That Hail and Kelena both insisted on following her troubled her a little more, but their decisions were their own. There were no safe places in battle. The gods’ little hexapod clung to her arm as well, though she would settle it down once the golden god had proved their worth. She wondered if Amber was nervous; perhaps she wondered because she was, too. She thumbed the locator stone in her hand, wishing it would spark with light, but grateful either way the strange wraith had kept it and brought it back to her. She did not want to do this alone.
Down on the ground, as three hundred galhak-mounted gunners fanned out into a single, thin line to present the widest and shallowest targeting field for enemy barges, she began to march up the ridge. The animals themselves were silent, too, as though they understood something from the increasingly taut coils of anticipation wrenched around their riders. Sulakaz bubbled along off to the side, as though idly grazing from the sands.
“Isavel.” Hail was to her left, staring up the ridge they were climbing. “I’ve seen you do so much else that seemed impossible. We’ll manage this, too. Somehow.”
Isavel gave her shoulder a squeeze, then let go again.
She glanced at Kelena, instinctively, but the martian woman simply smiled and shook her head. “No parting words. If we succeed, we are not yet done. If we are done, then I am gone.”
After a quiet moment, Amber’s hexapod chirped happily. “I will survive regardless.”
Isavel chuckled. “Don’t mock your betters, god.”
“Apologies, Arbiter.” She thought she heard a true spark of humour in the god’s voice, though, and that was strangely comforting.
Most comforting at all, though, was the army at her back. The soldiers none could see. The legion of her. And amongst them all, closest to her now, holding the hand that held the stone, she found not the dragoness or the medic, or the daughters or the gifted, but the woman who had laid in a tent under a dark sky intertwined with Ada Liu, quietly feeling a thousand futures bloom.
Chapter 20
“Ready, Amber?”
“When you clear the ridge.” Mere moments, sifting away into the sand. “Every second we delay Azure’s recall of his fleets is precious.”
“You’re sure godfire can break the godshell.”
“Quite confident, yes.”
She took a deep breath and tried to smile. She could ask for no better. As her muscles began to tense and her heart beat quicker, she grabbed for the locator stone one last time, and crested the ridge.
Together they beheld the ordeal that lay before them. A sense of dread filled her, standing on the top of this hill, looking out across that vast plain with nothing separating her from this dark, looming enemy. The vast fortress of swarthy metal hung over the red plains, shaped like a disk at its top and slowly tapering inwards towards the bottom. Its lowermost point reached for the ground itself, a dense blue beam of light connecting it with something in the City Azure, its stone buildings and towers long past their prime but bannered and painted all over with bloody martian blue.
The architecture was impossible, the power that must hold it aloft difficult to comprehend. But it was no ring around the world.
They could see Azure; Azure could see them. She raised her palm and fired a bright, crackling blue shot into the air that burst into radiant shards high above her head. Behind her the sudden chirping of galhak and the growing thrum of the barges announced the advance. Sulakaz boiled over the edge of the ridge half a klick to her right, coos echoing across the basin; their small force had spread out from the wraith’s position to Isavel all the way out another half-klick to her left, and they appeared over the ridge as one, great barges and smaller craft and beasts and a few daring footmen all together.
And Azure acknowledged them with a thunderbolt-fast crackle across his vast surface. From dozens of points on his bulk, a frosty glow flared to life and poured out streams of light that condensed into a vast honeycomb shell all around the City Azure. Deep Tharsis in its glory days may have rivaled this great dome, but today it was the largest single thing Isavel had ever fully seen in a single glance.
“Amber?” She heard her own voice rise. She did not like the looks of this.
“Watch the skies, Arbiter.”
She turned her eyes up, wincing away from the sun. She had seen godfire once before, and knew what to expect - a little flicker of light, a slow pulse, a growing glowing streak of fire from the heavens.
Nothing happened.
After a moment passed, she started to frown. “Well?”
