Heaven's Queen

by Rachel Bach

  “I’ve got another clip,” I said, but Rupert was already shaking his head.

  “You had another clip,” he corrected, giving me a sheepish look. “There were a lot of them.”

  That was the understatement of the decade. There’d been so many lelgis that you couldn’t even see down the hall, but Rupert had held them all back so he could watch over me, and if that wasn’t worth every bullet I owned, nothing was. “Thank you,” I said again, leaning into him.

  He froze for a moment, and then his arm slipped around my waist. “I’ll always fight for you,” he said softly. “Always, until I die.”

  I believed him. At this point, I’d have to be an idiot not to. I stayed like that a moment longer, resting on his strength, and then I pushed away. “Let’s go.”

  Rupert nodded and we started down the hall toward the stairs he’d mentioned earlier, but though we were still in enemy territory, he didn’t let go of my waist, and though I knew this was a damn stupid way to proceed that would likely get us shot, I didn’t make him.

  CHAPTER 13

  The rest of the station must have abandoned ship when the lelgis started tearing the place apart, because we didn’t see a soul. The traps were still there, but with the hull breach alarm going off like crazy, all of them seemed to have gone on emergency lockdown, and with no one to take them off, they gave us no more trouble. The dock, however, was another story.

  Thanks to the swath the lelgis had cut getting to me, the station had subdivided, locking the remaining atmosphere into sealed compartments. A computer voice was announcing the compromised sections by code, and though I couldn’t make heads or tails of the alphanumeric strings, Rupert recognized one of them as our dock, which meant we were now stuck.

  “Please tell me there’s another one,” I groaned, because seriously, how much worse could this shit get? The only good news was that Maat’s arm of the station hadn’t blown yet, which meant Brenton was either still alive or the charges had malfunctioned. I preferred to believe the former, because horrid as the old man was, I wanted Brenton to at least live long enough to know his sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. Assuming, of course, we could get off this hunk of junk.

  “They haven’t said anything about the second wing,” Rupert said. “The old fighter deck might still be functional. Let’s try that.”

  Anything known as “old” in this antique didn’t sound too promising to me, but I followed Rupert as he shifted course, doubling back to the station’s center before setting off into what was clearly a less used area. The lights were off here, probably an automatic shutdown in deference to what were usually the more vital areas of the station. The orange glow of the emergency lights was still enough to see by, though, and when the big bay doors for the dock came into view, safety lights on and clearly functional, I started to let myself believe we were actually going to make it.

  Rupert opened the doors and went in first, motioning for me to stay back. He returned a few seconds later, his face excited. “It looks clear. There’s a bomber at the end of the bay that’s unhooked and ready to go. All we’ll need to do is get in, hit the engines, and we’re gone.”

  It sounded too good to be true, but I followed him anyway, hugging Maat to my chest as we ducked through the door. Just as Rupert had said, the dock was clearly out of use. The fighters and the larger bombers clamped to the high walls were all a decade or more out of date, and the bay floor, rather than being kept open for crews to assemble like Republic regulation demanded, was stacked with dusty boxes. Even so, there was plenty of room to see the line of ships prepped at the edge of the bay for immediate deployment, including the bomber Rupert had mentioned, which was sitting like a forgotten trophy at the far end of the deck with its dusty ready light still shining a bright, cheery green.

  “I just hope it flies,” I said as we started to run through the stacks of storage crates.

  “It should,” Rupert said, jogging beside me. “These ships were all rated for fifty-year storage. All I have to do is get the bay doors open and we’ll be good to—”

  I couldn’t hear what he said next, because at that moment, my suit alarm started blaring in my ear as a huge message flashed over my entire view space.

  Weapon lock detected.

  My heart jumped into my throat, and for a terrifying second, I was frozen in panic. Then, like a kick to the gut, nine years of combat experience snapped into place, and I threw up my sensors. But though it took my suit less than a second to pin down the source of the lock, dodging wasn’t an option. I barely had time to glimpse Mabel sitting behind one of the stacked crates we’d just passed before she raised the Terran anti-armor shotgun to her shoulder and unloaded the huge twin barrels straight into my back.

