Prodigal (Maelstrom Chronicles)

by Jody Wallace

  The few remaining items in the wide bay careened past him into space. One glanced off his arm. Thank God there were no shuttles left, because that would have hurt.

  Sweating inside his protective suit, heart racing, he watched the darkness outside Ship’s hull grow blacker and blacker.

  More and more ominous.

  The items swept into space simply…disappeared into that nothingness.

  The leviathan. It was here.

  The tension that had risen in him when Ship had admitted they weren’t going to reach to the sun wasn’t tension. It was his shade-alert—amplified. His skin prickled and ached so much that he felt like he’d blistered all over.

  Using his augmented strength, he dragged himself hand over hand along the tether to a wall. He untangled the snag and swiveled to eyeball the doors. Ship flashed its outer spotlights, the ones for guiding shuttles, and their gleam was instantly sucked up by the leviathan’s bulk.

  “The leviathan has made contact,” Ship announced. “It is attempting to engulf me. It does not function like a shade. Recording for data packet.”

  No shit. It was right outside the docking bay. Bulging. Roiling. Flowing around the vessel. The blue illumination from inside the bay did nothing to relieve its darkness. Unlike shades, its blackness contained a haze of colored lights so tiny he wasn’t sure he truly perceived it. It was more of a flutter he only saw when he didn’t focus on it. But it hurt his eyes to stare, so he squinted, wondering how long he should wait before he shucked his gloves.

  How long would his hands last once exposed? Would they freeze off and leave him with bloody stumps? What the hell was he thinking, trying to tackle the leviathan when the atmosphere wasn’t safe for his body?

  Except it appeared he wasn’t going to get the chance to try, unless he was willing to fling himself into space. The leviathan hadn’t oozed inside after him. Did it have no interest in a tiny sentient like him? Did he register? The shades had been uninterested in eating him, and the daemons were less attracted to him than other prey.

  “My sensors are not registering expected information,” Ship commented through his array. “It is almost as if the leviathan is negating the laws of physics. I do not understand the data.”

  If Ship didn’t understand it, who could? Adam worked with the gloves of the suit, ensuring the clasps would release easily. “Well, it is from another dimension. Record and send it anyway. Maybe somebody can make sense of it.”

  “I am fully enveloped by the leviathan now. This is not comfortable,” Ship observed. “I am experiencing what sentients would call pain, Adam.”

  He had no idea if that was normal. Had no idea what it meant. But they were too far from Terra, radios or no radios, to get advice from the people there. “What can I do? Is the leviathan at your matrix? Did it find a way through your hull already?”

  He could attack it there, instead of here, and not be at risk of exploding in a vacuum.

  “No, it is not inside me.” Ship’s voice sounded weaker. Quieter. “It appears it has no need to breach the hull. We have been wrong on a number of conjectures. I have forwarded all the information, including the nonsensical results. I hope it reaches Terra and my people.”

  The blue lights flickered as the leviathan tortured Ship. The bay doors began a slow, shuddering movement inward but halted about three-quarters of the way closed.

  As big as the doors were, that still left a damned wide gap.

  “Try evasive maneuvers.” Adam let go of the wall, working himself toward the doors. Toward the monster. “Shake it off.”

  “Acknowledged.” Ship’s vocal module stuttered. “Secure yourself.”

  “Oh, shit, I’m not secured.”

  Ship thunked and groaned all over and began quivering. Apparently there was enough gravity left that the pit of Adam’s stomach bottomed out when Ship did…something. It didn’t matter that spacewalking and astrophysics were as foreign to him as his past. He was going to have to exit those doors to attack the monster.

  It was his battle to lose.

  “Engines barely responsive,” Ship said faintly. “I think…we’re reversing course. It is hard to assess with my sensors malfunctioning. It is as if we are no longer in our dimension.”

  “Maybe the leviathan is dragging us to Terra to feed its babies.” Adam blew out a huge breath, took another one, and loosed his tether.

  He drifted toward the doors. Closer. Through.

  Outside, and into the leviathan.

  His sight and hearing instantly shut off. If only his sense of temperature and touch had followed. Incredible, intense cold immobilized him. He couldn’t wave his arms to take off his gloves.

