Gem
Polaris Station

The alarms blared. The main power had gone out, basking the entire station in the flashing red lights of the emergency lights. Explosions rocked the station.

It all seemed a millions miles away. I knew I was lying on a bed, but I couldn't explain why it was being wheeled down a hall, or why they were cramming an oxygen mask on my face. I barely registered any of it.

I faintly felt the bed get jerked to a stop, and a concern-filled face popped into my vision. I could vaguely recognize his white hair, but I couldn't connect a name.

Then I blacked out.

.  .  .

I briefly came to again.

"...she's stable. She'll recover soon." One voice said.

"She'd better, Rat, damnit. She's like a little sister to me." Another one snapped. They both sounded like they were talking through water.

"And I understand that, and I'm saying she is. But it can't be rushed." The first one replied sharply.

I faded away again.

.  .  .

He sat next to me. It still felt like a sword was in my hand, running through his gut.

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to kill you." I rasped deliriously, tears threatening to spill over.

He squeezed his eyes shut, a single tear running down his face.

I blacked out again.

.  .  .

The next time I woke up, my mind felt clear, even if it was pounding

I slowly glanced around.

I was in a hospital room, filled with the sound of a softly beeping heart monitor and the smell of cleaning chemicals. The cold metal door was shut fast.

"Hello?" I croaked.

"Hey. Good morning." A deep voice to my right said, making me jump. I turned my head.

A familiar man sat there, wearing a simple white T-Shirt, blue jeans, black running shoes, and, of course, his normal black mask. Two fuzzy white fox ears poked out from his white hair. One twitched as I watched.

"...Etho?" I croaked out. Grief welled up again. I must've been delirious from the drugs.

He put a hand on my arm, and it felt... real. Warm.

Alive.

"Hey, Gemstone. Sorry I didn't come find you sooner. I was just running some last-minute errands for X." Etho said.

"...am I dead?" I rasped, a cold shiver running down my spine.

Etho chuckled.

"Almost. What do you remember?" He asked.

I strained my brain to remember.

"We went to the derelict... there was a Gigacorp guardsman inside... Jimmy...." I shot up. "Jimmy! We need to find him! I-!" I broke down sobbing again, remembering.

"Hey. It's ok." Etho said softly, like he had to comfort me when I was little. He scooted his chair forwards, and I buried my face in his shoulder.

I hadn't even known Jimmy that well or that long. But he had shown me a rare kindness in the time I spent on Free Station.

And now he was gone.

After a while I curled back up, and Etho sat back.

"I-I'm sorry, Etho. I... I shouldn't have killed you." I muttered

He snorted.

"I took Xisuma's advice: I walked it off." He said.

I couldn't help but chuckle a little bit. Then a small grin broke out on my face.

"Did I hear you right? Did you actually admit that you actually like me?" I said.

Etho groaned.

"I can tolerate you, Tree-Hugger. Somewhat."He muttered.

"Syrup-Chugger." I retaliated.

"Carrot Top."

"Fuzzball."

We both grinned. But it quickly slipped off my face again.

"How long was I out?" I asked. He winced. I frowned.

"Etho. How long was I out?" I repeated.

"Ah, yeah..."

"Etho!"

He sighed, rubbing the back of his neck.

"You ran out of oxygen. You were almost dead when we found you... you've been out for a week, Gem. A lot has happened."

.  .  .
Pearl
FTL

Two days.

That's how long it takes to jump from one end of the Milky Way to the other. Two days. But time works differently in FTL. Usually, you'll only miss about an hour or two. But for long jumps...

In standard Galactic time, it takes a week to cross from one end of the Milky Way to the other. But in FTL, it's two days.

I sat in the cockpit with BigB and Nafia, idly bouncing a rubber ball off the wall. I noticed the quick looks and smiles the two kept shooting each other when they thought I wasn't looking, and I had to smile behind my mask.

Nafia suddenly stood.

"I'm gonna go check on the engine room and make sure Zara and Karn haven't broken it yet. I'll be back." She said, smiling and briefly squeezing B's shoulder before leaving.

I waited a moment before spinning my chair around.

"Spill." I demanded. B raised an eyebrow at me, but his eyes betrayed him.

"Fine. I think she's a bit into me." He relented with a sigh.

I couldn't help it. I laughed.

