The water tasted as good as morning stim. He addressed Manny. “Yes. I don’t think they want to kill people, not very badly. They want the robots.”
“Where are your pet bots?” Manny tugged on his beard. “Are they safe?”
Charlie consulted his glasses. “The one who’s with me is. The others are in Nexity or up in the mountains.” He stopped for breath. “I’m betting the ones in Nexity are in the most danger.”
“Could be. One of my people just called me from Hope, and they say security is way up. Nexity has hardened its shield. Everyone’s been ordered to go to their rooms and stay for now.”
“So you reported the attack to Nexity?”
“And to the Port Authority. To everyone. That’s what I’m trying to set up. I want everyone, everywhere, to know what everyone is doing. It won’t do to have any question about who is the aggressor here.”
A tall, slight woman with brown hair caught in a long braid came up to Manny and stood waiting for him to acknowledge her. When he did, her voice shook as she spoke, although she kept her head up and her gaze directly on Manny. “Reporting from the hospital. They’ve been asked to evacuate. So far there have been three people killed and seven injured. One was a fall, but the others were attacked.”
“Thank you, Clarice,” Manny said. “Please ask John to send twenty people to guard your location. Tell them we’re trying to find a safe place to take the patients, and that as soon as we do we’ll land a transport and take them off.”
Clarice nodded, looking slightly confused.
Manny smiled at her. “Just do it. Give them the message.”
She turned and left, and Charlie asked Manny, “Are you really going to evacuate?”
“I might just land a skimmer full of soldiers.”
Charlie winced. “Maybe we shouldn’t be the aggressors.”
“Maybe it’s time we were,” Manny said. He touched his ear to indicate a conversation with someone remote. When he looked back at Charlie, his voice was clipped. “Come on. Outside. The Port said it’s starting.”
“Why outside?”
“Things to see.” Manny was already up and moving.
As they headed out from the office and toward the front porch, Manny’s retinue followed him. Charlie glanced back; a server had snuck in behind and started clearing old dishes from the table.
He tapped Manny’s shoulder. “What are we going to see? It’s dark.”
Manny merely opened the door. They went out, joining a small crowd that had already been gathered on the hotel steps, everyone watching the spaceport, and beyond that, the robot’s city.
The Wall around Nexity glowed bright blue.
The boy who had brought Charlie water pointed at the sky. “There!”
Barely visible movement suggested a large ship, something so great and flying down at such a steep angle it had to have come directly from space. Another one. They flew directly at the Wall.
An explosion ripped along one edge of the Wall, darkening the light in the fireball. Sound followed. Loud and sharp. A sudden hard wind nearly knocked Charlie down and then passed on. He staggered, stunned by the incomprehensible force of it.
Sparks flew from another spot past the first hit, and the second ship bounced off and tumbled down the outside of the clear shield. It appeared that the machine bounced off of nothing at all.
A sound above them made them duck, and the forces of a collision knocked roofs off of walls and threw debris into the streets. Somewhere, a woman screamed.
Cricket growled low in her throat and hopped gamely by Charlie’s side, a hulking mass of shadowy, disturbed beast.
Lights flicked out.
Charlie reached for Manny, wanting to be sure he hadn’t lost him. Light from the burning after-fire left by the first collision painted his uncle’s face and beard with golden-red hues. His eyes were wreathed in deep wrinkles, as if he had aged in the few days he had been back here.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
NAYLI
On the Shining Danger, Nayli leapt and cavorted, colliding with the chairs and with a post, driven to movement with happiness. They had damaged Nexity! Against all odds, they had proven that it was possible, and they had surprised the Next!
Surely they had killed robots.
Maureen laughed out loud, pleased. “They have most of Manna Springs clear now. We can land.”
Marina stood, her feet planted on the deck, staring at the monitors all around. She confronted them both with her back, a stark refusal to accept that they might be winning.
Nayli raced up to her, pulling her into an embrace from the back so hard that she unbalanced her. “What’s the matter?”
