Pegasus accelerated when it reached the outside, and Amira pulled on her goggles. The ship raced out across the frosted desolation toward the dying serpent in her half-dug grave.
When they were a few hundred meters away, Amira could smell it in the air. It was a scent of rot and decay that was unmistakable if not quite overpowering.
Pegasus set down and she hopped down from her perch to land lithely in the snow. Then she padded over to the crew waiting to meet her.
The factory complex towered above, resting at an odd and canted angle like a broken leg. It'd been hers once but she saw no choice but to abandon it when she finally realized Donovan wouldn't make any tough decisions. He'd left everyone on the Earth to fight for themselves, while waiting for some kind of peace to magically appear.
Sadly, Amira didn't believe in magic anymore.
"Miss Saladin," a bundled-up technician yelled above the crush of the wind. "Glad you came."
"Someone cashed in their chip," she said hoarsely. "What am I doing here?"
"Inside. This way, this way," he said, waving one arm in big arcs toward the nearby iris.
Amira shrugged and hurried along. The iris opened slowly when they got to it, and they entered a smooth tunnel on the other side. Then the membrane closed behind them and Amira was taken back by the sudden and total silence.
"Now," she said, "why'm I here?"
"There's an emergency with one of our projects and we needed someone with your particular expertise. I'm Bryce Kinnison with Deep Well Six. I'm a student of your work, Miss Saladin."
Donovan's research and development group was only a plan when she left for Amiasha, and she assumed it'd been rushed to completion once she was gone. If nothing else, Donovan plugged gaps quickly.
Kinnison offered his hand and Amira shook it, then they turned and marched into the tunnel. "Since we're in the factory, I'll assume it's a ship," she said.
The tunnel mouth widened ahead of them, and as they stepped through, Amira found herself in the massive cavern that was the heart of Legacy's factory. It was dim and blue-green inside, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust.
"Yeah, you could say it's a ship," Kinnison said.
Amira could make out a shape filling the center of the complex, stretching for kilometers into the dark and misty distance.
Kinnison flashed a very nerdy smile. "It's Donovan," he said.
Amira's eyes went wide. She pointed. "He's..."
"A little over five kilometers long and healthy. There are complications though, and he's not quite complete."
"How?"
"Not sure I really understand it myself. Legacy constructed the body, and Donovan was implanted somehow."
"And what... you want me to finish him?"
"If you think you can," Kinnison said hopefully. "I understand we're under some time constraints at the moment."
That was putting it lightly.
Amira looked around the giant chamber and saw the many resizable docking rings, covered in articulated tools like spider-legs. They subtly tilted in her direction.
She sent out a few test prods, and they swung into motion at her command. She brought on flood lights and the farthest dark corners of the complex came into view.
Donovan's new form was shaped something half-way between Legacy's main hull and a broadsword set on its edge, the outside broken into overlapping segments like an insect's shell. Rather than Legacy's rich green, he was a subtle blue-grey with silver accents.
And she could plainly see just how incomplete he was. His forward section ended abruptly with open edges revealing partially formed tissues and superstructure within. Far to the rear, the bulbous housings of his drive organs didn't appear to be fully connected. He was a mess...
But Amira had spent years rescuing old wrecks from the junkyard. It was one of the few tasks she could ever rope her father into sharing with her.
She waved goodbye to Kinnison, and in the absence of Legacy's instinctual response, she commanded the gravity systems to lift her off the ground and fly her to the control deck.
Chapter 47
Epistle
Jack and Kai scaled Amiasha's central stalk in leaps and bounds. They flung themselves up the wall, grabbed hand-holds, and flung themselves again until they finally reached the access tunnels halfway up its length.
When they marched inside, the automated weapons that lined the walls saluted Jack and welcomed him home, and he proceeded quickly past to the cradle chamber.
The lights in that room seemed to be glowing with a renewed vigor. "You're looking healthy," Jack said warmly. "That's good my friend, because you're going to need all your strength and more."
The ornate cradle waved open like a tropical flower and Jack slipped easily inside. It came down around him and hugged him close, then a legion of electric eels bit into him from all directions and the mind link blazed to life.
The difference from their first meeting was drastic. Amiasha was pleased to feel him again, and the Yuon Kwon's presence radiated out like a warm campfire on a cold winter night. The creature was mature and strong now, able to stand on his own without a pilot at all.
Amiasha didn't need one, but sometimes he missed them. Jack did a decent job of filling in.
He looked across the city that had grown and changed so much in the past half-year, and there was activity everywhere as the people of the Arkangel Compact hastily prepared.
"You've heard the plan?" Jack asked.
"Yes," came Amiasha's cavernous reply. "It is necessary. We adapt."
"You sure do," Jack said proudly. "So, are you ready to contact your sisters and brothers?"
"We must try," Amiasha rumbled. "But I lack hope."
Jack could relate. Hope had become a very rare flower. One that was out of season. "How does this work?" he asked.
"I howl. Chera Aum-Samaraya will answer."
It wasn't always clear if a Yuon Kwon meant he was doing something, had done something, or would do something in the future. Either verb tense wasn't really their thing, or Jack was just a bit dense.
