Then the Saint of Duty turned and walked away from you, disappearing out the mouth of the corridor, into the habitation atrium and beyond. You were suddenly seized with the conviction that the universe would not have judged you if you had lain down in that corridor, shed fifteen years, and thrown an absolute tantrum; if you had pelted the cool panel floor beneath you with hands and fists and wailed. It meant so much that you would die with so many questions unanswered, would go to your unkind grave understanding absolutely jack shit.
“Whose idea?” you called after him, and your voice rose to a shriek. “Whose idea?”
In a way, it helped. Nothing added to your resolution to live so much as someone else suggesting that you die. Ten minutes later you were eating leftover stew in the kitchen with something close to animation, choking down your last lunch before the apocalypse. And you were angry. You were always such a little bitch when you were angry.
39
THE HERALDS OF NUMBER SEVEN—the ghost of a swiftly murdered planet in the demesne of Dominicus—arrived that evening, around forty-three minutes before the habitation lights were due to go off. They had already been dimmed to preserve power, as apparently the defence mechanism locked inside a Lyctor did not need light to fight by—nor senses of any kind, in fact; Mercymorn said they did not even feel pain. Unlike them, you generally needed light and felt pain, but you were the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House. The first was negotiable, and the second was irrelevant.
When the first Herald broke through the Mithraeum’s honour guard of asteroids, it was not particularly terrifying. You had made your preparations. You sat on the floor before your window that looked out onto nothing. The great sword you had taken off and laid before you, as though it were a beloved talisman and not a sickening, befuddling relic, a back-breaking burden your dead self told you to carry. You were almost fond of it, except when you looked at it, at which point all fondness was dispelled.
The courier of the Beast landed on a part of the Mithraeum’s hull very far away from you. You did not feel the impact or hear a sound. It was only when Augustine’s voice came over the communicator, “Confirmed impact. West quadrant, third ring, engineering room,” that you even knew it existed.
God’s voice: “How many minutes before you’re in the halo?”
“Depends. Impact, again. Also west, third ring, same location. Are they spearheading? Impact. North quadrant, habitation ring. Ortus, that’s quite near you.”
A crackle. “I’m fine.”
Another crackle: Mercy’s voice. “Less chatter on the line. Wait until they breach. They’ll try to smother us first, and roast the station.”
“No temperature change,” said God.
Then you felt it: the first vibrational thump, and it sounded astonishingly close. From above you—direction was difficult; thanergetic sense irrelevant—what sounded like a small meteor had struck the hull of the Mithraeum. Silence before, and silence after. There was no distant roaring, perceived through the shudder of the hull and shutters—no monstrous noise, no pageantry. The messengers of the Resurrection Beast arrived without fanfare, and for a moment you resented the anticlimax.
Augustine, on the comm: “Confirmed. East quadrant, habitation. That’s you, girls. Don’t bite your tongues.”
You thought it was one of Augustine’s little jokes, until the fear hit you.
It hit as a smell. Your nostrils quivered, and your head was filled with a strange petroleum odour, redolent of old machines; but there was a sweetish underlayer to it, like vomit. It assaulted you in the manner of a migraine headache. Then the punch—like the Saint of Joy to one’s kidneys—low in your stomach, racing up the central line of your body, seizing your heart in its teeth and shaking. Your palms ran wet. You made a gulping, golloping sound in the back of your throat—you tried to close your eyes as though that were some escape, but it was not—you tilted forward, gasping, your pulse bellowing, your ears deafened. You were suddenly convinced that there were little things crawling over your skin—you rubbed frantically at your forearms—you shivered convulsively, as though to fling them off; you touched obsessively at your ears; you cringed when a stray hair fell across your forehead.
But as you lurched—fretted—perceived—you fought. You made yourself one inhalation and exhalation—reduced yourself to one sensation, following it from down at the toes up all the lines