Trix is on her knees in front of this formation with her hands linked behind her head. Mookie stands beside her, back rigid, face impassive, pointing a large, snub-nosed waver pistol at Trix’s temple.
“Mookie,” I call out, “this isn’t you!”
“That’s exactly right: it isn’t him.” A figure emerges from the MEPHISTO ship, and though I’ve only seen her via holo, I can tell it’s Hamid. She wears a gray trench coat over her uniform, which flaps noisily as a cold wind crosses the rooftop. She stops next to Mookie and turns to face me. “Did you really think you’d get away with crossing me, Mars?”
I scoff, but I doubt she can hear it. The Legionnaires level their carbines, tracking me as I walk toward Hamid. I force a smirk. “To be fair, I never thought we’d actually meet.”
The port to the north is lined with a dozen cruisers and twice as many frigates. Legionnaires move in perfect formation—visible even from here, like insects working to a common goal—unloading the ships and marching away from the landing. They fill the streets, great slabs of human machinery gliding across New Tangier, demonstrating the power of their queen.
Hamid’s hair flows in the breeze, but she stands perfectly still at parade rest. “What did you think would happen?” she asks.
“I thought I’d be gone already. I thought you’d be smart enough to let me disappear.”
One of the Legionnaires walks out of line and holds an arm out, stopping me about five meters from Hamid, Mookie, and Trix.
“Even if you’d escaped, Mars, you would have had to abandon your friend. He’s mine now; he will forever be part of the Legion.”
I look up at the sky and see Homan drifting slowly overhead. Hamid glances up too. “My flagship is moving to intercept your other friends,” she says.
I keep staring upward and send Squid a burst: You need to leave Homan, now.
They respond: I can’t be sure everyone’s on board.
“I could have given you a good life,” Hamid says.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Good, maybe, but it wouldn’t have been my life.”
“You’re a fool. Do you think anyone gets the life they want? Life is compromise. Now, because you were too selfish to comply, your other friends are doomed to share this one’s fate,” she says, resting a hand on Mookie’s shoulder. She keeps talking, and I hold her gaze but let my eyes lose focus.
With my right hand tucked behind my arm, I flex my fingers and stretch my thoughts out. My mind is endless, infinite, and Hamid’s flagship is so close, close enough to touch. I ensnare the massive vessel in a psychic net and pull. It shudders in my grip, engines fighting my grasp, and I start to groan, quiet enough that Hamid doesn’t hear over her continuing tirade.
The ship starts to stall and I feel its weight shift. The noise in my throat builds and Hamid walks closer.
I send another burst to Squid: Go now, or you won’t save anyone.
“What is she doing?” Hamid asks.
At the same moment, three of the Legionnaires say in unison, “Commander,” and point to the sky. The flagship is sinking low enough that flames erupt around its edges as it dips into the atmosphere.
Hamid spins to face Mookie, his gun still pointed at Trix. “Shoot her!”
With my mind on the ship, I can’t react fast enough, but Trix can. She pushes up from her knees, ramming Mookie hard in the stomach. He tumbles backward and the waver discharges as he hits the ground, the shot going wide.
Lying on his back, Mookie aims at Trix again. With wrists still cuffed, she shields her face and chest with her arms. Mookie shoots low. The gun squeals, then there’s a sharp squelch and a fist-sized hole in Trix’s gut.
I let go of the flagship and scream. Trix collapses forward onto her side and presses her forearm against the wound. Blood quickly pools around her. Too much blood, seeping from the open maw of flesh.
Mookie stands. He doesn’t even look at Trix. Instead he rejoins the line of Legionnaires, waiting for their next order.
Hamid watches calmly as Trix bleeds out on the ground. “All of your friends will die, Mars. Either for me, or by my command. You never should have crossed me.”
“Cross you? You’re nothing.” I spit the words out and lift Hamid into the air, feeling the weight of her steel skeleton. That won’t save you.
“Kill her,” she screams, but she needn’t have bothered. Already the Legion is flowing toward me, thirty bodies moving for one purpose.
