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Sep 14th, 2018 by yukamichi

 

Chapter 1: Stowaway

"Where's the Captain?"

"Still getting changed."

"Sorry I'm late!" Katou Marika, captain of the pirate starship Bentenmaru, burst onto the bridge clutching her unwieldy and time-consuming dress jacket with both arms.

"What took you so long!?" Kane MacDougal, entrusting the ship to autopilot, spun the entire helmsman's chair around, his arms linked behind his head. "We nearly had to start work without our captain on the bridge."

"I was busy with the yacht club! Didn't you say we didn't have to work today?" Marika glanced at the flight plan on the captain's display as she hastily donned her jacket.

"It was a last-minute job, they paid extra up front for us to take it." Misa Grandwood, ship's doctor, rose from her place at the observer seat, her lab coat fluttering behind her. "It's a standard passenger liner commercial piracy gig, but they went with an optional package this time that you'll need to keep in mind."

"Options? What, kidnapping tour? Slapstick routine?"

Misa's eyes ran to Kane at the helm.

"Have we got time?"

"Two minutes and thirty seconds until we drop back into normal space."

"I'll keep the explanation brief. Our mark is the Fregat Lines megaship Symphony Angel. It has three escorts, we'll board after a ship-to-ship engagement."

"Sounds like a handful." Marika settled into the captain's chair as she buttoned the front of her jacket. Misa continued with the explanation.

"The Symphony Angel's escorts are three small ships, cheapos meant for private militaries, so firepower won't be an issue. We'll engage them directly and overwhelm them before asking for their surrender. Once we've taken over our prey you can pillage them as usual. Any questions?"

Marika scrolled down to the end of the data on the captain's chair display.

"Have all the arrangements been made?"

"We've hit Fregat Lines several times before. The details of the ambush option have also been filed with traffic control—we're supposed to give the passengers a show, make it look like we really mean it."

"So I'm just along for the ride until it's time to for me to take the stage." Marika surveyed the bridge of the pirate ship Bentenmaru. It wasn't what she would call roomy—all the stations were filled with their respective crew finishing up preparations. Marika smiled and lifted her arm. "All right, let's get to work."

"Returning to normal space." Kane clapped his hands together, returned his seat to the forward position, and took hold of the ship's yoke.

The Bentenmaru reemerged from hyperspace into normal space, the characteristic shockwave encompassing the ship's hull. Radar and sensors were instantly turned loose to verify their current position and discern their surroundings.

"Target confirmed!" Hyakume, the radar and sensor operator, immediately nailed down the ships' signatures. "One Angel-class mega cruise ship and three Corback-class destroyers. Their armaments don't match up, guess they didn't have the budget to buy all three at once."

"You can dig into their finances all you want later." Marika confirmed the positions of each ship on the displays surrounding the captain's chair. Nothing out of the ordinary. "Is everyone good to go?"

"Radar, sensors, all green!"

"No problems with propulsion or thrusters, they can fire at any time."

"Cyberwarfare preparations are complete."

"Weapons and gunnery control are combat-ready," Schnitzer, the shorn-headed combat cyborg crammed into the gunnery station chimed. Hyakume had an additional announcement.

"The Corbacks are targeting us. They've picked up on our location and transponder."

"In other words, they're letting us know they know we're here."

"Bingo."

Marika listened to Hyakume's report and nodded. "Bentenmaru, let's move!"

The Bentenmaru threw out a jamming field and began its advance on the cruise ship and its three escorts.

The luxury liner Symphony Angel and the three Corback-class destroyers, arranged in a triangular defensive formation, lost their radar and sensor functions all at once. Weathering the powerful ECM, the three escorts boosted their radar outputs and switched frequencies as they started their approach.

"The three escorts have started to move," Coorie, the cyberwarfare operator, announced from underneath her tousled hair and glass-bottle spectacles, her voice devoid of energy. "They're going along with our jamming, I assume they'll be firing shortly."

"How's the sequence of battle supposed to go, again?" Marika called the itinerary back up on her display; the enemy ships should have each had copies as well. Pick out targets using the high-power, high-frequency radar; launch cyberattack; approach and exchange battery fire; come alongside the Symphony Angel. The battle with the escorts was listed as an addendum to the standard pirate activities outlined in the first paragraph, but otherwise it wasn't that different from business as usual. "Yeah, I don't get to show up until we board."

That business, of course, was ransacking their prey. Marika scanned the bridge. The crew all knew their jobs; some had been serving on the Bentenmaru since before she'd even been born. There was nothing for her to do as captain during the battle.

"I guess now's the time to send the order to surrender."

"Transmitting," Coorie responded softly. "They should be firing momentarily."

"Oho, detecting a sudden energy surge from the enemy ships," Hyakume said, reading off the sensor data. "We've got live ones here."

"They're ignoring the surrender order?" Marika grumbled. The pirate ship Bentenmaru had made a show of announcing itself, and moreover they outgunned the enemy three times over, not that that ever stopped anyone. "Why does everybody always want to get in a firefight?"

"Because they have guns," gunnery officer Schnitzer answered in a deep baritone. "Targeting data acquired. Waiting for the Corbacks to open fire before responding."

"Make sure to go easy on them." Marika took one last look at the battle itinerary. Nothing in the program mentioned damaging the enemy ships. "They may just be mass-produced destroyers, but if we're careless and scratch one of them, we'll still have to go through the hassle of filing a claim for the repairs with our insurance company."

"I'll do what I can."

"All right, they're firing!" Just as Hyakume called out, the three destroyers that had come forward in defense of the Symphony Angel each let loose with their paired, forward-mounted twin turrets, twelve beam cannons in all. The tightly-focused energy beams tore across space from the armor-penetrating induction barrels.

Whether thanks to the Bentenmaru's jamming or the limits of the destroyers' effective range, all twelve of the beams scattered off into space, missing their target by a wide margin.

"They're disciplined." Schnitzer offered his opinion of the three destroyers' simultaneous volley. "But their skills and equipment need work."

"Like I said, go easy on them." Marika watched both sides' positions laid out on the holographic display. "It's a regular gig, we might as well let the escort fleet get a little experience fighting real pirates."

"The Corbacks are switching up their patterns." Coorie's voice had lost some of its tired edge. "Instead of a brute force cyberattack, they're dispersing and going passive. That's smart, spreading out their networked sensor grid to improve their detection accuracy is the best way to go about it."

"Seriously?" Marika followed the trajectories of the three ships intently as they fanned out; their movements were different from those of typical escorts. "Is our position going to be compromised?"

"We'll be fine, the computers on those consumer-grade ships are too slow," Coorie answered, unfazed. "Their sensors are flooded with so much data that even just doing the calculations will lag them. Your typical commander isn't gutsy enough to try and focus their sensors on a specific region of space at random, we've got nothing to worry about."

"Even so, we're still on the clock. Maybe we should throw them a bone, help them level up a bit?" Hyakume teased. "Maybe if we graze them with our beams it could help them figure out where we are."

"I just want this over with," Marika said, waving her arms. "I have school tomorrow."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Enemy Corbacks Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, positions confirmed." Schnitzer verified the targeting data for the three provisionally-named destroyers. He assigned one to each of the three cannons of the number one turret. "Prepared to fire a warning shot. Firing."

Schnitzer discharged the Bentenmaru's cannons, warning shots not meant to strike their targets. The conglomerated masses of near-lightspeed plasma energy ripped through space from the barrels of one of the paired triple-turrets mounted on the upper deck.

The precisely aimed volley loosed from the three barrels drilled through space directly in front of the three scattered destroyers. The observation equipment on any proper warship should have been able to confirm that they were receiving directed fire, even while being struck by intense jamming.

As predicted, the three Corback-class destroyers froze as if they had just come under a surprise attack. The fleet continued its cyberwarfare countermeasures, however, and fired another volley at the unseen pirate ship.

"They're not responding to the surrender offer?" The initial volleyed fire had transitioned to a staggered pattern, one just as inaccurate. Marika propped her elbow against the armrest of the captain's chair, growing weary of the drawn out gun battle. "Maybe they didn't hear us?"

"The message was flagged as received. Unless nobody's manning their comms, they shouldn't have missed it."

Marika took a moment to consider Coorie's report. "Maybe they think they can win with numbers, regardless of how outclassed they are in cyberwarfare? Guess that means we'll have to give them a lesson in firepower too. Schnitzer, can we straddle all three ships at once?"

Straddling, the use of multiple beams to box in a targeted ship. Firing point-blank shots all focused in a single direction could result in calculation errors, but by using a salvo of beams to bracket the enemy ship, it was possible to ensure that the next shot would be on-point.

"It's possible," Schnitzer answered immediately. "What about output? With volley fire, we can use lower-energy beams to bracket them and then charge up for the next shot."

"I don't care, keep them at anti-ship levels." Marika checked the position of the Symphony Angel, to the rear of its escort fleet. "Our customers are watching, we owe them a show."

"Roger. Targeting Corbacks Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie, all turrets set for volley fire."

The Bentenmaru broke from its evasive maneuvering and proceeded into a stable, forward-facing flight pattern in order to accurately aim its shots. The pair of upper-deck-mounted triple-turrets loosed six simultaneous energy beams.

Without fail, the six beams accurately straddled all three of the destroyers as they undertook combat maneuvers, still firing in an attempt to locate the Bentenmaru.

"Send the surrender order again. And tell them that the next warning shot will be at the Symphony Angel."

"Message sent."

"Main batteries are charging up. If you just want a warning shot, they can fire any time."

"Give it a second, let them have some time to double-check their dance card."

"We've got a response." Coorie forwarded the message to the captain's chair. "It's from the Symphony Angel, though, not the escorts. It says they accept our surrender offer."

"The Symphony Angel? That's not usually how it goes, is it?" The typical procedure for an escorted target was for the escorts to surrender first, then for the prey to hoist the white flag.

"Nope. Now the escort fleet has accepted the surrender offer too, in the name of their commander. I wonder what was up with the delay?"

"This was a last-minute job, maybe there was a communication mix-up somewhere?" Marika turned to Misa at the observer seat. Misa, who had watched the battle unfold, shrugged, palms facing upward.

"Communication mix-ups happen all the time out here in space. Maybe the escorts were just showing off, maybe the Symphony Angel's chain of command got scrambled, it's anybody's guess. I'm sure you know the danger in assuming everything will just work out okay?"

"Even so, if we had just turned and ran, we'd lose our license. Have the escorts stood down?"

"Yeah, they've cut their ECCM and halted combat maneuvers." Hyakume dialed back the ship's sensors as he answered. "I'm still getting high energy readings, but that's not unusual."

"We've secured control of the Symphony Angel." Coorie forwarded the Symphony Angel's current status, received over datalink, to the captain's chair. "The Symphony Angel is ours. Feel free to get to work."

Marika noted the positions of the three destroyers and the luxury liner, and then scanned the bridge.

"There's still a chance things could turn dangerous. Hopefully it's just paranoia, but if not, it could mean our livelihood, if not our lives. Let's dock with the target as usual and board them."

Continuing to jam the escort fleet, the Bentenmaru advanced, docked with the Symphony Angel, and forced open its airlock.

As usual, Marika's appearance at work was greeted with a shower of applause from the waiting passengers. She looted a portion of the passengers' jewelry and some precious cargo—all according to their contract—and then the Bentenmaru's business was complete.

"It's over..."

The pirate boarding party returned to the Bentenmaru and released their prey, entrusting their getaway to the crew who had remained on the bridge. Marika retreated to her captain's quarters still wearing the gaudy, miniskirted getup she had paraded in front of the passengers, her dispirited eyes dropping like they always did to the full length mirror.

"Another thrilling day as a space pirate."

She slowly lifted her head to face her own gaze, the audacious miniskirted captain's outfit, even makeup and lipstick.

"It gets easier and easier each time...at this rate, I'll never be able to go back to living a normal life." She glanced at the captain's hat lying on her desk. "I never thought I'd be cut out for this kind of work."

Looking back on the day's job and everything that had transpired, Marika vigorously shook her head.

"I don't need to dwell on it! It's just a temporary thing anyway, the piracy, this costume!" she screamed, full of excuses, and then traipsed her way to the closet that adjoined the captain's quarters. "Time to get changed."

According to stringent dress codes, the proprietor of a pirate ship—its captain—was required to wear a uniform identifying them as such whenever they were actively engaged in piracy of a targeted vessel. There was not, however, any obligation to wear the uniform during normal operation of the ship. And there should have been no more work for a pirate captain that day.

The intercom on Marika's desk rang out, beckoning her. She spun around and returned to the desk, pressing the response button on the far side.

"This is Marika."

"Hey there, this is Hyakume on the bridge. Apologies for bothering you while you're unwinding, but I was wondering if you might come up to the bridge for a second?"

Marika frowned. When Hyakume used that roundabout mode of speech, she could bet that some sort of trouble was brewing.

"Understood, I'll be right there."

If he had gone to the trouble of calling her, then it wasn't something that she could solve just by hearing about it over the intercom.

"Good thing he got to me before I took the uniform off."

Appearing on the pirate ship's bridge in her schoolgirl's uniform would have been a powerful blow to her authority as captain. She quickly left her quarters and headed for the bridge.

There, Marika's first encounter with crisis awaited her.

"A stowaway!?" Marika's voice rose unconsciously. It wasn't a word the modern world had heard for some time. "Where, when, how!? This is a pirate ship, is our security so lax that we let some archaic criminal sneak aboard!?"

"They came from the Symphony Angel, while we were raiding it," Hyakume summarized, answering her questions concisely and in order. "We're currently trying to figure out how."

"I thought I heard a strange noise after we docked with the Symphony Angel, as we switched control over to the hardline connection," Coorie explained apologetically, still cozied up to her spot at the cyberwarfare station. "Since it didn't trip our defenses, I assumed it was just some corporate communication with civilian-level encryption, but apparently, somehow, it overwrote the Bentenmaru's security for a moment. We have backups, of course, and by the next scan everything was back to normal. I checked again once we'd separated and there were signs that data from the security cameras and sensors had been overwritten; I think they probably snuck aboard as we were raiding the other ship."

"Color me surprised. That's top-notch hacking, isn't it?" Marika looked at Coorie, the Bentenmaru's sole cyberwarfare operator, and Hyakume, who was in charge of sensors and communications. It was their responsibility to hold down the fort while the Bentenmaru's rough-and-tumble crew members were off plundering their targets.

"Definitely," Coorie confirmed, rapping herself on the head. "I was confident we were locked down tight, I never thought someone could slip by this easily."

"What if it were some robot carrying a bomb? The Bentenmaru could be blown away just like that."

"They didn't trip any of our threat sensors, so we shouldn't have to worry about that," Hyakume said, running another check of the ship's internal systems. "There were no signs of significant metal objects either, so I doubt they brought anything particularly dangerous on board with them. But still..."

"It's not like it's a dog or a cat, we can't just ignore them."

"Could we even ignore a dog or cat?"

"Regardless, where is our stowaway and what are they up to?" Marika looked around the bridge, dismayed.

"They're currently holed up in docking control on the lower deck."

Coorie's answer left Marika puzzled. "So we're a pirate ship, we've got a stowaway on board, we know where they are, and we aren't doing anything about it?"

"It's not like we're doing nothing," Hyakume said with a shrug. "Allowing them on board was our mistake, but we've got security and docking control back now. They may not realize it, but it would be nothing for us to lock them in, flood the room with knockout gas, vent the air, whatever. Easier than sending a boarding party after them, at any rate."

"But there must be some reason why you aren't doing that. What is it?"

"Our stowaway's vitals." Hyakume sent the data from the ship's internal sensors to the bridge's main screen. It showed a list of physical stats: vital signs, CO2 levels, body heat, etc…

"Estimated height, one hundred thirty-five centimeters, weight, twenty-nine kilos!?" Marika shouted, reading off the easily understood parts.

"Exactly," Hyakume confirmed. "Based on the life sign readings we got that weren't obscured by noise, there's a high probability our stowaway's just a kid."

"What about an image?" Marika moved to the captain's chair. "There's no security camera footage from docking control?"

"Nope. I tried switching on the comms, but I couldn't get a complete image from the camera, like someone had stuck something on the lens. Other than that, we can't see what they might be up to."

"Did you try talking to them?"

"I gave it a shot," Coorie said calmly. "They moved but didn't answer. All they said was to let them speak to the captain, that was it."

Marika grabbed a headset and placed it over her ear. "Gotcha, I'll try talking to them. Patch me through."

Hyakume opened a channel between the bridge and docking control on the lower deck. He routed it to the captain's chair.

Marika took a deep breath and cast her eyes down at the communications monitor. The view through the camera was cloudy and indistinct, as if it were covered with a thin fabric.

"You're connected."

At Hyakume's word, Marika began to speak.

"This is the Bentenmaru's bridge, can you hear me, docking control?"

Marika focused on the sound coming through the headphones. She heard a faint rustling of clothes.

They were listening to the transmission. Satisfied, Marika continued.

"This is the Bentenmaru's bridge, we'll be able to hear you if you say anything. Who's down there?"

"...please..." They coughed, and Marika listened as the voice on the other side of the channel seemed to overcome its uncertainty. "Please allow me speak to the captain directly. I won't negotiate with anyone else."

Marika placed the shipboard call on hold. She pointed with one hand at the microphone to confirm that her voice was cut off.

"The voice sounds like a kid's."

"The height, weight, and our sensors readings of their metabolism all agree. Our stowaway is definitely a child," Hyakume said, pricking up his ears for any sounds from docking control. "But they're still a child who can sneak on board the Bentenmaru. Best to treat them like one."

"So don't act like I realize they're a kid, you mean." Marika reactivated the shipboard communicator.

"This is the Bentenmaru's captain, Katou Marika. I am the ship's captain. Who are you?"

"Liar!" The voice on the other side of the communicator suddenly jumped an octave, as if they had previously been trying to keep it low. "The Bentenmaru's captain is a man! I know that much. Let me talk to Captain Gonzaemon Katou!"

Marika scanned the bridge—which had fallen into an awkward silence—and accepted that the responsibility fell to her.

"The Bentenmaru's previous captain, Gonzaemon Katou, is dead." She waited for a moment before going on. "Were you a friend of his? I'm the current captain, Katou Marika, his daughter."

"Liar…" The voice had dropped again. "I heard nothing about Gonzaemon, about Captain Katou, dying."

"Changes in captain for a sanctioned pirate ship are posted publicly on the net." Marika had even looked for herself, not believing it was really true. "Though a change in captain might not make it all the way to the newsnets."

"So then who's the Bentenmaru's captain now!?"

"I told you, I am. The current captain, Katou Marika." Marika carried on, feeling a complex range of emotions. "I'm Gonzaemon Katou Jirou's daughter, Katou Marika. Did you know my father?"

Several sighs later, a response.

"I apologize for calling you a liar like that. It hadn't occurred to me that Captain Katou might have passed away. I am Princess Gruier Serenity, Seventh Princess of the Serenity royal family.”

After a brief silence the bridge erupted in a fierce uproar. Remembering to put the shipboard call back on hold, Marika turned to Misa in the observer seat.

"Who?"

"She's a member of an exalted family of royals. Not as old as the Galactic Empire's Holy Royal Family, but if you believe their family tree, they go back more than a hundred generations. They're a very famous royal line."

"Is she for real?"

"Figure it out for yourself.” It must have been beyond Misa's capabilities. She raised her voice so the entire bridge could hear. "Now, is there anybody here who's up to date on the Serenity royal family?"

"The only things I know about high society come from reading the headlines on scandal news sites."

"Well then go look her up! If she is the real thing, we have a lot we'll need to consider. Captain, keep her talking."

Marika straightened up and deactivated the hold on the shipboard call.

"Princess Gruier Serenity? It's nice to meet you, I'm the captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru, Katou Marika. Uh, if it's okay with you, could you remove whatever it is that's blocking the camera lens so I can see your face? I think my face should be visible on the monitor down there."

Marika watched the monitor as it displayed only a faint image. The camera installed inline with her own monitor should have been projecting her face onto the docking control communicator's screen.

She was worrying that she probably lacked any clout as a pirate captain when suddenly the camera's field of view brightened.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Captain Katou Marika." The communications monitor showed a beautiful, doll-like girl. "I am Gruier Serenity. I apologize for boarding your ship without permission. Would you be so kind as to grant me clearance to come aboard?"

Instantly enchanted by the girl's striking, noble features and green eyes, Marika stumbled in responding.

"I'll authorize you to come aboard. Welcome to the Bentenmaru, Princess Gruier Serenity. Um…" Remembering her responsibilities as captain, she went on. "If it's okay with you, I'd like to greet you in person and hear what you have to say directly, but first could you tell me what business you have on board the Bentenmaru?"

Visible on both the communications monitor and the bridge's main screen, Gruier's expression darkened. As she watched, Marika realized that the girl was forcing a smile.

"I want you to capture a ghost ship."

"She's the real deal." She could make out Hyakume's rarely voiced admiration from across the bridge. "Princess Gruier Serenity previously embarked on the Symphony Angel. The visual data captured by the camera matches the official records. That's really the princess."

"Princess Gruier, please wait where you are. I'll dispatch someone to show you up," Marika said, fumbling for words as she looked around the bridge. "Schnitzer, hurry down to docking control and escort her."

"Me?" The shorn-headed, tiny mountain of a cyborg rose from the gunnery control station. "Don't you think I'm a poor choice to escort a princess through the Bentenmaru?"

"Ah, you're right, she wouldn't need an armed guard on the ship. Kane! Put on some formal clothes and go greet the Princess!"

"What!?" Kane shouted in protest, rising from the helm where he still wore his full battledress from the raid on the Symphony Angel. "You want me to get changed now? It'll take time, and anyway are you sure we should be bringing her up here?"

"Augh!" Marika shouted. "Uh, how about my quarters...no, that's not the kind of place you take a princess! And the mess hall is a mess. Misa! Where the heck on this ship am I supposed to put a VIP?"

"The stateroom we use for hostages, maybe?" Misa stared at Marika, puzzled. The Bentenmaru was equipped with a lavish cabin used for hosting important passengers they kidnapped from cruise ships.

Gruier, whose face on both the main screen and communications monitor had retained its composure, finally broke out in laughter.

"Pardon me, but if I may suggest something?"

"Augh!" Marika screamed, realizing she had been overheard; she had intended to place the shipboard call back on hold.

"If it's okay with you, I would be fine with visiting the bridge. And please don't worry about a dress code for my escort. I'm here on a mission."

"Ugh, fine, Kane, you're good how you are, go and show the Princess to the bridge. My apologies, Princess, I'm sending an escort down for you immediately!"

Marika hung her head in shame, this time remembering to place the internal call on hold.

"I guess I'm off to meet a princess." Kane lifted himself away from the helm and departed.

Marika watched him leave and surveyed the bridge from the captain's chair. "A ghost ship? That's what she said, right? I wonder what she meant."

Princess Gruier made her appearance on the bridge of the Bentenmaru in a long, pearl white dress, accompanied by Kane plus a gunner and a mechanic, both of whom had volunteered for the task.

"She's so small," Marika remarked without thinking, captivated by the princess's nearly translucent white skin and her handsome features, but most of all by the elegance with which she carried herself.

"I apologize for stowing away on your ship." The girl in the long dress greeted Marika, bowing at the waist as Marika rose from the captain's chair. "I am Gruier Serenity. If you would please grant me permission to come aboard the Bentenmaru."

"Ah, of course, it's our pleasure." Flustered, Marika descended from the elevated captain's chair to meet the princess, fumbling with the etiquette she had learned in school. "I'm the ship's current captain, Katou Marika."

Gruier tilted her head up at the captain, her platinum blond hair loosely pulled back. Marika saw herself reflected in the girl's large, blue-gray eyes. Nervously, Marika bowed to her guest.

"Welcome to the Bentenmaru. We're pleased to welcome the Princess on board."

Gruier's eyes finally softened with a blink of her long lashes.

"Thank you, Captain Katou...the former captain Gonzaemon Katou's esteemed daughter, I presume?"

"Esteemed daughter...?" After taking a moment to realize that the princess was referring to her, Marika pulled her face into a smile. "Yes, the former Captain Katou was my father, or so they tell me."

"I can see that. Your features resemble his."

"They do?" Marika felt something odd as she watched the little girl in front of her. "I never knew my father. People often say we look alike, though."

"He was an outstanding man." The bridge murmured at her unsettling assessment. Gruier gave another deep bow. "Please accept my deepest apologies, I did not know that he had passed away."

"Ah, no, don't worry about it."

Marika scanned the bridge, searching for any sympathetic faces, but the entire bridge crew were engrossed in the proceedings. She looked askance at Misa, eyes pleading for understanding. Misa acknowledged her immediately, but curtly shook her head.

Marika turned back to Gruier.

"Uh, did the crew members I sent to escort the Princess already introduce themselves?"

The three men standing at attention behind the princess—Kane, Tex, and Brigato—waved her off in unison.

"All we did was escort the Princess to the bridge, you think we had time for small talk?"

"So you left all the talking for me." Marika let out a short sigh. "Well then, allow me to introduce the Princess to the Bentenmaru's main crew. Um..." Marika looked around the bridge and began her introductions with the closest crew member. "First we have our helmsman, Kane MacDougal, who showed the Princess to the bridge."

"It's a pleasure to formally meet you, Princess Gruier." Kane extended his right hand, brought it to his chest, and bent his knee with a dramatic flourish. "It's an honor to welcome the Princess to our ship."

"Rein it in, Kane," Marika said—before Kane could grab the princess's hand and kiss it—and then continued. "Behind him is the gunner for our number one turret, Tex Avery."

The tall, long-haired man with eyes concealed by mechanical sunglasses gave a short bow.

"And one of our mechanics, Brigato."

The lanky, bearded man in a turban faced Gruier and brought his hands together in front of him.

"Here we have the Bentenmaru's doctor, Misa."

Misa pulled her hands from the pockets of her lab coat and smiled at the princess. "I'm Misa, I run the sick bay. Have you been under a lot of stress? You look so thin."

"I'm told that often.” The edges of Gruier's smile relaxed.

"Over there is Coorie, she's in charge of cyberwarfare." Marika called out to Coorie, who still had her back to the captain's chair. "Coorie, say hello."

"Sure." Coorie, with her tousled hair and thick glasses, slid the operator's seat backwards and rotated it. She held the same posture from her long shift, the blanket spread across her lap arrayed with snacks, and waved at the princess with both hands. "Sorry for not standing, but I'd lose all the time I've spent on this."

"That's quite all right."

"And next to her is Schnitzer, our combat officer."

The combat cyborg had risen from his seat and remained standing at attention from the moment since the princess had entered the bridge; pulled up to full height he looked like he might break through the bridge's screened ceiling. He offered a crisp salute.

"At ease."

At the princess's smiling words, he returned to a state of attention, the relaxing of his core almost audible.

"And our navigator, Luca."

Luca turned and stood, throwing back the hood of her black cloak and removing the headset that covered her eyes and her long, black hair. She pulled a crystal ball-like display from her cloak with both hands and bowed her head.

"The empty seat in the middle belongs to our helmsman Kane, and to the right is Hyakume, our radar and sensor operator."

Hyakume spun his seat around and stood, removing his favorite baseball cap and holding it to his chest as he bowed.

"It's nice to meet you, Princess."

"To his right, at the engineering station, is our engine specialist, Sandaime."

"I'm Sandaime. It's a pleasure."

The young man—he looked to have barely just left childhood—in overalls and a headband was already standing. He gave a stiff salute.

"Lastly is the first officer's station, but unfortunately it's empty at the moment. Good talent is hard to come by in this business." Marika turned and faced the princess. "And I'm Katou Marika, Captain-in-training."

"Captain!" Misa snapped at her. "Please don't add 'in-training' in front of guests! You're a fine captain for the Bentenmaru, not just on paper."

"Our visitor is a dignitary, I thought it would be better not to keep anything from her," Marika said, still facing Gruier. "The ones on the bridge now are the Bentenmaru's main crew. There are lots of others, but these are the ones I turn to when we need to make important decisions. Does that make sense?"

Gruier took another look at the bridge crew. Marika placed the capstone on her introductions. "You don't have to worry, they're all first-rate pirates who worked with the former captain."

Gruier looked at each member of the bridge crew, and then coolly back to Marika.

"I came here because I have a request, a matter for pirates with a letter of marque who can operate outside the law in this region of space. Namely…" Gruier's gaze faltered, as if she were struggling for words.

"Namely?"

At Marika's prodding, she resolutely lifted her head.

"To find a ghost ship...the Wandering Golden Ghost Ship."

"The Wandering...Golden Ghost Ship?" Marika repeated as confirmation, and looked around the bridge.

The bridge had sunk into a rare silence. Marika looked back at the princess. It did not seem that she had misheard.

"The Wandering Golden Ghost Ship," Hyakume quipped, then returned to his station and began tapping away at the control panel at a brisk pace. "It's never something normal, is it?"

"If I may?" Misa said, rising from her seat next to Marika and raising her hand. "In the course of our work, I've heard all sorts of tales and legends about space, ghost ships and so much more. Your Wandering Golden Ghost Ship, Princess, would that be the one that drifts through space, loaded down with treasures from throughout history and civilization?"

Gruier stared at Misa with her blue-gray eyes.

"The Ark-Angel of Serenity, spoken of in our royal mythology, and said to have guided the original royal family to the promised land." The princess spoke in hushed tones. "We believe that the ship known as the Wandering Golden Ghost Ship was our first starship, the one that bore us to the Seven Jewels of Serenity."

The galaxy was home to many civilizations that had flourished once they had succeeded in traveling from star to star.

The oldest known, still-extant lineage was that of the Holy Royal Family, leaders of the Galactic Empire, but there existed other civilizations that predated them, and other cultures and peoples that had risen and fallen throughout the Empire's history.

The Serenity royal family made its ancestral home on seven habitable worlds spread across three separate star systems, their royal pedigree supported by historical and biological surveys. There were effectively no other examples in the galaxy of an an environment stable enough to support life—to say nothing of life so advanced—on seven separate worlds across a cluster of three systems, two of which were binary systems. Some theories claim that the habitable planets of the Serenity royal family's territory—the Seven Jewels of Serenity—had their ecosystems artificially stabilized by some other ancient civilization.

According to the biological surveys, the Serenity royal family and their subjects, who arrived on all of the Jewels of Serenity at roughly the same time, had originated on some other star. This was not uncommon in space, where intelligent life sprang forth and developed, withered and disappeared in a never-ending cycle.

In Serenity's founding myth, it is written that the people were guided to the Seven Jewels by an Ark-Angel. The legends say nothing of what they had done before that, nor of where they had arisen. Despite numerous theories and public inquiries, the truth of where the royal family and their subjects originated and evolved before arriving on the Seven Jewels remains a mystery.

Capable from the moment of their founding of supporting an interstellar civilization, the relaxed rule of Serenity's royal family even became a model for the Galactic Empire following its unification. They serve a regulatory, conciliatory function and avoid interfering in internal politics, each world managing its own affairs as a member of a larger republic.

"Why do you want us to find this ghost ship?"

"I need it to prove the authenticity of the royal line." The princess's voice dropped, and her eyes were dodgy.

A shrill warning sounded throughout the bridge.

"Sorry for the interruption." Hyakume turned to Marika, wearing a headset integrated with a cyclopean viewfinder. "The administrators of Serenity's royal government have announced that Princess Gruier Serenity is missing. They've begun a search, and believe that her disappearance may be criminal."

"Blast it!" All eyes on the bridge converged on Gruier, who had shouted into her closed fist. Marika looked at the princess and then turned to Misa.

"This last-minute job, what channels did it come through?"

"Same as always." Misa looked perturbed. "Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency. The Princess stowing away was an unexpected twist, though."

The Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency was a massive insurance conglomerate with a long history in transportation and which had its origins as a shipping guild. Its networks spread across the galaxy, within and beyond the Galactic Empire.

Insuring ships was one of its primary tasks, and pirate insurance was said to have a history as old as space piracy itself.

When the Bentenmaru received its letter of marque, an agent from Harold Lloyd was there with an explanation and an insurance policy. The Bentenmaru and Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency had enjoyed a long partnership ever since.

"Where were the Symphony Angel's escorts from?"

"The Serenity Defense Force," Coorie answered immediately from the cyberwarfare station. "With the Princess on board, they must have been there to guard her. Three destroyers isn't much, although they were from the Royal Guard."

"Make sure Shou from Harold Lloyd knows what's going on."

"Aye-aye." Hyakume opened a communications channel. "I can get a hold of Shou, but what are we gonna do about the Princess?"

"I'm not too keen on getting involved in a case of interstellar lèse-majesté. Making an enemy of our insurance company would probably end us, so if they ask about her, tell them. But if they don't ask, then we don't need to let them know."

"There's no need to worry you'll be tried for treason!" Gruier shouted. "I boarded this ship of my own free will! There's no reason for them to charge you!"

"It's possible they've thought the same thing, it could be why they've only declared you missing." Misa tapped her finger against her temple, doubtful. "But the palace official announced that not only was the Princess missing, but that they were initiating a search. Which means…" Misa shot Marika a knowing glance.  "If we don't come up with a plan, we're going to end up framed for kidnapping."

"They've probably got more than enough evidence to make the Bentenmaru look like a bunch of traitorous kidnappers."

"I swear on my honor, I won't let anything like that happen to you!"

"For all the good the Princess's word may be now, we can't know what might happen later on."

Marika folded her arms and pondered. "Misa, do you think we'd be able to find the ghost ship if we started searching right now?"

Misa looked at Gruier, then back at Marika.

"Not a chance." She shrugged. "We'll need to verify facts, gather information. Start investigating its whereabouts, then decide on a course of action. Moreover, we don't know how far we'll have to travel, and this ship doesn't have the supplies for a long-range mission."

"I guess you're right." The Bentenmaru hadn't made any long-distance flights since Marika had become captain. One of her conditions for accepting the job was that she would remain in school, giving rise to serious restrictions as to when the Bentenmaru could take on work as a pirate ship.

Out of necessity, the Bentenmaru now spent most of its time patrolling in the vicinity of Umi-no-ake, where its captain attended school. The ship had found itself in a routine of making hasty jumps to its areas of engagement when Marika was finished with class—on occasion showing up late to school or leaving early—and racing back to the Tau Ceti system once its business was concluded.

No one was particularly displeased with the lack of long-distance work—repeated faster-than-light jumps meant more strain on the hull, on the engines, and on the crew—and so the Bentenmaru had moved away from provisioning for long flights.

"I guess that means for now we should return to Umi-no-ake," Marika acknowledged, looking around the bridge. "Princess Gruier, please tell us everything you can while we make our way back to port. It'll help us in deciding whether we can help you find the Golden Ghost Ship."

"All right," the princess answered, her expression still gloomy. "Without Captain Gonzaemon here, I guess that would be necessary."

"Hey, there is one thing I was hoping to ask you." Coorie turned, her fingers still rushing across the cyberwarfare console.

"Yes, what is it?"

"Would you mind telling me how you slipped past the Bentenmaru's security? No matter how hard I look, I can't find any holes or signs of hacking. What kind of magic did you use to get on board?"

Gruier smiled as the eyes of the entire bridge converged on her, and she pulled something from the front of her cocktail dress.

"What's that?" Marika caught a glimpse of the object in Gruier's delicate fingers, something silver in the shape of a skull. "A ring? Is that a skull?"

"A skull ring!?" Misa shouted, taking a closer look at the princess's hand. The ring was crudely fashioned, a caricature of a skull absent its jaw, the vacant eye sockets casting a blank stare.

Gruier slipped the oversized ring onto the middle finger of her left hand and flashed it at Misa and Marika. "Captain Katou gave it to me. He told me that if I were ever in trouble to bring it to the Bentenmaru."

"What was that halfwit thinking!? Didn't he stop to consider what would happen, handing out ID rings with electronic keys inside them to outsiders!?"

"What!?" Coorie shot up from the cyberwarfare station, dropping her array of snacks onto the floor, and zoomed in on the bulky, skull-shaped ring sandwiched between the princess's slender fingers. "Ah, I get it. The ID ring has Gonzaemon's personal authorization as captain inside it..."

"He told me not to tell anyone, that it was our secret." The princess removed the ring, too large for a child's fingers, and placed it on her outstretched palm. "Now that I've broken my promise, I don't deserve it anymore."

Neither Coorie nor Misa reached for it. Marika looked at the skull-shaped ring in the princess's white palm and smiled.

"If the last captain...if my father gave that to you, then I guess we're obligated to listen to what you have to say. If it's not too much trouble, how would you like to hold onto it?"

"Would that be all right?" The princess's gloomy expression suddenly brightened. Misa's scolding gaze graced the captain, but only for a moment.

"Maybe it will bring you some good luck." Marika nodded. "Now, why not fill us in on what's going on."

The next day, Hakuoh Girls' Academy announced that Princess Gruier Serenity would be transferring to their middle school as a temporary exchange student.

Chapter 2: Transfer Student

"Marika!"

Endou Mami, Marika's inseparable baggage ever since middle school, charged into the classroom. She barreled straight toward Marika's desk.

"Did you see the middle school's princess!?"

"Um…" Marika sluggishly lifted her head from the desk. She had slept through most of her morning classes, but the lack of sleep still showed on her face. "It depends on what you mean by 'saw.'"

"If you haven't gotten a look yet you totally should." Mami planted herself sideways in the seat in front of Marika's and turned around, face propped up on both elbows. "This is the first time I've ever seen real royalty, her aura was amazing. She's so different even from the stars at our school: her grace, her presence, her dignity..."

"I mean I guess she would be." Marika yawned, stretched, and rubbed her eyes. "She's royalty, she's from a different world than us peasants. Is the cafeteria free yet?"

The school cafeteria, however spacious it may have been, always descended into chaos when the entire student body—middle school and high school—converged on it at lunch time. The rush might vary based on year and class, but steering clear immediately after the afternoon recess tended to alleviate most of the hardship.

"The sports clubs just swarmed it en masse to grab takeout before afternoon practice."

"I guess I'll wait 'til they're gone. You have lunch yet?"

"I was just about to. If I don't hurry I'll get hit with the grumbles in the middle of fifth period again."

It was past the time when the lawless, post-recess crowding should have already subsided. But regardless, the auditorium's massive dining hall, which stood between the old building of the high school and the new building of the middle school, was still jam-packed with students hailing from both.

Marika and Mami forsook the main entrance—it was too crowded to even breathe—and entered through an elevated walkway to the steeple on the roof. The only way down from the catwalk that encircled the cafeteria's rafters was via ladder, but they were able to get inside with little hassle.

As Marika stared down from the catwalk at the endless lines of tables below, she understood the source of the commotion.

The mosaic of schoolgirls in uniforms from middle school, high school, and sports teams converged on a single point.

At the center of the mob, seated at a table, her food largely untouched, was a young girl with golden hair. Though Marika knew how slight and slender she was, she still appeared grandiose.

"Aha! She showed up in the cafeteria for lunch, and the whole student body came out to watch her." Mami rested her elbows against the exquisite mortar railing of the catwalk and beamed out triumphantly. "It's amazing, you can still see her shining from this far away."

Even from a distance it was possible to discern the princess's flawless etiquette, knife in one hand and fork in the other, while she was subjected to an unbroken stream of conversations and laughter and pleasantries. Too busy entertaining, Gruier didn't have the time to lift bread or salad to her mouth.

"She looks like she's enjoying herself," Marika said, relieved. The princess's expression shifted rapidly as her attention darted about, though they were too far removed to make out the substance of her conversations.

The cafeteria, heavy with the sounds of silverware and high-pitched furor, was splintered by cheerful laughter. It started from the princess and quickly radiated outward—had someone told a joke?

"Ah, what's going on, can you hear anything?"

"I don't think we'll be able to hear anything this far away." Marika pulled away from the railing and started along the catwalk. "Let's hurry. There's an open counter."

Just as Marika began to scramble down the ladder, mounted to the backside of one of the thick columns supporting the ceiling, a familiar chime echoed across the school.

"Katou Marika, High School division, Grade 1, please report immediately to the physician's office. Miss Misa Grandwood is waiting for you. I repeat, Katou Marika, High School division, Grade 1..."

"Aw geez!" Marika stopped halfway down the ladder once she heard her name being called out.

"Oh, they're calling for you." Mami, her hands reaching for the ladder, stopped and looked down at Marika in mid-descent. "What are you gonna do? Eat first?"

"Just grab me something to go, I don't care what." Defeated, Marika climbed back up the ladder. "I'll eat in class later."

The cafeteria's main entrance was still crammed with middle- and high-schoolers. It would be quicker for her to leave the way she came in.

"Got it. I'll pick you up something nice." Mami took Marika's place once she had taken off down the catwalk, and started her climb down the ladder.

The physician's office was fitted with a sign that read, "Treatment in progress, emergencies only," perhaps to ward off any outsiders.

Presuming it to be Misa's usual handiwork, Marika rapped gently on the office door.

"Come in."

"You don't have any other patients?" Marika half-opened the door and peered inside.

"The ones who stopped by because they didn't get enough sleep live in the dorms, so I sent them back to their rooms. I let everyone else leave for lunch. It's empty."

"So we're good." Marika took one last glance down the hall in both directions to ensure she wasn't being watched, then slipped inside the office.

"You want tea? I've got snacks too."

"Ooh, thanks, I haven't had lunch yet." Marika took up the stool in front of Misa, who was sitting at the exam table. Misa lifted the pot and drained it into a teacup.

"This was a fantastic idea. They always say the best place to hide a tree is in the forest, but announcing the hiding place publicly in order to put a lock on your enemy's movements, that's brilliant."

"How'd you manage to arrange for the Princess to transfer here over the course of one night? You even got a middle school uniform made to order." Marika stared back at Misa. "This school's background checks are supposed to be solid, but the Bentenmaru's crew got in so easily."

"Well, I don't know about Kane's teaching certification, but my medical license is legit."

"The license may be real, but you're not what it claims on the package, right?"

"I guess you could say that." Misa opened her eyes and laughed. "The Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency confirmed that we're dealing with a high-level political affair here."

"Ah, so you went through them."

Harold Lloyd was a major insurer in the shipping industry throughout Orion's arm, including the Cetus constellation. The scope of its activities and finances easily surpassed that of major interstellar businesses or federations of star systems.

"A visit from a member of a royal family, even a seventh princess, is a major diplomatic event. After the government officials blasted through the red tape, of course Hakuoh would hyper-accelerate all the arrangements."

"Huh." Marika glared at Misa, mildly suspicious. "I wonder if they were behind things the last time the crew from a pirate ship infiltrated my school?"

"It wasn't just them." Misa flashed a mischievous smile and tapped the screen built into the table. The image on the ethereal display changed.

"Apparently the Umi-no-ake government has received a special dispatch from the Serenity royal government through secret diplomatic channels."

"A special dispatch?" Marika cocked her head, curious.

"A written diplomatic memo. It was only the body of the message with their seal attached, of course—the real thing will probably arrive later. It said that the Serenity royal family has a formal request to make of the Umi-no-ake government."

The Galactic Empire was made up of billions of stars, and there were easily more than a billion other governments and independent powers with which the Empire had formed alliances. Since it would be impossible for all of those worlds to maintain embassies and consulates with each other, the bulk of diplomatic communications was carried out over faster-than-light information networks. For important messages, hard copies were delivered after the fact.

"Did the message mention a time?"

"I figured you'd ask that." Misa gave a self-satisfied nod. "Immediately at the start of the current Galactic Standard day." Misa scrolled through the message on the screen. "Convenient, since Shin-Okuhama operates according to Galactic Standard Time. The message was sent yesterday, around the time the Bentenmaru returned to Umi-no-ake, just as you were getting home."

The princess had asked if she could spend the night aboard the Bentenmaru.

"That was after we first got in touch with the insurance company, right?" Marika had left Hyakume to handle the explanations and field any questions, though of course she was briefed later on. The Bentenmaru had filed its initial report explaining the situation with the Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency before making the faster-than-light jump back to Umi-no-ake.

They emerged from the jump inside the Cetus constellation and were contacted by Harold Lloyd while in transit to Umi-no-ake. Marika was brought in on the call, and she explained the situation to Shou, their agent of indeterminate age, and a specialist when it came to negotiations.

"So Shou got in touch with Serenity and handled all the preparations?"

"The Umi-no-ake government too, maybe."

Insurance agents never sleep. Neither do bureaucrats. Interstellar affairs never stop moving.

Marika didn't know what the time difference was between the Serenity royal government and Galactic Standard Time, but she imagined that the palace and the government of Umi-no-ake—where at the time it should have been late in the night—both responded immediately to Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency's messages. In economic matters, the counsel of an insurance company could count for more than that of even the Galactic Empire.

"So based on all this..." Marika meandered through the recorded message and then looked back to Misa. "We're already caught up in a political matter."

"We had Harold Lloyd arrange for the Princess's temporary exchange specifically to avoid that from happening. What's more concerning is that the Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency—who won't lift so much as a finger if it's not in their own interest—acted so quickly."

"So what does that mean? The insurance company believed that saving us from a political incident was in their best interests?"

"Maybe, but it wasn't just the Bentenmaru's agent Shou; they had to pull strings in far-off Serenity, that means that the whole insurance agency must have moved like lightning to put out this fire. They also needed things like personal information on the Princess; I have Hyakume and Coorie looking into it too, but something about about this story stinks."