  “Remove gloves,” he ordered through the array, in case it worked.

  He slammed into something huge. Ship’s hull. Again. Again. He bounced like a yoyo. If it kept this up it would destroy his oxygen pack. Then again, maybe it would tear his suit and he could have a couple seconds of contact with the leviathan before he croaked.

  Would that be enough to stop it from killing Ship and everyone on the planet?

  “We are traveling much faster than I could,” Ship whispered. He could only hear it because of his array; his ears whined with the menacing silence inside the leviathan. “The leviathan is negating the effect this should have on my structure.”

  “It’s playing with its food?”

  Ship didn’t acknowledge the humor. “I will attempt to protect you as long as possible within my hull. Bay doors closing.”

  “Wait, I’m outside, I can’t—”

  He slammed into the metal again, but it didn’t free him. Pressure increased from inside his body, as if someone was inflating him like a balloon. Adam shouted at Ship but couldn’t hear himself. Lights, bigger and more intense than the static inside the leviathan, flickered behind his eyelids. Were his eyes open? He couldn’t fucking tell.

  Slam! He collided with Ship’s hull once, twice, and suddenly hurtled backward, out of the leviathan.

  His body had slipped through the crack between the closing doors.

  Pain vibrated through him. His body convulsed. He faintly heard the bay doors slam, as his hearing returned, and he sensed the restored gravity and air.

  Shortly thereafter, he learned that puking inside a Shipborn skin suit was not recommended.

  Adam gagged. His nose was still functional. Too functional.

  “Rerouting power to life support in the docking bay,” Ship whispered.

  He couldn’t wipe his mouth in this damned helmet. Shaking, he fumbled at the headpiece and flung it aside.

  “Losing access to nonessential systems. Essentials next. I failed my people, Adam Alsing, but I will attempt to maintain your life long enough for you to triumph. You may remove your suit.”

  Well, the hat and its vomit were already gone. But he’d keep the suit. “What’s happening?”

  “You were correct. We are approaching Terra.” Ship’s framework juddered harshly, unlike their smooth liftoff. Adam stumbled to a wall and gripped the handholds to avoid being flung around. “Once we enter the atmosphere, the friction will slow us, but we are going to crash.”

  Ship wasn’t an asteroid, but Ship was really damn big. “What does that mean with you being the size you are?”

  “My impact will not destroy life on the planet.”

  “Will it destroy you?”

  It paused, long, longer. Adam worried it would never respond. Was it dead? Was it just a hunk of metal now? Was he alone out here? The minutes ticked by as the vessel rattled and heated up around him, as metal moaned and groaned and lights flashed.

  Finally, it answered.

  “I cannot reproduce,” it whispered. “I am not needed for preservation of species. Must preserve the Shipborn. Matrix powering down in ten…nine…eight…”

  “Wait. No, wait.” The matrix was what gave Ship its sentience. Powering it down seemed like a bad idea. “What will that do to you, my friend?”

  “I will cease t
o be.”

  “It’s suicide?” If he’d learned one thing about Ships, it was that they were really damned useful—and they deserved to live, too. “Don’t do that. Have faith.”

  “I will come down on land, instead of water.”

  “If water would help you, I can swim,” Adam insisted. This suit probably floated. He’d tackle the leviathan in the ocean.

  “Regained partial control of engines. Sensors…restored? Cannot be right. I haven’t actually lost any matrix viability…” Ship trailed off.

  “You haven’t lost your matrix? What’s going on?”

  “Redirecting. Landmass approaching. Too rapid. Trying to cushion…”

  He’d never heard a Ship scream, but the sound shattered his eardrums.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Will burst through Claire’s door as she was putting Frannie’s blocks away. She had just packed a bag to relocate to Niko and Sarah’s room; she and Sarah had decided Niko would behave better if Frannie was up in his business. He’d gone a bit mental with the stress of waiting.

  Sometimes you needed a reminder that there were more important things than suicide missions.

  “Dude, you don’t just slam open a door where a baby lives,” she fussed at Will. Frannie was happily tossing shit out of her knapsack, but she could have been crawling near the entrance.

