The cargo bay of the Drifting Ember smelled like scorched metal and burnt mana. It seemed as if everything smelled like burnt mana these days.

  Elara Szanto fumbled with the wall restraints until her fingers found the release. Her hands shook—not from fear, just from the crash. Adrenaline draining out of her system left her hollow and brittle.

  “Well,” she muttered, dropping to the deck. “That was absolute shit.”

  Her ribs protested when she rolled her shoulders. Bruised, probably. She’d had worse.

  Beside her, Karn unstrapped with the steady efficiency of someone who’d done this too many times to count. His hooves hit the deck with a solid, grounding thud.

  X-37 didn’t bother with straps.

  It liquefied.

  The creature’s grey-blue body sloughed through the harness, pooled on the floor like spilled oil, then dragged itself back together into a long-limbed, horned quadruped. Its bioluminescent patches pulsed faintly, as if pleased with itself.

  Elara stared at it.

  “Why did we even strap it down?”

  Karn’s mouth twitched. “Procedure.”

  “Procedure can eat my ass. It’s gelatin.”

  “I thought it was a proto-morphic semi-solid,” Karn corrected mildly.

  “Well, excuse me, Professor Blackhorn.” She gave him a flat look. “It’s fancy gelatin.”

  Before he could answer, a warm, melodic voice filled the bay.

  “Welcome aboard the Drifting Ember. I hope your arrival wasn’t too uncomfortable.”

  Elara’s hand instinctively dropped to her hip. Empty.

  “Right,” she said. “The talking ship.”

  “I prefer ‘sentient vessel,’” Ember replied, faintly offended. “Captain Ironbelly has authorized your movement beyond cargo. Please follow the blue guide lights and refrain from exploring unescorted areas. Some systems are still stabilizing.”

  Blue floor panels flickered to life.

  Elara glanced at Karn.

  “You think this is a trap?”

  “If they wanted us dead,” he said evenly, “we’d be dead.”

  That tracked.

  The corridor beyond bore scars from the fight—burn streaks, flickering panels, the sharp ozone bite of overworked systems. Crew moved past them with purpose, giving the newcomers wide, measuring looks but not interfering.

  Good discipline.

  Good captain.

  Or a very confident one.

  X-37 padded ahead, head low, sniffing the deck like it might taste something interesting through steel.

  Elara caught her reflection briefly in a polished bulkhead panel—blood at her temple, bruising blooming under one eye, expression set to “bite me.”

  “Let’s go,” she muttered.

  The blue lights curved toward a sealed hatch.

  And somewhere deeper in the ship, doors were opening, water was running, armor was being stowed, systems were recalibrating.

  Life continued.

  By the time Cassian Ward heard about the new arrivals, the ship had already stabilized.

  He knew that because the galley gravity stopped hiccupping, the lighting returned to its normal spectrum, and Chef Krell stopped swearing in three dialects at once.

  War was apparently over.

  Dinner, however, was not.

  The galley was a storm of steam and heat. Massive pots rattled, protein blocks sizzled, and something sweet and spiced simmered in a sealed vessel near the cooling rack.

  “No, no, NO!” Krell thundered, tasting from a ladle. The komodon’s scales flushed darker with outrage. “Too much charmigna! Do you want the captain to breathe fire? Fix it!”

  Cassian kept his head down and moved faster.

  The copper streak in his hair shifted pale blue, bleeding heat out of the air around him. The galley temperature dropped a fraction of a degree everywhere he passed. It wasn’t something he consciously did. One of his gates had been stuck open by a hair since ot unlocked.

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  “Ward!” Krell barked.

  “Yes, Chef.”

  “Briefing room. Now. They’re getting started.”

  Cassian loaded the hovering service cart with steady hands: water, stimulant tea, protein plates. Krell opened a small cooling locker and removed an ornate blue bottle beaded with condensation.

  “The captain’s spiced milk,” Krell said reverently.

  From the prep line, Whisk’s mandibles clicked. “Sure. Pamper the giant kitty.”

  “The captain,” Krell enunciated carefully, “just saved all our lives. He can have his milk.”

  Cassian nodded and wheeled the cart out.

  The corridor was a mess. Crew were patching panel seams. A repair drone zipped past his ear.

  He’d heard rumors.

  SoulCorp. Bounties. Something not entirely solid.

  He did not want to meet “not entirely solid.”

  The briefing room door slid open.

  The temperature inside hit him first.

  Warm. Uncomfortably so.

  Captain Ironbelly dominated the head of the table. Thimble’s augmented fingers danced across a holo-display. Vaeris Grimleaf sat opposite her, silver-white braids draped over one shoulder, looking bored and dangerous.

  Across from them sat the newcomers.

  A human woman with eyes that missed nothing.

  A minotaur larger than any Cassian had seen outside military holo-feeds.

  And—

  Cassian nearly faltered.

  At the end of the table sat a small, girl-shaped figure with bluish-grey skin, black hair, black eyes—and horns. The shape of it was wrong. Too smooth. Too still.

  His skin prickled.

  “The Bulkheads hit us from three vectors,” Ironbelly was saying. “Someone fed them surveillance.”

  “Clearly,” the human woman replied dryly.

  Cassian began setting drinks down.

  He placed the blue bottle carefully before the captain.

  “Chef Krell sent this up,” he murmured.

