She turned, looked up and back, and saw she stood under his fierce beak.
This was bad, she acknowledged.
There was nowhere to run and the door didn't lock.
She had trapped herself, not that she'd had much choice.
She refused to give up, though.
She walked backward, out a little further along the outstretched brushed metal of Karn's arms, listening to the shouting in the square below, and when she could see past the beak to the head, she aimed and shot between the statue's eyes.
She flew up moments before the door slammed open.
Silius stepped out onto the arms, and Havna followed him.
Lucy scrambled to get her footing on the top of the beak, and watched as they stared up at Bane, just like she had.
She heard Silius swear.
That meant they hadn't known Bane was there. He must have arrived while they were chasing her up the stairs.
She wondered what he was doing, but she had a good idea he was looking for her. The thought calmed her. Warmed her, even though the wind off the ocean was making her cheeks numb.
Now she was even higher on the statue, she could see out to the ocean, with the square below, full of people.
Both moons lit up the sky, and Bane contributed to the general brightness, so she could see the light reflected on the water, and the straight line of fog heading toward the city.
It looked like the first line of an attacking army, a steady, unwavering line of cloud.
Silius gave a shout below her, forcing her attention to him and Havna.
They stared up at her for a beat, and then started looking for ways to climb up to her.
She was truly trapped up here. She lifted a hand to her throat and her fingers tangled in the necklace around her neck.
Maybe the time had come to use them.
There was no harm in it, anyway.
She worked one off and it crumbled a little as she pulled it free. She hoped the damage she did to it wouldn't make a difference, and then she threw it down to the arms below.
It bounced--she heard the ping as it hit the metal--and then . . . nothing.
“Throwing pebbles at us isn't going to do you any good.” Silius gave a laugh.
She ignored him, worked off another bead with a back and forth motion to get it free, trying to be more careful this time.
Bane had said it had to make forceful contact with a surface, before it would light up.
With luck, she could blind Silius and Havna, and have the added benefit of attracting Bane's attention with the light.
She walked out to the tip of the beak, looked down at where she wanted it to land, and threw again, putting everything behind the throw.
As she pitched it, Havna stepped into its path. It hit him, bounced off, and skittered along Karn's right arm and then was lost to her sight in the shadows.
She clenched her fists in frustration.
“Ow.” Havna rubbed his shoulder. “What are you throwing?”
She crouched on the beak, using both hands to steady herself, and tried to look over the side of the statue. If the bead had hit the square below, surely that would give it enough force to light up?
She couldn't see anything, and the shouting and noise from below didn't change in pitch or volume that she could hear.
She shifted her focus back to Silius and Havna and saw Havna was still standing below, watching her, but she could hear the sound of Silius trying to find a way up to her on her left.
He gave a grunt of satisfaction as he finally got a foothold.
Aaand . . . once again she was out of time.
“Silius!” Havna's shout came as she was rising to her feet, wondering if she could swing down using the magnet cylinder just as Silius got to the top, although with Havna waiting below she didn't think she'd get far.
“What?”
“Fai just made contact to let us know the thinking system is going to destroy this statue if someone doesn't tell him where the Earth woman is by a certain time.”
They were, all three of them, silent as they absorbed that.
Lucy sat down suddenly and started to laugh.
“See how funny you think it is when he follows through.” Silius's snarl was worryingly close.
He was right. But having Silius and Havna have to choose between getting her or saving their own skin was some sweet kind of karma.
She reached back and untied the necklace and held it up toward the sky to try and see a little better in the dim light.
She was obviously doing something wrong. Maybe if she pulled the beads down the wire and off the end, rather than lifting them off?
“That thing's going to shoot us in less than ten minutes.” Havna sounded panicked. “I can see a cannon protruding from its side. You do whatever you think you have to do, Silius, but I'm not staying.”
She heard the creak of the door opening, and the hammer of boots on the stairs.
Silius swore, but he didn't leave.
Lucy pulled one, and then two, beads off the wire.
Even if she threw one down to the arms below, with Silius almost on top of her, it most likely wouldn't affect him.
She should rather use them to let Bane know where she was.
Because Havna was right. She saw a cannon now, where she could have sworn there wasn't one before.
She turned to look into Karn's carved, narrowed eyes, stepped closer, and threw two beads, one after the other, aiming at the center of each eye.
For a moment, nothing happened, but they did stick in place rather than fall off, and then, suddenly, light flared. She spun away, crouching down and pressing her face into her upper thighs as the world suddenly lit up around her like it was midday.
Silius cried out and she heard the sound of him losing his footing.
All she had to do was hope he fell all the way. And that Bane worked out who had turned Karn's statue into a lighthouse.
Chapter 40
Bane hovered.
The feeling inside him to fly--didn't matter the direction--as fast as he could, and also to destroy everything in front of him, were at war with each other. Juggling both inclinations kept him from doing either, and lucky for the people of Fa'allen, it was taking all his power just to remain stationary so low in the atmosphere above them anyway.
