Hours over in minutes. She jammed the simulation into a golem sigil, and returned to real-time. It had felt very long, but it had apparently been fast enough that Erran was still there, leaning against a wall swearing at her. Cognitive time dilation was fantastic. “I - woah, what the hell did you do?”
Ada grinned, wiping sweat from her brow. “Like I said - I think we can summon you a demon and let it run loose without you following it.”
“But demons can’t leave the walk.”
“That’s what I’m saying - we can make the demon itself a walker.”
Erran blinked. “That’s horrifying. Don’t do that.”
Something shuddered in the building, dust falling from the ceiling and rumbles shaking the foundations. “No, that’s horrifying. Go!”
They rushed out and looked to the top of the medical facility. It had been cracked by heavy fire, raining dust and shards. Still, someone up there was shooting back. Ada heard the dragon roaring in the distance, and sounds of shooting and horses neighing were getting even closer. The army must be advancing - some deterrent the godfire had been.
“Start looking for a demon!”
Erran looked at her in despair for a moment, then closed his eyes, dark pupils barely visible behind his eyelids as they flicked around. It was a moment before he opened his eyes again. “Okay, I have something. But it’s dangerous as -”
“Is it literally unstoppable?”
“No? I’m sure you could cut off its head or -”
“Then good. If you’re sure Isavel can stab it in the face before it eats her, I’m fine with it.”
“Isavel? Wait, you’re friends with her?”
Ada grinned, winking at him. “A little more than that.”
“You -”
She slapped him on the shoulder, pointing towards the walls. “Demon, now!”
He shook his head. He looked scared; she should probably let him go after this. “Okay, okay, here goes. Stand back!”
Suddenly another world bloomed around him and he was running, jumping, landing on the back of something that Ada could only barely see. It was monstrous, some kind of raging lizard-monkey with fire burning beneath its scales, and Erran desperately clung to its horns, trying to steer it as though it were some kind of horse. He slowly forced the walk bubble to be larger, and Ada got a picture of the demon’s full size, easily twice the height of a human and taller even than those tanks. She grinned, baring all her teeth. “I like it!”
She didn’t seem to hear her. He jerked the demon around as it roared, pointing towards the crumbling city wall. “I don’t know why it isn’t ripping me off, but I can point it that way. I’m sure as hell not riding it out there!”
Ada ran up to him into the walk, grabbed the patchwork sigil she had cobbled together, and jumped onto the thing’s back behind him. She looked around the world the demon lived in - a hellish, underground place of rock and fire - and focused on that world alone, feeding her impressions and sights and brand new memories of the place into the golem sigil, willing it to stay here. Then she connected the walker gift simulation to it, slowed time, and slammed the code into the creature’s dark hide, the dark strands searing as they hissed on.
Back to real time, she hauled Erran off and gave the demon a sharp kick in the rear.
“Stop walking!”
Erran stopped, the bubble fading away - but only around him. The demon was there, in its full fury, a bubble of hell all around it as it walked clean through through the city walls and ran straight for the army that was already shooting at it. It couldn’t see the army, of course, but it could see shots being fired at it, and it ran off after their source.
Erran was holding his hands to his forehead. “Oh gods oh gods oh gods -”
She peered through the cracks in the wall. The tanks were still approaching now, the dragon was raining hell on the army from above, and Isavel was no longer anywhere to be seen. “I think that went well.”
“Was that magic?!”
She turned to the ghost and laughed. “Magic! Science! It’s all the same at this point.”
Ghosts were hiding behind the ruined walls and firing back, but when something heavy and angry fired a shot through a nearby solid wall and blasted away a few defenders, Ada and Erran backed off in a hurry.
Ada looked up to the sky and saw four points of reddish-white light descending, a dark blob between them. It was coming down fast, but not directly over the ziggurat - it looked like it was spiraling in. “It’s the shuttle!”
“The what?”
She slapped the walker on the shoulder. “The outers are going to space!”
