by Rachel Bach
“Come on,” he said, turning me around and shoving my glove, which I didn’t realize I’d dropped, back onto my hand. “We have to go.”
Too numb to protest, I nodded, pulling on my glove as I followed him back to the train. We had to step over the three dead xith’cal to get out of the cave, and as I edged past them, I realized the blackened bodies were already twitching. I went for my gun with a yelp, plugging a shot into each of their heads before I could think better of it. That stopped the twitching all right, but I swore their glazed eyes still followed me as I scrambled onto the train. “What the hell just happened?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Brenton said, hitting the switch that started the train’s engine. “From what I could see, it looked like you stood around waving your hand back and forth through the air until your fingers turned black. The xith’cal died right after that. Just keeled over and started convulsing. The slave went down a few seconds later. That was when I grabbed you, but you didn’t wake up until just now.”
I looked down at my hands. With my glove back on, I couldn’t see whether or not my skin was still black, but I didn’t feel the pins and needles anymore. I ripped my glove off, hands shaking, but when my fingers appeared, they were clean.
“I saw the blackness spread up their plasmex spike,” I said, putting my glove back on again as the train began to move. “I tried to pull out, but then the phantom died, and everything went…” I trailed off. How could I explain that endless emptiness? Or the things inside it? “Black,” I said at last. “Everything went black.”
“I saw that much,” Brenton said as the train raced us backward down the tunnel. “Get ready, we’ve got a hot exit.”
His warning broke the emptiness’s spell. All at once, I remembered that I was on a xith’cal asteroid with alarms going off all around me. I slammed my visor back into place and sealed my suit, searching the com channels at the same time for something I could use. All I got was a lot of lizard squawking, but it didn’t take a genius to guess the alert might have something to do with the three xith’cal leaders I’d just killed.
“What do you think we’re in for?” I asked, grabbing Mia off my back. My plasma shotgun had only one shot left, but that would be enough to blow a hole if there were warriors waiting at the tunnel’s end.
“Actually, I don’t think that’s for us,” Brenton said, nodding at the blinking lights.
I scowled. “Then why—”
I was cut off by an enormous blast as something struck the asteroid. The impact knocked the train off the rails, throwing me into the stone wall. Brenton was thrown too, though he landed on his feet. I was up a second later, flipping on all the functions I’d turned off when I was dealing with the phantom so I wouldn’t be caught unprepared again. I’d just gotten everything back on line when the next blast hit.
This time I was ready. My suit rolled with the shock, adjusting between one step and the next as Brenton and I started running full tilt down the tunnel. For once, I thanked the king the man was a symbiont. I didn’t have to slow down for him at all. Instead, I was the one struggling to keep up as we raced toward the hangar.
“What’s the plan?” I yelled, keeping Mia close.
“Get you out,” Brenton yelled back as another, softer blast rocked the stone beneath our feet. We’d barely gotten steady again before Brenton turned to grin at me. “You did it, Deviana!” he cried. “You’ve got the virus!”
Considering what had just happened, I didn’t see how that was anything to be happy about. “And killed the lizards who were supposed to know how to control it!” I shouted.
“Doesn’t matter,” Brenton said. “We’ve won. Now all we have to do is get you to the ships and we’re going straight to the Dark Star.”
I slammed to a halt, my boots grinding on the stone. “What?”
Brenton stopped more gracefully. “Dark Star Station. It’s the Eyes’ secret headquarters and the place where they keep Maat prisoner.”
“Why the hell would you want to go there?” I said. “Did you not see what just happened?”
“I saw you killed a phantom,” Brenton said.
“Are you crazy?” I cried. “We can’t use something this unstable for leverage! I don’t even know what I did! If we go to the Eyes like this, I’ll probably kill Maat just trying to show them what the virus does.”
Brenton nodded excitedly. “Exactly!”
You know that moment when you go to take a step and the floor isn’t there? The terrifying second when it feels like the whole world is falling? That was what I felt now. The asteroid was still shaking, but I couldn’t even manage to feel worried over the fact that we were under attack. All I could do was stare at Brenton’s grinning face as the cold realization slowly condensed in my gut.
