by Amie Kaufman
“Orders, sir?”
“Zila and Kal’s explosive charges are in place.” He taps his uniglass. “Even without Fin, I can detonate them remotely. When they pop, Bianchi’s security will be in chaos. We’ll still have ourselves a window, just like we planned.”
“But without Fin, we can’t get the key code,” O’Malley protests. “Even if we make it to Bianchi’s office, we won’t get through the security door.”
Tyler calls up the schematic from Finian’s presentation and points.
“The security door isn’t the only way in.”
“You’re not serious?” I ask.
Tyler winks, and my heart drops into my boots.
“I’m improvising.” He grins.
A few minutes later, we’re lurking near a heavy plasteel door in a shady corner near the back of the ballroom. It’s a little quieter here, and a few couples and one triple are getting to know each other better in the gloom. Large red letters are stenciled on the door in a language I can’t read. If I was a betting girl, I’d wager the passkeys to the Longbow that it says Menagerie: Keep Out.
The door is guarded by four huge Chellerian goons, leathery blue skin gleaming in the dim light, thin black masks covering their four blood-red eyes. They’re each standing with four arms folded across their broad chests, but they’re not on high alert—there’s cams everywhere after all, almost a hundred other guards in this ballroom. And as Ty said, nobody in the ’Way is stupid enough to mess with Casseldon Bianchi.
Well, almost no one.
Tyler looks at me, the whites of his eyes aglow in the black neon light.
“Ready?”
“Is this a trick question?”
We all reach down, flick the switches on our boots. The electromagnets Finian installed in our heels begin to hum softly, fix us to the metal floor. Tyler looks at O’Malley, squeezes her hand.
“Just act drunk and stupid,” he says.
“Second part should be rrrrreal easy for us,” I mutter.
We begin walking toward the guards, heels clunking on the deck. It’s a little awkward to move in the magboots, but Tyler takes the lead, pretending to be off his face. He wobbles, almost falls. I support him, trying to look embarrassed and loaded at the same time. O’Malley trails somewhere behind us. The goons look us up and down as we approach.
Tyler holds up his uniglass, slurring. “Any of you got station time?”
“Move ’long, hoo-maaan,” one growls.
And as he steps within range, Ty gives the detonation command.
There’s a second’s delay. The lights flicker overhead as Zila’s and Kal’s charges explode deep down in the belly of the station. And with a rush of vertigo, the sickening feeling of my insides suddenly floating free in my body, the gravity aboard the World Ship dies.
The Chellerians wobble, lifted gently off the ground. They reach out to the walls for balance, but their movements are too sharp, and they’re overcorrecting. I hear shouts of joy from the crowd, followed by uncertain screams as that ocean of people begins to float up off the deck toward the galaxy-clad ceiling.
Tyler moves quick, I move quicker, each of us reaching into one of the Chellerian’s jackets to draw out his disruptor. I fire once, twice, Tyler offloading into the third’s chest. The fourth manages to grab Ty’s wrist, twist it hard before I fire into his face. Red eyes roll up into his skull and the guards are drifting unconscious. The couples and triple are screaming behind us, but their cries are lost among the chaos of the ballroom. People are floating everywhere now, a sea of bodies rising into the air, the music still blasting, strobe lights bursting.
“Go!” Ty orders.
I grab a passkey off a goon’s belt, swipe it through the scanner. The door to the menagerie opens wide, and in a heartbeat, Tyler, O’Malley, and I are inside, slamming the door behind us.
Tyler takes the lead, magboots clomping as he follows Fin’s schematic. O’Malley’s eyes are wide. I wonder if it was the GIA who hit Dariel’s den before they were supposed to. If some other drama took Fin out of play. How I can keep this whole thing from spinning out of control. How we’re going to get through this alive.
We round a corner, find two guards floating in midair, shouting into their commsets and trying to get a grip on the ceiling. A blast from our disruptors silences them, and we’re slipping in through a heavy door, sliding it shut behind us.
