by Rachel Caine
I tapped the wall and said, “Viewport please,” but I wasn’t expecting what we got. Even from so far away, I caught a shimmer of movement, distant light on shiny black plates. It undulated like a snake. And in the distance, the drifting, dark bulk of a Leviathan—dead; I knew it in my guts. We’d seen that ship before, piloted by the parasites, clumsily chasing after us.
They were abandoning it because they’d identified new, fresh prey. The Phage had found us.
“Shit. Nadim, analyze trajectory!”
“They’re trying to intersect,” he confirmed.
His horror shivered through me, rooted in my spinal column. Bea rushed over to the console, but before she could call, Chao-Xing was already popping up on the monitor from Typhon. “You spotted them?”
“Evasive maneuvers,” I suggested.
She gave me a stern look. “Elaborate.”
Did Chao-Xing not have a solution, or did she want to test me? Whatever, I was ready. I wasn’t a trainee anymore and I did have a plan. “We separate, take alternate routes to the coordinates. The Phage will respond one of two ways. One: they pick a target and chase. Two: they split up and do likewise. Scenario one is good for us because one Leviathan is safe, and the other just needs to be fast. Scenario two is good for us, because we’ve already seen that they’re slower and stupider in smaller groups.”
“Agreed,” Chao-Xing said. “On my mark, break formation and don’t look back, no matter what. We’ll rendezvous on day three at mission coordinates.”
Talk about a snap judgment.
“Got it.” I turned to Bea, and by extension, Nadim, since he was always present. “Are you ready?”
She nodded, and he answered by making light contact, mind to mind. Dropping into a nearby chair, I reached for him, and in the next instant, we were Zadim. On some level, we could feel/hear the weird scratching of the Phage at the edges of space, and their noise ate away the melody of starsong, leaving only discord. We corkscrewed away from Typhon in a smooth motion, and the devourers hesitated only a microsecond before choosing us.
Smaller Leviathan, easier prey.
Quicksilver amusement raced through us, but there was no time for laughter. Bea was talking, but we couldn’t focus on her words when we had to run. Leaping, full speed, away, on a burst of energy that rippled in a silver shock wave. From star to star we leapt, passing through the colors, swimming them.
The Phage had played this game before, but there was little they could do but try to surround us, and the farther they spread apart, the slower and stupider they became. They were deadly in the swarm, but we were faster than them, smarter than them. Zadim swam close to the gravity well of a black hole, and some portion of the individual swarm—a quarter, I thought—lost the battle with the monstrous pull, disappearing into atoms as they fought the strongest force in the universe. It was dangerous; Zadim felt the pull too, an almost irresistible wind that tried to blow us off course, but the Leviathan had sailed these stars for eternities, and we knew what to do, how to flip and turn and break the dark tide.
The other stars sang. The black hole had no music but an eerie whistle like a hole punched in reality, and a great, vast silence behind.
The Phage were nothing against it.
We led the enemy away from Typhon, with his bleak soul and festering wounds. We danced through irrational suns that lashed out with whips of fire, vaporizing dozens of the Phage; we ran just fast enough to keep them on our track, singing exultantly all the way. When the tattered remains of the Phage had followed us too far to change course, we glided into dark run: silent, shadowed, and their chaotic rage followed until it echoed to silence.
We’d lost them.
I had no clear sense that it was safe, except suddenly I was sitting in a chair instead of out among the stars. It always took me a few beats to reconcile myself to being human again, all this skin, these fingers and toes, and what were elbows for again? Bea knelt beside me, holding my hands, which had gone very cold.
“You were together for a long time,” she said in a neutral tone.
It would’ve been completely fair if she’d asked me if that was prudent, after what had happened with Nadim and dark sleep, but we had the alarm now, and Nadim was more mature. He could handle a deep bond now. We both could.
“How . . .” I tried to get out, but my throat was bone dry. Bea put a glass of water in my hands; I guzzled it. “Sorry. How long?”