“You want to kill Maat,” I whispered.
“Of course,” Brenton said. “I told you before, I don’t care about killing phantoms. I just want to end her suffering.”
“End her suffering?” I repeated, my voice rising to a squeak. “We’re supposed to be in this to save Maat, save the daughters, and end this cycle of infinite bullshit. We’re supposed to be finding a new solution, not…” My voice trailed off as I took a deep breath, pulling myself in and straightening up until I was looking Brenton dead in the face. “The Eyes kill daughters, not us,” I said coldly. “You said you wanted to free them. That’s the whole reason I came with you.”
“Death is the only freedom left for Maat,” Brenton said, his face going hard. “She’s been their prisoner since she was a child, suffering for decades. Even when she went mad from it, they didn’t let her rest. Instead, they hooked her to machines. They even put a symbiont in her to help keep her alive.” He was speaking faster now, his voice shaking. “All she wants to do is get away, but they’ve filled her up with too many voices, too many dead girls’ lives. She can’t even escape in her own head.”
He stepped toward me, clenching his fists. “I swore, Deviana,” he whispered. “When I left the Eyes, I swore to her that I would not stop until she was free. And I won’t, not until I’ve found a way to kill her so they can never use her again.”
Fear and disgust had closed my throat so tightly by this point I could barely breathe, but I got the words out somehow. “And you found me.”
“Yes,” Brenton said with a relieved smile. “You’re the salvation she’s been waiting for, and with the virus this unstable, we might not even have to get you inside the Dark Star for it to work. Maat is stronger than the Eyes realize, and she’s been waiting for this for so long. If you can do whatever you just did near her, even in space, I’m sure she’ll reach you. Even the Eyes’ security can’t stop a plasmex virus. With your help, she’ll be free at last, just like you promised her.”
I shut my eyes tight. Part of me agreed with Brenton. Being trapped and used like that without even the ability to kill yourself sounded like a special kind of hell. If I was in Maat’s place, I’d probably welcome the virus with open arms, too. But this wasn’t just about Maat.
“What about the daughters?” I asked, looking at Brenton once more. “If Maat dies, what happens to them?”
Brenton’s face fell. “Haven’t you been listening? The daughters are Maat. She eats them, taking their lives, their memories, everything and replacing it with herself. She even changes their bodies to look like hers. The daughters are dead already, we can’t save them, but we can stop them from making any more. If we kill Maat, it all ends. The Eyes will have no choice but to find another way to kill phantoms. Maybe they’ll use your virus, maybe they’ll find something better. But Maat will be free, and our job will be over.”
“Your job,” I snarled. “But the daughters aren’t dead, Brenton.” They couldn’t be. I’d seen Ren break. Seen her horror with my own eyes as she looked down at her father’s dead body. I could even still hear her thin, broken voice whisper, Papa? Whatever had been taken from her, she’d known her father and mourned his death, and that was enough for me
. “I’m not going to the Dark Star.”
Brenton’s jaw tightened, but before he could start arguing with me, something hit the asteroid hard enough to send it spinning. Brenton and I were thrown off our feet, landing together in a heap against the wall as the asteroid rocked like a toy boat on the ocean. The xith’cal must have installed stabilizing thrusters, though, because the asteroid righted itself almost immediately, and Brenton and I jumped back up. We stared at each other for a long second, and then, by silent agreement, we both turned and started running for the hangar.
I knew this wasn’t over. The moment I set foot on his ship, Brenton would try to take me to Maat. But I’d fight that battle when it came. Right now, we both had to focus and work together if we were going to get off this rock alive.
We had a lot of tunnel left to go, but a symbiont and a suit of Verdemont armor can cover a lot of ground in a very short amount of time. Not three minutes after we started, I spotted the end of the tunnel in the distance. I raised Mia, ready to blast us a path through whatever the hell was going on outside, but there was no need. When we burst out of the dark tunnel into the brightly lit hangar, all the xith’cal were too busy to spare us a glance.