The room beyond smells like a sewer. I wince at the stench, looking around at the doe-eyed beasties in the cages surrounding us. They’re sorta like cows, gentle fuzzy quadrupeds with big brown herbivore eyes. They mewl when they see us, ears flicking back in fear.
“What is this place?” O’Malley whispers.
“A larder,” Tyler says. He’s got his uniglass held up on translate mode, scanning the Chellerian letters on the controls and searching for the right switch.
“Bianchi eats these things?” she asks, horrified.
“Not Bianchi,” I sigh. “His baby boy.”
Ty presses a button and a section of the floor rumbles and slides away, revealing a steep ramp curving down out of sight. I smell wet earth below, the sweetness of flowers.
O’Malley has her head down, and for a moment I think it’s fear. But then she lifts her chin, and her mouth’s a straight, determined line.
“Does that lead where I think it does?”
“To Bianchi’s office?” Tyler nods. “Yeah, it does.”
I shake my head. “This is crazy, Tyler. This is every kind of stupid.”
“At least we’re being consistent,” he says, ripping off his mask and jacket.
“This bad boy killed every living thing on its planet. You really wanna go poking around its house?”
“Gravity is still down, it’s not going to be mobile. We move quick and quiet, we’ll be okay. We’ve come this far. There’s no backing out now.”
“And presuming we dodge that thing down there, how do we get through into Bianchi’s office afterward?”
Tyler smiles. “Trust me.”
A beep sounds inside O’Malley’s pocket.
“You realize you’re all about to die, right?”
“Magellan, hush,” she whispers, muting its volume.
Annoying as the little bastard is, I can’t help but agree with it. I want to protest more, but Ty’s already gone, deactivating his magboots and pushing himself down the ramp. For all her obvious fear, O’Malley zips her pocket closed, throws her mask aside, and follows close behind—Tyler Jones just has that effect on people, I guess. Because as pants-on-head stupid as this is, I find myself killing my magboots and floating after him, too.
The ramp emerges into a broad stretch of amazing jungle—a bona fide rainforest right here in the middle of a space station. I don’t know why it surprises me after the aquarium, but this is somehow even more incredible.
I can’t imagine the creds Bianchi must have blown to put this place together, how mad he’s going to be if anything happens to his prize pet. The foliage is thick, rippling shades of red and orange and yellow, like a permanent autumn. The air smells sweet, hung with vines and vibrant alien blooms. We push ourselves around the edge of the enclosure, using the twisted magenta trees to guide our movements. The space is massive, deathly still, and the sounds we make as we brush past the branches seem deafening, though they’re no more than a whisper.
And in the distance, in that stillness, I hear a shuddering, chuddering roar.
“Son of a biscuit,” O’Malley whispers.
“Why don’t you just swear like a normal person?” I mutter.
She smiles then, like I’ve said something funny. Glancing at me with those mismatched eyes. “Sorry, but … do I seem normal to you?”
Yeah okay, fair enough …
Another roar rings through the enclosure. The vibration shakes my belly, sets my teeth
on edge. Tyler pulls out his uniglass, punches in a set of commands, throws it hard, back toward the ramp we just came from.
“What the hells are you doing?” I hiss. “That’s a Legion-issue uniglass! It’s more valuable to us than the Longbow!”
“Just keep moving,” he whispers.
He’s out in front, moving sure and steady—he aced his zero-gee orienteering exam, after all. O’Malley moves just as quickly, her movements careful and quick. I’m guessing maybe she practiced for this sort of thing in her colonist training, because for once, she looks like she knows exactly what she’s doing.
I can hear earth being torn up, timber breaking, another bellowing roar. Tyler makes a fist, bringing us to a halt. And peering over his shoulder, my stomach turning to solid ice, I see it.
It’s about the scariest thing I’ve laid eyes on, and again, I’ve seen Dariel in his undies. It looks like the Maker took every monster from under every bed of every child ever born and squished them into one great big über-monster—and then made a creature that’d eat that monster on toast with a glass of OJ and the morning news.
