All sound ceased, the voices of plains dwellers and Sun-Moon worshipers alike falling silent. All stared at Naos, and Natalya knew she had to have the same amazed look. As Naos strode from the city, Natalya waited a few moments before catching up. The plains dwellers followed, but no one else. Natalya didn’t blame them. Even considering standing up to such immense power had to seem the height of foolishness.
*
Patricia Dué walked the Atlas’s halls, peeking into conduits and checking the wiring. The engineers had already done their inspection, and the ship wouldn’t depart for hours, but it was her first long mission. She wanted to get to know the ship she’d be helping to pilot. She’d done this last minute check for every tub she’d ever flown, and the Atlas put them all to shame.
She spotted a missing bolt on a hatch cover and clucked her tongue. One missing bolt wasn’t likely to cause a crash, but she didn’t like the laziness it spoke of. What mistakes might be behind the hatch if the outside was so sloppy?
She put her toolkit down and strained to catch the remaining bolts with her wrench, but they were just out of reach. She put one foot on the toolkit and tried again, but the kit slipped, and she lurched backward with a yelp.
Someone caught her elbows, stopping her fall. “Climbing the walls before we even get to the boondocks?” a man’s voice asked.
Patricia turned, and the rescuer flashed a brilliant smile. Late forties, maybe early fifties, he radiated masculinity from his square jaw to the calluses on his hands. His thumb glanced along her forearm, making her teeth clench. Something about him made the small touch seem as intimate as if he’d caressed her bare breast.
He let go as she turned, and she eyed the crisp gray uniform, the black piping, a combo that complemented eyes that seemed more gray then blue. The stripes of a Pross Co. colonel graced his shoulders, and she looked for the stitching that gave his last name as Tracey.
He raised an eyebrow, and she knew she was staring. She’d never been a blusher, so she swallowed instead. “Thanks.” Her mind raced, trying to find out what it was about him that was so fascinating. She’d never been interested in someone at least ten years her senior. Jack was a handsome man, but when Colonel Tracey chuckled, secret places in Patricia’s core tightened as if pulled by a drawstring.
She sensed power in his muscled frame; maybe that was it. This wasn’t someone who worked with numbers all day, who sat at a desk. No doubt he used his hands for all sorts of things, and he was a soldier. If he was a colonel, he’d seen combat, had fought for his life and the lives of others.
She’d walked away then, but now, when she had this moment to live again, she wanted to stay, wanted them to peel each other out of their uniforms and fuck right there in the hallway. She opened her mouth to tell him, but he’d gone still, frozen in time, stuck in the unchanging past.
“I thought you loved Jack,” her own voice said. Naos leaned against the wall in a black evening gown, fidgeting with a string of diamonds around her neck. She pulled it taut with one finger, the stones dimpling her skin.
“I did love Jack,” Patricia said. “Do love. Something.”
Naos tapped her chin. “During pre-flight check on the bridge, you were thinking about our dear colonel, weren’t you, wanted to sit on his console and wrap your legs around his head.”
Patricia edged away, looking for another memory, but Naos stayed with her, floating through the air as if there was no gravity.
“Don’t you think you should have been paying attention, hmm? Did you cause the crash? Is that why you were so willing to let me in?”
“Nichols caused the crash! He was the pilot. I was just running the numbers.”
“Yes, double-checking his work. Maybe everyone would have been alive and happy and sane if you’d done your job instead of fantasy fucking Dillon Tracey!”
Patricia turned, fist raised, but Naos caught her in an invisible grip. She laughed, her with all the power, and Patricia with all the pain.
“You want me to abandon my war?” Naos said. “For him?”
With a flash that made her gasp, Patricia remembered what she’d been doing before she’d gotten lost in the past again. She’d heard a telepathic cry for help. Naos’s shields had been wide open on that battlefield, and Patricia had been able to peek through, but it wasn’t the battle that interested her. It was the people she’d once known, and one of them was in desperate trouble and calling for help with all his might, but he wasn’t a telepath. No one else could have heard him.