I hold Hamid tight, feel her in my mind like an insect trapped in a web—a dull presence I can’t fully ignore as I tear the weapons from the hands and holsters of each Legionnaire. Mookie moves with the pack as they swarm closer, but I tear a length of cable free from the communications tower and wrap it tight around him. He falls to the ground, writhing.
By the time I’m done with Mookie, the nearest Legionnaires are close enough to grab at my clothes. Ocho jumps with claws out, landing on a Legionnaire’s face and scratching deep cuts through geometric scars.
She’s fast, but I’m faster; my thoughts are quicksilver. My eyes flash from one target to the next as I grab and crush, fling, throw, or tear reinforced skeletons apart. They drop, but the hive mind drives them on, arms reach from broken torsos to clutch at my ankles and at the hem of my cloak.
“Enough!” I yell, then I stomp the ground around me, crushing the fallen Legionnaires into the rooftop, the building vibrating under my feet, trembling like an earthquake just struck. I push my arms out hard, sweeping the rest of them aside and off the edge of the building. I watch them fall, bodies relaxed as gravity pulls them toward their doom. None of them scream as they drop.
Down in the streets, the marching Legionnaires are running now; I watch formations break as pieces of the hive scatter. A wave of them hits the building beneath me—some rushing inside, others scaling the walls, ascending on the strength of their unnatural bodies as gunfire fills the air over my head.
“Let me go,” Hamid says, breathlessly, still caught tight in my grip.
I ignore her plea and rush over to Trix. Her breathing is ragged, face unnaturally white, clothing caked in gore. She looks at me, eyes clear and focused even as blood seeps from her lips.
“Promise me you’ll save him,” Trix croaks. She starts to say more, but her voice cracks and she goes silent.
Mookie is a few meters away, rolling on the ground, still struggling against the makeshift restraints. His face is a calm mask—there’s no hatred or anger in his eyes, only duty. He’s Legion, through and through.
We lost him to Homan Sphere but I got him back—I can get him back from the Legion too. I just need to—
“They’ll never stop,” Hamid says. “They won’t stop until you’re dead.”
“You’re right,” I say to Hamid, loud enough that she can hear me over the din of distant chaos. “They won’t stop, unless I stop them.”
Homan Sphere.
The prison drifts placidly across the sky. It looks so peaceful at this distance. Hamid’s flagship has righted itself, and every engine on its bow glows bright as starshine as it pulls out of Seward’s gravity well. I ignore the flagship and reach out farther. I lift my hands up into the air, and with my fingers spread wide I grab hold of Homan Sphere. I feel its mass like a stone in the center of my brain. I skip the quiet noises and go straight to screaming as I reach out with every piece of myself. My heart thuds hard, so hard my chest rocks and my body sways, but I feel Homan go still: it stops spinning, stops its inexorable orbit.
I fall silent and exhale slowly; my body shakes, but I’m calm. This will only work if I’m calm, focused. My throat is raw, and my vision is blurred with tears. I can’t tell if it’s working, so I hold my eyelids open until the film of liquid clears, until I see the moon growing larger by degrees.
“What are you doing?” Hamid yells, incredulously. She’s loose now, forgotten when I grabbed Homan. I forget her again.
I keep pulling. I fall to my knees but barely notice. My neck aches, m
y arms flood with pain, but I keep offering them to the sky. Homan looms large. I inhale and scream again as I pull. Gravity shifts, Homan falling on its own; Seward itself is pulling with me.
I collapse forward onto my hands and I pant and force myself to breathe. Ocho rubs herself against my arm, but I can’t speak. I pick her up and hold her to my chest as I stand.
I step over scattered pieces of Legionnaires as the sky itself starts to rumble. I pick Mookie up and lift Trix out of the pool of her blood. A sharp pain stabs through my brain as I carry them to the shuttle; I wince, and push through it.
“What have you done?” Hamid grabs my arm and spins me to face her.
I shake her off and knee her in the stomach. She doubles over and stumbles back. “Stay here and die with your precious fucking Legion.”
I get the others onboard and Waren takes off without a word. Legionnaires reach the rooftop, crowding in to protect their queen. Too late. Outside the viewport, the atmosphere starts to burn. Homan crashes into Hamid’s flagship, shattering the vessel, and continues to fall slowly to the ground. Half the sky is fire.
