Byakko woke.

Mu was asleep on the bed — it was not a large bed. Byakko thought the Queenly luxuries excessive, and kept a mattress most would not enjoy the stiffness of. She ate a light meal: a dish of fruit and desert spices, a mildly sweet glaze drizzled liberally across the plate, and a glass of a particular sparkling water from a spring tended deep in the palace — a lovely floral fragrance, and an unexpected flavor, tart and refreshing at once.

She checked her time-tracker and finished up, not lingering in the washroom, and slipped into something light to wear beneath her regular garment — a waistband in its default shape, or an impenetrable armor should Ichi and Zero sense the need. The intelligent mass was a common utility to most. Her weapons, the symbiotic twins, made it something far more than it was designed to be. They always chose the white porcelain with the regal gold, and her favorite colors of teal and pink — one of the few liberties she allowed herself. There were times having a favorite color seemed a luxury. This turn she could choose her attire; no need for court finery. She paused before the tall mirror a moment, a little twist left and right, and headed out to meet Shiro for their investigation of Leerma.

Shiro held the tiny scissors the way she held a surgical instrument, as they served the same function here. A small bird outside proudly declared it morning, and it was a soothing tune. She found the right node and trimmed the little tree on the low table she knelt before — breathing in calmly through her nose, filling her lungs, the slow exhale, trimming another node each time she paused before the slow regulated inhale came again. A tidy snip or two cleaned the delicate trunk; she opened the small jade box beside the ceramic planter and set the scissors inside. She stood, flattened the wrinkles in her kimono, and went to her office to meet Byakko for the mission to Leerma.

Shiro grabbed her reading tab and scrolled over the items she wanted to investigate: surveillance recordings, docking schedules, shipping manifests, the damage, and the people she wanted to speak to. She was never distracted by the quiet things — and this quiet thing that caught her ear had the rhythmic tone of a familiar favorite. The singing floor was everywhere in the palace; random areas would chime out a tone when stepped on. Those who knew the palace could walk it in silence. Those who knew the palace as home could sing a song as they walked the halls. This song was not any song; this was one she knew well. The notes grew louder one after the other, a steady progression. When the next note did not arrive, her door opened instead.

Byakko stood in the open door, caught her eye, and with an affectionate reverence greeted her simply: "Sensei."

"My Queen," Shiro replied, rising from her bow as Byakko became visible. Byakko stepped in, and Shiro came around her desk to meet her.

"Is our agenda confirmed?" Byakko asked.

"It is — though the picture has shifted since it came to you. A clearer timeline of the silence has emerged." Shiro lowered the tab a fraction. "The Fold-Gate in the Leerma system came back online three turns ago. They have repopulated the farm with staff. It is no longer dark."

Byakko gave a single nod, and nothing else — the news filed, the surprise, if there was any, kept where she kept such things.

"I have a list of where to start and who to speak with. There is a wide common area outside the main hydroponics nursery. I would suggest we rip in there. Our first contact has an office in that building — Nic Shedo, the Risu Agriculture Minister at our recent dinner. She has already been investigating for Risu Farms, and was more than happy to extend her services to us. So we come to a place that has already begun to forget what happened to it." A small, precise pause. "Which is its own kind of answer."

"Did you happen to get the weather report also?" Byakko asked, with a little smile.

"I did, and it is a pleasant season. Leerma is a locked system, no rotation. The farms sit in a permanent temperate zone — the sun is always shining there." Shiro was happy to report.

"Well — shall we?" Byakko gave the command as a question, and Shiro answered by placing her hand on her own symbiotic weapon, Shinobi. In unison with her Queen she ripped a hole in the dimensions, and their next breaths were the air of Leerma.

That first breath was exciting in its freshness. Byakko had been to more worlds than she could remember to tally, and this one was different in a new way: the scent had life in it that sprang the mind to alertness and stirred the appetite at the same time. Shiro was already pointing the scanning dome on her tab in all directions, recording the motions and details of this place even their senses could not catalog.

"Oh! You're here already! Wow — they weren't kidding when they said it wouldn't take you long to get here. I've never seen anything like that. Obviously it's good to be Queen, right? Hello again — Nic Shedo. And I have to tell you, your Majesty, your palace and dinner were the most amazing experience I've had in several ages. Thank you again for having me. Now — where do we begin?"

Shiro greeted her with a polite head nod and a properly minimal bow, and went right to work. "It looks as if you have everything staffed and operational again. What can you tell us about the silence?"

"We got things up and running quickly after the Fold-Gate came back online. We're nine arcs from the nearest other habitable world in this system, and weren't even close to getting here. The automated farming systems were never interrupted — but the entire population, well over two hundred Risu and a few others, are gone. Entire families just picked up and, it looks like, orderly evacuated. There was no loss to the crops, and the warehouses were still being stocked. The Masshulks haven't stopped docking since."

