General Cynwrig was not taking any chances at losing this technology. Of course she wasn’t. She’d brought an army.
Just do what you planned, Asala tried to direct herself, fighting off a swell of helplessness. What you always do. Look for the opportunity, and take it.
“Well, hello there,” called an amplified voice.
Around Asala, the soldiers immediately stiffened to attention, rifles socking up against shoulders. The AIs seemed to do something equivalent at the same time, whipping around toward the threat, prepped and menacing.
A hidden opening was rolling back in the mountainside. Much larger than the crack Asala and Niko had squeezed in through. And the woman striding toward them from the depths did not seem the least bit perturbed by the crosshairs of death amassed across the mountains. Her long coat swirled around her and her feet made almost no sound on the springy needles, and she held something aloft in one hand—something that, even at this distance, made Asala physically sick to look at. A box of writhing, endless matter, like the cubes but not, some sort of inside-out device that made every instinct of Asala’s stand on end.
Uzochi.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she called. She had some of the same agitated air as before, but now it felt cracked, bent to the edge of what any person could withstand. “I’m glad you’re smart enough to put a pause on your killing machines, General. My ships aren’t here anymore. We’re well ahead of you.”
She stopped. Raised the thing she held in both hands above her head. Her hands shook, but somehow it didn’t look like fear—more like exhilaration.
Cynwrig held up a fist to her troops and stepped forward. “I’ve heard you’re worth as much as your ships all by yourself. You made a mistake staying behind, no matter what that is you have.”
No, Asala thought. This is no mistake . . .
“Oh, this?” Uzochi’s face bent in a humorless smile, the smile of someone who has broken too many times to ever be properly afraid again. She twisted her nauseating box in the air, and she stood against the whole Gandesian army like a hornet facing down giants. “Do you like it? It’s my own little homemade gravity bomb. You know how our wormhole drives are made—that much energy, it’s so very easy to make it destructive.”
Asala was close enough to see Cynwrig tense.
“As for staying behind,” Uzochi continued, “I don’t know if I know how to have fun with my science anymore, General. But this, I think might be something to see. Maybe it will help me remember.”
Everyone moved at once.
Cynwrig saw the jaws of the trap just as it closed, and whirled to give an order to her troops, but Uzochi was faster, bringing the sickening gravity bomb in her hand straight down as if to smash it into the forest floor. At the same time, Asala launched herself at Cynwrig, because they might all die this second, but if they didn’t, this was her chance, maybe her only chance—
Uzochi’s bomb hit the ground, and up became down, and the mountain went sideways.
Asala’s precise tackle somehow missed Cynwrig by more than a meter and rolled her out onto dirt and pine needles, her bound hands making it impossible to catch herself. Everything was falling in the wrong direction. Around her, soldiers hit rocks or earth or tree trunks, their weapons flying, and AIs nosedived into the loam. The shock wave seemed to swell as it blasted from the epicenter, crumpling and rolling the tanks, tearing colossal robots in two as half of them fell one way and half another. Trees splintered down the middle as if they’d been hit by lighting, crashing through the chaos and bleeding showers of scarlet needles.
Above them, quadcopters yawed and fell out of the sky, or fell up, up and then down down down until they smashed into fire and the ground shook. The mountain rumbled as if an avalanche were choking up from the depths. Boulders tore free and crashed—some into each other, others flattening frail human flesh or flailing robots, and still others tumbling up and off the tops of cliffs into the sky, as if they were plummeting off the edge of the world.
Asala pushed against the dirt, trying to get up against the feel of a giant hand pressing her to the surface. Her mouth choked on soil and pinesap. A rifle had landed near her; she heaved and forced herself into a roll along with the way the world was tilting until her scrabbling hands found the grip.
The only people still moving were the ones who had been closest to Uzochi: Asala, Soraya, a handful of soldiers, and Cynwrig. Asala managed to roll halfway up, though it felt like she was fighting at least six gees hauling her sideways, and pulled the trigger on the few staggering Gandesian troops. Even with the ground going off its axis, she managed to take out three with her first five shots.
