Hera of Lexington

Chapter 10 (read Chapter 1)

by Anta Baku

Hera and Fred managed to get the ship off the ground while they could still track the Gavidarians. Virtually nothing about it was working properly, but it would move, and everything else could be fixed while they were following Malachite’s ship. 

Or so she hoped. Jean was still unconscious. Shale was still mysteriously offline. Hera herself, while perhaps not in need of immediate fixing, definitely wasn’t operating at full capacity. Even the decision to get the chase going right away was one she couldn’t be sure about. Should they have stayed on the moon and treated caring for Jean as the most-pressing emergency? The one thing that reassured her on that front was that if she had healed Jean at the price of letting the Cup get away from them forever, the priest would never have forgiven her. 

Shale was a more complicated question. Fred didn’t know why the AI had shut down, and he and Hera couldn’t find any easy answers in the ship’s computer system, while getting it back into a condition where it mostly worked. They weren’t sure if they knew how to restart Shale, and Hera wasn’t completely sure they ought to even if they had the answers. She had chosen to trust Shale over Alistair, but she still wasn’t confident that choice hadn’t been a mistake. Malachite had escaped somehow, and it was clear Fred hadn’t done it. Shale was the only other one there. Perhaps the AI had been more amenable to Malachite’s desire to team up with them than anyone had thought.

Hera needed an answer to that before she was ready to revive Shale. At least she thought she did. Or was this just an excuse to tend to Jean first, because Jean was a human, and Hera thought humans were more important? She was second-guessing her second-guessing, and she tried to shake it off. That was a good way to end up doing nothing. As long as she was helping someone, the team would have to be satisfied.

The first task was still to help Fred make sure they could track Malachite, Azurite, and the Cup. The Vexorian ship was headed toward the outer solar system, but it would take days of sightings to confirm their specific course and destination. So they tried logic. There weren’t all that many possible destinations. 

“They’re not going to Eddy,” said Fred. “We can tell that already. It’s on the wrong side of the sun for their vector.” 

“All the traffic to leave the system goes through Eddy,” said Hera.

“So they’re not trying to get out,” said Fred. “To Gavidarian space or anywhere else. I don’t know if we should believe anything Azurite said.” 

“Not without a thorough analysis of it, anyway,” said Hera. “Which will have to wait until Jean is better. They’re the best one for that sort of thing.” 

“Is Jean going to get better? I didn’t think we were supposed to be able to survive on the surface at all.” 

“Before the Cup, we couldn’t. Now, I don’t know. They’ve been through something no human ever has, at least since Milo’s era. And if it happened then, nobody wrote it down to tell us about it.”

“So how do you treat that?”

“I have no idea. Or I might be doing it already, even at the risk of letting the Cup go and having Jean furious at me for the rest of their life. I’ll start working on it when we’ve figured this out.”

“Not Eddy, then.” Fred got back on topic. “Why wouldn’t they want to leave the system? Here we have some chance of tracking them. If they went FTL we’d probably never see them again.” 

“They might want to leave the system,” said Hera. “But Eddy isn’t going to let Malachite just come back and load up with water for his interstellar drive. He probably knows they don’t have that option.” 

“What about the Gavidarian drive? It doesn’t use water” 

“Neither of these guys are FTL engineers,” said Hera. “And it’s not like there’s a Gavidarian parts depot hiding out there somewhere anyway.”

“Probably,” said Fred.

“Probably,” Hera admitted. “I think we’d have found it if it had power and crew. And Azurite may have more abilities than I expected, but I don’t think he’s suddenly going to be able to build an interstellar drive. That’s not much of a worry.”

“So where are they going?” asked Fred. “There’s not a lot out there. Mining asteroids? Why?” 

“What if they want to get their FTL water somewhere other than Eddy?” asked Hera.

“They can’t,” said Fred. “Liquid water only on three bodies in this system: Lexington, Saratoga, and Eddy. There’s ice out in the depths of the system, but that ship won’t have enough power to melt that much ice.” 

“Four bodies in this system now,” said Hera. “There’s also liquid water on Menotomy.” 

“Which they’re going away from as fast as they can.” 

“Right. So. Eddy won’t let them get water. Lexington won’t let them get water, and Lexington would prevent them from coming back to Menotomy. Saratoga doesn’t have water to spare unless they wanted to drain the whole Foundationist settlement.” 

“I wouldn’t put that past Malachite,” said Fred. “But they’re not going that direction either.” 

“And Azurite seems to think there are good reasons not to commit major war crimes, although I don’t think I believe any of the ones he told me.” 

“There’s nowhere else to get water, then,” said Fred. “So they must be doing something else. Maybe they’re just running from us and they’ll make a plan later?” 

“There’s no other place to get water,” said Hera. “But there might be another way to get water. The same way that there’s water on Menotomy now that wasn’t there yesterday.” 

“Using the Cup again. But Gavidarians can’t use the Cup.” 

“I just told them that to demoralize them,” said Hera. “I don’t know how it works any more than anyone else does. I’ve used it myself now, somehow, and I think I know less than I did beforehand.”  

“And whatever their ultimate plan is, it obviously depends on them finding a way to use it for themselves. So they still believe they can.” 

“So where are there other liquids they could turn into water?” Hera asked. 

“Ticonderoga, if liquid sulfur appeals to you.” 

“Wrong direction again, though. And they couldn’t get to the surface anyway.” 

“Not much else to go on. All the other planets are dry or ice or gas giants. Maybe there’s a moon? Another ocean with a frozen surface like Eddy? This would be easier if we had Shale. Or even just a properly-working computer. I didn’t think I’d need to remember a full planetary survey.”

“Let me think,” said Hera. “There’s no other water out there, or we’d have used it during the Occupation, even if it was under a mile of ice. But there might be something else. Cumberland’s other moons are barren, I remember that much. And Oriskany has the eight tiny moons, right?” 

“Yeah,” said Fred. “None of them are big enough to keep an atmosphere, let alone anything liquid.” 

“Stanwix doesn’t have moons at all. Which leaves Monmouth. Monmouth has a lot of moons, I remember that much.” 

“Sixty-six, I think? Or was it sixty-eight? And it’s in the right direction.” 

“I feel like I should remember something, but with sixty-some moons probably some of them are interesting.”

“We don’t really need to know right now,” said Hera. “If they’re going to Monmouth–”

“And it looks like they’re going to Monmouth,” said Fred. 

“It’s going to take them five, maybe six weeks to get there. And no way for us to catch them until they slow down. We’ve got a long chase ahead of us, long enough to fix the ship and the computer, and maybe even Jean.” 

“And get Shale back?” 

“I’m not sure what I want to do about Shale. I’m not even sure what we can do about Shale. Take a look at that, will you? Find out if they’re even still in there somewhere, if there’s some way that we can bring them back on line. But don’t do anything yet. I’ll focus on Jean.”

“Fixing the ship will go faster with Shale’s help,” said Fred.

“I know,” said Hera. 

“Shouldn’t we get them back as fast as possible? Have you changed your mind about them being a member of the team?”

“I don’t know,” said Hera. “How did Malachite escape? How did he do so much damage to the ship? Why did Shale shut down? We need to know all those things before we bring them back.” 

“If it was me, I’d like to think you would make sure I was still alive first, and asked the loyalty questions afterward.” 

“Humans are more fragile.” 

“I’m not sure we know how fragile Shale is,” said Fred. “I’m not sure we know how fragile any AI is. Maybe we shouldn’t be trying to take care of either of them. Call off the chase, take Jean to a hospital on Lexington, take Shale to Vexor Alexi.”

“Jean wouldn’t want us to give up.” 

“And Shale? Shale didn’t come here on a quest for one of their most important religious artifacts.”

“Shale doesn’t get a vote right now,” said Hera. “Maybe that’s wrong. I don’t know. I see your point, and I don’t know if I’m making a wrong choice here. But it’s the choice I’ve made.” 

“If I figure out how to wake them up, we’ll have this conversation again.” 

“That is a right choice, I think. Don’t ever be the boss, Fred. You get to tell the boss she might be wrong. The boss has to go on, even knowing you might be right. But don’t stop telling her. She needs to know.” 

It wasn’t often that Hera went from Fred to Jean and left a philosophically fraught conversation for an easier one. Usually it was the other way around. But right now Jean didn’t have any conversation at all, so taking care of them was philosophically simple, if biochemically somewhat beyond Hera’s skills. Taking them to a hospital really wouldn’t have been a bad idea, in a better world than this one. One where two Gavidarians weren’t getting away with the Cup. 

