“It’s not a song,” said Grace. “It’s a command.” She grabbed the younger woman’s wrist, her bracelet warm to the touch. “Don’t take this off, no matter what.”
Saveria nodded, pulling her wrist away. “I know.” She shook her head. “I was at New Haven. I’ve … seen.”
Chad pushed Chinnery to the back of the elevator, Karkoski joining him. She’d drawn a simple black sidearm, face closed, eyes hard. Her Navy uniform looked out of place without a starship around her, but her face said I’m keeping score.
Nate took one side of the elevator’s doorway, Kohl on the other, with Grace in the middle. The doors closed, the car descending. Below, the fear/fear/fear was ebbing, not because it was going away, but because it was fading out. The people having those feelings were dying.
The elevator slowed, doors opening without even a whisper of sound, good Guild engineering not even allowing for a hint of friction. The atrium the elevator opened onto was wide, an open space like the Guild Master’s office, but seeded with potted plants, a water feature, and a spiral staircase leading to a mezzanine.
It also contained bodies. Lots and lots of bodies. They were slumped, torn, bleeding, but all dead. None had blaster wounds, rents in their bodies suggesting cuts in some cases, immense blunt force trauma in others. Grace padded out of the elevator, keeping her steps light to minimize noise. She saw a man and a woman, entangled together, lying in the water feature, the water red as it burbled around them. Grace wondered for a moment if they were lovers, or just in the same wrong place at the same wrong time.
A boom hit them with the sound wave, glass walls of the atrium imploding in with a shower. Outside, a Skyguard ship tumbled in a blaze of fire, trailing parts and smoke and what might have been pieces of the pilot before it impacted with a Guild building outside. Grace made her mind form a defensive barrier, shards of glass bouncing off an invisible wall in front of her. She felt sick, but she didn’t know if it was from using her gift or from seeing so much death. You’ve seen dead people before. True, but she’d used her gifts before, too.
Grace looked around, seeing Karkoski, Chad, Ottavia, and Chinnery moving towards the right wall of the atrium. They were scurrying rather than sprinting as glass rained around them. Nate ran left towards the impact site of the Skyguard ship, Kohl on his heels. Saveria was hunched down in the lee of Grace’s shield but had her hands over her head anyway. Nate will try to save someone, again, and he’ll get shot. “Come on,” she said to Saveria, running after Nate. Grace moved around bodies and plants, stance low. One of her feet slipped on blood but she didn’t fall.
GRACE Nate, not that way, they’re already dead
Nate slowed, turning, and looked like he was about to say something when the atrium shook, like a giant had grabbed the outside of it and given it a thump. Saveria fell next to Grace. Kohl didn’t even appear to notice, other than looking at the ceiling.
There was a sound like rain made of metal, growing louder. The roof cracked. Grace grabbed Saveria’s arm, yanking the young woman up, then running towards Nate. They passed Kohl, who was still looking at the ceiling, so Grace shouted, “Asshole! Move!”
That got to him. The big man turned, following a few steps behind.
The ceiling above ruptured inward, huge chunks of white stone falling to the floor. The water feature was destroyed in a shower of water and ceramicrete. Bodies were pulped under the falling ceiling. And through it all, the metal rain sound continued, louder and louder. Grace kept running until she hit the side of the atrium, not even slowing as she hurdled debris to get outside. Saveria stumbled in her wake, tripping, falling on grass. Nate was right behind her, grabbing one of Saveria’s arms as Kohl took the other. Grace looked back, taking in the collapsing atrium, and the klicks and klicks of nanometal spooling down from the heavens.
Someone cut the gravity elevator.
The cable was hissing towards the Earth, lightning jumping and crackling along its length as it fell. It separated them from Karkoski, Chad, Ottavia, and Chinnery. They may as well have been on Mars for all Grace could do to reach them. Even she couldn’t hold the sky up against the fall of so much kinetic potential.
Grace spun, sword still out, nothing to cut. The air was full of thunder, speech impossible.
