"No, it's all right, Ma'am. She shouldn't come with us if she doesn't want to."

"There's a chance she'll report back in to the United Colonial Military with our coordinates?"

Devika glances at the nav data still swirling on one wall of the cockpit.

"...I'm pretty sure that's what I'd do, if I were in her shoes?"

    "She should assume he'll kill them if they provoke him."

"I've had a lot of time to come to terms with... well..." she gestures at Deskyl in an all encompassing 'You Existing' gesture.

"You have to understand. Our whole culture, or whole reality, is premised on the idea that nothing exists that's more dangerous than a dragon and dragons can still have swords rammed through their hearts if you just come at them from the right angle?"

"Veda will still be thinking that way. I should raise her on the comms, try to explain..."

"She's already gone."

"What?"

"The reaction mass transfer's finished. She just decoupled from us."

Ths Sith goes distant, then signs.

    "Deskyl's got her. Try raising her."

Veda appears in the cockpit. Her holographic face remains impassive, but her pupils flit back and forth rapidly.

"She'll let you go, Ma'am, she just wants to make sure you understand the situation first. If you bring the military in, the other Sith will most likely kill them. The only threat to a Sith is a stronger Sith, and he's stronger than Deskyl."

Scribble scribble scribble.

"I'm staying with Deskyl. I have to finish the mission, no matter what. I'm sorry."

    "We'll bring her home when we can, Ma'am."

Veda locks eyes with Deskyl (and with Devika, simultaneously, because that is a Thing She Can Do.)

A few more scribbles arrive, Devika translates.

    "She says she understands the situation."

    "She says she's ready to go."

    "She says not to try to pass one of my clones off as me if you get me killed, she'll know."

    "She wouldn't dream of it, Ma'am."

Deskyl lets her go.

Veda departs.

Shreya makes some quick mental calculations based on their renewed supply of propellant and reduced overall payload, then changes the vector of her SLAYER’s thrust to better optimize their arrival time.

It won’t be long at all, now.

“I’ll let you know when we’re in scanning range of the target.”

“How would you like me to approach things once we get there?”

    "Carefully, Ma'am. He might not have deactivated its defenses, if he wants to test Deskyl's authenticity."

“Understood.”

Shreya points out the macrofab facility when they come within scanner range of it, and makes a cautious approach as instructed—keeping a mid-sized dysofrag between them and potential lines of fire until they’re quite close.

No automated defenses appear active, though. The titanic structure’s core hums with energy but its surface is dark and still.

Devika has been studying the schematics and comparing them to the surface scans of the facility.

”I still can’t wrap my head around how this thing can even exist.” She could fathom it well enough if the macrofab were some half-size Ill-tempered contraption cobbled together from cast off parts. She’s heard of pirate factions that managed that much. But it is, to all appearances, a match for the best manufacturing facilities that the United Colonies have to offer. “How could anyone operating in secret possibly muster the resources to build something like this?”

    "He's a Sith, Ma'am. You haven't seen most of what Deskyl can do."

A ring of lights blink on in a ring around a docking bay on the near side of the macrofab facility.

Shreya makes a slow approach.

The roughly spherical facility is a bit less than a kilometer across according to scans/schematics. Like the cloning facility Deskyl just came from, this place only contains a skeleton crew’s worth of human life signs and no SLAYER-scale life signs at all. Most of its internal volume is currently uninhabited, those aboard are all near the core of the structure in a section the schematics identify as a residential hub for long-term staff.

The heavy doors of the docking bay glide open weightlessly as Shreya’s SLAYER draws near. The interlocking prongs along the doors’ edges bestow upon the chamber beyond the appearance of a gaping maw.

Deskyl checks, again, for traps, and then gestures for Shreya to take them in.