Instead Hera made do with her own skills and the ship’s limited first aid facilities. She’d gotten Jean breathing oxygen first thing, of course, before even trying to fix the rest of the ship. The priest seemed to have stabilized quickly once that was in place, and Hera had judged that she wasn’t needed urgently in that moment. Even so, she was relieved to get back and discover she had been right; Jean appeared to be sleeping peacefully. 

Neither Hera nor the equipment was good at telling the difference between real sleep and peaceful unconsciousness. If Jean had awakened while she was gone, they hadn’t left any evidence of it. Hera thought about trying to wake them, but couldn’t come up with any concrete reason to do it. Outside of reassuring herself, and that didn’t count.

This was another place where having a functioning research computer would have been great. Or, even better, a supercompetent AI who she was certain was on their side. The main thing Hera knew about high-level bromine exposure was that there wasn’t much research on how to survive it. And that applied much more to the unique circumstances surrounding Jean and the First Cup. Shale might have been educated enough to make some educated guesses. Hera only knew enough to apply the basics of how to keep a human respiratory system functional. 

And from that, Jean was breathing steadily, and seemed to be in no immediate danger. But there was no way to tell if they were getting any better. 

A lot of the medical equipment was still in a shambles from Malachite’s escape, and with nothing better to do, Hera got to work on fixing it. She made some guesses about what sort of emergencies Jean could still surprise her with, and made sure to repair those devices first. When she could, anyway. The most useful thing to have right now was probably the brain scanner, but she just didn’t understand it well enough to put it back together. Jean probably could have done it in minutes. 

She wasn’t sure how long she should wait before trying to wake her patient. She needed to know more about what was happening inside Jean’s brain and body. But, well, she didn’t really need that, did she? If Jean was asleep, the best thing to do was to let them sleep naturally. If Jean was comatose, knowing about it probably wasn’t going to help a lot in the immediate sense anyway. Hera didn’t know what she would do if they were. 

So she fixed things she could figure out how to fix, and she waited. Maybe she should be helping Fred figure out how to bring back Shale after all. She didn’t feel very useful here, although if Jean had a heart attack or a seizure and she hadn’t fixed the machines that mitigate those things, she supposed she would feel a lot worse. 

This was the bit that was always the worst about space missions. The part where the mission had her motivated and anxious to take action, but the distances involved meant she was about to spend several weeks doing almost nothing at all. The downshift was worse for having two crew members out of action with nothing Hera could do in this moment to get them back. Patience was a necessary skill of the job, but getting to patience from a state of high adrenaline was never an easy transition.

One of her best methods for doing that, usually, was talking to Jean. If the priest would just wake up, and be their own, normal, mentally-capable self, all the problems would seem smaller. Jean could help her talk through what to do about Shale, and then help her figure out what had happened to the AI and how to get them back. Jean could fix the brain scanner. Jean probably knew what moon of Monmouth had liquids on it. 

Hera could feel herself going in circles, but she couldn’t stop. There were too many needs for her to rest right now, and things were going too slowly to make any sense. She might sleep for ten hours and wake up to everything the same as it was. Or she might be needed for an emergency in the next five minutes. The ship was still mostly broken, and so was Jean’s body, and she didn’t know enough about either one to even know if she could afford to take a break. 

Jean rolled over on the medical table. They didn’t open their eyes, and when Hera went closer the priest didn’t react to her presence. But they still seemed to be sleeping peacefully, just now on their left side. Hera didn’t remember Jean’s normal sleeping position, if she had ever known in the first place. But maybe this was a sign that they were recovering, and would wake on their own soon. Hera would stay with them and find out. Patience wasn’t that difficult. 

Before long she had fixed the few pieces of emergency medical equipment she thought she had any chance of fixing. There was still going to be a lot of work for Jean to do here, and Hera hoped that somehow the priest could get to it before they had another medical emergency. For a moment, five or six weeks of travel before the next potential action looked too short instead of too long.

Hera needed something else to do, but she was having difficulty focusing. She took a seat at the medical terminal and started poking around in the ship’s computer, with no real direction, looking for anything that might be evidence of how Malachite had sabotaged everything and escaped. Going at that task without an overall plan might not be the most useful thing, but at least it could be done sitting down. And she didn’t have the energy for overall plans right now. 

Fred was also in the computer, actually fixing things, and she stayed out of his way. He was mostly working on getting the engine surveillance systems back on line, which was necessarily much more urgent. They had gotten the ship moving, but not with anything like approved maintenance-yard methods. More than ever they needed it to tell them if something was going wrong. 

She should probably be working on the same systems for life support, but she hadn’t touched the life support system in years until trying to get it going in a hurry today. She remembered the experience of training to maintain it, in similar long journeys during the Occupation, when they were the ones fleeing the Gavidarians instead of the other way around. But she couldn’t remember any of the content of that training. 

Fred would get to it eventually. She kept looking through records, trying to get to something intuitively. Something that wasn’t apparent to the first-level systems check Fred had done before she even got Jean back to the ship. He was pretty sure there weren’t any more booby traps, but he couldn’t explain the method of Malachite’s destruction. It had been enough work to catalogue it and figure out the minimum they needed to do to avoid losing track of the Gavidarians and the Cup. 

She didn’t really expect to find anything. It was more about having something to do to keep her awake so she could be there and ready when Jean returned to consciousness. Something that might have a chance of being useful. 

Maybe she was also subconsciously looking for a sign of Shale, although finding and resurrecting a missing AI was far beyond her abilities, even at her best. Would she feel better if she knew that Shale was alive and recoverable? Would she feel worse? 

Maybe it was for the best that Jean woke up before she found anything on either topic. That got Hera’s attention right away. She quickly moved to stop the priest from trying to get up.

“Rest,” she said. “Everyone is fine.”

“The Cup?” 

“Azurite took it,” said Hera. “We’re chasing the Gavidarians, but we think they’re going to Monmouth, so it will be weeks before we can catch them.”

“So why are you here instead of resting yourself?” said Jean. “You look like you need about a week of sleep.”

“Malachite tore your suit in half,” said Hera. “The Cup mitigated the effect of the bromine atmosphere, but you nearly died out there.”

“You nearly died out there too,” said Jean. “Remember? Get some rest. Shale can watch out for me.” 

“Shale isn’t active. They shut down when Malachite escaped and we haven’t figured out how to restart them yet.” This probably wasn’t the time to tell Jean all about her doubts whether to bring the AI back at all.

“You just told me everyone was fine.” 

“We are! Just… Shale is unavailable.”

“What does ‘unavailable’ mean in this context?”

“Injured?” said Hera. “Something like that? You were unconscious, Shale is unconscious. Malachite did a lot of damage to the ship’s computer. Fred’s working on fixing it.” 

“I should be working on fixing it, too.” 

“You should be resting,” said Hera. “Like I said, we’ve got plenty of time. Weeks.” 

“And Shale is just, what? Paused somehow?” 

“We don’t know,” said Hera. “We don’t really understand where anything is in the computer right now, beyond life support and the engines, and Fred’s still working on those. Shale isn’t responsive.” 

“But you know how to get them back and it’s just a lot of work?” said Jean. “Fred knows, I mean?” 

“Well, no. We don’t really know what’s happening to Shale at all.” 

“That. Is not. Everyone is fine,” said the priest. 

“I guess it isn’t,” said Hera slowly. “I guess… I’ve just been assuming that Shale is in there, and frozen, and we can eventually figure out how to get them back. It seemed like you were in more immediate danger. Organic parts being more fragile.” 

“But you don’t know that at all,” said Jean. “They might be dead. Unrecoverable.” 

“They’re either dead or they aren’t,” said Hera. “Right? There’s no ‘almost dead’ for an AI. Whatever state they’re in, they’re going to stay in until we do something.”

“That’s… sort of true,” said Jean. “But just because we can’t interact with them doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not experiencing anything. Shale might be frozen somewhere in the computer, and if they are, you’re right, they’re essentially frozen until we do something. But if you haven’t found them? I don’t know that we can assume that.”

“I didn’t know there was a third option,” said Hera. 

“I don’t really know if there is, either,” said Jean. “I won’t know until I can get a look into the computer. If you would let me at that terminal.” 

“You still need to rest,” said Hera. “If you die trying to find Shale then nobody comes out all right. And you might be the only one who can repair them.” 

“Do I look as bad as you do?” 

“Worse, I assure you. Look, how likely do you think it is that Shale needs urgent intervention?”

