Holy labradorite. Finally she’s face to face with the fabled material, never found raw, only extant in the seraphim the Larex Forge had gifted to humanity. Beneath the glistening brown skin, stripes of iridescence live in its depths, greens and yellows and purples and blues, flashing by like a lover’s wink as Misery traverses a wide arc of changing angles. She cannot help herself. One palm makes contact with the shimmering, hypnotic surfaces. For all its calm and polish, holy labradorite has the warmth of an object cradled close to the body. Heat transmitted from some unknown source. Standing overwhelmed with her hand glued to one of the pilot capsules, Misery imagines the beating heart of the universe tunneling up her nerves and into her body. Her pulse quickens as her bone marrow fills with ice and fire. Holy labradorite is unlike anything’s she met. There’s ineffable power here, raw and waiting to be flexed. Holiest of the holy. Shit, standing in this place with this thread of unworldliness running through her, Misery can see the shape of possibility, her heart soaring and her head filled with song. It’s a good feeling. Cleansing, like iodine.

“Daydreaming?”

Major Reyes towers disapprovingly over her. Misery retracts her licentious hand. “I’ve never seen holy labo before. Not where I came from, in the boonies.” She clasps her palms together, the picture of saintly chastity. “It feels different, that’s all. As if it draws me closer to the Larex Forge.”

The major huffs. Disdain shines on xer face: xe doesn’t believe in this Messiah, this dangerous criminal falsely wearing the mantle of holiness. Xe’s seen xer share of hucksters and shameless liars, but this nixen takes the nugget. No matter. Sooner or later, shit floats to the surface. This fraud might have fooled the station computers for a spell, but they cannot fool the Demiurge. They cannot fool the holystone.

The major doesn’t know how close xe is to the truth—and yet how far. Ironic that Misery’s coming up on the easiest part of the deception for her. She’ s eager to prove the major wrong. As the nixen walks away she smiles at xer back. She loves a challenge. Belligerence rolls through her, fed by the song of stone. This kind of energy got her into fights with grown-ass mercenaries at fourteen, fights she sometimes won.

Ruin leaps atop the holy labo boulder. “Get in the hot seat, Misery Nomaki.”

Misery mounts the helmet and heaves into the pilot module. Inside, holystone flows in awkward shapes, fluted and jutting, too narrow to accommodate the flat soles of her feet. On tiptoes, she maneuvers into the seat, which curves like a bucket and resists the width of her hips. “How does anyone even fly these fucking things?”

“In a live unit,” Ruin says, “the stone changes to suit you. It’ll be quite something when you experience it for the first time.”