I stared out at the chaos, stunned. The chunks of metal and stone looked oddly familiar. With a sickening sense of understanding, I realized this was the same kind of debris we’d run into on our way to Zai. The fragments had evidently floated out from the source of the destruction, the aftermath reaching far into the universe. I imagined an explosion would give off a powerful first push.

“They’re all dead,” Angie whispered.

Her words made my mind drift back to the distress call that had come through our speakers before we’d even reached Zai. That child’s voice pleading for our help. This must have been where they were transmitting from, desperate for someone to rescue them from their ruined outpost.

“Who would do something like this?” Lauren added solemnly.

“Many species have a vendetta against the Fed, though most are smart enough not to strike against them,” Navan murmured. “I have theories, but I don’t know for sure who would’ve singled out this outpost.”

Tears pricked my eyes as a body floated past us, having broken free of the grisly congregation in the moon’s orbit. The body hit the windshield of the Vanquish with a sickening thud, before ricocheting off. I caught glimpses of the face as the body spiraled but wished I hadn’t. A crystalline network of ice had trailed across a face so swollen and distorted that it was impossible to tell what they’d once looked like.

“Do you think there are any survivors?” I asked, thinking again of the voice that had called to us from across space. There was no way of knowing how long the attacked fae had been out here, like this. We’d received the distress call a week ago, and she could’ve been trying to find aid long before we’d picked up her transmission.

Sorrow bristled through me as I realized we’d probably waited too long. If we’d forced Pandora to launch a rescue mission, refusing to take no for an answer, we might have had a window of opportunity to save any survivors. A week, eking out an existence on a destroyed outpost, with limited—if not zero—life support resources seemed like an impossibility. If I hadn’t already seen the puffed-up face of a dead fae, I might have hoped their bodies worked differently and could hold out in the harsh conditions of open space, but now that possibility was gone.

“If they managed to stay inside the outpost during the explosion, finding some sort of shelter from the blast, then maybe they weren’t expelled into space,” Bashrik reasoned, though he looked just as doubtful as I felt.

“The voice we heard—that distress call that came through… I think it came from here,” I said. “If that girl is still down there, then we need to find her.”

Lauren nodded. “I was just thinking the same thing. The debris is too similar to be a coincidence.”

“We let her down once, but if she’s still alive, we can’t let her down again,” Angie added quietly, her eyes fixed on the devastation in front of us.

“Even if there aren’t any survivors, we need to find out what caused this. If a report needs to be made to the Fed, then we should gather as much intel as possible,” Navan interjected. “The only problem is, we can’t get closer to the outpost without risking the debris or bodies hitting the ship.”

Bashrik grimaced. “The debris could damage the ship’s hull if we get hit, and we might damage the bodies if they hit us hard enough. I think they deserve better than that.”

“I agree,” I said, and the others nodded their assent. I really didn’t want to see these poor souls put through any further indignities.

“Can’t we use the force guns to gently push them aside?” Angie asked.

Lauren shook her head. “No, if we use the force guns, even the slightest push would mean expelling everything away from the orbit of the moon. Bodies and debris would end up flying everywhere.”

“What about suits?” I pressed, trying to wrack my brain. I couldn’t remember seeing any on the Vanquish, but I figured the coldbloods would know what kind of inventory these warships tended to have. After all, if these ships were built for battle, they’d undoubtedly get damaged somewhere along the line, and that would mean mechanics taking a spacewalk to fix whatever had been broken.

“There are spacesuits in the engine room,” Bashrik said, a note of hope in his voice. “No idea what shape they’re in, or how long it’s been since they were used, but they might be our only shot.”

It was all the persuasion I needed. “Let’s take the suits then!”

I hurried from the room, with the others right behind me. Upon reaching the engine room, however, my optimism sank like a stone in deep water. In a locker to the side of the noisy engine room, we found four suits, though two looked as though they’d seen better days. One had a great big tear in the fabric and a crack in the helmet, while the other one looked like it had been burned to a crisp.

“Looks like only two of us are going out there,” Navan muttered, taking out the viable suits. He was about to hand one to Bashrik, but I stepped in defiantly.

“Someone with the right skills needs to stay in the cockpit to drive this thing if something happens out there,” I said. “That falls on either you or Bashrik.”

Bashrik lifted his hands in surrender. “I’ll happily give up my spot. I’ve taken a few spacewalks before, and they’re really not that fun.”

I turned to Lauren and Angie. “Do either of you mind if I go?”

They shook their heads vigorously. “Just take care of yourself out there,” Lauren warned.

“Yeah, please come back safe,” Angie agreed, offering none of her usual humor.

“I will,” I replied, turning back to Navan. “Looks like it’s you and me, then.”

He smiled begrudgingly. “It’s always you and me,” he murmured. “I just wish you weren’t so stubborn.” I rose up on my tiptoes and kissed him on the lips, taking the spacesuit out of his hands.

“You wouldn’t have me any other way,” I teased.