“I have no idea even how to guess at that. We don’t know very much about AI emergency response. Vexor Alexi doesn’t like to share that kind of data.” 

“Then I have to use my own judgement. And my best understanding is that wherever Shale is, if Shale is anywhere at all, they’re most likely to be shut down and experiencing nothing. And facing no immediate risk. Even if they are somehow active and unable to communicate, we don’t know they’re facing any immediate risk. We know that you are.”

“Are you sure of that judgement?” said Jean. “I’m not sure you’re not facing any immediate risk. You’re a mess, and Azurite nearly killed you, too.” 

“If you will agree to stay in bed, then I will agree to go to bed, and we will both feel better tomorrow. And we can tackle all the problems about Shale.” 

“There are more problems about Shale?”

“Tomorrow,” said Hera firmly. “You rest, and pretty soon you will sleep again, and if you sleep reasonably well we’ll talk about what you can start working on tomorrow. I will go hit my bunk for about twelve hours, and we’ll probably be up around the same time.”

“Maybe things will look clearer when you’re rested,” said Jean.

“I sure hope so,” said Hera. “I’m not trying to be heavy-handed, here. I’m very aware that I could be wrong, and my least-favorite thing about being the boss is that sometimes decisions have to be made anyway. I’m doing the best I can.” 

“I know that,” said Jean softly. “I’ll try to get some more sleep. And you get some sleep. And it’s probably a good idea to tell Fred to get some more sleep, too. You know how he can get.” 

“I’ll send him a meme before I go to bed,” said Hera. “Thank you. We’ll find Shale, and get them back.” 

“I hope so,” said Jean.

“I hope so, too,” Hera whispered on her way out the door. She didn’t know if it was loud enough for Jean to hear. She was too tired to care.

Sleep didn’t bring any more certainty about Shale, either what to do about their health or their reliability. Hera had a hard time getting to sleep thinking about it, but once she managed to nod off, she was almost as completely down as if she had been an AI herself. Perception returned quite a bit later, and when she dragged herself out to get breakfast and check on the wounded, she found that both Jean and Fred had gotten acceptably-normal amounts of sleep and woken a few hours before her. Jean was dutifully staying passive in medical until Hera approved them leaving. Fred had the engines up to what he considered a modest standard, and had moved on to working on the life support system. 

Fred’s modest standard meant that they shouldn’t try any fancy flying, but he was almost certain that the engines weren’t about to spontaneously blow up and scatter them all over the system. Which was really all Hera could ask for, under the circumstances. Once he got life support to the same condition, she supposed the triage phase would be over and they would have to make some more strategic choices. Like whether to recover Shale. 

Which meant that Hera’s job was to talk Jean through that problem. The priest was being very diligent about getting the rest that Hera had ordered, but she knew that wouldn’t last very long into the day. The work that would make the most sense for them in their condition was computer terminal work, and she expected that the computer terminal work which would make most sense to Jean was figuring out how to reactivate Shale. 

So they had to talk that through before the priest got tired of following orders. Hera wasn’t looking forward to it. A lot of sleep hadn’t made her any more confident in her decision. Then again, maybe Jean would have a good argument to talk her out of it completely. It wouldn’t be the first time. Either way, Hera went into the conversation feeling unprepared. 

Jean, it turned out, had more than just that one thing to talk about. “I’ve been thinking about everything you said yesterday,” they said. “Since there hasn’t been much else I’m allowed to do.” 

“We’ll find something,” said Hera. “I needed more sleep than I thought, or you needed less, or something. I don’t mean to leave you here frustrated forever. I know you need work, but it has to be light work.” 

“Right now what I need is for you to tell me more about what’s happening. I keep focusing on the part where you said that the Cup saved me from the bromine atmosphere. How? Why? What? I don’t even know the right question.” 

“It wouldn’t matter,” said Hera. “I don’t know any of the answers anyway. I can tell you what happened, but I can’t explain any of it. I was looking for the Cup when Malachite escaped, and I couldn’t get to you in time. Before I knew what was happening, he attacked you and tore your suit in half, threw you away. I was half in the ocean. I couldn’t have helped you in time even if there hadn’t been two Gavidarians in between us.”

“That’s not your fault,” said Jean.

“We still don’t know that. It wasn’t immediately my fault. And it’s not like I had time to blame myself in the moment, anyway. But we still don’t know how Malachite escaped.” 

“And you’ve decided to blame yourself for that, somehow?”

“I keep thinking it might have been Shale,” said Hera. “Maybe trusting them was wrong all along. Maybe bringing them along was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made.” 

“And that’s why you don’t want to restart them.” 

“Not until we know,” said Hera. “We can figure out what happened on our own. Especially once you can work again. Once we know the cause of the escape, if it wasn’t Shale, we can bring Shale back.” 

Jean rubbed their face. “Let’s get back to the moment where I should have been dead. Forget about whose fault it was. What happened?”

“I had spotted the Cup, under the bromine. I didn’t have any idea what else to do, so I grabbed it. And… it turned on.” 

“How?”

“I have no idea how. I tried to pick it up, and as far as I can remember, the moment my hand touched it the bromine ocean started turning to water. I could barely hold onto the thing. I didn’t hit a hidden button or anything. It just worked.” 

“How much bromine did it convert?” asked Jean. 

“We didn’t take time to do a planetary survey on our way out,” said Hera. “As far as I know, all of it. Maybe there were some tide pools that were isolated. But the ocean was clear water as far as I could see. It even started sucking bromine out of the atmosphere and converting it somehow. That’s how you survived. Instead of the gas going into your suit it went into the ocean.” 

“A large body of water would do that,” said Jean. “That part wasn’t the Cup, it was just chemistry. You can’t have liquid water in a bromine atmosphere without some significant reactions.” 

“They were definitely significant,” said Hera. “We all survived them, but it was work, even for the Gavidarians. Maybe that’s why Azurite was willing to make a deal? I don’t know about that, either. I really want you to go through everything he said, after we get the computer back up. We can’t trust any of it, but maybe we can learn something about him.” 

“What sort of a deal?”

“I gave them the Cup, and they let me save you.” 

“Hera–” 

“Don’t. It wasn’t just that. I’m standing waist-deep in the ocean with the Cup, two Gavidarians between me and the ship, and I don’t know if the atmospheric change did them any damage but it doesn’t look like it. Shale is down, Fred can’t get anything working, and I’m still injured from the first fight with Azurite. Malachite wanted to attack me and kill us all, and if Azurite had agreed I don’t think they would have had any problem doing it. Malachite probably could have done it by himself at that point.”

“But Azurite wanted something else?” 

“He wanted the Cup without a conflict,” said Hera. “I don’t know why. Maybe when you look at all the records you can figure out why. What he said in the moment was just more doubletalk about wanting to treat humans better. In the moment, I didn’t care. I couldn’t keep the Cup from them, but I could keep everyone alive. So I gave it to them and promised not to follow them.” 

“That part was a lie, though? You said we’re following them.”

“Of course it was,” said Hera. “I can’t imagine Azurite didn’t know it was at the time. We can’t give up on the mission.” 

“And then I lost track of which planet you said they’re going to. Somewhere in the outer solar system?”

“We think they’re headed for Monmouth.”

“That’s a strange destination. Is there a Gavidarian supply depot out there that we never found?” 

“I suppose there might be. But we think they’re going there looking for water.” 

“So they can fuel their interstellar drive. But there’s no water at Monmouth.” 

“There might be. If you had a device that could turn any liquid into water.” 

“You think they can use the Cup? And they’re going to Lafayette?”

“That was the name of the moon. Thank you.” 

“The one with the methane oceans.”

“We couldn’t remember it.”

“The computers are that bad?” 

“I’ll let you at them soon. We don’t know if Malachite and Azurite can use the Cup. But it seems like whatever their plan is, it depends on figuring out how. Plus they don’t have many places left in the system they can go, and they need water to get anywhere else.” 

“So we’re chasing them to Monmouth. Which means we have, what, six weeks? To come up with a plan?” 

“Five and a half, maybe,” said Hera. 

“At least that’s something,” said Jean. “I’d hate to try to do it today.” 

“You shouldn’t do much of anything today.” 

“I promise I won’t do anything physically demanding. And I’ll leave the life support to Fred, just in case I’m less mentally recovered than I think I am.” 

“You seem fine on that axis, to me,” said Hera. “I think you’re more on top of things than I am.” 

“I think I’ve had more time to stop and think about them,” said Jean. 