  Anti-armor shotguns are short-range weapons, meant for taking down armored targets in close quarters, but this was just ridiculous. Mabel had shot me from less than three feet away, close enough that she hadn’t even needed the stupid lock. But I guess she wasn’t taking any chances, because the shot my Lady took across the back was full bore, and every alarm I had started going off as the barbed shrapnel ripped through my beautiful baby like she was made of paper.

  If I’d been wearing a cheaper suit, that would have been the end. But my Lady is quality through and through. Still, even custom Verdemont armor can’t stop everything. Pain exploded down my left leg as one of the metal barbs punched through, digging into my thigh. I actually felt the damn metal sliver hit bone before my breach foam kicked in to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, nothing could stop me from falling.

  “Devi!”

  Rupert’s frantic shout came from far away as I crashed to the floor, rolling just in time to keep from crushing Maat. For a second, I couldn’t even believe Mabel had shot me considering just who I was carrying, but then sense kicked back in. For all that she looked delicate, Maat was still a symbiont. If something like this could kill her, we wouldn’t have had to go through all this nonsense in the first place.

  It could kill me, however. The breach foam made it hard to tell where else I was injured, but my suit’s vitals only showed my leg wound, and though the shard of metal hurt like hell, the bone wasn’t broken, which was why my suit hadn’t injected the cocktail automatically. It was still giving me the option, but I pushed it away. I couldn’t afford to be drugged now, not with my Lady in this condition.

  My suit was far worse off than I was. Nearly every gauge I had was in the red or unresponsive. I wasn’t even sure if I could sit up. I was about to try when I felt Rupert grab me. Before he’d even gotten me off the ground, though, another shot echoed through the dusty bay, the familiar boom of a disrupter pistol.

  This time, I did panic. Rupert’s hold on my armor vanished as he crashed to the floor beside me, gripping his chest, which was now a bloody mess. I reached out to help him automatically, but my arm wouldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything except lie there and stare as Rupert began to bleed out, and then I felt the soft vibration of footsteps near my head.

  The man standing over me when I looked up was a black, bulky shadow against the bright dock lights. The pearl-handled disrupter pistol in his hand looked just like every other Eye gun I’d ever seen, but that didn’t matter. I knew who it was.

  “End of the line, Morris.”

  I bared my teeth as Brian Caldswell leaned over to pull Maat’s body out of my limp hold. Gentle as a new father, he gathered her in his arms. The moment he had her clear, he said, “Shuck her.”

  I didn’t take his meaning until Mabel appeared above me with that damned anti-armor shotgun still propped on her shoulder. She set her gun down to grab me, using her claws to peel away my damaged armor, shucking me like a shellfish, just as Caldswell had ordered. I fought her for every inch, but unarmored and bloody against symbiont strength, I might as well have been trying to box a mountain. She yanked me around like an unruly toddler, kicking my damaged suit, my beautiful custom Verdemont armor aside like so much trash. The sight made me so mad I would have infected
us all right then, but two things held me back: my newfound control and my fear for Rupert.

  From the way he was gasping, I knew Caldswell had hit a lung with that shot. He was pale, too, even paler than he’d been back on Kessel, and my fear that Rupert was dying before my eyes was even greater than my rage over the damage to my suit, which I would never have thought possible a few days ago.

  My feelings must have been clear on my face, because Caldswell sighed and shifted Maat under his arm. “Relax,” he said, nudging Rupert with his clawed foot. “Charkov was always one of our best regenerators. He won’t die from this. You, however, are another matter.”

  I tossed my head at his threat, struggling uselessly against Mabel’s hold to get in his face so I could yell at him properly. “Do you even know what you’re doing?” I cried. “We’re on the same side, you moron! The lelgis have been using us! Goddamn you, let me go!”

  Caldswell answered my hysterics with a pitying look. “You think I don’t know that?”

  His calm voice shocked me out of my fury. “What?”

