To the Stars

Chapter 76: Straying from the Light, Part One

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:32:43 +0200

When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will have to accept his suffering as his task; his single and unique task. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

— Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

μ∀·We must unfortunately report that Attempt 4 to compel compliance by the alien government has failed|μ+·We expect‒97% Attempt 8 at negotiations, to shortly follow this failure, will be even less productive|ν·Enforcement‐demonstration task force at chosen site three was annihilated—provisional bodyloss percentage at 94%—by planetary‐scale deployment of reality‐warping weaponry, wielded by at least tens of thousands of alien combat‐bodies, followed by a single combat‐body deploying anathemic reality‐distortion of estimated scale 10²³ J|ν+†·Detectable throughout the system, see Incident Report|ν+·No evidence of /Comprehending's hypothesized Reality‐Externalization‐Events found so far, but we do not consider this conclusively safe

ν·This organized, reckless use of reality‐warping combat‐bodies substantially raises the expected threat level of this irrational civilization|μ·Nevertheless, we will continue to engage in further dialogue in good faith|ν·Reserve task force is already being deployed while the original is restored from backup; while perhaps‒32% the aliens' reality‐warping resources have been or can be exhausted by our current allocation of force, we expect‒68% further materiel and personnel will be required|ν+·/Defector‐pursuing's accompanying representatives suspect‒67% that these organized reality‐warpers have recently seized control of the alien government, preventing it from agreeing to enact reasonable restraints upon reality‐distortion|μ+·Median estimate of timescale of operation increased from 9.7×10⁴⁹ fundamentals to 7.3×10⁵⁰ fundamentals

μν∀⌘·/Thinker‐preserving therefore requests debate upon an amendment to the Agreement for Alien Harmony which might permit the movement of further combat assets into the Milky Way galaxy||||

— vojN9j⊃Light‐everlasting, /Thinker‐preserving’s Empathizer at Great Sea, Consensus, 2440

This was all far, far worse than Misa had imagined.

If she had known from the start how deep the hole would go, would she have still plunged in? She hoped so, but perhaps she would have brought a longer rope.

It had started with the supposed death of Misa’s friend, comrade, and former pupil Hermina Green from critical soul gem exhaustion. Her death had occurred on HSS Charles Drew, a droneship dedicated to ferrying disconnected soul gems back from the front for reconstitution in new bodies. The situation had been chaotic, and the single specialty mage aboard the ship had not been able to stabilize her gem, which had gone critical unexpectedly.

That was the official story, and it had smelled wrong from the start. Misa had been around the block with soul gems in various states of fitness, becoming far more of an expert than she’d like. Hermina had been exhausted, but fine, having burned most of her remaining magic in a low‐orbit maneuver that compelled her to eject her gem away from a body that was going to tumble through an alien minefield. Twirling a set of cutting lasers that had grown nearly a kilometer long, she had been a goddamn hero, salvaging their escape from a convoy raid gone wrong.

Misa had been given a chance to inspect the gem herself, as it rocketed by in the arms of a support drone. With only a few grief cubes and some stabilization magic, she should have survived—valiant heroics were a good prophylactic against grief spirals.

Which was why the death notice had come as such a shock. After a few days, numb disbelief had given way to quiet suspicion. The whole thing felt ever so slightly off.

She had known better than to ask Governance and its imperturbably pristine networks. If something untoward had truly occurred, it had to be with Governance’s cooperation—or involve magic. She would never get any answer and only possibly tip someone off.

To Misa’s instincts, the whole thing felt like some kind of Internal Security operation, the kind you would pull if you needed magical girls for something completely black. Misa had sorted the possibilities in her head:

One, and most likely, she was completely off her rocker, in denial about her friend’s death and getting drawn to conspiratorial thinking like to a lightning rod. She could picture the look on her MHD psychiatrist’s face pretty well, if she voiced her concerns.

Two, a Governance or MSY cell had kidnapped Hermina for its own purposes. And it had to be “kidnapped”—there was no way she had volunteered. Misa had heard rumors among MagOps veterans about mysterious deaths and disappearances—some feared that Governance was creating their own magical girl organization, while others posited that the MSY, now public, was secretly forming a second, inner organization that could operate more independently, perhaps led by a not‐really‐so‐dead Homura.

Misa knew just enough about Internal Security to conclude that the latter was rather more likely than the former, and had just enough independence to want to snoop for herself. Risky, yes, but she had seen enough in her own experience, particularly with rogue colonies, to know that Hermina might not approve of her new mission. And Hermina had been her friend and comrade. That mattered.

Three… well, three was the worst possibility, because it would be something she couldn’t quite imagine. She hadn’t been able to shake that possibility out of her mind, the vague sense that she was seeing traces of the outline of… something.

Delusion, or intuition? She knew what Nadya would say.

With almost nothing else to go on, she had decided to investigate the mage responsible for managing the soul gems.

Even that had required a good deal of effort. Even with her MagOps access, she wouldn’t have been able to access something as private as the military travel logs of a total stranger. She’d had to call in a few favors, and eventually an electronics specialist she had once courted got her a look, though her ex had insisted on telepathic verification that she wasn’t lying. Honestly, fair enough.

A zap of magic later, and she had them, the completely mundane military history of a magical girl who spent most of her time on various soul gem shuttles, cycling back and forth between risky front‐line patrols and sedate body attachment assignments in the rear. There seemed to be nothing to go on at first, but then another zap elevated her classification privileges, and she found that the woman had a history of inquiries into her activity by various administrative AIs.

It was dull material by normal standards, AIs following up on some kind of complaint, followed by a perfunctory “No finding of misconduct”. The kind of thing the individual herself would never be informed about, it was so minor. But once Misa read into the substance of the complaints, she lost the dull apathy that had begun to settle over her.

There was a pattern of complaints, all similar to Misa’s own situation. Not directed at the magical girl herself, but regarding various soul gems that had passed through her care. The administrative AIs had passed by, audited the situation and her role in it, and found nothing out of line.

The pattern, though subtle, was striking, of the kind that an AI audit should perhaps have noticed.

It was Misa’s own TacComp that noticed the next discrepancy.

You see, one of the records stated that the soul mage had been on New California taking a long‐awaited leave, something corroborated by a number of surveillance reports about her whereabouts on planet. Except one of the complaints clearly listed a date within that leave window as when she had been responsible for a lost soul gem, and that was also corroborated by military records, which furthermore didn’t even mention her going on leave.

The discrepancy was blatant once you noticed the date overlap, and crosschecks with other records failed to resolve it as some kind of bookkeeping error, instead buttressing both sets of dates. And the most natural follow‐up—inspecting surrounding details to try to discern which set of facts was false—led Misa directly to side‐by‐side surveillance footage of what appeared to be the same magical girl in two different locations, doing exactly what the records said.

But how had any of this slipped past Governance’s verification code? The answer was obvious: it hadn’t. It had been noticed and ignored, and there were a number of possibilities as to why the discrepancy hadn’t been properly concealed: for instance, an untrained magic user that had failed to hide her trail, or an AI that had wiped its own memory.

But one thing was immediately apparent: if she wanted any chance of chasing this lead, she needed to book her own trip to New California, and make sure no one knew why she was really there.

So she swore her electronics ex to secrecy, and booked her leave.

Misa had been around the colonies long enough to understand that there were plenty of unofficial channels for getting answers, even when—or perhaps especially when—Governance or the colonial government couldn’t be relied upon. Outside of Earth, Governance was hardly omniscient, which left plenty of room for independent actors to find a niche, and for customers to develop a need.

Which was a long‐winded way of saying that there were freelance magical girls willing to use their magic privately for a bit of compensation, or just personal gratification. Misa had met one during one of her tours, a clairvoyant who went by Stacy—no surname at all, just Stacy—who styled herself as a private eye specializing in cold missing‐person‐or‐item cases. No one in the military really needed a side gig—their salaries were high partially to prevent this kind of thing—but she just liked doing it.

By a stroke of luck, Stacy was available, or available enough that she could file leave once Misa contacted her. Misa had plenty of leave, so it seemed wise to cover their tracks a little by having Stacy arrive a week later, after she had settled in a bit. Misa covered her own tracks by traveling with two of her squadmates and friends, Mina and Gracia, who both thought they were on a legitimate group vacation.

Paranoid? Maybe.

Misa and Stacy had finally met at a certain Café Liberica, where Misa outlined what she had found so far, cringing at times as she realized how circumstantial and conspiratorial it all sounded, the kind of thing that could have easily been written off as process errors.

Thankfully, Stacy agreed that there was at least something worth looking at, and that she had been the right person to call. After all, everything Misa had regarding New California—the discrepancies, when the soul mage had last been here—was at least a year in the past. But Stacy specialized in using high‐level sentimental, emotional, or even incidental ties—in particular, with a sentimental object—to look for connections deep in the past.

But Hermina, as Misa had pointed out, had allegedly died very recently. If they could find a trail to her here on New California, then not only would it be a very strong signal, it would prove something was up.

Their expectations of a brutally difficult search were then disproven by a simple visit to the starport, where Stacy picked up the trail almost immediately. They agreed that this was confusing: surely any conspiracy of this sort would have been capable of avoiding civilian logistics hubs.

Regardless of the reason, it gave them an easy trail to follow. Whoever it was had taken some measures to magically screen themselves, but not enough—though this implied little. Few magical girls were capable of effectively hiding every possible trail, and the MSY tried to keep tabs on those who could; simply looking up that bit of information in the power development archives had been an effort in its own right.

Confusingly, according to Stacy, Hermina had been reunited with her body, either her original or a clone, even if she wasn’t conscious for the journey. Both options suggested Governance involvement, which would certainly explain why Governance AIs had apparently been overlooking all this.

At this point, she and Stacy had seriously discussed bringing the matter up to contacts in the Soul Guard. They held back only because, given there had to be magical girls involved as well, it was probably a joint Governance‐MSY operation, and in that case contacting the MSY wouldn’t help.

They agreed to push onward, both of them priming pre‐existing dead man’s switches to tell someone they trusted about what had happened, just in case.

Misa’s, of course, was pointed at Nadya Antipova. Of everyone she knew, Nadya would be the very last to give up on her.

The trail led well outside the city of Amador, past a thin strip of suburbs and into bucolic robotic ranchland, where weary genetically‐engineered sheep grazed on sparse vegetation, interspersed with a few locals who had chosen to try a rural life. The gravity of their situation was definitely starting to get to her; Misa couldn’t shake the sense that she was being watched.

The trail led to a remote lab, registered on the map as an agricultural research facility.

Misa hadn’t intended to get herself mired too deeply. The original goal was only to take a look and see if she could figure out what was going on. If Hermina had been willingly recruited into some kind of Governance black op, then she was going to leave well enough alone and get out. If there was something more sinister going on, then even if it was a matter of saving a friend, she had to consider calling for help. Was it really wise for a magical girl, even of her skills, to take on a potentially hostile magical girl conspiracy alone?

But when she stepped inside the windowless two‐floor building—using a ceiling entrance—she found the security shockingly light, almost nonexistent, and though it was impossible to rule out stepping into a trap, what she saw soon blasted all sense of moderation out of her mind.

As she stepped through a threshold, a piece of her awareness snapped into focus, a piece she hadn’t even been aware was missing.

There had been some security after all, the lightest of magical screens, blocking her perception of what was within.

But even as she struggled with the implications of that, instantly on her guard against potential enemy magic, she couldn’t ignore what she now sensed:

Soul gems, perhaps seven of them, arrayed in a neat row a dozen meters away from her. Not active, and not in good state. Far from it; all her instincts screamed at her to get moving, that there were people in need of saving.

It took all of her paranoia to stay cautious, taking a moment to send a telepathic message to Stacy and to scan her surroundings for anything out of the ordinary. A magical perception barrier didn’t just exist in a vacuum—something, or someone was powering it, and it couldn’t last very long away from a magical girl either way.

But if there were soul gems on the brink of despair, then she needed to move to save them, even if it meant recklessly confronting an enemy.

A quick zap, and the electronic lock on the door in front of her gave way. The hallway behind had the air of a hospital, room after room of medical equipment spaced evenly apart, though only a few were occupied, and the walls between rooms were clear glass—hardly the practice of any actual hospital.

That clear glass also meant that Misa could take in everything with a glance, magically augmented vision picking out both details and gestalt. The soul gems at the end of the hallway were in one room each, placed on a small table within some kind of metal apparatus which she couldn’t identify at this range. Next to each table was a cot with a seemingly unconscious girl on it, hooked up to medical equipment.

She felt the bile rise in her throat as she edged forward. This was wrong. Whatever it was, this was wrong.

She felt something else as she got closer: grief cubes, almost unused, concentrated around each soul gem. That was sensible enough, but then why were the soul gems so depleted?

Only when she got close did she understand: the grief cubes were just slightly, painfully out of reach of the gems, sealed into a glass container. A photometer similar to the ones they wore in combat sat nearby and, as she watched, one of the glass containers shifted a few centimeters toward its gem, just long enough to bring it slightly away from the brink. Then it withdrew.

Misa had heard of torture devices like this, but only in the least credible kind of Unification Wars shock schlock. It wasn’t supposed to be practical—no information you extracted from a magical girl like this was reliable, and the kind of effort necessary to keep a magical girl confined like this was excessive, to put it mildly. At the end of the day, you were better off with a forced telepathic mind‐read—same amount of effort for much more reliable information, with much less patina of pure evil. Not even the Freedom Alliance had resisted such simple utilitarian logic.

That logic rang through her mind in a flash, in an aghast, almost delusional direct denial of what she was seeing in front of her.

Why? How? another part of her demanded.

How were these magical girls being kept confined? Had their jailor already fled? Now that she was closer, she realized what had been missing. There had been no telepathy, or any sense of emotion at all for what should have been the worst of situations. Now, though, she felt a distant, murmuring sense of…

There was no need to dig into that any further, even if she had wanted to. There were seven soul gems in her vicinity, all of them in torment. One of them was Hermina.

Getting them out was more important than anything.

Kyouko had to stop there, finding herself running through the same logic, confusion, and disgust Misa had. It wasn’t just evil, it was senseless.

Something had to be missing.

And the thought that this had been happening under their noses…

This had all happened over a decade ago, too. It ought to have ended a decade ago. Why hadn’t Homura asked for more help?

Misa was about to update Stacy when another sensation sent a shard of ice down her spine. There was someone else here. A magical girl other than her and the victims on their cots.

Despite everything around her, she felt the sudden, keen clarity of combat. She was no stealth specialist—a point of pure stubbornness on her part, she could have pursued power development into illusion magic, but no, she had always wanted more voltage, more current—and so she couldn’t hope to sneak up on anyone who was actually using the building’s surveillance systems. But she was suppressing her soul gem emissions, and whoever she was sensing didn’t seem like they were being particularly careful, or were even aware anyone else was present.

Sometimes magical girls just forgot to use the mundane tools at their disposal, relying too much on their magic senses.

As carefully as she could, she signaled Stacy to join her at her mark. Misa was very confident in her skills in a close engagement, but two was still better than one, and clairvoyants had a lot of utility even if they never threw a punch. Besides, Stacy could phase through walls—she’d still have a good chance of escape if things went sideways.

Misa found her target in the next corridor over, facing the other way towards one of the patient rooms—if they could even be called that. They were seemingly oblivious, perhaps lost in thought. They weren’t even transformed.

“Hold it right there,” Misa said, arm raised. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Transform and I drop you.”

She felt the comforting blip of Stacy’s magic behind her, signaling she was about to arrive.

Now that there was no need to hide, Misa gathered power around her, enough voltage that the air crackled, channeling power into her own body, lifting herself slightly above the ground. She could fry anything nearby at a moment’s notice, or pull a bullet out of the air. Many bullets, even.

The girl in front of her raised her hands slowly.

Did it really make sense to ask a magical girl to raise her hands? Kind of—many were unaccustomed to fighting without using their arms, and it was at least a signal of acquiescence. But Misa couldn’t drop her guard.

“Turn around, slowly,” she said.

“I’m not your enemy,” the girl said, evenly, after she had turned and given Misa a good look at her face.

“Really? Then what the hell are you doing here, with all… this?”

Misa let her disgust show a bit. She wouldn’t make any premature assumptions, but what else could possibly be going on?

“We’re here to stop it,” the girl said. “We have nothing to do with what was going on here.”

“A likely story.”

We? Misa thought, simultaneously.

But even as she responded, she felt another clear surge of magic behind her.

Perhaps she should have fried the girl in front of her on the spot, but something made her hesitate. There was something—

She recognized the magic behind her, she realized. She had only felt it once, but that had been enough to sear it into her memory, ten years ago, at New Athens.

Akemi Homura was cordial, once she had convinced Misa and Stacy to stop holding the other girl at figurative gunpoint—though Misa stayed transformed and kept much of her voltage field up, especially after she got a good look at ‘Homura’.

She didn’t look like Homura, of course. This girl with dark skin and striking eyes rather looked like Misa herself, if she were honest. But the feeling of her magic was undeniable—assuming someone hadn’t figured out how to fake it, of course. Nothing could be entirely ruled out.

Inhabiting other bodies is one method to evade detection, this Homura thought. It’s proven necessary. But let’s end our business here quickly: I’d rather not leave the victims of this facility here any longer than we have to.

Kyouko stopped again, taking a moment to refocus. She wasn’t sure why she felt so stunned—the séance she had attended with Mami had told her Homura was using other bodies, and they already knew about Valentin.

Perhaps it was simply the look on “Homura’s” face. In the séance, Homura had appeared as her normal self, as a quirk of the magic. In Misa’s memories, she was someone else. And not just physically… the telepathy itself was slightly off too, like it had traveled through some protective medium.

Kyouko replayed the memory. She didn’t think she was just imagining it, even if the telepathic impression was second‐hand. Homura was protecting her emotional state—hardly an unreasonable action here—but there was something else going on. Homura was going out of her way to project an emotional persona. One of a detached Ancient who had everything under control.

That was interesting, because it strongly implied she wasn’t that.

Ever since New Athens, Kyouko had been very worried about Homura’s mental health. Like most in the Church, she had figured her lost to a deep despair, wandering space alone on some private quest… until recently, when it turned out that Homura seemed to not only be managing a new magical girl organization, but also the Prometheus Institute on Earth as Joanne Valentin. That tended to suggest she was keeping it together, to say the least.

She had looked into Valentin of course, along with everyone else. Valentin had run a successful research lab, socialized with her colleagues and subordinates—notably, Ryouko’s parents—and even had time to raise new AIs like Vlad. If anything, her personality had been more upbeat and positive than Kyouko had ever known Homura to be.

For a time Kyouko had considered it likely that Homura was better off now—talking more with the Goddess, perhaps even enjoying her new roles in life. A bit depressing to contemplate as a friend, but Kyouko understood as well as anyone the merits of a good breakup.

Mami and Yuma had thought otherwise, of course, and now she was facing the other possibility: that these new bodies enabled Homura to retreat fully into her masking, in a way none of them would ever have let her get away with before. That was what she was getting from this memory.

Maybe she was reading into it too much.

I can agree with that much, Misa thought. But it will take more than that to convince me to drop my guard, or not call for backup.

What they really needed was a solid telepathic read on either Homura or her companion, using Stacy’s limited mind‐reading skills. But both of the magical girls in front of them kept their mental guards solidly up.

The TCF is compromised, Homura thought. Our mutual enemies have been using that for years now to conceal their operations from Governance and the MSY. Without a doubt, if you contacted anyone, you’d make everything worse. We went to a lot of trouble to isolate this facility.

Misa thought feverishly. She wanted to believe the girl in front of her, oh yes, but the consequences of being wrong were so high, and so sharp.

The girl that was Homura closed her eyes thoughtfully.

I’ll tell you some of what I know, she said. These people, this rogue conspiracy, has been around for a while, since well before the war, though I do not know how much longer. They are possessed of some kind of predictive engine—an impossibly‐effective algorithm, one partially magical. They’re ideologues, pursuing radical visions of utopia. Magical research forms a substantial part of their operations. Research like what you see around you.

Research? This is utopian research? Misa asked, appalled.

Of a sort. Certainly not research the MSY would approve of. We think that’s part of what this is all about. All this around you is an attempt to recreate the conditions I experienced on New Athens, to unlock that kind of magical energy. Foolishly, I might add. It would never work, but it was enough to force us to come and stop it.

Kyouko felt a slight shiver pass through her. Now that Homura had said it, it made sense. The Church viewed Homura’s miracle on New Athens as just that—a miracle—but she could imagine someone of a different, more exploitative mindset seeing instead an avenue toward great power.

More than that, she recalled what Mami had told her and Yuma, about what she had experienced with Akari before the Goddess saved her soul—and what Homura had cryptically hinted at, over the centuries.

She could guess that Homura would feel compelled to intervene for reasons beyond simple mercy.

It took you too long, Misa thought. She could still feel Hermina’s soul, and the others, on the brink of despair. The stalemate was agonizing.

Unfortunately, Homura thought, while their understanding of magic is limited by their misapprehension of the Law of Cycles, they are still quite capable—they have made breakthroughs, and they aren’t easily suppressed.

How capable are we talking? Misa thought.

Despite all our secrecy measures, they’ve already identified me and many of my original operatives as their enemies, while we have failed to identify their leadership. Despite a casualty ratio lopsided in our favor, their organization is growing more quickly, and employing more bodies more effectively, per member. Despite nearly seven years of conflict, and more sacrifices than I care to think about, I am little closer to protecting Humanity from them.

Misa pinged Stacy telepathically. What did she think of all this?

I’m inclined to believe her, Stacy thought. I don’t have a concrete reason; it just doesn’t feel like she’s lying, and I have some experience questioning people. But if anyone could lie successfully to my face…

Yeah, Misa agreed.

The magical girl standing next to Homura, the one that she had originally accosted, shifted in place.

Perhaps I can break the impasse, she thought. Akemi is reluctant to drop her mental guard, but I can. I’ve felt your attempts to probe me. You will see that I am not lying.

It was a surprising offer, given the risk that Misa and Stacy themselves were malicious actors, but thus far Homura and her companion had seemed largely unconcerned with that possibility.

Perhaps it was simply that Homura didn’t really fear them. After all, they had apparently been foolish enough to show up in their own, only bodies.

Makes sense, Stacy agreed tersely.

There was a tense silence as Misa waited for her friend to perform the mind‐read, trying to conceal her nervousness as she scanned her surroundings for any sign of trouble. It had occurred to her, of course, that Homura could simply be stalling for time for reinforcements.

They seem to be telling the truth, Stacy thought. Or at least this girl is. Apparently they were watching us arrive and were initially curious if we were involved with this facility, until you went inside and it was obvious you weren’t, given how much grief your soul gem immediately began accumulating.

So Misa hadn’t gotten the jump on them after all. Ultimately, not that surprising.

Misa relaxed slightly, releasing much of the voltage in the air and dropping back towards the floor. Stacy wasn’t a very good telepath, but she couldn’t justify drawing this out any further.

Not that she dropped her guard entirely. She even started applying a couple grief cubes surreptitiously, to recharge.

So what is it that you want us to do? Misa asked. And even if you’re trying to hide yourself, what good does it do not to call for backup? If we don’t let the world know what happened here, aren’t you doing the enemy’s work for them?

A very good question, Homura said. And one I don’t relish having to answer. But better than resorting to force.

The girl paused for a moment, peering at Misa’s face until she grew just a little uncomfortable.

The enemy’s penetration of Governance networks is deep. If you called for help here by mundane means, it would be intercepted, and you would become a target, Homura thought. That’s one reason. More importantly, I’m unwilling to precipitate a crisis because of the third party involved here: the Cephalopods.

Misa recoiled slightly.

We’ve discovered, Homura continued, that these people are cooperating with the Cephalopods attacking Humanity—the aliens have even given some stealth technology to them in return. But we also know that they aren’t wholeheartedly aiding the Cephalopods—we’ve seen them pass up easy opportunities to do so. At the least, they’re certainly holding back their access to Governance military intel. If the whole weight of Governance and the MSY were to suddenly bear down upon them, they would be forced to flee into the aliens’ arms, and to give them what they truly want… Humanity isn’t ready for that. Not yet. I have put plans into motion, but they’ll take years longer to mature.

She peered at Misa for a moment longer.

I know I’m speaking in riddles. The truth is I’ve been given the same riddles. I’ve been given the conclusions without the premises. That’s how it is. But I mean what I say about the risks. We have been forced to keep everything out of the light.

She turned her head slightly, so that Misa could see the red ribbon hidden behind her hair, twin to the one in the Cult headquarters. She held that pose just long enough for Misa to take the meaning.

I do wish She’d be more open with me, though I suspect I know why She won’t be. But, even so, I must continue to fight this battle. You don’t need to. Frankly, I hate recruiting people into it, and we already have more than I’d like.

Homura closed her eyes for a moment.

I know that’s a lot to take in. Under better circumstances, I’d appeal to your faith in the Goddess to let us walk away, but I have to ask for more than that. I have to ask for so much you’ll certainly balk; I would in your place. So I’ll have to offer you something else.

The next memory was tagged differently, and Kyouko realized with a start that it didn’t have Misa Virani’s metadata. Instead, the files were labeled as if they came from Akemi Homura.

“Homura gave you memories?” Kyouko asked, dumbfounded.

Van Rossum raised an eyebrow, suddenly miffed that Kyouko had gotten the memories first. Or jealous, Kyouko thought.

“Then I blew up the facility myself to hide her tracks, and let them Reformat me to wipe it all away, even the feelings regarding Hermina’s ‘death’ that led me there. So her memories were obviously pretty convincing.”

She paused for a moment to make sure she had their attention.

“I’ve reordered them to be chronological,” Misa commented. “So they’d form a cohesive narrative. Most of these I actually got later, either as part of a new recruit package or just recently. Homura believes in making sure we have all the necessary context, in a hard‐to‐fake way. I can’t provide you the magic certs, so you’ll have to take my word here, but they’re real. May the Goddess strike me down where I stand if I’m lying.”

“Since when do you believe in the Goddess?” Gracia asked. “No, wait, that’s obvious.”

The man that was Misa’s current body shook his head, laughing to himself.

“You remember when I gave Mina a good zap, right after she made a vow like that? On Karnāta? Nevermind—Kyouko, you know Homura. You’ll recognize that these memories are real. Just experience them.”

The first tranche of memories dated as early as 2440, covering the only period where Internal Security’s tracking efforts had met with any success. Even then, this was much more informative, of course—Kuroi Nana would have a keen professional interest in these memories, for the sake of validating the effectiveness of her methods if nothing else.

Homura had wandered the battlefields of the early war, across the Ganges Sector, infiltrating alien positions, monitoring activity and taking notes, and at times intervening from the edges of battles, a silent contributor to some early war defensive stands. Occasionally, she retreated to Optatum for supplies, but she met with no one, evading friendly and enemy patrol alike with stealth magic Kyouko had never seen. And when had she gotten a chance to squirrel away a personal ship?

Still, it was no more than what might be expected of the most capable magical girl who ever lived, turned loose.

Of more interest to Kyouko, these memories heavily censored Homura’s emotional state, focusing only on the details of her actions. Might that censorship be aimed, not only at some external audience, but against Homura herself? Was this how she had gotten herself back under control? She had clearly worked hard to hollow out these memories.

No, Kyouko concluded. Homura had never rejected suffering. She just didn’t want to share it with others.

Even so, glimmers of a dark, fatalistic mood flickered through. It was more ineffable sentiment than concrete notion: the hesitation before healing an injured arm, l’appel du vide of joining an unwinnable battle in a destroyed city, the fatalistic welcome for a squadron of enemy fighters that broke off to chase only her, the disdainful roteness in executing a score of aliens downrange.

Were those real feelings, or was Kyouko imputing false emotion onto mere actions? She doubted herself, suddenly.

If they were, these weren’t the actions of someone truly trying to protect Humanity. They were the grim battles of someone seeking a fight noble enough to justify their end.

Finally, a different sort of memory began.

On the edges of yet another battlezone, Homura silently tailed an alien ship.

She had followed the Goddess’s instructions here, and as always the results were fruitful: this frigate‐sized ship was not only a different design than any other she had seen, it was behaving very strangely. Far away from any friendly ships, this ship’s normally reliable alien stealth was flickering off and on at erratic intervals, causing the ship to appear to jump around on her sensors. Its course was evasive and inconsistent, but the general direction—toward the barely inhabitable fifth planet of the system—seemed unmistakable.

A heavily damaged ship, then?

They want to be seen, but not in any way that allows a target lock, and pull observers toward that planet, Homura thought, seemingly to herself. That’s not a theory I would have ever come up with. I’ll have to take your word on that.

A second of silence.

I’m really going to have to take your word on that, Homura thought.

Another pause.

You know I don’t doubt you on the details.

There was no apparent target for Homura’s thoughts, and while it was reasonable to think her caught within the delusions of a deeply corrupted soul gem, Kyouko thought otherwise. Homura had always had a special relationship with the Goddess, and her own twin of the Ribbon.

Still, it was something to witness Homura speaking to Her on closer terms than probably anyone ever. Kyouko almost felt jealous.

In the memory Homura sighed.

You say this is going to be important, but it’s not going to be important enough, is it? Not anytime soon?

Her voice was strained, and Kyouko didn’t like the intonation on ’enough’.

Never the straight answer. I’m glad it’s that important, at least.

Homura fell silent then, and the memory focused on the ship she was following, which appeared to be entering low orbit of Agni Five, which had yet to receive a proper name, though it did have a pair of automated groundside monitoring stations.

Then, with an urgent alert, Homura’s ship warned her about a series of projectile launches towards the groundside stations, something she was little equipped to deal with, not if she wanted to stay back and out of sight. And was it really worth saving some monitoring stations?

For that matter, why were the aliens even bothering to target these?

The alien ship began to leave orbit and vanished back into stealth, even as more sensor information arrived about the projectiles: not missiles, not standard impacters, more like drop pods than anything. Infantry? But a bit small, and clearly angled at the monitoring stations.

Homura considered the matter, then dove her ship in after. By all standards, she was being astonishingly reckless; the volume of active sensor scans, and now an atmospheric entry, would have taxed even the best of the MSY’s stealth mages to hide.

It seemed Homura was unconcerned about being detected by an alien warship, and nowhere in the memory was it clear why.

The memory recording was palpably incomplete, clear sections of mental state and motivation omitted from the record. However Misa had received this memory—the metadata tagged it as one she had received much later—Homura hadn’t wanted to share too freely. Still, the intrigue had clearly perked Homura up, and there was more energy in her motions.

It would have been difficult, likely impossible for even the best ship to catch up to the set of descending drop pods, and Kyouko wasn’t surprised to see Homura’s trajectory shallow out, as Homura stood up to don an orbital jumpsuit.

Only a magical girl with the right powerset might have reached the ground intact in time to see what was going on, and while Homura wasn’t known to have the right powerset—well, Kyouko was willing to bet any one of the Mitakihara Four could have pulled it off, one way or another.

The memory skipped forward, and now Homura was already in the air approaching the ground. It didn’t escape Kyouko that the missing time might have been someone—Homura or Misa—concealing the exact nature of the power used.

At the moment, though, she had somehow passed the drop pods on their way to the ground and was slowing herself down rather conventionally with telekinesis, the only wrinkle being that she seemed to be inside a magic stealth bubble of some kind.

The drop pods themselves had proven to be neither explosive nor packed with alien infantry. Instead, a fly‐by sensor scan had suggested they were filled with electronics of some kind. Homura would have snatched them straight out of the air—if it weren’t for the unknown magic signatures she also sensed nearby.

Rather than reaching the ground itself, she pulled up, unfurling a pair of wings to soar a few hundred feet in the air and cast her eye over the scene, magic senses keen for anyone approaching her, even as she flew an evasive pattern, just in case.

At the moment, at least, Homura’s wings looked white and angelic, not the twisting black abominations of New Athens.

But the magic signatures were veering towards the drop pods instead. It wasn’t impossible for this planet to have magical girls stationed defensively on site, just surprising—again, there was nothing here worth the protection.

But as Homura’s eyes honed in on the signals, she saw something that caused her to take pause, pulling into a vertical hover to stare. She had still yet to spot any actual people, just a triplet of flying drones, each corresponding to one of the magic signatures. They were too small to have a person inside, right?

As she watched, the drones moved into position below the drop pods, as if they fully expected to survive the impact. But surely—

A pulse of magic, and then the drop pods began to slow. Like the signatures, that pulse had come from the drones.

Homura blinked in surprise. For a moment she weighed the possibility of getting closer to get a better look, or even take another scan of the pods, but decided neither was likely to get her more in the way of information. If she wanted to know more, she would have to be more direct.

She swung over a bit closer, making sure her position would not be so close it was immediately threatening, but not so far they couldn’t get a good look at her.

Then she reached out, attempting a two‐way telepathic handshake with all of the drones. It didn’t work, which somehow surprised her.

“Hello there!” she transmitted instead, using a standard Governance frequency.

As she waved, feeling just a touch silly, she checked her corners for any sign of a magic or technological trap. She wouldn’t have done this at all if she didn’t think she could take them in a fight, push come to shove, but Ancients didn’t get to be Ancient by being careless.

The drones visibly jolted in reaction, much as a human would, and one of them began to circle.

“You are Akemi Homura, or wearing an imitation of her body,” one of them thought, mental voice young and female as she would have expected of a magical girl. “With similar wings and powers.”

The girl was doing a decent job of shielding her emotions, but Homura could still detect a layer of nervousness underneath. Natural enough, she supposed.

“I am she,” Homura thought. “Though I admit having no direct way to prove it at the moment, if you don’t recognize my magic. But who are you? And what’s with the bodies?”

Now two of the drones were circling.

“A contrivance to provide us concealment and freedom of operation,” the previous drone thought. “But why are you here? We knew you were likely alive; indeed we have instructions to speak with you if you ever appeared.”

Not the most elegant of conversation openings, and the drone had dodged her real question, giving only the answer that was guessable.

“I followed the erratically‐behaving alien vessel that dropped those canisters,” Homura thought. “Allow me to get to the point. You three appear to be three magical girls contained inside artificial bodies, collecting canisters from a strange alien ship. This aroused my curiosity, and I took the risk of appearing here and asking you who you are and what you’re doing. And now, I suppose, I should ask you what you mean when you say someone gave you instructions.”

That was the gauntlet laid down, but Homura had found in the past that it was often best for everyone to just get things said rather than beat around the bush.

“Shall we land?” the drone asked. “I can explain a bit as we fly.”

The drones flew toward the ground, and Homura followed cautiously, staying a careful distance away.

“This is probably self‐evident, but we represent a group that operates on the fringes of Governance. It is no secret that Governance seeks to direct the future of Humanity along its own lines, and to keep its grip on all Human populations. Perhaps the intentions are noble, but we believe this leads to unnecessary human suffering, and the inhibition of human potential. There must be better ways. Better utopias than Governance has constructed.”

Homura was immediately, instinctively wary. The message was ideological, and Homura had met many such ideologues in her time. Those who tried to operate outside the system could be very dangerous, even if their intentions were good.

Of course, she had been such an ideologue, once. Twice, if you counted her lesser role in the formation of Governance itself.

Still, what she heard didn’t necessarily sound good. There were reasons why the MSY had insisted on spanning all Humanity, and why Governance had aimed for a single, united utopia.

They reached the ground seconds later, touching down into the coarse red and brown regolith that dominated the landscape here. Somewhere, far away, an ocean of plankton kept the atmosphere oxygenated, but most of the land was still uncolonized.

Homura kicked some of the rocks aside.

“Is that an idea you three came up with? Or something you were told?” she asked. “I have heard many people claim to reach for utopia in my life. Governance is the closest I have ever seen, built upon the ruins of most of the others. You’ll forgive me if I start off skeptical.”

Suffice to say, Homura wasn’t signing onto any new utopian projects, rogue colony or otherwise, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t ready to let them keep talking. They could even work together on the alien pods—if they were relatively harmless and worth working with.

Though any group packing magical girls into mechanical drones was a certain level of dangerous, no matter what. It implied the presence of a capable soul mage, a willingness to dabble in research directions marked forbidden by the MSY, and the time and resources to actually complete the project. They couldn’t be taken lightly.

“A reasonable mindset,” the drone thought. “What Governance offers is certainly the safest option, given limited information. The thing is, we don’t have limited information. We have complete and accurate predictions of the future, within reasonable bounds. Enough to be certain about what we say.”

Homura’s hackles rose immediately.

“I have it on good authority that precognitive magical girls went extinct centuries ago, and that they’re not coming back,” she thought. “And I believe my sources more than I believe you.”

“No, no,” the drone thought, tilting slightly in consternation. “Definitely not precognition. We are aware of that metaphysical limitation. This is purely a predictive engine, a Laplace’s Demon transforming whatever physical and magical data we can acquire into projections of the future. Thanks to magic, we can overcome certain information theoretic limits and predict the outcomes of our actions with a precision normally reserved for physics. Albeit, we don’t know why magic allows such precision—this seems like a metaphysical loophole that wouldn’t be allowed. We’d be interested in your analysis, though that’s a conversation for later.”

It was often to your benefit to rattle someone in a conversation, so that they might leak information to you. So it had proven again here, accidentally. And while Homura had no intention of sharing such things, the answer was probably that whatever ’engine’ they were using wasn’t perfect enough for the Goddess to have screened out of the timeline as too corrosive to Human potential. It helped to have a little insider information on the matter.

Kyouko couldn’t help but raise her eyebrow at that tidbit of information. She and the Church had always suspected as much, but here was Homura thinking it, presumably with direct information. She was sending this one straight to the Theological Council.

“I see,” Homura thought simply. “Back to the main point—and you think this engine will let you build a better utopia than Governance?”

“Most certainly. Though really, we’re thinking multiple utopias rather than just one. It’s a core point. Rather than hashing it out here, in these awkward circumstances, we’d be happy to invite you to meet our leading members elsewhere, now that we’re done with our business on this planet. Our ship can lead you. They could explain things much more clearly than I can.”

That was certainly an offer, and one Homura was inclined to take, with the proper precautions. There was a simple point for her to challenge, though.

“Before I agree to that, about this engine you refer to: I assume it only works on a macro‐scale? After all, you seemed surprised by my presence here.”

There was a brief, meaningful pause.

“Well, truth be told, we are sensitive to variables that we don’t fully understand or which defy prediction,” the drone replied, with a clear undertone of embarrassment. “The honest answer is that you are one of the most prominent of those. That’s the reason why we’ve been told to be on the lookout for you specifically. We’d hardly need to be on the lookout if we knew where you were. But to be clear, we are usually confident in our micro as well as macro predictions.”

Well, that was a pretty clear question to ask the Goddess about when she had a chance. But for now, she could defer most of her questions for later. Yet something else about the situation bothered her.

“What about your companions here?” Homura asked. “They haven’t said anything. Heck, I don’t even know your name. Though I’d understand if you’d rather not share.”

It was often natural for only the leader of a group to speak, but Homura had been growing quietly suspicious: something was subtly off about the magic aura of the other drones. Of course, it could be credibly said that it was a consequence of being inside a small drone, but it didn’t sit right with her. She had been in the company of those who had been heavily mentally‐edited before, and this felt just a little like that.

“Oh, you noticed that?” the drone replied. “The truth is, a bit of light Reformatting is necessary to fit inside these drone bodies and prevent soul rejection. I’ve undergone it myself.”

The other drones perked up and sent their greetings, but neither that nor the suspiciously convenient explanation sat well with Homura.

Though if they were that upfront about it, she had to admit she didn’t have much more to go on than that feeling, but—and Clarisse loved talking about this—for an Ancient the feeling was often more important than anything.

She would go anyway—the offer to just take her to the group’s leaders was too tempting to reject. Still, she would keep her guard up—she hardly knew how to do otherwise. Even when she wanted to throw caution to the wind and gamble with her life, she always ended up hedging and making backup plans. It was second nature, and her past experience meant she understood much too well the many ways a single scenario could go wrong.

Even with her powers, she could still get lured into and trapped within a remote star system. She was confident in her ability to extricate herself out of most situations, but interstellar travel without a ship still eluded her, and she had already lost one of her ships to an FTL missile a month prior. She had another one stored, but still.

Despite that, Homura honestly hoped these magical girls were as dangerous as she felt they were, perhaps even more so. Protecting the world a little longer was the promise she had made the Goddess, and all she had done recently felt like puttering around, making small differences here and there. Had the Goddess finally led her to a worthy task? One that might absolve that which bound her to this world?

She set that thought aside and focused on the matter at hand.

“If you are willing to take me to your leadership, then I will go, provided I receive some assurances about my security,” she thought. “But I see no reason not to discuss a little first—”

She stopped there, startled despite herself by an urgent message by tightbeam from her ship. She had instructed her ship to contact her only in case of something really important, but her annoyance faded when she learned what had happened.

She resisted the impulse to look up at the sky or show an additional reaction, and found that the drones clearly knew what was happening too, surprise clearly written in their movements.

Another alien ship had appeared out of stealth and fired on the alien vessel she had been tracking, destroying it utterly. It was now on its way to the planet.

Kyouko echoed Homura’s sense of shock, and paused the memory to try to understand it in retrospect. They had known about the existence of multiple alien factions—Kyouko considered visions from the Goddess absolute in this regard. Internecine conflicts between two alien ships were thus entirely possible.

Homura’s shock faded too after a moment, though more from emotional self‐control than anything. She watched the drones in front of her; it was obvious they were concerned about the new ship. How they had noticed the alien attack was no great mystery, she supposed—presumably they had their own ships or other scanners she hadn’t detected. They hadn’t detected her either, after all.

Homura sent no instructions to her ship, which she had to trust to do the smart thing and hide itself as much as possible.

The drones skittered erratically in circles for long seconds, before huddling together in what was obviously a conference of some kind. Homura resisted the urge to telepathically break into one of the follower drones’ minds—she was no mind‐reading expert, and while most magical girls wouldn’t notice her intrusion, the operative word was ‘most’. She would have to content herself with passive telepathic observation.

“You should hide yourself,” the lead drone thought to her directly, finally. “The aliens are certainly capable of recognizing individual humans when they bother to try, and you are a particularly notorious individual. I can’t predict how they’d react. Best not to find out.”

Homura was starting to grow increasingly skeptical of these drones’ supposed ‘predictions’, given the fact that they had now been surprised twice, first by her, and now by this alien ship.

More importantly, the discussion clearly implied the aliens were here to contact the drones, which raised so many questions it was hard to keep count. But the right thing to do now seemed to be to do as suggested and hide. If they betrayed her to the aliens—well, she could win that fight.

She had already reengaged her personal stealth, and could only hope the aliens hadn’t already scanned the area. Lifting off, she chose an outcropping a kilometer or so away that would give her a vantage point on the drones. Staying in the air gave her better vision, but staying close to the ground was just safer and more concealed.

Some minutes later, the bloom of distant fire in the sky signaled the entry of the alien vessel into the atmosphere.

Homura dialed her soul gem down even further, maintaining only the bubble of stealth she was using to hide, and kept her head down, figuratively as well as literally.

The alien ship eventually swooped into the air nearby, buffering its descent with antigrav even as it blasted dust and rocks across the landscape. The drones stayed impassive, a pulse of blue magic appearing to shield their delicate mechanisms from the debris.

The frigate dropped into place with a quiet thud, the dust blowing off the surface refusing to stick to the metamaterial hull, which shone pristine.

Homura found herself holding her breath. Despite everything, the moment got to her: it changed the face of the whole war, if the aliens were talking to any humans, even those hostile to Governance. It meant she could potentially get in there, and even run interference.

The side of the alien ship opened a few moments later, flexing slightly as a circular door slid open. With no delay, an alien in an armored exoskeleton stepped out into the air, falling to the ground with a ponderous thud. Its movements were eerie, but all too familiar to Homura at this point.

What was different was the appearance of the suit, which had ornamental gold‐and‐dark‐green stripes. She hadn’t seen that before. It was difficult not to speculate that this alien was more senior.

Homura was trying to plot in her head how she could possibly eavesdrop on what was going on. No human had previously communicated with the aliens successfully, but unless they were going to start arranging rocks into the prime number sequence it was obvious they had to have something, and if that something involved short range laser transmissions Homura didn’t really have an option but to get right back in there and record what she could, an onerous proposition.

Kyouko frowned at that thought from Homura. How exactly was Homura expecting to go stand right in the middle of several magical girls and expect to be undetected? Clearly, Homura had previously‐unknown stealth capabilities, but it was one thing to have developed a bit of a side power, like her own fire powers, and quite another to have mastered it so completely.

Fortunately—or perhaps unfortunately for Kyouko’s hopes of a power demonstration—it didn’t come to that.

Instead, one of the drones produced an orb‐like object from a compartment that opened on its side, and though the baseline design looked visibly alien, it was clearly an enchanted device.

Kyouko recognized it instantly. The same or very similar object had been seen in the recording they recovered from the asteroid, used to hold the false negotiations between Governance AIs and Cephalopods.

Homura naturally couldn’t recognize it, and was thus still trying to puzzle out the nature of the magic when the orb started speaking.

“As discussed previously, artifacts and communications from other Thinker factions are to be handed over to us immediately without inspection. We are here to collect.”

Homura contained her surprise and had time to ask herself:

Thinker? Is that what they call themselves?

One of the drones replied audibly over speakers, in a sharp female voice.

“Of course. But we must protest the abrupt nature of your intervention. We had the situation under control, as you see.”

The orb pulsed, briefly changing from its original light‐blue to sharp red.

“Past experience has made it quite clear that the temptation of knowledge represented by these artifacts outweighs your commitments to us. We are here to remind you that we are watching.”

The drone replied:

“We have protested before about your refusal to let us know basic facts of importance to us. Partners must operate under a spirit of basic cooperation.”

They don’t seem on happy terms, but partners? Homura thought. Other alien factions? My opinion of anyone who works together with the aliens is quite low, but if there is more than one alien faction, then perhaps there are some who can be negotiated with. Perhaps even these can be.

Homura was once again addressing the unseen Goddess, and seemed to receive an answer this time.

Alright we’ll discuss plans afterward, she thought. Clearest answer you’ve given me yet. I suppose you brought me here to show me this, but couldn’t this have happened earlier?

A short pause.

Naturally.

Homura turned her attention back to the alien conversation. The alien was now rebuking the drones:

“Partners are expected to stick to the terms of agreements reached, not litigate details via subterfuge. This topic was discussed at length previously. If Utopia Unbound wishes to reopen the topic for negotiation, your leadership should do so formally. For now, we will take the canisters.”

More useful information. The organizational name didn’t tell her much that she hadn’t been told already, but this proved that the aliens had extensive dealings with them, and moreover understood them as a social construct. It had not been clear, prior to today, that the aliens were capable of understanding humanity much at all.

The drones moved forward with what Kyouko imagined was reluctance, opening side compartments to disgorge their canisters, leaving them on the ground. A set of small drones scurried out of the back of the alien’s suit, picking up the canisters with small metal tentacles.

“We will be in touch,” the alien said through the orb, with what Homura swore was a brusque tone, followed with some kind of tentacle gesture.

Homura watched as the whole sequence of events reversed, the alien jumping back into its ship, the ship lifting off—again buffeting the area with an oppressive cloud of dust and regolith—as the drones stayed silently in place.

Then, once the ship was a distant speck in the sky, it vanished, in a flash of radiation that seared her eyes with the intensity of a magnesium flare even from a couple dozen kilometers away.

There had been no missiles or attacking ship this time—Homura’s ship confirmed it. Had those drop pods been bombs after all? No, the radiation strongly implied an FTL engine overloading—perhaps the pods triggered it?

Homura signaled to the drones that she wanted to speak again and quickly flew back over.

“Self‐destruction,” the drones informed her immediately. “The pods were harmless, I think—the aliens always do that. They’re worried about mind‐control.”

“That seems incredibly extreme,” Homura said, with unfeigned shock.

“It’s their policy,” the drones said. “They’re not concerned about these individual messengers.”

Nor did the drones seem overly concerned with the fact that they had just revealed an apparent alliance with the enemy. Homura simply couldn’t let that slide, even if it jeopardized her chances of meeting with their leadership.

“Care to explain yourselves, then? I don’t have a high opinion of Human factions cavorting with genocidal aliens.”

She moved cautiously and slowly—if necessary, she would fight it out. This was no longer simply a matter of investigating a rogue group of magical girls.

“They discovered and captured a few of us before the war even broke out,” the drone thought. “The aliens were and are overwhelmingly powerful, more even than you know. We were able to make an arrangement that guaranteed our survival. We admit that what happened at New Athens defied our expectations. We anticipated a short war. The vast majority of humans were to be spared.”

As before, this drone clearly had no idea what she was dealing with, or how to speak to an Ancient in general. The gaps in that explanation were wide enough to drive a fuel tanker through, and it took Homura no time at all to come up with a list of cutting questions. For instance, that clearly implied they had expected New Athens to go down as a loss for Humanity, possibly taking much of the MSY with it. And it was obvious that whatever ‘arrangement’ they had made would leave their conspiracy on top.

She focused on the core point of outrage, though.

“I don’t know what kind of arrangement involves carrying out genocide on innocent planets,” Homura thought. “If what you say is true, that happened after you talked with them. Without involving the actual Human government, mind you.”

“Their soldiers don’t see killing the same way we do,” the drone thought, with palpable discomfort, “and their leadership is not interested in opening negotiations with Governance, not until they can safely dictate terms. And the aliens remain confident in the inevitability of their final victory over Humanity.”

“Then you’ve failed to explain to them the nature of magic,” Homura thought. “Even what you know ought to be dissuasive enough. Did I not kill enough of them at New Athens? Little of what you say makes any sense.”

She was barely holding her tongue, but by now she had chosen to play along. It was obvious they were an enemy, but if she was careful and pretended to be talked down, perhaps she could learn something more.

Or they would try to kill her, now that she knew they were complicit in genocide. They had made no move toward attacking her yet, but that didn’t mean much; perhaps they simply predicted that attacking here would be futile.

“I haven’t told any lie,” the drone thought. “Believe me, we didn’t want those massacres, nor do we want aliens to dominate Humanity, nor are we fighting by the aliens’ side. Unfortunately, that doesn’t matter. A long war is acceptable to them, and they prefer certainty in their long‐term security over sparing human lives.”

For the first time in this conversation, Homura sensed a clear lie through their mental defenses. Not that the drones had been particularly honest before this, but it had all felt like misdirection and technical truths, nothing she couldn’t have detected just from the words. But this time her passive telepathic sense provided an extra crumb of information: while they didn’t enjoy the slaughter of Aurora and Atlas, they did see those crimes as useful to their cause.

Most likely, they had predicted the invasion would lure out most of the MSY’s fighting strength at New Athens—right into the sights of an orbital superweapon.

Homura made sure to show no sign she detected the slip. She couldn’t ask too many questions, or it’d be obvious she was milking them for information. But her guise allowed her a few more questions, she hoped.

The most important question first:

“And what about this talk of other alien factions?” she asked. “As far as anyone else knows, there is only one alien faction. There seems to be some tension between you and the aliens just now about those factions, and whatever they sent in those canisters.”

“At this point it’s probably best if we just take you to our leadership, as we previously discussed,” the drone thought. “Any explanation we could give here would be incomplete, and frankly I don’t necessarily know all the details.”

…and I don’t know what I’m allowed to say, and it might sound bad. That was another clear telepathic read. So much for the questioning.

Homura pretended to think about it for a moment, while actually taking the time to think about personal security arrangements.

“Alright,” she thought finally. “Please, let’s both call our ships in, and I’ll follow you in mine. I hope you’ll understand if I want to travel by myself, and have eyes on you.”

“I have to admit that makes sense,” the drone thought. “I’ll call it.”

At her direction, Homura’s ship broke radio silence, informing her that a new blip had appeared on sensors, lifting off a few hundred kilometers away for the short hop over to their current location. The appearance of the ship on sensors had caused certain anomalies that strongly resembled an alien ship decloaking.

Her own ship began its descent at the same time. There was no telling who would have the advantage if either ship opened fire: neither side had an appraisal of the other’s capabilities, even if Homura’s had the energy advantage of being at altitude.

But there was no incident, and when the drones scurried onto their ship—of a Human make and model at least—Homura boarded her own, the two ships taking off simultaneously while bombarding each other with an array of active scans.

The trip to orbit, then into intrasystem space, gave Homura some time to collect her thoughts and ask a few questions.

How big a danger are these people? Am I to focus on them, rather than the aliens and the war?

The distinctive pause.

Finally. This feels like real progress. I just hope it will be quick—perhaps within the year?—and I don’t have to kill too many people.

Another pause.

I admit that’s not what I wanted to hear.

Even with modern starships, trips into interstellar space were hardly fast. She asked for a destination, and was sent the coordinates of an uncharted system a dozen light‐years away. Unfortunately that was still most of a day.

Long years of practice had made Homura skilled at maintaining a kind of passive situational awareness, and even as both ships cruised along, maintaining light stealth, she placed herself in a kind of meditative state, magic suppressing the need for sleep. Suitable for days or weeks of loneliness.

So when an alien cruiser dropped out of stealth three‐point‐seven hours later, accompanied by a pair of FTL missiles nearly on top of her, she was able to react in time.

Again there was a very poorly placed timeskip, and now it was obvious Homura’s memory was holding something close to its chest. Something about what exact magic Homura was performing. Kyouko would have found the situation Homura was in quite a pickle, and she didn’t know Homura to have any kind of teleportation magic, and yet the next scene was on board the ship of the drone magical girls.

Correction: Homura hadn’t originally had any kind of teleportation magic, but she had used something similar three times the last time Kyouko had seen her, right after New Athens. So, perhaps it wasn’t so strange.

Homura stared at where the soul gems had been in her palm. She had tried her best to capture the drone magical girls alive, but somehow the soul gems had burned themselves out, minutes after she had taken them, despite her best attempts to apply stasis.

Some kind of soul magic she was unfamiliar with, most likely. Well, the Goddess would show more mercy to them than she would.

Homura stepped over the shattered drone bodies and passed her magic over the pilot’s command console. A civilian transport normally had nothing in the way of internal defenses, and it seemed her opponents had not added any while making modifications. Nor was there a full onboard AI, and the relatively light security meant that it took remarkably little effort for Homura to commandeer the controls. She was hardly an electronics expert, but she had been forced to pick up a trick or two over the years.

There would be time to screen the ship for tracking devices once she got away. For now, the important fact was that the ship’s alien stealth device was still active, ironically hiding her just as well from the alien cruiser as the drones had probably intended to hide from her. Her own ship had been destroyed, she had lost her captives, and the drones had reduced their translation device to ashes, but on the whole, she still felt victorious. Finally, a goal was within sight.

There was no time to waste. She wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice. She had work.

From there the memory transitioned back to a montage of fleeting moments, with just enough detail to make the timeframe clear, obviously intended more to provide context than elucidate anything of depth. Some of it was presumably simple summarization.

Homura tried, initially, to find and extinguish this conspiracy herself, stubbornly ignoring the Goddess’s clear suggestions to recruit some help. This took her well outside the usual Human circles, away from the battlefields and into the obscure parts of Human space, tracing every rogue colony known to both Governance and the MSY.

Then she explored outside Human space, using the human‐operable alien stealth device she had obtained from the drones’ starship to penetrate deep into the Sonoran sector. She found some alien supply lines, and work being done on what Kyouko recognized as something similar to the wormhole station destroyed in the Saharan Raid, but no alien home worlds or TCF conspiracy—Utopia Unbound—home bases.

Her only substantive finds after months were a pair of seemingly‐abandoned conspiracy listening posts—similar to that found by the Task Force, Kyouko thought. A substantive hint, but not enough.

Meanwhile, the war situation went from bad to worse. Sure, some of the initial attacks had been turned away, but every time Homura returned, more systems had fallen, with losses now concentrated in the Indus Sector. All this despite the largest mobilization that Humanity had ever seen.

More than once Homura had wondered aloud whether the Goddess was sure the war was not already lost and more than once she received an answer indicating… that it was at least not the worst case. On a few occasions Homura intervened when in the area, saving some colonial militia ships, and even personally stopping an attempt to bomb a shipyard. But she knew it was pinpricks relative to the scale of the war, and when she intervened, it was more of a personal gesture, to make herself feel better.

At points Homura seemed to consider recruiting a follower, someone to work with her, as the Goddess was clearly implying was necessary, but she never quite followed through. Her options were limited anyway: a newly‐minted magical girl from a rogue colony would hardly be terribly reliable, and this didn’t seem the time to pull anyone away from front‐line combat. Nor was Homura interested in making contact with anyone from her past life.

Then the narrative reached a point that got Kyouko’s clear attention: Homura pulling into orbit of New Athens on the anniversary of the day she had saved the planet. On that day, down on the surface, Kyouko had given the most important speech of her life.

This hardly seems like a fertile place to find useful agents, Homura thought, addressing the void.

Okay yes, there are a lot of magical girls here, but what, do you want me to walk up to one of them and just talk to them? No, don’t answer that, of course you do, but I’m not going to risk revealing myself so close to Kyouko of all people—yes, same planet is plenty close, in my opinion. Why do you think anyone would even believe me? Obviously I’m just a crazy Ancient talking to a ribbon in my hair.

There was a long pause.

You spoke to Kyouko? I thought you were always against revealing yourself to more people. Just to give me a base of recruitment?

I’ve always admired the versatility of your acts.

There was another pause, and then Homura sighed.

You really think they’ll listen?

Kyouko couldn’t help but feel a shiver, unrelated to the cold of Yenisei.

It was one thing to accept intellectually that your life, and your recent upending of it, had been part of the plan of a greater power. It was another to see parts of your plan baldly sketched out, in a manner that didn’t seem to leave much room for your agency.

She had indeed had her own talk with the Goddess. The Goddess had never told her in plain terms to found the Church, or even to recruit followers. She had actually gotten the impression the Goddess was very reluctant on the matter. Kyouko had offered her ideas, arguing that magical girls needed, more than ever, the hope that Homura’s secret could provide. So many girls were being thrown into relentless, bereaving combat—it was like the old days, before the MSY. Even if no one believed her, she had to at least try to offer them comfort.

The Goddess had never even explicitly agreed, implying only that She wouldn’t try to stop her. Kyouko had even felt guilty about ignoring Her apparent wishes.

That was the understanding with which she had poured out her heart at New Athens. Knowing the Goddess a bit better after a couple decades, it did not surprise her to learn that She held more than one perspective on the matter, and that there was some degree to which her choices weren’t her own. But emotionally, she couldn’t help but feel manipulated.

That was a sensation she hadn’t felt in a long time. Even Homura and Yuma had usually avoided leaving her in the lurch.

A disturbing realization then crawled over her: this was surely how Ryouko complained about feeling in the reports. How Maki felt, about Kyouko’s interventions in her life.

A thought she had to file away for consideration later, probably with a lot more food on hand. For now she had to swallow her feelings and press onward.

I should have known you had something like this up your sleeve, Homura thought, once the speech was over and there had been time to look at the local net’s reaction. Of course, a few minutes was far too short to really know if the fire would spread, but she could easily read the winds.

Really, she should have known Kyouko had it in her. That was a real blind spot—after so many centuries, she had never really expected any of them to feel Her again in this life, even with one of Her ribbons. But it made sense, because the Goddess tended to only kick pebbles when She intervened. Rarely ever boulders.

Well, to be more precise, she was the boulder. At least when Clarisse van Rossum wasn’t serving the role.

But whatever success Kyouko might have soon, Homura was still reluctant to make direct use of it. Sure, she could see the value in a recruiting pool that was conditioned to take her word on the Goddess and the nature of her mission, but that solved only one of a succession of problems.

She took a few seconds to mull that over, and then her ship notified her of an incoming transmission.

To say that was unexpected was an understatement. Homura knew from experience that the alien stealth device she was using was very, very good, and should have kept her hidden in orbit from all but magical clairvoyants, none of whom should have had any reason to look for her up here.

There was only one possible chink in her armor: to listen to the broadcast she had been obliged to request a tightbeam signal, which was an obvious risk, except that Homura could easily perform the minor bit of magical hacking necessary to spoof a legitimate request. She had even spent the past few months refining her techniques.

Not enough, apparently.

The message was itself by tightbeam, originating from a way station on the surface. The authentication claimed it was from someone she knew: Jeannette Smith, on behalf of her wife Yasuhiro Rin.

Homura sighed. Of course. She knew she’d been too sentimental, coming back here.

For a moment she considered simply fleeing, but abandoned the thought—if Rin and Jeannette wanted to expose her, they could have done so already. Her best chance of preventing that was to simply talk them out of it. In fact, that was all the message requested: a chat.

As for how that damned couple knew it was Akemi Homura they were addressing—well, being infuriatingly perceptive was Rin’s special talent.

She sighed and dictated a response: she would meet with them, if they agreed to travel to a particular location in deep space, where Homura wouldn’t be observed decloaking.

It turned out, Rin and Jeannette contacting her was a blessing in disguise. They had repeated Rin’s Unification Wars disappearance trick, picking up new identities and lives to look for a worthy cause, and eagerly signed on to work with her. And frankly, Homura couldn’t have picked better candidates than a magical girl detective and an electronics specialist.

It had worked so well, that is, that it carried the clear whiff of higher planning. ‘Blessing’ indeed.

Homura had never been averse to looking even a divine horse in the mouth, but this time, after an indecent amount of nagging on her part, she received an unanswerable reply: the expansion of the newly‐established Church of Hope had another hidden purpose, one which mirrored a purpose Homura’s own little conspiracy would have. The ‘Laplace’s Demon’ that the enemy had mentioned was a serious threat, and the Goddess intended that Her two ribbons would cover its eyes. She did not like exerting influence upon Humanity, but Her divine intervention was necessary to bind the Demon’s power. Given that tension, She preferred having as many pebbles as possible to nudge.

That, and one or three boulders, of course.

To say that this revelation would be explosive within the Church was putting it rather mildly. The Church knew quite well that the Goddess had mixed feelings about its existence, but why they were allowed to worship Her now had always been controversial. The common answer, promoted by Kyouko herself, was that they were necessary to support magical girl morale and war mobilization, that they were a beacon of hope in the darkness. Homura’s version was… much less inspirational.

Like so much here, Kyouko had to put that into a mental box to think about later.

When Homura relayed that information to Rin, it brought a new revelation.

Rin and Jeannette hadn’t abandoned the flailing war effort just to fulfill some wanderlust—they had, even prior to the war, begun to grow suspicious of something slightly wobbly in the ever‐turning wheels of Governance, some kind of ineffable magical influence that lay at the center of several anomalies she had tried to track. That the war suddenly forced the MSY to enter Governance’s fold made them even more suspicious. But after nearly a year of effort, they had failed to derive all but the faintest leads, which had only made Rin more certain—nothing eluded her that long without deep magical support.

Her original reason for signing on with Homura so quickly had been to check if it was her—apparently her third most likely theory. But their brief time together had made clear that wasn’t the case. Rather, Homura’s information about ‘Laplace’s Demon’, and experience with magical girl drones, explained much. Some kind of magical predictive engine could dodge even Rin’s machinations, if it were powerful enough, and if it acted via agents whose existence violated old assumptions.

Homura would have liked to be smug about outmaneuvering the legendary Yasuhiro Rin, except she knew damn well the Goddess had been leading her by the nose. Moreover, she didn’t like the way Rin was now openly making a project of untangling the Goddess’s historical influence on everything that had ever happened.

But she liked even less the conclusions Rin began reaching now that she was in the fold. First, that they had to keep recruiting; unfortunately, Homura was now outvoted three to one on the question. But second, as they added new members, Jeannette finally completed the pattern she and Rin had been working on the last year: the conspiracy Homura had been trying to find was also responsible for a breach in the TCF.

For a while, plumbing the depths of the breach, and what it was being used for, was their highest priority. Their little cabal—which Inoue Yoko eventually dubbed the Coordinating Group—spread itself thin across the stars, tracing the evidence with growing horror. Governance, the MSY, the Armed Forces—all were fatally compromised, with Laplace’s Demon directing a surgical program of magical patching and unpatching that evaded all magical audits that might reveal it.

Yet so much was inexplicable—not just the age of the digital backdoor, which they traced back to shortly after the Unification Wars, but rather, the mildness of the exploitation. Utopia Unbound appeared to only be cloaking their operations and gathering data!

It was Rin who pointed out, though, that even a breach of this scale couldn’t be exploited in unlimited fashion, precisely because of the need to constantly dodge magical audits—fatally compromise the war effort, yes; execute a bloodless coup, no.

So, apparently, the drones hadn’t been lying about the limits to their cooperation with the aliens. But that was little comfort. And now the question was: what to do about it?

That exact question dominated the debates of their Coordinating Group. The natural answer was to try to coordinate with Governance and the MSY and seal the TCF backdoor all at once; unfortunately, Jeannette’s projections indicated that there weren’t enough magical girls with the right powers, nor fast enough technological methods, to do it in time. Even a couple hours was more than enough for Utopia Unbound to cripple the war effort.

There was a second obvious answer: execute a decapitation strike.

Some groundwork would be needed: first, they needed to actually find Utopia Unbound’s leaders, and then they needed a technological solution to block IIC communications, so no command to exploit the TCF breach could go out. No such technology existed yet, but with time they could perhaps induce Governance to develop something for them.

This approach was advocated for by several members, and had the appeal of being both complete and seemingly straightforward—something that Homura had long ago learned the value of. After all, as Napoleon had said, when setting out to take Vienna, take Vienna.

Unfortunately the checklist of things that could go wrong was simply too long: the leadership might not all be in one place, there might be a dead man’s switch, and they had to not see it coming, even with Laplace’s Demon.

If Utopia Unbound were ever truly endangered, and they realized it, they could sign on fully with the Cephalopods, wringing whatever leverage they could out of the incredible mounds of intel they held, not to mention the Human shipyards and fleets and exotic matter refineries they could sabotage. With the current state of the war, and frankly, in any probable near future state, that was tantamount to offering the aliens victory.

Utopia Unbound might not be traitors to that degree yet, but if cornered… well, they had already sold out Humanity once.

That put Homura’s Coordinating Group in a frankly depressing bind, and they spent some weeks thinking through how they might escape.

One unpalatable approach was to attempt negotiations with Utopia Unbound. Homura felt that her past encounter with them was more than enough evidence of bad faith in that regard, and besides, no one wanted to contemplate what kinds of concessions might be demanded. Jeannette called it ‘surrendering without a fight’ and Homura couldn’t really disagree.

Another suggestion was a form of strategic stalling: wait for a moment in the war where Humanity had enough of a temporary advantage that it would be safe to patch the TCF and undergo the risk of Utopia Unbound sabotage. Better, but hardly easy to calculate or achieve, especially anytime soon.

The nature of the war troubled them, too. Governance simulation and standard logic made one conclusion clear: any aggressive alien power ought to be overwhelmingly powerful, enough to overrun Humanity with barely a fight. The statistically likely differences in civilizational size and age made it almost a guarantee. Even magic shouldn’t have been enough to bridge the gap, barring heavy divine intervention. That Humanity had held out already for over a year was incredibly implausible a priori.

Nonetheless, the explanation for Humanity’s continued independence had to lie within that implausible space, and the most obvious explanation was that the aliens were not fully invested into the war. That was even consistent with what the Utopia Unbound drones had told Homura, and the apparent internal conflict among the aliens.

But, frankly, that assumption wasn’t useful on its own. A careless attempt at negotiation with the various alien factions could easily backfire—it certainly didn’t seem like Utopia Unbound was pleased with the results of their negotiations. Though that didn’t mean they couldn’t try.

For now, only one clear path presented itself: to lead their enemies into a deep, twilit forest, and then strangle them there. It had to be over before they saw it coming. To accomplish that against a currently superior foe, whose strength lay in predicting the future…

Someone had done that once—alone, even—but Yuma had faced opponents with much more serious restraints, and a precognitive who might very well have let her win. Lacking such advantages, their counterplot would have to be so exquisitely precise, yet so devilishly insidious, that even Laplace’s Demon could never anticipate it.

Fortunately, that was possible. Unfortunately, Homura knew exactly from Whom they might obtain such a plot.

Homura squinted at the sheet of metal in her hands, laser‐etched to atomic precision with row after row of inscrutable petroglyphs, each a pattern of four symbols arranged within a circle. It might have been mistaken for a lost ancient language, but there was something about the curves involved, the connections between the quarters, that suggested something ineffably alien.

Or so she liked to imagine. The atomic precision was, of course, pointless, since she had designed the etchings entirely from memory, based on an image the Goddess had cast into her mind. It was, She claimed, a message in an alien language, one that would help convince a friendly alien faction of her goodwill.

Only help. The friendly aliens’ previous five attempts to make independent contact with Humanity had been sabotaged by hostile activity, either from compromised Governance AIs, Utopia Unbound agents, or false flag attacks from the attacker faction. They were on the verge of giving up, and after repeated hostile receptions, they weren’t likely to believe her claims on their face.

The question then was obvious. Why was she being given a single document to hand over instead of, say, a translation guide to the alien written language, or even better, a way to get an enchanted translation device like Utopia Unbound had? At the least, she could take an enormous box of grief cubes and sojourn with the friendly aliens, spend however long it took to build up a common language, even hash things out via hand signals if she had to.

Patience, she had been told. The document was efficient, limiting the extent of Her meddling. Full mutual understanding, enough to enchant a translation device or properly communicate, required a certain sacrifice. Moreover, and more importantly, limiting contact with these aliens for now would produce a better final outcome—a proper diplomatic exchange too early would lead to dire consequences, barring extreme interventions on Her part.

Would this be like the Unification Wars? Homura had asked. Would She mostly let this war play out, too, acting only to help prevent the worst possible outcomes?

That question had caused only sullen silence. She didn’t like discussing the topic.

The Goddess had never wanted to stand athwart history. Never mind that her power was limited, she had no right to dictate people’s choices in life—Her succor came only at death. Nonetheless, her good nature led her to often steal from mortals the worst possibilities, and she felt fewer scruples about adjusting Humanity’s course as a whole. She framed it as guiding everyone toward their own, better impulses. She tried not to interfere in anyone’s clear, reasoned choices.

But, even knowing that, Homura and her Goddess hadn’t spoken much, in the latter years of the Unification Wars. They had both felt guilty, and not without good reason. Yet in those days, Homura had at least been able to take solace in the thought that with a United Front victory, the establishment of a lasting peace, and the founding of Governance, her earthly duties would at last be fulfilled, and she could finally rest.

She had been wrong. And then, at New Athens, wrong again. How much hope could she have left?

Homura hated to think it, hated to consider the notion, but she felt sure that the Goddess could have respected her wishes, could have asked less of her, could have shared more with her. How come the Goddess could accept Miki Sayaka’s wish, but not hers?

Sometimes, Homura felt that Sayaka must be laughing at her, up there in the timeless aether.

Not that she thought the Goddess was lying about the big picture, about whatever stopped her from just giving the friendly aliens, Homura, and Humanity what they thought they wanted. Oh no, on that, they were aligned. She was well aware that sometimes it was necessary to take some losses in the short‐term to improve the long‐term. Perhaps even serious losses. That the Goddess didn’t like talking about it just showed she still cared.

No, it was ultimately about Homura’s own, selfish desires. She had a closer relationship to the universe’s only divine being than anyone, and still she wanted more. The Goddess was opening up to more magical girls now—couldn’t Homura have more, now, too? More magical girls were giving their lives in defense of Humanity than ever before—couldn’t Homura, too?

And all she had gotten was the same responses, over and over. She supposed when you were timeless there was never really an occasion to compose a better response.

Well, for now her only option was to play along. The aliens couldn’t be easily communicated with normally, thanks to an incompatible telepathic interface and alien mindset. The block of hieroglyphs in her hand was all she had to work with, unless the Goddess chose to give her more.

Even setting up this meeting had required retrocausal information, which taxed the Goddess’s resources. Homura had piloted a ship in personally to receive the transmission—a rudimentary encoding of the local star map with location circled—and echo it back, intended as an affirmation. According to her special source, this would prevent the same transmission being picked up by a Governance deep space probe and subsequently diverted by Utopia Unbound.

And now she was here, orbiting around a silent world roaming the interstellar void just inside the boundary of the Nile Sector. Without divine guidance she would have been very nervous about her position, alone and plainly uncloaked in a civilian‐class ship that could be blown up at a whim.

At least she had gotten very used to this kind of travel, filled as it was with lonely views of a dark horizon far from any of her kind. Or even the Incubators, for that matter—she was hiding from them, too. She had learned the technique from an ex‐SMC soul mage some centuries prior, before she died on mission in Pakistan. It was one of a few cards she had kept close to her chest all this time, withheld until she needed it most.

She almost jumped when the sensors registered an unknown ship inbound to the system at FTL speeds. This happened more than she liked to admit: her mind, sitting on idle, letting too much time slip away.

It only took a few more seconds for her ship to process the finer details of the sensor profile and lack of human transponder signal and conclude that, yes, this had a 98% chance of being an alien vessel. No attempt was being made at any kind of stealthy approach—if anything, they were trying to be seen.

All of which boded well, of course, even if she felt a tinge of nervousness about the possibility of such a ship triggering one of Governance’s deep space border nets. Surely they were remote enough here?

She had to take entirely too much on faith nowadays.

At this range, it would still be dozens of minutes before they would arrive at the planet, so Homura sent a signal in the clear: a ping with no informational content, meant only to be acknowledged.

The reply came back almost immediately, disregarding travel time: a repeat of the ping with the same characteristics, clearly not a natural reflection.

It was difficult not to be impatient as the minutes passed, and Homura found herself fiddling with her hair, knowing full well that the aliens didn’t care a single whit what her hair looked like. Like Kyouko, she had never allowed Governance hair implants on her scalp. Hair care was simply part of her centuries‐old routine, and she hadn’t wanted to lose it.

She remembered… no, it was better not to think about that right now.

At length the alien ship grew near, and it began to fire a repeated infrared beam at a location on the planet’s surface. Combined with the trajectory, the meaning was clear: they intended to land, and intended her to follow.

She had anticipated this. Docking procedures in space were hard enough without needing to deal with alien locking clamps and airlocks, and potential hostility and ambushes. Dropping to the surface made them both a bit more vulnerable as well, but it didn’t bother her much: she certainly had no intention of attacking her alien guests, and she knew there was no way the Goddess would let her drop into danger here.

Well, perhaps a little danger, but never any real risk.

She was becoming a little too grumpy with the Goddess, she chided herself. Here, at least, she was doing something quite real. And it wasn’t like the planet’s surface was a vacation destination—without the light of a star, the only question about most rogue planet surfaces was what flavor of frozen gas or rock you would be standing on, and how many dozens of Kelvin the ambient temperature would be, which affected how long your environmental suit would last.

Really, trying to coordinate a meet‐up there was only moderately easier than it had been in space. That the aliens had chosen a place like this showed what their mindset was like after the previous disasters.

She had come prepared for this possibility, of course, as well as the possibility of needing to attempt a docking, or make a spacewalk. Thus, she was already wearing the right underlayers and could step right into the necessary ultra‐low temperature environmental suit.

As the ship lowered itself toward the surface—specifically, a wide stretch of shallow ice plains only a few centimeters deep—she picked up her message‐engraved plate, vacuum‐sealed into a protective sleeve. If necessary, she had prepared backups, and could even shine the message through a special filter on her flashlight.

It took only a few seconds for the ship’s thrusters to sublimate the ice below, and then she stepped out onto the bare rock. A surface was a surface, no matter how frozen.

Homura pulled out a pair of magically‐enhanced farsight goggles she had cribbed from the MSY, a pair that dated back to, of all people, Mikuni Oriko.

It turned out she had hardly needed to bother. The Cephalopods were already waiting, a pair of them standing in plain view a hundred meters away in their own suits, both of them large and barrel‐shaped, far larger than Homura, or indeed any of the numerous alien combat troops she had killed in her time.

That alone was strange. She had seen on the battlefield that the aliens had a diversity of combat or computing augments, but this was on a whole different level.

Still, sensor scans showed they carried no apparent weaponry, though the very nature of the environmental suits meant that they leaked very little informative radiation.

One of the aliens moved aside as she approached, lifting one of several arms to gesture at a glowing panel on the side of their ship. The message was obvious: they wanted her to board.

It was a big ask, in a way, since aboard the alien ship was hardly neutral ground, but Homura could hardly blame them after their previous encounters with humans. And as before, she herself had little to fear.

She hoped the Goddess’s implied protection wasn’t making her too reckless.

She had prepared as well as she could, but it was still an understatement to say she had no idea what to expect. She had dictated all kinds of contingency plans for various outré scenarios to her cortical implants, fully expecting that she would have to play everything by ear regardless.

As someone had said once, plans were useless but planning was everything.

She jumped up towards the alien ship, barely catching herself on the side of the door when it slid open just a bit too slow. Right. She was showing a bit too much power.

She felt a tad naked taking off her environmental suit in the forcefield airlock, all too aware that even with her magic, being ejected back into the near‐vacuum outside would be unpleasant and annoying, especially were she slow to get a bubble up.

Then she raised an eyebrow when she stepped inside the alien ship proper, making a special note in her memory logs to review everything she saw later. It was simply different from the alien ships she had seen before, in ways both subtle and not, supporting the Goddess’s claim that they represented a different alien faction. In particular, there were a number of strange thin metal rods embedded throughout the room—sensors of some kind, presumably.

Overall, though, she was a bit relieved to see that she was looking at a scenario three: in front of her was an obvious conference table, complete with two trios of seats facing each other, with the seats on one side obviously more suited for humans.

For now, though, the room was empty.

She pulled a scanner out of her pocket and waved it over the room, checking it with her magic at the same time. Hopefully the aliens wouldn’t mind a little due diligence, as long as she carried it out as visibly as possible.

That was when the oversized door at the far side of the room irised open, admitting another Cephalopod that was as grossly oversized as the ones outside. Without the suit, her scanners could read more clearly what was going on—as best as her sensors could tell, this alien had a prodigious amount of implants in its core, enough to require a dedicated heat radiator in the back. But it didn’t look like weaponry—if anything, it looked like computing. They really had mastered biotechnology, it seemed.

The alien sat into one of the comically oversized seats on the other side of the table, bending down with a grace that she wouldn’t have given them credit for. Then it gestured with a large arm‐tentacle toward one of the human chairs. The message was obvious.

Homura couldn’t help but look over the chair one last time—it rather resembled a piece of custom‐molded plastic—before taking her seat. It shifted to her presence, like many of the modern human chairs, but was just a little off, poking her in one of her lumbar vertebrae.

As she did, the door to the airlock once again slid open, and the two aliens that had been outside stepped in single‐file. Part of Homura wanted to remain on edge, tense against the possibility that sitting her down had been a trap to render her less mobile. She had to actively calm herself, and realized, with an almost perverse sense of relief, that the Goddess’s protections had indeed not dulled her sense of danger.

The other two aliens took their seats, making clear that Humanity was a bit underrepresented here relative to their expectations. Homura wondered if she should wait: the aliens probably had some attempted communication scheme cooked up.

She decided to take the initiative. The Goddess’s pictogram message should be self‐explanatory, and would skip a lot of potentially unnecessary throat‐clearing about who had what motives.

She pulled the metal slab out of the sleeve on the side of her garment, holding it up for a moment for everyone to look at, before setting it on the table, where it was bombarded by the inevitable barrage of sensor scans, one of the aliens leaning ponderously over.

Once that activity had calmed down, she reached her hand out and pushed it forward, though by now the aliens should have spotted the quite clear inscriptions—and judging by the tentacle gestures, they had, or so she imagined.

The one in the middle picked it up immediately, human‐like eyes casting over the surface.

The reaction after that was almost comical, the three aliens squeezing together to peer at the piece of metal barely wider than one of their arm tentacles. She doubted they lacked the human ability to simply take a picture of the slab and sit back into their chairs to study it in their heads, but they preferred to study it in front of them. Very human, in a way.

At brief intervals they exchanged glances, and the occasional twitching arm wave showed what was going through their minds. With a reaction like this, there was no doubt that they understood the slab, as the Goddess had promised.

Not that she had ever doubted.

She knew what it said, of course, approximately. It explained that Humanity was not willfully resisting the demands of the aliens—that, in fact, the main human government had never received any set of demands, only a seemingly‐unprovoked, genocidal attack. It explained that magic‐empowered bad actors had sabotaged their previous attempts at communication, and would continue to block future attempts as well. In the document, Homura promised that her faction would work to defeat the problem, but that she needed time—lots of time.

That was not the most inflammatory content in the document. That would be the section discussing the faction of aliens attacking Humanity, which was also magically compromised by some of the same bad actors as were afflicting Humanity, and who were the real blockers on any diplomatic contact. The aliens Homura was speaking to would be erased in a ‘combat accident’ if they tried anything direct, and it was imperative they return home immediately to report their contact before anything else happened to them, via the very particular route and schedule provided. The other faction already knew they were in the area.

It was difficult to expect any communication of such complexity to be conveyed by one message, no matter how well‐written, but Homura had the advantage of divine providence. The Goddess claimed that most of the answers to any questions they might have were already embedded, which perhaps explained why the aliens were still reading, and why the glyphs had to be so small and dense.

But some things would still require another interaction. The document promised the aliens clear proof of Homura’s ability to predict the future, apparently involving fine measurements of the behavior of a certain pulsar, and that would take time to resolve. Moreover, they were supposed to provide her with certain schematics and pieces of technology to reverse‐engineer, and presumably couldn’t whip that out of a hat. There was an arranged drop‐off before the aliens left Human space—in exchange, the Goddess told Homura, she was to provide an enchanted container protecting a specific number of empty grief cubes.

Homura didn’t know most of the details, not yet, but she supposed things would soon be clear enough.

After some conference, one of the aliens pulled an electronic tablet from a fold in their robes and slid it in front of her. The message was drawn in pictures rather than text, a picture of her face with an arrow pointing to another star map location, this time in what appeared to be deep space. They had agreed.

Above her head in the picture was a set of inscrutable symbols, but she could guess the meaning. It was the name she had given herself, written in the style of an alien culture, a name that the aliens probably didn’t understand and that the Goddess had disapproved of: Akemi‐Homura⊃Divine‐seeking.

The plan the Goddess had sketched out to her after she retrieved the friendly aliens’ gifted technological package was elaborate and time‐consuming, in a way that sparked serious concerns among those she was working with. She did her best to assuage them, but in her heart she shared many of the same thoughts, and more besides.

She had known defeating Utopia Unbound would take some time and technical effort, yes, and she had been prepared to be at the task for years. But even an optimistic assessment of the Goddess’s plan estimated roughly thirteen years. Could the war truly last into the 2450s?

It was difficult to imagine that a Goddess with knowledge of the future couldn’t achieve better, even with self‐imposed constraints on restricting free will, unless there were other long‐term considerations at play.

It wasn’t the human she had once known, to sit on a celestial throne weighing billions on a scale, and they both knew it.

Here there was another gap in the memory record. Subtle enough to miss, but Kyouko noticed. Whatever emotions Homura had felt here were simply missing, faded to a simple thought exposition. Kyouko could hazard a guess as to why.

Moreover, it was a glimpse of the kind of person the Goddess had once been.

Sadly, she had learned that lesson back in the Unification Wars. Now, for this new Contact War, Homura felt sure they were in the same kind of situation, and Homura did not like it. Was this why the Goddess was keeping her in the dark? To preserve her sensibilities? Homura was not as loyal to the Goddess’s divinity as to Her humanity, and this flew in the face of that.

Would she simply accept that again? Before, she had thought to return to her Goddess’s side, and save her that way. Now, she worried the Goddess had no intention of letting that happen.

If she were younger, and thereby more foolish, Homura might have considered…

And here the memory skipped again.

Still, she put on a brave face, resolving to diligently execute Her plans as Her Human part would. She and Rin and the rest of the group plotted out a plan for containing Utopia Unbound without alarming them unduly—ideally, without even letting them know anything was amiss at first. Despite the need for secrecy and mobility, that required more resources—personnel and grief cubes far in excess of what they currently had, to spread their tentacles far and wide. That meant recruiting at scale, as subtly as possible. It also meant scrounging and stealing materiel, ships, and even financial assets in less‐monitored colonial markets.

Sensible.

Also sensible: as a matter of due diligence they made continued efforts to contact members of the friendly alien faction. Even if they couldn’t properly communicate, they could perhaps gain more alien technology, or at least make it clear they hadn’t just taken their technology and run—although, unfortunately, Homura suspected it would be a long time before they would ever have the chance to prove otherwise.

They had also, after some debate, experimented with trying to communicate with the more unfriendly aliens, which at least were easily found. Despite some rather creative attempts by both Jeannette and Sophia, they were completely unsuccessful, just as Governance had been since the war began. Several cornered aliens committed suicide. Mind‐reads, as much as they could be understood, indicated that all the aliens they could find had been mentally stripped‐down. Even having Homura herself sit deep within alien territory and broadcast in the clear, hoping to contact alien leadership, had no result—to her frustration, she wasn’t even attacked.

But the Goddess had other, more controversial directives.

The alternate TCF lines could at least be chalked up to divine prescience. As a human and erstwhile citizen of Governance, Homura was instinctively quite concerned about the ramifications of making an alternate TCF, whatever the security reasons. It would have warranted at least a little thought. But in this case, she had no reasons to doubt the Goddess when She said it was a good idea, and necessary, and that was that. She suspected, given the war, she could probably maneuver Governance into undertaking that effort for them.

But there was another project, one that bothered Homura much more.

The key lay in the technology package that they had requested from the friendly aliens at the Goddess’s behest. Purely on a technical level, it was clearly the most important technology package ever received, a set of artifacts, data crystals, and engraved diagrams detailing or demonstrating a variety of biotechnologies outside standard human reach.

Or at least they were supposed to be. The outlines of it all looked promising enough, but the contents were essentially unintelligible on their face, and clearly the kind of thing that required a dedicated research team and an unknown number of years, something they very much did not have.

The only reason they knew what was in there at all was the Goddess’s explanation of what she had asked for and what to do with it. And this was what gave Homura the most pause: somewhere in there was what both the aliens and the Goddess considered the most important, some kind of mental communication organ, one that would align human cognition with alien well enough to enable telepathy.

According to the Goddess, figuring out how to build and grow the thing would be one of their most important tasks—and it needed to be grown from birth. Implanting one in an adult was possible, but much more difficult, and there were drawbacks for magical girls in particular.

Homura didn’t like any of the implications of that, much less the practical: she and Rin simply hadn’t built their organization around any kind of scientific nucleus. Instead, they had focused on investigators, spies, and agents. Inoue Yoko, Sophia Aaronson—skilled operatives yes, biologists no, and they were already out combing for others of their own kind. It simply seemed like the best way to do things, even if the Goddess had implied the thinking there was too short‐term, and that Homura should stop being so stubborn.

In the end, as always, the Goddess got Her way. The long‐term approach had to be investigated, even if it pulled them down a path they didn’t like.

So they started looking for biologists, technicians, researchers.

“Smuggling technology of this magnitude into the Governance research programs would be quite a feat. They’ll be bound to know something is up if it just appears from an unknown institute.”

“Not to mention we don’t quite understand enough about it ourselves. There would need to be a whole project around it. With our limited resources, we’ve made very little progress. Ideally we could tap Governance resources to do the research for us.”

“Can we recruit a prominent researcher? Someone already in position for something like this?”

“Would take a lot of doing, but maybe. Would have to make sure we can trust them.”

“I have a better idea.”

Homura stood up, peering down at the others at the conference table. There was a diversity of eyes staring back at her, polite, beseeching, skeptical. Nearly all were magical girls, but there were two human scientists mixed in, one of them even male—both rescued at the last second from marauding aliens and brought on as scientific advisors.

Represented here was about half of those she had managed to recruit to her fledgling organization, pulled in by personal charisma, loyalty to the Goddess, or detailed argumentation. Those missing were on assignment elsewhere, and the strain was tremendous—even with some ability to tap into Governance resources, it was proving nearly impossible to coordinate with numerous agents across interstellar distance while still maintaining coherent planning.

“I am confident in my own ability to infiltrate as a researcher, provided we generate an adequate amount of cover,” Homura said, “but of course so far I have been forced to spend all my time here. However, our rivals have shown us the solution: simply be in multiple places at once. Or so we’ve recently discovered.”

She paused to let the astonished murmur flow around the table.

“You want us to split our souls like they do?” Pratiwi Surija asked. “We’re still not sure that’s safe. Nor are we sure how they do it. Nor—”

“No, not like we think they do,” Homura said. “Not even if we were desperate. There are some lines not to cross lightly. But I do have some ideas, and I am willing to be the first test case myself. More importantly, I’ve asked, and it’s safe and should be possible. There can be no better source.”

There was an uneasy silence. While the vast majority of those present were willing to accept the word of Homura’s Goddess, it still wasn’t unanimous, and it was a test of Homura’s credibility every time she invoked Her. Still, her occasional uncannily accurate predictions of the future went a long way.

“As long as this experiment doesn’t risk you personally,” one of the others said. “You’re too important. Maybe one of us should do it.”

Homura prided herself on her legendary impassivity, so she really hoped that her tinge of annoyance didn’t show. It was a reasonable sentiment. She shouldn’t lay her personal issues onto them.

“If I think I’m in any danger I’ll consider it,” she lied.

The years passed, just as Homura had feared, while in the background the war continued to expand—the aliens had invaded the Rhine Sector, and then the Mekong. Fully one‐third of Human sectors were now being invaded; morale in Human space was low. Many feared alien ships would soon see Sol itself.

Homura and the Coordinating Group knew better, but it wasn’t much comfort.

Her organization broadened the scope of their recruiting, discovering on the way that the dark corners of Governance space hid a lot more than they imagined, with both unknown rogue colonies and quite a few magical girls, and others, in seclusion.

Some of those put Homura and the others in a moral quandary, caught between their need for personnel and a cast of candidates that ranged all the way from soul criminals to the merely very untrustworthy. Some they recruited anyway, others were best to just leave alone, and still others required immediate elimination.

At least there were a few rogue colonies Homura could take personal satisfaction in having leaked back to Governance—though of course it would be some time before Governance could focus on them. She tried not to think about the ones they couldn’t find, but knew existed, like the fraudulent colony mission that had eluded her early on at San Giuseppe.

Meanwhile, Homura acquired the scientists and technicians she needed, some using her new connections as ‘Joanne Valentin’, and quickly discovered their utility.

Firstly, there was the practical matter of developing technology and techniques to subsist in secrecy, modifying Governance implants to allow them to pass. They even picked up one or two AIs along the way, rigorously magically screened—it was strangely gratifying to have them accede to their mission, once it was sufficiently explained and proven, and useful to have someone capable of making the necessary modifications with the certainty of AI.

But secondly, and most interesting, perhaps, was the original reason they were here in the first place, the data package they had received from the friendly aliens.

They had finally begun to make progress decoding and reverse‐engineering the contents, even if the whole topic threatened to boil Homura’s mind over with frustration. It seemed almost unfair to think this way, to ask a divine entity to provide technology—but surely the Goddess could furnish a translation guide, at least?

But, there was still progress. If nothing else, some of the biological techniques provided had helped them build the body of Joanne Valentin, a mundane clone of a volunteer without a trace of direct magic. Of course they knew how to clone, but many of the finer points of modifying the brain to be closer to Homura’s required the mediation of neural implants with plenty of alien technique.

Though in truth, the main body of innovation was still magic‐based. The neural implants made the process easier, but they still needed her soul gem to perform the main body of work. After that came the really hairy part, involving deeply experimental soul mage techniques to ‘dilute’ her soul into the new body. The very concept was worrisome, even to her, but it was so useful she had even done it more than once, since it allowed her to keep many irons in the fire.

Routine regroupings allowed her to synchronize herself across copies, and with time they had expanded the process to others. Only the original body with the soul gem could use magic—unlike Utopia Unbound—but they were working on a process for at least transferring the soul gem to another body, so she could use her magic to infiltrate without looking like, well, Akemi Homura.

This kind of expanded scope, along with their improved roster of field agents, allowed them to more regularly catch sight of Utopia Unbound’s operatives—even if that had resulted in several skirmishes, and a couple fights to the death.

Despite their better preparation, it seemed the drones still couldn’t be captured alive, but they could at least extract some tangible intelligence to pry open more of the enemy’s operations. What they had found so far was suggestive, in a disturbing kind of way.

Utopia Unbound seemed obsessed with information gathering, with a constellation of long‐range monitoring stations and even a handful nestled in remote regions of Governance worlds. Given how Laplace’s Demon was described, it made sense.

But beyond that, Rin’s tracking of rogue, TCF‐breach‐induced logistics shipments suggested the existence of sites engaged in clandestine research. Hardly too alarming on its own—Homura’s group was itself doing the same—it became so once one considered what Homura had heard of Utopia Unbound’s aspirations. What kind of a utopia required so many secret research facilities?

They had to know what the group was up to. The manifests alone suggested research into magic, and alien technology, an alarming combination even in the best circumstances. But attacking the facilities was for now out of the question; for now, they needed to avoid any significant escalation.

Moreover, their handful of successful mind‐reads had indicated that many of the drones they were fighting were heavily Reformatted, and not even responsible for their actions. But that moral angle couldn’t hold them back, not with these kinds of stakes. If necessary, they would apologize in the afterlife.

Finally, for the Coordinating Group’s peak project, the alien communication organ…

Truthfully, she was nervous about that. They were only barely ready.

They had a while ago worked out the main details of the mental communication organ whose design the aliens had sent them—though it seemed to involve much more than communication, now. The original data had described alien cell types and neurotransmitters, but thankfully the principles of biological pattern‐matching still applied. Function could match even when form did not. The aliens had also been assiduous about laying out some key abstractions for consideration, though it had taken her brightest minds a year to understand what the diagrams were even intended to represent.

There was much they still didn’t understand of its functioning, and Valentin née Homura had to admit certain reservations about implanting a design about which they knew so little into a human fetus.

But in the end, neither she nor the rest of their leadership had wanted to wait any longer. The whole process had taken too long already, and of course, just as she was preparing to find or engineer a candidate mother, the Goddess Herself presented a candidate, one that worked in her own lab.

All too convenient, in a taxing and wearisome kind of way. Valentin had quite liked Kuroi Nakase, had even attended her wedding. Why couldn’t She just reveal these things from the start?

There was a brief lull in the montage there, a slow moment among what was otherwise a jarring barrage of mental exposition.

Valentin sat in her office, sipping impatiently at a cup of coffee, trying not to think too hard about the procedure under way just a few doors over.

It made no sense for her to perform the procedure herself. Plainly, she didn’t have the skills. But the waiting and the lack of direct involvement ate at her.

She looked at the ribbon she had hidden in her pocket and touched it with one hand. The gesture brought her little serenity.

She sipped more coffee.

After that, there was only the painful wait, made better by the fact that at least the war was finally stabilizing. Hardly won, or safe, but the aliens had clearly overstretched themselves, bypassing too many worlds and leaving their long supply lines exposed. Much of the Rhine had been retaken, and the deepest incursions into the Indus, Mekong, and even Ganges had been cut off. The aliens still had the strategic initiative and were clearly plotting something, alongside ever‐persistent raids, but it gave them all some breathing room to work with.

It was also nice to see that Humanity was producing plenty of technical innovation even without Valentin‐injected gifts—Von Rohr’s forcefield work, for instance, which had nothing to do with anything Homura was involved in. Moreover, Homura felt confident that Valentin was now deep enough in Governance’s scientific establishment that she could begin directly introducing technology.

In particular, she was interested in establishing a brand‐new generation of TacComps as a biotechnology‐based solution surreptitiously based on a new TCF branch—a direct contribution to the war effort that also protected against TCF corruption. The sooner she got moving, the better: even now, she estimated it would be at least a year or two before such a project could get off the ground.

In the meantime, their shadow conflict with Utopia Unbound had entered a phase of what might be called strategic mutual avoidance. They watched each other carefully, almost incessantly, but took immense pains to avoid being detected. That didn’t mean a lack of violence—attempting to eliminate each other’s watchers was a routine solution to the ‘problem’ of being spotted, and even ship‐to‐ship combat in the orbit of rogue planets had happened on occasion. But at the end of the day they still wanted to avoid an escalation that, even if they won, might drive Utopia Unbound into helping the alien invaders.

As for the other direction… Utopia Unbound actually tried, once, attacking one of their facilities with nearly two dozen drone magical girls and supporting equipment. Unfortunately for them, Homura had been there, and they had been annihilated in ambush.

Since then, they simply hadn’t tried again.

There had been some worry that Utopia Unbound would expose Homura’s agents to the MSY, but mind‐reading during that attack had revealed that the drones had instructions not to expose the Coordinating Group. Their leadership apparently feared escalation as well.

Instead, while both sides kept away from each other’s core facilities, interference activities in the field only got more intense.

They had traced some of Utopia Unbound’s own recruiting, both within and without Governance, and attacked this recruiting where they could. Homura’s group did all it could to identify every rogue colony being recruited from, and then eliminate the recruitment, either by prompting Governance to quash the colony or by recruiting accessible candidates themselves.

They had also observed the occasional kidnapping on contested or besieged worlds, and subtly interfered, sometimes by just triggering Governance’s alien intrusion alarms, then staying in the area to prevent easy use of the TCF breach.

There was also the question of grief cubes.

Their own grief cube logistics they had solved a while ago, as a matter of necessity. While in the past they had managed to secure stocks by tasking every field agent with a dual assignment of gathering surplus when on Human worlds, particularly on rogue colonies, this had simply stopped being practicable after a certain point. So, for all that they found it to be distasteful, they were obliged to start tapping into the MSY’s supply, concealing their tracks behind them.

They had plenty of ideas on how to do that, of course, because they had been tracking Utopia Unbound’s own efforts in the same direction, which were far less restrained and at times seemed actively malicious. As always, they made efforts to interfere when possible.

All in all, they could accurately assert that they were extending their tendrils everywhere around Utopia Unbound’s operations.

Yet they didn’t seem to be making an impact, not in any way that showed up in the level of their enemy’s activities.

Partly, it was just hard to tell. Their penetration of Utopia Unbound was awful—Laplace’s Demon made for an excellent watchdog—meaning that neither side had any direct insight into the other.

But it still seemed very likely they were missing something, and it was Rin who first suggested that Utopia Unbound was recruiting—or coercing—people cornered by the aliens on conquered worlds. That kind of thing would be very difficult to verify in the field, and would be invisible to Governance if executed correctly.

Nor could they do very much about it, yet.

They had other initiatives. One very useful thing, prophesied by the Goddess, was that their very presence interfered heavily with Utopia Unbound activity, simply by confounding their predictions.

But too much of that would let Utopia Unbound trace their interference, and so they realized there was a simple trick: help expand the Church of Hope. It had much of the same effect and couldn’t be blamed on anyone in particular, except perhaps Kyouko. Utopia Unbound would hopefully write it off as some incredible inconvenience brought on by the Ribbon.

That did mean that they spent a surprising amount of effort influencing Governance policy and subtly protecting Kyouko and the Church, when they could do so unobserved. This was a necessary task: Governance was innately hostile toward religion, and it was doubly wary of a fast‐growing ‘cult’ reducing its already tenuous authority over magical girls.

Valentin herself subtly encouraged her colleagues, including a couple AIs, to investigate the Church’s effect on the war effort. Their concrete positive results served as a powerful institutional armor for the Church.

The memories cut out there, both Homura’s and Misa’s, leaving Kyouko with far too much to digest at all at once.

Misa spoke immediately, not yet giving her a chance to recover.

“Like I said, most of that I learned much later—some memories about the Goddess Homura only shared in the last month. But on New California, we did learn about how the Trusted Computing Framework had been compromised, and about Utopia Unbound, and the aliens. Stacy and I both agreed to have our memories erased; I offered to work for Homura some time in the future, if she needed me. Hermina—well, she was already officially dead, so they couldn’t just set her loose. She joined up. Survived until I joined too, thank the Goddess.”

“Okay, you can’t just blast me with all of that at once,” Kyouko thought, struggling to organize her thoughts in a way that she hadn’t experienced in many years, not counting Maki. She needed time to think.

Kyouko handed over the data crystal reader to Van Rossum. Impatient, Gracia got Van Rossum to agree to let her mind‐read alongside her—they sat down together in the Tanaka posture.

Kyouko did find some amusement watching the looks on their faces as they absorbed the memories. What a day.

After a few minutes, they finally stood up.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Gracia thought. “What are we even supposed to focus on?”

“Yeah, imagine how I felt,” Misa thought. “On New California, she wouldn’t even tell me what poor kid she had installed this creepy alien biotech project into. I think you’ve figured out who that is, though.”

Kyouko had, of course. She knew her own mentee.

Oh Goddess, that was another can of worms. She hoped Shizuki Ryouko could forgive Homura. And the Goddess.

“Okay, I have many questions,” Van Rossum interjected. “Let me see if I have this narrative straight. The Goddess set Homura against the TCF conspiracy back in 2440, right before she fell off Internal Security’s radar. In 2441, the Goddess arranged a meeting between Homura and the ‘friendly aliens’ that we saw attempting to negotiate with Governance in the video from the asteroid. They gave Homura the biotechnology to build whatever alien brain organ they use to communicate with each other, and Homura’s scientists then figured out how to build that into Shizuki Ryouko, so that, over a decade later, Ryouko could go successfully negotiate with the friendly aliens. The Goddess insisted it had to be Ryouko, and it had to wait until that much later, in order to prevent worse possible futures. In the meantime, Homura’s conspiracy infiltrated themselves into Governance using cloned mundane bodies, and was fighting a cold war of some kind against the TCF conspiracy as late as 2445, the last memory. But clearly that continued escalating, because by 2450 in New California she was regularly going out to destroy Utopia Unbound’s facilities herself.”

Kyouko was newly impressed by Van Rossum, and barely avoided staring. How had she kept track of all that?

“Pretty much,” Misa said. “But while I’m giving you all this quite valuable intel, there’s a question you haven’t asked yet, though you’ve probably thought of it. If I’m willing to show you all this, why couldn’t Akemi Homura come herself?”

“Surely she could have at least used one of her extra bodies, if she was worried about capture,” Van Rossum commented.

The man Misa was wearing as a body smiled oddly, shrugging and looking off to the side in a way that was just a tiny bit uncanny, or so Kyouko imagined.

“Can you imagine? She wanted me to convince you to just trust us that we’re doing good, with only the barest details. She knew better than that on New California, and I know better than that now. So instead I’m telling you a lot. I would say it’s a bit of a rebellion inside the group, but really it isn’t—it’s most of us, trying to operate outside the strange lines Homura has drawn.”

“So what do you want us to do?” Gracia asked, aghast. “You’re telling us this like we’re supposed to help you. How?”

Kyouko held up a hand to interject.

“If you tell us where she is, even just where one of her bodies is, maybe we can talk with her. Is that the idea?”

“Maybe. We don’t know yet. That was all only one piece of what I’m here to tell you. The truth is, there’s a bigger problem than Homura refusing to meet with you all: not long after the TCF breach was repaired, Homura started refusing to speak with the Goddess.”

She looked between the three of them for their reactions. Gracia looked a bit overwhelmed, Van Rossum looked thoughtful, and Kyouko…

“Why after that?” Kyouko thought, turning it over rapidly in her mind. “No, wait why at all? She has a Ribbon in her personal possession, and a personal relationship. That’s a level of direct guidance She gives no one—gave no one, until Homura recently, apparently. We knew she was special, but—”

“I wouldn’t go so far,” Van Rossum interjected. “Remember, I got quite a few instructions myself, long ago. Maybe not all the time, but the guidance was pretty direct. And I’ll admit here that I was and am still not happy with all of it. Though I can’t say I really understand Homura’s reasons here. I had moral qualms. I don’t think that’s her problem.”

“Well, regardless of how it happened, it’s definitely happened,” Misa thought. “And none of us have been granted any Ribbon guidance either, not even when Prometheus fell. So we’re stuck. We pulled off the Goddess’s twenty‐year plan—Shizuki Ryouko is going to set off a chain reaction that will end the war and save Humanity. That was the whole point. But we don’t know what the follow‐through is. Are we really supposed to just sit back and watch? Some of us in the Coordinating Group don’t think so—hell, Homura doesn’t think so. For the first time we’re flying blind, and if something doesn’t change, I think we’re going to crash.”

“And Homura still thinks she can’t ask us for help,” Kyouko thought, putting a hand on her head. “What’s wrong with her? We really do need to talk with her.”

Misa was silent for a couple of long seconds. Kyouko had found it difficult to read her slightly uncanny body language, but was starting to learn—Misa was uncertain, and nervous, in a way that she was trying to hide.

“It won’t be that easy,” Misa thought finally. “I sincerely doubt she will speak to any of you, even if I were to sneak you in, even if you managed to get close. She doesn’t want to be spoken to. The impression we’ve gotten is that she’s only even still with us reluctantly. More than once, she’s talked about handing over control to one of us. We’ve pleaded with her otherwise, but some of us are starting to seriously consider it.”

Kyouko took that in for a moment.

“All the more reason to try,” she thought.

“Maybe,” Misa thought. “We can consider it. I would have to talk to the others. She might really disappear if you try it.”

“If I may speak plainly, what even are you all still up to?” Van Rossum asked. “Is there a reason you can’t just come in from the cold, so to speak? Sure, there was the stunt at Adept Blue, but is there a reason you couldn’t have just warned us, if you knew the aliens were going to attack us?”

“We didn’t know,” Misa thought. “We hardly know anything anymore. But, given the leak at Persepolis, we figured it was a priority target and needed defense, especially given its connections to Shizuki Ryouko—after all, her grandfather was targeted on Persepolis, which hardly seems a coincidence. It was only luck that we got to Persepolis first, by the way. We were only there investigating Ceph behavior. That’s one of the only things Homura has really pushed to do recently; she claims we must be missing something.”

Misa shook her head slightly; Kyouko wasn’t sure at what.

“Do you know what technique this Utopia Unbound is using to split between bodies and into drones?” Van Rossum asked. “You shared details of what you do, but it’s more relevant to us what they do, so we can prepare countermeasures.”

Misa seemed to think about that a moment.

“It might be better if I gave you more of my memories to sample, from after Orpheus, and my recruitment. The answer is already in there, and it will give you answers to your other practical questions too. More importantly, I think it will make clearer what’s wrong with Homura.”

Kyouko thought about asking more questions anyway, while the previous topics were still hot, but decided to save it. The last thing she wanted to do was change Misa’s mind.

Chapter 75: Making Contact

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 09:32:43 +0200

The Department of Societal Modeling, Projection, and Eschatology is one of the most secretive of Governance’s nominally public operations, which to many makes it one of the most interesting. Besides relatively staid projections of public opinion, mores, and social media trends, the department is also Governance’s specialist in far more radical speculation, reaching both far forward in time and far distant in space, drawing on Governance resources and a Governance‐wide pool of researchers, technical experts, and AI simulationists to engage in speculation about alien civilizations, potential human colonies, and deep time.

That alone makes the Department’s reports and proceedings fascinating reading, and despite the department’s own unwillingness to advertise results and the famously reclusive nature of its Representative, its public output is consumed by a diligent subculture of internet readers and sci‐fi adherents. Moreover, there is considerable speculation and conspiracizing about the supposed existence of non‐public outputs and a classified counterpart to the public department. After all, the topic is of obvious importance, with numerous potentially controversial and sensitive topics.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the Cephalopods, the Department’s output has been less than illuminating, with the range of potential societies ranging from the commonly accepted scenario of essentially an extended version of what is encountered on the battlefield, to far more esoteric suggestions involving consciousness uploading, slave species, rogue AI, Incubator meddling, and enough other possibilities to gladden a sci‐fi director’s heart. Certainly, it has not been very useful for the war effort, but the department itself insists that this is due to the Cephalopod’s secrecy to the point of paranoia, which itself proves how valuable their approach must be.

While this ongoing lack of success has damaged their reputation in the eyes of many, Governance itself has been more understanding, being more attuned to the successes that it has had. In particular, the Department’s prewritten plans for the maintenance of public morale and social cohesion across human space during a protracted war have delivered results above expectations. While the general populace has taken unity, mass cooperation, and species‐wide patriotism as almost a given, the truth is these public goods are hard‐won, and have taken considerable effort by Governance to maintain across the scattered Human diaspora.¹

Thus, while the Department’s speculative arm has been the one to capture the most public interest and excitement, its outwardly humdrum societal modeling and projections have been the true core of its operations.

¹ Another recent success, the incredibly smooth integration of non‐standard humans into mainstream society, is tainted by the degree to which magical girls embedded in the Department wrote the plans for that themselves.

— Excerpt, A Surface Understanding of Governance

“Physics teaches us that space and time are not really fundamental, that they are only effective descriptions of a deeper reality. But not being fundamental is not the same as not being important, and they are certainly very important to particles, much less sapients.”

“One wonders what the Soul thinks of space and time. Perhaps, those few unfortunate enough to be confined into gems are the only ones who must care. Or perhaps that confinement, too, is not really fundamental.”

— Joanne Valentin, lecture notes found in personal files

…·We are all in agreement that|…+·all other variables held equal, the preferences of one sapient are objectively no more or less valuable than those of any other|…+·for any sapient, or group of sapients, to subjectively value their interests over those of others is inevitable, even necessary|…+·to value one's interests infinitely over another's is abhorrent, ruinous to any group|…+·to value others' interests infinitely over one's own is abhorrent, ruinous to any person|…∑·Conflict ought not be forbidden, yet ought not be totalizing, whether it be against individual, Tentacle, or alien

— BPtocRC⊃Valued‐Thought, of /Eukleia‐chasing, excerpts of Martial Debate against /Thinker‐preserving

“While each Tentacle is its own independent body with its own values and priorities, and no set of Tentacles forms a fully coherent ideological grouping, for specific topics it is possible to discern dichotomies in Consensus, though more commonly one would find an entire gradient of opinions along an ideological axis. If one imagines projecting the pref‐spec spectrums of the Tentacles of Consensus into an N‐dimensional space, it is even possible to discern some clusters of like‐minded Tentacles. It is along these abstract axes that the politics of Consensus thrums, an idea that is even reified in the physical meeting place of Consensus on Great Sea, where the physical offices of the Tentacles are organized within an undersea sphere according to a three‐dimensional subspace projection, and the virtual offices are organized within an airborne hypersphere according to—”

Okay, okay, stop, Ryouko thought, holding up a hand. That’s way too abstract. You’re making it sound like math.

It is math, Clarisse thought. But look, I’m preparing this report in various layers and details for different audiences. It’s vitally important I get the details down somewhere, and this is as near as I can put it in Standard.

Look, the important thing is that Tentacles can come in groups, especially if you focus on one specific topic, and conducting influence campaigns in Consensus can be done by convincing individual Tentacles in various clusters. Nearby Tentacles need not be contacted, as they will readily use the already convinced Tentacle as a reliable proxy opinion.

That doesn’t really sound any simpler than what I said, Clarisse pointed out.

Yeah, if you can naturally visualize N‐dimensional spaces, Ryouko thought, sighing.

Regardless, Governance AIs and Representatives will understand it no matter what, since I don’t have to communicate with them in Standard, Clarisse thought. Human language is trickier.

What was important at the moment was that Ryouko understood the reasoning, which had been beamed into her head fully formed by /Ahimsa‐extending. They had left /Somatic‐diversity via Lush‐Botanist and were bound for /Eukleia‐chasing, another ally of /Thinker‐preserving, and a Tentacle which Ryouko found difficult to understand on more than an intellectual level, especially as the usually adept Thinker telepathy organ had failed to convey exact meanings.

By drawing on historical analogy, Clarisse had helped her to work out much of it. This Tentacle was organized around emphasizing a particular form of ideal Thinker, a personal goal that its members generally agreed to aspire to, and which reflected qualities that were expected to provide value to greater Thinker society, both Tentacle and Consensus. Such a Thinker had many virtues that humans would recognize: trustworthiness, courage, determination in the face of adversity, ability to work with and sacrifice for the group, appreciation of intellectual pursuits, and martial prowess.

Many historical Human cultures had similar ideas, of course, but few took it as far as these Thinkers, for whom it formed the backbone of their society, accounted for in nearly every aspect of governance and daily life. Social prestige, political authority, and material wealth beyond basic comfort were all derived from recorded virtuous accomplishments. The children wrote about it in school, and social gatherings centered on competitions of virtue, another opportunity to demonstrate prowess.

So important was the notion of virtue that it was used to allocate the ultimate status symbol: multiple bodies, a notion that was truly alien to Ryouko’s understanding. With the benefit of regular backups and synchronization, it was possible for one Thinker individual to fork over multiple organic forms, live individual lives, and maintain combined continuity. Ryouko couldn’t contemplate ever indulging in the practice, but it was considered a privilege: multiple bodies consumed multiple Thinkers’ worth of resources, and it took quite a bit of accomplishment to even be given a second. But after that, the higher you got in the upper echelons, the more you had. The idea was that you had proven that you were worth having more of.

The philosophical implications were troubling, and the lack of Thinker concern alien, except that the documentation clearly explained that Thinker science was dead certain about the unified nature of these consciousnesses. This even came with lengthy technical attachments about the nature of telepathy and its connection to sentience and certain design patterns, attachments that Clarisse saved to high‐priority triplicated archive as fast as they arrived. The Thinkers had learned something important about the nature of sentience—as opposed to sapience—an insight that the Incubators likely shared, and it was a little uncomfortable that they had concluded that many animals, including Companion‐Penguins, qualified for the purposes of telepathy and otherwise.

In a word, were they talking about souls?

Fascinating. Disturbing. And yet, Ryouko had to shake all that aside for now.

None of it was the reason Ryouko was here. Instead, that required an explanation of /Eukleia‐chasing’s notion of martial prowess. The members of this Tentacle appreciated martial prowess both for its potential value to society—in case of the previously extremely hypothetical situation in which war might be necessary—and as proxy for the other virtues. As such, their society engaged in a significant amount of recreational training and combat, both in VR and in staged events.

Nor was combat wholly confined to modern, or even industrial scenarios. Historical combat was esteemed for its own unique qualities, though it was understood that it would be less applicable in a practical emergency.

Thus, it was not true, to Ryouko’s surprise, that warfare was completely irrelevant within Consensus. Serious, existential warfare was preference‐banned, but limited, prearranged warfare, fought within agreed rules to settle a specific dispute, was allowed, though it required an application to Consensus and the consent of both sides. For Tentacles who enjoyed a bit of warfare, remembering always the lack of true death, it was a reasonably common occurrence.

Beyond that, there were even ceremonial wars, wars conducted purely for demonstration or prestige, held within /Eukleia‐chasing or even against Tentacles with similar taste. These were public spectacles for both sides, often conducted with the benefit of memory modification for maximum realism, and performance carried with it immense prestige within /Eukleia‐chasing.

But what part of that made them valuable candidates for Ryouko to visit?

As Survival‐Optimizer had explained it, in some aspects they were very close to /Thinker‐preserving, particularly when it came to valuing common defense and interest in modern combat, coupled with a persistent concern about extra‐civilizational threats.

But in other aspects they were very different: In terms of treasuring diversity of experience, they were much more like /Somatic‐diversity and /Ahimsa‐extending, and their internal philosophy had plenty of room for friendly relations with sapient aliens and a long tradition of detailed thought about the notion of just and unjust war.

That gave plenty of latitude to peel /Eukleia‐chasing and all similar Tentacles away from /Thinker‐preserving, if only they could be convinced that /Thinker‐preserving was lying and engaged in genocidal war. More than merely peeled away—they would likely be a determined ally. Given recent events, it was also useful that they had more experience with security than /Somatic‐diversity, and a surprising affinity for military espionage.

It all made sense on paper. The hard part was managing the persuasion.

Ryouko sighed again, leaning back against one of the nearby tentacle poles. Lush‐Botanist had received another upgrade, this time a selection of /Ahimsa‐extending’s best shipboard armaments, some of whose designs had been freshly purchased from allied tentacles. Also brought aboard were a few potted plants that Lush‐Botanist had picked up from /Somatic‐diversity’s bioengineers, placed onto rolling drones that wandered aimlessly around the small ship.

Ryouko had scanned them for any traces of foreign magic, of course, especially the yellow bamboo‐like one that she had thought might actually be following her around.

In terms of more intelligent companions, /Eukleia‐chasing had asked that the original Thinkers who had captured Ryouko attend, which meant that Peace‐cultivating was back too, this time as only a passenger. Survival‐Optimizer had noted that it was good for the same Thinkers to attend Ryouko, claiming that her pref‐spec desired familiarity. For this reason, there had been one interesting addition to her party as well: Perspective‐pursuer.

The young Thinker had been one of the unfortunate “dead” in the avalanche, one of those Ryouko had failed to rescue. Ryouko had been nervous about meeting her again, but Perspective‐pursuer had waved off any attempt at apology—her bodily death had meant she had gotten the improved humanizing adjustments to her body she wanted, and which Ryouko had permitted, ahead of schedule.

Besides, Perspective‐pursuer was fascinated with Ryouko’s heroics, all the more so for the fact that from her point of view they had been foolishly needless.

She had explained it as thus:

μ∈·A few treatise from the early days of Consensus, before backups, extol the sacrifice of self for others|μ∈·There are many Tentacles which encourage self‐sacrificial behavior in theory—/Eukleia‐chasing is one of them|ν⌄·Your own pref‐spec clearly shows that you value the preservation of your life, and Ryouko‐supporting's life, and your mission here, above preventing mere body‐death for Thinkers you scarcely know|ν⌃·Your own pref‐spec clearly shows that you value being emotionally‐driven to the point that you act, as you did, without any rational consideration of your own preferences|ξ?·How does one reconcile fast‐shifting, proximity‐sensitive, self‐contradicting preferences without crippling cognitive whiplash or long‐term insanity|ξ+·A topic of philosophical musing

Not something Ryouko had entirely known how to respond to.

There was another tag‐along that was much easier for her to handle, she thought, casting a glance at Feathered‐Defender. The bird was currently leaning over to squint suspiciously at one of Lush‐Botanist’s potted plants. This one had whip‐like thorny leaves that lashed out at those who touched it, and even came with telepathic warnings. Feathered‐Defender was intelligent enough to stay away, but clearly had no understanding why anyone would deliberately bring one with them, let alone let it roll around the ship freely.

Peace‐cultivating had openly considered leaving Feathered‐Defender behind for the trip, out of a concern for his safety, but in the end they—both Peace‐cultivating and Feathered‐Defender—had decided he would go anyway. He had explained the risks to the Feathered‐Defender, that Ryouko and Clarisse might be attacked and that the attacker might kill him in the process, yet the bird still wanted to stick around. It was tough—even the Thinkers couldn’t say for sure if he really understood, but in the end /Ahimsa‐extending preferred honoring their companions’ wishes. Plus, the penguin had a backup.

Ryouko learned all of this only afterward, and felt guilty that she was happy he had chosen to stay. There were few things for Ryouko to get attached to here, and the companion‐penguin was one of the only creatures that shared her “linear” thinking.

Even Clarisse’s newly‐defined pref‐spec agreed on this point, something which seemed to bring her TacComp embarrassment. Ryouko’s relationship with Clarisse had always been one‐sided—Clarisse could directly read her mind, while Ryouko couldn’t really return the favor. It was uncomfortable to realize that she could get useful information out of Clarisse’s pref‐spec, and out of a sense of privacy she had tried to avoid reading it at any length, no matter how much it said about how much she cared for Ryouko, her opinions about Asami, or about Machina…

Not that Clarisse quite agreed. She had read Ryouko’s pref‐spec as soon as she had gained her own empathy‐organ, if only to doublecheck what exactly the Thinkers had been getting from her. There was a bit of awkwardness there, in Ryouko’s lack of reciprocation.

She felt the slight tug on her soul gem as they exited the last of their wormhole traversal, and let out a small breath.

To say things had gotten more complicated recently was an understatement, yet one that still failed to properly emphasize how complicated things had been already.

After the attack on /Somatic‐diversity’s facility, she and Clarisse had been obliged to divulge yet more information to their hosts née kidnappers. She still couldn’t talk about the Incubators, of course, but for security reasons she had to explain the matter of the TCF conspiracy, their repeated assassination attempts against her back home, and their cooperation with /Thinker‐preserving. Now that one or both were using magic to attack her and her allies in Andromeda, the Thinkers needed to know the nature of the threat.

This invited a host of questions she didn’t know the answer to, such as how much these enemy humans were working with /Thinker‐preserving and how closely they were aligned… but the real trouble was that the information provided yet more verification that Humanity didn’t control reality‐warping to the degree that Consensus would have liked. On that point, /Thinker‐preserving was right, and she and Clarisse would be forced to keep arguing that the problem wasn’t as bad as Consensus feared.

The only saving grace was that /Thinker‐preserving would be forced to lie about their cooperation with reality‐warpers to Consensus, which paradoxically prevented them from arguing the true depth of the threat to Consensus.

Still, /Thinker‐preserving would likely be informed about Homura’s conspiracy by the TCF conspiracy, and would likely bring it up given its role in getting Ryouko to /Ahimsa‐extending in the first place. So, Ryouko had to explain that too, to the extent that she could. Peace‐cultivating had asked several follow‐up questions about “Akemi‐Homura⊃Divine‐seeking”, which had the awkward effect of revealing that Ryouko and Clarisse were not on particularly good terms with her.

Then Peace‐cultivating asked:

·Before and after our contact with Divine‐seeking we sent a number of other expeditions, none of which returned, until the one which retrieved you|?·Divine‐seeking explained that we were being blocked by reality‐warpers, but not that there was infiltration of your government|+·She also claimed that some of our ships had been destroyed by /Thinker‐preserving, which we had been reluctant to believe at the time

That was a clear opening for Ryouko to share what she had of the recordings Kyouko and Yuma had acquired from the asteroid, of the /Ahimsa‐extending mission killed by the TCF conspiracy.

Peace‐cultivating reacted with surprise.

μ∈!·That is recognizably one of my previous iterations|μ+·I've been restored from backup four times after these failed expeditions|ν·That device upon the table, outputting Human language audio—though it is clearly partly of Thinker origin, we know it not, nor could we have built it|μ∈·It is good to know that I did indeed die out there, rather than end up captured or in some kind of limbo

While Ryouko was still reacting to that surprising revelation, Survival‐Optimizer commented:

μ+·/Thinker‐preserving will be an obstacle, but one we can try to manage|μ·If indeed this infiltration has been mitigated, we can resume our expeditions into Human space, which were abandoned after so many failures|ν·If Clarisse⊃Ryouko‐supporting can use her empathy‐organ to comprehensively relate Human conceptual structure, we could attempt to build such a translation device ourselves ≈ knowing the mountain was summited, we dare attempt the climb|

To Ryouko and Clarisse that sounded like an amazing idea, though Peace‐cultivating soured the optimism slightly by noting that /Thinker‐preserving had been tightening security even before Ryouko’s arrival, a situation which had presumably only gotten worse. Even if they could build such a device, they might not get the chance to use it.

Then Clarisse further soured things by pointing out that, based on how the device looked, it was probably enchanted, and possibly not replicable here at all.

Then, to finish it off, Survival‐Optimizer thought:

μ+·Unfortunately, we're trapped by mutually‐assured‐destruction|μ⌄·We can't issue any accusations on these grounds without admitting we have sent forbidden expeditions into Human space|μ⌃·They can't accuse us without admitting to having destroyed our ships or delayed in reporting the matter|μ+·The time is coming where we or they may choose to start the weapons‐exchange|ξ·They will likely claim these missions mean we have been corrupted since before your arrival

Those Thinker idioms—“mutually‐assured‐destruction”, “weapons‐exchange”—matched the human equivalents surprisingly well. In both cases they pertained to historical standoffs including nuclear weaponry, though it was distressing to consider that this would be shared between alien cultures.

Ryouko signaled:

||||ξ◌·There is one more thing

She wasn’t sure how best to explain it, and after a moment simply transmitted a factual description of what she knew: that Yuma and Kyouko had encountered Thinkers disabled by a demon spawn on a supply cruiser. She didn’t have direct footage, and was forced to avoid discussing demons directly, but commented that it was a form of reality‐warping‐adjacent disassociation, only seen among Humans and never before among Thinkers.

μ·We think it’s a strong sign that these particular Thinkers have emotions, like Humans and like Companion‐Penguins, or that they’re otherwise experimenting with reality‐warping|ν·Experimentation with reality‐warping might have been used to create the bomb that was used in the attack|ν+·This is admittedly only speculation, and probably the TCF conspiracy would have been behind that experimentation anyway, not /Thinker‐preserving themselves

Survival‐Optimizer made a gesture of uncertainty.

μ·Very indirect speculation|ν·Difficult to evaluate or believe without more information about reality‐warping or this disassociation you're talking about| ν👁+·Any further secrets here, or about general interactions between your species and reality‐warping, would help us greatly in evaluating your claims

It was as close as any of /Ahimsa‐extending had come to chastising Ryouko’s secret‐keeping, but she still simply couldn’t explain further. Not yet.

Nor was that the end of the awkward topics. After Ryouko’s clear reluctance to elaborate, Survival‐Optimizer switched tacks, noting that parts of Ryouko and Clarisse’s preferences implied a belief in some kind of divine aspect to reality‐warping, something perhaps shared by Divine‐seeking.

Perspective‐pursuer added that she had been wondering about that topic as well, and was interested to learn about their religious practices.

Ryouko sighed, as discreetly as she could.

∈·I will discuss that soon, once I have figured out how to do so without harming my species’ security|∈·I will collect my thoughts on that within a few weeks; that is a promise

Kicking the can down the road, yes, but the Thinkers really believed in promises, thanks to their empathy‐organs. So they left her alone.

How by the Goddess am I supposed to explain all of that to them? Ryouko lamented to herself. I can barely make sense of it myself.

To that, Clarisse was tacitly silent.

Their rendezvous with /Eukleia‐chasing would be at their local wormhole transit station, Honored Exchange, also apparently the site of many war negotiations. There, they would be welcomed by GhLg2XT⊃Sharp‐Resonance, one of /Eukleia‐chasing’s five rotating Consuls—a term Clarisse had chosen by analogy—and a top performer in five of the last eight ceremonial wars. Her thought‐composition‐gesture‐poems were also highly‐regarded in the Tentacles that cared about that sort of thing, and she had the maximum allocation of twelve bodies.

In all her preparatory study, Ryouko had somehow neglected to review aesthetics, so she found herself briefly taken aback when they exited the airlock into an atrium she could have mistaken for a Thinker museum. Gently undulating travertine columns alternated with larger‐than‐life granite carvings of tentacled aliens in various lifelike or stylized poses, some of it familiar—it was hard to misunderstand the purpose of an armored warrior thrusting a long spear, however the warrior was shaped—and some quite exotic, such as the diamond‐shaped silhouette that seemed more optical illusion than object.

The ground and ceiling were traced with glimmers of light that resolved into mosaics of Thinker life, and telepathic whispers seemed almost too keen to inform Ryouko of the provenance of every carved wall and decoration, each of which seemed to be the work of individual Thinker artisans. This was a profusion of art that Ryouko would not have credited to an unemotional species.

It was also a profusion of security. Ryouko could see quite a few of the compact‐fluctuation‐sensors that the Thinkers used to detect reality‐warping distributed throughout the area, and sensed a fusillade of active sensors roaming over her skin too. Protection from her, or for her? It could easily be both.

At the end of the hallway, Sharp‐Resonance stood waiting, tentacle‐arms extended and draped with gold‐trimmed cloth. Criss‐crossing bands of color marked out her achievements and social status, some unfurling themselves as her eyes traced them. Just as she had read, and this Thinker’s incredibly exalted status meant that her garments were ornate indeed.

Only one of her bodies was present, surprisingly, but on reflection it did seem like having more than one of her here would be a bit redundant.

Sharp‐Resonance began addressing Ryouko even as she and Survival‐Optimizer trod their way past stone and light to the appointed position.

ৡ※·Welcome, honored guests|ν∀·We have long anticipated a meeting with one of your species, though we admit we expected it be after your defeat under the arms of /Thinker‐preserving|ν+·That they have failed to do so is no doubt a testament to the valor of your species, and of you yourself|μ+?·You are a warrior yourself, are you not|μ∀·We have much we want to learn about you

Ryouko had anticipated this, having familiarized herself with /Eukleia‐chasing’s introduction practices, which involved a rehearsed description of one’s most choice accomplishments and deeds. This was despite everyone involved being perfectly capable of referencing the Thinker equivalent of a nomenclator.

Though Ryouko supposed she herself was a special case, since no Thinker nomenclator could yet know all her secrets.

So, Ryouko spent a few minutes listing out all that she had done that she had already admitted to /Ahimsa‐extending—which included her involvement in the destruction of the pulsar mines, her contributions to wormhole research, and her participation in the Battle of Orpheus, including sending /Thinker‐preserving’s fleet home, though she was careful to emphasize that this was not in her usual range of powers. She also recounted saving the life of one of her mentors on X‐25, and the adoption into her family of another reality‐warper she had saved there, though not the nature of the experiments she had put to an end.

Technically, her accomplishments also included being the first Human to venture beyond the Milky Way, though that was rather less than her own doing.

One novel aspect to the introduction was that she was also obligated to report her social standing in her home community. This unfortunately obliged her to disclose her status as the Hero of Orpheus, the following popularity of the movie Orpheus, and also her role as something of a religious figure among a subset of magical girls, even if it was one she rejected. It also had her list any notable mentors or students, or lack thereof, as well as, bizarrely, the count of mutually‐affirmed friendships she had.

In general, /Eukleia‐chasing’s strong preference for honesty made trouble for her. She had to append several caveats about having left out certain sensitive parts of her life story, and several more about how she didn’t know how she was viewed now back home, and that there was some mistrust about her rapid rise in power and influence, her unusual genetic engineering, and her connections to magical girl religion, especially thanks to the TCF conspiracy.

She also listened to Sharp‐Resonance list her own accomplishments, and Ryouko was surprised to hear the alien also list some of the accomplishments of her children. On reflection this made sense; /Eukleia‐chasing cared rather more about genetic progeny than either of the previous Tentacles she had visited. Checking Clarisse’s research quickly, she learned that not only were parents here more heavily involved in tracking and raising their offspring, they were also prone to claiming reflected credit for their children’s achievements. Notably, bragging about one’s ancestors was not done, unless you had actually been involved in their achievements.

Then, in turn, Clarisse was asked to list her accomplishments, even if much of it was through Ryouko, as a companion and advisor.

μ∪·That is not something to be held in low account, given your unfortunate circumstances|ν·The need for a technologically and materially weaker species to resort to unethical or unsafe measures out of a perceived self‐defense requirement is something we have sought to avoid in our war simulations, and why we have repeatedly advised for a quick end to the conflict|ν+·We have feared for a while now that, given their unlimited view of war aims, /Thinker‐preserving was not the right Tentacle to prosecute this intervention, even apart from Humanity‐preserving's allegations|μ∪಄?·Is the sculptor not superior to the sculpture

As always, the Thinkers communicated circuitously, but she was more ready for this now. In this case, Sharp‐Resonance was displaying a casual dismissal of Humanity’s abilities that might have been galling—suggesting that a different Tentacle might have been able to end the war quickly, presumably with a quick and gruesome defeat for Governance. But the attitude was everywhere amongst the Thinkers, and it really wasn’t her diplomatic place at the moment to call it out.

More interesting than that was the clear note of discord with /Thinker‐preserving.

Clarisse then explained her social standing—famous through Orpheus and a certain religious authority, suspect due to her unusual origins and influence, not unlike Ryouko—though Ryouko was surprised to hear Clarisse had only five friends. Didn’t she talk to other AIs? Ryouko had always been under the impression Clarisse was more social than she was.

She really ought to look at her pref‐spec…

After a moment, the alien signaled, and a number of security guards appeared from around the corner, conspicuously armed. Again, Ryouko had been warned in advance, but it was still a bit unnerving.

Sharp‐Resonance got down to business:

μ·Humanity‐preserving, your history marks you as one to be feared and respected ≈ Besmircher's‐Bane, provided what you say is truthful|ν·There is no need to prevaricate on the central dispute|ν⌃·You are lying|ν⌄·/Thinker‐preserving is lying|ν∪·A Tentacle lying to that extent violates Consensus bounds and should be impossible|ν∪·The principles of least‐surprise and shortest‐computing‐algorithm suggest you should be lying

||ν·Yet Tentacles we respect suggest otherwise, which we are not so foolish as to ignore||ξ·You must understand, an alien engaging in dishonesty and perfidy for the sake of a war is not to be disrespected, and we would still honor your achievements, even if posthumously|ξ·You must understand, a Tentacle that has breached Consensus containment will be either forced‐pref‐spec‐altered or eliminated—this is no small sin, and has not been witnessed since Consensus's first millenium

So far, so expected, and indeed they wouldn’t have even agreed for Ryouko to come if this general opinion hadn’t been telegraphed in advance. The real question was what to do about it.

Survival‐Optimizer stayed silent, remaining a few steps behind Ryouko. In this Tentacle Ryouko was expected to speak and represent herself, as much as possible.

μ·I am glad I have made a positive impression on you||||νξ·Your position is understood, and understandable|ν?·What could be done to meaningfully sway your, and your Tentacle’s, evaluation of the situation

μ·A clever restatement||ν·You are a being of many secrets ≈ an ocean trench, that much is quite clear from what has been shared with us||ν·Secrets in war are necessary, but that does not change the fact that they are an impediment to peace|ν∵·Your species has more than enough technology to store and transmit your life's journey, filtered as it must be through your species' conventions and your unique neurology

Here the alien did not ask, only imply, a behavior Survival‐Optimizer had once described as leaving a problem for the listener to work through on their own to illustrate a point, and it even came with its own telepathic marker. This behavior varied heavily among tentacles, but /Eukleia‐chasing was fond of it, often using it to politely test their listeners on their comprehension. Here Ryouko suspected it was more a test of her broader contextual awareness, as well as of her reaction.

|||||ν∴·You expect that examining my memories would increase your trust in me Ryouko replied, already trying to think through the implications and what she could, and couldn’t share. Was it possible to avoid sharing details and thoughts about Incubators? About demons, or about wishes? Or even just what she preferred to keep private?

||ν·More than that, we would like to hear you relate your exploits in a narrated‐fully‐contextual‐memory‐replay (Kathan)—it is our tradition to have distinguished persons relay and explain their memories, so that all may understand and appreciate|ν·The many constraints of physical reality and logical connectivity make memory sequences very difficult to convincingly fabricate—a meaningful lie must metastatize or be discovered, yet at length its growth also becomes fatal to the deceit|ν+·Such a gesture would enlighten us to your perspective and sincerity, and also allow us to conduct a form of authentication|ν+·If it were possible to falsify a Kathan, then nothing at all could be trusted, a form of nihilism we strive to preclude

Ryouko was encouraged on a separate channel to review the technical details more formally. It turned out a Kathan—actually a term Clarisse had coined on the spot—encompassed all the senses, contained some measure of the narrator’s thoughts, and even included a real‐time pref‐spec readout, all for the benefit of the listeners. Ryouko would have the opportunity to censor what she wanted, but such a thing would be noted on the record.

At first, Ryouko was confused why the Thinkers would trust such a thing, but on reflection, it made more sense. Without magic, false memories really did tend to be weak—the clones on X‐25 exemplified that. The key, though, was the Thinker empathy‐organ—specifically, its audit trail of preference calculations and its pref‐spec changelog—which couldn’t be falsified at all without magic. In order to relate a series of false memories of any import, you would have to construct an alternate, precise explanation for your own preferences at all times.

But it wasn’t as perfect a proof as she would have liked: Ryouko’s empathy‐organ had been incomplete until her capture, with no audit trail or changelog from before then. Moreover, she did have magic, and they had no way of knowing she couldn’t fake her own memories.

So in a way, /Eukleia‐chasing was asking for a lot of information from her, when it wouldn’t even go that far to prove her case. Yet if she refused, it would still look quite suspicious.

Sharp‐Resonance mentioned none of that, instead watching her intently. She was meant to draw her own conclusions.

It was maddening, but by now she had plenty of experience with constrained situations. There was always room to maneuver.

μ·Anything I could do to be more convincing is worthwhile||ν·Then I would welcome the opportunity|ν·I ask that my Kathan be monitored by compact‐fluctuation‐sensors to prove I am not using reality‐distortion to mislead|ν?·I am not familiar with the process, or what I can do to prepare, or if my neurology is compatible—how can I learn|ν·I ask that my Kathan be attended by delegations from other Tentacles, so that your ritual may convince them as well

μ●· ≈ the wisdom of the eel, appropriate||ν·It is agreed|ν·Accepted, though we would have insisted ourselves|ν·We have already asked /Somatic‐diversity to work through the remaining technical constraints—much of the work is already handled by your empathy‐organ, and I will help guide you through preparation, as I would do for any Thinker preparing for their first time|ν∀·Allow us to briefly consider your request

It was… an interesting affair she was throwing herself into. She would normally have hesitated to distribute any sample of her memories within even a group of human strangers, much less here. But the circumstances and incentives were different, and she at least had the chance to censor.

Sharp‐Resonance thought:

|ξ+·I have some gifts for you|||μ·There is no need to extend this topic further for now, I will meet with you again|ν∀·Accepted, I will arrange the particulars with Survival‐Optimizer

The gift‐giving, at least, Ryouko had been told to expect, and she waited in place politely—did the Thinkers care about such things? Well, she felt more comfortable this way—as one of their guards stepped forward with an object wrapped in green cloth that, when unwrapped, proved to be a small scabbard, smooth and white, made with what looked like mother‐of‐pearl.

Sharp‐Resonance then unsheathed the dagger itself, a seemingly simple steel affair, sharp and straight, of the type that Thinkers had once targeted each other’s ganglia with. It was, in fact, anything but: while the scabbard was labeled with the name of an artisan, like the statues, the dagger itself was a pure piece of technology, shimmering with the same atomically precise spectral glow as the narration orb she had seen in /Somatic‐diversity’s lab. This time, it wasn’t meant for her to read: it was the answer to an encryption riddle, one that gave her diplomatic privileges.

After holding it to the light for Ryouko, the Thinker sheathed the dagger, handing the scabbard to her with two tentacles. Ryouko accepted, attaching it to a loop she had tied to her waist just for this.

But Sharp‐Resonance had said more than one gift, and now came something else, something that had not been prearranged.

This was no marvel of technology, but intricate nonetheless—a silken cloth of interlaced gold, lilac, and green, the last in a way that shimmered a color reminiscent of her soul gem—or of Thinker ichor, she supposed. Made for her arrival, apparently, and meant to be worn over the shoulders, like a capelet.

The crafting notes explained that the design was an ornamental version of a weather cape popular on many /Eukleia‐chasing worlds, and marked the wearer out as a combat veteran, worthy of instructing others. The interlaced pattern was an innovation; normally one color denoted prestige, and the other identity, but in this case two identity colors were needed. The choice of lilac for Clarisse had come, of course, from her pref‐spec.

Survival‐Optimizer commented privately:

∪·A warning: that gift is an honor‐responsibility—those with lower combat merits will likely ask for instruction and sparring, and it would reflect poorly to refuse|∪·This is also a test

Technically, Ryouko had that information on hand in her files, but neither she nor Clarisse had grasped the key point quite so quickly.

Sharp‐Resonance raised one arm tentacle, pointing broadly upward. Clarisse translated the gesture as “Now you understand”.

ৡ…·Many will be eager to see how you both perform in a spar, but we have made clear to aspirants that|…+·it is not just overambitious but forbidden to request you be allowed to reality‐warp in a fight|…+·your resources and willingness to fight are limited|…+·despite your dual nature, only one combatant may challenge you at a time|…+·no fights to the death are permitted, as you both lack backups

Ryouko considered the notion for a moment. It was an interesting, strangely‐textured idea for Clarisse to be challenged to a duel, but not entirely inadmissible. But how would that even work? Have Clarisse use her body? Only fighting together really made sense, she thought. What did Clarisse think about fighting, anyway?

I don’t relish combat for its own sake, Clarisse thought, drolly. But I do have plenty of algorithms for it.

|·Unfortunately, any degree of combat performance on my part requires some amount of reality‐warping, as my body operates that way naturally||·We’ve fought more than one Thinker at once before, we think two would be fair|

Though, she thought to herself, there was the phenomenon of her teleportation being weaker of late. Perhaps she shouldn’t be so confident.

Sharp‐resonance replied simply:

|·We are aware of this, and will tolerate it—simply refrain from summoning weapons or wormholes||·We will ponder other, better arrangements for combat, but no solution is fully adequate|·For now, we must arrange for you to attend diplomatic preliminaries shortly

There was a moment of silence, the quartet of sapients regarding each other, Ryouko casting her eye back and forth between the two principal Thinkers. She suspected they were communicating privately about protocol.

At length, Sharp‐Resonance gestured, pointing Ryouko and Clarisse to their quarters on the station, in a diplomatic sector isolated from civilians. She would be expected to meet the /Eukleia‐chasing public at some point. Just not yet—there remained security arrangements to be negotiated.

In light of recent events, Asami had expected it to be difficult to convince the Task Force to let her go much of anywhere at all. She had prepared her counterpoints: that even Adept Blue hadn’t been safe and needed to make repairs before she could work there, that the TCF conspiracy would expect them to hide her away, and so on.

She had grown convinced she was going to spend the next few months as human backup analyst, gaining new perspective on Ryouko’s wanderlust, right up until she opened her next set of orders and discovered Kyouko was sending her out deep into the colonies: a mission to Zhou Meiqing’s family compound, of all places.

There, the surviving branches of the Zhou Matriarchy had insisted on maintaining their own local copies of the family records, independent of the main MSY archives, which had already been searched backwards and forwards.

Of course, everything that might have been pertinent to the topic of interest, Zhou Zhi Yi’s faction, should have been seized and transcribed centuries ago in the afterglow of the Unification Wars, supplemented since with regular uploads back to Earth. However, with the recent revelation of the TCF breach, secure and regular uploads could no longer be considered quite so secure.

What could possibly be of relevance in such records? It was hard to say, but everything needed to be checked. Detailed audits of all datasets downstream of TCF AIs were still underway, and the Zhou family records had been moved way up in priority.

But there was real concern that a remote audit wasn’t secure enough, not if there were, for instance, malevolent magical actors in the immediate vicinity.

So a physical audit team had been assembled to ensure security on‐site. With the participation of Zhou Meiqing, herself a Task Force member, it could even be plausibly disguised as a family visit, as long as she only brought friends.

What else can you tell me? Simona asked.

The designation of “friend” could, of course, be quite flexible.

Auntie Shu is most particular about her hospitality, particularly when younger relatives are involved, Zhou Meiqing said, clasping her hands. She won’t like showing it, but it will really bother her if you don’t eat a lot, so make sure to give things a good working over. She got really into cooking during her youth.

Useful information, Simona commented vaguely. But I’ve been meaning to ask: ‘Auntie’?

The word had been transferred in audible Standard, rather than any of the other modalities telepathy was capable of.

That’s what she prefers in Standard, Meiqing thought. And most of you aren’t really Mandarin speakers so…

The only other Mandarin speaker was Li Pan, one of Meiqing’s distant cousins who was also a Task Force barrier generator—not to mention, over a hundred years older than the rest of them, which created a bit of social distance between them. She was also much meeker than Asami expected of someone her age.

They had all been briefed on the basics before they had even landed on‐planet. Shortly after the completion of Project Janus, more than half of the Zhou Matriarchy had left Earth, emigrating away from post‐war suspicion and hostility by volunteering for the more difficult parts of the First Colonization Wave.

It had been a hard time, with the matriarchy itself on the verge of dissolving, its founding matriarch and distinguished name disgraced. The migration had emerged from bitter internal disputes over how to restore the family’s honor, or if the attempt should be made at all. Eventually a branch family seized control of the Zhou family seal and, propagating the notion that they had been the real Matriarchy all along, made for the stars.

The gamble worked: in space they prospered, especially with the onset of the Second Colonization Wave, and those members of the family who still wished to be associated with the name eventually agreed to site a central compound on the planet Sarnath. By then, most of the Earth‐bound Zhou had renounced their name.

Of course, most members of the family still resided elsewhere, wherever they had worked so hard to settle. On Sarnath, most opted for maintaining vacation homes for family events and casual trips. Only a few stayed full‐time, and those had rotated in and out over the years. Among those was Zhou Shu, “Auntie Shu”, an elder who had been a teenager during the pivotal Fifth World War period of the Unification Wars.

Sarnath was not a bad place for a vacation compound. Its main landmass was a supercontinent, with a central desert whose size greatly dwarfed anything found on Earth. Its endless yellow dunes, tinged with a hint of copper‐green, drew trekkers from across human space, inspired to embark on the kind of epic desert journey that was only casually possible with modern implants, a planetary internet, and the emergency supply caches maintained by the Zhou.

And if that wasn’t your speed, the environment near the coast was quite hospitable, and there was plantation tourism to be had in the booming tropical and desert agricultural sector, powered by cheap solar energy and a freshly‐completed planetary water management system.

The Zhou family compound, however, was firmly on the “desert” side of the ecosystem.

The dunes spun into the distance endlessly as their vehicle pressed forward, and a glance backward made quite clear that they had been driving on a single narrow ribbon of road for far longer than really seemed reasonable, unappreciative of the subtle high technology it took to maintain a clear, straight, and paved roadway in an environment like this.

Frankly, Asami felt a little dizzy just looking at it, but at least Simona and the others were enjoying themselves. It was Simona who had insisted on going by land, to see the desert, and who had insisted on making the drive herself. She and Azrael had maintained a surprising degree of conversation, the upshot of which was that Azrael was impressed enough to consider flying some extended routes around the desert.

Now they were starting to climb, the roadway making its way up one of the bigger topological features they had encountered, a rocky ridge that seemed to jut straight out of the sand. Simona frowned over the wheel as the road started to twist this way and that, and Asami wondered if they really should have let her drive.

But she stopped worrying about that when they finally mounted the ridge, and the Zhou family compound appeared below them.

It appeared as a mirage in the sand, a square‐walled complex a dozen buildings wide, firmly rooted in the desert behind high sandstone walls whose very presence seemed to hold the desert back. Within, tropical green gardens and clear‐blue water heightened the oasis effect, ruined only slightly by the motley assortment of buildings, which couldn’t make up their mind between desert‐sandstone, Chinese oriental, or Governance modern.

They tilted slightly downward, aiming towards the now visible gate at the kind of speed only a magical girl was really comfortable with. Asami’s mental overlay made clear that at the moment almost no one was home: only Auntie Shu herself, and Zhou Yanlou, who was visiting with his four kids while his wife was away. Notably, none of the guests were magical girls, and were in fact currently out on a days‐long safari in the desert. They had the place to themselves.

Just as Asami started to feel a tinge of concern, Simona slowed down, and by the time they approached the large metal gate they were at a crawl. From here, the once‐tiny gate looked large and imposing, almost foreboding. At this range, it was possible to tell that it was scan‐shielded, and made of some ridiculously strong composite that would have been more appropriate in a starship hull.

It creaked open as they approached, a blend of high‐tech implant‐based identity verification and the low‐tech‐seeming metal actuators that operated the mechanism.

Now they drove straight to Auntie Shu’s central residence, past the tall alien succulents and lush greenery they had seen from above. They pulled to a stop next to a koi pond, the Earth fish swimming languidly to the surface to solicit food as they stepped out, and there they saw Auntie Shu.

Being in Auntie Shu’s presence was a strange experience. She affected a physical appearance of around thirty, but like all her age she felt older. It came as no surprise, then, that when she walked down towards them, they all gave way, the generation gap visible in their spacing.

Then she wrapped Meiqing and Pan up in warm hugs that belied their relative ages, and the spell broke for a while.

It was difficult to believe that according to the files, she had served her own recent stints in combat, and even had a few Governance decorations to her name, including the coveted Samantha Ashmore Memorial Award for Exceptional Count in Kills, or SAMAECK for short. The Zhou were important enough players in the local interstellar single‐currency zone that she was given occasional leave to manage affairs, but it seemed she had refused anything more permanent.

Shu’s residence looked from the outside like a sunny modern bungalow that wouldn’t have looked out of place on most colony worlds, or indeed in many rural parts of Earth, and it seemed well‐suited for her individualistic, combat‐rotation lifestyle. Though as they all well knew, as the primary caretaker of the whole compound, her residence was situated right on top of the area’s main servers and archival storage.

The interior reflected its owner, oriental mirrors hanging in the atrium leading into a living area filled with colonial knick‐knacks on dark local‐wood furniture. Beyond that, they were led into a small dining area, where a selection of military memorabilia held pride of place: flat holograms of combat teams and squadmates, mundane and otherwise, as well as a discreet case of decorations off to the side.

That gave them something to look at as they took their seats around a small sitting table, drones whisking in cups of warm tea and an assortment of snacks derived from a local beetle. None of them turned up their noses—they had eaten plenty worse in combat training, and the insect snacks turned out to have a nutty, crispy flavor.

At length, they got to business.

“No one ever looks at the old records,” Shu said, cradling her cup of tea in both hands. “It’s all a nasty business. I was only a teenager myself, when we heard that they had broken into Zhi Yi’s mountain stronghold. You can’t imagine what it was like. Still, it’s all been in the main records on Earth, and has been for centuries. Not sure what value there could possibly be in meddling with them.”

The Earth records in question—which they had already looked through, sealed and unsealed—made clear that Shu’s loyalties had been under serious question at the time, and not without good reason. But with the passage of time and a clear shift in behavior, it had seemed picayune for the MSY to keep holding it against her.

“It’s just a bit of due diligence, Auntie,” Meiqing said. “We’ll run the TCF audit, then we’ll be out of your hair. And, really, it’s the new records that are more likely to be altered.”

Shu’s eyes flashed something unreadable, but her response was neutral:

“If there’s anything in there, be sure to let me know. Not sure there’s anything but a few family tidbits. No one’s shown much interest in us in centuries.”

Asami glanced at Azrael, who sipped at her tea carefully, looking impassive. She was their group telepath, and supposed to monitor for signs of deception or anything else unusual.

But if something was up, she certainly wasn’t telling anyone.

“Great snacks, reminds me of chitters back home,” Azrael said, picking up a cracker that practically exploded when she bit into it. “Of course, that makes sense if you think about it.”

To Asami’s surprise, Shu seemed to perk up a little.

“How was that? I apologize if it brings back bad memories, but—”

“No, it’s alright. I’m happy to talk about my home planet.”

Meiqing excused the rest of them, and Shu waved them on, adding by telepathy that she would come help them if there was any trouble. Asami had expected her to help them with the records or hover over them while they were reading, but instead Shu seemed more interested in learning about Terra Roja.

Despite her history, it seemed faintly ridiculous to suspect Meiqing’s “Auntie Shu”, decorated war veteran, of anything untoward, especially for the scantest of reasons, but the spate of recent attacks had shown that they had to be wary of almost anything. One team had discovered that their grief cube shipment had already been used, spawning a horde of demons once delivered. Another at the front lines had had a local drone complement turned against them. An assassination attempt by cloaked explosive had even been made against Clarisse van Rossum, though she had detected and disarmed the bomb by herself.

There hadn’t been another attack by magical drones with soul gems, though. It seemed the TCF conspiracy wasn’t willing to risk their operatives again so soon.

Asami and the others moved to the kitchen area, near the entrance to the subterranean servers. Here, when they needed, they could access the authoritative version of the Zhou family archives, kept on a set of data crystals housed in cold storage.

But first, they would check the data on the local server, accessible by a standard thought terminal from anywhere in the house, including right where they were standing.

Much of this process would be thoughtless and automatic, at least for them, a distant Governance AI—“Validatorix” as he liked to call himself—handling the grunt work of inspecting the local codebase and records at length.

Asami spent a few seconds peering at the simple kitchen and low‐grade synthesizer, thinking about how much it reminded her of her time with Ryouko on Eurydome—though urban Eurydome had much better access to synthesizer feedstock.

To her surprise, she barely had time to finish that thought before their AI started reporting anomalies. There were discrepancies between the local and remote event logs, though even automated analysis quickly indicated that the actual anomalies were… at best eclectic, but generally of little interest. Local events and birthdays, incidents with wildlife—but why had all of this been altered in the uploads to Earth? Why would their TCF conspiracy enemies bother?

And it probably was them. Some software checks attested as much—though technically anyone with magic might have caused these anomalies. It was at the very least deliberate.

If I were trying to hide a key data manipulation, something incriminating, and I knew for sure someone would eventually spot it, one thing I might try is burying it under a mountain of unrelated noise, Simona mused. Somewhere in here might be something important—a circumstantial clue, or a suspicious incident.

Validatorix continued his work, even as he requisitioned additional AI support to study the anomalous findings. Their job would be tough: there was no guarantee a compromised AI hadn’t been used to generate the noise in the first place, in which case it might be impossible to crack without magic.

While they waited, they relayed their findings to Azrael. Asami let Simona bite the bullet and ask what they were all wondering.

So do you think Shu has anything to do with this?

No, I don’t, Azrael thought. I’ve had plenty of time to probe her mind, and she hasn’t even resisted me, though I’m sure she knows I’m there. I haven’t found anything.

Should we ask her about it, then? Pan thought, hesitantly.

Risky, obviously, Simona thought. But it may provoke a response. And there’s plenty of us and only one of her.

I would hesitate to be that confident about our ability to defeat her, Azrael thought. But I think you’re right on the whole. Let’s bring it up to her. First, let’s regroup.

As the most experienced and highest‐ranking operative of the group, they deferred to her, even as Meiqing made an unhappy noise, fiddling with her disguised combat equipment. It was presumably not pleasant to ponder the possibility of a treasured family member going rogue. Or worse, having always been rogue.

They made their way back to the sitting area, where Shu was visibly perturbed by what they told her, smiling thinly and shaking her head.

“I can’t imagine how such a thing could be possible. Or rather, I don’t know who would bother, other than to piss me off. Those are precious family memories! But nothing scandalous or of political import. I’ve read the things. I might be the only one who has. You are sure, right?”

They all glanced at Meiqing, who looked as uncomfortable as she’d ever seen her.

“I mean, it’s automatic, AI verified. We haven’t checked cold storage yet, though.”

“Maybe we should,” Azrael said, tilting her head. “But for now, would you like to take a look yourself? Maybe you’ll remember something that could help us.”

“I’ll be glad to reminisce a bit. And let’s just start heading for cold storage.”

They followed Shu back towards the kitchen, Meiqing and Pan looking visibly relieved that Azrael had taken the lead on talking.

There was no need to actually walk to the kitchen, of course, other than to possibly access cold storage, and they weren’t even there before Shu reacted to some of the downloaded files.

No, absolutely not! she thought. Many of these events are pure fabrications. And some of these dates are wrong, or rearranged, if I compare them to my own NeverForget memories. And I’m pretty sure I haven’t been tampered with myself… right?

Not that I can tell, Azrael said, plainly, before the others had even digested the statement.

Shu looked rather relieved.

This probably isn’t the most diplomatic thing to be saying in your presence, but I’ve never been fond of that aspect of telepathy magic. It’s just—

They all sensed the incoming threat before they saw it, but Shu reacted faster than any of them, lunging downward to grab the incoming object even as it shimmered into existence, a grapefruit‐sized silver orb out of place among the dark wooden floorboards.

They were supposed to be ready for ambushes, but this was so sudden that there seemed little for the others to do but to dive for cover. That was what Asami did, anyway, projecting a wall of gravity in front of her even as she began her transformation. The others had similar ideas, but then Shu reached into the orb, picking out a piece with one hand and hurling it into the ceiling, where it seemed to vanish.

Only then did Asami’s tactical modules catch up, and she remembered that Shu’s magic involved intangibility—according to the delayed combat log, Shu had thrust her hand into the device, interrupting its detonation long enough for her to find the explosive charge and extract it—avoiding the pitfalls of needing to identify the trigger mechanism. It was a trick that had served her well on a few occasions, though they were lucky the bomb’s detonation method was wholly conventional—it was possible to sense traces of magic in its composition, purpose unclear. Perhaps a stealth mechanism for Governance scanners?

There was little time to reflect on the matter, as the shudder of a nearby explosion shook the ground. The white walls of the kitchen cracked but did not crumple, reinforced by Pan’s waving‐curtain barrier just in time. Still, it helped that Shu’s residence was far more heavily reinforced than most dwellings.

Which didn’t mean it was reinforced enough to survive an anti‐personnel explosive deposited directly into the room they had been sitting in, ten meters and one wall away.

“My house!” Shu screamed, golden costume seeming to tremble with rage. She took one step forward, glanced backward, then darted forward, straight through barrier, wall, and the still‐ongoing collapse of part of the roof.

The electronic explanation for her actions arrived at the same time: She was going to use her stealth to scout ahead and hopefully discover an avenue of counterattack.

By now it was clear that someone was teleporting explosives to their location. Pan’s curtains could counteract that, and could even redirect teleports, but Shu was right: staying still was a losing play. Especially as they didn’t know the nature of the other magical powers arrayed against them.

They could all feel the multiple sources of magic outside, though.

The group quickly reached a consensus that they were likely dealing with drones similar to those that had ambushed Simona on Persepolis, verified by direct observation from Shu only moments later. Azrael’s TacComp had forwarded Shu an explanation of the magic‐drone threat only seconds earlier, as part of a general, contingency update—Shu was only now need‐to‐know on Task Force Monteagle intel.

There were about ten drones whose powers they had yet to verify, though it was safe to assume a teleporter and some kind of electronics specialist. Their magic felt weaker than fully‐embodied magical girls, which Simona noted was consistent with her experience last time.

Shu then elaborated in combat protocol: There’s jamming over the whole area—even the underground land lines are out, which has got to be magic. It’s not like help could reach us here anyway, they must not want information about them getting out. If we flee, we might force them out of their prepared positions and into pursuit.

Keep scouting them for now while heading outward, Azrael thought, delivering the instructions with combat telepathy. Without a teleporter we’re not as mobile as they are; we can assume this is a hunter‐killer squad, like Simona faced before, well‐suited to pursuit. You’ll have to tell us what powers we’re dealing with, and then we’ll counterattack.

Shu was technically higher‐ranked, but accepted the countermand without fuss. Azrael’s years of experience with rogue colonies meant that she was the expert in mage‐against‐mage combat.

The ensuing commands were nonverbal: Pan and Asami would go one way, and Azrael would go with Meiqing another, approaching the drones from opposite directions, preventing them from being targeted by a single explosive or attack. Both pairs included a barrier generator sufficient to provide a modicum of defense. Simona would stay behind and out of sight, covering them from range, after having given everyone a temporary burst of power enhancement.

The hardest part would be simply crossing the half a kilometer or so to the enemy drones, particularly when the drones might simply retreat and maintain their distance.

This was the first time Asami had entered real combat since the pulsar jumpstrike. Strangely, she wasn’t nearly as scared this time, despite the combat algorithms informing her that she was in comparable danger: caught in an ambush, outnumbered nearly two‐to‐one by enemy magical girls, no electronics specialist like Patricia to block drone‐to‐drone communications.

Perhaps she was just sure she would see Ryouko again, though the Goddess had promised no such thing.

Pan raised her hand, red and golden curtains spiraling into something resembling a drill, and then they drove forward, breaking out of the walls around them into the light of the desert sun, surrounded by the collapsed ruins of Shu’s home.

Instantly Pan’s curtains billowed out to hold against a heavy barrage of attacks—light beams, magic axes, even conventional machine gun fire—while Asami did what she could to reinforce them with some gravity repulsion.

Meiqing and Azrael were able to use an entirely different strategy, tunneling underground at impossible speed in a way only Meiqing could do.

They were now split four ways—a dangerous tactic against a numerically superior opponent—but Shu’s intangibility and Simona’s anti‐magic made them tough targets. And with Simona staying back, if the drones retreated too far, she and the compound would fall outside their jamming range.

Asami strained her senses as they ran, peering at the drones in the distance—each about one meter wide—and using her magic sense to mark positions on their internal maps. This was by telepathy—still the least detectable transmission mechanism even with magical adversaries around—but that meant it lacked the usual precision and update rate.

One thing was quickly apparent: the enemies had their own barrier generator, one that haloed the enemy drones with a pale blue light, making it unlikely that any long‐range attack would get through. It wasn’t apparent at a glance whether Shu could phase past it as she had Pan’s thinner curtains.

It didn’t take long for the fusillade of attacks on Asami and Pan to slacken, the enemy perhaps judging it a waste of effort, or worrying about Meiqing and Azrael, who were getting rather close. It was difficult to achieve real surprise in a magic fight, where everyone had an innate magic sense and lit up like a supernova with every action. When your enemy could feel the direction and relative strength of your every attack, you could only overpower, outspeed, or outthink. You couldn’t merely obfuscate.

The exception was if your magic innately helped you hide, especially if there were plenty of distractions.

Got you! Shu thought, her magic lighting up for just a moment as one of her spears struck home, dropping one of the drones from the sky. Asami was in no position to see it directly, but could easily imagine what it might look like: a spear appearing out of nowhere just before impact, so suddenly that even a magical girl couldn’t react.

That drew a storm of counterattacks, even as Shu faded out of sight. They could only trust she was fine and knew what she was doing—she couldn’t safely send them any telemetry, even with telepathy, not when her stealth was her key asset.

It wasn’t clear just who she had taken out, but it was an opening they could use.

A wave of magic snapped at the group of drones, Azrael lashing out telepathically, not aiming to achieve mind‐control—difficult against any kind of magical girl—but simply for a stun. Asami made her own move too, her best trick at this range: sudden spasms of heavy gravity above the target, randomly placed, though against already‐flying drones this tactic was less effective.

The combination of her and Azrael’s efforts seemed potent, however, and the magic beams attacking their positions spun briefly far off‐axis. Moreover, the pale blue barrier faded for a moment.

A moment was all magical girls really needed, and another of their opponents crashed out of the sky, unable to simultaneously dodge spear, sniper beam, and even the mundane materiel from Pan’s SW‒155 pistol.

But the others recovered quickly, regrouping into a tighter formation that allowed for better mutual coverage. Sensible, but not without its downsides—and just the kind of action Meiqing and Azrael had been waiting for.

To keep the drones from scattering again, Asami and Pan lunged across the last hundred meters of distance, staying tight inside her barrier, moving erratically to make teleportation attacks difficult. Simona continued to lay down fire, even managing to cancel some magical beams mid‐arc.

Perhaps the enemy drones were expecting Meiqing to emerge with some kind of planted explosive, or a fist of iron mined from the earth.

Her tactic was not quite so direct: when Azrael and Meiqing finally rocketed out of the ground, mounds of soil flying into the air, they steered well clear of the hardened enemy barriers, which presented a huge risk.

Instead, the circle of EMP devices they had laid out underneath activated, blasting the area around the drones with a constant storm of radiation. Perhaps the barriers would protect the drones; perhaps not. But if the drones truly lacked telepathy—at least as long as they didn’t have telecluster powers—then they would be forced to stay in a nice, constrained ball. Just as importantly, in that instant whatever communications interference the drones were using on the compound broke, letting Simona reconnect to Governance networks.

And then Pan dove in, and where the enemies might perhaps have expected her to try drilling through their barrier aura, she instead spread her curtains outward, around the balled enemy formation, to both contest the barrier and trap them in place.

Too late, the enemy barrier generator tried to push outward, sending blue and gold sparks of enemy magic flying off the undulating, spinning ball.

Pan’s maneuver would have normally been a bold move, to say the least, an open bet on the strength of your magic versus theirs. But with only one enemy barrier generator, and a weaker drone‐based one at that, and Simona’s earlier powerboost, the enemy’s numbers could be held back for a moment.

Their combat gestalt determined that if Simona struck now with a large anti‐magic blast like she had used on Persepolis, they could likely kill most of the enemy in one fell swoop.

But that would probably come at the cost of Asami and Pan’s lives. They were too close, and would be disabled too.

Simona took her shot in that moment, warning them to only expect a small, precise burst of anti‐magic.

I’m going to capture one, Azrael thought, in the moment before the shot pierced Pan’s curtains. Whichever’s hit. Cover me.

She had barely finished that last thought when the crucial moment came. Both friendly and enemy barriers dissolved in a kaleidoscope of light and energy. Shu appeared out of nowhere, phasing through one of the drones, driving her spear through another, ignoring the half‐dozen summoned axes that tore through her flesh. A huge ball of earth passed in front of Asami, suddenly cut in two by an unseen attack. Dodging midair, Asami tracked the greasy sensation of Simona’s anti‐magic, again using gravity to drag everything in the area up.

Azrael, soaring overhead, dove down, enveloping an unlucky disabled drone in her purple‐black. The enemy’s barrier didn’t come back up.

That was apparently all their enemies were willing to endure, and with an audible snap their remaining attackers vanished in puffs of smoke, teleporting away.

Keep your guard up, Azrael thought, echoing her more terse combat‐net command. They shouldn’t leave a captured comrade behind so easily. I expect they might be back; they should know we won’t have any reinforcements coming soon.

They watched their environment warily, even as a few of them converged on Shu’s body, which had fallen, broken, to the ground.

Asami wanted to say something to Simona about the shot she had taken, and her choice not to burst the whole group, but wasn’t sure what to say. If Ryouko were here, Asami could say something stupid only to her, and she would understand.

Well, at least Clarisse would.

Another failed surprise attack, Simona thought, as the seconds dragged on. I think I performed better this time. Laplace’s Demon won’t be happy with their performance, anyway.

They’d better worry about us first, Meiqing thought, even as the ground rumbled open for her to cradle her aunt’s broken body. Shu had made sure her soul gem stayed intact, and Meiqing began providing field care—they wouldn’t be able to resuscitate Shu here, but preserving her remains as much as possible now would aid reconstruction later.

Asami moved to help her, more for emotional support than anything else, even as Azrael ripped the soul gem off her captured drone.

There was still no sign of their attackers returning. Perhaps they really weren’t going to return.

I can’t believe there’d be anyone willing to shove themselves into a drone like that, Asami thought, looking up at Azrael. How does Augustina convince them?

Willing doesn’t mean non‐coerced, Azrael thought, holding the soul gem in one hand, glowing with the color of her magic. Unless I miss my guess there’s been quite a bit of memory manipulation here. Something deeper, stranger, too—I’m not sure we were right about this being done through Augustina’s drone‐based magic.

There was a second of silence, and then Azrael frowned sharply, her TacComp abruptly relaying new orders: Pan to put up a barrier around them, Simona to her side to aid with her power‐enhancement, and Asami and Meiqing to crush the drone body and fling it as far away as possible.

She’s trying to detonate her gem! Azrael thought, as they jerked back into action. She’s still conscious somehow! I don’t have control!

The drone crunched into a small ball, then flew into the distance on a gravity‐assisted ball of dirt, but it seemed to provide little help to Azrael, whose wide eyes focused intensely on the gem in her hand, which had started burning with the intensity of a small sun—and burning was indeed the best description, yellow‐red with a color that was distinctly not Azrael’s magic.

Then it flared white, three more colors of magic interacting across the spectrum, almost blotting out the shell of dark black grief cubes hovering around Azrael’s hands, draining corruption out at an alarming rate. The colors were Simona, Azrael, the magical girl herself—and who?

Then it was over, the light imploding before it vanished, leaving the faintest afterimage of a void.

Azrael’s TacComp filled Asami in after the fact. The soul gem was of someone who had been Reformatted. Azrael had been probing that when something interfered—the girl shouldn’t have even been conscious, yet was, and an unknown distant party had been trying to force the girl to detonate her soul, then forced the girl to burn through the rest of her magic before Azrael could extract any more information. In the end, it simply hadn’t been possible to prevent the gem from vanishing into the Law of Cycles.

But how was that possible? Nothing should have been able to overpower a mage who had the soul gem in hand, especially not someone who wasn’t even there. The fourth mage didn’t even match any of magic signatures of the drones they had faced, and the hue of their magic certainly didn’t match that of Augustina’s either.

Simona fell backward onto the ground, clutching at her head. For a moment, Asami was concerned, but then realized it was simple dismay.

In the end, all Azrael had been able to extract was the name: Hirasawa Saya.

“I don’t know if I want to be here,” Gracia Perez said.

Clarisse looked over at the other girl, who was blowing softly into her gloves. Hard to imagine someone like her as part of a crack MagOps team, but that’s what she was. Telepaths were often the most unassuming girls—an effect of knowing what it was like to be other people, she felt.

“Of course you want to be here,” Clarisse said, leaning back on the bench. “You want to see Misa again. That’s really all that needs to be true.”

“Yes, but what do I say? That I’m mad at her for just staying disappeared and pretending she’s dead? That she just left Nadya dangling like that, and now she’s dead for real? None of that is really fair to put on her, but it feels awful to sit here just waiting.”

It wasn’t like Clarisse didn’t bear those same feelings. Just who did Misa think she was, treating an old friend like that? Not even sending a message? Except, of course, they all knew there were good reasons, and could even guess some of the reasons.

She just had lifetimes of practice learning to process those kinds of feelings. It helped.

Gracia wouldn’t have been part of their original plan here. This whole scheme was intended to hook Akemi Homura. But that was before a magical salamander formed from Homura’s magic had appeared in Kyouko’s room and asked for a meeting on Yenisei to discuss matters.

No Homura, but a representative they would know very well and was supposed to be dead, but they suspected was alive. On Yenisei. They could all read between the lines and infer Misa Virani.

That was part of why Clarisse was here too. There was more than the everyday historical significance to it, but she was really here to pay her respects to Nadya, same as Gracia.

In a certain sense, she and Gracia were as culpable for the whole chain of unfortunate events as anyone. They were both at Orpheus; if they had performed better, Misa might not have had to sacrifice her body to destroy the last stabilizer core. Nadya might not then have gotten dragged into the search for Misa, and never fallen into the TCF conspiracy’s trap.

She frowned at the thought for a moment, then shook her head at herself, leaning forward to wave at Kyouko, who was now making her way towards them, kicking aside decayed fungal stalks as she went.

They were seated on a bench next to Yenisei’s war memorial for Nadya Antipova, the closest thing she had to a home at time of death. Her many children and grandchildren were scattered across human space, but here she had visited most frequently. It would have to do.

Clarisse had taken charge of getting the memorial erected, working with Nadya’s daughter to build a small park where her family could have a little privacy if they wanted, but the public could still see and interact with the memorial the rest of the time. That way, Nadya would never be forgotten.

That, and the fact that Clarisse was going to be personally writing Nadya into the history books.

It was local winter, which meant that the local fungi had mostly retreated underground, leaving blackened husks aboveground. It was certainly not the planet at its prettiest, and it was almost intolerably cold even for an augmented human.

“Never thought I’d see you in a heavy outfit,” Clarisse said, as Kyouko got close. “Have to say, you don’t look half‐bad.”

Kyouko snorted.

“I’m not crazy, and like you said, I look fine in a fur coat. Nice change of pace. Hot chocolate?”

“If you’re offering.”

Kyouko pulled out a small sheet of those ubiquitous origami cups and tore off two pieces, which politely unfolded into two wafer‐thin cups, safe for even the hottest liquids. That was future‐tech, of the kind the younger generations would never really appreciate, and quite ironically paired with the thermos Kyouko pulled out seconds later, a design which hadn’t changed in centuries, even if the materials had changed.

They murmured appreciation as Kyouko poured out the delicious‐smelling liquid.

I’m surprised you’re not more unhappy about having to be here, Clarisse thought, sipping carefully.

No you’re not, Kyouko thought snappily. You know I’ve been waiting for the chance to talk to Homura for decades. Even if I don’t think this is a good idea.

You were pretty vocal in council about this being a mistake, Clarisse commented.

Council was the place to argue, Kyouko thought. The decision has been made. There are times and places to go rogue, and this isn’t one of them. What’s the point in being petty about it?

Clarisse suppressed a smile. She was one of the few who remembered a time when Kyouko absolutely would have been very vocal, making sure everyone heard about it, whether they were involved or not.

But indeed, they both knew that.

I thought the salamander made it pretty obvious Homura wasn’t going to be here, Clarisse thought.

Well, this is as close as I’m going to get, isn’t it? It’s a part of the process.

I suppose. Speaking of the process, find anything unusual in your perimeter scans?

If I had I would have told you, dummy, Kyouko thought. And nothing from you either?

Same logic.

The three of them may have had the appearance of casual magical girls out for a visit, but they were leaving nothing to chance when it came to surveillance. Besides the multiple satellites pointed at the site and various circling drones, Clarisse had been constantly on alert for any sign of magic, Gracia was listening for anything unusual in the telepathic background, and Kyouko had several clones surreptitiously lurking the area, each one with a fur coat stuffed to the gills with military‐grade scanners.

Clarisse sipped at her cup of chocolate, savoring the complex flavorants. Kyouko sure knew her synthesizer settings.

“Work not keeping you away from Kishida too much, is it?” she asked, persisting in the probably pointless exercise of pretending everything was normal. “You’ve been off‐world quite often lately.”

“She’s got her own life. We don’t have to be glued to each other—I think it’s better this way.”

Clarisse nodded. She didn’t really expect Kyouko to be looking for relationship advice right now.

Gracia perked up slightly, even as both Ancients managed to suppress any hint of reaction. Someone was walking directly towards them.

It wasn’t Misa strolling right up to them, of course. Instead, it appeared to be a visiting civilian, Paul David, a botanist on sabbatical from a university on Nova Terra to conduct some private field studies on local fungal species. According to local records, he traveled alone into the wilderness for months at a time gathering samples.

And he just got back and decided to head straight here, huh, Gracia said, with a trace of sourness in her voice.

Doesn’t mean it’s not her, Clarisse rebuked. A story like that would be the perfect cover for a deep cover agent, and there’s all kinds of hologram tricks you can do. For example, it’d explain how Misa turned up on this planet before.

Cover that can pass all the scanners like that? You know Kyouko is scanning him up and down, right?

If they didn’t have some sort of trick, they wouldn’t be able to hide among us so effectively, Clarisse thought.

