Aratri spent her free time painting in her Garden. With the ship real-side, her garden was flat, walled, and dark.

She lifted her brush from the canvas and called, "Lovesong?"

"Yes, Aratri?"

"Do you ever make art?"

"I match humans."

Aratri smiled. "You see me as an art project? Wait, humans?" Her adrenaline surged at the realization. "Plural?"

"Yes."

"Who else are you matchmaking for?"

"Everyone aboard."

"How many is that?"

"One-Hundred and Fifty Thousand."

Aratri looked at her brush, then at her painting. It seemed so small in comparison. She asked, "Exactly that many? That seems too high."

"It is an estimate. The actual number is dropping. I do not want to count right now."

"Because you're busy matchmaking?"

"I am observing the executions."

Aratri tensed. She rarely left her garden, and she often lost track of events. She couldn't remember the date and had no idea who was being killed nor why. "Executions?"

"The crew of Holy Grox is being decimated."

"You mean the officers."

"The officers were already executed. Now the crew."

"Oh. Why?"

"Because they are good men."

"What?!"

"My best candidates are being selected. It cannot be a coincidence."

Aratri shook her head and decided to remain uninvolved. "Does the Inquisitor know? I hope he puts a stop to it."

"He is the cause of it."

Aratri relaxed. "It's probably for the best then." On a second thought, she wasn't sure if she was supposed to or allowed to pass a moral judgment. So she hedged with, "Still, it's very sad I think."

"It is very messy, Aratri. All of my matchmaking has to be reworked."

Aratri blinked. "Oh. Yes, that too. I'm sorry, Lovesong. What about your plans for me? How are those coming along?"

"Those have to be reworked."

"Why? Did something happen?"

"Male Navigators may take non-navigators as wives and concubines. This lowers their interest in female navigators, skewing the market against you. Spacefaring crews are disproportionately male. Decimating a crew therefore disproportionately removes males from the market. This harms the female population in general and you in particular."

Aratri lost the logic. She resumed painting and thoughtlessly asked, "How? I can't marry them."

Lovesong took a long time to answer. "There are now more women competing with you."

Aratri froze. She asked "What should I do?"

In the Chamber of Defenestration, Inquisitor Halbert stood before a parish of good men and delivered their last rites. As he spoke, he dipped his fingers into holy oil and anointed their foreheads with the Aquila.

He finished intoning, "Where you go, we endeavor to follow." The final man waited patiently for his mark, then murmured out of turn, "We all make it, someday, right?"

The Inquisitor stared into his eyes solemnly for a moment. "No," he corrected.

The man swallowed, then shifted his weight.

Halbert delayed a moment longer, to add, "Have you not heard? Hell is full of priests."

He returned to his lectern and said to them all, "Soon you will be closer to our Lord than I ever have. When you arrive, pray thus."

He'd brought the Sororitas with him, full regalia. Their black ceramite armor fit the alcove shadows, and their reply- three voices as one- echoed through the atrium. "Master of Mankind, accept the souls of our kin as you accept ours. Remember your love for Mankind and your hatred of The Great Enemy."

Then the Homily. Halbert spoke in his relaxed voice. "You here congregated, the crew and passengers of Holy Grox, selected these men for their piety." He spoke to everyone behind the front row. The congregation sat in darkness, their heads bowed, shaking and crying for the meaning of this ritual.

"All of you who remain admit your unworthiness. You knew better than to draw near to your Master without repentance. It is a fearsome thing, to serve a God. The example of these good men humbles you now. In time, it will embolden you to worthiness."

He nodded to Sister Spera, who stepped forward from her alcove and welcomed the procession towards the airlock.

As they ejected the first among firsts, the Navigator entered the chamber. She spotted the nearest suit of armor and asked "Sister Odia?"

Sister Fidea pointed across the chamber, where Odia distinguished her armor with a sash.

Aratri clutched her robes and shuffled around the pews murmuring "Sorry, sorry, please excuse me," until she could whisper to Odia. "I have a question about this procession."

Odia had watched this all with sympathetic pain. She glanced to the lectern, where Halbert displayed un-sympathetic pain.

She turned back to Aratri. "It is called decimation."

Aratri nodded and tugged her fingers at frantic speed. "I know that, but why are we killing the good men? There's already…" She watched the next man bid his compatriots farewell and enter the airlock. Her gaze lingered on him wistfully. "There's already so few."

