by Amie Kaufman
“T-t-ttrig-ggerrrrr,” she says.
A wave of force rolls out from her, shivering, translucent, spherical. It flattens the undergrowth, crushes the trees flat, expanding in an ever-widening circle until it hits beastieboy.
And beastieboy just … pops. Like a bug being squashed by some massive, invisible shoe. Its armored skin splits apart and its insides become its outsides and I turn my head and close my eyes so I don’t have to watch the rest.
The enclosure shakes like it’s in the middle of a planetquake. There’s something soft and spongy under my feet. Opening my eyes, I realize my boots are now touching the floor.
Maker’s breath, she’s moved me. …
O’Malley sinks down to the earth, arms still outstretched, blood spilling from her nose and floating in the air. Her eye is still burning with that ghostly white light, almost blinding. But I can feel her looking at me. Feel her seeing me.
“Believe,” she says.
She convulses once, then her eyes close and she passes out again, slowly curling into a fetal position and floating there like a baby in its mother’s womb.
“Cat!”
I turn and see Tyler behind me, shaggy blond hair drifting about his head in the zero gee. He’s clinging to the flattened tree line, spattered in ultrasaur blood. His face is pale, his blue eyes wide. But he’s pointing past me.
“Look,” he says.
I turn, look past the curtain of gore to the office wall. And I see the force of O’Malley’s … well, whatever she just did … hasn’t just flattened the trees, torn the shrubs free, squeezed the Great Ultrasaur of Abraaxis IV like a very large and angry jelly doughnut. It’s also cracked the wall of Bianchi’s office open like an egg.
She did it.
We’re in.
“Told you,” Tyler says.
I look at him blankly, and he just smiles.
“Faith.”
23
Scarlett
“We are aware World Ship residents may currently be experiencing difficulties with [gravity]. Please remain calm.”
The announcement spills over the public address system, met with hundreds of outraged shouts from people already well aware of the problem. I push my way out of the turbolift, sailing into the grand bazaar and a scene of absolute chaos.
People and goods and everything else float in the air, a tumble of colors and shapes, like confetti at a very angry wedding. As I pull myself to a stop on an access ladder, my gown billows about my waist in ripples of shimmering blue and glittering crystal. I’m feeling glad I decided to wear sensible underwear for once.
“Our technicians will return the [gravity] service shortly,” the announcer assures us in a lilting female voice. “We thank you for your patience.”
The announcement cycles through a dozen different languages, only four of which I can speak. The reaction from the residents is universal outrage. The savvier folk in the bazaar are wearing magboots like me—but that doesn’t do much for their wares, their livestock, their belongings.
I keep to the edge of the bazaar, pushing myself along the wall, engaging my magboots only when I need to. It’s quicker to fly, and time is something we’re apparently way shorter on than we planned.
“Kal, Zila, can you hear me?”
“Affirmative, Legionnaire Jones,” Zila responds.
“What’s your position?”
“Almost at Dariel’s flat. ETA, forty-two seconds.”
I reach the edge of the bazaar and consult the schematic on my uniglass, shaking my head. “Crap, I’m at least five minutes away.”
“We cannot wait for you,” I hear Kal declare.
“Three guns are better than two, Punchy.”
“The World Ship’s technicians will have the secondary gravity generators online at any moment. If Finian and Dariel are compromised, your presence in a close-quarter battle will not outweigh the cost of delay.”
I kick through a doorway, sail into another turbolift.
“Are you saying I’m no good in a fight?”
“I am saying this is no time for diplomacy,” Kal responds.
“Listen here, you pointy-eared, pretty-boy jer—”
“We have arrived. I am going in.”
I curse, hit the turbolift control, engage my boots as the thrust pushes me down. I hear a crashing noise over my uni comms channel, the sound of weapons fire. My heart is racing now, stomach in knots as I kick out of the lift and into the residential sector. I hear a scream over comms, disruptor fire.
“Kal?” I shout. “Zila, report!”