"No shit, B. What tipped it off? Was it googly-eyes she's been giving you the past six months?" I teased.

He frowned.

"No. Wait... no. Wait! No..." He muttered. I laughed again.

"You, BigB, are one of the most ignorant people I have ever met, and I was friends with Mumbo." I cackled. He looked slightly hurt, but he was smiling a little.

"What should I do?" He asked, clearly embarrassed.

I snorted.

"B, I'm a galactic terrorist who's entire life has revolved around running from the authorities and causing mass havoc. You're asking ME for relationship advice?" I said.

"Well... yeah. You seem way better at this than me. Always calm and collected, with the right answer." He admitted.

Again, that surprised me. I felt like I had been an absolute train wreck since I was sixteen.

"I say go for it. We're flying towards certain, excruciating death, so what the hell? Go make out with a princess in the engine room. I'm not one to stop you." I said. His face colored, clearly imagining it.

I laughed again.

The alarm suddenly beeped across the ship, signaling that we need to jump back into Realspace.

B sighed.

"Later. Or I'll kill you myself." I promised him.

"Yeah..." he muttered.

The rest of the crew joined us, and once they were at their stations, we jumped back into a warzone.

"Whoa!" I yelped as B narrowly avoided crashing into the backside of a Gigacorp Wraith.

He ducked down below the destroyer, and we got our first good look at the Andromeda Fleet. My heart skipped a beat.

It had looked big on Mowgli's hologram, but it was even more impressive in person. The entire sky as far as I could see was completely choked with cruisers, battleships, destroyers, carriers, and, between them, all manner of fighter, troop and resource transport, and shuttles. The silence of space made the whole fleet seem twice as imposing. Below them, hanging like a beautiful blue, green, and red drop, was the planet of Hermitcraft. Our star, a Red Supergiant named Titan, shone brightly. But in the distance, at the very edge of the fleet... another star, this one a small blue one with a three-ringed Dyson's Sphere around it. Each ring had a glinting glass lense I could see from here.

They had weaponized a star.

"Andromeda's Wrath... their super weapon..." I muttered.

I heard a sharp intake of breath from Zara.

"I've seen that star before." She said, sounding... terrified.

"Will they see us?" Nafia asked, voice small. I understood why. If they found us...

"This is a smugglers ship, babe. They wouldn't see us unless we flew directly into their line of sight." B said confidently.

Of course, that was the moment a handful of destroyers and carriers jumped out of FTL above us.

The small fleet was an assortment of craft from a variety of planets: Earth, Therllyria, Aviara, and others I didn't recognize. The one thing they all had in common was a singular, painted silver handprint on the hull.

The Lazarus Revolution.

The Lazarus ships immediately released their fighters and started silently blasting away.

"Shit!" B barked, shooting downwards and weaving around Gigacorp patrols. They tailed us for a moment before breaking away to fight the Lazarus fighters.

We broke away from the fleet, blasting into the atmosphere of Hermitcraft.

"Today will be remembered by historians as Salvation Day." I voice from the radio came. Barnes.

I frowned. Was he even here? Or was he still at Sol, bombing Terran cities to oblivion?

"Today, we take back the Milky Way and begin ANEW!"

"You're full of shit." B growled at Radio Barnes, ducking into the clouds to avoid a Flight of Gigacorp fighters.

"I've seen the signs. Odin is with us! We may have lost the battle at Sol, and we may have lost the Moon. But we have Fort Asgard! We have our Milky Way, Andromeda, and Wrath Fleets!" Barnes jeered. He had never struck me as a particularly religious man, but apparently I was wrong. And of course he was part of the most violent Terran religion.

"My dare to the Galaxy is this: come for us. You know where we are. Send your armies! Send your bombs and guns, your ships and destroyers! You will fall to our might! I know you can come. So come! Fight us and die with honor! Or will you cower in your holes and wait for Helheim to come to YOU?!"

B dove from the clouds as Barnes finished his mad rant, revealing the Shopping District.

The place looked like it had gone through hell and back. The whole thing was either currently burning or smoking, completely in ruins. A lump formed in my throat when I saw my shop, a second-hand store I had spent three years of my life building, had been reduced to a hillside of charred dirt and rubble. I could see a few firefights between at least three different galactic factions through the smoke. Bodies drifted down the Hermitsippi like small logs.

