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There is a tiny chapel aboard the aircraft carrier.
Well, technically the label on the door reads ‘Multicultural Room’. With such a worldwide team, there are a broad variety of religious practices to be accommodated. Being a practicing Catholic herself, Eva Stratt understands the desire to carry your spirituality with you on such a dangerous and vital mission. The fate of the literal world rests on the shoulders of the people working on this ship. She would be a hypocrite and an idiot to lower morale so badly by denying her people the ability to worship. They need all the motivation they can get, and if connecting to their gods provides it, then a small cubby dedicated to reflection and prayer is a small ask.
She herself has not visited it since it was established, when she personally checked that all necessary symbols and supplies had been provided: holy water and a crucifix for the Christians, a prayer mat and Quran for the muslims, a Torah and candles for the Jews, and more besides: Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Sikhism, they all had a totem or symbol, an available copy of any necessary holy texts, and a tiny slice of floor space in which to use them. A pair of stools and a curtain for privacy. Incense and candles to burn. A fan to disburse the smell afterwards. Soundproofing for peace and quiet.
Eva hasn’t been to Mass since she was ratified as leader of the Petrova Taskforce. She’s barely even prayed except a few ritualistic ‘Hail Mary’s and a single ‘Our Father’ sometimes, when she’s laying sleepless in bed. Praying the rosary doesn’t actually do much for her, but it’s the kind of quiet, calming ritual that’s clinically proven to assist with insomnia.
She doesn’t have time to be Catholic when she’s busy being the ruthless pragmatist the UN asked her to be. No useless prayer when you’re busy saving the world.
...
The day after the launch of the Hail Mary’s crew is not the quiet moment of celebration and relief that one would expect. Just because the ship is built and its people are aboard doesn’t mean the job’s done yet. Yao and Ilyukhina – innocent, oblivious, noble - still have to do pre-flight checks, get up a good head of steam in Tau Ceti’s direction, then go under for their own comas. Only then will Stratt consider the job done. Anything could still go wrong between now and then. The crew launch was the 99.8% completion mark; 100% completion won’t be declared until they leave the solar system entirely, and are beyond all further help and support of Earth. Only then will her bird have officially left the nest.
She and her team leave Baikonur the day after the crew launch, though. The continuing inquiry about the explosion that killed Dubois and Shapiro can be done remotely as far as she’s concerned. Baikonur can coordinate the final communications, then monitor the Hail Mary’s progress until they finally leave Sol’s gravity well. Her science team needs to pivot immediately to interim solutions.
Earth has a long 26 years of Mass Extinction ahead of her, and a lot of human death and destruction to prevent. They have to find ways to make astrophage work for them against its own kind.
Dimitri has plans for a new sort of ‘power plant’ they could build at various latitudes across the planet. It seems like their best shot at postponing the imminent collapse of society, along with various strains of cold-resistant staple crops. The astrophage-powered power plants would focus on shifting current worldwide power grids to astrophage reliance, as well as maximizing heat output as a byproduct. Hopefully by dumping some of astrophage’s heat energy into the atmosphere, they can ameliorate the effects they’re already feeling. Plus, Earth should take as much advantage of solar power as possible while they still have it. Save their fossil fuels for the inevitable drop in astrophage production when the sun dims, and the conventional power plants are called upon to take up the mantle again.
Dimitri wistfully complains that he wishes Dr. Grace were still here to help him plan his power stations. “Grace would be able to explain this the way they understand,” he mutters in exasperation after their third meeting with yet another budget committee, in which the necessity of their project’s scale and expense was yet again brought into question. “Maybe we should borrow one of his middle school science colleagues, no?”
He shoots a sad smile to Stratt, who does an admirable job of holding her face straight.
“He is where we need him most. And don’t sell yourself short, Dr. Komorov. You have picked up on some of his better public speaking habits, you know. I trust you will get through to the committee somehow.”
Her newly-promoted replacement science lead squares his shoulders and clears his throat. It’s a thick sound, one of tears being swallowed.
