by Kylie Chan
‘I’d definitely see one if it appeared in this part of space,’ Marque said. ‘I’m spread through this system at the nano level, almost as much as the cat nanobots in their system.’
‘What about our colonies?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ Marque said. ‘They’re not communicating at all. Wait, the last instance of me is sending a message relayed through scales stations . . .’
I fidgeted as the silence surrounded us.
‘The walkers are all dead,’ Marque said. ‘The attack is over, but the damage to Earth facilities is extensive. It will take me some time to bring communications back up, but it’s finished.’
‘How many dead?’ I said.
‘At this stage I don’t know. There’s only one instance of me left on Earth, and the radiation is frying my circuitry . . . it’s gone.’
*
I didn’t sleep at all the rest of the night as we slowly reconnected to Earth’s communications. I deployed the guard to defend the Empress and wasn’t satisfied until the entire Palace complex was covered. When morning came after the fifteen-hour night of Dragonhome, I was trembling with a combination of grief and exhaustion as I escorted the Empress from her quarters to her office. She settled herself behind her desk and brought up the surveillance; she’d been watching the relief effort from her quarters and hadn’t slept at all.
She glanced at me. ‘Marque, provide chemical assistance for the Captain. She’s about to fall over and I need her at my side when I talk to Parliament.’
‘No,’ I said.
Energy rushed through me and I stood straighter as my mind cleared and my grief subsided to be replaced by cold intellect.
‘Never mind, that was exactly what I needed,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Trust your sovereign,’ the Empress said. ‘You probably haven’t been paying attention, so here’s what’s happening in the next two hours. Marque has limited connectivity to Earth, but we know for sure that many neutron devices went off all over the planet and there’s a great deal of radiation to clean up. The younga are radiation-eaters who can do that, but they must be paid for their work. I wanted to immediately pay them myself, but it’s more than I can personally afford, so Parliament needs to approve the funding. Once that’s approved – and don’t worry, it will be – I want to tour the disaster area and personally inspect the relief effort. Our humans will be cared for.’
‘I’ve found David and Cat,’ Marque said. ‘I think Captain Choumali needs to go to Earth now.’
‘Are they alive?’ I shouted.
‘Cat: no. David: yes, but critically injured. Human medical staff are working to save him.’
I sagged against the wall and wiped one hand over my face. ‘What about the rest of the family?’
‘They’re at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, and we need the younga to clear the water of radiation before we can search for them.’
I stood again. ‘Majesty. Permission to—’
‘Go, Jian,’ she said. ‘Graf can mind me while I address Parliament. Marque, notify Tomoyo to transport her.’
‘Go outside and I’ll carry you up to the folding nexus,’ Marque said.
‘Dismissed, Captain,’ the Empress said. ‘Go.’
*
Tomoyo folded me to the cliff overlooking the site of the Embassy. The pink island was gone, and the water was full of dark mud where the sea had been churned by the collapse. Not even the stalk was present; the island was completely obliterated.
‘Hold still and put your arms out, Jian,’ Marque said. ‘I need to put a proper suit on you – the radiation here is lethal. It will take me weeks to clean it up, even with the help of dragons.’
‘How much was I exposed to?’
‘None. I protected you.’
‘What about Tomoyo?’ I said.
‘I eat it,’ she said. ‘Radiation doesn’t actually harm me until I reach the core of a hot star.’
‘Damn you’re tough,’ I said. I looked around. ‘Where are David and Cat?’
‘Not far away, and in the care of paramedics. But we have something much more important to worry about. Tomoyo, transport us to these co-ordinates.’
Tomoyo transported us again. I staggered when we arrived; gravity was lower. We were in the centre of a city square, and the buildings around us were collapsing upwards in a vortex of wind.
‘This is more important than my son?’ I said.
‘Yes. The whole planet is in jeopardy.’
A second, brighter, sun was in the sky. I felt lighter, as if it was pulling me upwards. The wind whipped past me into the sky, a visible vortex of matter spiralling into it. It shone brighter than the sun with the energy released from the matter destroyed in it.