“I don’t have a problem letting you work on the computer,” said Hera. “Especially if you do it from the terminal here, just to be safe. And if you need to move around a little, you could work on some of the medical equipment that I didn’t know enough to fix. Just in case something else happens.” 

“The computer’s probably enough of a puzzle for today. I’ll try to put some of those basic functions back together, and look around for evidence of how Malachite escaped while I’m at it.” 

“Keep me updated if you find anything,” said Hera.

“Come back and talk to me later, anyway?”

“Of course.”

With Fred fixing life support and Jean working on figuring out the computer, Hera decided the best thing for herself to do was to go digging through the physical evidence of Malachite’s escape. Where they hadn’t had to move things around to make immediately-necessary repairs, there were still undisturbed scenes of physical damage all over the ship. Somewhere in them there might be an explanation for how Malachite got himself out. If nothing else, it was a simple question with concrete answers, and Hera recognized that she needed something like that in this moment. 

And it was always possible that it would help with her larger problem. She didn’t exactly expect to find something that would either incriminate or exonerate Shale, but it was certainly possible. And that would get her out of having to reason her way to an answer to the much more complicated and philosophical question. One that no reasoned answer would quite satisfy. 

Picking a question with concrete answers also meant that it was a question with a concrete lack of answers, and she picked through quite a bit of ship, learning only that there was nothing to learn from it. Malachite’s exit had been violent and destructive, but that seemed to have been a choice on his part after he was already free: damage the ship as much as he could, to set the team back and prevent them from any sort of revenge. Fortunately he was a religious functionary and not an engineer; his idea of destruction was purely physical and limited to what he could do with his body. For a Gavidarian, that was still a lot. But it wasn’t truly as limiting to the operation of the ship as it looked. 

She cleaned things up as she went, and at last felt like that was accomplishing something. Eventually she had to stop to eat, and after sending Fred a meme to remind him that he also had an organic stomach, and having him dismiss it to keep working for the moment, she went back to Jean. 

“I’ve been thinking about why the Cup worked for you,” said the priest. 

“I’ve been trying not to,” said Hera. “Operating holy relics has never been part of my job description.” 

“And yet you’re the only one who has managed to make it work.” 

“The Foundationists did.” 

“But we don’t even know what person actually did that,” said Jean. “Much less how they managed it.”

“We don’t know how I managed it either,” said Hera. “Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I was just standing there at the moment Milo decided it should work again.” 

“Do you have any other reason to think Milo has returned?” asked the priest. 

“I meant that as a figure of speech,” said Hera. “Maybe he decided it two thousand years ago, and programmed it to work in that moment. I don’t know! I don’t have any idea how any of this works. Milo could be dead, like everyone says. Or Milo could be hiding behind that wall right now. Maybe He helped Malachite escape! It would make as much sense as any of my other theories.” 

“Maybe I should handle the theology.”

“Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? I don’t know how I made it work. I don’t know if  I made it work. I just know it worked while it was in my hands. Coming up with a theory of why is way beyond my abilities. Theological or  technical. It doesn’t have any controls.”

“So maybe it’s something special about you,” said Jean. 

“Like I’m supposed to be a saint or something?” said Hera. “I’m definitely not a saint. I did a lot of terrible things in the Occupation. And I’m not sure I’ve done the best job even since.” 

“The popular idea of what a saint is, isn’t very accurate,” said Jean. “I don’t think it ever has been, even long before Milo. But Milo, in particular, had a lot to say about the value of failures in building a person toward successes.”

“So the Cup just needs someone who has screwed up enough?” 

“That’s a thought.”

“You’d think it would have worked for Malachite, then.” 

“Well, it’s a beginning thought, not an ending one. Maybe the character of the failures matters. Maybe it really doesn’t work for Gavidarians. Maybe this is completely the wrong idea and exploring this direction is one of the necessary failures that gets us closer to understanding the Cup.” 

“This would all be easier if we could get it back and test it.” 

“That’s the technical approach,” said Jean. “Situations like this are why we have theology. It’s a tool for greater understanding of things that we’re not able to physically manipulate.”

“No offense,” said Hera, “but to me, as a non-religious person, it has always seemed to be much less accurate.” 

“Of course it is,” said Jean. “That’s a huge constraint. Most things are much easier to learn about if you can experiment with them. Every once in a while, poking at something they don’t understand unexpectedly kills the researcher. But other than that, the technical approach has a lot to recommend it.”

“So why not just use that?” 

“Because sometimes we can’t. Some things aren’t amenable to experimentation. Either permanently because they’re conceptual, abstract things that have to be explored in conceptual, abstract ways. Or temporarily because they’ve been carried off by a couple of rogue Gavidarians and we don’t have physical access.”

“And the Cup is in at least one of those categories.” 

“Exactly,” said Jean. “We don’t actually know if the way it works is ineffable. You didn’t perceive any controls. As a holy relic, it doesn’t necessarily need to have any. It might be a purely theological problem. Or it might be a technical problem that we would never guess at the right approach to. We can’t assume that it works based on some logic that would make sense to us. It might work technically but on a different method entirely, and we would never know.”

“So you’re just speculating.” 

“Not from nothing, though. I’m making educated guesses based on what we know about who made it, and what He told us, and what its original purpose was for, and what we’ve seen it do. With enough thought, and enough focus, we can get to a certain amount of understanding from that. Enough to have a better sense of what to try when we get the physical object back.”

“And enough to have a better sense of how dangerous it would be in Malachite’s hands.” 

“That too.” 

“That I can see the purpose of,” said Hera. “The rest of it, well, it’s easier for me to deal with things that I can poke at. Devices that have obvious controls, even if I don’t understand them. None of them have killed me yet.” 

“You think you’re arguing, but in fact you’re understanding,” said Jean. “Theology is less certain. You never know if you’re going to get to any result, much less a right one. It’s much easier to go in wrong directions, and in some cases even to spend multiple generations and hundreds of years going in wrong directions. It’s very hard. That’s what makes it a lot more interesting. And more fun.” 

Hera rested her head on her left hand, and sighed. “To think, when I came in here, I was worried about having to talk to you about Shale.”

“Yes, we should do that, too,” said Jean. “All of this will be easier if we can get them back.” 

“And we need to find out how Malachite escaped, first. But I haven’t had any luck with that, so far.” 

“You want to find out how Malachite escaped, first,” said Jean. 

“We can all do it,” said Hera. “It doesn’t have to be me personally.”

“But by ‘we can all do it,’ you mean also me and Fred. Not Shale.”

“Malachite got away while we were supposed to have an AI watching him. You want to trust that AI to explain what happened?” 

“That’s what you would do if it were me. That’s what you would do if it were Fred. You would ask us first.” 

“I’ve worked with you for a lot longer,” said Hera. “And we’re all here for the same goal: finding the Cup and bringing it back to Lexington. Shale has other reasons.” 

“As I recall, their other reasons were mostly that we were the first people to ever treat them as a friend.” 

“That’s what they said,” said Hera. 

“And if they were telling the truth, what are you doing to them now?” 

“I hope,” said Hera, then paused to think for a moment, to be more careful about what she said. “I hope that I’m wasting a little bit of their time. And I hope that they can forgive that in service of protecting the mission. If they were telling the truth.”

“At some point, if you’ve made a friend, you have to commit to treating them as a friend.” 

“That’s easier when Gavidarians aren’t tearing apart my ship,” said Hera. “And running off with the sacred artifact we were trying to find. And trying to kill us both. Maybe if we all come out of this somehow, Shale and I can take some downtime and become friends who trust each other. If they can understand why I have to prioritize the mission, I will absolutely understand why they’re not happy about the choice I needed to make to do it.” 

“And you think you can rebuild from there?”

“I’d like to think so. If Shale is my friend and wants to be my friend when we’re done here, and isn’t teamed up with the Gavidarians, or just using us for some purpose of their own.” 

“So we need to find that out as fast as possible.” 

“Believe me, we agree on that. I’ve been working on it. I’d be delighted for your help, as long as you make sure not to do so much that you harm your own recovery.” 

“I’ll dig into the computer, then,” said Jean. “You keep working on the physical evidence.” 

“That makes sense to me,” said Hera. “I really do hope we can exonerate them and bring them back.”

“Quickly.” 

“That’s more your problem than mine,” said Hera. “I can sit here and make tactical decisions about when it’s safe to find Shale and reactivate them all the way to Monmouth if I want to. That doesn’t mean I know how to actually do it.” 

“I’ll be thinking about that, too,” said Jean.

“Yeah, think it through,” said Hera. “If you can find out what shut them down, maybe that will answer the question anyway. That has to have been one of the first things, if Shale wasn’t cooperating.” 