Marika frowned.

"Every world has its problems, but this might be big enough that it could hurt the Kingdom of Serenity if word were to get out." Misa watched Marika, probing for a response. "Think about it. Why would a twelve year old princess, still sheltered from society, sneak away from a luxury liner and onto a pirate ship by herself? If she wanted to search for a ghost ship, wouldn't it be faster to organize a royal search party?"

"So you're saying there must be a reason she didn't?" Marika said, pondering what that reason might be. Misa shrugged.

"There's no way for me to tell what's going on with the royal government or inside the Princess's head."

"So you want me to just straight up ask her? That's cold."

"You're the one in charge of the Bentenmaru. Besides, it was your idea to hear her out."

"Fine, I get it." Marika turned away. "You could see it in the Princess's eyes, couldn't you? Something was bothering her."

"She looked like she was ready to start a war."

"I don't know how royals live, but her education must be even stricter than mine, with even more power and responsibility, and she went out of her way to stow away on a pirate ship that had no connection to Serenity. That alone probably reveals a lot about what's going on." 

Marika took another look at the transmission record on the screen. It was a constant back and forth between the Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency, the Serenity royal government, and the Umi-no-ake government; the message titles were omitted.

"Gruier looked like she was having fun, though." Marika recalled the princess talking and laughing with her classmates at the table in the cafeteria. "It doesn't look like Shou has any back-channel explanations for us yet, and the Bentenmaru won't be ready to launch for another couple of days. I just want to let her live like a normal student for a bit."

"Not like anybody's going to let her take it easy." Misa switched the image on the display. "As soon as it was announced that Princess Gruier was coming on exchange to Umi-no-ake we were flooded with applications to transfer or work here from all across the galaxy."

Marika stared at the waiting list from the faculty information network, amazed. "But why?"

"Lots of them are probably just lookie-loos and people trying to gather dirt for gossip columns. But based on the timing it's obvious that they're all gunning for the Princess. I don't even want to imagine how many of them are thinking of starting trouble."

"You mean like what happened with me?" Misa looked at Marika. Marika explained herself. "You, Kane, Chiaki, you all came to this school looking for me, right? I wonder if any other transfer students or teachers came here after me."

"Hakuoh Girls' Academy is a renowned institution for upstanding young ladies. Their security wouldn't be that lax."

"But how much can we trust them?" Marika murmured, loud enough to be heard, and looked back at Misa. "And what about the official information on Serenity's star systems?”

"You did some digging of your own?"

"Just guidebook-level stuff," Marika confirmed. Serenity was located in a region distant from Umi-no-ake. The two had hardly any direct interaction.

"The kingdom is a federation of seven unmodified planets each with its own independent government. The royal government sits above them, and is in charge of foreign diplomacy and steering the kingdom as a whole. After that it was just pictures of nature preserves and resorts and old cities."

"So you looked up a Serenity tourism site. Do you remember the pitch?"

"'A classical kingdom,' I think it said. I was surprised to see that the site had pictures from when the first king set foot on the planet two thousand years ago and proclaimed the founding of the nation. Have you ever been there?"

"I've flown through the nearby spacelanes, but I don't remember if I ever saw any of the planets." Traveling on a warship like the Bentenmaru offered disappointingly few opportunities to look out on space with the naked eye.

Misa switched over to the promotional site—had she already opened it in advance?—for the Serenity Royal Tourism Bureau, decorated with photos of lavish landscapes.

"There's no native intelligent life higher than communicative pre-civilization sea mammals, and the settlers arrived with an already advanced culture, so despite being developed for such a long time, they're blessed with a strong natural environment and a relative lack of environmental pollution. Though a kingdom in name, the monarchy's official stance is to entrust each world with its own administration rather than ruling over them directly, and their history has been mostly peaceful. Thanks to the monarchy's skill at diplomacy, they've avoided becoming involved in any interstellar conflicts that might have threatened to destroy their worlds."

"You can hardly fault them for having a history of stability."

"I mean yes, they have a history, but whether you consider it stable is a matter of perspective. The Kingdom of Serenity is spread out across three star systems, and apparently there have been several internal struggles over systems or individual planets trying to achieve independence."

"Really?" Marika interjected, not quite believing it. "They're all one people, they should be able to get along. And they're part of the Galactic Empire now, right? Even if they weren't back then."

"If things were that simple the universe would be a much more peaceful place. There've been some who believed that the individual systems or planets would be better off independent from the monarchy since way back, even if they didn't object to being part of the Galactic Empire.”

"Why?" Marika's head listed more and more to the side. Misa laughed as she answered.

"I'm sure they had their reasons. If you want to know more, wait for a report from Shou or Hyakume. Or maybe just ask the Princess yourself?"

Marika considered further. "Could that be why the Princess decided to search for the ghost ship on her own?"

"As far as we can tell, the monarchy shouldn't have any trouble organizing a search party for the ghost ship. But it's probably only part of what's going on."

"Huh." Marika groaned. "It looks like we've got a lot on our plate."

The sound of timid knocking came from the office door. Misa quickly switched the image on the display away from the Serenity tourism site.

"Come on in, it's open."

The door remained shut. Strange, it's not locked, Marika thought, as the door hesitantly opened.

"My apologies for intruding." Gruier's large eyes peered into the physician's office, her look one of apprehension. "I'm not bothering the patients, am I?"

Misa traded looks with Marika, and remembered the sign she had hung warning people away.

"Oh, that's just something I use to ward off people playing hooky." Misa beckoned to Gruier. "How's it going? Enjoying school life?"

"I am, quite." Gruier bowed and entered the office, laughing, her hand obscuring her mouth. "I've only ever had private tutors and attended small schools, I've always wanted to go to a big school like this one. I met so many of my classmates this morning I can't even remember all of their names. It's like a dream come true!"

Marika stared wide-eyed, and Misa came to her aid. "Yeah, keeping all the names and faces straight is a job unto itself. Have you been having any trouble?"

"I haven't had any problems." Marika realized that Gruier's socialite smile had returned. "My teachers, my classmates, everyone has been very kind. There are so many people my own age, I'm very comfortable here, even if I don't really feel like I'm part of the group yet."

"No need to force yourself."

Gruier turned and stared back at Marika, who sat in the exam stool facing Misa. "Is there something you wanted to say?"

Marika shared a momentary glance with Misa before facing Gruier. "After everything that happened yesterday, I've got everyone on the Bentenmaru digging up whatever information they can."

"I see." Gruier's expression sank.

"For now, we haven't found anything that's stood out. We may be investigating a legendary ghost ship, but all we've hit on are random sightings—no sensor data or verifiable information yet. Serenity's Wandering Golden Ghost Ship may top the list of famous ghost ships, but it looks like it's going to be a struggle to find any recent, hard data on it." Marika's eyes flicked over to Misa. "Wouldn't you agree?"

Misa nodded. "For now it's a battle of legwork and analysis. But when you're dealing with something like a ghost ship you have to factor in raiders, scavengers, sometimes even bounty hunters or cults. Even with the Princess on our side, we can only track it so far."

The galaxy had known countless legends of ghost ships over the ages. Their origins varied, from simple wrecks to natural celestial bodies, deserted warships or even real phantom ships, but when one did cause a stir, it almost always came down to money.

Unlike the ghost ships, derelicts, and wrecks of the Age of Sail, it took a significant amount of time for a starship to deteriorate. Even a simple wreck or drifter could be recovered and sold for scrap, and those that were left to drift with ancient technology, artifacts, or riches on board were not uncommon.

Not to mention that certain ghost ships had other problems that made identifying and recovering them even more of a challenge.

Once a starship that's lost control or run out of energy has been spotted, it will continue to travel along the same path in accordance with the laws of physics. But it's not uncommon for so-called ghost ships to appear and disappear even after they've been located, distorting time and space with no heed for physical laws.

It's normal to think of starships that don't conform to ordinary rules as something other than ordinary ships. Some may turn out to be ancient faster-than-light vessels or secret weapons that have slipped their moorings, and countless businesses, organizations, and even the occasional adventurer have taken on the challenge of hunting down these ghost ships, exposing vast mysteries, discovering unheard of technologies, and overcoming a bevy of traps in order to recover their lost treasures.

As the spacelanes came into being and space traffic began to consolidate, sightings of so-called ghost ships decreased. More powerful radar that could see through interplanetary space was installed not only on warships but on civilian starships as well, which continually scanned their surroundings as they traveled. Whenever a ghost ship was detected, the Imperial Navy assisted in investigating these unknown objects.

Even so, some starships continued to drift through space as ghost ships, as mysterious as ever.

"You need more information?" The princess thought for a moment, then lifted her head. "Understood. I'll figure something out, one way or another."

"One way or another...?" A bell chimed through the office speaker, signaling the start of afternoon classes. Marika shot up from the exam stool out of habit. "Ah, we need to get back to class! Do you know the way?"

"Yes, I think I'll be fine."

"Great, we can talk more after school. See you later Misa!" Marika took Gruier by her tiny hand and bolted from the physician's office.

Misa watched the two students leave, then turned back to the exam table's display and hit the switch.

The screen filled with the tourism bureau's site, plastered with images of Serenity's rich, natural landscapes.

"She'll figure something out, one way or another...I wonder what our Princess is planning?"

Three days passed.

"I thought you said we didn't have any jobs until next week!?" Marika charged into the faculty parking lot underneath the old school building, carrying her bag and coat.

"Sorry, but this one was last minute." Misa burst out behind her, jumping nimbly into her classic commuter, still wearing her lab coat. She hit the ignition switch and the console, lined with retro analog gauges, reported no problems.

"Where? It's the weekend, I can still get back before the day's over, right?"

"Inside the Tau Ceti system; if things go well you should be home before supper."

Marika vaulted into the passenger seat. On the driver's side, Misa opened her pocket watch rather than launch the commuter.

"Aren't we going?"

"Waiting on a straggler."

"Kane?" Marika stood in the passenger seat and slipped on her coat. Kane had found a new calling as the middle school phys ed teacher at the same time Princess Gruier had transferred in. "He goes from teaching high school physics to middle school gym. He must be a popular guy."

"You'd never guess it, but he's got a passion for teaching." Misa pulled her face away from the pocket watch and looked around the bright and spacious underground parking lot. It was supported by thick pillars and filled with row upon row of the faculty's commuters. With plenty of room to spare, part of the space was used as a storage area for sports and culture clubs.

"That must be why he's so good with field work."

The underground lot's elevator opened and Kane rushed toward them, dressed in a tracksuit. His dash straight across the parking lot was befitting of a phys ed teacher.

"You're late!" Misa snapped shut the pocket watch and took off before Kane had even jumped into the commuter's back seat.

"Sorry, ran into trouble while I was on my way here." After an impressive leap into the rear of the open car, Kane pulled himself up by the backrests of the front seats. "Hurry, before they get the drop on us."

"What do you mean, trouble? What happened with the middle schoolers?" Giving the commuter a sudden burst of speed, Misa cut the wheel and turned onto the paved ramp that led above ground.

The large wooden door—which was supposed to lift on its own—finally started to move. Misa brought the commuter to an abrupt stop in front of the exit to the lot. It looked wide enough that two large trucks could pass each other going through.

"Misa, watch the reckless driving!"

"We're in a hurry. Aren't you the one who wanted to get home early?"

Though the door appeared to be made of wood, rumor had it that an armored layer was sandwiched inside. It opened slowly to the melodramatic whine of a motor. Trying to drive through before it was raised would have knocked out Misa's windshield.

"This door is always so slow," Misa complained, checking the time again on her pocket watch, hand gripping the steering wheel. How long would it take to follow the nearest interchange onto the freeway, speed to the spaceport, and fly their personal shuttle up to meet the Bentenmaru in orbit?

"Ah!" Marika in the passenger seat and Kane in the back seat raised their voices in unison. A figure appeared, rolling out from under the not yet half-opened parking lot door and, without any sign of stopping, made for the back door of the commuter, opened it, and plunged inside.

"Gruier!?"

"Princess!?" Marika spun around in the passenger seat, shot Gruier a welcoming glance, and half-scowled at Kane in his tracksuit.

"I thought I asked you not to call me that while we were in school?"

"What's going on?" Misa turned around in the driver's seat and glared at Kane. He shrank beneath the three women's stares.

"I have no idea. I got an emergency call from orbit and was rushing here from homeroom when the Princess asked me to take her with us."

"You've got a last-minute job, right?" Gruier answered Misa. "The job is to investigate a suspicious ship on the edge of the Tau Ceti system. It's a request from the system defense force commander, is it not?"

Misa looked at Kane, then at Marika. Last-minute jobs had become more frequent after Marika had declared that she would remain in school while working as a pirate. And they usually learned the details en route, after all the crew were assembled on the Bentenmaru.

"Is she right?" Marika asked. Misa shook her head.

"The location is around that area, but I haven't heard the details yet."

"I requested that the palace bring me data. I assume they probably sent one of our warships to deliver it."

"How!?" Misa shouted. "When?"

The door halted, finally completely open. Misa looked to Marika for an answer, and Marika handed down her orders. "Go. She can tell us on the way there."

Misa shrugged and launched the commuter forward. "Time to fly."

The majority of the noise inside the speeding commuter was the sound of the wind, followed by the sound of the tires. The noise of the engine was barely a factor.

Misa's commuter was a replica from an age of classic cars where "high speed" meant anything faster than a horse-drawn carriage. And while the high-output motor scoffed at normal civilian constraints and was capable of speeds on par with racers, the full open-topped commuter—whose design predated the science of fluid dynamics—hadn't taken into account the air in front of the vehicle, and it grew more uncomfortable the faster it went.

As promised, Misa flew full-throttle to the spaceport, defying the restrictions on manual controls on the packed afternoon freeway. Easily exceeding a hundred kilometers per hour, the wind whipping between the commuter's seats made starting a conversation an impossibility.

Pushing its way through the autopiloted buses and cars, the commuter charged down the interchange for the Shin-Okuhama spaceport, speeding past the auto-pass gate to the area reserved for private vessels. With a reservation already in place, they entered the hangar where the Bentenmaru's personal business shuttle was being readied for launch.

Kane had Misa drive her commuter in a circle to cheat his way through the external pre-launch inspection, then charged straight from the car into the shuttle. Misa, still gripping the wheel, and Marika and Gruier in the passenger and rear seats, remained behind, depleted, their hair ruffled. Misa still needed to park her commuter in its designated spot inside the hangar.

"So what now?"

"There was no way to talk when we were going so fast." Marika leaned forward, pressed both hands against the dashboard, and then flung herself upright, trying to straighten the disheveled mess of her long hair.

"Gruier, you alive?"

"I'm okay. Nothing to worry about," she answered weakly, carefully rising from where she had sunk into the rear seat. "Shall we discuss matters on the shuttle?"

Marika looked at Misa, her hands on the steering wheel.

"I guess that means we're taking the Princess along with us on this one." The shuttle would be stowed inside the Bentenmaru once they reached orbit. Hearing Misa state the obvious, Marika spent only a moment in thought.

"I mean, if there is something out there, it could affect whether or not we accept the Princess's job. Right? Gruier, get on board the shuttle." Marika jumped from the passenger seat into the hangar.

"I appreciate the consideration, Captain." Gruier opened the rear door and stumbled out of the commuter. Marika moved to help her and caught her in her arms.

"Sorry, Misa really did end up flying here."

"It's okay."

"I'm going to park the car." Misa sped off in the commuter, leaving Marika behind. Still bracing Gruier's slight frame, they headed for the open door of the business shuttle, its running lights having just begun to flash.

"I'm sorry. I thought I could handle vehicles."

"She shouldn't have left the top down, don't let it get to you."

Marika and Gruier climbed the steps to the business shuttle and entered the cabin. The shuttle, which also served as a ferry, was divided into the cockpit and an area for passengers.

The door to the cockpit was open, and Kane called back to them as he blew through the pre-flight check.

"There's a call from the Bentenmaru."

"I'll take it in the cabin."

Marika sat Gruier down in the first of several lush sofa seats that occupied the modest cabin. She settled into the seat opposite Gruier and fished a small wireless headset from a pocket by the window. She pressed a switch, located the proper channel, and placed it over her ear.

"This is Marika."

"Hey, it's Hyakume on the Bentenmaru." Following the characteristic digital screech signifying a private channel, Hyakume's voice flowed from the headset with barely any lag. "Sorry for calling you out of the blue when you were busy with school."

"It's work, no way around it." Marika glanced at Gruier, nestled into the next seat and out of breath. "I've got news for you first. Princess Gruier Serenity is with us."

There was a momentary pause before the response. "Then I guess I'll be extra careful about what I say."

"Car's parked," Misa shouted into both the cockpit and the cabin as she burst onto the shuttle in her lab coat. She closed the hatch. "We can fly whenever."

"We've got priority from the control tower. Launching ASAP."

As usual, the vibration from the overpowered, souped-up engines made its way into the cabin. In the pilot's seat, Kane simply made sure that the hatch was sealed before he got moving. After an abbreviated taxiing the business shuttle's body lifted off the ground, accompanied by a feeling of weightlessness.

Forcing its way into its launch corridor using only its anti-gravity device, the business shuttle went full throttle with its main engines. The passengers were buffeted by forces too heavy for even the G-balancers to eliminate.

Misa entered the cabin and, letting the weight take hold of her body, sank into one of the empty sofa seats.

"Kane! We have a guest, try to be a little more gentle!"

"Sorry, just bear it a little longer."

Once they reached a steady level of acceleration the forces inside the cabin that the G-balancers couldn't cancel out would also eventually stabilize. Inside the business shuttle, in the middle of its steep climb, Marika returned to the call, feeling her body being pushed back into the sofa seat.

"Here's our situation," Marika said to Hyakume on the other side of the circuit. "Right now I'm on the shuttle along with Misa, Princess Gruier, and Kane, who's piloting."

"If it's okay with you, could you let everyone listen to this? Including the Princess." Hyakume's voice was edged with an unusual nervousness. "This next job might require a delicate response."

Marika cast a sidelong glance at the princess in the next seat, her eyes closed.

"It's not like it's uncommon for fleet command to come to us with vague jobs, but something about this one feels off. Every single last one of their ships is moving to withdraw from the target area."

"Roger. I'll switch the channel so everyone can listen." Marika switched the circuit from private to speaker using the console in the armrest. "Everyone's listening now."

"Thanks, Captain. I'll repeat the request from fleet command. I'll omit the coordinates, but they want us to investigate an unknown ship they believe is on the far outskirts of the Tau Ceti system."

Marika looked over at Gruier in the next seat. She had opened her eyes and was listening carefully. As usual, Marika decided to dispense with the secrecy.

"The Princess said that it's a battleship from the Serenity Defense Force. It's supposed to be carrying information on the Golden Ghost Ship." The call's reception inside the business shuttle flickered rapidly as they continued their high speed climb through the stratosphere.

"I see. Even if they're not acting hostile, another system's warship appearing without warning inside their defense perimeter would mean the defense force would be forced to respond. I guess fleet command didn't want to make a big public spectacle out of it, so they bugged out and dumped the problem on us."

"Is that what you meant when you said we needed a delicate response?" Marika asked, getting the feeling that they had just been roped into something. "Fleet command didn't want to be so blunt over a line they couldn't be sure wasn't compromised, so they had to hint at it instead?"

"That's not all." Hyakume's voice dropped noticeably. "The part I haven't mentioned yet is that fleet command thinks it's possible that more than one ship may have appeared at the edge of the system, and they implied there's a high likelihood that the ships are involved in a battle. They didn't just call on us for reconnaissance, it looks like we may be in for a fight."

Chapter 3: The Pirate Princess

The business shuttle linked up with the Bentenmaru in orbit around Umi-no-ake, coming aboard with the force of a fighter landing on a carrier.

With the captain and the rest of the passengers on board, the Bentenmaru departed from Umi-no-ake with thrust unthinkable for a civilian ship, heading for the outskirts of the Tau Ceti system.

Typically, the extent of a star system was determined by the radius of the gravitational influence of its main star. The orbit of its furthest planet was used as a gauge to measure the range of the star's gravitational pull.

Now aboard the Bentenmaru, Marika adhered to her dress code and changed from her school uniform into her captain's uniform. She entered the bridge just as she finished pulling on her epauletted jacket.

Gruier, still in her middle school uniform, was surrounded by the Bentenmaru's bridge crew as they hurtled toward deep space. She noticed Marika entering the bridge and immediately bowed.

"Your captain's uniform is quite handsome." The earnest look on Gruier's face caused Marika to unconsciously pull the uniform closed around her.

"Please don't say that. It's not like I wear this gaudy cosplay because I want to."

"But it looks so good on you," Misa called out, reading the adoration in Gruier's eyes. "Would the Princess like to try it on?"

"Misa!" Marika shouted immediately. "How could you talk to the Princess like that? And besides, it's not like it's even the right size!"

"It doesn't have to be yours." Misa nonchalantly stuck out her tongue. "Thanks to all those pesky rules regarding the succession of the Bentenmaru's captain, there's effectively no age requirement. We could put a baby in the captain's chair and it'd do; we once had a captain even younger than the Princess." Marika's mouth flapped as if she were going to offer a rebuttal. Misa made a show of deep contemplation. "I bet if we dug through our closets we'd find a captain's outfit that would fit the Princess."

"Please cut it out! We'd have a diplomatic nightmare on our hands if we dressed a proper royal in a getup like this!"

"Oh, that would be wonderful!"

"Princess!" Marika shouted at the enthusiastic Gruier, and then sighed. "Anyway, how far along were we in explaining this whole situation?"

"Captain Marika explained to the Princess that we didn't have enough research data to hunt down the ghost ship, at which point she made contact with the palace."

Marika listened to Coorie's summary and quickly raised her voice. "You sent a message directly to the royal palace!?"

"Serenity's royal family has a long history," Gruier replied with a gentle smile, occupying the center of the bridge in her Hakuoh middle school uniform. "There's a cipher we use when members of the royal family wish to get in touch with the palace from afar without anyone else knowing."

"There's no question that external communications have been monitored ever since Princess Gruier's exchange on Umi-no-ake was officially announced. Can we be sure it was safe to do that?"

"It's fine. At least, I believe it was." The confidence drained from Gruier's face. "At the very least, the fact that a Serenity starship made its way here makes me believe that my message was properly received."

"What did you request from the palace?" Marika asked, not bothering to leave the captain's chair as she buttoned the front of her uniform jacket.

Gruier turned to Marika and answered. "I ordered them to bring me any documents that related to tracking the Golden Ghost Ship." Gruier bowed. "I should have brought the information myself when I first asked the Bentenmaru to pursue the ghost ship. I offer my sincerest apologies for coming unprepared."

"No, it's fine.” Marika noticed a peculiar nervousness had fallen over the bridge. She looked back to Gruier. "Maybe I should ask this now. How much information does the palace have on the Golden Ghost Ship?"

"The Golden Ghost Ship transported the first people and the royal family to the Seven Jewels of Serenity; it's legendary, you might even call it Serenity's roots. The ship is the property of the royal family, it's sacred. But it's been the subject of investigations for many years now; the Serenity Fleet wished to keep a proper accounting of it, to protect it and our history from scavengers and grave robbers," Gruier explained smoothly. "Obviously the results of those investigations are one of the royal family's greatest secrets, and not something we make available to outsiders. If a Serenity warship were to have brought those records with it, I can't imagine that they did so with the royal family's blessing."

"I have a bunch of questions, if that's all right?" Coorie raised her hand. Gruier turned towards the cyberwarfare station and nodded.

"After years of investigating, the Golden Ghost Ship is still considered a ghost ship? Serenity's naval assets are considerable, but even after multiple surveys done in the name of the royal family, they weren't able to discern anything about the nature of the ghost ship?"

"Secrets are valued because they stay secret," Gruier said, sing-song and smiling. "I know that sounds like a deflection, but it's how my grandfather explains it. It's said that the Golden Ghost Ship was once an interstellar migrant vessel that brought the people of Serenity to our home. It lacked FTL drives and spent generations wandering through the stars. No one has ever told me why they consider it to be a ghost ship, or whether it can still fly."

"We're coming up on the target area." Kane soared through the system at interstellar speeds. "The location they gave us is within our sensor range, do you see anything?"

"Nothing," Hyakume answered. "There've been numerous surveys of the region past the eighth planet, Kita-no-hate, and all the natural and man-made bodies are cataloged. I'm not picking up any phenomena worth reporting."

"This is the area the defense force marked for us, right?" Marika rose from the captain's chair and switched on the display. It showed the region of space surrounding them, tranquil. "Did somebody screw up?"

"I believe the defense force only told us where they predicted the warship would be," Coorie said softly, nestled into the cyberwarfare station. "All I can think of is that we picked up the job too early. If a suspicious ship were to show up here, even the defense force would have to respond appropriately."

"It's unsettling to think that they'd go about setting all this up for a pirate ship outside their chain of command." Luca checked the status of the spacelanes multiple times from the navigator's console and pulled her headset down over her eyes. "The currents of space are more troubled than usual...something's coming."

"There they are!" Coorie shouted. "Picking up a slight spatial tremor ahead of us! Something's materializing!"

"Everyone to your stations!" Marika leapt towards the captain's chair. "Princess, take the observer seat. Misa, give her a hand."

"I'm picking them up too!" Hyakume reported. He forwarded the relevant coordinates to all the necessary stations. "It's a heavy touchdown, warship-class. Got a pattern match. It's one of the Corbacks from the Serenity Defense Force we ran into earlier!"

Starships have patterns that vary subtly from ship to ship. While it's possible to learn the name, position, speed, vector, and other features of a ship in normal space from its transponder signal, an individual ship can also be identified by observing it as it flies.

Mass-produced ships of the same type start off producing identical spatial anomalies from their faster-than-light jumps. As time passes, however, even ships with the same shape and the same classification will develop subtle disparities in their data based on a slew of minor differences; equipment upgrades, the service history of their faster-than-light engines, and the like.

The spatial anomaly accompanying the faster-than-light touchdown picked up by the Bentenmaru matched that of one of the destroyers that had been escorting the luxury liner Symphony Angel on their last job.

The massive energy output warped the dimensional fabric, returning the faster-than-light starship to normal space.

"Right, I see it." Kane confirmed the ship's transponder signature on the Bentenmaru's radar and grabbed the controls. "Should we approach?"

"Wait a minute, something feels off." Hyakume ran his fingers across the control panel, continuing with a more detailed scan. "Its radiation output is a bit too much for a simple touchdown. Maybe they've got an energy bleed?"

Gruier looked up at Marika in the captain's chair, unable to grasp the meaning behind their conversation.

"Detecting radar waves! The Corback isn't just damaged, it's in the middle of a fight too!?"

The color drained from Gruier's face, and she hovered over the edge of the observer seat.

"Catching tremors from the surrounding area!" Coorie shouted again. "Multiple ones this time! Warship-class, that Corback is definitely braced for a fight!"

Coorie switched the monitor to show the Corback at the extreme edge of their visual range. They could tell that the ship's energy spike had occurred immediately following the return to normal space from its faster-than-light jump—it was projecting pinpoint, high-output radar in all directions, clearly meant for targeting its guns. Long distance scans also showed abnormal levels of heat radiating from certain sections of the ship's outer hull.

Gruier's high-pitched scream sliced abruptly through the tension on the bridge. "Who would start a fight with a Serenity ship?"

"We're about to find out."

The space around the Bentenmaru began to oscillate, as if in response to the Corback that had just touched down.

"Multiple warships!"

Unlike civilian ships, whose operating costs ran on tight budgets, warships possessed much more powerful engines. Prioritizing speed over efficiency, their faster-than-light jumps produced much more intense spatial anomalies than those of civilian vessels. The Bentenmaru's sensitive sensors picked up the high-energy signatures of several ships returning from hyperspace to normal space.

"Transponders!?"

All starships were expected to broadcast their name, location, and vector via transponder.

"No answer!" Coorie answered immediately. "But I've identified them based on their response patterns!" Coorie plastered the hastily assembled list across the screen. "All of them are from the Serenity Defense Force."

Gruier shrieked. Coorie continued to read the report out loud as she forwarded it to the rest of the monitors.

"All of them have high energy readings and active combat radar! They're ready for a fight!"

"They must be serious..."

The Bentenmaru itself was also flying with its transponder off; there wasn't much room to comment on other ships. But hostile foreign warships entering another system without their transponders on meant the possibility that things could escalate to war.

Marika only needed a moment to consider.

"Activate our transponder! Let everyone know the Bentenmaru is here!" The bulk of the bridge crew turned to the captain's chair with looks of surprise. Coorie faithfully followed the captain's orders.

"Transponder activated! What now?"

"Bring all radar and sensors online, I want to record as much of this as we can. I don't know what they plan on doing, but make sure they know there are witnesses!"

"Starting battle log. Want me to get a backup running too?" Hyakume focused on the control panel, both hands busy.

"There's heavy electrical interference coming from the Serenity Defense Force ships," Coorie reported, confirming Hyakume's prediction.

"What about the first Corback that appeared?"

"It's begun to rapidly accelerate in the direction of the Tau Ceti star. Uh, it looks like it's on a direct course for Umi-no-ake."

"So the rest of the fleet is pursuing the first ship that jumped in. I'm not misreading the situation, am I?"

"I think you're right. The group that jumped in later consists of four destroyers and one battleship. The battleship is in command."

"If they know there are witnesses, the next thing they'll try to do is jam us or shut us up. So whose side are we on?"

"What do you mean, whose side?" Marika rose from the captain's chair. "Space pirates are supposed to stand on the side of justice, right? Of course we're going with the underdog. Follow the first Corback! Coorie, can we hold off the squadron chasing them?"

"We won't be able to beat them in a straight-up fight," she answered casually, beginning to take measures to counter the jamming. "Forget about the destroyers, if that heavily armored battleship trains its high-caliber guns on the Bentenmaru it'll blow this trash heap away like it was nothing."

"Jamming is one thing, but we're in trouble if they try to stop us from talking." Marika watched the Bentenmaru's projected course, cutting in between the fleeing Corback and the pursuing battleship squadron, and settled back into the captain's chair. In space, the conditions in battle change faster than the speed of light. If you have a chance to strike, you take it while you can, nothing more.

"We don't need to beat them. Can we buy enough time for that first Corback to run to Umi-no-ake?"

"Sure, if we're fighting a bunch of halfwits," Coorie answered, without much confidence. "But from what we saw with the Symphony Angel, the Serenity Defense Force probably aren't halfwits. I doubt they'll let us waste their time unless we come up with a spectacular bluff."

"The escorts are taking off after the Corback." The destroyers made a clear show of chasing directly after the Corback from their current positions—they could shore up their formation later. The larger battleship continued its powerful jamming while also taking up a pursuit vector.

"We can reach them first if we go all out, but what should we do until then? We can try out some electronic warfare tricks on them, but we can only protect a single destroyer for so long." Hyakume watched the projected paths of both sides drawn on the main screen as he made complex calculations in his head, and Marika considered their options. The Bentenmaru could outmaneuver them, but that alone wouldn't be enough to stop the enemy.

"Is it possible to talk to the Serenity ships?"

Marika lifted her head to find Gruier standing in front of the captain's chair. "What, like a comm circuit? Coorie, can we raise the Serenity ships?"

"With this much jamming, we would have to target them with a directed communications beam—it'd be like screaming right in their ear."

"Will you let me talk to them?"

"What?" Marika looked back at Gruier.

"Let me borrow your hat and captain's uniform. I'm going to reprimand the Serenity crews straight from the Bentenmaru's bridge."

Marika shot the princess a double-take, her eyes agape.

The first Corback to touchdown on the outskirts of the Tau Ceti system had entered into a trajectory aimed at the third planet, Umi-no-ake, accelerating at maximum burn. Of the fleet that rematerialized into normal space following it—which included a lone battleship—the four destroyers had the highest mobility. They took up direct pursuit courses and began to close the distance.

The battleship, lacking in both mobility and speed, projected a jamming field as it followed lazily behind. The destroyers were still too far away from each other to exchange fire, but the range for cyberwarfare was much more considerable.

With its transponder broadcasting its name and position, the Bentenmaru chased after the fleet, accelerating even faster than the destroyers.

Both pursuer and pursuee were operating under strict communication restrictions—neither were sending out any transmissions. The Bentenmaru approached the initial Corback, also maintaining its silence as long as none of the other ships tried to make contact.

The Bentenmaru opened a channel to the first of the escorts—currently supported by the battleship's jamming—just as they were about to enter firing range. The pirate ship's main guns took the place of antennas, each pointed in a different direction, and it lashed out with a powerful directed communications beam that would transmit through the target's monitors and speakers even if they weren't powered on.

The forced message, not unlike an unannounced barrage of fire, rattled the Serenity fleet, but not nearly as much as did the image and voice that flashed across all of their systems.

"What is it that you think you're doing!?"

Displayed on their monitors was the Seventh Princess of the Serenity royal family, Princess Gruier Serenity herself, her face unknown to none in the Serenity Defense Force. She was clad in an historical, epauletted, piping-adorned captain's uniform and a gaudy, Caribbean-style captain's hat—something that vaguely resembled a naval uniform.

"I am Gruier Serenity, rightful successor to the Serenity royal line, and I am ordering this fleet of the noble Serenity Defense Force to cease this seditious sham of a conflict immediately! If you do not, you will be labeled as traitors against the throne!"

The crews involved in the mission would all attest that the sight of their young princess suddenly appearing dressed as a pirate captain, along with her harsh tone and expression, chilled them to the bone. Nevertheless, no official recording remained of the transmission impressed on them from the pirate ship's bridge.

The effects were stunning. The battleship immediately halted its jamming without even waiting to confirm the princess's identity, and the remaining ships ceased their combat maneuvering, albeit not all simultaneously. Their allegiance to the princess had been demonstrated.

"That's quite some influence for a princess."

Marika watched the situation unfold on the displays with amazement, the battle coming to an abrupt end. Her hat and uniform were on loan to Gruier in the captain's chair, the communications monitor showing her only from the neck up.

"It's a miracle that plan worked. We're lucky the Serenity fleet is disciplined enough to listen to the Princess," Misa commented, having watched the whole charade from the observer seat. "Imagine what might have happened if they had thought the Princess was a fake and attacked us."

"The noble Serenity Defense Force navy would never permit something so dishonorable!"

"Misa, enough naysaying. Let's get out of here on the double."

"We've got two hailing attempts from Serenity fleet." Coorie passed the two messages along to the captain's chair. Marika, wearing just an underblouse, ducked out of the way of the camera and glanced sidelong at the captain's chair, at Gruier.

"One is from the battleship, the other's from the first Corback. The battleship's message says it's from the captain, but the Corback's appears to be from someone else. Um, the Lord Chamberlain of the Privy Council?"

"Yotof!?" Gruier picked out the familiar name from the submonitor in front of Marika. Marika read the unfamiliar title and name out loud.

"Lord Chamberlain of the Privy Council, Yotof Sif Sideux. The message says..." Marika touched her fingertip to the touch panel and called up the message. "I've had the dress you ordered made and have come to deliver it. Please try it on...?"

The other message, from the battleship's captain, was a formal salutation and a reaffirmation of his loyalty, nothing particularly eye-catching.

"So Yotof brought it himself," Gruier said, relieved, and looked up at Marika. "It seems that what I requested from the palace has arrived. Could the Bentenmaru link up with Yotof's ship?"

"You want our pirate ship to dock with a warship?" Kane at the helm noted the positions of the Bentenmaru and the first Corback, which had cut its acceleration and was traveling on inertia, with an expression of disbelief. "And one of the escorts that was with the Symphony Angel, which we just raided, no less."

"The Bentenmaru has me on board." Gruier's voice echoed coolly across the bridge from her place in the captain's chair. "I can handle any explanations and requests to the Serenity ship. I'll guarantee the legitimacy of the Bentenmaru's actions, in the name of the royal line. Now Kane, could you please bring the Bentenmaru up next to the destroyer?"

"We're still a pirate ship, things might get a little weird." Marika looked at Gruier in the captain's chair, still wearing her captain's hat. "After seeing the Princess sitting in the captain's chair dressed like that, they probably look at the Bentenmaru like we're a dignitary ship."

"Please open a comm channel." Gruier sat up straight in the captain's chair. "I'll explain the situation to the battleship squadron directly."

"I don't believe that's a very good idea," Misa said, raising her hand as if her opinion had been asked for. "This may be an internal conflict among the Serenity fleet, but they still entered another system's defensive perimeter with a hostile posture. Rather than give anything anyway, we'd be better off getting them to explain what's going on."

"In other words?"

"So what you're saying is...?"

Marika and Gruier responded at the same time, and Misa answered.

"Act like we're following the Princess's orders. Meet with them, but don't let them know what's going on."

"This situation is a delicate one that calls for a high degree of political acumen, you mean." Marika listened to Misa's explanation, both elbows propped against the side of the captain's console, and repeated one of the new additions to her rapidly expanding lexicon of the past few days. She turned to the princess.

"Shall we trust my crew on this one?"

"...please do." Gruier shot her a troubled smile. "Truth be told, I'm not so well versed in diplomatic protocol."

"Tell the battleship squadron that the Princess orders them to stand down from combat-readiness, to form back up, and to go on standby," Misa told Coorie. "Then let the Lord Chamberlain on the first Corback know to prepare for the Princess to come try on her dress."

"Roger."

"Princess, just stay in the captain's chair and keep looking serious. If we can convince Serenity's military that the Bentenmaru is under your command, they should follow our orders."

After receiving the message in Princess Gruier Serenity's name the battleship immediately ordered the escorts under its command to form up. Scattered and traveling under their own inertia, the destroyers briskly withdrew to converge on the battleship and reestablished their squadron in proper military fashion.

The Bentenmaru approached the first Corback.

"So it is the same ship that was guarding the Symphony Angel," Hyakume reported once he had confirmed the Corback's identity, its transponder still disabled. After receiving the princess's reply the ship had cut its radar and drives and yielded to the Bentenmaru. Its hull—polished like new when it had been guarding the Symphony Angel—was now flecked with noticeable damage and scorch marks, results, perhaps, of the battle it had gone through to get here.

"The Corback is requesting that we dock via the side hatch," Coorie announced.

"That should be fine, right? Even if we don't use the main hatch along the bilge, the boarding bridge should give us more room to maneuver after we've docked."

"Princess, I assume you know what the Lord Chamberlain looks like?"

Gruier answered Misa's question with a nod. "Of course."

"Good. Coorie, tell them that the Lord Chamberlain can deliver the Princess's dress to the Bentenmaru once we've docked. The Princess will meet with him directly."

"Roger."

"So we won't be boarding their ship?" Marika asked, relieved. She had been fully prepared to depart for the Corback like it was one of their usual jobs. Misa checked the position of the squadron centered on the battleship behind them; they were holding a cruising formation.

"With all apologies to the Princess, we have no idea what's happening on Serenity's side of things. What matters first and foremost is getting our hands on the goods, without needing the Princess to board their ship." Misa looked up at the princess in the captain's chair. "Is that acceptable?"

Gruier closed her eyes for a moment, then reopened them. "Lord Chamberlain Yotof may need to be convinced, but I'll entrust this to you. A member of the royal family appearing aboard a pirate ship rather than one of our battleships, for example, I imagine may be some sort of transgression."

The Bentenmaru matched vectors with the slender, mass-produced destroyer and brought its venerable hull up next to the Corback. The pirate ship extended its boarding bridge and attached itself via universal connector to the side hatch the Corback had indicated. The accordion-like boarding bridge was constructed of multiple layers and supported by a flexible arm; once the connection was made and the seal verified, it filled with pressurized air from the ship. 

The Corback-class destroyer was equipped with one rear-mounted and two front-mounted turrets each holding a pair of small-caliber, rapid-fire guns. Like the triple-mounted main guns of the Bentenmaru, the barrels were pointed straight ahead and lacked any noticeable energy build-up, but it was a nonetheless discomforting situation for the pirate ship, docking with a warship that had just moments earlier been poised for battle.

The Bentenmaru's side of the boarding bridge, which doubled as the ship's EVA airlock, had transformed into a work zone.

Anticipating the worst, only the Bentenmaru's melee fighters were present to cover Marika and Gruier during the exchange. Under Schnitzer's command, they were equipped with close-quarters firearms, dressed in black ninja suits and fatigues. The bridge was also monitoring the meeting, and any unassigned combat personnel had been positioned throughout the ship.

"The Corback's opened its side hatch," Coorie reported from the bridge. Marika switched over the display on the control panel next to the airlock. It showed an image from the security camera inside the boarding bridge. An elderly man with a refined gait and dressed in an old-fashioned suit appeared inside.

Marika stepped aside so Gruier could see.

"Can you confirm his identity?"

"That's Yotof," Gruier answered after a glance. Behind the suited old man emerged a maid wearing an old-fashioned, long black skirt—the sort only seen in classic movies—and holding a black parcel with both arms. "I'm sure of it. Behind him is Catherine, captain of the Imperial Guard. Don't tell me the two of them commandeered a ship to come all this way?"

Marika watched the two of them on the screen; she received no impression that Gruier was joking.

"Are they that strong?"

"Yes. They say that either one of them has the power to start and end wars on their own."

"No weapon or energy readings from either of them." Coorie relayed the results of the sensor scan from the bridge. Though they hadn't been restricted from bringing weapons aboard the Bentenmaru, they were apparently not carrying anything for self-defense.

"I guess it's not the sort of job you can tackle without being tough," Schnitzer murmured, taking the ostentatious heavy machine gun from his shoulder and resting it against the floor. "Looks like we'd have been better off prepping for a real fight rather than just bluffing by looking the part." He exchanged glances with the ninja suits and fatigues, who returned their large-bore weapons to their racks. They weren't intended to be useful in a close-range fight. They'd only been hoping to look threatening.

The old man in the black suit crossed the boarding bridge and bowed on the far side of the sealed bulkhead.

"He's arrived."

"Open the door for him," Marika said, trying her best to keep her voice calm. "Everyone, try to stay polite."

The dull sound of a motor permeated the airlock, and the standardized, airtight hatch opened. The lanky old man emerged, illuminated by the boarding bridge's built-in lighting.

"I am Lord Chamberlain of the Serenity Household Agency, Yotof Sif Sideux."

"I'm the captain of the Bentenmaru," Marika started, struck by Yotof's sharp gaze. She smiled and continued. "Katou Marika. I've brought Princess Gruier Serenity with me."

"Thank you for traveling so far." Gruier stood before the black-clothed chamberlain wearing the uniform of the Hakuoh Girls Academy Middle School, the captain's uniform and hat returned to Marika.

Yotof bent his long body at the knee and bowed his head before the princess, his eyes narrowing slightly in a manner characteristic of the long-lived. "I'm pleased to find you safe."

"I should be the one saying that!" Gruier shouted at Yotof, who on bent knee was now the same height as the princess. "Lift your head. Catherine too, let me see your faces."

The slender maid, obscured behind Yotof, slowly showed her face for the first time since arriving on the Bentenmaru.

"For the two of you to come all this way..."

"Nothing has happened at the palace, everyone is safe and sound," Yotof summarized, seemingly trying to deflect from something. "Everything has been peaceful since the Princess left on her exchange. There has been little for the two of us to do, and so we were charged with this task."

"I see. I'm glad to hear it." Gruier's gaze swam uncertainly between the two of them.

"I bear a message from Archduke Simsiel."

Hearing the name of the current head of the Serenity royal line drew Gruier's gaze back to Yotof.

Still facing the princess, Yotof began to recite the message. "I await you accomplishing what is expected of you. Do not worry yourself over the consequences. That is all."

"Grandfather..." Gruier closed her eyes, her arms wrapped around her chest. "He would say something like that, wouldn't he?"

"He insisted that I repeat it faithfully." Yotof lowered his head again. Gruier looked directly at the lanky, kneeling old man and spoke cheerfully.

"And faithfully it was heard. Please let my grandfather know that I will take his words to heart."

"As you wish." Yotof bowed again, rose, and ceded his place to the maid in the long dress who waited behind him.

"I've brought the dress the Princess ordered." The slender maid stepped forward, holding the black parcel in both arms. "Please forgive my presumptuousness in handling it myself."

Schnitzer saluted the chamberlain and the maid—proper to his core—and stepped forward. He accepted the black bundle with the same respect one would a folded flag.

The chamberlain quietly assessed Marika, the princess, and their escorts.

"Would it be possible for this humble servant to make a request?" The old man turned his gaze toward the princess. "The next time the Princess should address our ships, please inform me of the outfit she will be wearing beforehand. I feared my heart was about to stop."

"Oh, that was the effect we wanted." The princess laughed cheerfully. "I apologize for sending you on such a frivolous job. Is it safe for you to return?"

"Now that our task has been completed, there's no need to worry." Yotof gave the rest of the Bentenmaru's crew one last look. "I shall entrust the Princess's well-being to you."

The Corback broke off its docking with the Bentenmaru, joined up with the rest of the fleet—which had remained stationary throughout—and departed.

The Bentenmaru watched the Serenity fleet's departure from the edge of the Tau Ceti system, then took up a return vector for Umi-no-ake.

Once on the bridge Gruier placed the package she'd received from the chamberlain on the console of the observer seat and opened it.

Inside was a dress of jet black nightsilk.

