The first thing Ynaqi notices when she wakes up in the clinical-white room is—okay, the second thing she notices, because you can’t really discount those harsh lights that poked through the skin of her eyelids to wake her. Pale as slit-goggle tundra and bright enough to give you a goddamn headache.

The second thing she notices: no ache. Not in the head and not in the stomach. Not anywhere Which is odd because last thing she remembered was the feeling of her life leaking out of her abdomen.

She’s laying in a mint-shaded slab of foam bed. Its sheets crinkle like tissue paper as she sits gingerly up, waiting for that soul searing pain to reintroduce itself. It doesn’t. She examines herself—someone’s put her in a thin robe. She unbelts it and beholds the puckered snake of scar tissue across her belly. All that remains of the apocalypse.

Tennek. Suqen. A moment of blind panic. Are they okay? Are they still on this shore?

Ynaqi lowers her knees to see her crewmates at the foot of her bed. Tennek’s arms are crossed and his chin tucked; Suqen’s delicate head is canted against his shoulder. They’re both asleep. The see-saw music of their deep breaths, Suqen’s soft and melodic and Tennek’s on the grumbling edge of a snore.

The dry skin of Ynaqi’s lips stretches and cracks as she smiles. They’ve been here waiting for her. Like the heroes in some romantic song cycle.

Her heroes.

Something urgent bubbles in her. A question.

“Guys,” she whispers, and then, louder. “Hey. Guys. Guys.”

Tennek makes a decidedly unromantic snrk noise. His eyes crack open.

He’s on his feet immediately. The jostle of her departing shoulder-pillow tips Suqen onto her side; then she recovers and is right by him. Right by Ynaqi.

“Naq,” she gasps, and her eyes are filling and spilling over. Her snout squishes against Ynaqi’s. She is upon the newly conscious gunner in a tight, weepy embrace.

Ynaqi rests her chin on Suqen’s shoulder. “You’re leaking on me.”

“You were leaking on me, you big beautiful bitch,” Suqen sobs.

“Cap.” She extends her arms. “Come here, mister.”

Tennek sits on the lip of the bed and embraces them both, pressing Suqen into Ynaqi’s chest and folding his arms around both of them.

“Hey, Naq,” he whispers. “Hey, lady. Welcome back.”

Ynaqi has never heard his voice this soft, so full of emotion that it quivers beneath the weight. Her question becomes more pressing.

She extracts herself a notch from the hug. Suqen’s tears have left a topographic stain on her shitty robe, a little pond at the neckline.

“How long was I out?” she asks.

“Day, just about.” Tennek loosens his hold and backs up to give her space. “Day and a half, I guess. They got different days in here.” 

Tennek released her but Suqen didn’t. She’s burying herself deeper into Ynaqi, nuzzling and shaking as Ynaqi’s cushiony chest muffles her sobs. All the distance they’ve carefully cultivated and stuck to—it’s all gone, all of a sudden. A seal they can’t un-break. Ynaqi runs her hand up Suqen’s spine and feels reality shift along with the keeper’s sinuous scoot closer in. The keeper clings to her. She cradles the back of Suqen’s head.

“So what,” she says. “We got… eight days left, then? Til it’s mission failed?”

“Just about,” Tennek says. “Close to seven.”

“Mission’s already failed,” Suqen says. “Mission’s done with. No more mission, Naq. I ain’t giving you back to the armada.”

“No?” Ynaqi chuckles. “All right.”

Suqen makes a whimper of assent and crawls further into Ynaqi’s lap.

“Goddamn, girl.” Tennek nudges Suqen’s foot. “Give her space. She’s been stitched open and shut again.”

“It don’t hurt, Nek. Honestly. I feel pretty good.” Ynaqi gives herself a mental once-over. “Little thirsty, maybe.”

“Yeah?” Tennek leans across the bed. “Let me get in there, then.”

Ynaqi scoots over to make room; Tennek slides up next to her. His leg lays across her, their thighs warm against one another. 