This place had been being built up my entire life. I had watched it go from a collection of ramshackle wood and mud huts to a beautiful city, where Hermits met for everything, from massive parties to exchanging news and goods. It had been the heart and lifeblood of our server. And now it was a pile of ash.

An unexpected wave of grief crashed over me.

"This is it?" B asked. I nodded, trying not to talk.

"There. On that ice island. It-it should be under that. It was Xisuma's shop." I managed to get out. My voice cracked as I did.

He shot me a look of concern, but landed in front of Xisuma's shop anyways.

I mentally braced myself.

.  .  .

Stepping out onto the little island was like stepping into a warzone.

A mixture of disrupter blasts and bullets peppered the ground around us If it was Gigacorp or Lazarus, I had no idea. Either way, we were getting shot at the moment we stepped off the ship.

Again.

Mowgli swung his massive rifle around, barely aiming before pulling the trigger. Boom! It sounded more like an explosion than an actual gunshot. The thing had smoke coming out of two slits on the barrel.

"I'll hold them back and guard the ship! Go!" He roared.

None of us argued. We just ran.

B shielded Nafia in his black, knee-length coat as we ran, returning fire to a hidden group in the ruins of my shop. Karn looked like a madman, with his white medical trench coat, absurdly big Disrupter AR, a rapier on his hip, and the rocket launcher on his back because why not.

We stormed into Xisuma's shop, and I slammed the door shut behind us.

"I'm assuming it's not normally like this." B said drily. I shot him a nasty look.

"Spread out. Find some kind of doorway or elevator." I said. The crew nodded.

I ducked behind the counter, sitting in the swiveling office chair and digging through the drawers.

I froze for a moment, fingers hovering over a child's crayon drawing in one of them. It was me, Xisuma, Gem, Grian, Doc, and Cleo, hand-in-hand on a beach.

A lump formed in my throat. I hadn't realized Xisuma had kept my childhood drawings.

And under it was a big red button.

"I found something!" I called, folding the drawing up and sticking it into my back pocket. I don't know why I did.

The crew gathered around me.

I pressed it, and the entire floor shook. The desk and a surrounding ring of the floor descended into a dark, metal tunnel. Four glass panels ran down the length of the tunnel, glowing forest green.

I stood, surprised. I had been in this building a thousand times. How had I never found this?

The tunnel suddenly opened into a massive chamber, and my breath caught.

The chamber curved to the left in the distance, with the biggest warships I had ever seen, both for Space and Navel combat, sitting in rows. Workers climbed about, looking like ants welding iron giants. Sparks fell in showers. The ceiling looked like rows of massive vault doors, big enough for each of the ships to fly through, with the occasional cascade of dirt as something exploded above. More ships—like fighters, cargo transport, troop carriers, and shuttles—were being assembled in between the massive cruisers and destroyers. Various songs blasting from speakers echoed through the chamber.

They were all built in a similar, bulky yet sleek style, like a traditional Terran mixed with the Thellrilian sleekness. They were all painted white and gray. And every single one had the crest of the Severnyy: a crossed hammer and battle axe. The crest had also been painted on the ceiling of each door.

"Xisuma was arming the Severnyy with their own fleet...he wanted them to be able to fight back against Gigacorp..." I muttered to myself.

"This is... insane. Did you know about this?" B asked, slightly wonderstruck. I shook my head adamantly.

"I had no idea. How did he even hide all of this? He must've had an army to mine this whole thing out." I responded softly.

A sudden thought occurred to me. TFC always seemed to be down in the mines, but he rarely brought any resources to the surface. Could this be what he had been digging for?

My respect for the old guy skyrocketed.

The elevator suddenly jerked to a stop.

And standing in front of us on the metal walkway like he had been waiting for us, was a man who looked like he had walked straight out of a Skittles commercial. He wore a rainbow tie-dye shirt, sweatpants that were half neon yellow and half neon red, forest green running shoes, and light blue sunglasses. The tips of his long brown hair were dyed lime green. He held a jarringly plain clipboard.

"Howdy!" Joe Hills said cheerfully.

. . .

My jaw dropped. I hadn't seen Joe for... years, really. I felt slightly guilty, realizing I had never even asked Xisuma or Cleo where he had gone.

Then again, it was Joe Hills. No one questioned him or his craziness.