The hangar was swarmed with lizards running around like ants on a kicked-over hill. The males were scrambling the heavy fighters docked against the hangar’s far wall, while the females were frantically loading equipment crates into the smaller civilian craft. Several ships must have already launched, because the huge cavern was much emptier than it had been when we’d landed, but though the hangar door was wide open, I couldn’t see who was attacking through the heavy shield.
“What’s going on?” I shouted at Brenton as I holstered Mia.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” he shouted back, raising his voice over the xith’cal screeching that was blaring through the hangar speakers. “All that matters is getting you out.”
I wasn’t going to argue. Across the hangar, all three of Brenton’s ships were fired and ready. He was already running full tilt toward the largest one, and for a few glorious moments, it looked like we might actually make it. But then, when we were fifty feet away, something exploded through the shield that covered the hangar door.
It was not a xith’cal ship. It wasn’t a human ship either. I wasn’t even sure it was a ship at first. The thing had no windows, no hard edges, and its deep blue hull looked almost spongy. It was so big its nose was the only part that fit through the door, but though it was hanging half in and half out of the gravity, the ship didn’t seem to mind. It didn’t list forward or even put down landing gear. It simply settled onto the hangar’s stone floor and opened its prow like a mouth.
“Lelgis!” Brenton shouted, skidding to a stop in front of me. I slammed into him a split second later, but the man didn’t even budge. He was already changing, his scales slicing through his clothes. By the time I’d backed off, he was fully transformed, and his symbiont was screaming at me. “Get to the ship!”
You’d have thought I was back in the army from how fast I obeyed. I leaped forward, running full speed toward the freighter, the largest of Brenton’s ships. Another transformed symbiont was waiting on the ramp for us. His clawed hand ready to grab me the moment I was in range, but I never got there. Twenty feet from safety, my path was blocked.
If Brenton hadn’t shouted, I never would have connected the thing that jumped in front of me with the dead lelgis Cotter and I had seen back on the tribe ship. Those had looked like popped balloons. This creature was beautiful.
It stood nearly eight feet tall. Its huge purple head floating weightlessly over a dozen spindly white legs with feathery edges that tiptoed along the ground. The effect reminded me a bit of a jellyfish, especially when the lelgis moved like it did now. Seconds after landing just in front of me, the lelgis jumped again, rising into the air like gravity didn’t touch it. I raised my gun to shoot, but it wasn’t coming for me. Instead, the lelgis jumped backward, landing on top of the symbiont on the ramp.
The man started convulsing before the lelgis even touched him. It was like watching someone have a seizure, but the symbiont wasn’t going down. Instead, he reached for the lelgis as it landed, one hand shooting out to claw his attacker while the other flew sideways, pointing at the ship beside his as he shouted something at the top of his lungs.
I couldn’t hear him over the blaring alarms, but I didn’t need to. The message was clear, and I obeyed, turning midstep toward the other ship. The little stealth two-seater we’d arrived in was up and running. I could see Nic in the pilot’s seat through the glass, watching me run, his pale face pinched in fear. For a second, I couldn’t understand why, and then another lelgis landed right in front of me.
My suit reacted before I could. Before my mind could even take in the yards of delicate legs or the huge, featureless mountain of its bulbous body, the Lady launched me into the air.
For five seconds, I was flying. My suit had jumped me over the alien in a graceful arc. As soon as I realized what had happened, I adjusted, flipping in midair a dozen feet above the alien’s head. But as I started to fall, my feet angled perfectly to land right on the ramp of Nic’s ship, something grabbed my ankle.
It was a light touch, like a feather had brushed over my foot, but the second it connected, a presence exploded into my mind. It reminded me of the hand Ren wrapped around my spine when she wanted to drag me around, but that at least had felt like a hand. This felt like nothing I could describe. It was feathery and dry and wiggling, gnawing into my mind almost like a caterpillar eating a leaf, but faster and directed. It shuffled through my brain methodically, like it was looking for something, and I had a pretty good idea what.