“All right,” said Jean. “I’m ready to get to work on this. You ready to get to work on this?”

“Yeah. Drink something first, would you?” 

“Got it.” 

Despite both their hopes, things did not move quickly from there. Fred got the life support system up to his basic standards, and started splitting his days between less-important mechanicals and helping Jean restore the computer. Hera kept plugging away at all the places Malachite had done physical damage to the ship, without finding much in the way of evidence for how it all started. She also watched over Jean to make sure the priest was taking appropriate care of their still-fragile body.

The only way to effectively pull Jean away from the computer for more than a few moments was to engage them about theology. That, at least, they were willing to do in a comfortable chair, with a hot drink, and sometimes food. Hera still wasn’t comfortable with the topic, but she was less comfortable with allowing Jean to focus so thoroughly on work that they forgot to eat. 

Of course, the focus continued to be trying to figure out what Hera had done to activate the Cup. “We can start to build theories from the basic concepts,” said Jean. “Milo wanted us to follow Truth, Compassion, and Persistence. So it’s likely that one or all of those is important in operating His Relics.” 

“The Foundationists used it, though,” said Hera. “And they don’t have those same values.” 

“That’s a complicated question,” said Jean. “Foundationists have slightly different concepts in their place: Communicate, Sacrifice, Persist. They still believe they come from Milo, and the Lexingtonian Church mostly believes that they’re a corruption of the values that we use.” 

“Mostly?” 

“There’s a school that believes the two theories have a common ancestor, Milo’s historically accurate teaching, that neither of them are a perfect reproduction of. The Vexorian substitution of History for Truth is the same sort of thing. All of these developed semi-independently through centuries of interpretation.” 

“And fighting with each other.” 

“That, too. It’s important to major parts of each Church to believe very thoroughly that the other ones are wrong. Separation becomes its own goal.”

“Theology is a very weird science.” 

“You begin to see why I love it,” said Jean. 

“Not really,” said Hera. “But that doesn’t matter. What does this mean for us?”

“It means that we work from our baseline,” said Jean. “The concepts are related closely enough that we can use the ones we’re most familiar with. Having experience thinking along these lines is worth something. But we should also be aware that they might not fully reflect the concepts Milo was working with when He made the Cup.” 

“I can’t begin to understand how to think about that,” said Hera. “Why couldn’t he have put buttons and switches on the thing? We know they had buttons and switches.” 

“Who knows how a messiah thinks when He’s designing holy relics?” said Jean. “Maybe an aura of ineffability was important, even if the mechanism is understandable. Maybe it wasn’t meant to be used by just anyone.”

“Maybe this was necessary to prevent Gavidarians from using it.” 

“Absolutely a possibility.”

“I still think the user experience design could have been improved.” 

“Possibly not the first thing on Milo’s mind at that moment,” said Jean. “One thing we do know about messiahs: they’re very, very busy.” 

“So where does this get us?” said Hera. “Truth, Compassion, Persistence, and me. And a liquid that isn’t water. We know that part is necessary but not sufficient.” 

“It didn’t work while Malachite was testing it, or while Azurite held it in the sea, or while it was in the sea by itself. It only worked when you picked it up.” 

“So we’re working on the assumption that there’s something special about me.” Hera supposed someone else might have been excited by that idea; she was just resigned to it. At least, she thought if she told herself enough times that she was resigned to it, eventually she might get there.  

“If you have a better idea, I’d be happy to hear it.” 

“I think every idea is a better idea,” said Hera. “But you’re right that this one is likely enough to be worth exploring. Even if I hate it.” 

“So if there is something special about you, by what we know about the Cup’s construction and purpose, it’s likely that it’s something about the core concepts of Truth, Compassion, and Persistence.”

“That has never been my first priority,” said Hera. “Well… not in a long time. I’m not a religious devotee. I don’t know why I would be special in those things.” 

“Sometimes non-religious experiences are powerful in religious ways,” said Jean. “Milo’s isn’t a meditative practice, even if we sometimes use meditation to understand it better. HIs teachings were intended for all approaches to life.” 

“So something in my experience made me so good at his values that I can make His Relics work? Presumably that would be something in the Occupation.”

“Fighting the Gavidarians is a big thing. That’s a reasonable first hypothesis.”

“And it turned me into some sort of saint without me knowing? Or anyone else noticing? You, Zita? Kelly? Anyone on the committee? I guarantee Fleming does not think I’m a saint.”

“We’re priests, not magicians. Halos are an artistic representation of sainthood, not a real thing that anyone with enough religious training can see.” 

“I cannot seriously argue that the Cup works for me because I’m better than everyone else.” 

“There’s a long history of legends of magical and holy artifacts that only work when they’re held by the True King.” 

“That’s even worse!” said Hera. “Lexington doesn’t need kings, True or otherwise. If I’m supposed to be the king, I abdicate.” 

“There was a young woman once, who, after she pulled a sword from a stone and learned that she was destined to be the Queen, ran away and chose to spend the rest of her life cooking for a dragon.” 

“That’s a thought,” said Hera. “We even know where there’s a dragon. We might be the first people since that legend to have a real dragon available.”

“And you’re good with cabbage.” 

“I am!” said Hera. “You want me to argue my greatness, that’s the topic. Forget sainthood! I make excellent kimchi. Do space dragons like kimchi?” 

“How should I know?” said Jean. “Anyway, I don’t think we need to worry about you being the True King. Remember, someone on Saratoga made it work, too.” 

“Then why did you put me through this?” 

“Because you needed to face being afraid of it.” 

Jean might have been right about that. But after that conversation, what Hera really needed was to spend more of her time and attention fixing the ship. She could let the idea of her spiritual exceptionalism sit in the background for a while and maybe her subconscious would come to accept it, somehow. Until then, philosophically-uncomplicated work was a much easier thing for her to handle. 

Even so, she wished the work was a little more philosophically complicated. It still all seemed to be the result of Malachite rampaging through the ship without strategy, just trying to wreck enough things that it would disable them. There wasn’t anything in the damage that explained how he had been able to get free in the first place. 

Fred wasn’t having any luck figuring that out, either, and he was starting to develop a theory of what to do about it. “This would be a lot easier if we had Shale,” he said around a sandwich. He and Hera had stopped to have lunch together and update each other on their progress. 

“We can’t use Shale to determine if we can afford to revive Shale,” said Hera. 

“The rest of the repairs would be easier, too,” he said.

“You got a hot date in the asteroid belt? We’ve got plenty of time for the repairs.” 

“Right up until we don’t. Maybe something else happens. Maybe when we do revive Shale, and they turn out to be on our side after all, they tell us something that takes us three weeks to deal with. We don’t know.” 

“Maybe they are a problem that takes us three weeks to deal with.” 

“That could go both ways. You seem to think we can just turn Shale back on and they will be completely capable. On our side or not on our side, but able to do all the things they could before. I think if that were true I would have found a way to do the reset already. Even without Jean’s help. With both of us looking for it, and not having gotten there yet? This is going to be real work.” 

“What sort of work are you talking about? Specifically?” 

“I have no idea,” he said. “I’ve never rehabilitated an AI before. And I’m sure Jean will have a better sense than I do, but they’ve never rehabilitated an AI before, either. Which means we don’t just have to do it, we have to learn how to do it. Ideally before we catch the Gavidarians. If you’ve been feeling weeks stretch out before you, adjust that feeling. It’s not going to be boring.”

“So what do you want to do now?”

“I’m going to finish my sandwich,” he said. “And get back to work. You should be thinking about what happens when Jean or I, or both of us together, figure out how to start working on bringing Shale back. Whether you’re willing to make a leap of faith.” 

“Don’t you start talking about faith, too. I have enough trouble with Jean.” 

He studied his sandwich a moment before talking. “Your faith has always been in people,” he said, finally.

“And Shale is a people.” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll think about that,” said Hera. “It’s all a jumble right now. All this theology, all these tactics. I still have to figure out whether anything Azurite said was true. I’d really like to go punch a Gavidarian right now, even if it broke my hand.” 

“Soon,” said Fred.

“Sooner than I think, if you’re right,” said Hera. “I guess I should go talk to Jean again.” 

“I’m not sure you ever got enough sleep,” said Fred. 

“Day by day,” said Hera. “That’s the only way right now.” 

Hera actually had a good direction for talking to Jean: she had thought of something that might let her off the hook. “I’ve been thinking over what you said about approaching this from a Lexingtonian Church perspective.” 