Erran grabbed his head as though he were having a headache. “Ada, I’m four hundred years old and I don’t even -”
A stray weapon shot shattered glass above their heads, shards raining down into the streets. Ada yanked him out of the way and looked back at the shuttle. “Why isn’t it coming down?”
“Because there’s a gods-damned war going on here with dragons and tanks and demons and giant fucking space cannons?”
She grimaced. “Okay, I can see how that would be off-putting. Come on, let’s figure out if we can get them to come down. We need them to evacuate the outers as fast as possible.”
“Why do you need me? Can’t I go hide? ”
She looked at him, pale and shuddering and clearly out of his element as hard light blasted the city to shrapnel around them. She could think of one last use for him, though. “Fine, hide, but keep an eye out on Isavel for me.”
“I’m not your go-between!”
She grabbed him by the shoulders and stared him in the eye. “I need her.”
She backed off, throwing her hands up and turning away. She couldn’t control him. She ran for the ziggurat. Something roared in the distance, nothing like a dragon’s roar, and wondered if that was Isavel cutting down the demon. It wouldn’t surprise her in the slightest. She smiled at the thought, a stirring of pride and need.
On the ziggurat, Kseresh of all people was holding a gun, looking back towards the constantly shifting sea of dust and flashing lights around the outskirts of the city. The outers were huddling on the roof, desperately looking to the sky and firing blindly towards the army. She called out. “Ksersh!”
“Ada!” Kseresh looked at her, ears totally flat, and pointed at the shuttle circling above like some kind of ironic vulture. “They refuse to land under fire!”
“Where’s your damned translator? Jhoru?”
“With Zhilik!”
Ada looked behind the elder and saw Zhilik and Jhoru crouched behind one of the ziggurat's crenelations. She scurried over to them and took their shoulders.
“Get the shuttle on the line!”
Jhoru fumbled with her communicator and opened it up. “What do you want me to say?”
Ada reached out, slowed time to a crawl, and struck out with code to knock an incoming tank shot out of the air with a dense force sigil, bouncing it away from them and off into the distant. Thank the gods that worked. “Tell them I am Ada Liu, Arbiter of the Gods, and if they don’t land that damned shuttle I will tell the gods on the ring to blow their entire gods-damned orbital ship out of the sky!”
Jhoru looked horrified, but Zhilik patted her on the shoulder. “She is bluffing.”
“Don’t tell her that!”
Jhoru started shouting into the communicator, nervously and haltingly, and there was a long silence before the single-word response came back. It couldn’t have been anything other than a curse.
The shuttle immediately started descending.
“I hope that thing has shields!”
“They only have metal plating!”
Ada blinked as weapons needled the city. “Well I hope they don’t - uh - get shot.”
Kseresh approached them, firing a shot back out at the army, as the buildings of Campus were slowly picked apart by glittering flashes of light. The army was closing in on the city walls. “That seems -”
Su
ddenly a small blade of light, hunter-like, sliced through the air and pierced Kseresh through the chest. He collapsed onto the roof of the ziggurat, gun falling to the side.
“Medic!”
Ada surged forward, throwing the gun back at Zhilik and reaching out to the elder.
“Medic!” There were no medics around. The outers didn’t have medics - they had doctors, who used tools stored in a building several minutes away. “Kseresh! Hey, hey, wake up!”
He looked dazed, blood was staining the grey fur around his mouth, his ears folded back over his head. “Ada -”
She slowed time, trying to think. She could heal him - she could stitch him together. She had done it before, and she could do anything. She could do this. She reached in with code, pulling and prodding - but the code did nothing. The spindles and sigils that might normally coax the body into repairing itself had no effect on his alien tissue whatsoever.
He was saying something, or trying, but time was too slow and she wasn’t hearing anything. She let time slip back to its normal pace. “The shuttle -”
The elder fell limp, unmoving. Dead.
