Somehow Tvorh wished he was even more confused than he actually was. He wished he didn't understand that something horrible had come to Tellus in eons past, seeding the planet with a poison.

He wished he didn't understand that that poison was curling inside his body even now.

He wished he didn't understand that something had attacked Senrii and Piotr in the dead landscapes of this ancient skybound tomb. He wished he didn't understand that their assailants were probably the residue of that prehuman expedition.

He wished that he didn't understand the horror behind Thiyyatt's fluttering eyes as they focused on him. He wished he didn't understand that she saw him as a monster who had violated her.

He wished he didn't understand why Aoife refused to look at him.

He wished none of it had been necessary.

Thiyyatt drew a quivering breath and turned her face away. Tvorh let her escape his gaze, though her body was still trapped in his arms. Thiyyatt's eyes fell on Piotr, whose massive form still sprawled across Senrii's shoulders. And halted there.

Please, let Thiyyatt not be planning her next attack on them. Let her not be deciding on the next step toward dominating every Symbiont in Tellus using Synapsis and the Master-Minds. It wouldn't work, but she could still kill them all.

Tvorh could kill her. He could cocoon her in an airtight bag of flesh or gas her with poison, but he'd never be able to forgive himself if he did.

"Help." The syllable from Thiyyatt's lips cracked like the Table of Acerbia.

"I will," Tvorh said, though duty was stronger than conviction. She'd tried to kill them all more than once.

Thiyyatt stretched out a shaky hand toward Piotr. "I. Can help."

"Come on, mom," Senrii whispered, her eyes shut tight. "Come on." Senrii clearly wasn't paying any attention to what was going on in the room, and she was their only hope for scrubbing the ship's air. Tvorh didn't want to distract her.

Eztli leaned against the table projecting the hologram, her fingers gripping hard with fear, tears forming in the corners of her focused eyes. She was a crippled woman, a Maga who'd lost her reason for being, the discoverer of ancient horrors.

Tvorh trusted Eztli more than ever, but he knew he couldn't ask her to make the call.

"Aoife," Tvorh said. Aoife pulled her braid over her shoulders, crossed her arms against her chest, and studiously ignored him. Fathers, she sounded so beautiful. She'd be just as beautiful even without the contemporary rifle and the ancient grenade launcher slung in an X over her back. "Aoife, please."

Finally she looked at Tvorh. Frustration, fear, and hurt all danced over her face. Much though he loved Aoife, he couldn't leave Thiyyatt, however. He nudged his chin down toward her.

Aoife's eyes flickered toward the regia puella, who was still stretching out exhaustedly toward Piotr.

"Should we let her?" Tvorh asked.

"How the hell should I know?" Aoife's nose curled with disgust. "You're the one who loves her."

How could Tvorh describe the different kinds of love that had settled in his soul, counterweighting the Symbiont? Surely Aoife understood that his love for Hrega and Bilr was different from his love for Senrii was different than his love for Thiyyatt was different than his love for Aoife. "That's not what I meant," he said.

"Whatever, Tvorh." Aoife turned away. "Do what you want."

Why did women have to be so impossible? "I love her because I know her," he explained. "But I'm not in love with her. I'm in love with you."

Aoife rocked back on her heels and had to catch herself before she could drift more than a step. "You... you what?"

"Aoife, please."

"You pick now of all times to say that? Ugh! Why are boys so impossible?"

He'd already thought it at her! What made this so different? "Aoife!" he pleaded.

"I can help," Thiyyatt said. Her fingers stretched toward Piotr like heliotropes seeking the sun.

"What do I do?" Tvorh asked. "Do we let her?"

Aoife put a hand over her mouth. She still looked stunned at Tvorh's confession. Her eyes flickered back and forth between Tvorh and Thiyyatt. "I don't know," she whispered.

"My self," Thiyyatt said. "My organs. My Symbiont. My blood. I want..." She hiccuped, a pitiable sound seasoned with salt. "I want to help."

For once, she wanted to help. She wanted to do what was right. After a lifetime of plotting and scheming, she'd been faced with the buried memories of whom she'd wanted to be so long ago, before the corruption of the ancient royal bloodlines had destroyed her humanity.

Or at least she claimed she did.

