"Ah, you are at the apex, Hierarch Epthirieth Loman Dorth."
The words wormed into his consciousness, almost as if forming from the random sounds of so much that he was himself hearing and hearing by proxy. With part of himself that seemed nothing to do with human senses, he felt something unfolding from quantum vacuum, oozing out like guts pressured out through a small hole in someone's torso, or perhaps like crystals growing in cooling magma — something vast, and more powerful than anything should have the God-given right to be. Even Behemoth was a pale monster indeed by comparison.
"Who? Who?"
On Charity, Loman looked through the eyes of technicians and saw something they had hoped very much never to see. On the Witchfire he felt the horror of Captain Ithos as, trapped against atmosphere, he observed missiles hammering down on him from deepest space. One after the other he felt the brief sad protest of lives snuffed out in seconds, as hugely powerful induction weapons and full-spectrum lasers scoured away small ships of every kind between the cylinder worlds, almost like a blowtorch singeing away pin feathers from three plucked birds. Briefly he heard the babbling panic of the crew in the lone bomber with its cargo of atomic weapons. Briefly he glimpsed on a screen in the Gabriel the trace of radioactive vapour which that craft became in high orbit over Masada, and felt the keening grief of Captain Granch.
"I am Skellor and you see me in total, Hierarch Epthirieth Loman Dorth. Now, release your hold or I must free your hand."
Loman saw the sheer appalling size of the Occam Razor, and watched it pulverize the entire technical infrastructure of the system in mere seconds. The small ships of the fleet were burning, cargo carriers and small transports burning when not already become glowing debris. He felt the sudden groundswell of prayer from the Gabriel, the Witchfire and Ducking Stool, just before the missiles struck and the burning shells of these ships rolled around the planet, breaking up and contributing their substance to the growing scrapyard orbiting Masada. Then the afterglow of another titanic explosion bled across his vision, and he saw Ragnorak in harsh and brittle detail tumbling end over end down into the gaseous sea that was Calypse. Through the eyes of screaming men he saw girders and huge frameworks twisting against vast storms of colour. Then the image blinked out upon a fading wail and, alone again, he felt something reaching out from that terrible ship: something that wanted to get inside his head, something that wanted to seize from him the reins of power, absolute power.
"You cannot have it."
That seemed the limp and ineffectual protest of a child caught playing with something it had been disallowed, but Loman reached out, tightened his grip, and resisted.
"I have work to do."
Hanging on with all the sweaty grip of his mind, and the will that had allowed him to climb so high, Loman wondered at this huge emphasis on this entity's work.
"This is mine! You have no right!"
Glinting sunlight from its golden hull, and sucking away sunlight with grey Jain architecture, the Occam Razor slid closer, dominated the face of Calypse, and turned silver and ebony towers on its hull down towards the cylinder worlds of the Theocracy. In vacuum, the titanic flash of lased light was invisible, but it became visible as the first coherent wave slammed from the Down Mirror of Faith, only microseconds before that mirror disintegrated. The full horror washing through him in hot sickness, Loman leaned out and stared down into the eye of the cylinder world as the wall of fire ascended. He started screaming, as for each passing second he felt tens of thousands of his citizens incinerated; and at the last moment, when the firestorm obliterated Amoloran's Tower and the Up Mirror, he felt all contact and all power plucked from his grasp, and thought that truly cruel, before brief incandescent agony snuffed his life.
Rolling through space: Faith was an empty container, burnt out on the inside.
The side of the big lander opened down into the tented area, in which men were now erecting dividing walls. Speelan led them round stacks of packing cases, then held up his hand to halt them by the ramp leading up into the lander itself. From the room beyond, which was obviously some sort of control centre, walked a man with a blank face and ball-bearing eyes, below flat black hair. He seemed surrounded by a kind of dead atmosphere as he descended the ramp. Perhaps that was the smell of death, Apis thought, then dismissed the idea as being far too romantic.
"My name is Aberil Dorth, Deacon and First Commander of the Theocratic forces of Masada." He gestured to the first man. "You have met my lieutenant, Speelan. And your names are?"
Apis considered keeping his mouth shut, but then wondered what point there was in that — doing so he realized would only bring about the expected violence earlier.
"I am Apis Coolant, M-tech number forty-seven of Outlink Station Miranda," he said, quietly pleased with his fulsome title.
Aberil Dorth stared at him for a moment, then turned to Eldene.
"I'm Eldene," she said simply.
Aberil abruptly stepped towards her, reached out and with one finger parted the stick-strip of her shirt to expose her small breasts and the dressing underneath them.
"Pond worker," he observed.
Eldene did not reply, she just closed her shirt once he removed his hand, and waited.
Aberil turned back to Apis, then pointed to something lying in a heap beside the ramp, which it took a moment for Apis to recognize as the exoskeleton he had been wearing previously.
"That suit," said the Deacon with obviously more than passing interest. "How does one remove the limiters?"
Here it comes, thought Apis: the first question he could not answer. "I don't know," he said, then seeing an opportunity to turn things away from himself, he tipped his head towards Speelan. "He killed the woman who did know."
Aberil glanced at Speelan, then abruptly reached out and closed his hand around Eldene's throat. "You are an Outlinker," he said to Apis. "You manage to stand down here which, as I understand it, is quite exceptional, but I don't want to risk killing you just yet." Eldene was now choking, fighting for breath. She tried kicking him, but he easily avoided her attempts. Apis started to move forwards, but one of the guards caught him by the hair and struck him lightly across the back of his legs with a gun barrel, so that Apis went down on one knee.
Aberil went on, "So, every time you either refuse to answer, or give me an answer that displeases me, I will do something unpleasant to your companion here. Is that understood?"
"Understood," said Apis, tears in his eyes.
Aberil gave Eldene a shake. "The correct reply from you, Outlinker, is 'Yes, your reverence. »
"Yes, your reverence," said Apis.
Aberil released Eldene and she too slumped to her knees. Another man walked down the ramp — this one wearing a less obviously military uniform — and stood observing things from a wary distance. Aberil turned to him. "Ah, Molat, hand me your stinger."