GRACE We need a ship, a ship, a lucky ship
NATE I know one, it’s a small one
GRACE The Tyche, the Tyche is hurt, I hurt her because I can’t fly like El
NATE She’s hurt because of robots, she’ll fly for us
GRACE How do you know
NATE Because she’s the Tyche
She nodded, then ran again. Grace had a moment to be grateful she hadn’t abandoned her training once on the throne, her body still fit and ready. Grace ran along a wall, inside of which was a corridor full of dead people. She was using the wall as a shelter, but if a piece of that cable landed on them, it wouldn’t matter what the wall was or who made it. It’d be the end, and no mistake.
She rounded the edge of the building she was using for cover, a wide paved area between her and the next shelter, a welcoming low building that might have been a refectory. Grace sprinted across the grounds, breath rasping in her ears, making the refectory with a crash as she slammed through the doors. Inside, tables and chairs, and many, many bodies.
At the far end, in a huddle, were five people. The hissing of Ezeroc was around them like a miasma, clouding her thoughts. One bright, single thread of purpose washed the noise away.
They must die for what they have done.
Grace didn’t slow as she ran towards the five. She vaulted a table, sword silver bright in her hand. One of the five exploded into flame as a blast from behind her tore it to pieces, and another spun like a top before crashing to the ground as another blast hit it in the shoulder. Then Grace was among them, her sword whipping out to taste the Ezeroc puppets.
She hit nothing but air.
They were faster than the ones she’d fought previously, all oiled precision inside human bodies that didn’t move like humans should. Joints no longer bending the right way, jaws distended, eyes glassy. One of them lashed at her with a hand. She shifted her stance, not fast enough to dodge it entirely, and even the half impact she got made her eyes water as she was slammed backward.
Grace landed, rolling, and came to her feet. The head. The command insects are in their skulls. She reached out with her mind, holding one still in a fist of thought, and stepped forward, a perfect strike from the top of its head, through its chest, and out. As Grace released her hold, the body fell in half, Ezeroc larvae popping from the remains of the skull.
She raised her star forged sword to block another strike, the arm of the Ezeroc severing itself against her blade. Grace struck again, her weapon taking its head from its shoulders to bounce under a table.
The last one caught Grace a savage blow to the side of her face, knocking her flat. Grace hit the ground at its feet, looking up. Its jaws were hinging wide, sharp inhuman teeth inside. Her sword had bounced clear. She rolled, trying to get away, but it was fast, leaping on top of her. Grace punched it in the throat, and it didn’t even flinch.
SAVERIA No no NO!
The Ezeroc twitched, falling aside. The blow from the young woman’s mind took Grace’s thoughts away for a second, and when they came back, Saveria was beside her. Grace’s chest heaved as she gulped air.
SAVERIA Okay, are you okay, okay
GRACE What did you do
SAVERIA Made them go away, far away, made them stop
Grace rolled over, pushing herself first to her knees, then a crawl as she moved towards her sword. Her fingers around the hilt, Grace felt her sense of self returning. She wanted to throw up again, sweat running down her face and into her eyes, her vision blurry. The floor was trembling with the fall of the gravity cable, the refectory’s tables and chairs juddering and shaking, moving as if they had wills of their own.
She leaned forward, hands around the hilt of her blade. The me
tal didn’t bend or waiver, and she needed its strength. Grace pushed herself to her feet, swaying a little. The air outside the refectory’s windows was thick with dust and smoke and ash, fires blooming as the heat of the falling cable ignited anything made of carbon. Plants. Bodies.
What was she doing before this moment? A ship. They had to get to a ship.
Grace turned, stumbling towards Nate, lying on the ground. His eyes were wide, staring at nothing in particular, but they came into focus as she leaned over him. He smiled.
NATE My love, my life
GRACE Get up
NATE We could not, we could stay here
GRACE They will die without us
The lassitude left him, and he hauled himself up with her help. Grace looked for Kohl, found him on his feet but curled over like he’d been kicked in the stomach. He was looking at Saveria like that was a problem he needed to solve, so Grace walked to stand between them. She shook her head, no. He nodded at her, checked his weapon, and lumbered towards one of the broken windows.
Grace licked her lips, tasting salt and copper, and she wondered if she’d bitten her lip on the way down. She pulled Nate along as they followed Kohl outside through broken windows. The ground was shuddering and shaking, rents appearing in the earth.
