She spun the display to Patton. The two dots were right on top of each other.

“What does that mean? Is he caught?”

Izairis pressed her lips together and took back the pad.

Patton gazed at her like someone who’d just been informed their parents were dead. Saying nothing, he faced ahead.

“Look!” said Naecia. The next sector over was lit. It had power.

They found a transway that ran the city’s perimeter along the docks. She pushed the cart and its passengers inside. “Berth five-eight-zero!” she shouted. Then: “Timelance?”

“Still out there.”

Naecia pushed the dolly into a gap in the seating reserved for cargo and triggered a short wall to keep it in place. “Could be very soon that they realize he doesn’t have the Chime.”

“Oh shit,” Izairis exclaimed, holding the data pad for them to see.

The blue dot on screen was now traveling in the opposite direction, leaving the pink dot of the Silent Child behind. “How did it do that without a braking deceleration? It just... changed direction.”

Izairis looked on. “I don’t know why we keep acting shocked.”

The transit slowed and pulled into the station serving the five-eighties. They tore out from their straps. Naecia got the dolly. “Go!”

Patton and Izairis sprinted from the transway, saw that they were at five-eighty-five, and ran back down the dock. Naecia soon came up beside them, her legs moving at three times their clip even with the extra burden of the Switch on wheels.

She had never seen a galax cruiser. Most of the craft on the routes around and between Drev and Vask were utilitarian beaters, only as large as they needed to be. Still three births away, the ship was unmistakable. A titanic silver-bronze teardrop of gleaming technology with few other visible features or inclusions. No other obvious weapons systems, arrays, or coms. All likely hidden away behind panels or otherwise internalized. A solid second place for the strangest ship she’d ever seen.

Patton raised the fob and called ahead, “Open!”

A section of the skin of the cruiser pulled wide like a theater curtain, but without any wrinkles, seams, or hinges. It just changed. A ramp scrolled down from the opening to touch the deck as Naecia got the dolly to it, and she continued up and in. She caught the name of the ship embossed in small, nondescript type along the side of the door. Stellarcade.

Patton burst in after, shouting orders to the ship, “Lights! Nav! Reactor!” And it was working. Displays warmed to life across gorgeously burnished surfaces. Status holograms projected up and spun lazily in the air.

“What kind of power does it have?” asked Naecia.