The people he had brought here wouldn’t only see that they could fight. They would see who would fight with them.
Yes, come. The new Aalim drove all three of them upward, darting among the fighters. Where an aim was unsteady, they centered it. Where will faltered, they lent their strength. Where reflexes weren’t fast enough, they curled their hands around the strands of time itself and slowed the spool. This, too, was a skill an Aalim possessed. And yet never before like this. This was new. This was a kind of birth, the blooming of something that had been closed too tightly for too long.
They lunged back down toward the surface of Peris, to where the fighters met in midair. Together the ships ducked and wheeled and tumbled, setting the air ablaze with the sheer force and number of their guns. Far below, a white wave was being driven back. All of it might be happening, or might only be possible, or might only be a dream. But carried and led by the others, Adam slipped into a dance that was pure instinct.
He had always known how to do this. Everyone did, even if they had forgotten. He had been waiting to do this since he had first emerged from the maelstrom at the moment of his birth.
Now, at last, he was free.
Lochlan was at the edge of the wood when he heard the fighters.
He froze, remaining under cover, staring up. He could hardly see them, little pale stars gleaming in the morning sun, deceptively pretty as they lunged toward the ground. How many were there? He had no idea. But in front of him, the peacekeepers were starting to push back against the wave of people that had them surrounded, starting to run for the other end of the valley, and now he understood why. He caught sight of Rachel and waved his arms.
“We have to get back into cover!”
“Fuck, I know!” She looked up, then around at the people nearest her. All of them were motionless, heads raised, some of them bleeding and some not, but every one fixated on the sky. “Have you seen Aarons?”
“A while ago. No idea where he went.” He stared across the meadow, to where Kyle and Eva must be—if they were alive. Could they see? Would they know to run? There wasn’t any fighting back against this.
There had never been any winning.
Adam.
Then the fighters bellowed above them, and the firing began.
If before had been chaos, what happened next was sheer madness. As one, everyone rushed back to the cover of the trees, away from the strafing fighters. Grass and dirt flew upward in explosions, people screamed and fell into the dirt, flailing as their bodies were torn apart. A few fell, tried to get up again, but were too late. Lochlan had a last glimpse of the people on the opposite side of the meadow, scrambling for the ridge—but he knew they wouldn’t be fast enough.
Cursing, he almost tripped over someone, then righted himself and dragged them to their feet. He was mildly surprised to see that it was Aarons, bleeding freely from a graze on his upper arm but alive.
“This is turning into quite a party.”
Lochlan only let out a thin laugh, hurrying on and trusting Aarons to follow. Overhead, more fighters were skimming low over the treetops, and he and Aarons were surrounded with falling branches and leaves as they began to tear the canopy apart.
“We’ll hit the other side soon,” Aarons grunted. “It’s only more meadow after that.”
“Yeah.” Lochlan skidded to a halt. Suddenly it all seemed so pointless. There was nowhere to run. He had hoped, but he shouldn’t have. Adam claimed a higher guidance, but here they were about to be slaughtered, and here he was, the superstitious Bideshi, and he simply didn’t believe anymore.
Aarons stopped beside him, grabbed his arm. “The fuck’re you doing? We move or we die!”
“We die anyway.” Lochlan stared up at the white streaks across the sky. “I shouldn’t have left him. We should have stayed together.” He laughed. “I was actually going to marry him. You believe it? How stupid is that? I was going to marry him, and now look.”
“You’re outta your damn fool mind.” Aarons yanked on his arm so hard that Lochlan was almost pulled off his feet. “I’ll argue fatalism with you later. Move.”
Lochlan whirled, gave him a shove. “You go. Fucking go if it’s that important to you. I’m tired, all right? We’re dying in the fucking dirt for no reason at all, and I can’t—”
Pain lanced up and down his side in a bright spiderweb—the bruised side—and he faltered. Speechless, confused, he pressed a hand to the site of the pain and felt something warm and sticky.
