The Black Pike floats in space over the Omnidivine Temple at Chassak. On the main screen, the village looks abandoned and decrepit, its streets quiet, its prefab portholes unlit. The temple itself sits atop a hillock rising from the misty fen. An apron of stained darkness skirts its concrete perimeter from the irregular lapping of high tide.

"Scan again," Hyax says. "I'm not dropping a carrier until we're sure."

"Another scan is not gonna change these readouts, Brigadier." Waian's on edge. They all are. The command deck is cinched into its privacy setting as they huddle around their readouts. "No weapon installations big enough to puncture the Pike. No grid to power them."

"Could they have launched a ship?" Vora asks. "An interceptor to track and kill us once the membrane was down?"

"Nothing we've seen," Waian says. "For as far as I can trust the systems, anyway."

"And do you trust them?" Sykora asks.

Waian's white-knuckling her console. "I don't know. I just—everything seems optimal. I just have something in my craw, maybe."

"No installations, no interceptors, no follow-through," Grant says. "So why did they send me to the manifold? Why not blow us all up on the command deck?"

"The manifold is the furthest point from the command deck." Sykora runs her fingers through her hair. "So the only other answer I can think of is—"

"Diversion?"

A woman is sitting on Sykora's throne.

"Well puzzled," she says.

Her face is concealed by a black metal mask, inset with seven circular panes of glass, arranged in an upward parabola along her hidden eyes and forehead. She wears a glittering black rhinestone gown, its sleeves puffed up and geometrically structured like armored pauldrons.

A projection, Grant realizes, as the woman flickers like a fixture. The command deck table is casting her out of light.

The command group has frozen. Hyax's service weapon is drawn uselessly toward the phantom. Waian has a look of pallid shock.

"It's an honor to finally meet you, Princess Margrave Sykora." The hologram crosses her legs; they're encased in steep black stiletto boots. "You might as well put that tablet aside and remove your earmuffs. You have my word that you'll be safe from the kill phrase. And your life is quite inescapably in my hands regardless."

Sykora's scowling face rises from the tablet. "The earmuffs stay on. Who are you?"

"Call me the Penitent." The woman stands and couches her hands at the small of her back. She strolls toward Sykora. "I hadn't intended for us to meet this early, but you've forced my hand, I'm afraid. You have my compliments. Your friend—Waian, right?—is very good. A quick thinker." She nods toward Waian's stricken face. "But I'm afraid I have friends who think in seconds what you think in days."

The Princess stubbornly stands and stares their holographic intruder down as she approaches.

"Don't be hard on yourself." The Penitent reaches Sykora and steps right through her like a ghost. "You came quite close. Too close." She settles at the balustrade, gazing out into the firmament. "But your husband, I'm afraid, is your weakness. And you've lost. The Black Pike is mine."

The ground drops from Grant's feet. The command deck is sliding downward, and leaving them behind. When did the gravity turn off? His stomach was so occupied by the swooning suddenness of the woman's appearance that he didn't even notice the zero-G toggle. He hastily clicks his heels and magnetizes to the floor.

"I've spared you once already," the projection says. "I could have detonated that device right in your midst. And yet you stand. I'll spare you again, if you're good."

Sykora glares with horrified rage at the projection as it paces to the balustrade. "What do you want?"

"What I want," the Penitent says, "is to be civil. What I have heard is that you have become an increasingly civil woman. Would you be civil with me?"

The bridge comes into view.

"Their safety depends on it, I fear," the Penitent says.

Crew and accoutrements float in flurried confusion, caught offguard by the sudden loss of gravity. Ribbons of tea spill through the still air. A navigatrix's papers have lifted from an unsecured clipboard; she scrambles to retrieve them.

Waian is staring at the projection like it's a vengeful ghost. "No," she whispers. "Not again."

"Bridge of the Black Pike," the projection calls. "Your vessel's systems are compromised, and your lives are at risk."

A non-holographic version of the mask is plastered across the bridge screen, three stories tall, speaking back to them in concert with the projection. The text readout next to her image, the one that normally displays subtitles or nameplates or text alerts, overflows across her visage. The same writing, on every readout. On Waian's console, on Vora's tablet, on Sykora's transcriber.

HAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESSHAILTHENEWEMPRESS

Sykora tears her earmuffs off. They flutter to one side. Grant's lungs are valved too tightly shut to protest.

"The Black Pike has begun its final voyage," the Penitent says. "It's bound for Chassak's atmosphere. In ten minutes' time, the vessel will descend to an altitude it cannot survive. You have the opportunity to slow its terminal descent. The entire bridge team, including the command group, must move to the brig level, whereupon I'll disable your lifts and you'll remain there. This will stave off atmospheric destruction for half an hour. The Princess and Prince of the Black Pike must depart the Black Pike and descend to Chassak. This will earn you another half hour. If any individuals besides the Prince and Princess attempt to leave the vessel, the Black Pike's guns will acquire and destroy them."

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

The projection turns back to the command group. The featureless metal mask tilts imperiously upward.

"You came here looking for a daemon, Sykora of the Black Pike," she says. "I have it."

An image resolves on the monitor. A temple chamber, the light of Chassak coming through the window. A daemon's statuette, wooden and portraying a familiar sea captain, sits on an altar.

"I will treat with you for it," the Penitent says. "We have a great deal to discuss. I wait for you at the temple. Your shuttle will have the exact coordinates. Bring your husband."

"I have nothing to say to you," Sykora says. "Neither of us do."

"Remain aboard your ship, then, and die in the skies over Chassak." The Penitent shrugs evenly. "It would be a shame, I think. For a Princess of the Void to lose her life in an Imperial Core atmosphere. So close to the home of the Empire. So far from yours. Spare yourself and your crew. Come to me."

She disappears.

The candles are floating again in the temple of the Omnidivine. The clerics strap themselves to the pews and pray. In the hab level, hastily-abandoned meals float from their tables: glistening nimbuses of broth and lazily corkscrewing vegetable discs. A caregiver smiles through the terrified lump in her throat and tells the kids they get five minutes of supervised zero-G playtime and then everyone needs to put on their floorbelts.

"Talk, majordomo."

Sykora stomps to the glass cell that houses Majordomo Niminoa of the Cloud Gate. Her hair floats around her like a lion's mane.

"Whatever you can give me now, I need," she says. "Your obstinacy ends here, or we're dead."

Niminoa sits at the end of her cot, holding herself to it with a hooked heel. Her sullen stare sweeps across the assembled command group. Through the door into the private cell they hear conversation on the edge of panic. The entire bridge crew fits on this level, but only just.

"I know that you're bound by your oath to Kanori," Sykora says. "I know you loved her. If you're blaming me for her death, you blame in error. The woman who killed Kanori awaits us on Chassak. If you want revenge against her, I'm your vector."

Niminoa points at Grant and the command group. "Get them out."

"That's not how I do it. I told that to Kanori."

Niminoa sighs percussively and rests her face in her hands. She slides her grip down, stretching her bottom eyelids.

"I didn't swear my oath of secrecy just to Kanori," she says. "I swore it at the foot of the Empress."

"The Empress's dominion is under dire threat," Sykora says. "You see that now."

"I do," Niminoa says. "What I tell you, swear to take to your grave."

Sykora shakes her head. "I can't swear that. Not until I know what it is."

"Then I cannot reveal it," Niminoa says.

"Then we're dead," Sykora says. "I am not going to that planet without understanding what awaits me. I won't give this Penitent that kind of satisfaction. The incandescent death of a ZKZ will bring the eyes of the entire firmament to Chassak. Our sacrifice will shine a light on whatever is being concealed."

Niminoa frowns. "That's madness."

"It's hundreds dead or a broken oath," Sykora says. "I know you are an honorable woman, Niminoa. But you must weigh that."

Niminoa sighs and shuts her eyes. "Forgive me," she murmurs.

Sykora folds her hands. "I—"

"I am not talking to you, Black Pike." Niminoa opens up with a glare. She takes a deep inhale. "Very well. The daemon is the Empress."

Sykora's breath fogs the glass. "What?"

"The daemon is the Empress," Niminoa says. "A copy. The daemon is the Empress in a box."

A few seconds of silence among the command group.

"What's the one thing that can break the Empire?" Niminoa prompts. "The one threat that keeps it from security? The one thing that prevents Zithra XIX's plans from being perfect?"

She spreads her palms.

"Mortality," she says.

"Gods of the Firmament," Hyax says.