Niko was down, their prone form unmoving in the shadow of the crumpled tanks, with Soraya on her hands and knees beside them. Asala tried to maneuver her aim line around them to find the other three soldiers, but hit her knee hard on the dirt again. Two shots went wild, but the third found a mark.
A screech sounded behind her. Some sort of impossibly fast, blade-like scooter zoomed out of the caves, riding the crosswinds of the gravity waves straight to the epicenter, where Uzochi stood, calm and unaffected. She swung a leg over and threw a grim smile at the Gandesian army she’d just single-handedly destroyed.
Cynwrig snarled and lurched after her, but Uzochi wheeled the scooter around and darted away. The residual effects of her bomb caught at her, too, but she rode into them like a windsailer, undulating down the mountain until she disappeared.
Asala was finding it easier to stand. She twisted to take in the remaining threats—behind her, two soldiers left, Soraya now on her feet and tackling one of them. And in front of her, face gnarled into a rictus of hate, Cynwrig swept around and bore down, sear gun in hand.
Asala’s center of mass was too far off-kilter to aim, and she still felt like she had to lean into the shifting g-forces. But she dove to close the distance and whirled the butt of the rifle to slam into Cynwrig’s sidearm. Both of their weapons pinwheeled away.
Cynwrig’s palm came up in a sharp uppercut, and Asala tried to duck and block, but withher hands still strapped palm to palm she only managed to make it a glancing blow. She reeled back. Cynwrig swarmed her.
Asala couldn’t think, couldn’t plan, only react.
Clumsily protecting her face with one elbow, she brought her knee up and snapped out a kick, catching Cynwrig in the midsection and taking the woman to the ground. Asala threw herself bodily on top of her, driving down with knees and boots, clubbing with both fists where she could. Cynwrig clawed back and rolled them both, socking Asala in her eye, sternum, throat.
They fell apart. Asala fought for breath, but she didn’t have time, Cynwrig was about to fly at her—
Except she didn’t. She rolled to the side and grabbed for her sear gun.
General and gun came up in one move, snapping into place to aim directly at Asala.
Asala felt her body start to dive. She felt herself try. But she was too late, she knew it in that moment, her fate crystallizing before her with the dead certainty of long experience.
One of the smaller troop transports thundered out of nowhere and slammed into Cynwrig, sending her flying. The general sprawled flat in the dirt meters away, fingers twitching.
“Come on!” yelled Soraya from inside.
Asala cast around quickly, but didn’t clock any dropped weapons near enough to grab on her way in. She staggered to the transport and half-fell inside. Niko was draped in a seat, unconscious, their wounds reopened and oozing.
“Cynwrig,” Asala managed to spit out. “She’s not dead . . .”
Out the windshield of the transport, Cynwrig started to drag herself up. Reached for her weapon.
Soraya’s face flattened into a thin line, and she punched a command into the interface. The transport lurched forward.
Faster than Asala would have thought possible for someone who’d just been leveled by two metric tons of moving metal, the general dove out of the way, rolling out to track them
with the weapon she’d managed to scoop up again. Asala ducked instinctively, but the transport was armored like the larger carriers, and lethal fire flashed uselessly against the back of it.
“There are reinforcements coming in now,” Soraya said, fast and urgent. “This wasn’t the whole Gandesian military, just a good chunk of it. Uzochi must have known they’d be going after the ships. Great Mother, she was probably the one who leaked the intel! Then destroy them all before they come after her ships in space, win the first battle just like that—”
“Later,” Asala said. “Where are we going?”
“Into the caves. I don’t think we can make it anywhere else before they get here. Uzochi was working on ships here—there has to be something left, right? Can you—what can you fly?”
“Anything,” Asala said shortly. Over the years she’d piloted everything from bare-framed solo scooters up through a commercial cruise liner—it wasn’t likely they’d stumble across something she couldn’t figure out.
