H5 was no more a spacefaring craft than Albion, or Oba-Saltus Kaul, or the Brethren Onslaught. Forge cupped his hands around the kzin-rathi Empire Ship like it was a firefly. Its guns blazed, tickling his palms.

“Flea,” said Eukary, “I’m fine.”

“Lieutenant, none of us are fine.”

Oba-Saltus Kaul’s fighters filled the creases in Forge’s skin with incendiaries.

“You’re overreacting.”

“LT, there’s a giant head in our tractor beam and my man is astral projecting. Now, wit’ all due respeck, sit yo enlightened ass back down on yo bed.”

Eukary laughed. Forge was suddenly reminded of the sound and how happy he felt to hear it. He never made her do it. At least not intentionally, the way Reev got Ru to do it.

“Is he still playing cat’s cradles with the universe?” Reev asked. And Ru was there as well, laughing. Did he summon them too?

“That’s some quantum…” Ru trailed off. “Never mind. I got nuthin’. I’ll leave the jokes to you.”

“Yeah, yeah. I know my role. Hey Flea, best leave Euk to her hovering. Useful skills like that aren’t something she’s used to.”

Forge let the firefly loose and turned his eye across a grave that stretched a continent across.

“Where’s Cat?” asked Euk.

“Outside,” said Ru.

“Still? What’s he doing?”

“Pretending space has chairs,” said Reev.

Forge looked for his captain, but only found his shell. “Cat?” he said.

“Hey, he’s talkin,” said Reev.

“Forge, baby,” said Euk.

In front of the others. Had things changed?

“I’m here, Forge,” said Cat.

“Where, Captain?”

“He’s outside, baby.”

“Forge,” said Ru, “Cat’s outside. Where are you at, buddy?”

“Really?” said Reev. “She called him baby twice and you’re letting it slide.”

“He’s gotta point, Euk. You guys agreed to keep your unrequited love a secret, remember.”

“Love?” said Reev.

“Unrequited?” said Euk.

“Majula,” said Cat.

“Where’s Majula?” asked Forge.

“Majula?” said Reev. “Oh, you know. Hang left at LV-426. Can’t miss it.”

“Reev…” said Ru.

“I can fly you there,” said Euk. “I can fly us anywhere, baby.”

“Okay,” said Flea, “y’all holla of you need anythang. I’m out.”

“Where’s Majula, Captain?” Forge asked again. He heard waves.

“I don’t know,” his captain said.

“Is it in Ulro?”

“No. I don’t think it is.”

Forge saw a pink horizon cut by a yellow sun. Above him in a day blue sky wheeled stars. The ripples of the sun on the glassy sea were polished gold. All around him, the miles seemed both near and far. “Are you sure?”

“I can see Briah.”

Catalyst sat on a rock near the edge of a great bluff, looking across the sea into whatever there may be.

But Forge saw stars, and he saw stars within stars and stars devouring stars. And when he drew back far enough he saw great pillars of stars, and he remembered his shared life recalled in Ulro, where on old Terra he would find a similar cliff to sit on and stare at the ancient skylines sagging in ruin, buckling under the sinkholes caused by the decay of older cities, they the bones on which the less ancient world had sought its bedrock.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“What’s one life among all this?” Cat mused.

“Captain?”

“You can see, Forge. Look.”

He looked and saw. He saw and wept. Entire parsecs bathed in corpse ash, with brilliant skies now swollen black. There were no birds, no clouds, no stars. Just a mass of insects gorged to bursting.

“They’re coming,” said his friend. “They’re coming and we can’t stop them,” said his captain.

They looked like comets at first, dragging their tails of cold dried blood. But he could hear their voices, hear them chewing their food, hear the weak sobs of their organ doners in the season of their harvest.

“What is one life against all this? One mind against trillions.”

The comets were now close enough to see. Throbbing with dead life, dripping with inexplicable mania. Each looked like the unskulled brain of some loathsome creature, their near necrotic matter sick with green and purple rot. Each of them bled, trailing liquified biomass through space like engine plumes.

“Has all of Ulro gone mad?” Cat continued. “What can Red Orak do against that?”

“They’re far,” said Forge. “And they’re slow. Albion can race to them and back to the Verge before they’re halfway here.”

