Oh no. If she failed now. But she drew her sword. “I will try.”
Try or die. Maybe try and die. Today was one screwed-up day.
“Dassenze? Lord?” Ally again and she sounded frightened. “What’s coming – some of them are nerve chewers that like you.”
Oh shit. That scared her more than anything. Her own death seemed impossible, maybe that was a thing people couldn’t imagine easily, and besides there were so many healthy people in front of her and they’d just beaten off a whole army of the most horrible creatures. Dassenze though, she peeked at him. His death seemed a real possibility.
“Lord?”
He swung to look at her. “Yes, Talia? You’re worried? Don’t be. Nothing can get me. Nothing will.”
Liar, liar pants on fire. But she held her sword hilt tighter and squeezed a word out of her throat. “Good.”
“Those ducts need to be explored and shut down. Go.” He waved some warriors in either direction.
“They’re coming!” Ally squeaked.
From behind her, via the open duct that led god knew where, came a distant repetitive booming, as if something large pounded on metal. The warriors assigned had barely levered themselves off the floor.
“It’s coming!”
A flood of yellow roaches swarmed into the room, covering the floor, and chittering like a battalion of lost crickets. Before anyone had reacted, they’d covered Dassenze from feet to waist and were heading upward.
She ripped the katana out and halted, frozen in an agony of dread as she watched the last of him buried under a yellow, squirming horde. Whatever she hit would find him beneath. Her heart beat so hard it was going to tear from her chest. The room was tiny. If she used her powers, would she kill him or the others? Pain wracked her fingers where they gripped the sword.
He fell like a toppling tree, arms flailing. Somewhere, distantly, people were screaming. Warriors circled, knives out. Brask stared at her, hoping. She inhaled bitter air, still crazily frozen with indecision.
What can I do?
He was a god. He couldn’t die.
Tears welled, blurred her vision.
No.
She raised her sword.
Chapter 27
More booming. These roaches hadn’t made that sound. Something bigger was coming.
She hesitated again, her sword high, arm muscles straining. She couldn’t kill him and her blow might do that.
A scream fractured the air, harsh as an eagle’s cry. Willow stepped forward, black wings elevated and smoking, staring downward at the writhing yellow mass, as if riveted to what had become of Dassenze.
If nothing else that scream freed Brask, for he wrenched his gaze from Talia and roared. “Get that door!”
Warriors, Stom and two others, ran and leaped into the duct, scrambling along it and yelling back. “There’s a circular hatch!”
“Close it!” Brask whipped around, again with the stare, directly at her.
Only seconds had passed.
“Do it,” he ground out. “You have to.” Even she could hear the heartfelt fracture in his command. “Do it, please.”
He meant her to kill Dassenze. No. Fuck no. She began to lower her sword, her hands trembling.
Willow struck. Flame. Redness. The room blasted with sound. Fiery wind swept burnt air outward, searing her eyes, and in the last blink of sight before she must close her eyes, she saw it – the spears of fire piercing the roaches with precise pins of flame. They fell from him, rolling in fire, burning, squealing with ultrasonics. But did he rise?
Her eyes glued shut; she was tortured in limbo.
Did he live?
Did he?
Eyes livid with pain, she forced them open, blinked ferociously.
To see him stagger upright and breathe out, and be...alive.
He shook himself and the last corpses of roaches flew free, spinning across the floor, smoldering.
“Let’s get this fucker dead. Talia?” His voice had reached new depths. His eyes were scorched golden. He’d emerged from that unscathed?
Ohmigod.
“Uh.” Instinctively, she bowed her head. “Yes, Lord.”
The sword was made anew in her fist. She remembered to breathe, remembered to let blood flow through her hand.
She hadn’t lost him.
The glowing wall called her and she strode to it, raised the katana. As she sliced it downward in an arc, she prayed.
The katana sank into the green, hissing. Smiling, nostrils flaring, arm muscles feeling the kill, she finished the arc of her blow and stepped away...