“It’s too easy.”
“What? It took hundreds of years.”
“Wait.”
Nayli laughed. “No need. In five minutes we might have failed. Enjoy this feeling while you can. It’s a drug.”
Marina glared at her, stubbornly refused to relax, insisting on keeping her thin smile and her dour look. Her face looked like a piece of space-dried fruit.
The screen in front of her flicked on, a bright thing.
Vadim’s face looked like Marina’s. Sour. He was far enough away that a short delay occurred between when she saw him and when she heard him say, “Hello.”
She spoke softly, full of gravity, in spite of the smile that still lingered in her voice. “We blew up a piece of Nexity. We did it.”
He smiled softly, and in a few moments his words came along and filled her ship. “I see that. I’m proud of you.”
Some grave purpose clung to him. “What is it?” She glanced at Stupid, who proclaimed that it was 7:35. She watched the clock, waiting out the shift to 7:35 and just past, giving time for Vadim’s reply to find her. The adrenaline in her veins changed tone; her limbs felt heavy, her movement coming in jerks.
“There’s a ship shaped like an arrow on the way to me. We’ve tried to shoot it down. The Rebel’s Way actually slammed into it—full speed—and everyone on board died. It didn’t change course. It’s on the way to me. I want you to turn on the recorder, and to stand by me.”
Images of Brea and Darnal, of their bright, dazzling, horrible deaths filled her eyes. “Move!” she screeched at him. “Move.” She sat back, wasting precious time, knowing it, not able to stop herself. A last whisper. “Move.”
His face was tight, his eyes darting between objects the camera didn’t show her. Probably vid or instruments. Maybe people. She hated not knowing.
“We did,” he answered the command that now seemed old to her. “We moved. It moved with us, locked onto us. Don’t waste time, my love.”
“How will I live without you?”
Maureen tugged on her arm, pointed at a different monitor. Marina stood right under it, looking up. Something spun toward them.
Vadim had stopped looking at her. He was watching the monitor the way he always did when he was speaking to a crowd, his bright, burning eyes slightly unfocused. “There are many of you left. Continue to fight.”
Cold washed over her; her stomach fought to escape her control. She bit her lip, stared at the screen. At Vadim’s face. At the screen. At Vadim’s face. It wasn’t possible. Couldn’t be. She pushed record and centered all of her focus on the screen in front of her. She took a deep breath. Her hands shook, and she had to clasp them together tight to keep it from showing. “Fight on. Fight Hard.”
Brilliant light flashed on the screen that had held Vadim’s image, an explosion that had occurred seconds ago on Vadim’s ship, the light bright enough that it forced Nayli’s eyes closed.
The Shining Danger shuddered and bucked.
Marina screamed in fear, Maureen in anger. They fell into one another. Nayli’s foot caught under a chair, her ankle popping and ripping.
She screamed in pain.
A horrible rending sound signaled a split on the ship somewhere. The floor bucked beneath her; her head smashed into a cabinet; hot blood erupted from her scalp, mat
ting her hair. She found herself staring at the clock she’d turned Stupid into, a virtual thing that hung undamaged, unbrightened, unchanged. 7:47.
Music began to play. A dirge.
It was the wrong music. It wasn’t what she had chosen, or what Vadim had chosen.
Three bars of the music played in her head before the Shining Danger came apart.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHARLIE
In spite of the cold, Charlie had remained outside even after the fires around Nexity no longer burned. Even though there were things to done, he felt shocked still. As the adrenaline faded, he also felt cold and tired, and slightly uncertain. The weight of the Shining Revolution pressed down on him, as well as a feeling that the one definitive strike was only the opening round of a larger action. Manny, Yi Two, and many of the others had also stayed outside in the cold, looking across the spaceport toward Nexity more than they looked behind them.
Manny tugged on Charlie’s arm and pointed up. Above them, a round orb of fire and light expanded and distilled, as if a bubble had been lit on fire from inside and filled with flames before all of the outside burned away at once and the light inside surrendered.
