Sired by Stone

by Andrew Post

  The manmade lightning cracked, slapping at the bullets. A few slipped through and thumped into the hull. Gorett held his breath, waiting for the telltale whoosh of depressurization, but thankfully the Odium had thoroughly armored their crafts.

  “Still on us, sir. Might I recommend the sizzler?”

  Dreck waved a hand over his shoulder. “Sure, but be sparing. This isn’t all of what Chidester has for us.”

  “Ready, sir.”

  “Fire.”

  A breathy fump. Gorett watched out the top of the cockpit’s glass bubble as a rod striped like a candy cane streaked high into the sky, quickly reducing itself to a pinprick among the blue vault of the sky. When it burst, Gorett felt its concussive detonation in the core of his chest.

  From the snap of light came countless tiny rockets—zipping around in spirals and drunken twists. The knot of insane rockets went after anything, friend or foe, carrying a heat signature. A few even banged down against the Magic Carpet.

  But apparently the swarm was still effective. From behind came a detonation that made Gorett’s teeth snap together. Then a second and a third. Clutching his harness to keep himself in the seat, Gorett watched between his knobby knees as Adeshkan fighters tumbled, oily black smoke chasing them down, bursting into flames upon crashing.

  “How many did that sort?” Dreck called back, eyes forward.

  “All three, sir. Radar shows zero pursuers.”

  “I’d reckon that was only a drop in the bucket of what Adeshka’s got. Can’t blame Chidester, really. Wouldn’t want to blow all the fun right at the start. A gentleman eases into a scuffle.” He retracted the ship’s guns to reduce drag.

  He doesn’t care anything about the stone, only the fear he can create. He dangles reward only to retain his men’s assistance.

  I disagree, Gorett replied. He wants the stone so he won’t be alone anymore. He’s the only weaver in the Odium, and I think he’s ashamed, seldom using his power in their presence. He wants more like him.

  And what do you suppose he’ll use more weavers for? Mother Worm posed. The companionship? He’ll continue this reign of terror, even more with the aid of those like him. If it works, that is, and if Father Time agrees to do it. Speaking of which, Dreck hasn’t even confirmed he’s anything more than legend. Shows how much he believes in this plan, how besotted he is in following his Goddess. And even if he does find Höwerglaz, a powerful one such as he would not likely side with such sentient filth as Dreck Javelin. But—hypothetically—if he does exist and does work with Dreck, there will be no force whatsoever capable of stopping the Odium then. Think of that, Pitka. Not Adeshka, not Embaclawe if they deign to do something. If he can manufacture weavers, Dreck might as well begin calling himself King of Gleese.

  That’s terrifying.

  But you know I’m right. Your mother is always right.

  Something in that moment told Gorett to look out the side of the cockpit, to the west. Not Mother Worm, no flash of starship fire pulling his focus that way—but some force made his focus swivel.

  Outside he saw nothing but blank sky, the occasional stippling of the brown world. All the same, he felt something out there looking.

  CHAPTER 16

  A Warm Welcome

  Clyde didn’t know why, but he found himself gazing out the left side of the Praise to Her. But as bullets pattered against the floor beneath his feet and Aksel’s shouting continued, Clyde snapped to. He stood, clutched the wall as the starship quaked beneath him, and stumbled into the cockpit.

  Nevele was already there, gripping the back of Emer’s seat at the copilot controls. The boy looked over his shoulder as Clyde stepped in. Clyde expected him to appear terrified—seeing as how they were nigh shot down—but instead Emer bore an eerie calmness.

  Nessapolis was mapped in with geometric shapes, all cubelike, but every building looked halfway submerged in something. The nav computer had a hard time discerning this, but Clyde assumed it was sand. Nessapolis had been the victim of a cataclysmic sandstorm. Only the tallest buildings spiked the landscape.

  “They’re all over us,” Aksel said. “Four at least.”

  Another salvo peppered their starboard flank, a dotted line of dents appearing inside, each glowing orange a moment.

  “Land somewhere,” Nevele shouted. “If the Odium are still here, it means they haven’t found Höwerglaz yet.”