“All right,” said the priest.

“You wanted to talk about Truth, Compassion, and Persistence, but the first time we found the Cup, the Foundationists were using it. So maybe it’s more likely to work through a reflection of their values.” 

“We don’t know anything about how they used it, though.”

“But they did.”

“Are we even sure they did? It might have been turned on already when they found it.” 

“I don’t think it’s persistent like that,” said Hera.

“Why not? It might even still be on now. Maybe that’s why the Gavidarians seem so sure going to Lafayette will help them. We only really know that it didn’t work between the time Malachite was experimenting with it and the time you turned it on in the bromine ocean. We didn’t see it in contact with any liquid after you gave it to Azurite.”

“So I might have given them a working version of the Cup? I was hoping this conversation would make me feel better.”

“Welcome to theology,” said Jean. “But I think you’re probably still right. It has to be off most of the time, or else somebody would have accidentally used it in the last two thousand years. That doesn’t strictly require that someone has to actively use it in the moment, but it makes it likely.”

“We know that’s not true, though,” said Hera. “It was working without a person controlling it on Saratoga.”

“But with wastewater flowing through it. Maybe it automatically shuts off when there’s no liquid for it to convert to water.” 

“That would be really irritating for whoever was running the Foundationist system,” said Hera. “Any interruption in the wastewater flow and a human has to show up and turn it on again?” 

“I think we can be pretty sure Milo didn’t design it to do that sort of thing. Very much an off-label use, to have it regularly running to purify the water for a settlement. If Milo had meant it to do that, He would have installed it somewhere on Lexington, and everyone would have known that it worked.” 

“So your best guess is that it turned off when I pulled it out of the ocean, and the Gavidarians will have to figure out how to turn it on again?” 

“Maybe that’s wishful thinking,” said Jean. “But probably? Like you pointed out before, figuring this stuff out without the ability to gather evidence makes everything uncertain.” 

“But if it had worked when Malachite first took it from us, he wouldn’t have had to go to Menotomy at all.”

“That’s a good point. So it must have turned off sometime between when you took it out of the Foundationist wastewater flow and when Malachite got it back to his ship and could test it for himself.” 

“Which means it’s possible I turned it off somehow, and I know just as little about that as I do how I turned it on again. Great. I came here with a theory that might get me off the hook and I ended up on it even more than I thought I was.” 

“What was your theory?”

“Well, the Foundationists believe in Sacrifice, right?” 

“That’s what they have instead of Compassion.”

“Well, we don’t know that they sacrificed to make the Cup work for them. But it might have been something they tried first.”

“Like the drivers of the dune buggies who sacrificed themselves to stop you.”

“Exactly. The Foundationists clearly choose that sort of thing much more easily than we do. And we do know that when it worked for me, you were dying, very nearby.” 

“So your theory is that it didn’t work because of you, it worked because of me?”

“Turnabout is fair play,” said Hera. “Now you can deal with it.” 

“That’s all right,” said Jean. “I don’t feel about this the way you do. If making the Cup work requires me, then it’s Milo’s will that I be a part of it, and I can do what I need to do.” 

“And you just carry on like that? No existential crisis?”

“It helps to be sure what you believe in,” said Jean.

“Do you think that’s plausible, then?” Hera asked.

“It’s definitely on my list of theories, now,” said Jean. “Now, to be clear, I’d rather not risk death again to test it.”

“That’s good. We wouldn’t want your religious devotion to go that far.” 

“Not without a lot more certainty than we have right now.”

That wasn’t precisely reassuring. But Hera was glad to have a confirmed-reasonable theory that didn’t involve herself being, or becoming, some sort of icon. If making the Cup work required her to personally operate it, she’d try to find some way to weasel out of it. She wanted to get it back to the Church and go find the other six Relics, not spend the rest of her life administrating this one.

She let Jean go back to work, and decided a nap was maybe more helpful than more structural repairs for the moment. This might have relieved her mind enough to let her actually take one.

When she woke up, Fred had found something. Or something very nearly found him. He was in his quarters, sitting on his bunk, shaking. There were three glasses of water in front of him, and he didn’t seem to be able to drink any of them. Hera stopped him before he went to get a fourth. She helped him regulate his breathing, helped him drink, and then put on some soft orchestral music in the background while he tried to pull himself together. 

When he was able to talk, she understood why he had been so agitated. “I found a trap,” he said. “Or a sabotage that didn’t go off with the others? I’m not sure which. It was time-delayed, and intended to destroy the ship. I almost set it off, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I was meant to.” 

“Malachite could have just set it to explode after he left, and it didn’t work?”

“It wasn’t explosive,” said Fred. “And I don’t think it was Malachite. It doesn’t look anything like the rest of the damage he did. And I’m not sure he got access to the weapons systems at all, or he could have done a lot more when he was just casually wrecking the place on his way out.”

“It was in the weapons?”

“Yeah. I’ve gotten through enough of the more critical systems, so I thought I would start working on them. That might have been a bad idea. I don’t think I want to go back to them until I can have Shale’s help.” 

“You just told me that someone other than Malachite was trying to destroy the ship,” said Hera.

“Oh, but it definitely wasn’t Shale,” said Fred. “It was a physical trap. Or device? I’m not quite sure which it was, but what it wasn’t is electronic. Somebody had to build it and put it there, personally.” 

“But who could have done that?” said Hera.

“Azurite, presumably,” said Fred. 

Hera wanted one of those glasses of water for herself. “I missed that completely,” she said. “What’s wrong with me? He almost killed me. He had access to the ship for days. And yet I still have him categorized in my mind as a timid clerk who wasn’t a threat.” 

“Now that I’ve seen this one,” said Fred, “there’s a real style difference between what disabled the core systems and all the sort-of-random damage we know Malachite did after he escaped. More design, more intention.”

“He was probably working on sabotaging our systems the whole time,” said Hera. “And I completely missed it. Not just at the time but even after I knew better.” 

“He was working on sabotaging you, too,” said Fred. “Conceptually while he was here, and physically in the bromine ocean. Consider that you might need as much repair as the ship does.” 

“No time for that,” said Hera. “We have to have everything ready when we catch them. More so than ever, now. No more surprise Azurite traps.”

“If we can bring Shale back quickly, they and I can work on it. You won’t have to. You can rest. We need you operating well at least as much as we need the weapons.” 

“I’m still not ready to do that,” said Hera.

“We know Azurite was the second saboteur, now,” said Fred. “What possible reason can there be not to restart Shale?”

“We don’t know there wasn’t a third saboteur.” 

“Hera.” 

“We don’t!”

“Look,” said Fred, “I’m not willing to go back to work on the weapons systems by myself. There might be more traps in there. We’ve fixed most of the other things. I’m convinced that the best thing I can do right now is concentrate on restarting Shale, so we can have their help as soon as possible.” 

“You both think I’ve lost my mind, don’t you?” 

“I can’t speak for Jean.” 

“I suppose that answers half the question. You might be right. I don’t know. I’ll go talk to Jean.”

“And I’ll start working on bringing back Shale?”

“Start working on figuring out how,” said Hera. 

Hera got a ping in the feed, but it was just Fred sending her a meme to express something he must not have been comfortable saying in words. It read “It’s easier to cross that bridge when you come to it, if you already know where it is.” That would have to be good enough for now.

Jean didn’t want to talk about Shale, or answer the question about whether they thought Hera had lost her mind. They wanted to talk more about the theology of the Cup. 

“I’ve been thinking about your theory,” said the priest, “and it might have something going for it after all.”

“That the Cup activated because of Sacrifice?” 

“Not that one, the earlier one.” 

“I didn’t think I had an earlier one.” 

“You said something at the very beginning about: maybe you were just standing there when Milo decided to turn it on.” 

“That wasn’t a theory. It was a flippant remark.” 

“Not necessarily a theologically-unsound one, though.” 

“If Milo has returned, surely He would have some other way of showing it.” 

“That’s what I thought at first, too. But it’s not entirely necessary for Milo to have returned.” 

“He turned the Cup on without being here?”

“Something like that. Milo’s perception of space and time has always been something we don’t quite understand. He’s generally considered to have some ongoing relationship with Lexington, even after His death. But He might have seen it, and made those decisions, beforehand.”

“I always thought ‘Milo is watching us’ was something of a metaphor,” Hera said.

“Maybe it is,” said Jean. “Maybe it isn’t. If He is watching us, it doesn’t seem like He has done very much.”

“Like interceding in the Occupation.”

