by Gary Gibson
She focused on steadying her breathing, using calming exercises she’d learned a long time ago while still a student on Bellhaven. As she thought back to those times, it felt like she was experiencing someone else’s memories: someone younger, more idealistic and much more sure of herself. In at least one respect, she was forced to admit Moss had been right: she’d been looking for an opportunity to redeem herself and to find a way back into her own good graces – let alone anyone else’s.
Then she remembered how the filmsuit had worked, very briefly, while she was undergoing interrogation. But the Bandati had somehow prevented it from fully forming, perhaps using some form of remote signal to suppress it, or some other method she simply couldn’t imagine.
But if it indeed was some kind of signal, or – for the sake of argument – some kind of field that prevented her filmsuit activating while she was still inside her cell, then its effect must have been highly localized.
Which meant all she’d ever needed to do was climb out far enough from her cell, and her filmsuit would have started working again.
She wondered what would happen if she just let go of the blimp. After all, following the destruction of Bourdain’s Rock, her filmsuit had saved her when she’d collided with a chunk of rock the size of a mountain.
All she really needed to do was to let herself fall, all the way to the ground. The evidence suggested she’d walk away like nothing had happened.
Doing so was, however, an altogether different matter. Every nerve and muscle in her body screamed at her to hold on.
Unfortunately, it was starting to look like she might not have much choice. The blimp was sinking faster, and starting to come apart. The invading spacecraft meanwhile was in the process of touching down on a clear spot near the banks of the river, not far from a random collection of buildings and what had once been either gardens or cultivated fields, but were now – in common with much of Darkwater – thoroughly ablaze.
Fuck it.
She let out a bellow of frustration and let go of the blimp just as the flames spread to consume the section where she’d been clinging so desperately. She screamed as she dropped free, catching sight of the burning blimp as she fell. It crashed into the tower platform closest to her cell, which was itself already ablaze.
The air whistled past her ears and she screamed again, suddenly unsure of her filmsuit’s ability to protect her from such a long drop.
As the ground came rushing towards her, spreading ever wider below, she could see the invading ship more clearly now. Tiny figures were emerging from openings in the upper part of its hull, and began gliding around its nose on wings spread wide. That they were Bandati was clear. Some of them broke away from the invading ship and started making their way toward the same stretch of river Dakota was currently dropping towards.
Coming for me.
She felt sure of it.
A pulse cannon must have fired from somewhere, because suddenly one or two of the tiny flying specks were ablaze, tumbling downwards onto rooftops and into narrow alleyways between adjoining buildings.
It occurred to Dakota that, if she was going to survive this latest crisis, she wanted to land somewhere she could easily evade being caught. Landing in the river or on open ground was just going to make it even easier to pinpoint her.
Angling her body slightly, effectively swimming through the air, she aimed for a collection of rooftops separated by tightly winding alleyways and passages, and away from the Bandati invaders she’d sighted moments before.
The ground rushed up, faster and faster. Some of the rooftops directly beneath her burst spontaneously into flames, smoke and heat blooming towards her and obscuring her vision. She guessed a pulse cannon had been fired either directly at her or at the Bandati rushing to intercept her.
In the last few moments of free fall, prior to impact, she got a look at the nearest of the Bandati that had emerged from the Orion ship. It looked like a remarkably detailed sculpture cut from black stone that had come to life, more like a mobile winged silhouette, incongruous amongst the dozens of bright fires that had broken out across Darkwater.
They had filmsuits, she realized with a shock, and it was the first time she’d seen anybody else with the technology since the botched deal that had led her to Bourdain’s Rock.
Dakota hit the ground four seconds later. The road surface immediately under her cracked as it absorbed the kinetic energy of the impact, leaving her miraculously undamaged. As in her encounter with a flying mountain, she had failed to feel a thing. Except that this time she had experienced a brief moment of blankness – as if time had skipped ahead half a second at the precise moment of impact.