Blood.
Aarons cried out and wheeled, and Lochlan staggered around after him. Nothing was making sense, now. The pain, the buzz of the fighters, and the peacekeeper standing in front of him, blast shield up and rifle still aimed.
“Don’t—” he started, and Aarons shot the peacekeeper in the chest, in the head, and he fell backward, dropped his rifle, blood staining the dirt and the moss.
And lay still.
Lochlan stumbled to one knee, and then Aarons was at his side, trying to pull him up. “You stupid fucking Bideshi.” Aarons spat the last word like an insult. “You’re going to make me explain this to Yuga? You’re going to do that to me, you selfish asshole?”
“I’m not,” Lochlan murmured. The blood might be slowing. Maybe. He couldn’t tell how deep the wound was, only that it hurt, and it was the bullet that should have pierced him back at the camp, finding him at last. Adam. Even if this ended, he needed to go to him. Hold him until it all came crashing down. It always should have been that way, on the Plain, here. “Aarons … help me, please—”
He stopped. Something cut through the roaring in his head, something new, both over and under the shriek of the fighters.
That sound.
It wasn’t the fighters. He thought it was, at first, but it couldn’t be. By now he knew the sound of the Protectorate ships, that awful screeching whine, but this was a deep roar; a noise that was bizarrely and deeply comforting.
Something familiar.
He stumbled up and back, gazing through the gaps in the canopy, ignoring whatever Aarons was saying. It couldn’t be. It fucking couldn’t be.
A small ship flew by, very low, so fast that it should have been a blur, but somehow its image was frozen before him, the beloved shape of it, the way it was at once clumsy and sleek, mismatched and harmonious, like the ship from which it came. The marking on its side, the twisting characters. The name.
“Kae!” He lifted his hands and screamed that name, the pain fading to unimportance. It was insane, he was insane, and he never wanted to be sane again. “Kae, you glorious fucking bastard!”
“Ma’am, we’re under attack.”
Alkor pushed herself up from the floor. She, like Sinder, had fallen when the ship rocked with three hard, fast impacts, and all around the bridge lights flared before they stabilized. “You don’t say,” she growled, and she didn’t even sound surprised. “Who the fuck is it? Give me a damned visual.”
“It’s a large ship. It’s— Oh. Oh no.” The view on the main screen shifted, snapped into focus away from the planet, and Sinder sank backward, grateful that the seat was there to catch him.
The ship filled the screen. It was a mass of pieces, a patchwork of a thousand different smaller components, all welded together into a single massive hulk of a thing, rust-colored and somehow vaguely iridescent. It was immense, fantastically ugly, monstrous, an obscenity that flew in the face of every orderly aesthetic convention. It hurt to look at it.
It hurt to know what it meant.
“It’s—”
“Bideshi,” Alkor snapped. “I can tell. But homeships don’t carry guns.”
“They do carry fighters in large numbers,” Sinder said quietly. “The defensive ones. Which, I imagine, this is.”
“They’re making another pass.” The ship rocked again, though not as badly as before; Sinder gripped onto the sides of his chair and willed his nausea to subside. “The Vanguard and the Superior are both reporting damage. Some of it serious. If th
is goes on much longer …”
“Return fire. Now.”
It was like a dance. He thought of that first time dancing in the High Fields with Lochlan, whirling and strangely joyful, pulling that joy from months of terror and pain. The terror of feeling the joy at all. Adam swept and spun between the fighters and the firing, which were like bursts of light and color that were somehow lovely, like new flowers on a white field.
Good, he heard, and he couldn’t tell which of them it was. Perhaps it was both. He was grateful to them—teachers, helpers, placing him exactly where he was supposed to be. It comes, all together in harmony. In the dance, child. In the—
There was one in a fighter, one he knew. A soul he had touched. He stretched himself toward it without thinking—and just as he did, its side exploded in flame. This was like before, as well: crammed into the gun turret with Kae hurt below, and the helplessness and the rage that came with it.