To find she no longer had a sword. Apart from two inches of blade past the guard, she had nothing.
No.
Talia let her hand fall. Her doubts had been made real.
She looked at Dassenze. “I can’t do it.”
What could they do?
Dismayed, his lips parted. She’d failed him.
Her sword was gone. The remnants rolled from her hand, leather across her palm, spinning to the floor.
No more tears. Not for a damn katana.
But her hand, it still felt the touch of a sword. The realness of a sword. She stared, seeing the lines, the creases on her palm.
Imagining.
Once upon a time, she’d dreamed of wielding a paper sword. One that could cut infinity. It wasn’t that. Not paper.
No.
Something more.
She could summon a sword from scraps, from anything. Talia raised her head and her gaze fell on...
Willow.
The dark parasite.
It could sneak onto ships in midspace and suck the lifeforce from the crew.
She curled her fingers, feeling the tug as it resisted.
Come to me.
Yesss, it replied.
The feathery first edges peeled away from Willow, her wings etched in light, then disintegrating into specks of black that fled to Talia, flying to her hand, accumulating, building.
Making a hilt, a sword, a blade of the best, inestimably excellent black.
A dark matter sword and it led her eye upward to the very point where the final black specks fell into place.
Done.
“Fuck,” someone whispered.
She heard a thud and knew it was Willow.
What else could she ever have used? Only already it sought her flesh, nibbling at her skin.
“Talia!” Dassenze bellowed. “What have you done?”
“I’ve bought you time and the finest-ever sword.” She looked at him, knowing his pain, but holding herself back from acknowledging it. She must be stone. Someone had to do this. She went to the green wall.
“Wait.” Ally threw out her hand, her face white with shock. “I need a death. This is useless without that. Can you hold it long? If you cut her, the queen, can you stay there?”
With her hand already partly gone? Her skin was being etched. Could she hold it long? Her lips trembled and she looked at Dassenze and Brask then Ally. “No. Not long.”
More loss sizzled into her palm. Cells were going. Parts of her were no longer her. This dark matter thing, it liked her. If she waited too long, she’d be like Willow.
“Even a roach will do?” Ally took a faltering step and repeated the question to everyone, begging. “I need a death.”
Jadd and Rimmil had gone down the alternate end of the duct and now returned, no doubt having secured the hatchway. Ally had spoken as they stepped in and Rimmil had stared at her horror-struck.
“What is this?” he asked “Ally?”
Ally shook her head and barely met his eyes.
“Can you bring us a Bak-lal to kill?” Brask bellowed down the duct.
“No! We’re barely holding here,” Stom called back. “There are tentacles! Things trying to tear open this door!”
A death. They had no enemy. Only those who faced her. Would someone have to volunteer? Talia catalogued them – Rimmil, Jadd, Brittany, Willow, Steve, Dassenze, and Brask. She su
cked in her lip and bit the edge.
They might die here anyway but there was still hope if you lived. Dead, there was none.
“If you need someone?” Hesitantly, softly, Rimmil took one step farther into the room. Though he looked at Ally, her head was down.
“No,” she gasped out, shaking from head to toe. “No, Rimmil. I couldn’t do it. Not you.”
“Then me.” Steve spoke up loudly. “I’ve got no ties. No family.”
Hands over her mouth, Ally sobbed. She shook her head at Steve. “This is terrible. I didn’t mean it to be like this.”
Willow, with her head to the floor, croaked out words. Though still naked, she was pink and human. Nothing of the dark creature seemed to taint her.
It was all in Talia’s hand.
This was awesome.
A thrill shivered through her. Awesome and I’m insane to be admiring it.
“What?” Tears rolling down her face, Ally knelt and brushed at Willow’s hair. “What did you say, Willow?”
She groaned. “I can...I can kill something for you.”
“What, girl? You’d better not be telling tales. Oh god.” Ally swiped at her eyes with her hand. “What can you kill?”