  “Probably because he isn’t here to be found,” Aksel put in, shifting the sticks.

  The Praise to Her ducked and dodged, slipping between buildings. Clyde was tossed around, one hand on a grab bar, the other pressing Commencement’s sheath to the bulkhead so he wouldn’t get slammed with the next sharp bank.

  The ship’s condition reading went from an I’m sort of hurt yellow to a flash-flashing Now might be a good time to worry red.

  “If there are any parachutes back there,” Aksel said, pausing to concentrate as he passed them through a beige cubicle farm inside a building, “might want to consider strapping up.”

  Clyde took a crooked hop back, into the holds. He swung from handhold to handhold, kicking things aside, scanning for parachutes among the tossing cargo.

  Only one chute pack, marked with a commercial frigate company logo, slid by. Clyde snatched it by its belt.

  “Here,” he said, presenting it to the group.

  “There’s only one?” Aksel and Nevele said in unison.

  “I got that off the frigate,” Nevele said, breathless. “There must be others.”

  “No. I looked.”

  Without warning, Aksel wrenched back the sticks. The floor slipped out from under Clyde. Nevele snatched his wrist. If she hadn’t, it would’ve been a fall down the empty tube of the ship with nothing soft to land on.

  The ship’s frame groaned and rattled. Clyde was certain at any moment the Praise to Her would disintegrate.

  Nevele’s threads unlaced from one arm to snare Clyde’s, cementing the hold she had on him.

  Aksel leveled them out, and the floor became the

  floor again.

  Clyde stumbled into the cockpit. He pushed the parachute at Nevele. “Take it and go.”

  “No.” She pushed it back. “You take it.”

  “Very sweet, you two,” Aksel barked, “but if you wouldn’t mind, can it.”

  They were going back through the building again. In their wake, a concussion—one pursuer hadn’t been so deftly piloted.

  “There’s one down,” Aksel noted joylessly. And again over his shoulder, “Which one of you is it going to be?

  I’m taking another swing across that roof. That’ll be time to hop.”

  Nevele and Clyde held the parachute, locked in a stalemate.

  “Sheeit, I’ll volunteer.” Emer unlatched himself from the seat, snatched the parachute pack, and shoved his way past them. Without hesitation, he flung open the hatch and jumped, Rohm screaming from the boy’s pocket.

  “Well, that settles that, I guess,” Nevele said.

  “He’s down,” Aksel said, still weaving through the dead city. “Now it’s just a matter of us doing the same—without dying, preferably.”

  Something hit the ship. Not a bullet. Heavier, as if a man-sized cannonball had just dropped onto their wing. Aksel began rolling them, apparently trying to break the grip of whatever had landed.

  Nevele sprang forth a net around her and Clyde and their surroundings, twining around every available bit of exposed frame to suspend them in the middle—just as the thing detonated, blasting their wing entirely off.

  The ship went into a floppy, end-over-end spin.

  Even though his feet were no longer touching the floor, Clyde could feel gravity taking back control. Smoke poured into the cabin. Things popped and pinged, bolts flying, alarms bawling.

  “Look at me,” Nevele said through the chaos. “Clyde. Look at me.”

  Even with their faces an inch apart, smoke blurred her.

  He held her tight. She squeezed him in return.
<
br />   He loved her and believed she knew it, but holding her was the only way he could express it—now and ever. If he told her, she’d be ripped from his mind, replaced by a bleached spot, a stranger again.

  And in spite of death charging in, he refused to tell her. He wanted to remember her, even if that was all he’d have after this.

  “I love you,” Nevele said. A loose panel of her cheek slid off. “I love you, and I’m sorry.”

  You’re sorry? For what? is what he would’ve said if his lips hadn’t been stilled: over her shoulder, the cockpit vidscreens displayed a widening, flat square, growing. The ground.

  Clyde looked into her eyes.

  Blackness swallowed them.

  Coughs swelled in her chest and fought free of her lips, bringing Nevele back to consciousness.

  A fire crackled. She could feel its heat lapping but, unnervingly enough, couldn’t see its glow. Smoke. So much smoke.