“Eight hours. I was getting ready to pull out the opera and sing you both back home. We need to establish some rules, you two, about how long you can do that without damaging yourselves.” Bea looked so fiercely beautiful that she kind of took my breath away.
Damn. When I joined with Nadim, it felt like seconds to me. I had no ability to track time at all. No wonder I was stiff and cramped as hell. Getting up took a couple of tries. Bea was right. We needed guidelines. I couldn’t imagine how frightening it was for her, waiting and watching. Hoping not to die. Hoping we didn’t drift off together into the dark and leave her trapped.
“We’ve lost the Phage.” Nadim sounded tired too. “We’re lucky. If we had run into another swarm, they would have surrounded us and closed.”
I hadn’t thought of that, and the cold possibility of it tensed up my muscles. “How many swarms are there?” Somehow, I’d thought it was just one. But the idea that there were lots out here, hiding in the dark, waiting to attack . . . that was terrifying. Running wasn’t always an option. And we didn’t have the weapons to really fight back effectively.
Nadim would be a rich source for them, gutted and filled with their swarming bodies, piloted like a zombie back to Typhon. I couldn’t let that happen. Ever.
I sighed. “I’d hoped we lured them so far out they died.” Was that even possible? How long could they drift out there, waiting to hear a victim? Maybe years. Maybe forever. “Bea? Help me find a good star for Nadim to refuel.”
We spent what felt like too long orbiting a smallish star, but it fit Nadim’s needs perfectly, and when we struck out on the return, he set a good course and speed that let him catch regular infusions of light from his sails. We wouldn’t arrive tired, at least.
Another day or so, and we reached the coordinates without further issues. During the journey, I caught up on delicious food, used the combat sim, and generally hung out with Bea, Starcurrent, and Nadim. I was feeling good about our Phage victory, though I guessed it counted more as an escape. Typhon should be here soon, and then we could . . . what?
“I have no idea what’s down there,” I said. “We should take some readings.”
Bea would probably always be the careful one in our partnership. “What if that activates the weapon that destroyed Bacia’s other pigeons?”
“We dodge?” I was half kidding. “Seriously, we’re good at that.”
“Zara!” Since she was laughing, I figured that meant forgiveness.
“Our sensors shouldn’t trigger anything,” Nadim said. “I’m not receiving any signs of sentient life from the surface.”
“Plants and animals, though?” Bea asked. “It looks like it has an atmosphere.”
Nadim said, “Yes. Like Firstworld. In fact, I detect some similarities in structural style in the ruins present on planet.”
Huh. Bacia had provided detailed criteria on what we were looking for, and no matter what they said, this artifact must come with antediluvian, automated defenses. Otherwise, what killed the other crews they’d sent?
Typhon arrived as I was wondering that. Seems we’re about to find out.
FROM THE SUNG HISTORY OF THE ABYIN DOMMAS
We swim safe in the knowledge of the death of gods, free in our world, free in our minds. We sing of them in darkness. We sing of them in silence. We sing in warning of what is gone, and never to return. As we are born singing, we must always sing of this, but only to ourselves, to remember and watch for the rise of new gods, false gods.
Such must never come again upon us.
CHAPTER EL
EVEN
Binding Hope
IT WOULD BE beyond risky to jump in the Hopper without scoping out the planet, so I got Nadim to try something . . . unusual. We found a relatively small chunk of rock—plenty of them floating around, moving according to the dictates of distant gravity. The one we chose was small, about the size of an old-school round football.
That was good, because we were about to score a goal with it.
“Okay,” I told Nadim. “Push it when I tell you to. Don’t smack it too hard, just enough to send it into the planet’s atmosphere and let it do the rest.”
“Ah,” Nadim said, and I felt the blush of his satisfaction. “We are creating a decoy.”
“Exactly. Let’s see what happens when something enters the atmosphere.”
Bea and I watched tensely as Nadim expertly maneuvered the asteroid into position, then with a gentle flick of his tail, sent it spinning down into the gravity well of the planet. It arced, but he’d perfectly judged the angles and force, and it made straight for the coordinates that Bacia had given us. It wasn’t big enough to cause much damage, with the lower grav on this planet, so we weren’t worried we’d destroy anything vital; if it made it to the surface, it would be a pebble after burning so much off.