‘That’s a miniature black hole, isn’t it?’ I said with horror.
‘Yes,’ Marque said. ‘It’s only four millimetres across.’
‘How long before it devours the planet?’
‘The atmosphere will be gone in less than a day. Earth will be completely destroyed within a week.’
I looked around. ‘Can you transport it, Tomoyo?’ I shook my head. ‘Of course you can’t – you’ll be sucked into it before you get close.’ I turned a circle. ‘An energy shield will be sucked into it as well. Can we move the Earth away from the black hole?’
‘The black hole will travel with the planet. They’re locked together.’
‘How many people are left on Earth?’
‘About nine hundred million.’
‘So what do we do? We can’t move the black hole. We can’t move the planet. Can we move the population in time if we get all the dragons to help?’
‘No. But I have an idea,’ Marque said. ‘I’m talking to people.’
‘I hope David’s okay,’ I said, trying to wipe my eyes and hitting the energy field around my face. Marque had said that he was in a critical condition and I could only hope that the medical team could save him.
The ground shuddered beneath me.
‘Tomoyo, move us – the ground’s giving way,’ Marque said.
The ground lifted, and I leaped to touch Tomoyo. She fell away from me, and I rose gently into the air, sucked up by the great vacuum above. The ground cracked, and two pieces lifted separately, each fifty metres across. I panicked; if I was between them when they rose, I could be crushed, suit or no suit. Tomoyo appeared next to me, flew to me using her large wings, put her snout on my chest, and folded us away.
I landed on my stomach on grass and picked myself up. Tomoyo had moved us a hundred metres from the edge of the hole where the ground had lifted. The wind still howled up into the glowing black hole, and a couple of burst water pipes added to the chaos with water that spiralled straight up.
‘The planet’s coming apart, Marque,’ Tomoyo said. ‘What was your solution?’
‘Go back to your homeworld and pick up Kana.’
‘That is not a solution,’ she said. ‘It’s a death sentence. It will kill her – and we protect our goldenscales.’
‘It’s the only solution you have. Do it!’
‘I won’t force her into a suicide mission!’
‘So ask her when she gets here. Go get her.’
She stared at Marque for a heartbeat, then folded away.
‘I agree with her,’ I said. ‘Just because she’s a servant doesn’t mean she’s expendable—’
Tomoyo appeared with the goldenscales servant, bright yellow and smaller than her multicoloured sisters. Kana was the Empress’ maid, and helped her out with grooming and household management.
Kana looked up and then at Marque.
‘The only way to save this planet and everybody on it, is to gate this little black hole,’ Tomoyo said. ‘Can you do it?’
‘You want me to gate?’ Kana said. ‘I thought I was just here to help carry things!’
‘The Empress said it’s okay,’ Marque said.
Kana stared up at Marque, her golden eyes wide. ‘Are you sure? This is a capital
offence – the punishment for gating is the Real Death.’ She swung her head to see Tomoyo. ‘Isn’t there another way?’
‘No,’ Marque said. ‘This is the only way to save millions of lives. You must gate the black hole.’
‘Can you do it?’ I said.
‘We are strictly forbidden from doing this,’ Kana said. ‘If we get it wrong – and it’s not hard to get it wrong – we could put the gates inside each other and destroy the universe.’
‘I confirm before Marque and the Captain of the Guard that you have permission,’ Tomoyo said. ‘You’ll save millions of lives. Please!’
Kana lowered her head and thought about it, then raised her head. ‘It’s worth dying for, if it’ll save the humans. They worked so hard to defend the Empire.’ She straightened and appeared larger in her small frame. ‘Captain Choumali, you saw Tomoyo give me permission?’
‘I did.’
‘All right. I’m willing to take the risk. Just . . . please don’t let Tomoyo crush my stone.’
‘I’ll hold it for you,’ I said.
She turned to Tomoyo. ‘My lady?’
‘She can hold it.’
Kana pulled her soulstone out of her forehead and gave it to me.