"How are you fine folks doing today? And... Pearl! Good to see you." Joe said, his calming Tennessee accent taking a little bit of the edge off of the situation. Before we could respond, he had grabbed me by the elbow and was dragging me after him.

The rest of the crew followed behind helplessly, listening to Joe Hills whistle'YMCA' as we strolled between massive war machines.

"Joe, where have you BEEN all this time?" I asked, overwhelmed. Weather or not it was the fact that my childhood teacher had just randomly popped up or if it was the colorful clothes, I had no idea.

"Oh, here and there. But I'm so happy you're here, friends! I've been waiting MONTHS down here for you!" He replied cheerfully.

I decided not to push him.

"What is this? I've never seen anything like this." Nafia asked, staring at the fleet with wide eyes.

Joe grinned at her. "Why, this is the Severnyy Fleet, Nafia! Even if none of them have even SEEN snow." Joe said. Her eyes went wide.

"You're giving the Severnyy interstellar travel?" She questioned.

Joe shrugged.

"Sure, let's just say that. Why not? And... aha! Here we are! I would recommend holding onto those yellow rails there." He said, cutting himself off.

We had reached the end of the walkway, on a free-floating platform with a control panel hanging on the rail. The hull of a massive transport sat a ways in front of us. The concrete of the floor below the walkway dropped away into a large trench to compensate for the bottom of the hull, which was being held up by massive magnetic arms. A giant hydraulic piston held a platform up next to the hull, allowing for a place to step off and enter a small emergency doorway into the ship.

He pressed a few buttons, and the platform jerked forwards. I grabbed the rail to steady myself. The platform seemed to be our destination, although the platform moved slower than I had hoped.

"How does this work? Is it magnetic?" B asked, excited.

Joe launched into a brief, animated explanation, and I tuned them out.

How had Xisuma hidden all of this for so long? It definitely explained a few things, like where the excess materials from Doc's Perimeter and Tunnel Bore went, and the long hours Xisuma seemed to spend in his shop. Come to think of it, I remembered that Tango's office in Decked Out was filled with various blueprints, as well as some for warships like the one in front of us. Had Hermitcraft been a facade to hide and produce all of this?

I shook that last thought away. Hermitcraft had been so much more than endless work. Or had it? Had Xisuma simply been tailoring us into what he thought the Galaxy needed? The ships definitely had a lot of stylish choices that didn't seem to add to the systems. And that would explain why he seemed to adopt abandoned children like Scar, Cub, False, and even me, Gem, and Pearl.

It made me question who Xisuma really was.

The platform jerked to a stop, snapping me out of my thoughts.

"Here we are! Follow me!" Joe said cheerfully, stepping up to the emergency hatch. The rest of the crew started to follow.

"Joe, wait, damnit!" I snapped. Everyone froze, looking at me.

My face flushed, and I was once again grateful for the mask.

"What is this?" I demanded.

He cocked his head at me.

"Why, this is the Hermitheus, the newly finished flagship of the Hermits. What else would it be?"

. . .

Joe gave us a brief tour of the Hermitheus, but the whole thing was a daze for me. A subtle buzzing grew in my ears.

We had always talked about getting a flagship for the Hermits. It was the brunt of countless jokes, because we knew that having a flagship would mean exposing ourselves. Their signals alone were enough to attract attention from any Coalition patrols in the area. Ren had proposed the name as a joke, and it stuck.

And yet here it was. The Hermitheus had become a reality.

"It looks like a harmless transport, see, but this baby is as armed as a Drauger," Joe explained as we walked into the bridge, "this baby is one massive war machine that doesn't even need a crew. The Hermits are more than enough to handle her."

The bridge was more or less standard, with a triangle-shaped floor dipping down towards the flat canopy, work stations in lines along the walls and down the floor. There were enough for each Hermit to comfortably have their own station, and each one was personalized for each one. A swiveling captains chair sat in the very back, with a monitors and keyboards on movable arms to display all the necessary information.

A lump formed in my throat when I saw my station: left side weapon system controls, with a PC tower covered in little crescent moon stickers. A printed picture of me, Gem, and Grian was stuck to the corner of the monitor. The monitor itself was on, with a background shot of the Soup Group Valley taken from the riverside. The station was stuck in between Grian and Gem's, clearly so they didn't start smacking each other or something. I chuckled at the thought.