The shuttle engines hit a pitch I’ve never heard them reach before as Waren boots up from Seward’s surface. MEPHISTO vessels lift off from the port, and craft all over the city start to scatter. Most of them won’t make it; they didn’t have our head start.
We’re high above New Tangier now, the city in Homan’s shadow. We break atmosphere as the city disappears behind the hollow moon. Finally, with a thunderclap louder than death, it’s gone.
Mookie stops fighting against his restraints and falls silent as Seward burns.
“Mookie?” I lean over him but he stares through me, eyes wide as he hyperventilates.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Seward is unrecognizable by the time we dock with the Nova; there’s no city, no flagship, no fleet—no Legion.
Massive tsunamis roll across the planet, collide, coalesce, and then divide. They appear slow and gentle at this distance, but when one of them strikes the planet’s sole continent it blasts through the smoking debris-packed crater where New Tangier used to be. Ragged remains of Homan’s shell rock and tumble, like boats in a storm. Steam pours into the atmosphere in plumes where seawater floods into the planet’s mantle, magma spewing from the colossal wounds like fiery blood.
Squid joins me at the viewport. They don’t speak for what feels like a full minute. “We should go, before they send a fleet to see why Seward fell silent.”
I nod, and my migraine peaks; I feel my head turn to the side, cold spear of pain through the right hemisphere of my brain. I haven’t had a headache like this since Sera opened my mind with those encephallucinogenic mushrooms. I also haven’t pulled a moon out of orbit before, shifting thousands of tons of steel and stone with nothing but my thoughts; of course the strain of that is going to hurt.
“I was thinking we’d go to Aylett Station,” Squid says. “From there all the people we rescued can find work, transport home, or whatever else they might need.”
“Sounds good,” is all I can manage.
“I’ll tell Einri. After that, we should talk.”
They leave me, and after a few moments the view of Seward cuts away and the stars disappear as we enter worm-space. I stay at the viewport and stare into the abyss.
* * *
Ken walks backward down the hallway of the hotel. A wall of fire rages at the end of the corridor, flames roiling but silent. It moves toward us in slow motion.
“Stop,” I say, but Ken keeps moving.
The flames engulf him.
I wake on my side with Ocho curled up at my chest, purring. I scratch her chin and she shifts in her sleep. I bring my legs up, fold myself around her, and try to nap.
* * *
“I don’t see why we need to have this meeting,” I say. Pale is sitting on my lap, with Ocho asleep on his lap.
We’re in the shuttle, docked with the Nova because the hold is crammed full of refugees, cut off from all our passengers while Einri flies us toward Aylett. The stench in the Nova is thick with humanity—sweat, sex, and other stinks. Ali was one of the first to reach the ship when Squid docked with Homan, a trail of prisoners following behind her. She’s been telling them all that I saved them; she says I’m a hero, and some of the others agree.
Which is why I’ve been hiding out in the shuttle.
“Mars,” Squid says softly, “you destroyed a whole city. You need to talk about that.”
Pale turns around to look at me and his bony butt digs into my legs. I still don’t know how much he understands, but the awestruck look on his face tells me that he might grasp “destroyed a whole city.”
“How’s Mookie doing?” I say, just to change the subject.
Squid sighs and leans forward in their seat. “He’s not good. One moment he’s catatonic, the next he’s hysteric. Either way he won’t leave Trix’s side.”
I nod. I haven’t seen her body since I put her into storage in the medbay. Part of me wants to say goodbye, but that means facing Mookie, and I’m still not ready for that. Maybe I never will be.
“Mars,” Squid says, “I won’t judge you, but you need to talk about what you did.”
Maybe you should judge me, Squid. Maybe I can’t talk about it because I’m too busy judging myself. “I just need some time alone,” I say. “Once we unload everyone at Aylett and I get a new ship, I’ll go, and I’ll get my head together.”
“We’re here for you, Mars.”
“But you shouldn’t be,” I say. Unless you want to die too.
