EVANGELINE

Canoness Elivia’s quarters have been devastated. The deck is ruptured and deformed, and the supporting arches are cracked and blackened. Every weapon is missing from the racks on the walls. Nothing remains of Elivia’s maps and charts but scraps of vellum. Only the gnarlwood table is left. It is burned, and blackened. Split across its face and limbs. But it still stands in spite of the damage wrought upon it, as do those summoned to gather around it.

Elivia’s two Celestians take up position on either side of the Canoness commander, as always. Beatris and Radah are both newly scarred, in flesh and in armour. Inquisitor Ravara is the next to arrive. She goes without her lightweight, layered armour, clad solely in her indigo tunic and trousers, and soft, flat shoes. Her face is set and still, but her gait is awkward and slower than it should be, and she has to use a cane to walk. Ravara only has one member of her retinue with her. Just the marksman. Zoric is limping, too, his pale eyes deeply shadowed. Lastly come two representatives of the Vow’s crew. The first is Ulivar Okash. The second is the Vow’s new senior security officer and master-at-arms, a broad-shouldered, badly scarred woman clad in carapace whose ident marker names her as Quinn. As is the case all across the ship, the lumens have failed, so the only light comes from the clusters of tall, twisted candles and the half-hearted starlight filtering in through the frosted armaglass of the viewport. It grants Elivia a faint and flickering halo as she leans forward, gauntleted hands resting on the surface of the gnarlwood table.

‘Let us begin with the obvious,’ she says. ‘Our location.’ She looks at Okash. ‘I trust you have an answer for me, first officer?’

Okash nods. The Vow’s first officer has all the traits of the void-born. He is tall and slender in an angular way, as though he has been made solely from straight edges. Okash’s eyes are large and deep-set and entirely dark. Looking at him reminds me of Dallia and Wyllo. Of cold blood, and the sound of sobbing.

‘Our capacity to determine our exact coordinates is diminished, Canoness, but I can offer an estimated location based on what information we do have.’

Elivia does not prompt him other than to stare at him. Okash nods again, and his eyes go back to the slate in his hand.

‘The charts and data put us somewhere in inter-sector space, corewards of Cypra Mundi, well within the Segmentum Obscurus.’

‘That’s good,’ Zoric says. ‘Right?’

‘It is and it isn’t,’ Okash says. ‘We have a long way to go before we are even close to Dimmamar.’

‘So we jump again,’ Ravara says, fixing Okash with her amber eyes. ‘And then again, if we have to. We keep making warp translations until we reach our destination.’