“There are only three dozen of us,” Tennal said. His head hurt, but it was gradually clearing enough to remember why he had the plan in the first place. “We’re not an army. Without a lever, we’re a joke.”

“There’s no way the commander’s people had enough time to clear out the whole lab last time,” Istara said. “The Archer troops hit us like a hammer, remember? Even if there are just some more remnants in there, maybe we can use them. And—”

“You need to lie down, Captain Halkana,” the medic said to Tennal, interrupting Istara. “You need to be stable—we need to finish the treatment—”

“I don’t give a shit,” Tennal said. “I’ve never been stable. Why would I start now?”

“What if there’s nothing to find,” Basavi snapped.

“That’s what I’m trying to say!” Istara said, turning up the volume on the speakers until their voice was deafening. The rest of them went quiet. Basavi glared into empty air.

Into the silence, Istara said, “I’ve got a scan on the lab. It’s picked up energy signatures. Someone’s in there ahead of us.”

The laboratory facility spun in a planet-sized lull in chaotic space. It was a ring of linked modules, ancient by the Note’s standards but large enough to be entirely self-sustaining. It wasn’t lit; to the naked eye, it was only distinguishable by the dark void where it blocked the scattering of distorted stars. The pod’s inbuilt scanners gave the image a faint wash of silver. Half the modules were gone; there were gaping wounds in others. That would have been Marit Yeni’s doing. But some of the modules were still whole.

Tennal watched it approach on the screen of the tiny transfer pod and tried to put out of his mind that Surit must have felt the comforting hull of the Note recede behind him in the same way.

But the lab wasn’t dead, not entirely. In the midst of its vast dark bulk, one small pilot light gleamed by a docking hatch.

“There’s a ship,” Basavi reported from the chair next to him. “Look. It’s deflecting scanners.”

“So we know that hatch is powered and working,” Tennal said, with an entirely false confidence. “Bring us in.”

“I wish we had even the faintest idea who was in there,” Basavi muttered. She sent their position back to Istara on the Note and got an immediate acknowledgment. Istara must’ve been hovering over their console.

The light was so old that its blue glow flickered. A new, insistent ping came over their comm.

“That’s the station alert channel,” Tennal said, nonplussed, as Basavi took them into dock. “Someone wants to talk to us.” He brought the screen up before she could protest. It only occurred to him afterward that maybe he should have taken it just on voice.