“I sense roaches.” She lifted her head, her hair spilling from her face, and she looked into Ally’s eyes. “I can kill the one in your mind.”
Holy crap. That was scary. “With fire?”
“Yes.” Willow met Talia’s gaze. “I can be exact.”
Willow’s mind was back and her reasoning powers. It said she too had a chance to lose this thing afterward and still be Talia.
“Won’t that hurt her?” Rimmil looked wildly about the room before settling on Talia. “It still has to go through her brain?”
“It would.” Though she wasn’t a brain surgeon, her forensic science background gave her a good idea of the dangers. “The damage depends on how much heat radiates and how small the diameter of the injury as the fire goes in. You could cook her brain, Willow.”
Ally stood waiting, wide-eyed, the smallest and most timid on them all, yet without her they would fail.
“I can limit the damage.” And that was Brittany. “Heal her instantly.”
“Of course. Fuck yeah.” She mashed her hand tighter onto the dark matter hilt. “This is what we are meant for. This is why the four of us are here. Let’s do this.”
Dassenze had thought they were a jigsaw of magic power? How right he was. She looked to him.
He nodded curtly. “I agree. But it has to be up to you four.”
Slowly Ally looked around at everyone, then at her cousin. “I trust you, Willow.” She helped her up and hugged her, before standing free with only Willow’s hand in hers. “I agree too. This is...” She smiled. “Our fucking destiny. Let’s do this.”
“You need a name, girls,” Steve sung out. “The Kick-ass Chicks? Funtastic Four? The Girl Gorillas?”
They all swung to stare at him, stunned no doubt, though Talia felt like giggling. Ally was the first in. “After this, after we are done killing this queen, we tie Steve to a pole and give him a make-over. Eyelashes, mascara.”
“High heels,” said Willow, naked but clearly happy from her big smile.
“Lipstick,” added Brittany.
Talia grinned. “And a tattoo that says ‘girl power’.” She winked at Steve.
He gave a thumbs-up. “I’ll be there.”
Brask just shook his head. “Crazy humans.”
After the laughter died away, silence fell upon the room.
Time. She hefted her dark matter sword, registering how it was welded to her palm and how the greyness was creeping into her. It was heavier, but then it bore the weight of the fate of this world.
“Let’s do this,” she said again, and the women came to her and waited.
For the second time, she raised a blade and aimed it at the wall that protected the factory queen. Like a whisper of an omen, the sword carved down, and echoes of curses muttered madly in her head as she drove it down, down. Her hand began to shudder. Fumes rose.
The sword stuck at the bottom. Whatever it had wedged in, it pinned her there, since the sword was a part of her. Her heart ramped up the pace. Her pulse thudded in her temples.
An ethereal smoke obscured where she had cut, but the very top where she’d begun seemed to gape. The whole room shook, making her teeth rattle, and the walls keened like a tuning fork gone badly wrong.
“Let me in!” Ally squeezed past her and plunged her arm into the smoke. It disappeared to the elbow. “I’m there. Touching her... Willow?” she asked in the tiniest scared voice. “Please? Willow?”
The request didn’t sound like her asking for the final step in this killing process. It sounded miserable and lost and frightened – like someone asking for a true deathblow to release them from pain.
“I’m here, Ally. I’m sorry, girl. Hold on. Here it comes.”
She placed her palm on Ally’s head. A spark of light glowed through her hand. Ally jerked once and moaned.
Chapter 28
Why me?
The thought had stuck in her head from the moment she’d put her arm in the hole Talia had sliced in the wall. Sponginess had flowed over her skin, hot and pulsing. This was an alive thing, an alien, a factory queen, and an organism that wanted her dead or in its power.
Here she was with her arm two feet deep in someone’s brain. The ultimate ick.
Why me. The thought spiraled on, around and around until she hit another one that engulfed all awareness.
Quietness simmered.
“Hello.”
It talked to her? She mustn’t listen. Thoughts, equations, images of creatures being tortured, of the deep dark ground they lay in, of screams and moans and things squelching into metal walls, bashing, bashing. They rampaged into her head.
