by Rachel Bach
So failure was not an option, but I still couldn’t seem to calm down. And the more I failed, the more upset I got, and the more impossible my task became.
When the virus had eaten half my body, I decided it was time to switch tactics. Clearly, I needed to work on my anger management, but there was no time for learning curves. So I gave up on trying to stomp down my rage and focused on harnessing it instead.
This went much better. I’d always considered my anger an ally, after all, so it was no surprise that once I stopped fighting it, we got along great. I started with Maat’s claim that I couldn’t do anything. That my lack of control was letting the virus eat me alive, letting her win. That thought fanned my anger even hotter, but instead of letting it burn, I focused it into the useful, pointed fury of my battle rage.
All at once, my mind stilled. The fear vanished, and everything grew very clear. I was no longer an angry, terrified woman trapped in a box. I was a weapon, a soldier, an avenging fury who was going to smash this whole place to bits, and as the battle rage settled over me, the pins and needles began to fade.
With my armor on, I couldn’t check to make sure if the black stuff was receding, but when the last of the tingling vanished from my fingers, I didn’t feel sick anymore. I felt focused, ready for the fight as I turned to face the bulletproof wall of my cell and dropped my visor. I couldn’t see the plasmex patterns through my cameras, but that didn’t matter. I knew they were there, and that knowledge was all I needed as I launched Elsie from her sheath.
Trapped, was I? Nothing I could do, eh? We’d see about that. It was time I taught Maat and her lizards exactly how destructive a Paradoxian could be.
Smiling a deadly smile, I brought my fist back, firing Elsie’s thermite as I did. The blinding light filled the chamber as I shifted all of my suit’s power to my arm. And then, when we were both primed and burning, I punched forward, slamming my white-hot blade into the glass as hard as I could.
CHAPTER 14
Elsie hit with a crash I felt to my boots, but even with her thermite burning full tilt, the wall didn’t crack. I wrenched my arm back and hit it again, using my targeting system to slam Elsie’s point right back into the tiny nick I’d gouged the first time. The boom of my burning blade against the glass was deafening, and by my third hit, I could hear the xith’cal females shrieking on the other side of the air lock.
I ignored them, focusing on the glass. My fifth hit opened a tiny hole, and when I landed my seventh, I was rewarded with a loud crack as Elsie’s blade finally punched through.
Stop!
With my visor down and cameras on, I couldn’t see Maat, but I could feel her clawing hand in my mind. You’ll ruin everything, she hissed. Stop this!
“Try and make me,” I growled as I wedged Elsie against the bottom of the hole I’d punched and leaned on it, using my weight to force her blade down.
Slicing the wall proved easier than piercing it, but it was still slow going, and I’d lost a lot of time. Whatever this glass was made of, it took all my suit’s strength to cut through it. But my thermite was roaring now, and every inch felt easier than the last.
The racket on the other side of the air lock was getting louder. Maat was yelling, too, banging on my mind. I could even feel her hand on my spine, but for some reason her pulling wasn’t working. Maybe I was doing whatever I’d done when I’d resisted Brenton’s girl, or maybe her link through Enna was too weak to maintain the web she’d spun and throw me around at the same time.
Whatever the reason, I didn’t care. As soon as I’d figured out Maat couldn’t hurt me, I stopped worrying about her. I ignored the xith’cal, too, focusing only on the cut, because if I couldn’t finish that, everything else was for nothing.
I’d managed nearly a full circle by the time my thermite finally burned out. I scraped the brittle, burned crust of the spent thermite off Elsie’s edge and retracted her, stepping back at the same time. Then, bracing one foot against my cage, I kicked off, launched myself at the hole I’d almost finished cutting.
My suit hit the glass so hard I felt the blow through my stabilizers, but the wall didn’t crack. It bowed, though, and I raced back across my cell to kick off again, slamming my shoulder into the side I’d loosened. This time, the impact pushed the half-cut hole out far enough for me to get a foot through, and I braced, using my leverage to crack the glass the rest of the way. The final inches broke with a sharp snap, and I tumbled forward, my suit rolling me to my feet in the middle of the observation room just as the xith’cal warriors began pouring through the door.