"Tvorh," she moaned, then gritted her teeth and stretched harder. "Low-born, high-blooded Tvorh. Let. Me. Help."

Tvorh took a deep breath and bounded to Piotr. Thiyyatt touched the giant's calf hanging down over Senrii's back and closed her eyes.

Nerve wove with nerve. Blood mixed with blood. He felt Thiyyatt grow colder.

But as the seconds passed, Piotr's breathing stopped rattling, became calm and clear.

"Mom!" Senrii shouted, startling Tvorh. "I've got her." She spun. "We--" As Senrii turned, so did Piotr, which meant Thiyyatt and Tvorh had to move to follow, too. "Whoa, kid. What are you doing?"

"Thiyyatt's helping Piotr."

"The psycho is..." The sharpness in Senrii's words fell away as she regarded the ever-weakening girl. "Lending her organs to him."

Tvorh nodded mutely.

"Huh. So she's not totally worthless." Senrii raised a hand dismissively, but Tvorh could read the relief on her face. "Hey, kid. Your mom needs you again."

"Mom?"

"Yup. My mom isn't so hot with the gengineering, but you're apparently fantastic. And it turns out your mom knows quite a bit about atmosphere control. How to aerosolize nice little particles." She grinned. "And how to scrub them. Between you and her, we should be able to override the Silver Suns Tool, design some organs to capture the sulfur, and slow down the aliens."

A dark psychic spot opened in Tvorh's mind.

"Lend us your brain, kid, and let's get the job done. Aoife, watch our back. The tower's too close to the town. They can't be far now."

Aoife nodded and unslung her rifle.

"Ready for round two, kid?" Senrii asked.

"As I'll ever be." Tvorh sent his consciousness into the depths of unfiltered Synapsis again.

#

Oralie and Meghan passed straight into the stars of Tvorh and Senrii like ghosts, and where there had been two minds, there were suddenly four.

Information flitted back and forth between them all so quickly that Oralie never would have been able to follow the words, even if she understood the jargon, which she did not. She was only the bridge, and that was enough. Within seconds, Tvorh and his mother were connected via Oralie to the Silver Suns Tool and focused so completely on their work that their thoughts became a low buzz.

Oralie was developing a headache from interacting with so many different minds; she was still exhausted from her earlier stint in the void. Plus, the infected Silver Suns Tool kept fighting her commands even while she had to maintain constant control of it. It was like dodging a venomous snake's bites while holding it by the tail.

Headaches weren't so bad, though. Anything to keep her thoughts off of her husband and Rosabella.

Rosabella-

Rosabella-Rosabella-Rosabella!

You all right, mom? Senrii asked. She was watching Tvorh and Meghan with one metaphorical eye, but despite her hobbyist's interest in gengineering, she was obviously out of her depth.

Oralie smiled inwardly, glad to be here with her daughter. "I'm fine, Senrii. Only tired."

Uh huh. Senrii didn't sound entirely convinced. Things have been crazy, huh?

"Yes, crazy." Oralie thought of Lenaa in the war room. "Nxtlu are making war on Acerbia."

Bastards. We won it fair and square.

"I'm sure they'd take the city if they had the opportunity, but it's not their main goal."

Oh. Dad, right?

Dad-dad-dad-dad!

It's that stupid message they sent out. They want him to step down and leave Nethress vulnerable, don't they?

"They do."

We should've killed them all-- Then Senrii stopped, visions of Eztli flashing through her mind. Oralie waited. We should've made sure they couldn't hurt us again, Senrii amended.

"To live is to be vulnerable," Oralie said, trying not to think too hard about what the words meant.

Still. We've got to get them off our backs. Somehow... I dunno.

Oralie felt a change in the Silver Suns Tool as its Symbiont bound a new STIGMOS. Tvorh and Meghan ascended from it a moment later.

We're finished, Meghan announced.

That was... Oralie caught a distinct picture of star-Tvorh wiping his star-forehead. That was intense.

"One minute." Oralie descended into the Silver Suns Tool. Its star writhed, fighting her every step of the way, and its Symbiont kept trying to slip from her grasp. It took her several tries to take firm hold of the SOPHIOS. Sulfur dioxide scrubbers, she commanded.

