The rattling roar of atmospheric entry wraps its burly embrace around them. Down through the jaundiced cloud cover, the Temple becomes visible, as plain and severe as it appeared on Vora's map.

They land on a carbon-scorched pad on its periphery and reacquaint themselves with the clinging Chassak air on the walk to the temple's bleached gate. Pointed polygonal divinities frown down at them as they step through.

Black-clad and masked Taiikari men wait for them in the foyer, accompanied by jostling, clattering bounders. More of those robots that the Pike's marines fought off on Myak, their gun turrets clicking on gyroscopes as they track the Prince and Princess of the Pike.

Sykora stares coldly into the seven-eyed mask of the guard who disarms her. He points silently further into the darkened hush of the temple.

They emerge into a brutalist concrete nave, its vaulted central hall rumbling with the echo of its chilly AC, its great fans chopping air down toward the clustered rows of empty seats. Lurking in the darkened corners of the room are more armed automata, sleek and whirring.

At an altar crowned by the Omnidivine's brass swirl stand two women in clerical robes. A projector screen is unfurled between them. On top of the altar sits a carved wooden statue, weathered with age, its mic saddled to its side.

The woman on the left is musclebound and broad-shouldered. Her nose is turned somewhat at the tip, like it has broken and reset. A gun belt is strapped across her robed midsection, its boxy holster housing a heavy-looking hand cannon.

The woman on the right has her peaked hood up. A silvery strip of metal glints in her hand, twirling slowly in her fingers. A daemon's mic, Grant thinks. Like the one they used on Tamion to talk to the Gravitas player.

"One of you compelled my husband, I think," Sykora says, as she strides down the temple's central path. "Who?"

The woman with the daemon microphone in her hand steps forward. Below the rim of her hood, she has a preternaturally smooth face, like a doll's, and a crooked smile. "I did, Majesty."

"I am going to kill you for that," Sykora says.

"Temper, Sykora of the Black Pike." The Penitent's chiding voice echoes from the PA. "I'd understood you'd developed past temper." The featureless plane of her mask appears on the projector. "The woman you threaten is named Sister Lors. The other is Sister Mye. Neither wishes you ill will. Not as long as you remain civil and attentive. The daemon on the altar is what you've come for. You have my word that the creature you seek dwells inside it. But she is one of many digital friends I have made. The guardians of this temple are slaved to a particularly eager J-daemon. Sister Lors is quite prepared to let its leash slip if she must."

Lors beckons with the tip of the microphone in her hand. "Come here, Prince Grantyde."

Grant's frozen in place.

"Don't touch him," Sykora says.

Lors lets out a queer little giggle. "I won't harm him. Just a little prick." She slips the mic into her belt and holds up a syringe. "Keep him well-behaved during your chat. That's all." She beckons again.

Grant looks into Sykora's eyes. Tries to speak to her without words. Then he approaches the altar.

"Kneel," Lors says.

He steps into her space and kneels.

"To my regret, I can't be present in the flesh," the Penitent says. "I have obligations elsewhere in the firmament at the moment. But I am glad to have this chance to speak frankly with you."

"I'll go first," Sykora says, as Lors prepares the syringe. "I know your face under that mask."

The Penitent's amusement curls her reply. "Do you."

"The Malkesti annexation," Sykora says. Grant watches the gleaming syringe drip with C70 as it approaches him. He shuts his eyes. "The worst massacre of the Zithran expansion. The Princess in charge of it retired. She took the cloth. The Empress allowed her out."

"The Empress allowed you out, too. Princess Margrave Sykora. You are something special, aren't you? Very, very special. Tell me who I am."

Grant feels a pinprick against his neck. He grits his teeth. His anticomps are lifted from his face.

"Open your eyes, Majesty," Lors whispers.

"You're Void Princess Yniai," Sykora says. "You're the Murderer of Malkest."

"Heya." Waian steps into the Cloud Gate Majordomo's cell.

Niminoa frowns as Hyax follows the chief engineer in. "What are you doing in here?"

"Saving the fuckin' day," Waian says. "As usual."

She moves to the wall against which the cot is pushed.

"What can you do that this Penitent woman can't?" Niminoa asks.

"Oh, she talked very fancy." Waian taps her foot against the corner where the wall meets the floor, then takes a step to the side and taps again. "Bet you anything she's some kind of defecting noblewoman, some sorta captain. A Princess, even, on account of how familiar she is with ZKZs. But there's the familiarity a Princess has. And then there's what a chief engineer knows. Like how the engineering team service hatches on the brig level are camouflaged to fit seamlessly, but if you go right here…"

She takes one more step and delivers a solid kick to the wall. It rings hollow.

