Aptat attached a drone to one of the bulging nets and pushed it out from the cruiser. “This batch has a rack of universal power cells, a squadron of short-range probes, some Khatisi religious iconography – wait until you see that, I mean, wow, and a case of genuine, variable-aperture Vortu blunderbusses. Never played with anything like those. Oh, and voidsuits, too. Will probably be a little baggy on you lot, well, maybe not big Oush.” The drone pulled the cargo across the vacuum, leaving it inside a stall in bay one, then returned to Aptat for the next load.

Naecia dug back into the Switch, hardwiring it to the ship’s main power. It was the first time she was able to bring the machine fully online. Before now, she’d never had access to the immense energy required for its operation. After the connection was made, she checked the fidelity of the quantum processors on a small display and made some microadjustments to the particle shielding. She then ran through the aggregation and cataloguing script that she’d gotten courtesy of the twin mathematicians. It was the machine’s heart; what it would use to bundle data for something to be transferred. In this case, the Silent Child and everyone in it.

Aptat remained on the Glaive for nearly half a cygie, excitedly filling more than twenty nets with salvage, while noisily regaling them through the com about every little bauble they’d found, like a child discovering a cache of gifts ahead of the Aphelion Festival. They dispatched the final drone, the one Naecia had been waiting for, and began a final sweep. She watched the drone’s signature anxiously as it made its way over.

“Whoa, look at this,” said Aptat. “Those cheap bastards!”

Oush switched from the macro visual of the Glaive over to the stringhunter’s POV camera, and everyone pressed in around the display. The dilaceration cannon had sliced away a portion of the Glaive’s inner hull, exposing a compartment into which arm-sized metallic bars were set. None of them – probably even including Aptat – had ever seen so much guush in one place. Naecia’s own mental discipline faltered as she swam into fantasies about what she could do with money like that.

Aptat yanked a pair of the billets free and turned them over, exposing red embossments crossing the base of each pewter-colored ingot like a ribbon. “And it’s registered. All of it.”

Excitement spread among the observers like a pheromone. Oush picked up Izairis, who, looking stunned, nearly disappeared in his massive embrace. Naecia, too, was swept up in the revelry. An equal share of that type of money could take care of her family for ten lifetimes. It was virtually unspendable.