A signal, far away yet connected to the Tool's thoughts--a chemical indicator moving through its body--announced that the vines in the space station were reconfiguring themselves, devouring mass-energy from...where? Oralie couldn't tell. In any case, the Tool was building the scrubber organs throughout the ship. Within a minute, they would be operating at full capacity.

Oralie hoped it would be enough. "It's done. You all need to go now."

The stars around Oralie danced apart, revealing a glimpse of a nearby constellation. Another throne.

A throne of silver stars, shifting and blowing like grains of dust in eternal motion. And the Silver Suns Tool was connected to it.

Oralie recoiled in horror as her Symbiont cried out in recognition. Long ago, little Oralie had tumbled into a glowing pool. Its eerie water had poisoned her, planting a tiny seed in her, opening her mind to limited Synapsis even before she had received a Symbiont.

Now, with a Symbiont, she knew the pool for what it was. It was a throne, like the one before her. A Master-Mind. The moment that she made the connection, she saw gossamer strands stretching from the nearby silver throne to one that was far distant and encircled by the sickly green light of Chimerical stars.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Senrii may have killed one in Umutukk and Dorsin may have slaughtered the one that held Oralie hostage, but there were two more alien Master-Minds in the system.

One was within the black alien ship that had impaled the Patrick Henry.

And the other was in a cave beneath Oralie's ancestral home.

"Wait," Oralie said. At the speed of thought, she told Tvorh, Meghan, and Senrii what she had found.

Gotta get back out there, but guys, can I have a second with Mom?

Oralie opened a path back to consciousness, and Tvorh and Meghan vanished almost immediately.

I guess we need to kill those things, then. Leave it to me. I'll brainstorm with the others and pass the...plan back to you. We're gonna do this, Mom. Somehow. And we'll stop their attacks on Acerbia, too. We'll save Dad.

Brave girl. "I am so proud of you, Senrii."

Senrii lingered a moment. How are you doing all this crazy stuff, mom?

The Relays did this. This was the power of the Master-Minds. It was the power of the Symbiont and the power of the genophage. Perhaps it was even the purpose of the Symbiont, as Senrii's recent discussion with Eztli indicated: to carry the power of Synapsis to intelligent beings, then to corrupt their flesh, assimilate their minds, and transform their worlds into sulfur-skied ruins.

But Oralie just said, "Apotheosis."

Senrii's mind gave a crooked smile. I bet Rosabella's gonna be so jealous.

After Senrii left, Oralie sank back into the embracing darkness of the Relay-Space. There, seated on her throne where nobody could see her, she screamed starry tears into the void.

#

The first crack of Aoife's rifle made Eztli jump. The acolyte had taken up a sniping position on the floor of the control room, aiming out the door. A pile of yellow flesh speckled with silver crumpled on the street. As Eztli watched, more mustard-colored skin appeared.

Aoife's gun barked again and again, and blue-silver blood spattered the metal-asphalt floor. Some of the terrible beasts, the six-legged, six-armed hounds that looked like they had stepped straight out of the Smoking Mirror, collapsed, but more of them came on with clicking talons. "Any luck with the defenses?"

Eztli glanced at the hologram again. "They're still spinning up."

The rifle leapt on its bipod as another shot cracked out. "What does that even mean, 'spinning up?'" Aoife grumbled.

"Ammunition needs to be fabricated--"

"Just find us a way off this death trap," Aoife said. She climbed to her knees, leaving the rifle on the ground, and unslung her sleek, angular grenade launcher. As the mass of flesh rushed the door, she sighted down the terrifying weapon's barrel. Eztli could practically hear the girl's teeth clench as she pulled the trigger.

Whump.

There was a roar of fire, heat, and light, and Eztli heard the spattering of blood.

"Are there any lifeboats remaining on this vessel?" Eztli asked AIda, remembering the miniature bridge she had discovered deep beneath Acerbia some months prior. "Is this one?"

"Everywhere on the Patrick Henry is close to a Lifeship," the sprite said. "Heck, you're standing in the bridge for one. Each control room manages a Lifeship. Every continent is designed to detach in pieces for planetfall, layer by layer, like an onion or a puzzle." The sprite's face appeared in the datastream, smiling manically. "An onion of puzzles! But--"

"--Prepare us for launch, then."