As soon as they saw me, though, I knew something was wrong. I’ve faced down a lot of xith’cal in my day, and these males weren’t acting like the ones I was used to. Normally, xith’cal are chargers, trusting their superior size and weight to bowl over opponents, but these were hanging back, watching me with wary yellow eyes.
They were afraid of me, I realized with a start. I was the plague bearer, and I was out of my protective box. Even the females shrieking orders from the back were keeping well away, and I felt my face break into a feral grin. This was going to be good.
With a battle cry that would have made my drill sergeant proud, I launched myself at the xith’cal. I didn’t bother drawing my gun, I couldn’t have shot them all anyway. Instead, I relied on surprise and their own terror, and the result was better than I could have hoped.
The xith’cal dove shrieking out of my way. I bowled past them, kicking anything that got in front of me. But though I was feet shorter and half their weight, none of the big males tried to grab me as I shot out the door, knocking over the females in the process.
The door led into a room much like the one they’d brought me through earlier. The ceiling here was much higher, though, and there were weapons against the walls as well as sterile storage. A mixed-gender room. More important, one that had two exits, a big freight dock, and a smaller door that opened into a long hall.
The smaller exit was closer, so that was the one I picked, sprinting across the room as fast as my suit could go. There were several females in my way, but they were in an even bigger hurry to get away from me than the males had been. Even so, it was only a matter of time before one of the lizards finally got over its fear of the plague and made a grab for me, so I pushed my suit harder, darting between tables covered in heavy, complicated-looking scientific equipment as I raced toward freedom.
I made it almost halfway before my luck gave out.
I was ducking under a machine that looked like a giant centrifuge when I spotted the Highest Guide standing in the freight door holding another of those cursed white balls. Like hell was I getting hit with that again, and by the time she’d raised her arm to hurl it at me, Mia was already in my hands. My fully charged plasma shotgun whistled to life with a beautiful sound, and when it hit its highest pitch, I ducked out from behind my cover and fired a white-hot burst straight into the Highest Guide’s chest.
Hyrek had said that females weren’t warriors, but the Highest Guide was still a xith’cal, and she jumped out of the way of my blast with admirable skill. Still, Mia isn’t a precision weapon, and fast as she’d jumped, it wasn’t enough to avoid getting hit completely. The burning plasma struck the Highest Guide across her side, and she went down screaming as the white fire engulfed her. The flames went out a second later, probably smothered by plasmex I couldn’t see through my cameras, but the damage was done. The ball she’d been prepping to throw at me was lying on the ground in a gooey melted heap, and I was running again, legs pumping as I shot toward the little door.
I didn’t have a plan. My goal at this point was just to get to the hall and play things from there. But when I was nearly to my exit, I caught sight of something huge charging up behind me in my rear camera. That was all the warning I got before a claw grabbed my leg.
The xith’cal yanked me off my feet like a doll, and I went down hard only to find there was no ground to go down to. I was hanging upside down in the grip of the
largest lizard I’d ever seen other than Reaper himself. He had to be twelve feet tall and he was covered in scales as black as a symbiont’s. There was a mantle of some kind draped across his shoulders too, which was odd. Most xith’cal wore no clothes. It was probably a rank insignia of some sort, I thought bitterly as I struggled in his grip. He was certainly big enough to qualify for something like that in a race that valued strength above all else.
Unlike the others, this xith’cal didn’t seem scared of me at all. He held me at arm’s length, dangling me high off the floor from one hand while he used the other trying to pry Mia out of my grip. I shot him for his trouble, but the burning plasma didn’t even seem to tickle him. He just squeezed my leg tighter, and my alarm blared as my suit began to buckle.