"Hyax." She steps back and points. "Can you get this open?"

Hyax nods and crouches. Her HAK suit's gauntlets test along the section of wall. Then she rears back and delivers a thunderous punch that puckers the sheet metal, and she finds the centimeter-long lip where it buckled.

Niminoa watches the Brigadier brace a boot against the wall and tug the hatch away with a harsh squeal of metal. "If she sees what we're doing, she's going to slam the accelerator on the ship and kill us all."

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"Maybe," Waian says. "But Sykora's great at running her mouth and Grantyde is great at pissing noblewomen off, and there's only so fast she can do it once she figures us out. Gotta dunk us into the atmosphere first. That gives us a few minutes, and that's all I need."

Hyax stands up. The crawlspace she's uncovered is cramped and unventilated and lit in emergency red. The kind of space a grease monkey like Waian feels right at home in.

"You're gonna come with, Niminoa." Waian extends her artificial hand to the perturbed prisoner. "Fill me in while we climb. We're gonna get into the nitty-gritty on this daemon bullshit."

"Princess Yniai is gone," the Penitent says. "She witnessed the true face of Empire. Its obligations that are not spoken but required. She drowned in the blood that lubricates its colossal gears. The Empress, in that pale twisted thing she calls mercy, offered her a quiet life of prayer and contemplation as repayment for the monstrosity. But Yniai died the day the Malkesti burned. I am what replaced her."

Grant's anticomps are tight in Sister Lors' grip. She blazes will into Grant's unprotected eyes. "Stay here," she says. "Stay on your knees. Stay obedient. Do not speak until spoken to."

"You shirked its weight, for a time," The Penitent says. "The Imperial sabaton. You've even found a way to acclimate your Maekyonite husband to its weight, to cover the gore it treads out of the firmament's face."

Flash. "Stand and turn to the Penitent," whispers Sister Lors.

Grant folds his arms as he turns.

"Grantyde of Maekyon." The Penitent's voice goes wistful. "How easily you've shed all the lessons your world taught you. How comforting it must have been to slip beneath the stream and forget the nature of your captor. To let her carry your certainty away from you."

"I am her certainty," he says.

"But you know what she is," the Penitent says. "You know what you are. You see the conquest of your world as an inevitability. When did that surrender anchor itself within you? Sic semper tyrannis. That's what your people say. You know what every tyrant earns."

Grant refuses to give her the satisfaction of his consternation. But how the fuck does she know that?

"So vivid and beautiful, Maekyon. Its people. Are you truly so willing to see them enslaved? I can offer a different way." The glass studding the Penitent's mask shines. "Here is my offer. Return to the Pike. Frame it how you will. As a daring escape from me, perhaps. I'll leave that to you. Join the millions already working in the shadows to save the firmament from its chains. You wouldn't be the only Void Princess, you know. Save your husband's world. Topple the Empire."

Grant shakes his head. "You topple the Empire, you kill billions."

"I free billions more. I will make the choice you are too fearful to make. Isn't that what you've been waiting to hear? The longer we wait, the more the disease spreads. We can sever the limb now, or we can let it reach the heart and perish entirely."

The Penitent opens her arms in a mockery of holy ecstasy.

"If you refuse, you'll be spared. I would be loath to kill an innocent man, and a woman as splendid as you, Sykora. But you'll lose the Pike, and you'll lose your subjects. You will remain here, dosed with Compound 70 to keep you subdued, and watch their pyre streak across the sky. Then we will pray together. And then we'll march you into the bog, mind scoured, to await retrieval from some other cog in the Imperial machinery. Perhaps you'll return to some small portion of your former power, if you survive the inquest."

"You've made a monstrous mistake, Penitent," Sykora says.

"You've made more, I think. The Black Pike's fate is in your clutches. All your servants' lives depend on what you say."

Sykora shakes her head. "You have not caught a Void Princess in your net, or a Princess Margrave. You have caught Sykora of the Black Pike. The man you compelled was Grantyde of the Black Pike. And you thought the Black Pike was yours now."

"It's certainly not yours anymore, Sykora."

"It never was," Sykora says. "As much as I imagined otherwise. It's Waian's."