There was a sudden red flash that seemed to emanate from both poles. It formed a solid red curve that spread in a heart-stopping second all the way around the planet. It lasted for two seconds, maybe, pulsing with power.
Then it was gone.
So was the asteroid.
I mouthed a word I didn’t say, but man, did I feel it. That was some heavy planetary defense shield. Maybe it had been designed to destroy asteroids, exactly as it had just vaporized the one we’d thrown down there . . . or maybe it was designed to keep people like us out.
Either way: not good news.
“Try again,” Bea said. “Let’s see how long it can keep it up.”
“What if it detects us and targets us?”
“Nadim has a stealth mode.”
“I do,” he said. “Perhaps this is an excellent time to use it.”
“What about Typhon?”
“Tell him to stay high and be ready to dodge.”
Typhon also had armor. Stealth would have to be our shield.
“Go for it,” I said, and felt the shift. I probably wouldn’t have, if we weren’t so attuned now; it was like a whisper moved through me, and a chill. “Let’s try another asteroid.”
We kept up the slow bombardment, making sure to vary our location so that there was nothing for any targeting system to extrapolate and lock onto. We were ten tosses in when the line suddenly flickered out.
Nadim flicked asteroid eleven on its way. Intuition made me urge him to move, and we went to another spot to watch as A11 made a clean, burning arc all the way down. We tracked it to a tiny negligible impact on the surface.
“Well,” I said. “That’s looking pretty—”
A beam of pure red light suddenly burst out of both poles, but this time, it didn’t form a protective shield around the planet. The two spears of power crossed at a specific point in space, then winked out.
“Uh, that was exactly where we launched Asteroid Eleven,” Beatriz said. “It would have sliced Nadim in half if we hadn’t been moving.” She sounded blank, which I guess meant she was terrified. I would have been, if I wasn’t so damn angry. I wanted to rip someone’s eyeballs out.
“Nadim, keep evading. These batteries run down, they have to, because other Leviathan said they didn’t have a problem. Maybe if we keep making them waste their shots, we can get down there while they’re offline.”
“I don’t like that plan,” Nadim said. “I will be fine, but you—”
“We’ve got to go down there. There’s no other way.”
It was surprising that Typhon and crew had stood by while we played asteroid ball, less so that Chao-Xing lost patience and buzzed our comm. “How do you see this game ending? We can’t just wait and hope the defenses run down. They might be linked to a self-sustaining reactor, or—”
“You got a better idea?” I cut in.
“Maybe. I’m thinking that if Nadim and Typhon join forces with an asteroid barrage, it might be impossible for the weapon to evaporate that many projectiles.”
“It’s a start,” I said, still chewing on the problem. “But I don’t like putting Typhon at risk.”
“I still don’t like your odds of survival, even supposing you’re right about defensive downtime.” Nadim could probably produce stats relevant to our potential demise, but that wouldn’t help me think.
Suddenly it hit me, and as it did, Bea brightened too. We traded looks, then I asked, “Is it possible that we could modify the Hopper to add shielding like we did before?”
Chao-Xing conferred on her end, while I did the same with Bea and Starcurrent. In the end, our separate teams reunited with the consensus that while we could get shields operational, the Hopper didn’t have the power to maintain them. We could take one hit coming in, no more, and if the planet shot at us as we were making our getaway, it would have to be evasive maneuvers all the way.
“It might work,” said Marko, from somewhere behind Chao-Xing.
“This is ridiculous. Get over here for a proper meeting.” I could tell C-X was about to complain, so I added, “You’ve still got gaps and repair work ongoing, right? Nadim is more hospitable.”
Nobody could argue with the facts, so Chao-Xing, Marko, and Yusuf arrived a bit later. Their Hopper lined up beside ours in the docking bay, and we were waiting for them in Ops, so we could strategize. I didn’t love the one-hit-and-out limitation of the shield, but we argued for a while about how we could get more power to the shuttle.
