Riff leaned forward. "What's that?"
Steel's cheeks turned crimson now. "I said I even tried to play your guitar as a boy. To be like you. Never could master the damn thing."
Riff's eyes nearly popped out. "You . . . played my guitar? So that's why it was always out of tune!"
"Don't tell the demon," Steel grumbled.
"I won't," Riff swore.
"Me neither!" said Romy. "My lips are sealed."
The brothers spun around to see the demon standing behind them, holding her teddy with one hand and waving with the other.
Steel groaned.
"Can you play me a tune?" Romy said. "Oh please, Steel!" She pulled a banjo out from behind her back and held it out to him. "Play me something! Play me play me play me. Serenade me!"
"Go away!" Steel rumbled.
Romy thrust the banjo into the knight's arms, beat her wings, and rose to the ceiling. "Pretend that I'm a beautiful maiden on a balcony." She batted her eyelashes. "I'm waiting, Don Juan."
"More like Don Quixote," Riff muttered. He took the banjo from his brother. "Come, Romy. Sit down. I'll play for you."
She flew down and sat in one of the suede seats—the same seat, Riff noticed with a wince, that Nova used to sit in. Steel took another seat.
Riff stood before them, and he began to play "Moonshine Blues" by Bootstrap and the Shoeshine Kid, one of their saddest songs, one of the songs that had been with Riff his whole life. And he felt a little bit like home. And he felt a little bit of hope.
Some people say the blues is about sadness, but they're wrong, he thought. The blues is about feeling better when things are sad.
As he played, Twig tiptoed into the bridge, wonder in her eyes. The "Chief Mechanic" badge Piston had given her shone proudly on her chest. She sat cross-legged on the floor and stared up, listening.
We still have music. We still have life. We still have some fight in us.
The music played. The battered fleet flew onward.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:
CLOCKWORK WORLD
Battered, bruised, and broken, the ashai armada limped along the last light-year of their journey and beheld the star of Achernar ahead.
Most stars in hyperspace stretched into lines and blurs of color, but with Achernar their fixed point of reference, the star appeared solid as if shining in normal spacetime. It was a huge star, several times the size of Earth's Sol or Ashmar's Sirius. Unlike the stars Nova had always known, Achernar was bright blue, not white or yellow, nor was it round. The massive star, spinning madly, had flattened itself into the shape of a football. There was something chilling, something wrong about a star this size, this color, this shape, something that made cold sweat trickle down Nova's back.
We're only moments away. She inhaled sharply and dug her fingernails into her palms. Moments away from the Singularity, perhaps the most evil, powerful force in the cosmos.
Nova was a warrior. A gladiator. A princess. The leader of an armada. The heiress to an empire. Yet now, flying here toward that flattened blue star, she was afraid.
"Do I see sweat on your brow, sister?" Senka approached her, eyes narrowed. His lips peeled back in a mocking smile. "Are you afraid?"
"The wise are always afraid before battle." She stared at him, eyes narrowed. "Only fools have no fear."
He scoffed. "The battle is here. Soon we'll see who's the fool." He spat at her feet and marched off the bridge.
"Might want to see a doctor about all that phlegm!" she called after him.
She shook her head sadly and looked back outside into hyperspace. Achernar was closer now, a colossal football of blue light blazing ahead. Around the Bronze Blade flew the other spacecraft carriers that had survived the battle with the Singularity's urchins. Four other starstrikers flew here, their hulls dented, one ship ripped right open. On their backs, they carried their remaining scorpion jets.
We left home with five thousand scorpions, she thought. Now barely two thousand remain. She gritted her teeth, the terror rising in her. Not enough. Not enough.
She looked higher up. Floating above the starstrikers, small as a dove flying over lumbering whales, shone the Dragon Huntress. Nova's eyes stung. When she had first seen that ship, she had thought it a piece of junk. She had mocked it, had raged at finding herself flying within it. Yet now that ship was home. Now, Nova would have given up her empire just to step in there again—to play counter-squares with Twig and Romy, to feed the goldfish in its bowl, to talk about swords and guns with Steel, to make love to Riff.
