by Alex White
“Pesky,” rumbled Osmond, and the hulk’s amps fired, projecting his hideous glyph across their surface.
He’d tie them down, break them, liquify their brains with neural spikes. As he cast, Nilah could almost hear the whine of the drill, millimeters away from the nape of her neck.
“Spread out!” Nilah shouted to the others, and they dashed from their cover behind the plinth, finding new sanctuaries behind half-demolished columns. Nilah fired twice more, burning away another thrall. She took aim at the hulk and pulled the trigger. Osmond raised the bot’s arm to cover the cockpit and—
—the shadowflash did nothing.
“Bollocks.”
Nilah checked the slinger and clicked the trigger again, but she’d used all six shots.
“Yeah, sorry, babe,” called Orna. “Organic matter only.”
Osmond’s spell seized Nilah, ten times more powerful than before. The air went viscous around her and a force lifted her up, only to slam her down on the stone. The wavering force swept her out from behind the column into the center of the room, along with all the others, and the barrels of the hulk’s remaining autoslinger whined with delight.
“Nope,” Orna barked through Charger, firing its disperser cannon into Osmond’s spell, shutting it down.
Nilah got free just in time to avoid the barrage of rounds, scrambling out of the way for the nearest cover. The percussive blasts of spells addled her balance, and she scarcely made it to safety. Thankfully, Osmond’s attention refocused on Charger; the bot’s flaming sword and disperser rifle meant it couldn’t be ignored.
Shrugging away her dizziness, Nilah realized she was crouched beside the hulk with an empty slinger and no body armor. The others had bolted in a different direction.
Osmond began to cast once more. With another “Nope,” Charger skidded out of cover and planted a shot from the disperser into the heart of the spell to deflate it. In retaliation, armor plates popped free of the hulk’s shoulders, revealing a sinister array of missiles—which Osmond let fly at Charger.
Gouts of flame and pressure battered Nilah as she flattened against the floor. The roof blew open like a cracked egg, considerably widening the hole made by Charger’s orbital drop pod. Nilah’s ears rang in the silent wake of the explosion, and she checked her person to ensure she’d not been hit.
Lightning quick, Osmond cast his spell, yanking Charger out of cover and snatching his disperser rifle as though it was a doll’s accessory. Charger’s servos whined as it tried to resist the force, but amplified by the hulk, Osmond’s magic couldn’t be opposed. First, it spun Charger’s right hand, snapping it off at the wrist.
“I like your armor, Miss Sokol,” Osmond said. “It’s so dainty.”
The elbow joint was the next to go, crumpling in on itself. Charger squealed errors, kicking out at the wavering spell. Without him, they were as good as dead, though it could’ve been worse. At least Orna had jumped out before the fight started. From her vantage point near the hulk, Nilah could almost make out Orna’s face—teeth gritted, cheeks flushed with anger. She hadn’t seen Ranger die, but she’d have to watch Osmond destroy version two.
The hulk stomped forward, its foot coming down hard beside Nilah’s hiding spot. Either Osmond didn’t see her, or he didn’t care.
“Shame we can’t get you under contract, Miss Sokol,” said Osmond. “I’d just love a suit like this.”
Another step brought the hulk so close Nilah could almost reach out and touch it. If it wanted, it could simply stomp her into jam, or kick her hard enough to break every bone in her body.
But it didn’t.
Wasn’t it looking at her? A machine of that size should’ve had active target tracking on every surface, cross-referenced between visible light, ultrasonic, and infrared. The computer should’ve rendered Nilah a bright spot on his viewports, crouched and cowering. But then, what if Osmond’s attention was on her friends?
More viscous tendrils of air sucked Orna and the twins into the open.
“Lord Vraba will take care of all resistance soon enough,” Osmond crowed, rotating out the canisters in his remaining autoslinger for a fresh charge. “Why don’t we dispose of one of you to make clear the consequences of defiance?”
Osmond was within spitting distance for the first time in their battle. It was now or never.
