, and then pushed them out of the nest on the assumption they could fly. Each of them has the same basic toolkit - blasts, shields, flight and teleportation, that kind of thing - but each of them seems to have specialized in one or two tricks beyond that.
None of them, except the Captain and his two adjutants, seem to have gone beyond that. But all three of those people are now on Adam’s case. Their flashing swords push him back, and their blasts and feints and sudden tricks are distracting him.
His first bubble pops thanks to a sudden and well-timed triple blast, and he feels brief disorientation. He’s floating in space nearby. When the Captain recognizes what happened, he takes to the air in pursuit.
Adam glances around him.
William is a true beast of a swordsman. He swings Excalibur with skill and grace, parrying every incoming blade, turning away every thrust, and when he’s not on the defensive, he’s shearing through defensive bubbles like they’re tissue paper. Jaycee is learning to aim her blasters at the suddenly vulnerable Drifters, who must teleport out of the melee or be shot.
The Drifters fighting against Keri have teamed up to try and bubble her, and it’s not going well. They keep erecting new barriers, and she keeps tearing through them. She doesn’t seem like she’s throwing really hard punches. Adam can understand that - the lion of her nature and the Lamb she aspires to be are fighting as well, inside her soul.
Like William and Jaycee, Peri and Space Bug have also teamed up. Peri can’t pop bubbles the way Armiger’s holy sword can, but she’s an elusive sprite, giggling and disappearing and dodging. Adam is shocked to recognize after a moment that Jordan is doing something like he is doing - she’s teleporting between her illusionary duplicates, keeping her enemies off guard as to who is the real Peri. Meanwhile, Space Bug keeps plugging at the Drifters, who can’t let down their bubbles for a moment to unleash a blast.
Despite their success, Adam can feel their weariness - physical and emotional and moral - from the race. He can feel the energy and commitment of the Dark Drifters. His team has power and skill, but the Drifters have endurance. This fight is to decide which will prevail.
As he and the Captain lock swords again, Adam tries diplomacy. “Why are you attacking us?”
“Your ship!” the Captain announces, as though that explained it.
In a moment, the Captain and his twin adjutants fuse, forming a glowing figure that looks like a larger Captain with a fancier hat and four arms. Four Continuum Swords fill the fusion’s hands, and it presses the attack. Adam is forced back, making jump after jump of teleportation to gain distance and regain composure.
Why would they…? Right, space pirates.
“You can’t have our ship,” he responds. “But maybe we can make some other deal?”
“What an outlandish proposition!” the Captain-fusion booms.
Four Concordance-type constructs appear, shaped like giant hands. The Continuum Swords themselves are also now giant, and held in those hands. They all strike, attempting to impale Adam between them. Adam teleports to safety in the nick of time.
“Your ship marks you as the enemy!” the Captain shouts.
Does he know I’m a Concordance agent? Adam thinks.
“We’re not the enemy!” he protests aloud. “We just–”
The Captain-fusion splits, and does something Adam hasn’t seen before. The Captain and his two aides split again, into successively smaller Captains and aides. When there’s about three dozen of them, they teleport into a spherical formation around Adam, and they all unleash a blast of energy directed at him.
With their barriers up and blocking him, Adam can’t teleport away. All he can do is call on Tau and Antares Alpha-One, to create a counter-shield strong enough to resist it.
When the blinding energy of the blast fades, and with his shield in tatters, he finds his opponents have re-formed themselves and again are on the offensive. Their flashing swords are hypnotic, in a way - Adam can feel his own weariness inviting him to give in.
The ship - the ship - it’s a Blockhead ship - memories start to connect in his mind, as he struggles to resist and find a way out of this.
“We stole the ship from its owners! We’re not with the Blockheads!” he shouts.
This gives the Captain pause, but only a bit. “A likely story!” he retorts.
Adam is feverish with desperation. This fight must end amicably. “Antares Alpha-One, take over fighting,” he commands.
Acknowledged.
“Tau, we’re going for a dive.”
Adam marshals power, enough to break through the Captain’s defenses. He draws on still more, to make his plan work.
He drives a telepathic question into the alien’s subconscious mind, amplified by Tau’s natural affinity for the emotion of fear. “Why do you fear that ship?”
The answer is immediate. “They stole Drifter Shards from us. Those who would receive the power. Those who had it already.”
So the Blockheads - these strange aliens - could they be responsible for the Sol Gamma Shards’ disappearance?
“My people lost Shards too!” Adam shouts aloud. “We’re using this ship looking for answers.”
He drops his own shields, mindful that another attack could come at any moment, and broadcasts this Truth. He dare not reveal everything, and he feels awful for hiding something - and as before, he hates Somber for pushing him into this way of being.
But it works.
The Captain pauses, and calls for a pause from his people. “Drifters! Halt your attack! Parley!”
Adam lets out a long sigh of relief.