Then he felt it happening and he understood. It was like reaching out a hand that just kept stretching further and further over thousands of kilometers. The connection was a construct of pure electricity, but somehow also an extension of his nervous system. His mind was being stretched around the Earth.
A few seconds passed by and then a connection approached. Jack felt it a moment before it touched, and then the link expanded.
"I am Elkellian, and I speak for Chera Aum-Samaraya. I meet you in peace."
Amiasha didn't answer, and Jack felt awkward. "Um," he said. "Vigil here. Amiasha Aum-Samaraya is on the line. Pleased to meet you?"
He probably would have slapped his own face after that if his own arms had been easier to find.
"Yes," Elkellian said, and Jack could taste something in the connection like disgust. The rest was concealed.
Jack stumbled onto script. "Listen, this planet is going to become very inhospitable in a bit over seventeen hours."
"It's already begun, human. Talis Aum-Samaraya and the Western Oikeya have already fallen to your kin and the Nefrem horde."
"Fuck," Jack said all too classily. "We have to leave. Now."
"We concur. You seek a temporary truce?"
Jack had a terrible urge to overreach. He fed it. "I'm seeking more."
Annoyance greeted him from the other side. "What more do you want, human?"
"Alliance," Jack said. "Our chances are better together. You've fought the Adversary before. You know what we're facing."
Elkellian couldn't completely hide a feeling of shame and self-doubt. He said, "The enemy is great... but we must follow separate streams. Will you accept the cease fire."
Jack assented and the line snapped dead. His focus splashed backward, and he felt like a shapeless ghost floating about the city. "I had to try," he said to the Yuon Kwon.
Amiasha said, "You try badly."
This
wasn't a good time for Jack to explain the delicate art of negotiation, nor make excuses for why he was so completely terrible at it. "When can you be ready for lift-off?"
Amiasha hesitated. All Yuon Kwon seemed to exhibit the same deficiency, as challenged dealing with time as a small child struggling to do arithmetic. He said, "Days."
"No days available," Jack said. "We have hours. Can you somehow do hours?"
"I am unsure."
Jack could feel his panic rising. The tap was busted, and panic was filling him and splashing everywhere. "We don't have any other choice, so you have to try. You will try?"
Amiasha said, "I will try well."
"Do you need me to fly you?"
"No. I will fly. I adapt."
And at that, Jack beamed pride out to the young vessel. Their chances sucked, and everyone would probably die in a flaming wreck, but at least they were going to try well.
Jack felt Amiasha going to work, readying tired and atrophied muscles for the climb ahead, and he bid the ship farewell then slid free of the cradle. The cortex chamber looked different from the inside, and it took a few long seconds for Jack to get his bearings again.
Kai was sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, and his spine as straight as a skyscraper. He seemed to be rather annoyingly relaxed, all things considered.
Jack said, "The New Union threw in with the Nefrem, and the Western Oikeya are down already."
"Slightly faster than I would have anticipated," Kai replied. "Assuming the Nefrem take command of the attack, we have roughly four hours. This is going to be tight, Jack."
"Getting that impression," he said. "The Eastern Oikeya won't join us. They're planning to go their own way."
Kai didn't look surprised, but he never did. "They will," he said.
"Sure," Jack replied. "I have to deliver the news. You coming?"
Kai said, "I must prepare," and returned to his meditation.
When the interrogator didn't move, Jack realized that this was the preparation he had in mind. "Each to their own," he said, and sprinted out into the city beyond.
Chapter 48
Basilisk
The first wave of attackers arrived three hours and seventeen minutes later. New Union fighter jets blotted out the white and raging sky like a plague of locusts, their approach heralded by a screaming chorus of cruise missiles launched from some ship further on.
The powerful warheads exploded in red and orange balls of flame all around Amiasha's shell like a wreath of furious roses. When their fires subsided, they revealed discs of quicksilver on Amiasha's hull, shields controlled by the city's Sey Chen residents which protected the animal beneath.
The Arkangel Compact's official response was already in the air. Thousands of Heirath Yuon Kwon with human pilots streamed out into the rising blizzard, while Fleet gunships began to hunt through the skies in a feeding frenzy.
When the two fronts met, flashes of light and bright streamers criss-crossed in a circle around Amiasha like the climax of a mad fireworks show that simply didn't know when to quit. The crackle was of endless nearby thunder, slapping the ground and echoing back up to the raging sky.
Alex Faulkland stood atop his personal command cruiser, the Phoenix, parked on the ground beside Legacy. He wanted to see the coming storm with his own two eyes, in those last minutes before they got out of town once and for all.
It was a massacre up there; Fleet and Arkangel ships were pushing the Union fighters back at a steady pace, but Alex knew not to get his hopes up. This was just the snack plate, and the entree was still on its way.
He was just about to turn and head in when he noticed a humming darkness that caused the roiling clouds to twist, bulge, and finally peel away. It was some kind of ship less than a kilometer long and shaped like a tiger shark, bringing an even colder and more vicious wind with it.
Alex headed for the lift as an identical ship descended beside the first, and something told him that his fancy, two-hundred meter bird of war wasn't going to be enough.
