The next day was barely better than the first, but at least Ravi smiled at him and worked beside him so that their shoulders kept brushing while they were sorting the rest of the supplies. The second day was even a bit better than that, because Jossen unearthed the waffle iron and Lio got to make a production of licking cream off a spoon while Ravi tried not to look at him. On the third day in the camp, Yorune started humming again. By the fifth day, she and Rosareen were debating where to establish a succulent garden.

Ravi pestered Archcom Huseda daily for updates, and the ziggurat commander must've felt at least some shred of guilt for their situation, because she granted Duhar's request for an outrageous sim machine and shipped it and all its accompanying gadgets to the camp the next day. Eight days in camp, and things were starting to feel familiar. Aziri and Orvaska had a blow up fight that Onfenka ended in record time by calmly saying, "Would you two just fuck each other and get it over with," which mortified them both into silence and had Teres on the lounge floor bellowing with laughter. It was nearly normal.

Lio was happy to see his friends regroup, but he made no progress on his own private quest to return to Opalina. Yet somehow, his belief was unshakable. They wouldn't keep him away from his lightship forever. Two full weeks passed in the ring of trailers that was their new home, and Ravi was starting to brief them on possible commendations again, when a missive from Archcom Huseda reignited his hopes.

They were all gathered in the lounge, which doubled as their muster room, just after breakfast. Ravi was in the middle of outlining their plan for the commendation task when he glanced at his flashing holowatch, read the contact code and stopped talking.

"Sorry," he murmured. "Hold on." His eyes raced across the missive, and when he looked up, his jaw was tight. "We're going to have to scratch our plans for the day. Archcom Huseda said the Enlightenment crews have some questions for us. Hov is on the way. We're heading back up the mountain." He didn't say it outright, but they all knew this was their chance to see Opalina again.

The ride was the opposite of the one they'd taken two weeks prior. The hov was definitely not meant to accommodate all of them, but they packed in regardless. Everyone was babbling, guessing what the Enlightenment crews wanted to ask that needed to be done in person. Duhar half-convinced himself that it was military secrets they couldn't say over a call line and was nearly hyperventilating by the time they reached the end of the mag lane.

Lio climbed out, and his stomach lurched. The little trail he had climbed to Opalina a thousand times was gone. It was replaced by a wide, flattened road stamped with the footprints of enormous machinery. The crew quieted as they hiked up the tracks, Ravi in the lead.

The noisy bustle of activity reached them before they rounded the rock curve that had always hidden Opalina from view. Insistent beeping, people calling instructions to each other, and smooth, electronic bot voices echoed off the rocks.

He was walking faster, loping past Ravi and up to the crest of the ridge to see—

The mountain was demolished. Cratered. Enormous piles of reddish shale banked either side of a narrow through-way. And beyond the shattered remains of the rock that had hidden the Mastali's secrets, dwarfing the remains of the sandstone cloak it had worn, the lightship stood. Lio stopped running, stopped breathing, stopped thinking.

It was immense. A gigantic, smooth, silver dewdrop in the desert. Of course it was Mastali made. The lightship looked flawless. The sun glanced off of its silver dome and blinded him.

"Merciful goddess," Jossen whispered. "That can fly?"

"It looks fast," breathed Duhar.

"We lived on that," Yorune said.

Ravi didn't say anything it all, but he put his hand on Lio's shoulder as if the entire crew weren't surrounding them, and Lio had one dream glimmering in the sun in front of him waiting to be claimed and another standing beside him laying a claim of its own.

"Look at its feet!" Rosareen pointed to the base of the lightship, to a pair of huge, flat tank treads.

"I think," Yorune began slowly, "that those aren't part of the ship. They put those on it."

"Why put treads on a flying ship?" Jossen wondered aloud.

Lio flexed his fingers. "They can't get it to work." He didn't say the rest of his hypothesis. If they couldn't fly it but were mounting it on treads, they intended to move it somewhere. His heartbeat doubled.

"Good, you've arrived." The clipped greeting came from a very haggard-looking Tarik Sarrel, who emerged from a miniature village of interconnected tents strung in Opalina's shadow. He frowned. "Although I don't remember requesting the entire crew."

"Too bad," Ravi said. He stepped forward, arms crossed, looming over Tarik. He took space like he owned it, Enforcer-trained dominance asserting itself in every inch of his stance. Lio experienced a drunken rush of satisfaction that he could make that same man lose his mind in bed.

Tarik sniffed. "Well, perhaps one of you knows the information we need. Come along." He spun on a heel and led them into the tents.

Air-conditioning blasted an unnatural chill over Lio's sweat-damp skin. His gaze flitted across countless screens, bots, and Enlightenment recruits as Tarik led them through a series of plastic flaps and into a large room. Empty chairs were scattered around a white table projecting a holographic rendering of Opalina. He could see it all in miniature, the circle of the central tunnel, their common rooms and bedrooms branching off of it. There was another, larger space beneath the loop, in the center of the lightship but a level below the other rooms. The old storeroom.

