The interior of the steeler hive was shaped like the inside of a cathedral bell, except it boasted a three-foot-wide, ridged chimney in the roof, which rose to a height of about thirty feet. The walls of the sanctum consisted entirely of sticky, scaly red flaps, thousands of them overlapping. These appeared to respire somehow; little apertures on the undersides dilated and then retracted, like miniature bellows, making a hideous collective wheezing noise that had Finnegan jumping at shadows. He guessed the steeler insects were cocooned behind those leathery flaps. Was this their hibernation?
He poured water on Malesseur’s wounds, held her as she recoiled with a shuddery clench of her whole body. Shit. What else could he do?
“D-don’t d-do that again.” Her words were weak, flaccid. He touched a palm to her forehead. Christ, poor woman was molten. He soaked the hem of his T-shirt with water, used it to swab the sweat from her glazed white face. “Y-you need to go, Finnegan. I’m d-dead with this leg. Amputation’s no good—I’d b-bleed to death before w-we got to the border.” After screwing up her eyes ready to sob, she somehow managed to resist the impulse, steeling herself through sheer defiance, gasping through her nose, mouth crooked and all. Impressive to see, but at the same time hard to watch. God, there had to be something he could do to end her agony, something he—
All of a sudden she hooked an arm around his neck, pulled herself up to him. Pursed her lips and struggled, fighting with all the fight she had left...to kiss him.
He couldn’t deny it was partly pity that bowed him to meet her half way, but when their lips met, cool then warm, flaky then soft and tender; when the succulent give and take of their tongues erased all thought of her condition; in however brief a time they were locked alone in that unassailable, intimate place, she stirred him to a fever of his own, one he hadn’t experienced in a long, long time, imbuing and shared and disarming. Then she fell from under him. Rather than let her go, he lowered her slowly, eased their lips apart just as slowly, giving their kiss the bittersweet denouement it deserved.
She drifted out of consciousness. Her pulse was a butterly wing fidgeting after final flight. Finnegan laid her clammy hands on her stomach, clasped them tight in his own, and rocked himself into something like concentration.
But what could he do? The wounds were far past the point of healing; infection had taken its grim hold. She was right about amputation—he didn’t have a sharp enough edge to cut, so he would have to blast her leg off with his Shelby. And with no way to cauterize it afterward, she’d bleed to death pretty quickly. So this was it? He’d gone through all this to keep her alive, and she him, only for the wounds she’d suffered before they’d met to come back and claim her?
Think, goddamn it, think.
Maybe handing her over to the Iolchians might be her only chance at surviving? They’d have to have some sort of first aid kit. Perhaps someone to perform an emergency amputation. At the very least she’d have a chance with them. Her dad would stop at nothing to see her freed later. But with Finnegan she was dead for certain.
He had no choice. Himself, he’d rather die than surrender. But for the first time in a long time he had someone else’s life to weigh, someone else he wanted to go on living, maybe even to see again someday. Chrissakes, was this really Lori Malesseur he was talking about? A couple of days ago he’d vowed to cut her up, now he was the one cut up about losing her?
No sooner did he move to lift her, to carry her outside when another foreign vision wedged into his mind’s eye. This one didn’t hurt. It didn’t jar. Its clarity of perception as well as its visceral sharpness told him everything that needed to be done and why it should be done and how soon he ought to do it. Unpack the Golden Fleece. Use it on Lori Malesseur. Now.
He didn’t question it because this was a higher intelligence than him at work, and it had already tried to save them both twice. He didn’t know what the hell the Fleece was or how its science worked, but for some reason he knew it could heal her.
“Get out of the way, you.” He nudged the pesky condor aside with his boot, started prying Bess’s covert side panel ajar when...it hit him. He stopped, glanced round at the bird. Eye to eye with the flocker, he studied its cold, dark gaze, the unnaturally intelligent way it tilted its head, as if it were studying him, curious on a level he hadn’t imagined. Sure, it had viciously saved his life for no apparent reason back at the aviary and had been strangely placid ever since, but...now that he thought about it, had the condor been a passive passenger all this time?