Does my home lie upon the red plains of Ashmar or there inside that dragon?
She raised her chin, steeling herself.
If I fail today, there will be no Ashmar. There will be no Dragon Huntress. So I must not fail. Even with this broken fleet, this shattered blade, I will fight. Until my last breath.
One of her officers approached her, a lanky man with small green eyes. "Commander, we're nearing our destination. We'll emerge from hyperspace in ten minutes. It will bring us within a hundred thousand kilometers of the planet, Commander."
Nova sucked in breath.
The moment is here. The great battle of my life.
She nodded. "Take command of the bridge, Shen. Bring us out. Fly true. Fly brave. Like the scorpion's stinger, we will strike." She pounded her fist against her chest. "For fire and venom!"
The officer raised his chin, slammed his own fist against his heart, and repeated the cry of their people. "For fire and venom!"
Nova spoke into her communicator, and her voice boomed out of the fleet's speakers, filling the starstrikers.
"Sons and daughters of Ashmar! War is upon us. A great battle of blood, of red fire, of victory. All pilots—report to your scorpions. Fly with me. Fly to war! Fly to victory! Fly for Ashmar and life!"
They ran through the ship. They ran through shattered, dented corridors. Nova climbed into her scorpion jet and rose off the back of her starstriker, and around her, over two thousand other scorpions rose. They arranged themselves in battle formations, engines blasting out fire, flying several kilometers over the massive starstrikers. The lights of hyperspace streamed around them, and the blue star blazed ahead.
"Welcome to your death, sister." The voice rose through the speakers in her helmet. "I'll enjoy seeing your scorpion crushed."
She turned her head, stared out of her cockpit, and saw her brother flying to her right. Senka had painted a red tower, sigil of House Tashei, onto the hull of his scorpion jet. His eyes blazed as he stared at her, and the speakers died as he severed communications.
Nova raised her head and looked above her. The Dragon Huntress flew there, several times the size of the scorpion jets, its fire ready to blow.
Nova hit her communicator, hailing the Dragon Huntress, and for the first time since leaving Planet Ashmar, she heard his voice.
"Nova? Nova, is that you?"
The starstrikers below began cooling off their hyperspace engines. The streams of light alongside began to shorten. Spacetime was straightening. Within heartbeats, they would be flying in regular space again.
"Riff," she said, tears in her eyes. "Riff, it's me. Remember, we must reach the hub. I expect resistance. My scorpions will carve you a way there. Fly straight to the hub, Riff! Fly and blast it full of dragonfire. I've got your back."
For the briefest of moments, silence. Then he spoke again. "We head to the hub. Good luck, Nova."
The star ahead washed her with blue light. The curves of spacetime smoothed out. The streams of light slammed into solid stars in the distance.
With pulsing flashes of light, one by one, the armada's ships—five starstrikers, two thousand scorpions, and one dragon—emerged from hyperspace.
And there ahead it loomed—Planet Antikythera, home of the Singularity.
"Red Gods," Nova whispered.
This was the place. This had to be the place. Yet before her Nova saw no planet—at least, not a planet of rock, water, or gas. Here was a great, ro
und machine the size of a world. The entire planet, thrice the size of Ashmar or Earth, was coated in metal. Towers soared from its surface, spikes that rose hundreds of kilometers tall. Canyons of shadows and strobe lights spread in great canals. Gears spun on the surface, the size of cities. Hammers rose and fell, so large they could crush mountains. Computer chips the size of starstrikers rose upon sheets of metal, blinking, moving, thinking, staring.
It was a planet coated with machinery. A massive computer thousands of kilometers wide.
It was the Singularity—shining, spinning, thinking, building, evolving before her eyes.
And there upon its surface gaped a pit, dark as the mouth of a corpse, an ancient crater digging into the planet, surrounded by metal shards and cannons and countless gears.
The hub.
"Do you see it, Riff?" Nova said.
His voice rose through the speakers. "What, a giant computer the size of Jupiter ready to devour my soul? No, haven't noticed."
