"We've won a planet." Sykora summons the lift and leans on the chrome doors as its hum approaches. "Our surveyors will decide whether it's worth exploration, or if we ought to destroy its abominations from orbit and move on. Technology tombs never have many natural resources. Usually, they've been depleted. Transformed into stupid self-recursive murder machines."

"And the away team?" Grant asks.

"The what?"

"The Privateer away team."

"Right." She sighs. "We'll search for them. The Iron Promise, I understand, has been trying to hail them, and we'll aid their efforts. But I have to doubt there are survivors."

"I figured as much," he says. "We've worked enough miracles for one day. Can't ask for another."

Her tail flicks around his wrist and draws him into the opening lift with her. "Will you go to the vigil with me? You needn't trouble yourself, but. Uh." Her ears droop. "I would be grateful."

"Batty. Of course I will." He bends at the waist and lifts her tricorne to kiss the top of her head. "If I'm honest, I feel… responsible."

"It was my call," Sykora says.

"Sure," he says. "But you made it because of me."

"I made it because it was the right one." She hits the button to bring them up to their cabin. "We'd have lost at least one of those ZKWs if we hadn't done it. But we lost two interceptors to save two frigates and hundreds of lives. Our rescue of the Cinnabar Dawn and the Iron Promise brings Dantia into our debt. We'll contact her and inform her of that fact, and invite her here directly to retrieve her little jailbirds. Should she dare to disagree, I'll keep them aboard the Pike and let the firmament hear it from them directly. It's a painful tradeoff, but I'd make it again. And my pilots would too. It's what we do. Protect the citizens of the Empire."

Those weren't citizens; they both know it. But Sykora's in no mood to make the distinction, it seems. And neither is he.

"And yes," she murmurs. "I made it because of you, too."

She shuffles into his personal space, tucking herself between his knees. "I know you aren't comfortable with how I treated those women." She looks pleadingly up. "But you must understand—they are criminals and murderers, and not to the relatively harmless degree your liberated unionist was. A Bright Covenant privateer does not take her commission when there is an easy or quick alternative."

"I get it, Batty." He brushes an errant lock of her hair from her forehead. "Seriously. I do. I can moralize about it all I want. But when it comes time to make these decisions, to do shit like send people out to die, I'm afraid to, and you aren't. That means I fall in line on this stuff. It's what I owe."

She sighs as the elevator comes to a stop. "If you want to be a warrior, I can make you a warrior. But is that really what you want?"

"Maybe not a warrior. But these decisions, the hard ones." He holds the door for her. "I'm trying to feel as though I'm not entirely out of my depth for them. For all of this."

"Well it's not inherent, dove." She gives his butt a playful tap as she passes him. "I've got half a kilocycle under my belt. You've barely scratched the surface. We're still at the bare beginning of your journey. You have so much of this life ahead of you." She tugs her boots off at the cabin door. "I remember the terrified, trembling Maekyonite I first dragged onto the Pike. That man seems like such a strange dream now, with the turning of the newtide. Which reminds me…" She skitters to a chest abutting their anteroom trophy case. "I have your present."

He looks inquisitively over her shoulder. "You said that couples don't give each other Newtide gifts."

"They don't, usually," she says. "The gift is a pledge of continuing love, traditionally. Keeps things fair. I just had this silly little idea—and I knew if I told you, you'd work yourself into a tizzy finding something for me, and what do you get a Princess, anyway—I mean, look at all this stuff."

She rummages around in the chest, tugging out frilly silks and fine gifts from forgotten courtiers.

"Here we are." She stands and turns, holding a burnished wooden box. "It's a silly thing. I've got so much more planned, of course. And I can move one of your nameday gifts up, maybe, if it's—it's a silly little thing. I know it's silly."

"Batty." He sits atop the trophy case with a grin (she's had cause to assure him, during a previous sexual escapade, that its transparent surface can hold his weight). "You haven't given it to me yet."

