The Altar room was empty. The Rider could still hear the distant shouts and bangs and other noises of the evacuation. The Captain’s voice reached her, loud and commanding and infuriatingly calm. She lifted the wet cloth and pressed it to the metal of the pedestal, hot with the pain of the battle.
There had been chunks thorn from the ship, hooks and claws of the many attempts of the invaders. Sanctum had fended them all off, cursed tham and killed them with a battle fury that made her heart swell with pride. The cloth soon became uncomfortable to hold, but she did not pull it away why it might bring small comfort to her beloved ship.
This was what the crew considered to be the face of the ship. Sometimes, if he felt helpful or like playing a joke, he would lead them here and speak to them. They couldn’t really hear his voice, of course, but he could play some music or put some words on a screen. He did so now, and her heart broke as she realised that he could no longer tell that she shared the room with him.
Run?
It was asked with the usual hopeful excitement. They always ran for a celebration as well as travelling long distances. He so loved being in the Slip, the space between things. There they could almost go as fast as light itself. She loved it too but, unlike the ship, she knew when to pull back.
The Rider pressed her forehead to the pedestal, letting him sense her in a more complete fashion. She felt the surge of joy that always came when they were together, and she felt the pain behind it as well. He never hid anything from her. Lies were for small people and their small ways. He was large and full and honest at all times. He sensed her pain as well, the bruising on her arms from when the last round of invaders had tried to grab her, the tears running down her cheeks.
He showed her the scene again, how he had opened up his floor and dragged them into the heart and heat of him and burned them to nothing for daring to touch her. No need to cry, he had saved her. He did not understand why she cried harder. They were together. Things were always better when they were together.
He could run with her, and when they found the others like him, she stopped him from chasing them and being lost in the run forever. There hadn’t been many others, in the last few years, not like when he was a colt and all of the inside places were filled with the race. He wasn’t alone though, not when he was with her.
These were not words he spoke to her, or images in her mind. It was her mind, their mind, joined together like they had been doing since he was a new born and she was just fifteen summers.
She separated from him, and though she could feel his confusion and searching, she could not let him understand what she was trying to keep from him. She took it as a sign of his trust in her that he did not even expect that she would abandon him.
She wet the cloth again, ignoring her own tears, and pressed the cloth to the metal with a hiss. Soon the captain would return to offer her a choice. He would stay either way, if she knew him at all, and die with the ship under his feet. He couldn’t ram them like she could, but he could explode the engines on impact. It wouldn’t do as much damage, but it would be enough. Her choice was whether she would stay to die with them, or go home with the news of the loss- to warn their friends and families.
Others could do that.
Her ship was dying. Her beautiful, brave ship- her Sanctum- was dying. His injuries were bad, but he could have limped home had they not been surrounded. The Captain had turned off his scanners so he couldn’t see what was happening. Their ships spooked easy, but she wasn't worried about that.
Sanctum was a thoroughbred, trained for battle since birth. Her Sanctum would have rushed into the fray if he sensed it, but they needed to buy time for the others to get away.
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Her father had told her once that had he been born before the war, when the wild ships still roamed and their own numbered thousands, Sanctum would have run his own herd. She believed that had more of their ships been his blood at the start of the war, they would have won long ago.
Yet that wasn’t what happened. They had lost. Everyone knew it. The defeat hadn’t been announced. There had been no point. They were too few and too fragmented now. At the last meeting, only five ships had reported in.
They had brought back the carcasses of the Ophelia and the Spiritus in secret, away from the other ships and those who might sell the knowledge. She had lied to Sanctum, for the first time, then. So she could go to the funerals, see that they could be given the proper rights. So he could go on believing he would see them again. They had not been able to have funeral for so many of the others.
The Rider sniffed back a tear. Maybe this war was doomed from the beginning. She remembered the first time she had encountered the enemy, wrapped in the corpse of a ship she had seen birth others. That would not happen to Santum. She would not allow it.
Yet now she thought about a few hours ago, looking out at the enemy and seeing their hulls decorated and patched with familiar charred remains. Glorious had such a pretty metal, like it was coated in oil that gathered rainbow patterns. She had been there the day Glorious had died, heard the last transmission of her Captain and Rider, both friends since childhood. Friends even before they found and bonded with their ships. They had said their goodbye with pride, thinking that they were saving what was left of their ship.
Ram them in the Slip, or run alongside them and explode the engines. That was the advice to stop your ship becoming torn into parts, stop them being ghoulish things of death to be filled with the invaders. Maggots who cared not what they had destroyed. That was the choice that the captain was coming to give her: how her ship would die.
She was fully crying now, weeping on the floor and hoping that her ship could not feel it. All she wanted to do was give him one last run in the Slip. One last piece of joy. She could do that.
She stood up and took off her boots and her socks. She wanted nothing between her and the ship. She stood on to the pedestal, a raised platform painted to look like a rose window.
Sanctum knew that something was wrong, but all of that was pushed away by his excitement of the chance to run. She could see as he could now, see those corpse-metal ships that were coming towards them. Sanctum could see them now as well, joined with her like this, but he didn’t care. They were going into the Slip.
The Rider eyed the largest ship. Her target. It would be easy to open Sanctum to their goal, to fill him with the rage that coursed through her. She could make him feel something he never had before; anger. She could take that out, and maybe a few of the small ones near it. That would be the right to do.. The honourable thing.
Even then she knew that she couldn’t get them all. There would be some left to salvage him, and to turn her Santum into scrap. Into soulless fodder for their growing herd of deathless monstorities.
Or…
The thought snagged her. This wasn’t new. All Riders had to learn to expect and deal with the thrill of the Slip and how it called to their ship. His wishes and hopes filled her so easily. She had been good at turning them aside, knowing as he did not the danger they possessed to them both. She almost did so by habit and instinct, but stopped.
This time she lingered. The had already been chased to the far edges of chartered space. She could hold back, but then they could follow. Unless she didn’t hold back.
The Captain entered the room, his face covered in his own blood and a grim set to his feature. She saw him as ship and woman, and both felt for him. To the ship, he was Captain, he who kept his crew alive and brought him to feeding grounds and cared for his Rider when she was run-sick. To the woman, he was the man she had loved once.
He knew what she was doing as soon as he looked at her. She was smiling.
“NO!”
She knew then that he loved her still, despite everything.
They ran.
She didn’t hold back, even as she felt her body and mind and soul begin to burn. Not to ram into them and destroy them all, but away. They couldn’t follow her at this cost. It hurt, but it would hurt more to lose her ship. Sanctum didn’t notice, he was lost in the joy of the run.
She would be lost to it too. Soon now. She could hear her own screaming, and the Captain’s as he tried to reach her.
Then, just before she fell into nothing, another sound came. It was calling, not to her but to her ship. A distant call of a herd, a race. Sanctum asked her permission and she gave it with the last of her.
Run.