“This is bigger than just the cubes now,” Soraya went on, and Asala thought she wasn’t understanding right, because how could anything be bigger? But Soraya was continuing. “What Uzochi did to Gan-De here is barely going to make a difference, not with the orbital defense platforms and the drones Gan-De has up in space. Uzochi and Hafiz—they had started locking me out of things, but the plan was always to take Camp Ghala through the wormhole with us first. Uzochi’s rescue ships must be headed there, and that means . . . that means . . .”
Her voice sawed into silence. The transport sped them into the black chasm of the mountain, the light cutting out as if a switch had flipped. Running lights sprang to life automatically, just in time for Asala to see the transport tilt drastically away from crashing into a rock formation. Soraya had set the speed parameters higher than was safe.
Asala didn’t need her to finish what she’d been saying. The conclusion hung heavy and obvious in the silence. Everyone in Camp Ghala was about to die.
“Do you have any defenses?” Asala asked.
“Are you kidding?” Soraya’s voice climbed like it was a joke. “You saw what we’re dealing with up there!”
“Ships, then?”
This time Soraya hesitated. “I could scrounge maybe two or three dozen spaceworthy ships that have some type of weapons capability, but to fly them . . . We have cargo pilots? They know how, at least . . .”
Three dozen ships, flown by green pilots. Against the entire Gandesian orbital defense on one side and all the force Khayyam could bring to bear on the other. Camp Ghala wouldn’t just die. It would barely whimper as it was crushed.
How had Uzochi and Hafiz ever thought this would work? They must have always been banking on their 1 percent chance of getting through, otherwise content with going out in a blaze of glory.
Asala had known others like them. Most of them were dead. And they’d taken a whole hell of a lot of people with them.
But never this many at once.
“I’ve spent my whole life protecting refugees.” Soraya’s voice broke. “This can’t be the—we can’t end like this. Uzochi wants to save Camp Ghala. Let her. We’ll still try to grab a cube to keep behind. I’ll find a way, and I’ll stay, and then someday everyone else can go too. Khayyam and Gan-De can find a way to work together, I’ll make them, if only—”
Whatever stupidly idealistic thing she was about to say, it was cut off when the transport lurched, wheeling around a corner and into a huge open cavern.
No. Not a cavern. A hangar.
“Slow down,” Asala said. “Can you turn up the running lights? This looks like what we want.”
The cavern was still half-natural rock with the floor smoothed into a stone pavement. The shapes of older-model ships—some in pieces—cluttered the edges of the wide space.
Asala frowned. “This place looks like it hasn’t been touched in decades. I thought Uzochi was building her ships here.”
“Who knows how extensive these caves are?” Soraya said. “There are probably a dozen shipbuilding facilities in here. Are any of these flyable, or not?”
“There,” Asala said. “That one. It’s a racing dart. If anything will get us a chance to punch through the orbital defenses, that’s it.” More important, it looked mostly intact.
Soraya tapped the transport’s interface, and they sped forward so fast Asala briefly wondered if Soraya had just sent them into a flaming crash with the tiny aerodynamic ship before they jolted to a stop right next to it. Asala turned, dreading trying to move Niko, but Soraya caught her arm so hard it hurt. “We need you. Lead the defense force for us. Save Camp Ghala.”
Nothing can save Camp Ghala.
“I was ground trained and deployed,” Asala said instead. “I’m not who you want for orbital warfare.”
Soraya’s grip tightened. “You’re all we have. Even if you can hold them off for a few minutes—in those few minutes, maybe a few more people get out. Innocent people, Asala.”
Dayo’s face sliced at Asala’s memory again, unbidden.
Dayo, who still might be somewhere on Camp Ghala, lost between the bureaucratic cracks. But even if she wasn’t . . . the clanners of the Thoroughfare laughed and hugged and bartered in her mind’s eye again, the smell of jinma, the shouts of Hypatian slang.
Maybe this was the one small way Asala’s planet could live on, light-years away, in another solar system, far from the people who had left them to die.