‘Please don’t crush it,’ she said plaintively to Tomoyo.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t,’ Tomoyo said. ‘You have my word.’ She looked up. ‘Can you do it?’
‘It should be relatively straightforward,’ Kana said. ‘I’ll put the other end of the gate close to a much larger black hole, and when the small hole is sucked through, I’ll close it from this end before it kills me.’ She looked up at Marque. ‘Quickly confirm my calculations.’ She rattled off a series of numbers. ‘Other end at—’ Another series of numbers. ‘What do you think?’
‘You know you’re better at it than I am,’ Marque said. ‘But it looks good to me.’
‘Please don’t tell any other species that we can do this, Captain Choumali,’ Kana said. ‘We’re slightly better at building gates than our coloured sisters, but gating is strictly prohibited – it’s too dangerous. We seem to have this knack with the numbers, even though we don’t know how we do it.’
The ground beneath us shifted.
‘Less talking, more gating, I think,’ Kana said. ‘Tomoyo, take me to these co-ordinates.’
Tomoyo touched her nose to Kana and they disappeared. Tomoyo reappeared a moment later. ‘Marque, please show us her progress.’
A two-dimensional display appeared in front of us, showing Kana near the tiny black hole. She swam against its gravitational pull to stay stationary. The equipment that the walkers had used to construct the black hole stretched to either side of it. They’d used a floating particle accelerator – a long circular tube with a small reactor at one end. The equipment was unrecognisably warped as it entered the hole. The black hole itself wasn’t visible; only the lens-shaped distortion of gravity around it.
‘That thing is churning out hard radiation on every band,’ Marque said. ‘I can’t get close with any of my instances, it wipes them out. I’ve heavily filtered what you’re seeing, otherwise it would just be white noise.’
The gate appeared. It looked like a shining glass ball, two metres across, with thick walls and a black centre. It glittered in the reflected light of the black hole. Kana moved towards it, then backed away as her front legs were distorted by its proximity.
The miniature black hole rushed into the gate and the gate went brilliantly white as it travelled through, then rotated in shifting colours. The circle of brilliance shrank and blackness grew from the edges of the glass ball towards the centre.
‘Kana, quickly, close it,’ Tomoyo said to the image. Kana had her head twisted all the way back, but her front legs were twice as long as they should be and were becoming slimmer all the time. She was being sucked into the gate.
The black edges of the gate shrank towards its spherical centre, dragging Kana with it. Her front end went into the gate as it disappeared, and the rest of her looked like spaghetti. Half of her was inside the gate as it closed with a loud rush of air, then silence. What was left of Kana fell out of the sky and hit the ground with a wet thump. It looked like a lump of raw meat, with red, blue and green blood in a puddle around it.
‘Damn that was brave of her,’ I said.
‘It must have hurt like anything,’ Tomoyo said. ‘And she closed the gate when half of her was already gone. Our goldenscales often outshine us.’
‘I hope I have the chance to thank her.’
‘You will,’ Tomoyo said.
‘Earth is still severely damaged,’ Marque said. ‘I need to build a full-sized instance of myself to return the planet to stable orbit. Let’s head back to the homeworld, and I’ll start building one.’
I wanted to stand but my legs were like rubber, and I was still shaking from the aftermath. ‘Are my family okay? My mother? Oliver? David? Aki?’
‘At this stage I don’t know,’ Marque said. ‘There isn’t anything left of me apart from this sphere, and all comms are down. You’ll need to give me some time to clean up the radiation and sift through the remains. This will take a while.’
‘Tomoyo? You went back and collected Oliver, right?’ I said.
‘He wasn’t anywhere when I went back,’ she said. ‘I looked for him – but moving humans off Earth was a priority. I’m sorry, Jian, I don’t know where he is.’
‘You did the right thing. You probably saved many.’ I put my head in my hands, feeling the energy barrier around me as I tried to touch my own face. My family were in the epicentre of the Embassy blast, and I hoped they’d made it to the blast shelter in the facility. There wasn’t much chance that the family had survived, and even their soulstones were probably gone. David’s soulstone wasn’t even the real thing; if he died, that was it for him. Oliver was probably dead as well, but at least he had a real soulstone and could be salvaged.
