Ingrish woke me up in the middle of the night ship-time. She knelt over me and gently put a hand on my shoulder. I jumped from my resting place on the floor, recoiling at her touch. I backed into the corner of my quarters as she tried to approach. The Bakke smiled, but from the way she picked at her hands, I could tell she was unsettled. The crimson cloth around her eyes had been fastened hastily, and her silk gown was ruffled.

  “We need to go to the bridge,” Ingrish told me. “Amon wants all the crew accounted for.”

  “Why?” I asked, glaring with timid scorn.

  Reflecting back, Ingrish’s patience has always amazed me. Not a week had passed since we took off from Ghiza VI, and once I learned “why” was an acceptable question to ask, I had not wasted the many opportunities. I was always suspicious, always searching for that unexplainable reason why these strange people had taken me from the Mantza. Despite everything Ingrish had tried to do for me, I still resented her, and I would for a time yet. Perhaps that is why she took such a liking to me. I never feared her abilities, and I never put on that guise of dishonesty which the galaxy calls good manners. The Mantza had not taught me to worry about such things.

  “We stumbled on a ship,” Ingrish quickly explained. “It could be dangerous. If so, Amon needs us somewhere safe.”

  Reasonably satisfied with that answer, I finally obeyed. I hesitantly nodded and followed her out of my quarters. We briskly walked down the dim corridors of the Aphelion and up a set of ladder stairs that opened into a gangway suspended through a ringed access tube. As we passed by, I gawked at the ancient technology that seemed so more advanced than the rest of the ship.

  Inset into the metal paneling were vacuum chambers filled with orange control crystals. Carved into these thin wafers were angular, silica patterns that were infinitely varied though unmistakably meticulous in design. The computers here were different also. For the first time, I saw holographic displays on the Aphelion, though they were few and far between. They emitted softly out of ports reading diagnostic information and sensory data. The floor below us was filled with large black cables that hummed with energy and wound their way from the bridge to the rest of the vessel.

  I at once got the sense that this access tube—and the bridge—were of a different, older ship that had been grafted onto the rest of the Aphelion. But whatever stories it had to tell would have to wait for later.

  Our footsteps echoed as we crossed the last threshold onto the bridge. The command center was too big for the ship’s current meagre crew, much too big. It had room to easily fit two dozen or so personnel. The long computer consoles which ran along the length of the viewing glass had many unpowered and dark stations whose purpose I could not guess at. The G-Seats next to them were the only clue that they served any necessary function at all.

  There was a Captain’s chair, but it was empty as well. It was covered in a thick layer of dust like so much of the bridge. Amon Russ occupied a forward station on the left, leaning over the ship controls. Seated next to him were Rykar and Kybit.

  I had seen the two only in passing. The ship’s pilot and mechanic were two more aliens that were as nearly as overwhelming to me as Ingrish and Tut had been. But they were quickly the last things on my mind when I saw what was through the viewing glass.

  Obscured in the dark, rolling clouds of space, lit by flashes of paradoxical and eerie light, I saw a large cargo ship drifting in the distance. Its angular and wedge-shaped design was identical to the Mantza freighters I had often seen docking on the surface of Ghiza VI. The ship was scarred and much of its insides exposed, likely having gone decades without repair. Along one side was an exposed docking bay for shuttlecraft—open to the vacuum.

  I was at first afraid that it would come alive and attack us, but the ship remained lifeless. The thrusters were all dark, none of them burning to life. None of the turrets swiveled to take aim, and there wasn’t even the quick golden flash of shields being raised. It just floated there, dark, without a single indication that anyone was on board or aware of our presence.

  “How long have we been in their sensor range now?” Amon asked.

  “If they didn’t see us the first time?” Rykar asked. “You know, when we shot past them at full speed? Or when you had the bright idea to turn back for a second readout? Yeah, if anyone’s onboard that bucket of scrap, they know we’re here.” Rykar sarcastically clacked. His beak and vocal cords lacked the capacity for human language, but a boxy implant on his neck somehow distorted his shrieking speech into recognizable words.

  Amon shot him an annoyed look, but it was Kybit who spoke. “At least we know the auto-nav system still works. It diverted us to a safe trajectory before we would’ve risked impact.” Ingrish translated the fluster in her voice, and even one such as I noticed that Kybit kept glancing at Amon, as if she was afraid he would turn angry at any second.

  “Oh yes, do tell us how close we came to getting atomized. That’s going to set my nerves at ease!” Rykar snapped at her.

  Kybit bristled. “I—”

  “I don’t care,” Amon interrupted her. “Your first readout said it detected intense zeta particles. That still true?”

  Kybit tapped a few buttons and nodded. “Clustered around the bridge and engine compartments.”

  “Yeah, that’s how they like to kill. Pick a target and follow its trajectory into dark space. Cut off the head before they can raise shields and then the legs so they can’t run. They were probably boarding before the Mantza knew anything was wrong.”