In the distance, Grace saw a woman running their way. Elspeth Roussel, sprinting like her life depended on it. Sprinting towards the danger. Grace allowed herself a moment of wonder amid the terror and destruction of the falling gravity elevator, then broke into a run herself. It started as a jog, turned itself into a lope without much encouragement, and held at that pace over the broken, heaving ground. Pieces of ceramicrete, sheared from tall buildings around, fell to the Earth with impacts felt through the soles of her feet.
Ahead, a hangar, roof wide, the familiar lines of their starship. Grace passed a loader, a ruin of wreckage. Nate broke towards it and she followed. Maybe the driver could be helped. They could get him on the Tyche and into orbit. Out of this madness.
The driver was dead, blood on his overalls from the ruin of his face. She could see the lettering on his lapel, B. MCKINLEY, and she wondered which shore this man had called home before Kazuo Gushiken brought the sky down on his head.
She felt a tug on her hand, Nate’s metal fingers intertwined with hers. Pulling her away, towards the Tyche. Their only hope now, a starship she’d crashed into the unforgiving city of Osaka, because she wasn’t a good enough pilot to keep air under the wings of a goddess. When she’d seen the Tyche last, there’d been a hole in Engineering, punctures in the deck, a whole drive core gone. Could Hope have fixed all that, even in the heart of the Guild? It seemed … unfair to have laid that burden on a soul so young.
They reached the Tyche together, the hangar empty. Big construction equipment was around the ship, touching, healing, setting her aright. El was ahead of them, boots on the ramp to the waiting cargo bay. A flash of plasma past El, October Kohl on her heels, ducking low, returning fire. Inside, Grace found El with boots on the ladder to the flight deck, ignoring the immediate danger of the Ezeroc puppet that had fired on her, trusting the people at her back to solve that problem while she woke a goddess into flight. Kohl had blown the Ezeroc puppet to pieces, and lumbered after El.
Grace turned, seeing Nate and Saveria running up. They were last through the airlock, Grace hammering the seals closed. It was impossible to tell if the ship hummed around her, the ground shaking so much it felt like it was made of noise itself, as if sound could be a physical thing you could grab and hold.
Hope. Where is Hope?
Grace scampered up the ladder to the crew deck, boots slipping as she tried to round the corner. She ran, sword still in her hand, to Engineering. Inside, she found bright new metal over the hole in the hull where air had come through before. A new drive nestled next to the old one. Hope was on her acceleration couch, rig’s visor down, eyes focused and determined on Engineering’s holo. She looked to be trying to get the ship to do something it didn’t want to do, an argument between an Engineer and her sickly machine. Grace paced to Hope’s side, swaying a little as the ground trembled. She put a hand on Hope’s shoulder.
GRACE It’s okay, it’s okay
Hope looked at her, seemed to relax a centimeter or two, and nodded. She went back to working on the console, and in a moment, the drives coughed and fired, a rumble and a roar louder than the gravity elevator’s descent from the heavens.
Grace left Hope there, sealing Engineering on her way out. She needed to get to an acceleration couch, or she’d be tossed around the inside of the hull. Sheathing her sword, she put a hand on the railing of the crew deck, hauling herself to the ready room. Inside, Kohl was tightening Saveria’s straps. She gave the big man a nod, slipping into a couch beside the younger esper. Kohl seated himself, then gave her the thumbs up.
Nate looked at her from the flight deck, El beside him. The Helm was running through preflight checks, and Grace knew the flight deck holo stage had far too much red and not enough green for a starship about to rise into the sky.
GRACE We’re here, everyone is here
NATE Then we fly
He nodded to El, and the Tyche shuddered, trembled, and rose on a stuttering, fragmented Endless field.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
STARSHIPS DIDN’T FLY themselves. That’s what they’d told El, back when she wanted to fly the big hulls. They needed a whisper of encouragement, a gentle hand most of the time, occasionally a firm one. The secret of flight, they’d said to her, wasn’t knowing when to use the carrot or the stick. Her instructor had shaken his head at the audacity of the idea. No, the secret is knowing the ship’s alive, a living, breathing thing. Ain’t no ship in the universe that will fly for a Helm that doesn’t care for her.