‘You said David was alive. Where is he?’ I said.
‘Tomoyo can take you,’ Marque said. ‘Tomoyo, these coordinates.’
‘My scales are going nuts,’ Tomoyo said. ‘All the dragons are rallying to help our human friends.’
‘Subjects,’ I said. ‘Slaves. Conscripts. If we’d never met you, this would not have happened.’
She didn’t rise to it. ‘We’ll work with Marque to clean up the radiation and repair the planet. Now, let’s go check on your son. I hope he’s okay.’
15
Tomoyo folded me to a stand of trees a few kilometres from the edge of the Mediterranean where the Embassy was located.
‘Give me the stone and I’ll take it back home to put Kana into a new body,’ she said.
I wanted to make sure that the goldenscales would be okay, but my son was nearby and hurt. I glared at her as I handed it over. ‘Don’t you dare let them crush this stone. That dragon is a hero.’
‘I know,’ she said, and disappeared.
The trees around me were dead, their leaves all blasted off and covering the ground in a brown blanket. A scorched trail led to the area covered in black goo.
‘The black goo is dead nanos, isn’t it?’ I said as I trudged over the papery leaves to the site.
‘Yes,’ Marque said. ‘I don’t know what other nano devices Cat brought with her. She could bring the seeds of the devices, put them in the sun, and then grow just about anything. From the crash marks it looks like it was a spherical, single-passenger nano vehicle, and she overloaded it by putting David in as well.’
‘Was the crash caused by it being overloaded, or by the bomb blast?’
‘The blast. The cats really have no value for their own kind.’
A corpse, covered with a red sheet, lay in the puddle of dead nanos. Another corpse lay in the centre of the clearing, also covered in a sheet, and surrounded by disposable medical equipment. A group of humans in radiation equipment were packing up their vehicle in preparation for leaving, with no gurney in the vehicle.
‘Oh lord,’
I said. ‘I’m too late.’
I went to the body in the middle of the clearing and lifted the red blanket. It was David. One of the rescue staff approached me.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, Captain Choumali,’ she said, her voice muffled by the helmet. ‘We did everything we could, but we couldn’t save him. We didn’t find a soulstone in his forehead? I hope you can find it.’ She looked back at the vehicle. ‘We can’t do any more here; we have to move on to where people are alive. We will deal with the dead later.’
‘I understand. Go,’ I said.
She nodded to me and they entered their vehicle and flew away. I was left alone with the dead trees and my dead child.
David’s body still had a neck brace on, and his expression was serene. I lifted his body to hold him. His head flopped against me, filling my nose with the fresh scent of his shampoo. He smelled the same as he always did, but he was ice-cold, limp and pale; a shell of the vibrant young man he used to be. I didn’t want to let him go; as long as I held him, he was still with me. I clutched him against me in a suspension of the reality between his being in my life and the acknowledgement of his death.
I wasn’t aware of the passage of time, but eventually I rose up out of the grey vacuum of my grief, gently laid him back on the ground, and covered him with the red blanket. I’d never see his lively face again, touch his hair, call his name. He was gone.
‘What about the rest of the family?’ I said.
‘I don’t know,’ Marque said. ‘The Embassy is at the bottom of the Mediterranean.’
‘So they were either killed by the explosion or drowned. Either way they’re dead and we need to find their soulstones. How badly damaged is the island down there? Is there a chance that the stones are still intact? We only have forty-eight hours before the stones lose attunement.’
‘The water is heavily irradiated. I’ll be able to investigate the area after the younga have eaten the radiation.’
‘Has Parliament agreed to pay them?’
‘The younga are volunteering their skills without payment and they’ve already started to clean up the sites.’
‘Any sign of Oliver?’
‘I’m sorry, Jian, no. You can stay here at the Embassy site and wait to see if your family are in the water, or go to Tokyo if you like. Aki is probably safe inside the Imperial bunker.’