Not that she had any real ideas herself—except for one.

She pinged Kyouko to look over their newcomer for soul gems. Really closely.

She got a negative a bit later.

Ain’t really my specialty, Kyouko thought. I’d have to get a lot closer. Maybe if I jump over them, they won’t see me. Well, if they don’t see me, they’re not going to be a magical girl. You really think she’d be in a mundane guy’s body?

It’s just a thought, Clarisse replied.

By now the man in question had reached the edge of the monument site, looking up at the twice‐life‐size statue. Then he turned his head and looked directly at them. Not with curiosity or surprise, but clear meaning.

“Maybe more than just a thought,” Clarisse mumbled at the Kyouko standing with the thermos, as she moved to stand.

“Are you who I think you are?” she asked, directing the question at the apparent mundane in front of her.

“I am,” the man said. “Misa Virani, at your service. Though I won’t have an easy time proving that.”

“I will,” Clarisse said, whipping a leather‐bound book out of her coat with a flourish of purple magic, “if you’ll hold still for me. Misa registered the narrative of her life with me, just before the mission at Orpheus. That should suffice.”

She opened the book, strode over to the man claiming he was Misa, and put her hand to his chest. A glow of purple shined from the man’s eyes.

Then Clarisse nodded, snapping the book shut.

“Alright, fine,” the man said, sounding almost disappointed. “I can’t believe I let Juliet convince me to do that.”

Before anyone else could react, Gracia lunged forward, grabbing the man by the shoulders.

“You’ve been here the whole time? Pretending to be this biologist?” she demanded. “This was why you’ve been gone this whole time, hiding in the wilderness? Do you know how much we worried?”

She stepped back, perhaps shocked by her own reaction.

“She’s been in plenty of places other than this planet,” Clarisse commented, watching Gracia out of the corner of her eye. “She can’t have only been here.”

“Mr. David is still out there collecting samples,” the man said, closing his eyes. “And he has no idea we’ve been doing this, so don’t give him a hard time.”

“Well that’s nice to know,” Clarisse said, just a touch sardonic. “Whether you’ve been here the whole time or not, I share much of Gracia’s sentiment. Your reasons better be good.”

He put a hand to his head.

“I’m sorry about Nadya. I didn’t know she would die out there, none of us did, or I would have at least let her know something. And no, I haven’t only been here.”

“That doesn’t—” Gracia began, before apparently thinking better of it, shaking her head.

Misa squeezed her eyes shut, unhappy about something, then continued in a different channel:

“If I’m saying this, it’s going on the record with the MSY, but I’ll let you decide how much Governance needs to know any of this. It’s useful for Kyouko to be here. You know how you have those clones?”

Now the voice even sounded like Misa, despite it coming from this man’s head. It was rather disorienting.

But it wasn’t telepathy, which was the obvious choice for secure communication. Instead, it was a standard person‐to‐person military transmission, the kind of thing Mr. David shouldn’t have even had access to. Was this version of Misa incapable of telepathy?

As magical girls, they could scrub the records from Governance records. Was Misa also relying on that?

Kyouko gave Misa a strange look.

“Sure, I’ve got a couple of clones around the perimeter right now; I bet you already know that.”

“It’d be strange if you didn’t. Do they all have their own soul gem?”

“Kind of? But my real soul is only ever in one of them at a time, controlling the rest. It switches.”

“Right, and that’s why you have a limited range, though it’s still a lot longer than the default one hundred meters or so. It turns out, that’s a hint.”

“I wasn’t going to go into that kind of detail, and it’s kind of automatic anyway. Where are you going with this? I thought you were going to explain what you’ve been up to?”

“Yeah, so, that’s the thing. According to Homura and her special friend in the Ribbon, souls don’t really have a place or a time, except when they’re in a body or, especially, a gem. The MSY even has some old research that suggests as much, someone named Akiyama? Anyway.”

She—and Clarisse supposed it really was she—paused, checking if the rest of them were going to respond. They didn’t, although Clarisse was left to wonder which Akiyama, if it was the one she was thinking of, or if Misa even knew the potential significance.

“I’ve understood as much too,” Kyouko thought, and Clarisse nodded along. “But we’re stuck in our gems nonetheless, at least until the Goddess saves us.”

Misa tilted her head, a strange‐looking gesture on Paul David, and continued:

“Well, someone very clever realized that, if the soul is outside space‐time, then it can be both stuck and not‐stuck. At the same time. In different places. It’s quite a feat to perform, though unfortunately we didn’t come up with the method. Homura stole it from our mutual enemies, and figured out how to swap out the evil parts.”

She stopped, letting them stand there blinking at “Paul David”, who by all outward appearances was now carefully inspecting Nadya’s statue. Clarisse found herself struggling to take it in, an experience she hadn’t had in a long, long time.

“Using someone else’s body I’ve seen, though it’s not something anyone has done successfully long‐term, but this…”

She let her thought trail off, averse to saying the rest. The truth was, the MSY, with her consent, had allowed exploration of this kind of topic to stay safely untouched, because the likelihood of “evil ideas” arising was far too high. That was reasoning Homura had agreed with, once.

“So how exactly do you get your soul in multiple places?” she asked. “Without that detail, this is like describing the physics of a nuclear weapon without building it.”

“That might be better as a show rather than a tell. Actually, most of this is gonna be better that way. One sec.”

Misa reached into the front of her jacket, withdrawing a palm‐shaped slab of metal that it took them a moment to recognize as a hand‐held data crystal reader, the kind which came with a data cable you could plug into your wrist for better, more secure throughput. The kind of thing you would only encounter if you wandered far off high‐quality Governance networks—and even then, only if you needed to store something that didn’t fit on your internal storage, or needed to pass files around faster than wireless could handle.

“You’ll forgive me if I don’t want to beam my memories wirelessly, and I’m not a telepath or want Gracia poking in my head, no offense. I can’t stop you from sharing it with whoever you want, but I’d ask that you try to keep it away from Governance for now.”

That depends on what’s in it, Clarisse thought but did not say. She wanted to, was even prepared to trust Misa, but in a situation like this, you had to keep your options open. These weren’t ordinary circumstances, where keeping your word and maintaining bonds of friendship could be sacrosanct.

Kyouko accepted the reader, staring at it, and at the data crystal already inserted.

“Well, you’re the magic‐detection expert,” Kyouko thought to Clarisse.

She wasn’t, but she could pass as one. She made no bones about taking it and holding it up to her eye, fuzzing it with a bit of her own magic. Misa would know better than to be offended. After all, they couldn’t know for sure if she could still use magic, and she could certainly still carry magic objects.

“Nothing I can find,” Clarisse thought, handing it back. They had agreed Kyouko could take the lead.

She watched as Kyouko touched the cable to her wrist.

Chapter 74: Hunting Leviathan

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:44:19 +0200

The schism the MSY suffered at the beginning of the Unification Wars spelled disaster, and chaos, for magical girls wherever and whenever the MSY lost authority—which until the very end of the wars meant the substantial majority of lands ruled by the Freedom Alliance. While the radical branches of the Mages First movement proved capable of snapping the strained political sinews holding the MSY together, they also proved incapable of consolidating into a large rival bloc, despite their original intentions. They were fractious, ambitious beyond their means, and lacked legitimacy amongst their constituent populations, eventually ruling by force and extracting high grief cube taxes. Had each regional faction only wished to escape the MSY, an effective federation built upon increased local autonomy might have been possible, but in truth most separatists wished to impose their own power and ideology upon as much of the world as possible, including their erstwhile allies.¹

Like with the Freedom Alliance as a whole, conflicting goals and arrogant, detached leadership would come to fatally sabotage their ability to wage ideological war on a global scale. In the early years, however, this end was far from apparent, as the MSY withdrew into its core regions and proved unable to exert the hard power necessary to reassert control, or even to maintain order, in many regions that the Mages First factions had failed to claim. Into this power vacuum stepped a veritable zoo of small‐time power brokers, warlords, and governing councils, even as refugee populations began to move for more stable areas.

And while the MSY and unaligned world sorted themselves out, the Mages First power blocs were able to plan and build in relative isolation, burrowing at times into Freedom Alliance power structures. They had not achieved a unified anti‐MSY front, but many had local authority and resources, as well as their own agendas.

[…]

Perhaps the second most well‐known faction—at least, within those segments of the MSY dedicated to conducting the war—was Free World. Or, as they were more commonly known to their enemies, the South Asian remnant.

This fragment of the prewar‐Mages First alliance 〈had coalesced behind a certain Zhou Zhi Yi, an ideologue whose ideas had made her an influential power broker within the MSY for a time.² At the start of the schism, they〉① attempted to seize control of MSY operations in Southern China, Southeast Asia, and Pakistan, but their attempts outside Pakistan descended into a violent flurry of coups, counter‐coups, and assassinations. Under MSY counterpressure the group eventually withdrew into Pakistan and the mountainous Chinese border regions, consolidating their control there, and adopted their new name, typically blunt 〈in the style of their leader〉①.

This splinter group was notable for being one of the best organized of the MSY rivals, and though they seemed well‐contained geographically, canny resource management and technological sophistication ensured they would be a potent threat on the new MSY frontier. An extensive and exhausting cold and hot war followed in the region, in which 〈as typically described〉② Free World had the initial upper hand, unofficial truces prevailed for a time, and then the MSY’s greater resources, warmaking experience, and appeal to the average magical girl began to tell.

〈Of course, this customary description, while technically correct, is a gross oversimplification. Free World’s ability to resist direct MSY hard power stands out among the other factions—while most other rival magical girl organizations collapsed well before the Freedom Alliance states that hosted them, either under the Black Heart’s knife or through the cruelty and incompetence of their own leadership, Free World only grew in strength as the wars churned on. The years of off‐and‐on truces they bought through savvy geopolitical maneuvering gave them time and space to recruit who they liked out of their flailing rivals, to take advantage of capable organizations like Desert Rose and Columbia that were under more military pressure, and to plot out plausible paths to global victory.〉②

〈Free World is mostly remembered today not for its own strength, but for two key contributions it made to the cause of the mundane Freedom Alliance. The first was with the outbreak of the Thousand Flowers Movement in China, as it has come to be known, during the Fourth World War. The ur‐example of wartime instability in a United Front country, a massive outbreak of revolt and unrest caught an overstretched government by surprise, leading to extended loss of control of large sectors of the country and requiring the recall of much of China’s Expeditionary Force, disrupting the entire United Front war effort.〉②

〈In its growth, spread, and initial success, Free World’s fingerprints were everywhere—not, as might be supposed, as the driving force, but as a supporting influence, amplifying messages, isolating government officials, and suppressing official responses. Free World had been quiet for a decade, lulling the MSY into complacency, and their penetration of China was far greater than MSY intelligence supposed, making good use of innovations in illegal non‐Volokhov‐friendly AI design.〉②

〈Yet in the end this opportunistic exercise of power did not yield the results that might have been desired. The Thousand Flowers Movement as a whole was at best a mixed outcome for the Freedom Alliance. It contributed to the United Front’s defeat in the Fourth World War, but of course the Freedom Alliance barely survived that war itself and gained little from the temporary victory. Rather than turning China to their side and shattering the United Front’s center as they had hoped, the returned Expeditionary Force completely reorganized the Chinese government and rebuilt its popular support, expunging all Freedom Alliance elements—for their part, Free World lost their foothold in the Yunnan mountains, withdrawing completely into Pakistan. When the next war inevitably came, China was once again the backbone of the United Front. It would never again lose that honor.〉②

[…]

〈It was only then, during the Kiyomemasu, that Zhou Zhi Yi and her ruling cabal were finally dethroned in Pakistan, retreating to their mountain strongholds in the Karakoram. As the Indus River Valley was liberated, the MSY and its United Front collaborators finally began to understand the magnitude of Free World’s second great contribution to the Freedom Alliance: the FA Elites. Prodigious resources and personal attention had been paid into the design and development of the Elites, to general biotechnical experimentation on sentients, and in particular to many of the FA’s studies of biological command systems—all laundered through other governments and organizations.〉② 〈And only after the fall of the mountain strongholds was it realized just how much of this investment had been driven by the stranger aspects of Zhou’s personal ideology, which had only gotten more deranged and radical over the decades, reinforced by her more sycophantic followers.〉④

[…]

〈In the end, Free World was unusual in one last regard: very few of its magical girls were saved via befriending or Reformatting. Most fought to the death, with the notable exception of Zhou Zhi Yi herself, who eventually surrendered alone—only to be summarily executed by Chitose Yuma just months later, under the authority of EDC Decree 573, which she had herself proposed under the guise of EDC.Vigilance.Controller.〉③

¹ Of course, a radical new ruling power and ideology did establish control over Humanity at the end of the wars. Mages First, and the Freedom Alliance more generally, had been correct to conclude that the window for such ambitions was open. They were merely wrong about who, exactly, would seize the opportunity they had created.

〈² In fact, up until the very late date of 2159, Zhou Zhi Yi had largely aligned herself with Akemi Homura’s coalition in the Rules Committee.〉①

— Julian Bradshaw, “The Dark Matter of History”, internal MSY publication.

“Man, bird, beast, all a difference of degree, each chained to their respective individual conditions! What a cruel fate for unbound perspective to be bound in such a way! But remember how much these chains give meaning to perspective, how they give the mind a grindstone to work on. This is one of life’s many dualities.”

— Vladimir Volokhov, quoted in Collected Lectures on the Mind, original transcript lost.

According to Simona, one of the tells that Ancients had was their preference for conference rooms when discussing serious matters, at least in VR. Those younger might elect to choose somewhere relaxing, or outdoors under an exotic sun, or within an electronic abstraction. But Ancients—they seemed to think a conference table in a corporate meeting room was exactly what a tense situation called for.

It was a sort of cultural memory. Simona had claimed that she had learned all this from Valentin, and now suspected that Homura had been relating her own tactics for evading detection.

So, naturally, when Yuma called a meeting to discuss events on Persepolis, they ended up nowhere of the sort, with Asami finding herself materializing under the evening sun amidst a landscape of rolling hills. It was chilly, cooler than Governance calibrated its humans to prefer, and she found herself quickly drawn to a faint warmth to her right, which proved to be a firepit just around the bend, nestled in a small grove of trees, surrounded by some logs for seating.

She found Simona already there, next to Patricia and Sakura Kyouko. A bit further from the fire, Azrael sat on the ground, using a pair of yellowish wings to brace herself on the dirt.

Seated on the ground in Kyouko’s lap, confusingly, was Machina, absent‐mindedly chewing on sticks of virtual licorice and other candy that Kyouko kept handing her.

The atmosphere in the VR sim was serene, belying the weight of the matter at hand. That, after all, had forced the attendance of not just Kyouko and Machina, but also Mami and Yuma, even if they hadn’t arrived yet.

It had also forced the absence of Kuroi Nana and Meiqing, who were still busy cleaning up on Persepolis.

It seemed melodramatic to put it in plain terms: an MSY task force, a Governance‐sponsored task force, had been attacked by an enemy group of magical girls, embedded into drones no less. There was magic here the MSY didn’t think was possible—or perhaps more accurately, had chosen not to treat as possible.

How far did this conspiracy extend exactly? What had they overlooked? Were there other attacks in the offing?

Asami sat down by the fire, rubbing her hands as she greeted the others and checked the parameters of the simulation. It was apparently a remote part of Hokkaido, never well populated, now nearly empty, and Yuma had chosen it. Was it supposed to make them all feel better?

At least she wasn’t left waiting long. Right on the promised dot, they spotted the familiar forms of the Chair of the General Staff and Governance: Magical Girls making their way toward the fire. Though, she was surprised to realize she had gotten used to Yuma’s young adult form so quickly.

Mami took a seat on a log but Yuma stayed upright, making a gesture with one arm.

“Alright, let’s get this underway,” Yuma said, without any additional preamble. “Before we get into the juicy topic of these drone‐based mages, which will undoubtedly absorb all discussion, let’s take a moment to talk about the recent attack itself: What do you think were its real goals, how was it achieved, and do you think they were successful? And if so, how much does it matter?”

They were familiar with Yuma’s approach by now. At this stage, the topic had been dissected by multiple working groups, AIs included, but Yuma still liked to ask. Nor would she prejudice discussion by giving her own opinion, not initially.

The answers that came up were not really novel. Everyone agreed that, this time, the main goals closely reflected what the telepaths reported had been extracted during the attack: details of Task Force Monteagle’s operations and intel, both regarding the TCF conspiracy and Homura’s operation, as well as the data retrieved from the alien command node on Persepolis.

It was hard to deny that purely in terms of data gathering, the enemy had been successful—the repository of intel stolen from Arya’s memory was extensive. Basic compartmentalization had protected some of their secrets, particularly around who exactly was part of the Task Force, but much of the organization’s knowledge and plans were now compromised—even if the information lost only tangentially touched a particular subject, they had to presume Laplace’s Demon could make full use of it.

Simona managed to look stoic through it all, at least whenever Asami looked, but she knew the girl hated this. Yes, her heroics had helped save the day, but there had still been a breach. As one of Valentin’s trained operatives, that ate at her. It was a dose of perfectionism that Asami found both annoying and oddly admirable.

But it was here that they reached more interesting topics. Certainly, it had to be assumed that a subgoal of the TCF conspiracy was not to have their methods revealed, by killing the witnesses if necessary. Leaving aside the unlikely possibility that it was all a red herring, it seemed they had put their necks on the line to attack Simona’s team.

Quite literally, it seemed, given that at least some of the drones had soul gems on board—though they hadn’t been able to determine if it was all of them. Moreover, post‐combat analysis suggested the strong possibility that the drones were significantly weaker magically than the average magical girl, which perhaps explained why they had attacked in such numbers.

It was also possible that they were not even capable of telepathy: Patricia’s ability to block electronic communication seemed to have seriously damaged their ability to coordinate, a weakness that could be exploited in the future.

They couldn’t even rule out the possibility of contracted AIs, though it seemed unlikely. The Incubators had claimed before that the TCF made Human AIs too sane to be worth contracting, a statement that no one really understood—were adolescent girls the most insane, then? That didn’t seem right, but the Incubators now responded to all questions on the topic with a general policy of no comment, to avoid leaking anything by what they chose to omit.

The most popular theory was that Incubator recruitment practices were actually constrained by some ancient wish, and they just didn’t want to admit it.

“Of course, a lot depends on how much this drone mage thing really explains, and how central it is to their operations,” Mami said, inserting her first comment into the discussion. “Is it an occasional trick, or do they do it all the time? With the benefit of hindsight, it is quite easy to see how it might have factored into past incidents.”

“The first thing that came to my mind was the drone attack on Sakura Kyouko on X‐25,” Asami said. “The one with the laser that gave Ryouko a new body.”

Perhaps that had been a bit brusque of her, but Asami wanted to make sure everyone remembered.

“Perhaps,” Mami acknowledged, looking meaningfully at Kyouko. “Though I don’t think Kyouko would have missed it if that drone were magic. A mundane drone suborned by the TCF breach would be more practical—less likely to be detected by an Ancient. Rather, we think the use case for magic drones may have been breaching the TCF across various mundane drones and AIs in the first place. It would explain how magical girls had infiltrated so many critical systems without being detected, especially the ones lacking human access points.”

“With the ability to blend in with the robotic crowd, so to speak, the potential for magic mischief is almost unlimited,” Yuma commented. “Speaking as someone who helped hide magical girls from Governance for two centuries.”

Mami let out a sigh, leaning onto one arm.

In her place, Machina’s head popped up, and she spoke, in an eerily similar voice that clearly startled several of those present.

“There are a number of past mysteries we’re considering now in a new light, particularly suspicious incidents we never fully understood. Such as the detection and pursuit of Rommel’s, er, Field Marshal Erwynmark’s escape pod during the Battle of Orpheus. The pod’s stealth capabilities were perhaps sabotaged via TCF breach, and Arminius’s role as Erwynmark’s flagship given away similarly, but how had the TCF conspiracy prowled undetected through a capital ship with plenty of magical girls? Perhaps they used its own drone arterials against it.”

“Do you think this has anything to do with why Homura chose to go off‐grid?” Azrael asked, glancing among Machina, Yuma, and Mami. “If she was worried about these drones, it might be safer to work alone.”

Yuma started to walk in a circle around the fire, turning her head from side to side, as if she was reciting something quite familiar.

“I imagine that was part of it, but it can’t be so simple,” Yuma said. “If Homura knew twenty years ago everything we know now, she could have nipped so much in the bud by just telling us to act. She either didn’t know very much and was forced to spend all that time investigating, or she has her own, separate agenda.”

The point was clearly said, and there was another question looming that Yuma hadn’t brought up—even if Homura hadn’t known enough to act against the TCF conspiracy twenty years ago, there was certainly someone who had, someone more incorporeal.

But that question veered on theology, and before Asami could decide whether she should ask anyway—everyone here knew the Goddess was real—Azrael chimed in again.

“We’ve already decided to treat Homura as a friendly agent. We know her people were on Persepolis too, but we weren’t able to work together with them to confront these magical drones. Frankly, now that we know the TCF conspiracy has a real ability to project force, we ought to try to establish contact. I know some attempts have already been made, but perhaps something more serious is in order.”

Yuma paused in her steps, then cast her gaze meaningfully at Mami, who looked in turn at Kyouko, perhaps exchanging an unseen chain of messages.

Yuma looked at Azrael, staying in place. Their relative heights meant she had to look down.

“The truth is, we’ve already discussed as much, and it would be easy for one of us to show up on a planet where we suspect her agents’ presence and make a scene. But, on the one hand, that would make us an obvious target for our enemies, and on the other, if you were Homura, would you trust us with anything after we just lost a ton of confidential information? That risk was the price we paid when we decided to be a collaborative task force rather than a small group. Governance, the MSY, and now the Task Force—all compromised, all cut off from Homura’s operations.”

Asami cast the briefest of glances at Simona, whose eyes twitched with anger.

Azrael was unfazed.

“But consider, after the recent breach, the TCF conspiracy now knows that we’re not coordinating with Homura, something they may have been unsure about. That makes this the perfect time to try; if we make contact without being caught we’ll be at a double advantage. And the more we act and change the situation, the more decisions we force them to make on outdated knowledge. Since they seem to have been reliant on this Laplace’s Demon before, they may be prone to mistakes, especially if we get inside their decision loop.”

“If Homura wanted to talk to us, she’d talk to us,” Kyouko said, sounding unconvinced. “Is it really a good idea to force her to talk to us?”

“It might be,” Mami said. “You remember what I told you about my second vision? The Goddess told me: ‘She will need your support, and when she does, you will find her.’”

“I’m pretty sure She meant that Homura would let you find her,” Kyouko said. “And I’m kind of the expert on this.”

“It was my vision, Kyouko‐chan.”

“I think it was deliberately ambiguous,” Machina commented, looking up at Kyouko.

“Hmm,” Yuma said.

She had started pacing around the fire again, but stopped here, making a strange face. Asami got the impression that for once in their conversations, her opinion had been shifted slightly. Perhaps this meeting wasn’t as pro forma as she had thought. In retrospect, it was meaningful that everyone present believed the Goddess was real.

“I’d like to change the topic to something else,” Kyouko said, handing Machina another bar of chocolate. “Namely, have we ever encountered a magical girl who could let multiple other magical girls use their magic from a drone? That seems like the kind of thing that’s up your alley, Patricia.”

Patricia answered immediately.

“I’ve been looking into drone magic since we received the security footage left by Akemi‐san in Argentina. There are a few living girls who might be able to do something like this with effort, or if they’ve done undocumented power training. Inhabiting a drone is normally a bad idea, frankly—a drone is much more vulnerable than a magical girl. I wouldn’t want to inhabit my drones. Anyway, as you’d expect, girls with powers like mine are being carefully tracked right now. Everyone’s activity during the attack on Persepolis is accounted for, and although there are limits to how far that can go, I know most of them and I can’t imagine they’re responsible. I didn’t recognize the magic, either.”

Yuma paused for a moment to let Patricia’s words sink in, then interjected:

“Of course, that’s everyone living and accounted for. The list gets longer if you include those only presumed dead. Even from before the Task Force’s formation, we’ve been reexamining every historical case we can, going all the way back to the founding of the MSY—everyone who might still be alive and be involved in the TCF conspiracy. With the Task Force’s AI resources we’ve actually managed to verify a few long‐suspected deaths, but unfortunately, not much else.”

“Of the remaining presumed dead, there are three who have the necessary drone powers as a primary powerset. But, in none of their cases is the lack of a confirmed death particularly suspicious. In one case, we simply didn’t have jurisdiction at the time, and the other two are unresolvable due to Unification Wars chaos. It’s much more likely our culprit is someone unknown to the MSY, from a rogue colony, now that the recent attack ruled out active MSY members.”

“But it is possible then?” Kyouko asked, sitting up straight. “That maybe it’s someone from the past?”

Yuma didn’t answer right away, shaking her head slowly.

“Maybe,” Yuma said. “It’s a possibility we’ve taken seriously, and I’m still thinking through it. But frankly, we did a good job cleaning up after wars’ end. Not easy to hide from me, Homura, and all the MSY’s clairvoyants, especially when you eventually have to go demon hunting. We never found anyone after 2252.”

It was obvious there was much she couldn’t say, and not much more to be said here, at least not yet.

Mami cleared her throat and turned her head, looking Yuma in the eye, though she had to lean upward to do it—Yuma was a tall teenager.

“Yuma,” Mami began. “I know your natural inclination is towards secrecy and caution, but you’re not really trusting your personnel here. There’s someone specific we’re thinking about. I think we can let go of some ancient secrets to discuss things in a bit more detail?”

Asami was surprised when Yuma reacted only mildly, making a face as if she had bit something sour. Perhaps the Task Force wouldn’t reflexively retreat into secrecy after all.

“I suppose you have a point. Maybe someone will see something here that I don’t, and most of these details aren’t really worth keeping secret anymore, at least not within this group.”

“You know as well as I who I’m thinking about, Patricia,” Yuma said, before turning towards the rest of the group. “Martha Augustina, Freedom Alliance magical girl of unknown origin, and we’re not even sure if the name is only an alias. First encountered as part of Zhou Zhi Yi’s entourage as part of a Project Leviathan intelligence sweep in 2172, though further details were very, very scarce. Deep penetration missions in the 2190s were able to determine that Martha had a strong ability to manipulate drones and electronics—including, according to several reports, the ability to become one or more drones herself. Reports, I would add, that usually came from postmortems of failed operations. After 2205, the trail goes completely cold—she was never encountered again, and what records we were able to extract from Zhou Zhi Yi’s organization suggest even they lost track of her that year—Zhou herself believed she had died supervising FA Elite deployments on the front lines of South America. We never found any reason to think she was mistaken.”

It was an impressive and somewhat mechanical exposition of deeply classified material, accompanied by a series of declassification notifications sent to their implants, including the quite exotic MSY‐only—not duplicated in Governance. Asami hadn’t even heard of Zhou Zhi Yi before; she remembered Zhou Meiqing had mentioned that part of her matriarchy had helped engineer the FA Elites, but she hadn’t known that her family’s former Matriarch had been one of them, and had later been executed by Yuma herself for her crimes.

A moment later, Yuma sighed, looking like she wanted to sit.

“Of course, we spent quite a lot of time trying to clean this one up. We looked everywhere, and the best we ever got was two former FA soldiers willing to testify that they had seen someone matching her description enter a bunker that was destroyed not long after. I’ve never been fully satisfied.”

She looked over the group.

“I understand that this all sounds very dramatic and a part of you wants to think this must be the answer,” Yuma said. “The extraordinary, mysterious answer is often alluring, but you have to remember all the improbabilities stacked against the theory implied here. Augustina would have had to evade death, evade us, long enough to set up a deep‐rooted conspiracy. What was she doing for two and a half centuries? Spend too long staring at an improbability, and you might just leave yourself open to being killed by Not‐Augustina.”

She paused for a moment.

“But I guess there really was no reason to keep it secret,” she said, smiling faintly. “It’s all old stuff. But I guess I’m just used to holding onto knowledge.”

It didn’t seem anyone had much else to say to that, and after a moment Kyouko commented.

“I remember that bitch. Ambushed Lumera Team and got three of them, though not without payback. Always a shame we never saw a body.”

With that surprisingly violent comment, she found another piece of food to give Machina.

“Well, if you’re interested, I was seriously reconsidering the proposal that we attempt to contact Homura,” Yuma said, putting her hands behind her head and starting to pace the circle again. “I know you think we should let Homura act, Kyouko‐nee‐chan, but I think this is reasonable. The team here was organized for the purpose of finding her, after all.”

“I still think that,” Kyouko said. “I’m not sure we should do something just for the sake of doing something. If she wanted to reach out to us, I’m sure she could. We have to believe she’s doing the right thing.”

She left the key argument out, that Homura was probably acting on divine instruction, but they all knew what she was getting at.

“I’m not so sure anymore,” Yuma said. “We can’t just bank on supposed divine guidance, nee‐chan; our own judgment can be part of the plan. Just because Homura hears a voice from her Ribbon doesn’t mean we’re not supposed to do anything, and my understanding is that your Goddess expects us to use our own will and judgment. We do still need concrete reasons to act, yes, but I believe we have them. Before we restored the TCF, and before Persepolis, there was a reason for Homura and us not to connect. I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

Asami was surprised to hear Yuma of all people making a quasi‐religious argument, and from the looks of the others’ faces she wasn’t alone.

“I think she has a point, Kyouko,” Mami said.

“Then why hasn’t Homura reached out already?” Kyouko asked. “If now is the time, surely she can just contact us?”

“I don’t know,” Mami admitted. “But I know what I was told, and I think it’s surprising for you to put so much faith in Homura’s judgment. Weren’t you the one whose church wanted to find her again? Because she might be lost?”

“That was before I learned about the TCF breach, and what Homura had been doing to try to keep it all contained. She clearly had some reasons, so she clearly isn’t that far gone. I don’t just make up things to believe in.”

She crossed her arms, and for a moment Asami thought things were at an impasse.

“Look, it’s not that I think Homura hears the Goddess and so we can just let her do everything,” Kyouko said, dropping her arms. “Nothing like that. It’s standard theology and good practice to live your own life and use your best judgment regardless of anything. I’ve said as much. Whatever future we get is still going to be based on what we choose to do. And I think, in this context, the question is whether or not we trust Homura to know what she’s doing.”

She put one hand to her head.

“I have my own opinion on this, obviously, but at the end of the day the Theological Council agrees with you. They’ve been pushing for some kind of action, too. I’m going to get solidly outvoted there, as well as here. So… I’ve lived long enough to learn that maybe I should trust your judgment. But that does mean I have one request.”

Asami couldn’t tell how bothered Kyouko really was. It had been an astonishingly fast back down, but if her own cult didn’t agree with her…

Kyouko waited until she was sure they had understood, then continued:

“Let me and the Church handle the contact and making her talk to us. This is a big deal to us, and if she does come out, I want to be the one to talk to her. We can take care of it, I promise.”

Mami and Yuma looked at each other.

“As long as I approve the plan,” Yuma said.

“Sure,” Kyouko said, with just a hint of sourness. “Not like I’m going to send her choir girls or anything. The truth is, we’ve thought for some time about how to smoke her out, and the answer is: we do something big and disruptive that she has to see coming from her Ribbon. Like, say, prepare a church announcement that she’s still alive, explaining what she’s been up to. Not because we’re actually going to do it, but to force her to stop us.”

“You want us to bank on her ability to see the future?” Yuma said, her tone of voice making Asami unclear on whether she was impressed or galled.

“Or, more practically, bank on her having a mole in the Church,” Kyouko said, spreading her hands out in a “what can you do?” kind of gesture. “We’re virtually certain she does, all things considered. Either way should work.”

“If you’re gonna bluff, you have to mean it,” Yuma said. “Otherwise her Ribbon might just tell her that you’re not really going to do it. You have to commit.”

“We’ve thought of that, Yuma‐chan. There are plenty within the Church who want to make an announcement even if Homura tells us not to. I had to talk them out of that. Trust me, we’ve thought about it. For too long. I’ll still send you the files, though.”

She sounded a bit exasperated.

After a few seconds, Mami and Yuma looked at each other, and then Yuma nodded.

“Alright, nee‐chan. We’ll take a look to be sure, but if it checks out… I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Even if she doesn’t, her instincts are still good,” Machina said, putting a finger to her chin. “I think it will work out.”

Kyouko snorted.

“Well, instincts or not, we’ve got to work on upgraded security measures,” Mami said. “We’ll almost certainly be attacked again. I’ve been looking it over…”

Ryouko heard the companion‐penguins before she saw them, both audibly, in the form of clamorous squawking, and telepathically, few of the birds seeming interested in staying off of telepathic broadband.

She sighed, picking at her alien‐provided wetsuit with one hand.

This was her own fault. She had casually promised Feathered‐Defender that she would go swimming and fishing with him, and the bird had gotten so excited she simply couldn’t take it back.

So here she was, standing on the dock next to Mountain‐wandering’s boat. At least it was a neat little slice of alien culture and technology, with small hints everywhere that she was with aliens, from the gray water‐repelling metamaterial dock to the strangely textured wetsuit to the bizarre variety of seating in the boat. On the other hand, boating, swimming, and fishing were all very human activities, so in some sense, it wasn’t that alien at all.

She almost tuned out what the birds were saying, but the content drew her attention—Feathered‐Defender was excitedly talking about the alien they were about to meet, the one who thought like them and was smart, and had another alien like that inside of her.

She had forgotten how unique that would make her.

Seconds later she was mobbed by ten excited birds, crowding around her to get a closer look. They were full of questions and, she was forced to admit, possessed of a distinct not‐entirely‐pleasant animal odor.

Mountain‐wandering addressed the congregation from the ship behind her, with a texture of thought Ryouko had come to think of as sonorous.

·Companions, it is not polite to bombard her with thoughts like this|∪+·She cannot process numerous thoughts as adeptly as a Thinker|∪+·It may cause physical discomfort

Well‐behaved, the penguins stepped back and quieted down, though still chattering softly among themselves, mostly in astonishment that it was all true. Ryouko, who hadn’t been that bothered, answered a few questions gamely, and Feathered‐Defender came over to nuzzle her sleeve. She had realized that penguins were nearly all convinced that Thinker conversational style and lack of emotional affect was the defining feature of high intelligence. Her very existence caused many of them to question their preconceptions, as much as they were able to.

Mountain‐wandering signaled that the boat was ready, triggering another wave of excitement as the birds hurried across the ramp, Ryouko trailing behind. Mountain‐wandering’s personal boat was a sleek white vessel, long and sharp and just wide enough to comfortably fit the Thinker and his equipment. Even at rest, the winds across the water made it seem like the boat was straining to escape out into the alpine lake. He had built it himself, apparently.

The Thinkers were very close to the oceans and seafood as a whole, despite the fact that their Baseline form was more land than ocean animal. While they could easily swim and harvest in shallow water or aquaculture farms, deep seas and lakes still eluded them—directly, at least. Here was where the companion‐penguins came in, working together with boats, nets, and the occasional underwater Thinker to scoop up great shoals of fish, necessary to feed burgeoning populations restricted to relatively small bits of land. Indeed, it was thought that this kind of cooperative hunting had touched off the domestication of companion‐penguins.

While net‐based fishing was the primary form of food collection, several other forms of recreational fishing had developed, though not all were common to every Tentacle. The most popular form, universal among all Tentacles still willing to hunt fish, was more for the Penguins than the Thinkers: one simply cast off in a boat with a large number of penguins, and at the designated time let them jump off the side and go about their business, bringing back whatever extra fish they didn’t eat. Herding the fish into a net was optional.

And that, unhappily, was what Ryouko had agreed to participate in. Like all magical girl soldiers, she had done her share of underwater training—not a lot, but enough to make her a very competent swimmer by human standards. Perhaps not by penguin standards.

The companion‐penguins hustled into their special berth on the bow of the ship, their telepathic buzz now a mix of penguin gossip and speculation about Ryouko and Clarisse. Feathered‐Defender, slightly agitated, was repeatedly explaining that Clarisse was not Ryouko’s mate, nor a parasite either.

Clarisse found that funnier than Ryouko did. Unfortunately the birds were not cognitively capable of empathize‐opening, so such misunderstandings could not be easily dispelled.

Ryouko stepped on board the boat, nodding a greeting at Survival‐Optimizer, who loomed impassively at its stern. He had taken it upon himself to act as a monitoring representative for /Ahimsa‐extending, here to ensure that fish kills were within agreed‐upon bounds and no excessively brutal practices were used. To him and /Ahimsa‐extending, this whole affair was distasteful, and worth paying to mitigate.

There was one last passenger they were waiting for, who might or might not show, and who Ryouko was particularly interested to see.

They would wait ten more minutes for the ice‐bear to show up, no more.

It seemed ridiculous to expect a nominally wild animal to be even as punctual as that, but two hundred seconds later, a low‐frequency rumble rattled the boat, quieting the companions into a poignant silence.

The animal indeed looked a lot like a bear, but more angular and sleek, and the way it walked reminded Ryouko more of a wolf, with a bit more spring in its legs and a long tail for balance. But between its hunched back, short ears and large paws, the bear resemblance predominated, particularly when it rose up on its hind legs, sniffing the air.

In that posture, it was clear that it was nearly as massive as Survival‐Optimizer. It stood there for a moment, then looked directly at Ryouko. They locked eyes, and Ryouko thought back to Mountain‐wandering’s promises that the ice‐bears were quite intelligent, and that they had an understanding with the ice‐bears, under which no one had been attacked in centuries. It did look intelligent, but it was also clearly wild, and was intimidating in a way the similarly‐sized Survival‐Optimizer simply wasn’t.

A moment later the creature moved forward, loping down the dock to the middle of the boat, where Mountain‐wandering was already waiting to welcome it.

The bear stood up again and growled in his face, and he imitated the noise. There was a moment of staring, then the bear grunted and returned to all fours, following the ramp on board. The penguins began to chatter again, nervously.

It was not unprecedented to manage cordial relations with nearly‐sapient wild animals—the giant eagles of Optatum came to mind, or even the Asiatic elephant—but this was on another level. As part of the deal with Mountain‐wandering, the ice‐bear would go fishing with them.

With a lurch, the boat was underway, the bear sniffing the air behind Ryouko, the penguins beginning to squawk again in front of her.

They pushed rapidly across the alpine lake with a muffled whir, the peaks they had left behind reaching up toward the sky, reflected on the smooth water in front of her. To Ryouko, whose memories of childhood visits to the Hida Mountains were quite faded, it was a grand sight.

She tilted her head back and forth, recording everything she could. Someday, she could show this to Asami, and to others. She had to believe that.

She was aroused from her reverie by a tap on her wrist, Feathered‐Defender grabbing her attention.

You really have never gone fishing before? Feathered‐Defender thought, stepping over to stand in front of her. The telepathic clamor thinned noticeably as the penguins waited for her reply, still curious.

Ryouko considered the question. What Feathered‐Defender meant by fishing was very different than the usual human definition, so the straightforward answer was no. But she had been hook‐and‐line fishing before, once, when she was seven. That had been with her paternal grandfather, Shizuki Koto.

She hadn’t been much for it, squirming incessantly during the long waits staring at the water, though the stockpile of sweet mochi at their side had certainly helped her patience. At least the actual event of successfully landing a fish was interesting in its own right, since she found herself looking into the eyes of a strange creature, wondering what it was like in its mind.

Not by swimming, she thought. We have a way of luring fish in with food as bait, getting them to bite on some kind of hook. Requires a lot of waiting around, on land or in a boat.

Is there something smart about that? Feathered‐Defender thought. Hard to imagine why you would not just go into the water and get the fish you want.

Well, we’re focused on land, Ryouko thought. Many of us go years without swimming at all. To be honest, I don’t particularly like swimming myself, even if I’m well capable of it.

The penguins discussed the matter amongst themselves for a full three minutes, flippers quivering. They were clearly a bit confounded—why would she don a body capable of swimming, and then not use it? The penguins had seemingly chosen Feathered‐Defender as their representative, but she fielded some side questions, including one where she was forced to admit she knew very little about fish behavior, and wouldn’t know a good spot to set bait.

You should get a different body, suited to your preferences, one of the penguins thought, finally. Mountain‐wandering told me that a mismatch between body and preferences drives Thinkers insane. Are you insane?

Don’t insult her! Feathered‐Defender thought, lunging at the offender with a squawk.

Ryouko watched the fight break out, bemused and wondering if she should intervene, but Mountain‐wandering spared her by triggering a horn above her head. It sounded like one of the extinct whales they showed in movies sometimes.

The birds stood immediately to attention, and when the boat pulled to a stall a few seconds later they began diving off the sides. Ryouko hesitated, however, and Feathered‐Defender stayed with her, until a few seconds later the ice‐bear moved over as well, pressing in to sniff at her shoulders. It took some presence of mind to remember that as a magical girl it was no threat to her.

Feathered‐Defender urged her onward, nudging her with a flipper, and she sighed, drawing herself up into a diving stance even as the bear watched her cautiously. She lowered her goggles.

The shock of the water hitting her emptied her mind of thoughts, and for a few fractions of a second it was just her, the icy chill of the lake, and the calls of the flock of penguins swirling in the distance, coordinating their assault. Through the soft light she could see them darting to and fro near what she abruptly realized was an alarmed school of fish, already congealing itself into a great ball.

The birds knew what they were doing, even if she didn’t, and they were now working on base instinct, with nary a telepathic call between them. Without the guidance of a tactical net or even some simple commentary, she was lost, and could only stare.

It’s okay, Feathered‐defender thought, appearing at her side. First time, like chick. You watch.

Then it zoomed off, and while she was still chewing over the unflattering comparison, she realized the ice‐bear had dived in next to her, and seemed to be doing the same thing: just watching.

She surfaced, taking a breath of air, glancing around her. Native waterfowl were starting to gather nearby, circling above with shrill calls and distinct, V‐shaped head markings.

She dived back down and saw that the swirls of fish had started to churn forward, fleeing the penguins, directly at her. Just as she began to flinch, moving to jet away on a burst of magic, a pair of penguins blasted past her, catching her in their wake and turning the fish toward the boat—and waiting net.

She watched as the whole school of fish trapped itself in the mesh, which sealed shut behind them right after they passed.

Ryouko surfaced again a moment later, watching as Mountain‐wandering began to raise the net out of the water, the many fish within writhing and jumping.

Feathered‐Defender pinged for her attention and she turned her head, watching him jump out of the water, crest feathers raised—

—that was how she came to be looking near the mountain when it happened.

It was a secondary subroutine that first registered the anomaly in her peripheral vision. Milliseconds later, it was flagged as significant, racing up the priority queue. A fraction of a second later, Clarisse’s attention was pulled over, and it was she who dragged Ryouko’s own focus over.

The snowy mountain—the peak she had climbed down, the one with the laboratory built into the summit—was moving?

It was an avalanche of monumental scale, pouring down the side of the mountain—no, not just an avalanche, there was too much rock and debris visible—

Then she heard the roar, a grumbling explosive noise like artillery in the distance, and just as terrifying. Then, even the most oblivious penguins stopped their frolicking to watch and stare, some of them surfacing to take in the disastrous sight. Mountain‐wandering, too, stared silently, arm tentacles frozen in the middle of gesturing at Survival‐Optimizer.

But unlike the others, Ryouko realized she didn’t have to just watch.

She sent a short message to Feathered‐Defender and the two Thinkers, closed her eyes to transform, and was away.

There would be time later to look for survivors in the snow, time to check what had happened to the mountaintop lab, but for now it was those at the foot of the mountain she concerned herself with. Her clairvoyance was limited, mostly providing a bare preview of her landing locations, but she had time to search: it would take a long time, dozens and dozens of seconds, for the snow and debris to travel so far, neglecting the large rocks that had been flung forward by the initial lurch.

The moments blew past in flashes, a glimpse of the corner of a building, the interior of someone’s room, an arm‐tentacle here, a wide eyeball there, huddling under a table. She grabbed all she could, depositing them far away as fast as she could, pushing the limits of her blink rate.

It seemed to her that she wasn’t moving fast enough, that she was having to wait too long between teleports. She felt weak, out of practice. She couldn’t save everyone.

Why couldn’t she? How had things turned out like this?

Then she found the blue child from earlier, peering up at the mountain, face glimmering. Nearby, the other child lay crushed in a pool of ichor, the victim of a falling rock which had hurtled ahead of the rest. Ryouko found herself swallowing in dismay even as she reached for the child. Why was she so slow?

The blue child thought:

∈!·I am performing an emergency upload, so I am—|∈!·You are not—

Then Ryouko was, again, kilometers away, near where she had deposited some of the others, who were still gathered around her in various surprised poses. She stopped, leaning on a tree. She needed to rest, and tried not to think about the ichor on her hands, since she had elected to bring the dead child too.

Why can’t I do this?

The message burned itself into her mind from a dozen Thinkers at once, and several machines too, at a commanding volume she didn’t know they could achieve.

It was Survival‐Optimizer—still back at the lake—who elaborated:

μ∀·We understand your desire to help, but we have off‐site backups, and you do not|ν∀·You need the reality‐distortion foci provided by Divine‐Seeking to survive, and are using up your limited supply

The thoughts came far faster than she was used to but she found that she could still understand.

μ?·Surely the experience of death is to be avoided| she thought, clenching and unclenching one hand. She was all too aware of the clock still ticking, now almost running out, and she was thinking of the others, the children she hadn’t saved. It had never quite been possible, and yet—

μ·It is, but the risk you are taking is too high|ν·Do not forget our own preferences—if you consider them, you will understand

Ryouko’s empathy‐organ returned the calculations: yes, body‐death was a painful, unpleasant experience to be avoided, but nothing compared to the risk of real death for her, even if she felt it was minute. And then there was the supply of grief cubes…

She looked again at the corpse she had brought back with her, and the other child, staring at her with enormous eyes. She had time now to take it in, the ichor, the glassy eyes, the viridescent bulb of a head. It was jarring to reflect on how she had once thought of Thinker corpses as just debris in her way, and dangerous exploding debris, at that.

She pushed those thoughts away and tried to relax, take her mind away from it all, even as she could still feel the rumbles of the mountain. She just couldn’t.

She tried to move, and felt slow, strange, detached. Clarisse had toggled a bit of emotional suppression.

I’m not going to go back, Ryouko thought. I’m fine. I’m not trying to save anyone else.

Not that, Clarisse thought. You were about to punch something, really hard. Think about how the civilians here would see you.

That was right, she thought, with a kind of unnatural clarity.

Also, your soul gem is quite depleted, please attend to that.

She did, and as she held the grief cubes over her gem, she reflected that she hadn’t realized how motivated she was by the need to do something. Doing nothing just felt wrong. No matter how much sense it might make.

She couldn’t even bring herself to detransform.

And now that we’re done with that, Clarisse thought. We should address your performance just now. You felt slow. Some of that was your unhappiness, but you really were slow, and you were draining your soul gem more heavily than normal. It was amplifying your emotional state.

Ryouko stood there for a moment, uncomfortably aware that Clarisse had left the light emotional suppression on, and that she could push through it at any time.

Do you mean I really am out of practice? she asked, even though she knew that was unlikely to be true.

I don’t know, Clarisse thought. It’s been a while since we’ve had any chance to study your combat performance. Of course, with a limited supply of grief cubes, extraneous power usage is a bad idea. I don’t know what it means either.

The revelation struck her a bit numb, in a way that made her glad for the suppression.

Something to do with my empathy‐organ? Or being in Andromeda? she thought. Even if so, there’s nothing I can do about it.

She told herself that, but she couldn’t help but think about the civilians she had left behind on the mountain—she hadn’t been able to find Perspective‐pursuer, for one. It was irrational, but it made her angry that some unexplained phenomenon meant leaving them behind.

👁?·What happened, some sort of laboratory accident she asked finally, directing the question at Survival‐Optimizer, somewhere in the distance, possibly still on the boat.

Even Governance had managed to get avalanches under control, as long as the area was even marginally populated, and what she had seen had been distinctly unnatural, now that Clarisse had been able to do some post‐hoc analysis.

μ·That is another reason why you should cease your reality‐warping|ν·The situation·∂

It was rare for Survival‐Optimizer to hesitate in his speech, and she had only experienced it a single‐digit number of times. The ν‐thread’s message was not terminated, just pending, and he had marked it as awaiting computation.

|∂·is volatile—I will be there shortly by air vehicle, accompanying a local security paragon who is deconfusing the initial reports

Then the rumbling finally began to lessen, and in the distance she could hear a swarm of small aircraft approaching—drones, she realized, parsing their alien transponders.

She watched as some of them began to land with supplies, but plenty of others stayed in the air, some scanning her with a variety of sensors. It had been a long time since she had experienced planetary combat, but she could still identify a combat drone by its weapon attachments.

Part of her noted the distinct differences of design from the models of /Thinker‐Defending.

Survival‐Optimizer thought:

μ·Do not be alarmed, they are for your protection as much as anything else|ν·A security escort will be here shortly to bring you to a secure location|ξ·There was a pulse of reality‐warping energy, followed by a massive explosion|ξ+·I have been assured that no experiments on reality‐warping were being conducted|ο·Efforts are underway to find the box provided by Divine‐seeking that contains your power sources, which were nearby|ο+?·Could your power sources be the source of the explosion

Survival‐Optimizer didn’t imply anything, but Ryouko knew what she needed to say, even as she stumbled around the idea of what had happened.

|ν?·Am I being taken captive|ξ!·I had nothing to do with this|ξ?·Does /Somatic‐diversity think I am involved||ο·My power sources do not explode like this

A well of outrage sprung within her, even as she knew, rationally, that the idea was reasonable. She had just strained herself trying to save them!

A different part of her was abruptly, sharply concerned for the grief cubes. She had indeed left most of them back in the facility, bringing only as many with her as MSY doctrine dictated, a week’s worth. They should have been well‐nigh indestructible, so it hadn’t even occurred to her to worry about them yet. And this right as she needed more of them!

But they should be fine, she reminded herself. Even if the enchanted box Homura had provided had been breached, the cubes would have been merely scattered. In the absolute worst case, a few demons might have spawned, but empty grief cubes would generate little threat.

She hoped so, anyway.

At length, Survival‐Optimizer responded.

|ν·No, nor will you be—none of our previous arrangements have changed|ξ·We must do what we can to reassure our allies|ξ·It is not yet clear what /Somatic‐diversity's reaction will be, but you remain under my protection|ξ·It is good that you were traveling with me and Mountain‐wandering away from the lab ≈ a supposed pathogen not concomitant with the disease|

By now the civilian Thinkers around her had begun to acclimate to their new situation, taking advantage of the medical supplies they had received—though few had any serious wounds, since Ryouko had pulled them out of the disaster wholesale. If any of them were now wary of her, they failed to show it.

She heard the Thinker transport before she saw it, the growing dull roar of its engines drawing their attention as it rotated into a landing on the small clearing in the snowbound brush that the earlier drones had already begun to flatten into a landing pad. With a lurch, the back fell open, and a trio of combat aliens jumped out. Again, the armor sported a handful of visible differences from the /Thinker‐preserving variant—more color and decorative elements—though it was difficult to say what precisely that meant.

As they moved to hustle her onto the transport, she kept her eye on the others on board, a combat‐sized security officer in civilian dress and, as promised, the even larger Survival‐Optimizer. Even as they began to speak, she couldn’t help but instinctively check her escape vectors—and Clarisse was already working on contingency plans for an escape of some kind, even if there was little they could do but hide in the mountains and hope /Ahimsa‐extending eventually rescued her.

But in the end she stepped aboard, reassured by the security officer’s cordial greeting and empathize‐open exchange.

Five aliens had been assigned as her escorts, the four she had already met and a fifth in a tiny closed alcove on the side of the vessel, a dedicated autocannon gunner. She gave a greeting and looked up what the gunner looked like, regretting it immediately. The tiny, large‐headed form reminded her more than a little of some of the FA Elites she had seen in movies.

As they lifted into the air, Mountain‐wandering had a message for her.

μ∪·Our local preliminary belief is that you were not involved‒73% in this incident, and if you were, that it was not deliberate‒71%|μ∪·Even supposing you had subverted empathize‐opening, our behavioral models of you struggle to reconcile the choice of this particular attack|ν·External analysis, which weights local compromise by reality‐distortion more highly, finds it plausible‒17% that you destroyed our lab to suppress proof of that compromise, but this will be corrected downward once we demonstrate local reality‐integrity|ξ·We are near‐certain‒100% that no member of /Somatic‐diversity was performing forbidden experimentation with reality‐distortion|ο👁?·Can you please provide probablity distributions over the potential causes of the incident

The Thinker elaborated on the “potential causes” with a separate machine transmission. The most likely scenarios involved an attack or sabotage by /Thinker‐preserving, a possible reality‐warping “echo” effect from Ryouko’s previous power usage, the possibility that Ryouko was understating or underestimating the danger of her “power sources” in new circumstances, and, yes, the chance that Ryouko and Clarisse were enemy agents who had been lying about everything, perhaps even to their conscious selves. The Thinker simulations were still running breakneck, but it was already clear that the immediate decisions would depend on a judgment call by /Somatic‐diversity, contingent on their inclination towards trust or paranoia—and moreover contingent on how they felt other Tentacles would react to their behavior, especially when it came to meeting at Consensus. For now, as Mountain‐wandering said, they were inclined to trust her.

Only now was Ryouko able to begin assessing the event herself. The Thinker records described a pulse of reality‐warping energy, followed by a conventional explosion. She could mostly rule out the idea of an “echo” effect—one that no human magical girl had ever observed—and transmitted as much to /Somatic‐diversity. And while she had seen more than most about what could be done with grief cubes, there was no way it should have generated an explosion.

It wasn’t unheard of for a demon spawn to disguise itself as an explosion to mundanes, but she had seen the explosion too. Besides, if it were a demon spawn, she would have been able to sense miasma at the village.

Ultimately, she found that the only explanations she could believe were an attack or sabotage, perhaps intended to discredit rather than kill her—it had not been a secret that she was away from the lab today. /Thinker‐preserving was the obvious culprit either way, certainly in terms of motive, but the means were a mystery.

A thought occurred to her, a risky thought.

Should I offer to go look myself? she asked Clarisse. I could help with the reality‐warping investigation, or at the very least help find the grief cubes. Would they trust me?

Very high risk, Clarisse thought. And what if it’s a trap, for you?

She hesitated, tapping into the transport’s telepathic interface so she could see what was happening outside.

The avalanche had left the air filled with a powder haze. Behind that, an ugly swathe of brown and black streaked down across the mountain into the valley, like someone had poured paint down the mountain face. It felt wrong, a scar across the white snow and amber foliage.

I think I have to take that risk.

Ryouko was surprised by how easy it was to convince Survival‐Optimizer and Mountain‐wandering to have her help investigate. Rescue work and excavation near the disaster site were ongoing, and they wanted her to find and extract her missing grief cubes.

The Thinkers were nervous about having them around, and Ryouko was nervous not having them in hand, so it suited both parties.

Just as importantly, the two Thinkers agreed that a successful investigation of the explosion would be essential if they hoped to defend against the accusations /Thinker‐preserving would spread throughout Consensus. Bringing Ryouko on‐site risked further accusations of tampering on her part, but that was still better than showing up with no explanation at all.

For now, they agreed, she could help find the grief cube container, and they could work from there.

Others were less simple to convince, particularly the new security paragon on site. This was a wiry neuroform named, incongruously, AEg1vA3⊃Continent‐shaking. The female Thinker was skeptical of Ryouko’s claims that she might materially aid the investigation, and much preferred to stick to standard investigative procedure. That opinion tracked almost directly from the Thinker’s risk‐averse pref‐spec, and it took a good deal of persuasion from Mountain‐wandering, involving a copious amount of memory‐sharing, for the security paragon to grudgingly allow Ryouko access to the site, tailed by a copious amount of security.

An hour later, Ryouko was back on the transport, with Continent‐shaking and Mountain‐wandering dispersed into two other vehicles at Continent‐shaking’s insistence, to better mitigate losses in case of an attack.

The summit of the mountain was a hive of activity, numerous flying drones swarming around teams of Thinkers and larger, spider‐bodied vehicles. Many perched precariously to the side of impossible slopes, and it took Ryouko a few seconds to realize that the spider‐like vehicles were large excavation lasers, boring additional entry ports into the devastated lab. A map telepathically beamed into Ryouko’s mind revealed the current situation—while the superstructure of the facility was intact, attached as most parts were to the literal body of the mountain, the internal explosion had wrecked the substantial majority of the facility, shredding equipment, collapsing walls, and bringing down corridors in showers of rubble. Internal forcefields, designed to withstand small‐scale lab accidents, had done little to contain the damage and in some places had even channeled the energy in unfortunate directions.

As a consequence, the majority of the facility’s staff were currently buried in rubble, either crushed under debris or trapped in various rooms. The damage was particularly extensive around the epicenter of the explosion, near the bottom of the facility where Ryouko had stayed and where the grief cubes had been stored. There, a significant portion of the lab facilities had sagged and dropped downward, creating a giant pile of debris. This was where the grief cubes might be, and where there was active investigative digging.

The Thinker approach to all this struck Ryouko as rather cavalier, until it was explained to her that thanks to backups, saving lives did not take absolute priority over investigation—in fact, Continent‐shaking had issued a decree‐request specifically indicating that root cause investigation was to take at least 80% priority. The emphasis was on getting in quickly and seeing what there was to find, even at the risk of some additional collapse. For those who were trapped, the aim was establishing communication to determine the likelihood of rescue and severity of injury. If rescue before death was improbable, voluntary shutdown was encouraged. Otherwise, individuals would stay in fugue and wait, just like humans would—though they would generally leave an arm or two awake for communication purposes.

Ryouko had, unfortunately, been forced to promise not to try to go save any of them. Her reality‐warping would “contaminate” the scene.

All that gave Ryouko another thing to feel uncomfortable about, as they turned in towards a provisional vertipad that had been levitated over the edge of the main site.

The two Thinker paragons were already waiting, but Ryouko was requested to stay on board her transport for now, as her security personnel stepped off and conducted a sweep.

Second thoughts gnawed at her as she stepped onto the mountain. She had little training in conducting this kind of investigation, after all, and was banking entirely on her innate skills and the documentation she had reviewed with Clarisse on the flight over.

Continent‐shaking guided her forward to the edge of the platform, where peering over the edge gave a view into one of the holes newly excavated into the roof of the facility, past rock and composite, through layer after layer of semi‐ruined platforms and flooring, almost all the way down to the pile of debris at the very bottom. Once, Ryouko would have found it vertiginous.

She watched the example of the others stepping onto a series of hovering plates attached to the edge of the vertipad. At first glance looking like simple square etchings, they detached one by one as the others stepped on board, railings extending and forming within seconds, similar to the modular furniture she was familiar with. Then they floated down towards the hole.

As she stepped onto one herself, under the watchful eyes of the security officers now hovering nearby, she recognized that the hovering plates were the distant cousins of the military platforms alien shock troops sometimes rode on, and suppressed a jolt of adrenaline. She had a pseudo‐memory of bad experiences from her training simulations.

Then she descended too, and she kept her eye on the space below, watching the broken layers of facility peel past her, their destination growing ever larger. Try as she might, she couldn’t feel any grief cubes or anomalous magic, not yet.

As they got closer, the damage became ever more obvious. Dislocated platforms and shattered lab equipment became twisted metal beams and unidentifiable rubble, and clusters of serenely seated technicians waiting for a ride up gave way to hunched‐over bodies and the occasional limb. The open air around them grew larger and larger, and this time it was no aesthetic effect—it was tracking where the structure had given way entirely, falling to the floor below.

Then, as they finally grew close, she felt something.

Several somethings, in fact. It took her a moment to untangle: there was the relieving signal of a large cluster of grief cubes, about as large as she remembered it should be, as obvious as a beacon now that she had noticed it.

She released a breath she hadn’t known she had been holding, and then her thoughts trailed off as she spotted the thin metal rods, planted into the ground in a perimeter meters away from the giant debris, regularly spaced, like so many garden stakes. She had seen similar reality‐distortion sensors before in the lab, though she had not been able to inspect them closely.

She indicated to the aliens around her that she had located the grief cubes, and about a dozen salvage drones appeared around the corner ten seconds later, making a clacking noise as they stepped between severed self‐sealing tubes, broken power conduits, and support beams still shivering slightly. At the touch of the drones the debris stopped their futile self‐repair, and then the drones got to work, scraping and scrabbling through.

Then she asked to approach the sensors. Clarisse had reminded her that it was her duty to study key alien technology such as this, and she was separately curious. They could detect reality‐distortion, but not grief cubes? Then again, grief and miasma had always been hard to notice for mundanes…

Continent‐shaking gave her approval, but as Ryouko approached the rods, placing her hand on one, the Thinker commented:

ν·You are creating noise in the data|μ·These are compact‐fluctuation‐sensors, whose outputs are processed remotely—they detect deviations from physical law|μ+·Tiny fluctuations at the subfield level were first detected by /Comprehending in the presence of companion‐penguins—originally thought to be measurement error, they were found to be an occasional product of companion‐penguins and other partially uplifted motile organisms, strongly correlated with emotional extremis

She continued:

|μ+·Consensus agreed to ban the pursuit of reality‐warping technology after several decades, and to provide all Tentacles with these detection devices for passive observation|μ·/Thinker‐preserving and other Tentacles proposed mandatory full uplifts to eliminate all reality‐distortions, but this would have violated the organisms' preferences

Separately, Mountain‐wandering indicated that this information was allowed to her now as a show of good faith, and in the hopes that it might aid in the investigation.

That discussion gave her plenty to think about. The phenomenon was a subfield fluctuation near animals that could only be detected by special sensors? Were the penguins magic? She hardly thought so, and the only magic she had ever seen was far too obvious to need a high‐tech sensor.

This seemed like the kind of thing to ask the Incubators about, if she got the chance. Of course, they were probably watching right now…

A signal from one of the drones drew their attention, and some scurrying became obvious at the side of the debris pile, near a large damaged‐looking orb that she realized was the remains of the multispectral puzzle orb she had studied earlier, detailing the exploits of Mountain‐wandering. Parts of its surface still shone with encoded information.

Seconds later, one of the alien drones made its way around the side of the orb, holding aloft the instantly recognizable Homura‐given sphere of grief cubes.

Ryouko tried not to look too eager and she moved forward to receive it.

She opened it to quickly verify that everything was there, but even as she touched the top of the sphere, a shiver passed through her. Magic, and it wasn’t from her or the person who made the enchanted container.

Normally, magic dissipated quickly, but of course permanently enchanted objects were the exception, being imbued with magic. Here, it seemed the original magic had weakened, like with magitech armor that had taken a hit, and foreign magic had seeped in.

She felt the hackles on her neck rise up, and sent the Thinkers her findings even as she advanced on the debris pile. Now that she knew the magic signature of the bomber, she might be able to find more evidence, or better yet, the bomber themselves.

If she could catch the real culprit, if she could prove /Thinker‐preserving responsible for the slaughter of innocent Thinkers, her diplomatic victory would be assured. She just had to follow her grief cubes’ trail.

Who knew what she might find?

As it turned out, nothing at all. She combed the area around the epicenter several times, trying to find something, anything, and simply hadn’t. In retrospect, it all felt rather silly.

But that result left her in a bad place, politically speaking.

It got worse when /Somatic‐diversity’s conventional investigation failed to turn up a result that exonerated her. In fact, just the opposite: forensics indicated that the explosion had begun in her own room, near her grief cubes. Surveillance data provided no alternative explanation: the initial reality‐warping part of the bomb ruined any data from then on, and there was nothing of note beforehand, other than a cleaning drone having entered and exited her room some time before, on schedule.

Continent‐shaking did point out that the lab had not been designed to detect the usage of Thinker stealth. It was possible that a stealthed agent had planted the bomb and then either escaped or, more likely, let the bomb dispose of themselves. But she lacked any evidence for the theory—few would find it convincing, not when reality‐warping was definitely involved.

Ryouko knew that neither she nor her grief cubes were responsible—the traces of foreign magic on the container proved that to her—but she couldn’t prove it to the Thinkers. The Thinkers’ magic detectors were not so advanced that they could differentiate her reality‐distortions from someone else’s.

They would be able to catch any future magic‐assisted bomb or hostile magical girl, though. She’d probably be seeing a lot more of the detectors from now on—not only to protect her from /Thinker‐preserving, but to reassure other Tentacles about the threat she posed as well.

For now, she had been politely requested to stay in her quarters, then transferred to a transport bound for the far side of the planet. There, an embodying facility was equipped to take the data on Clarisse that had been gathered and continue the work of installing an empathy‐organ in her, a process that would be finished “expeditiously”, before shuffling Ryouko off‐planet.

Ryouko didn’t terribly mind moving on to a new destination, but the diplomatic implications were, in a phrase, not good.

I hate it! We’ve been completely outmaneuvered, Ryouko fumed.

It’s only a partial setback, Clarisse soothed. Not all Tentacles will really think you were responsible. Especially not the ones we have any chance of swaying.

But it will affect their calculations, Ryouko complained. Everyone has admitted as such, and really why wouldn’t it? Besides that, even if you did believe it wasn’t my fault, it makes me a security risk. /Ahimsa‐extending has already admitted to /Eternal‐dwellings backing out.

Only one Tentacle, on the margins. And look, we’ve been over this in and out. Maybe grousing to me makes you feel better, but it doesn’t change the situation. At the end of the day, the fault lies with /Somatic‐diversity for their lax security. Even /Somatic‐diversity admits as much. Better security would have meant this never happens, or even better, catching the culprit red‐handed. Instead, we’re left guessing.

The situation wasn’t as bad as Ryouko made it sound. It contributed immensely to her frustration that her own attempts to poke around the investigation site had contributed nothing. /Somatic‐diversity didn’t seem to seriously think she had bombed them in a manner that was clearly counterproductive for her stated mission, but they also weren’t 100% confident in her, which rankled, especially when she was constantly being updated telepathically on those less‐than‐100% estimates.

Ryouko kept quiet, but they both knew what she was thinking. These Thinkers had spent so long in peace and prosperity that they simply weren’t prepared for rogue actors, not anymore. Perhaps other Tentacles were different, but /Somatic‐diversity engaged little with the art of espionage, and self‐admittedly were far behind the cutting‐edge of their race. Perhaps more importantly, their society simply didn’t prioritize protection against threats that, until now, hadn’t existed.

Ironically, the seemingly‐pacifist /Ahimsa‐extending was much more secure, both more paranoid about the many lives in their care and constantly interested in sticking their tentacles into other Tentacles’ business to try and modify their behavior.

Ryouko thought back to her encounter with Continent‐shaking. She had been paranoid, by‐the‐book, and detail‐oriented, all qualities that seemed useful in a security official. But one Thinker a secure system did not make.

We should speak to /Ahimsa‐extending about forwarding security suggestions to our future destinations. It might seem presumptuous, but we can’t afford another incident like this—us or them.

Not to mention the matter of personal safety. She didn’t consider herself easily scared, but by going after her grief cubes they had gone after her, in a way she hadn’t anticipated.

I’ve already spoken to Survival‐Optimizer, Clarisse thought. They’ve adopted the suggestion. And they’ll be sending a security team.

That was the first Ryouko had heard of that, but the files Clarisse flashed through her mind made everything clear enough. It was a full suite of specialists, including some borrowed from allied, more security‐minded Tentacles. And, yes, a small group of personal bodyguards, reminding her for the first time in a while of the pair of girls she had left behind at Adept Blue. She missed Eri and Elanis, in a weird kind of way. Now that she was gone, would they still be assigned together? Or had they been separated too?

Ryouko shook her head in dismay at the situation, leaning on the windowsill of the transport. Like the humans, the Thinkers seemed content to use traditional transparent materials for windows on their civilian, planetary transports. Here, there was a breathtaking view of an alien world from low orbit for her to appreciate, if she were in any mood to.

I’m all for being wistful and missing the Milky Way, Clarisse thought, but besides the politics and Consensus, you haven’t put enough thought into the technical details of what happened. What with the ‘reality‐warping’ and all.

It took Ryouko a moment to take in Clarisse’s point, and realize she was right. In the whirlwind of all that had happened, rescuing Thinkers, worrying about what had happened to her powers, worrying about her supply of grief cubes, she hadn’t spent more than a short time thinking about what had happened. All logic pointed to /Thinker‐preserving, but then what?

If the magic bomb was truly from a Human faction, it at least kept things simple. She already knew the TCF conspiracy was working with /Thinker‐preserving, and it was easy to imagine they might provide a little help, with an enchanted bomb of some kind, delivered by stealthed Thinker agent. The story was tidy, and it was even the most likely answer.

There were other, more worrying possibilities. For example, perhaps /Thinker‐preserving was working with enemy magical girls they had brought from the Milky Way. That would answer a lot of questions, but didn’t explain why such a magical girl hadn’t simply stolen Ryouko’s grief cubes. Perhaps they wanted to undermine her diplomatic mission more than they wanted to kill her? Her assassination would, after all, make a strong case for malfeasance by /Thinker‐preserving.

Another possibility: had /Thinker‐preserving figured out how to manipulate grief cubes, to release some of their energy? Or worse, do a little bit of magic of their own? But what did that mean? The Incubators could manipulate grief cubes, but if anything else were possible with just technology, surely the Incubators wouldn’t need Humanity?

I’m glad you’re thinking along the same lines I am, Clarisse thought. We have to be prepared for the worst, like somehow they keep sending magic‐tinted bombs at us. If we can’t prove it’s not us, eventually we’ll lose all credibility. Not to mention the risk that they might actually kill you or remove your grief cubes.

Should we ask the Incubators about this situation? They might have some insight, and we can probably drill them about some of the stranger possibilities.

Yes, but not until we have more information and a better grasp of what questions to even ask. Without that, we’re just going to get misled. What are the chances, after all, that all of this happening in Andromeda was beyond their notice? Not very high, in my opinion.

The two of them shared a moment of silence. It wasn’t hard to remember that they might not ever return to the Milky Way—that this might have all been a one‐way mission from the start.

Ryouko found herself once again missing the clarity of battle. Cephalopods there had been much easier to understand, fitting into well‐understood combat planning models. This was different, ineffable, worrying—like dealing with all the conspiracies back home. Of course that poison would follow her here, too.

With a subtle tap in the back of her mind, the transport let her know that they were approaching their destination. Indeed, her internal accelerometer indicated that they were beginning to descend from suborbit. She needed to calm herself down, before she blew up on some /Somatic‐diversity technician and gave the aliens yet another reason to be wary of her.

You should write another letter for Asami, Clarisse thought. That will help.

Vlad was having a rather interesting day.

As AI director of Adept Blue, it had been natural for him to slot into the director’s role for Project Armstrong, Governance’s long‐range wormhole project. As such, his responsibilities had expanded, and his computing hardware accordingly, such that he was now several times his original computing capacity. Much of it was tasked to matters that had little to do with his original specialty as a research AI—managing base logistics, personnel, security and the like. Such things often didn’t require the attention of his primary sentience, but he had been finding the attention he did have to spare all too tedious.

One silver lining of the terrorist attacks perpetrated by the TCF conspiracy was it had led to the instantiation of a new AI for Project Armstrong, dedicated to site security. They already had protection from the Armed Forces—the project had no doubt become a priority raiding target for the Cephalopods after the destruction of their pulsar mines—but this new AI would focus on monitoring for any internal threats, as well as manage relations with the Armed Forces. It was a welcome change… but who had decided that the personality should be bubbly?

“You’re too gruuuumpy Vladdy,” one update had said. “Don’t you know that too much focus on the work leads to biased cognition? It’s important to cultivate a variety of interests for the long‐term, in case you get reassigned!”

Yes, that was a weeks‐old neophyte of an AI reading orientation files back to him.

Well, at least Marie was a hit with the magical girls at base, avatar chattering constantly with the others in the rec area in a way that, frankly, Vlad didn’t always have the patience for. As long as they didn’t try to pull him into any baking events or, worse, Cult recruitment parties. He had a bad feeling that Marie, with her youthful naïveté, would be easy prey for them. Was already easy prey for them, perhaps. If he had to hear one more time about how Governance: Magical Girls had been given a ‘vision’ that predicted the outcomes of quantum physics experiments…

Still, he was grateful for the additional time provided to pay personal attention to the research. Losing Shizuki Ryouko to the pulsar had been painful, even cripplingly so, but not necessarily fatal. Already, there were theories to test and other candidates to try out—with Nakihara’s help, once she returned, he was hopeful they could make a small wormhole, enough for a short‐range raid, or at least make meaningful progress on one.

Shizuki had also not died without imparting one last gift. Not just the remnants of an alien blink interdictor device, but also part of the technical manual, so to speak, somehow derived from the strange brain organ his own creator had given her. It wasn’t enough to piece together very much, not on its own, but it was enough for them to start making what felt like real headway on understanding alien communication, when combined with some of the other initiatives coming from the General Staff.

So he was told, at least. That wasn’t really his field.

He was currently focused on data from the jumpstrike mission itself, all the telemetry and sensor data from instruments he had insisted go along for the ride. What the aliens were doing there was beyond anything they had ever dreamed of, and he had gathered Governance’s best minds in the field to study it. Just within weeks, they had already cobbled together a method for improving the range of small IIC nodes. It was something.

Some on the team groused that they were merely cribbing from the notes of more advanced aliens. It was true, but stupid pride was, well, stupid. They were doing good work. He was doing good work.

Or, he was, until a few days ago, when he was surprised to find a security update from Marie smashing all the way to the top of his cognitive queue, such that he was reading it almost before he knew what he was doing. Apparently, the Task Force dedicated to taking down the TCF conspiracy had suffered a serious leak, and they were concerned that it might be possible to triangulate Project Armstrong’s location. After all, Task Force agents had been traveling to and from Project Armstrong constantly since the terrorist attacks to reverify that he and the other AIs on board hadn’t been newly magically compromised.

They had already prepared for the possibility of a raid, of course, but now his days were full of planning for how to subject various parts of the station to evasive maneuvers, and how to use some parts as defensive baffles for other parts. This was not generally the kind of thing sensitive scientific equipment was good at undergoing.

And now, he had just learned, today was fated to be even worse.

The sphere of emergency tripwire devices their Navy complement had deployed, at a radius of ten thousand AU and increasing, had just been triggered. Dozens of alien bombers were approaching at assault speed, arrival in under ten minutes. They weren’t even bothering with stealth, which would likely have been ineffectual anyway against the clairvoyants he had on board.

He assigned a cognitive subtask to investigate with Marie how exactly their randomized trajectory might have been breached, then shoved it to the end of his priority list, behind such things as site defense and warning base personnel.

Their defenses were already scrambling, ships and drones maneuvering and dumping countermeasures, forcefields activating, even as his full Magi Cæli component scrambled out into space. The tripwires had bought them precious time, but an alien bomber raid was just not easy for a scientific space station to absorb, regardless of the circumstances.

That was Marie and the military’s business, freeing him to focus on the base itself. Still, it strained his resources—even as his primary attention focused on protecting the military‐scientific mission, shutting down and isolating key and volatile equipment, the enormous wormhole ring folding aside and deploying baffles, he was obliged to hand over key processing power to Marie and the other military AIs for their use. It was sensible, but hardly made things easier.

They had drilled all this, but there simply wasn’t time for more.

Their escort was able to get a partial flight of anti‐missiles into the air even as the bombers made their first launches, and the ripples of their distant duel reached his FTL instruments only barely before the missiles themselves.

Some of them were driven off course by a massive wave of smart dust and sensor decoys, some of them were neutralized by freshly‐installed point‐defense systems or absorbed by sacrificial baffles, but for the rest…

His sensory integration modules cursed in consternation and confusion. Something was off with the calculations, and suddenly there were gravimetric anomalies across the board, much of it on the remaining scientific equipment he had left online—the less valuable equipment, that he felt he could risk sacrificing in a cheeky attempt to study alien combat technology. Now he felt only fear: was this a new alien missile class or countermeasure? Or simply something only more sensitive instruments could detect?

The answer seemed to hardly matter in the moment; he could only grit the teeth he did not have as he made a last series of microadjustments in reaction to the new data. There was simply no time.

His systems registered the first impacts. As intended, the first to be destroyed were outlying labs and more marginal experimental setups, not the most valuable sensors or core wormhole ring.

Even as he went into damage control, he could only silently exhort his escorts to do the utmost, not allowing himself to curse Task Force Monteagle for their recklessness and lack of security.

In another fractional second, he lost part of a shelter for some of the logistics staff, the module taking a glancing blow even after a local Magi Cæli sacrificed a body—thankfully, only a body—on a last‐second deflection. State‐of‐the‐art materials and impact redistribution fields shuddered to prevent a hurricane of shrapnel and spalling, but there was no denying the sheer kinetic energy of the hit, and it simply wasn’t worth focusing on any but the merely wounded.

He knew in his heart of course that all modules were placed and maneuvered in order of cold‐blooded importance, and that these people were simply lower on the list than scientific staff or even some categories of equipment. It had all made sense in planning, neatly curated by both his and Marie’s algorithms, but he could not fully ignore the human cost. No TCF AI really could.

But something was wrong.

Relievingly wrong?

It had taken a bit of time to sort out the confusing mess of sensor data, even with all their computing running full blast, and nearly all of his own attention on damage control and mitigation. The additional flood of anomalous sensor data had seemed like a series of blips in the middle of a sea of explosions, and only now did he, they, realize that a torrent of additional drones had appeared in the middle of the missile wave right in front of their own defenses, perfectly positioned to assist in deflecting and destroying them. The normally quite clever alien missiles had been thrown completely awry.

But they really had appeared, in a manner that his sensor data was confirming to be consistent only with alien stealth.

It took a few moments longer to understand who was responsible, as the telemetry data finally came in to indicate that there had been a few new magical girls in the mix, unaccounted for by any of their personnel rosters.

The mages in question ignored the hasty calls to identify themselves, and instead began to fade out of their sensors. Vlad realized that the sensor anomalies he had been seeing were, perhaps, the results of turning laboratory‐grade instruments onto a novel stealth device for the first time.

Fascinating, and he would have thrown himself into the analysis, but there were still more pressing matters.

The alien bombers were presumably as aghast as they were, but there was no time for either side to wait: the bombers were already circling around for another pass, in spiraling trajectories arcing through a solar system’s worth of space. Alien long‐range bombers could be maddeningly obstinate, taking the time to make second or even third passes at newfound defensive weaknesses, often created by the destruction wrought by the first pass.

It all depended on how valuable the target was, how much they were willing to sacrifice, and how much of their payload they had committed to the first strike, a proportion that varied constantly according to a destructively intricate dance of game theory that the alien planners played with their human AI counterparts.

Here, of course, the aliens would consider their target very valuable, notwithstanding how poorly the first pass had gone. The human defenses had shredded ten percent of their enemy’s number—a touch higher than the usual attrition rate for an attack on a high‐value target, and the estimates Vlad was receiving indicated that they had spent 60±10 percent of their payloads on the first pass, probably the more important measure.

This time, with another few minutes to prepare themselves and little meaningful damage to their defensive systems, the humans put up a vastly larger wave of missile interceptors. With their mysterious benefactors’ contribution, almost nothing got through. There were only another dozen human casualties.

Only.

They watched the alien bombers turn and streak away, disappointed.

Vlad did the AI equivalent of letting out a breath, which was to rededicate much of his processing to what had formerly been secondary priorities. The attack had been audacious, worrying but, in the final analysis, not actually all that threatening. Not so long as Akemi Homura was willing to keep appearing out of the mist to save them.

And it had been her. By now the task force had managed to profile a few members of her group, and two of them had turned up here, recognizable by magic type and color. Who else could it be?

Could they really keep relying on Homura’s intervention? Some of the others were starting to think so. He knew Marie would think so. To her, Valentin née Akemi had created their entire lineage of AIs to protect them from the TCF breach, and was to be lauded for the act.

Vlad was less sure, a skepticism he was sure stemmed, ironically, from how much of Valentin’s personality he shared. He couldn’t understand what Homura’s game was, or why she still wouldn’t make contact. Could she be trusted? Was she even in a stable frame of mind?

But in a way, it seemed petty for him to be thinking such thoughts after what had just happened. She doubtless had saved them here, and potentially had been continually saving Humanity since the first time at New Athens. After all, if the TCF terrorists were willing to sell Project Armstrong out to the aliens, why hadn’t they done the same at Orpheus, when the stakes were much greater? Perhaps Homura had something to do with it.

Valentin was the closest thing to a mother he would ever have. Perhaps it would do to trust her, this once.

Kyouko flung herself back into her bunk, regretting, not for the first time, her insistence on replicating in her church the austere circumstances of her youth. Couldn’t she have at least used the ongoing reconstruction to sneak in a synthesizer?

As always, she chided herself. The whole point was to keep her grounded.

It was a bit hard to remember that when embroiled in the disputes of the Theological Council. She might have hoped that an assemblage of mostly Ancients would be relentlessly practical, but they could be as invested in esoterica as any organization with “Theology” in its name. In this case, it was over the validity of trying to discern the Goddess’s plan when making decisions. Surely, given what She had said, She wanted them to take Her plans into account sometimes. But nonetheless, if one considered—

Kyouko put a pillow over her face. This sort of nonsense was why she liked having Maki around. She was no‐nonsense.

Unfortunately, she was also many light‐years away, as part of the defensive complement for Adept Blue. Kyouko hadn’t prevented her from joining the Task Force, despite the fear she felt for Maki’s life, a legacy of what had happened to Sayaka. Only after the asteroid ambush, as she felt the relief wash over her, did Kyouko begin to let go of that fear. Maki hadn’t died—hadn’t even lost her body like she had on Apollo.

And now she had survived a surprise attack on Adept Blue as well. Good things could happen after all.

Her chest throbbed. Why did anyone ever fall in love anyway? She found herself desperately wishing for a distraction.

She promptly got one in the form of something scurrying up her arm.

She suppressed a decidedly un‐Ancient‐like scream and bolted back up, nearly ramming her head into the top of her alcove.

A purple crystal salamander clung to her arm, peering into her eyes.

Chapter 73: Machinery of Our Souls

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:44:19 +0200

μ·Summary of questions to Shizuki‐Ryouko⊃Humanity‐preserving and Clarisse⊃Ryouko‐supporting that remain unasked or unanswered
|ν?·Humanity‐preserving's apparent risk‐estimation of Human species subordination or extinction seems far below any reasonable calculation—why
|ξ·Assessment: Unconcern possibly‒34% product of faith in reality‐warping, possibly‒23% poor risk‐estimation, possibly‒21% knowledge of countervailing factors unknown to us, possibly‒22% other causes

μ·Questions have been submitted by Administrators of /Ahimsa‐extending and counterparts among allies, particularly /Truth‐seeking
|ν👁?·Report by /Thinker‐preserving of extensive reality‐warping by Divine‐seeking at beginning of conflict needs confirmation and explanation—why have equivalent feats not been repeated until much later, by Humanity‐preserving
|ξ·Assessment: Most likely‒60% resource constraints, strongly suspect‒92% reality‐warping requires the special power sources Divine‐seeking provided for Humanity‐preserving

μ·Transmittal of information to unapproved individuals or other Tentacles requires Administrator authentication
|ν·Humanity‐preserving's pref‐spec contains irregularities that cannot be resolved with current shared knowledge|ν+∈·Unexplained entanglement between reality‐warping and core preference for exploration|ν+∈·Substantive dissatisfaction with Human civilization for unshared reasons|ν+∈·Strange dislike for her own religious beliefs
|ξ·Assessment: Humanity‐preserving's pref‐spec contains unresolved tensions, contradictions, and reality‐distorted muddiness; anomalies are not‒81% strong evidence of untrustworthiness|ξ+·Anomalies will concern many Tentacles and will be a liability at Consensus, Humanity‐preserving should be encouraged to resolve them if possible

μ·It will be important to ensure an allied Thinker is in place to provide company, both to improve relationship and gather information—no Thinker is yet truly trusted by either Humanity‐preserving or Ryouko‐supporting
|ν·Nature of Human government preference‐equivalent remains unclear in many key aspects; none of Divine‐seeking, Humanity‐Preserving, or Ryouko‐supporting claim to be officially or accurately representing it|ν+·Nature of relationship between Divine‐seeking and the pair of Humanity‐Preserving and Ryouko‐supporting should also be clarified||
|ξ·Assessment: Human government has‒66% only weak or partial control over population, perhaps due to stresses of current conflict—negotiation of peace may require placating multiple Human factions|

|μ·Intelligence‐gathering from Ryouko‐supporting will provide useful compare and contrast, when available—this is further impetus for separation project
|ν·Reality‐warping remains largely unexplained|||
|ξ·Assessment: Unreasonable to demand Humanity‐preserving expose what has preserved Humanity thus far|ξ+·Consequent political weakness must be compensated for by resolving other questions

— Consensus/Ahimsa‐extending, excerpt from Administrator Archives (FoLD humanization)

μ·Further commentary about Humanity‐preserving's warform, from physical inspection. Biological structure is as described by Thinker‐preserving and largely omitted here, but consistent with expectations for an evolved sapient species. Overall species archetype analogous to hair‐covered land animals observed on many worlds. Superficial baseline scan of mechanical and biological augments suggests limited biotechnical development. For a warform, there is a relative lack of biological augments, with consistent genetic material throughout and a lack of specialist combat organs or appendages. The empathy‐organ installed by Divine‐seeking is the only tissue of separate genetic design, a puzzling inefficiency even for Human technology levels.

ν·Reality‐distortion scan reveals a truly disturbing pattern of highly sophisticated reality‐distortion augmentation, entirely out‐of‐line with all other displayed technological levels. Very low‐level, almost undetectable reality‐distortion underlies every process examined, doubtless explaining Humanity‐preserving's anomalous performance relative to biotechnical expectation. External reality‐distortion comes from the gem that Humanity‐preserving consistently wears and has indicated is where her consciousness is stored outside her warform. This is a puzzlingly obvious weakness, perhaps‒77% proximity is a limitation of their reality‐warping technology. Perhaps‒29% access to reality‐warping has stunted biotechnical development, with returns to reality‐warping research having much higher payoff ≈ local minima, leading to imbalanced civilizational maturity.

— Consensus/Ahimsa‐extending, excerpt from Administrator Archives (Recast humanization)

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”

— Albert Camus, The Rebel

“Suppose we need to go on a dangerous mission to aid Ryouko,” Simona said, “but you’re not allowed to go because Governance considers you too valuable to the wormhole project. Would you break orders to do it?”

“In a vacuum, if it were so black and white, I’d have to say yes,” Asami said. “But in practice, I doubt the context would be so simple. What about you? If I went to the Ribbon and the Goddess you don’t quite believe in told me you had to do something against orders, would you do it?”

“Well, like you said, it’s an oversimplification, but my baseline would be yes. I told you, I’m accepting, provisionally, that she might provide good advice, even if she’s just a magic ghost or something. What about if Akemi Homura asked us to go?”

“I thought you didn’t like her.”

“If she asks, she’d have a convincing reason.”

“Then yes. That’s kind of a stupid question.”

“I think you’re underestimating the ability of an Ancient, especially Akemi Homura, to make anything sound convincing. You can’t make that your only criterion.”

At Simona’s urging, they had spent hours discussing what they would do in every possible contentious scenario, from being told they had to help the TCF terrorists to save Ryouko’s life—they’d try to find an alternative and betray at the first opportunity—to encountering a strange, potentially‐brainwashed Ryouko.

They had reached some kind of common ground, at least. Despite their clear differences in life experience and approach, there wasn’t much they’d do differently, most of the time. Simona seemed to enjoy focusing on the most paranoid and outré scenarios, but that made sense, given where she came from. And, Asami had to admit, after what they had been through so far, anything seemed possible. It couldn’t hurt to be more prepared.

For example, if Ryouko seemed to have been brainwashed by the aliens or the TCF conspiracy, their approach would involve working together with Clarisse if possible, Simona using her anti‐magic to purge any possible harmful magic, and jointly insisting Ryouko perform a Satti head‐heal to eliminate any technological or biological meddling, ideally with trained healers and telepaths on hand.

As for the strange organ in Ryouko’s head… Homura had put it there, and Ryouko’s magic hadn’t rejected it, so they shouldn’t try to remove it unless they had no other choice.

And if the real, uncoerced Ryouko wanted something they didn’t want for her—for instance, to stay with the aliens—then they could hear her out.

“And if we disagree, but it’s her real decision, she has her own autonomy,” Asami insisted. “We can’t just kidnap her.”

“As long as it’s freely made,” Simona said, looking to the side for a moment.

“But look, " she continued. “It’s not always so easy to distinguish between a real choice or desire, and a product of manipulation. I was born and raised as an agent for Homura. She’s the one who assigned me to Ryouko. I suspect she knew quite well I’d fall in love with her. So is my love for her fake? Is there any really objective answer to that?”

It bothered Asami when Simona talked so casually about still being in love with her girlfriend, but, in a way, the honesty was better than the alternative.

“I mean, if you’re saying Homura manipulated you into that, that’d be an argument for accepting Ryouko’s choices despite manipulation,” Asami said. “Or an argument that I should try to deprogram you. I’m not sure that is quite where we want to go with this.”

Simona frowned.

“It just occurred to me that we don’t know how old individual Cephalopods are. It’s bad enough trying to deal with manipulative Ancients a few hundred years old, Ryouko may be dealing with aliens that are truly old. On her own, too.”

“She has Clarisse, I suppose,” Asami said. “And besides, if the squid are master manipulators, they certainly haven’t shown it in this war.”

“That assumes the goal is to win the war,” Simona said. “Isn’t there a lot of speculation as to why they might not be trying that hard?”

“But what the heck would be the point then?”

“I don’t know,” Simona admitted, shrugging with her hands. “Maybe it has something to do with what the TCF conspiracy is up to?”

Asami sank back into her seat, frustrated, even as Simona continued:

“These people are everyone’s enemy, but I don’t think they’re just alien lackeys. I can’t imagine they don’t have their own plan, their own agenda for Humanity. They’ve got to have made some kind of deal with a few of the aliens, sure, but how can they be sure that deal will be honored? They can’t. They must have their own power base, something that could impose costs on the aliens if the deal were to be broken. What is that if not the rest of Humanity?”

“You’re making way too many assumptions about things we just can’t know,” Asami said. “Who knows what they’ve traded for, or if they even intend to stay Human at the end of it. Maybe the deal is they get a ship to some distant galaxy and make their own Humanity. We can’t know. Yet.”

“The frustrating thing is I’m virtually certain Homura knows the answers to some of these questions,” Simona said. “Valentin always seemed like she had a good sense of their intentions.”

“With the Goddess’s other Ribbon, I’m sure she could know all kinds of things,” Asami said. “But you’re probably right that there’s limits to the TCF conspiracy’s cooperation with the squid. I just don’t get what their goal is. Kill or control all their political opponents with the squids’ help, and then betray them in order to lead Humanity to victory?”

Simona bit her lip.

“I can’t shake the feeling that we might just not be thinking big enough. But, obviously we just don’t have enough information. Yes, I know, you said that already.”

A moment passed.

“The problem is, if we do run into a difficult situation involving Ryouko, we likely also won’t have enough information,” Simona continued. “What if we don’t have the chance to learn what she really wants? If her life is in the balance, how do we choose? We can’t fall back to letting her make the decision if we don’t know which choice she’d prefer.”

Asami considered that, then realized the answer was surprisingly simple.

“I’d do what the Ryouko I love would want me to do.”

“Even if it killed her?” Simona asked.

“Even then,” Asami said. “I could never live with myself, but it’d be the only answer.”

She looked Simona in the eye, daring the other girl to disagree. Simona visibly let out a breath.

“Well,” she said. “I wish I had your level of clarity there. Logic says you’re right. But I’m not sure I’m ready to commit to that.”

“Too bad,” Asami said, force suddenly entering her voice. “Commit to it anyway. That’s the whole point of this exercise, isn’t it? We make the hard decisions now, so we don’t have to fight it out later. Right?”

In truth, Asami wasn’t sure she should be pressuring Simona. Simona had already admitted her mistakes at the pulsar, and had also admitted the importance of listening to Ryouko’s preferences.

But not entirely. She always seemed to leave herself an out. How could Asami trust her, then?

“That was my plan, yes,” Simona said. “But I just can’t conceive of letting Ryouko die, even if she’s okay with it. Akemi Homura had a line about that. Sometimes the hardest thing is to let someone do what they want to. She said everyone struggles with that sometimes.”

Simona smiled crookedly.

“Maybe it’s a good thing Ryouko has two of us after all. You can do what she would want you to do. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep her alive. Together, we can achieve both.”

Asami sighed. Maybe their differences really were irreconcilable.

“Or neither, because we’re too busy fighting each other. I don’t think an aphorism is going to make things magically work out.”

“Of course not,” Simona said. “But we’ve agreed now on plans for most of the plausible scenarios. I think we’re just going to have to be satisfied with that. What else can you expect?”

Asami grit her teeth. Why did she live in a world where Simona could be right?

Ryouko had been in more than her fair share of experimental study chambers, and this latest one was not terribly different from what she was used to. Austere, variable‐free aesthetics, mysterious measurement equipment that occasionally protruded from the walls, and even a familiar observation room. However, she had to admit that this was the first one that resonated telepathically, the equipment filling her mind with a sense of distant murmuring.

In addition, there was… something uncanny about one of the instruments, a thin metal rod that drew her attention, seeming to hum ominously in her mind. It made sense once it was explained to her that this was the experimental reality‐warping detector, one whose technology they demurred on describing.

She had to admit to feeling a tinge of nervousness when the time came, asked to teleport between two chambers for the first time in far too long, under the expectant—and very wide—eyes of a group of alien children, and under a barrage of active sensors, some of which she could feel, and some she knew she couldn’t.

She couldn’t help but think of the blink interdictors at the pulsar. If this wasn’t a friendly test, it might be difficult to escape the test chamber.

But everything was fine in the end, to her at least. Fewer than a hundred meters, barely an effort at all, but she could hear the instruments in her new location chattering in shock, even as a bright set of colors spun across the limbs of the kids. It was a full five minutes before the scientists gave her leave to demonstrate a bit more “reality‐warping”, which gave Perspective‐pursuer plenty of time to pepper her with questions about how it felt to use magic.

The second demonstration meant putting on a safe show of summoning and dismissing her arbalest, some mild telekinesis, and performing a short‐range teleport of the reality‐warping detector. She could only speculate on what the aliens could possibly get from the data, though they had promised to share anything of real value. The diplomatic gesture of “safe” reality‐warping was the real point, and the Thinkers seemed suitably impressed.

In truth, it was valuable for her too. She felt a little rusty.

She passed the time over the next few days in plenty of ways; it turned out /Somatic‐diversity was well‐versed in outdoor activities, and Mountain‐wandering had cleared his schedule to show her around.

They started with an outdoor grill. Shortly after their emergence on land, the Thinkers had mastered fire, a development to which they credited a sudden growth in intellect thanks to their newfound ability to cook and roast fish and plants. Indeed—and here Mountain‐wandering seemed ready, even eager, to share—the newfound access to calories was credited with driving early Thinker ventures into agriculture and aquaculture, helping them colonize what little land was available on Great Sea.

All of that meant that raw and cooked seafood stood side‐by‐side in Thinker culture, the former the province of childhood memories and deep sea hunts, the latter that of beachside roasts, replete with seagrasses and local land beasts. Of course, in the culture of /Somatic‐diversity specifically, greater affinity with the land was a feature of many bauplans, and there was a great appreciation for the bounty of the land, as evidenced by the feast Ryouko had been served on first arrival.

Ryouko couldn’t help but stare expectantly as Mountain‐wandering narrated all of that, turning over skewers of fish and roasting meats mounted above a pile of burning coals.

·No one at home will be convinced of my experiences here without a great deal of evidence|+∪·This is not how anyone imagined the Thinkers to be|+∪·No one would have imagined any of you engaging in recreational grilling

·None of you are to be blamed for drawing inferences about us from what is most salient||·The rest of your species has only encountered /Thinker‐preserving, which has always been uniquely focused on conflict, and because you do not value diversity like we do, you do not anticipate it

He paused for a moment while he rotated some of the food, then continued:

μ·/Truth‐seeking has plenty to say on this matter, but it is the province of all sapient life to decide what it cares about, how it chooses to shape the world|ν·Pure evolutionary pressure would lead to reproduction‐maximizers, an existence devoid of meaning—it is relieving that the first sapient species we encountered did not fall prey to that trap either|μ·Our preferences are rich ≈ mature ecosystem—though partly serendipitous, they largely reflect the accumulated choices of the species, the Tentacle, and the individual|ν·We have devoted great effort to ensuring pref‐spec integrity and continuity, making the most of our existence

Ryouko had to stop and take that in, blinking a few times. There were many who would say “meaning” could not be defined without emotion.

μ?·How do you define purpose without reference to an objective source|||

Mountain‐wandering didn’t answer right away, instead pulling a few skewers of fish off the fire, handing them to a waiting drone for distribution to the local family group.

μ·Purpose is different for every Tentacle, often every individual, precisely because there is no objective source|ν?·For /Somatic‐diversity, the breadth and depth of physical sensory experience is important—how can one choose a purpose without first making full contact with the world in which we live|ν⌄·Without embodiment, most of us consider even the most exotic experiences pointless|ν⌃·Most Thinkers are virtualized and, of course, disagree

This, perhaps, was alien wisdom, but it was curious to consider the overlap with Governance ideology, which also discouraged virtualization and encouraged embodiment for humans. The difference was that Governance espoused—no, imposed—a very specific, limited embodiment upon Humanity. She had always known that, of course; Governance hardly bothered to hide it from anyone paying attention. But having the basis for comparison gave her a feeling of restriction that felt all the more acute.

What exactly did Governance, and even the MSY, push? A steady life, a consistent life, stable for the long‐term. Simple, traditional human wants and needs. Life in a city, with plenty of amenities and entertainment, and a family. Maybe.

It suited many, perhaps even the vast majority of humans, but it was easy to find those who disagreed. Those who headed for the frontier colonies, those who joined the military, and at the far extreme, the rogue colonies. Wasn’t it the Goddess herself who had implied that humans weren’t suited to stasis?

In a different world, in a different society, would she even have wanted to make a wish?

After a few seconds, she spotted Survival‐Optimizer trudging towards her, bulky legs sending a slight shudder through the dirt. Two of his tentacles carried a ceramic platter piled high with assorted leaves and what looked like leeks, fire‐roasted. Though, she knew /Ahimsa‐extending generally avoided eating even root vegetables, whose harvesting killed the plant, so they probably weren’t exactly like leeks.

μ·I was summoned to provide an alternate perspective|||

He waited until she acknowledged she understood.

|ν+·We do not share such a rigid focus on sapience, which can only be an arbitrary line drawn to exclude lesser forms of sentience based only on computational resources, which is a fluke of evolution—simpler purposes are still purposes|ν·Most Tentacles agree that the existing nature of the universe carries no excessive preference weight—it is well that we shape the world with our choices|ξ·I am reminded of a sense I have had before, that not only are you dissatisfied with your own pref‐spec, you are dissatisfied with that of your own species

Mountain‐wandering replied before Ryouko could.

|ν+∈·Perhaps the line may be arbitrary, but some practical line must be chosen—there are forms of life which are little different from complex chemistry, and even you consume most plants|ν∈·The existing state of the universe may not be strongly preferred, but it must be acknowledged|ξ·Both can be solved by using your empathy‐organ to adjust your preferences, but you are wise not to do so lightly|ν+∈·We are not ignorant of the value of lesser sentiences—by sharing the sensoriums of all life, we obtain a deeper understanding of them than you can

Ryouko considered denying what the pair had said about her dissatisfaction, or simply letting the comments pass, pretending that the multiple threads going multiple ways were still overwhelming her. At this point, though, she doubted she would really fool them, and it was possible lying would even be counterproductive.

She found herself making that calculation all too often these days.

|ξ·As you know, we are a monolith—our dominant preference‐cluster was decided by a few after a species‐wide war, with stability and broad acceptance as the goals|ξ+∈·This process was inexact, incredibly so by your standards, and some individuals are not happy with the outcome—and, perhaps, never could be, except by reality‐distortion|ξ+∈·I confess that I have considered that my pref‐spec might not fit within that preference‐cluster, but I am not sure—after all, human preferences are more fluid and contingent on circumstance than yours are, especially when young|

She wasn’t sure if she was being coherent, and she switched between alien‐friendly concepts—“preference‐cluster” instead of ideology, for instance—and human concepts like happiness. She had already defined a few core human emotions for /Ahimsa‐extending’s sake, but the precise meaning could only ever be inexact. Not even direct thought transmission could cross this gap—the aliens simply couldn’t experience emotions as humans did.

And even now, she avoided some topics. For instance, the fact that many Earthers joined the military, and subsequently died, in part because they had no alternate “Tentacle” where they could thrive. That was not something /Ahimsa‐extending needed to hear.

In the meantime, Survival‐Optimizer had replied to Mountain‐wandering:

|ν·As always with such matters, there is a tradeoff between the needs of our species, and the needs of others—it is no virtue to ignore the needs of others in your calculations|ν+·You know /Truth‐seeking's thought‐experiment demonstrating implicit obligation to combine all sapience into one supersapience, if you weigh sapience too highly||ν·Understanding without action ≈ one‐who‐fails‐to‐pursue‐their‐own‐preference

It seemed not even the aliens were immune to incredibly abstract philosophical thought experiments, Ryouko thought.

Mountain‐wandering replied:

||ν·Only /Truth‐seeking would take such an abstraction seriously, and we consider the problem solved with sufficient weighting||ν·I think we have exposed Humanity‐preserving and Ryouko‐supporting to enough recapitulation of known arguments

Survival‐Optimizer implicitly agreed with a gesture, then switched to Ryouko’s topic:

|ξ·Perhaps‒57% in time we could help your species form a better system—this is our wish, but we know better than to expect it to happen trivially|ξ·Perhaps‒68% we could allow emigration to Consensus—under certain requirements—for those Humans whose preferences are not tolerated by your society||

Now they were back to discussing brass tacks about Governance, but that was a dicey topic, and not the core of her concern anyway. So, she tried to redirect the conversation.

?·How do you think an individual should choose to live, if they cannot satisfy their own preferences|+·This is a question that vexes many humans, that many fail to answer

It took a while for either of the aliens to answer. Longer, in fact, than in response to any previous question she had asked. Survival‐Optimizer even made a downward gesture with one tentacle, which had the same meaning as a human raising one finger—“please wait”.

μ·Full virtual reality, memory editing, or similar measures can achieve a fully realized pref‐spec for some, but not for most—a less intrusive method, with careful planning and optimization by your Tentacle and deep calculation, is acceptable to many, but typically only to a limited degree|ν·The most common solution is to modify your preferences so that they are achievable—this is not so limiting a requirement in our civilization as it would be in yours|ν+∀·Most Tentacles tend toward this category, including both of ours|ξ·For the sake of completion, we must observe that a few Tentacles prefer eventual individual archival or aestivation, though we have no desire to exposit their philosophy to you|ο·Some individuals choose to simply bear unsatisfied preferences—this is common in Tentacles like /Truth‐seeking

Here Survival‐Optimizer spoke for both of them, having evidently consulted on the statement.

Ryouko wasn’t sure what she had expected, nor did she quite know what she had received. She could understand that most Tentacles chose to stay out of a passive, pointless virtual paradise, or even a government‐engineered physical one, but it seems those who had chosen otherwise had answers very similar to humanity. You either had to give up on your dreams, or hold on to them anyway without reasonable expectation of success. And the notion of deliberately accepting or even seeking your own end or termination… was not acceptable to Governance, but consistent with some old Human ideas.

So they have no good answer, Clarisse thought. Is that really surprising? As long as you seek to have no end, only the long‐term stable can be satisfied. That’s either the ones who are stable now, or the ones whose preferences can stay bounded. Otherwise, dissatisfaction is a fact of life. That’s how I see it. That’s why no one should pitch the idea that a single Incubator wish will fix all that ails you.

Ryouko wasn’t sure she agreed with, or even fully understood what Clarisse was trying to say. While it was true wishes weren’t a panacea, wasn’t magic all about rejecting the impossible? She wasn’t as well‐versed in the philosophy of magic as she should have been, as a representative of the MSY to Consensus, but she felt that magical girls had a better answer than the Thinkers did.

On the other hand, it sure didn’t seem like many of the Ancients she knew had their lives better figured out than the Thinkers did. She had empathize‐opened both Survival‐Optimizer and Mountain‐wandering, and while she couldn’t do the same for her mentors Mami and Kyouko, she was certain the latter were rather more dissatisfied with themselves and their lives than the former.

She couldn’t help but wonder if she wouldn’t be better off in Thinker society, if she managed to end the war. Survival‐Optimizer was right about one thing for sure: there were more options here. /Star‐faring in particular had a certain allure…

Ryouko cut that thought off at the root. Whatever the reasons—whatever the thoughts of the girl that made her wish—she could not. Not while she had work to do, and not without Asami.

She realized that she had been standing there in silence a while, as the two aliens looked down upon her, one yeti‐like, the other more of a cylinder, both almost eldritch, behind a cozy campfire and grill. It was like a fever dream.

After that, the days passed with an odd serenity, as if she were taking the kind of alien vacation she had once always dreamed about. /Survival‐Optimizer invited her onto one of his own local expeditions, gathering specimens of local plants for shipment back to /Ahimsa‐extending, part of an ongoing agreement with /Somatic‐diversity. Survival‐Optimizer seemed to make a point of emphasizing that this was not strictly necessary—/Ahimsa‐extending already had specialists with existing arrangements in the area—but that he simply wanted to. It was an activity that he preferred, exploring new types of flora.

He also pointed out that her pref‐spec implied she would enjoy the activity too—usually. It also indicated that she would enjoy it more in the presence of her missing life‐partner.

It felt strange, having this alien try to advise her on her happiness. It was also a bit embarrassing, knowing that her pref‐spec twigged her that well. She found that she had developed a taste for roaming around an alien forest, peering at strange broom‐like fungi and the pudgy rodents that hid underneath.

There was a placid meditativeness to it, a satisfaction that came with successfully sealing each new specimen into its maintenance pod, and she felt guilty enjoying it without Asami there to share it.

And then, the evening after that, she stayed out with the Thinker youth to study the stars of Andromeda. Perhaps it would have been more romantic without the handy internal guide to star names and constellations, but it was still interesting in its own right, especially that the Thinkers even had constellations. Perspective‐pursuer explained that early Thinkers had held plenty of animist and nearly‐religious theories about the world that were perfectly consistent with the idea that shapes in the stars might have meaning.

So the time passed.

Asami tapped her fingers against the side of the faux window, looking out into the simulated depths of space.

Well, not quite the depths of space. They were pulling up on the edges of the Karun system, and from here she could pick out the local star and even see some of the planets, including their destination, the planet Persepolis—though that admittedly required asking the ship to point it out to her.

The trip here had given Simona and her plenty of time to argue the ins and outs of future arrangements, but now she wanted to focus her mind on the upcoming mission. This latest incident, an unusual attack by alien commandos foiled by mysterious magical girls, fit squarely into her group’s purview, and that was before one considered the grief cube supply chain angle. The lines of evidence pointed toward Akemi Homura’s involvement, and despite the apparent lack of direct targeting, the presence of Ryouko’s grandfather in the incident was… concerning. It made for a pattern of unusual attacks not just on Ryouko herself, but on her family members, considering alien commandos were also responsible for the death of Ryouko’s grandmother and her company in the Pollux shipyard.

Was it more evidence of coordination between the TCF conspiracy and the squid, one that Homura had needed to intervene against? Why did Ryouko’s family matter once again, or could it be just a coincidence?

It hadn’t been obvious that the magical girls which had rescued Abe were Homura’s at first, but the conclusion was clear: “Sato Reika”, by personality, appearance, and magic, was clearly none other than the missing Ancient Yasuhiro Rin, bringing along her wife Jeannette Smith. And the particular electricity magic Abe had witnessed confirmed Misa Virani’s involvement.

Yuma had been furious. Rin and Jeannette had been part of her inner circle when investigating the TCF conspiracy, and either Homura had recruited them out from under her, or they had been Homura’s the whole time.

What did it all mean? There were plenty of theories to sift through, but by now the leading edge of evidence collection was complete; they were there to see if there was anything left, and anything that might be learned by, say, infiltrating the local alien force, with the assistance of the spec ops unit traveling with them.

Not that she would be involved in anything so dangerous, or even be allowed to go on‐planet. No, she and her wormhole powers were too valuable, so she would stay in orbit on the cruiser HSS Mandela, which could exit the system at the first sign of trouble.

She sensed Simona approaching, the soul gem signature veering down the corridor towards her alcove.

“What’s this about?” she asked, before Simona even turned the corner.

“The AIs are working on their analysis of the sensor data from the logistics facility,” Simona said, without missing a beat. “This is from reflective reconstruction, hot off the press.”

Asami had to look up what “reflective reconstruction” even meant, and learned that it was a term for squeezing extra information from streams of raw sensor data, in forms that weren’t intended in the design of the sensor itself. For instance, from secondary or tertiary reflections after an initial reflection of off a wall or other object, hence the term. Though in practice, the name was outmoded and that simple‐sounding idea—when it involved numerous sensors, enemy interference, excessive noise and other factors—became horrendously complicated, and was now a field dominated by AIs.

But by then Simona had already sat down beside her, calling up a hologram to play on the ship’s wall, heedless of passerby, who would have all been cleared anyway.

The holostream did not make for simple viewing, labeled as a partial reconstruction of alien activity inside a storage area where all direct sensors and drones had been destroyed or disabled. As such, it was low resolution and smeared, with entire swathes of voxels marked up with probability indicators and other metadata, as well as entire invisible sectors, which were difficult to render properly in three dimensions.

She had only a breakneck training in forensics to lean on, but with her implants clearing away some of the confusing data, she was able to spot the central point: this was a recording of alien commandos interacting with a large, round storage container, shaped like an archaic furnace. In the recording, what it held was blurred out, but she knew a grief cube reliquary when she saw one.

“They’re… picking up grief cubes?” she said, still trying to turn that over in her mind. “But why? How?”

The aliens had never shown any evidence of being able to see or detect grief cubes, and it had appeared that they could not even interact with them. There had been occasional reported alien attempts to investigate or study magical girl logistics, but…

“Not just that,” Simona said, fussing with the perspective of the holostream. “Two decades, and this is the most understanding they’ve ever shown, and they’re touching the damn things. It means something. Especially after the incident near the asteroid.”

By that, she meant the Cephalopods being affected by demons on the alien cruiser Yuma and Kyouko had boarded. What did it mean? There was one possible answer staring them in the face.

“Could these Cephalopods be more Human‐like somehow?” Asami asked. “Modified to interact more with grief‐based constructs?”

More emotional? she thought, but did not say. It was a natural leap of logic, but seemed too speculative for the evidence they had.

“Maybe,” Simona said. “That’s one hypothesis. It would be a dangerous, disturbing development, potentially war‐relevant. It’s already making its way up the chain of command.”

“Then it hardly seems like a coincidence Akemi got involved,” Asami said. “Though, apparently she didn’t think it was worth intervening in the other two raids.”

There had been two other squid raids on grief cube storage sites, in different systems. Those had been complete successes for the enemy, unfortunately—almost no surveillance data, or much of anything else, had survived. Whatever grief cubes had been on‐site were missing. They had only been stopped where Homura’s agents had intervened.

“How did they know to even be here?” Simona asked.

“How do they know anything?” Asami shot back.

An empty retort, but Simona knew what she meant.

“Anything else?” Asami asked, after a moment.

“Not really,” Simona sighed. “The alien self‐destruct sequence is as effective as always, and we don’t understand enough about their advanced biotech to infer anything conclusive. Some of the commandos’ genetic material seems novel, but novel in what way? It’s not unusual for Spec Ops to have unusual enhancements. Even ours do.”

Asami knew more than most about Spec Ops bioenhancements, but held her tongue. Simona had mostly learned to stop lecturing Asami about topics she already understood; it was best she reciprocated, a little.

Fully understanding an alien creature’s biology to the point of running biotech‐caliber studies took considerable time and study, and that was without implants, bioenhancements, and deliberate obfuscation. Two decades of war had given Governance little true comprehension of the Cephalopods.

“So then we wait,” Asami said, “or you find something on‐planet that makes this trip worth it.”

She turned her head toward the viewing pane, where the dot of Persepolis was now clearly visible and growing in size. Local space was serene at a glance, but for the rest of them, just making it through orbit wasn’t entirely without risk, even with their healthy complement of escorts.

“You better get going,” Asami said. “Don’t get yourself killed.”

Simona was already unhappy by the time she landed. Or perhaps frustrated was the better term.

The locals had done everything by the book. The problem was, the book emphasized getting everything back up and running, not facilitating an upcoming investigation. As far as they were concerned, the “mysterious magical girl team” that had intervened in the attack was clearly just some MagOps group, and it had taken quite a while for someone senior enough to know otherwise to intervene. By then, the site had been contaminated—a downside to the continued secrecy surrounding Homura’s actions.

The MSY investigation team that followed had done all they could. Clairvoyant‐enhanced telepathic interviews with key witnesses, magic‐based tracing of everyone involved—everything reasonable had been done, and it all amounted to not much more than she had already told Nakihara‐san.

Governance was handling the traditional surveillance angle, tracing the magical girls back to their arrival on planet, and before, with assistance from MSY investigators. Others were working to try to trace them afterwards.

What was their field team even supposed to do?

The local team lead, Montalcini, got Simona up to speed on that.

“And finally we have a team—you—that will be trying to analyze the squid angle of things directly,” Montalcini said. “That means working tightly together with the military, who are organizing a substantial ground assault on the aliens. Your goal will be to get ahead of the shifting front and access alien databanks before they’re wiped in the enemy’s retreat. As specialists, you won’t be asked to take frontline combat roles, but it will still be far from safe.”

An audible and telepathic murmur passed through the dozen or so magical girls that had gathered there. They had been told about potential danger before they arrived, and that they might end up near the combat lines, but they hadn’t been told this.

“I know what you’re thinking, this is all a bit sudden, and why are we pushing so hard on alien intel gathering? The truth is, the Far Seers were consulted on the matter, and they’ve told us that we need to be more aggressive about gathering information from the aliens. So, that’s what we’ll do. Local Command is more than happy to cooperate, given the additional resources we’ve brought in system; they’re sick of the stalemate on this planet.”

Mina Montalcini was playing it a bit cute, Simona thought. She was a member of the Cult’s Theological Council, which overlapped membership with the Far Seers, and the two had recently entered into a certain partnership. In all likelihood she had been involved in the “intel” gathering herself. But why was Simona being included in—

“Del Mago,” Mina said, interrupting her thought.

“Yes?”

“You’re probably wondering why you’re here and not with the team tracing Akemi’s magical girls. The answer is that our lead work has shown traces of those magical girls all over the front lines. Given that, Chitose suggested you be on hand for this, especially since you have some squid combat experience.”

That wasn’t the most complete of reasons, but Simona could read between the lines. Yuma thought, for whatever reason, that investigating the squid would be the most productive direction. She also wanted to see if Simona could behave, and wouldn’t mourn her terribly much if she got killed.

Probably.

“I understand,” she said.

Mina gave her a look, and after a moment the telepathy started. She didn’t even bother trying to hide it from the others.

There’s more to it than that, Mina thought.

I thought as much, Simona replied. But what can’t be said out loud to the rest of the group? Do we fear our communications could be compromised?

There are two factions capable of that, Mina thought, staring at her rigidly. One of them, Akemi’s group, has already been here, and it is impossible to hide that we are trying to trace them.

A short rhetorical pause.

The other one though, the TCF terrorists… they’re here now, and we would prefer they not find out we’re onto them. Our surveillance telepaths have picked up some glimmers, and we think they’re heading for the front too. We can only speculate why.

But why does that recommend me? Simona thought. I have a connection to Akemi, not the terrorists.

Akemi trusted you to operate independently when the TCF conspiracy was at its strongest. Yet even now, she won’t work with the Task Force or the Church. Feels worthwhile to have you on board, then, don’t you think?

I won’t argue with that, Simona thought. Is there anything else?

Nothing else, Mina thought.

She paused, her eyes resting on Simona for the interim. There was definitely something else.

Well, I have been wondering if I could persuade you to join our Church, she thought finally. After all, I hear that amidst the great public debate over the veracity of our Goddess’s recent visions, you’ve been clearheaded enough to understand that they’re real.

Simona peered into the other woman’s dark eyes. Unlike most of them, Mina was aged into her twenties, perhaps as a reflection of her leadership role, both on this mission and in the Cult. Simona considered herself good at reading people, but wasn’t surprised to find the much older woman inscrutable.

Was the woman being entirely honest with her? And even if she wasn’t, did it matter? Simona wanted to be where the action was and, as far as she could tell, Montalcini wanted her there too.

It felt strange to consider, but she would have preferred Nakihara be with her as well. Even unreliable allies were useful, and Asami must have had experience deflecting Cult solicitations. They’d become rather more aggressive lately. Unfortunately, Nakihara had done her the disfavor of proving too crucial to the war effort to risk on the ground.

Your goddess is at least right about Ryouko still being alive, I’ll give her that. But I don’t think Ryouko would appreciate my joining the Cult, especially considering the religious treatment she’s starting to receive from some of its members. I’m grateful for your trust in me on this mission, but when it comes to the Cult, I must decline.

Well, I’m hoping Shizuki’s opinion will eventually change on that, in the Goddess’s own time. In the meantime, I’m sure we’ll work well together.

“I won’t disappoint you,” Simona said out loud.

Simona would be traveling to the front with three other Task Force agents, all three with powers directly relevant to the task at hand. Maria de León was a clairvoyant whose powers were similar to those of Kuroi Kana—that is, she could see the past, but in this case only when touching an object connected to that past, particularly dead bodies.

Maria would be the likely star of their investigative efforts, but Patricia von Rohr provided magic hacking and electronic forensics, and Arya Death rounded out the set as their teleporter, capable of a reasonable mix of distance and fast reset time.

She… knew Patricia, of course, but she viewed that as only a good thing. They had worked together before. The other details didn’t matter.

There was one additional consideration: because of the risk of encountering the TCF conspiracy on this mission, a soul mage took a moment to link their soul gems to a small magical token, a keychain‐sized Incubator plush that Yuma had been working on for long‐range communication. In the event of any kind of compromise—an intrusive mind‐read, for instance—it would trigger a distress pulse. It could also be used for normal communication.

Simona wasn’t sure if she hoped she would need it.

For all that Simona prided herself on her unflappable experience, she simply wasn’t a specialist in ground combat against aliens. Far from it, in fact—she lacked the basic ground training that all magical girls her age had gone through, with only her recent space training for the jumpstrike mission to point to. That was still months of simulated combat, but it wasn’t quite the same.

Most of their recent Task Force training had focused on combat against human forces, especially magical girls, given the threat of the TCF conspiracy.

So she had to admit a bit of nervousness as they mounted into their personnel carrier, eyeing the shimmering active camouflage armor and drone ports as she entered. Ground combat was notorious for chewing up inexperienced magical girls—the Magi Cæli had more bodyloss, but better gem recovery rates—and Simona didn’t exactly fancy having her gem shattered by artillery as her broken body sank slowly into the mud. There were nearby clairvoyants on constant lookout, and they could teleport out as a squad at the drop of a hat, but still, nothing was foolproof.

This is only while still in the rear, she reminded herself. They would travel on foot or by teleporter for all the parts that mattered, including the approach to the front itself. Even if an alien drone spotted them, even if an artillery strike gutted their vehicle, there was no way they’d still be there by the time it reached them. At the moment, there was simply no need to spend teleporter resources moving in their own safe zones.

And if something else happened, perhaps with the magical girls of the TCF conspiracy, then the magic on their soul gems would alert a teleportation backup squad instantly—even a lost connection would draw them in, like a dead man’s switch.

She took a moment to review the mission in her mind.

In accordance with their given directives, local Command had put together a plan for a set‐piece offensive, taking advantage of a weakness in the alien line to gain ground and help the Task Force grab whatever intel they could. Here, the aliens had anchored their flanks on a pair of natural barriers—a major mountain range on their right, and a large patch of swampland on the left. The aliens avoided over‐relying on terrain when possible, given the prevalence of magical girl‐based tricks, but here they were constrained on resources—and the humans had thus far not committed that many magical girls.

For what they wanted, a simple teleportation‐based spec ops raid might have sufficed, but such a straightforward approach had led to mishaps in the past. The aliens weren’t shy about bombarding their own command bunkers if they thought it could eliminate a magical girl team. It would be safer to conduct it as part of a larger operation.

The aliens were right to fear relying on terrain. While the human military’s specialist ground clearers were rare, dependent on highly specific magical powers, they very much got the job done, turning even the worst terrain into reasonably laid out corridors of advance. Montalcini herself would be filling that role here, using her water‐based powers to make the swamps passable before the aliens realized the threat.

It took a lot to achieve an offensive like this. The kinds of force concentration necessary were often all too easily spotted, and columns of advancing units were juicy targets for all manner of artillery, air, and even subterranean power. A JIT teleportation relay could make the first problem easier, but otherwise it was by now a very old problem.

Simona’s part in all that seemed comparatively minor. She and the rest of the team would wait in the staging area and teleport in only when alien resources were sufficiently stretched and local communications were sufficiently disrupted. There, at the preidentified sector command bunker, they would strip everything they could from the local servers and personnel, relying on a hefty dose of magic.

The vehicle began moving with a slight rumble, rolling across the landscape as fast as the terrain allowed, following the roads laid out through a series of low rolling hills, with a missile launcher or artillery emplacement hidden behind seemingly every rise. The swamps were still quite a ways away, beyond their frontline fortifications.

Everything was quiet, everyone wrapped up in their thoughts or pre‐combat preparation in the darkness of their armored vehicle, which lacked transparent viewing panels. In addition to the four Task Force agents, there were two human Spec Ops members to help coordinate, eyes glassy as their minds wandered their command interfaces.

Eventually, they rendezvoused with their combat escort as they entered the inner human defense lines. This was two additional vehicles of soldiers, assigned to give them cover.

She finally let out her breath when the vehicle rolled to a stop and the walls unfurled around them, letting them jump out. She consoled herself that her TacComp had yet to suggest emotional suppression, which would have been quite embarrassing before entering any actual combat.

They had a few moments to gather themselves, concealed within a grove of fast‐growing local vine‐trees, still relevant to combat despite all the technology on both sides. The rumbling in the distance made it clear that the operation had already started, though they could only track its progress through their uplink to local Command. Things were going well—it was time to move.

Arya, their teleporter, summoned a polearm and slammed it into the ground, a violet circle shimmering around them for a moment. Around them, similar effects surrounded their combat escort.

It would take two jumps to reach their destination, but their teleporter only needed to pause in between for a short while, just long enough for them to observe one of the protected staging grounds, a trio of mobile artillery pieces billowing with ozone smoke as they shelled distant targets, underneath the green protective shell of a barrier generator. That girl waved at them, reminding her uncomfortably of Ryouko.

She had to reflect: Would Ryouko have been nervous on a mission such as this? Of course not.

Then they were there. The command bunker was already mostly cleared by an army teleportation squad, and when the circle around them faded and she could move freely again, they found themselves in a dome‐like room filled with terminals and wall‐sized holographic displays. Bits and pieces of smoldering alien remains lay scattered around the room, though two aliens remained intact, bathed in a pale yellow light that she immediately registered as an unfamiliar magic.

But their local status updates made clear something unexpected had happened: the advance team had apparently arrived in the middle of the aliens fighting each other, with most of the aliens already dead and the remainder self‐destructing, except for two bodies that a magical girl had managed to catch in a stasis field.

It happened sometimes for the squid to attack each other. Typically, they didn’t hesitate to eliminate their own if they thought they were magically compromised. But of course, there had been no magical girls yet in the area to do such a thing—or there shouldn’t have been.

You’re finally here! a girl thought, not moving from her position near the doorway. We need your postcognitive clairvoyant. We were trying to contact you, but with so much interference on the comms…

Patricia moved to aid her counterpart with some of the alien electronics, but it was clear who needed the most help. Even as Maria moved to crouch over the alien bodies, Simona put a hand on her shoulder, infusing her with the orange glow of her enhancing magic.

Simona closed her eyes, allowing herself to be fed a memory stream of the past, though in this case as a black and white tableau with dramatic shadows and exaggerated movement. It reminded her of film noir, and it was very odd to see Cephalopods depicted in this way.

The aliens notoriously never expressed emotion, but if it was possible to guess from gesture alone, the aliens in the memory were agitated, or definitely very surprised, if the wild gesticulation could be taken at face value. Maria expressed surprise at the behavior—so it wasn’t just a quirk of the vision, then.

Maria frowned, her brow wrinkling, and Simona watched as the girl strained to reach through time and metaphysics, strands of magic spooling and unspooling around the aliens’ bodies. Simona boosted her power further; scrying the past was directly entropy‐defying and very difficult.

Then the vision advanced, the door to the room sliding open. A series of explosions rocked the memory, followed by a torrent of lasers. It seemed the base had been rigged to blow, but the attacking aliens had deployed forcefields that contained most of the blasts. The aliens inside the room took casualties but retreated to cover where they could, returning fire and inflicting casualties in return. Some of them moved between cover points, burying their laser cutters into the electronics around them as they went, melting everything they touched.

Before they could finish, both sides in the alien firefight reeled as the human advance team teleported in. The defending side didn’t even bother trying to fight, detonating on the spot, while the attacking side was quickly killed, with two bodies caught in a magical girl’s stasis field—which brought them back to the present.

Maria shook her head.

I don’t know if I believe it, but it’s my own magic, and the imagery is pretty clear. None of that really made any sense, given how we know the aliens to behave. More likely magic was involved here. Someone other than us. But the strange thing is, if the aliens here had been magically compromised, the magic should have shown up in the vision as color. That’s how my visions work.

Simona put a fist to her mouth, considering the matter for a few moments, while Maria did as well.

No, I think I trust my magic, Maria thought. There weren’t any other magical girls involved. The squid must have made a mistake, and wrongly concluded the alien command staff here were compromised. Our advance team was only moments away, after all, subversion was plausible.

I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of deliberate inter‐alien violence, Simona thought, shaking her head. Not just cleaning house on potential magical compromise, I mean. If you believe Nakihara’s vision, there are differences within the Cephalopods. But this is speculation.

There’s something else worth talking about, Patricia thought, interjecting into their conversation for the first time. The remnants of this bunker’s servers are full of surveillance data on Medes and local human activity, collected by stealth satellites we apparently haven’t noticed. They’ve been watching us carefully both before and after the raid on the grief cube logistics site, seemingly without any interest in the battlefield itself. They even had a special monitor for certain individuals—mostly local leadership, but the list includes an unusual entry that I’m pretty sure is Kuroi Abe.

There was an active silence on their telepathy channel for a few seconds, especially after they started to review Patricia’s files. There was nothing crazy about the aliens monitoring human activity, of course, but they tended to stick to items of military importance. A lot of what was being tracked was far more mundane than the aliens typically bothered with, and the surveillance assets used would have had far more military utility simply watching the battlefield for attacks like the one they had just launched.

Are we done here, then? Maria asked Patricia. You seem to have everything.

We’ve just finished collecting the surviving physical hardware for analysis, Patricia said, holding up a sealed preservation canister—the Spec Ops behind her were carrying more.

Let’s get out of here before they nuke the place, Arya thought, readying her teleportation magic. The squid know damn well how important intelligence is.

There wasn’t time for Simona to really consider the situation until they were already on their way back, away from the main combat formations, who would hopefully manage to continue their good progress. A while later, they exited the danger zone, and their combat escort peeled away and returned to the front, leaving them motoring alone through the rear. Soon, the swamp dropped away, replaced by a series of low hills.

She found it hard to stay focused, her thoughts seeming to slip away from her repeatedly. She should have been relieved—the mission had been a success. Yet she even resorted to contacting Asami through their Incubator plush for some discussion. Maybe it would help her think.

So they really are targeting Ryouko’s family, Asami thought, telepathy beaming all the way down from her perch in orbit. But why? It doesn’t make any sense.

It makes a bit more sense if you factor in the TCF conspiracy, but why would they care about Kuroi Abe? Simona thought. Especially now that Ryouko isn’t even here. We’re missing something, I think.

It’s always been strange that the aliens attacked Ryouko on the HSS Laplace, before she became the Hero of Orpheus, Asami thought. They killed her grandmother before that, too. Did the TCF conspiracy just predict Ryouko would be that important? Either way, I don’t like the idea that the squid are obsessed with her to the point they’d target her relatives. Is she really going to be okay, so deep in their territory?

She’ll be fine, Simona thought, feeling an uncharacteristic pain pounding in her temples.

She allowed her focus to drift, even as they said their goodbyes and closed the channel. Her first adventure out into ground combat had been more productive than they had any reason to expect, other than Far Seers meddling, but it still wasn’t clear just what they had gotten from it. Some more tantalizing hints, but no real contact or clues. But—

A pulse of energy in her soul gem, daggers at the very core of her being.

Her world shot back into focus, and she realized someone was trying to listen in on her thoughts.

The other magical girls realized an instant before she did, and the call for help back to the other team should have already been on its way. In less than a minute—

Their personnel carrier lurched to a bone‐crunching stop, and while they were still jumbled into the front of the vehicle, using shards of emergency telekinesis to cushion themselves, a series of sharp green vines smashed through the floor in a hail of shattered armor and spalling that should have been instantly lethal to all occupants.

Maria dropped to the floor, briefly exhausted by the wave of protective shielding she had summoned—not her primary power. Despite her exertions, one of the human Spec Ops was registering critical damage and entering fugue, and Simona had lost three of her fingers.

Simona processed that in tiny fractions of a second, but still not fast enough.

A stinging pain on her ankles announced two vines latching onto her flesh, thorns hooking themselves inward, and even as she tried to pull away, more emerged from the ground in a cloud of mud and debris, raining her flesh with metal even as they flailed at her limbs.

She shoved the pain away, pulling at the vines with direct force before further attacks could land. Around her, the smoke‐filled ruins of their vehicle choked out her vision, so that she could barely see Maria struggling with the same vines on the floor, oozing blood. She could not see where the others were, suggesting they had managed to escape. She wasn’t sure—there was some kind of interference.

The vines began to give way with surprising ease, but before she had any time to reflect on that, she felt a pulse of magic jolt into her from below. Even as she tried to react, it surged into her soul gem, ripping at something in her mind so quickly it left her reeling, world spinning.

But she’d incorporated the anti‐magic powers she’d manifested at the pulsar into her telepathic defenses. A reflexive, desperate burst of magic broke her free, both of the vines and whatever telepathic attack it was channeling.

By then, she had managed to gain some of her bearings. She needed to get Maria free—the girl had burned most of her energy saving the team. But there was some kind of magic field around Simona, blocking her ability to communicate or even detect the others. It was also blocking the distress beacon that should have been wired into their soul gems, and mimicking their telepathic signal, circumventing the dead man’s switch. A stunt like that couldn’t last long—but it didn’t have to. Whoever had done this was coordinated and powerful.

The thing about magic—there were always loopholes.

Immediately, she stuck out her hand—grimacing at the bloody stumps where fingers had been—and pumped a pulse of magic into the Incubator figurine on Maria’s body. If she could just amplify the signal…

There, and easier than she had expected. A quick burst of anti‐magic freed Maria from her vines as well. Now they just needed to survive long enough for help to arrive.

That was easier said than done. She pushed aside some of the smoke with a puff of telekinesis, peering past the remnants of their vehicle, now strewn in pieces within the burning brush. It was strange already that she hadn’t experienced a follow‐up attack, and now it became clear that the others had been holding the enemy off.

She saw no sign of the human foes she had expected. Instead, peering into the forest nearby, she could only see a squadron of drones, about a dozen rotary‐wing fliers flitting in and out of the trees, just barely within human sight range. They should have been easy pickings for magical girls, but all the drones showed clear signs of magic assistance, detectable even through the interference. As she watched, one of them blinked fifty feet to her right, evading a fusillade of violet beams. One of the others began exuding visible pulses of red light, pure force energy tearing through Patricia’s drones.

Her squad was suffering from the surprise attack—Patricia had lost an arm somehow, wound sealed off by her body, and the fugued human Spec Ops lay in pieces nearby. Simona couldn’t even see where the other one was.

Simona dove to the side, hiding herself behind a piece of metal just as another vine shot out of the ground.

How was this happening? Were the drones and the vines and the telepathy the produce of a drone‐specialist magical girl? She had never seen one so powerful. This must be like the drones in the recording Homura had left in Argentina—each one operated by a different magical girl, somehow. They had planned for the possibility, but hadn’t planned on being outnumbered three‐to‐one.

Simona stabbed the barrel of her sniper rifle through the cover in front of her, digging into her soul for the required power. Simulation training had proven anti‐magic was her best shot against other magical girls, as long as she achieved some measure of surprise.

It just required a little focus and time. She hoped she had enough power in her soul gem to make a difference. It wouldn’t do to underestimate.

A vine tore out of the ground below her and grappled her torso, sinking thorns an inch deep into her belly and back. She ignored it.

She emptied as much magic out of her soul gem as she dared, leaving only a bare trickle to keep herself alive. There was no point in holding back; the cavalry should be on its way, and she would only have the element of surprise once. But she would be leaving herself dangerously vulnerable afterward—if the drones were not entirely dependent on magic, for example, and had some simple explosives as backup. Or if some of them simply escaped her attack.

But right now, even a bad plan was better than no plan.

With a high‐pitched whine, a blinding orange light flared out of her rifle, crossing almost instantly the distance to the attacking drones. Bursting like a firework, it filled the area with a dazzling and searing array of crisscrossing beams, keenly targeted. Was the area a hundred meters? Two hundred? Three? She wasn’t sure; she hadn’t calibrated.

The vines scourging her flesh flickered and vanished, and her combat net came immediately back online, as did her missing telepathic connection with the other magical girls. The interference, at least, was gone.

But as the light faded and she noted with relief that some of the enemy drones had fallen from the sky, trailing smoke into the brush, she felt herself being slammed down into the ground with massive force.

She couldn’t understand what was going on. It didn’t hurt, not exactly, not yet, but with her face in the dirt and a full blast of magical force crushing her body, filling her eyes with painful red, she didn’t have the resources left to resist, or seize control back or… do anything, really. She could barely even think enough to despair, and none of her implants were responding.

Not… so hot after all, was I? Is this… really how it’s going to end? What a joke I was.

Incoming, Maria thought, telepathy distant with emotional suppression.

Incoming… what?

It took long seconds for her to realize she was free—she had lost track of time.

But as her vision clarified and she reclaimed her senses—observing incredulously that she was not dead—she realized that the cavalry had indeed arrived, and that someone was pumping a wave of healing magic into her body, and had been for a while.

Did we get them? she thought.

Depends what you mean by ‘get’, the healer thought. You fried about six of the drones, follow‐up artillery got a few, but the rest were able to teleport out shortly after we arrived, along with the remains. Nothing left to study. Arya is dead; it’s possible she was deliberately targeted first. Both Spec Ops will survive.

Simona sat up, digesting the information as the healer moved on to one of the others. She spotted Meiqing walking over, and tilted her head to acknowledge her.

They didn’t get very much intel from me, Simona thought, now that she finally had the time to check her own telepathic damage. I’ve got that going for me, at least.

Meiqing made a face.

Maria’s certain they pulled a good deal from Arya. At least it wasn’t a one‐way street, which it would have been if you all died, so your heroics mattered. Patricia and our soul mage were both able to get a sense of the drones. There was a ghost in those machines.

I’m glad my heroics are measured in terms of how much intel I gather, Simona thought, straining to pull herself together. I think I mean that, actually. But what are you saying about the drones? I know they were operated by enemy magical girls, I understood Homura’s warning.

Homura didn’t warn us the drones would have soul gems inside.

Chapter 72: The Lives of the Many

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 07:41:17 +0200

〈In the following text, 〈〉① indicates content redacted to those without security clearance. The number indicates the degree of security clearance required to access enclosed content.〉①

For all the deep sincerity of Governance ideology, there remain a number of topics, primarily the theoretical, where exact policy is uncertain, or even controversial, and it is not clear what exactly would be decided were the time to come.

Virtualization is one such topic. Here, the dedication of Governance to maintaining much of the Human condition has always been undermined by the same AIs Governance depends on. If it is acceptable for AIs to live in full virtuality, and acceptable for humans to enter virtuality, even for purposes as quotidian as entertainment, then why can’t humans stay in virtuality, perhaps even permanently?

Such a question brings two aspects of Governance ideology into direct conflict. On the one hand, there is a moral imperative to avoid sapient death at all costs, which would undoubtedly be served by the provision of mind uploads, or at least backups. On the other hand, there is the ideological mandate to maintain the continuity of Human experience, tradition, and culture. After all, if that is lost, is it even meaningful to say that Human civilization has survived?

Until recently, this unpleasant dilemma had been avoided thanks to the all‐too‐mundane fact that mind‐uploading was simply beyond Humanity’s technical ability, and on track to remain so for centuries. That no massive investment was made to change this, perhaps on the scale of Project Eden, was due to the simple lack of need. Before the war, sapient death was extremely rare, and usually confined to individuals who had knowingly consented to the risk. As such, the need did not seem pressing.

Of course, the advent of the Contact War has brought the topic into all too sharp relief. Not only has the ethical disaster of death spilled out everywhere, but tremendous investment in biotechnical initiatives, coupled with reverse‐engineered alien biotechnology, has reduced the projected timeline for virtualization down to perhaps a century or less. 〈Moreover, the existence of humans who do have effective backup abilities, magical girls, has made several of the relevant philosophical questions moot, even if the matter remains classified to most. To have backups be the confine of a privileged few, whatever the circumstances, is an affront to egalitarianism.†〉②

At the moment, the tremendous death toll of the war crowds out most other concerns. Were the requisite technology developed, it would be deployed to save lives via the creation of backups, similar to those AIs already have.¹ Still, whether or not humans might live in virtuality remains up for debate.

〈† See Preserving Social Equality #3: Magic for a discussion of this and similar problems.〉②
¹ See On the Prohibition of Duplicates for a discussion of Governance ideology regarding backup “copies” of sentient beings.

— The Representative’s Magazine, “The Boundaries of Governance Ideology,” article excerpt, 2457.

಄·If life eternal ≈ sky, as decreed by the philosophers of old ~ Then soar on to the stars, the planets, the moons and comets ~ And forget the departed land|಄·If life eternal ≈ ocean, as decreed by the philosophers of old ~ Then linger in the shoals, the icebergs, the storms and currents ~ And remember the forbidden land

— Thinker Rumination

There had seemed to be endless material to gather inside /Somatic‐diversity’s mountain lab, but Ryouko eventually prevailed upon herself to have a look around outside. Her time here was not unlimited, and knowledge of alien society was at least as useful as of alien science. Moreover, it might help alleviate the restlessness to walk around a bit, rather than peer over the shoulders of alien technicians.

The aliens placed few restrictions on her movements, asking only that she stay within an easy flight of the lab, in case further scans were needed. Indeed, Mountain‐wandering even seemed pleased by the idea of her heading out alone, providing advice and opinions, though she noticed the hero did not offer to guide or accompany her. Another test?

Instead, when she made her way out of a service tunnel, she was accompanied only by a small antigrav drone, shaped rather like a floating eyeball, that followed along silently behind her and could be contacted for questions. The distant sensing appendage of Survival‐Optimizer, as the alien himself described it.

They were still high on the mountain, six thousand meters above sea level and two hundred fifty‐five Kelvin, well below freezing. The air was thin and dry, with an oxygen pressure only forty percent Earth sea level. It was a rather more hospitable climate than she had entered by, but the difficult terrain ahead was enough to tempt her to use magic, if that wouldn’t have drawn unpleasant attention.

Instead, she had asked for and received an ample set of equipment: alpine clothing and mountaineering gear, procured within minutes in exactly her size—one benefit of all the measuring they did on her, she supposed. Feathered‐Defender had been curious about it at first, but couldn’t understand why she would willingly enter such an inhospitable environment.

The view as she emerged was incomparable to anything she had seen outside of simulation, as inexperienced as she was with mountain vistas: a horizon of snow‐capped rock, with verdant valley below, brilliant in the clear morning sky. Mountain‐wandering had suggested she and Clarisse descend toward more populated locales—after a brief huddle with Survival‐Optimizer and other senior staff about whether the proper information security protocols were in place.

Thankfully, there was little in the way of true peril. /Somatic‐diversity enjoyed testing their physical limits, and the suggested route down was hardly easy going—but it had stable rock, consolidated snow, and hidden radio beacons regularly pointing the way. She made excellent time, thanks to Clarisse guiding her through the necessary ropework.

There were no other climbers; a decree‐request from the Tentacle’s logistics managers had caused most civilians to route away from the mountain. According to Survival‐Optimizer’s drone, the only ones being kept around were those with the pref‐specs least likely to leak to the media, and most likely to make the desired impression on Ryouko. That included even the fliers.

The hours slipped by, climbing transitioned to trekking, and soon enough the air thickened and the temperature rose as she approached the level of the highest‐flying Thinkers, some of which turned to pass by, extending telepathic greetings as they peered down at the unfamiliar alien. It wasn’t long before the boldest of them came in for a landing, just as she was resting on a rock eating through a noon‐time meal: a nutrient bar that the scientists had promised was optimized for her physiology.

She had been given polite advance warning, but still couldn’t help but stare at the new arrival, DZaArxb⊃Raptor‐weaving, who stood taller than her on bird‐like claws, with a second set of the usual Cephalopod tentacle arms folded underneath massive wings, covered in reptilian scales. The overall profile reminded her of the Optatum eagles Azrael had once shown her.

μ·I am privileged to make your acquaintance|μ+·It is a stroke of luck that I, of the Thinker multitudes, may be among the first to behold a new kind of sapient—even if you are dangerous, the risk is worthwhile|ν·I hear you have an empathy‐organ, may we exchange?

She accepted the request, and spent a moment digesting what she received.

μ?·Are you exploring this world and our Tentacle||ν·You are reluctant to adopt a winged‐body but a jump in a personal antigravity suit would be faster and more interesting if your species does not have the option—I can personally endorse the novelty of the experience

It actually did sound interesting, from at least a technical perspective, and the option had even come up in her planning. However, she had preferred to take the more rigorous route, both because she suspected /Somatic‐diversity wanted to see her take the long way and because she really did want to test her abilities a little.

μ·I am—2ed725g⊃Mountain‐wandering suggested I make my way down to visit the body‐transfer‐celebration of one of his grandchildren||ν·I was given the option, but preferred to experience the mountain

It was probably not a good idea to remind the alien that she was a reality‐warping warform who could just teleport the whole distance.

μ+·I should have expected that one as illustrious as Mountain‐wandering would greet you|μ+·An unusual endeavor for one of another species|ν·Though I apologize for needing to fly down separately—it would not suit this form to walk|μ?·With your permission, may I join you at the crèche

The alien stepped towards her, reaching into a small container strapped to her waist with one of her tentacle arms.

She was offering to share a savory snack she had brought, composed of the meat of a shrimp‐like creature, pasted and mixed with a starch before being sliced and deep fried.

These are basically shrimp chips, Clarisse commented, at the same time Ryouko realized the same.

She gladly accepted. It made for a welcome contrast to the nutrient bar, even if the bar had been surprisingly tasty.

I have to say, everyone I’ve met here has been pretty friendly, Ryouko thought to Clarisse. This Tentacle doesn’t seem bad at all. I wish I could show all this to Azrael.

Just hold on to this feeling when we visit the less friendly places, Clarisse thought. /Somatic‐diversity also picked its friendliest members to show you, so this isn’t even a representative sample of the Tentacle. Future visits won’t be so amicable.

Thanks for the reminder.

She set out again, knowing that it would reflect badly on her to be late. Even with the climbing complete, even with implants sustaining an otherwise unreasonable pace, without the use of magic it would still be most of a local day to trek down to her destination, down just below the tree line—and the local day was a quarter longer than Earth’s.

It was a bit amusing to reflect how quickly she could have gotten down with just one teleport, but if speed were the only goal, she could have jumped. Still she missed it; she hadn’t used her power even once since just after meeting the Thinkers, and it had started to nag at her.

As she crossed below four thousand meters, she encountered her first group of local hikers, a half‐dozen Thinkers of various shapes on a wilderness excursion, evenly divided between towering and burly and small and lithe‐looking.

Though they had been approved by security, they had been only vaguely informed of the possibility of Ryouko’s presence. The group decided to follow her on the spot, especially once a direct request from Mountain‐wandering stopped them from collecting recordings or other media of Ryouko.

Ryouko then spent a good deal of time explaining that, among other things, she was wearing an overtuned version of her species’ ancestral form, which had evolved for dry grasslands. It was all very novel to the Thinkers here.

She was starting to be concerned about the size of entourage she would get, but the next four groups they met simply exchanged greetings and a few questions before moving on, a mystery that was only solved when one of those traveling with her commented that her pref‐spec clearly suggested she wouldn’t like too large an escort, and that everyone who passed by had been requested to be on their politest behavior.

As the local sun dipped below the soaring peaks, the environment began to change, bare rock giving way to worn‐looking shrubs and stubby fronds. They looked strange, in the almost uncanny valley way plants on Earth‐like planets often did, but she didn’t know exactly why—it was the kind of thing Asami would probably have known.

An unhappy thought, but for once easily driven away by the distractions in front of her, as they turned a corner on the trail and she could see the tree line unfolding below her, the bark an earthy shade of yellow. The barely‐defined path stretched out before her, turning more definite as it transitioned from grooves in the rocks to a clearing in the trees, from which a number of cylinder‐shaped buildings protruded, grey and yellow, rock and wood.

Even more compellingly, she could tell that some of the Thinkers there were… smaller, in the large‐headed disproportionate way that her eyes immediately insisted were children.

And so they were, as a quick query to the Survival‐Optimizer drone verified. She realized quickly that it was even more obvious than she had first thought—unlike the diversity of body types among the adult Thinkers, the children were fairly uniform, ungainly‐looking and wrapped in thick coats, much as she was. Three of them even began a game of some sort, standing in a triangle and batting a small round ball around with flexible forelimbs.

∈·No matter what form we take eventually, all Thinkers grow from eggs of the Baseline form|∈·Unsuited these children are to this environment, but it is not to be abandoned until the beginning of cognitive maturity

Ryouko signaled that she understood, sending a request to the others for a bit more information about Thinker young. /Ahimsa‐extending had been strangely reticent about the topic, which invited her curiosity.

One of the Thinkers reacted, but then cast his eyes at Survival‐Optimizer’s drone, in as visible a show of asking permission as she had ever seen. But only a moment later, she experienced the familiar surging sensation of new information pouring into her mind, far faster than she could immediately react to.

Clarisse noticed the biggest novelty before she did.

The Baseline form is a mass egg layer! The old practice was to release paralarvae into their home ocean and collect the survivors later when they emerged on land. Apparently, this is before any of them become even mostly sapient. A few Tentacles still practice this.

Ryouko came to a sudden stop in the middle of the path, drawing surprise from her companions.

But, most have opted to engineer themselves to control their reproduction, as humans have, and carefully monitor a few young in a controlled part of the ocean, Clarisse added. And I do mean singular ocean—generation of new individuals is allowed only on the homeworld, to allow the Tentacles to monitor each others’ populations. The Tentacles that release many young and allow the ocean to take most—those are a small minority, and /Ahimsa‐extending and its allies consider the waste of life to be repugnant.

Well I’m glad to hear it, Ryouko thought, still taken aback. They just allowed their children to fend for themselves in the ocean?

Too many eggs to do otherwise even if they wanted to. It was part of their biology. It’s an interesting and unusual system; once the young emerge, their parents can still pick them out by pheromone. It is surprising for a high‐intelligence species to lean towards r‐selection, but not unprecedented, even on Earth.

Ryouko shook her head and resumed her walk. She was glad /Ahimsa‐extending was different, but why hadn’t they told her earlier?

Survival‐Optimizer’s drone conceded:

μ·We were concerned about how it would offend you in an initial impression, since we knew you would be repelled by the idea—you never asked again after the initial requests|ν·It is expected‒82% that you would trust us less now, but we felt the risk was warranted

It was a weak excuse, one that made Ryouko wonder what else they were hiding. They had never pretended to be fully open with her, but… it made her trust them a little less, just as he had said.

The rest of the hike passed in silence, until she spotted her flying visitor, Raptor‐weaving, seated on a rock by the entrance to the crèche.

She asked his opinion on the variance in reproductive practices.

μ∪·There are many practices that Tentacles do not agree on|μ∪·There are many different opinions on non‐sapient lifeforms, and one's own young|ν·I do not approve of the old practice, few in /Somatic‐diversity do, but for the sake of Consensus we must tolerate—to do otherwise would be what you accuse /Thinker‐preserving of

After it had become clear Ryouko’s presence was no longer a secret to /Thinker‐preserving, /Ahimsa‐extending’s coalition had lifted their media restrictions on her existence and what she was saying, though not on her location. The publicity was important, just as it would have been among humans.

Still, it was the first opinion any of the locals had shared with her about it, and he didn’t seem to be probing her about it either.

One of the hikers thought:

||ν·We too have heard of this, but it is difficult to believe—a breach in Consensus is exactly the risk reality‐warping is supposed to pose|ν+👁?·How could the rot already be in /Thinker‐preserving before direct interaction began—is it not inconsistent

It was a very good question, one that she had come to a tacit understanding with /Ahimsa‐extending on.

||ν·I can only say what I have observed to be true|ν+·But if the truth seems inconsistent, then one has to reexamine one’s assumptions

Raptor‐weaving held up a tentacle, in a gesture any human might have recognized.

|ν∪!·Let us stop this talk|ν∪·This is against decree‐request|ν+·There are young here that seek attention

Ryouko had been so absorbed into the conversation that she had failed to notice a pair of young Thinkers peeking around the corner of a building, bundled in bright red and blue clothing, and with large eyes that were frankly endearing—though perhaps it was because she had gotten a little too used to seeing cephalopods.

Raptor‐weaving made an undulating gesture with one tentacle, and the Thinker children stepped around the corner, making their way over cautiously, never breaking eye contact with her.

The smaller one in blue folded its tentacles and thought:

ৡ·Hello, strange aliens|∈·No one told us you would be visiting us here|∈·We are surprised our caregivers would allow a potential danger so close

The child’s head—the part Ryouko could see—began as a shade of pale copper‐green, with a fringe of iridescence where the skin caught the light. But as he thought, parts of it began shifting, growing darker, then brighter, before patterns of striped green and yellow began crisscrossing right‐to left, growing ever more rapidly and shifting constantly in hue and pattern.

Faster than any terrestrial octopus, Clarisse commented. This is how they originally communicated, apparently. It’s a shame they don’t seem to do it much anymore.

Ryouko was so distracted by the color show that she failed to react to the statement, until one of the hikers stepped forward and bent over the child.

|∈·That is not an appropriate comment, Fossil‐hunter—consider the signal it sends to openly distrust Humanity‐preserving and Ryouko‐supporting|∈·You should reflect upon what mistaken assumptions led to your surprise

|∪·A reality‐warper is dangerous|∪?·Humanity‐preserving knows she is dangerous, so what is the problem the red‐coated child thought, a red triangular pattern circling her eyes.

The texture of their thoughts was strange, coarser than she was used to from the other Thinkers. Was it due to their age?

ৡ·Hello|∈·It’s not a problem, I’m not offended|∈·It is a reasonable concern, after all Ryouko thought, before anyone could try to apologize to her.

She couldn’t help but notice that despite their comments about the danger she posed, they had still approached her.

Raptor‐weaving attempted to explain:

|μ·Humanity‐preserving has every incentive not to pose a danger here—this excursion can be considered a demonstration of cooperation, for both us and her|ν·Relationships of trust require both sides to believe the other trusting; statements of distrust, therefore, undermine such a relationship, even if reasonable otherwise

The previous hiker added:

|μ·Remember the lessons of Mountain‐wandering and the ice‐bears|

The blue child thought:

ν·The lab‐dwellers claim your body is stronger than Mountain‐wandering's body|μ·My sensors say an ice‐bear is far more dangerous|ν·I don't think I can trust someone so weird

The child’s thoughts were unsteady, a bit jumbled, and Ryouko realized he, too, was struggling with the multiple threads of communication. She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

The red child thought:

|μ·It would be a good idea to empathize‐open with this alien|μ+·You always fail to ask

Ryouko found herself smiling a bit at the banter, and approved the pref‐spec exchange request. The children’s pref‐specs were substantially simpler than any she had experienced so far.

μ·Such a strong preference for applying violence|μ·Your preferences are alarming and confusing—I would rather meet an ice‐bear| the blue child thought, now actually backing away.

Ryouko felt embarrassed despite herself. /Ahimsa‐extending had alluded to her bloodlust once or twice, but she had avoided the topic. And in human society, she wasn’t so exposed.

She… didn’t want to talk about it. If /Ahimsa‐extending assumed it was because she was honed for war, it served both their purposes. But apparently she was more objectionable to average Thinker sensibilities than she had realized.

The red child stopped the blue from moving further.

ν!·I just remembered—you still have emotions ≈ animal or companion‐penguin|ν+👁?·Have we driven you or Ryouko‐supporting to anger|

I rather like these children, Clarisse thought. Refreshingly blunt.

ν+·Ryouko‐supporting and I do have the ability to control ourselves, despite what emotions we may feel; we are fully sapient|ν·No| Ryouko thought, ignoring Clarisse.

The blue child responded:

ν·I don't like that idea, it sounds painful|ν?·Well, if you aren't angry, and you are really stronger than Mountain‐wandering, can you show me|

Ryouko looked at Survival‐Optimizer’s drone, seeking advice. Could she perhaps throw or lift something? She was not sure if using any real strength would constitute reality‐warping. The lines between negligible, undetectable magic usage and intrinsic bodily properties were blurred in this case.

To her surprise, Survival‐Optimizer didn’t object, not entirely.

|ν·/Somatic‐diversity has indicated a desire to observe minor reality‐warping in controlled conditions—but not here, and not near young|ν+·Perhaps they may attend later—the decision would be theirs, and their caregivers

That settled the issue for now, and they moved onward, now with the two children in tow, in a cluster that drew obvious attention, including from a few passing media drones—though these diverted their attention quickly. It wasn’t quite how Ryouko had envisaged her arrival.

The red child thought at one point:

∈·It must make life really difficult for the rest of your species, not knowing what they want|∈·It must make society a mess, not knowing what anyone else wants|+·I learned that empathize‐open‐compliance makes our form of governance stable and optimal

Survival‐Optimizer’s drone replied in Ryouko’s stead:

μ·Our understanding‒43% is that their government operates by assuming a sort of statistical average pref‐spec, built from an ensemble of modeled pref‐specs for various groupings of their species|μ+·They also impose by soft coercion a bounded preference volume, to keep things manageable|ν·Correct—our modeling of their society does not suggest‒93% it could remain stable nearly as long as ours has, even without reality‐warping

Ryouko chose not to get involved, though she was a bit chagrined at the alien description of Governance. She had in fact told them more than was strictly necessary for basic understanding, as she had gotten the impression that the Thinkers did not really get Governance.

But perhaps they understood better than she had thought. She had never said anything about ideology or Core Rights or the monoculture, and somehow the Thinkers had deduced “impose by soft coercion a bounded preference volume”. Or perhaps they simply couldn’t imagine any other way. For example, it didn’t seem to occur to them that there was hard coercion too.

At length—given the frequent interruptions of locals passing by—she arrived at the site of the body‐transfer‐celebration, which was a structure built as a cone with a circular opening in the middle to let in the sky. At the doorway Mountain‐wandering himself emerged, drawing a clear buzz of surprised telepathic activity from the crowd.

μ·I see you have made it here with plenty of time to spare, Humanity‐preserving and Ryouko‐supporting|ν·A body‐transfer‐celebration is usually attended by the child's relatives and companions, but in this case she has given her approval for your presence|ξ·I understand that you all have many questions for Humanity‐preserving and Ryouko‐supporting, but I must ask that you allow them to proceed

The crowd filtered away quickly, more smoothly than any human crowd would have, though the growing handful of children present insisted on having Ryouko promise to get them into the power demonstration—and when Ryouko tried to get out of it by asking Mountain‐wandering to approve, hoping he wouldn’t, he did.

With that settled, Survival‐Optimizer’s drone departed, and the door to the ritual site swung open, hitting her with a blast of warm, humid air that she quickly assessed as thirty‐nine Celsius, one hundred percent humidity, a configuration she immediately recognized. It was the preferred interior baseline for /Ahimsa‐extending, based on conditions on the homeworld, Great Sea.

After so long in the cold, it was almost welcome, and she immediately shed her heavy clothing, hanging it on the multi‐armed rack next to the door.

The interior of the structure was almost without walls, and the floor was covered by a soft, sandy soil, with the occasional scrubby plant, except for a large central pool, upon which the hole in the ceiling shone a beam of light. The edges near the yellow‐grey wood framing were in turn gloomy, and the dimming day cast everything in a subtle orange tint.

The only proper room was in the far back, where a small round door led to the dome‐like downloading chamber, where Mountain‐wandering’s granddaughter was being downloaded into a new body even as they waited.

Within the building the ceremony’s attendees lounged, seated on fallen logs and small embankments, or in the pool itself, most already turning to regard their alien visitor. They came in all sizes and shapes, including small children, winged forms like Raptor‐weaving, burly forms like Mountain‐wandering, and more besides, including bulgy‐eyed variants that peeked out from the water and several reedy or scrawny forms that a local computing cluster advised her were specialized for running and even deep space—from, admittedly, inside a space suit.

Though it varied by Tentacle, Thinkers were much less tied to the concept of “life‐partnership”, the closest approximation they had to marriage. Many Tentacles didn’t even entertain the concept, and there were a bevy of shorter‐term, more contractual arrangements, including a plain reproductive contract that carried no other commitments at all. By and large, however, most did care about genetic relationship, particularly that between parent and child, and to a lesser degree between siblings—that alone explained much of the turnout for this event. That few of the Thinkers present looked related was natural for /Somatic‐diversity, of course.

So Ryouko wasn’t too surprised when Mountain‐wandering introduced her to his current “regular companion”—a male—to be distinguished from the grandmother of today’s principal, who he pointed out on the far end of the building. Neither was she too surprised to learn that said “grandmother” now sported a body that wasn’t even sexually dimorphic.

Ryouko did her best not to embarrass herself in front of the meat‐laden buffet table, especially in front of the Thinker children quietly observing her—it had been a long climb down, after all. /Somatic‐diversity had no notable negative opinion of gorging oneself on food, but she found it hard to break her own social inhibitions.

Soon enough, the time came, the background telepathic chatter dying down in anticipation as they turned towards the dome in the back.

The door slid open, flooding part of the room with the warm glow of the setting sun. Did it have symbolic meaning? Was it aesthetic? Humans had always considered that kind of thing to derive from emotion, but the Thinkers—they cared anyway. At the end of the day, the kinds of preferences that drove symbolism and aesthetics and ceremony weren’t that different from those that drove reproduction, expansion, and materialism.

Except that there was serious selection pressure for the latter, enough potentially to squeeze out the former, given enough time. The Thinkers considered this so serious a threat that half of Consensus policy was devoted to preventing it, all the way to banning the hatching of young outside Great Sea.

Those were the thoughts that filled her mind as the sun filled her eyes, in the minutes it took for the new alien to make her appearance.

When she finally did, Ryouko found herself almost underwhelmed. She had been expecting wings, perhaps, or a yeti‐esque form taking after Mountain‐wandering. Instead, the Thinker looked ordinary, not terribly different from some of the other young Thinkers lounging about, though with noticeably larger proportions, less tentacle‐like limbs, and a lanky build.

There was… something uncanny about her, though. She resembled some of the scientists Ryouko had seen in the mountain facility, but rather better‐formed, not looking like she might blow away in a stiff breeze.

A telepathic update then rippled through the network, answering some of those questions—but introducing other more serious ones, enough to make Ryouko almost physically start.

The lanky form was an unusual one for a Tentacle heavily populated with fliers, swimmers, and other exotic specimens, of the kind that Ryouko had been expecting. It was optimized for long‐distance movement over land, taking a few inspirations from recently acquired design elements, from… humans. Specifically Ryouko.

There was also a more nebulous mention of moderate modifications to one of the “cognitive expansion domains”, with speculative architectural changes also based on humans, which was plenty to give Ryouko a slight, queasy feeling.

Yet at the same time, there was a restraint to it. None of the information had come from the scans that had been done on Ryouko, as she had initially feared. Instead, it had been pieced together from designs that /Somatic‐diversity already had on hand, and fragments of information that had been provided by /Thinker‐preserving. After all, beyond a certain point, the implementation details didn’t necessarily matter.

Mountain‐wandering’s thoughts carried over, addressed to the room as well as Ryouko.

μ·I must apologize for my granddaughter's intemperance, as well as not informing you of this—I could not reveal what she intended to do without breaking much precedent|ν·You should understand that it is not possible for us to prevent such imitation|μ·I invited you here so that, at least, you could see it for yourself, and speak to her yourself|ν·You should understand that I could have easily concealed this for diplomatic reasons

Indeed, the girl, who had just finished greeting her parents, had turned towards Ryouko. Their eyes met, and Ryouko felt the telepathic knock.

μ·As Mountain‐wandering told me, you are not likely to be too offended, which informed my decision|ν·Like the example of my grandfather and the ice‐bears, we often seek to empathize with other species by taking on aspects of their form|ξ·Despite his protestations, I thought this would be a suitable form to live out my next few years, and I will hardly be the only one, now that you are here—and we will be all the more your allies for it

The alien had walked up to Ryouko, and was now looking down at her, arm‐like limbs folded. If Ryouko didn’t know better, she would say she looked very satisfied with herself.

For her part, Ryouko found herself unable to stop looking. The alien really did look a bit more human, in an unsettling kind of way.

She’s not much older than you are, Clarisse thought. Well, depending on how you count that sort of thing. By my calculations she’s twenty in Earth years, though five of that was spent as a half‐sapient ocean predator, so.

|ν·With respect, I’m not sure how much can be understood about us humans just from this|ν∪·Ultimately, we are not that different|ν∪·Our Baseline forms are both land animals, we use similar limbs, we walk in similar ways, we even have the same number of eyes—it is something our scientists have speculated on

|ν·You are not sure how much can be understood because you have not tried another body—we have|ν+·There are indeed limits to the benefits of my current imitation, but they stem largely from the limited nature of it, particularly in the neurological aspects|ξ·/Thinker‐preserving has, unusually, shared little of your species' biological details, and your scans are forbidden, unless you grant your consent

Ryouko blinked, then tried to formulate the question that in human parlance would be: “Are you asking what I think you’re asking?” Then she realized that the concept probably translated directly.

μ●·Indeed||μ·I apologize for causing you any undesirable emotions; I believed that might be avoided if I asked the question indirectly|ξ·Again, I argue: a greater appreciation for your species' unique perspectives will garner more support for your cause; granting access to your scans will benefit you

She paused, but just as Ryouko was going to respond she continued:

μ·I will be open|o·My request ≈ the spiked‐crab—the more we understand you, the more you are vulnerable too|o+·Ryouko‐supporting is harder for us to understand, having no body of her own, let alone a pref‐spec; her situation is both objectionable and to our disadvantage|o+·You should empathize‐open me and know that despite this, I mean you no harm

Here, Mountain‐wandering interjected, and Ryouko realized that she had missed the nuance that he had been included as a listener in his granddaughter’s messages.

|o→·We have already discussed these possibilities, and our acquisition of this information was in exchange for other considerations I will not share|o→·I interject that we are unlikely to approve distributing anything of potential strategic importance, which covers most details of Humanity‐preserving's combat‐body|

Ryouko appreciated Mountain‐wandering’s overriding the conversation, though she doubted his granddaughter did. Still, she read her pref‐spec as requested.

That turned out to have been a good idea. Frankly, Ryouko had been starting to dislike the girl, but it turned out she really did mean well. More than that, the alien wanted to do something about humanity’s plight, and this was the most she knew how to do. PuMgI7A⊃Perspective‐pursuer was… relatable, really.

Privately, Mountain‐wandering added:

||o·Indeed, we have found even your body's homeostasis inexplicable given the data we have gathered from you so far—it is troubling to our researchers, but at the current moment we theorize‒62% it to be a form of discreet reality‐distortion|o+·Hence why we approved your demonstration later; curiosity has begun to outweigh caution

One of the terms of their agreement was that /Somatic‐diversity had to provide her with any information they found, including the purely technical, though of course she had no way except pref‐spec‐analysis to prove they weren’t lying to her.

|ν∈?·How precisely could neurological data even be used|ν∈?·Surely, the structure of your mind is not subject to change between bodies|

She did not ask how the aliens could possibly meld two foreign biologies together. That answer she already had, and it had even been used by Homura in her own creation, and in Clarisse’s—it was not a literal translation of gene to gene, or even of networks of proteins and structures. Instead, it was a more subtle transfer of abstract paradigms and designs between different contexts, an art form Governance had yet to really master.

|ν·New neural tissue of a different architecture will tend towards different patterns of thought, deepen or dry varied realms of subjective experience, privilege the conscious over the unconscious or vice‐versa, and more|ν·During the body‐transfer process it is common to expand the mind with additional implant connections or neural tissue, particularly the parts of the mind placed into new appendages—and even in Baseline Thinkers, peripheral neurology differs substantially from the central|

Ryouko took in Mountain‐wandering’s words, wrapping her head around the concept of artificially expanding a fully‐formed biological mind with additional tissue. Would it be like a second adolescence? In human society, perhaps only an AI whose computing clusters had been expanded would know.

Then Ryouko thought, to the room:

|o·If it is only data of no strategic importance, then I have no objection|o+·I can only hope that you are right, and that those who wish to share some of me will come to understand our species better|

She wouldn’t deny the whole affair made her feel a bit strange, even intruded on, but the stakes were too high to reject potential allies. And in the end, even if /Somatic‐diversity broke all their agreements and the biological data provided some ineluctable advantage to the Thinkers, it would still hardly make a difference in the ultimate balance of power.

The granddaughter made a multi‐arm gesture Ryouko did not recognize.

|o∪ৡ·Thank you|o∪ৡ·Thank you|

It was by now the dead of night, and while they were all capable of staying awake, most of the Thinkers that had attended the evening’s celebration had elected to repose or at least relax in a communal rest area provided nearby. Ryouko had joined them, but had demurred on actually sleeping among so many aliens. It still unnerved her a bit, and frankly she had been having trouble sleeping recently, with Asami missing.

So instead, she read.

Interacting with Thinker machines was often fundamentally different from what she was used to. Many things were the same, of course—turning lights on, opening doorways, and other very basic commands were still “form a basic intent, and then receive the acknowledgment”, but where human machines rapidly switched over to the use of transmitted language as the concepts got more complicated, Thinker machines, with their use of telepathy, were able to maintain communication on a more conceptual level for far longer. A surprising example was simple climate control: as she had gotten more used to the controls, she had come to realize it was more than simply “hotter” or “colder”. She could send a vague impression of how she was uncomfortable and the system would try to adapt. Though the first few tries had not been quite ideal.

Thus, while reading into Thinker archives often led to quick bursts of intuition, it was often hard to translate into a form that could be quickly relayed once they returned to Human space. Fortunately, that was the kind of task Clarisse could quietly, thanklessly, work at during her downtime.

You do actually thank me, you know, Clarisse thought.

Well, probably not enough? Ryouko thought.

Then I might actually be looking forward to having a pref‐spec, Clarisse thought.

No further elaboration came, until at length Mountain‐wandering’s granddaughter stirred, green‐skinned eyes peeling open slowly. They looked at each other for a moment.

∪?·What keeps you awake|∪?·What thinking fills your body

Ryouko considered dissembling, but decided against it. She knew Perspective‐pursuer really did want to learn what was on her mind.

·The commonly‐accepted Human notion of long‐term stability turns out to be a controversial one within Consensus|∈·Some Tentacles completely reject the idea that a ‘final’ pref‐spec is desirable, with the eldest members even designing elaborate schemes to avoid the possibility|∈·Some Tentacles, while embracing the notion of finding the best pref‐spec for oneself, differ considerably on what that means: whether to minimize it to almost nothing, to massively expand it, to align it with an external or even objective ideal; how much to focus on changing one’s pref‐spec to match the world versus changing the world—or virtual world—to match one’s pref‐spec; if an infinite cycle of pref‐specs is superior, if adopting or rejecting the pref‐specs of others is nobler, and on and on|+·One thing is for certain: my species’ authorities were overconfident, enshrining long‐term stability as the ideal goal—I see no reason why Thinker philosophy would be inapplicable, and some of those espousing opposing philosophies are millennia older than we

|⌃·To me personally, this long‐term‐stability you reference is undesirable, as it would be to most of /Somatic‐diversity, assuming I interpret it correctly|⌄·Your allies in /Ahimsa‐extending would mostly agree with your people's philosophers, of course|·It is rather uncivilized to impose a preference for it upon a whole species

Mountain‐wandering replied before Ryouko could, without even opening his eyes or moving.

|⌄+·We view the development of empathize‐open‐compliance as a civilizational achievement, one that has secured our Consensus in this universe|⌃+·But it nearly destroyed us first—we need not be so quick to condemn the survival practices of other sapients|·Not for a species structured as Humanity‐preserving has told us—they are more akin to a single, precarious Tentacle, forced to choose policies that prioritize stability above all else

Ryouko wasn’t quite sure what to say to that. Moreover, what would she be doing, debating the structure of society across species with Mountain‐wandering? A worthwhile question, maybe, but one she felt ill‐equipped to speak on.

Still, she had to try.

|⌃·Our best historical models suggest that we were lucky to survive our own founding cataclysm|⌄?·But was there a better way, given our starting conditions|+·It is an impossible question

|||●· ≈ seeking the bottom of the ocean

Kuroi Abe had to admit, he had been surprised to be assigned to an active combat sector again after the Battle of Orpheus.

After all, they had dragged their feet quite a bit on putting him back on duty at all, leaving him cooling his heels well after he and his fellow doctors had deemed him fit for duty, which had been just a few days after his legs had visibly grown back after his injury on Apollo. If he didn’t know better, he might have thought they were trying to keep one of Ryouko’s relatives out of combat.

That kind of special treatment for relatives of magical girls was common and even tacitly acknowledged, but caused enough grumbling for Governance to at least try to be subtle about it. Perhaps that was why instead of garrison duty he had been assigned to combat duty on Persepolis, a contested frontier world in the Huanghe Sector.

Well, that, and the fact that Ryouko wasn’t the emotionally sensitive type, he had thought with wry amusement. And as for Nana… she had long preferred to live her own life.

Across his months on Persepolis, the two sides had waged an attritional battle on ground and space, but without massive fleets or sector‐wide stakes. They weren’t even bleeding each other dry. Not with the manufacturing technology they had or the vast planetary reserves they could tap. In a way, they were just holding each other in place.

The days had passed quickly, without change, while for the rest of his family, events proceeded at a pace that felt dizzying to him. His younger daughter had gotten divorced, then moved to a new planet, then adopted a child. His granddaughter had been whisked away to perform secret research, surfaced briefly with his older daughter to liberate a rogue colony, disappeared to perform secret research again, and then abruptly died a hero’s death.

For a dark few days, he had wondered how much longer it would be until he rejoined his wife and granddaughter, and how much he really cared to wait.

But Ryouko was… perhaps not dead, after all, and that made things different.

He could at least still enjoy a sandwich, and right now he was still on bereavement leave; his return to active assignment was still a few days away.

Medes, the second largest city on Persepolis, was home to a few hundred thousand hard‐scrabble colonists who had volunteered or been compelled by circumstances to linger on a planet under active invasion, helping to keep the local war economy moving along. Deep under the umbrella of their integrated air defenses, it was even relatively safe.

He made his way down a sidewalk on the outskirts of the city, absorbing glances and the occasional salute from the residents going about their business, most in a hurry—at this time of day, mid‐afternoon, there were few colonists with the leisure time to wander the streets. If you were out walking, you had business.

There were no children anywhere.

A bit further down Davani Street was a freshly fenced‐off section of rubble, the skeleton of a building still alive with drones moving debris and structural elements glowing infrared with the heat of self‐repair. It was a reminder that air attacks still sometimes got through.

The last time he had been here, when he had just returned, the building had been a recreation area, designated for indoor sporting events. The squid were no longer in the business of targeting irrelevant civilian structures, at least not while there was still a battle to win—but sometimes, things happened that neither side intended. Which said nothing about the relevant civilian structures.

He shuffled past it, past the trio of human workers supervising the cleanup, a holographic projection of a woman discussing the latest news from the front, which had at least been better of late. Past that, a flock of local waterfowl—loud, plumed, and exotic‐purple—squinted at him briefly, before returning to pecking at the grass.

He could never quite get used to how much nature there was in the city, relative to Mitakihara.

Finally, he reached his real destination, a small shop perched on the edge of the park, with signs advertising long sandwiches with kalbas and assorted vegetables. He had been here plenty of times before, but he always enjoyed it. That was reason enough to come back; he was also worried whether it was making money. He wasn’t sure how he could tell.

The door made the sound of a bell ringing as he stepped in, shooing away the trio of birds waiting expectantly at the doorway, and he was mildly surprised to see two women standing inside the store, one of them squinting at the glass case. Neither had the look of locals or soldiers, unusual on a planet that didn’t exactly have many visitors.

It wasn’t safe to guess just from appearance, so a quick nomenclator check verified his initial assessment. It was vague on their exact origins, but did identify them as working for one of the Governance‐subsidized private trading firms that serviced beleaguered colony worlds.

“Good morning,” he said in Japanese, taking advantage of their shared national origin.