The lelgis had exterminated Stoneclaw’s tribe to destroy the plasmex virus, the virus I’d just used, opening me into that weird emptiness where I’d felt the other presence looking at me. The one that had called me the threat. Now, the squids were here on a tiny rock in the middle of nowhere with what sounded like a battle fleet, and it didn’t take a genius to guess what had drawn them. They were here to eliminate the threat, my threat, and if I didn’t want to be exterminated, I had to act now.
My first thought was to use the virus. After all, that was what the lelgis feared. But I dismissed the idea just as quickly. First, I couldn’t actually use the black stuff on command yet, and second, even if I did manage to get the plague going, there was a good chance it would kill everyone else in the process. So, with the virus not being an option, I decided to do the thing I was good at.
I bent over, tucking my legs as I swung my right arm down toward the feathery tentacle wrapped around my ankle. Elsie shot out of her sheath when I was an inch away, but I didn’t even need to fire my thermite. My tungsten blade sliced through the tentacle like a knife through a noodle, and the presence in my mind vanished.
Given how I’d just whacked off a piece of it, I expected a scream like the phantom’s, but the lelgis made no sound at all, mental or otherwise. It just shot another tentacle at me, this time for my neck. But I was in the fight now, and the tentacle had barely made it off the ground before I had Mia in my hand.
Normally, shooting backward while falling is a stretch even for me, but the nice part about plasma shotguns is that you don’t have to be too accurate. I swung Mia over my shoulder, pausing just long enough to make sure her barrel was pointed at the lelgis’ bulbous head before I pulled the trigger. I saw the white-hot plasma slug hit the thing dead-on in my rear cam, and then my feed whited out as the sun-bright clinging fire consumed the alien’s soft flesh.
My suit landed me neatly on my feet a second later. As soon as my boots touched the ground, I started running, keeping one eye on the burning lelgis in my rear cam. Considering its head was now a mass of white fire, I was pretty sure the fight was over, but experience had taught me never to take my eyes off an enemy before I was certain it was dead. But though the lelgis was now smoldering merrily, it still wasn’t making a sound, and it was still coming for me, i
ts wispy tentacles reaching out even as the fire consumed them.
I didn’t even have time to swear as I clicked Mia, now empty, back into place and grabbed Sasha. I spun round, shooting the first burning tentacle off at the base just before it landed on my shoulder. I shot the others off as well, letting my targeting system line up the shots until, at last, the huge thing fell.
The lelgis has been burning all this time, Mia’s fire eating through its head as I shot off its tentacles. But even lying on the ground burned and shot to pieces, the alien was still twitching toward me. I fired one final shot for good measure before I gave up and ran, barreling full tilt toward the waiting ship.
Nic had the ramp down for me, and I charged it full speed, yelling through the com at him to go ahead and get off the ground, I’d jump in. He obeyed, and the thrusters came on with a roar. But as the ship began to rise, something landed on the open ramp, slamming the ship back down.
I skidded to a stop. The thing blocking my path was nothing like the jellyfish alien I’d just shot to pieces. That one had been little more than air and feathery tentacles, but this one had weight, and its tentacles weren’t feathery, but thick and barbed with wicked hooks. It was definitely a lelgis, though, and it was in my way.
Quick as a thought, I whipped Sasha up and plugged a three-shot spread straight at the new alien’s dark, pointed head. The shots struck true, hitting in a tight triangle, but they didn’t split the alien’s skull. Instead, they stuck in the air, caught by something thick and shimmery. A shield, I realized belatedly. But as I was processing this, the bullets flipped in midair, turning around to point back at me, and my eyes went wide. A plasmex shield.
I dove as the lelgis sent my own armor-piercing rounds flying right back at me. I managed to dodge the first two, but the third caught me in the leg. I gritted my teeth as my own expensive ammunition bored through the Lady’s ballistic steel just like it was supposed to and dug into my calf. The pain came a second later, a stabbing blast that made my whole body seize before the soothing cold of the breach foam filled my suit.
