Just in case the specimen turns hostile, she told herself. She wondered if the rumored power of Edison’s lance was all that kept them at bay.

As they progressed into the interior of the keep, the habitable corridors disappeared, and the density of the obstructing beams increased. Also, more and more of the gold canisters became visible—larger slivers and triangles of shimmering honey flashing out between the beams.

After a few tight, final squeezes, the three ships rounded into an open workspace where Anlyn could see several tugs pulling the blockade apart, creating a hole for her to fly through. A collection of replacement canisters stood nearby, another tug busying itself around them like a herder tending his flock.

Anlyn had to wait while they finished. She held the ship perfectly still as the two starfighters hovered to either side, their bows pointing straight at her. As if we pose more of a threat than the rift ahead, Anlyn thought. She tried to ignore them, as well as the hollow pit forming in her gut from having their weapons aimed directly at her. Instead, she lost herself in watching the tugs work. They pulled out several more layers of armored canisters—the innermost eaten away in places—until the rift was eventually exposed.

When the tear in space became visible, Edison grumbled something in English too obtuse for her to follow. In the recess of gold opened by the tugs, she could see empty space and stars beyond. A few structures glimmered in the distance beyond that, like bright stars. It was an odd sight, for the tugs had only removed half the layers in one spot. The hole in space stood in front of the rear half of the rest of the golden cube. She and Edison were looking through them, rather than at them. And not through them so much as through a rip in the very fabric of the galaxy, a doorway to another galaxy that was not theirs.

Anlyn shook the wonder of the scene away, scared that Bishar’s men would see her hesitation as a change of heart. She increased thrust, moving the large craft forward.

“How’s the hyperdrive?” she asked Edison, wishing she’d boned up on some basic Bern during their flight from Drenard.

He pulled up a different screen on his readout. “Cycled and optimal.”

They passed the outer boundary of canisters, entering a bright, golden cave. Ahead of them loomed a hole in space where the other half of the Keep should be. Anlyn continued to power the ship forward, slow and steady. She thought of all the brave men and women who had come on the mission with her, their lives lost. And why? Had she misread the prophecy? Was she misreading it again? No longer were they waiting for the Bern to show up—she and Edison were now going to them. Once more, it felt like a mistake. She wondered if their arrival in a Bern craft would give her and Edison more time to announce their arrival in peace, or if she and her love were about to join the rest of her mission in being reduced to dust.