He had me off balance. “What about my mother?”

“Bogeys!”

And suddenly they were on us, a dozen angular craft that looped around the flitter, coming from over our heads like falling fists.

L’Eesh yanked at the stick. We flipped backward and sped away. But the bogeys were faster.

I cowered, an ancient, useless reflex; I wasn’t used to being in a dogfight that humans aren’t dominating.

“Remarkable accelerations,” murmured L’Eesh. “An automated defense?”

The bogeys surrounded us in a tidy cloud, and hosed us with a crimson haze.

“There is nothing we can do.” L’Eesh sat stoically at his controls; blood-red light glinted from the planes of his shaven scalp.

Abruptly the bogeys tipped sideways and squirted away. As the mist cleared, I let out my breath.

At first, it seemed the unexpected assault had done us no harm. We were still descending to the moon, which was flattening out from a closed-in crimson ball to a landscape beneath us.

Now my softscreen filled with the mournful face of Pohp, the agent who had brought us both here, calling from the Spline. But her image was broken up, her words indistinct: … classification of … Ghost … vacuum energy adjustment, which …

A warning chimed.

“Raida, help me.” L’Eesh was battling his controls. “We’ve lost telemetry from the portside drive.”

It was worse than that. Through the crystal hull, I saw a drive pod tumbling away, surrounded by a cloud of frozen fluids and bits of hull material.

I tried my controls. With half our drive gone, they felt soggy.

I wasn’t afraid, at that point. I looked up to that impossible bridge, a line drawn across the sky, aloof from our petty struggles. There are times when you just can’t believe what you are seeing. A survival mechanism, I guess.

More alarms.

“Another drive pod has cut out.” L’Eesh sat back, pressing his fists against his softscreen in genteel frustration.