17 Rising Withering, 1886 CE

Highkirk's synakirk

Oralie sat on the simple wooden bench in the corner of the council room, exhausted from convincing the Synapsis Tool in La Table d'Or to take seriously her demands that the city immediately be evacuated. She had succeeded. Hopefully, the twelve hours until planetfall would be long enough.

The councilmen were still arguing around the table about the dispositions of the defenses, and Dorsin was still there, lending his his wisdom to proceedings.

Oralie's husband was so wise in the ways of war. How could he have been so foolish in the paths of the heart?

You invited it, a part of Oralie warned. Oh, she remembered how she would blush when Rosabella would flirt with her, and of course she recalled inviting Rosabella to have her way with Dorsin once the cancer had taken Oralie. Ever since the day they had met, the day that Rosabella emerged from her Chrysalis, the day that Oralie had been presented to Dorsin's court, the woman who would become Ambassatrix had had a hold on Oralie's heart.

Even that had been false, though, hadn't it? Rosabella compelled men and women both, but that was due to her pheromones. It was an unnatural attraction. If Oralie had had a cold when she first met Rosabella, if her nose had been stuffed, the scarlet woman would surely have seemed to be nothing more than a strumpet who was overly attached to a man she had no business loving.

If, if, if. Did it matter, now? Did it matter whether Oralie's long-simmering interest in Rosabella was "true love" or "infatuation," as if there were such things as "high lust" and "low lust?" Did it matter that she had never discouraged Rosabella's gentle flirtations, or that she had truly believed herself to be dying a year ago? Did it matter whether they shared a friendship founded on lofty ideals instead of lusts founded on chemical persuasion?

The whole mess was irrelevant. All that mattered was that Rosabella had taken something precious from Oralie. All that mattered was that Dorsin had broken the word he had given.

And he had given Rosabella more than she even appreciated.

Lavender. Truth, or lies? Was it true form, or was it a masque that Oralie smelled?

As if summoned by Oralie's thoughts, Rosabella slid onto the bench next to her. To the boneyard with Rosabella's grace! To the grave with her form of curves and lines, her hair of shimmering scarlet, her ruby lips! The blasted woman looked beautiful even when she was in pain.

Rosabella crossed her legs and put her hands atop her knee. She kept her eyes down. Was she afraid of Oralie the wife or of Oralie the Ascended? Or did she fear to meet the gaze of Oralie the friend?

The first two possibilities only made Oralie more angry, the latter frustrated.

"The fault was mine," Rosabella said. Her voice was low and uncertain. Perhaps this place of strange ancient worship was acting on her conscience. Oralie herself could sense the weight of millennia of history in the stained glass windows, the artwork, the muffled canting of liturgies coming through the wooden walls. "I enticed him knowingly."

Oralie sighed. "He consented knowingly." Still, she couldn't muster up a sting to place in the words. How could she accuse Rosabella of being party to betrayal when Oralie herself had all but invited it barely a year ago?

But nonetheless it was a betrayal. Fantasy and future gifts were well and good, but she was supposed to be Dorsin's and he hers as long as they lived.

"He consented knowingly," Oralie repeated to herself.

As if he'd heard her, Dorsin spared a glance across the table at her. He didn't smile.

Neither did she.

A young man burst into the room. "We've got problems," he said.

Oralie was grateful that Dorsin followed the men from the room. Should she have insisted that Rosabella follow? Should she be grateful that her betraying friend instead insisted on remaining alongside her as the light through the windows grew long and red?

"Anything I can do to make things right, I shall," Rosabella said.

"Oh, Rosabella." Oralie thought of the genetic legacies that she had glimpsed in the void. She thought of liquid stars pressing together and tearing apart, leaving traces of their minds and their genes on one another. She thought of Dorsin's blood and Rosabella's intermingling, mixing together and separating, creating a fragile new flesh that was somehow both of them and neither of them at the same time. "Some things cannot be set right, Rosabella."

"Then I shall have to try harder to prove you wrong. I have always been a stubborn woman."

"Yes, you have." Oralie sighed.

Such a tiny new soul...

Mom, Senrii called through the window in Oralie's mind.