"Wow, it's gorgeous," Marika exclaimed suddenly. It felt as if the black dress were dragging her in. But Gruier's expression weakened as she reached for it.

"What's wrong?"

Gruier half-smiled and shook her head. "These are mourning clothes. This must be Yotof's way of being ironic."

Gruier lifted the funerary dress and snatched from underneath it a black, dragonskin clutch.

"Whoa," Misa only half-vocalized. Marika prodded her with a whisper.

"What is it?"

"Those purses are only given to members of the royal family. If you sold it you'd have enough for a starship, at least."

"What!?"

Gruier deftly switched the clutch from one hand to the other. She worked the clasp in a fashion that would be unrepeatable from having only watched her once and revealed a hidden pocket.

From inside she pulled standard, unassuming datacard.

"Please, have a look." She passed the tiny datacard to Marika. "This should contain all of the information we have concerning the Golden Ghost Ship."

"This might be the most valuable data on board the entire ship." Marika accepted the datacard. She carried it over to Hyakume at the radar and sensor console. "This is the royal family's greatest secret. Be careful with it."

"Aye-aye. Is it okay if we make a copy?"

"I doubt that you could." Gruier watched over the datacard cautiously from behind Marika. "All of the data is supposed to be protected, you'll need the credentials of someone from the royal family to access it."

Hyakume slipped the datacard into a reader. When he tried to access the data on the card it suddenly displayed the ornate seal of the Serenity royal family and asked for a password.

"The password will be the full legal name of any member of the royal family. If you get it wrong three times, the data will be erased automatically."

"I see. Guess they put every kind of safeguard they could think of on it." Hyakume ran his fingers across the keyboard and brought up a list of all the authentication protocols lying in wait. "Once you enter a name it locks it to that specific individual; then there's a fingerprint, voice scan, even a vein and retina scan. They're a tenacious bunch."

"You figured all that out without going through it!?" Gruier yelled, surprised. "Even I don't know all of the verification methods."

"It takes a thief to catch a thief, right? These kinds of datalocks are old-hat, we have our ways of cracking them. But uh, just to be safe, Coorie, could you run a check on it too?"

Crosschecks from multiple people were par for the course, just to be vigilant. And the Bentenmaru did not lack for experts in that regard.

"Roger...did you kill the external scan functionality?"

"They've got it all tricked up to look like a single process. Aha, so the verification protocol has a timer on it. Guess it'll be quicker to have the Princess knock this one out for us." Hyakume slid his seat back, retrieved a keyboard stowed on the side of the console, and spun it around to face Gruier. "Could you punch in your name, for starters?"

"Please, make sure that none of this data leaks out anywhere." Gruier typed out her lengthy full name, including her unpublished middle name, using the keyboard. The Seventh Princess's name immediately passed verification.

The display showed a long list of the first through sixteenth royal surveys and the corresponding data for each.

"Whoa."

"Wow, they've got it locked down."

Hyakume and Coorie were both in awe.

"It wants a biometric verification for each step. You wouldn't even be able to open them without the right equipment to run the analyses."

"Can't even check the files without a certified member of the royal family on hand to run through the verification properly. It's like they want to deny that there ever was any research done into Golden Ghost Ship at all."

"My apologies. That data is precious, it has as many safeguards as they could fit."

"Is it okay if I strip them away?"

Gruier answered Hyakume's straightforward question with another look. "The Royal Intelligence Service is supposed to be using state of the art protection. Can you really remove them that easily?"

"The simplest method would be to duplicate the Princess's data and then feed it into the verification process, but I figure that might make you uncomfortable, leaving a copy of yourself aboard a pirate ship." Hyakume continued rhythmically tapping away at the keyboard. "It would be more practical to just pull everything we need from inside."

"Be careful," Coorie called out from the cyberwarfare station. "Mess up the verification protocol while you're copying it and the data'll be wiped clean."

"I'm well aware. The verification protocols are embedded inside the data, if we aren't careful to separate them they'll self-destruct."

"Self-destruct!?" Gruier shouted, instinctively taking a step back from the datacard reader.

"Ah, just a figure of speech. If we make a mistake with the verification process and it realizes we're up to no good, the data will be deleted without warning. After all the trouble you went through to have this valuable data delivered, we'll be careful with it. Now, retina scan." Hyakume pulled a flexible arm with a small camera attached to it from somewhere on the console and pointed the lens at the princess. "Look into this." Using the arm, he fixed the camera to the keyboard he had produced earlier.

Leaving the data collection to Hyakume and Coorie, Marika returned to the captain's chair and noted their current location. It would be some time before the Bentenmaru was back in orbit around Umi-no-ake.

"I don't see how I'm going to make it back in time for dinner." She considered the time and effort involved in taking the shuttle back down to Shin-Okuhama and getting the princess back to the Hakuoh dorms, then checked the chronometer on the captain's console.

Misa was standing next the captain's chair, watching Gruier from behind as she assisted in the verification process. She whispered to Marika. "So what do you think?"

"What do I...?" She looked at Misa, troubled. "I only saw what I saw. The destroyer carrying the chamberlain and Gruier's attendant maid jumped here while being chased by the Serenity fleet. They listened when Gruier chewed them out, so they must at least still be loyal to the royal family."

"Could you tell who was on our side and who wasn't?"

"You want me to choose!?" Marika glared at Misa.

"I'm only asking the Captain's opinion. You can always change your mind if it turns out you're wrong."

"Geez!" Marika lowered her gaze to the control panel and called to the display the movements of each ship, from the moment the first Corback appeared to when Gruier had sent the order to stop. "The chamberlain and the maid who delivered the dress must be on the Princess's side. I guess the destroyer that brought them is too."

"Do you think the fleet supports her?"

"They didn't look like they were her enemy." Marika pondered. "She ended the battle with a single message. But we never learned why the pursuing fleet was ordered to attack, or what started the fight. I can't gauge them unless Gruier uses her authority as princess to make them show us their battle logs."

"What do you think about the Serenity royal family?"

"I assume the Princess's grandfather is the head of the monarchy? And he's not trying to stop her. But I think whether he's on her side or not is a different question." Marika looked up at Misa. "We don't have a clue about what's going on with the monarchy. Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to get ahold of Shou at the insurance company and ask him what's going on?"

Misa shook her head, her expression grim. "Even under normal circumstances the affairs of royalty are a circus of Machiavellian conniving and politicking. I don't know how much our insurance agency would know about the royal family's internal squabbles."

"The time and place will come when we'll have to decide." Marika pondered even more. "And even if the Princess and the archduke are in agreement, whether that includes the monarchy as a whole is a different question. On the surface the fleet swears its allegiance to the royal family, but we don't know when that might change. You could tell from Gruier's face that she was thinking the same thing. We might be in this even deeper than we thought."

"Ain't that always how it goes?" Misa laughed as Marika began to nod in agreement. "What's the point of being a space pirate if you always have to have the whole picture?"

"Yeah! Space pirates are on the side of justice!" Marika lifted her head. "We always manage to get things done one way or another, no reason to stop now!"

"There are plenty of kinds of justice. Which one are you on the side of?"

Misa had meant her question as a joke, but Marika beamed a smile at her.

"It's simple." Marika looked at Gruier, who was speaking with Hyakume while she placed her left hand on a palm scanner. "The space pirates in stories, whenever they need to decide what to do, the answer is obvious. Always go with the coolest option."

"All right, got it!" Hyakume shouted as he bypassed the biometric confirmation, including a vein scan, voiceprint, hair DNA analysis, and even a brainwave scan. "Well, Coorie? Any traps or hexes left behind?"

"Hold on, I'm scanning the data you copied right now...if it doesn't find anything strange, then you must have managed to strip out all the time-delay viruses and copy protection."

The mass of documents, including detailed reports from more than a dozen survey fleets and their followup research data, was copied from the datacard to an isolated data sector on the Bentenmaru. Just to be safe, Coorie made sure that the files could be opened and ran the usual battery of checks and scans on the backed up data.

"Okay, I think it's good." Coorie checked the contents of the files as they flowed across the display and sent the scan results back to Hyakume. "I can't find any stealthed programs, just the basic data. If there's anything still hidden in here, then whoever put this data together must be some godlike wizard."

"Okay, extraction complete, you can relax." Hyakume closed the open files. "Wait a minute, there's a verification when you close the files too? Not just when they're opened?"

"I really am sorry for putting you through so much trouble." Gruier smirked and punched her full name into the keyboard one more time. After Hyakume confirmed that they had safely broken through all the protocols he closed the files. He pulled the datacard from the slot.

"I may need to borrow it again if we accidentally delete our data or need to compare it to the original, but for now you can have this back."

Gruier took the datacard and returned to the captain's chair. This time she offered it up to Marika. "If it's okay with you, could you keep this on the Bentenmaru for me?"

"Huh?" Marika looked at Gruier and the card in her hand. "But those reports are the Serenity royal family's highest secret..."

"Right. Even I don't know what's in them," Gruier confirmed. "But if I take it back with me, I'll have to keep it in the room that Hakuoh Academy is furnishing for me. It's not that I doubt their security arrangements, but if something were to happen, some incident or a natural disaster, and I weren't there, I believe it would be safer in space, on the Bentenmaru, than in my room."

Marika watched Gruier, shocked at how simply she had put things. "Coming from a royal family must be difficult. The things you need to consider..."

Gruier looked surprised. "Do you think so? I was taught to always think two steps ahead whenever I said or did anything."

Marika turned away from Gruier, who stood before her in her middle school uniform. "Whenever I look at you, all my dreams of being a princess, of being royalty, just fly right out the window."

"How terrible of me." Gruier smiled her diplomatic, socialite smile. "I'm constantly being told that it's my job to protect the image of the royal family."

"That image fell apart the moment you boarded this pirate ship." Marika took the datacard from Gruier's tiny hand. "But it's fine, you don't need to play the part of a royal princess while you're on board the Bentenmaru. There are no reporters here, no paparazzi waiting to catch you in a scandal."

Gruier looked around the bridge with a wistful smile. "This really is Captain Gonzaemon's ship."

Marika and Misa turned to each other.

"Captain Gonzaemon said the same thing to me, once. Though unfortunately he never had the chance to let me come aboard."

Misa breathed a heavy sigh. Gruier turned back to Marika.

"That's why I'm happy to be here."

"I...see. Well, I'm happy you're happy," Marika replied, embarrassed by the child's smile.

Chapter 4: The Phantom Passage

The video files alone that were attached to the seventeen royal survey teams' reports amounted to several unbroken days' worth of content.

The makeshift research team—centered around Coorie, a skilled speed reader, and Hyakume, an expert in analysis—quickly threw their collected efforts into analyzing it all.

In order to maintain the secrecy of the aggregated data on Serenity's Golden Ghost Ship they were forbidden from transmitting their findings to anyone on planet; not to Marika, and not to Gruier or the other members of the Bentenmaru's crew.

It had been Gruier herself who asked that the information on the Golden Ghost Ship not be sent over any communication channels, private or public, in order to safeguard its secrecy.

Misa, Hakuoh's school physician, and Kane, the middle school gym teacher, were staying in Shin-Okuhama, in a suburb of apartments and maisonettes near the academy. They were restricted to contact with the Bentenmaru only through regular, periodic updates, and those calls made no mention of either the data or the ghost ship.

As a result, Marika and Gruier were left in the dark as to the progress of the investigation.

But that would change the following week.

"Morning!" Marika entered the yacht club's club room after class, expecting to be the first one there. An unexpected visitor awaited her. "Huh? Chiaki-chan?"

"I thought I told you not to call me that, it's not like we're best friends or anything!" Chiaki Kurihara wore the same basic high school uniform as Marika, but arranged in subtly different ways. Sitting alone, she kicked her chair back and stood.

"I haven't seen you in forever! How've you been?" Marika threw herself across the club room as if to hug her. She tossed her bag on the table and grabbed Chiaki by the hand. "You even went on that training cruise with us, but then you transferred back to your old school before the second semester started. Things have been so busy since then that I couldn't even go say hello. What have you been up to?"

"You think you're the only one who has to pull double duty as a space pirate while they're still in school?" She deftly slipped from Marika's arms. "Don't tell me you aren't keeping up with what the Barbarossa's been doing?"

The Bentenmaru wasn't the only pirate ship in the Cetus constellation with a system-issued letter of marque. And though they kept different ports of call and didn't much encounter each other, it was nevertheless part of a captain's job to keep tabs on their fellow pirates' actions.

"Ah, uh..." Marika tried to remember the most recent pirate ship activity. "I think the Death Shadow's last job was teaming up with the Black Pearl to play the opfor in defense force war games? And the Barbarossa's been raiding cruise ships out along Pirates' Way?"

Chiaki breathed an exaggerated sigh. "We haven't done business with a cruise ship in the past six months. It's been nothing but routine work: escorting surveyors in places it's too dangerous for the fleets to go, patrol routes, hauling cargo."

"Uh, oh, yeah." Unlike the Bentenmaru, which couldn't operate without Marika on board to serve as its captain, the Barbarossa was captained by Chiaki's father. She wouldn't need to tag along on every job. "Sorry, I've been so busy with work and school, I haven't had time to look into what everyone else is up to."

"I figured as much." Chiaki shook her head, annoyed. "You need to watch the news, read the papers, know what's going on in the universe. Pirates exist at the whims of a lot more than just the military or the corporations."

"Ugh."

"At least, that's what the bearded old man is always saying."

Marika recalled the Barbarossa's captain—whom she had only ever seen in photos—and his hefty beard. "Hey, do you have time to stick around? Jenny and everyone else should be on their way. I was just about to make tea."

"I didn't stop by to say hello." Chiaki scanned the club room nervously. Everyone else had yet to arrive, and there was little worry that the room might be bugged. Even so, Chiaki grabbed Marika by the arms as she started to turn around and lowered her voice to a whisper. "I heard that you're caught up in Serenity's internal squabbles?"

Marika blinked and turned around to face Chiaki. "You're well-informed."

"I mean, they announced that Princess Gruier Serenity would be doing a temporary exchange at Hakuoh Girls' Academy. The Bentenmaru's captain attends the same school, and even if someone were to somehow miss that point, the Serenity Defense Force fleet showing up in Tau Ceti space, the Bentenmaru acting all suspicious, all the pieces fit together."

"Uh-huh, I see." Marika plopped onto the sofa, the look on her face suggesting she wasn't quite buying it. "You're right, I guess it must seem that way from the outside."

"Am I wrong?"

"You got most of it." Marika raised her head and smiled vacantly. "Yeah, we wanted to keep it under wraps, but you can't help what people already know. I guess I need to give our operational security a once-over."

"We're both pirates here, don't pull that stuff with me. You were never cut out for intelligence operations, leave that stuff to the experts."

"Yes ma'am," Marika replied, and rose. "I'll take your advice. Every time I step on the ship I'm reminded I'm just a beginner."

"I've got something to tell you I don't want anyone else to hear."

Marika stopped and turned back around. "What is it?"

"I don't know who the client was—we got the offer through a back channel—but someone came to us wanting to search for a ghost ship."

Marika instinctively probed Chiaki's face.

"They asked us to search for the Golden Ghost Ship of Serenity, and wanted us to use force against anyone who got in our way. I didn't get to see the actual contract so I can't say for sure, but I got the impression they wanted us to shut down another ghost ship hunter somewhere out there."

"What do you mean?" Marika's mind ran at full steam trying to make sense of what she knew, but none of the answers she found satisfied her.

"Just what I said. I think there's someone out there searching for the Golden Ghost Ship, who doesn't want it in writing, doesn't want the military involved, and wants the competition crushed."

"Who?" Marika asked bluntly. Chiaki stared back at her in response.

"Are you seriously asking me that?"

"Sorry, my mistake." Marika shook her head. She was so used to being the only one who didn't have all the answers.

"I imagine you've already guessed it, but our problem with the original offer was the condition that we sink the enemy regardless of whether it was legal or not. And being the licensed pirates that we are, the client wasn't the sort of upstanding individual who'd let us choose a more elegant route."

"So you're saying there's someone out there working against us."

"I came here in person because I didn't want this information getting out. I don't know who they are or where they're from, whether they have sources that extend to the Bentenmaru and Umi-no-ake."

Marika listened with a conflicted look on her face, then looked up at Chiaki. "Thank you for taking the trouble to let me know... Have you gotten a look at the Princess yet?"

"Nope. Not interested."

"Aww, you should go see her. It's not every day you can go to school with a princess."

"I told you I'm not interested. And besides, I'm here under the pretext of a meeting on behalf of my school's yacht club. I need to see whether Umi-no-ake and Umi-no-mori are going to enter the next high school championship separately or as a team."

Four short, hesitant knocks came from the yacht club's door. Typically a club member would have just burst in without knocking.

Marika paused her tea preparations to respond.

"Come in, it's open."

"Pardon me." The voice from the slowly opening door caused Marika to turn around, holding the teapot in one hand.

"Gruier!?"

Chiaki instinctively straightened up at the appearance of the uniformed, blond-haired pixie. Over in the tea nook Marika set down the pot she had yet to fill and hurried to pull Gruier inside. "What are you doing here by yourself?"

After taking a closer look to confirm that it was really her, Marika poked her head out of the club room and peered in both directions down the hallway. Club members were smiling and chatting at the far end of the hall.

"I visited your classroom, but they said that you had already headed off for the yacht club." Gruier bowed from the waist towards Chiaki. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"No, we were pretty much done." Marika's eyes darted to Chiaki before adding, "This is Chiaki Kurihara, from the Hakuoh Girls' Academy Yacht Club, Umi-no-mori campus. And this is Princess Gruier Serenity, who's doing a short exchange at our middle school."

"It's nice to meet you." Chiaki gave a proper, old-fashioned bow. The princess responded by repeating her deep bow.

"Uh, Chiaki-chan was also a transfer here, before the summer."

"I told you not to call me that!"

"She's a member of the yacht club, and very experienced."

"Morning!" A group of students, clustered around club president Jenny Dolittle, entered the club room spouting their standard greeting.

"Oh my, what a surprise. Chiaki-chan!"

"I said...!" Chiaki started to complain, but perhaps seeing the difficulty in arguing with an upperclassman, she simply bowed to the throng of club members. "It's been a while. I wanted to get in touch before now, but things on Umi-no-mori have been so busy that I—Wah!" Chiaki yelped as, with no room to escape, she was caught up in Jenny's arms.

"No need to be so formal, not after everything we've been through," she said, running her hands through Chiaki's long, straight hair.

"How've you been?"

"I can't believe you disappeared so soon after transferring!"

"You never submitted a form to withdraw, so you're still part of our club."

"Uh, err, Jenny?" Following Marika's gesturing finger as she timidly tried to speak, Jenny saw the princess, who had at some point retreated into the corner of the club room. It took a moment for her to recognize the petite, blond-haired middle schooler.

"What? No way!"

"Wait a minute, isn't that the princess doing an exchange with the middle school?"

The rest of the club members were quick to react.

"I apologize for intruding. I'm Gruier Serenity, here on a temporary exchange with the middle school." She offered an abbreviated introduction and bowed, smiling.

"Is she here to join the club?" Jenny asked Marika, still caught up in her embrace with Chiaki. Marika shook her head, flustered.

"I don't think so. She's here for something else."

"Well she must have a reason."

"Could you please let go of me!"

"Oh, sorry." Jenny released Chiaki and took stock of the club room. The majority of the upperclassmen were there, but the first- and second-years were still missing.

"We've still got some time. Lynn, lock the door. I don't want any non-club members showing up for the moment," she called out to the club's vice president, and then looked back and forth between Marika and Chiaki. "Are you two finished? With whatever it is you didn't want anyone else to hear?"

Marika and Chiaki looked at each other.

"Um, I believe the Princess is the one who had something to discuss."

Gruier was busy engaging the rest of the club members, who had abruptly swarmed around her. Jenny sized up Marika and Chiaki, then clapped her hands together.

"All right everyone, give the Princess some space. Come on! No secretly pawing at her, no asking for autographs! Marika, don't just stand and watch, go give her a hand!"

"Ah, right!"

"Waaah!" The disheveled princess, still smiling but on the verge of tears, was rescued. "Oh, I'm fine, it's no trouble..."

Gruier introduced herself again to the rest of the club members, then turned to face Jenny.

"Um, as you probably already know, this is Princess Gruier Serenity, here on a short-term exchange with our middle school."

"If you could, would you please refrain from referring to me as Princess while we're in school?"

"Ah, sorry, my mistake. And this is our yacht club president, Jenny Dolittle."

"It's nice to meet you...though we've met before, haven't we?"

"Oh my, what a wonderful memory you have." Marika watched the air about Jenny change all at once and unconsciously backed away. "We met at a party at Arnold Junction, celebrating the opening of a new spacelane. My father works in interstellar shipping."

"Ah yes, Hugh and Dolittle Interstellar Transport. Your family has always been kind to us."

"Oh damn it, I went all diplomatic there." Jenny's tone and expression reverted, and Marika put even more distance between them. "Anyway, what is it that I can do for you?" Jenny scanned the club room. "I can ask everyone to leave, if need be."

Gruier nodded to Marika, then turned her eyes back to Jenny. "It's not something that I need to keep from other people. If I do need to discuss something in private, I'll find another place to do so." Gruier scanned the faces of the club members who were present. "Though it might be trouble if a teacher were to hear."

The club members burst out laughing.

"So, Gruier, what is it that brings you all the way to our high school yacht club?"

"Um, well, I can't think of the proper word for it, but I wanted to ask if there were some secret, illicit trick to being counted as present in class or assemblies even when you're not there."

"You mean a roll-proxy?" Marika cocked her head. "Like when you have someone answer for you during roll call, or write your name on the attendance chart, or take your ID with them? That sort of thing?"

"Yes, I figured there must have been a word for it."

The club room was a furor.

"Oh my, what trouble we'd get into, coaching a royal in how to get out of roll call!" Jenny joked, then glanced back at the princess. "Now, of course we've cultivated various methods, passed them down and refined them over generations, and as a fellow classmate we're certainly not averse to sharing them with you. But if you don't mind me asking, what is it you want them for?"

"I'm here on a temporary exchange. And I'm happy to have the chance to share my school experience with everyone." Gruier flashed her socialite smile at the club members. "It's a student's job to study. And while I'm enrolled here as an exchange student, I'm required to go to class and participate in clubs. But it pains me to say that I have other duties that I must prioritize ahead of knowledge."

Gruier turned her eyes back to Jenny.

"It's possible that, in the future, circumstances may arise wherein I need to miss school, maybe briefly, maybe longer. If that happens, is there any way that I can make it appear on the surface that I'm still at Hakuoh Girls' Academy?"

"Gruier..." Marika looked at the princess, confused. "You came to the yacht club to ask us how to ditch class?"

"That's not all there is to it."

"Hmm." Though she was on the verge of graduating, as club president and therefore the bearer of her own uncompromising responsibilities, Jenny was deeply moved. She nodded. "So you need a reliable roll-proxy system. How about we make you a phantom member of our club?"

"Jenny!" Marika shouted without thinking. "If you let Gruier into the club, that would mean we'd be bringing royalty on our yacht!?"

"It would be an honor, wouldn't it?" Jenny shot a smile back at Marika. "If everything holds, we plan to go on a training cruise during the next break after exams, at the same time we see off the senior club members."

"I thought that was still all hypothetical!? And the Odette II's been drydocked on the station ever since our training cruise over summer break!"

"But ever since realizing over the break that we know enough to use the Odette II as a sailing trainer, we've been discussing letting members of the middle school yacht club participate in our next training run too." Jenny turned back to Gruier. "I wonder if the Princess has decided on a club yet?"

"I would prefer it if you didn't call me Princess while we're in school." The princess shot back her canned retort, and then shook her head. "But no. I've had the chance to observe many clubs, but I've yet to decide on one. Since my exchange is only short-term, I was wondering if I had to choose only one."

The rumor that Gruier had been spending her time after school trying out several of Hakuoh's clubs had spread even to Marika in the high school.

"Could you give me a form to join the yacht club as a provisional member?" she asked. Jenny considered it.

"If we do, we'll likely see a slew of imitators trying to join, in both middle school and high school. If we get too many, we won't be able to fit them all on the Odette II."

"Then what if I asked to be a provisional member of every club?" Gruier asked mischievously. The whole club stared at her. "I've been content so far simply trying them out, but the idea of choosing just one is so hard that I still haven't asked any of them to let me join. Since I'm only here short-term, I don't think I could be satisfied with any single club. I thought it might be more fair to everyone if I were to become a provisional member of all of them."

"So you feel like you have an obligation to all the school clubs..." Jenny stared at the princess, who looked to be deep in thought. "Hmm. Lynn? Does our school have any restrictions on joining multiple clubs?"

"I don't think so." Lynn Lambretta, yacht club vice president, pulled a small electronic file from her pocket and swiped her fingers across its compact keyboard as she let some newly-arrived second-year members into the club room. "There's one girl in my class who's in multiple art clubs, and another who's a professional sub for different sports clubs."

"I wonder if the school rules have any stipulations against it."

"I'm looking them up right now. As far as restrictions regarding clubs go, I don't think there's anything hard and fast about membership. Hmm. 'Hakuoh Girls' Academy students are encouraged to participate in club activities,' this sounds like the right spot. It says all you need to join multiple clubs is permission from the club president or the advisor." Lynn pulled her face away from the display once she finished summarizing the relevant passage. "Both middle school and high school, as long as you want to do it, there aren't any restrictions on being a member of multiple clubs. I'm sure if you explain the situation beforehand, any club would be honored to have you join. I mean, who would turn you down?"

"That way the Princess—" Jenny started, but corrected herself as she looked at Gruier, "That way Gruier would be able to avoid causing anyone an influx of new members. Then we can add Princess Gruier Serenity's name to the passenger manifest for our training cruise, and she'll be counted as on board the Odette II for the duration."

"As long as no one checks to see if she's actually on board, that will get her out of roll call," Marika said, looking at Gruier's concerned face. "But isn't it risky? She's royalty, it would give unsavory types even more of a reason to go after us, not that they needed one in the first place."

"Looks like our training cruise just got even more exciting."

"Jenny!"

"I'm not worried. With a princess of the Serenity royal family on board, our humble yacht club training vessel will become a full-fledged VIP ship. I don't plan on taking the Odette II outside the Tau Ceti system, I imagine if we file a proper flight plan that the defense force will provide us an escort."

"But what if someone goes after us!"

"If they do, isn't that all the more fun for us?"

"When did the yacht club join us on the dark side?" Chiaki whispered to Marika. Jenny pretended not to hear her and continued.

"If someone does target the Odette II, it'll probably be because they think the Princess is on board. And even if all they do is tail us without attacking, then we've still done our job as a decoy, right?"

"Should we really be doing this?" Marika asked in earnest. Jenny stared back at her.

"Did you catch all that, Lynn?"

"You upsetting the underclassmen, the world must be coming to an end." Lynn casually poked her head out the door and quickly retreated back inside. "Kane's coming. Better can it for now."

"Kane?" Gruier asked dubiously, as the sound of nonchalant knocking echoed from the closed door.

"It's your advisor. I'm coming in." Kane—who had found new life as a middle school gym teacher while he continued to serve as the yacht club's advisor—showed himself as he opened the door to the club room.

"Good afternoon, sir."

Kane waved in answer to the chorus of greetings and noticed the club members circled around Chiaki and the princess.

"Oh, were you in the middle of something? If you'd like, I still have a couple of things to finish up in the faculty office..."

"It's been a while, sir." Chiaki stepped forward and offered a formal bow. "I'm here as a messenger from Umi-no-mori's yacht club."

"Huh? Oh right, that. I hadn't heard you were coming. Jenny, could you listen to what she has to say?"

"Of course. We also have Gruier, from the middle school." Jenny exchanged glances with Gruier and ushered her forward. "Apparently she's interested in checking out our club."

"I...I see. You want to check out the yacht club? How adventurous." Kane stumbled for a moment, but finally responded appropriately. "I suppose we should have her try out some simulator training, then?"

"What a fantastic idea. Marika, why don't you show Gruier to the simulator room. And would you mind supervising them, sir? I'll head down to the simulators as well once I've finished speaking with Chiaki."

"Roger. Let's go, Gruier." Marika reached through the throng of club members, grabbed Gruier by the arm as if to haul her away, and looked up at Kane. "Ah, you came all the way down to the club room, was there a message or something you had to give us?"

"Oh, right, that's what I was doing down here." Kane clapped his hands together. He leaned forward slightly and whispered. "I got a message from Hyakume. Says he's got our next job lined up."

Marika looked first at Gruier, then at Chiaki. "You mean...?"

"They're done analyzing the reports we got from the palace." Kane bowed to the princess and did an about face. "Now, allow me to show you to the heart of Hakuoh Girls' Academy's renowned yacht club, our state of the art simulators."

The yacht club was abustle that day as a result of middle schooler Princess Gruier Serenity's provisional membership.

After spending the majority of club time in simulator training with Gruier, Marika grabbed their club advisor Kane so that they could head straight for the Bentenmaru in orbit.

"Shouldn't we hurry to the Bentenmaru?"

"Nope, not on the menu for today," Kane answered her as they escorted Gruier back to the middle school dorms. "The Bentenmaru doesn't have a job lined up. If we were to rush up there from the surface and then come back without the Bentenmaru going anywhere, we'd be giving away to anyone watching that we were holding an important meeting. Just take it easy and wait, Hyakume and Coorie are going to take a regular shuttle bus down to avoid drawing attention."

"Huh." Marika had been all set to hurry to orbit from the spaceport, but as her deflated voice left her mouth, she realized the gravity of their situation. "We're being watched?"

"All movement around this planet, aerial and orbital, private and commercial, is carefully controlled. Flight plans can be accessed remotely, so they wouldn't even need to station a watcher here. You're probably safe inside the school, but we can only guess at what kind of surveillance net they might have set up outside. Just go to your part-time job and act like you haven't heard a thing."

As they walked, Kane lowered his voice and added, "It'll probably happen sometime late tonight."

Ever since starting her career as a space pirate aboard the Bentenmaru, Marika had been mostly absent from her part-time job at the cafe Lamp House. She made an appearance for the first time in a long while to help out with the evening dinner rush, then made her way home along the darkened bike lanes of Shin-Okuhama.

Her mother, Katou Ririka, had arrived home just ahead of her and had switched on the lights. Once Marika finally made it past the complicated home security layout and through the front door, she was struck by the stark absence of the smell of food.

"Huh? What's up with dinner?"

"We're eating out tonight." Ririka had been waiting on Marika, still dressed in the suit from her job at spaceport traffic control. She closed the file on her lap that she had been reading and rose from the sofa.

"Agh, what should I wear?"

"You're fine how you are. Come on, it's time to go."

Marika crowded into the passenger seat of the pickup truck Ririka used to commute to work; she'd only had time to deposit her bag inside before leaving home again.

As she watched the scenery flash by while they traveled down the freeway, she realized their destination.

"The spaceport?" Marika had found herself there frequently since becoming captain of the Bentenmaru. But Ririka worked there; it was an unusual choice for a meal out.

"Sorry it's not anything fancy." She flew down the smart road, driving manually, a sour look on her face. "And don't get your hopes up—we'll be eating at the employee cafeteria."

"Really?" As a child Marika would meet up with her mother at the spaceport after school, and it hadn't been uncommon for them to have dinner in the food court, open around the clock to serve the port's employees. It had been a while since she'd last been there—she'd lacked for free time ever since starting her part-time job.

"Wow, it's been so long. I don't mind. I like it there." Marika cast a furtive glance at her mother's face in profile. "Wait, is this what I think it is?"

Ririka nodded slightly, her hands on the steering wheel. "I'm guessing Coorie or Hyakume set it up. We used to do this sometimes before a big job, back when Gonzaemon was captain. We'd hold the ship where it was and shuttle the crew around without anyone noticing, to avoid broadcasting our intentions to the enemy. If they want to meet with you inside the spaceport, it's likely they're trying to avoid drawing any attention to the Bentenmaru's crew."

Ririka turned the wheel of the pickup and headed for the employee parking lot. "It's not like you want to become famous, but with the crew of the Bentenmaru, you never know when you might run into somebody you know."

Shin-Okuhama Spaceport was an interstellar hub with facilities for handling not only orbital shuttles and routes to various points around Umi-no-ake, but also for landing the occasional starship capable of making planetfall. The newest terminal building was equipped with an enormous shopping center, a large-scale hotel, and an upscale dining district.

The employee food court, however, used by everyone from ground crews to traffic controllers, maintenance staff to pilots, was built to be unassuming and inconspicuous, nestled quietly beneath the surface.

Unlike the main terminal building which boasted a hyper-modern look and construction, the employee food court maintained the facade of the original commercial airport and housed many long-time businesses still in operation. Its cost-performance ratio was supposedly among the highest in all of Shin-Okuhama outside of the student district, on par with the wards of the old city.

Ririka deposited her pickup in the employee parking lot and guided Marika to the food court through the employee-use tunnels, located underground and separate from the areas used by regular customers.

"Isn't this a different route from last time we were here?"

"They've rebuilt most of the stuff above us. New construction, detours, restricted areas. This place is a proper dungeon."

But as they passed through the final door and into the subsurface food court it was just as Marika remembered it: dusty and apathetic signboards, employees rushing about, the commotion of the restaurants audible even from the hallway.

"Wow, it hasn't changed a bit."

"They've had plans to remodel it for a while, but the store owners are stubborn and keep raising a fuss, and it's popular with the people who work here, so they never got off the ground." Ririka walked deftly through the narrow, labyrinthine corridors to a door leading into the food court's depths, seemingly hidden behind a wall. There were no signs or other indicators.

"Huh? There's a restaurant back here?"

"It's a nice spot to have a private conversation."

One foot through the door and Marika was enveloped in heat and a bouquet of spices and flavors that assailed the stomach. At the center of the kitchen, lined with a cornucopia of ingredients and cookware from the universe over, stood a large, middle-aged man in a pristine chef's hat, his face covered in scars. He scowled briefly at Ririka.

"Come in," he said, his voice infernally deep, gesturing further inside the restaurant with a silicone-jacketed mechanical arm. "Everyone else is already here."

"Been a while, old man." Ririka straightened up and gave a military salute to the man as he added ingredients to the large pot in the middle of the kitchen. "You remember my daughter Marika?"

"Huh. Charmed. Your mom's always been one of the good ones." Marika bowed out of reflex as the man scowled at her. He turned his eyes back to the pot and waved them away. "Try not to knock anything over."

Ririka carefully contorted her body as she moved deeper into the cramped kitchen. Marika followed after her, bewildered.

"Uh, have I met him before?"

"You were still a baby at the time."

"Who is he?"

"The food court's manager. Which makes him the most powerful man in the spaceport." Further into the kitchen Ririka opened an oblong, armored door that looked like it had been ripped straight off a tank and entered into the next room.

"Nice of you to finally join us."

The spacious, windowless room was furnished with pale yellow sunlamps and large, circular tables surrounded by mismatched chairs. A section of the room looked like a jungle, the walls crawling with thick, green vines and decorated with what looked to be abstract sculptures. It appeared to be a business space.

"Misa!" Marika exclaimed, recognizing her face at the half-filled table. The circular table was ringed by Kane, Coorie, Hyakume, and several other of the electronics staff members.

"This is the place?" she turned and asked her mother. Ririka answered with a shrug.

"It's probably the safest place on the planet to meet someone in secret. Hurry up and get down to business. I'm sure everyone else knows better than I do how scary the old man can get when you let his precious food get cold."

"Well, now that everyone's here, should we get down to business?" Hyakume rose from his seat and grabbed a remote control. Marika took a seat next to Gruier, who loomed small in her chair, and wondered how the princess had got there. "Let's begin by going over everything we know about the ghost ship so far." Hyakume dimmed the restaurant's lights, information projected on a large screen occupying one of the walls.

"Serenity's Golden Ghost Ship appears in the founding myth of the Seven Jewels of Serenity, believed to be the remains of the ark ship that carried Serenity's first people. It's an interstellar generation ship, with self-contained power and recirculator systems, not capable of faster-than-light travel between stars."

A schematic of a slender cylinder appeared on the screen.

"It was built long ago, before modern inventions like inertial dampeners or FTL engines, so it lacks artificial gravity and can't make hyperspace jumps. Gravity is achieved through the centrifugal force resulting from the ship rotating along its axis of travel, and it moves slowly between stars through extended periods of acceleration and deceleration in normal space."

Hyakume cleared his throat before continuing.

"Obviously it was considered high-speed in a universe that lacked FTL. But it still took years for it to fly to the next closest star. Even in Serenity, where the habitable planets are located exceptionally close to each other, it would need ten years to travel between all of them."

"That long?" Marika asked, surprised. She had learned in history class that space voyages in the past had been measured in decades or even centuries, but she'd never experienced something like that so close at hand.

"Obviously the passengers and crew didn't spend the entire voyage awake. It was a generation ship with its own recirculator system, so there was some leeway, but most of them were placed into cold sleep—it required less work and consumed fewer provisions."

Hyakume superimposed an analysis on top of of what they believed was an external rendering of the ghost ship produced some time after it had been built. It was divided into two primary sections: the bow of the thin cylinder was the habitat block, the more complex stern the mechanical section.

"As you can see, the sleepers were housed in the innermost parts of the hull, where it was believed they'd be safest should anything happen. The ghost ship's habitat section is comparable in scale to even modern-day space cities, and though as an old ship its mechanical and power-generating systems are unreasonably large, since they're located in the gravityless core of the ship, they might still be functional even if the ship has met with some mishaps."

"So this is what the ghost ship looks like." Marika stared at the giant, dark silhouette of the starship drawn against a white background. The black mass on the screen looked like some ancient ruin—perhaps from long years of being scorched by cosmic radiation, or maybe it had always been that color to begin with.

"Because it was built for long voyages spanning light years and generations, we believe it's likely that very little of the original structure remains. These visuals are from the last time a survey team successfully made contact with it, so we don't expect it to have changed much. This ghost ship is what's become of the generation ark ship that carried Serenity's first people."

Hyakume scanned the faces of the crew gathered in the dining room, probing their reactions. "So, how did this generation ship become a ghost ship? The answer requires a lecture on Serenity's history."

Hyakume switched over the display.

"I imagine the Princess knows the circumstances of its founding the best of all of us. Obviously all seven of the 'Jewels' weren't settled at the same time. The habitable planets were colonized in the order in which they were discovered. And at first the ark served as a ferry, traveling between the three stars at regular intervals."

The screen displayed an image showing the positions of Serenity's seven habitable planets and their three relatively close stars.

"A regular ferry between the Seven Jewels of Serenity. That's what the last remaining official records say about the ghost ship. And then Serenity came into possession of FTL technology."

Hyakume increased the scale of the star chart showing Serenity's three planets one hundred-fold. Countless star systems shown in a space one million times larger.

"Once you can travel faster than light the universe suddenly becomes a lot smaller. Even Serenity, blessed with an abundance of habitable worlds, found itself in contact with other systems whether it wanted to or not. The reasons were varied—colonization, trade, war—though Serenity, with its long culture of independence, survived primarily through the use of skilled diplomacy to avoid becoming embroiled in conflict, and later became part of the Galactic Empire. I'll leave the rest of the history lesson for another time, but for now what we need to concern ourselves with is what happened to the ghost ship once Serenity entered the FTL age."

Hyakume reduced the scale of the image back to Serenity's three star systems.

"As I first explained, the ghost ship is a massive generation ship, built before FTL flight. Even if they could somehow manage to inertially dampen a ship that large, a massive, pre-FTL antique would be far from user-friendly. And as FTL ships came into common use, there was also a noticeable increase in their travel speeds through normal space. The output of the drives they were packing into ships was on a whole other level than what had come before."

"Were there any plans to install FTL engines in the ghost ship?" Kane asked, raising his hand. "The transitional period into FTL must have had them retrofitting FTL drives into older starships, right?"

"It seems that there were several plans to do so. But they would have needed to be quite large to compensate for the size of the long-distance, generation ark ship. The larger a ship's hull, the more output is required from the FTL engines, and the more energy they consume. In terms of efficiency, building an appropriately-sized FTL ship from scratch would have been more economically feasible."

"Putting that aside, you said that during the sublight era it made a regular transport circuit between the stars. How many years did that take?"

"It seems that at first it took the ghost ship on the order of several decades to travel between all of the stars. Steady technological improvements apparently led to them increasing its speed, but as far as we can tell, at best they could only reduce that to just under twenty years."

Though Serenity's three stars were clumped relatively close together, they were still separated by light years. And standard engines would never surpass the speed of light, no matter how high their output or how much fuel they carried.

"In-system use is one thing, but there's no real point anymore in using a Category-II, sublight ship to fly between stars—the only people doing it these days are asteroid ore prospectors. But our ghost ship is legendary, a piece of history, a national treasure. There are plenty of stories about what they planned to do—that they wanted to preserve it as a cultural artifact, or park it in a system as an orbiting city—but then it just disappeared in the middle of a scheduled ferry run."

Bam! Hyakume clapped his hands together, then pulled them apart. "And that's how the ghost ship was born."

"You say it just disappeared," Marika said suddenly, breaking the silence that had fallen over the dining room. "So they kept operating it as a regular ferry even after they had FTL ships? How does a city-sized ship simply vanish, especially when it's flying between stars at such slow speeds?"

"It wasn't like things are today, where every planet that could be developed has been, and you can blast through the established spacelanes at FTL speeds." Hyakume reduced the scale of the star chart showing Serenity and the surrounding stars by a factor of ten. Several spacelanes overlaid themselves on the image.

"Even today, unless something is emitting huge amounts of energy, it's not going to be easy to locate it in interstellar space outside of the regular spacelanes. It's not hard for a single ship to disappear somewhere in the galaxy, especially if it's trying to stay hidden. That being said, a massive ferry doesn't just go missing overnight. If a scheduled ferry that takes ten years to arrive is a little bit late, that's not breaking news. Getting lost wasn't—and still isn't—uncommon."

"Why should it matter if it was in the past or not? A ferry went missing, couldn't they have sent out a search party?"

"They did, obviously. Depending on how you count them, the first royal survey was technically organized as a search and recovery mission for the missing ferry."

"Did they find it?"

"Nope. An FTL-capable defense force fleet investigated its planned route and the surrounding areas for any trace of the missing ferry, but they couldn't find even a scrap. It should have ended there, the cornerstone of the kingdom's founding relegated to a fragment from history, a simple legend, but then stories of a ghost ship started popping up."

Hyakume overlaid numerous points of light on top of the image, centered on Serenity's three stars. The spacelanes and star systems jumped forward, highlighted by the dots of light.

"This is a plot of the last two hundred years' worth of unidentified craft sightings reported to traffic control that couldn't be verified later: first-hand accounts of ghost ship sightings."

"There's that many!?" Marika exclaimed. The lights painted the spacelanes and star systems with a striking mosaic.

"As the number of in-system sightings increase, so do the number of encounters along the spacelanes. This is every so-called ghost ship sighting, so of course there are a lot of them. But if we only include reports of massive, city-sized derelicts like our Golden Ghost Ship, this is what we're left with."

The points of light on the star chart flickered out. What remained was an indistinct, mostly-straight line centered on the three Serenity star systems.

"When you consider these are only large-scale ghost ship sightings and the fact that our sample stretches over a long period of time, the results aren't that surprising. A few decades after the ferry failed to arrive at its scheduled port, it starts to show up in reports as a ghost ship."

"And it was sighted well outside its original scheduled route?"

"Right. Maybe it was slow to be discovered because it was traveling through rarely-trafficked space, and maybe if we're lucky it's still there, unnoticed. With a normal ghost ship, one that's not causing any problems, the patrol fleets—whose job it is to keep the spacelanes stable—will just leave it be. But since we're dealing with an ark ship that's part of Serenity's founding mythology, we also have a government's pride to contend with. Not to mention that the ship is massive and ancient. It may still be registered to the Serenity monarchy, but if someone were to locate it and salvage it inside the Empire, the treasures inside would be worth a fortune. It may just be a giant ferry, but that's where the ‘Golden' part of the name comes from—it's become a piece of folklore that pops up time and time again among scavengers and salvage crews."

"The birth of the ghost ship's legendary status," Misa quipped.

"No one hates the idea of a key part of their founding myth becoming a topic of speculation for prospectors more than Serenity does. I can't imagine that dredging up some ancient ferry is going to have much effect on their power or influence, but when you've got a royal line that stretches as far back as the Galactic Empire's, it certainly wouldn't be pleasant having some salvage crew trample all over your past like a bunch of grave robbers. So the royal family, concerned about this supposed treasure trove of a ghost ship, organized the official royal surveys to keep track of the Golden Ghost Ship, and on a scale that civilian companies couldn't match."

"You're not really going to make us listen to the reports from all seventeen surveys, are you?" Misa said. "Surely we don't have enough time for that? There'll be time go over the background information and all the particulars while we search, why not start by telling us what you found out?"

Hyakume threw his arms up in defeat. Coorie took his place in front of the screen. She drew an orbit centered on Serenity's three star systems.

"After analyzing the data from the survey teams, our guess is that the Golden Ghost Ship is traveling along this path. However, we weren't able to conjecture from the data we have available why a massive ship that lacks FTL engines hasn't been observed along its projected orbit."