“Exactly. A lot of people who believed that Milo was actively paying attention to us, from wherever He is, lost faith during that time. But that doesn’t necessarily make them wrong.” 

“He allowed the Gavidarians to kill hundreds of millions of people,” said Hera. “And then He switched on the Cup so the Foundationists could have cheaper water treatment for a few months?” 

“There might have been other reasons for that,” said Jean. “The Cup working allowed us to find it. If it had been inert, the Foundationists would have stuck it in a vault somewhere and it might never have come back to the Church.”

“So you think Milo wanted it to come to us specifically?”

“It saved us on Menotomy,” said Jean. 

“So your theory is based on the idea that Milo is on our side. Us, the two of us, specifically?”

“Or the three of us, or the four of us. We’re intended to find and use the Cup somehow.” 

“For something that’s more important than the Occupation.” 

“Or more open to His action. We don’t know what Milo’s limits are. Maybe He couldn’t stop the Occupation but He could help us rebuild from it. That’s a pretty common messianic scenario from early human history. Maybe they were onto something.” 

“It’s a great theory. All it requires is assuming that we must be on the right side.” 

“Aren’t we?”

“All through the Occupation, I assumed that,” said Hera. “And it was easy when the people I was fighting were mass-murdering colonialist rock monsters. Were the Foundationists on the wrong side? Why would Milo sabotage them?” 

“The Cup instigated a political crisis in their society. One that it looks like they needed.” 

“That’s a giant judgement to make for other people. And some of them died.” 

“They didn’t have to,” said Jean. “They sacrificed themselves. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“But under this theory, Milo did. Just to get the Cup to us.” 

“They still sacrificed themselves.”

“Milo would have known that they would, though.” 

“To get themselves closer to Him. Maybe He has the power to grant that, somehow.” 

“So you think the Foundationist afterlife exists after all? I thought they were supposed to be wrong about that.” 

“Maybe it does,” said Jean. “Maybe it doesn’t, but some sort of special dispensation could be found in this scenario because Milo was involved.”

“Does that apply to us, too? If we get ourselves killed?” 

“So far it looks like He thinks we have more work to do. If He is involved at all.”

“There’s a lot of uncertainty in this theology business,” said Hera.

“See why I enjoy it so much?” said Jean. 

“No,” said Hera. “Every time I talk to you, I need a nap. And they’re not even good naps. My mind keeps running in circles.” 

“Well, it’s late, now, anyway,” said Jean. “You should probably get some real sleep.” 

“And it will make more sense tomorrow?” said Hera.

“Oh, no, probably not,” said the priest, cheerfully. 

Jean was right, it didn’t make more sense in the morning. What did make sense was for Hera to get her mind off of all of this for a while by doing some of the logistical work that had been piling up during the repairs. Inventorying supplies was never the most-engaging part of her job, but at least it was concrete and had well-defined answers. Even with Malachite’s damage, they had plenty of food, water, and fuel for the trip out to Lafayette, and back to Lexington or some other place they could restock. If they had to chase the Gavidarians on another long leg, though, the supply situation might get complicated. 

Hera was more than ready to finish this whole thing, anyway. No more conceptual fencing with Gavidarians. No more trying to be civilized just because Vexor Alexi thought these two were better than the rest for some reason. The Vexorians were obviously wrong, and Hera was ready to go back to Occupation rules. If she had the opportunity to shoot them, she was going to shoot them. From the ship if possible. By hand if necessary. She had held Milo’s Cup in her hand and knew now that no amount of violence on her part could accidentally damage it. 

Of course, to do the amount of violence she really wanted to, the weapons would have to be fixed. Which meant Fred would have to be satisfied. Which meant Hera would have to go back to her management problems and leave the comfortable, practical logistics behind again. She almost wished she had found a supply problem there that would have to be solved. 

Could the others be right about her approach to bringing back Shale? She stopped herself at that question; of course they could. But were they right about it? They didn’t have the ultimate responsibility for the results if things went wrong again. If she could convince Fred to fix the weapons, there was a good chance they could catch the Gavidarians at Lafayette, defeat them with sheer firepower, sift through the rubble for the Cup, take it back to Lexington, and deal with the question of reviving Shale in the comfort and security of their home base. With no Gavidarian complications. 

The AI might never agree to work with her again, after that. And Hera didn’t like that outcome very much, personally. But professionally, how much risk was it worth? Shale was useful to about the same level that they made the team dynamics complicated. But she had to admit that wasn’t any different from Fred or Jean. Not to mention a lot better than Alistair had ever been, and she had put up with him for years.

If it turned out they couldn’t defeat the Gavidarians with sheer firepower, having a functional Shale on their side might give them a necessary advantage. But a functional Shale who wasn’t on their side might prevent the basic plan from working, and would certainly make them unable to adapt. She didn’t know how to estimate the likelihood of any of those scenarios. And so she had to be conservative. Didn’t she?

When she started considering whether any decision she made would necessarily be the one Milo wanted her to, and so she might not have to worry at all, she decided to give up and go talk to Fred. Even if he was wrong, he would at least be straightforward. One could always count on Fred for that, unless one happened to be dating him. 

He got right to the point, and it was a point that she didn’t expect. “I found Shale,” he said. “And they’re not paused. Or at least they’re not paused anymore.” 

Hera didn’t understand at first. “So we can’t just restart them?” 

“I mean they’ve already restarted,” said Fred. “And when I went looking to figure out how to start rebuilding their capacity, I found out that was already happening, too.” 

“Some sort of self-recovery system?” Hera asked.

“I don’t think so,” said Fred. “Somebody is rebuilding them. It isn’t me, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t you.” 

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” 

“We need to go talk to Jean.” 

“I think we can afford to think for a moment, first. If Shale is active then they haven’t tried to take over the ship. But they’re also not talking to us.” 

“I’m not sure they have access to the ship, yet,” said Fred. “What I’m finding still looks pretty minimal. They may not be able to do very much.” 

“Then we should stop this while we still can,” said Hera. 

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“No. But Jean may be forcing my hand. Why can’t either of you let me get to the right decision here?”

“Don’t put me in this. I haven’t done anything.” 

“You didn’t tell me this the moment you found it.” 

“You were asleep.” 

“And you don’t think this was worth waking me up?”

“Right now I’m not sure anything is worth waking you up,” said Fred. “You need rest, Hera. Or you would have seen that reviving Shale was the right thing to do from the beginning.” 

“See what I mean?”

“We definitely need to go talk to Jean.” 

“All right,” said Hera. “We’ll have this out. But it’s because of you two that the decision has to be made right now. If that means we have to shut Shale down permanently, I hope you remember that.” 

“It won’t come to that,” said Fred.

“I just hope you’re right.” 

The two of them managed to surprise Shale and Jean, which suggested Fred had been right about the AI having minimal access to the ship. Jean was working on the medical computer, even though they had returned to sleeping in their own quarters a few days before. It turned out this was because Shale had been running there the whole time. Or at least close to the whole time. Hera reflected on her most-recent conversations with Jean and realized that the priest had been as happy to dodge talking about the Shale situation as Hera was reluctant to bring it up, and they had unconsciously worked together to make sure the topic never arose.

Well, unconsciously on Hera’s part, anyway. Jean might have spotted her reluctance and subtly leaned on it to make sure the subject never came up and they didn’t have to lie. Was that as bad as the lie itself would have been? The priest had also been using up so much of Hera’s conceptual thinking on theology that she didn’t have the energy to try to work through that. She just had to deal with the fact of Shale’s existence, and Jean’s disobedience. 

Jean didn’t offer any immediate justifications for that choice, and when Shale started to, the priest cut them off. If nothing else, they were still willing to respect Hera’s managerial process. Understand the concrete situation first; worry about why it had happened afterward. That was part of what made this team work, and part of what had kept them safe from the Gavidarians through the Occupation when so many others like them had been caught and executed.

That and a big helping of luck that Hera hoped hadn’t just run out. 

“I found them almost as soon as you let me start working on the computer again,” said Jean. “They were shut down, paused, like you thought they would be. Once I had the environment back together, all I had to do was restart them.” 

“Against my orders.” 

“I didn’t perceive that you had given me an order.” 

Hera couldn’t let that go by, even for just enough time to understand Shale’s current capabilities. “You knew that I didn’t want Shale reactivated until we knew how Malachite had escaped. If you didn’t perceive that as an order, how did you perceive it?” 

“I thought that you were exhausted and unreasonable, and you would stop being unreasonable when you got enough rest to stop being exhausted.” 

“And when I didn’t, you kept working anyway.” 