No response. The hexapod gripped her bicep quietly. She turned her eyes down to the field she would have to cross - a desert, an eerie blend of ochre and rust. She stood here in the shadow of a god, buffeted by a cold wind from the east, relying on another god to make true on its word.
“Amber, tell me -”
“I have control of a battleship.”
She breathed a sigh of relief, and smiled, looking up to the sky. “Thank - well, thank you , Amber. I almost thought -”
Something twinkled in the sky. A vaguely orange flash of light. It was a bit brighter than she expected, actually, and lasted a bit longer than she remembered.
Then the god’s voice.
“Unfortunately, Isavel, Azure’s other battleships fired on the one I took. It is destroyed.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “What? Did you -”
“I was unable to fire on the shell. He seems to be hardening the other three as we speak - I will not be able to take control of them.”
She stared at that fleck of flame and ash in the heavens. Another ancient weapon shattered. Another opportunity lost.
“I am sorry, Isavel. I suggest you retreat while you can.”
Hail and Kelena stared at her. She felt the eyes of the entire patchwork army falling on her, as though they somehow all knew . The weight of it started crushing her.
No. She pushed back against it.
We haven’t come all this way for nothing. With the strength of one, of two, of ten.
We can’t have. The strength of every battle won, every shot weathered, every eye deceived, every loss and every revelation.
“Isavel.” Kelena was reaching for her. “Nobody has ever killed a god. There is no shame in turning -”
She shrugged off the swordswoman’s hand. She took a step forward. She felt crushed, a fire buried under more tinder than it could possible burn, fuel enough to suffocate it all. She had to keep burning. But how?
When a tiny insect crawls on your skin… Do you take notice?
Was it just too much to ask? A simple shield? She had seen warrior shields, dragon shields, tank shields, all were powerful but none were perfect. There must be something . But she had no idea what the shields were, how they worked, how powerful a god was and how long it could maintain it.
She felt dizzy, and as she took another staggering step forward Hail caught her arm. “Isavel - Isavel what are you doing? We have to -”
She shook off Hail’s hand, too, and pulled off the hexapod, throwing it aside . This was intolerable. She looked into the eyes of the lover lost, her own brown eyes in angry tears, her own face nodding back at her. This is intolerable. No more. She kicked the world under her feet. No more! The world did not take notice.
She gripped the locator stone in her right hand. If Ada were here, she would have some idea. She would not be afraid. Together, they would find a way. But there was no way -
Days ago now, in Crimson’s temple. There in the polished stone. She could have sworn Ada herself was looking back at her - a ridiculous fantasy, of course. Impossible beyond all feats of gods and ancients. But she remembered that feeling of connection, that feeling of presence . That feeling of not being alone. And she was legion, a lineage of Isavel stretched back over twenty years, and within that legion she was still that woman, standing in that hallway, looking into that stone, knowing Ada was there . She was still there, sharing that tent and that night.
She collapsed into
the memory of the feeling, wanting it back, wanting more than anything else to face this impossible as an army of two.
Isavel.
Gods, she could even hear Ada’s voice. She must be going completely mad. She could almost feel herself breaking apart.
Isavel, I’m here.
The wind flicked her hair to the side, casting strange shadows in the left corner of her eyes.
She turned and looked and Ada was standing right there.
Unsteady and wrong, like some kind of mirage. She wasn’t looking at Isavel at all - she was looking straight ahead, down the damned hill towards Azure. Isavel knew then and there that her mind had finally given up.
If she were to die a madwoman, she would rather not do so alone.
She reached out and touched Ada’s hand, and suddenly she felt it - absolute, utter certainty, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Ada was truly with her. She squeezed her hand tight and stepped closer. “Ada?”
Her voice sounded as distant and unreal as she looked, but the solidity of their contact cut through all doubt. They’re afraid of us.
Isavel turned her eyes to Azure again, to that great metal bulk hovering above its shadowy city. Put together, long ago, by human minds. Bound to serve human will. Ultimately unable to understand just what humanity really was. Cowering before a human threat.