Her implants flagged an alert: the internal battery pack that powered her filmsuit was at zero, so she wouldn’t be using it again any time soon. Indeed, as this knowledge slipped into her thoughts, she felt the filmsuit pull itself off her bare body, draining back through the pores of her skin and leaving her naked and defenceless on the streets of a burning alien city.
She crouched like an animal, taking in her immediate surroundings.
What she hadn’t been able to see from way up in the tower was that every building down here at ground level actually stood on stilts several metres high. Yet no two constructions appeared to be alike, and each one was so thoroughly asymmetric as to appear to have been built by a team of blind architects without any prior design specification.
Hearing some kind of commotion nearby, she moved quickly into the shadows beneath one large habitation, and spied dozens of Bandati gathered together in a narrow open space nearby, all clicking and chittering at once in a great cacophonous racket.
She crept forward to find several ladders leaning against the side of the neighbouring building. A wide door set into the wall had been pushed to one side, revealing a large warehouse-like space within. Some more Bandati, positioned at the top of these ladders, were lowering bundles of what might have been large fleshy sacs – eggs? – to their companions still on the ground. Others simply spread their wings and hopped up into the warehouse, apparently intent on retrieving what they could. Smoke drifted across this busy scene and the noisy clicking of the Bandati grew more frenetic.
Dakota whirled around on hearing the sound of something thud into the wet sand behind her. She saw several more Bandati come to land immediately next to the building she’d hidden under, except these newcomers were sheathed in filmsuits identical to her own.
One of them caught sight of Dakota, and stepped into the shadows surrounding her, his liquid shield quickly draining away to reveal a complicated harness worn over his shoulders and fitting between the two sets of wings sprouting from his back. The Bandati pulled a long pipe from his harness – no, not a pipe, she realized, but a shotgun of some kind, with a trigger and guard clearly visible.
The newcomer reached up to his throat to activate an interpreter hanging there. ‘Dakota Merrick?’ he asked.
She shook her head, desperately wanting just to lie down and rest. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she snapped tremulously.
The Bandati stepped closer and Dakota quickly moved backwards, slipping and falling. ‘Stay away from me or—’
‘Miss Merrick,’ the creature announced, ‘my name is Days of Wine and Roses, until recently a representative to the Consortium on behalf of my noble Hive, Darkening Skies Prior to Dawn.’
To Dakota’s amazement, the creature affected something like a bow, its wings crinkling with that distinctive paper-rustling sound. ‘I am here to rescue you, Miss Merrick, on the orders of my Queen. I’m afraid we don’t have much time before Immortal Light can muster a far more effective counter-defence, so—’
Pull yourself together, thought Dakota, glancing around. The rest of the Bandati who’d arrived with Days of Wine and Roses were slowly spreading out to totally encircle her hiding place.
She put one hand up and Days of Wine and Roses halted in mid-flow.
‘Hold that thought,’ she said, and darted away quic
kly, past the egg-gatherers, who milled in frightened consternation as she ran right through the middle of them and then underneath the adjacent warehouse.
‘Stop!’ she heard a voice call out behind her. ‘I insist—’
The Night’s End system was right on the edge of Consortium territory, and had a small but sizeable human colony, though this was something she’d previously long been only vaguely aware of. Nevertheless the derelict’s analysis of local communications traffic had confirmed a human population several kilometres east of her current location, conveniently near a spaceport. There she could get someone to help her hide – or help get her off Ironbloom altogether.
Unfortunately, she hadn’t accounted for the possibility that Darkwater might be invaded, irradiated and set ablaze in the middle of her grand escape attempt. As it was, her original plan was proving to be a less than workable proposition.
The ground underfoot was uneven. Dakota soon hit an incline, a low, soft dune of sand and pebbles that crunched painfully under her bare feet and came to a peak beneath a huddled collection of raised huts and a few larger buildings whose roofs were fiercely ablaze.
