Sage’s breasts weren’t fully covered in skin, and looked like something out of the Dr. Gray’s Body World exhibition that I went to see in Seattle a few years ago.

  "Teasing makes the flowers prettier!" the Skinwalker declared while running her claws lightly down Galateya's naked spine. The Taniwha shuddered. A cascade of blue roses erupted along the far wall. "See? Gorgeous! We should tease her constantly! Swank up the decor!"

  Galateya growled without menace. She grabbed Sage by the scruff and pulled the Skinwalker into a deep and intense claiming kiss.

  I watched, mesmerized, as the two cryptids made out above me. Sage's skeletal body began shifting, flesh blossoming over bone, fur replacing rot. Galateya's scales shimmered through every color in the spectrum. The moss around us grew thicker, softer, spreading to carpet the entire floor.

  When they broke apart, both were breathing hard.

  "Mmmm." Sage panted.

  She turned back to me, looking slightly less like a recently deceased fox now. Serenity and warmth and attraction dripped from her like little sparks, making my heartbeat accelerate.

  “Can you tune it down for a bit?” I asked. “I’m almost done.”

  “Almost done what?” Sage tilted her head, the face losing skin and once again becoming bonier.

  “Almost done with my work. I should have both of my minds soon and then you’ll be free to blast me with as much of your Charmchain as you want to.”

  “Really?” Sage’s eyes ignited with pure, liquid happiness. “You can handle all of me?”

  “Pretty sure that I can,” I said. “Shady did a number on me when I was a kid.”

  “Shady?” Galateya asked. “What?”

  “Xandy,” I said. “Shady. Starshady. My best friend. My girlfriend. When I was seven, I wandered off into the fog, went down the rickety stairwell leading from my grandad’s old mansion to Darkfall valley and met her there. At least I think that’s what happened. My memories of that time are fuzzy as fuck… I think that she’s haunted me in my dreams too many times too, because I’ve several different memories of us meeting and I have no idea which one’s fucking real.”

  “Starshady,” Galateya let out. “Princess Aquillianne. Commander Xandria is the runaway Princess being chased by the entire fleet… Abyss!”

  “Yep.” I nodded.

  “You…” Galateya stared at me with a wide open mouth, naked chest heaving and drawing my eyes to the undulating scales of ever-shifting textures. “You’re the…”

  “Yep,” I confirmed her guess. “I am. Sorry gals. The big show is about to begin. Please don’t distract me for the next bit. You can ask me anything after it’s done. Anything at all. As many questions as you want to, not just one each. You two earned it today. Especially you, Teya. You didn’t give up, didn’t back down, didn’t stop.”

  “Okay,” Galateya mewled. “T-thank you.”

  I focused all of my attention on another me inhabiting the Frontenachii capital ship.

  “We can make out while you do your thing.” Sage nodded. “Actually… no. I want to see exactly what you’re doing out there, Emperor. Her claws dug into the sides of my head, drawing blood. Then she licked her claw and grabbed the Neural Interface, scratching something into it. “Amplify. Connect. Intercept, bind transmission! Display!”

  The TV screens flickered with thousands of fox eyes and then the static cleared, displaying the interior of the Frontenachii warship.

  Galateya gasped. Sage smiled triumphantly.

  Whatever Darkfall and Sagetopia did, it actually helped the broadcast between the two bodies, amplified the connection to the Nth degree, made it much easier for me to be in two places at once.

  A lightbulb ignited in my head.

  An idea of how to deal with some of my problems.

  “Sage?”

  “Mmmm, yes?”

  “If you can receive signals from Omnithornia, could you send one back?”

  “Mmmmm… Depends. What signal?”

  “I’ll be sending out a worldwide-Voicecast transmission from the Frontenachii capital ship,” I said.

  “Oh.” The Skinwalker blinked. “Then… totes. I’ll be able to push it through the Astral. The skulk will amplify the transmission and cast it through Darkfall to Omnithornia. Yep, yep. On it, my Emperor.” She snapped her fingers. “Amplify signal! Cast to Omnithornia! Trust all your broadcast needs to Sagetopia and Co!”