"What a quandary." It was the navigator Luca who spoke up. "Could it be caused by a dark cloud, a complex of black holes, a white dwarf cluster? That region is infamous as a hazard-ridden wasteland. I can only assume that someone, somewhere, has exerted a malevolent influence over its trajectory."

Coorie exchanged looks with Hyakume, who had returned to his seat.

"We considered the same thing." She reached for the remote control and aimed it at the screen. "Here we see the spacelanes, and the habitable star systems, that are within its vicinity." Several new data points appeared on the holographic display. "As you can see, the ghost ship is traveling along an orbit that's avoided spacelanes, habitable systems, and any star clusters where you'd expect to find resources. If you were to ask me why, I'd say that someone is actively working to keep it hidden."

"Keep it hidden? It was being used as a giant ferry, what would you need to keep it hidden from?"

"Your guess is as good as mine." Coorie used the remote to raise the dining room lights. "But either way it would just be speculation from the uninformed. Maybe if we could pick the brain of someone with a little more credibility, someone who was actually involved, or someone close to them..."

Coorie's eyes settled front and center on the princess. "Perhaps you know the reason why the monarchy put together so many expeditions, prepared so many reports on the Golden Ghost Ship? If it's not intruding, maybe you could tell us how this former ark ship became a ghost ship?"

Marika turned suddenly to look at Gruier. The princess's face looked even paler in the reflected glow of the screen.

"I do know." Hesitantly, sitting with her back to the table, her hands folded in her lap, Gruier began to speak. "I believe it's written of openly in our history, but the proliferation of faster-than-light technology meant contact with rapidly expanding civilizations. It's not difficult to imagine how the introduction of this seemingly magical technology could have brought about abrupt changes in people's lives."

Gruier stood and turned to face the table, her face wearing a strained smile.

"I can only impart on you what I've learned. I don't know if my understanding of it is correct or not, but I will tell you what I know. When faster-than-light technology was introduced to Serenity, they say that the number one problem facing the monarchy was how to maintain their sovereignty. Up until that point, Serenity's culture had been premised on its technology, but if they were to reject various technological advances such as inertial dampening and faster-than-light travel, it would have become impossible to coexist with other star systems."

Civilizations did not progress directly towards technologies like inertial dampening and FTL as ends unto themselves. Most civilizations that learned to travel the stars developed on their own planets, embarking into the ocean of space by building on top of what technology they had, desiring to seek out new and unknown worlds.

"When Serenity's seven worlds first came together to form an interstellar government, they, like most interstellar civilizations, didn't know how to transcend great distances or how to surpass the speed of light. Naturally their interactions with neighboring systems were minimal, and united under a single ruler there were none who threatened them. But when faster-than-light travel became a reality, the barriers of distance and time that had protected them were no longer secure. Their universe was about to undergo a radical change."

Gruier punctuated her words by scanning the faces of her audience with the look of someone used to speaking in front of large crowds.

"And so, I've heard it said, they loaded the last ferry with Serenity's culture and civilization, a message to the future that they had existed, specimens that could be used to recreate their natural environment in the event that they weren't able to protect Serenity, a way to show later generations what Serenity was supposed to be."

"Like Noah's Ark?" Misa said, invoking the name of the vessel from ancient legends. "An ark constructed when the world was about to be destroyed, loaded with every species of plant and two of every animal so that the world could be remade anew. Is there any record left of what was put on board, or how much?"

Gruier shook her head apologetically.

"There are no detailed records, not even in the palace archives. The introduction of faster-than-light technology was a time of continual contact with new civilizations, and likely not all of those meetings were auspicious. I imagine that it was a most chaotic time, not just for the monarchy, but for all of Serenity."

"Serenity is a leader among the Galactic Empire when it comes to museums of art and natural history," Misa said. She followed up with another question. "Is it possible that particularly valued items—rare artifacts and expensive pieces of artwork from ancient times—were placed on board?"

"Such a narrative has persisted at the Serenity Royal Museum for ages," Gruier answered, smiling. “In order to preserve the artifacts from war, natural disaster, and theft, the ones on display in the Royal Museum are all high-quality replicas. The originals are kept deep in an underground storehouse far away from prying eyes. Even when it comes to works of art that have gone missing or reported as stolen, there are always people whispering that they may have been counterfeits."

"But in reality...?" Misa asked. Gruier's expression was unchanged as she answered.

"I believe that all of the objects stored in the Royal Museum are real." Gruier unexpectedly stuck out her tongue, playfully. "And even if they do know the truth, I think that we can trust them to know better than to comment on disputes over the authenticity of the royal family's treasures."

"So what you're saying..." Marika bolted up from her dining room chair and turned to face Misa and Gruier. "Is that the ghost ship could be filled to the brim with Serenity's riches?"

"Not its modern wealth, no, but ancient, valuable artifacts, packed onto a massive generation ship. That's one of the reasons that Serenity's ark came to be called the Golden Ghost Ship," Misa confirmed.

"But if that were true, then why didn't the survey teams that made contact with the ship bring them back? Sure, they couldn't grab them all at once, but there must have been teams that boarded it."

"You're forgetting the details, Captain." Misa's voice was relaxed as always. "The surveys were all commissioned by the monarchy, and the results of their investigations were held under the tightest secrecy. Once we're done with this job, we'll not only have to return all of these documents to the palace, but any secrets we learn over the course of the job will need to be covered by a strict non-disclosure agreement, no letting anything leak out."

"For real?" Marika looked at Misa, then at Coorie and Hyakume, who nodded matter-of-factly. She collapsed back into her chair. "Ugh. Non-disclosure agreements. That seems like a lot of responsibility."

"Whatever the survey teams' orders were once they boarded the ghost ship, they weren't included in the reports we received," Hyakume remarked after raising his hand. "But now that you mention it, there weren't any records of anything recovered either, no reports of searching for treasures or anything else that they unearthed. It's possible that they exist somewhere, but at least as far as the mission reports go, they didn't include a section for recording those kinds of variables and discrepancies."

"Could they have redacted parts of the reports to keep them secret?"

"If I were going to go through the trouble of editing a report to make everything seem above-board, I'd have just ordered them to fill out a second one from the start. I was hoping to find some personal impressions, but the surveys were sponsored by the monarchy, so of course even the reporting was handled by cold professionals. At the very least, I didn't get a sense that anything in the results was being omitted or falsified."

"So what were the survey teams sent to survey, exactly?"

"Their objectives varied depending on the survey. At first they were tasked with establishing whether or not the ghost ship even existed, and if so, determining what state it was in. Not all seventeen surveys were able to make contact with the ghost ship, and of those that did, not all of them were allowed to board it. And remember, they were dealing with a generation ship the size of an orbital city. Exploring the inside of the ship without a solid layout of the interior would have required time and effort on the same scale as an archeological dig."

"Didn't they have blueprints from when it was being used as a ferry?"

"Maybe something like that was stored on the ship's bridge. But it was a generation ship, it could have spent who-knows-how-many thousands of years wandering before it first reached Serenity. At any rate, I couldn't find anything about detailed schematics in the reports. And even if records of its original construction had been left behind, I imagine that after generations of modifications you'd be hard pressed to find anything original left."

"Are people really that irresponsible," Marika asked, staring dubiously out across the faces of the Bentenmaru's crew, "when it comes to ship blueprints?"

"It depends on the ship," Kane answered with a serious look on his face. "Take the Odette II, for example. It's a sailing trainer with a proper history, and Hakuoh has the paperwork on every modification back to when it was first launched. Warships are tightly administered from the moment they're laid down to the moment they're scrapped, tracking every remodel, and sometimes even down to the individual steps of each maintenance. But poorer ships—and pirate ships like the Bentenmaru—that throw together repairs with whatever is on hand at the time, even if they do keep proper schematics, it's doubtful whether they'll be of much use."

"But the survey teams must have at least made maps, right? What about those?"

"Sure, if you count some general drawings of the structure hammered out by engineers as schematics, and I'm sure they helped some. But that doesn't get to the heart of the mystery." Hyakume used the remote to change the image on the screen. It displayed one of the detailed blueprints that had accompanied the reports. "It transitioned from migrant vessel to ferry to ark, but how did it become a ghost ship, drifting along a path that nobody can seem to locate? We still don't have an answer."

Marika looked to Gruier, but Gruier shook her head disappointedly.

"Numerous treasure hunters and adventurers have struggled to find the Golden Ghost Ship; I can't say exactly how, but it's never given up its secret, it always stays hidden. It's an ancient generation ship, so it can't be using modern active stealth or electronic warfare equipment, but no matter how rough the space it travels through, it never loses control and goes adrift, it always disappears before someone can find it, forever a ghost ship. That part's still a mystery."

"The survey teams' reports never said anything!?"

"Our honorable survey teams hail from a monarchy that's on par with the Galactic Empire's Holy Royal Family; they're careful to never once refer to the object they're investigating as a 'ghost ship.'" Hyakume removed the datacard from its reader. The image displayed on the screen went blank. "If they did have knowledge of the pattern of its appearances in advance that they used in order to make contact with it, then I guess they never included it in any of their reports."

"There's a pattern to when the ghost ship appears?"

"That, or a proper flight path, or a regular destination. Among the first survey teams there were instances where they couldn't locate it and had to return empty-handed, but the later groups racked up quite a reliable number of hits. They'd lie in wait at various points and go right to work once the ghost ship showed at one of them."

"And the treasure hunters and salvage crews can't do the same?"

"I'm sure they tried. But it never worked out for them." Hyakume's eyes fell on the small datacard he held in his hand. "The ones who've done the most detailed, long-term investigation of Serenity's ghost ship are Serenity's royal survey teams themselves. And their reports are held under the tightest secrecy—you need to be a member of the royal family just to access them. I imagine it'd be difficult to try and locate a pattern or a projected course with just the information circulating in the wild."

"Even with how big it is?" Marika glanced up at the screen and the external view of the ghost ship. "Shouldn't it be easy to spot a ship that big even from far away?"

"That's the biggest mystery of all," Coorie confirmed, a sober look on her face. "The ship is ancient, so while it may not put off as much energy as a modern FTL-capable ship does, a ship this size should be setting off all kinds of sensors even on normal starships. The salvage crews' and survey teams' sensors are even more sensitive, so assuming they're not all just totally incompetent, I can only assume that the ghost ship possesses some unique property that's kept it hidden and allowed it to remain a ghost ship."

"How did the survey teams catch it?" Marika hit on the ultimate question. "Did any of the reports explain why only the royal survey teams were able to pin it down?"

"Unfortunately, there was nothing in the reports that made that point clear." Hyakume raised both his arms seemingly in defeat. "However, the latter half of the survey teams—the ones that succeeded in making contact with the ghost ship—typically included a member of the royal family. Conversely, teams without a member of the royal family were almost always either unable locate the ghost ship, or could find it but were unable to dock with or board it."

Hyakume cleared all the images from the screen.

"Now for our conclusion. Based on the available data, there's almost no chance of running into the ghost ship simply by flying along its projected course. Our only chance of finding the ghost ship will be if we have the Royal Princess herself accompany us." Hyakume turned apologetically to Gruier. "That being said, we have no evidence to suggest that the ghost ship will simply appear right in front of us just because we have the Princess on board. Furthermore, our target area is home to a laundry list of hazards. I have low expectations that we'll succeed, but if it's enough to push our chances above fifty-fifty, then I think we should go for it."

"But, but, how could they let a ship that's basically Serenity's museum and treasure hoard just fly around aimlessly without guards or anything? Normally they'd at least have a secret key or something, right?"

"She's right." Kane looked at Marika, then Gruier. "The survey teams must have had a key to the untraceable ghost ship. Or at least, something consistent that they could go by."

"What kind of key?"

"For example, the ghost ship could appear when it recognizes the Princess's biometrics, or something like that."

"Not scientifically possible." Like that, Coorie rejected Marika's first suggestion. "It's impossible to isolate the detailed patterns of a single life sign inside a ship. And we're talking about a ship that's running on pre-FTL technology. Even if it could recognize the royal family's vital signs from light years away, it would still take years just to reach them."

"But the Archduke acknowledged Gruier's hunt for the ghost ship, and he sent us the reports we need to search for it. If he wants her to succeed, then he should have already given us everything we need. That means that everything we need to find it, and maybe even to make contact with and board it, is already on board the Bentenmaru."

"Is that your decision as captain?" Misa challenged. Marika closed her eyes. She considered only for as long as it took her to take a deep breath, and then opened her eyes.

"Yes. Our client came to us with an offer, and we gathered all the information we could. I think our next step should be to act."

Marika stood, her back to the screen, and placed her hands on the circular table. Inside her head she was arranging all of the points she needed to make.

"The Serenity Fleet is caught up in infighting, and the reason we're all here right now is because the surveillance net around Gruier is closing in tighter and tighter. Plus, today Chiaki from the pirate ship Barbarossa came to the yacht club with a message." Marika scanned the faces of the Bentenmaru's crew. "Someone went to the Barbarossa with a job to find the Golden Ghost Ship of Serenity, and though they didn't say it outright, they wanted the competition eliminated."

The Bentenmaru's crew all traded looks. Marika ignored them and continued.

"If they went to the Barbarossa, a licensed pirate, with that request, then I'll bet they've gone as far as to talk to other criminal elements as well. And if they have, then aren't things just going to get worse for us the longer we sit here?"

As Misa listened to Marika, her gaze turned knowingly towards Gruier. Catching Misa's point, Marika sat back down in the seat next to her.

"We may not find the ghost ship even after we weigh anchor. Can you accept that?"

"I don't believe that will happen." Gruier smiled. "I'm sure that if we need it to, the Golden Ghost Ship will appear right in front of us."

"So you don't even care to think about what will happen if we fail?" Misa clapped her hands together, delighted. "Why Princess, I believe you'd make an even better pirate than our captain."

"If I ever find myself fired from the royalty, perhaps I'll consider it for my next line of work."

A loud banging came from the armored door, apparently the sound of someone pounding on it from the other side, and it swung open. The middle-aged man in the chef's hat poked his head through.

"You done with your yacking yet? Dinner's almost served."

"Oh, thanks." Marika gave the faces of her crew a once-over. "We're ready. Hyakume, Coorie, do you know when we can launch?"

Hyakume and Coorie looked at each other.

"We still haven't found any reliable pattern to the ghost ship's appearances. We saw a significant number of coincidences with things like dark star conjunctions or meteor shower impacts, but those aren't exactly uncommon astronomical events."

"So that means it's up to us when we leave. Good, I want you to start prepping as soon as you get back." Marika added something, as if as an afterthought. "And try to avoid looking conspicuous."

"So you're taking a princess, out on a pirate ship, to hunt for a ghost ship." Ririka had been listening quietly until that point, when she finally addressed her daughter. "That's a much more romantic job than the ones we took in my day."

Marika turned around to face her mother, an uneasy look on her face. "Let's just hope it stays that way. I don't want this turning into a big budget action-fest."

Chapter 5: The Eighteenth Survey

"Electrical interference incoming!" The onset of the powerful electronic jamming occurred precisely on schedule, robbing the cruise ship Gorgeous Magi of its vision. "All radar and sensors are unusable!"

"Don't panic." The Gorgeous Magi's veteran captain checked the time on his personal chronometer against the clock on the ship's main bridge. "This is a standard tactic for pirates. Hold course and don't upset traffic."

He returned the chronometer to his uniform's inside breast pocket and turned to the first mate. "Did you hear the rumors about our pirates' stand-in this time? Supposed to be a young girl."

"I heard she's the first woman pirate boss since the infamous Captain Ririka," the well-informed first mate said, brimming with excitement. "It's got everyone all fired up for the ‘cruise ship raid' event. The Bentenmaru's insurance agency, Harold Lloyd, refused any requests for extra options on top of the pirate raid without saying why, but all the rumors say it's because they're fishing for more money."

"The best pirates have always been good businessmen." The captain grabbed the mic. "Now then, it's time to play our part in this grand event. Can we get a direct visual on the pirate ship?"

"Our observation cameras have picked up an image of the Bentenmaru."

One of the bridge crew transferred the image to the monitor directly in front of the captain. The pirate ship's slender black hull bore down on them, its running lights flashing wildly against the backdrop of the galaxy.

"Excellent. Send the image to all primary screens throughout the ship." Large screens and displays across the ship—the promenade, the hallways, and elsewhere—flashed the image of the pirate ship Barbarossa as it approached.

"Transponder confirmed!" The pirate ship had skillfully transmitted its transponder signal to its prey even while the interference was robbing the Gorgeous Magi of its eyes and ears. "It's the pirate ship Bentenmaru, no question."

"They're breaking into our transmissions!" the communications officer shouted. "It's a visual stream. A powerful one!"

"Broadcast it throughout the ship." The captain stared up at the main bridge's large screen. "Our passengers have been waiting for these pirates the whole cruise."

With its transponder disguised as the Bentenmaru's, the Barbarossa bombarded the cruise ship Gorgeous Magi with electronic waves that cut into their communications system with a video message informing the ship of their intent to raid it.

"Ohohohoho!" Chiaki, her gaudy captain's uniform, and her high-pitched cackle appeared in high-definition across every monitor on the Gorgeous Magi. "The Bentenmaru's captain, the illustrious Captain Marika, has arrived to raid the Gorgeous Magi! Surrender peacefully and I'll go easy on you. Now, hoist that white flag!"

"Praise be, to think I'd see my Chiaki wearing a captain's uniform while I was still alive." Kenjo Kurihara, captain of the pirate ship Barbarossa, couldn't hold back his joyous tears as he watched his daughter passionately play the part of a gallant, miniskirted pirate captain. "If Chiaki ever does inherit the Barbarossa, it'll be after I've passed. I'd given up on ever seeing her like this; why, she could hold a candle even to her dear mother."

"I'm sure the old woman is smiling in her grave."

"Keep those filthy eyes to yourself!" Chiaki shouted, pulling her beamgun from its thigh holster unnoticed and firing into the air at full power. "What's this embarrassment of a costume even doing on our ship in the first place?"

"I mean, a pirate ship needs a captain in order to engage in piracy, so..."

"I don't wanna hear it!" Chiaki seethed, pointing the sawed-off muzzle of her beamgun back and forth between the captain's bearded face and his attractive, long-lived first officer. "I get that you needed a doppelganger, but it wasn't enough to pass the Barbarossa off as the Bentenmaru, you really had to make me parade around in this get-up? Don't think I won't remember this, Katou Marika!"

"I owe the Bentenmaru a debt that can never be repaid."

"We're the ones doing them a favor! Make no mistake, you bearded old fool!"

"Receiving confirmation that the Gorgeous Magi has surrendered," a rabbit-eared communications officer reported, summarizing the contents of the message. “We've got the ship's control codes in our network. Should I switch the bridge camera back on?"

Chiaki glared one last time at her father, who smiled so contentedly he looked like he had scored a ticket to heaven, and returned her beamgun to its holster at her thigh.

"Do it!"

"Mark, three, two, one!"

At the unspoken count of zero, Chiaki's sweet, smiling, pirate face returned to the airwaves.

"Well, I see you've been good little children. If you stay that way and do as I say, then perhaps I can guarantee you make it to your next port unharmed. The Bentenmaru will now dock with the Gorgeous Magi; prepare whatever gold and silver valuables you have and hope they're enough to satisfy my crew!"

Chiaki offered up an ostentatious wink and puffed out her chest for the camera. The rabbit-eared communications officer turned toward the captain's chair, stopwatch in hand, arms waving as a signal to cut the camera.

"Visual transmission cut! Next transmission will come as we dock with the Gorgeous Magi."

"The camera's off, right?" Chiaki confirmed glibly, but with her expression frozen. She finally took a breath.

Next to the captain's chair Kenjo nodded approvingly at his beautiful daughter and grabbed the captain's mic. He switched channels to broadcast to the entire ship.

"Listen up you nitwits! It's been a while since we've done any marauding! We don't want the Bentenmaru making fools of us, so give it your all and show them what real pirates look like!"

Cheers rang out in answer across the Barbarossa.

Meanwhile, the Bentenmaru was far away, flying through a dark nebula.

"What space!" Headset obscuring her eyes, navigator Luca's complaints were unending. "Thick dust, choppy waves, our radar can barely see a thing even at full power! This is nary a place for a starship."

"The perfect place to hide a ghost ship filled with treasure," helmsman Kane interjected. He was following a barely stable course based on Luca's input, but there was no time for him to take his eyes off the instruments. "Hiding a ship that big should be a pain, but in space this rough you could hide a whole fleet or a mobile fortress and I doubt anyone would ever find you."

"You can't even spot an enemy in a place like this. The battle wouldn't even start until you're right on top of each other." Luca slid both fingers along the navigation panel. "If we don't find the ghost ship soon, we're going to end up a ghost ship ourselves. Three minutes two seconds ahead, angle, one degree two minutes, there's a clear spot, hurry!"

"Aye." Kane brought the Bentenmaru in line with the given heading and accelerated. Though the yoke was only connected to the hull-mounted thrusters electronically, he could still feel the denseness of the thick interstellar gases.

"This is what you consider clear?" The pocket of space was at least clear enough for radar waves to briefly propagate. Kane sped through it, preparing to angle the hull towards Luca's next course change. "I've flown a lot of places, but never through anything this bad."

"Most of it isn't even proper space to begin with." Though the Bentenmaru's radar and sensors were operating at maximum, they could only make things out at short range. Hyakume compared the rapidly changing conditions with the royal survey teams' data, increasing if only by a little their knowledge of the terrain as they continued with their hapless plan. "Constant EM storms, high gravity stars...nobody would willingly fly into a dark nebula unless they were a miner hunting for rare metals or some eccentric researcher searching for anomalies. Sure, the Golden Ghost Ship might be resting out here, but I don't care if you have nerves of steel, you'd probably give up at the planning stage rather than risk your life over it."

"Launching recon pod," Coorie announced as the pod was ejected from the missile launcher. Recon pods were unmanned observation stations, typically seeded en masse across a suspected battlefield in order to form a surveillance network. The small craft contained expensive radar and sensors as well as an energy source to power them, and reported back to their mothership using a faster-than-light uplink. They weren't cheap, but since they allowed one to see across a battlefield without having to launch reconnaissance craft, they were highly cost-effective.

The Bentenmaru could only dream of working with matching sets of recon pods: they bought up as many used, military surplus, and junked models as they could, hoarding and refurbishing them. There weren't that many jobs that called for launching large numbers of the pods, and they usually expected to recover most of them.

This time, however, hunting for the ghost ship meant spreading the pods out along a wide area. They couldn't know how useful or effective the pods would be until they released them, and there were no expectations this time that they might be recovered.

"At this rate we're going to lose our whole store of pods."

To use their radar and sensors effectively, recon pods needed to be released into as clear a space as possible. The Bentenmaru had already set loose a number of pods.

"Any necessary—" Gruier responded to the repeated complaints, and cleared her throat. "Any necessary expenses will be reimbursed through the funds of the Serenity Royal Palace."

"It's not just the price; the more pods we lose out here, the less effective our scans become." Coorie superimposed the Bentenmaru's course over top an image of the space that should have been covered by the pods they'd launched so far. According to their preliminary analysis there were only a limited number of points where the ghost ship could appear. Even so, the likely targets for its appearance were too spread out for a single ship to cover. Releasing the pods would help overcome that disadvantage, but their numbers were limited.

"I don't think you have to worry," Gruier said, forcing a smile. "The ghost ship is supposed to appear for me if I need it to."

"I get that, but if it'll increase our chances of finding it even a little, I'd like to get this network up and running."

"The cosmic winds are picking up." Luca read the conditions in front of the ship, where thick cosmic dust had started to pool, and sent new piloting data over to Kane. "Be careful, make sure we don't go off-course."

"Aye. Geez, it's like trying to fly in atmosphere out here."

"It's hard to believe they sent multiple survey teams here, royal or not." Marika, with her lack of command experience, was of little help in navigating through such adverse space. To her it was a learning experience. She was addressing Gruier, who had been hovering nervously over the edge of the observer seat ever since they'd entered this region of space.

"I've heard that the survey teams were made up of warships," Gruier answered, her eyes glued to the main screen where incomprehensible sensor data was streaming on top of an overview of their surroundings.

"It would probably be suicide to send civilian survey ships into space this rough," Schnitzer commented, diligently collecting information at the combat command station. "Though I wonder if loading a sturdy warship hull with sensors would be enough to get the desired results. A disciplined fleet, networked together, can expand your sensors' useful range, but it won't boost their effectiveness by much."

"No way you'd be able to find a ghost ship in a place like this without knowing where it's going to show up." Coorie searched for a place to release the next recon pod. "I don't care how powerful the royal family is, the chance of a single survey fleet turning up anything is way too low. I can only guess that either Serenity must have had an excess of ships at their disposal, or else they had to have known where they could meet up with the ghost ship."

"It's not like the survey fleets they did dispatch were putting up great numbers." Hyakume was amending the charts from the survey teams' reports with their own spatial data. "They occasionally went over-schedule, but none of them were that late in returning to Serenity. That's not the latitude you'd expect from a fleet command that has ships to spare."

"Maybe not an excess, but they still had the fleets to assign to it." Kane made minor adjustments to the rudder as the ship started to get swept off course. "There are so many obstacles out here that it's dangerous flying even at in-system speeds. It's impressive that the old survey teams could hunt down a single ship while moving so slowly."

"It's a surprising result considering how much slower ships were back then," Coorie said. "I doubt the ghost ship can drift through space much faster than any natural celestial object; I have to wonder what kind of sensors they used to navigate through this mess."

"Nothing special," Hyakume answered as he sorted through the data. "Standard-band radar, a combination of active and passive sensors. Not as powerful or precise as what's in use today, obviously. Not a problem in clear space, but it'd be suicide flying into as unstable a place as this."

"I've got a signal!" Coorie shouted suddenly. "A response from recon pod group one!"

"What?" The recon pods had been grouped together based on which section of space they were covering in the order in which they'd been launched. Group one was made up of the first handful of pods released. "Shouldn't they have overshot the target area by now?"

Marika shrank the size of the Bentenmaru's course on the display and looked at the current position of the first group of recon pods. They were still active and had been launched at a relatively high speed; the surrounding space wasn't particularly turbulent, and they covered a wide area.

"It doesn't look like it's the ghost ship." Coorie grabbed the data sent by the pods and started analyzing it. "It's sketchy, the data's from outside their effective range, but it's looks like other ships. Multiple vessels, warship-equivalent."

"Huh?" Marika looked puzzled. "Didn't we do a search for flight plans before we left? All the way from the Abyssal Straight to the Dark Gulf, I thought there weren't any ships that had even come close to the Phantom Passage in the last half year?"

"The Bentenmaru's following the Phantom Passage, and we didn't file a flight plan either."

Marika crossed her arms at Kane in response to the helmsman's quip.

"And now that you mention it, we've got our transponder turned off too."

"The recon pods aren't picking up any transponder signals either, of course." Coorie flashed the post-analysis data up on the monitor. "The response is fuzzy, but I'm guessing these patterns are from a small fleet, just a handful of ships."

"They must be after the same thing we are," Marika said, echoing the thoughts of everyone on the bridge. "Can we track them?"

"Not a chance," Coorie answered immediately, jumping from one recon pod's data to the next. "They're skirting the edge of our pods' range, and in space this rough it'd be impossible to track a fleet without knowing where they're heading. But, if there were a way…" Coorie's hands suddenly froze.

"If there were a way...?" Marika repeated, waiting for Coorie to continue.

"If they are following us, then they'll keep tripping our recon pods one by one." It was unlikely that two ships in the expanse of space would follow the exact same course. "Assuming they're after the same thing we are," Coorie said, her hands resuming their original rapid movement, "then we should run into them eventually, whether we want to or not."

When two ships head for the same destination, they'll still meet up at that destination in the end, regardless of how much slower the second ship might be.

"So what you're saying," Marika said, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible, "is that the fleet that's following us is after the ghost ship, same as we are?"

The bridge fell into in a disquieting silence.

Gruier was the one to break through the sounds of the electronics and the faint breeze of the recirculators. "We should get moving. If we do run into someone, then maybe it's because that too is necessary."

"If possible, I'd like to avoid any unnecessary firefights." Marika quickly eased the tension on the bridge. She followed up with another question. "Do you think the fleet that's following us knows where we are?"

"If you're wondering if they've noticed our recon pods, then I don't think we need to worry," Coorie answered as she continued her analysis. "The sensors are operating in passive mode, and they've got stealth mode activated. We'll only be able to extract limited information from them, but I can't imagine they've noticed the pods."

"Good."

"But if you're asking if they know the Bentenmaru is here, I think it's entirely possible," Coorie said, her tone unchanged. "Even with the Barbarossa off pretending to be us, it's a well known fact that Serenity's princess was running around on the Bentenmaru, and we're definitely at the top of their potential enemies list."

"I see." Marika pondered. "That makes sense. If they've assembled an entire fleet, then we should assume they've come prepared. Which also means—"

"That they've already come up with multiple attack patterns," Schnitzer offered from the combat command station. "We can't know if our usual anti-fleet tactics will work in space this rough until we try, but we should be able to find an acceptable solution short of completely wiping them out."

"An acceptable solution?" Marika urged, noting the look of concern on Gruier's face. "What would that entail?"

"Withdrawing." Schnitzer glanced back at the captain's chair and smiled. "Our goal is to secure the ghost ship, not to wipe out the enemy. It's not like we're under any obligation to play along with them, are we?"

"It'd be nice if they felt the same way. Fine. Our flight path has the highest chance of locating the ghost ship, we're not going to change it now, but Coorie, if you could put those recon pods to use, I'd appreciate it."

"Aye-aye. They may be aware that we've got the jump on them, but the recon pods won't give themselves away in passive mode." Coorie's hands stopped. Marika knew it was a stubborn tic of hers whenever she realized something.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"Supposing that they came to the Phantom Passage to search for the ghost ship by the same methods we did, then they would be pretty liberal in dropping recon pods to help improve their odds in searching, right?"

"I assume that's how a normal search team would operate. Your point?" Hyakume lifted his head from across the bridge to look at Coorie.

"Well, if we can slip into their recon pods' network and siphon off their data, won't that make our search that much more fruitful?"

"You want to hack into an FTL network? And in the middle of space as rough as this?"

"Things are only bad in three-dimensional space. The network runs through hyperspace, it won't be influenced by real world conditions. As long as we can get their settings right, we should be able to tap into their data."

"I guess, if you wanna give it a shot." Hyakume quickly acquiesced.

"Is it even possible to hack into a hyperspace network?" Marika asked tentatively—she couldn't grasp what they were talking about.

"Well, not normally," Hyakume answered for Coorie by proxy—her hands were already flying. "In normal space you only need to be able to match things like the EM scan frequency and crypto key, but there are so many more parameters in hyperspace that picking out a specific network would be like taking a single pull on each slot machine in a casino and hitting the jackpot on every one."

"That would be pretty much impossible."

"Coorie doesn't think so. If we're lucky, the hyperspace network settings of their pod network won't be that much different from ours. Normal space may be harsh, but the data flow through hyperspace is that much smoother, so she'll be able to narrow down the settings on their network."

"That's cheating," Marika blurted out. Hyakume laughed and continued explaining.

"It sure is. If you cheat, you can hit jackpots or draw royal flushes all you want. Or, we could just throw all this ship's extra resources into trying to crack their settings; if we're lucky we might just have a clue by the time we're done with this job!"

"Cheat, lie, whatever, I'm down with any advantage we can get, no matter how small." Marika watched Coorie from behind as she toiled away at the cyberwarfare station. "We don't have a lot of options to choose from this time."

The captain's chair communications display flashed Marika's name, indicating a personal call. She reached out for the shipboard intercom.

"This is Marika on the bridge."

"It's Misa in sick bay." Misa appeared on the display. "You've put in a lot of hours today. Give it a rest, bring the Princess down to the mess with you for dinner."

There were no age restrictions on being a captain. However, as the Bentenmaru found itself in the exceptional position of having a captain who was also a minor, they paid careful attention not to run afoul of Umi-no-ake's civilian labor laws.

In practice this meant coming up with schedules that didn't force Marika to work for more than eight hours while remaining on board the ship; even if a battle were to suddenly break out, they'd hurry to finish it before her time was up.

Thanks to Marika's insistence on staying in school while she worked as a pirate, and the crew's willingness to help make that happen, it hadn't become a problem. The biggest effect on the Bentenmaru was not being able to undertake long jobs far from Umi-no-ake while school was in session.

This was the first truly extended operation that the Bentenmaru had undertaken under Captain Katou Marika.

Searching for a ghost ship that might or might not exist in a choppy, impassable region of space would press the crew into working overtime. But short of emergencies, Marika and their client, Gruier, were still forced off the bridge once their eight hours were up.

The next morning Marika was awoken at the usual time, quickly finished a hearty and unreserved breakfast in the mess, and rushed to the bridge together with Gruier.

She had only been gone the night, but the smell in the bridge had definitely changed.

"What is that? The mess hall?"

The crew had a motto—health is our number one priority—and the air in the bridge always smelled like a crisp forest breeze. But one foot inside and Marika sniffed at the air, noticing that it was cut with a curious scent.

"Sorry." It was morning, outside of normal operating hours, and many of the bridge stations were conspicuously empty, but there as always was Coorie, the blanket spread out on her lap lined with snacks and a full breakfast tray. She didn't look up. "In situations like this we need to prepare ourselves for a protracted battle."

"A protracted battle?"

"Ah, this is the Captain's first time, isn't it? When it looks like we may not be able to leave our stations for a long time, the crew start swapping shifts for rest so we can keep working at our posts for as long as possible."

"Aha, I thought the mess looked empty for breakfast time, so that's why. But then don't you need me here too?"

"The Bentenmaru isn't in such dire straits that we're going to force our underage captain to work through the night," Coorie said flatly, both hands working. "If it does come to that, then we'll to put you to work. But until then, just keep yourself well rested so you can make the decisions that matter."

"I can't just sit back and have fun while everyone else is pushing themselves."

"The only people who are worn out right now are all part of the analysis group. We may be a little overworked but we're getting sleep in shifts, you don't need to worry. It's a captain's job to stay in shape so she can make proper decisions, it's okay for you take it easy."

Marika had numerous objections, but she knew she couldn't out-logic Coorie. She took her seat in the captain's chair.

"Don't go overboard."

"I'll be fine, our doctor's very strict about that sort of thing." Coorie continued working with one hand while clutching a hot dog with the other. "Worst case scenario, she'll give me a shot and force me to rest."

"Huh. I guess they don't call her the 'bloodstained doctor' for nothing."

There was no sign of Misa on the bridge that morning. The captain's chair control panel had been left on; she pressed her fingers against it, meaning to check the flight logs from the time she had been absent.

"At any rate, we picked up a strange ping from the hyperspace net sometime after midnight."

"Oh?" Marika perked up at Coorie's news, talking past the hot dog stuffed in her cheeks. She washed it down with a swig from a mug of black coffee and continued her report.

"I'll start at the end. The seventeenth survey team released several unmanned observation craft; not all of them are still active, but a number of them are, and apparently they've got an observation network spread across this region of space."

At first Marika wasn't able to make sense of Coorie's report. She looked at Gruier, who was still standing next to the observer seat, when finally the significance struck her.

"Wait, what!? You mean the recon pods dropped by the last royal survey team however many decades ago are still alive? They still work!?"

"They're probably not just from the last survey. They try to keep the moving parts on these recon drones to a minimum; with a fancy enough battery they might keep going for centuries on their own. They could have squeezed even more life out of them by placing them carefully to avoid getting hit by asteroids or struck by solar flares that could take them offline."

"So basically, the survey teams set up a network of observation stations where the ghost ship is likely to appear, and we have total access to it?"

"Right."

"That's fantastic! Why didn't you wake me up?"

"Because whether you're here or not, it doesn't change our chances of success," Coorie said simply. Marika slumped over in the captain's chair. "Now our job is to figure out the settings on the network and find a way to use it. Schnitzer and Hyakume really burnt themselves out on it, but it looks like it's gonna work."

"So that's why they're missing." Marika glanced at Hyakume's and Schnitzer's empty stations.

"You didn't need any authentication to use the network?" Gruier asked nervously. She too had spent the night uninterrupted.

"There was," Coorie answered quickly. "But thankfully it wasn't complicated—no live royalty required—so we broke it on our own."

"It was that easy to crack?"

"It took us some time. The network doesn't even exist in this universe, so it was a chore just breaking into it in the middle of such choppy space; then we had to unravel the verification codes. But after that we managed to get through the Serenity fleet codes, and the authentication data from the royal family."

"Huh?" Marika looked to Gruier, brimming with suspicion. Coorie continued her explanation, her face fixed on the control panel.

"The seventeenth survey was launched fifteen years ago. The Princess hadn't been born yet, right?"

"I'll be turning thirteen this year," Gruier answered, nervousness in her voice. "I haven't lied about my age...assuming that I was told my proper age and birthday in the first place."

"I'm not doubting the Princess's age. I only wanted to confirm that you didn't exist in this world when the last survey was launched." Coorie set the breakfast tray aside and began running both hands across the control panel. "Besides the complicated settings and connection procedures, accessing the network of observational buoys the last survey team left behind required Serenity fleet authorization as well as verification from a member of the royal family. The fleet authorization we managed to find a way around, somehow."

"Somehow...?" Gruier sighed, her expression pitiful. Coorie continued.

"The issue was the royal family's verification. Starting with a full name."

"Why didn't you wake me up?"

"We were going to, if we had to. But we already had the necessary data from when we copied it while unlocking the survey teams' reports, and anyway you hadn't been born at the time of the last survey, they shouldn't have had records of your biometric patterns in the first place."

Gruier looked at Marika, worried, and then returned her gaze to Coorie's back. Marika realized what it was that Coorie was trying to say.

"You mean Gruier's verification patterns worked?"

"That's right."

Coorie's hands stopped moving across the control panel. She grabbed the blanket on her lap, covered with snacks and bottled drinks, and slid back her seat, rotating it automatically to face Gruier, who stood in front of the captain's chair.

"The royal survey team's observation network confirmed the Princess's biometric data without a hitch. I couldn't believe it. Maybe there are laws restricting certain names and genetic patterns to the royal family, but I never imagined that it would accept someone who was born after the last survey. Is Serenity's royal family really that special?"

Gruier flinched slightly, but smiled back at Coorie, who stared at her through her thick, glass-bottle spectacles.

"Yes. If we weren't, we wouldn't have been able exert our political influence across seven planets, or use our diplomatic strength to maintain Serenity's sovereignty. Serenity's royal family is expected to fulfill its obligations."

"Captain," Coorie said, her stare still focused on Gruier. "Previously, I rejected one of your ideas as unscientific."

"Uh, which one was that?"

"When you asked whether the ghost ship might appear on its own once it realized we had the Princess on board. That idea."

"Oh, right." Being refuted and corrected was an everyday occurrence for Marika. "Uh, it's not like I let it get to me or anything."

"After observing the watcher station network—one that supposedly predates the Princess—as it accepted piece after piece of her biometric data, I've changed my mind. Unfortunately for us, we don't have any detailed data on what happened to this former interstellar ferry after it became the Golden Ghost Ship: what kind of traps were left behind, what kind of maintenance the royal survey teams performed on it, whether they updated its systems. But after seeing the watcher network accept her authentication, I was forced to reconsider the possibility."

"In other words..." Marika thought for a moment. "We might have an easier time making contact with the ghost ship than we originally thought?"

"Better than a shot in the dark, I think. But there are two problems."

"Which are?"

"We aren't the only ones who know about the existence of the survey teams' watcher network."

Marika and Gruier quickly exchanged looks.

"The Bentenmaru stumbled across the network pretty much by pure luck. We don't know if our hypothetical competition is taking orders from someone in Serenity, or even if they're from Serenity itself. But since we're always assuming the worst, we should act as if they have access to all of the same data we do."

"That's an eye-opener." Marika pondered. "If they can use the watcher network...does that mean they know where we are?"

"I don't think we need to worry about that. As long as we're careful not to show ourselves too close to one of the watcher stations, the possibility of finding a ship like the Bentenmaru in a region this hectic is probably pretty low."

"But since we're working from the same observational data, we should assume that their chances of finding the ghost ship are about the same as ours?"

"We should assume they have more manpower to throw towards analyzing the data. We're a single ship, they have a whole fleet, and we don't know its composition. We don't have any recent intelligence regarding anyone in Serenity putting together a search fleet, so their staff may be ad hoc, but there's no way for us to prove they don't have specialists on board."

"So we need to assume that they could catch up to us at any moment, regardless of our head start or how much we hurry." Marika looked around the bridge, the stations noticeably vacant save for Coorie, the navigator Luca, and the engineer Sandaime.

"True, but we also have another problem." Coorie moved her gaze from Gruier to Marika in the captain's chair. "If we assume that the enemy has the capability to access the same network as us..."

"Then they must have the same verification patterns," Marika finished, and looked suddenly to Gruier.

If encountering the ghost ship required having a member of Serenity's royal family on board, then there was a high likelihood that one of Gruier's relatives was traveling with the enemy fleet.

Gruier turned away and quietly shook her head.

"Unfortunately, I have no way of confirming whether or not that's the case. But I don't want to believe that any member of my family would be complicit in such a thing."

"They wouldn't need a real person, maybe they cracked the authentication just using biometric data," Marika said, her voice forcibly buoyant. "We don't even know who we're dealing with yet, we don't need to start assuming the worst. Worrying now won't get us anywhere, maybe we should just think about it once it becomes an issue."

"I wonder if you get that penchant for putting off problems from your father?"

Marika turned to the cyberwarfare console in answer to Coorie's quip. "You think so?"

"Captain Gonzaemon always had this way of dealing with things as they came. I figured it was something he was born with, I'm happy to see that you inherited it from him." Coorie saluted with just her fingers and spun her seat back around to face the console.

"So, uh, if the enemy is tapped into the same network as we are, can't we disrupt them or interfere with them somehow?"

Coorie let her seat continue to spin another three quarters of a turn to face the captain's chair once again.

"You mean mess with them from here?"

"I don't know how you'd do it, exactly, but can't we make it so that only we get the accurate information, and we can feed them distorted info? Can we tell from here whether or not someone other than the Bentenmaru is connected to the network?"

"It could be possible, if we can pull up the access logs. If they're going to go through the trouble to put authentication locks on it, they probably keep logs too."

"If they haven't connected to the watcher network yet, could we throw something together so it'll feed them false data? That way only we'd have the real data, and I bet we'd reach the ghost ship first."

"We're dealing with a network that, at best, is using fifteen year old protocols." Coorie spun her chair back around to face the cyberwarfare console. "I don't know if the Bentenmaru's equipment, or our crew, will be of much use. But if it did work it would be an overwhelming advantage, so I guess it's worth a shot. At worst, the network decides we're trying to break in and kicks us out, but I'll do what I can."

"Sorry, it looks like I'm making even more work for you."

"Let's just hope it's not all for nothing. There's a lot of data to analyze, I can't say when we'll have the results."

"What do you mean, a lot of data?"

"Each watcher station was filled with the past twenty years worth of data." Coorie forwarded a list of the data they had received to the displays at the captain's chair and Gruier's observer seat. Marika groaned when she saw the massive datastores: years' worth, from hundreds of observational buoys.

"There's this much?"

"The area they cover is small, so it won't be much help in navigating, but there's a wealth of data on astronomical phenomena. Even so, without a specialized computer it'll be hard to pick out anything in this much data that will actually be of use to us; it took us until this morning to even put together a protocol that could sort through it."

"Is that what knocked out Hyakume and Schnitzer?" Marika now understood why two of the Bentenmaru's toughest, top-tier crew were missing. As far as she knew, Hyakume and Schnitzer were almost never not on the bridge. "So how long will it take to get results?"

"Can't really say,” Coorie answered and shrugged her shoulders. "We don't know what's normal and what isn't for this region of space. Even after putting the data in a form we can read, who knows how long it'll take before Luca and Kane can actually use it to understand what's going on."

"Would it be okay if I took a look at the watcher data?" Gruier's fingers reached for the data on the observer seat's display.

"Knock yourself out." Coorie routed the data analysis's output to the observer seat. "Do you know how to handle it?"

"It's the first time I've worked with data of this type, but I'll learn."

"Captain, why don't you show her?"

"I'm just a beginner too, though!"

"I'm sure you still know more than the Princess. The conceptual model is as basic as we could make it, maybe you'll be able to help us get a better understanding of this region of space."

The space was rough, but all the Bentenmaru could do was stick to its original plan, continuing to monitor the area along its course. By the afternoon the bridge had gradually filled with rejuvenated crew members, while Marika lectured the princess on how to read spatial forecasts and analyze scan data, and bit by bit the analyzed data grew more detailed.

Gruier, working together with Marika, had shown a level of understanding of the analysis system that would occasionally astonish Coorie and Luca as they lent their expertise.

"Wow, who'd have guessed she'd be such a quick study?" Marika grumbled to Misa, returning from lunch after having been shuffled off to the ship's mess. Gruier was supposed to have been a complete beginner when she entered the bridge that morning, but she was already discussing the analyzed data output with the likes of Coorie and Luca.

"She's exceptional." Standing next to the captain's chair, Misa narrowed her eyes at Gruier, who sat in the observer seat, her back to them. "Makes you wonder if she's chipped."