More shouting, wet thuds, another scream. I hear Kal swearing in Syldrathi, and though his tone is ice-cold, I realize he’s far more creative at cursing than I thought.
“Tiir’na si maat tellanai!” (Father of many ugly and stupid children!)
“Kii’ne dō all’iavesh ishi!” (Stain on the undergarments of the universe!)
“Aam’na delnii!” (Friend of livestock!)
And with a sizzling crack of disruptor fire, my comms channel dies.
“Kal?”
I kick off a wall, gliding past two bewildered-looking men crawling out of a storage cupboard, stripped down to their underwear. One of them is wearing an Uncle Enzo’s cap.
“Zila, can you hear me?”
I make the stairwell, engaging my magboots as I kick my way upward. My pulse is really hammering now, sweat in my eyes as I disentangle myself from this ridiculous dress, bustle it up and stab another channel on my uni.
“Ty, I think Kal and Zila are in trouble, I—”
I fall silent as I make it up to Dariel’s floor. There, waiting for me in the corridor is a figure in a drab gray suit. Featureless gray helmet. Looking over its shoulder into the den, I see Finian hunched in his chair, pale pink blood leaking from a split in his brow. I see bodies floating in the zero gee, the walls charred with weapons fire.
The GIA operative stows a disruptor in its jacket.
“Legionnaire Jones,” it says. “So nice of you to join us.”
24
Tyler
I’m feeling a little naked without my uniglass, but presumably it’s somewhere in that ultrasaur’s stomach and I’m not about to wade through the mess to get it back.
Pushing myself off the broken foliage, I sail across the enclosure, gently scooping up Auri’s limp body. She stirs, frowning at the shift in momentum as I bring myself to rest at the edge of the wall to Bianchi’s office. The polarized silicon has been cracked wide. Fragments of glass drift in the air above the pressure-sensitive floor—luckily, whatever else Aurora did, she seems to have killed the power in Bianchi’s office and the alarms along with it.
Whatever else she did?
Call it what it was, Tyler.
Telekinesis.
I touch her cheek, speaking softly. “Auri, can you hear me?”
Cat comes to rest next to me, blood-stained and dirty, looking as shaken as I feel. But as terrifying as what we both just saw might have been, her voice doesn’t shake.
“She okay?”
“I don’t know.” I reply, glancing through the broken glass wall. “But we have to move, security have got to be on their way by now. Look after her for me.”
I leave Cat cradling Aurora and push through the crack into Bianchi’s office. The spotlights are dead, the air filled with floating pieces of sculpture, objets d’art, alien artifacts, all knocked off his shelves by the force of Auri’s blast. A wide desk is ringed by large chairs, glass cases arranged in a widening spiral around the huge room. My heart surges as I see our target—the three-fingered statue wrought in strange metal, floating inside a tall glass case.
The Trigger.
I glance back to Aurora, see her stir again in Cat’s arms. The power she’s displaying—this small, frail girl out of time—is like nothi
ng I’ve ever seen. If I wasn’t a believer before—if Admiral Adams’s and Battle Leader de Stoy’s warnings, what happened on the Bellerophon, Auri’s visions of the future weren’t enough to convince me that we’re caught up in something way bigger than ourselves, seeing her squeeze that ultrasaur like a zit sure would’ve been.
Looking into Cat’s wide eyes, I can finally see it, same as mine.
Belief.
I hope it hasn’t come too late.
Cat pushes herself into the office, floating above the ground with Aurora in her arms. Auri groans and opens her eyes, blinking hard. She takes a long, slow moment to focus, to find me, to remember where she is. But then her mismatched eyes fix on the Trigger, and she tenses, coming suddenly, completely awake. Breathing quicker, jaw clenching. She looks at the sculpture, looks at me. Her voice is hoarse, as if she’s been screaming.
“That’s it,” she whispers.
I draw my disruptor, fire it into another of Bianchi’s display cases. Splintered silicon sprays across the room, the four-headed statue inside goes crashing into the wall. Lowering the setting, I shoot another case, and watch the glass crack but not shatter.