  “Clyde? Aksel?”

  She reached into the darkness, fumbling. A narrow shaft of light peeped through a bullet hole.

  She pushed herself up, groaning. Everything hurt. Reallocating some threads, she bit her lip and cinched closed a slice crossing her shin.

  “Clyde?” The darkness ate her words.

  A soft moan—somewhere near. Cautiously, keeping low to avoid the denser smoke collecting near the ceiling, Nevele scuttled on.

  The moan came again.

  As she crawled, she realized she wasn’t feeling the rubberized floor of the ship under her palms. Now it was a carpet of warm, granular texture. Nessapolis’s burying sand.

  Her fingers brushed a hand, which was weakly reaching.

  He was damp and tacky, as if he’d been dipped in paint. Through the smoke, she recognized the smell—that coppery tang she was unfortunately well acquainted with.

  “Clyde?” Cough, cough. “I can’t see. Where are you hurt?”

  A drowsy “Ugh.”

  Something near them buckled, and a load of fresh smoke and fire-warmed sand dumped in, hissing as it rained. “Can you move? We need to get out of here.”

  “It . . . hurts.”

  “What hurts?”

  More delicate than her hands could be, her threads explored him. Up his sleeves, down the collar of his poncho, traveling her fiancé’s form.

  He’d been punctured by something.

  She followed the rivers coursing down him, soaking his clothes, to where it was the warmest, the blood’s source, the injury.

  Something solid and cold. She swallowed and carefully traced its shape. Embossed metal, flamboyant and intricately hewn. Familiar. Commencement.

  Like everything else in the ship during the crash, it too had gone through the cement mixer that the Praise to Her had become but had somehow managed to abandon its sheath and find a new one: its owner, just below the ribs.

  “Nevele . . .”

  “I know, sweetheart. I know it hurts. But just lie still, okay?” A cough swelled in her chest, demanded out. She was lightheaded.

  She felt along the floor, gently squeezing fingers under his back. The sword was through him, the blade tip buried into the ship’s floor, Clyde a pinned entomology specimen.

  “Aksel,” she shouted into the darkness, “Clyde needs help. Aksel?”

  Her answer came in a report of gunfire. She yelped and ducked, throwing herself across Clyde. She must’ve bumped the sword because he screamed as if he’d been run through a second time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, covered his mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

  Past the crackle of small fires and Clyde’s hot wheezing under her palm came voices—outside the wreck. Footsteps too. Close by, plodding across sand, crunch, crunch.

  If he dies, she thought, I will tear all of you apart.

  Nevele forced herself to leave Clyde for a moment to feel around for any of the guns Coog had stored on the ship. She cut her hands several times, felt bits of steel dig under her fingernails as she blindly swept hands around, but kept on as quietly as possible.

  A supernova burst inside the ship. Her eyes focused for the half second it took the figure to push aside the hatch door and throw himself out into the white-yellow world beyond. The door slammed behind him and gunfire followed—haphazard and surprised. It trailed off, shouts following it.

  Aksel had just saved their lives.

  She crawled back to Clyde, bumping her head twice.

  Outside, far away now, the shouting and gunfire continued. Good. If they were still firing, they hadn’t caught him. She hoped Aksel was actually trying to draw them away and wasn’t just running for his life . . .

  Either way, it had bought her time. She found Clyde’s hand in the dark, entwined her fingers with his. They snapped together easily, slickened as they were. She held tight . . . while the other wrapped around Commencement’s handle. She paused, readying herself: settling threads near where Clyde’s flesh and the sword met. The moment she pulled the sword free, she’d try to rush in and patch him quick as possible.

  The tempo of his breathing increased. Apparently she didn’t need to explain what she was about to do.

  Forgoing any sort of countdown, she tugged on the sword. And for the first time ever, she heard Clyde swear.

  But it hadn’t come all the way free.

  She felt—delicately as she could—along the damp blade. Another ten inches of the metal remained inside him. She echoed his pain with a scream of her own, one she couldn’t help but make. She hated this more than anything—hurting her love to save him—but it had to be done.

