‘Lord!’ The shout filled his ears. The deck and walls shook and shook again. ‘Lord there is a… distortion around the Phalanx, lord. There are things in the void–’

Something struck the ship, flipping it over like a toy thrown from a child’s hand. Alarms blared as the world rolled over and over.

The metal of the doors before them bloomed with rust as creatures burst through in a wave of wide mouths and reaching claws.

The Phalanx, Inner System Gulf

‘Look at him,’ said the voice behind Mersadie. Around her, the image of the Phalanx’s reactor chamber blurred and blinked into the image of a family house on Terra, then it became the cell she had lived in for the last seven years, then it was a dark cave filled with the sound of falling water. In all of them, Loken stood before her, frozen as he staggered backwards, sword falling from his hand. But his eyes were alive, and alight with pain. ‘Weakness is a habit, you know,’ said the voice behind her. ‘You return to it like a dog to its vomit…’

She felt her body move forwards and pluck Loken’s sword from the air as it fell. She kicked him. The force and impact would have broken her leg but the strength that moved in her was not her own. Loken’s frozen form tumbled back. The scene around them was still the cave. A black abyss opened beneath the spit of rock they stood on. Loken lay on its edge.

She felt her neck move, so that she was looking down at him. The sword in her grip felt light, its weight and bulk a feather.

‘Our dreams cannot change the stars. But sometimes, our deeds can change the universe even if it is only by accident.’ She heard the memory of her own words, and waited for the voice behind her to comment or laugh, but it was silent, focused on Loken lying on the floor next to the abyss.

‘You did the same thing with Jubal,’ said a voice that came from her mouth, but was not hers. ‘And then with the lodges, and then with Horus… Even after all you have seen and all you have done, Loken, you just can’t quite believe the worst is happening. And so you have hope, and pity, and so you suffer for your weakness.’ The sword in her hand rose, the point resting on Loken’s throat just above the collar of his armour.

‘And that is enough?’ the memory of Vek’s voice said.

Still there was no reaction.

‘We could let him choke,’ said the voice behind Mersadie. ‘Stop the muscles in his lungs. Crush him bit by bit…’

‘It is all we have…’

‘But I think this is better. Everything has meaning, and what does it say that this last lost son of wolves dies by his own sword.’