“Da, let us do him proud as he does us proud out there in the stars,” he says, half to himself. Then Dimitri gets back to work.
Stratt excuses herself to her next meeting. But instead of steering towards her office and the waiting Zoom call, she makes a pit stop in the ladies’ room and locks the door behind her. For the first time in several years she is going to be late to a meeting, and she doesn’t care.
She bends over the sink, breathing slow and deliberate so that she will not give in to the useless bodily instinct to hyperventilate. It takes her longer than usual to regulate. The collar of her shirt is damp from how much cold water she has splashed on her face. She looks up at her reflection in the tiny, dingey mirror.
Her eyes are hollow. Empty. She is deliberately mistaking her numbness for a continuation of her usual professionalism. Until now she has held that there was no time to mourn her losses. There still isn’t.
“Get yourself together, woman,” she hisses at her reflection. Her reflection says back in the voice of her father,
Schedule the maintenance before the machine schedules it for you.
Joseph Stratt was a mechanic for specialized factory manufacturing equipment, and it was one of his mottos. It’s advice she lives by. Don’t traige disaster; prevent it with routine precautions. It’s why she enforces a minimum amount of breaks and sleep and rest and leisure time for her most vital project leads. She needs them in fighting shape.
Grace was not in fighting shape by the end. He, like her, was burning the candle at both ends. The two of them were the only exceptions to her 'routine maintenance' rule. Eva did not rest. When she hit rock bottom, she simply dug deeper and found more reserves she didn’t know she had. And Ryland was there, digging right next to her. When he ran, when he fought, there was nothing left to dig for. They ran him down easily, pinned him easily. His eyes were so darkened and haunted when he stood there in her office and begged for his life. She wonders now how long it had been, at that point, since he slept. Since before the explosion, probably. That was the last time she slept, at the time when she asked him for his ultimate sacrifice.
Would he have given it to her willingly, if he had slept? If he had just had a little more time? She couldn’t have crammed more days between the explosion and the launch if she tried, but she could’ve told him about the backup plan earlier. Months or years earlier. She could’ve given him the chance to make peace with the possibility that he would be asked to step up if the worst happened.
She knew he was better than that, better than his refusal. She knew he was scared, too, and cowardly at times, but she knew how much his students meant to him. The lengths he would go to, to ensure the future of ‘his children’. He was better than that. She... she had trusted that he was better. That he would be better when it really mattered, like he had every time she needed him before. He had risen to so many occasions. What was one more, she thought? What was one more? She was deluding herself. She knew him. She knew him to his core, as he should've known her. She knew he would never say yes, but it still hurt. And he should've known that she would never accept his 'no'. His shock and betrayal hurt her, too. Maybe he never knew her as well as she thought.
A knock at the bathroom door snaps her out of her staring.
“Mein Gott,” she curses at herself, splashing her face one more time and patting it dry with a towel until she’s presentable. Is she really going to spiral now of all times? No. Enough. Clearly she needs to schedule that maintenance she was ignoring, and she will, but now is not the time to let it happen. She has a meeting to attend and a world to continue saving.
...
Later that night, in the hour when she would be winding down and praying her rosary to sleep, she instead places a phone call to the church in the Netherlands where she was Baptized, where she took her First Communion, where she was Confirmed, where she was almost married long ago. She asks for Father Ansel. They inform her that he passed away last year. She does not let the news strike her; he was aging by the time he blessed her Confirmation name, old by the time he consoled her over her failed engagement, very old by the time she left the Netherlands to become Director of the taskforce, and it's been several years since then. She asks who has taken his place as head of the parish. It’s Father Aalders. She remembers him; young and fresh-faced as she was when they first met, a rare young seminary graduate who Father Ansel was grooming for succession by the time she left. Not her first choice – he is her peer in age, when she would’ve preferred the reassuring paternal presence of an older priest – but beggars can’t be choosers. The travel will probably be more comfortable for a younger man, anyway.
She sends her jet and pencils a rare block of free time into her calendar in two days’ time. Poor, confused, young Father Aalders is on his way across the globe by the next morning.
Preventative maintenance.