  “Please,” he said, weakly clutching her arm. “Please stop.”

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t. We need this thing out.”

  “Please . . . Margaret, please.”

  She felt just as impaled, hearing that name. “Just a little more. Hold on to me.”

  As soon as he’d returned his hand round her wrist, she didn’t give him or herself time to catch a breath. She wrenched again, her fiancé’s body reluctant to relinquish the sword.

  Another pull, more screams, both his and hers.

  The sword popped free, and the blood leaped out in a sloppy gush. She dove her threads in, working fast. She got the wound—front and back—closed, pulled tight, the flow damming off.

  She used Commencement to cut herself free of him. Not letting him suffer another second there on the floor, she tossed aside the sword. For right now, the heirloom didn’t mean anything. On hands and knees, she dragged Clyde in the general direction she’d seen Aksel escape.

  She was blinded again when they broke free of the wreckage. Falling out onto the dusty floor of the city, she pulled Clyde out and knelt beside him. Blocking him from any danger that might be waiting, she took a squinting scan of their surroundings.

  Nessapolis, the Necropolis as it was more commonly known now. Fitting. Among the widely scattered skyscraper tips that still showed of the sandboxed city, a few raised roadways rose and dipped like a cement sea monster. Everything was so still. She looked down the hill they’d crashed upon, the littered trail of starship pieces—some still smoking, others stabbed deep into the sand. From the direction of what was probably once downtown, she could hear gunshots echoing, bouncing around in the man-made valley of drowned high-rises.

  She turned back to Clyde. His wound was still pushing blood up around the brown-and-black laces she’d sewn into him, painting his snowy skin as well as the sand beneath him. She pulled the poncho from around his shoulders, tore off a long strip, and tied it around his middle.

  Doing so got sand in his face, collecting in the corners of eyes that floated loosely in his head. Most people had a hard time telling which way he was looking precisely, because his eyes were entirely black, but she knew, just by the way the shine on them shifted. She’d had practice watching them, more than just where he was looking but how he used them: whether he steered his gaze away before telling her bad news or because he was growing shy, as he sometimes still became, even after a year together. She
could tell he was looking at her now. And that he was scared.

  “It’s going to be okay.”

  Nodding faintly, he said nothing. She didn’t like how cold his hand was.

  She pulled her focus from him to try to orient herself, looking for the office building they’d dropped Emer onto. There. It was a ways down the block, a plain glass slab topped by a wind-twisted communication tower. She shielded her eyes, peering to see if the boy was still up there.

  A distant double pop of gunfire echoed past. Then another. Aksel. She didn’t want to leave Clyde here alone, but . . .

  His hand squeezing hers brought her attention back. “Tell me something,” Clyde whispered weakly.

  More gunfire repeated throughout the dead city, echoed.

  “Stay here, okay? Just stay here.” Before he could argue, she gave him a quick kiss and raced down the hill, the wind hot in her face, the coppery taste of blood on her lips.

  CHAPTER 17

  Signed in Blood

  Geyser was in chaos.

  Flam hadn’t been here when Gorett ordered the town evacuated last year, but he assumed it was similar. Everywhere he raced through the streets, trying to get back to the auto-body shop, people were shouting at him, saying they were promised that they’d never have to leave their city again, that they’d be kept safe. Flam didn’t have time to explain but insisted they stay inside their homes, there was no mass evacuation planned, and they were not to answer their doors regardless of who came knocking.

  He charged on through the crowded streets. Despite the orders to stay put, people were voluntarily evacuating. A line stretched for blocks to the elevators in the citizens’ ward. Honking autos added the horn section to the ugly city-wide symphony already playing: ringing alert bells and the loudspeakers’ redundant “Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm” reprise.

  Finally reaching the garage, lugging the rifle he’d picked from the armory after the guardsmen and women had chosen their own, Flam stepped inside. He saw nothing but hammocks dangling empty, every tent and Blatta hive pocket abandoned. Flam grimaced and pushed through the door leading to the back lot. The ship was still there, and from within, he could hear muffled chatter—that weird Lulomba language.