Fine. She says to the room: “The Heretic said the shield is blind from the inside. What if we jumped inside the net, and took it out from there?”

The major is instantly skeptical. “Yours is the only unit that can jump freely. Are you saying you want to take out six ships by yourself? And again if it turns out we were wrong?”

Yes, she wants to say. Yes. She will destroy an entire Heretic fleet by herself, just give her the chance. She will cut them open one by one and she will revel in it. But Diamond says, “Wait—there’s another thing. Monkglass. We can use the station. Their scanners could confirm which of the models is correct.”

Tank slaps the display table, incandescent with excitement. “Shit. That’s fucking genius. You could jump in, make contact with the station, get the confirmation, and get back out.”

Her childish enthusiasm balances the muted response from the rest of the room, weighed down by years of anxieties. The fears of carrying out such a complicated operation. The memories of failed sorties past, ghosts of the many dead lodged under the skin.

Major Reyes cannot contain the force of xer objections. “This is stupidity. This is shit-tank stupidity. We know nothing about the conditions within the siege ring. To jump inside without any intel—to hinge the entire operation on jumping inside without any intel—that’s madness.”

Misery seethes with nuclear heat. “We have intel. The Larex Forge guides us.”

“And does the Larex Forge tell you exactly what to expect inside the siege shield?”

No. But yes. “After everything you’ve seen, you still doubt? How long did Angelsteeth suffer repeated insults from the Heretics before Zie reached forth Hir hand and crushed them?” Through me, she wants to add. Zie worked through me.

“Are you certain you can pull it off?” asks the General.

Finally, someone with some faith. “I am.”

“We still have to work out the logistics,” bleats the Major.

General Tsung grunts. “We can work them out.”

Pyrex Imogen, who has attended in silence, knowing the technicality of the details are beyond their station, says: “Can this be done without alerting the Heretics?”

“Absolutely,” Tank says. “Like, you don’t even have to touch them. The beauty of knowing the KD principles is that you can just scan the patterns, visually, and run the data against your predictions. It’s, like, really basic stuff. We can pull it off, for sure, no problem.”

The other attending engineers seem equally confident, in expression if not in speech. Misery folds her arms, thinking. Getting to Monkglass and getting inside will not be a problem. Not for her. Not for the archangel. Yet— “Will the crew on Monkglass understand what we’re planning? How much explaining will I have to do?”