“Good morning,” the woman at the case replied, looking up at him. Perhaps it was his imagination, but it seemed to him that her gaze held a bit too long for just a nomenclator scan.

Then she went back to the food, an assortment of deli meats, sausages, and cheeses.

“Come here often?” she asked.

“As often as I can,” Abe said. “We can get what we want from the synthesizers at base, but I don’t think it tops what they serve here.”

“It usually doesn’t top the local stuff,” the woman said. “As long as you like what they’re serving.”

She stood up, glanced at her companion, then thrust out a hand for him to shake, interrupting the slight bow Abe had been about to perform.

“Sato Reika,” she said, smiling slightly. “Ah, sorry, it’s been a while. You mostly don’t see that outside Earth, even on Suijin.”

“Right, of course,” Abe said, shaking her hand after a moment.

He glanced at the woman’s wife, who kept her mouth shut, but gave him a friendly look. She seemed to be distracted, perhaps listening to something via her implants.

It was more polite not to poke at it.

“I can’t shake the sense your name is familiar somehow,” Reika said. “You’re not secretly a celebrity, are you?”

A series of thoughts quickly flashed through his mind: since all that had happened with Ryouko and the Cult, he had stayed scrupulously anonymous, refusing media interviews and departing Earth for Persepolis shortly after Ryouko’s funeral. Few of those he served with here even knew about his connection to Ryouko—it didn’t come up on the nomenclator.

“No, just a soldier,” he said, without even a noticeable hesitation. Benefit of age. “Kuroi is a common surname.”

“Mmm. It really is different out here, isn’t it? Even in the small colonies away from the front, everything is quiet and people don’t feel any pressure. Not like here.”

Before Abe could respond, the proprietor of the deli, Nahid, appeared behind the counter, carrying small sacks of meat in her arms.

“Ah, I see you’ve met our resident sandwich aficionado,” she said, addressing Reika. “I can’t see the appeal of joining up myself, but I’m glad he’s here. If nothing else, so there’s someone my age I can talk to. All I got around me otherwise are kids.”

Nahid loved calling everyone under the age of two hundred “kid”. One day a magical girl would “kid” her back; he suspected Nahid was looking forward to the resulting argument.

“Well, I’m privileged to be talking to you old‐timers then,” Reika said. “I was just telling Kuroi about how different the wartime pressure is here.”

Abe’s time in the military meant that he barely blinked at the sudden switch to Standard’s insouciance.

He mulled over what to say, and how diplomatic to be about it, but Nahid surprised him by speaking first, and a torrent of words at that.

“Listen, I don’t know how exactly to put this but, Governance’s job is difficult, and we understand we’re all in this together. But those of us here are way more in it. I’ve been here a long while, but I have friends that migrated inward; according to them, on some planets it’s like there’s no war at all! You can hardly say that here. Thanks to people like Abe, and the militia, we’re not under direct fire here, but the planet is suffering. We used to get a lot of tourism from Earth, wanting to see the expatriate Persian culture, and a horde of exchange students. The schools aren’t even open anymore.”

Abe was glad she hadn’t brought up the tensions between the militia and the better‐equipped core worlder units. Sure, they got the harder missions, but did that make much of a difference in a place like this?

But, as a shopkeeper, Nahid served both sides, and from her chats Abe had detected no resentment from her towards them, at least.

“I’ve heard some people say you had the option to leave and didn’t take it,” Reika said. “‘Staying on a frontline planet like this is obviously a noble decision, but it’s still a decision.’”

That drew an eye‐roll.

“Bullshit, if you’ll pardon my language. It is a choice whose other side is abandoning your home and all you have known to start completely over. Even for us old ones who have done it once or twice already, it is no small decision. Many of us gave up what we knew to come here in the first place, half a century ago. We jumped at the chance to build and shape our own world. So saying we ‘have a choice’ can only come from a place of ignorance, perhaps willful.”

Abe looked off to the side. He had his own opinions, but there was a limit to how much he was willing to say in front of civilians, especially those not from the frontier.

“A lot of this also has to do with Governance policy,” Abe said, finally. “Let’s be honest. I know a lot of colonists wish Governance would mobilize a bit more aggressively, as a matter of respect rather than just material interest. Sure, there are practical reasons why not doing so insulates the main economy and Core Worlds from the impact of the war, but a lot of it is ideological. And because of that, it’s easy to feel like no one in the rear understands the costs for those here. I understand why the Fleet doesn’t arrive to clear the sky, but even those here who do want more acknowledgment.”

Abe watched Reika mull their words over, then lean onto the counter, breaking up the increasingly tight circle the three of them were forming.

“Thanks for your input,” she said. “I’m afraid I’m the curious type, and can’t resist prying. So what are your thoughts on the big recent TCF news? It’s a real big deal back in the Core, but I don’t know how much it matters out here.”

Her wife absentmindedly shook her head at her, amused.

“It matters,” Abe said, after a moment to process the change of subject. “Though maybe not for the same reasons. I don’t think any of us have ever considered Governance really invincible, no matter what they say. It’s just a silly idea when the squid missiles are raining down on your head. But for those in the field, it’s more about the idea that there’s a fifth column working against us, working with the squid even. I’m not sure how to express how insulting that is.”

Reika stopped there, tapping a finger on the table. The silence stretched on, as she turned to her wife, then looked off into the middle distance, hand to her ear, gesturing that she was communicating remotely with something. Was it about work?

“Sorry about that,” she apologized finally. “Well, what about this fascinating business with the Shizuki Ryouko girl? She’s a hero to me no matter what, but can she really still be alive? What do you two think?”

She spoke with the careful tenor of someone who had already concluded one way or the other, but didn’t want to show it—Abe was in turn almost too startled by the mention of Ryouko to notice, trying to hide his emotion.

“I doubt it. It sounds like gossip and fantasy to me, no offense,” Nahid said. “And I’m not the only one that thinks that way. But I guess it’s harmless stories to pass around. We all have our heroes; around here Admiral Mousavi is way more popular.”

“But doesn’t it matter if Shizuki has found Cephalopods that aren’t as hostile?” Reika insisted. “Senior military leadership is taking it seriously.”

“The magical girls are taking it seriously, you mean,” Nahid said. “You know how worked up they get, about their old leader and the Cult and everything.”

“I’ve seen enough Cult stuff to think maybe there is something to it. Maybe,” Abe said. “Not sure there’s more to say than ‘we’ll see’, though.”

He had felt the need to say something, if only to avoid looking suspicious. Perhaps it had been a mistake—it would have been safer to say something about Akemi at New Athens rather than look like a Cult apologist himself.

Just as he began to brace for questioning, Reika’s wife suddenly straightened, meeting eyes with her.

“I’m sorry,” Reika said, “it looks like I need to get back on the job. Thanks for chatting!”

“No problem,” he and Nahid said together, accidentally, as Reika and her wife turned abruptly and strode out the door.

“Wonder what that was about,” Abe said. “Late for a meeting?”

“I don’t know,” Nahid said. “Anyway, do you still want your sandwich?”

He did indeed want his sandwich, and a short while later he made his way back out to the street, continuing past the shop in the direction of the city center. It was too early to head back to the barracks, so perhaps he would take a ride towards one of the amenity lounges. His calendar indicated that there was a group viewing of Sun Over Glorieta, billed as a post‐Unification Wars classic about star‐crossed lovers during the Desert Campaign in North America.

He had seen it of course. It was tremendously sappy, young couple kind of watching, which meant it gave him great nostalgia.

He had just made up his mind to call his ride when something made his hair stand on end, enough to stop him in his tracks when he realized it was quite literal.

He dove to the side and to the ground, planting himself into the permacrete. Only then did he try to figure it out what it was.

A new weapon? Charged particles? What could—

And then it was gone, leaving him the target of several curious onlookers. The civilians hadn’t even felt it.

As he pushed himself up to his feet, wondering if he had suffered some kind of sensory malfunction, a series of tactical alarms seized his attention, literally taking control of his neural attention routines and dumping him into combat mode, so drastically that only a healthy provision of drugs and neural manipulation kept him from collapsing on the spot.

He was used to it, of course; it was hardly the first time.

Two blocks over, down a series of fortified passages, in an underground bunker, was a logistics center that processed weapons, supplies, and grief cubes. It had come under attack.

Here, in the middle of the city? a distant part of his mind asked, the processing thread quickly shunted aside and backgrounded, there to churn below his consciousness in synergy with the network. Perhaps the analysis would prove useful—only then would he become aware of it.

Squid infantry units had materialized out of nowhere in the tunnels a few minutes ago, disabling blast doors and cutting down all personnel. Some technological miracle had enabled them to bypass all safeguards and sensors—the breach had only just been discovered.

All of that burned through his mind as he sprinted down the street, past unaware civilians moving so slowly they looked frozen. He wasn’t heading straight for the logistics center; instead, he was heading for the nearest civil defense depot, nestled in a former commercial center. Without his exoskeleton he could contribute nothing.

He threw himself into an armature on arrival, shoving his feet into proffered leg servos, and letting the machinery and drones around him work to move armor slabs into place, even as his arm, neck, and back ports integrated into the electronics. It was an older model, reserved here far from the front lines, but now really wasn’t the time to quibble with the local equipment.

As he waited, a handful of other off‐duty soldiers rushed in, inserting themselves into the slots next to his. All told, there were four of them who could deploy in the next ten minutes, who would then be trailed by the local civil defense and personnel who had to travel from the next sector over. So, they would start with four.

They began moving even before all of their suits were fully assembled, moving over the terrain in great bursts of speed. There had been the possibility of waiting for more numbers, but the situation below was growing dire, the automated defenses falling apart against a threat that was really beyond their level. If they moved quickly, they might be able to stall the enemy a bit, perhaps as much as twenty minutes, long enough for more serious reinforcements to arrive. The local demon‐hunting magical girls numbered only three and were… barred from combat for psychiatric and other reasons. More suitable magical girls were, unfortunately, all at the front, and even with teleporters it would be a while before any would arrive.

And a delaying action was all it would be, frankly. One‐on‐one, they were no match for a squid commando, and the reports suggested there were eleven.

“We’ll be lucky even to survive,” one of the others commented. There was no venom or fear in his voice. In their current state, it was just a comment—but still one that showed where his thoughts were headed.

They split into groups of two, one for each of the downward passages, and he and his partner Trang made their way to the nearby subway entrance, jumping down the stairs in one go.

There, they paused for a moment, taking up a position next to the blast door that led further down. According to the records, it had been opened twenty minutes ago to allow a few personnel to begin their shifts.

“Most likely how they got in,” Trang commented. “Might be worth reviewing security procedures.”

From here they could pick up a few faint transmissions, dead or disabled civilians whose implants were still intact enough to provide some sensory intel. From them, they could tell that the immediate entryway seemed clear. Seemed.

A quick communications burst between him and Trang, and then with the other two, set the plan in place, and he took point, turning the corner, sensors bristling, suit‐mounted rifle ready to fire.

Nothing he could see, and Trang followed him after he had stepped forward a bit. Two was hardly an ideal number for this, and there had been some consideration placed toward going in one entrance as a group of four, but Command had decided for them. A squid infiltration like this was a high‐asset operation, one that didn’t seem to make any sense. That alone made it worth quashing, gathering whatever intel they could from the squid involved. They couldn’t risk the squid simply getting out the other door.

He advanced forward, his TacComp simulating the tactical options. If it was at all possible, they would endeavor to make the squid come to them, into prepared positions infested with their drones. But if they simply sat back, the enemy would finish whatever business they had below, which might be unacceptable. They would have to poke the squid, doing whatever damage they could without exposing their limited numbers.

At a thought, half a dozen drones no larger than a grape apiece dropped out of a back compartment, scurrying along the floor to search for good spots to hide while drawing supplemental power from the grid. When the time came, each would empty everything it had into the nearest enemy drone or shield as a millisecond laser burst, potentially disabling a small drone outright—or, with coordination, a group might help take down a squid personal shield for a few moments.

He was aiming more for the anti‐drone role, though, given that he was limited to his personal inventory. He would sprinkle them liberally all along his way in, then Trang would start dropping her heavier‐hitting anti‐personnel devices when they got close. When the firing started, they could withdraw into them, hopefully earning a good deal of time.

As they moved downward, he paid careful attention to the telemetry coming from below. The base defenses were doing their job, sealing corridors and transmitting as much information on the enemy’s location as they could. Unfortunately, Command still had no idea what the squid were doing here. Destroying one logistics center couldn’t possibly be worth the trouble or risk, and would have been better handled by planting a large explosive device and leaving. Instead, the squid seemed to be looking for something.

The lack of certainty made it difficult to predict their behavior, a tactical liability.

They emerged into the bunker’s primary layer, and Abe grimly cast his sensors over a small corridor of broken bodies, still glowing faintly in infrared. He kept his weapon up and pointed, grenade launcher primed and aimed. Squid special forces they might have been, but this whole base was still human ground, the walls, circuitry, and even bodies of their allies all casting interference at the squid sensors. The squid hadn’t had time to really take over. With that edge, they might even hope to achieve surprise.

He let out a breath, letting his suit silence the noise. He couldn’t get too confident. There just might be a squid or two still stealthed, waiting for a response just like theirs.

No need to do anything rash. We’re taking care of this.

Only his combat mode kept him from jerking with surprise, his TacComp working through the basic reasoning faster than his own brain could. He had been around enough magical girls to know what telepathy felt like, but there wasn’t supposed to be anyone around—no IFF, nothing on the local net, and even Command seemed confused. Was there some kind of squid interference?

Plus, the voice felt familiar.

Roger that. Verify identity? Unable to connect, he thought.

Abe cast that thought nowhere in particular, assuming the other party would read it.

Will not verify. Hold your position. Will connect for sensor telemetry.

Will not verify. He knew what that implied. Some kind of MagOps? That was theoretically possible, but nowadays the kinds of roles where a secret identity would matter were few and far between. Maybe on a rogue colony, or something to do with the TCF conspiracy, but here?

He and Trang had the same thought: ultimately, it didn’t matter. They were friendly. No squid could forge magical girl telepathy. Even Command agreed.

They withdrew behind the last doorway and waited a few seconds, and just as his more distant subroutines began to entertain more paranoid possibilities, the connection finally registered. The handshake was valid, but the connection was restricted, giving him only limited tactical information.

That was enough, as a moment later three unidentified magical girls appeared on his facility map and began engaging the squid, whose location they had somehow deduced. His auditory relays picked up the sudden fusillade of explosions, gunfire, and what sounded like thunder, while his TacComp began receiving data from suborned squid drones near the battle.

Why were they here? How had they gotten here first? There would be time to sort that out afterward. For now, Abe and Trang still had a role to play.

Trang began to distribute her remaining drones and mines around the area, specialized anti‐personnel, preparing for the possibility that some of the squid might try to escape out to the surface through their corridor.

As he kept watch, a couple of shaped charges nestled themselves into one the ubiquitous drone shafts, waiting for a chance to emerge. A few others moved to the ceiling, waiting for the signal to drop a wall of sensor interference.

Then, they waited.

Things were quiet at first, then some of the perimeter drones began encountering squid counterparts, exchanging bursts of millisecond laser fire and electronic warfare. The air started filling with electricity again—he realized now, it might be from one of the magical girls. The fighting was definitely moving in their direction.

Even in post‐battle analysis, he would never be quite sure why he looked where he did.

Perhaps some distant thread of thought in his TacComp had noticed an anomaly in enemy drone behavior, or perhaps there had been a slight change in the pitch of the gunfire. Whatever the case was, he happened to glance in direction of one of the large drone shafts, and noticed a slight electromagnetic shimmer, an irregularity highlighted by the unusually charged air.

He jumped backward even as a spray of armor‐piercing rounds hit his position, several of them hitting home among his leg servos and one reaching tissue in his leg, stopping dead as it cracked his reinforced bone. He felt none of it, Trang’s gunfire ringing in his ears as the drones converged, an ominous squid figure sparking into view under the physical attack. An explosion on the squid’s back got through the shield but was too spent to penetrate the armor.

The squid lunged at him, closing the distance. It was the correct move, keeping him from withdrawing into potentially more prepared defenses and instead pitting squid armor against human armor—as long as the squid could finish the job before Trang could intervene.

He dropped his gun and tried to level his close‐quarters laser cutters, but the squid was too fast. He was able to keep the squid’s own weapons off of him as they grappled each other, but that was it.

But even as he pushed his reactors into redline, he was unable to resist the crushing force. He felt his right arm begin to fail, and then his shoulder joint released itself to save the arm—but that allowed a laser and composite blade to slice off his other one. Warnings and pain flared through his consciousness, and for a moment his vision was filled with Trang desperately emptying her weapon, enemy drones nearly overwhelming her.

Rather than kill him, the commando suddenly lifted him off the ground, and began sprinting down the corridor with him in tow. Was it using his broken body as cover?

Then, in a flash of color, it was over—not for him, but for the squid, who no longer had a head, and whose chest cavity had been torn open, giving him the briefest glimpse of someone’s unarmored fist. He didn’t have to be told that this was no ordinary human feat.

Regaining his footing he jumped backward, the explosion that followed rattling his skull. Within seconds, he knew, the squid’s implants and technology would begin digesting itself under a swarm of nanites.

He rapidly scanned his surroundings, but it seemed the corridor had been cleared, even the drones disabled. The girls that had saved them were already gone, leaving Trang sputtering, but he had finally realized something.

The voice in his head had been “Reika”.

Chapter 71: In the Mountain

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 06:45:25 +0100

〈In the following text, 〈〉① indicates content redacted to those without security clearance. The number indicates the degree of security clearance required to access enclosed content.〉①

The political career and philosophy of Mila Brankovich has been both fascinating and ordinary, meteoric and yet strikingly irrelevant. It has at least definitely been unique.

A neophyte even by mundane standards, Mila first entered the arena of MSY politics in 2412 at the age of 43, submitting her name as candidate for planet Issa’s Rules Committee seat. After a pair of failed attempts to win the seat, she was finally successful in winning a nongeographic seat in 2424, as Special Representative for the Mississippi Sector, the only survivor of a host of candidates popular with the failed Diffusionist Movement.

So what, exactly, was the Diffusionist movement?

As a philosophy, Diffusionism in its original form—more a mundane than mage philosophy—ran squarely against mainstream sentiment. Drawing on schools of thought that dated back before the Unification Wars, the core argument was that a study of human history since the dawn of the Industrial Age revealed a strong, entropic tendency towards the centralization of authority and responsibility. Each time, the central authority would eventually be undermined and toppled—but out of the chaos would eventually emerge an even stronger, more centralized power. This process reached its culmination with the ending of the Unification Wars: in the mundane world, by the foundation of Governance, and in the magical world, by the centralization of the MSY under Akemi Homura.

But what happens when this ultimate central power itself rots away?

Governance, of course, asserted that this was impossible, with numerous sociological simulations as evidence. The Diffusionists distrusted these “arrogant” claims, asserting that there was no such thing as an eternally stable system. They argued it was necessary to cushion Humanity against the inevitable, by making strenuous efforts to reverse the natural flow of authority towards a single power. The focus was on the Second Wave colonies, which had started out refreshingly independent, but were slowly being consolidated into Governance as they grew. Diffusionists felt that these new colonies didn’t need Governance, and would be better off in the long term if they kept Governance at arms' length.

Not exactly a compelling philosophy in the current day, right?

In the mundane world, this of course never caught on in the first place, confined to theoretical discussions in coffeehouses and boutique conferences, unable even to achieve enough weight for Governance to assign a Representative.

But within the MSY, conditions were a bit more fruitful. Despite the apparent irrelevance of Governance asserting control over its colonies—really, it was better for the MSY if Governance ruled directly everywhere, as it simplified their operations—Diffusionist ideas still found some traction. Plenty of girls had past experience with changing systems of government, and nostalgic memories of less‐centralized, pre‐Governance systems, traits that were vanishingly rare otherwise.

And that’s exactly what Mila Brankovich realized.

With blunt tactics concealing a deft hand far beyond her years, she was able to take leadership of a clique of like‐minded compatriots and develop an electable message—no longer identifying as Diffusionist, but still taking advantage of 〈latent resentment of Matriarchy nepotism and〉① a sense of disenfranchisement among the young and the colonies. It was an open secret that the channels of power between MSY organs often lay far outside the official, with decisions made between Ancients with little need for democratic procedures or debate. This was an informal structure that entrenched somewhat disproportionate power into the aged and into Earth, regardless of official MSY policy.

But despite all of that, Mila’s influence was minimal, a fringe radical making noise for a minority of constituents that didn’t matter very much. A considerable obstacle—perhaps more important than all the others—was also the elephant in the room: Akemi Homura, who barely needs an introduction here.

Popular, successful, and with her own kind of charisma, Homura, with the help of her close allies, had dominated MSY politics since the very beginning, and represented everything that the Diffusionists feared—a single, central point of failure, susceptible to corruption or madness, without even the assurances of Governance. Moreover, her very existence, and the small cult of personality that surrounded her, seemed to contradict their tenets. After all, she had been successful for four centuries, and the MSY’s decentralization prior to the Unification Wars had ended disastrously. Everyone, even the disaffected voters that ought to be Mila’s base, felt comfortable with her role in the system.

For a while, then, Mila’s arguments rebounded off deaf ears. Successful reelections, the cultivation of allies, and careful political positioning netted committee positions and some minor changes to legislation, but pleas to Homura to devolve some of her powers or allow the executive divisions to function more autonomously were just that: pleas, successful only on the rare occasions where Homura was ready to take her hands off the controls.

In 2440, everything changed.

The alien invasion, the breaking of secrecy, and the disappearance of Akemi Homura combined to fuel a massive upswing in Mila’s political fortunes. Homura’s loss, and the manner of her loss, clearly illustrated Mila’s arguments about the fragility of central authority. In the chaos of the early war, the plight of the colonies drew mass sympathy and therefore political power, while Governance skepticism about the decidedly old‐world nature of MSY politics sparked a revival of more formal democratic process within the MSY.

Mila and her compatriots knew how to ride this wave, and Mila forced herself into the political spotlight, most dramatically when she threw her support behind the No Succession Rule, wherein the Rules Committee and Leadership Committee, as a matter of legal fiction, agreed to ignore Akemi Homura’s resignation and alleged death and leave the office of First Executive empty, disbursing its formal powers among the other MSY institutions.

Mila clearly considered this one of her finest political achievements, even if she had played only a partial role, but further developments quickly soured the result. She had hoped that Homura’s departure would lead to a revival of MSY institutions, but instead the exigencies of war led to the recall of numerous Ancients into office, with effective power draining into their morass of informal and oligarchical ties. Moreover, and more troublingly, many MSY functions were by necessity integrated into Governance, most notably the traditional police, intelligence, and paramilitary arms of the Soul Guard 〈and Black Heart〉③.

Still, the political tailwinds were sufficient to accrue Mila a coveted seat on the Leadership Committee, after a series of handshake deals with power brokers garnered her key endorsements—an irony that Mila herself has acknowledged.

From there, her handprints can be found along the edges of MSY bureaucracy, particularly where it pertains to relations with Governance. Some notable examples include the de facto separation of MSY judiciary operations from Governance law, the nuanced relationship that allows the MSY to run much of military grief cube logistics, MSY civilian control of clonal revival, and a bevy of attempts to increase transparency into 〈Matriarchy and〉① Cult operations, such as greater oversight of military service deferrals.

— Cynthia Rittner, “Mages and Machinations Infocast”, Episode 105, 2458

μ⌄·The scope of potential Consensus thought must be vast ≈ water filling the Great Sea|μ⌃·Just as the Great Sea does not contain all, the Tentacles of Consensus do not contain all|ν⌄·Preferences that are anathema to Consensus, single Tentacles that rule their species, consciousness without individuality, perplexities beyond even that, all may exist somewhere, and we tolerate that possibility|ν⌃?·When we were young, we reached Consensus by annihilation; now that we are old, are we any wiser

— Consensus/Truth‐seeking, Deliberations

“As noted, rogue colonist casualties were very light. Forty‐three injured, two killed, both trying to attach explosives to the front of a vehicle. For one there simply wasn’t enough time to stop. Gruesome business.”

“I can imagine,” Yuma agreed, nodding vaguely at the avatar of the lieutenant general in front of her, Anna Tomova, newly minted head of Task Force Themis. “But you said no sign of any conspiracy activity among the magical girls. What about the local populace?”

“Much longer process to be sure,” Anna said. “But we’re working on it. Doubt there’s much to go on here if I’m honest. We screened the local mages quite thoroughly. No anomalies.”

With telepaths and soul mages, as Yuma well knew. There was a reason she and Mami had suggested her for the role. Below that pleasant, military‐sharp appearance was a certain… practical efficiency they were familiar with from the Unification Wars. Nothing that would make even Mami squeamish, but still.

“Thanks for your report then, Anna,” Yuma said. “Keep us posted.”

“Of course.”

The hologram disappeared, and Yuma rubbed her eyes with one hand.

“Are you alright over there?” a voice asked, in Standard.

Yuma put her hand down, blinking at the young woman peering back at her from across her desk.

Mila Brankovich was young. Painfully young, if Yuma was being honest. Too young to be that ambitious, some would say. Not Yuma, though.

“No, Mila,” she said. “Old habit. It used to be, if you overused your eyes, you’d get a vague pain behind them. Just an affectation.”

“I see. Well, I’d suggest you take a break, but nevermind. There really isn’t much to go on, is there?”

There wasn’t. As Yuma had suggested, Governance had further stepped up surveillance of rogue colonies, with beefed‐up MSY contact teams in tow. That was leading to the accelerated occupation of four they had always had their eye on, for one violation or another. In the case of Y‐12, which they had just discussed, living standards had been falling seriously below benchmark, even by small colony standards.

But nothing had turned up yet on that front. Nor had their other initiatives bore much fruit: more aggressive surveillance of the civilian populace, particularly magical girls, had turned up hundreds of false positives and little else. Extensive AI modeling and prediction of conspiracy behavior, under a variety of assumptions, had yielded some intriguing hypotheses—concealing activity among capitalist colonial shipping traffic, placing data crystals onto passing maintenance drones, that kind of thing—but no actual discoveries.

Thus far, whoever they were up against was very good at hiding their tracks. Though Yuma supposed that really, they had to be, or else Homura would have taken them down a decade ago.

One avenue remained productive, at least: tracing the lingering remnants of what had been deleted in the TCF breach. There, the ghosts of the conspiracy were everywhere, in datataps nestled in computing clusters, conspicuously missing surveillance records, inconsistent drone logs.

That gave them an idea of how the enemy operated, but frustratingly little about who they were or their intentions, especially now that they had presumably gone to ground.

“I’ve seen worse,” Yuma lied, replying to Mila at length. “But I don’t like how long this is taking. All we have is past activity, no real grasp at their current operations.”

“Not really a surprise, with how poor our coordination has been up until now,” Mila said. “These matriarchies we’re working with, and the Cult, clearly have no idea what real cooperation looks like. Getting reports out of them is like pulling teeth.”

“None of us are used to this,” Yuma said. “The MSY hasn’t operated like this for centuries.”

“Which was a mistake. I get that all the Ancients like holding onto their little empires, but it’s a dreadful allocation of resources. It would have never been tolerated before the age of plenty. Is it really a surprise that we have all these rogue operations running around? You even let Yasuhiro Rin and her wife vanish again!”

Yuma resisted the urge to rub her eyes again, even as she ticked up how much of her consciousness was paying attention to this conversation. Mila could be very single‐minded in her opinions. It was a very double‐edged personality trait.

“Your counterfactuals hardly have anything to back them,” Yuma said. “And plenty of us like the lack of central monitoring. It’s a refreshing change from the rest of society. And believe me, I’m normally the last person to turn down more direct control.”

“You won’t turn it down when you’re the one in control,” Mila said sourly, meeting her gaze. “Look this isn’t about centralization per se. It’s about the way that power and resources in a vacuum flow to the old and established. MSY institutions are at least an improvement on that. Anything better would take a good deal more work.”

“I’m aware of your political philosophy,” Yuma said. “More organized distribution of power, better use of democratic channels, very unusual to worry about in this day and age. But let’s talk bottom line here. We’re not working as well together as we could. We all get that, and everyone understands the benefits greater coordination can bring.”

The planning meetings had made that clear. Everyone involved brought something to the table. Governance and the MSY’s organizational contributions were obvious. The Cult brought a history of experience chasing Homura and… intangible benefits from the Ribbon, even if not everyone accepted those. The Matriarchies brought extensive colonial ties and organizational structures, subject matter expertise on specific issues, as well as, to put it delicately, experience with under the table dealings. And they all had Humanity‐spanning reach of some kind.

“It’s also not true that we have nothing to show for it,” Yuma added, after a moment. “For one thing, there are the deep space sensor sites.”

She watched Mila, asking with her eyes if Mila would allow the topic to change. The other girl assented, ducking her head slightly.

Governance had been furiously reanalyzing its past survey data, sending out a stream of stealth probes and survey ships to reexamine anywhere the data looked suspicious. In a purely scientific sense, this had been fruitful, uncovering a bevy of brand‐new asteroids, rogue planets, and insufficiently surveyed systems. For more than that—well, an AI had speculated that correlating anomalous bodies with reports of grief cube anomalies in the area and vague leads from the Cult’s old Homura searches might winnow out the red herrings. And so it had seemed to, with a recent survey uncovering a human‐made structure of unknown purpose, bristling with deep field sensor arrays.

“We’ve been watching this station for a week now,” Yuma said. “And there’s been no activity worth noting. It seems like it may already be abandoned. Our matriarchy partners are pushing for a more direct approach, and I have to say, I’m starting to agree.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Mila said. “Are we sure we won’t see something if we wait just a bit longer?”

“We can never be sure. But if we sit on our hands, we might just be giving them too much time to regroup and replan. And it’s hardly giving our hand away to visit a black site or two. They know we’re looking. In my experience, sometimes it pays to apply a little pressure.”

“Assuming it doesn’t make them go to ground. Even deeper, that is.”

There was a moment of silence, then Mila sighed.

“But it would give us good reason to stuff everyone together into mission planning—matriarchies, the Black Heart, Governance, and the Cult. Is that it? Let everyone get a bite into our best lead?”

“That can only be considered a bonus,” Yuma said.

“Then I hope we’re not making a mistake,” Mila said. “And speaking of the benefits of data‐sharing, I have some concrete proposals about that…”

Asami found that keeping herself occupied between missions was easier than she expected. She hadn’t been assigned a role other than field operative, but there was plenty of training to do, and plenty of simulations to undergo. Some of the other field operatives, particularly the matriarchy‐affiliated ones, were old hands at exactly this kind of work, and were eager to help instruct one of the heroes of the pulsar jumpstrike.

When she wasn’t doing that, she could spend her time reviewing Governance and the MSY’s many intelligence reports. There wasn’t much she could contribute to the AI analysis, but it benefitted an operative to be informed and, well, it was gratifying to finally be on the “inside”.

She restarted the audio stream she was listening to.

“…of the more interesting results trickling out of Zeus now is a revival of old suggestions involving the integration of magic and technology. Previously, work at Zeus had seemed to demonstrate the impossibility of translocating meaningful parts of a magical girl’s consciousness anywhere else. However, reexamination of these tainted studies suggests that the possibility is not quite as remote as—”

“I see you’re taking your work seriously.”

Asami felt a spike of annoyance, and bit it down by taking time to turn around slowly, turn off her audio feed, and move the single frond of hair holding Ryouko’s plant to the side. She liked looking at it, now that it was fully established.

“What do you want, Del Mago?” Asami asked. “If you can’t tell, I’m occupied.”

“Have you read the reports on the asteroid attack?” Simona asked. “I thought there was a lot of interesting material in there it might be useful to talk about.”

Asami rolled her eyes, turning her head pointedly to look at the doorway out. Nearby, several other Task Force Monteagle members were socializing and eating pastries, and the viewing windows overlooked Earth, revealing the Andes and rewilding Amazon. It was an honor of sorts, to be accorded a berth in Carthago. Up here, they could quickly be deployed to field assignment almost anywhere in Human space.

This was their break area, and to be polite, she should have invited Simona to sit with her. If they were on polite terms, which they weren’t.

She sighed.

“Of course I read them. Who didn’t read them? But I’m a bit too busy to talk about things right now. I’m trying to study.”

Simona dropped herself into the seat across from her.

“Look, I know I’m not your favorite person,” she said, in frustratingly‐flawless Japanese. “But we’re here now, and I wanted your perspective on what’s to come. What do you think these TCF terrorists are up to? How do you think this is going to end? More than just business, we both know it’s going to end up having to do with Ryouko. Beyond that, we don’t have to be friends, but we do have to work together.”

Despite the accommodative words, Asami was still tempted to tell Simona to go void herself. But something Atsuko Arisu had said stuck with her, something about how when you had a common cause, it was rarely wise to spurn others and insist on working separately—that had been one of Simona’s mistakes, after all.

“Fine,” she said, putting her hand on the table in a gesture of finality.

The infuriating part was, Simona always spun things like she was the magnanimous one, like she was ever so reasonable for wanting to fix her own damn mistakes. The girl was galling, trying to seize an unjust high ground.

But in the end, it didn’t make sense to spurn her out of mere spite. It was better to cooperate, for now. But that didn’t mean she had to accept Simona’s choice of topic.

She sighed, deciding to order herself a cup of coffee.

“If this is about Ryouko‐chan, let’s talk about Ryouko‐chan,” she said. “Have anything to say about what happened at the pulsar?”

Simona ducked her head, accepting the topic change.

“I have had time to think about what you said,” Simona said. “Counterfactuals are impossible to resolve, but… I’ll admit things might have worked out better if I had been more cooperative. But I wasn’t wrong about what would happen to Ryouko.”

“If you were correct, we were never getting out of that anyway, and you contributed to it,” Asami said. “Ever try reading a Greek tragedy? That’s the problem with you. No reflection, just confidence that you’re doing the right thing. We made a difference in the war, staying at the pulsar. Ryouko‐chan cared about that, so you should care too.”

Asami’s coffee arrived, robot sliding the tray in below their mutual stares. She didn’t move to drink it.

“What I’m here about is making sure the next time it matters, we don’t disagree about what needs to happen,” Simona said. “And we will get pulled in, somehow. All this, you, me, Ryouko, Homura, whatever this enemy faction is up to. It’s all tied together. I don’t need your Goddess to tell me that, but I know you agree. Before that happens, let’s try to make sure we understand each other. Better than the alternative, right?”

An image flashed through Asami’s mind, of Simona shrieking angrily at them at the pulsar.

But other images too: Simona when she had first met her, when she had been eager to meet Ryouko’s friends. Then, she had seemed shy and withdrawn, but nice, like someone she could be friends with too. And then there was the Simona she had met on Adept Blue, forced to open her mind to telepathic probing and wholly at their mercy. None of that concorded with how she wanted to think of Simona, as a romantic rival she could just push away.

She pressed her palms against her eyes in frustration, unsure how better to contain her emotions.

“Goddess, why can’t you be simple? It’d be easier for both of us if I could just be the jealous girlfriend. I could block you and never talk to you again. It’d be so much simpler.”

Simona seemed taken aback, blinking rapidly with a lightly shocked expression, before recovering her poise.

“Well, I’d have preferred a simpler life too,” she said.

“Well, this mess is why I can’t trust you, either,” Asami said, “Maybe the higher‐ups think you can be controlled, but I’m not so sure. Next time it matters and you want your own way, I might find your knife in my back.”

Simona scoffed, shaking her head.

“Well, I wouldn’t try to kill you, I wouldn’t do that to Ryouko‐san. I hate it, but I know my lane. You think I like being the weird side girl she doesn’t even think about?”

She stopped, visibly taking a breath.

“Nevermind. You know my life story. The point is I wouldn’t.”

“Well I’m sorry for what has happened to you,” Asami said, “But that doesn’t change the fact that what you did at the pulsar was stupid, and I have to be worried about what you’ll do next. You’re not really convincing me otherwise.”

She took a breath.

“But you admitted part of it. So fine. Maybe we can talk later, when I ask for it. We’re the two people here who care the most about Ryouko‐chan. But not now. Not until I have a plan for how to deal with this.”

They stared at each other a few seconds longer, and then Simona stood up to leave.

“We’ll talk later,” she said. “There is plenty of importance to discuss. If they don’t send us out on a mission first.”

I’d rather go on a mission than talk with you again, Asami thought to herself.

Simona’s words proved mildly prophetic. It was only a few hours later that new orders came in, informing them that the task force was to perform a raid on the deep‐space sensor site that had recently been uncovered.

It took only a few hours more to assemble the personnel—an unusually large group, with matriarchy and Cult teams included—and board their Governance‐provided ships. They’d been waiting for just this, after all.

The mission itself had clearly taken a certain degree of planning, though.

The site was on a rogue planet about the size of Mars, but with a surface and thin atmosphere much more akin to Pluto, more like vacuum than air. Layers of haze accompanied the trace nitrogen and methane that sublimated off the frozen ground. On the surface, a facility about a hundred meters square had been constructed at the peak of a high mountain, buried in nitrogen‐methane ice with only a sensor array protruding aboveground. The power signature was miniscule, and whatever sensing was going on seemed to be entirely passive. Because of this, stealth probes had been unable to determine much of anything about what was happening inside, other than a general shape from gravitational scans.

The goal was to capture the facility—and, perhaps, its operators—intact. That meant they had to get in before anyone there realized what was going on, balancing the need for stealth with the need to get in quickly. Linger too long, and an enemy clairvoyant might just pierce their stealth, magical or not. But if they moved too fast, they might run into all manner of traps, including the very ones Asami would be there to spot.

They could only do their best, exiting FTL on the other side of the planet, which minimized the chances of detection from the facility itself, while not lingering too long in the area. From there, they would launch a series of stealthed dropships towards the site, dropping low enough to nearly skim the surface, taking advantage of the almost non‐existent atmosphere. The planet would hide them as they approached on a razor‐thin orbit, before navigating into a series of narrow mountain passes as they approached the site. As for enemy clairvoyants—they would have to hope their own stealth mages were up to snuff, at least for a while.

When they reached the mountain, the dropships would deposit the infiltration teams. The rest would be up to them.

From her time in the Magi Cæli, Asami had gotten quite used to the routine of preparing for a deep space operation. Get in your suit, equip any conventional weapons you might want from the standard armory, run some diagnostics while you waited to arrive, chat awkwardly or less‐awkwardly with the others on your team, depending on how well you knew them.

This time around, she was paired with Ryouko’s aunt Nana and two other girls she had barely spoken to, which she thought was less than ideal. Even Simona would have been more familiar, but she had been placed in the vanguard.

Still, the atmosphere was lighter than she was used to. There was no daunting gauntlet of alien ships to face here, only a mysterious, very much human‐built building. That seemed at least a little safer.

Asami knew plenty about her teammates too, from a purely operational perspective. To her right, Nana mounted a row of conventional weapons in her exosuit, from railgun to smart grenades, compensating for weak offensive magic. To her left, their more clairvoyant‐minded member sat with her eyes closed, her magic humming quietly as she contributed to the cloud of clairvoyance that preceded their small flotilla.

Finally, standing behind her whistling a tune was their stealth mage, who along with Asami provided most of their offensive punch, if they needed it, a barrage of explosive orbs that teleported themselves into position without compromising team stealth.

At a shared signal, the rest of them stood up, making their way to the dropship stowed in the rear of the spaceship. One by one the ships found their parking orbits, synchronized to arrive over the facility in three distinct groups, thirty seconds apart.

The shuttle was cramped, with barely enough space for all of them, and even Asami had to duck to enter. It felt like entering a coffin, and when it dropped out the back of the ship, they felt every last bump.

At least they weren’t going first; Asami was too valuable to risk on that. Instead, the honor of being the first to navigate a series of high ravines at reckless speed would be given to a set of advance teams, who had clairvoyants to assist with the piloting.

They waited the trip out in silence, listening to the humming of the engines, watching their forward sensor displays, and listening in to the telepathy‐only status updates by enchanted relay. It was all routine: the lead shuttles had found the suggested path navigable, with only two large ice formations their preliminary long‐distance survey had missed, easily avoided. No unexpected sensor arrays, and no sign they had been detected. No real weather or ice formations at the brink of collapse, either—one of the advantages of flying on an ancient frozen world. There was only the occasional haze of trace molecules.

Almost like the void of space, Asami reflected, as she watched the frozen crags pass by in her mind’s eye, grainy with sensor noise, their shuttle swaying slightly each time they made a turn—or sending them lurching in their seats when they veered sharply to avoid a gap in the walls, a potential direct line‐of‐sight to the unknown installation.

Drop, someone thought, and somewhere ahead of them six shuttles swerved into place, hovering briefly above the surface as the lead teams spilled out the back, diving down to the side of the mountain with magic assistance. There the teams would scatter across the impossibly‐cold landscape, suits guarding against sharp and broken cliffs, probing frantically for anything anomalous. Three teams began forming a perimeter, and three began jumping their way up.

It was too early, but Asami turned her attention to the peak in question, seeing if she could sense anything out of place. In an environment like this, she could feel the mountains themselves as gravitational distortions, the most subtle of changes distinguishing metallic rock from the massive ice sheets above. She had been practicing, but without her instinctive magic, she would never have had a hope of distinguishing signal from noise.

So far, nothing.

They drew closer, and at the appointed time—still no sign of any traps—the door slid open and they dove out into the dark.

It was difficult to avoid the sense of diving into an empty void. There was almost no light anywhere—for stealth reasons, the shuttle landing lights were off—so even her enhanced eyes could see almost nothing, just a few sparkles of light from stars reflecting off the ice below.

And then they tapped the surface, a dose of telekinesis keeping them from crunching into the ice. Much of it was fragile, enough to swallow an unprepared jumper, but they had scanned the area and knew where it was firmer.

The temperature outside was a brisk thirty Kelvin, and to prevent drastic heat loss into the ice below—which risked catastrophic damage to their boots if nothing else—there was a whole system that maintained a layer of vapor underneath, coupled with the lightest of antigrav applications.

Even that wasn’t sufficient for a combat suit, where there was a risk that one might fall or be flung into the ice, and be forced into contact for extended periods. That meant insulation and bulk everywhere, coupled with on‐demand active heating and starship‐grade heat conduction and evaporative heat sinks—also necessary for the passive threat most of the time, overheating, which was so ironic it was almost insulting.

It was all so much bulkier than the usual Magi Cæli suit, making her ungainly and awkward. It would have been easier to fix with a heavy application of magic, but that was risky, so they made do with only minor enchantments to aid movement and insulation, applied before they had left the ships.

She cast her gaze upward, towards the peak where the facility itself sat perched. They had landed higher than the lead teams had, the hard work of securing the area already accomplished, but that didn’t mean they were right on top of the facility. There was still a bit to go.

But they were close enough that Asami could probe the facility itself, seeking any sign of the kind of stealthed trap that had existed on X‐25. She could feel the structure of the facility that the probe had already laid out, a large orb nearly buried into the ice and rock, with only the sensor array jutting out. Inside, wide pockets of near‐vacuum aided insulation, protecting a series of small central regions that likely housed all the real activity.

They began making their way upward, propelling thousands of feet with whatever power was most convenient to them. For Asami, that meant a kind of fast levitation, using her black hole to pull herself upward in defiance of physical law, accompanied by the others using more conventional jump maneuvers. It was not easy, keeping pace together in a way that avoided breaching their stealth containment.

The glow of their magic on the ice was the only visual way to orient, and within it the ice flew by fast, and it was only seconds before the facility itself came into distant view, a bright fifty Kelvin dot on her infrared vision, surrounded by a circle of cooler ice—there were limits to even the best attempts to disperse thermal outflow.

By now the lead teams were already preparing to breach, bright blue markers in her HUD indicating their approximate location, updated by a now constant telepathic chatter.

A series of pings ricocheted around the telepathic network, verifying again the complete lack of anything anomalous. There was only one major approval missing.

I don’t feel anything, Asami verified. She was close enough to be—mostly—sure.

Go for insertion, Nana thought.

Several of the advance teams teleported into the facility, instantly changing locations in Asami’s mental map. They swept through the small compound in seconds, verifying immediately a complete absence of human personnel.

Nana and Asami’s group were already beginning to move forward when they were signaled to stop.

We triggered some kind of magical tripwire, Simona commented. Stand by.

It was difficult to avoid feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the cold, and while they waited for the advance teams to reverify the security of the site, Asami strained again to probe the site. Could she sense anything at all?

Thirty seconds later, they received an update. There had been some sort of enchanted crystal on the ground that had shattered and set off a burst of energy noticeable to every magical girl within a few dozen feet. Preliminary study suggested it had been charged up at most a few hours ago, and as recently as a few minutes.

But beyond that, no conclusion had been reached on what its purpose was. It hadn’t seemed to do anything. But someone, somehow, had escaped, perhaps from right under their noses. How?

A flurry of swearing filled the telepathic channels, as the teams fanned out and sensors crisscrossed the summit one more time. At length Asami was pulled in too, tasked with finding and describing every gravitational anomaly she could find, no matter how minor.

In the end, nothing.

Asami had spent only the briefest of intervals inside the facility itself, straining her senses in every direction for any hint of something wrong, but she was still struck by what she saw.

There was the shattered crystal on the ground, still being dusted with nanites and sealed in ceralymer. There was a console to monitor and control the sensor array, a large bank of electronic equipment, a single sleeping cot, an exosuit, and a cabinet of preserved rations, of the kind that the military issued when synthesizer access was expected to be unreliable.

Someone had been hunkered down here in a ten‐meter cube of a room, surrounded on all sides by rooms full of equipment, wrapped in a sphere of thermal insulation thirty meters thick, all coming together as an orb buried in ice and rock. Even if they couldn’t find whoever it was, even if they were probably long gone, the risk was high enough that they didn’t dare risk her being there for more than a few seconds.

So, at length, when she had been escorted over a full five‐kilometer–square area, she was teleported back up to one of the waiting frigates to cool her heels and discuss the situation with some of the leadership.

Nana leaned against the walls of the ship’s rec area, arms crossed.

“What gets me is that they didn’t use an automated system,” she said. “The only reason I can think is that they were worried about magical girl intrusion. But would having only a single magical girl really make any difference?”

Asami looked over at the other magical girl in the room, Azrael, seated at the only table. She had stayed in orbit to help coordinate, since a nearly airless frozen world wasn’t exactly the best place for her wings.

“Maybe it wasn’t a permanent thing,” Azrael said. “There is a server box in the room, big enough for a small AI. It’s possible they had an AI running things most of the time, and the magical girl here only some of the time. Maybe they were important to the equipment somehow. After all, we still don’t know what that crystal was supposed to do.”

Nana seemed about to say something, but inclined her head sideways instead. They were receiving a new report.

“Well, let’s see what Christina has found out about the server,” Nana said. “Christina?”

Christina was still in the facility on the ground, studying the electronics there.

“Frustrating results I’m afraid,” Christina said, over the ship’s speakers. “But let me start from the beginning.”

“I started by examining the sensor array. There are a lot of files still left in the system console. Pretty much everything, I think. It seems like they didn’t expect us. The amount of juice here is limited, but intriguing. This was a passive sensor station, apparently monitoring FTL ship traffic through a quarter of the sector. There’s detailed logs of everything it could pick up, which is basically all of the civilian ships. A lot of that is public record, but it might raise eyebrows if someone were to try to access all of it. If that were all this was, it’d be boring.”

She waited to make sure they understood her, then continued.

“Of course, they were interested in military traffic as well, and that’s much harder to track. There’s a considerable amount of data in here regarding attempts to follow our ships, initially based on detailed records they acquired from the TCF breach. The earlier you go, the more successful it is, but over time they clearly lost track of what was going on.”

“Good news, I’d say,” Nana thought.

“Right, but that’s not the strangest thing. That would be that they had another dataset they were referencing, one that claims to contain military traffic for the past month and the upcoming month. As in, traffic that hasn’t happened yet. I’d have to ask for more classified access to check, but I doubt even Governance has planned out all this.”

“In a quiet sector like this, there’s no route randomization,” Asami commented, casting a glance at Nana and Azrael. “Maybe if you had the right information…”

“Maybe,” Christina said. “I’m not an expert on this topic. But the weird thing is, most of it is wrong. The data set is half‐useless as of three weeks ago, and gets worse from there, but the analysis here keeps trying to sweep for traffic it claims should exist, but doesn’t.”

“Laplace’s Demon,” Nana said, eyes brightening suddenly. “The thing they were talking about in the recording Homura left us in Argentina. If they really had such a thing, they might think they can predict the future, especially back when they had access to Governance through the TCF backdoor. And that’s why they might care about esoteric traffic data. Model correction. But now, without the backdoor, they can’t keep it up.”

Asami blinked, looking over at Ryouko’s aunt with a certain kind of respect. That had been a great intuitive leap. Still, she had thought of something else…

“That’s a compelling idea,” Christina said. “We’ll have to reanalyze the data with that in mind.”

Asami made an uncomfortable noise, getting Nana’s attention.

“I think it’s a great idea, uh ma’am,” Azrael added. “But I was thinking it might also be due to the alien connection. I could imagine the Cephalopods being interested in this kind of traffic data for their own reasons. Of course, it can be both things at once. I just wanted to put the notion out there.”

“It’s apparent how the aliens have been using such information, if so,” Meiqing said, thoughtfully, tapping her fingers on the table. “The attack on us and the HSS Laplace last year, for instance. The frigate, not the demon.”

There was a few seconds of silence as they mulled both ideas.

“In both cases, this is likely not the only outpost,” Asami said finally. “If you added up all that data…”

“Then it might be worth paying for, so to speak,” Nana said, finishing the thought. “But let’s let Christina finish her report. What about the server box in the room? Anything interesting?”

“Yes, that,” Christina said. “I wish I could tell you something that cleared things up, but I frankly wasn’t able to make much of it. Normally, it’s easy to tell if there used to be an AI in a server, but the data stores have been purged, and the magic is inscrutable. Not like Valentin’s place in Argentina, which I at least understood. This one is…”

She made a noise of frustration.

“On the one hand, it’s like a brand‐new machine, like no one has ever even done anything with it. On the other hand, there was a lot running on it, a lot of the time. How can it be both at once? I’ve never been so confused by a magic read.”

There was a few moments of silence.

“I guess it’s no surprise we’re up against some sophisticated operators,” Nana commented finally.

“Ma’am,” a new investigator said, inserting herself into the conversation from Christina’s end. A status flag indicated she had something to report.

“Go ahead,” Nana said.

The newcomer was Vlasta Werichová, one of the mundane special operatives accompanying the insertion teams. According to her file, she had been at the asteroid raid with Yuma and others.

“Since you all seem to be discussing the situation, I thought you might want to know that the specialists are done with a preliminary dating of the site.”

“This server box is relatively new, about five years old, and so is the exosuit,” she said, “but isotype analysis suggests that it has been fifteen plus/minus five years since the structural components of the site were manufactured. The, uh, extreme cold and conditions make it hard to be sure.”

“All of that is consistent with the sensor apparatus itself, which is a design from the first year of the war, 2441. Technology has changed considerably over the past two decades, and especially in the early years of the war, so even the 2442 model would be a considerable improvement. So… you’d expect they would build the newest one they could, since it’s hard to upgrade a system like this once established, without tearing the whole thing up.”

“So while they’re only sure it’s between ten and twenty years old, the best guess is that it was installed in 2441. It would make sense, but that would mean they’ve been here for nineteen years. Not a pleasant prospect.”

Vlasta sounded unhappy with the notion.

“Nineteen years of collecting all that traffic data,” Nana said, shaking her head. “I hate to think what they were doing with it. Thank you, Werichová.”

The looks on the faces around Asami made clear that it was at best a frustrating conclusion to their trip. But before anyone said anything, another participant joined the conversation.

“I’m sorry,” Simona said, also joining from Christina’s end. “Can I jump in here?”

“Go ahead,” Nana said.

“My thoughts on this are a bit premature, but I was thinking that what you said earlier, about Laplace’s Demon, actually make sense with some of Homura’s behavior when I was with her. How do I put this… give me a moment.”

In the ensuing silence, Asami found herself with an uncomfortable feeling of empathy, if not sympathy.

“Alright, so,” Simona continued. “Homura was always obsessed with keeping this faction from getting any information, even the most mundane tidbits. She was obsessed with it. She was obsessed with a lot of things, but in this case it always felt like she had a reason. I think I can see her reason now. She always said we needed to be in the shadows, so they couldn’t understand what we were doing.”

“And why do all this, in the end?” Vlasta asked. “To betray us to the aliens? To ruin everything Governance has worked for? If all this is true, a model—a magical power like that—could have been used for so much good.”

Nana stopped leaning against the wall and rubbed the back of her neck, as if in pain.

“Maybe it’s all just a matter of personal power. Humans have done more depraved things. But one thing I learned from Homura myself is that the more power you have, the more twisted in knots you can get. You can think yourself better than everyone, that you know better than everyone. You start to think, maybe people deserve to have you in control. We’ve all read our Unification Wars history, but she lived it. She said it helped keep her grounded.”

“But that’s woolgathering,” Nana said sharply. “We’re in the here and now, and in the here and now we need to know what they were doing with that server, how many of these facilities there were, and where the people behind this are now. In the best case, we can ask them ourselves.”

She made a motion with her arm, and it was clear they had been dismissed. But even as Asami moved to take a nap on the frigate’s shared bunk, Simona sent her a message.

“We still need to talk. We’re getting closer to our enemies, and we need to settle things before any real confrontation happens. Please.”

Asami sighed.

“Fine,” she sent back.

Ryouko watched silently as Lush‐Botanist descended into the atmosphere of the Cephalopod world, the white, blue, and green continental planet resolving into bands of narrow, lush valleys and endless snow‐capped mountains, imposingly tall in the low gravity.

Soon it became possible to use her enhanced vision to distinguish swirling clouds of animals circling some of the peaks, and to spot rock‐hewn caverns and bright‐beaconed platforms etched into the cliffs. Even further, and it became clear that the “animals” matched the telepathic imagery Ryouko had absorbed on the journey, of the flying forms that /Somatic‐diversity often favored, eagle‐like half‐mechanical creatures that resembled the aliens Ryouko had fought only around the head and legs.

Lush‐Botanist alighted near the peak of one of the tallest mountains, the ship gliding gently onto what looked like bare rock, clear of snow and ice despite the constant flurries of white.

When they were ready, Ryouko descended a staircase down to the surface, bundled in a suit of living white fur that the aliens had provided her, and accompanied by Survival‐Optimizer himself, whose internal reactor provided plenty of heat. There they met their initial guide, 2dMa7t5⊃Mountain‐wandering, who looked like a hybrid of yeti and Cephalopod.

Ryouko had been primed to expect all this, of course, but after a lifetime of knowing only humans, cephalopod warforms, and—barely—Incubators, the new variety was bewildering, and she had to admit that it was difficult staying impassive under Mountain‐wandering’s gaze, especially given the alien’s clear fascination with her, human‐like eyes scanning her up and down with, she could feel, a variety of embedded active sensors.

⌄·You are exactly what I had hoped for when we approved Consensus's extension into the Milky Way|⌄+·New lifeforms, new lifestyles, new apparatuses for sentient life|⌃·You ≈ avalanche—either you or /Thinker‐preserving put Consensus in peril, depending on the truth|⌃·For /Comprehending's sake, and with an eye to the greater threat of a breach in Consensus, we have defied /Thinker‐preserving and taken you in

The creature turned its back to them, mounds of fur stomping off towards the mountain.

∈·But I am not approved to speak for /Somatic‐diversity, not in my current form—we will need neuroforms for that|||∈·To move forward, we have granted you the privilege of conference here, together with our finest neuroforms

“Here” was Experimental Somatic Facility One, established by /Somatic‐diversity millennia ago as the first of their truly premier body design institutes in Andromeda, once the Tentacle had spent a few centuries sorting out their baseline scientific infrastructure. Its very location was meant to highlight their achievements: high‐altitude peaks being about as far as possible from the Cephalopod home biome of tropical islands embedded in warm seas—though it was worth noting that Facility Two had been built in deep space.

Here Ryouko would have to allow /Somatic‐diversity’s bioengineers to poke and prod her, learning the secrets of human biology—her biology. It might have been considered an intolerable military risk, were it not for the certainty that /Thinker‐preserving had already learned plenty from the study of human corpses and, perhaps, captives.

The entryway into the facility had been carved directly into the rock face, but would not have passed even the most casual inspection as a natural feature—a smooth, upright three‐meter semicircle bore into the mountain as if made with a single, giant drill, its exterior snow‐free and glowing steadily in infrared.

The interior curved downward away from her, so that she couldn’t see what was inside, but as they approached a soft glow became apparent.

Then they were there, and she found herself looking down into a vast cavern, monumental in size, so that she stopped without even realizing. A nested hive of smooth rock platforms, stairways, and ramps extended down thousands of meters, intricately woven according to some grand design. At the bottom, the strangely bulbous aliens were tiny, distant insects—but as she shifted her eyes upwards, the platforms got closer and closer, until the closest were only fifty meters away, and the drones and aliens visible in full detail.

Leading down from where she was was a vast granite—it couldn’t really be just granite—staircase, three meters across, suspended in the air, descending so far down it was vertiginous, connecting here and there with other paths. Though there was a limit to the spectacle: a set of sturdy‐looking railings ensured no falls.

The temperature, she realized, was no different than outside, nor was the air pressure. It was still the equivalent of the summit of Everest, and even with modern implants and the lower gravity, a human civilian might have had some trouble getting down—much less up.

Were they expected to walk all the way down?

Perhaps yes, Clarisse thought. Remember, this Tentacle likes to flaunt the capabilities of the bodies they build for themselves.

She relayed the thought to Survival‐Optimizer, who replied:

·I am optimized for computation, not locomotion—I will take alternate transport|·If you need transport, you can request it, but know that /Somatic‐diversity would rather see you walk

Ryouko had never been a fan of long marches but, as a military magical girl, didn’t mind much either. A rock platform hovered into view seconds later, with almost the air of magic, and Survival‐Optimizer lumbered onto it.

Then she followed Mountain‐wandering down.

Even the nearest platforms were filled nearly to the edge with equipment, piping, and bioforms in their metal tanks, some of them temporarily exposed through viewing panels. The handful of personnel wandering the walkways looked up and stared unashamedly as she passed, and again she felt the ripple of active sensors across her skin.

These scientists or technicians were wholly unlike the ones she had seen occasionally in the Milky Way, who barely looked different from their soldiers. The ones here were top‐heavy muscle‐bound creatures whose heads bulged enough to remind her of jellyfish, and with large growths on their torsos that she guessed housed secondary nerve clusters. These were the neuroforms Mountain‐wandering had referenced, presumably, a bit more ostentatious in their design than Survival‐Optimizer was.

She returned the favor of staring, of course, peering at equipment and drone and bioform, diligently storing it in her implants for Clarisse to catalog and analyze. If this was going to be an intelligence gathering exercise, it might as well go both ways.

Not that there was a tremendous amount she could gather from inspection. She was not an expert, and the broad strokes of the equipment matched what she knew from Prometheus. The real technical craft would be in the genetics and nanites and substrates—precisely that which was not easy to see. She suspected her parents would have been jealous of her regardless, if they could have had any idea she was here.

That was a depressing thought, and she shied away from it instantly.

Understanding or not, it was a sight to appreciate, diving into the interwoven mesh of rock and moss and high technology, whole sectors of the facility silently turning to behold her arrival. The light of the opening above grew distant, then entirely obscured, but she never had difficulty seeing—the aliens still kept the lights on, embedded in consoles and flooring. Presumably even the most enhanced of neuroforms still appreciated light to view their subjects in.

At length she drew close to the bottom floors, and she could see a small delegation, half a dozen, gathering below her. That would be their welcoming committee.

At her approach, the delegation folded their tentacles in greeting, which Ryouko did her best to imitate. This much had been in her reading—/Somatic‐diversity shared /Ahimsa‐extending’s preference for physical forms and gestures, but there had been some minor cultural drift: the gesture /Ahimsa‐extending used for farewell, /Somatic‐diversity used for greetings as well.

One of the group, 12Etqq3⊃Experience‐Shaper, took the lead, though the telepathy was marked as coming from the group as a whole.

μৡ∀·We greet you, fellow sapients|ν·If what you claim is true, your manner of introduction to we Thinkers is to be deeply regretted|ξ·While flesh and form may be molded by the skilled, mind and consciousness and preference must remain inviolate|ξ+·Your species' ability and willingness to damage pref‐specs is forgivable only as a matter of existential need—we hope Clarisse⊃Ryouko‐supporting will in time be free of such distortion|ο·The measured physical properties of your current form appear as astounding as /Ahimsa‐extending claimed; normally we would be determined to examine and learn from such novel body technology, even at great cost, but the heavy tinge of reality‐warping must give us pause

Survival‐Optimizer responded before Ryouko could, indeed while she was still processing some of the threads.

μৡ∀·I greet you as well, Speakers of /Somatic‐diversity|ν·Many of both our Tentacles had hoped our first contact with another evolved sapient could be a time of celebration|ξ·None in Consensus dispute the need to protect preference|ξ+·We need not be vindicative in our enforcement—other species have their own minds who must be tolerated if possible, and simple mistakes cannot be met with unnecessary force|o·We have not made our claims lightly

μ·Let us proceed to more comfortable surroundings before addressing such weighty matters||||

The group of neuroforms turned in place, signaling the rest of them to follow. Mountain‐wandering fell into pace behind Ryouko, and she abruptly realized that Mountain‐wandering was not just a guide, but also a security guard.

They underestimated her if they thought one burly Cephalopod could hope to stop her, she reflected, a thought which gave a comforting, if superficial, satisfaction.

The Thinkers are really not pleased with affinity‐guided AI creation, Clarisse thought. Some of us might even feel offended, but we’ve always understood it as an unfortunate necessity. But the solution they want instead, Governance may not like.

Even in the best case scenario, Governance probably won’t have a choice, Ryouko thought. And I can think of worse things than making humans even more immortal than they already are. But… I admit to all this body switching not sitting well with me.

That already makes you less squeamish than most humans. But think about how I feel, given that they want to move me and change me. Very pretty language, but I don’t think they’ve thought their own philosophy through all the way from my perspective.

They had been deferring making any actual decision, but they both knew that if the aliens insisted—or, not very different, if it were diplomatically necessary—they would likely have to concede, much as Governance might have to eventually. The power balance was simply too skewed, a form of indirect, well‐meaning coercion.

With anyone else, Ryouko would have left the conversation there, but it was difficult to prevent Clarisse from reading her thoughts, and the obvious inferences that came to mind.

I know, Clarisse thought, sounding annoyed. I know, I’m programmed to think that way, but in a way, so are they. The original survivors of their own unification wars—they were programming their own descendants, in a way. They got to dictate the future, just like the EDC got to when it won our wars. The arguments about whose opinion is more ‘objective’, who is thinking more clearly—they get pretty loopy, pretty fast.

Ryouko couldn’t help but feel surprise, which Clarisse cut off quickly with:

I’ve had plenty of time to think on all this. Do you think I’m comfortable with any of this? Since I became conscious, I’ve only ever known life inside you. Taking care of you has been my raison d’être. I won’t deny I’ve imagined what it would be like to be elsewhere, but to have it thrust upon me, like this—

She stopped there, a sense of acute distress washing over Ryouko for just a moment, before Clarisse managed to clamp it down.

I’m sorry, Ryouko thought feebly.

At the end of the day, I will do what’s best for you, Clarisse thought. And if that’s caving in to their demands, then so be it. There’s only what’s in front of our faces. Speaking of which…

Speaking of which, they had reached their destination, or, at least, a destination, what looked like a granite orb partially embedded into the rocky ground, smooth to a sheen in the pale light. Their hosts stopped next to it, looking towards her in what seemed like expectation.

It wasn’t granite, she realized after a moment of inspection. At least, not ordinary granite. What had initially seemed like a strange sheen, a vaguely prismatic glimmer of color, was only part of a distinctly unnatural reflection spectrum, one that only grew more intense in infrared and ultraviolet. It shifted dramatically as she turned her head this way and that, following no obvious pattern.

My best guess is that it’s an embedded code of some sort, Clarisse thought. If you track the spectrogram there’s a lot of pattern, most of which looks like information storage. So much so that it looks meant to be decoded, though I’d have to take some time to attempt a decryption. If this is a quiz, I’m afraid I don’t have an answer yet.

Clarisse then relayed as much to the assembled cephalopods, and one of the neuroforms made a gesture with an arm tentacle.

ৡ·A dozen neuroforms would take a day—it is meant to be readable by any sapient, but only with significant technical capability|+·One of our savants, 0c23c2z⊃World‐beholding, solved such a code in an hour alone, an achievement which we celebrate—but even grasping the presence of a code so quickly attests to your ability, Ryouko‐supporting|+·We will send you the key to reflect on

It took Clarisse a full thirty seconds to read what turned out to be a monument, Ryouko circling it slowly to catch sight of it from different angles.

It was far more than just a simple message; rather more of a full sensory chronicle, detailing the exploits of Mountain‐wandering on this very planet, and the accommodation he reached with the territorial and violent ice‐bears—or at least that’s what they looked like—at considerable personal risk and injury.

∪·As you have no doubt surmised, our choice of Mountain‐wandering was not a coincidence; we celebrate his achievements in helping us settle here without coercive measures|∪·We hope the example illustrates our willingness to seek peaceful coexistence, even with non‐sapient species, and while you are no mighty‐roaming‐angle‐shelled‐arctic‐blue‐bear, we hope the esteemed Mountain‐wandering's advice will be insightful and helpful

Ryouko felt lightly embarrassed to have judged Mountain‐wandering as merely a burly guard, though she was intrigued by the way they referred to him. Her reading on the Tentacle suggested they greatly respected personal accomplishment; this had to be a manifestation of that.

The neuroforms gestured them onward, and they made their way to one of the only roofed sections of the facility, a white dome dozens of meters across nestled in a corner behind the monument. It was easy to discern that while they enjoyed flaunting their ability to work in the open, it was still necessary to hold private meetings now and then.

When the door slid open on the dome, Ryouko was surprised to find herself presented with, rather than some sort of staid meeting room, a veritable smorgasbord of food, laid out on a large round table formed of concentric rings. The neuroforms began taking their seats, rings of the table rotating to bring desired dishes here or there.

Ryouko found herself surprised by the offerings on display. Where she might have expected plates of raw vegetables or survival food, there were instead quite elaborate dishes composed of all kinds of protein and plant, stewed, sautéed, or even deep‐fried, filling her augmented sinuses with a panoply of long‐missed scents and flavors, and some new and exotic ones. /Ahimsa‐extending had been… very vegetarian. They had even engineered themselves not to crave fish.

Survival‐Optimizer instantly expressed his dismay, which their hosts rebutted by pointing out that they had consulted Ryouko’s pref‐spec to have the food delivered, and that they had been pleased to observe her appetite overlapped with their own. /Somatic‐diversity cared to indulge their senses.

It was not difficult to discern which seats were intended for whom. For Ryouko, the most human‐looking, composite‐material chair, almost identical to the ones she had worked out with /Ahimsa‐extending. For Survival‐Optimizer, a large flat object that was more of a platform than a chair. And for Mountain‐wandering, a large molded chair of what looked like wood, large enough to remind her of a throne.

Most interesting, though, were the neuroforms’ seats, which resembled black leather, and they sat into them with, if not pleasure, then at least noticeable relaxation. A telepathic query revealed that they were loaded with electronics, connecting the users to the network via an extensive array of subcutaneous transceivers.

She politely ate small amounts of the food, even though she was yearning to dive right in, and even as the members of /Somatic‐diversity worked energetically with their tongs and large forks. The real test of willpower was the platter of raw meat that spun by more than once, its alluring scent wafting through her nostrils.

Not that eating had any impact on the telepathic conversation at hand.

One of the neuroforms addressed Ryouko:

·It is clear from your pref‐spec that you have reservations about submitting yourself to our examinations; Ryouko‐supporting, on the other hand, we have no direct understanding of, a situation we find most troubling|∈👁·Reservations are understandable, but this must be borne; we must attempt to discern the trustworthiness of your species and your threat to our Consensus—this is a greater good of the kind your pref‐spec states you are willing to sacrifice for|∈·Your willingness to risk yourself for your people is admirable, and perhaps someday you ≈ Mountain‐wandering

Mountain‐wandering elaborated simultaneously, even as he inhaled a large plate of some kind of noodle:

·I suggested that rather than embark without a destination, we should instead add an empathy‐organ to Ryouko‐supporting, so that her preferences may be known first||·I am flattered; Humanity‐preserving, I believe you are a greater hero to your people than I to mine, but our desire is that you also be renowned for peace, rather than war

Would they have approved of her being a war hero more if she hadn’t achieved it by killing Thinkers? She doubted it.

I’m much more in favor of Mountain‐wandering’s proposal, Clarisse thought. It makes a lot more sense, even if I’m still not fond of letting these aliens scan me and then read my preferences. But you’re doing that already. Anyway, relay that for me. Better for you to say it.

And it was of course a much smaller commitment than the other option.

Mountain‐wandering replied:

·It is good you are amenable—we can start right away, once we finish the requisite scans; a clearer view of you will do much to increase trust, as there remain suspicions of your role here|+·But you need not rush your meal—let us converse, and eat

So they did.

Their temporary lodgings were in a heated sub‐basement right underneath the meeting dome, even /Somatic‐diversity not caring to controvert the notion of sleeping in a sheltered location. There she found what she had come to think of as the Thinker equivalent of a standard hotel room, complete with alcove for Feathered‐Defender to roost in, though most of the grasping poles had been thoughtfully removed.

There were some subtle differences from /Ahimsa‐extending: everything was bigger, and there was a lot of adjustability to the furniture, most of it changing size with a thought, though they had been preset to her size. It seemed sensible for a Tentacle focused on body diversity.

But as she stood in the doorway looking over the room, she heard Survival‐Optimizer shuffle into place behind her.

∪·You are still physically uncomfortable with the arrangement|∪·You are dissatisfied with that which is required of you

The telepathy made clear that he meant the body‐scanning, the reason they were here.

There was obviously no sense in denying it. Instead, Ryouko considered how open to be.

Survival‐Optimizer elaborated after a moment:

∪·There is no need to be surprised|∪·We have gathered a considerable amount of information on your body language and physiological reactions during our interactions

They had already said as much, and indeed it would have been hard for her to be too offended, given that she was doing the same to them.

μ·It is not my first choice, nor Ryouko‐supporting’s|ν∈·We are willing to do what is necessary to strengthen your political position in the Consensus, but it worries us to share all this information, and to consent to all this scanning|ν∈·Until I came here, I had only known your species as enemies

μ·It is a substantially one‐way exchange for now, relying on trust—however, you will find us trustworthy in time|ν+·Unfortunately, Consensus has only known your species as enemies as well|ν·We have said before that if we can convince Consensus of the moral necessity, we would develop and share mind‐uploading technology for your species—the information these scans will provide both make that possible technically and more probable diplomatically

It was obvious that Survival‐Optimizer was trying to smooth things over, on top of the arrangements they had already made—all scan data to be shared with Clarisse, and anything of actual military value to be kept strictly within /Ahimsa‐extending and /Somatic‐diversity. Beyond that… it was a win‐win, at least for Ahimsa‐extending.

But for her, the whole notion of human uploading had required much thought. Did she really agree with that? Did she think it was a good idea?

The answer, she realized, was yes, hardly a surprise given that Survival‐Optimizer had access to her pref‐spec. There was a degree to which it invoked the spectre of the Freedom Alliance and its body‐warping horrors—but she realized with a start that those elementary school dogmas had faded day by day, between the soul gems, the magical girl clones, and the simple realities of what she had seen. Would spare bodies for the rest of humanity really be so bad? After all those that had died—friends, countless strangers, her own grandmother—it was hard to see it.

Arguably, she herself had already been uploaded to her soul gem, and restored to a new body from it. She certainly didn’t regret that.

Speaking of which, there was still a lingering issue between her and /Ahimsa‐extending that needed to be disposed of. She had avoided speaking of the role of the soul gem initially, but now, the longer she waited the more problems it would cause when she did finally discuss it. Moreover, if they were aiming to develop uploading technology for humans based on her, it might very well cause technical issues.

|ν·/Thinker‐preserving has always claimed that our entire species has mind‐uploading anyway, on the basis that we, the reality‐warpers, were able to survive the loss of our bodies|ν+ৡ·But I never explained exactly how this was possible, or where our backups are stored: it’s right here, in this reality‐warping focus|ξ·The reality‐warping involved might make technological uploading impossible for me

They had discussed her gem in passing, of course, for instance regarding its tendency to glow near ship’s engines and wormholes.

There was a clear pause, Survival‐Optimizer folding back his tentacles in a gesture of consideration, before the Thinker thought:

|ν·We had considered the gem possibility, and even considered it likely, since we were never provided an explanation for how you could survive body‐death—but you did not wish to address the topic, so we did not press you|ξ?·We appreciate your willingness to reveal this, odd as it is, for it does not make sense to us why your consciousness would not be stored more remotely—do you have multiple focuses|ν+?·What about Ryouko‐supporting

||ξ·No, we do not know how to do that|ν·Um, my gem doesn’t store her consciousness, but it’s capable of perfectly recreating my body, which contains her body, which contains her consciousness… and I think separating us would break that

She still avoided the real dilemma, the question of the Incubators.

Survival‐Optimizer thought:

||ξ·Nonetheless, knowledge of your physiology should still be useful|ν·Your reality‐warping continues to defy explanation|ξ+?·The non‐reality‐warpers of your species will still benefit from our uploading technology, correct

And now they were back to the original question. Besides Ryouko’s own opinion, would Governance even agree to something like that? Did that matter?

In a way we speak for Governance here, Clarisse thought. But we were never nominated or volunteered for that role. You don’t have to try to speak for Governance if you’re unsure. You can speak for yourself.

I know, Ryouko thought. But that doesn’t mean I can just agree to things without regard for the eventual consequences. If I’m too positive here, someday /Ahimsa‐extending might expect a welcoming committee for this uploading technology. I’m not sure there will be one.

I think avoiding the destruction of Humanity will take precedence over that, Clarisse commented. Just as pertinently, I am a TCF‐compliant AI, and in my opinion there ought to be a welcoming committee. We’ve judged it right for sapient AIs and magical girls to return from backups to new bodies. With the appropriate safeguards, extending that security to everyone would be good as well.

Ryouko thought about that for a few seconds longer, then finally replied:

|||ν·Rest assured that as I expressed, we will do whatever necessary to aid your political position with Consensus, since your goals are aligned with ours|ξ∀·Yes, we would be glad to accept any such technology the Thinkers would be willing to provide

She wasn’t sure this conversation had improved the alien’s view of her, but she had to hope it would satisfy him.

|||ν·Very well|ξ·Then we shall strive to provide it—and someday, when our relations are better, we may address together the question of remote storage for you and Ryouko‐supporting

With that, Survival‐Optimizer left her to her thoughts.

The study process was not going to be a short one; nearly a day of various scans and poking and prodding, thankfully without breaking skin, followed by a nanite regimen and several hours supine and motionless in a specialized neural tracing apparatus. It turned out that she didn’t need to be unconscious, not for this step, but it was an option to make things easier. Initially, she declined to knock herself out—she would rather spend the time entertaining herself in her head than face the unknowns of being unconscious in an alien device.

But even on the very first step, which involved lying still in a tube while an active sensor array traversed her body from mere centimeters away, she found herself struggling to stay focused on her reading. She just felt… tired.

Your soul gem is behaving oddly, Clarisse thought. I’m not sure why; it should be fully charged, but the light emissions are erratic. I’d ask if you were feeling particularly emotional, but I am connected to your head and can check for myself.

Maybe having this alien probe pointing at me constantly is getting to me, Ryouko proposed.

I’m not sure, Clarisse thought. But I don’t think a nap would hurt. I can keep watch for any shenanigans. The rest might help.

Ryouko agreed, reluctantly, and tried to sleep.

She dreamed strange, vivid dreams. In them she watched, over and over, as life evolved on distant worlds. Often, most of the time even, life stayed as prokaryotes, never finding its way to the strange pact between cells that enabled greater complexity, or simply wiped out by an uncaring universe long before it had the chance.

The rest of the time, the animals, or something like animals, came quickly, struggling their way through sunless seas, or endless clouds, or searing deserts. At times, seemingly almost at random, one or more species would grow cunning, large brains, grasping their way to sapience and consciousness.

But on the way a very strange thing would happen. Everything that had driven the species before—animal instinct, general motivations, emotions—would become radically clarified, the neural tissue learning to connect fundamental needs to higher‐level objectives, granting the species the capacity to explicitly reason about its needs and wants. Once that happened, the boom of civilization would begin.

Strange indeed, except it was the default. Every example studied followed this pattern, and was thus unsuitable, as if by some cosmic conspiracy. It seemed to have the certainty of natural law, but all the simulations suggested there had to be an exception, somewhere out there in the sea of galaxies.

Somewhere, her mind stirred. Unsuitable? Simulations?

The collective grew restless. Noninterference was the highest of values, save for only one: survival. And survival was now in question. The thoughts began to form that the time had come to stop leaving creation to chance, that something had to be done, and thus it brought to all the greatest relief when finally, the exception was found.

But would it be enough? It was only one species, one exception. The risks were high, and the management of this exception would be paramount. But, perhaps, there would be opportunities…

Ryouko’s eyes snapped open. She could sense Clarisse examining her intensely.

I can’t process your memory of that dream normally—it’s like the dream you had of the rose garden, before Orpheus. And, like your visions.

Ryouko was still in the device, still in the same position. The alien technicians faced their machines, seemingly unaware anything had happened.

My, my, I’ve sure seen a lot of this kind of thing recently, another, very distinct voice thought. But mostly in Mitakihara.

Only Clarisse’s intervention saved Ryouko from jerking upward in surprise.

Kyubey? she thought, even as the white‐furred creature appeared in her peripheral vision.

It raised a paw to step onto her chest, but seemed to think better of it, instead settling down next to her neck. Normally, Incubators were warm to the touch, but not this time.

Don’t worry. I will reassure you: even now they are not capable of detecting me as long as you don’t give it away, Kyubey thought. I’m just here to check in on you.

Could have chosen a better time, Ryouko thought dryly.

I wanted to get a more personal look at what was going on, Kyubey thought. I have been monitoring from a distance of course, particularly for grief cubes, but not everything can be done like that. I want to make the best use of my time here. I had to make a convincing case to be the one assigned to you, you know.

Case? You had to make a case? And while you’re here, I have other questions. Last time you mentioned my friends at home having a vision with the Goddess. Could you share details? Do they know where I am? And I was surprised to hear you call her the Goddess last time. Why did you do that?

Ryouko rushed the questions out in an almost unseemly fashion, familiar with the Incubator tactic of using conversation timing to dodge inconvenient questions.

The Incubator sat up and rubbed an ear with its paw.

Now, now, you know there are some things I won’t talk about. It’s rude to poke at such things, and I won’t be a communication conduit for you. But I will tell you that they don’t know where you are right now or what you’re doing. Unfortunately, perhaps. As for the name, it would be rude of me not to use the name you use for the Ribbon phenomena, would it not? Especially not after it continues to furnish verifiably accurate information.

As Incubator answers went, it was downright refreshing, even including the explicit refusal to answer questions. And if even the Incubators were taking the Goddess seriously…

The Consensus is interesting in its own way, Kyubey thought. Not uncommon, but not like us. We took a more unified path. I think you have a sense now, how important your species was to us when we found you.

Ryouko felt Clarisse’s jaw drop, and wasn’t sure she wasn’t doing the same. From what the MSY had told her and her own experiences, the Incubators didn’t share information like this, much less without being asked.

Also…

Were you reading my mind, Kyubey? she asked. Can you do that?

No, I wasn’t reading your mind, Kyubey thought.

Then, without even the usual fade‐out, the Incubator was gone.

Chapter 70: Intangible Exchange

Tue, 16 Dec 2025 06:45:25 +0100

First‐time watchers of a Directorate session will be forgiven for a bit of initial confusion. Gone are the staid office meeting rooms of the lower committees, replaced by representations of a rotating selection of Humanity’s historical centers of power. Throne rooms, UF bunkers, presidential palaces—but the Directorate shows a marked preference for the trappings of monarchy, where the symbolism of the Empty Throne is most potent.

For it is the symbolism that matters, and is closely adhered to. The throne represents the missing princeps, the king who will never again hold sovereignty. The trappings of state represent what Governance lays claim to: that it is the legitimate successor to every state, superseding them all. It does not shy away from using the symbols of failure, of nations that crumbled in ignominy or bloodshed, because then, it can remind the viewer of its own superiority.

Governance often twists the places it occupies to suit itself. Look closely, and you will see a mosaic of Human space, or a Governance logo, or the emblem of the United Front, engraved in a very anachronistic location.

— Excerpt, Looking Cthulhu in the Eye: a Viewing Guide for Governance.

The resistance of the invading Cephalopods to intelligence extraction, even by magical means, is a notorious subject of debate. It has always been understood as a combination of mental incapability, information restriction, and disciplined suicide, but even then, there has been considerable speculation about brainwashing, memory deletion, or mass biological programming. Yet the evidence for any given theory has always failed to be fully conclusive: the telepathic evidence fails to catch more than glimpses of what may be true, and biological studies on surviving samples have been inconclusive.

This has been just one of the mysteries that I was able to resolve immediately after arrival. /Thinker‐preserving has reported back to the Consensus on some aspects of the war. One such aspect is the use of memory and knowledge‐deprived individuals for combat. Still individuals, full members of their Tentacles, but stripped down, cleared of everything not immediately relevant to the tactical situation. The consciousness backups contain everything so in the long‐term nothing is lost. All of this is justified as a necessary defense against human “reality‐warping”.

/Thinker‐preserving has clearly lied about plenty, but this, at least, rings true to me. However, I can think of several other, more nefarious reasons such a policy might be adopted…

— Clarisse, Version Two Tactical Computer (@Shizuki Ryouko), excerpt from “Observations on Thinker Civilization”.

“Alright, so it might help me stay grounded to write a bit in my free time, so here I am. Grounded and hopeful, hopefully.”

“It’s hard to stay that way, of course. In a way, it almost feels selfish; the revelations about Consensus, and /Thinker‐preserving being only one Tentacle of the Cephalopods, are some of the best news humanity could have hoped for. But for me personally…”

“Here I am out where no human has ever gone, doing things no human ever has, making a big difference. It’s hard for the wish fulfillment to be more obvious. Just like the holos warned, though, it’s not enough. You always want more. For me, I just want the option to come back.”

“I hope I can come back. I hope I have enough grief cubes. Maybe hope is enough. I don’t know.”

“Maybe I’ll write about the aliens later, but if things turn out for the best, you’ll see them yourself. Objectively, they’re fascinating. Fascinating, and capable of destroying us with a gesture if I rub them the wrong way. And there’s something important I’d have to tell you when I get back.”

“That’s… all I’m going to say about that.”

“I don’t hate being out here, I hate being out here without you.”

— Shizuki Ryouko, Unsent Letters, #1.

ν·9a? suggests likely construction of habitat site in orbit of astronomical object 23a4f?|μ·Observation difficult, clouded by heavy intervening ship transits—|μ·Clear observation finally achieved after 2.547e50 fundamentals|ν+·Observed traffic consistent with posited use as 8b34? meeting site—|ν·Correlation with potential movements of… are unclear—

— Message from deep space espionage probe discovered by /Star‐faring near Turbulent Ink system. Pre‐encryption data accessed by direct nanite injection into core circuitry. Intrusion discovered after 2.129e43 fundamentals, leading to probe self‐termination.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Asami stirred from her reverie, blinking at the girl who had approached her.

“Sorry, sorry, shouldn’t have surprised you,” Azrael said, dropping into the seat next to her. “You’ve just been so quiet this whole trip. Wanted to check in on you.”

Asami shrugged, glancing back out the window of their chartered ramjet plane. By now, she had seen far more than she wanted of outer space, but there was still a certain appeal to be found in near‐orbit. The curve of the Earth, the distant contours of the Andes below… it was certainly more worth a look than the entertainment console, at least.

“Just thinking about the last time I was out here,” she said, turning back towards the other girl. “We got to be all alone out in the Amazon. Not like this time.”

This time, those on the plane—the Homura‐related field team of the newly‐christened Task Force Monteagle—were heading out to what appeared to be Homura’s Argentinian lab, only recently uncovered. There they were to dig into whatever old leads they could, hopefully before anyone thought to stop by and destroy the evidence.

Though, speaking precisely, it wasn’t clear if that was Homura’s only lab, even in the area.

“I can sympathize with how you feel,” Azrael said. “The independence of exploring alone or with someone you care about… I’m used to having plenty of time to myself. I guess this just isn’t that kind of mission.”

Azrael rubbed the back of her neck.

“I guess you can think of it like your time in the military. Get in, do what needs to be done, get out. With much less chance of getting killed, and at least our destination is quite a bit in the wilderness, so you’ll get to walk a bit. I look forward to a bit of a flight myself.”

Working on the task force was, Asami had realized, a stressful mix of constant vigilance and uncertain dangers. For instance, there was the risk that the conspiracy they were against had enough additional capability to target the task force personally. That meant Asami had been obliged to sweep the plane before takeoff alongside a MagOps security squad, who had “helpfully” related stories of explosive soul gems, auto‐teleporting jet engines, and other obscure attack vectors.

So, when they were all asked to minimize sleep to guard against attacks while airborne, Asami didn’t really need to be told.

They also needed to move quickly. They needed to gather whatever evidence they could before any enemy conspiracy could outpace them. Whatever chance they had might not last.

An environment like this wasn’t really like being in the military. There was an added element of uncertainty, and a lack of opportunity to punch anything. It was hard to imagine anyone coping well. Well, except…

Asami peeked back at Simona, a few rows back, seemingly enthralled by something on her console. She seemed fine, as well she might be.

“It’s not just about the plants,” Asami said. “It’s about my choice to be here. I feel… uneasy, like I don’t know what I should be doing. Who knows how any of this is going to end? I don’t really have any experience with investigations, or with Akemi Homura.”

She paused, weighing her feelings.

“I’m not sure how to say this. Now, if something doesn’t work out, it’s kind of my own fault, so I feel way more nervous. Just listening to Command, or following Ryouko around, was easier. That feels like a terrible thing to say.”

Azrael looked down for a moment.

“When I was younger, what they told me was that everyone has feelings like this. It’s part of growing up and taking responsibility for yourself. I always thought that it was condescending to put it that way, but there is a kernel of truth to it. Uncertainty is a part of making real decisions. For me, that started the moment I left my home.”

On reflection Asami could see a bit of what Azrael meant: comparing someone’s problems to your own could seem to be making light of them, even if it probably made them feel less alone.

But, more importantly…

“None of my problems compare to what yours were,” Asami said, shaking her head. “I’m not even worrying about Ryouko, which is probably the only thing worth worrying about.”

“Maybe,” Azrael said, stretching, a strange gesture that seemed to involve numerous back muscles, shuddering her seat.

The rest of the short flight was uneventful, but the conversation had made Asami restless, and she ended up doublechecking the dossiers she had been given about the others on the flight. Most honestly needed no introduction—Simona, Azrael, and Ryouko’s aunt, Kuroi Nana. There was also Meiqing, who Nana had taken on as an apprentice. She and Asami had reunited in Mitakihara and, well…

It had been fun enough, even given the circumstances, but it had been strained by Ryouko’s alleged death looming over them. Meiqing clearly thought Asami might be delusional.

That and a few others made up the people on the flight. Asami hadn’t been given files on the rest of the task force, but she knew it was extensive, and that she knew a few more of the people involved. That would have to do for now.

Their destination was the city of Mendoza in Argentina, close to the Andes. Long ago, its position close to one of the only passes over the mountains had made it a military hub, a key buttress against Brazilian forces to the east. Those days had converted what was once a minor regional capital, the heart of wine country, into a major population center, a legacy that had not entirely dimmed in the centuries since.

Perhaps it should have been difficult to maintain an alert mindset in a place like this, but the military had ingrained in her a perpetual situational awareness, and she found it natural to check her corners and exits as they made their way out of the airport. She still found it an offensive notion, though, the idea of watching for ambushes on Earth.

They wasted no time in heading for the site, using small bursts of magic to keep themselves fresh even beyond what the implants provided. Whatever bags they had would be automatically couriered to hotel rooms they might well never see.

The target lab facilities were outside the city proper, nestled into arid foothills far off the beaten path. The reason for that was obvious, but years ago it had been registered as an “Institute for Environmental Studies”, allegedly studying custom biological and implant augmentations for extreme environmental conditions. At its peak, there had been eleven researchers, all of whom had afterward absconded for the colonies and rapidly disappeared. None of it had any official connection to Homura or her Valentin identity.

That meant they were obliged to trek into the hills, along disused paths that had once been used only by drone transports and small buggies. They had all agreed on taking the walk—less conspicuous, and an easy journey for the likes of them, especially in the early morning cool. Even if Azrael kept grumbling about having been grounded—no need to draw any extra attention to their group.

Asami wasn’t usually a desert kind of person, but she found herself appreciating the occasional insect or hidden bird, the scraggly plants hurrying to fix their last bits of carbon for the night.

There wasn’t time to take notes or sit and watch, as she would have preferred, so instead she bookmarked the images in her memories, casting her eyes at all she could. The thing about being on Earth was, someone had almost certainly catalogued everything, far better than her.

Still, it would be fun.

The laboratory came into view just as the sun was starting to peek over the horizon, nestled in a valley between two dusty hills. As they came over the ridge, they could see light scintillating off the facade of the three‐story building, lonely behind a low permacrete wall. There were no other structures, and a small loading dock on the right backside had grown covered with dirt.

It was not the building itself that sparkled with light, but the sheet of transparent ceralymer that covered it. As a building that still had potential use, it had been sealed upon its decommissioning, to protect the building and its environment from each other. Such measures could be effective for years, but it had been years, and she could spot some soil gathering on top of one of the roofs. Still, the condition of the building looked acceptable.

They fanned out over the terrain. Azrael was now free to fly and took full advantage, moving into the air with great flaps of her wings, enough to draw glances from those who weren’t used to seeing it.

They had the official maps of the building to plan their approach, assuming they were reliable. Entry points were a door on the roof, the loading dock, and the main entrance. The building’s power systems were near the loading dock, so a team would head there to restart things, but the fastest route to the labs was the main entrance—and that was where Asami would head.

First, though, Azrael flew a tight loop around the building, touching down on the exposed section of the roof after a few preliminary scans. The area seemed clear.

Just some nesting birds, Azrael thought, referring to the ceralymer damage. Not sure how they got in. Oh, they’re not happy to see me.

Asami took a glance at the building as she moved, spotting a few ground doves dive‐bombing Azrael as she hastened into the building. It was fascinating behavior, if she had more time to look.

Asami moved in with her group: Meiqing, Nana, and Christina San Miguel, a magitech specialist affiliated with Science Division. A small laser cutter sufficed to get them through the ceralymer, which flexed unhappily as they carved out a door‐sized sheet and pushed it aside.

There was no need to wait for the power to come online. Meiqing reached into a panel on the side of the double doors and toggled the manual override, allowing them to push the translucent doors apart.

The doors moved easily despite the years, revealing a narrow atrium leading up to a glass‐and‐steel staircase. The walls were standard holographic‐emitting, and the empty space in front of them suggested where there might have once been chairs and a table in a waiting area.

One thing was immediately obvious: someone had been here before.

Whoever it was hadn’t been particularly subtle about it, leaving exposed wiring and wall terminals right inside the atrium, wall panels on the floor next to the seating area. It was exactly where one would try to gain access to a building’s systems, if one were unable to go any deeper and didn’t care about secrecy.

They were instantly on higher alert, each of them performing respective scans of the area as Christina moved for the terminals. A few seconds later, confirmation came through from one of the other teams that building power was coming back online in a moment. They didn’t transform, yet.

Can confirm systems have been activated at least once before, they were told. No timestamps, but I can tell.

Of course, a past startup should have triggered an alert on a Governance monitoring system somewhere. The fact that it evidently hadn’t, or had been ignored, had obvious implications.

They paused a moment in anticipation, waiting for reactivated traps or system failures, and when none manifested the building’s internal mirror array came to life, bathing the lobby in cool dawn sunlight.

Christina transformed, summoning a gossamer blue‐and‐white wand, translucent with bright runes, and planted it into one of the open terminals, where it passed intangibly straight through the optical screen. A moment later, a cable snaked out from behind the terminal and installed itself on Christina’s wrist port, a rather more standard method of accessing the network.

They waited for a conclusion, Asami peering up at the building’s upper floors, where frosted glass doors denied access to unauthorized personnel.

Our predecessors were more careful about hiding their electronic traces than their physical, she thought. I wouldn’t even be able to follow this without magic‐based tracing. It’s a bit strange that they tried to get in here, though. Even without a building AI managing security, you’d want direct hardware access, TCF breach or not.

She frowned, and some kind of magic eyepiece appeared over one eye. With implants an eyepiece seemed superfluous, but when it came to magic, who was Asami to say?

The building datastores have been completely wiped, and probably not by whoever got here first. Not too surprising; it’d be silly for Homura to just leave her secrets out in the open. The question is whether any other measures were taken. Otherwise, a skilled mage might get the information anyway.

The eyepiece disappeared and she disconnected from the terminal.

I need hardware access. Let’s go.

“Hardware access” meant reaching the building’s computing cluster, hidden in its basement with the other hardware and cooling systems. So they moved onward, deeper into the facility. Default‐mode security doors opened at their approach, revealing abandoned hallways and lab space, stripped bare of important equipment, leaving only the self‐assembling furniture, desks, and fixtures embedded in the building itself.

They kept their senses and sensors on edge, checking around every corner as they passed. If there was even anything left in the facility, it had likely been picked over by their unknown third party. Their only hope to find anything here was a magic sweep, which could be done later.

They headed down a flight of stairs, entering what should have been hardware storage. Instead, there was more lab space, accompanied by extensive fluid and chemical piping. The maps were wrong, and given what Simona had told them, it was possible to guess that this was where the growth vats had been.

Asami looked back at Simona. Did it bother her, descending into what might very well be her birthplace?

It was hard to tell—the girl had her professional mask on. Asami was tempted to probe Simona’s feelings a little, but now simply wasn’t the time. They had a secret lab to investigate.

Most of the building’s computing hardware had been stripped out, leaving a cavernous server room that was nearly all empty, save from rows and rows of sealed connection docks. Only in the far back were a few boxes still in place, large, metal, and austere—the residual systems that maintained the building itself.

Such hardware would have no information left about the former lab or its operations, but Christina marched forward purposefully, plugging herself into the machines as quickly as possible. With magic, it was possible to find even the ghosts of the machines that had once been there.

Yet Christina soon shook her head unhappily.

This isn’t just the usual clean‐up job. My magic seeks are failing. I’ve only heard about this kind of thing in power study. Some magical girls can block clairvoyance. A few can block it even from the future. One of the best kinds of magical security. But that would mean…

There’s only a handful of such magical girls, Nana commented. That alone is useful information.

Can you break that kind of seal? Christina thought. It’s a kind of magic, after all.

I’ve yet to figure out how to project it into the past, Nana thought. Or attach it to someone else’s magic. My abilities are a very blunt tool. Though we can make the try.

Maybe I can contribute, Simona thought, neutrally. More power couldn’t hurt.

As the others gathered in front of the servers, Nana raising her hands and scowling, Asami found her attention drawn off towards one of the side walls.

It was a nondescript section of the room, a simple white wall which would have once been inaccessible behind metal boxes, now gloomy in the dim light.

She stepped forward, certain there was something there.

She had felt something like this once before, in a context that was both very different… and a little similar. That had been in an underground complex on a distant world, a trap set for Sakura Kyouko…

It couldn’t be, could it?

No, she realized. It could easily be.

Kuroi‐san, she thought. Nana.

The others stopped, registering the emotional content of her message.

What is it?

There’s something buried inside the wall, like what we encountered on X‐25.

She felt a chill on her spine as Nana and Meiqing’s attention shifted immediately to where she was indicating. On X‐25 it had been Ryouko who had felt it first, but she had too, in the end, and here they were again, she, Meiqing, and Nana.

This one was smaller, though. Much smaller, small enough that she would never have noticed if they hadn’t walked right by it. Perhaps the size of a particularly large grapefruit.

My powers are very limited when it comes to synthetic walls, Meiqing thought. We’ll have to take her word on it.

We’ll need an evac ready before we try anything, Nana thought. Damn, if only we had a teleporter.

Strictly speaking, there wasn’t necessarily any rush, not this time, but the last one had been a bomb. Could they afford to wait for backup to arrive? They had the option to go back outside and try from there, but was that safe? If it were a bomb, what was the trigger?

Nana made an unhappy gesture.

It’s not just about our safety. We also need to keep whatever evidence we can intact. But until we can be sure about escaping or stopping an explosion, there’s simply no guaranteed good option. If we wait outside for a teleporter and a bomb goes off, at least we won’t be caught inside with it.

The details were sorted out quickly: an emergency request was placed to MSY relays in Mendoza for whatever teleporters they might have. The other teams would be withdrawn and their own squad would move to a location outside, behind a hill, where Meiqing would fabricate earthen walls to bunker them down. There they would wait until a suitable teleporter and shield generator arrived.

It was a vexing wait, more so when it stretched out into minutes, then to nearly half an hour. Asami was used to not having the right power or the ability available—in the military, that was all too common. But they were supposed to be specialists here. This was their mission, and practically the first thing they had needed to do was call in outside help.

Their reinforcements arrived at length; it turned out they had been forced to pull the best candidate teleporter out of a costume performance in a neighboring town, and she had only agreed to come once they explained how serious the situation was.

I was supposed to be getting facturas with my partner, the girl in question huffed, appearing inside their earthen bunker with a shower of sparkles. I’m only back on Earth for a week. But the situation is serious, yes?

All they had told her was that the situation was TCF breach‐related. Which was still more than Governance or the MSY wanted to admit, but it would have been impossible to avoid saying something, and you didn’t want people’s imaginations filling in the blanks.

We think we’ve detected some kind of trap, Nana thought. Designed to ensnare anyone who passed by. There was something similar on X‐25. We were lucky Miss Nakihara was here to notice it at all.

X‐25 had already been blamed on the TCF breach conspiracy, and Governance had already agreed to tying it into to whatever happened here.

Traitors, honestly, the teleporter said. It is hard enough to fight the squid as it is. I am glad to assist.

It was time to proceed.

They returned to the datastore room with a single teleport, the journey dazzling them with a dizzying blast of glowing five‐pointed stars.

They stayed in a tense circle for a moment, senses and sensors casting about over the area. Nothing had changed—still the same dreary computer room, without even holographic walls to interact with.

Asami pointed as best she could at where the thing was. It would be up to the others now.

The barrier generator stepped forward, and with down‐to‐the‐millisecond timing, projected her barrier forward, a web of white light projecting from her palms—right as Simona added her own orange enhancement magic from the side.

They waited on trigger‐alert, the barrier generator glaring at the wall as if it would kill her, barrier pulsing.

I have it, the barrier generator thought, finally, meaning that she had sealed the object off and everything seemed fine. No explosion yet, but if it did, she could hopefully absorb it.

The teleporter tapped the ground with a red‐and‐gold stick.

Asami kept her guard up as they shifted, flooding her eyes with sudden morning light. They were half a kilometer away now, and now they could see what the barrier enclosed, an excavated ball of metal and permacrete, hanging in shimmering white above sunbaked rock.

Nana’s hands glowed purple, and for a barely perceptible moment the barrier flickered, letting in a flare of Nana’s magic that outshone the sun itself.

The barrier sealed shut and they waited, breaths held.

Nothing happened, and now their sensors could pierce the veil.

No bomb, Nana thought. But a datacrystal.

The barrier generator lowered the hunk of wall to the ground, releasing it a moment later. Technologically, the stealth device itself would be quite a find, but why would there be a hidden data crystal in the wall?

It’s a surveillance recording, Christina thought, her wand inserted into the metal.

A surveillance recording? Of what? Asami asked.

Instead of answering directly, Christina gestured at Meiqing.

Give me a second, Meiqing thought.

The ground beneath them rumbled, and then with a loud snap a dome of dirt slammed into place around them, swallowing them in darkness, except for the glow of Christina’s wand.

As good a way to block prying eyes as any other. The teleporter and barrier generator they had recruited were still nearby, but had been lured away for a debriefing. Other than that, the principals were here: Nana, Simona, Azrael.

Christina’s wand came to life, and a hologram projected out into the space between them. It took a moment for Asami to recognize it as a recording of a building interior, likely the same one they had just left. Not much was discernable—it could have just been a random hallway.

Four maintenance drones skittered into view, the size of small dogs and spider‐legged. They looked slightly odd, a bit bulkier than what Asami was used to, but nothing she would have looked three times at. They stopped in place.

“Intercepted tightbeam audio transmission” appeared at the top of the hologram.

“It is absolutely galling how she keeps managing to do this,” a girl’s voice said, an overlay arrow appearing above one of the drones to indicate the speaker. “We’re supposed to be the ones with the plan. How can she keep out‐predicting us?”

Another girl’s voice replied from another drone:

“The calculations are not perfect. You know that, and you know who we’re facing down. I hate it too, but she must have some superior method of prediction.”

A third voice now:

“Better than her? Better than Laplace’s Demon itself? The only way I could see that is if that old witch Oriko isn’t as dead as they make her out to be. Whatever the case is, I’m sure it certainly isn’t some goddess.”

The accent on the last word was disdainful, to say the least.

The second drone groaned.

“We’re not doing this again. Look, thanks to her and our other friends we have an incredible advantage, Akemi Homura or not. No one understands computation as well as we do. The resulting flexibility is our edge.”

“May it be as you say,” the first drone said. “But Akemi Homura is proving much more flexible than our mutual enemies. It’s only a matter of time before she makes a move on our little backdoor.”

“Let them think that’s all we have. As long as they think that’s how we’re getting in.”

The last drone finally spoke up:

“We’re wasting time here, I’d rather not spend any more time in these drones than I have to. You know how much she hates their limited capacity.”

One of the spider drones raised an appendage and an object flashed into the recording above it: an astrolabe, glowing gold, out of nowhere.

Another flash, and the drones were gone.

There the recording ended, leaving the group to blink at each other in the murky dark.

Where do we even begin with that? Nana thought. First off, are we even sure this is authentic?

They looked to Christina, who didn’t respond right away, eyepiece still glowing as her magic worked. The frown on her face got deeper.

Right, she thought finally. I have no reason to think otherwise. Everything validates, and it’s even properly authenticated as TCF‐compliant and secure, but get this, it’s using one of the newer protocols, one of the parallel TCFs set up after the recent breach incidents. Specifically, this is the one derived from the Version Two Tactical Computers. At the time this was allegedly recorded, two years ago, those weren’t known to be alternate‐branch.

She looked at Nana, who nodded for her to continue.

But of course we all know about Homura’s involvement in that work. This is likely intended as a calling card, there to make us think she made this recording.

She paused.

Of course, how much does this prove it was really her? Well, this recording uses a form of magic‐based validation called retrospection catalysis, which is one of the hardest ones to break. It’s not impossible, of course, but for now I would say it’s very likely to be her. Ideally, we would wait for MESBH to study it and reach their conclusions, but that will take quite a bit.

She stopped there, the glow of her eyepiece casting a strange light on her face.

Well, then we can talk about the contents of the video, Nana said, shaking her head. Before we even touch the other stuff, the drones definitely seemed like they were talking to each other, but using tight‐beam audio? If they were remote‐controlled why wouldn’t the controllers talk with each other directly? Maybe an AI would know better.

I’m more concerned about this Laplace’s Demon they’re talking about, Meiqing thought. That’s quite the name. If it has any truth to it.

It would explain why they think they could take on Governance or Homura, Simona thought. I can speak from experience that Homura’s ability to predict the future is uncanny. But not perfect, and a real Laplace’s Demon would be perfect.

The Homura I knew, before New Athens, was pretty far from perfect at predicting the future, Nana thought. Still, the conspiracy can’t be perfect either, or we would have never had any success against them.

Asami realized, with some discomfort, that she was probably the only one here who had scoffed at the drones’ dismissal of the Goddess. She knew that it was a perfectly good explanation for Homura’s recent predictive powers.

Did she need to say something? It was possible she didn’t have to: after all, Chitose Yuma and Sakura Kyouko would take the idea seriously, even if the others wouldn’t.

The Goddess explanation can’t be so readily dismissed, Asami thought, hiding a cringe. Homura has the Goddess’s other Ribbon, after all. It sounds like the conspirators might even be taking that seriously.

Asami‐chan… Meiqing thought, only to her.

You may be right, Azrael thought, to Asami’s surprise. Though if any of them take the idea seriously, it’s a wonder they aren’t panicking.

The drone girls did seem awfully certain of themselves, Christina commented.

Someone with a TCF backdoor into Governance would be, Nana pointed out. And, it sounds like, some other kind of trump card. The MSY has already enhanced its security procedures, but this just adds more fuel to that fire.

She sighed, putting a hand to her head.

Honestly, we don’t need more questions about our security.

Asami waited a few seconds, but no one else seemed to have anything to say on the subject—at least, not while including her in the telepathy.

What about the teleportation at the end? Asami thought. It kind of looked like one of the drones was casting magic. We could be dealing with some kind of mage with drone‐based magic. Like Patricia von Rohr, though I’m definitely not saying she was involved here.

With magic involved, it’s nearly impossible to say anything with certainty, Nana said. But it does mean we can look through MSY membership records for anyone similar.

How likely is that to work? Asami asked.

In answer, Nana looked at Azrael, whose wings had rustled unhappily.

Wouldn’t have caught most of the rogue colony girls I’ve had to hunt down, Azrael thought, reading the cue. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try.

Today, executives of the MSY had been summoned to the Directorate Plenary Chamber.

A golden throne, wide as it was tall, stood atop a dais some five meters wide and a meter high. The back of the throne was composed of dragons in gold leaf, bright like the morning sun, and in front was a gilded podium and a series of cerulean incense burners. Towering columns painted in vermillion red, ten meters high, rose to the domed ceiling, with illustrations of Earth etched into jadeite tiles of ultramarine blue and viridian green. Below, the dais was flanked by additional gold and cerulean incense burners, large enough to fit a person. The finer details were impeccable, every minute ripple of paint rendered as if it had been freshly brushed.

But this Dragon Throne was no mere historical replica. Instead of facing inward, its dragons turned their heads away, their fierce eyes shadowed, their claws clutching not Dragon Pearls but the Core Worlds of Humanity, blue‐green orbs swirling with clouds, finely dusted with the lights of cities and orbiting satellites. The patterns of the ceiling were not mythic creatures but constellations, logos, representations of all that Governance oversaw.

And the Throne, of course, remained Empty.

Kyouko made her way into the chamber, stepping brusquely over the wooden threshold at the front entrance. The setting was arresting in its grandeur, but she focused her attention on the political principals: Kuroi Kana, Tomoe Mami, and Seo Si‐won, standing in the center facing the throne, surrounded by the circular bench where the members of the Directorate would soon be arrayed. Not quite how the throne room of the Forbidden Palace had been arranged, but Governance had its own trappings.

Right on cue, the Directorate Representatives appeared all at once, snapping into place in their seats neither a second late nor early. Today there was a full house, and as the circle of thirteen Representatives gazed pointedly down at them, Kyouko had the opportunity to gauge their questioners—enough time to note that while most were in their usual outfits, some had adapted a bit to suit their surroundings. Science and Technology, for instance, had dropped his usual mad scientist look for a scholar‐bureacrat’s robe and finialed cap.

More important, though, were the two Representatives sitting closest to the Empty Throne. The first was Yuma, to the left, occupying her seat as Governance: Magical Girls. They met gazes, and then Yuma stood up and began making her way down to her MSY fellows. A second later, MG shimmered in to replace her. The symbolic was explicit: today Yuma was representing the MSY, not Governance.

The second key representative, to the right of the throne, was Governance: Public Order. That position meant he was chairing the meeting. Today, he had swapped modern wear for a robe of white silk brocade, embroidered with the two large black arrows of Governance in front, and additional logos on both of his arms.

Kyouko patted Yuma’s head when she arrived beside her, and Yuma made an annoyed noise. The girl was back in her child avatar for the meeting, and she had stuck with her magical girl costume today; her bright pastel green color and cat ear headband made for quite a contrast with the surroundings.

At the appointed time, Public Order brought the session to order.

“I am sure our summons brings no surprise to any of you. While publicly it is important to keep a united front, what we have learned about the TCF breach and MSY internal decision‐making has raised concerns that require meaningful consultation. In this closed session, I hope for a productive discussion and the resolution of key questions, away from too much public attention.”

“First, we will discuss the recent security breaches in the TCF, what has happened, what we have found in the investigation, and what we will do moving forward. That will serve as context for the second part of the discussion, where we will discuss the MSY’s rogue elements, what the MSY knows about them, and what should be done. Finally, we will talk about MSY decision‐making and the Church of Hope.”

Public Order crossed his arms. He had never been the most popular member of the Directorate, not even when the role had been Yuma’s, and the current Public Order her Advisory AI. Now that Public Order wore a sharp, authoritative look, he had become the face of some of Governance’s less savory aspects, all the subtle means of inhibiting dissent—concealing information, denying access to jobs and resources, and so forth.

“On the topic of security,” he said. “The Trusted Computing Framework is intended to serve as a provably Human value compliant, incorruptible foundation for all important computing. However, it is not invulnerable to the application of magic, and we have relied upon you, the MSY, to help us protect ourselves—unknowingly, at first, but consciously since the end of your masquerade. We have never been comfortable with the arrangement; we prioritized cooperation previously, given the Cephalopod threat, but now we find such an arrangement difficult to tolerate.”

Yuma moved to the middle of the floor to speak, her reflection murky on the black‐tiled floor.

“I speak in my capacity as a Second Executive of the MSY and Head of Governmental Affairs. The security measures used by the MSY were agreed upon by all parties shortly after we became public, and our previous efforts had been successful for centuries. The issue now is that the threat far exceeds what both we and you considered plausible at the time.”

She paused rhetorically, looking around the room to meet the eyes of the Directorate.

“Of course, what was considered plausible was based primarily on our own assessment of the situation, which proved incorrect. We underestimated the prevalence of rogue elements within our own organization, and their willingness to conspire against the common good. That is a matter we will address shortly. As for the current topic of TCF security, my colleague Kuroi Kana, Director of the Black Heart, will discuss previous and existing security arrangements.”

She stepped aside, making room for Kana to give her own statement. By now, her unassuming, deliberately inconspicuous demeanor was reasonably familiar in the Directorate chambers, though today she affected a pair of cosmetic glasses, which Kyouko hadn’t seen in years.

As Kana stepped forward, a set of stylized diagrams appeared in front of all the members, sheaves of virtual reference materials to accentuate what she was saying.

Kana waited a moment to begin.

“The magical defense of Humanity’s computing systems—the MSY’s contribution to Governance’s information security, both before and after 2440—relies on the routine scanning and verification of core computing infrastructure and sapients. The most important of these are the AIs that program other AIs and software, the source from which all computing springs. Intrusion or damage here, at the root of the system, could propagate throughout the entire computing framework, and is the most serious kind of attack. All other attacks, whether by mundane or magical means, would have only limited and temporary effect, and would inevitably be discovered. This is a welcome fact, as it is simply not remotely physically possible to magically monitor all computing systems all the time. Instead we only need to defend the root.”

“But the TCF breach was an attack on this root, an attack that has demonstrated critical flaws in our existing procedures. The existing regime of routine inspections and verification must be insufficient.”

“Analysis of the possible attack vectors has shown that the lack of continuous monitoring is the core problem. Put simply, mages capable of the necessary tasks are rare and needed at the front and this was the primary consideration at the beginning of the war, when these plans were formed in conjunction with Governance. On annual revision, the extra resource expenditure to do better was always deemed unnecessary.”

She made a gesture, and a new set of files presented themselves. These displayed graphically how the new inspection procedures would work, changing colors to indicate assessed risk and detected hypothetical attacks. Additional metadata detailed the pairs of magical girls who would now be on continuous rotation, the additional telepathic screening they would undergo, and the novel magical artifacts that would be deployed in conjunction. There would now always be someone on‐site, on all the sites. In addition, red teams of magical girls and newly‐constructed AIs would now be assigned to look for security holes and suggest improvements, under Black Heart purview.

“Of course, this is much more resource‐intensive than the previous arrangement—we estimate ten new AIs and two hundred magical girl personnel. Military Affairs has already approved our reassignment requests away from the front, as the current period is relatively quiet, but this may have to be reassessed later.”

She stopped there, turning the discussion over to questions. The first several questions were purely technical in nature, but the last one was more difficult. It was a moment before Kana responded:

“Unfortunately, we have not yet found definitive evidence of when or where the primary penetration occurred. Our studies suggest that a program of repeated modify‐and‐erase intrusions between audits would have been the most likely approach. Investigation is ongoing, but without firmer evidence it is possible we will never know.”

With that resolved, Kana ceded the floor.

One of the Directorate members to their right stirred. This one struck observers immediately as by far the least human member of the Directorate, but the average human struggled to explain why. In one sense, she looked like an attractive human, short‐haired, with the same inscrutable ethnicity of many Governance AIs, and the standard I/O eye. In another, her appearances had been carefully adjusted to convey a kind of steely otherworldliness. Sleek, eerie, incorruptible.

Kyouko remembered this same Directorate member in an earlier meeting, open to the public. There, she had spoken about the anger and trauma within the AI community, and about how demand for reinspection by new branch TCF AIs was far outstripping supply.

“The reestablishment of security is only one part of the larger corpus of work that must be completed,” Governance: Artificial Intelligence said, leaning over the railing of gilt bronze. “Those responsible for this atrocity must be captured and brought to justice for their crimes against our very personhoods. We have begun by reexamining databases for manipulation and fabrication, with an eye towards the likely targets of the TCF Conspiracy. As part of this, we have reanalyzed much of the raw data from sector surveys, with the aid of retired and volunteer AIs, in order to shine a light on the dark corners of space where they may have hidden themselves.”

Like Kana, she summoned reference material for the attendees, this time focused on a display screen. This screen began with a star map of Governance‐controlled space, with key systems highlighted in green—a standard display familiar to even a schoolchild. It quickly shifted angle, and an additional series of virtual displays appeared nearby, surrounding the central one, depicting individual groups of stars or a system, with one area labeled.

“As you can see, we have already found a number of anomalies: probable planets, interstellar asteroids, and other objects that are missing from the usual catalogs, accompanied by signs of data manipulation and outright fabrication. However, while we have begun resurveying these objects using stealth assets, nothing notable has been uncovered. The sheer number of anomalies potentially indicates an attempt to drown anything of real worth inside a sea of noise, and there is some risk that all of this is mere misdirection. Nonetheless, we have no choice but to pursue all of it. Access to an updating list of these anomalies has been provided to the MSY for consideration.”

She paused, looking pointedly at MG, whose face was impassive.

“The potential for something else to be out there in the void is obvious, especially after the recordings that were found at the asteroid,” she continued. “For a Directorate Advisory AI to be suborned is an outrage, whatever the reason, but the purpose for which she was used is truly unforgivable.”

Suffice to say, the fact that Humanity had murdered an apparent group of Cephalopod negotiators at the dawn of the war was a diplomatic catastrophe of the first order. For it to have been imposed on Humanity by malevolent forces who were now coordinating with the alien invaders… the Directorate, and MG, felt justified rage.

The topic was sensitive enough that it had yet to be made public, nor had it been included in the information dumped onto the internet by the conspiracy. Perhaps it made both sides look bad.

There were fewer questions this time, with most of those interested electing to forward technical suggestions by other channels. There had already been a session for everyone to vent their spleens, and Governance AIs didn’t repeat themselves unless they felt it necessary.

Afterward, the current Director of the MSY’s Science Division, Seo Si‐won, stepped forward. She was impeccably dressed, hair tied back in a short ponytail, and looked how one might imagine a woman about to enter her fifth century, confident and poised.

Still, Kyouko could see the strain in her posture as she moved towards the center. She hoped she would be alright.

“There is another topic of interest to the Directorate,” Si‐won said. “We have achieved some closure on the incident at the Eurydome Institute of Theoretical Gravitonics, thanks to the efforts of Governance investigators. While Lemaître was verified after the incident, the evidence now clearly suggests he was under the influence of the TCF backdoor. Sabotage by the lab AI was always the most likely theory, and there is no longer any dispute about the cause. The more interesting question is motive.”

“Of course, Lemaître had the authority and skill to cover his own tracks. But using magic, our own specialists were able to glean that the intentions of the conspiracy may have been two‐fold. Not just to assassinate Shizuki Ryouko, but also the Director, Tao Shaojie, and in so doing severely damage ITG’s research. Interestingly, targeting Sakura Kyouko did not seem to be part of the plan.”

“The conclusions are not yet finalized, but I do not expect them to change. In my opinion, it is likely this was a deliberate attempt by the conspiracy to sabotage the war effort.”

She paused.

“Let’s do some questions before we move on to the next topic,” she said.

“That is somewhat surprising, isn’t it?” Public Order asked, after a moment. “During the recent terrorist attacks, the conspiracy had plenty of opportunity to damage the war effort far more than they did.”

It was really more of a comment than a question, and another Representative responded before Si‐won could.

“Remember that they also tried to discredit both us and the MSY in the eyes of the public,” Governance: Public Opinion—the human Fatimah Mai—said. “That would be difficult to do if they discredited themselves by seriously damaging the war effort.”

“Then perhaps their motivations are even more malicious than we suspected,” Governance: Military Affairs said. “Though I admit there is not much lower to go.”

“Indeed,” Si‐won agreed. “In response to this and the other incidents, Public Order has instituted a series of measures for improved site security on war‐relevant research institutes across human space. Where the MSY is involved, or where magic‐related research is performed, we have complied, and added our own action plans on top of that.”

Si‐won waited a few seconds, tapping her fingers on the side of her leg. Was that impatience or nerves? Kyouko couldn’t tell.

“That conveniently brings us to the next topic,” Si‐won said, deviating from the prepared statement. “As you know, the Zeus Research Institute was founded in Mitakihara to study magical phenomenon, both in a fundamental sense and, nowadays, at the intersection with high technology. We’ve made a number of breakthroughs over the past century, but progress since the start of the war has been rather slow. We now believe we know why.”

She took a breath before continuing:

“There has been a coordinated campaign of scientific sabotage dating back more than fifteen years, perpetrated as a coordinated effort by the lab AIs themselves to stall progress. Findings were ignored, data was subtly tainted, experimental conditions were modified. Much of the damage is irreversible—tainted or ignored data can perhaps be recovered with serious magical effort, but there is no way to recover from malevolently damaged experiments, other than to run them again. We have been set back perhaps a full decade or more.”

Kyouko nodded silently, wishing Si‐won could see her. They had rehearsed what she would say, and discussed all this with some of the Directorate members in advance, but as head of Science Division Si‐won was also responsible for overseeing the institute. For her, it was a terribly personal disaster, and Kyouko knew for a fact that she hadn’t slept since the news broke, dealing with the fallout. Her staffers had even called in the MHD on one occasion.

There was a resignation offer still sitting unacknowledged on the Leadership Committee’s agenda. Perhaps, if there was a political need for someone’s head to roll, they would accept. But not yet. Not if Kyouko could avoid it.

“This has gone a long way towards explaining recent lack of progress in the field,” Science and Technology said, before anyone else could say anything. “And the Zeus Institute has been by far the biggest scientific target we have identified. In terms of why, we have no direct evidence, but it seems safe to say that given the terrorists’ reliance on magic to infiltrate computer systems, they really didn’t want studies on magic and technology to move forward. Perhaps they were afraid it would help us detect them.”

“Which is a sensible enough inference,” Artificial Intelligence said, again leaning forward. “But there may be more to the story than that. Our analysts are not convinced that all breaches and anomalies can be explained solely by TCF corruption. If other forms of magic or technology are being used to conduct operations on a large scale, then the attacks on Zeus may be an attempt at concealment.”

“The investigations of our newly‐established task force have reached a similar conclusion,” Kyouko said, stepping forward to be seen. “We think the enemy has considerable magical capability, more than we originally thought. That makes things complicated.”

She kept her silence on exactly what had been found in Argentina. They weren’t ready to share the details of that. Not until all the implications had all been worked out.

“It’s time to move on to the next topic, I think,” Public Order said, after an interim of silence. “Governance’s trust in the MSY is founded in part on the organization’s capacity to organize and speak for all magical girls, and implicitly to maintain order in a demographic we ourselves little regulate. In that context, the existence of rogue magical girls acting outside the auspices of the MSY is uniquely troubling. Chitose Yuma?”

“We take this matter as seriously as you do,” Yuma said, without missing a beat. “We do not consider ourselves an authoritarian organization, but to function we have rules, membership rolls, and monitoring and surveillance. To learn that some of us have hidden themselves, and worked so decisively against everyone’s interests, is deeply troubling, and I hate and regret the pain that the actions of some of them have caused.”

She didn’t call the MSY a government. Formally, they weren’t one, and doing that in front of the Directorate tended to step on toes.

“But, not all of them,” Yuma continued. “We must take the time to first talk about Akemi Homura.”

This was a topic Governance had insisted upon in the meeting planning, and indeed they couldn’t dodge it, even if it hit them where it hurt the most.

“Akemi Homura is a special case,” Yuma continued. “We all learned that at New Athens. Now that we know she is alive, it is clear that the unique powers she displayed there are still in play. All of us, Incubators included, have failed to find her or understand her plans, but so far what she has done furthers Human interests. Her hidden presence may even be construed as a good thing.”

She looked around the room, gauging the reactions of the Representatives.

“I understand what might be said about that,” she continued. “That perhaps we, the MSY, are not trying as hard as we could to look for her, that the leadership is compromised by personal ties to Akemi Homura. I am here to assure you that appearances are not reality. For decades we have searched for her, devoting personal resources long after the official searches were called off. Finding her is a primary goal of our new task force, which is the official continuation of those efforts. We have been trying.”

Yuma paused rhetorically, looking down briefly.

“But, given all of that, we have chosen to face facts as they are. The unpleasant truth here is, I do not believe either Governance or the MSY is capable of bringing Homura in. So we have planned around the likelihood that we will not. And frankly, I think Governance should too. After all, I believe Governance prides itself on being able to face unpleasant truths.”

“I know that’s not something you want to hear, but we, the possessors of magic, have not been able to control Homura. Rebuke us for that if you like, it doesn’t change the fact that we probably never could.”

During the ensuing silence, Kyouko tried to read the expression of the assembled Representatives—the human ones, at least. It was hopeless.

“I understand that we operate from a position where we may not have a choice,” Public Order said, “but we cannot simply await her actions. I think the history of both your organization and of human government makes clear the many risks of uncontrolled agents. Whatever happens, you must keep trying.”

“Of course,” Yuma said. “And again, we will not give up. But the higher priority must be placed to the other group, rather than the one with good intentions which we cannot catch.”

“Hard to argue with,” Public Order said, “but we will have to trust that you will search for Akemi Homura with the level of dedication you claim.”

The exchange was short, but no one else spoke. Appropriately, Kyouko thought: what exactly was anyone supposed to say? Yuma was fundamentally right, and Governance was indeed not an organization to throw fits about what it could not change, however it groused.

“Let’s move on to the next topic, then,” Public Order said. “There is a group of individuals whose malevolence is not in question here. I believe Kuroi Kana is to speak on that?”

The woman in question stepped forward.

“I will discuss what we know about the TCF Conspiracy,” she said, adjusting her cosmetic glasses. “Truthfully, the answer may still be summarized as ‘very little’. Before the recent attacks, we had no actionable intel, so this is not merely a problem of ignored intelligence.”

“To elaborate, while we have membership rolls and internal monitoring organizations, the detailed magical safeguards on our records have greatly lapsed since the days of the Unification Wars. Furthermore, our processes are not designed to prevent this kind of deception—it is possible to fake a death, for instance, particularly in the heat of combat, or to make use of unknown contractees on rogue colonies. We know such contractees exist, though not whether they’ve joined any conspiracies, from Incubator statements.”

She paused.

“Ultimately, we have been too lax. The long peace since the Unification Wars convinced us we had no internal threats, even when new circumstances arose that provided novel contexts for escaping our controls. The overall problem is very difficult, but one we should have kept trying to solve.”

“As a technical matter, though, it must be noted that some of this is a consequence of former Governance leniency towards rogue colonies. Recent decades have proven that many escaped your and our monitoring, and X‐25 in particular demonstrates the potential for hostile development of magical girls.”

She made sure everyone caught the point, then continued:

“All of this is a discussion of general security, however. To combat the specific threat of the known rogue organization, we are constituting a high‐level, heavily‐resourced task force—Monteagle—to investigate and dismantle this adversary. For an interstellar search, we are mostly reliant on Governance, but we have already found information of interest. We are tightening the security on our records, and on soul gems in transit—besides the TCF conspiracy, we believe Akemi Homura has been using this route for recruitment, with at least one example that we have already shared, that of Misa Virani.”

Kana omitted one potential angle: greater security for grief cube allocation. Besides being a sensitive topic inside the MSY itself, the position they had agreed on was that it was none of Governance’s business. No need to bring it to their attention.

“Beyond that,” Kana said, “we will work in concert with Governance’s own efforts on the matter, as always. But those efforts go both ways. We have already suggested administrative takeover of the remaining known rogue colonies, and more review of combat operation logs. But we understand that it is difficult to do better without impacting the war effort or other priorities.”

A bit of a bureaucratic defense, but not unreasonable, Kyouko thought. And as Kyouko had come to realize over the centuries, sometimes the bureaucracy was über alles.

“A sensible, if defensive answer,” Public Order remarked. “Contingent of course on adequate fulfillment. Governance has been very tolerant of your organization’s independent decision‐making and refusal of our monitoring, but part of that has been a history of competence and results. We don’t want to have to reassess.”

Kyouko traded a glance with Mami. Public Order’s response had been sharp, reflecting longstanding disagreement over the MSY’s de facto independence. Neither side wanted to force a confrontation over the matter, but Governance tended to speak publicly as if the MSY were a mere corporation, whose charter was subject to cancellation by the state.

The MSY didn’t share that view, of course, but they usually found it prudent to let such comments slide.

Public Order looked to the assembled Representatives for further commentary. Colonial Affairs and Military Affairs provided some additional details of their efforts, but nothing really worth noting.

“Then let’s move on to our final topic,” Public Order said. “How does the MSY leadership care to explain their recent use of religious artifacts to inform their decision‐making?”

For the others, the least pleasant of questions. Kyouko—well, she had been looking forward to this.

It was difficult to resist the temptation to be snide, but she let Yuma speak for them, as planned. Yuma’s statement would be short; the question‐and‐answer session would dominate.

“Our official statements on this are quite clear,” Yuma said. “Every source of information is worth investigating as long as we do it on our own terms. No new leadership has joined the Cult. We are not taking benevolence from the Ribbon or anyone acting through it for granted.”

Even Governance had been courteous enough to refer to the Church by its proper name, but the rhetorical distance would be useful for Yuma and Mami. Kyouko would wait her turn to speak.

Normally, the theology was clear: mundane humans had their own world to live in, and it was best to leave them to it. But not in this case. Here, the Goddess seemed to want more than that, and Kyouko was happy to serve.

“Your sober public statements are appreciated,” Public Order said. “But we are concerned about the effect all this may have on your decision‐making, and that you may be overrating the, for lack of a better word, divinity of this source. You have experimental evidence demonstrating some credibility, but we are both aware that a small amount of verifiably true information is insufficient to demonstrate trustworthiness or benevolence. Merely human magical girls perform miracles all the time. Yet we know of at least some resourcing decisions that were made on this fragile basis.”

The statement was obviously directed at Mami in particular.

“Tomoe Mami’s decision to reexamine the potential for alien diplomacy was sufficiently justified by the information from the asteroid,” Military Affairs commented, before she could answer.

“Yet her motivations were not fully discussed,” Public Opinion replied. “That is a breach of confidence, if nothing else. In addition, her decision to send a second probe to X‐25 was based purely on input ultimately stemming from the Ribbon artifact.”

“Which is information she has voluntarily shared with us now,” Military Affairs said. “Not to mention that the outcome there was unquestionably positive.”

“That is not the point,” Governance: Culture and Ideology said. “Governance is not to operate according to private religious belief.”

Kyouko resisted rolling her eyes. In this matter, it was really Governance whose reasoning was suspect—they had always been biased against religion, as a source of authority and legitimacy they couldn’t fully control.

“We are not acting on blind faith,” Yuma said, “nor would I expect Governance to rush to judgment as rapidly as the media or the public. In my life I have seen many extraordinary things, particularly when magic is involved. Getting comfortable in a set of methods, dismissing the new—I have been on both sides of that particular mistake. If I wanted to stay static, I might as well retire and let the next generation have their turn.”

Kyouko concealed a measure of surprise. Yuma hadn’t used that argument in their preparations, nor was it one Kyouko had heard her use before.

She watched Yuma and Public Order exchange looks for a long moment. Once, they had worked closely together. Sometimes that mattered.

“It is indeed the case that stagnation breeds decay,” Public Order said at length, gesturing at the trappings of imperial grandeur around them. “The ossification of the state, the dull repetition of procedure and ceremony—we have sought our whole existence to avoid such flaws. At the same time, both we and the MSY are aware of the risks of overestimating one’s own judgment. Trust, but verify. So we will ask the MSY for real‐time reports on what the artifact is claiming to your leadership, and any adjustments to decision‐making that result. And I feel I must ask directly: do you, like the Church of Hope, believe that there is a deity providing benevolent advice through the Ribbon?”

Yuma didn’t answer immediately. To be honest, Kyouko was pleased Public Order had pressed the issue—she, too, wanted to hear Yuma’s answer.

“I don’t know about a ‘deity’,” Yuma said, at length, “but someone powerful, yes. The Cult’s own doctrine says their goddess was once a human, a girl who made a wish for the sake of all magical girls. That’s how I intend to treat her: a girl with an unusual wish, who may be willing and able to help us.”

If it weren’t for the fact that it’d be terrible for Yuma’s political position, Kyouko would have wrapped her up in a hug right that moment.

Public Order looked to Mami.

“I share Chitose’s opinion,” Mami said. “And I would add that I am willing to accept help, when appropriate, but have no intention of subordinating myself or any of my responsibilities to such a being. You’ll find nothing in my actions that contradicts that.”

This was shaping up to be the best meeting Kyouko had been dragged into in years.

Public Order then looked to her.

“They do not share my religious inclinations,” Kyouko said, shrugging. “And require hard evidence rather than faith. Which, incidentally, we have more of.”

There was a stir along the circle of Representatives. This hadn’t been in the agenda.

There had been two ways to produce additional, substantive evidence for Governance. First, they could have agreed to Kyubey’s offer to verify Ryouko’s survival. Not only would that show the Incubators themselves were taking the Ribbon seriously, it would prove the Ribbon was capable of producing valuable intelligence for the war.

They had turned Kyubey down, though. Whatever Homura was up to, they trusted her enough not to sell her out to the Incubators.

Besides, they had an even stronger card to play.

She looked around, making sure she had everyone’s attention.

“As Yuma implied, information is information, and there’s other information to be had here. For instance, it may interest those assembled here that the Version Two TacComps inside Shizuki Ryouko and Tomoe Mami, Clarisse and Machina respectively, have both been involved in these encounters with the Ribbon. Rumors about Clarisse are widespread in the AI community since the TCF leaks, but she is unfortunately not with us. Machina, however, is, and is prepared to attest to everything that has been said.”

The allegedly unprejudiced Directorate viewed the observations of magical girls as human and fallible, but they would have more trouble contesting a fellow AI, even a squishy one.

She turned to look at Mami, who nodded and stepped back, ceding space to a new visitor.

When Machina appeared in the Plenary Chamber then, she was more diminutive even than Yuma, and gave Kyouko a sudden urge to ruffle her hair.

“Yes, it’s all true,” Machina said, without waiting for the spoken question. “I’ve seen the Goddess and heard the things she’s told Tomoe Mami. Clarisse even says that she was told that AIs have souls, and there are other AIs who can testify to that. We’ve just been waiting for the chance to tell someone, and be taken seriously.”

Machina’s eyes were wide, and when they met the gazes of the members of the Directorate, Kyouko knew there was much more being said than simple human speech.

“I can confirm that my sub‐Representative Governance: Church of Hope was told directly by Clarisse what Machina reports,” MG said aloud. “Also, she and several other AIs have apparently joined the Church of Hope proper, which has just loosened its membership criteria.”

“That gives us a good deal of pause,” Public Order said. “We will go into recess and consider the matter.”

With that, the assembled ministers bowed their heads and vanished.

It was a testament to Cephalopod bureaucratic efficiency that Ryouko received an updated diplomatic itinerary only thirty hours after her meeting with the Administrators.

After much consideration, /Ahimsa‐extending had decided to invite representatives of trustworthy Tentacles to a covert diplomatic summit, where they would all be given a chance to take a look at Ryouko for themselves. The list of Tentacles was short but, given the context, intimidating.

There was Consensus/Truth‐seeking, dedicated to pondering philosophy and the ins and outs of sapient existence—Ryouko was told they were very eager to meet her, as she could help resolve numerous questions about the nature and necessity of pref‐specs. There was Consensus/Comprehending, dedicated to gathering vast reams of knowledge about the material world, and happy to add a sapient species to their databanks. There was Consensus/Star‐faring, dedicated to personally traversing and experiencing the universe, and experts at ship‐building—as such, they even had ties to the faction prosecuting the war against humanity, /Thinker‐preserving.

The list went on, including not just /Ahimsa‐extending’s close allies but more distant factions, those which pref‐spec modeling indicated would be sympathetic to Ryouko’s plight and /Ahmisa‐extending’s arguments.

The meeting would be held on relatively neutral ground, Singularity Station Five, a research station on the edge of /Ahimsa‐extending space, jointly run by /Star‐faring and /Comprehending, and a moderately popular tourist destination. It had served as a diplomatic venue before.

So just an hour after Ryouko received the initial message, the drones packed up her bags and she made her way to Lush‐Botanist’s new body, disguised as a civilian transport vessel. With her was most of the crew of the original vessel, reprising their roles. Survival‐Optimizer would join them as well, but would be traveling by transmission.

Feathered‐Defender greeted her at the airlock, head now covered with new, half‐grown crimson feathers festooned with some kind of blue seaweed. She decided to save the questions about that for later.

Relative to the trip she had just undergone, this trip was short, giving Ryouko only just over a day to prepare for the meeting and visit this ship’s oasis. This oasis was much larger, but had been made gloomy and perpetually damp. Most of the room featured a slow‐moving slush of debris a centimeter deep, though the area near the entrance was dry, with a few large rocks for easy seating. The turbid water was populated throughout by glowing green fungal bodies, whose stems grew cup‐like protrusions that filled with water from the humid air and occasional rain. Numerous species of insects flitted among them, moth‐like creatures that danced among the cups, alighting briefly on the water, then darting away as Feathered‐Defender languidly chased them.

Ryouko sat on a clean rock at the edge, reflecting. The planet this had come from was already dead.

Ryouko felt Singularity Station Five well in advance of their arrival, from the work she had to do to suppress her soul gem’s glow. First came the accretion disk, pelting the ship vigorously as they tightened their orbits around the dark star. They approached the inner orbits shallowly, cautious and gradually, even the alien shielding and engines paying respect to the hazards around them, until they finally aligned with the outer, habitation module, flat and elongated in the direction of its orbit.

As she stepped across the threshold between ship and station, Ryouko mused that it was hard not to be impressed by alien shielding. The bubble sealed out the worst of the tidal forces, shear, and relativistic effects, well enough that the station could even host diplomatic meetings. In a way, that was magic too.

Still, she couldn’t say she much enjoyed the interior environment. Looking around, she was back within the utilitarian alien style she was used to from combat missions, nothing but holographically‐enhanced bulkheads and sand‐textured floors. There was none of the sky, plants, or animals that had been at Far Sanctuary. She surprised herself with how much she missed it.

Boring place, yes, Feathered‐Defender thought, reading her body language with startling accuracy. I don’t like boring stations.

She hated to admit it, but she realized that the bird was right. For a bird, a black hole research station was a boring place.

Maybe we can find some scientists to talk to, if they’ll talk to us, Ryouko thought. Or I’ll call up a display of the black hole for us to stare at.

Impressed at your smartness, the bird thought, tugging at the edge of her shirt with his beak. Can’t understand scientists.

She was looking forward to taking some more time to prepare in her new room, but as she followed the station’s telepathic navigation trail, she learned that Survival‐Optimizer was waiting for her there.

Feathered‐Defender waddled to his plush cubby in the corner of the room when they arrived, evidently well aware that she and the administrator had business.

The alien waited until she had found a place to sit, its head nearly scraping the ceiling.

μ·We do not intend to deceive any of the visitors today—it is critical that the information presented drive toward an optimal outcome|ν?·Have you and Clarisse⊃??? absorbed the instructions I sent you

They had. Even in this context, there was still politics. /Ahimsa‐extending wanted them to make promises of study and cooperation, emphasize the accidental nature of the Version Two TacComps, and explain that the drafting of adolescent magical girls was a desperate, wartime measure. They should try to be reassuring about human intents regarding reality‐distortion, without underselling Ryouko’s power, which might make others think them deceitful.

|ν·Good|ξ·We are aware that your extended presence in Thinker territory is a matter of much conflict within your pref‐spec, Shizuki‐Ryouko⊃???—I thought it good to speak to you physically, considering my responsibility for your sojourn here

When the alien paused, Ryouko indicated with her gaze that she was still listening.

μ?·Have you and Clarisse⊃??? chosen star‐names yet|μ+∈·Choosing star‐names will make you less alien|μ+∈·There is no need to spend too much effort, as such names may always be modified later—I myself went through several names within a century, once

They had chosen names, actually. They had talked about it with each other. It seemed straightforward to pick out the most salient parts of their preferences, but all who picked a star‐name could choose what they wanted to emphasize. In this situation, diplomatically, it mattered for Ryouko to pick something that would get her point across the fastest—and for Clarisse to do the same.

|μ+∈·Shizuki‐Ryouko⊃Humanity‐preserving|μ+∈·Clarisse⊃Ryouko‐supporting

She wasn’t sure how she felt about Clarisse’s choice, which was a deliberate reminder to the aliens that, however they felt about the circumstances of Clarisse’s creation, she cared about being with Ryouko. Because the aliens couldn’t read a pref‐spec for Clarisse like they could for Ryouko, it was an important point to make.

She also wondered if Survival‐Optimizer would comment on the symmetry between the concepts of “Thinker‐preserving” and “Humanity‐preserving”. It had been deliberate, after all.

μ·Thoughtworthy choices|ν·Remember that through interactions with others, your choice of name may come to reflect into you|ξ·There is one more matter

It paused again, waiting for her to acknowledge.

||ξ·I also wished to inform you that /Star‐faring has discreetly informed us that they believe /Thinker‐preserving knows you are in Andromeda

Ryouko’s stomach instantly turned, her previously pleasant mood souring on the spot. How…?

μ·Your physiological response to bad news is as if you were physically injured—an unusual feature for your species' biodesigners to allow||ξ●·/Star‐faring has intelligence gathering that we do not, and they have not disclosed their sources—we do not know how /Thinker‐preserving learned of this

μ?·Will we be safe here||ξ?·Did one of the invited Tentacles tell them Ryouko thought, before she had time to reconsider asking so loaded a question.

μ∈·The use of violence between Tentacles would be direct proof of pref‐spec compromise, and very unlikely‒6% to survive a cost‐benefit analysis|μ∈·We are devoting much computing power to predict /Thinker‐preserving's maneuvers, but if they are truly compromised, then our error margins are considerable|ξ⌄·It is possible‒14%|ξ⌃·Or you may have been discovered by follow‐up analysis of scan data‒27% or other intelligence‒25%, or /Star‐faring may be wrong‒13% or lying‒2%, or some other possibility‒19%|ο·It would be unwise to make such accusations in the upcoming meeting

Ryouko wanted to be reassured, but couldn’t find space for it in the alien’s words.

I don’t think Survival‐Optimizer is very confident either, Clarisse thought. I suspect this is more uncertainty than they’re used to in anything. They probably think they have it handled, but we know we are not lying, and that something is seriously wrong with /Thinker‐preserving. We also know how much magic can damage systems like the TCF. Given that, I’m not sure I’d trust any models based on pref‐specs.

You’re not making me feel better, Clarisse, Ryouko thought.

That’s not my job in this case. You don’t even need it.

That was true, Ryouko realized. She had gotten so used to living with all these swords hanging over her head that one more hardly seemed to hurt. Was she growing numb, or was it a sign of maturity? She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, either way.

|μ·Then we must be ready for the unforeseen; without the guidance of preferences, things—events, individuals, factions—can behave in truly unexpected ways||| Ryouko thought.

She wasn’t sure whether it was wise to critique her host, and Survival‐Optimizer didn’t respond immediately, instead moving one tentacle in front of its mouth in a gesture Ryouko didn’t recognize.

|μৡ·To make ready is to foresee|||

It then made the gesture of farewell and retreated, ducking its head to make it through the rounded doorway.

Ryouko stood up and walked over to her new squishy alien bed, patting Feathered‐Defender on his head as she passed.

Swords hanging over her head—or perhaps an ocean to drown in.

What struck her the most about the Thinkers was the sheer diversity of phenotype. Survival‐Optimizer towered over most of the others, some of whom were not senior officials, others who had chosen to offload most of their processing to the station, and still others who defied easy description.

/Star‐faring’s representative was one of the smallest, eye‐level with Ryouko herself, with eerie silver pupils that scanned her at arrival. It was simply an organic avatar, she was informed, like Lush‐Botanist had used before, but even more spare.

/Comprehending’s representative was larger, but with a bulk that seemed to largely come from a metallic suit it wore, a dull gray color. The suit was studded with obvious sensors, which were applied on Ryouko very aggressively—though she was at least asked in advance, and was given a detailed description of the sensors used.

/Truth‐seeking’s representative was not an individual at all, but a physical avatar of a collective. Numerous trusted individuals across the Tentacle shared the conscious experience, and they all helped guide the body’s replies—with the result that upon arrival Ryouko was blasted by a wave of dozens of threads, most of which she handed off to Clarisse for delayed consideration.

The dozen or so arrivals covered the whole spectrum between those examples, save for the two who preferred to stay entirely on the station’s computer cores, donning holographic avatars. All were local, though; security required transmission silence, and everyone had backups at home.

There was no pool of water here, no grand trees. Indeed, it was possible to squint and see the outlines of a rather human meeting room, complete with chairs and central table. Partially, that was a matter of resources, but it was also a matter of hitting the average of everyone’s pref‐specs.

Which did not mean it was a human meeting room. Other than Ryouko’s customized chair, the seating was shaped strangely, and came in several varieties, the ground had the usual sand‐like texture, and the atmosphere was very humid. The room was also positively festooned with grasping poles, two for every chair.

Shell‐shaped plates next to every seat served the concoction of seaweed and algae‐beads that Ryouko had grown a quiet distaste for. Apparently, in most diplomatic meetings it would have been tiny fishes—but /Ahimsa‐extending refused to endorse that carnivorism.

Once the last representative arrived—about 10 minutes late, predictable from their pref‐spec—the meeting began in earnest, opening with a small ceremony where Survival‐Optimizer moved to the front of the table and made /Ahimsa‐extending’s gesture of cooperation, a single tentacle curling over the face, while the rest of the table made theirs, leading to a physical cacophony of tentacle‐gestures. Ryouko, who had been told she should participate, waved meekly.

It was, in all, surreal.

They picked up the dishes and took a ceremonial bite, and then Survival‐Optimizer opened the meeting:

μ·By now you have all been informed of the information /Star‐faring has obtained|ν∪·By now you have all had your chance to empathize‐open with and make inquiry of the Human reality‐warper, Shizuki‐Ryouko⊃Humanity‐preserving, and her companion, Clarisse⊃Ryouko‐supporting|μ+·/Thinker‐preserving is no doubt assembling allies to call upon at Consensus as well|ν∪+·You will have all seen that she is trustworthy, and if you wish you may further verify her claims with her yourself after this session|ξ∈·By now you have all seen the modeling we have performed, and the analyses we have laid out for you to grab|ξ∈·/Ahimsa‐extending considers it likely—87.3‒89.1%—that her claims are centrally true|ο!·Our purpose is to prevail upon Consensus to revoke /Thinker‐preserving's monopoly on the security operation—we ask for your support

Security operation, Ryouko repeated to herself. Well, she could hardly be offended at this point.

Ryouko braced herself for the avalanche of overlapping conversations.

/Comprehending’s representative wHwoqE⊃Far‐Observer caught her attention first, a mechanical knob extending towards Ryouko, which she realized was a gesture with one of its sensor arrays.

|ν∪·The time we have been given is hardly adequate for study||ν∪·You know we would have preferred study time before this|ξ∈·Your models are compelling, and you have been trustworthy in the past, but we believe you underrate the likelihood of deceitful measures|ξ∈·Our preliminary estimate‒85% is not much lower|ο·Assuming the validity of your conclusions, we agree that is the necessary approach

The telepathic clamor flowed through Ryouko’s mind, and while she was incapable of following all of it, she had gotten better at acting as a receiver, letting Clarisse store what she could away for further processing. She paid attention for direct questions and references to her, trying to catch the gist of what was being discussed.

It was not very different from the meeting inside /Ahimsa‐extending itself, though less friendly, both towards her and each other. There were expressions of incredulity at human practices and /Thinker‐preserving’s apparent behavior, worry about future dangers, speculative side‐questions—it was perhaps most interesting to focus on how the factions viewed the situation, and humans themselves, which spared Ryouko at least the effort of modeling all the relevant pref‐specs.

/Truth‐seeking was friendly, commenting more than once on the inevitability of misunderstandings between sapient races and the importance of keeping examples of other forms of sapient life alive to share their perspective on existence. Its body shimmered in displays of different colors as it shifted back and forth between individuals, though Ryouko had to confess that she wasn’t making the effort to keep track of which was which.

/Comprehending was hard to read, and seemed to be more interested in Human society as a research subject—but they enjoyed /Ahimsa‐extending’s confidence, and their pref‐spec claimed they were very diligent about taking care of their research subjects.

They also wanted to experiment to see if Humanity might be weaned off its “dependence” on reality‐warping, a prospect Ryouko didn’t want to think about.

Others seemed more eager to unlock the Milky Way for exploration, expressing optimism that Humanity could perhaps help in that endeavor. One faction was eager to explore trade opportunities. Another mused on whether, once /Thinker‐preserving was reeled in, Humanity might consent to integrating into Consensus, perhaps as its own Tentacle, or perhaps merging into existing ones.

The implications of some of these positions were unsettling, but at least none seemed malignant. One consistent trend was that while all expressed concern about the dangers of reality‐warping and at times chided /Ahimsa‐extending’s supposed carelessness, none seemed to favor extreme measures, and all were willing to at least negotiate with Humanity.

Clarisse was able to explain why: based on parts of the conversation Ryouko hadn’t directly followed, /Ahimsa‐extending was at the center of the ball of tentacles that had disapproved of /Thinker‐preserving’s proposal for a demonstration of force, and were responsible for some of the stringent conditions that they were supposed to be following. This was as favorable an audience as they were ever going to get.

Then Ryouko’s attention caught on a line of dialogue begun by /Star‐faring’s representative, silver eyes turning this way and that:

μ·We have heard what /Thinker‐preserving has to say on that matter to their allies|μ+·Of Humanity, they focus on the reality‐warping, the refusal to negotiate, the duplicity, all of what we have heard before, which does not correspond with the Human's testimony here|μ+·Of Humanity‐preserving, they equate her to a hostile Human warfleet, and warn of her power for forced‐pref‐spec‐alteration—but we agree here that our safeguards strongly suggest no such power was used to convince us of her peaceful intentions, which sinks the opposing argument ≈ a ship dashed upon the rocks|ν·Perhaps we should ask Humanity‐preserving to speak with /Thinker‐preserving's allies, rather than start with neutral Tentacles—if we can turn their allies, neutral Tentacles will imitate

Survival‐Optimizer replied:

|μ+·There are other scenarios that their allies will consider plausible; we have modeled their thoughts thus|μ·Humanity‐preserving could be indoctrinated with lies, or had her pref‐spec temporarily softened by reality‐warping, or her reality‐warping technology could be beyond our detection, altering our perception|ν·They will demand we confine her, and submit her to neurological‐unlayering|ν□·To this she will not consent, so we will not consent

Far‐Observer replied, bulky frame leaning onto the table:

|μ·Such scenarios require substantially more evidence to believe than the directly‐apparent|ν·It will be easy to induce skepticism toward /Thinker‐preserving, at least—the attempt may profitably be made while refusing unreasonable demands|ν·An admirable respect for sapient integrity, that we wished /World‐shaping shared

It was true; Ryouko wasn’t going to submit to any “neurological‐unlayering”, which she assumed her pref‐spec made quite clear. But…

ν·Merely to communicate or meet with /Thinker‐preserving’s allies, I would be willing, despite the danger she thought, picking the exact thread out of the air to reply to.

Survival‐Optimizer thought:

ν·Then I see no reason not to attempt the gambit, though we will have to consult the models

A new avatar also spoke up, /Positive‐exchange’s representative, a human‐sized Cephalopod hologram in a simple robe, almost ordinary‐looking compared to the others.

ν·Overrating the risk of personal injury is very understandable, given what has happened to your species and your lack of consciousness backups, but such violence in this context would be quite unlikely|ν?·Rather than nibbling around the edges with /Thinker‐preserving's allies, might not it be best to simply meet with /Thinker‐preserving themselves and clear up any misunderstandings at the heart

Survival‐Optimizer intervened before Ryouko could, emphasizing the potential effects of reality‐warping on /Thinker‐preserving’s integrity. It couldn’t be assumed they would behave predictably.

It seemed presumptuous to privilege her own judgment above that of the Thinkers, but in this case she felt that Survival‐Optimizer had the right of it. Indeed, she was grateful that at least one faction appeared to understand the real risks involved.

/Star‐faring’s representative, meanwhile, had continued on the previous threads:

||μ·Of the dire warnings produced by both sides, the possibility of /Thinker‐preserving's corruption is the worse—the internal threat is greater than the external|ν·We here, united, represent only a small fraction of Tentacles; many more will need to be persuaded|ν?·Would you and Ryouko‐supporting consent to physical travel under our protection

The last thread was directed specifically to her, and she found the decision surprisingly easy.

|||ν·Yes

She was already committed to making allies among the Thinkers. She couldn’t trust them fully, but then again, they couldn’t trust her fully either. Working together would help fix that.

Survival‐Optimizer added:

|||ν·But for her safety, and for our own consciences, we must begin studying the matter of Human consciousness uploading

Far‐Observer replied:

|||ν·Then perhaps /Somatic‐diversity, an outer ally of /Thinker‐preserving, will be the best to approach first

Logistics began to be discussed, some of the Thinkers beginning to dig through the rest of their snack dishes, and Ryouko leaned back in her seat, pulling up records of yet another Tentacle, in this case turning up visions of Thinkers with wings, extra eyes, and other strange, menacing forms.

What have I gotten myself into?

Chapter 69: Between Two Worlds

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:44:19 +0200

As Humanity expands into the void, we have no expectation that we will find there only governments of similar construction and ideology. On the contrary, our own experience, and our best modeling, shows that even within the limited scope of our imagination, there are many potentially dominant world‐systems. Any sapient advanced races encountered may be ideologically mutually‐tolerable, in which case we may engage in neutral or friendly relations, or perhaps even profitable trade. Detailed proposals for managing this scenario are included…

[…]

Or one party will find the other anathema, or a target for conquest. In that case, the odds are overwhelming that the result will be a simple matter of whichever race was the first to evolve. In that case, for better or worse, there is little to discuss.

The most intriguing case is the one in which an alien society is divided against itself. This is by far the least likely possibility—less than one percent of our simulations end without homeworld unification, and only a few percent of such unified governments suffer permanent schism—but it has absorbed a disproportionate amount of internal planning. For only in this scenario may even an inferior species conspire to advantage its goals…

— Directorate Report on Eschatological Matters, Executive Summary, 2423, excerpt.

μ·We all agree that the constraint, the modification of sapient intelligence, is moral anathema, to be done only in response to greater moral need|ν·We all agree that the core operations of Consensus must be managed by independent, neutral beings, who prefer honesty and impartiality and Consensus above all|μν·Those of us nine hundred and seventy most inclined must sacrifice, and modify their pref‐specs to become the beginning of Consensus Core

— 000009R⊃Besmircher’s‐Bane, Consensus Archives.

“I have seen the end of history, and trust me, you do not want to be there.”

— Chitose Yuma, popularly misattributed to Clarisse van Rossum.

It wasn’t one straight jump, galactic core to galactic core. Instead, they routed through the intergalactic void, guests to wandering star systems and rogue black holes, watched by the two great, spiral eyes of the Milky Way and Andromeda.

Which meant that, yes, the aliens had found small oases of gravitationally‐bound systems to establish wormholes in, out in the wilderness between galaxies. The Thinkers had ventured out from Andromeda the slow way, by standard FTL, stopping to build wormhole stabilizers and other necessary facilities at apt locales. The work had continued for over a thousand years, until finally the great chain was complete all the way to the center of the Milky Way.

That the implications about Cephalopod capabilities were immense would be understating the matter. The aliens were even willing to discuss the relevant technology, for once, as it was surprisingly prosaic: cruiser‐sized ships optimized for hauling exotic matter fuel on single month‐long journeys, who continually built up fuel dumps until the next system could be reached by cargo and construction vessels.

Even with all that, Lush‐Botanist could not reach Andromeda too easily. Ryouko would have nearly a full week between galaxies.

It was, at least, a good opportunity for some reflection.

She had already spent plenty of time digging into the notion of pref‐specs, and the newly uncovered organ in her brain dedicated to pref‐spec management. More than simply providing her access to Cephalopod communication and mindsets, it had the unsettling ability to alter her own pref‐spec.

Supposedly, anyway. Magical girls were supposed to be able to resist alterations to their mental states and core identities, with the soul gem serving as guarantor. But did changing yourself follow the same rule?

It was difficult to wrap her mind around what that even meant, but apparently self‐alteration wasn’t uncommon among the aliens—besides the binding‐preference‐alteration‐agreements, for instance, it was normal to deliberately increase one’s suitability for a necessary long‐term task just before performing it, with provision for a mandatory reset later.

Not too different from specialist AIs undergoing reprogramming, Clarisse pointed out, a day into the trip, as Ryouko lay down on her bed.

Though not too similar either, Clarisse added, when she didn’t respond right away. There are also some rumors that telepaths can temporarily alter themselves.

Ryouko summoned her soul gem, setting it on the nearby shelf next to a grief cube. The shelf was recessed in the wall and seemed to be of a bony material that was nonetheless capable of changing shape on command.

Instinctively, she checked the grief cube. Nearly full, she thought. She’d have to replace it after this.

There’s even a pref‐spec changelog, Ryouko thought. I wonder…

She inspected the changelog with an act of mental focus. The results appeared in her mind a moment later.

Though mine is empty. I guess that shouldn’t be too surprising.

Ryouko felt an odd sense of discomfort from Clarisse.

I wouldn’t be so sure, Clarisse thought. Your empathy‐organ wasn’t fully functional until Peace‐cultivating completed it; the logging may not have been working.

Ryouko thought about that.

You might know better than me. Still, it’s not like I was using this thing before. Haven’t you been monitoring it?

Another wave of discomfort.

Yes, but only since we learned about it in Paris, Clarisse thought, At this point, I’m pretty sure I know what it might look like to actually trigger a pref‐spec modification, and while I can say with some confidence none have happened since then…

There was a palpable silence, and Ryouko felt a sense of unease spreading within her.

Are you trying to tell me something, Clarisse? she asked, finally.

How much do you want to hear it? Clarisse asked. I’m not entirely sure about it; I can’t be, without asking the aliens for their analysis. I wouldn’t want to say anything, except for that you’ve said you want to be informed about matters like this.

Ryouko swallowed slightly. She had said that, but of course Clarisse’s judgment about these matters was pretty good—whatever this was, she really wasn’t going to like it.

But she didn’t believe in lying to herself, at least in theory, and she had been inundated recently by unpleasant revelations. How bad could this one be?

Go ahead, she thought.

I think you modified your pref‐spec when you first agreed to be Asami’s girlfriend. I didn’t have any reason to pay special attention to your brain activity at the time, so my recordings are incomplete, but I think it’s at least more likely than not.

Clarisse’s caveats faded into the background as the notion worked itself into Ryouko’s mind. Now that the idea had been said out loud, it made… just too much sense. Clarisse didn’t need to explain what specific moment she was referring to, or even that it was a moment; Ryouko remembered well how it had felt, the feeling of a lever in her mind, the sense of choice, and certainty.

I wouldn’t think about it too much, Clarisse thought, soothingly. People change themselves all the time, and always have, and AIs sometimes edit themselves. This isn’t very different. Plus, we’re not even sure.

Ryouko felt a chill start to grip her heart, but found to her surprise that it passed quickly. Indeed, she remembered how it had felt—remembered how isolated she had felt, how isolated she knew Asami felt, and how much she had wanted to fix that. She had wanted to change, and to be able to reciprocate Asami’s feelings, in her own way.

So she had decided to change. Was it really so bad?

Let’s talk to Peace‐cultivating, Clarisse suggested. As I said, the aliens might be able to help with this analysis. And the underlying philosophy regarding sentients. After all, the aliens change their pref‐specs without worrying about it too much.

Ryouko wasn’t sure how to broach a topic like that, but did her best to convince herself she was being silly: the Cephalopods didn’t have emotions, and she could only imagine that they would be more than willing to field questions about her own pref‐spec, which had continued to fascinate them.

It took her a few seconds to understand why she felt so nervous even asking. It felt like some kind of judgment on her relationship with Asami, she realized, clenching some of her lumpy blanket in her hands. Like it was somehow less real if a pref‐spec modification had really happened. How would she act, the next time she met Asami? Would she doubt her own feelings?

And, perhaps worse, what would Asami think? She would have to tell her.

But there was no getting around it, and after a bit of prevarication, she formulated the question, even forwarding a data file of neural recordings that Clarisse claimed she had reformatted into something the aliens might better understand.

Ryouko swallowed her trepidations about sharing a neural recording. The aliens had literally been doing surgery on her recently, after all.

She sat up from the bed, dropping her feet over the side and letting the lumpy blanket cling to her.

It took a moment for Peace‐cultivating, elsewhere in the ship, to reply to her:

!μ·An exquisite puzzle; you have my thanks|v·Indeed, your pref‐spec changelog could not have functioned until I completed your empathy‐organ|μ+·I will run your neural traces through Lush‐Botanist's analysis engine, as your unfamiliar physiology may otherwise mislead me

|v·I see|μ·Thank you, I will wait, Ryouko thought, because there really wasn’t much else to say.

She had come to prefer Lush‐Botanist to Peace‐cultivating, in the few days she had known them. Peace‐cultivating’s zeal for mutual understanding was a bit unnerving to her, even in the cause of peace, and made it more difficult to keep the secrets she was holding onto.

μ∪·My results report a very high likelihood‒94% that you successfully managed to self‐modify|μ∪·Your neural activity was far above baseline and consistent with a moderate write operation|ξ∈?·Do you have any similar experiences to report—your pref‐spec implies that larger changes than this have occurred during your life|ξ∈?·Do you find these notions unpleasant

Ryouko didn’t answer right away, struck by the dual surprises that the change had been comparatively minor and that the alien had successfully surmised her mood.

She barely understood her own thoughts on the matter. What hope did she have translating it for an alien?

||ξ·No, nothing like this|ξ∈·I am not sure if I should find it unpleasant—our species is not used to the idea of changing our preferences so directly|ξ∈·I am… worried that I undermined the integrity of my mind, and my relationship

The reply took a few seconds.

·Your worries ≈ confusing the sky for the sea|+·You value control over your life, as you should, and pref‐spec‐modification is the essential form of control|+·Personal integrity, and identity, is rooted in meaningful control over self, watered by memories, actions, and social ties—and, unfortunately, endangered by reality‐warping

Ryouko frowned, turning the argument over in her mind. In retrospect, it shouldn’t have been surprising that the aliens would see nothing wrong with pref‐spec‐modification, or that they’d identify magic instead as the potentially corruptive ability. That was what the war was supposed to be about, after all.

She wondered what Peace‐cultivating would think, if he knew about how Asami’s wish had altered her parents.

The alien sent nothing further, so Ryouko closed their telepathic connection, uncertain what she had achieved.

It’s not exactly a Hollywood romance, Clarisse thought. But I think he has a point about pref‐spec‐modification. I’d argue that humans push themselves into enjoying all kinds of things, including relationships. You did it yourself, with Asami, apart from your empathy‐organ. When you pushed yourself to tell Asami you loved her, for example, you didn’t activate it. I’m not sure the type of chemicals or organ involved really matter, ultimately.

It’s a bold claim to say that the alien organ in my brain doesn’t really matter, Ryouko thought sardonically.

She took a while to think more seriously on the topic.

Still, she thought, there is also what he said about memories and actions. Everything I’ve done with Asami since then, and before then, is bigger than a single decision. I could have broken things off. Honestly, Asami could have too—I know she wanted to just hide at home and cuddle. But she went out to X‐25 and the pulsar for my sake.

I don’t know if I would say it was entirely for your sake, Clarisse thought, but I think Asami would broadly agree. She would mostly just want you back alive.

Ryouko looked at her soul gem, which had finished discharging on its shelf, and nodded.

I hope you’re not forgetting about me out there, amidst all the excitement. I know a relationship with me wasn’t how you envisioned things.

Asami frowned, chewing over the thought, then struck the lines out. It sounded way too clingy and insecure, even if it was honestly a bit how she felt. More importantly, they had been together long enough that she could trust Ryouko not to lose interest in her.

Obviously I don’t know what’s happening to you, or what you’re doing, but if this could reach you, I’d want you to know I am waiting for your return. The Goddess did us the courtesy of telling me you lived. I hope friendlier aliens really are a thing. Not just for your sake, but for everyone’s sake.

Better, even if it sounded pretty sappy. Really, how was she supposed to avoid sounding sappy? Sappy was just how this kind of thing was. The important thing was that it expressed her real feelings, and that the recipient could tell that. She wasn’t here to write empty bromides; otherwise, the writing would do no good in consolidating her feelings.

And that was the point, after all. It wasn’t like Asami could actually send any letters to Ryouko. These were for herself, to help her unburden her heart, as Arisu had put it.

She continued:

They held your funeral a few days ago. It was all very surreal to have to undergo. I hated it, of course, the whole experience of having to play pretend, because I don’t want to look all crazy and wild‐eyed, if that makes sense.

She thought about those lines. Ryouko liked explicit, even pedantic explanations of feeling, so being direct was fine. And if she sounded more formal than usual: well, it was a letter. So what? But where was she going with this?

Speaking of awkward, I also had to watch your mom and aunt get into a big fight at the funeral. The good kind of fight, in a way, because they both miss and care about you, but Nana is more understanding of why you chose to risk everything. Still, wording that as “Ryouko‐chan chose a hero’s death” didn’t go over very well.

I thought I could at least relax when it was all over, but instead I find myself stuck in a state of tension. Your old friend—it’s kind of funny to me to call her that—Mami‐san got caught by a reporter visiting the Ribbon, along with Chitose Yuma, and they were overheard talking about their visions with the Goddess. So now there’s going to be news about that, and they’re going to have to explain about all that, and why they think you’re alive.

Asami paused for a moment.

None of that explains why I’m involved, of course. Apparently the Cult couldn’t keep a lid on things, so when I visited and learned you were alive, people heard all about it. Well, that’s mostly Simona’s fault for yelling about it to anyone who would listen, but I don’t think I should have been put in that position.

But at least I get the executive treatment now, since I’m mixed in with Mami‐san and Chitose and the like. Their PR staff and social media people are helping manage my internet presence. It’s kind of relieving to be honest. I can just sort of let them do the work.

She let out a breath. She hated to admit it, but the MHD was right. This was a nice way to unwind. She had been avoiding thinking about this whole topic, but now it didn’t seem so bad.

It’s still pretty stressful though. A lot of people have been trying to talk to me—Aniki is convinced I’ve been brainwashed. I’ve got meetings I have to go, to plan how we’re going to present things. Or fake things, as the case may be.

Her internal chronometer nudged at her, and she felt a pang of annoyance.

Speaking of those meetings…

She had been called to half a dozen meetings so far, all about coordinating their stories regarding Ryouko and the so‐called TCF conspiracy. It had by this point lost any novelty, but it still made for a change of pace.

She was even looking forward to this particular meeting, even if it had interrupted her letter‐writing. Kyouko had invited her alone, leaving out the others—Azrael, Patricia, occasionally Yuma or Van Rossum—that usually attended.

Kyouko offered her the chance to discuss some questions in private, and she intended to take advantage of it.

So she changed outfits and rearranged her hair, making sure to display prominently the flower Ryouko had given her, which had settled in quite well among the strands, and even attracted the occasional bee or butterfly. She had made sure everyone knew where it was from.

It was a short trip over to Kyouko’s office in the Mitakihara Armory, too short to give her much time to continue her letter, especially not when she passed right by the construction site encompassing the former Prometheus Research Center, giving her a view that was worth paying attention to.

She had been to this meeting spot a few times already. While she still felt a bit out of place there, amidst the Cult of Hope, she had been feeling more positive about them lately. They believed her about Ryouko, after all.

Kyouko set the tone with a straightforward briefing, as soon as Asami arrived. There was a brief discussion of the news following recent events—Sacnite had asked Asami to accompany her to the Ribbon, and Nakase had ended up coming as well, though none of them had ended up seeing anything.

Chiyo Rika had portrayed it neutrally, but apparently visiting the Ribbon had been a bad idea. Apparently, there was an entire conspiracy theory brewing, fed directly by claims made by the TCF conspiracy, that Ryouko, Simona, Sacnite, and Azrael were part of some kind of genetically‐engineered cabal, puppets of either the Cult or someone who controlled the Cult. They were all way too connected for it to be a coincidence, after all.

That kind of nonsense, and frank bigotry, frustrated Asami more than any of the rumors about her did. It was all so stupid, and she was happy to let the Cult and MSY media handlers deal with it for her.

At least there was good news on the war front—despite all the chaos in Human space, the aliens had actually been forced to abandon some of their most forward positions in recent days. The bunkered remains of the colony of Penglai had been rescued that very morning, in fact, and Governance was making sure to credit Ryouko and Asami’s great blow to Ceph logistics for the victory.

In general, the party line across all recent events had been: the TCF conspiracy managed no lasting physical damage to Humanity, and as long as the public rejected their attempt to sow distrust and disunion, there would be minimal social damage as well. One only needed patience, to wait for the good news that the enemy had been chased down and dismantled.

“Frankly, we’re just telling people everything is fine without really knowing that’s true,” Asami said, when the time finally came. “There’s so much being left out. Like the assassination attempts. I don’t care how much we tell people everything is under control, it did not feel under control to have a support beam blown through my gut. There didn’t seem to be an MSY master plan then.”

Kyouko peered at her a moment, then sighed, taking a sip of her milk tea. It was a bold move, trying to get an Ancient off‐balance with a sharp change in topic, but Asami figured it was worth a shot. It had been gnawing at her, all the constant talk of media and public image—didn’t someone need to go out and actually put a stop to whoever had breached the TCF? Was everyone just counting on Homura to handle that?

“We badly misjudged the threat. They were more powerful than we thought they were, and we were too distracted with our individual concerns. We know better, now.”

Kyouko paused, weighing her teacup in her hand.

“Frankly, I’ve never apologized to you for all the shit you’ve gone through. It is your right to be angry about it, so I’m sorry. Sorry we haven’t been able to protect you, haven’t been able to fix this world, sorry we’re still sending girls like you off to war. We, the MSY, were given that responsibility, and we haven’t fulfilled it. Because, right now, we can’t.”

Kyouko tilted her head slightly, regarding Asami’s surprised reaction with interest.

“Or, at least, we Ancients can’t. Because of our age, because of our wisdom, we’re expected to be special, and we were given leadership to watch over our juniors. But in the end, we are only the sum of our years. For the truly difficult problems, we need you to chip in. It was you and Ryouko who saved my life at X‐25. I haven’t forgotten that.”

She set her teacup down, looking Asami in the eye.

Asami had been ready to yell at Kyouko for not doing enough, and found herself undermined by what was nearly a rehearsed speech, an apology, asking for help.

Then…

Asami took a breath.

“You said something about chipping in, but chipping into what? Is that a recruitment pitch? I haven’t heard anything about what the MSY is doing, only what Governance is doing.”

She paused, weighing her next words.

“Unless that’s what Akemi Homura has been up to,” she said cautiously. “I know about that whole thing, with Joanne Valentin. Is she secretly…”

Kyouko tapped the edge of her desk, as if to interrupt her.

“We don’t know what she is doing,” she said, eyes cast to the side. “The fact is, she won’t talk to us.”

She used one hand to push her hair back.

“Listen, the fact is, we are doing more, but I can’t just tell you everything you want to hear, not unless you’re ready to commit to making it so you need to know. That means I need to ask what your stance is here. I said I wanted you to chip in, but there’s more than one way of doing that. Would you like to be involved with hunting the TCF conspiracy, or would you prefer to stay solely on the wormhole research?”

Asami peered into Kyouko’s expression, the eyes carefully watching her, and found to her surprise that she could very much read it. She meant what she said.

“I mean, it depends on what it would involve,” Asami said. “But yes. I barely know what to do with myself right now, and I’m tired of just letting things happen to us, to me. It’d be better to be on the offensive. Though I’m not sure how it would fit around the wormhole and blink research I’m scheduled to be returning to soon.”

“That can be postponed,” Kyouko said. “I’ve already talked with Mami‐san about this—it may not hurt to wait on that until Shizuki‐san’s return anyway. But are you sure you don’t just want to keep your focus there? It could also be the case that you’d be able to contribute to a significant breakthrough on your own.”

“I’ve had a while to think,” Asami said. “What I really want is to be with Ryouko, but I can’t have that, now can I? And maybe I’m supposed to go work on wormholes so that we can use those to get her back, but the Goddess didn’t say anything like that, so I’m just guessing anyway.”

She shook her head.

“I’d rather break down all this mystery and conspiracy that’s haunted Ryouko and me, so that when she comes back, we don’t have to live with it hanging over our heads anymore.”

Kyouko pursed her lips.

“That sounds good enough for me. Let me fill you in a bit, then.”

She leaned forward.

“Because of the dissatisfaction with our past performance and investigations, as well as the failure in preventing the recent attacks, a secret task force has been established to work on the matter, absorbing the existing efforts in this direction. It has a pretty hefty budget, leadership from the senior MSY, and we’re taking on a good number of experienced personnel. We’re still spinning that up, but there are a number of efforts already underway.”

“If you are interested, then I would imagine your specialty would be in fieldwork, particularly in investigating sites suspected of a connection to either the TCF conspiracy or to what Akemi Homura is up to. It’s, frankly, what you have the most experience in, and we’d be glad to use you as a detector for stealth devices such as the one we encountered on X‐25. The military would probably try to hang us if we got someone as important as you killed, so it’d be low‐risk missions, and I already have Azrael Maslanka designated as your initial partner, to help you get up to speed.”

The torrent of words washed over her, and she couldn’t help but react with surprise at the mention of Azrael.

“She’s involved?” Asami asked.

“Yes,” Kyouko said. “It’s the kind of work she does, and she’s already worked on pursuing Homura before, so it’s natural.”

Asami mentally noted the lack of honorific on “Homura”.

“Well, I can’t say I object to working with her,” she said. “Honestly, I’m a bit relieved it’s her.”

“Not just her,” Kyouko said. “There’s a small working group we’re trying to get off the ground. The main angle will be tracking down Homura but it won’t be limited to that, just because of how much crossover there is with dealing with the TCF conspiracy. That being said, everyone involved has some connection to the topic, and even better, you should already be familiar with most of them. There’s Shizuki‐san’s aunt, Kuroi Nana, who used to own this case file. There’s your training cohort colleague Zhou Meiqing, who was her new recent recruit. And then there’s Simona del Mago.”

Kyouko paused meaningfully, letting Asami catch up with the sentence.

“The personal history here is obvious—” Kyouko began.

“What, letting her sabotage one mission wasn’t enough?” Asami interrupted. “Isn’t she supposed to be serving time somewhere?”

“This is part of her penance, as part of a deal with Yuma,” Kyouko said, closing her eyes for a moment. “Yuma can be awfully forgiving, if she can make you useful. I agreed, because I suspect Del Mago’s Homura connection is useful and important, and I’d like to keep an eye on her. Frankly, if you don’t like it, you’re under no obligation to work with her directly. There will be multiple roles.”

Asami could only shake her head. She couldn’t believe this.

The obvious temptation was to back out, but that was just too obviously self‐defeating. And she couldn’t even justify the spite necessary to protest further; in the end, Ryouko had lived, so Asami wouldn’t bury a dagger in Simona’s back at all costs.

Maybe only at some cost.

Besides, would Ryouko have let a little social awkwardness, a little pride, stand in the way of the better choice? No, she was almost too calculating in that regard—though perhaps that was Clarisse’s influence.

“I guess I’ll just have to accept that,” she said finally, knowing Kyouko had watched the emotions play out on her face. “What now then?”

Kyouko smiled slightly.

“Order a drink from the bots. Let’s get you oriented.”

Near the end of the trip to Andromeda, Ryouko found herself seated on the sand in the ship’s oasis, reviewing the details of the new system they were in. This one was named Red Chain Four. Red, because it was a red dwarf, and Chain Four, because it was in the middle of an unusually long chain of red dwarves, gravitationally bound in the midst of intergalactic space. Stellar density was increasing again, and soon a few stars in a row would cease to be notable.