He laughed. “You’ve got me there.”

With his arm around me, we made our way out of the engine room, heading back up to the main space of the ship. The suit was a hefty piece of equipment, getting heavier with each minute I carried it. I knew it wouldn’t feel like that out in the weightless vacuum of space, but I was already working up a sweat.

“Need a hand?” Navan asked, carrying his with ease.

I shook my head, smiling wryly. “Queen of Stubborn, remember?”

In the main chamber, we came to a halt. With the help of the others, Navan and I clambered into the suits, making sure every buckle was fastened, every zipper done up, every clamp snapped into place. There were retractable folds at the elbows, knees, and waist, to fit the suit to the size of the wearer, so at least I wasn’t drowning in it. Even so, I was getting more anxious by the second. After all, there was no way of testing our suits before we stepped out of the safety of the ship. We were taking a leap into the unknown, without having any clue how protected our bodies were. The last thing I wanted to do was end up bloated and frozen, drifting forever through space.

Once the suits were fastened up, Navan explained the life support and movement systems. There was a panel on my forearm, embedded into the material, with an orange light flashing to show the steady flow of my oxygen levels, and a red beep to show the beat of my heart.

“If either of those lights turns blue, then you’re in the danger zone, and we turn back immediately,” he explained, his voice tight with worry. He went on to explain how the two triggers attached to my hips controlled the air jets that would move me wherever I wanted to go—the right trigger made me move to the right, the left made me move to the left, and both together made me move forward.

“I think I’ve got that,” I said with forced brightness.

“If anything feels wrong, you can talk to me through the headset,” Navan promised, his voice rasping through the speakers in my helmet. “I’ll be there the whole way. You ready?”

I nodded. “Let’s go, before I lose my nerve.” He flashed me an anxious look, but I stopped him before he could tell me not to come along. “I’m fine. Let’s just get this show on the road,” I insisted, dragging my heavy body toward the airlock.

Bashrik opened the door to the airlock, and the other two helped us inside. Once we were safely in the middle chamber, they darted back out into the hallway. The hatch of the interior door slid back down with a satisfying clunk. Once it was secure, Bashrik signaled to us through the small window, giving us a nervous thumbs-up.

Navan typed the code to unlock the exterior door, waiting for the control panel to turn green, to show that the chamber’s pressure had been altered to match the outside atmosphere. As soon as it flickered green, he pushed down the lever beside the exterior hatch, and the door slid open. The icy cold of the outside crept into the chamber—I could feel it even through the thick insulation of the spacesuit. My oxygen levels seemed to be holding, the small monitor on my arm beeping at a steady pace.

Navan grasped my gloved hand in his as he helped me through the airlock door. I stepped into space for the first time. It was weird, the floor falling away below me, and yet I didn’t plummet into the black oblivion underneath. I floated there, drifting along. It almost didn’t seem real—it was too bizarre to be reality.

Removing my hand from Navan’s, I pressed down on the two triggers, propelling myself forward, toward the throng of bodies and debris. I gulped, dreading the moment we got too near, when I’d have to see a corpse up close. But we owed it to the fae to find any survivors among them.

“I’ll go down to scout the outpost, if you want to check the bodies?” Navan said grimly. “See if you can find any identification cards, that sort of thing.”

I lifted my hand in an awkward thumbs-up. “Will do.” I supposed he thought I’d be safer out here, instead of getting too close to the origin of the blast site. After all, there was no telling what might still be inside the outpost, lurking in wait.

He drifted off toward the surface of the moon, winding in and out of the floating masses with ease. I watched him until he disappeared, his jets propelling him toward the outpost itself. I wondered what the other three would be thinking of us splitting up, but since there was no way they could communicate with us, I knew they’d be waiting anxiously in the cockpit, observing us from a distance.

“Navan is going to explore the outpost. I’m going to check the bodies for ID,” I explained, pressing down on the comms button. They’d be able to hear me, even though they couldn’t respond.

Taking a deep breath, I moved through the sea of bodies, tentatively reaching for the buttoned jacket pockets of the deceased fae. I tried as hard as I could not to look at their distended faces, or feel the awful hardness of their frozen bodies, but it was impossible to ignore as I took their ID cards and stowed them away in my suit. At each body I came to, I said a few words, though I had no idea what religion these people followed or how they might’ve wished to be honored. Even so, it didn’t feel right to leave them without at least saying something to commemorate the lives they had lived and mourn the way they’d been cut short.

As I drifted among them, my mind turned, unexpectedly, to thoughts of Galo. Navan believed that this outpost was where he was telling us to go, but I no longer believed that. Galo had tried to tell us something just before he died—he had wanted us to seek someone out, but this couldn’t be it. He’d said something about finding a star, but then he’d been cut off before he could finish. What if we’d misunderstood what he was trying to say? What if there was more to his words that we were missing?

