The auditorium burst into a round of applause, but Dellian carried on watching the screen. He knew people on the Asher. Now they were gone, lost to him forever in both space and time. The other side of that portal had been traveling at point nine-eight light speed away from Juloss for more than five hundred years, ever since the traveler generation ship had arrived, one of thousands of identical portals that had been sent out along random courses, providing an escape route should the enemy detect that Juloss was home to a human civilization.

Now another portal was expanding, glowing a hellish orange against the stars as it opened to its twin deep in Cathar’s atmosphere. The skyfort began to twist and buckle as it was captured by the pull of abnormally strong gravity. Chunks broke off, twirling away into the blaze, streaming ahead of the skyfort itself, which was now moving with increasing speed into the smoldering abyss.

There was no applause this time, just a wise, sober acknowledgment of the skyfort’s fall into the heart of the gas giant, where the hypervelocity storms and terrible gravity gradient would pull the detritus down and down until it became nothing but a smear of heavy atoms slithering atop the planet’s metallic hydrogen core. All of Juloss’s orbital defenses were scheduled to follow it, then the portals themselves would surrender, and collapse. The Juloss system would be naked among the myriad stars once more, with teeming life and crumbling ruins the only legacy that humans had once visited.

“I would like us to take a moment,” Captain Kenelm said in a level voice. “We should thank this star and its planets for being a peerless haven to so many of our ancestors. Humans have lived a good life here. And now it is our turn to honor and repay that gift. We venture out into the galaxy to join the very Saints themselves. Somewhere out there, they are waiting for us. When they call—and they will—we will join them, no matter how far away they are in time and in space. Know this, Saints; we will not let you down.”

“We will not let you down,” Dellian intoned, along with the rest of the audience. He’d said it a thousand times in his life, but this time it finally meant something. We’re on our way!

Kenelm gestured with his palms, and everybody stood. “The Morgan is about to launch,” sie said. Behind hir, the screen was showing a view from the front of the Morgan. Up ahead, a twisting gray knot was churning amid the stars.

“We thank you, Saint Yuri Alster, for your fortitude,” Kenelm said respectfully.

“We thank you, Saint Yuri,” the auditorium responded.

The portal turned blue and began to swell out, its physical components undulating in a fast rhythm.

“We thank you, Saint Callum Hepburn, for your compassion.”

“We thank you, Saint Callum.”