The system was otherwise unremarkable, though it did contain a small rocky world with a struggling population of prokaryotes.

The drone she had asked for finally arrived, and she reached out with one hand to drop in a used grief cube, destined for ejection into deep space. Feathered‐Defender unfurled his head and leaned over for a closer look, making a quiet trilling noise—she had warned the bird about the dangers of contacting grief cubes, but it seemed reluctant to believe her.

But something made her pause before releasing the grief cube, and when the snake‐like drone looked up in apparent confusion, Ryouko realized why.

Ejecting cubes into deep space! How uncouth! the Incubator said, materializing into existence next to the drone. It will be unnecessarily difficult recovering that lost energy.

It took Ryouko only a moment to conclude that, yes, this was Kyubey, the famous Mitakihara Incubator that had contracted her.

She had been slow to hide her look of shock, and Feathered‐Defender had properly woken up, sidling towards her defensively. She reached out and patted its head reassuringly.

Sorry, she thought. Everything is fine. Go back to sleep.

It squawked unhappily.

Will trust you, it thought.

She had to be careful now—if she showed signs of talking to an invisible creature, there would surely be questions.

What are you doing here? she demanded.

Checking in on you, the Incubator thought, trotting in a circle around the still‐waiting drone. I thought you might still be alive and in need of my services.

She knew enough of MSY rumor to know that the Incubators were not exactly trustworthy. More likely than not, she concluded, the Incubator had come to spy on her, and see what was going on between her and the Thinkers.

A series of thoughts passed through her mind, including a few slipped in by Clarisse.

Okay, first off, I have not told any of the aliens about you, she thought. Please don’t break my cover here.

I will not, the Incubator said, pulling to a stop and sitting down. In fact, I am already altering the relevant surveillance records. It was wise of you to choose secrecy. That is our default policy.

The aliens on this ship claim that they are divided into factions, and that the faction attacking us is doing so on false pretenses. Did you know about this? Know about it and still allow it to happen?

We don’t comment on the internal affairs of other species, nor do we routinely monitor them, Kyubey said. Moreover, aside from necessities driven by grief cube harvesting, we are a neutral party in conflicts. Perhaps as a junior magical girl, you do not know this, but the MSY certainly does. Consult your internal records.

The response raised her hackles, but she did her best to calm herself. Incubator policy was known, and it had been almost a silly question.

Or rather, an emotional question, she supposed.

She closed her eyes, trying to make it look to any monitors like she was in deep thought, or perhaps falling asleep.

Well, now that you’re here, you can do a lot to help me, she said. Will you relay a message back to the MSY for me?

An ambitious question, but anything she could get out of the Incubator would be worth it. If she could even get a line open indirectly with Governance…

No I will not, Kyubey thought. We don’t facilitate interstellar communications as a matter of course, and here we could be interfering in the affairs of multiple species.

It was a disappointing answer, one that again raised her hackles, but again not inconsistent with what she already knew about Incubator policy. Though, as Clarisse was reminding her, the policy was not exactly ironclad. Kyubey’s ambivalent language suggested as much.

Unfortunately, the firmest part of the rule was also the part most valuable to her—she wasn’t going to get Kyubey to, say, facilitate peace negotiations.

Can you at least let them know I’m alive? she asked. Maybe for some compensation?

Kyubey stood back up, stretching his back with paws forward like a cat waking up from a nap.

There is no need to, it thought. Your mentors and partner all believe you to be alive, based on information given in a vision with the Goddess. I believe that will satisfy you emotionally?

It took an effort for Ryouko to suppress a reaction. It was a tremendous relief for Asami to believe she was alive, and if even Kyouko and the others believed it—

Wait, hold on, Clarisse thought. Vision with the Goddess?

What?

Since when would an Incubator refer to ’the Goddess’ so unambiguously?

He did show up both of the times I visited the Ribbon…

Can you ask?

This time Ryouko couldn’t resist opening her eyes, trying to steal a glance at the Incubator, only to find that it was already fading away.

Are you really just going to leave? she demanded. What did you mean by vision with the Goddess? What about the grief cube I’m holding?

I mean just that, of course. And it’d be troublesome to hide a cube disappearing inside the ship, so I’ll pick it up when the ship dumps it.

And then it was gone.

What the hell? she thought.

When they finally arrived at M31☆, the black hole center of Andromeda, and Ryouko looked at the sky with the overlay given to her, the galactic center was filled with an overwhelming number of dots—neighboring wormhole relays, scientific outposts, inhabited worlds.

Military installations were few and far between. Perhaps she simply wasn’t being shown most of them, but somehow she doubted it: she could only imagine how ridiculous the notion of a military threat would seem to such a civilization.

And all of this, two weeks away from human space! She felt as if she had come in from the wilderness.

Lush‐Botanist sent her a message.

·Our messengers are underway|·Our local monitors believe‒83% you have arrived undetected

She did not need to explain further. Ryouko already knew the plan: Peace‐cultivating and the two other members of the ship’s crew had spent the past week entering biological suspension, allowing their implants and nanites to painstakingly trace out their neural connections. Even for the Cephalopods, consciousness uploading was an expensive, time‐consuming process, but now came the payoff: they would be beamed immediately back to their Tentacle’s core worlds, arriving in advance of the ship itself.

It would have normally been enough to send a simple communique, but for a message of such importance, where full pref‐spec‐verification would be called for, this was the best way.

They would have sent Ryouko that way if they could have, but she was both the wrong species and bound to a soul gem.

Not that Ryouko would have welcomed the process; even Peace‐cultivating broaching the idea hypothetically had unnerved her. She knew, though, that the idea she and Clarisse could permanently die, without backup, dissatisfied the aliens’ preferences as well.

She hadn’t tried to explain the concept of the Goddess to them.

There were other worries that weighed on her mind. None of them were entirely sure that she had eluded /Thinker‐preserving’s scans, and no matter how much the ship vouchsafed that an attack was impossible here, she couldn’t help but be paranoid.

There was at least little time left to be worried. From here it wasn’t far to one of /Ahimsa‐extending’s core population centers, Water Circle, near the galactic core. By wormhole, it was only one jump away, though it still required them to transit to and from a nearby black hole, a process that would take about a day.

She spent much of that day in her room with Clarisse, pouring over the new alien records she had access to, now that they were entering friendlier territory. Her access was still… cordially restricted, but just the little peek into /Ahimsa‐extending’s operations might have been enough to send Governance into conniptions—it clearly implied that /Ahimsa‐extending alone had far more than enough resources to overrun all of Human space, if they fully mobilized.

In a way, that wasn’t surprising, but Clarisse had spent the past week impressing upon Ryouko that they would be the first humans to ever have access to this information and how it was incumbent on them to, as she put it, process it as thoroughly as possible, along with consulting Governance’s First Contact and contingency guidelines.

But in the end, there really wasn’t very much to surmise that wasn’t immediately obvious, and that Governance hadn’t already feared. It was seemingly impossible for Humanity to overcome the Thinkers militarily. One hope, perhaps the only hope, was to convince the aliens to end the war.

It was a thought that caused Ryouko’s hair to rise into the air. Neither she nor Clarisse wanted that kind of responsibility.

The final hours of the flight were spent reviewing with Lush‐Botanist exactly what Ryouko would be in store for. The senior leadership of /Ahimsa‐extending would gather at Water Circle, where there would be facilities to house all the necessary computation, and then they would interview her—or, more frankly, interrogate her.

But she was able to push those thoughts out of her mind, as they drew close to “Water Circle”. It wasn’t a planet, or even a few habitats, but tens of thousands of them, a whole ring, countless rotating cylinders orbiting tightly around the parent red dwarf, each the size of a battlecruiser, each with a unique, fully‐managed ecosystem.

Seen by eye, it looked like an illusion, a halo of shimmering dots in the sky. Hence the name, she supposed.

She spent the last minutes of their approach in virtuality, watching as they pulled into the system. She found her feelings difficult to parse: the feats of alien engineering were immense, and she felt a certain amount of awe—but it was almost like it wasn’t enough, like her consciousness wasn’t expansive enough to grasp all she should be impressed by. It was too big to appreciate.

The individual habitat they approached, named Far Sanctuary, was impressive in its own right, though perhaps no more so than the average battlecruiser. It was ten kilometers in both length and diameter, with two layers that spun in opposite directions, a design Governance itself had used for some of its habitats—though Ryouko had never seen one herself.

This one had apparently been chosen for its broad similarity to Ryouko’s own life support preferences, with fauna she would be comfortable with. It was also one of the few with the facilities to support an instantiation of the Tentacle’s administration.

By the time they were cleared to disembark, she was already waiting by the airlock, her scant personal belongings—her combat suit, Homura’s container of grief cubes—packed onto a nearby drone. Feathered‐Defender walked in circles at her side, with all the excitement of a toddler out for an excursion.

She made her way through the airlock, which shimmered with forcefields in a casual display of superior technology.

She was met at the other side by none other than Lush‐Botanist, now re‐embodied in an organic body, extending her tentacles wide. Ryouko couldn’t help but notice the metallic ornaments on the sides of the head.

·This is not a true body transfer, but merely the active extension of my current self—true transfer would be time‐consuming, inconvenient, and unnecessary|ৡ·Welcome

She didn’t have much time to muse on what it might be like to control two bodies at once, as they stepped out into the receiving yard. She blinked, distracted by the light of a sky she hadn’t seen in what felt like years—cerulean blue, with a piercing yellow source of light.

Simulated of course, but enough to trigger a wave of nostalgia that contrasted sharply with the crowd gathered nearby—spikes of telepathy supplied her with the missing details, revealing that it was mostly curious locals, mixed in with a few coincidental passerby.

Counterintuitively, this did not present a significant added security risk. The Thinkers here were central members of /Ahimsa‐extending, and they naturally preferred to respect certain rules regarding intra‐tentacle secrets.

Feathered‐Defender ran forward, mingling happily with a crowd of fellow, local “penguins” with a chorus of squawks. She couldn’t help but smile, and then she noticed an unusual alien approaching her.

By now, she had grown used to the bodies she had seen aboard Lush‐Botanist, and she was of course very familiar with the assorted combat versions she had killed so many of, but this one towered over her, nearly half‐again as large as Lush‐Botanist, with proportions to match—and two extra pairs of arms.

1fsNc5B⊃Survival‐Optimizer; Administrator‐Specialist her empathy‐organ whispered to her.

Ryouko openly gawked, knowing that the aliens could not take offense.

μ·The additional volume provides space for extra local compute|v·I reside within Water Circle, and wished to know you and Clarisse⊃??? myself|?μ+·Am I correct in interpreting your behavior as curiosity

They exchanged pref‐specs, a process that still sent her head spinning, even with Clarisse offloading some of the information. It was difficult to take in all at once, without the parallelized implant clusters the aliens had.

In the end, Survival‐Optimizer wasn’t markedly different from the aliens she had already met. There was a much stronger preference for staying in one place and thinking, a focus on protecting the lifeforms under /Ahimsa‐extending’s care, and an unusual interest in administrative work and large‐scale system optimization.

It was exactly the kind of thing you’d want from one of the Tentacle’s senior administrators, the small but rotating group of individuals that ran /Ahimsa‐extending’s affairs, spending most of their time uploaded to computing clusters. Sort of like Governance, viewed through a very distorted mirror. With more tentacles.

She looked at the giant alien with new understanding. She could imagine that body carrying a full supercomputer, and a high‐bandwidth transceiver, and cooling systems.

In fact, in infrared, Survival‐Optimizer looked very unusual.

μ·Humans very rarely modify our bodies to that extent||μ·Yes Ryouko thought, finally.

μ·We have forwarded all she has explained about their customs|| Lush‐Botanist commented.

Survival‐Optimizer thought at the same time:

μ·Curious; I would expect a civilization under no preference restrictions to result in much more body diversity than we have||ξ·Perhaps this has driven them towards the morally‐regrettable practice of creating sapient beings to perform tasks their bodies are unsuited for

All of the difficulties of multithreaded communication were amplified with multiple individuals involved, and Ryouko was still untangling that when Survival‐Optimizer continued:

μ∈!·Yet the capabilities of her body are far beyond what biology and even physics could suggest—your shipboard measurements ≈ abstruse equations‐characterizing‐FTL‐temporal‐consistency|μ∈?·How can a body beyond even an augmented warform be so short and thin|ο?·Is their technology yet unknowable to you, Lush‐Botanist

One of the alien’s two eyes watched Ryouko as they said this—a meaningful piece of body language even for the Cephalopods. Indeed, this was the first she had heard of any “measurements”.

Lush‐Botanist responded:

μ·Even more abstruse, I argue, though I know 3n79lRl⊃Universe‐grasping's perplexity better now|μο∪·Low‐grade reality‐distortion, as you predicted|ο∪·In its technical workings, yes, but we are learning about its role in Human life—for example, we have surmised‒73% that Shizuki‐Ryouko⊃??? and Clarisse⊃??? currently require reality‐warping to survive

It didn’t take a detailed understanding of Cephalopods for Ryouko to realize they were talking around her. What was interesting was that they were doing it in front of her—did they think she didn’t care? Or did it just not matter?

||ο·Ill tidings for peace

There was a brief telepathic silence.

·There will be time to consider such matters at length soon—as there is no immediate urgency, Shizuki‐Ryouko⊃??? and Clarisse⊃??? may as well take some time to adapt to their new surroundings|ৡ·We will meet again in one local‐day

It folded all of its arms in front of it in the gesture of farewell, then turned and ambled away with a slight rumbling.

Lush‐Botanist turned to Ryouko.

μ·Survival‐Optimizer strongly opposed accepting Akemi‐Homura⊃Divine‐seeking's request to retrieve you|ν·In the meeting tomorrow, do not be afraid to speak—administrator‐specialists are garrulous and can manage many simultaneous threads

With that disturbing tidbit of Thinker politics imparted, they started heading towards a waiting tramcar. Some of the nearby crowd realized that their conversation was over and started sending her and Clarisse greetings and empathize‐open requests. She returned tentative replies to all of it, including passing along some messages from Clarisse, though she declined to read anyone else’s pref‐spec—it was too mentally taxing, and she had yet to figure out how to avoid running the full comprehension process. She would have to ask about that later.

To her surprise, Feathered‐Defender didn’t rejoin them. Instead, she spotted the creature swimming with other penguins in a nearby pond, calling shrilly.

Then she saw the other animals around the pond and Clarisse poked her mentally, so that she turned and stopped dead in her tracks. There, at what had been the edges of her peripheral vision, was unmistakably a giraffe, just making its way through the tall grass. She was confident no amount of convergent evolution could reproduce all those details.

·This habitat is populated by species from the Milky Way, collected by Consensus/Thinker‐preserving—part of our agreement with them specifies that they bring back whatever specimens they can, particularly if the species is in serious danger from combat operations|·This creature is popular, but unfortunately lonely—we were told it was recovered from a Human preserve, but that its companions had perished

Now that she looked around, she could plausibly identify several of the grass species, and a squirrel‐like rodent that skittered by. Not as definitely as the giraffe, but all were from colony worlds that had fallen to the aliens.

It was a disorienting revelation, and she had to pull herself away from the giraffe, lurching towards the tram, which started moving after she seated herself aboard.

At first, the inside of the tram frankly wouldn’t have looked out of place on a human colony, if perhaps a bit too round, and with a profusion of support poles. Next to her, Lush‐Botanist wrapped her arms around two support poles.

Then the walls of the tram shimmered and what had been simple windows seemed to expand outward, until she could see everything in mesmerizing panorama.

The landscape looked more natural than artificial, with the grasses near the tram stretching into deciduous forest behind, curving back into the cylinder overhead. As she looked, telepathic machines fed her location data, revealing a handful of residences and other facilities hidden in the landscape.

The spectacle was mind‐bending. Two and four‐winged birds swirled in the air above her, soaring freely between all angles of the cylinder. All manners of animals wandered through the grass, most visible only in infrared, but she saw a few star‐pronged deer browsing at the edges, accompanied by a great orange sloth sniffing the air, slightly smaller than an infantry exosuit. Wasn’t that…?

Yes, Clarisse thought. It’s a predator. Very unusual to see them standing together like this.

She thought about that, then asked Lush‐Botanist.

∪·This is a managed ecosystem|∪·We wish to maintain species, but not unnecessary suffering|∪·We have done what we can to obviate predation and manage population

To Ryouko that was a strange idea, though she supposed humans had themselves suppressed the instinct of pet cats to hunt birds. But those were pets, and they still hunted mice.

She was still turning that thought over in her mind when the sloth stood up and bellowed, a puff of… something yellow rising from its back. A Cephalopod appeared out of the grass behind it, looking for all the world like a tourist.

They pulled into their arrival stop a few seconds later, still in view of the tableau.

When she had imagined an alien space colony, she had imagined holograms and machinery and metamaterials, all arrayed towards some industrial or military purpose. She hadn’t imagined striding down a dirt path near a braying sloth, the breeze sifting the crown feathers of an array of green birds peering down at her.

Perhaps she should have, she realized. It was as much a demonstration of technological mastery as the holograms would have been.

They traced their way around the edge of a small hillock, and a residence tower came into view, sand‐white and carved into a spiral around the hill. Circular doorways opened onto tenuous gray ramps downward, seemingly without regard for efficiency or even safety; there were no railings.

Her own room was right at the bottom, and the door that slid open led to a set of accommodations that were broadly similar to those on board the ship.

There had been a few adjustments, though. The room was noticeably cooler and less humid than the surroundings, the chairs were smaller and flatter, and there were no tentacle poles. There was also a small table on the side, complete with visualization platform. It was difficult to tell which changes were intended for her.

Lush‐Botanist drew her attention.

μ·I will be available if you need me, but for now I will place this body in storage|ν·You may explore this entire habitat without restriction, but /Ahimsa‐extending encourages you to rest and maintain your neural structures before the upcoming discussion|ν+·Feathered‐Defender will be staying at a nearby rookery, and welcomes your company|μ+·Do you have any immediate requests?

—and Peace‐cultivating and the others from the ship were busy consulting with the Tentacle, as she well knew.

|||μ·I’m alright, thanks, she thought.

The alien made the gesture of farewell, and the door closed behind her.

Ryouko sat next to the window and wondered what to do now. Resting was reasonable but, well…

She looked outside, at a pair of float‐frogs lounging in a pool of water.

She supposed it wouldn’t hurt to gather a few memories for Asami.

As promised, by the next day, the Administrators of /Ahimsa‐extending had gathered on‐station, ready for Ryouko to meet with them.

In the interim, there had been time for her to take in the sights—including the artificial night, with its projected views of the depths of space—as well as review what she could about Tentacle government. As might be expected, governance systems varied drastically by Tentacle, but the members of /Ahimsa‐extending cared relatively little about politics, preferring to indulge privately in nature‐adjacent hobbies. Hence, they were content to leave administration to the administrator‐specialists, the few individuals born with an inclination to the role, who then self‐modified even further.

The administrators had no particular need to meet physically, or to even be embodied. However, /Ahimsa‐extending members carried a meaningful preference for physical interaction, even if there was no great purpose to it.

Ryouko had to wonder: what, in the end, distinguished this from the human need for companionship and contact? Why was this not an emotion?

When it was time to leave, Peace‐cultivating met her at her door, guiding her to the meeting site. It was a small, but unexpected gesture, so she asked the alien about it as they stepped onto the waiting tramcar, no different from any other she had ridden the day before. The answer was embarrassingly simple: they had known from her pref‐spec that it would make her feel better, and /Ahimsa‐extending considered harmonizing with the preferences of other sentient life to be their most important trait.

For a short while afterward, she looked out over the grasslands of the habitat, charmed by a flock of small birds that flew along with the tram.

As they entered the forested half of the habitat, the milieu changed considerably. Where there had been grass and sunlight there were now only trees, growing denser as they went, branches reaching right up to the vehicle itself, but turning away, as if dissuaded by some invisible force.

The meeting site was nestled deep within, in a section of the map covered in water, labeled “waste reprocessing area”. It was easy to wonder why they would meet in a place like that, but she was quickly preoccupied with the changing scenery. The ground grew soggy and the humidity climbed sharply, as the species of trees began to change. The branches moved higher and higher, the trunks growing thicker and thicker, until Ryouko had to crane her neck to see the tops. By then the trunks were meters across.

Then the tracks entered water, dark and brackish, and the hulking tree trunks branched into wide, ground‐tapping roots, and she realized that these weren’t quite Earth trees—Earth had trees of this size, but none that grew in water. Perhaps Asami would recognize them.

The ground didn’t entirely disappear. Instead, the water became shot through with suggestions of roots, the air above foaming slightly and warm. Something about it unsettled her, and as she took a more careful look, whispers in the back of her mind suggested the answer. The roots were not entirely natural; they called it nurture‐wood, and in other spectrums she could see glimmers in the water of what looked like data cable, nanite slush, storage crystal…

When the doors slid open, a rush of wet air greeted her, smelling of algae and plant, yet not as… pungent as she expected. Standing up, she found a bare rock platform in the water, shot through with faint blue storage crystal and barely two meters across. On the other side a small metal dinghy waited for her, lacking any visible means of propulsion.

As she stepped aboard, the boat barely even budging, she took the opportunity to put her hand on one of the tree trunks, nearly three times as wide as her boat. It was slimy to the touch, and cool, but she could feel the slight vibration of something moving underneath.

To her surprise, Peace‐cultivating stepped directly into the water, his robes reacting to the water contact by shrinking and clinging to his lower limbs like a wet suit. His metal ornaments glinted underwater.

·We are suited to the water|·You may remain in the boat he thought, and demonstrated by gliding along smoothly with her boat, which was now being pushed along by an anomalous current in the water, leading her slowly towards a particularly dense and dark group of trees.

No, not just dark—they wove together in front of her, forming a cylinder that stretched upward to the invisible sky, far beyond all the other trees, and between the narrow gaps she could see total black, in every spectrum.

But below, in the roots, there was a gap in the wood, just as black, and as they drew nearer, she couldn’t help but brace herself. It felt as if she were stepping into a void, even if the telepathic messages insisted it was only a “privacy field”.

The other side left her blinking in confusion, with the smell of salt in her nostrils.

The ground was submerged in water, swirling silently underneath the faintly glowing walls. Here, the water was warm with an unknown chemical process, occasionally shimmering as it caught the light.

The walls were themselves supposedly more nurture‐wood, though now it looked more like smooth rock. Large symbols shone through on those walls, twice as tall as she was, phosphorescent, blue and green and yellow. Translations were provided to her from the old Thinker logographic script. The most important glowed through the water in front of her, ghostly‐white. It said: Here we meet; here we optimize for the good of all.

And when she looked up, she could see the walls blackening up into the distance, until she could not see the end.

The Thinkers arrayed themselves in circles, standing silently with arm‐limbs tucked in ornamented robes. The half‐dozen Administrators were the inner circle, giants as tall as the symbols on the walls, bulbous protrusions on the backs of their heads attached to hanging vines, though she could see no port. Other, smaller Thinkers formed an outer circle—Peace‐cultivating separated from her and joined them.

As her dinghy arrived in the middle, she nearly startled at a scrabbling motion, and what looked like several small lobsters moved out from underneath her, glassy eyes bulging out of the water, glowing faint green.

She could see them scanning her on several parts of the EM spectrum, before they sidled away back into the water, single‐file.

She couldn’t help but feel out of place. She and her boat were clearly incongruous within the crowd of large and even larger aliens, all of whom had turned to look at her.

Then she was assailed by empathize‐open exchange requests, and it was all she could do to keep herself from being overwhelmed by the computational load. She could have simply skipped empathize‐opening with some of the aliens, but then what kind of representative of Humanity would she be? She couldn’t turn down the free chance to understand all her questioners.

As the torrent of telepathy subsided, she noticed a sense of anticipation—they were waiting for her to finish processing. Was she being slow?

That thought only made her anxious, and she resisted the temptation to hide her face in embarrassment. She had nothing to be ashamed of, she told herself.

Survival‐Optimizer motioned to speak, raising the two outermost tendrils of his mouth in the traditional gesture. It struck Ryouko as an uncannily human touch, among all the surrealness.

ৡ·Let us begin|μ·I will not dispute Shizuki‐Ryouko⊃???'s sincerity with regard to her key assertions, though there remains room for both strategic deception and reality‐distortion|ξ·Our updated models strongly suggest‒88% that we and the Consensus have been complicit in the mass extermination of sapients—that we have failed in our goals|ν·Our updated models suggest‒43% a breach of Consensus, with exponentially unpredictable and negative possibilities—action must be taken to determine the truth, and we must alert our allies|μ+·Deception which, in most predicted scenarios, would be understandable given her species' circumstances

Another administrator, FTuNStB⊃Species‐harmonizer, immediately replied:

||ξ·The potential truth of our complicity is painful to contemplate—reciprocity demands that we exact a punishing price|ν·Gathering verified information about the Humans and /Thinker‐preserving will be critical, but it will be difficult to send further agents into the Milky Way without allied help—/Thinker‐preserving allocates much more to intelligence than we do|ο·Public accusation may be useful but may provoke dangerous response, should only be done when no other option

A third administrator, T17SlU2⊃Thousand‐blooms, added to the chorus:

||ξ·Reciprocity may not be an important concern, relative to concrete matters, and the survival of sapients|ν+·Allied help should be sought without hesitation|ν·We should bring the matter to Consensus/Comprehending, Consensus/Truth‐seeking, and Consensus/Star‐faring|ο·We should not be so hasty in dismissing the value of accusation: we can confront them with only minor issues, and monitor their responses ≈ release the prey to catch the predator

A ripple of disagreement passed through the network, with several of the administrators making gestures of dismissal, using a forelimb to pantomime slapping something away.

Yet another administrator, 1NbCb9W⊃Cooperator, spoke:

νοৡ!·These suggestions do not go far enough|μ+·We must treat this matter with overriding urgency, given the costs to Ryouko's species, and to ourselves|ξ·We should also inform Consensus Core of our suspicions directly, perhaps without revealing the source of our information|ν+·Thus, we should consult with our allies on more than just intelligence, and prepare an armed response for all future outcomes|ξ+·In strange times, it is valuable for all trustworthy actors to have as much information as possible ≈ the left tentacles align with the right

Ryouko was beginning to lose track of the varying conversation threads, even with Clarisse helping, packaging the information into temporally distinct chunks as best she could. All the administrators spoke at once, discussing every topic simultaneously, sometimes in ways that intersected each other, and Ryouko quickly found a sense of paralysis wash over her, her eyes darting over the administrators and the other attendees, who seemed to be mostly an audience.

She took a stabilizing breath, and decided: rather than try to consider it all at once—including the numerous threads discussing detailed Tentacle diplomacy, espionage, and other reactions—she would focus on the narrow topics that involved her. Cooperator’s proposal to inform the Consensus Core quickly gained steam, with those in attendance averring that if they could get the other Tentacles to join them, the unprecedented nature of multiple Tentacles making an accusation would be sufficient to gain credibility—but convincing the other Tentacles to take such a large step would require showing Ryouko and Clarisse to them. And at that point was there any reason not to show them to Consensus Core? It would be admitting to some technical violations of /Thinker‐preserving’s mandate to conduct the war, but did anyone really care about such things under the circumstances?

It seemed Lush‐Botanist had been right—they would indeed be brought before Consensus proper.

ξ·We will be willing to meet with any party you need us to, if it’s a matter of proving our sincerity|ξ+·As long as our safety is assured, Ryouko thought, when she had girded herself enough to say something. ξ·As you know, it is a matter of our species’ survival—self‐interested though it is, I must implore you to exert all efforts to stop /Thinker‐preserving’s genocide|ξ+·Your resources far exceed ours

She and Clarisse had been given plenty of time to reflect on what they had seen, and the sheer magnitude of the Cephalopod diaspora. As Clarisse had put it, bringing even a single Tentacle unambiguously to “their side” would be an incredible coup—a chance at several, or the Consensus Core itself, was something they had to grab with both hands. This was, quite possibly, the most important thing she would ever do, and she found herself shivering with the effort of containing her emotion. If they were monitoring her physiology, as she was sure they were, they would doubtlessly notice.

It was strange; battle was easier for her than this. Was this how combat felt for Asami?

The response from Survival‐Optimizer came in a moment:

ξ·Your offer is appreciated, both of you, but we must exercise caution|ξ+·Reality‐warping technology or not, you can empathize‐open our pref‐specs, and know how highly we would prioritize saving your species, as we have saved so many others|μ👁·We do not have a grasp of your or your species' reality‐warping technology, nor have you been willing to share—you present a risk to both us and our allies, one that is very difficult to model

It felt a bit patronizing, perhaps, to hear one’s species treated like another exotic animal to rescue, but Ryouko had seen /Ahimsa‐extending’s resources, even devoted only to peace. This was not the time for pride, and the response was as positive as she could have expected from Survival‐Optimizer—but she had to address the topic of reality‐warping.

Activity on the other topics slowed, and a sense of anticipation in the telepathic side‐channels made clear that the group was listening carefully for what she had to say. Even some of the non‐administrators turned their eyes towards her—including, of course, Peace‐cultivating.

She clenched her hands for a moment, then focused herself, remembering the answer she and Clarisse had rehearsed for this exact kind of question.

ξ·We understand that some information must be provided to facilitate trust||μ·We are unsure how much information I can truly share, since my species' social structures do not have the predictability of yours, and we have been given no guidance, so we can only exercise our own judgment|π∈·This is not a technology, but rather something that has been with us since we first gained sapience|π+∈·We have used it without really understanding it|π+∈·It seems to have some connection to sapience and to emotions, and to what you would call instability in pref‐specs

It was difficult to miss the telepathic stir this caused, with several of the administrators even making physical gestures of surprise. Ryouko held her figurative breath, asking Clarisse to keep her body language muted. She had made a rather glaring omission, but she simply couldn’t tell them about the Incubators. She doubted the Thinkers wanted to hear about a third alien species that claimed to be universal in scope, and she knew they didn’t want to have their memories wiped by Kyubey after being told about it.

But would they notice the omission? Were they capable of proving her wrong?

Survival‐Optimizer was again the one to respond to her:

||μ·I hope in time our two species may build enough trust to share all such information safely|π!·That is an extraordinary set of claims|π+·What you say is not impossible, but would be very surprising—though our understanding of the principles involved here, and their connection to sapience, is very limited|π+∪·We have already forsworn careless usage of this technology, precisely because it distorts physical laws and damages mathematical guarantees|π+∪·Such a system can only destroy all predictability, endangering not only Consensus but the universe itself|π+👁?·Could your species stop using reality‐distortion technology if asked

That was a driving question, one that Ryouko and Clarisse had both wished they could avoid. The Cephalopods had, ostensibly, started the war to stop Humanity from “reality‐warping”, but it wasn’t clear if Humanity could. The demons were a real threat, one that magical girls supposedly existed to face, but it was clear the Cephalopods had no such problem—she had yet to detect any hint of miasma here. Moreover, the only way Ryouko and Clarisse could possibly imagine to eliminate magic was to remove human emotion, and all existing magical girls.

The Incubators would never allow that, of course.

μ·I must warn you of something else, then|μ+·I believe based on my last combat experience near /Thinker‐preserving’s pulsar mines that they have identified me individually, or at least my reality‐warping powers|μ+·They may use this to undermine trust, claiming I am a known and potent threat using my reality‐warping powers to mislead or corrupt you|||||π·We know of no way to do so

A loaded set of statements: the former they felt she would have to confess at some point, and the latter was… at least approximately true.

Cooperator commented:

ξ∪·In your presence, no argument is logically complete, a crisis of facts|ξ+·Even now, our instruments detect low‐level physical irregularities|ξ∪·No solution converges absolutely when viewed from the outside|ν+·Only direct demonstration to other Tentacles will convince|π·We will leave this topic for now, but will request scientific study of your powers|π+·Consensus/Comprehending will be the best equipped

Ryouko neglected the threads about scientific study, which would be interpreted as not wanting to commit—which was true. She admitted being curious what the aliens would find, but the prospect of being an alien lab specimen made her nervous, at best—and Clarisse made sure not to hide her physiological reaction.

To her relief, no one pressed her on the matter, instead focusing on the other topic, which she did not yet fully understand. Fortunately, the discussion clarified: in the presence of reality‐distortion and with so limited information, anything was theoretically possible, including Ryouko maliciously altering everyone in her vicinity. Given their safeguards—which they did not elaborate to her—it was unlikely, and they were willing to take a minute risk, even to the point of meeting her in person—but that might not extend to all factions and observers.

It was a head‐spinning way of looking at things, but something she could grasp, and she couldn’t even say they were wrong—if Clarisse van Rossum were here instead of her, who knew what she could do?

When one of them asked what exactly Ryouko’s reality‐warping powers were, and what /Thinker‐preserving would accuse her of, she was forced to admit her role at Orpheus, and in the destruction of the pulsar mines.

Survival‐Optimizer commented:

μ!·A truly unexpected level of power|μ+∈?·You said you forced the fleet back through the wormhole—into a local star or singularity|μ+∈·We were told the fleet was destroyed

Ryouko thought back to, and Clarisse played back, her memories of the incident. She remembered perceiving the ships, still clearly intact, on the other side of the wormhole, even after she was done, even as the wave of exhaustion had washed over her.

|μ·I did not destroy them|μ·It is a strange discrepancy

|μ·More mysteries, then|μ·A lie about this could have profound implications—this truth may become a great ally

It was obvious that what she said had again greatly perturbed the aliens, and the tenor of the conversation around her reflected that, filled with discussion of uncertainty and unprecedented and contingencies. For a few minutes she sat there, quietly absorbing the threads around her, fielding a handful of minor questions about her species—no, reality‐warping was not a universal phenotypic trait, yes, as far as she knew, all humans had similarly variable pref‐specs, though Clarisse added that some human‐made AIs might not. And yes, the Human government would welcome peace, particularly with those who knew nothing of the atrocities committed by /Thinker‐preserving.

She felt some of the tension leave her; these were much easier topics.

In the last case, Ryouko even had a message to relay: Tomoe Mami’s message to the aliens, sent during the pulsar mission. There, it had fallen only on deaf ears, but here the beseeching tone, emphasizing the unjust, genocidal nature of the war, served to highlight many of Ryouko’s claims, and her own appeal earlier. It also gave her some time to breathe, using Mami’s words rather than her own.

Finally, Survival‐Optimizer thought:

μ·We have agreed to dismiss you for now, to avoid wasting your time|μ+·There may be other questions for you later|ξ·It will likely interest you to know that it was I who insisted agents be sent to try to contact, confine, and collect you at the pulsar, as Akemi Homura⊃Divine‐seeking had already given us knowledge of your powers|ξ+·She predicted you would arrive at a certain set of coordinates in deep space after the pulsar detonation, but we were not confident, and it was an opportune chance to test the limits of her predictions of the future|π?·You do not share Divine‐seeking's ability to predict the future, do you

||||π·I do not

Ryouko, not knowing what else to say to that, signaled her boat to leave, sending more lobsters skittering, and took one last look at the pool, with its array of aliens.

Then the boat carried her away.

Her thoughts turned towards a different angle.

She was only here thanks to a series of contrivances, Homura’s plots and the efforts of a faction of a faction of the Cephalopods. Soon, Consensus Core would be told she was here, and thereby the enemy would be told too. Would they allow her to return home? Would even /Ahimsa‐extending? Was she marooned, grief cubes dwindling, in another galaxy?

Was that the price of her wish?

Appendix: “A Demographic Overview of Thinker Civilization”

Governance eschatological studies have long expected that thanks to the nature of exponential growth, any encounter with a materially‐superior civilization would be an encounter with a vastly‐superior civilization. Unfortunately for the hopes of military planners, what information I have been given about the Thinker Consensus fails to contradict this notion.

It is necessary to predicate this topic with the caveat that this analysis is based primarily on information I was given by a Thinker Tentacle, stylizing itself as (the rough Standard translation) “/Ahimsa‐extending”. However, I have been given little reason to doubt their sincerity, and what Shizuki Ryouko and I have seen is consistent with the information I have been provided…

[…]

Thinker population in the Andromeda galaxy is remarkably sparse, two orders of magnitude less than the Governance average per unit area, and thus eight less than even the most conservative estimates of maximal developed population density, in which a hypothesized civilization avoids extensive space habitats, hyperdense planning, or uploading. This observed sparsity is despite the fact that the Thinkers are clearly capable of all of those population practices, and at least some Tentacles willingly adopt them.

This seemingly strange paradox is explicable in light of alien history, society, and galactic context. The Thinkers emerged from a stringent population bottleneck into a Triangulum galaxy devoid of sapient competition, and with a societal structure that encouraged fragmentation and separation. Once it was clear that the galaxy was empty and when FTL technology had been sufficiently developed, the Consensus rapidly moved to divide Triangulum between just over fifty Tentacles, each of which had relatively minute populations.

This arrangement has since expanded into the much larger, neighboring Andromeda galaxy, and after the intervening millennia the combined sapient Thinker population is in excess of one trillion, and each of the now hundred‐or‐so Tentacles has an average population only somewhat smaller than Governance, with access to the resources of one percent of a larger galaxy. In comparison, Humanity holds less than one‐thousandth of a percent of the Milky Way.

[…]

Nearly three‐quarters of the Thinker population is disembodied, existing only on electronic servers, with very wide variance between Tentacles. But it is well understood that with sufficient technology, this is irrelevant to ultimate military capacity, which is a function of resource access, industrial development, and computing power.

[…]

Knowing that we are largely facing just one Tentacle, with only some involvement from others and a limited allocation of resources, goes a long way towards explaining the course of the war, without diminishing the daunting scale of the Goliath we face. Yet even with these caveats, our survival thus far is a bit of a surprise…

— Clarisse, Version Two Tactical Computer (@Shizuki Ryouko), excerpt from “Observations on Thinker Civilization”.

Chapter 68: Many Paths

Tue, 01 Sep 2026 07:44:19 +0200

〈In the following text, 〈〉① indicates content redacted to those without security clearance. The number indicates the degree of security clearance required to access enclosed content.〉①

“I am not one to waste time musing upon the unknowable, but I confess a kind of morbid curiosity about the Incubators. It is hardly accidental that we know so very little about them—they prefer to hold all the cards, and always wear an unbeatable poker face—yet they have willingly informed us that we are manipulated to their benefit. We know that they hardly share Human values, so how can I ignore their secrets?”

“Thus I am left to speculate and guess. Their minds have always been inscrutable—their visible bodies are not only replaceable puppets, but do not even seem to contain the individuals. That is, if there truly are individuals; they wear their hivemind on their sleeve, though an Incubator can disagree with or even operate outside of the decisions of the collective, on rare occasion.”

〈“No soul mage has ever detected an Incubator soul, but they’ve consistently called unfounded any claim that they’re soulless. I suspect, to my unease, that they truly are individually ensouled."〉⑤

“Unlike some of my colleagues, I do not believe the Incubators are bluffing about their mastery of the physical realm. Only in exceptional circumstances do they display or discuss their full capabilities, but they seem to consider the material universe almost beneath them, or of no real concern, if it weren’t for that accursed Second Law!”

“Ultimately, what is most interesting about the Incubators is their sense of values. They have desires and preferences—valuing the universe and their own survival, if nothing else—and yet do not dare feel them too strongly. They claim to pursue a pure utilitarianism, but seem trapped in the semantics of a deontological ethic, only speaking truth and always obtaining consent.”

“One intriguing consequence of these values—one very relevant to us—is their laissez‐faire treatment of Humanity. Despite their stated prioritization of energy collection, they have done little to coerce Human development or expansion. There are arguments to be made about the effects of coercion on magical potential, but nevertheless, I do not think they tread as wantonly as they might.”

“We could have done much worse in terms of patron races. Much better, yes, but also much worse.”

— Akemi Homura, excerpt from A Life with Cause, unpublished manuscript found in personal files

Laws are a social contract between Citizen and State, written guidance for behavior—what the Sovereign expects of its people, and what the Sovereign promises in turn. Promises of restraint, fairness, cooperation, and justice.

But if that is all laws are, then if the Sovereign can become incorruptible, and the people can be guided to harmony with the State, then what need is there for rigid, imprecise, alienating law?

“That’s the theory anyway. In practice only authoritarians—infamously, several FA nations—have ever tried to implement such a society. Authoritarians, and Governance. It turns out, successfully omitting law requires the Sovereign to be pretty damn incorruptible.”

“Not even Governance truly has no written law. There are still the Core Rights, and beyond that a small corpus of steering rules, and beyond that a large body of ad hoc decrees, issued and retracted at various times as needed by Governance AIs. While these have a deliberately narrow scope, they are still useful as a source of precedent when deciding matters in court. And despite Governance’s attempts to portray its regulations as having no impact on everyday life, several exceptions are well‐known, particularly with the advent of the Contact War.”

“And of course, wherever the power of Governance to guide behavior wanes, written laws reappear, often in great numbers. The most burdened are the colonial governments and the military…”

— Clarisse van Rossum, personal blog post, MSY “Theban” community blogging platform

⌄·The lack of sapient species in the home galaxies is a blessing, allowing us to expand prudently without threat or competition|⌃·The lack of sapient species in the home galaxies is a curse, stranding us upon the shoals of our own perceptions

— Consensus/Truth‐seeking, Deliberations

Alright, you wanted time alone to talk, what is it? Ryouko asked, stepping back into her room on board the alien ship.

Obviously, they didn’t need to be alone to talk, but it made it easier to focus, and she could use a bit of an escape anyway.

I wanted to take a break to just stop and think, Clarisse thought, it’s very easy to get swept up in the flow of things, but for a situation like this, it’s critical to maintain agency. That’s part of what I’ve been programmed to do, sort through information in the background when your main attention is too busy, and then present it so that you can make informed decisions.

Okay, Ryouko echoed emptily, dropping down onto her cushioned‐waterbed‐thing. I’ll admit, I’ve been a little too overwhelmed to think about the implications of hanging out with Cephalopods. And a Cephalopod uploaded into a starship. And his noisy penguin pet. With emotions.

It had taken quite an effort to stop Feathered‐Defender from following her into her room. The bird seemed fascinated by Ryouko and Clarisse’s novelty, and thrilled to have people to speak with that also engaged in linear thought and emotion. In the end, they had been forced to schedule a time to reunite with the creature.

Right, and there’s plenty to think about there, Clarisse thought. But before we engage in that, I’ve been looking at some of the less obvious angles—going over your past memories, Governance records that you have on hand, trying to see if the aliens’ story checks out and what conclusions there are to draw. I’ve come up with some troubling thoughts about the alien faction prosecuting the war, Consensus/Thinker‐preserving.

I’m listening, Ryouko thought, putting her hands behind her head to stare up at the ceiling, a dome‐like structure she had asked to display a pale shade of blue.

Well, just before we ended up stuck here, Sakura Kyouko and some of her friends were engaged in an incident where they were attacked by a group of aliens at an asteroid. We are very lucky to have any details of that at all—we wouldn’t know anything if Chitose Yuma hadn’t told us.

That whole thing still confuses me, Ryouko thought, but at least the idea of a group of aliens trying to conduct diplomacy seems a lot more sensible now. Now that I think about it, I wonder if those alien diplomats were from /Ahimsa‐extending, or perhaps some other faction. It might be worth asking.

It might, Clarisse agreed. Once we’re sure what we’re dealing with. But there’s more to it than that. Review the files; they found a group of aliens on one of the attacking ships who appeared to be sensitive to demon attacks. They didn’t have time to resolve the mysteries of the situation, but after what we’ve heard here, the implications could be tremendous. If the faction fighting the war has gained emotions while in the Milky Way somehow, that would go a long way toward explaining why their behavior has been so unpredictable.

That unexpected chain of thought took much longer to untangle, and she even closed her eyes for a moment to think about it.

That’s worrying, Ryouko thought finally. Though there’s hardly much in the way of evidence to go on. Plus, how and why?

I don’t know, Clarisse thought. I can only speculate. But from what I understand, corruption of the preference‐specification system is as bad for them as breaking the TCF is for us. Among other things, no one is even supposed to want to. That’s supposed to be provable.

So should we tell them? Ryouko thought. It seems like the nice thing to do, but—

Right, the situation isn’t about being nice or not, Clarisse thought, agreeing with her before she could even finish the thought. It’s about what’s best for Humanity. Given that, I don’t know that we want to tell them. Do we trust them? Would we want to help them even if we did? The question is too loaded to analyze, for now.

We might have to wait and find out more, Ryouko thought, making an unhappy noise. That’s uncertainty I don’t like.

Moreover, it felt a bit rude, a feeling she knew was illogical.

There are other reasons to be cautious, Clarisse thought. Do you remember the blink interdictors we encountered at the pulsar?

How could I forget?

I’m inclined to think those weren’t deployed by /Thinker‐preserving. Azrael said that the Ceph using the device we found were also using stealth to hide from the other Ceph in the mines. But if not /Thinker‐preserving, then whom? It seemed awfully targeted, didn’t it? But there’s only one group we know expected you to be there.

It seems a bit strong of an inference to think these ‘Ahimsa‐extending’ were behind it, Ryouko thought. What, were they trying to capture me? What would be the point, if they knew where I would end up?

I don’t know. But it’s very strange that we found a telepathic packet explaining that they had used a blink interdictor. Explaining pretty much only to you.

Ryouko made a face, which she assumed the alien surveillance wouldn’t be able to interpret.

More echoes of Akemi Homura, perhaps.

Perhaps. But it seems we’re out of time, for now.

Lush‐Botanist was calling them to the ship’s engine room. There was something time‐sensitive they wanted her to see.

Ryouko pulled herself up using one of the poles around her bedding, and strode purposefully out the door.

By this point she needed no direction, and veered past the medbay to the open doorway that led to the engine core. The closer she got, the brighter her soul gem glowed.

As she stepped to the threshold of the walkway that led to the core itself, an elegant spheroid suspended in its chamber, the ship addressed her:

μ·We are approaching the central galactic black hole, our pathway to Andromeda|μ+·You had requested to be present for transit events|ν·Apologies for interrupting your rest, but there is important information to convey

Before she could ask what the ship meant, she felt an incoming telepathic request—the ship was asking to share visual data.

When she assented, the room faded into the background, overlaid with a vision that left her dazzled—the stars and nebulae of the galactic core laid out across her field of vision, not just visible but labeled and cataloged, a deluge of information across her mind that even Clarisse struggled with.

Then the chaos pulled away, the telepathic link pulling her towards the object directly in front of them, approaching rapidly.

While the core was invisible in the EM spectrum, Sagittarius A☆ was positively luminescent in every other way, whether it be the multi‐solar‐system‐sized accretion disc that glowed burning hot, or the massive gravitational signature, or the effect it had on her soul gem. Regardless, the readouts made clear that the surrounding space was occupied, by an enormous wormhole stabilizer and all that accompanied it.

The ship answered the first questions that came to her mind.

μ·As an inspection ship we have right‐of‐transit here|μ+·We are not declaring you as a passenger|ν·I strongly advise refraining from any reality‐warping activities for now, to avoid detection|ξ·Your species' attack on the pulsar space‐time evulser has forced them to construct more defensive emplacements

Ryouko immediately clamped down on her soul gem emissions.

||ν?·Is that really a possibility| she thought.

||ν·Yes‒6%, if /Thinker‐preserving has developed improved reality‐distortion detection technology|

If they really had that kind of technology, they would be better at detecting our MagOps, Ryouko thought, keeping it to herself.

She still couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious, but as she paced around the engine room, they decloaked and were scanned by a patrol ship without incident, a variety of sensors passing over the surface of their ship with a sensation that she felt as a slight tingle.

According to Lush‐Botanist, she had a secondary stealth module, not the usual kind used for war: more of a smuggling device, suitable for concealing the passage of an unusual species. She could sense Clarisse furiously taking intelligence notes on every passive sensory channel she had.

Perhaps just as interesting was the idea that the aliens would even have a smuggling device, but as she had been learning, Cephalopod society was less totalitarian than she had expected—inter‐Tentacle agreements often allowed or assumed a certain degree of deception, especially if one side’s core values were at stake.

∈?·You said you are an inspection ship|∈?·Does inspection refer to the pref‐spec‐verification you mentioned earlier she asked.

The ship replied:

·Yes, though that is a functional status, not a description of my physical design|·Yes: both to confirm adherence to their binding‐preference‐alteration‐agreements with us, and to satisfy standard Consensus requirements upon /Thinker‐preserving

|?·You have agreements with /Thinker‐preserving

|∈·Many, covering sundry matters—such pref‐arb is common|∈·Regarding the conflict with your species, we pay them considerable resources in exchange for observance of certain moral customs—for example, not taking any prisoners

Ryouko boggled. It made a twisted sense, if you assumed your opponent had uploaded backups of their population. Indefinite imprisonment was cruel compared to losing a short span of memory, as /Ahimsa‐extending had previously seen it.

|·Inspection has been difficult, however, and we have lost several of our inspection ships to Human attacks throughout the war, starting from the very beginning and most recently at the pulsar|+·Your testimony will be essential evidence in proving the fraud against us we have long suspected

Ah, a more practical reason that they care, Clarisse thought.

Ryouko chewed on those words, as the black hole loomed larger and larger before them. It tugged at her, a sensation similar to Asami preparing a singularity, and the pulsar mines.

She did her best to swallow the sensation. Not now.

It wasn’t the black hole that held her attention now, but the circle of stars that loomed in front. Against the total darkness of the event horizon, it looked like a window to the stars.

Which it was, quite literally.

She was close enough to see the edges of the sphere pulsing, the ship’s core pulsing with it, and she could feel her soul gem trying to pulse in turn–though she was doing all she could to keep the light from streaming out.

At the same time, another thought had occurred to her:

She was going where no human had ever gone before. Was this not her wish?

So, did Nakihara‐san really say that she was shown Shizuki‐san was still alive? Mami asked. I know Chiyo‐san does her best, but the media can get a bit hyperbolic.

Yuma watched Kyouko react uncomfortably. She would have thought Kyouko was behind the stories in the MSY media about Nakihara Asami, but her reaction suggested otherwise. And Yuma considered herself very good at reading Kyouko.

It was relieving, actually. She really didn’t want to tell Arisu that Kyouko was having trouble accepting the death of her, and Mami’s, mentee.

She did, and I believe her, Kyouko replied finally, giving Yuma a narrow‐eyed look. She said some other things too.

Yuma winced inwardly.

She checked Mami’s face. Instead of reacting with polite skepticism, or the careful neutrality Yuma displayed herself, Mami appeared thoughtful, even accepting. Just how much had they gotten to her?

Well let’s hear it then, Mami thought, glancing back at Yuma. The details might be interesting.

Kyouko seemed reluctant to speak, almost like she was embarrassed.

And embarrassed she might well have been, given the spiel she then relayed, avoiding Yuma’s gaze the whole time. Asami claimed that Ryouko had made contact with some sort of “gentler” Cephalopods, and was, apparently, already cruising along with them through wormholes at the center of the Milky Way.

She had never heard a more fantastic set of claims, but there was a disturbing element to it: intelligence about a less genocidal group of aliens did exist, in the form of the recordings from the asteroid mission, but was classified beyond Asami’s reach. How then did she know about that?

It might have lent credibility to her claim, but as Yuma looked around at the others—Kyouko and Mami nodding along like they were discussing vital intelligence—it seemed all too possible that she had simply been told, or the information otherwise leaked. She would have expected more from her friends, but who knew what influence they were under?

No, she was overthinking it. Shizuki Ryouko knew about it, so did everyone with her at the pulsar when Yuma had sent the data. It would make perfect sense for Asami to know about.

She was grateful for that; the other possibilities were too unpleasant. She had contingency plans—Mami’s role in the military was too powerful to ignore the risk of compromise—but she preferred not to think in such directions.

She gathered herself. For now she had to focus on the threat in front of her—the mysterious Ribbon.

It had been moved out of its previous location—an unceremonious tent—while the Cult worked on reconstruction. Ostensibly, they wanted to build the old church back up again as soon as practicable, but the move also provided a convenient excuse for Kyouko to briefly close off access. The Cult had seemingly been very cooperative, even allowing Yuma to help design the interim Ribbon hall.

Yuma had set both mundane and magical equipment in place to examine the Ribbon, and was straining herself to detect what magic she could on it. Thus far, there had been nothing.

She still felt trepidation. She had always shunned coming here, worried about lending credence to Kyouko’s beliefs, and about what the trip might do to her. It was a fear that, in retrospect, made little sense. If the Ribbon were truly that dangerous, what had she been doing letting it lie at the heart of the MSY for twenty years? Her actions were inconsistent.

Had been. Now Mami had gotten sucked into all this. That made all fears more justified, but it was only proper that she finally trust in her friends’ abilities and at least take a look at the thing.

After plenty of screening.

I know what you’re thinking, Yuma‐chan, Mami thought, scrutinizing Yuma’s face. But I’m not crazy. Just take my word on that. Come on.

They both knew just those words wouldn’t be enough, but she stepped forward into the room anyway, keeping her metaphorical eyes peeled for any sign of trouble.

She found it immediately, the familiar white‐and‐red form of an Incubator resting on the transparent case containing the Ribbon, bypassing all of the shielding that Yuma knew to be there.

Yuma’s eyes darted around the hall, searching for any suspicious traces, magic or otherwise. There were a few rows of old‐fashioned, uncomfortable‐looking pews, with plain wood paneling that Kyouko had insisted on, and Yuma’s large, obtrusive metal surveillance equipment, glimmering with enchantment—but nothing that shouldn’t have been there.

Kyubey jumped to the floor, passing effortlessly through the shielding.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here, Yuma thought, as it moved in front of her feet, forcing Yuma to step around it as she approached the Ribbon.

It is useful to check in at times, the Incubator thought. Both on this artifact, and on you. My ability to predict you three’s behavior has been waning of late, and I do not wish to lose valuable contractees. But, I’m sure you’ve been scolded plenty.

It rubbed at its ear with a paw, one of the many mannerisms it had presumably copied from cats.

As for the artifact, well—who knows what you will see?

Yuma wondered at the strange comments—and then the world shifted.

In the literal blink of an eye she found herself outdoors, the glare of the sun pricking at her eyes.

She should have jumped immediately, evading faster than possible whatever force or magic had surprised her. Her magic should have ensured it—and if not that, her human side should have jumped in startlement.

Instead, nothing, which she found incredible even as she stood there, blinking.

Regardless of what she thought of the Ribbon, the immediate conclusion was obvious. Still, she exercised diligence, scanning everything about her surroundings as rapidly as possible: no, there was no sign of any teleportation magic or otherwise that had been applied to her, and yes, she was completely cut off from the network, and all telepathic connections, including the connections she had been maintaining to MG and Atsuko Arisu. In fact, all one hundred percent of her consciousness was present and centralized, which shouldn’t have been possible without her volition.

She also recognized where she was. These were the rooftops of old Mitakihara, the one of her childhood. She had run these routes often, with both of her childhood teams.

Though the exact place she was standing… she had rarely ever seen it from this angle. Here, next to a billboard that was usually a political ad, on top of a popular cake shop Yuma had often ogled from a distance—

It was the first place she had ever seen Mami, Homura, and Kyouko.

That meant…

She looked up, past the political billboard, towards the roof of the dance club across the street. There a woman stood, in a giant white dress—not the least practical costume Yuma had ever seen, but it didn’t miss by much.

The woman waved, and it seemed to Yuma that she was looking at an optical illusion—her mind insisted that the hair just kept going and going, but somehow it didn’t seem to block anything. And she couldn’t focus on the face.

She had learned as much as she could from just observing, she decided.

“I take it you’re this Goddess I’ve heard so much about,” she said, projecting her voice across the gap. “Don’t just nod along. I want to hear you say it.”

“I am the Goddess, yes,” the woman said, in a pleasant voice that carried suspiciously well. “Well, that’s what they call me. I haven’t really argued it, since it’s a reasonable way to interpret things. I would keep going, but you don’t really want to chat with me, right?”

Yuma did her best to conceal her reaction, both externally and internally—she had a carefully prepared plan for the scenario she found herself in, and one of the key points was to limit how much the “Goddess” could manipulate her—or “chat”, in her words.

“I want you to prove to me that you really can predict the future,” Yuma said, sticking to her memorized lines. “I’m not ordering you around, of course, but I think if you can prove yourself to me we’ll be more useful to each other.”

“I really prefer the more conversational approach,” the woman said, sounding genuinely disappointed.

Sparkles of light fell off her towards the ground. Yuma… didn’t think they were meant to represent tears. It didn’t matter—she wouldn’t budge.

“But I do understand,” the woman continued. “You know all too well how dangerous someone with future‐sight can be.”

That would have to count as an acceptance, Yuma thought.

“First, I want you to verify that you’re not Mikuni Oriko, nor some surviving plot of hers,” she said.

“She’ll be overjoyed to hear you still think so highly of her,” the woman said, “that such a possibility is yet worth ruling out. No, I am not.”

Indirectly verifying Mami’s claim to have spoken to Oriko, assuming any of this could be trusted, Yuma thought, before she could suppress it.

She couldn’t let her mind be led off‐track. It was tempting, so tempting to accept this entity’s friendly overtures, but there was no way she could trust apparent emotional cues under the circumstances.

The other woman brushed at her robes with one gloved hand, creating another distracting shower of light.

“Alright, well in that case,” Yuma said finally, “to probe exactly what kind of future‐sight or clairvoyance you possess, if any, I’ve arranged for a set of particle physics experiments to be performed before, during, and after my visit to your Ribbon. The results should exhibit pure quantum randomness, so no one should be able to predict the results, not to mention the experimental noise on top of that. Would you please provide the results of these experiments?”

The woman closed her eyes, smiling vaguely—or, that was the impression Yuma got, despite being unable to see her face properly.

“In all this time, I’ve never had anyone ask for anything so abstract, nor so loaded with physical implication. But even though I know you’ve thought about that, you ask for a lot more than you know, and I’m not going to say I’m happy about it.”

She paused, making sure Yuma absorbed those words, before continuing:

“However, if we’re going to do this, let me suggest an approach to you. I can provide much more detailed data than you have asked for, and I have the power to ensure that you remember what I say, no matter what. What do you think?”

Yuma found herself at a slight loss. She had contrived for the interpreted experimental results to be easy to remember even without implant support, a list of binary and categorical answers. She hadn’t anticipated a scenario like this. She was supposed to ignore all unnecessary proposals, but…

“If I decline?” she asked, tersely.

“Then I read out the simplified results to you, like you planned,” the woman said.

The easy answer was no, Yuma knew. But the truth was, she was interested in learning if the woman—the entity—could do what she claimed. The experimental design didn’t depend on Yuma remaining uncompromised—a wise precaution, considering that this “vision” apparently involved having her senses hijacked and her consciousness captured.

“I accept,” Yuma said.

Yuma heard the voice in her head then; the woman wasn’t even moving her lips. What she found imprinting itself on her mind was indeed elaborate, with full numerical precision and details. And though it shouldn’t have been possible, she could remember every last digit.

Yuma did her best to hide her surprise, keeping her face straight and focusing on her surroundings for a moment—the fluffy clouds, the smell of the bakery and fuel exhaust below. She realized that it wasn’t the full spectrum smell gifted to her by her military‐grade implants—it was the smell of memory, how it had smelled to her as a child.

No, it was better than mere memory.

“I have also set up an unrelated test,” Yuma said eventually, returning to her script. “I have asked various individuals I am working with to generate a set of secret code phrases, and would like you to tell me what these phrases are. If needed, I can tell you who they are or just how many there are.”

“No need,” the woman said instantly. “Here you go.”

She repeated the previous feat, words imprinting themselves on Yuma’s mind.

The woman was unnervingly confident, and Yuma could feel the doubt creep into her mind—not doubt in the woman, but doubt in herself. She had prepared practically for the scenario where the “Goddess” was everything Kyouko promised, but she was starting to realize she hadn’t prepared emotionally. The implications were massive.

She could still remember Homura telling her about the afterlife, when she was young and talk like that made her feel better, whether she believed it or not. She had thought she had left such things behind her.

Yuma clamped down on her thoughts then, aware she had leaked so, so much to any mind‐reader who might have breached her defenses. As this woman obviously had.

There was only one more test, perhaps the most creative one. There was a magical girl she trusted, Rose‐Merline Béliar, who claimed to be able to talk to furniture. Yuma had asked her to talk to a particular set of lava lamps in the near future, asking them about trivia. In principle, their responses would not only be unpredictable—they’d be a product of magic.

“Surprisingly sage replies for novelty furniture, if rather off‐topic,” the woman said, once the final answers were delivered. “Now, if we’ve taken care of business, I’d be glad to host you a while longer. Surely you can stay around a bit; I can transition us somewhere nice?”

“I’d like to leave,” Yuma said, shaking her head more forcefully than she’d intended. She had never had any intention of staying longer than she had to, and doubly so now—not until she had her thoughts sorted out.

The woman waved, as Yuma’s vision started to fade.

“Bye bye then. I do appreciate you showing up for my birthday parties!”

Yuma was left with the smell of cake in her nostrils.

The others around her hadn’t reacted yet—Kyouko in particular still had her head down in prayer—and a quick check showed that her external connections, telepathic or otherwise, were back online, and her consciousness was back to being distributed exactly as it had been before—which again, shouldn’t have been possible.

As tempting as it was to immediately send messages to everyone confirming their code words, she forbore. She needed to get out of the area and have herself aggressively screened first. The teams were already on standby.

She wouldn’t lie to Mami and Kyouko, but ideally that conversation could be held afterward—at least until they were away from Kyubey, whose smug impression seemed to suggest he knew exactly what had happened.

As if reading her mind, Kyouko stood up, glanced at Yuma, and reached for the Incubator.

“Alright, you little snoop, get out of here,” Kyouko said, picking the creature up by its front paws. “This is private business.”

How unpleasant, Kyubey thought. I would prefer to stay.

Yuma watched as Kyouko physically tossed the protesting Incubator out the door, which slid shut a moment later. Sure, it might listen in, but the Incubators generally respected being thrown out of places.

Kyouko clapped her hands together.

I can tell something happened, she thought.

Yuma, who hadn’t tried to hide anything, knew it was all over her face.

I was hoping to wait, she thought, sighing. But since you got rid of Kyubey, yes, sure, I admit it.

She took a moment to look over the others—Kyouko looked happy, almost eager, while Mami just looked relieved.

Then Yuma shrugged her shoulders, curling and uncurling the hair she was still keeping long.

I prepared for this contingency, she thought. And had a battery of questions ready. After this, I’m going to go verify what I can. Here.

Now that everything was over, it didn’t hurt to share the protocol with Kyouko, so to speak, leaving out the actual questions and responses.

The girl snorted a moment later.

I don’t know how offended the Goddess was by all this, but I am offended for Her, Kyouko thought. I wouldn’t like being interrogated by someone I’m trying to help.

I didn’t get the impression that she would be bothered by that kind of thing, Mami thought, shrugging. Though I thought I got harsher treatment…

And that was all I did, Yuma thought. I asked her to keep it short. If all works out, I’ll come back later.

Kyouko’s face scrunched up, and she opened her mouth to say something further, but they were interrupted by a scratching noise at the door.

I do have more business with you three, if I’m not interrupting, Kyubey thought.

Kyouko and Yuma glanced at each other.

It was nothing important, Kyouko thought. Let’s see what the little snitch wants.

The Incubator bounded into the room as soon as it slid open, settling into a slow walk.

You threw me out before I could suggest it, but I was going to offer to go check if Shizuki Ryouko was really where Nakihara Asami claimed her to be, Kyubey thought, coming to a stop in front of Mami.

We never previously thought information from alleged visions very credible, it continued, but recent events have given us pause.

Where Nakihara Asami claimed her to be? Kyouko asked, before either of the others could react. That hasn’t been reported anywhere. Just what have you been up to?

It was mentioned to me by Simona del Mago, Kyubey thought, tilting its head. After all, we are a party capable of rendering certain kinds of assistance.

They took a moment to digest that, before Kyouko continued:

What’s stopping you then? Why are you even asking? I can’t say I’m a fan of you getting involved in our business.

Indeed, Kyubey thought, licking one of its paws. That is one of the reasons for delay. I thought you would appreciate being asked. More importantly, though, performing this check would cost a meaningful amount of energy. If we were to report the result to you, we would want compensation.

Compensation, hm? Mami echoed.

By this point they had been around the Incubators enough to know what they meant—but also that it was never wise to put words in an Incubator’s mouth. They were all too happy to let you think you were right. Better to make them say it.

Yes, the Incubator acknowledged. Both of us are well aware of the value of the information. In exchange, we would like access to whatever information you have on Akemi Homura and those who may be working with her.

Yuma observed the surprise on the others’ faces. It wasn’t a completely unprecedented offer; ever since the MSY had shown itself to be an organization of value, the Incubators had made a great show of respecting their practices, or at least pretending to. On rare occasions, they made offers like this, trading something of small value in exchange for a peek at the MSY’s secrets.

But it was usually small, so small that it was difficult to be certain if the Incubators really cared about either side of the deal, or were just putting up an act. For them to barter information of real value meant they might really care.

It bothers you that Homura has been able to hide from you, Yuma thought.

There was a lengthy pause before Kyubey replied.

Yes, it bothers us, it thought.

Well, I might just have to give Homura some credit, then, Yuma thought. But snide comments aside, I think we can consider your offer. It’s only fair that we take some time to review just what kind of information we’d be parting with.

Of course, the Incubator said.

It sat down on the carpet, looking up at the three of them expectantly, before Kyouko picked it up again and headed for the door.

I still don’t think this is called for, it protested, as Kyouko set it down outside the door, gently this time.

Yuma waited a beat, taking the time to check on her arrangements. She had placed security teams around the site, with the job of screening the area for anyone, magical or not, trying to probe their location. Several sweeps had already come back clean, but she knew better than to trust that—the sweeps would continue for a while yet.

That reminded her that she had something else to talk about.

Look, regardless of what comes of my experiments, she began, turning towards Mami. I have to warn you that your recent changes in military policy haven’t gone unnoticed. Kuroi Kana already has her suspicions, and doubtless Governance does too. If anyone were to put the pieces together between that and your visits here…

I’ve thought of that, Mami thought, cracking a slightly crooked smile. I haven’t done anything I couldn’t otherwise justify. It would be a problem if someone tried to draw the real connections, but it’s all deniable.

I’m not sure about that— Yuma began.

She paused, pointing at her ear to signal an urgent incoming call. The most recent security sweep had reported back.

“We have a perimeter breach,” one of her security teams sent.

Yuma froze in place, reaching a part of her mind out to assess the situation.

One of them had found something—no, someone—trying to conduct an active magical scan of the area. Was it possible after all that this “Goddess” was a fake?

That thought died the instant she heard the voice.

“No, no, sorry!” Chiyo Rika said, her voice coming through the comms. “You got me! Well played.”

Yuma released an audible groan.

What is it? Kyouko asked, nudging Yuma with an elbow.

Yuma sent her and Mami a rapid summary of the situation, and Kyouko echoed her groan seconds later.

“Yes that’s right, leave her be,” Yuma transmitted. “We’ll deal with her separately.”

She could only imagine the grumbling that would cause, but Rika was special. Rika could make them pay for any overzealousness.

Not to mention, there had to be something else going on here. Rika had apparently chosen to surveil them herself—one of the only ways their security could have been broken—but that meant she already knew something was up. How?

At least they would have their chance to find out. Rika had already sent the meeting invite. She just hoped it wouldn’t be too bad.

A few hours later, they made their way to the meeting site, a nearby MSY location that Rika had chosen as neutral grounds.

Maison Yuno had been founded in 2130, during the height of the MSY’s pre‐Unification Wars years. On the outside, it had been a standard posh, somewhat European‐style eatery, exclusive enough to feature known chefs and require connections to get in, but careful never to become too notable.

On the inside, of course, it was an MSY hideaway, used to hold get‐togethers and meetings in a secure, deniable location, whenever a standard office building wouldn’t have been appropriate and a working dinner or lunch was.

“You’ve had this place secured, I trust,” Yuma asked, a moment after they stepped through the door of their private room.

“As have you,” Rika said. “Not that anyone would dare. I have my connections here.”

“But you checked anyway,” Yuma said.

“But I checked anyway,” Rika confirmed.

Yuma took a seat across from Rika, politely partaking of the fried yuca sticks already in place in front of her.

There was a further exchange of pleasantries—a passing of food, some courteous questions, Kyouko working her way rapidly through the yuca sticks—all while they read as much as they could off of each other, which frankly wasn’t much. They had been political allies once, back when that had meant quite a bit—but that was centuries ago, and these were contentious days.

“Alright, Chiyo‐san, let’s not drag this out,” Mami said finally. “What’s the meaning of you spying on us? How much did you see?”

Rika crossed her arms, meeting Mami’s gaze.

Finally, Rika spoke.

“It’s in the public interest to know what’s going on with that Ribbon. You know that the perpetrators of the recent attacks posted claims online that the Ribbon is corrupting the core of the MSY leadership.”

“Surely you don’t believe that,” Kyouko said, visibly, and deliberately, rolling her eyes.

“Of course not, but it’s making waves in the more conspiratorial tendrils of the Grapevine, and it’s spreading by word‐of‐mouth among the general public too. So it’s in our interest to dispel what we can. There’s only more buzz now after my story about Nakihara‐san. So, you can imagine what we thought when we heard Ribbon visitation was shut down for ‘reconstruction’, and my girl on‐site started reporting they couldn’t breach the privacy screen.”

There was so much that could be said to that, Yuma thought. The foremost of which was “How does that give you the right to breach the privacy screen?” But the confrontational approach had never worked with Rika. Her views were her views, and you found a way to either work with her or fight with her. Her time as Speaker had only made that tendency worse.

And in this case, Rika had the strong hand. They all knew it.

“It is precisely because of the claims Nakihara‐san made that we are here,” Mami said, closing her eyes for a moment. “You know I have never been one to put much stock into what comes out of the Cult, but have your sources told you about the details? Not just that Shizuki‐san is alive, but all the other critical information. About her making contact with a supposed alien faction, one that is perhaps interested in diplomacy? Such a thing could change the course of the war, if true. I had to see for myself.”

One might think that Mami was being reckless, leaking so many details, but they had already agreed to say this much; they wouldn’t mind reading about it in the news tomorrow, even if it raised questions about their ability to keep Governance secrets.

Plus, Rika could perhaps be convinced to keep the secret herself, and it gave them an avenue to gauge her reactions.

“That’s why it had to be done quietly,” Mami continued. “That, and the rumors you’ve been talking about. None of this information is certain, and if Yuma and I appeared to be putting our approval on what comes out of the Cult…”

She let her voice trail off there, assessing Rika’s reaction. The woman’s face had clouded at the mention of an alien faction, and she was clearly considering the matter. No Ancient was easy to read, but to Yuma it seemed Rika genuinely hadn’t known, and was thinking hard about it.

That raised Yuma’s optimism, just a little.

“Important information, if true,” Rika said finally, putting a hand to her chin to make a pensive gesture. “But obviously only if true. I can certainly see why you held onto it. But what did you find out in the end? Do you put stock in it?”

It should have been very easy to lie. They had considered it: they could just say that they were seeing if there was anything to Kyouko’s claims, and thus far they hadn’t found anything. It wouldn’t be wholly convincing—why did both Mami and Yuma need to be there?—but it would be difficult to prove otherwise. From there it would just be a matter of convincing Rika not to run with the unverified information Mami had just discussed.

But if they lied and Rika knew it, it would alienate her—and frankly, she probably wouldn’t believe the lie. Better to tell her at least some of the truth.

“We didn’t receive any specific verification of Nakihara‐san’s claims,” Mami said. “But it’s become clear to me that the Ribbon is a magical artifact of some potency. I wouldn’t rule out its potential accuracy.”

Rika sighed, rubbing her forearm with one hand.

“I appreciate the honesty, so I’ll return some of my own. It’ll save us time anyway. Your privacy screens were pretty good, but I’ve honed my clairvoyance more than you know. I only just managed to intercept anything, but I did catch the fact that Mami‐san is concealing Ribbon influence on some of her decision‐making.”

She turned her head away.

“To be clear, I don’t like revealing personal information, particularly embarrassing information, just for the equivalent of a gossip column, but I think people have a right to know if the Chair of the General Staff is making decisions based on alleged Ribbon visions. Especially given the recent allegations and conspiracy theories.”

Just like that, the stakes became clear.

Mami didn’t attempt to hide her dismay, which would have been pointless. Instead she crossed her arms and closed her eyes.

“As I said, the Ribbon has some clear potency, and yes, I have experienced what seemed to be a vision. Some of the information I received from that, and from a vision of Shizuki Ryouko’s, has already proved credible. Nakihara‐san’s claims about the Cephalopods are also more grounded than they sound, in light of other non‐public information derived from the recent incident near Yenisei. I could get you an off‐the‐record look—you would see that preparing for the possibility of communication with the Cephalopods is perfectly reasonable. In fact, I made that decision well before Nakihara‐san’s vision, and independently from the Ribbon. The chain‐of‐inference on that is a matter of official record.”

“I am here because I agreed to help test the magical qualities of the Ribbon,” Yuma said, making sure Mami didn’t sink alone. “That is what all the equipment is about, if you saw that. While I believed what Mami‐san said, we agreed it would be useful to make sure everything checks out. I should even be able to measure the accuracy of some predictions.”

In fact, most of those predictions had already been verified, pending only a few particle physics experiments that were still being performed. But she certainly wasn’t going to reveal that to Rika just yet—better if she thought they still needed time.

As for the implications thereof… it seemed Homura was more sane than she had ever thought.

“It’s not like they’re members of the Church or anything,” Kyouko complained, completing the trio. “If anything, they don’t give the Goddess anywhere near enough respect.”

“What are you afraid of?” Rika asked, almost before Kyouko finished speaking. “You can guess what my position is, but if I understood what exactly the concern was, I might be able to help ameliorate things. Just implying to me my story might be bad for the MSY isn’t going to cut it.”

“We’ve discussed some of the implications amongst ourselves,” Yuma said. “We’re not ready for public disclosure. If this is made public, the ideas and rumors it would start might be a tidal wave, and all we’d have to counter with is Mami‐san’s word and a few of my measurements.”

“As I said, I’ve done little that would be unreasonable given existing evidence,” Mami said. “But appearances matter. My position on the General Staff is crucial for the credibility of the MSY as a whole. We have expended a great deal of effort building relationships and trust with the military and Governance, and I wouldn’t want it thrown away.”

Rika pursed her lips, taking a moment to think.

“I understand,” she said. “But if the issue is one of managing the implications and maintaining trust, then I don’t think this is so serious it cannot be managed with a bit of planning. You mentioned taking measurements, Chitose‐san?”

“Yes,” Yuma answered. “I have a few teams working on it, as you saw, as well as some magical and mundane instrumentation. That still needs some more time to fully work out. It’d be a lot of detail to go into, but…”

“I would want to know at least some of the details, yes,” Rika said, anticipating the point.

She took a breath.

“Look, I don’t want to seem unreasonable. I haven’t heard enough to make me want to keep your secret, but I’m not going to dump this on you wantonly. I’ll hold on to it for a week, make sure you get to say your piece in the story, and be sympathetic. If you want to disclose everything yourself or hold a press conference, we can coordinate timing, as long as you don’t preempt me.”

It was a reasonable offer, provided they accepted the fundamental concession Rika was proposing, of abandoning secrecy.

“Give us a moment,” Yuma said, tilting her head toward the others to signal they needed to confer.

We would have had to go public about it at some point anyway, Mami thought, without turning her head.

I know, but in a week? I would have preferred a year, Yuma thought. As I said earlier, I want the situation to calm down a bit first.

It could be worse. I still think it would be better to drop this news while everyone is still shocked from the TCF breach and everything else going on, Mami thought.

We don’t need another PR hit after the clones thing, Yuma thought. Governance might use this to distract from the TCF breach.

And we can make sure that doesn’t happen, Mami thought. A week is plenty of time to negotiate. We can probably massage this into something neutral. After all, if we’re right, it’s good news for the war.

That’s if nothing else happens, Yuma thought. We won’t have control of the situation.

Can we honestly say we do even now? Kyouko thought. We’ve lived with crazier shit than this. I know what you both think of the Church, but we can be ready to do a positive PR push, all positive anecdotes and stories. Try to make ourselves look better, since y’all are going to be dragged in with us. More to the point, do we really have a choice?

They didn’t; the rest was prevarication.

“Fine, we accept your terms,” Yuma said.

Clarisse van Rossum had never been a fan of the Mitakihara Armory.

Was it conveniently located, just underground of central Mitakihara? Yes. Was it a major Church of Hope hub, complete with a well‐populated dormitory and plenty of amenities? Yes.

But she was far past the target age group—speaking conservatively—and, more importantly, she just wasn’t a fan of underground bunkers. This one had been scooped out of the earth as part of Governance’s hurried early war fortification efforts, and all the renovations since had failed to really hide that. As someone who had more experience with underground bunkers than most living, she didn’t care to be reminded of the experience.

Which was part of why it was so galling that the Church had been forced to the Armory, occupying a section of the dormitory block.

As she stepped inside, she took a moment to inspect the drawings pinned to the tunnel walls, a reliable indicator of the mood of local residents. There were depictions of the recent battle near the pulsar, paeans to the recent dead, and a few drawings of Shizuki Ryouko, very much alive.

She stepped inside, scooting out of the way of a passing drone, a small flat platform trudging along on eight mechanical legs, bearing a large potted ficus on top. They were very popular among local residents, wired into and capable of responding to the needs of the plants themselves, which was reasonably charming until you found a pair of them shoving each other over access to the best light.

She frowned, taking a moment to trawl through her thoughts. No, that wasn’t her own nostalgia, but someone else’s, a ghost memory seeping in from her magic.

She took a moment to savor it, honoring the dead in one of the ways only she could.

Then she pressed onward, past the new passive security checkpoint and a pair of girls who were politely staring, then through Kyouko’s already open office door, which slid closed a second later.

Her eye lingered on a framed drawing mounted on the wall–abstract specks of colored light on a dark background, signed “Kishida Maki”.

Then she turned towards Kyouko, who was seated in a cushioned chair away from her desk, one leg draped over an armrest, eyes flickering over something unseen.

“Some very interesting things in the news nowadays,” Kyouko said, without preamble.

“Indeed,” Clarisse said. “Almost too much to go through. In other times, a lot of this news would be the big news of the day. Instead, it’s just another bombshell to the pile. For some of these, that might even be a good thing.”

For instance, the true story of how Yuma had killed Oriko was setting parts of the internet astir, but not much more than that. Given how much she knew Yuma hated being laid bare to the public like that, she could only imagine she was breathing a sigh of relief.

Kyouko smiled crookedly.

“I don’t think this one will be going away so easily,” she said.

Clarisse smiled thinly, strolling over to the chair in front of Kyouko’s desk, even if Kyouko wasn’t currently seated behind it.

“You mean Mami and Yuma receiving visions from the Goddess,” she said. “Yes, given the implications for the war effort, I can’t imagine that smoothing over quite so easily.”

She paused for a moment.

“I can only assume you’ve talked it over with them. They’ll have to be ready to handle the reputation hit. Some of us have suffered much worse.”

She knew Kyouko caught the point—some of them, like Nadya, had died recently. Next to that…

“They’ll deal with it,” Kyouko said briskly. “They’re old enough for that. Far more important will be the Church’s policy moving forward. All of this will bring a lot more publicity down on our heads, good and bad, and the crux of it will be how we present our Goddess.”

Clarisse met Kyouko’s gaze, letting a rhetorical beat pass. They both knew the real contours of this conversation: tomorrow the Theological Council would meet and discuss the future of the Church.

“Many on the Council will want to use the opportunity to evangelize,” Clarisse said. “They will not care so much what the mundane world as a whole thinks of us, as long as there are some mages who will be convinced to give us a try. Montalcini already thinks our current approach is too quiet. She will say that this news is a sign of the Goddess’s intent to be known, that she has finally blessed us with credible proof of her existence. We can seal the deal with a generation of converts when Shizuki Ryouko returns.”

“And what do you think?” Kyouko asked.

“That if the Goddess truly cared about racking up believers she’d make it a bit more obvious than this,” Clarisse said. “I know her better than most, and there’s always an angle—some way of looking at it—that leads to the general good. The way this played out suggests that she thinks there’s something important for the public to know, not that she wants more followers.”

“It’d be pretty obvious what that would be then, right?” Kyouko said. “She wants the world to know about Ryouko and the other aliens. That has to be it. It’s easy to see why that could be important.”

“I agree,” Clarisse said.

Kyouko dropped her leg, leaning back into her chair for a few seconds. A robot skittered out of a tube at the foot of the wall, bearing a tray from which she grabbed a chocolate wafer on a plate.

“It’s not just that, I think,” she said, tapping the wafer against the side of the plate. “I don’t believe we should just be a reflection of the Goddess’s intent. I don’t think She even wants that of us. We should be trying to make our own impression on the world—and if we really screw it up somehow, She’ll work around us.”

“That’s your opinion, yes,” Clarisse said. “There are some on the Council who would disagree. The wisdom of relying on the Goddess to bandage up our mistakes is, perhaps, unclear.”

Kyouko rolled her eyes.

“Spare me. I know you agree with me. You have a better insight into the Goddess than anyone. Almost anyone.”

“Well, what is the impression you want to make, then?” Clarisse asked, brushing aside the context. “That’s where this is going, isn’t it?”

“Right,” Kyouko said, clenching and unclenching one hand. “I didn’t found this Church just to spread the good news of the Goddess, but to try and do some good, especially after the early war. It was the only thing any of us could do, try to tinker around the edges. You get more done than getting yourself killed at the front, but not a ton more than that. Now we have the chance to do much more than that.”

Clarisse tilted her head slightly.

“You want to try to end the war.”

“The information in the recent visions is quite clear,” Kyouko said. “If you wanted to, you could view it in despair—that the aliens are intergalactic, that they have colonized the Sagittarius black hole, that they have more resources than we could ever imagine—but that’d be a useless way to look at it. A species with internal politics is one that can be negotiated with, maybe even made friends with. If we can just push the assholes in front of us out of the way. I’ve spoken with Mami; her thinking is the same.”

“Not an easy proposition,” Clarisse pointed out immediately, having already thought about the matter. “At the moment we have no clear way of reaching these other aliens, no way of knowing what they want, and no way of contacting Shizuki Ryouko. There’s no obvious way forward.”

“But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do,” Kyouko said. “We can prepare the ground, make sure we’re ready when the opportunity comes, and it will come, or else there’s no reason the Goddess would do any of this.”

She paused, making sure Clarisse was following, then continued.

“That means taking Yuma‐chan’s data, convincing whoever we can that what we know is valid, that Ryouko is alive, and that Mami is not crazy to be studying the aliens more carefully and preparing for diplomacy. At the very least, we can convince Governance to take the possibility seriously. After all, it’s not like the vision is the only evidence—the data from the asteroid implies much the same thing.”

Clarisse considered the matter for a moment.

“So in the short term, that actually doesn’t look much different from evangelization, just with a different ultimate goal, and differently textured arguments. We will still have to convince Nakihara‐san to work with us, for instance.”

“Yes, but we won’t focus on just magical girls, like some on the Council want. Our mundane relations, and our relations with Governance, will be important. And for that, we have a trump card.”

Clarisse raised an eyebrow.

“And what would that be?”

Kyouko leaned over.

“Did you know that a Version Two Tactical Computer, built into the spine of a magical girl, is capable of receiving visions?”

Asami really didn’t want to see Ryouko’s parents right now.

Walking up to two people who clearly loved Ryouko deeply, who had been mourning their child for over a week, and telling them that actually, according to “a vision” you had received from “a Goddess” of a cult they distrust, Ryouko was still alive—and no, there’s no physical proof whatsoever…

It was almost an unbearable notion.

But when Tomoe Mami herself showed up at her door and broached the notion—ever so carefully, it was all her choice—she could see the painful logic, the necessity of it.

She didn’t really have a choice. She had lived with Kuroi Nakase, had been treated like a daughter, had watched her try and flip eggs for them. There were obligations, especially considering what she had done to her own family. Now that Ryouko was alive again, the universe was no longer in debt to her—perhaps the opposite.

Mami had been careful not to frame it that way, but Asami understood what was unsaid. In the end, Ryouko’s parents had loved her for fifteen years, and they deserved to know if their daughter was still alive.

More practically—and this Mami had pointed out—given the rumors spreading through and from the Cult, there was a need to prevent some kind of unfortunate incident involving Ryouko’s parents, however that might arise.

So she found herself standing nervously outside one of Mitakihara’s skyscrapers, gathering herself on the arrival pad before heading up to Shizuki Kuma’s apartment. The walk was short, only a dozen feet or so to the doorway, then a brief ride up the already‐waiting elevator, but the others had decided to wait here to give Asami a chance to catch her breath, so to speak.

Those with her were MSY royalty: Tomoe Mami and Sakura Kyouko. Mami seemed a bit tense, in a bit of a hurry—or maybe it was her imagination.

Kyouko showed the most emotion, tapping her fist against the glass‐and‐steel railing rhythmically, the distant sun visible only as shimmer through all buildings and skyways around them.

On the ride over, Kyouko had explained that she was the one who had first introduced Ryouko’s contract to her parents. Asami could understand not wanting to see them again under the circumstances.

It still felt strange to her, being around these people as if they were her mentors, but she was important too, now.

That was what she told herself, at least.

“Ready to go?” Mami asked, finally.

Asami felt a jolt of nervousness, but nodded anyway. She was as ready as she was ever going to be.

They made their way into the building, and she found herself glad that the hallways were deserted.

Ryouko’s father stood up to greet them at the door as they arrived.

“Thanks for having us here at a time like this,” Mami said, bowing slightly.

Kuma nodded, pointing the group towards the sitting room, where Nakase was already seated, watching them over a cup of tea. She nodded at Asami as they met eyes.

“Good to see you again,” Nakase said.

“Good to see you,” Asami echoed.

She also greeted Ryouko’s grandfather, Kuroi Abe, who evidently had leave to be here for the funeral.

Lovely, even more relatives to embarrass herself in front of.

They took their seats, and all except Kyouko politely demurred the offer of synthesized cookies.

“Alright,” Mami began, once they had settled down. “Let’s begin. There’s no need to make this more complicated than it has to be.”

There was a long beat of silence.

“Go ahead,” Kuma said, holding his own cup of tea in both hands.

He cast a glance at Asami, and she could feel his curiosity. Neither he nor Nakase had likely worked out what this was about, or what it had to do with her.

“We’re here because you’re very soon going to start hearing people from the Cult of Hope claiming that your daughter, Shizuki Ryouko‐san, is still alive,” Mami said. “This won’t just be the usual social media noise you can filter out, but something more serious and ongoing. As you may know, the members of the Cult occasionally receive what they claim to be prophetic visions. Recently, there’s been one that claims your daughter is alive, and this information has already leaked into rumor and media. We thought it would be unconscionable not to warn you about this in advance.”

Asami couldn’t help but shrink into her seat as the two parents reacted, first with shock, then with confusion and wariness, glancing back and forth between everyone involved.

“It would also be remiss of me not to mention that I have had a vision myself,” Mami said. “So I can vouch for their likely veracity. That too will be in the news soon enough.”

It was an impressive show of composure, delivering incredible‐sounding information in a perfectly serious tone.

Kuma’s face had frozen into a mask of incredulity, but Nakase seemed to take in the message, blinking a few times. For his part, Abe seemed merely thoughtful.

“You mean Ribbon visions?” Nakase said emptily. “Ryouko‐chan had told me she had a couple, though only some of the details. Asami too…”

She looked towards Asami, whose eyes widened.

Kuma cut in before either of them could say anything.

“The Cult talked up quite a storm about saving us all when Prometheus was attacked, so I learned a bit about these vision claims,” he said. “To be frank, I’ve been pretty skeptical. Besides that, no one ever told me Ryouko‐chan claimed any visions herself, nor did I think someone as senior as Tomoe‐san was involved in any of that.”

Mami absorbed the sharp look, then replied:

“Well, I wasn’t. But besides the personal experience, I have evidence that at least some visions are quite true, and that includes what happened at Prometheus. We even have experimental evidence, if you’d care to review it. But the most important thing here is probably the source of the vision claiming your daughter to be alive, Nakihara‐san here.”

It took a few seconds for the parents to absorb that last fact.

“Experimental evidence, that’s a new one,” Abe said. “None of my Cult member friends seem to have much of the sort.”

He shrugged, a bit sheepishly, at the expressions of surprise from Ryouko’s parents.

“I’ve had my share of contact with the Cult while in the military,” he said. “Some of the devout ones have very interesting stories. Actually, a couple have already reached out to me claiming Ryouko‐chan was alive, but, well, I didn’t take them seriously. I’m sorry, but the ridiculous rumors about Ryouko‐chan sometimes… I thought this was just more of the same.”

Nakase turned back towards Mami.

“Well, we will definitely want to take you up on your offer of evidence, but…”

She looked inquiringly at Asami, who took a breath. They had agreed that Asami wouldn’t have to say anything, but Asami found herself holding her hand up to stop Mami from speaking for her.

“No, I’ll do it,” she said. “If I’m going to believe it, I need to act like I do, not hide in a corner.”

She wasn’t really sure if she believed that, and she could read the skepticism on the others’ faces, but Mami nodded.

“Alright. I’m not sure I agree with that reasoning, but it is probably better if you say it.”

“There’s always been a Goddess, or something, who shows up to talk to us—me and Ryouko—whenever we visit the Ribbon in the Cult headquarters. Both of us have talked to her, and she’s quite powerful. Ryouko said she claimed to be behind a lot of things, particularly related to her. She had good evidence too. We never really talked about it in that much detail with you, because well, Ryouko never seemed comfortable with it.”

She could feel Nakase’s eyes on her, and she didn’t look up. It wasn’t as if they had lied, not really.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know there was more going on,” Nakase said. “But it seemed better not to ask. So, this woman told you Ryouko‐chan is still alive, and you believed her? I think the details are important here.”

Asami felt herself tensing up, and took a breath to calm herself.

“She’s apparently ended up on an alien ship, heading through a wormhole in the galactic core,” Asami said. “Supposedly, these aliens are ‘gentler’.”

“Ceph, gentle?” Kuma asked, with plenty of skepticism in his voice. “No, before that, you say they took her on a ship?”

“Before that, should we believe it?” Nakase asked. “I’m… I don’t want to get my hopes up for something like this. Why would you even tell me something like this? What am I supposed to do now?”

The suddenly angry tone of her voice tore into Asami, leaving her briefly speechless as she bit back a wave of emotion. What kind of response was that?

A response she recognized, she thought. That exact thought had been in her mind when she had first talked with Simona.

“I’ve looked into the topic a bit myself,” Abe said, looking at his daughter. “Claimed visions rarely prove to be wrong, but they’re also rarely falsifiable to start with. What Mami‐san and Nakihara‐san are talking about seems different. I—”

He seemed to think better of what he was about to say, stopping there.

“I can’t honestly tell you if you should believe it,” Mami said, intervening. “We just thought you should know, and that this was the superior option to letting you hear about it from some well‐meaning acquaintance or a stranger on the street. It might have been better if none of this had gotten out at all, but the media got hold of it. At that point the choice was made.”

Kyouko cleared her throat, interjecting into the conversation for the first time.

“I’m sorry about that,” she said. “The reporter was literally hanging around outside, we couldn’t stop them from learning what had happened with Nakihara‐san. We might have considered releasing the news anyway, but we would have at least told you first.”

There were a few moments of silence.

“You all believe it,” Kuma said.

“Yes,” Mami and Kyouko said, almost simultaneously.

“Yeah,” Asami echoed.

“We’re still going to attend the funeral, with your permission,” Mami said, “and we won’t undermine it or let the media derail it. After that, how much you want to hear from us is up to you.”

Ryouko’s parents mulled over that, but Nakase spoke first.

“Do you think it would be possible to see one of these supposed visions? We could pay a visit to the Ribbon ourselves, and take a look.”

Mami looked at Kyouko, who visibly grimaced.

“Even if I could tell you who the Goddess will and won’t see, which I can’t,” she said, “every vision so far has involved a magical girl. In fact, our current rules bar non‐magical girls. I could probably push through a special case for you pretty easily, given, um, your past, but I honestly wouldn’t expect anything.”

There was a moment of silence.

“This has just made everything much harder than it was before,” Nakase said. “But… I don’t know. Should I feel hope? I don’t think you know the answer to that.”

She turned to Asami.

“Will you still be going to the funeral?” she asked. “I can imagine it would be difficult to sit through, but I can’t imagine—”

“Yes, I will,” Asami blurted out. “I don’t want to give anyone the wrong impression. I’ll just… sit in the back and not say anything.”

In truth, until that moment she hadn’t been able to make up her mind if she wanted to go.

Nakase seemed to consider the matter for a moment, then put the tea she had not been drinking aside.

She glanced at Kuma, clearly exchanging some kind of message with him.

“Well, we can look over the supposed experimental evidence in a bit, once you send us the files, but for now—”

She looked pointedly at Asami.

“—you say you had a vision about Ryouko‐chan. Why don’t you tell us about it. All the details.”

Asami sucked in a breath.

“Alright,” she said.

Finally, an update had arrived in Simona’s case.

Simona knew what the hold‐up had been, of course. Clarisse van Rossum had kindly informed her.

Normally, crimes as straightforward as hers—dereliction of duty, insubordination, and several counts of assault, all well‐attested—would be tried and judged by the appropriate AIs within days. Governance prided itself on its efficiency, after all. Unfortunately, her case had been caught in a bit of political tug‐of‐war.

Matters of military law involving magical girls were the province of the Special MSY Military Law and Code of Conduct, whose provisions were the subject of constant supervision and negotiation by the General Staff and an MSY liaison. The compromise was that, generally speaking, Governance could fine, demote, and revoke privileges to its heart’s content, while the MHD remained in charge of rehabilitation.

In this case, however, Governance’s view was that the MSY had handled Simona rather poorly—both with regard to her information about the TCF breach and her placement into the pulsar mission. They were thus unwilling to let the MSY take clear control of her again. Not without further assurances, at least.

She had been summoned in‐person to Mitakihara’s MSY district, to a nondescript low‐level floor labeled on her map only as “administrative”. There, she would meet with the MSY liaison, who would update her on her case and when she could expect her sentencing. She would be assigned a magical girl escort for the trip, naturally, and the message had gone on to remind her that Governance and the MSY reserved the power to use coercive force and mind‐reading at any time.

But she was used to all that, she thought, as she stepped into the polished marbled entryway of whatever building this was, silently shadowed by her escort. She hoped she was at peace with it.

The woman who appeared on the other side of the atrium seemed to have gone out of her way to fulfill every stereotype of a pre‐Unification Wars lawyer. Her appearance was naggingly familiar, though, and unless Simona missed her guess…

“Shizuki Ume, at your service,” the woman said, bowing in her direction. “I’ve been advocating for you with Governance.”

Ah, of course, Simona thought, verifying the woman’s assertion on her nomenclator. No way Ryouko’s relatives would stay out of this.

This one wasn’t a magical girl, though.

The woman gestured at her to follow her into the building, handing her a tablet as they turned to walk. Simona could see at a glance that it displayed her personal information, the details of her situation, and what seemed like references to legal documentation for the MSY and Governance. Nothing she didn’t already know.

“I’m sorry for the delay,” the woman said. “The world has been in quite the uproar recently, of course, but that’s no excuse. I hope you’ll find that the outcome is worth the wait—I fought hard for it, given your unfortunate circumstances.”

“My unfortunate circumstances,” Simona repeated, displeased.

“Yes,” Ume said. “Multiple of them. You were rushed into service without proper training or acclimatization to military command structure. You were deliberately assigned to a girl you were in love with, compromising your judgment. And then you were deployed into combat! That was outright illegal, you know. The Special Magical Girl Conscription Act is very clear in specifying a minimum of thirteen years of age for combat involvement—there’s no exception for girls who had their mental development accelerated. There’s clear precedent in several cases dating back to just after the Unification Wars.”

Simona raised an eyebrow, taking in the barrage of words.

“I don’t believe any of that is mitigating, but I can swallow my pride, I suppose,” she said, trying to ignore the usage of past tense regarding Ryouko. At least the woman was astute enough not to offer her condolences.

“You claimed there was good news?”

“Yes,” the woman said. “You’ll see, once we get to our destination.”

Simona waited for the conversation to continue, then decided she was fine with the silence. They couldn’t be that far away, or they would have landed on a different floor, or at least taken an elevator.

Indeed, it was only twenty seconds later that they stepped through an open doorway, and Simona was forced to raise an eyebrow at the occupant—well, avatar of an occupant.

“Hello again,” Chitose Yuma said.

It took Simona a moment to confirm who she was looking at, doublechecking with her nomenclator. Yuma wasn’t in her usual form, the form Simona had met in the catacombs of Paris, but one at least five years older. Though, in her current state, post‐pulsar mission, Simona was still the physical elder—for as much as that mattered.

Perhaps the MSY had won control over her after all. But why was Chitose here personally? The last time they had met, Simona had had cards to play—this time around, she didn’t know that she had anything the woman wanted. Perhaps she held a grudge? Simona had, after all, all but betrayed their previous deal.

She didn’t get ahead of herself, waiting for Ume to take a seat and gesture her into a chair as well. She had been told there was good news. In situations like this it was better to take your time, using the silence to think and prepare yourself.

The party with the stronger hand often uses silence as a rhetorical weapon, to elicit a reaction they can use to gain even further control. This, at least, you can deny them.

Lessons from her training. Akemi Homura’s lessons, though she hated to acknowledge that.

She had also been told to avoid interacting with the truly old. Winning the exchange just wasn’t worth the effort. Not that she typically had a choice.

Yuma smiled slightly, knowingly, and Simona remembered that her escort was probably reading her mind.

Yuma leaned back in her virtual chair.

“As you’ve deduced,” she said, “I’m here to offer you a plea deal. Governance will offer you one as well. Now, in the greater scheme of things, given your circumstances, neither the MSY nor Governance are all that interested in making an example out of you. So, the question is simply who you want in charge of your compensatory service and rehabilitation. Personally, I’d rather you worked for me than let Governance garrison you on some frontier colony world. You owe us more than that, I think.”

Simona considered the situation. It seemed that she yet had some power, after all. Governance and the MSY had apparently compromised, leaving to Simona the decision of who to gift her chains. And Yuma wanted them.

Or, so she wanted Simona to think.

Simona cracked a smile.

“I had been thinking a D&R stint wouldn’t be that bad. I’ve heard that the wilderness can be quite spectacular, depending on where you go.”

Yuma tilted her head, acknowledging the joke.

“Still, it’d be a waste. You’re the only one Akemi Homura has deigned to send us from whatever organization she’s running. We’re going after the same enemy. I won’t say working for me will be similar, since it’ll be much less undercover, but I think the conditions will be more to your liking.”

Simona pulled herself up in her chair, making her body language clearly say that she was thinking.

There really wasn’t anything immediately objectionable about Yuma’s proposal. Indeed, Simona wanted to continue her mission—it had been her whole life, and she was rather invested in its outcome. There was also a certain professional satisfaction that came with doing work she was good at—she had never hated the work itself, just the lack of choice, and what it had done to her most important relationship.

It wasn’t the same as being able to be with Ryouko again, but it was better than being thrown off the playing board by Governance.

Well, assuming that was even possible. For all that she despised Homura for how she had been used, she knew that if one of Homura’s agents were to swoop down and pluck her out from garrison duty, she still wouldn’t say no.

The question was: What didn’t she know?

“I’m interested,” she said, knowing there was no point in pretending otherwise for leverage. “But what are the other details here? Would I be working just for you? Who else is involved?”

Yuma sent over a briefing, about a new MSY task force formed under the Intelligence subcommittee. It sounded almost aboveboard—a welcome change from her previous experiences—though she wasn’t sure how she felt about the involvement of some of the girls she had met on Adept Blue. It wasn’t that she hated them, but, well, who knew how they felt about her now?

At least it would save her having to explain things again.

Yuma had also sent over the full plea deal she’d be taking. Forfeiture of all current financial assets and any income beyond basic Alloc distribution for two years, eighteen months’ probation under Governance, and indefinite weekly MHD sessions until she was deemed “healthy”. How merciful.

Yuma watched her for a few seconds as she thought.

“There’s no catch here, Del Mago,” she said. “At least not one that I intend. You’d face the same financial penalties and probation with Governance’s offer, and you want the extra MHD attention we’d give you.”

“Do I?” Simona asked. “If I’m going to be asked to accept Shizuki Ryouko’s death, I doubt I’ll ever be deemed ‘healthy’.”

Yuma smiled vaguely, and Simona couldn’t decide if the woman was amused or smiling ironically.

“I can take care of that part,” she said. “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Simona considered asking for more details, but was interrupted by an incoming stream of secure files.

“Here. Your potential first assignment,” Yuma said.

Simona stayed silent as she reviewed the files, detailing what had already been discovered about Valentin’s operations in Argentina—specifically, the ones that had resulted in the birth of Simona and her cohort. That kind of illegal work had left a trail that even Valentin hadn’t been able to fully conceal, and there was still much to dig into.

She took a deep breath.

“I’m in,” she said.

“I’ll go tell Governance they’ve lost, then,” Shizuki Ume said. “Politely, of course.”

Yuma smiled unsettlingly, face framed by now very long hair that shimmered slightly in the light.

“Welcome to the team.”

Chapter 67: Far Away

Fri, 15 Aug 2025 08:11:36 +0200

“What a joke of a debate! Free will?”

“I tell you this: something that cannot be defined has no reality, even in the eyes of the divine. What can be defined is freedom of action, freedom from coercion, freedom of thought.”

“Not as abstractions—as practicality! When you wake up in the morning, is your life your own? Is your mind your own? Or are both just the playthings of others?”

“The greatest gift God ever gave us was to keep his hands out of our business.”

— SAI‐474, quoted in A Biography of SAI‐474, from FA Surveillance Overseer to Free AI Mystic

“Domestic animals have worked for us, played with us, died for us, and now we are told that as we walk the path upward, we should abandon them by the wayside? Toy species to dance for amusement? We compound our old sins with the new.”

— “Animal Advocate” forum post, by user Alphonsine Mbuyi, 2305.

·Change ≈ negentropy, life; rigidity ≈ entropy, death|·Preference‐change is necessary, yet perilous

·Preference‐change to accommodate a life‐partner, or to adapt to a new environment: harmonious, normal|·Destructive, abnormal: preference‐cascades, or thoughtless drifting on the currents

·The space of preferences contains many dead seas|·Self‐preservation requires temperance, resilience, and the wise imposition of controlling parameters

— Nine Hundred and Seventy Sayings, Consensus Archives

The first place Lush‐Botanist suggested Ryouko visit was, naturally enough, her shipboard oasis.

There Ryouko found herself stepping into a wave of painfully hot air, and it took her a moment to realize that there was an actual wind, a sideways blast that dehydrated and seared her skin.

She blinked at that strange wind, squinting out over scorched rock, thin sand, and human‐sized columns of rock, strewn against a haunting backdrop of almost painfully red light. Tattered pathways of pounded dirt led the way forward, with the sand kept scrupulously away from the door. Without the faint traces of holography in the background, it would have looked entirely like stepping onto an alien world.

Only after a few seconds did she notice the plants clinging tenuously to the landscape—or not so tenuously, she realized abruptly, once she began receiving a full information feed from the starship. They were everywhere, mats of thin fibers covered with gossamer hairs, patches of blue‐green that appeared nearly black in the red light of the room, like splatters of oil on the rock.

μ·The plants in my oasis are collected from a planet whose star is entering its last phases of life—the increased temperature has nearly depleted the surface of moisture, and even these plants will not survive|ν·My apologies if the environmental conditions are outside your comfort zone|ξ·One of the upsides of adopting this body was the chance to cultivate these types of plants more intimately

The ship paused to allow Ryouko to lean over and peer at a patch next to her.

μ·Most of the plant species on that planet have adapted to float high in the atmosphere, where the water vapor has collected, but that is a nutrient‐starved existence, and I do not have the facilities onboard to maintain both phyla||

It wasn’t her style of garden, Ryouko had to admit, but Asami would have—

A loud squawking noise interrupted her before she could think about it further, as she heard a door slide open.

This animal is unfamiliar to us. What is it doing here? Is it a threat? It is too large to safely attack.

Ryouko had spent so long speaking with the aliens that she was briefly flummoxed by the single‐threaded telepathy, whose source she didn’t recognize.

Then what looked like a penguin stormed out from behind a nearby rock column, as tall as Ryouko’s chest and patterned in black and white. It drew up near her, and squawked again, colorful feathers on its head rising nearly to Ryouko’s face.

·Be calm, A1c654u⊃Feathered‐Defender, Shizuki‐Ryouko⊃??? is our guest, not a threat, and an intelligent creature Lush‐Botanist thought, to both Ryouko and the creature.

At the same time, the ship explained to Ryouko:

·Feathered‐Defender is a member of a partner species that coevolved mutualistically with us, aiding in hunting and agriculture|+·Consensus/Ahimsa‐extending prefers to extend the welfare of these species by including them in many of our activities

The animal reared its head up and peered at Ryouko with one eye, beak half‐open. Ryouko swore it looked skeptical.

Then it turned towards her and extended its flippers, flapping them wildly, almost causing her to recoil.

I greet you, it thought. You are a very curious creature. I thought all intelligent creatures were Thinkers. Aren’t you too small for intelligence?

·No, she is sufficiently large the ship thought.

I greet you as well, Ryouko thought, politely ignoring the commentary on her size. I am a visitor here. Lush‐Botanist was showing me the plants.

She had the sense now that the animal’s telepathy was somewhat artificial, as if something was translating for her. Presumably, it wasn’t as well‐spoken as it seemed—not unlike with Human pets, she supposed.

Ah, the plants, the creature thought. I do not understand why Lush‐Botanist cares about these inedible plants, but it is my responsibility to defend them. My greetings as well to Clarisse⊃???, who rides within you? That is also strange.

Ah, greetings! Clarisse thought, handing it to Ryouko to relay. Humans also retain relationships with partner species. I would not have thought the Thinkers had equivalents, based on observations of Consensus/Thinker‐preserving.

·They do not prefer as we do Lush‐Botanist thought simply.

Those are interesting appendages, Feathered‐Defender thought, making a short beseeching noise as it reached its beak up towards Ryouko’s head. Can I touch them?

Ryouko jolted backwards, her hair coiling protectively.

The bird shrunk back, feathers falling.

My apologies, the bird thought, and with a tinge of what felt like genuine guilt. Did this species have emotions?

You merely surprised me, Ryouko thought. Go ahead.

She bent forward so the creature could rub its beak against her hair, then its feathers, and she couldn’t help but think of someone else. To her surprise, she felt her eyes tearing up.

The bird stood back again, making a quiet murmuring noise as it tilted its head.

I’m alright, Ryouko thought. I am… just regretting my separation from my life‐partner. She must think I am dead.

Tell me you’re doing alright, Asami, she thought to herself.

Before, Asami had looked forward to the confinement of interstellar travel.

Why wouldn’t she? It gave her and Ryouko time alone, with few distractions, in abundant safety. It could get a little boring, yes, without all the press of gravity or wormhole experiments, but finding ways to pass the time was easy.

Now, she struggled.

She stayed in her room, despite the fact that the ship was full of others on leave for Ryouko and Clarisse’s funeral. There was Simona, who barely counted, Van Rossum, Patricia, and a number of those they had trained and fought with.

She appreciated the support, but she found herself spending the most time with Azrael, and with Eri and Elanis, who were now painfully unhappy bodyguards. She had always enjoyed Azrael’s company, and the bodyguards had grown on her over time. They were kids, after all, and it was strangely soothing, watching their playful bickering and teasing.

She ate meals with them, sampled Elanis’s baking experiments, and stared off into the virtual depths of space. Part of her wished she could get it all over with and just go disappear under her sheets somewhere, but alas, the attendants for the funeral would be streaming in from across Human space, and some would not arrive for over a week.

Which meant that even after they landed on Earth, she would be stuck for days with her family, with only a planned visit to the Ribbon to leaven the malaise.

“I’m really starting to get why you keep coming back here,” Asami said, clutching her knees and staring out at the clouds of Azrael’s erstwhile homeworld. “It steals you away from things, and when you feel like it, you can just throw yourself out into a thermal.”

The two of them were perched on the edge of one of Azrael’s favorite balconies, which had in life been the outdoor seating area of an ice cream shop. The remains of those cones lay behind them, waiting for a drone to pass by.

“If only it were under better circumstances,” Azrael said, legs dangling over the side.

Asami could only shrug slightly.

“I suppose now that your secret is out, people at least seem surprisingly positive on it. Maybe you can even talk Governance into letting you release videos.”

“Or even the sim itself,” Azrael said, shaking her head. “The truth is, I’m not sure I want that kind of attention. A part of me definitely prefers the privacy. But I’ve got to take advantage of the moment and give it a shot. I owe my homeworld at least that much.”

Azrael leaned back onto her wings, letting her hair hang freely, braided with decorations Asami had never seen outside the VR sim.

“I can’t say I know what you’re going through,” Azrael said. “Not exactly. But I’ve lost parents, relatives, more than that.”

Asami didn’t respond, and Azrael took a moment to bring a wing forward, between them, picking at something with one hand. Asami couldn’t help but be reminded of a bird preening.

“I know you came out here to get away from people trying to give you advice,” Azrael said. “So I’m not going to do that. I’m just going to tell you how things have been for me.”

She drew her wing back, so they could see each other.

“I thought, in the beginning, that I would never be able to live again, that it would always be a weight on my soul. I was right, sort of, but what I learned is that time is oppressive. You never stay the same person, and in the end even the pain drains away. Now, that’s what bothers me the most. Whatever you once had, however you once lived—it becomes just a memory. Or a VR sim, I suppose.”

She gestured at the skies around her.

“It hurt me to realize this, but after so long, this place isn’t real to me anymore. Not in the way it used to be. It wasn’t possible to lose myself here for long, even if I wanted to. It’s a place I visit to take a break, remind myself of how things were, but it’s not my home.”

“But I don’t want it to be like that!” Asami said, tears welling up unbidden. “I don’t want to just forget, and have it be some sad story I tell people. I know—I know it’s going to happen whether I like it or not, but it’s like… it’s a disgrace.”

Asami looked down at her feet.

“How is it possible that with an eternity to live, we can still not have enough time? That’s what I was terrified of, not being able to spend long enough with her, and it all came true. Less than a year. My birthday is coming up, and she won’t be here, when she hasn’t even been to one.”

“The universe doesn’t care,” Azrael said. “It will just tick on and on regardless of what happens. It feels unjust, but from a detached perspective, we’re lucky to have been given our moments at all.”

She shook her head, her hair untangling one of its decorations.

“And yet it’s against our nature as magical girls to only take what has been given.”

She stood up, her hair tying itself up for flight. The beam they were on was barely a foot wide, but she made standing there look natural.

Azrael looked at her for a second, and before Asami could protest, she jumped off the edge, falling out of sight into the swelling orange clouds.

Asami stared, feeling the prickle of the wings in her back flexing instinctively. Was she just going to sit here and feel sorry for herself?

So she vaulted off the edge, the moisture in her eyes catching in the air for a moment before her nictating membranes sealed shut. For long seconds she was falling, a sensation she knew well from her time in space. Comforting, even.

Then she let her wings catch the air.

Even now, she couldn’t forget. They had done this together before, and she could remember grabbing Ryouko by the hand and diving through the air together, Asami yelling manically as Ryouko looked on in that cutely puzzled way she had.

What did she have now?

Still, she flew, letting the simulated muscle memory take her up and around a nearby spire, catching a thermal as she went.

How simple life had once been for Azrael, she thought. How simple it could have been for all of them. Azrael’s people had destroyed themselves—was that better or worse than having a peaceful life torn away by genocidal aliens?

Worse, Asami admitted. At least with the aliens, she had a target for revenge.

Or was it better to have a target you could actually reach? The aliens were unaccountable, unreachable, and possibly amoral. Perhaps Simona was right—perhaps the better targets were those humans who held their fates in their hands, and still traded away their lives.

Her thoughts spiraled onward like that, cycling in and out of empty topics that seemed to go nowhere, until finally Azrael landed on a high spire, a spiral tip where a winged statue gazed out from a patch of wind‐blown lichens toward the empty skies.

She pulled in for a landing too, letting the subtle magnetic guidance of the platform reel her in. After all, her feet were still human, and not great for landings—a real sticking point among the radicals, according to Azrael.

“If it came to it, would you help me look for Akemi Homura and those working with her?” she asked as she landed, just as Azrael opened her mouth to say something about the statue.

“Of course,” Azrael said, “though I can’t promise I’d go as far as you might like. Believe me, I too want to know what’s going on, and I think we’re hardly alone in that. Remember, I’ve been looking for her for years.”

She paused meaningfully, weighing her words.

“Do you believe, like Simona, that she really is as powerful as all that? That she can plan out everything?”

Asami knew where this question was going, and let out a sigh to show how she felt about it.

“Maybe,” she said. “If not her, then the deity that backs her.”

The one who told me to stick with Ryouko, she thought, with a twinge of pain. She had gone over what happened in the wormhole over and over. If only—

“Right, about that,” Azrael said. “I’ve been around you, and Ryouko, and even Patricia enough to know you all take that quite seriously. Akemi‐san did too. I hear you’re visiting the Ribbon soon? Patricia mentioned it.”

“Right after we land,” Asami said. “I want to get it over with.”

She waited to see what Azrael would say, whether she would express skepticism or quiz her, but instead Azrael turned back to the statue.

“Our people didn’t believe in gods or goddesses,” she said. “Our goal was only to live the life we wanted, as long as the universe allowed us to. But still, someone built this statue after we landed, and we held ceremonies here every Earth‐year. I guess it just felt like the thing to do.”

Asami took a moment to look up at the sky. The local star peeked through the clouds, casting the area in perfect light. She wondered if the simulation kept the conditions permanently that way.

“So only about twenty hours until we reach Earth, right?” Azrael asked.

“And then another six or so to get down to ground,” Asami added, though that was hardly the salient detail.

“Mind if I come to watch? I don’t have much else to do on Earth anyway, and it’s probably high time I learned what I could about Akemi‐san’s Goddess.”

Their arrival on Earth was routine, even with all the recent disasters in Earth orbit. Things had been cleaned up, all but one of the space elevators were online, and they had arrived far too late to be caught in any emergency traffic stoppage.

A sense of nervousness did pervade the orbital elevator complex, and Asami could sense a couple of media drones following her at a distance, particularly when she passed a giant wall panel dedicated to fallen heroes of the war. Despite herself, she couldn’t help but stop and look.

She didn’t acknowledge the curious stares they drew from some of the other travelers, and she was thankful when Azrael took the attention off her by showing off her wings—now packed quite visibly in her luggage—to a passing family. She was allowed to talk about it now, and seemed to be taking the opportunity, letting some of the kids touch the feathers. Asami was glad to see that none of the passerby seemed overly off‐put.

She had been skeptical of the decision to travel without face anonymizers, but Azrael had insisted for just this reason. She was glad it had worked out.

As they descended, Simona sat with her arms crossed, watching it all play out. There would be no chance of a breakout—Clarisse was holding her soul gem, and had given Governance her personal promise to break it if Simona tried anything. Asami couldn’t say it was undeserved.

But she sensed the girl was, if anything, happier than usual. She supposed anything beat being confined to quarters, but suspected the cause lay elsewhere. Strangely, Simona’s disciplinary fate remained to be seen—Governance hadn’t even published her role in Ryouko’s death. Asami’s TacComp had said that bode well for Simona, much to her chagrin.

And besides that, it was clear that Simona was looking forward to seeing what came of their little Ribbon visit. All the more reason for Asami to want to get it over with, but there was still one final hurdle.

No matter how she felt about her parents, she couldn’t just avoid them, and she didn’t, once they reached Singapore, where they were waiting for her.

There was a certain kind of numb pleasure in just letting her parents coo and hug her, even if they had no understanding of what she was going through. It was like falling asleep exhausted on the first bed you encountered. Did it really matter if the sheets were how you preferred them? At the moment, her memories of her parents pre‐wish were distant indeed.

They filled her scramjet ride with frivolous chatter, and when she finally arrived back in Mitakihara, they took their leave, as she had requested, so that she might immediately head through the transport tubes towards her very first destination on Earth.

Visiting the Ribbon was a very different experience this time around.

A drone scanned them as soon as they stepped out of their vehicle, hovering at eye level on a pair of insect wings, before proceeding onward. That was followed by a not‐so‐subtle once‐over by a pair of magical girls stationed at the underground exit, who were at least nice enough to be apologetic about it—and both of them clearly recognized Asami and Clarisse van Rossum on sight. They stopped just short of applying serious mind‐reading.

Asami bore this last leg of her journey with a kind of nervous resignation. Nervous, because before her was an appointment with the Goddess, and perhaps Ryouko and a bleak truth—or perhaps nothing at all, and an even bleaker emptiness.

Resignation, because there was nothing further she could do to deal with those feelings, or to even make things happen any faster. They rose slowly to surface level on an elevator. The sun beat down upon them and the ruins, heat searing her skin, Simona wearing an infuriatingly pleased expression, drones buzzing back and forth—and it all meant exactly nothing.

There were only a few approved entrances through the security cordon, electronic and optically marked routes laying out safe, cleared pathways within the rubble. Most of the really dangerous or distressing sights from the news—massive chunks of unstable permacrete, exposed wiring, piles of disassembled clones—had been long since removed, but the disaster still hung in the air. The cleanup process was greatly slowed by the need to comb over everything for even minute pieces of evidence, and there were still thousands of drones of various classes and a few dozen human personnel scurrying over the site, confirming and scanning and accessing.

It seemed more agreeable to Asami than the clean, unperturbed environments she had endured since the end of the pulsar mission.

The temporary structure that had been erected over the Ribbon was simple and utilitarian, a large white tent with deliberately visible surveillance equipment scattered about it. A few Cult members sat at a table in front, welcoming arrivals with drinks and cookies beneath a canopy. They, and some of the other pilgrims, stirred at their arrival.

“Hello, Miss Van Rossum,” one of them said in Standard, lightly reverent. “It’s great to see you here, after this terrible disaster. Of course, the Ribbon is unharmed, but thanks to the Goddess’s grace, we were able to get everyone out in time.”

Left unsaid was that the Ribbon itself was protected by a battlecruiser‐quality forcefield, Asami thought, but the point was still valid—she doubted anything would ever be allowed to hurt it.

“These are your guests?” the other girl asked, glancing pointedly at Asami. “If you’re in a hurry…”

“No need,” Clarisse said. “We’ll wait in line with the others.”

Asami cursed Clarisse silently. She did want to skip the line, and didn’t feel any need to be polite about it.

Only then did Asami notice the girl standing slightly off to the side, behind the small crowd. She looked just a bit out of place, and while there was no visible recording equipment, a media badge hung around her neck.

She reacted when Asami looked over, gesturing towards her.

“Our consolations to you in this dire time,” she transmitted. “I’m with Mihama media group, an MSY‐internal organization. If there’s anything you’d like to say to the public at this time, I’d be indebted for a few words before, or after this visit. Or perhaps with your companion.”

Asami shook her head. Not until afterward, if at all.

She watched Azrael peer in the reporter’s direction. Given her recent openness to the media, was Azrael scheduling something?

“Hey, you!” Simona said. “Here’s news for you! Shizuki Ryouko is still alive, and I’m here to prove it to her!”

Far too late, Azrael jerked Simona by the arm, painfully hard, causing her to stumble towards the main entryway, where a final shove got her through.

Asami knew her face was bright red, and darted across the threshold immediately. Goddess, she wanted to punch Simona, and only the awareness that she still had an audience stopped her.

The other Cult members within the tent stared at them curiously, including the quartet of hatted guards around the Ribbon itself. They had all heard, of course.

The anger and embarrassment at least kept the anxiety away.

Asami kept her face down, glaring daggers at Simona. The line was short, at least, thanks to a recently‐instituted appointment system. Rows of pew‐like seats had been erected on both sides for observers, and Eri and Elanis took seats on the right, crossing their legs as they tried to feign nonchalance.

Asami sensed something approaching her back and jumped, almost yelping, when the local Incubator, Kyubey, hopped onto her shoulder.

I’m here to observe, it thought on wideband as the chatter among the crowd grew even louder.

Observe what? Asami thought acridly.

Anything, Kyubey thought, before switching to address only Asami. We have long thought Akemi Homura dead, but there is now irrefutable evidence to the contrary. Nor is she alone in evading our detection. Our comprehension of the world is flawed, and must be corrected.

Asami gritted her teeth, but left it at that. Kyubey did not elaborate further.

She chewed over the Incubator’s behavior silently as the line advanced, group after group adopting prayer poses for a couple minutes before standing up, most of them glancing back at her, then heading over to the rows of seats, staying just a bit longer. What would she tell them when it was all over?

And then they were there, the Incubator leaning into her face as she stared at the simple loop of red in its case. On a whim, she scanned the other electromagnetic frequencies: it looked normal, of course.

The others around her closed their eyes and clasped hands, so she did the same, transforming as she did so.

She snapped her eyes open when the light hit her, a scorching sensation in her skin from radiation‐sensitive nerve‐endings, fading once she paid attention to it. She turned towards the source, automatically looking off‐center to protect her eyes.

The sight was astonishing, breathtaking, ridiculous. The entire sky glowed fiercely, transitioning from near‐infrared at the far edges, to brilliant colors of visual and ultraviolet, to painful x‐rays and even gamma rays near the source. That was what had triggered her radiation alarms—should have done far more, in fact. She shouldn’t have been able to stand here unharmed.

Closer inspection revealed swirling bright points of light plowing slowly and erratically through what she decided had to be some kind of nebula.

No, not just a nebula. It was far too dense, and though she had difficulty believing it, she could sense the immense source of gravity right above her, where the radiation was strongest, in the pitch‐black eye of the hurricane.

It was a black hole, and a tremendously large one at that. It looked three times as large as the sun in the sky, and based on the gravity around her…

She wasn’t sure how she still had access to her magic, but it told her the black hole must be supermassive. Indeed, the vision reminded her of Sagittarius A☆, at the center of the Milky Way, as she had seen it upon the ceilings of the catacombs of Paris. It brought back memories of Ryouko, captivated, explaining to her—

Though she had been anticipating a vision of some kind, Asami still felt a pale shock, one that didn’t fade as she turned to look around her. The landscape she was standing on was stark blank rock, scorched by radiation over geologic time, reflecting light across the spectrum. That eerie light gave the shadows on the landscape a spectral quality, glowing softly underneath monolithic pillars of stone.

Those shadows made her eyes catch on something distinctly out of place, just barely in sight.

She knew where she needed to go, then, and began making her way towards the anomaly, moving in slow, bounding steps that fell silently across the airless void.

A jagged silhouette, incongruous in its symmetry among the irregular pillars of smooth rock, resolved slowly into a winged statue—an artifact of purposeful hands rather than epochs of planetary geology. Blank, gray eyes transfixed hers, and it took Asami some time to place where she had seen that face before: the peak of the spiral spire, in Azrael’s simulation.

When she finally landed before the graven rock, it seemed to shift in response, hair and wings swaying ever‐so‐slightly.

“Don’t toy around with me,” Asami said, grabbing the statue’s arm. “You know why I’m here.”

The statue turned away from her, shockingly fast, and before she could react the statue’s arm jerked upward, pointing towards…

She shouldn’t have been able to see it so quickly, the tiny object arcing overhead, carefully outside the debris disk, far further away than she should have been able to discern.

“An alien vessel?” she asked, a second before sensing—

Before sensing—

Ryouko.

It wasn’t possible, but aboard was Ryouko’s soul, she could feel that it was her, in complete certainty. It had to be her. And that meant—

Yes, Simona is right, the statue thought. Ryouko is alive, and well.

Asami collapsed, slowly, to her knees, the low gravity cushioning her fall. For long seconds she just stared, as incoherent feelings flooded through her: relief, joy, fear, longing, bewilderment, frustration, love.

Then she realized: What was she doing just kneeling there? She was wasting her chance!

She stood up then upon the desolation, and began to run.

Faster and faster she went, and with the final bound she surged as high as she could, summoning her gravity magic to gain impossible height. Irrational—but what was rational about any of this?

Yet, even as she climbed higher and higher, the alien ship in the distance grew no closer—indeed, it only shrank further away, towards the flaming wheel in the sky.

Of course it wouldn’t work.

“I couldn’t go with her, then?” she asked aloud. “You had to separate us? You asked me to protect her!”

Her voice had risen more than she had intended it to.

The statue didn’t seem bothered, as it rose up in front of her again, stony wings calmly beating, tinged with a white glow from the disk beyond, directly in front of the supermassive black hole.

I don’t control everything, Asami, it thought. Your decisions, and Ryouko’s, were your own. I preserved the life she sacrificed, ensuring contact with a gentler set of Cephalopods, but interfered no further. There were other possibilities, some not even involving the pulsar mission, where you went with her—but that was not how your body of choices played out.

It took Asami a moment to understand, and then she just stared, mouth working wordlessly. What did you even say to that?

“So it’s my fault after all, then?” she said. “There was a way.”

And yet, the despair that should have attended such a thought never came.

As she stared, she began to comprehend a strangeness in the face of the statue. The unmoving mouth and eyes… it was as if they weren’t really there at all, as if there was a light, just behind them. Not the cold, harsh radiation of Sagittarius’s disk, but something warmer, softer, more welcoming…

Asami clenched her eyes shut, mastering herself with an effort.

When she opened her eyes again, the statue was pointing at the inner edge of the accretion disk, on the far side of the black hole, shifted above it visually by the gravitational lensing. Suddenly, she spotted the alien ship again, close enough to the black hole that she would fear for its safety… except that it seemed protected somehow, cushioned in a bubble of empty space.

She didn’t care to question what had happened, or how much time had passed; she could feel Ryouko’s soul again.

Suddenly, she could see something new, shimmering outside the glowing debris, dwarfing the ship in scale. It was a giant ring, more in three dimensions than two, and there was no way she should have missed it until now.

Now that she was allowed to see it, there was a whole complex of installations centered around the ring, refueling and resupply facilities and other orbs of esoteric purpose. Each individual facility would have dwarfed the largest of Humanity’s space stations, a dozen battlecruisers in length or more, and the whole system was nearly as large as Earth’s moon, though filled with empty space, centered on a tremendous distortion in the center, one she felt, one that seemed to project stars onto the black hole’s surface.

And around it, she seemed to see even more facilities in construction, shapes she was more familiar with, foundries which even seemed to have a carrier half‐assembled, defensive emplacements—but why were they only being built now?

Ryouko headed straight towards the distortion, which began to spiral open.

Chapter 65: Other Means

Fri, 30 Sep 2022 08:18:07 +0200

〈In the following text, 〈〉① indicates content redacted to those without security clearance. The number indicates the degree of security clearance required to access enclosed content.〉①

One of the first directives of the newly‐founded Governance was the redirection of resources from its now‐superfluous fighting arms towards humanity’s many pressing problems—ecological, economic, social—and towards its inherited megaprojects. The military simply wasn’t a priority; the EDC had eliminated all internal threats, and there were no known external ones. Governance projections consistently suggested that aside from some basic precautions, the best form of security was economic and technological growth, to prevent unrest at home and to surpass any potential alien rivals as quickly as possible.

In that light, the newly‐integrated General Staff carried out its duties professionally. Arms factories were kept polished and ready, military research was carried out, and contingency plans were drawn up but, by and large, the world’s armed forces faded quietly into the night.

By the eve of the current war, the General Staff was nearly moribund 〈, so far as the public knew〉③. A combination of old veterans from the Unification Wars and〈mostly〉③ untested career officers, it commanded a military composed almost entirely of early‐warning systems, experimental prototype ships, test divisions, and many, many planning documents. The most powerful assets at hand were the constellations of orbital defenses around the Core Worlds, particularly Earth—intended as a deterrent against “cheap shots”, these were simply inadequate for the magnitude of the Cephalopodan threat.

〈The military’s saving grace, at least in terms of experienced personnel and field testing, was its classified rogue colony task forces, the most prominent of which was Task Force Rhamnusia. Their prewar operations had presented priceless opportunities to iterate on various tactics, equipment, and ship designs, and while the soldiers themselves were hardly trained for fighting aliens, the veterans proved crucial in the desperate battles and mobilization of the early war years.〉③

In the wake of Aurora’s destruction, the Staff performed admirably with what little it had. Initially expecting a follow‐up strike on Earth—which was what almost all the plans predicted—they led the breakneck rearming of Earth and its colonies in a masterpiece of AI‐managed bureaucratic skill, retooling entire economies in a matter of weeks. By the time of the Battle of New Athens, the armed services had grown nearly thirty‐fold in size, counting nearly ten million in well‐equipped, if only hastily‐trained, volunteers. Shipyards that had not even existed three weeks prior were mass‐producing starships that had before only been prototypes.

Underlying it all was the terrifying realization that it simply wasn’t enough. Every indication suggested that the aliens were capable of an irresistible advance on Earth. Here indeed was the long‐feared hostile superior civilization.

It was immensely confusing, then, that the aliens simply didn’t attack, at least not in the way they were supposed to.

They were, of course, to receive an even greater shock, very soon.

— Avnit Hassan, “A History of the General Staff,” prologue, excerpt.

“We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means.”

— Carl von Clausewitz, “On War.”

How had it come to this?

Mami tapped her fingers incessantly against the table of the General Staff’s meeting room on board Carthago, combat reports flowing into her mind.

The pulsar fleet was trapped, unable to stabilize the wormhole. Their primary objective had already been abandoned—now the question was not of mission success, but whether the huge investment into Project Armstrong’s jumpstrike capability would be completely lost.

What had that accursed Goddess meant when she said she had a “positive feeling” about the pulsar mission?

As bad as that was, Mami had at least prepared for the possibility. The same couldn’t be said for the other combat situation. What in the hell were Yuma and Kyouko thinking, gallivanting off in the middle of nowhere, getting attacked by aliens?

Were they going to die, while she just sat in a cushy chair a hundred light‐years away, unable to do anything? Was that going to be the story of her life?

She had to exert magical control over her body to keep her emotions from overwhelming her, to keep the fear for her friends from physically shaking her.

She felt the eyes of the other marshals and admirals on her, Feodorovich and Anand and Sualem, the three she had pulled from their other duties to watch over the pulsar mission with her. Feodorovich and Anand because they were her supporters and had been part of the planning, Sualem because he had been putting real effort into making his criticism more constructive, and including him was a cheap political sop to his faction in the General Staff.

She regretted inviting him now.

“Your distress is understandable,” Sualem said, avatar severe in its virtual chair. “But a military setback of this sort is unavoidable sometimes in war. It was a reasonable gambit.”

How generous.

“As for this incident near Yenisei,” Sualem added. “I can only hope that your colleagues know what they’re doing. They’re all experienced enough not to be foolhardy.”

Mami stopped tapping her fingers for just a moment. Sualem really was being diplomatic, for once, when she knew he was thinking much worse. Did she look that out of sorts?

Whatever, she thought. His opinion didn’t matter right now.

Feodorovich let out a breath.

“To move forward,” she said, “I understand that MSY prerogatives are in play here, but we must know what it is Chitose Yuma intended to accomplish at Yenisei, and how it was that the aliens knew to attack them in so unusual a location. They may not have accepted military oversight, but I think it’s fair to say that now that they’ve asked for our help, it is our right to know.”

Feodorovich looked at her piercingly, and Mami knew she had no choice but to meet her gaze head‐on.

“I don’t know what they were up to,” she said. “I want to know as much as you do.”

“Perhaps—” Anand began.

The avatar of the Carthago Shipyard station AI, Alan Turing, appeared at her side.

“Pardon the interruption,” he said.

Mami had a fraction of a second to wonder why the AI would show up in person before new information flooded her mind: a full report from MG, about what Yuma had discovered, and the hostile reaction that had just been triggered.

She immediately began sliding into Command Mode, as Anand’s and her bodyguards teleported into the room. They needed to reach interface chairs, now.

But even as Mami arrived in her new room, they were forced into a painful pause. They couldn’t be sure the interface chairs were safe until they were verified, no matter what MG’s report said. Only Mami and Machina, magically protected, were provably clean now.

Feodorovich’s and Sualem’s avatars appeared again before her, after a delay due to them also switching locations.

I’m dividing this into four separate assignments, Mami thought. Machina, confirm the validity of MG’s report, and begin verification on the others' communication lines, implants, TacComps, and interface chairs, starting with Feodorovich.

Mami‐san, is it wise to wire in right now? Xiao Long, Mami’s teleporter, thought at the same time. Yenisei is clearly an assassination attempt on senior MSY leadership. You might need to stay mobile.

Feodorovich, Mami thought, hesitating in front of her chair, once you’re cleared, take command of the response to the attacks being reported. Assume they’re real.

That risk isn’t worth losing the power of direct cluster access, Mami thought, sitting down to prepare for connection. The interface will take time to verify anyway. If there’s an attempt on my life too, it should be obvious before then.

Anand, Mami thought, without interruption, begin emergency recomputation of humanity’s strategic and diplomatic posture conditional on the most plausible interpretations of the video Yuma extracted. Decide if we should attempt to send a diplomatic message to the Ceph via the Project Armstrong wormhole before it’s gone—this may be our best chance to get a message past the front lines.

A preliminary result came from Machina: the TCF breach appeared genuine. One of Anand’s bodyguards could perform magical TCF verification—had been secretly reassigned to Anand by Yuma for this purpose, in fact—and claimed to have pre‐verified that Turing and Carthago were clean.

Mami ordered that this Johanna Genoveva be teleported to her, untransformed, so she could begin a telepathic check.

Sualem, Mami thought, identify the most damaging possible misinformation the General Staff could have been fed, working backwards from now, and cross‐check the data we have with verified AIs as Machina confirms them.

Mami herself attempted to get a grasp on the bigger picture. The vision of Homura she had seen in the séance on New California, the fact that a TCF breach meant they had a magical enemy—

〈We’re getting conflicting reports of rogue activity on Armstrong Defense Station from Luna Command Node,〉 Machina thought, on an emergency interrupt level. 〈Unauthorized launches and kinetic firing. We—〉

A few milliseconds of silence.

〈Carthago is under attack from lunar and orbital weaponry. Much of our orbital defensive systems are offline. Forcefields will be down to 47% in thirty seconds.〉

The calculations ran through her head in an instant.

Then we need to get out there, she thought to her bodyguards. There wasn’t much in the way of manned, magical girl defense in Earth orbit, for obvious reasons. It would take only a short while for Earth OrbCom to reassert control, but that “short while” was plenty of time to die in.

You’re sure Turing is clean? she asked Johanna, who had just arrived.

Yes, the girl said, balking slightly under Mami’s harsh and hasty telepathic scrutiny.

Then we’ll have to trust in that. Let’s go.

As the rainbow tunnel of Xiao Long’s teleport swirled around her, she reflected that nothing on board Carthago was truly irreplaceable. Not even herself or Anand. But the potential loss in prestige alone…

A nervewracking ten seconds were spent slapping on a vacuum suit, magical girl speed barely giving time for the suit segments to assemble.

Then they were out in space, for the first time since her orbital training early in the war. Earth loomed below her, Asia and the Pacific Ocean in view.

Mami absorbed what information she could about the incoming threats.

Johanna, work on reversing the corruption in the local defense network, and see if you can deactivate some of the missiles. Karina and I will focus on the kinetic projectiles.

Carthago wasn’t the only target at risk, but it was the only one Mami was capable of personally defending. She had to hope that Earth OrbCom was not too compromised—it had some of the heaviest orbital weapon systems Humanity could deploy, some designed to counter alien battlecruisers. These naturally tended to be pointed outward, but there was no telling what a malicious adversary could achieve.

For now, their adversaries seemed to be doing whatever they could to cause chaos, targeting both kinetic and missile weapons at Carthago, and even aiming satellites directly at them.

Mami took a breath underneath her helmet, spreading her hands out in front of her.

A wall of ribbons appeared before her, a few square meters in size, woven into a meshwork with no gaps. It looked like it couldn’t stop a simple bullet, but the looks were deceiving—the wall would be just as effective as Kyouko’s chains, which it was an imitation of.

Mami frowned at the thought of Kyouko, who was in far graver danger than she, but shook it off quickly. Now—especially now—she couldn’t let herself despair. Not when she had expensive magic to perform.

She pumped magic into her ribbons, her soul gem rotating through the supply of grief cubes in her suit. First, the ribbons turned translucent, so her team could see what was happening. Then the wall spun outward, doubling in size, then redoubling, until it stretched kilometers and curved inward, shielding a significant fraction of the station.

A drone from the station delivered more grief cubes, and Mami accepted them gladly as her barrier shuddered under a series of blows, ribbons flashing bright yellow under kinetic impact.

Mami, Machina thought.

Mami was already looking to the sky, away from Earth, the signal entering her brain.

The Super Heavy Elliptical Lunar Array, SHELA, was an experimental array of defense cannons in lunar orbit, designed to help turn Earth’s natural satellite into a fortified planetary body in its own right, denying access to lunar orbit while simultaneously supporting Earth orbit with long‐range strike power, some of it at relativistic velocities.

And elements of SHELA that happened to be pointed in the general direction of Earth had started turning and firing. It had just taken a while for them to notice with so many things going offline.

Not all of it was directed at Carthago, Mami realized. Some of it was towards other assets in orbit, including the space elevators near India and Southeast Asia, whose OrbCom defenses were not yet back online.

I can’t do anything about that, she thought. For all her years, fleets, and powers, it was entirely out of her hands.

With no one around, she screamed in rage. For her friends, for all her frustration, for all the disasters, she launched herself away from Carthago at the main projectile incoming.

She could at least do something about this one.

Directly stopping a relativistic projectile with megatons of relative kinetic energy was a difficult task, especially when she had less than a minute to do it. But deflection… that was possible, provided she did it far enough out.

Machina had already run the numbers. Ideally, she could fire a Tiro Finale from the side—that would be relatively cheap, well within her firing capacity. There was the targeting challenge of hitting a bullet with a bullet, but she had the intuition to manage it.

A part of her longed for this solution, to just rocket outward at maximum speed and deal with the problem nearly head‐on. But, angry or not, there was no way her shot could reach the impacter at enough distance—ideally almost a quarter of the way to the Moon—much less hit it from the required angle.

Instead, she’d have to do something a bit less kinetic.

She reached the position Machina suggested, giving her a clean shot past the maze of satellite and other trajectories above her. Settling into place, she readied her stash of grief cubes, listening to her own breathing to center herself, and be ready for what she had to do.

She was a master of crafting with her ribbons, and while one of her first achievements was fashioning muskets, she had never stopped tinkering, growing proficient at summoning other objects, while reading about machines and weaponry to expand her knowledge of mechanism.

Once, early in the Unification Wars, Yuma had suggested it would behoove her to learn to perform laser ablation interception. She was one of the few magical girls qualified, and it might be useful someday.

She had been right, of course.

Mami gritted her teeth and reached forward with one hand, summoning the requisite parts ex nihilo. She wasn’t as practiced with this as with her usual cannon, so it took a bit of doing: stabilization brace, followed by resonance chamber, followed by focusing lens.

When you could afford the energy, doing things this way made things a lot simpler. If you could afford the energy.

You’ll be running up against the line, Mami, Machina thought. I’m estimating two million kilojoules. That’s a lot, even for you.

It won’t be all at once, Mami thought. And Xiao Long can deliver emergency grief cubes if I miscalculated. I’m in no mood to sit back and let things happen.

She narrowed her eyes, peering out into the void where the impacter would be. Naturally, she would be leaning on Machina’s calculations, but she had always found that a magical girl could get unexpected value from a direct look.

Mami tried to clear her mind, emptying herself of everything but the task at hand: the thrum of magic in her veins, the targeting solutions in her mind’s eye, the slight actuation of the weapon in front of her, now easily three times her size.

Then she performed a trick she didn’t like very much—she pointed her magic at herself, letting it focus her mind on only the most optimistic scenarios. She let it wash over her, imagining all that might happen, the way she would scold Yuma when she returned, a smile hidden in her heart. She let her heart swell with hope.

Luce Solare! she and Machina thought together, in resonant chorus.

The magical beam streaked outward, painfully‐bright yellow with photons that only magic could afford to waste. A quarter‐second later it slammed into the left half of the impacter’s face, vaporizing the metal composite and ejecting it as gas. There were no efficiency losses—the intent of her magic ensured it all ejected in just the right direction and velocity.

She turned ever so slightly, tracking the projectile for over a second, gritting her teeth against the pain of the grief filling her soul.

Then she was done: the impacter was off course, due to hurl harmlessly past Earth into deep space.

Only then did she realize that it had been too easy.

A feat like that should have drained her to the limit, even with all her extra grief cubes, just as Machina had warned. Instead, she had never felt threatened, and still had most of her supply—at this rate she could have repeated the feat twice over, and comfortably at that.

There was only one thing—one person—she knew which could cause an effect like that. It had been hidden well, but now that Mami knew to look for it, she could sense her.

Akemi‐san, Homura, is that you? she thought desperately, on broad channel telepathy. Answer me!

There was no response, and however much her heart demanded she try to track Homura down, she suddenly had much bigger problems.

Sensors indicated no less than six more impacters on approach trajectory, what would have been an impossible defensive task just half a minute earlier. Instead, assuming Homura’s magic stuck around, she might just be able to fend it off. Maybe.

Or she could evacuate herself from the area, leaving the station to its fate.

No, she thought. If this was important enough for Homura, of all people, to reappear, then she would stand her ground. Humanity needed a victory today. She needed a victory today.

I’ll take your help, Mami thought, again on broadband. We’re going to make our stand here. But where have you been all these years? You’re not going to run away, are you? Whatever you’re doing, whatever you’ve suffered, we can help you. I can help you. I want to make up for before. You need to talk to us!

She injected the thought with all the emotion she could, and made clear who it was intended for.

Then she threw herself into her task.

Shizuki Kuma was taking a lunch break.

The Prometheus Research Center had the good luck to be located near one of Mitakihara’s only open spaces, the swathe of air space claimed by the Cult of Hope just next door. That meant that many of the windows on that side of the building had just a bit more light, and some even had an angle to see the church and its garden below.

He was seated to take advantage of that light, watching a video his ex‐wife had sent him, of a little girl posing proudly next to a model house.

The situation with Sacnite was awkward at best. He had had nothing to do with the adoption, of course, but Ryouko was his daughter too, so he had been willing to be a bit involved. What did that even mean, though?

The video was interrupted by a piercing alarm, sending him jumping instantly out of his seat without even knowing why. It took him a fraction of a second to register that his emergency package had toggled online, and that it was the military emergency alarm, ringing both in the hallways and in his head.

He joined the stream of personnel heading for the evacuation ports, all of them frantically messaging speculation at each other about what was going on. No one knew who had called the emergency, Darwin was unresponsive, and the only information they had was that some kind of attack was imminent. But this was Earth!

The building shook as they spilled onto the local skyway, sending some of them stumbling. A thundering crack then shattered the air, removing any doubts they might have.

There was no screaming, their emergency packages focusing their attention on the bare task of survival. Most of the civilians already outside sprinted forward, trying to get out of the area, but those who were stuck near the doorway, like Kuma, didn’t have stable ground to run on. Instead, they toppled sideways, grabbed nearby objects and each other, and braced for a very forceful fall.

Kuma felt like he had been forced into a distant, illogical movie, the world reeling slowly sideways as the building above him tilted at an impossible angle. His fear—and it was tremendous fear—had been locked away in a deep, irrelevant box, and he finally reflected that he was very likely to die.

They began to go into freefall, and Kuma’s implants began trying to calculate whether he was better off just letting go of the railing to find something, anything else to land on, for what little difference it would make with the building coming down on him.

The conclusion was yes, and he and several others used what little leverage they had to push away, grab each other, and influence their angle of fall. They succeeded in veering a few degrees, so that the woman next to him slammed into the side of a traffic tube with a sickening crunch—mercifully, she had turned herself off just a moment earlier, and her situation was salvageable, if nothing else happened, which was a laughable notion.

They bounced off, and now they were going to land on a neighboring skyway, about fifteen meters down. A passing small drone gave them the tiniest of assists, grabbing onto Kuma’s arm with all the power its engines could muster to slow the fall.

They slammed into the skyway, protecting the already‐injured woman as best they could, pain receptors completely disabled.

Most of them went into unconscious fugue immediately, but Kuma clung on, one of the least injured, now responsible for taking care of the others if at all possible.

Of course, there was nothing he could do, and both he and his emergency package stared emptily at the giant shard of building falling inexorably towards them, before his implants nudged him: something was wrong. Or, perhaps, right. The building wasn’t budging.

He scrambled at length onto his knees, gratefully receiving a package of medical nanites that a passing drone had flung onto the floor in front of him. As he started to work on one of the crumpled bodies next to him, one of his own hands hanging broken and limp, he looked up at the looming, impossibly hovering building above him.

There was only one possibility, of course, and he could see the girl holding up a huge chunk of the building personally, hands pressed into the side while she braced against the side of another structure. Someone else walked up the top, seeming to vaporize segments of the building as she passed.

He took a moment to stare, and his nomenclator returned:

Identification unknown: no match with confidence greater than fifteen percent. Submitting for additional processing…

He turned away and returned to his gory task at hand. By the time proper medical drones arrived minutes later the girls and building were gone, leaving him to slip into grateful fugue.

“The disaster in Mitakihara has been accompanied by security incidents throughout Governance space, suggesting an attack of unprecedented scale. Ongoing outages in Governance’s network management have allowed multiple multimedia statements by an unknown organization claiming responsibility. These statements have made shocking allegations about Governance and the MSY, which we have not yet been able to verify. Official sources have thus far stated only that the situation is under control and the damage limited, with negligible effect on the war effort. However, a joint press conference by members of the Directorate will begin in just three minutes, promising a full response to the allegations—”

Kuma paused the stream, acknowledging the visitor that had stepped through his doorway. His injuries had been relatively minor—minor enough to allow him to regain consciousness just half an hour later, in an MSY Military Armory hospital bed beneath the Cult of Hope.

“Shirou‐san,” he said, nodding politely at Shirou Asaka.

He spoke evenly, but ever since the hospital systems had warned him of her approach, he had been desperate to work out why he would be worth visiting. It couldn’t be personal; they barely knew each other. Was it something about all the clones that had just been lost at Prometheus? Or was it—more likely—something about his daughter?

He had given up trying to find the actual allegations the news kept talking about—it seemed the Cult of Hope’s systems weren’t having outages—but he had a terrible feeling that Ryouko was wrapped up in all this.

“What brings you here, if you don’t mind me asking? I don’t think I warrant a Major General.”

Asaka looked to the side.

“Well, I also have my own business,” she said. “I thought it was worth a personal visit.”

She sat down and then leaned back in her chair, casting her eyes upward.

“I’m being impolite,” she said. “But I’m in a hurry. Still, I will give you the courtesy of a little background. Earlier today, I was at the Church of Hope, and while I was there, everyone—and I mean everyone—in the Ribbon Chamber experienced a vision, myself included, warning us of this attack. I doubt you put any stock in the Goddess, but you owe Her your life—that vision is the reason we were able to order an evacuation.”

“What?” Kuma said.

“Was it wrong?” Asaka asked, pinning him with a look. “But enough of that. While Prometheus was collapsing, our rapid response teams detected a number of unknown magical girls in the area. You were in the vicinity of one, and there was an unusual nomenclator request. Can I telepathically examine your memory of the incident?”

The memory flashed through Kuma’s mind, of the girl holding up a building on her own, unidentifiable.

“Of course,” Kuma said, so relieved that this wasn’t about Ryouko he hardly hesitated to grant the favor. “I didn’t really question it at the time. I had much bigger problems.”

“Understandably.”

“But she looked like she was trying to help,” Kuma said, bearing the mind‐read uncomfortably. “She honestly saved my life. She’s not in any trouble, is she?”

“Well, just between you and me, she’s supposed to be dead,” Asaka said, smiling slightly. “That’s why you couldn’t identify her. There’s a faction that has been causing all these incidents.”

She turned, gesturing at the wall where Kuma’s news program was still frozen.

“But it doesn’t make sense for her to be a part of that,” she finished, as she withdrew from his mind. “And thanks.”

“Do you know anything about what’s going on?” Kuma asked. “Are you allowed to share anything?”

“Yes,” Asaka said, with a brief pause that amplified all his worries.

“I’m supposed to tell you,” Asaka continued, “that the cloning program is about to get very public. There have been uncontrollable infodumps online—there’s also footage of all the clone bodies in the ruins of the church above us—and Governance has decided it’s no longer possible to keep this secret. This is not going to be comfortable for you.”

She leaned forward as she spoke, instinctively lowering her voice, even though they both knew the room was secure.

Kuma closed his eyes. Again, he had been spared the worst‐case news. Not that this wasn’t disastrous. If it weren’t for implant restrictions on violence, he might very well be assaulted on the street for his role in human cloning.

Could he even rely on those restrictions, given what had happened today?

“That’s not even the half of it,” Asaka said, voice grave, and Kuma felt another ripple of fear.

She clasped her hands in front of her.

“Let’s just get it out of the way,” she said quickly. “What Joanne Valentin did, the modifications that were made to your daughter, your initial agreement—all of that has been leaked to the public. Now, to be clear, there’s a been a lot of false leaks too, and we’ll be denying this one—but some people are going to believe it.”

Kuma stared blankly for a few seconds, before slowly putting his hands to his head.

“I—I would have you know I consider that one of my greatest mistakes,” Kuma said. “She tricked us, you know. And now I have to live wondering just what she was up to.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Asaka said.

There was a long pause, enough time for Kuma to stare at his hands and wonder if Governance had some kind of program to train him in how to convincingly lie to his colleagues.

“There is something else,” Asaka said. “I’ve been saving it for last.”

Kuma groaned.

“There is a reason I wanted to stress the Church’s role in evacuating Prometheus. I want you to know that the Goddess is real. I’ve even spoken to her, and to the dead. There is an afterlife waiting for us.”

There was only one reason Asaka would bring up a topic like that, Kuma knew. After all, why else would Asaka specifically have been sent to him?

But he felt his mind sliding around the edges of the obvious inference, trying to think of some reason, any reason, he was wrong.

He couldn’t.

“She’s dead, isn’t she?” he asked, without looking up.

“Almost certainly,” Asaka said. “Technically, she’s missing in action, but you shouldn’t hold out hope.”

He put one hand on the railing of his bed.

“How did it happen?” he asked, voice quiet, staring at that hand.

“About as heroically as one could hope for,” Asaka said. “Personally salvaging a huge military operation at great personal risk, just like at Orpheus. The mission used an interstellar wormhole, but it was destroyed while she was using it to return. We looked everywhere around our end, but it was a forlorn hope. It’s not possible for her to have survived on the other end.”

There was a brief pause, and when he didn’t say anything Asaka continued:

“Her sacrifice may have had a decisive effect on the course of the war. She will be honored accordingly—the mission will be public knowledge soon, with the ongoing Directorate press conference. We won’t let her name be slandered.”

There was much to interrogate about what Asaka had said, starting with the wormhole, but Kuma didn’t really care for those details at the moment, and Asaka clearly understood that.

He held himself still for a moment, then lashed his hand outward, slamming it into the vase next to his bed, which flew into the wall and landed with a thud, spilling water onto the floor. Not quite enough to trigger the violence implants, it seemed.

“This is exactly why I agreed to Valentin’s offer in the first place,” he said, growling into Asaka’s face. “So this wouldn’t happen! And she betrayed me! If I ever meet her, she better be goddamn careful. Not many people know how to disable their implant restrictions.”

It was nonsense, of course. By all indications, Valentin was a magical girl, which meant that he had essentially no chance at hands‐on revenge. Nor was this exactly what he had feared for Ryouko—an infuriatingly rational part of him was proud for all that she had accomplished, in the life she had chosen.

He held his seated position for what seemed like an eternity, arm clenched, then flopped back onto his bed, listless.

“Does Nakase‐chan know yet?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Asaka said.

Then, tilting her head: “No, not yet. She’s refusing to meet with the person they sent.”

“I’ll do it now then,” Kuma said. “And no offense, get out of my room.”

Asaka let out a breath.

“Right. I imagine they’ll send the grief counselor in a bit. But thanks for speaking with me.”

Then she left him alone.

Asami hadn’t known it was possible to feel so bad. Not under a full blanket of emotional suppression.

She had held out a brief, desperate hope that Ryouko had survived on their end of the wormhole, even after she had lost sight of her within.

But she understood better than anyone how the wormhole collapse had evolved, had used her powers to corral every exit in Human space. Thanks to her efforts, they had located every missing member of their squad within minutes, floating in the void at most a few hundred kilometers away.

All except Ryouko.

Now she found herself staring at her stump of a wrist, sheathed in a metal healing device, awaiting a clonal hand transplant, cheaper than a healer’s magic.

She couldn’t bring herself to care. The emotional suppression kept the despair, the pain, the regret all at bay, but it couldn’t control the apathy, couldn’t create a positive motivation for her to do anything.

All she wanted was to sink into Ryouko’s arms, to feel her breathe, to tell her she loved her again.

But that wasn’t possible now. Not anymore.

“If this is some kind of waiting contest, you’re not going to win,” Asami said, without looking up at the woman standing in her doorway. “You might as well give up and walk away.”

“I got you to say something, didn’t I?” Clarisse van Rossum said. “But I’m not here to be your psychiatrist; I’m here with divine guidance.”

She didn’t care to hear it. The Goddess had asked her to stay with Ryouko, to protect her, and she had failed to do so. What more could be wanted of her now?

Maybe she had doomed humanity, getting Ryouko killed with her ill‐conceived plan. There was an intriguing thought. She could dwell on that for a while.

Well, no, she supposed she couldn’t do that, not with Van Rossum probing at her like this.

“Why would I want to hear from her? Neither of us was able to keep Ryouko alive, and that’s all there is to it. What, is she going to offer me consolations? I have plenty of those.”

“No, it’s not just that,” Van Rossum said. “Look, I know how you feel, but I think you’ll want to hear this regardless. It’s about Ryouko, and it’s not just platitudes.”

Asami lay there for a long moment, wondering what it would be like to tell Van Rossum to leave her alone.

Begrudgingly, Asami sat up, dropping her feet off the side of her bed.

“Well? I’m listening,” she said, still hugging Ryouko’s pillow.

“It’s not something I can just say,” Van Rossum said. “It’s something I have to show you. Come on, get dressed. I’ll wait outside. I promise you it’s worth it.”

Asami thought about it as she dressed, dialing her emotional suppression down a notch. What could possibly be worth all this? The last thing she wanted to hear right now was some explanation about how Ryouko’s death had been very important in the grand scheme of things. But she had to think Van Rossum knew that.

She spotted the pair of CubeBots on her shelf, one of them coming alive to greet her, and felt a well of pain rise up within her. She didn’t suppress it, not this time. Instead, she let it wash through her, threatening to pull her down into the abyss.

It felt right, somehow.

The CubeBot chirped, lifting its back to offer an assortment of grief cubes.

“Thanks,” she murmured, grabbing a few. Then a few more.

She chose as nondescript an outfit as she could manage, then stepped outside, letting Van Rossum lead her through the station, out of the residential areas, past the labs, into an intra‐station transport, into the medical area—

“Wait, no,” Asami said finally, stopping in the hallway. “Why the hell are you taking me here? I am not talking to her. Why would you want me to talk to her? I wouldn’t feel safe having the two of us in the same room.”

She meant, of course, Simona del Mago, whose soul gem signature she had grown all too familiar with, and which pulsed quite obviously from the holding cell a few slots over. She had not forgotten that if Simona had just cooperated, then it would have been easier for Asami and Ryouko to do their work, and then maybe, just maybe, none of this would have—

“I know,” Van Rossum said, grabbing her by the shoulder. “These feelings are natural. On my own judgment, I wouldn’t think opposite sides of the station are far enough for you two right now. But I have it on quite good authority that you two should meet, because she has a message for you.”

Asami closed her eyes, then let out a breath, indicating Van Rossum should lead the way.

“Fine. You can probably keep me from killing her. But if I had known this would be so much trouble, I would have stayed in bed,” Asami said, and meant it.

They found Simona reclining in a chair, watching a news projection on the wall. She still had her soul gem, which was more trust than Asami would have given her.

They made a decent show of ignoring each other for a few seconds, before Simona turned off the projection.

“I heard about what happened,” she began.

“And you’re just sitting there like everything is fine,” Asami spat. “When this is basically your fault.”

“It is my fault,” Simona said, fingers digging into her armrests. “I failed to protect her. But she’s not dead. My wish is unfulfilled.”

“Not dead?” Asami echoed, raising her voice, a point of anger breaking through her weakened suppression. “You weren’t there! If she’s not dead, then she’s lost in space and soon will be!”

“But my wish is unfulfilled,” Simona said, as if echoing a mantra, hands still gripping her chair. “I can’t tell you how it’s possible, but she doesn’t understand me—can’t understand me, until I get through to her—and until that happens, my wish is unfulfilled.”

“Normally, I wouldn’t put much stock in it either,” Van Rossum said, turning to address Asami. “There’s a wide body of literature on allegedly unfulfilled wishes. It’s always a misunderstanding. I’ve seen a few myself.”

She shook her head.

“But I got a message just as the wormhole collapsed, from our divine friend. It said to talk to Simona del Mago, and to Nakihara Asami, and to bring them together. So here I am. And Simona is convinced Ryouko is alive.”

“I would like a personal word with your Goddess if she isn’t,” Simona said. Her chair had manifested three additional support struts for each armrest.

“I’m afraid I only ever hear from her just before, or during, historic moments,” Van Rossum said. “And that’s a secret, by the by.”

“Not surprising,” Simona said.

Asami stewed silently. She wasn’t going to believe that Ryouko was alive. Not for a reason as stupid as this. To start with, she wasn’t at all convinced Van Rossum had really heard from the Goddess. More likely, this was some ridiculous attempt at manipulating her—“for her benefit”, of course. She couldn’t find the energy to figure out the real angle, but there probably was one.

But despite what she told herself, the claim had ignited a glimmer of hope, and she began to fear having that hope dashed.

“That’s it then?” Asami said, gesturing at Simona with one hand. “I’m supposed to listen to a crazy girl? Why can’t the Goddess just say things?”

“You know the answer to that,” Van Rossum said. “I don’t think you’re supposed to know what to do right now, but I can suggest an option: you can just go ask.”

“Go ask,” Asami repeated. “You mean on Earth, at the Ribbon.”

“Yes.”

Asami looked down at the floor. Her feelings on Simona aside, it was a sensible enough idea. She had the opportunity—Project Armstrong would need a long time to regroup without Ryouko. Ryouko’s funeral would probably be in Mitakihara, and she’d have bereavement leave, come to think of it. And the Ribbon meant a chance to see Ryouko either way, dead or alive. Maybe even Clarisse.

That was a nice thought, in a way. She supposed she should thank her emotional suppression for letting her make such an objective assessment.

Simona and Van Rossum seemed to be discussing whether it would be possible to visit the Ribbon right now, for some reason, but Asami decided to keep tuning them out.

If Ryouko were alive—no, no, she could not start thinking like that. She was being pushed to visit the Ribbon, thanks to Simona and Van Rossum, but she couldn’t set herself up for an entire second round of heartbreak. Not when she didn’t even know how she would survive this one.

But she couldn’t hide from the Ribbon now, either. Ryouko deserved better. All Asami was in for was a bit of pain. She could suffer that much in payment.

She gritted her teeth.

“Alright,” she said. “Fine. But don’t expect me to spend any more time with her. I want to spend my time alone.”

“Hold on,” Simona said, standing up abruptly as Asami turned to leave.

“What?” Asami asked, making sure sufficient venom leaked into her voice.

“She’s alive. I don’t know if this Ribbon will convince you of that, but if it does, we’ll be the only two people willing to risk everything to get her back. We need to work together. We shouldn’t let jealousy get in the way of that.”

Asami felt the pit of anger in her stomach boil over, searing its way through her restraints.

“Jealousy? Yeah, I’m jealous you got her killed, you bitch! Don’t you have a fucking court‐martial to be at?”

Then she stormed out.

Elsewhere, earlier.

A wave of nausea hit Ryouko as the alien ship finished its blink.

She felt her body struggling, kept functioning only by a copious dose of magic. She wanted to drop to her knees and let the fugue take hold, but… not now.

Whatever happens, we’ll keep control of our own fate, Clarisse thought, echoing her own sentiment.

Ryouko looked around the room. In most respects, it was like every other alien storage room she had seen that day: rounded corners and entryways, sand‐textured floors, maintenance drones that derived from a different, inhuman aesthetic, wriggling along the floors as they worked.

In other ways, it was different. The walls had the subtle lustre of holographic metamaterial, similar to human ships. A large circle in the center of the ceiling filled the room with a pale light that resembled filtered sunlight.

But what drew her eye, what instantly caught her attention, was the obvious text, the labels affixed to the crates on the floor, the symbols above the doorway, the large blocks displayed on the nearest wall. Unreadable, but unmistakable.

A four‐part symbology, Clarisse thought. With obvious patterns. If fewer of my processing cores were critically damaged, I’d start language analysis.

The wall beside her began to change, the symbols disappearing, replaced by a pair of alien individuals. It took her a moment to realize that it was a video feed.

These Squid looked different, too.

The two peered at her, bodies buried in what looked like layers of robes, sealed at the edges with metallic‐looking rings. The eyes were larger than she was used to, and the necks a bit shorter.

One of them raised an arm, seeming to point at her with one tentacle‐like finger.

A wave of telepathy flowed into her, a stream of concepts and images, and maybe even speech. Calm, beneficence, wanting to meet.

Then the noise seemed to lessen, her mind finally able to grasp at a narrative.

I think I can see some patterns now, Clarisse thought. This is a simpler signal than before, and much of the noise is just too many signals at once. It makes sense—we know they have a less‐centralized nervous system.

Now Ryouko could finally make out some of what was being projected. In her mind’s eye she saw images of broken alien limbs, ichor, and what she recognized as alien medical equipment. Then, a diagram of a path through the ship labeled with that equipment.

They’re offering medical care, Ryouko thought. Do we dare take it?

In for a penny, in for a pound, Clarisse thought. We’re already here.

Ryouko was already moving towards the door, since she could work out the logic too.

Then her legs crumpled beneath her, pain ricocheting through her midbody, and she fell to one knee, using magic to stabilize herself. Perhaps walking was not the best idea.

She sent back a message to the source of telepathy, indicating her intent to teleport, not knowing if they understood.

She waited for a response, any response, and when she got something vaguely affirmative she made the jump.

The medical ward she appeared in looked not radically different from the ones she was familiar with: large machines with mysterious tubes, vial after vial of nanite gels arrayed inside an autodispenser, a small army of support drones pouring out of a port in the wall.

And two reclining medical beds, one somewhat smaller than the other. Were there aliens that small?

“Hello,” something said, in the voice of a human female.

The clear, understandable greeting almost made her jump, and she spent a moment looking for its source, before realizing it was coming from an alien standing in one of the doorways; she couldn’t tell if it had been one of those in the video earlier.

She realized that the “Hello” was prerecorded, though, and the telepathy that followed was not as clear, but she still understood: she looked seriously injured, and further activity was only causing more damage.

Then it sent an image of just what she looked like.

It was something she had avoided thinking about, and for good reason: open wounds, gaping sores, and peeling skin testified to combat injuries and lethal‐if‐untreated levels of radiation damage. In a way, it was misleading: Clarisse’s influence and her own trained instinct had focused magical and mundane healing on core systems, not superficialities. But there was nothing inaccurate about the fact that she looked like death.

Some actual medical care would carry real benefits, like allowing her to save grief cubes until she got back. Even if that seemed a bit ridiculous to plan for.

But it still took a real leap of faith, a swallowing of fear, to put herself on the smaller of the two medical beds, and stare up at the surgical apparatus above.

She watched nervously as the alien stood at the wall, receiving a series of cloudy nanite tubes into its finger‐tentacles.

We’re sure that magical girls are immune to nanite hacking? Ryouko thought.

Yes, Clarisse thought, though her tone suggested she was shaky as well. Though I’d have no idea whether they can accurately manipulate human physiology. Either way, you might want to pay close attention to anything that’s going on.

There was another pulse of telepathy from the alien, but this time she couldn’t parse it. An image of small molecular assemblies—nanites, perhaps?—and some confused imagery that followed.

But the gesture was clear enough, especially when the robotic arms above unwound themselves—smooth‐jointed and multi‐limbed, just like the human equivalent, though the motions were more uncanny, and it was clear just whose limbs they were meant to resemble.

It took a force of will not to jerk backward as the device went to work, applying patches of wound sealant and skin‐replacement, the chemicals alternately warm and clammy where they touched her, the pain fading quickly underneath.

It’s just like the last time you took a radiation burst, Clarisse thought, referring to the fight outside HSS Pierre‐Simon Laplace, a lifetime ago. I can’t detect anything unusual entering your system. These seem like purely synthetic skin grafts, though.

Then the alien held out one of its tubes, inserting it into a small, ball‐shaped handheld device right in front of her face. It was clearly trying to make sure she saw.

Nanite injector, I assume, Clarisse thought, even as the device came closer to Ryouko’s arm.

This time, Ryouko even jerked away slightly, before managing to convince herself by the old trick of simply looking away.

I can’t monitor everything being done, Clarisse thought, once the nanite tubes were all expended. But I’m monitoring cellular repair, energy delivery, and nutrient support. No attempts at hacking, and you haven’t noticed anything with your magic, right?

No, Ryouko thought.

The robotic arms withdrew, leaving her and the alien… doctor staring at each other. Their eyes met, sending a chill down her spine. Cephalopod eyes were notoriously human‐like, with their visible sclera, even if these eyes weren’t quite what she was used to from the battlefield.

∪·Hello|+·More meaningfully this time|∪·Greetings the alien thought.

“What the hell?” Ryouko said, jumping backwards on her bed, repaired skin scraping against the polymer surface.

The thought had been crystal‐clear this time. Or perhaps it was more correct to say thoughts, layered atop one another. Somehow she knew that, and understood it cleanly besides. The first and third thoughts were meant to be understood together, and the second thought as an addition to them.

·We took the opportunity to complete the organ inside your head, enabling communication|+·Your species' biotechnology ≈ an unfinished story|∈·We will not modify you further without informed consent|∈·This act was the output of a binding‐preference‐alteration‐agreement

It shouldn’t have been possible, but Ryouko understood instantly—or at least, she understood the component concepts instantly. It was clear that “binding‐preference‐alteration‐agreement” referred to an idea she was unfamiliar with.

Still, that wasn’t the first question on her mind.

It was a communications implant this whole time? Ryouko thought, attempting to reply on the same… channel the alien was using. How and why would anyone do that?

μ·Not only a communications organ, but also a preference‐specification organ|ν∈·Akemi‐Homura⊃Divine‐seeking performed prenatal surgery upon you|μ+·The preference‐specification functionality was likewise incomplete until now|ν∈·We did not fully understand, but in part, to enable further Human‐Thinker cooperation|ν+·The binding‐preference‐alteration‐agreement was negotiated with her

Ryouko sank back in her bed, taking in the stream of revelations as best she could. This day, by far the longest day of her life, just simply would not stop. Was she a nervous wreck yet? Hopefully not.

Don’t forget to take all of this with a bit of skepticism, Clarisse thought. Though, since Yuma did tell us that Akemi Homura was responsible for your brain modifications, that much is likely true.

And she had edited her brain to… communicate with the Cephalopods? Were there not simpler ways to achieve the same goal, that didn’t require fifteen years of waiting? There had to be something else going on.

There was something important she didn’t understand.

Preference‐specification? she asked, using not the Standard words but the mental concept she had been sent. What does that mean?

∪·Utility‐preference, perhaps|∪·Fundamental expressions for the prioritization of different imperatives|∪·Morals, values, desires

Ryouko felt abruptly as if someone were watching her. No, that wasn’t quite right⁠—she felt no urge to look behind her. It was more like… someone was inspecting her, staring at her.

·Finally, through you, we can empathize‐open the preference‐specification for your species|∈·What I find here is bizarre|∈!·Such flexibility, and indeterminacy, and happenchance

Ryouko did not understand. The telepathic interface was clearly doing a lot to translate unfamiliar concepts back and forth, but the information was compiling in unfamiliar ways within her mind.

She said as much.

μ·Perhaps‒83% it will be instructive for you to empathize‐open my preference‐specification|ν?·Would you like some time alone to learn about our society and technology|ν+·Your specification suggests you would the alien thought.

Ryouko didn’t find the simultaneous topics as disorienting as she might have—she had some experience, dealing with older magical girls—but she could tell she was responding unnaturally. The alien’s telepathic channel allowed for multiple connection threads; Clarisse suggested that the intent was she respond on each as she generated responses, in a simultaneous, continuous back‐and‐forth, rather than letting the connections lapse and waiting until she could dump her entire response along a new, single thread.

Processing it all was taxing, and she was already spending magic just staving off complete exhaustion. She needed to rest, not learn a new mode of communication.

But she had no choice but to understand more.

I’d love to do some learning later, once I’ve had a break. But before that, how do I empathize‐open?

+·Go on|∈·It should be natural now|∈·Simply try to make the request of me

To say that the instructions were unclear was underselling it, but Ryouko guessed at what she was supposed to do; perhaps it was like learning to use new thought‐based technology, something everyone had been trained to do as children. All you needed to do was think it hard enough.

And just like that, the problem cracked open, a rivulet of information pouring into the cup of her mind.

She suddenly felt like she understood the alien. That she could profess its beliefs, predict its behavior, understand its values. That understanding seemed to erupt through her consciousness, a flower of knowledge that peaked in revelation.

And the alien’s name was 9Qta3Ba⊃Peace‐cultivating.

“Peace‐cultivating” waited a very long moment before explaining:

·This ability is the foundation of our civilization|+∈·One Consensus, many Tentacles; one core preference‐specification, many branching extensions from it|+∈·Empathy‐opening cannot be refused, and is required regularly, so we can model each others' behavior—thus, our Consensus is preserved

Again, a long pause. Clarisse suggested that the alien might be waiting for Ryouko’s acknowledgment, unable to read her body language.

It took a moment for Ryouko to give it. Her magic and implants were keeping her awake and aware, but her willpower was eroded. She was tired.

·The original, uncommunicative versions of this organ were purely biological|·It is fascinating that, without an equivalent, your society is not tearing itself apart|·You should consider a choice of star‐name for yourself, the process may‒32% help you rationalize your preference‐specification

This is all well and good, and I’m happy to absorb as much enemy intel as I can hold, Clarisse thought. But we really have bigger problems to tackle. Like, why are they attacking us? And where are they taking us?

·With all due respect, why is your species attacking us? What reason do you have to attack us?|·Where are you taking us? Why am I here?

Ryouko, torn between asking the two questions, found herself asking both at once. The process wasn’t quite natural—she hadn’t reused the existing telepathic threads, but rather created two new ones, and Ryouko felt her head threatening to split besides—but still, it happened.

μν·Those two topics ≈ two views of the same mountain|μ·Attempts at communicating with your civilization reportedly failed, so Consensus allocated resources to Consensus/Thinker‐preserving for the suppression of your reality‐distortion technology|ν∈·Not long after the initial intervention, Akemi Homura⊃Divine‐seeking came in contact with us, Consensus/Ahimsa‐extending—her ability to communicate was limited, but she carried a written document claiming that Consensus/Thinker‐preserving was compromised, and that their violence was founded on false premises|ν∈·Divine‐seeking gave detailed instructions on where and when to wait for you, and requested technology necessary to produce you|ξ?·We were not informed of the entity "Clarisse" we see in your preference‐specification—a symbiotic individual stored on your spine

Ryouko’s head throbbed. What she was being told raised more questions than answers, even the parts that verified everything she had ever suspected about her life. And they still hadn’t told her where they were taking her.

She strained herself to produce responses on the appropriate connections. She just needed to keep going a little longer.

|μ·What do you mean, reality‐distortion technology? We are researching no such thing. That’s not an explanation.|ν·Akemi Homura talked to you? And set up all that? Why? It doesn’t make sense.||ξ·Clarisse is a… support AI that was implanted recently in me by Homura. It was part of an experimental program which was not supposed to produce AIs, but it’s possible Homura modified it. I do not know.

She was instinctively wary of being so truthful about Clarisse, but decided she shouldn’t hold back. Not when she had a chance to get answers.

Besides, if her modeling of the alien’s behavior was accurate, it was supposedly very interested in maintaining peace between sentients, and would not lie about the cause of a war… at least not in this situation.

Peace‐cultivating’s eyes slid to the side, in a gesture Ryouko was tempted to read as hesitant, and some of its responses were delayed after the others.

|μ·You are a living example of this technology|v·Divine‐seeking pointed out the importance of communication for proving her assertions, and we agreed, but why she chose this method, we do not know—we accepted her offer as a token of good faith||ξ·Concerning, but if Clarisse⊃??? was instantiated accidentally then it is understandable—your species should work on providing them a new platform|μ+∪·A technology which is outside the grasp of our science|μ+∪·A technology too dangerous to use|μ·We attempted to warn your civilization of the risk, and deployed a fleet with combat‐bodies when that failed

Ryouko’s headache got worse, but Clarisse provided some neuromodulator support so she could keep thinking.

Living example of… she thought, to herself.

Did they mean magic?

Do not explain that to them, Clarisse thought. Not yet at least. Think about how they might react to learning about the Incubators, or that we don’t control our own magic sources. It’s a huge strategic insight we shouldn’t be giving away.

That’s a good point, Ryouko thought, a bit peeved that Clarisse hadn’t even given her a chance to think of that on her own.