Her breath caught in her chest. Nilah drew the mechanist’s mark, praying that his trackers wouldn’t point her out as a threat. Mustering every gram of strength she possessed, she reached out and placed her palm against the toe of the hulk’s boot, forging a psychic connection with its circuitry. A labyrinth of cybersecurity gates spread through her mind. She blasted through the outer loop with little trouble, but the inner sanctum of the hulk’s data processor closed in upon itself.
“I don’t think so, dear,” growled Osmond, bringing his rotating cannons to bear on her.
Nilah briefly saw herself through his gun imager before she managed to zip through his servo network and knock his aim wide. A blast of slinger fire demolished the walls near the shattered roof, expanding the gap even farther. Bitter-cold wind suffused the room, racing around the rotunda like a banshee.
“Precious. But too little!” barked Osmond, and his heavy swing came far too quick for her to dodge.
Nilah tasted metal; then the lights went out.
“We’re catching a lot of activity there!” Cordell said over Boots’s radio. “Two of the Pinnacle walls just went up. Something just blew from the inside.”
Boots swiveled her keel imager to view the collapsed wall, finding a smoking hole. “This is Boots. I’ve got eyes on the hunting party.” As a gust of wind tore away the gray curtain, she found a massive bot lumbering toward her trapped friends. She’d seen that model in the Famine War, embedded with the enemy infantry. “Boss, looking at a Carrétan 225 Demolisher pinning down Orna and the twins. Do we have a status on Hunter Two?”
“Hunter Two is hit!” cried Orna.
“Boots,” said Armin. “That Demolisher needs to go down, now.”
Boots scoured her glass for any weaknesses. “Not happening, Prince. Not while their anti-air defenses are in play.”
Malik sighed theatrically over the comm. “Please stop nagging me. I’ve been shot.”
“ETA, Sleepy,” said Cordell.
“Twenty seconds,” Malik replied. “I’ve crested the cliff and I’m arming the first charge now. Going to take down the central disperser.”
“Line up your strafing run, Boots,” Armin said. “You’ve got enough time. With the disperser down, we’ll take out the closest air tower.”
A chill ran through her gut, but she banked hard to face the Pinnacle and gunned the thrusters. “And if he doesn’t make a big enough hole?”
“If you go down fighting,” said Cordell, “we will, too. I’m not leaving this planet without my crew.”
“Copy.”
Through the Midnight Runner’s computer-enhanced imagers, Boots could make out Malik’s tiny figure. She wasn’t that far out of range of the anti-air turrets, and they were coming up on her like a brick wall.
“Reduce thrust twenty percent,” said Armin. “Maintain the slower airspeed.”
She eased off the throttle, supplementing her altitude with maneuvering thrusters. “I’m not going to be able to dodge when they start shooting!”
The turrets swelled in her view, ready to burst with volleys of deadly light.
“Arrive late, risk getting shot. Arrive early, definitely get shot,” said Armin. “I’m projecting the reactions of the other air towers to your HUD.”
Long stalks of laser light spread before her in a forest, the potential shot patterns. It’d take some fancy stick work not to get sliced in half. She eyed the anti-air turret in front of the Pinnacle’s smoking hole, hoping she wasn’t blocking Aisha’s shot. Keying the Demolisher on her screens, she leveled off and readied to fire.
She crossed into the range of the anti-air towers. No explosion o
n the central disperser yet. Pops of heavy fire dotted her horizon in the same spread pattern as before. If she didn’t break off, she’d be toast.
The Capricious fired its keel slinger, the force round sailing past Boots’s cockpit toward the Pinnacle. In perfect synchronicity, Malik’s explosive charge blew the disperser tower and the force round slammed into the anti-air slinger, clearing the way for Boots.
But the other anti-air towers had still gotten off a volley.
Boots fired her keel, maneuvering thrusters at maximum, shoving her downward in her seat as her dispersers zapped the nearest round, leaving a web of hot spell threads directly in front of her cockpit.
She threw her hands in front of her face and gritted her teeth. Errant shards of magic came slicing through her cockpit, shattering her windscreen, binding to her rubberized suit, eating through sections of her helmet. Her shattered canopy glass ripped away in a heartbeat, and wind roared in her ears as bright strands chewed on her visor.