  Rykar looked at Amon suspiciously. “Who? What are you talking about?”

  Amon’s face barely concealed his anger. “Old friends. You wouldn’t know them.” He tapped a few buttons on the console, and the Mantza freighter began to slowly grow in the window. “I’m going aboard to look for the survivors. Keep the shields up, and if you see another ship out there, you run. Don’t come back for me.”

  “What?” Kybit tried to keep up. “It’s pretty obvious there’s no one alive on that ship anymore. Look, I just ran another scan! Their life support is dead! Every compartment is open. It’s just vacuum inside!”

  Amon walked for the access tube. He turned back briefly, and his expression told me more than I wanted to know.

  “The Xurak always leave survivors.”

  …

  From a screen, we all silently watched as Amon opened the airlock and jumped from the Aphelion onto the Mantza freighter. A camera on his enviro-suit gave us his perspective as the metal floor fell away under his feet and the infinite, stormy void opened up. It made my stomach churn as I watched him leap through the emptiness, and I held my breath until Amon’s mag-boots touched down again in the Mantza shuttle bay.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The space was empty of its perched vessels. I did not know whether they were destroyed in the encounter, or worse, taken. What I did see was a savaged vessel. Much of the metal plating had been ripped off the walls, and all the internal machinery had been ruthlessly examined.

  The whole area was a mess of broken parts and scrap metal. The Mantza never had an eye for cleanliness, but I knew this was the work of their attackers. Amon flicked on a flashlight at the end of his assault rifle, and he went towards an iris hatch that had been melted open.

  Slowly, he climbed over collapsed girders and torn paneling as he entered the dark hallway. Each step of his heavy boots were muffled in the vacuum, reverberating through his suit. I heard his labored breathing over the comm as he forced his way through the cluttered interior.

  The darkness that surrounded him was worse than space. At least space is empty. I kept seeing bizarre shapes and shadows that always threatened to resolve into imagined monsters. Each dark room was filled with the work of some malign intelligence that had been mercilessly curious with the Mantza ship. And yet, for all the destruction, I didn’t see any bodies.

  “I don’t understand. What are the Xurak?” Ingrish asked.

  “They’re collectors. Don’t know what they look like. I’ve only ever seen their android servitors.” Amon spoke softly as he pointed his rifle, illuminating another dark room. “Back at the end of the war, they attacked a convoy I was escorting. Killed damn near half our people before we knew what was happening. Encountered them half a dozen times since.”

  “How come I’ve never heard of them?” Ingrish pressed. “I’ve lived my entire life on spaceships. I think I should’ve known about this.”

  “Because most people who survive the Xurak don’t go on to talk about them.”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “It’s hard to put into words what they do. You’ll see soon enough, anyway.”

  Despite the ruined state of the ship, his footsteps moved with careful purpose. Somehow he knew exactly where to go. Or rather, where he was most likely to find what he was looking for. He descended three decks and came to another iris door that had also been melted open. Behind it was the gaping darkness of a large cargo bay.

  He stepped into the empty void where seven cone-shaped pods had been left, churning silently in the center. The angular ribbing of the pod reminded me of the Mantza’s chitinous exoskeletons, yet the texture and design was utterly alien. These devices were smooth and pristine, made not by insects but rather with a geometric precision—or perhaps beauty—that suggested a careful and oppressive mind. Not quite an egg sac and neither a stasis pod, but something in-between. Yellowish green fluid swirled behind some viscous substance that was similar to glass, and I saw the dark silhouette of a Mantza Urtaph covered in dark veins which threaded the interior of the pod.

  “What is this?” I asked, in horror.

  Amon hadn’t heard me, but he answered the question he knew we must all be asking. “They’re being upgraded, everything inside them is being turned into something else. They’ll awaken and infiltrate their world, looking and talking and acting like Mantza. Don’t ask me what for.”

  Amon pointed his gun. “I’ve only seen this done on humans, but no one deserves this. Not even the bugs.” And he began firing his weapon.

  The pods reluctantly burst open as the dark figures inside were torn apart by bullets. Strange pustules ruptured and out spilled a black liquid that mingled with the yellow ooze seeping on the floor. The veins snapped off, and even though the cargo bay was in vacuum, I swore I could hear the shrill cries of the Mantza dying inside.

  “What was that?” Rykar suddenly pointed a talon towards the Mantza vessel.

  I hardly noticed him, and I didn’t look to see what he was talking about. All I was feeling in that moment was a sense of oncoming dread and a mixed pity, for both myself and the Mantza who died.

  It is one thing to know your masters can die, but to see them brutalized in such a way destroyed the last thing I thought I knew about the universe. I was a slave, and as a slave I thought the Mantza were invulnerable, when in fact they were no more than a tiny mound of insects. The only thing that spared them from being crushed by the indifference of the galaxy.