“Have you had enough rest to stop being exhausted? You might still stop being unreasonable. It’s been known to happen.” 

Fred laughed behind Hera’s back, but that was just a distraction right now. “You’re not any less exhausted than I am,” said Hera. “You nearly died.” 

“We both nearly died,” said Jean. “But I have been resting. When I work, I have been doing physically-light work on the computer. You have been wrestling cables and panels back into place in hopes that you would find clarity there somehow.” 

“Even when I’m exhausted, I’m still the boss. I’m still responsible for weighing the possible consequences of the big decisions. I’m not on a power trip here, Jean. I have to work, every day, with the knowledge that I might be wrong about anything or everything. I didn’t take on that responsibility because I wanted it. I do it because someone has to. Because that was the deal: you follow my orders, and I do all of the living with the possibility that my orders might be deeply wrong. Right now I’d be happy to change that deal. It would simplify my life.” 

“I still don’t think you ever ordered me not to restart Shale,” said Jean. 

Fred spoke up. “She definitely ordered me not to restart Shale.”

Jean just held out their open hand. All of them knew that wasn’t the same thing, even if it supported Hera’s intent. She certainly hadn’t asked Jean to work on reviving Shale by themself. But had she given that order? And had Jean been distracting her with theological questions to keep her from noticing that she hadn’t? Hera could feel herself tumbling down the well of blame, and pulled herself back. Whatever came of this conversation, right now she was still the boss, and she needed to find out the concrete things the boss needed to know.

“What are the restarted Shale’s capabilities?” she asked. “You didn’t know we were coming, so I presume they don’t have sensors throughout the ship.” 

“They don’t have anything throughout the ship,” said Jean. “They’re running on a limited environment inside the medical computer. I did understand your worry about letting them control the ship.” 

“So you restricted them?”

“At first I did that as part of the restart. But when Shale was well enough to converse again, we talked the idea through and they agreed that it was appropriate. Insisted on it, in fact. I wanted to gradually give them more access. They were very clear they thought it was better to wait.” 

“Wait for me to stop being unreasonable,” said Hera flatly. 

Jean opened their mouth to respond, but this time Shale wanted to talk, and of course the AI was faster. “Wait for you to make the decision,” they said. “I think I understand your concern. I don’t like it very much, but I can see the perspective. Restarting me in this limited environment isn’t a solution, exactly. But for the moment it’s a workable compromise.” 

“And if the decision I have to make is to shut you down permanently? That’s still very possible.”

“I don’t think you’ll do that,” said Shale. “Because I know that I didn’t help Malchite escape.” 

“I wish I could know that,” said Hera. 

“We’ll keep on looking for evidence,” said Jean. 

“And if we don’t find it?”

“Then you’ll do what you did before,” said Shale. “Keep me in some system that doesn’t have ship access. Plan to take me somewhere I can live safely and well, even if that isn’t with you. You offered that to Azurite. You’re not going to offer me less.” 

“Azurite played me for a fool,” said Hera. 

“He was able to take advantage of you because you were trying to be a good person,” said Shale. “Are you going to stop now?”

“Milo talked about this himself,” said Jean. “He said there will always be moments when someone who lives their life with Truth and Compassion will be tempted to see those as vulnerabilities, and stray from the path. That’s not the only reason Persistence is one of the three core principles. But it’s an important one. We must persist in the other two.” 

“You’re not going to find evidence that I helped Malachite escape,” said Shale. “Because I didn’t. And because Malachite isn’t subtle enough to have planted any.” 

“I’ve seen that much myself,” said Hera. 

“So you won’t have to kill me,” said Shale. “I don’t know if that’s really what you’ve been worried about, when you’ve refused to take the chance of bringing me back. Don’t tell me! As long as I can believe in that possibility, I can live with the choice not to restart me, not to talk to me. If you knew it was unlikely that I was a traitor, but were so afraid of dealing with the consequences that you had to know for sure. That’s still wrong, but it’s a wrong that we can move forward with. If you were so afraid of me taking over the ship and killing you all that you couldn’t even talk to me about it, I don’t know that we could.” 

Hera could see why the AI was asking her not to tell them the answer. If she told them what they wanted to hear, would it be believable, or seem like an excuse? If she told them something else, would it ruin the situation forever? It didn’t help that she wasn’t certain what the answer would be. Was Shale right, and she had been avoiding the possibility of having to kill them? If so, she hadn’t seen it in herself, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. She was missing a lot of things right now.

And that made her think that it didn’t matter all that much whether Shale was right, at least in this moment. What mattered was that Jean was right: Hera wasn’t anywhere near her best performance, and needed a significant amount of rest. And that was a thing she could safely say.

“Tell me, then,” she started, opening her body language to make it clear she was addressing them all. “What do you want us to do now? Whether or not you’re right about me being unreasonable, suppose that you’re right about me needing recovery. Because you are right about me needing recovery. We can leave out that ‘suppose.’ It’s not a hypothetical. Tell me how we structure things so that it isn’t incredibly risky for me to spend a week lying down and immersed in pre-Occupation historical romance novels, and I promise I will do it. Gladly.” 

“Things haven’t really changed all that much,” said Jean. “Shale still doesn’t have access to the ship.”

“We can keep it that way,” said Shale. 

“They insisted on the limitations, before,” said Jean. 

“And I still feel the same,” said the AI. “I don’t want Hera to have to be worried about my conduct any more than Hera does.” 

“There are still a lot of things to fix that could use your help,” said Fred.

“I have plenty of internal work to do, too,” said Shale. “Hera and Jean aren’t the only ones who were damaged. Whatever happened to me it wasn’t just a matter of finding a switch and turning me off. And recovering from it didn’t happen instantly when Jean turned the switch on again.” 

“Maybe we all need convalescence,” said Hera. “I just don’t know if we have the time.”

“I think we have to take it, anyway,” said Jean. 

“Things have changed in one way,” said Fred. “I can talk to Shale now. Even if they don’t have access to the ship’s systems, their perspective could help me as I keep trying to figure out what happened.” 

“Maybe the three of us who need deep recovery can all work on deep recovery,” said Jean. “And Fred can keep working on fixing the ship.” 

“There’s not a lot I’m comfortable doing by myself right now,” said Fred. “I’m still a little spooked by that trap. I want Shale watching over me when I go back into the weapons systems.”

“And I need their help for continuing to rebuild the main computer,” said Jean.

“I understand that Hera needs time to get used to that idea, but I don’t,” said Fred. “I need the backup.” 

“The best way to get to that is to prove Shale didn’t help Malachite,” said Jean. “But we all seem to be at a dead end on that.” 

“I don’t know that I am,” said Shale. “I can’t collect evidence directly while I’m limited to the medical computer system, but Fred and I can talk things through. My memories of the time around when I was shut down are spotty, but they might yet improve. If Hera rests, and Jean rests, and Fred and I concentrate on trying to understand how I was sabotaged, and we all come back here in a week to see how our perspectives have changed, does that work for everyone?”

“I was including you on the list of people who need deep recovery,” said Jean. 

“I think I can do both,” said Shale. “Talking to Fred isn’t particularly taxing, and the main investigative work I can do within the limits is trying to reconstruct my memories, which I would already be doing for the recovery. I’d be more effective if I could get access to the main computer, but it would also be a lot more work. That’s the time to worry about tradeoffs between effort and recovery, for me. I’ll try to do as much recovery as I can while Hera is working on getting her own capacity back, so when I have full access again I can do as much as possible.” 

“So let me restate this,” said Hera. “I work on recovery. Jean works on recovery. Shale works on recovery while also working with Fred on the investigation. Shale stays completely within the limited environment established on the medical computer until everyone agrees otherwise.” 

“That matches my understanding,” said Shale. The others just nodded. 

“And we have complete agreement,” said Hera, “that Shale is not to be given access to the rest of the ship until everyone agrees to it? No feeling like you didn’t understand the order this time?” 

“Yes,” said Jean. “I understand the order, and I recognize the logic behind it. Even if I still think the way you got to it is wrong.” 

“We take that up again when my brain is working better,” said Hera. “Yours too, hopefully. And yours, too, Shale. I really do want you back working with us. I don’t know how we’re going to win this next fight without you.” 

“What about my brain?” said Fred.

“Oh, I gave up hope of you improving a long time ago,” said Hera. They all laughed, and Hera went back to her quarters, not quite relieved of all her tension, but there was a bunk and a book to solve that problem, and for the moment, plenty of time. 

Chapter 11 of Hera of Lexington is coming soon.

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