"Okay. It's not like I know anything about technology to contradict you, but there's famous stories of evil Witches trapping people in the form of rocks, or turned into a duck, or things like that. That's why I asked."

"I don't think I'd like to be a rock. That isn't something you know how to do, right?"

"No, transforming is rare and nasty-hard. Met someone who could change peoples' natural hair color once, but I can't copy it unless I'm standing next to them."

"Okay then. You said Witches had, like, baseline powers? Flight and shields and I forget what else?"

"Some extra strength and toughness if we push it, and manalights, which become mana blasts if you use enough at once. What kind of stuff can the Force do?"

"Enhanced speed and reflexes. Telekinesis. Enhanced strength. Better senses. A sort of empathy-thing, I can tell if you're feeling strong emotions. Uh, what else. Mind stuff, I've never been very good at that. Limited precognition. Some people get full-on visions of the future."

"Mind stuff. Give me a minute to remember how-to mental defense, okay?"

"I said I'm not good at it! But yeah, go ahead."

"42nd wing has a tracker special, so they send us to hunt down particularly dangerous criminals, especially criminal Witches, that regular police can't catch once in a while. One of them could bend your thoughts around. Our captain had to kill her to keep her from making us kill each other. I felt slimy for weeks, after that." She closes her eyes, thinking.

"That is not something a Jedi would ever do."

The Sith, on the other hand... Ana will let her guest concentrate.

After a couple of minutes, she lets out a deep breath. "I'll read over my notes on it later, but that's as good as I'm going to get it without visiting the one who can do mind-shields again. I can't share it, though she could."

"Shareable mind-shields? How good are they? And how many of them could she do?"

"She can cover two whole strike wings, against a Neuroi psychic screech, but usually only five or six against another Witch with mind-affecting magic. She needs line of sight and relative proximity. You think you've got a use for her?"

"The Emperor, the boss of that guy who tried to blow up the planet, is very effective at mind control. We're working on a plan to remove him. If your friend could shield some people who aren't so great at blocking control themselves, that would help considerably."

"We're really more like comrades. I haven't seen her for a year and a half. I'm not even sure if she's still alive, to be honest, attrition of relatively green Witches is pretty bad around Neuroi."

"If we find your planet and I survive the Emperor, I am going to go there and kill Neuroi."

A chiming sound plays over the intercom.

"Oh. We've arrived. I have to go land the ship."

Gren follows curiously. How does one operate a flying vehicle?

By means of a bewilderingly complicated array of buttons, levers, and blinking lights. Ana performs an action that causes the stretched-out starlines to snap back into single points and a planet to suddenly appear directly ahead of them.

This place looks a bit like a train control cabin. She didn't understand that either.

"I should probably learn about your tech at some point... I was a bit too busy to pick up the finer points of mine, back home, and even if I wasn't I bet my education's in a sorry state."

T7 rolls in and beeps a complicated melody.

"Slugthrowers, really? Yeah, if your weapons are a good indication of your general tech level we've got some things to catch you up to. But on the other hand, your magic seems pretty versatile."

"Our magic goes away as we get older, and mine in particular is unusually versatile. But yeah, it's useful. We only really started in on tech two dozen years ago when the bloody Church just about collapsed in the wake of the Neuroi. I think we've made decent progess, going from horse-drawn carriages and couriers and bow and arrow to steam trains and telegraphs and 'slugthrowers'."

"It goes away? How does that work?"

Ana is not actually piloting the ship down to the surface, but bringing it in to dock with an orbiting station which has just come into visual range.

"We don't know. Ten years ago we didn't know why some people get smallpox and others don't, and now we know it's pathogens. So maybe we'll figure it out eventually."

"Maybe it'll turn out to be reversible." Ana aligns the ship with the docking tube, and it locks into place with a thunk. "We'll have to transfer to a shuttle for the trip down, they don't have any landing pads that will fit this ship. You can grab your stuff and meet us at the airlock. Come on, T7."

She's a bit confused about how things fly in space, it didn't quite feel right. Maybe it's just the lack of wind and acceleration.

But, "Sure, be right there." And she gathers her stuff, hefting it all over one shoulder in a way that makes it look effortless, and goes to the airlock.