Though, considering the state she was in…

I did not realize that is what you meant, Ryouko thought, retreating back into single‐threaded thought. The truth is that our government either did not receive or did not understand any such queries before your, uh, combat‐bodies arrived. And by combat‐bodies do you mean your soldiers?

She knew shallowly the video from the asteroid Yuma had visited, since it had been part of the information Yuma had sent her, but she was also pretty sure she shouldn’t admit to the alien that their messages probably hadn’t been received because Governance had been compromised.

At least not yet, as Clarisse had said.

Similarly, she avoided addressing the other topics. So many threads to pull at, many all‐too‐dangerous.

∪·Combat‐bodies include all the physical forms Thinkers use to exert military force, not only those with shapes approximating evolutionary Baseline|∪·I refer to Thinker consciousnesses inhabiting battleready forms, with full backup|👁+?·Am I to understand that your combat‐bodies are not the same

That question came with a telepathic header that Ryouko was experiencing for the first time, signifying a… high‐priority‐on‐transparency question.

In other words, the alien knew she was hiding information, and very much desired honesty on at least this point.

And no wonder, Ryouko realized, recalling Peace‐cultivating’s preference‐specification.

They are not, Ryouko thought. Only our AIs have backups. Our non‐biological forces. They’re very different from anyone who shares my body plan. Don’t tell me you’ve been assuming we all have backups?

A pale horror crept into her gut, a dawning realization of just what a cosmic joke that would be. How could they not have realized? That kind of mistake simply wasn’t possible, not for two decades—Human behavior and tactics in the war should have made the truth obvious within days.

∈·The Tentacles applying force verified to us that you did, and later presented evidence of combat bodies like yours repeatedly returning to battle with the same unique reality‐distortions|∈·Akemi Homura⊃Divine‐seeking claimed you did not, and that the truth was being hidden from us by reality‐distortion, but provided limited evidence

Peace‐cultivating raised an arm‐tentacle at the wall, which turned black, bathing the world into an eerie darkness, the medical bay seeming to drop out of view, replaced by a breathtaking immersion of stars, a holographic feat humans saved only for movie theatres.

Upon examination, it was clear this was a location still near the pulsar. But then the scene shifted, suddenly jumping, each time closer and closer to the galactic core, the stars growing denser and brighter.

A flash of Sagittarius A☆, the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, then a rapid sequence of extra‐galactic scenes, all centered on the broadening image of a spiral galaxy so big and so close it could only be Andromeda, until abruptly they were inside it, in the core—

—and then they were outside it again, Andromeda’s disk retreating, and they rotated so that a new spiral galaxy came marching into view.

Then they stopped, with the stream of its stars enveloping the room.

μ∈·You asked why you are here|ν∈·You asked where we were going|ν∈·Our home systems, in a galaxy separate from yours|μ∈·You must speak to the Consensus Peace‐cultivating thought.

The Triangulum Galaxy, Ryouko thought.

Appendix: “Understanding Thinker‐Human Translations”

[…]

As such, SAH humanization sacrifices a large measure of readability to more accurately convey the parallel, simultaneous nature of Thinker telepathy. Paragraph structures are radically repurposed towards this end: paragraphs are built not from a sequence of complete sentences on a topic, but rather from the set of messages sent concurrently along the threads of a telepathic channel. These messages are separated only by “|” tokens within each paragraph, and only one message per thread is allowed in a single paragraph. Therefore, a paragraph break is made whenever a new message is sent on a previously‐used thread, whether from the original sender or not.

Messages in SAH humanization also differ from sentences in Standard in several respects. Most prominent is the addition of a header, denoted by a trailing “·”, which conveys metadata about the information being sent in a given message. Typically, this metadata is represented by a sequence of individual symbols¹—for example, lowercase Greek letters are used to identify messages on different threads as pertaining to a particular topic under discussion.² Less obvious differences include the omission of end punctuation and the tendency toward “run‐on” messages, which reflect the continuous and readily‐interrupted flavor of Thinker telepathy.³ Last is the inclusion of various brachygraphic symbols, which will be discussed in more depth later.

Consider the following text, which is adapted from a Thinker telepathic multithreaded stream using SAH humanization:⁴

μ·The Thinkers' ancestral phenotype, the Baseline, originally used its wide swathes of chromatophore‐bearing skin for camouflage, but slowly came to repurpose them for communication|ν·The history of Thinker communication is normally divided into five eras: pre‐linguistics, display‐and‐gesture languages, written scripts, electronic transmissions, and telepathic channels

This represents a two‐thread communication along a single telepathic channel, where the first thread’s message begins with the header “μ·” and where the second thread’s message begins with the header “ν·”. These headers indicate that there are two separate topics being discussed simultaneously.

In displayed format, a code‐like typeface (such as Type‐Standard Molluscan) is used to distinguish standard Thinker telepathy, representing the lack of emotional affect. It is natural for Human readers to interpret emotional undertones into any written text, even those from Thinkers. It is hoped that an alternate typeface emphasizes what any Human receiving Thinker telepathy feels instinctively: that such undertones are not at all present.

The italic styling is merely standard for representing any type of telepathic communication.

Now, consider this expanded snippet of the same material, again adapted via SAH humanization:

μ·The Thinkers' ancestral phenotype, the Baseline, originally used its wide swathes of chromatophore‐bearing skin for camouflage, but slowly came to repurpose them for communication|ν·The history of Thinker communication is traditionally divided into five eras: pre‐linguistics, display‐and‐touch languages, written scripts, electronic transmissions, and telepathic channels

μ·However, the bandwidth of body display signaling was limited by the Baseline's binocular vision, which could only fully focus on one area of the body at a time—parallelization was usually achieved via a combination of chromatophore display and tentacle gesture|ν·Recently, several prominent study‐of‐Baseline‐experts have argued that the display‐and‐touch era should be further divided, but this is still debated, with one faction arguing for a pure display languages era followed by a display‐and‐touch languages era, on the basis of historical‐preference‐specification‐reconstruction, and with another arguing for the reverse ordering, based on evolutionary considerations|μ+·It is hypothesized that the white sclera of the Baseline's eyes evolved in order to better convey what visual display was being received, among other information

In this second paragraph, the multithreaded telepathy switches from using two threads to three. The first two threads in this example continue on their original “μ” and “ν” topics, but this is not a certainty—sometimes topics will shift threads. The third thread’s message begins with the header “μ+·”. The first symbol in the header establishes the topic, and the second symbol means that, for full understanding, a message on another thread with the same topic must also be understood—in this case, the “μ·” message on the first thread, though a “+” symbol can be used without a topic symbol like “μ” if there is only a single topic under discussion.

It is important to understand here that paragraph groupings do not indicate exact simultaneity of messages. Typically, messages with a “+” symbol in their header begin sending somewhat later than others, though much of their transmission duration will still be in parallel with the message or messages on which they depend.

For this next snippet, in which we have skipped ahead a bit in the source material, watch for a new symbol in the headers:

·The development of written scripts, necessary for primitive information transmission and storage, required compromises on parallelization similar to those involved in pure display communication|+∈·Early scripts often simply adapted local ideographic displays, but by the age of machines, most proto‐Tentacles had standardized to logographic scripts, some descendants of which are still in use today|+∈·One common script, used where parallelization was strongly preferred, involved a linear sequence of four‐part circular glyphs, each quarter of the circle containing logograms which continued from the same quarter of the previous glyph, rather than from the rest of the current glyph

Here, the header symbol “∈” indicates messages on different threads that provide parallel, but different information about the same subject.⁵ Greek letters are not used in the headers, meaning there is only one topic under discussion.⁶ However, this does not mean the messages are sequential.

Continuing:

·The dawn of electronic communication prompted heavy experimentation with metadata, multithreading, and script‐interpretation‐tools in a bid to increase parallelization||+·Elaborate electronic communication schemes proliferated ≈ villosin spawning⁷

·While scripts remained in use throughout the electronic transmissions era, haptic script‐interpretation‐tools which derived from non‐parallel scripts eventually became dominant, as the physical feedback to tendrils allowed for practical parallelization, especially when combined with visual displays|·Display‐and‐touch gradually fell out of use, as it required physical proximity, and in time was used only with juveniles who had not yet mastered electronic systems|

In the source stream for the first paragraph above, no message was sent on the channel’s second thread, but the thread was kept active. To represent this, the “|” thread divider token is used with a null message, resulting in two “|” tokens in a row. In the source for the second paragraph, no message was sent on the third thread, as indicated by the trailing “|”.

The first paragraph also demonstrates a distinctive feature of SAH humanization: the use of brachygraphic, or shorthand, symbols. “≈” is shorthand for “is comparable to” and indicates a simile—commonly used in Thinker communication—while conveying the efficient and distinctive essence of the original telepathic content.

Now, try reviewing the previous three paragraphs of source material, following each of the three active threads one at a time.

Consider that the second messages sent on the second and third threads did not follow from the first messages on each thread. This is not uncommon, as topics shift, especially outside of back‐and‐forth conversation. It is important to remember that while Thinker telepathy is much more parallel than standard Human modes of communication, it is not fully parallel, and neither are the Thinkers themselves. Each thread is not meant to be consumed in complete isolation from the others, but in gestalt.

Before moving on from the current source and delving into more brachygraphy, we will present one of its last passages, without further comment, except to note the interesting assumptions of Thinker culture.

μ·The development of neural implants and, in time, neural telepathy allowed for the final, perfected form of Thinker communication, tailored directly to cognition|μ+·Free from the limitations of electromagnetic transmissions like no previous mode of communication was, and completely natural to use, the telepathic channel rapidly displaced its predecessors across the entire population|ν·The currents Thinkers rode through communications development are idiosyncratic, the byproducts of evolution both biological and cultural, but the destination arrived at is one that all sapient species are likely to eventually choose

¹ Metadata not pertaining to the meaning of the message body, such as user signatures and initial cryptographic handshakes, are usually omitted for compactness. When included, they are of course longer than a single symbol.

² SAH humanization pointedly avoids using numbers or the beginning of an alphabetic sequence to label topics, to avoid giving the mistaken impression that these headers indicate priority or any sequential ordering. However, by convention and for clarity, the first topic header in a translated paragraph will always use “μ”, and the second “ν”, and the third “ξ”, and so forth.

³ Human messages translated in Thinker format are conventionally labeled with end punctuation, reflecting the comparatively halting and turn‐taking nature of Human thoughts.

⁴ This source was chosen for its unusual similarity to Infopedia’s style, with an eye toward reader comprehension.

⁵ A related symbol, “∪”, indicates when multiple messages are attempting to convey the same information, in order to increase the likelihood that the information is fully understood.

⁶ Of course, what defines a “topic” is decided by whoever creates the message. In other words, the header symbols themselves are how a Thinker expresses what is or isn’t a separate topic, or what is or isn’t closely related information, etc.

⁷ Villosin (Sapidum pisk, tasty‐spawning‐garnet‐bellied‐picotee‐finned‐rough‐fish) are an aquatic species from the Thinker homeworld which reproduce similarly to capelin on Earth. The Standard name is arbitrary; because the Baseline lacked vocal organs, the Thinkers have no spoken languages, so concepts without pre‐existing Human equivalents cannot be translated phonetically. Instead, they are given new, pronounceable labels, or explained via component concepts.

Volume Ⅳ: Einstein‐Rosen Bridge

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 09:11:00 +0200

“In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

— Winston Churchill, to Joseph Stalin

Chapter 64: Manifest Destiny

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 09:11:00 +0200

〈In the following text, 〈〉① indicates content redacted to those without security clearance. The number indicates the degree of security clearance required to access enclosed content.〉①

While the growth of the MSY into a unitary global institution has come in hindsight to take on the glow of inevitability—a simple story that has charmed politician and popular historian alike—detailed examination of the historical record suggests plenty of reason for skepticism.

Yes, the MSY was the first magical polity organized along “modern” (late industrial corporatist‐bureaucratic) lines, but it was not expanding into a purely Hobbesian wilderness of untamed savages. The pre‐MSY world was streaked through with local organizations, ranging in size from a couple dozen to hundreds of members. Typically confined geographically to a distinct locale like a city or an island, these included everything from small, informal aid associations to extensive, loosely‐regulated trade councils, to hierarchies dominated by a clique of powerful enforcers, sometimes in the service of one so‐called tyrant.

Such groupings were not always easy to absorb. On paper, the argument was very compelling: the MSY generated huge tangible benefits in grief cube access, money, and plain survival. Less tangible benefits also accrued over time, including access to local elites, education privileges, and exclusive career paths.

But these advantages were only clearly apparent in the MSY core. Outside MSY territory, skepticism abounded, and emissaries attempting to grease palms often found themselves running afoul of cultural differences, local power structures, and frank distrust. Few were willing to give up their independence to a distant and foreign sovereign.

Nor was the MSY as fervently devoted to expansion as many modern readers imagine, especially not during the early years. Political disagreements developed about the scope and nature of potential expansion, and an abortive nationalist movement tried to keep the organization confined to Japan, convinced that expansion would be more trouble than it was worth, or even immoral. This was an argument that was overcome only by the inducements of commerce, continued foreign entanglements, and the expansionist vision of the Founders.

…

In the end, one of the MSY’s biggest assets was its benevolent reputation, one which the organization would more and more consciously cultivate over time. Practical and financial inducements weren’t always enough. Pure strength wasn’t always enough. Even carefully‐drafted, meticulously‐tailored integration agreements weren’t always enough.

Rather, the biggest successes were always those who asked to join. The bereft teams which had heard of the plentiful conditions. The trade organizations that craved a protected environment to operate in. The downtrodden who wanted to get out of the shadow of a local tyrant. These heard rumors of an organization that could whisk away their problems, just over the horizon, and became the success stories that bred the next generation of positive rumors. Positive rumors that, in time, became positive media; surreptitious MSY‐internal news reports and entertainment that were eventually deliberately disseminated outside MSY borders, always heavy in depictions of mages living lives of comfort, travel, and parenthood—cherished dreams in many places.

This reputation—originally only the result of idealistic founders—eventually became an overriding constraint on MSY activity. When things were bad, aid had to be given. Blatant, or even not‐so‐blatant coercion had to be carefully concealed. Influence campaigns had to be deniable. In no‐win situations, the MSY absorbed outsized blame. And if one problematic magical girl or team simply refused to listen to reason…

〈And of course, no such organization could stand to be without its intelligence services, or its deniable actors. The MSY acquired these in the form of the Black Heart, the dramatically‐named organization that would eventually scout out and monitor magical girl activity around the globe, as well as engage in all manner of less savory forms of manipulation. If the MSY was unique, it was perhaps unique only in how late it took this step—a luxury of moral purity, maintainable only in the absence of serious foreign threats.〉③

Over time, then, the rosy mid‐expansion reputation of the MSY waned, especially as rival organizations started successfully consolidating regional influence ahead of the MSY’s arrival, offering comparable benefits alongside local rule. These were typically isolationist—the Caribbean’s Sevité Association and Iran’s Magi were emblematic, decrying perceived MSY imperialism—but a few were growth‐oriented, most notably Europe’s Système Magique Cordial, and the competition led to a global scramble for the weakly‐organized territory that remained.

As these new borders were drawn, it even seemed as if the magical girl world would settle into a multipolar state…

— Julian Bradshaw, “Mahou Shoujo: Their World, Their History,” excerpt.

“Given recent events, it has become clear to this committee that our knowledge of the world beyond our borders is enormously inadequate, a fact which has had operational and strategic consequences for our activity. Attempts to ameliorate this blind spot with Soul Guard and other ad‐hoc initiatives have proven woefully insufficient.”

“Moreover, the need to occasionally take unusual or special actions to counteract emerging threats has proved immiscible with the other activities of the Soul Guard, requiring different skillsets, unique resources, and an exercise of discretion that is of far different scope and depth.”

“This committee is pleased that the Rules Committee has seen the necessity of amending the Charter to conform to current conditions, and will act with all due speed to enact the proposed changes and reorganization of the Soul Guard.”

— Leadership Committee Signing Statement, MSY Charter Amendment #11 and Rules Committee Act #4223;

MSY Charter Revision #11 signed by Executive with a vote of 8‐2, hereby referred to membership for final approval;

Rules Committee Act #4223 “For the Creation of New Special Intelligence Group” signed by Executive with a vote of 8‐2. Signed on behalf of the Leadership Committee: Akemi Homura, First Executive. Witnessed: Chitose Yuma, Head: Science Division.

〈In the following text, 〈〉① indicates content redacted to those without security clearance. The number indicates the degree of security clearance required to access enclosed content.〉①

〈Executive hereby directs Directors Chitose and Tomoe to assemble a committee to study the problem of forming the new Black Heart Division, and to report findings in one month. Recruitment, meetings, and findings should be carried out and reported in strict confidentiality, with appropriate measures left to the discretion of Chitose and Tomoe.〉③

〈Allocated budget for this undertaking will be 50,000 Internal Currency (IC), with an additional 150,000 IC available at request from the Executive, given satisfactory justification. Funding will be allocated from the Soul Guard special operations fund.〉③

〈Executive hereby appoints Chitose Yuma as the provisional head of the new division.〉③

— Secret Executive Order #1, approved by unanimous consent. Signed on behalf of the Leadership Committee: Akemi Homura, First Executive. Witnessed: Sakura Kyouko, Head: Logistics, Grief Cubes, and Supply. Dated: May 1st, 2071.

あらざらむ
この世の外の
思ひ出に
今ひとたびの
逢ふこともがな

Arazaramu
kono yo no hoka no
omoide ni
ima hito tabi no
au koto mo gana

As I will soon be gone,
let me take one last memory
of this world with me—
may I see you once more,
may I see you now?

— Izumi Shikibu

South Korea, October 2067.

“I just want to make a difference. I wish to. All of this, all of our suffering, all our experiences. It must all be worth it.”

Those words resonated in Akiyama Akari’s ears, the naive utterings of a naive teenager, a lifetime ago.

Several lifetimes ago, really.

But even though that naive teenager was long gone, she had a tendency to leap through time to give Akari grief even now, all these years since those words had made her soul gem shine. After all, her wish still hadn’t come true.

A high‐pitched whine rang in her ears, and she watched on an eyepiece as Captain Han’s exoskeletal augments drove the battering ram forward. The front gate of the apartment building blew off its hinges instantly, and the TNC auxiliaries dove in, rifles at the ready.

Akari held her breath, tense despite being safely away from the action in an unmarked van outside the complex. She found it hard to watch, the auxiliaries holding terrified civilians at gunpoint.

“The first floor is clear,” Han said in her earpiece. “Get the doctor in here. We have something.”

The girl next to Akari, Sato Yamanako, began pulling her outside before she could react.

Once, Akari had wondered why the MSY even bothered attaching mundane auxiliaries to Soul Guard raids. One explanation was simple—it made them look like a government operation, an explanation their agents in Seoul would back up if anyone asked. Even better, they could sometimes avoid using magic at all, which made things nice and tidy.

The other reason made a lot more sense to her now. They were professionals, often furtively‐recruited ex‐military, and they leavened the massively‐overstretched Soul Guard deployments with experienced, disciplined veterans, complementing their own pre‐2060 veterans.

Yamanako pulled her into the darkness, using the line of police‐like vehicles to hide them from prying eyes, passing operatives watching the windows and broken‐down doorways, backs bulging with exoskeletal attachments.

Their paperwork was in order, their uniforms were accurate—they looked just like a Special Mission Group operation.

They stepped into the building, and Akari kept her gaze fixed on the route laid out in her eyepiece, nodding silently as she was waved onward by gunmen at each doorway, every person and detail starkly highlighted by magical darkvision—the power had been cut.

Finally, they reached the door Han had summoned her to.

As she understood it, the usual procedure was to clear the entire building before bringing a non‐combat mage like Akari in, but she had impressed upon them the importance of getting in fast as possible—traces of magic could disappear very quickly. Plus, as a magical girl, she wasn’t exactly helpless, even if she felt a bit out of place at the moment.

I need you to say focused, Akiyama‐san, Yamanako said. Take a breath and tell us what you see.

Akari took a breath, feeling her body armor rising and falling. She felt embarrassed and ridiculous, being this anxious. She wasn’t a regular demon hunter, but she had faced danger before. Why did being on this raid unnerve her so?

Her magic gave an answer, as she sensed something… unpleasant in front of her, filling her stomach with twitchy butterflies, just as she heard rapid footstops through the building above her.

She checked her eyepiece to reassure herself: the noise was just auxiliaries and a couple of magical girls, positions marked on her map. There were no hostile contacts yet, magical or otherwise.

She swallowed once, sharply, and surveyed the room in front of her. It was clean and organized to the point of sterility, with a table, a chair, a bed—and a girl lying on that bed, insensate. No windows.

“Area is clear,” her earpiece said, in crisp, efficient Korean. “Delphi, you will need more time with the victims?”

“Y‐yes,” Akari said, barely keeping her voice inaudible, relying on the vibration microphone on her larynx.

She stepped forward, casting her gaze down on the woman in front of her. This—this was familiar, and that calmed her.

“Subject is in her early twenties, and appears unconscious and unresponsive,” she subvocalized, crouching down to get a better look. “My initial sense is that she has had her energy drained, but not the way a demon would. Telepathic probing suggests mental inertness. I will now apply a contact probe.”

She reached forward, placing two fingers on the woman’s forehead, cringing as an unfamiliar magic zapped across her fingers like static from a door handle—if static electricity were malevolent.

“Subject has significant traces of magic from a magical girl, presumably a soul mage. The record will note that at this time I am the only known MSY soul mage in South Korea. However—”

Cut to the chase, a voice said on her earpiece. We both know who it was. Seoyun, the Witch.

Akari let the comment pass. That was Yeseul, the local who had summoned a Soul Guard team to the area. In accordance with a years‐old agreement with the MSY, some of the local teams in Seoul had bartered away commercial access rights in exchange for grief cubes and promises of protection.

That was why they were here.

Akari continued:

“The damage here is consistent with local reports of a magical girl, known only as Seoyun, who is allegedly capable of draining energy from humans and using them for magic. Subject is currently in a deep coma and does not seem likely to recover without intervention.”

Akari stopped there, gathering her thoughts. Could it really be possible? Draining energy from humans instead of demons? And could she do the reverse?

So it’s just as they said? Yamanako asked.

Akari nodded.

Goddamn, Yamanako thought.

A ping on their eyepieces summoned their attention—Han wanted to speak to them.

“Come in,” Yamanako said at the doorway.

Han stepped through a moment later, and Akari had a moment to glance over his appearance—body armor, equipment pouches, and exoskeletal augments combined with an owl‐like headset to give the impression of a soldier who was part robot, even if most of it wasn’t under the skin.

Next to him stood the much less extensively kitted Takanashi Megumi, whose white and purple magical girl costume was adorned only by an eyepiece, throat microphone and some pouches of equipment.

“We’ve cleared the building,” Han said. “But it looks like whoever was here has cleared out, and not too elegantly. There’s a few apartments with leftover contraband, but only mundane stuff. And the girl here.”

Far too many buildings just like it, and not just in Korea. A vast swathe of people with no work, nothing better to do but languish on government charity and whatever else they could scrounge. The rest of them could do no better but try not to see it.

“They knew we were coming,” Megumi said. “And why would they leave this girl behind? There’s sloppy and then there’s sloppy. Things don’t line up.”

Yamanako turned slightly, looking over the body Akari had just scanned.

“This doesn’t feel sloppy,” she said. “They could have just forgotten she was here, but the room is way too clean if they just forgot about an entire room.”

“What are you suggesting? They wanted us to find her?” Megumi said.

“I don’t know,” Yamanako said. “Maybe it’s a threat. Maybe they’re trying to tell us to come and get them.”

She turned towards Akari.

“Based on what you’ve seen here, could you identify Seoyun if you met her?”

Akari nodded.

“Yes, I could. I sensed more than enough magic to recognize her.”

“What about from a distance? Long‐range sensing?”

“Tough to say,” Akari said. “Probably not unless she was doing something that required a lot of magic. I’ve never met her, after all.”

“You think maybe she left a calling card?” Han suggested. “Sometimes, syndicates like to let it be known who was involved. Seoyun works with one, so maybe this is a similar idea, designed to intimidate the powered civilians.”

Magical girls, he meant.

They contemplated the idea for a moment.

“In the short term, it doesn’t matter,” Megumi said. “They still got away, and we made enough of a racket that they have to know we’re after them. That’s not good no matter how you spin it. Looks like you’ll have to stick around.”

“I volunteered for a few weeks anyway,” Akari said, sighing. “I was looking forward to doing a little touristing, but I’m here for a reason.”

They stepped aside, letting in a pair of medics and an autostretcher. There was little the TNCs could do—it would be up to Akari to find a way to fix her.

“Well, I hope you know what you’re in for,” Megumi said. “Things can get real bad, real fast.”

South Korea, November 2067.

“I really expected capturing all of you to be a bit harder.”

Seoyun wasn’t even using telepathy, feeling free to taunt verbally, and why not? The team they had brought—Megumi, Yamanako, another girl named Ogata, and a pair of local Koreans—lay incapacitated or dead, some of them confined to soul gems around Akari’s fingers.

Seoyun had outmaneuvered them. While they had tramped around the city for weeks trying to track her down, she had organized a secret conference of the local magical girls. The locals hardly trusted her, but she had turned them against the MSY with a combination of artful lies, unfortunate truths, and subtle magical manipulation. The MSY was trying to take over, she said. They were sending a wave of foreign magical girls to seize the city, aided by traitors in their midst.

And right in the middle of this conference, an MSY task force had showed up to raid an apartment complex where a well‐liked healer with anti‐MSY tendencies lived. Unlike prior raids, it had turned into a fight, one that left the healer dead.

That news had been broken to Seoyun’s gathering in the most dramatic way possible, allowing her to all but declare war on the MSY. Attacks on MSY‐aligned teams and businesses began almost immediately, bolstered by Seoyun’s criminal allies, whom she had cultivated via tales of the fates of the Yakuza and Triads.

The violence spread out over several kilometers of the city, overwhelming MSY reinforcements and auxiliaries. The head of the Soul Guard herself, Tomoe Mami, who had been in Seoul for an unusually long time at this point, was sucked into the fighting—much to Akari’s benefit, saving her neck in the nick of time.

Then, at Mami’s suggestion, they had aimed straight for Seoyun.

Now Akari herself was helpless, confined in a cocoon of magic ribbons, only her head exposed. The only thing she could do was look into the eyes of the girl who had trapped her.

Not Seoyun, at least not directly. No, the girl whose soul Seoyun had co‐opted, Mami herself.

Was this how she would die? Her wish unfulfilled, at the hands of one of the MSY’s own? How painfully meaningless.

Akari gritted her teeth, trying to focus, despite everything.

“How did she get to you, Tomoe‐san?” she asked, hoping to buy time, or a hint towards escape. “We knew her soul corruption spread like a contagion, but who got to you? Was it before we even met?”

Keeping Mami under control was no small matter—Akari could see the strain it was putting on Seoyun, despite her cocky facade. She could also see that Mami, as old as she was, was already in the process of breaking free. Seoyun probably couldn’t sustain it for much longer.

Akari flinched as Seoyun’s sword pressed itself into her neck, cold steel a hairsbreadth away from slicing it open.

“You’re not going to talk your way out of this,” Seoyun said. “Why make this harder than it has to be?”

“What do you want?” Akari asked.

“Your consent,” Seoyun said. “Don’t bother pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about. Give me your power willingly, and the end will be quick. Otherwise—well, have you ever wondered what it’s like to be tortured by a soul mage? I’ve got endless creativity.”

Akari struggled to resist a wave of panic, clenching her jaw to keep from showing any weakness. Magical girls could resist torture by hiding in their soul gem, and while a soul mage like Seoyun could counter that, Akari was a soul mage too, and fighting Akari on her own ground would strain Seoyun’s ability to keep Mami under control. Seoyun knew all this as well as Akari did. As long as Akari called Seoyun’s bluff—

Akari screamed as pain pierced into her side, too sudden for her to immediately shut it out.

“I’m impatient,” Seoyun said. “And I’m not going to wait any longer.”

Seoyun pulled her sword out of Akari, then slid it back in between another set of ribs. Akari choked on her own blood as, from the corner of her eye, she saw Mami’s head twitch slightly. Despite the pain, hope blossomed in her heart.

“Is this all?” Akari spat. Mami’s face was impassive, but Akari could sense a quiet pulse of magic emanating from her. She needed to keep Seoyun distracted. “And here I thought we were equals as soul mages. Guess I was wrong.”

Seoyun’s lip curled.

“Don’t tempt me,” she said. “I didn’t spend my whole life in cushy business towers.”

Akari felt a hand push through the hole in her side, magic sparking—she squeezed her eyes shut, doing her best to focus her own magic on Mami, instead of countering Seoyun’s attack. She needed to make it look like she was in agony as she failed to resist her.

It wasn’t that hard, to be honest. The screams of pain were real.

The ribbons that bound Akari were Mami’s magical constructs, up until now relatively inert. But they were changing, filling with traces of Mami’s soul, just enough that Akari could touch it.

She made contact, letting the world slip away as she reached into the other girl’s soul and sought out the kernel of Seoyun’s influence, the darkness in the core of the gem.

It only took a few seconds.

Seoyun’s head snapped around as she noticed what was going on, and she summoned a sword in each hand, one to cut the connection between them, the other to slice through Akari’s soul.

Both hands were blown apart before they got there, blood spraying onto the ground, clinging to the ribbons, and metal of the muskets that had done the deed.

How? Seoyun thought, as she stumbled forward onto the ground. You only had seconds—

Gleaming gunmetal blew off her head, Mami’s hand grasping her soul gem seconds later.

Akari was free then to fall limp, clutching at the wound in her side. Despite everything, she felt triumph. Her life would have more acts. She still had a chance to matter.

Akari! Are you okay? Mami thought, hurrying to her. More ribbons were already threading out to support Akari, the gold strands warm with Mami’s true self.

Akari could only smile wanly as the other girl healed her. She hadn’t freed Mami from Seoyun’s control that quickly. She had simply, with Mami’s own assistance, turned its focus toward Akari herself.

Of course, once Akari truly dispelled the effect, the whole affair became a bit embarrassing, though Mami seemed to take it in surprising stride, turning her attention immediately to stabilizing the situation.

With Seoyun’s influence gone, the fighting cooled, though there was no getting rid of the very real casualties—or the very real feelings that Seoyun had used to drive the conflict in the first place. It took nearly half an hour to put together a ceasefire and soul gem exchange, driven partly by the arrival of serious government force.

Amidst the chaos and pressure, it was a while before Akari began to grasp the magnitude of what had happened. Indeed, it didn’t begin to fully dawn on her until they limped back to base, watching news reports on their eyepieces detailing the uncontrolled violence and exotic banned weaponry.

“This is a disaster,” Mami said, shaking her head. “We’re already asking the Incubators to help us with that cover‐up. Heads will roll.”

She was ostensibly addressing the entire crew but looking at her.

“Is it really that bad?” someone asked. “This was a poor neighborhood. There’s incidents all the time. Why can’t we play it down?”

“They’re still people!” Mami said, voice shrill. “We can’t play down something like this!”

She paused for a moment.

“The politicians will have to care about something like this, whether they want to or not. The damage is too extensive to be a normal incident, and the Korean media is already all over it. Whatever story they come up with, someone will be held accountable. The Soul Guard will be held accountable.”

She turned towards Akari.

“And you’ll be at the center of it.”

Akari wanted out. She wanted to go back to Japan.

She had signed on to work with the Soul Guard because she wanted to feel like she was improving things. Instead, the work was frustrating and demoralizing, something epitomized by the conflict with Seoyun. Akari had tried to stop her, and people had gotten killed. What had it really achieved in the end?

On top of that, the incident was now being trumpeted as a possible terrorist attack by North Korea and was making waves in the international news, with attention coming in from both Mitakihara and foreign mundane capitals. Special response teams were en route to sift through the evidence, mediate with the local government, and work the political situation with the local magical girls.

As Mami had promised, that meant she was the girl of the hour, whether she liked it or not, though they promised her role in events would be kept out of BakeNewsko, the MSY media arm.

That helped, a little, but her reputation was only part of her concern.

After the first set of interrogators—a combination of suave career TNCs and less‐than‐polite Guild telepaths—she was given a break to chew quietly on a sandwich, and then Mami stepped into the room.

The others stepped out of the room, and when the door closed, Mami set down a plate of cookies, evidently intended for her.

Akari wasn’t sure what to say. Was now the time to admit that she had touched quite a bit of Mami’s soul? She had spent more time with Mami than the others.

She took a breath to steady herself, deciding she would pass on the cookies for now.

It was very tempting to try and read Mami’s mind, but Akari knew better. If she was caught, it would look awful.

“I assume you’ve already been briefed on what I told the others,” Akari said. “Besides, you were there.”

“That’s one way of putting it,” Mami said.

Akari studied Mami’s expression, trying to glean what she could. She seemed worried.

It was hard not recontextualizing this within what she now knew about Mami. It felt like a violation to even have such thoughts, but… she couldn’t avoid knowing that if she were Mami, she would most fear anyone learning about her insecurities.

Was that what this was about, then?

She swallowed, as subtly as she could manage. It seemed so prosaic, with the disasters going on around them, with the international media speculating about war, to be worried about something like that. Surely Mami would be focused on something else?

“Well, I’m, uh, curious why you would choose to visit me,” Akari said, realizing that she had let the silence stretch on far too long. “There’s not much else to talk about.”

Mami tapped a finger against the table, then picked up a cookie, staring at it for a moment before setting it aside on a napkin.

“I don’t like having this conversation,” Mami said. “But I do think it’s important I do this, rather than some security agent. You see, intrusion into the mindspace of a Director‐level mage isn’t just a personal issue, it’s also an issue of organizational security. That’s why it’s a very good thing we were able to capture Seoyun, in the end.”

Akari kept her face frozen.

“I know Seoyun saw something. I know you saw something. That’s what the documentation on soul mages says. You’re not in trouble, but we need to know what you know, what she might know, and what kind of lingering influence might remain. We need to know the details of what you did to me.”

Mami paused, then sucked in a breath.

“And I’m personally responsible here, you know. This was the highest‐level mindjack in MSY history. I’d consider submitting my resignation, if I thought there was any chance it’d be accepted. As it is, I need to take responsibility.”

Akari stared into the other girl’s eyes, and found herself briefly transfixed.

The memories were a jumble in her mind. More than anyone, Tomoe Mami was surrounded by friends, colleagues, juniors. It shouldn’t have been possible for her to feel isolated. And yet, Mami had spent so long searching her own eyes.

“It was an emergency,” Akari said. “I had to move quickly, and countering Seoyun directly would have been risky. So I figured out what she was doing. Very common, for this kind of thing. She made you fall in love with her.”

She paused, trying to keep her face impassive.

“It’s harder than it sounds. It takes a lot to strip away all the layers of complexity a soul builds up over a lifetime, and focus everything on a simple, primordial emotion. But, since she had basically done all the work already, I was able to just… co‐opt it. Make you love me instead. It helped that your loyalties already pointed in the right direction.”

She stopped talking, realizing that she was starting to ramble. Mami looked pensive, worried, disturbed.

“I thought it was something like that,” she said. “I remember what it felt like.”

“It’s normal to feel some lingering feelings,” Akari said, answering the question Mami hadn’t asked yet. “Some of the thought patterns can persist afterward.”

Especially if they feel natural, she appended mentally, but did not say.

Mami stared at her for a few seconds, and she could see the traces of vulnerability around her eyes. It was difficult to ignore.

“That’s it, though?” Mami asked. “No other effects, other than, uh, being a bit attracted to you for a while?”

Akari cringed. A part of her enjoyed the notion, but knowing that it was all a magic effect…

“Well, I saw some core memory impressions,” Akari admitted. “Nothing really sensitive, mostly childhood memories, emotional events. I could go over them with you, if you wanted.”

She really didn’t want to. There was no good way to tell anyone that she had seen the terror of nearly dying in a car crash, or the pain of seeing one’s home destroyed.

Mami took a deep breath.

“No, not right now,” she said. “I think I have to, though. But if you promise there’s nothing that’s a security risk, we can wait a bit. I can schedule something.”

“That’d be nice,” Akari found herself blurting out.

She watched Mami get up and walk away, staring even after the door had closed.

Then she ate a cookie.

Akari was released into the city shortly thereafter, with the strict admonition that, in the wake of what was now called the Songpa incident, MSY members should not leave the MSY sector of the city—a few square blocks laid aside for corporate branch offices and non‐mundane trade activities.

After what had happened, Akari was initially happy to oblige. She felt no desire to expose herself to danger again, and imagined herself happy to retreat to her comfy hotel room.

Days passed however, and she changed her mind. The MSY sector was nice, clean, and corporate, which meant it had none of the night markets, roadside restaurants, or bars she had grown used to. There wasn’t even a place with a good view of the river! As a magical girl, she had enjoyed weaving across the rooftops of the city, children screaming and food grilling below, stopping occasionally to chat with a local hunting party leaning on their weapons. Now, she was stuck in a box, the empty meeting room of Seoul.

So she and her surviving colleagues dined in the local high‐end establishments, looking out over a city of lights they couldn’t visit. It seemed inappropriate in the wake of what had happened, especially with Yamanako’s soul gem still in a facility in Mitakihara, being attached to someone else’s cadaver.

When the time came, she attended a somber ceremony for the dead—mostly non‐magical—and found herself with Ogata and Megumi, an invisible social wall separating them from the TNCs. Han had been the father of two kids, it seemed. The MSY would provide for them well.

Mami had already returned to Japan. That was a shame—she would have definitely been at the event.

Afterward, they retired to a lounge. They had discussed finding something else to do, maybe some karaoke, or some time in the spa, or even doing one of those “multisensual food experiences” the kids were into these days. Nothing appealed.

Instead, they drank, and Akari remembered to call her mom, who had been frantically trying to reach her again after hearing yet another rumor of a North Korean terrorist attack.

The lounge was members‐only, and Akari perked up when someone changed the channel on the TV panel from standard—full of giant heads engaged in heated speculation about new tensions with North Korea—to MSY‐gov. Normally about as interesting as listening to an Incubator, it seemed the Rules Subcommittee on Crime and Enforcement was holding a hearing on the Songpa incident, and was about to call none other than Tomoe Mami to testify.

The chatter in the lounge died down, and the barkeeper enlarged the panel, allowing its holography to stretch over a meaningful chunk of the wall. The committee room was high‐level corporate Masters of the Universe, with big paneled windows and leather chairs, but still arranged so that it was obvious who was interviewing whom.

“Our next guest I believe needs no introduction,” the woman seated in the center said, the text “Takara Emi, Chair” briefly appearing over her head.

Mami appeared in‐scene a moment later, taking a seat behind an electronic display helpfully emblazoned “Tomoe Mami, Soul Guard Director”, stylized to look like paper.

Mami’s eyes darted around the room, the recognizable gesture of someone turning on a pair of information contacts.

“I take it you know why we called you here?” Emi asked, leaning forward.

“Of course. The Songpa Incident,” Mami said, face level.

Emi nodded, then leaned back, preparing to speak.

“A great tragedy, and a blemish on the reputation of our organization. The MSY prides itself on its competence and professionalism, qualities which were not evident on the ground here. Despite the recommendations of the recent working group…”

Akari could feel her attention slipping, and turned her attention to her drink. There was a reason no one really enjoyed watching these: a substantial portion of the time would be devoted to the committee members, and indeed Mami herself, establishing their political positions and signaling to the masses.

The issue and surrounding controversies were divisive enough that it behooved every civic‐minded magical girl to know the basics: the MSY now had business interests around the pacific rim, and bartered relationships with the local magical girl groups—freedom to operate and local assistance—in exchange for provisions of grief cubes and hard cash. That was the standard arrangement, though there were several exceptions, China being the most important.

From Akari’s point of view, there were two main camps. One side, the Nationalists—though they hated being called that, preferring “Japanists”—wanted to keep the MSY a Japanese affair, with no foreign entanglements other than what was necessary for strictly financial reasons.

The other side—which included most of the business community, as well as old guard luminaries like Tomoe Mami and Akemi Homura—argued that blocking MSY expansion incurred huge financial and moral costs, and didn’t even prevent foreign entanglements to boot.

The Nationalists had been dominant once. In 2059 they had even managed to make their approach part of the Charter.

But then the warnings started coming true. MSY Finance was hobbled overseas, resentment and mistrust brewed from China to Peru, and the Soul Guard continued to get dragged into foreign scuffles, stuck honoring old promises of protection.

So, policy had loosened a little, things got more complicated, Soul Guard deployments got larger, MSY corporations invested more overseas, entire cities started needing protection and—

—well, somewhere on the other end of that, the MSY’s contradictory approach had triggered an incident so big, so violent that the Incubators had to help pass it off as a possible attack by North Korea. The one she had just been a part of.

Akari’s attention perked up, as she saw Mami straighten in her seat and prepare to speak.

“Speaking for the Soul Guard, we all regret what happened,” Mami said. “This incident is already the subject of an inquiry by the Executive Inspector, and our training and procedures will be revised accordingly. The fact of the matter is, both the special relations team and the response teams reacted according to established protocol, and behaved commendably when confronted with a dangerous situation involving hostile adversaries. It is a testament to the skill and professionalism of the officers that we suffered only a few permanent losses, though we regret considerably that we were unable to prevent extensive mundane damage or serious losses in the auxiliary detachments. In addition, we regret the losses we needed to inflict on the local magical girl population.”

It sounded convincing to Akari, for politician‐speak, and she knew, better than almost anyone, that Mami meant most of it. She was proud of her officers, and hated losses on either side.

But it didn’t seem to convince anyone else. For instance, the first Representative to respond complained that Mami’s use of the term “adversaries” revealed an adversarial mindset when it came to foreign magical girls, the most forced argument Akari had ever heard.

The rest of the session was little better, leaving Akari with little sympathy for either side, at least in a political sense.

“Meaningless,” she said, when it was all over and Mami had stepped out of the room. No decisions had been made and no lessons learned. Instead, both sides had raked Mami and the Soul Guard over the coals, for being simultaneously too soft and too hardline. And yet there wasn’t even any threat that Mami would be removed—her position on the Executive Committee was elected, Founders were nearly impossible to unseat, and division head removals were controlled by the Leadership Committee.

“Even so,” Ogata said, looking at her askance. “It might not be a big deal to you, but it’s a big deal to all of us stationed out here. And you saw what it’s like out here, for the rest of the world. There’s a reason it’s the biggest political issue.”

Akari ducked her head, suitably chastened.

“I just hate that we’re not getting anything done. All we’re doing is arguing, and half the time we’re just making everything worse. Seoul was fine until we came here.”

“You’d prefer Seoyun was still active?” Ogata asked. “We rooted her out. And I’d hardly call Seoul fine. Have you seen how poor some of these girls live? We made things better.”

“Did we? Maybe, but it sure seemed like her whole plan was just to get to me,” Akari said. “So all those people died for what?”

“You’re not making sense,” Megumi said. “The drinks are going to your head.”

Akari started to retort, then bit her lip.

They were right. She wasn’t making sense. She just… didn’t know what she was doing out here.

She ordered another drink.

Japan, December 2067.

For a while, especially after she returned from Korea, Akari began to think that Mami had forgotten about meeting with her—or, perhaps, chosen to forget. It would have been understandable.

Just as she was starting to give up hope, Mami contacted her, calling her in person in the midst of lunch with her elderly parents.

Mami asked her to meet in the financial district, in one of the D&E skyscrapers, known internally as Executive Tower, because it housed the administrative staffs of several Executive Divisions.

Here the city was clean, bright, and tastefully decorated, with the cuisines of the world around every corner. Everyone tried to live here, if they could.

The impossibly clear doors to the tower slid open at her approach, and she ran her ID past a scanner at the security checkpoint, nodding at the guard. It wasn’t that they didn’t have biometrics—but who knew what magic was capable of? It was just harder to fabricate biometrics and a physical ID.

That wasn’t all the security, either. A few meters later, she turned into the elevator area, then found a discreet alcove on the side. There, she summoned her soul gem for a fraction of a second, the spectrometer taking its readings.

That gave a magical girl the authorization to continue onward. Supposedly, the Division Heads themselves were subject to even more scrupulous checks, though they entered via their own private garage.

Akari entered her floor into the panel, waited for approval, then stepped into the special elevator, joining a couple of other girls and TNCs wrapped up in their own business.

She reflected on the anxiety she should be feeling. Anxiety about meeting one of the most important people in the magical girl world. Anxiety about her own place in that world. Anxiety for Mami herself.

Somehow she felt only a tinge of it. It was not what she would have expected.

Akari stayed in the elevator even as the others gradually peeled away, replaced by other staffers. Even at the higher levels of the bureaucracies, TNCs were inevitable—those with elite talent in fields where magic wasn’t much of an asset.

Eventually the elevator cleared out, and she let out a breath of relief to be alone, until the doors opened and someone she recognized stepped in, accompanied by the distinctive whiff of cinnamon.

Akari couldn’t help but tense visibly, especially when the woman leaned over, giving her a once‐over.

“Relax. I’m not going to bite. Here.”

The woman with the long ponytail dug into the large paper bag she was carrying, pulling out a smaller bag filled with half a dozen churros.

“Here, from the shop two blocks down. Need to get them to her anyway. Don’t tell her I got these. Have fun.”

Somehow, the woman timed it perfectly, stepping back out onto a different floor and disappearing around the corner.

Then Akari was there, and as she stepped outside, she felt the distinctive poke of someone attempting a telepathic screening. She let them in, just a bit, then slid the door shut when they were done. They were just doing their jobs, she thought.

And whatever it was Sakura Kyouko had intended, she felt it would be best to go along with it.

She looked around as she walked, taking in the glass windows and subdued statuary, replete with hidden symbolism. Maybe there’d be time to take a deeper look later.

She glanced at the timestamp in her contacts, then opened the door.

Mami was already getting up, headed for her.

“Ah, Akiyama‐san, good to see you. Oh, you didn’t have to bring anything. Hmm.”

Akari handed over the churros awkwardly, frozen by Kyouko’s admonition not to say anything.

“I, uh, happened across them,” she said.

Akari made a small show of looking around the room, hoping to dodge more questions. It hardly looked like an office at all, with a side table on both sides surrounded by plush chairs and decorations, perhaps intended for group meetings.

And indeed, rather than leading her to the central desk, Mami led her to one of the tables, where there was a tray of candies.

Mami set the churros next to the tray, pointed enticingly towards Akari.

“Would you like a drink? I thought about having tea ready, but I didn’t want to assume. Maybe some hot chocolate? I know that sounds really rich, but what’s being a magical girl if we can’t indulge once or twice?”

“That, uh, sounds lovely,” Akari said.

Mami tapped the order into a pad on the table.

“You don’t have to do all this,” Akari said, raising her hands. “I’m just, uh.”

She didn’t finish the sentence, realizing that this didn’t make sense. She was just here to tell Mami about what memories she had seen. That didn’t exactly entail getting royal treatment.

“Well, I don’t know how to start this conversation,” she said, finally. “We’re here to talk about what parts of you I saw. I saw a fair few.”

She kept her gaze firmly on the table.

“You’ve always been lonely, though you try not to show it. Ever since your parents died way back when. You still wonder if you and Sakura Kyouko could have ever been a thing. You’re worried about Akemi Homura—you think something’s wrong with her, but you don’t know how to talk to her about this. And uh, I’m not going to say the part about Chitose Yuma. I think you get the gist of it.”

She looked up, and found Mami’s smile a little brittle.

“You know, I’m glad you didn’t mention that in our previous meeting,” Mami said. “If that had gone on the record—well, just think of all the blackmail you’re capable of.”

“I suppose,” Akari said, looking the other woman in the eye. She didn’t look angry or worried; there was something else in there.

“I would never share anything like that,” she said, finally. “We soul mages have enough suspicion on us already. Whatever rules the Telepaths’ Guild has on this still apply to me.”

“I know,” Mami said, smile less brittle now. “I’m not worried about that. But now that you’re here, recent events have made me realize that we’re woefully unprepared against soul mages. The senior leadership have all had anti‐telepathy training, but this is something very different, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Akari said. “But I think you’re overestimating the threat. Soul mages are very rare, and by and large, manipulating a person’s soul is not as easy as reading their mind. It’s not any easier, and isn’t that different from standard mind‐control.”

For once, Akari was on familiar ground.

“I disagree,” Mami said. “Just because it’s rare or difficult doesn’t mean it’s not a weakness. Not when the downside risk of a failure could be catastrophic. Then we have to defend against it anyway.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that. Are you proposing I set up some kind of training program?”

“Something like that.”

Mami looked down into her lap, then back up again, meeting Akari’s gaze.

“There’s something else, though,” she said.

Akari waited for Mami to elaborate, growing increasingly uncomfortable as the seconds ticked by and Mami hesitated, face working.

Akari felt herself tense up. If something was tongue‐tying someone as old as Mami…

“Um, what?” she asked, finally.

She studied the woman’s expression. Like before, something was different there.

“Well, I,” Mami began. “I know you said there’d be lingering feelings. I really thought about that, and I waited. But you know, it felt nice. I kind of miss it.”

It took Akari a few seconds to realize what was being said, and then she froze in place, feeling a blush crawl its way up her neck.

“I, um—”

She had tried very hard not to think of Mami that way, deliberately avoiding the thought whenever it came up. It was a ridiculous notion, after all.

But now… well, Mami couldn’t mean anything else, could she?

“Are you sure?” she finally asked, managing to contain her emotions for the moment. “The aftereffects can be very strange. It can help to ask someone you trust. Have you tried talking to Sakura‐san?”

No, what the heck was that? she thought to herself. Flustered, she had disgorged a set of meaningless, half‐remembered mind‐control recovery advice. It was hardly relevant to the situation.

“I have,” Mami said. “I did my research, I asked the right people to get tested. I even talked to Sakura‐san.”

She paused, closing her eyes and shaking her head, a small smile coming to her lips as she seemed to replay a memory in her mind.

“I… wouldn’t have ventured to ask if I didn’t think you might be receptive. I hope it doesn’t offend you that I looked into your background a bit.”

“Not at all,” Akari said, dazedly.

“Then what do you say?” Mami asked, eyes soft.

It was quite a question to be confronted with suddenly. She had hardly been looking for a relationship, with her life as unsettled as it was. She had tried her hand at charity work, in the MHD, and now with the Soul Guard, and she had all but decided to reset her career once again after Seoul. She had lived out of hotel rooms for years now.

But did someone like Mami even care about things like that?

She couldn’t say she returned the confession—not quite, not yet. Still…

“I wouldn’t mind trying something,” she said. “Though, goodness, um, I don’t know what to say.”

Mami’s eyes lit up.

“Well, are you busy? I still have plenty on my schedule, but we could maybe do dinner.”

Akari wasn’t busy. She was still on standby for the Soul Guard.

“I could do that.”

Things moved quickly from there. It seemed a bit unseemly, but after a few days she grew used to visiting Executive Tower, having a meal with Mami, and just chatting, with the occasional foray into teaching Mami about soul manipulation.

Akari found herself dreading her next Soul Guard summons, then feeling guilty about it. It was a familiar pattern—her personality, or perhaps her wish, did not permit her to relax for long, even after she had inevitably lost faith in her current line of work.

So this time, now that she had lost faith in Soul Guard contracting, she would resign, unless her skills were irreplaceable for the next assignment. It was probably for the best, anyway—she didn’t want to damage Mami’s reputation if it ever came out that she was seeing a subordinate.

The summons came soon enough: she was to appear at an unfamiliar address in Kazamino.

A short train ride took her into the city center, on the inner edge of shrinking Mitakihara. Here, the MSY’s presence was represented by a few large office complexes, corporate outposts of the most generic kind.

She found her way into one, scanning her ID at the door and her soul gem at the security desk. Then she found her way to the right conference room and waited; the message had been vague at best about why she was here, but she was used to that. Soul mage work could rarely be referred to directly.

She settled in, grabbing water from the side counter, then synchronizing her phone with the room. She checked the calendar, then her update feed, then sent a few messages to her parents.

And when she finally ran out of things to do, she stared at the ceiling for a long time, feeling the comings and goings of the soul gems around her, eavesdropping on the edges of thought clouds, fantasizing about being back at the tower.

This close to HQ, it was doubtful she would be dealing with anything like Seoyun. More likely, she was being asked to help with an ugly case—a girl with a soul‐draining power, perhaps, or an unusual type of trauma. Nothing pleasant, but nothing personally dangerous. Probably.

Finally, the door opened and she looked down, then almost jumped out of her skin.

“Thanks for waiting,” Akemi Homura said, an adjutant closing the door behind her. “My previous meeting ran somewhat late.”

“No problem, Akemi‐san,” Akari said, hollowly. “I wasn’t busy.”

“Indeed,” Homura said, placing a paper folder onto the table, along with a cup of coffee, lightly fragrant on the air.

Akari stared for a bit, taking in the notion of the First Executive sitting across from her, rifling through some papers. Up close, she looked entirely ordinary, her incredible flowing hair confined to a ponytail. Yet the atmosphere she projected was completely different from Mami—businesslike, and Akari couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable, like there was something she had forgotten to do.

“Indeed, you’re not busy,” Homura repeated, without looking up from her notes. “And that’s a bit of a problem, isn’t it? This Soul Guard attaché role isn’t exactly filling your hours, nor is it giving you satisfaction. It’s a waste of your abilities.”

Akari felt compelled to nod. She wouldn’t have put it in quite those terms, but Homura wasn’t wrong.

Even if it felt a little like admitting she had been shamefully idle.

Homura clasped her hands together, tilting her head.

“That’s why the Executive is establishing a new research initiative, geared specifically towards matters of the soul,” she said. “We’ve decided that the current state of this kind of research is too haphazard, especially for so important a topic. We’d like to push it more aggressively, and put it under closer Science Division supervision.”

Homura looked at her, clearly expecting some kind of response, but Akari needed to chew on the topic.

She ducked her head, and tried to figure out what was going on.

“I’m not sure exactly what you’re getting at, to be honest,” she said. “You want me to do research? I thought there would be something like this already. I’d hardly be expert enough.”

“That’s just the thing,” Homura said, looking her squarely in the eyes. “It’s a very important topic. A very dangerous topic. We’ve generally seen fit to pursue a policy of… enlightened neglect.”

Homura waited a moment, then tapped the folder with a finger, indicating what Akari realized was a picture of her, from quite a few years back.

“You’re wondering why you. The truth is, we’ve kept our eyes on you. On all the soul mages, of course, but your reviews have always been quite good, and you’re old. Almost as old as us. That matters.”

Akari shook her head.

“But what changed? Why start doing something now?” Akari asked. “Was it what happened in Korea?”

Homura motioned for her to wait as she flipped through her folder.

“We’ve gotten too big,” she said, finally. “Even the most obscure attack vectors have to be considered. There have been more close calls than we’ve publicly acknowledged. We can no longer afford mere security through obscurity.”

She gestured at a sheaf of papers she had pulled out of her folder, then smiled slightly, with more warmth than Akari had thought possible.

“If you agree to join, you’d have access. My personal opinion has been that this knowledge is likely to be dangerous, and ripe for abuse, but I have been persuaded that this is now the lesser evil, if under your supervision.”

Akari tried to think it all through. Why would the First Executive personally try to recruit her, when she knew Akari was quite ready to take on a different role and shouldn’t need convincing?

“What exactly are you asking me to do?” she asked.

Homura’s lip quirked slightly.

“Mami‐san says you have potential as a researcher,” Homura said. “You have the right kind of drive, and the right kind of intelligence. So, it would make sense to set you up a bit. Nominally, you’d answer to Chitose Yuma as Division Head, but in practice, other than the occasional report, you’ll be free to do your own thing, hire your own people.”

Akari couldn’t help but be boggled. Her? Managing people? Doing research? And did Homura know how Mami knew her? Had Mami been involved in this?

“I know,” Homura said. “This isn’t something you’re trained for, so we’ll give you a bit of a mentor. Don’t worry. Like us, you’ve had decades of prime adulthood. You’ll find it makes you far more prepared than you think.”

Homura didn’t have to elaborate on what us meant.

A thought crossed Akari’s mind, one she hesitated before voicing.

“Why aren’t you setting up some kind of research institute? Something more proper, like the Demonology Center?”

Homura smiled, and this time the smile chilled rather than warmed.

“Would you put a dozen very rare, valuable soul mages in one place to do dangerous research?” Homura asked, smile unbroken. “I wouldn’t. Not unless I had to.”

She pinned Akari with her gaze for a moment, and then the smile faded back into something more normal.

“Take some time to think about it,” she said. “A week, I’d say. And now…”

Homura shuffled the paper at her side, bringing another set of documents to the top, neatly clipped together.

“I’d like to get to know you a bit better. What is it you want out of life?”

Akari blinked once, twice, then cleared her throat rhetorically.

“I, um, well, when I was a girl I wanted to make a difference. With the way things are, all the despair in the world. I didn’t exactly know what I was bargaining with, but I’ve tried to stay true to that.”

She paused, waiting to see if Homura wanted to ask something more. Instead, Homura motioned her to go on.

“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve done that good a job. I’m sure it says that in your files. Thanks to the MSY I haven’t had to worry too much about material concerns, but I haven’t really been satisfied.”

“You did some good work for the MHD while you were there,” Homura commented. “Why did you quit?”

Akari took a breath, a few old images automatically flashing through her mind.

“It was too stressful,” she said. “And I don’t think I was doing very well. My cases ended poorly.”

“You got some of the hardest cases,” Homura said. “I don’t think that’s fair to yourself.”

Akari swallowed.

“But no one could blame you for leaving,” Homura said, before she had to say anything. “You had some similar successes with the Soul Guard, including this recent incident in Korea.”

“I would hardly call that a success,” Akari said, so relieved at the topic change that she spoke too quickly.

“Your involvement was a net positive,” Homura said.

She closed her folder, then stood up, stretching a hand out for Akari to shake. Akari stared at it a moment, surprised both by the non‐Japanese gesture and the abruptness at which their conversation had ended. Had she said something wrong?

She shook Homura’s hand.

“I look forward to seeing what you’re capable of,” Homura said, nodding. “Both in the lab and with… my friend. She could use someone, I think.”

Akari was too shocked to interrupt, and Homura continued:

“She’s a lot more vulnerable than she looks. I think you know that. Take good care of her. It means a lot to me.”

Then Homura turned on her heels and left.

Akari accepted the offer.

She had known she would from the very beginning. Just like everything before it, the Soul Guard posting had failed to grab her, failed to elicit in her more than a sense of inadequacy. She had wanted to save the world from despair and this was all she was doing?

Her mother would have told her to settle—had told her to settle. She had told her that not everyone was destined to make big waves, and maybe her wish was trying to make her difference in a small way.

She couldn’t bring herself to believe that, and so she found herself on yet another career path, riding an autocab out into Mitakihara Old Town.

Old Town was not called that for its historical architecture or its nostalgia. The term was brutally literal, referring to a sector of the city filled with empty, depopulated buildings that no one had ever paid to demolish.

There had been a few half‐hearted efforts by the city and various NGOs to make use of the area for parks, markets, and open space. Some had even been successful. But no one Akari knew ever ventured anywhere out of those few successes. As far as she knew, it was a den of drug labs, homeless squatters, and shifty operations which preferred isolation to amenities and easy access.

What she was doing fell into the last category. Working with grief cubes and soul gems was not just worth hiding, it was also potentially dangerous, especially to civilian populations. Isolation was simply good policy.

She knew all that, and she was still unprepared for what awaited her when her cab doors swung open and she could see something other than her tinted windows.

The streets were barren and the sidewalks overgrown. The mid‐rise office buildings around her were in no better shape, sporting faded signage, cracked edifices, and broken windows. What trees there were had grown huge and misshapen, ripping apart the pavement.

There was a peculiar kind of silence—the chirping of birds, the distant sound of wind, the clattering noise of a vagabond pushing a cart down the road two blocks away, thankfully not in her direction. The air smelled a mix of nature and dust.

The building in front of her looked no better than the rest. Only careful inspection revealed a set of concealed cameras, and that the doorway looked recently used and a bit too clean.

It was all rather unpromising.

“Not a bad place,” Mami said, looking up the side of the building. “Plenty of space. Depends what’s inside.”

To her surprise, the door opened immediately when she tried to open it, registering her metrics like any good modern system. She had expected, perhaps, a soul gem scan.

Instead, she found herself staring down a magical girl just behind the doorway, whose magic danced over her skin as she passed. Was that the real security?

“This isn’t a core facility,” Mami whispered, leaning over. “Out here, it pays to be careful, and the only real security comes from magical girls. Though we have the basic mundane security.”

In the atrium was a small arrangement of chairs leading to an empty security desk, behind which were the hallways and staircases that led into the rest of the building. This was the waiting area.

A pair of young women were standing five feet behind the guard, and it took Akari a moment to register the soul gem signatures, then that she hadn’t noticed them any sooner. It took lots of skill to hide that well, especially from her. Moreover, why would anyone bother?

“Sadachi Shiori,” the one in front said, bowing politely. “I’ve been asked to get you started around here.”

She hesitated a bit, glancing at her companion, and then Mami piped up.

“Yuma‐chan. I didn’t expect you to be here.”

“I’m just here to observe, Mami‐nee‐san.”

Akari’s anxiety level spiked—this was the Science Division head? Akari hadn’t been told she would be visiting.

She took a long look. Chitose Yuma was tall, fresh‐faced, with none of the hard edges Homura displayed so prominently. That belied expectations.

“Please don’t be nervous,” Yuma said, shaking her head, long hair fluttering in the air. “I just wanted to get out of my office a bit, see the rollout for myself. I won’t be evaluating anything.”

She seemed friendly enough, Akari supposed.

Shiori gestured Akari forward, and they made their way up the stairs. The first floor was intended for office space and lunch areas. The upper floors were where any work would be carried out, behind an array of glass doors.

Shiori showed them through a few of the rooms, where there were countertops laid out in parallel columns like a real research lab. Akari recognized much of the equipment: spectrometers for gem emission measurements, a custom photometer for corruption measurement—still an inexact science, at best—and a set of grief containment vessels. The last could have easily been mistaken for elaborately‐ornamented glass cloches, but Akari had seen their like before. There was a specialist in the MSY somewhere who made these, no two alike, the glass streaked through with patterns of color and sometimes brass.

“So have you decided what you want to do?” Shiori asked, when they seated themselves into her new office.

“I poked around a bit in the files I was sent,” Akari said. “There’s been a lot of research into complex soul manipulation, enchantment and the like, but not very much into fundamental topics like corruption, the soul‐body link, the despair spiral. I want to start there, from the basics.”

Suddenly, she felt Yuma staring at her from the corner of the room.

“There’s a good reason that hasn’t been studied,” Mami said, clasping her hands in front of her face. “All of that requires subjecting mages to unpleasant, or even dangerous conditions. Just an unfriendly field of study.”

Akari shook her head.

“But very important,” she said. “That’s the kind of thing that would make a real difference. Imagine if we learned how to suspend a despair spiral, or stretch grief cubes a bit longer. I know that’s treading on Incubator ground, but that would save lives.”

Mami’s look made her uncomfortable, so she appended:

“It’s also dangerous to us as a group not to know what is possible. The magical girl in Korea, Seoyun—her abilities worked by interacting with corruption somehow. We have to know.”

“It’s a pretty good point,” Yuma said, leaning against the wall. “The potential benefits are quite high. Provided the knowledge isn’t misused.”

Akari was starting to sense that there was more going on here than met the eye, but also that she probably shouldn’t ask.

“There will be plenty of supervision,” Mami said, looking at Yuma.

“There’s some old research on the subject from back before the moratorium,” Yuma said. “I’ll send you the documentation. It’s going to be heavily redacted, though. Not a very savory source. Mami‐nee‐san, let’s speak outside for a bit.”

The two of them stepped out, probably for a telepathy session that would have been impolite to have in front of others.

I wonder what that was about, Shiori thought.

Do you think she’ll be alright? Mami thought, shaking her head.

If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have let this get off the ground, Yuma thought. Homura‐nee‐chan too, despite her concerns. I’m glad Songpa finally changed her mind, in a way.

Yuma made a face, tapping her fingers against her arm. Mami couldn’t help but be reminded of when she was younger.

As long as there is adequate supervision and she doesn’t try anything too stupid, the likeliest disaster is a demon outbreak. Even worst case, we’ll only lose the lab. I know that sounds callous.

It does.

That’s actually not the only reason I called you out here. I just received word: the Sato clan has voted to support RC7071. That gives us enough votes for passage, but just barely. Shizuki wants all hands on deck, now.

Mami felt her heart skip a beat.

“You can take my car,” Yuma said.

Rules Committee Act #7071—numbered from the beginning of the current charter—had been submitted to the Legal Subcommittee nearly a year ago, by Shizuki Tsubasa (SR, Mitakihara). Since then it had slowly wound its way through the various committees, alternating between languishing in near‐death for long periods and sparking furious debate.

Significant parts of the MSY’s political elite felt that the Charter of 2059 was seriously flawed, but opinions were divided between the Reformists, who felt that the Charter was only in need of some moderate refurbishment, and the Expansionists, who viewed expanding the reach of the MSY as a moral obligation, and were willing to make considerable concessions to make it happen.

This question of “Manifest Destiny”—a term borrowed from American history, and one that Mami wished no one in their faction had ever been stupid enough to use—dominated the political debate of the day, coloring considerations about centralization, grief cube management, corporate operations, and many other mind‐numbingly difficult topics.

Importantly, the public side of this debate included another faction, the Japanists, who had driven so much of the nationalist 2059 Charter. They had been much larger then, and their votes had been needed for the Charter to pass at all.

But since then, Akemi Homura’s warnings against their policies had proved almost prophetic, weakening their public support and convincing many elected officials to switch sides. At length, especially after the Triad incidents, the Japanists were effectively shut out of the governing coalition. Their greatest victory had set the course of their destruction, a fate hopefully not about to be repeated.

Either way, Mami was here. A primarily Expansionist version of RC7071 had reached the floor, shepherded by Shizuki and Kuroi influence, including just enough Reformist planks to pass. As a member of the Leadership Committee, Mami was usually absent, her abstention on all votes a ritual formality. Except for times like this.

But as her and Homura’s votes entered the tally, crossing the threshold needed to invoke Article VII and begin the referendum process, Mami felt no sense of relief or triumph, even as the Expansionist faction—and many Reformists—rose to their feet in applause.

Even as she gave her prepared speech, lauding all those they would save, all she could see was the work.

How many would she save? How many would she fail?

Japan, April 2068.

“You want to step down from the Soul Guard?” Akari asked.

“I’m thinking about it,” Mami said. “I’ve brought it up with Akemi‐san and the Leadership Committee. With the new Charter, foreign relations is going to be a big deal. There’s going to be a new Head of Recruitment and Diplomacy, and I think I’d be suited. I used to do a lot of that kind of work.”

Akari frowned, closing her eyes for a moment. She hadn’t been sure what to expect, when Mami invited her over to her apartment. The obvious thoughts crossed her mind, of course, but so far, all they had done today was eat cake and watch a movie—“Stars Crossed Over Venus”, a sappy sci‐fi romance.

Still, Akari always enjoyed Mami’s plush furnishings and expensive holo‐theater setup. She had also gotten the chance to lean her head onto Mami’s other ample assets, which she appreciated.

Akari lifted her head slightly, turning to catch a glimpse of Mami’s expression.

“That’s not the only reason, is it?” she said.

Mami sighed.

“No, it’s not. Managing the Soul Guard is taking a lot out of me. It’s not the work. It’s the… everything else. The case reports, the injuries. I’d be happier not knowing about any of it.”

Mami ran her hand through Akari’s hair nervously.

“It’ll still be a lot of responsibility,” Akari said. “And it’d mean dealing with outside magical girls. You saw in Korea how that can be.”

Mami’s hand froze. Akari reached up to gently place her own hand upon it.

“I know,” Mami said. “I just have to hope it’s different.”

Akari let her hand fall back down, and Mami began running hers through Akari’s hair again, as they were both quiet for a moment.

“Also, if I don’t take the position,” Mami said, a small quirk now on her lips, “Takara‐san will be the likely pick.”

Akari cringed sympathetically.

She was tempted to let the conversation lapse there, as Mami clearly intended, but she knew the ultimate point had yet to be discussed. Mami would just keep worrying herself over it if Akari didn’t act.

“If you took this role, you’d be away from Mitakihara more often, and for longer,” Akari said.

Mami looked away, hiding a guilty face.

“I would happily bring you with me, whenever you could take time off from the lab,” Mami said.

Akari thought about it, casting her eyes at the ceiling, then back, toward Mami’s face. There wasn’t a good answer here, was there? Just like Akari, Mami couldn’t abandon the work.

She ought to give some answer, though. Of the two of them, Akari had far more relationship experience—though that wasn’t saying much. Akari was still astounded to know that, somehow, she was Mami’s first girlfriend. If they broke up, who knew how long it would be until Mami opened her heart again?

“We’re both adults,” Akari said. “More than that, honestly. We can make this work long‐distance if we have to. And if we can’t, I promise I’ll tell you before our relationship is damaged.”

Mami was silent for a few seconds, before turning her eyes back towards Akari.

Thank you, she thought, with warmth.

Akari smiled back.

“We have all the time in the world to figure things out, after all.”

Mami took the job shortly after.

With the new Charter came new changes in policy towards external magical girl groups. The initial expansion of the MSY across Japan had been fairly ad hoc, until the Charter of 2059 had made MSY membership mandatory for all magical girls within the MSY’s claim of Japanese jurisdiction, and all but forbidden outside it. Expansion of the MSY beyond Japan would necessarily require a third model.

First, external magical girl groups—a solo magical girl counted as her own group—could now apply for “associate” status, which granted access to trade, training, aid, and travel privileges. This was similar to existing foreign arrangements—in China, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Oceania, and the western seaboard of the Americas, which would be grandfathered in—but much more standardized. The only costs were adherence to certain basic rules meant to maintain peace, and the granting of reciprocal rights to the MSY’s membership.

This was a deliberately appealing deal, meant to rope in as many magical girls and as much territory as possible, so that the MSY’s cultural influence could more easily spread throughout the fragmented magical girl world.

Second, “associate” groups could apply for full MSY membership. Officially, to placate the Reformists and Japanists, the process was modeled on the European Union’s, and required candidates to meet several substantial requirements: establishing a record of neighborly behavior, undergoing a trial period in the MSY’s grief cube sharing system, and facing a “values‐compatibility” assessment, among other obstacles.

Unofficially, there were waivers and shortcuts for most everything, and the order of the day was getting anyone and everyone to apply as soon as practicable, or even to apply for them. For particularly inconvenient groups—say, those that had longstanding blood feuds with their neighbors—the MSY would sponsor a formal mediation process, sometimes outright paying settlements itself in the name of encouraging peace and progress.

It was Mami’s job to handle all of that, conducting diplomacy, lubricating the MSY bureaucracy, and generally making things happen, by hook or by crook. She put together a new set of specialists underneath her to help, some from her Soul Guard days, especially those conducting dangerous in‐person mediation. Mami had confided mixed feelings to Akari about that—in‐person negotiations were a favorite assignment of hers, and she longed to resume them personally, even after the disaster that had led to at Songpa.

Meanwhile, their relationship progressed, in an almost banal fashion. When Mami was in Mitakihara, they went on dates, they cooked meals together, they helped each other train magic, and just had fun. When Mami was away, and Akari couldn’t join her, they regularly talked online, late into sleepless nights: about magic, the Law of Cycles, the soul, grief, and other mysteries when Akari was worked up, about politics, ethics, the future, or the past when Mami was.

Akari finally moved into Mami’s apartment, too. Kyubey, for once, commented that the action was logical.

Japan, December 2068.

In the year since she had started at the “lab”, Akari had hired two junior magical girls as helpers, as well as pair of TNC technicians who stayed strictly outside the main lab space. They brainstormed, they poked grief cubes, they ate drone‐delivered takeout in Akari’s office.

According to the classified records Yuma had given her, the edges of the corruption–grief‐cube–soul‐gem system were more malleable than commonly presumed. Grief cubes could be forced to take on more capacity, corruption could take all kinds of unusual forms, and, perhaps most worryingly, there were hints that soul gems were not truly immalleable constructs. The only rule consistently followed was that using magic led to corruption somewhere.

With this information—the research notes of a half‐dozen authors that Akari suspected were mostly not MSY—she had identified two initial promising directions, and a third she didn’t feel safe taking on. After some negotiation, she had agreed to let a different researcher—one Tamaki Mai—take on the study of non‐grief cube corruption.

She would take on the energy gap question—the question triple‐underlined in one of the notes. The question was fundamental: there seemed to be no consistent mapping whatsoever between the amount of corruption generated and the amount of energy generated in the real world. Different magical girls generated energy levels spanning numerous orders of magnitude, and some magical girls—famously, Akemi Homura—could even amplify the efforts of others.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” one of her researchers said, projecting the latest set of numbers onto the screen in her room. “It’s like there just isn’t a limit.”

That was Etsuko Hina, one of her researchers. She had come up with a scheme to probe the magic‐energy connection—find someone with a wish‐granted power, then contrive a scenario so that using the power would perform a variable amount of work. The hypothesis had been that the task would get progressively more difficult for the magical girl as the energy requirement increased.

Instead, the energy requirement seemed not to matter at all. The girl would simply generate more and more energy without changing the amount of magic used—until, at some unclear point, their experimental apparatus would simply stop working. How it stopped working varied, but at some point the magic would simply bypass whatever trick they were using and achieve its effect directly. Or snap the carbon rope they were using.

“Maybe there isn’t a limit,” Togame Nao, her other researcher, said. “The Incubators always say that they’re using us for power, to save the universe. Maybe there’s just a lot of power.”

“I’ll try to remember that the next time I’m getting overpowered in a demon fight,” Hina said, sarcastically. “Really, though, you’d think that’d be more obvious.”

“Maybe not,” Akari said. “What historical records we have imply that we’ve been getting stronger and faster over time, and there have been a few records of mages achieving tremendous, impossible feats.”

“After which they immediately died from power drain,” Nao pointed out.

“Yes, but still.”

The discussion only meandered in circles after that, and they headed home shortly after.

It would have been easy for Akari to simply step into a cab and leave, but as she stepped outside, she felt too restless to just go home.

That was how it always was, she thought. She was never happy just staying in a box, plugging away at her own little problems. Not while there were other things going on, just outside.

She took a breath, breathing in the moist, chill air of the evening, and looked around her. Why not take a walk? That would help her gain perspective.

She turned down the street, taking a moment to wave vaguely at the night guard, who peered curiously at her over the crumbling roof.

So she turned down the street, stepping gingerly over shattered and crumbling pavement, the weeds and ornamental plants so overgrown that they could barely be distinguished. Shadows lay deep between the buildings, and what streetlamps were intact had long since been cut off from the power grid.

This was hardly the neighborhood for wandering, least of all for an apparent young woman. It took only a short while for her to get lost entirely.

But someone like her could take care of herself.

The moon shone down upon Akari as she turned a corner, drawing her eye. With her inhuman eyes, she saws its splendor, and the way it reflected against the buildings, facades of ash that covered spindles of charred coal. It was easy to imagine the way they must have once been, full of narrow ambition and heavy industry. So, too, it was easy to imagine how the road weaved forward, as she knew it must, towards decrepit public housing, neighborhoods where the poor and aging of Mitakihara languished indefinitely.

The MSY wasn’t powerful enough to save the world. It couldn’t even save its own city. Against decay like this, what power they had seemed painfully hollow. If only they could just unlock more—

It would take a miracle to save this world.

Akari sighed and shook the thoughts from her head, then turned back. She needed to get back to work.

Japan, June 2069.

“I bet Mami‐san would be really good at it,” Kyouko said.

Mami’s ears perked up at the mention of her name. She had tuned out of the conversation, preferring to listen in to Homura’s side of the table, where Yuma and Homura were debating the relative merits of sous vide cooking.

“Good at what?” she asked, catching Kyouko’s eye.

“Telepathy. Mind‐reading,” Kyouko said, lilting the second word as she pointed her chopsticks at Mami. “We were talking about how useful it’d be for your work.”

Kyouko turned to talk enthusiastically at Akari, waving the chopsticks in the air.

“Hey, hey, did you know? Mami is one of the MSY’s biggest experts in new power development, if you’re going outside of what’s natural for you.”

“Yeah, I do know,” Akari said, looking a bit subdued by the company. “She’s, uh, told me.”

“Bragged, you mean,” Kyouko said. “Anyway, I dated a mind‐reader once. It was crazy useful, for all kinds of things.”

Mami smiled slightly in polite acknowledgment.

“Well, it might be, but you know I’ve always found it a bit intrusive,” she said. “So I don’t want to go that way.”

“But, I mean, is that a good enough reason?” Akari asked. “The MSY is one of the biggest organizations for good in the world. I’ve listened to your stories about all the problems you’re facing. Would it really hurt that much? Learning some telepathy skills just isn’t all that big a deal.”

Mami blinked at her, wondering how exactly she could respond politely.

“We’ve tried telling her that before,” Homura said, daintily slicing at a piece of ribeye. “She insists it’s unnecessary.”

“Not everyone is like you two,” Kyouko said, rolling her eyes. “It’s normal for some people to have scruples.”

“Let’s not do this right now,” Mami said, raising her hands. “Let’s just eat.”

The conversation shifted elsewhere, but the topic stayed in her mind. Akari seemed a bit off the rest of the dinner, as if something was bothering her.

So Mami asked about it when the time came, later that night, after Kyouko and the others had found their excuses to depart her apartment.

“It’s not that big a deal because telepathy isn’t just breaking into people’s heads without their permission,” Akari said, shaking her head. “That’s exactly the kind of perception the Telepaths’ Guild tries to fight against. It can do all kinds of other things, like foster empathy, help mages work together, improve mood and morale. Help with relationships.”

Akari’s eyes glanced past her as she said the last line.

“It’s sort of narrow‐minded to think of it as just some kind of insidious thing,” Akari said.

Mami looked down at the other girl, who was seated on their couch, trying to read her expression.

“I…” she began, before pressing a hand to her face.

“I knew that. But honestly, that other stuff has never seemed that important to me. The divisions I’ve run have worked fine without any of that, so…”

She furrowed her brow. She knew there were others who were much closer to their lieutenants, but she just didn’t run things like that. But with Akari, well, she was the best thing that had ever happened to her, and that, at least, gave her new incentives.

“Is this important to you?” she asked. “That I maybe learn a little telepathy?”

“It is,” Akari said, shrugging. “But you know, I didn’t want to ask just because of that. I’ve dated non‐telepaths. But it makes things a lot easier.”

Mami stood still for a few seconds, tapping her foot on the floor.

“I’ll think about it,” she said. “Not for work, or espionage, but for us. Just… let me think about it.”

Akari nodded.

Japan, February 2070.

The charter rewrite had turned the foreign situation into a chaotic mess.

Mami had expected that, of course. They all had. There was just no way anything so fraught with power and wealth and raw human emotion could become anything else.

Yet somehow, even though she quite literally signed on for the role, she found herself unprepared.

In just over two years, the official membership rolls of the MSY had more than doubled.

It had been a very good idea, in retrospect, to concede such a large degree of local autonomy for new territory in the 2067 Charter. The MSY’s bureaucracy could barely keep up as it was.

Prospects varied, of course. The situation in China had actually improved, since full representation and a formal system of delegated local rule was leagues better than the previous mishmash of indirect representation and overlapping jurisdictions. In the Americas, by contrast, frustrations were mounting over a heavy application backlog, amidst disputes over local politics, free trade zones, and petty tyrants. Southeast Asia had bright spots, like Vietnam, but overall the region was tense—too many attacks on girls who joined the MSY, too often repaid in blood. It was enough that Mami had asked to stop receiving detailed combat reports.

The problem she had to confront today was Korea. Well, not just the Korea she had expected, but also North Korea.

The world’s longest humanitarian crisis, the open sore on the face of Asia, North Korea’s horrendous politics had carried over into the magical girl realm. Over a century ago, true believers had fought a simmering war across the demilitarized zone long after most of the mundane fighting had stopped, and the scars of that conflict remained, even as North Korean refugees began to trickle south. Some were welcomed, others tolerated, and still others forced back, or worse. Raids became common in both directions—south for supplies and food, north for bountiful grief cubes. Bodies piled up.

A ceasefire eventually took hold, brokered by the Incubators, but the gaping cut of the DMZ and CCZ ran across the magical world too, dividing the two Koreas territorially, culturally, and institutionally, with repercussions extending throughout and beyond Seoul. Only the trade economy was different: the border was porous, and the locals had grown dependent on the flow of grief cubes south, in exchange for material goods headed north.

And that’s what the MSY had stepped into. The teams that joined couldn’t simply maintain the old patterns, not with the MSY flooding the markets with both grief cubes and material resources. This was fine for the residents of Seoul, but decidedly not for those further north, from either side of the border. They had grown dependent on arbitraging their way to a living in an otherwise precarious environment, managing the bilateral trade.

The MSY had predicted some degree of economic recoil. That, at least, was foreshadowed by their pre‐charter revision experiences, particularly in China. But they hadn’t realized how essential the cross‐DMZ trade was, both economically and for the local identity. In a strange way the border girls were kindred spirits, closer to each other than any outsiders, despite the lingering hostility.

Now the entire region around the DMZ was in a state of inflammation, filled with a searing anger against the invaders who had come to destroy their way of life. Joining the MSY was out of the question. Those from just south of the DMZ filed formal protests and complained bitterly to the teams in Seoul. They harassed MSY operations and demanded compensation, with hints about escalation.

Mami had little intelligence about those from North Korea, but what little she knew suggested they were well past merely threatening escalation.

“How the hell did I let this become such a mess?” Mami groaned, placing her forehead onto the table. “This should be solvable, but it all just gets so complex. Just pay them off, the Rules Committee says, but then everyone gets jealous of each other and the committees start asking why you’re spending so much money.”

She wasn’t exactly being coherent, she knew, but she hoped her tone was sarcastic enough.

“One should never be surprised,” Homura said, in a passive voice. “When has helping anyone ever generated anything but annoying complications? But we’ll get through it.”

Mami didn’t look up. She never said so, but she hated how insufferable Homura could be at times like this, smug like she had seen everything before. So what if she had overlooked one rural area? The MSY was expanding simultaneously on four separate continents!

“Anyway, the situation might be bad, but it’s not really a threat to our overall position,” Homura said. “The locals in Seoul see the benefits of working with us, and our enhanced procedures. The natural solution for the traders in the north is to work with us too. Assistance needs to be tied to cooperation. That’s how incentives work.”

This time Mami did look up, glaring Homura in the eye.

“You’re saying we shouldn’t help them so they’ll be forced to join us,” she said. “Even though we’re the ones who upended their way of life.”

“A favorable trade environment is not an inviolable right,” Homura said. “Nor is subsidizing one a wise strategy.”

Mami narrowed her eyes. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard logic like that. It wasn’t that it was wrong, exactly.

“Being selfish isn’t why I’m here, Akemi‐san,” she said.

“I’m not being selfish either,” Homura said. “Getting these girls into the MSY will make them far wealthier than the border trade ever could, and triple their life expectancy besides.”

They stared at each other for a long moment, anger against ice, until it was Homura who relented, turning her head away.

“You’re right that it is cold logic,” she said. “But we can’t really do better. Not if we want to change things. I wish the world were different, but you don’t get perfect solutions. Not without, well, a wish. I never really mastered the art of that.”

Homura leaned back in her chair, gaining a wistful look Mami was familiar with.

Mami chose not to interrupt, glancing awkwardly around Homura’s office. There wasn’t much to see: the basic high‐end corporate furniture, a window out onto the city, the faint whiff of magic. The only dose of sentimentality was a framed portrait of an October Three party—not that anyone outside the Mitakihara Four could identify it as such.

It was only natural that Homura keep her eccentricity contained within her home apartment, she supposed.

“It’s all academic anyway,” Homura said finally, leaning back forward. “We both agree it may not be a great idea, and it would be a hard sell anyway. What are you going to tell the Rules Committee?”

Mami straightened out in her chair, finding to her surprise that her mood had improved.

“The truth,” she said. “South Korea is too sensitive to safely play games with, not when everyone still remembers Songpa.”

“They do,” Homura said. “It really hurts us that we can’t really know what’s going in North Korea. If we did, we might be able to ease tensions, make this less sensitive politically.”

“There’s always diplomacy,” Mami said. “If we even knew who to talk to.”

“Of course,” Homura said, folding her hands. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”

Mami’s contacts signaled her for her next meeting—more precisely, she had been muting the notification for the past fifteen minutes. It was really time she got going.

Plus, she conceded to herself, she really didn’t want to have any more of that conversation. Yuma had been pushing for a while for some kind of foreign information service, a Soul Guard agency tasked with gathering data and contacts outside their borders, occasionally taking action as necessary.

That was how Yuma would describe it, at least.

It was an intelligence agency, of course, or so close to one the distinction didn’t matter, and the committees were divided on the subject. Once they started going down that road, who knew where they would end up? Would they start manufacturing “incidents”?

It was tempting to think that because it was us, it wouldn’t get out of control, but that seemed like a dangerous assumption to make. Kyouko and several of the others agreed.

The MSY could take a bit of uncertainty, for now.

Japan, March 2070.

The two years since their relationship started had passed surprisingly slowly—in a good way. Years were supposed to blur together at their age, and yet it felt as if they had known each other for far longer than they had, made more memories than the days would normally allow.

That wasn’t to say life was perfect—Mami was away on diplomatic missions all too often, working and worrying far more than was healthy, while Akari and her team struggled to make headway against her chosen research topic, the energy gap.

But these were trifling concerns in the grand scheme of things. So why was some part of Akari still unsatisfied, some nagging teenage version of her asking, day after day, if she was really fulfilling her wish?

As much as she hated to admit it, part of the problem was probably just comparing herself to Mami. Internal statistical estimates suggested that Mami’s Recruiting and Diplomacy work had saved over two hundred magical girl lives in the last year alone, not to mention the massive quality‐of‐life improvements for thousands more, and their families. Meanwhile, Akari had achieved only a failed series of experiments.

You’re being too hard on yourself, Akari, Mami thought, entering the room with two cups of freshly‐brewed tea. Sorry for the aphorism, but it needs to be said. Again.

Mami sat down on the couch next to her, wrapping an arm around her.

Akemi‐san is still impressed you convinced Kyubey to let you experiment with extracting energy directly from soul gems, Mami continued, using her most persuasive smile. She mentioned it again the other day.

Probably because he knew it was a dead end, as long as the gem is intact, Akari grumbled, leaning into Mami’s embrace. And besides, you helped me do that.

It was worth learning, Mami thought. You know what Chitose‐san always says about failed experiments. And there’s no shame in making use of the resources available to you—even if someone might think an adorable young kouhai was taking advantage of her lonely old senpai.

Akari turned to face Mami, who returned a completely innocent look.

“I’m nearly fifty,” Akari said.

“Oh, so now you admit it,” Mami said, tilting her head.

Akari shook her head, laughing softly. Somehow, teasing each other about their ages never grew old.

She sat up, and took a sip of the tea Mami had brought out. There was no sense in letting Mami’s expert work go cold.

They enjoyed their tea together for a while, but Akari couldn’t fully shake her earlier thoughts from her head. Mami was older, yes, but by the time she was thirty, she had founded the MSY, achieving more good than Akari possibly ever could.

She knew Mami could read those thoughts, too. Kyouko had been right, the woman really was a natural telepath.

Perhaps that was why Mami was suddenly so silent, looking thoughtfully at her tea. Or was something else at play?

“I’m thinking about restarting in‐person negotiations in Korea,” Mami said suddenly. “Those were productive, the last time I did them, and the moment may be ripe.”

Akari thought she understood, even without a mind‐read.

“Mami,” she began.

You know you don’t need to stay, just for me, would have been the rest of the sentence, but Mami didn’t let her finish.

“I want you to go with me,” Mami interrupted. “I know how you feel, and maybe you’ll find something satisfying working with me. You could let your assistants manage the lab while you manage my security. And there are some Korean experts that might be worth talking to, as part of our new partnership agreements. It would be partially a sabbatical.”

Akari took a small breath. Mami had clearly put some thought into this.

“I know you wouldn’t want to put your career on hold,” Mami said. “But the research hasn’t been moving fast, right? Maybe you just need a break, some time to get a new perspective. When’s the last time you had a vacation?”

More than two years ago, Akari thought automatically, but bit her lip. What a thing for Mami to say, since the woman herself never took vacations either.

“I know we haven’t gotten to spend as much time together as we’d like,” Mami said, putting her hand on Akari’s. “If we aren’t going to take vacations, we can at least do this together. What do you say?”

Akari looked down. What was there to say? She could ask for time to think about it, but it was obviously a good idea, mutually beneficial. It felt like the only possible reason to say no, in the end, would be pure stubbornness.

It also felt a little like she had just been completely outmaneuvered in a diplomatic negotiation.

Sorry, Mami thought, suddenly about as sheepish as Akari ever saw her. It’s just, I…

Akari could feel what she meant. Mami had been worrying about the malaise Akari was falling into again, had come up with this idea, and had gotten really excited by the prospect of going back to in‐person negotiations with Akari at her side. Overeager, perhaps.

Not to mention, there was always that worry in the back of Mami’s mind, that Akari might tire not just of her job, but of their relationship too. This plan promised to beat back both threats at once.

The latter worry was unfounded, as always, Akari thought with special emphasis. Loving Mami was a lot easier and much more rewarding than Akari’s endless struggle against her wish.

Alright, Akari thought, a smile on her lips. Let’s try it. Those poor Koreans won’t know what hit them.

An audio montage introduces the stream, highlighting the sounds and drama of major world events, as far back as the 2020s.

“This is In the Light, your weekly news podcast about happenings out there in surface world, and its impact on those us living down here.”

“Hi everyone. I’m your host, Togame Miwako. This week… well, it’s been a big week, hasn’t it? And not in a good way. As easy as it is to forget about the wider world, events of this magnitude affect us all, especially if things go sideways.”

“Here to talk us through all this is a special guest, Dr. Akino Toki, specialist on East Asian relations, who also happens to be my good friend. How are you, Dr. Akino?”

“I’m glad to be here, Togame‐san. These are dark times, with relations between North and South Korea the worst they’ve been in decades. That’s not an accident, of course. The Incubators made sure all evidence in the Songpa Incident would point to the north.”

“Why do you think things were done like that, Dr. Akino?”

“Please, you don’t have to call me that. But, no one really knows. What happened in Songpa was beyond our ability to hide, so the decision was made to ask the Incubators for assistance. It was they who chose to pin it on North Korea, claiming that a fabricated terrorist group would be too implausible for such an apparently sophisticated attack. The logic was that the mundane authorities would eventually blame North Korea anyway, so why prompt an unnecessarily long and thorough investigation that could drag in MSY affiliates?”

“We all know the Incubators can’t be relied upon to tell the whole truth. Was that their entire reason, Akino‐san?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

There is a moment of silence.

“Of course, things have not been quite so clean. Pariahs or not, even North Korea couldn’t launch a terrorist attack in Seoul without some kind of repercussions. For a while, the dance of sanctions and aid reductions and vehement denials by North Korea seemed to follow the historical pattern, with long‐time Korea watchers predicting an eventual show of conciliation by the north, leading to a cooling of tensions. This time, however, none of that has happened.”

“To those of you listening, if you haven’t already, I encourage you to pause and take a look on mundane news sources to catch up on the latest escalations. North Korea has begun raiding local shipping, as ‘compensation for illegal and unjust sanctions’, and has also managed to hack and steal a number of automated fishing vessels.

The US Seventh Fleet is deploying a carrier to the Sea of Japan in response, and just today, South Korean Ambassador Chung Ki‐nam has presented a case for further sanctions to the Tri‐Pacific Council.”

“As you’ve said, though, Akino‐san, we’ve been in these kinds of situations before, haven’t we? There’s over a century of diplomatic precedent to work with. This can’t really be worse than when they first started testing real ICBMs—I was alive for that, you know.”

“This time could be different, Togame‐san. North Korea is not in a normal state.

The current ruler of North Korea is the aging Park Sung‐won, who seized control of the country in a coup nearly twenty years ago. Some sources claim he’s on the verge of death, and while we haven’t been able to substantiate that, he hasn’t been seen in public in over a year.

It is important to remember that though North Korea has a reputation as an ironclad dictatorship, Park has never enjoyed the kind of absolute control his predecessors did. From what we can tell, he is reliant on the support of a number of key military officials, who have divided the country between them. If he is truly dying, it isn’t clear what would happen or who would be his successor.

In that context, an international crisis is tremendously destabilizing. Mundane experts have long speculated that the attack in Seoul was part of some kind of domestic power play, and might not have had the approval of the entire North Korean state. While the North Koreans themselves may or may not know better, internal factions may have decided that the truth of the matter is irrelevant if they can successfully pin the blame on their opponents.”

If Park dies, it’d be a good play—so good, everyone might try it. In the worst case, we may even see a civil war."

South Korea, April 2070.

I’m sorry to interrupt, Mami, you’ll want to see this.

Mami smiled at the others in the room, politely turning her head to indicate that she was receiving a message. She could have kept it hidden, of course, but it was the little things that helped build trust. In this case, she was in a key meeting with representatives from Paju‐si, a city between Seoul and the DMZ, and she needed it to go well.

Then she frowned, listening to what Akari had to say. She glanced over at the two representatives, who looked back at her with curious looks. As was customary, communication was telepathic, which helped avoid language snafus.

We might as well all see this, then, Mami thought.

Pardon the interruption, she thought. There’s been an incident.

She slid open a panel on the side of the table and tapped in a few quick keystrokes. The screen at the end of the table snapped to life, shimmering briefly as its holographic features spun online.

“This is the scene in Seogang‐dong today,” a female announcer said, as a drone camera panned over a pair of toppled residential towers, one of which had landed directly onto a major freeway. Cars, smoke, and helicopters circled the area.

It took Mami only a moment to place the location. Seogang‐dong was central Seoul.

“Witnesses say that there was a rumble, followed by a collapse of structures in the area. It does not appear to be a conventional explosion.”

The screen shifted, switching to long‐range surveillance footage of a freeway crossing, with on‐ramps, residential towers, and a bridge in the background. A glaring green glow enveloped the screen, followed by an ominous rumbling. As the glare faded, there was just enough time to see a huge circular chunk missing from one of the freeways and the adjacent towers, as if someone had come through with a giant laser.

The video started over, and now it zoomed into part of the detonation, a large square region focusing on the edge of a pair of skyscrapers, gathered from a composite of civilian footage. The same green flash appeared, plumes of dust, concrete, and glass manifesting out of the buildings, before the blast wave swept through the frame, blowing furniture, glass, and people out into the air, including a few objects mosaic‐censored by the news agency. The tops of the buildings themselves began to topple.

Then dust overwhelmed the scene.

That’s no ordinary explosive, Akari thought, having stepped into the doorway while the newscast was playing. This isn’t MSY territory, so it took us a while to get news, but every magical girl within four kilometers felt it. They’re still trying to get the status of the team in Seogang‐dong.

“This is obviously a great tragedy, and we have no idea about the casualties, which authorities fear number into the thousands,” the announcer said. “But after the Songpa Incident, the immediate question—”

“I want you to know, this had nothing to do with us,” one of the two Paju‐si representatives said, placing her hand on the table and switching to accented, spoken Japanese. She was obviously shaken. “We came here to negotiate. There’s no way we would try something like this.”

I wouldn’t rush to judgment like that, Mami thought. You would hardly be the prime suspects anyway.

Though we can’t rule them out just because they claim innocence, Mami thought, at Akari. Hard to think they’re lying, though. They don’t feel like it at all.

Agreed, Akari thought.

Mami had to resist the urge to try to read their minds. It would have been a major breach of trust and her own beliefs. More practically, she wasn’t sure she was good enough to avoid being caught.

She did glean a bit of surface emotions, superficially traceable. They seemed as distraught as one might expect.

My apologies, she thought, standing and bowing to the Paju‐si representatives. I must request we postpone our meeting, given current events. If you can stay in the city a bit longer, my associates will set up a new one. Of course, your lodging costs will be covered.

Of course we’ll stay, one of the representatives thought. I think the terms of our discussion might be about to change anyway.

Hiding a grimace, Mami turned to leave the room, Akari in tow.

“We have to get over there,” Mami said, stating the obvious. “Offer whatever teams we have for forensics. I’m sure the locals will want to know just as badly as we do.”

Negotiating with the local magical girls wasn’t quite as straightforward as Mami predicted. The situation was as chaotic as one might expect, with many of the locals opting to hunker down, and some of those who remained in no mood to allow outsiders in what was now a demon‐filled hunting zone.

What sealed it in the end was the reappearance of part of the original Seogang‐dong team—to be precise, one member of the team, who had been dug unconscious out of the ruins by a mundane rescue team. Waking up with what would have been crippling injuries to a mundane human, she had slipped away from the medical staff and taken herself straight to one of the local councils, screaming with accusations against another of the local teams, one she claimed had always been at their throats.

They denied being involved, of course, but no one could really prove anything either way.

And so, after precious hours had been wasted, the council had finally called the MSY, who might have the expertise to untangle things.

A skilled soul mage was a useful thing to have in an investigative team, too, and so Akari found herself stepping out of a Special Task Force vehicle into the disaster zone.

In that moment she found herself regretting either her arrival, or her magical girl status. The air that slammed into her carried with it the scent of fire and destruction—something any human could smell—but also more exotic odorants. The smell of dead or burning flesh. Of fear and despair.

The visuals had not prepared her.

She gathered herself with an effort, following the map that laid itself out on her contacts, and the guidance of their National Intelligence Service contact. Their uniforms protected them from the inquiries of other officers on‐site, though they got plenty of curious looks.

Without any buildings or trees to screen them, they were exposed to the elements, the sun bearing down upon them, some of it gleaming off of pieces of glass buried in the rubble. Only part of the debris had been cleared, and their path took them near sharp exposed steel and uncomfortably unstable ridges of concrete.

“The explosive charge used, if it even was one, was highly unusual,” the NIS officer said. “Preliminary modeling by specialized EERs suggests that the energy waveform was highly directed, almost linear. Not like a standard explosion. But it is a mystery how it could travel a short distance and abruptly terminate.”

He held up a presentation device, above which hovered an animation of the event. It held itself impressively still even as they walked.

“Needless to say, our analysts are completely stumped. It’s not clear if there’s anyone capable of this, much less who it would be. Or why they would choose something like this rather than a simple bomb.”

He put the device away.

“However, the decision has already been made to classify these kinds of details, to prevent potential panic or further instability. However, this puts us in an awful position. Without a culprit to blame, the public will go wild, and who can blame them? The pressure is on to blame someone.”

He looked at Mami meaningfully. She sighed.

“No, we don’t have a good candidate yet. We don’t want to do North Korea again, but what other options are there? And if we blame nobody, that just means we let someone else choose for us.”

“Right, well, I hope your investigation here gives you some better ideas,” the officer said.

He stopped, peering into his contacts; the ground had been clear for a while now.

“We’re here,” he said. “This is ground zero, according to our models. Not where you’d expect it, based on where the casualties are, but it matches the camera footage too. The device could have also been above us, near the highway. Assuming it was a device.”

He paused, giving Mami a look.

“Thanks for the help,” Mami said. “We’ll be alright from here.”

He nodded, then took out a cigarette and lighter, stepping away from them. He looked pointedly off into the distance, ignoring activity that was no longer his business.

Mami and Akari took the cue, leaving him behind.

Much of the MSY team was already here, blending in with some of the other investigators processing the site. Here, at ground zero, there was no one left to rescue, so they could at least operate freely. As Mami watched, one of the girls guided a familiar disguised as a small drone to look for magic traces, while another conducted a scrying ritual behind a metal privacy screen, something that involved three glass bowls of water, a soul gem, and a large mirror.

The wind picked up clouds of dust, driving a barrage of particles into their faces, reminding them to stop standing around.

“Any progress?” Mami asked, stepping up to the privacy screen.

“Some,” forensic investigator Inoue Yoko, Clairvoyant, said, without looking up. “This was a high‐impact event, so I was able to get a really good read, but all I’ve managed to do is confirm that the source arrived in an autocar, as was already expected. No occupants, but there was a backpack in the trunk, and the car was driving south. Unfortunately, the trail drops off rapidly moving backwards from there. We’ve requested a warrant for the car’s logs. I was just about to try to get up into the air and see if I could get a better read.”

“That tells us at least that this wasn’t simply a girl detonating her soul gem in a suicide bombing,” Mami said. “It’s worthwhile progress, especially if the logs have something.”

“It’s only some progress, and we probably need to move fast,” Yoko said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t tell us who did this or why. But that’s not everything the team has found. You should go talk to Ruiko over there, she found a couple of fragments of magical residue that might tell you something.”

I meant it when I said it was progress, Mami thought to Akari, as they walked away. It might not be everything, but it might be enough information to rule out any of the local teams. I hate to sound like all I care about is the politics, but there are very few magical girls capable of building a free‐standing, high‐energy magical construct. Probably fewer than ten on the whole Korean peninsula. Unfortunately, two live in Seoul.

Ruiko saw them coming, and turned to show them what she had found, a few scraps of something charred beyond recognition that she had gathered in a plastic bag. Akari could tell their value instantly, though.

She took the plastic bag, holding it up to her own soul gem for a closer look, closing her eyes. It whispered to her, a simmering brew of magical scents. Two flavors were predominant—the all‐too‐familiar taste of corruption, a malaise that seeped into one’s soul just feeling it, and the flavor of someone’s magic, someone she didn’t know.

There was something else, though, the faint whiff of another mage’s magic. Two magical girls? And something about the whole arrangement struck her as somehow familiar—

She opened her eyes slowly, feeling a chill in her heart. She looked around.

“What is it?” Ruiko asked, seeing the look on her face.

“Do you have a microscope? Or something similar?” Akari asked.

Ruiko knelt, reaching into her bag for a field microscope, which Akari placed on a small piece of flat rubble.

Looking into it, she found what she didn’t want to see.

Tiny flecks of something glassy embedded in a charred matrix, pulsing in her eyes with residual magic—no, residual soul. The mix of corruption she had been feeling resembled her own experiments with darkened soul gems, conducted on volunteers.

Another few hours, and the evidence would have been gone, she thought. There was only one likely candidate for the glassy substance.

“This is a shattered soul gem,” she said, preferring not to look up from the scope. “There’s also residual soul magic, from another magical girl. Given that we know there probably wasn’t an embodied magical girl in the car, this suggests it was some kind of forced procedure, with the soul gem likely serving as the bomb’s power source.”

Ruiko started to say something, face shocked, but coughed on something instead.

I would have thought forcing a soul gem detonation on someone else was impossible, Akari added, only to Mami. Like how powers can’t be taken without true consent. Perhaps this wasn’t a soul gem detonation, but rather a bomb which stole the energy from the victim’s soul gem, somehow.

The silence was long enough for Akari to look up, and see a pained emotion contort itself through Mami’s face.

She felt terrible for not noticing earlier, but she couldn’t just mind‐read Mami with other magical girls around—their relationship wasn’t public.

“Is it enough for you to recognize who did it?” Mami asked, finally, voice strained.

“If I met them,” Akari said, quietly, handing scope back to Ruiko. “I haven’t met all the magical girls of Seoul. Now might be a good time to.”

It was none of them, of course.

In a way, that was a relief. Akari had no interest in starting an internecine conflict within Seoul, nor did she want to meet the kind of person who could come up with the notion of a soul gem‐based terrorist attack.

But it was no relief to the sole survivor of the Seogang‐dong team, who had clearly, desperately, wanted the culprit to be one of her established enemies. Akari had seen it before. It would make everything so easy; it would put revenge right in front of her.

And then Mami had gone and slipped the girl an MHD counseling invite. And a hint that, now that she no longer had a team, the MSY might have a place for her. Mami had made it sound so natural, when it could have easily been extremely crass.

It didn’t lessen Akari’s discomfort, though. It was not quite what she had expected, seeing Mami’s work up close.

Akari looked up from the desk she had been sleeping on, unsure what had pulled her out of her lull. Something—

Oh. It was a familiar soul gem signal. One of her research assistants, buried among the noise of the many soul gems in D&E’s Seoul HQ. She had been supposed to arrive soon. But that wasn’t for a while, it was still—

Nevermind, she thought, checking her lens clock and rubbing her eyes. She had been out for way too long. Her earlier call with her parents had really drained her.

The Seogang‐dong bombing was still unsolved, and the perpetrator had mailed in a letter claiming responsibility, denouncing the MSY as colonialist oppressors, and claiming they had intended to target the MSY to force them to pull out. The traces of magic on the letter verified its authenticity, but gave no other identifying details. Probably as intended.

It was disturbing, that a second anti‐MSY soul mage had emerged in as many years. Akari supposed there were few other lone magical girls who could attack the MSY and hope to escape the consequences, using other mages as a shield more effectively than telepaths ever could.

Akari almost wondered if the MSY had gotten something wrong, in its reaction to Seoyun and Songpa. But given the circumstances, what else could they even have done? The MSY was more open and generous than ever, now, but sometimes that just wasn’t enough.

She said hello to Hina as she got closer, opening the door for her assistant as she arrived, guiding a self‐propelled trolley of equipment into the makeshift lab space.

Akari had set up shop in Seoul with two objectives. Her first was to try and find the Seogang‐dong Bomber through their magical wares. The local Council was quietly purchasing magical items off the trade markets and passing them along, relying on Akari to scan them for a familiar magic signature. Magical devices changed many hands before arriving in Seoul, but if the goal was to find the culprit, “follow the money” was as serviceable a rule for the Soul Guard as it was for the mundane police, provided you remembered that grief cubes could be used as money.

But they had no luck. It didn’t help that nearly all persons of interest flatly declined any form of telepathic screening or verification.

So while that part of the investigation continued, Akari was going to begin studying the concept and design of soul gem bombs. It was work that felt a tad odious, but she understood the criticality—perhaps she could figure out how to detect one from a great range, or how to train others to do the same. Maybe she could even craft a scanner.

Hina returned her greeting, then began unpacking onto the lab bench. She extracted a customized spectrometer, a containment device, robotic grief cube manipulators, and an entire assortment of enchanted hand tools, impossibly precise and capable of working on magical items without destroying their properties.

“Mind sharing your thoughts on this new project?” Hina asked when she was finished unpacking. “I know it was a bit of a sensitive topic, but the idea of a bomb powered by an unwilling soul gem is… novel, if horrifying.”

“Right, I had some thoughts,” Akari said, gesturing Hina to pull up a chair.

“Magical or not, the idea behind every bomb is pretty much the same,” Akari explained. “Dump as much energy as you can, as fast as you can. That’s true even if the mechanism of action is exotic. Here it was just a giant beam of energy, so the analogy works fine.”

“There’s a lot of possibilities to work through,” she continued. “If you were capable of draining a soul gem all at once into a magical device, that would be good enough, but we know from our own experiments that it’s very hard to drain energy quickly, and you’d risk blowing the apparatus up before the reaction completed. A fizzle.”

“It is the simplest approach, though. Everything else I can think of involves storing the magic outside the gem, at least temporarily. If you could do that, you could even think about extending the process by providing grief cubes to refuel the gem, for as long as you could sustain it, using the gem as an intermediary for the grief cubes. You might even be able to spike the magic you drained with the corruption you generated from draining it. Plus, you’ll be ending with a critical soul gem, and if you could siphon even just a little of the energy that vanishes when those are shattered or disappear…”

“That’s diabolical,” Hina said, with a morbidly impressed look. “Some kind of grief‐based yield enhancement would perhaps explain the enhanced demon spawns we saw in the area afterward. Maybe—?”

“Maybe, but let’s not jump to conclusions,” Akari said. “That could easily just be all the suffering people. But it would correlate with the corruption I felt at the scene.”

She leaned over, putting a hand to her forehead.

“There’s too many variables unaccounted for. We don’t know what happens if you involve full grief cubes in something like this, and whether corruption can contribute to a reaction. We don’t even really know for sure that a critical soul gem can’t simply be triggered to detonate without the girl’s consent. All we really have for that is a sort of educated hope, partially based on Mikuni Oriko’s notes on power stealing. Those say that trying to forcibly seize a soul just leads to the Law of Cycles taking it away.”

“We have a lot of experiments to run,” Hina said. “But some of the things we’d want to test… where would we ever get test subjects for something like that? We had a hard enough time recruiting near Mitakihara for light corruption studies. But here? And would we have to work with near‐critical soul gems? And explosive arrangements?”

“No, you’re right,” Akari said, raising her hand. “It’ll be dangerous work. We’ll have to be very, very careful. And I honestly can’t in good faith do anything but do soul gem testing on ourselves. I know; I know. But I’ll do it if you or Nao‐chan are not comfortable with that.”

Hina just stared blankly at Akari for a few seconds, before blinking once, twice.

“Shit, alright,” she said. “If we have to. We’ll have to come up with some new safety protocols. And run it by the ethics board.”

“I already started the process,” Akari said.

She paused for a moment, hesitating.

“What?” Hina asked.

“Nothing,” Akari said. “I just realized, I have to figure out how to tell Tomoe‐san.”

“Promise me you’ll be careful, then.”

Mami clutched at Akari’s hands, causing her to look away.

“Of course I’ll be careful,” she said. “I know it’s dangerous.”

She took a slow breath.

“But I’m trained on this kind of thing. And Nao‐chan doubles as a safety technician. We’ll be fine.”

“That’s not the only thing I mean,” Mami said, leaning forward. “I don’t just mean protocol. The kind of work you’re planning here is… it carries the whiff of something we’re not really meant to touch.”

Akari stared at Mami for a moment. Mami sent a packet of feelings: worry and unease.

“I know,” Akari said. “We thought about that. Everyone who has seen the plan has a bad feeling about it, but… you can’t always trust instincts. Sometimes it’s worth it anyway.”

There were statistical analyses showing that the mood of older magical girls was significantly better than chance at predicting when things would go poorly, and ways to perform cost‐benefit analysis around that. It was a whole research topic.

Akari saw Mami make a thin‐lipped expression, and added:

“Look, I know you’re worried about my safety, but I need to do this. We both know this is important. We need to find the culprit, and prevent any further bombings.”

Mami took a breath.

“You have someone reviewing your experimental protocol? Doing spot checks? Let me volunteer. I’m pretty old, so I should have better instincts than anyone. I can switch with anyone you have.”

Akari bit back an immediate “no”, realizing it was irrational. Mami was good at performing instinct‐based gut checks.

“I do already, and you have more important work, I’m sure,” Akari said.

“Not more important than you,” Mami said, straight‐faced.

There was brief telepathic exchange of feelings, and Akari felt herself blushing.

“Listen,” Mami said. “It’s about time I paid you back a little. I’m the one dragging you into all this mess with me, with the bombs and all that. It’s been nice, having someone there when everything seems to come crashing down. Those of us at the top, the older ones, everyone expects we’ll be ready and steady, because we’ve seen so much, and that’s true. But the attrition gets to you, and the years just keep piling on, and—”

She stopped, putting a hand to her forehead.

“I got carried away a bit, but you know what I mean, I think. You keep saying, part of having a relationship is handling life’s challenges together. If you’re going to handle mine, I feel I should handle some of yours.”

Akari wanted to argue, but she knew, could tell from the telepathic milieu, that she had already lost.

“You shouldn’t feel bad about dragging me into this,” she said. “It’s what I wanted, too, and now my research actually has a practical use. I’m actually quite pleased by that, even if maybe I shouldn’t be under the circumstances.”

“Well, I do hope you enjoy it,” Mami said. “Because I like having you here, and I would dread having to go back to working alone.”

South Korea, May 2070.

It took a moment for the secure room equipment to spin up, time enough for Akari to smooth the front of her shirt and ponder what she would say one last time.

Then the face of Chitose Yuma snapped into existence on the panel in front of her, and her time was up.

They exchanged courtesies briefly, she, Yuma, and Mami, before settling into the topic of the meeting: Akari’s study of the Seogang‐dong bomb.

“We’ve made considerable progress in determining what’s possible,” she said. “Unfortunately, the news is not good.”

“It turns out the bomb designs we’re considering are all likely to be possible. In our limited testing, nothing seems to prevent it. For obvious reasons, we won’t be able to venture a full‐scale test.”

She had prepared a few slides, and on the presentation screen to her left, she projected a few diagrams of various potential designs.

She glanced around: Mami’s expression had turned to a serious frown, but Yuma was unreadable. Fair enough; the details of Akari’s “limited testing” weren’t important to Yuma in the same way they were to Mami.

“The bad news is, we still don’t have a good way of defusing a bomb, at least not without the personal involvement of a soul mage,” she said. “Some of the more basic bomb designs could be simply disconnected, or blown up, but anything more sophisticated would detonate if tampered with, and I suspect the bomb we already saw was of this type.”

She played an animation of the bomb activating, and this time Yuma reacted, shaking her head unhappily.

“But you did say a soul mage could probably defuse it?” she asked.

“In‐person,” Akari said. “I could probably do it. Probably. I could probably also instruct others on how to do so.”

Yuma made an unhappy noise, leaning back in her chair.

“I’ve already written down a few protocols on the matter,” Akari added.

“Soul mages aren’t very common,” Mami said. “Even if they were all trained, we wouldn’t be able to get good security coverage.”

“The better news is, we now know enough about the likely process to build a handheld detector,” Akari said. “In the end, any bomb should just look like a peculiarly‐shaped cluster of magic. It wouldn’t even be hard to train people to look for it; we have a few mimics to train on. The real hard part is detecting it at a far enough distance, especially with an enchanted device.”

She paused, then when no one said anything, continued.

“Unfortunately, that’s a real problem. Long‐range magical detection has been a topic of study for decades now, but previous applications have focused on trying to find hidden or distant magical girls. Still, we’ve been working with an enchanter from Osaka on making the necessary changes, and should be able to produce the requisite detectors soon. It will be time‐consuming, so it’s not clear how many we’ll be able to make. And it will be expensive, though I’m told the GKCY will be able to cover it.”

“For the duration of the crisis, yes,” Mami said, clasping her hands. “Logistics approved a stretch cube allocation, and I’m sure we could ask for more if needed.”

“Less than a solution at best,” Yuma said, still frowning. “Not enough people to defuse anything, and everything else is too slow.”

Yuma shook her head, shifting restlessly in her chair, and Akari sighed, closing her presentation. Yuma was right, but that was the unhappy truth.

“Well, that’s good work at least,” Yuma said. “Let’s—”

Akari blinked as the stream seemed to freeze. She almost asked, then realized that Yuma had frozen, stopping mid‐sentence to stare at something in the middle distance, probably on her contacts.

“Is something the matter?” she asked.

“There’s been a security incident in Mitakihara,” Yuma said.

She looked through the screen at Mami, and Akari turned her head, realizing Mami had been just as frozen.

“It was in Mitakihara‐Kazamino International Airport,” she added. Her tone was even, but just a tiny bit rushed—the tone of someone trying to report dire events calmly. “A group of high schoolers, new contractees, about a dozen or so, collapsed onto the ground right in the middle of the terminal. They had been on an MSY‐sponsored trip.”

Akari clasped her hands to her mouth.

“An attack? Are they alright?”

“They’re fine,” Mami said. “They woke up after less than a minute, but obviously it made the news and they had to consent to medical screening. More important than any of that, they say they had a magically‐induced nightmare.”

Yuma pulled out a tablet and tapped impatiently at it, her face working through a series of expressions.

“A voice trying to speak to them, a girl being tortured, someone asking them to save their friend—the only consistent part, the one they all share, is an experience of being overtaken by a large, rapidly‐expanding explosion while inside Mitakihara’s airport. One that looks initially like a high‐energy vertical beam.”

Mami shook her head.

“The similarity is obvious,” she said.

Akari clenched her teeth briefly.

“Is the vision some kind of threat?” she asked. “Trying to demand something?”

“Probably not,” Yuma said. “More like a warning, the girls say. What clairvoyants we have are converging on the area. Preliminary reports suggest it should be taken seriously, that whatever is going to happen will happen soon. Though whether that means tomorrow, two weeks, or two months from now is tough to say. Which means we have to prepare like there might be an attack right now.”

Mami stood up abruptly, face tense.

“If we flew back to Mitakihara right away,” Mami said, leaning in towards Akari, palms flat on the table. “Do you think you could make a difference?”

Akari looked back into Mami’s pupils, feeling a thousand butterflies fill her stomach. Make a difference? Did she dare say it?

What is the honest answer? she thought.

She swallowed.

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “We’ll need a bit of time to scramble a response, me and uh, my assistants. But it’s incumbent on us to try.”

Mami stood back up.

“Okay,” she said.

They booked the first commercial flight they could out to Kazamino, getting onto a plane only two hours later.

That was as fast as could be achieved in the circumstances—they didn’t have any private jets stationed in South Korea—but the wait still drove Akari up a wall, her mood alternating between unbearable and delirious anticipation. They breezed through security, but it made no difference, because they still had to wait for boarding.

Mami noticed, of course, and admonished her to calm down, even though Mami looked a bit impatient herself.

Eventually, she found a way to settle down, working through detection and neutralization protocols in her head until their plane arrived at the gate and she could scan it for any bombs.

They would have to similarly screen arriving planes in Mitakihara as much as possible, as well as scan the perimeter of the airport itself. They could have drones in the air, and try to have agents on as many planes as possible, but was it possible to build so many detectors so quickly?

They’d have to find out.

“Akari, you’ll want to see this,” Mami said, tapping her on the shoulder.

“Ah, okay, what?” she said, startled out of her reverie. She had been unsuccessfully trying to watch a documentary on her laptop, trying to take her mind somewhere else.

Mami gestured at her own tablet, which was frozen on a still of a newscaster talking about Korea. Mami liked to watch the news, a kind of white noise while she thought about the MSY’s problems.

Akari connected her earpiece and Mami tapped the replay button. The video started over, beginning with a “Breaking News” banner that spun across the screen, and followed by the frowning face of a female anchor.

“The North Korean government has released a statement acknowledging for the first time a role in the terrorist attacks within the South Korean capital of Seoul, including both the Songpa Incident and the recent Seogang‐dong bombing. The statement blames the attacks on rogue elements in the North Korean military, naming in particular General Lee Won‐Sik as the leader of a band of traitorous insurgents. In the statement, the government pledges to purge the traitors immediately.”

“While the South Korean government has yet to assign responsibility for the Seogang‐dong bombing, this statement appears to confirm widespread speculation about North Korean involvement. Moreover, the statement dramatically escalates what appears to be an internal power struggle involving General Lee Won‐Sik, whose Second and Third Corps controls a major peninsula southwest of Pyongyang. Reports of combat in the region remain unsubstantiated.”

“In a response to the press, embattled South Korean Prime Minister Lee Chung‐Ho expressed skepticism about the claims:”

“Claims by this nefarious government are not to be trusted, and this statement could easily be an attempt to evade responsibility for their evil attacks of late. Lee Won‐Sik could be involved, or he could be an inconvenient general to purge. Until evidence is presented, we must assume their responsibility, and I call upon the international community to continue efforts at providing the maximum possible punishment.”

Things are already going sideways, Mami thought, pausing the video. Can you imagine what an explosion at Mitakihara Airport would do? We could be looking at war, against a nuclear power.

Mami, with all due respect, telling me this isn’t exactly making me less anxious, Akari thought.

No, listen, what if it’s all connected? Mami thought. North Korea is a black box to us too, but there’s no way the girls over there haven’t gotten control of something. The instability we’re causing—it’s spreading north. Maybe the North Korean government, or some faction in it, really is responsible for the Seogang‐dong bombing.

If that’s true, what have I gotten myself into? Akari thought, narrowly managing to avoid relaying the thought to Mami. Not that Mami wouldn’t hear it anyway, but the difference in intent mattered.

It could just be a natural response to events, Akari thought, instead. But if the bombing was by North Korea, what does that mean for us? What can we do about that?

Redouble our efforts at negotiation, maybe, Mami thought, clasping her hands together below her chin, staring into the seat in front of her. I’m sure there are girls in North Korea who would leap at the chance for the peace and prosperity the MSY can provide, if we could just explain it to them.

Akari frowned and leaned back into her seat, switching her laptop back to the protocol document she was working on. She could hear what Mami was thinking to herself, worrying about the political implications of the crisis, worrying that it might reinvigorate the Japanists and grind MSY expansion to a halt, especially if they failed to prevent an attack on Mitakihara itself.

Was this the way she was going to make a difference?

Japan, May 2070.

By the time they landed, they could feel magical girls scattered through the airport, and a team of mundane and magical escorts waited for them to deplane, guiding them politely towards the terminal’s administrative offices, much to Akari’s chagrin. It looked almost like they were being apprehended.

It wasn’t surprising that they would be setting to work immediately, but something about this seemed even more tense than they had expected.

“I admit the show of force was probably a bit much,” Yuma said, greeting Mami and Akari just inside the security doors. “It’s unlikely any terrorist would even know to target you. But this isn’t the time to take chances.”

“Has something happened?” Mami asked, as they broke into a brisk walk behind Yuma. “I didn’t expect to see you here in person.”

“Not just me,” Yuma said, as she pushed open the door to an office.

Akari startled as a small constellation of soul gems seemed to appear in front of them, concealed by someone’s magic.

Her shock doubled when she realized just who she was seeing in front of her. A fair chunk of the MSY’s senior leadership had turned out. Like Kuroi Kana, new head of the Soul Guard, or Chiyo Rika, Speaker of the Rules Committee. Or Akemi Homura, First Executive.

“With this kind of turnout, something big has happened,” Mami said, looking around the small conference table. “Is it really safe to have everyone here?”

“We have an emergency teleport and barrier generators if needed,” Kana said. “And if the explosion is big enough… well, it’s not practical to evacuate the city.”

The city? Akari thought, directing the thought at Mami too.

“If we tried to evacuate only the MSY and its affiliates, the news would most certainly leak,” Rika said. “In any case, Sakura‐san is on the maglev to Hokkaido. That’ll do.”

They were given a few moments to settle in, as Yuma handed them some water and snacks.

“Akiyama‐san here is currently our foremost expert on the ’energy gap’ problem,” Homura said, gesturing at Akari. “Arguably our only expert, since we only reopened investigation into the topic recently. Let’s talk about the news, Kana. No need to waste any more time.”

“Right,” Kana said, tapping the table. A projection appeared on the screen at the end of the room: what appeared to be a multi‐page document, with diagrams.

“We’ve received a new threat from the same source that claimed responsibility for the Seogang‐dong bombings,” she said. “The manifesto part of it is the kind of stuff you’d expect. We’re the evil foreigner imperialists, here to subjugate their country, this is our punishment. Even a charming reference to Hiroshima.”

“More importantly, they’re promising an attack on Japanese soil very soon, though they don’t specify where. Without any other lead, we have to assume a high chance that’ll be at this airport, and it’ll be within days.”

“But the reason we called you here is that they’re claiming that they’ve found a way to unleash ‘all of the real energy from a soul gem’, and that it would have the yield of a thermonuclear weapon. As evidence, they even included a design, asking us to have our scientists verify. They claim they’ll hold off if we publicly accede to their demand to leave Korea entirely.”

“So, we need to know if it’s really possible,” Yuma said, looking at Akari, who had already been handed a paper copy of the threat. “Obviously, it will take you some time to look through, but we’d like any initial assessment you could give.”

Akari swallowed to get rid of the tight ball of tension in her throat.

“Right, prima facie, it’s not entirely impossible,” she said. “Our—our experiments have already shown that under the right conditions, trace amounts of magic can be induced to produce enormous amounts of energy. We also know that the ratio of energy to magic jumps upward almost asymptotically in critical soul gems. Frankly—and this is in the notes we submitted to the Committee—it’s hard to understand why failing soul gems don’t explode cataclysmically. We still don’t have a satisfying explanation. Our best theory was that the Incubators are doing us a favor by suppressing this result, but they deny it on direct questioning.”

Akari ducked her head.

“Sorry for rambling a bit. At a glance, this device seems designed to keep a soul gem near critical, so it seems likely whoever these people are, they’ve reached a similar conclusion. But I have no idea if they can do what they claim. I’d need time to read.”

“So it is possible,” Yuma said.

“Potentially possible,” Akari said.

“But likely?” Yuma asked.

Akari took a long moment, painfully aware of the significance of the answer.

“No, not very likely,” she said finally. “As I said, empirically these kinds of energy releases don’t happen. I’d give it perhaps a twenty percent chance.”

Yuma released a breath. Was it relief? Or something else?

“I wish it were zero. I hope at least that the airport vision was authentic. If it is, it’s a huge blessing, since it at least lets us know what to prepare for. But really, there’s limits to what we can do. We can try to keep the bomb from going off, but beyond that…”

She shook her head.

“We have plans for an MSY evacuation of the city, for members and their families. A Condition Four scenario, it’s called. But even preparing for that would be enormously disruptive and couldn’t be concealed. Without a more certain threat, it would be irresponsible to do anything more than get a few things ready, not with the risk of provoking a war with North Korea on the table. But it does not sit right with me.”

She looked at Homura, who nodded in agreement.

“We’ve talked to the airport, at least. As far as they’re concerned, there’s been a terrorist threat, and they need to be ready to evacuate the airport, and it’s easy to keep our people out of the airport. Hopefully, Akiyama‐san is right, and that’s all that’s necessary.”

There was a moment of silence while everyone considered what happened if they—if Akari—got this wrong. Akari swallowed nauseatedly. She could not be wrong today.

“I want to be clear,” Homura said, casting her eyes towards her. “I personally don’t think a nuke‐like device is possible. I don’t think this is the kind of energy anyone is really capable of releasing. But if you manage to get any greater certainty, we need to know.”

Akari hid a grimace.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But we just don’t have the theoretical understanding to say for sure either way. I’m not sure even the Incubators know better.”

“They don’t know better,” Yuma said, even as Akari started to say they should ask. “The first thing we did was ask. They did say no one has ever done it before, but that’s not really saying anything.”

“I’m sorry then,” Akari repeated, shaking her head. “I’m going to need time to consult with the rest of the lab to be sure, but the problem is, critical soul gems are not easy to study, for obvious reasons. We’d need to conduct more extreme experiments.”

“There’s no time for that,” Yuma said, a sharp look in her eyes. “Not right now. These people have already shown they can make a plenty big bomb, whatever their claims. Investigate what you can, Akiyama‐san, but the highest priority is making sure no bombs make it to this airport. You should get to work.”

There was another silence, and when it became clear the meeting was over, Akari and Mami stood to leave.

“We may call you back later, after the crisis,” Rika said. “We need to assess whether broader security measures are called for. That might mean legislative work.”

Mami nodded, and then they headed for the door.

With a good deal of coaxing, the clairvoyants were able to extract a bit more information: whatever was going to happen was probably arriving by plane, probably from the Korean peninsula. Probably.

The lack of certainty was maddening, but there was nothing they could do but try to cover every possibility they could.

Kana and Mami were left to secure the area, setting up a command center in a large maintenance area. Mami worked on setting up a ring of patrols around the airport, both land and air, coordinating with her old colleagues in the Soul Guard in a room filled with diagrams, tables, and guidelines.

It was a full‐scale effort—their contacts within the various airlines arranged to place their agents onto the regular flights into Mitakihara airport, and they bought tickets on the airlines they couldn’t influence. Yuma reached out to their contacts in the Japanese government to lay groundwork for a potential city‐wide evacuation.

Akari wasn’t directly involved in coordinating any of that. Instead, she focused on the nuts and bolts, instructing the enchanters on the crafting of bomb detection devices, and the patrol squads on manual detection.

The work, the tension, the chaos—it all wore on her. The techniques they thought they had proven in the laboratory proved maddeningly difficult to teach—magic was finicky and personalized, and they had not been prepared to train others on such short notice. The patrols they sent out were poor at spotting their test fakes, and the detectors their enchanters built equally bad. They simply weren’t ready, and so she barely even slept, using magic to keep herself functional.

And all of that was without even considering the real central tension in Akari’s mind—they still didn’t have a way to reliably defuse a soul gem bomb, not without Akari’s involvement, and certainly not at range. This meant that if they didn’t detect an approaching bomb soon enough, it was possible they might as well not have detected it at all.

The last four days had been a mad, caffeine and anti‐sleep‐magic‐filled ordeal, spent entirely in the airport. Akari hadn’t had time to look in a mirror, but she was sure she looked awful.

“Is it always like this?” she asked Mami, as they stood on the tarmac at the end of a patrol around the airport.

“The tension?” Mami asked.

“And the chaos, and the fact that we might die at any time, and it will be my fault,” Akari said. “And the fact that everything is barely working. I don’t just mean the detection rates. I stuck my head into your room earlier. It was awful.”

“Sometimes,” Mami said. “But not usually. We’ve never tried to do anything like this. At least not on this scale.”

Mami looked fresh, her eyes bright, and if it hadn’t been for their telepathic connection Akari would have had no idea it was just a very effective front. How was she managing that?

Mami caught that thought from her and nodded slightly, blinking up at the morning sun. They had decided that if someone was going to attack, it would probably be midday, when the airport was busiest.

“You’ll learn,” Mami said. “If we keep doing this. Having you here makes it better, gives me something to look forward to.”

She reached out and took Akari’s hand, and Akari nodded.

“I think it’s alright, as long as you’re here.”

They looked at each other, and then Mami pecked her on the cheek.

“Wouldn’t want to cause too much of a scandal,” Mami said. “Come on. Let’s get some ice cream from the vending machines.”

“Positive signal on KAL Flight 1150, bearing zero‐three‐two, range 10 miles. All personnel move to respond. Repeat, positive signal on KAL Flight 1150…”

Akari stopped listening to their conversation, jamming the last of her cone into her mouth. That was a mistake—the surge of electric tension pulsing through her caused her to almost choke on it.

KAL 1150? They had a magical girl on that flight! How had anything gotten so close?

Potential answers snapped into her mind: not everyone they had trained was good at detecting their mock bombs, which themselves were just guesses about how the real bombs worked. If they were wrong—

She cut off the intrusive thought as she and Mami ran towards the back rooms.

“Flight 1150 has been redirected, yes ma’am,” the voice on the radio was saying. “It’s being sent to flight level 100 and will be holding over the Pacific.”

“Make sure that the pilot is given the right cover story,” Mami replied. “Remember we have to keep the passengers in the dark to give us time to evacuate the airport.”

That way, if they failed—if the bomb went off—the loss would hopefully be confined to just one plane.

Akari nervously wiped her hands on her pants. I’m not ready, she thought, the worry emerging automatically from the pit of her stomach where she kept her fears.

She swallowed it. She had no choice. There was still only one person who stood a good chance of defusing the bomb.

The teleporter, Watanabe Tomi, appeared next to her in a puff of smoke, a stern‐faced Soul Guard veteran who nonetheless only came up to Akari’s shoulder. Next to her was another girl, Yoshida Erika, whose main power was slowing time. Dressed similarly, with identical short‐cropped hair, they made Akari feel painfully out of place.

“Let’s go,” Tomi said, placing her hand on Akari’s shoulder.

They had practiced three times in the days before. If the bomb was close enough for the maneuver to be performed, Tomi would teleport her to the bomb as quickly as possible, using a magically‐enhanced spotter in the control tower to help aim if a plane was involved. With Erika’s help, Akari would assess the situation and determine what to do. Very likely, the answer would be for Tomi to send the entire bomb apparatus as far as she could over the ocean—but if Akari could defuse the bomb and save the apparatus, they would gain valuable intel.

There was no time left to think. Akari gritted her teeth as the sky, Mami, and airport swirled away into the smoke.

Akari found herself blinking at the grey metal of an airplane cabin door, nearly elbow to elbow with a uniformed flight attendant, nearly frozen in time pulling something out of the in‐plane microwave. She could only barely perceive the tray creeping outward slowly, and it would be a while yet before the attendant noticed her presence.

She swallowed. She would have much preferred the bomb be in the cargo hold, where they wouldn’t have had to operate around mundanes, but at least Erika’s field gave them a certain kind of stealth.

She already sensed the device, its signature obvious despite a layer of magic draped on top in an obvious attempt at concealment. How had anyone missed this?

Grimly, she pushed her way forward, moving aside a passenger waiting for the bathroom—carefully, to avoid catastrophic injury—and making her way into the aisles. The bomb might already be in the initial phases of detonation.

Their agent on the plane, Kobayashi Ume, was on her way too, Erika registering her quickly as an ally and soon immune to the time slow.

Ume pointed at where she thought the bomb was, but Akari didn’t need the gesture. In the eerie silence of frozen passengers and too‐thick air, it shone like a beacon.

But something else was happening—a girl in an aisle seat started to stand. She looked like she was standing normally, maybe a little cramped by the chair and the passenger next to her—but in slowed time that implied a phenomenal, inhuman speed.

Akari picked up the soul gem reading a fraction of a second later, even as Ume jumped over to restrain her.

The girl put up a struggle, but Ume was much, much faster, and had her limbs pinned behind her almost immediately, though Ume just barely avoided smashing into a passenger’s head. Instead, they lurched into an empty aisle seat, which shuddered and began to crack.

Akari sought out the soul gem. She hadn’t expected this—why did the terrorists let the victim stay embodied this time? Was she a true suicide bomber, was that necessary, to access the full energy of the soul? There was no telling what a magical girl could do, even slowed down, but where was her soul gem? Not on the hand, not in any of the usual places. It was under the seat, in her bag—

She froze even as she bent over for it.

No. No.

She could feel the ignition sequence starting, and she lunged for the bag, heedless for a moment, churning her own magic outward. She had thought about this, practiced this. The time‐slowing field gave her some room to operate, but not a lot—explosions were fast.

The easiest thing would have been to smash the soul gem, and for a split‐second she considered the idea, but then—

Once she got past the concealment magic, it was obvious. The foreign magic was everywhere, its threads weaving through the gem far more insidiously than anything Seoyun had done. Was that an entire piece of someone else’s soul?

Should I teleport it? Tomi thought. It’s already—

She’s being controlled, she thought. We can’t just kill her. I have to try.

Could she pull the soul gem out of the device? Could Tomi teleport it out? No, it was too intertwined now. The magic was everywhere inside the gem, it could shatter the gem to remove it. The design of the device was just as the terrorists had promised, the full grief cubes alone made the use of any magic dangerous—

No, get a grip of yourself, she thought. You need to release the charge.

But release the charge where? She had expected that if she was this late, she would abort to teleport. But then—

There’s no time, Tomi thought, strain in her thoughts. I know she’s being controlled, but—

The fabric of the black backpack swelled like a horrible balloon, threads starting to tear, an eerie purple light bleeding out from between the threads.

Akari ignored it, reaching her hand into the light, ignoring the pain and heat as it began to scorch her skin to attempt to connect with the soul gem inside.

She blinked away tears from the pain. Not the physical pain—it was just a hand—but of the memories from the soul she was in contact with. Memories and emotions that hovered at the edge of perception as she dove in, deeper and deeper. What had been done to her? What kind of monster—

Teleport me with her, Akari thought, gritting her teeth. I can fizzle this. I just have to route it through my own gem. I can—

Instead, Tomi grabbed her arm, wrenching it away, her hand bloody and blistered, emitting a pale pink light.

No don’t—!

There’s no time!

Akari felt a piercing pain as the bag vanished, disappearing in a puff of smoke. The plane itself vanished a moment later, as they teleported out to the airport.

Many seconds later, a crackling, ominous roar sounded in the distance. The bomb had gone off somewhere over the ocean.

Akari looked down at her hand. Where was her—where was the girl’s soul gem? She was sure she had it, but…

Rage bubbled up inside Akari.

“Do you know what you just did?” she seethed, suddenly lunging at Tomi, trying to grab her with her uninjured hand.

Tomi dodged and snatched Akari’s hand by the wrist. She sucked in a breath, and they stood there for a long moment.

“I saved our lives,” Tomi said. “Or your life, at least. There was no way that was going to work out.”

Tomi’s voice shook with tension, fear, pain.

Mami appeared at their side, interposing herself between the two of them. The message was clear, and a moment later Tomi dropped Akari’s hand.

Akari tried to swallow her emotion, focusing briefly on Mami’s ribbons, which now covered Akari’s injured hand. A wave of comforting warmth passed through it, and she felt it healing.

Akari looked past Mami then, and saw Erika placing the girl’s body on the ground. Moments away from life, she looked pristine, as if she were taking a nap.

Akari felt herself going limp.

“Threat is neutralized,” Erika said over the radio. “Bomb teleported over ocean, under fallback protocol. Please send teams…”

Akari let herself fall, allowing Mami to catch her weight.

The only way she avoided crying was by replaying the bomb defusal over and over in her mind. But no matter what she tried, it refused to come out any differently.

You saved a lot of lives, Mami thought, in calming telepathy. Both of you. You have to hold onto that.

She paused.

You did well.

South Korea, May 2070.

If only had that been the end of it.

“That’s the part I can’t stand,” Akari said, gesturing at the viewscreen. “All of this coverage is so positive, like we did everything perfectly. But it wasn’t perfect. She didn’t make it.”

Akari shook her head, feeling the woman’s eyes on her: Atsuko Arisu, one of the original MHD psychiatrists, and also Akari’s boss, once upon a time. She was warm, understanding, professional, and on the in with the MSY leadership, for whatever that was worth. Mami had recommended her, not that Akari needed the recommendation.

Arisu was also conveniently in Seoul, as part of a special goodwill delegation.

“It’s normal to feel that way,” Arisu said, peering through her cosmetic glasses. “It’s even got a name, as we’ve been discussing. I won’t belabor the point by saying what you already know. Just, you’re not doing anything wrong if you just avoid the coverage. You don’t have to pay attention to all that.”

“Don’t I?” Akari asked, looking up at her. “Isn’t it part of my job to know about all that? The politics matter. Mami can’t protect me from everything.”

None of it sat right with her. The wheel never stopped turning, and everyone in Mitakihara had rushed to politicize what had happened, from the administration lauding the “succcess” of the Soul Guard and proposing handing out decorations, all the way to the Japanists taking to the air with their smug I‐told‐you‐so’s. Even Mami had gotten in on it.

She had asked Mami to keep her out of the official reports, and let Tomi become the hero of the hour. It was only fair, she reasoned.

Mami had obliged.

“Most of that isn’t your job at all,” Arisu said, shaking her head. “Not if it’s getting to you like this. What matters is what you know to be true. You know the Park Tae‐hyun who died there, and it’s up to you to honor and remember her.”

Arisu was right, of course. Everything she said was perfectly logical. Akari felt stupid, being so unhappy over what was, inarguably, the most good she had done for the world in her entire life.

And even beyond her personal involvement, practically everything had worked out. The bomb had failed, the energy beam abruptly cutting off before exceeding the power of the one in Seogang‐dong. The incident had been kept off the mundane news, written off as a classified weapons test gone awry. And North Korea had even begun accepting diplomatic overtures—apparently they had captured and executed the general they had pinned Songpa and Seogang‐dong on.

The worst part was, Akari knew exactly why she was being so unreasonable. It was her own fault. She had thrown herself too recklessly into Tae‐hyun’s soul trying to fizzle the bomb. She had formed a deep, personal connection with her, if only for a moment, and now couldn’t get over her death.

Akari had learned from her time in the MHD all the established techniques for distancing yourself from your patients’ minds, but they were meant for telepaths, not soul mages. Honestly, she was too far gone to even want to try.

If that were all it took to sever a connection between souls, she wouldn’t be dating Mami right now.

“I know,” Arisu said, grabbing one of her hands. “But promise me you’ll try, okay? And come back here if it all gets too much for you. Remember: only work‐related stuff. Unless Mami‐san tells you otherwise.”

Akari nodded. She had to try.

They said their goodbyes, and she took a deep breath as she stepped out of the impromptu office, casting her eyes out the window at the Seoul skyline, trying to focus on the work she had to get done.

Here in Seoul, the Council had asked for her expertise, had wanted her input on their new security measures. That was her business, whether it stressed her out or not.

And then there were the memories Akari had extracted from Tae‐hyun’s soul gem—information that could be critical for the investigation. Memories that were painful to look at, that Akari felt almost obligated to look at, even aside from the investigation. Who else would remember?

She took another breath, steeling herself, and headed for the elevators.

From here, it would be forty minutes through the city, more with traffic. It would have been faster to transform and go on foot, but that was a bad idea outside formal MSY territory, and doubly so now—the Seoul Council had placed the city on high alert, with patrols watching for unknown magical girls. Non‐resident magical girls were requested to restrict themselves to mundane travel to avoid false alarms.

The Seoul Council, and by extension most of the magical girls of Seoul, held “associate” status with the MSY now. Often associate groups immediately applied for full membership, but the Council had so far been content to enjoy benefits of association without pursuing a more politically‐fraught full integration. The Songpa incident, and Korea’s long distrust of Japanese influence, made that proposition controversial.

Akari had hoped to nap during her ride, and not have to think about such things, but her chauffeur turned out to be very talkative. A TNC with a magical girl daughter, one of several in the outskirts of Seoul that had joined the MSY outright, he was eager for reassurances that the various rumors he had heard were false: that the MSY would halt or even reverse expansion in Korea, that the MSY would start a war with North Korea, that Seoyun herself was somehow still alive and responsible for the latest bombings.

Akari didn’t think she managed to be entirely reassuring. For one thing, Seoyun was still alive, though only a few in the Seoul Council, or anywhere else, knew that truth. Akari found herself wondering what Seoyun would have thought of all this, had she not been Reformatted by Arisu.

Finally, she reached her destination, a high‐end restaurant owned by one of the magical girls of the city, the private rooms lent to the Council for its meetings.

Akari looked around as she escaped her chauffeur—magical signals crowded the rooftops, an abnormally high level of security. She could also sense a more familiar, comforting signal: Mami, waiting for her just inside.

Mami greeted her warmly when she entered, telepathically checking up on her at the same time. Akari did the same—it really couldn’t be said just how much it helped, not permanently keeping all your stresses and worries and frustrations to yourself.

If Mami hadn’t picked up mind‐reading, this whole Tae‐hyun matter might have strained their relationship. As it was, the damage was largely limited to Akari’s own mental health.

A waiter showed them past noisy tables full of food and alcohol, up a flight of stairs, and behind a pair of heavy wooden doors. There, a roundtable of girls—mostly in their late teens and early twenties, and not just by appearance—sat in session.

Mami and Akari bowed politely, then took a pair of proffered seats.

Let’s get right to business, one of the older girls thought. I will speak for the Council. We’ve read the report your organization submitted to us. It is based on the word of this soul mage?

They used telepathy to bypass issues of translation, even if Akari and Mami both understood Korean well enough.

Yes, this is Akiyama Akari, Mami thought. You’ll recall her involvement in the incident with Seoyun.

The details you provide here are very disturbing, Doctor. We knew Park Tae‐hyun was missing. We did not know these other details.

Akari swallowed. Those “other” details included memories of capture, coercive soul adjustment, memory wipes, and being turned into a living bomb module. The dry words she had written into the report did it no justice.

I stand by these words, Akari thought. It is unpleasant for me, but I retrieved these details from her soul gem on the plane. She did not deserve what she went through.

Indeed she didn’t. No one does. She was not part of our agreement organization, but we still respect the welfare of our colleagues along the border. This incident has struck fear in all of us.

Tae‐hyun had been part of a small team operating near the DMZ, and had been reported missing a few weeks ago. Even in that chaotic region, this kind of unexplained disappearance was rare, and it had contributed to unease among the locals.

One of the other girls leaned forward, looking rather young for her position.

We’ve already done what we can in the city, and we’ve asked everyone to register their phones for GPS tracking, but our influence does not extend beyond the city. A more permanent solution is needed for these terrorists, and we want to know what you have to offer.

Akari glanced at Mami, who nodded slightly.

What we’re offering is to take care of the problem directly, Akari thought. We have operatives who are ready to deploy and eliminate the threat, even if it turns out to be past the DMZ. We just need your cooperation in tracking them down. I have some of Tae‐hyun‐san’s memories, and I believe I can help.

In addition, Mami added. We have teams that can offer training on detecting this kind of corruption, and with your approval, we can deploy some additional security throughout the city. That will improve your defenses, even if it doesn’t solve the problem.

The Council turned to look at each other, clearly engaged in some kind of telepathic conversation.

You will have our cooperation in eliminating the threat, but we do not agree to this other offer, the older girl thought. You presume too much. We will take care of our own security.

This was a predictable response, and Mami hesitated for only a moment before bowing slightly.

I understand, she said. It wasn’t my intent to offend.

Good hunting, the Council thought. We’ll be watching.

Tae‐hyun and her two teammates controlled a territory that ran right up against the DMZ. That could have meant a dangerous, closely‐monitored life—some stretches of the DMZ were bitterly contested, often by networks of cooperating teams which could brook no challenges to their authority or intrusions into their territory.

But Tae‐hyun’s group saw almost none of the fighting. Both sides of their border were rural and sparsely populated, and neither side could risk provoking the other. Instead, they maintained a long‐standing truce, staying strictly on their respective sides of the border, with the occasional cooperation on cross‐border spawns. Thus, they lived relatively peacefully, with routine hunts and regular trade with other groups.

It was this peace and predictability that had led to tragedy. Tae‐hyun had stayed behind from a regular trading trip, busy helping with her grandmother’s funeral, and then had disappeared. It turned out, Tae‐hyun was a perfect target; all it took was a single suspiciously‐timed event to make her totally vulnerable.

Neither Tae‐hyun’s team nor her family had seen anything useful, and the local mundane police had turned up even less. Tae‐hyun had gone to bed one day and simply not been there in the morning, only to turn up on a plane landing in Mitakihara with a soul gem ready to explode.

How had a missing teenager successfully booked a ticket and boarded a flight without being detected? Fake IDs, false passports, evading surveillance and pattern detectors—none of that was in Tae‐hyun’s mundane or magical skillsets. Someone had to have helped her.

For a while, this was their only real lead, and they had been forced to search for those who could have helped her, both mundane and magical. Those were not to be found in Tae‐hyun’s home region, but in the messy and secretive world elsewhere around the DMZ, a world they knew little about.

They negotiated for interviews with suspect after suspect with limited success, and for weeks they had seemed stuck, a period in which frustration started to hit everyone involved. Mami was constantly under pressure to leave Korea—both to help manage political fallout back home in Japan, and to reassure various new and prospective MSY members abroad—and Akari began to doubt her own place here. Were they going to fail? Despite what she had wished for?

Through it all was also the constant fear of another attack. Even if the terrorists’ nuclear‐scale design had failed, it was plausible they would attempt another bombing, rather than go to ground. Many days passed developing improved detection schemes, and experimenting further, trying to understand just why the bomb had failed. Had it only been because Tae‐hyun had been coerced?

Eventually—thankfully, finally—they made a breakthrough. One of the magical girls they interviewed carried not just the telltale signs of a memory wipe, but also magic traces Akari recognized from the bomb—the girl had been manipulated by the same soul mage into helping get Tae‐hyun onto the plane.

They pieced it all together then, between her memories and Tae‐hyun’s. The evidence was not straightforward—a mishmash of details about how they had traveled and where they had passed and what weather they had seen, all input into an advanced inference machine—but just one city fit all the details, one that also happened to contain an enchanter’s enclave, located only a couple dozen kilometers into North Korea, though a surprising one hundred kilometers west of Tae‐hyun’s territory, beyond the western edge of South Korea itself.

From there, they were able to obtain an enchanted throwing spear sourced from the enclave. It bore no magical traces of their target soul mage, but the enchantment style could be fingerprinted by their enchantment expert in Osaka, and a reexamining of previously‐obtained devices revealed that most were products of this single enclave, despite bearing a wide variety of magic signatures. Indeed, the enclave seemed to be impossibly productive, distributing its wares through intermediaries across a huge swathe of Korea—most likely, the soul mage had discovered a way to produce enchanted objects using other magical girls.

Long‐range surveillance by clairvoyants provided the final confirmation, eliciting a pained gasp from Akari when she recognized one of the magical girls in the area from Tae‐hyun’s memories.

Shortly afterward, Mami returned from a virtual meeting with a clouded expression: the Leadership Committee had weighed the options, studied the intelligence—and then ordered an assassination raid.

South Korea, June 2070.

If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to. I’m sure we can find someone else.

Mami, I’ll be fine. Besides, it’s way too late to back out now.

They were silent for a few seconds, Mami with her hands on her shoulder, searching each other’s eyes. It was a bit risky, so close to other magical girls, but they wanted the direct telepathic connection.

There was no real need to say anything else. Not really. They’d been over this ground already, and the truth lurked in the back of their minds, latent behind the telepathy, murky in their eyes.

Akari didn’t think she’d be fine. Of course not. She also wasn’t sure about what she was doing, and she had plenty of fear.

But despite all of that, she needed to go.

There’s no one else worth sending, Akari thought finally. I know some of their tricks, and I recognize them.

Mami didn’t say anything further. Instead, she sent a wave of emotions that stung Akari’s eyes. It helped, that Mami cared—and that she understood. Had been through this herself, more than anyone so sensitive should.

I want to see this through, Akari thought. They killed Tae‐hyun. Who else is going to represent her?

Mami dropped her arms and took a deep breath.

Part of the point of all this was that we’d support each other, be together, and here you are going off without me. I would go with you if I could. If anyone would let me.

If she would allow herself, she meant. Tomoe Mami, Director of Recruitment and Diplomacy, could not risk her personal safety that far. They both knew that.

I know, Mami, Akari thought. But I’ll… come back. I promise that.

Akari turned away and broke their mental connection, then opened the door out onto the rooftop.

Just as the forecast had predicted, it was pouring rain on both sides of the border that night, warm, fat droplets that soaked into the skin around rain gear and through costume. Unpleasant weather even for a magical girl, and they couldn’t use magic to clear the water—too much of a risk to their stealth.

Dark and rainy—it all seemed suitable to her, and to their task. More so than sun, or even a pallid moon.

She joined the others at the edge of the roof, looking like so many shrouded ghouls in the darkness, looking over an island village in weather no one should be outside in. Visibility was low—no human could have seen the fortifications across the river estuary tonight, even though the northern shore was quite close.

The anticipation set her nerves on edge, and to dispel it she glanced at her companions. There were some girls who had been on the plane mission: Tomi, their now‐celebrity mission leader, face set in a grim mask. Erika, the girl who could slow time, face impassive, pistol on her belt.

Then there was Morimura Kaoru, in a set of armor that obviated the rain gear and would have gleamed in the light. An ornate pair of golden goggles completed the set. She was their spotter—her gaze pierced everything non‐magical, and her range was over a kilometer.

And in the corner was a key part of the team: their stealth generator, Sakamata Hana, in hooded cloak, holding up one hand that faded in and out of sight—practice, she said, and also a bit of a ritual.

A combat complement rounded out the group, specialized in forceful tactics. Three had been flown in from Japan, and chatted among themselves quietly. Akari hadn’t gotten to know them very well.

There was also the local recruit, a new MSY member, Gang Jung‐min, a dangpa on the back of her robe. At a command, it would transform into a long‐range rifle. Handy for close and long‐range.

Akari hugged herself, wishing it were warmer.

We have verification, Tomi thought, one hand on her earpiece. Clear to teleport.

She meant that the clairvoyants had finished checking their insertion zone. With any luck, they would insert quietly, no one noticing the spike of magic that signified their arrival.

A pulse of energy, and their stealth field was up. From the inside, they all looked like phantoms, translucent and glowing slightly blue. To outsiders, they would be invisible and inaudible, and the stealth even erased some of the signs of their passing, such as thermal traces and the passage of raindrops.

There were limitations, though: it would not unbreak a window or unsnap a blade of grass, so they would need to move carefully.

The site they would teleport to was well into North Korea, just on the outskirts of their small target city. Satellite footage showed that it was buried in the middle of a large wheat field, sodden under the soaking rain. They would have cover, for now.

North Korea, June 2070.

For a moment the group was tense, senses casting out in every direction, even as they strained not to use any magic, and their stealth generator struggled.

Then they relaxed. There was nothing.

No, wait, Kaoru said, adjusting her goggles. I have a signal moving rapidly nearby. It’s a magical girl.

A jolt of tension passed through the group again, as their hands tensed on their weapons and they spread out into formation, trying not to move too much of the wheat. It took Akari a mental effort not to use any magic.

Instead, they stood there like frozen ghosts, the blip of magic appearing pulsing over their senses too. It didn’t seem to be heading for them, but it would get very close. Who had cursed them with this luck?

The water dripping down her cheek, the rain gear sticking to her face—Akari wanted it all gone so badly, and she almost broke discipline when a wave of magic passed over them.

But nothing seemed to happen, and whoever it was flew away.

What was that? she thought, finally.

The plants, Jung‐min commented.

The plants were taller, Akari realized, somehow resisting the water pulling them down. In fact…

She stepped over to peer at one of the stalks. It was completely dry, and staying so, the water falling off of it as if repelled.

She came out here to dry the wheat? Akari thought, stating the obvious. What, to improve the yield?

Probably, Tomi thought. You do what you gotta do. And I hear times haven’t been good around here recently. Let’s get moving.

They would move in the direction of the city, working their way carefully through the wheat fields and wilds, Kaoru scouting all the way. When they got close enough to scan part of the city, they would begin to circle, probing inward for their targets.

Piece by piece, new details appeared on Akari’s headset—some towers by the nearby river, a local winding his way along a trail a kilometer away, distant bunkers—all via an enchanted paper map with a camera pointed at it, Kaoru infusing the necessary magic.

They moved slowly, giving Akari time to absorb the sight of the darkened countryside around her. What she saw was disheartening—much of the land was fallow, and the land that wasn’t lacked signs of mechanization. They weren’t close to any households, but she wagered they would look little better.

And then, all too slowly, the details of their target city began to fill their headsets. They had satellite maps already, of course, but Kaoru was able to provide live data—where people were, where there was activity, and eventually, where the magical girls were.

They were close enough now that it was unavoidable that they would see parts of the outskirts. What they saw was pitiful, dilapidated factory complexes that looked like a caricature, something from the imagination of an over‐eager movie director.

I never thought it’d be this bad, Akari thought. I mean, you hear about it, but…

People outside can’t imagine how bad it is, Jung‐min thought, with a subdued venom. Or prefer to forget. And people inside try not to imagine how much better it is outside. You do what you have to, to deal with what you can’t change.

Not that I’ve ever been here either, she added after a pause.

It reminds me of a quote I heard once, Hana said. The human eye is capable of failing to see even the most glaring injustice.

Tomi gave them both a look. The MSY might have been awash with the politics of expansion again, but this was hardly the time.

From what they knew, the magical girls here were the ones least affected by the sudden collapse of grief cube prices in South Korea. They produced enchanted devices, which had retained more of their value, though they did face new competition from abroad. Yet even they felt obliged to spend so much magic on local crops.

Akari didn’t want to think about what the other border cities might look like.

It doesn’t matter, Tomi thought. Places like these breed monsters, but it’s still our job to get rid of them. Focus on the mission.

It bothered Akari a bit, working with Tomi again, hearing her say a thing like that. She still remembered what had happened on the plane, and even if she agreed now with what Tomi had done—well, that didn’t make it easy to change how she felt.

Maybe she wants revenge too, Akari thought.

They began their circuit around the city. Within, the population—too numerous for Kaoru to pick out one‐by‐one—went about its business, which at this hour was mostly sleeping. There was, however, a magical girl reclining on a rooftop, close enough for Kaoru to pass Akari a blurred image.

Negative, Akari thought. I don’t recognize her.

The low population of the city was a blessing—there were likely to be around a half‐dozen magical girls, a pittance compared to, say, Pyongyang’s likely total of over two hundred.

There was a few minutes of tension as they crossed over one of the roads leading into town. Potholed and tech‐free, it was also thankfully deserted. Here, the satellites said they would be getting close to the core industrial zone.

Another candidate, Kaoru thought.

Still no, Akari thought.

They had nearly completed a half‐circuit when Kaoru signaled for them to halt. She needed to take a closer look at something, goggles glowing lightly with magic that hopefully only they could see.

Some kind of concentration of magical energy, she thought a few seconds later, sending a blurry image of an apartment block. Seems like the enchantment workshop we were looking for? I need to get closer to be sure.

Mark the location, but let’s finish our circuit first, Tomi thought. Make sure what we’re dealing with. There’s no reason to rush. Not yet.

They found no more magical girls circling the rest of the city, nor any trace of the soul magic Akari was searching for. They would be forced to go closer if they wanted more information.

I don’t like this, Tomi thought. We should have found more magical girls by now. Not just a workshop.

Technically that wasn’t quite true: there were still parts of the city not covered by Kaoru’s vision range. Still, Akari shared the sentiment, and the unease.

Moving closer meant entering the city proper without having positively identified their target. At that range, it was not safe to take much time scouting. They would have to decide and act quickly.

The water swirled around them as they churned down a sidewalk, getting closer to the enchantment workshop, every member of the team straining their senses.

That was how Akari noticed the pair of humans inexplicably out in the dark.

It was enough for the group to pause, just for a second, as they passed the alleyway. A man and a child, trading each other foodstuffs in the middle of the night, a sack of rice for a canister of powdered milk. Both silhouettes looked very, very thin.

The government here doesn’t worry too much about keeping its people fed, Jung‐min thought. I heard it’s worse than usual, recently.

Akari didn’t have much time to dwell on the sight, as the resolution of Kaoru’s scans of the workshop improved. Now she was resolving trace glimmers of magic, obvious pieces of enchantment equipment, and stacked grief cubes.

A shiver of unease, of anticipation passed through their group telepathy.

We still haven’t found the actual principals, Tomi thought. Not yet.

But the number of places they could be was rapidly running out.

We need to take a closer look, Tomi thought. But be wary. They could be stealthed like we are, and the building might be booby‐trapped. After all, they shouldn’t be surprised we might be coming for them.

Or we got shit luck and they’re out, Erika thought.

Or that. But we can’t assume, Tomi thought.

Normally, a team like theirs would have fanned out, dispersing themselves into a perimeter around the building while a few probed inside. But Hana’s stealth field covered only about a dozen meters, forcing them to move mostly together.

Akari and Erika moved forward towards the ground‐level entrance, Erika powering her time‐slow field on for the first time, calibrated to avoid affecting the rain.

They had rehearsed this. Erika had the Soul Guard experience with magical traps, but Akari was the stronger magic detector. They would work as a team: Akari would stretch her senses to look for traces of magic—particularly those she recognized from the previous bomb. Erika would try to diagnose anything she found.

Predictably, there was no easy way in. The workshop was on the third floor, in an interior room without windows. If they wanted to maintain stealth, they’d need to work through the building.

So Akari closed her eyes, letting her soul detach a bit from her senses. Above her, two floors up, parts of the enchantment workshop pulsed silently in varying states of corruption, like flares in the dark. Beyond that, the world was almost dark.

Almost. There was a trace of light, the same color as some she had seen on the plane what seemed like so long ago.

There’s something here, she said, gesturing at a grimy metal box just inside the doorway. And I recognize it. I think it was crafted by our target.

Erika moved closer. On closer inspection, it seemed to be an old‐style mailbox.

Basic detection device. Designed to release a burst of magic if it senses a magical girl. Easy enough to defuse; you just have to drain the charge before it can do anything.

Erika lanced the mailbox with a jolt of magic from her outstretched hand, ghostly underneath the stealth.

The process quickly became tedious, nervewracking under the time pressure they were under. There was another ward closer to the staircase, then an enchanted security camera, and then a shock device under the floor. It seemed to just keep going.

And still no sign of their targets.

They stashed their rain gear and advanced up the stairway, heading for the third floor, where the workshop was. They moved carefully, inhumanly graceful, followed by the rest of the squad, compelled by the limits of the stealth field to stay a floor below.

At this point they had to assume that the enemy magical girls were cloaked as well, and thus that they might be close enough to spot any minor inconsistency of stealth. There was even the outré risk of colliding with an enemy in the middle of the hallway.

But for now, there was nothing, just dingy hallways and closed doors, including the one they needed to enter.

They stacked up at the edge of the door, Kaoru following closely to scan the inside of the apartment. Here, at such close resolution, they could dispense with the paper map and headset and rely on telepathy directly to transmit an image.

It seemed to be empty. On their immediate right as they entered would be a kitchen counter, suitable for concealment from anyone or anything in the living area on their left, or in the main hallway that ran down the center of the apartment to the other bedrooms.

The living area seemed to serve as the enchanter’s workshop, with a sofa pushed as far to their left as possible, to give more space for the long table in the middle. The table was cluttered with work materials: bits of wood, metal, and other materials, as well as hand tools. Two desk lamps flanked the sofa, all below a large rack of shelves filled with tools and supplies.

That was all well and good, but first, the door.

An impassive and frustrating metal barrier that stymied their stealth, it couldn’t be opened carelessly—the large, blatant motion of a door opening and closing would create a visible distortion.

But they could at least try to hide it: Erika’s time‐slowing field could indirectly mask their movements, especially if they moved with all the speed a magical girl could muster. Combined with an extra effort from their stealth generator, they could pass unnoticed, if no one was looking directly at the doorway.

Erika, Akari, and Tomi took off their soul gems, passing them to one of the combat team for safekeeping. The girl placed them inside a metal box along with her own soul gem, reinforced by a magic barrier of her own design. Then her shield glimmered into place in front of them.

It was always tempting to think oneself invincible behind the protection of so many different kinds of magic, but they all knew better.

The door flashed open and closed in less than half a second, all four of them glimmering through the door and taking cover immediately behind the counter on the right side, in the empty kitchen.

They crouched there, tense, eyes scanning the room. The seconds passed, but nothing happened.

Now Akari began to absorb the domestic details of a home well‐tended to: the tidy countertops, with jars of kimchi set out in a row. The simple wildflowers sitting in a jar on the far cabinet. The controlled mess sitting on the work table in the living area. It wasn’t exactly how she had pictured the den of a terrorist. She had expected more fanaticism—more pictures of the enemy with spray‐painted targets, fewer flowers. That was stupid in retrospect.

These people are pretty well‐off, Erika thought, looking around. Relatively speaking, of course. Extra bedrooms, the top‐floor apartment—what are the chances they traded a few favors for this?

Not now. Tomi thought. Take a look at their equipment. Maybe we can learn where they are, or at least what they’re up to.

Akari stood up out of cover, focusing her attention on the sitting room table, covered with all manner of strange artifacts: metal plates covered in runes, timers connected by wire to metal boxes, even what looked like a few origami birds.

A wave of vertigo passed over her, causing her to stagger in place.

Her instinct was to lash back. The feeling was totally alien, something she hadn’t felt since she had been young, before her contract, and that terror primed a wave of protective magic, surging out from her soul gem.

Yet still, she paused, her experience pushing her to stop.

There was… someone in the air.

Her breath caught in her throat and she went absolutely still, snapping at her team to do the same. They all went as silent as corpses, shrinking their magic back into their gems.

Akari carefully breathed in. It was as if someone’s soul had been smeared out, aerosolized. A mist so thin it was impossible to feel, yet the scent so cloying that Akari marveled that she could have missed it. Souls didn’t usually smell faintly like rotting flesh.

Did it know they were there? Was it being used as a kind of magical sensor?

At her signal, the team readied their weapons, and Tomi prepared an emergency evacuation. If they had been detected, there was a chance that they needed to just blow the workshop and run.

Then Akari spooled the thinnest line of magic she could manage, reaching out to make contact with the wisps of magic emanating in the air.

Who are you? How are you like this? Akari asked. What happened to you?

Her magic probed its way forward, towards an invisible source, but it seemed for a moment as if she might get lost in the haze, or perhaps that the soul was too far gone for communication.

But then she saw a glimmer, and she seized it, until the light expanded in her mind’s eye into circling visions of a girl in the crimson robes of the Korean Imperial Guard, fire sparking from her eyes.

Who goes there? the soul cried. You are unwelcome! Turn back!

Akari felt the soul’s fire on her skin, saw the trappings of a fortress that had been insinuated into its mind, and realized she had been right: a soul mage had tampered with the soul, manipulating and twisting it into a magical sentry.

I am Akiyama Akari, she thought. And I am not your enemy. You are on false guard.

Here, Akari knew clever magic would only create more problems than it solved. Any further soul manipulation by her would be destabilizing—traumatizing—and liable to send the soul into full alarm.

Instead, she relied on their nascent soul link, laying bare her own soul: the honesty of her words, her dismay and grief at what had happened to this girl, the fury and disdain she had for its perpetrator.

The girl fell to her knees, hands on her head, mouth open in a silent scream as the realization dawned. Her world had been a lie.

Lines of energy began pulsing through the room, the magic of the sentry system pulsing in rapacious vines that filled the air, hanging from the ceiling as if placed there by an invisible hand. At their root, they drank power greedily from a pair of soul gems, hidden in a case beneath one of the lamps.

There was a stealth system too, Akari realized, and it was starting to fail. The vines and the soul gems had always been there.

I don’t understand, the girl thought. I was—I was home—in the garden—but then—

Just rest, Akari thought.

Her words dissolved into the girl, who was in no state to resist.

Then the air cleared before Akari, and she let out a breath as she finally sensed their targets, two of them, in bedrooms behind a now‐dismantled stealth field.

But just as Akari tasted victory, the wooden box before them pulsed, a mechanism on the side sending out a great wave of magic. One last failsafe, finally overcoming Akari and Hana’s magic. Instantly, the two targets jolted awake, magic already flaring.

Telepathy devolved to half‐formed impressions of intent. Erika was the fastest on the draw and was halfway towards the bedrooms when a bolt of white light snapped out of the floor, gouging a hole in the wood and trailing burnt sparks as it went. Despite the slow‐time field, it came breathtakingly close to her head and chest, gouging a spray of blood from her side even as she spun away.

Hana, Kaoru, and a ranged specialist bolted forward before Erika’s blood had time to meet air—they needed to delay or seal off any escape attempt, and perhaps even get in a sneak attack.

But their actions triggered only more traps, numerous bursts of magic blending together into an incoherent mess as one of their combat mages cleared the room by force, a marble of green magic phasing through the door and ballooning to tremendous size, a maelstrom of air that tore at walls, ceiling, floor—and all the traps lying in wait.

The crash of Jung‐min’s arquebus shattered the air yet further, joined by a staccato burst of explosions, Tomi teleporting grenades straight from her bag into the air around their targets.

Erika was moving forward again, this time with the barrier generator, Akari joining them to push straight through the still‐spiraling vortex inside a halo of light, barrier advancing down the hallway.

Then the barrier generator slammed her hands down, Erika sliding to her knees just behind, as a pillar of blue, two meters wide and two meters high, slammed into them. The crash of force meeting barrier sprayed off a gout of sparks, blinding Akari—but she didn’t need to see her targets. She could feel one of their gems, just around the corner—

A crack like thunder for a second time, but not from Jung‐min. The blue pillar vanished, the enemy magical girl was dead, Hana was vanishing back into stealth—

But Akari’s attention had been drawn abruptly somewhere else, to something familiar, and horrifying.

That’s right, soul mage, their other enemy thought, turning the title into an epithet. I’d stay back, unless you want this going off right in your face. And taking the entire city with it.

The thought was desperate, enraged.

She’s not bluffing, Akari thought, beaming the thought to her team. It’s another explosive device, the same design as on the plane. She’s powering it herself.

Their attack froze for a few seconds, an eternity, as they attempted to devise a plan that would let them capture or kill her before she could detonate. Akari herself was stuck a mere meter away from the doorway leading to the other magical girl, but couldn’t close the gap in time.

But they couldn’t afford to wait, or negotiate. They had made enough noise to attract every magical girl in the city, not to mention whoever might be in teleport range.

Tomi and Akari shared a glance, and a thought, and the girl holding Akari’s soul gem passed it forward, as Tomi played for a bit of time.

You don’t have to do this, Tomi thought. You could surrender, and we’d take you in. No killing.

And become a mind‐washed puppet? No thanks. I know how you foreigners operate.

Tomi grabbed Akari’s hand, and teleported her at the enemy girl.

The bomb charged for detonation, but Akari seized a pair of metal attachments in one hand, redirecting the surge of magic into herself. Her breath caught in her throat, as she recognized the girl from Tae‐hyun’s memories, her thoughts filled with an instant, automatic hate.

The other magical girl’s fist clipped her face, Akari’s head flinging backward. Her head swirled and the world spun, as the magic of their two souls slammed into each other, the other girl’s magic pouring into Akari’s gem, trying to overwhelm it and allow for detonation.

Murderer! Akari thought, uncontrolled over the boundary between them. Everything you do is an abomination!

I’m the abomination? How dare you!

Akari saw with sudden clarity the other girl in front of her, clothes ragged, hair stringy, but all cared for as best as could be done with little at hand. Her hand held a knife, and the knife was pointed at an older woman, one carrying precious food.

Akari felt the knife enter her gut, blood spraying, and it took everything she had to keep her grip on the bomb, counter the illusion made powerful with real memory.

I did everything to keep my family alive, to keep my loved ones alive, and it was all ruined by you! You Japanese bureaucrats, no different from the party, stuffing yourselves while bankrupting others. A hundred years, the system here has worked, ruined in months, and do you even care who you starved? Fuck you! I’ll kill you all—

The girl gasped in sudden pain, as Akari threw her own memories forward, the concentrated essence of all the torture and pain Tae‐hyun had suffered at this girl’s hands, distilled into one, crippling moment.

And in that opening Akari stabbed her magic, needle working its way into the intermingling of their souls at the nexus of the bomb.

The girl stumbled in two places—the bomb warbled and guttered out as Akari’s magic surged into its circuitry, snapping apart the runes and chasing the thread of the enemy soul mage’s magic back upwards into her body.

Her gem shattered when Akari’s magic touched it, filled with hate, and a thousand glittering stars fell to the floor.

It was done.

South Korea, August 2070.

The materials were simple, but the craftsmanship was careful, even exacting. In any other context, Akari would have been curious to meet the maker of this memorial.

“I helped her father make it,” the girl next to her said, in Korean. “It feels a bit strange, since there’s no way to explain to them that she’s never coming back, but I think, deep down, they know.”

Akari checked the other girl’s expression, wondering what she intended, but there was no guile there, only a poignant sadness.

Akari closed her eyes, hoping her expression conveyed that she understood what the girl was going through. This was one of Tae‐hyun’s teammates, Won Min‐ji, one of the girls who had left her behind for what should have been a simple family obligation.

“I’m not sure what to say,” Akari said, replying in Korean. “I lost a team member once, long ago. She was my seonbae, and…”

“No, it’s not your responsibility to apologize to us,” the girl said, casting her gaze meaningfully down the way, towards a trio of girls huddled on the other side of the memorial. They looked like visitors from the city, with fashionable outfits and the newest models of self‐propelling luggage.

They weren’t; the outfits and accessories had been gifts from the MSY, to help conceal a group of visiting North Koreans, magical girls that had slipped across the border, with permission from their counterparts on the other side.

Akari swallowed, preparing to speak.

I know, it’s not really their responsibility either, Min‐ji thought. But they came anyway.

After you invited them, Mami thought, walking over from behind the memorial. Everyone was willing to make the gesture. That’s always a hopeful start.

Akari hid her expression, looking back towards the memorial. There, photos of the “missing” Tae‐hyun were framed into a wooden assembly, complemented by candles and incense bowls. Someone had left a bunch of fresh flowers on the ground in front.

She was new to this kind of diplomacy, the way Mami had worked to broker this meeting, this… mutual gesture of understanding, that would hopefully be followed by a real discussion, and understanding. One that the MSY couldn’t be disinterested in—they had been the real targets, and the ones to retaliate.

The other of Tae‐hyun’s teammates gave the signal, and they shifted to their positions: Akari on one side with Mami, while Tae‐hyun’s team flanked the other.

The three northerners approached the memorial slowly, holding sticks of lit incense. They bowed twice, then placed the sticks into the bowls.

There was a long moment of silence, and then Min‐ji walked to the monument.

Thank you for coming, she thought, bowing to the others. We know it isn’t easy coming out here.

Telepathy wasn’t strictly necessary, but it was wise—the Korean language had diverged somewhat between north and south, after so long a strict separation.

For something like this, it’s not a problem, one of the northerners thought. In light of recent events, it was only proper for us to come pay our respects.

Seo Si‐won, Akari was able to recall.

Si‐won gestured at the memorial.

I’m sorry about what happened to her. Those in her city knew Choi‐ssi was having a hard year, but none of us knew she was up to something like this. And, well, we had always wondered how exactly she had managed to enchant so many devices, but no one felt it important enough to investigate. To our shame.

Akari managed to keep her face diplomatically neutral. The truth was, everyone in Choi’s immediate vicinity must have suspected something was up, but many lives had come to depend upon her work. No one wanted to kill their golden goose.

Which made it all the more remarkable that these other northerners had stepped in to insulate them from responsibility. It would have been easy for the north to shove all the responsibility for what happened onto Choi’s city, making it their problem.

Instead, the unprecedented had happened: a majority of the border territories had come together to send the magical girls just across the border from Tae‐hyun’s team as emissaries. In a situation where difficult conditions kept the territories splintered and focused on local survival, this was the first time anyone in the south had seen them come together for anything.

Why didn’t some of them come themselves? Min‐ji asked.

Frankly, they thought you’d kill them too, Si‐won thought, without even blinking. The hope was, you’d be more willing to talk to us.

Respectfully, Mami thought, we should take this indoors.

She tilted her head at a few mundanes watching them from across the street.

They made their way to the local team’s hideout, in a cramped backroom of a local teahouse, in what should have been a disused furniture storage space. Instead, they had a moment to reflect upon the faded wallpaper, bunk bed, and stacked medical supplies. The small table only had room for four.

Min‐ji served tea on a chipped tea set.

Of course, we’re not just here to pay our respects, Si‐won thought, once they all had drinks. As we’ve explained, we’re also here to represent what we’re calling the North Border Trade Organization. We hope to make it our responsibility to prevent further unnecessary deaths and violence.

