Travnyk doesn’t answer. His head tilts, tusks fixed and gleaming as he studies the walls.
“I think it is… sorting,” he says after a pause.
That word hits me wrong in a way that I can’t name, but it feels like my brain is itching. Suddenly, everything stops. It’s a brief moment, but the background hum is gone, leaving an empty silence that makes my breath catch. The light along the walls settles into a neutral wash. No escalation. No warning. No reaction at all. Rakkh feels it too; I see it in his muscles that don’t relax—they lock.
“This is different,” he says quietly.
“Yes…,” Travnyk says, inclining his head and frowning. “It would seem that the system has suspended any immediate response.”
Suspended. My stomach drops.
“That’s… good, right?”
“No,” Travnyk says calmly, a half-smile pulling at the corners of his lips. “I don’t believe so. It is more dangerous.”
The ship isn’t testing or threatening. It’s proceeding. The question is, with what?
The wall opposite the platform changes—not opening, not peeling back, but reconfiguring. Lines in the metal shift position with surgical precision, resolving into a shallow recess that isn’t a doorway or a container; it’s something else.
“That’s not a passage,” I say.
“No,” Travnyk agrees. He takes a small step closer, not testing the ship, but getting a better view. He frowns for a long moment, bending and turning his head to look from different angles. “It appears to be an operational node.”
The moment he says it, something presses gently behind my eyes—not pain, not an invasion like before. This is more like a file opening all at once without my even knowing to ask.
I see stars, cold and distant. And pathways… that I somehow understand are routes between planets. The paths are layered over one another, and they’re color-coded. The colors indicate alliances reduced to three stark categories: aligned, compromised, hostile.
And then—threading through the three categories—a new color that I know, instinctively, represents the Zmaj. The Zmaj thread has multiple colors, and that’s confusing. Is it dividing by Surface and Cavern?
No… the Cavern Zmaj weren’t involved in the war that led to the Devastation. They were deep beneath the surface, having retreated long before… I close my eyes, focusing. Then I get it. One of the colors is for the Order.
I haven’t thought about them since the Bunker, though I think some of them are still around. Most of them were lost in the fight with the new Invaders.
New Invaders. There’s a title. But it’s becoming clear now that the nebulous event the Zmaj call the Devastation was, in some ways, similar to what we did to stop the Invaders. A massive bomb that left Tajss a wasteland.
But it’s not only Order colors in the Zmaj thread. There are three categories in that one thread. Order seems to be one, but thereare two others represented. The sensation snaps into focus, sharp and clinical. The ship system is trying to figure out what category to place Rakkh in. That’s why it vacillates in whether or not he is a threat.
The Order are combat-capable, but their status is unresolved.
I look over at Rakkh, and I understand that his risk classification is deferred. I exhale sharply, unsure how to proceed or what to do with what I think I understand. Especially because I could still be wrong. What if I’m making all this up in my own head? What if I’m leading us further and further into danger?
“It hasn’t decided,” I whisper.
Rakkh inhales slowly through his teeth.
“It’s… postponed a decision on you. Don’t do anything rash, okay? Let’s not provoke it.”
The recess shifts again, and symbols lock into place. Tomas swallows audibly.
“So… it doesn’t think he’s the enemy?” Tomas asks.
“It thinks,” I say carefully, “that he might become one.”
“It believes I could interfere,” Rakkh says, turning toward me.
“Yes,” Travnyk replies. “Eventually.”
One thing is clear, though—the ship isn’t reacting to Rakkh’s anger as much as it’s reacting to me.