Just like that, her exhaustion vanished. Oralie dropped into the void, took up her throne of blazing blue harmonies, and rushed into her daughter's star.

Oralie fell forever. It was even worse than the symbolic sensation of eternal tumbling that she'd suffered when she first slipped into the void. This was all too real.

Her head spun as she tried to gain her bearings. Why was the tiny room spinning? Why couldn't she orient herself? Oralie's stomach and head might have been far away, but if she stayed here, she would vomit.

Without a second to spare, Oralie withdrew a step. Senrii's thoughts clouded over; Oralie became more herself as she relegated herself to looking through Senrii's mind and hearing her conscious thoughts. Gravity, or an imagined sense thereof, reasserted itself.

Oralie's impression had been right. Senrii was packed almost shoulder to shoulder with the others in a tiny room. She was strapped into a seat, and her hair floated about her head. Beneath her--or at least in the direction her feet were pointing--there was a clear window.

And beyond that window, Tellus glowed like a giant blue-green marble against the inky night.

Mom? You all right?

"I'm sorry, dear. I didn't expect you to be in zero gravity. I wasn't prepared for it. I shouldn't have surfaced in you so quickly."

It's all right. Aoife had problems when we first got into space, too.

Aoife--but where was she? Piotr, his head slumped, his black lips and chin glistening with blood, sat across from Senrii. Thiyyatt, the evil girl, sat next to the ebony giant, looking barely better with bloodshot eyes and hair plastered to her forehead with sweat. Even Eztli sitting next to Senrii appeared pale and exhausted, as if she'd been through a great trial.

The realization that Eztli had no Symbiont to rely on and keep her healthy welled up from Oralie's subconscious. She'd known it through her connection to Tvorh and Senrii when she'd reached Apotheosis, but she hadn't really understood.

The poor woman had given up everything, at least in part to protect Gens Nethress.

But where were Tvorh and Aoife? There was a fifth seat in the escape pod, but it was empty. If Eztli had given up almost everything, then Tvorh...

Aoife...

Don't worry, mom. They got out. We saw their pod get free a few seconds before ours. Senrii's mind grinned with lovestruck embarrassment as she looked at the brutalized Piotr. The big lug over there apparently doesn't know how to strap himself in.

"Perhaps he'll do a better job when he's in better condition," Oralie offered.

Senrii's smile vanished. Yeah. Right. Listen, mom, Eztli and I were talking. We think we have a plan.

"To do what?"

You said Nxtlu is attacking Acerbia, right? Well, Eztli was there the whole time last year. She knows who's really responsible for the genophage.

We just need her to get the word out.

***

Senrii told Oralie what she had in mind. Eztli might not have a Symbiont any longer, so you might not be able to connect with her in Synapsis, but you can connect to me. And I can connect to her.

Senrii reached out for Eztli. It was strange to see the way that her hand hovered, floating as if she was in water. It was likewise strange to see how slowly Eztli responded.

They clasped hands, and Eztli's consciousness unfurled like an auxiliary nervous system to Senrii's. "I think I can take you into the Tools of the fleet's skywhales," Oralie said. "A few at a time, at least." In truth, she didn't know how many hostile entities she'd be able to control.

"What do you say, Eztli?" Senrii asked. "You willing to give the message multiple times?"

"I'll give it a thousand times if it helps stop the war at our doorsteps," Eztli said. "In fact, Oralie, Meghan might be able to help reinforce our argument. If you could request her assistance one more time, I would appreciate it."

And Eztli told Oralie what she was planning. It was a good plan. It might even work. How clever Oralie's daughter was. How wise in choosing her friends.

Wiser than Oralie had been, perhaps.

Oralie felt Senrii's uncertainty through their connection. The girl knew as well as any of them that no plan survives contact with the enemy. It would've been foolish for any of them to take for granted that this would work. Still, Oralie's heart beat painfully for Senrii. To be so young and weighted with such responsibility was a grave and terrible burden.

What if it doesn't work, mom? Senrii asked.

"Don't worry, dear. I have some ideas about that."

Assuming, of course, that Meghan was willing to commit abominations.

Oralie imagined she would be. If abominations were the cost of preventing a new war on the verge of an alien invasion, then abominations they would be commit.

