Ellis waited at a distance. Still reeling from the loss of Natan, they resonated with the idea of loss of one of their own and the grief the HOVA suffered. But this was the HOVA’s time and understood that they had to find a measure of comfort with one another. Ellis simply needed something to do with their hands. They stood on point, on lookout, to allow the team room to mourn. Chandra remained in prophet mode: silent, listening, searching for patterns in whatever chatter she scanned. Determining intentions, probabilities, calculating locations and movements among the enemy’s assets. She took the full measure of the scene, storing all the information in a catalog of carnage.

“Permission to wreck some shit?” Anitra crouched low, her navsuit caked in dirt and dust, baked in the terrain of the planet. She turned to study the encroaching ring of their faces.

“You got a plan?” Epyc Ro asked. Epyc Ro ached under the weight of guilt and failure. One by one, she took stock of the Hellfighters’ wounds.

“I just said wreck some shit.”

“In Jesus’s name,” Robin said.

“I feel you, but … nah.” Epyc Ro stood up—not having realized she’d sat down—struck by the sheer pointlessness of it all. The faces of her people, full of questions and doubt, looking to her with expectations. Their unit was diminished, no longer whole, and teetered on collapsing into a hole of grief and hurt. “We need a plan. We can’t just act out in anger.”

Theirs was the first deep-space mission into uncharted territories. They knew there would be casualties. They would not always have the opportunity to mourn and retrieve their dead, but when they could, they would. Each gbeto carried with them their own burial disk. A flat disk of green metal. It was Epyc Ro’s duty to attend the body. Igniting glow orbs to illuminate the cavern space. She held a moment of silence for her friend. The solemn ritual began with her removing her Oya elekes beads. She completed a scan of Fela’s remains, genetic sequencing to confirm gen-ident, telemetry for autopsy records. The disk pack rose, glowed like a low-orbit sun, and reduced her body to ash and collected her remains.

When her duty was done, Epyc Ro consoled herself in the corner. She strung the sacred beads between her two hands like a necklace cat cradle. The silence was cold comfort in the moment. She had her people to take care of, not to mention getting Ellis and his crew to something approximating safety. Above all else, she was tired. A weariness she couldn’t give into.

Robin shoved a plate in front of her. “Your belly sounds like it’s mumbling the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.”

“Thanks.” Epyc Ro couldn’t remember the last time she ate.

“What’s the plan?”