They were afraid?
Ada’s hand tightened around hers, and Isavel took a step forward. Ada followed, eyes still fixed in the distance. Hail and Kelena shouted something at her, but the words blew past like a gentle breeze, echoing impotently into the plains.
Something was wrong in the world, but it felt so right . Something in Isavel felt the creaks and reverberations of old laws breaking under strain. Something should not be happening. Something was happening, and now the world took notice. They stepped down the ridge, towards the plains.
Together. Ada’s voice sounded desperate and lonely and full of need, and Isavel gripped her hand all the more tightly. We could do this together.
Afraid. Someone was afraid of Ada and Isavel; anyone who truly knew them should fear them twice as much together. She felt a slow swelling of pride in her chest, felt herself walk taller, and something in the world seemed to bow. “We are together.”
She wasn’t mad. This was real . They were breaking something here.
Don’t mock your betters, god.
They are afraid of us.
They should not be walking together, here, but they were.
The god’s shell flickered, individual hexagonal windows receding to let weaponry through. Azure was going to fire on them.
Don’t mock your betters, god.
“Together.” She pulled Ada forward. “Come on. We can do this.”
The world around them revolted. What first seemed like dizziness was something else entirely, Isavel quickly realized. The vertigo wasn’t hers - it belonged to the space around her. The world growing plastic. Somewhere in the closed, sweaty grip of Isavel’s left palm against Ada’s right was something that broke the rules. The rules hated it, but Isavel loved it, and she marched forward onto the plains and the rules yielded.
The storm began with icy flashes from the gaps in Azure’s shell. The blizzard made straight for them, a hateful funnel of sharp edges singing through the air.
She let her mind slip deeper into Ada’s presence, gripped her hand tighter, and the world yielded.
The first to come were sharp blue hexagons aimed at her heart. They zipped closer and closer - a klick at least, less than that, hundreds of metres, one hundred, fifty, twenty, ten.
Five.
Ten.
Five.
They slammed into the ground behind her.
The world in front of her yielded, and for all that these weapons were firing straight they could not touch her. They slid and coursed around her like water around a break, snapping into the rust behind her like they had never changed course.
This was wrong. As it should be.
She kept walking. She and Ada held their free arms up to shield themselves; she didn’t bother wondering if it was necessary. Ada staggered, but Isavel pulled her along.
The shots kept coming, and they kept missing.
Time was strange. Mars was lighter than it should be, and she stepped further than she might on Earth, but time grew stranger still. The world wobbled as she pushed against it, and they crossed the plains towards the shell faster than they should have. Ada was starting to tremble, and Isavel’s vision was starting to lose focus, to grow more frantic, like she was drunk or exhausted or startled. But they were getting closer to that shell.
Rivers of fire poured from the war barges down onto them, breaking around this strange island that felt so much like home .
This was no gift from the gods. And what a gift.
They reached the shield, a great stubborn thing rooted in their way. Azure had stopped trying to shoot her at this point. There was still no reason for him to worry - no human could break these shields.
Isavel smiled, and looked at Ada. The Dark Angel looked back at the Angel of Glass, smiled back, and collapsed into the desert.
She was still something of a mirage, but she sank into the sands as she fainted. Isavel knelt down over the ethereal body, still holding her hand as the desert sucked them in, and shouted. “Ada! Ada!” She shook her hand. “Ada, I need you! I need your help!”
They sank further and further into the sand, sliding down and collapsing through the ruddy martian hills, falling through a cascade of dust and dirt. She frantically stretched her mind back through the memories of these last few minutes, of that last time before the stones, trying to reach for that presence again. Nothing. She kept trying. Nothing. She kept clinging, kept reaching.
And they were on the edge of a vast nothing, all the sands of Mars pouring over infinite cliffs to either side, stripped of their reds as they flew into dark, and in those greying sands Ada was falling away from her towards the empty grey abyss, and Isavel jumped after her and grabbed her hand.