Now Kae’s fighter was spinning out of control, stabilizer charred and sheared away. He tumbled toward one of the white Protectorate ships, and as Adam penetrated the hull, pushing in, he could feel the man’s fear. He could also feel time, its delicate threads. He could just see the tapestry of it, the way in which it was emergent in a chaotic quantum sea, parts of it coming into being and vanishing again, a beautiful riot of possibility. Everything happened everywhere. So things could change.
He felt the shattered body of the ship and flooded himself into those cracks. At the same time, he extended himself back, crying to the others. Help. I can’t do it alone. Help me.
They came, and everything moved. Footage of a disaster in fast reverse. Tiny fires unburning themselves. Torn wiring knitting itself together. All bodies were bodies, all bodies were the same, and as Kae’s ship healed itself and Kae’s and the gunner’s terror turned to confusion, Adam was flooded with joy at a new truth discovered.
Healing was healing. There was no limit to it.
Now, he whispered—to Kae, to the other two with him, to all the birds of Ashwina. Now, together, we fight.
He merely had to be there, be the link. Abruptly he sensed every single one of them, their lines and their orbits inextricably joined, as they always had been. They were separate parts of a whole, but they could move as one smooth organism, like Ashwina herself. Chaotic and beautiful and alive.
Kae’s ship joined the dance and knocked the Protectorate fighter out of the sky with two hard blasts. The fighter twirled like a falling leaf and burst into a brief ball of flame and debris. Death. But he could grieve it later. He was accepting it, beginning to. If he could have escaped it, that would have been wonderful, but it would also have been a fairy tale.
Child, there is no life absent death. There is no birth absent violence.
As one, the fighters of Ashwina pushed forward, through the tiny shards of Protectorate firepower, and—ignoring them—hurled blast after blast at the great ships themselves.
And everything began to break.
“Captain, it’s getting worse out there. It’s … We’re sending everything we have at them, but they’re dodging around it like it’s not even there. It’s impossible.”
Another officer spoke up, voice shaking. “We’re getting a few of them, but there’s a lot, and their flying is … It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Ma’am.” She swiveled her seat around. “Please forgive me for speaking freely, but I don’t think we can stay here much—”
Alkor held up her hands. The bridge fell silent.
“Sinder,” she murmured, and turned to him.
He stared up at her, and he knew what she was going to say. He knew it, and his heart reared up at it, enraged. He was so close. They were so close. Adam Yuga was in reach, and all they had to do was last long enough to find him, catch him, kill him, end this whole wretched nightmare. He sent every remaining fragment of his will to her, to make her not say it. To not do this to him. Because if she did, there would be no gainsaying it. Not now.
And a smaller, more rational part of him knew that she was right. She had been ready for this to be over for a long time. She had been with him in it until the end, but that didn’t mean just any end.
He wasn’t going to be Melissa Cosaire. He wasn’t going to pull the whole world screaming down with him. Not when this wasn’t over. Not when there would be other chances; he could feel it. Slowly, painfully, he closed his eyes and nodded. If he had to fight his way back here with bare hands and a broken body, he would see that it wasn’t the last. Given everything else, he was confident that it wouldn’t be long until he found them again. Not long at all. He would be given everything he needed to end this properly.
Melissa Cosaire had given up. And he was not Melissa Cosaire. He knew when to pull back; he would know when to return.
“Go.”
“Sir, they’re pulling their fighters back.” The young man who had been taking the lead in communications sounded excited, half-unbelieving, his voice strong but trembling at the edges. He would remember the Plain, how badly that had gone. He would understand how different this was. “We’re getting reports from our people near the surface that the transports are lifting off as well.”
Adisa sat back and let out a huge breath. Nkiruka was aware of this distantly as she slowly returned to herself. It was like waking up from a long sleep, except she was so tired. Almost too tired to move.
