by Rachel Caine
“Yes! I’ll deploy them and set them to ignore friendly power signatures. Make sure Suncross and Typhon mark them on their displays.”
“You all get that?” I asked, and Yusuf just nodded, working on his own tasks.
Suncross said he understood. He added, “I am also deploying stealth-mode devices of destruction. All will be keyed to ignore allies.”
Yusuf said, “I’m doing the same now.”
Between the three of us, we spread out a complex net of destruction; it would take out thousands of Phage, but they could afford that. Wouldn’t even make a dent. The scary part was, Lifekiller might have the same number with him; he’d left only half his Phage army to delay us, maybe long enough for him to destroy Earth.
I stared at the star’s life force streaming away into that black hole. If we could get the Phage into position in that kind of death spiral, it might just suck down half the swarm, maybe more. How many would they lose before they decided to break off the attack? Unknown. And I couldn’t ask Xyll anymore.
Or could I?
I stepped back from the console. “I’ll be right back,” I said. Bea nodded, and so did Yusuf and Suncross. Starcurrent had appeared on my screens now too, and ze waved some tendrils in a distracted sort of way. Everybody had jobs.
I had one too.
I headed for Medbay. EMITU was in his recharging station when I came in, but he launched himself out with a whir when I tripped his sensors. “You should not be here! My patient has finally calmed down, no thanks to you. Your presence is not required.”
“Yeah, well, I’m here anyway,” I said, and stepped toward the bed.
Chao-Xyll’s features looked much more angular, more alien than before. Her beautiful black hair was gone, and onyx chitin encased her head all the way to her ears and forehead. Her eyes were shut, but when she opened them, I saw that she wasn’t suffering quite so much. Her arms weren’t restrained, but the bot did have her ankles cuffed. With effort, C-X tried to sit up.
“Take it easy,” I told her. “I’ll talk. Tap twice for yes, once for no.”
Her fingers weren’t human anymore; they were longer, more insectile, and they had cutting surfaces on the undersides. But she lifted one digit and tapped twice.
“Good,” I said. “We’re in trouble. We’re going into battle against the Phage soon. Can you do anything to help us?” I hated asking this, but Xyll had been our chief asset, and now the Phage cell made up half of C-X’s whole.
She hesitated, then tapped just once. I took that as a no. But then she tapped again, three times, and I wasn’t sure what that meant. “Slow down. What are you trying to say? EMITU, is she doing Morse code again?”
“I believe she is trying to tell you that she isn’t sure,” the bot said. “Or perhaps that she’d like to eat you. I don’t speak hybrid.”
“Shit.” This was infuriating. There had to be some way to communicate with her. I took a deep breath. “Nadim? Can you, ah, hear Chao-Xing at all?”
“That is not Chao-Xing,” he said coldly.
Damn. I really didn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. Nadim had a mean streak where the Phage were concerned. “Okay. Chao-Xyll.”
“I can hear . . . something. It’s not quite as chaotic as the screech of the Phage. But it is not human, either.”
“Well, can you understand it at all?”
“Emotions only. She’s frustrated.”
Yeah, who wasn’t? “I need some way to talk to her. The translator could understand Xyll before; why can’t it process her, ah, vocalizations now?”
“Perhaps it takes time for it to adjust. Perhaps if she speaks more?” I could feel how repulsed Nadim felt by this, how angry he was that we’d lost Chao-Xing to . . . this. But I couldn’t afford to let that emotion get to me, either. I needed to focus.
“Okay.” I focused on Chao-Xyll again. “I need you to try to talk. The translation matrix needs more data to start parsing your language. Do you understand?”
Two taps. Chao-Xyll opened her mouth, and I saw with a slight shudder that her teeth were . . . gone. New ones were coming in, streaked with blood from punching through her gums, and they were differently shaped. Triangular. A mouth made for tearing flesh.