  “We knew the lelgis were using us from the beginning,” he explained, his voice frustratingly calm, like he was talking to a child. “But it didn’t matter, because we were using them, too. That’s what negotiation is, Morris. Using and being used in return. We had to stop the phantoms, they had a way, and up until recently, they kept their part of the bargain to the letter.” His eyes narrowed. “You were the one who messed things up.”

  “Me?” I roared, twisting in Mabel’s grip. She kneed my injured leg in response, and the wave of pain that followed was almost enough to black me out. I didn’t go under, though. I wasn’t going to give these bastards an inch if it killed me.

  “I was the only damn person with the guts to try anything new!” I shouted at Caldswell. “You said you hated the system of using up the daughters more than anyone, and you have the gall to stand there and blame me for trying to take it down?”

  “Did you know how much I wanted to believe you?” Caldswell shouted back. He was losing his temper, too, his lips pulling back in a snarl. “Your virus was the first real hope I’ve had for a change in seven decades. That’s why I fought so hard to try and meet you halfway. You want change? I was ready to bend over backwards to make this bullshit work. The only thing I couldn’t give you was her.” He tightened his arm around Maat’s body. “But that wasn’t good enough. You had to run off half cocked after god knows what, and now you’ve left me no choice.”

  “That’s not how it is!” I cried, my anger giving way to the furious, desperate need to make him understand. “We can have everything. We can end this suffering. All of it, for everyone. Just let us go.”

  “No,” Caldswell said. “Shut up for once and listen, Morris. This isn’t something we can afford to mess up. It may well be that you’re right. That if I let you do as you like and kill Maat in hyperspace, all our problems will vanish and the whole universe lives happily ever after. But as much as I’d like that to be true, I can’t risk it, because Maat is the one thing we can’t afford to lose. We’ve tried everything we know to reproduce the circumstances that created her, but the daughters are the best we could ever manage, and even they’re just shadows.”

  He looked down at Maat in despair. “She’s irreplaceable,” he said softly. “If you kill her, and the phantoms don’t leave, or worse, if more come in, it’s over. Without her, we can’t close the door again and we can’t make more daughters. The ones we have now will go mad like they always do, only we’ll no longer be able to replace them.”

  He turned back to me. “Don’t you get it? Without Maat, we have nothing. I don’t care what you promised. I cannot allow you to gamble away our only defense against the phantoms and our only bargaining chip with the lelgis. There are simply no odds good enough or payoff large enough to justify that risk, and I will not play dice with the lives of all mankind just to satisfy your damned Paradoxian honor!”

  I looked away. When he put it like that, my mission did sound unforgivably reckless. But though I knew he had good reason to doubt, I couldn’t, because every time the thought tried to cross my mind, all I could see was the emperor phantom lighting up the dark, dying as it begged me to open the door and let them go home.

  “I know I’m right,” I said at last, pouring every ounce of my conviction into the words as I lifted my eyes to his. “This isn’t a gamble, Captain. It’s a leap of faith. You can’t change anything without risk. If you cling to safety, if you refuse to jump, all you’ll ever have is the hell you’ve got. So please, sir, I’m begging you, take a chance.”

  I have never begged for anything in my life, but I did it now. If Mabel hadn’t had me pinned against her, I would have been on my knees, because this was more important than my pride, more important than anything. And for a second, I saw the doubt in Caldswell’s eyes. He looked down at Maat, then back at me, then back to Maat like he was arguing with himself, and I held my breath. Please, I begged the Sainted King. Please please please.

  In the end, though, my prayers came to nothing. “I can’t,” Caldswell said softly, looking at me with pity. “For what it’s worth, Morris, I believe you, but it’s not enough. I can’t risk everything on a story you got from a phantom.”

  “Then take me back into custody.” The surrender was like ash in my mouth, but I figured if I could just draw things out a little bit more, maybe I could make him see. But Caldswell was already shaking his head.

  “I’m afraid that bridge is burned,” he said, raising the arm he wasn’t using to hold Maat to point the disrupter’s barrel straight at my head.