"Huh?"

"It's rare, but I've met people who make me think that god just wasn't playing fair."

"People like that seem to pop up a lot at our school."

"You can see results like this from chemical boosters, or assist chips in the brain."

"Huh?" Marika asked again, not catching Misa's intent.

"I haven't done a close examination or anything, though I doubt the Princess has a chip in her brain, and the Bentenmaru's sensors didn't sniff out any kind of drugs. If she hasn't had any sort of special conditioning, then the Serenity royal family really must be exceptional humans."

"It really is a case of being born different." Marika sighed and propped her elbows up on the captain's chair armrests.

"It's not just that. Take a look. I'm not saying you're lacking, but the Princess's focus is on another level entirely."

"You could almost say she's from a different species." Marika watched Gruier; ever since she'd returned from lunch Gruier had been there with a headset on, engrossed in analyzing the observational data.

"She's just a kid; Serenity's schooling must be amazing."

"Or maybe it's just blood—"

Just then an unfamiliar tone sounded from several places throughout the bridge.

"Huh? What's that noise?"

"An alert! There's info coming in from the network!" Gruier answered from the observer seat. "Watcher buoy 17-78 has picked up a large spatial anomaly! This might be it..."

"A large object has appeared in normal space," Coorie said, taking over. “It's not surprising that something would happen in a place like this, but it's definitely weird seeing an unexpected chronoquake in a place without any nearby sources of gravity. Should we go check it out?"

"Is it possible that another ship would touchdown in that area?" A faster-than-light starship reemerging into normal space would have been the most common explanation for an observational buoy picking up a chronoquake. Navigator Luca answered Marika's question with a shake of her head.

"Even an entire fleet wouldn't cause a quake this large. Had we been careless enough to be caught next to it, I can only imagine it would have sent us flying."

"What about if it were caused by something large, like space-city sized?" Marika's words expressed what everyone on the bridge had likely been thinking. This time it was Coorie who shook her head.

"It's too big even for that. The quake is powerful enough to affect the next buoy; it might not be natural, but it's too inefficient to be used for a jump. But maybe, it is large enough that something the size of a space-city could have been caught up in it."

"Could this be the ghost ship showing itself?" Marika's eyes ran across the information on the display, and she made her decision. "Let's go. The quake is...six light years away? Can we make a precision jump in a place like this?"

"Sure, just realize that we might be a little off," Kane said, exchanging data from the helm with Sandaime at engineering. "That data's from a watcher station that's been been running for who knows how many years without being calibrated, for safety's sake we can't jump right next to the chronoquake."

"Do it. But since these are hardly normal conditions, make safety your priority."

"I'm sure you realize this," Coorie reported casually, "but we still haven't made any alterations to the watcher network. If our pursuers saw that data and came to the same conclusion we did, we might run into them at our destination."

"Fine, make preparations for battle as well," Marika said calmly. "Is there anything else we need to do?"

Marika waited a moment, but no further suggestions came from anyone on the bridge.

"Prepare for FTL jump, all hands to battle stations. Once everything's ready, let's go see if our ghost ship's made its entrance."

Chapter 6: The Ghost Ship in the Storm

The bridge filled with alerts the moment they reemerged into normal space.

"I know we predicted as much, but things are even worse off here." As soon as they touched down the hull was struck by a massive wave that sent it lurching; Kane made slight adjustments using the rudder and the maneuvering verniers, steadying the ship while he quickly canceled the warnings going off around the helm. "These gravity fluctuations are maddening, the inertial dampeners are overwhelmed and can't correct for them fast enough. We're lucky we touched down safely."

"Can't be that safe with all these alarms going off!" Sandaime shouted; he was both the ship's engineer and in charge of damage control during combat. "I'm getting reports of fusion explosions across the surface of the hull: small ones, but still! If any of them penetrate, we're toast!"

"Sending a missile to detonate at the coordinates just before touchdown wasn't enough to clear away any space debris?"

Schnitzer was busy collecting the necessary data from the combat control panel, surrounded by warnings. "Apparently the missile's and the Bentenmaru's touchdown points didn't match. Don't worry, now that we've got enough data on the idiosyncrasies of this region of space, our next jump will be better."

"Our next touchdown point is going to be completely different!" Sandaime's voice grew louder. "Since the Bentenmaru appeared outside the pathfinder's blast zone, those fusion explosions are knocking us even further off course!"

"Losing your cool over it won't make it any less dangerous!" Schnitzer said halfheartedly, quickly shutting off the combat alerts. "We've got a client on board, stop making a scene."

"You're right, sorry for the fuss."

Warnings of irregularities flashed on the displays around the captain's chair, Marika dealing in order with what ones she could. Gruier's back was to her, but it was obvious she had tensed up.

"This ship's old, it likes to complain whenever we go a little overboard. Don't worry, it's built solid, we'll be through this in no time."

"I...I trust you," Gruier answered, continuing to stare straight ahead as the warnings on the bridge finally started to subside. Marika felt like she could see the girl's strained smile. "This is the Bentenmaru, famed pirate ship, after all."

"Can't imagine what we did to earn the Princess's trust," Marika said with a smile. "So what about the signal we came here to find?"

"Gimme a second." Hyakume's hands were doing acrobatics, stretching for every control panel that he could reach in an effort to, among other things, cancel the alarms. "We're still feeling the effects of the blast from the pathfinder's antimatter warhead. Wait until the ripples dissipate."

The coordinates given by the observational buoy were deep inside a dark cloud. The maelstrom of stardust and dark matter was a decidedly unsuitable point to reemerge from a hyperspace jump. At worst, a ship returning to normal space could overlap with large pieces of matter occupying the same space, resulting in energy released in the form of fusion explosions.

When making a jump into a dark cloud it was standard procedure to locate a stable area suitable for faster-than-light transit. But at the urging of Coorie and Hyakume—neither of whom were pleased with the detour that choosing a stable spot would have required—Schnitzer had launched an antimatter missile ahead of the Bentenmaru at their predicted reemergence point, the explosion meant to clear out the area just before they touched down. A fancy little trick.

The simulations had shown a high likelihood of success, and the Bentenmaru proceeded to jump head-on into the dark cloud.

"This place is a mess. Even the low-res, long wave radar can't get through it. Forget pretending to fight in a place like this, how would you even be able to fire?"

"It's bad, that's for sure." Marika had seen simulators recreate all sorts of situations, but never something like this heavy dark cloud swirling with electromagnetic storms. "I doubt even pre-star nebulas are this bad."

"It's certainly tempestuous," Misa said. She had shown up on the bridge before the jump. "Some aging star collapsed in on itself and exploded, and now we get to deal with the aftermath. Who knows, maybe after however many years it'll come together as a new star?"

"Sure, millions of years in the future; I think we can put that discussion aside for now."

"So what about the ghost ship? Or any other ships?"

"Searching." The sensors were recalibrated for the rough region in front of them, and information began to pour onto the bridge. Hyakume picked up several easily discernible patterns in the data and compared them to the information from the observational buoys. "We're picking up periodic chronoquakes?"

"But I was under the impression there weren't any high-gravity binaries or star clusters around here that would cause that?" Luca said, peering into the surrounding space through the heads-up display covering both her eyes. When high-gravity neutron stars or black holes formed complex multiple-star systems, they were rife with periodic gravitational fluctuations. "If that's the case, then the gravitational ripples we're seeing must not be located in this space; they're interference from an extra-dimensional epicenter."

The poor conditions were limiting the range of the ship's sensors, but based on what little reliable data they had, the Bentenmaru's instruments were picking up an unprecedented phenomenon from outside normal space.

"I can feel the ship's hull vibrating." Kane's hands stuck fast to the yoke.

"Extra-dimensional? Where?"

"That's the question, isn't it? Subspace, maybe, or somewhere else? As sailors, the next dimension we're most familiar with is FTL hyperspace, but this..."

"Is it a pre-drive signature?" Marika asked, bringing her meager knowledge to bear. She knew of no other circumstances that would cause the phenomenon known as a chronoquake in normal space.

"Usually I'd think so, but it's way too large in scope and lasting too long. We had to analyze the data from the watcher station before we jumped here, but the chronoquake is still ongoing; if something were to appear from it, it would have to be massive."

"Like a city-sized generation ship." Marika had intended only to whisper, but her words unintentionally carried across the bridge.

"But the ghost ship doesn't have FTL engines. I don't care how big the hull is, a chronoquake like this wouldn't be caused by a sublight ship."

"So what, it's some sort of natural phenomenon?"

"Can't say," Hyakume answered curtly. "It's rare for chronoquakes to occur naturally. I'm no expert, I don't understand all the details, but chronoquakes are supposed to be more precise, occurring in a small area. The epicenter for this one is too spread out."

"It's starting to subside," Coorie reported, manipulating every control panel she could reach. "The epicenter is still moving, but the quake itself is weakening."

"Can we follow it?" Marika asked. "If this is a clue to the ghost ship, shouldn't we chase after the epicenter?"

“The watcher buoy data and our sensors have a general idea of its movement, but the patterns are more like a shadow from hyperspace, I don't think we'd be able to follow it in normal space."

"Huh." Marika stared at the chronoquake data on the captain's chair display; it had clearly grown smaller since they'd touched down. "So we made that wild jump all for nothing?"

"Not quite." Hyakume was busy switching over the recorders. "Our sensors were able to get a direct look at the chronoquake, even if it was already in progress. If we can compare it to the watcher stations' database we might be quicker in running down the next one."

"Can a ship even last for very long in the middle of all this mess?" Gruier watched their unstable surroundings with concern, going back and forth between the inadequate observer seat's display and the holographic rendering above it. "I doubt even the newest ships could hold together out here, wouldn't the ghost ship be ripped apart rather quickly if you tried to hide it somewhere like this?"

"It does appear to be quite unfriendly space for a ship." As long as starships were operated in a vacuum, they tended to incur little damage. A modern starship could live a long life, assuming it wasn't involved in any battles or accidents. "But it's not like in atmosphere where you experience weathering or rust, and it's a pre-FTL generation ship, it was built to fly anywhere. I think it'll be fine."

"But you wouldn't set some ancient ship adrift just anywhere. The palace went through all the trouble to send regular surveys after it, and maybe even kept its registration up to date."

More warnings blared from Hyakume's and Coorie's consoles. Marika acknowledged them, somewhat frustrated. "What is it this time?"

"A new energy signature."

"Radar signature."

Marika felt the tension on the bridge spike as Hyakume and Coorie made their reports. She leapt unexpectedly from the captain's chair a moment later, once she understood what they meant.

"All hands to battle stations! Have they spotted us?"

"Probably not yet, they're too far off," Coorie answered as she fine-tuned the electronic sensors. "We picked up regular navigational radar, not anti-ship fire control. If we're careful with our movements, I think we can fool their sensors."

"Who are we dealing with? Can we make them out?"

"Not a chance! They're too far away, their transmissions are too faint."

"It looks like two separate energy signatures," Hyakume relayed. "We only picked them up because our sensors are tweaked for maximum sensitivity; we're in scanning mode, our own energy emissions are suppressed, so they shouldn't have noticed us yet. But we won't be able to hold them off for long if they decide to start searching."

"I guess it's too much to hope that it's someone other than the last ships we saw, just jumping in here by chance." Marika pondered. "If they are from the same fleet as before, then they must have come here after seeing the same watcher network data that we did."

"But there's no way they made the same reckless jump into the chronoquake that we did. Based on number and direction, I'm guessing they made their way into the dark cloud through a more stable region. At those high speeds the radar is probably just for show."

"So we're dealing with two ships? And they haven't noticed us yet?" Marika verified the current situation. "Coorie, is there any way we can let them slip by us? Use jamming or something?"

"I think that as long as they don't assume that we're here and start looking for us, they'll just pass us by."

"If they're using the same data from the watcher network as we are, what are the chances they won't notice us?"

"The stations' accuracy isn't much to write home about. Just like you can't use weather satellites as recon satellites, they're here to search for something massive, they shouldn't be able to track a lone cruiser."

"So we'd be on the same footing in a fight...except that they brought an entire fleet with them."

"What's the call? Either way, we're not in range for a fight."

"Let them pass," Marika ordered. "We're after the same thing, we'll need to confront them sooner or later, but let's try to avoid any unnecessary shooting. We don't want to push them into action, no matter how much damage we can inflict by getting the jump on them."

The bridge filled with the blare of the same warnings as before.

"What now?"

"A new radar signature," Coorie answered. "It's close this time. I think it'll be tough letting one this close slip by."

"Run!" Marika ordered immediately. "We're not here for a fight, get as much info as we can and book it!"

"Crossfeed! They've pinned us!"

"Crossfeed!?" Marika blurted out. Coorie entered into a quick explanation.

"It's when you do a radar search of an area from both sides. It doesn't just extend the scale of your radar, it also offers a three-dimensional response, giving you more range and definition."

"Can we throw them off? Jamming, decoys, anything?"

"We just launched a missile with a decoy transponder and a faked radar signature," Schnitzer responded as he worked. "It's set to cycle its course randomly, but if they're shrewd enough to be using crossfeed I don't know if they'll buy it."

"A third radar signature," Coorie reported as a new alarm sounded. "I'm thinking the fleet reemerged into normal space spread out so they could monitor the chronoquake from different angles. They know how to exploit their numbers, they're gonna be dangerous."

"We can't escape without being noticed?"

"It's all down to luck. All we can do is go into passive mode and wait for them to pass us by."

"Which of the ships are closest?" Although the chronoquake had subsided, its aftershocks had spread throughout the entire dark cloud, disrupting sensors; the whole region was still unstable. Marika looked worryingly to the captain's chair display for the data.

"The second signature." Coorie snagged the requested info and shunted it off to Marika. "Destroyers, probably two of them. Negative relative velocity, but they're accelerating in our direction."

"Two ships approaching from low and behind…" They would soon be within firing range, but the conditions were bad enough that they couldn't measure the distance accurately enough to aim.

"Fine, forget about running." Marika sank back into the captain's chair and screwed up a modicum of courage. "We're gonna go say hi to the two closest ships before we disengage. Let's charge past them and spray them with beams, missiles, whatever. Try to damage their sensors."

"All hands, prepare for a moving engagement." Schnitzer succinctly relayed the captain's orders to his staff.

"If we drop a decoy where we are now, I think we'll be able to fool them for a second." Coorie was already busy initiating standard electronic warfare procedures. "But no matter how we do it, the hit-and-run will give us away."

"We're all heading for the same place, they'd have found us out sooner or later."

As Marika was a novice in battle, there was no need for her to hand down detailed combat orders. All she had to do was make their goals clear: where to go, what objectives to achieve. "Besides, if we close with them, we'll be able to get a look at who they are. Then we can think about where to go from there."

"They've gone after Sandaime's first decoy," Coorie reported. "They're taking up an offensive posture. Whoa, their radar's at max. Damn, they're lighting things up so much they'll be able to see everything, no matter how dark it is out there.”

"It looks like they've surrounded the chronoquake in three sets of two ships each." Marika watched the unidentified ships on the holographic display showing their surroundings. When a fleet had the ships to spare, it was a standard tactic to operate the ships in pairs in order to spread out their firepower. As she watched their positioning, Marika realized what the fleet was up to. "They split their fleet into three so they could do a 3-D search of the area. They're pretty clever."

"Good, keep that point in mind. We're going to change direction, drop a decoy, and head after the targets. Reversing course for our hit-and-run." Kane laid out his explanation of the expected sequence of battle. "Should we open fire on them? Or wait until they shoot first?"

"I don't care if they fire at us or not." Several of the bridge crew smiled as they listened to Marika's strained voice. "I'm more concerned with whether our beams will hit them or not. We only get one shot at this, and there's no guaranteeing our accuracy in this mess. Set the firing mode for as wide a dispersal as possible; we don't want to sink them, just damage them or blind them, make it so they have to take time for repairs instead of chase after us. Can we do that?"

"So a single volley, full charge, point blank range." Schnitzer forwarded the firing order to the main turrets. "A beam at max focus can penetrate the armor on even a battleship, but the effective range and damage are reduced. Full charge on scatter mode should be enough to burn out any soft targets on the hull, like antennas and sensors, even if our aim is off."

"The second pair of ships has us marked!" Coorie caught the second squadron switching their radar from wide scan mode to tight and accurate. "They have to know we're here. Initiating jamming countermeasures, though I don't know how far they'll get us."

With its position made, the Bentenmaru would have become a target even if it had just sat there quietly.

"Second decoy is ready for launch," Schnitzer announced. "We can release it whenever."

All eyes on the bridge converged on Marika. She couldn't help but smile as she nodded.

"Bentenmaru, move out."

Meanwhile, the two light ships that made up the squadron were putting distance between one another as they approached the Bentenmaru. The formation allowed them to project their radar from multiple directions for increased accuracy and to catch their target with a crisscrossed pattern of fire.

The Bentenmaru reversed course, angling its bow toward the two-ship squadron, and released a decoy programmed to broadcast a copy of its own signature, hurtling on the same course along which the ship had just been fleeing.

The intent was to look to the pursuers like a ship giving off powerful energy readings as it sped away from the dark cloud.

In order to avoid being detected by the infrared signature from its propellant, the Bentenmaru set a course in the exact opposite direction of the decoy and began to accelerate.

The intensity of the enemy radar increased as their distance decreased. Still in passive cyberwarfare mode, the Bentenmaru tried to circumvent active detection by inserting noise and inverted-phase waves into the radar waves that it reflected back. But between calculation errors and the unstable conditions, the danger of being noticed increased the closer they came.

"Detection distance must be a tenth of what it is compared to normal." Thanks to the thick dark cloud, radar and sensors functioned at only a fraction of what they normally would have. Kane watched the readout from the console with his hands on the yoke, adjusting their course to remain equidistant from the two ships. "Any kind of engagement would instantly become a melee."

"If that happens, we'll flood them with enough interference to overwhelm them." Coorie was manually maintaining the inverted-phase transmissions; the automated adjustments couldn't keep up.

"You can ease up on the acceleration, we should have enough energy for a running battle. Concentrate on trying to avoid their beams."

"Roger that. They're in for a huge, short-range blast, make sure you get them right in the eyes."

"Do we have any idea who they are yet?" Marika asked, unable to resist the pressure of the approaching enemy fleet. "Aren't we close enough that we should be able to get a good look at them?"

"They're using off-the-shelf anti-ship radar, probably some cheap Electro Galactica suite," Coorie said, dropping the name of a major multipurpose starship electronics manufacturer, a guess based on the characteristics of their radar waves. "Both ships appear to be from the same manufacturer, and maybe the same class. They're on the offensive, so there's still no way for us to identify them with only passive sensor data."

"I just want to see what type of ships they are, then we can bust out of here." Marika watched the two approaching ships on the display; normally they would have already been close enough to have exchanged fire. Since the ships were running without transponders, no classification or affiliation was listed. "I guess there's no way to get a look at them without hitting them first."

"They've got us!" Coorie shouted. "Enemy radar suddenly narrowed in! They've made the decoy, now they're focusing their scans on us!"

"Jam them! Just make sure they can't get a straight shot at us, anything else is icing on the cake!"

"Already started. Blocking their comms and data transmissions, we're letting them know we're here."

"Understood," Marika confirmed, sinking into the captain's chair. "Just do your best."

"Leave it to us. Engine output at max, splitting them down the middle!" Kane whooped, sending the Bentenmaru into a gentle roll to bring the two triple-turrets on the upper deck in line.

"You just have to make a show of punching through those overlapping firing arcs, don't you?" the engineer Sandaime muttered as he disabled the limiters suppressing the Bentenmaru's energy emissions.

With its power plant's output now at maximum, the Bentenmaru began to rapidly push through the dark cloud on jets of plasma. The two light ships made minor adjustments to their facings while they continued spreading apart, their target changed from the decoy to the Bentenmaru, angling their bows to project as small a surface as possible toward the pirate ship.

"Wonder if they're going to fire."

Coorie matched the two ships' frequencies and began bombarding them with interference. "If they do, maybe we can narrow things down a bit from their weapons. I can't learn a thing just from their run-of-the-mill ECM..."

"They're not firing at us?" Kane looked perturbed as he reined in the Bentenmaru, barreling towards them while utilizing a basic evasive flight pattern.

"Who knows if they'll even hit? Their accuracy should be taking a pretty big hit in these conditions."

"What if they aren't interested in fighting?" Gruier seemed to implore, but Coorie casually dismissed her concern a moment later.

"If that were true, they wouldn't be painting us with their fire control radar." She flashed a simple diagram on the display showing the two ships' radar arcs bearing down on the Bentenmaru. "It's focused and powerful enough that, if we weren't inside this dark cloud, even a passerby would be able to tell they mean business."

"Even so, couldn't that just be because they don't know who we are?"

"That may be, but hoping for the best could be tantamount to suicide."

Marika scowled at the display as the projected paths of the two ships gradually stretched away from their current positions.

"I imagine they're waiting until close range so they can be sure of their shots, just like we are. It's like a game of chicken: whoever changes course now is just asking to be shot in the back."

"Turret one, mark, right ship Alpha, turret two, mark, left ship Bravo." Schnitzer assigned the two ships provisional code names and began preparations to fire. "Firing plans have not changed: a single volley at the apex of our approach. No plans for repeated shots, make sure you're synched to the indicated range and position."

The turrets needed to be rotated and their elevation aligned with each target before they could fire. Conditions in a space battle can change at the speed of light, and it was standard procedure to keep the barrels trained on their targets so that they could fire at a moment's notice.

However, in high-speed running battles, a ship's movement will sometimes outstrip the speed at which its guns can rotate or aim. In those cases, contact with the enemy needs to be predicted ahead of time, and the guns aligned beforehand in the direction they're expected to fire.

"But what if they don't fire?" Gruier argued, apparently still wanting to avoid a direct fight.

"Then they're gonna be in for a bad time." The tension was practically stabbing Marika in the gut, but she didn't let it wipe the smile from her face. "We'll show them what happens when they try to take it easy around pirates."

"But!"

"Don't worry, they're going to reach optimal firing position first." Marika drew Gruier's attention to the corresponding display at the observer seat. "The Bentenmaru is planning to fire at the apex of our approach, just as we race down the middle of the gap between the two ships. If they hold their fire that long, they'll end up hitting each other; their only option is to fire before then, while they've got us crossed."

"We're letting them shoot first!?" Gruier cried.

"We won't let them get a direct hit. With all the heavy jamming the Bentenmaru's doing, they'd be lucky to hit us even if we were sitting right in front of them. And if they don't go for the optimal shot, then we can just let them go."

"We've identified the enemy ships!"

The amount of information they received continued to increase as the distance closed, even in spite of the heavy jamming. After sorting through the data from the Bentenmaru's sensors, Coorie managed to identify the enemy ships.

They were already in the database of ships the Bentenmaru had encountered before.

"They're Corback-class destroyers! Their ID patterns match the Corbacks from the Serenity fleet!"

"It can't be..." Gruier's desperate mumble reached Marika's ears, and it took even more conviction for Marika to reassert her point.

"No changes to our battle plans. Fire even if they don't fire on us."

"Roger!" Schnitzer responded, with more vigor than was necessary. Gruier turned to Marika in the captain's chair as if she wanted to say something. "Currently set to fire automatically as we reach the apex of our approach."

Marika could only sit there as Gruier stared at her.

The Bentenmaru accelerated towards the Corbacks as they continued to drift apart to either side. On the rapidly updating display, the paths of the three ships converged.

"Here they come!" Coorie shouted as alarms flashed on the bridge. "Corback Alpha is firing!"

"Deploy the beam deflector!"

"Hoo!" Kane yelped, drifting the Bentenmaru sideways as Schnitzer released the beam dispersal screen.

"Bravo's firing too!"

"It's all good, I see 'em!" Kane dropped the Bentenmaru back into its original path as it crashed forward, avoiding the two ships' crossed fields of fire. Slipping past the eight heavily focused anti-ship beams—two from each of the Corbacks' pairs of dual turrets—the Bentenmaru caught both ships, one on either side, in the sights of its main guns. After reaching the optimal point, fire lanced simultaneously from the two triple-turrets, all according to the pre-programmed firing plan.

Unlike the focused anti-ship beams of the Corbacks, the Bentenmaru's beams struck home, washing broadly across their targets and scorching their hulls.

The encounter was over in an instant. With no rear-facing turrets to fire, the Bentenmaru accelerated away from the Corbacks with its deflector screen up.

The lone rear-mounted twin turrets on each of the Corbacks opened fire on the retreating Bentenmaru in another crisscross pattern. The four focused beams struck the deflector screen stirred up by the Bentenmaru's drives and dispersed harmlessly off into space.

"Are they following us?" Marika couldn't stop checking the Corbacks' movements on the relative positioning monitor once they'd passed them.

"They aren't." It was Hyakume who gave her the report. "In a high-speed engagement like that, you can't shoot without predicting the enemy's course beforehand. If either of us had meant for a serious fight, we wouldn't have set courses that only allowed for a hit-and-run."

"Was their timing off on that first intersecting shot?" After confirming that there would be no followup fire, Kane set the Bentenmaru back on a straight trajectory. Sandaime eased up on the acceleration.

"Bravo fired late, by about half a second according to our readings."

The more closely timed a barrage of anti-ship fire was, the more devastating it could become. Failing to coordinate the intersecting shots would have cut their strength in half.

"It gave me enough space to dodge."

"Th...that was enough for you to dodge?" Gruier, who had been waiting with bated breath, finally exhaled. Marika added her own question.

"Were we able to identify the individual ships? Are those two Corbacks the ones we ran into earlier?"

"Alpha was one of the pursuers on the outskirts of Tau Ceti," Coorie answered, checking the wealth of data they had acquired over the brief encounter. "And that was our third time meeting Bravo. It was one of the Symphony Angel's escorts, and the destroyer which delivered the report on the ghost ship under the Princess's orders."

Everyone on the bridge heard Gruier stifle a groan. Marika pretended not to hear her.

"Damage to the Bentenmaru?"

"See for yourself." The captain's chair damage monitor showed the damage from the engagement. Schnitzer read the negligible damage report out loud. "Two impacts on the bow and stern armor that nicked the deflector screen. The paint's singed, and they might have carried through to the reflective layer, but it's nothing that will interfere with flying."

"Do you think our beams hit?"

"We got a response." Schnitzer called the firing data up to the display. "The folks on the turrets confirmed greater than seventy percent accuracy. Armor penetration's a wash, but we should have damaged soft bits on the exterior of the hull like sensors and observation equipment."

"Got it. They'll probably play for keeps next time we see them, we'll end up getting burned if we just sit back and wait for them to move."

"Um, pardon me," Gruier said, leaving the observer seat and trotting to Marika's side. "Would it still be possible to contact the destroyers we just saw?"

Marika stared at Gruier; her expression was filled with worry.

"The ones we just shot at? What for?"

"They're Serenity ships, if we let them know that I'm on board the Bentenmaru, they shouldn't treat us as hostile. Please let me contact them, I want to avoid any more pointless fighting."

"I understand your concern," Marika answered as calmly as she could, her mind working full-tilt considering the issues surrounding the princess and the Bentenmaru. "But I don't think that would help us right now."

"This is all just a misunderstanding! Serenity ships would never open fire on me otherwise! The best thing to do would be to clear it up as quickly as possible!"

"Coorie, has anybody tried to hail the Bentenmaru?" Marika didn't take her eyes off of Gruier. Coorie answered immediately.

"No hailing attempts over either normal or FTL comms. It's true that even outside of the ongoing electronic warfare, the EM storm-like conditions of the dark cloud are making normal comms difficult, but we should still be easily reachable over the FTL link from basically anywhere. That last contact should have revealed to them who we are; they should be able to hail us even with our transponder cut."

"So the Serenity fleet should know by now that they're dealing with the Bentenmaru, but they haven't tried to get in touch." Marika summarized the situation. "Maybe the two ships we were just in a firefight with made a report to their superiors, and headquarters is in the middle of a heated debate about how to respond, but at the very least it seems that the Serenity ships that just shot at us aren't interested in talking."

"It's a mistake! If we just let them know I'm on board we can avoid any more unnecessary fighting!"

"If it really is a misunderstanding, then I imagine our next encounter will be more friendly," Marika said amiably. "But I'm sorry, the Bentenmaru is a pirate ship, and we need to consider the possibility that the Serenity fleet may fire on us even knowing that their princess is on board. If they're here searching for the ghost ship, then they should be intensifying their search after learning that they've got competition. If that leads to them approaching us peacefully I'll be grateful, but there's always the possibility that they won't. And if that happens, as captain I have no intention of showing our opponent all our cards."

"The Serenity fleet would never treat me as their enemy!"

"Then why was it necessary for the Princess to hire a pirate ship?"

"That's…" Gruier was at a loss for words as she tried to come up with an excuse. Marika pressed on.

"Furthermore, officially the Princess is supposed to be on the Hakuoh Girls' Academy yacht club's training cruise, not on board the Bentenmaru."

"...and the Bentenmaru is supposed to be off doing raids in the Cetus constellation, rather than out here."

Marika nodded. "Our plan was to put as many covers in place as we could before coming here. I think the fact that we have the Princess on board the Bentenmaru will be a powerful bargaining chip."

The princess nodded weakly. "I understand. I hope our next encounter does not end up like this one."

"Amazing," Kane whispered to Hyakume, glancing back at the captain's chair. "Our captain actually managed to act all captain-like while dealing with royalty."

"Weren't you the one who confirmed for us she was an honor student?"

"Now, are we able to track what the Corbacks we just encountered and the rest of the fleet are up to?" Marika asked Schnitzer.

"Alpha and Bravo don't appear to be following us."

The Bentenmaru had returned to normal flight, unrelentingly broadcasting its powerful radar in every direction. There was no point in hiding in passive mode now that the enemy knew they were there. Not to mention, they wanted as much information as they could garner.

Coorie had something else to add. "The other ships are too far away to get any direct response from them, but based on Alpha and Bravo's movements it doesn't look like they're planning on regrouping to come after us. They could be treating our little exchange as nothing more than an unexpected speed bump, continuing with their original plan of distributed spatial observation and information gathering.”

"I see." Marika thought on it. "No matter how you look at it, they've got more pieces on the board than we do, so they can gather more accurate information. I think the only way we're going to get a leg up on them is if we use the information from the watcher network to make an educated guess."

"We'll end up mixing it up with them again at the site of the next forecasted chronoquake," Coorie said, offering her own prediction of the way things would unfold.

"Is there anything we can do, like feeding them false watcher data?"

"I thought about trying to feed them false intel, but they've got the old watcher data network, and they can drop more recon pods than we can." Coorie's hands continued moving briskly. "Whatever we give them would need to be consistent across both networks. Moreover, we're lacking in accurate information ourselves, and even if we do manage to trick them it could eat up a lot of time."

"I'd rather we had the time," Marika considered. "So we don't even know the right answer, and we could be wasting our time..."

"Also, and I hate to say it, but there's no way we can beat them in terms of resources as long as we're playing by the same rules." Coorie looked back at Marika, worried she hadn't been heard, her hands continuing to move. "The Bentenmaru should have better observation equipment than those warships, but even so, we can't get data as accurate as that survey fleet can by making simultaneous observations from multiple vantage points."

"So there's not even any reason to assume that their data will be less accurate than ours." Marika thought even harder. "Have you got a plan?"

"I wouldn't call it a plan, necessarily, but what if we try to make contact with the ghost ship during the next chronoquake?" Facing the console, Coorie's hands began to move busily again.

"Make contact with the ghost ship? Can we make that happen?"

"I don't know if we can make it happen, but we're definitely not going to beat the survey fleet if both of us just sit around waiting for it to show up. So our only hope is to try something that they won't, right?"

"I'm a little scared to ask what you mean by 'try something that they won't.'"

"Jump into the epicenter of the chronoquake," Coorie answered simply, both hands working. "The epicenter is on the other side of hyperspace, so we might not be able to make contact with it directly, but if the tremors are coming from somewhere in normal space, it could at least bring us closer to the ghost ship than we are now."

"You're saying that the non-FTL-capable ghost ship is somewhere in hyperspace!?"

"Just because it's not capable of FTL doesn't mean it can't get lost in hyperspace." Coorie's hands stopped. "There are records of those sorts of weird, paranormal phenomena dating back for quite some time. Stories of ships getting caught in a chronoquake and being flung across the galaxy have been common since the pre-FTL era."

"But nobody has any idea how or why chronoquakes form!"

"It took them years to build up that watcher network, but their biggest focus was on placing sensors to collect information on local chronoquakes. The only reason I can think of for them to focus on chronoquakes and spatial shifts is that the information is somehow important."

"So what you're suggesting is..." Marika dusted off what meager knowledge on the subject she had and tried to fire back. "You want to jump into the center of a chronoquake in the middle of unstable space, basically just jumping us into who knows where? Isn't that way too dangerous? We have no idea where it'll send us."

"There's always a risk, but as long as we can make it back to the real world safely we can always recover. If you're worried about safety, we can send a pathfinder through first to confirm where we'll end up."

"Will that work?"

"It might not be easy maintaining a reliable connection with the pathfinder without knowing where it's heading, but at least it's safer than just sending the Bentenmaru through. However, the signal will drop the longer we wait to analyze the data."

"But isn't it possible that they're planning on doing the same thing?"

Hyakume raised his voice, impressed. "I was going to point that out, but you beat me to it. You're right, there aren't that many different ways of surveying a chronoquake. After first confirming the established watcher network's long-term data, and then doing observations with modern sensors, the next step would be either launching a probe into the epicenter or jumping in directly. But if you had the time, you'd probably want to spend it investigating multiple patterns."

"I see." Marika raised her head. "So which is easier, searching for the ghost ship ourselves, or trying to predict what the Serenity fleet's next move will be?"

Hyakume turned around from the sensor station to look at the captain's chair. Marika leaned forward in her seat, both hands on the control panel, waiting for an answer from her bridge crew.

Hyakume looked to Coorie before answering. "Obviously it would be easier to tail the Serenity fleet and try to predict what they'll do. We've encountered them before, and though we don't know their entire composition, we already have data on several of their ships."

Whether in combat or not, whenever the Bentenmaru encountered a ship they would record not only its transponder, but also it's radar signature and energy patterns, making it possible to identify the same ship later.

"What do you think Coorie?"

"It would be just as much work to observe the chronoquakes in secret as it would be to follow the Serenity fleet. That being said, following them would make it easier to outmaneuver them or escape."

"So maybe we would be better off shadowing the Serenity fleet and trying to strong-arm our cut of their survey results."

The bridge fell silent for a moment, and then filled with uncontrollable laughter.

"Captain?" Misa sidled up to the captain's chair and turned to Marika. "Are you sure you should talk like that in front of the Princess?"

"How about it, Gruier?" Marika called her by her first name, as she did at school. "If you want to stop us, now's the time."

Gruier spun the observer seat around to face the captain's chair. She stared up at Marika.

"It hardly seems like a fair fight." She flashed her socialite smile. Marika nodded.

"They're blessed with more hardware and more people than we have. Unfortunately, we have no chance of winning if we try to take them head on, but it's not like we're under any obligation to play by their rules, are we?"

"The monarchy always prefers to keep things fair and square. However," Gruier said, looking across the faces of the pirate ship's bridge crew, "they don't have the freedom to choose how they want to do things. It may not be fair, but as long as we achieve our goal, I'm sure we can justify it somehow later."

"We're fortunate the Princess gets how these things work," Marika acknowledged, laughing. Gruier looked taken aback.

"You know, it was Captain Gonzaemon who told me that."

"Huh?"

"For a spacer, results are all that matters, he said. It doesn't matter how you get them. Even if you have to lie or cheat along the way, as long as it works out in the end, then the universe will count it as a win.”

Sighs and snickers spread through the bridge crew.

"That old fart went around spouting junk like that?"

"But just because it's easier to get what you want by breaking the rules, that doesn't make it any easier to deal with at the time."

"Huh, I see." Marika lifted her head, forcing a smile across her dismal face. "So that's the kind of person Captain Gonzaemon Katou was, eh? Ha ha ha."

Chapter 7: Contact

The obscuring mass of the dark cloud, the violent electromagnetic storms—conducting observation in such an unstable space was exceedingly difficult.

Radar and sensors, normally capable of scanning at vast distances, had their effective ranges slashed, and what data they did collect was riddled with errors. The only reliable data came from repeated observations across a narrow area, the readings constantly corrected for the conditions.

Despite successfully infiltrating the royal survey teams' watcher network, there had been little success in using it as a bridge into the data network that should have existed within the Serenity fleet. Hyakume's data analysis group and Coorie's cyberwarfare team were working in tandem to try to access it through the FTL network, but all they'd succeeded in producing were error messages.

"Huh, a Maracot-class battleship and six Corback-class destroyers." Marika glanced up at the main screen, which showed the Serenity fleet's suspected makeup.

Though there had been no success breaking into the fleet's network, the Bentenmaru had been able to determine its composition rather quickly after they'd started trailing it.

The escorts were all Corbacks—they may as well have been the standard ship of the Serenity fleet.

The ships' ages varied, with minor differences in their weapons and equipment based on when they had been procured, but their baseline performance was identical, allowing them perform fleet maneuvers in tandem. Three of the ships had escorted the Symphony Angel with Gruier on board, and four of them had been part of the pursuit fleet that had entered the outskirts of the Tau Ceti system.

The Maracot was a heavy battleship mass-produced by the subcontractor Blue Ink Manufacturing for allies of the Galactic Empire, less expensive than the ships of the Imperial Fleet. The hull was equipped with armament on par with the Imperial dreadnoughts, powerful enough to deal with anything but the Empire's ships themselves, and by neglecting command-level communications and cyberwarfare gear, the price in its standard configuration was kept reasonably within reach of even independent powers with small budgets.

Obviously the sky was still the limit when ordering one with all the bells and whistles. Adding communications and observation equipment equivalent to that of a cyberwarfare ship would have caused the battleship's price to skyrocket.

Verifying the name of the Maracot that accompanied the Serenity fleet was a simple matter. Serenity possessed only a single Maracot-class battleship.

"The Queen Serendipity," Gruier said immediately, watching the images of the Maracot during a naval review on the Serenity Defense Force's public-facing site. "The flagship of the Serenity Defense Force has carried the same name from generation to generation."

"The Defense Force's flagship," Coorie murmured, checking the overview of the Queen Serendipity garnered from the site. "There's no way to tell what its really armed with and what's just grandstanding, but if we assume it has command facilities for coordinating an entire interstellar war fleet, we're dealing with a true strategic-level battleship."

"In other words?"

Coorie response to Marika's question was straightforward. "The Serenity Defense Force is throwing the most powerful weapon they have into the search for the ghost ship. They can't have that much force to spare; if they've peeled off this much, I wonder how much is left at home holding down the fort?"

"Can we beat them?" Marika asked, and followed up her own question. "Or rather, can we outmaneuver them?"

"Beating them would certainly be tough. They've got a fleet-level command battleship with an escort of six modern destroyers. Without some brilliant ploy, the only thing for a single aging pirate ship to do in a head-on fight would be to run, and as fast as possible."

"Like I said, we don't need to beat them in a firefight," Marika said with a bitter laugh, shaking her head. "All we need to do is reach the ghost ship before they do."

"So our objective is to board the ghost ship?" Coorie asked, glancing at Gruier in the observer seat. Gruier nodded, her expression rife with trepidation.

"I'll be fine once you get me on board the ghost ship, you won't need to worry about me after that."

"I don't suppose you have any intention of letting us know what you're planning on doing once you've boarded it?"

Gruier closed her eyes and shook her head, as expected. "Only what is expected of me as a member of the royal family. Please understand, it is not something with which you can assist."

Coorie looked at Marika, who shrugged her shoulders. "Just stick with the plan. If we can get the Bentenmaru onto the ghost ship's flight deck before the Serenity fleet, they shouldn't have an easy time attacking us."

"I have my doubts that they'll stick to their orders, but either way...you want us to buy enough time that we can get close to this total mystery of a ghost ship and, assuming everything goes our way, dock with it."

"Think we can do it?"

"It'll be tight," Coorie answered bluntly. "But even if we can't get the Bentenmaru itself docked, we can always use a shuttle or even go over naked as a last resort; it should be doable."

"Go over...naked?" Gruier asked, concerned, focusing in on Coorie's troubling word choice.

"Uh, she means putting on spacesuits and going in," Marika said, frantically cobbling together an explanation. "It might be difficult to fit the whole ship inside, but it's easy to get on board a ship in just a suit."

"I don't have any experience with space walks. Will I be okay?"

"You'll be fine, don't worry, it's easier than swimming."

"We should give her a lecture on how to use a spacesuit," Schnitzer said. As long as the ship was on combat alert, he was ever-present on the bridge. "The last of the reports indicated that the interior of the ghost ship possessed sufficient amounts of breathable atmosphere, but that data is from fifteen years ago. It wouldn't be unusual for something to have happened since then."

"Right...it wouldn't be surprising for an unmaintained space city to completely vent in that amount of time." Marika scanned the bridge. Misa caught her intention and raised her hand. "All right, Misa, could you show Gruier how to use a spacesuit?"

"Yes ma'am." Misa rose from her observer seat and looked down at Gruier's tiny body. "I wonder if we have a child-sized suit in storage?"

Misa exited the bridge, Gruier in tow.

"...well?" Marika looked around the bridge again, now minus one outsider. "Now that we've chased off the Princess, what is it you wanted to discuss?"

"The Serenity fleet has already spread out all of its ships." Coorie displayed their current positions, stretched across light years, on the holographic monitor. "They previously had three sets of ships dispersed in pairs, but now all six ships have taken up separate positions. They're arranged like the six points of a triangular prism; I assume they're relatively certain about where the next chronoquake is going to occur."

"Does it look like they're paying any attention to us?"

Even after the hit-and-run engagement with the two destroyers, the Serenity fleet had carried on as before. Despite the fact that they must have been aware of the Bentenmaru's existence, they continued their scans as if everything were set in stone, no effort spent trying to track down their enemy.

"They can't not be paying attention to us, but they sure don't look like they care. I can't imagine they've got much leeway either; either they're ignoring the unexpected pirate ship, or they're waiting for us to make our next move."

"Oh, well if they're expecting us, we can't let them down, now can we?"

"Since they're ignoring us, we should assume that the Serenity fleet's ultimate objective is the same as ours, to capture the ghost ship. They could be planning to act with the next chronoquake."

"Their positioning certainly makes it look like they're up to something." Marika stared up at the three-dimensional display. "But I'm sure you didn't need Gruier to leave the bridge to tell me that?"

"Based on the data we have so far and the Serenity fleet's movements, the next chronoquake will likely appear at this point sometime in the next few hours. If the Serenity destroyers use their FTL engines to agitate the chronoquake's epicenter, it's quite likely that it will cause the ghost ship to materialize in this universe."

"So what, we need to hurl ourselves into the middle of a waiting enemy fleet?" Marika said. "If we don't hurry up and make contact with the ghost ship first, they're going to walk all over us."

"The Princess's request was for us to seize the ghost ship." Coorie spun her seat around to face the captain's chair. "What does the Captain plan to do after that?"

"After?" Marika repeated, not grasping the point of the question. Coorie nodded.

"If she stays true to her word, I believe the Princess will order us to leave once we transfer her onto the ghost ship. Have you been able to get the Princess to tell you what she plans to do after we've captured the ship?"

"Sorry, but I haven't." Marika's voice sank. "But, she's been so careful and reasonable, she's put a lot of thought into this, I can't imagine she's planning to do anything that reckless."

"And if the Princess were planning on doing something reckless, what would the Captain do?"

"What would I do...?" Unconsciously Marika looked back at Coorie. "It's the Golden Ghost Ship, the centerpiece of Serenity's founding myth, drifting through the stars loaded with ancient treasures—what would I even be able to make of it?"

Marika felt the stares of the entire bridge crew focusing on her. Schnitzer slid his chair back, turned to face the captain's chair, and folded his massive arms in front of him.

"The only other force in this region of space besides the Serenity fleet is the Bentenmaru. So it's either going to be Serenity or the Bentenmaru that ends up with the Golden Ghost Ship. And you're the Bentenmaru's captain, the one in command."

Marika listened as Schnitzer delivered his circuitous lecture, then pointed reflexively at herself.

"Me?"

"Don't tell us you didn't realize?"

"It's not that I didn't realize...more like it hadn't crossed my mind?" Marika cast her gaze downward under the glare of Coorie's glass-bottle frames, trying to escape the stares of her crew. "I mean, she's a princess from a family that rules over seven planets much older than Umi-no-ake. What if I try to interfere and do something that changes the course of history?"

"Don't make light of things, it's not that surprising in this line of work to end up making history," Coorie said, staring at Marika. "Maybe not publicly, but it's normal for a pirate ship to have a little secret or two."

"This isn't just a little secret or two." Marika stared back at Coorie. "I get it, it's possible that Gruier might do something rash. My first priority is to make sure everyone gets back safe; the Golden Ghost Ship can come after that, okay?"

"And where would you rank the Serenity fleet?"

"...above the ghost ship," Marika said, her expression apologetic. "With all due respect to the Princess, the Serenity fleet should be more important than some ghost ship with no one alive on board. If it looks like an all-out war that we're going to lose, I plan on running regardless of what Gruier says."