Nova groaned and wiped sweat off her brow. "The chasm." She pointed as if, even on the bridge of the Dragon Huntress above her, he could see her pointing. "That's what the tuloys described. The hub. A tunnel leading to the central brain. That's what we must blast."
"A good dose of dragonfire should do the trick. Fly with me."
They flew onward. The Dragon Huntress. Nova in her scorpion jet, two thousand other scorpions around her. The massive starstrikers below, warships the size of cities, their guns aimed at the planet.
They flew in silence.
"Where are you, you bastards?" Nova whispered. "Where are your urchins, your drones, your warships?"
The armada kept flying closer, soon only fifty thousand kilometers away. The planet loomed ahead. The gears spun, their teeth larger than the greatest of starstrikers. The canyons spread out, a labyrinth of metal. The computer chips, each as large as a city, blinked and flashed. Great lights blazed upon this mechanical surface like the eyes of cats, staring at her approach, staring into her soul.
"Nova . . ."
She cried out in pain. The scar on her thigh blazed with pain—the scar the machine had given her in her childhood. Again that memory filled her—the Singularity attacking her fifteen years ago, cutting her, trying to kill her while she was weak. But she had defeated it then. She would defeat it now.
She sucked in breath. "No. No!"
From her speakers rose the screams of her fellow pilots—they cried out in pain, in memory. When Nova stared around her, she saw a few pilots vanish from their cockpits—slain in their childhoods? Their scorpion jets whizzed out of control, crashing into one another, exploding in space.
It's a new memory, she realized. A memory she had never had before.
"The bastard's hitting us in our past!" she shouted into her communicator. "Fly! Faster! Destroy it!"
Those white, narrow eyes blazed on the mechanical planet. The screams in the speakers were cut off. The Singularity's voice rose instead, cackling, mocking her.
"Come to me, Nova. Come to die, precious child. Come to scream."
On the planet's surface, the hub—that pit of blackness—seemed to whirl with shadows as if the words came from there. Nova tore her helmet off her head, silencing the damn voice. She growled. She shoved her throttle, flying faster. Her engines blazed with fury, roaring out fire, propelling her forward at many times the speed of sound. Her fleet flew around her. The Dragon Huntress shot overhead, engines blazing out pillars of flame.
"For life," Nova whispered.
Thousands of jets charged toward the massive computer and fired their guns.
Photons blasted from thousands of scorpion stingers. Dragonfire roared out of the Dragon Huntress. The starstrikers below fired their guns, propelling house-sized shards of steel toward the planet ahead.
From that planet's surface, like shrapnel from a grenade, soared countless drones.
The small, flying robots crashed into the hurtling fire, absorbing the blows. The photon blasts slammed into whirring disks of metal. The dragonfire crashed into lumbering, melting drones. The starstrikers hit nothing but the flying hunks of metal.
When the fire died down, the planet's surface—the great face of the Singularity—was untouched. Not a scar, pockmark, or burn marred the gears and chips of the planet-sized computer.
"Oh Red Gods of Ashmar," Nova whispered.
And then, with blasts of fire and blazes of light and a million moving pieces, the warships of the Singularity rose from its canyons and charged toward her.
Nova screamed.
She yanked her joystick.
She fired her guns as the sky exploded.
There were thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. Jagged urchins of iron, their blades ready to impale the scorpions like skewers. Great whirring blades, larger than men, spinning toward her. Black metal vultures, red eyes gleaming, beaks opening to breathe dark fire. Mechanical octopuses, their metal tentacles firing lasers, their mouths opening to reveal teeth of metal. It was an army of machines, an army of malice, an army to shatter Nova and her fleet—to spread across the stars and crush all life.
We lost, Nova knew. We will die here. The cosmos will die.
She howled in rage and fired her guns.
Then I will die taking a few of those bastards with me.
Her scorpion's weapons blasted, shattering an enemy ship. Her fellow scorpions flew around her, rising and dipping, firing their guns. The enemy ships swarmed across them, and all Nova saw was metal, light, blood, and fire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:
ROLLING STONES
"Oh shenanigans," Riff whispered, staring in shock as countless Singularity ships flew his way.