The darkness of the city’s stilted underbelly was cut through here and there by shafts of light that slanted through gaps in the superstructure. Thick, cloying smoke began to billow towards her, making her cough and gasp uncontrollably. She worked her way up the incline until she was forced to get down on her knees and crawl through a narrow gap where the floor of the building above her almost met the soil beneath.
She squeezed through, then ran in a half-crouch down the far side of the slope, nearly smashing her head on a stilt in the process. She could hear the tick-tack of Bandati voices right behind her and to both sides.
She sprinted on through a maze of struts and supports, trying to lose herself in the smoke and darkness.
Dakota felt scorching heat on her skin as she ran through a narrow, sun-filled gap between two buildings and back into another darkened forest of struts. Part of the floor of an overhead building had collapsed, sending smoke and flames twisting and turning against its underside. She changed direction, running to one side and covering her mouth, afraid of losing her direction and running back towards Days of Wine and Roses.
The fire was spreading almost as fast as she could run, jumping from support to pillar at an increasing rate, the heat searing her bare skin even at a distance. The whole building was going to come down on top of her if she didn’t soon find her way to safety. The smoke suddenly billowed around her. She choked, trying to hold her breath, her eyes stinging until she was half-blind.
Got to get out of here, lady.
She was completely disoriented. She’d hoped she might spot a way up – a ladder, anything – but there was nothing. All she could do was keep running.
There! Through watery eyes she squinted at sunlight dead ahead. She sprinted towards it, wishing she could reactivate her filmsuit, aware it was much too soon. She bent low as she ran, desperate now to get some clean air into her lungs.
She emerged into an open space between buildings mostly ablaze. Standing on waterlogged sand, she must be getting close to the river. Nearby was a tangled mess of curved metal struts draped with rags of material that were still burning; after a moment this vision resolved itself into the ruins of one of the cargo blimps.
She could still see the top of the Orion ship peeking up over the rooftops. It was so big that at first she mistook it for just another building.
Something hit Dakota hard from behind, pressing her face down into the wet sand. She yelled and kicked, but whoever – or whatever – it was, they had her arms locked behind her back so she couldn’t move. She pulled her face up out of the sand just to snatch air, and saw dark shadows moving across the sand, accompanied by the dry-paper rustle of wings.
‘Miss Merrick.’ Did she hear a certain impatience seeping through the synthesized voice? ‘My name is Days of Wine and Roses and, as an agent of the Hive of Darkening Skies Prior to Dusk, I am here to rescue you whether you like it or not. Your cooperation is mandatory.’
‘Fuck y—’
A small black hand reached out and pushed her face back into the wet earth. She kicked again in outrage, feeling her anger taking over. She swore and cursed, spitting the mud out of her mouth. A moment later she was dragged upright and found herself surrounded by another three heavily armed Bandati, in addition to the one who still had her pinioned.
They crowded in close, and Dakota felt something wrap around her wrists, then waist and thighs, making it totally impossible to move. Small limbs grabbed at her extremities, holding her tight. She yelled with fright.
‘Please shut up,’ said a synthesized voice.
Two of them had taken an arm each, while a third had hold of her legs. She was suspended between them. Then the sound of their beating wings filled her ears, as they skimmed so low over the rooftops that she was convinced they were bound to collide. Despite her terror, a part of her mind marvelled at how they could fly so close together without crashing into each other.
They were only airborne for a minute before they came to a hard landing in an alleyway where several large vehicles were parked, crude-looking things with heavy caterpillar tracks and weapons mounted on the back.
Dakota was unceremoniously dumped into the back of one of these vehicles. It roared into life, swivelling a hundred and eighty degrees before tearing off through a maze of stilts at high speed, bouncing violently as it went.
It didn’t take much guesswork to realize they were heading for the Orion ship.
