Sacrifice

There was a presence following her, and Lumiya could pick it out like a beacon even at this range. So could the meditation sphere.

Broken, said the ship.

In the back of her mind, the presence manifested as a jagged, shattered mass of black and white glass. If she concentrated on it long enough, it resolved into a whole vessel again, but the cracks were still visible.

"It's broken, all right," Lumiya said. "What shall we do, allow it to catch up? Or shall we see how good a hunter it is?"

The meditation sphere felt elated. The smoldering red flame that seemed embedded in its bulkheads grew brighter and more golden, and Lumiya felt a conspiratorial sense of humor flood her. The ship was enjoying itself. Of course: it had been dormant on Ziost for untold years, a conscious thing waiting for purpose and interaction.

Nothing in the galaxy enjoyed being alone, be it flesh or metal.

Lumiya rocked back on her heels, still a little disoriented by a cockpit that didn't wrap around her. It didn't feel like an extension of her body as a starfighter did. Instead of neatly arranged screens and controls within her reach, there was nothing except stark, grainy, stone-like surfaces in which images appeared and then vanished again.

The ship's bulkhead showed her a pattern of lights. A small craft matched their course at a range of five thousand kilometers. The asteroid belt where her base was hidden appeared as a sprinkling of stars on a dark blue ground as if a hole had been punched in the bulkhead, and she almost expected to feel air rushing past as the vacuum beyond claimed her.

"Time to jump," she said.

The meditation sphere felt as if it took a deep breath and lunged forward. There was no inertia, no sensation of movement whatsoever, and yet Lumiya was sure her stomach leapt and her head spun with the