I stepped up to mine, brushing my fingertips across the metal desk. I could almost hear what it would've sounded like: Xisuma barking out orders, the Hermits working together like the well-oiled machine we were. All of us, Xisuma included, would still be smiling, no matter what the situation was, knowing that if we were going down we were going down together.

That would never happen now, I realized. The thought made me a little sad, almost nostalgic for a moment that never happened.

"Why did you bring us here?" I demanded.

Joe smiled slyly.

"I don't know everything that Xisuma did, but I do understand that he had good judgement. Which is why I called the rest of the Hermits back." He said.

I stared at him blankly for a moment before realizing what he was saying.

"Wait. So you mean...?" I trailed off.

"Yeah. Hey, Moon." A voice from the hallway said. My heart skipped a beat.

Tango leaned against the doorway, a sly grin on his pale lips.

"Tango!" I cried, throwing myself at him. He laughed in surprise, embracing me.

He broke away a bit later, backing me into the bridge again.

The rest of the Hermits streamed in, looking around in wonder and embracing me.

I'll admit it. I cried a little bit. Even if there were faces missing, either dead or absent, it was almost more than I could handle.

Then Cleo stepped in.

My blood ran cold. I probably would've killed her on sight if Tango hadn't grabbed me.

"Alright, at attention, Hermits!" Tango barked. They all stopped admiring their stations a moment to look at him. "We're down a few Hermits, but we can still operate this beast! X and I designed it so it takes a minimum of five Hermits to operate it, and we have a wee bit more than five."

They chuckled slightly, all looking curiously at the captains chair.

"Who's gonna be the captain? X is gone." Zed asked.

Cleo shifted uncomfortably, standing a little ways away from the group, who had immediately started arguing.

"Oi! All of you! SHUT UP!" I yelled. Amazingly, they managed to fall silent. Skizz tried to discreetly punch Zed in the shoulder, but I raised an eyebrow at him. He stopped mid-swing.

I sighed.

"Look, I know we've been through some nasty shit lately." I started.

"That's an understatement..." Joel muttered. Lizzie elbowed him hard. I shot him a glare, just for good measure, before continuing.

"But we have to move past that if we're going to survive. Put aside who wronged who. If you didn't notice, we have a few uninvited guests upstairs."

More chuckles.

"I don't know who should be captain. I don't know if any of us should. But I do know this: we're going to get through this. Together. That's what families do, right? They fight, they argue, and sometimes they want nothing to do with each other. But in the end they still love each other. Even dysfunctional ones. And I can't think of a more dysfunctional family than us." I said, having no idea where the impromptu, Xisuma-style speech came from.

"Here here!" Keralis cheered, setting the rest of the Hermits off into what sounded like a tribal war cry.

The Unbroken Crew in the background looked a little overwhelmed. But B managed an encouraging smile at me.

"I say you elect Pearl." Cleo said so softly it was almost a whisper once the cheering died down.

Everyone looked at her with a mixture of confusion and outright hostility. Apparently word had gotten out.

She raised her hands defensively, face a mask.

"What? She's the obvious choice. Intelligent enough to make sure none of you get yourselves killed, with enough reckless courage to power a gods damned city. Xisuma raised her well. If you don't vote her in you're worse off than I thought." Cleo explained, head down.

I noticed she didn't include herself when referring to the group.

Then I saw it in her eyes: she was hurting. A lot. She had never wanted to kill Xisuma. In a burst of rage, which wasn't even that rare for her, she had pulled the trigger. And it was clearly ripping her to pieces inside.

Something folded inside of me, and all of my anger against her faded.

"You and Xisuma raised me well." I corrected. Her head snapped up, confusion marring her face.

I stepped up to her, pulling my mask up.

"I didn't see it sooner, and I'm sorry. Come home." I said.

I embraced Cleo.

She tensed up, and I thought I had misread the situation for a moment, but then she returned the embrace. A single sob racked her body.

When we broke apart, tears were shining in her eyes and down her cheeks, but she was smiling.

"All in favor?" TFC called, pushing his way to the front. He kicked Skizz in the shin with his diamond peg-leg.

Every single Hermit raised their hands immediately, the Unbroken crew included. A lump formed in my throat, but a smile formed on my face.