“Hey! Hey!” She shook him. Gods, not right here. Not when they were so close. “Don’t you dare! You can’t - you can’t go to Elysium! You can’t just -”
“Ada, he -”
She whirled around at Zhilik just in time to see the shuttle touch down behind him. Hundreds of outers rushed up the sides of the ziggurat, desperately clawing at the ship as it lowered a panel like some kind of great maw, just like the Chengdu did.
Her mind froze as she watched a few confused and frightened-looking mirran shapes usher the outers inside. The Chengdu .
She turned back to see the army approaching the city walls, that dragon still cruising the skies above, hunting for Isavel. They were losing fast, and they still needed one more shuttle trip.
She stood up and called up a communicator sigil. Zhilik stared at her. “Ada, what are you doing?”
“It’s time to bring out the big guns.” Through the communicator sigil she felt around the city, quickly finding the Chengdu ’s implacable, cold, solid mental presence. S he whispered under her breath. “Isavel I know you can handle this, but please, please be able to handle this.”
Chapter 17
One wrong step and the meadows outside Campus burst into a warzone. Eerily human-shaped metal rose from behind rocks and bushes, stepped out from behind solitary oaks. They raised their arms and unleashed glittering shots at anything that moved; Isavel watched dozens of pathfinders cut down in seconds, wounded or dead, and the rest turned to flee.
She shouted down into the tank at Zoa. “Golems up ahead! Shoot!”
“You think?”
Zoa’s response was acidic, so Isavel decided to leave her alone, firing down into the fields with both palms instead. For how long could she count on the tank’s shield to keep her safe? The golems struck out indiscriminately at anything that breached whatever their conjured minds apprehended, and the army’s advance shuddered. She grumbled under her breath. If she wanted to protect people, she’d have to destroy these things.
“Damn it, Ada, couldn’t you have warned me?”
A horse rode up on the ground behind her, the animal passing a bit nervously through the tank’s bubble shield, and she turned to find Dendre Han shouting at her. “What the hell is going on here?”
Wasn’t it obvious? “Golems!”
“No ghosts?”
“Dendre does it really matter at this point? They can shoot!”
The tank teetered as it fired back, cannons tearing apart the perfectly nice meadow as they probed for targets. The Bulwark turned and rode back to the tensely hesitant crowd of the army proper, and in moments Isavel saw the first warriors rushing forward, shields up and ready. Anger and panic flashed through her spine; with this little caution, with the defenders having so little breathing room, more people were bound to get killed. She knew Ada wasn’t as concerned with human life as she was - if Ada did something drastic, things could get ugly.
She saw the alien ship slowly rising to the sky, and she thought she heard some kind of cry rise up from within the city. She opened her palms and fired into the golem field, but suddenly Zoa was screaming.
“Isavel in the shield there’s two in the -”
Isavel barely dodged red-hot weaponfire from a golem already crawling up the side of the tank. She swung over and stabbed with a light blade, down through the middle of the golem’s false skull, and kicked it off the tank even as it wailed. “This is a restricted area!”
She turned to the other golem and blasted its head right off. “Zoa! We’re clear!”
“Keep them off me damn it!”
Warriors from the army were passing between the tanks, cutting into the field to fight the golems head-on. Humans were not as coldly efficient in their movements, but there were only so many golems here, and once they were out of the way -
“Incoming!”
Hunters and weapons from the city started responding to their advance, striking down a few unwary warriors and pouring light into the tanks’ shields. Isavel balanced on the tank’s head as it swivelled towards the city and started firing back.
“We’re going too fast.” She glowed brighter, hoping Ada could see her wings. “Zoa, don’t shoot!”
“Why the hell not?”
“We’re doing this too fast, they’re going to hit back hard!”
Zoa didn’t stop shooting. “They’re a bunch of ghosts and aliens behind a wall, how hard can they -”
“Godfire!”
What?