...
Father Koen Aalders has spent a very confusing eight hours traveling across the world via private jet and helicopter, and is now having a very confusing afternoon aboard a Chinese aircraft carrier. He thinks they’re somewhere in the Indian Ocean. It kind of doesn’t matter.
He and his duffel bag of clothes and vestments are escorted to a bunk tucked in away in some corner of the labyrinthine ship passages. The sailor leading him doesn’t speak a lick of Dutch, German, or English; just waves him inside and hands him a note. The note is in neat cursive penmanship, addressed to him from his single familiar touchpoint in this entire debacle:
Please take tonight and tomorrow to rest and center yourself. We have an appointment in the carrier’s Multicultural Room at 7 PM tomorrow. I recommend adjusting your sleep clock to the current time zone to avoid jet lag. In the meantime, show this note to any uniformed sailor and they will escort you to anywhere you need to go.
This is followed by a few lines of Chinese characters, and signed by one Eva Stratt.
Koen isn’t blind or ignorant. He knows her name. The entire world knows her name, the infamous Director of the Petrova Taskforce, Savior and Destroyer of the world depending on who you asked. It’s hard to reconcile the version of her he’s seen on the news with the version of her he remembers.
She was always closer to Father Ansel, but that was only natural. The man baptized her, and was a trusted spiritual advisor to the late Mrs. Stratt when the late Mr. Stratt passed away. Still, Father Aalders has always done his best to keep track of his more devout parishioners. He was around for the planning and subsequent cancellation of Eva Stratt’s wedding in the parish. She was young then, pretty and in his same age group. Back then he couldn’t fathom how any man could stand to betray a woman like that. Though he begged God’s forgiveness for such thoughts, knowing they violated his vows.
As he had been for her mother, Father Ansel was Mz. Stratt’s primary counsel during that difficult time, but Koen remembers seeing her come and go from confessional a few times after that whole debacle. She always seemed so cool and collected, so straight-backed and sure of herself. It was hard to imagine what she, of all people, needed a spiritual advisor for.
Still, she was a regular face at Sunday Masses for years, until her appointment to the Petrova Taskforce whisked her away across the globe. Koen remembers her style of worship was quiet, steadfast, and almost habitual. The movement when she crossed herself and accepted the Eucharist was cursory, like a reflex rather than a reflection. It always made him wonder what she was thinking behind those inscrutable ice-blue eyes. Did she worship because she believed and found solace in the Lord? Was it just a piece of her culture, something to which she was accustomed rather than devoted? Was it a way of remembering and honoring and feeling close to her once-devout, now-deceased father? She didn’t strike him as the sort of person to do anything out of obligation, so regardless of the tenacity of her belief, he always knew she was at Mass voluntarily. Yet she did not seek him out for counsel and the two of them were only ever acquaintances.
So why is he here now?
His question goes unanswered for the rest of the day, the night, and the following day. She’s apparently too busy to spare a moment for the man she dragged across all of Eurasia, outside of their scheduled time.
Koen returns to his quarters after dinner on the day of their appointment and, just as instructed, takes the time to center himself. He kneels and asks the Heavenly Father for patience, then deliberately puts his annoyance and confusion to the side. He sheds it like a second skin as he dons his vestments and prepares for a small, somewhat impromptu Mass.
He emerges from his quarters in full seasonal color, cradling his bible and a gold-lined cedarwood box containing small amounts of the necessary supplies: Eucharist and wine for two, a small bottle of holy water, a stapled booklet of sheet music for his single parishioner, a few pieces of incense, and a dish to burn it in, since he didn’t have room in the duffel for a censer. There’s already a Chinese sailor waiting outside his door. The young man looks at the fully-vested priest like a strange foreign species of bird he doesn’t recognize, curious and befuddled. Nonetheless, he leads the Father to the intended ‘church’ without a word.