“My spider girl,” whispered the queen. “She is coming for you. So are my brethren and sisters.”
So fast. Everything piled in on top, submerging her under information, drowning her in alien consciousness.
Jibbering, wailing. The screams deafened her.
Brethren? Sisters? Ahhh. The others.
She wrenched to a stop her spinning path and listened.
The queen talked to the ships and, yes, there they were.
The space above the Earth breathed cold.
She saw the fleet emerging on a roiling cloud of ruptured dimensions, flooding out in a swathe of immense ships as numerous and ominous as the roaches on Dassenze.
Above the Earth, they slowed, preparing to descend. Thousands of them. Minutes, minutes, seconds away. Time was messed up. Then Willow spoke...or had that happened ages ago?
I’m here, Ally. I’m sorry, girl. Hold on. Here it comes.
Pain rammed in, throttling thought until a blissful peace blanketed most of the pain.
Inside her head, a thing died, wriggling its last, thrashing, hurting her mind.
She wanted to writhe too, wanted to pull her arm out but didn’t. Stay. She heard herself whimpering.
The nerve chewer. Its death was important.
She could taste death, feel it like it was solid, and play with it. She kept her eyes closed as she shaped this death then she flung it into the void that was the queen, hearing her shriek. She smiled.
Then she knew.
The connection between the queen and her friends was open. Opportunity beckoned. Racing to complete the action before it shut down, feeling the last movements and cries of the queen as she shriveled, Ally threw the death high, squeezing it into the data stream in a monstrous spear of nothingness.
Their screams obliterated her. Her heart stopped. Breathing stopped, but Ally felt her smile widen.
The aliens, as stark as pinpoints of stars in her mind, weakened. Death ate them. One by one, tens of thousands of living creatures blinked out and died.
She slumped, losing herself, dying too, feeling her arm torn in some way, then her knees hit the floor.
Done
.
Chapter 29
Mouth open, Talia watched as Rimmil dived in and dragged Ally away so that Brittany could attend to her in a clear space.
“She’s not dead, is she?” The agony in his mind was written in the contortions of his face. Where another man might be grim and not show emotion, Rimmil, this fierce Igrakk warrior, looked ready to cry. It was the bondmating tearing at him. It must be. The minus side of the incredibly close connection they had.
Ally was limp and pale and looking so fragile it hurt not be able to go to her. She tugged. Still caught. Damn this sword.
“Her heart’s stopped. She’s not breathing.” Brittany looked up at Rimmil, eyes large and red-rimmed. “I don’t know if I can do anything. I’m trying but I can’t tell.”
“Sure.” But as soon as she went back to trying to revive Ally, from behind his back Rimmil drew a knife.
What was he up to? Interrupting this might wreck Ally’s chances, so she said nothing.
Whatever Brittany did, the effort wasn’t visible in any way – just her kneeling with her hands on Ally’s head and heart, as if she prayed.
Seconds passed and Ally stayed dead and still.
Steve levered himself from the wall, bursting out with, “Do CPR. Plain-old mouth-to-mouth. I can help with that.”
If Rimmil heard any of this she wasn’t sure. His hand rose and he put the knife point to his throat, the tendons on his hand standing up. With Steve, Willow, and Brittany crowding Ally, no one else saw what Rimmil did and he could no longer see Ally.
She threw out her free hand, wishing she could reach. “No! Rimmil!”
At that, everyone except Brittany looked at him. The knife point cut into his neck. While Ally, damn the girl, through the legs, past the other’s kneeling bodies, she saw Ally suck in a breath.
Come to me. She yanked the knife from Rimmil and it flew over and slapped into her palm.
Her own heart decided to beat again.
He gaped at her, empty handed, blood running down his neck.
“She’s alive. Look.” Talia nodded toward Ally who was coughing and striving to get up on one elbow.
“Come here.” Steve grabbed Rimmil’s arm and dragged him down beside Ally. “See.”
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