Distance and speed were not on his side: there was simply no way he could get to the ship before it rose out of reach. Everything Mose had endured, everything he’d done, all of it would be for nothing. Gau was going to slip away again, and with him, the nanovirus. Mose couldn’t let Fate’s Shears destroy another city while he lived. But in another few seconds, he wouldn’t be able to stop it.
Unless. He couldn’t stop the ship, but he knew what could. Mose flipped open a panel on the inside of his vambrace and began to type on the tiny console inside.
Deep in the core of his ship, a program began to execute.
22
Get us out of here!” Gau yelled to Ven, hunched in the pilot’s chair.
“What about your ship?”
“I’ll slave the Carnivore to this ship,” said Gau. “It can cut itself free of the tether, then follow us.” First he’d take care of Mose; use the ship’s lasers to char him to ash. Let’s see him block that, Gau thought.
He was about to duck into the cockpit to send the instruction set to the Carnivore when he saw Mose open his vambrace and start typing. As though he’d had the same idea as Gau. The bottom dropped out of Gau’s stomach, and he seized Ven’s shoulder. “Target that Osk right now!”
“I don’t have any weapons,” Ven said, baffled.
“You have a ship, ram him! We can’t let him execute that program!” Ven’s and Arkk’s eyes widened. Ven leaned on the control yoke. Gau grabbed the doorframe for balance as the ship angled down and picked up speed, the air snatching at his mane.
The ship wasn’t moving fast compared to its top speed, only maybe thirty kilometers per hour. That would have to be enough. Mose’s jaw dropped at the ship barreling down on him, but his boots remained planted as he pressed keys. He threw himself into a sideways dive just as the ship rolled over him. Gau felt the impact through the hull as the ship’s nose smacked into Mose, then glimpsed the other seph go tumbling in a tangle of limbs.
The smell of ozone cut the air. Gau just had time to be surprised before the first laser lanced out from Mose’s ship. It punched into an Embassy freighter, blowing the ship apart in a descending cloud of orange flame and white-hot shrapnel. A fan of lasers speared the Embassy ships in quick, awful succession. Fire licked across their hulls, the tanks of Fate’s Shears exploding in halos of glass as the liquid inside turned to superheated steam. Heat scorched Gau’s exposed skin as the first of the burning hulks crashed into the pavement. Then a huge hand slammed into his back and shoved him out the hatch.
Gau twisted as he fell and saw Arkk standing in the hatchway. Blue flames had engulfed one engine compartment. Gau hadn’t even seen the laser that penetrated their ship.
The fall wasn’t far. Gau curled into a ball just before he hit the ground, sprawling on his back. As the ship skimmed onward, Arkk looked back and smiled an Arashal smile, beak open and black tongue tipped upward.
Then the engine exploded. Gau lost sight of Arkk as the ship yawed to one side, its last engine shrieking as Ven fought for control. But the heavy tanks of Fate’s Shears had disrupted the ship’s center of mass too much for the remaining engine to compensate. The ship heeled over on its side and gouged open the wall of a nanoassembly in a screech of shearing metal. The injured wall flushed a warning red, klaxons blaring their indignation. Flames slashed the night again as the ship’s second engine went up. Gau shielded his head as debris impacted around him.
He stayed like that for what felt like a long time.
Mose felt as though he’d been broken apart and inexpertly spliced back together. His chest and side seemed to be one giant bruise, and sharper pains spiked through him every time he breathed. He guessed the ship’s blunt nose had broken at least one rib as it slammed him aside. His right hind ankle ached—sprained or broken, he wouldn’t know for sure until he tried to put weight on it. With a groan, he got his elbows underneath him and struggled onto his knees. When he surveyed the wreckage, Mose saw he’d been lucky.
Gau’s followers were finished.
