She growled and released him. Rubbing his throat, he watched her as she stalked back and forth before him, a tiger winding itself up to strike. At last she wheeled to face him.
“Well?” she demanded.
There was nothing for it. It was either tell her or be thrown out the nearest hatch, parachute optional.
“What do you think?” he said, quietly.
She studied him for a moment, then smiled, just briefly. “Good. I hoped you hadn’t gone soft on me.”
He smiled, just as briefly. “Never.”
“You knew the only way you could find out what I was up to and stop me was to join me, so you and your ...”
“Layanna,” he supplied.
“You and your alien whore decided to trick me into thinking you would willingly betray them and go with me.”
“Really, Jessryl, if you already knew, why did you ask?”
With that, her eyes blazed, but not with fury. She threw herself at him, finding his lips waiting, and they tore at each other’s clothes. And, despite the fact that they were both utterly exhausted, they launched themselves on the luxurious bed and did not stop until they were done.
* * *
Someone knocked on Sheridan’s cabin door—Avery heard it through the bulkhead—waited a tactful moment, then knocked on Avery’s door.
“Yes?” said Sheridan, raising her head from his chest.
“The Captain, ma’am,” came a voice. “He wants a word before dinner.”
“Very well. We’re coming.”
The footsteps moved on.
Avery and Sheridan dressed quickly, she using a new uniform from her cabin, he using some quickly gathered civilian clothes that had been tossed into his, likely moments before his arrival, and together they made their way through the halls to a doorway flanked by two guards. After checking with someone within, the guards admitted them, and Sheridan and Avery stepped through into a dark conference room facing a bank of windows.
A man stood there, silhouetted against the windows, staring out at the gathering darkness. Clouds rushed past him, ghostly bulks in the twilight.
He didn’t turn, and Sheridan and Avery were obliged to move toward him. Avery could see that, like every other soldier aboard the zeppelin, save Sheridan, the Captain had accepted the Sacrament, and though he was a handsome if stern man in his middle to late fifties, there was something gray about his face, something just slightly fishy, and one of his hands was webbed.
Wearing a troubled expression, he turned to them, nodding at Sheridan, then Avery.
“Doctor, meet Captain Marculin,” Sheridan said. “Captain, Doctor.”
“Thank you for coming, both of you,” the Captain said, in a rich, gravelly voice. He spoke Ghenisan, which Avery appreciated. To Avery, he said, “So, you are the Doctor of Doom, eh? I have heard so much about you.”
“I am hardly a doctor of—”
“You have halted our attempt at world conquest, forced our gods to retaliate by killing tens of millions. You are the greatest butcher of our time.”
Avery blinked. “I did not force them. They chose—”
“Gods do not submit, Doctor. They do not surrender. No, you forced them to act, and so they have, and now it is up to us to stop them.”
“You ... want to stop them? The R’loth? But I thought ...”
“Not all is as it seems, Doctor,” Sheridan said.
“Indeed,” said the Captain. “We are trying to stop them. Of course. We are humans, are we not? We want to preserve humanity.”
“But they’re your gods,” Avery said, honestly puzzled.
“Yes, and we quail in fear of them, and love them for the blessings they’ve given us and the promise of still more blessings to come. But their wrath is a terrible thing, and must be tempered, or all is lost. Civilization will fall.”
“The Starfish have been destroyed,” Avery said quietly, with conviction.
“And what now?” the Captain said. “The assault of the Starfish was our gods’ idea of a surgical retaliation, striking only the countries that had wronged them. The Starfish could only have survived a few days outside of the sea. They could have only leveled the coastal powers, those that had risen against us. Now that the Starfish are defeated, the gods will have no choice but to unleash even more unholy terrors, things, plagues, the warping of reality to the point where anything native to this dimension will perish.”
Sweat trickled down Avery’s back. “What ... what ...?”
“You begin to see,” Sheridan said.
“But Layanna said the R’loth had no further resources—”
“Layanna has been away for centuries,” the Captain said. “Even then, the Great Elders held things back from the rest, waiting to unleash them. That time is now.” He let that sink in, and Avery felt cold all over. Then, slowly, the Captain said, “There is hope, though.”