“It won’t matter.”

“It will.”

But would it? Thousands of civilizations had fled the Brethren Onslaught, and some had thrived for generations after settling far away. But the Surge never stopped or slowed, and often their vanguard found the species that ran, and their hive masses eventually came, leaving effigies of entropy and agony behind.

“One life,” said Cat. “One. Among all of that, only one.”

Forge turned his neck, only he didn't. His head kept still. He heard Cat’s echo from Majula, but his body would not respond when he tried to turn and go back to his captain, back to his friend. One by one he felt each muscle and tendon, seeing with his nerves where each fiber had gone stiff. He massaged them with thought until they loosened enough to move, and he stood in facing his captain, sitting on his rock, watching the blank space beyond the farthest ripple of waves.

“There has to be a way,” Forge said.

Majula had a planet. Grand and blue with green continents and white clouds tinted pink. Grey storms churned the open seas, pitting them with vortices, then broke hard on the continental shelves that rose like bastions over the waves.

Like bastions.

Beneath the planet’s magnanimous beauty was something uniform and familiar. They found Solomon there, under its repeating hillscape. He had gathered the dead for his work.

A world within a world; could such a thing exist?

He left that weird place for home and laid his cold cheek on Albion’s warm flesh. His armor faded, his harness drifted away, his radiance bled in rivers from his eyes. Albion, the universal soul, in the aspect of a woman, touched his naked shoulders and pulled him close to her until he was inside her womb, feeding on her milk from inside her breast. He fed on her till her milk poured from his eyes and ears and nose and mouth, and he was nearly drowned in but for her call to arms. At that the milk turned to hissing vapor and he shivered on the bed in medbay.

“He’s waking up,” said Ishtar.

He opened his eyes. Ru was standing by him with her hand on his shoulder. Her eyes were dim and her cheeks were moist. Reev was just behind her, tapping on his vam.

“Aster,” he said. “Aster. Helooo.”

She spoke through static. “What?”

Forge craned his neck to Eukary. She was unconscious, covered by a thin blanket, floating on her back a half foot off her bed.

“Man, you guys took the good stuff,” Reev said.

His vam crackled again. “What, Reev?”

“Aster, he’s up. Get Cat in here.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Come and see.”

“He better bot be a cloud.”

“Come and see.”

“Reev,” said Ru, “go help her.”

Forge closed his eyes. “Captain? What are you doing?”

“I’m interrogating the bastard.”

Forge clenched his fists. “Captain? What are you doing?”

“He knows everything, Forge. Everything. He’s from there. He’s of there. We have to learn everything we can from him.”

The room was quiet for a while. Forge opened his eyes so he could watch Euk’s chest heave from her labored breaths. The other team milled in and out, offering genuine platitudes or attempts at humor. Eventually he heard Reev’s voice through static.

“Ru, get out here. You two, Red. And bring your big boys. The haole and the Ninja Turtle.”

“What did he call me?” said Raphael.

“Man, he called me a haole,” said Gilgamesh. “He’s the haole, not me.”

“Reev, what’s going on?”

“Just come, Ru,” said Aster.

All but Ishtar and Flea began moving towards the door.

“Guys,” said Ru, “we’re coming. Can’t you tell us what’s happening?”

“The dang nermal’s gone and… he’s… damn it, Cat… for the love of tits, come back!”

“Reev!”

“He’s flying into the head, Ru! You hear me? He’s flying into the… Oh come on! Don’t take your clothes off!”

They all hurried out and the room was quiet. Ishtar and Flea sat in chairs and watched, eyes shifting from Euk to Forge, Forge to Euk. Catalyst flew through Orak’s throat and buried his hands in his basal ganglia. The others tried to find him, but he mummified himself in Orak’s dried out tissue and cast echoes of himself to draw them away.

“No,” said Ishtar. She stood and went to Euk. “No. Baby girl? Baby girl? No. No, no, no Flea do something!”

Euk was convulsing, violently. Then she was begging not to be hurt and asking why. Then she was gone. Then she was back, under her blanket again before it had a chance to drop. She was calm, and her breathing settled into a soothing whistle as she gently lowered onto the bed.