It was cracked. When Surit touched the strongbox, almost mesmerized, it beeped in protest. It didn’t accept an emergency salvage key. Or—no, that wasn’t it. Marit had set it to accept no key at all. She had never wanted this opened.

Shouldn’t have blown yourself up, then, Surit thought. He couldn’t parse the emotion attached to the thought. His chest hurt.

The silver strongbox had clearly been caught in a blast from somewhere else, embedding itself in this wall like shrapnel, which was the only reason it hadn’t been sucked out into the cloud of debris outside. Surit stared at it, then knelt, clamped one hand to the surface beside it, and used the tool in the suit’s wrist to break it open.

A dazzling light cracked from the box, spilling into the darkness of the ruined flag chamber.

It died away almost as quickly, leaving Surit wondering if he had hallucinated it. As it drained away, it was immediately replaced by a buzzing sensation, like a swarm of insects across Surit’s skin. Surit barely stopped for a second thought. He levered open the side of the box.

Inside, heaped up like hundreds of shining pebbles, were more galactic remnants than Surit had ever thought existed.

Surit’s breath caught. Marit had stolen these.

“The bridge knows you’re there now,” Tennal reported. “Someone noticed. They’re sending a scanning ship, looks like?”

Surit did not really care. He picked out one of the remnants. It was a shard like a pearlescent piece of shell. It buzzed through the glove of his suit. He almost certainly shouldn’t have been touching it.

Surit didn’t know why the back of his throat tasted bitter with disappointment. He’d known his mother had started a coup for power. The remnants could have made more architects for her power base, so it made sense she wanted them. How had she planned to do it? Had she meant to bargain with the Resolution?

Did it even matter, now that she was dead? Her body might’ve been floating among the debris outside. Surit should have looked for that, not come inside the ship as if it would tell him something about what she’d meant to do.

There was nothing here for him. Only another crime his mother had committed.

“Sir,” Istara said urgently over comms. “Sir, there’s a scanning ship from the fleet coming toward us. I don’t know what it’s fucking doing.” There was a pause. “It’s not slowing down. Lieutenant! Answer!”

The world gave a shattering crash and turned over.

Surit’s back slammed into the ceiling. He clutched the remnant shard in his hand. In the split seconds afterward, his head ringing, he tried to understand what had happened. A new ship must have collided with the wreckage he was in. Why—