She caught glimpses of the enormous spacecraft, where it squatted close by the river, right next to the still-burning ruins of several buildings. Beams flickered from its upper hull nacelles, striking faraway targets, while the occasional missile was fired at it in retaliation from the neighbouring towers.
Dakota’s transporters came to an open patch of ground and she saw now just how far the conflagration had spread. She spied a dozen dirigibles in the distance, with water gushing down from them in a half-hearted attempt to put out the flames.
Then the Orion ship filled her view. It rested on massive struts, the sands beneath it steaming. Her escort accelerated towards the ramp and shot up into its darkened interior.
Twelve
Less than ten minutes later, the nuclear pulse-ship lifted back up into the skies above Darkwater, with Dakota and Days of Wine and Roses now safely on board. It left behind it a shallow, irradiated crater and a circle of devastation almost two kilometres across, with fires still raging across its perimeter. The ship rose fast, spitting out nuclear fire as it accelerated towards escape velocity.
It came under heavy bombardment from orbital defence platforms as it burned its way through the upper stratosphere; beams of directed energy – ionized hydrogen accelerated close to the speed of light – played across it, its outline blurring as protective shaped fields flickered on and off, deflecting the brilliant focused energies before they could compromise the vulnerable hull beneath.
Dakota had been forcibly strapped into a gel-chair that sheltered her from the worst effects of this enormously high acceleration. She was surrounded by other gel-chairs in a tiny cabin that also carried the four Bandati responsible for capturing her. She stared upwards at a grey metal ceiling just above her head, feeling like a thousand hands were pushing her deeper into the chair.
The ship’s commander was an ancient Bandati whose scent-name might be loosely translated as ‘The Victorious Aroma of the Bodies of My Enemies, Left Rotting under the First Light of Dawn’. That he did in fact smell literally like death to his fellow Hive-members did little to distract from his status and reputation amongst them.
He was a crippled veteran lacking two wings, who had suffered badly at the hands of Immortal Light, and so Roses’ suggestion to the commander that they might steal one of Immortal Light’s own craft – a museum-piece nuclear pulse-drive ship whose exhaust doubled as an offensive weapon – had a great deal of
emotional appeal for him. But at the same time, Old Victory – as he was sometimes known – was far from unaware that Immortal Light’s planetary defence forces would be formidable when it came to mustering a response. Nonetheless, Roses’ plan was not only quickly approved by the Queen of Darkening Skies, but had so far proven wildly successful.
A surprise attack was one thing; maintaining the edge thereby gained was another matter. Old Victory knew they needed to put distance between themselves and Ironbloom, and fast. The vessel was on its way to a rendezvous with a coreship scheduled to materialize in the outer system within the next few days, and the fighting would surely intensify once they reached it.
Victory spat out a rapid series of clicks, the slim dark fingers of his primary battle-crew flickering across a variety of bridge interfaces in response. Manoeuvring jets in the pulse-ship’s hull started the vessel rotating around its length as it rose above the atmosphere and towards the nearest of Ironbloom’s orbital platforms.
As often among the Bandati, the staff of the orbital platform in question were all closely related. All twenty-five were, in fact, siblings, hatched within several days of each other, and sharing the wing-patterning of a brood-male who was briefly favoured by the Queen of Immortal Light.
Old Victory was entirely unaware he was the product of the same brood-male, and therefore shared close lineage with every Bandati dwelling within the network of pressurized compartments that comprised the platform – and he would have cared little even if he had known. Brood-males were often sold and bartered between Queens of different Hives, so that Victory and the crew he was about to murder should be half-brothers would have been no great revelation to him.
Victory shifted in his gel-chair and watched the surrounding displays as the pulse-ship stopped rotating and banked to one side, tipping towards a horizon that looked increasingly curved from his perspective.
The pulse-ship blasted straight through the centre of the orbital platform, sending its components spinning apart. The nuclear fire of the ship’s exhaust finished the job, spraying across the pressurized living spaces and command systems, turning them white-hot in an instant and vaporizing everything inside.