  The TVs around us began to thrum, sparks and electric currents dancing between antennae.

  The Slayer’s Sword shuddered, sparks raining from the ceiling, massive runes igniting across the dark metal walls.

  A massive hexagon erupted from the floor with a sound of metal grinding against metal. The thing was at least four feet in diameter, composed of black metal and blinking bits. As it rose, mechanisms clicked and whirred and a metal handle extended from the top.

  Nexxali moved immediately. Her hands wrapped around the handle. She pulled, muscles straining beneath her hexasuit.

  The ship's core came free.

  The pradavarian serval girl staggered backward, hissing. She adjusted her grip and began dragging it toward Seeker 008-Alpha. The Seeker's body peeled open obligingly, revealing its red crystalline interior.

  Nexxali heaved the massive core up the stairs, each step accompanied by the banging of metal ship core edges against crystal. She disappeared into the Seeker's interior.

  The serval emerged a moment later, panting from the exertion. She stood at the top of the Seeker's stairs, golden eyes meeting mine across the command deck.

  Then she saluted.

  It was a lovely, full military salute, hand raised to her forehead, chest out, expression solemn. Recognition of sacrifice. Acknowledgment of the dead Captain standing at the ship's controls.

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  "It's been an honor, my Emperor," she called out. "Give them the Abyss!"

  I returned the salute as best I could with a gun unit frame that was only half-responding to me. "Take care of them for me."

  "Always." Nexxali grinned with serval canines. Then her expression softened slightly. "Thank you for teaching me what love feels like."

  The words hit harder than Shady's execution shot. I wanted to say something profound back, something worthy of the moment, but all that came out was: "I'll see you later."

  She laughed and sent me an air kiss. Then she disappeared back into Seeker 008-Alpha's interior.

  The door folded shut.

  I watched through flickering sensors as the Seeker's segments rippled and then it vanished from where it stood with a sonic boom of displaced air.

  And then I was alone on the empty ship. Well… almost alone.

  On a holographic monitor a surviving pair of Shady-copies stared up at me, as if they somehow knew that I was here with them. They were probably connected to Shady via her hooks or whatever.

  The pair of doomed Shadies stood in some kind of a dim maintenance corridor, naked and blood-splattered, bodies bubbling, silver eyes reflecting the flickering runes. One of them tilted her skull-face at that particular angle Shady used when she was trying to figure something out. The other waved.

  They could definitely somehow sense me. Across the entire ship, through metal and crystal and the Astral Fountain contamination spreading like cancer through Slayer's Sword's infrastructure, they knew I was watching.

  "Do it," I said, even though they couldn't hear me. Even though my voice was coming from a barely-functioning gun unit frame in a dead body on a dying ship. "Finish it."

  As if responding to my command, both Shadies reached for each other. Their movements were gentle regardless of what they were about to do. Claws found throats. Silver eyes met in understanding, maybe even affection—two fragments of the same shattered soul recognizing each other in their final moment of life as brief as that of a mayfly.

  They bit down simultaneously.

  The holo flickered and died as their bodies detonated into wriggling, black tentacles.

  More systems failed around me, more displays winking away. More of the ship devoured itself from the inside out as Astral Fountains bloomed in corridors and chambers blossoming throughout its massive structure.

  The alerts flared in cascades of red text flashing from the holo panels of the command deck. I could barely see them through the static. My connection to the gun unit frame was thread-thin now, stretched across two hundred thousand miles like a rubber band pulled to its breaking point, held together only thanks to the syntropy-reinforcing shields of the command deck.

  Thankfully, whatever Sage was doing on her end in Sagetopia helped massively, didn’t allow the signal to decay completely.

  I stumbled toward the empty captain's chair like a drunken sailor, my limbs refusing to respond properly, my vision winking off and on.

  The wheel… Manual control that the Avatar of the Slayer’s Sword had blessed me with before her departure.