I was just reaching into the pocket of another poor soul when something launched itself at me in a tangle of flailing limbs and terrifying eyes. All thoughts of Galo dissipated as I screamed into the helmet of my spacesuit, the glass fogging up, making it difficult to see what was coming for me. I held up my hands to defend myself, but I could only feel the bump of bodies against me, not knowing which belonged to corpses, and which to my assailant. I grasped for my triggers, trying to keep my body from flying backward. Suddenly, the onslaught stopped.

As the condensation cleared on my helmet’s visor, I saw a female fae hovering in front of me. She was about the size of a child, and her enormous eyes—with bright purple and gold irises, and pitch black where the whites ought to be—were staring at me through the glass of a similar helmet’s visor. She was wearing a dark gray spacesuit that almost camouflaged her against the chunks of debris that floated around her. It explained why I hadn’t seen her until the very last moment.

“Intruders come to take away our lives,” she said, her voice echoing out through external speakers. An eerie smile spread across her mouth, showing two rows of tiny, sharp teeth, which looked oddly like a shark’s. “Big boom, and we all go floating!” She giggled, darting left and right in the air, the sound of her misplaced laughter sending a shiver of fear up my spine. Nothing she said sounded normal, her voice carrying a high-pitched, detached tone.

“You called us to help you, didn’t you?” I asked. Even though her voice sounded strange at close quarters, I could tell this was the same person who had sent out the distress call.

The fae tilted her head at me. “Nobody home.”

“I know we didn’t come when you called, and we’re eternally sorry for that, but we’re here now. Are you the only survivor?” I pressed. “What’s your name?”

She did a funny twirl in the air. “There is never anyone home. Now, there is no home!” She giggled again.

“What’s your name?” I tried again.

“Mauve. Who are you?” she replied, swooping forward suddenly, her helmet clashing with mine. I gasped, struggling for breath, convinced she’d cracked the glass. Her huge eyes were staring right at me, our visors touching.

“I’m Riley,” I said, panting, trying to restore my heartbeat to a normal pace. I could see it beeping wildly on my forearm panel.

She squinted at me through the visors. “I know you. You ran away.”

I shook my head. “No, we didn’t run away from you. We were just slow getting to you. Are you the only one left?”

“Lonely as a cloud. I’ve never seen a cloud. Have you seen a cloud?” she asked, tilting her head again.

“I’ve seen a cloud, yes. Does that mean you are the sole survivor?” I asked, determined to get an answer out of this strange being. Were fae always like this, or had the trauma and the time spent with limited oxygen addled her mind?

“My soul survives. Everyone has a soul, which survives everything,” she replied, her answer just as disjointed as expected. “I’m the only one whose heart is still beating, though.” A giggle rippled from her throat, but it was the confirmation I’d been looking for. Mauve was the only one left.

“What happened to the Fed outpost?” I went on, knowing I’d have to decipher her responses. However, it seemed like she’d had enough of chatting with me. She pulled away, weaving through the tangled mass of bodies and debris, moving like a swimmer.

Pressing down on my triggers, I chased after her. She was the only one who knew anything, and I wasn’t about to let her out of my sight. Only, she was moving pretty fast through the crowd of corpses, and I was having trouble catching up. More than once, I bumped into a frozen body in my attempt to move around them, grimacing as I watched them float away into the endless reaches of the universe, which would forever be their graveyard.

On and on I floated, feeling like I was in some twisted version of Alice in Wonderland, falling down a rabbit hole filled with the bloated, frozen dead and the fractured remains of their former home. Occasionally, I’d catch glimpses of my white rabbit, her gray suit flitting through the orbiting mass, but then she’d disappear again, giving me only a vague direction to follow.

I was close to giving up when something appeared in the near distance. It shimmered in the reflection of light that glanced up from the moon’s surface, the shape smooth and perfectly round. I’d seen a similar structure before. Mauve hovered beside it, pressing one hand against the gleaming hull.

I gasped. “It’s a pod.”

And not just any pod, I realized, coming closer. The bolts showed where a panel had once been, but it now revealed the engraving beneath. It was carved in the shape of Queen Brisha’s symbol.

I’d never seen the pod Jethro had sent away from Earth with my vial of blood inside, but I had a sneaking suspicion this was that exact pod. The one that had gotten him killed for being a traitor.

As the pod rotated slowly, I saw that the panel wasn’t the only thing that had been torn off—the whole vessel was in pieces. Only half remained intact, giving the illusion of a complete pod when seen from my angle, while the other fragments had evidently floated off into the vacuum of space. It looked like someone, or something, had forcibly torn the metal apart. And the blood it had been carrying was nowhere to be seen.

I pressed the comms device. “Navan, there’s something you’ve got to see.”

A moment later, his voice crackled through. “I’ll be there soon.”

Glancing at Mauve, who was staring at me intently, I wished for him to hurry. There was something wrong about the female fae, something that made me fear for my life. Her eyes were wild, her movements disjointed.

And yet, she’d brought me to this pod.

“Why… Why did you bring me here?” I asked.

A giggle erupted from her throat, the eerie sound rippling through the emptiness of space.