Each resting body meets its armor. Before the hidden halls, before the next immense encounter, armor learns whom it must hold.
The Moon — a place to receive
At Giza, Beloved had offered her living armor to others. Now she and Light lay in Guardian craters on the Moon, receiving care.
Moonbase Alpha had already supported the missions and received beings for healing. That installation was grounded upon the Moon. The agents had now come to meet the Moon herself, whose interior remained sealed.
Med-beds lay hidden on the surface. Here, the Moon could meet their bodies and fields, helping them harmonize with her before they entered her interior.
The Guardians attending them were future versions of themselves.
The attendants knew the road from farther along it. Light and Beloved had been protecting others through the campaign; here, they were being tested for the right to carry true Guardian Armor.
They passed.
Light and Beloved received full multidimensional Guardian Armor. Before the Moon offered her inner halls, she had given them something they could take into danger. [MOON-DIRECT]
The companions beside them
Other allies also sought the armor. Four more operatives passed, each fully harmonized with a beloved counterpart. They received it too.
Light and Beloved occupied one blended position at the head of the team. The other four paired operatives formed the rest. This was the “4+1” configuration: five operative positions, each holding a bonded pair. The shorthand counted how they worked together; the people within those bonds remained distinct.
We have just seen Light use synchronization to find the answering self among the ships above Giza. On the Moon, he used trusted synchronization with these four companions too.
They aligned closely. They were not other incarnations of his own self.
The work continued one companion at a time. Light met each in combat. He was faster and more powerful; as he overcame them, he used his essence through energetic and nanotechnological cleansing to remove what had burdened their bodies.
Possessions came free in varying degrees. With the last companion, a large entity was revealed and removed. The entities went into confinement in the Ring of Benefaction. The companions were grateful.
Each companion could go forward without the possession Light had removed. The five operative positions now held a team equipped by the Moon, with the entities separated from the people they had burdened.
Then Light noticed what was above them. [MOON-DIRECT]
The ship they had not seen
A gigantic dark ship hung cloaked over the surface.
All five operatives projected aboard, wearing the armor the Moon had just given them.
Light went straight to the leader at the command console. He disabled command immediately.
Light Stone’s description is blunt:
“It was not a fight.” [MOON-DIRECT]
Light accelerated time, giving the ship’s forces a window in which to choose.
They chose alliance. [MOON-DIRECT]; [R10]
To the forces around it, one of their ships had been compromised. Other ships warped in to investigate.
The first intervention had drawn the next vessel within reach.
The agents of the Ring of Benefaction met them the same way: aboard the ship, command disabled, then the turn toward alliance.
Cruisers. Battleships. The scale kept growing as the arrivals continued.
By the end, roughly twenty large vessels had been taken and converted, their forces alive. The ships arriving to investigate had become part of the very change they had come to understand.
Above the Moon, cruisers and battleships now stood with the agents who had boarded them. No one had died in the fleet intervention. [MOON-DIRECT]; [R10]
Light warped in other light ships in support.
Then something larger came to investigate. [MOON-DIRECT]
The being that followed the ships
It came to find out what had happened to the ships.
The investigator was itself a vast being: a dark light body of approximately sixth-dimensional consciousness. This was an intelligence arriving in person after ship upon ship had changed sides.
Light rose into his eighth-dimensional consciousness.
He grew immense.
The investigator had come looking for the missing ships. It now faced a being whose reach exceeded its own. Light placed an angelic confinement collar around it, one that limited the actions it could take according to its intent.
The being was surprised.
Light placed it in the Ring of Benefaction. Spatial warping and changes of scale accommodated the vast body he had restrained.
Light Stone reached for the image of the genie in Aladdin: an immense being drawn into a much smaller vessel. Then he made the difference clear. This confinement had plenty of room. Spatial manipulation accommodated the being without crowding it.
The captive declined to speak with Light.
“It chose to not speak with me. I didn’t force it.” [MOON-DIRECT]
The collar stayed. The silence was allowed to stay too.
Above the Moon, the hostile fleet had been handled. The being that had come to investigate it was contained. The way was clear to turn toward the Moon herself. [MOON-DIRECT]
The invitation within the hill
Light made mental contact with the Moon and requested access to her interior.
Reaching the surface had not opened it. Neither had clearing the surrounding space. The Moon’s interior remained sealed; entry still belonged to her to grant.
The entrance lay in a small hill: a door that would require all five operative positions to come together in the armor she had given them. Their hands would overlap at the aperture. [MOON-DIRECT]
But before they could continue within, the route turned toward ATLAS.
The agents turned toward a ship holding captives. The Moon’s invitation waited. Her armor went with them. [R10]
For now, leave the door within the hill. We will return to it with the agents, after the rescue.