"But this Lifeship also contains the bad tower thing, and it's stabbed through all the inward continents. Plus, it's stabbed the ruined layers outside of us. We'd need to release the Lifeships underneath us in continents thirty through twenty-four all at once, plus the ruins of continents twenty-three through twenty-one, and then we'd just be a shish-kebab of Lifeships tumbling to the ground."

"Give me something, AIda."

"Three miles antirotationward, there's another lifeship." A spot on the complicated wireframe flashed green. "Plus there are still lifepods everywhere. They're a lot smaller, but there are only six of you."

"Any answers?" Aoife shouted. Eztli didn't blame the girl for her volume. That grenade had been loud. "Could use another gun hand."

"Report on internal defenses," Eztli commanded AIda as Aoife launched another grenade, and another boom of heat and light flowed into the bridge from the hallway.

"I've got twenty thousand nine hundred fifty four fifty-caliber frangible rounds fabricated. One hundred seventy nine thousand forty six rounds queued. Our potassium sulfate reserves are low, so I'm budgeting mass-energy from the masslesses for increased production."

"Fine, do it," Eztli said.

Aoife's voice was pitched high, and nerves were clear beneath it. "Getting pretty close here..." Her rifle started to bark again.

"Should I batch load the ammunition?" AIda asked.

Eztli didn't even know what the question meant. "Yes."

"The ammunition batch will take four minutes, nineteen seconds to complete."

Too long. An unpleasant tickling sensation at the back of Eztli's throat made her queasy. "Never mind! Don't batch load, then. Get the existing ammo into the turrets."

"Need some help!" Aoife shouted, her rifle snapping several times a second, far faster than it had ever been designed to shoot. "They're almost on us."

Eztli spared a glance for Tvorh and Senrii, but both of them had their eyes closed, and Eztli suspected that she wouldn't have been able to awaken them even if she wanted to. Piotr on Senrii's back and Thiyyatt in Tvorh's arms were equally motionless.

The defense of the Lifeship bridge fell to Aoife and Eztli, the only two true red-bloods on the Patrick Henry. They didn't even have a single Stigmata between the two of them.

They were going to die.

AIda chirped again. "So, loading the turrets right now'll delay full replenishment of magazines. Do you still want to cancel the batch ammunition job and load the guns?"

"Yes!" Eztli shouted, pounding on the table once with her fists.

"Yes!" Aoife shouted, her braid whirling about her head as she turned to look at Eztli and the display.

The hallway just beyond the door was filled with blood and writhing flesh, half living and half dead, that gave way as a mustard-colored monster bounded through the door.

Eztli drew and shot. Globules of blue-silver blood spattered again and again as she placed a dozen bullets into the thing's face. Its arms legs and slashed wildly in the air as it sailed past Aoife toward the back--or was it the front?--of the control room.

Eztli was no more afraid of dying as a red-blood than as a blue-blood. Perhaps less so. The worthy could be expected to stand and fight against impossible odds.

When the weak stood against the strong, however, it was...

An abomination against the ways of nature? Nxtlu's General Principles would declare it so.

An indictment of the powerful, as Gens Nethress would hold? Perhaps.

But as Eztli slid to her knees next to Aoife and shot into the incoming swarm of abominations, she found that the prospect of fighting and dying in the face of impossible odds brought to mind other descriptions.

Valiant. Honorable. Even patriotic.

Amrician words.

Aoife pulled up her grenade launcher and loosed into the hive of clacking monsters just a few meters away. Their sheer mass absorbed most of the blast.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of blast to absorb.

The force blew Eztli and Aoife down the room. Eztli's back slammed into a console. Pain screamed through her spine. She reached instinctively for the Symbiont and commanded it to shut off her pain signals.

But of course, she didn't have a Symbiont any longer. Her body continued to flare with agony.

Aoife howled as the concussion smashed her into a single-legged chair screwed into the floor. She curled around it as an injured alien, skidding across the floor and shedding silver dust like dead skin, dug its talons into the living metal to stop itself. It turned empty, bestial eyes on the helpless Aoife and dragged itself toward the girl with its three good legs and two good arms.

Eztli tried to raise her pistol to end the monster, but her arm protested in pain.