She landed suddenly, like she had never been falling, grey sands cascading all around her. She was sitting on top of Ada, legs wrapped around her hips as Ada lay unconscious against a great, blackish-grey seat inside a small confined space.
She kept reaching. Ada was not there.
But… there was someone else.
For a moment everything around her vanished, she vanished, and she was kneeling in the middle of a vast eye that saw through her flesh and bones and exposed all of her at once. And that eye beheld, and it stared, and she felt its searing knowledge fall onto her so powerfully it could have been a blazing sun engulfing her and destroying her utterly. Except it wasn’t. It was pink and cool and gentle, like a nest of cherry blossoms.
Who are you? Somebody on the other side of Ada, the sorceress suddenly turned into a windowglass of minds instead. Ada? What is wrong?
A glassy bubble covered their heads from the grey outside, and when Isavel looked out there, she saw… whatever it was was incomprehensible and wrong, and she averted her eyes in fear, catching her breath. She looked around, trying to focus her mind on that presence on the other side of Ada’s mind.
I’m not Ada! Her mind raced, her hand still fixed to the coder’s. The colours of the eye, the strength of the glass, the memories… You - Who are you? Can you help me? I need help! I thought -
She felt silent, eyeless sight fixed on her, and felt an understanding as they met through Ada. I’m Cherry. Don’t you know me?
Cherry? The sands were piling around her knees, grey and lifeless, threatening to bury Ada and Isavel both. But in the shapes of Ada’s mind, she found the memories. Ada’s… ship? My name is Isavel Valdéz. I need your help! Please!
That cold, alien clarity finally reached back and touched her mind, and its chill was unexpectedly soothing, like fresh peppermint. It did not believe her. But it answered. Very well. What do you need?
Shields. Ancient shields. Her vision was swimming, and
the sands were drowning them both, already piling up through the cockpit and covering Ada’s lower half and starting to bury Isavel’s shins. She had no idea what was even real. She might already be dead, blown to ash on an alien desert. They can’t be invulnerable, but this one is too strong, and I don’t have the weapons. How - what are they? Do you know? Can you make me know?
I can, but even complete understanding will do you little good without the proper tools. I do not understand what -
The sands were piling higher, and she looked up and saw the reds of Mars, distant and urgent all at once. Just show me! Show me everything! Exactly as it is! I need to tear this apart! I have - I have a moment, an impossible moment -
The voice rustled in the wind. You seem distressed, and your consciousness patterns are… unusual. Out of concern, and because I do not understand enough to provide an alternative, I will give you what you’re asking for. But a complete knowledge transfer may prove confusing.
The knowledge struck her and shredded her, and she was dust in the dust, and the dust was gone, and in the void between the dust and the patterns between the sifts the edges of her mind were ensnared in a webwork of electric silk, the weave of the deep, fundamental manipulation of the universe the ancients had practiced to create such miracles. The deepest energies and forces they could understand were all linked - time and space and presence and absence and energy and information and consciousness. And so many more she could not name.
A thousand years ago the ancients had pulled at the very threads of the universe, to unweave them and bind them back together anew. Within the weave were things even they could not understand. But they were bold and brave and fools, and they touched it nonetheless, for every meal and every fruit and every flesh that now nourished the human race was once an alien thing that some bold brave fool decided to eat.
And so the shield before her and the plains beneath and her body at the centre, all of it, became a canvas on which she was and knew , the billions of fibers that made the real. And she saw the contortions and the twists in the fabric that snarled across stars and connected her to Ada, and to this crushingly gentle eye beholding her from the other side of Ada’s body. And she saw the texture of the shield, where the universe was pressed together so tightly that it cast out as light the repulsive energy that would otherwise cause it to push itself apart again. She saw the locking knotting intricacy of channels of powers and forces she could never name, and she saw them all at once, the edifice of geometries that held all things together. Including the shield.
Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5) Page 34