"Okay. Okay, I see what she did." Waian tromps across the command deck, her hair floating in the bridge's weightless air. "Very clever. This is some big-brain exploitation. Every failsafe she couldn't disable, she wired other dependencies to. Made them kill switches. I can't use the manual stuff or the standard shutdowns without blowing something up or suffocating us. It's a hell of a takeover."

"She must have planned something like this for a hectocycle at least," Hyax says. "We're her test case."

Niminoa follows them in two-sizes-too-big borrowed magnetic boots. "So there's no way back in."

"There's not supposed to be," Waian says. "On most ships, there wouldn't be. But something bad happened to me, once. Something terrible. And I promised myself it wouldn't again. Put in a few customized contingencies. Aftermarket type stuff." She rolls her sleeve up as she approaches her console. "That bitch obviously knows a ZKZ like the back of her hand."

Waian lifts her mechanical arm into the light.

"But my hand's cooler."

"You would have me believe I am caught in your web," Sykora says. "Helpless but to obey you. You pretend that every struggling movement just wraps me deeper into your clutches. But I am not a fool, Penitent. This is not a culminating plan. This is improvisation. A parlor trick. My back isn't against the wall. Yours is."

"I have one word in response to that," the Penitent says. "Soapstone."

Sykora laughs unkindly. "You tried to kill me already. Your assassin. Now, suddenly, you extend your hand. Suddenly, I've been a puppet dancing to your tune. Is that right? And you can cut the strings whenever you like? I think not."

"You have been a puppet all your life, Sykora. The Empress is the one who—"

"Twelve hectocycles." Sykora points at the daemon housing. "The Empress in that box is from twelve hectocycles ago. She made that daemon, with all her knowledge within it, because she despaired of finding a true servant. One who would keep the Imperial promise. One who would make her proud."

She takes a step forward.

"Because I hadn't been born yet," she says.

Sister Mye's hand slowly drops to her side. She lays her palm on the stock of her pistol.

In the corners of the room, the mechanical bounders silently track their turrets. The daemon that controls them waits for its command to attack.

Another step. "Go on," Sykora says. "Say the phrase, Sister. Penitent. Whoever would like to go first. Perhaps you could say it simultaneously."

The Penitent is silent. Sister Mye's grip tightens.

"Go ahead." Sykora's smile is huge and sharp. "Your line starts with soapstone. Go on."

They stare at one another.

Something on the edge of the Penitent's vision jolts her. Grant hears her sharp intake of breath.

"Kill them," she barks. "Kill them!"

Sister Lors' hand darts to her belt loop. Her eyes bulge as she turns to Grant, who holds up the mic that hung there.

He snaps it in half.

Sister Mye's pistol clears its holster.

Sykora leaps.

The ship lurches. The jig's up. For a second, Waian thinks they're about to start their plunge. But the Black Pike isn't pointing its nose at Chassak. It's turning. It's bringing its broadside to bear.

Looks like Kora's making a move. It's now or never.

Niminoa watches Waian cycle her hand into its connector configuration. "If you plug in, you're exposing yourself to a thoroughly hacked daemon. How thorough are these modifications? Surely that arm's connected to your brain."

"Yep." Waian flexes. "All the way up."

"So it could seriously compromise you. Shut down your nervous system."

"Wouldn't even need to work that hard," Waian says. "It could just hit me with a power surge and pop me like a tick. But I know this ship better than some distracted digital echo with a fake Empress stuck up its ass. Sykora's down there dealing with the Penitent. All I have to do to keep us alive is smash the panic button they've got digitally gated. I'll get that done, and then if I'm lucky and I'm quick, I'll be out before they can fry me. And I'm quick."

"Are you lucky?"

Waian shuts her eyes. She takes a deep breath.

She sees her kids. Sees them laughing and gasping at Grant's crazy Maekyonite monster movie. Sees all her lovers, Reina and Kamen and Halkman and Pentine and Tilard and Shosa and scores more. Sees Hyax, happy in two sets of big tattooed arms. Sees Vora and Oryn, and Sykora and Grant, and their kids growing up together. Sees it all crystal clear.

There was never a world where she didn't try this. Never a version of her that wouldn't take this risk to keep her family safe. She wants to meet her grandkids. Wants to hold Sykora and Grant's babies in her arms.

But if it's time to go, then that's okay, too. She's been the sole survivor, and it fucking sucked. Being the sole casualty, that's not so bad. She'd be okay with that.

She opens her eyes and grins at Majordomo Niminoa.

"I'm the luckiest bitch in the firmament," she says, and slams her fist into the Black Pike's heart.

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