Death.
I'm staring at death.
The surface of the mechanical planet sprawled below, a field of endless gears and wires and chips, and its soldiers stormed forth, ships of jagged spikes, of whirring blades, of burning eyes, of hatred, of laughter.
"Die, life!" Giga cried from deep in the Dragon Huntress, her voice filling the ship. "Come to me, my comrades! Come and slay the living."
Riff allowed himself only that single moment of terror.
Then he inhaled sharply and thrust down the throttle. The Dragon Huntress roared forth to meet the enemy.
"For Sol!" Steel shouted at Riff's side. The knight pressed down on the controls, blasting plasma out of the dragon's mouth.
The inferno stormed forward, a great stream of light and heat, and slammed into a mechanical vulture ahead. The enemy ship exploded, peppering the Dragon Huntress with metal shards. The starship rocked. Riff nearly fell from his seat.
More enemy vessels flew everywhere, thick as hail. Riff kept tugging the joystick from side to side, flying every which way, trying to reach the hub, knowing he could not.
"Nova!" he shouted into his communicator. "Nova, damn it, they're everywhere. Where are you?"
"Keep flying!" Her voice rose through the speakers, staticky. "Keep burning them down."
"Keep giving me room!"
A streak of gold overshot the Dragon Huntress. A scorpion blasted down—Nova's jet—and its stinger shot out light, shattering several enemy drones. A dozen other scorpions charged around the Dragon Huntress, firing their venom. Hundreds more of the slick, golden vessels flew all around, rising, falling, firing their guns, crashing down.
The enemy was everywhere. More robotic ships kept rising from the planet. With every turn of the gears below, the Singularity vessels rose from hidden chambers, blasting toward the attacking fleet. Fire lit the darkness as a scorpion shattered only meters away from the Dragon Huntress, raining shards of metal. A blast of enemy fire crashed into another scorpion ahead, and the golden vessel crashed down toward the clockwork planet. Explosions kept lighting the darkness—scorpion after scorpion shattering, streaking down like comets. Fire blasted up, showering out chunks of metal, as an entire starstriker listed, burst apart, then dived down with streams of flame toward the planet.
"Keep fi
ring that plasma!" Riff cried, dodging a jagged urchin. One of its spikes slammed into the Dragon Huntress's wing, nearly knocking the ship into a tailspin.
Standing at Riff's side, Steel fired the weapons again, but the dragonfire was weaker now, coughing out short blasts rather than a raging inferno.
"Twig, we need more power!" Riff said into his communicator.
The halfling, down in the engine room, cried through the speakers, "I'm giving her all she's got, Captain! We can't take much more of this. One wing shattered, sir, and fuel draining fast!"
"Keep us in the sky, Twig!" Riff shouted back, tugged the controls, and soared over a whirring saucer.
Nova flew at his side, firing her stinger, but every moment, another scorpion died, and the corpses of ashais floated through space until gravity grabbed them, tugging them down toward the waiting computer.
Giga laughed in the bowels of the starship, her voice impossibly deep, impossibly loud. She spoke only one word, repeating it over and over like a chant, a word that thrummed through the very walls of the ship as if the Dragon Huntress herself were speaking it.
"Die. Die. Die."
* * * * *
Romy raced down the corridor, the central vein of the Dragon Huntress, and so much fear filled her that she could barely breathe.
Through the portholes she could see it—the battle. The horrible battle. Death. Destruction. Countless robot ships killing everything in sight.
"I have to save him," she whispered as she ran. "I have to save Frank. He's only a baby spider. He's probably so scared."
As she passed by Giga's chamber, she heard the android laughing within, but Romy just kept running. She burst onto the main deck, flapped her wings, and rose to the hatch in the ceiling. The ship swayed around her, thudding as blasts hit its hull, and Romy climbed into the attic.
"Frank!" she said. "Frank, it's all right. Don't be scared. I'm here to protect you."
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