"Right." She clears her throat. "Forgive me. It's been such a day and I just… I wanted your first Newtide to be so lovely. And so far—"

He closes his hands around hers. He feels her fingers twitch, tighten, and loosen with her heavy sigh. "I'm gonna open it, okay?"

She nods.

He opens the box. Inside, on a pearl-colored cushion, is a simple necklace. A delicate brass chain looped through a narrow hole drilled in a little chip of tortoiseshell plastic. A guitar pick, with a bend in its point from its use as an impromptu screwdriver.

"Your first gift to me," Sykora says. "The first of many ways you have freed me."

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He lifts the pick slowly from its cushion. Its chain links jingle faintly.

"It's silly," she whispers.

He sets the box aside and folds his arms around his wife. "It's perfect." His hands land on her peach-shaped butt and squeeze tight before they boost her into the air. Her feet rest on his thighs. "You are fucking perfect, Sykora of the Black Pike."

She giggles breathily as his kisses climb her collarbone. He guides her down by her hips, from standing atop his lap to sitting in it.

"Happy Newtide, my love," she says, and then his tongue is in her mouth, and her hands are slipping under his clothes, and his wife's heart is racing, the pliant softness of her skin, the urgent, building promise of bliss as her tiny heels dig into the small of his back.

They're needed. The incoming prisoners, the ceremonies, the surveyors. For a second he doesn't give a shit—let them tap their feet—but his wife deserves more than a furtive quickie.

He pulls away from the hot breath and the trembling outstretched touch. "Tonight," he whispers. "Okay?"

She sighs and flops forward against his chest. "Okay," she murmurs. "But you owe me, Maekyonite."

"I owe you a Newtide gift, is what I owe you," he says. "You can't just give me something so fucking cute and not expect a counterattack."

A scratchy, tuneful laugh in his ear. "You've given me three."

"What you told me back on the bridge," he says. "About the kids, and how we'll raise them."

"I meant it," she says. She rests her head on his shoulder. "I don't just want children, dove. I want your children. And God knows I don't want to raise them how I was raised."

"I don't exactly have much of a happy-childhood type model either."

"So we'll figure out something new," she says. "We're good at that. Maybe we'll find some Maekyonite baby books to go along with the Taiikari ones."

He runs his palm across the small of his wife's back. The breath she releases in response is on the edge of a purr.

"Just as long as they don't grow up too soft for the coterie," she adds. "Or hating their Empress."

"That might depend on who their Empress is," he murmurs.

"Dove." She gives a wry laugh and glances around as though there were a spy squatting in their kitchenette. She puts a finger to his lip. "Shhh."

They haven't spoken of it, not directly. Not since that day in the Empress's office. The competition that Sykora is now in. The game she's playing and its prize. They've been too swept up in the near future to ponder its distance, and Grant is still unsure about his feelings toward the possibility. But except for the two Eqtoran women he semi-smuggled aboard, he is the only person aboard the Pike who doesn't love the Empress. Even Sykora, despite the pillar-shaking revelations, has kept her faith.

Try as he might, there is only room for one tyrant in Grant's heart.

And he has stayed up, staring at the ceiling, now and then, counting his breaths and wondering how it would be to live in a galaxy commanded by the Princess in his arms.

But for now, he grins beneath Sykora's chiding index finger and plants a quick kiss on its pad. He stands up, scooping his wife into a one-arm carry against his side as he rises. "Back to it?" he asks.

Her tail rests across his shoulders like a scarf. "Back to it."

Back to it—the bloodstained graveyard of the Xivikanese fleet, the funerals and the fights and the future. But his wife rests on his hip, and her gift rests on his heart. And as they leave the cabin, and lights click unobtrusively off behind them, Grant knows that when the future finds him, he'll be ready.

Down on the hangar floor, the clerics of the omnidivine affix seals and sanctifiers to the three black stone coffins waiting in front of the membrane. Lance Corporal Varkori practiced the religion of his homeworld, something Sykora called storm worship. His remains are being shipped to his family.