"Zithra has been hunting for an heiress for many hectos," Niminoa says. "Many frustrating failed years. There's a—a game. A competition. A splinter of the peerage is playing it. You're playing it now, though you haven't been aware. Approximately twelve hectocycles ago, she despaired of it. Concluded there was no capable replacement. She attempted a… regrettable solution. The New Empress is the result."

"That's a stupid goddamn idea," Waian says.

"She came to agree." Niminoa pushes up from the cell cot and twists to the window, where the sickly wart of Chassak is growing on the firmament's face. "So the resulting simulacrum was hidden."

"Why wasn't it destroyed?" Grant asks.

"It is a perfect copy of the Empress. An abomination, maybe. But killing it is an abomination, too." Niminoa shrugs. "And a suitable heiress still eludes us, after all."

Grant leans forward. The braided brocade of his uniform trails behind him then bobs forward. "I was told repeatedly that daemons aren't people."

"This is different. Nothing was redacted. This is an unblemished copy. The intent was that it would act as a perfect advisor to an imperfect heiress."

"That's insanity," Grant says.

"Questioning the Empress is not your place, Maekyonite."

Sykora snaps out of the daze this revelation put her in. "Do not talk to my husband that way."

"It's not yours either, Majesty. Nor is it mine, nor was it Kanori's." Niminoa puts her hands in her pockets. "Our place is obedience. For a very long time, now, the Empress's daemon has danced across the firmament in a series of innocuous housings, moved every time its secret was threatened. Kanori was the latest agent placed in charge of its safekeeping."

"Kanori killed the Argosy True, then," Sykora says. "Didn't she? To keep the secret. And then this Penitent destroyed Myak and stole it. That's how the Penitent is doing these impossible daemonic takeovers. They've all kept their loyalty to the Empress. She has an Empress. The kill codes. She's been fed them."

"That is how it appears." Niminoa kicks herself back to her bed and stares at the floor.

"Kanori was a flawed woman," Sykora says. "With flawed methods. But she didn't deserve to die that way. The death of a traitor."

She steps from the cell. She holds her hand up to Grant.

"Let's see what kind of justice we can find down there," she says. "Will you go with me?"

He puts his hand in hers. "Anywhere."

The bridge crew clatter to the deck with their magnetized boots, parting for the command group as they move through the brig level. A fluid wave of bows accompanies their passage. Sykora's expression is stony and sure, projecting the strength Grant wishes he felt. Every footstep feels like a wobbly stake set into treacherous ground.

They summon the lift. The button doesn't light up, but the Penitent presumably will allow them to ride it to the hangar bay, anyway. Waian taps Sykora's shoulder while they wait for it to coast through the Pike.

"Kora," she murmurs. "C'mere, kiddo. Listen up."

Sykora's steely posture falters only briefly as she leans into the chief engineer's embrace. Waian holds Sykora tight. She whispers something in her ear, something longer than just a good luck that stills Sykora's anxiously swishing tail for a moment. Then she lets her Princess go and kisses her forehead.

"All right," she says. "Watch her back, Grantyde."

He bows. "I will."

The lift arrives with the deep hum of foreboding prophecy.

One of the hangar docks is lit and warmed up, with a shuttle already waiting for them inside it. Grant follows Sykora into the cockpit. She toggles the flight computer, and they watch the preordained path etch through the orbital map onto Chassak's surface.

As the shuttle slips into the firmament, its controls light his wife's enigmatic smile.

Grant scoots to the edge of the divider and rests a hand on Sykora's far hip. "What's that face?"

"She never betrayed me," Sykora says. "And I never betrayed her. I'm not dross. I'm not trash. I'm loyal to her. She's loyal to me."

"She made a digital monster out of herself."

"Well, yes." Sykora's brow quirks. "Everyone has off days. The important thing is that she's relying on me to fix it. I'm not here against her will. I'm here enforcing it." She rests back in her seat. "That comforts me. I wish it comforted you. But I'm not afraid anymore."

He manages to smile at her. "Then neither am I."

"We have to assume our host is listening." Sykora draws him down to her lips. "There's only so much I can say." She changes to English. "Do you love me?"

"I do," he says.

"Do you trust me?"

"My sword is yours."

"Then heed my words," she whispers. "I have a plan."

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