“We have to help him!”
“No!”
Patricia flexed what little power she’d managed to find within herself, trying to manipulate the real body she had to share.
Naos shut her down with a snarl. “He’s going to die anyway.” She muttered something about being foolish and stupid.
“But you want to be the one to kill him, don’t you? You want to kill him with your hands, her hands.”
Naos frowned harder, but Patricia knew the argument was working. “This is the last time we do what you want.” Naos flickered and disappeared.
Patricia sagged against the hallway. A ghostly ribbon hung in the air where Naos had been, and Patricia knew what that was, too. She was seeing it more and more recently: the attachment to the world, the one Patricia could occasionally follow. Sometimes it led to the girl, sometimes other places, other people. Patricia clutched it and watched as Naos sent out a psychic tendril, seeking Dillon. His mind was tight, panicky, and Patricia could see through his eyes. He was entombed in blackness, and she sensed the thunder of his heartbeat. In his mind, Naos began to sing.
He didn’t bother to reply out loud, but Patricia heard him think, “Come to watch while I die, nutbag?”
A confident thought, but in his mind his terror was more transparent than if he’d spoken aloud. It should have made him less in her mind. In any other man, it might have, but now she wanted to save him more than ever.
“Don’t read too much into this, sugar,” Naos thought at him. “It’s just because you’ve got a part to play.”
But that wasn’t all, and Patricia knew it. She’d been able to upset Naos’s plans, to jangle around in her mind like a loose screw until Naos took her seriously. She was gaining power.
Naos moved Dillon upward through the dirt; a macro pulse shielded him from the roots he feared. As he rose, he laughed and thanked her, his gratitude real, and though Naos ignored it, Patricia delighted in every sensation.
Chapter Twenty-two
Samira sent her third battery away from the fight, crippling another paladin. Many of them now had to open their visors and shout to one another. She braced to grab another battery when the air glowed white around her, blinding her as the sky cracked with thunder. She staggered and rubbed purple spots from her eyes only to see that a nearby drushka had been reduced to a smoldering pile of flesh. When the smell washed over her, she gagged and grabbed her mouth. The hair on her arms stood on end, and she whipped around, looking for him. He stalked toward the battle to her right, his visor open and murder etched on every feature.
“Oh no.”
Another drushka ran to her. “The queen is in pain! The Storm Lord is free!”
“Keep fighting!”
He yelled something else about Pool, but Samira gathered her power around her as the Storm Lord’s eye fell on her. She didn’t know if she could stop him, but she wasn’t going to wait to try. She hurled a wall of force and knocked him over. At least she had a chance of withstanding him. She had to give the drushka more time to get Simon!
When he stood, he looked past her, and Samira heard a slithering sound accompanied by heavy thumps that made the ground tremble. She risked a look and saw Pool’s tree thundering toward the battle. Its long roots whipped out and knocked the Storm Lord flat again.
Another battery was freed, and Samira sent it Pool’s way. Thunder boomed across the sky now, and the clouds opened like an overturned bucket, sheeting everyone with rain. Another bolt lashe
d out, and the drushka screamed as it left a black scorch mark across Pool’s trunk. The tree bent and swung a branch, hurtling the Storm Lord into the air. He landed hard on his back, but Samira had no doubt the armor could protect him. He slipped in the wet grass, and the rest of the paladins ran toward him. Several shot at Pool where she rode in the tree, but the limbs folded over her, and more drushka leapt from the branches to join the fight.
Samira gave the paladins another shove and ran for the tree. Her strength was flagging and her head pounding without Simon to cure her fatigue. She didn’t know how much longer she could keep this up. After another macro shove, she caught sight of a drushka running toward them out of the haze of rain. She thought he might have gotten thrown clear of the fight when she noticed he was carrying someone, a human.
“Simon!” She ran toward them, whooping for joy.
One of the paladins turned and lifted her weapon. She called something about not letting them have the healer, and others went for their guns.