Tarik impatiently indicated they should sit, and spoke while they were still arranging chairs closer to the holograph. "As you are hopefully able to infer, we have made excellent progress with uncovering and mapping the lightship. Apart from a minor setback with the entrance, we—"

Ravi interrupted. "What happened with the entrance?"

The inspector rolled his eyes. "That wretched door you all used was not part of the ship. When we removed it and the rock surrounding it, a Mastali engineered apparatus reemerged and sealed the outer shell with no apparent release mechanism."

"What?" Orvaska asked.

Yorune chuckled. "He means Opalina locked them out."

Tarik glared at her. "Of course, we were able to reenter through the lower level door. As I said, a minor setback. And one which could be rectified if we could understand the lightship's programming. In order to do that we need to understand its power system."

"Uh...you know there's probably a power switch on the nav console, right?" Duhar asked.

"Obviously." Tarik clasped his hands behind his back, which suddenly made him look like an irate tutor Lio remembered from childhood. "A power switch cannot turn on a ship that has no fuel. We've searched for a core, a reactor, solar cells, a tank, anything. All we've found is useless plumbing. Archcom Huseda suggested that you all might have some...insight into the build of the ship." He sounded as if it pained him to admit it.

Yorune, Jossen, and Ravi took the lead on answering Tarik's questions, or trying to. It was difficult to follow the conversation as it got more technical. He listened as Yorune, bolstered by occasional input from Rosareen, explained the generator system that powered the cord lights. Tarik's frustration was visible by the time he moved to quizzing Jossen about the sewage system. Lio itched to duck out of the tent and back to the lightship.

There was only one thing that continuously orbited in his mind. They were going to move the ship. Likely off the mountain and somewhere further away from him. He couldn't let that happen.

"Excuse me," he said, cutting of another of Tarik's questions. "So sorry. All this talk of sewage has me needing to use the facilities. Do you have a—"

"Separate from the tents. Any of the recruits outside will direct you to it." He swatted aside Lio's disruption and went back to making Jossen repeat himself.

Lio ducked out of the tent complex and back into the baking heat. Opalina hovered in front of him, a silver mirage. He circled around to see the entrance the Enlightenment crews were using. The ship was elevated in some sort of steel trap attached to the treads. A long ramp ran from the dirt up to the open door.

He approached the foot of the ramp, and a tall woman wearing an Enforcer insignia turned to him. "Authorization?" she asked, scanning an Enlightenment crew member's metal ripple and waving them onto the ramp while she spoke to Lio.

Trying to sound as nonchalant as possible, he indicated the single metal ring pinned to the front of his uniform. "I'm with the Opalina crew," he said.

Without so much as blinking, the Enforcer scanned the ring, and then jerked her head to the ramp. "Go ahead."

That really shouldn't have worked. Apparently his read-out still said he was assigned to Opalina Outpost, and the only Opalina Outpost that remained was this eerie Mastali perfection. Holding his breath, Lio climbed the ramp and entered the lightship.

It took him a moment to orient himself. He was in the lowest level, the place they'd thought was an old storeroom. Stripped of rock, it looked a lot more like a nav control room. Duhar would've salivated at the sight. Five stations like the one the crew had first uncovered were revealed, set in a u-shape around the room. With the dust cleared and floodlights illuminating the space, they looked like glass sculptures of the most elegant nav consoles he'd ever seen.

Three different arched doorways led out of the nav center. One of them had to be the same tunnel he and his friends had cleared together. But the others were new to him. He climbed the nearest, and found himself at the threshold to another silvery room. It was full of people, anchoring a brand new table into the center of the room and yelling at each other.

"Are you the recruit they sent with the replacement diamond bits?" A woman emerged from another attached room. "The ones we've got in the drill are already worn to nubs."

This was the muster room. And she'd just come out of the com's office. Lio edged into the room with a smile. "No, sorry. I, ah...think they're on the way." Before she could demand to know what he was doing, he ducked out the muster room door and into the tunnel. What used to be the tunnel. It was still somewhat a tunnel, although the rock and dim cord lights overhead were gone. Blue-silver light suffused the new tunnel. It was like looking at a reflection of something he knew very well in a mirror that changed everything, but kept an echo of the old.

He went back to the nav center and took the third flight of stairs to see where they led, and ended up in the mess hall. A swarm of Enlightenment recruits fiddled with appliances that looked like solid alloy blocks. Extraordinary. Drifting back into the tunnel, his mind was racing. The Mastali must have lived on the ship even after they concealed it, and at some point after it was abandoned, a crew moved in without questioning where it had come from.

Lio was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't realize where his feet had led him until his hand touched the cool door, seeking a scanner pane. He stood outside his old bedroom, as if he could go in and roll onto his bed to think over the scant clues he'd gathered.

The door didn't open, but he pressed his palm to it all the same. Bent close enough to brush his forehead against the cool metal. He wanted to believe that if the ship were powered on, it would know him. This was home and adventure both. Past and future in one. He would find a way to get it all back.