A sister of the Omnidivine chants in Taiikizi'nekan, the ancient language of prophecy and prayer whose mysteries Grant's implant is too modern to pierce. Grant is surrounded by a sea of Taiikari, some with heads bowed or damp eyes. He's joined on his mountainous island by Ipqen-mek-Taqa and her keeper/fiancée/property, Ruaq-nai-Taqa, who stand vigil with him on the lit and living shore, watching the crossing before them.

"You're moving up, Junior Engineer," Grant murmurs, as the liturgy continues before them. "Nice pips."

"I know, right? A woman in uniform." Ruaq's tail nudges playfully against Ipqen's. "Throwing starships around."

Ipqen rubs the back of Ruaq's neck. "It was a lot smaller than you're picturing, I reckon."

"Still," Ruaq says. "Bet you could throw me even further."

"So when are you two getting hitched, anyway?" Grant asks.

"Well, we can't yet," Ruaq says. "Not if we want a proper Uvaniqish wedding. Gotta find a third."

"Oh," Grant says. "Interesting."

He looks over to see Hyax, standing within earshot, stock still and staring down at the orating cleric. The ear closest to the three non-Taiikari twitches. On the Brigadier's other side, Waian stands by a marine with his face buried in his hands, his shoulders shaking. That must be Kamen. Reina's boyfriend.

"Whenever that happens," he says, refocusing on the Eqtorans, "you could get some shore leave back to Harok, I'm sure."

Ruaq smiles. "Perks of being a faithful servant, eh?"

"You can think about it that way if you want," Grant says. "I'd call it a reward for demonstrated excellence."

"Yeah." Ipqen lets out a sigh through her nostrils. "Yeah, uh. Look, Gran—Majesty. Ruaq's just being a little shit on account of we've been talking lately about the whole servant thing."

"Won't be long until we can get that bracelet off her, you know."

"Not mine. I'm all good." Ruaq shakes her head. "Ipqen's."

"Oh?"

"I've decided… I'm okay with the servant word," Ipqen says. "Don't love it, but it is what it is, and it's a nicer sounding word in Taiikari, anyway. Thing is I don't think—" She leans closer and drops her voice. "I don't think I can stand being the servant to the fuckin' Empress."

"I had the same crisis, Ipqen. Trust me. What I do is consider myself a servant of Sykora's instead. She's—"

"I'm your servant, Grant." Ipqen stares solemnly down her snout at him. "That's what I'm trying to say. Eqt love Sykora, but she doesn't get it. You do. You feel that burden?"

"I do."

"All right, man." She punches him on the shoulder. "Use me right."

Sykora has taken her place at the front of the caskets. Her arms are laced tightly behind her back. Her chin is high. "Glory to Lieutenant Suthuk of the Black Pike," she says.

"Glory to Suthuk," they echo.

"Glory to Gefreiter Reina of the Black Pike."

"Glory to Reina," they say, and Kamen's cracked voice joins the chorus.

"Glory to Corporal Tarsi of the Black Pike."

"Glory to Tarsi."

"Glory to Lance Corporal Varkori of the Black Pike."

"Glory to Varkori."

"Their duty is discharged. We who remain in the safety for which they gave their lives praise their valor and petition their gods to do the same. May Suthuk, Reina, and Tarsi be sung and celebrated and joyfully received in the Heavenly Court of Empresses Past. May Varkori drift in peace within the Eye of the Renewing Storm, awaiting the day its rains bring paradise to this realm." She turns to face the vast firmament before the silent coffins. She fires her fist into the sky. "Pike's up."

"Pike's up," they thunder behind her.

Sykora lets her hand fall forward. That same polar chill Grant felt before washes over him again; he watches the coffins drift out into the firmament, tracking their shapes against the aquamarine orb they died over, until they're dwindling dots in the infinite void. And seconds later he can't see them at all.

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