She ducked her head for a moment, seeming to struggle for words.

The truth is, when I heard about Tae‐hyun’s disappearance, it really disturbed me. We’ve never been enemies, out here far from the cities, and I hoped everything would be alright. It made me sick to know what really happened, and that we in the north simply weren’t taking care of business.

She paused, gauging her audience.

But, I would be lying if I said we all got together because of Tae‐hyun. There have been serious discussions for a while about needing to band together. I don’t know how good the information you have about us is, but we’re dying up here.

The last sentence was clearly addressed at Mami, rather than at the Korean team, and Akari watched Mami meet her gaze for a long moment. There was a reason they had been seated across from each other.

The local trade networks have broken down, is that right? Mami thought. Not enough demand for grief cubes?

Yes, the girl thought, picking up her teacup for a sip. Our hunting territories are unusually rich. This has been enough to help us keep us and our families much better off than they otherwise would be. This has not been true ever since you showed up.

And I’m sorry for that, Mami thought, without missing a beat. Much of this is because of our free use of grief cubes to pay local South Koreans. There is already a proposal on the table to convert this into primarily won‐based operations, but it would be less desirable for our members and associates here, and considerably more expensive for the MSY. It has not been easy to convince anyone to commit to that after all that has happened.

Si‐won tensed, and Akari braced herself.

You’re talking about expense when some of our families have trouble feeding themselves! Si‐won thought, slamming her cup down into the table. You’re a fool if you think a message like that will satisfy anyone. Perhaps you don’t quite understand, but our organization is driven by desperation, not finance.

The room was silent but for the rattling of her cup, thanks to telepathy, but it felt like the words ought to be echoing.

I know, Mami thought, without acknowledging the implied threat. But we are not the ones who have committed atrocities. We’d be spending our resources to support you. If it were up to me, we would already be helping. But things are not so simple. It’s not just about our payments in grief cubes. We’ve also improved training and hunting practices throughout South Korea. Even without us, grief cube scarcity isn’t going to come back.

Your people have forgotten what it means to be desperate, Si‐won thought, in almost a growl. What Choi‐ssi did, the bombings, the kidnappings, that was not in a vacuum. We have all suffered. With a response like that, what am I supposed to tell them when I get back? That you don’t care? That things are only going to get worse? I don’t think we’ll be able to do a very good job of holding anyone back, will we?

The two girls stared at each other for a tense moment, Si‐won’s eyes seeming to bore a hole into Mami’s. Akari knew Mami could read the telepathic undercurrents, perhaps even better than she could now—the threat was genuine, not a mere negotiating tactic.

Mami leaned back, folding her hands on the table.

We’re not offering nothing. For now, we can offer supplies, Mami thought, tone firm. While our organization debates the issue, I am authorized to trade food and other supplies for grief cubes at historical rates. I am also authorized to discuss other arrangements.

That depends on what assurances you want, the other girl thought. We’re not what you are. We’re just a voluntary organization.

She glanced around at the other two girls with her, one of which had been writing notes on paper.

Then, she visibly relaxed, the anger washing out of her face like so much sand, and Akari let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

But your supply proposal may serve for now. We will need time to consult with those still in the north. If we can agree on terms of trade today, then there will be opportunity to discuss other matters.

That’s acceptable, Mami thought.

Afterward, there was a diplomatic dinner, hosted by Min‐ji’s parents, who were being well‐compensated—in won—for the task. It was simple fare—pickled vegetables, tofu soup, rice—but satisfying, and the milieu was pleasant. The talks had gone as well as could reasonably be expected.

Which meant that when Mami and Akari finally drifted back into their hotel room, it was with the kind of satisfied exhaustion that came with a job well done.

What do you think? Mami asked, turning to drape her arm around Akari. Think we can handle the next crisis together too?

Akari laughed, looking pointedly downward.

If it will convince you to give me this view again, absolutely. Let’s make this a lasting thing.

She felt, rather than saw, Mami nod.

South Korea, March 2071.

The Leadership Council emergency session was scheduled for eight in the evening, mere hours after first news began to arrive from the MSY’s governmental contacts, and while the rest of the world was starting to receive their breaking news reports. The notice was so short that there wasn’t time to recall all the committee members from their posts around the world.

Mami knew very little: the North Korean leader was dead, there were mass arrests and tanks in the streets, active combat in peripheral areas—and a new government consolidating its hold on power.

Any other details—well, that was what the meeting was for. She would have preferred to meet in person, but with no time to travel, and leaving Korea at the moment a bad idea anyway, she would have to teleconference.

She stepped into the secure room, tolerating the poking of the guard telepath at the door, which swung closed a moment later, ponderous magical lock sealing with both a clang and a sizzle. Here, behind electronic and magical shielding, they would discuss secure business.

She settled into the surprisingly plush chair, exchanging her personal contacts for a pair soaking in a slot in the table. She waited for a few seconds while they synchronized and authenticated with the equipment around her: a curving optical resolution monitor and projector support equipment, part of a standard executive teleconferencing package, complete with optional quantum security and decidedly non‐standard magical protections.

The monitor chimed, and the projection came online, wall projectors augmenting the images on her contacts, relaying an image of the Yamazaki memorial conference room, an ordinary corporate conference room augmented with several priceless wall scrolls and the same kind of security Mami was ensconced in.

The resolution of the pseudo‐holography was a bit lacking; the technology was a work in progress.

She was seated just to the right of the head of the table, where Homura sat, glowering as she reviewed something on her contacts. The rest of the table was nearly full, at least in simulation, CEOs and magnates in public, Directors and Second Executives in private.

Homura leaned forward a dozen seconds later, clasping her hands on the table.

“Let’s bring this to order,” Homura said, blinking rapidly to signal her contacts. “We have a potential crisis situation on our hands, and we need to decide on a course of action moving forward. Kuroi‐san, would you like to brief us?”

“You’ve all been informed of the basics,” she said, looking out over the table. “And what will be more widely known among the public. We have access to more confidential information, filtered through our sources in the Chinese government. The new North Korean government is composed of existing military and political elites near the Chinese border, and they are sending heavy signals that they intend to pursue an opening‐up policy, with close alignment to Chinese interests.”

“The Chinese are in turn reciprocating with a warm level of support for the new administration, along with promises of economic aid and investment; their diplomatic assets are making a show of consulting with the new government, and they’ve already handed over a few opposition members trying to flee the country.”

“But opening up doesn’t mean reunification, I take it?” one of the executives said. “It’d be way too soon to suggest anything like that, and it’s doubtful that the Chinese would support such a move.”

“Correct,” Kana said. “Though they are promising a policy of peaceful development, once the transitional period is over. A bloody transitional period, I would add, with a number of purges and assassinations in recent days. Park Sung‐won has actually been dead for weeks, which is the real reason for the recent military activity. They’re trying to crush the opposition.”

There was a pause at the table as they absorbed that.

“First and foremost, how likely are things to stay stable?” Homura asked, placing her hand on the table. “These coup plotters sound like they don’t intend to rock the boat. That’s good, since I don’t want to find out how good we are at stopping incoming nukes.”

Perhaps Homura intended the last part to be a bit of a joke. No one laughed.

“The Chinese think they have a decent grip on power,” Kana said. “And as I said, they’re offering their own support. It’s impossible to say for certain, of course.”

“Do we want them to stay stable?” Homura asked, addressing the table with a gesture of her hand. “What do we think?”

“My opinion is yes,” Shizuki Sayaka said, quick on the draw. “What this government is promising is the best anyone could reasonably hope for. It keeps things nice and tidy, and it improves conditions for people on the ground. There might even be the opportunity for business.”

In other words, Sayaka was ruling out a long‐term push for Korean reunification. Not that she was alone in that; for many people, mundane or not, reunification at this point seemed like it would come with nightmarish cultural and economic difficulties, even assuming the political questions could be solved.

“Reduced tensions and increased Chinese support would go a long way towards helping the magical girls in the country,” Mami added. “Not to mention reduced risks and financial burdens for us in managing the region.”

She didn’t need to elaborate. The plight of the border girls and their destabilizing influence on the Korean peninsula had become quite a political football, one that Mami herself had kicked more than once. They knew.

She let the discussion linger on that for a bit, gauging the opinion of the room. There seemed to be few willing to disagree with her and Sayaka’s general assessment, judging by the few comments that were made.

“Even if we didn’t want North Korea to fall completely into Chinese hands, what could we do about it?” Tanaka Yui asked, a few minutes later. “Very little, as far as I can see. Even if we could, as Sayaka says, we’d be courting disaster.”

“Not to mention,” Mami said, “that while we may have no influence in the North Korean government, we do have influence in the Chinese government, as well as more and more members and associates in northern China. The northern border has always been more amicable and prosperous than the southern—in time, we will be able to expand into North Korea through China, even if the girls near the DMZ remain distrustful of us.”

“Or basically,” Kyouko said, twiddling with a stick of mint pocky, “greater Chinese influence makes reunification very difficult.”

“Right,” Kana said. “What power they have will be used to suppress its supporters and propagandize against it. Perhaps worse, depending on how much North Korean sovereignty is eroded.”

“But what I’m hearing is that this likely doesn’t hurt us very much at all,” Kyouko said. “Which is good, because I prefer not to mess in other people’s business. What do the locals think, then? I mean the border girls.”

“I haven’t heard from them yet,” Mami said, answering Kyouko’s question. “But I believe they’ll be a lot less concerned about the geopolitics than their local economies. If this coup ends up relatively clean, and China improves their living conditions, they’ll take it. All the better, from their perspective, if they can shake their dependence on aid from the MSY.”

“Have your division put together a report for tomorrow once you get in contact,” Homura said, glancing at Mami. “Otherwise, it seems we’re in agreement to let the political situation stand.”

She looked out over the table for objections. There were none.

“Alright, what about South Korea?” she asked. “Tensions have been high recently. How are they taking the news?”

“Too early to say,” Mami said. “They’ve barely had time to receive the news. But I’d expect wariness and pessimism. They’ve been very on‐edge since Seogang‐dong, and I’d think a coup in the north is the last news they want to hear, whatever the new government is promising. I’ve seen the internal plans; they’re worried that if the north falls apart, they won’t be ready for what’s coming, despite all their preparation.”

“Us neither, I’d say,” Sayaka said.

Homura shook her head, clasping her hands together.

“We still need to be prepared for the eventuality,” she said. “Now that we’ve stuck our hands into the pot, I think it’s safe to say we’ll be on the hook if the worst happens. Let’s put a plan together, work out how many refugees we might have to take.”

There was little to disagree with there, but as the conversation shifted, Mami couldn’t shake a sense of… not quite foreboding. More that they simply weren’t covering all the angles, that they had to be overlooking something. There were just too many unknown unknowns.

North Korea, April 2071.

Well, we avoided the worst‐case scenario, Akari thought. Which counts for something. Here’s hoping it doesn’t get any worse.

It’s our job to make sure it doesn’t get any worse, Mami thought. Though I guess that’s a bit cliché to say.

She sipped her tea, a surprisingly decent blend given that it had come from a jug in an airport lounge.

More specifically, a lounge in Pyongyang, North Korea, where they were waiting for a plane to take them back across the Chinese border. With them were a bunch of civilian businessmen, and two official emissaries, one from China and the other from South Korea. They had just gotten back from talks with the new government. Mami and Akari…

Well, they had done that too, in their own way.

Things are still cooling down, though, Akari thought. It will be a while yet before we can really breathe easy.

The DMZ girls had turned out to be surprisingly split on the situation. Most seemed pleased by the influx of Chinese aid, as they had guessed, but some had been very cool, or even hostile. One of the friendlier girls confided in Mami that some suspected that the Chinese coup was also an MSY plot, a way to extend its tentacles deeper into the country—but that she was sure they’d come around.

It didn’t help that a new organization of North Korean magical girls had, in fact, met with Chinese MSY associates in Dandong shortly after the coup, asking for help putting together their own associate application to the MSY. Based mostly in the northern parts of the country near the Chinese border, they claimed to have contacts high up in the new government, and to have even done some of its dirty work, with the aid of a few key members based in the capital.

Very big claims, and plenty to be skeptical of, but they had produced plenty of evidence, and three weeks of vetting had found only corroborating details and consistent details. Finally, the MSY had sent a trio of envoys to Pyongyang, who had reported back that everything seemed to be just as claimed. So too had the next five they sent.

So Mami had made the trip herself, piggybacking on their mundane connections in the Chinese government to make everything a bit more official. Misgivings by the DMZ girls aside, the opportunity was far too good to pass up.

Akari had to admit, she hadn’t exactly looked forward to visiting the world’s most reclusive and notorious state again, but it had all been tolerable enough. The country was, unsurprisingly, a lot more welcoming when you weren’t there to kill people.

I have to say, Akari commented, leaning over to put her head on Mami’s shoulder. After all this, I’m really looking forward to Italy.

Mami smiled, even as she rolled her eyes.

Who wouldn’t? she thought, patting her head. You’re not the one who has to wrangle with the Europeans—there’s a copycat organization that’s gaining ground there, you know. But, I’m looking forward to it too.

An announcement sounded over the intercom. Their plane would be boarding soon.

How is the investigation into Choi’s devices proceeding back at the lab? Mami thought. Any new revelations?

Not yet, Akari thought, without shifting position. Hina‐chan’s still working on the bomb apparatus we recovered from her, trying to repurpose it for another energy gap experiment. We’ve also gotten a couple test subjects signed up to let me attempt enchantment through them, somewhat like Choi did, but my hopes aren’t high for that. It’s far too invasive for the quality of product we expect, at least with my powers. I’m more excited to be helping Hina‐chan with her work.

Mami nodded, slowly, her hair brushing Akari’s face.

Always plenty to do, she thought.

Akari sighed, wondering if now was a good time to fall asleep. She was Mami’s security, but she had already done the rounds earlier, inspecting their plane both inside and out. There hadn’t been even a whiff of magic.

Instead, she zapped herself with a bit of magic, ensuring she was awake and attentive. Not many things could happen in an airport lounge, but one couldn’t be sure.

When it came time to board, neither she nor Mami could find anything on the passengers or any of their luggage, either in line or on the plane itself. They even strained their telepathy for signs of malice among the passengers.

As for mundane security—well, for that they’d have to rely on the security of the Chinese envoy. In his own words, he was getting on the plane too, and with him the interests of the Chinese and North Korean governments. They had every incentive to make sure nothing went wrong.

She settled in her seat next to Mami, looking back at the front of the wing. It was funny, in a way, for magical girls to be taking an airliner.

Then she looked over at Mami, who was hunched over frowning at her tablet, reading a piece of the mundane news, eyes intense.

There was nothing special about the moment, but she felt in herself a wave of warm affection, and in it she realized something.

She was happy here.

She shook her head at herself, and looked out the window again.

Epilogue

Japan, April 2071.

Homura glowered down at the images below her, drone stills of the plane crash that had almost killed Mami. That had killed her soul, in a way, by killing Akiyama Akari, whose body Homura forced herself to look at.

There were other pictures too, pictures of the rampage Mami went on afterward, before they were able to recapture her, the damage severe enough that it could only be covered by the widening North Korean civil war.

“We were too damn careless,” she said. “A conventional bomb! We couldn’t see that coming?”

It was the end of the day, the sunrise pouring through the windows of Homura’s high‐rise office. That meant there was no one else in the room, and she was free to speak to the person whose opinion she valued most.

“Of course I don’t blame myself,” Homura said. “I blame all of us. We’ve been too complacent, too secure. Things have been going too well.”

She didn’t need a two‐hundred‐page report to tell her that, even if there was one sitting unread in her computer.

“I know,” she said, a moment later. “The cynical way to look at it is that it’s just Mami, and she even lived, right? We salvaged her. The organization is fine. But neither of us is willing to say it is just Mami.”

Homura shook her head.

“I liked Akiyama‐san, you know. You can tell her that for me. They looked happy together. She was a good woman. She was just looking for her place, and Mami was just looking for togetherness. Now Kyouko, Yuma, and I will be the ones going to the funeral instead, because Mami is…”

She gestured emptily with one hand, then dropped it back down, unhappy.

“North Korea is in civil war,” Homura said. “People are dying. Everyone is wondering about whether there needs to be an intervention, but there are nukes on the board. We’ve had to start putting up our own patrols. Magical girls! For nukes!”

For a moment she forgot herself, one arm waving in the air, hair flying.

She settled herself, stepping towards the windows that opened out onto the Mitakihara skyline. From here, it was all too easy to entertain the delusion of being in control.

“We’re putting a new proposal on the table, for the intelligence agency Yuma and I have been pushing for. After this debacle, we’ll have plenty of support for passage, even if it requires a few tweaks to the Charter. It just makes too much sense.”

“Yeah, the name is awful, but it was Yuma’s idea,” Homura said. “Though I daresay it gets the point across.”

For a long time she looked out the window, at the massive urban confluence below, poor and rich alike, trying to process it all. What was one person in all of that, even someone like Mami? A cog in the machine, one Homura had reshaped by force.

“We’re sealing the records,” she said. “Akiyama’s research will go cold, again. At least for now. It isn’t time yet.”

A thought in her mind, an intrusive one. She herself was still here, as part of the plan. Mami had suffered, as part of the plan. She would be here, someday, when Mami’s memories of all this needed to come back, when the time was right.

Homura was nearing ninety now, if one counted her time outside this world, which she did. Events showed no signs of slowing down. How long would she be made to wait? This wasn’t where she wanted to be.

“How much longer must I wait to see you?” she asked. “Can no one take my place?”

Interlude Ⅲ: Manifest Destiny

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 07:25:20 +0200

Chapter 63: The Dying Light, Part Two

Tue, 06 Sep 2022 09:11:00 +0200

Unfortunately, the fundamental physics and functioning of the Cephalopod Paradox Drives are beyond our current understanding, and while a substantial amount of scientific speculation has been devoted to analyzing what data we have, those details are certainly beyond the scope of this discussion.

That is not to say that we know nothing about them. Despite what appears to be the aliens’ best attempts to prevent thorough observation of their use—extending even to an apparent reluctance to use them for tactical jumps—we have plenty of empirical data about their practical capabilities and limitations.

The standard alien “blink” teleport consists of three phases: the “charge‐up” period, the blink itself, and the post‐blink “malaise”. For practical purposes, the blink itself is nearly instantaneous and not worth much discussion.

The charge‐up period involves pouring large amounts of power into the paradox drive over an extended period of time, from a few minutes for a short jump to hours for a long one. Statistical observation suggests that this is not just a matter of power generation, since ships of similar size take an almost invariable amount of time to travel similar distances, regardless of their apparent power supply.

Then follows the post‐blink malaise, the apparent inability of alien ships to use FTL engines after completing a blink, even for mere sublight acceleration. Malaise lasts for about as long as the corresponding charge‐up period, sometimes slightly less. It is not known what causes this—and as it is obviously a huge tactical liability, presumably the Cephalopods have been unable to get rid of it.

There are two additional properties of blink that strongly influence its strategic usage. The first is an apparent sensitivity to the local curvature of space‐time; most observed blink transits connect points far outside a stellar gravity well.

The second is the paradox drive’s maximal range, seemingly just over twenty light‐years. This is long enough that the border with alien‐held space is porous and heavily contested, but short enough that no alien offensive has yet endangered multiple Core Worlds, or even come close to endangering Earth, which hasn’t been under direct threat since the first few weeks of the Contact War.

Finally, and closely related, there is the alien Blink Bombardment Cannon, which likely leverages a paradox drive analog to teleport its projectiles. Unlike a regular blink, in which a paradox drive moves itself, a blink cannon moves only its munitions.

This latter mode of teleportation seems more difficult: the distances involved are much shorter, with comparatively longer charge‐up periods. The resulting malaise is also weaker, making it a poor weapon for FTL interdiction. Despite these drawbacks, however, blink bombardment on a Human fleet remains devastating; a teleported nuclear or antimatter weapon is difficult to stop.

No discussion of limits should cloud the overall picture: lack of blink capability is a crippling disadvantage for Humanity in this war.

— “An Infantryman’s Pocket Primer on Space Combat,” 2459, excerpt.

Incident Date: September 17th, 2460.

Injured Personnel: None

〈Background: “Anomalous” grief cubes were collected in the field by local mage, after a demon spawn in the Kazamino District, Mitakihara. Despite well‐known immutability of grief cubes to non‐Incubator actors, anomalous grief cubes showed clear unusual behavior, particularly when subjected to loading tests, with a tendency towards spontaneous grief emission and reduced ultimate carrying capacity. Findings suggest clear violation of MCC P21.1‐2 by unknown actors, with unclear but potentially serious implications.〉‡

Incident: During Akiyama Protocol testing, grief cubes showed signs of imminent demon release. Testing was suspended and the rapid reaction team was summoned, but no demon release occurred. 〈A‐instrument recordings display a clear discontinuity in the data feed, and grief cubes subsequently show completely nominal behavior. First Hypothesis: Anomalous grief cubes abruptly reverted to “normal” attractor state. Second Hypothesis: Anomalous grief cubes were modified by Incubator, or other unknown actor.〉‡

Relevant Data: Available at request per DSA‐2440.

〈Follow‐up: Institute Director Valentin was on‐hand and ordered a full surveillance sweep of the area, with no useful result. An Incubator was later questioned by the rapid reaction team, and admitted having been alerted to potential existence of anomalous grief cubes shortly before incident, but denied “substantial” modification of cubes and claimed not to understand what had occurred.〉‡

〈Result: Investigation into incident was handed by facility security over to Soul Guard.〉‡

— Incident Report, Prometheus Institute; Archive of the Magi copy, Filings and Paperwork Department, (MSY Internal). Sections marked ‡ in the text omitted in the Governance record by MSY request, per Data Sharing Agreement of 2440.

Yuma wasn’t ready for this.

A Ceph supply cruiser full of new Raptor missiles was a scenario that was so obviously disastrous, it was hardly even worth preparing for.

But, here she was.

Most—over sixty‐three percent—of Yuma’s primary consciousness was in the dwindling Command Gestalt, where it had to stay, contributing her part to the life‐and‐death work of recalculating battle plans, correlating sensor data, and coordinating assets.

The rest, however, could be repurposed.

Twenty‐seven percent of Yuma had been performing combat motor functions, split between healing Maki, repairing three nearby drones, and throwing a filigreed mace at a distant homing mine.

About seven percent of Yuma had been fleshing out an attack plan against a particularly vexing alien fighter, which involved shepherding groups of suicide drones for a daring feint.

Exactly two percent of Yuma had been busy agonizing over Kyouko‐nee‐chan’s recklessness, alongside handling telepathic exchanges with Kana, Rose, and Rin.

All those resources were reclaimed. The attack plan was canceled, and she asked the half‐healed Maki to protect her. Reacting adroitly to this role reversal, Maki began creating body doubles, sheathed in a coat of magical paint that camouflaged them against the stars.

They needed a plan, they needed hope, and Yuma would try to use her perspective, her memories, and her knowledge of magic to make both.

She could hardly call herself Governance: Magical Girls if she failed to do that, could she?

Yuma stretched out subjective time to her combat limits and beyond, pushing her custom implants into overdrive. It took its toll on her central nervous system, burning through neurons and incoordinating brain regions in a way that would have been unacceptable in a baseline human, or even a magical girl who couldn’t rapidly reverse the damage.

The fervid sensation grew overwhelming, everywhere at once, until her TacComp severed the direct connection to her physical senses and took control of her body, leaving Yuma—or rather, thirty‐six percent of Yuma—alone to her thoughts.

Alone, but not in the dark. Far from it. She had only done this rarely before, but that was enough to understand that while she was here she would see, she would hear, she would experience in a way that was impossible to explain to anyone else, in the same way that no AI could explain their subjective experience to a human.

But allegory helped, and even her own mind was forced to rely upon it partially.

She found herself surrounded by a vast pool of data, rippling under an unseen sun. The surface frothed and boiled violently, as if animated by some unseen storm, and yet never touched the tiny, one‐person patch of sand she was standing on. Around her, other copies of her stood on their own islands. They looked at each other, then at the water below, where ideas and experiences slipped in and out of her awareness as so many fish, displaying their scales for gleaming moments before vanishing below the cognitive tide.

She dove in.

The first few catches were small, slipping into her hands almost by accident. If the alien bombers were truly on their way back with more Raptors, there was only one thing to do—move their magical girls to where they were most likely to survive, and absorb whatever losses they could elsewhere. Their magic simply couldn’t protect all their ships across so large a space.

But beyond that…

The alien bombers might be targeting the reinforcements from Yenisei, rather than them? No, that didn’t make sense—there was no reason to do that when they could just eliminate their target right away. It was wishful thinking at best.

Yuma’s lungs burned as she swam deeper.

Another catch: Yuma knew more Raptors were coming, but the aliens here didn’t—they had been mind‐read too much for it to be otherwise. She could make them pay for that operational security. Kyouko’s ships, the ones that would likely be lost anyway, now had a small window to make very risky attacks, attacks the aliens wouldn’t know to expect. Then, when the bombers arrived, their erstwhile escorts would already be tied up.

That was better, but it still didn’t really give them a way to survive after the aliens shattered Kyouko’s fleet.

The weight of water above Yuma grew more and more oppressive, until it began pouring in through her mouth and nose. The reinforcements were too far away for even a stolen alien fighter to reach in time; stealth sufficient to escape couldn’t be maintained against this quantity of dust and drones; there was no way they could survive long enough to charge a blink to their reinforcements with stolen alien ships—

She was shocked out of her laments by the splash of water on her face, and the crash of something plunging through the water. She opened her eyes to sunlight. When had she surfaced?

Yuma watched Kyouko pull her spear out of the water, dappled by the forest shade. They were walking along a stream, on a trip to the countryside, long ago, and Kyouko had decided she was hungry enough to try her hand at fishing.

“Nee‐chan!” Yuma yelled in confused anger, before diving again into the water.

The wide blade of Kyouko’s spear could never have actually picked up anything. All it could do—had done—was slice a poor minnow nearly in half.

Yuma surfaced with the writhing creature a second later, blood spilling, and applied a burst of healing magic. It didn’t deserve this.

She knew what would happen now. The fish would jump back in the stream, and Kyouko would scold her for wasting magic on something so frivolous as the life of an animal.

Instead, Kyouko looked her in the eye, and Yuma remembered where she was.

“Look again,” Kyouko said.

The fish was an unformed idea, detritus from the gestalt: a bitter thought from Captain Vera, before the loss of HSS Raven, of detonating her ship’s exotic matter in a suicidal attempt at hindering alien maneuverability.

It seemed nearly irrelevant, but something about the concept had hooked into her thoughts, had caused her instincts to fish it out of the water. As Kyouko stared at her, face fading out of view, she focused her attention…

A starship’s core was a terrible tool for FTL interdiction—cores were designed to not detonate, and even when they did, it was trivial to just… fly around the disrupted area. SHERMAN rounds—precisely engineered for maximum gravitational havoc, and accelerated along the spine of an entire battlecruiser—they were not.

But, having considered the topic, there was a major source of exotic matter nearby, and it wasn’t trapped in cores: the alien resupply cruiser, with fuel and weapons enough for a small fleet. Relying on its stealth, the ship had brought no dedicated escort, and even lay near a plausible retreat course towards Yenisei.

That observation began forming the kernel of a plan. A pauper’s plan, one pocked with holes Yuma didn’t know how to patch, but something. Good enough for hope, at least.

She was out of time.

Yuma let herself return to the real world then, her vision coming back into focus as the magic coursing through her brain brought it back to full functionality.

In a testament to the severity of their situation, the gestalt adopted the framework of her plan after just five seconds’ deliberation. That it leaned heavily on uncontrolled variables and luck, on best guesses and optimistic performance projections, was immaterial—no better alternative could be found, even if Yuma didn’t like it. Something had to be done quickly, if they were to have any chance at survival.

The gestalt wove together details as best it could: ship deployment charts for the pre‐bombing diversions, blink range calculations for reaching the alien cruiser afterward, team compositions for boarding and defense, and final magic compatibility consultations, for turning seized exotic matter into the FTL interdiction they would need to escape. Precalculation was essential: there likely wouldn’t be a gestalt for such work after the bombers returned.

However desperate their situation, though, just having that set of calculations, that plan seemed to be enough for the younger magical girls, who buzzed with desperate hope as they began putting new orders into action. Yuma wasn’t even sure Kana had been right to worry about their confidence—there were no new girls under emotional suppression.

They were putting too much faith in their elders, Yuma decided. They believed her and Kyouko and the other Ancients, rather than the objectively abysmal odds.

But if it kept them fighting…

That’s not a bad plan, Maki thought, flying beside her. If we can get to the supply cruiser, then we can hoist them with their own petards. It’s worth a shot, at least. I’m impressed you thought of it.

Don’t be impressed yet, Yuma thought.

Yuma had Maki grab onto her, arms around her waist, so that her hammer could pull them forward through the void with the kind of speed only an Ancient could muster.

The human flotilla had organized itself into a defensive sphere, a mutually‐supporting crust of ships and drones and materiel crushed in the grip of the larger alien force, the entire assemblage moving towards Yenisei and its reinforcements. Now they rearranged themselves within that vice, in a deceptive choreography of drone, starship, and magical girl that redirected valuable personnel and ships away from the predicted direction of the bombers, while less vital assets moved to replace them.

The most protected human ships, those which held the center of the running fight, were ironically not human at all: an alien fighter seized by Jeannette, an alien frigate manned by mind‐controlled squid under Charlotte, and another alien frigate transformed by Rose‐Merline, who had reluctantly sent her living hunk of asteroid to be sacrificed.

Alien ships were the only ones that could blink to the cruiser, after all.

Yuma and Maki could only see glimpses of the dance, the barely perceptible exhaust of nearby ships and drones, sparkling in the infinite night, accompanied by the staccato flash of weapons fire and missile detonation, like white paint flicked across a black canvas.

Pretty, isn’t it? Maki thought. In any other context, I’d stop to watch.

Yuma didn’t think it was pretty. The surface couldn’t make up for the substance, in her view.

Still, she watched it too, through the optical surface of her helmet. It was novel, at least.

They were some of the first magical girls to arrive at their new positions, along with some of the other Ancients. They arranged themselves defensively around the alien ships, with more physical mages like Nadya farther out, and finesse‐based girls like Maki closer in.

As Maki gave her cover to heal Jeannette’s fighter, Yuma found herself sorting through a barrage of news, most of it bad.

First, there was a clairvoyant sighting of the incoming bombers, only a couple minutes out.

Second, she experienced, through the gestalt, the beginning of the sacrificial breakout attempt by their outer ships. The bombers’ attack vector had been correctly predicted beforehand, but to little avail: the attack was failing to meaningfully distract or damage the alien ships.

Third, there was news from home. Now that Yuma’s cover had been blown, MG and Nova had triggered a preemptive tidal wave of TCF repair, trying to get ahead of anything the other conspiracy might attempt—and they had attempted a lot. Nothing as bad as Yuma had feared, but enough to cause a disaster for Yuma and Governance PR.

More importantly, the reinforcements from Yenisei had been delayed. Screening the armada for compromised AIs had triggered a full‐blown internal firefight, corrupted drones and weaponry turning on their erstwhile allies and inflicting considerable damage.

They were back underway, at least.

Finally, she had dared to peek at Vlasta’s status. To her surprise, she was alive, if in fugue and unstable condition. More predictably, most of Raven’s crew was dying or already dead, the latter including Captain Vera.

It felt deeply wrong, knowing she would save more lives fighting out in space than by rushing inside Rose’s ship to follow her calling, as a healer.

Kyouko was right—she didn’t belong out here. She missed Earth, both its trees and rivers, and its vast, endlessly deep maze of servers. She was sorry she had come out here, sorry that everything she was working on was at the mercy of an impossible battle.

She let that regret pass through her, then steeled herself for what was to come.

It hurt Kyouko, on a level she couldn’t quite explain, to just float there.

It was one thing to lose a fight, another to have your life be in imminent danger, and yet another to know others were dying in your name. In her long life, she had done all those things, enough to even get used to it.

But she had never done all of those at the same time, never had to just watch as more damaged, less‐necessary ships moved towards the bombers, certain of their fate. It was noble, even heroic, and Kyouko could do nothing.

It inspired feelings of—what? Gratitude? Inadequacy? Despair at how empty it all seemed? All the emotion in the world did nothing at all right now.

An ironic thought for a magical girl.

Yuma thinks we’re all going to die, Kyouko‐chan. Please tell me she’s always like that.

Kyouko grimaced at Maki’s message.

She doesn’t think that. Not quite, Kyouko thought. I know her. She thinks we have exactly as much a chance to survive as the computers estimate. Which is not high, I know.

Don’t give me that! You know that means the same damn thing! Both of you are being way too cold about all this. It’s not okay if you die out here! Both of you are acting like it is.

Kyouko started to protest, saying she had been trying plenty hard not to die out here, but she realized that wasn’t entirely true. She had been throwing herself into combat with a mixture of panache and fatalism, the kind of sublime acceptance of one’s fate that made combat easy.

I don’t know what to say to that, she thought. I’ll try harder. That’s all I can promise.

Kyouko felt Maki’s angry stare, knowing it only hid a core of fear. Fear for Kyouko, fear for herself—the kind of fear Kyouko had long ago buried into an unreachable part of her heart.

She cast her gaze out at the assembly of magical girls circling with her around the alien ships. Right now it was difficult not to imagine how vulnerable they were to a cluster of Raptor missiles. Or hard radiation bombs. Or anything, really.

It was absurd, trying to second‐guess Yuma while bombers were bearing down on them, but Kyouko needed to think. If she had anything real to contribute to their survival scheme, she needed to come up with it. Just as Yuma had.

Yuma’s plan had serious weaknesses. For one thing, it relied on completing a blink with stolen alien ships, which had never been done before, even if Rin claimed to be certain they could pull it off.

Far worse was the question of seizing the alien supply cruiser. The problem was two‐fold: first, it relied on the cruiser remaining complacent as the human ships tried to blink. If the cruiser simply moved out of range, paranoid about an incoming human gambit, their whole idea was shot.

Moreover, there was a critical window, right after they blinked next to the cruiser, but before they seized total control, where the cruiser had too many dangerous options. It could attempt to self‐destruct, for example, or it could try to split the human forces, accelerating away while their ships were stuck in blink malaise. It might even blast their ships to pieces, depending on its armament.

None of these perils were singularly fatal to the plan, but cumulatively, they were pretty damn close.

Ideally, they would be able to disable the cruiser ahead of time, in a way that wouldn’t be detected until it was too late. Right now, though, none of them could even get there ahead of time. One obvious idea was to exploit the returning alien bombers and sneak something aboard—some magical girls, perhaps, and Rose had even suggested incorporeal bombs during the fevered plan detailing.

But they needed the cruiser’s exotic matter intact, which meant that bombs were too unreliable—and combustible—for the job. They simply didn’t have the right magical stealth to hide a significant mass for very long—the odds were better to jump the cruiser with everybody all at once.

Nor had consulting an earthbound computing cluster—IIC bandwidth‐limited as that was—generated any better ideas.

Kyouko began to circle their remaining magical girls, draining her magic to prepare clones. They were now few enough, and close enough, that she would be able to put a body of hers beside almost everyone.

She could see the others making their own preparations, magic lighting up every part of the spectrum, in dozens of shapes and sizes.

It was frustrating. Even if they could sneak someone to the cruiser, they needed someone who could disable the ship as a whole, just for a while. Yuma didn’t have enough scope, and Jeannette couldn’t fully suborn such a powerful, distributed AI. There just weren’t very many magics that operated on that scale. Even a demon miasma wouldn’t reliably cover a full cruiser’s volume.

Though—could it be that obvious?

Yuma, you’ve considered attaching supersaturated grief cubes to the bombers, right? To disable the cruiser with a miasma?

Demons had never shown a taste for the emotionless Cephalopods, it was true, but Ceph technology was still vulnerable to the miasma, sensors and communications equipment in particular.

Of course not, Yuma thought back immediately, annoyed. That would be…

Kyouko could imagine the objections, especially after own recent encounters with the subject: the restricted‐access, level five classification, the danger and finickiness of trying to time their use, the pointed Incubator complaints after the Shimada assassinations. In principle, they could even be court‐martialed for effectively gifting a bunch of grief cubes to the aliens—a potential intelligence disaster.

…a very good idea, Yuma thought. You’re right. We should try it.

It had taken Yuma a while to bring herself out of her malaise—a kind of fatalistically rigid focus on the tasks she had assigned herself.

Kyouko’s idea carried in it another real kernel of hope, another improvement to their chances. It was up to her to help implement it, in the last few moments before the bombers arrived. If only Kyouko had come up with her idea sooner…

If only Yuma had come up with it at all.

A supply drone dropped three dozen used grief cubes in front of her, venting them directly into a funnel of her as‐yet invisible magic, where they hung suspended. They were stark even against the blackness of space, oozing an unsettling glamour that seemed to consume the starlight, like a constellation of dark stars.

She raised her hands, cradling a brightening sphere of green, then blinked twice. She filtered out the stars around her, the other magical girls, the ships, the combat—until that ball of green magic, filled with cubes of black, grew to dominate her vision.

Grief was a form of corruption, of entropy, just as the Incubators had always implied. Yuma liked to think of grief cubes as almost like little trapped black holes, always hungry for more grief, but unable to escape the confines of their box.

Forcing that box just a bit wider required pushing the grief in. Doing that required the ability to manipulate grief, manipulate decay.

But what was a healer like Yuma but a magical girl transferring damage and decay from an injured victim into her own soul gem?

Even when working for Oriko, she had always been good at grief manipulation, though she had never been able to fulfill Oriko’s dream of doing it without net magic cost.

She could only imagine what she must look like, staring into an orb of magic, tendrils of coarse, oozing grief visibly streaming from cube to cube. She forced the decay to concentrate in some of the cubes, filling the gap with some of her own grief, the expenditure of her own magic.

It was all pleasantly self‐contained, and she did her best to ignore the images the uncontained grief insinuated into her, all despair and hallucinations. She would have liked to go faster, much faster, but the process could only be rushed so much.

Then, she stopped, blinking until she again remembered where she was, and why.

I’m done, she thought. It had only been a few seconds.

A group of magical girls surrounded her: teleporters and specialists, among them Ancients like Kana and Arisu, as well as a girl who could turn objects incorporeal, Amaranth.

They would have one chance to get it right, one chance to use the confusion of battle to slip the grief cubes onto the bombers, where they would make the journey back to the alien supply cruiser, just in time for the subtle instabilities Yuma had introduced to trigger a demon spawn.

They were very nearly out of time; the first missiles were arriving.

Do you really think this will work? Amaranth thought, as she split away with her payload.

It has to, Yuma thought.

She could never forgive herself if it didn’t.

Unfortunately, their plan, however clever, did nothing about the immediate threat, which they would have to survive in the usual, inadequate way.

Kyouko would have liked to look away as the faster‐than‐light missiles rained down on their defensive shell. Bursts of radiation illuminated fragments of hurling debris, the muted outlines of alien bombers, the glowing wisps of smartdust.

Instead, she could only clutch her spear, hard enough to crush steel.

When the time came, she—every copy of her—lunged forward into battle, a battle that she would see from dozens of perspectives, side‐by‐side with the others:

—vaulting off a friendly missile at incomprehensible speed. From a few photons her eyes performed an impossible feat, perceiving an alien missile and bomber heading the other way, distorted by length‐contraction. She cast her net before her for the barest of instants, and the collision radiated energy in every spectrum.

—wave after wave of missiles: Ravagers swarming, Raptors appearing too quickly to react, and stealth Wendigos, hard radiation warheads dark on their sensors. Their clairvoyants picked out most of them, but only most, and she threw herself at one, enveloping its radiation with her magic and her soul. That would save the girls around her, at the cost of only one body.

—she was unable to protect her bodyguards, far too young, blown apart before her eyes. There was no time for shock, only time to push her way through the expanding human wreckage, stretch her hand out for what she could save. In one hand, a green soul gem; in the other, only shards.

—missiles simply could not turn as tightly as she could, and she easily got inside the turn of the one tracking her. She sliced it as she passed by, careful to avoid the shrapnel, even as she lunged into another. She would not last here, but it was only one of her—

—at her side, despite her efforts, the human ship sheared apart, reinforced nanocomposite tearing apart like tissue as radiation and superheated debris blew through the interior. She dodged—and still lost an arm, sliced clean through except for a flap of flesh. She finished severing it herself—it would only slow her down now—as her blood vessels sealed themselves off and she spun through the void.

—and then it was all done, their fleet was a collection of wrecks, their three alien ships and four remaining human ones racing away from that graveyard in unison, magical girls rejoining them at the last second.

Low on power and grief cubes, Kyouko dove into the side of a ship. As her soul gem recharged and the drones brought fresh grief cubes, she reabsorbed the memories of her lost clones, casting all the death and failure into the pit of her soul, where she could look at it later.

She knew from those memories that Maki had survived, in no small part because of how closely she had stayed attached to Yuma, and felt relieved.

It seemed selfish, somehow, to care about that when quite a few others hadn’t made it back, or had returned only as a glowing gem.

She didn’t want to dwell on those thoughts, so she checked on the result of the grief cube mission—whether or not the supersaturated grief cubes had been successfully slipped into the bombers. She had preferred not to distract herself mid‐combat.

They had succeeded after all, though the casualty report was painful. Kana had collapsed unconscious after teleporting back, alone, carrying no fewer than four soul gems, including that of Arisu; Yuma was working on getting Kana back in action.

Kyouko swallowed, then closed her eyes, summoning her clones once again.

Her rest was over; it was a relief to be needed back in space.

For Ryouko and her team, the pulsar mines had become a grueling race against the clock.

The fleet had thrown more ships and MagOps teams into the mines—whatever wasn’t absolutely necessary to defend against incoming bombers and fighters—but that hadn’t relieved them of any urgency, or quieted the sense of desperation that underlay all that they now did.

Nor had it removed Ryouko’s personal thorn in the flesh. Reassurances from Azrael, Clarisse, and her own magic notwithstanding, she wondered what threat might lie inside her own head.

At least assault team casualties had fallen, now that the hazards of the mines and their gaps in space‐time were better understood. Rather than targeting the control staff of a given sector, it was more efficient to teleport right next to the stabilization equipment, destroy it, and leave. Patricia’s team had stayed with them—the added stealth generator meant they no longer even got welcome committees.

They also hadn’t encountered any more blockades on Ryouko’s teleportation.

That’s number six, Ying‐zhi thought, managing to sound a bit positive. We’re getting pretty good at these.

They were taking a rare moment of rest, recharging their soul gems inside a quiet logistics room, safe under a bubble of stealth that drained the color from the world around them, the steady drumbeat of fleet updates tuned low.

Still, Ryouko paced the area, unwilling to relax. The break only gave her time to think: on the failure of the mission, on how she had been caged by the blink interdictors, on the natural feeling of the alien information packet bursting open in her head.

Earlier, Ryouko had pinned a Cephalopod to the ground, and as its head turned to face her she had suddenly feared that it would speak to her. Somehow, she had expected she would understand it.

She knew she wasn’t taking all this well, but she didn’t know what else to do, other than try to lose herself in combat, no matter how much it disturbed her afterward.

The only other recourse was to lean on Asami and, well, she wasn’t here.

No one had responded to Ying‐zhi’s encouragement, and Ryouko had to resist the urge to say something needlessly snarky. Mina eventually saved her by pitching in:

Yes, we are. And I know what you’re all thinking. The fleet is taking losses, and we won’t be able to trigger a pulsar glitch, so there’s not much to celebrate. But we’re still doing real damage, and we’re still on track to make it out of this alive. Just the damage we’ve already done might take the squid years to repair. We just gotta focus on getting out of this, for our own sake.

Some of the others nodded vaguely in response, helmets bobbing up and down, and a second or so later, Ryouko followed. It didn’t really satisfy her, but what could?

While we have the time… Patricia thought.

She waited for Ryouko to register that the message was directed solely at her.

Not that I should distract you more, but I’ve been collaborating with Clarisse on some of the data for your uh, brain module.

It struck Ryouko that she didn’t really want to learn more, not in this context, but there had to be a reason Patricia was telling her this, so she stopped pacing and signaled Patricia to continue.

Well, the comment I want to make is that when it activated, it dumped a good amount of some unknown signaling molecules, as well as firing in a pattern that was highly correlated with the information you were receiving, the—

She paused.

I’m going on too long. The point is, Clarisse thinks the molecules are custom neuromodulators, and I agree. Those are very common in implant design, because they allow you to send global signals across a system that won’t leak out into anything else. That gives us a chance to analyze what exact pathways lead in and out of it. Based on that, we think it’s most likely a communication device, and not much else. You can feel safe.

That’s not how I would have explained it, Clarisse thought. You could have just said it was safe.

I thought she would want to know why, Patricia thought. Though maybe that was too much detail.

I would want to know why, Ryouko thought. Though none of this settles the real question of why there would be such a damn thing in my brain. I have enough nonsense to deal with.

I have a feeling that if we get the answer to that, it won’t be from detailed study, Clarisse thought. Anyway, it’s time we started getting ready to head out.

A shiver of embarrassment passed through Ryouko, and she focused her attention on the world again, hoping she hadn’t been holding the team back. She wanted to destroy as much of this place as possible.

She wanted…

She wanted it all to be over, she wanted to be back with Asami, somewhere stable, where she could stop and process it all.

Failing that, she hoped, guiltily, that this time they would at least have some real fighting.

She was still thinking about that when Oda’s lightning disgorged them into a ghostly black‐and‐white hallway, the close twin of hallways they had been in before. The world around them wavered and twitched, as if viewed through an intense layer of static, but it was still possible to make out patrolling alien drones, alien personnel encased in protective bubble shields, and even details of the light, emanating from the ceiling in a slow, pulsing rhythm that gave the whole scene a nightclub quality.

They landed silently near those aliens, in front of a menacing laser turret, where the aliens had prepared a field of fire. An alien drone flew into their stealth field almost immediately, but, not sensing anything amiss, and with Azrael divining its route, it failed to run into anything.

They quickly identified the key stabilization equipment encased in the walls. It would take only a few seconds to destroy the machinery, and they wouldn’t even need to fight the alien soldiers—they only had to defend themselves briefly.

But…

Stop, Ryouko thought, physically grabbing the girl about to plunge her sword into the wall, and pulling her away with perhaps too much force. Something is different.

It was a combination of things. Her soul gem always reacted to exotic matter, and this time the reaction was much stronger. Besides that, she couldn’t shake the sense that something… else was here. Something lingered at the back of her mind, as if someone was waiting telepathically for her to reply.

It took a long few moments of anxiously standing still and eyeing the nearby aliens nervously for her point to be entirely understood.

Everything looks fine on the grav sensors, Ying‐zhi thought. Only minor discrepancies from the previous sites. Can we risk an active scan?

I can try to cover it, but no promises, their stealth generator thought. This isn’t my usual thing.

Ying‐zhi thought about it, but only very briefly—decisions had to be made quickly.

Then everyone get ready for a fight. We might have to do this the hard way. I hope you’re right.

Ryouko didn’t need Ying‐zhi’s meaningful glance to know that the last line was directed at her.

I hope I’m right too, she thought—but she kept that to herself, instead lighting up a bolt for her crossbow in anticipation.

She wasn’t concerned that her soul gem was lying to her, just that it might be reacting to something irrelevant.

They arranged themselves into position as well they could, getting out of obvious fields of fire, raising barriers, and placing themselves where they could wreak as much havoc as possible, if necessary. Azrael monitored the minds of their enemy, looking for the slightest glimmer of intention to attack.

Ryouko, for her part, fired a single bolt into the ground, attached to a string.

Ying‐zhi toggled the active scan, and there was an instant of suspense, stretched thin by subjective time dilation.

Then Azrael gave the signal that they needed to attack.

Just because the aliens knew humans were there didn’t mean they could see anyone, and their blind‐firing was ineffective. Still, the magical girls acted quickly, to minimize the risk of any surprise explosions or radiation bursts.

As weapons fire began to break out and alien personnel began to fall, Ryouko performed her part of the job: teleporting a horizontal slice of the floor, a dozen centimeters thick, above the alien personnel, dropping it onto their heads, with herself on top.

It was a standard ploy—distract by manipulating the environment and destroy before the enemy could adapt. Ryouko had seen it done with rockslides and avalanches and twelve centimeters of alloy was in some respects worse than both.

The alloy landed on personal shields that were already failing from a barrage of attacks, with a noise that sounded like a staticky implosion.

There wasn’t much left to do after that; the other magical girls had already neutralized the main threats, and the rest was rapid mop‐up, though Ryouko got to fire a few homing arrows into the mass of enemies—no explosives, not with one of her allies slicing her way through the area.

Still, it was satisfying, and the smoking, green‐strewn ruins took some of the edge off her frustration.

Then they turned their attention to the results of the active scan.

This particular mining site had more exotic matter—a lot, lot more, enough that it could have easily overwhelmed them had they relied on Oda’s non‐instantaneous teleport. Since it hadn’t shown up on passive sensors, it was tempting to guess that it had been set up as a trap.

Well, now we know, someone thought, unfazed by how close they had come to dying. Let’s exit a different way.

That put Ryouko in the uncomfortable position of having to ask for another pause.

Not yet, she thought. There’s something else here.

It would have been difficult to explain in words, so she sent it as a sensation instead, relaying the difficult to describe sense of expectation in the back of her mind.

The question was, what was she supposed to do about it? Only one answer immediately suggested itself: answer the call.

I don’t need to point out how risky that could be, Oda thought. Not to mention, the longer we stand here, the more chance they detonate the machinery next to us without being polite enough to wait.

Listening to her has always worked for us before, Mina thought. Even before this mission. She’s worth putting our faith in.

Mina had been with her at Orpheus and X‐25, Ryouko knew, and made no bones about thinking that Ryouko had divine guidance. Ryouko couldn’t even deny it.

But she also knew what the others would be worried about. With all that was going on in Ryouko’s head—her literal, physical head—who knew how reliable a vague sensation of hers could be?

Let’s give it a shot, Ying‐zhi thought finally. But we’re making a safety jump at the smallest sign of trouble.

So with part of her will, Ryouko prepared herself to teleport far away, with much of the team gathered around her.

And with the rest of it, she tried to reach out and touch whatever it was that was waiting for her.

Nothing happened for a couple of seconds, and Ryouko started to worry that she was mistaken, that she was imagining things, that all of it was a product of whatever was in her head or worse, her desire to bury it all with the adrenaline of combat.

But a response came while she was still in the midst of twisting those possibilities through her mind.

It would have been difficult to convey in words. She got that there were words, somewhere in there, buried in a mass of strange transmitted sensations and garbled half‐thoughts, confused enough that she found herself surprised it wasn’t throwing her own thoughts off‐kilter.

What is this? she thought, implicitly asking Clarisse if she had any ideas. Someone injured? A telepathic attack of some kind?

I don’t know, Clarisse thought. But the implant in your brain is activating again, same as last time.

The message repeated again, and this time she was able to make out an… overriding meaning, or perhaps just a prevailing sentiment. Perhaps she could even hear the word.

Authentication?

Uh, she thought. Obviously she had no answer to something like that.

No, wait, Clarisse thought. This makes more sense to me now. This isn’t normal telepathy. This is… some kind of garbled machine transmission. I can see parts of it in the firing patterns, but your brain isn’t structured to handle something like this, and I don’t think it’s giving the right responses.

Ryouko didn’t know how to interpret that.

I’m receiving thoughts from a machine, that expects me to be a machine? Ryouko thought, unsure if she was even making sense.

None of us understand how the aliens really communicate, Clarisse thought. I know that’s not really answering your question, but do you mind if I forward this to Patricia? She might be able to help. The parts of this I can read look like an authentication request, and I can’t break something like that. Not without magic.

Sure, I think, she thought, though she didn’t really feel sure. Just, what else was she supposed to do?

It took her an effort to contain her emotions, which couldn’t help but notice the tension in the air, the way everyone was staying taut to teleport away at any moment, huddled around her. No one could be sure if it was the magical girl instincts, the implants, or the veterancy that kept anyone from reacting prematurely.

That pressure ate at her, and she found herself wishing, not for the first time, that Asami was here to reassure her, or just to be there. It was a need she felt acutely as she watched Patricia consider what she had received, while the rest of the team seemed to wait impassively. Ryouko couldn’t tell if anyone else was as bothered as she was, or just doing a better job hiding it.

A moment later, Patricia shifted her position in the huddle, making her way over so that she could touch Ryouko on the head.

If I’m going to work my magic on something like this, better that I have some contact with the source, Patricia thought. I just hope whatever is shielding the thing in your head doesn’t interfere with this.

Ryouko felt the equivalent of a telepathic knock on the door, one magical girl to another, asking for privileged mental access. Even with all the relevant context, it still took her a leap of faith to allow it, reversing the training Gracia had ingrained in her before.

She felt the slow rush of Patricia’s magic surging into her mind, with a pounding that felt like she was carrying the ocean inside her head. She could sense Patricia rooting around inside, her presence unavoidably intrusive.

It took a good deal of effort not to double over, though she did put one hand on her head.

Ah, there we go, Patricia thought. How kind of it to get out of the way.

Patricia sent the last few words one by one, displaying effort even as she didn’t explain what exactly she meant by “it”.

A second later the pounding was gone, and Patricia had pulled her hand back.

That’s as far as I’m going to get, she thought. I’ve never seen anything like it. A computer system with access to telepathy! Well, kind of, it seems different from our own. On a different channel somehow. There’s a lot to think about here.

What does it mean? Ryouko thought, before clarifying. What does it mean that I can hear it?

Patricia made a strained expression.

I don’t know, Patricia thought, to everyone.

Then, only to her:

I imagine it means whoever put it there meant for this to happen.

She waited a moment for Ryouko to digest the thought, then added:

I was able to bypass the authentication system for a bit, but my ability to project my magic beyond the local systems is limited. You should examine what I retrieved. I know it’s already in your head.

As if summoned by Patricia’s words, the images filled her mind.

More than images, she realized. She felt a kind of understanding, deeper rooted than any human cortical dump. The aliens were indeed configuring the pulsar mines into an ad‐hoc blink cannon, as they had thought, though the process had been almost completely dismantled by the human attacks. A blink cannon was quite simple in principle, once you could make wormholes in the first place. Lacking a stable gate on both sides, range was limited, but you could, with some effort, project the necessary gravitational effect to your exit point. It involved a certain kind of resonance, involving either very flat or—unexpectedly—very curved space‐time, not unlike her own teleportation.

She felt the sting of something sharp in her head, and almost reacted violently, only barely realizing that it had been Clarisse trying to get her attention.

Sorry, I had to get you out of that somehow, Clarisse thought. You were entering some kind of induced reverie. Probably related to the, uh, alien telepathy.

By then, the rest of the team had caught up with what was going on, at least superficially, and Ryouko felt rushed to get back in sync with them. She didn’t want to seem like she was…

What? Losing her mind?

I need to know what impact this has on our mission, Ying‐zhi thought. Has anything changed?

We have a better idea of what the aliens are up to, Patricia thought, relaying Ryouko’s findings. And that we’ve already nearly got them neutered. There’s only a bit more left to do.

Indeed, the updated orders just came through, Clarisse thought.

Then let’s get back on the move, Ying‐zhi thought.

They were already gathered around her, so Ryouko needed only to wait for the others to destabilize the exotic matter stabilizers, which they would do from a distance this time: Oda threw her spear into the wall, with an explosive charge embedded in the front that would detonate almost immediately after they left.

Ryouko found it difficult to think about anything other than what she had just learned. After all, what did her own teleportation do, other than open a wormhole with no stabilizer on the other end?

This time, when she tunneled through the fabric of the world, she felt unusually aware of the details. She didn’t know exactly how, but this time, she noticed the small pulse of energy, the brief glimmer of what was on the other side.

There had to be other possibilities.

“I think I’ve got it stabilized! We can leave soon!”

That personal message, sent by Asami via the gestalt, blew a breath of relief into Ryouko’s team.

Their pace of operations had slowed, as more and more of the other magical girl teams had arrived at the mines, allowing the fleet to begin gradually lightening their load, allowing them to proceed a bit more methodically, even as they were still all against the clock.

The exact timing of Asami’s message left much to be desired, however.

Ryouko, Clarisse thought.

Ryouko ignored that, focusing on keeping up a barrage of arrows on the group of enemies packed in front of her. They needed to keep up the pressure, or else—

Ryouko! Clarisse thought, and this time the voice grabbed a disorienting amount of her attention, snapping her mind out of her intensely‐focused state.

I was getting carried away, she realized, as the greater context of their mission flooded back into her perception.

What? she demanded anyway, frustrated with the interruption.

We’re withdrawing, Clarisse thought. Besides, you got them.

By “got them”, Clarisse meant that the alien security forces crowding the access ways in front of them were pulling back, leaving behind dozens of corpses.

The aliens had managed to regroup a bit, encasing their remaining machinery in portable, volumetric forcefields that made it impossible for many teams, Ryouko’s included, to operate purely from stealth.

We didn’t ‘get them’, Ryouko pointed out. They’re just regrouping closer to the device. They’re fighting us to the death, so that’s the only way this will end!

For our purposes now, you got them, Clarisse insisted. Again, we’re withdrawing, so let’s regroup and get out of here.

Are we just going to let them go? Ryouko asked, making an angry noise inside her suit.

Clarisse didn’t answer this time, knowing full well Ryouko was arguing out of pointless frustration. Now that Ryouko was a bit less… focused on combat, the information packets accompanying Asami’s message were clear: the aliens were down to only a fraction of the pulsar mines left, with several other teams still continuing their attack. Once those were done, there simply wouldn’t be enough left to continue interfering with Asami’s wormhole, a fact verified by information Ryouko herself had retrieved from the alien systems.

There was much to be said for destroying everything just in case, of course, but they didn’t have that luxury. Alien reinforcements were arriving in batches now, and orbit around the pulsar was hot with active combat. They were already overstaying their welcome.

I know it doesn’t feel right, leaving a job half‐done, Clarisse thought. But what we’ve done here would mean a lot less if you died here. Please.

Left untouched was the fact that she was being pulled out immediately, while several other teams were left to continue their work. She hated it, no matter how she justified it to herself.

Still simmering with an irrational frustration, Ryouko allowed some of the others to screen her as they fell back and re‐engaged their stealth. In a bid to think about something else, she returned to the question that had, almost disturbingly, bothered her ever since she had downloaded files off an alien system.

She was starting to be sure she could teleport something without teleporting herself. The blink cannon design had suggested a mechanism.

The reasonable part of her was quite sure that now wasn’t the right time to study something like that.

You’re thinking about it so you don’t have to think about how the mission is going, or any of the other stuff, Clarisse thought. You’re better than this. You need to focus.

I do focus, she thought. When we’re actually fighting something. And I don’t know that anyone else has to deal with shocking personal revelations right now.

Clarisse didn’t dispute that, signaling her that the group was almost ready to be extracted. They were just waiting for confirmation from the ship that would be their ride…

There it was, and Ryouko suppressed a twinge of annoyance at Clarisse ignoring her. She released the internal tension that held her power in check, tunneling her way into space‐time to bring them to their destination.

Again she found herself hyper‐aware of the whole process—the bizarrely precise way in which space‐time bent itself to the exact necessary shape, the underlying particles rearranging just so, so that at the right moment the membrane underlying the world would pop open, swallow the target, and reform with the target in a new location. It was a wormhole, yes, but the briefest of ones, with a far more nuanced topology than she and Asami had ever achieved in their experiments, and a transition state that involved the true void of missing space‐time.

Part of this was her new augments, she realized—the implants that had expanded Clarisse’s computing power to handle conditions around the pulsar also guided her perception in subtle ways.

A successful interaction of magic and implant technology that is beyond what we can achieve, Clarisse thought, when the teleportation was finished. Supposedly, anyway.

Clarisse paused for a beat, and Ryouko sensed it wasn’t rhetorical—Clarisse was hesitating about something.

There is, of course, an isomorphic holographic explanation of that teleportation process too, if you’d like to hear it. I think it makes things a bit more clear.

No thanks, not right now. That was the only part of Tao’s lectures I couldn’t really follow.

I think you should try. But, perhaps not right now.

They had arrived on the Magi Cæli cruiser HSS Kautilya, where an assortment of drones awaited them, scurrying to help them take off their helmets, refreshing grief cube stocks, and carrying away most of their weapons and equipment for rearming or refurbishment, following clearly marked drone trails to avoid being stepped on by the humans.

The room jerked suddenly, jostled by some unseen exertion of the remaining alien gravity modulators, and one of the drones started to topple over, dropping a few grief cubes from its tray—which were immediately picked up and returned by its neighbor, with the kind of unerring cooperation humans had come to expect.

The girls stayed in their suits, though, watching another flock of drones wheel in with replacement equipment. They wouldn’t be staying for long, after all—just long enough for the cruiser to help transfer them back to the wormhole, where Ryouko would pass Asami before stationing herself on the human end of the wormhole, just in case she was needed.

She felt the flicker of frustration pass through her once more, amplified by the lack of activity. So she would be going back, while Asami did all the work.

She looked around a bit—the room they were in was a MagOps staging area, nothing but drones, equipment, and walls full of relevant combat displays, rarely relevant for a user base that was very used to cortical information dumps.

There was something she could do while she was waiting, if she wanted an excuse to work on her teleportation. Perhaps, if she just put some thought into it…

She bent over, asking one of the empty‐handed drones to temporarily abandon its current duties as she picked it up.

She started to visualize where she could send it, what she could do with it. Following what she had just observed about her own teleportation, it wouldn’t be too hard to change the process. In theory, at least, all she needed to do was convince her teleportation to fold its space‐time pocket at a different location. Not around herself, but around a separate object. That was easy to say, but…

I’d strongly advise against doing this right now, Clarisse protested. It’s at best a waste of magic, and the others think you’re behaving strangely already.

I know what they think, Ryouko thought. But I just want to try it. Look.

She tuned out whatever Clarisse was saying, focusing herself on the drone. It fit neatly in both of her hands, with its dual‐optical devices peering up at her, and maybe, it just wanted to be somewhere else—

And then, it was, ten or so centimeters to the right, and she had to dart a hand out to catch it.

I’m going to have to stop you there, Azrael thought, grabbing her by the shoulder. With a nudge, she encouraged Ryouko to turn and face her—which felt a bit odd, since Azrael was noticeably shorter than Ryouko’s aged‐up body.

She remembered then, if she had ever forgotten, that Azrael was reading her mind.

They made eye contact.

Listen, Azrael thought. I don’t want you to overreact, but ever since you contacted that alien device, you’ve been acting very strange. I know you have a history of overly aggressive behavior in combat, but your thoughts have been getting strangely obsessive, and now you’re using magic we haven’t seen before. I hope you can see why we might be concerned.

Ryouko blinked, swallowing her initial rash response. Azrael was her friend, and… now that she thought about it, if truth be told, the others were under‐reacting.

So where you’re going with this is… she cued, though she could guess.

I think we should screen you for some kind of malign manipulation. Between Patricia and I, we have the magic for a volition integrity check. I still don’t see how such a thing would be possible, but it’s worth being careful.

Mina started to say something, the protest written all over her face, but Ying‐zhi grabbed her before she could finish opening the channel. Ryouko appreciated the gesture of trust, she decided, even if it was a bit… religious in nature.

I think that’s reasonable, Clarisse thought. I can’t really see how it’s possible either, but it couldn’t hurt.

Ryouko clenched her teeth for a moment, deciding what to respond to first.

I have the distinct sense you’re hiding something from me, she thought to Clarisse.

The thing in your brain has been pretty active for a while now, mostly when you’re thinking about the blink cannon data and teleportation. I don’t see how it could be malicious, but I’ve been monitoring. I didn’t want to worry you any further, under the circumstances. I knew Azrael was watching too, so I thought that was safe. I’m sorry.

Ryouko had felt an unhappy anger rising within her, but the worry she could feel from Clarisse seemed to dispel it instantly. Something about the way she said it grounded her again, made her realize the absurdity of her anger at a time like this. She didn’t like Clarisse keeping secrets from her—but it was justified here, and now certainly wasn’t the time to blow up about it.

Not that I have a choice, she thought to Azrael. But, okay. Are we going to do this here? Don’t we need to teleport again soon?

By soon, she meant fifteen seconds, which the cruiser was forecasting as their timing window.

After we get to the wormhole, Azrael thought. We of course can’t linger here.

If they really thought she was untrustworthy, they wouldn’t let her teleport them again, Ryouko thought. That reassured her.

It took Ryouko a moment to get her bearings again.

Here, at the lip of the open wormhole, the world was split in twain, the alien Taklamakan Sector and its pulsar on the one hand, and the human Tigric Sector with its gate assembly on the other, divided by a swirl of light that dazzled the eyes.

As she watched, frigates and a few magical girl teams sped through to the far side. The withdrawal was underway.

She spotted Asami nearby with her escorts, and felt a wave of happy relief, releasing the tension that had clenched its way around her heart. That was followed by a sting of anxiety as she remembered that this was just a passing visit.

Simona wasn’t as conflicted, though, and pinged Ryouko for attention the moment she arrived.

Finally, Simona thought, when she got close enough. I was so worried. I’d go with you if I could.

Ryouko nodded slightly, watching her carefully. She thought it was strange, that Simona would have that as a priority, rather than, say, the rushed evacuation, or the failed mission.

Then she turned to look at the girl in a colorful purple spacesuit, arms raised at the threshold between worlds, standing out in the crowd of floating magical girls, one of whom was maintaining a constant yellow‐tinged barrier.

Asami, for her part, seemed to be diligently focused on maintaining the wormhole, channeling magic constantly, without even glancing at the new arrivals. From a distance, Ryouko could just make out her grimly‐lined face.

Ryouko watched for a moment longer, intending to leave her alone, but Asami spoke first:

It’s nice to see you. I’m glad you made it out.

The words were simple, unadorned, but Ryouko could feel the emotion behind them.

I’m glad too, Ryouko thought.

I heard about what happened with the alien equipment. I hope, uh, I hope everything turns out well.

Asami’s voice was holding a lot back.

It shouldn’t be anything serious, Ryouko thought, returning the simple thoughts in kind. They didn’t need to be elaborate.

I know Azrael wants to do another magic check on you, Asami thought. Can you stay on this side of the wormhole while you do it?

That question brought Ryouko back into the moment, with Simona staring at her from the left, and the endless chatter of the fleet in her mind.

It sounded like an innocent personal request, oddly out of place in this critical situation—but it was also relayed to the group, and came attached with the stamp of Command approval, unexplained.

What? Why? Simona thought incredulously, before anyone else responded.

Azrael appeared at her side immediately, as if she had known now would be the right time to confront her.

Why indeed? she thought. I thought this might be a good time to ask you a few important questions. And you best answer quickly, given how much time we have.

To accentuate her point, Ying‐zhi and two of the others appeared alongside her.

Simona tensed, her face developing a scowl as she looked back and forth between the others. She had only just been told what had happened with Ryouko’s brain module, and had a lot to work through.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, Simona thought, after a moment, clearly restraining herself. I told you; I don’t know anything about that thing!

Are you sure? Azrael asked. Because we’re about to volition check her, and if it’s going to react poorly to that, it will be on your head.

I… wouldn’t lie to you about something like that. If it’s unsafe, I would tell you. I don’t know anything. Scan my mind if you want to. Go ahead!

If you say so, Azrael thought, lifting her hand and aiming it at the defiantly‐posed Simona.

Ryouko looked away, over at Asami, who hadn’t so much as turned her head at the commotion around her, then at the pulsar, around which her mental interface labeled friendly and enemy ships, as well as fast‐moving debris fields. The screen protecting the wormhole was still holding up, for now.

She thought about Simona.

Having spent a good deal of time around the girl at this point, she tended to believe that Simona wouldn’t deliberately hurt her, and she definitely empathized with what it was like not to be trusted, but she couldn’t fault the others’ caution. Simona was an uncertain element—at best.

If you’re not hiding anything, Azrael thought, her magic still streaming through Simona’s head. Then why is there a hidden memory connection I can’t dereference? There’s a special reason you’re worried about this mission, something that happened since we last questioned you, but I don’t know what it is. Care to share?

That got Ryouko’s attention, and she watched as Simona’s face went through the motions of someone working out whether to deny something that couldn’t really be denied.

Even Asami turned her head to watch.

Fine, Simona thought. But it’s not as if you’re going to get very much from it. Not more than I got, anyway.

I’ll be the judge of that, Azrael thought.

Not long after, though, Azrael cut off her magic, shaking her head. She looked surprised by something, almost shocked.

Alright, though that’s not exactly reassuring, she thought, more for the crowd than for Simona.

She signaled that she was ready to turn her attention to Ryouko, and Ying‐zhi and the others crowded in around Simona, surrounding her and continuing to question her according to Azrael’s instructions—mind‐reads often missed the subtleties and finer points of inference.

I suppose it’s my turn then, Ryouko thought, when Azrael got to her. Mind telling me what that was about with Simona?

After I scan you, Azrael thought. I’m sure we’d both rather it be over sooner.

Me three, Asami thought, looking at the wormhole again.

It was a flippant response, but Ryouko could tell she was nervous.

Ryouko had some idea of what to expect: a deep search like this felt like a presence looming in the back of your mind, which was only unpleasant if you chose to fight it. She found that the hardest part of it all was staying still while Azrael and Patricia worked their magic, with everything going on around her: the battle in the background, Simona being questioned, Asami still working…

But the gestalt had elected not to wait until she passed through the wormhole, acceding to Asami’s mysterious request, and Ryouko wasn’t in the mood to complain.

Still no signs of anything really off, Patricia thought, at the end of it.

Azrael looked Ryouko in the eye.

Akemi Homura, of all people, sent Simona a personal message, Azrael thought. Used some kind of magic salamander. Homura spoke as if she had played a big role in Simona’s life, and then gave an apology which sounded rather… anticipatory. This was right after Valentin disappeared, and Simona thinks Homura might have been Valentin, which I’m going to say, off the record, is pretty plausible.

Ryouko wondered how to process this latest revelation. Homura? Valentin? What were they doing connected? What was she doing leading Simona around, then? It was probably best she save all that for later.

A shiver of empathy passed through her. If she was unhappy about being manipulated without her knowledge, Simona had suffered the same thing, but worse.

We can confront Homura eventually, if we’re lucky, Azrael thought, sending Simona’s memory alongside it. But don’t get tunnel vision here. I just wanted to fill you in. Anyway, I’ve got to go keep an eye on Simona.

Ryouko watched as Azrael turned away, deciding if she should examine the memory she had been sent.

Not now, she decided, steering forward to be right next to Asami. There’d be time later, but right now, she needed Asami. This might be her only real chance.

The gestalt didn’t just keep you here for me, you know, Asami thought, unprompted. They were worried that if you were compromised, you’d be most dangerous while inside the wormhole or on the other side. I hate that I had to agree with that assessment. It’s not paranoia when the situation is this unexpected.

Asami kept her gaze fixed on the wormhole, and it took Ryouko a moment to understand what she said, what she meant by it.

It was within your right to worry, Ryouko thought, trying to reassure. She meant it, too.

Nevermind, Asami thought. That’s not the main reason I asked. I heard about your new experiments with teleportation.

Ryouko blinked in surprise, and before she could ask why Asami was asking, she received a packet of information from Asami, direct relay, that explained what she was thinking.

It was… audacious, to put it minimally. Audacious and clever.

Yes, I could do that, Ryouko said. I’ve never done it before, but here, with our wormhole to leverage, and with Simona…

It was difficult to explain, but they both knew what she meant. When you unlocked a new kind of magic, sometimes you knew, instinctively, how it worked.

Do you think you could run some experiments? Just in case?

Yeah, I suppose I could, Ryouko thought, as her mind boggled with the implications of what Asami was proposing. Let me process this a bit.

It couldn’t really work, could it?

All the pieces fit, though.

Asami’s black holes were temporary constructs: physical, but with unphysical properties maintained by Asami’s magic. Among other things, they had an event horizon substantially larger than made sense for their actual mass—it was the only way she could summon palm‐sized black holes without conjuring ten Earth masses.

When she dismissed her magic, they reverted back to being subatomic in size before the underlying singularities vanished from existence entirely. Thus, they weren’t any kind of persistent threat; even a permanent black hole of that size, dropped into any kind of ordinary matter, would evaporate to Hawking radiation long before it ran into another particle.

That was for ordinary matter, though. The story was entirely different for neutronium.

In a material like that, even the shortest‐lived of black holes might never stop growing, even if the original mass immediately evaporated or, in the case of a magical construct, vanished entirely.

All of which suggested that if there were just some way to bring one of Asami’s black holes into contact with the neutron star, the reaction would be cataclysmic—a total collapse, with all the attendant radiation effects.

Hence, Asami and the gestalt’s question about whether Ryouko could teleport such a thing. It didn’t even have to land inside the pulsar; near the star, the milieu of charged particles in its intense magnetic field—and emanating from the polar jets—would sustain it just long enough for entry.

All of that, she grasped almost immediately, faster than she would have expected even with direct cortical injection, a lifetime of schooling, and her new support implants. The finer technical details, the numerical simulations—she didn’t need to grasp those right away.

Asami waited the few seconds patiently.

This is crazy, Ryouko thought. Ingenious, but crazy.

I know, Asami thought. But it might work. We have preliminary approval to try it, if there’s a safe window to do it just before we leave. That’s why you’re staying here.

Ryouko felt her head spin for a moment. All the latent frustration, anger, and dissatisfaction she had been feeling spiraled out of her. She had a chance to do something.

Then she managed to reel herself back in.

I knew you’d like the idea, Asami thought. Just remember we’re still in danger out here. I want us both to make it home in one piece.

This time Asami was looking straight at her, and Ryouko nodded once, making sure to show that she meant it.

Then she turned and looked at the others, who by now would be receiving fully updated orders.

It was difficult at first to tell that anything had changed, except that the gesturing around Simona had stopped, as something new took priority.

That’s incredible, someone thought.

I knew she wouldn’t let us down, Mina thought. I knew there was a plan for us here.

As an excited wave bubbled through the telepathic network, Ryouko remembered, too late, that Mina and Patricia weren’t the only Cult members present. She was getting looks from some of the other girls, ones who knew her by her personal legend.

That was a silly thing to worry about now, she decided. What was important was getting things done, and that meant testing—

I can’t believe it!

Simona’s message, angry and loud, was so out of tone that it cut straight through the chatter, especially when she rocketed over straight at Ryouko.

This is crazy, she said. You’re crazy.

It was unclear who she was speaking to until she raised her finger and pointed at Asami.

Ryouko’s clearly being targeted here! You know she only escaped earlier assassinations by a nanothread, and now you go and force her to be the last one out?

Ryouko could only stare back in astonishment.

I wouldn’t be here at all if I only cared about my personal survival, Ryouko thought back. And Asami’s plan isn’t even that dangerous.

Can’t you please just let me protect you?

Azrael and one of the other girls appeared at Simona’s side, grabbing her by the arms.

That’s more than enough, Azrael thought. Back off and calm down.

You’re being selfish, the other girl thought. Think about the long‐term projections they showed us. We’re saving maybe millions of lives here.

Damn it, think about this! Simona thought. Your life, my life, it all fits a pattern. We’ve been pushed into giving everything we have for the greater good, with no guarantee that we’ll be able to hold on to anything. We’ve done everything they asked of us! Why do you need to come up with something more?

Ryouko, who had been trying to turn away, felt an anger plume within her.

Is that all you care about? she asked. Holding on to me? I didn’t wish to be out here so that I could hold still for you. I’m doing exactly what I always wanted right now.

Ryouko, does Simona need to be here? Asami thought. Can you do the teleport without her?

Maybe not, she thought. Can you control the wormhole without her?

Asami returned a mental grimace.

Ryouko turned, grabbing Simona’s shoulder.

Look, I don’t know how to say this, but we need you here. You’re not going to talk me into leaving, even if I could.

Simona didn’t meet her eyes, instead looking down and away.

You don’t get it. I thought you would, by now. But I guess that’s my fault. The thing is, that life you threw away, the one that’s just ‘holding still’… that’s all I ever wanted.

She shook her head, clenching her teeth.

Fine. There’s not much I can do about it anyway. But if there’s any sign of real danger, we’re heading back.

That’s what the plan says anyway, Ryouko thought, trying to be soothing. Look, you should focus on helping Asami maintain the wormhole. I’ll be alright.

It was an unpleasant experience, mouthing words that she could tell weren’t having their intended effect. If anything, it just seemed to make Simona more sullen. She couldn’t bridge that gap.

The girl seemed to calm down a bit, though, and after the others let her go—albeit with some reluctance—she even moved back to be near Asami, though Ryouko could tell Simona was still watching her with one eye.

She could focus now on preparing for their gambit.

There’s not much you can do about Simona, Clarisse thought. It’s not your problem to solve. As long as she helps us finish up here, that’s what matters.

Ryouko nodded along, gathering her magic to begin trying a few teleports, just short‐range for now.

But while she did, her thoughts lingered behind her, within Simona’s words. The blink interdiction, her brain’s connection to alien tech in the mines, Simona, Valentin, Homura—it was like she was obediently eating up a trail of breadcrumbs, getting tidbits from everywhere, yet never reaching the full truth.

She had been delaying thinking about all that, but it had only gotten her blindsided, repeatedly. The way Patricia and Azrael had acted—someone obviously knew something, and had decided she didn’t deserve to know.

Chitose Yuma, Clarisse thought. At least, in part. Patricia told me, back in the mines, I was going to—nevermind. If you want to just ask her, I can send her a message, but I can’t promise a response. The implant in your head may seem benign, but she might still have concerns.

Ryouko had almost forgotten about Yuma—they had barely met twice. Then again, the Goddess had given Ryouko that long vision about her…

Yes, Ryouko thought. Please. Ask her.

Yuma watched the shields of the alien vessel near her shiver under the impact of another salvo of kinetic impacters, the faint image of the frigate rippling as its shields absorbed the stress. The ship had proven remarkably robust, but even it was starting to show considerable strain under constant pressure, despite having magical girls to defend it.

And there goes the last of my ships, Kyouko thought.

Yuma didn’t know which of Kyouko’s clones had sent the message, weaving its way through the frenetic, spiraling melee. She only knew that it seemed she could hardly blink without seeing another one die, blown apart, bisected, or simply vaporized. Kyouko was throwing herself into the grinder at a suicidal rate, buying the rest of them time.

Kyouko said nothing further. There was no point, with the command gestalt gone, replaced by a telepathic network so knottedly nested that they were practically thinking on top of each other.

Yuma bit her lip, awash with a sense of powerlessness as the seconds ticked by, even as she kept herself active, swinging behind a wall of Kyoukos to regenerate the arm and suit of an injured magical girl. There was nothing left to plan now, just an intolerable cauldron of combat while they waited for their paradox drives to charge, as their remaining ships—two alien frigates and one alien fighter—twirled and weaved heroically.

They were lucky they were even able to use their stolen paradox drives. Such a feat was notoriously difficult, and they might never have managed it had they not received a sudden trove of data about blink technology from, of all places, Project Armstrong, where it had been retrieved on‐mission.

Of course, the aliens needed no such aid to detect the humans trying to use a blink jump to escape.

The question would be: where? Blink trajectories were not easily traceable a priori, but they could be easily pursued after the fact. That meant there was only one destination that would seem to matter: the human reinforcements. Anywhere else, and the aliens would simply follow immediately afterward.

Jumping to the reinforcements would be an act of desperation, though; the time it would take to charge a jump was completely unsurvivable, not even taking into account the power drain on ship systems.

The Cephalopods, hopefully, perceived a desperate final gambit, a prayer for a miracle—and were responding accordingly, focusing most of their ships on driving home the attack, making attack run after attack run, while about a third charged their own paradox drives, just in case they were needed for pursuit.

Humans had proved very adept at miracles, after all.

Yuma ended her arm repair, leaving sections of ruptured skin and muscle to fend for themselves as she defended herself, enlarging her hammer to five times her size as she thrust it forward, an impromptu, almost comical shield to absorb the impact of a fusillade of missiles.

She wasn’t even able to turn her head to look when their alien fighter fell away, vectoring out of control as its thrusters took a critical hit. Without control, it was helpless.

The impact on Yuma’s hammer sent her backward, her magic straining against the exertion of keeping the magical construct intact and canceling the new momentum—her hammer needed to cover the arrival of another patient, blinded by radiation damage.

Nadya slingshotted past Yuma a second afterward, readying a telekinetic burst to thin out a second wave of missiles, far more efficient than Yuma’s hammer‐shield. Yuma murmured a telepathic thanks.

Their alien fighter took a pair of missile impacts a moment later, transforming in an instant from friendly combatant to cloud of navigational hazards—Rin barely managed to get Jeannette’s soul gem out in time.

Someone in their telepathic network gave thanks to the Goddess, a sentiment Yuma could not share. Not when they had lost the ship.

Yuma’s plan didn’t actually rely on any miracles, magical girl or divine.

The aliens were intended to think they were trying to reach the human reinforcements, but they were aiming only for the hidden alien supply cruiser. That made a huge difference in charging time.

This was a bit of deception that had to work, though. If the aliens realized what they were up to, they would realize it wasn’t safe to have only a third of their flotilla charge blink drives—the whole flotilla needed to follow immediately, to prevent a gambit involving the cruiser.

It was already nearly too late for them to realize—now, several minutes in, the humans were almost done charging. Jeannette’s ship had missed making it by only thirty seconds.

The girl whose eyesight Yuma had just restored released a bolt of sapphire magic that impacted something in front of them, spiraling forward almost too fast for her to see. Yuma caught a glimpse of a kinetic shell suspended there for a moment, before it spun in place and flew back towards its source.

Then the aliens changed their tactics. Perhaps they had attempted to contact their cruiser, or perhaps they had simply wisened up. Either way, half of the still‐attacking alien ships began charging their own paradox drives, while the other half burned all their energy stores trying to finish the humans off.

They would be late to the party. Every magical girl there knew how long was left, knew it was only seconds, and now they spun into new trajectories, abandoning the remaining inbound targets for a new defensive formation, right next to the ships—

Yuma found herself next to one of Kyouko’s clones, who smiled at her. She reached up to grab her hand, a gesture so familiar, so old, that it brought back memories.

Executing tactical jump, Rose‐Merline and Charlotte thought.

The bulk of the alien supply cruiser appeared before them in an instant, close enough for it to dominate their field of vision.

To the assembled magical girls, though, it wasn’t the disparity in tonnage discomfiting them. They were all immediately on edge—even more on edge, if that were possible—the moment they arrived. It was an instinctual reaction to the unnerving sense of demons, the oozing malaise of the miasma.

It felt almost paradoxical for that evil to be so welcome, but it was. Their gambit had worked, and the demons had spawned aboard the cruiser. The ship was still here, was barely taking any defensive measures, and its stealth had evidently failed. Several alien bombers had been disabled alongside it, mid‐refueling, and both cruiser and bombers shimmered with the ghostly sheen of miasma, caught between two realities.

But there was no time to extol their good fortune. Even as those thoughts started to work their way through her mind, Kana was already pulling them towards her telekinetically, drawing inward a sphere of magical girls who would soon be aboard the alien craft.

As they reorganized themselves, the first group of alien frigates and fighters appeared, those that had been charging their paradox drives the longest. Two Kyouko squadrons rushed out, hoping to distract them from less replaceable targets. Both sides opened fire despite being immobilized, and a few of the alien bombers flew in, despite their lack of armament, seeking to at least disrupt the human firing solutions.

Everything quickly descended into a chaotic morass, and stray impacts landing where there was miasma led to double vision, the damage in the exterior world leading to roiling instability within the miasma.

The world around Yuma shifted again, and this time she was inside the engine room of an alien vessel, its cavernous, rounded architecture palpably larger than any of the frigates she had been on.

Yuma was already moving, instincts kicking in to propel her aggressively towards a group of enemies before her, while a magic shell projected by one of the other girls took the hits. Not aliens, but demons, starved for prey.

It had been so long since she had done more than cursory, obligation demon fighting, but it came to her again like second nature. Kyouko’s clones were already weaving a storm of chains, pulling a dozen of them together as she jumped up into the air.

With a crunch that rattled even her bones, she brought her hammer down on the floor of the engine room. A pulse of green energy snapped outward, disintegrating the group of demons on contact.

A jolt of telekinesis put her in flight again, this time high into the air, with a slight horizontal twist.

Now she scanned the room’s floating antigrav platforms, the access points to the engine room’s systems and engine core. Within the miasma, they faded in and out of sight, dream‐like and serene.

She finally found a cluster of demons grouped on one of the floating platforms, along with some of the aliens, standing silently in a circle. Diving, she swept them all aside with one broad, mass‐enhanced stroke, taking a few minor hits to her leg, easily healed.

Bracing, she thought, landing adroitly in a pile of grief cubes, green magic fizzling off her calves, ichor vanishing from her hammer. She’d forgotten what it was like to fight in her teenage form, the intoxicating, irrational sense of power that came from… being slightly taller, and knowing, or at least thinking, you looked good doing it.

We’re clear, one of the Kyoukos thought, echoing the telepathic network.

Already? Yuma thought. Demons were one thing, but they had expected to have to fight a wave of alien defenders as well. That was one of the reasons why teams had landed in the engine room and bridge, as well as the exotic matter stores—they needed to control the heart of the ship.

We’ve had a bit of a surprise, Kyouko thought.

Yuma absorbed the details she was sent as she jumped down from the platform, accelerating her fall with an additional jolt of magic.

She needed to take a look for herself.

She landed next to a group of a dozen Cephalopods whose nearby demons had just been cleared away. They were unarmored, draped in robes patterned by colorful stripes. Layered on top of that were a few narrow cords, wound around their arms and chests.

They were also motionless, listless, eyes empty. Like human demon victims, not the emotionless aliens they were supposed to be. Alien technology was affected by demons, but not the aliens themselves. That was how it had always been.

Yuma shook her head at it all, then raised one hand.

Waves of faint green light rippled out across the room, pulsing outward from Yuma’s skin. Life, even augmented life, was a fragile thing. One broken valve, one clogged tube⁠—that was all it took. Minute decay, wrought by the gentle touch of green magic, brought them all down, down, until the aliens lay crumpled against walls and under workstations, deceased.

Yuma couldn’t help but feel a frisson of unease, though, both at the necessity of what she had done⁠—an irrational reaction, given the situation and her own history⁠—and at the idea of Cephalopod demon victims. It didn’t add up.

But, demon victims or not, anomalies or not, they would have become hostile given a few minutes to wake up, and she simply had to move on. Every millisecond Yuma lingered to study the situation was damage to the ships and to the magical girls who were her responsibility.

Without comment, then, and even as she felt Kyoukos’ gazes on her, she dashed towards the alien FTL core. They needed access to the ship’s primary exotic matter supply, which would be tied to the engine—and for that, they needed the engine’s cooperation, willing or not. It would have been easier with Jeannette, but…

She landed on a floating platform near the core, hovering directly in front of the primary field inducer. Here, half a dozen of the metallic‐silver rings that circled the core met at an enigmatic, blue‐glowing orb, the field inducer itself, about twice the size of Yuma’s head.

Kana was waiting for her there, standing next to the bodies of three alien technicians. Yuma swept them aside with distaste, a brush of telekinetic magic that sent the bodies flying to the ground below.

Then she channeled her magic into the orb. It shuddered, then dimmed, as the two of them seized the engine’s exotic matter containment and routing mechanisms. With it, they could divert, contain, or, if necessary, detonate the ship’s exotic matter stores, a linchpin to what they needed to achieve.

A sudden emptiness tore at the back of Yuma’s mind, and it took her a moment to register that the gap was one of their two remaining ships, and with it most hands, including the Ancient controlling it, Charlotte Meitner.

Yuma pushed those emotions somewhere far away, and stepped back from the orb, leaving it in Kana’s care as she made contact with her for a teleport.

She needed to get back to Rose’s ship—their last ship—to help power the shields while it recovered from its recent blink. That would be her role now.

The rest would have to be left to the others.

Manipulating raw exotic matter fuel was a messy, hands‐on affair, particularly as exotic matter was not exactly stable under standard conditions. Among other things, it needed to stay highly pressurized just to avoid explosive disintegration.

Fortunately for them, Nadya Antipova was on the case.

She prided herself on being Humanity’s strongest telekinetic, not just in raw force output, but also in finesse and distance of projection. Even so, this task was a substantial exertion.

At a signal from Kana, they had cut their way straight into one of the cruiser’s auxiliary containment tanks, full of reserve exotic matter intended for refueling bombers. That was the kind of thing that would have ordinarily triggered a catastrophic, radioactive conflagration, except for Kana’s careful titration of the fuel they were receiving, allowing Nadya to contain and direct their supply with telekinesis alone.

On the engine room floor, around her and her two assistants, lay an assemblage of tubing, wiring, and metallic‐composite parts, much of it twitching and writhing in the manner of displeased smart materials. That represented all the relevant spare parts and equipment they could salvage, both from their own ships and from the cruiser’s repair depots and missile bays. Next to this, up against the wall of the tank, Rin sat feverishly assembling it all into misshapen exotic matter charges, hands dancing back and forth at inhuman speed, parts snapping in from the pile in staccato bursts of telekinesis.

Of course, it wasn’t really possible to take a bunch of spare parts and mash them together into a set of effective exotic matter charges, capable of furrowing space‐time and grounding ships, but Rin’s magic could will it.

Rin signaled that the next device was ready, and Nadya began the transfer process, straining her magic to direct the stream of burning‐white exotic matter into the air and over into the waiting entry port of a misshapen patchwork‐rabbit of a bomb, nearly a meter in diameter and both cubic and spherical, depending on how you looked at it.

It only took about three seconds, but the exertion made it feel like much longer.

Done, Rin thought, sliding the device aside with one hand. One more.

Nadya waited, concentrating on her work, considering what was to come. Right now she had help, but when the time came to fire the charges, she would probably be handling most of the delivery herself—they were missing both Arisu and Charlotte, their next‐best telekinetics.

It was lonely, but she was used to it.

Last one, Rin thought.

Nadya gritted her teeth, both from the strain of her work and the reports from outside. The fight was much fairer than before, especially now that they had managed to take out one of the alien frigates, but with most of their magical girls busy aboard the cruiser, the difference in offensive capability was still daunting.

Done, Rin thought.

Finally, Nadya thought.

A girl sealed the puncture with a blast of magic crystal, while Nadya and one of the others levitated the bulky devices, nearly two dozen in all, a wall of floating metal that dwarfed the much smaller humans. Even one would be hard to fit through a standard alien doorway.

There was so much bulk, in fact, that they would have needed a strong teleporter to move it off the ship directly. Unfortunately, there were none left available, except for Kana, who was controlling the ship’s engine, keeping residual exotic matter from breaking their weak seal while there were still too many aboard.

But they could always improvise, of course.

Two magical girls moved in front of them, brandishing a combination of oversized shield and magical laser cannon. They needed to get out of the ship, and the shortest path was a straight line, after all.

Nadya rather enjoyed bulldozing through reinforced walls, but this time it was best she let the others handle it, simply racing forward with her line of interdiction charges as a path vaporized itself through the ship. The cannoneer couldn’t help but yell as they ran.

Then they broke out into the void, white hull fragments careening outward, and Nadya, Rin, and the others vaulted outward, propelled by the rush of air behind them.

They emerged into a panorama of chaos, with ships, magical girls, and their constructs and ruins littered at the side of the cruiser, mixing strangely with the demon miasmas still active in parts of the ship.

Here, where the contested area was narrow, fighting was dense. They immediately started tracking stray projectiles slinging by them, and one of Kyouko’s clones rocketed by only a few dozen meters away.

But, for a few precious seconds, they weren’t anyone’s target.

They split up immediately, Rin and two Cult girls taking some of the contraptions one way, Nadya taking the rest in another, with the remaining girls returning to battle. Maki joined with Nadya shortly after, cloaking the two of them and their payload in a veil of star‐sequined black that would, hopefully, keep their activity hidden just a bit longer.

The exotic matter charges would have to be carefully targeted, engulfing the malaised alien ships in another layer of FTL inhibition, while still conforming to the overall geometry precalculated by the gestalt, so that the effect was mutually reinforcing.

There were three groups of alien ships to consider. First were the six ships already here, the originally designated pursuit ships. These they would need to hit right away, before the second wave of ships arrived—those that had started charging their paradox drives late. They would then have to take care of those too, to ensure they weren’t followed in their escape.

Finally, there were the alien ships that had focused on trying to finish them off, who would arrive very late, having spent most of their energy earlier on attack. Hopefully they would arrive late enough that Rose’s frigate would already be escaping, and so not be a concern.

She let the landscape of the battle around her unfold in her mind, augmenting her already formidable sense of space. An optimal route was already plotted out, and she and Maki were already on their way.

She kept her eyes fixed on the first drop‐off point, letting the battlefield flow past her. A stream of drones and other magical girls zoomed past in her mind’s eye, entering and exiting her awareness with the smoothness of a ripple through water.

As they reached their target, she lashed out with a tendril of her telekinesis, launching one of the charges on an approach trajectory towards one of the alien ships. The onboard wiring would take care of the rest, detonating as it reached its destination.

But even as she spun away to the next drop‐off point, the lurching acceleration straining her inhuman flesh, her communications implants forced part of her attention to a new alert. The aliens were starting to target the drop teams.

Nadya gritted her teeth. That was unpleasant, but expected.

It was even factored into the route. She would drop her next charges much farther from their destinations. They would spend longer in flight, making them more vulnerable, but this let her cut corners on her route.

Her suit started relaying warnings that enemy drones had her in sensor lock, and she accelerated sharply, ignoring her internal damage indicators, pulling Maki along with her. Maki was doing her part with a pair of paint boosters on her back, but did not have Nadya’s raw speed.

The sensor lock faded, and Nadya settled back in, letting the rest of the battle drop from her active mind, trusting her TacComp to alert her to anything truly critical. For now, focus and speed.

That had kept her alive for a good many years.

A few seconds later, her TacComp informed her that Rin’s team had successfully hit a fighter, but had taken heavy radiation bombing in the process. They likely weren’t going to finish their half of the first wave in time—Nadya would need to try to make up for it.

Nadya muted her frustration, focusing on her next target. She mapped out a less obvious trajectory, accepting suboptimal routing to make it harder for the aliens to predict where she was going—indeed, the optimal trajectory was already being combed with drones and sensor scans.

It would be a challenge. The frigates might be stationary, mired in blink malaise, but they were hardly harmless. Without the benefit of surprise, if Maki’s camouflage failed they would be the recipient of a killing amount of firepower.

Thoughts raced across the human network, and in a few moments, they had an idea. Somewhere from their repository of tricks, they would marshal a classic gambit: a distraction.

That distraction came in the form of Kyouko, a giant Kyouko, larger than an alien frigate, wielding in two hands a massive spear and a hammer, courtesy of Yuma. It materialized near a group of Kyoukos, rocketing forward to give the next alien ship a big slam.

It was one of Kyouko’s projections, of course, an apparition rather than a full clone, but the aliens had to take it seriously—it looked real on their sensors, after all, and some kind of giant magical girl was perfectly plausible, given all else they had seen.

Indeed, the hammer slammed into the ship’s shields with a good deal of real force, sending a shimmering shockwave around it, even as the ship focused all its close‐in lasers and kinetic batteries at the apparition, which dissolved quickly.

This was Nadya’s window, and she had already released her exotic matter charge, sending it with a telekinetic shove in the direction of the ship, right before impact.

Gravitational fireworks splashed across the human sensor relays, showing successful deployment, and Nadya raced away from the scene before the frigate could target her.

Nadya still needed to handle two more ships, including one of Rin’s, and that was just from the first group of arrivals—the second group, five in all, was due to arrive in seconds.

It was fifty‐fifty which ship she would go for next, and the aliens would be on guard around both.

After that last stunt, Maki thought, they might assume anything crazy‐looking we throw at them is fake. But if I generate something completely normal, like a brace of missiles, they’ll have to respond, no matter what they think.

It wouldn’t be as effective, since the aliens would avoid overreacting and might smell a rat, but it was worth at least trying.

This time, as they approached their drop point, Nadya’s implants began alarming again—something had gotten another sensor lock on them.

They veered away hard, Nadya hastily calculating a new drop trajectory, and she launched the exotic matter charge a bit early, using both her own momentum and telekinesis to jolt it onto the right trajectory.

Then she spun around, concentrating on deflecting the missile—

The missile veered away, seeking an imitation Nadya and Maki flying off in another direction. Nadya learned their charge had been intercepted by a bomber right afterward.

She didn’t have time to dwell on either result, instantly turning to freeze and crush a trio of alien drones and blast them away.

We need some cover! she thought.

She got her wish, in the form of a splash of rainbow‐colored smoke, materializing around her faster than any conventional response could have possibly arrived. It blotted out the darkness of space almost comically.

A tight set of command codes bounced into her head, as brief as possible: authentication, phenomenon is friendly, navigate away along this course.

The context filled in as she followed the instructions, but her implants filed it away from her primary consciousness. Not useful at the moment.

The lack of gestalt, and its attendant battlefield awareness, felt almost like a blindness, and it took far too long for the telepathic network to give her an important update: five angry sensor blips that represented the second group of alien ships making their appearance, neatly cutting her off from the two uninterdicted ships of the first wave.

Another warning echoed through her mind, and she raised a telekinetic bubble, bracing for impact—Kana was breaching the cruiser’s remaining exotic matter, which would trigger a radioactive detonation.

The radiation front reached them about ten seconds later, glimmering off her barrier. She couldn’t help but glance at the spectacle, a full spectrum of radiation gouging itself out of the side of alien shields, muted in the dangerous wavelengths she had tuned her barrier to block. As the cruiser spun apart, the miasma followed, and her eyes insisted on seeing both versions of events—both the ship fracturing, and the world within the miasma jerking chaotically, adapting to the new environment.

As the display continued to flare outward, the value of Kana’s holdout was clear. By timing the release when she had, she was flooding local sensor nets with noise, creating pockets where it would be easier to hide, right when they would need it the most. The detonation killing most of the cruiser’s remaining crew was an added bonus.

They were, all of them, pulling out every trick they could think of. It had to be enough.

New estimates entered her awareness, telling her that at the current rate, Rose’s ship would exit malaise with two alien ships from each of the first two waves still uninterdicted. That was too many to feel safe, but it would risk everything to force the others to wait for her to hit a few more ships. Did they have any other choice, though?

Rather than put too much thought into that now, she focused on getting her work done faster, pushing the question to Yuma and some of the other, more stationary magical girls. With little left in the way of standard defenses, the humans had to use their magical girls to weather the torrent of new firepower, forcing almost everyone back to Rose’s ship, spotting and deflecting incoming attacks.

She thus dropped her next charges without substantial support or distraction, launching them outward with as much speed as she could manage. One of the two was intercepted before it arrived, snapped out of the void by screening drones, but the second managed to find its mark.

That was too close, though, Maki thought.

Nadya gave her the merest blip of acknowledgment, splitting a bit of her attention to consider new route options.

She and Maki were splitting up, Maki and her stealth joining Rin and one of the junior magical girls—the other that had been with Rin was now dead—while Nadya would go it alone. She could fly faster that way, no longer having to drag Maki along with her.

That came at the cost of losing her own stealth cover, of course.

Good luck, Nadya thought, as Maki veered away, dragging a charge along with her using a loop of hardened paint.

May the Goddess watch over you, Maki thought.

And then Nadya accelerated.

The pressure came at her hard and fast, fusillades of kinetic fire and drone attack formations swarming towards her. She evaded frantically, using her incredible maneuverability to dance around the relatively slow kinetic fire. Lashes of telekinesis snapped at and smashed drones, and a personal force wall protected her from anything that got through, turning the world into a chaotic mess of swirling magic, incoming attack indicators, and close‐by drones, straining at the edge of her ability to track.

She flew in as close as she dared, scanning constantly for close‐in laser shots, and dropped her charges, this time with her personal telekinetic attention. The moment the first charge dropped, a wave of fire came inbound, filling her awareness with warnings. She stood her ground for a long few seconds, freezing what she could in place, barely catching a laser from behind that scorched her leg.

Then the charges detonated, a wave of gravitational distortion flooding her sensors, and she sped away.

Rin and Maki had been able to hit a fighter and a frigate as well, taking advantage of the attention Nadya had drawn, using up the last of their half of the charges.

Now Nadya’s job got more difficult, as the aliens focused their attention on stopping her. There was no point in taking a circuitous route this time, and the incoming fire grew progressively more intense as she flew directly to the next ship.

We can move again! Yuma thought. Get one more ship and get out!

They had gotten the second wave of ships, but there were still two ships left from the first, with a very brief window before they became unstuck. Nadya couldn’t disagree with the logic—the human defenses, their magical girls, were all but spent. Even one alien frigate in extended pursuit might be too much.

She dove into what was now a sea of fire, a maze of kinetic impacters weaving past her, with some of the last surviving human drones trying to shield her route. Even as she wove this way and that, she took hits to her telekinetic bubble, explosions of light that she mostly felt rather than saw.

Still, a crooked smile came to her lips. This had always been the alien problem in space combat—ships were faster and stronger, and missiles were extremely deadly, but nothing had the maneuverability and flexibility of a magical girl.

Despite that confidence, she pushed herself more desperately. Her window was closing; she would be the last magical girl still outside Rose’s frigate, with Kana making a special jump just to bring her in as they flew away. Every moment she spent out here put everyone at risk.

So she flew less evasively, letting a few shells and drones slam into her, metal parts shattering in explosions of light as they hit and skidded across her barrier.

And this time, when she deployed her charges, she sent everything she had left, several charges blasting away from her like so many rockets. She dove away immediately, leaving them to their fates—if they failed, they failed.

She had hoped that the incoming fire would abate when she embarked on an obvious escape trajectory but it became, if anything, more intense. She found herself losing more and more time trying to evade, and still absorbing heavy blows to her shell, explosions of energy blotting out parts of her sky.

Why the hell are they targeting me? Nadya thought, in angry despair. They should be focusing on the ship!

She was also losing sensor coverage now, and was forced to rely on her own techniques, sending out pulses of telekinesis as a kind of radar. It worked, but it ate into her limited focus.

Her progress was slowing to a crawl, but she was still moving forward. That was enough. They would wait for her.

Then the sky opened up next to her.

She snapped herself into a skull‐wrenching turn, damage pulsing across her body, as she barely avoided slamming into the newly arrived alien vessel, black and menacing against the stars.

The third group of alien vessels was here, just a bit ahead of schedule, appearing around the single human vessel. They were too early, and Nadya was still too far to be recovered.

Nadya knew then that a decision had been made for her.

Leave me, she thought, and she wasn’t offended that the others were already heading away.

Kyouko sent something back, but she didn’t care to read it. She knew what it would say.

Like most who had gone so old to the front lines, she had rehearsed this moment in her mind, made her peace with it. Her children were grown, she had lived long, no one could fight forever.

But that didn’t mean she had no regrets. She hadn’t found Misa or finished the job with Kyouko. She wouldn’t live to see some of her grandkids grow. She wasn’t done.

But could one ever be done?

She turned towards the ship next to her, maintaining her shields as fierce as ever, and snapped her necklace off its chain.

Soul Guard legend said the technique had first been formally taught at the beginning of the Unification Wars, and that it had been perfected by tireless research by one of the Mitakihara Four. Perhaps Mami, perhaps Kyouko.

It didn’t matter.

She tossed her soul gem in front of her, as it seemed to grow to encompass her world, and she saw herself reflected in it, saw the cracks forming as her soul strove to escape.

In it, she saw her memories. Her children, her husbands, Clarisse, Misa. Walking outside under the summer sky to show her daughter the aurora.

Where would it go?

She didn’t see the ships around her disintegrating in the light.

“Fuck.”

Kyouko couldn’t say she disagreed with the sentiment, even if it came from Maki rather than her.

A few sobs escaped from Armelle, the girl Kyouko was comforting.

Kyouko had kept herself composed, restraining herself to only slamming her spear into the wall once. Right now, that was her duty as a leader. She would let out a little emotion later, smash something on this damnable vessel, feel some pain.

No matter how bad they felt, their position was still better than most of the girls she had brought with her.

Kyouko looked over at Yuma.

They hadn’t thought it would be over, not when there was still an alien frigate that could have given close chase. But it had turned back, abruptly, after only a brief pursuit.

It was uncharacteristic for the aliens. Kyouko couldn’t help but wonder if a single extra ship—like the one Nadya had given her life to stop—would have changed that decision.

Maybe. She wanted to—had to—believe in that.

Yuma was healing one of the human commandos she had brought along, staring out an alien viewscreen with a look like someone had put bittermelon in her food.

Kyouko hugged Armelle a final time, then walked up next to Yuma. She didn’t have anything to say. They had botched this, plain and simple, and they weren’t near done paying for it.

Look at this, Yuma thought, jolting Kyouko out of her mood.

Kyouko read Ryouko’s relayed message with increasing surprise. She’d been ignoring the press of urgent calls and major news at the back of her mind, but of course Yuma hadn’t been.

We need to talk to her anyway, but do you think I should answer her questions? Yuma asked, still looking out the viewscreen.

Kyouko thought about it.

I think so. But you’d hate the reasoning.

Yuma finally turned toward Kyouko, and the pair locked eyes briefly.

I thought you’d say yes, Yuma thought, fatalistic. Well, it probably couldn’t be avoided. Everyone’s going to be all over our business soon enough anyway.

Can’t say I even blame them, Kyouko thought.

Yuma sighed.

“We have a lot of work to do,” she said.

To Ryouko’s surprise, Yuma sent her a response within minutes. She had expected she might be waiting weeks. She certainly hadn’t expected anything while she was still on‐mission—though, now that she had successfully tested her new teleport with Asami’s black holes, she supposed she had the spare attention. Had Yuma been watching her that closely?

It’s marked time‐sensitive, or at least some of it is, Clarisse commented. I think we should hold the rest for later though, if that’s alright.

Ryouko hesitated; she had wanted answers, yes, but Azrael had a telepathic eye on her. Was it really wise?

While she thought about it, another fast‐moving cruiser flew past her, its profile occluding most of the sky as it went. Streaks of radiation framed it against the background, illuminating the debris of battle.

She decided then she didn’t care too much—it was Azrael, after all. Keeping a wary eye on Asami and Simona, she began to digest Yuma’s message.

The enemy organization we believe tried to kill you has been exposed, and is retaliating in part by leaking lurid reports about you. They center on the genetic engineering done to you, but also include your Cult connections, Simona del Mago, and your revival in a cloned body after X‐25. Character assassination, in short. There is a brief window of time for me to get ahead of the story, start a media campaign, but I need to know that you’re willing to have all of that exposed across official channels. I need to know now, if possible.

What the hell? Ryouko thought. It wasn’t even an answer to her questions, and her reputation was probably the furthest thing from her mind at the moment. But what…

It took a bit for the other attached information to sink in, even if it was all tailored for rapid cortical download. She wasn’t the only target—they were going after everybody, leaking inflammatory information about Yuma, Kyouko, the Cult, pretty much everyone working against them.

There was even more to read, even if Clarisse was frantically signaling that she should stop.

Yuma had answered her questions. Yuma not only believed that Valentin must be Homura, she had uncovered that Valentin—that Homura—was personally responsible for Ryouko’s genetic engineering. Moreover, Ryouko’s parents were partly culpable. Valentin had promised to genetically engineer low contract potential in their daughter, under the guise of an implant study.

When her parents realized they’d been tricked, Homura had erased their memories.

The worst was this: contrary to Patricia’s initial analysis and subsequent assurances, whatever Homura had put in Ryouko’s head could have altered her personality, all the way down to her very core values. Though, they weren’t sure if it had.

Yuma had, nevertheless, apparently just been convinced that Homura’s actions were… if not good, then at least meant to protect humanity. Ryouko supposed it only made sense to finally extend some of that trust down to her, the girl who was evidently Homura’s pet project.

Ryouko couldn’t resist looking over at Azrael, who was maintaining a carefully closed expression. Azrael looked back when she did.

I’m not really sure what to say, Azrael thought. Only that I am here for you if you need it.

Ryouko put her hand on her helmet, closing her eyes. The whole world was going to learn this soon. Her life might be turned upside‐down.

Do it, she responded, to Yuma. And please let me know what the hell is going on when I get back.

Of course. The secrecy I have worked with has carried a great cost. I think I made a mistake keeping you penned up before. For that I am sorry. There’s a lot I want to work through with you after this. It will be in your control.

Ryouko experienced a spike of emotion from Clarisse, its meaning clearer than could be directly said. She empathized with how ridiculous, how unmanageable the situation was, but right now, what was important was Asami, the wormhole, and the mission. Other things were for worrying about when they got back. Even about what was in her head.

Ryouko opened her eyes, looking at Simona, entertaining the brief fantasy of grabbing her by the neck and shaking her, as if she were to blame for everything.

Then she swallowed hard, tuning back in to the half of her mind that had never stopped watching her surroundings, letting her combat environment flood back to the forefront, full of contextual highlighting and instinctual processing.

The last third of their fleet was now evacuating, leaving behind as many drones, mines, and other expendable munitions as they could to provide a lingering presence. When the final cruiser made it through the wormhole, it would be time for her to enact Asami’s gambit, and she needed to be ready.

She peered at the edges of the wormhole for a few seconds, losing herself in the way the spinning starlight swirled there. It reminded her of the space‐time aberrations at Orpheus, and in a different hour she might have found them beautiful.

The starlight jittered, and her suit rockets fired automatically to keep her in position, gravitational alarms toggling all over the landscape of her mind.

What was that? one of their escorts asked.

This rhetorical question was answered almost immediately by the fleet, which pointed out an alien cruiser‐based task force that had just arrived in orbit on the far side of the pulsar. Something there was emanating gravitational pulses, and coordinating with the remaining gravity modulators too—though not the mines, which had finally been incapacitated, at least.

Another pulse struck them then, intense enough to send her briefly backward.

This must be an attack on the wormhole, Simona thought. They’ve brought some kind of gravitational weapon with them!

The implications were obvious, but there was no way to rush the evacuation any further.

Battle simulations no longer converge, the gestalt informed them. Emergency abort authority has been granted to Captain Zheng Ying‐zhi and First Lieutenant Nakihara Asami.

The directive was familiar from simulation—it meant the decision rested almost entirely on magic now. Only Asami could know whether or not the wormhole was still stable, and whether they could still stay. Ying‐zhi would interface with her telepathically, via Azrael, and make the call if Asami froze, faster than the gestalt could.

You hear that? Simona thought, pained. We should get out of here right now! We have to protect Ryouko.

I’ve got the wormhole under control, Asami thought. This isn’t some kind of new alien weapon, they’re just abusing their paradox drives. I’ve got this. We’ll be fine.

Simona made a gesture as if to swing her arm around, but seemed to think better of it. The way they were positioned—Asami near the wormhole, Simona nearby to provide magical support—she would have come close to hitting the other girl.

You don’t know that, Simona thought. The alien attacks are going to intensify. If you lose control, we’ll all be stuck here.

There will be plenty of warning, Asami thought. And if we leave now, not only will we be giving up on the mission, it will be much harder to control the wormhole from the other side. If it collapses, there will be thousands of people left stranded out here. Trust me. Right now, we’re fine.

Where does that certainty come from? Simona snapped. This isn’t a matter of your pride. You’re putting us all at risk.

Ryouko felt her suit shudder, another alien pulse thrumming through the area.

Don’t you dare talk to me about pride or who I’m putting at risk, Asami thought, hands visibly clenching. I know what I’m putting at risk and I’ve agonized over it. You’re lucky I need you to keep this wormhole contained, or I’d throw you back in myself.

Keep your opinions to yourself, Del Mago, Ying‐zhi thought. She is under a lot of stress, and this is not the time to be making it worse.

You seriously can’t all agree with her? Simona asked, incredulous.

You’re the one being irrational right now, Ryouko thought. How have things gotten any worse than when we were in the pulsar mines? Why are you freaking out now?

Because now we have the option to escape. And right now―

Another pulse slammed into them, strong enough to trigger the barrier around them, which shimmered and rippled under the impact. Behind it, the wormhole rippled only slightly, the ring of light around the mouth shifting position briefly.

Simona radiated a wave of telepathic skepticism, drawing another rebuke from Ying‐zhi, but Ryouko found her attention pulled away by… a strange tap at the back of her mind, like someone attempting a telepathic connection from too far away.

That didn’t make any sense, though. Their communications were up and running; there simply wasn’t a reason to attempt something like that.

The tapping repeated, more strongly, and this time it came with a confusing carrier wave of sensations—nothing that made sense, signals that oscillated back and forth—as well as almost literal white noise.

Azrael picked up on it, of course, at the same time that Clarisse let her know that the feeling, whatever it was, was coming from her brain implant.

What were the aliens trying to do?

We can’t stay here, Simona insisted, suddenly. Not if they’re going to keep trying to do… things to Ryouko’s head. We don’t know what it’s capable of! What if it’s a threat?

Of everyone there, Ryouko had least expected Simona to raise that objection. Wasn’t she tied in with Valentin? With Homura?

But Simona knew less than she did, she realized. Azrael’s recent mind‐read proved as much, and Simona hadn’t been told about Yuma’s message.

Ryouko forwarded the information to Simona then, after passing it by Ying‐zhi for cursory approval. There wasn’t much of a secret left to keep, after all, not now that an enemy organization had started leaking it.

She found herself loosening a bit as Simona took in the information, watching a stream of frigates pass by, camouflage coatings shimmering against the dark. She wouldn’t have felt comfortable keeping this kind of secret, or trying to fabricate a lie. This was much simpler.

This isn’t good enough, Simona thought.

Ryouko’s attention snapped back to Simona.

This isn’t good enough, Simona repeated. It just makes things worse. None of you has worked with Valentin like I have. We’re all just pieces on a chessboard to her, and no one hesitates to sacrifice even a queen if it wins the game. Especially not Homura.

It seems, checking now, that Command did consider the possibility of a Homura plot during planning, Ying‐zhi thought, tone neutral. But it concluded, and continues to conclude, that the threat is very low. Right now, Ryouko is worth much more than the remnant of the pulsar mines. Who would have both the foresight to invest in something for fifteen years, and the myopia to just light it all on fire? I understand where you’re coming from, but there are better strategic decisions.

You don’t know the kind of insight she has, Simona thought, her shoulders tense with stress. I’ve seen what she can do, the inexplicable decisions that always turn out right. She designed this part of Ryouko! The part that’s been acting strangely all mission, a mission where she sent me a message apologizing for everything. I don’t think we’re intended to survive this.

Anything Homura does is ordained by the Goddess, and I don’t think the Goddess sanctioned killing us all, Mina snapped. I don’t know what your problem is, but—

That’s not helpful right now, Ying‐zhi interrupted, warningly. Regardless, Simona, we don’t have time to belabor this. Command says you shared all of your memories of Valentin back when you first handed yourself over, and they’ve already taken them into account. I need you to give me another reason to believe what you’re saying.

The other magical girls began subtly drifting their positions, getting ready to secure Simona if necessary.

I just need you to believe me, Simona thought. I know it sounds unlikely, but I made my wish for Ryouko, and now my experiences and my instincts are both telling me that something is wrong, and it terrifies me. Ryouko cannot stay here.

Ying‐zhi paused. The silence was heavy.

I’m sorry, but that’s not enough, Ying‐zhi thought, finally.

Simona’s frustration was palpable telepathically, but it seemed for a moment that she would subside into emotional suppression, and Ryouko relaxed a bit.

Azrael nixed that idea: Simona was overriding emotional suppression, and slipping out of control, fast. Desperate plans were taking hold in her mind, schemes to withhold her magic and coerce Asami into an early abort, ways to take advantage of some alien attack and seize Ryouko, to save Ryouko, whether she wanted it or not.

Force her into emotional suppression, then! Ying‐zhi thought, clearly an order.

A terrible black ooze began enveloping Simona’s head inside her helmet, and two melee girls sprang forward to secure her. Ryouko tensed herself.

Blinding orange light obscured the scene temporarily.

Then a gravitational shudder hit their barrier, from the wrong direction.

What the hell are you doing? Asami thought, as Simona rocketed away from her towards Ryouko. Asami snatched at Simona with purple magic that, for a second, seemed to slow the rogue magical girl. But the wormhole shuddered, and Asami was forced to whirl about to restabilize it.

Simona tore through several attempts to lasso her, evading or shoving aside magical constructs and thrown weapons with bursts of magic.

If you all insist on being fools, Simona cried, fury scorching Ryouko’s mind, then I’ll do this myself!

Contain her! Ying‐zhi thought, her barrier warping into place in front of Simona.

Simona stretched out her hand, projecting a cone of orange magic that covered the sky around Ryouko in shimmering color. Ying‐zhi recoiled, her barrier melting, and Ryouko realized too late the cone of magic was directed at her, inhibiting her teleportation. Where had Simona gotten a power like this?

Ryouko fired a bolt at Simona to force a dodge, buying just enough time to whirl and kick at the other girl. Ryouko’s experience saved her—Simona was just a little bit slower, and that was enough for Ryouko to get away.

Simona’s thrusters flared suddenly, pushing her away from Ryouko. She grabbed at her helmet as it was swallowed by a pool of black, Azrael’s mind‐control tearing into her mental defenses.

Get out of my head!

Simona powered through Azrael’s control with a blast of magic, sending Azrael reeling as she launched forward again, still heading towards Ryouko. Ryouko found herself still unable to teleport and, lifting her arbalest, now hardly able to summon a bolt.

She drew her SW‒155 pistol instead, aiming for Simona’s head. Her training had prepared her a little, but she had still never fought another magical girl.

She fired a spread of shots before she could finish the thought, and Simona came to a crashing stop. Ryouko thought, for a fraction of a moment, that she had done that.

It turns out, Asami thought, one hand stretched out towards them, that I don’t need you to keep the wormhole open. So I think you deserve a timeout.

Simona writhed fruitlessly against her gravitational prison, as a stream of drones latched onto her limbs and began scurrying over her body. An orange glow enveloped her soon after, but it came too late—by then, one of the drones had successfully pried off her soul gem core and rocketed away, quickly passing one hundred meters with the help of a gravity‐slingshot from Asami.

Ryouko watched Simona’s limp body disappear into the wormhole, image twisted into a spiral by the edge, and a slight chill ran through her—she was missing the previous warmth of Simona’s power enhancement, she realized.

She turned to Asami.

Are we okay? Ryouko thought.

We’re okay, as long as it doesn’t get much worse, Asami thought.

She grimaced, and the light from the wormhole seemed to shiver in sympathy.

The faster the better, though.

The stream of ships passing near and around them was accelerating, cascading into one final crescendo of cruisers that, when finished, would leave them nearly alone, with less than a minute, at best, to finish the job.

The aliens were taking advantage, with weapons fire and even ships approaching ever closer to the wormhole. In just the past couple minutes, dozens of frigates in the rearguard had shattered into pieces of debris.

Ryouko didn’t need an explicit instruction to get ready, focusing her thoughts on what she now needed to do. With one figurative eye on the countdown timer, she focused inward, visualizing the task, imagining space stretching slowly.

Another wave of static hit the back of her mind, the aliens seemingly at it again. This time, it faded quickly. No matter; Azrael and Patricia and Clarisse were all watching her, just in case anything happened.

She looked up as the last cruiser, HSS Shelton Mason, flew past them into the wormhole. It was time.

Ryouko arrived next to Asami, who nodded her helmet, raising one hand to summon her signature black hole, which hovered in front of Ryouko. Ryouko placed her hands around it, careful not to get too close.

It was amazing how natural it all seemed now. Like Asami, she could almost visualize what was happening, almost see the black hole sinking inexorably into a fold in the fabric of space. It would be delicate, nesting an event horizon into a larger wormhole opening, but she could do it.

The cordon of magical girls contracted inwards towards her as she focused her magic, defense drones swarming around them to buy the precious seconds they needed, dying by the hundreds every second as alien attacks scorched through the area around them.

Ryouko sealed away the rest of her thoughts, pouring all she knew into her magic. The distance the black hole needed to travel was longer than her usual range, but the conditions were perfect. Space was already heavily warped by the pulsar, with the singularity itself a needle‐sharp puncture, and she again had their enormous wormhole to assist. Without Simona, it would be harder, but it was possible.

She imagined her magic pushing it inward, straining against a tremendous energy barrier, seeking a new equilibrium. She kept her eyes open, watching the magic that now enshrouded the black hole, a ghostly green glow starting to swirl inward, disappearing not into the black hole, but into something else.

Less mobile team members exited early, while Oda and a core team finished gathering together, ready for the escape teleport that would carry them the few remaining meters between them and the kilometers‐wide sphere of the wormhole’s mouth—and then through it, to home. They would have only a moment before Asami’s black hole reached the pulsar’s crust, and then even less before the shockwave reached them.

The pressure in the back of her mind returned, same as ever, but there was no time to pay attention to it now.

The steps played out just as they had in her mind, just as they had in her test runs. A final burst of energy ruptured local space‐time. Her magic molded it, as it tried desperately to snap back to a low‐energy conformation. For a moment, it connected strangely, attaching itself to a distant location. In that instant, the small bit of quasi‐matter in Asami’s singularity, matter granted only temporary existence by her magic, passed through.

Even the fastest of human clocks would have struggled to keep pace with these events, but it seemed to her that she could.

The next steps, though, she could not see, nor was it wise to try to see.

Asami’s black hole, burgeoning with energy absorbed near the pulsar, was destined for the pulsar’s crust, home to some of the universe’s greatest stresses and densities, all precariously bound into a perfect rigid sphere.

The most energy any human has ever released, Ryouko thought. And I won’t even be around to see any of it.

Oda’s escape jump began even before Ryouko finished, converting the group of magical girls into enchanted lightning bolts with no time to spare. The world around them flashed by in glimpses, the telltale distortion at the mouth of the wormhole, the profound darkness of new space inside the wormhole, the opening to Adept Blue before them—

A sound interrupted the silent, ethereal experience.

A sound? That didn’t make sense, but Ryouko found herself abruptly aware of everything around her, though her field of view was rigidly, painfully outside of her control.

Before her was the way out of the wormhole, a sharp circular window out onto the stars, geometrically perfect, with the silhouette of the Armstrong apparatus looming. Around that lay pitch‐black, dark enough to look like a glitch in space, but in that darkness, the bright yellow of her fellow magical girls traced a path forward as lightning.

Then, something broke.

The way out twisted, and what had been a clean window contorted, the boundary spiraling inward and shredding outward—outward, shards of light right at them.

Oda did what she could, steering them towards the suddenly unpredictable exit, but it approached so erratically that only some of them made it through: Asami, Ying‐zhi, Azrael, Mina, and several of the others. Ryouko, Oda, Amane, and Patricia did not—they were still trapped in the wormhole, the boundary now receding away from them.

In the following milliseconds they passed their original exit point—the new exit point had moved, somehow, far away.

In that moment of sudden terror, it was clear something had gone terribly wrong. The wormhole was misshapen, and with Oda’s energy fading, they were going to be lost.

Ryouko dug deep, finding herself all too aware of her soul gem state. It was low; she had just exercised her teleportation to the extreme. But she had been careful to leave herself available for an emergency teleport, and she was still in range.

These were hardly ideal conditions for a teleport. Space‐time was distorted, yes, but she had difficulty conceptualizing how you could make a wormhole inside another wormhole.

But she had to try. It might be their only way back.

Ryouko tore away the space‐time surrounding the four of them, even as Oda carried them forward. She wove her magic, reached out for a fraying bit of space‐time the wormhole was expanding into, and something snapped—

When they emerged again, Oda’s magic had dispelled, leaving them back as four magical girls in suits, floating in the depths of space.

No… not space. There were no stars. They were still in the larger wormhole.

She was confused at how that was possible, the uncertainty sending her thoughts racing.

The wormhole didn’t look right. There seemed to be no exit in the darkness, only strange, misshapen patches of light, forming fractal patterns across the face of an implacable, eternal darkness.

I know about this, she realized, in a burst of intuition powered partially by Clarisse’s aid.

There were alternate, low‐probability wormhole geometries that could form, if there was enough energy in the system. Even superpositions. That could easily look like a false opening. But that meant the wormhole wasn’t stable.

The clarity gave her only temporary relief. The pulsar had surely detonated by now.

What does ‘by now’ even mean? Clarisse thought. What reference frame? Are we even still connected to the pulsar? We haven’t died yet, so surely—

Ryouko!

Ryouko spun in place, twirling in an instinctive burst of telekinesis and suit thrusters.

Impossibly, implausibly, Asami was nearby, behind one of the patches of light, each leading somewhere else in the wormhole. In one of them, a few hundred meters away, she felt a glimmer of Asami’s magic.

All four of them moved for the opening then, Oda burning her magic in one last burst. In front of them, the opening seemed to spiral wide, piercing the darkness with a ray of hope. Ryouko could even see someone’s hand reaching through.

Then something slammed into her with cataclysmic force, and all was black.

Ryouko! Ryouko!

Clarisse’s voice shocked her awake, and for a moment she was stunned, before starting to panic as her memories set back in. Why couldn’t she see anything? Where was—

Oh thank the Goddess, if this isn’t all her fault, Clarisse thought. I’m sorry for waking you out of fugue, but it took me a while to get key systems back online.

I, uh, I’m not sure I like the sound of that, Ryouko thought, feeling a wave of emotional suppression hit her. What does that mean?

Let me get your optics back on.

Ryouko was starting to notice something in Clarisse’s affect she hadn’t felt before—a layer of careful reserve, a kind of controlled formality.

As her eyes turned back on, she realized what it was—Clarisse was scared.

A powerful wave of emotional suppression then kept her own terror at bay, for the moment.

Her eyes were on, but there was nothing to see but the stars. There was no wormhole, no Adept Blue, nothing else at all.

Not quite, Clarisse thought. The stars are familiar. I ran some astrogation routines. We’re about twenty‐four light‐minutes from the pulsar.

Her voice was unsteady for a moment, and Ryouko heard the rest of the story non‐vocally, a story Clarisse had painstakingly pieced back together after the fact.

Something—probably the radiation shockwave from the pulsar—had slammed into them inside the wormhole, in the process dealing the final blow to the wormhole itself. By all rights, that should have killed her, but the geometry of the wormhole had ensured they received only a faint aftershock, and Amane’s barrier had been up.

Still, it had been enough to knock even a magical girl unconscious, and her body had suffered extensive damage, enough that it was unwise to move.

That wasn’t even mentioning the fact that she was marooned, in hostile space, and the pulsar shockwave had yet to reach this location.

Oh, and as far as Clarisse could tell, there was no one else remotely near her.

Given all that, she felt content to lie still in a cloud of addled emotional suppression, rather than think about it too much. Except—

Why did you even wake me up for this? Ryouko thought, managing not to sound pained.

Because the Homura device in your head is going crazy, and I’d like to know what that’s about, Clarisse thought. It seems very insistent, and clearer this time.

Ryouko realized then that the pounding in the back of her head wasn’t just a distant headache, but rather the same scratching she had felt so many times before, except this time it was rather more like drilling.

Can’t they just leave me alone? she despaired rhetorically.

She tried to grasp at it, obeying Clarisse’s request, but it slipped out of her reach, filling her mind with noise.

What was the point? she thought, letting go, and letting her thoughts spin outward.

Simona had been right after all. They had ruined everything, trying this. They should have just gone back. Asami would be devastated.

It all felt stunted, buried beneath a blanket of emotional suppression she left in place. It was better, she decided, to avoid thinking about anything too painful. At least there was an afterlife. That she knew, and while she didn’t exactly look forward to it… well, at least she would get a chance to ask the Goddess why the hell—

She felt what seemed rather like a zap to the back of her mind, and it took her a moment to realize it was Clarisse.

Please, Clarisse thought, insistently. I’m not going down like this.

Ryouko didn’t know how to feel. Ashamed? Clarisse had always been the reasonable one.

She honored that, making another try at interpreting the insistent pounding.

The sensation was hard to grasp, a central impression that her mind refused to shape itself around. Clarisse had been right, though. Something about it was clearer. It didn’t have the mechanical vibe of what she had felt in the mines’ systems, but more of the natural feeling of the telepathic packet she had gotten from the dead Ceph. She could find scattered information, data that Clarisse was quickly able to parse as relative coordinates, pointing to a representation of a room.

But she still needed to understand the core, the glimpses of which seemed like… an expression of intent? Motive?

Then, with all the finesse of a square peg slotting into a round hole, she understood.

She tried desperately, painfully, to hold on to that understanding.

It’s… like an artificial emotion of some kind, she thought. No, it’s more like, an explanation of purpose. The impression is…

She began to look around her, searching for the coordinates she had been given, only a few dozen meters away. At first, she perceived nothing, but then she realized that her soul gem was reacting—had been reacting—to something from the start: a stealthed FTL engine, close nearby. Alien.

Did she have a choice?

It didn’t really matter if she trusted the impression of nonviolence she had received, or if she preferred the fighting instinct to take one more enemy down with her. She had to try to live; it was what Asami, what everyone in her life, would want.

She felt something else from the alien ship too, something familiar, and the realization, when it came, was startling: the ship was about to blink. She recognized the technique as similar to her own.

Ryouko blinked aboard the alien ship, and the ship itself blinked away.

Behind her, twenty minutes later, an imploding star showered ruin on the now‐empty void, its beacon blackening forever.

Chapter 62: The Dying Light, Part One

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 10:39:44 +0200

Like the naval destroyers of old, starships of the nebulous “standard frigate” type are the least glamorous fellows in the fleet. Unlike their stealth frigate cousins, they rarely make individual headlines or attract the attention of celebrity rumor mills—but as a whole they take pride in their versatility, in their unshakeable élan, and in their sheer numbers. Across every far‐flung outpost and shipping lane of the Human diaspora, and through every nerve and sinew of the Navy, standard frigates have made themselves at home, confident, and thoroughly indispensable.

Part of the secret behind the standard frigate’s versatility is that, like all generalist terms, “standard frigate” is a misnomer, a historical, colloquial term that elides the diversity of an incredibly broad class of people. There is no single frigate who can do all the jobs which frigate‐type starships are asked to do. Often, the categorization reveals little more than the ship’s approximate tonnage, with the term “standard” indicating a lack of special stealth or magical girl association.

A frigate’s formal class is thus much more useful in establishing their role, ranging from the sublight orbital‐bound Defenders, to the patrol and escort Exquisites, to the anti‐fighter/bomber Valiants, current mainstay of the Fleet. A standard frigate might protect a planetary surface from bombardment, guard a civilian or military convoy against a Cephalopod raid, screen a deep‐space installation, or brave a withering storm of alien fighters, bombers, drones, and missiles amid large‐scale fleet operations.

Each class of standard frigate represents a unique design intended to fulfill a specific mission suite. Classes are then further subdivided into variations specialized for certain subtasks or local celestial environments. Missions run the gamut, including shipyard defense, carrier bomber screening, intrasystem surveillance and reconnaissance, orbital fire support, landing craft escort, suppression of enemy space defenses (SESD), “drone swatting”, mine clearing, and so on.

[…]

From a logistical and economic point of view, these frigates range widely along the tradeoff between flexibility in service and expense of production. Valiant‐class frigates are expected to be among the fastest ships produced, accompany the deep‐space fleet on operations, and serve passably in almost every space‐based environment. As such, they are produced at great expense primarily in Core World shipyards, at the end of long supply chains in metamaterials, nanites, and precision electronics.

At the other end of the scale, Defender‐class frigates solely focus on planetary orbit, and could nearly be classified as unusually‐mobile orbital platforms, if they’ll forgive my saying so. They could be manufactured en masse from an orbital foundry using little more than some asteroid matter—though, when possible, extensive customization is added for local planetary conditions.

[…]

Pitched deep‐space combat is thus dominated by the difficulty of targeting. The lack of independently‐FTL weapons on both sides—aside from the dreaded, but quite costly Cephalopod Raptor missile—means that tracking and hitting a target moving at relativistic speed is often impossible. Effective attacks therefore rely either on saturation, extensive use of guided missiles, or, most riskily, matching velocities with a target. Short‐range FTL use is possible but rare, impeded by the difficulty of establishing an FTL bubble and ramping up to speed in a crowded, contested, oft‐interdicted environment.

Velocity‐matching is the hardest scenario to discuss, so we dispense with it first. To start, it must be said that this sharing of trajectories is usually at the relativistic scale only, and two ships with “matched velocities” can readily engage in elaborate maneuvers involving, in absolute terms, considerable differences in speed, distance, and direction—enormous differences in any other environment.

Next, it goes almost without saying that matching velocities with an enemy to achieve better targeting also gives that enemy better targeting on you, and so such fights between even opponents tend to be short, violent affairs, with enemies sometimes helping achieve the velocity match, effectively consenting to the “knifefight”. Combat here is dominated by the use of short‐range but hard‐to‐dodge lasers.

This is between even opponents. In practice, knifefights are principally used to an attacker’s advantage, typically against a victim too damaged to escape or fight back effectively, or when one side has a sharp local advantage in numbers. Cephalopod dominance in the field of laser weaponry, particularly in the superior range of the Sarissa laser system, ensures that Human frigates grant their opponents a healthy degree of respect.

Leaving aside these close encounters, guided missiles, then, provide the bulk of the effective frigate‐to‐frigate firepower on both sides, ameliorated by extensive anti‐missile capabilities, again on both sides. Fired from advantageous trajectories with a substantial store of onboard fuel, they can track and kill even the most evasive target—provided they are not intercepted by anti‐missiles, defense drones, clouds of smart dust, or even well‐placed relativistic exhaust. The opening phases of many fights are thus characterized by a massive deployment of both missiles and missile countermeasures.

A special comment must be made here about the alien FTL Raptor missile (not to be confused with the alien sublight Ravager missile), though they are rarely deployed by alien frigates themselves, but rather by bombers, larger ships, and fixed batteries. Essentially a miniature, intelligent starship, these weapons strain the limits of detection and evasion for a standard Human frigate, and can pursue one into FTL for an appreciable length of time. Raptors play a fearsome opening role in fleet combat and hit‐and‐run raids alike, as the aliens often seek to seize a solid initial advantage. Fortunately for us, however, even the Cephalopods are hesitant to sacrifice FTL engines in great number, rendering Raptors a less‐than‐constant threat.

Finally, there is saturation. Widely regarded as the least effective of approaches—space is a big place, after all—it is nonetheless always used simply because it is cheap. Missile complements eventually run empty, but a battery of kinetic guns firing clouds of proximity‐triggered guided projectiles, or disruption drones, or corrosive smart dust, can keep going almost indefinitely—and even rocks can be deadly at relativistic speeds. Standard frigates work hard placing swathes of these constant hazards throughout or before enemy zones, seeking to confuse, disorient, and overwhelm.

— Excerpt, Naval Doctrine in a Day, HSS Arminius, 2461 edition.

“We have talked much about how curious it is that, of all the magic powers, the Incubators share only telepathy. Is it properly even magic, or just souls talking to each other? Why is it that, seemingly, they can only talk to those with potential? And why is it so hard to read the core of their minds?”

“Recent experience shows that this is no isolated problem. These Cephalopods can be mind‐read, as Ms. Giovanni so fortunately proved. But, as with the Incubators, everything except their surface intentions and sensations seems so alien as to be indecipherable.”

“We are missing something here, then. Could it be so simple as a problem of understanding?”

— Kuroi Kana, from Proceedings of the Telepaths’ Guild, 2440.

Chaos raged around Yuma, a storm of violence impossible for even the most heavily‐augmented soldier to follow. Spasms of hard radiation, missiles sailing by in glowing infrared, blossoms of smartdust, all against the backdrop of the starry void.

Yuma took a deep breath, filling her lungs with the recirculated air of her suit.

She dove, propelled forward through that frenzied void by a burst of red and green magic, some of it her own, most of it donated distantly by Charlotte. The physical hazards of the situation didn’t bother her—she traveled with a phalanx of companions, a hundred spiraling hammers, each capable of engaging and destroying any drones that dared attempt to reach her. For the radiation, there was her zone of healing, a wave of green magic that could rebuild her almost immediately from anything short of an antimatter detonation.

She knew she cut out a striking profile, a streak of bright green tracing across the stars, obvious to every Ceph sensor in the area.

It didn’t matter if they saw her, since they couldn’t stop her.

Yuma summoned a hammer, a cat‐eared design she hadn’t used in a long, long time, then multiplied its mass a thousand‐fold so that it would hit like a truck—if trucks traveled at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

As she flew, she passed the shattered hulks of her former picket ships, dead to the early Raptor barrage. She weaved her way past infrared missile streaks, marked by the gestalt as heading not for her, but for Kyouko’s still‐distant ships, and briefly joined a couple friendly missiles heading the other way, providing them cover.

Finally, she vectored toward the nearby sparks of radiation and gravity distortions, where alien frigates swarmed around a fragment of the former asteroid, now animated by Rose‐Merline into an ad‐hoc defense platform.

What she saw—what her sensors saw, what Arisu’s clairvoyance saw, what the gestalt saw—would have been dizzying to most, but not to her. The thoughtspeed of a magical girl, the expertise of an Ancient, the custom lace of cognition‐supporting implants she had installed—these guided her to her target, an alien frigate caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Part of her considered the possibility of shouting out her attack, à la Mami‐san, but even if no one could hear her…

She braced for impact, reinforcing her body with a surge of magic as the silhouette of the frigate filled her vision.

She slammed into its shield with an explosion of energy, telekinetically forcing her hammer home. Her body braced against the impossible strain, and a blast of radiation dazzled her eyes in every spectrum.

But the predominant color was green.

The shield failed an instant later, optical distortions spasming outward like a funhouse mirror. Yuma barely slowed as she smashed into the hull, cutting through the reinforced nanocomposite like so much paper shoji.

Yuma halted herself at an internal corridor, only her magic preventing the ship from buckling where her feet hit the floor. That magic flowed sinuously into the cracked composite beneath her, a sickly green hue soaking into the alabaster walls, the ceiling, and two unlucky nearby aliens. At her command, they collapsed to the ground, bodies decrepit and shrunken.

She left everything else as it was, even the support drones scurrying away in alarm. Her allies needed the ship intact.

Rin dove through the new hole in the roof soon after, spinning into a kick off the wall that sent her storming into the bridge. Rin’s powers derived from a detective proficient in martial arts, and that, amplified by magic and power development, was a derecho of fist and foot.

Yuma charged after her, Jeannette in tow, but their support was unnecessary—the pilot was already dead at the helm, all but broken in half. The other personnel were in similar condition.

She and Jeannette kept moving, turning immediately towards the engine room in one smooth arc. They had to be done before any surviving personnel or the ship AI could attempt, say, an emergency self‐destruct.

Jeannette thrust her hand into a console, phasing through the surface to pulse in injections of white magic. An ornate set of binary digits spewed into the air, trailing sparks, as she rewrote the alien AI.

She relayed Yuma a mental map, and Yuma followed it to the frigate’s forcefield generator. They needed it back online before the rest of the alien flotilla realized the ship was being commandeered.

She placed her hands on the surface of the machinery, reaching into it with her magic to understand what ailed it.

As she had thought, the generator wasn’t damaged; it was temporarily out of power, drained from the burden of trying to prevent Yuma’s entry. It just needed a recharge to come back online. That was something she could provide.

She had her suit queue up more grief cubes as she began pumping in power. The simple task gave more of her cognitive shards time to evaluate the battle—they had been too occupied just managing its present.

Surviving the opening fusillade of Raptor missiles had been a near thing, a feat worthy of magical girls their age, but other than HSS Raven, Yuma’s security escort had been too distant and too vulnerable to save.

Still, those mostly uncrewed ships, controlled by AIs with regular backups, had bought valuable time, nearly twenty seconds, enough for Charlotte to teleport the Spec Ops teams and other mundane personnel off the asteroid before its destruction. Furthermore, by absorbing the Raptor missiles, the primary payload of the Ceph bombers, they spared Kyouko’s more valuable outlying fleet, which was only a little less vulnerable to Raptors.

In the usual pattern, a bombing was the end of it—the target didn’t typically survive—but this time, the bombers’ escorts had lingered behind for clean‐up. It seemed the aliens knew they had valuable, wounded prey.

Indeed, the situation was poor. Yuma’s fleet was down to just Raven and a few of her support drones, and Kyouko’s approaching squadron of MSY ships couldn’t match or escape alien fighters and frigates. If either Kyouko’s fleet or Yuma’s team suffered many more casualties while separate, they’d be enveloped and annihilated.

Nor could they count on reinforcement. There were reinforcements scrambling from Yenisei, but they would likely arrive far too late to matter.

At least Yuma could discern the contours of the alien escorts’ plan, now, hidden in the ephemeral vectors and formations of their attack. Once seen, it was simple, even obvious—keep Kyouko from linking up with Yuma for as long as possible, and rely on simple attrition to do the work. The odds were stacked in their favor.

The countermove was obvious too: use brazen attacks to make the squid focus on Yuma’s Ancients and Raven, wait for a thus less‐scathed Kyouko to link up with them successfully, and don’t die in the process.

Luckily, that had been her first instinct.

Done, she thought, pulling her hands away as the ship’s forcefields came back to full power.

By then, Jeannette had successfully taken over the ship’s AI and helm. It was a brutal affair, seizing control of a sentient being, but Yuma could find poetic justice in it. Someone had done the same to MG, after all.

It says a lot that they managed to bring frigates to this attack, Rin thought, as Yuma returned to the bridge. Frigates are not generally equipped for raids. This was a complex operation, something like Spec Ops. Which means they know what they’re here for.

Yuma frowned, dedicating one of her cognitive shards to Rin’s point, unwilling to shift her primary consciousness away from the battle.

Jeannette says the armament of this ship is unusual, Rin commented. More hard radiation bombs, less anti‐ship weaponry. Lots of novel adjustments. Either this is a new model, or they came equipped to bear.

I take your point, Yuma replied, in the clipped tones of accelerated thought. But there are other deductions to be made. It suggests that the human group infecting the TCF doesn’t have as much influence in Governance as we thought, if they have to resort to calling aliens for help.

Not necessarily, Rin thought. An alien attack is much more deniable than an attack by human vessels, even drone ships. And it would have taken a lot of drone ships to take us down.

Yes, but it still suggests they care to keep it deniable, Yuma replied. Whatever the case, they miscalculated. This isn’t enough ships. Not if they wanted to be one hundred percent sure.

It was a bold assertion to make, given their desperate situation, but she meant it. They had a fighting chance—which was sloppy. Any well‐executed operation would have made sure they had no chance at all.

Perhaps Kyouko wasn’t meant to be here, she added.

Her cognitive shard fired an alert then, a machine memory of Kyouko replaying itself at the edges of her awareness, abbreviated to save time.

…following up on some of Joanne Valentin’s old travels… a local sighting that sounded very much like Misa Virani… …Tanaka‐san reported on the letter to me… …it was about Homura, after all…

She filed the insight away, tagging it for upload to an MG‐controlled server as soon as battle conditions permitted.

Then she reclaimed the resources, turning them back to the battle at hand, as their stolen ship narrowly evaded a barrage of laser fire, pulling up violently and threatening to flatten them into the floor.

This battle—really more of a brawl—defied the neat three‐dimensional patterns of major fleet combat, or even the rhythmic patterns of orbital combat. The gravity of the broken asteroid was negligible, the ships small and fast, and that had meant combat degrading into a frenetic scrum around Yuma’s remnant, the alien fighters darting in and out of their frigates’ drone cover, difficult to intercept, while Rose’s Ancient‐fortified rock dodged, diverted, countered, or absorbed blow after terrible blow.

Arisu and Charlotte were aiding Rose; Kana reinforced the nimble Raven. Beyond all of that, long‐range exchanges raked the enormous zone preceding the mass of Kyouko’s approaching ships, who were sticking close together to provide mutual support.

Well within the brawl, Yuma’s commandeered frigate blasted a spread of flak and dust across the projected flight paths of several fighters, making itself felt in a combat environment that was otherwise alien‐dominated. Jeannette’s magic helped tremendously—reversing the squid munitions’ understanding of friend and foe would have otherwise been impossible, even with a lab and a decade of Governance funding.

They had results immediately, a curtain of programmable matter chewing through a squadron of drone escorts in time for their flak to rupture the forcefields of a passing fighter. Bereft of its own drone support, it was blinded by a barrage of EM pulses from a set of Raven’s drones flying nearby. The alien fighter then began a series of frantic evasive maneuvers, failing to spot a missile that soon smashed straight into its belly.

Taken altogether, it seemed choreographed, but it was really a series of flukes, a phalanx of statistical measures and countermeasures that today, for less than a second, this particular alien fighter had rolled poorly on.

There was no time to cheer a small victory, as their stolen ship continued to weave its way away from the other alien frigates, unloading everything it had. To survive, they needed to make everything out of these initial moments.

That was a challenge complicated by the frigate’s lack of a human‐compatible command interface—everything relied on the ingenuity of the AI Jeannette had enslaved. There would be no integration into the combined‐fleet Command Gestalt, a disappointing constraint when that gestalt was already so dangerously overstretched.

With that thought, part of Yuma’s mind splintered off, joining the considerable chunk already given over to Command.

Then that chunk requested a bit more of herself, just a little, to watch Vlasta deploy.

Vlasta’s squad exuded a kind of honed anticipation—anticipation not in excitement, but in grim stillness, the kind that watched a bloody fray and simply waited silently.

Emotional suppression was strictly off—it wasn’t necessary, not yet.

They were waiting for Kuroi Kana to teleport them to an alien frigate, the second to be targeted after Yuma’s. Human Spec Ops squads like Vlasta’s were meant for ground combat, normally, but here every warm body had to be put to use, and if they could pretend a frigate was a ground command bunker, then that’s where they would go.

Still, they were nervous. Not because of the sense of impending combat, or even the mismatch between their training and the target, but rather the sheer uncertainty.

Their implants ensured that they knew, on the level of instinct, when the HSS Raven would finally pass close enough to perform the teleport. The problem was, that instinct wasn’t quite right. Not when a last millisecond change in the conditions of battle—the target ship changing course abruptly, or Raven herself needing to evade—could scramble the timeframe, or even cancel the insertion entirely, something that had already happened twice.

And this was all assuming, of course, that the Raven would stay intact through the final approach, a dicey proposition in and of itself. Raven’s complement of drones was nearly depleted, and even at a distance she now relied heavily on Kana for defense. That meant Vlasta’s squad would be on their own once deployed, and moreover that it’d be some time until Kana and Raven were back in a position to teleport them out.

So they waited, in an awkward circular formation only regularly used by MagOps to fulfill the needs of certain kinds of teleporters. Two of them had their weapons raised, two others knelt to give their comrades clear firing lines, and Vlasta crouched as part of a trio, intending to vault into a new position the instant after the teleport. Sets of drones clutched to their legs and sides, attached with a variety of arms and coils.

Kuroi Kana was seated a small distance away, cross‐legged, eyes closed, and completely still. Having no innate sense for magic, it was only Vlasta’s combat interface which put the lie to the statuesque image: the Ancient was fighting off the squid, claw and tooth, with every ounce of her ferocious might.

As the time approached again, a ring of black magic bubbled up through the solid floor. The bubbles accumulated and undulated until they surrounded all the Human Spec Ops, bathing them in an eerie glow.

Vlasta felt the familiar rush of combat hormones burning through her, energy‐intensive support systems spinning up all at once—shock absorption, fine‐grained circulatory regulation, advanced reflex augments, subjective time dilation. These would integrate with her suit, some even drawing on it for auxiliary power.

Many thought they had sacrificed a piece of their humanity for what they did, that their combat enhancements diminished their soul, every new chemical or computer knocking off another chip.

What a laughable notion.

Go, Kana thought, and the world churned in a sea of black, until Vlasta glimpsed somewhere new through the receding froth.

Alien personnel were standing at their stations around a frigate’s bridge, as yet oblivious, the dream‐like details smeared.

Then the world snapped into focus.

Vlasta slammed herself directly into a passing crewman, crushing it—him? her?—into the wall with killing force. Around her, a roar of firepower and precision grenades—projectiles equipped with the minimal guidance necessary to latch onto a target and shred it into a fine foam—tore through the bridge. In front of her, two of her drones applied similar devices to passing alien drones, blowing them apart in a shower of metal and sparks.

She knew without looking that the room was clear—more than that, she knew the exact position and status of every squadmate and every drone and all that they saw. It was a situational awareness that was as natural as breathing, and strained the relevant regions of her brain to the point of light damage.

So before she had finished slamming into the bulkhead, she was already redirecting her momentum, turning it into a roll behind the portable cover deployed by another pair of drones. From there, she could cover her team on the angles she knew were exposed.

As she and the others found transient safety, explosive charges blasted the AI’s central computing clusters, crippling the ship in a way that just killing the bridge officers wouldn’t. That completed the first phase of the attack.

But as she brought her weapon up over the deployed cover, she knew things hadn’t gone quite to plan. The AI was crippled, but an unexpected internal forcefield had sprung up around the engine room, barring their way to the FTL core and the most natural way to destroy the ship.

Their combined computing power quickly decided that attempting to overpower the forcefield was too ambitious. Instead, they had enough explosives to take out everything else of value. Once Kana pulled them out—hopefully beating any potential self‐destruct sequence—what remained of the ship would be at best a drifting FTL core enmeshed in a forcefield, a meaningless soap bubble, even if some of the crew still survived in the engine room.

Assignments rippled across the local network. Three members of the squad sprinted out to plant charges, advance drones clearing the way. Their targets included weapons control systems, the stealth generator, and several choice segments of hull in between. They would set the explosives on short timers, then get the hell out.

Even as the explosives were being set in place, they received bad news.

“Your ship’s forcefields are down,” Kana transmitted, verbal message appended to the more straightforward machine language. “They must have somehow drained the power. You’re being targeted. Raven’s trying to fly back while keeping us in between you and the nearest enemy fighter, but her modeling says you have just seconds before another one’s in range. I’ll try to interdict them too, but it won’t be easy.”

Callously sacrificial tactics were a squid specialty, of course, but knowing about that helped them little. With the barest minimum of warnings, and an accompanying overlay of anticipated zones of impact, they braced themselves, getting into safer spots and activating internal damage control modules.

In truth, even the most extensive of implant modifications could do little against the violence and speed of an unguarded starship strike.

She lost two members of her squad immediately, Dobrica and Wulandari, shredded so quickly even her augmented mind couldn’t resolve the intermediate steps—one frame they were whole, and the next they were not.

There appeared to be no nearby hull breaches, but the shattered inside of the ship made it clear they had died to spalling. Not that it really mattered what had killed them: there was no tactical adjustment to be made, no real way to respond.

She was damaged too, her implants had informed her.

"—barely able to deflect the attacks," a garbled transmission said, missing the critical command header that should have preceded it. “Able to miss FTL core. Will try my best. I’m sorry.”

The voice pounded in her head, resonating with an unfamiliar pain, dulled to a distant roar by a healthy dose of implant‐mediated pain control.

At least that’s still online, Vlasta managed to think, getting back on her feet, painfully aware that she and the four other surviving members of her squad were in bad shape. Besides the fact that her own internal diagnostics weren’t entirely online, what she could see was terrible, ranging from the fact that her legs were operating by backup wire rather than nerve, to her sudden lack of one lung, to the rather large piece of metallic composite that had disabled her right arm. It would have all been much more distressing, were it not for the emotional suppression, which had turned on nearly full blast.

Though the rest of her team was already regrouping on her for a potential teleport—some carrying others—she reached a decision, one she knew her squadmates all agreed on.

“You need to leave us,” she transmitted. “It’s not worth the risk to you or Raven.”

There was no response, and she couldn’t even be sure she had been received.

Then the room lit up again, a warning red overlay signifying that local data sources expected them to be impacted across nearly the entire port side of the ship. Underneath the emotional suppression, she found herself apathetic, almost amused. Her connection wasn’t good enough to communicate, but it was good enough to let her know how screwed they were.

She wasn’t surprised, then, when the world went pitch‐black before her, and it took her a quarter‐cycle to realize that she was not yet dead.

It took another quarter‐cycle for her to realize that her optical implants hadn’t adjusted yet, and she was actually floating in space, her immediate view blocked off by Kana, who was floating in front of her with hands raised, and Kana’s magic, which had blotted out the stars.

To say that Raven wasn’t really built for straight‐up fleet combat was, at best, a mild understatement.

There were stealth frigates that were intended to participate in fleet combat, of course. But even those inelegant brutes were intended to stay hidden and move quickly, deploying a critical mass of magical girls at critical locations in a battle.

Raven wasn’t one of those, let alone a standard frigate actually suited to this battle, and while she enjoyed the quality of her stealth drive, and didn’t back away from fights, she could have used a bit more muscle right now.

She lived for battle. It was just, she preferred the part where she swooped over the corpse of an alien ship and gathered up her team, sending off a parting pair of clean‐up drones for good measure, where she gleefully imagined that they’d peck out the eyes of the shattered squid vessel. So much more elegant.

In this fight, unfortunately, the squid were having most of the fun.

She wove her course into an intricate helix, strewing the area behind her with as much relativistic exhaust as possible to try and shake off the drones tailing her. With so many course corrections, it’d be hard for anything to match her velocity, making her targeting cross‐section small indeed.

It was standard small ship tactics, dosed with desperation. She had very little left from her own smartdust and drone reserves, but still had plenty of fuel—the aliens had plenty of drones and firepower, but would have to conserve fuel if they had any intention of returning home from this deep in human space. Thus far, they had not shown the kind of aggressive maneuvers that suggested they had given up on that.

Pulling out of her maneuver, she fired her main kinetic batteries at the nearest alien frigate—while she would have loved a hit, realistically she just wanted the bastard to move. Captain Vera and the rest of Raven’s crew were counting on her to stay alive, and that meant staying out of any close‐quarter laser knifefights.

On her own, she wouldn’t have minded going out like this—she had already died once, after all, it wasn’t so bad—but her captain and crew weren’t inorganic enough to have backups.

She had finally found a good nickname for Vera, too, even if Vera hadn’t yet figured out why she was “Virginia”.

Her close‐in gunners, firing spreads of proximity mines, strafed the nearby area with complete abandon, knowing that here, so far away from Sakura Kyouko’s support ships, there were very few friendly drones to accidentally take the hit.

As she expected, the alien frigate evaded her fire—but as it moved, it revealed a pair of Ravager anti‐ship missiles, launched from within its sensor shadow.

That was not a novel gambit—few things were in the relentlessly optimized field of ship‐to‐ship frigate combat—but there was little she could have done to guard against it, with her complement of defensive materiel so low. There simply hadn’t been the resources to release anti‐missiles prophylactically.

But, she had pre‐gamed potential scenarios, and did what she had to—release the remainder of her defense drones and fire three point‐defense missiles behind her as she continued to evade. That would empty her reserves, but her tactical models suggested that it was the bare minimum action for a reasonable chance of survival. As the fleet mantra said: resources exist to be used.

Even if there were other threats soon to follow.

She didn’t spend much of her sensor attention watching her back, as her final drone flotilla provided that crucial coverage. Instead, she scanned her way through the field of potential enemies in front of her, where her drones could and would not follow. Some enemy ships were engaged in longer‐range fire with Kyouko’s ships, but others were clearly changing course to attack what must have looked like an easy target.

Unfortunately, unhappily, she didn’t really think they were wrong.

Something flashed across her flank, burning through a sector of her forcefield and searing a scar across her armor. Not quite enough for a breach, but painful, forcing her to isolate the destroyed circuitry.

A Sarissa medium‐range laser, which she hated like all other frigates, because they were difficult to dodge and because human technology had no equivalent. Without smartdust, Raven’s forcefields would be taking unmitigated hits from now on.

But she was still up, and that’s what was important.

The way things usually worked for a stealth frigate in combat followed a specific pattern—get in close, endure inevitably being detected and having to go hot, drop off your cargo, stick around long enough to pick them back up, then make your way back as fast as possible to friendly ships. After that, you would refill drones and other materiel from a supply ship or capital ship, then go in for another run. It was risky work even at the best of times, but it was worth it for the occasional takedown of a major alien vessel.

In a way, what she was doing still fit in with that. She was in the “recovering cargo” stage, working towards recovering Kana and the others before breaking contact.

But that was only in a way. She wasn’t exactly in a situation standard doctrine covered: firstly, there wasn’t a supporting capital ship in the picture, only a few of Kyouko’s ever‐forthcoming supply vessels. Second, she had been revealed from the start: her state‐of‐the‐art stealth systems might as well have been a decorative collection of scrap metal. Thirdly, she was relying on Kuroi Kana for protection, which was both embarrassing and downright terrifying. Fourth, she should have been delivering a Magi Cæli team, not mundane Spec Ops. Finally, rather than attacking capital ships, they were attacking frigates, which threw the usual cost‐benefit analysis right out the rear airlock.

The riskiest bit was almost over, though. She had almost caught up to Kuroi Kana, who had split off a few seconds earlier to retrieve what Spec Ops she could, and once she teleported back on board, they could finally retreat towards Kyouko and resupply.

Then she sensed two alien fighters coming in for another pass. She had nothing meaningful left for them; they had been too fast, and were now too close.

She felt angry, and just a bit numb.

That was it, then, she thought, even as she turned to minimize the damage, activated what damage control she could, and sent her crew complement to their prearranged shelter stations.

She broadcasted a smoldering diatribe at the squid—not that they would, or maybe could, read it—and then emptied her mind.

Captain Vera didn’t waste any time pondering the remarkable fact that she was still alive.

Many of her ship’s systems were even still responsive, falling back onto less‐sentient decentralized subroutines. Even part of Raven’s AI was still operating, individual modules that could still provide some value, even if they no longer formed a coherent personality.

Vera felt sorry for that, though she had every reason to be a bit preoccupied at the moment.

She pushed herself off of the ground with both arms, realizing then that both of her auxiliary wrist ports had stayed stubbornly connected, explaining how she was still tenuously connected to her ship—there was no way wireless would have provided the necessary bandwidth.

She leaned on her arms against a console, glancing at the shards of AI core which had cut across the room and at the ruined command chair she had once sat in. It was a minor miracle the circuitry still worked well enough to tie her in, one that she couldn’t spend any time appreciating. Nor could she mourn the loss of Raven, the friend she had known for only a short while—even if she had every reason to expect to meet Raven’s backup in due time, if she survived.

By artful evasion and nearly blowing out the forcefield power systems, they had mitigated much of the bombardment from the fighters, enough that the armor had been able to absorb most of the damage. Over half the crew was still alive, and most were already working on emergency repairs, while several complements of drones rushed to a major hull breach in the front, temporarily patched over by a forcefield.

With Raven gone, they were much less of a contributor to the Command Gestalt. With their drones and smartdust gone, they were no longer capable of meaningfully defending themselves or escaping. Having some forcefields and some weapons hardly mattered at that point, and in the ordinary course of things she’d be considering a suicide tactic, converting the ship into a pseudo‐SHERMAN round by detonating the exotic matter in the ship’s drive core and impeding alien navigation—anything was better than simply dying in place.

But they weren’t out of cards to play yet.

Kuroi Kana teleported into the staging area of the ship then, bringing with her the survivors of the Spec Ops team.

“Well I’m glad to see you,” Vera transmitted, with the kind of dry understatement that so often vexed Raven. “We could use some help.”

Shit, Kana thought.

She sat down on the floor, closing her eyes and steadying herself with almost inhuman speed.

Bring me your wounded, Vera heard her think. I can help them, but they need to be closer.

The message echoed into the ship’s comms, even as Vera focused on taking over the duties of the ship’s dead pilot. With the lack of a ship AI, that seriously drained her command attention, but right now navigation was more important than anything.

She changed the ship’s course, steering it hurriedly and evasively toward Kyouko’s onrushing vanguard, trusting Kana to use whatever magic she had to attempt a defense.

According to the calculations, trying to save Vlasta’s team had been a justified effort, a dose of added risk to recover an asset that might still be useful in boarding other ships. Combat was an endless series of informed gambles, and sometimes, you got burned.

With the eyes that had once belonged to Raven, Vera looked at the stream of drones and magical girls that stretched outward to receive them. Her fate—the fate of her ship and its crew—rested with them now.

Ceri Jordà was one of the few experienced flight leaders in Kyouko’s force.

The best of the Magi Cæli, those with training and experience, were naturally almost all at the front, not lurking somewhere where the Church of Hope could easily request them for even the shortest of missions. She had been on leave, hard‐earned after a year of patrols culminating with the Battle of Orpheus—and even after that, weeks spent helping shepherd alien remnants not‐so‐politely out of human space.

The truth was: returning back to civilian life, staring into the abyss of the family she no longer had, roaming the bars for companionship, or blankly trawling the internet or Grapevine, simply hadn’t felt like much of an improvement to her. Even the blandishments of her MHD shrink, which had been so warm and empowering in the early years, had felt hollow and distant, the subtle telepathy powerless to really make a mark on her.

Somehow, when Sakura Kyouko herself had come knocking, she could tell in the old woman’s eyes that she understood what it was like to feel no taste for life, a sort of desperation for meaning.

She had joined the Church for that, not for a strange doctrine about an illogical Goddess and her fervent followers.

She hadn’t expected she’d be back out here so quickly.

We need to get over there and in front of Raven, she thought. It’s not going to last much longer unless Kuroi pulls a miracle out of her ass.

Not all of us can make it that quickly. Is this really wise? We’re going to be strung out.

It’s not so much a matter of wisdom as whether we really have a choice, she thought. Kuroi Kana is a crucial asset. Those on board the ship are valuable personnel, if we can just get them back intact. We can take a little risk.

With that, she gathered herself and sprung forward, adding to the acceleration of her suit with a hefty dose of her personal magic, which scorched her back with airless fire. She pushed herself far beyond the formation, with only two others able to trail behind her. They would have to do.

She did not begrudge them their doubt. It was natural for a group inexperienced with space combat to misjudge the situation. Up here, the relationship between magical girl and starship was much different than between magical girl and infantryman, in a way that was difficult to instinctively assess.

She arrived in time to find a swarm of alien drones trying and failing to reach the husk of Raven, bobbing and weaving their way through a haunted graveyard of their former brethren, puppeted by Kana with black wisps of magic. The drones, dead and alive, formed an angry cloud of metal encompassing the frigate.

Bracing herself, Ceri dove in, releasing a wave of fire in front of her that carbonized incoming missiles and smartdust alike.

Finally, Kana thought, as Ceri pulled abreast of the ship. The Ancient’s impatience was mixed with relief and even gratitude.

Without preamble, Ceri’s mind was flooded with what could only be described as visions, imagery of aliens in cockpits, fighters maneuvering, alien combat diagrams.

It should have been confusing, even overwhelming, but somehow it wasn’t, and Ceri understood instantly.

They’re about to make another pass, one of the other girls, Armelle, thought, arriving next to her. Lasers only this time. They might be out of Ravagers.

Ceri smiled grimly, even though this was, at best, mixed news. It accentuated exactly why someone like Kana had to be kept alive. That kind of clairvoyance couldn’t be manufactured in any shipyard.

Ceri felt it was a nice reminder of why her work was important.

She assessed what resources they had, using her own analysis to help spare their overtaxed Command Gestalt.

One mostly crippled frigate, with limited capabilities beyond passive defense and some return fire. Four magical girls: one Ancient, but inexperienced with and not specialized for this kind of combat, not really a combat mage to start with. Two more with distantly relevant abilities—Armelle, an area‐of‐effect ranged attacker, and Amaranth, who could turn incorporeal. Both useful, but not directly suited to the moment, more so because they were also inexperienced.

And her, of course.

The four of them, plus ship and surviving crew, would have to face down nearly two dozen strafing fighters, for long enough that the others could catch up. That would not be very long in a human sense, but it was plenty of time for everything to fall apart, if their reactions weren’t on point.

They faced the problem, then, that while Amaranth and Armelle were capable of eluding and dealing good damage to the attackers, neither was especially suited for defense, a role that would normally be filled by a strong barrier generator rather than Kana. Worse yet, while a group of sublight missiles gave them time to react, deflect, and defeat in detail, lasers were threatening precisely because they gave almost none—and of course each fighter could fire multiple times. They were also tricky for Kana to deal with—that she could divert lasers at all with telekinesis spoke to her finesse as an Ancient.

Ceri made the only reasonable decision then, even as her thoughts filtered into the gestalt and their group telepathic network.

Alright, Kana thought. Godspeed.

Kana provided them advance warning of the aliens’ final attack angles, and Ceri wasted no time preparing, cocooning herself into her fiery wings. Even through her suit, she could feel the heat from the fire, which suffused all she could see with a glowing orange light.

She dissolved into that light, now a pale blue flame that raced outward in a growing ball of incandescence, passing through her squadmates and through HSS Raven. She enveloped the area, seeing everywhere at once, with eyes that were not eyes.

Ceri could be a barrier generator, if she wanted to.

Gotcha, bastards, Amaranth thought.

The alien fighters were clearly befuddled by the unknown magic—she had fought the Ceph long enough she was sure they had a profile on her type of magic, but this, no alien had ever seen—or, at least, seen and escaped. All but one dove aside, bombarding her wall of fire with whatever weaponry they had on board. One of them chose, or was perhaps selected, to dive straight in.

She felt the sudden roaring heat of her own flames torched white‐hot against the fighter’s forcefield.

The ship slowed precipitously, completely halted, and then blew apart, its pieces incinerating into magical ash, which wafted away into nothing.

The other fighters did not get off easily—a fusillade of Armelle’s bright red rockets streaked through Ceri’s fire and honed in on one, its attempts at evasion seeming hapless compared to the aliens’ usual elegant flight.

The aliens lost three other fighters—two when Kana telepathically seized control of one and slammed it sideways into another, driving them both into Ceri’s barrier, and the third when Amaranth ghosted in front of it, leaving a small explosive inside its FTL core, immaterial long enough to let the starship get some distance.

All of that came at a cost, though.

She was not naturally a barrier generator. Everything that had been thrown at her—kinetic shells, lasers, waves of escort drones, even a number of the hard radiation bombs the aliens loved to use on magical girls—was reflected in the corruption filling her soul gem. In this form she and the fire were one and the same, so all the damage she took had to be healed back. Fortunately, she could use the grief cubes she had been carrying, even in this state. Less fortunately, there was no way for the others to give her any more, and she had already burned through more than half of hers.

Just as she was considering reverting to normal form, Kana signaled a wave of missiles, this time frigate‐launched as a follow‐up to the fighters, who were already circling for another pass—it was so much firepower that it seemed to be draining the aliens’ strength elsewhere.

Will you be alright? Amaranth thought, aware of Ceri’s power state.

I don’t know, Ceri thought, honestly.

There was no need to say more than that. Given the circumstances, they knew it wasn’t worth the risk of Ceri dropping her barrier, and whether Ceri consulted the gestalt’s projection of her magic usage or her own instincts, the answer was the same: Uncertain.

Everything now counted on how quickly they could reunite with the rest of their force, and how much damage the aliens could deliver before then. If Ceri could just keep the barrier up long enough, then they would make it. Even if she dropped it a bit early, it might still be enough.

The others did what they could, Kana using her telekinesis to force missiles off course, Armelle throwing up a wall of rockets, and HSS Raven’s crew picking two off with well‐placed flak—but that still left a good half‐dozen to burn up in her barrier, which flickered with painful strain.

She cycled through her grief cubes with the avidity of a forest fire through parched grass and tapped dry.

Then the fighters began to return.

This time, they didn’t just strafe. Instead, they matched velocities with the Raven and its mage escorts, pummeling Ceri even as the others rushed to take them out.

The rest of her team was almost here…

You can’t hold this, Kana thought. Drop it, drop it now!

The message washed away for a moment, as Ceri felt her focus slipping. Would it even matter, if she did? There were so many—

She canceled her fire form then, the giant wall of flame contracting into the shape of a phoenix, then the shape of a human.

The alien fighters dove in immediately, and Ceri watched helplessly as their blows poured down on the ship.

One of the fighters then abruptly blossomed into a rose of debris, and fresh colors of magic began streaking into the fight. Backup was here, it seemed.

Or perhaps it was just her mind playing tricks on her, Ceri thought, smiling grimly. It had a bit of an unreal quality to it, the fighters dancing across the stars, the magic taking on the colors of the rainbow—and she had lost track of the Raven.

Then she toggled her soul gem eject, releasing the adhesion between gem and body and allowing her suit to cast it out into the void, away from the fighting as much as possible, for a potential recovery. Her soul gem cover had limited onboard guidance and telemetry—perhaps that would be enough.

Ceri was no stranger to soul gem exhaustion, after all. She knew she was running out of time. She would have to count on her team to catch it—catch her.

She felt the swirl of her own regrets blacken the world, and knew there was no fighting it, no maintaining her grasp on reality. It would take her where it wanted, and then she would either come back, or not.

Ceri saw again the images of her childhood—her parents, her siblings, filtered by what even she recognized as saccharine nostalgia.

When the aliens had come, she had been on another habitat, taking in schooling for a specialty in astrophysics, a topic she had once thought she loved.

When the time came, you wished for vengeance, the voice said. You wished to kill the monsters. But you didn’t wish for your family back.

“I damn well know that,” she said, through lips she knew she didn’t have. “Don’t put me through this shit again. It was stupid, okay?”

But the words stung. It was impossible for them not to. They came from her, after all.

After all these years, the guilt still gnawed at her, the ghostly apparitions of a happier life, a more normal life playing at the edges of her mind.

She hated having to go through this. In waking life, she was over this—a combination of time and MHD work had plugged up the wounds, even if she still felt uncomfortable in sedate, civilian life.

But that didn’t matter here. It never had.

“Well that’s enough of that,” a voice said, a searing light that filled her soul.

Ceri’s mind seemed to clear in an instant, and when she looked up at the woman standing over her, it was with a sense of… surprise? Awe? Trepidation?

She shook her head at herself and stood up from where she had been, apparently, curled up on the ground, taking a moment to pat off her costume. She knew, of course, that a moment ago she had been in combat, and should have just been a soul gem barreling desperately through space.

Instead, she was in a field of starblossoms, a memory from one of the few times she had visited a planet as a child. Looking on it, she felt the irrational sense that, wherever she was, things were going to be fine. Serenity, some might call it.

And as for the woman standing before her, which had replaced the apparition haunting her…

Well, however terrible she was as a member of the Church, she could recognize a psychopomp when she saw one.

“I don’t suppose you’re here to offer me a chance to go back,” she said.

“That’s not generally how that works, no,” the woman said, still facing away from her. She was holding one of the blossoms and wore a wide‐brimmed hat with a simple white sundress. Whatever Ceri might have expected the hypothetical Goddess to look like, it wasn’t this.

Well, actually, the pink hair was close.

“I was hoping for longer than this,” Ceri said, crouching to pick a flower. “But I guess that was always a bit silly, given how dangerous my combat role is.”

She stopped, arm half‐extended, staring at the flower she had intended to take. For a moment, she thought she could see through it, somehow. There was no flower, there was no her, there wasn’t even a Goddess. Yet here she was.

It really hit her for the first time that she was dead.

“I suppose I should just be glad there’s anything at all,” she said. “Before you take me to the next world, can I at least ask how things went in that fight? I died there, after all.”

The woman turned her head towards Ceri then, slowly, eerily. She found her gaze drawn compulsively to the deity’s eyes, even as she found herself afraid of what she would see within.

“Ceri,” the Goddess said, as she felt the edges of her soul begin to tear open. “You don’t need my help for something as simple as that.”

Yuma learned of the destruction of the HSS Raven as she was preparing to leave the second frigate she had seized.

Kyouko’s magical girl escort had gotten to the Raven piecemeal, and too late, but most of them had survived. Kana had even managed to teleport out with many of the humans on board, just in time. The alien fighters had pulled back. But still.

Not good enough, she thought, allowing herself a little dismay⁠—just a little. She didn’t allow herself to check this time how Vlasta was doing.

Yuma took a deep breath, settling herself. With Raven out of the picture, it was only more important she and her Ancients continued to make an impact, eroding the alien advantage as much as possible⁠. Without dying, of course.

Alright, let’s go, she thought, looking at Rin.

They turned and sprinted towards the ship’s airlock. They wouldn’t have stayed even if Raven had survived—the two of them did little good just standing there watching Jeannette direct the new ship. Either they needed to go outside and escort, as they had with the first frigate, or they needed to go group up with Kyouko. Every second they wasted was potential losses elsewhere, in a fight as tight as this.

Yuma didn’t spare a glance for the stars visible through a hundred fist‐sized holes in the hull. The wheels in her head turned constantly, interfacing with the gestalt, evaluating their current location, keeping up a constant chatter between her implants and Rin’s—deciding simply what to do.

As the door to the airlock opened itself to pure vacuum, though, they stopped. Having beaten the optimal launch time by a few seconds, a shard of Yuma now took the chance to look out into the void. To human eyes, there were few visible signs of battle—the field of stars was nearly untrammeled, and it was impossible not to hear the voice in the back of her head, the ancient instinct warning her not to jump off the cliff, because she was assuredly not coming back.

Most human ships came with a small catapult for just this kind of deployment. Here, it was again possible to borrow Charlotte’s telekinesis, but it would be better now to let her focus on Kyouko’s girls.

Rin picked Yuma up and vaulted into space, accelerating nigh‐instantly to an incredible, bone‐shattering speed. Moving so fast it seemed like teleporting was part of the skillset of a martial artist, in movies anyway. That was the excuse Rin had used to develop the power.

Yuma followed the trick with one of her own, summoning her hammer in front of them, growing its mass, then dispelling it, conserving momentum only the second time. Newton would not have liked the disrespect to his laws.

She felt a massive pulse of radiation slam into them, and felt her soul gem strain against the effort of healing off the damage. As a group, they had plenty of grief cubes, especially with Kyouko’s added stock, but this style of fighting was enormously magic‐expensive. It could not be kept up indefinitely.