It’s as big as a house, all teeth and claws, sinewy legs flailing as it struggles to find its footing in the zero gee. It’s got its hands dug into the black earth, and apparently it’s not stupid, because it’s using its front claws to pull itself about. It snuffles the air with a blunt, snotty snout and roars again, spit flying from its mouth, black pupils dilated in five emerald-green eyes. The reptile part of my brain is just screaming at me: Run! Go! Get out! Because there’s apex predators and there’s Apex Predators. And then there’s the Great Ultrasaur of Abraaxis IV.
“It can smell us,” I whisper.
“There’s Bianchi’s office.” Tyler points, somehow cool as ice.
There’s the glint of a polarized silicon wall through the undergrowth, a hint of the spotlights and furniture in the office beyond. The wall is perfectly clear, but there’re no seams. No latches. No hinges. Nothing.
“How we gonna get in there?” I whisper.
“Faith,” he murmurs with a smile.
I scowl at the ultrasaur. “Is faith gonna get us past that thing?”
“Not faith.” Tyler waggles his eyebrows. “Hormones.”
In the distance, I hear a sound. It’s faint, tinny—about the quality you’d expect coming from a uniglass’s speakers. It sounds like two chainsaws trying to have sex.
The ultrasaur falls still, perks up, its eyes wide. The sound repeats again—it’s the recording from Finian’s presentation, looped on playback, over and over. I look at Tyler and he grins, and much as I still want to punch him, I can’t help but grin back.
It’s a bloody mating call.
“You smug son of a b—”
The ultrasaur roars, slavering, spitting, bellowing as it scrabbles across the enclosure. It leaves huge gouges through the earth, ripping trees up in its wake as it struggles to get closer to Tyler’s abandoned uniglass. Its teeth are bared, eyes flashing, great clods of shrubbery ripped free as it disappears into the thick foliage.
“It seems more … annoyed than excited?” O’Malley says.
“You’d be annoyed, too, if you thought there was another male in your house, cruising for ladysaurs.” Tyler nods toward the office. “Come on.”
Ty pushes himself hard off the nearest tree, moving quick now. I dart behind him, O’Malley bringing up the rear, waves of ridiculous tulle floating around her in the zero gee. Ty slows his dive with a handful of thick vines as he draws close to the silicon barrier, catching me as I come sailing in. O’Malley lands beside us, her mismatched eyes alight, seemingly energized at the thought of being so close to the prize. There’s some metal under the earth here—brackets for the wall, I’m guessing, and Ty activates his magboots, heels clomping on the turf.
“How we getting through this?” I hiss, thumping my fist on the glass.
“When all else fails, just blast it.” He shrugs.
He pulls out the disruptor he took from Bianchi’s guards, sets it to kill, and gives me a nod. I do the same, cranking the power up to max, and we both unload on the glass. There’s a bright flash of light, a searing sound. The shots melt the wall’s surface, leaving a black, charred scorch mark a few centimeters deep.
Problem is, this sucker is at least half a meter thick.
“Um,” Tyler says. “Okay.”
“ ‘Um, okay’?” I say, incredulous.
“Is there an echo in here?” Ty asks.
I hear a small electronic beep from O’Malley’s breast pocket.
“If I may venture an opinion—”
“No you bloody can’t!” I snap. “Silent mode!”
We hear a distant roar, the sound of towering trees being torn out of the earth by claws as big as swords. I glance over my shoulder, back to Tyler.
“Please tell me ‘When all else fails, just blast it’ wasn’t your only play?”
Tyler blasts the wall again, melting another couple of centimeters. He frowns, blows his mop of hair out of his eyes. “I really thought that’d work. …”
“Great Maker.” I flail. “This from Mr. One Hundred Percent On My Military Tactics Exam?”
Ty raises his scarred eyebrow. “Cat, I hate to shatter your opinion of me, but this is probably as good a point as any to confess I’ve been pretty much making this up as I go since the Bellerophon.”
Another roar shakes the foliage.
“Mothercustard,” O’Malley whispers.
We turn and see it.
See it seeing us.