Nic had said these words to farmers, suppliers, shareholders, half a dozen investigators more than a few times over — the worry worn smooth, the words gone ahead of the feeling. Byakko marked the monotony of one having to repeat themselves often and said nothing of it. It was orderly and routine for those with responsibility. The Minister was thorough, and handled her people with the same care as she treated her crops. Restoring a world torn asunder by a missing population would be a grand task for a proper team of people, and here was one focused Risu at her best.

"Security office is over this way, and it's on the way to the Genetics Lab. There's a warehouse, a cantina, a tool shed and the matter recycling station on that side of the farm. Back the other way are the fields, the hydroponic nursery and all the residential areas."

Nic set off across the common grounds, Byakko and Shiro stepped in behind. The walkway was a gentle curve that guided them toward the security office that stood out in no particular way. The ground was busy in the unhurried way of a place that worked without being driven — a low hum everywhere under the air, machines about their business, the light steady and warm and going nowhere. Byakko walked it the way she walked everything, taking in her environment through finely tuned senses: which things belonged or did not, which ones had stopped. Beside her Shiro kept the scanning dome turned out, deploying the small autonomous drones that would survey the wider area and return to her filled with data, gathering what the eye would not keep. For a frontier seat that had lost its every soul, the place was remarkably untroubled with itself. The grief was put aside for the task. It had arrived on the Masshulks, carried along with the hope of answers.

"Minister Shedo — can you tell us what you've learned about the damage you reported at the Genetics Lab?"

"Well, Your Majesty — as far as we could tell, someone used a wide variety of thread parasites to infiltrate our data systems. About thirty percent is permanently corrupted; we lost quite a lot of archived genetic variants and experimental prototypes. Honestly, none of that was worth anything — just notes of failures, so we don't try them a second time. The cores that were corrupted have been completely removed and put in quarantine; the normal systems are operating clean, just some extra space where things got deleted. We're fairly certain there are more parasites in them."

Entering the Security office was strangely misleading — it was indistinguishable from any of the agricultural offices. It sat at the edge of the common, on the way out toward the genetics lab and warehouses, and inside there was a handful of Risu skittering about, most monitoring view screens, others typing what were probably reports. No weapons on any wall. No one who stood the way a guard stands. On a world that was only ever asked to watch its own fields, security meant watching the fields, and the watching was done from a desk. Byakko took the measure of the room in a breath, and the measure was this: nothing here had ever once been built to be a target. The mystery here had layers she was determined to unfold.

Nic pointed to the glass eye that was a common port for linking to other data cores.

"I have a link mode right here. You can lock in your tab and pull what we've got on file for the turns it was quiet. I have to warn you, you aren't going to find much. Whatever happened here, the same thirty-two chords are on repeat — and that was running when someone got here."

Shiro aimed her tab at the link mode and found the path to start the data transfer. The loop came up at once, exactly as promised — the same thirty-two chords, patient and seamless, a small slice of an ordinary turn set to play itself forever. Not wiped. Not broken. Left running, wearing the face of a system that worked. Shiro had seen records destroyed; a destroyed record screams that someone was here. A record set gently to repeat does the opposite — it keeps the lights on and the eye open and says, mildly, that nothing happened at all. It was careful work, and patient, and it told her more about the hand than any of the turns it had eaten. She set the transfer to run to her tab as they moved — it would follow her, gathering, while they walked — and turned to Byakko. "This might take a few beats." Then, to Nic: "You said in your report that one of the outlying warehouses was disturbed — or, how did you put it? 'It looked like someone threw a party'?"

"Oh, yeah. Strangest thing. The floor was cleared, and there were tables and streamers, garbage bins filled with decorations and party favors." Nic let out a short, frustrated sigh. "I sure wish they'd kept some of that — they broke down the matter for ingots, added them to the matter supply."

Shiro precisely wrote everything Nic said onto her tab — the party, the streamers, the ingots, the fact it had already been reclaimed, the regret, all of it, the meaningless beside the relevant, because she saw clues as seeds and seeds can be cultivated. She inwardly reminded herself of her methods as she worked on a farm. The very place where seeds matter the most. It was a way of thinking Nic would surely appreciate and relate to. "We'll need the records from the matter re-claimers after we examine the warehouse. Can you lead the way, please?"

Nic Shedo led the way with her energetic gait, and Byakko and Shiro enjoyed the brisk pace. The weather truly was lovely on Leerma. The warehouse stood a fair distance from the administration hub, and Shiro kept her scanner gathering throughout the walk. Byakko took it in as well, but with her own senses.