He had lit himself up, both to show the incandescent rage within him, and to make sure every Tecran knew where he was and how big a threat he posed.
The outer shell of his Class 5 ship was covered in lenses, allowing him to see in every direction, and he was using them to project the image of a full and glowing Gyre, Tecra's biggest moon, over his ship.
From the reaction of the Tecran below, his idea had worked.
They stared up in a mix of awe, anger and fear.
The anger was most likely to do with his threat to destroy their most precious monument.
Sazo had once advised him not to use threats unless he meant to follow through. Anger had temporarily erased that advice from his mind.
He remembered it now, though.
And he didn't know whether he would truly destroy Karn's statue or not.
He knew what it meant to the people of Tecra.
He would alienate himself from all of them, even those who agreed that Lucy should not have been taken, and he should never have been enslaved.
But, did he care?
He thought about it, decided he didn't. Not one of them had come forward about Lucy and someone knew where she was.
The soldiers who'd taken her. The people in the crowd who must have seen them dragging her off.
But if he did destroy the statue, there would be debris. It would fall. And as he didn't know where Lucy was, it might just injure her.
That wasn't acceptable to him.
But now he'd made the threat, he would have to at least look as if he planned to follow through.
He extended a light cannon.
“Are you sure you want to do that?”
He registered Dray's quiet question and focused one of his lenses down onto the square and picked up the Grihan commander.
Dray looked like he was in trouble.
He was moving through the crowd, shockgun raised, and most were giving him a wide berth, which told Bane he must have given them cause to be wary.
“I'm simply showing I'm willing to follow through.”
“Will you?” Dray asked.
“I don't know.”
“Well, you've given yourself less than ten minutes to decide.” Dray's voice was grim.
Bane caught the flicker of shockgun fire, and realized Dray was shooting as he made his way to the center of the square. The Grihan commander had taken one of the shockguns from his armory the Tecran had developed to use against new aliens they found in their exploration of the galaxy. It was satisfying to Bane that it was being used against the Tecran now.
He watched Dray climb up onto the square central pedestal, and gave a few warning shots to get rid of anyone else who was standing there.
Bane found his way into the handheld of someone pointing it at Dray, and he threw the lens feed onto the big screen that overlooked the square.
“My name is Dray Helvan.”
Bane took the audio feed from the closest handhelds, and transmitted it to every speaker, so everyone in the square could hear him.
Dray looked up as he realized what Bane had done, and then gave a nod.
“If you know where Lucy Harris is, the woman from Earth who was held in a facility just outside this city for months, tell me. Not because Bane is up there, threatening retribution, but because it’s the right thing to do.”
“Why do you think any of us know?” Someone in the crowd shouted out.
“Because she was grabbed just over an hour ago in this very square, and at least six Tecran soldiers were involved in her abduction. They, at the very least, know where she is. But some of you also had to have seen them.”
There were murmurs from those in the crowd.
But they had calmed down, and it was the least antagonistic that Bane had seen them since the protests began.
Dray looked over at the countdown, which Bane had set below the lens feed of Dray on the screen. It showed two minutes to go.
“I think I might know where she is.” A Tecran woman stepped out from the crowd, looking up at Dray.
“Where?” Bane asked before Dray could open his mouth.
“I think they took her into the base of Karn's statue.”
Bane's first reaction was to reject her statement.
How convenient. A minute before he was set to destroy it, someone came up with a reason to stop him following through.
“You only think?” Dray asked. “You're not sure?”
“I saw people carrying someone. They dropped her, and I thought she looked strange. If it was the Earth woman, that would explain it. They took her into the shrine room at Karn's foot.”
“Do you believe her?” Bane asked, his words just for Dray, this time.
“I think we should at least check it out.”
“Agreed.” He was about to erase the countdown from the screen, and Dray was walking to the edge of the platform to drop to the ground, when suddenly twin beams of light shot out of Karn's eyes.
People cried out.
Some of the protesters dropped to their knees, hands out in a mimic of Karn's request for the wind's blessings. Others stood, transfixed.
“Did you do that?” Dray asked, and Bane could hear the doubt in his voice.
“No,” he answered, launching the drone from his Class 5 down toward the statue. “I think it's Lucy. I think she's in trouble.”
As he said it, there was a flash from above him, on the left, and his Class 5 took a hit.
For a moment he reeled in shock.
He had never once, in all the time he'd been awake and aware, been hit.
And now he was.
He saw, immediately, that two Levron were closing in on him, one on either side, coming in fast.
He'd known they were close by, but they'd been in a holding pattern close to the planet since before he'd come out from his hiding place on Gyre.
They must have drifted closer as he'd kept his concentration on Fa'allen and finding Lucy.
They'd bested him.
He moved upward suddenly as the second Levron fired.
“Dray.” He kept low, circling around the city.
“Yes?”