The bridge crew exchanged looks and nodded. Marika could tell that her answer had mostly struck home, and she breathed a sigh.

"I'm glad you have no intention of asking us to wipe out an entire fleet." Coorie turned her eyes back toward Marika. "So, what do you think the Serenity fleet's priorities are?"

"The Serenity fleet? You want me to try and guess what they're thinking?" Marika's eyes went wide. Coorie nodded, her expression suggesting it was nothing out of the ordinary.

"Don't worry, it's not like we're going to ask the Serenity commanders directly to find out whether you're right. I just want to hear what the Captain's thinking."

"Um." Marika spent some time thinking, her face a look of consternation. "I believe that the Serenity fleet's main objective is to secure the Golden Ghost Ship," Marika said, taking her time with each word. "Even after encountering the Bentenmaru they haven't put any effort into looking for us, focusing everything they have on searching for the ghost ship, so I don't think I'm wrong about that. That must mean that the Bentenmaru—and the Princess who's possibly on board—don't rank that high on their list of priorities, right?"

"Right. We've been tracking the Serenity fleet's movements since we first encountered them inside the dark cloud, and they've mostly just ignored us. As long as we don't present too great an obstacle to their mission, they'll probably just continue their search for the ghost ship. What do you think the Serenity fleet is going to do once they've secured the ghost ship?"

All Marika could do in response to the question was blink. "What are they going to do? I guess, investigate it once they have it in front of them?"

"What kind of investigation?" Coorie followed up with another question. "Usually the surveys are sponsored and sent out by the royal family; why would someone assemble such a large fleet only to gather information that they're already supposed to have? What could they be looking for?"

Marika eyed Coorie suspiciously. "Just making sure here, you don't actually know the answer, right?"

"Of course not," Coorie answered casually, shrugging her shoulders. "But we can speculate. The ghost ship is supposed to be loaded with cultural artifacts, they've dispatched an entire fleet to locate it, and don't forget that Gruier apparently thought that this was worth making the trip away from the palace over. What could the Princess and the fleet be after once they've captured the ghost ship?

"They want to board the ghost ship," Marika answered, and then quickly lowered her voice. "...to catch a ghost...?"

"That doesn't really help us, and we don't know why Gruier or the fleet—to say nothing of the monarchy—would be interested in catching a ghost."

"Have we heard anything from Shou? Harold Lloyd was quick to get the Princess situated with her move, but now they've got nothing on Serenity's internal strife or political situation?"

"Not a peep since we left to search for the ghost ship. It is what it is." Hyakume checked the communication logs. There were several entries for both scheduled and unscheduled transmissions, but none from Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency. "It could be they still don't know what's going on inside the palace, or they just haven't found anything they think is worth turning over to us."

"Maybe the walls of classified information surrounding the ghost ship are too thick, or the ghost ship hasn't become an issue in light of other ongoing matters," Schnitzer said quietly, causing Marika to turn to face him.

"What do you mean, ongoing matters? What could be more important than the ghost ship?"

"It's a question of expediency," Schnitzer answered in his usual monotone, all the while staring at the combat monitor. "Insurance companies are sensitive to matters of profit and loss. If some issue other than the ghost ship were having a greater effect on Serenity's economy, it would probably command most of their attention."

"The fact that our insurance company moved so quickly before must have been proof of a struggle going on." Marika sighed. "Regardless, she said to leave the rest to her once we got her on board, I guess it's possible she's planning on doing something reckless." Marika reached out to the captain's chair console to find Gruier's current location. It looked like Misa had taken her to the rear hangar deck for a lecture on spacesuits. "She's almost certainly going to tell us to leave her there once we get her on board."

"Probably," Coorie agreed bluntly. "We can let the Captain deal with her."

"It is my job, isn't it?" Marika glanced at the two of them on the rear hangar deck. "At least that's something I can actually handle."

"The chronoquake is starting." A distant observation buoy had relayed the data over the FTL network, and Coorie's hands quickly darted across the control panel. "It's a bit earlier than we predicted...but within the margin of error."

Marika checked the arrangement of the six scattered Corbacks. While she couldn't confirm their most recent positions, the chronoquake picked up by the observation buoy was located more or less in the center of the six destroyers' projected locations.

"So this is it? I wonder if we can time our jump to slip past the escorts and secure the ghost ship?" Marika took another look at the disposition of the Serenity fleet and realized something was making her feel uneasy.

"Once the chronoquake ends, if something big does appear, it should be picked up by the watcher buoys. But no matter what we do, there's going to be a time lag on the watcher network's data; if we don't time our jump far enough in advance, I think we'll miss our window to get out in front of them."

"Wait a minute, where's the battleship?!?" Marika shouted. "The Maracot is supposed to be commanding the destroyers. Where is it!?"

"In a clear spot several light years ahead of its escorts," Hyakume responded immediately. "Looks like there's a gap in the watcher network, it took some work to find it. They also ended up severing the network between the fleet."

"Why would the flagship be so far away? It's too far way to simply be keeping a safe distance; wouldn't it take them too long to respond in an emergency?"

"It's not just hanging back, it's definitely up to something different than the rest of the fleet." Hyakume pieced together fragments of data from the network in order to calculate the battleship Queen Serendipity's position.

"Are there any chronoquake readings out there?"

"I just caught one." Hyakume looked through the watcher network data and worked out a new calculation. "It started at roughly the same time as the one surrounded by the six ships. I'm pretty sure the two quakes are originating from the same source."

"What could they be waiting for?" Marika tried to elicit some meaning from the relative positioning of the six destroyers and the lone battleship. "Is this part of their scans?"

"If it's not, they could be trying to coax their target out of the chronoquake somehow."

"The chronoquake is expanding on the destroyers' side," Coorie reported, reading off the watcher network's data. "It's strange, the pattern is different from before. Wait, could it be...?"

She began tapping frantically at the control panel. "I knew it. The pattern is different from any of the quakes that have been recorded by the network! The potential energy levels are the same, but with reduced seismic amplitude. Something is definitely going on!"

"Hey now, all we've got is the watcher data, you really want me to guess what's going on just from that?" Hyakume opened numerous virtual displays in the space around his seat. "I had a hunch something like this might happen, I knew we should have seeded that area with recon pods."

"I doubt there's any way we could have. We don't have any recon pods we could have used that wouldn't have been noticed by those six destroyers out there."

"Even the watcher buoys are detecting a powerful energy signature surrounding the chronoquake. It's big enough they could be going to war with the thing."

"The energy signature is coming from their FTL engines, not their weapons, isn't it?" Either one would put out vast amounts of energy, but their signatures would be quite different.

"There are multiple signatures mixed together, but the spatial shift and seismic amplitude are too intense to get any accurate data."

"The quake in the middle of the six ships, they're trying to induce an inverse-phase chronoquake towards it." Coorie fed all the data that she could into the computer, constructing an analytical model on the virtual displays opened up around her. "Are they trying to squeeze the epicenter from hyperspace into normal space?"

"I'm no expert in hyperspace physics. When it comes to practical applications, I'm guessing you know more than I do."

"The principle of external FTL boosters is to use FTL engines to hurl a starship into an artificial chronoquake. But there's no way to tell what's on the other side in hyperspace, even with the Empire's top military researchers continuing to study it; their method looks similar to the reports of experiments I've seen."

"I'm not sure I understand," Marika interjected. "So basically, we should assume that the Serenity fleet is working together to drag something out of the chronoquake?"

"That's probably right on the money," Coorie confirmed, watching the data on the chronoquake and the energy field being applied to it split across several screens. "If the Serenity fleet has information that wasn't in the survey teams' reports supplied by the Princess, then we should probably assume that they have a more effective way of contacting the ghost ship than we do."

"So where is it?" Marika took another look at the position of the fleet on the displays in front of her. One showed the six destroyers, the other the heavy battleship, quietly biding its time. "The epicenter doesn't have to align with the chronoquake itself—hyperspace theory doesn't even treat them as the same thing, right? What's going on with the quake near the battleship?"

"It appears to be growing steadily," Hyakume reported. "What do we do? Make the jump?"

"If we need to square off with somebody, we'll probably have an easier time against a single battleship than six destroyers. If they really are tearing the ghost ship out of hyperspace, what would give us the biggest gap to exploit?"

"If we touchdown before the chronoquake by the battleship has time to subside," Hyakume answered. "It'll be easiest to hide our jump close to where the quake is occurring. But our jump will be less accurate."

"How much time do we have left?"

"We don't!” navigator Luca shouted. "No scans, no pathfinder—if we want to make it while the chronoquake is still occurring, we have to jump now!"

"Jump, make sure we make it in time," Marika ordered. "If the quake dies down while we're getting ready, or if something appears, we can worry about that when it happens."

A siren rang throughout the Bentenmaru announcing an unscheduled jump.

Gruier listened to the strained octave-leaps from the rear hangar deck while she stood in front of a spacesuit locker learning how to operate a helmet.

"What's that?"

"Looks like we're making an emergency jump." Misa switched on the helmet's built-in communicator and explained how to use it, staring up at the flashing strobe lights on the wall.

"Bridge to all hands, this is your captain, Marika. Uh, I know you're busy so I'll make this quick. The Bentenmaru is preparing to make an FTL jump, we plan to jump as soon as we've collected all the data we need. We may be involved in an exchange with a battleship after touching down, so everyone please prepare for that possibility."

Gruier lifted the helmet off her head and looked up at Misa in surprise.

"That's our captain, always with the laid back announcements." She returned Gruier's look, maintaining a gentle smile. "I wonder if they caught wind of the ghost ship's trail?"

"What is she talking about, a battleship!?" Gruier's voice creaked as she stared up at Misa, the helmet still perched above her head. "Maybe it would be best if I returned to the bridge?"

"I doubt there's anything you could do even if you were there." Misa too was curious about what had changed, but there was nothing either of them could do once a new course of action had already been decided. "And besides, right now the Princess needs to concern herself with mastering how to use a spacesuit in preparation for boarding the ghost ship."

Gruier continued to stare stubbornly up at the dimmed strobe lights, still flashing even after the siren had stopped. She closed her eyes and settled the cramped helmet over her head.

"Is that okay? The padding inside is pressurized to adjust the fit. You don't feel any discomfort?"

"I'm fine." With the double-layered face shield surrounding her face still up, Gruier reached around to her neck to check the suit's seal as she'd been instructed.

"Once the shield is down and you leave the ship you won't be able to brush away your hair if it gets in your eyes, or wipe away any sweat. Make sure that your hair is tucked safely behind the padding." Misa adjusted the placement of Gruier's helmet and helped her tuck back her bangs. "I apologize, if we'd known it would come to this we could have gotten you something newer and cuter, but all we had was this worn out old thing."

"It's okay." Gruier finally found the lock on the back of her neck and connected the helmet to the slightly oversized lightweight spacesuit. "We set off not knowing what would happen, I'm sure you were as prepared as you could have been."

"The suit may look small, but it's meant for combat use, so you should be able to shrug off a rifle beam. Just try not to get hit in the same spot twice."

"They make child-sized combat spacesuits?"

"Unlike the military, there's no age limit for being a pirate. Plus, being smaller makes you a smaller target and requires less life support energy, so the lifepack lasts longer." Misa lifted up the air tank and cartridge-based energy capsule, combined into a small backpack, for Gruier to see. "Don't worry. If we have the suit, that means its last owner made it back to the Bentenmaru safely."

"Who was the last owner?"

"Captain Ririka, when she was still young." Misa thought about Ririka at that age and smiled. "Marika's mother. She was Gonzaemon's wife."

"FTL jump preparations are complete," Marika announced again throughout the ship. "The Bentenmaru will now jump. We could be looking at a fight once we touch down, so all crew report to battle stations."

The Bentenmaru's bridge was assailed by a storm of alerts as soon as it touched down.

"Again!? What is it this time!?"

Though the conditions were different from the last time they'd touched down in the vicinity of a chronoquake, and though the Bentenmaru was old enough that it set off warnings every time it jumped, the consequences this time were much more serious.

"I don't want to hear it!" Kane shouted, trying to steady the hull as it was engulfed by the gravitational waves being emitted in every direction by the chronoquake. "We just jumped blind into a chronoquake! You're lucky the ship's in one piece, you can deal with a couple alarms!"

"I won't complain as long the ship's in one piece." The bridge was suffering uncharacteristic levels of vibration. Marika read the ship's internal and external status off the display. "Where's the battleship?"

"On the other side of the chronoquake, just as we expected!" Hyakume canceled the alerts around his console and quickly reported what he felt was the most certain piece of information amid a flurry of inaccuracies.

"Have they spotted us?"

"Probably." Coorie's hands were also moving across her control panel as quickly as they could. "Our sensors have managed to pick up two recon pods! There are probably more, they're set up for some serious observation!"

"Should we take them out?" Marika asked, but then countermanded herself. "No, forget about it. Leave the enemy recon pods alone!"

"All right, but can I ask why!?"

Though there would be serious errors thanks to the chronoquake, the recon pods could still collect data. Coorie began to scan for the locations of other pods that should have existed, based on the two confirmed pods and the network they were a part of.

"If the battleship's goal is to draw out the ghost ship, the Bentenmaru has no reason to interfere with that."

Marika confirmed the location of the Maracot-class battleship Queen Serendipity; it was on the far side of the chronoquake, which for all the talk of it subsiding still seemed quite violent. The Bentenmaru was inside the maximum range of the battleship's main guns, but there was no worry that it could fire into the chronoquake and hit, even by luck.

"We can decide to take them on or run away once they start targeting us, but I doubt they'll have the leeway to do it until after we know whether or not something's going to appear, right?"

"If something does appear, the battleship will recall those six destroyers." Coorie marked the position of a newly discovered recon pod. "We don't have the firepower to take on an entire fleet!"

"I know that. If it shows up before then, we should try to get on board before the battleship can bring its firepower to bear on us. So, does it look like our ghost ship is going to show itself?"

"There appears to be something with different amplitude and energy convergence patterns than the chronoquake." Hyakume read what seemed like accurate data from the Bentenmaru's sensors. "But unless the vibrations look like a man-made jump, I don't know how you'd tell if it was natural or not."

"Can't you tell us anything?"

"If I had any advice for you in this situation, I'd give it." Hyakume checked the distance of the battleship on the other side of the chronoquake, the anomaly caught between them. "All I can say is that we might be safer further away from the quake. I know that you can't conflate the quake with its epicenter, but the battleship has three times the distance on the anomaly that we do."

"Is there something wrong with staying close to it?"

Kane, his hands gripping the yoke, winced at Marika's beginner question. Hyakume continued his explanation without displaying any emotion.

"First of all, we're dealing with an unpleasant ride thanks to the chronoquake rocking the hull. And because of all the shaking our radar, sensors, and fire all drop in accuracy."

"It's not like any of that will kill us. What else?"

"If something does appear, it's possible that the Bentenmaru's mass could act as an anchor in the spatial fabric. That may be why the battleship's keeping a safe distance from the chronoquake."

"What do you mean?" Marika asked with a sense of foreboding.

"When a chronoquake occurs as part of a pre-drive, as a hyperspace phenomenon, it can manifest in the real world with all sorts of physics-defying effects. That's fine when you're making a jump, when you know what you're doing, how much energy to apply—but with unknown, supernatural phenomena, it's best to stay as far away as possible."

"What about the Bentenmaru can affect that?"

"Our mass. We make jumps in stable space, as far away from planets as we can get, to avoid even the minor influence that comes from their gravity warping space."

"But the Bentenmaru is light, aren't we barely producing any gravity?"

"Still enough for us to get dragged in. Not to mention the fact in itself that the Bentenmaru jumped here." Hyakume switched over several of the displays around him. "We can't predict what influence our jump would or wouldn't have on a natural chronoquake."

"But aren't we better off staying close to the chronoquake?" Marika thought she heard a creaking sound, like the sound of space rumbling. A chill ran down her spine. "If we move somewhere clearer with fewer obstacles, fewer observational errors, won't we make ourselves a target for the battleship's guns?"

"At least we know how to fight another ship." Hyakume's face flashed concern as he compared scan results across various displays. "This chronoquake is big enough to completely toss our ship around, what do we do if we come across another anomaly inside of it?"

"What, you think we're going to find even more anomalies!?"

An unfamiliar warning pealed through the bridge. "High gravitational field!" Luca shouted. "Multiple ones! No wait, it's a ring-shaped high-grav field!"

"A what!?"

"Like I'm supposed to know!? Absent jumping or teleporting, it shouldn't even be possible for a gravitational field this substantial to form out of nowhere, and high-grav fields shouldn't be able to form as rings!"

"It's as massive a gas giant!?"

A gravitational field, its strength surpassing that of a terrestrial planet, had formed inside the chronoquake. Marika watched the display as the readings shot upwards, its gravity climbing to the equivalent of a star's in the blink of an eye. "What the heck, is this a neutron star touching down!?"

"Get us out of here!"

"You don't need to tell me!" As if in answer to Hyakume shouting next to him, Kane quickly spun the Bentenmaru around, putting the gravitational field behind them. He used the standard drives as well as the anti-gravity engines to try and escape to a safe distance.

"We're not going to make it," Coorie shouted, loud enough for the rest of the bridge to hear. "The gravity ring is expanding faster than we can move. It's going to swallow us up."

"What's going on!?" The Bentenmaru should have been accelerating rapidly, but the ship merely shook as if flapping in the breeze. Another warning sounded on the bridge, and Marika screamed.

"There's something inside the gravity ring!"

The captain's chair displays emitted numerous flashes of light, engulfing her in white. After a heavy jolt, the bridge settled, seemingly having left the gravitational field's influence.

"Huh?" Marika looked at the conflicting information on the remaining displays, puzzled. "What just happened?"

"The expanding gravity ring moved past us," Coorie said, activating new sensors to replace those that had been knocked out and merging together their data. "Even without any mass, the gravitational field is moving at more than half the speed of light. I have no idea what's going on."

"Huh, so what about the chronoquake?"

"Still ongoing. The gravitational field is—wait, space is tearing apart at the point where the gravity ring originated!"

"Tearing apart!?"

"Cut and run, full speed!" Hyakume indicated to Kane as he watched the proximity monitor. "Hurry! I don't know what's going on, but if we just sit and watch, this ship's gonna get ripped apart right along with it!"

"All power to the drives! Sandaime, I know you're against it, but cut all the limiters!"

"And there it is," Sandaime muttered as he started making minor adjustments to the engine panel. "Cutting the limiters isn't the same thing as routing all the power to the engines. Assuming you don't want us to explode, I'll need to continually babysit the circuits if you want to be able to overboost them."

The Bentenmaru began to accelerate, accompanied by a powerful whine.

"Shockwave incoming!"

"How can there be a shockwave in space!?"

"If space can tear, then it can produce a shockwave!" Hyakume explained bluntly to Marika, continuing to report on the next phenomenon to occur. "It's shaking the hull; initiating anti-shock safeguards."

An ominous shudder began to propagate across the Bentenmaru's hull.

"We're fine, we're far enough from the epicenter that we don't need to worry about getting torn apart. Focus on keeping us steady rather than trying to escape!"

"Autostabilizers are working at maximum capacity!" Kane ran his fingers here and there across the control panel while making minor rudder adjustments. "How am I supposed to counter something like this!?"

"Watch out, something big is coming!"

The next moment the Bentenmaru was struck by an impact like that of an emergency planetfall. Marika, who'd grabbed the armrests of the captain's chair to stay upright, heard the starship shriek in a way she'd never before experienced.

"There it is," Marika heard Coorie say through the upending roar of the spatial shockwave that had manifested on the bridge. "It's the ghost ship."

The cosmic dust drifting inside the distorted space was forcibly converted into energy, painting the spatial rift with lightning-like flashes as the gigantic, black silhouette materialized from within.

"That's the ghost ship?" Marika's eyes were fixed on the image from the Bentenmaru's rear monitor, the experience completely different from a normal touchdown.

The destabilized rift in 3-D space was an extra-dimensional pocket where physics and relativity didn't apply. The rift grew inside the chronoquake, spitting plasma like flares from the surface of a star as the massive object inside continued to emerge.

"Twenty-four kilometers long, seven kilometers wide at its thickest point...nothing special if it were natural, but that's huge for an ancient, pre-FTL ark ship." Hyakume pieced together what seemingly reliable information he could from the displays full of errors and false readings. "It matches the data from the reports. It's the Golden Ghost Ship."

"Are things stabilizing?" Marika asked to no one in particular, focused more on the space around the black silhouette that had appeared from the arcing, red-hot plasma than on the object itself. "Is that really part of this universe?"

"Picking up high energy readings!" Hyakume shouted in tandem with a shrill alarm. Typically it would have been a response to an enemy ship preparing to fire. "The rift's discharging its distortion!"

"Minimize our exposure to the ghost ship!" Coorie ordered. "The energy's going to radiate in every direction. It'll be a shockwave the equivalent of a supernova!"

"Taking it on the bow!" Kane wrenched the Bentenmaru around in a half-circle. "Let's hope the hull and the engines make it!"

If the ship were to be struck by a shockwave, taking it on the streamlined and reinforced bow—rather than on the stern with its exposed engines—would offer a better chance of absorbing or deflecting it. Just as the Bentenmaru's bow spun to face the chronoquake with the aid of its inertial dampeners, the spatial rift practically exploded, releasing a powerful burst of light energy.

"Here it comes!"

Light, radiation—the hyperspace shockwave transformed into every possible form of energy as it overflowed into normal space. The Bentenmaru's bow was awash in the energy discharge, the equivalent of being struck directly by a dreadnought-class beam.

The cacophonous bridge erupted in its loudest alert yet; every warning light that could flashed.

A moment later the bridge plunged into darkness.

"The damage report..." Marika's voice could be heard saying as the dying wails of distant alarms still seeping into the bridge, "...can wait. For now let's get enough of the Bentenmaru's systems back up that we can keep flying."

The bridge instrument panels and displays returned to life underneath the flashing emergency lighting.

"We're good, we were able to isolate some systems before the overload shut them all down," Coorie explained as she brought the bridge systems back online. "We should be able to get recirculators, radar, and sensors back up without any problems. Unfortunately, communications and weapons might not have made it in time."

Hyakume winced, his face looking like a squashed frog. "Communications crashed. We might have saved our last settings, but if not we'll have to reset them from scratch."

"The only person we could contact out here anyway is that Serenity battleship." Marika checked the position of the battleship on the proximity display, which was showing clear space—a drastic change from just a few moments before. "Are our combat systems down too?"

"The connections to radar and sensors were severed," Schnitzer reported with a grimace. "Resetting them now. If we do get into a fight with that battleship, I doubt we'll have access to anything other than main guns and missiles."

"Verify our current position, and whether or not the chronoquake has dissipated!"

"It looks like that last energy burst cleared out the surrounding area. We have a clear line of sight on both the battleship and the ghost ship."

As Marika listened to Coorie's report, she remembered their mission. "We can see the ghost ship, can we move? If so, set a course for the ghost ship, full speed!"

"Roger!" Kane did a basic check of the ship's motive systems and, confirming that there was no serious damage, adjusted the Bentenmaru's heading and pushed the ship forward. "Setting course for the Golden Ghost Ship! Where are we going to dock with it?"

"Um." Marika looked at the giant, black silhouette captured on the monitor. The image was unenhanced—like looking with the naked eye—and she couldn't make out any fine details. "According to the reports there should be a docking port near the middle of the hull; try to learn what we can as we approach, see if we can make it out."

"Those were old blueprints, who knows what it's like now." Hyakume expanded the image of the ghost ship's midsection, skeptical. "It should be around here, I think. Don't know how we're going to dock or get on board unless it decides to let us, though..."

"The battleship is moving!" Coorie yelled. "It's...not going after the ghost ship!? They're on a direct course for us!?"

The door to the bridge began to manually slide open, just as the last of the extinguished captain's chair control panels returned to life. The hatch, it's power severed, opened slowly to the sound of the gears of a manual crank; when it was half-open, the pint-sized Gruier slipped through and onto the bridge.

"What all just happened?"

"Ah, sorry." Coorie glanced at Misa, working the crank on the other side of the door, and turned her eyes toward the diagram of the ship's internal power systems. "We still don't have combat back up, I didn't even get to the power for doors and corridors. Did you have any trouble getting back?"

"The whole ship went dark on our way here." Gruier hunched over the observer seat, reading what displays she could. "I'd probably have gotten lost if Misa hadn't been with me; I don't think I even have a pocket flashlight. Is that...the Golden Ghost Ship?"

Gruier's eyes were drawn to the giant, black silhouette looming prominently on the observer seat display. The once silver hull of the massive generation ship had been scorched over the years by cosmic rays and weathered untold meteor showers and stellar winds until it had turned a solid, filthy black.

"It still looks mostly like it did in the data from the last survey," Hyakume said, summarizing what information the sensors could glean. "We've found the ghost ship. Now we just need to capture it."

"Bringing communications back online," Coorie relayed. "Regular comms first—" Before she could even finish speaking a bell rang, reminiscent of a phone call. She muttered. "Of course they're calling us."

"Who!?"

"Who else would be trying to urgently get a hold of us at a time like this besides the people right in front of us?" Coorie read the data from the message's sender off the communications display. "Origin: Serenity Defense Force Navy Flagship Queen Serendipty. Sender: Grunhilde Serenity?"

Gruier let out a wordless scream from the observer seat.

"Wait a minute, it lists an addressee. Recipient: Bentenmaru, Gruier Serenity."

"Grunhilde?" Marika said. The name resembled Gruier's.

"That's gutsy of her, pulling rank on the captain and the fleet's commander." Misa peered over Coorie's shoulder at the communications monitor once she'd finally opened the bridge hatch wide enough to get inside.

"Grunhilde Serenity..." Misa turned towards Gruier, who was frozen in place at the observer seat. "She's Serenity's eighth princess, as I recall?"

"My younger sister," Gruier finally squeezed out, her voice frail. "She's still a child...I'd never thought she'd come all this way for the ghost ship."

"Gruier, switch." Marika rose from the captain's chair. "The message is for you, right? You should be in the captain's chair."

"...all right," Gruier answered reluctantly, moving away from the observer seat where she'd been hovering.

"You said the battleship is coming after us, rather than the ghost ship?"

"That last shockwave must have knocked out all their recon pods. They may be trying to get a read on things first, rather than head straight for the ghost ship." With both Misa and now Marika looking over her shoulder, Coorie dragged her finger through the holographic display, highlighting the Maracot-class battleship's projected course. "With only their own ship's sensors to take readings, we should have a big advantage now that we're closer."

"Until they call the rest of their escorts back, anyway." Marika tried to get an impression from the proximity display. At least for now there didn't appear to be any new ships within range of the Bentenmaru's sensors.

"Sorry, but we don't have time to sit back and scan the outside of the hull. Kane, get us next to the ghost ship as fast as possible."

"That's the plan. If worst comes to worst, we can still open up a hole and force our way in."

"Only as a last resort. Gruier, I don't intend to stop the Bentenmaru until you're on board the ghost ship. Is that good with you?"

"Be my guest." Gruier sat in the captain's chair, running her fingers through her hair, disheveled from the spacesuit's helmet. "I don't know how well this conversation is going to go. Don't stop until we've made it to the ghost ship."

"I think I'll be better off without the captain's uniform this time." Gruier stared straight ahead at the captain's chair communications monitor. "Patch me in, please."

The crest of the Serenity monarchy appeared on not only the captain's chair monitor, but every station's communications monitor, accompanied by a majestic fanfare. Gruier braced herself for whom she knew would appear next.

"Turn back, Gruier!" the young girl shouted. She had appeared on the monitor without so much as giving her name. "You must know what it is we've come here to do!"

"Whoa!" The girl's hair—the same glittering blond as Gruier's—was done up; she wore a uniform with no cap, and she glared at her sister through the monitor from beneath bristled eyebrows. "I'd always thought Gruier was cute, like a doll, but her sister's absolutely gorgeous!"

"Don't get carried away!" Coorie whispered to Marika, quietly enough that the microphones wouldn't pick her up, and poked at her. "Please try and focus on being a captain."

"Right, right."

"What's with the outfit, Hilde?" Gruier scowled at her sister through the monitor, her stolid expression betraying none of her distress from before. Grunhilde stood on the bridge of the Maracot-class battleship, the royal crest and the naval flag at her back. "Are you old enough to know what it means for a member of the royal family to don a uniform and board a warship?"

"One who wishes to rule must be able to lead the way in battle." The adult maxim flowed smoothly from Grunhilde's lips, her childish voice even more high-pitched than Gruier's. "Of course I know what it means. It's why I'm on the Queen Serendipity."

"Once we put on a uniform and board a ship, we assume responsibility for everything that happens afterward." Gruier shook her head solemnly. "You're being used, Grunhilde."

"I boarded this battleship of my own accord!" she snarled, her contempt clear in her expression. "I will not be lectured by someone who has let herself fall into piracy."

"I won't allow you to slander this ship or its crew."

"Enough!" Grunhilde scowled again at her sister through the monitor, as if she had just remembered her original intent. "Take your ship and go! If you do not, I will be forced to show you no quarter."

Marika looked to Gruier in the captain's chair. The princess's eyes were fixed on the monitor.

She made sure that Gruier could see her in the corner of her field of view, waving her arms and stabbing forward with her flexed digits. The Bentenmaru was heading on a direct course for the ghost ship.

"If I were the type to stand down simply because you asked me to, I'd have quit long before making it this far." Gruier stared back at her younger sister. "When you take command of a ship, you bear the responsibility for everything you do. Do you really understand what that means? Are you prepared to accept it?"

"I shall say this again, dear sister." Grunhilde's gaze fluttered momentarily to the side, as if something were being whispered to her off-camera. "Halt your ship now. If you do not, I will have no choice but to order that your pirate ship be stopped by force."

"You can't." Gruier looked down and shook her head, her expression one of sublime understanding.

"Yes I can! The Queen Serendipty's guns are primed and trained on your ship."

"You've never been instructed in naval combat, have you Grunhilde?" Gruier looked up at the monitor. "If we fight here, you'll be endangering the Golden Ghost Ship. Are you okay with that?"

"What!?" Grunhilde's face paled. She quickly looked around her and returned her gaze to the monitor. "Don't take me for some amateur, sister. Based on the current positions of the Queen Serendipity and your pirate ship, there's no risk of involving the Golden Ghost Ship."

"And that's what makes you an amateur." Gruier's lips curled into a smile. "It's true, the Queen Serendipity may not be in a position to strike the ghost ship. But what about me?"

"Gruier!" Grunhilde shrieked. "Do you realize what you're saying!?"

"But of course," Gruier confirmed. "I've known what I was doing ever since I boarded the Symphony Angel, since the day our grandfather ushered me from the palace."

"Please reconsider! Turn back!" Grunhilde's voice grew even shriller. "I didn't come all this way just to fight you!"

"I can't establish a link with the ghost ship!" Kane had taken up a direct course for the ship. "Not that you'd expect a response from a ship left to drift for fifteen years, but it's not even reacting to our hails! We might as well be approaching an asteroid rather than a ship."

"There's noise in the radar and sensors, I think that battleship is trying to jam us." Coorie's hands continued to work, jumping across the control panel. "Our cyberwarfare system still isn't back up, we can't retaliate...ah, there they go!" The radar display, showing both the ghost ship and the battleship approaching at high speed, was stippled with white noise.

"We've come this far, we're making this rendezvous even if we have to do it in the dark." Kane switched over to optical mode, unaffected by the jamming that was blocking the radar and sensors, and held the Bentenmaru on course. "Of course, I'm not quite sure what we're supposed to do once we've made it there."

"The ghost ship's central docking port!" Marika said. They'd considered it as a transfer point several times. "Just get us next to the ship. All we need to do is get inside, even if we have to pry it open!"

"Assuming it's like other ruins or derelicts, forcing our way inside might be the only option; are we okay with that? Didn't the last report say that the ship's interior was supporting an environment?"

"If we need it, there should at least be a makeshift docking port left behind by the other survey teams." Hyakume pored over the visual scans of the ghost ship collected by the Bentenmaru's sensors. "I haven't found any way of controlling the ship from the outside, at any rate. And even if there is one, with the internal power cut we'd need to connect an external line to feed it."

"Turn back, Gruier!" Grunhilde repeated through the monitor. "The Queen Serendipity's guns are locked on your pirate ship. Please, I'm begging you, don't make me fire!"

"I told you you were an amateur." Gruier stared at her sister over the communications monitor. "The Queen Serendipity is already engaged in cyberwarfare with my ship. The battle had already begun, before you aimed your guns, before you made your threats. Now do you understand what it is you're doing? Wearing the uniform, boarding the battleship, aiming its guns?"

"I do. So please, don't make me give the order to fire on you."

"Don't put the blame on me," Gruier scolded her. “Know that if you fire on me, I'll fire on the Golden Ghost Ship. There's still time. Return to the palace."

"Picking up a large energy signature!" Coorie shouted. The next moment the radar screen, white from noise and interference, erupted in a flash of light.

"Did they fire on us!?"

"Negative. It's omnidirectional, high-output radar from the ghost ship! What the heck? Even if it's not the tight wavelength used for fire control, it sure is powerful!"

"I thought the ship was supposed to be dead!?" Kane ran his eyes across the optical sensor display—showing the gulf between the Bentenmaru and the battleship, and the giant ghost ship in front of them—hoping to find some useful information. "It's still active after not being touched for fifteen years?"

"The ghost ship uses a recycling reactor." While being struck by the high-output radar—a brute force approach to ascertaining a situation regardless of the conditions—Coorie rapidly scanned for any other transmissions being made by the ghost ship. "It's not as efficient as our newer thermal reactors, and it eats up a lot of space, but if maintained and operated properly, it can keep supplying power for a thousand, two thousand years."

"...the lights are on."

The forward section of the ghost ship, which had until now remained a giant, dark shadow on the monitors, began to flash in a regular pattern. Across the giant generation ship running lights and other illumination started to switch on.

The massive ghost ship hung idly in space, its ring-shaped habitat section encircling the thin central core around which it was meant to rotate in order to provide artificial gravity through centrifugal force.

"I don't know if it's on a timer or if it's set to activate once it reemerges into normal space, but it certainly looks like the thing's alive."

"This is it...the Golden Ghost Ship," Gruier said, staring up at the giant ship on the monitor as it had probably been seen by countless survey teams in the past. "Our foundation...the ship that brought our first people to the Seven Jewels..."

"It's breaking into our comms!" Coorie shouted, picking up a data stream forcing its way through the Queen Serendipity's electronic interference. "Wow, an uncompressed double-digital transmission. How antiquated."

Marika looked surprised—she'd never even heard of such a data format before. "Can we decode it?"

"Don't worry. It's a simple decode, we'll be able to handle it just fine as long as we don't screw anything up. It's not a lot of data, but the transmission is loaded with plain text." Coorie ran the data through several transformation algorithms and flashed the body of the ghost ship's brute-force transmission up on the display.

"Whoa," Marika gasped. The text had been converted into Galactic Standard script, but it was in a form that she had only ever seen used in ancient writing, and she couldn't work out its meaning. "What is it?"

"The first two lines are the ship's name and owner. Serenity Interstellar Trading Corporation ship number one, the...Queen Serendipity?"

Peeking at Coorie's display, Marika and Misa saw the same name as the Maracot-class battleship, and turned to Gruier in the captain's chair.

Gruier nodded slowly. "The name is a tradition for Serenity ships."

"The rest is an identification code. It's a primitive IFF signal. It'll decide if we're friend or foe based on how we answer."

"How we answer?" Marika took another look at the functionally incomprehensible ancient message written in Galactic script. "What is it asking? What should we say?"

"Let me see it."

At Gruier's urging, Coorie forwarded the message to the captain's chair monitor.

"Use the keyboard. I've set it to accept input from there."

"...I've seen something like this before, in old letters." Apparently Gruier, with her specialized education, was able to make sense of the classical text. "It's asking for the visitor's name. If my name unlocked the survey teams' watcher network, then maybe..."

Gruier typed her full name into the keyboard. She took one last look at the display to ensure that she hadn't made any mistakes before sending it.

The reply was instantaneous.

"What is it now?"

"It's asking for my biometric verification. Give me the data we used to unlock the reports."

"Gruier!" Grunhilde shouted through the communications monitor, while Gruier proceeded with the verification protocol.  "Please, stop! Do you have any idea what it is you're doing!?"

"I know full well." Gruier watched from the corner of her eye as her data was transmitted to the ghost ship, and nodded.

"It worked!" Hyakume shouted. "The central docking port is opening. Take the ship in!"

"I'll be on my way now, Grunhilde." Their ship must have received the same message. Gruier stared at her younger sister's composed face on the monitor as it began to fill with noise. "If you want to stop me, I guess we'll see each other on board the ghost ship."

"Gruier!"

"This conversation is over." Gruier turned to Coorie. "Cut the transmission."

"Roger." She severed the communication circuit with the Queen Serendipity.

"Kane, hurry! We're picking up several small chronoquakes in the surrounding area that look like pre-drives. Get us to the ghost ship before those destroyers have us surrounded!"

"We've got confirmation on the ghost ship's midship flight deck!" Kane adjusted the Bentenmaru's course as they rapidly approached the massive ghost ship. "There's a large hatch opening. I don't know what's inside, but I'm taking us in!"

Chapter 8: The Golden Ghost Ship

Once, it traveled among the stars as the Queen Serendipity, an ark ship that brought its passengers to colonize new worlds; now it drifts helpless in space. A radical transformation.

The massive starship, from an age before artificial gravity and inertial dampeners, was built to be symmetrical in respect to the axis along which it traveled. The fore of the ship held the living quarters, a thin cylinder circled by numerous rings that would rotate slowly around the central axis as it moved through space. Centrifugal force provided the habitats with a false gravity, similar to that of a planet, to keep the inhabitants' physical condition from deteriorating on their long interstellar voyages.

The ship's aft held the engines, centered on the recycling Roschmann fusion reactors that powered the massive ship on its indeterminately long voyages. From an age when travel between stars was measured in lifetimes, the three Roschmann fusion reactors could operate almost indefinitely. Utilizing the most advanced technologies available at the time they were built and maintained and improved after the ship was launched, they were still in operation.

Smaller vessels were able dock with the ship directly, while larger vessels could dock through a flight deck near the middle of the ghost ship, constructed in the space between the forward living quarters and the rearward engines.

"The flight deck's separate from the rest of the hull's construction." With the internal lights extinguished, the only illumination was the flashing warning lights on the entry hatch as it crept open; the inside was simply a void. Hyakume offered up an explanation as he focused radar, infrared, and other sensors to try to peer into the depths of the opening. "According to the records, the central flight deck was added when the ship transitioned from an ark ship to a ferry. As you can see, the entire ghost ship is built to rotate slowly around the central axis in order to produce artificial gravity; there's nothing complex on the habitat section that might get in the way of it spinning, it keeps the hull simple and robust."

There were no guidance beacons or other navigational signals active on the ghost ship, other than those on the flight deck. Following the initial radar burst that had rendered the electronic interference temporarily ineffective, the ghost ship had remained almost totally silent, save for intermittent pulses of radar.

"As long as it was just putzing along between stars at sublight speeds, there weren't that many opportunities to launch or recover ships. The original launching platform was only large enough to accommodate the forward extremities of ships; it probably never saw use except to send out scouts whenever it arrived in-system. It may not seem that big compared to the rest of the ship, but it looks like its capacity was on par with a modern heavy carrier."

"That's pretty big," Marika said, watching as little by little the visual information they collected was appended to the diagram of the ghost ship. "But maybe a bit too small for the entire Bentenmaru?"

"Apparently the people who were supposed to use the ship when they converted it from an ark to a ferry thought so too. They anticipated regular use by barges and shuttles at their destinations, so they added a block with a launch deck big enough to accept even larger shuttles. That's the central flight deck that we're headed towards."

Hyakume highlighted the central block on the ghost ship's diagram on the main screen to make it easier to see.

"Both as an ark and as a ferry, the whole ship was built to slowly rotate as it traveled through space, but trying to dock with something that's spinning around like a rotisserie ain't exactly ideal. When they added the mooring block they attached it directly to the ring-shaped rails that surround the ship's central core, so it would stay fixed in place regardless of the ship's rotation.”

Large ships were built to spend their entire lives in space, as true in the past as it was now, and operation in zero-gravity was a fundamental part of that. Having the flight deck rotate along with the rest of the ship would have complicated the launching and recovery of ships, making them harder to control by adding the unnecessary variable of centrifugal force to the docking process.

"Of course now the whole ghost ship is still, everything inside is gravityless, including the flight deck. But it's still connected to the ship's internal corridors, so we won't have to worry about getting from the deck to the rest of the ship." Hyakume waited a breath before adding, "Now it's just a matter of how it's put together."

"The flight deck's door's open." The portal to the flight deck gaped like an open mouth on the surface of the hull. Kane brought the Bentenmaru in line with the door and illuminated it using the ship's powerful searchlights. "Are we going inside?"

"Scanning now."

Hyakume and Coorie gathered up every sensor that seemed useful and began to take readings on the flight deck's entrance and interior. The focused beams of the searchlights on the Bentenmaru's bow lit the inside.

"We'll just fit," Hyakume said, calculating the dimensions of the opening using laser measurements. "As long as we retract our antenna masts, it looks like it's just wide and deep enough for the Bentenmaru to make it inside."

"Is there enough space to turn around once we're in there?" helmsman Kane asked.

"No clue! From the outside, there should be enough room for a ship the size of the Bentenmaru to turn around, but we don't know what the construction is like on the inside."

"Fine, I'll back us in!" They were still facing the flight deck head-on; Kane began to take the Bentenmaru into a one hundred and eighty degree turn.

"Are you okay doing that?" Marika shouted at Kane across the bridge, the Bentenmaru spinning its tail towards the ghost ship without slowing its approach.

"The idea that it's easier to control a ship in space while facing forward is just a trick of the mind! We're close enough that I could take us in blindfolded. Retracting antenna masts!"

During flight the Bentenmaru deployed masts in every direction, equipped with antennas and sensors. The masts, which were collapsed and stowed when entering ports with limited space or when approaching other ships to forcibly dock with them, began to slowly retract from left and right, top and bottom.

"What about the Serenity fleet? Have the destroyers shown up yet?"

"We can't make out much thanks to the battleship's jamming, but they should be here by now," Coorie responded, adjusting the scan settings to match the ship's new facing. "Although it looks like they were careful to touchdown a good distance away. It'll be a moment before they form up with the battleship."

"What about the battleship?"

"It's continuing its approach...it looks like they've passed the ghost ship's verification too."

"I wonder what would've happened if they couldn't pass it?"

"Yeah...usually when an IFF tags you as a foe that means you'll get fired upon. Does the ghost ship even have any weapons that could take on a modern battleship?"

"Upper antenna masts one and two, port, starboard, and lower antenna masts all retracted!"

"Right, time to take us in!" Kane used the retro-thrusters and inertial dampeners to quickly slow the Bentenmaru after they'd reached the ghost ship. He cut the main drive's output to a minimum to avoid scorching the flight deck, and absorbed the rest of the ship's speed using the inertial dampeners.

"Huh, room to spare all around." Kane carried his eyes across the display overlaying the Bentenmaru's front profile on top of the entrance and made minor adjustments to the ship's facing. "And there's some wiggle room once we're inside too!"

The Bentenmaru's rear-facing sensors and spotlights illuminated the depths of the flight deck.

"We're going in!"

"Hold on Kane, we're moving too fast to dock!"

"These are combat conditions, don't sweat it!" With a rapid turn the Bentenmaru pointed its stern at the entrance and began to dock with the ghost ship's flight deck. The ancient hangar's interior was filled with movable piers and maintenance machinery, all illuminated by the Bentenmaru's searchlights and sensors.

"Final deceleration!" With a rapid drop in speed on par with that of a high-speed combat situation, Kane brought the ship to a perfect stop inside the flight deck, all the while keeping the Bentenmaru's facing steady; it was like magic.

"Look at that, not even a scratch."

"The entry hatch is starting to close!" Coorie's head shot up. "Kane, drop the ship back another ten meters or else the Bentenmaru's nose is going to get flattened!"

"What!?" Kane shifted the Bentenmaru back even further with a momentary burst from the inertial dampener system.

The Bentenmaru's tail slid into a maintenance system jutting from inside the ghost ship's flight deck, the muffled noise making its way even to the bridge. Directly in front of the bow the entryway to the hangar slowly slid shut, the thick cross-section of the doors visible.

"Internal scan complete," Hyakume announced dully. He switched over the main screen to show the internal layout of the flight deck the Bentenmaru had just entered.

"You're a little late!"

"Like I could help it! The whole system got knocked out by some bizarre phenomenon, and somebody decided to put off rebooting the proximity sensors!"

"My mistake, I'll rethink the priority for the next time we need to reinitialize the whole ship."

"We're inside the ghost ship..."

The light emitted by the Bentenmaru's searchlights reflected off the insides of the enclosed flight deck, not a single other light visible. They could finally make out the internal layout, old crane arms and evenly spaced docking ports sized to accommodate everything from small ships to ones as large as the Bentenmaru.

"Huh, is that an old survey team ship?"

The flight deck looked like it could hold up to three ships; one space held a still-twisted wreck fixed in place by a crane. The terribly outdated, ragged spindle of a frame was missing patches of its outer hull; it looked to be a cruiser, significantly older than the Bentenmaru, from a time when they had still mounted battering rams.