And, if necessary, abominations they would become.

***

Magus Admiral Caxatl Generosus Ortus Nxtlu watched through binoculars as the perimeter defenses of Acerbia shot another volley of the Nxtlu vine-mines out of the sky. "Reduce the angle of the launchers and increase the momentum of the shots," he ordered.

"Admiral," said his chief gunnery officer, "that might deal damage to the launchers' muscles."

"Of course it might," Caxatl snapped. The man might as well have been a red-blood for all of his worrying and uncertainty. Caxatl's adrenaline was still high from the way his body, and those of his blue-bloods, had frozen up for several minutes straight. It made him less inclined to be understanding. "But we can't approach the city while the Xipe Totec is still operational."

In the lull between volleys, the Captain looked down at the ground a few short miles away, where low-lying clouds of fog flowed over the gouges in dirt and rock and alpine forest that the cannon's rendering fluid had created.

He shuddered to think of that warning shot. It was clear that Nethress didn't want a confrontation, but it was also clear that they would destroy every vessel of the allied fleet in order to defend themselves.

"The point defenses are too accurate," the captain continued. "Our only hope is to stop lobbing and shoot in arcs that are too low for their flak to intercept. Get it done."

"As your divinity commands," the gunnery officer said. Smoking Mirror, the man even talked like a red-blood.

The comms officer relayed the orders to the rest of the fleet. Two minutes later, a new mine-volley launched. These cut low across the sky at rapid speed. The Nethress flak gunners had obviously been caught by surprise, because two of the mines got through to the city. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

"Command the other vessels to vary their angles of bombardment," the captain said. "We don't want Nethress to be able to predict our next moves."

All eighty vessels of the Allied fleet from more than a half a dozen Gentes did as the admiral commanded. The ships of Gens Utulo shot high, several seconds before the other ships did. Gens Labrinth went next, its mines sailing at a lower angle. So on and so on down the line, the sky whales shot, and all of their mines approached the defensive perimeter at the same time. There were too many targets for Nethress to pick out.

This time, five of the mines got through.

The admiral sat back in his chair and nodded to himself. It was a good tactic.

"Admiral," the comments officer said, "we're picking up a shortsphere signal."

"Put it through."

"I can't," the comms officer said. "I don't have control."

The admiral rose, thinking to teach the louts a lesson. It was a terrible thing, being surrounded by incompetence. Before he could move more than a step, though, that chordal units began to speak.

"Attention, skywhales of the Nxtlu alliance. I am Eztli Orta Nxtlu, sister of Dux Ilhicamina, late of Acerbia."

Someone on the bridge gasped. Caxatl would have to wait to punish whoever it was. The shock of hearing the voice of the disgraced and disowned Nxtlu Generosa had wrongfooted him.

"Princeps Nxtlu has lied to you," the betrayer went on. "Give up this shortsighted effort at conquest and return home."

"Triangulate that message," the admiral said. "If we find where she is, we can kill her."

"It's coming from inside the ship," the comms officer said, disbelief shackling his voice. "She's using our own antenna against us."

"To the other Gentes that have joined in this unprovoked attack, I understand your concerns. I felt it myself when I first heard that the code of the genophage had been broken, and that an innocent family was being targeted for extinction by a wicked man."

The admiral held up a hand. This was an interesting twist.

"But it was not Princeps Dorsin of Nethress who recreated the genophage and tested it on his family. It was none other than my brother Ilhicamina."

Bah. This was nothing new. The admiral had heard these accusations before. What did it matter which side had figured out how to re-target the genophage, redirecting its hunger from the genetic signature of those who had received direct genetic engineering in the Last Era, and pointed it instead toward the Nethress genetic line? Whether Dorsin or Ilhicamina had pioneered the genophage's transformation, Nxtlu would use it to claim their birthright.

The silver desert will swallow Tellus. Without Nxtlu's guidance, mankind will fall beneath the coming storm. So Princeps Tlalli had confided to Caxatl before sending him on this mission, several days before the Princeps's message had gone out.

Eztli continued, "By way of evidence, I present this recording, taken in Acerbia's Palace of governance, of an exchange between my brother and me."