She’s never been this close to him, to his body. He feels so strong and sure. So solid. She wants to curl into his shelter.

“Thought we were going to lose you,” he murmurs. “Thought I’d failed you. Most afraid I’ve ever been.”

His foot hooks over Suqen’s knee and pulls gently to shift the keeper closer, so that Ynaqi is half-buried in her crewmates.

Crewmates. Of what ship? Can she still call them that? Is there another name?

Tennek hands her a water bottle, and she drains it with castaway greed. The clearing of her throat knocks the question loose. She can’t sit on it anymore.

“You two haven’t gotten the kissing started without me, have you?” she asks.

Suqen sputters a laugh. “No,” she says. “We haven’t.”

“Well. Okay.” Ynaqi scooches to the head of the bed.

Suqen’s hand has found its way onto Ynaqi’s stomach, right by the miraculous scar. Tennek’s hand has found its way on top of Suqen’s.

The three of them stare at one another.

Suqen’s thumb marks little windshield wiper caresses against Tennek’s palm and Ynaqi’s abdomen. “Someone wanna go first?”

“All right.” Tennek props himself up on his elbow. “I’m calling captain’s privilege.”

His face looms closer to Ynaqi’s. His solemn, scarred eyes. Always so watchful and full of concern. Fatherly, Ynaqi used to think of them. But he isn’t looking at Ynaqi like a father now.

“Ooh.” Suqen giggles as Tennek’s caressing hand slips along Ynaqi’s jaw. “Starting with male-on-female. How modern of us.”

“You’ll get your turn.” Tennek’s thumb gives just the slightest pressure to Ynaqi’s chin, enough to tilt it. “Been waiting too long for this.”

He kisses Ynaqi, unafraid and assertive. It’s a kiss that pushes into her heart and tosses its bags on the floor. Ynaqi kisses him back, in timid, trembling awe; when Tennek feels it, he quests deeper, captures her. Suqen’s hand is tight in hers, lacing into it. Tennek closes his fist around them both. Warm and calloused and tight.

Ynaqi’s heaving and huffing when Tennek pulls away. Her robe’s askew; the gray sliver of chest expands in visibility as Suqen’s fingers quest beneath the cloth.

“You okay?” Tennek whispers. “Not hurting still?”

“No. Gods, no.” Ynaqi boosts Suqen up across her chest by the keeper’s delicate shoulders. “Not at all.”

Suqen’s kiss is different—smaller, sweeter, dancing away from Ynaqi’s as it explores. She’s teasing, coaxing the bigger woman forward. Ynaqi feigns timidity then pounces forth once Suqen’s slowed. Both her hands come down with authority on Suqen’s tight little butt and her tongue pushes forward and she binds the lithe keeper in her clutches, feels Suqen moan and squirm and exult in finally being caught and crushed. Her fingers slide along the smooth, sweet curve of Suqen’s ass and dig with tender insistence into the soft flesh of her inner thighs, nudging them open until they straddle around Ynaqi’s bent, firm-flexing leg.

“Don’t wanna go too hard there, girls.”

Ynaqi looks past Suqen’s draping tail to Tennek. “Why?” She wiggles their gasping keeper at him. “Plenty of her to go around, cap.”

“Those little bastards are watching us, is why.” He points into the cream-colored corner of the room where a black bubble camera grows wartlike from the wall.

Ynaqi snorts. “So what? They’re going to be watching us for the rest of our lives.”

“They’re so little,” Suqen says. “You’re gonna flip when you see them. Conquered by a bunch of shorties.”

Ipqen’s hands rub Suqen’s supple legs. Her fingers could nearly close around them. “Shorter than you, even?”

“Some of ‘em,” Tennek says.

Suqen scoffs in half-pint indignation. “Most of ‘em.”

“Listen up, shorties.” Ynaqi stabs a finger up at the camera. “You win. You fucking win, okay? Now mind your own business while the losers make out.”

