it had a functional need to do.

“You said the neverkey was there in case you ever needed to communicate with the Tok in an emergency,” she said. “Do you have any clearer idea yet how you're supposed to do that, now that we're out here?”

“I assumed that the Tok would see my emergence and make contact. That was partly why I was confused when the waiting ships attacked us.”

“Okay, then you need to make up your mind about what you are going to do, given that your creators haven't shown up.”

This time, there was no pause, no blinking. “I will take you to your ship. Then I will decide where I should go and what I should do next.”

3. Radiance

The Radiant Dragon waited quietly for them at the assigned muster point. They nudged towards it on reaction drive, conscious that it had emerged from a battle with Concordance warships, and that they couldn't be at all sure their enemy hadn't captured it and done … something. It was completely dark, unresponsive to their attempts to communicate with it. That was bad, but it also meant that it didn't appear to be powering up to detonate some proximity trap. It hung in space at a canted angle relative to their approach vector – which meant nothing, but it was hard to escape the impression that it was irrevocably damaged. It looked like a dead fish drifting in an ocean current.

The only other artificial object in local space was a single free-floating nanosensor waiting for its data collection rendezvous. Selene piggybacked onto the tiny metaspace drone to watch from an external perspective. The double sphere of Surtr's ship dwarfed the tetrahedron of the Dragon as the vessels edged closer together.

The double viewpoint gave her a good angle on most of the Dragon's voidhull. It had, in fact, sustained three direct strikes upon its superstructure, implying that its energy hull had been completely depleted during its attempt to escape Coronade. It was a wonder it had limped out of the system at all. Now that they were nearer, she tried to open comms with it again. This time, there was a flicker of activity, suggesting something on the ship was still operational, but the response cut out immediately.

“We can't risk docking,” said Ondo. “We have to assume the Dragon is either compromised or rigged to explode when we get inside.”

“We can't just sit here admiring it,” said Selene. “We need to find out what state it's in. We need to get it moving again.”

“If it can't recognize us, then it's not going to open its spaceward doors,” said Ondo. He had a habit of explaining the completely obvious, perhaps because his mind was generally elsewhere and he wasn't always aware what was obvious.

“I'll EVA across and see if I can open the doors manually,” said Selene. “They'll respond to a bit of brute force if nothing else works.”

“The ship might also register that as an attack and repulse you. The core AI may not be functioning, but there's a very good chance the ship's defensive systems are operating in autonomous mode.”

“We'll have to take that chance. I can see no other way to get the ship active again.”

“Very well,” said Ondo. “I'll come with you.”

“No, you stay here in case things don't go well and the Dragon attacks me, or some Concordance trap triggers.”

“We're not going to get very far without the Dragon; even if I can get word to the Refuge via the nanosensor network, there are no functioning vessels there capable of coming to get us. The Aether Dragon was the only other viable metaspace ship.”

“Then, if the worst happens, you can return with Surtr and spend the rest of your days happily studying the nebula and the dead star.”

It was supposed to be a joke, although it didn't look like Ondo got it. “Fascinating as I'm sure that would be, I'm not ready to give up yet. We should both go.”

“Fine, fine.”

To her surprise, Surtr said, “And I will join you.”

“Why would you do that? You need to get your ship well out of the potential blast-radius.”

“I can position it at a safe distance and accompany you. If there are any detonations, there is a high likelihood that I can protect you.”

“I doubt even you could shield us from a multi-megaton nuke blast, and that's probably what Concordance will have planted.”

“I can easily withstand energies of that magnitude, and shield you from them at the same time.”

“You cannot mean that; you clearly don't have a full understanding of the forces involved close to a nuclear blast.”

She glanced at Ondo, who shrugged. “I think we have to believe what it says. I told you that Aetherals are supposedly capable of miraculous feats; this must be one of them. If there's a chance it could shield us from a detonation, then we should let it come with us.”

Clearly, this wasn't an argument she was going to win. “Fine, yeah, if there are stories about how powerful these things are, then I'm sure we'll be completely okay.”

Selene touched the bare voidhull of the Radiant Dragon with the fingers of her left hand, half-expecting one of the ship's close-range defensive systems to blast her backwards, or a Concordance mine embedded in the ship to trigger. Nothing happened. There was also no sign of the airlock door that they were trying to access. When it was sealed, it was completely invisible from the outside, but she knew precisely where it should be.

Ondo drifted beside her, both of them bathed in the glow of the field that Surtr was propagating around them. She'd tried to analyse the field, work out its physical properties, but hadn't been able to make anything of it. It didn't seem particularly energetic; they just had to hope that it would become so very, very rapidly if it needed to. Her suit's sensors did tell her that the field held a bubble of breathable atmosphere within it. Once again,

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