Better.
I turn to the Trigger’s case, fire into the glass. A thousand cracks spread out across the surface like spiderwebs. I lift my disruptor and give it a gentle tap with the butt, and the glass shatters at the precise moment the gravity kicks back in.
We all drop to the ground suddenly, off guard, me on my belly in a hail of glittering splinters. Cat and Auri hit the floor nearby, my Ace grunting as she lands. There’s a long, disgusting splash as the insides of the ultrasaur hit the ground outside, followed by a heavy, wet thump as the rest of its body follows. I push myself onto my knees, shaking the glass fragments from my hair.
Bianchi’s techs must’ve engaged the secondary grav-generators.
We had to run out of time eventually.
I hear a series of electronic beeps at my back. The sound of heavy locks sliding away. My heart lurches at the small, somber hiss of the office door opening.
I already know what I’ll see when I turn around, and still, my gut is full of butterflies as I glance over my shoulder. I let my disruptor fall from my fingers to the polished boards as a bloodcurdling scream of rage fills the air.
So close.
Casseldon Bianchi storms into the room, flanked on all sides by his bodyguards. They’re Chellerian, every one—big as small cars and armed to the teeth. Bianchi’s four eyes are wide with rage, fangs bared in a snarl as he stalks into his office. But it’s not the smashed cases, the scene of chaos, the antiques scattered among the broken glass on the floor that make him raise his fists and scream again. It’s the long slick of gore outside the glass. The sight of his most prized pet—the rarest beast in the galaxy—reduced to the consistency of the soup of the day.
“Skaa taa ve benn!” he roars.
And turning on me, all four of his red eyes narrow to paper cuts.
“Hoo-maaan,” he hisses.
His punch lifts me off the ground, sends me back into the wall. I hit the deck with my knees, jagged pain in my gut, blood in my mouth. Bianchi grabs a disruptor from one of his goons, points it at my head. Auri screams my name, Cat raises her weapon as Bianchi’s goons all draw on her.
“No firing in here please, gentlemen,” comes a sexless electronic voice.
I glance up, clutching my aching belly, breath rasping through my teeth. A GIA operative in a featureless gray suit steps into the room, flanked by a second.
Bianchi bellows in Chellerian. He points to the splattered remains of his ultrasaur with three arms while waving his weapon at me with the other.
“And I appreciate that, Mr. Bianchi,” the operative says, motioning at Auri. “But as we explained, this asset is of vital importance to Terra. We would prefer that she did not become collateral damage to your fit of pique.”
Bianchi tilts his head, looming over the G-man and growling in perfect Terran.
“This is my ship. My world. You have no jurisdiction here, hoo-maaan.”
I can’t see its face, but the operative speaks like it didn’t even blink. “You would not even have been aware of this robbery had we not informed you of it, Mr. Bianchi. Some gratitude might be in order.”
“If you had warned me sooner, my pet would not be dead!”
“The Bellerophon is only a few hours away from the World Ship, sir. On arrival, our Princeps will compensate you adequately for your losses. We require only the girl. As for the rest of these traitors”—the G-man gestures to me and Cat—“we are sure a man of your reputation will enjoy taking his time with them in your holding cells.”
“Waitaminute,” Cat says, stepping forward. “That wasn’t the deal. …”
I turn on her, eyes widening. “Deal?”
She doesn’t look me in the face, staring at the GIA agent instead. “You said we had immunity! You said we could go back to our lives!”
The agent tilts its head. “We lied, Legionnaire Brannock.”
“You sold us out?” I whisper at Cat, hands curling into fists.
She meets my eyes, tears welling in her own. “I … I did it for the squad, Ty.”
“For the squad?” I yell. “You betrayed me for the squad?”
“Betrayed?” Cat’s voice is incredulous. “If anyone betrayed us, it’s you!”
“What?”