She’d never wanted to be part of this fight. But if she turned away now . . .
What was the point of making a decision that would leave her empty the rest of her life? Even if it was the smart one?
There was only one answer she could give.
“Fine,” she said to Soraya, shaking her off. “I’ll lead your suicidal defense. Now go find the hangar door—there must be one. I’m going to see if this rust bucket still has enough juice to run the starter sequence.”
• • •
Strapped in one of the cramped seats of the ancient Gandesian racing dart, Soraya concentrated on a cracked interface panel and tried not to watch Asala’s piloting. Instead, she got on the nets with Ifa and Mangatjay, fighting to boost the old ship’s comm speeds while she frantically tried to sort out everything they would need. Ships. All the ships they could get. Pilots. Anyone who had ever held a stick in their life . . .
And an organized evacuation plan, because Hafiz sure wasn’t going to have one. Docking ports cleared or jerry-rigged for Uzochi’s ships, disaster preparation that should have taken years torn through in less than forty minutes as they shot up from the surface. Asala hadn’t been kidding that the dart was fast, even as old as it was. The acceleration changes as they dipped through low orbit made Soraya want to vomit, but somehow they managed to twist through Gan-De’s orbital defenses with barely a singe across their bow.
Soraya figured it didn’t hurt that the Gandesian military—not to mention its leader—was probably still in mild disarray down on the surface.
Ifa met them at the gangway, wearing a headset and juggling two handhelds. “Soraya! We’re trying to scramble everything you said. I’ve got a zillion things for you. How long before the ships get here?”
“Last tracking I pulled said we’d beat them by at least an hour,” Asala grunted behind her. She’d lifted a still-unconscious Niko in her arms and carried them down the ramp behind Soraya, her face an expressionless mask. Niko’s face was slack, their chest barely moving, and their pallor had gone gray beneath the blackly crusting blood.
Ifa’s eyes lingered on Asala and Niko a little nervously.
“They’re on our side, I promise,” Soraya said. Too much to explain; Ifa would have to trust her. “And we need a med bay for Niko right now. Tag in Jadyn and tell her any med tech we have, use it. I’m authorizing everything, understand?” She hated to admit the order had a calculation behind it, but . . . whatever Niko’s true loyalties were, Soraya was going to be smarter about it than Cynwrig, and Asala had been rig
ht that Niko offered useful leverage against Khayyam.
But for once it was the decision she wanted to make anyway. At least she could justify it. She’d had to make too many calls to preserve resources; just this once, she could save a life without being weighed down by careful consideration.
“Okay, got it. Um—you two—Jadyn says she’s headed up to meet you now,” Ifa said to Asala, pointing down a hallway. “Head toward the Thoroughfare and she’ll grab you into the med center.”
Soraya nodded them away, her mind already dashing to the next thing. “Ifa, walk with me. What have you found for the defense force?”
“Twenty-eight ships we’ve scrounged so far that have some kind of weapons, but none of us know anything about how good they can stand up to the Gandy robots out there. Like, I can’t find anyone who’s an expert on it at all—it could be we only have five ships that’ll work, or none.”
Soraya wouldn’t be able to tell either. “Agent Asala is going to lead our people. She can cut ships from the team if she feels they can’t stand up to enemy forces.”
Ifa cast a quick glance back the way they had come. “And you’re sure she’s, you know, okay and stuff?”
“I’m sure. We can trust her.”
Whatever lingering suspicions Ifa had, Soraya’s firm confirmation was enough for him. His expression cleared, and he turned back to his handhelds, keying in information double-time.
Soraya didn’t add that in all likelihood the defense force would fail anyway and none of this would matter, but the only other option was not to try. She didn’t have what Khayyam or Gan-De wanted, so she had no power to negotiate, even if Cynwrig or Ekrem would have wanted to. Uzochi and Hafiz were taking them screaming into the abyss, and she could only try to mitigate the damage on the way down.
The Vela: The Complete Season 1 Page 27