Black smoke and tongues of flame climbed from the crashed Embassy ships. Silhouettes twisted against the flames as a few figures stumbled from the wreckage, some dragging broken limbs. Mose realized the others were trapped in the burning ships, the emergency hatches distorted out of shape by the blasts. Screams and pounding rose under the roar of the fire, growing wilder as the flames grew higher. A frantic lightspeech display blinked deep inside the glare, and a moment later a Rul—Sand Sweeper? One of the others?—stumbled out of the blaze, its limb pods alight and flickering with soundless screams. It collapsed only a few meters away, writhing and burning.
Though the access corridor was blazingly hot now, an icy nausea swept through Mose. He could think of no worse death than the one he’d given to the crew in those ships. Horror choked his throat as the screams from within the blaze grew weaker, then stopped. The stench of charred flesh reached him, and his stomach convulsed. He doubled over, heaving until his insides felt hollowed out. Each convulsion stabbed like shards of glass into his side.
He wiped the vomit from his mouth with a shaking hand. The mission wasn’t over yet. Mose scanned the access corridor for Gau. The fires were dying away as the nanoassemblies sprayed flame retardant foam around their perimeters, but he could still barely see through the smoke. He tried to stand for a better vantage, and his hind ankle folded beneath him with a snap and a jolt of agony.
This final pain was too much. He swayed and collapsed. A veil descended over his thoughts, and Mose slipped back under the surface of things.
Gau pulled himself upright from a place that felt unconnected to his limbs. The explosions and fires had ceased. As the smoke cleared, he saw everything. The laser barrage had turned the Embassy ships into blackened hulks; the Carnivore was a mere circle of charred ship components, fused to the pavement by heat. And the tanks of Fate’s Shears his plan rested on—
Incinerated. Nothing remained of the tanks but shattered glass and melted metal.
“No,” he breathed. “No, no . . .” Gau couldn’t move. He could only repeat that one word again and again. Something was screaming inside him, a starving cry bubbling up from the well of his being like black oil, like searing gas. The scream tore its way out of his mouth and propelled him into a run.
Halfway across the corridor, a clumsy hand gripped weakly at one of his hind ankles. Gau jerked his gaze downward. Arkk lay on the pavement, his blue chest scales stained yellow where an ugly, jagged wound had rent his abdomen. Blood leaked from his beak in yellow streams as he fought for breath in hissing gasps. Gau realized Arkk was trying to speak.
“Leader . . . we lost . . .” A burbling cough racked him. “I failed y—”
“No, Arkk.” Gau knelt next to the dying Arashal. “It was my failure. You did very well.” Arkk’s tongue tipped up in a bloody smile. The expression froze on his face as Gau slipped a blade between Arkk’s scales into his heart.
He flicked the yellow blood from his blade and scanned the smoky corridor until he found Mose slumped on the pavement. Then Gau was running full tilt again, his vision narrowed to a tunnel with Mose at its center.
The first sense to return to Mose was pain. He registered its source a moment later as Gau’s boot shoved itself into his gonads for the second time, bringing him fully conscious.
Gau stopped kicking and seized a handful of his flame-red mane in one strong hand, hauling Mose’s upper body off the ground. Gau’s snout was centimeters from Mose’s, trembling with rage as he snarled through clenched teeth, “My ship—my plan—fifteen years of my life, and you took everything! I’ll kill you!”
Spittle flew from his mouth, its liquid warmth sprinkling down Mose’s snout. He couldn’t think of what to do, or indeed if there was anything else he could do. His mind seemed to separate from his body, as if he watched himself through a window of blurred glass. He watched as Gau th
rew him to the ground; through a numb fog, he felt his body being pounded into the asphalt with vicious punches and kicks, each blow searing his broken ribs.
Strong hands wrapped around his throat, bringing the two Osk level again. Mose watched his hands clamp around Gau’s, trying to pry them off as he choked and slobbered.
Blood bubbled up from deep in Mose’s throat, speckling Gau’s face and neck as he throttled him. Gau’s rage-darkened features broke into a twisted grin; his slender blue tongue darted from between the needle teeth to lap it away from his lips and snout.
Mose gasped for air that wouldn’t come. The world was growing hazy, vanishing behind a bright glow. He was suffocating again, choking to death, but it didn’t hurt this time. Mose had lost the duel, but not the battle. Fate’s Shears was finished. The memory of Za could finally rest. And so could Mose.