“You heard me!” Cat points at Auri. “Ever since she came aboard the Longbow you’ve thrown the regs out the window! Sucking us all down into the toilet, and for what? For her?” She presses her hands to her breast and whines. “Oh, I’m so sweet and helpless, Mr. Jones, won’t you gather me up in your big strong—”
“That’s what this is about?” I demand. “You and me?”
Bianchi steps forward and growls. “Enough—”
“This has nothing to do with us!” Cat screams right over the top of him. “This is about the Legion! About the academy! Everything we worked for since we were kids, Tyler! Some skirt bats her eyes at you and you throw it all away?”
“It was a mistake, Cat!” I yell. “I’m sorry about what happened between us on shore leave! I’m sorry I messed it up! But isn’t it about time you got over it?”
Her eyes widen at that. “You sonofa …”
She launches herself across the room, slugs me right in the jaw, shoves me back into a display, cracking my skull on the glass. I tackle her backward, we crash into the Trigger display, knocking it over as we hit the deck. Broken glass and flailing fists, Cat pounding on my face and screaming, screaming.
The room dissolves into chaos; a couple of the Chellerians guffawing at the stupid hoo-maaans, the two GIA agents striding in to break us up, Auri crouching low and covering her ears as Bianchi raises his disruptor and fires into the ceiling.
The G-men pull Cat off me, my blood on her knuckles. She’s panting, flailing, still spitting curses at me.
“You bastard! I’m gonna kick your arse so hard, your fu—”
“ENOUGH!” Bianchi roars. “Take them to the cells!”
One of the G-men grabs Aurora’s arm, hauls her up from the debris. “We will be taking Ms. O’Malley back to Earth, as per our arrangement.”
Bianchi squares up to the operative, folding all four of his arms.
“You will have earned the friendship of the Terran government, Mr. Bianchi. I assure you, our gratitude is almost boundless.”
“Perhaps while they are showing their gratitude, they can explain why they had two of their agents aboard my World Ship without my consent.”
The G-man shrugs. “The Global Intelligence Agency has one thousand eyes, Mr. Bianchi.”
The gangster grits his fangs. But finally he growls and nods. The Chellerian goons step into the room and grab me and Cat. The GIA agents march briskly out through the office door,
hauling Auri between them. With a hard shove to help us, Cat and I follow, boots crunching on broken glass, leaving Bianchi to stare mournfully out at the remains of his pet.
We’re marched side by side, Auri and the GIA out in front. Cat refuses to meet my eyes. Blood drips down my chin from the split she reopened in my lip. I can hear Auri’s breath catching in her chest, the soft metallic hiss of the G-men breathing. I can’t hear the party music anymore.
The G-men bundle into a turbolift, press the button for the docks. One of the goons swipes a passkey and hits another button—presumably the level for Bianchi’s infamous holding cells. People who go in there never come out.
I stand facing the doors, six Chellerians at my back, two GIA behind them. I ache all over. One of the goons talks to me, lips curling in a sneer.
“I don’t speak Chellerian,” I reply, licking my bloody lip.
“He’s asking if you’re stupid,” one of the operatives replies helpfully. “How you possibly expected to get in and out of that office without getting caught.”
I smile at the goon, then glance over my shoulder at that faceless mirrormask.
“Tell him I didn’t.”
The operative draws its disruptor, unloads a stun blast into the back of the Chellerian’s head. The second agent draws, too, firing into one goon’s face as he turns, then dropping another with a second point-blank blast to his chest. There’s a brief scuffle, stun blasts flash again, and in a handful of seconds, every goon in the lift is laid out on the floor, twitching and drooling.
“Well.” Scarlett drags off her GIA mask, checking her reflection and adjusting her flaming-red hair. “That went less than smoothly.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” I say. “Is Finian okay?”
“His exosuit is damaged, but he is alive,” Zila replies from beneath the other G-man uniform. “Kal took him back to the Longbow.”
“Could’ve gone bad,” Cat mutters. “Bastards told me they were going to wait till after we had the passkey before they stormed the flat.”