Chill

Samael nodded. 'There's no way to support her, of course. She'll have to be sacrificed.'

The sword on Tristen's hip murmured, Save her.

11 aimless angels

Shall the companions make a banquet of him? Shall they part him among the merchants? Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? Or his head with fish spears?

--Job 41: 6-7, King James Bible

Caitlin would have far rather returned Jsutien to an acceleration bay or, failing that, a hospital tank, but he was awake now and she was stuck with him. Well, technically the hospital tank was still an option, but an Exalt didn't need that much resource support for a simple skull fracture, and Caitlin thought Jsutien would require little attention while sleeping off his injury.

Also, she needed him and she didn't trust him, and she didn't really want him out of her sight. So she left him tucked in a corner of Central Engineering, one arm nanoshackled to the magnetized leg of his cot. While he snored she directed survey operations and created prioritized lists of existing damage, impending damage, and available consumables for Nova's convenience.

Status one was to repair, patch, or at least seal off catastrophic injury to the world--anything that represented an immediate danger to integrity, biosystems, or consumable or static resources. The irony being that many of those consumable resources would be consumed in the process of effecting the necessary repairs.

A quandary, but if God had made the world perfect, there would be no need for evolution.

Pursuant to those goals, Caitlin instituted protocols geared toward halting the expansion of null zones and the establishment of new ones, diagnosing the source, and regaining control of existing ones as rapidly as possible. Reinforcing the superstructure, collecting raw material, and choosing an immediate harvestable destination were also driving priorities.

Further down the list fell niceties such as stabilizing the world's biosystems. Caitlin ranked crew comfort close to last. They could stay in the acceleration pods.

And if it came to pass that she needed to sacrifice some percentage of them to keep the rest alive--an eventuality she was not yet prepared to face as anything but a hypothetical--it would be easier to make the decision if they were still in suspension.

Seated at the console Benedick had repaired, Caitlin rested her forehead against the backs of her fingers and sighed in exhaustion.

'We're still bleeding atmosphere and water?' She rubbed her aching hands. Her overstressed colony wasn't managing much damage control against the small aches and agonies of life. For a moment Caitlin thought of Benedick, the strength of his hands and how they could ease the ache. She bit her cheek and swept memories aside.

The angel's voice was soothing and neutral. 'Faster than we can replenish them, Chief Engineer. At this point, we are mostly losing consumables by capillary bleed, though the Captain has caught two more catastrophic unmakings, though only by having the Captain review feeds from external video motes. Generally a tiny leak is harder to locate and seal than a vast one, but--'

'You're still having problems seeing things?'

'It is a concern,' the angel admitted.

Caitlin was already learning to determine the new angel's moods, despite its tendency to sound more methodical than personable. A matter of integration, she thought. As it brought its shattered personalities closer to consensus, it might find more range and depth of response. In the meantime, much of the processing power that could otherwise have gone to independent action and autonomous thought was bound up merely continuing the process of integration. And Perceval was a relatively inexperienced Captain, which meant that much of the executive guidance and disaster response had to come from Caitlin, the Chief Engineer.

A Chief Engineer who right this instant bitterly missed Susabo, the former Angel of Propulsion. Or even Inkling, who would not have had to be so carefully led. The most frustrating part was that she knew Susabo and Inkling were both present there inside Nova, somewhere--just not yet entirely compiled into the whole. Caitlin itched to pound her fists on the console and scream 'Integrate faster!'

But such additional pressure was unlikely to net her good results.

She took a deep breath and said, 'Nova, at this point would it be more efficient to allocate those resources to increasing our speed, thus feeding the ramscoop faster? If we can counterbalance the lossage with increased input--'

'My calculations indicate that that is a viable option,' the angel agreed. 'We will still be limping, and eventually we will outstrip the blown-off gas cocoon of the supernova, at which point collectable resources will become more sparse. We will need to be ready with other options. Chief Engineer, not to interrupt myself, but--'

A hesitating angel was never a good sign. 'Spit it out.'

'Samael wishes to speak to you.'

Caitlin wondered if her symbiont couldn't at least do a little something about the headache. She set her armor to provide more back and neck support, and said, 'Put him on.'

Because he was communicating with a high-ranking Engineer, Samael did her the courtesy of generating only a partial avatar--a gleaming focal point that materialized with a polite chirp. Quickly and efficiently, he explained that the world appeared to have reset in some fashion, and as part of its last-ditch effort at survival, it was not only releasing life-forms selected at random from its genetic banks, but altering them.

'The biosphere is mutating under stress,' Caitlin restated, to be sure she understood.

'That appears to have been what the Builders intended.'

If he were material, or possibly just present, she would have thrown something at him. 'Well, stop it, Samael.'

'I haven't the strength anymore for ventures such as that.' When Caitlin glared at Samael's avatar, he added, 'I am not equipped to lie to you.'

'Right,' she said, and restructured her to-do list. 'Give me back to Nova, please.'

Samael's confident, glowing polyhedral winked out, to be replaced by Nova's silver-haired avatar. Whether the young angel thought her crew would be more comforted by a face to respond to or whether she sought the reassurance of a human seeming for herself, Caitlin did not know. She was simply grateful that Nova had chosen a form so unlike any of her component parts. It broke her heart enough to look in the angel's alien eyes and catch a fleeting expression that reminded her of Rien. She did not care to imagine how she would have borne it if the features that wore that manner resembled her adopted daughter's. Better for Nova to be as different as she could.

Then she wondered when she had begun thinking of the angel as a she. There was nothing about Nova to indicate or imply a sex, and as Caitlin knew them, the vast majority of angels had always been he by courtesy, much as ships were she.

Focus, Chief Engineer, she reprimanded herself. Funny how the alienation of a title could make you hold yourself together in the face of the impossible.

Caitlin said, 'Thank you, Nova. I'm going to list off our immediate complex of problems as I understand it, and I'd appreciate it if you'd check my logic and see if I've missed anything.'

Frowning, the angel nodded. 'Carry on.'

Verbalization was a slow and monodimensional means of exchanging information, but it demanded linearity and precision, so Caitlin chose to speak out loud rather than to transmit a problem matrix. In a measured fashion, she listed everything she'd previously considered, added Samael's intelligence on the Jacob's Ladder's biosphere reboot process as an immediate concern, mentioned the pursuit of Arianrhod and