The last step.
The strictly flat summit of the tower, of smooth black stone. The sun has long since set, but powerful auroras fall like a curtain from the cloud layer and illuminate the surroundings.
The Empyrean Gate may be here: at the exact center of the tower, two or three meters above the ground, a luminous triangle.
"The three-shaped form," Ada indicates, signing the appropriate glyph.
They advance as best they can, in a cold breeze. In the distance, the apocalypse seems to drift away like a storm.
A silent bird falls from the sky: the Halcyon. When it reaches two meters above the ground, its reactors warm the air and it opens like a complex box to eject Andreï, who is carrying Pallas in his arms.
Ada wants to hug him even though he is "the weird guy" (and now, above all, the tired guy), but she settles for trotting toward him, exhausted, and raising a hand with a smile, just as he lays his officer's body onto the ground.
"Is she asleep?" Ada asks, who likes people alive or dead, but not in-between.
"The last few days have been long for all of us, I think, Gorylkin."
"Pff!"
Had he scrambled through the snow like she did? These people of the HS, Ada thinks, such delicate creatures.
The Wau kneels beside Pallas, touches her forehead. Catatonia. He wakes her with a psychic caress, the way one wakes a sleeping child. Pallas blinks.
Other ships land: Salman's Phoebus, from which he emerges carrying the slimy Abandoned over his shoulder. A Raven from the Ptah with a contingent of officers armed with rippers. Two others, packed with the last survivors of the Amaterasu, including its captain and its Xeno cat. Three Anti-Wau fall from the sky. The impact is harsh because the ground does not absorb the shock, and stunned, almost broken, they rise before the Wau knocks them out psychically for good.
Other ships of the Stellar Fleet, Tygers, descend from the sky with retracted weapons and at slow speed. Gulmira steps out of the first of them with two security officers who carry their rippers slung across their backs. She is accompanied by Esmée. Other captains unknown to Andreï, but clearly wearing the uniform, also descend from the others.
Andreï, who was kneeling, rises with Pallas, whose eyes flutter and who seems to be waking from a very long sleep.
Gulmira wears a bitter smile. As a tactician, she tells herself she could gain the upper hand by force of rippers-but the Wau is there. His armor bears scratches from unimaginable traumas and his stance seems fragile, yet even a fragile god can crush any army of mortals.
"What a pity, Wau, that you chose to oppose the legitimate Stellar Fleet. But let us say it is a historical tradition."
"The Lennox and Escalus crises teach us that this opposition was a just struggle," the Wau states in his neutral voice.
"One would think that history belongs to the defeated. Captain… Admiral Andreï, it pains me, but the Stellar Fleet surrenders to your command."
Andreï, with a poor smile, places his hand on Gulmira's shoulder, while behind him Ada jumps into Salman's arms and he spins her around.
"Hold on a moment. Soon all this will be over. I will no longer be captain nor admiral, and, between us, you are an excellent asset. I suggest, however, that next time you remain open to a request for surrender to the very end. Tantrums are for children."
"Why did you not retreat, tend to your wounds, and counterattack?" the Wau inquires.
Gulmira remains silent. The Wau steps forward to stand near Andreï, who answers for her:
"I spent more time with Garen Antor, the Aleph, than anyone else. I see no dishonor in fearing to account to him for defeat. I imagine opportunistic captains have already Drifted away to be the first to explain to him how much they deserve your position, and how much you deserve punishment."
"I have presented the requested surrender, but I do not personally intend to rally to you, Andreï," Gulmira replies, lowering her eyes.
Old Captain Esmée, so old she bore actual wrinkles of age, swiftly seizes a ripper and fires at Andreï. The Wau blocks the shots with his body in the blink of an eye, and the metal fragments ricochet off him before falling to the ground. She fires again and again, her officers draw their own rippers, and the Wau sends them into unconsciousness. She turns her ripper against herself, and another security officer from Gulmira's retinue disarms her. She collapses, but there is an animal flame in her gaze.
Andreï does not comment.
He raises his voice and, beneath the aurora, addresses everyone:
"I do not know whether you are religious, whether you worship the gods of humans or of Xenos. If we are to believe our expedition to the planet where Garen Antor was exiled, this colony is the work of entities the Xenos revere under the name of the Travelers. This luminous triangle, which they call the three-shaped form, is a machine of their making capable of altering the direction of the arrow of time. The tower on which we stand is an amplifier of unquantifiable power. We will now manipulate it in an attempt to reach The Empyrean Gates. We will face forces that exceed us in power and in understanding. We are insects in cathedrals."
And lowering his voice, he added:
"As we have always been beneath the mysteries of the firmament."
He advanced with his companions toward the Three-Shaped Form, which in its light caught the hypnotic waves of the auroral reflections. The form was too high, and the Wau grabbed Ada like a child to lift her toward it.
In doing so, he remembered the vision the Owls of Booz had given him earlier in the marshes of the Xenos' Babylon: Andreï, Ada, and himself, not far from The Empyrean Gates, a strange familial and warm scene. The vision is coming true… the vision has come true, at the unimaginable price of having been brought back from death to make it so. From now on, he thought with amusement, any death will be final.
Andreï gives Ada an instruction: to touch the lower side in order to trigger passage toward perpendicular time. Before the eyes of the small assembled army, the young woman extends her hand toward the luminous line that vibrates erratically…