The first vision had hit him while he was in the previous cave; it had revealed to him the desert above, warning him of the approaching Hover-APC. Moments later the bird had hopped back into that cave. Had it been up top at the time of the vision? The second glimpse had shown him exactly where his gun had landed at the bottom of the slope; and when he’d gone to fetch it, the bird had been there, too, exactly at the point of view in the vision. And now here it stood, facing the secret compartment in his bike where the Fleece was hidden. Had it seen him put it there? Or did it just know because he knew? Finnegan swallowed, then twitched an uncertain smile at his supernatural companion. “Hey.”
No response.
“Can you tell what I’m thinking?” He pictured the bird roasting on a spit over a thatch of burning twigs. Immediately the condor gave a hissss and pecked at his hand. “Wow, I was just kidding. Sorry.” The bird hopped back a step, motioned toward Malesseur with its wing, then gazed at him again. Hissss. “Yeah, yeah, give me a minute.”
The Fleece was furled inside a pressurized, carbon-bronzed container that resembled an urn, two feet tall and chilly to the touch. A fountain of freezing gas overflowed when he screwed the top off; it settled in midair, then descended to the ground and spread gently and uniformly. He used the arm of his jacket to retrieve the cold contents.
Its bubble wrapping seemed oddly fluid and elastic until he unfurled it to its full length and realised that was the Fleece. On closer inspection, the bubble compartments each bore unique coded signatures, while inside the gelatinous liquid millions of tiny twinkling life-forms swirled around in funny geometric patterns. Nope, he still didn’t have the first clue what the thing did. Unfurled and laid flat, it was the size and shape of a very thin inflatable bed. But the image the condor had given him suggested he should wrap it around Malesseur’s wounds instead.
Who was he to argue?
As he crooked her leg and carefully applied the baffling biotech blanket, wrapping it a loose three times around, the hollow began to stir. The scaly flaps on the walls fluttered. The wheezing noise hiked to rapidly ululating, high-pitched whistles. Meanwhile the condor hopped across and laid its damaged wing on the unused section of the Fleece. Finnegan folded the material once over the wing, then stroked his feathery pal’s neck. Its sort-of-friendly gaze in reply told him he’d done his job well. “I guess we’ll see.”
Nothing happened at first save a gradual contracting of the Fleece around the shape of her leg and its wing. But as he watched, the fluid inside the bubble compartments took on a life of its own. Emptying any outlying sections not in contact with Malesseur and the bird, it appeared to migrate all its fluid toward the wounds. The swirling geometric patterns fed into each other, sped up, creating a brilliant glowing friction of many colours. The flexible membrane swelled with the collected fluid until it resembled two flotation rings, one large, one small, around the respective damaged limbs.
Finnegan had to shield his eyes from the blinding light.
Goddamnit! He’d just given away their position. Sent a searing spectral beam of light up through the chimney. The Iolchians might even know it was the Fleece at work. That would make them even more furious, more determined.
The moment he looked skyward, the hollow burst apart at the seams. From all around, dark buzzing shapes about the size of eightballs snapped their long, whip-like proboscises out in front and swarmed with terrific speed. He crouched, threw his jacket over his head.
The collective
siren shriek—deafening—and the force of the insects’ circular flight around the sanctum quickly increased to a tornado crescendo. It bowled him sideways into the wall. He peered up to see one of the most incredible sights he’d ever witnessed: the maniac swarm spiralling up inside the unearthly glow emitted by the Fleece. The riot of colours and shadows created a ferocious kaleidoscopic effect. Beneath, the condor was going ape, one wing firm inside the fluid ring, the other pointed skyward at full span and flapping for dear life. Malesseur’s upreaching arms were held aloft by the centripetal force in the centre of the swarm, in unwitting prayer to a nature beyond imagination.
Seconds later, the furore was over. The steelers disappeared up through the chimney. Finnegan almost hyperventilated as he searched himself for bites, but for some reason the insects hadn’t touched him. They’d been preoccupied with the phenomenal light from the Fleece. Unsure what to make of it? Or was it some profound secret of Nature all creatures recognised instinctively. All creatures save humans.