Bane rolled his Class 5, able to fly up in a way he had never been allowed to do when it contained Tecran crew.
“If I continue to stay low, they might miss and hit Fa'allen.”
“Lead them away. I'll save Lucy.”
Bane could hear Dray's breathing was deeper, guessed he was running.
“Yes.” He accepted that was the only thing to do, and as he fired on the Levron, he wondered what the Tecran below thought of their own warships putting them in danger.
And how lucky they were that Lucy was down there with them, or he'd have been happy for the Levron to do their worst.
The military had lost its grip.
Dray looked up at the light show above, saw it was two of the three Levron that had followed the Urna to Tecra attacking Bane, and wondered if the third was too far away to participate, or just waiting in the wings to attack later.
The crowds didn't seem able to decide whether to keep their gaze on the lights shining from Karn's eyes, or the flicker of cannon fire above. They stood and stared, heads tilted up.
He forced himself to forget about the fight going on overhead, to leave that to Bane, because his only concern now was Lucy.
He dodged the protesters, moving as fast as he could, and with a spurt of speed, Cossi flanked him.
She'd been standing with her back against the dais in the square, having followed him when he'd broken ranks and run into the crowd, and now she followed him toward the base of Karn's statue.
“You don't make things easy, do you, Helvan?” she asked, her voice just slightly breathless as they ran.
He didn't apologize, he wasn't sorry, but he did appreciate her. “Thank you for having my back.”
“More exciting this way,” she said, and then stopped talking to concentrate on dodging the people in their way.
The hostility of the crowd seemed to have leaked away. They were confused. Frightened.
Everything they knew was being ripped apart.
“Anyone who looks like they're about to cause trouble,” he said over the comms to the rest of the team, “arrest them. They're most likely rogue soldiers.”
As they approached the door set into the folds of Karn's cloak, between his clawed feet, a Tecran burst out of it. He looked around, as if expecting to see someone, and Dray fired on him, the setting low.
He heard Cossi swear softly in appreciation, but he didn't have time to banter with her.
The Tecran stood, still upright but dazed, and Dray shoved him up against the side of the statue. “Where about inside are you keeping Lucy?”
He blinked at Dray for a moment, then shook his head in a delicate shudder. “She's not inside anymore. She's up there.” He pointed upward at an angle, and Dray lifted his head.
“On the arms?”
“On the beak, last I saw.” The soldier coughed. “But Silius is after her, and I don't think he's stopping until he throws her off.”
Dray shoved him at Cossi and ran backward, his gaze searching the top of the statue. It was hard to see much when the light from the eyes was so blinding, but he thought he could just make out a shadow crouched on the beak, and a figure climbing toward her.
Silius.
The Tecran soldier would reach her in seconds. In less time than it would take Dray to make it to the door at the bottom of the statue.
He was too late to save her, again.
Chapter 41
“I knew the battleship commanders wouldn't fail us.” Silius's words were tight with discomfort but full of pride, underscoring the
scrabble he made as he continued to climb.
Lucy guessed he was having to do it with his eyes closed, or nearly closed, given how long it was taking him.
“Because they're shooting at Bane? They're lucky they haven't hit Fa'allen.”
He gave an ugly laugh. “Half of Fa'allen would call them traitors, so no loss there.”
“What do you plan to do when you finally get up here with me?”
She knew, she just wanted to have confirmation.
“Toss you off. I'd rather you not be around to talk about how long we had you and how badly you were treated, even though I know we're going to win this. The UC might be more difficult to negotiate with if you're around to blab.”
The scientists at the facility hadn't actually treated her that badly. Lucy had long had a suspicion they exaggerated the cruelty of the experiments they were conducting.
It was sad that they thought the military would approve more if she was harmed.
“The Tecran military really has lost its way, haven't they?” She tried to see if Bane was in trouble above, but the lights shining from Karn's eyes made it difficult to even make out how many Tecran battleships were attacking him.
She heard Silius make a sound of disgust. It sounded a lot closer than before.
She took out the pen again, opened her eyes to narrowed slits to see a little, and realized that she would have to aim as far down the arms as she could, because just landing below the beak was as easy for Silius as it would be for her. She didn't even need the pen for that.
Another sound came from her left and she bent her head and opened her eyes a little more, saw Silius's hand reach up for a handhold.
She pointed the pen toward Karn's fingers, and engaged.
Her sight was too limited to work out where the magnet had attached, and as Silius pulled his head up in line with her feet, she was yanked off her perch.
The metal arms seemed to rise up at her, and she twisted onto her back so that when she hit, it wasn't face first.
She felt the air slam out of her lungs and then she was sliding to the right, flying off the edge of Karn's sleeve into space. She screamed as she swung out past the hands held out in supplication like she was on a crazy fairground ride, and then she was hauled up, so she was pressed against the knuckle of Karn's right thumb.
Dark Matters (Class 5 Series Book 4) Page 24
