EIGHT

"Alice! Get up here!" Kon called through the speakers and tried to hide the smile of anticipation on his face. They were less than a minute from leaving the lane and they'd be coming out into the system where the Oasis was said to be waiting. Benny had said it was a small system, only a trio of planetary bodies in it and no signs of life aside from a few asteroid mining groups who had left their equipment behind when they abandoned the area.

The bang of feet on metal raced toward him as the door swung open and Alice appeared, shoving him out of the way to look over Benny's shoulder. She looked down at him and grinned as she realized her brusque shove had hardly stirred him.

"Getting to be pretty solid there," she said and Kon felt a hint of dread go through him as he remembered their last spar which he was still hurting from even after her healing.

"My body is still settling. From Diur's notes it could take up to six months for the energy to fully stabilize," Kon muttered. Alice choked out a laugh and shook her head.

"Bet it's going to be like a month for you, you little freak," Alice said with good natured humor. She even rubbed his hair, but with enough force that Kon felt like he had whiplash when she was done.

"No screwing around on the bridge or I'll lock the doors again," Benny warned.

Alice turned back towards the screen and Kon pushed against her to look at himself. The engines roared as they forced a hole in the lane, allowing them to exit in the system.

The star was young, burning hot and bright while the three planets stuck in its orbit were all gas giants. Multiple asteroid fields were clustered about in weird patterns that pulled at Kon's mind to look at them, but his attention was taken up by the fleet that was stretched out in the space between the second and third planets.

Hundreds of ships, from picket ships no larger than the Puca, frigates covered in weapon platforms, sleek destroyers that cut patrolled the outskirts of the fleet, personal ships floating back and forth, rotund carriers that would be filled with single fighter craft and landing shuttles, to bulbous cruisers that could batter a world. In the center of the fleet was the monstrous Authority of Man.

Kon swallowed hard as the kilometers of steel and guns were dwarfed by a mobile planet. It looked nothing like any ship he'd ever seen. In his mind he'd pictured a spherical ship like a world given engines. Instead he was looking at a dozen massive arms connected to a central ring with bridges stretching back and forth across them.

"Awe inspiring isn't it? Fifteen million souls aboard her. It's the oldest and smallest of the worldships, but she's the one that holds the remnants of home. Records, original recordings, plant life carefully preserved, anything and everything that you can think of that could be saved we did so," Benny whispered. Kon nodded along with him and then remembered what Benny had said about their acquisition of the ship.

"What about the original creators of it?" the words came free before he could think about stopping them. Benny grew solemn and sighed loudly.

"We were desperate. Doesn't make it right, but it's what the decision was. They're all dead. An entire species consigned to death so we could have a chance. We have a museum in the Upper Districts about them and the others. More tender hearted people than I decided that we needed to remember what we took from others to ensure our own survival. Doesn't get a lot of traffic," Benny informed him.

Kon swallowed again, the knot in his throat painful to push through as he looked back at the massive station. Benny increased their speed, the Puca moving smoothly as it accelerated to the point it wouldn't take more than a few hours to rendezvous with the Oasis. Kon stayed over Benny's seat the entire time, him and Alice both silent as the world ship grew bigger and bigger in front of them.

It was hard to grasp just how large the ship was even as the Authority of Man passed in front of it, hardly filling up a quarter of a single arm of the Oasis. The Puca was little more than a fly in front of it, small enough to disappear without a thought. It was humbling to see something so majestic that even as they closed in on their landing pad on one of the sides of the arms, that Kon still hadn't fully wrapped his brain around the ship.

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"How do they even afford to fly it?" Alice asked as she wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against Benny's seat.

"Carefully. Lots of trade deals in place where we sell protection for supplies. Still, a ship of that size can drain an entire system if it stays too long, not even counting that rifts would start to form if it lingers in real space too long. Have to enter the lanes frequently to keep them from forming." Kon knew they had deals in place to supply security for supplies, but to keep not one but three worldships functioning was hard to comprehend.

"Puca? Is that you Benny?" A voice crackled from the radio. Kon jerked his head to look at the small speaker. Benny hadn't opened the channel to speak.

"Bob? You old bastard!" Benny cackled with pure joy as the Oasis continued to get bigger in their view. Kon and Alice shared a look as Bob spoke again.

"Calling me old? Shit son, I've been on planets younger than you," the rest of the sentence was broken up by the high pitched laughter. Benny snorted and shook his head and looked back at them.

"He's a big fan of his own jokes," Benny started but the radio crackled again.

"It's cause they're funny," Bob cut in. Kon stared at it not understanding how Bob was cutting in without thought.

"They're not. Bob's going to be someone that the two of you are going to want to play nice with," Benny said.

"Got a few new Squires for me to outfit? It's been a while," Bob drawled out, stretching his words out long.

"He's an armorer?" Alice said, surging over to hang over the top of Benny's chair to stare at the radio with hungry eyes.

"Best armorer in the galaxy, missy! Also did most of the work on the Puca, rebuilt her from the ground up!" Bob bragged, his voice booming louder.

"He also left himself a backdoor to let himself access my systems when we're in range," Benny said with a false frown.

"Best friends spy on each other, it's a known fact," Bob agreed.

"He's not my best friend," Benny denied.

"I'm his only friend," Bob cut in instantly, not allowing Benny to finish talking.

"I believe that," Kon said, his mouth moving before his brain could stop himself. Alice kicked him, the point of her boot hitting his shin to send a lance of pain up his leg. Bob simply laughed even louder while Benny scowled at him, but he didn't refute anything.

"So what's a girl got to do to get some armor?" Alice asked, cutting across the banter as fast as she could. There was pure avarice in her voice, a hunger that was nearly physical.

"Pay a man," Bob said instantly. Alice deflated a bit then looked at Benny hopefully.

"It's on my tab, Bob. Got a regenerator here who's got plenty of juice and a kid who needs his first kit."

"First kit? I don't do amateurs," Bob said. Kon felt a tremor of disappointment roll through him but Benny simply chuckled.

"You're turning down the first armor fit for a body cultivator-mage hybrid?" Benny teased out.

"What the hell does that even mean?" Bob said, but there was a hint of excitement in his voice.

"Something special. We'll be there soon enough, you're first on the list to visit. Get your tools ready for when we arrive," Benny said. He reached over and clicked a button and the radio fell silent.

"That silly bastard thinks I wouldn't know how to keep him out of my system," Benny said with a scoff and a laugh as he shook his head. The conversation hadn't taken long, barely five minutes, yet in that time the Oasis had swelled to considerable size and picket ships were pulling away from their patrols to intercept them as they entered the Oasis's security zone.

"All right, here we go. Time to dig out the rats," Benny growled as they were directed toward a hangar bay. The Oasis swelled in the viewpoint until all they could see was the hangar along the side, large enough to house nearly a dozen ships the size of the Puca.

Kon swallowed down his excitement, the thought of being on the worldship and all that entailed making him positively giddy. That they were here to hunt down traitors and try to find allies to a war took little away from it.

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