Dust

28 the kiss of angels

Perceval turned her face and permitted the angel to kiss her. She closed her eyes, breathing between parted lips, and waited to see what happened.

At first, there was nothing. The small, chaste kiss. The pressure of Dust leaning in, and withdrawing. And then she felt her breath come clean, and the next one, pure and untrammeled, filling a chest no longer restricted by longing. She breathed deep, held it, let it flow.

She owned herself again. For a long, clean second, she exulted, and if her wings had been hers, too, she would have stretched out into them.

And then Dust touched her shoulder, and called her "Captain."

And she realized she would never be herself again.

She was braced for an invasion. To be torn out of herself, smashed, raped, impaled. But that wasn't it at all. Instead, the first thing she noticed was a creeping dissolution. As if the fringes of her consciousness were sliding apart, growing friable and then melting into particles. Into powder.

Into dust.

Perceval crumbled. Scattered. Disassociated. Dispersed. She felt herself slipping away, the core, the center, the ego worn into a shadow even starlight could shine through. As if she were all fingers and no eyes, all edge and no center. She felt the world all through her, or her all through the world, and the ship and its denizens were no different. She felt it lacking, felt where it was weary with metal fatigue, battle fatigue, the incessant scrape of entropy.

Dust was there with her. She felt him, in all his diffusion, all his cold angelic will, as she spun along the webs and nodules and struts and lattices of the world.

She felt where the ship might hold, when the waystar primary went supernova. She felt where no repairs could be enough, where it would inevitably fail. She felt the borders of other angels, and the spaces where she could not tread.

She felt Ariane approaching, on the one side. And on the other, Rien and Tristen, come to bring her home. Too late, too late, and she mourned not her loss—for she had not lost them—but the grief they would suffer on behalf of her.

Like oil dropped onto a puddle, Perceval spread thin. And lost herself in the world.

There was only so far the lift could take them. Eventually, they came to the outer hull of the bridge itself, protected at the core of the world. When the lift finally rattled to a halt, vibrating and straining so Rien could feel the unheard whine of metal fatigue through her boots, she could not at first seem to unlock her gauntlets from the strut. But Tristen, armor glistening, paused beside her and carefully uncurled each finger, with a delicacy she could imagine had taken decades to perfect.

He held one of her wrists. They floated face-to-face for a moment, and when Rien peered through his faceplate she saw him wink, quite broadly, his waxy face contorting.

And then his face shield closed, and she was looking at her own reflection mirrored in its gloss-white carapace for two long seconds until her own armor locked down as well. Then she saw through sensor motes connected to her symbiont, a spherical field of vision that left her almost completely disoriented. The armor reassured her, though: a steady stream of data, filtered down until it made sense. Tristen released her wrist, and she wondered if he gave her a final reflexive squeeze. Above them, Samael's ghostly avatar floated beside what Rien could only assume was an air-lock entry.

Tristen moved away.

Rien's armor followed his.

Entering was easy. Samael merely put out his hand— not, Rien thought, that he needed to, except for dramatic purposes—and opened the air-lock door. As her armor brought her inside, she caught herself wondering if it would be that easy to get back out again.

Or if there would be any need.

Once inside, they moved through cobwebbed darkness, but the armor had no need of light. Insect husks crunched underfoot, and the armor relied on internal air. From its conversation, Rien understood that the biosphere here had long failed, the flora dying in darkness and drought and, in due time, the fauna following. Not, however, be' fore the flies and spiders had undergone an apparent population explosion.

—Armor?—

—At the ready.—

—Do you have a name?—

—This unit is unnamed.—

—Oh.— She waited, as if it might somehow proactively fill the gap. But there were only echoes of her own silent voice in her head. —Would you like a name?—

Of course she couldn't feel it hesitate as it processed the question. Even Exalted reflexes could never be fast enough. Perhaps it was simply focused on a tricky bit of following the others through the gloom. Tristen's chalky armor glimmered on ultraviolet. Rien wondered if he had chosen that whiteness for dramatic reasons, or so as to draw fire.

Or possibly so as to be the first to come to Ariane's notice, if—when—they should reach her.

The scabbard of the unblade clasped across her back protruded at hip level. She touched it nervously.

—Yes.— the armor said, when she had grown resigned to a lack of answer.

She nodded, its collar rubbing her throat, and said, —I'll think on it.—

She wondered at the bounce she thought she sensed in its step, for minutes after.

It was easy to tell which door led to the bridge, even in the blackness. Rien could clearly make out the stand beside it, the glass dome and what rested within.

Hero Ng knew what the case held.

A paper New Evolutionist Bible. With leather covers, and pages pressed from wood and cotton fibers grown in the soul of ancient Earth.

Rien could barely breathe as they came forward.

Piece by piece, particle by particle, Dust collected his Captain. He'd known it would come to this; he'd known she'd fall into his vastness. They lived so bounded, these small intelligences.

But he could get her back.

Fragment by fragment he redeemed her, brought her together, showed her how to integrate herself. As for maintaining the connections between the particles of her consciousness and the meat that Dust believed housed her soul... they learned that together.

Dust worked feverishly. Taught, feverishly. Learned in a frenzy. Because Ariane was there, and Dust could feel Asrafil pressing at his fringes. They were coming.

They were nearly here.

Alasdair Conn hadn't been a real Captain. Just a Commodore. In charge, but not in command.

He had never surrendered himself to his ship.

To his angels.

As Perceval surrendered now. Surrendered, and possessed.

And stood again, dripping stormlight, wreathed in her dozen shining wings, just as the forward bulkhead blew wide open on the Enemy, and Ariane and her angel came within.