That horrified scream came from somewhere behind her but wrenched Isavel’s gaze towards the sky. Godfire, smiting whoever had displeased the gods, often in unknowable ways. Godfire, thunderously changing the course of a thousand tales. Godfire - a pure legend with no basis in fact, as far as she was concerned.
And yet a lance of legend snapped down at them from the heavens, a shard of the sky’s blue cracked off and flung like glass to the Earth. It landed with a heavy thump almost directly on top of the tank furthest from Isavel. The bright explosion swallowed the vehicle and dozens of people right around it, deafeningly churning them into a fountain of blue fire and black ash. Everybody on that side of the field scattered, mouths open and screams lost to thunder. Isavel’s eyes widened.
Godfire.
The fury of the gods made manifest, and directed at her people.
The sight of it hollowed her out, and yet… the godfire was directed as far as possible from her .
What did the gods want with her? Had Ada pleaded on her behalf that they spare her? Was this some kind of warning? If the gods wanted her to protect the city, why were they shooting its people?
“Isavel? What the hell just happened?”
She leaned into the hatch. “We just got hit by godfire.”
“Godfire? Please tell me you didn’t just say -”
“Get away from the other tanks! And keep firing, I’ll cover you!”
“Is Ren okay?”
Ren was piloting the tank next to theirs, which seemed to be entirely unharmed. “He’s fine! Don’t worry, I’ll cover him!”
A mechanical voice broke through the din of weapons. “I am authorized to use lethal force -”
Isavel jumped off the side of the tank and shielded her feet, letting them crunch the golem into the ground. She let the wings go - the gods themselves apparently knew where she was. She would have to trust that would be enough. She charged forward, blasts rippling and singing off her shield as she went, crushing one golem’s skull in a brilliant dragon’s claw, blasting another aside. If she could keep them from killing her people long enough -
Something black in the distance drew her attention. Someone had stepped outside the city walls, darkness clinging to them in an unnatural haze. Who in their right mind would be stepping outside the city walls at a time like this?
Suddenly, even as Zoa’s tank rotated towards the distant shape, a
chain of dark lightning crackled across the field towards the furthest remaining tank. Dark code. Ada. Whatever she did to the vehicle almost immediately wrent it apart, wringing it like a wet rag as the metal screamed and silver shreds scattered across the field.
Zoa’s guns were aimed straight at Ada.
“Zoa wait!”
The tankshot zipped out and impacted the city walls, splinters of a second after something around Ada flashed. Was that a shield? Had Ada survived? Isavel’s heart kicked up a notch, wishing she hadn’t known Ada was even there. Ada would survive anything.
Deep breaths.
Isavel couldn’t account for herself at a distance like this. She hopped off the tank and rushed over to the broken remains of the dark code’s attack, but found only bloody evidence of the pilot’s fate. Damn it. She needed to stall the army completely somehow - but how?
She heard the hiss of a golem’s attack even as it launched and brought her wings up. There were too many of these damned things. She felt the shudder as the shot slammed into hard light on her back, and spun around palms open to fire back into the golem’s metal frame.
Suddenly there was a cavalry charge, horses rushing past the tanks to try and take the field from the golems. She shouted out impotently as they galloped past.
“Stop pushing!”
She turned towards the heart of the army. She had to stop this - or get someone else too. Where was Dendre? She jogged off towards a stable point in the advancing force, yelling at everyone she passed as she went.
“Hold the line! Don’t advance! Hold the line!”
Heavy weapons fire starting bursting from the city, and she heard an animal roar in the distance. It was an otherworldly roar, cavernous and clawed, and she knew she wanted to stay away from whatever mouth it had rolled from. Gods, what now?
She found Dendre Han standing on a hauler, his horse apparently gone. The Bulwark had some kind of ancient artifact held up to his eyes, and next to him a hunter manned a large gun on a tripod, firing apparently indiscriminately into the city. Despite the artifact, Dendre saw her approach.
Second Contact Page 25
