Siladan remembered his sense of awe not at the ship, but at his first ever vision of the Dark Between the Stars. The video was grainy and low quality, but even through the degradation of compression and whatever damage the radiation surge had done to the Ghazali’s storage system the mysterious flux of unspace was vaguely visible in the background of the video, strange tides and shoals of darkness shifting in the abyssal dimensions into which the Zafirah’s camera faced.

  Of less interest to Siladan, but drawing murmurs of appreciation from Saqr, was the strange glittering white spaceship floating in that cursed space, slowly changing orientation to point its bow at the Zafirah. It was small in comparison to the destroyer, perhaps just a hundred metres long and relatively slim, its form sleek and organic as if it had been grown or extruded rather than built in a shipyard. Four wide, long wings extended diagonally upward from lateral positions, their forward- and aft-pointing aspect making the ship look like a butterfly or some other elegant insect rather than a battleship. It was, however, clearly an attack ship. Dorsal and ventral gun turrets broke the smooth, organic curves of its spine and belly, and a large weapon port emerged from the center of the bow beneath the elegant curve of its bridge. As it turned the gun turrets spun faster, rapidly acquiring targets along the length of the Zafirah and opening fire with energy weapons that sparkled in the darkness as they hit the destroyer’s shields. There was no sound with the recording but Siladan could imagine alarms ringing, and in the bottom right of the video a small text feed appeared, indicating that the Zafirah was initiating defensive maneuvers. The nameless butterfly-ship’s aspect changed as the destroyer began to change course, and the space between the ships began to convulse with bright colors as return fire began. Small marks in the darkness indicated torpedoes, some of which seemed to disappear in clouds of shadow as they streaked across the unfamiliar dimensions outside the ship. The Zafirah unleashed a vast array of defensive weaponry on its attacker, which somehow rippled and phased out of the space at which the weapons pointed, reappearing in a different angle in the sky. Was it an anomaly of the Dark Between the Stars, did this ship have some new subspace technology, or was someone on that ship manipulating the properties of the Dark itself? The text feed in the video went wild as the Zafirah attempted to reacquire its target, and now the swirling darkness shifted in sickening patterns as the destroyer moved rapidly in a wide arc, establishing the Portal entrance point and moving towards it. Siladan pulled up the feed from the ship’s logs and matched the time stamps, confirming that a crash exit from Portal space had been initiated. This was the point where the Zafirah’s automated defense routines caused it to attempt to return to Hamura to warn the Ghazali of the ambush. As the huge ship swung wildly around Siladan caught a brief glimpse of the Portal it was reorienting itself towards, a kaleidoscope of shadows rent with starlight briefly visible in the video feed before the ship’s angle of attack obscured it. The camera shifted again to refocus on the enemy, which was now pointing directly at the Zafirah. The bow weapon sparkled briefly and a hideous beam of violet light connected the two ships, carving instantaneously through its shields and striking directly midships, ahead of the camera. The shield fell almost immediately and the attacking ship’s turret-mounted weapons began to strike along its length with a mixture of brief, flickering energy beams and curving arcs of projectiles. The time-matched feed of the ship’s log that Siladan had loaded on the other screen showed the blossoming of damage reports, first small hull breaches and limited damage to modules along the starboard side of the ship and then the flashing report of a catastrophic breach, before the entire system went silent as the bow of the ship fell away, taking with it the primary reactor, the bridge and the ship’s computer. Siladan could see it briefly, tumbling away into the Dark Between the Stars in the corner of the camera’s feed before that, too, flickered and went dark, its final impression the butterfly-shaped aggressor glittering like a pale insect god in the cursed dimensions between the Portals.

  “Wow,” Saqr breathed after a few moment’s of silence from the entire group. “What was that?”

  “Replay it, Siladan,” Adam ordered. “I want to see that weapon again.”

  Siladan restarted the feed, and Adam gave a short commentary on the weapons being deployed, trying to make sense of the rapid escalation of violence on the screen, until the bow weapon fired. “Pause it,” he demanded, and Siladan froze the screen at just the moment where the Zafirah’s shields shimmered and broke, the violet beam reaching out to the ship’s hull. “That’s impossible,” Adam told them. “The amount of energy to collapse a destroyer’s shields with one hit, in two seconds.” He held up one hand to indicate he had been counting. “There’s no power source can fit into a ship that size, and no weapon can contain it in a single blast.”

  “How does it normally happen?” Siladan asked.

  “It just doesn’t,” Saqr told him. “Everybody knows you don’t break through to a destroyer like the Zafirah in a few seconds.”

  “You hit it along its length with torpedos,” Adam explained, “Which the shields don’t stop. You try to slide in a memetic weapon, or fighters that get close and target shield generators. Nuclear weapons to try and break systems so that the shield goes down in patches. If you’re lucky you can get the job done in ten, twenty minutes. You don’t use energy weapons until the kinetics and explosives have done their job.” He stared at the screen for a moment, then shrugged. “That’s a curse from the Icons themselves, not an energy weapon.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Could it be a feature of the Dark Between the Stars?” Dr. Delecta asked. “Maybe shields don’t work the same way in … in there?”

  “Never heard of that,” Adam replied, “But I guess it’s possible. Would need to do some research to find out. Nobody fights between the Portals.”

