{Enki}

Bright white light blinded Nox. In it, he felt Rayne’s determination and hope, so pure it nearly sent him to his knees. Instead, it enveloped him in warmth and wrung from Nox his fealty and strength.

Rayne could take it all. Deserved it all. Earned every drop.

When the light receded, Nox stared out the window of Rayne’s eyes with her beside him inside her mind. White stone floors and walls—no ceiling. The stacks of white tomes climbed into the silver sky above. Mercury waterfalls fell from their towering heights all around the Martyr Complex. The abomination lay on a dais, fit perfectly to its dimensions in the presence of a white stone throne.

Empty.

Old. Everything smelled ancient. Smelled? “I can smell.”

Rayne giggled beside him before warmly explaining, “I shared my senses with you. You’ll be open to most of what I experience. Not my thoughts or emotions, but everything else.”

A better Eternity than he deserved, Nox nodded his thanks to Rayne.

“Is this the Pantheon?” She took a step away from the Martyr Complex. “Where is everyone?”

Calibrated.

Optimized.

Stabilizing…

Unable to stabilize.

Warning: Seventy-one hours and fifty-nine minutes until maximum destabilization.

The infernal fuse. Curse the Tritans for installing these Weapons. Rayne lost some color beside him, and it was enough to make Nox vow to ram his fist through Remorse’s heart.

Softly, she said inside her head, “We have three days to complete our mission and put an end to this.”

Nox took her cue for active pragmatism. “Begin with the knowledge and tools in your possession.”

“Right.” Rayne enthusiastically clapped her hands together in the mindscape. “We’re in the Pantheon, deep in Enki. We’re surrounded by books. Let’s get to reading—Hey, there’s something on the throne.”

Although Rayne was the most powerful being in the galaxy, Nox still warned, “Approach with caution, your majesty.”

Rayne rolled her eyes. “Yes, dad.”

Taken aback, Nox crooked a brow at her, bewildered.

“I’ll remember that one.” With a sly grin, Rayne returned to her external sight. “Hey, it’s a gun. A rifle. Is this…” Checking the ammunition, she confirmed electrical stun charges. “This is like the weapons Lynn and Pablo made. They disable nacres.”

Why would someone leave this? Was it for Rayne? Was she right to hope Silence, Smith, and Lucas were still aligned with the Shadow?

Shouldering the strap, she murmured, “Taking this can’t hurt. Wait…” A piece of paper lay beneath it on the throne with a message written in gold ink.

Keep your faith in me a little while longer.

Beneath that, lines formed a map. “These are conduits,” Rayne said softly, with a sadness in her voice. “And these spaces are Primary Sanctums. See the Cascading Light?”

“Perhaps it’s an ally, but it may also lead you astray. Tread cautiously.” She opened her mouth and Nox cut her off, “And do not call me ‘dad’ again.”

Her snickering charmed him, despite his stern facade. In the face of which, she confessed, “Okay. I won’t, but tormenting you gives me a decent amount of satisfaction. Now let’s hit these books.”

“Careful for—”

Something metal clunked about fifty meters south. Rayne heard it and tunneled into a stack, hiding amid the gigantic volumes. A metal cube traveled overhead a few minutes later, scanning the area before continuing on its route. Inside her head, she said, “Security of some kind. I’ll read a few before we follow the map. There must be a reason these books are throne-adjacent.”

Nox approved Rayne’s logic but disliked the mysterious disappearance of her jailers. The note and the rifle. Convenience irked him, and no one should be trusted here with her poised on the location of her predicted demise. This gnawed at him—

Rayne folded her long legs to her chest, bare from the same black beach top she wore into her isolated sleep. Since awakening from the blood-filled Martyr Complex, her nacre’s nanites reclaimed the precious fluid. For a mighty warrior, she looked vulnerable, curled like that in a hiding place with a book larger than her body.

Truth be told, Rayne was more vulnerable now than trapped in that box, and Nox was in no position to support her on the outside. It vexed him—

“Okay. A Tritan named Quet wrote this. Do we know him?”

Nox read over the passage with her. “Do you remember the story of Elden’s making?”

Nodding her recollection, Rayne stared at him with her undivided attention.

