Grail

but when confronted with another angel, a bit of rank-pulling. By resolving herself for him, she said in essence, you are not angel enough to meet me on my own terms.

That Samael did not protest, and had never protested, was either a sign of submission or of incalculable patience. Given her knowledge of his past, of his prior and more powerful self, Perceval was inclined to believe the latter.

When he got close enough, Tristen shoved the picnic meal into Perceval’s arms and grinned wolfishly. “Come on,” he said. “We’re going outside.”

In under ten minutes, Perceval was walking with him across the hull of the world, toting the paper basket (now wrapped in a thermal shield), while she herself was still wrapped in her suit of armor, well wrought against the depredations of the Enemy. Nova had access to detailed sensory and proprioceptive information from her hull. Those data were far more nuanced than anything Perceval and Tristen could glean from simply stomping heavy- booted across the surface of the world, trusting electromagnets to bind them where they ought stand, and trusting their own honed skills and trained reflexes to slip them through the very fingers of the Enemy should their grip be somehow broken. But the incident with Leviathan in which the Jacob’s Ladder had nearly been destroyed had taught them that Nova’s senses were not unimpeachable, and eyes-on inspection was a valuable protocol.

And now there was the question of how the mercenaries had penetrated their defenses. And of what they had wanted with the Bible. And of what had become of Charity.

Still, what they did was useful work, and it kept her mind off lightspeed lag and grief and her worries regarding what they would do should the denizens of Grail turn them away.

Usually it was carried out by junior Engineers. Perceval’s armor was also richly bedecked with sensors, and it and her eyes showed her a few of those on the hull this hour, quartering slowly across their assigned patrols, gazes trained a few feet in front of their boot steps. Their armor was marked by color. The russet and orange of Engine said they had reported to Perceval’s mother, Caitlin Conn, Chief Engineer. Each wore rank sigils on their shoulders and across the breadth of their back.

Perceval could feel their attention on herself and Tristen. His white armor and height were unmistakable, and she imagined she was unmistakable, too. Her armor was also white, stark and plain, but that was not because she had chosen the presence of all colors as a personal badge. She had never customized this suit, but rather wore it as it had walked to her out of the storage module.

She wondered if the crew members saw that as humility or hubris. Most probably, some of each.

However they interpreted her presence, though, it did not hurt the Captain’s popularity or authority to be seen doing the work of walking the hull. Perceval hoped it showed she did not set herself above the common folk, which was doubtless a part of Tristen’s intent in bringing her out here.

He was by far the better politician.

Side by side in their armor, a few meters apart, they quartered the skin of the world. Most of Perceval’s conscious attention remained on the hull, but between her own senses and those of the armor, she could hardly have pretended to be unaware of the vast sweep of the Enemy around her. Chilly stars lay scattered like dust across its velvet, all surpassed by the brighter pinpoint of the destination star.

It glowed an intense white-gold, brilliant enough to cast shadows that lay black against the gray-white, radiation-marked skin of the world. The contrast was sharp enough that when Perceval and Tristen turned away from the destination sun and their shadows stretched before them, Perceval had to shade even her Exalt eyes with her visor to see clearly into the blackness.

All around, the great scaffolded architecture of the world turned, rotating lazily before its center of thrust. To Perceval it did not seem as if the world wheeled around its axis. She knew how it worked, but when she looked up, Perceval’s imagination told her the stars wheeled around the world. Her armor and her Exalt senses would quickly put the illusion to rest if she checked their inputs, but she found she rather enjoyed it.

When it had been stationary—or only falling in orbit around the shipwreck stars—the world had rotated around itself with a grandeur Perceval well remembered. The world was so vast that even when it whipped about its center of gravity with great speed, the view across the gulf suggested a stately pace—an impression only made more inescapable by its space-stained, dust-scoured, radiation-pitted surface.

In pattern—and a bit in color—the surface under Perceval’s feet reminded her of the fur of a tortoiseshell cat. There had been time and materials since Acceleration for the crew to effect some repairs in the world, but cosmetic damage had been a low priority. While shipshape and spaceworthy, the Jacob’s Ladder still bore the wounds of her age—another factor that made the walking inspections so essential. These young Engineers were getting to know the face of the world—every wrinkle and every blemish. And new injuries would show up either as structural weaknesses or metal fatigue—visible to toolkits, armor, or Exalt senses—or as bright scars in the burned and mottled hulk they walked upon.

Logically, Perceval knew it would have taken thirty-nine minutes for their transmission to reach Grail, as they were not approaching its orbit from the near side of the sun. They planned to use the gravity well of one of the system’s gas giants—a violet monster of a planet, decked in rings and moons and captured asteroids like so much glistening gaudery—as a slingshot to curve their trajectory and boost them toward Grail.

So that was approximately thirty-nine minutes one way, and then whatever time it took for the people of Grail to realize they had received a message, decode it, translate it, hold whatever conferences needed holding, argue, politick, and fire it back. They would not, she thought, be sending their message of permission or denial tonight. At best she could hope for a preliminary contact—a feeler.

She still wanted to sit in her Captain’s chair—more like a throne than a chair, no matter what she told Nova to do with it aesthetically—and chew on her thumbnails until they called.

Instead, she looked up, startled from her reverie by the staccato vibration of Tristen patting a long, curved cable as thick around as four men holding hands.

“Sit here,” he said. “We’ll have lunch now.”

“Outside?” she said, startled, imagining unsealing her helmet and crunching ice-hard, space-frozen vegetables. It didn’t present a lot of appealing aspects, even without considering the effect of the Enemy on her tender face. She’d survive it. She was Exalt and the Captain, and the aura of her Angel always surrounded her. But it didn’t sound like fun.

She heard him chuckle over the com, knowing she blushed as he began unfolding a transparent geodesic blister. “It’s not a picnic if it happens inside.”

At least the armor hid her face. She stuck the basket down in the middle of the blister with a dab of adhesive and went to help him anchor the edges. It was restful work, repetitive and fiddly, requiring concentration to do well. They worked in silence, shoulder to shoulder, stretching and adhering. Perceval could tell when the seal was complete, because Tristen set his armor to heat and vented oxygen. Alien sunlight and Tristen’s suit heater were enough to keep the thin air from freezing. The triangular panels tautened under slight, sudden atmospheric pressure, but the blister held.

“Go on,” he said, unsealing his helm. “We can hold our breaths on the way back. Let’s eat.”

Perceval burst out laughing with enough force to spatter the inside of her faceplate with spittle. It was irresponsible and goofy and exactly what she needed. She retracted her helmet and faceplate, taking a deep breath of the thin, chill air. The oxygen environment was low-molar, but within Exalt tolerances, and the whole setup was so madly perfect that she didn’t care.

She plunked herself down and stuck herself to the hull beside the picnic basket to watch while Tristen unfolded the paper and insulation. Nothing inside was exactly hot anymore, but some of it must have been when it was packed, because there was enough residual heat to encourage a faint dragon-tail of steam. In its turn, the water vapor thickened the atmosphere, as did every warm, wet breath Perceval and Tristen gave up to it.

Everything is an ecology, she thought, and dearly hoped that she did not live to regret the extravagance of this meal. With a potential end to the aggressive maintenance of environmental balance in sight, it was too easy to spend resources profligately, to make up for long hardship and privation. Too easy, and too dangerous.

While Tristen was sorting out utensils, she found two packets of noodles and handed him one. They were designed so you could hold them open one-handed by pressing at diagonally opposite corners and dip chopsticks in and out at will. Clever and convenient both, for situations with erratic or micro gravity.

She tilted her head back for the first mouthful, watching the world turn against the stars, and wondered how