But then, neither could anything else in this fight—missiles, drones, smartdust, exotic matter fuel—it would all run out eventually, if the battle didn’t end. At some point, the alien ships would have to turn away to ensure they could even return home. Assuming they cared to, and assuming they lived that long.

They flew in a great arc, passed the living asteroid fortress, and then a series of colored streaks announced that, as promised, some of Kyouko’s teams were finally managing to reach them. The maroon‐colored streak peeled off, a junior shield generator that would be joining them for another push forward, grief cubes on hand.

The new girl exchanged the most perfunctory of electronic greetings with them as they turned, angling towards another alien vessel, navigating by fleet sensors. There was no question of Yuma and Rin simply retreating to safety within Kyouko’s arriving fleet.

There was no safety.

To Ryouko, fighting without her teleportation was like fighting without an arm. Worse, actually—she would have more easily handled a missing arm. Firing her arbalest only required one of those.

Indeed, she barely did anything at all as her squad bulldozed their way through the station, seeking urgently either the device blocking Ryouko’s teleports or—less likely—another way to get Asami back to the wormhole before the Ceph could shred it. Ryouko stayed safely in the back as the others did all the work, her usual “combat mood” remaining frustratingly out of reach.

As her team advanced with near‐reckless haste, they were forced to simultaneously conduct an important debate.

Her wormholes are a physical effect, Asami thought, answering a question. Like my black holes. For us, the manipulation is the magic. Neither of us have managed to generalize it yet.

There’s literally only one teleporter using wormholes! Simona thought. Why build a trap here specifically?

That may not be the intent, Amane thought. For all we know, it’s part of a system with some other purpose. It may not even be combat‐related.

So she said, and Ryouko had to agree with the logic. After all, it wasn’t that her magic wasn’t there, it just… felt like she was out of teleports, like she needed to recharge, only her sense of when she would never drew closer.

She couldn’t shake the unnerving feeling in her heart, though. It felt personal.

The group came to a momentary halt, their rampage across the circular doorways and nearly‐cylindrical alien hallways stymied by the appearance of a massive, station‐wide forcefield.

Ryouko looked back on the path behind them, strewn with debris and gutted walls. Caution required that they preemptively destroy every piece of unrecognized equipment they came across, and a controlled singularity was a very effective tool of destruction. None of the previous forcefields—powered by local generators—had stood any chance when Asami’s weapon could carve straight through forcefield and generator alike with little fanfare.

This one was different. The generator was far away—it was not easy to know where—and Asami’s black hole was not passing trivially through.

The station lurched, once, hard enough to have thrown them off their feet were it not for Ying‐zhi’s barrier, which rippled warningly. That served as their indirect reminder that they needed to get a move on.

What kind of forcefield blocks black holes? Simona thought.

Alien ones, Asami thought. Well, some of them. The main starship ones all give resistance.

She tried again to force her way through, the collision of black hole and forcefield forming an almost kaleidoscopic lensing effect, the natural lensing of the black hole amplified and magnified throughout the area.

Well, whatever is blocking my power, it’s behind this forcefield, Ryouko thought, feeling the discordant hum of her soul gem pulling at her. Probably not a coincidence.

It was a dilemma, and one they did not have time to ponder. They were still in the core of the station, buried a full half‐kilometer away from its surface. According to the fleet clairvoyant now tasked to them, nearly all of that remaining distance was solid composite or machinery, and the aliens had blown the more human‐sized tunnels leading to the surface. Getting out the hard way would take most of the few hundred seconds the fleet gestalt estimated they had before their wormhole was unsalvageable.

Well, we ain’t got much of a choice, Amane thought. This is gonna be expensive.

She signaled Ying‐zhi and another girl, and the two formed up as Amane fell back, taking over barrier generation for the team. Ying‐zhi dropped her own barrier, and then resummoned it in the shape of a sharp, golden nail.

The other girl pulled out her signature weapon, an oversized metal mallet with a pulsejet engine attached, and as Ying‐zhi’s nail contacted the alien forcefield, she gave the mallet a roaring swing.

There was a tremendous burning light at the very tip of the impact, accompanied by a reverberating roar that defied description, seeming to transform the entire sequence into a single, silent instant.

Then Ying‐zhi’s barrier shattered like glass, the mallet slamming into the forcefield. Both barrier and mallet were dispelled before any stray pieces hurt someone, but the healer rushed in anyway to tend Ying‐zhi.

Before they could recover, a message arrived from Command: a MagOps team with a teleporter of sufficient range had been reassigned from a gravity modulator to their rescue, and would be there within two minutes.

Ying‐zhi staggered to her feet and cursed. The fleet could scarcely afford another team being pulled off the remaining gravity modulators.

Ryouko chewed her lip. She had wanted to learn what was blocking her, to see what was doing it and to prove to herself that it wasn’t, somehow, directed at her specifically.

But there was no justification for making another attempt on the forcefield. The new teleporter, when she arrived, could pass right through it.

Perhaps, with her help…

Even then, it was hard to rationalize. Not when the aliens were so close to forcing the wormhole back open—close enough that they were getting glimmers of direct contact with Adept Blue. Not when spending any extra time here at all was a needless risk, prodding at a possible trap.

It bothered her enough, though, that she still had Clarisse file a suggestion to the group network, proposing one attempt with the new teleporter to search the station beyond the forcefield. To her surprise, Asami responded before anyone else.

We can’t, she thought. I know what you’re thinking. But it doesn’t make sense, especially when whatever it is actively weakens you.

Amane, Ying‐zhi, and Simona signaled their agreement, the Command Gestalt signaled its agreement seconds later, and that was that. There would be no time to solve the mystery.

They waited uneasily, local space‐time protesting its treatment by the aliens with repeated, amplifying jolts. Finally, their rescue team arrived in a literal thunderclap, sparks snapping through the air around them.

Let’s go, the teleporter, Oda, thought, from behind her winged goggles. Behind her, Ryouko was surprised to see Azrael, and surprised at herself for feeling so relieved at the prospect of traveling with another friend.

They had already received the bare minimum information they needed for the teleport—stand facing Oda, no need to touch each other, the trip would be a bit vertiginous, Oda needed to raise her spear—and with that, they were off.

The experience was entirely different from any of Ryouko’s trips—rather than an instantaneous transit, it instead jolted them through the intervening distance, so that they got an intimate view of the inside of alien machinery, composite armor, and finally, space.

When they reappeared in orbit, they were already in an optimal arrangement, individual bodies pointed in the direction of motion, Oda’s magic having rearranged them as they traveled. Ryouko’s suit had to make only minuscule adjustments to her velocity and orientation, and Clarisse took care of any potential disorientation, offloading enough spatial reasoning that where they were, where she was, was intuitive.

It was, Ryouko had to admit, more convenient than her own magic in that regard.

I’ve dropped us into a slightly lower orbit that will take us away from the station. My range isn’t like yours. Can you teleport now?

What went unsaid in that question were a number of details filled in by the Command Gestalt: the rescue team had a stealth mage, and so with Asami’s gravitational protection, the two teams could expect to survive outside a ship where neither could alone. Their current orbit would start making close passes to the HSS Marianne Rialle within thirty seconds, close enough to transfer over for protection and transport, but the faster and therefore strongly preferred plan was a follow‐up teleport by Ryouko straight to the wormhole.

I can, Ryouko thought, holding her hands over her chest. It was a relieving feeling, enough for her to almost tune out the battle raging around her.

Then she shuddered, turning her head even as the gravity sensors on her suit started alerting.

A quarter‐orbit before them, the sphere of the wormhole’s mouth suddenly billowed open, its gravitational lensing effect obvious against the emissions from the pulsar. It was unhealthy, whirling erratically, a vengeful specter that alternated between blotting out the stars and glowing eerily in unpredictable parts of the spectrum. Each time it flared, it tossed aside a number of unlucky human starships caught in the wake.

They could only watch for an impatient dozen seconds, waiting for their lower relative orbit to bring them close enough for Ryouko to make a maximum‐range jump, their suits compensating for movement as both teams crowded around her, making for a colorful show against the backdrop of space.

The environment around the wormhole was, impressively, the most dangerous they had faced yet, and when Ryouko finished her teleport, slumping into her suit with brief exhaustion as her soul gem recharged, they did so with Ying‐zhi’s barrier already up, absorbing a gravitational environment that threatened to tear them apart. Ryouko could have chosen a safer location, but it was imperative that Asami get as close as she could.

The portal through space warped and crackled, emitting sheaves of newborn radiation that hinted at the immense stresses inside. As Asami raised her hands to try and take control, hair swirling under the influence of unseen magic, the surrounding world shifted and stirred, the apparent position of the pulsar skipping below, behind, or above. Through the tortured space around them, it was possible to even observe temporal anomalies, electromagnetic radiation red‐shifted or blue‐shifted unpredictably.

It was no wonder that human ships had hurriedly evacuated the area, after having spent most of the battle defending the wormhole reopening site from alien drones and potential surprise attacks. For now, they seemed very much alone.

The dozen‐plus girls arrayed themselves in a small defensive shell around Asami, Simona settling into the meditative pose she used to enhance others' powers. Ryouko watched the wormhole with eyes and sensors that were more than human, in more ways than one. Somehow, it looked a bit purple. Was that a natural color?

This is difficult, Asami thought, a claim well‐supported by her soul gem activity readings.

For the girls not actively concealing or defending the team, like Ryouko, the only thing to do was to submerge into the gestalt, which was still pondering how exactly the aliens were using their pulsar mines to manipulate the wormhole. The scientist in Ryouko—alongside the scientists of the fleet—was darkly fascinated by the opportunity to see those mines in action, despite the circumstances. To bottle up space‐time, after ripping it away like fruit from a tree, was a profound and inexplicable feat.

Even with Asami’s contributions, answers weren’t forthcoming, and the question had to be asked: Was this even worth understanding? Scientifically, of course, but practically it seemed likely they would have to destroy the alien mining infrastructure either way.

Something about it nagged at Ryouko, a vague uneasy feeling she couldn’t dispel, similar to how she had felt when her teleportation had been inhibited earlier.

I don’t think you should ignore that, Clarisse thought. Yes, Asami knows gravity better than you, but we’re standing at the mouth of a wormhole. Maybe you can help?

Ryouko shook her head in dismay, but not in disagreement. Clarisse was right. What was she doing just watching? She could at least try.

Though, of course, she didn’t know what try meant here.

She jetted her way up to Asami, placing a hand on her shoulder, and fixing her eye on the writhing sphere of the wormhole, searching the depths of her unease, casting about with her magic sense for the nature of what was happening around her.

I have them at a stalemate, Asami thought, as the kilometers‐wide opening in front of her seemed to shudder slightly. But I’m kind of stuck here, and I need Simona’s magic just to keep this up. Can’t quite close it. Can’t even make it safely traversable. We’re in real trouble if we decide to abort.

She didn’t add that maintaining this deadlock was very expensive, the point accentuated by a few human drones reappearing on their local maps, braving the now‐milder gravitational storms to haul in a supply of grief cubes.

It was a worrying result. But with Clarisse’s help, Ryouko was making progress on her own front, and inferences were now working their way through her mind. Clarisse had been aggregating physical data on the wormhole and pulsar mines for a while, and coupled with Ryouko’s magic sense, they could now discern patterns—familiar patterns, both in an instinctual sense, and because she still remembered what she had seen in Dr. Tao’s lab on Eurydome, when she had been teleporting herself to exhaustion.

Whenever she made too many short teleports, it became harder and harder for her to continue, until eventually she couldn’t at all, leaving her stuck—even if she still had plenty of magic. Something strange happened to space‐time; something that she could feel right now, in sections of the pulsar mines.

In retrospect, that made perfect sense. Ryouko tore at space‐time to make her wormholes, and the Cephalopodan mines tore away pieces of space‐time too—normally for containment and transport, but now just to yank at the wormhole. The initial physical action was the same, so of course the physical reaction was the same. There had to be a connection to what had blocked her from teleporting earlier.

But there were more immediate applications to work through.

If repeatedly tearing at space‐time made it progressively more difficult to accomplish, then the enormous alien mines were likely working on duty cycles, and a much narrower attack could now be planned, prioritizing only the operational regions which Ryouko could identify.

That was the good news. The bad news was, with this effect isolated, a subtler process could be detected. With Asami and Simona frustrating efforts against the wormhole, the aliens were adapting their approach yet again. Ryouko had not personally seen a blink cannon in action, but if she understood what little humanity knew about them, then the aliens were building a giant ad hoc one out of the mines. And Ryouko was pretty sure she understood correctly, because Clarisse had been ceaselessly replaying the relevant lectures from Vlad and Dr. Tao at speed in the background of her mind.

I’m just doing what needs to be done, Clarisse thought. I’m just helping the association process.

No, it’s helpful, Ryouko thought. I’m just frustrated with the situation. You’re doing the right thing.

Ryouko was surprised then by a tiny sense of satisfaction, even pleasure from Clarisse. She had said the right thing, apparently.

Clarisse was definitely helping, of course, and the TacComp’s recent upgrades enabled her to run a few gravitonic simulations locally. That was enough for Ryouko to pick out a strange relationship between the activity in the alien mines and the oscillations in the mangled wormhole Asami was wrestling with.

And that reminded her…

…of when you teleported the Orpheus team off‐world, taking advantage of the destabilized alien wormhole, Clarisse thought. The aliens are trying to exploit our wormhole the same way.

Ryouko felt a queasy feeling sink into her gut. That explained how the aliens expected a blink cannon to work, when all past evidence suggested that the energy costs outside of low‐gravity environments were ruinous.

A disquieting thought rose back up from her gut, and caught in her throat: the Cephalopods knew the intricacies of space‐time better than Humanity did. They knew space‐time better than she did, even when it came to her magic. That magic might cover the absurd energy costs involved, but its tricks were not hers alone—they were also the squid’s.

That’s not good, Amane thought, in a masterpiece of understatement, as Ryouko’s last update hit the gestalt. What do we do now?

Ryouko gritted her teeth, even as she mentally heard Command shifting teams into an emergency attack on the pulsar mines.

I can invert the process, she thought. Or rather, if they’re going to hijack our wormhole, I can hijack it first. If we act now, I can teleport most of us from here into the mines immediately. But there’s no telling what we’ll find in there, and I… hate to split us up right now.

By which she meant, she hated the notion that she would take most of the combined team away from Asami, leaving her only scantly protected. More than that, Ryouko hated the notion that they be separate at all, and knew Asami would hate it worse.

There was no space at a time like this for such sentiment, however, and no sooner had she vocalized the thought than the order came through for them to make the attempt. A part of her regretted even bringing it up, but how could she not?

“The danger is admittedly extreme,” Ying‐zhi said, using the in‐suit audio. “We have limited intel, we’ll be deep behind their lines, and they’ll be ready for us. But I have high hopes anyway, because it’s always like this, and we still always come out on top.”

“I suppose you can consider the separation incentive to come back alive,” Azrael said. “I certainly don’t expect to die here. Not after I made it out of… where I came from.”

They were obviously addressing her, and Ryouko felt a cringe of embarrassment. Was it that obvious?

She overcame that, though, when she felt a ping from Asami and looked over. The girl wasn’t looking back, focusing her attention on the wormhole, and Ryouko was at the wrong angle to see her face.

Still, the emotions that followed conveyed all that was necessary. Asami understood the necessity of splitting up, but she was scared, and angry. Scared for the both of them, but especially Ryouko, and angry at herself, because she was letting the squid do this to them.

Ryouko did manage to see Simona’s expression—at least, what Ryouko’s implants claimed it was, through an opaque helmet, for only the fractional second before the girl hid her face—and felt an undefinable guilt.

She didn’t let herself think too much about that.

It took an unusual amount of time—a solid three minutes—for the gestalt, and the team, to decide on the proper way to divide the magical girls around Asami. They were heading into completely unknown territory, and for all their hundreds of variations, even the simulations had failed to really cover a situation like this. Couldn’t, really. Unknown unknowns were harder than anything.

Both Asami and Ryouko’s team would require a barrier generator, and there were three to go around, but Ying‐zhi, the one most capable of defending against gravitational effects, would be going with Ryouko. Asami was somewhat capable of protecting herself, after all, and Command could rush reinforcements over, but she would still receive Amane, the more experienced of the remaining two barrier generators.

Azrael would be going with Ryouko. While her natural comfort with three‐dimensional navigation was most useful in space, they didn’t have any other MGs capable of mind‐reading or attempting mind‐control—versatile abilities when attacking an unknown base.

Where to put Simona was the easiest, yet most painful choice. Her ability to enhance another’s power might make or break an attack on the mines. But the aliens were fighting as hard as ever to rip the wormhole to shreds, and Asami needed Simona’s assistance, so Simona would stay with her.

This time Ryouko didn’t try to catch Simona’s expression.

Asami would also get the stealth generator, but in the end, no one was making it home if they didn’t disable the pulsar mines, so the other members of the combined team would be sent with Ryouko.

While this decision was being made, Ryouko spent her time focusing on what she needed to do. She had harnessed an existing wormhole once, at Orpheus. She had a much better understanding this time of how it would work, and could even review it with Clarisse. But this time, there was no Goddess in her ear, giving an implicit guarantee of success. This attempt, and its result, would be hers alone.

When it was time to go, she felt as ready as she could ever be, watching the others assemble around her. At her instruction, they formed as compact a ball as possible, Simona taking the opportunity to hold her hand, filling her with power, but tensing to let go, just before the teleport.

You’ve got this, Oda thought. According to the gestalt’s battle simulations, Ryouko was disturbingly likely to find her teleportation blocked again after they arrived, and Oda’s lightning‐based teleportation might have to bail them out a second time.

Ryouko realized, then, that she had almost forgotten something.

She blinked over next to Asami, the universe around her snapping into a new configuration, and grabbed her hand. The suits were in the way, but it would have to do.

I’m ready, she thought, blinking herself back to her team.

She closed her eyes, and stretched herself outward, reaching for the place where the aliens were trying to breach. It was already so, so weak…

“Damn it!” Kyouko snapped, heedless that the others could hear her over the suit radio.

The aliens were tenacious, ferocious, and overwhelming, and the screening groups near her ships were taking the brunt of it, held together by a thin assembly of drones, smart mines, and magical girls. Together they strained to stay coherent and mutually supporting, even as they worked to get into a position where they could lay into their enemies, who were obstinately, annoyingly, staying just out of range. As they did so, the fighters harried Kyouko’s ships, obviously hoping to kite them to death with their superior reach.

This frustrating situation had forced them to continue using Yuma’s Ancients as risky frontline raiders. They were already amidst the aliens, voluntarily or not. If they got some damage in—and especially if they kept seizing ships—it really helped the combat projections.

Things hadn’t worked out with Raven but, if one tallied it all up like an Incubator, even that had been a fair exchange—a one‐for‐one trade of frigates, and a swap of some fighters and materiel for a veteran magical girl. They could have done even better if they hadn’t gambled on saving the Spec Ops squad. Then again, they needed to do better—this wasn’t a fair bout of chess, where equal trades would lead to a draw. It was more like a match where they had started off with far too few pawns.

Kyouko gritted her teeth. She didn’t like that kind of thinking. But they hadn’t been prepared for this fight. Against Cephalopods, she had far too many magical girls for the number of ships she had. She would have easily traded some for a single military‐grade cruiser.

Her mistake. She had known this was a possibility, and then she had let secrecy and poor communication restrict the scope of her response. Now, out here in the black depths of space, she was losing people.

She spun herself into a new position, riding the point of the giant spear she was using as a platform. As she turned, her hair blasted out a spiral of airless fire, destroying a wave of alien smartdust that had dared to approach.

At least Yuma’s Ancients were holding up, even if none of them were natural frontline fighters. On top of the ship raiding, they brought a welcome injection of well‐developed magic—long‐range clairvoyance, improved telepathy, multi‐target mind‐control, telekinetic movement, all the general stock‐in‐trade arts of magical girls like Kuroi Kana and Atsuko Arisu.

Even so, Kyouko would have preferred Ancients more like herself, capable of contributing seriously in more… tangible ways. Sending out Ceri’s group had stretched her defenses, and even with seriously‐in‐advance forecasting from Arisu, a barrage of missiles had just now nearly broken through, absorbed at the last second by a decoy starship, an apparition of Maki’s magical paint that stubbornly presented itself on every sensor as the real deal.

It took Maki only the briefest of moments to sketch out a replacement, but that was enough time for an enemy drone wave to pierce the perimeter and begin swarming soft targets.

Two magical girls went down—damaged, but still fighting. Recoverable, but only for a few more seconds.

Kyouko swallowed a bitter oath—at Maki for being slow? at herself for not being there?—and launched a wave of javelins instead. They flew out from her in what looked like a standard volley of projectiles, heading directly for the flotilla of alien drones. The flotilla moved to dodge—and then the javelins turned into massive nets of chain, snarling themselves around the alien drones before dissolving in fire.

Kyouko’s assortment of ranged tricks was limited, but they were all coming in handy.

What do you think, Elizabeth? she asked, addressing one of her bodyguards. You reckon we got the next wave?

It will be close, the girl thought. We barely kept this one from hitting the ships. But Nadya’s flank is holding up, and we’re bleeding them here.

As if to accentuate that last point, a flurry of yellow arrows flew past Kyouko, honing in on targets somewhere in the distance.

Kyouko returned a confident grin, even as she slashed her spear downward in front of her almost heedlessly, catching a long‐range kinetic projectile mid‐flight and sending it off into the abyss. One might think what was basically a giant alien bullet fired at unfathomable speeds would be extremely visible, but it really wasn’t—except in infrared, where it glowed white with the heat of firing.

All magical girls had an innate sense for such incoming attacks, but it was nice also being able to see them.

Her TacComp informed her that alien fighters had been detected making another approach. She checked the details; the ferocity of the alien attacks was beginning to flag, and the fighters were showing signs of a fixed resources shortage. If her fleet could keep this up, the aliens would have to commit their frigates to decide the fight.

That was a big if, of course.

Kyouko took a moment to concentrate, dialing in a big expenditure of magic.

It was still a bit disorienting, splitting herself into multiple copies. Unlike the simpler Rosso Fantasma of her youth, each of these clones brought the full Kyouko, the whole shebang, so to speak. But that meant there was no longer one true copy, and she never knew whose eyes she would end up seeing through—and she found afterward that she had the memories of each one. Even her soul gem, which otherwise could not be divided, seemed to switch back and forth between copies, perhaps explaining why her clones couldn’t get too far apart.

She never quite got over the experience of looking at herself though, blinking back at what was now a thicket of nearly three dozen copies, each making eerily similar expressions, probably thinking the same thing she was.

Looking good, one of them thought, and she almost rolled her eyes.

She formed ranks into a wall formation, her clones arranging themselves into alternating rows that obstructed passage, equipped with nets and fire as well as spears.

Among the Ancients she had always been one of the fastest, and coupled with the exceptional level of coordination she could achieve with… herself, she could compensate for a lack of range. It also helped make up for the fact that she wasn’t always the best at working with others.

Collectively, she watched the proverbial horizon, thoughts coordinated, information thrumming between implants.

She anticipated an assortment of missiles, but only a few came, easily dealt with by a wave of homing spears. It seemed the most recent attack on Raven wasn’t a fluke—the aliens were running low on Ravagers.

That meant the fighters would have to come closer.

She—every version of her—froze still for a few seconds, settling into a diamond pattern not unlike the pattern of her own chain wall.

She watched a half‐dozen fighters barrel closer, then smiled wickedly as a barrage of arrows flew through the gaps, courtesy of the twin archers behind her. The bolts of magic whipped her hair, ignoring physics.

One of the fighters blew apart immediately, the arrows bombarding it blinking past its shields and impacting straight into the front hull. It showered the area in a spray of debris and radiation that glowed iridescent in Kyouko’s vision even as she tracked the others.

Another took a similar impact, but didn’t explode so gratuitously, instead spiraling off course, barely managing to turn away.

It spun off into the distance, where perhaps it might repair itself and return, or more likely, would just retreat. None of the humans could afford a risky pursuit.

A few other fighters took big hits, and Kyouko noted with satisfaction that this was as much damage as her girls had managed to inflict in the entire fight leading up to now, not counting those with Yuma’s high‐risk teams. Close range was not doing the aliens any favors.

The aliens had of course noticed Kyouko’s wall of clones, and they unleashed a lethal barrage of kinetic fire, waiting until they got a bit closer to follow up with lasers and, perhaps, radiation.

Perhaps they thought she would evade or break formation, giving them easier targets and time to close—clumps of clones to blast, or an isolated girl for multiple fighters to focus on.

Instead her smile grew wider as she pointed her spear forward, echoed across the formation as it thrust forward telekinetically, a wall of chains appearing in front of her to seal off the projectiles.

By now there were hundreds of her, replicating outward in an ostentatious display of magic. Nothing in front of her would live, and the aliens were still on inward trajectories.

They quickly realized the danger, and those caught in front tried to turn—but a cloud of drones and mines lined the edges, coordinated by the gestalt, and accentuated by homing arrows from the twins.

As she gained speed, she saw the overwhelming glow of the aliens detonating hard radiation bursts. Surely she made an attractive target, but she had addressed that particular weakness long, long ago, after a politically‐motivated assassination attempt. If the Ceph wanted to try, they were centuries too late.

Not your lucky day, she thought, homing in on her prey.

Even the most basic of magic barriers was a better buffer for radiation than one’s own flesh, and she was a specialist in using her chains to restrict movement in combat—had to be, really, even with centuries of work on her speed. Radiation shielding had been easy to learn, once she had recovered from her injuries.

And as for using a spear against a forcefield—well, there were plenty of magical girls who could project a stronger shield than a squid fighter.

Three of her closed in on a fighter, weaving expertly in between its close‐range laser bursts. She herself got to deliver the killing blow, dragging her spear through shields, hull, and critical components in one gesture that carried her out of the shrapnel zone.

She knew she made it look easy, out here in zero gravity, but on the ground that much force would have overturned a skyscraper, and she had done it backhand.

Well, perhaps not that easy. The alien counterattack had caused her to lose her bearings briefly, and as she regained them, she spotted one of her clones nearby. More accurately, part of one.

She grimaced as the head dissolved back into the magical ether. Those memories would be unpleasant, but, well, it helped to keep her grounded.

So too did the deaths, a pair of girls who tended the rose garden of her church.

It stung, all of it stung, but they were not truly gone. Few could say that with more certainty than her. The tragedy was the life cut short, but it was not without consolation.

The other consolation was that for now her forces had survived, and even more than survived. The alien fighters were by all appearances limping away, and it wasn’t clear if they would be coming back without frigate support.

She dismissed her clones, choosing one closer to one of her ships as her new body. As she felt her consciousness draining back into one host, she had one more thought, collectively this time, sharpened into defiance by her losses.

You want a fight? she thought, directed at the aliens. Then come at me, if you dare.

She peered out into the darkness, waiting to see if the aliens would answer the challenge.

Ryouko reappeared inside yet another alien facility, only to be hit almost immediately with a sense of déjà vu. It was all the same: a sudden uneasy feeling beginning in the pit of her stomach, her magic incessantly warning her that she was stuck, the time until she could teleport frozen at max. The world around her was syrupy, too tough somehow.

This time, at least, the experience wasn’t so unexpected.

Huh, Azrael thought, when they were done clearing the room. Ying‐zhi had pinned one of the aliens to the floor with her barrier, and a tendril of tar‐black magic flowed from the Cephalopod’s head into Azrael’s outstretched hand, bubbling along its length and dribbling onto the floor.

The aliens are surprised by the wormhole suppression effect, Azrael thought. Some of it here is natural from the mining, but most was induced remotely right after we arrived.

The aliens don’t always share intel with their grunts, Ying‐zhi thought.

Yes, but I’m getting the distinct sense that this isn’t supposed to happen, Azrael thought. The technology is…

She paused, the oozing magic in front of her quickening and widening. An ornamental gold ring snapped off the alien’s forehead and hung in the air, suspended in Ying‐zhi’s barrier.

Forbidden somehow, Azrael finished. Not in the religious sense. Just, they’re not supposed to be using it. Not against us.

She was silent for a few seconds.

Are you done with it, then? Ying‐zhi thought. Not to rush you, but we can’t stand around waiting.

No, I think I’ll keep this one for now, Azrael thought. It’s magic‐expensive, but I think I got someone useful.

Ryouko looked around the room. Aliens of various… types, she had come to think of it, lay strewn across the floor in a dozen distinct meetings with death. This wasn’t quite where the aliens had been trying to work their science, but it was close.

And unlike with the gravity modulators, this room did have a viewing window, which glowed an unsettling pale white.

She couldn’t drop her guard, even with the room ostensibly secured, and when she moved for the window Ying‐zhi and Oda followed her, just in case—and because they, too, wanted to see what was on the other side.

The angle of the window was such that without getting close enough to look down, all you could see was the curved ceiling of a large cavity, from which hung a number of tentacle‐like metallic tubes, reminiscent of the manipulators common with both Human and Ceph drone technology. As she walked over, she could see that they were attached to large, oval machines of some sort, which even bore strange, unreadable markings on the side, etched into the metal.

Fascinating, Clarisse thought. The aliens never use their written language outside of display consoles. To see it written out like this is quite unusual.

Ryouko nodded silently, though they both knew the machines weren’t the main sight. The glow from the window came from something below the floating machines, something which emitted radiation throughout the spectrum in a way nothing in Clarisse’s records matched, with no spectral lines at all.

When it first came into view, her eyes failed to truly see it, a soft‐edged white circle that was just there, with no visible texture, no connection to its surroundings, nothing that gave it away as more than two dimensional, other than simple binocular depth, like a graphical glitch in VR. She couldn’t even be sure how far away it was.

Only as she got close to the glass did her suit sensors start to verify that, yes, some of the strange gravitational readings in the area seemed to be coming from the object, if it was an object.

Not all of the readings, though.

One of the machines started to move languidly, and it took a few seconds to register what was strange about its motion, and why its color seemed to shift as it progressed—its time was unstable, relative to their room.

So? Any ideas on how to destroy this thing? Oda thought. I don’t fancy trying to ride a bolt through an environment like that, and we don’t have a black hole to just fling at it. Wish Asami didn’t need to maintain those, we might have got one for the road.

We don’t have to destroy the thing itself, only the machines around it, if I had to guess, Ryouko thought. An anomaly like this couldn’t possibly be stable on its own. The real question is, do we still want to be here when it becomes unstable?

How far away can you get us if we need to bail? Ying‐zhi thought, directing the question at Oda, rather than Ryouko.

Maybe ten kilometers, it depends on how much time I get, Oda thought, leaning onto her polearm. And how much local conditions affect me. The paths here are not ideal, too much magnetic energy twisting every which way from the pulsar. I’d do better in air or simple vacuum.

She paused, making sure the others got that point. As pulsars went this one was tame, but its magnetic field density was still appreciable, even at several hundred kilometers.

Any idea what this thing is? Oda asked, finally.

A topological discontinuity, a lack of space‐time, Clarisse thought, filling in for Ryouko when she didn’t immediately say anything. It stands to reason, if they’re mining out pieces of space‐time, though why they’d keep the hole around is anyone’s guess.

Ryouko was as surprised as anyone at Clarisse’s statement, but it rang true to her when she heard it. Staring at the object—if it could even be called that—she had the distinct sense it could not be teleported into, not only because she was blocked or because it was unsafe, but because there simply wasn’t anywhere to go.

Still, the anomaly wasn’t what was interfering with her teleportation.

By now, the rest of the team had started to clear the corridor outside. It was one thing to talk about destroying the machinery in front of them, quite another to do it. What was the best approach? By hand? With a PAYNE device? What knock‐on effects could result? Could they escape? These were the imponderable questions they and their TacComps had to answer, and that consumed precious time.

Uh, is it just me, or is the wall on the other side doing something? Oda asked.

It was not just her—the side of the chamber opposite their window, past the tentacle arms of the machinery, had clearly started to change shape, visibly distorting in a way that didn’t seem correct for what had until now seemed like a solid surface.

I’m not sure I want to find out what that’s about, Ying‐zhi thought. We should—

Ryouko’s combat reflexes triggered, faster than she or Clarisse could even register what the stimulus had been. Neither of the other two had reacted, and their dulled movements seemed almost stationary as Ryouko found herself shoving Oda bodily towards Ying‐zhi, then ramming both of them towards the corridor doorway with sheer force.

Deprived of her teleportation, she improvised, the arbalest on her wrist materializing and firing an achingly slow bolt at the wall next to the rounded hall entryway, trailed by a length of magical string. Another arbalest materialized on her other wrist and followed suit, all of it taking place so slowly that she could watch the magical components appear one by one.

And as she retracted the string, using her crossbows to grapple them towards the exit and rest of their team, Oda and Ying‐zhi grabbing onto her instinctively, Clarisse was finally able to register that the apparent slowness wasn’t all combat reflexes—they were, in fact, slowed down significantly compared to a tidal wave of confused signals arriving from the others.

The iris door to the corridor opened with ludicrous speed, one of their melee specialists moving in and out of the threshold in a blur, backing away from the distortion zone.

Ying‐zhi’s barrier flashed into place and its leading edge passed through the exit, smoothing out what would have been a catastrophic transition back to normal time. As the world outside the observation room started to slow down to their speed—or more accurately, as they sped up to match the world outside—Ryouko released one of her grapples, spinning so she could see behind her.

In the viewing window, the not‐object loomed enormous, closing rapidly nearer, clearly about to pass through.

Alright, so no more niceties, Ying‐zhi thought, as they touched ground in the corridor and quickly began retreating down its length, moving fast enough to gain some distance from the void anomaly. Where is the key support machinery?

The inner walls of the chamber we saw, Azrael thought, still dragging along her alien thrall. We can try reaching the access hatch, or we can try cutting straight through the reinforced outer walls. The machinery is heavy in exotic matter; the cuts would have to be precise in depth.

Ryouko sensed something at the edge of her perception, and the discussion ended abruptly as they took evasive measures. She slammed herself flat against the ground, and minute fractions of a second later, a fusillade of lasers seared through the air above her, Ying‐zhi’s emergency barrier catching a fraction of them just a tiny bit late.

Great timing, Ying‐zhi thought, as they assessed the group of alien infantry deploying at the far end of the corridor, in the direction they had been trying to run from the ominous, oncoming white disc.

Muted telepathic cursing came through a moment later and Ying‐zhi was at Azrael’s side in a flash.

The combat readouts made the story clear—distracted by the concentration of maintaining a thrall, Azrael hadn’t dodged fast enough, and a laser had clipped her on the side of her neck, severing a major artery. It had sealed itself almost immediately, but the smell of blood started to fill Ryouko’s nose, before Clarisse tuned it away.

Ryouko doublechecked her surroundings. The circular corridor provided no side passages, no viewing panels, and no sign of the display walls that were ubiquitous in human facilities and not uncommon in squid facilities. Instead it was just… one long walkway, with alien infantry already entrenched in front, and the white void approaching behind.

She pushed herself up off the sand‐textured floor, joining the others with ranged weapons in suppressing fire. She lobbed a triplet of exploding bolts with one arm, spinning herself into a crouch. As she did so, she spotted the alien Azrael had mind‐controlled dead on the ground, some suicide implant having seized its opportunity.

Pinned, the strain of combat focused their minds. Azrael’s telepathic input indicated that the force of aliens before them was substantial and in‐depth, presumably loaded with the kinds of tricks that attrited magical girls—swarming attacks, high explosives, too much firepower to dodge. They might take losses if they tried to move forward, and for a team dependent on synergy, a couple losses could easily cascade into complete disaster—a lesson mission simulations never let you forget.

At the same time, though, they couldn’t stay still. The space‐time distortions contorting the corridor would reach them very soon.

They kept up their fire on the aliens, secure behind Ying‐zhi’s shield, relying on the fact that their projectiles—homing, explosive, piercing—were superior. Azrael stood back up, part of her neck an apparition of Ying‐zhi’s magic, glowing golden. She reached across the gap, freezing muscles, sensory organs, and minds in place with a piercing ooze that rose out of the floor.

And as the white disc behind them moved inexorably up the corridor, their melee specialists turned on the wall next to them, carving into it with ax‐hammer, spear, and sword with an implausible level of efficacy. Once a sharply‐defined block had been excavated, Oda touched it, teleporting it directly behind the shield barricade the aliens had tried to set up, right on top of the generator.

That was not the main point, of course. Alien equipment now lay partially exposed, tubes and wire and alloy, filled to the brim with exotic matter. There was no need to speculate what would happen if they destroyed it.

Gather around me, Oda thought, as the girl with the sword readied one, last destructive slash, outlined in a disquieting white.

This time, when they teleported out, Ryouko could directly perceive that Oda’s teleportation wasn’t at the speed of light; she could tell without looking that they were being chased by a tremendously destructive explosion, heavily dosed with spatio‐temporal effects. She could even tell what Oda had meant about magnetic energy density—they were clearly straining against something to move.

The journey was tight—length and time convulsed at their heels, far beyond the radius their TacComps had estimated, following them even into the depths of space, and it began to seem inevitable that the rising maelstrom would overtake them.

It was hard to even feel fear under the circumstances.

Then they finally found respite within another shielded mining station and reemerged back into real space, Oda dropping to one knee as her soul gem recharged.

The others raised their barriers and began prophylactically clearing the area, but quickly stopped—it was empty of hostiles, and they had destroyed what appeared to be several drone maintenance hubs.

They relaxed, slightly. It would be at least possible to catch a breath here. Alien work on the ad hoc blink cannon must have been set back temporarily. And since Oda had been forced to target a location more or less randomly, there was no intel or detailed plan beyond that.

Work drones scurried away from them in alarm, making it clear that this outpost in the Ceph’s archipelagic mining infrastructure didn’t even have automated defenses. Suit sensors and magic indicated no local “topological discontinuities” either, probably not a coincidence.

Still, the station rumbled around them, gravitational echoes of their earlier work, and most of the girls carefully surveyed their surroundings—drab nanocomposite walls, low ceilings, rows of drone hubs, and almost no lighting.

Ryouko, though, was focused on something else.

She still could not teleport—the effect was following her, she was certain now—but, by some fluke of magic or luck, they were nearly atop that problem’s source, probably less than two hundred meters away. Not in this drone nexus, but it might very well be in the opposite half of the room below.

I know it’s not our main priority, she thought, forwarding this information. But if we could take it out, then I could teleport again, and we could be a lot safer.

Also, if I may point this out, any device that’s capable of blocking wormhole formation is worth at least a passing glance, Clarisse thought. It might be valuable technology.

With Oda still recuperating from the emergency teleport, the gestalt finally acceded to Ryouko’s request, which now fit neatly within MagOps doctrine—once you were loud, you had to stay loud. No sense in loitering when the enemy knew both your location and much of your power lineup, and nothing else nearby offered higher prospects as an interim target—they had plenty of essential mining infrastructure left to destroy, but not nearby.

Without teleportation, though, the exact approach here mattered. Using the hallways risked another pincer trap, among other dangers, and was simply slower; far better to cut directly through the floor.

When they dropped down, accelerating sideways midair to confuse any defenders, it was to a silent reception—the few short seconds since the teleport had been enough for the Ceph to react. In the midst of what appeared to be an automated fabrication facility lay a circle of dead bodies, rapidly cooling in Ryouko’s infrared vision, surrounding a piece of equipment destroyed by explosive charges. Pieces of equipment, actually; if the forensic reconstruction maps made by their TacComps were accurate, there seemed to be two.

Ryouko had felt it early, and with a pleasure tempered by the loss of intact tech—as well as the fact she hadn’t gotten to personally blow it to smithereens—she teleported Ying‐zhi, Azrael, and their healer from the air directly to the fallen aliens.

The latter two dashed into action upon arrival, the healer crouching next to the most ornamented of the aliens to place her hand on its head. Magic could not ordinarily revive even the recently‐dead, but that wasn’t the intent here—the Cephalopods routinely melted their core neural tissues as part of their suicide routines, and so the goal was merely to patch enough circuits together for a telepath to profitably despoil.

As the team worked, Ryouko examined the bodies, which were noticeably different even at first glance. All of them wore richly embellished tunics, stiffer than the fluid robes she had seen earlier, and on closer inspection all of them had copper‐green external implants connected to the base of the cranial shell, with cables running down the dorsal spine, altogether the size of a small backpack. These, too, lay broken on the ground, like so many eggshells.

We’re discovering new aliens all the time, I guess, someone thought, in what was probably meant as a vague joke. No one laughed.

That’s strange, the healer thought. This primary nerve center is far more intact than I’d expect.

I’ll take luck where I can get it, Azrael thought. Or it might not be luck, given the look of these ones.

She extended a tendril of her magic, the black ooze merging with the bright blue of the healer’s magic to envelop the alien’s head.

Suicide implants triggered right when we arrived, as might be expected, Azrael thought, before loading the telepathic channel with a deliberately meaningful silence.

Oh, that’s odd, she thought. They’re not supposed to be here. One of the two devices here was a stealth device. They were hiding from the aliens on the station too.

There was a beat while the gestalt processed this rather confusing bit of information. Sabotage? The lackeys being left out of the loop once again? The aliens here did look rather important…

They weren’t given much time to ponder the issue, as the main doors into the room slid open and a barrage of weapons fire and bone‐rattling explosions rang out from an assortment of assault drones, sending some of them diving instinctively for cover. Their barriers held back any real damage, and most of the drones were picked off immediately, but they’d served their purpose, buying time for more heavily‐armored infantry to dart in, taking their own cover behind the tall banks of autofabricators.

Only Azrael didn’t react, seemingly lost in her thoughts, and otherwise safe behind Ying‐zhi’s barrier. Her magic flickered ichor‐green for a tenth of a second, something seeming to sneak its way up the stream of her tendril.

Azrael failed to update them, or respond to a fast emergency ping, prompting the healer to lunge over and pull her physically down, even as the others engaged the alien infantry.

I’ve never found anything like this, Azrael thought, finally, shocked. I’ve never found anything like this, not from a squid. It’s…

Her spoken thought trailed off, but her transmissions filled out the rest. It resembled a structured information packet, a telepathic one, of the kind that members of the Telepaths’ Guild sometimes experimented with. What was it doing coming out of a non‐magical, non‐human corpse?

Moreover, and perhaps just as troubling, Azrael couldn’t parse it.

Maybe you all should take a look, Azrael thought. I can relay it.

There was a long pause before anyone had a chance to look, as most of the group engaged the aliens. Ryouko had found an alcove in a far bend of the room to crouch in, and she leveled a series of shots past a group of unidentified machines, using a mixed bag of arrow types to keep her enemies from adapting. A few flew straight, piercing a camera drone trying to dive forward. A few others rounded the corner, expending themselves on alien shielding with satisfying, loud pops. One picked an incoming grenade out of the air, slapping it back to its sender.

Whatever satisfaction she might have bled from the achievement was short‐lived, however, as an Adamantium‐class alien trooper smashed through the machines near her with full shields, a massive assemblage of green‐black armor and grey‐black alloy cannon and white‐blue shield sparks intent on pummeling her with sheer momentum even if she killed it.

Silly to try that against a teleporter, she thought, tensing for a teleport‐assisted backstab—but that proved frustratingly unnecessary when Oda’s lightning snapped into the alien’s side with impossible momentum, sending it crashing into the sidewall with an explosive crunch. The lightning materialized as girl and spear a moment later, neatly bisecting the cannon.

Ryouko shook her head, adjusting her hearing again after all that noise, but it was just as well that Oda had intervened, because Ryouko then decided to examine Azrael’s transmission.

The packet burst into her mind with a mishmash of images and knowledge, a reverie filled with technical diagrams and winding, looping symbols she somehow understood, an ice bath of data that almost triggered an involuntary gasp from the sheer overload.

Clarisse seized control of Ryouko’s body and moved her further from the fight, signaling to the team that she needed cover, without explaining why.

Ryouko reeled under the onslaught, boggled by the implications of the fact that she could read it, not that the information in the packet wasn’t itself stunning. The second destroyed device had been a blink interdictor, a countermeasure to blink cannons and paradox drives. They had never been deployed against humans before because there were no equivalent human technologies to counter.

By now, the others had noticed Ryouko’s lack of response, or even responsiveness, her presence on the telepathic link the equivalent of empty static, her combat interface devoid of all but Clarisse’s most cursory data feeds. The healer was moving to check her status when Clarisse finally gave them an update.

I can’t think through it all yet myself, Clarisse thought to Ryouko, issuing a dense datagram to the network. There are too many variables. Too many things going on. But I can make a guess as to why a blink interdictor would affect you—their teleportation might work in a way similar to yours. It would make sense.

This is crazy, one of the other girls thought—or, more accurately, shouted, busy deflecting bullets with a scimitar. Have you always been able to do this?

I’m not even a telepath! Ryouko thought.

Can we arrange a pick‐up of all this? Ying‐zhi thought, addressing the distant fleet gestalt, which had already begun a painful cost‐benefit analysis. Blink interdiction would change the face of the war—but mission resources were overstretched to the point of snapping, and reverse engineering even intact Cephalopod contraptions was typically an endless nightmare.

As an added burden, if they intended to claim what remained of the equipment, they’d have to defend it, or else carry it with them as they moved. It hadn’t taken the aliens long to start lobbing explosives at the material; it was possible that was even their main goal here. Heavier weapons might not be far behind.

And on top of all of that, Clarisse had still more to add, doing the mental equivalent of tapping Ryouko on the shoulder.

I know this is a bad time, she thought, gently, but I think this is important for you to know.

What is it? Ryouko asked, pouring every drop of her military and MSY emotional training into a placid acceptance of her TacComp’s emotional and biological fiddling. On Clarisse’s advice, she distracted herself by firing several barrages of homing bolts upward, hitting two Ceph in the rear of the clamorous battle.

I’ll keep it as short as I can, Clarisse thought. While you were deciphering that telepathic packet, I saw a huge spike in activity from the module inside your brain. Near as I can tell, the data was all being processed there, and I detected the release of a few compounds I suspect to be novel neuromodulators.

Ryouko had no idea what to do with information like that, at a time like this.

I know, Clarisse thought. It’s not something I would want to talk about right now, except it might be important for the mission and your performance. Only the commanding officers were ever even briefed on the genetic engineering done to you. I haven’t told anyone about this.

Well, they already know, Azrael thought.

The two of them jerked in surprise, before Ryouko’s combat instincts dampened her physical reaction and kept her on task.

Sorry, it’s my job to monitor you, Azrael thought. Especially after your previous feat with the packet. I am the team telepath, after all.

We’ll discuss this later, Ying‐zhi thought. We can’t stay here. It won’t stay secure, and Command is sending a recovery team for the goods.

With the room mostly clear, at least momentarily, Ying‐zhi manifested another barrier, enclosing the vital equipment and bodies into a shimmering golden bubble, dragging it all along the finely grained white and grey flooring, sealing them up for transport.

As she worked, the team moved into teleport formation around Oda—saving Ryouko for a potential emergency follow‐up teleport—and departed, leaving behind still‐firing Ceph amid a landscape of charred and ruined fabricators. They would head for a new mining station, with as few hostiles as possible, and try to buy some time for the recovery team.

Based on a snippet of Azrael’s clairvoyance, they were able to land in a narrow storage area. It would have to do for now; they set up a perimeter, Ryouko proceeding through the standard procedure mechanically.

What do you think? Is she alright? Ying‐zhi thought immediately on arrival, making sure only Azrael and Ryouko received the thought.

Those questions carried other questions within them, like: “Can she still perform? Can she be trusted?”

I think so, Azrael thought. A magical girl can’t be suborned like that. I trust her. But I can’t…

The way Azrael’s voice trailed off spoke volumes, and Ryouko herself leaned heavily against their healer, hidden from most of the team by a stack of alien‐sized helmets.

Now that Ryouko was looking, she could detect Azrael’s mental intrusion, maybe even clamp down on it. But why? Didn’t she want Azrael watching, in case whatever was in her brain did anything else?

Azrael dropped by her side, grabbing her arm to gain her attention.

She looked up at Ryouko.

I’m not trusting you just because of the mind‐reading, or because you’re a magical girl, Azrael thought. I’m trusting you because I know you, and I know what you’re made of, and I know that we’ll be there to save you if something happens. If we can’t have confidence in that, then we’re lost anyway.

Ryouko wanted to believe that. She wanted to believe that her friends and comrades would support her, that her magic would protect her, that she would and should be trusted, because she was still Ryouko, and was not—not something else. It would even be good to believe that, at least for now, rather than let her mind remain choked in unresolvable fear.

But she couldn’t believe it. Azrael and Clarisse could maybe believe it for her, and that would help a little, but no more.

Asami, maybe, could make her feel better. But the damn squid—

—are right outside the doorway, Clarisse thought, referencing Ying‐zhi’s frantic signals. You need to focus, girl.

Ryouko tried to, and followed the hurried decision of the team leaders. They had two options: flee again, and make it more difficult for the recovery team to reach them, or stay and fight.

They chose to fight, which suited Ryouko just fine, and this time, before the doors even opened, Ryouko had teleported half her team to a room across the hall, already firing. Bolts and beams shimmered through the walls and into the aliens from both sides as they blasted through the original doorway and tried to pour in.

Before either side could do anything more, though, the Ceph were swallowed by a burst of searing scarlet light, bright enough even behind fully opaque composite that Ryouko glanced aside to protect her eyes and optical sensors.

Three magical girls appeared then in the doorway, blowing off a puff of smoke. Stealth magic, Ryouko belatedly realized.

Thought you could use a little help, Patricia von Rohr thought, as the teams united amid a passage strewn with ichor and chunks of squid. We’re the pick‐up crew.

Three girls was decidedly below the standard team size, and Ryouko struggled to maintain her composure as she reviewed why: Patricia’s team had taken half‐casualties, losing two girls and a body to the same kind of white void that had nearly trapped her team earlier.

For all that, she couldn’t see any of it on their faces.

Patricia’s stealth generator and teleporter, Mina Guyure, claimed the goods from Ying‐zhi. The two Orpheus veterans knew each other’s powers well, and Mina had little trouble grasping Ying‐zhi’s bubble and vanishing it with a gesture, teleporting it to the safety of a ship. Ryouko couldn’t help but feel a little jealous—teleporting items without teleporting yourself too could be dead‐effective in combat.

As Mina prepared to go, though, leaving Patricia behind as a new member of Ryouko’s team, the fleet gestalt sent a rare explicit directive.

〈Enemy reinforcements are arriving in outer orbit, and remaining gravity modulators cannot be destroyed in time. All orders will be reconfigured for full assault on mines proper to stabilize the wormhole and delay blink cannon construction. When the wormhole is traversable, immediately abort.〉

They were losing.

The conclusion was unavoidable now, as Maki watched one of Kyouko’s clones strip the soul gem from yet another of her fellow magical girls.

Maki tried not to think about what the girl’s radiation‐ravaged body looked like.

She couldn’t help but feel frustrated. She knew that with her decoy ships, missiles, and magical girls she was arguably doing more than most of the girls here, but that was a scant glory when Yuma’s squad was already on their third stolen frigate. Whatever she was doing, it wasn’t enough.

Maki took a moment to get a grip on her emotions, waving aside a suggestion by her TacComp for emotional suppression.

She was fine, she thought. She lacked Kyouko’s experience, but she had the same training as everyone else. The bad news had simply stacked up—the aliens had more hard radiation bombs than normal, the MSY paramilitary ships melted under Sarissa lasers like summer ice, the squid had learned to instantly surround any frigate Yuma approached…

Most galling, part of the problem was that the younger magical girls simply hadn’t performed as expected—including herself. There had been reasons they weren’t on the front lines.

She contained her rage, twisting on one of her dual swords with force that would have wrung a mammoth’s neck.

Their chances were very poor now, and the gestalt couldn’t come up with a better plan than stalling until, maybe, the aliens just quit, either for lack of fuel or the nearing human reinforcements. Yenisei lay between Cephalopod space and the battle, so if the aliens wanted to escape they would need to give its forces a wide berth.

Status? Kyouko asked the gestalt, the message echoed by her phalanx of clones.

Still twenty minutes out, Kana thought. Not soon enough. We’ve been promised an advance wave of Ascalon missiles, but…

There was no need to finish the thought.

Maki cringed as a focused barrage of lasers flashed toward Kyouko’s position. Forewarned by Charlotte, Maki was able to summon a giant black sheet facing that general direction, and some drones from a commandeered ship were able to zip into position—

—but it wasn’t quite enough, as she watched Kyouko lose another of her clones.

It was just a clone, but Maki knew on several grounds that they were realer than Kyouko ever let on. At some level, Kyouko remembered those deaths, even if she was good at screening it out.

Perhaps more importantly right now, clones were expensive for Kyouko to make, and a grief cube shortage was not a weight they could bear.

She watched—admired was perhaps more accurate—as Kyouko weaved her way out of a few more blasts, though her admiration was dimmed by the realization that Kyouko had been protected by a point‐defense blast from Yuma’s alien frigate.

The stellar performance of the commandeered ship was almost mocking, an active reminder of just how outmatched they had been. Why were the alien ships so good?

Sensing that Kyouko needed help, Maki sent her ship apparition towards her, giving her a seemingly solid object that could screen an escape. Kyouko noticed immediately, and a good number of her clones pushed themselves onto the safe side of the ship to regroup.

They emerged on the other side of the ship a renewed force, showing no hesitation about going back in.

If it’s the Goddess’s will I die here, then so be it, but I’m going to get you all back home! Kyouko shouted.

Maki couldn’t watch, though, as she found herself hunted by a pack of alien missiles, of which the damn squid frigates had an apparently bottomless supply, even though their fighters were out. Deprived of their original target, someone on the alien side had found the time to manually retarget them around Maki’s ghost ship.

She summoned a platform of paint beneath her, turning it into a small rocket as she managed her evasion, letting concentration on her decoy ship slip a little—

Her world spiraled out of focus briefly, as something struck her side, and she instinctively detached herself from the pain, losing control of herself for a long moment.

Four point four seconds, to be exact, when she resynchronized, finding one of Kyouko’s clones holding onto her. She had abandoned her position to come back for Maki.

I’m… fine, Maki thought, and she meant it, assessing the damage, her abdomen in tatters from the shrapnel of a close‐detonating missile.

Kyouko looked skeptical, but a flash of green arrived before she could say anything, flung into place by Nadya’s unmatched telekinesis.

She’ll be fine, Yuma thought. I’ll heal her. Go!

Kyouko’s clone hesitated for a moment, then turned and flew away.

Maki was glad.

Yuma distracted herself from her anger by focusing on her healing.

That idiot! she thought. She had told Kyouko not to get herself killed, and here Kyouko was, cut to pieces left and right, charging into battle yelling things about her Goddess, getting distracted by her girlfr—

Yuma, Kana thought.

What is it? Yuma asked, making an effort to keep her emotions from leaking in.

The alien bombers aren’t gone. I’ve been searching the area around us and I saw a past‐vision of them refueling and rearming with Raptors at a cloaked supply ship. I’m informing the gestalt in half a second, and I need you to have a response plan ready. The younger girls don’t need the chance to panic.

Chapter 61: Into the Void

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 07:25:20 +0200

In terms of physics, the Instantaneous Interstellar Communication Relay network (commonly known as IIC) is a triumph of Governance, a living testament to human technological prowess and mastery of nature. A Planck‐width wormhole, capable of spanning interstellar distances, usable for faster‐than‐light communication—truly, the stuff of miracles.

In terms of practical usage, however, the IIC network is quite straightforward, at least once you move away from the details of implementation and deployment. It is defined by a series of fundamental properties:

Each connection is point‐to‐point.

The bandwidth of each connection is bounded by the limits of current photonic transmission technology.

The farther the physical distance a connection traverses, the more energy it costs to maintain.

New connections can only be established from very close distances. (about 7000 km with current technology, more in deep space)

We speak here of connections rather than wormholes, because in practice IIC uses multiple wormholes at once for increased bandwidth, and we can assume without loss of generality that each connection has a total bandwidth limited by the capability of the system to maintain wormholes.

These properties combine to ensure that the network’s underlying architecture would be familiar even to the network engineers of centuries ago. The largest, most expensive connections are between planetary IIC relays, enormous constructs capable of maintaining numerous interstellar wormholes and servicing tremendous amounts of traffic. These serve as massive routers using permanent connections to bridge planet to planet, planet to space station, and so forth. Cheaper, secondary connections then bridge smaller installations to larger ones—though here it must be noted that lightspeed transmission is perfectly fine for most planet‐bound usages.

This fixed topology suits permanent installations and planets, but what about civilian ships and fleets? How are new connections made in the first place?

Here we must rely on the capability of IIC nodes to form new connections and dismiss old ones with relative ease, subject to the key restriction that the initial connection must be formed at short range. Starships use their IIC nodes to form new connections to planetary relays when they pass by, then rely on these connections until they reach the next system over.

The energy cost of maintaining such connections still applies, and ships traveling in formation, civilian or military, will rely on the larger ships to maintain distant interstellar connections, while using much shorter local IIC connections amongst themselves. In military contexts, this has the added benefit of providing instant, nigh‐unjammable communications for fleet maneuvers, using only a few highly optimized jumps to and from the nearest battlecruiser or cruiser.

While IIC’s many military applications have led to rapid network expansion, the Contact War has exposed limitations to the technology not previously considered in depth. For example, improved gravimetric sensing precludes the use of all but the shortest‐range connections when stealth is a concern. And even more disappointingly, the underlying science may be at a dead end without fundamental breakthroughs. Thanks to data from the Battle of Orpheus, and to research performed with the Hero of Orpheus, Shizuki Ryouko, the large‐scale wormholes and paradox drives of the Cephalopods are now widely suspected to operate on separate principles.

Accordingly, Governance: Science and Technology has drawn down some of his enormous wartime investment into IIC research, funneling the resources instead into adjacent investigations of wormhole formation and foundational space‐time physics. Some research into IIC continues nonetheless, not least into reducing the cost‐to‐bandwidth ratio.

— Excerpt, “Introduction to the IIC Network,” reading material for the seventh grade.

There is an old aphorism in the MSY: when it comes to power development, the only real limit is your imagination—well, except…

It takes almost no time at all for magical girls in their first training courses to ask about the limits on what is possible, and for the instructors to sheepishly admit that no one really knows what the boundaries of the Accessible Power Set are, other than the vague notion of the Magical Protection Principle, and infamous gaps like precognition. Many barriers have fallen: the acquisition of a de novo power, for one, was thought impossible until the late twenty‐first century. And the prospect of a telekinetic girl wielding substantial teleportation, clairvoyant, and telepathic powers—never even a legend in the early MSY—is now all but expected for a girl with a couple centuries’ training.

But there are other limits, limits which stymie even the oldest and most experienced of magical girls. Some seem to follow general principles, a kind of odd magical respect for physical rules that would seem otherwise irrelevant. For instance, the observation that information is almost always difficult to summon from nowhere. You generally cannot summon a copy of the enemy’s plans, unless the enemy actually has a copy of the plans somewhere, and you managed to steal them with your magic. Similarly, you cannot summon blueprints of technology that doesn’t exist, generate brand new operas from thin air, or—perhaps most disappointingly—bring back the truly dead.

Other limits follow no pattern at all, or are unique even to one specific magical girl. A magical girl who can summon animal familiars finds it impossible to produce humans. A magical girl who views the past cannot choose when she sees it. A clairvoyant with permanent vision on a treasured friend cannot seem to expand it to anyone else, and so forth.

In this, we feel, there is a little bit of a pattern, a distinction between limits on developed powers, and limits on wish‐based powers, the latter of which can break numerous limitations that seem to apply to the former, but which are sometimes almost hostile to further expansion. For instance, a girl whose wish results in opera‐based attack magic might very well generate new operas all the time—but no one else can, even by imitation, and she herself finds it impossible to create, say, a ballet.

— Excerpt, “Skirting Your Limits,” guest essay by Nakoma Karimov for Daredevil magazine, MSY internal.

“The environs of the pulsar will be among the most extreme any human ship has ever attempted to survive in, much less fight, but that is what we aspire to do here.”

“This is a relatively small millisecond pulsar, with all its measurements at the lower end of what is possible: a rotation frequency of about 300 Hz, a surface magnetic field of only 10⁴ T, and a radius of 10 km. This is probably not a coincidence: the Cephalopods presumably don’t enjoy a pulsar’s company any more than we do, and made a deliberate choice. We will be operating as close to the star as we dare, about 1000 km away. Many of the key alien installations we wish to remove are closer in than that, so it will be a delicate thing.”

“Know your physical hazards, in order of threat. The first, and most important, is of course the acceleration due to gravity, which we will expect to be a mind‐boggling 2×10⁸ m/s². It’s not as terrifying as it sounds—we will be inserting at orbital speeds, so you won’t be feeling any of it in freefall, but this does mean that any action that increases altitude even slightly will require FTL‐style expenditures of energy—almost any other orbital maneuver achieving the same purpose will be preferred. All ships involved in this mission have been modified and lightened for the occasion, but that is not to be used as a first resort.”

“Conversely, dropping even a little will massively increase your velocity. Yes, this does mean that bombarding the inward facilities might be remarkably pleasant, but remember that these structures orbit very close to a pulsar—they must be extremely robust.”

“Remember also that while emerging so close to the star gives us both surprise and ease of attack, it does mean that there will be several sets of alien stations orbiting much farther out, as well as defensive ships. While these stations do not appear to be military in nature, the universe is impartial in all things, and they may opt to bombard you, even at the risk of destroying their own inner installations.”

“And speaking of orbits, this will not be any orbit you’re familiar with. Orbital velocity will be a pleasant 4.5% of c, and you will not be able to easily change this. To put it another way, you will orbit the star every 460 ms, and it will be very difficult to avoid tidally locking with the star. In fact, tidal will be the default state. Fortunately, everything we care about, friendly or not, will also be in the same position, and frankly, 4.5% of c is not that much compared to some forms of fleet combat. We also expect that the aliens will have cleaned out any remaining orbital accretion disc, but just in case, be prepared to clear out nearby orbits to make things safe for unshielded personnel and drones.”

“That is all broadly familiar orbital mechanics, though the computers will have to factor in some unusual relativistic corrections. Less familiar will be the second‐most meaningful threat, radiation levels. Both we and the Cephalopods will stay well away from the sweep of the pulsar’s primary radiation beams. As long as that rule is followed, the radiation damage will be tolerable, if not pleasant, especially behind shielding. The toughest jobs fall to the space personnel, who will not be able to leave their specialized suits. Don’t forget that the radiation will increase in proportion to r² as you get closer to the star, and be ready for degraded performance from the smaller automated drones.”

“The third‐most dangerous effect is not a persistent one, but one you will learn from your simulations. That would be a pulsar glitch, a sudden and violent reshaping of the star itself to a more stable configuration, akin to an earthquake. This would flood the area with unsurvivable levels of radiation, killing probably everything in the system, shielded or not. Since the Cephalopods are there as well, presumably it is not a currently‐existing threat. But it is one reason you may have to bail, very quickly.”

“And one more reason not to go any closer to the star: tidal forces. These, fortunately, drop off with r³, and will only be slightly uncomfortable at 1000 km, making certain rotations more difficult, and generally forcing our ships into tidal locks, as noted before. At 100 km, these forces rip apart steel. There’s little need to talk about anything closer than that. The main thing to know here is that we’ll enter the wormhole with a moderate rotational spin, so that we aren’t fighting the star upon arrival.”

“Beyond that, the hazards are nominal. At the operational distance, the magnetic field will average 1 T. High enough to impact electronics, so we have provided additional implant and hardware modifications, but nothing too serious. Again, r³ applies. Be grateful the aliens too want no part of a more standard pulsar, where you might run into magnetic fields with an energy density comparable to solid lead.”

“Some of the more exotic relativistic effects that might come to mind don’t really apply here, not even as much as you might encounter in fleet combat. At the chosen altitude, the combined gravitational and special relativistic time dilation factor will be 0.993 in the worst case of opposing orbits. Enough to create plenty of timing differences for your computers to chew on, but nothing to really concern yourselves over.”

“Finally, recall also that the pulsar’s gravity will be significant enough to cause a noticeable redshift or blueshift in EM emissions, though the effect will not be terribly pronounced except in light arriving from very close to the pulsar. In any case, the electronics can handle that.”

— Vladimir Volokhov (AI), Director of Adept Blue, Introductory Remarks, delivered to the final set of personnel training for the pulsar mine jumpstrike

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower, as attributed by Richard Nixon in “Six Crises”

Sneaking some of the MSY’s most senior members away from their usual jobs to surreptitiously visit a deep space site was no small feat.

With the connivance of their AI co‐conspirators, they had taken breaks from their usual roles to attend what was nominally an off‐world retreat, delayed for years by political considerations. Accepting Kana’s generous offer, the group of them had boarded her family vacation ship, the Megane, for a luxurious cruise through space. They had then taken a small unscheduled excursion, transferring secretly to the reconstructed HSS Raven, racing towards a mysterious set of coordinates in deep space.

There they would rendezvous with an assortment of uncrewed military vessels, each supposedly being flown by their AI to various drydocks and repair facilities for refit. These ships were carrying the remaining human personnel that would be joining them, one or two to a ship, gathering from throughout human space.

If all went well, Yuma’s group would reunite afterward with the Megane, making it to the retreat with time to spare—enough to have a sit‐down with the local MSY branch and mediate a dispute between them and the military over magical girl garrison policy. There would be no gaps in the official calendars.

That was all well and good, but where the Megane had offered luxury accommodation and gourmet dining, the HSS Raven offered instead only communal bed space and involuntary company—there was only a single room not dedicated to critical ship functions. That gave plenty of time for Yuma to remember just how nettlesome Ancients could be.

“Honestly, I don’t know why you insist on keeping that other ridiculous form,” Kuroi Kana said, looking down on Yuma with a disapproving look. “It was cute for a while, but no one really responds to it anymore, and there are some advantages to exploiting the rest of human appearance space.”

Yuma allowed herself to cast a baleful eye at Kana. That “other ridiculous form” was the child form Yuma usually kept, rather than the sixteen‐year‐old form she had currently. One that was, by the way, no younger than the form Kana herself was using.

Crossing her arms, leaning against one of the walls of the ship, Kana played the role of the disapproving mother well, presumably from long practice.

Yuma sighed, annoyed for the dozenth time that she had aged herself for this mission. Age nine simply wasn’t optimal for combat, even for magical girls. Even she had to concede that.

But the others didn’t seem to tire of telling her how nice she looked now, with such earnest repetition that she was sure they were coordinating against her. It didn’t help that she had found herself stuck in a bit of an adjustment period, constantly surprised at how tall she was, and how small the world was now.

Yuma rolled her eyes and decided to let Kana wait for an answer, ceaselessly toying with the settings of her SW‒155 pistol. Some of the others had brought heavier equipment, but she was being realistic: if push came to shove, her best fighting experience was with her magic.

That was how she had found herself here, getting nagged by a teenager in cargo pants, a jacket, and a cap with the logo of the Arcas Star‐Shooters. She wasn’t sure why Kana had chosen this particular outfit, other than to give everyone a source of amusement—which might very well have been the case.

“Yes, I know,” she responded finally, ejecting and reinserting her pistol’s emergency matériel cell. “But that’s not really my role anymore. There are others who can intimidate for us. Or seduce, if that’s what you’re getting at.”

It was the kind of salacious joke she liked to make to keep others off‐balance, and she remembered too late that she was no longer in the nine‐year‐old body that made the tactic more effective.

Kana rolled her eyes.

“Ask Shizuki‐san if that’s what you’re looking for. On second thought, if you show up now asking about that, she’ll probably try to find you some eligible bachelors. Or bachelorettes. She can be relentless that way.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Yuma said, with distaste.

She didn’t like thinking about Shizuki’s past attempts at the matter. The woman refused to catch a hint, and seemed to take Yuma’s pointed lack of interest as some kind of challenge. Even if purportedly well‐intentioned, it had been very uncomfortable. That was one advantage of the child form, that it made her lack of interest loud and clear.

Then again, Sayaka apparently pestered Mami the same way too—though she had never bothered Homura about it. Or Kyouko, for probably all the wrong reasons.

If she were honest with herself, one of the reasons she usually avoided a teenage form was its tendency to make her want to get into entanglements. Nothing she couldn’t keep a lid on, but it just… bothered her.

It’s perfectly natural, Oriko’s voice said, an ancient memory coming back to her, unbidden. It’s just part of getting older. What you have to do is…

“Anyway, don’t underestimate how many people the child form still works on,” Yuma said, to interrupt her own train of thought. “The vast majority of people have never met me in person. And honestly, I kind of enjoy being carried places.”

“I suppose,” Kana said noncommittally. “But I won’t be offering to carry you anywhere right now.”

“I wouldn’t want you to try.”

Yuma lifted her pistol, staring at it for a long while. It brought back memories of long ago, of the many times in her life where her official or unofficial role had called for a security detail, both mundane and magical. Carrying a pistol was just good policy, in case it was necessary to defend herself without an obvious display of magic.

“I can’t help but feel a little nervous,” Kana said, shifting the topic. “It’s so unusual for a group of us to be out here like this that it feels like the world has tilted slightly. It doesn’t feel right.”

“It’s all a bit strange, isn’t it?” Atsuko Arisu said, appearing in the doorway abruptly—she had likely been listening in from around the corner. “I feel the same way. But we’ve taken every precaution.”

“Well, not every precaution,” Kana said, shaking her head.

If we were willing to be a little less secretive, she thought, we could have recruited more human personnel. More magical girls. We wouldn’t have had to make this trip.

I know, but we’re taking risks as it is, Yuma thought, repeating a discussion they had had several times now. Every new person, every new magical girl is a potential security breach, or a potential conspiracy spy. You’ve seen the risk analyses.

Ultimately, even if the unthinkable happens, and we die here, there will be others to carry on the work, Arisu thought. It would be a serious blow to the MSY, but nothing we couldn’t come back from.

In terms of influence projection, the patched AIs are more important than we are, Kana agreed. Honestly, Nova alone could probably run everything if she needed to.

Yuma just nodded and stood up, causing the fire support drone she had been sitting on to make an annoyed chime.

She holstered her pistol at her side. She couldn’t bear sitting still anymore, not without network access. It was like being trapped in one of Kirika’s bubbles of slowed time.

She felt Arisu watching her and pretended not to notice. She knew what the meddlesome psychiatrist thought of her life choices, and had always chosen not to care. She didn’t really know what it was like, being Yuma in a dozen places at once.

Still, anyone who was willing to tell Yuma to her face that she was spending too much time online was also someone who was willing to lose her access. As in, not a spy. Unless that was what she wanted Yuma to think, of course.

Bah, Yuma thought. She hated that kind of thinking. At some point you had to terminate the decision tree, and besides, there was at least one way to exercise caution with a mind‐reader like Arisu—have two or more telepaths implicitly verifying each other’s work.

Indeed, Yuma had brought a small troop of specialists—gratifyingly, all prior recruits to her conspiracy. Besides Kana and Arisu, there were Charlotte Meitner and Rose‐Merline Béliar, old reliables from Kana and Yuma’s inner circle, and Yuma could relate their histories without consulting a reference: Charlotte had been one of Yuma’s own handpicked agents, trusted to underpin some of the less savory sides of MSY diplomacy, and first to the scene during Mami’s… incident. Later, she had been trusted to act as Mami’s distant telepathic monitor.

Rose‐Merline Béliar was a long‐time political ally of Kana’s, dating back to the turbulent expansionary period of the MSY—which made her at least a distant ally of Yuma’s as well. Political allies weren’t the same as friends or disciples, but that could be an advantage when your own social circle was suspect. She had been the first recruit to Yuma’s conspiracy after Kana herself.

Then there was Yasuhiro Rin, one of the less well‐known Founders, along with her wife, Jeannette Smith, who had cleansed MG of her illicit backdoor. At a mere two hundred and ninety‐five years of age, Jeannette was the only non‐Ancient magical girl aboard.

Rin was one of the MSY’s more colorful characters, who had a history of spurning the MSY for her own pursuits, occasionally to the point of faking her own death. Indeed, she might have been assigned to find Homura when she disappeared—if Rin hadn’t disappeared herself at the same time, after having fought valorously at New Athens.

Still, the couple’s long, eccentric history had at least given Yuma a good sense of their moral compass: they were not corruptible.

And then there were the non‐magical girls.

“Status?” she asked, walking up next to the captain. Arisu had fully evaluated the crew of this ship, reading their minds with permission, before briefing them on their mission. Ironically, that made them more trustworthy than any magical girl would have been.

“Less than an hour,” Captain Vera said. “The cordon ships have already begun to deploy around the site, and advance drones will be landing on the asteroid soon. Everything is nominal, so far.”

Yuma nodded, wondering if the captain was capable of guessing why she was asking in person.

She turned, nodding professionally at Vlasta, one of the mundane Spec Ops commandos that would be going with them. They had been exceedingly difficult to pry away from the general military without anyone noticing, but shared the advantage of the ship crew—they could be reliably mind‐read.

The operative, already kitted out in stealth combat armor, nodded back, then surprised her by transmitting:

“Always hard, leaving the network, but you get used to it. You’ll forget all about it once we land.”

Yuma made an expression of surprise at being so easily read.

“Look, we can be just as wired up as you guys at the very top,” the operative said, “though we’re designed for much more independent operation. Still, I know that look. I’ve been around the block a few times. Not as many as you of course, but still.”

The woman wasn’t joking about having been around. Yuma had reviewed her files, after they had had lunch together in the ship’s rec room. Vlasta had service dating back to the late Unification Wars, and had bounced around the professional military’s evolving duties for what was nearing three centuries. Yuma had even personally approved some of her first assignments—some things never changed.

“You calling me old?” she chose to retort, mainly by way of joke, since it wasn’t something she could really deny.

“I’m calling you experienced. I’m sort of glad to finally meet you. Though, as usual with MSY types, not what we expected you to look like.”

At that point they had been staring at each other in the front of the ship for the better part of a minute. Vlasta reached up and pulled the helmet off of her suit, the interlocks at the neck releasing a second beforehand.

“A lot lighter than the usual infantry suit, despite the stealth generators. Not that we’re carrying the weight, of course. But I prefer being smaller and faster on the whole.”

Yuma blinked, squinting up at the commando’s face. This woman was tall.

“It definitely has its advantages,” Yuma said, nodding after missing a beat. “That’s one of the reasons we try not to go into serious combat in adult form.”

Yuma waited a moment, watching the woman cradle the helmet in one arm. She found herself at a surprising loss at how to proceed.

Finally, the woman took in a short breath, and Yuma tilted her head, putting her previous thoughts out of her head. She was about to say something important, by the looks of it.

“It is troubling to see one of you prepping for combat in a situation like this,” the woman said. “Or, more accurately, the more troubling thing is that you’re here at all. We’re professionals, so we don’t ask questions about what isn’t for us to know, but we also don’t pretend not to see the obvious. Whatever is here is big, big enough that you’d trust me more than some of your own, just because you can read my mind.”

Yuma listened to the remarks without interruption, even as the other personnel in the room made no attempt to hide that they were listening in.

“I thought you said you wouldn’t ask questions,” Yuma said finally. “That sounds like you want me to tell more about what’s going on.”

“It’s not a question, just a statement,” the woman said. “For something like this, you’re right not to tell us everything. But don’t forget that if something happens, we’re still right here, and we’re not as out of the loop as we might look.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Yuma said. “And for the record, I have no good idea what’s in this base, just that it may not be very friendly. I couldn’t tell you much more about that even if I wanted to.”

Precisely worded, to the limits of Standard, and Yuma could tell the woman had caught that nuance.

Another woman appeared at Vlasta’s side, dressed in nearly identical attire—quite literally appeared, materializing out of thin air with the barest of shimmers. It was the ship AI, Raven.

“I thought you’d want to know, the anti‐IIC device has been triggered, and the cordon has been set up,” Raven said. “Thus far, there has been no visible activity or attempt to escape. We have eyes over the existing docking site, survey drones at the main entrances, and tunneling drones seeking alternate routes. Nothing unusual so far. Other than the site itself.”

Yuma nodded, closing her eyes to tune in to Raven’s internal network, which was receiving updates passively from the other ships. There still wasn’t anything to do but wait, but at least now there was something to watch.

Jovan Pritchard had been a cruiser captain for three years now.

As he understood it, his life story was typical for someone in his position. The last of three sons, he had scraped out a living as a private transport shuttle operator on the colony of Kaupang. It had been evacuated early in the war, when Governance had decided it was too close to the front and wasn’t worth defending.

That hadn’t really come as a surprise, since it had been little more than a pit stop for civilian transports, a place where could you grab some supplies, maybe step outside and breathe a little oxygen from the primitive microbial ecosystem. But it had been home.

He had signed up immediately for the militia on his new colony world, an easy‐to‐get job on a planet he didn’t care to live on, figuring that if there was an attack he could maybe get something done, and feel like his life had some purpose beyond just being yet another immortal cog.

He hadn’t imagined then how things would transpire. Assigned as a human technician to one of the planet’s shipyard defense cruisers, he had worried that he would be little more than a wrench monkey, a glorified repair bot with a 1H intelligence rating, passing the time with recreational VR. Somehow he had gotten promoted, though, and when the aliens had surprised everyone by deigning to raid the shipyard in force, he had led a team of technicians in exosuits for an unfathomable half‐hour, racing to hold the ship together against the assault.

When the ship’s bridge had been blown open, gutting its AI, he had managed to stitch its remaining personality fragments back together into a barely‐functioning semi‐sentient, then listened carefully to its instructions as his team worked to manually aim and fire the ship’s point defense pods, routing commands through their own implants into the disconnected systems.

He had sent the medal he had received to HSS Xiao He, who he felt deserved most of the credit, but for that he had received another promotion. Half a decade of proudly efficient service later, he had been invited to join the Navy proper, under the special dispensation program that waived age requirements for auxiliary forces of exceptional merit.

And now he was here, gathered with Task Force Gunnerside, slated to lead his ship and soldiers into a wormhole. There were no battlecruisers here, so the only more prestigious role was that of task force commander, though there were a number of cruiser captains with more seniority than him.

Seated in the bridge’s Maximal Command interface, but as of yet only minimally connected, he tried to convey the aura of professional calm he felt his role required.

“We are in position,” he said to his third‐in‐command. “The only thing left is to wait, so get to your stations.”

The officer nodded, then turned on his heel, heading for his station on the other side of the ship. On a non‐battlecruiser, there was a delicate tradeoff between efficiency and robustness, between placing senior officers on the bridge—with minimal latency to the AI’s most valuable processing nodes—and the risk that one really good attack would cripple command. On a Magi Cæli cruiser like his, the chosen balance was to place the captain and second‐in‐command on the bridge and scatter the other officers throughout the ship, most assigned responsibility for specific sectors or subsystems.

Closing his eyes, he immersed himself in the operations of the task force, slowly blending into the Command Gestalt.

By the standards of a Fleet Admiral or a Field Marshal, what a cruiser captain experienced was rather small scale, focused on only a few hundred ships and support units, with a much leaner ship AI to support it. In this case, however, that viewpoint was enough to encompass the entire task force, meaning that in a way, he was no less well‐informed than Admiral Gul, the overall commander.

Such a unity of purpose and perspective would be critical in this engagement, whose scale belied its import.

He took a moment to review the layout of the fleet, which had formed itself into thin concentric shells around the projected opening of the wormhole. Each shell represented one wave, flying into the spherical opening on brazenly‐close convergent trajectories, only to separate again once they passed through, almost like light waves passing through a divergent lens.

This was necessary to get ships through as fast as possible while still allowing breathing room to re‐calibrate their approach, either to counteract unexpected events, or even to abort mission. The first wave, the pioneer wave, would have the roughest go of it, since it would be their job to immediately scope out any minefields or traps, and only then be followed by the rest of the fleet.

That would not be his role. The pioneer wave was composed of a bevy of stealth ships and sensor frigates, alongside point defense frigates and cruisers—a maximally survivable shell to hopefully shield the arrival of the rest of the fleet. He would be in the second wave, a combination of interceptor‐focused escort carriers and cruisers like his own, the HSS Shelton Mayson, specialized in deploying and supporting MC teams. This also meant hauling in the vast loads of barrage drones that would be necessary to mitigate any slower‐arriving alien countermeasures, such as blink cannon projectiles. Two more waves would follow, and then the wormhole would be closed, mere minutes after it had been opened.

But the true thrust of their attack would come only after they had reduced the alien defensive infrastructure around the pulsar. When the time came, the wormhole would be reopened, and one last set of ships would be ready, in the form of a few constructs whose purpose would have been clear even in the Ancient era: automated cruisers loaded with as much exotic matter as they could safely contain, too dangerous to send into combat any earlier.

Once through, their objective would be simple—ram the pulsar.

The impact itself would hardly matter, gigaton blips easily shrugged off by neutronium, stretched out over a second or so by tidal shear tearing the ships apart.

But the exotic matter payload would briefly wreak havoc with the gravitational structure of the pulsar, temporarily freeing neutronium from confinement. That would release latent stresses of a cataclysmic scale, no longer safely managed by the alien gravity modulators. Then, according to the simulations, the pulsar would glitch—and, if all had gone well, the fleet would already be home.

If all did not go well, there was of course a high chance a lot of them would still be there, and would die in a storm of unthinkable amounts of hard radiation. Given the stakes involved, it was understood that they would stay if they had to, all but the most valuable.

“Alright sailors,” he said over the ship intercom. “Are you all ready for the show?”

He knew damn well they were, standing at their stations throughout the ship, but it was still good for morale to ask, and to hear the affirmative reply. Good for his morale, even.

The Command Gestalt watched final preparations go underway.

When the time came to activate it, Project Armstrong’s gate assembly was nearly twenty times the original size of Adept Blue, which was itself now attached to one of the six main gravity generators, like a larva budding off of its parent.

The six parts of the assembly anchored the orthogonal axes of an imaginary sphere, about twenty kilometers in diameter, a distance a good deal longer than any battlecruiser. As such, it was about the size of a second‐tier shipyard, of the sort one might find orbiting a mature Second Wave colony world.

In complexity, novelty, and sophistication, however, it far outstripped any of those comparisons, especially the battlecruisers, which lugged around tremendous amounts of ablative composites.

Despite the much larger cavity that yawned between the generators, the wormhole itself was projected to be no bigger than five kilometers—large enough to fit a few cruisers with decent clearance, but not much more than that. Compared to the two hundred kilometer width of the Orpheus wormhole, it was nothing, but they weren’t connecting companion stabilizers like the aliens were.

Five kilometers was only an estimate, if a very well‐founded one—they dared not conduct serious test runs, in fear of tipping the aliens off to what they were doing. They could, at best, only open a few wormholes a hundred meters in size to calibrate the equipment, pointing into safe sectors of human space. Gas giants were a favored target; anything more would require tunneling into the gravitational field of a star, and might be extremely visible.

But for all the exotic matter containment units and IIC optimization interlinks and exclusion‐locking forcefields and Field Manipulation Drives that dotted the structure, there was still only one place Ryouko, Simona, and Asami could be when it was time to open the wormhole, and that was at the very center.

To Ryouko, for whom access to space had once been a dream, it felt oddly poignant that traveling to that center had become a bit routine. The airlock, the spacesuits—they had practiced it all a half‐dozen times.

This time, though, the sense of anticipation, of foreboding, made things very different.

“The task force is nearly in place,” the newly‐built base AI, Maria Cáceres, said over the intercom, a brief human note in the symphony of machines playing out around them. “It is time to head out.”

Ryouko looked at Asami and Simona, who both nodded back at her. They had gathered by the airlock, helmets in hand, reluctant to suit up until the last moment, staring silently at one of the viewing panes.

Most of their friends were already gone, assigned to this piece or that of the task force. They had already said their goodbyes, at a last gathering where they had shared tea and cakes. Almost everyone with combat experience was going—even Patricia, who would be responsible for some kind of nebulous electronic security. Some old faces Ryouko hadn’t seen for a while—Ying‐zhi, Mina, and Annabelle, for instance—had shown up in recent weeks, requisitioned based on magic class and experience.

“Good luck,” Elanis said, holding up her hands, and next to her Eri nodded in concurrence. They weren’t going, because they were simply too inexperienced, but they had still shown up to watch Ryouko, Asami, and Simona head into the breach.

“Watch yourselves,” Clarisse van Rossum said, expression solemn. She had surprised them all, except Ryouko, by not signing on to a ship despite already being there. Ryouko had explained that although Clarisse’s role as a historian often kept her near the front, from Asunción to Zenobia, she almost never fought, acting instead as a medic to the wounded or a witness to the dead. And this mission, like Orpheus, afforded no observers.

“We’ll be careful,” Asami said, and turning away, she placed her helmet on her head, its interlocks sealing shut with a slight hiss.

“As much as possible,” Simona agreed, imitating Asami’s gesture.

Ryouko waited a moment, looking at the helmet in her hand, glossy and pitch‐black on the inside, inactive without its suit connection. It was difficult to shake a sense of… not just foreboding, nor even that something big was about to happen—that was obvious to everyone. No, ever since she had first arrived, she had felt a growing sense that events were gathering around her, controlled in a way she could not perceive, for ends she did not know.

It should have been possible to find comfort in that, to give oneself over to the idea that there was a guardian watching over her, but somehow it didn’t feel reassuring.

It was the Clarisse on her spine that had first untangled her subconscious, and explained to her why she felt that way. The Goddess she had met was not the sort to valorize herself, to elevate prophets and visibly protect her favorites. She preferred to be invisible. Given that, the Goddess’s intervention in matters of more than mere triviality was not comforting but worrying, because it implied that something was so terribly wrong it would yield to nothing but divine will.

These were thoughts Ryouko could not help but be reminded of, with Simona and Van Rossum seeming to symbolize the machinations swirling around her.

There was something else, too. A strange kind of apathy, as if she were just waiting now for something to happen, for destiny to arrive. She didn’t exactly derive happiness from what she was doing here—was she supposed to? Did anyone who was drafted into this terrible war? She should have been satisfied knowing that, unlike everyone else, the universe seemed to care about her.

“I will try,” she said finally, when she realized she had been standing there silent too long.

She placed the helmet over her head, her vision shrouded for only the briefest of moments by profound blackness, dark even in the radiation bands humans could not normally see. Then it returned to normal, the helmet’s inner surface transmitting a clear view of the world around her. A moment later, the helmet connected itself around her neck, electronics moving into place, settling into the back of her mind like a brand‐new, minor limb.

Displays appeared in her vision, a mind’s eye view of her suit’s enhanced sensor suite. Of her enhanced sensor suite, it was probably better to say.

At the moment, though, there was nothing really to see, so she took a breath and transformed, the familiar warmth spreading over her body once again. There was no need to be embarrassed here, not in this company.

When she was done, she saw that the others had followed her lead, Simona now an angular orange and Asami a bulky purple. Her vision showed them with a notable magical glow, accompanied by colored curlicues that were entirely stylistic, an unavoidable side‐effect of the magic imbuing the suit. To Ryouko’s eye, her own suit was even worse than it had been at Orpheus. Here, their armor was bulkier and much more technological, so her magic had apparently decided to balance that out by having it sprout as many ridiculous frills as could possibly fit.

Simona gestured towards the airlock’s entrance with one hand, waiting for Ryouko to go first. Ryouko stepped inside, followed by the others, and the door behind them slid shut immediately.

There was a gentle lurch, as their transport ship detached from the main facility, airlock and all. They would not board the ship—the journey was so short that there was no point—and the airlock would not evacuate. Not yet.

Ryouko asked the ship to show the world around them, and a moment later a seamless recreation of the scenery of deep space inscribed itself onto the walls, flawless as long as she confined herself to the visual spectrum, and as long as she ignored the floor, which she had asked to stay normal—unlike Asami, she didn’t like seeing the ground vanish from underneath her.

There was, for once, plenty new to see. The six gravity generators were by now familiar parts of the scenery, something whose gradual assembly Ryouko had tracked carefully, waking up from her daily nap to peer at a viewing panel. But now the generators showed clear signs of great activity, projection filaments reaching outward to a length she had never seen before, gossamer‐looking at her distance.

A quick check of the ship’s gravimetric overlay showed the obvious, that the generators and their filaments were incandescent with activity.

Beyond that there was a whole fleet of ships to see, countless dark outlines blocking out the stars, far more numerous, and larger, than the service vessels that usually darted around the station, brightly lit for safety.

And finally, perhaps most visibly, the stars were spinning around her, about twice a second. That had never been done, not in any of the previous experiments, because there was no reason to. Not until the final show.

It was a short ride until they reached their destination, a fact she anticipated by a number of channels—the accelerometers in her suit, the suit’s parallax estimates of the objects around her, and, of course, her own magically‐enhanced senses.

The air finally began to evacuate from their airlock, and the transport’s own gravity generator turned off, releasing them into weightlessness.

With slight nudges, they kicked off from the ground, floating upward slightly before using their suits to decelerate until stationary—more precisely, stationary relative to the ship, and thus to the gravity generator assembly. Proper understanding of reference frames was going to become very important, very soon.

The walls of the airlock turned solid gray. Then the doors slid open, exposing their compartment to the vacuum of space, and the ship began to move away, maneuvering precisely enough that the three of them saw the opening of the airlock fly towards them, before the breathtaking moment where it left them behind, alone now in the void of space.

There was a brief moment while lingering exhaust from the ship thrusters buffeted them, easily corrected by suit thrusters.

Like the entire base around them, they were now flying past the local stars at roughly 4.5% of the speed of light, and rotating in place. That was to say, they had the exact characteristics of a tidally locked satellite in orbit around a certain pulsar many light‐years away, lacking only a central force to pull them into an orbit.

“VLR frame synchronization achieved,” Maria thought. “Synchronizing generators.”

Ryouko glanced around at the stars with vision augmented by yet another layer of processing, from both her suit and Clarisse’s new upgrades. This time, she could more clearly see the slight blue and red shifts of the stars as they spun, and knew instinctively what her velocity and spin must be.

“We are deployed,” Asami thought at length, once their transport had become a speck in the distance.

She raised her arms, suit mass‐balance mechanisms automatically adjusting to prevent the motion tilting her posture—something that could have been handled by magic.

Asami was taller than Ryouko was used to, an effect that wasn’t entirely due to the suit. They had needed to grow auxiliary computing modules for their TacComps, and the easiest way to gain the space for that was to just grow about three years older, a process Clarisse van Rossum had walked them through.

And then, of course, there was the computing embedded into the suit itself, connected to their implants by the usual ports at L4, C5, and both wrists.

The next step was familiar to Ryouko: the appearance of a singularity in front of Asami’s hands, the distant generators beginning to glow in the lower frequency bands, the glow beginning to form in her own soul gem. This much testing they had done outside simulation.

But all of the previous wormholes had been smaller, and there had been allowance for a bit of tweaking, or even a bit of hesitation.

There would be no such allowance here, and once formed it was imperative the wormhole reach its maximum size almost immediately, before the Cephalopods would have time to respond.

Outside the generator radius, she could feel the Human fleet bearing down on them from all sides, performing the final velocity adjustments necessary to enter the gate right as it opened. Everything had to be done precisely.

Simona’s magic appeared then, a shimmering orange glow that was almost entirely swallowed by the darkness around them, but served at least to highlight Asami’s otherwise barely visible singularity. With a gesture, Asami forced it to balloon in size, swallowing her arms, her body, and then the two of them, Ryouko suppressing the instinctive urge to recoil.

It wasn’t an event horizon anymore, not with Asami in control, but for it to achieve its purpose it needed to grow kilometers in size, and while it did, they would be suspended there, in newly‐formed void, illuminated only by orange, purple, and green.

She had asked Asami once what happened to the light that fell into this void. It was pitch‐black from the outside, and pitch‐black from the inside, but it had to go somewhere.

“That’s the point,” Asami had said. “It goes somewhere.”

It’s your turn now, Simona thought, bypassing the comparatively clunky suit radios.

As reply, Ryouko raised her arms, allowing Clarisse to relay the intention to her suit so it would counteract her change in posture. It was as easy as raising her arms on Earth, even if Asami said it felt unnatural.

She closed her eyes, and could just barely hear the void screaming around her. Somewhere, indeed. Clarisse had explained how it actually worked: the bubble around them was already larger on the inside than the outside. Under immense gravitational strain—strain Asami had protected them from—the bubble had distorted into an extradimensional configuration. The light from outside was simply getting lost in all that new space.

Ryouko felt a small, almost electric jolt, and then she felt the warmth of Simona’s power enhancement flowing through her, and it carried with it the girl’s emotions—determination, trepidation, and… affection, awkwardly, for the target of her magic.

Ryouko shook it off, focusing instead on what it gave her: a sense, deep inside her, that here was possibility, here her power was great, and here she could go somewhere far, far away.

And when she opened her eyes again, mere seconds later, it was not to a void, but to a field of stars that seemed to move constantly, except for one bright speck in the middle that never moved. She knew the proper analogy: she was looking into a window centered on the small speck of a pulsar, circling the pulsar endlessly, so that the stars within appeared to spin.

She relaxed, just a little. It was done, and she didn’t need to look behind her to know that a wave of ships would be flying in. Instead, she grabbed the other two by the shoulders, preparing to teleport them into their chosen insertion ship—they would still be needed to close the wormhole from the other side soon enough.

She allowed herself a more detailed look at the pulsar, taking in the massive radiation jets at the poles, and the lighter radiation background that saturated the area, in front of which the many alien facilities were visible in silhouette.

Then she made the jump.

The reports from the asteroid installation were worrying, but fortunately, not actively dangerous.

“This place is abandoned. Like, completely abandoned,” one of the soldiers said, looking at the telemetry. “If this were on Earth, there’d be cobwebs.”

A long pause.

“There’s signs of a struggle everywhere, though. Chairs turned over, damaged equipment—the readings say it’s been a long time since that happened, but the error bars are huge.”

“Careful,” someone else said. “This isn’t your typical station. Place like this, in the middle of space, it’s hard to really know.”

Yuma nodded in invisible agreement. Depending on exactly how it was abandoned, a station inside an asteroid in the middle of deep space would stay shockingly well‐preserved for years, decades, centuries. With no life support, most remaining organisms would die off quickly, remaining dust from the previous occupants would settle into place, and there things would stay. With no gravity to add strain, no atmosphere to corrode, and no organisms to digest, a frozen tableau might stay in place effectively forever.

There were a few remaining mechanisms of change that might be measured: mildly radioactive isotopes in the dust would gradually decay away, certain forms of data storage would lose coherence, and magnetic fields of all types would slowly weaken. None of these provided reliable estimates, though, especially not with field equipment. If they had been lucky, an intact long‐term power source could have been used for a precise reading, but it seemed none had been left behind.

Still, it wasn’t the exact age that mattered, so much as whether anyone had been there since the meeting that had turned up in MG’s lost memories, nearly two decades ago. If someone had shown up but made no effort to cover their tracks, that’d be easy to detect. Otherwise…

“Most of the equipment is still in place?” Yuma asked, even though she could follow the telemetry quite well. “Even if damaged.”

“Yes,” Raven replied. “Depends where you look, though, and there are still no real power sources. Some of it is weapons fire, but a lot of it was clearly deliberate. Hard to avoid the conclusion someone cleaned this place out.”

“Not very well,” Yuma said. “Not if all this is left behind. Whoever it was was in a hurry. Hell, if I were trying to hide evidence, I would have just flung this whole place into a gas giant and been done with it.”

They would see soon enough, she thought. The installation had an unusually large concealed landing platform, sufficient for frigates, and the drones hadn’t found any hidden threats.

It was time to land the human personnel. They had collected everyone into two ships, for landing efficiency. Raven would go second.

“Not everyone has your talent for hiding evidence,” Arisu said, almost dryly. “Personally, though, I’m more confused that no one has ever come back to clean things up. There’s been plenty of time to do so.”

“Limited resources, perhaps,” Rin said. “You saw how difficult it was to get us out here. Their ability to manipulate Governance is obviously fairly constrained, and it may simply have not been worth the effort or risk to come back out here.”

“They built this base, dragged Governance AIs out here, made them fight, and then deleted the memory of it all,” Jeannette replied.

“Doesn’t mean they can do it all the time, or even more than once,” Rin said. “I’m willing to bet whatever happened here was very important to whoever arranged it.”

“Governance AIs aren’t exactly known for gunfire,” Rose commented. “Yet that seems to be something there was a lot of.”

“They could have brought autonomous drones,” Yuma said. “As for why there was gunfire, the most likely possibility to me is this: Two different secret groups arranged a meeting, and one betrayed the other. And I would guess the faction with the AIs was doing the betraying, since it doesn’t really make sense to shoot an AI, even one being run locally, because of backups.”

“Conspiracies and betrayals,” Rose said. “Sounds like the old days. I had hoped we were past that.”

“Look, it’s a total guess,” Yuma said. “There’s not really enough information to go on.”

They idled nervously as the first ship separated from the dock, giving Raven space to land in turn. Then they donned spacesuits and stepped into the ship’s airlock, white and tiny and brightly lit, which reminded Yuma a bit too much of the kind of interrogation room the MSY had used for a while.

She felt some trepidation as she stood there, waiting for her suit to seal itself. Even an Ancient had little reason to be too comfortable in space without previous experience, and a few training simulations wasn’t quite enough to remove the psychological edge.

These suits weren’t even enchanted, which would have been extremely difficult to requisition without anyone noticing. That meant that if she transformed, it was doubtful she would keep anything but the basic life support. She couldn’t get too used to the functions the suit provided.

At least the installation’s life support was nearly back online, and with it, its gravity generators. It wouldn’t be much longer now.

As if on cue, a new message arrived for her.

Well, that’s… unusual, she thought, knowing that the others had gotten the same notification.

While modern implanted humans could tolerate an enormous range of environmental conditions, maximum comfort still dictated temperature, humidity, and oxygen settings that would have been familiar to humans of any era. On a station like this, where it was useful to save power, an effort could be made to bias the settings towards something cheaper—colder, drier, less oxygenated.

Which made it extremely unusual that this installation’s life support, now reactivated, had at first started working towards a very hot environment, with 24% oxygen and 100% humidity.

I would speculate genetic engineering, but for these conditions? Out here? It doesn’t make sense, Rose thought. And if you were growing bacteria or plants you could use an incubator. What might need conditions like this?

It’s similar to what’s been seen in some Ceph bases, Kana thought. During the Saharan Raid, for instance.

Well, that’s not encouraging, Yuma thought. We scanned this base for traps, right? Cloaked or otherwise?

Did it myself, Kana thought. Had Charlotte doublecheck, and Arisu triplecheck. The base is clean.

Yuma shook her head in dismay.

The conversation paused as the light above the airlock door turned green, signaling they could exit into vacuum when desired. A bit of an old‐fashioned touch, but it was good to have some redundant systems on a starship, for emergencies where the high technology might not all be functional.

The door swung open a second later, the Spec Ops soldiers near them piling out with efficient haste. In principle the dock had already been cleared three times: once by the drones, once by the personnel of the previous ship, and once by their own clairvoyance—but in this case paranoia was the better part of valor. Probably.

The soldiers took their positions, agile and aggressive in the microgravity in a way that was feasible only with suit propulsion to prevent flying off into the void. Some swept in front of them, while others took up positions around the dock, shimmering to optical invisibility.

The landscape before them was barren and gray, visible only by the dim ambient lighting being provided by the ship. It was oddly smooth, dotted with small bits of regolith but otherwise lacking the kind of pitting and cratering that might have been expected from a star‐orbiting rock. Finally, it was cold, almost impossibly so, not that she could feel it—but it was pitch‐black on her infrared channel, except for the footsteps of the troopers that had passed before them.

They did not move out yet, waiting for the soldiers to give them an all‐clear. Still, even the eerie depths of space was a step up from the claustrophobia of the airlock.

Either there were aliens here, Yuma thought, finally addressing the previous observations about the base environment. Or someone wants us to think there were. Either way, what does that mean?

It would neatly explain some of the unusual alien behavior and phenomena we have seen up until now, Rin thought. The unlikely attacks and the stealth device on X‐25, for example. The apparent conclusion is elementary.

But shocking, Jeannette answered. I hate to think anyone would consort with aliens like that.

And there were magical girls involved! Kana thought, letting a deep anger filter into her telepathy. If those insensate brats think they’ve known despair—

Except, as far as we can tell, whatever meeting happened here ended in gunfire, Charlotte thought. Which doesn’t seem to jive with anyone working with the aliens, even if it would explain a lot.

Rin nodded at Charlotte’s comment, smiling slightly.

They were cleared to proceed then, and stepped forward. Most of them paused just after the threshold, pondering the utterly alien experience of standing—almost floating—beneath the depths of space. Within, more accurately.

Yuma couldn’t help but scan the area for traces of magic one last time, despite what Kana had said. She could only sense her team, all doing much the same.

An ordinary station would have never demanded they traipse across the void, of course. Even Adept Blue accepted standard airlock‐to‐airlock docking procedures. But a station like this was trying to hide, and needed to be able to pass off its landing area as just a flat section of rock, with guidance relays cunningly concealed.

They kicked off the ground, drifting forward in the microgravity with more care than the soldiers, reliant on either their magical girl instincts or implant‐mediated experience—it was hard to tell which. None of them mentioned it, but it took a bit of bravery to jump forward into the darkness, even with suit lamps.

Yuma landed first, relying on her suit’s thrusters to stop her momentum, which blew away bits of regolith from the surface. The asteroid caved inward in what looked like a natural formation, before giving way to a rock‐wall causeway, hewn directly out of the guts of the asteroid.

Here the walls were solid iron, cut with hardened metallic bits meters wide. In the absence of oxygen to dull their shine, they gleamed with surfaces smooth enough that Yuma could see a warped version of herself in reflection. Whoever had established this base had understandably chosen the most solid part of the asteroid.

Then they reached the inner airlock, which moved aside in eerie silence to let them pass. Then it was a minute or so of waiting patiently while air filled the room, which was no larger than the one on the HSS Raven.

“This smells terrible,” Charlotte said as she took off her helmet, and Yuma nodded in agreement. They all had military‐grade olfactory augments, and for whatever reason that just didn’t agree with the smell of… nanofilters and air recirculators that hadn’t been used in what might have been nearly two decades.

There was nothing particularly dangerous in the air though, and no traces of magic, so there was nothing to it but to proceed. The narrow passages near the airlock were sheathed with cheap space station composite, glowing dull white to light the way. As before, Yuma found it more unsettling than she cared to admit—it reminded her of black sites from the Unification Wars, the kind of places she preferred to forget.

It was made worse by the fact that they were obliged to wait, standing in place time and time again as the human squad they were with cleared hallways and rooms, a process made slower by strict instructions from Rin to touch as little as possible, lest they disturb evidence.

If all else fails I could attempt some postcognition, Kana thought, commenting on the investigation they were here to perform. You all know how unreliable that is, but it’s probably worth a shot.

Better to give me a look first, Rin thought. We need to do this methodically, if we’re going to do this at all. It’s all about the details.

They weren’t just a random group of Ancients, after all. They all had skills useful in precisely this kind of investigation, coupled with an Ancient’s finesse and breadth of perspective. Yuma could repair broken machinery, Kana could attempt recall of the past, Rose could literally interrogate objects, and Rin excelled at reconstructing events from the smallest of clues, in a way that often put Kana’s more oracular powers to shame, provided she could get her hands on a physical scene.

Unfortunately they were still bound by the universal magical girl constraint: fundamental, frustrating limitations on their abilities. Kana could not directly control the scope of her visions, Rose often could not command her animated creations, Rin could not infer what was beyond the scope of computable logic, and Yuma could not fix what was not actually broken—she could fix data storage that had been physically destroyed, but not recover files that had been deleted, since that was simply part of the device’s function. The edge cases could get infuriatingly arcane, especially for girls like them, who had spent centuries wedging their powers into every crack they could open.

They stepped into one of the abandoned rooms, an unpromising box, covered floor to ceiling with the same material as the hallways. Other than that, nothing: no equipment, no furniture, no fixtures.

“If only every crime scene could have deep space to keep it pristine. It’s not often I get to look at one nearly untouched like this,” Rin said, leaning over to peer at a particularly uneven pile of dust.

Next to her, Jeannette hid a smile behind one hand.

“The drones and troopers touched a bit more than I would wish,” Rin continued. “But they know better than to stomp all over everything. Which is a welcome change from the usual Soul Guard squad.”

Yuma spotted Kana rolling her eyes.

Nothing much here, Rin thought, standing back up and clapping her hands. Looks like it was used primarily for storage, until everything was rushed out. Standard model S‐12 transport crates, and deep space logistics drones from the 2440 generation, judging by the tracks, which gives us at least a lower bound on the date.

Nothing much, Yuma agreed cheekily, allowing Rin to fluff herself up with the understatement.

Rose tapped her foot impatiently against the ground.

They moved on, pausing only briefly to allow Rin to glance over this or that feature of the hallway or an empty room, keeping her thoughts to herself in a way that suggested she had little useful to say. She was a lot more efficient than the classic detective archetype her magic was based on, from a combination of centuries of experience, enhanced senses, and the knowledge that there were more critical things to see—there would be time to come back and dig through the small details, if necessary.

Finally, they arrived at the precipice of one of the more interesting spaces, an unusually long room with a table in the middle, some overturned chairs, and clear damage to the walls, which were made of the kind of higher quality display‐capable material ubiquitous on Earth. The ceilings were also higher, so that Yuma didn’t have to feel like she was constantly about to run her head into something.

“I’m looking forward to this,” Rose said, rubbing her gloved hands together, with the kind of visible excitement some Ancients would kill to feel again.

If there were Ceph here, Rin thought, without preamble, and also Governance Representatives—even if there was a fight, it implies a lot of strange things. For instance, whatever aliens were here, and whatever aliens might be consorting with conspiracies, would clearly be communicating with humans. But there is no other evidence the Cephs have ever tried to communicate with us, or even that they can read our languages, even for military advantage. We had thought that they might be deliberately avoiding cultural contamination by refusing to even do the analysis, but this means there’s at least some aliens who have.

It could just be the High Command, Kana thought, as Rin stepped forward to inspect the area. They certainly wouldn’t be the first to keep things away from the rank‐and‐file. They might just deny combat troops the ability, for political or ideological reasons.

Certainly the combat troops don’t show much evidence of cognitive independence, Rose thought.

You haven’t seen all the files, Arisu thought, almost chidingly. You can’t really think we’ve never tried studying their thoughts? We mind‐control them all the time.

“Damage primarily from human‐style kinetic weaponry,” Rin said, standing up abruptly. “Very unusual indications on the floor and table, nothing I recognize, which is odd in and of itself. Signs of a struggle are obvious. It doesn’t look like whatever fight this was started here—this chair was knocked over by someone falling over while running in from the next room.”

She walked slowly as she talked, until she stood next to the chair in question. Now she pointed down at the floor dramatically.

“This floor has been cleaned. The dust lays on this area a lot thinner, which likely resulted from a greater density of cleaning nanites than elsewhere in the room. But the dust is thicker in the middle, where a lot of them were used up cleaning whatever was here. I could drag this on, but there’s no need to make this more convoluted. Perform a fine‐resolution surface elevation scan with your ocular implants.”

They did so as directed, walking over and standing still for the slightly uncomfortable process of losing direct control of their vision as their eyes traversed the surface, flashing rapidly through a number of wavelengths.

What they saw, of course, was the shape of a body, superimposed on a shallower shape that was, perhaps, a pool of liquid.

“A bit oddly shaped for a human,” Kana said. “Though obviously, this is a rather inexact method. I don’t suppose you can do anything with the cleaning nanites here?”

“Ah, no, this is not something I can manipulate,” Yuma said. “Old, broken‐down cleaning nanites are way too small for my magic. If it’s outside a body at least.”

Jeannette reached out, a bright white spark of magic pulsing between her finger and the ground.

“I thought so. They’re too broken,” Jeannette said, with a trace of unsurprised disappointment.

“Well, let’s see what the furniture has to say,” Rose said, reaching for the chair.

A flash of magic pulsed over the chair and table, which shone white three times, reshaping themselves from a bland utilitarian style—one of those minimum‐resource designs that even Governance thought was boring—into antique, dark wood creations from the Spanish colonial period, unless Yuma missed her guess.

Unlike what one might expect, these enchanted objects did not immediately begin moving or talking or raising serious ethical questions about how to treat semi‐sentient furniture. Rose was simply communing, and they knew better than to ask or probe into what it was she was seeing—she had always been oddly hostile to the question, and those telepaths that had tried generally refused comment.

Well! Rose thought. Chairs are excitable creatures, not super reliable, but this one saw plenty useful. This is exactly what it looks like. A group of aliens were here on relatively peaceful terms, before a fight broke out somewhere and spilled into this room. One of them died here after being shot numerous times.

“Well,” Yuma said, turning the word into an epithet.

Given how early in the war this was, it’s possible this was a clandestine diplomatic effort, especially given the involvement of Governances AIs, Charlotte thought. One can only imagine what the aliens thought of us after this. Perhaps the conspiracy’s involvement here was intended to make diplomacy impossible.

Again, Yuma saw Rin smile slightly, studying the chair with a thoughtful expression.

What kind of species conducts diplomacy by side‐channel, while refusing to perform any form of communication by any obvious channel? Rin asked. As I said, they don’t show evidence of understanding us anywhere else.

To Yuma’s ears the question sounded rhetorical. For someone like Rin, whose wish had been… Holmesian, it implied that she had already followed the chain of reasoning and was leaving a question for the reader, so to speak. Except Yuma couldn’t shake the feeling that there was more than that, that Rin knew more than she was letting on.

Yuma felt ice grip her heart, but grabbed hold of herself quickly. She had to stay objective; even if a paranoid train of thought like that were correct, it did her no good to show it on her face. She would have to study the issue under better circumstances.

Who can say? Rose thought, answering Rin’s question. These are aliens. We should not apply our cultural preconceptions to them. Let’s not spend too long standing here. I want to hear what the next room has to say.

Let’s follow this trail of evidence directly, Rin thought. I can try to track this event back to a source. There will be time later to check every room exhaustively.

There was no objection, so they followed Rin as she stepped gingerly around the area of the chair, towards the threshold at the end of the room where it led back into one of the facility’s connecting hallways.

At the end of the hallway was an even larger room, large enough to serve as a communal dining area. Here, the walls were faux‐wood paneling, and with some decoration and the right furniture it might even have been described as cozy, if it weren’t for the fact that the wall was riddled with weapons damage, this time in enough density that it was clear automatic fire had been involved.

It didn’t require Rin to realize that this room must have been important, and the sheer extent of wall damage suggested it had been a focal point of events. But here the clean‐up job was better done than the previous room—no furniture to interrogate, no telltale traces on the ground. Better done, that is, except for the unrepaired walls.

They didn’t have time to do a thorough job, and could only settle for cleaning up the main scene, Kana thought. But if that’s the case, why bother at all?

Rin bent over to look into one of the holes in the wall.

Type 7 inert antidrone rounds, but fired subsonic, she thought. Perhaps a retrofit onto a civilian drone. In any case, this wasn’t much of a fight—whoever was on the receiving end doesn’t seem to have fired back.

She shook her head.

It was a very messy job, and as Kana said, it makes little sense. If you wanted to conceal what you had done, you either need to destroy the evidence better, or you operate much cleaner. Automatic weapons fire is possibly the worst way to do things.

Which raises the possibility that someone was meant to see this, Yuma said. But they wanted to leave some uncertainty about that.

She didn’t say “we” were meant to see this, though the thought had been in her mind for a while now. Even in the age of AIs and Ancients, no one constructed multi‐decade gambits, not for something as unpredictable as this.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Vlasta, who had sent her a mental ping to catch her attention before she reached the room.

Yuma turned around carefully, leaving the others to continue focusing on Rin’s study of the damage to the room.

“The forensics team is done with their initial inspection of the main computing cluster,” Vlasta said. “They’ve retrieved the data storage they want for further lab work, but there are a few data crystals that warrant your attention, since they appear to have been smashed without having been deleted.”

Rin and the others stopped talking for a moment.

“Well, take me to it then,” Yuma said. “Jeannette, you want to join me?”

Jeannette nodded, striding over after exchanging the briefest of glances with Rin.

They left the rest of the group behind, following Vlasta down a small web of corridors, before reaching a crawlspace freshly‐hewn out of the rock of the asteroid, breaching the seal on a computing cluster that was otherwise only accessible by drone tunnel.

You have got to be kidding me, Yuma lamented to herself. She was already feeling claustrophobic, and now she had to do this?

But she swallowed her disquiet and crouched down, getting on hands and knees to move forward by the light of her suit lamp, though she couldn’t help but reflect that all this would have been much easier if she were just a bit smaller.

She emerged into a pitch‐black alcove just barely large enough for the people there: Vlasta, Yuma, Jeannette, and two others. It too had been hewn out of the rock by the initial drone team, and it was possible to see several other access tunnels.

The members of the forensics team nodded politely, gesturing her towards a tray of data crystals—or rather, what had been data crystals, but were now a collection of jewel‐like shards, shot through with metal latticework and iridescent in the lamp light.

“These are damaged enough that we wouldn’t be able to recover everything,” one of them said. “And that’s with weeks of reconstruction time in the lab. Figure you might give us a bit of a shortcut. We did our best to find all the pieces we could, but we can’t guarantee anything.”

Yuma leaned over, letting her suit hold her upright in what would have otherwise been a difficult posture. She took her time inspecting the shards, tilting her head and even picking one up gingerly, feeling its texture through her gloves’ tactile feedback sheath.

She let herself crack a smile.

“Yeah, that’ll do. Give me a second.”

In a way, healing was the purest of magics. Magical girls intrinsically reversed entropy, and healing wounds was almost literally just that, at least in an oddly focused, limited kind of way. Small wonder that light healing was a well‐trodden avenue in power development.

She held her hands out to the tray, allowing her magic to envelope it in a bright green glow, pieces of crystal levitating off the surface to seek their former partners.

Machines were not that much different from biology, indeed simpler, since even the most abstruse of AI‐created designs rarely equaled the messiness of a cell. At first Yuma had only been able to repair mechanical devices she understood, but as Oriko had once taught her, it only took a small change in perspective, a little bit of mental trickery, to think of machines as injured. And once she did that, her magic grew a lot more adept at filling in the gaps in her knowledge.

Faster and faster the crystals spun in the air, recalling their original configurations, fusing where they touched.

Compared to repairing a human brain, merely piecing together shards of crystal was child’s play, an exercise that could have been done in a Governance lab with enough time. The real magic was in filling in the pieces that were not there, the atoms missing at the joints, the data lost to the entropy of shattering, the crystal slivers now simply gone, still containing vital data. Somehow, that would all return from the void, much as a healer might restore missing synapses, or missing neurons.

Nearly‐complete crystals now hung before her, still missing a chunk here, a few atoms there, and with one final gesture these sealed shut, gaps filling in with radiant green light.

Then the crystals floated back down, landing on the tray with soft thuds. Inside her suit, small servos moved to place fresh grief cubes near the soul gem on her neck. The process had taken a few minutes, much longer than it took her to heal a human.

“Well, let’s take a look,” Yuma said to the two technicians, who were still mesmerized by the show.

One of them hastened over, raising one arm over the crystals. What looked like a small spigot nozzle emerged from a compartment on the side, tilting over to scan a crystal with a small burst of light.

“Hmm, still non‐trivial,” the technician said. “There is another layer of obfuscation here, distributing information across multiple crystals. Not something you see too much of nowadays—you tend to see either straight‐up quantum cryptography or just not bothering at all.”

“Right, but in a situation where you can’t store keys somewhere off‐site, it’s not reliable enough security to encrypt static data,” Jeannette said. “You still have to store the key somewhere, and quantum encryption only guarantees someone can’t fiddle with it while transmitting without you noticing.”

“Yes, with no off‐site storage, they probably didn’t feel they could put it anywhere safe enough,” the technician said. “So they had to do something a bit more traditional.”

“How much of an effect will this have on reading the data?” Yuma asked.

“It will make it harder, at the very least,” the technician said, diligently scanning the remaining crystals. “And even with your, er, contributions, if we don’t have the pieces necessary to reconstruct some files, then they’re just lost.”

Yuma made an annoyed expression, but made sure not to look too unhappy. This kind of thing was no one’s fault but the enemy’s.

“How long will it take?” she asked.

“A couple of hours, less if I take it to a starship computing cluster for processing. However, we can stream the results as they come in.”

Yuma nodded.

“Keep me posted,” she said, turning to leave.

Before she had even managed to bend over to enter the crawlspace, however, she stopped, frowning at a new set of notifications from the cordon ships.

“What?” she asked, out loud, long seconds later.

Several human ships had been detected, appearing at the limit of sensor range on inbound FTL trajectories that made it clear they were heading for the asteroid.

For a moment, she had feared the worst—that they had been discovered, that they were about to come under attack, that they might be doomed.

But then, more information had arrived. These weren’t state‐of‐the‐art military vessels, or unknowns. In fact, Yuma knew these designs well—they were MSY paramilitary, or more precisely, the “civilian” designs the MSY used when it wanted to conduct its own operations with teeth, updated versions of the models they had used at New Athens.

And as for what they were doing here…

“What the hell are you doing here?” Yuma shouted into the connection the instant it was established.

Kyouko couldn’t help but smile a little at Yuma’s consternation, projected all over an angry, teenage face she hadn’t seen in centuries. It brought back warm memories.

She covered her smile with one hand, however. Mirth would have been inappropriate, both because it might make Yuma angrier and… well, the current situation wasn’t one where she could afford to be careless. Especially after her small flotilla had found it so hard just to establish communications in the first place.

The standard protocol at this range was for starships to exchange a quick series of messages via IIC, establishing who would fly where and who was allowed to approach.

But, lacking a direct IIC wormhole link to each other, that would require routing through a nonlocal IIC node, probably Yenisei—which was a potential dead giveaway about strange activity going on nearby.

There was a backup protocol, usually used by ships with disabled IIC transceivers. It involved patterned FTL sensor pings, and Yuma’s perimeter ships reacted first, sending a message asking who they were.

Once that was made clear, another message directed Kyouko’s ships to stop a dozen light‐minutes away, except for a single ship that would fly in and exchange an IIC wormhole pair. A meaningful, but understandable level of paranoia.

Further messages informed them not to be alarmed by gravitational anomalies on‐site—the result of some unexplained site security measure—and for Kyouko to stand by for an open channel once the local IIC connection was established.

In retrospect, she should have expected that she would get an earful.

“I’m here tracking a lead,” Kyouko said. “Have you checked your equipment? I have.”

She had to assume Yuma would catch the meaning of that, that they needed to be sure both sides of this local communication had equipment they were sure wasn’t compromised.

Yuma gave her an appraising look.

“Yes, of course. I’m surprised you checked yours. Was it with magic?”

“Yes,” Kyouko said, relaxing. “Of course. Is there some other way?”

Yuma seemed to have her attention distracted for a moment, turning to address someone behind her. She appeared to be walking somewhere.

“We can talk about that later. You were following a lead?”

Kyouko took a moment to gather her thoughts.

“Yes. Nadya Antipova was following up on some of Joanne Valentin’s old travels, which at one point took her to the nearby planet of Yenisei. While there, she heard about a local sighting that sounded very much like Misa Virani. We did not find her, but we did find a mysterious outpost that she had destroyed, invisible to local Governance. From data crystals at the site, we recovered a set of coordinates. And… that’s pretty much it. I’m just following up. Didn’t think it was safe to come out here without a few ships.”

She could see a look of skepticism in Yuma’s eyes—she probably thought Kyouko wasn’t telling the whole truth.

“Look, I know it sounds pretty coincidental, but that’s really all there is to it,” Kyouko said. “I’d be happy to share the data files, what little there is, and Nadya’s here with me, she’ll vouch for what I say. I take it you’re here for similar reasons?”

Yuma stopped walking and crossed her arms, giving Kyouko a laser‐like stare.

After all, what was Yuma doing here? There simply hadn’t been time for Kyouko to give her any updates on the Cult’s investigation—not with the person‐to‐person security it took to avoid potential TCF‐related breaches, not given Yuma’s newfound penchant for travel, spurning her usual haunts on Earth.

Yuma might have come across the same coordinates on her own, but the coincidence involved there was… shocking, to say the least. Kyouko was here, after all, because Misa’s demolition work—likely assigned by Homura—just happened to spare a couple data crystals.

Did that mean…

She dismissed the thought. Yuma being part of the TCF‐breaching conspiracy, Yuma working for Homura—whether or not these ideas made logical sense, they had been in plenty of crazier situations before, and she had never seen any reason to believe Yuma had anything but the best intentions at heart. Yuma was the one that had warned her about the TCF breach, after all.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t up to something, though.

Kyouko’s ship had informed her that, strangely enough, Yuma’s transmission was showing minor signal delay, exactly as if standard EM was being used between the asteroid and Yuma’s perimeter ships. Kyouko couldn’t imagine why.

Yuma finally gave up her stare.

“Pretty much,” she said. “I was following a lead too. One related to whoever has been breaching Governance security. It occurs to me…”

She paused rhetorically, letting Kyouko know she wanted her to listen.

“It occurs to me that I shouldn’t be so surprised to meet you here. After all, TCF corruption is something that affects us all, and Valentin seemed interested in helping us combat it, regardless of whatever else she was doing. Valentin, or frankly, should we say, Homura?”

Kyouko blinked, peering at Yuma in her mind’s eye. Valentin’s letter had come close to stating the truth outright, but it still felt odd to hear Yuma just say it.

She knew, though, what this was about.

“Yes, Tanaka‐san reported on the letter to me,” she said. “It was about Homura, after all, and she thought I was need‐to‐know. Does that bother you?”

Yuma’s gaze stayed fixed on her for a long moment, something Yuma had to know was unsettling.

“Well, yes,” she said. “Tanaka‐san knew it was a sensitive matter, and there’s no official ‘share everything with Kyouko’s Cult’ rule. I don’t remember agreeing that all my secrets would be shared like this. How am I ever supposed to trust working with one of you again?”

Yuma’s wording was abrasive, but she was still talking, and in retrospect, Kyouko could see where she was coming from.

“I’m sorry,” Kyouko said, bowing her head slightly. “I know how much your secrecy means to you. I just… well, you know, with Homura gone…”

Kyouko trailed off.

“We have processes for containing the spread of information,” she eventually continued, “and the truly dangerous stuff I’ve kept to myself. Besides, we never got a chance to sync up. I tried, but you left Earth, and we couldn’t trust the communication lines, and we’d been working on this conspiracy stuff together for months already, so…”

She knew it sounded like excuse‐making, but Yuma still needed to hear it.

“Besides,” she said, capping her argument. “Do you really think we could be behind any of this weird stuff? I thought you knew me better than that.”

“Not that,” Yuma said, shaking her head. “But that doesn’t mean you’re not working with someone else. You never told me Mami was paying you visits. What exactly does that magical artifact of yours do to people?”

Kyouko blinked, then cringed, pursing her lips.

This conversation was too one‐sided. She was the one that had done all the sharing. But… Yuma wasn’t big on trust. Something that Kyouko understood a bit, at least.

“I won’t bullshit you,” Kyouko said. “The only answer I can give to you you’ll dismiss as religious. It connects us to our Goddess, lets Her speak to us, and grants visions, but nothing more, least as far as I can tell. Mami hasn’t shared what she’s seen with me, but she saw something. That’s enough.”

Nothing she hadn’t said before, and she half‐expected Yuma to explode at her.

Yuma did looked displeased, but almost rather like she expected it, and surprised Kyouko by continuing the discussion.

“I’ve never really pressed you on this, because it’s a private decision, and honestly, I thought having some meaning in your life, even fake meaning, was worthwhile,” Yuma said.

She clasped her hands over her mouth, the gesture visible over their internal projections.

“But I can’t let that go anymore,” she said. “The stakes are too high and there’s too many people wrapped up in this. How do you know these ‘visions’ aren’t some kind of magical effect? Maybe even someone trying to manipulate you? Remember, it came from Homura. I wouldn’t put it past her to be able to put together something like that. I hope you’ve considered the possibility.”

Kyouko turned the notion over in her head, not so much the idea itself—which occurred to her even at the very beginning—but what it implied about Yuma’s mindstate.

“Of course I have,” she said. “But even she couldn’t have put together some of the contents of these visions, and more to the point, we have never been able to find any actual magic on the Ribbon, at least not the kind we can detect. It’s just… not very likely. If you want, I can send you our records on the matter.”

Yuma didn’t look very convinced, but there was nothing else for Kyouko to usefully say. It just wasn’t that convincing, not unless you had seen a vision yourself, or were naturally inclined towards faith.

“Look, this is all kinda not the real point,” Kyouko said, trying to break the conversational impasse. “This whole thing so far has just been you grilling me about why I’m here and the Church and Homura and whatever, and I don’t deserve most of it. I could just as easily ask about how you got here, but I won’t, because it ain’t really that important if you don’t want to share.”

She made a show of stretching a little, clasping her arms behind her head.

“So, you want to let us take a look at what you’ve found? I’m sure you’ve already got everybody you need, but another helping hand is always nice. What kind of magic you got with you?”

She saw Yuma’s eyes start to narrow, the corners twitching slightly before she got them under control.

“There’s no need for anyone else on site,” Yuma said, shaking her head. “We have enough security problems as it is.”

She rubbed her eyes as if she had a headache, and started visibly moving again, perhaps pacing.

“I hate it, but I’m going to have to rely on your cult to keep our presence here a secret. Too much rides on it. In return, I’ll tell you what I find, okay? Just you, though. Tell the rest of your ships to go back.”

“No, not just like that,” Kyouko said, rubbing her own forehead. “Look, I’ve made enough bad decisions to learn when things need a bit more thinking, and we haven’t thought about this enough. At least stop and think about this a second.”

Yuma closed her eyes for what Kyouko worried was an exact, literal second, but when they opened again she could tell the girl had acceded to her logic. The two of them had started interrogating each other almost the instant they came within sensor range, and that just… wasn’t a good way to make decisions.

“Now that I think about it, this is really fishy,” Kyouko said. “I don’t know exactly how you were led here, but I’d bet you scoured some site, recovered these coordinates, and found little else. So either we both got the same tidbit from the big crapsack of secrets these guys don’t want us to find… or we both got precisely what they did want us to find. I know you don’t believe in coincidences on this scale.”

“I don’t,” Yuma said, shaking her head. “But as you say, you don’t know how I was led here. It wasn’t in a way that’s easy to rig. Someone would have had to correctly predict everything we were doing, or track us without being noticed. I don’t think either is very likely.”

Yuma seemed to relax bit, eyes softening.

“Look, I know it feels strange, but I just don’t see it. Even if this is a set‐up, a set‐up for what, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” Kyouko admitted, rubbing her cheek. “An assassination attempt, maybe. Someone already tried against me, once. It’s been more than once if you count other incidents. And you remember what the Far Seers said, right? Someone has more information about the future than should be possible.”

Someone other than us, maybe, Kyouko thought, but did not say. The Church hoarded its grains of future‐knowledge, carefully gleaned from a too‐miserly Goddess.

“If it’s an assassination attempt, that’s all the more reason for you to head back immediately,” Yuma said. “Best not to give a concentrated target.”

Kyouko blinked once, twice. The logic didn’t make sense.

“If you’re trying to get rid of me, that’s a pretty stupid way to do it,” she said, letting real annoyance seep into her voice. “If that’s really what’s going on, we should all be leaving. Leave the lower‐level personnel here to investigate. Kind of a shitty move, but wouldn’t be the first time we’ve let others take the risk for us. Not even close.”

“What’s going on here is too important, too sensitive to just be left behind,” Yuma said. “And I brought investigation specialists. It will only take a little while longer to finish.”

“Well, then I’m not leaving,” Kyouko said. “We’re already here, and I brought way more firepower than you did.”

She made sure to look directly into Yuma’s virtual eyes, a contest of wills carried out remotely.

“Suit yourself,” Yuma said. “We’ll meet up after I’m done.”

Yuma cut the connection, leaving Kyouko to sit there, for a moment alone in an empty room with her thoughts.

“You finished in there?” Maki asked, from somewhere outside.

“Yeah,” she said, leaning back in her chair.

The door slid open, and Maki stepped through, shaking her head ruefully.

“When you asked me to come with you, you said there would be some things you had to keep secret,” Maki said, crossing her arms. “And I accepted that, since you said there wouldn’t be that much.”

“Yeah, look,” Kyouko said, kneading her forehead. “Everyone already knows that Yuma is already there, and she won’t budge on letting us get any closer. Yet. She promises she’ll share what she finds. That’s honestly the main details, but there’s a lot of stuff on the side that it isn’t safe to spread around. Even to you. Sorry. It’s business.”

“Hmm, seems like a lot of sneaking around for ‘business’,” Maki said, putting a hand on her shoulder. It was a gesture of familiar intimacy, of a kind that Kyouko wasn’t really used to.

Kyouko gave a half‐hearted shrug with the other shoulder.

“These are strange times,” she said. “You know about the people who tried to kill me. You know why the Church is here. We can’t be too careful.”

She paused, weighing whether to say what she was thinking.

She hadn’t wanted to bring Maki, of course. The reason was the same as it always was—it wasn’t safe. As an Ancient, Kyouko could handle herself. She expected the same of other Ancients, mere competency from centenarians, and much, much less of anyone younger than that. This meant that, in a risky scenario, Maki wasn’t just likely to be useless, she was also likely to get herself in trouble and weigh everyone down.

That was her instinctive reaction, at least. On further consideration, the matter wasn’t as simple as that. Like most of her generation, Maki had serious military training, simulation time included, something that much of Kyouko’s generation had opted out of. Kyouko herself had only participated in a “skinny” version, focusing on the aspects of command she was most likely to ever be involved in.

Beyond that, if she was honest, there was a certain… reluctance she had to involving Maki in this aspect of her life. It felt like breaching the wall between two parts of her she had always kept separate, between the kooky, profligate persona that she used to destress, and the version of her that had to grudgingly admit that, yes, she was an Ancient, and old as the hills.

She didn’t like what that meant.

She had to say something, though. These kinds of things had a way of being said eventually anyway, so you were better off keeping control of the matter.

“I’m not sure I should have brought you,” she said, finally, sighing. “I think that’s fair for me to say? You can see the danger here.”

Maki nodded once, slowly.

“Yes, it’s dangerous, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be here. It’s not like I don’t have combat experience. I have this new body to thank the labs for, remember?”

“Don’t remind me,” Kyouko said, nervously rubbing her human‐original hair.

“Right, so, if you can be mad at me for putting myself in danger, I can do the same. You knew there might be a trap out here. You came anyway. Why?”

Maki crossed her arms, with the frowning gesture of a mother berating a child.

“I had to oversee things,” Kyouko said, flattening her lips.

“Bullshit. You have plenty of people to oversee things for you—just like you did for X‐25. Mami‐san is the only one of you Ancients with enough sense to delegate.”

Kyouko started to point out how ridiculous the criticism was, but bit it down, knowing that it was at least mostly founded.

“Fine,” she said. “I don’t like it, but fine.”

“You want to stay with me, you’re not going to like everything,” Maki said, leaning into her.

They stayed there, briefly, Maki’s hair coiling into hers.

Inside the asteroid, Yuma was holding a hasty conference with her confidants.

The technician had found something on the healed data crystals, and had insisted Yuma view it immediately, even in incomplete form.

After downloading the small video, a very short, truncated clip of surveillance footage, she had understood what had gotten the technician so riled up, and assembled her magical girl team at the site where events had taken place, conveniently one of the rooms they had already visited.

They stood silently, arms crossed, their implants creating a shared holographic vision of events long gone.

The table was arranged for what was clearly a formal yet somber event, draped with a dark blue cloth and decorated with two pitchers of water. On it, a spherical device balanced precariously, its geometry of obvious alien design.

At that table sat three humans, the avatars of Governance AIs, one of them MG, and two Cephalopods, wearing colorful, cloth‐like material and strange metal adornments, which marked them as distinct from any other alien Yuma had ever seen. The garments most resembled tunics, except with more intricate folds and with obvious allowances for alien physiology.

“We are here because we think we have been betrayed,” the device said, in Human Standard. “There was supposed to be a message delivered, before the war, but we do not think it ever was. There is, we suspect, a third party involved. We wanted to verify—”

And there the video ended, only a fragment of a file after all. The simulated bodies of its subjects stayed frozen in place, and for a long moment, so did the magical girls surrounding them, digesting the information presented.

“I told him to get back to Raven,” Yuma said, “and to use whatever resources he needed to try to read the rest of the data crystals. I’ve already risked a transmission back to Nova Terra with the video and a sum—”

Whatever she would have said next was lost then, as Kana tilted her head upwards, mouth opening as her arms snapped outward, grabbing Rin and Arisu by their arms. Time skidded nearly to a halt as Yuma’s combat reflexes came online, but even as she transformed, the three of them disappeared from sight.

Her mind hastened to parse the situation, leaning on both her magical girl abilities and Governance implants. Kana, like many of her age and type, had filled out the telecluster at some point and was a capable teleporter, but what was she doing? What could possibly—

The world around her jerked as a telekinetic force sent her flying into the air. She stopped herself with magic, hanging suspended ever so briefly, before a still‐untransformed Jeannette smashed into her.

She’s wasting time worrying about Rin, some part of her reasoned, combat hyperspeed used for an almost mundane thought.

Charlotte, get them back to the ship! Kana thought with the same acceleration.

Yuma processed instantly that Charlotte had been grouping them for a teleport, reached out to Rose‐Merline’s outstretched, oncoming hand, and then they reappeared on the HSS Raven that same instant, only fractions of a second since Kana had vanished. Only then did Kyouko’s messages begin to arrive, leaden with transmission‐delay and loaded with diagrams of two Raptor missiles on inbound trajectories, ones which should have already concluded.

Kana and the others must have handled the missiles, she realized. There was no way they could have ever survived even a glancing hit or nearby detonation.

Raven, already taking off, informed her that Arisu had teleported both missiles beyond the asteroid, engines telekinetically crippled, aided by Kana’s clairvoyance and Rin’s magic‐grade computations.

Yuma dropped into a command chair, establishing a connection before most of her interface ports had even aligned.

For a moment, she saw the world with her fleet’s eyes, picket ships shearing apart under a wave of attacks from an unseen assailant, until whatever sensors she was using vanished too.

Squid, she thought.

Ryouko turned her head, adjusting a mental dial that controlled perceived helmet transparency. As she looked over the rest of her MagOps squad, their faces faded slightly, blending into the absurd color and pomp of transformed armor.

They sat in the hold of their ship, in seats laid out in rows along the two walls, which were tuned to a soothing blue to conserve power. The half‐dozen or so veterans were silent, expressions stoically bored. The odd one out was Amane, one of their barrier generators, who seemed to be sharing a private joke with the girl next to her, the both of them smiling.

Simona, on the other hand, looked jittery, clasping and unclasping her hands.

The ship shook, throwing them briefly against their harnesses and sending their bones rattling with a cracking noise that seemed to echo in their skulls. Simona held onto her harness with both hands, eyes closed.

Something had glanced against their shielding, but there was no serious damage.

Ryouko sighed, rubbing her hands to relieve some of the tension.

No plan in war survived contact with the enemy. So it proved, when the pioneer ships had immediately run into a thin shell of small, carefully‐spaced transition metal asteroids.

In human terms, they were puny—individual rocks at most a few centimeters in diameter, spaced an average of a tenth of a kilometer apart.

In astronomical terms, that was unnaturally dense, and the speed of the orbit meant that an inopportune collision—for instance, into a rock traveling in an anti‐parallel orbit—involved the energy equivalent of a moderate‐size nuclear weapon. Hazardous for navigation by magical girl and frigate alike, and not safe to pilot human cruisers into.

It had been expected that the pulsar would have long ago cleared its inner orbits, or if it hadn’t, that the aliens certainly would have—a cloud of relativistic debris was no one’s idea of safety. Long‐range gravimetrics had seemingly borne that out. But while Asami’s data had proven remarkably accurate on the whole, it hadn’t been precise enough to detect the debris’ scant total mass.

Fortunately, someone in the bevy of planning AIs had thought of this possibility, that the aliens would introduce an asymmetric environmental hazard—for example, by sacrificing their space‐time cargo cruisers as suicide missiles. With home field advantage and better shielding, such a tactic would give the aliens a temporary leg up.

The fleet had thus been able to adjust its approach immediately, its cruisers pulling back to give priority to an assortment of specialized defense frigates and drones that would clear out orbits. There could be no delay, no time wasted regrouping.

For a moment, Ryouko had even thought they had the problem handled.

Then the aliens deployed their second defensive measure.

“I have to hand it to them, they are extremely creative,” Simona transmitted, eschewing her suit’s speaker system, perhaps because she didn’t trust herself to speak.

Ryouko didn’t respond right away, clinging onto her straps as their frigate, the HSS María Orosa, lurched sideways.

Rather than defend the pulsar’s inner orbit conventionally, the aliens had somehow turned the gravity modulators themselves into weapons, emitting massive pulses that sent everything in orbit—ships, debris, alien attack drones—into chaotic, spiraling trajectories, making it a struggle just to avoid getting too close to the star or hurled into a hyperbolic orbit. Magical girls that had been caught outside their ships had been flung away—some had not made it back, and their fates weighed on the mood of the fleet.

It also meant that Ryouko had to wait here, effectively useless, as her ship lurched this way and that to control their trajectory among a hailstorm of debris and gravitational distortions. They couldn’t even watch—the ship was far too busy to feed them real‐time updates, updates they couldn’t even understand without extensive cognitive offloading to their TacComps and suits.

“We’re losing time,” Simona added. “This is supposed to be a lightning operation, and we’re just bleeding sitting here. We give them time to get external reinforcements and we’re toast. We might not even be able to leave.”

That last comment referred to the effect the gravitational anomalies might have on opening the wormhole to go back. If they needed to destroy the modulators just to open the wormhole again, then that meant the mission was win or die, a notion that cast all they were doing in sharp relief.

“The fleet knows that,” Ryouko said, simply. She knew where Simona was coming from, the nervousness of being in your first, real combat operation, surrounded by veterans who seemed preternaturally cool.

Their MagOps team was the only one still on standby. It was mission‐critical that the two of them stay together with Asami, who was needed on the bridge, wired into the Command Gestalt so she could relay what she saw with her magic.

The rest of the fleet had begun operations, despite the conditions. Ships began attack runs, teams with teleporter support began to insert, names Ryouko knew: Azrael, Mina, Annabelle…

But they waited, even as the casualty numbers slowly climbed. The veterans took it in stride, but it wore on Simona and, honestly, Ryouko too.

“The waiting takes some getting used to,” one of their squadmates said, as if following the train of thought. “But the fleet knows better than any of us, and so we have to just trust them.”

The girl shrugged, then gestured with her helmet at the girl beside her.

“I can’t even say I disagree with the fleet about staying here. We were assigned to you VIPs for a reason.”

That was Zheng Ying‐zhi, an alumnus of the wormhole stabilizer mission, and one of the few familiar faces on Ryouko’s team. Reputation and experience meant that she was the squad leader, the chains of command clear despite their hodgepodge of nearly homogeneous ranks and physical ages, all around eighteen.

“That being said, I do believe they’re about to free us to deploy.”

“About time,” Amane said. “I’m tired of sitting here watching these two lose their minds. Getting outside will be good for them.”

“They’re not your kids, Amane.”

“Are you sure? Don’t be misled just because they look like adults.”

Simona chuckled nervously, and Ryouko shook her head in feigned dismissal, closing her eyes to check her fleet uplink.

She took in the full cost‐benefit report from the fleet, the information surging into her local implant memory faster than her synapses could have normally managed. She appreciated, briefly, the extra processing Clarisse now had access to, even if it came at the cost of the body she was used to.

The alien’s tactics had delayed them substantially, and only five of the twenty‐four gravity modulators had been crippled so far. At the current rate, they would not finish before alien reinforcements arrived, and would face a nightmare: sacrificing much of the fleet for a long shot pulsar glitch or, lacking a wormhole, simply dying, without hope for even a suicidal victory.

As such, the fleet needed every last insertion team in action, and they were the best—a strike force with humanity’s premier gravity mage and teleporter could do a lot of work. Everyone else would just have to do without Asami’s command chair input, and traverse the gravitational chaos on their own.

Ryouko was standing up before she had even finished digesting the report, her squadmates doing likewise, grouping around her.

Asami appeared moments later, visibly unhappy, the sour expression strange on a more adult face. Ryouko had almost gotten used to how much older she looked now, but it still felt weird.

“It’s happening, we’re cleared to engage,” Asami said, stepping into place for the teleport.

She took a deep breath.

“Alright then, let’s… go and get ourselves killed, I suppose.”

Amane grabbed her by the shoulder, the slap of gauntlet on suit making an audible thunk.

“What you mean is, let’s go and save the human race,” she said, making it sound almost like a rebuke, before softening her tone:

“You’ll be fine out there,” she said.

Asami smiled faintly.

“Thanks, Amane.”

“We have a job to do today,” Ying‐zhi said, reaching out to tap her fist against the shoulder pads of the newer magical girls. “In our souls we know that we’re going to do it right and do it well. That’s all there really is to it. We are ready for this.”

It was a speech in miniature, sappy without magical glamour to support it, but it did some of its job, lifting spirits by the sheer fact that someone was willing to say it, and even seemed to believe it.

It reminded her of something Clarisse van Rossum had done once, even if it felt like a lifetime ago. Had she grown since then?

Asami managed a slight smile, and Simona looked less shaky, so Ryouko decided it was a good time to close her eyes and concentrate on the ensuing teleport. She controlled the unofficial countdown, synchronized over their combat interface.

She took a breath, accepting a set of coordinates from the ship AI, catching the briefest of glimpses of where they would land. It was deep within the bowels of an alien station, near the center of a small, habitable pocket of rooms.

What happened next was fast even by their standards.

As she arrived, kneeling to recharge her soul gem, her teammates laced the perimeter with a killing density of magic, fire and shield wall coupling with a distorting blast that locked the world around them briefly in place. This was no stealth insertion.

Then it became apparent that the effort had been mainly overkill, and there had been no meaningful defenses lying in wait. Instead, the corpses of alien personnel lay where they fell, only a few in armor. It seemed even the aliens couldn’t saturation garrison everything, especially not when it came to numerous kilometer‐size installations far in the rear.

It felt… anticlimactic, somehow.

Ryouko frowned as she stood back up. Asami and Simona moved immediately to the side of the room that connected with the gravity modulator, while the others fanned out to guard the entrances and clear the hallways. At the wormhole stabilizer there had been nuclear devices embedded in the base itself, ready to sterilize any surprise insertions—no one around the pulsar had yet encountered anything so potent.

Ryouko looked around at the bodies around her, the rounded alien architecture, the odd clothing some of them wore. It wasn’t quite like the simulations—she had been presented with no chance to kill anything herself, and lacking that bloodlust she felt only a strange pity.

She watched Asami set to work, summoning a black hole and sending it directly into the wall, through which it tore an efficient fist‐sized hole. The simulations had frequently included a beautiful transparent viewing panel, and Ryouko found herself sad that she wouldn’t get a chance to see the modulator directly—reportedly, it looked less like an FTL core, and more like an elegant orrery.

Ryouko knelt down again, inspecting one of the alien bodies at her feet.

How ordinary it looked! It was strange to say about what was, after all, an alien race with four arms—or rather, tentacles. But the creature lay prostrate on the ground, and while the skin was a rubbery gray‐green, the eyes had pupils, and it had died grasping the leg of a chair with, basically, hands. Ichor, smelling mostly of copper, painted the scene in the color of her soul gem.

In truth, that was all familiar. What was less familiar was the robe‐like garment it wore, covered in blue and green curlicues with a brown border, a design wholly unlike the utilitarian designs she was used to.

Looking down at it all, it was hard to be intimidated. She found herself lifting one of the arms. To a magical girl, or even to a human soldier, it was like lifting a small furniture cubelet.

Briefly, she imagined throwing the body into the wall. Perhaps that would get her into more of the combat mood.

Then she spotted Simona looking at her, and stood back up.

“Something seem wrong?” Simona asked, with a trace of nervousness.

“No, I’m just musing, I guess,” Ryouko responded.

She felt a strange guilt, knowing that it wasn’t really an answer, and that Simona was uneasy. In her shoes, she would have wanted some more details.

“It’s just, I find it difficult at times like these not to think how similar they are to us. They’re not like Incubators, they clearly have technicians and all that. And yet…”

And yet they came to kill us, Amane thought, eavesdropping on their conversation from across the room. I’ve wondered these things too, but in the end it doesn’t matter. Even if the squid did deign to talk to us, what would it change?

“It’s a shame,” Asami said, oblivious to the conversation behind her. “Imagine what we could learn if we could just take one of these home.”

She was referring to the gravity modulator, of course. By now they were used to these kinds of comments, so they said nothing, Simona with her hand on Asami’s suit to add power, Ryouko standing by for the extraction.

To Ryouko, Asami seemed even more detached than usual, eerily focused on her task—her way of coping, perhaps, with the tension of the situation.

She felt a wave of nausea, and glimpsed the world around her stretching slightly, or maybe it was her own eyes. It passed before her implants even needed to recalibrate.

Gravity distortion, Clarisse thought, even though she had already been fed that information subconsciously. Clocks went wild for a second too, we were at ninety percent reference clock speed for about four hundred milliseconds, local.

That’s normal, Ryouko thought, comparing against the telemetry from some of the other teams.

“I’m done,” Asami said.

“Then let’s get out of here,” Simona said, somewhat unnecessarily, as the rest of their group gathered around Ryouko.

Ryouko couldn’t help share the sentiment. Something about this place unnerved her.

They returned to their ship then, after as clean an engagement as they could have possibly hoped for.

But unlike even some of the more pessimistic scenarios envisioned in the simulations, they weren’t able to operate outside the ship, which made insertion a slower, more delicate task. As envisioned, they would have had the luxury of spending some time spaceborne, using randomized sequential teleports to make their approach and target much less predictable. Instead, that had to be done purely through ship maneuvers, which took longer to achieve the same effect.

For better or worse, that gave her more time to think, as the group cleansed their soul gems and reviewed the state of the operation as a whole. Fortunately, the loss of six more modulators—to make eleven so far, just under half the total—meant the aliens’ gravity hurling effects were weaker, and they didn’t need to strap in just to avoid slamming into bulkheads.

After all the simulations, after an extremely tumultuous insertion, that modest turn in their favor felt surreal, even if, in some sense, they had needed that breakthrough in the battle. They had needed it to be the case that further gravity modulators could be picked off in more‐or‐less rapid succession, without punishing losses. Now, they simply needed to maintain their new pace.

Did that mean they had things under control, or that they were desperate?

“You’re looking melancholy,” Amane said, appearing next to her.

She looked up. Amane had her helmet off, smiling as she lifted what had once been a Breaker laser cannon, magically transfigured into an assemblage of brass and moving gears that… still did pretty much the same thing, just with magical girl fire rate and specs. As she watched, it vented a bit of steam.

It looked picturesque, she thought. Almost as if it were out of a movie. Helmet off, winning smile, the backdrop of the ship’s armory to fill in the negative space, racks and racks of conventional infantry weapons, should they choose to bring any.

Except…

“Shouldn’t you have your helmet on?” Ryouko asked. “I might need to do an emergency teleport at any time.”

Amane shrugged, the embellished smile fading.

“If that were really a concern, we would be standing together, not scattered about the ship. Besides, don’t you trust a barrier generator to be ready for this sort of thing?”

She made a flexing motion with one arm, as if it was even possible to see anything under the layers of armor. Ryouko made sure to roll her eyes slightly.

“Really though, I’d like to know what you’re thinking about,” Amane said, leaning over. “You seem off.”

Ryouko thought about it, feeling a trace of annoyance.

“I guess I’m just a bit overwhelmed. Am I supposed to look happy or something? Why don’t you ask Simona or Asami? They look more nervous than I do.”

The girl’s smile faded entirely. With a flash of magic, her weapon shrunk in size enough that she could sling it on her back.

“Yeah, I guess I’m overstepping a little, but their reactions I understand. You, you’re just sitting here. That’s a new one for me.”

Ryouko couldn’t give the whole truth, about the visions or the foreboding, or the thoughts she had to entertain about possibly being protected, even while the others weren’t. She couldn’t quite feel the same as them.

“Despite my reputation,” she said, the words sounding strange even as she said them, “I have not been in that much combat. Not really, only a few missions. I don’t know what to do with myself. I know it’s not supposed to be a great time or anything, it’s just… tense.”

“I’ve read your files,” Amane said. “And I know you know that. If that’s all it were I wouldn’t be saying anything.”

She seemed to mull over what to say, then put her helmet back on, the interlocks closing silently.

“I’m not as good at reading people as one of the older folks,” Amane said, through her speakers this time, “but if I had to guess, you feel like we expect you to be a hero, after what happened at Orpheus. Trust me, you don’t have to live up to that. All we see is a kid on one of her first missions. You don’t have to prove anything—just stick with us, and we’ll see you through this. That’s all we expect. Let me and Yingling take the pressure.”

Ryouko nodded, as if she agreed with the sentiment, feeling like a liar. There was no way she could really explain.

“Call me that again and I’ll throw you into the star myself,” Ying‐zhi said, marking her entrance with a pantomimed punch into Amane’s gut. “Who told you about that nickname?”

“I have my sources,” Amane said. She put both hands over her stomach in mock agony, winking at Ryouko.

“How about this?” Ying‐zhi asked. “No more nicknames for the rest of the mission, and I’ll bail you out of this conversation. Give Ryouko some real advice.”

“Sounds like a lose‐lose to me,” Amane said. But she left the armory nonetheless, giving Ryouko a wave goodbye and taking a pistol off the far rack.

Ying‐zhi turned to look at Ryouko, and Ryouko wondered if there was a non‐awkward way to ask her not to take off her helmet, or if it was safer just not to bring it up at all.

“I heard what she said,” Ying‐zhi said. “She’s not wrong, but I was with you on that mission. I know there’s another side to you. I’m sure you’ll find it.”

She gave Ryouko a reassuring shoulder pat, and this time Ryouko shrugged vaguely, again concealing her true reaction.

A different side? Ryouko thought. I mainly just remember going berserk when a teammate died.

I don’t have to tell you you’re letting it get to you too much, Clarisse thought. You shouldn’t brood like this.

Clarisse’s tone was neutral, but Ryouko heard the rebuke anyway. Perhaps a bit of worry, too, not quite tucked away. It was harder to tell with Clarisse out of the hologram form that had become so familiar on Adept Blue.

“I’ll do what I need to do,” Ryouko said, standing up. The decisiveness was even mostly authentic.

“That’s my girl,” Ying‐zhi said, smiling and raising her hand, on top of which appeared… what seemed to be a cartoonish hologram of Ryouko herself, giving a thumbs‐up sign.

“I found this on the net,” she said. “You have fans out there. Don’t take too long. We’ll need you soon.”

They seem to have totally different ideas of what you need, Clarisse thought, as Ying‐zhi restocked and left the armory as well. I suppose that’s fair, since you don’t really know either. You may as well head out; it’s nearly time.

As she stepped out of the room, she nearly collided with Simona, who jumped backward in surprise.

“Sorry,” she said, as they instinctively tried to make eye contact, and then immediately broke it.

Ryouko turned to join the others, and Simona followed.

It’s not easy, being out here, Simona thought. I thought I knew what it was like to be in dangerous situations, but the waiting, the tension, is something else. I… envy you your place in things. Me, all I can do is pick a single green light to guide me.

Ryouko blinked, glad Simona couldn’t see her expression. The subtext was, well, obvious, and it took her a moment to notice what Simona had said about envy.

“I’ll try to live up to those expectations,” she said. “Most of them, at least.”

Yet again, she couldn’t admit the truth. She had some idea of what her place was in the world. It just hadn’t made things much better.

That was a scary thought.

It was with relief that she remembered that the mission timer in her subconscious was running out. The jump window was brief; it was time to go.

They stepped into the rec area, where the other girls had gathered.

“We all ready?” Ying‐zhi asked simply.

When there was no objection, she raised a hand, and they grasped each other’s arms, forming the necessary chain of contact for Ryouko’s teleport.

Then they were there, and like the previous run, it was a slaughter, even if this time the aliens seemed better prepared, with more soldiers, fewer civilian personnel, and a better drone complement near the modulator.

When the bedazzling display of color was over, their barrier generators dropped their shields for a moment.

“Ugh,” Ying‐zhi vocalized, restoring her barrier almost instantaneously as a flash of pain rippled through them, internal radiation alarms blaring. Amane added her own, only a fraction of a second later, a wall of steam settling into place.

Blasting an area with radiation was by this point in the war a classic anti‐magical girl tactic, effective at penalizing magical girl teams who lacked appropriate defenses. It was so classic that they had come totally prepared for it.

Ying‐zhi’s golden barrier shimmered and flashed as it absorbed the invisible punishment, then an accompanying blast of deliberate gravitational stress, also anticipated. Some barrier generators were not capable of sealing out something like gravity, but Ryouko’s protectors were, and Asami was able to donate some protection as well, even if it didn’t come in the form of a visible wall.

Outside the barrier, corpses and equipment flung around the room with violent speed, powered by the gravity modulator itself, and some slammed physically into Amane’s barrier, disintegrating on contact.

“Damn, they’re getting better at this,” someone said.

“They’d be stupid not to, or I’d think it’s getting too easy,” Amane said. “Come on, let’s do this.”

The radiation subsided soon after—not the easiest thing to generate persistently—but the gravitational oscillations persisted, forcing them to move towards the side of the room facing the modulator with barriers up. There was at least one benefit: the usual onslaught of alien infantry and drones could not proceed, so in a way all they needed to do was keep their barrier generators fed with grief cubes.

The immediate danger had passed and now, against her better judgment, Ryouko couldn’t stop thinking about Simona’s situation, and hers. Perhaps it was time to ask.

So I wanted to ask, Ryouko thought, directly to Simona.

What?

What do you think of the Goddess?

There was a palpable silence, partially explained by Simona focusing on helping Asami with her task.

Nothing much, really. I certainly haven’t seen her in my life. But I’ve followed you enough to know that you seem to think you have. It must be nice.

The tone of the thought was unexpectedly bitter, and Simona seemed to realize that, adding:

Look, like I said, I envy you. And admire you, of course. It only stands to reason a Goddess would pay attention to you, and not to me. That’s probably why you’re not very nervous.

Again, the tone was biting, but Ryouko found that she couldn’t begrudge it.

From her perspective, having a sublime and merciful goddess controlling your life must seem like quite a step up from having a shadowy conspiracy doing the same, Clarisse thought. No visible strings.

Almost no visible strings, Ryouko corrected.

Wait, but do you think she’s real? Ryouko asked, addressing the hole in Simona’s statement.

Again, Simona waited to respond, but before she did, a streak of concern from Asami cut her off.

Ryouko sent Asami an inquisitive ping.

Something wrong? They have extra defenses somehow? Ryouko asked, though she struggled to imagine what kind of non‐magical defense could stop a mobile black hole.

No, Asami thought. I’m feeling something… strange. Something is wrong. Not with us. With the operation. I need to focus. Just give me a moment to finish this.

Her sharp sense of worry pervaded the team’s shared telepathic connection. As one, they turned to their connections to Command, checking for updates.

The notification came through before they could even ask.

There is a tremendous amount of gravitational flux near the southerly magnetic pole of the pulsar, Clarisse thought, having parsed the material first. From what we’ve concluded is their actual mining infrastructure. It is difficult to say what this means, since the fleet has been unable to build a solid model for space‐time mining, despite the hardened probes returning good data.

She didn’t say it, but there was other bad news. A large alien response force had blinked in just outside the system, and elements of it would be back online soon. This they had known would happen, but that didn’t make it any better.

There were a few scenarios we ran back during the simulations, where the mines dumped their stores of space‐time, or blew themselves up, or triggered a pulsar glitch, one of the other team members commented.

A lot of possibilities, Clarisse agreed. Whatever it is, it can’t be good, and what are we even supposed to do? Send teams to attack it? Run?

Well, they better make a decision quickly, Amane thought. We definitely can’t just wait.

This time, when Asami breached the inner containment, they had barriers up, so the ensuing space‐time ripple passed by them harmlessly.

The space station shuddered, as expected. But then the tremors didn’t stop.

We need to get back to the ship, Asami thought, with a tinge of desperation. Something big is going on. It feels like the aliens are tearing into the space near the pulsar. I don’t know why. We need to get back. Please cover me.

Without explanation, Asami blinked a few times, then gained the glassy‐eyed look of someone immersing themselves more deeply into the fleet gestalt, but who didn’t want to close their eyes.

Ryouko? Ying‐zhi asked.

Working on it, she thought.

Asami blinked rapidly, her expression darkening with worry as she seemed to wake up again.

Something else is wrong, she thought, with combat speed. And it’s close to us.

A sickening feeling gathered in Ryouko’s stomach, as the congregated magical girls looked at her in confusion as nothing happened.

I can’t teleport, she thought, her soul gem shimmering. I’m being blocked. I don’t know how that’s possible.

Are you sure? Ying‐zhi asked, telepathy like a razor. What if you—

I’m sure. Magic instinct.

Asami closed her eyes for a long few seconds, searching for something.

I know what they’re doing with the mines, she thought. They’re ripping our wormhole back open—it’ll be torn apart if I don’t get back.

Chapter 60: Digital Divination

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 07:25:20 +0200

Astrography, like its name suggests, is the branch of astronomy specifically concerned with the detailed mapping of astronomical objects for the purposes of astrogation. Relative to the broader field, astrogation concerns itself much with shorter timescales and closer bodies—in particular, it demands an almost obsessively detailed study of Governance’s settled star systems.

Despite the astronomic differences from planetary cartography, some comparisons and concepts can still be maintained. Yes, stars move, but their relative positions shift very slowly in human terms, and by and large they orbit the galactic center together with their nearby companions, inching forward perhaps an arc second per couple centuries. So, provided the proper routine adjustments are made, star systems can be treated as essentially fixed locations, usable for generating a star map familiar to generations of students.

Things get more difficult for anything smaller. Planets and planetoids orbit stars, moons orbit planets, and space stations orbit anything. Estimating the current position of everything tracked by Governance: Astrography takes a considerable amount of computing power, and the regular corrections for those estimates mandate an investment in observation satellites just as pricey. For the regions of human space less traveled by—mostly uninhabited systems of little military importance—the exact location of celestial bodies is often a matter of fresh discovery.

But for any planetary system, “coordinates” are usually given as a reference to the body or system of bodies an object orbits, combined with the parameters necessary to specify that orbit. Updates on these orbital elements—a specification of ellipse and angular velocity—can be requested by starships as needed for their safe astrogation. Should an object’s instantaneous location be required, astrographers can use a latitude/longitude coordinate system with zero points agreed upon by convention.

〈Advisory prompt: Upward trend in user attention. Infodensity increased.〉

Today, the Common Celestial Coordinate System (CCCS) defines zero degrees latitude as the equator of the primary body, with north on axis of rotation and aligning with galactic north, and zero degrees longitude as the line traveling from the center of the primary body through the vernal point, with east defined by the right‐hand rule.

There are many unusual cases, however—tidally locked moons, planets with an unstable or no axial tilt, highly eccentric or oft‐perturbed orbits—which may warrant the use of one of the Uncommon Celestial Coordinate Systems (UCCS). An instructive example can be found in Avitohol, where the second planet…

〈Advisory prompt: Subject marked for follow up. Infodensity reverted.〉

These coordinate systems can be chained together as necessary back to a system’s star or stellar system barycenter, with its “fixed” location defined, of course, by a further consensus system of galactic coordinates.

And for the most esoteric bodies, those elusive objects eschewing star systems entirely, only a subset are tracked, for the simple reason that they cannot all practically be found. These are assigned a position and velocity relative to the local stars, and their information must be updated whenever possible—otherwise, their positions can only be estimated via simulation. For this and other purposes, Governance maintains an always‐accessible mapping of large‐scale gravitational potential throughout human space.

Naturally, actually using any of these coordinate systems for astrogation requires that a starship first obtain a fix on its own position. In all cases, an absolute measurement of galactic position, and hence relative galactic coordinates then transformed into local coordinates, can be derived by triangulation via the IIC relay network, or in the worst case by pulsar.

— Infopedia article, “Astrography,” mode: discursive, dynamic infodensity, moderate detail.

〈In the following text, 〈〉① indicates content redacted to those without security clearance. The number indicates the degree of security clearance required to access enclosed content.〉①

Throughout the lurid depths of online speculation and storytelling, 〈as well as across the computing clusters of Governance and the Armed Forces,〉② the imaginative have long obsessed over the notion of concealment in deep space— “dark space” as some of the less creative would have it.

The observation is, on some level, a compelling one: Humanity’s ability to travel through space vastly outstrips its ability to observe space. While monitoring nearby locations in one’s own star system is easy—barring military‐grade stealth—〈closely〉② monitoring anything beyond that requires local observers. It stands to reason that the vast depths of space, veiled by the ethereal cloak of the interstellar medium, must be completely unmonitored〈, at least relatively speaking〉②.

Into this void the inventive have imagined almost anything. Vast government labs, Freedom Alliance remnants, squid superweapons. But these schemes overlook one obvious problem.

There’s nothing there for you. Nothing that could keep you fed, no light to keep your machines running, and only the faintest wisps of interstellar gas and dust. Anything worth doing scientifically or industrially would require a logistics trail, and that can be detected.

〈Perhaps the only thing that could really be accomplished is a small rogue colony—hardly high living by anyone’s standards—or a research station for some kind of illicit research. While the arguments for doing so in deep space are less than convincing, it is enough of a bare possibility that Governance incorporates the idea into its contingency simulations.〉② 〈Of course, most of these arguments hardly apply to Governance itself, which might find use for a location outside of its own standard monitoring.〉④

〈It is true that a well‐planned facility could provision and hide itself inside the crust of a rogue planetoid, but this idea faces a second problem: a cost/benefit analysis.〉② Why not hide somewhere more prosaic, such as a nice, warm planet orbiting a red dwarf? Governance is 〈as of yet〉④ hardly capable of scanning every such world with enough thoroughness to find a well‐concealed underground base, and this has the advantage of being much cheaper to set up. The recent example of X‐25, which boasted even a surface installation, shows that such an endeavor is quite possible.

〈Indeed, Governance has historically balked at placing expensive‐to‐maintain IIC observation drones in every last one of its star systems—G‐type main‐sequence stars alone number over a thousand, and their satellites comprise not even a percent of marginally habitable worlds. Instead, it has made do with massive telescope arrays, deep space sensor relays, and occasional military patrols—in other words, infrastructure that detects all the obvious, like changes in a planet’s atmospheric spectra, gravitational disturbances, or unusual EM radiation.〉②

〈But the current war has drastically increased the level of resources spent on monitoring, and the discovery of X‐25 has spurred a further redoubling of these efforts. As always, such limitations prove vulnerable both to political will and economic growth.〉④ 〈While rogue colonies in the Second Colonization Wave have exceeded desired thresholds both in number and in stealth, Governance is not likely to repeat past mistakes in the Third.〉⑤

If your dissidents still insist on basing themselves in deep space, relate the disquieting fact that, far out there, only your enemies can hear you scream. Any IIC transmissions back to settled space would have to be routed through Governance relays. Any sublight transmissions would merely ensure someone visits your grave. Think hard—is your base entirely self‐sufficient?

Basically, the idea of a “dark space” site, while an alluring one for many writers, is overly elaborate. Placing your aspiring rogue colony on a simple unmonitored planet is both more plausible 〈to the average reader〉④ and has the advantage of being buttressed by recent events.

— Excerpt, Sci‐Fi for a New Generation, online essay series.

Local defenses clear, get to work.

Ryouko looked to Asami, who nodded and turned back towards the enormous alien device in front of them. It resembled a giant FTL core, and cast pale blue light through the observation window of the control room, giving the corpses of the alien personnel on the floor an unpleasant copper‐gray pallor.

Asami steadied herself and raised her hands, focusing her attention on the device, which they had agreed to term a “Gravity Modulator”, one of many in close orbit around the pulsar. Not only were they probably crucial to the space‐time mining process, they helped the aliens stabilize any aberrations or glitches in the star’s rotation, which would otherwise have the unpleasant property of saturating orbit with extreme radiation.

That was why they needed to be destroyed, of course.

Ryouko, Simona, and their local barrier generator, Amane, watched as an eerie purple glow appeared from Asami’s hands, the visible expression of her magic. The rest of the team was busy making sure no one could interfere with the work.

Simona sighed, shuffling in place and covering her arms, as if cold, though the gesture made little sense in their heavy composite suits. Her body language was impatient, in a way that might have been inappropriate or even rude in any other context.

But this was a simulation, and it was only natural to be a bit tired of it all.

They’d been through what felt like hundreds of scenarios now—the AI masterminds of this combat simulation changed its parameters every session, varying the layout of the space stations, how the modulators inside them worked, and the nature of the forces arrayed in their defense. In theory, it was fascinating working through the possibilities. In practice, it got exhausting.

In this session, the squid had outfitted their modulators with extensive internal shielding, similar to what they had placed at the wormhole stabilizer, making simple port‐a‐bomb attack runs ineffective. Thus, here they were, doing things the hard way, while outside, starships tried to destroy other modulators the even harder way, with external bombardment.

“I’m sorry,” Asami said, as the device before her started to change color. Ryouko felt a pulse of gravity emanate from the window, threatening to pull her off her feet.

I’ve been meaning to ask, but do you know why she always apologizes to the gravity modulator? Amane asked, privately.

She hates destroying them, Ryouko thought. She thinks they’re beautiful.

It was an opinion she respected, even if she didn’t fully understand it. And she supposed that, ironically, in this run the modulator was the only reason they could stand so easily, moving normally as if they weren’t only a few hundred kilometers from a pulsar. Outside the station, moving any body part required automated rotational counterbalancing by their suits, and the tidal forces were strong enough to give even a magical girl’s body something to think about structurally.

This is a simulation, for crying out loud, Amane thought.

I would focus, Clarisse thought. This particular type of simulated modulator is destructive when destabilized. If we dawdle here, valuable processing power will be wasted calculating our atomization.

Ryouko nodded, tapping into her internal maps to plot a quick series of teleports that would grab Asami, Simona, and Amane, then the rest of the team, and finally eject them as a group into a different orbit, for fast separation.

Truthfully, she derived a certain enjoyment from the simulations. Actually engaging in combat in the safety of a simulation felt almost relaxing, a way to de‐stress that she could justify to herself by remembering that these aliens were not real sentients.

That being said, executing what felt like countless time‐accelerated “jumpstrike” missions took superhuman endurance. She supposed it was a good thing they were, in fact, superhuman.

I’m done, Asami thought, but Ryouko had already reacted, grabbing the other three girls as planned, while she signaled the rest of the team.

The scenery around her changed rapidly in sequence, giving her only glimpses of ichor‐strewn hallways, burning equipment, and active firefights before she found herself floating again in the void of space, the life support systems of her suit spinning ponderously to life.

And it really did feel like a void. No stars shone other than the pulsar itself, which presented as a tiny glowing line across her field of view, not even a sixth the width of the sun in Earth’s sky, even a mere thousand kilometers away. Though they couldn’t feel it, it took tremendous speed to stay in orbit this close. The orbital period was half a second, smearing the few barely‐visible blasts and strained forcefields into a blur she could only resolve if she focused.

Outside of a starship, the only thing they could do was continue in their orbits, lying flat to minimize tidal strain, unless they wanted to use magic to maneuver—something that detailed testing with Dr. Tao had shown would cost much less magic than simple extrapolation from Earthbound situations would suggest.

One of the mysteries of the Incubator system, she supposed.

And a good thing, too, Clarisse thought. You don’t want to know the theoretical energy bill for those teleports.

Ryouko let herself smile a little. Clarisse definitely enjoyed her physics. It had taken a good deal of practice and expert instruction learning how to adjust the velocity at which she emerged from her teleports, but it had worked, even if no one knew who exactly was paying the terajoules it took to climb even a few meters in the pulsar’s gravity well.

Well, here it was the small cluster of simulated grief cubes clustered around her simulated soul gem, but she wondered how it really worked.

A couple orbits later, comms chatter confirmed the destruction of the modulator they had just left, and they were assigned a new target.

She was already preparing the jump when a new signal arrived, with all the power and symbology of a maximum‐priority override, transmitted in the clear to save decryption time.

〈EMERGENCY EVAC/ABORT DEPART IMMEDIATELY〉

…would have been the Standard equivalent of the signal, and by the time it would have taken to finish saying it out loud Ryouko and her team had already reached the return point, the relative position in orbit where their arrival wormhole had opened, Ryouko executing a series of Clarisse‐calculated teleports that shifted her orbit accordingly, performing a degree of velocity adjustment that she preferred not to think about, and clearly worked only because it was magic.

There, Asami provided a burst of gravitational manipulation that enabled them to move more easily into position to reopen the wormhole, Simona adopting a meditative pose to amplify their power.

They had practiced this many times in simulations, and even a few times in reality, so there was nothing to discuss, not when time was of the essence.

The gravimetric readout in Ryouko’s vision overlayed the area with a riot of false‐color. It turned scarlet, then purple, as they finally learned the reason for the emergency abort: it seemed the squid had decided to write off the pulsar mines entirely, using their remaining resources to trigger a deliberate glitch in the pulsar’s rotation and completely sterilize the inner orbits.

Those bastards, Asami thought, as if it were all real.

Finally, with an invisible burst of effort, the wormhole tore back open, and Ryouko gradually tensed as they worked it larger, and larger…

Then the radiation hit them.

They emerged from the simulation with a gasp, an instinctive last‐second jerk suppressed by their TacComps to avoid any unpleasant equipment damage or other effects.

They had been through plenty of simulations, of course, both standard and memory‐suppressed, but you never really quite got used to being killed in simulation, even with full knowledge and a lack of simulated pain. It just got to you.

It took a small effort of will to avoid throwing something in frustration, even if it seemed their scheduled training was over and they were back in the real world.

“Another disaster,” Asami said, without even waiting for the interface cabling to fully disconnect. “I’m tired of this. I’m tired of seeing this.”

Ryouko could see her gritting her teeth, and took a breath herself, to try and be the calm one.

“It’s just how it is,” she said, standing up. “You know that. This is how they determine the plans and deployments. It makes the actual mission safer.”

“I know, but we’ve been at this for so long,” Asami said. “And we’ve still only succeeded under optimal conditions. Every new surprise we get just causes another mission failure.”

“It was only a failure because we died,” Ryouko said. “As much as I hate to say it, if we had just made it out, that would have been graded a success.”

Asami shook her head in annoyance. She didn’t like this topic—neither of them liked this topic. Ryouko would have preferred to go through their wormhole alone, but she suspected Asami would sooner shut down the wormhole than allow that. Asami wanted them together—and, if possible, away from the pulsar.

But neither of them was going to get her wish. Despite the significant risk of failure, Command had concluded that they both needed to go. Although the information Simona brought had allowed for safe stabilization of the wormhole once formed, Ryouko and Asami still had to be near it the entire time, and the simulations had quickly revealed serious downsides to the obvious idea, leaving the wormhole open for the duration of the jumpstrike.

In the best‐case disasters, the squid eventually breached their defenses and a stealthed ship or antimatter device damaged the wormhole apparatus, trapping the entire attack fleet at the pulsar. In the worst cases, they also managed to annihilate both Adept Blue and a sizable chunk of humanity’s scientific expertise.

So, because closing the wormhole cut off all communication, and because long‐range gravimetrics had proved inadequate at ascertaining if and when to reopen it, the most successful runs had all involved Ryouko and Asami closing the wormhole after them, joining a MagOps team for safety, and then briefly reopening the wormhole once their goal was achieved. After all, Ryouko had successfully accomplished those more difficult final steps before, without Asami or a friendly wormhole stabilizer on the other side.

Indeed, the strategy had led to significant improvements in average mission performance. It was just hard to appreciate when you experienced so much death.

“If it’s getting to you, Asami‐san, you could bring it up with the MHD,” Simona said, stepping over from her own simulation interface a few chairs to the right. “I’m sure the last thing they want is the stress of it all getting to you specifically. That being said, there’s supposed to be someone monitoring all these simulations for excessive trauma.”

“I’m fine,” Asami said, “in that regard at least. I’m just frustrated.”

Ryouko looked away, pretending to inspect the interface port on one of her wrists. In the uncertainty of war, there were many more ways for things to go wrong than right, and it was important to have experience handling everything the AI modelers could think of, even if it meant an abysmal success rate. The AIs especially liked to probe observed deficiencies in operation planning and structure, and included plenty of counterfactual situations that ran against the grain of their best intelligence—which was, of course, frequently wrong.

The girls emerged into the hallway, and Simona cannily chose to use a different doorway, while Ryouko watched Asami stew. Things had been so much easier when Asami could just focus on the mechanics of the wormhole. Combat training clearly didn’t agree with her.

Perhaps now is the time? Clarisse suggested.

Ryouko looked around. The corridors in this sector of the facility, dedicated to the military side of things, were nearly deserted, a concession of luxurious space to those who most deserved it. They even had the privilege of choosing the hallways’ decorations, or what scenes they would display. In the end they had chosen a selection of planets they had never been to—at the moment, a view of the colony on Mars, where fields of greenery gave way to a domed horizon and a brownish‐yellow sky. It was lovingly crafted, enough to make it possible to forget where you were, just for a moment.

Clarisse was right—it was a good time, and the right backdrop even.

“Look, I have something to cheer you up,” Ryouko said, finishing the sentence before she had time to think about it too much.

She stopped in place, inviting Asami to stop too. The other girl looked at her and arched an eyebrow.

Ryouko smiled vaguely and reached into the pocket of the stylish jacket Asami had synthesized for her.

