Aenea started to take his hand, saw that three of de Soya’s fingers were missing, and set her own hand on the stained blanket next to his. “Father Captain,” she said very softly.

“Aenea,” said de Soya, his dark eyes really looking at her for the first time. “You’re the child… so many months, chasing you… looked at you when you stepped out of the Sphinx. Incredible child. So glad you survived.” His gaze moved to me. “You are Raul Endymion. I saw your Home Guard dossier. Almost caught up to you on Mare Infinitus.” A wave of pain rolled over him and the priest-captain closed his eyes and bit into his burned and bloodied lower lip. After a moment, he opened his eyes and said to me, “I have something of yours. Personal gear on the Raphael. The Holy Office let me have it after they ended their investigation. Sergeant Gregorius will give it to you after I am dead.”

I nodded, having no idea what he was talking about.

“Father Captain de Soya,” whispered Aenea, “Federico… can you hear and understand me?”

“Yes,” murmured the priest-captain. “Painkillers… said no to Sergeant Gregorius… didn’t want to slip away forever in my sleep. Not go gently.” The pain returned. I saw that much of de Soya’s neck and chest had cracked and opened, like burned scales. Pus and fluid flowed down to the blankets beneath him. The man closed his eyes until the tide of agony receded; it took longer this time. I thought of how I had folded up under just the pain of a kidney stone and tried to imagine this man’s torment. I could not.

“Father Captain,” said Aenea, “there is a way for you to live…”

De Soya shook his head vigorously, despite the pain that must have caused.

I noticed that his left ear was little more than carbon. Part of it flaked off on the pillow as I watched. “No!” he cried. “I told Gregorius… no partial resurrection… idiot, sexless idiot…” A cough that might have been a laugh from behind scorched teeth. “Had enough of that as a priest. Anyway… tired… tired of…” His blackened stubs of fingers on his right hand batted at the pink double cross on his flaked and oozing chest. “Let the thing die with me.”

Aenea nodded. “I didn’t mean be reborn, Father Captain. I meant live. Be healed.”

De Soya was trying to blink, but his eyelids were burned ragged. “Not a prisoner of the Pax…” he managed, finding the air to speak only each time he exhaled with a wracking gasp. “Will… execute… me. I deserve… it. Killed many innocent… men… women… in defense of… friends.”

Aenea leaned closer so that he could focus on her eyes. “Father Captain, the Pax is still after us as well. But we have a ship. It has an autosurgeon.”

Sergeant Gregorius stepped forward from where he had been leaning wearily against the wall. The man named Carel Shan remained unconscious. Hoag Liebler, apparently lost in some private misery, did not respond.

Aenea had to repeat it before de Soya understood.

“Ship?” said the priest-captain. “The ancient Hegemony ship you escaped in? Not armed, was it?”

“No,” said Aenea. “It never has been.”

De Soya shook his head again. “There must have been… fifty archangel-class… ships… jumped us. Got… a few… rest… still there. No chance… get… to… any translation point… before…” He closed his torn eyelids again while the pain washed over him. This time, it seemed, it almost carried him away. He returned as if from a far place.

“It’s all right,” whispered Aenea. “I’ll worry about that. You’ll be in the doc-in-the-box. But there’s something you would have to do.”

Father Captain de Soya seemed too tired to speak, but he shifted his head to listen.

“You have to renounce the cruciform,” said Aenea. “You have to surrender this type of immortality.”

The priest-captain’s blackened lips pulled back from his teeth. “Gladly…” he rasped. “But sorry… can’t… once accepted… cruciform… can’t be… surrendered.”

“Yes,” whispered Aenea, “it can. If you choose that, I can make it go away. Our autosurgeon is old. It would not be able to heal you with the cruciform parasite throughout your body. We have no resurrection créche aboard the ship…”

De Soya reached for her then, his flaking and three-fingerless hand still gripping tightly the sleeve of her therm jacket. “Doesn’t matter… doesn’t matter if I die… get it off. Get it off. Will die a real… Catholic… again… if you… can help me… get it… OFF!” He almost shouted the final word. Aenea turned to the sergeant. “Do you have a cup or glass?”

“There’s the mug in the medkit,” rumbled the giant, fumbling for it. “But we have no water…”

“I brought some,” said my friend and removed the insulated bottle from her belt. I expected wine, but it was only the water we had bottled up before leaving the Temple Hanging in Air those endless hours ago. Aenea did not bother with alcohol swabs or sterile lancets; she beckoned me closer, removed the hunting knife from my belt, and drew the blade across three of her fingertips in a swift move that made me flinch. Her blood flowed red.

Aenea dipped her fingers in the clear plastic drinking mug for just a second, but long enough to send currents of thick crimson spiraling and twisting in the water.

“Drink this,” she said to Father Captain de Soya, helping to lift the dying man’s head.

The priest-captain drank, coughed, drank again. His eyes closed when she eased him back onto the stained pillow. “The cruciform will be gone within twenty-four hours,” whispered my friend. Father Captain de Soya made that rough chuckling sound again. “I’ll be dead within an hour.”

“You’ll be in the autosurgeon within fifteen minutes,” said Aenea, touching his better hand. “Sleep now… but don’t die on me, Federico de Soya… don’t die on me. We have much to talk about. And you have one great service to perform for me… for us.”

Sergeant Gregorius was standing closer. “M. Aenea…” he said, halted, shuffled his feet, and tried again. “M. Aenea, may I partake of that… water?”

Aenea looked at him. “Yes, Sergeant… but once you drink, you can never again carry a cruciform. Never. There will be no resurrection. And there are other… side effects.”

Gregorius waved away any further discussion. “I have followed my captain for ten years. I will follow him now.” The giant drank deeply of the pinkish water.

De Soya’s eyes had been closed, and I had assumed that he was asleep or unconscious from the pain, but now he opened them and said to Gregorius, “Sergeant, would you please bring M. Endymion the parcel we dragged from the lifeboat?”

“Aye, Capt’n,” said the giant and rummaged through the litter of debris in one corner of the room. He handed me a sealed tube, a little over a meter high. I looked at the priest-captain. De Soya seemed to be floating between delirium and shock. “I’ll open it when he’s better,” I said to the sergeant. Gregorius nodded, carried the glass over to Carel Shan, and poured some water into the unconscious Weapons Officer’s gaping mouth.

“Carel may die before your ship arrives,” said the sergeant. He looked up. “Or does the ship have two doc-in-the-boxes?”

“No,” said Aenea, “but the one we have has three compartments. You can heal your wounds as well.”

Gregorius shrugged. He went to the man named Liebler and offered the glass. The thin man with the broken arm only looked at it.

“Perhaps later,” said Aenea.

Gregorius nodded and handed the glass back to her. “The XO was a prisoner on our ship,” said the sergeant. “A spy. An enemy of the captain. Father-captain still risked his last life to get Liebler out of the brig… got his burns retrieving him. I don’t think Hoag quite understands what’s happened.”

Liebler looked up then. “I understand it,” he said softly. “I just don’t understand it.”

Aenea stood. “Raul, I hope you haven’t lost the ship communicator.”

I fumbled in my pockets only a few seconds before coming up with the com unit’s diskey journal. “I’ll go outside and tightbeam visually,” I said. “Use the skinsuit jack. Any instructions for the ship?”