The light still shone, but it was on the wane. The bulbous fluid rings shrank. He dashed across and helped the condor free. With a leap of joy it flapped both wings and hovered above Malesseur, phoenix-like in the fading glow.
“Good as new, kid?”
Hissss.
It took another few minutes for the Fleece to loosen its grip on Malesseur’s leg and spread itself thin again, as if nothing had happened. But when Finnegan unwrapped it, he gazed, stunned, at its handiwork. The four bullet holes were gone. Where necrotic rot had set in, not even a scar remained. The healing power of the Fleece wasn’t just miraculous, it was absolute. Malesseur sat up, stretched as if waking from an afternoon nap, and then jumped to her feet with a spring he wouldn’t have thought possible.
“I just had the wildest dream,” she said and, handing him his jacket, stopped to stare at the Fleece. “Say, is that...?”
He shrugged. Her eyes seemed to shine with a million many-coloured twinkles.
“You just healed me, didn’t you.”
“Uh-huh.”
She studied her leg, limbered up with various gentle yoga positions to test it, and gave her verdict as a thoroughly apathetic hmm. The damn nerve. Just as he was about to remind her a freaking miracle had dragged her back from death’s vestibule, she erupted into a spinning scissor-kick four feet in the air.
He gawped. She had to lift his jaw back into place for him, then she gave him a non-too-gentle slap on the ass. “Don’t drool, Finnegan. You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“W-what happened to you?”
“I got better.”
“Yeah, but what—”
“You going to ask questions all day?”
He flipped her a salute—“No, ma’am”—then helped her repack Bess. The questions could wait till later. The Fleece rolled up nicely into its urn container, which was still cooled. They then each took a generous swig of water. But when it came time to fetch the bird, there was no sign.
Finnegan dashed outside, and instantly located its gliding form against the blue-green sky. It appeared to be circling far to the west. He threw a celebratory fist, acknowledging the fact that he’d fulfilled his promise to save its life for saving his. And damn, it was good to see the smart flocker soaring so high. But would this be the last time he’d get to see it? The bird had come this far with him, against all odds, and now it had upped and ditched him without so much as a bye or leave?
Well, it had earned that right. From here on, he’d just have to wing it himself, so to speak. He threw the condor a wink, then ran inside at Malesseur’s signal from the edge of the row of hollows.
Shit. The Iolchians were closing in.
He jumped onto the bike, gave Malesseur’s newly healed leg a squeeze when she climbed on behind him. “You ready?”
“Always.”
“It’s a straight race now. Them and us. First to the border.”
She reached over his shoulder, kissed his cheek. “Quadruple, right?”
“Quadruple.”
Bess started first time. Her acceleration wasn’t as sharp as he’d like but she licked through the gears well enough. Enough to make him believe she could run all the way to the finish line so long as she didn’t have to sprint for long periods. That was what had overheated her earlier. Full throttle with no respite. It had gained them a huge advantage over the Iolchians, but that advantage was now little more than a mile or so. The fingers of dust reaching after them were at the steeler hives when he next looked in his rearview. They weren’t gaining, but they were constant, venerable, indefatigable. If Bess waned they’d be all over her.
Malesseur gripped him by the shoulders. “What’s that on the horizon?” she screamed in his ear. He fetched the comms headsets from the glovebox, handed her one, waited for the double beep.
“Say what? Where are you looking?”
“Eleven o’clock.”
“Why? What’s at—”
Then he saw it, the long, faint comma of dust curling up from the oily heat haze in the distance. He let his chin drop to his collar. “It’s a convoy.”
“You sure?”
“Pretty sure. And it’s on this side of the border.”
“But a convoy from where? There’s only one military base in Iolchis, and it’s behind us.”
“Yeah, but there are forces other than the Iolchians on this rock.”
“The western colonies. Why would any of them give assistance? Weren’t they at war?”
He touched her leg again, ran his knuckles over the healed wounds. “That’s why.”
“The Fleece? You think they’re that desperate?”
“I think there’s nothing they won’t do to make sure it stays in Iolchis. I’ve seen it work—trust me, it’s like nothing else in the galaxy.”
