by Conner, Jack
“Yep,” said Janx. “That’s the bastard, all right. I’d recognize his handsome mug anywhere.”
“They say no two snowflakes are alike,” Hildra said. “Guess that goes double for giant fucking starfish.”
Avery swallowed. Thousands would be dying below, either in collapsing buildings or crushed in panic-induced stampedes. Presumably General Hastur was establishing evacuation corridors and trying to get people out of the affected areas as safely and swiftly as possible; still, many would be dying, in fear and confusion, tens of thousands. Soon hundreds. And that was just the beginning.
With renewed resolve, Avery faced the front, guiding his ship ever closer to the vast ray cutting through the clouds over Hissig. The dirigibles and zeppelins controlled by the Navy, perhaps spurred by the devastation caused by the Starfish, finally realigned themselves and began rising, with greater swiftness and efficiency than the ships controlled by the Army, toward the fleet. For a moment he feared the Navy ships had betrayed them all and would open fire on the Army craft, but, as they neared, the Navy ships fanned out and formed orderly formations to either side of the Army fleet, all their soldiers aiming weapons forward, toward the ray, forming one large combined fleet. Cynically Avery wondered how much the allegiance of the highest-ranking member of the Navy had cost, then told himself it was just as likely done out of patriotism—or fear. Many would have family in the path of the Starfish, after all. Sons, daughters, mothers, sisters. It was their homes down there.
The ray had taken little interest in the fleet up to this point, or perhaps those aboard had simply been readying themselves, but now, with ponderous slowness, yet a certain deceptive grace, it turned about and aimed its ever-gaping, tendril-fringed maw toward them. Sheridan would not go down without a fight. With air blurring ever more violently around it, the ray drove straight at the attacking fleet.
Sheer, blinding pain.
Avery cried out and clamped a hand to his head as whiteness flashed before his eyes, flickering and dimming. All throughout the fleet soldiers screamed, some dropping to their knees or thrashing on the deck. Several airships veered away. One dirigible plowed into the side of a zeppelin. Fire erupted, and the two ships fell flaming from the sky, dozens dying in an instant.
The psychic aboard the ray renewed his assault, and Avery was only dimly aware of clutching the wheel and shoving a gear, making the ship go faster. He couldn’t hold out long.
Then, relief.
Layanna must have countered the psychic somehow, as the pain and terror receded, if not completely. Spots still flashed before Avery’s eyes, but he nodded at her in gratitude.
“I can’t keep this up,” she said, her face rigid with effort.
“We only need a little more.”
The ray drove on, looming larger and larger in Avery’s vision, taking up first a quarter of the sky, then half, then nearly all of it. Stretching a mile from side to side, the great once-aquatic abomination was truly massive. Squads of Navy shock troops did not wait on this one’s back, but Avery knew they must be inside, ready to pour out of its mouth or through the various orifices they had designed into it.
Gunfire flashed from along the ray’s front and sides—machine gun emplacements surgically grafted into the poor creature’s flesh—and more dirigibles and zeppelins fell away. The ships of the fleet fanned out wider, and the soldiers aboard returned fire, snipers like Hildra trying to drill the ray’s gunners through the glass or translucent skin blisters of their emplacements.
Gritting his teeth, Avery plowed his ship toward the great toothless maw, and the ships that were to go with him did the same. The rest were simply to give cover and provide distraction.
The maw reared before him, a black rectangle, and for the first time Avery actually looked into the eyes of a ray, large and dark, far to each side of the mouth; they were eerily intelligent, although perhaps that was really the psychic looking through them. Either way, gooseflesh popped out on his arms.
“Get ready!” he shouted, and the soldiers tensed.
His dirigible shot into the maw, side by side with two dozen other ships, and gunfire erupted all around him, echoing strangely off the organic surfaces. It was a vast hall, all composed of the living flesh of the animal, arched bulwarks great distances apart, the air between misty and shimmering.
Sheridan’s guns spat from every direction.
