Holloway paused to listen. If he’d heard something, it was either gone now, or knew he was aware of it.

His datacom spoke. “I don’t sense any life signs, Joshua.”

“Yeah? Well, that don’t mean much on this ship.”

He had found some loose conduit fiber while crawling through a garbage chute. The fiber proved effective for lashing his datacom around his wrist.

“They shoulda made a vam outta you,” he’s told Holly.

“But that would violate all sorts of pf regs,” she replied.

So he wore her in a jury-rigged way, grateful for the situational awareness she afforded him.

She emitted a scan in all directions, sensing nothing but shadows.

“But there could be something in those shadows,” he complained.

“Joshua, the only beating hearts in this room are yours and mine.”

“Imogen’s tits. You ain’t got no heart.”

Her face appeared in front of his. “On the contrary. I’m all heart.”

“Cute. Allright, what’s beyond that door?”

A thin beam of dim photons lanced from his datacomm to the door on the far side of the unused office suite, illuminating a cloud of dust motes in the unlit space.

“Another office.”

“Where are you leading me? We’ve been chasing these suspicious exos for almost an hour.”

“Oh, Joshua.”

He held up his wrist and wrinkled his brow at the hologram. “Now don’t go sassin’ me you danged computer lady! You’re a device, not a person. Tell me what I wanna know.”

The face was replaced by a map with a series of dots, none of them indicating non-human lifesigns.

“Then where are we going?”

Silence.

“Oh, come on.” He wiggled his fingers through the holo display on the datacomm and found the settings menu, then lowered the interface immersion by a small percentage.

Holly reappeared. “You wound me, Joshua.”

“Yeah, yeah. Where are we going? You got me hooked with some tall tale. Now tell me the truth or I’n turning us back.”

“We’re stopping the invaders, of course.”

“But they’re nowhere in sight.”

“We’re not following them, silly.”

He stopped himself before asking his next question, replacing a look of impatience with a look of approval. “We’re goin’ where they’re goin’.”

Holly winked.

“Lead the way.”

They passed through office suite after office suite. Holloway began to feel nauseated at the thought of so much space being set aside for monotony. Then they burst through a pair of doors that while locked were damaged enough to open. Then it was a tour de corridor, and Holloway again found himself aghast at how much of Albion, a precious, if not holy vessel, was squandered by its ungrateful populace.

Holly led him to a joint where the ship had transformed. He felt along the walls and found a gap just wide enough to slip through.

“I’m not gonna end up walking into space, am I?”

“Well, that depends.”

He smirked. “Well,” he grunted as he squeezed through the narrow space, “if you’re trying to hint that I need to eat less bar food, you made your point.”

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Holly giggled, then spread a radius of soft light, illuminating the space just ahead.

“Thank you, darlin’.”

“Anything for my Joshua.”

He was quiet for the next twenty minutes, favoring grunts and wheezes over speech as he pressed through. He was about to complain when his path opened up. Holly’s orb of light showed no more than an expanse of large flagstones that seemed to go on forever.

“It’s cold in here,” he said.

“It’s a big room. Here.” She focused the light into a semi-wide swath. “I’ll point the way.”

“Where the faldergarb are we?” he said as they walked. Holly wasn’t wrong. The room was immense, its ceiling far higher than their soft light could hope to reach. But his voice echoed, and the air was at all times cold and drafty.

“It’s your ship,” Holly replied.

“Well yeah, but it’s a huge ship. There’s tons of parts I ain’t seen. Hell, we only occupy about ten percent of it. And we only use…”

His voice trailed off and his footsteps slowed. Holly intensified her light and the statue, no less than three hundred feet long and who knew how high, revealed a portion of its profane and haunting nature to the interlopers invading its hallowed lair.

One figure, shrunken and grey, lay in a twisted fetal heap. Another, just as shriveled, lay atop the first, its skewed limbs in macabre mockery of an embrace. A third pair of necrid limbs draped over the second figure’s sunken waist, but their bearer was invisible in the dark above.

“What in the name of Imogen’s tits is this supposed to be?”

He slowly approached the dismal monument, careful not to step too close or make any noise.

He paused when he realized he was rounding the lowest figure’s jaw, then stepped back. He radiated such a strong sense of regret for having looked on the tortured scene that mild telepathy would not have been needed to know his thoughts.

The mamani chose that moment to reveal himself, coming silently out of the dark.

"Perfect,” Holloway said, “another corpse. Well don’t just stand there, climb on up and join the cuddle puddle.”

“You’re in a mood,” Sam grumbled.

“Maybe I don’t like being followed.”

“I tried to shake him lose,” said Holly.

“Did you now? Well, Holly, I guess I forgive you for the prevaricatory nature of our excursion.” He turned to look at Sam. “So, what’s the op, partner?”

“Needle asked me to protect Samhadi. My present happens to be leading you my way.”

“Samhadi?” Holloway looked back at the monument and grimaced. The one full face he could see was twisted and broken. The one above was barely visible; its right cheekbone shone above the jaw, which looked to be kissing the neck of the body beneath. The rest of it was shrouded in shadow.

“Beautiful,” said Sam.

Holloway glanced back at him, his face a tangle of disgust and disbelief.

“Yeah,” he said. “Move over Bourgeoise. Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

It took some time for them to cross the monumental hall. They passed through a doorway Sam managed to activate, then stopped suddenly when they saw a window.

“Now what?!” Josh exclaimed.

Albion had become a thing out of myth, but the two men had fixed their frightened eyes on something else. A glowing form of writhing energies hovered just outside the ship.

His eyes were stars, his body electric, his aura the flames of war. He pressed himself against the hyperfiber hull and screamed, his body burning as Albion’s blessed hull crushed his atoms. His radiance dimmed when he squeezed his naked, bleeding body through.

“Sweet Jesus!” shouted Holloway. “General!” He ran to Sensus, taking off his jacket. “Sam,” he said when he got to the wounded Harbinger, “give him your robe.”

Sam did just so, and Sensus stood slowly, clutching at the other men’s arms as he rose.

“What’s happening to the ship, General?” Josh asked nervously.

“I was hoping you could tell me. You must be Sam. Thank you for the robe.”

Sam bowed.

“We’re heading to Samhadi,” said Holloway.

Senses seemed confused. “I was just there.”

“You were?”

“In a way. You’re after the insurgents?”

“Yes,” said Sam.

“Good,” said Sensus. “The four of us should be able to stop them.”

Holloway glanced at Holly. “Oh, she’s just a hologram.”

But Sensus ignored Holloway, for his vision, awakening, had begun to translate the Gloom and he now looked Grundelgrum directly in the eye.

The general stepped forward and Grundelgrum shivered. This man, whom Solomon the Sacred had spoken of so highly, told so many heroic stories of, was to the Darkenthrall and Gloomkin a folk hero, and Grundelgrum the Wrestler, their strongest warrior, had wept when he was chosen to serve that legendary man’s interests.

Had he the wits to speak, he would have apologized to the general for his appearance. They twisted the frayed edges of Briah’s photons around their bodies to cloak their tortured forms, but Sensus was above such cheap tricks now. His cloven hands, his fingered feet, his cracked grey hide and the mass of wriggling teeth that was his face, Sensus saw it all.

The Harbinger stood above the Shadow Child now, looking down with an uncertain glare.

“So that’s what you really look like. Sol told me you’d been the wringer but still…”

Grundelgrum grinned. He wasn’t like the others. He liked being a monster.

Sensus grinned back, burning violet light filling the space between his lips. “You’re one ugly mother-“