  “I guess if no one is awake to start an attack no one needs to experiment with defenses.” Al Hamra tapped the captain’s control panel with one finger, staring like everyone else at the vivid, slightly unsettling purple color of the beam weapon. “What about the ship? Anyone recognize it?”

  “No shipyard I’ve ever seen,” Saqr said. “Shipyards have a style. They don’t change their style that much.”

  “Could it be a new one?” This from Dr. Delecta, who knew nothing about ships.

  “Doubtful,” Saqr replied. “Possible, I suppose. The Third Horizon is big, maybe there’s someone out here or over in the Algol route who’s working on stuff like that. But how’s it attacking in Portal space?”

  “Automated?” Olivia suggested, but Adam grunted disbelief.

  “Too risky. You don’t leave space battle to computers, especially in the Dark Between the Stars. People must have been awake on that ship.”

  “That’s impossible,” Al Hama said flatly.

  “I’ve heard rumors,” Dr. Delecta contradicted him, giving Adam a subtle sideways glance. “There are stories about rituals and … um … adjustments that can make people function in the Dark. Or at least not go crazy.”

  “I heard that prayer to the Faceless One can grant the boon of survival, if you’re desperate,” Olivia told them, touching her chest in a way that made Siladan think she might be an adherent of that particular Icon.

  “Nonsense,” Adam grunted. “Even the Faceless One rejects the Dark Between the Stars. No prayer helps you in there.”

  “Maybe it’s all corrupted Mystics on the crew,” Saqr suggested. “Some people say that’s what Samina’s Corsairs are, a gang of Mystics who’ve developed the power to stay awake in the Dark.”

  “That’s Nomad Federation bullshit,” Olivia said, and they all began arguing about the many rumors concerning Mystics and their relationship to the Dark Between the Stars that had spread through the Horizon. Finally Al Hamra yelled them to silence, and in surprise they all complied with his order.

  “Let’s just accept we don’t know,” Al Hamra instructed them after the babble had died down. “Adam’s probably right, people had to be awake in that ship. Saqr’s probably right, it’s not one of the known shipyards. But it could be some secret project of the Draconites or the Order of the Pariah, or even the Nomad Federation for that matter. Let’s not waste time trying to figure out their secrets based on a few seconds of low-grade video. Siladan, are there drive signatures or radiation patterns from that ship in the emergency transmission?” Seeing Siladan nod, he continued. “So we’ve got valuable information here, and nobody involved in the attack knows it.” He raised one hand and begin lowering fingers as he counted off facts. “They can’t know that the Zafirah sent this information to the Ghazali, because it was on tight beam. They don’t know we found it on the bridge, and they probably didn’t notice us leave on the Beast of Burden, either because they were still in the Dark Between the Stars or they were too busy watching the Isaac’s Solace. Even if they saw us get off the ship they probably didn’t see us go through the Portal, because the Ghazali’s explosion would have hidden the energy signature and the Portal station that would have recorded our entrance was disabled. If they saw us go through the Portal they’d be expecting us at Kua or Taoan, and when we didn’t arrive they’d assume we were consumed by it, because it was clearly unstable. They probably don’t have any register of the Beast of Burden because it was marked as salvage, and even if they can track its signature across systems it won’t be in any list of owners, and our names aren’t connected to it. So by the time they do find it we’ll be long gone, it’ll have a different owner and a new name. And finally, if they do find us, we have this video record as insurance.” He looked around at the group, waiting for them to acknowledge his points. Once he was satisfied, he finished his speech with a proposal. “So I suggest we make a copy of this video, and once we arrive at the Gravity Observatory we make contact with the Sadaal Free Skippers and try to sell them the Beast of Burden. While we’re waiting, we take a trip down to Cauldron, and we find a suitable group of outlaws to pay to hold a copy of our recording in safe, secure and sealed storage. We set up a dead man’s trigger, okay? Then we split the money from selling the Beast of Burden, and we get out of here with our lives and our credit ratings secure. Deal?”

  “So you’re saying we just let the destruction of the Zafirah and the Ghazali go?” Saqr asked, her frown making clear her opinion of the matter.

  He nodded, looking around at them again for confrontation or disagreement. “It’s not fair Saqr, I know,” he said finally, “But you saw that ship. We got entangled with powers beyond our comprehension. We go up against whoever that was and we’ll be ash before we know what hit us. So we lie low, we separate, and if they come for any of us in the future they’ll find out that we’ve scattered the video across the Third Horizon.” He pointed at the screen. “Whoever did this sank an enormous amount of energy and resources into making sure no one knew who they were. Let’s assume that for now they want to keep it that way, and they’ll be willing to deal with us on those terms. But first and most importantly, let’s make sure they don’t have to.”

  He looked around at the team, waiting for their response. Siladan, standing to one side, thought for a moment that Adam or Saqr would disagree, but finally everyone nodded.

  “Good,” Al Hamra turned to Siladan. “Make copies of this video and the logs, enough for each of us and one spare. Saqr,” He turned to the pilot, “Turn our transponders on, we’re heading for the Gravity Observatory. Let’s hide this secret at the bottom of the Cauldron, and whoever tries to drag it out can feel its heat.”