“Ahh! You have one of their infospheres. You will have greater access than I do. Sebastien has kept such devices from me. You could even search the deep archives with that. Sebastien has spent hours poring over them. I have caught the occasional glimpse, but I have trouble reading the records. Sebastien’s implant whispers translations to him, but mine does not.” Uzoma inclined their head toward the sphere. “What are you planning to do?”

“Whatever I can.” Lantern held the sphere up to the screen, and it glowed bright blue, and began to spin.

Callie said, “We have to neutralize Sebastien and save Elena. That’s straightforward enough. As for blowing this place up – we can just get out of here, and let Sebastien’s dead-man’s switch activate and take the station out.”

“I overheard Sebastien telling you that.” Uzoma shook their head. “There is no self-destruct system, no dead-man’s switch. The station has no central power source that can be caused to explode. He was merely trying to keep you from incapacitating him.”

“And you call me a liar,” Lantern muttered.

Callie put a hand on one of Lantern’s tentacles. “Not you. Not anymore. You’re a truth-teller.”

Lantern patted her hand, but absently, focused intently on the spinning sphere.

“A whole fleet of ships, full of wormhole generators. Huh.” Ashok clucked his tongue, somewhere under all that metal, and began to pace back and forth, a sure sign of deep and twisty thoughts. “We probably shouldn’t leave those lying around unattended.”

“Not ideally,” Callie said, “but maybe no one else will ever find this place again. Space is big.”

“Sure, but it would nag at me, knowing they were out there, waiting to wreak havoc. But maybe… Cap, do you need me, for the Elena-saving portion of our program?”

Callie was already formulating a plan, with herself at its center, so she said, “I don’t think so.”

“Good. I want to talk some stuff over with Lantern.”

Callie flapped her hand at him in dismissal and turned back to Uzoma. “Is there another way into the control room?”

“I doubt Sebastien is there anymore. I suspect he has taken Elena to the overseer’s platform, to show her the progress on his fleet. He dragged me there often, until he realized I did not share his wish to become a god.”

“I wouldn’t want to be a god either. Seems like a lot of responsibility. The part of being a god where you get to mete out justice is good, but I can do that in my mortal form pretty well already. Can you get me to this platform?”

Uzoma nodded. “Yes. You should hurry. Sebastien was always fond of Elena, and has spoken of her often, regretting his decision to send her away, so perhaps she is unharmed. But he does not cope well with disagreement, and he may try to… change her, to make her compliant.”