The Nameless was from hundreds of years before the invention of FTL and art-grav. It simulated gravity through centripetal acceleration. The ancient vessel spun around, and we walked on the inside of its vast wheel. Maybe that was why I felt so unsteady, following One down that long, dark hall. My inner ear said we were walking a straight line, but my eye recognized the near-invisible curvature of the floor ahead.

The hallway was pitch-black, without even a filmed-over window to allow in flickering traces of light. The Ministers had all turned down their collar-lights, so as not to blind themselves. The only source of light was their flashlights. We salvagers had no lights; the Ministers had left us nothing in our packs except food and water. The world around us was built of glimpses of walls and ceiling and uneven floor, half-seen shapes of doorframes and molding hanging loose. I knew the size of the space only from the way sound echoed.

One had taken the lead, a slight figure a few steps ahead of me. Unlike Indigo, who kept his one long knife strapped behind his shoulders, One kept her two knives at each hip. The blades hung in her silhouette like flight feathers.

The air here—breathable; I’d seen Green examining a handheld scanner, tracking the quality—was heavy with an unpleasant, musty-oil smell that was somehow familiar.

“Roaches,” I realized, then repeated for everyone to hear, “There are roaches on this ship.”

From the back of the line, I heard Quint make a small, involuntary noise of disgust. One said, “We appreciate the warning, Mr. Wren.”

She’d already known. Still, if there were roaches on this ship—and quite a lot of them, from the smell, though they were probably hiding from our flashlights—then that meant that life could survive on the Nameless, and had. Like Lantern-Eyes.

“This ship was designed to host generations,” One said. She was having no trouble finding her footing, because she had a flashlight to light her way. “It has a robust autorepair. It is likely there are self-perpetuating sources of food and water, deeper in. All the things humans need.”

“We don’t exactly need generation ships anymore,” I said. “We’ve grown out of them. Like old shoes. Or Ministers.”

Number One looked at me like a snow-capped mountain looks at the sun, the ancient frost of her untouchable even by the brightest day. My imp grinned: point one for Sean Wren.

Before the invention of faster-than-light engines, humans had been born, aged, and died on the ships that traveled between star systems. That was why we had needed the Ministers—the past tense being the operative word. Much of the Ministers’ control over the Sister Systems had been their ability to make the journey between planets within only a fraction of their lifetime. A few decades was nothing to them.

The invention of FTL had rendered them as obsolete as outdated technology, but the Ministers, used to thinking on timescales of fifty years or more, were slow to recognize the threat this new technology posed. It was the one and only time human technology has outpaced the Ministers’, but the effects had been far-reaching. As soon as the Ministers realized the humans had had a breakthrough that put the Ministers at a disadvantage, they took steps to re-assert their authority, not realizing how far the situation had already slipped from their control.