The murderous alien left a trail of silver-streaked blue blood wriggling on the floor behind it. Teeth churned in a remora's circular mouth. Was it salivating? Why was Eztli's arm refusing her commands? Why couldn't she fight?

She'd never been injured before, not like this, never been so badly overcome with pain that she couldn't move, could only watch as talon-tipped limbs rose into the air--

And tore free from the monster's body.

Piotr raised his foot from where he'd planted it on the beast's head and moved his grip on the two taloned arms down to the shoulder limbs, where he'd ripped them loose from the thing's back.

Then he stepped back and smashed both arms like whips into the shuddering houndlike alien. The two pairs of talons slashed blood free from two pairs of horizontal stripes across its back. Piotr twisted and struck again, this time laying open the monster's skin along the spine.

It slumped and made its first and last sound as Eztli listened, a sick hissing noise like air escaping a lungboat. Then it fell still.

Aoife still huddled, eyes tight, shaking from the pain of her impact. She probably had no idea how close to death she'd been. "Thank you," Eztli said on her behalf.

Piotr nodded. His face was a mask of frost and blood. Eztli was grateful he was on their side.

Then he strode into the monsters' midst. Talons raked down at him; he parried them with the whip-arms. One of the beasts launched itself at him, legs outstretched, trying to grapple and slash him at the same time. He slapped it away with a backhand, then twirled one of his lashes around to disembowel it.

One breath. Two breaths. Three. Though her arms protested at the pain of the motion, Eztli grunted and pushed up to a sitting position.

She took aim with her pistol.

She unleashed a hurricane of forgebone around Piotr as he danced in stuttering murderous motion between the aliens, lashing free silver dust and azure blood. When Eztli's magazine ran out and her pistol whined, she slapped another in and began shooting again.

Piotr's taloned lashes drove the beasts back to the door of the bridge. Eztli kept her sight picture dialed in and rose to her knees, then to her feet, shooting all the while.

Just one step in front of the other. That was all Eztli needed to reach Aoife, to help her up. When she crouched to touch Aoife's shoulder, though, the girl looked up at her through tears and blood born from pain, snarled a silent war whimper, rolled, pulled her gun from beneath the wriggling body of the alien that had pinned it, flipped down the bipod, and started shooting again.

A wave of noxious air wafted past Eztli. Senrii drifted past her, one hand outstretched, spewing flesheater bacteria toward the monsters, driving them back. "We did it," she shouted over the din of gunshots. "We've got what we need."

Eztli raised her nose and sniffed. Between the lingering scent of the grenade and the stench of blood, she couldn't tell whether the air was purifying yet. She would have to trust Senrii.

And she did. After all they'd been through, she trusted the Nethress girl.

A mind-numbing pulse of sound like a beam emanating from behind Senrii rippled the flesh of the beasts and caused them to stumble. Tvorh stepped up to the line, cleared his throat painfully, spat a glob of blood, then cast what looked like a handful of dust toward the regrouping monsters. Thorns erupted from the flesh of the aliens in the front line, painting the hall just beyond the door blue with blood. The carcasses fell like rosebush tumbleweeds in the low gravity, and the thorns snapped as they bounced on the floor.

"Turrets ready!" AIda shouted, and turrets descended from the ceiling of the hallway and popped out of the walls and floor.

Eztli recognized them. She'd seen their forms before in the secret lifeboat beneath Acerbia: sleek, multi-barreled, all of metal, mounted on swivels. She'd even seen plans for the ammunition.

But she wasn't prepared for the noise as twelve turrets inside the room each unleashed thirty fifty-caliber lead bullets per second into the aliens.

The racket was indescribable, as loud as standing inside a building as vine-mines pulled it down. Chemical propellant, flames bursting from barrels, tearing blood and flesh, round fragmentation, and ricochets harmonized in a dark symphony of destruction. Eztli shouted in shock, her voice lost beneath the cacophony, dropped her pathetic forgebone pistol, and clapped her hands over her ears.

Turrets had risen on the street, too, and were tearing the aliens to ribbons. Senrii intensified the flesheater cloud, driving the closest monsters back into the killing grounds, where ancient technologies of murder tore them to bloody bits.

Because of the way the bullets were still riddling the corpses, it took Eztli a long second to realize that the aliens were all dead. The turrets seemed to come to the same realization a moment after Eztli did. The spinning barrels whipped to a stop, smoke fuming from their exits.