"Whoa, amazing! There are barely any ships with rams left, they all sank in battle. It's just a hulk, but I bet it'd be worth your while to check it out."

"Right now we're here for a ship that's even more of a relic," Marika said, fixing the excited Coorie with an exasperated look.

The screen showed a cross-section of the doors in front of the ship; as they came together the complicated teeth interlocked to form an airtight seal. Coorie added something, as if as an afterthought. "Oh, now we're locked inside."

"'Oh!?' Maybe we should think about, I don't know, blasting through the door so we can get out?"

"If we're not careful we could damage not just the deck, but the entire ship."

"Damage report?" Marika scanned the bridge while yet another alarm sounded. "I'm pretty sure our rear end just took a beating."

"Don't sweat it, we weren't moving that hard, it shouldn't have penetrated to the structure." Kane switched the helm's display to inspect for damage. "It looks like whatever we smacked into had some weight to it—a crane truss or a joint maybe. Sandaime, how do the nozzles look?"

"The sensors aren't seeing anything that looks like damage to the structure, at least," Sandaime—who was in charge of the ship's damage control—answered, his face stumped. "But it's possible something could have found its way inside one of the nozzles, and it's definitely going to leave a mark on the tail."

"All right, next. Situation report, what's it look like out there?"

"No unusual energy readings," Coorie answered. "It looks like most of the energy buildup around the hatch is gone. Antennas aren't picking up anything strange either, and probably not because we've got them retracted. I can still see what looks like the radar from the Serenity fleet outside, flying in all directions."

"Can we see outside?"

"Not directly." Coorie switched back and forth between control panels, searching for a sensor she could use. "The gyroscope and inertial nav system are working, so we'll be able to tell if the ghost ship moves, but we can't see what the fleet outside is up to. If you're okay with big levels of error, we can at least make guesses based on the data that seeps through the flight deck's walls."

"Gruier, is there any chance the Serenity fleet will attack us in here?”

Gruier jumped and scrambled out of the captain's chair, apparently ceding it back to Marika. "The Golden Ghost Ship is invaluable, not to mention the cornerstone of Serenity's founding. It's unthinkable that they would attack it, even with the Bentenmaru hiding inside."

"Okay, so we can worry about outside later, now what about inside? Is there anything we can connect to, get information on the ghost ship's interior?" Marika looked around the inside of the flight deck; the remaining dock also looked to be strewn with assorted scrap as well as another slender hulk. Space was ample, but there wasn't a single thing moving, nor a single lit light. There was, however, plenty of light reflected from the Bentenmaru's searchlights, and what she could make out looked more like an abandoned building than ancient ruins.

"The doors opened and closed, so I imagine there's at least minimal power, but it doesn't look like our antennas are going to be of any use." Coorie began a visual analysis of magnified images of the empty docking port. "We'll need to do a check of the area, and we should probably do a visual inspection of the tail while we're at it. I think we'll have better luck finding a way out if we can locate a data hookup. Our analysis so far hasn't shown there to be any dangerous emissions or unusual heat fluctuations, so it looks like we can get away with minimal shielding; you should be fine leaving the ship in just a spacesuit."

"How do we get from the flight deck to the rest of the ship?"

"There's an elevator shaft that connects to the rest of the ship." Hyakume overlaid the schematics of the ghost ship from the reports with the newest information collected by the Bentenmaru. "Still not sure where the cage is, but even if it doesn't work you should still be able to access the ship through the shaft."

"I guess it's now or never." Marika turned toward Gruier at the captain's chair. "Well now, Princess. We didn't exactly capture it so much as get captured by it, but we've made it to the Golden Ghost Ship."

"I'm much obliged." Gruier closed her eyes and took a deep breath before looking around the flight deck through the captain's chair display.

"The Golden Ghost Ship...I've finally made it." She stared up at Marika. "You needn't worry about the rest. I have a minor errand that I need to complete once I'm inside. Could you wait for me somewhere safe?"

There it is, Marika thought, watching the faces of the bridge crew. They all continued to go about their business as they stole glances at Gruier and Marika.

"Somewhere safe. So stay here, basically?" Marika nonchalantly folded her arms and cocked her head. "If we were to head outside the Serenity fleet would almost certainly give us trouble, and we can't leave anyway without breaking down the door. I guess the Bentenmaru will wait here until you're finished with what you have to do."

Gruier narrowed her eyes and looked at Marika, a pained expression on her face.

"I imagine things might become dangerous. I think you would be safer outside."

"The ghost ship survived inside the hazardous Phantom Passage for two thousand years, I doubt there's any place safer than inside it." Marika returned Gruier's look with a smile. "And besides, if Captain Gonzaemon were here, I hardly think he would leave you here by yourself, don't you agree?"

"Well, yes, but..." As Gruier attempted to come up with a retort, she suddenly looked around the bridge in surprise. "…wait, what's that?"

"Are we shaking?" Marika glanced back at Coorie's console as she put the sensation into words. "Did the ghost ship just move?"

"It's not the ghost ship!" Hyakume shouted. "That was from a chronoquake! The surrounding space is starting to vibrate unstably. What the hell is going on out here!?"

"A chronoquake!?" Marika unconsciously scanned the inside of the flight deck where the Bentenmaru was docked.

"That's..." She remembered the wreck of the ancient cruiser held in place by the crane arm. "Is the ghost ship making another jump somewhere!?"

"Could be," Coorie said casually, making a halfhearted attempt to cross-reference the information from the sensors. "It looks less like it's making a jump to a specific location, and more like the chronoquake is dragging it back to some arbitrary point in subspace."

"Subspace!? Where's that!?"

"Another dimension, slightly different than the one we're in. But let's not jump to conclusions. The Bentenmaru is inside another ship, our sensors may not be getting accurate data."

"I don't care, guess if you have to! And we need an anchor!" Marika screamed as she tried to formulate a plan. "Use a crane, the docking arm, whatever, just secure the ship! If this thing jumps and the Bentenmaru isn't tied down we're going to take a beating!"

"Roger." Schnitzer ran his fingers across the control panel. A dull shock traveled through the bridge, like something had been launched. "Bow and stern anchors secured."

Anchors shot out from the Bentenmaru's bow and stern, pointed rams that broadened into flat throats. Tethered to their electromagnetic catapults by staunch silicon-steel wires, the anchors penetrated an elevated crane arm and a presumably secured cargo container to affix themselves to the flight deck's interior walls; the wires winched back to secure and stabilize the Bentenmaru's hull.

"If the ship does jump while we're inside, we should try to keep the Bentenmaru in position." Kane returned frantically to his flying posture, hands wrapped around the yoke. "Adjusting inertial dampeners! Sandaime, I need you to cover me if I'm too slow!"

"Roger!"

"The ghost ship is jumping." Following Coorie's announcement, the flight deck was buffeted by an unnatural turbulence, as if it were sinking from stable space to somewhere else. "...this isn't a normal jump."

The undulations that moved through the bridge were unlike those of a normal hyperspace jump; it felt like not only the Bentenmaru's hull, but also the walls of the flight deck, were converging in on them.

"But that would make sense; something with this much mass and no FTL engines of its own getting pulled into hyperspace wouldn't feel at all like a modern jump."

"So the ghost ship is the epicenter?"

"No matter how you look at it, the energy readings aren't large enough." Not knowing how to explain it to Marika, Coorie pointed at the rows of complex formulas. "We only recorded low energy levels when the ghost ship appeared; for a ship this size, that would mean basically depleted and drifting. Just enough for the reactor running at minimum to keep the ship going and maintain basic life support, though I imagine moving the ship without inertial dampeners must be pretty rough."

"So the chronoquakes occurring around the ship aren't the ship's doing?"

"I can't rule out the possibility that they're being controlled by the ghost ship, but there's not enough energy from the ship alone. The fabric of space around here is so unstable, and the chronoquakes so frequent, there must be some mechanism somewhere that's behind it all."

"It jumped!" The vibrations affecting the Bentenmaru, secured to the flight deck by its two anchors, were canceled out by Kane's controls. The peculiar sensation of being thrust from crest to valley, however, was felt by the Bentenmaru's entire crew.

"Where to?"

"Unknown!" Hyakume replied immediately, to which Marika reflexively snapped back.

"How can you make a hyperspace jump and not know where to? I don't care how big the margin of error is, I don't care if you have to guess, just work it out!"

"Like I'm supposed to know! We're so far removed from reality that the dimensional compass is throwing a tantrum and the numbers on the superstring chronometer are spinning like reels on a slot machine. I don't know where we jumped to, but I can tell you it's not hyperspace!"

"We were swallowed up by the chronoquake." Coorie's deadpan struck the ears of the entire bridge. "The ghost ship simply returned to the other side of the rift it emerged from. It's hard to tell from inside, but I bet we're drifting through a subspace pocket superimposed on the Phantom Passage."

"What!? Why, how!?"

"Subspace stealth, a way of throwing the existential axis off-tilt, I don't really know, but they've probably been using some trick like that to keep the ghost ship hidden in another dimension. Even if people know that it's a ghost ship, no one can board it or run off with it if doesn't exist in their dimension."

"Well then how did we get on board!?"

Instead of answering Marika's question, Coorie looked at the captain's chair, at Gruier. Marika grasped her answer.

"...because we have the Princess with us?"

"I wouldn't worry, all the survey teams made it back in one piece, we should be able to make it home as long as we don't do anything too reckless." Coorie returned to her analysis. "Now that the ghost ship has entered subspace, there's probably little worry that we'll be attacked by the Serenity fleet. Let's keep collecting and analyzing data so we can find our way back. In the meantime, Captain..." Coorie glanced again toward Gruier at the captain's chair, so slightly that, had Marika not been standing directly next to her, she probably wouldn't have noticed.

"Understood." She nodded and left Coorie's station to approach the captain's chair. "Now, Gruier, let's go finish what you came here to do."

Gruier's eyes danced several times back and forth between Marika and the state of the flight deck shown at the captain's chair.

"I would say that I'll go alone, but you probably won't listen, will you?"

"Nope." Marika glared at Gruier, almost pleading. "A captain is responsible for her ship, for her crew, and for her passengers. Who could ever forgive me if I were to do something so dangerous as allowing a princess to board a ghost ship all by herself?"

Under normal circumstances the ghost ship's flight deck should have been filled with atmosphere, but no matter how long they waited there was no indication that it would be supplied with air.

By the time that Gruier—with Misa's assistance—had donned her spacesuit and left the rear hangar, the Bentenmaru's crew had already begun work outside the ship.

"I was worried when you said this was your first time wearing a spacesuit, but you seem to be doing okay." Marika, also clad in a lightweight spacesuit, called out to Gruier over a private channel. "You're not having any trouble breathing? Nothing feels forced?"

"I'm fine." Gruier seemed to swim as she lifted away from the Bentenmaru, a moment later losing all sense of up and down. As she lost track of both her facing and her positioning, she was struck by the illusion that she was falling into something not quite distinct.

"This way is up." Marika skirted in front of Gruier, clutching her firmly by the shoulders and pointing away from the Bentenmaru's deck. "This way is down. You can't tell which way you're facing in zero-gravity, up and down is what you tell yourself. Right now I'm facing up, right now I'm on my side, got it?"

"...I'm fine." Behind her face shield Gruier seemed to stifle a scream, swallowed, and forced a smile. "Right now I'm facing up. Marika is right in front of me."

"Like that. The ghost ship isn't spinning, it's going to be completely weightless inside, will you be okay?"

"I don't think it will be a problem," Gruier answered uncertainly. "I've been to space many times, but if I knew I'd be spending this much time in zero-gravity I would have spent a little more time training."

"You'll get used to it quick. The lack of force, it's probably the next most natural feeling in the world after being in water." Marika reached her suited hand out to Gruier. "If you'd do me the honor, Princess. Let's make our way onto the legendary ship."

"I don't need your help." Smiling but seemingly on the verge of tears, Gruier grabbed Marika's hand through her suit. "This was something I needed to accomplish on my own, but all I've done is keep relying on others for help."

"It's always okay to ask for help, when you can't get something done on your own." Marika gently squeezed Gruier's slender hand and slowly lifted her tiny body forward, rolling with the recoil and planting her feet on the side of the hull. "I bet that's what Gonzaemon was thinking when he invited you onto the Bentenmaru. I'm going to jump."

Pushing off the Bentenmaru with both legs, Marika swam into the expanse of the flight deck. She traveled in a straight line, landing in the middle of a work space illuminated by a bevy of industrial lights hauled down from the Bentenmaru.

A spacesuited Hyakume was already at work, using the equipment that he and the crew had set up.

"Hold on a sec. We're about to open the door."

The giant hatch—five meters to a side with rounded corners—was surrounded by analyzers and laptop computers, writhing with bundles of thick tubes and slender cables trailing from the Bentenmaru's hull.

"Will it open?"

"Don't worry, the lock's not that complicated. We've already got power running to it, we were just about to try taking a look inside."

"Got it." Schnitzer, who'd entered the flight deck in his usual suitless appearance, pulled open an access panel installed beside the giant hatch. Gruier was startled, and nearly took a step back. "Now we can patch in." His mouth moved normally, his voice still carrying over the spacesuits' radios regardless of the vacuum.

"I'd heard that cyborgs don't need spacesuits, but it's always surprising to see it for yourself." Marika skipped away from Gruier's side, coming to a stop with her hand braced against the panel's cover. "So you think we can connect to the ghost ship?"

"Coorie's working on it on the bridge." Schnitzer pointed at the chunky cable that had been dragged from the Bentenmaru, secured squarely to the floor through an abundance of connectors. "We have a usable current running from the Bentenmaru to the flight deck. We should be able to connect to the ship after we get the equipment to power up."

Schnitzer plunged head first into the access panel, one hand gripping a bundle of power cables. He opened up another panel further inside and connected the cables.

"The connection's jury-rigged, try not to trip over the cable. Hyakume, gimme some juice."

"Aye." Hyakume made his way over to a large energy pack, fixed to the wall so that it wouldn't float away. He threw several levers, disabled the safety, and turned a dial. "We're at two hundred...you need more?"

"That'll do." The strips of lighting surrounding the massive hatch signaled their operation with a muffled glow. They flashed red, then quickly transitioned to green. "It's alive."

Schnitzer's eyes dropped to the control panel next to the opened access panel. It was illuminated as well, its blinking lights surrounding some sort of central figure.

"What is it?"

"There's another hatch past this one." Hyakume pressed a stethoscope-like device to the hatch and moved an adjuster dial. "There's vacuum on the other side of the first layer, but the door after that might be an airlock. There's a high probability that the air has enough pressure to support life."

"Can we get it open?"

"That's what we're here for." Schnitzer opened a large access panel next to the hatch. He reached in with his burly arm and pulled the lengthy lever inside.

The hatch, which had been flush with the wall, sank backwards. Once it was drawn inside it pivoted along two slanted tracks and yawned open.

"Assuming you can get air inside, the hatch is designed to stay in place without a lock."

The strip lighting embedded in the interior walls was also illuminated, likely having lit up along with that on the outside. A broad chamber opened up to the outside, about twice as deep as it was wide.

Inside they could see another hatch, similar in construction to the first.

"Follow me." Hyakume entered first and placed a penetrating analyzer against the surface of the second, closed hatch.

"Bingo! The other side of the hatch is pressurized to zero-point-eight atmospheres, twenty-four percent oxygen, seventy-four percent nitrogen, plus a smattering of inert gases. We won't be able to tell until we can check it out directly, but I'm not detecting any dangerous gases or emissions. Amazing. A ship this old spends fifteen years wedged outside normal space and it's still maintaining an environment that can support life."

"Gruier?" Marika, illuminated by the lights inside, peered into the corridor that connected the flight deck to the rest of the ship—it seemed to be meant for loading and unloading. "We're good to go."

"...let's go." Gruier entered the corridor alone, without grabbing Marika's hand, using the hatch as a handhold.

"Bridge to captain, Captain Marika, do you read?" Marika picked up Coorie's voice over the radio as she followed Gruier into the corridor.

"This is Marika, I read you." The communications were two-way, there was no need to press a talk button each time. Marika stopped at the grips installed behind the giant hatch and answered. "We were just about to enter the ship. Is something the matter?"

"We're not all the way there yet, but we're working on getting hooked up to the ghost ship so we can start pulling information from it. We've learned a lot, and there's one thing I think you should hear."

"What is it?"

"The ghost ship has three flight decks, more or less all the same as this one, arranged in a triangle around the central axis. It appears that there are signs that one of the other decks opened and closed."

Marika's eyes jumped ahead of her to Gruier. She had stopped at a set of steps built into the wall near the center of the corridor and was looking back up at Marika. She should have heard the same transmission.

"I'm sure you know what that means. We aren't the only ones on board the ghost ship. Based on the size of the deck I can't imagine they fit a whole Maracot-class battleship in there, but the Serenity fleet probably sent someone over on a shuttle or other small craft."

"We should assume they did. Do you have any idea how many or where they are are now?"

"Sorry, we aren't so connected that I can tell you what's going on throughout the entire ship. I imagine things will be easier once we've analyzed the system thoroughly enough that we can access the host computer; I'll contact you again once that happens."

"Keep at it."

"Let's hurry." Gruier softly touched down at the second hatch without waiting for the transmission between Marika and Coorie to end. "I suspect Grunhilde came on board with her flunkies. I won't let them have this ship."

The lift sat at the bottom of the elevator shaft, motionless.

The group descended down the gravityless shaft, entered the stalled lift through its ceiling, opened the airtight and still-unpowered door, and finally arrived inside the ghost ship.

The elevator landing, which connected to the flight deck through the elaborate shaft, looked like it had once served as a temporary loading dock. Old-fashioned shipping containers, variously shaped crates, and what looked to be pieces of machinery were all fixed to what would have been the floor if the ship were rotating.

Each block of the ship was separated by thick bulkheads, apparently standard construction for old-style, long-haul starships. They moved to the next storage space through a set of sealed double doors meant for human use, which closed shut behind them; Hyakume checked the air composition and pressure and signaled that it was okay for the group to remove their helmets.

"We don't know where we might run into a hostile party, we should treat this place like a battlefield. Which I guess would mean we're safer with our helmets on...so just be careful not to hit your head or get shot, I guess."

Hyakume checked the environmental analyzer on the upper left arm of his suit and gave a look around. The area was a turn bigger than the terminal at the elevator landing, but was likewise strewn with standardized shipping containers and large boxes of fabricated raw materials that had seemingly just been left there; he didn't notice anything conspicuous.

"So where to now?" Marika asked. Gruier, her blond hair tied up, blinked.

"We head for the engine room and the bridge, and retake control of the ghost ship?"

"Well." Marika looked apologetically at Hyakume and Schnitzer, her sad excuse for a boarding party. "With the Serenity team on board, I doubt there's any need for us to head to the engine room and restore power."

"No matter how much we're used to running an old pirate ship, working those ancient Roschmann reactors is outside our field of expertise. With Serenity's personnel on board, what would be the point in going all that way just to fight over control of it?"

"Yeah, it would be a waste of energy"

Gruier turned to look at Marika, as if she were about to blurt something out.

"If the Serenity fleet has no intention of destroying the ghost ship, then we're both here to do the same thing. Board the derelict, get power back up, and run it to the places that need it. If we both have the same goal, wouldn't it make sense to leave it to the people who know what they're doing?"

"That..." Gruier pulled off her helmet with a look of dissatisfaction. She left it attached at the back of her neck, the helmet resting on her back. "That may be the best course of action."

"We can skip taking over the bridge for the same reason. If the ghost ship is drifting through subspace, the Serenity boarding party would probably head for the bridge in order to get us back to normal space. Far from hindering the Bentenmaru, I think it's something we should be thanking them for."

"Isn't it possible that giving them control of the ghost ship might prove to be an inconvenience to the Bentenmaru?" The fabric of hyperspace still wasn't fully understood. Manipulating the ghost ship from the bridge, it might be possible to choose its touchdown point.

"It might be trouble if they choose to dump us out in the middle of a Serenity fleet firing squad." Marika thought for a moment. "But I don't think it'll be that difficult for the Bentenmaru, a single ship, to escape, and with you on board, we may be able to negotiate."

"That's true." Gruier offered a weak smile. "If it comes to it, and the Serenity fleet is still open to negotiating, then I guess I'll have to come up with something."

"Hey, why the grim look?" Marika gave Gruier an encouraging slap on the back. Gruier started to float away and let out a yelp before reaching for the wall to stop herself. "All I'm looking for is a happy ending where everyone goes home smiling. Even if we let the Serenity fleet take control of the ghost ship's engines and bridge for us, it doesn't mean the Bentenmaru can't hijack them later."

"You're right. If Grunhilde couldn't bring the whole battleship onto the ghost ship with her, the Bentenmaru should have the advantage in people and equipment."

Marika listened to Gruier and narrowed her eyes at her. "How many do you think your sister brought with her?"

"I don't know." Gruier cast her hand-held light around the giant storage space, still ensconced in darkness. The light landed on nothing. "She probably won't be any help in servicing or adjusting the engines, but it should still require a verified member of the royal family in order to take control of the bridge."

“This space is big and it doesn't look like there are any handholds, if you're going to jump, use this." Marika pointed the bulky, pistol-shaped light she was holding at Gruier. She turned the dial on the back of the light and pressed it down.

A four-bladed propeller appeared from the tip, encircling the light. She pulled the trigger and it began to spin with a faint whirr.

Marika pointed the light into the darkness and gently kicked against the warehouse floor. She began to fly across the gravityless space, dragged by the propeller attached to the light in her hand.

"Aha...this way you can move without using up any fuel." Gruier mimicked Marika and deployed the propeller from her own light, then pulled the trigger on the pistol grip. The thrust from the propeller as it began to spin lifted her body off the ground. She pointed the light at Marika,who floated ahead of her, and tightened her grip on the trigger. The propeller's rotation hastened, and the floating Gruier's course changed.

"Ah, ahh!"

Gruier immediately caught up to Marika with her brief head start, but with no way to stop herself she continued past her even after stopping the propeller. Marika, still floating in space, used her propeller-light to chase after Gruier.

"Be careful. There may be air, but it doesn't offer much resistance, and you can't stop yourself if you overshoot. If you want to stop, point the propeller in the opposite direction." Marika corkscrewed around until her back was facing the other way and spun the propeller to slow herself down. "Once you get used to it you can fly with a little more force, but take it easy until then. Now..."

Marika stared out across the vast space, what parts of it were illuminated by their lights. She casually resumed their conversation.

"Why does everything have to do with verifying the royal line?" Marika's question sent a sudden shiver down Gruier's spine. She pretended not to notice and carried on. "We needed it to access the survey reports, and to get on board the ghost ship. There must be something extremely important on board, right?"

"If you had something valuable, wouldn't you keep it somewhere where you can keep it safe?" Though they carried powerful industrial lights, they weren't enough to illuminate the entire warehouse. The propeller-light in Gruier's right hand pulled her forward, and she continued. "This ship is precious, it's the cornerstone of our nation's founding, don't you think they should have taken it back to Serenity and safeguarded it, rather than abandoning it here in this harsh region of space?"

Marika thought for a bit, then brought herself next to Gruier with a light squeeze of the trigger.

"I thought they lost track of it after it's last ferry voyage?" What had once been a giant warehouse space when it was still in use was now vacant, like a store preparing to close up shop. The smell of ionization—a form of sterilization, maybe—lingered heavily in the air. "Didn't they say that the first survey teams couldn't locate it?"

"The more recent survey teams were practically all able to make contact. After watching the Serenity fleet, I can only imagine that they knew the conditions necessary to make it appear. The survey teams...the palace, they must have already succeeded in taking control of it."

"This ship is huge, it can't move faster than light speed, it would probably be a pain to haul it back." Marika gave her propeller a rest and narrowed her beam of light, casting it far off into the distance. Seemingly forgotten containers and boxes of goods were stacked in a corner, but most of the space—which had likely once been a shipping warehouse—stood unused.

"There's so much I don't understand about how people with power think." Marika glanced next to her, where Gruier had been dragged by her propeller-light. "Do you know why they left the ghost ship to drift, why they didn't recover it?"

"What if, no matter how important the ghost ship is, there were something on board that they didn't want close to them." Gruier stared off into the darkness, beyond where their lights could reach, and gently drifted forward. "This ship may be historic, but what if it came with something that could cause trouble, something that would be better off where no one could get their hands on it? So they claim it's cursed, like a haunted house, to make sure that people stay away unless it's truly needed. People have been doing that for ages, haven't they?"

"A haunted house..." Gruier was staring straight ahead. Marika tried to read her expression. "You mean it wasn't just rumors that made it into a ghost ship, it was Serenity's monarchy?"

"What if the whole thing were just a ploy? Let the ship loose in the Phantom Passage, only to be spotted at random thanks to the chronoquakes, let the rumors about a ghost ship spread. Who benefits from this ship being called a ghost ship?" The girl turned her socialite smile on Marika as the propeller dragged her along. "This ship is important. Don't you think it's odd that the palace would let the rumors calling it a ghost ship persist for so long?"

"History does come off as more charming when it's a little mysterious," Marika agreed with a satisfied smile. "My history teacher, Mr. Gavacho, likes to say that. They even sent out search parties; if the palace had wanted to stop it from being called a ghost ship, they could have. You're saying they kept quiet to stop people from talking about it?"

"Possibly. They tried to keep any discussion about the ghost ship from leaking out—even the royal survey teams' reports are highly classified."

A giant, towering wall appeared before the two of them. Marika halted her propeller, widened her beam, and ran her light across the sealed bulkhead, thick and covered with padding.

"The living quarters are up ahead." Gruier carefully reoriented her propeller and landed where the bulkhead met the warehouse floor. A section of the bulkhead held a small, sealed hatch, meant for people rather than freight.

Gruier ran her fingers across the embedded control panel. The hatch should have opened and closed automatically, but there was no response, not even a light; the power appeared to be cut.

Marika cut her propeller and located her attendant crew members by their lights. Schnitzer illuminated Gruier and the sealed hatch with the intense searchlight attached to the barrel of the heavy machine gun he carried.

"We gonna need to do some more safe cracking?"

"I'm sure we can handle it." Hyakume landed next to them, back turned as he carefully decelerated, his propeller-light pointed in the opposite direction. "It might take a while, but now that we're inside there won't be any locks that need the royal family's verification. If we do run into any, I imagine whatever's behind them is gonna be trouble."

"Go ahead and open it...what do you mean by trouble?"

"I'm sure you know." Following behind them was a spacesuited Misa; she matched her speed to the floating Marika. "Whatever it is the Princess was after when she stowed away and asked us to hunt down the ghost ship. I bet if we go even deeper into the secure heart of the ship, where the cold sleep chambers are, that we might come across even stricter authentication."

"That must be it." Marika recalled the blueprints of the ghost ship from the survey teams' reports and glanced at Gruier, who watched as Hyakume and Schnitzer work on the sealed door.

"All right, got it!" Schnitzer's reinforced arms used their inhuman strength to break through the formerly automated portal, and the group proceeded through.

They broke through a second sealed hatch—meant to make the block-constructed starship that much more survivable—and had just opened the third leading to the habitat section's airlock when suddenly the ghost ship's internal lights came on.

"I'm guessing that means they've either got the engine room or the bridge back up and running."

Hyakume punched a code to unseal the now powered hatch into the attached control panel. Marika quickly slipped past the half-opened door and entered the habitat block.

The massive ship's habitat block, which was built to rotate around the ship's central axis in order to provide artificial gravity through centrifugal force, was built up from the outside, away from the rotational axis. The main part of the ship, its core, only rotated at a low speed, and the gently curved floors near the center were filled with the machinery that kept the ship's life support system running.

"Whew, would you look at that." The lights were dim but still functional, illuminating a machine house much smaller than the warehouses they had just left, closer in size to the Bentenmaru's hangar deck. The corridor leading straight ahead was lined on either side with transparent windows, meant to make visible the massive machinery separated by the sealed bulkheads installed at fixed intervals. "The life support system must be built to operate at zero- or low-G."

Hyakume unfurled an electronic-paper display from somewhere and juxtaposed the schematics taken from the reports with their current position. "These ancient machines are bulky and inefficient, but they were made with safety in mind, built to keep going for as long as they needed to. Looks like they still run, even."

He zoomed in on a section of the schematics and looked out at the mounds of machinery that loomed over the vast space, lit by strips of lighting on either side of the hallway. "This area is the power uplink to the engines in the rear, it controls the buffer tanks, decons, purifiers, and composition regulators for the recirculators that maintain the atmosphere inside the ship. The sub-bridge is close by too, but the main bridge is all the way at the tip of the bow, as well as the launching port from back when it was a ferry."

"Is it far?" Marika strained her eyes down the corridor until her vision was blocked by a lowered bulkhead. Judging by the overview of the ghost ship from the reports and their current location, there should have been quite a distance until the ship's forward terminus.

"If you rushed and flew there, it would take you half an hour or so." There was no need to waste time or energy walking in zero-gravity, but there was still a limit to how fast the propeller-lights could move.

"We don't have that much time, let Serenity handle it." Marika looked at the hulking machines that lay beyond the transparent, multilayered panels. Scattered, slowly blinking lights and indicators signaled activity. "This was a generation ship, aren't there any parks or natural areas?"

Hyakume pointed towards the floor of the corridor. "They'd need gravity, if there were anything like that they'd probably be on the outer habitat ring. But who knows how many centuries it's been since the ship stopped spinning. Even if the engine room kept supplying power to the circulation system, any foliage, anything natural that they brought up with them would probably be completely lost by now. Without convection the atmosphere recirculators turn into air conditioners, and everything starts to stagnate."

"Huh...everything stops in zero gravity." Marika turned to Gruier. "So, where to? Straight for the sleeper block in the center of the ship?" The ship's core was designated for holding passengers in suspended animation; it was the safest place in case of a disaster, where they might be able to survive.

"...so you figured it out, then?" Gruier lifted softly off the floor and began to move forward with her propeller-light, the light switched off.

"It doesn't matter what someone's hiding, if it's important to them, they're going to put it in the safest place they can, right?" Marika spun her own propeller-light and chased after Gruier. "And the safest place on the ghost ship is probably the sleep chambers at the center."

"If there are any ancient treasures or art on board, they'd likely be there," Misa added, lagging slightly behind. "If the lights are on, then we should assume that the ship's monitors have been reactivated too. Anyone who's curious about our location probably already knows it. If you know where we're headed, we should hurry."

"I wish I could take some time to explore the ship used by my ancestors, but I guess there isn't time for that now."

The strip lighting-lit corridor came to a six-way intersection, including branches left and right, up and down. Gruier discerned core from rim by the subtle differences in the angles of the left and right machine houses and turned coreward without hesitation, her propeller-light carrying her forward. The corridor leading toward the outside of the ship was blocked by a lowered bulkhead, cutting off access to the external habitat blocks.

Gruier walked straight along the descending corridor, tapping her empty left hand against the wall, her sights set on the ship's core. Both sides continued to be fitted with the transparent laminate material, the point of which was apparently to make visible the massive machinery on the other side.

"This section would have been a low-gravity area while the ship was in flight." Misa kicked off against the three-dimensional intersection and changed her course. "The whole thing rotates and uses the force pushing outward in lieu of gravity, so the pull decreases the further inward you go. It's a good place to put something big."

"But if you want a machine that works in zero- or low-gravity, design and maintenance become that much harder." Hyakume's eyes skirted along the massive and complex tangle of pipes and tanks beyond the windows. "It's wild to think they built something like this and kept it running in an age before anti-gravity and inertial dampeners."

"I've heard that zero-gravity isn't just good for building giant things, but for storage too." The corridor leading to the ship's core had a gentle curve. Gruier deftly adjusted the angle of her propeller-light as she continued along the passage, strip lighting spaced evenly between floor and ceiling. "An object on a planet will fall apart or lose its shape because of natural effects like erosion or chemical weakening of its structure, but in space there's no risk of chemical reactions, and no gravity to make it collapse."

"Instead, in space you're bombarded with powerful radiation." Misa flew behind Marika, who was trailing Gruier. "There are plenty of ways to guard against it, but it's not an environment I'd call friendly towards living things."

"But I guess that's what makes it a good place to store inorganic objects—books, works of art, precious metals. You don't have to worry about erosion or oxidation, and there's less chance of losing them in a disaster compared to on the surface."

Misa exchange glances with Hyakume, who followed behind.

"If there is something of truly universal value out here, what do you think it could be?"

"Truly universal value?" Marika carefully repeated back the very regal-sounding phrase. "You mean valuable like real estate?"

"Sure." Gruier's voice was cut with self-deprecating laughter. "For example, precious metals are certainly valued as materials, but they're neither finite nor irreplaceable. On a universal scale, no matter how rare a metal may be, there's a practically endless supply, and we know that it's possible to synthesize any element with enough time and work."

Modern particle physics had fully parsed the makeup of three-dimensional matter, down to the tiniest speck. Physical transmogrification, the production of energy: if something's atomic structure was physically possible then it could be crafted. The continued existence of the mining and refining industries was due solely to economic factors and nothing else.

"A single ingot is only worth what it's worth, and the price fluctuates over time, so you can't really say that it has universal value," Misa added. "But turn it into jewelry or a coin and it acquires historical value, artistic value."

"The Serenity monarchy of the past came to the same conclusion," Gruier said, still facing forward. "Until that point, faster-than-light travel had only been spoken of like magic; when it appeared, in a universe with weapons that could wipe out a planet in the blink of an eye, they thought that if anything had universal value it was the artistic, the historical. No matter how expensive the precious metals they were made of, no matter how valuable the materials, that value might be lost over the ages. But as long as there were intelligent civilizations in the future, art and history might show their true worth."

Another closed bulkhead appeared ahead of them, thick enough to guard what was beyond it even if some accident were to compromise the seal elsewhere. Gruier pointed her propeller-light in the opposite direction to slow herself and landed on the cushion-covered bulkhead.

"But even that concept of worth relies on the universe being, well, universal. If your intelligent civilization no longer deals in objects of value, then that value isn't maintained."

"But as long as your civilization maintains any lust for the economic, you can expect the artistic and the historical to remain highly prized. Your ancestors in Serenity made that bet two thousand years ago, that they could pass on something of universal value even after FTL technology had changed the universe. I wonder if it paid off?"

"It wasn't the founders who landed on the Seven Jewels two millennia ago who decided to fill the ghost ship with Serenity's pre-FTL cultural legacy. The monarchy decided that later on." Gruier opened the cover to the control panel beside the bulkhead. Though it may have been upgraded at some point after the ship's initial construction, the mechanical keyboard that appeared was still terribly old-fashioned. "How do you..."

There was power, and with it the promise of functionality, but she hadn't a clue as to how to operate the switch. Hyakume touched down beside her and with a practiced hand heaved the lever next to the control box.

The crude mosaic display installed above the keyboard made a faint clunking sound as it sprang into operation.

"Hoo boy, this is the first time I've seen an actual working mechanical display."

"A mechanical display?" Gruier repeated the unfamiliar phrase as she watched the display change minutely in color like a sandpainting. After a change in colors that seemed to indicate an operational diagnostic, archaic, ornamented characters rose to the display's checkerboard surface.

"Each pixel is made up of a tiny gear, crank, and shaft, rapidly alternating between one of five colors—white, black, and the three primaries—to form a symbol. The whole thing's mechanical, so unlike an electronic display, if one part breaks the rest won't die along with it, and it can still display things. It's a relic from a bygone age. They require absurd precision and time to manufacture, the only ones that still work are either in museums or research institutes."

Hyakume fiddled with the various levers and switches that surrounded the keyboard, then ceded his place to Gruier. "Your turn. It says it needs a royal family member's name."

Gruier placed her fingers on the keyboard, its layout unchanged from modern ones. Though the keys offered more resistance, the venerable keyboard willingly accepted her input.

The mechanical display showed Gruier's full name in an elaborate and embellished classical script, followed by an abstract symbol once the verification was accepted.

The sound of a lock being freed came from somewhere on the sealed bulkhead.

Forgoing her propeller-light, Gruier pushed off against the control box in front of her and moved to a hatch built into the corner of the bulkhead. She reached for the wheel-shaped crank used to open and close it and stopped herself.

"Beyond this is a low-gravity, temperature-stabilized storehouse. Correct?"

"Should be." Hyakume, who had yet to move from the control box, used the electronic-paper display to check their position against the ship's schematics. He tapped something into the keyboard, and the image on the mechanical display changed.

He placed the stethoscope hanging from his neck against the bulkhead and read some numbers off his left upper arm. "It's holding an atmosphere, but it's mostly nitrogen gas, with minute traces of other inert gases mixed in."

Gruier furrowed her brow, her hands gripping the hatch's handle. "What does that mean?"

"Oxygen-free environments are used to preserve things for long periods of time. As the Princess pointed out earlier, objects in a planetary atmosphere undergo chemical changes, reacting easily to the presence of water and oxygen. But in space it's simple to create an environment without them. When transporting something you can simply fill the space with oxygen in order to create a work environment, then seal it and replace the oxygen with nitrogen. The technology's not hard." Hyakume reached for the helmet hanging at his back. "If you're going inside, put on your helmet. It's pressurized, you don't need to worry about being ripped apart, but without any oxygen you'll easily suffocate."

"Used to preserve things for long periods of time..." Misa quickly donned her helmet. Before closing the visor she added, "I wonder if we've finally found our treasure."

"I doubt there's anything on this ship that would be of interest to the rest of you." Gruier's voice carried over the spacesuits' radios. "May I open the door now?"

"You're good."

Marika checked the indicator confirming her suit's seal in the corner of her field of view and flew to the hatch where Gruier had placed her hands. Gruier began to turn the rotating, wheel-shaped crank affixed to the hatch.

It was slow to move, but once it started to spin it opened easily without assistance. With Marika's help Gruier lifted open the thick, airtight hatch.

The sound of air escaping as two differently-pressurized spaces met was audible even through the spacesuits.

A rich darkness peered back from inside the hatch. Gruier turned on her light, casting the beam into the shadowy interior beyond the open hatch.

"Hmm, I think this might be the internal lights." Over by the control box Hyakume manipulated the keyboard. The lights switched on inside the darkened, temperature-controlled storeroom.

"Thank you. Please, come inside." Gruier shut off her propeller-light and plunged through the hatch. "Though I doubt there's anything inside for you to see."

"What, it's not filled with ancient, pre-FTL cultural artifacts?" Misa mused, peeking inside as Marika followed Gruier through the hatch. "Oh my. A bit drab, isn't it?"

Unlike the machine houses of the core, the temperature-controlled storeroom consisted of a single level, held a constant, human-appropriate temperature through the heat generated in the equipment rooms, and maintained an oxygen-free environment to prevent its contents from undergoing chemical reactions. Without any bulky environmental machinery installed there was ample space inside.

The section through which the group entered was only one of numerous segmented blocks. The vast space was lit with red-tinged illumination free of ultraviolet radiation so as to prevent any photosensitive reactions, and only a handful of containers and boxes remained inside.

"Did we miss out on the jackpot?"

"I imagine the other storerooms are in a similar state." Gruier looked blankly out over the deserted storeroom. "I don't care if you want to look through the crates that are here, but there probably isn't anything worthwhile left."

Hyakume followed them inside and traded looks with Schnitzer. "They're still cultural artifacts. Even more than a pirate, I'm an antiques buff. You don't mind if I have a look?"

"Be my guest." Gruier took aim at the door leading further inside and began to fly towards it using her propeller-light. "You can take whatever you like with you."

"Score!"

"Hyakume! We're not here to rob the place blind!"

"Come on Misa, don't tell me you're not curious. Let's see, inside we have...silverware? Utensils?" Hyakume quickly approached a small, ancient, standardized shipping container that was close at hand, reading its contents off the affixed label. He called back to Schnitzer, who had resealed the hatch to prevent the oxygen-free air of the storeroom from spreading to the rest of the ship. "Schnitzer, come help me get this thing open."

"Sure thing."

The container, still sealed for shipping, required a specialized tool to open. Attempting it with bare hands would have been a pain. Schnitzer, who could operate unhindered in the oxygenless environment, began to work on the lid of the container, which dwarfed even him in height, all the while still holding the heavy machine gun in one hand.

Misa set down next to the container. "You ever feel bad being so greedy?"

"Just taking thorough stock of the situation. It'll probably need to be appraised later."

Misa scanned the mostly empty storeroom. Though Marika was interested in what they were doing, she followed after Gruier, who was already floating across the room.

"What's going on, Gruier?" Marika called out over her suit's radio, goading the propeller-light as she chased after her. "What do you mean, there's nothing for us to see?"

"It means exactly what it sounds like," Gruier answered, not bothering to face her. "You might turn up something expensive if you search the entire ship, but there's hardly anything of value left, not like it was when the ghost ship first went missing."

"Why?"

"The royal survey teams were all sent out at times when Serenity's economy was undergoing great hardship. And for some reason, once they returned from the ghost ship, Serenity always managed to turn the economy around. Pretty straightforward, don't you think?"

"You mean..." Marika looked around the nearly empty storeroom. "The royal treasures, the pre-FTL artifacts, they were already hauled away from the ghost ship long ago?"

"Nobody ever said anything directly, but I imagine that must be what happened. It's why they won't comment on the authenticity of the objects in the galleries and museums, why nobody reacts when those same objects show up in auctions on the other side of the galaxy. The overseers of the royal family, the administrators of the star systems, they've always been opportunistic like that."

"It's open." Schnitzer's voice was audible over the wireless channel. Marika twisted her body to watch Misa and Hyakume rummage through the container while her propeller-light dragged her along.

"Whoa, a Royal Kakiemon full-course dinner set. What year is it? These are impossible to find."

"And books, rare ones maybe. The nerds who go for real paper or turn-of-the-millennium writing would probably love these."

Gruier heard them and turned around. Marika smiled.

"Looks like we've found our treasure."

"They're certainly valuable," she could hear Misa say. "But they're nothing more than heirlooms you'd find in a well-off family's attic. They're worth something, and a collector would probably be pleased to have them, but I don't think there's anything here that could change history or help prop up a floundering monarchy."

Gruier shot them a troubled smile and refocused herself on moving forward. A section of the wall held another sealed hatch leading to the next room.

"Assuming everything that's left is more of the same, it'll at least put a dent in our operating expenses, but I wouldn't call this treasure, just antiques. You said that the other survey teams already took all the more expensive stuff?"

"That's right." Gruier landed next to the next sealed hatch. She opened the control box to find another mechanical display attached to a keyboard, much like the last one. "Most of the royal family's treasures are already long gone."

"That's still pretty amazing though, isn't it?" Marika landed next to Gruier. "The reason you're here at all is because the treasures your ancestors left behind ended up being useful. That's wonderful, right?"

"...thank you?" Gruier's answer was doubtful and slow in coming. "But that means that the ghost ship no longer has any monetary value to the monarchy. So if there's any reason for letting the ghost ship remain a ghost ship, it's whatever is up ahead."

Gruier imitated Hyakume's actions from earlier and then ran her fingers across the keyboard. Marika mentally overlaid their movements so far with her mental picture of the ghost ship.

"The sleeper cells?"

"Exactly."

The system confirmed Gruier's identity, the mechanical display showing an image verifying that it was unlocked.

Chapter 9: The Ghost Ship's Sleeping Beauty

"Air pressure and oxygenation are both good." Hyakume ensured that the readings he had taken from the other side of the hatch matched up with his direct measurements. "No harmful gases that the sensors can pick up either. This air is breathable."

"Thanks." Marika lifted her face shield and took a whiff of air, then tilted her helmet back and away from her head. She looked around the wide, cylindrical space, bright with unnatural white light, a stark change from the subdued lighting of the storerooms. "Um, we should be really close to the central core of the ship, I think."

"Your intuition would be right." Hyakume unfurled the electronic-paper display in front of Marika and showed her their current position, a flashing light at the center of the ghost ship's scaled blueprint. "We're at the rear of the habitat block that takes up the ghost ship's forward half, and practically at the center too. This is the deepest part of the ship."

"This place looks like it's barely been touched." Misa stared out across the broad tunnel that looked as if it were made of glass blocks piled one upon the other.

"That could mean that the survey teams didn't believe there was anything here of monetary value." The space looked like a giant pit covered with a mosaic of glass; unhindered by gravity, Gruier made her way inside, casting glances at the glass coffins that made up the walls around her and the geometric patterns that they formed. "I think they might not have even set foot inside here."

The former generation ship would have rotated as it flew, the outward-directed centrifugal force producing a mock gravity. The effect would have been felt even here at the core, albeit significantly less-so than in the rest of the habitat block proper.

The suspended animation cells of the sleeper block lined the central core, aligned so that the cells' backs would face outwards as they felt the minute centrifugal force.

Each cell resembled a glass coffin capped by a completely transparent cover, a mechanical display at the head of each one showing its contents and state of operation like a tiny gravestone.

"Aha. They keep showing the last thing that was displayed. I guess so you can read them even without power." Marika looked at a suspended animation cell that must have held an ancient traveler on their long journey, and then at the mechanical display at its head. "Yakuud Stroheim Aries?" She struggled to pronounce the letters on the display in the unfamiliar Galactic Standard language.