Sounds came out. Sounded like metal dragged over concrete to me, raspy and wrong, and I was vaguely surprised there weren’t sparks to go along with it. She paused. I gestured for her to keep going. More noise, louder this time, with more modulations but no less painful to hear. Honestly, like a bag of tools dropped down stairs this time. I didn’t know how a human throat—or one that had once been human—could even make those sounds. It sounded like it would rip delicate skin apart. Finally, she quieted, anger blazing from her pale gold eyes. She couldn’t even curl her hand into a fist anymore; her hands wouldn’t bend that way.
“Too new,” EMITU said then. “The translator has never run across this species. Nor have I. Very interesting!”
I didn’t want the bot to make C-X feel like a specimen. She was already upset enough at failing to communicate. “Dial it down. Can we go back to Morse code?” I asked.
A single inclination of C-X’s head. At least she remembered how to do that. I glanced at EMITU. “Will you translate for me?”
“Well, that’s remarkably polite of you. Yes, certainly. What would you do without me?”
“Learn Morse code,” I muttered. “But I’m glad I don’t have to. Time is not on our side.”
EMITU listened to the taps. The message was longer than the first time, but I suspected the med bot of simplifying. “Don’t know. Can try.”
Try was better than nothing. I didn’t feel great about cutting C-X loose when she couldn’t even speak, at least not in words intelligible to our translation matrix. I guessed if we had to communicate, she could click against the comm pad and EMITU could pass along the word. The fact was, we needed every edge we could get to survive this fight—to blow past the Phage blockade and haul ass to Earth to wreck up the god-king.
EMITU looked at me. I looked at the bot. I shrugged.
“It’s your potential dismemberment,” he said. “I can be rebuilt.” His ghoulish cheer was somehow comforting to me right now.
“Go ahead,” I said, and the ankle restraints snapped open.
C-X practically levitated out of the bed, a move so fast it wasn’t human, and before I could react, she was right there in front of me. Her posture was different, bent more forward, and her knees were angled the wrong damn way. Gleaming black chitinous exoskeleton. Cutting edges and spines. Knives for fingers.
I felt very, very soft. She could peel me like an apple, if she felt the slightest inclination. I didn’t move. I didn’t blink. I just looked in her still-human eyes and said, “I’m trusting you. Don’t let me down.”
Her lips twitched and formed a familiar smile. Familiar except for the sharp teeth, anyway. I imagined her chewing through Nadim’s hull, lost in Phage impulses. The look in her eyes was alien to me as well, cunning and excitement and—
She scuttled off before I could say more, and yeah, her neck allowed her head to turn a 180 and look right at me as she exited. It was all I could do not to shriek, and then C-X was gone, moving away from us toward the docking bay at a presumably incredible speed.
“Nadim, tell Bea to stay out of her way. Warn the others that she’s going to be out there among the Phage. Can you tag her energy signature and mark her as friendly?”
“Yes,” he said, but he sounded sober about it. “Is she? Friendly?”
“Well, she didn’t eat my face, so let’s just call it good for now.”
EMITU did his sniff thing and rolled himself back to his dock. None of his concern anymore, until one of us ended up bleeding, so he was going to have a rest. Wished I could. I went back to Ops instead.
Beatriz looked pale, and I knew she’d seen C-X without her even saying it. “Is this dangerous? Letting her loose?” she asked, and then shook her head. “No, never mind, don’t answer that; I know
it is, and I know you wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t important. I’m okay.” She heaved a deep breath and blew it out. The soft, loose curls around her face waved in the breeze. “Nadim’s tagged her energy signal for me, and I marked her as friendly for our bombs. I sent the information to Yusuf and Suncross too.”
“Thank you,” I said, and kissed her. Hugged her, since we might not have the chance in a few more minutes. I wanted to say, We’ll get through this. I promise, but I couldn’t. We were past me saying easy words to settle her down, like I had when she’d first panicked in the shuttle. Seemed like we had been together forever. Not so long in real time.
I didn’t speak my doubts aloud either. That was my burden to carry now. Chao-Xing had passed that on to me, I supposed. I stood at the console and looked at our preps, checked the Phage’s progress, looked at Earth and the dot that was Lifekiller and the other half of the Phage swarm speeding toward it at terrifying velocity.
