“Nice outfit.” It was Ben. Standing where a wall used to be.

“Ben!” said Naecia, opening the suit’s mask. She looked him over. “Where is the Chime?”

“Hidden.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“None of us can know, remember?” said Izairis.

“But you know,” said Naecia.

“I’m going to fix that,” Ben answered. “Look – there’s a massive power corridor right behind those walls across the dock.”

“How do you – oh right,” she said. “You built this whole place in the dredge.”

“Yeah. I’ve already switched off the breaker. The rest I’ll leave to you. I don’t really do engineering.”

“Even if I can get power to the drive, the Scythin are here,” said Naecia. “And even if the machine can assemble a reliable particle catalogue, they’ll effectively be a part of Aszerat at that point. We’ll just take the Scythin with us wherever we go!”

Ben shrugged. “If it comes to that, we’ll take it, I think. It would separate them from the Timelance. At the very least we could switch ourselves far enough away that they would never be able to find it, much less reach it. They can’t destroy the galaxy without that ship.”

“Yeah, but they’d shred Aszerat and every person in it,” said Naecia. “Us included.”

“You’re the one always talking about saving uncountable trillions at the expense of a few, right? Sucks to be the few.” Ben leaned backward and glanced down the dock. “Look – I’m still going to try and get them out of the city. They’re searching for me, remember?”

“They’ll catch you, Ben. Or they’ll kill you. Neither of those things can happen.”

“First step is escaping with the Chime,” said Ben. “It’s here. Hidden. Tell Patton it’s in a place that will remind him of Saturday mornings. He’ll figure it out.” He paused, furrowed his face. “Hey. Where is Patton?”

Izairis stepped forward. “The city’s PA is locked down hard. Only the emergency announcements are coming through. We couldn’t throw the recording to somewhere else.”

“So...” his face was suddenly distressed.

“We turned a Vortu helmet into a transmitter and Patton is bringing it to the far side of Aszerat,” said Izairis, taking Ben by the shoulders. “Your plan worked, Ben. He started the transmission and the Scythin just fell apart and went after it.”

“It wasn’t my plan to have Patton be a sitting duck!”

“I don’t know what a sitting duck is,” said Naecia, “but he’s buying us time. What’s the rest of your plan?”

Ben looked at Izairis. “I need you to teach me to fly the Silent Child.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

PATTON GETS A CHAPTER

Patton belted the chorus to Enter Sandman by Metallica as the transport zipped across open space.

“Patton!” It was Naecia “NOW!”

“Now? Now what?” he said, checking his surroundings. “I’m still in the transway!”