Layanna’s other-self exploded outward, and without a word she flung herself over the gunwale and set upon the enemy troops with tentacle and pseudopod, hunting for the psychic, who would be somewhere quiet and protected, removed from the action, likely near the brain.
“Down!” Colonel Versici ordered Avery. “Take her down!”
Avery obeyed, he and the other dirigible pilots wrestling their craft to the surface that served as the ground in the ray’s interior. A bullet whizzed by his ear, another tinking off a lever, and it was all he could do not to throw himself to the deck and cover his head in fear. At last the ship touched down.
“Find Sheridan,” Avery suggested to Colonel Versici. “She controls the psychic. But bring her in alive if you can. She’ll know where Haggarty’s gone.”
The colonel nodded and led his troops in a charge.
“Always some excuse to keep her alive,” Hildra snarled. “Fuck that bitch, bones.”
“Haggarty could stage another coup,” Avery reasoned. “His threat must be ended.”
“Her threat must be ended.”
“Preferably painfully,” Janx added.
Janx and Hildra, who were not military and who would have only slowed the soldiers down, covered the attack with their respective guns (no one had ordered them not to), while Avery finally did hunker down and simply tried not to get shot. Peeking through a gun slit, he saw Layanna stymied by men with venom-whips, lashing her and driving her back, beginning to surround her. The Army troops advanced, firing on the men, and Layanna freed herself and plunged ahead, slaughtering the enemy whenever they reared in her path, and at last vanished down a circular organic doorway.
By the sound of the gunfire it seemed as if the invaders were winning, though bodies of both sides littered the ground, if it could be called that, blood leaking across the gray-pink surface. Avery wondered where Sheridan was, if she still led the defenders, or if she was looking for some means of escape. She could even be dead. Maddeningly, he hoped not.
Pain.
Avery cried out and collapsed, Janx and Hildra falling beside him. It was a lance of agony worse than before. But, just as soon as it had begun, it cut off. Avery panted, sweat streaming down his face. In that one blast had been the psychic’s own mental cry of agony and fear: his death scream.
“Layanna,” Avery wheezed. “She’s found him.”
He imagined a dim, dark chamber in the cranial cavity of the great creature, crackling machines and tubes plugging into an alien brain on one side and a near-comatose, shaven-headed soldier on the other, likely in a coffin container similar to those in Rigurd’s lair, when Layanna suddenly erupted into the space, ripping and tearing ...
The ray lurched. Everyone in the great hall that was still standing fell.
Tumbled.
Avery screamed as the dirigible slid across the now-tilted, mucus-lined floor. Other ships all around slid, too, crushing people and toppling over gun emplacements and equipment. With the psychic dead, the ray was diving out of control. Avery didn’t know if it had a mind of its own anymore, or if machines or drugs suppressed its will, but it made no move to right itself or fly. The ray plummeted straight toward the ground, which could be seen rushing up at them through the enormous maw. Avery wondered if they would all spill out of the opening before it hit, but either way meant death.
Then, only moments after the ray lost control, it did begin righting itself, then leveling off. The earth swung out of view, replaced by moon-lit clouds. Gasping, Avery stared at Janx and Hildra, and all examined themselves to detect any broken bones.
In Avery’s he
ad, a familiar voice sounded, Run. Go. NOW.
All around people blinked at each other, and he knew they had heard the voice, too. Layanna had plugged herself in. She was piloting the ray.
Fly, she sent. Fast and far. You’ve done your part. You’ve gotten me here. I can survive what comes next. You cannot. Go!
With new haste, sweaty and wild-eyed, the soldiers still moving found the dirigibles that were functioning and readied them for lift-off. Colonel Versici, alive but sweaty and covered in blood, returned to the airship Avery occupied with a handful of soldiers and did likewise. Two of the soldiers were handcuffed Navy men. One was—
“Sheridan,” Avery breathed, as he fired up a burner.
She was battered and bruised but alive. Her eyes flashed at him in anger, and she said nothing.
