Then Naomi will attempt to read the Acts of Iomedae.

And, meanwhile, in an office on Callisto, a man is reading a deeply disturbing report from one of his subordinates.

He has to consider, of course, the possibility that Lopez has lost his mind. He doesn't actually consider it for very long. There's video evidence. There's biometric evidence of the miraculous healing. All of it fakeable, especially since he's receiving it as an after-action report rather than live during the battle, but that's not something a man suffering immersive hallucinations would probably think to do. No, the hard question here is not whether to relieve Lopez of command because he's insane. The hard question is whether to kill everyone on the Tachi with as little warning as he can possibly give them because they've all been compromised by an alien superintelligence, because that, regardless of the intentions this 'Iomedae' has towards humanity, does appear to be the approximate shape of the thing happening.

In the end, he doesn't do it, because it wouldn't work. It might have worked, if they had blown Phoebe to plasma the moment they discovered the blue goo, and perhaps they should have done that, but by the time the alien god can manifest an entire human with magical healing powers, there's really not much they can do but be grateful it apparently wants to talk.

"Thank you for your report, Lieutenant. My condolences on the loss of your crewmates."

"You are hereby ordered to report to Jovian Fleet Headquarters for a full debrief and medical evaluation. You are further ordered to escort your civilian charges, including the extrasolar intelligence identifying as Blai Artigas, to Fleet Headquarters for evaluation and questioning. You and your charges are hereby placed under quarantine, owing to the risk of exposure to extrasolar pathogens, invoking the necessary quarantine exception to the Interplanetary Convention on Stranded Astronauts. The emergency access to ship systems that you granted to your civilian charges has been revoked."

"I hope to see you all here soon."

Well, James Holden isn't going to like this.

Indeed not.

"Hey Blai," Naomi asks, after some tense arguing among the rest of the crew in a language Blai can't understand, "do you have a way of getting a message off this ship? Mars is refusing our request to be taken home and we'd like to discourage the scenario where they make us all disappear, either because they think we blew up the Donnager or because they're panicking about alien superintelligences or both."

"...if I called a lantern archon that could do it? They can teleport. Is the... alien superintelligence they're panicking about, Iomedae? They wouldn't be wrong to panic if it were an evil god, really..."

“Uh…not exactly, from our perspective it seems really very unlikely that there’s another star system with humans like our humans except that they have magic powers and can become gods, and a lot of people are going to wonder if you’re actually human at all or if you’re actually something very alien and very powerful that’s appearing human for inscrutable reasons. And the conventional wisdom about beings like that is that they’re very bad news. The thing where your world’s evil gods publicly advertise this fact about themselves is really very bizarre, and no one is going to believe that the good gods are actually aligned with humanity just because they say so.”

“You said your summoning spell only lasted thirty seconds, right? Do you know if teleportation is limited by the speed of light?”

"I don't know about that, but it does have a limited range - or, the fifth circle version does, I don't recall for certain if the lantern archons have that or the more advanced version. I don't mind being - examined? - to demonstrate that I am a human. Though I suppose I can't rule out that I might be some small percentage something else far back enough to forget. Anyway, summonses last thirty seconds but a calling can be longer, it'd just require that I have some way to compensate the archon for its time and risk."

“If the limit is less than the size of a planet then it’s probably useless in space, but it seems worthwhile to let Heaven know that our civilization exists in case we get killed? I don’t know how the compensation thing works, are they willing to be paid in, like, ‘the knowledge that nukes exist’, or do they want some kind of money that I don’t have?” She’s not going to acknowledge having noticed Blai’s admission that he might not be entirely human; she’s not racist.

"I have been giving Iomedae sitreps periodically, so She knows, and if that's somehow insufficient then if we all die I expect to arrive in at least Axis and to be able to contact Heaven from there. Compensation - varies - an inevitable would probably want some kind of negotiable commodity though I'd expect them to be able to access moneychanging services in Axis but I don't think the kind I'd be able to call can teleport. I don't know whether or not Heaven knows nukes exist. Perhaps they do and they're irrelevant, or the Outer Planes are barred by treaty from using them, or they already are and this information simply never made it back to Golarion. Perhaps they don't, but they would be irrelevant or forbidden. So I don't know if it might constitute a valuable piece of information. Credible promises of good deeds that would not otherwise be done are I think standard fare for angels in general and that probably includes lantern archons."

“I can…promise to use my newly acquired notoriety to evangelize as many people as I possibly can about the fact that hell exists and needs to be destroyed, which I would probably do anyway but not if I die or spend the rest of my life in a Martian prison,” or actually an Earther prison is more likely, but she’s not going to mention that. “I could also promise to volunteer or donate to charity or whatever but the first thing seems much more important, so. I’m not sure if that works, but what’s the cost if we try it and the offer isn’t accepted?”

"I don't know specifically. I barely even know vaguely. There is a lot I don't know about how this works, because information about how it works, itself, is expensive. Iomedae can cut off my spells if I mean to use them in a way She doesn't approve of, but that, too, is expensive information, it communicates very clearly - and to only one person who by then would no longer even be one of Her clerics, it's not even one-to-many - that She does not approve of something. The way I was supposed to learn about that is by communicating with the rest of Her church, not by speculating wildly. I was warned not to attempt an untrained Commune, and wasn't warned about summonses or callings; but I don't know exactly what led to that and it could be an idiosyncrasy of the person I was corresponding with. But it might cost Iomedae in particular - because of it being me doing the casting - or Heaven in general - because of it being a lantern archon - perhaps quite a lot of intervention budget, and then in some other situation where they can refrain from stepping in to make something, somewhere, go well instead of badly, they will stay their hands. I wish inevitables could teleport. An inevitable I am reasonably sure you can just pay in money, and I don't know Axis to be in quite such dire intervention budget straits as Iomedae. - I suppose it is not necessarily completely and wildly out of the question that you could pay an inevitable to go home to Axis and buy a Sending there on your behalf? It would cost a quite phenomenal sum even if the answer were 'absolutely not' because the answer being 'absolutely not' is information."

“Okay. It’s not urgent; it’ll be at least another day before we get where we’re going, so if there’s another spell you can prepare tomorrow that would be better, we would appreciate it,” (she has by now read enough of the Acts to get the concept of spells per day); “if not, I can probably find some nonmagical way of getting comms access back. I do expect that if the Martians don’t decide to kill you they’ll want you to do a summoning so they can confirm that Heaven, you know, exists, but they can figure out how to pay in that case.”

“What’s Axis? Heaven and hell map to concepts our religions sometimes have but I’ve never heard of Axis.” The Acts mention it plenty but mostly with the assumption that everyone already knows about it.

"Thirty seconds of a summoned lantern archon I would expect to be much cheaper - it's not risky for the archon, for one thing, it's not their real body, just a projection they operate from back in Heaven - if that will serve for proof. Axis is the Lawful Neutral afterlife."

“Okay, I can guess from context what ‘Lawful’ ‘Neutral’ means but does your world just—have a whole three-by-three grid of afterlives?” It’s honestly incredibly normal for a system designed by a random alien superintelligence but it’s still fucking bizarre. “Religions here that claim afterlives exist usually only claim one or two, I don’t think there’s any that say there are nine.”

"It has nine, yes, though it is said that Pharasma doesn't like anyone to linger in the Boneyard. In parts of the Acts it's condensed into Paradise and the Lower Planes? Which are the main important possibilities, if you aren't too young to have an alignment."