“No!” Samira pulled another wave of force from her core, sending pain bouncing between her ears, but the shot rang out just as the wave threw the paladin prone.
A fine red spray doused the drushka’s face as Simon’s head jerked to the side. He went limp, and the drushka stumbled.
“Simon!” Samira cried. She skidded to a halt.
The paladin who’d shot Simon was getting to her feet. Samira’s vision went cloudy as her teeth came together hard. She reached deep within, grabbing every ounce of power and ignoring the pain twisting her head off. With a cry of inarticulate rage, she set a wall of force across the paladin’s body, seeking to rip her in two. The armor shrieked as loudly as the woman inside, but Samira snarled and pushed harder, feeling the armor give along with muscles and ligaments, organs and bone.
Another paladin fired at her, but she knocked the bullets away, pulling reserves from places she didn’t know she had. She tasted copper. Her nose was bleeding. Pool’s tree reached Simon and his rescuer and lifted both into her branches. The Storm Lord turned, and she thought he’d aim at Pool again, but he pumped a bolt of lightning into the paladin who’d shot Simon, and Samira thought she heard him cry out.
A limb snaked around her torso and lifted her into the air. “I’m not done yet!” But she had to let the paladin go as the drushka returned to their branches. Samira screamed, desperation turning into a final prayer that the Storm Lord had ended Simon’s killer.
The limb placed her on a branch, and she fell to her knees. The drushka and humans scattered through the branches had a hazy, dreamlike quality made dimmer by the rain. She wiped her face, leaving red smudges across her hands, but the rain cleaned them at once. It might already have washed away Simon’s blood.
The drushka had his body. She had to find it. She grabbed the first drushka that passed, wadding her fists in his shirt. “What did you do with him?”
He replied in drushkan, lifting his hands. She pushed him away and staggered along, calling Simon’s name. The unknowing drushka stayed with her, muttering.
Shiv dropped in front of them. “Usta, you must calm yourself.”
“Where did you put Simon’s…body?” Her voice broke, and she sobbed, loud and hard until Shiv had to support her. One minute alive and the next dead, after everything they’d done? Life couldn’t be so cruel. She tried to ask where he was again but could only manage a keening moan. Shiv was talking to her, and there were people all around, trying to console her, but what was she supposed to do now? Where was she supposed to go?
“Usta, come with me,” Shiv said as she cupped Samira’s cheeks. “Come.”
One of the watching drushka said, “Queen’s daughter, you cannot—”
Shiv gave him a harsh look. “I have decided.”
She led Samira away, and Samira spotted Lydia in the crowd. She wanted to fly at the ex-prophet, to tear her apart for not warning this would happen, but before Samira could gather whatever power remained to her, the tree lifted her and Shiv higher into its limbs.
Shiv led her to a group of branches as dense as a basket, and she eyed them curiously, even through her grief. At a wave from Shiv, the branches parted enough to crawl through, and Shiv led the way inside.
Samira blinked as they entered a world of soft, golden light. Pods hung from the branches all around them, and as Samira stepped close to one, she saw a tiny drushka inside, a baby. From those the size of a fist to some so big she couldn’t get her arms around them, the pods all held infants in various stages of development. Near the largest, Reach stood with several other drushka, one of whom held a mewling baby. Samira looked past them to the pod itself.
Its occupant filled it completely, making great bulges along the sides and interrupting its oval line. Samira walked toward it woodenly, hypnotized by the naked man inside; his legs were pushed up to his chest, and his arms locked around them. His head rested on his knees, face turned toward her, eyes closed. His hair swayed inside the golden liquid.
“Simon.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Is he…”
She touched the pod’s slick, smooth surface. She could see the bullet wound in his head, a precise little hole. Occasionally, a small jolt of red blood leaked into the golden fluid, turning it a darker amber.
“He is alive,” Reach said. She had red and golden smears of blood on her clothes, in her hair. “I cannot repair the wound as I cannot sing away the metal.” She looked to Shiv. “One human here was bad enough, but two?”