“We got her as ordered,” Versici said. “I issued a bulletin to the whole squad to be on the look-out for her. She’d just reached an opening and was about to parachute out.”
“I’d like to see her manage the drop without a chute,” Hildra said.
Avery lifted off. Other ships were doing the same all around. Traveling in no particular order or formation, but with a speed born of fear, the dirigibles made for the tendril-fringed exit.
“This is going to be close,” Avery said. “The ray’s going about as fast as we are. I don’t think Layanna can slow it any further without it dropping.”
“Just go, Doc,” Janx said, shoving one of the machine guns over the side to lighten the load. Seeing his example, one of the soldiers did the same for the other mounted gun, or tried to; it proved too heavy for him, and a second soldier pitched in. Still they couldn’t budge it.
“Hold on!” Avery said.
The maw approached with maddening slowness, but at last he flew the ship out of it, along with the rest of the surviving fleet. His stomach lurched as he guided the ship in a curve upward, clearing the height of the ray. Not all the ships were so lucky. Hearing screams behind and below him, he knew the ray’s forward momentum had smashed several dirigibles into splinters. Curses and grunts came from all around as Janx, Hildra and the soldiers were flung against the gunwales and had to grab on with all their strength to ropes and nets or pitch over the side. Avery gripped the wheel so tightly he feared splinters had dug under his skin. Then they were soaring above the ray, accompanied by a dozen other ships.
Below them, the ray clove the sky, blocking out all view of the ground.
It began angling down.
When the creature had passed by, Avery saw that the Starfish had moved beyond the industrial sector, and in its wake smoke and fire rose from several leveled square miles of what had been important real estate, contributing to much of the nation’s economy, not to mention all the tenements where the factory workers lived. How many thousands had died already? Even now the great vastness of the Starfish, which had completely emerged from the sea, plowed through the city toward its heart, the government sector, including the courthouse building and the City Square where Prime Minister Denaris had narrowly escaped being sacrificed. Tall buildings fell before the Starfish, then were ground beneath it, and crowds of people streamed down the streets and alleys leading away from the being, but they were slow, too slow, and despite being so immense the Starfish moved all too swiftly. Its arms moved and rippled as it went, not stiff static things like those of dried starfish on display in some seaside shop but limber, flexible, and strong.
Bombers, having been scrambled from the airfield, flew runs over it, dropping payload after payload onto its miles-wide back. Smoke rose up and coral forests were shattered, but the Starfish, heedless, drove on toward City Square. Storied buildings, many hundreds of years old, a few over a thousand, succumbed to its advance.
The ray tilted downward still further, putting it on a direct line of collision with the Starfish. Down it swept, and down.
The Starfish strained ahead, destroying another wave of buildings and killing another thousand people.
The ray increased its speed.
Avery held his breath.
The bombers, seeing the approach of the great flier, hastily veered away, smoke still rising from the Starfish’s back where their last payloads had hit.
“This is it,” Hildra whispered. “This is it!”
The ray struck the Starfish with all the impact of a volcano erupting. Gore and exoskeleton exploded outward, raining viscera and bony sections out over the city for what might be miles in every direction. The earth shook—Avery could see dust actually lift from the ground, obscuring the sight of the massive echinoderm, but not completely. The ray smashed into the Starfish’s back and penetrated deep into its interior. The collision seemed to go on forever, both gigantic creatures moving with what appeared to be slowness but which was really otherwise. Gore continued to rain as the ray tore into the Starfish, then ceased, its momentum spent, and Avery imagined Layanna, shaken but alive, emerging from the broken body of the ray and, in her other-form, seeking out the Starfish’s brain, having to tunnel through endless heaps of flesh to get there.
For long, horrifying moments the Starfish continued straining forward, and Avery feared it had all been for nothing, the creature would live and lay waste to the continent.
The Starfish slowed ... and then slowed some more ... and at last ground to a final, breathless halt.
* * *
Avery stared.
Wind whispered over the gunwale.
“It’s done,” he breathed, and realized he had whispered the words.