Aoife gulped and shouted over the ringing in Eztli's ears, her eyes fixed on the still and still-smoking barrels. "Well, I guess that's what 'spin-up' means..."

Eztli stared at smoke drifting from the barrels. "Cease fire," she murmured, and couldn't help smiling to herself.

"What can you tell us, Tvorh? We clear?" Senrii shouted, which made her words just this side of audible.

"No idea! After that racket, I can't see a thing."

"We might not have a better chance than this. Eztli, please tell us you found a way out."

"There are smaller lifepods, not part of the Lifeships, nearby. We can take them down."

"Great. Now we just have to figure out how to kill the Master-Minds."

Eztli must have looked confused, so Senrii explained. "We did a little bit of scouting while we were under Synapsis. There are three Master-Minds left in the system, at least as far as my mom can tell. You know, three Relays, the things that are coordinating all of this chaos with the Symbionts and the Chimeras, like the one we killed in the Amber City." Senrii started to tick off her fingers. "My mom's one--long story, apparently, and I'm sure we'll get it once we get back home. So we've got her on our side. Then there's the one in the alien ship." She raised her eyebrows at Eztli.

Eztli shrugged. If there was a Master-Mind aboard the alien vessel, it would account for a number of the anomalies they'd encountered.

"And then there's one more Master-Mind left on Tellus. It hid a really long time, we think. Probably it could have made a second Symbiont-producing Tool, just like the one the Sodality kept, if anybody had found it way back when."

"Wait," Aoife said. "What do you mean, kept?"

"Apparently my dad killed your Symbiont-makey-thingy, acolyte," Senrii said. "No SOPHIOS-babies for the Sodality, not any more."

"What?!"

Even Eztli had to grip the desk to keep from stumbling. The Symbiont, gone?

Senrii barreled on as if she hadn't just tossed another grenade into their own bunker. "Anyway, I'm guessing the third one has been around as long as the original, only nobody found it. Nobody before my mom when she was a kid, anyway. It's in a cave system under La Table d'Or."

If the same aliens that had placed the Symbiont on Tellus were on their way here to telluform the planet, humanity would need every advantage possible. "I understand," Eztli said. "We need your mother to be the only Master-Mind in the system if we're to have a chance when the vanguard arrives."

"Right." Senrii put her hands on her hips. "I'm just not sure how we kill--"

"AIda," Eztli said, "are there lifepods at the top layer that the alien tower has speared?"

"Yes...?" AIda said, sounding uncertain.

"Can we release and move all of the speared Lifeships at once, to isolate the tower from the rest of the ship?"

"You can," AIda said. The wireframe view of the ship ticked inward, highlighting the inner cylinders layer by layer. "I can still contact the impaled chunks of the inner continents from here." Then the image ticked out, highlighting in red the ruins of three more layers extending along the tower out from the seventh layer, where they were. "But continents twenty-three through twenty-one are broken. Those are the ruined layers of the onion farther out from us along the alien tower. I can't contact them. You'd have to reach them and manually give their Lifeships the command to release, then get to the lifepods on twenty-one. There's no atmosphere, and--"

"We just need a way out to the ruined layers," Eztli said.

"There's the tower," Tvorh said. When Senrii turned to look at him, he shrugged sheepishly. "I kinda...had a memory of being one. It's a transport ship. Part of it is hollow inside. We could descend it to the outer layers."

"That's it." Eztli turned from the display and clapped her hands. "We had all best suit up. We're soon to leave this tomb-ship behind."

"Care to tell me your genius plan, Eztli?" Senrii asked.

"Certainly. One moment." Eztli turned back to the console. "On my mark, AIda, please set a two-hour launch timer for all the continents you can reach. Senrii, also mark the time for us, please."

"What--"

"Mark." Eztli slapped the table, then spun. "That's it. Suit up while I finish some business with AIda. I'll explain along the way." Anything to put off wearing that disgusting vacuum-moth for a few minutes longer.

"Oh, yeah," Senrii added. "We also have to stop your family from attacking Acerbia, Eztli."

Eztli sighed. "They aren't my family any longer. AIda, get me that data copy, now."