Except that it wasn’t over yet.
As Mose stared into Gau’s eyes, he saw them change—the vicious hatred departed, replaced by something else.
Respect.
Gau released his chokehold and let him drop to the ground. In his shock, Mose almost forgot to breathe.
Then the air came, in great shuddering gulps that racked his throat and made his chest convulse and heave. He gulped air painfully, clawing life back into his body. Mose hauled himself to hands and knees and looked up at Gau.
“Why?” Mose croaked.
“It is too soon,” Gau replied. “Just an hour ago I would have called what you did impossible. I’d thought there were none who could disrupt my affairs, let alone lay a hand on me. And yet you did. You destroyed my plan, but there will be others. My game, its object? You enriched them.”
Gau strode away across the shattered street, his silhouette sharp and black against the red emergency lighting.
“I know your place on the board now. Heal fast, seph-killer. You have some life ahead of you yet.” He half turned back, a slight smile playing on his thin lips. “I look forward to working with you, Mose Attarish.” Then he turned and melted into the smoke-blackened night.
Minutes passed, steeped in a silence finally broken by the high-pitched keening of ambulance and cruiser sirens. It was Mose’s cue to exit.
He lurched heavily to his feet, curling one leg to hold his broken ankle off the ground. Mose stumbled out of the intersection on three feet, the fear scents of his enemy’s followers trailing him like a curtain.
It was over.
He staggered into a sheltering alley, barely able to keep his feet. He stopped midway through, swaying as he bent to flip open a compartment in the front right leg of his armor. From it Mose withdrew a syringe full of quick-acting painkiller, one of several he carried. He uncapped the needle and slid its point home into the crook of his left elbow.
The searing agony coursing through him lessened almost immediately as the soothing fluid seeped into his veins. His vision began to blur as the painkiller’s sedative effects rammed into his brain.
With a kind of surprise, he realized how completely his battle with Gau had drained him. It was more than just the brutality of the fight itself: Gau’s very presence had seemed to suck all the energy from him.
That’s what the sunspawn is, Mose thought as his knees threatened to buckle. A vacuum . . .
He was tired, so tired, and wouldn’t it be nice to just go to sleep? He didn’t need long, just a few minutes. Maybe he would do that, just lie down and . . .
“Don’t give out on us, Mose. We’re almost there, just hold on, okay?” The voice was small and tinny, emanating from somewhere he couldn’t see. Then reality reemerged from the fog, and he glanced down at his wrist radio, the small movement almost tumbling him to the ground. Sure enough, the light near the grille was blinking green. Two-way communication was on. Had he been talking?
He looked up.
The Terran ship seemed to fill the sky beyond the alley as it hovered just above the tops of the factories, jets blasting him with a barrage of warm air as they labored to keep it afloat. At first he thought it was the same medical cruiser that had extracted him from Za fifteen years ago, but that ship had been rectangular. This cruiser was ovate and streamlined, its silvery body a collection of oval pods.
It lowered as much as it could without scraping the rooftops. Silver tendrils disgorged from a hatch in its underside, wrapping Mose’s torso and belly in a supportive cradle. Mose relaxed gratefully into the sling and let it ferry him up into the ship.
Medical instruments ringed the cabin’s white walls; below them, a modified circular bed dominated the small curved space. In an alcove beside it, a tiny round table and shelf bench grew from the wraparound wall.
Alex Vernsky sat at the bench. He turned his head as the sling hauled Mose into the room. “Jesus,” he breathed. “You look like shit.”
“Just who I wanted to see,” Mose said. He tried a sarcastic laugh, but it came out more like a groan. He tried to climb out of the sling and gasped as its swaying jarred his broken ankle.
Vernsky started up from the table. “Don’t try to move. I need to get a diagnostic.” Mose lay still as Vernsky linked his lightpad to the electronics in the sling. The Terran clucked his tongue. “You’ve got two broken ribs, a broken right hind ankle, plus a lot of bruising just about everywhere.”