The blood drained from Caxatl's face as he heard Dux Ilhicamina's voice over the chordal units.

He listened to the exchange. He listened to Eztli confront her brother. He listened to Ilhicamina's admissions.

The bridge was silent, but Caxatl's men remained clear-eyed as the lies were laid bare. Caxatl had no doubts about his sailors. They were good troops and would do their duty.

But Caxatl wasn't so sure about the Allied ships.

"You have heard me," Eztli's voice rang out. "I see it in your eyes."

"Smoking Mirror, bring me that woman! She's somewhere on the ship," the admiral shouted.

"I bear you this offer from Gens Nethress to those Gentes that have decided to assist Gens Nxtlu. Turn your skywhales back. Return to your homes with honor. There need be no more bloodshed here today."

"Tell me what the other ships are doing," Caxatl said.

The woman prattled on. "If you depart from here in peace, Gens Nethress will not harass you as you return to your ports. This moment of foolishness will be forgotten. Choose to remain, and suffer the consequences."

"Admiral, the Anansetsi is coming about...I think it's leaving."

Caxatl hissed. "Bring us about as well. Send them a shortsphere message that if they go, we'll bring them down."

"I can't, Admiral," the comms officer said. "I still don't have any control over the transmitter. It's almost like somebody's controlling her Tool."

"I don't have thrust, and I can't use the rudders," the pilot said. "I'm locked out."

Caxatl ground his teeth. When he caught that traitor, he would teach her a lesson about sabotaging their ships.

Two more of the skywhales of Gens Utulo turned and began to drift away. Then the last three followed. Then Gens Poramir, then Gens Labrinth.

Their allies were deserting them, and Nxtlu was impotent to stop them.

"To the skywhales of Gens Nxtlu, I offer you this: depart and Gens Nethress will not destroy your...Our family line entirely." Eztli's voice was quiet and cold. "You cannot prevail in this."

Who did the woman think she was? Nxtlu had forty ships of their own still, and intelligence held that Nethress had no more than twenty nearby. Nxtlu would prevail.

Now if only Caxatl could get his skywhale working again!

"If you do not depart, then I can assure you that it will be war to the knife with Nethress, and our family will lose," Eztli warned. "The sign of our loss awaits, should you not turn back and cease your siege and bombardment. You will not receive another warning. Please..." She paused. "Please, don't force Nethress to unleash this horror upon you.

"I will release control of your flagship now, Admiral Caxatl. Immediately turn to port without using any impulse. Close your gun ports and do not attempt to target Acerbia or any other skywhale. Once you are facing 180° away from Acerbia, turn your throttles to maximum and depart. Any deviation from these commands will result in..."

Tension on the bridge was as thick as jungle air.

"...Do not deviate from these commands," Eztli concluded. "I am releasing my lock on the flagship now."

"I've got steering again, Captain," the pilot said. One by one, the stations reported in.

Admiral Caxatl breathed out a sigh of relief. He was back in control. "Send a message to the rest of the fleet to prepare for bombardment. Release at will. Give them everything you've got."

"Wrong decision, Admiral," Eztli's voice rang out. "And I forgot to mention that I'm still locking your shortsphere, though that won't be necessary for much longer."

"You bitch," Caxatl shouted. "Show yourself."

"Admiral, what's that white stuff?" The chief gunnery officer pointed out at one of the vents near the back of the bridge. Usually the flap moved smoothly in and out, but it was spasming now, and a white particulate matter was drifting through the air from within.

"Poison," the admiral said. "Everybody, get back."

It was too late. The pilot, upon the highest level of the bridge, fell first, writhing and clawing at his throat. He loosed a scream of primal terror as he rolled back and forth.

The navigator went next. He, too, collapsed to the ground. "Make it stop," he wailed. "Make it stop!" Chaos erupted as one by one the blue-blooded officers started to scream, scratching out their eyes, grabbing for their throats, or clawing around themselves as if trying to pull their own spines out.

The skywhale lurched at the same moment that Admiral Caxatl heard his Symbiont loose a cry of inhuman fear.

Caxatl's Symbiont shriveled and died within him at the same time that the Huitzilopochtli's Tool perished and the warship fell from the sky.