In the days following the destruction, my Sisters and I tend to the survivors while the Vow’s diminished crew attempt to reset the warp drives and shore up the hull for our next jump. We pray, and we give up our rations. Ashava tells stories. Even Qi-Oh spends time amongst the people. But it is not enough. The crew starts to come apart, just as Quinn said it would. First come suicides. Then murders. Then bloody, desperate riots. My Sisters and I stop our singing and our stories and we go to the furnace halls to assist the remaining naval security troops in suppressing the unrest. We suppress. We destroy. We burn what is left, or eject it into the cold of the void.

In the aftermath, when the drives are cycling and the Navigator has stopped screaming and the ship is preparing once more to sail the tides, I find Haskia in the armoury, attending to the links of chain around her vambrace. I sit and watch as she runs together a new loop of chain made of tarnished copper links. It is almost crude, compared to the others. I count the links as she winds the chain around her vambrace, just as I did before. This time, though, I do not lose count. I memorise each copper link, and each loss along with it.

The second warp jump is even darker than the first. More violent. The lights aboard the Unbroken Vow this time are those of blades and of gunfire. This jump ends with a breach, just as the first one did. This time it is the sternward cathedral quarter that comes apart at the seams. Three worship halls are destroyed in the explosive decompression, and hundreds of faithful souls are lost to the void. More murders follow. More suicides. More riots. The shipmaster orders curfew. He orders double-rotation, then triple-rotation. He orders penitent service and execution after execution, and then barely moments after the voidlocks have expelled the turncoats and cowards, Vallien orders another jump. The senior navigation officer answers by shooting the shipmaster four times in the chest.

The mutineer is killed by naval security, but it comes too late to save the shipmaster. Arcoh Vallien dies in the throne he spent his life serving, and then his body is allocated for the furnaces, along with the rest of the faithful dead. It is left to Ulivar Okash to take the position of shipmaster. The throne, and the responsibility that goes with it. It is Okash who sits in a seat still tarnished with his predecessor’s blood and repeats Vallien’s last order, to make the jump towards Dimmamar.

No matter the cost.