  Will left the door open. “They found Ship! They found it on radar.”

  “What?” Claire shot to her feet, heart pounding. “Where is it? Did it make it to the sun?”

  “No, it’s entered our atmosphere. That’s when they located it again.”

  She wasn’t sure what she was hearing. “Are you saying they killed the leviathan and came home?”

  “I…” Will seemed to realize what he was about to tell her wasn’t as hopeful as his previous information. He hovered in the doorway, visibly nervous. “Leviathan’s still with it, but their trajectory is bringing them down in northern Arkansas. We’re loading everything we’ve got in the shuttles to throw at the leviathan.”

  Whatever hopes Claire had washed back out of her, floodwaters retreating to the river, leaving behind muddy devastation. She locked her knees so she wouldn’t crumple. “Everything, huh? Does that include pies?”

  “What? Claire, this is serious.”

  She refused to ask if Adam had contacted them. They’d tell her if they had news. Obviously, he hadn’t eradicated the monster if it had dragged Ship back to the planet.

  Which meant he was probably dead.

  “Is that part of Arkansas populated?” Claire focused on practical details to drown her howl of despair. She’d accepted Adam’s death. Hell, everyone’s. Didn’t mean she liked it.

  “Not really,” Will said. “It’s in the buffer zone, not the safe zone.”

  Claire glanced at Frances, tubby and oblivious in her blue sweat suit. A bib hit the floor as her daughter rummaged in the diaper bag. “Then attacking the leviathan is a fool’s errand.”

  Dixie arrived, sidling around Will, who blocked the entryway. “We can’t sit around and do nothing. If that thing can drag Ship through space, we’re not safe in the base anyway.”

  Behind Dixie came Sarah. “Niko’s going. He wants you to stay here.”

  Was Niko attempting reverse psychology or being authoritarian? Either approach was a bad move with Claire. Then again, this wasn’t the time to yield to her inner dissenter for the sake of dissenting.

  “You guys are serious about shooting at the leviathan as if it’s some kind of Japanese movie kaiju?” A crazy-ass shuttle pilot had flown close and captured scans of the leviathan before it had rocketed out of the system. While they knew more about what they were up against with the leviathan, that didn’t mean they knew enough.

  “Completely serious.”

  Claire picked Frannie up and distracted her with a crumpled paper so she wouldn’t eat the diaper cream. She started kicking diaper bag detritus toward the bag itself, like baby-toy soccer. “If attacking a leviathan worked, somebody would already have managed it. What does Ship say about this? It’s still part of the trine.”

  Frannie shook the paper and laughed, but Sarah frowned. “We aren’t getting any responses to our hail. We sense power to some systems, but Ship may have powered down its matrix.”

  If a Ship’s matrix lost power completely, the core of its essence, the Ship in question, died. Claire’s arms tightened around Frances involuntarily, until the baby squirmed. “Does that mean it’s already—”

  “We don’t know.” Sarah knelt to reassemble the diaper bag, face averted. “It doesn’t matter. This is Niko’s decision, and the advisors are behind him. Everyone who wants a shot at the leviathan is going.”

  “I’m going.” Kenna popped up from the hallway, expression more animated than grim. Fucking teenagers. Along with her was her mother.

  “I’m going to keep her out of trouble,” Natalie said, but the worry lines around her mouth told a different story.

  “Most of the Shipborn soldiers are going.” Sarah finished cleaning Frannie’s mess and straightened. Her gaze cut to the toddler in Claire’s arms, and she clasped her hands in front of her. She probably wanted to hug the baby but was afraid to ask Claire to release her death grip. She was as involved in Frannie’s life as Niko was, and Claire had grown to care for her a great deal.

  Sarah was hard not to love. Claire was the one who was hard to love.

  That hadn’t stopped Adam.

  “No danger of waking a leviathan anymore, I guess.” Claire shunted aside her morbid thoughts to make room for useful ones. “That’ll change our battle tactics. Won’t have to be as careful, so we can do more damage.”

