Dust

Perceval reached out through Dust again. Since he had released her emotions, she found she could think, process, and consider in absolute clarity, even while her body danced swords with Ariane. She was not, she thought, only thinking with her own brain, and her symbiont, but with some fraction of Dust's processing power as well. And her borrowed capacity was untroubled by the desperation with which Perceval's body fought for life.

—Dust, Open the door.—

She could not permit Ariane to corner her, and there was nothing she could do to parry that blade. Anything living or symbiotic it touched was severed for all time. But if she could not parry, Pinion could riposte, and Perceval could keep them both out of the way.

Perceval spun, dodged a thrust from the enemy angel— a lance of charged particles that seared the decking where she had been—and as she recovered found herself face to mask with Ariane's faceless armor, and almost within the span of her arms. Ariane's blade swerved toward her—a hard reflexive arc—and Perceval sprang upward, Pinion flailing around her.

She could not actually feel the unblade slice under her feet. There was no air for it to stir. But she felt it clip the trailing flight feathers on Pinion's bottom wings, and pass through without resistance.

There was resistance as Perceval somersaulted up and away, Pinion slashing and scissoring. She knew she struck Ariane's armor. She knew she cut it, for those wings were edged like razors where they chose to be. She felt the pulse of blood from the wound—arterial—and saw the cobalt spray across the decking, quickly stopped as Ariane's symbiont attended it.

Ariane shifted her sword to her other hand.

When Perceval landed, crouched, half the bridge away, the cobwebs tore under her feet. And one of Pinion's wings was dragging.

—Dust.— His stubborness was like a wall. He had no intention of permitting Samael or any of her family near her. He had no intention of making alliances, or of sharing power.

And if she was his Captain, what good was it if he did not answer when she spoke to him?

—Dust. Open the corridor door.—

He showed her his war, plunged her into it like a microsecond bath of ice water. He gave her angels fighting, the knife-taloned combat of microscopic machines. The weapons were invisible ... until microwaves sizzled cobwebs, until a wave of massed nanites burned through another like a flaming sword through ice.

—Open the corridor door.—

Chromed armor glittering, Ariane charged. Perceval, coiled for another twisting leap, curled her lip and narrowed her eyes, and waited.

—Samael ... —

A console across the room sparked and exploded.

—You stupid bastard, let them in.—

Ariane lunged, anticipating another leap like before. Perceval threw herself to the side, this time, instead, and felt Innocence bite deep into one wing. Just like before, there would be shocking pain and then—

She fell, sprawling, skidding in cobwebs. She rolled, the remaining wings armoring her as best they could, bruising elbows and toes, smacking her shin hard on the navigator's chair. She scrambled behind a console, Ariane instead grabbing the chair back and bounding over, her guard flawed for a split instant as she leaped and Innocence drifted wide.

One wing was severed above the elbow. But all the others bent forward, flexed at the joint as sharply as a guitarist's fingers, and as Perceval fell backward among the dust and debris they met, and bowed, and slid into Ariane's breast through the armor, until a meter or more of blue-smeared plumage protruded from her back.

Perceval saw her own wide eyes and stubbled scalp reflected in the bright chrome of Ariane's helm—

And then Pinion snapped wide its wings, and the daughter of Alasdair Conn shredded, flesh and bone.

With the hiss of air entering from the now-open corridor door, Perceval heard the pop of dislocating joints and the thick meaty rip of muscle.

Snaps and tatters of static electricity charged in the ionized atmosphere; Ariane might be vanquished, but Asrafil fought still.

And then, as if the fighting has been a hallucination, Rien's armor balanced flat-footed in the corridor, and the door into the bridge stood open. Silence hung over the corridor, dim lights flickering into life, shadows concealing as much as they revealed. Within, though, lightning raced over surfaces, and Rien could see someone slender and bony-tall, shrouded in tattered wings and dripping cobalt blood, rising to her feet.

Tristen cried out and stepped forward, weapon trained on Perceval. No, Rien thought, moving forward in anticipation of the betrayal, aware already that there was nothing she could do to stop him. Perhaps an angel could intervene in time. Perhaps—

'You're alive,' he said, and his voice broke, and his gun dropped down beside his thigh. He held out his unarmed hand, offering support or an embrace, and Perceval turned toward him, her eyes wide and wild.

And Rien breathed again, through a pall of sick self-hate for ever doubting him. But then Samael appeared like a star from eclipse, one hand firm upon his arm, and Perceval halted midstep.

—Rien,— said a voice from the air before her. —And Rien only.—

'Dust,' Samael said, as if it needed explaining. And Rien nodded.

Somehow, when Rien turned, she found herself meeting Tristen's faceless attention. 'You're all idiots,' Rien said.

He squared himself. 'You have everything you need.'

She nodded. And as she stepped over the threshold onto the bridge, toward Perceval, she brushed Samael's naked shoulder with her gauntlet and said inside her helm, 'I'm ready, angel. Consent.'

She never saw if he responded. She was distracted by the motion in her hand, as something nigh-weightless and of neutral temperature to the armor's sensors. She looked down in surprise, and nearly dropped it.

Mercy.

Rien swallowed and went forward.

Walking across the bridge, she picked her feet up and set them down straight, to try to limit the amount of dust she was disturbing. Perceval, wreathed in wings like an arbor of brazen thorns, held out her hands. As Rien came closer, she saw the severed stump of one wing dripping viscous blue fluid. Perceval's eyes widened when she saw what Rien held, the splinter of absolute blackness in her hand. Perceval dropped to one knee and Rien trotted a step—but then Perceval stood again and Rien realized her sister had only been picking up Innocence.

Which meant that the chunks of armor and blue-dripping meat scattered around the deck were—

'Oh,' Rien said, and tried not to gag inside her helmet. 'Space it,' she said, and opened her faceplate, just in case. The machine-oil stench of Exalt blood didn't help the nausea, but it didn't really hurt it either.

And then she was close enough to Perceval for Perceval to touch her, and Perceval put a hand on her armored shoulder, and Rien leaned into the touch. Although she couldn't feel the touch through ceramic and titanium, she could feel the armor feeling.

'Close your eyes,' Perceval said.

Rien closed them. For three minutes, timed on her symbiont. And all the while she waited, she felt Samael working in her, moving through her, changing her. Taking her apart.

Her fringes were unraveling, and she felt how Perceval had come unraveled, too. She sensed what Perceval hadn't wanted her to witness, as Perceval collected Ariane's symbiont, her own symbiont hunting it to every corner of the bridge, and consumed it. And with it, Ariane.

And with Ariane, Alasdair.

'I guess you're really Captain now,' Rien said, without opening her eyes. And then the name, one last time. A caress. 'Perceval.'

Perceval's voice was thick and choked. 'I'm not exactly Perceval anymore.'

'It's all right,' Rien said, as Samael's invisible components converted her, cell by cell. 'I still love you.'

Perceval touched her armor again. This time, Rien felt it.

Samael was converting the armor, too. Or her own symbiont was, now. Now that the angel had given it instruction.

In Rien's head, Hero Ng was steely in his resolve. The angels must be integrated. Samael was not strong