“The Primary that the Icari overwhelmed, whose nacre Elden consumed—That was Quet. The eldest, I believe.”

They both turned back to the passages. Rayne pointed. “Here, he’s referring to his attempts to replenish the female population. After calamity—hold on.” She spun and grabbed an earlier entry. “Let’s see if we can find… Hmm. What are these numbers, Nox? 1.5022.1325 | H?”

“Those are galactic years and dates. One hundred million Earth years will pass when Enki completes a single revolution around the center of the galaxy. Given what Korac described in his Verse, this entry occurred in the years prior to Tritan occupation of the Dyson’s Sphere. It stands to reason they established this throne room with that dais more than a galactic year ago.”

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Rayne swallowed hard, and Nox understood. How could they know of the Martyr Complex so long ago? In a contemplative voice, she said, “Let’s keep reading. We might find a weakness here.”

1.5172.1325 | H

Primary Rem confessed to me that he and Vi are trying to conceive a daughter. Again. Primary Tumu and I cautioned against it since the last two hundred attempts left his spouse so gravely injured, but they are determined. Meanwhile, no other coupling conceived a female in the last one hundred thousand years. The people grow suspicious, and I cannot blame them.

1.5173.6984 | H

Vi returned to my hospital, dying. The labor nearly killed her, and the baby was not only born male, but he died shortly after meeting this world. Primary Rem is inconsolable. He seethes with impotence outside my lab even now. I hesitate to inform him or Primary Tumu of my recent findings, yet I despise bearing this burden alone. The burden of knowing we will never come back from this. The Tritan race faces extinction.

1.5173.8722 | H

Vi overheard my discussion with Primary Rem. She disappeared from her bed, and several other female leaders went missing, as Primary Tumu predicted. They can never know the truth. Not before we enact the program to correct our mistakes. Their compliance is required—necessary for the reconstitution of our people. If they resist, we will force the females. In the meantime, Primary Rem works for weeks at a time on the new engines. He fears the worst. I cannot say I blame him.

Primary Tumu says that we are wrong. For everything.

1.5609.9158 | H

Calamity drives us. The female population knows. They All Know. They are furious with us and demanded negotiations. We offered a window to encourage them to see reason. They countered with their own program to recover. The reverse of our suggestion.

It was Vi who said, quite regally, “Seeing as the men are responsible for breeding and manipulating our genes until no females are born, the women bio-engineers should hereby gain full access to your exclusive labs and reduce the male involvement to nothing more than bulls.”

While Primary Tumu accepted her terms, for the first time, Primary Rem publicly disagreed with his spouse and recommended their compliance to maintain civility between the sexes. The women returned to their secret location within the station.

Our next priority is to locate it and rein them in. I will save our race.

“They lost their ability to make daughters.” Rayne digested the concept aloud. “Their women sound quite fierce. I think I like Vi.”

At first, it amazed Nox how she processed the entries and interpreted the people involved, but after a moment of looking at that smile on her face, he could only appreciate her manner—

“Oh, hey. There’s a huge jump in the entries.”

1.6013.6899 | I

We owe our very existence to the Aegis, but we cannot dally with our work. I strive even now in this luxurious facility they offered me to restore our race. Primary Rem and Primary Tumu argue at every turn. Primary Bol is preoccupied with Enki. Primary Lon and Xhi… well, it was for the best.

I am close. So very close to solving our dilemma. I only pray that Project Surra is successful.

That was it. That was the connection.

Rayne blinked at the entry and quickly flipped to the next page. There was nothing but torn pages in the spine. Someone removed them. “No!” she cried. “No, we were so close. Damn it.” She threw it down and winced at the echo of its loud thud. “Shit.”

It was Nox’s turn to digest the concept aloud. “Quet is responsible for my grandmother, and she was his key to saving the Tritans. Surra—Silence—is older than Elden.”

“She wanted us to find this. I’m certain of it, but what do I do with this information? I can barely process it.” Rayne’s frown crinkled her nose, and Nox looked away to regroup with a clearer mind.

What can this mean for the Icarean Prerogative Nox was recited his entire life by his mother? How much did she know? How did the Tritans come to find Enki and the Aegis? And where are the females?

