She turns and is presented with the lovely, infuriating visage of the princess. Then there’s the roomful of strangers who are now demanding explanation for what just happened. The Lady Alodia Lightning looks pleased, but with her, who can tell? Also, pleasure seems like the wrong emotion to be telegraphing at this moment. Misery’s just destroyed an entire ship. She doesn’t know the typical roster for a vessel that size, but there had to be a dozen crew at least. So, more murder. At least this time it’s Heretics. Not sure how she feels about that. The princess is definitely partial to murder, though. She knows that.

“It’s over, then?” The asker is the captain of one of the seraph servings—was it Cormac Yellow-1?—hir voice butter-soft. Zie looks more shaken than Misery herself feels, this seasoned veteran of untold seraph battles trembling like a rag in the wind.

“It’s over,” General Tsung says. “Start the cooldown.” Their voice has compacted into something with all the power and gravity of a neutron star. Quiet. Authoritative. Deeply determined. What they’ve just witnessed has solidified the belief they’ve been too afraid to hold. But it is true—the Larex Forge has answered the prayers they’ve whispered into the dark. They have that look about them that Misery only knows too well: the look of one deeply religious whose faith has just been reinforced.

Around them, the crew shake off their awed stupor and return to their duties with military discipline. The aegis is turned off. Red alert canceled. The serving captains reconnect with their pilots and direct them back home. The fear and tension run out of the room, like a sump being drained, leaving behind a complex sludge of emotion. Relief, disbelief, hope, awe. To Misery that frothing peat is all good news and rich potential. So many things she can shape out of things felt that strongly. She will build herself a bridge to survival.

Next to the General, Captain Sunyata Diamond frowns in deep thought, her fist pressed to her chin. She hasn’t felt this way in a long time—and that, so far, has been a good thing. One brush with divinity is all she needed in her lifetime. What just happened threatens the foundations of the meager recovery’s she’s clawed out over these years. Fascinating. The captain is perhaps the only person in the room feeling objectively worse than before the attack. Despair lies deep in her being like a hard, enormous stone, and it’s not immediately clear why. Misery will have to learn more.