Its staring, floating eyes irritated me, so I suggested it revert to the spinning disk or no visual whatsoever. It chose the latter and its responsiveness immediately improved.

“This ship answers a light query. It tells me it no longer remembers its name or number,” it said. “It also informs me an internal report on operability will not damage equipment. That’s a relief, no?”

“Maybe,” I said, paying more attention to the world below, as if staring hard might reveal something I had not noticed to this point.

And it did.

“Ship says external sensors are corroded and barely operable,” the residue continued. “But properly coaxed, they may still supply some information. Shall I coax?”

I pointed to a grayish patch on Uthera’s limb, even now sliding into darkness—but still, as it did so, shaping a visible bump against the thin starfield beyond. “Try focusing on that.” I said.

“It is of considerable size,” the residue said. “Yet it does not appear to be a natural feature, nor a Forerunner construct. Ship will take a closer view.”

That view—grainy and shimmering, as if through a rising column of hot air—revealed what I had dreaded most and seen only once, ten thousand years before: a spore mountain.

The Flood.

“The object rises fifty kilometers above the planet’s datum and measures four hundred kilometers across the base, at its greatest diameter. It intersects many Forerunner constructs and appears to have arisen at the center of a major city, which city is, if memory serves—if this is truly Uthera—”

A matter of little importance to me at this moment. “Will ship respond to my commands? Will you?”

The residue considered, then flashed a geometric shape—a complex polygon. “Do you have proper codes for assuming command?”

The codes I carried in memory were over a millennia old—but they might appeal to this poor remnant, or the ship with which it was so delicately linked.

“Try this,” I said, and spoke a string of four hundred intricately looping nonsense words and numbers of the sliding, nonintegral varieties favored by Builder systems.

“Checking,” the residue said.

Sharp-by-Striking came up through the transit opening, but this time in proper fashion, rising slowly, accompanied by a sigh of freshening air. “Tubes and conveyors are working, sort of,” he said. “What did you do?”

“We’re waking up,” I said. “What about our comrades in the hold?”

“Murky, but clearing a little. Not long until they burst. One appears to be a high-ranking Builder,” Sharp said, confirming my observation. “Still has armor.”

“Not Faber—?”

“Not the Master Builder.” He grimaced in disappointment.

“Too bad,” I agreed. We shared a moment of darkness, touching the sixth fingers of our left hands in vengeful sympathy.

“But possibly one of his subordinates, fallen from favor,” Sharp said. “If the armor still functions, perhaps it can help control the ship.”

“And the other?”