The Andromeda popped into existence a few thousand light-years away from Purica Space. It had emerged at the edge of Rete territory, a section of the border that rubbed shoulders with Independant Space, rather than the war front.

This particular neighborhood of Rete consisted of a handful of colonies, all annexed relatively recently. Most of these planets were founded by the Rete a century or two ago; one or two were existing independents that petitioned the Rete for citizenship. They were breadbasket worlds, and offered their agricultural product as incentive.

One of these worlds was a relatively recent endeavor by a Rete corporation. Rather than for cultural or logistical reasons, Aquatime Corp. aimed for economic success.

About two decades ago, it garnered the licensing rights to a huge swath of property on one of the Rete border colonies, Alto II. It was a small planet, with a small population. Due to this, the residing Planetae was rudimentary, undergoing only the first stage of its sentient existence.

Initially, the Rete had colonized the planet in order to establish a massive fishery operation. It was named after a long extinct colony - according to historical records, Alto had been a previous fishing colony that had been ravaged in some long-ago conflict.

Alto II - the Planetae - did not have the self-awareness yet to be selective with its gifts, nor was it autonomous enough to do much more than physical augmentation. It acted on instinct, providing its hosts with an advantage in the watery world to ensure they would stay - and continue to grow their numbers.

Thus, every member of that first generation of those born on the new colony were bestowed with a Body-Type Factor: the ability to also breathe underwater.

Aquatime had no interest in fishing, however. The company wanted to take advantage of the mild oceans and temperate climate of the world and build a 'quiet, off-the-beaten-path' style resort for the Rete upper class.

Tucked away in the middle of nowhere, the place was distant enough to feel exciting and exotic to tourists, but also well-established enough to offer all the comforts of home in Rete's Core systems.

Ricardia sighed as she wiped her feed vision clean of the records she was reading and returned her gaze to the view beyond the ship. Despite sending her answer to Erin over the feed, she still had no desire to interact with anyone for the time being.

Wandering the ship, Ricardia discovered a lavish lounge that had been built along the flank of the Andromeda. The place was built for a crowd, but Ricardia was the only person there to appreciate the expansive view from the windows. She'd imagined that the place would have been packed if the ship hadn't been seized for the time being by Erin and her conspirators.

She'd tucked herself into a deep-seated couch and lost herself in the feed, scouring it for information about the Andromeda's upcoming - and final - stop on their 'research expedition.'

To any outsider following the trip, it looked as though Alto II had been chosen as a celebration stop, a way for the team to congratulate themselves after hard weeks of work and research throughout the galaxy.

But it was impossible to know what their real purpose for being there was. Of course, it was possible they were there for just a refuel and a moment of rest before going... elsewhere, but Ricardia's paranoia had reached new heights since stepping onto the ship. It felt as though there were always more and more questions, and not nearly enough answers.

Ricardia almost accessed long-range communication to reach out to Sana before stopping herself. She'd been ordered by the others to kill any communication with Onyx, lest they be tracked down.

But it was hard to sit there in that plush cocoon of a ship when she had no idea if Sana and her sister were okay. They could have been taken in for questioning by the Purists, or hurt for Sana's accomplice work, or-

She shook her head. No, as hard as it was, she needed to be cruel - to push those thoughts elsewhere.

Figure yourself out first. That's what Dani would have told her. Can't help anyone if you're not standing on two good feet yourself.

She could do what she'd done before - make a run for it once they landed down on Alto II. She'd have to be careful though - there was a chance that if Erin had any suspicions, she'd be under just as much surveillance as the doctor. There wasn't much she could do on the ship besides run laps, but an open planet was a different story. She'd have to act as though she was fully committed to staying.

Despite her dark mood, she couldn't help the tingle of anticipation at the idea of visiting a new world.

She wondered what Alto II looked like from afar, if the blue from its oceans would glint in the light of the stars. Regulations prevented jumping within a certain distance from the planet, so everyone on the Andromeda's bridge was likely to be watching as it gradually approached.

Unfortunately, her own view was angled off to the side and behind, and so it was doubtful she'd get to see their arrival first-hand. She could have gone and found a new spot, but the isolation and quiet of her current space was soothing. Going to the front of the ship meant people, and she needed to be alone right now.

She leaned back against the couch, staring out into the expanse through half-lidded eyes. The pinpricks of light casted by the stars blurred together in her compressed vision, becoming streaks and dashes of brightness in the dark. She'd run away for a terrible reason, but it didn't diminish the thrill of the unknown, of going somewhere you've never gone before.

Maybe it was something she'd always wanted, even before becoming a Candidate. Despite being one of the largest settlements on Caedem, Yigera had always felt small. Ricardia did love the green hills and wet marshlands of her home, ringed with terraced rings of rice paddies; the canals that crisscrossed the streets, and the low canoes that traversed them, laden with peddlers hawking their wares. The Temple, always strewn with seasonal flowers, crowded with worshippers and pilgrims. And her, always at the center of it all, performing the Forms day after day as was her responsibility.

