“I shouldn’t be here.”

Silence.

“Hypatia.”

She was gone.

So was the sky. Only mute and hazy darkness surrounded him, and Eno, she stood on nothing, a human shape of billowing grey rags a dozen feet above him.

“Eno,” he said, “bring up Dawn Exigent. Night Op One, please.”

“Mission status: ongoing,” was the Aged Mother’s reply.

“But I brought him back.”

“Phase one: retrieval.”

“And phase two?”

“Delivery of payload. Status: concluded.”

As she spoke, she seemed to expand, and soon Sensus was looking into the crescent of a vast moon. Within the vast moon’s craters were the stars of every planetary horizon.

“What payload?” His voice echoed. “Albion? Is Albion the payload? What’s happening to the ship?”

Eno’s hooded head showed behind the rag-wrapped figure, vast and translucent against the vast moon. “What ship?”

“Albion. What’s happening to Albion?”

“We are waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

“For the Aged Mother.”

Confused, Sensus stepped forward, palms displayed at his side. “I’ve always thought that name referred to you, Eno.”

“I am the mother’s Whisper, and I called across the Deep to the mother’s Echo, begging her to awaken and to water those seeds that could germinate.”

He put both hands to his chest. “Us?”

A wind from another plane interacted with Eno, blowing back her hood to reveal a face both youthful and ancient. Her eyes were glass and when she spoke, Sensus saw clusters of galaxies between her lips.

“You are dust left by the fetal bloom, spared its unreconcilable anger by the memories the mother’s Echo transcribed.”

“This body’s life?”

Eno nodded. Her movement brought an electrical storm.

“Eno, what can we do? How can we succeed against so many enemies?”

“You cannot.”

“Can you? What about Shaka?”

Her hooded visage, twelve feet above Sensus, spoke while the vast moon remained silent.

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“Phase three status: initiated.”

“Shaka’s the payload? What’s phase four?”

“Pending.”’

Sensus slumped. He craved knowledge, but something in him held him back from pressing this vision for more. He clasped his hands together and looked past the robed figure to the face amidst the moon. “What must we do?”

A storm wind rose and blew the robed figure away, and when it peaked Sensus could see nothing. His eyes rekindled, and in newly calmed air he breathed deep, looking at Hypatia through the visor of his skullfort.

“We return here to find wholeness and peace,” she said, “because in our past lives we lacked these things, and we caused great harm in our quest to fill the void in our hearts. In Samhadi, our riven shards are knit, but in Samhadi there is also a sword that can split the fea from the hroa. In Samhadi, the dream is real. Do you understand, General?”

They were returned to the grave where Sensus looked into the basin of the Sentinel minds. Special Assault Group 79 rose from the basin and formed up behind Hypatia with their rifles shouldered.

Sensus took off his skullfort. That act sent a shockwave through the air, and his armor vanished, leaving him naked before the Sentinels. “I understand.”

They opened fire.

His eyes opened to the void. He wore only a medical gown, and he was very cold, but only for an instant, as with his wakening his radiance burned and he glowed, a beacon in space. Albion spun before him, its luminous fibers orbiting its watchful core. Sensus enveloped himself in a sphere or circling photons and propelled himself forward.

The tendrils of power lashing out from Albion whipped at him, inflicting terrible pain. He cried out at first, but each one hurt less, and his radiance hardened, reflecting much of the power outward and absorbing what he could handle. By the time he reached the inner folds of Albion’s many wings he surged with more strength than he had ever known.

With that strength he pushed through the ship’s navigational deflector screens and rocketed towards the hull, dodging the grinder of rotating mechanisms that orbited the core, now glowing with a fierce white light. But when he came close, he was repelled, and so he flew about searching for a gap in this new protective aura.

Dejected he withdrew, scanning the vessel for an opening.

Where the many wings attached to the hull were many ventral ports. In normal vision they were a blur, so Sensus, driven by subconscious algorithms, drew from the particles surrounding him and fashioned a facsimile of hos skullfort. But as he peered through that visor, it occurred to him his brain was only simulating what he expected his instruments to show him, and that he was not wearing a vacuum sealed full-face helmet with an integrated combat and situational awareness suite. So he dispensed with the illusion and focused the power in his glowing eyes.

The ports were wide, but very shallow. He would not be able to enter the ship through there. He sighed, then turned to get some distance to see from, prying an opening in the deflector screens again. And then he saw it.

Bindu Prime had cracked. Four lines ran vertically down the planet, visible even from where he hovered. The atmosphere of the world seemed to be expanding as well, and he could just barely perceive movement in the world’s uniform surface. For some time he watched, moved to unexplained tears which hissed on his cheeks when light beamed from the four cracks in the planet.

Eventually he drifted away from Albion and closed his eyes, seeing the ship in his mind. The vessel was turned outward on itself, leaving its layout a mystery to Sensus. Airlocks, docking ports, shuttle bays, fighter launch tubes and EVA access ports were all his best bets, but they were hidden and in motion. If only he could reach out to their controlling software. Perhaps… As Hypatia said, he was light.

But he was drawn into Samhadi by Eno, a great being. He had no telepathic abilities of his own. But perhaps…

I can listen.

So he listened.

And he listened.

And he heard.

It was Eno again, but her presence was faint. He strained to hear with his thoughts and match the voice to a direction, feeling his way through a mindscape he was a newcomer to.

His body moved instinctively as his thoughts stretched out, weaving tendrils around the whisper coming from the ship. He felt the displacement of neutrinos and dust as the massive wheels of the ship turned, felt the shadow of its wings passing over him, and the heat of Albion’s burning heart as he drew closer to the core that spun its many wheels. Wheels within wheels he passed through, until he opened his eyes and was looking through a window.

The ship was dark inside, but he could make out the confused face of Holloway and a hideous creature rising behind him.