The last five minutes were the hardest. I kept racking my brain, checking our courses and positions, going over the plans and making damn sure I knew all our risks. The Phage were going to come at us from all directions, including above and below; we had our defenses positioned in a bristling, lethal ball around us, set far enough apart that they’d trigger on encounters, not other explosions. We needed every one of them to count and count hard.
“Get ready,” I said, watching the screens. “Everyone? Hold tight.”
“Die with honor!” Suncross shouted exultantly. “I have sent our glorious message of defiance! We will be remembered, Zeerakull! All of us!”
“Hell yeah, we will!” I shouted back. “Okay, here we go. Phage coming up . . . now.”
They were impossible to see visually until they crossed a light source, but they blocked out stars as they passed them, and all around us, the universe was . . . going dark. Distant candles going out. The dying star still smoldered, but it grew dimmer, dimmer, gone.
We were in the black now.
And the swarm hit hard.
I watched the wave of bombs go off. First line lit around us in a wide shell of silent bursts, and Nadim staggered emotionally; even I could hear the distant shrieking of the Phage now, but for the Leviathan it must have been overwhelming. “Shut it down,” I told him. “Focus on us. Listen to us. Not to them.” I knew instinctively that the Phage’s cries woke panic in the Leviathan. If they listened, it could throw them off. Nadim steadied. “Bonding . . . now.”
Bea and I fell effortlessly into that spiral with Nadim, blending into a rich, awesomely powerful whole. Bezardim looked out as the second wave of defenses triggered, blowing thousands more Phage into pieces.
But the stars were still black, hidden by the masses of squirming, hungry bodies. We felt fragile, and we reached out for Typhon and his bond crew, and achieved unity, the shared consciousness of both Leviathan, both crews. Nameless again, without Chao-Xing. Yusuf was a new, steady color in our mix, a dark blue that felt strong, a base on which to build. Marko felt like quicksilver, shivering and unstable, but still there. Starcurrent’s songs wove us all fast, and Bea’s beautiful voice blended with us. Typhon was a rock on which to stand. Nadim was a wall from which to attack.
We were ready.
We saw Suncross’s ship firing and swooping, attacking in patterns to pick off huge swaths of the Phage with their clumping weapons, finishing them with explosive bursts. The third line of bombs went off. The fourth. We readied weapons and began to fire once the Phage spun and whirled into range, a crawling horror of carapaces and raw hunger. We shattered them into ichor. Burned them into drifting ash.
And there were more. So many more.
We heard something else at the edges of our bond. Another song. Chao-Xyll? It felt like her, but with strange overtones, wrong harmonies, blood and hunger and chaos melded with human will. The swarm ignored those notes. They were alien and incorrect, useless. They treated her as nothing, and her silent shriek filled our head with dissonance.
Last set of bombs exploded, and we moved as one, spiraling out in a graceful circle. Two Leviathan bodies striking massive blows, rolling, crushing, spreading destruction. Frying any Phage that encountered the armor. It seemed random but was not, a course directed to slowly rotate toward the unraveling star, the streaming energy, the hungry event horizon of the black hole.
The Phage, confused and jagged, followed. They swarmed. Struck. Suncross’s ship darted between the Leviathan for protection as they were hit, and hit again, and Nadim and Typhon made space and offered shelter. Suncross’s communications were heard and processed by the whole. Out of cluster weapons, Suncross reported. No more explosives. We have only energy weapons left. Will fire until we die! The Bruqvisz roared, audible even through the link. Exultant in their rage.
We noted it with sadness and wonder, and moved again, rolling, killing, striking, protecting the Bruqvisz vessel as best we could.
Typhon is breached. That was our Marko-self, a stab of fear in the blending, and our Zara-aspect whispered, Activate internal defenses. Typhon had many and could withstand much. Fight them but do not forget the plan.
We were close to the event horizon now, close enough that we could feel the slow, relentless pull of a star broken and crushed into unimaginable density, a vortex into which everything flowed, nothing escaped.
We could go no closer. Typhon positioned himself at the inner edge and stopped the roll; Nadim was farther from the pull, more able to bear it where he was.