“Well, I only know how it’s made me feel. And I feel freaking amazing.”
He ducked an airborne tumbleweed. Unfortunately it caught Malesseur square in the face. “Pleuw-aagh!”
“Sorry.”
She spat the last of it, gave his back a thump. “Just tell me one thing: how are we gonna get past them?”
“Depends how many there are. If Iolchis is desperate enough to barter a deal with their old colonial enemies like this, they could have an army waiting for us.”
“We could still flee east, make a run for the dams.”
“Uh-uh, sweetheart. That door was closed long since—they’ll have all those ports snared tight. It’s the northern border or nothing. We don’t make your camp, we don’t leave this rock.”
“So it’s either over or under the fence?”
“You got it.”
“Which is it?”
He amped the throttle a tad to rise over a bed of sharp jutting rocks. “All depends.”
“On what?”
“On Bess. Nothing doing without her say so.”
“Then sweet-talk her, Finnegan. Sweet as you can.”
“And just hope she isn’t jealous.” A sudden hand cupping his crotch made him flinch, then he gave a deep belly laugh as he lifted her hand free. “I guess she’ll get over it,” he said.
“Oh, I think she kinda likes the idea,” replied Malesseur. “Why don’t you ask her? Go on.”
He switched on the audio track randomizer. The first song began, “Let’s go surfin’ now; everybody’s learnin’ how. Come on a safari with me.”
Chapter Four
Try as he might, Finnegan couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a second or two at a time. Dips in the pitch of Bess’s whine kept tipping him over into panic, but each time he snapped to; it wasn’t her, it was him, phasing in and out of semiconsciousness. He repeatedly saw things that weren’t there: the rolling green hills of the Cumbrian Lake District from his boyhood home in England on Earth, roly-poly alien couriers doing their busy cartwheel thing on the tops of dunes, a cool oasis pool, Malesseur unzipping her survival suit and flashing him as he sped past, a lot of orange rain; the last vision smacked him in the face.
He had to wriggle upright in his seat to correct his ridiculous slouch, while all that rain had made him both thirsty and in need of a pee.
“You still with me?” he asked over the comms.
“Uh-huh.”
“Not too far now. They’ve taken position along the border, at regular intervals. Can you see?”
“Yes.” She gripped his sore shoulders to keep balance as she stood tall. “There aren’t as many as I thought. Maybe a division, from the looks of it. They’re roughly blocking this vector, but they’re spread pretty thin.”
“Good.”
“You remember exactly where the tunnel is?” she asked.
“Down to the inch. The vicinity’s uneven, kinda rocky; I doubt they’ll be camping there.”
She ruffled his near-petrified hair. “Keep the good news coming.”
“Okay, here’s one. Look skyward.” He jabbed a finger overhead. “At first I thought it was one of the smaller moons, but now that we’re under it, check out the coma on that thing.”
She whistled her appreciation, glad to be indulging in the distraction. “Which comet is it?”
“Not a clue. It’s a big one, though.” After gazing at its long, brilliant lilac tail for a few moments, he glimpsed a blue streak in his rearview. A weightless and colossal blue streak. At first he thought it was the tiredness, or the impressive comet glow playing optical tricks on his vision. A trippy after-glare. But the more he watched, the bigger it grew, the more defined its shape became. An urgent desire to protect his left side, and the knowledge that he couldn’t, unmanned him, stripped him to a shrivelled morsel silently screaming to be unseen by whatever this was bearing down on him. He reached back, yanked her down by her sleeve. “Hold on.”
“What...what is that?”
Not of this world, or any other that he knew of. The scale of the thing as it caught up to Bess dwarfed any lifeform he’d ever in his wildest dreams imagined. Or had he drifted into that slack-sleep zone again, and this was another hallucination? No, Malesseur had seen it too. He gazed up and shivered coldly, astonished, as a semitransparent blue figure—a giant bipedal form, hundreds of feet high—bounded soundlessly beside him. The spring in its titanic stride suggested it was running, but it made no footprints and didn’t even seem aware of the bike. Rather its head appeared to be tilted skyward, watching the comet—following its path?
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