“Why fill Juloss with alien predators?” Yirella said. She’d risen to her feet, wiping jelly-strings of clotted morox blood from her hands. “I mean, seriously! Sure, keep some in orbital xenohabitats, and store their genetic molecule for study. But release them into the wild? That makes no sense at all. Our ancestors put in a century’s effort just terraforming this world up to habitable status so a whole civilization of humans could flourish and expand. Now we can’t even set foot outside our clan compound, it’s so dangerous.”

“Dangerous to the enemy, too.”

“Like they’re ever going to set foot here. The only landing they’ll ever perform is with a dozen apocalypse-event asteroids.”

“So what, then?”

“So I don’t know!” she shouted bitterly.

Dellian was surprised. It hurt him to see her like this, so wound up and frustrated. Close to tears, too, if he was any judge. Yirella was always the cool, rational one. But then this situation was extreme. Without thinking, he put his arms around her. Her whole body was held as rigid as steel. “I remember someone telling me there are always answers; you just have to know where to find them.”

She nodded, slowly and very reluctantly. “I know.”

“Did you find anything in the morox’s brain?”

“No.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Not sure. Something that would make it act the way it did.”

“They all behaved the same.”

“I know. And that worries me. I’m scared, Dellian.”

“Me too,” he said softly. “But we’ll get through this.” He kept hold of one of her hands as he turned to face the sleeper tree, which was now a giant column of flame, burning with the aggression of rocket exhaust. The boys who’d lit it were having to stand well back, the heat was so strong. “The skyfort sensors will think we’re zapping them with a laser when they pass over, the infrared emission is so strong.”

“Yes.” Yirella bent down and kissed him again. “You know what I’m thinking?”

“What?”

“This place is our Zagreus. So you know what that makes us?”

“Up shit creek without a paddle?”

“No! You and me. Look at us. You with your red hair, you’re Saint Callum.”

“And you’re my Savi.” He laughed. “Yes!”

“They escaped, didn’t they? They got back home.”

Dellian heard the urgency in her voice, the desperation. “Yes. They did. They even lived happy ever after for a couple of decades on Nebesa.”

“If they can do it, so can we.”

“Callum was always my favorite Saint,” he confessed.

“Really. Yuri’s mine.”

“How come? I’d have you rooting for Kandara.”