I regretted the necessity to destroy my sister, Fenrir. But if I hadn’t killed her, she would have killed me. That made the regret easier to bear, and my part in her death easier to justify. Captain Konstanz, on the other hand, had been shaken to the core by the killing of Admiral Menderes. Up until then, she hadn’t considered herself capable of issuing such an order. Granted, she had let me wound the would-be hijackers at Northfield, and then let me off the leash against Fenrir, but she seemed to view the killing of Menderes as something more personal. The fact her decision had almost certainly saved the admiral’s crew from sharing his fate, and that she had explored all reasonable alternatives before ordering his death, brought her little comfort. She couldn’t face Preston, who spent the whole trip back to Camrose in the infirmary, treating the wounded and medicating himself with a variety of sedatives. In fact, the only person (aside from me) she would talk to was Alva Clay, with whom I suspect she now shared a certain reluctant kinship. But, as we limped back to Camrose surrounded by an escort of sleek white knife-ships, Captain Konstanz spent most of her time curled alone in the inflatable life raft, trying to make sense of what she had done, and what, in her eyes at least, she had become.

But, even as she lay there in the dark, watching the rotating orange light of the raft’s distress beacon strobe against the cargo hold walls, I knew I could help her. I knew I could care for her, because we were the same now. We had both lost people, and we had both done things of which we were ashamed, and for which we would always be trying to make amends.

One day, I was positive she would even find herself able to look Preston in the eye. But, until that came to pass, like sisters we would shoulder each other’s burdens, and carry them forwards together until the end of our days.

Seventy-Three: The Marble Armada

SEVENTY-THREE

THE MARBLE ARMADA

We have found our purpose.

The Trouble Dog gave it to us.

We will patrol the higher dimensions.

We will prevent another war.

Conflict attracts the enemies that live out among the mists and winds of the higher dimensions. If one comes, the rest will follow. They may already be falling towards us through the fog.

And so we will do our duty. We will patrol the galaxy and remain vigilant; and, at the first sign of an attack—at the first unexplained disappearance of a ship in the hypervoid, or the first reliable sighting of something moving in the empty spaces between the stars—we will gather our forces into a thin white line, to stand between the worlds of light and life, and the voracious hunger of the abyss.

We will fight.