Boots shoved her fingers into her broken helmet and yanked the face plate away, flooding her lungs with frosty air. She squinted at her target, trying to line up the shot through freezing tears. Her flight suit glove smoked where burning magic struck it, but she couldn’t feel it through her metal arm.
“Boots!” came Cordell’s voice, and she tried to transmit, but they’d never hear her over the gale-force winds buffeting her cheeks. “Boots, what’s your status?”
No instruments, no imagers, not even iron sights like the ancient pilots of Origin—visual only.
Another force round from the Capricious streaked past her, smashing the next anti-air tower, opening up a larger gap in their defenses. She dipped low and raced across the snow, enemy lancers chewing up the ice in front of her.
Wait for it.
This close, she could make out Malik, collapsed in the snow, a red stain around his form. Then the gaping hole in the wall, then the Demolisher. She squeezed her eyes against the blistering cold and leveled off, her finger twitching around the trigger.
Now.
Boots sprayed a line of glowing fire up and down the hole, splashing across the Demolisher’s shields, through chinks in its armor, over the wall behind it, into the decorations, and all around the edges of the hole in the Pinnacle.
The Midnight Runner zipped past the structure, banking hard in the atmosphere to avoid the fire of the remaining anti-air towers. Boots tapped her comm package, screaming that she wanted a status from the Capricious.
“Say again, Boots,” said Armin. “We couldn’t make out your last.”
“Give me a goddamned status on the Demolisher!” she yelled into the shrieking wind.
“Are you asking about the Demolisher?” said Armin.
She tried covering the mic with her smoldering metal hand. “Yes!”
“What?”
“Affirmative!”
Her cheeks had stopped hurting, instead going completely numb from the cold. If she didn’t already have frostbite, she would soon enough. The Runner sailed clear of the Pinnacle, rocketing over the guard depot toward the uninhabited wastes beyond.
“Confirm hit,” said Armin. “Good kill.”
“Tell Boots I said thank you,” Orna gasped over the comm. “Hunter Two is unconscious but breathing.”
“Aisha, take us in,” said Cordell, “and mow down anyone who dares to poke their heads out. We need to grab that husband of yours.”
“Yes, Captain” was Aisha’s curt reply.
She tapped her comm package again in predictable intervals, attempting to make them understand that her cockpit was blown and she needed to dock. She repeated the pattern twice, and Armin finally understood.
“Boots, return to the mothership,” he said. “Repeat, return to the mothership.”
Thank god, she wanted to say, but her mouthpiece would never transmit over the cacophonous howl. She ripped into another anti-air tower, reducing it to detritus, and the Capricious iced the last one. They were free to approach.
Boots raced toward the ship, her face so cold she was sure her skin would slough right off, and angled to dock. She brought the Midnight Runner home and flipped on the magnetic locks on the landing skids.
“Approach, this is Boots. I’ve set him down onto the floor of the cargo bay. Requesting gravitational compensation.”
“Approach acknowledges. Glad to have you back,” said Armin. “Aisha, adjust cargo bay gravity to Origin point one.”
Boots’s gut churned with the dimming of gravity, and she unbuckled her belts to float out of the cockpit. Kicking off the side of her ship, she sailed over to the powerjack and yanked an energy cable out of the wall. She plugged in her ship, snapping the charging hook into place.
Only then did her face begin to burn. Boots raised her shaking hands and inspected the damage: several painful lacerations, third-degree burns, and puffy, irritated flesh. Bits of duraplex had melted to her metal hand. She wiped her stinging eyes, swearing.
“You okay, Boots?” asked Cordell.
The Runner’s canopy was nothing more than a jagged lining of glass around its cockpit. Twisting curls of magic had stitched scorch marks across the hull. Without a doubt, she should’ve died.
She sighed, letting the lack of gravity take a load off her. “No, sir. I’m hit.”
“Okay, copy. Can you make it to the med bay?”