Again.
Again.
“Ships,” Manny whispered.
Charlie sat down beside Cricket, taking her in his arms so that he could keep track of her while he stared at the sky.
“Look up!” a woman screamed. “They’re killing them. Those are people.”
If he wasn’t physically safe here inside the circle of humans taking the last stand in the last part of Manna Springs, there wasn’t much he could do about it. He went inside himself so that he felt only him and Cricket, and Manny beside him, and craned his neck, staring at the sky.
He counted. Seven. Eight. Nineteneleven. More went off at once. The sky lit and lit, a chain reaction. Firecrackers of light that made no sound here on the surface. So bright it had to be one of the two docking stations. Nona’s ship must be gone. Everyone’s. They’d be marooned at home.
Death and fire like stars.
He thought of what had started all of this, of the High Sweet Home being taken far away, of its protective skin of warships being destroyed. A long line of death, and now he could see this moment with his naked eyes. Since he had been on starships with Nona he could imagine the fear, the sure knowledge that you couldn’t flee fast enough as you watched ship after ship destroyed.
There would be no injuries, only deaths. Fast death and slow death, instant death and hard death. Death and death and death.
Hearts were stopping above him.
As he watched, fewer bubbles exploded, the burn-rate down to one or two a minute.
Just as Charlie was about to look away, another ship exploded. He searched the sky for more until his eyesight readjusted, returning to almost normal. Again he started to say something to Manny, and then two small round balls of fire appeared in his peripheral vision, keeping his gaze on the night sky. It reminded him of being up high in the mountains watching a meteor shower, only this was far more macabre.
His brain stuttered through thoughts about the display, his body shuddering with cold and apprehension.
The Next were doing what they had promised, allowing no mercy for those who had attacked them.
Another circle of fire bloomed, a large one.
Many of the ships above them must have been supplicants hoping to become Next. Maybe most.
The Next didn’t care.
They were keeping their word.
Manny whispered, “Are we safe?”
Charlie had to work to drag his attention back down. The Shining Revolution was here. Close. Behind them. And the Next would come for the Shining Revolution. “No. Gather people.”
“They’re all already here.”
Yi Two appeared at Charlie’s side, offered him a hand, and pulled him up. Cricket stayed glued to him, a warmth around his legs, her ruff up.
Perhaps Yi Two had been close all along and had heard them. “The Jhailings have asked us to leave town.”
Manna Springs would be destroyed. The flower shop. The tea shop. The Spacer’s Rest where they stood. The remains of Manny’s garden.
He caught the bright shine of the death of another ship down near the horizon.
Manna Springs was only a town. Not Lym, not the tongats or the rakul or the fish or the birds. Funny what images came to him. The damned rakul he’d never been able to get a good picture of. “Of course. Tell them we need an hour.”
“You have twenty minutes. I’ve worked it out. Start walking. Walk into the spaceport, toward Nexity. Don’t stop. I’ll send everyone after you. There’s a ship evacuating the hospital.”
“Tell them only the town,” he blurted out. “Not the stations, not the wild places. Only the town.”
“I have.”
That stopped Charlie for a moment. Yi Two was a soulbot and before that he had been a spacer. Yi Two wasn’t even Yi, who had been up in the Ice Fall Valley with him and been bathed in waterfalls. As far as he knew, Yi Two had never been this far from Nexity. “Thank you,” he said, taking his first step, pulling Manny after him.
“Will they listen?” Manny asked.
Yi Two had already gone.
“I think so,” Charlie said. “Yes.”
Charlie and Manny started across the tarmac, taking long strides. The Wall far in front of them glowed all along the top. Arcing streaks of light playing along its surface, the patterns clearly broken where the explosion had occurred. It mesmerized Charlie enough that he barely watched the ground in front of him. It stole his night vision, so he seemed to walk toward the Wall through a tunnel, even though the spaceport spread wide around them.