He finds Eva Stratt waiting for him in a very small, dark, windowless chamber tucked near the larger Rec Room. A laminated sheet of printer paper on the door labels it the ‘Multicultural Room’ in seven different languages. It’s a curious sight to lay eyes on. Symbols of various other religions rest in a clear-fronted plastic cabinet to one side, ready to be taken out and set up and used by whomever needs time to worship. He understands now why it’s labeled the way it is. It’s not much in the way of a chapel, but nonetheless Mz. Stratt has done her best. A folding table with a white cloth over it serves as an altar, with a crucifix resting on the shelf behind it and a stool before it. Eva Stratt stands from that stool to shake his hand as he enters.
“Father Aalders,” she greets with a nod. “It's good to see you.”
“And you, Eva,” he smiles gently. “You must’ve needed the Heavenly Father’s guidance very much, to go to such lengths for a single Mass.”
“I do. But we'll save that for confessional. For now, please begin the service at your convenience. We won’t be disturbed for another two hours.”
“Of course. I’ll be five minutes setting up. Here, I brought you a little something from home,” he murmurs, patting around in his pockets underneath the robes. A look of soft surprise crosses her face when he withdraws a familiar string of garnets and pearls. The gold crucifix gleams dully in her palm as he gently piles the antique into her outstretched hand. She cradles it close to her torso like a delicate baby bird.
“Father Ansel’s rosary,” she whispers with quiet reverence. There’s a flash of some strange, mixed emotion on her face for just a split second, shuttered just as quickly. She’s back to her usual implacable self by the time she looks up to meet Koen’s gaze. “Thank you very much for the loan. I’ll handle it gently.”
“Of course. Five minutes,” he repeats, then goes to the ‘altar’. From the top of his cedarwood box he pulls out some tabernacle cloths to cover the surface and make it look that much more like it should. This is a poor approximation of a Catholic Mass, but the Lord is everywhere in all things. And it’s clear that Eva tried her best given the limited resources at hand. He can make do.
While he prepares, Eva sits back down on the stool and winds the rosary fondly through her fingers, pressing them to her lips and worrying the beads as she closes her eyes and begins to pray it in silence, just her lips and fingers moving. There’s... a fervor, a desperation there that Koen has never seen in her before. But then, he doesn’t know her well, and the years since he last saw her have visibly aged her. No doubt she's had a hard time of it. The world has demanded much of her. What she’s done, what she’s had to do... that changes a person.
She makes it through a couple cycles before he’s just about ready. All that’s left is to choose the readings and quickly compose an impromptu homily.
“What do you need most from Our Lord today, Eva?” he asks gently. She doesn’t open her eyes, finishing her recitation of the last Our Father before she answers.
“Forgiveness of mortal sin. Redemption. Grace,” she whispers with a strange inflection on the last word, and she doesn’t see how Koen’s face crumples with pity.
Of course. Of course. A few weeks ago, she sent three people into space to die. They volunteered, they did it willingly and bravely, but even the strongest and most pragmatic of souls would feel the weight of their sacrifice. One of those three souls was her right-hand man, one Dr. Ryland Grace: a man nearly as infamous as her, by now. She’s without her closest confidant, in a world which has already begun to turn on her. To crucify her.
No wonder she needs to know the love of Christ. Anyone would, at a time like this.
And even before launch, this Atlas with the world on her shoulders had already done terrible things in the name of her fellow man. From Antarctica to the Sahara, she has wrought havoc on this planet and its people on a scale never before seen in history. There’s only so much ‘greater good’ one can justify before the repercussions become too much to ignore.
“Anything you need,” he nods, and lets his leatherbound bible fall open in his palm, flipping through the onionskin pages for the appropriate passages. Father Ansel didn’t choose Koen for his successor for no reason; he knows his scripture, and he can compose a good, heartfelt, short-but-engaging homily in his head in a matter of minutes. He’s good at working on the fly, flexible and sensitive to the needs of parishioners, good at reassuring people. It’s a necessary skill in any clergyman.
He hands off the sheet music to Eva just before he begins. She only flips through it briefly before setting it aside, having apparently memorized the contents in a matter of moments. It’s then that Koen remembers she sang in the youth choir. He recalls occasionally hearing the pure, clear, struck-bell notes of her voice rising over the pews of their parish at home, leading others through the familiar melodies. And he smiles. Looks like he’s about to get a private concert. He’ll do his best to make his barely-passable tenor match hers.