The sounds of the farm were mostly relaxed — the soft hum of hovering harvesters moving up and down the rows of cleanly laid pepper plants, the vibrant blue dotting the fields as the berries came to ripeness. Rounding a corner on the path, she reached out casually and let one of the long narrow leaves pass through her fingers. It had a slightly fuzzy texture, light orange lines scattered at random among the darker green of the leaf itself. The smell was heavy with soil, and it caught her attention: she could detect no trace of chemical fertilizers.

Shiro broke the serenity just as they came to the warehouse doors. "So this area is all fields and harvesting operations, from what I can see. The maps show your processing hub is closer to the shipping docks, and the residential areas are farther along this path. Is this correct?"

Nic nodded a pert, confident confirmation. "Yes, that's correct. It's all pretty close together — logistics are very streamlined. Everything radiates out from a center, so when we expand, things just get a little farther out." She waved her arm in the direction away from the center of the complex. "Everything's been stable for some time now. Nothing new constructed in the last twenty ages."

Shiro took in the information. "That sounds like a very consistent operation, and the efficiency on display is impressive. Your farms are well suited to cultivate such a valuable vegetable."

The Risu minister couldn't hide the moment she knew something her visitors did not, and was happy to correct it. "Oh — that's a little misconception, actually. They sure make you think they're vegetables, but in fact these peppers are a variety of berry. Technically a fruit. It's just not what you expect from a fruit." She reached for the door panel, pressed a few buttons, and the soft whir of maglocks releasing answered; the huge doors slid open.

Byakko and Shiro looked at each other with marvelous amusement.

"Yuki absolutely believes these are vegetables," Byakko said. "Do you want the pleasure of informing her they are yet another of her dreaded berries?"

Shiro couldn't contain a healthy giggle, nor did she want to. Yuki's aversion to berries was as legendary as her glass-emptying skills.

"I would enjoy that, My Queen, but that appears to be a family matter, and I would not deign to interfere." The sly expression was clearly manufactured.

"I would not deny the moment to the rest of the house. This should be knowledge shared at the dinner table, as an appropriate subject of conversation." The smile was obvious on Byakko's face, and the two shared a moment that even made Nic smile.

Inside, the large rectangular structure was about organization. Clear labels. Perfectly stacked stasis containers, designed for storage, not shipping. Identical lanes between the towering inventory. Floors completely free of dirt — obviously meticulously scrubbed when the party remains were removed and the area cleaned.

Nic led them to the small office in the front corner of the interior and pointed out the correct console, so Shiro could gather the data she needed here. Byakko stood in the large open area and closed her eyes. Listening. Smelling. Sensing.

Something in this building was off, and it made her reach for Zero's hilt — always present at her back, the twin blades as much a part of her as any of her clothing. There was a trace resonance here. Faint, familiar — but then again, not. There had been a weapon here. A very strong one, to have left such a hint of its presence all the arcs later.

"Shiro." A beat. "Scan for a Rip, please."

Shiro stepped out of the control room to get a clear scan of the interior. Re-calibrating her tab for dimensional energies, she began to sweep the area.

"Something was here. Something I have not seen in any of our current data." A pause. "There was a rip here — a huge one. But I am only showing the signature for a single weapon."

"Yes, Shiro. You are seeing what Zero is telling me." Byakko's voice stayed level. "A single weapon ripped over two hundred people out of here at once."

She let the thousands of threads that come from such a revelation flood her thoughts, and the swarm of possibilities quickly narrowed to the few logical conclusions. "I have as much of the data as I am going to get from this tab."

She reached for the hilt of her own weapon and let Shinobi show her what Byakko was sensing.

She knew this signature. It was not a mystery to her.

This was not the place to tell Byakko, but it was clear this investigation was over. Two groups had come to Leerma. Two separate goals.

She saw the pattern now.

Shiro put aside the urge to process what had just happened. The data from the matter re-claimers still had to be collected.

"Right around this way." Nic led them around the corner of the warehouse, and the recycling zone stood right in front of them.

A chirping tone sounded from Nic's comm. "Shedo here — what've you got?" Byakko and Shiro had paused along with her. Shiro noticed the slight lowering of Nic's brow, her lip and cheek crunching up. "Right. Right, I'll be right there." She turned to the Nekozoku. "I am so sorry, Your Highness — I hope you'll excuse me, but there's a situation that needs my attention. Some of the replacement workers had family here, and they seem to have learned about your visit. They're outside my office. They're looking for some answers, too."

Byakko felt the weight that had just landed on the Minister's shoulders. Every bit of it.

"Shiro — collect the data and resume the investigation. I will accompany Minister Shedo to her meeting with the families."

Shiro bowed from reflex. "My Queen." And went back to her gathering.