All over the city people would be likewise staring, citizens out on the streets or balconies or grouped around the radio or television, gazing at the Starfish to see if it began to move again.
Gore finished raining, and gradually the dust began to settle, and still it did not move. At last people began to cheer. As Avery brought the dirigible down he could hear their shouts and cries from open windows and gatherings in the streets. Janx and Hildra were embracing, and the soldiers under the colonel’s command did, too.
In a low, dangerous tone of voice, Sheridan, a handcuffed figure reclining against the gunwale, said, “You people don’t know what you’ve done. You will regret this.”
Ignoring her, Janx slapped Avery on the back and hugged him. “You did it, Doc! You fucking did it! Ha! You fucking killed the Starfish! Gods, Doc, I—” Then he saw Avery’s expression. “What, Doc? What is it?”
Avery nodded ahead, to where he was guiding the ship. All that could be seen of the ray now was its tail, sticking straight up out of Starfish’s back. As he watched, the tail lost its rigidity and folded to one side.
“She’ll be fine, Doc,” Janx said.
“Sure she will,” Hildra said. “She’s a god or whatever.”
Avery prayed they were right, but he wondered if even Layanna’s people were built to withstand the impact of two such colossal extradimensional creatures, not to mention the strain of plugging herself into the psychic net that controlled dozens of Starfish and sending out a deadly pulse through it.
With the death of the grand being—and it was dead, he was certain—the lightning crackling on its back had faded, and the only illumination on it were the stars overhead and the nearest buildings that still held power ... and those were far away. When Avery drew near enough, he switched on the dirigible’s searchlights, scanning the great cratered back with that almost obscene-looking tail sticking out of it, arcing overhead, blocking out a whole swath of stars.
He searched and searched, growing cold inside, until at last he saw human-sized movement. Hardly daring to breathe, he set the ship down and ordered the gangplank flung down.
“Is that ... ?” Hildra said, squinting into the dark.
The shape drew closer.
With a shout, Avery rushed down the gangplank onto the bony back of the Starfish. The figure staggered and listed to one side, blood trickling down her leg, completely coated in gore of one animal or another, likely both. Avery embraced her tightly. Layanna started to
laugh, then hitched in a pained breath, and he eased off. Tears stung his eyes. Without thinking about it, he leaned forward and kissed her. Half to his surprise, she kissed back. Her lips were warm.
“You did it,” he breathed.
“It was your plan.”
Grinning idiotically, he kissed her again, and Layanna responded. Joy filled him. This was a magical moment. With the crowds cheering in the background, and the Starfish cooling under them, it was almost surreally perfect.
Then, suddenly, she pulled away.
“What?” he said.
“No.”
“Even now?”
She indicated the dirigible, where Sheridan gazed back, expressionless, from over the top of the gunwale. Avery was amazed Layanna had even been able to see her—and dismayed. That was why Layanna had broken the kiss; she’d seen the admiral.
“Why is she here?” Layanna said.
“Because … Haggarty …”
Pain crossed Layanna’s face. “You lied, Francis. You saved her from Ani’s bullet because you wanted her. Otherwise why safeguard her as you obviously have? You come to me now only out of shame. Who you really want is her.” Layanna’s face had grown cold. “Well, you can have her.”
“Layanna—”
“No.”
By this time Janx, Hildra, and several others had come out onto the Starfish and were exclaiming in wonder at its size and general otherness. Dying fish flopped amid shoals of coral all around; some of the coral glowed. So did some of the fish. Small floating squid bobbed all about, picking at the remains, and in pools of water larger animals stirred. From far away in every direction drifted the sounds of music and cheering. The people of the city were celebrating, but the Starfish was so big their sounds had to travel some distance to reach those on the creature’s back.
Quietly, Layanna said, “I did it. I found the brain. I sent out the pulse to the other Starfish. It killed them all.”
“That’s wonderful,” Avery said.
“My people ... have been defeated.”
“Hot damn!” said Hildra. “That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