Beside him, Cricket was tiring. He’d never seen her slow so noticeably. Her ears and head dropped. From time to time she jerked it up and looked hyperaware again for a few moments. He held a hand lightly on her back, and from time to time he talked to her. It comforted him, since Manny was quiet beside him, his face wreathed in sorrow.
Farro and Jean Paul came up beside him, both breathing heavily. They were silent for a while, perhaps catching their breath. Farro spoke first. “Do you know where they’re sending us?”
Charlie wished he didn’t have to reply; he was too damned tired to talk. But he answered. “Away from town. Otherwise, they haven’t said.”
Jean Paul fell in with them, on Cricket’s far side, Farro outside of Jean Paul.
Here and there, starships and skimmers sat tall or thin or fat on the tarmac. But mostly it was open space.
Charlie found the strength to ask, “Are others from the port coming?”
“They’re filling in behind us,” Jean Paul replied. “We jogged up here since I suspected you would be at the head.”
Machines scuttled past them. A few wore the large bodies the Jhailings liked, and a few others weren’t humanoid at all. In spite of the fact that he’d known they took different shapes, it startled him. “They’re clearly on their way to town,” he told Manny, as much because he had to say something as anything else.
Manny’s voice was clipped with anger. “They’re protecting us.” As if he hated the idea. Maybe he did. Charlie’s mouth felt lined with dust; he wished he’d refilled the small canteen at his belt. Too late now. He said nothing; the others were probably in no better shape.
He was sure they had been walking for far longer than twenty minutes when Yi Two came up beside them and said, “You can rest soon. We’ve built a place for you. Follow me.”
He had liked being in front. An illusion. He followed Yi’s slender form for about five minutes. Yi got a bit ahead. He turned and gestured for Charlie and Manny to speed up, but Charlie shook his head on Cricket’s behalf.
“We’re going to go back and check in with the others from the port.” Farro put a hand on Jean Paul’s arm and pulled him after her. He didn’t look happy to go, and Charlie wasn’t even sure he had a choice.
Shortly, they arrived at a wide ope
n place near the edge of the spaceport where there were no ships. A small city had been assembled. Simple shelters, beds, shared toilets. Lighting. Chairs had been set around. If Charlie weren’t so tired he would marvel at the speed and the thought that had gone into this.
Yi looked proud. “We designed this for you.”
“And built it. When did you start?”
“This afternoon. We understood there was a greater than half likelihood we would have refugees.”
The word struck him in the stomach. He resisted. “We’re not refugees in our own home. We’ll rebuild.”
Manny was more diplomatic. He held his hand out to Yi Two and said, “Thank you. We will need a place to sleep tonight.”
There were some chairs on the far end that had been built on a small dais, and Yi Two led them to this. Charlie collapsed into one, the smooth seamless surface cool and surprisingly comfortable. Cricket wrapped herself around his feet.
He felt certain that his heart or his brain might break at any moment.
Yi brought them both water, setting a jug and some glasses down near them. Charlie poured some of the water into his palm and Cricket lapped it, again and again touching him with her wide, rough tongue.
Yi noticed and brought him a bowl. Charlie poured a finger or so into the bottom, wanting to be sure Cricket didn’t drink too much too fast.
Another soulbot he didn’t remember ever meeting brought plates of sandwiches and cookies. He wasn’t hungry until he took a bit of sandwich to be polite, and then he finished three halves and a cookie, plus two bottles of water.
People poured in quietly, taking food and drink and talking in low, shocked tones. The man with the little girl on his shoulder was almost last.
An hour must have passed since they left.
A pair of women came up to them and asked, “Was that the Next? Killing all the ships?”
Before Charlie could answer, the low pop of ground explosions began going off in Manna Springs.
People stopped mid-sentence, stood on tiptoe, looked. Charlie and Manny had the highest seats in the little makeshift town. Charlie spotted a smudge of smoke threading through the pale light that came from windows, and then a darker column of smoke. Shortly after that, fire crept up over the tallest roofs.
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