Its mouth is open, showcasing row upon row of razor-sharp fangs. Its breath is like a blast furnace, its claws are dug deep into the ground, ruptured earth and shredded plant life floating in the zero grav around it. Its five eyes flash with rage, a forked tongue flicking the air as it drags itself closer to us. I look up, see glass above me. Glass behind me. Monster in front of me.
We’re boned.
“Cat, break left, take Auri,” Ty whispers, killing his magboots and gently lifting off the ground. “We work our way b—”
Whatever Ty’s command was going to be, he never gets a chance to finish it. The ultrasaur tenses its muscles and springs, the zero grav letting it sail right at us like a fang torpedo.
I grab O’Malley’s hand and the pair of us kick off the wall, hear the sound of its massive body colliding with the polarized silicon behind me.
The ultrasaur roars, claws scrabbling on the glass, and I risk a glance over my shoulder. Tyler has kicked off the ground, up to the ceiling high overhead. He hits the roof hard, shoulder crunching into the glass. But he’s moving again, lunging back toward the ground just as the ultrasaur crashes claws-first into the spot he’d been floating a moment before.
“Tyler!” O’Malley screams.
I know it probably won’t make a difference, but I crack off a shot with my disruptor anyway, rewarded with a satisfying sizzle as the blast burns a hole in the ultrasaur’s side. The shot doesn’t do any real damage, but it gives Ty a few seconds to gather himself and take another spring, back in the direction of the feeding hatch.
Except now I’ve got beastieboy’s attention.
It roars and lunges at us, and I’m barely fast enough to leap aside, dragging O’Malley with me as I hook my fingers around an outstretched tree branch and shift our momentum. I feel the talons slice through the air behind me, just a breath from my back. I kick off the tree, bring us up through a tangle of branches, crack off another shot over my shoulder. I hear beastieboy roar, smell sizzling flesh. O’Malley beside me. Heart hammering. Mouth dry.
I’m back in the flight simulator. The day we graduated into our streams. Fellow cadets gathered around me. Instructors watching dumbfounded as I weave and roll. Cheers growing louder as the kill shot notifications keep flashing, as I keep firing, the weapons an extension of my fist, th
e ship an extension of my body, as the final miss tally flashes up on the screen and they cheer my new name.
Zero
Zero
Zero
Something big hits us from behind, sends us both pinwheeling into the office wall. I realize it’s a tree, that this thing is smart enough to be able to throw. I guess you don’t get to be the last surviving member of your species by being a dunce. I hit hard, O’Malley crashes into me, cracks her head hard on the glass, leaving a bright smudge of red behind her. I bite my tongue, the breath driven from my lungs in a spray of spit and blood as I lose my grip on my disruptor.
We bounce off the wall, sailing back through the air. We’re spinning out of control. Nothing to hold on to. As I grab at her, I see O’Malley is out cold, eyes rolled up in her skull, tiny globes of blood floating from her split brow. I can see the beastie over her shoulder, tensing for another spring. I hear a disruptor fire, Ty shouting.
But its eyes are locked on me. I’ve pissed it off. You don’t get to be the last surviving member of your species without learning to hold a grudge, either.
I look at O’Malley again. Her eyes are closed, her jaw slack, brow bleeding. I do the math. Figure we both don’t need to die. So I let her go and kick her away.
She sails apart from me.
The ultrasaur springs my way, roaring as it comes.
Tyler fires again, I see a bright flash.
The world is moving in slo-mo, I’m spinning weightless as that engine of teeth and claws flings itself right at me. But I find myself smiling. Because I’m flying.
Here at the end, at least I’m flying.
And then I hit something hard.
There’s nothing there, but still I hit it—some invisible force that arrests my flight. Holds me in place.
The ultrasaur is frozen, too, hanging in midair and defying every law of momentum and gravity I know.
It roars in fury.
The air vibrates around me, the world goes out of focus. I taste salt in my mouth. I see O’Malley from the corner of my eye. She’s floating on air, too, short hair rippling as if the wind were blowing. I can see her right eye is glowing, burning, her arms outstretched, a subsonic hum building like static electricity in the air around me.