  Not a fancy holographic interface. Not an AI-driven navigation system. An actual physical steering wheel, crystalline and gold-veined, mounted on a column that had emerged from the deck plating like a flower blooming from concrete.

  I grabbed it with both of my gun-unit hands.

  The moon.

  I could see it through the command deck's viewport: a pale disc hanging against the black, crater-marked and beautiful. Humanity's oldest companion. The thing poets had written about for thousands of years. Much closer than the Earth.

  Did the ship have enough power to reach it?

  It was worth to try, to completely deprive the Third Fleet of its biggest vessel, to make a statement.

  My hands tightened on the wheel. Through the failing neural interface, I felt the ship responding, massive thrusters firing, adjusting our trajectory. It was like trying to steer a mountain. Ten kilometers of celesteel, crystalline biomechanical architecture, reactor cores the size of buildings, hundreds of decks.

  All of it turning… slowly, ponderously, toward the moon.

  There were flickers of transmission notifications from other ships. Probably demands to know what was going on, orders for me to stop. I wasn’t going to stop. Nobody could stop me now.

  The wheel felt solid under my deteriorating grip. Real. Physical. A throwback to ancient naval vessels, when captains actually steered their ships instead of delegating to computer systems. Someone, probably the original Frontenachii engineers, had included it as a failsafe. A way to pilot Slayer's Sword when everything else went to hell.

  Through the static eating my vision, I studied the control column. The wheel itself was obvious enough, but below it were three hexagonal levers that glowed faintly in the dying light of the command deck. My gun unit sensors managed to parse the runes etched around each one.

  [Thrust] [Pitch] [Yaw]

  Simple. Elegant. Exactly what you'd need for manual navigation.

  I pressed my palm against the thrust lever. It thrummed against my synthetic skin, responding to the contact. Through the neural feedback, barely holding me together now, I felt the ship's massive reactor cores surge with power, watched a miniature hologram of the gargantuan ship light up with flares from behind.

  The viewport showed the moon growing larger.

  Not fast enough.

  I needed more speed. More momentum. Ten kilometers of corrupted warship had to hit hard enough to make a statement. Hard enough that everyone on Earth would see it. Hard enough that the Frontenachii fleet would understand exactly what happened to their precious capital ship.

  My eyes found a secondary interface beside the thrust control—a hexagonal depression with runes that roughly translated to "acceleration." The kind of thing you'd use when running from a superior force, consequences be damned.

  Perfect.

  I pressed it.

  The ship lurched forward. My barely functional gun unit frame couldn't maintain balance. I collapsed against the captain's chair, hands still gripping the wheel like a drowning man clutching driftwood.

  The alerts were almost funny. Catastrophic failure was the entire point.

  The dying holographic panels warned me. But there was no life there, no ship AI stopping me.

  Through the viewport, the moon grew massive. Individual craters resolved themselves from the gray landscape: Tycho, Copernicus, the Sea of Tranquility where humans had planted their first flag. All of it rushing toward me at velocities that would have been terrifying if I wasn't already dead.

  I spotted a device hanging from the side of the wheel and grabbed it. Here we go, that’s it. My gun unit eyes took a moment to translate the runes.

  Probably the exact microphone that the Admiral used to threaten the Earth with. She probably sat on this crystal throne, feeling all mighty and superior when she spoke to the humans she saw as bugs on the planet’s surface. Now it was my turn to speak.

  My barely responding fingers closed around the device. Like the wheel it wasn’t a complex piece of magitek. A crystalline cylinder with a hexagonal activation stud at the base. Press once for internal comms, twice for fleet-wide broadcast, three times for a System-wide announcement according to the instruction tags flashing in my gun unit’s eyes.

  I pressed it three times.

  The static in my vision intensified, but I could still see enough. The moon filled the viewport completely now, its cratered surface rushing toward me like the ground during a skydive.

  How long did I have? Thirty seconds? A minute?

  I lifted the microphone to where my mouth would be if this body had a working mouth. It didn't matter. My dead mouth was under my gunshot-cracked mask which had an embedded speaker in it.

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