He stepped on a circular platform and it dropped him down into the Phoenix's small nerve center. His chair was located centrally, angled so that it was always leaning a little forward; he hated a chair that was too welcoming.
The cabin was the size of a two-car garage, but with a roughly triangular layout. Smooth panels lined the walls that displayed different views of the battle.
"Let's get in the air, people. All batteries hot. Be ready for a bumpy ride."
Alex slipped into the chair and tapped at his console, bringing up graphs that summarized the action. Bars flickered with estimates of units lost on both sides, while a heatmap illustrated where those losses were occurring.
The realization that he was looking at the statistical side of death made him feel briefly ill, so he popped another antacid in his mouth and began chewing it slowly. Meanwhile, the Phoenix hopped off the ground and was airborne.
The screens that ringed the bridge all switched to glass mode, and Alex stared through the driving snow at the twin battleships. Against a force like that, his little convoy would to need every edge it could get and probably more.
He recalled that there was one potential edge he'd been ignoring, and he genuinely hated himself for waiting until the worst possible time to finally consider it. But it'd just been that unthinkable, right up until his last remaining option was to be eaten alive by space cannibals.
He keyed a sequence into his console then entered his command code, followed by his secondary command code and a special four-digit pin, and finally pressed the green OK? button twice to confirm. Something (probably his ulcer) told him he should've put just a few more obstacles in the way.
Soon, there wouldn't be any obstacles left.
A panel opened in the ceiling above his chair and a white arm reached down. This particular mechanism had been built for a single purpose. It was shaped like a broad and flat scorpion's tail with a small spiked payload at the tip, and it looked scary as hell.
Alex was beginning to frown (powerfully) when the arm wheeled around and struck the side of his temple, knocking everything black.
***
Amira Saladin had been working furiously for hours. Her eyes were burning, and when she stopped to think about it, she wasn't sure she'd blinked at all in the last twenty minutes.
Monitors all around her showed live feeds of her work from multiple angles. She glanced from one to another, then onto the next and next, tracking dozens of constructor arms in their choreographed dance around Donovan's hull. She issued new instructions to them in teams, then took control of individuals when their tasks required her personal touch.
A dull thud came from somewhere a hundred klicks away. She was already too late, but she kept at it, in part hoping to at least make the splitting head-ache worthwhile. She wanted to see him fly.
The vessel that was Marcus Donovan hung in the air outside Amira's control deck, held aloft in Legacy's soft gravitic arms, and attached to the mothership by a thick bundle of cables. Despite Amira's best efforts, he looked like a stitched together mess with parts from different machines sloppily jammed in place. Loose cables hung from the thrusters at his hips, and his forward section was little more than an unfulfilled promise. It was a bulky cap covered in connectors for something she hadn't managed to finish in time.
That left Donovan totally unarmed as far as Amira was aware. There were structures inside him that she didn't recognize, but none looked much like offensive weaponry, and that made her tense. She was tempted to quickly weld on a few particle cannons scavenged from gunships, but they'd be little more than switchblades glued to a blue whale's flippers.
And there was one procedure left that took precedence.
Amira took command of five constructor arms at once, brought their torches in, and hastily sealed the last few panels into place. If she looked too close, Donovan looked less like a starship than he did like a shanty town... so she decided not to look too close.
She tapped
her mic. "Give me some good news, Kinnison."
His voice came back over the comms. "The tugs are in place," he said. "We're waiting on you, Miss Saladin."
She glanced at her work one last time and winced. "It's time. What's your ETA?"
"If nothing goes wrong, should take us about a minute to crack the cage and sever the primary conduits. Another three to get over to the factory... the rest is up to you."
"If nothing goes wrong," she muttered cynically. "Alright... Get it done in two and I'll make sure there's a new lab in it for you. Deal?"
"I'll see what I can do."
Thunder crashed and a horrible rumble permeated the chamber, followed by Legacy moaning low like a wounded elephant. Lights flickered, went out, and came back gradually but weaker than before.
In the next few seconds, the lights dimmed again and never came back. Amira realized with unexpected sadness that Legacy's heart had been cut out. It was over, and if all went according to plan, Amira and the last workers would be out and gone in a few minutes, never again to return.
Without thinking, her hand reached out and softly stroked the ship's smooth surface. Her fingers were shaking as they went, with skin that felt cold and dry.
The tugs emerged from the transit tunnels like a school of clownfish towing a hubcap, and Amira's eyes became wet. Those blinks she'd been holding at bay finally arrived in force.
"Good night," she said, and the last of Legacy's light went out for good.
***
Pegasus flew on through the thick of the fighting, clearing the path ahead with staccato bursts of particle beam fire that crossed the air like flashlights in thick fog. The constantly transforming New Union fighters were rocked and blasted apart by the impacts, their final transformation leaving them as remnants for future generations to find.
The strange and elongated Nefrem fighters who had just joined the battle were a different story. Despite their awkward shape like disembodied beaks, they fluttered masterfully through the air, bouncing lightly on the surging winds. And more troublingly, they all moved together in one perfectly orchestrated, adapting formation. Groups broke apart and immediately formed new ones, alternately attacking or distracting their prey.
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