They’ve lost completely. Miserably. Crushed like they weren’t even there. A bug on the invaders’ windshield. But she watches Tennek and Suqen fall into one another, and she holds them both and laughs and cries at the same time, and then they’re upon her again, their hands and tails and breath and lips, and she lost, she knows she lost, but for maybe the first time in her life, she doesn’t feel lost at all.

***

Grant opens the office door with such force that its handle slams into the woodpanel wall. “We have it. We fucking have it.”

He strides to the whiteboard and erases a massive swathe of marker.

Sykora hops hurriedly from the desk. “Have what?”

“The whole thing. We have the song.” Grant sticks a dry-erase pen capfirst into his teeth and tugs the tip free. “Tymar is a fucking champion for this one,” he says around the plastic. “It is perfect.”

“Yes. Okay. So.” Tymar lays a sheaf of his notes on the desk and spreads the pages out. “Late in the Book of Renewal you get a gospel written by an ecclesiast who lived a few thousand years ago. It takes place after the deluge. It’s a, a—” He snaps his fingers to jog his memory. “It’s a frame narrative—the ecclesiast presents it as a visitation from an angelic being, sent backward from the event to console and prepare the children of Eqt for what’s to come.”

“Kinda making me wanna read this heretical shit,” Ipqen admits.

Sykora purses her lips as she stands on tiptoes to read the passage Tymar’s laid out. “That sounds like the same livestock-for-the-slaughter narrative as the Book of Thorns.”

“No, no, this one’s different. This one isn’t a celebration of death, but of life in its sure and solid face. An assurance that nothing truly ends. That after the worst day, a day whose night is burgundy with blood, there will be another morning. A new kind of morning, that comes in defiance of all the tales that tell of eternal darkness. It isn’t described, because it can only be beheld. And to behold it, you have to live. You have to love your life even when you know it’ll hurt and it’ll end. Because you’ll get tomorrow first.” Tymar’s hands are shaking as he points to the passage in the dog-eared Book of Renewal. “It’s everything we need.”

Sykora steps to the whiteboard. She looks across the lyrics, their phonetic translations broken down syllabically in wide ribbons that stem from their sides. She visibly steels herself, shaking the doubt away, straightening that indomitable spine, lifting her chin.

“Right. We have our heading, then.” She turns to the room. “This is the song that saves the Eqtoran annexation.”

Grant drops to a knee in front of her. “Baby. I know you’re going really far out on a limb for this, and I know it’s just because—”

“Grant,” Sykora says. “It’s going to work, lover. You think I’m humoring you.”

“Maybe a little, but—”

“I’m not humoring you. I’m hanging my career and billions of lives off you. This isn’t a silly foible or a new hobby or something. This is the future of the system—of the sector, even. I’m doing this because I believe in you, and I trust you, and I love you. And perhaps it seems like madness to me. But I realized while you were out that I’ve gone mad.”

Grant huffs a laugh and sits on the shag-carpet floor. “Have you?”

“That’s right.” Her tail winds around his shoulders. “Six cycles in a Maekyonite cell have driven me mad. And it’s worked out wonderfully for me so far, so I’m going to keep right on going.”

“It’s very gratifying to hear you say that, sister,” Tymar says. “Because the messenger vision isn’t like the other masculine depictions of the Tamuraq—it’s described like a keeper. Small and cute and feminine.”

“And the vocal part was written for a keeper’s voice,” Grant says. “High up into the mezzo-soprano range.”

Sykora’s eyes dart between the men. “What’s a mezzo-soprano?”

Ipqen’s shoulders are tense. Her hand’s on her mouth. She’s trying to hold her laugh in.

Grant’s hand couches Sykora’s cheek. “You are.”

Sykora’s tail droops away. “Me?”

“Yes,” says Grant.

Sykora’s valiant attempt at digesting this information twists the edges of her mouth down. “Is it too late to change my mind and blow the planet up?”

“Yes,” says Grant.