"It's unanimous, then. Hail, Pearl Void Moon, Admin of Hermitcraft!" TFC called. The Hermits echoed the cheer.

"Cmon, kid. Take your seat." Cleo muttered in my ear, walking me up to the captains chair.

Hesitantly, I sat. The chair was comfy, like a recliner mixed with the shape of an office chair.

TFC stepped forwards, handing me a green communicator.

"This was mine, once. I gave it to my son, and now I give it to you, Vnuchka." He said the last word in Severnyy with a knowing wink, and I resisted the urge to jump up and hug him.

Granddaughter.

I removed my old one, and slipped the Admin one on. The weight was unfamiliar but reassuring.

"Orders, ma'am?" TFC said, stepping back. Life had seemed to breathed itself into his wiry frame, straightening his back as much as he could and giving him the posture of a soldier.

"To your stations, Hermits." I said.

The group immediately listened, taking their seats and booting up the various systems of the ship. I turned on my own monitors, and was immediately bombarded with information from both the Admin communicator and the ships systems: vitals and locations of the Hermits, ship condition, map of nearby objects and ships, and transmission logs.

I noted the absence of Ren. My heart ached a little, remembering how much he talked about the Hermitheus. He was the only one who seemed to take it seriously. The other Hermits with flatlines, like Stress, Mumbo, Xisuma, and even Doc, felt like knifes in my gut.

"Right wing weapon systems, check!" False reported.

"Right side thrusters, primed!" Joel yelled.

"Left side thrust, ready!" Skizz shouted.

"Communications and shields, check!" Zed yelled.

A chorus of confirmations echoed around. I nodded to the Unbroken crew.

"I need you guys to man the empty stations. Zara, you're on mine." I said. They also listened without hesitation.

"Incoming transmission from the Command Hub! It's Fwhip!" Joe reported cheerfully. He was still humming YMCA.

"Patch it through." I commanded.

"I dunno what you did Hermitheus, but keep doing it! The AI Xisuma left here is finishing the fleet! Should be done within a few minutes!" Fwhip was laughing his ass off, relieved. I frowned. AI?

"Noted, Command. This is Moon Strongwinter of the Hermitheus, requesting liftoff." I responded, not noticing the name swap at first.

Somewhere along the line I had gone from the sweet old Pearl of Hermitcraft to a commander and admin of my own right, proud member of the Strongwinter Shield Family, captain of the Unbroken. The realization was comforting, in a way. At least I knew who I was now.

Silence.

"Permission granted, Hermitheus. Stand by while the gates open. Good luck, Moon." Fwhip replied.

With a grind of metal on stone above, the bay doors started opening. Tons of water started crashing down on top of us.

The Hermitheus rattled as the platform below started lifting us up.

"Warm the engines up. We want to be able to take off as soon as possible." I ordered, crossing my right leg over my left and leaning on my fist. I pulled my mask back on.

"Oi, Miss Moon! I'm assuming that massive hole in the ground was your fault?" Mowgli's voice came over the com. I smiled.

"Affirmative. Mowgli, get the Unbroken off the ground and get her into the Hermitheus, ASAP." I responded. He responded in what I was assuming was the affirmative in his own language.

"Do you want to be able to see the Andromeda Fleet's transmissions?" Zed asked. I nodded.

Another screen slid in front of me, with multiple windows open with transcribed versions of the panicked responses of the Andromeda fleet scrolling by.

I smirked. They hadn't expected us.

"Get me a wider range. I want the entire fleet to hear this." I said, pulling a microphone closer to my mouth. Zed gave me the thumbs-up.

"Attention, Andromeda Fleet. My name is Moon Evander Strongwinter, better known as the Scarlet Killer. You have chased me and my family across the Galaxy for years. You have invaded and violated my homeworld. You have brought your armies to my doorstep, bent on war. You killed my father. So is it war you want? Because I'm ready and willing to bring it to you, Admiral. We will fight to the last man if it brings the rest of the Galaxy closer to defeating you. Even if we fall here, we will not go quickly. Even if we fall here, we will not go quietly. Even if we fall here today, Admiral, we WILL bring you to Helheim with us. And no matter what, remember this: me and my family will always hit back harder. We will stand forever unbroken. So I ask you this again: do you really want this war? If so... bring it the hell on."