Odia stepped to block Aratri's view of the airlock. "Good men are plentiful in the host of the Master of Mankind. That is where they belong and why we are sending them."

Aratri protested "What about with us?"

Odia turned to look at the man in the airlock. He wasn't particularly attractive. Not off-putting, but not handsome. A sound- hiss, Fwoooosh!- rendered the point moot.

Odia turned back to Aratri and asked, "Was he your type?"

Aratri had leaned around her to watch. She was still shocked. Her finger pulling stopped. Odia's question rattled around in her ears until she stammered, "My type? No. Nonono. This isn't about me, Sister Odia. I merely-"

Halbert was trying to deliver a homily, and the navigator was whispering into an acoustic alcove so that everyone could hear her clearly. Halbert's annoyance grew, and the pointedness with which he glared their way intensified.

Odia placed a hand on the navigator's arm. "We will speak now in another room."

She moved the navigator, half as assistance and half insistence, to hurry the wobbly distraction away from the ritual.

As they left, Spera sent a helmet comm. {Sister-Superior, the Inquisitor reminds you not to kill our navigator.}

{Assure the Inquisitor that I will exercise my discretion.}

Aratri protested her escort by grabbing onto Odia's gauntlet. "Ow. Sister Odia, just really quickly, before we go anywhere, could we stop the-"

"No." She lead them into a monastic cell and released the navigator. "You sought me out instead of the Inquisitor. Why?"

Aratri pursed her lips tight. She lowered her face and nervously admitted, "I'm more comfortable talking to you than anyone else."

"Why?"

"Because…" She sighed her frustration and swept her eyes towards the ritual chamber. "You remind me of someone I was able to talk to."

"And you cannot speak to her anymore?"

"No. She…" Aratri folded her arms. Her eyes watered. "We really can't stop the execution?"

"You are being selfish and disruptive."

"It's not selfish because- because it's- it's not about me, Odia." She couldn't make eye contact anymore, and she started rubbing the tips of her fingers together, trying to recite from memory.

"I'm concerned that- um- you see, spacefaring crews are disproportionately male. A-a-and decimating a crew therefore disproportionately removes males from the market. This harms the female population. Not me of course, because I can't marry these men."

Odia had worked very hard to learn patience, temperance, and compassion for her fellow women. Every day she learned that there was still more to learn. She had to calm Aratri and build rapport to find the source of this autistic babbling. So she tried a bland assurance. "The Administratum manages human demographics with an interest in such concerns. The population will be balanced."

This did nothing to calm Aratri. She was still objecting, but didn't have words. She kept glancing through the bulkhead in the direction of the defenestration chamber. Her mouth formed sounds, and eventually in desperation began, "W-w-w-well. You see-"

Odia sternly interrupted "Whom do I remind you of?"

Aratri shifted her weight around uncomfortably. "What?"

"You said I remind you of someone you could talk to. Whom?"

Aratri resumed pulling her fingers, a sure sign she was calming down. "Grace. There was a planet we tried to reunite to the Imperium. But Inquisitor Halbert had to declare Exterminatus, and we only rescued one person. But it doesn't matter because she's gone now."

"What do you suppose happened to her, Aratri?"

"The Inquisitor marooned her at a convent. And I never saw her again."

Odia smirked. She couldn't believe this was happening. Still, it was better for Aratri to move on. It saddened her to be the most approachable person in Aratri's life.

She blinked through her visor menus and lowered the voice modulation on her helm, then spoke again, softer. "Aratri, you are able to look at me in a way no other can. Look at me now."

Aratri glanced at her nervously, then looked down and fiddled with her fingertips.

"Why won't you?" Odia asked.

Aratri murmured, "I'm afraid of you, Sister Odia. You know that. And you have that scary helmet."

"You should not fear me any more than I fear you, Navigator. We are merely experts in our trades."

"That's true," Aratri nodded. "But we're not really going to talk about you, are we? Nuns see more than they let on, too. You're going to talk about me."

"Yes," Odia nodded. "I perceive that you have never had a man in your life, Aratri."

Aratri turned rigid.

"But," Odia continued, "We are also talking about me. I have had a man in my life. Does that surprise you?"

It shocked Aratri into silence.

Odia pointed at her. "You are afraid of a lonely future." She pointed at herself. "I never knew that fear. But I once loved an irreplaceable man and lost him forever."

Aratri gaped. "But you're a nun. Isn't that illegal?"

"I was not always a nun. I was once betrothed. To a man named Tristan."