“Tell me something useful,” said Mose. “Gau Shesharrim doesn’t play nice, you know.”
Vernsky helped him out of the sling. Sloughing off his armor, Mose half walked, half crawled to the bed. The therapist supported him as he climbed in and let him get comfortable.
“Pilot’s called the cruiser to come get us,” Vernsky said. “We’ll make the rendezvous orbit in a few minutes.” His brow drew down in thought; after a pause, he asked, “That’s really who it was?” Vernsky pulled on gloves as he waited for Mose’s answer and swiveled to the instrument rack, shuffling through its assortment of nano-eggs to ready one for transplant. “It wasn’t a false alarm this time?”
“It was him.” Mose let his tired eyes slip closed. “Our intel was good. He was going to release the Fate’s Shears into Diego Two—reprogrammed. Terran-specific this time.”
Vernsky whistled. “Project Intelligence’ll be itching to hear that report. You’ll probably have Jan sitting in on this debrief.”
He returned to the medical couch and stooped to attach the egg to Mose’s bare chest. The silvery ovoid rooted itself to his skin with minute tendrils upon contact, its body unfolding into a starburst from which millions of tiny nanites streamed in a gray tide toward his various orifices. They would ensure he was soon healed in all but memory.
“I don’t doubt it,” Mose snorted. “He’ll want to know all the details . . .” As he trailed off, his gaze turned inward. “I can’t say it was anything more than luck that allowed me to stop Gau.” Mose blinked again and again, trying to clear the blather from his head. Each of his blinks seemed longer than the last.
“Luck and doggedness,” Vernsky said, dimming the lights to a twilight glow for Mose’s comfort. “But you beat him this time.”
“I beat him this time,” he muttered, each word farther apart as the sedative and exhaustion pulled him under. “Fate’s Shears is gone, but Gau . . . I will have to face him again.” Where will you slither off to, Gau, now that I’ve destroyed the path you’ve followed so long?
“But not right now,” Vernsky replied firmly. “Someday, but not right now. Get some rest, Mose.”
He heard the words as though from a great distance. Their meaning spiraled away from him as he sank into unconsciousness, save for a single word.
Someday . . .
23
The slim blade of the High Council courier ship sliced through Teluk’s pearlescent clouds. Auxiliary engines glowed blue along its side as the craft banked above the city nestled in the caldera below. It settled onto a broad landing stage cantilevered out from the side
of the volcanic cliff. The roar of the main engines shrank to a whisper and cut out, leaving behind a gentle ticking as the courier’s motors cooled and the soft sound of rain steaming against the hull.
Pri exhaled a sigh of relief as the ship touched solid ground, the air flowing through the spiracles along her shoulders and into the complex tubing of the rebreather strapped to her back. Normally she had no trouble flying. She loved being high above the ground, seeing entire cities laid out as though in a mental schema. But now all she could think about in the air was Gau’s ship falling out of the sky, tethered to that other.
She reached around the four-point harness securing her to the passenger compartment wall and twisted her tendrils to undo the clasps. As the metal buckles clanged against the hull, the Baskar pilot glanced over her shoulder.
“Do you require any assistance with the package?” she asked. Her yellow eyes wandered to the black canister that squatted on the opposite wall, also secured by a harness.
«Thank you, Pilot Thel,» Pri sent. Unclasping the buckles around the canister, she bent and lifted it with arms evolved to withstand a gravity six times that of Teluk’s. «But I think I can manage.»
Pri watched with her forward eyes as the courier ascended, a blue streak shining through the cloud layer as it sped back toward the capital, Opella. One of her side eyes lingered over the rectangular door etched into the stone of the cliff face, hoping it might open . . . but obviously news of Pri’s arrival had not preempted her.
Leaning the canister against the umbel of her legs, Pri walked to the door and waved a tendril over the scanner. The stone rectangle sank into the cliff face and slid aside.
Pri rode the elevator a long way down. She counted fifteen layers of rock, each a geologic age, before the elevator was moving too fast to keep track.
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