The archangel Misery knows this the moment zie tears through the fabric of space and emerges within the borders of the siege mechanism. The stars coalesce around hir as though emerging from water, and overhead the net of Heretic ships looms like a great glass ceiling. A human eye would see nothing—thirty-six ships scattered over the surface equivalent of a small moon would be lost in the blanket of the cosmos, the billions and billions of pinpricks set against the cold, each one a sun too far away to touch. Hard to find something as small as a ship in all of that. But the archangel Misery is more than human, and each of those stars is but a waypoint, a marker in the map of the universe. The Heretic ships blaze with malicious will in hir sight. Thirty-six darts tilting the entropy of the nullvoid in their direction, sinks of possibility that map onto the human Misery’s neurology as a jolt of tartness, increasing in acidity as time moves forward in material space.

And then, there—lording over them, cutting an enormous orbit around the siege net, is their leader. Outside of the shield, but in command. The archangel Misery instantly recognizes the blade for what it is. A sibling to the ship zie cut open in defense of Angelsteeth Base, which seems an age ago. Here is another for them to destroy. Esse Temple lurks within, wicked and bloodthirsty, a foul blossom on the nullvoid. Hunger rises: zie aches to do it again. The archangel Misery could split that ship’s skin and spill its profane contents like so much seed pulp. But no—zie must be patient. That is not the agreed-upon plan. And the human Faithful, the captain Sunyata Diamond—she has been given the honor of dealing the final blow. As she should.

Before them, at the center of it all, lies Monkglass Station. The subject of their labors, waiting for liberation. On the left are the jaws of the jump portal, its gums rendered gray and inactive by the siege mechanism. On the right is the sparkling top that is Monkglass Station, fat in the middle and tapering to spike points above and below. Acrylplate shines in generous swathes, making up most of the upper dome, and beneath that clear layer lives a canopy of lights and metal architecture. A pretty bauble floating in space. In happier times Monkglass was a thriving spaceport, a center of commerce, a waypoint between the duchies Taurus and Canis. Thousands called it their home. And there are thousands still, even in these days of decline. Those same thousands have been trapped under its gleaming facade for months. Now the renegades of the holy have come to rescue them from their long confinement.