  Ironbelly’s whiskers twitched in approval.

  Cassian almost made it back to the door. Almost.

  Fabric jerked tight at his back. He stumbled.

  Vaeris had him by the shirt.

  Her eyes bored into him with analytical intensity.

  “What power are you running,” she asked, “that makes this room tolerable?”

  “Vaeris,” Ironbelly growled.

  She ignored him completely.

  Cassian swallowed. His thermal streak flared bright copper.

  “I… I was told most call it Ambient Thermal Harmony, ma’am.”

  Her eyes sharpened.

  “Rare,” she murmured. “And useful.”

  She did not release his shirt.

  “You,” she decided, “are standing here until this meeting ends. I refuse to sweat in a war council.”

  Cassian froze.

  Ironbelly’s tail lashed once. “Stop harassing my galley staff.”

  “Fix your temperature control,” she countered without looking at him. “You are not a jungle cat.”

  Cassian stood there, mortified, while the conversation shifted.

  The captain looked like he might object further, but then just growled low in his throat and turned his attention back to the briefing.

  “Either someone paid out the ass in bribes, or someone took out Whisper’s Edge Management, and I don’t see that happening.” Captain Ironbelly crossed his massive arms and leaned forward, eyes narrowing on the three newcomers. "So now that we've established what happened during the attack, let's address the rancid meat in the room. What the hell is that and why does it have my whiskers?”

  Cassian stood awkwardly beside Vaeris, trying not to look like an idiot without being too obvious about it. He kept his eyes fixed on the table, but his ears strained to catch every word.

  Elara snorted. "Why does SoulCorp do anything? Profit and power."

  "That doesn't answer my question." The captain's tail flicked impatiently.

  Karn shifted in his seat, the reinforced chair creaking under his weight. "We don't know the specifics. Just that SoulCorp originally wanted us to find it, kill it, find out who all knows about it, and how it got out in the first place. But it’s a prototype for something new. Some kind of breakthrough.”

  Thimble shot a quick glance to the captain at the word “prototype”.

  Elara asked, “Do you think it has anything to do with this newbie you found?”

  “We don’t know enough right now,” Thimble answered quickly. “There are just too many variables and not enough facts connecting them together.”

  Captain Ironbelly uncapped his bottle of spiced milk and took a long drink, low purr in satisfaction. "SoulCorp had operatives all over Whisper's Edge. More than any of us realized, apparently. We need more info.”

  "I might know someone who can help," Elara said slowly, as if weighing how much to reveal. "A former... associate. He specializes in secrets, particularly dirty laundry."

  "And where is this associate?" Ironbelly asked.

  Elara's lips twisted into something between a grimace and a smile. "That's the complicated part. He's in an inconvenient location. And he will definitely want us to take him to a better location."

  "Of course," Vaeris muttered.

  "He was sentenced to labor under the Hedonist Collective," Karn continued.

  Ironbelly’s nostrils flared. "On Euphoria Prime?"

  "The very same," Elara confirmed. "Where the galaxy's elite go to gamble and play and watch condemned souls fight to the death or some other form of torture."

  "How do you know he's there?" Thimble asked.

  “Elara put him there,” the minotaur said.

  She didn’t deny it. “Darius Vex. Bonded with a Kishi spirit, charmer, and loves stealing corporate secrets. Incarceration isn’t likely to have stopped him from his usual bad habits. If SoulCorp’s panicking, he’ll know why.”

  Cassian tried not to breathe too loudly.

  He tried not to look at the horned, child-shaped thing at the end of the table.

  He failed. It looked back, its face rippled faintly, and a thin streak of blue appeared in its hair. Just like his.

  Cassian locked his knees and stared very hard at the grain of the table.

  Finally, Ironbelly drained the last of his spiced milk and set the bottle down with a decisive thunk. "Ember, calculate a route to Euphoria Prime that avoids SoulCorp-owned systems. Vaeris, I need you to prepare cloaking wards that will hold inside an atmosphere. Who knows how fast word will spread our bounties."

  "What about us?" Elara asked.

  "Thimble will take you to Queenie to get geared up. And no, it’s not free, but I’ll front you for the time being." The captain's gaze shifted to X-37. "And we need to figure out what to do with your little pet."

  The “pet" made a sad, trilling sound.

  "It stays with us," Karn said firmly. "Whatever SoulCorp was doing to it, it never had a choice.”

  Ironbelly nodded. "Fine. But if it tries to eat anyone, it's going out the airlock."

  Thimble's fingers flew over her holo-display. "Ember plots Euphoria Prime as three jumps away. Even pushing the engines, we're looking at fifty-two hours transit time."

  "Then we'd best get started." Ironbelly stood. "Meeting adjourned. Get to work."

  As everyone began to rise, Vaeris turned her eyes on Cassian.

  “Thank you, thermal boy,” she said pleasantly. “Come see me sometime if you’re interested in learning control.”

  He nodded stiffly and pushed his cart toward the door.

  "Ward."

  Cassian froze. "Yes, Captain?"

  "Don’t have to tell you to watch your mouth, do I?"

  “N-no, sir.” Cassian slipped out, faster than necessary.

  Behind him, the ship adjusted course.

  Ahead of him, dinner service waited.

  And somewhere in the lower decks, rumors were already multiplying.