Then he clears his throat and begins, speaking in their shared native tongue. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit...”
...
Eva executes the motions of the Mass just as he remembers: by rote. Muscle memory carries her through every phase of the ceremony. It’s a bit strange, but Koen has given Masses to rooms as small as this before. Usually it’s for Last Rites, crammed into the corner of a hospice room with weeping family nearby, but the atmosphere here is surprisingly similar.
The change that comes over Eva isn’t obvious. It takes Father Aalders some time to put a name to it. But this feels more and more like a Last Rite, despite the still-living parishioner kneeling on the bare floor before him.
Who else died? He wonders, looking her in the eye as he places the Eucharist on her tongue, holding and tilting the wine in its chalice for her to drink. Her inscrutable face shows no answer. They're still alive up there, for now. Who are you grieving, child?
Finally the Mass is over, as they finish harmonizing through a final hymn together. Eva wastes no time moving on to the confessional. There’s a new air of urgency to her now. Koen has a feeling this is what she was after all along, and braces himself. This is... probably going to be the heaviest confessional he’s ever heard. For just a moment, he will take the weight of the world off of this woman’s shoulders and hold it upon his own, before offering it up to Christ the Redeemer. He sends a silent prayer to his Lord as he watches Eva set out two stools, then move a curtain partition between them and take a seat. The setup is not technically correct – parishioner and clergyman are ostensibly supposed to be anonymous to each other – but these are not ideal accommodations or circumstances. Koen will make do. He always makes do.
He takes a seat on the opposite side of the curtain, clutching his bible white-knuckled between his knees. The stool is low, the room close and a bit strong-smelling from the incense he burned. The vent fan isn't turned on so the smoke lingers in a haze, making both their eyes water just a touch. The silence in this room without their voices to fill it is... oppressive.
“Good evening, my child," he whispers, loath to break the waiting stillness. "It’s good of you to come to Penance today. Be at peace with the Lord,” he welcomes.
“Thank you, Father,” Eva whispers. He can’t see her face, but her silhouette stands out faintly against the curtain. Her long auburn hair hangs down around her face. There’s a pause, then she gathers herself with an audible breath and recites,
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been five years and four months since my last confessions. I accuse myself of the following sins.”
Father Aalders winces at the harsh, archaic wording. He tends to lean towards a gentler atmosphere in his confessional, but evidently this penitent doesn’t want to be handled gently.
All the more reason to treat her with kindness, he resolves as she begins her monologue.
She speaks like she’s rehearsed this. Like the words have tumbled themselves smooth as river stones in her tumultuous mind.
“I have done... horrible things in the name of our species’ survival,” she whispers. “I regret very little of it. This isn’t... I don’t mean to say I don’t have feelings about it. You know, when I was a child in elementary school, I did a project on orangutans? I made a big poster and a diorama. I was so excited to present it. I thought they were so interesting. They’re intelligent and gentle creatures. They’re going to be extinct in the wild by the end of next year. And barring a miracle of resource conservation and distribution, they’ll go extinct in captivity as well. My priority is and always has been the preservation of human life, above all else. The time is coming very soon when food rationing will demand that the production of specialty animal feed stops. We won’t be able to spare ground beef to stuff in pumpkins and throw into tiger enclosures in zoos. Not when our children need to be fed. We are... we are going to lose so much, no matter what we do, no matter how much I fight, no matter what scientific miracles my team pulls off.”
Koen swallows thickly. “You didn’t manufacture this crisis. The world has placed an incredible burden on you, and you’ve risen to the challenge. No matter what anyone’s opinion is on your various actions, everyone knows the Hail Mary would never have launched in time without you.”
She sucks in a wet, shuddering breath at the mention of the launch.
“If the mission succeeds, it will be because of what I have just done. But I… how should I even… I don’t know how to feel about it. I can’t regret it, because I know it was necessary. But God, lord help me, I wish he didn’t make me do it!”