The Phage were leaves in the dark wind, scattering, scrambling, spiraling away. They died by the hundreds of thousands, spun screaming and shrieking beyond the point of no return, and though they dealt us wounds, we maintained. We held.
C-X’s signal had stuttered as the swarm had turned on her, no longer a thing to ignore but one to destroy; she’d tried too hard, become too visible. We fired on the remaining Phage, driving them off as C-X skittered into our protection, the entirety of her being a silent scream. Failure sliced at both halves of the whole—Xyll, who could not believe it was no longer kin to the swarm, who had just been exiled and made prey—and Chao-Xing, who could not believe she was no longer human. Rather, a separate being, bloody and exhausted from the long, awful struggle toward new life. A baby. Zara’s consciousness whispered guilt. I sent a baby out there to fight.
Then the remaining Phage regrouped. We couldn’t count them; they no longer blocked the stars, but the ragged remains of the hive were still dangerous.
And they came for us.
FROM THE BRUQVISZ COLLECTION MECHANICAL INDEPENDENTS, VOLUME 5220, CHIPPED AND REGISTERED
The Saga of the Lawgiver begins, as most things do, with a birth. But no organic birth, as expected from this edition; the robot designated as Jury was born in a factory on the planet Earth (see ref.) of human making. It was only once aboard the Leviathan Nadim (see ref.) that it gained final sentience and pursued its goal: to judge and sentence those involved in creating its murder imperative.
Jury’s glorious mission took the Leviathan Ophelia (with deceased human Derry McKinnon) back to Earth, where Jury accompanied said corpse to Earth’s Honors Council. There Jury delivered the following message: “I have come for justice. Where is Torian Deluca?”
Torian Deluca was not among those in attendance, but Jury accessed the records of this body and determined that Deluca was in the city of New Detroit, where he oversaw a vast criminal enterprise (see ref.).
The trial of Torian Deluca occurred in the Horizon Building (see ref.) in the top-floor security-restricted penthouse. Seventeen guards, robot and human, failed to prevent Jury’s entry into this space. Torian Deluca attempted to bargain with the robot for his survival.
He was unsuccessful.
Let the record show that the robot Jury considered all evidence and arguments for clemency, and in accordance with human law and tradition, shot Torian Deluca dead. Vids indicate said execution occurred swiftly.
Jury evaded all efforts to capture him in New Detroit b
y both Deluca’s surviving criminals and the New Detroit Mech Police. He then returned to the Leviathan Ophelia and is the only recorded crew of any Leviathan ship to be of mech origins.
We honor this story with solemn hands of salute. May Jury’s story be preserved.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Lost Momentum
I DROPPED OUT of the bond and staggered. Too many things were happening at once for our bonded entity to hold. For this part of the fight, I had to be Zara Cole and nobody else, mad as hell and constantly looking for the weakest link.
Hopefully we’d taken out enough of the Phage. If we couldn’t kill the rest of them, we could still run. Typhon had that sonic attack, though it would drain his power reserves and leave him weakened for the final battle against Lifekiller.
Nadim could dark run.
“I can’t,” he said, answering my very thought. “It would mean leaving Typhon and Suncross behind.”
“Just running through some options. I know you wouldn’t do that, sweetheart.” Funny how easy it was to be gentle with him now. I had nothing to prove anymore. Not when we were standing at the edge of the abyss. When you gaze into the abyss, it also gazes into you.
That’s it. Or it could be.
But before I could say anything about that, Nadim let out a pained sound. “Chao-Xyll has returned. Injured. Zara, I’m afraid. I don’t think—”
“Calm down. She won’t hurt us. C-X isn’t the enemy.” I hoped.
“She doesn’t feel the same as when she left. Her mind is like . . . knives.” Unlike Typhon, Nadim didn’t have internal defenses. We’d never gotten around to installing any, and I could feel his panic rising.
Bea turned from the console, her own fear levels spiking. “Is C-X going to turn on us?”
“One problem at a time. It would’ve been better if she could disrupt them like Xyll did, but we have to play the hand we’re dealt. Look at all those Phage between us and—”