  Dixie shared some maps on a data tablet. “We’ve alerted local militias here, here, and here, closest to where Ship is predicted to hit. The Global Union hasn’t broadcast the news yet, but they approved the local alert—better to have more hands on deck than fewer. They’ll be sending forces, though they may not arrive in time. They don’t have shuttles.”

  “If the leviathan’s the same size as Ship, what’ll Shipborn bombs do to it?” Claire said, studying the charts. While certain bombs did kill shades, that kind was deadly to all life in a certain radius, with no confirmation it would affect a leviathan.

  “Forget the leviathan. What’ll bombs do to Ship?” Will grumbled.

  “It might not matter about Ship,” Sarah said in a low voice. She stepped closer, clowning with Frannie. A serious conversation about when and how they were all going to die, while playing peek-a-boo with a mostly toothless toddler, was about the most surreal thing Claire could have imagined. “If we have to pick between Terra and Ship, I know what Ship would want us to do.”

  “Well, we don’t have any bombs like the one that sealed the nexus.” Dixie flicked quickly through some charts. “Bombs never worked on leviathans in the past, so we didn’t unload any of those. However, we can mount a decent destructive payload. It would set off a chain reaction with all munitions on Ship to boot. Worth a shot as a last resort.”

  Claire bounced Frances on her hip, imagining what it would take to kill a leviathan, why it had never succeeded before—and why they were going to try anyway. “Why does Niko want me to stay at the base if there’s fighting involved?”

  Sarah’s blue eyes stared at the baby. “For Frannie. She needs you.”

  “We need you more,” Kenna said. “Adam needs you.”

  Claire pretended to be absorbed in Frannie’s hair, picking at a piece of lint in the curls. Adam had made his choice. He was an adult, unlike Frances. But this was about more than one child, even her child.

  Claire was a protector. A warrior. Whether she was a mother or not, she’d taken it upon herself to protect Chanute.

  Maybe all of the planet.

  “I’m going,” she decided. She kissed Frannie’s head and fought back a surge of hot tears. “Are you going, Sarah?”

  “Yes, but Tracy’s not. Frannie can bunk with her and Adelita Martinez
.” Adelita wasn’t particularly great with kids, but Claire trusted her, especially when paired with Tracy. “They’re going to oversee the medbay to help anyone who…makes it back.”

  Frannie waved her paper through the air like a flag, babbling.

  “You’re not a soldier,” Claire pointed out to Sarah. “You’re a doctor.”

  Sarah raised her eyebrows. “I can’t beat you, but I’m hardly useless. It’s my choice. Just like going is your choice. We’re both defying Niko on this, by the way. If we were anybody else, we’d get tossed in the brig.” She smiled.

  For that, Claire rewarded Sarah with the baby, and Sarah sighed when she wrapped her arms around her. Frannie immediately stuffed her crumpled paper in Sarah’s mouth.

  “Eat,” Frannie said. “Eat, Sasa.”

  Sarah pretended to oblige. “Nummy.”

  “Oh, now she starts talking.” Claire, throat tight, strapped on her weapons, checked the power gauges, and located her tactanium vest. It might not help with a leviathan, but what if it summoned daemons? Plenty of entities remained on the planet. “Where’s Niko? He’ll want to see his girl. Let’s go give Daddy some kisses and then kill us a kaiju.”

  …

  The shuttles raced across the globe and through the clouds. They were still in the air when Ship crashed, its protracted blaze across the afternoon sky a smoky horror. Nobody on this side of the planet was likely to miss seeing it—and they’d have questions.

  Not as many would see the impact, unless they were in the Ozarks region of the United States. The shockwave mushroomed into the sky like an ominous warning. There was no way anything—besides the leviathan—survived that landing.

  Was there?

  Certainly not Adam. Claire had inured herself to that. Nevertheless, when Sarah, stuffed beside her in the overcrowded shuttle, inhaled audibly and gripped her hand, Claire didn’t pull away.

  When a Shipborn initiated physical contact, it meant they either sensed how much the Terran needed it, or they needed it themselves. Niko was too busy arguing with the Global Union and the U.S. president to be there for Sarah—and who would be there for Claire?