That was the last straw. No one messed with my Lady Gray. Snarling in rage, I dropped Mia and sprung Elsie again, swinging up to dig her point straight into the xith’cal’s wrist.
Punching through xith’cal scales is notoriously difficult. If I hadn’t had a hardened tungsten spike, I probably wouldn’t have gotten through, but my suit is strong where it counts, and I was hitting a joint, where the scales were softer and smaller. The stab landed perfectly, my blade sliding between the huge xith’cal’s wrist bones like a wedge. The second I was in, I swung to the side, using my weight as leverage to snap the warrior’s joint.
That got his attention. The xith’cal roared in pain and flung me away. I flew through the air like a missile, slamming into the far wall so hard I saw stars. Thanks to my suit’s amazing shock system, I didn’t break anything, though from the ache in my ribs, it had been close. I did break something on the wall behind me, though, because an alarm began to scream as I fell to the floor in a heap.
I was pretty punch-drunk from the hit but I forced myself up anyway, brandishing Elsie to take the next enemy, but it wasn’t necessary. The xith’cal weren’t looking at me anymore. Instead, they were scrambling for a big metal cabinet in the corner. I had no idea what for, but before I could think of a good guess, I heard something metal slam down behind me.
I whirled around with a curse. The exit to the hall I’d been running for was now covered by a heavy fire door. The large freight entrance the Highest Guide had been standing in was sealed as well, but it wasn’t until my suit warned me that the air outside was rapidly filling with a neutral gas that I realized what had happened. Those doors weren’t down for me. The thing I’d broken on the wall had been the fire alarm, and since this was a lab inside a spaceship, they used a heavy gas to smother the flames instead of precious water. No oxygen, no fire.
My face spread into a huge grin. Different as we were, xith’cal still needed to breathe, and every lizard in the room, even the huge one, was rushing for the air masks. And as I watched them scramble, a beautiful plan fell into my mind.
I reached over my shoulder and grabbed a grenade from my string. My ordnance was low since I worked, or had worked, on a spaceship, but it was still plenty for what I needed now. Using my targeting computer to line up my shots, I lobbed my entire grenade payload in rapid succession, not at the xith’cal, but at the metal cabinet in the corner where the masks were stored. My bombs exploded in blinding flashes, knocking lizards back and blowing masks everywhere.
The resulting chaos was so perfect I couldn’t have planned it better. Everywhere, male and female xith’cal were scrambling to grab the scattered masks, but their motions got slower and slower as the flame-retardant gas filled the room. By the time the smoke from my grenades was forced down as well, the air was completely unbreathable, and I was the only thing left standing.
Grinning inside my sealed suit, I hopped over the xith’cal bodies and scooped Mia off the ground. Sliding her back into place over my shoulder, I hurried back across the room toward the door that led to my prison. I didn’t have much time, but now that I had a chance, there was one final piece of business I wanted to take care of before I left.
The door to the observation room had sealed like the others when the gas came on, but a blast from Mia opened it again. I couldn’t see the daughter’s glow with my visor down, but I could still make out her heat signature inside the box. I crossed the room and grabbed the lid, tearing the box open with my suit’s strength, but though I’d braced for the worst, the thing locked inside still took me by surprise.
It was a daughter, there was no doubting that, but she was so thin she barely looked human. She was naked, hooked up to a dozen strange xith’cal machines with a tube down her throat, which explained why she hadn’t suffocated yet. They’d shaved her head, and her eyes were closed in sleep, but her face was screwed up in pain and her body was heaving, crying without making a sound, just as she had in Brenton’s arms back on Falcon 34.
“Enna,” I whispered, brushing my gloved hand over the girl’s bald head. She didn’t stir at her name, or when I reached down to pick up her hand. Her fingers were so thin they felt like twigs in my grip.
I dropped her hand with a soft curse and moved up to cradle her fragile head. Then, gently as I could, I reached into her mouth and began working the tube out of her throat. I’d barely gotten an inch free before I felt an invisible hand grab my wrist.
What do you think you are doing?