And to his utter shock, she breaks down in tears.
He waits. His mind races. Who is ‘he’? What did he ‘make’ her do?
“What have I done?” She whispers between sobs. Koen’s heart breaks for her.
“Only you can tell me. Offer up your sin to the Holy Father.”
Another wet intake of breath. He can see the silhouette of her hands shaking between her knees, clasped in prayer.
“I… There’s context,” she ventures, hesitantly. Then she begins to explain.
A choice between two terrible risks: three of the best and brightest minds available, subjected to four years of confinement, of emotional agony and possible psychosis that could fail the star mission before it even began. Or three of the most genetically compatible minds available, suspended in near-death for four years and then waking up mission-ready.
“He said to me, ‘science and morality both say the same thing, and you know it.’ It was the first time I’d ever asked him to advise me on something outside his expertise, but he already knew me well enough to know what I needed to hear. He didn’t know he was signing his own death warrant.”
Koen’s throat closes. He swallows thickly. “The genetic markers…”
“He has them. Had them. And he knew everything there was to know about astrophage, the ship, its crew… Yao and Ilyukhina trusted him. He was their friend. That’s… a good team is important. And they were already reeling from the loss of Martin and Annie. Mission success would depend on a solid, well-trained team that trusted each other. They needed him. I needed him. There was so little time… no time at all. If we missed the launch window we doomed hundreds of thousands of people to death. There were no other viable candidates. I… I asked him to give up his life. I should’ve asked him so long ago, I… but I was so scared he’d say no, and keep saying no. Maybe I believed in him too much. Maybe I asked too much of him, waiting until the last moment to spring the contingency on him.”
“Eva what are you saying,” Koen whispers, so shellshocked he can't even pretend at anonymity anymore. She bows her head so low she’s nearly folded in half. Her shoulders shake.
“He said ‘no’. But I… I wasn’t really asking. So he ran. They chased him down like an animal, on my orders. I could hear him begging for his life from my office. He accused me of murdering him. He’s right. He’s not dead yet, but he will be, because I condemned him. He was my only real friend and I… oh God…”
The sob rips out of her like a serrated blade from a wound, tearing flesh and blood on the way.
Koen sees the collapse coming a split second before it happens and moves on reflex. He bats the curtain aside and gets an arm under her chest before she falls into a shivering pile on the floor. Her trembling hands latch around his robes to keep upright. She’s crying so hard and so silently that she’s not breathing.
“Breathe, Eva, breathe,” he begs, folding her into a hug and taking big deep breaths so she can feel and follow his rhythm. He rubs his palm in big circles over her back and lets the tears soak into his shoulder.
When she does start breathing again, the sound of her weeping is so haunting that he fears he will hear it in every confessional booth for the rest of his life.
“Why?” She begs through the hot flood of tears, the words muffled in his vestments. “Why would he make me do that? Why did it have to be me? God, forgive me, condemn me to hell I don’t care, but don’t let him suffer in the end. He didn’t deserve it. He gave everything and I just took more and more, how could I? How could… God, Martin and Annie, why take them so early? Why take them both? It’s not fair!”
Father Aalders has heard many a bereaved person say just the same about someone they lost, and he usually knows how to comfort them in times like these. But platitudes about the Lord’s plan and souls going home to Christ fall short on the tip of his tongue, in this case. Nothing is normal. Nothing is right. And for them, in this tormented era of history, nothing will ever be normal or right again.
It's just. Not. Fair.
...
Fourteen months later, Father Koen Aalders is called by prosecution to testify in front of the International Criminal Court and United Nations Representatives in the trial of one Eva Stratt. Having followed the controversial case closely from the moment of her arrest, Koen already knows what they want him for.