But the feeds and the foreigners and even the Convention had hinted at a much bigger one beyond her own. Dangerous, her elders had always said, Complicated and unstable and filled with too many things to handle. That's why Caedem had petitioned for a colony, all that time ago. It's better to stay, where your problems are known and fixable, then to go.

She was still thinking about her home when the Andromeda's alarms burst into life, and a strange, interlocking hunk of a ship blinked into existence in direct view of her window.

...

"Ferrus help us!" Erin ranted, pacing back and forth on the floor of the bridge. "Where the damn is Ito? And the woman?"

Lukas, Viktor, and the Captain stood nearby, whoever hadn't been on the bridge already had rushed to the location once the ship had been put on alert.

Lukas was winded from his flight through the halls, but exhaustion wasn't to totally blame for the unsteadiness he was feeling. The noise was of a totally different pitch and timbre than the sirens in the underground, but it still sent him into a minor panic, adrenaline spiking in memory of his recent struggles.

Aurrum accessed the feed for a moment before turning to Erin. "I sent your soldiers to Ito so they could bring him here. I have some of the crew tracking down the woman. They'll get her here in just a few moments."

The captain's smooth tones seemed to settle his mother slightly, and her pacing began to slow.

"Alright..." she sighed, turning to face the window. "What do we have here?"

The bridge's viewing window currently had a projection cast over it, a view from the rear of the ship. The craft that had just entered their space was a vaguely spherical object, but lacked a smooth exterior. Instead, its broad shape was composed of various shapes that seemed to be jointed together, forming a mottled white-and-gray color.

The captain shook his head, rueful. "More and more, I question why I agreed to this." He jerked his head towards a pair of technicians furiously working at a console in the balcony above. "They're working on identification, but I don't think it takes a genius to figure this one out."

Not Rete, not Saiseki... but he was right. There was only one faction who could possibly have the motivation to approach them with so much hostility.

"The cultists?" Erin was livid. "How did they even track us down? How did they jump? Did the damn Candidate send something out?"

"No," Aurrem said after a moment. "We've been monitoring communication channels. Nothing's come up" he winced.

"That's impossible." Erin stared up at their pursuer. They must have done something. Planted a tracker, or..."

Then she whirled around, bearing down on Viktor.

"Damnit! They let you go on purpose!"

"What?"

"I knew it was strange that they just left you and the others walk free. You were insurance."

The captain picked up on it instantly. He called down a handful of techs, gesturing to Viktor.

"We need to check you and whoever else was in that meeting for bugs, plants - anything."

"It was just me and Erin's assistants," he blanched. "There were four of us in total."

"We need to check all of you." The captain swore. "Aren't these people supposed to be anti-tech or something?"

"Anti-Factor," Erin hissed as Viktor was led away by the crew. "But clearly that might not be the case either."

"Well, we have a few options," Aurrum strode over to his control board, bringing the ship's front view back into focus.

Alto II, like Onyx before it, was a rapidly approaching anomaly in the blackness of space. A marbled blue orb, shot through with wisps of white and silver like the fuzz on a sweet-tasting fruit.

"We could hold our ground and fight, which is something I would very much not like to do," Aurrum said. "Unless you're willing to pay for the collateral. And the missing crew," he added.

"Or," Erin said, unamused.

"Or, we do what makes the most sense. We're a seemingly civilian craft, part of one of the Rete's largest corporate fleet. We keep ahead of that weird, shit-ball ship and make it to the planet's atmosphere, then claim protection."

The Rete code - any civilian ship under attack, and owned by one of citizenship can call in for aid from the nearest settlement. There was a binding obligation to provide support, an ageless law meant to protect trade fleets and migrations protection from prowl of enemy nations or pirates.

"They have the support?" Erin was doubtful.

"Whatever they have couldn't hurt," the captain shot back. "And I'd rather keep my ship in one piece than not. If we make it to the surface, it means we can get your precious cargo hidden away all that much quicker."

"We could try for a jump," Erin suggested.

Aurrum thought about it. "We'd have to set up the equipment, then wait for the power to build. And we'd also have to come to a stop for the jump to work. They'd overtake us long before we could pull it off."

"Fine," Erin said, crossing her arms. "Let's make a run for the planet."

The captain chose to forgo his feed for the more traditional communication style of bellowing at everyone in the bridge at the top of his voice.

The alarms were cut off, the noise doing nothing but hindering their ability to hear each other. At the same time, the Andromeda surged forward, pushing towards the colony.

"Damnit Viktor," Erin muttered to herself. "Always another mess." She looked at Lukas then, and for a moment he swore he shell cracked a little, and his mother was momentarily replaced by an exhausted, worn-down husk of a woman.

A stranger.