“Stopping you,” I said, pushing against Maat’s hold. “I can’t leave any of this virus for Reaper, and I won’t leave this poor girl either.”
I couldn’t see Maat through my cameras, but I could feel her cold fury like a knife against my throat. So you would kill my daughter?
“She’s already dead,” I said, staring down at Enna’s emaciated body. “If not for these machines, she’d have moved on a long time ago.”
The grip on my arm tightened, and I turned to glare at the empty air where I could feel Maat standing. “Why are you stopping me? She’s clearly suffering, and you’re the one who’s always talking about death as freedom.”
Maat’s death, Maat hissed. This girl is Maat’s link here. You will not sever her.
I arched an eyebrow. “So the Eyes aren’t the only ones using the daughters as tools.”
I DO WHAT MUST BE DONE! Maat roared, making my head ache. But quick as her anger came, it vanished, replaced by despair.
Please, she whispered, her grip softening on my wrist. You can end both our suffering right now. You know how to activate the virus. Give it to us. The daughter’s plasmex is Maat’s. If you infect her here, we will die at last, and a direct infection will kill her too quickly to leave Reaper with a viable sample. We’ll both win, don’t you see? So please. Please, Deviana, set us free.
I took a deep breath. It wasn’t like I wasn’t sympathetic to Maat’s situation. But as much as I wanted to end her suffering, I couldn’t do it yet. Not before we had another weapon against the phantoms, and not before I was sure I wouldn’t be killing all her daughters in the process. “I will set you free,” I promised her. “No matter what Caldswell says, as soon as this virus works, I promise I’ll come to you.”
Save your false promises, Maat snarled as her hand landed in my mind. Maat will take it from you if you do not—
She never got to finish. The moment she touched my mind, my other arm, the one she wasn’t holding, shot up and grabbed the daughter’s neck. With my suit’s strength, breaking it was nothing. Enna’s spine broke like chalk under my fingers, and Maat’s presence vanished.
I removed my hand slowly, looking down at the girl’s still, abused body. Rupert’s memories welled up at the sight, but I didn’t need them. I understood how he felt well enough on my own now. Whoever Enna had been before, she hadn’t deserved this. Someday, I promised myself, I’d get the Eyes to tell me who her parents were so I could offer my apologies. It was a stupid promise that I’d probably never be able to keep, but making it gave me the strength to walk away, stepping over xith’cal bodies as I made my way to the door.
I fully expected to find an emergency team waiting when I hacked my way through the lab’s fire door. Or worse, a full band of warriors
come to recapture me, but there was no one. The hall outside the lab was empty, and that scared me more than running into Reaper himself.
The whole setup screamed trap, but I couldn’t hang around waiting for it to spring, so I set off down the corridor, jogging at a steady pace with Sasha ready in my hand. I kept my eyes locked on my cameras for any sign of the hammer I knew was about to fall, but I didn’t see so much as a flicker of movement. This entire section of the tribe ship seemed to be empty.
Paranoid and jumpy, I put my back to the wall as I tried to figure out my next course of action. I wanted to go find the crew, but I had no idea where they were or how to find out. Even if I could take a xith’cal hostage and make them tell me, I wouldn’t be able to understand it. Also, tribe ships were huge. The crew could be miles away and I wouldn’t even know.
Standing around definitely wasn’t an option, though, so I decided to just keep moving until I spotted something better. I focused on getting as far from the lab as possible, turning corners at random and keeping out of sight of the cameras. I’d just spotted a long, low hall that looked like it might lead somewhere interesting when I saw something behind me.
I turned and fired before I could think, shooting a three-shot spread. Sasha’s bullets caught the thing in the chest, sending it flying. I flew after it, pinning it to the ground with my suit before my brain could catch up. From the size, my gut reaction was that it was a female xith’cal, but as I brought my gun up to shoot it in the head and finish it off, I realized that the black-scaled thing beneath me wasn’t an alien at all. It was a symbiont.