“Good,” he said. “Give them a chance to get their people out. Don’t pursue. I’m not interested in a massacre.”
She smiled. Wise Adisa. He had never been much for vengeance. He wouldn’t be now. She felt him glance in her direction, and knew that he saw her smile and took a degree of pleasure in it.
In some ways he was like a father to her, even if she had taken the mantle of Old Mother. In some ways.
“Recall the fighters?”
Adisa paused. “The ones still above the planet, yes. The ones closer to the surface … Order a contingent of volunteers to land and remain there until we can send proper landing parties. Tell Ying to gather some of her fellows and make herself ready for that. They’ll have wounded. In the meantime, we need to ascertain their status.”
“Kae’s wing was taking the lead there. I’ll tell him to pick a few of his people and set down.”
“Good.” Nkiruka lifted her head. Incredulity and exhilaration pulsed through her, not coming from her but as much hers as anyone’s. “I think there’s more than one person who will be most pleased to see him.”
Things continued to wind down. They had lost fighters, and on the surface of the planet there were doubtless plenty of casualties, but this felt dizzyingly unlike the Battle of the Plain. People were congratulating each other, exchanging words of relief and even pride. No Bideshi fighter on the ship was in doubt of their skills, but the fact remained: they had taken on an armed Protectorate recon fleet and beaten them back. Won.
Except.
“Now it begins,” Nkiruka said to Adisa when they managed to find a relatively undisturbed moment at the far end of the chamber. She sighed. “I wonder how many of them realize it.”
“Some. Not all. But you did well.” He laid his hands on her shoulders, and for a moment she thought he might be about to embrace her, but instead he only gave her a friendly squeeze and released her again.
He would want to maintain certain formalities. Even now. She would remind him too much of Ixchel.
“I did what I could.” She felt Ashwina moving around her, felt the curve of the chamber under its golden, spherical sunlamps. “I did what I had to do.” She paused. “I’ll be going down with the landing parties. There’s someone down there I have to see.”
“You’ll want to meet Adam, of course.”
“Yes. But not only him.” She folded her hands, and thought of that old hand in hers, the brief and complete peace she had known as she filled a space too long empty. “There’s someone else. And I don’t think she has much time left.”
Adam didn’t remember pushing his way out the d
oor. He didn’t remember running down the hill onto the meadow, didn’t remember stumbling over the wounded and a few of the dead. He didn’t remember the friendly roar of the ships and the quieter growl as they descended, and he didn’t remember the cheering of exhausted people as they gathered, lifted their hands, waved their guns, wept.
Much later, he vaguely remembered Eva running into his arms—though she was limping—and Kyle doing the same, pulling him into a bear hug as if years had passed since they were last together. He remembered Aarons and Rachel supporting each other as they approached, Aarons opening his scarred mouth to say something, and Rachel framing his face with her hands, his scars as well as his unmarked skin, and kissing him, and this was not really so surprising.
Later he remembered some of these things. He didn’t remember most of them. What he remembered, as he stumbled into the midst of them, was a tall man with tattooed brown skin and dreadlocks adorned with garish beads, blood staining his right side, staggering toward the dark-haired man who was just climbing down from the landed Bideshi fighter and embracing him so hard and so completely that they both almost fell.
He didn’t have any qualms about breaking that embrace by joining it. He reached them both, stopped and stared, and then he didn’t have to speak anymore, because somehow Kae was hugging him and Lochlan was kissing him, both at once, and untangling it all didn’t matter.
It had come full circle. Full orbit. They were still flying.
It was enough.
They found Lakshmi on the floor of her house where Adam had left her in the last of his trance, Skitss bent over her. He looked up when they entered, and his features were so twisted with grief and betrayal that Adam almost turned around and walked outside again. He felt fragile. Like this last contact might be too much.
But he owed her this.
Fall and Rising Page 34