“Shawness Simon will not remember,” Shiv said, “and Usta had become useless with grief.”
“How is he alive?” Samira asked.
“Shawness Simon has a connection to plants. We sensed it when he touched the connection of the drushka, but we can only keep him alive like this and not forever.” She took a cloth from her bag and wiped Samira’s nose, but Samira barely felt it. “We need a human healer. We need shawness Horace.”
Samira swallowed hard. She didn’t understand about the connections to plants and the drushka, but she understood the pod was keeping him alive. She took a deep breath. They hadn’t failed to save him. It was just going to be more complicated than they thought.
She looked from the pod to the rest, to the babies, the newborn. One of the drushka bounced the baby softly, saying, “Chee, chee, chee,” before speaking to Shiv.
“She worries because the baby is thin,” Reach whispered. “We had to remove him early to make room for shawness Simon.”
“Will he be all right?”
“Ahya, I think so. The queen feeds the children differently at every stage. The last is mostly her blood, to bind the children to her so that they will be tied to their tribe.”
Shiv unwound a bandage from her hand. Samira hadn’t noticed it until then. She had a wound below her knuckles which she held above the baby’s head. When she flexed, golden blood dribbled into the baby’s mouth. It ceased mewling and lapped at the liquid, its tooth-filled mouth working and swallowing.
Samira turned away, so many emotions warring within her that she didn’t even know how to process that.
“We are lucky the young queen is here with us,” Reach said. “She gives the blood while Pool is occupied.”
Samira stared at Simon and felt the heavy hand of fatigue across her shoulders. She wanted to be happy he was alive, but if they couldn’t get to Horace, there was no guarantee he’d stay that way. “Can I stay with him?”
“Ahya. We ask you, Usta, please do not tell other humans of this place. Not even Sa knows of it. We wish it to remain a secret.”
Something about keeping secrets from their closest allies should have sounded off to her, but as she sank to the ground and stretched her neck, she found she was too tired to consider that, either. “Fine, whatever, as long as I get to stay.”
*
Liam took charge of the captured batteries. During the fight, he’d told Pool all he knew about where the armor might be vulnerable. Now, as they fled, he scrambled through the tree, trying to think
of another way to help.
They’d captured one prisoner, a paladin who’d gotten caught up as Pool rescued a group of her people. The drushka had taken his armor’s battery, but he still gave them a hard time. Liam jerked him around by his armored shoulder and punched him in his open helm, three hard hits, and the man went limp. He recognized Clemensky, who’d been a private when Liam left Gale. He wondered if they’d all been promoted since then.
“Strip his armor,” Liam said, “and plug the battery back in.” He took the paladin’s sidearm, but someone touched his shoulder.
“The queen asks for you.”
He kept the gun as the drushka led him to Pool where she steered the tree. “They follow us,” Pool said, her gaze unfocused. “Their bullets, the Storm Lord’s lightning…” She shuddered, and Liam knew she was feeling the hits.
“Put me where I can see them.”
She lifted him to the back of the tree, and he saw the armored figures running in Pool’s wake. With their armor still powered, they were keeping up easily, but Liam knew there were more than a few back at the battlefield with no power to speak of. He took aim and fired, hitting one paladin in the knee, though the bullet couldn’t penetrate the armor. The paladin still stumbled enough to be left slightly behind.
Liam took another shot and missed. “Fuck.” He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before shooting again. He hit another paladin in the hip, but she shrugged it off, drew her own sidearm and fired into the tree. The branches closed over Liam, and he heard the dull thud as the bullets buried themselves in the bark.
“Shit,” Liam mumbled. “Sorry, Pool.”
Well, if he couldn’t fight them from the tree, time for Plan B.
“I need that armor,” he said.
“You go to fight them?” one drushka asked.
“I can keep them busy long enough for you to get away.” For Shiv to get away. He only wished she was here so he could say…
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