“I’d like to stay here until everyone is aboard, sir.”
“Sometimes we don’t deserve you,” said Cordell.
She snorted. “‘Sometimes’?”
Boots kicked over to the crew locker and replaced her flight helmet, happy to have a shield against the cold. Her hands would have to wait—there was no time to change her whole suit. She clipped the cargo tether to her belt and walked to the edge of the ramp with her mag boots.
The Capricious was descending, its keel slinger pounding anyone foolish enough to emerge and fight. With no dispersers and no anti-air, Aisha’s ultra-precise shots could strike even the smallest soft targets. On the distant snow, Malik had curled into a ball, probably trying to keep warm after losing so much blood. Orna and the others were fighting for their lives inside the stronghold of the enemy.
“Contact!” called Armin. “Bogey spades, Hatchet five-seven-three, one thousand kilometers, twenty thousand ASL.”
“What is it?” asked Cordell, but Boots already knew the answer. They’d cut it too close, and now they’d pay the price.
“It’s a dreadnought, sir,” said Armin. “It … I believe it’s Vraba’s ship.”
Chapter Thirteen
Breakbeat
Nilah’s eyes lolled in her head, fixing on features of the rotunda, only to have her vision slide to the left every time she focused up. Hard metal smacked against her stomach in regular time, and her hands and feet prickled with blood. Charger carried her over his shoulder.
She retched, then vomited across his armor, bits of protein sizzling on his open chest vents.
Orna moaned. “How much puke am I going to have to clean out of this guy?”
The smoke brought on more retching, and Nilah choked out the words, “Oh god, put me down!”
The world spun, and she found herself against the cold stone, the black plume of the exploded hulk filling her view. Every surface of her body was a bruise. Broken ribs stabbed into her sides with each inhalation.
Orna rushed to her side, pushing a comm into her ear. “You’re going to be okay. Captain, this is Hunter One. Package secured.”
“I’ve been in crashes before, babes,” Nilah murmured, mustering a confident smile. “’S just I was backhanded by a big robot.”
“Glad to have you back, Hunter Two,” said Cordell. “We’ve got some new dimensions to the mission. No easy way to say this. Vraba is here. Malik is bleeding out by tower two. If you don’t get on board right this second, we’re all dead. If we go now—and go full burn—we can keep that dreadnought at bay until we hit the jump gate to somewhere more private.”
V
raba’s monstrous shadows crept into the edges of her mind, momentarily pushing away the fog of Nilah’s concussion. And in it all came the face of Sharp—the man who knew everything about the Children of the Singularity. He had the master list of their active agents.
She’d killed supplicants on her ascent to the Pinnacle. If Nilah could just save one deserving life on this mission, the sacrifices might’ve been worth it.
“Hunters acknowledge,” said Orna, pulling a small canister from her belt and twisting. It blinked, projecting a flare into the sky as she hurled it against the far wall. “Knock down the rest of that wall, and we’ll come to you.”
“Prince here. Be advised, danger close.”
The twins joined Nilah, and Charger loomed over the four of them like a protective parent.
Orna tapped her comm. “Acknowledge danger close. Blow it.”
The sound of the Capricious’s heavy slinger impact deafened them. Shrapnel filled the rotunda as one half collapsed into rubble. Charger knocked away a stone slab before it could crush them.
“Time to go,” said Orna, and Charger’s good claw gently scooped Nilah up.
“No,” Nilah murmured. “We’ve got to get Sharp.”
Orna looked to the twins.
“Bad luck for him, babe,” said Orna, and Charger hefted Nilah into a cradled position. “We’re leaving now. The mission failed.”
Except Sharp hadn’t been allowed to leave. He’d been trapped here for over a year, forced to play along for fear of death, or worse. He would have advanced training to defeat enemy readers and mnemonimancers alike. He’d have an extensive network of underground contacts, and the goods on hundreds of highly placed members of the Henrick Witts organization.
“No!” said Nilah, pushing off Charger to jump to the floor. Every neuron in her brain lit up with agony as her foot hit the ground—her ankle had been twisted in the fight.