The Tyche wasn’t breathing well. Not well at all.
Her sticks were sluggish in El’s hands. The Endless Drive was barely firing. It felt like only half of it was online, fifty percent of the power needed to lift the Tyche’s carcass off the crust. The flight deck holo said pretty much everything was fucked, and with Baggs’ blood coating her face, El was inclined to believe it.
El tipped the lift field sideways, nudging her out of the hangar and into the failing light. Dust fouled the air, and the electrical storm brought on by the falling atmosphere cable confused the Tyche’s eyes and ears. RADAR tried to read the ground, finding nothing but a shifting cascade of earth. LIDAR reported back fuzzy half images of buildings broken and falling, debris raining from the sky.
What the Tyche hadn’t seen, and El hoped it was because it wasn’t there, was the falling mass of the other end of the tether. Guild Hall’s gravity elevator endpoint, in geosynchronous orbit above the base, cable stretched between them. It was a station of a modest twenty decks, a cylinder twelve kilometers across. El had been there once, just to see what it was like, and she’d found that it was like a habitat full of assholes. Engineers everywhere, somehow smug they’d put a giant monstrosity in the hard black attached to the crust below.
That didn’t mean they deserved to die.
It’d be a blessing if the station had been sheared away, because then someone could retrieve it. The alternative was it was coming down Earth’s gravity well, and the impact of a twenty-deck twelve-klick station hitting Earth would be, assuming most of it didn’t burn up on re-entry, like dropping a nuke. The people in the station would have it easy, because they’d be dead already.
As the Tyche left the hangar, the Endless field cut out on the port side, dropping the ship’s wing into the ceramicrete. The grinding groan of metal shuddered through the hull, vibrating into the sticks. El gritted her teeth, tapping the console, asking the field generator to compensate. Spread itself a little thinner, just enough to get them clear of the hangar and into the sky. Then she could light the fires, blast off, take them away from this madness.
“Come on, girl,” she said, then wiped sweat away from her face. Some of it had run into El’s eyes, and her vision blu
rred some as she stared at the flight deck holo.
Which then cut out, leaving the flight deck dark. “Fuck.”
Nate looked at her, his voice raised to a yell. “Tell me you did that!”
“I didn’t do shit!” El banged her hand on the side of her console, the small local display blinking into life, before the display rolled, cycling over and over. Okay. You’re flying a starship blind. There’s no telemetry. No altimeter. No thrust measures. There’s nothing here but your hands on the sticks, the feel of the ship, just you and her. No pressure. Easy.
El let out a nervous laugh, ignoring Nate’s wide-eyed horrified glance, then clicked the Endless controls. No feedback, no knowing what they thought was going on, but the way she figured it, El had eyes, and ears, and if the Tyche was blind and deaf, that wasn’t a problem. I’ll see and hear for you. You fly for me.
She leaned forward, looking up at the sky above. The looping black coil of the gravity tether was still spooling down, hundreds of klicks of it yet to run as it tumbled to Earth, faster and faster. The heat pouring off it must have been intense, but it was El’s goal to not find out. It was El’s life mission right now to be as far away from that thing as possible. El wasn’t a hundred on this on account of the smoke and dust and ash swirling around them, but she thought she saw a red glow far above them. The kind of thing that might look like an asteroid burning through the fires of re-entry. Or, a twenty-deck, twelve-klick station.
Come on, girl. She feathered the Endless controls, bargaining for a little more lift, and the ship obliged, in a halting way, like someone with an injury might if finding their feet for the first time. Just a little higher. Once we’re up and clear, then we can let your legs stretch a little, stop relying on this Endless tech and get the drives to do the real work. Get me up there, and I promise, you’ll run ahead of the sun.
The ship growled underneath her, like she wanted to help, gaining more height. The Endless field failed again, dropping them like a stone, but caught straight away. El figured she’d heard a scream, but that couldn’t have been right, as she also figured it came from Nate’s direction. She tossed the cap a glance, taking in his white-knuckled grip on the acceleration couch, and frowned. It’s like he doesn’t trust your flying.
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