The stolen transport, now christened the Ghost in a moment of grim irony by Myra, hung in the deep silence between jump points. It was a tomb adrift in a sea of stars, its interior illuminated only by the cold, shifting luminescence of the two Celestial Orbs and the silver-biomechanical form of their master. Roewi did not occupy the pilot’s chair so much as he was integrated with it, his presence a cold node of energy around which the ship’s systems obediently hummed. The transformation was absolute. The filigree was no longer a pattern on his skin; it was his skin, a seamless, living alloy that pulsed in soft rhythm with the Orbs. His human form was now merely the underlying scaffold for a being of terrifying, serene power.
Myra watched him from the shadows of the hold, a silent sentinel