“You’ve got about an hour until we reach Aylett,” Squid says. They don’t say it might be my last chance to see both Trix and Mookie, but the subtext is there in the gaps between words. “I’ll be in the cockpit helping Einri with the docking procedures.”
Squid lingers at the doorway for a moment before deciding to stay silent. They leave the shuttle; the burst of sound coming from the Nova dies abruptly when the door closes again.
* * *
Pale holds tight to my hand as I walk through the Nova to the medbay. Refugees step aside to let us squeeze pass, huddling together to whisper about me in hushed tones.
Mookie doesn’t look up when Pale and I walk into the medbay. There’s a subtle hint of putrefaction to the air, Trix’s body laid out on one of the cold chamber drawers, pulled out from the wall. A white sheet covers her ruined stomach, but not her face or arms, and Mookie clutches her blue and lifeless hand.
“Pale wanted to see Trix,” I say.
Mookie’s arms are stippled in goose bumps, and he’s shaking, but whether it’s from grief or the cold, I can’t tell.
Pale pulls me closer and we stand next to Trix’s body, opposite Mookie. Pale stares at her and raises a hand as if to touch her shoulder, but then he pulls it away.
This wasn’t part of the plan, Trix. You could have stayed on the Nova; you didn’t have to die like this.
“Mookie, I—” I don’t know what to say.
“You never should have come for me.” He glances up and I see a flash of silver, but he doesn’t quite meet my eyes before he looks back to Trix.
“You know we couldn’t have done that. We had to find out what happened to you, we had to save you.”
“You should have left me,” Mookie says, louder. He groans and then smacks his forehead with the palm of his hand. “You should have died, you should have—”
He turns away from Trix and walks to the corner of the small room to lean his head against both walls. “You killed me—you killed them. You killed all of us!” He yells the last bit. “They were there, in my head; I knew them all, I knew them like I know myself, and you just fucking killed them. I was there when it happened; I died thousands of times. Now I’m alone, without them, without Trix; there is no one here, there is nothing.”
“The Legion killed Trix, Mook. I had to stop it. I—”
He spins back, face twisted in anguish, a stream of tears running down each chee
k. “You’re a fucking monster. Leave,” he says, then he starts screaming, “leave me alone, leave me alone!”
Pale starts to cry, so I hold him tight and press his head into my stomach, hand covering his ears. I lead him out of the medbay with my arm around his shoulder, but pause in the doorway. “Sorry, Mookie.” I’m so fucking sorry.
EPILOGUE
I sit cross-legged on a tall crate in the Nova’s hold, Ocho resting in my lap, cleaning herself. I smooth her fur with my hand, just to make her clean it again.
All the refugees have gathered around us, waiting for the large bay doors to open, swelling forward at intervals, impatient for the freedom we promised them. For some, it’s a return home, for others it’s a foreign station, full of as much threat as promise. At least they’re safe now. There’s no Legion left, no MEPHISTO to come looking for them.
A current moves through the crowd, and in snatches I see Mookie pushing a hover gurney toward the front. People begin to protest but fall silent when they see Trix’s body; nobody wants to interrupt a funeral procession, no matter how small or informal.
With a hollow clang the bay opens up, pieces of steel pulling away, revealing the bustling dock of Aylett Station and carrying the smell of fern to my nose. I expect a rush, but all the former prisoners wait for Mookie to get clear first. Once he has disappeared into the motion of the hangar, they start to leave, slowly at first, but then I hear cries and laughter, and people begin to run.
I put my rebreather on to cut out the smell, then wait a few minutes until everyone has cleared out. I lift Ocho to my shoulder and drop down off the crate, following in the wake of the refugees, displaced and broken, but alive. They have that at least, more than Trix, more than the people of Seward.
By habit I head out of the dock, mentally planning my route down to the Ring One bar, but I pause when I remember that Miguel won’t be there. Out of the corner of my eye I see a small stall set up in front of an old Blackcoat-class ship—maybe “stall” is too generous. It’s a collection of tools, gear, clothing, and random tchotchkes laid out on a large, half-empty tank of water. The two women behind the tank smile brightly as I approach, and their daughter looks up from where she sits beside them.
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