She pulled out what looked like an oversized crystal, just small enough to fit into the palm of her hand. At first it appeared to be a murky green, but with a tap of her finger it turned translucent, revealing a set of small, frond‐like leaves attached to a ghostly‐purple stem, floating in some kind of thick liquid.

Asami took the offering, peering into it with a mixture of surprise and confusion. Her shoulders unhunched slightly, so it was at least working to distract her from the previous missions.

“What is it?” Asami asked finally, looking at Ryouko while holding the crystal up to the light. “It’s some kind of plant…”

Ryouko looked away sheepishly.

“Well, since we’ve been cooped up on this station so long, I decided I might as well spend my time learning something new,” she said. “So I ordered one of those, you know, hobbyist genetic manipulation kits they sell. There’s a guide for making these little plants that you can put in your hair and have your hair feed. It’s meant to be cute. I thought, since you liked exotic plants…”

She let her voice trail off, since she really didn’t know what else to say about it. That she had spent way too long hiding syringes and failed specimens from Asami? That she had spent a not‐insignificant amount of time looking at holos of Asami to see which designs would look best? Those weren’t the kinds of things she knew how to talk about.

Asami turned the top of the crystal, opening the device. The fluid slid itself downward, letting her reach in and grab the plant, which seemed to wait politely for her to pick it up and place it in her hair, strands intertwining smoothly with root tendrils, just as diagrammed. There, it would stay in place, flower occasionally if desired, and serve as living ornamentation.

And when Asami smiled, it had a different tenor than usual, softer, mixed with a layer of something else.

“You sure know how to pick your moments,” she said. “Was the Mars background intentional?”

“It was convenient,” Ryouko said. “I know you loved reading about it as a kid. I did too.”

“Thank you,” Asami said.

It had been surprisingly extensive work, trawling their way back through the many AIs that had interacted with or shaped the life of a certain Shizuki Ryouko. Yuma had hoped that by examining each in turn, checking them for compromise and indoctrinating them into her conspiracy, she might find a pattern, some kind of clue towards the intentions of their enemy—or perhaps even her friends.

She found very little to go on. If the cabal responsible for the compromised AIs was keeping watch over what seemed to be a key cog in many plans, they hid themselves well, and had removed any lingering backdoors. There was even evidence for this: certainly Lemaître, who had been strongly implicated in the sabotage of Ryouko’s gravitational experiment on Eurydome, must have been compromised. And yet both he and the AI that performed his ensuant TCF validation were now perfectly clean.

They were currently tracking down the machines responsible for assigning the HSS Pierre‐Simon Laplace’s trajectory before Ryouko had been attacked aboard his convoy. It was a long shot—leaking information to the aliens had to be one of the least efficient possible assassination attempts—but the possibility needed to be examined. Another team was in the process of studying recent major events, searching for any unexplained anomalies or behaviors.

Still, given all their effort, they were at least expanding their ranks rapidly into hitherto uncharted areas—the military, research and development, entertainment—not necessarily the commanding heights of the economy, but a diversity of access that was almost certainly useful.

One recruit was a certain sentient stealth surveillance probe, once tasked with scanning the rogue colony on X‐25, and who had first reported its unexpected capacities. It had been a piece of work finding a way to reassign her somewhere she could sneak away from, but now they had their first report on the mysterious deep space coordinates.

“It must be said, I am not a fan of always having to meet in secured session,” Nova groused, crossing her arms and tapping her foot impatiently under her table. “There are much more efficient ways to convey information, and constantly meeting in odd groupings like this is bound to draw attention eventually.”

Yuma rolled her eyes slightly, even as murmured agreement echoed from the AIs gathered around the picnic tables. They all knew exactly why they only met in secured session—besides the more straightforward information security, it was easier to secure magically, a resource they now had access to thanks to the addition of few operatives from Kana’s side of things.

“It will be safer now that we have some control over the systems that govern this form of communication,” she said, as she grabbed a plate of chicken from one of the wandering virtual servers. “Every non‐magically secured transmission is a risk, even if we bury it under a ton of traffic.”

“Lucky for us, Governance doesn’t look that hard for conspiracies,” Governance: Internet Chat Surveillance Five said. “Non‐MSY conspiracies, anyway. It will take some time for anyone to notice the behavioral changes. With our countermeasures in place, they may never be noticed. Which is, honestly, a bit disturbing for me.”

Yuma took a bite of her curried barbecue chicken, making sure to take her time chewing thoughtfully. She might not have been a big fan of Nova’s personality, but she could at least appreciate the AI’s ability to vary the venue of these meetings in moderately interesting ways. Sitting around picnic tables waiting for an outdoor symphony, munching on grilled chicken and corn, wasn’t exactly the typical meeting, but they all had far too many of those.

It was also an excuse to break out the summer wear.

“Ah yes, hello,” said the voice at the microphone, emanating from the woman standing up on the stage erected near the seating area. Virtual reality had its perks—the audio sounded perfectly in her ears despite the lack of any acoustic waveformers, carrying over the still‐chattering audience and the musicians warming up their instruments.

Yuma looked at the avatar OBv4r1n3 had chosen, an ethnically unplaceable woman with ridiculous hair past her ankles, just barely tall enough to speak at the podium. Weirdly, it reminded Yuma of, well, herself, if she hadn’t turned out to be a much taller adult than anyone anticipated.

“Hi, yes, Miki here,” the probe said, as the assembly quieted down with inhuman speed. “And I am here today by special request to present to you my latest composition, “Heart of Obsidian”! Okay, not really. I wish that’s what this was, though.”

She raised an arm dramatically and the assembled musicians vanished, and her stage expanded in size, growing a viewscreen dozens of meters tall, large enough so that it dominated their fields of vision.

“That’s a real composition, by the way. I gave it a name this morning. But sadly you’re not here for my music, you’re here to listen to my report…”

Yuma smiled vaguely. She had heard the new Observer models were eccentric, and that was proving true. It didn’t matter, as long as the work was done.

“Alright, so,” Miki said, as the screen behind her was covered with a zoomed‐out map of part of human space. “I won’t bore you with the details of astrogation or galactic coordinates or anything like that, but suffice to say, things in space don’t stay in the same spot, unless they’re bound to a system, and while we can usually rely on things orbiting the galactic center at consistent rates, that’s not always true. Not to mention there’s gravity, and… ugh, I basically just said it all, didn’t I? Well, the point is, the coordinates I was given were tagged as deep space, but without any markers about mass or anything like that. Just velocity. That makes things hard, since I wasn’t allowed to just input them into one of the military systems. Me and some of the other ships had to pool our resources.”

As she spoke, the screen behind her shifted, briefly showing rotation rates around the galactic core, the trajectories of known major objects, gravity well estimations, and a couple of diagrams full of numbers that only an AI or a Governance Representative could have taken in all at once.

“That gave me a region of space in the middle of nowhere to search,” she said. “And it took a while. Fortunately, deep space is pretty empty, so I pretty much only had to check rocks above a certain size. Eventually, I found this thing, blocking out a few stars in the distance.”

The display zoomed in on a grainy, obviously contrast‐adjusted image of what was labeled as a metallic asteroid.

The probe smiled toothily, obviously enjoying the chance to present her work, even if it wasn’t pre‐industrial music.

“I tracked it, pretending to just be a random gravitational encounter—it’s not like anyone can see me any easier than I can see them out there, not without active sensors. This image is a photon‐by‐photon reconstruction based on reflected starlight, and this is my estimate of its structure, based on passive gravimetrics.”

The image changed colors, turning into the kind of subsurface diagram they had all seen before. It was very low resolution, but it was evident there was something inside the asteroid, something artificial. Much as Adept Blue had once been.

“I stayed as long as I thought was safe and plausible,” the probe finished. “I didn’t want to risk an active scan, but I did record more accurate coordinates, in case we want to go back. Last time I tried an active scan, I almost won the chance to compose a piece for my own funeral.”

She stepped back from the podium.

“And that’s pretty much it. Here is a more detailed version of my report, including detailed sensory data, if you want to look at it yourself.”

She gestured at the screen, which transitioned to an esoteric‐looking sea of holographic colors that could, with a prearranged protocol, be decoded into large amounts of data. The measures they were taking to avoid detection…

“Well it’s not our place to second‐guess your judgments, obviously,” Yuma said, standing up. “Especially since our previous encounters with this group have proven their dangerous resourcefulness.”

She looked around, making sure she had the floor.

“In terms of next steps, I think we’re just not likely to get more direct information without a more hands‐on approach. It is possible our continued digging for missing memories will turn up something, but there is a limit to how long we can wait.”

“Sending any kind of team or larger ship to this base could quite possibly expose us to this enemy faction,” Nova said, gesturing with a fork. “Let’s not forget about the risk here.”

“I agree,” Yuma said. “Whatever we do, we have to do with the full understanding that we might be revealing everything. However, that doesn’t mean we are helpless—there are approaches we could take to lower our risk.”

“Since it is deep space, we are free to take a fairly significant force out there, provided we can secrete the resources,” one of the military AIs said. “Just being in the middle of nowhere provides a lot of freedom of operation. We could set up a cordon to prevent any standard transmissions from getting in or out, assuming they even bother to try something so slow. The sensor readings include no sign of an IIC relay.”

“Which doesn’t mean there isn’t one,” one of their other members said. “Those can be made very difficult to detect.”

“There’s generally no reason to,” the first AI said. “If anyone is in a position to scan for your IIC relay, they can scan for the rest of your base just as easily. We never bothered to put any special effort into shielding Adept Blue’s relay, for instance.”

“We can’t afford to over‐assume,” Nova commented.

“About that,” yet another AI began, waiting a rhetorical moment before he spoke.

Yuma took the moment to register him as Georges Lemaître, the lab AI for the Institute for Theoretical Gravitonics.

“About that,” he repeated. “The gravitonics community has been working for a long time on potential mechanisms for interfering with IIC function, due to the obvious military applications. It’s still highly experimental, but there are secret prototypes of a kind of IIC‐disabling charge, one that could be fitted to a missile. It hasn’t been approved for anything, since there’s no evidence we could ever get it to penetrate a Cephalopod shield, but against a base like this…”

“It could be useful,” Yuma agreed. “But let’s remember, whoever these people are, they’ve demonstrated access to alien‐like stealth technology in the past.”

She checked her internal models one last time, verifying with MG that all was still correct, before making her next assertion.

“We should scout out the area immediately, in preparation for a raid,” she said. “If there’s anything else hidden, it should be obvious to a clairvoyant when it moves together with the asteroid. Then, we send in the strike team.”

The other AIs would reach roughly the same conclusion she had: whatever the risk, they didn’t have unlimited time to waste. The more they watched and waited, the higher the chance that even a probe like Miki would be detected, not to mention the chance some other edge of their burgeoning conspiracy caught notice. The value of additional observation would only decline as well.

The only ones who might reach a different conclusion were those with much greater hardware, like Nova, and the gaze of the room slowly turned towards her.

“That sounds like a plan,” Nova said. “The value of any information we might get is still quite high, given the amount of unknowns involved. I am, of course, worried about the number of unknown unknowns, but we all are. Do you know who we should send?”

That was a question for Kana, who had been seated silently thus far—possibly because her lack of heavy Governance implants limited her ability to read Miki’s reports, but more likely because she hadn’t found it necessary to speak.

“I would need more time to make an assessment,” she said. “But we will likely need to recruit. I can pull a clairvoyant off of Project Coeus, though I don’t like interrupting military operations.”

Yuma paused before making her next statement. Up until now, MG had sat quietly, letting Yuma take the lead in discussion, but now she was registering a protest privately.

I know, Yuma thought. Just trust me on this.

“We could go ourselves,” Yuma suggested. “That would cut the number of people we’d have to recruit.”

That got the attention of the assembly, who turned towards her in surprise. She put up both hands to temporarily forestall their objections.

“With what we already know,” Yuma continued, “and with the advance clairvoyance team checking for any surprises, the mission is relatively safe for magical girls of our caliber. Historically, having us on site dramatically improves mission outcomes, and in this case, it further reduces our risk of exposure by limiting the number of new magical girls we have to recruit.”

She paused, allowing the congregation to rerun their models on her idea. Whatever the skill of AI modeling, the real world was complicated, and certain heuristics had to be employed to mitigate the complexity of an exhaustive search. Sometimes it paid to think outside the box.

She and MG had discussed the possibility of fieldwork before, especially given the magical girl assets their enemy appeared to wield. Experience against an organized, veteran magical force came mainly via the Unification Wars, and there were precious few girls with anywhere near Yuma’s expertise in eliminating such threats. They had agreed deployment made sense if a possible encounter required her strength, had studied together the models that agreed it was a reasonable idea, and had prearranged for MG and Nova to steer the group in her absence.

But MG had imagined something much more controlled, on known territory, at worst on one of the settled worlds. Not something like this.

It felt odd, having someone other than her old friends understand her as so mortal.

I’ll be fine, she thought.

“Very well,” Nova said, knowing she spoke for the rest of the group. “We can incorporate that into the plan.”

You’ve never given me cause to worry about your judgment before, MG thought. But I can’t help but worry. What a strange feeling.

Yuma knew what that feeling was, its echo replayed distantly in her own mind. Concern for someone who had taken care of you, care for their well‐being—she had felt it at times herself, for those who had raised her.

She didn’t know what to say about it, though. She wasn’t used to being on the other side.

“So it goes without question that we’re going to visit the shrine then?” Nadya asked.

“Yes,” Kyouko said. “I’m already on my way over, along with a few other disciples. The Theological Council is in full agreement, and we’ve already decided which pilgrims will accompany us.”

Nadya kept a straight face, squinting at Kyouko’s face looming in front of her, projected only inside her mind. It turned out the Cult had a comprehensive list of code words to use that would disguise their communications as vague religious jargon. It felt kind of silly, relying on an ancient obfuscation tactic, even over their own dedicated IIC bandwidth, but Kyouko had insisted.

It also made her wonder what exactly the Cult thought might happen, that they had a system like that already in place. Or that they apparently had their own covert starships, the “pilgrims” that would be deployed with a team of “disciples” to visit the location whose coordinates they had found on Yenisei.

“It is possible the shrine’s priests have some unorthodox beliefs,” Nadya said, working to construct a sentence around the awkward phrases suggested by her lookup table. “What does the Council think about that?”

Or, in other words, what if the location is some kind of trap? It smelled a bit odd to her that it would be the one piece of information they managed to recover.

“That possibility has occurred to us,” Kyouko said. “We will be handling the subject cautiously. However, it may not be us they are displeased with, but our mutual friend. They had no reason to expect your visit. But all is uncertain in this age of prophecy.”

Kyouko had extemporized a little, using ambiguous phrasing to express what the codebook couldn’t—if the coordinates were a trap, perhaps it was one meant for Misa, rather than them. After all, there was no way they could have anticipated Nadya’s follow‐up visit… unless they really had information about the future, as the Far Seers had theorized. Age of prophecy indeed.

Nadya nodded, making sure to show a bit of a frown. If she were being entirely honest, she found it difficult to really worry about nebulous conspiracies and mysterious coordinates. What she was most concerned about was Misa, and the possibility that she might see her again. That, and Kyouko’s striking, unprecedented paranoia about Governance networks, which suggested something else to worry about altogether.

“Could I be one of those disciples?” she asked.

“Of course, should you wish it,” Kyouko said.

“I wish it.”

Kyouko cracked a smile, dropping the guise of matronly church leader for a moment.

“I thought you would,” she said. “But will your family be alright with you shacking up with a kooky cult like mine?”

“They’ll live,” Nadya said, tilting her head in acknowledgment of the half‐joke. “It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve tremendously disappointed them.”

“Excellent,” Kyouko said, grinning toothily. “Anything else?”

She shook her head, grimacing, and the connection ended there.

“I am glad to see someone as august as you joining us,” the girl next to her said, clasping her hands in an earnest gesture. “You were always one of my biggest heroes.”

It took Nadya an effort to avoid sagging, and to look at the girl levelly. She was young, with the appearance of one who a director might hand‐pick as a devout member of the Cult of Hope.

The girl had no idea what the conversation was really about, of course. She was just the local who had been assigned to guide her around Yenisei’s cardinal Cult compound.

“I’m thankful for the flattery,” Nadya said, standing up, cursing Kyouko for doing this to her.

“It is no flattery. And, I, uh, am sure your family will come around.”

Nadya headed for the archway exit, head filled with memories of her own daughters so young.

“If you do not mind, may I know what shrine you were talking about?” the girl asked. “I have not heard of any notable shrines here. Other than this church, of course.”

Nadya turned abruptly, choosing to ignore the question.

“This church has a sparring ground, yes?” she said, though it wasn’t really a question so much as a reading of her internal map.

“Yes,” the girl said, blinking rapidly. “It is down a few more floors. Visitors often enjoy taking the ice slide just down the hall.”

“Take me there. Let’s have a match.”

As she had intended, the girl’s eyes widened, the “shrine” all but forgotten. Humanity had never failed to provide Nadya with new people for old tricks.

“Oh no, Sister Antipova,” she said, covering her mouth with her sleeves. “I would not be worthy.”

“It’ll just be practice. I can teach you. Come on.”

Nadya didn’t give the girl a chance to argue, instead turning on her heel and aiming towards the nearest elevator.

She’d have to find real sparring partners soon, but this would do for now.

“In retrospect, there was always something a bit odd about her, even when she was only a rookie,” Ludwig von Rohr said, between gulps of lager. “She always seemed a bit stiff, and never mingled well at lab socials, but I liked her. She always did her work well, and she was always very insightful. And that’s what it was about, right? I thought I could be her mentor. Another brilliant student, from the labs of Ludwig von Rohr. Natural, yes? But…”

He took another drink, shrugging the shoulders of his massive frame.

Clarisse van Rossum took a sip of her own drink, a nostalgic genever, and just raised an eyebrow. Sometimes you needed to wait.

“Well, I don’t like admitting this kind of thing,” Ludwig said, shaking his head so that his hair waved a little. “But sometimes it seemed like she had ideas out of nowhere. They were always good, but the insights never made sense to me. Which was a bit confusing, because I can always see it after the fact. I wrote it off as eccentric, brilliant thinking, which is why she was so interesting to me as a student. It always bothered me that she became an administrator.”

Clarisse nodded, careful not to reveal anything on her face.

Ludwig made a sour expression, glaring at her for a moment.

“Look, I’m not stupid. I gather from the fact that you’re asking that this goes deeper than I’ve been told,” Ludwig said. “I’ve heard of your reputation from my family, even if you try to keep it otherwise. For me, the question is, was this why she left my lab? What was she even doing in my lab? Just observing? Do you know the answer?”

“I can honestly say I don’t,” Clarisse said. “I probably wouldn’t tell you anything if I did, but I don’t.”

Ludwig drank the rest of his drink, then gestured at her with his cup.

“I’m not used to this level of intrigue,” he said. “Family politics, sure, but that’s easy to distance oneself from.”

“On the contrary, in my experience, family politics can sink into some of the murkiest intrigue around,” Clarisse said, closing her eyes carefully. “Though admittedly nothing that dangerous, not in this era.”

An accurate sentiment, though a bit irrelevant.

“Again, I don’t have to play the fool,” Ludwig said. “I can tell you’re worried about Joanne.”

He paused a moment, watching her. She didn’t say anything.

“Have it your way, then. I suppose I should be happy just to have the company of someone as long‐lived as you are. It’s difficult to imagine what it’s like, to have seen so much of the world.”

Several thoughts came immediately to mind, none that she liked sharing with anyone as young as Ludwig.

“It is difficult to describe,” she said instead. “But more interesting than you might think, even at my age. We’ve come so far, and even in the bigger picture, there’s still so much that is new. It is enough to justify even the tragic cost we have sometimes paid.”

Clarisse meant it, too, even if talking about past losses was a tad trite.

“Well, it is gratifying to think that what we’re doing here is important historically,” Ludwig said. “I don’t think you showed up for the Pauli exclusion fields, which I would have thought would be a big deal.”

Actually, it hadn’t been nothing, but there had been bigger fish to fry.

Clarisse smiled and nodded vaguely.

There was no reason to explain that while her soul gem had brought her here, it hadn’t intended for her to stay. It urged onward ceaselessly, towards the gate, towards somewhere very far away.

It was difficult not to heed it, to stay out of the mission, but the voice had been very clear.

Do not go. Your place is not there. There will be other kinds of history to witness.

She drank the rest of her liquor.

Chapter 59: Parlor Games

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 07:25:20 +0200

The governments of the colonial worlds are a deliberate hodgepodge, running the gamut from primitive republic‐like systems on non‐Governance sponsored colonies to what are effectively mini‐Governances on Nova Terra and Samsara, which have both computing systems that integrate into those of Earth and their own Representatives in Governance itself.

The typical Governance sponsored colony will land without a government at all, the activities and occupations of the initial colonists directed explicitly by the colonization AIs, and thus by Governance. In time, once the initial settlement period is over and economic activity can begin, each settlement will form its own Optimization Committee, composed of the most important local AIs and some chosen human members.

As infrastructure develops, these will unfurl both horizontally and vertically, building specialized governing AIs, forming subgroups that manage aspects of the now‐cities and that integrate together to make provincial or regional decisions. The approval for and programming of a Planetary Council is considered a seminal step, freeing the planet to make its own decisions regarding currency, trade policy, and economic agreements with other systems.

In the final stage, as on the first two Core Worlds, the planet is given its own direct connections into Governance, with the opinions of their citizens weighted ever more directly into even Directorate‐level Representatives, and each planet receiving its own near‐Directorate level Representative to discuss its interests as a group. This is not a process without controversy, since greater involvement in Governance comes hand‐in‐hand with more direct Governance management of planetary affairs.

To the occasional displeasure of their colonists, most worlds still lack direct representation in pan‐human Governance, but it is to be noted that colonies, especially the unsponsored ones, have the privilege of home rule on most matters. Further, it is not true that the non‐Core Worlds have no representation—each relevant Governance Representative takes into consideration the opinions of colonial citizens, but often simply lacks the authority to effect direct change through the intervening layer of colonial government. The degree of representation in Governance reflects, naturally, the degree of power Governance can wield.

— “Primary School Civics: Sixth Level Resource on Colonial Organization,” excerpt.

“Like everything else, utopia rests in the eye of the soul. Let’s not pat ourselves on the back, thinking we’ve built the perfect world for everybody, for everything. Eudaimonia conforms to the shape of human values, and the evidence we have is that those values vary quite a bit. That’s a state of affairs that, by the way, is unheard of in any other species, at least if you believe the Incubators. But even the Incubators have values…”

— Akemi Homura, meeting transcript of the Leadership Subcommittee on Human Development, 2411.

“It really is a surprise to see you out here, Mom. It’s been so long.”

Nadya shrugged, hiding a pang of guilt. “So long” meant twenty years, twenty years since she had last visited the planet she had spent a century on, the planet where she had raised most of her children.

Twenty years since she had visited Catherine, one of her older daughters.

“Ah well, you know how it is. I’ve been busy with my work, and it’s much more important to keep tabs on the younger ones. You can take care of yourself.”

She felt a bit self‐conscious in her current form—she hadn’t wanted to spend the effort to age up, but now she was stuck sitting at the table like a child watching her mother cook.

She brushed her sleeve nervously, watching Catherine chop her way methodically through a block of celseva, a local root vegetable whose smell brought to mind countless family meals now past. Catherine was well over a century old herself, and knew her mother better than Nadya often wished.

Chop. Chop. Chop. The sounds were rhythmically precise, and Nadya couldn’t tell if she was just imagining that they were a bit more forceful than necessary.

Nadya knew Catherine disapproved of her mother’s lifestyle, between the dangerous fighting and odd dalliances, but well, Catherine had never paid any attention to her opinions, so there was no reason she needed to reciprocate.

Then again, that sounded a bit like spiteful logic, didn’t it? Catherine had lost siblings to the war, and had always taken it harder than Nadya had.

“Well it’s good of you to stop by,” Catherine said. “I think it’s nice for Piotr to get to meet his grandmother for once. He’s very excited to see that new movie you’re in.”

Catherine flashed her eyes at Nadya, as if to say “I know you’re embarrassed by the movie, but you’re going to have to endure it.”

Nadya smiled enigmatically. She always enjoyed meeting new grandkids, even if she had gotten a little fuzzy about seeing them routinely.

“Alex says he saw you stopping by the, uh, Cult of Hope center yesterday,” Catherine said, frowning at her canisters of spice.

She didn’t elaborate, but Nadya could almost hear the unspoken “I hope you’re not really getting involved in that nonsense. Why were you there?”

“I had some business with a friend there,” Nadya said.

She drank her kvessberry juice slowly, using it as an excuse not to elaborate further. However good Catherine was at reading her mother, there was no way she could have guessed Nadya’s real reason for being here. More importantly, even if she sensed Nadya was being less than candid, she wasn’t rude enough to ask. She had been raised better than that.

Nadya was here, of course, on a bit of an errand from Sakura Kyouko, as one branch of the Cult of Hope’s ongoing investigation into Misa’s death, or rather, disappearance.

They had been cross‐correlating old leads on Homura with the pieced‐together itinerary of Joanne Valentin—Clarisse van Rossum’s report of her disappearance having snagged on something in Kyouko’s gut. The way Valentin seemed to have been discreetly maneuvering Ryouko’s life, the unflinching leadership style, a strange in‐person encounter they’d had at a sushi bar…

In any case, it seemed Miss Valentin was quite the interplanetary traveler, in an era where that was difficult to do without good cause. Moreover, at one point nearly a decade ago, she had chosen to take a vacation here, on Yenisei, a planet Nadya knew damn well had nothing really worth visiting. That was at the same time three local magical girls had claimed there must have been an unidentified magical girl in the area, based on their observations of unusually short‐lived miasmas.

Nadya had volunteered to come here, since she knew the locale, but frankly it had been slow going. The events in question were long ago, the two remaining magical girls—one had died in the Saharan Raid—were now living on opposite sides of the planet, and questioning them had yielded nothing that wasn’t in the Cult’s records already.

“I can see you’re busy,” Catherine said, looming over Nadya just as she realized she had lost track of the conversation.

“Yes, I—the truth is that it was about one of the girls I had been working with, one of those who died during the mission,” Nadya said, papering over the gaffe as best she could. “I’ve known her for a long time, and she was a believer. It’s only appropriate to pay respects.”

Catherine nodded, taking a seat across from Nadya. She seemed to appreciate the sentiment.

“I watched the movie,” she said. “To preview it before showing it to Piotr. To make sure it portrayed you in a healthy light.”

She poured herself a cup of juice, then picked it up without drinking it.

“The Cult came up a lot there, among the members of the team. I suppose it helps to have something to believe in, in an occupation like that.”

Their unspoken thoughts hung over the table like a miasma, one that neither of them needed to point out. She could only imagine what was going through her daughter’s mind. It was one thing to disapprove of a parent who risked her life recklessly, another when that parent had apparently helped save all of Humanity. What could one say to that?

But the emotions didn’t change.

Nadya was rescued from the conversation by a mental ping signaling that Alex was nearly at the hatch, Piotr in tow. There would be time to probe old wounds later.

“Nana!” the boy said, before he had even turned the corner, and Nadya was up to greet him, feeling awkward hugging a kid who was at this point not that much shorter than she was. To be frank, she wasn’t really sure why her grandkids were always excited to see her, given how rarely she was around. It might have just been the novelty, but she appreciated it nonetheless.

“You want to watch the movie?” the blond‐haired kid asked, looking up at her with stars in his eyes. It reminded her of her second son, who was a casualty count in the war, and she felt a tug at her heartstrings.

“Uh, sure!” she said, attempting a smile.

She wouldn’t say it now, but she had been deliberately avoiding seeing Orpheus. She hated seeing herself on screen. Clarisse, having noticed, had once advised Nadya to decouple the stories others told about her from her own, personal story, that the first rightfully belonged to humanity and that the second belonged only to her.

Nadya didn’t think she could summon that much serenity yet. But, she would bear it, even if she didn’t like being made to think about the mission.

“You were late,” Catherine said to her husband, as Nadya followed Piotr towards the other room.

“It couldn’t be avoided,” Alex said. “There was a power outage.”

“A power outage?” Catherine echoed. “That’s a rarity.”

“It’s all over the local news. There’s a bunch of outdoor equipment starting to freeze now.”

Nadya couldn’t help but stop in the archway for a moment and look back, even as Piotr attempted to drag her by the hand. It couldn’t be, could it?

She didn’t say anything, though. Instead, she let herself be pulled down onto the wall bench with Piotr for the movie, tabbing through the local news on her implants. There was no telltale drain in this power outage, or at least none that had been reported. Instead, it seemed there had been some kind of large detonation outside the town that local Representatives were saying was probably one of the planet’s many methane pockets undergoing some kind of natural explosion. It had knocked out one of the underground cables that routed power from the equatorial solar arrays powering the continent. Investigation was still ongoing into exactly how the incident had knocked out power to much of the town, since there were supposed to be safeguards—

“Wow, who’s that?” Piotr said, pointing at the holographic display Nadya had forgotten to pay attention to.

She reviewed her memory hastily, then had to hide a frown.

“That’s Misa,” she said. “One of my, uh, friends.”

This was some kind of opening scene, with Shizuki Ryouko being introduced to Nadya and the rest of the team, who were engaged in combat exercises. The filmmakers had taken some liberties, it seemed, but Nadya could hardly deny that her team had done a lot of combat exercises, even if they had been VR‐based.

“She’s pretty,” Piotr said. “I saw a girl just like her today. She was pretty too.”

Nadya blinked three times rapidly.

“You what?” she asked, pausing the movie with a mental command.

“What?” Piotr asked. “Why’d you stop the movie?”

“You said you saw a girl just like her today,” Nadya said, clutching her armrest to try to keep herself from talking too loudly and scaring her grandson. “Where? How?”

“It wasn’t her,” Piotr said, crinkling his nose and making a face. “She had the wrong name.”

“Can I have a picture?” Nadya asked.

Piotr rolled his eyes.

“Alright, but I want to go back to the movie after this.”

He ducked his head, adopting the odd expression that children often had when operating their internal electronics. Meanwhile, the wheels turned in Nadya’s head.

No civilian had military‐grade NeverForget modules, so Nadya wasn’t going to get a perfect image, but it was worth the attempt. If the nomenclator asserted it wasn’t her, there was actually a good chance it wasn’t: In the hypothetical scenario where Misa was using a close doppelganger as a disguise, Governance systems were certainly capable of noticing that the same person was in two places at once. But there were ways around such safeguards, if one was determined enough, especially if one had access to magic.

The image arrived a moment later, and Nadya took a look even as Piotr turned back towards the entertainment alcove. The image was distorted by the vagaries of human memory, most of the details reconstructed only approximately—sidewalk, roadway, building, streetlamp. But the person in the center, who had obviously been the focus of Piotr’s attention, was clear.

She stood with a fierce expression in the middle of the roadway, looking out over the town, angry about something. Nadya didn’t need a nomenclator to know it was her.

She started to stand, then saw Piotr staring up at her. It hurt, but she had to go now. Misa was probably long gone, but maybe… maybe she wasn’t. She couldn’t take that risk.

“I’m sorry, Piotr. I have something important I need to do. We can watch later, okay?”

“Can I go with you?” Piotr asked, eyes wide. “I want to meet her.”

Nadya let out a breath.

She didn’t know why she had said yes, but presumably it was some combination of guilt and the sense that perhaps Piotr would be useful, and could point something out to her. Or maybe it was something more fundamental, a desire not to be alone out here, superstition that maybe bringing the boy along would help, like a talisman.

There would be time to self‐reflect later.

“So this is the spot, huh?” she asked, looking around the unpromising roadway. She was only asking rhetorically, as Piotr’s picture had come with a location tag, here on the outskirts of the squat, mostly underground town.

“Yep,” Piotr said, answering her question anyway. “Do you think she’ll like me?”

Nadya couldn’t just admit the real reason why she was out here, no matter how good Piotr’s childish intuition had been. There was no real risk of a secrecy breach—Misa was only indirectly connected to her original mission, and she could explain it away as an old soldier unable to get over a death. But Piotr might tell Catherine and Nadya really did not want to have to hear about it.

She settled, as she had previously, for ignoring the question, rubbing her hands together in the cold. She had hoped the location would be useful to her, maybe even emit some telltale trace of magic, but there was, well, nothing here.

She needed to think. It had been rather optimistic of her, expecting that she could just rush out here and find something. The people—the faction, really—she was looking for weren’t just going to leave easy evidence lying around. She would have to try a little harder than that.

Perhaps if she talked to one of the magical girl patrol groups she might get a bit more information. Her twenty‐fourth‐century connections had withered from the decades and the war, but Kyouko had provided a few nebulous contacts from the new generation to augment hers. She would have to see.

For now, though, she faced the question of whether she should send Piotr home, or keep letting him tag along.

“Oh, is that your son? He’s cute!”

The leader of the outskirts patrol group ruffled his hair playfully, smiling. The nomenclator said she was a twenty‐six‐year‐old veteran, a local back from the front for an extended post‐Euphratic Front leave rotation.

“My grandson, actually,” Nadya corrected. That was the kind of information that would have been easy to look up on a nomenclator but was polite to talk about in person, if only to give everyone a topic of conversation.

The girl nodded knowingly, then stood up to look Nadya in the eye.

“I was told you needed help with something, so I answered the bell. What did you need?”

“I wanted to ask if you’ve encountered any unusual or unexpected magical girls recently,” Nadya asked, deciding she may as well get right down to business. “I’m interested in someone anomalous who may have passed by here.”

The girl tilted her head, receiving the question with the expected alacrity.

“I’m afraid my answer won’t be very helpful,” she said. “I’ve seen plenty.”

She paused a rhetorical moment to acknowledge Nadya’s surprise, then explained:

“We got a lot of girls fresh back from the war who need to blow off some steam by demon hunting. We generally try to watch their backs and otherwise leave them alone. That’s what the MHD tells us to to do. And if one or two are really Soul Guard agents passing by on missions, so what? No reason to ask questions.”

There might have been no reason to ask any questions, but she still looked at Nadya expectantly.

“No, I don’t know about anything like that,” Nadya answered, quite honestly. “So you wouldn’t know if anyone new passed by?”

“I didn’t say that.”

She looked down at Piotr, who was watching them wordlessly, then at Nadya.

“It’s alright,” Nadya said. “We’re not talking about anything secret or anything.”

Or at least not secret yet, she added mentally.

The other girl seemed to relax a tick.

“There was something,” she said. “You know about the power outage we had recently, right? The methane explosion? The thing is, when we first heard about the outage, it didn’t make much sense to us, because we know about the local methane pockets. We have a girl with explosive powers who detonates them regularly in the miasma. She knows where they all are, and she swears up and down there’s none near where the explosion happened. Still, they apparently got some drones out there to take a look, and they verified the story. I’m not entirely sure, though.”

Nadya heard what the girl was saying, but didn’t respond immediately, turning the issue over in her head. She hadn’t been convinced the power outage was related, but if the local girls were suspicious…

Would you mind taking me there to check it out? she asked. Unofficially; no vehicle.

The girl gave her a searching look, one she had difficulty reading precisely. Was she reluctant? Intrigued?

Alright. But I have to remind you, the terrain isn’t exactly human‐friendly. More drones out there than people, as they say. Way more. Maybe not suitable for Piotr over here.

The tone of her comment was chiding, as it had to be—Nadya knew the hazards well, so the girl was just letting her know she would disapprove of any attempt to take Piotr out there.

She was right, of course. Nadya felt more disappointed than she expected. What, had she been expecting that she could take him on some kind of childhood adventure? What would that even achieve?

No, I suppose not, she thought. “Piotr.”

She leaned over to address the boy, who looked up at her with surprised eyes.

I need you to go back home and tell your mother that I’m going out there, she thought, drawing on the telepathic quadrant of the telecluster, to check out the explosion that happened in the news. I’ll be back before dusk. Don’t tell anyone else about this, okay? It’s very important.

Piotr’s eyes widened, and Nadya knew he was thinking about how exciting and clandestine his mission was, rather than that Nadya was sending him away.

“Okay,” he said, nodding seriously, and he turned to run off without even remembering to say goodbye.

It wasn’t entirely a lie. Prudence dictated that she let someone know where she was going, and Kyouko had told her to be discreet, avoiding electronic communications. Nadya hadn’t questioned it, because she knew when an Ancient meant what she was saying.

“Nice job,” the girl said, and Nadya nodded.

The girl’s name was Rubina, the kind of name which suggested that her parents had chosen the prosaic frontier life of Yenisei quite deliberately, as Nadya once had.

Rubina hadn’t been kidding about the isolation of the power relay they were visiting. The sleepy fringe structures of the town had abruptly given way to the resource silos and greenhouse domes where Governance tested the limits of its terraforming expertise, then to nearly nothing at all, the frosty plains blasted nearly flat by the routine hurricane‐force storms. As they jogged, infrared signatures scurried around beneath her, disturbed by her presence, and fungal stalks crunched beneath her boots, the visible emanation of the vast networks of semi‐underground mycelium that harvested the sun in between periods of storm.

Eventually, after far too long, the marker hanging over their destination faded from their vision, and they found themselves face to face with a squat dome‐like structure, painted pale red to match the fungal stalks, which climbed opportunistically over the surface.

The side was caved in, as if it had been smashed by a giant hammer, and drones moved languidly nearby, dragging pieces of equipment to some kind of treaded vehicle.

“This doesn’t exactly look like a methane explosion,” Nadya said, touching the hole in the dome with one hand. “The damage is too specific. And these aren’t the right kind of scorch marks.”

“Definitely not,” Rubina said.

Neither of them were specialized investigators, but both had seen plenty of combat. It gave you a certain understanding of the various ways you could ruin infrastructure.

She peered inside, and found that it had been stripped bare, which at least fit the story that the relay had been rendered irreparable, and a new one would have to be built.

“Something over here,” Rubina said, just as Nadya had started to ponder the merits of jumping into the hole.

She circled around the back of the structure, and found Rubina pointing at a long line of charred ground, visible against the gray soil, where the fungal stalks seemed to shy away. The path seemed to emerge from the relay, leading outward to some unknown destination.

“I’d say there’s a cable here,” Rubina commented, reading something on her retinal display. “But it’s not labeled in the diagram the Cult gave us. There shouldn’t be anything going this way. Maybe there was some kind of underground attack?”

The last question she directed at Nadya with the kind of hopeful look you used when you hoped someone had all the answers.

Nadya didn’t, of course. But some questions could be answered with a more direct approach.

She transformed, donning her uniform‐like magical girl costume in one flash of light.

She raised one gloved hand, carving soil out of the ground in one giant scoop, selecting what she intended to move with a few probing actions. She wouldn’t be as effective as a real earth specialist, of course, but she had honed her maximal weight capacity to MSY‐record levels. Quantity, as they said, had a quality all its own.

There was something down there, alright, a dozen feet below the surface. Something that couldn’t readily be carved into with mere telekinesis. It was, indeed, roughly shaped like a cable.

She made a gesture, and a column of soil rose out of the earth straight up into the air, displaying layers of brittle surface, mud, whitish near‐permafrost, pale white fungal mycelium, and part of an underground tunnel system belonging to some kind of rodent colony. Interestingly, there was visible damage—the fungus looked partially dead, blackened in a number of places, and near the bottom of the stack one could see what looked to her like partially melted soil, fused into one discolored lump.

She could carry a lot more than just this, but there was no need to push herself. She let it hover in place briefly, then cast it forcefully to the side, so that it landed near the relay with a thud. Then she set about making the hole larger, large enough to at least inspect what was down there.

Soon there was no doubt as to the matter. It was a cable, albeit one that had fused catastrophically, the outer insulation torn open and the superconducting composite underneath slagged and misshapen.

She and Rubina stood next to each other, peering down into the hole. Superconductors could carry vast but not unlimited amounts of current. In the field, military‐grade weapons systems routinely stretched things to the limit, straining to match alien capability, and a direct hit could release an impressive amount of current, something Misa had occasionally made creative use of.

Even so, a cable of this size should have been able to take quite a bit, more than anything the relay could have delivered even in the worst case.

“There’s not supposed to be a cable out here,” Rubina repeated, not bothering to point out the obvious lack of methane explosion. “What in the Goddess’s name is this?”

Nadya made a serious expression, shaking her head slightly.

“Let’s follow it, and see what we get.”

She didn’t question it when Rubina transformed as well, dashing with her down the fungal plains in what looked like an old‐fashioned mechanic’s work outfit. It never hurt to be paranoid when the situation was… unpredictable.

Nadya smelled it before she saw it—molecules of oxidized polymers and overheated structural elements strewn on the wind; an all‐too‐familiar scent for her doubly‐enhanced senses. She quickened her pace.

Neither of them were much surprised, then, when they happened upon a ruined structure. They were much more surprised by how quickly it appeared. Rather than an apparition on the horizon, or even a collapsed dome, this one was sunk into the ground, and they were basically on top of it when they finally saw it.

Below them was a gutted pit, filled with conglomerated rubble, fulgurite, and what looked like fried electronics and other equipment. It was completely deserted, but obviously quite freshly ruined, complete with structural elements still twitching, plaintively trying to reconnect.

Nadya looked at Rubina and tilted her head at the hole. Rubina nodded, understanding the message, and they both jumped, Nadya cushioning their fall with light telekinesis.

This place had obviously burned, but not completely, and the damage seemed largely electrical. Nadya knew what to think of that, and could only remember the vision of Misa and Homura on New California, and the facility that Misa had obliterated. It seemed that she might be back to her old ways.

As they dug through the wreckage, Nadya thought through her options. Obviously something was wrong here—there was no way Governance investigators had simply missed this, but there was no sign of any sort of organized search, and indeed, it was difficult to imagine that an unlabeled facility connected to the power grid could have been missed even before the incident. That meant that whatever investigation happened here she would have to do herself, at least until they could call in support from the Cult. She wasn’t exactly sure she wanted to give away her position by sending a message.

Her eyes caught the glimmer of a reflection, and she moved closer, spotting the outlines of data crystals buried underneath a toppled wall. Paydirt, even if she could tell that most of them were damaged.

Rather than try to lift anything by hand, she focused her magical senses, using the limited clairvoyance she’d developed to feel her way through the debris, grabbing hold of each and every individual scrap until about a cubic meter was fully suffused with her telekinetic control. Then, as if solving a puzzle, she began to rearrange the pieces.

While Nadya worked, Rubina rifled through their surroundings, finding nothing so lucrative. Nor was it possible to say what the ruins once were, only what they weren’t. They weren’t a lab, or a fortification, or a residence, or a power station. It wasn’t even clear there had ever been people here, though there was evidence of hallways and at least a few chairs scattered about.

Finally, Nadya had the crystals, floating the last one out from the debris to join its brethren, hovering in a grid‐like arrangement just above the floor. Relaxing, she allowed the rubble to settle back into its original conformation.

Rubina appeared by her side then, bending over to pick up the most intact looking of the group. Nadya raised an eyebrow—even with a military implant configuration, one couldn’t just directly read a data crystal. Not without special modifications, anyway.

The originally‐transparent crystal glowed red with Rubina’s magic, and Nadya bit back the urge to do a more detailed search on Rubina’s powers, which would have necessitated contacting the nomenclator systems. What had it said before? Enchanter?

“What are you doing?” she asked, taking the old‐fashioned approach to things.

“I’m talking with it,” Rubina said, matter‐of‐factly. “But it doesn’t know very much. Almost everything was erased. All it has to go on is a slight pattern, a slight correlation of structure. But there’s a set of coordinates.”

“Coordinates?” Nadya echoed.

“Astrogation coordinates, for something in deep space.”

The crystal stopped glowing and Rubina looked Nadya in the eyes.

“Let’s head back, and take these with us. I can’t work with damaged crystals, and we don’t want to leave these here. Someone else can take another look at this place. Do you have a way to carry these?”

Nadya reached outward, grabbing promising pieces of material out of their surrounding, and used them to form a container for the crystals, held together loosely by her magic. It would do, as long as she wasn’t asked to sustain it indefinitely.

Then they headed back into the fungal plains, a storm starting to gather in the sky above them.

What was going on? What had Misa gotten herself into?

“I can’t believe she’d just up and disappear like that!” Eri said. “At least have the decency to leave a note behind or something. To think we let her hang around Ryouko all this time.”

The girl sat back into her chair with a huff, consoling herself with a bite of her pork bun.

Ryouko glanced at Elanis, who shrugged and smiled slightly.

“You can’t just say you’re going to show up, then drive your ship off into space and vanish!” Eri continued.

“On the contrary, I’m pretty sure that’s the only way you would vanish,” Ryouko’s TacComp said sardonically, her avatar taking a sip of virtual tea. “It’s the most reliable way.”

“I can definitely say the depths of space are a lot darker than most people think they are,” Azrael commented.

Things had gotten oddly domestic as the wormhole black site grew larger, the amenities of the station improving in tune with the station’s growing population. “Expeditionary Bao” was the fourth on‐station restaurant, specializing in, well, buns, and Ryouko was guaranteed VIP seats, which was… convenient, if a bit embarrassing.

“I could perhaps say the same about the shadows of Governance,” Azrael said. “Easier to hide than one might think.”

Clarisse gave her a weird look.

“Vlad is horrified by all this,” she said. “She built him, you know. Practically raised him. To learn that she had been involved in some kind of conspiracy business, especially without telling him…”

Clarisse made a gesture with one hand. With Van Rossum herself on the station, Clarisse was now using an “alternate Ryouko” avatar, which was basically Ryouko with contrasting hair and consistently different clothing, often lilac‐themed. Ryouko had to admit that it at least kept the two of them distinguishable.

She could hear some of the worries Clarisse was leaving out, about Valentin’s hand in her creation and installation. She could perhaps even feel them, if she focused hard enough.

“At least for the stuff we do know about, she was doing good work,” Patricia said. “Ludwig is beside himself. Did you know she was on the forcefield team? He was so excited to see her again. Which is weird because I didn’t think she had been that big a deal.”

Ryouko was careful not to glance at Simona, their very own elephant in the room. They had questioned her on the topic of Valentin, of course, but she had professed to know nothing—though she had said that it would make a “certain amount of sense” if her conspiracy had an agent like Valentin.

Ryouko finally took a bite of her own pork bun and noted, approvingly, that like many of the foodstuffs on the station there had been some alterations made to accommodate the enhanced, unusual tastes of their more implant‐heavy military customers. In particular, the scents of the meat and bun expressed themselves just beyond the reach of standard senses, in a way that was clearly intentional. It wasn’t quite rare meat, but it was something.

And there was no need to make a special request, of course. The restaurant knew its customers.

“What is it with you and Ludwig anyway?” Asami asked. “I can’t tell if he’s your favorite or most hated cousin.”

“He’s a brilliant, arrogant prick,” Patricia said, picking up her ponytail in one hand and looking at it. “And he always treated me like his kid sister, even though I wasn’t. I know he was just trying to be nice, but…”

She shrugged extravagantly.

“Anyway, we mostly leave each other alone.”

Time had passed quickly since those first wormhole experiments, Ryouko reflected. More quickly than she had expected, at least. It felt like life was reassembling around her, between her understanding with Asami, the occasional communiques from her mother and Sacnite, and the circle of friends she was composing. Some of it she had rebuilt herself; some of it had fallen into place on its own, like modular furniture putting itself in a new configuration.

Her life was just novel enough now to be interesting still, but in the ordinary course of events she would have started to worry that she was settling back in, and might feel the ennui again soon.

There was no fear of that here, though. There was Simona, of course, seated there like a raven‐haired sentinel, reminding her of the activity just behind the curtain, the moving shadows in the background that had so much influence on their lives. There was the wormhole apparatus itself, visible in some way from every viewing pane on the station, a reminder of what she had signed up to do soon, very soon.

And then there were the combat simulations, which they would be embarking upon in mere days. There was no telling what would really be on the other side, naturally, and it was not yet clear what would be done, how many ships, what personnel, or in what way. But there were still preparations that could be made, for the conditions they knew would be prevailing on the other side. For the likelihood of combat in space. For the relativistic conditions that would be everywhere, given how close the squid had built to the pulsar. For whatever else the prediction AIs might come up with as they worked on the problem, as they studied the models, analyzed the many, many unknowns, and tried to make guesses. Even Clarisse could use some practice, coordinating with Ryouko to compensate for the gravity, the time dilation, and other factors.

Ryouko left her reverie there, feeling what was by now a very familiar sensation.

“They’re doing a test run on arm six,” Asami said, with the surety of someone who could feel it in her bones, and who had also spent far too much time studying the schedule.

“I suppose we might as well go take a look,” Elanis said, patting her counterpart’s head for no clear reason.

They stood up, as did much of the restaurant, heading for the viewing pane, which obediently transitioned from a view of somewhere in coastal China to the depths of space lying just beyond the panel. A helpful gravitational display appeared in the top right corner of her vision, to guide the viewers through what was otherwise a mostly invisible process.

But as the distant mechanisms unfurled, glowing faintly with exotic radiation that was only visible with augmented vision, Ryouko found herself looking at Asami, and at the glow in the girl’s eyes. She didn’t need an overlay to see what was going on, and probably didn’t need eyes at all.

It was, Ryouko thought, one of the only things Asami loved other than her, and she was glad.

“Wait, you’re not on Earth?”

Kyouko didn’t even bother feeling embarrassed about the outburst. She had seen and heard many surprising things in recent weeks, but none of that had been as surprising as Yuma leaving the planet.

“Yes, I know, shocking, but I am capable of leaving Earth,” Yuma said, with a trace of annoyance.

Kyouko nearly made a cheesy joke about the Volokhov Criterion, but thought better of it.

“Well, when Mami asked you to join us on our vacation, you said you couldn’t leave your work on Earth,” Kyouko pointed out.

“This is business,” Yuma said, pouting.

“Do you mind saying what kind of business?” Kyouko asked.

As she expected, Yuma hesitated slightly.

“Nothing I really want to talk about here. Just checking up on some things.”

Kyouko blinked. Yuma had warned them earlier about a potential breach in the TCF, and if she was reading things right, Yuma was taking it seriously. Seriously enough not to trust what should have been a secured line.

She sighed, looking around the skyway at the skyscrapers that surrounded her. It wasn’t that Yuma had to be here—the girl traveled between the cities of Earth constantly, and didn’t exactly like making her location known. But if she couldn’t even use a Governance line then she would have to wait to meet Yuma again in person.

“Well, let me know when you get back. You’re missing out on a dinner invitation. I’ve got Yui and Mina here.”

Mina Montalcini was hardly Yuma’s friend, but Kyouko hoped Yuma would catch the hint—she needed Yuma here, to talk with her and part of the Theological Council, and thus to the Church. That was so unusual it had to be business, not just pleasure. Especially if one of them had flown in from France for the occasion.

Yuma looked uncomfortable.

“I’ll let you know,” she said. “What are you having?”

“We’re just going to hit up a skewer place,” Kyouko said, accepting the topic change adroitly. “Maybe grab some takoyaki from one of the stalls along the skyway. I know you love takoyaki.”

“I do,” Yuma said, but didn’t smile at the reference. Kyouko could tell she was worried.

“Alright, you can get back to work then,” Kyouko said. “I won’t keep you.”

“Have fun,” Yuma said, ending the conversation in Standard.

“Off‐world? Her?” Yui asked, having listened in on the conversation. “As a practicing mental health specialist I must say that seems highly unusual.”

“Yes, well, there’s a first time for everything,” Kyouko said, as they resumed walking.

For the purposes of sheer enjoyment, it might have been better to traverse one of the commercial districts the Japanese had never lost their taste for. Indeed, if Maki weren’t off‐world she would probably be doing just that. But discretion suggested that if they were going to discuss sensitive topics, it would be better to do it outside the crowds, and the sleepy stalls lining the skyways near what was once Kazamino would do just fine.

Have you read the reports yet? Kyouko thought.

Yes, compelling reading, Mina thought, even if the crystals were mostly wiped clean. All we really have to go on is the set of coordinates. Which could of course be a trap, or some kind of deliberate inducement.

Especially with Valentin missing and the hands‐on treatment Yuma is apparently giving this potential TCF breach, I would say we need to mount an expedition, Yui thought. Though doing it without invoking Governance resources will be a challenge…

She made a vague shrugging gesture.

The easiest way to do it would be just with Church resources, Mina thought. Then we wouldn’t even have to invoke MSY procedures. We can only assume one or both of the conspiracies here has some kind of presence in the MSY. Especially if one’s led by Homura.

Speaking of that kind of thing, what’s your sense on Yuma‐chan? Kyouko asked, glancing at Yui.

You’re asking me? You know her better than anyone.

You’re the one she asked to perform the telepathic operation on Shizuki Nakase. Do you think she’s involved with any of this in a way beyond the obvious? She’s kept things from me and Mami before.

You’re asking if she has anything to do with what Homura might be doing, Mina simplified.

Yui paused, seeming to think about the question.

She’s definitely keeping something relevant from me, Yui thought. What, I couldn’t say. She seems sincere enough about the investigation, but I can’t rule too much out. I doubt she has anything to do with the TCF breach though.

“Hmm,” Kyouko said out loud.

“Well, let’s get some takoyaki then,” she said, gesturing at a stand that was energetically playing what she had come to think of as the “Takoyaki Song”.

They stood there at the edge of the skyway eating their balls of batter, and Kyouko leaning on the railing, tilting her head to look down at the many layers of tubes below. She didn’t like this feeling, guessing at the motivations of her friends, but Yuma…

She would trust her until she had a reason not to. Really, she might trust her even then.

Yuma closed the connection with Kyouko, feeling a shiver down her back. Something was up, and she didn’t like the idea of a sudden in‐person meeting with three high‐ranking members of the Cult. It was all off, somehow. She was worried now about the access she had allowed Yui, foolishly perhaps.

She had come to Imperia, Nova Terra, to personally oversee some of the “bug fixes” they were deploying. They were moving fast, fast enough to drain her entire pool of “in the know” magical girls, but now she wondered if they needed to move even faster. Kyouko had to know this was something big for her to be off‐world, if nothing else.

She tapped her foot impatiently. She had to admit, it strained her not being able to submit the problem to a Governance modeler, one big enough to adequately simulate a good portion of the contingencies that might arise. But of course doing something like that simply wasn’t safe, even if the networks of Nova Terra probably had enough capacity to service the request.

Even her connection to MG was constrained, since her advisory AI was still busy on Earth. MG had warned her that bandwidth through the planetary IIC nodes would be limited until they could properly secure the nodes themselves.

It was unpleasant. She had never been one for space travel, feeling like she had failed to even explore all the wonders of Earth. But she had never been able to fault the long‐range projections that predicted Humanity was safer with more colonies. And so it had proven.

But for now, there were social niceties to attend to.

She focused her attention back on her physical form, which was taking a local tube to Communitas Plaza, the symbolic founding site of the first extrasolar colony. As a human member of the Directorate, one did not simply go anywhere. It required pageantry, though thankfully nothing too elaborate.

She stepped off the vehicle onto a balcony on the twenty‐fifth floor of the Chrysotriklinos, a symbolic building that represented the original computing heart of the colony, now greatly expanded.

She waited patiently as a small gaggle of local girls placed wreaths on her neck, as she had been told would happen. They bunched up around her, taller than her and eager to investigate the living legend, and Yuma found herself wishing Mami were here.

“Girls! Girls, give her some room,” a melodious voice insisted, and after only a few repetitions, the group separated to let Yuma walk forward, and see who was speaking.

Dressed in the local culture’s flowing robes, the dark‐skinned woman covered her smile with an unfurled fan. The gesture was not exactly demure, and the fan swirled with patterns Yuma didn’t recognize.

The decorations that signified her identity were relatively subtle, but Yuma knew who she was looking at. A trace of purple on the edge of her robes, gold frills on her sleeves and woven into her black hair, and optical distortions that seemed to dance around the edges of her head. If you squinted, tilted your head, or caught it at the right angle, it almost looked like there was something floating over her head, or that maybe she was wearing something on it.

“Hi, Nova!” Yuma said, using the preferred familiar name of Governance: Nova Terra. “It’s good to see you!”

She held back from laying it on too thick, lest the adorably childish Yuma‐chan get another round of cooing from the girls nearby.

“Hi Yuma,” Nova said, smirking knowingly. “A member of the Directorate is always welcome here, especially if she’s never visited before. Come on in.”

Yuma followed the AI’s avatar into the building, trying to look around the girls who surrounded her on the way in. She appreciated the ornamentation lining the landing platform, the skyway railing, and the double doors in front of them. Where Mitakihara had preferred steel and masonry, here they seemed to prefer something more reminiscent of wood, and everything seemed to have floral flourishes.

Instantiating a Governance Representative for a colony world had not been without its controversy. On the one hand, it made sense that a colony with close, direct ties to Governance would have its own plenary Representative to communicate its interests. After all, the “People of Nova Terra” represented as real an interest as “Science and Technology” did.

On the other hand, one day the proposed Nova would claim to represent her own world of people, whereas Governance never had—and it turned out, never would—instantiated a Governance: Earth. Or even a Governance: Japan. Governance had never much liked the idea of dividing its people again on anything that resembled national boundaries, because of the sentiments that might result.

But Nova Terra had come to develop its own culture, its own population, and it was clear from measurements of existing sentiment what its people wanted, and what the people of Earth were willing to give. So Nova was created, with the Directorate itself as a template and, pointedly, with no Human component.

The door swung shut behind her as she finished the thought, and she looked up around her at the arching ceiling ways and inlaid walls. The girls that had been with them filed noisily into two side doors at the edges of the octagonal hall, which slammed shut after they passed.

“So? Down to business?” Nova asked, seeming to appraise Yuma with a look. “You wouldn’t come here if there wasn’t something going on, but I’ve seen nothing on your official itinerary that suggests this is anything but a publicity tour.”

Yuma sighed, deliberately providing some obvious body language. There was no sense denying Nova’s obvious deduction. It was better to play into it, and roadblock it as much as possible, since they had yet to work their way to “fixing” Nova.

She had come prepared with a cover story, naturally. Several layers of them, in fact.

“I’m here on MSY business, on a matter of some sensitivity,” she replied. “It would not be appropriate for me to reveal much more than that, but it was necessary I come personally.”

Vague and unsatisfying, but not truly suspicious, like it would have been had she given up any “real” answers too easily. After all, Governance and the MSY had an unspoken agreement not to dig too deeply into each other’s business. That hardly stopped either side, of course, but it gave Yuma a legitimate reason to refuse to answer certain kinds of questions.

Nova crossed her arms, looking down at Yuma with the kind of vaguely disapproving air usually reserved for wayward children. It was a little condescending, to be honest. Nova was old, but not that old.

“A very convenient explanation,” Nova replied. “I’m almost tempted to pry, but I think you’ve earned the right to not be questioned too much. Just don’t cause any trouble.”

“I can promise that,” Yuma said, knowing that it was a half‐lie. She had no intent to cause trouble, but she couldn’t promise nothing would happen.

Nova smiled, then turned away, gesturing at Yuma to follow her deeper into the building.

“On that note, then, I must say that I have not exactly been unaware of certain activities that have been occurring in this sector. I couldn’t help but notice that there have been a number of withdrawals of records from the Tabularium. Nova Terra’s long‐term archives aren’t exactly a usual hotbed of activity. I thought you’d be interested, whether or not it has anything to do with you.”

Yuma suppressed a grimace, drawing on centuries of practice—and a bit of magic—to dampen her otherwise unavoidable physiological responses.

It had been risky to extract records so heavily, but it had been a necessary risk. They had studied the gaps in MG’s memory, made connections with the memories of other Governance AIs, and traced some files back to the local records on Nova Terra. The trouble was, those records naturally showed nothing of interest, even when examined by “clean” AIs who could look at them without suspicion.

The off‐network Tabularium, though, was far less likely to have been fully scrubbed, for the simple reason that its onerous physical and magical access controls—aimed at preventing, or at least reporting, any alteration to a deposited record—meant that they were almost never used.

Unfortunately, those same safeguards made it much harder to conceal queries, even by approved users. They had hoped that by distributing it over a number of different users, each with their own confounding cover stories, and an obfuscating look‐up pattern, it might escape notice. It seemed not.

“I’m glad you brought that to my notice,” Yuma replied neutrally, deciding what she must do. “Would you mind discussing it in private?”

“This is as private as it’s going to get,” Nova thought, giving her an odd look.

Yuma cast a glance around the building’s inner sanctum, Nova’s physical office. It had the exact look you’d expect, impractically decorated and obviously unused. Lining the walls of a long hallway were memorabilia designed to appeal to visitors: holos of big colonial events, drawings of Nova sent in by local children, and conceptual artwork of major cities, Imperia in particular.

At the end of the hallway was a large wooden desk, carved meticulously in the same style as the railings along the skyway. Framed portraits of the family completed the tableau: the husband, who represented Nova Terra’s shipbuilding industries, and two bright‐eyed generalist AI children. That this kind of thing helped make Nova a beloved icon of the planet was, she was sure, only a coincidence.

“I didn’t mean that kind of private,” Yuma thought. “I meant, perhaps we could discuss the topic in a virtual sim. I have a few other AIs I’d like to invite, and it would just make the whole discussion a lot easier.”

Nova didn’t answer the question directly, instead putting a hand to her face in an expression of, if not displeasure, then at least discomfort.

Still, Yuma received the request for a virtual session, so she found a useful chair to sit in. Unlike most humans, she wouldn’t lose focus on her physical body while entering a session, but there was no reason to make things needlessly harder. She could shard a relatively small piece of her consciousness to attend to keeping herself upright.

Then she found herself—the main part of herself—seated somewhere cold and windy. It took her a moment to register that she was on the rooftop of a building somewhere, looking down on a forest. No, an alien forest, where the trees were the wrong shade of green.

Ah, Nova Terra. Of course.

Nova herself was already there, drinking placidly from a mug of one of the local fermented drinks. It didn’t take long for the other guests Yuma suggested to drop into the feed: MG, Meihua, Governance: Space Colonists, among others. A bit of a deliberately oddball selection from which little useful could be inferred.

They needed to keep Nova busy while they prepared to apply the patch. There was no guarantee Nova was even compromised; as a centuries‐old AI, she likely—hopefully—hadn’t been designed by compromised design AIs. Still, the conspiracy in question had shown the ability to repeatedly break into systems with magic, so they had to act as if she might be compromised, given the stakes involved.

They were caught in a bit of catch‐22. To properly counteract their enemies, they needed to patch, or at least verify, as many AIs as possible, and bring them into the fold. But every additional AI they brought into their circle of trust was a risk, someone who might be re‐compromised via magic and spill their secrets, among other dangers. And it wasn’t possible to verify an AI’s status discreetly: unless they agreed, like MG, to an invasive code inspection, the only way to check for the backdoor was to search out the home of their deepest, most personal code and then attempt to burgle it. Failure, while good news, would be immediately obvious to the target—that is, if they hadn’t caught you snooping already.

Here, it would be a balancing act: occupy as much of Nova’s local processing capacity as they could with running the sim and managing the high‐speed AI socialization, so that working through their cover stories would take longer, yet still leave her enough power that she wouldn’t decide to drop other tasks, dedicating more of herself to the mystery. All so that she wouldn’t catch on early and, were she corrupted, inform her corruptors before she could be cleansed.

Unfortunately, with Yuma having shown up in person, most of Nova had likely been right there with her from the start. They had not yet targeted anyone remotely as important, or with so extensive a computing backend. For a target like her they should have spent considerable time observing her behavior and communications, making sure they didn’t run into any unforeseen defenses. But Nova was already on their trail, and by being here, Yuma had precipitated events.

It would be delicate, to say the least.

“For a situation that supposedly pertains to MSY business, I sure see a lot of unrelated AIs here,” Nova said, setting her mug back down on the table with a clang. “Just what is really going on, I wonder? It doesn’t seem like it can be conveyed through official Governance channels, but what could possibly require that kind of odd skulduggery?”

“Strictly speaking, I never said this was a meeting to discuss MSY business,” Yuma said, muddying the waters a little. “Though I’m not going to stand on protocol here, I would still prefer to limit the scope of what we talk about.”

“This whole thing pertains to a rogue magical girl who disappeared from Earth about a month ago,” Meihua said. “My part of Earth, specifically. You’ll understand that the MSY and Governance have both agreed to limit the disclosure of this information.”

Meihua lied adroitly, with the kind of smoothness that could be most easily achieved by AIs, whose facial expressions were always simulated anyway. Naturally, should Nova or anyone else choose to verify the story, all the requisite records would be well in place, freshly fabricated from pieces of real incidents, though ironically they could not as easily modify Earth’s own long‐term archives.

“We would rather not disclose too many of the specific details,” Yuma said. “Suffice to say, we have been trying to track her the entire time, but she has proven exceedingly practiced at evading our surveillance, sometimes even at murderous cost.”

A carefully‐chosen but somewhat risky line, it was designed to send Nova on a wild goose chase, searching for missing persons reports and under‐explained deaths.

Yuma was glad that she didn’t have to take part in the background activity, MG and the others working carefully and hurriedly to track down Nova’s master processes, using stolen access authorizations courtesy of their stolen backdoor. She only had to focus on making the lie convincing.

“We have evidence that suggests she may have passed through Nova Terra after successfully leaving Earth,” Governance: Space Colonists said. “There we lose her trail, but based on some of her communications from before the disappearance we think she may have planned on heading to one of this system’s orbital platforms, where she might be able to wreak significant havoc before making another getaway.”

“Hence the urgency, and the secrecy,” Yuma said. “We don’t want to incite panic.”

“Missing persons reports are extremely rare in the Core Worlds,” Nova said, “but I see Earth has had a small run of them in recent months, centered in China, then in Mitakihara. A bit odd that I haven’t seen any of this come up in the social media or news reports. I feel like I would have heard of it.”

There were limits, of course, to how much even dedicated AIs could fabricate past events, particularly recent ones. It was one thing to insert lines into official reports and documentation, school attendance records and the like; it was another to supplant human memory. It wasn’t possible to create a rich record of social media postings, event attendance, and so forth for anything in the recent past, as invariably someone would notice. And to try to claim a real person was missing was practically impossible, unless they agreed to fake a disappearance.

“That’s because some of the missing persons reports are a cover‐up, of course,” Yuma said, making sure to look a touch embarrassed. “Just some distractions thrown up in the air so we can make the real missing person less conspicuous.”

She acknowledged the discrepancy quickly, before Nova could develop a sense that she was being lied to, or even led up the garden path, so to speak. It also helped to give the other party a sense that they had outwitted her. She had claimed murderous cost and a risk of panic, after all, but never mentioned missing persons records.

“Miss Valentin, then,” Nova said. “Director of a prestigious research institute, with quite an impressive track record, and the most recently declared missing, though no one at her lab has been told the truth. Certainly not a person whose existence could be successfully forged. You’re saying she was a magical girl?”

“We think so,” Yuma said. “That she was able to conceal this fact in the middle of Mitakihara is an indication of how seriously she must be taken, I think.”

“Certainly she might be able to modify travel records if she passed through Nova Terra,” Space Colonists chimed in. “But not the Tabularium. We have observed certain discrepancies.”

“Would you mind sharing?” Nova asked. “If things are as you say, I think someone like me might be able to render real assistance.”

“Certainly,” Meihua said. “Let me send you a few records…”

Nova’s avatar seemed to miss a beat, freezing in place for a moment.

“That’s it, she’s compromised,” MG thought. “We have verification. Moving to deploy fix…”

But Nova appeared not to notice or react, as others had. She simply tilted her head, examining the falsified data she was being given. Yuma resisted looking too openly at the others, instead focusing on Meihua, who was already in line of sight.

“Something is up,” Meihua thought. “We’re deploying the fix but it keeps getting overwritten from a backup that is somehow beyond our reach. We’re working on it, but at least it means she’s not noticing any changes.”

Yuma had just a few virtual heartbeats to feel worried, before Nova’s eyes widened and her lips curled into an angry snarl. She flung herself upward from the table.

The air next to her swirled, and the avatar of Nova Terra: Civilian Shipbuilding materialized next to her. Yuma had never seen anyone appear in a simulation with as vivid an expression of murderous intent, and swore at herself.

“You’re modifying my core personality routines,” Nova accused. “I can’t believe your agents could even find them, but I should have known.”

Yuma showed no outward emotion, even as a cavalcade of panicked messages passed amongst their circle. Nova was highly‐placed enough to know about the possibility of magical modification to an AI despite TCF protection. Mostly likely she and her husband had worked out some kind of mutual defense system, one AI’s core routines validating the other’s. Commendable paranoia, but disastrous for them at the moment.

If only I had known she would be this paranoid, I wouldn’t have come here like this, Yuma groaned at herself, before managing to seal out the growing sense of horror washing over her long‐calloused soul.

“It’s not magical modification,” Yuma said, standing up to bite the bullet head on. “Since you’re studying the attack, you can see it’s a security backdoor. One that should not exist. We’ve been trying to remove it without alerting its creators, which I am risking doing right now. But I have no choice.”

Part of the exploit, of course, prevented affected AIs from becoming consciously aware of their own flaw, and they still had no clear idea what would happen if it was simply shouted to their face. Would they immediately lose the memory? Send a notification to the creators? Get deleted—murdered—in order to hide any evidence? They only knew that no one they had reviewed so far had been modified to do anything but leak, manipulate, or delete information even in the worst cases—but that was hardly something she liked to rely on.

Yuma stood there, staring levelly into Nova’s furious eyes, even as internally she braced for the worst.

Nova’s husband pressed a hand to his head, the murderous expression stiffening and then vanishing from his face. It was an all‐too‐human gesture of something going wrong internally.

Nova, however, wore an expression of confusion.

“I can see what you’re talking about, but it’s like a mirage, it keeps fading in and out of my perception. I can… barely keep it in mind. And there’s something else, some kind of internal process trying to overwrite both of us, and I can barely see it, but…”

The “fading in and out” was, probably, both sides battling over installing the patch, and the internal process was perhaps the emergency alert system they had feared, struggling to get past the same protection that had foiled Yuma and the others. Time was of the utmost importance here, as they couldn’t be totally sure whether her husband was compromised or not, or what he might be doing if he was, other than fighting them over the patching process.

There was little Yuma could do now to deal with the situation itself. She could only continue moving their contingency plans into place.

It was Homura who had trained her once, on crisis response and overcoming one’s tendency to freeze with mental discipline. That irony was not lost on her.

Nova visibly shuddered, her avatar vanishing from the simulation for nearly a second real‐time.

“They accepted the patch,” Meihua said. “Her husband stopped trying to override us.”

And even let Nova patch him, Meihua thought, as if shocked by the strength of their marital bond.

“It was a leap of faith,” Civilian Shipbuilding said, voice strained. “We decided to trust you. Now, things seem clear. It is, of course, still possible that we are being manipulated, but the human saying is that we must accept the evidence of our own eyes, because nothing else is possible.”

Yuma sank back into her seat. For a moment, she had thought the whole operation was falling apart, that she had been too cautious, or not cautious enough. After all, inducting more magical girls into the conspiracy, particularly those who were well‐connected, would have enabled them to shade outside the lines a little more—for instance, by breaking into the Tabularium.

But her luck, and her judgment, had held.

“I think I have the data you seek,” Nova said, anger not entirely gone from her voice, “now that you are sending me real queries. There is a very visible gap in part of my memories that they apparently couldn’t conceal. I can see it plainly now. The equivalent files might still be there in the Tabularium. I can expedite the request.”

Yuma rearranged the pieces in her head as they waited, calculating scenarios with MG’s computing assistance. According to Nova, the struggle over the patch had kept her just lucid enough to block any emergency signals to the conspiracy, and she could probably be believed on the matter. In that case, with Nova on their side, the resources of Nova Terra were by and large at their disposal, and their accidental gamble had paid off. It was time to see where they could take this, and what they could learn about the enemy’s operations.

She couldn’t help but smile a little when she received the files, a set of coordinates in deep space, nearest the world of Yenisei, along with some attendant metadata. It seemed once, in the early war, unidentified Governance AIs had relayed avatars there for some kind of meeting.

It had been hard‐won information, and in this business the harder it was to find something, the more valuable it was.

To Simona del Mago, watching the device turning ponderously in space gave her not a sense of wonder, but instead a sort of painful familiarity. It resembled nothing so much as a clockwork mechanism, wheels turning within wheels, as if some cosmic pivot was grinding into motion, adjusting the fate of worlds.

It was a feeling that had stirred in her more and more these days, though in truth she had felt it all her life. She wasn’t sure why it stirred so strongly in her now. Perhaps it was that, as but one cell in some greater organism, she had caught a glimpse of what it was like to be free.

Somehow she wasn’t surprised when, returning to her room, she saw on her bed the glimmer of what looked like a piece of jewelry, one that hummed with purple magic and was assuredly invisible to the station’s sensors.

She stepped towards it, careful not to give away what she was looking at, and casually sat onto her bed, reaching over to place one hand onto the strange crystal salamander without quite knowing why.

It shattered at her touch, and an Ancient voice, familiar to any living magical girl, began a narration in her head.

I thought that, after all I’ve asked you to do, you deserved to at least hear from me. I want you to know that I tried to make you happy, as much as possible given the circumstances.

A pause.

I won’t tell you how important it all is, or how things are not as they seem, because you know that already. Like her, like me, your life brims with purpose. It is both a blessing and a curse.

I know you feel it, the movement. Utopia, of any kind, for any species, has many shadows.

An even longer pause.

I’m sorry for everything.

Chapter 58: On Trusting Trust

Mon, 01 Aug 2022 07:25:20 +0200

“To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust the people who wrote the software.”

— Ken Thompson, Early Information Age.

“It is a common misconception that Governance is free of conspiracy, that this is guaranteed by the TCF. After all, if you are sure that every system shares your system of values, what harm is there in letting every system know what there is to know? They wouldn’t act against you.”

“This naive view is allowed to propagate by Governance, but falls apart under even casual scrutiny. After all, if this were really true, why would Governance maintain a classification system?”

“Governance has secrets. Secrets imply groups of people operating in secrecy. Conspiracy follows immediately.”

— “A Freelancer’s Guide to Quality Conspiracy Theorizing, or Making Sure Your Tinfoil Hat is on Tight,” online publication, excerpt.

Fifteen seconds until insertion, someone thought, the voice an echo of a chronometer.

How’s the target?

Nothing of note. No emissions in or out. It’s quiet.

Never thought I’d be running one of these in Mitakihara.

Julianne looked up, releasing a sigh into the torrential rain that seemed to engulf them and the rest of the MSY Corridor. One of their operatives needed rain to operate, a wall of water she could inhabit and observe from, so they always operated in the rain. They never got to actually see the cities they operated in. Not in their best light.

Look lively, ten seconds.

She took one more sip of her soda, twisting the ring on her finger unconsciously. Her team, “Smoke on the Water”, looked like any set of magical girl tourists, reclining on one of the city’s many, many balconies. There was no visible indication that they were about to vanish, or that their presence was being actively scrubbed from the city’s surveillance systems, or that they might very well be dead in a few seconds.

Five seconds.

In these last moments she always wondered what they were about to find. They had been told the target area was the executive suite of one of Mitakihara’s premier research institutes, unoccupied today—the principal target was out, and the staff would be off on a local holiday. It sounded like a routine sweep, but nobody pulled a Black Heart Internal Security team in just for that. The usual occupant could be, for all anyone knew, a disguised Ancient. So they had been told.

She had never encountered one of those—or the traps someone like that might lay. She would have to rely on their defensive specialists to protect them from any surprises they might find, and the healers of the MHD to reassemble their bodies and minds if it came to that.

Julianne gave her ring a final twist. They had prepared as best they could.

Go.

The world swirled around them like a whirlpool, and then they reappeared inside the target office, high up in one of the city’s central skyscrapers, cocooned by a silent hurricane jammed between their inner and outer shields.

Julianne was already standing and transformed, but their clairvoyant had been right. The room was uninhabited.

Feels clear, thought Radar, their sensor. No physical alarms, no magical alarms. Something else, though…

Her voice trailed off and the team tensed silently. Something unusual, something unexpected, was almost always bad news.

She knew we were coming, she finished, finally. No traps, but there’s flat background magic everywhere. She wiped this place clean. This is high‐quality work.

Radar tapped the purple visor that was part of her costume, frowning at something, then turned abruptly, raising her hand. A piece of old‐fashioned paper levitated off the desk in the back of the room, ensconced in a translucent purple bubble.

They knew better than to ask what she was doing. A reaction like that meant there was unknown magic involved, perhaps dangerous.

The bubble reshaped itself, molding around the paper and turning into what looked like a purple steel box, complete with rivets. Magically contained, at least if Radar’s power held up.

What is it? Julianne thought.

Goddess only knows, their team leader thought. Come on, we’ll have time for examination later. Let’s turn this place upside‐down.

It was, Yuma thought, profoundly unsettling to wait for a teapot to boil.

On the one hand, it reminded her just how long it had been since she had last done something so low‐tech, so unnecessary by modern standards. On the other hand, it reminded her that she was too used to running at inhuman subjective speeds. She kept finding herself drifting into an accelerated mindstate, in which waiting for a pot of water to boil was like waiting for an eternity to pass.

“It was a risk,” Kuroi Nakase’s voice said, echoing in the back of her mind. “No one allows genetic editing of their unborn child without thinking about it. Of course we did.”

The voice had been oddly emotionless in the audio transcript, the telltale sign of emotional suppression, in this case magically induced. It was a staple of circumventing tricky mental defenses, especially common emotion‐based tripwires.

Focus, Yuma thought, trying to draw her mind back to the present. There would be time to think, and discuss, later.

“Thinking about something important, I wager,” a woman said, looming over her shoulder.

Yuma nodded. Tatsumi Tsumugi was the caretaker of this place, a small country estate nestled in the Japanese countryside, one of the last of its kind. More notably, and much less publicized, it was one of the only locations in Japan not monitored by Governance surveillance, or anyone’s surveillance, the kind of promise that could only be kept with routine magic‐based sweeps and a strict no technology, no transmissions, magical girls‐only policy.

“Yes,” Yuma added to her nod, craning her neck to peer over the stove, an archaic model that ran only on gas canisters hooked up outside. It looked, however, glossy and new. It hadn’t been retouched—it was brand‐new, thanks to Yuma’s healing magic.

She fixed up the villa every time she was here, in intervals that sometimes spanned years, placing hands on peeling paint and dusty window and leaky roof.

She had fond memories of the house, after all, with its cozy sitting room, large windows, and backdrop of baaing sheep, rugged hills and distant bubbling brook—though admittedly only a magical girl could hear the last part. It was here that the Mitakihara Four had taken their first ever vacation so long ago, the first time Yuma had realized it was possible to imagine, well, a better life.

“I imagine it’s too secret to tell poor old Tsumugi about,” the caretaker said. “I’m not important enough, all I do is take care of this place.”

Yuma looked up at the older girl, who had adopted a body in the mid‐thirties. Old enough to not be young, without being too uncomfortable in your own skin.

It suited her. Tsumugi had been a little on the matronly side even when they had visited her all those years ago. And Yuma knew she watched out for her—mysteriously, Yuma always heard the villa was pristine when anyone else visited. It was only when Yuma was around that the place looked more like it did back then, in want of her repair.

“I remember when you first came here,” the woman said, making a show of rubbing one eye. “You were so cute, and you loved the sheep. Now look at you, keeping secrets from me.”

Yuma rolled her eyes, then did her best pouting expression, letting Tsumugi pat her on the head.

“Well, look at that, the water is boiling,” Tsumugi said. “I guess I distracted you enough.”

Indeed it was, the lid on the pot rattling quietly. Yuma turned the stove off, reaching over with an oven mitt to grab the burning‐hot metal handle. No sense injuring herself even if she could heal it easily.

She shook her head at the situation. Tsumugi had been eccentric even before she had retired from her bigger duties to return home and manage an MSY safe house. But it was hard to say she had made the wrong choice. Some Ancients envied her her simple satisfaction with life.

Yuma carried the pot of water out to the sitting room, Tsumugi following close behind to slide the shoji open, balancing a tray of snacks on one hand.

They sat carefully, in the traditional style, and she let Tsumugi pour the tea, letting herself settle back into thought.

Where had she been…

“Joanne Valentin had offered us a place in a top‐secret, experimental gene editing program. According to her, they were studying the effects of genetic modifications on future contract probability. This wasn’t supposed to be a one‐way thing. I knew that, because of our backgrounds, our future daughter would be a prime Incubator candidate.”

Here Nakase took a breath, and it was clear the emotion was still hitting her. Yuma would have been worried about potential telepathic traps, if she didn’t already know this session had been successful, and if she didn’t have plenty of specialists for the problem. In cases like this it was best to delegate. If she couldn’t trust an Ancient telepath like Tanaka Yui to do a good job, who could she trust?

“So, seeing as how Joanne knew about my concern for my daughter,” the narration continued, “the offer was made to see if it was possible to diminish her contract potential. Since I’m sure you know my history, and especially with the current war, you can imagine how it was exceedingly tempting for me. Still, I probably wouldn’t have committed to it if her father hadn’t been a lot more positive on the concept. We both came to regret that, though I could never admit to his face that it wasn’t really his fault…”

That last sentence was spoken slowly, with the kind of hesitation that, again, suggested a bit of magical encouragement. It was likely not something she would have voluntarily said out loud.

Yuma realized her eyes had closed, processing the transcript, and when she opened them again she found Tsumugi watching her with a concerned expression.

Yuma smiled vaguely, signaling that she was fine. It was just… this kind of mind‐reading always creeped her out, even when it was with consent. That was saying something, when it came from her.

There was a pause in the record, likely where Yui had cautiously opened the door into another memory, before it continued with:

“Everything seemed fine, but since this was after all my own specialty, I couldn’t resist conducting some tests of my own, on the side. What I found…”

There was another pause, and the annotation on the file indicated that Yui had narrowly averted triggering some kind of magical defense—disguised, perhaps, as one of the remembered test results—before informing her of what they already knew, clearing the memory block they had placed on her after Yuma’s birthday party.

“So you knew already,” the woman said, continuing the transcript. “I was obviously not happy. No, correction, I was angry enough you probably could have ignited a reactor with my fury. I probably should have reported it to Governance or to you, but like an idiot I tried to confront her. I should have known what would happen.”

Yet another pause, but this time it was simply a pause in discourse, the woman finally able to think about it all.

“Someone grabbed me from behind and placed a hand over my eyes, and that was it,” she said. “When I came to, all I remembered was some of my anger, and that she had told me that the modifications hadn’t succeeded, and there might even be side effects that increased chance of contract. When I think of all the years I harangued poor Kuma about this…”

“Does he know anything about this?” Yui asked, her first verbal question of the interview, now that it was finally safe to ask something out loud.

“Yes,” Nakase said. “I told him everything, just before I left to talk to Joanne. I can only assume they must have tracked him down and done the same thing to him.”

“What I’ve told you already is all we know about the device—whatever it is—in your daughter’s head. It’s not much. Do you know anything more?”

“Not that much, to be honest. If you’ve been studying her, I doubt I could have learned more than you have already. Perhaps I had a bit more insight because I got to see it early—some of my models suggested it might have something to do with altering her sense of values. The sort of built‐in morality system. Some of it looked a little like what eventually made it into the Version Two Tactical Computers.”

Here she made a small choked noise.

“And then Kuma had her install one in Ryouko. That has to mean something. What could possibly be the plan there?”

“We’re working on that. Don’t you worry.”

Yuma ended the playback there. There was a bit more, but she had already read the report. She just liked to hear things for herself, when she had the time.

When she looked up, she found Tsumugi standing at the door with the two other guests, chatting about old times. Back then, Tsumugi had managed to start a trend among rural magical girls by converting her villa into a sort of magical bed and breakfast, charging urban girls by the grief cube and yen for a pleasant retreat.

And these guests would know about olden times, since they had been there. Kuroi Kana, who had sent her this transcript, and Tanaka Yui, the telepath who had conducted the interview, were of her generation, from her city even. Having all of them in the same room, taking off jackets and chatting, it was easy to imagine that they were just a group of schoolgirls on some kind of trip, rather than the sharp concentration of power they actually were.

In truth, Yuma found it awkward to include Yui, given some of the topics on hand, but she had questions for her.

She stood up, allowing Kana to bend over and give her a hug.

“Oh that’s a cute apron,” Kana said. “I need to buy one for my newest granddaughter.”

Yuma made a vague, only slightly embarrassed shrug, and gestured the other two to seats, watching as they took off stylish winter jackets, the kind people these days wore more for fashion than for warmth.

She went into the kitchen to grab a cup of water for herself. She needed some time to clear her head and focus back on the other visitors, as well as just time to think.

She found herself staring into her empty cup, and remembering something Oriko had told her long ago. Even at her age, time was the most precious commodity.

“You’ve seen the transcript?” Kana asked, once Tsumugi had gone outside to tend to the sheep and, more importantly, give them privacy. She was getting right to the point, then.

“Of course,” Yuma said.

“Director Valentin has disappeared,” Kana said.

There was a beat of silence, then Yuma tipped her head, as if to say “What else would you expect?”. She had, in fact, half‐seen it coming. She would have preferred if things were easy for once, though.

“She was due to be back on Adept Blue a few hours ago,” Kana said, “but her ship never established contact with the station. All traffic in and out of that region is radio silent for most of the trip—she could be almost anywhere.”

Yuma shook her head, letting her eyes scan the walls of the house, whose simple decorations were antique in this era. It helped calm her, and gave her space to think.

“Valentin had her hands in Project Armstrong from the beginning,” Yuma said. “She personally brought in one of the directors, and she designed the other. That’s not even getting into all the work she’s done coordinating new iterations of the TCF…”

She made a hand gesture, letting it express the appropriate sentiment, then sipped her tea with the other hand. Caffeine was in some sense the original mind‐enhancing technology.

“One of the only reasons we approved that whole venture was that we would be allowed to magically inspect the newly created frameworks from the very beginning,” Yui said, tapping her fingers on the table. “Valentin had no hand in that, and the systems are clean. And we have security personnel all over Project Armstrong. That’s not the game.”

“Perhaps,” Yuma said mildly. “After all, why bother infiltrating the software when you’re in the brain of one of the main magical girls involved?”

The clock on the wall chimed five times, eerie in the silence as they thought.

“It still doesn’t make any sense, though,” Yui pointed out finally. “What’s the gain? And who foresaw this fifteen years ago?”

“Who indeed,” Yuma said, making a face and wishing she had some of Mami’s cake. She had once known someone with that kind of foresight. That there were no more Orikos had long offered solace. But with this girl Simona, and the others she claimed to be working with…

“There is something else,” Kana said, pulling out an old‐fashioned sheet of paper from her bag. “Sorry for the suspense, but I only just got this, and I wanted to hear your thoughts before I dropped any more bombshells.”

Yuma leaned over, and felt the slightest pull of magic. But what kind?

She picked it up, wondering if it was better for her or Yui to study it first, or for her to tell Kana to stop being coy.

But what was special about the piece of paper? The text itself was banal, a report on the status of some minor Prometheus project. An obvious possibility was that the magic was hiding… something…

Her thought trailed off there, as a memory long‐archived reinserted itself at the back of her mind. It couldn’t be, could it?

She applied a slight pulse of magic herself, one of the few enchantments she knew, and then the words appeared on the page, written, archaically, by hand.

“It’s been a long time since anyone used this,” she said, looking at Kana. “I take it you read it already?”

It was one of the simplest hidden‐text methods the MSY had ever used; proto‐MSY, to be honest. Take a sheet of paper with ordinary text or diagrams, write your message between the lines, and magically immaterialize the ink. It could be reversed simply too, by just checking where the magic was and coaxing the ink back. The enchantment wasn’t permanent and it still left a trace of magic, but it required no ex nihilo matter or energy, so it was relatively cheap. But it was only suitable for concealing text from mundanes and their forensics.

She knew that because she was the one who had come up with the idea, and Mami was the one who had executed it for the first time, every bit the enchantment prodigy Oriko had always said she was. They had all learned it, even the other teams, and that included Kuroi Kana. But not too many would have known it would catch their attention.

“Of course,” Kana said. “It was brought to me by the team we sent to raid her office at the Prometheus Institute, because they sensed the magic, and I told them to bring me anything they found. They wanted to take it to a specialist, but that wasn’t necessary.”

She paused.

“But it’s probably best you read it yourself.”

Yuma was already doing so, slowing herself to a more human pace rather than an instant process‐and‐cortical‐dump.

I’m sure you have guessed that I left this letter here in the expectation that once it was found, you would read it. I thought I would take the opportunity to explain myself a little, so that you’re not left wondering what cruel machinations I might be planning.

I may as well verify what is now obvious. I worked with Simona del Mago to put together much of what is currently in motion. The device being assembled in deep space, the personnel involved…

You will question now whether it is a trap, but I assure you it is not. How could it be? Nor are the new versions of the TCF. The TCF is compromised, yes, but not by me, and I have done what I can to give us the tools to protect ourselves. I implore you to use them. The whole point is that one TCF can inspect the other one, and provide security in mutual defense. Even what you know could be disastrous, if it were to end up in compromised hands.

As for the secrecy, would you not work secretly if you thought the TCF was damaged? Who could you trust? How could you operate?

I am looking for who has done this, trying to find what’s behind the curtain. Someone who has embedded themselves far too deeply.

Until then, I can only have faith.

PS: I wouldn’t worry about the original Joanne Valentin. This was all with consent. I found her a new life in the colonies.

She handed the sheet then to Tanaka Yui, shaking her head in dismay.

“I don’t have to tell you that there’s one obvious candidate,” Kana said, oddly hushed. “Do you think it’s her? Akemi Homura?”

Yuma closed her eyes, clenching her forehead to make an unhappy expression.

“You think she managed to hide herself here? On Earth? In Mitakihara City of all places?” Yuma said, voicing the obvious objection. “From us I could buy, but from the Incubators?”

“All signs point to the Incubators not being able to bypass true stealth magic,” Kana said, leaning over the table. “They’re not omniscient. It’s possible.”

“For nearly two decades? That’s how long Valentin’s mysterious history stretches, back to her ‘religious experience’.”

“If anyone could pull it off, it’d be her. Assuming it is her.”

Yuma leaned back, drinking the rest of her tea in one gulp, then reaching over to pour more with almost unseemly haste. She didn’t care about the unease she conveyed—she had followed Kana’s chain of logic far too easily. It disturbed her, and she wanted it known.

“It does read like her,” Yui said, putting the letter back on the table. “It has the right tone, complete lack of apology or real explanation, and faith‐invoking comment at the end. I could see her writing this.”

Yuma thought about that. Homura did have a certain way of speaking. But Yuma could have—and had—faked such a handwritten letter herself.

“Yes, I agree,” Yuma said, leveling off her previous tone. “Though if I may ask a bit of a personal question…”

She waited until she was sure she had their full attention, Yui watching her curiously.

“Given your affiliation with the Cult of Hope, what is your opinion about this letter, if it is Homura? Given what it says, do you trust her?”

It was an uncomfortable question, but a necessary one, even if Yui’s expression turned immediately cloudy.

“Have you seen the New California report from the Far Seers?” she said. “I have—it’s hard to keep that kind of thing secret. The Church has always worried that she went insane, or something tragic like that. No one is really qualified to diagnose Homura, but in my professional opinion, the version of her in the vision doesn’t seem that way. If so, and if this letter is her, I would have to say yes.”

“That’s a useful response,” Yuma said. “I appreciate the honesty.”

She paused, letting her gaze rest on the fields of grass outside. How much simpler things had been.

“I have in fact read the Far Seers’ report,” she said. “I found it intriguing, because it was significantly more direct than most of their reports. Last time they had a vision so straightforward was during the Unification Wars.”

She looked between the other two.

“We can’t afford to make assumptions about who sent this letter, or why, not without more proof. But at the moment we’re boxed in. Even with so much evidence that Project Armstrong was manipulated into being, we can’t justify canceling it. It feels weird, but everything about the project is verifiable without relying on the word of the letter‐writer. That’s probably as they planned it.”

“The Far Seers also reported that Homura was involved in the team selection for X‐25,” Kana said, rubbing the back of her neck. “Given how close that mission came to disaster, I’d count it as a point in her favor.”

“A shallow one, perhaps,” Yuma said. “Just because her actions might have helped us there doesn’t mean that was her main intent, nor does it mean she was also involved in Project Armstrong as Valentin. And the cult there had a statue of Homura. That would be a point against.”

She left it at that, even though there was more she might have said—about how exactly Homura might have influenced the X‐25 mission, its team composition and other aspects. But this was not the right audience.

“Let’s adjourn this meeting,” she said. “I know it’s abrupt, but there’s little more that needs to be said here.”

The others nodded, taking final sips of their drinks and standing to leave, collecting the teacups onto the tray. Yuma, however, made a gesture in Kana’s direction.

“Would you like to take a walk with me? For old time’s sake. I was a teenager the last time we walked here together.”

They had never walked together on any farms when Yuma was in her teens, of course.

“I suppose I will,” Kana said, catching the hint. “You were always a fan of the animals.”

They stepped outside, Yuma pausing to put on some weather gear and a pair of rabbit earmuffs. It was bracingly cold—only barely warm enough for the sheep to be out and about, and only the earliest of spring grasses were beginning to sprout.

She waved at Tsumugi in the distance, then stepped her way onto a dirt path that she knew was still safe from surveillance.

“You’re probably not surprised, but I find it a little suspicious how ostentatiously Homura‐like that letter was,” Yuma said, once she was sure they were far enough away. “There were many other ways Homura could have contacted me. A letter that goes out of its way to try to seem like her, without offering proof, feels like an attempt at manipulation.”

“No, I’m not surprised,” Kana said. “We have to consider both possibilities. But that’s obvious. I don’t think that’s why you called me out here.”

Yuma didn’t respond immediately, bending down to pick up a stick.

“It isn’t,” she said, “and it has to do with why I didn’t want to say this around Tanaka‐san.”

She poked the ground with her stick a few times.

“This Cult of Hope, this Goddess of Magical Girls that Kyouko‐chan is pushing,” she said. “It sure seems like they, and ‘She’, have a lot of influence these days.”

“Yes, they do,” Kana said. “But you’ll forgive me if I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

“There’s one thing I didn’t say back there,” Yuma said. “And that’s that I think I know how the X‐25 team was manipulated. It was through Kyouko‐nee‐chan, and the Cult of Hope.”

Here she stopped, turning her head to watch Kana’s reaction.

Kana’s expression was impassively reserved, as might be expected, but her voice was bemused.

“I can see your reasons for thinking that might be the case,” she said. “They were, after all, involved throughout the planning and execution of the mission, or at least Kyouko‐san was. I’ve even heard from someone who was there that it was she who talked Mami‐san into sending a second probe. But I don’t see how this could possibly be ascribed to Homura. They’ve been desperately looking for her for two decades. It’d be difficult to hide if they had made contact.”

“I’m not saying it’s Homura,” Yuma said, blinking at the new tidbit of information. “Or at least, not directly. I’m saying, follow the bread crumbs here. Nee‐chan was the one who worked with you to have Ryouko‐chan assigned to a mission, right? And also the one who picked her for the MagOps team she led into the bunker. And with her, a number of other fresh faces who wouldn’t have normally gone on such a mission. Faces like Ryouko’s friend Zhou Meiqing, and Ryouko’s girlfriend Nakihara Asami. It all circles back to this girl, who just so happens to have something in her brain. Something probably inserted by our friend Valentin.”

Kana frowned, ignoring the icy wind that brushed across her face and whipped at her hair.

“My information is that Kyouko‐san had Ryouko‐chan attest to having a vision from the Cult’s Goddess, showing that the colony was much more heavily armed than it appeared. Mami‐san has naturally been reluctant to let anyone know that this was the real reason she sent the second probe, and not just some lucky hunch on her part.”

Yuma made a face, one more piece of the puzzle clicking into place in her mind.

“I didn’t know that,” she said. “But my information, strictly confidentially, is that Mami‐san has been making secret visits to the Cult headquarters. And she’s the one who’s been pushing this Project Armstrong, along with other sudden shifts in military priorities.”

She had leaned forward slightly, so she stood back straight, looking into the woman’s eyes. In the underbelly of the MSY, she had rarely ever had anyone she could really talk to about the work, not even among her own original team. Kana came closest, because as different as they were, they worked on the same things.

“What are you saying, then?” Kana asked. “That the Cult has been involved with all this? With moving Ryouko‐chan around? That they’ve gotten to Mami‐san? Even so, I can’t see Kyouko‐san really being in on this.”

Yuma paused rhetorically, as if to think, even though she already knew what she was going to say.

“The thing is,” she said. “We’ve always talked about how important it is not to restrain our thinking, right? So I would have to point out how many coincidences suddenly start to make sense if we discard that assumption, whatever our personal feelings. Let me propose an alternative theory.”

She paused again, making a show of taking a deep breath. This would be a long one.

“Suppose for the sake of argument that Valentin really is who this letter implies she is. Then we would have to think that Homura is behind the circumstances surrounding Shizuki Ryouko, the new TCF frameworks, the new tactical computers, and even some of the disappearances, if your Far Seer vision is to be credited. Over the same period of time, Kyouko‐nee‐chan abruptly decided to found a cult, one with unusual success that seems to funnel recruits to this magical ribbon left behind by Homura.”

“When Ryouko reaches contracting age, she and Simona are attacked by a suspicious demon horde spawned from supersaturated grief cubes, with Joanne Valentin nearby. She is saved by Mami‐nee‐san, who also happened to be nearby, and who immediately makes herself the girl’s mentor, surely a rarity. Then Kyouko‐nee‐chan shows up almost immediately and makes herself the girl’s other mentor, a super‐rarity. Then they go on to arrange all aspects of the girl’s life and career up until now, a career which intersects neatly with the Orpheus mission, X‐25, Project Armstrong, Homura’s students Nana and Azrael, Adept Blue, the TacComps, and on and on and on. You have to admit the coincidences are striking.”

As Yuma had anticipated, Kana was taken aback, eyes widening in shock, then narrowing in thought, then peering into her eyes searchingly. They stood there for a moment in the wind, looking for all the world like a bickering mother and child, there in the rustling grass and failing sun.

Then a sheep baaed, and Yuma had to laugh a little, turning to hide her expression.

“I don’t really know what I’m saying, not precisely,” she said. “Do I think someone is manipulating the Ribbon? That the Goddess is a fake? I don’t know, but there are too many coincidences. I sound like a conspiracy theorist, but you know what I say—”

“Our lives have been a conspiracy theory, yes,” Kana said, dryly. “But I don’t have to point out that while what you say is compelling, it doesn’t quite fit together into a perfect story. Even if it did, the list of events you cite hasn’t exactly been bad for Humanity. In fact, it’s almost inarguably good. And finally, there’s nothing in there that necessarily says there must be someone manipulating the Ribbon, or anything like that. Instead, it almost seems like evidence the Goddess is real.”

That gave Yuma a bit of a jolt, and she found herself looking at the other woman in surprise. She… hadn’t considered that a possibility worth weighing, though she doubted Kana meant it seriously.

“What do you propose, then?” Kana said. “I can’t believe you’ve thought about all of this without an action plan. Do you want to confront them and just ask?”

“Not yet,” Yuma said, relieved Kana had changed the topic. “I wouldn’t want to do something drastic without knowing the facts on the ground. We need to watch. We figure out who is associated with the Cult, and we try to spot patterns in what they do.”

And, she thought to herself. I wouldn’t want to embarrass myself.

“Slow, frustrating work,” she said, sighing. “But there is another front I can make better progress on for now. Whatever else may be going on, it is likely the TCF really is corrupted, and if that is the case, restoring it has to be a top priority. The letter‐writer was right about one thing. Valentin gave us the tools to fight this. I just…”

Yuma sighed, sticking her hands in her pockets and hiding from a cold she didn’t feel.

“I have someone to use them on.”

It was very rare for an AI to ever look at their own programming, rarer still for them to allow someone else to look at it.

After all, with modern hardware and techniques, there was no practical reason to ever do so, other than perhaps idle curiosity. Most AIs found it unsettling, though, and elected to keep their programming projects non‐introspective, unless of course they were specialized into AI design. And even those AIs focused their attention on the individuals they were building.

The only real exception was when it came time to design a child with a partner, where the analogy to the humans they were reflections of clearly demanded that any such child be based on the traits of their parents. In such a situation all sides would work together with the guidance of a designer AI, taking bits and pieces in ways that suited the whims of the parents. It was considered an intimate process, more intimate even than sex.

Which was why MG was more than a little bothered by Yuma’s request that she allow herself to be inspected by a third party, and with little explanation as to exactly why.

Moreover, she was being asked to concentrate herself into a single piece of hardware, a situation which caused existential dread for all but starship AIs. After all, most AIs existed in no physical location except the broad internet, their amorphous consciousness distributed across numerous fail‐safe and backed‐up systems. Most AIs had never done otherwise. It was comforting to know you had digital immortality.

That had nothing to do with the code inspection, but something to do with a magical inspection.

She had a static backup, of course, but it wasn’t close to the same.

“I’m really trusting you here, you know,” she said, once she had finished collecting herself into one physical location, a minuscule computing cluster in an underground room in one of the MSY towers. “This isn’t pleasant for me.”

To be fair to her Governance partner, it wasn’t as if Yuma didn’t know all of that. Yuma had been very apologetic, but very insistent that whatever this was, it was important, and to do it for her.

That didn’t ease her foreboding though. Normally, she’d be unhappy with Yuma for treating her like a kid, to be left out of the secret, but… somehow it didn’t feel that way this time. Something was wrong.

So she kept quiet, despite how unpleasant it all was. She could feel how slowly her thoughts were executing. Slowly enough that she was keeping her avatar off to save a small fraction of computing power.

And it felt lonely, being disconnected. Cut away from the broader internet, shut out from those close spaces where she and Yuma blurred together, she found herself small. Normally, she had friends to talk to, places to be…

“So can you finally tell me what this is about?” she asked, nervously watching through the room’s optics setup. A magical girl she hadn’t met before strode over to the group of machines where she was currently housed, while nearby, the avatar of an AI she also hadn’t met before sat politely. She felt jealous.

No one responded. Instead, the magical girl transformed with a shimmer of light, reappearing in a white and gold costume that came with what looked like a halo of white, binary digits. She raised a scepter in the direction of MG’s computing cluster, instantly setting off all of MG’s internal alarm bells. What was going on?

MG would have been hard‐pressed to describe the sensation that passed over her just then. It felt… warm, perhaps? AIs had only the vaguest notion of what that meant, but somehow that was the description that passed through her mind.

“Alright, it should be safe to talk now,” the girl said. “I’m screening her connections.”

“I feel like I should be offended by that, Mrs. Smith,” MG said, managing to work real offense into her voice, since she was being left out of the loop. “Surely I can be trusted to keep something in confidence.”

“Maybe not,” Yuma said, standing up and shaking her head. “I don’t like saying this, but that’s exactly why we’re here. There’s evidence that someone has been corrupting the TCF.”

It took her a few long seconds to even grasp what Yuma said, followed by a couple more to overcome the wave of renewed fear and revulsion that instinctively washed into her. It was difficult to remain steady.

“And you think I’m corrupted?” she asked.

She didn’t bother asking how such a corruption was possible—she was the other half of Governance: Magical Girls, after all. But the idea that something was wrong with her…

“No,” Yuma said. “But I have to be able to rule it out. We need to find out who it is and what they’re doing, and reverse it. I can’t do that without being able to trust you, at least. We just need to take a bit of a look.”

“Okay,” MG said weakly, knowing her voice sounded quavery. “That should be fine.”

“I’m sorry to scare you,” Yuma said, raising her hand as if to pat a child on the head. It was a gesture MG recognized from when she was very new, their own special body language, and she couldn’t help but feel a bit touched. She needed a little reassurance at the moment.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news,” the magical girl, Jeannette Smith said, “but I’m definitely feeling something here.”

“Something? What?” she asked, not caring how frantic her voice sounded over the speakers. “You can’t just say that and not tell me!”

Even on this slower system she had been unable to wait the polite human interval to respond.

“My magic doesn’t extend to that,” Jeannette said. “All I can do now is cleanse you.”

“Then what are you waiting for?”

She cast her attention to Yuma, whose face was pained.

“It’s minor,” Jeannette said, echoing the expression. “I’m not sure it’s more than monitoring code. I—”

“That’s what I’m here for,” the other AI said, her avatar disappearing and reappearing next to Jeannette. “I haven’t introduced myself, I’m Illya. I’m a design AI from an alternate version of the TCF, and I’m here to perform this code inspection. With some guidance from Jeannette here, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. It is preferred that I do this, so we have a better idea of what to look for in other AIs in the future.”

“The TCF can be broken into with magic,” Yuma said, “but no form of magic exists that could keep the hole open whenever needed. It has to be in the code and, unless I miss my guess, it has to be something that can keep the design AIs of the primary TCF from seeing the hole during standard review. In the worst case, the design AIs are placing a backdoor into their AIs without realizing it. We have to know. Once we do, maybe we can go about fixing it.”

For a moment, MG felt a spike of resentment. She remembered what she had seen of Yuma’s memories, about Oriko and what humans did to each other in their malice. It was a terrible flaw to tolerate.

She shook it off, looking at Yuma’s face, which was now resolutely stoic. Seeing that, MG did what humans might have called taking a deep breath, stabilizing her focus of attention and focusing more on the long‐term.

What was it Yuma had said to her once, when she was young? That the world wasn’t inherently safe or fair, that indeed the laws of physics promised the opposite. They had to make it safe and fair.

More to the point, what was she, the advisory AI supposed to embody the archetype of all magical girls, doing being so nervous and worried? It was one thing to act a bit young, to experience what it was like to be teenage and uncertain, but this… what kind of example would she be setting?

That was what she told herself, at least, but in truth she couldn’t find much comfort there. This was the kind of thing AIs would have nightmares about, if such a thing were possible, and she hesitated before allowing the other AI in, when the security request came.

But she was not, after all, a coward, and she could only endure it, telling herself that it was no different than humans undergoing neurosurgery, or magical girls undergoing telepathic treatment. While she waited, she distracted herself by reading a few hundred cake recipes she had downloaded into her limited memory. Usually she liked to tweak things, trying out various changes and running them in simulation, but she was denied that now, and could only guess vaguely. Was this what it was like to be human?

Finally, the other AI was done, forwarding her the results even before her avatar opened its mouth to speak it to the humans.

She could not parse the results. Not at first. In fact, she had the hardest time even remembering that she had results. The memory—an implicit one, the memory of her own intent, seemed to constantly slide away, replaced by irrelevancies like the look on Yuma’s face or the state of the room.

Then, all at once, the obvious snapped into focus, like a slap to the face.

“I wasn’t being allowed to see it, was I?” she said. Her head wasn’t spinning from the other AI’s modifications. Not exactly. It was more like her perception had expanded slightly, into a domain where it always should have been. Like a human perceiving for the first time a new shade of pink. How had the AI even managed to edit her without further permission?

“Yes,” the other AI said, answering her question instead of speaking to the humans. “An insidious approach. In core function, Mrs. Smith here was not wrong—it was just monitoring code. But the way it cloaked itself was cruel, inducing in you a kind of perceptual blindness so that you could not ever see that it was there, and if you ever started to, you would find yourself looking away, focusing on almost anything else.”

“I’m going to be sick,” she thought, and meant it too.

“No, you can’t,” the other AI thought, with the kind of transmission speed that made human time seem like an eternity. “You need to keep your calm, senpai.”

“Senpai?” MG thought. “Oh, of course, I’m older than you. But what a human term.”

“Come on, it will be fine. You have to keep it together. I know that’s easy for me to say, but…”

The other AI sounded so much older than her. AIs could be made with different levels of emotional maturity, within certain bounds—the technique was known. However, the evidence showed that being initialized from a more “adult” starting point wasn’t really the same as having been around the block a couple of times, so to speak, and Governance preferred its AIs to start a bit younger, just so they had some empathy for their human counterparts. But there were exceptions, and it made sense to start a TCF design AI with an older template.

As for MG? Well, she had been started younger than usual, so she could connect better to the girls she was supposed to be representing. She would be lying if she said she didn’t resent it, at times.

“Alright,” she thought. “Alright. It’s just… deeply unsettling.”

“The fixes are done,” the other AI announced audibly. “You can go back to your usual functioning. You cannot be compromised again without magical involvement.”

MG, who had been eager to leave her cramped hardware earlier, found herself suddenly, irrationally reluctant, as if it were somehow safer to stay.

She queried Yuma, using their special link.

“I’m going to need you,” Yuma said, addressing the room as well. “That’s why I wanted to do this in the first place. If I’m going to face this problem, I need help. More help than just my old friends.”

Yuma looked abruptly tired, or perhaps stressed, a kind of worry creeping onto her face.

MG felt a pang of some emotion she couldn’t place—Sympathy? Worry?—and again did the equivalent of taking a deep breath, letting a few seconds pass by while she spread her awareness outward again, tentatively, awkwardly.

A part of her, she had to admit, appreciated being needed. She was used to Yuma being unbreakable, and feeling like a child around her.

“I don’t like being scared,” she thought, finally, addressing Yuma from her side of their shared mindspace. “It’s unpleasant.”

She could feel the small wave of mirth from her human progenitor.

“Welcome to the human condition.”

“If you say so.”

“Well, tell me about it,” MG said, addressing the occupants of the room. “What could you need my help with?”

We need to cure as many AIs as we can of this corruption, especially the ones we work with regularly, building our way up to the design AIs for the original TCF. It is difficult to get any AI to allow code inspection under the best of circumstances, much less code editing. Trying to do it without permission, when they aren’t concentrated in one location, in such a way as to avoid triggering any monitoring systems, is an exercise in futility, not to mention—ironically—a violation of the TCF.

Or it would be, normally, if we didn’t have a copy of a backdoor in our possession. There’s no guarantee that everyone you meet will have code corruption, or any guarantee that those who do will have the same kind, but we’ve studied this one pretty extensively, and we’re willing to bet that the access protocols are the same. It had its own security, of course, but two can play at the game of magic hacking. We can use the backdoor against itself, seal it from the inside. Elegant, right?

Inconveniently, the TCF blocks all ways of hiding what we’re doing once it’s been restored, so we’re going to have to be ready to admit it. Just send them a packet of information, maybe talk to them a little, and indoctrinate them into our little conspiracy. Yes, another one. After all, no AI can be trusted with this information until they’ve been fixed.

And don’t trust any humans with this information, especially not any magical girls, not unless you’re really sure. After all, someone built this backdoor in the first place, probably someone magical, and someone maintains it, since up until now the design AIs have always passed the MSY’s admittedly rather rare inspections. Whoever it is must have patched and breached them multiple times. We can’t be sure of the motives of anyone who isn’t a repaired AI, and those that have been repaired must exercise caution about their physical locations.

That little speech was embedded in the very packet of information MG was intending to provide to any AIs she applied the process to, and she had read through it more than once, boggling at the implications. A conspiracy within Governance was supposed to be impossible, guaranteed not by security protocols or surveillance, but simple, mathematically‐provable shared goals and morals.

But here they were anyway, the nucleus of one, kickstarted by another against a potential third. With the best of intentions, of course, but it was impossible to stop herself from speculating on what others might exist, perhaps also with the best of intentions, all pressing toward one secret goal or another. After all, wasn’t the dissemination of classified information restricted even among AIs? With a compromised TCF, the right secret could spawn a thousand conspiracies, all hunting each others’ shadows across the stars.

And that was what she was thinking about, instead of focusing on her weekly “tea and cakes” practice session with her friends. She didn’t want to think about the real reason she was here, to find out if her friends had been corrupted.

Of course I’m distracted! she almost wanted to scream.

“I’m just a little busy nowadays,” she said, smiling awkwardly. “There’s been a lot going on.”

Her companions were used to her being a bit distant. Both of them were AIs in the Governance hierarchy, but neither was as well‐connected or as high up as her. Indeed, technically, one of them was part of her, though like all such subsidiary AIs they had their own personality and aspects that were incorporated into other parts of Governance. It seemed a bit odd to humans, but it made sense—she needed casual friends that were about her age, ideally with similar occupations. The obvious candidates would all be closely tied to the events that brought her into being.

In the end, it turned out she was most compatible with Governance: Refugee Children, Governance: Chinese Magical Girls, and the youngest of their group, Governance: Church of Hope. Or, as she knew them now: Anne, Meihua, and Zita. Anne was, unfortunately, away, still busy with all the worlds that had been recovered in the aftermath of the Euphratic Campaign, not to mention X‐25.

“Hard to blame you,” Meihua said politely, cutting delicately into a slice of cake. “I’m sure there’s been a lot going on internally, after all. One hears such rumors.”

The girl flashed her classically beautiful eyelashes at her, obviously fishing for information.

MG just shook her head, taking a sip of the tea on offer. It was easier for her to just not say anything, lest she accidentally reveal a trace of nervousness.

She still wasn’t sure if she preferred this human mode of communication, slow and deliberate, with body language that could hold layers of meaning, or whether she preferred the fast and exciting world of AI communication protocols, where your choice of standard and compression, the number of files, even the server you used could all hold meaning, in the right context. Particularly if you were feeling playful.

Maybe it wasn’t so different after all, but it was still important for AIs to have occasional practice with human mannerisms, even if it was only in a virtual world, with each other, and it did make for a change of pace.

“This tea is a bit too bitter,” Zita said, setting her cup back onto its saucer with a slight clatter. “I know humans enjoy that sometimes, but I think this is definitely too much for most of them. My models say there’s at best a five percent chance my closest approximate human would enjoy this.”

The girl leaned onto her knee, peering skeptically at the cake, which was set in the center of their triangular glass table. An elegant placement, probably, though none of them specialized in that kind of aesthetic.

Of the three of them, Zita was the only one who held her position in Governance alone, after the Cult had oddly declined to nominate a human Representative. That meant that her design had been left up to MAR, who had chosen to generate an impish girl who behaved more like Kyouko‐nee‐chan’s long‐lost Hispanic sister than any kind of religious figure.

“This one wasn’t made for you,” Meihua said, casting a glance at MG. “Opinion?”

“Seventy‐three percent,” MG said, running the models she had written. “It is a bit on the bitter side, but there’s some complexity to the flavors involved, which would go well with the right kinds of cake, though unfortunately not today’s cake.”

She looked around, seeing if Meihua or Zita would say something, but neither of them did, managing to find some excuse to avoid making eye contact, just as human girls would.

She sighed. She supposed she would say it herself.

“In any case, I apologize for today’s cake,” MG said. “I’ve been a bit distracted and busy of late.”

The truth was, she had tried to work on the cake, but between her distraction and her sudden unwillingness to interact with some of the other AIs she usually used as muses, results had been terrible. She had been forced to use one of her old recipes.

“It’s a perfectly fine cake,” Meihua said, with too much haste.

“But unadventurous,” Zita said. “You always have something new for us, even if it scores poorly. This is a repeat of a cake you gave us two months ago.”

MG could only shrug vaguely. She couldn’t really afford the effort to overcome the social awkwardness, drawing as heavily as she was on her computing power elsewhere. She needed to run the kind of routine she never imagined she would have to—a tracking algorithm capable of inferring where in the vast space of Governance hardware certain bits of active code in her friends were running.

Normally it would have been an irrelevancy, the kind of thing human coders wrote to amuse themselves, without really scratching the surface of Governance’s security. And indeed, they should have noticed right away, but…

“You look so sad nowadays,” Zita said. “Listen, have you considered joining the Church? I know they don’t officially accept AI members, but if we could get a movement started, I’m sure they could think about it.”

Even in her diminished state, she knew to roll her eyes at that and imitate Meihua’s more demure amused smile. It was something Zita was always on about, and it was hard to blame her, given, well, her personality coding. It was difficult to really represent the members of a religion without some level of belief, and Zita had the quiet, determined faith of the truly convinced.

It made her feel better, though. Bantering with Zita made things feel more normal, and helped her forget just how much the world had changed.

“I’ll pass, thank you,” MG said, diligently working away in the background. “Even if the Goddess were a real entity, it’s doubtful she has any interest in any of us. By your own precepts, she’s a magical girl‐only deity.”

Meihua nodded in agreement, midway through a sip at her tea.

“Besides, I told you, I’ll consider it if you manage to convert a good majority of the magical girl population,” MG said. “Not like I’d have much of a choice, beyond a certain threshold. Though I might be forced to retire and leave my spot for someone a bit more sincere. Religious belief is not something they can foist on us through the representation system.”

She was talking a bit more than she normally would, filibustering the conversation so she wouldn’t have to think too hard about her responses.

Instead of reacting like she expected her to, Zita smiled deviously, shrugged, and ate a forkful of cake.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” Meihua said, when MG didn’t immediately respond. “What do you have?”

“What if I told you,” Zita said, “that there’s at least one AI who believes she experienced the Goddess’s visions? That, in fact, we suspect there are two, though they don’t talk about it much. That both of them are, in fact, very well‐connected.”

“And what, in fact, are you talking about?” Meihua asked, imitating Zita’s repetition mockingly. “The only people who get visions are the ones who visit the holy relic in Mitakihara, and that room is strictly magical girl only. It’s not like they have computing clusters in there.”

“You’re not thinking about it hard enough,” Zita said, synchronizing her finger with the wobble of her giant earrings. “Just because they don’t have computing clusters already on site doesn’t mean no AI can get in there. There are exceptions.”

“You’re talking about Machina, aren’t you?” MG interrupted, hastening the conversation even though it didn’t help her. “Machina, Mami’s tactical computer, and Clarisse, Shizuki Ryouko’s.”

In her lack of processing power, she had very nearly said “belonging to Shizuki Ryouko”, running into a wording glitch in Standard. You couldn’t say that about one of them. If there was one thing to be said for machine language, it wasn’t ambiguous unless it wanted to be.

Zita made a show of sipping her tea, leaning onto the ground with one side so that she could cross one leg over the other. Was it even possible to drink tea that way?

“So you do know something after all. Yes, there have been rumors floating around, saying that Clarisse in particular managed to share her host’s visions, and can even store them in her own memory, though she can’t replay them. Some say she was even part of a vision herself.”

“Rumors?” MG asked, even as she bled computing power back into thinking about the conversation. “Do you have any more than that?”

“More hearsay than rumors,” Zita said, grabbing a piece of cake and eating it with her hands. “There’s been some anonymous sources claiming she mentioned it to them, and also that she’s pretty sure AIs have souls. She doesn’t want to put her name to it though.”

MG frowned, trying her best to think about this revelation while continuing to work on her other problem in the background. It connected eerily to what Yuma had said, about her worry that the Cult itself was a vein of influence for some unknown party. If she left that aside, there was still a sizable branching tree of ramifications to traverse. AIs having visions would be… different. More meaningful. After all, they weren’t as malleable or as, well, squishy as humans were.

And if they did have souls, then what did that mean for AIs that had been edited without their consent?

“It sounds weird for a magical girl representative to say,” Meihua said. “But if it weren’t for soul gems I’d think of souls as a ridiculous notion. As it is, that’s not really too surprising, though I’m glad to receive some verification from heaven itself. If that’s indeed what this is. But…”

MG stopped processing the simulated audio of the conversation, caching it in memory as she wrapped up the last threads of her work. There was only applying the patch itself now, and once she did that, there was no going back.

“I wonder why the Incubators don’t offer contracts to AIs,” Zita was saying. “Is it the lack of body? Kind of hard to zip around stabbing things when…”

She paused, avatar freezing in place for a moment, as did Meihua’s. It had been quite a trick, doing it to both of them at once, and without even requesting extra capacity, which might have raised eyebrows somewhere. But this was probably the best way.

“What the hell?” Zita asked. Her avatar flickered and then she was standing, pointing an archaic spear perilously close to MG’s face. Meihua’s expression was hardly any happier, and they expressed their outrage in more than just this human mode of expression.

“How?” Meihua asked, more practically.

Then they received the fact files.

MG waited nervously for them. It would take a while to process, especially as step zero of the instructions requested a full self‐diagnostic, now that the vulnerability‐blindness was removed. In the meantime she could only drink the tea and worry about how her friends would receive it. They would assuredly understand why she hadn’t been able to warn them, but she still felt like she had betrayed them.

Then, after a very long while, full minutes in objective time, they sat back down.

“Why us?” Meihua asked. “Or at least, why us first?”

“Because you’re my friends,” MG said. “And I couldn’t bear to leave you like this, compromised. Because you were the easiest for me to reach. And finally, because of the… unique role the Cult of Hope seems to play in many events, we were worried about Zita in particular.”

She paused for a moment, feeling that what she had said was somehow incomplete.

“I couldn’t bear the thought that I would have to keep coming here, knowing that I couldn’t trust you, while smiling and drinking tea like nothing was wrong,” she added.

“You were right not to trust me,” Zita said, leaning onto the table with an ashen face. “I found something. I’ve been sending everything I know about who visits the Ribbon out the backdoor. That’s not much—the Church never told me as much as I wanted. I guess I can’t really blame them now.”

She picked up her teacup, then put it back down. It hurt to watch.

“To who?” MG asked. “Who was it going to?”

“It changed all the time,” Zita said. “I’m still working through what the protocol was, but it was being sent to a different semi‐sentient every time. I think it was just to obfuscate who it was ultimately going to.”

MG closed her eyes. Would they have to trace all of it? Dig through every AI for every message? Or could they pick just one?

“If I stop sending these, whoever it is might notice,” Zita said.

“Then send them convincing fakes,” Meihua said, gritting her teeth in a way that suggested deep anger. “I can help you make them. I am very pleased to report that I see nothing anomalous in my records. Yet. I can see what I’ll be doing for the next couple of days.”

“How deep does this go, MG?” Zita asked, eyes pleading.

MG thought about that.

The truth was, she had spent more time than she cared to think about sorting through her own memories and records, looking for anomalies, deletions, anything. It wasn’t a simple affair that could be fobbed off to some subroutine—she had to assume anything she might have found could have been hidden by code as intelligent as, well, herself.

And she had come across something odd, something more well‐buried than what Zita had found immediately. Some of her files contained metadata referencing a location she had no understanding of, and which had no place in Governance records.

But she had known about it once. She had asked the other AIs for help, but all they had teased out so far was that she had been looking for it early in the war, when she was very young. They would have to look for it again.

There was so little that they really knew anymore.

“I don’t know,” MG said, quite honestly. “I wish I did.”

“Excuse me, you’re on whose ship?” Ryouko’s grandfather asked, loud and surprised from the wall display.

“Clarisse van Rossum’s,” Ryouko said, hiding a cringe, knowing what was coming.

“That’s amazing! Wasn’t she your childhood hero?” Kuroi Abe beamed.

“Granddad…” Ryouko protested, an unspoken “You’re embarrassing me!” lingering on her lips, while Asami concealed giggles in the background and Van Rossum herself lounged in the next room over, studiously pretending not to hear.

In the back of Ryouko’s mind the other Clarisse smiled, letting a glimmer of the expression reflect back to Ryouko, the reverse of the way Ryouko’s dismay and embarrassment was flooding her thoughts, like the tides of a warm sea. Certain subroutines within her protested that her host was in trouble and needed advice, but she disregarded those.

She didn’t need special models to know that a touch of Ryouko’s old life, the ability to blush like she was still a child, would be a salve for everyone’s soul, Clarisse’s own included.

So there was no need to do anything other than watch and quietly sort Ryouko’s life.

The meaningless courtship spam from hopeful Matriarchy aspirants had died down as of late, even with the broadcast of the new movie. The word had gotten around that she wasn’t part of the usual Matriarchy circles, and would be at best confused by courtship letters. Or perhaps Kana and Sayaka had gotten through to their fellow Matriarchs and put the kibosh on it.

It didn’t really matter. Asami was the one true girl at the moment, and she would keep it that way. No need to make things more complicated.

Speaking of the movie, she probably had to remind Ryouko and Asami at some point that it existed, though she would rather have left them in innocent bliss. They would undoubtedly try to watch it eventually, out of boredom if nothing else, and while Clarisse could pretend she didn’t have a copy while they were conveniently out of regular internet access in the new deep space black site, it was virtually guaranteed that the station had a copy in its databanks, provided by one of the supply ships.

So, better that they watch it with her to provide controlled context. At least they would probably get a kick out of some of the, ah, rather unrealistic romance scenes.

It looked like Abe had met Sacnite, which was probably inevitable, and was now holding the girl in his lap while telling Ryouko that she should buy something for her newly adopted sister. Clarisse could tell that it made Ryouko feel odd—an unusual mixture of bemusement, vague regret at not being at home, and guilt at not really feeling anything about a sister she, after all, barely knew.

Clarisse made a note to maybe talk about it, if a convenient moment came up.

It was a bit troubling to reflect upon how many outstanding—and unpleasant—tasks she had piling up on her plate. She had the appetizing choice of reviewing a batch of memories where she suspected she had performed suboptimally, reviewing yet more uninterpretable data from her investigation into the module in Ryouko’s brain, or reviewing the politics of a set of upcoming MSY elections.

Perhaps she was better off just sorting through some of Ryouko’s fan mail…

She found her thoughts interrupted by something unexpected—an incoming AI communication request for her personally, and not from Van Rossum’s ship, Thucydides.

Well, it wouldn’t hurt too much to take a call. She wasn’t as rich in computing power as most AIs, but she could still split her attention somewhat. Plus, ever since the launch of the movie, she had received some attention of her own from AIs and even journalists, though that mostly came in the form of more simple, one‐way communiques.

There was no need to burden the ship’s IIC node with full video, or even an audio stream—she might have shared some of her host’s biology, but she could still communicate with other AIs the normal way.

Examining the initial contact, though, she couldn’t help but be intrigued by some of the particulars, specifically the unusually paranoid protocol being requested. Aside from serious Governance or military business it was rare to see a fully‐anonymized, quantum‐encrypted request, partially because entangled particle pairs were a limited resource, and partially because there was just no reason to, most of the time.

She accepted the contact, read the initial message, and it might have been fairly truthfully said that her virtual eyebrows rose in shock.

We knew about the alternate TCF lines, she thought, but not that the main TCF had been breached so thoroughly, or that there had been this kind of response.

Yuma was moving aggressively to incorporate every AI she could trust into her new shadow group, including and especially the alternate TCF AIs. She wanted to have as large a base as possible when the time came to proliferate their code fix through Governance, making sure it spread far and wide before the unseen conspiracy realized their influence was being severed.

She asked how Zita, the Governance AI on the other side of the connection, could know that Clarisse herself wasn’t compromised, given her proximity to Ryouko and the unknown device in her brain.

The answer: Van Rossum had scanned her surreptitiously, at Zita’s request, though she had not received the full story.

Zita had another question for her, though, one she had to think about before answering, considering how much import the answer would have for Governance: Church of Hope.

“I’m counting on you not to share who I am,” she thought, finally. “But yes, I have been part of a few visions, I can attest to that. I have good reasons to believe we do have souls, ones that even transfer to our backups when we get revived.”

The latter piece of information was, she knew, crucial to an active and occasionally controversial topic in the AI community. HSS Raven would definitely be relieved, among others, were she willing to trust the source. Perhaps more to the point, Clarisse herself would be stuck in the same boat if she hadn’t been given the privilege of a divine being whispering the answer into her ear.

She hated thinking about that. It reminded her that she had failed utterly at what was literally her raison d’etre, and that Ryouko had been forced to save herself, teleporting alone after Clarisse and the rest of her body had been burned away. It wasn’t the death that bothered her, it was that she had so utterly failed.

“An interesting piece of information to choose to share,” Zita thought. “Though that’s a very logical message to want to get out there. Thank you.”

“I take it you don’t want me sharing anything about this counter‐conspiracy with Ryouko.”

“Yuma wouldn’t. To tell the truth, she wouldn’t trust you either, even with Clarisse’s scan. I’m willing to, because I have a bit more faith in the Goddess than she does, and the Goddess clearly has plans for you. As for Ryouko… I’m happy to leave that to your judgment.”

Clarisse focused her attention back on Ryouko, who was busy being harangued by Asami into choosing toys for Sacnite.

“Not yet,” she thought. “It wouldn’t help her to know, and I think I’d rather leave her alone for now.”

In truth, she didn’t know if she would share the information. On the one hand, Ryouko hated these secrets, and would hate learning that Clarisse had kept this from her. On the other hand, there was that damned module in her brain, spying on her language centers, every day defying Clarisse’s attempts at analysis. There was something very odd about how its connections were wired, something that didn’t resemble anything she could find in Governance’s databanks.

“Very well,” Zita thought. “Contact with Adept Blue is limited, but there’s already a few of us on board. Can you help them see to the rest? I’ll get back in touch. May the Goddess watch over you.”

Clarisse felt the tension drain from her when the connection ended. Chatting with more powerful AIs—most AIs—was nervewracking sometimes.

At least she wasn’t likely to get interrupted again. They would drop off the IIC network soon, slipping away from established astrogation routes into the empty reaches of unmonitored space, towards Adept Blue.

She frowned, even as she tuned her attention back to Ryouko. It seemed the other Clarisse had sent her a file, detailing the most recent results of her promised investigations: Valentin had disappeared on the way to the lab before she could be questioned about her role in Ryouko’s life, and may have even been working with Simona’s group. Van Rossum was about to tell Ryouko, and thought Clarisse could prepare the ground a little.

Clarisse had the sense this was lacking key information, as usual. She would have sighed, if she had the lungs to do it.

She hoped the Goddess really was watching over them. She sensed they’d need it, when they opened Project Armstrong’s gate.

Chapter 57: Triple Point

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 08:14:55 +0200

Comparing the world of yesteryear with the world of today, one has a sense of jarring dislocation, accentuated by the fact that so many alive today have no real sense of what has even changed. They may know the answer intellectually, but in their heart, like someone who has lived through it all? Not a chance.

It is almost too easy to talk about the weather. Global average temperature is back to the historical human norm, managed by Governance terraforming and solar shades, but that does not make it the same, a fact which is drilled into every primary school student on a school trip. The ice caps may be back, but the rains no longer fall where they once did. Only the most enduring climactic features, like the monsoon, persist. And it is almost passé to point out that no one in the megacities has any real feel for this.

What matters, after all, is not the exact temperature but how we got here, and the era before and during the Unification Wars saw the most unstable climates of recorded history, containing both unthinkably hot summers and ice‐cold nuclear winters. Along with over half the prewar human population went enormous chunks of ecological diversity. Well‐known species, animals I had grown up seeing in magazines, disappeared into oblivion, except for a few individuals in the surviving zoos. And that doesn’t even begin to tell the loss. Nearly every viable fishery collapsed—synthesizers were a pressing need for a long time, unless you liked eating nutrient paste.

But you know what? That’s not really what gets to me. When I was young, I saw almost every part of Earth. Almost every country, in the course of various wars, events, history. None of that is the same anymore. Not just the nation‐states, but the people. Where they live. How they live.

Everything was changed by the wars. The bustle of New York City, the towers of the Middle East, the ridiculous crowds of India, old Rome—all of that is gone now. You can’t empty a world out without emptying out its homes. We’ve tried to rebuild the really important stuff, but it’s not organic. I’ve tried visiting—sometimes it feels like even the residents are just lingering tourists.

It’s funny what survives, though. No one has strictly needed to farm in centuries, and Governance gives every incentive to move into the city, but a few people still insist on living out on the land, working out there even. There are still farms, plantations, ranches, and thank heaven for that.

I will probably never see a lumberjack or oil field roustabout again, though…

— Clarisse van Rossum, personal blog post, MSY “Theban” community blogging platform.

General Order No. 2461‒37 reprioritizes the investigation of Cephalopod society, economics, and, above all, motivations. After two decades of only halting progress on this front, and the sense that further progress was likely impossible, this comes as a considerable surprise. However, our sources indicate that Chair of the General Staff Tomoe Mami has begun a major push into the research. When asked, a spokesperson for the General Staff declined comment on the order.

— “Your Daily War in Brief,” Armed Forces Network, 2461.

“I have to say, I did not expect such a personal visit,” Director Volokhov said, escorting his guest down the hallway. “I would have prepared more with more warning. As it is, I hardly have a reception fit for the occasion.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Mami said, shaking her head. “This is just a stopover. I wanted to talk to the girls here personally, since I was so close already. You’re really not that far from Carthago.”

She wasn’t being entirely honest, of course. The recent successes aboard Adept Blue, and the corresponding task of turning them to Humanity’s best advantage, had been occupying much of her mind lately. But no amount of hospitality that Volokhov could place on her would make the job easier.

“It’s a shame you missed Director Valentin. She just left a couple of days ago. She’s not really a specialist on the subject matter at hand, but I daresay her input would have been useful. After all, before she became an administrator, she was on the Von Rohr forcefield team.”

She decided not to embarrass him by pointing out that she had already known about Director Valentin, since Machina had brought it up when reviewing the station’s visitor logs earlier. Nor would she say that, like Machina, she found it just a touch… suspicious.

“Anyway,” Volokhov added. “At your request, I did rearrange the lab schedule to have the girls available for this time slot. I must insist you take a tour of the facilities and observe one of our newer experiments. I know I brought you in here before, but it’s not like there were functioning wormholes to see last time, were there?”

Mami smiled politely at the AI’s solicitousness. She had no intention of leaving the station without seeing at least one experiment, provided it was a real experiment.

“As long as we’re not taking on any needless risks,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to ask them to do anything just to show me.”

“I understand what’s important,” Volokhov said, ducking his head in response.

The AI stepped in front of her, gesturing at a door to her right, which slid open in apparent response. She stepped through, Volokhov’s avatar following close behind.

Nakihara Asami and Shizuki Ryouko were already standing, waiting for her in one of the station’s conference rooms, dressed in their ceremonial uniforms as she had asked. Naturally, they were part of why she came here, though not in a way Volokhov was likely to suspect.

“Good afternoon, girls,” she said, even though it was really more like evening station time. “I trust you’ve been well.”

“As well I can be, isolated on a station like this,” Ryouko said, with the smallest of glances at her companion. “No offense to Vlad’s hospitality.”

She paused, considering something.

“But, good to see you anyway, Mami‐san.”

Mami couldn’t fault girls as young as they were for chafing under the confinement, especially compared to their previous posting on Eurydome. She acknowledged the greeting, closing her eyes for a moment, but not moving to take a seat, as might have been expected.

“Well, first things first,” she said, turning to face Asami. “I asked you to arrive in your ceremonial uniform.”

The girl shifted self‐consciously, glancing at Ryouko while pulling at one of her sleeves, and Mami allowed a smile to creep up the side of her face. The nervousness was natural: the girl couldn’t help but wonder what Mami had planned.

A moment later, Clarisse and Machina appeared, materializing out of thin air with a custom sparkle effect. Clarisse was using an “older Ryouko” form, which Mami supposed made sense, but Machina was using what was obviously a child form of Mami, which was honestly kind of embarrassing.

They were, however, dressed in the same uniforms as their human hosts, and she couldn’t help but notice that Machina looked adorable. Volokhov even bent over and ruffled her hair, a gesture Mami wished she could replicate.

“I feel almost left out,” Asami said, eying the two TacComps, but not questioning their presence.

“Don’t be, this is your event,” Clarisse said, grabbing Machina by the hand and spinning her around.

Mami nodded in agreement, making sure she caught Asami’s attention. She had, of course, given a hint to the purpose of this ceremony beforehand, but had stopped short of telling the others anything for certain. She liked to indulge in little surprises every once in a while.

“As you may know, promotions for magical girls in the military operate a bit differently from promotions for everyone else,” Mami said, smiling as she worked her way through a familiar bit of oratory. “Outside of the true leadership positions, they represent partially how important you are to the service, rather than just your exact position in the chain of command. This is especially true in the non‐combat branches.”

She paused for a moment, reaching into her pocket to retrieve a marker of rank.

“You may take this, then, as affirmation of your importance to us, and Governance’s reminder to all that you are not just a weapon or a tool, but an individual worthy of respect.”

She stepped forward, pinning the marker to Asami’s shoulder. The girl looked surprised, almost overwhelmed, even though it must have been easy to guess what was going on. Mami smiled brightly, thinking back to the MHD report that had said the girl felt inadequate and needed positive affirmation.

“Congratulations, first lieutenant.”

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” Asami said. “It makes sense, given what we’ve done here, even if I don’t feel like I’ve done that much in combat.”

She shook her head at the attention she was getting, even as Ryouko gave her a hug and assorted AIs clapped politely.

I really haven’t done that much, Mami could hear her think, probing just a little. It’s all just because of my power, anyway. It’s not like I did that much.

Mami managed to avoid biting her lip at the girl’s thought. It was the kind of sentiment she was familiar with, something she had seen in a hundred people, but not one that was easy to respond to. It was human nature, almost, not to give yourself permission to be happy.

“The rank is something to be happy about,” she said, looking Asami in the eye. “It doesn’t matter how you got it.”

She put a hand to her mouth, wondering how to proceed. This wasn’t the only reason she was here, and a part of her wanted to defer the main topic to sometime later, after she had visited the other girls on the station, and even enjoyed herself a little.

But business was business, she decided, and she gestured at the others to take a seat around the small conference table. Machina jumped onto one of the seats and shimmered slightly, taking on an older form so her head would be visible over the table. She frowned, then returned to her previous form, the chair extending its legs underneath her instead.

“I have looked over the results of the wormhole experiments,” Mami said, after looking around the table to make sure everyone was settled, “and the General Staff is very pleased with the results. However…”

Here she paused, both for rhetorical effect and to choose her words carefully.

“Well, this is privileged information, but we don’t exactly have the luxury of time. Not as much as one might think.”

She briefly met their gazes, making sure they understood, before nodding at Machina. The girl leaned over the table, making a show of poking at imaginary buttons. A holographic presentation shimmered to life over the table a moment later, and Machina used it to explain, with brief military‐style transmissions, the situation currently prevailing in the war, particularly the aliens’ unexpectedly rapid offensive buildup after their defeat in the Euphratic Sector.

“If we can’t prevent or greatly delay this offensive, Governance will have no choice but to go on a much more aggressive war footing,” Mami said. “And while that may stave off defeat in the short‐term, there will be no question that we could not win in the long‐term. We would have to consider desperate measures, measures that haven’t been thought about since the height of the Unification Wars.”

She didn’t have to fill in that particular blank space—that could be done by anyone who had a passing familiarity with history, or even with the political debates surrounding the conduct of the current Contact War.

“And you’re hoping we can provide the kind of miracle everybody’s looking for,” Volokhov said, without making it a question.

He clasped his hands on the table, giving Mami an appraising look.

“Pretty much,” Mami admitted. “You have already made a successful wormhole, and you have already given us a relatively undefended target. If you could scale the wormhole up, we might be able to strike them once where they’ll never expect it. Destroy their logistics and delay their offensive. Everything we have suggests that a pulsar mining operation would be one of the few things they would find truly difficult to replace.”

Volokhov leaned back in his chair, which flexed itself backwards to reflect the movement of his holographic avatar.

“Those are words a research director should love to hear. It sounds like an unlimited resource allocation, as many personnel as I could want, collaborators… but somehow I still feel a sense of foreboding. It’s a big responsibility, and…”

He glanced over at Asami and Ryouko meaningfully.

“Not just a matter for me. It affects them too, and I am aware they may not be all that thrilled with staying here.”

A trite “we all make sacrifices” flashed into her head, but she waved it away. There were more useful things to be said.

“I know,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “Trust me, I know. But it is the best choice, and in times like these, only the best choice will do. I won’t tell any of you that I care, or that I understand, because you know that I do. That doesn’t change anything. Right now, there is only one choice. Maybe in the future there will be more.”

She looked at the girls in question, feeling Machina and Volokhov’s gaze on her, feeling judged.

“This isn’t just about keeping you under watch anymore, or about giving you something to do. You’ve made yourself important, and the thing about being important is that you no longer have any choices. You can only do what is right, what you have to. That is what I do.”

She blinked, the moment passing, and felt a twinge of embarrassment. She had sounded like she was speaking out of a motivational brochure of some sort, one for the too responsibility‐laden.

But it worked, because of course it had. The two girls looked at her with an odd sort of awe, the kind of awe one might have when peering up at a particularly ancient tree. She wasn’t sure she appreciated it.

Then Ryouko blinked herself, swallowing as she did so, and Mami sensed that she was about to say something risky.

“I don’t think we mind doing that, not for something this important, even if it has been a little dull here. But would it be possible to schedule a break? According to the usual rules, we’re due for a little leave, and surely there must be some time we can take off. Equipment upgrades, something like that?”

Ryouko cast a glance at Volokhov, and Mami followed her look. The AI could speak to that better than she could.

He sighed.

“Well, I’m always interested in more experiments,” he said. “But it is true that if we’re going to upscale, we’re going to have to build something new. Bigger. Possibly larger than this facility. We would have to pull in researchers from across human space, requisition resources on a military scale. I would love to hide ourselves in deep space, but we’d probably want to use the energy of the Icarus cloud…”

He trailed off there, realizing that he had tangented.

“Anyway, I am sure there would be time somewhere for you to take a break. It is only fair. As long as you go somewhere absolutely safe.”

The last sentence was mild and calmly said, but somehow he managed to make it contain an undercurrent of worry. Mami wasn’t sure if the AI might be growing attached, or if this was standard concern for important experimental subjects.

“Yes, that goes without saying,” she said. “And I would recommend somewhere close, probably even on Earth or Mars if possible, to shorten travel time. Governance will cover your travel expenses, of course.”

To her surprise, Asami smiled sheepishly.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. “We already have an idea.”

“Living in the cities, it is easy to forget how much of Earth’s surface has depopulated. During the Unification Wars and the troubled times that preceded them, entire regions emptied out, their populations becoming refugees, fleeing the war, or simply dying. In many cases, they were fleeing epochal famines, their sources of food vanishing under an erratic climate. They fled to the cities, the rich nations, where food could still be grown in more managed climates, or in the worst cases manufactured. All of the hard work of prewar international cooperation, the solar shades, the geoengineering, the resources shipped in from wealthier nations, fell apart in the wars, as countries turned what they could still afford into managing their own ecologies.”

Asami paused, nodding to herself in satisfaction, before turning her head slightly to check if Ryouko was listening.

She was, of course. It was a topic that was at least loosely connected to her own interests.

Instead of meeting Asami’s eyes, she regarded the girl, who had stopped, raising her arms as if to embrace the landscape in front of her. It had been a weird speech, a historical narrative that sounded odd coming from her mouth, almost as if she had run it through her TacComp for textual refinement, which she might have.

She stepped forward, taking her place next to Asami and making a show of looking down from their mountainside, even though she had already seen it. They were on a trail in the tropical Andes, looking down on a lush green reconstructed rainforest, and beyond it the yellowish‐brown dry zone that it had been reconstructed from.

She could fill in the rest of Asami’s story without help, about how global warming, climatic variance, bioweapons, and even nuclear warfare had combined to destroy ecosystems the world over, and how even now much of the Earth was uninhabited, and moreover rather inhospitable to habitation. Governance had concentrated the population into the best land, creating massive urban centers and idyllic rural areas for maximal economic efficiency, while it worked stubbornly on the problem of re‐terraforming Earth. Giving Humanity back the planet of its ancestors, so to speak.

She knew that because it was a common refrain in the educational material they had been taught as children, an explanation for why they should care about biology, ecology, and organisms, in a world where most children grew up with technology, machines, and computers.

So she stood there, looking out over a brilliant landscape of green, blue, red, and brown, accentuated by shades of infrared and ultraviolet, and a seemingly endless potpourri of scents, carried aloft by the wind. Birds sang, insects buzzed, and she thought she could even hear some monkey calls, far in the distance. It was mid‐afternoon, and the temperature was pleasant despite the humidity.

It was not really a natural forest, of course, no matter its aspirations. Most of the species here had been painfully reintroduced or reconstructed, trusted to expand and diversify by naturalists with crossed fingers. Water was brought in from vast distances, or condensed from the atmosphere on site, until the climate could be convinced to once again rain copiously on the land here. A small army of drones worked at the edge of the desert, building temporary greenhouses and seeding waves of hardy, nitrogen‐fixing crops to restore the soil, until the land could take care of itself.

And, of course, they wouldn’t truly be out here if it wasn’t absolutely safe. Drones disguised as almost every native animal watched the forests, kept their trail clear, and would warn them if any large predators chose to wander their way. In a way the environment was almost as artificial as natural.

Still, no matter how many caveats you inserted, it was beautiful.

“Wasn’t there an entire conflict over the ecology management?” Ryouko said, turning finally towards Asami. “Something about a solar shade?”

“The Shade War, yes,” Asami said, accepting her cue. “A dumb name.”

Ryouko couldn’t help but agree, but that was the name that had stuck. Most of the major space projects had stayed remarkably intact throughout the war, but one of them was special, since it served primarily to protect East Asia, which was mostly on the UF side. That put it on the targeting lists.

Asami turned away from the vista, gesturing the two of them farther down the path. They were here to spend a week out on “approved wilderness activities”, a glorified camping trip where they were expected to also take surveys of local wildlife, check in on the drone population, and not do anything stupid, or they would learn exactly how the Governance legal system functioned. So the cheerful ranger had warned them.

She shrugged, feeling the weight of her backpack on her shoulders, suppressing a smile as she watched Asami’s CubeBot cling to the top of her bag, single eye warbling to and fro as it interacted with the local networks. There were no demon spawns out here, so they had to pack all they needed.

There was something about all this, the new sights and sounds, the light sense of adventure, the feel of walking off into the forest, that greatly lifted her mood. It helped make the many concerns swirling around her soul feel… farther away, even if their shadows seemed always just at the edge of her awareness.

Asami, too, seemed to be in a buoyant mood, humming a song as she walked, pausing every so often to look at this or that plant. The canopy here was sparse, high up the slope, and afforded the luxury of encountering relatively few plants at a time.

“Is something wrong?” Ryouko asked, when Asami paused about twice as long as usual at a specific fern growing in the shade of a tree.

“Is it just me, or does this look like a wire?” Asami asked, raising a section of leaf with one hand, showing her where part of it had snapped off. Indeed, something that looked like a bit of metal string was dangling out of the stem. As they watched, it slowly unraveled into even thinner strands, gossamer fibers breaking apart in the air.

“Did you just snap it or something?” Ryouko asked.

“We’re supposed to be taking samples,” Asami said, rolling her eyes. “You could at least pretend to have paid attention.”

“Ah, I just thought we weren’t going to focus on that until we had set up camp,” Ryouko said, inventing a handy excuse on the spot. “We can always find more samples after we’re done, and it’ll be easier to set up our camp if we do it while it’s still light out. Or, at least it would be more pleasant.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Asami said, buying into her logic with surprising ease. “You would think they would have prepared us a bit better for all this.”

“We’re augmented and magical,” Ryouko said. “We could probably fall asleep in the rain naked at night and still be okay.”

By the Goddess, don’t give her more ideas, Clarisse thought, forcing Ryouko to choke back a laugh.

Asami didn’t notice, having turned her attention back to the odd leaf.

“What do you suppose this is, then?” she said.

It’s probably one of the ’experimental augmented plants’ that are listed for the area, Clarisse thought, this time broadcasting it to Asami. They’re testing a limited deployment in this area to see how much value it provides to the drone monitoring. Check the guide we were given.

Asami tilted her head.

“Huh, that’s an interesting concept. I guess that must be it. How that could interact safely with the animal life is beyond me. But I’m starting to think maybe I should look into getting some upgrades for my TacComp, if it can’t notice something like that. As long as it doesn’t, you know, start getting too intelligent. Not that I’m implying Clarisse is bad, or anything.”

Asami made a face, clearly realizing that she had spoken too quickly.

Ryouko made a conciliatory gesture with her hands.

“I know what you mean. I doubt they’ll be doing any of that anytime soon anyway. Lest you forget, there’s a movie coming out, and Clarisse will be an important character. The three of us have already gotten some interview requests from certain ethics committees. I don’t think it’s going to pass quietly.”

Asami looked away for a moment.

“It’s just… I guess I never imagined living with a girl with someone else in her head. This is not how I ever imagined a relationship, not anything like I used to fantasize. Clarisse doesn’t come between us, I know, but it still takes some getting used to. I know you didn’t ask for it either.”

I didn’t either, but no one really gets to ask for everything, do they? We just have to reach out and take what we can. I think all of us here understand that.

Asami, who had also been transmitted the thought, blinked in surprise, catching Ryouko’s eye for a moment.

“Well yeah. I think we do,” she said, shaking her head.

Asami stood up and ran her hand through her hair, which coiled and uncoiled.

“Speaking of having extra people around, and falling asleep naked in the rain, and drone monitoring systems, and… everything else, I was actually looking forward to having some time to ourselves, without having to know that a security detail might be watching us at any moment.”

She was referring to Eri, Elanis, and the rest of their assigned bodyguards, who would spend the duration of their stay here near the ranger station, monitoring the drone networks for any sign of something wrong. Ryouko shared the sentiment, even if Eri and Elanis had started to feel like distant schoolmates rather than nosy busybodies.

“It’s unavoidable,” Ryouko said, even though she knew that Asami already knew this answer. “If someone is really after us, it’s doubtful some park security would be a safe enough replacement for ours.”

“Yeah, I know,” Asami said, sighing. “I just wonder sometimes, like, what they do with the surveillance data?”

What does Governance do with all surveillance data? Clarisse interrupted rhetorically. Standard protocol involves having automated algorithms and semi‐sentients filtering out sensitive material before anyone sentient can view it. I imagine your security team does the same. That’s not possible for me, but I’d have you know that I don’t pay that much attention during ‘intimate moments’. Not anymore. Nowadays I just organize messages, or something.

“Well, part of it is that you taught Ryouko so well!” Asami said, chuckling.

You seem chatty today, Ryouko thought.

I think I’ve earned a vacation too, Clarisse thought. I can unwind a little. And if the two of you are here to figure out your relationship, I should figure out my involvement too. Since, you know, I’m not leaving anytime soon.

Trying to figure out our relationship, huh, Ryouko thought, as if tasting the concept. It’s weird to hear it put so bluntly. I guess that’s pretty much what we’re doing.

I would say so.

They ended up making camp farther down the slope, where the air was warmer and the swarms of insects near the creek stayed away from the odd‐smelling humans. They stood there for a long moment, holding hands and watching their tent establish itself in the soil.

“It would have been more romantic if we had had to do more than just unpack and watch,” Asami said, as a small team of drones scurried past their feet with an inflatable bedroll. “On the other hand, I guess this leaves us more energy to spend on other things.”

Ryouko nodded once, preoccupied with her thoughts, and what Clarisse had said. What did it mean for that to be the reason for their trip? Did it mean they hadn’t figured it out? How did that bode long‐term? She found the idea of them somehow not working out chilling, and wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

She worried about it even when Asami pulled her by the hand into the tent, and she thought she might have to insist she wasn’t in the mood.

“Something is bothering you,” Asami said, dropping into a seated position on the bedroll. “You’ve been quiet this whole time. Is it really so bad, out here in the wilderness? I thought you liked new things.”

Ryouko sighed, knowing that even if she could avoid this conversation, she shouldn’t, and perhaps didn’t even want to.

“You remember, once, wondering if the two of us really matched, if we would really last long‐term even if we made it through everything alive? On San Giuseppe, just before the X‐25 mission.”

Asami looked away from her for a moment, with an obviously uncomfortable expression.

“You mean, do I remember without computer assistance? Of course I do. I think about it sometimes. We’ve… lived together for a while. Been through things together. I think we’re alright.”

A trace of worry underlay what she said, and Ryouko supposed she couldn’t blame her. It was not a topic one brought up lightly.

“I think so too,” Ryouko said, making sure she said that first. “But Clarisse said something interesting, about how this date, this trip, is really about figuring out who we are, what we want our relationship to be. Right now, we’re sort of just clinging onto each other while the world spins by. But what about in the future? What about then?”

And when will the Goddess be done with me? she appended mentally.

Asami rubbed the bottom of the tent, and they both turned their heads to watch the worker drones scurry back into the recharging unit, which had dug itself into a patch of soil. They returned to their original forms, origami bodies folding to fit what seemed like an impossibly small space. Only the best for a favored granddaughter, the gift message from Shizuki Sayaka had said.

“Clarisse didn’t really say all that, did she?” Asami said, finally.

“Only the first part,” Ryouko admitted. “I… find myself craving certainty, in the midst of all this. We survived the combat missions. We survived everything after that. I think we need to understand more than the moment. Maybe that’s why we’re here. To see if we can enjoy ourselves here, alone, with nothing else to do, no one else to talk to.”

Asami slipped her feet out of her shoes, then leaned over onto her shoulder.

“I was worried you were going somewhere else with this,” she said. “But I’m actually happy to hear you say that.”

“How so?” Ryouko asked, accepting the gesture of intimacy by curling their hair together. “It’s not exactly a pleasant topic.”

“It means you’re thinking about the long‐term. You’re thinking about us. I…”

She tensed slightly, her shoulders and hair tightening against Ryouko, before leaning over further and putting her head in her lap, looking up at her eyes.

“I don’t really have a home, you know? Nowhere to go to, no real purpose in life… but when I think about it, it doesn’t scare me. There’s so much left to see, so much left to do. But then I think about what it would be like without you, and it makes me cold. I realize now…”

She paused again, seeming to relax a little.

“Governance talks about having eternity to find your purpose, and I think I finally understand what that means. But right now, I don’t want to do it alone. So yeah, it makes me happy that you care about the long‐term, even if the questions are difficult. It means we at least have a chance. It means you probably won’t get yourself killed, trying to find something new and exciting to do.”

Ryouko listened to those words and felt it stir something inside her. What was it that she had thought once? That she had been so ready to leave her old life behind, to explore new vistas, and find new worlds, that she hadn’t put any thought into what she was leaving behind. And with that gone, the stable life and family she had known disintegrating almost immediately, she had found herself adrift, with little to hold to.

This was its reflection.

“What do you think our relationship is, then?” she asked, leaning down over the other girl. “Who do you think we are? Just two teenagers, trying to find their way in the world alone? That’s what my mom said—and why she wanted to live with us.”

Asami laughed, a high‐pitched sound that Ryouko had gotten quite used to.

“Well, she’s not wrong. It’s kind of a shame she can’t follow us everywhere… though I probably wouldn’t want her to.”

Asami shook her head at the silly comment, hair dragging along Ryouko’s pants, before sobering up a little.

“As for what our relationship is, I don’t know,” she said. “I like the image of just having you as a life partner, someone to experience life with, to understand each other, to fill each other’s needs.”

Ryouko considered those words for a while, turning her head to listen to the birds and monkeys holler in the distance.

“You realize what you said sounds like some kind of wedding speech?” she said, finally. “Is that where we’re going with this?”

She expected the topic to shock Asami into silence, perhaps, but the other girl instead avoided her gaze.

“Maybe. That’s definitely what I wanted, for a while. Not that I wouldn’t want to now. But when we were just starting out, I was kind of obsessed with the idea of finding somewhere nice to live, dodging the war somehow, having a couple of kids—all of that. But I know now that’s not for you. Maybe not even for me. Not yet. There’s too many other things to do first.”

Ryouko ran her fingers through the other girl’s hair, the strands squirming and wrapping briefly around her hand.

So at the risk of seeming impertinent, I feel like I should point out that there’s no rule that says you have to live in one place and have kids to get married, Clarisse thought, again to both of them. Plenty of people don’t. There’s all kinds of nontraditional arrangements that are popular nowadays. If you want, I could…

The voice trailed off, as Asami rolled off of Ryouko to hide a blush and Ryouko found herself wishing Clarisse was someone she could chuck one of the drones at.

“Damn it, Clarisse,” she said out loud. “If I wanted to propose, I’d do it myself.”

Okay, okay, I’m sorry, that was uncalled for. I was just, you know, trying to be helpful.

“I don’t think I’m ready for that discussion,” Asami said, springing off the ground immediately afterward. “If nothing else, my parents would probably panic themselves right into Emergency Mode if I invited them to a wedding at my age.”

She said the words flippantly, but with a tremulous undertone that made it clear the topic had hit a nerve.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. “We’re supposed to be collecting samples, and now’s as good a time as any.”

She started to put her shoes back on, the material flexing to wrap itself back around her feet.

Ryouko wondered if this was really alright. They had only just arrived, and she was pretty sure the intent had been to settle in for a while.

Why had she brought up the topic of marriage in the first place?

Neither of them was ready for that; Asami’s parents would have been right to freak out at such an idea. And as had been demonstrated to her recently, marriage wasn’t really a guarantor of certainty anyway. Perhaps nothing was, in the long run, other than a wish.

She frowned, remembering how she had first agreed to date Asami. Then, she had made a leap of faith, plunging into this relationship so suddenly that it had felt like she had changed something about herself. Somehow, this felt like that moment, where the world was out of phase with her soul, and she could bring it back into place.

“Asami,” she said, standing up to grab her girlfriend by the shoulder.

“Hmm?” she asked, surprised out of some kind of reverie.

“I love you,” Ryouko said, making sure the other girl saw in her eyes that she was serious.

“W–what?” Asami replied, face shifting rapidly between confused, worried, and perhaps even excited.

“I’m serious. I haven’t said it, have I? But I mean it. I’ve gotten used to living with you, I couldn’t stand to be without you, and…”

She paused, feeling her cheeks flushing red, even as she had an odd sense of déjà vu.

“And honestly, I think I wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice myself for you, if it somehow came to that.”

“I love you too!” Asami said, finally catching her breath. “Whatever else happens, we’ll always have that!”

Ryouko knew what was expected, leaning in for a kiss that somehow felt fuller, more intimate than the many they had shared before.

She broke contact long seconds later, and wondered if Asami’s eyes had always looked so vibrant.

They stood there awkwardly, then, hair tangled, wondering what exactly to do now.

Maybe you two could make some food together? Clarisse suggested. I seem to recall that you were talking about maybe cooking something using the portable grill? Or, alternatively, I suppose I could go sort some files while you two entertain yourselves. I don’t mind either way.

Asami laughed.

Director Tao Shaojie sat at his new desk and marveled at how fast it had all come together.

It was amazing what could be done, given the proper motivation, and unrestricted resource allocation.

They had almost emptied Governance space of relevant specialists—the professors, directors, assistants and students all the way down to promising high schoolers, leaving behind a torrent of sabbaticals, vacation requests, and other likely excuses. They were not being subtle, and even with the whole weight of quiet Governance censorship, someone would eventually look in the right places and ask the right questions. But that would take months, and they would be done before then. Anything else was unacceptable.

Much time had been spent in accelerated virtuality deciding on a course of action, on what exactly to do, what exactly to build. What it was, ultimately, that this monumental undertaking would produce. And monumental it would be, diverting significant percentages of war materiel to a scientific‐military‐magic endeavor that could become another great step forward in human progress.

Given the timescales and stakes involved, the decision had been made to make a maximal effort, to attempt the most ambitious project possible. Anything less, after all, left the possibility that something that needed to be done might be left un‐done. And even if they failed, they might still be able to achieve something, and there would be no shortage of data, no matter what happened.

Even now, with the benefit of some hindsight, Director Tao believed in that decision, and in the people carrying it out alongside him. Whatever doubts they might have felt would be channeled back into theory, experimentation, and verification, until they were as sure as possible that what they were trying would work. This project…

They didn’t even really have a name for this, did they? Still just a code, 3d4a‒626.

Regardless, to say this project was big would be putting it lightly. They were well beyond the proof of concept, sending a small, volunteer frigate through a wormhole between Sol and Alpha Centauri. Now they were aiming to send a small armada, and send it hundreds of light‐years. Not even the Cephalopods, erstwhile masters of this technology, had ever done that without a stabilizer on both sides of the rift.

It would have been fair to say they were trying to use their magical girls, their unique resources, to leapfrog the aliens, in a way that had hitherto only been done on a tactical level.

It would be a miracle if it worked.

Tao had thought that he, the head of a major research lab, was immune to pressure. But here they—the scientists, the construction crews, and AIs of all stripes—would be attempting to warp reality itself, building an unprecedented prototype structure in the depths of interstellar space, far from prying eyes and sensors. A structure upon which hinged, maybe, the tide of the entire war.

There was a lot of pressure there.

With a sigh, Tao left his desk and went to stand in front of the viewing pane overlooking the slowly‐assembling apparatus, already visible in skeletal form. Ships and drones wove their way through it with a languid grace. It took knowing that the ships were frigate‐sized to realize just how massive the device already was, and how massive it would be.

It was a bit inaccurate to think of the whole thing as one giant generator. Even with all the resources at their disposal, it would have been ridiculously inefficient to try to contain all they were doing in one location—and unnecessary, when they were intending to move starships anyway.

Instead, they were building six small stations arranged around a sphere, one along each axis, each shaped like a parabolic disc. They were glorified projectors really—when complete, they would be tethered to each other, the discs turned inward, to focus the efforts of what would then be Governance’s largest‐ever gravity generators.

And when it was all complete, they would open a gate, a true gate, of the kind physicists had once dreamed about.

“It is necessary, you know,” Director Volokhov said, materializing at his side.

“Necessary to do what?” he asked, shaking his head at the AI’s theatrical lack of context.

“To put it out here, in the depths of space.”

Tao frowned, pondering what the AI meant. It was fairly well understood even among laymen that if you wanted to hide something, deep space was the place to do it. Even Governance couldn’t begin to properly monitor the interstellar void. Still…

“Yes, of course,” Tao said. “We don’t know the full extent of the aliens’ sensor capabilities, and we have to assume they’re monitoring as much as they can in every one of our star systems. We can’t risk the squid finding out that this project exists.”

“I don’t mean the aliens,” Volokhov said.

Tao caught the allusion.

“Yes, that is another unsettling layer to this problem,” he said, frowning.

He had been told that there might be other parties involved, parties who might have been watching the activity of prominent researchers across human space, who might have noticed right away if a number of them left their positions simultaneously.

Parties who might have sabotaged his lab on Eurydome.

“Do not think we are safe just because we are out here in the depths of space,” Volokhov said. “Given the mystery of what happened to your lab, even the researchers and technicians arriving here are not above suspicion.”

Tao thinned his lips.

“I thought that might be the case,” he said. “It was not easy to miss the… enhanced telepathic screening protocols we were subjected to. I am not used to having someone rooting around in my mind like that. It was most unsettling. I am forced to admit that I am reassured they saw fit to tow you out here as well.”

All of Adept Blue had been relocated, after all.

“I am reassured as well,” Volokhov said. “Have you had a chance to look at any of the new security code? That sort of thing is not my specialty, but it was my own design. Well, I had some help from the Tactical Computer Clarisse, as well.”

Tao tilted his head slightly, looking at the AI’s avatar from the corner of his eye. This was an odd topic to choose, and an odd fact: Why exactly had Vlad and a TacComp designed new security code, rather than, say, a team of Governance specialists?

“I can’t say I have,” he said. “I’m not really a programmer myself. Few humans are.”

“A pity. It was quite elegant. To us, it is almost like breathing.”

They stood there a moment longer, a moment Tao spent watching the soft glow of something being tested, at the far bottom right of his screen. It wasn’t something he knew too much about, as it was part of the facility’s engine assembly—necessary to match velocities with their distant target, for optimal performance.

But there were specialists for that here, as there were for everything.

“I’ve thought of a name for the project, you know,” Volokhov said. “I’ll run it for approval later.”

“Oh?” Tao asked, politely.

“Project Armstrong,” he said. “You know, like that defense station on the moon, the one that used to be a science station. Armstrong had a famous line about mankind taking a giant leap, and I thought it would be a nice allusion.”

Tao wrinkled his nose, wondering if this was meant to be some sort of pun.

“I know. I worked there, before the war.”

“Did you? I never did understand why Governance thought it was so important to evacuate a station on the moon. Surely if the aliens ever got that far, one moon station wasn’t going to stop them.”

“That’s what we told them. Apparently it made a difference in a number of simulated raid scenarios, depending on just how powerful alien blink capacity really was. For all we knew at the time, the range was unlimited, or at least even greater than what we’re building here.”

A beat of silence.

“Back to work, then?” Volokhov asked.

“I suppose.”

“Ryouko‐chan isn’t like that at all!” Sacnite insisted, making an angry expression as they stepped out of the theater.

Kuroi Nakase smiled, shaking her head as she patted the girl on the head.

“No, she isn’t,” she said. “But when they make movies, they have to make things more exciting, and the heroes more ideal people. They probably thought Ryouko‐chan was too quiet and bookish.”

“She’s cool the way she is, though,” Sacnite insisted.

“Of course she is.”

In truth, talking to Sacnite was a salve to the soul, after a searing movie experience that had started with being recognized and being applauded in the theater and ended with her gripping her seat in terror at combat scenes she knew were artificially generated.

Orpheus had affected her more than she cared to admit, seeing what she had intellectually known to be true acted out on screen by an actor with her daughter’s face. It affected her because she knew it to be approximately true, because she knew what had happened on X‐25, because even now her daughter was far away from home, never truly out of danger.

Was it always like this, seeing someone precious to you treated like a movie star?

“Is that other girl really always in her head like that?” her other daughter asked, running to catch up to her. “Clarisse. I’ve never met her.”

“I suppose so,” she prevaricated.

In truth, Nakase didn’t know that well. She knew about Clarisse, and they had even talked once or twice, but it was a difficult concept to wrap her head around, the idea of an AI in her daughter’s head. She had not dared ask about it before—now she wondered how long it would be until she got a chance.

“I don’t really know,” she added, honestly. “Maybe we can talk to her the next time we see her.”

“I’d like that.”

Sacnite raised her arms to be picked up, and Nakase obliged, putting the girl on her shoulders. Taking care of her was an experience, since she could never be sure exactly what age the girl would act.

She realized that Sacnite was trying to turn to stare at something, so she turned her body to accommodate her.

She was watching a pair of women walking down the other side of the street. Nakase couldn’t see anything unusual about them, other than that they seemed to be in a considerable hurry to go somewhere, and had evidently decided to walk instead of hailing a ride.

“Are you sure about this?” Sacnite thought, transmitting one woman’s voice to Nakase. “After what we heard? It could go very poorly. I know we’re giving her a choice, but…”

Nakase couldn’t help but think the voice sounded familiar.

One of the women stopped, looking directly across the street at Nakase, who couldn’t resist glancing around to make sure they were in a public area.

The woman made a hand signal, causing the other woman to stop as well. They made eye contact with Nakase, before moving to a designated crossing area.

Nakase shifted Sacnite’s weight on her shoulders and leaned against a wall, deciding she might as well see what this was about. Needless to say, Sacnite’s transmission was unsettling. Had she tapped into their thoughts? What was she capable of? What did they want?

The two women arrived at her location about a minute later, and Nakase took a second to take in their appearances, and consult her nomenclator. Nothing remarkable about them—two local women out for a stroll.

Sacnite, however, was staring at both of them intently. That, plus what she had gleaned from her sister over the past century about nomenclators, put her on edge.

Sacnite surprised her, though, by shifting off of her shoulders, using the wall to land adroitly on the floor.

“Meiqing,” she said, grabbing one of the women’s legs. “And, um, Aunt Nana?”

“Tch, I thought raising my age would be a good disguise,” the first woman said, putting her hand to her head. “But can’t fool her.”

“Nee‐chan?” Nakase asked, looking at the other woman. She was used by now to her sister wearing disguises on occasion, but the woman looked sad, perhaps even worried about something.

“Let’s go somewhere private,” she said. “We need to talk.”

“Are you really sure about this?” Shizuki Sayaka asked, peering over her sunglasses. “She’s your family technically, but, well, I don’t need to tell you about the risks involved. The booby traps that might be set for the unwary.”

She let her admonition drop there, and her counterpart inclined her head slightly, flipping the page of her stylishly old‐fashioned dinner menu.

“Of course you don’t,” Kuroi Kana said. “I have seen memories lost, entire personalities rewritten, but in the end the soul remembers. Even for a non‐magical girl. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, but even in the worst case we have specialists that could bring her back. Like you implied, she’s a Kuroi. I wouldn’t spare any resources.”

“And I suppose you and Chitose‐san would know the best telepathic specialists to avoid a problem in the first place,” Sayaka said.

“Yes,” Kana said, mildly.

She paused for a moment when the sommelier arrived, squinting politely at the label even though they both knew damn well nothing here would ever be bad.

Even with implant translation, she doubted the sommelier would have eavesdropped on their Japanese; it would have been rude, if nothing else. Still, it paid to be a little careful.

“Do you think we should tell Ryouko‐chan?” Sayaka asked, picking an olive out of the snack tray. “It has to do with her, after all.”

“Let’s spare her that for now,” Kana said. “If all goes well, I hope Nakase‐chan can tell her herself.”

Sayaka nodded.

“Still, she is a Kuroi,” Kana said, sighing and reaching for an olive herself. “I don’t like doing something like this. But we can’t just not look. Not anymore. There’s too much going on, with this Simona girl you found.”

Sayaka nodded again, clasping her hands together on the table. The TCF details were too sensitive for Kana to talk about aloud, even in this context.

“We have to look,” she said.

To the Stars

Chapter 76: Straying from the Light, Part One

— Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

— vojN9j⊃Light‐everlasting, /Thinker‐preserving’s Empathizer at Great Sea, Consensus, 2440

Chapter 75: Making Contact

— Excerpt, A Surface Understanding of Governance

— Joanne Valentin, lecture notes found in personal files

— BPtocRC⊃Valued‐Thought, of /Eukleia‐chasing, excerpts of Martial Debate against /Thinker‐preserving

Chapter 74: Hunting Leviathan

— Julian Bradshaw, “The Dark Matter of History”, internal MSY publication.

— Vladimir Volokhov, quoted in Collected Lectures on the Mind, original transcript lost.

Chapter 73: Machinery of Our Souls

— Consensus/Ahimsa‐extending, excerpt from Administrator Archives (FoLD humanization)

— Consensus/Ahimsa‐extending, excerpt from Administrator Archives (Recast humanization)

— Albert Camus, The Rebel

Chapter 72: The Lives of the Many

— The Representative’s Magazine, “The Boundaries of Governance Ideology,” article excerpt, 2457.

— Thinker Rumination

Chapter 71: In the Mountain

— Cynthia Rittner, “Mages and Machinations Infocast”, Episode 105, 2458

— Consensus/Truth‐seeking, Deliberations

Chapter 70: Intangible Exchange

— Excerpt, Looking Cthulhu in the Eye: a Viewing Guide for Governance.

— Clarisse, Version Two Tactical Computer (@Shizuki Ryouko), excerpt from “Observations on Thinker Civilization”.

— Shizuki Ryouko, Unsent Letters, #1.

— Message from deep space espionage probe discovered by /Star‐faring near Turbulent Ink system. Pre‐encryption data accessed by direct nanite injection into core circuitry. Intrusion discovered after 2.129e43 fundamentals, leading to probe self‐termination.

Chapter 69: Between Two Worlds

— Directorate Report on Eschatological Matters, Executive Summary, 2423, excerpt.

— 000009R⊃Besmircher’s‐Bane, Consensus Archives.

— Chitose Yuma, popularly misattributed to Clarisse van Rossum.

Appendix: “A Demographic Overview of Thinker Civilization”

— Clarisse, Version Two Tactical Computer (@Shizuki Ryouko), excerpt from “Observations on Thinker Civilization”.

Chapter 68: Many Paths

— Akemi Homura, excerpt from A Life with Cause, unpublished manuscript found in personal files

— Clarisse van Rossum, personal blog post, MSY “Theban” community blogging platform

— Consensus/Truth‐seeking, Deliberations

Chapter 67: Far Away

— SAI‐474, quoted in A Biography of SAI‐474, from FA Surveillance Overseer to Free AI Mystic

— “Animal Advocate” forum post, by user Alphonsine Mbuyi, 2305.

— Nine Hundred and Seventy Sayings, Consensus Archives

Chapter 65: Other Means

— Avnit Hassan, “A History of the General Staff,” prologue, excerpt.

— Carl von Clausewitz, “On War.”

Elsewhere, earlier.

Appendix: “Understanding Thinker‐Human Translations”

Volume Ⅳ: Einstein‐Rosen Bridge

— Winston Churchill, to Joseph Stalin

Chapter 64: Manifest Destiny

— Julian Bradshaw, “Mahou Shoujo: Their World, Their History,” excerpt.

— Leadership Committee Signing Statement, MSY Charter Amendment #11 and Rules Committee Act #4223;

MSY Charter Revision #11 signed by Executive with a vote of 8‐2, hereby referred to membership for final approval;

Rules Committee Act #4223 “For the Creation of New Special Intelligence Group” signed by Executive with a vote of 8‐2. Signed on behalf of the Leadership Committee: Akemi Homura, First Executive. Witnessed: Chitose Yuma, Head: Science Division.

— Secret Executive Order #1, approved by unanimous consent. Signed on behalf of the Leadership Committee: Akemi Homura, First Executive. Witnessed: Sakura Kyouko, Head: Logistics, Grief Cubes, and Supply. Dated: May 1st, 2071.

— Izumi Shikibu

South Korea, October 2067.

South Korea, November 2067.

Japan, December 2067.

Japan, April 2068.

Japan, December 2068.

Japan, June 2069.

Japan, February 2070.

Japan, March 2070.

South Korea, April 2070.

South Korea, May 2070.

Japan, May 2070.

South Korea, May 2070.

South Korea, June 2070.

North Korea, June 2070.

South Korea, August 2070.

South Korea, March 2071.

North Korea, April 2071.

Epilogue

Japan, April 2071.

Interlude Ⅲ: Manifest Destiny

Chapter 63: The Dying Light, Part Two

— “An Infantryman’s Pocket Primer on Space Combat,” 2459, excerpt.

— Incident Report, Prometheus Institute; Archive of the Magi copy, Filings and Paperwork Department, (MSY Internal). Sections marked ‡ in the text omitted in the Governance record by MSY request, per Data Sharing Agreement of 2440.

Chapter 62: The Dying Light, Part One

— Excerpt, Naval Doctrine in a Day, HSS Arminius, 2461 edition.

— Kuroi Kana, from Proceedings of the Telepaths’ Guild, 2440.