  I was enslaved, yet my masters themselves had been slaves—not to any species but by those peculiar forces which act on the galaxy that are both unfathomably vast and yet infinitesimally subtle. The Mantza were not beyond the ignominy of defeat, and I realized then what I should’ve realized when I saw the crumbling ruins of Kaal—that no one is ever truly beyond death and shame.

  That is not what I thought, or could think, in that moment on the Aphelion’s bridge. I still had a simple mind, but that half-formed lesson instructed with the shrieks of my dying masters taught me the true nature of the galaxy.

  And it was then I noticed the many-legged machine creature which had now scuttled onto the bridge’s viewport.

  …

  I recall a great many things happening at once. Rykar attempted to activated the bridge’s blast shields, but the drone was faster. Its thorax opened up, and a laser pierced through the glass and hit Kybit in the head, vaporizing half her porcelain face and neural cables. Ingrish shrieked and grabbed my hand, yanking me away towards the access tube.

  Rykar unholstered his pistol and began firing, dodging the laser as it swept through the bridge. I do not recall the noise of the air being de-pressurized—it is actually quite soft. But I felt a gentle breeze on my face and the sudden thinness of the clean air that I had so quickly taken for granted. Emergency shields flickered on to stabilize the atmosphere, but the field wasn’t strong enough to keep out the attacker. The drone crawled its way inside while Rykar and Kybit fled in different directions.

  Perhaps it was ironically because we were the larger group that the drone chased us, or perhaps it was merely random chance, whatever the case, we were the preferred targets.

  Rykar had disabled its main laser with his gunfire, but the drone still had its legs—manipulator claws I saw now—that were quite capable of eviscerating us. The machine was utterly silent, save for a clicking noise that might’ve been from the damage to its internal components. It’s eye, embedded into the ovoid thorax, was focused solely on us.

  Before then, I had seen plenty of weapons meant to kill. This was the first time I had seen a weapon meant (as I presume now) to kill painfully. The manipulator claws, once scalpels meant for cleaving through glass, grew serrated blades which lashed at us as we ran down the corridors of the Aphelion.

  We practically threw ourselves around every corner and turn we could, hoping to lose the machine thing. It moved more gracefully and quickly beyond any predator animal could hope to achieve, and if we were to take too long down a corridor, we were dead.

  I felt the wind from one of the blades across my neck, and I cried out. My lungs were fire, and my poor body, malnourished and sickly, could not keep up for long. I screamed for it all to stop—as if that would do anything. All I knew was fear, and that was what kept me running as long as I did. Every minute felt like an hour and nothing entered my mind except desperately trying to get away.

  We jumped down several sets of ladder stairs while the drone crashed after us. Its claws sunk into the walls and even ceiling to propel it forward. It jumped and dashed and lunged after us, each attempt getting a hair-breadth’s closer. The ground we seemed to gain was lost as quickly as we gained it. It seemed hopeless, that all we were doing was delaying our already excruciating deaths.

  And it was at that point I just wanted the pain stop. Anything was worth it to avoid the ire of this monster. As we rounded the bend, I made a snap decision, and once another corridor branched off, I tried to tear myself away from Ingrish’s iron grip on my wrist.

  I thought at the time if I could just get away, or more accurately if the drone still chased after Ingrish, that I could get to safety. It was the sort of selfishness that only a child could have. But unknown to me, Ingrish had been leading us somewhere. She had been communicating with Amon on the comm, and didn’t have the time to translate for me. And I, foolishly trying to make it on my own, stopped us for a brief instant in the hallway. That was more than enough time for the drone to catch up.

  I have six regrets, six wounds as fresh as the day they were made. Like a branding laser forever engraving my heart, those sins are marked upon me. If the blood of Tsidkenu truly has been sacrificed and the Axios of Death have been inverted, perhaps one day I will be able to sleep soundly at night.

  But until that day, my first regret was that I tried to leave Ingrish to die.

  Ingrish did not let go of my wrist, and when the drone came upon us, she screamed and threw herself over me to shield me from the blades. We fell upon the floor, and I felt one of the serrated claws plunge right into Ingrish’s back. It went deep, and tearing out a great deal of flesh, I saw the white corridor ceiling splatter with blood.

  With horror, I looked at this woman who had all but thrown her life away in a desperate attempt to save my own. What’s more, I could not even begin to understand it, nor did I have time to as the drone raised another claw to pierce her again.

  But just as it was about to fall for the killing blow, a hail of bullets issued out from the airlock hatch. The drone was blown apart into a million fragments, and I saw Amon Russ step into the hallway. He ran over to Ingrish, and picking her up, he asked if I was okay. I nodded, still in shock.

  I sat up, and I saw him rush the broken and bloodied body of my mother to the medical bay.