Midway through the meeting, Bea ran off to check our supplies, but we didn’t have much in reserve. Her return prompted another round of bickering. I took the chance to connect with Yusuf.
“We could really use some genius innovation right now,” I said, nudging him. “You’ve been on the Journey longer than all of us. Help us figure out how to survive the round trip.”
Something sparked in his dark eyes, maybe my use of the word survive. “What is the point?” he asked softly. “There is no defeating the Phage.”
“Bullshit. You don’t believe that. So, come on, help us out. Pull your weight.” I gave him a little shove.
Unexpected, probably, since I’d tried to comfort him the last time we spoke, but this situation didn’t allow me to be patient or gentle. And let’s face it; that was never my strong point anyway. My natural angle was up in somebody’s face.
He stumbled, but I had his full attention. “Don’t test me, little girl.”
“Or what? You’ll kick my ass? Go ahead, try.” I made a face guaranteed to enrage anyone who didn’t love me, and sometimes it worked on them too. “Nah, there’s no point, right? Life is pain. No ass-kicking from you, my man.”
There was that spark again, a little brighter this time. A little hotter. “Let’s see some respect. I saved your ass once already.”
I shoved him again. Harder. “What about it? I’m sick of tiptoeing around you. We need you for more than grunt work. I saw your file, man. You’re fucking brilliant, so be brilliant now.”
It took a little more verbal pushing, two more shoves, until he finally swung at me. Anger was better than apathy, a lesson I’d learned hard down in the Zone. The punch was half-hearted and slow, and I dodged the hit easily and smacked him on the shoulder. “Been a while, huh?”
“What the hell are you doing?” Chao-Xing demanded.
“Getting Yusuf to engage. According to his Honors vids, he’s an expert in robotics.” While I was distracted, he nailed me a glancing blow on the chin, interrupting me good. I didn’t quite bite my tongue, but it was close, and Nadim rumbled. Yusuf followed up with a roundhouse that was backed by real power, and I weaved around that one.
I held up my hands, but Yusuf kept swinging until Marko grabbed him, and then he started to fi
ght in earnest. The altercation ended in a bunch of us holding him, more of a group hug than real restraint. After a few minutes of wild struggle, he kind of collapsed and screamed, then broke into such heartbreaking sobs that I could hardly bear to hear them.
“Meeting adjourned,” Bea said. She was shaking her head. “Zara. Really?”
I stayed in the huddle until Yusuf calmed down. Starcurrent didn’t have a single tentacle in the pile; ze was probably trying to figure out what kind of human custom this was. Good luck with that. Yusuf took several deep breaths and then he nodded to say he was good. Marko let go, and I followed suit. Chao-Xing’s expression said she was deeply fed up, but we needed Yusuf’s head in the game.
He got up and brushed back his locs, wearing a new expression of determination. “Let me see some schematics.”
The ideas flew fast and furious, with Chao-Xing and Yusuf doing most of the talking. I could install the tech like a champ, but I’d never done my own designs down in the Zone. Closest I’d come was combining parts from different tech into something else. Maybe I could innovate, but this shit was what teams were all about. We were all valuable; everybody had a part to play. Hours later, after some tweaking and rerouting of systems, overclocking some shit, and adding juice, it looked like we could get the shield up to two-hit sustainability.
I took Yusuf’s and C-X’s ideas and brought them to life, making the upgrades piece by piece with a 3D printer and some honest sweat. Between this shield and the asteroid barrage, which we’d need coming and going, we had a chance now. Time to pick teams.
“We need the best pilot in the Hopper on this run,” I said then. Sorry, Bea. “That’s Chao-Xing. I’m on tech support and combat specialty. I’ve also got the best physical scores on board, I think. Anyone object to me going dirtside?”
Marko shook his head. “I’d be a liability if you need to move fast. I’ll return to Typhon and coordinate with Beatriz on the bombardment.” Put that way, shit sounded so damn serious.
