It never happened at all.
And then she climbed into the last good boat, and was gone.
“Patching through to screens,” said her voice over boat-to-ship comms. She sounded calm. I didn’t want her to sound calm.
There were screens all over the ship. Entertainment screens like the ones Fidelity had hijacked. Announcement screens that told us when a spout was sighted or when an officer needed us. The ubiquitous advertisement screens that reminded us of our place in the world. But now they were all overridden, all showing us the live camera feed from the captain’s suit.
So as I staggered, dazed, back to the more populated parts of the ship, I watched her. I saw her fire the engines, evacuate the hangar, tuck a coilgun and the anointed harpoon in beside her. Standing now in the mess alongside a handful of my crewmates, I saw her finish checks and start the manual launch.
I began to cry.
As she soared out into the sky, we saw a trail of scavenger-Wyrms gathering in her wake. Some nights, tired and hungry and asking where it all went wrong, I wonder if they had the power of foretelling, or if they were just playing the odds, or if there’s a difference.
Through my tears, I tried to tell myself that the Old Ionian had been wrong. Or that he’d been making up stories, which, honestly, he did a lot. The only sign we’d seen of the Möbius Beast that day was the captain’s hunch and an energy spike on the array, and that hadn’t been confirmed. Or at least I hadn’t confirmed it.
The only sign until that moment. Because then the feed from the captain’s cockpit showed us the Beast in all its glory. Head-on, head-down, clouds billowing crimson about it like the lions of Old Earth. Or like I imagine lions to be.
“I see you now,” she said to him. And looking back she hadalwaysbeen speaking to him. When I’d thought she was speaking to the sky or to the fates or to me. “And I know you. Since before I heard your name I have searched for you, and now—”
She downed canopy and I looked away. The slaying of Leviathans was a grisly business. Being slain by them more so.
I heard a coilgun loose and I heard the captain’s voice onceagain. “There. I have you and you have me. And we will end this.”
The same unconquerable force that draws us to railway crashes and celebrity drama pulled my eyes back to the screen. Her harpoon had struck the Beast full in the eye and she was riding the line fast and true towards it, spear raised and shining red in the storm light.
Hope kills.
For a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a heartbeat I let myself believe in her one last time.
And then the monster turned its head and from beneath its armored nonface it unfolded jaws that seemed to adjust and distend and distort and become never-ending as they reached out and snatched the captain from the sky.
O captain my captain.
Over comms, somebody was saying something, but I just stared at the screen and watched as hands that had touched me and eyes that had looked into mine and a body I had wanted to worship with my own vanished with the mind and the soul it housed into the bloody gullet of a beast from a different creation.
“Move, girl.” That was the Old Ionian. “She’s dead. Naught for it now but to flee.”
“Stations,” Locke was shouting over comms. “Engineers, we need a miracle. Hands, we need to cut ballast. Now.”
OLD IONIAN VOIDER: What are you doing?
LOCKE (OVER COMMS): Repeat, all hands to stations. Emergency protocols.
I do not know where I am or what I am doing. I am a schoolmistress dressed as a deckhand. I am not here.
TALL GANYMEDIAN VOIDER: It’s coming. We’ll never outrun it.
FIRST PHOBOSI VOIDER: Not with that attitude we won’t.
FLINT (OVER COMMS): Arm yourselves! Everybody arm yourselves. We won’t let this bastard take us without a fight.
I am not here. I am outside myself looking down. I am watching a play that I was never cast in. I failed the audition because I couldn’t dance.
MARSH: Our revels now are ended.
TRUELOVE: To me, faithful. To me and we shall see prophecy fulfilled.
MARSH: These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits and are melted into air.
