From the high periscope blister of Observation Station North-Three, Qiao Ming tracked the retreat of the raiders.
Through the heavy quartz prisms, the outer cosmic deeps unfolded in chilling, silent majesty. Twenty-four leagues distant from the dark rock hull of the Ark, drifting through the dead gas clouds of the collapsed Northern Dipper, was the lone surviving void-boat of Zhu Heling’s expedition.
The vessel was a shattered wreck: its spirit-sails were burned to rags, its black star-iron hull listing forty degrees to starboard, trailing a faint, sickly ribbon of golden qi from its leaking engine core. On the quarterdeck, four armored figures were hauling Zhu Heling’s limp body into the airtight cabin, desperate to cross the outer asteroid belt before their life-support batteries expired.
Qiao Ming watched the vessel shrink into a tiny, dying spark against the infinite black of the void.
He brought his Folded brass star-compass to the mounting collar and calculated the flight path.
The instrument estimated that the vessel’s probability of surviving the crossing of the heliopause was less than eight percent. Without spirit-stones, without whole sails, and with their leader incapacitated by total spirit vein collapse, the raiders would drift into the cold dark until their hull froze into an iron tomb.