Too many questions.

After a few heartbeats of Rayne’s pacing, Nox stepped in her way. She looked all the way up at him and blinked with big blue eyes. Into that openness, he said, “Focus on the mission. This is solid intelligence to file away for later. In this moment, it serves as a distraction. Now tell me the mission, your majesty.”

She ticked the itinerary off on her fingers. “Kill Abresson, Remorse, and Celindria after I force them to cure me of this Weapon.

“Locate Enki’s control center—its bridge.

“Destroy the Dyson’s Sphere.

“Go home and figure out how I can explain your existence in my head to the people I love.

“Hug Pax.

“Eat all the ice cream.”

Rayne beamed at Nox, still only a step away. Warmth glittered in her eyes. It occurred to him she grew increasingly more comfortable around him in the recent months, and he relaxed around her in a way not afforded to him in his entire life. He felt free to laugh at her jokes, reward her kindness with smiles, and—

That was it.

Nox felt free.

Rayne asked nothing of him and accepted what he offered with praise and consideration as opposed to belittling or condescension—

He regarded her for so long that her grin eased into a gentle smile.

Inside her mindscape, Rayne stepped away from him and looked outside herself. Across the way, a mercury waterfall reflected her rather exposed appearance. Warmly, she mused, “What was I thinking, dressing this way? I didn’t even paint my toenails. What do you think, Nox? Warrior-casual? Or comfy gear for all the traveling?”

Released from her spell, Nox spared Rayne an incredulous tilt of his head. “You’re asking my opinion on your dress?”

More of that bubbling laughter he found astonishing that she could afford, given their situation. “I suppose you’d say I should fight this battle in something functional and ladened with weapons?”

“No.”

Nox’s terse response surprised Rayne. He enjoyed the slight widening of her eyes and the question behind them, the parting of her lips to ask it. Perhaps tormenting her gave him a decent amount of satisfaction. To draw it out, he said quite confidently, “As someone who fought you in every style of clothing imaginable, I can easily guarantee that you are capable of equal devastation no matter how you dress.”

Nox meant every word. Rayne did her worst to him while wearing small dresses and heels with most of her skin exposed. She could kill in anything. It was a quality he found most attractive in her. He smirked, remembering Sagan’s comment about them all needing therapy. There was something to that.

Rayne searched his eyes, perhaps following the same trail of thought, until she returned her attention to the mirror. She didn’t need to ask. Nox looked away as his King formed new clothes from a combination of Lyriki armor and Elden constructs, converting matter within her nanite field.

After a time, Rayne gave Nox permission to look. “There. Easy to get around in and definitely combat-friendly.”

Dangerous.

That was the only way to describe how Rayne looked in the form-fitting, one-piece fight suit. Cobalt, the color of Icarean blood and Tritan skin. A thick matte black chain was belted at her waist. Smaller chains connected the outer seams, gaping open and exposing her pale skin along her arms, waist, hips, and down her legs where the seams ended in matte black combat boots. High-heeled, her favorite, Nox realized. She gathered all her long black hair into close-scalp braids and twists that loosed into a full ponytail.

Rayne turned to the left and then to right, checking herself in the mirror and played with her hair. Nox tried to not to react to experiencing the sensation of it in her hands as if they were his own. Instead, he said with sincerity, “You’ve outdone yourself.”

“Thanks.” Rayne let out a sigh and slapped her sides. “Welp. I waited around here all I can. They aren’t returning for me to kill them.”

Nox worked to keep the smirk off his face, but heard it in his voice. “Then you must seek them out.”

Once more, Rayne shouldered the rifle, glanced at the map, and faced west. “Eighty klicks that way. Nox?” She faced him inside her mind.

He peered down at her and responded in the only appropriate manner, “Yes, your majesty?”

“What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?”

The question disarmed Nox and forced a smile onto his lips. Of all the things for Rayne to ask. Still, he indulged her, “I tried little of the stuff and only at Korac’s insistence, but if I must name a favorite… Strawberry.”

“Mine, too.” Rayne smiled and prepped for a run. “Let’s get to it. For Pax and strawberry ice cream.”

Quite.