The trial is being held in France for now, since the UN meeting that voted her into all that power originally occurred in France. They're even trying her in the same courtroom where she was ratified and sworn in, which is a bitter twist of irony. She has publicly and unapologetically pled guilty to every count of kidnapping, copyright infringement, and theft of funding from both private and public donors under false pretenses. She unapologetically took whatever was needed for the sake of the project's success, by force when she could and by lies when she couldn't. Whether it was money, manpower, expertise, or data, if the Hail Mary required it, she procured it quickly and without regard for due process. The public outcry against these crimes is small and easily dismissed by those who are intelligent enough to truly understand the gravity of the situation; private interests and copyright are trivial things in the face of their species' survival.
But the violence done to Antarctica and the Sahara is harder to swallow. She's accepted the charges of crimes against humanity and ecological terrorism. She did it because it had to be done, not because she's proud of it, and she won't allow responsibility to fall to any of her science team when she was the one who signed off on the final decision. They came up with the ideas, they planned them, but she executed them. She has already said on record that she will gladly accept any punishment the world needs to give her, if it keeps blame away from the team of experts who never wanted to have to make these terrible decisions in the first place.
No, the real sticking points of this trial are the two counts of the negligent homicide of Martin Dubois and Annie Shapiro, and the one count of first-degree homicide of Ryland Grace. They tried to get her for Olesya Ilyukhina and Yao Li-Jei as well, but the stacks and stacks of documentation from both astronauts and their home countries all waive the right to prosecute her for the deaths they willingly went to. Both astronauts state in no uncertain terms in their last will and testaments that Eva Stratt is innocent of their deaths. To disrespect the last wishes of the world's greatest heroes and final hopes would be unthinkable. In that same vein, the deaths of Annie Shapiro and Martin Dubois are also likely to be thrown out. They didn't die on the Hail Mary as planned, but they both signed mountains of notarized documentation where they accepted the risks of the mission.
Sometimes a tragic accident is just that: tragic, and accidental.
But there was apparently no time to procure similar documents from Ryland Grace; at least, not all of them, not notarized, and not enough from his home country of the United States. There's suspicion that the few documents he did sign may have been forged or signed under duress.
Knowing Eva, and remembering how she wept in his arms, the priest understands why she's covering it up. It's not for her own sake. He thinks that if she didn't know the world still needed her, if the work of the Taskforce was truly finished and there was nothing else at stake, she would have confessed to the murder of her closest friend in front of the entire world and then saved them the trouble of executing her. She'd have done the deed herself. But she doesn't hide her sin out of guilt. She hides it out of respect for the memory of Ryland Grace as one of the heroes who will save humanity. The world needs to believe in the Hail Mary and everyone on it. They need to believe in the bravery she knew he was capable of; not the cowardice he showed in a moment of unbelievable desperation. His dignity is worth that much to her.
The coverup by the Russians was thorough; the evidence that remains is circumstantial. And in classic Russian fashion, their government is refusing to cooperate with international law. They won't force any of their own people onto the stand; it's impossible to tell if the ones who do come willingly are lying or not, because either way, they won't face consequences for their perjury at home; and they won't confirm or deny anything, nor cough up any requested evidence, claiming either that the evidence was destroyed or that it doesn't exist in the first place. The French prosecution is grasping at anything they can to make the murder charge stick anyway, because if they can prove that Stratt forced Dr. Ryland Grace onto the Hail Mary, they can call it first-degree homicide and extradite her to the United States where capital punishment is still legal.
There are a lot of rich, powerful people who truly, madly, deeply want her dead simply because they weren't willing to give up their hoards to save the world. She took their riches from them by force, exposing their greed and cowardice to everyone, and now they're using the last scraps of their power to make her pay for it. It's a farce of a trial and anyone with half a brain knows it. Koen finds it disgusting.
That courtroom is the last place on Earth he wants to be. He tries to cite his clergy-penitent privilege to get out of it. They send him a second, more strongly-worded summons. Again he tries to abjure himself by citing the Vatican's opposed stance to the death penalty. They send him a third and final summons that says, in clinical but certain terms, 'come or be dragged'. So he goes.
They put him on the stand. His hands shake. He looks Eva in the eye where she sits at the defendant's bench in shackles, her spine ramrod straight, shoulders back, head held high and eyes forward. He takes courage from her courage. And he doesn't answer a single question.