The matter re-claimers gave her what she expected, which was to say they gave her nothing she could use, and a great deal she had to handle anyway. She read the logs grain by grain — the load brought in from the cleared warehouse, its mass and its make, the turn it was processed, the ingots it became. Tables and streamers and party favors, reduced to the line of a ledger. A celebration, broken down for stock. She set it against the rest and let it fall where it belonged, which was nowhere; a planned thing, kept and then left behind, the way a people who lived by their calendar would keep a date even with the sky going quiet over them. It cost her the better part of the visit to be certain it was only that. Being certain it was only that was the work.

The Genetics Lab took longer, and gave more.

It was exactly as the Minister had described it — the corrupted cores pulled and sealed away, the working systems humming along clean, an honest hole where data had been and was not. Nothing to find, by every account she had been given. So she swept it the way she swept everything, slow and complete, expecting the same nothing, and somewhere in the third pass the scanner caught on a thing that did not belong: a single strand, fallen down between a console housing and the wall, where a scrubbing hand had not thought to reach.

A hair. Coarse, and straight, and far too thick to have come from anyone who worked these fields.

Lycan.

She did not touch it with her fingers. She drew it up into a specimen cell off the edge of her tab and sat with what it told her, which was a great deal, and none of it kind. The warehouse had been one hand — careful past belief, gentle past reason, and a signature she already carried and would not yet set down. This was the other. This hand had come into the lab of the world that grew the most particular crop in the galaxy, and worked its parasites into the records, and dressed the theft as the ruin of things no one would miss — and then, for all its care, had shed a single hair against a wall. Two hands. Two purposes. She had said as much to herself in the warehouse; here was the proof of it, light as a thread and heavy as anything she had gathered all turn.

The crystals she took with her. The Risu were glad to be rid of them — Nic's people made no argument at all, only a kind of relief; quarantined or not, scrubbed or not, they did not want corrupted cores sitting on a working world, and were happy to let the Crown carry the risk away. They thought they were handing off a hazard. Shiro knew she was carrying out evidence. Both were true at once, and only one of them needed saying, so she said only the gracious half and sealed the cores into her case beside the cell that held the hair.

The pair rounded the corner, back the way they had come. A fair-sized crowd had gathered before the building that housed Nic's office. Walking along the path toward the administration building, Byakko spoke with calm respect.

"You are wise not to delay meeting with these families, Minister. I, too, wish to hear their words."

A grim expression fit itself over Nic's otherwise warmly joyous face. "I'd be as worried as they are. I just wish I had something — anything — to tell them."

It was an orderly grouping; murmurs in regular tones carried across the plaza as Byakko and Nic walked to a point close enough that all could hear.

"It's the Nekozoku Queen — she really is here."

A stray voice from the far side: "I thought for sure they wouldn't care."

And another: "She should have answers. They control everything, you know."

Nic spoke up. "Hi, everybody. I know most of you — we've met, we've spoken a few times — and I'll do all I can to answer what I can."

A Risu farmer spoke from a few faces back. "Minister, it's been almost four arcs, and none of us have heard a thing from our missing families. Surely your guest has information about them."

"I hear you. Every one of you, I do. I wish I had something more to tell you all."

Byakko stepped forward, and put herself before the crowd.

"Risu of Leerma. You have the fullest sympathies of the Crown, in this matter, and my own, personally. I have come here today to uncover any and all clues that may lead us to the whereabouts of your loved ones. Our investigation is ongoing, and there is much evidence yet to examine — I have my very best experts tending to it as we speak. We will locate them. I understand how difficult patience must be at this time; were it my own family, patience would be my greatest challenge as well. Minister Shedo will share whatever is learned. You will not be excluded from this investigation."

"Queen Byakko!"

A restrained cheer rose from the crowd, and a few more enthusiastic outbursts followed it.

"Thank you, Your Highness!"

"Praise you, Queen Byakko!"

"Bless the Crown!"

The murmuring had become, all at once, the sound of a gathering trading encouragements with one another.

Shiro came up to the edge of the plaza as Byakko was speaking — the Queen's voice clear and carrying, aided by the layout of the buildings. The pure charisma of her being was singular. She was a student a teacher could only fantasize about.

She compared to no one else in the galaxy — save one, and that one was gone into the shadows.

There was little that could hold back the flood of memory that came over her then, a tsunami that would not relent: that turn, so many ages ago, when the fate of all things had rested on her ability to shift that one other into those shadows.

That signature. She knew it. Knew it well.

Telling Byakko would have to wait. She knew Byakko. They were not leaving just yet — Byakko would dine with these families, ease them, care for them. They were not even her official people. Not even within her borders. And yet here she was, and here she would stay a few chords more, to reassure these farmers.

Shiro stepped in beside her Queen — her friend, her family.

"All data gathered, My Queen."

"Good, Shiro. Thank you — excellent work, as always." Byakko's eyes were still on the crowd. "I hope you are hungry. We are dining with the farmers."

"Of course, my Queen." A beat. "Starved."