"A mountain goat." Gruier stole a peek at the same mechanical display. "The ancestor of the goats raised in Serenity."

"Huh, so there's a goat inside." The surface of the occupied capsule had gone opaque, its contents obscured. It seemed that the capsules whose covers remained transparent, whose insides were visible, were all empty.

Around two thirds of the cold sleep capsules embedded in the outer walls of the central core had mechanical displays showing some sort of characters indicating that they were in use. The remainder had transparent covers, and small containers and cases were fitted inside.

"This is where the ghost ship is meant to serve its main function, isn't it?" Misa read the mechanical display at the head of one of the clear-covered capsules, a small, ancient container placed inside. "Gigant Ficelle Macrocephalus, that's the scientific name for a whale, right? It's a huge creature, it would be too hard to bring a real one on board and put it to sleep, so they settled for a genetic sample."

"It should contain all of the information that the technology of the time was able to collect about our three systems, the DNA of every creature that lived on the Seven Jewels, and real samples where possible." Gruier scanned the immaculate cylindrical chamber, awash in white light. "It's a gene bank from Serenity's distant past. We do as much as we can to preserve nature, but I suspect that for some species the DNA here is all that's left."

"Isn't this date recent?" Noticing a capsule whose display listed a date only a few decades prior, Misa floated over to it using her propeller-light and came to a soft stop. "A louse, and a gymnospermous plant? Environmental surveys of a single planet happen on the order of centuries; I guess the survey teams weren't just carrying off treasures, they were also leaving behind new scientific discoveries."

"It is an ark ship after all, I guess they're still using it as one." Marika clapped the dejected-looking Gruier on the shoulder. Hyakume nodded.

"No matter how long they keep running on low-power, trying to keep this many in cold sleep without knowing when you're going to get a chance to tend to them again would require significant energy reserves. I gathered the ghost ship's power system was fairly high-spec, this must be the reason why."

"With this they could recreate Serenity whenever they wanted."

Gruier responded to Marika with a shake of her head. "There are no people."

"Huh?" Marika looked around the sleep chamber in bewilderment.

"This is only a biological backup of Serenity's ancient wildlife, as well as anything that's been brought on board since our worlds were settled. There should be enough DNA here to serve as a seed, but even if you were to terraform a planet in order to recreate Serenity's natural environment, it would only be a model of what Serenity had once been."

Marika took another look around the sleep chamber. "Huh, I guess the people wouldn't have stayed in suspended animation."

"Apparently, copies of the entire population's genetic data had originally been stored here." Gruier extended her propeller and began to float down the center of the cylindrical chamber. "If we searched for it we could probably find a gene bank of every citizen's DNA, backed up from thousand year old medical data. But I'm sure you know that even if you make a physical copy from DNA, it's not the same thing. No, this isn't what the palace considers important."

Gruier stared into the depths of the white, cylindrical sleep chamber. It terminated in a half-sphere with supports that radiated outward and a circular, airtight hatch in the center.

The control box next to the hatch was a breadth larger than the ones they had encountered so far. Flipping open the cover revealed not only a mechanical display and keyboard, primed to accept input, but also what looked to be an optical medical device.

Gruier flipped the levers and switches surrounding the keyboard, feeding power to the device, and entered her name.

The mechanical display showed a different symbol than the previous ones had, and continued to ask more questions. Father's name, mother's name.

Gruier answered, and a capsule connected to a small pipe adjacent to the keyboard opened.

"What's that?"

"At one time it may have asked for a drop of blood." Gruier curled her finger around a strand of her blond hair, hidden away beneath her helmet, plucked it out, and placed it inside. "It says it's a genetic lock."

The capsule closed, and the analyzer at the base of the pipe emitted a dull light.

A breath later the mechanical display announced in flourishing script that the verification was complete.

The sealed, circular hatch surrounded by the radiating supports emitted a noise as it was unlocked.

"What I came here for is up ahead." Gruier reached for the rotating handle. It spun with hardly any resistance, as if it were precision built, and the thick, vault-like hatch lifted away from the bulkhead.

She pulled the heavy hatch toward her, but in the weightless environment her body ended up dragged towards the hatch instead. She pushed in the other direction against the side of the circular hatch, trying to open it with just the strength of her arms.

"Do it like this." Marika landed next to the gap where the hatch would open and close and reached for the handle with both hands. She crouched down and pushed with all her strength against its weight.

Gruier immediately steeled herself and knelt next to the hatch. She placed both hands on its side and pushed as hard as she could.

Even in zero-gravity the two of them weren't enough to cancel out the hatch's mass. But perhaps because of a spring inside its mechanism, all at once the partially opened hatch's movements lightened.

Inside the lights flashed on. White, unnatural light, like that of the sleep chamber, spilled from the crack in the heavy bulkhead.

It opened into a space large enough for a single person to pass through; Marika looked to Gruier. "After you, Princess. We finally made it."

"Thank you," Gruier replied, masked with nervousness. She peered past the half-opened, airtight, vault-like hatch.

She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and floated inside.

They were in the very center of the axis along which the ship rotated to generate its artificial gravity, and at the rearmost point of the habitat block that occupied the forward half of the ship. There stood a massive machine supported by elegantly curved struts that stretched from the walls in every direction, surrounded by thick, armored bulkheads that would likely survive even the ghost ship's destruction.

"...what is it?"

There were several crystalline devices sprouting from a central sphere, decorated in soft, curved pleats like the buds of a rose and supported by a jungle of pipes and tubes and arms. Gruier stared wordlessly at the mechanism at the center of the spherical room, and glanced back at the sound of Marika's voice.

"I hope you're not planning on going inside alone and pulling the hatch shut behind you," she joked, grabbing the propeller-light she had left floating and offering the grip to Gruier by the open hatch. "It would be a bad idea. Shut the hatch without a light and this whole room might go dark again."

"I decided against it as we were opening that giant hatch." Gruier flashed her a bitter smile and accepted the propeller-light, returning it to the holster on her spacesuit's hip. There was ample space inside, but the numerous devices and their supports, and the buds that sprouted from them, made it seem unlikely that they could float across it without brushing against something, not like in the storerooms or on the flight deck.

"This is the thing that's so important, but which they won't keep close by?"

"It is."

"Oh my," Misa exclaimed, entering through the half-opened hatch and glimpsing the complex mechanism, the blossoms and their labyrinth of supports. "How old is this? I've never seen a plant this size before."

Marika turned to Misa, then scanned the device in front of her.

"You know what it is?"

Misa answered Gruier's question by taking another look, this time concentrating on the details. "Shall I say it?"

"I don't mind."

"It's an artificial womb, right?"

Marika's eyes jumped to Misa, and then to Gruier, who continued to stare straight ahead. She thought she saw Gruier nod slightly.

"The biggest fear from long-term habitation in space is that radiation will damage your DNA, but you wouldn't need a giant bioplant like this one just to fix that. And the suspended animation block is shielded several layers deep within the ship's core; even during an extended period of cold sleep the genetic damage would likely be minimized. You should be able to maintain the sleepers' health using basic, periodic treatments. I realize it wasn't built with any knowledge of modern medical technology or biochemistry, but you still wouldn't need a plant this size to simply rewrite somebody's gene map from a backup. Just hazarding a guess based on what I know of modern technology, I'd say that those flowery bits with all the cords stuck to them are artificial wombs for raising fertilized eggs, and the oversized sphere in the center is a system for sequencing and tuning the DNA?"

Gruier listened to Misa's sudden burst of explanation as she looked around the chamber and approached the central device. She nodded, her look one of astonishment. "You figured all that out just by looking at it...doctors really are terrifying individuals."

"Was I right?" Misa glanced back, hands resting proudly on her hips. "I'll be honest, I didn't guess all that based on its shape. I simply had to ask why the monarchy would try so hard to hide something all the way out here, even going so far as to let it take on that spooky reputation." Misa stuck out her tongue. "So this is your proof of being born into the Serenity royal family?"

"Proof of being born..." Confused, Marika echoed Misa's words and looked to Gruier.

"A leader must have the temperament to guide her people, to set them on a path. If a ruler chosen by birth lacks that, both she and those she leads will suffer, don't you agree?"

"In other words, the Serenity monarchy's leadership and diplomatic skill are literally part of their bloodline." Misa turned her eyes to Gruier, who was brooding over the bioplant. "Those sorts of rumors are common when it comes to the Holy Royal Family—the symbol of the Galactic Empire—and other prominent noble and upper class families. But I don't think I've ever heard of somebody trying to cause a stir over the Serenity royal family's talents being artificially manipulated or genetically maintained."

"Maybe that's because Serenity needs the royal family." Gruier gloomily shook her head. "But if our society didn't value us, our blood would mean nothing. Just as an unqualified ruler is unfit to rule, a ruler whom the people have no need for has lost all value."

"I hate to interrupt." Hyakume followed them inside and gestured upward to Schnitzer as he too made his way through the open hatch. "But I'm picking up another reading. I think it might be another group on board."

A high-pitched call sounded in everyone's helmets. Marika grabbed the helmet resting on her back and brought it next to her head, pulling the tiny earpiece microphone from inside and placing it in her ear. "This is Marika."

"This is Coorie on the Bentenmaru. I didn't think we'd be able to reach you inside the ship, but it looks like we're good."

"I can hear you fine. Can you see our position?"

"We can see you. We finally got inside the ghost ship's network, it's not the greatest, but we've got your position. But, and I don't know if we just can't pull good info or if the data simply isn't there in first place, we still haven't turned up an accurate schematic for the ship. You're in the depths of the habitat block, near the end of the sleep chamber, right?"

"Bingo. Looks like you're doing fine."

"Anyway, the reason I'm calling is because there are three, maybe four other groups wandering around, and one of them is headed for your position."

Marika's eyes darted to Hyakume, who should have been listening to the same transmission. He pointed to the other hatches similar to the one through which they had entered, six in all, on the top, bottom, left, right, front, and back of the spherical chamber. He finished by pointing again at the upper hatch.

"Um, ah! It looks like Hyakume is saying the same thing."

"It looks like the other groups went for the control bridge and the two engine rooms, just like we predicted; they're approaching from a direction plus-ninety degrees from the flight deck where the Bentenmaru is parked."

The sound of the sealed hatch's heavy lock releasing echoed unexpectedly loudly through the silent chamber.

"Don't move!" A small silhouette dropped down, their voice even higher pitched than Gruier's.

Marika watched Gruier's sister—whom she recognized from the communications monitor—and the swarm of armored spacesuits that followed her, and shrugged her shoulders. "Thanks for the intel. They just showed up."

The younger sister seemed more acclimated to moving in zero-gravity than did the older one. The young girl, her tiny body clad in a white, helmetless spacesuit, kicked off one of the struts supporting the central sphere and bounded towards an arm attached to the wall closest to Gruier.

Her expression was more serious than her older sister's; she looked at the sphere, then back at Gruier. "It seems I made it in time. It's a relief to see you haven't done anything yet."

"No, the end is already here." Gruier stared at her sister with forlorn eyes. "When the people of Serenity decided they no longer needed the monarchy, it signaled the end of the role we were meant to play. Taking this back with you won't change the people's minds or restore the glory of the monarchy."

"You of all people should know that destroying it will change nothing!" the girl shouted, hovering above Gruier.

Marika noted that the group of armored suits that had stormed in behind her weren't taking an offensive posture. Their one-handed machine guns were pointed downward, and while they had spread out to cover Grunhilde as she charged forward, none of them leveled their guns.

Marika looked at Schnitzer next to the hatch through which they had entered. His heavy machine gun looked like it would be useful against armored targets, and his glass eyes rapidly tracked the armored soldiers' movements, but he too held his finger away from the trigger on the gun's grip.

"Well, they may not be under her command, but I guess they're still not going to point their guns at their own princess."

"How can you not know what it is you're doing?" Grunhilde gestured at the bioplant with her spacesuit's empty right hand as she shouted in a clear, high-pitched voice. "You of all people should understand! The Well of Roses birthed our first king, it's the key to the monarchy's history! Our line may be manufactured, but we've excelled in our duties from the very beginning, left behind a Serenity that's peaceful and prosperous! If I speak proudly of it, it's because it's nothing to be ashamed of!"

"Our line is not the problem, Hilde." Gruier called her sister by her nickname. "It's the reliance on it that's become a problem. The monarchy's role is at an end, and your faith in the Well of Roses won't restore our former glory, it won't return power to the palace."

"The Well of Roses..." Marika looked at the massive bioplant occupying the center of the spherical chamber. She whispered to Misa, who also remained vigilant of the soldiers. "Is Serenity's royal family supposed to be famous for their bloodline?"

"Hardly." Misa gently shook her head. "Serenity's royal family isn't the only one with an abundance of outstanding individuals. There've always been rumors, but they're not the sort of thing any powerful family would ever acknowledge in public. It's what they used to call nature worship, but intensified through the advancements of a technological society."

"If that's the case," Marika glanced at Gruier and lowered her voice even further, "maybe we shouldn't be listening to these secrets about Serenity's royal family?"

"They're coming straight from the Seventh and Eighth Princess's mouths." Misa watched the two sisters face off against each other. "You didn't think we'd travel into the heart of the Golden Ghost Ship, the Serenity monarchy's greatest secret, without learning a thing or two, did you?"

"But it's dangerous, isn't it?"

"You're worried about this now?" Misa threw a flabbergasted look Marika's way. "It's normal with a job like this one to come away with three or four secrets that you need to keep."

"That's even more than Coorie said there would be." Marika sighed and watched Grunhilde's soldiers in their matching black armored spacesuits. "Huh."

They looked to be an honor guard, tall and lean, but Marika's eyes stopped on one of the armored suits that was noticeably taller than the rest. It stood directly behind Grunhilde, watching over her; Marika recognized something familiar in the manner of the suit's careful movements.

Where most of the soldiers carried compact, one-handed machine pistols, this one was empty-handed, their posture showing a graceful intimacy with zero-gravity, the military spacesuit bereft of all but a minimum of armor, and the smoked glass of its face shield was angled towards Marika. Though she couldn't see past the thick face shield, she felt like she was being watched.

Skeptically, she gave a slight nod, and to her surprise her greeting was returned with a careful bend at the waist.

The smoked glass helmet carefully scanned the area, the suit's gloved hands moving to its throat to undo the helmet's clasp.

The helmet was stripped away smoothly all at once, and Marika was immediately able to recall the sharp-eyed, elderly face that appeared from underneath.

"The chamberlain!"

"Taking the Well of Roses back to the palace won't change a thing!" Gruier noticed Lord Chamberlain of the Privy Council Yotof Sif Sideux as she refused to concede an inch of argument to her sister. Her eyes scrambled to see if she recognized any other faces. "You must understand, the role of the royal family has come to an end. If the people choose to walk their own path, they will no longer need a guide, a protector."

"I won't believe that the royal family has no role to play in keeping the people on their proper path!" Grunhilde noticed her sister's eyes moving and followed her gaze, turning to find Chamberlain Sideux standing guard over her, his helmet removed. "If what you're saying were true, Serenity's government and economy would be improving!" Grunhilde's voice rose, as if she had picked up on some turmoil in her sister's psyche. "If the people are going to set their sights on a higher and more challenging path, the monarchy should be there so we can help them, encourage them!"

Another of the suits, holding behind and to the side of Grunhilde, slightly smaller than the others and wielding what looked like a crowbar rather than a machine pistol, removed its helmet.

The wearer presented an image rather different than she had in her earlier maid's outfit, and it took some time for Marika to conjure up her name. "She was the royal guard, right? Captain Catherine?"

Marika remembered Gruier's words, that both the chamberlain and the captain of the guard were both powerful enough to start wars on their own. She looked at Schnitzer, who stood guard by the hatch.

He kept the heavy machine gun pointed at the floor and avoided taking a threatening posture, but nevertheless continued to cover their escape route.

Based on how many soldiers they had, this wasn't an enemy they could beat in a fight. Marika watched Gruier and Grunhilde continue to argue without compromise, and whispered to Misa. "There's no way we'll win if this comes down to a fight, right?"

"It's not like there aren't plenty of ways we could tip the odds in our favor." Neither Misa nor Hyakume were direct combatants like Schnitzer. "The Princess could easily play the part of a hostage, but if we tried it the old man or the maid would have us like that, even without the rest of them."

"I doubt Schnitzer could take the two of them on at the same time, and the rest of them look pretty tough too." Marika scanned the squad of black, armored spacesuits spread out around the bioplant with a look of concern. "Besides, taking a hostage would basically be letting them know that our position is weak. Gruier's on our side, so they aren't being overtly combative, but I don't want to think about what will happen if her sister is reckless and orders them to charge."

"I don't know if Serenity forces would point their guns at the Princess, no matter how many times they're ordered to, but I doubt they'd hesitate to point them at us." Misa watched as the two sisters—strongly resembling each other—continued to argue in circles. "We might be able to leave here peacefully if Gruier backs down, but do you think she could talk her sister into leaving quietly?"

"You really think Gruier would back down?" Marika voiced her doubt directly. "And her sister's got the same blood running through her, you really think she'd accept losing? If they weren't royalty they'd already be at each other's throats."

"They're both rational enough to know this isn't going anywhere, they're just arguing to make themselves feel better." Misa sighed. "So, are we just going to stand here and watch until they figure something out? You think they're going to keep arguing until one of them agrees?"

"Um." Gruier and Grunhilde were coming from different viewpoints, it was hard to imagine that more talk would result in any progress. They were irreconcilable, talking wasn't going to solve a thing.

Marika suddenly felt someone's gaze and lifted her head.

Behind Grunhilde, Yotof Sif Sideux watched over the two princesses with a frown.

"Misa, you can read lips, can't you?" Facing forward, Marika spoke carefully and softly, barely moving her lips, so that only Misa could hear.

"Huh?"

"I'm going to try to discuss this with the chamberlain. Hopefully he'll notice."

"What!?"

"I don't want the two of them to hear, so I'm going to try to talk without using my voice. But I don't know how to read lips, so could you read the chamberlain's lips for me?"

Misa watched the chamberlain, steadfastly watching over Grunhilde, his helmet hanging from the back of his spacesuit. There was no doubt that Misa and Marika had both caught his gaze.

"I'll give it a shot," Misa whispered. "Do it while the Princesses are busy arguing."

Hello, Marika said slowly, silently, her stare fixed on Yotof. Hello, can you hear me? I'm Katou Marika, captain of the Bentenmaru.

Before she repeated herself a third time, Yotof's gaze shifted slightly, and his mouth moved.

Marika listened to his reply, translated through Misa's lips.

I am Chamberlain Yotof. I thank you for your help with the Princess.

It worked, Marika thought, and she continued.

I'd like to talk. Is that okay?

Yotof drew in his chin ever so slightly and looked straight at Marika.

What matter do you wish to discuss?

Marika listened to Misa's nearly flat, breath-like whisper, and licked her lips.

I don't think our two Princesses can solve this on their own. For just a moment Yotof's eyes went wide, as if he were surprised. How would you feel talking this out for ourselves?

Yotof's gaze washed over the princesses.

And what about the Princesses?

Marika nodded with what looked like a smile.

Shall we send them to bed for a while?

Yotof's gaze bored into Marika. Misa's voice carried to her ear.

How?

Marika noted the placement of the hemisphere of soldiers that surrounded them. The armored suits were spread out opposite the hatch where Schnitzer had taken up position, leaving the pirates their escape route but having moved to where they could grab Gruier.

The answer came not from Marika's mouth, but Misa's.

“I've got a sleeping gas grenade ready.”

Marika started, then mimicked the shapes of Misa's words.

We'll use sleeping gas.

Marika glanced back and to the side at Misa. Her field of view held several of the black, armored spacesuits, ready for a fight. She turned back to Yotof and continued.

A battle could go wrong at any moment.

For a moment Yotof's mouth was still. When Marika noticed Captain Catherine slowly begin to move, she figured that Yotof had probably signaled to her with his hands behind his back.

Marika looked at Schnitzer, who remained motionless by the hatch, and Hyakume, who lay in a straight line between the hatch and Gruier, stethoscope in his right hand, electronic-paper display unfurled in his right.

She heard Misa's voice.

Which side moves first?

The words "situation understood" flashed faintly on Hyakume's display. By the hatch, Schnitzer's supporting hand had left the barrel of the heavy machine gun and was pointing at Hyakume's display, his raised thumb proof he understood what was going on.

Marika turned her eyes back to Yotof. She moved her mouth as deliberately as she could.

Obviously the lawless pirates go first.

Yotof nodded.

"You aren't giving us enough credit!" Grunhilde's shrill voice echoed through the bioplant's spherical chamber. Gruier shook her head as if out of pity.

"You're the one who can't see reality, Hilde. It's nothing but a pile of wishful thinking. You can still turn back!"

"Gruier, duck!" Marika shouted without warning, pulling a bulky stun grenade from her waist pocket and lobbing it toward the spread of armored spacesuits.

In a flash Yotof loosed a throwing stone at the grenade in mid-air, the shock detonating it in a roar of explosion and a burst of light that made it impossible to see.

"Hoi!" Hyakume released a curtain of aerosol beam-disruptor at his feet. Schnitzer began to spray low-intensity beams from his heavy machine gun, little more than intense flashes of light.

The firefight was on.

"Sorry about this." Misa had quickly pulled on her helmet, her face hidden behind the face shield that had gone jet black in response to the stun grenade's flash, and waded in between the two princesses. "There we go."

She thrust her open palm between the two of them, a small capsule resting on it like some sort of magic trick. A pink mist jetted from the small, egg-like capsule while their vision was still hampered from the stun grenade's flash.

Without any special training, the two girls inhaled the knockout gas before they had time to don their helmets, and they instantly lost consciousness.

"And that's a wrap!"

Misa entrusted Gruier to Marika, while she herself grabbed the unconscious Grunhilde to ensure she didn't drift into the rain of low-powered beams flying back and forth. She turned up the volume on her helmet's external speaker and shouted.

"The Princesses are safe, you can stop fighting!"

"Your effort is much appreciated." Misa heard a voice cut through the external speakers, startled as Yotof's dark silhouette appeared suddenly, just beyond the thin, pink mist of the sleeping gas, almost as if he had teleported there.

Gruier regained consciousness unaware of where she was.

"Ah, she's awake!" Before she had even perked up there was a tugging on the arm of her spacesuit, Marika dragging her in front of a control panel lined with mechanical displays and machine-driven consoles. Marika leaned over her as the tips of her feet dug into a step on the floor, and she realized as she swayed back and forth that she was in a weightless environment.

"Sorry, we didn't want to wake you, but we need your verification!"

She saw the familiar authentication screen of the mechanical display asking for her full name, and punched in her name without thinking about it.

"It worked!" Cheers surrounded her. "Great, now we can go home!"

Gruier looked around dimly, realizing that she was on a darkened bridge illuminated by glowing control panels.

"Where..." She shook her head to collect herself, and tried again. "Where are we?"

"The ghost ship's main bridge."

"Drink this." She suddenly became aware of the presence of Captain Catherine in her maid's outfit, handing her a drink pack.

"What are you doing here!?"

Marika and Catherine shared worried looks.

"Our interests happened to align, so we're working together," Marika explained in brief after turning back to Gruier. "That drink pack will wake you up. It's one of Misa's special cocktails, you should feel better once you drink it."

Gruier held the tetrahedron-shaped package—complete with an anti-flowback straw to prevent spilling and splattering in a zero-gravity environment—in front of her and checked the label. It resembled a medicinal drink, but she couldn't make out Misa's smudged cursive.

She brought the straw to her lips. Even squeezing it didn't cause it to overflow, but sucking on the straw brought a sweet, sour, citrus-scented juice washing over her throat. The astringent herbal tinge was soothing.

She slowly sipped the tonic, a trigger that started to bring the disjointed fragments of reality together in her mind.

She looked around what appeared to be a large ship's bridge, one laid out without the expectation of gravity.

Both floor and ceiling, separated by several people-lengths of distance, were lined with numerous consoles and control panels, most of which were lit and active. They were darker than those on the Bentenmaru, perhaps to help with visibility, perhaps because the long years had dimmed them.

People were positioned at both sides, the black combat spacesuits of the Serenity fleet with an assortment of lighter suits mixed in, a variety of colors and styles, old and new, and even some crew members not wearing spacesuits at all, simply their normal shipclothes.

Gruier had seen several of their faces before, on the Bentenmaru.

"Did that do the trick?" Marika peeked at Gruier's face, worried. "Misa said the sleeping gas doesn't have any side effects, but I bet you were surprised."

"Are you going to explain to me what happened?" She fixed a heavy glare on Marika. "Why would you do something like that?"

"Like what?" Marika asked, eyes searching. "What do you mean?"

"I'm talking about activating a gas grenade right in front of Grunhilde and me!? What could you possibly have hoped to do by knocking us out!?"

"Well..." Marika's expression waffled, and she averted her eyes from Gruier. "We figured you weren't going to solve anything if we just let the two of you keep going on like you were."

Gruier looked around what she suddenly realized was the ghost ship's main bridge. The group of combat spacesuits that had accompanied Grunhilde were working alongside the Bentenmaru's crew.

"You must have discussed this with your sister before, right?"

"Many times over." The tone of Gruier's voice fell. Marika continued.

"And you never managed to settle anything, did you?"

"No, but..."

"And there in front of the bioplant, did you come to any conclusion the two of you could accept? It certainly didn't look like it."

Gruier frowned at Marika again. "That still doesn't excuse you from doing something so reckless!"

"I believe 'reckless' gave us the best outcome we could have hoped for." This time Marika smiled without averting her eyes. "Those soldiers were in a pinch too. Your sister may be their commander, but they couldn't point their guns at you even if she ordered them to."

"That still doesn't explain why you had to knock us out."

"There was no worry they'd fire at you, but us on the other hand...if I were their commander, I could see how eliminating the criminals who kidnapped the Royal Princess might convince the two princesses to talk things out." Marika raised her head toward the ghost ship's spacious bridge, where the Bentenmaru's crew scurried about. "I'm still the Bentenmaru's captain, my life and the lives of my crew still matter. That's why I wanted to find a way to resolve this peacefully."

She turned her eyes back to Gruier. "Unfortunately, you and your sister didn't seem to feel the same way, and as much as I regretted it, that's why I decided to use force. Yotof and Catherine understood that too, which is why they helped."

"A moment of your time, Captain?" Coorie floated over, clutching a tablet-style data display. She started delivering a detailed report.

Gruier looked at Catherine, who waited quietly, then sighed and turned her eyes back to Marika. "This is the ghost ship's main bridge; what's everyone from the Bentenmaru doing working with the crew from the Serenity fleet?"

"We've got control over the generation ship's course as it drifts through subspace," Marika answered, turning excitedly towards Gruier and smiling. "The people of Serenity were amazing. I don't know if they did it in response to FTL tech or if they knew about it even before that, but they were able to cause a temporary, artificial chronoquake using the distinctive resonance of the energy oscillations from the three Roschmann reactors."

"W-what did you just say?" Gruier shot back suddenly, unable to make sense of Marika's explanation.

"The ghost ship's appearances and disappearances aren't the result of some natural phenomenon, they're intentional, using equipment on board the ship. Apparently the dimensional fabric of the Phantom Passage was never that stable to begin with, making it easier to upset the balance of space-time, but they managed to do it without FTL tech, just the generators and theory that existed before."

"...I don't really understand what you're saying..."

"Do you know about the experiments they performed? They arranged the thrusters into a möbius strip, constructing a Klein bottle energy coil in order to accelerate up to critical mass and outstrip the barriers of time and space, all with the materials that they had at the time, before our modern FTL technology had been perfected."

Coorie had taken over explaining for Marika, but Gruier merely tilted her head. "I apologize, but I am not that well-versed in the history of technology."

"Well at any rate, this was before FTL, and they were trying to use the science and technology of the time—along with magic, the supernatural, whatever would work—to overcome the speed of light. And apparently they took the Queen Serendipity, this old ark-slash-ferry, and tried operating its three Roschmann reactors in all sorts of different configurations, until they found one that could interfere with the fabric of space."

"Huh..." Gruier interjected with vague agreement.

"That's not to say that space-time theory hadn't progressed a good deal by then, but even after they could imitate a chronoquake's tearing of the dimensional fabric and jump into subspace, without enough power they were never able to move into the higher dimensions necessary for FTL speeds; they were at a complete loss as to what was going on, and their dream of point-to-point jumps had to remain a dream. It was totally random when you'd return to normal space, but even though there was no way to utilize subspace travel, working out the arrangement of the engines and the operational pattern to create an intentional chronoquake was a really big deal at the time."

"So what you're saying is, the ghost ship didn't become a ghost ship after getting caught up in some unexplainable phenomenon, it was intentional?" Gruier's summary latched on to the one part she thought she understood, and Coorie smiled and nodded.

"Unquestionably. Apparently the survey teams were able to analyze the patterns that were confirmable through space-time theory and used them to ensure a high probability of contacting the ghost ship; with access to all of their data, the Serenity fleet was able to call it out in one go. But after using the chronoquakes to draw it out into normal space, with the ghost ship still operational, and with the Roschmann reactors continuing to interfere with the local dimensional fabric as long as no one shut them down, left to its own devices the ghost ship would end up causing another chronoquake, and disappear again."

Gruier turned her eyes toward the mechanical display on the control box where she had just given her verification. The confirmation had come back, but there were still no signs around her indicating what the verification had been needed for.

"Wait, did you say that we can go home?" Gruier recalled Marika's words from when she had first awoken. "You've found a way to return the ghost ship to normal space?"

Marika traded looks with Coorie, and then with Catherine, who stood dutifully behind Gruier. "We have. And not just anywhere in normal space. Back to the Blue Sisters, in Serenity space. That's where the palace is, right, on the first of the two planets?"

"Back to the Blue Sisters?" It took a moment for the words' meaning to register with Gruier. "The ghost ship is heading back to Serenity!?"

"Correct." Coorie expanded her computer's holographic display in front of Gruier. "It was a struggle getting the calculations from probabilistic quantum mechanics and multiverse theory to line up with string theory space-time."

"Um, what?"

"Back then, all they could do was use the Roschmann reactors to cause a chronoquake and jump into subspace, but with our modern knowledge and technology we can circumvent space-time theory to perform a pseudo-FTL jump. Now, the reactors were placed into long-term operation mode, and if we boost them and the drives to max we won't be able to cause anymore chronoquakes until the energy reserves are replenished and the drives undergo some serious maintenance. But our reemergence point will be at the edge of Serenity, just a day's standard travel from reaching the Sisters, so it shouldn't be a problem."

"You want to take the ghost ship back to Serenity!?" Gruier shouted. "What do you think I came all the way here to do in the first place!?"

"I suppose you were planning on destroying the bioplant that had given birth to Serenity's royal family, no?" Marika's casual delivery earned a grim scowl from Gruier.

"If you knew that, then why would you choose to return the ghost ship to Serenity!? The people have finally decided cast off the monarchy, to seek their independence! What will they think when they see this symbol of the royal bloodline?"

"Your sister must have wanted the bioplant returned to Serenity while the kingdom was still unified." Marika cast her gaze beyond Gruier. Gruier glanced over her shoulder to see Grunhilde dozing softly by one of the consoles near the ceiling, her toes hooked to a step so that she wouldn't float away.

"Even so, why!?" Gruier shouted. "Do you know what it felt like for me to come this far? What my grandfather felt when he entrusted me with the ghost ship?"

"You never said anything about it."

"How could I say anything!"

"Don't worry. The bioplant seems to have gone bust."

"Gone bust?" Gruier tilted her head; the expression wasn't one she'd heard living among the royal family. "What do you mean?"

"The bioplant was equipped with one hundred and twenty-eight gene patterns, and I guess it was supposed to make that many babies. Misa and Hyakume investigated it, and they figured out that it's run out of genetic samples and biological cells; the last one was preserved in cold sleep inside one of the blossoms.”

"...what?"

"Just to be safe, we ran a scan—with Yotof's permission—before running the Roschmann reactors and the drives and everything at full power. The artificial womb's blossoms are all but empty, and the life support system's been run dry too; there's only an emergency line, feeding a single artificial womb."

"The Well of Roses has...dried up?" Had she not been in zero-gravity Gruier might have collapsed on the spot. Her body shook, her focus wavered.

"Technically it's on the verge of drying up," Marika corrected. "But don't worry, Misa said we made it in time."

Suddenly, the bridge echoed with a baby's cries. Captain Catherine's back straightened up, and she bounded toward the cries like a startled rabbit.

"It's okay, I know, you were just reanimated." Misa appeared on the bridge, accompanied by Yotof and carrying the newborn, swaddled in white. "She's about forty or forty-one weeks. A little premature, but she should be fine."

Misa made her way forward through only the skillful skipping of her feet here and there, both hands occupied with clutching the life support capsule, Yotof and Catherine flanking her front and back. The Bentenmaru's crew watched Misa's hands intently; the spacesuited crew from the Serenity fleet stood at attention at their consoles and saluted, and it was then that Gruier realized that Yotof and Catherine weren't escorting Misa, but the infant.

"The last of Serenity's royal line to be birthed from this ship." Misa landed in front of Gruier and presented her the child, her grumbling face red and wrinkled. "And the newest princess. Say hello to your big sister."

"She's so small..." Gruier said, eyes wide. "She doesn't look human..."

"We all start out looking like this." Misa held her out, and Gruier nervously cradled the baby in the arms of her spacesuit.

"It's a girl?" Holding her was simple in zero-gravity.

"Be gentle." Misa released her grip. Gruier saw herself reflected in the baby's almost entirely-black eyes. She brought the baby's face up to her forehead.

"She's so warm." Their foreheads touched, and Gruier closed her eyes. Her shoulders began to tremble. "...did I really come all this way to kill her..."

"You saved her by coming here when you did," Marika interjected coolly. "The bioplant was starting to fail, if we had boarded the ghost ship just a little bit later we might not have been able to revive her. She would have stayed frozen. You made it just in time to rescue your last sister."

"Thank you." Gruier lifted her head, surface tension holding back wells of tears in the corners of her eyes. "But everyone will be shocked when they learn that the Golden Ghost Ship has returned. What am I supposed to tell them?"

"Why not try telling them the truth?" Marika shrugged and stretched her hands apart. "Not just the palace, but the people of Serenity too. Explain what happened and let them decide what to do with it. I bet they'll be happy to hear their legendary ark is back."

"...I think you're right," Gruier said, her face relaxing. "I don't need to decide everything myself. Perhaps the duty of the royal family is to let everyone else decide, and then act accordingly."

Suddenly the baby in Gruier's arms began to cry, like a switch had been flipped. "Ah, what, what do I...?"

Gruier froze with the baby in her arms; Catherine came to the child's aid. "To calm a baby in zero-gravity, you should hold them close to you with both arms. Having many points of contact helps babies to relax."

It was then that Gruier noticed that Catherine had at some point changed from her spacesuit into her maid's outfit. She held the baby in her bare hands and spoke softly to her.

Misa peeked at the baby's face and fished a white container from inside the life support capsule that Yotof was holding.

"Maybe she's hungry. This is just something I put together with what we had on hand—no newborn formula on board, I'm afraid—but try to feed her." Misa attached a nursing tip to the top of the drink pack and handed it to Catherine. Catherine deftly supported the baby with her left hand and brought the nursing pack to the child's mouth.

"Ah, she's drinking."

"Uh, nngh." It was somebody's sluggish voice, apparently awakened by all the commotion. Marika pulled her head up, Gruier turned around, and Grunhilde slowly opened her eyes.

"Gruier, could you explain things to your sister?" Marika brought her mouth close to Gruier's ear and whispered. "But that name, 'the Well of Roses,' it's kind of weird, maybe you could stop using it."

"It was our ancestors who gave it that name," Gruier said, taken aback. "But, I always did find it rather embarrassing."

Built in an age when starships lacked the means to transcend the speed of light, the ghost ship was equipped with radar and communications systems with terrifyingly large outputs—the unfavorable condition of distance would be overcome with more power.

As far as precision and effectiveness were concerned, the ancient radar and communications systems were a significant step removed from their modern equivalents, and maintaining a circuit that spanned light years required power on par with a modern cyberwarfare ship.

The Golden Ghost Ship reemerged into normal space and broadcast a message with its powerful communications system.

As the massive ghost ship rematerialized, its pre-drive was picked up by the sufficiently dispersed patrol network of Serenity's Blue Star, one of three star systems each named for one of the three primary colors.

The massive ghost ship appeared and transmitted a joint message from the Seventh and Eighth Princesses of Serenity, disseminated at the speed of light and caught several minutes later by a lookout satellite, and a dozen minutes later by a destroyer on patrol in the system's outskirts, which passed it along a faster-than-light channel to the fleet headquarters, through which it was forwarded to the twin third and fourth planets, the Blue Sisters.

The Serenity Defense Force was noticeably understrength, as the flagship and its Corback-class escorts were away on a top secret mission. But the remaining ships of the fleet assembled and raced to the scene, where they discovered the Golden Ghost Ship of their founding myths and made contact with the survey team led by their two princesses, Gruier and Grunhilde Serenity.

After more than a thousand years the Golden Ghost Ship, the ark that had once carried the first colonists to the Seven Jewels, and later the ferry that shuttled them between their three stars, had returned to Serenity.

The Bentenmaru separated from the Golden Ghost Ship before they could encounter the battleships of the Serenity Defense Force.

"You think Gruier can handle this?" Marika asked, watching the FTL radar as the closest of Serenity's high-speed cruisers approached the ghost ship.

"She is an astute princess, after all. She should have nothing to worry about." While the Bentenmaru's main bridge prepared for an FTL jump, Misa looked up at the display where a swarm of ships, civilian and military, continued to converge on the Golden Ghost Ship. "At the very least, nobody died, nothing was lost—and the Golden Ghost Ship has returned, an excellent prize to top it all off. And if that's not enough, you-know-what should come as quite a shock."

"The Well of Roses? The bioplant? Sure it's broken, but it was basically just a cloning system that created the royal family, wouldn't it be a cinch to repair it using modern technology? And doesn't that mean we ended up on Grunhilde's side, rather than Gruier's?"

"It wouldn't be that difficult to repair the Well of Roses, or to extract the special qualities of the royal family from the bioplant and use them to whip up a batch of DNA that you could make new kids from." Misa laughed and shook her head. "Princesses, kings, with today's technology cloning someone is easy. Even with in-utero gene therapy, people don't make that big a deal out of it—it's easy for an advanced civilization to fall into physiolatry or ugly authoritarianism. And anyway, it was proven long ago that upbringing and personality have a bigger influence than genes and biological material."

"Maybe that will prove to be the cause of Serenity's monarchy having carried on so successfully for so long." Marika glanced at the monitor as it displayed a live view of Serenity's Blue system's star. The white, G-Type light of the Blue Star, as it was known, was visible from the corners of the system.

"We'd be in trouble if the royal family didn't continue on—they're paying us for this job, after all."

"I know we haven't checked out the contents, but didn't we manage to haul some containers full of antiques off the ghost ship?" The guards under Yotof's command had all protested—these were valuable cultural artifacts, after all—but Gruier and Grunhilde had the final word, and they both agreed to let the Bentenmaru take whatever they could carry.

Time was limited, and they only managed a few trucks' worth, but the high grade antiques should still have been worth quite a bit.

"I just hope we can sell them." Misa sighed. "But considering the source, it might be hard to find a buyer...once the whole galaxy learns about the Golden Ghost Ship, they'll end up being museum-tier pieces, impossible to sell."

"What!? Even though they're authentic?"

"Without any proof that they were acquired legitimately, the only way to get rid of them is on the black market. Doesn't matter if they're authentic, everything there might as well be on clearance."

"So what, even if we can sell them all, we still won't break even?"

"That's why we're counting on the reward from Serenity's royal family." Misa glanced at the radar, the ghost ship marked by a conspicuously large blob of light in the center. "We knew what we were getting into when we took this job. If the Princesses hadn't been so generous, the Bentenmaru might have found itself wanted for leaking classified information again."

"Again?" Marika shook her head, dumbfounded. "It's happened before?"

"Sure. Most recently with a stink involving an independent system out in the boonies that had some undisclosed assets; we dug up some dirt on them, back from when they were absorbed into the Galactic Empire. We thought we'd made it away safely when their security forces ambushed us and cut off our escape route. It was a big mess."

"What happened?" Marika asked, more out of concern for the fate of the enemy fleet than the Bentenmaru. "I assume you went easy on them?"

"Obviously. We headed straight back to the system's capitol and sent out sealed copies of the incriminating evidence to the media. The administrators all found themselves replaced; though if I were them I'd have been more worried about my safety than my job, personally."

"Our course is set." Navigator Luca indicated the Bentenmaru's FTL jump preparations were complete. "We can jump whenever."

"All right, let's go home." Marika rose from the captain's chair. "Bentenmaru, jump! We can worry about our bills and the future of Serenity once we get home."

The Bentenmaru vaulted into hyperspace, leaving behind only a tremor in space.

A week later a message arrived on the Bentenmaru from Shou, agent of the Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency, regarding what had passed in Serenity.

They received Shou's explanation—internal information acquired by Harold Lloyd's agents and passed along with the private consent of Serenity's monarchy—on the bridge, having returned to business (piracy) as usual in the Cetus constellation.

After reciting a standard warning regarding a duty to confidentiality, he apprised them of the drastic changes Serenity had undergone in response to the Golden Ghost Ship's return.

"If you want more details I'll slip the report they sent us your way, give it a read." The enigma in his usual business suit and sunglasses rattled on with a spitfire machine gun cadence. "You're far enough away from Serenity that it might only be page-three gossip trash you'd never see, but there's been a big flare-up in Serenity between the unification and the independence factions, the pro- and anti-monarchy blocs. The gist of it is that there's a proxy war between the foreign-backed reformists and the hardline conservatives; even we were faced with the tough decision of whether to stick with the conservatives in the palace, with whom we have a long relationship, or to use this as an opportunity to invest in transitioning from an industrial economy to a tourist one, with all the profits that would stand to reap."

"So what? We were just pawns in some trade war?"

Shou frantically waved his arms in front of him on the communications monitor, feeling the brunt of Misa's pointed stare. "Don't say it like that. We're asked to make high-level political calculations day after day, weighing social obligations against humanitarian concerns. I'm curious about the fleet that disappeared during the Seventh Princess's grand interstellar study exchange while all this was going on, but let me ask you something else: just who was it who suggested that you return the Golden Ghost Ship, which had been lost for ages, to Serenity?"

The eyes of the bridge all converged on Marika, wearing her captain's uniform and occupying the captain's chair. She was forced to raise her hand.

"That was me. I thought it would be quicker if they could see it in the flesh, rather than going through a bunch of convoluted explanations."

"I see." Shou smiled, showing off his pearly whites. "A wonderful decision. Thanks to you, the Harold Lloyd Insurance Agency has abandoned its plans to make a potentially lucrative investment of foreign capital into Serenity, and will be continuing its long history of working together with the monarchy."

"Wait, they decided to keep the monarchy!?"

"That's not all they decided on." Shou wagged his finger reprovingly through the monitor. "Things have developed quite rapidly, as if everyone involved had a sudden change of heart—they're expanding the systems' right to home rule and shrinking the authority of the palace. Foreign diplomacy used to be the sole province of the monarchy, and each system only had a say in domestic politics by proxy. A true legislative assembly is being set up to serve as a regulatory body, with changes still being made at the administrative level. I guess coming face to face with the ship of their ancestors stoked a certain kind of sympathy even among the citizenry. I don't really get it, having such a nomadic past myself, but it's changed everything."

"I imagine that was more Gruier's doing than the ghost ship's," Marika said, picturing the faces of the beautiful, blond princess and her sister with whom she'd had so little chance to talk.

"Oh, that's right, Gruier Serenity entrusted us with a message for Katou Marika, captain of the pirate ship Bentenmaru."

"A message?" There was no need to be so indirect, Marika thought, but then realized that this was one of the monarchy's special communication routes. "Um, should I listen to it now?"

"Of course, it was addressed to Miss Katou Marika along with the entire crew of the Bentenmaru. Obviously you're prohibited from letting it spread beyond the Bentenmaru, but there won't be a problem repeating it within the ship."

"Could you read it back for us now? You can send us a hard copy later."

"Of course, if you'll allow me." Shou made a show of untying the string wrapped around the scroll.

"Katou Marika, Captain of the Bentenmaru. Please forgive me that I may only reach you in this fashion..." On the other side of the monitor, Shou's tone changed. "Serenity's monarchy is facing an urgent and unprecedented crisis; I beg of you, could you please come and rescue us?"

"Turn the ship around, on the double!" Marika ordered, before she'd finished listening to the message. "Set course for Serenity, uh...which of the Blue Sisters was the palace on? The older one?"

"Setting course for Serenity's Blue star system, the Elder Sister." Navigator Luca repeated their destination precisely. "Shall we jump right away?"

"Jump now! How could we not go when she's calling us like this?"

After skipping over much of the preparation process, the Bentenmaru set an emergency course for Serenity and jumped into FTL.

Awaiting the Bentenmaru at the palace was an award ceremony, celebrating the captain and all of her crew.

And come April, when according to the Galactic Standard Calendar many planets saw themselves entering the new school year, Hakuoh Girls Academy announced an extension of the Serenity princess's exchange, and welcomed her younger sister as well.