  “I’m sorry about this, Morris,” he said as Mabel forced me to my knees. “For all the hell you raised, you were the best merc I ever had. I’d even thought about inviting you to be an Eye if you could ever learn to follow orders. But after two escapes, there’s no way I can risk taking you as a prisoner again, virus or no. You’re just too much of a liability. I’m sure you understand.”

  I did, but that didn’t mean I was going to make it easy for them. I fought the whole way, ignoring the pain and the blood running down my leg, forcing Mable to push for every inch. In the end, she hit me so hard I saw stars and moved while I was stunned, scooting around so that she was standing off to the side, holding me in place with one iron-strong hand on my shoulder as Caldswell pressed the barrel of the disrupter pistol against my forehead.

  Funny enough, when the metal cylinder bit into my skin, its hard edge still uncomfortably warm from the shot that had downed Rupert, all I could think was that this was the same pose I’d seen back in the snowy bunker on Io5. This time, though, there was no illusion, and unlike Rupert, I knew Caldswell wouldn’t hesitate before pulling the trigger.

  “For what it’s worth, you have my word your body will be returned to Paradox for a proper burial once the scientists are done,” he said, shifting to King’s Tongue for the final blessing. “King’s rest be on you, Devi Morris.”

  I kept my eyes open, staring my death in the face, determined to make him watch as he shot me. It was petty revenge to be sure, but I was ready to take what I could get. But as Caldswell’s finger moved on the trigger, bright light broke over the fighter bay like a sunrise.

  It was so sudden and blinding, I thought the shot had gone off prematurely, but when my vision cleared, I saw that the light was a hand. Maat’s bony, glowing hand was gripping the barrel of Caldswell’s disrupter pistol so hard the metal dented. Maat’s physical body was still tucked under Caldswell’s arm, but Maat, the real Maat, was standing practically on top of me with light pouring off her like a star going supernova. And though I was the only one who could see her like this, everyone winced when her voice boomed through the dusty bay.

  “She is mine.”

  The words went off like a cannon blast, a throbbing mix of sound and metal pressure. I wasn’t sure how she did it, whether it was her physical proximity or the drugs wearing off or something else entirely. Whatever it was, though, Maat’s
voice cut through the air like a phantom’s scream, and as it echoed through the enormous dock, every light in the place went out.

  Silence fell like a stone as the station’s engines died. For one long second, I don’t think anyone so much as breathed, and then Maat reached out, placing her glowing hand flat on Caldswell’s chest. “She is Maat’s freedom,” Maat said, her voice ringing. “And Maat is not alone!”

  As she spoke, a wave of force so strong it made my ears pop rose up around her. I could actually see the plasmex moving as it coiled like a fist, and then that fist slammed into Caldswell, punching him into a wall of crates twenty feet away. The whole station rocked as he landed, and a new sound took over, a deep, shaking roar that made my mind go blank. That was all the warning we got before the emperor phantoms descended.

  I never did know for sure how many there were. All I knew was that they were enormous, bigger than the phantom who’d spoken to me, bigger than the one I’d seen floating among the broken rocks that had been the aeon colony of Unity, bigger than anything I’d ever seen. They were so huge I didn’t actually know how I was seeing all of them, but I did.

  It was like I was looking with two sets of eyes. With one, I saw the dark fighter bay and Caldswell rolling to his feet, shouting at Mabel to keep hold of me. With the other, I saw the phantoms writhing together like a serpent pit the size of a planet, their combined light so bright I thought I’d burn. But Maat was brightest of all. She was crouching over her own body where Caldswell had dropped it when she’d sent him flying, staring at me with eyes so wide I could see the tears she hadn’t yet shed.

  “Please,” she cried, the word stabbing into my head even as the sound rattled my ears. “Please, Devi!”

  She didn’t need to ask. I was already straining to get to her, but I couldn’t. Despite all the chaos, Mabel was following orders and holding me down, and though the emperor phantoms were everywhere now, they couldn’t get close enough to knock her off without entering the three-foot dead zone phantoms always maintained around me.