"If you have an issue with my beliefs, take it up with the Vatican," he finally snaps at the prosecutor, though his palms sweat and his voice warbles with fear. "I swore vows to my Lord and Savior that transcend the secular court. I am unconditionally forbidden by Church canon law to break them."
"That excuse has been used countless times by your Church to obscure and justify the sexual abuse of children," spits the prosecutor, and Father Aalders winces at the sharp reminder of his faith's darker past.
"I never claimed that the institution of the Catholic Church was unimpeachable," he snaps back. "But my vows aren't to the Vatican. My vows are to the Heavenly Father. Anything Eva Stratt confessed to me - and I am not claiming she did or did not confess anything about the circumstances of Dr. Grace's joining the Hail Mary crew - was done during the Holy Sacrament of Confession. And seeing as I consider that confession to be between herself and that Heavenly Father, I see no reason to divulge any part of it to you."
"There is no place for your religion in a secular court of law," sneers the prosecutor, but the judge cuts him off.
"Counselor, this is not a philosophical debate on religious exemptions. Return to the task at hand. Father Aalders, do you formally refuse to testify?"
"Yes. I will not betray the faith of my parishioners for any Earthly power. Do with that what you will."
'What they will' turns out to be a several-year-long jail sentence for obstruction of justice, but outrage by the Vatican and Koen's home country of the Netherlands sees his conviction thrown out a mere three months into his sentence. He returns to his clergy relatively soon, but is forever changed by the experience.
It takes three long years, but eventually all murder charges against Eva Stratt are thrown out on the grounds of insufficient evidence. Koen breathes a sigh of relief when the final news breaks that she's dodged the death penalty.
Thanks in no small part to his own outcry, Eva Stratt is extradited to the Netherlands as well to serve her life sentence. And thanks to that, Father Koen Aalders makes the controversial decision to continue serving her as the head of her parish. Once a month, every month for the next ten years until her eventual escape, he makes the journey to the prison where she serves and delivers a mass. And between the two of them, they pray for the Hail Mary and for the soul of Ryland Grace. For just an hour out of every month, he chooses again and again to take the weight of the world from her shoulders.
Father Koen Aalders dies of pneumonia three years after Eva Stratt's escape from prison; tragically young, another life lost to the necessity of medication rationing. He refused his allocation of antibiotics so that a sick child in his parish could have them instead. And in his final will and testament, he left the antique garnet-and-pearl rosary that one belonged to Father Ansel to her. It takes another three years and several near-miracle strokes of luck to actually get the rosary into her hands, but a few dedicated members of both her home parish and her team of refugees on the Gansu manage it. The rosary is finally delivered to her as if by an act of God.
...
Six years after that, the first of the Beetle probes splashes down in the Pacific Ocean with their star-saving payload. Thanks to the data dump it sent ahead of time, the rogue team on the Gansu is already expecting the taumoeba and is poised to rescue them the instant the capsule is open. Eva Stratt holds the rosary to her lips as she watches her crew haul it, dripping and icy, from the water. Good old Steve Hatch rushes his baby into a sterilization chamber to be cleaned before he cuts the taumoeba capsule free of the housing with a diamond saw. She prays that the microbes inside survived, her voice a mere whisper swallowed in a harsh winter wind.
Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed be the fruit of your womb, Jesus Christ.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners
Now and at the hour of our death...
She prays and prays and prays through each rigorous step of the process: getting the capsule free, sanitized, transferred to a sealed glovebox with the right atmospheric makeup and pressure, opened, the precious contents extracted onto slides and astrophage-coated growth plates for testing. She prays right up until the moment of truth. Dimitri places the first of several slides under a microscope to check for live taumoeba, his hands shaking both from cold and excitement and fear. Eva's knuckles go white around the rosary still pressed to her lips and she pauses her prayer, listening to the heavy silence as if waiting to hear the voice of her God, or of Grace himself.
Dimitri sits up and turns to look at her, tears already spilling from his eyes.
“Они живы. Он сделал это.”
Eva Stratt smiles.
...Amen.