Then her face hardened, and the image disappeared quickly that Lukas could believe it had never happened. Still, when she spoke to him afterwards, her tone was softer by a degree.

"If you're not feeling well, you can go lay down again. There's not much you can do right now, anyway."

It was true; he was nothing but an obstacle for the crew of the Andromeda as they rushed about in an effort to outrace the approaching ship.

Still, he gathered himself, summoning fresh resolve now that the awful alarm had ended.

"No, I'd rather be here," he said. "In case anything happens."

She gave him a thin smile. "Don't be such a pessimist. This still could be nothing at all - a total coincidence, two ships jumping so close to each other."

Aurrum let out a low chuckle. "They're gunning right for us. If this is a coincidence, I'll donate my entire damn fleet to charity."

"If this is a coincidence," one of his techs shouted out, "I'll convert to the Purists!"

There was a smattering of laughter, and the tension in Lukas' shoulders eased just slightly. Still, there was a frantic energy in the room that even their humor couldn't pervade.

Minutes slid by, thick as molasses, as both Alto II and the hulking mess of a ship grew ever larger in their views.

Ito and the soldiers arrived, the man quickly corralled onto one of the lower balconies. Ricardia came shortly after, led by a pair of techs who quickly abandoned her to help the rest of the crew.

She made her way down to the ground floor, where Lukas, his mother, and the captain stood.

She spared a quick glance at the doctor above before asking, "so, we're being chased down?"

Erin considered her response, but nodded, her words truthful. "We think it's the Purists. Somehow, they tracked us down."

"I'm not surprised," Ricardia shrugged, strangely apathetic about the news. "Onyx is crawling with hackers. Someone's feed was probably made to send out a low-frequency signal, less detectable than regular communications."

Erin and the Captain both stared at her, and she returned the looks with a wry smile. "I had some trouble a while back with hacking myself. It made sense to do a little research."

Then something occurred to her and her smile vanished. "That's how that bastard must have found me..." she trailed off, muttering and scowling to herself.

Erin turned away from her when it was clear there would be no elaboration.

"Have you tried reaching out to the ship?" Erin asked the captain.

"Since it appeared," he growled. "But we're getting no response. "Whoever it is in there doesn't want to talk."

They all lapsed into silence, watching as the ship continued to inch closer.

"It's a strange design," Lukas said, hoping to alleviate the tension. "Isn't it?" It was no model he'd ever seen in his classes at the Academy.

"No doubt about that," the captain squinted. "How is it even being propelled? I don't see any thrusters or stabilizers."

Erin frowned. "It's unfamiliar, but it reminds me of something..." she seemed to be racking her memories for the comparison, but it was evidently eluding her.

Still, more and more details presented themselves as time passed, but still, the sleek, light-colored mishmash of components reflected nothing of traditional ship design.

And then, when Alto II had begun to fill the broad expanse of their view, the odd ship moved.

For a moment, no one reacted, but as a piece of the pursuing ship detached and suddenly darted off in a separate direction, the bridge erupted into commotion.

Erin's eyebrows shot up in a rare degree of emotion. "Is that what I think it is?"

Lukas watched, fascinated, as more and more of the ship's jigsaw parts fell away like the leaves of a dying tree, until there were more than half a dozen flitting shapes around a now-much smaller core. Stripped of its layers, the real ship was small, dark, and simplistic. It quickly fell back, outpaced by both the Andromeda and the smaller ships it spawned.

"Those are fighters," the captain slammed his hand against the control board. "Fighters!"

"So it is an assault," Erin said, calm again. "They're using pirating tactics, I get it now."

"What do we do?" The words burst from Lukas. "Can we fight? Are we fast enough-"

"Hey," Aurrum shot him a look. "We'll be alright. This ship is built to last, alright? All we have to do is get to the surface, and we'll be in the clear."

He couldn't even finish his sentence before the alarms blared to life again.

"Oh, no..." Lukas stumbled back a step, his heart hammering. "Mom, are we gonna be okay?" He couldn't take his eyes off the fighter as they streaked towards them, harbingers of violence. He wasn't ready for this, he decided. Did field research trips always end up like this? Do scientists across the galaxy get chased down by violent cultists and sit, waiting in tin cans to be blown apart and scattered into space-

"Hey," Erin placed a firm hand on his shoulder. "You need to leave. This isn't something I want you here for."

Lukas looked at his mother, and saw the worry creases etched into her forehead, the shadows on her face. But he couldn't move. He was worried if she released her grip he'd simply collapse onto the floor.

But then Ricardia stepped in, and in that moment her voice was as firm as his mother's.

"Here, let's go find a spot to wait this out, alright? You and me."

He managed to catch the look that was exchanged between the two women, but then something in Erin's expression shifted and she stepped back.

"Thank you, Ricardia," she said.

"Better you than me, but you have work to do, looks like," was the response. Then a hand on his back was guiding him and they were moving, away from the chaos of the bridge and the view of those sharp, glinting fighters.