Alone

  His voice is full of awe. Aramovsky has his gods, Gaston has this.

  “They trained me to command that ship,” he says. “Now that I’ve actually seen it, Em, so much of my training is flooding back. Just like with Ximbal. I had to show you that to show you this—put the Basilisk on the display.”

  The Xolotl blinks out.

  The air above the Well sparkles. An image coalesces…it’s the same image I was just looking at.

  “You put the Xolotl up again,” I say.

  Gaston shakes his head. “Look at the colors.”

  What is he talking about? It’s the Xolotl. The long, copper-colored cylinder, the section with machinery and pipes, the tapering engine cone, the…

  The section with the machinery, the pipes…the colors are different. Gleaming, dark reds. Cobalt blues. And the front of the ship, the flat, circular end that points toward Omeyocan, it doesn’t have the squashed cartoon face…the front of this ship is gray. On that gray disc, in thick, black lines, are the two rings and seven dots of the carbon symbol.

  I glance at the Well wall, knowing a matching symbol is etched into it—black on red instead of black on gray.

  “The two ships are almost the same,” I say.

  Zubiri steps off the platform, slowly walks to the Well. She stares up at the image, her wide-eyed face bathed in reflected light.

  “Our ship and the Basilisk came from completely different areas of space,” she says. “Millions of light-years apart, yet they look like almost identical designs. How can that be?”

  Spingate and Gaston say nothing. They don’t know, either.

  “Maybe it’s a coincidence,” I say.

  Zubiri shakes her head. “Impossible. Theresa, please show her.”

  “Putting Gamma-One on the display,” Spingate says.

  Gamma-One. The Goblin.

  The Basilisk fuzzes out.

  The image that replaces it is smaller, perhaps because the Goblin is farther away from us. It is not quite as detailed as the first two, but there is no mistaking what I see: a thick, copper-colored cylinder, a smaller section sticking out the back, tapering to a black engine cone. The Goblin’s circular front is deep green, semi-translucent like glass. Etched on it in yellow lines is a curling symbol with thornlike points. I don’t know what that symbol is.

  “Now show me the Dragon,” Gaston says. Standing atop the red wall, fists on his hips, silhouetted in the display’s light, he looks so commanding. He reminds me of Bishop. He reminds me of me.

  The image blurs, fuzzes, crystallizes, becomes clear. The smallest of the four ships I’ve seen so far is the least detailed, yet there is zero doubt—the Dragon looks like the Goblin, which looks like the Basilisk, which looks like our Xolotl.

  The Dragon’s flat circular front is pure white. No symbol. The part tapering away from the copper-colored cylinder’s far end is also white. The black engine cone looks identical.

  “They’re all the same,” I mutter. “Different colors, but basically the same ship.”

  “Grandmaster Spingate,” the room says. “New contact detected. Labeling it Epsilon-One.”

  My heart sinks, weighed down by a sense of defeat, a feeling that no matter what we do we will eventually lose.

  Zubiri turns her back to the red wall. She sags slowly, sits on her heels. She starts to cry.

  “It will never end,” she says. “Never.”

  “Silence on the bridge,” Gaston snaps.

  The sharpness of his voice startles me. Zubiri as well—she stops crying, looks up at him in confused surprise.

  I don’t know what a “bridge” is, but Gaston seems to think he’s in one.

  “Show me the new contact,” he says. “Global model, and in scale.”

  “Processing, Captain Xander.”

  The image of white-fronted Dragon dissipates in an angry shower of sparkles. Those sparkles rush together to form the familiar blue, green and brown orb that is Omeyocan. Big at first, wider than the width of the Well, but the planet shrinks as if we’re flying away from it. I see the Xolotl, now highlighted in glowing red, then the Basilisk, highlighted in glowing blue. As the planet shrinks, those ships quickly become nothing more than colored dots.

  Omeyocan reduces to the size of Gaston’s chest. The two moons blur into view, then shrink in time with the planet.

  A green dot appears: the Goblin. When our planet is the size of Gaston’s head, I see a white dot—the Dragon.

  When Omeyocan is as tiny as Gaston’s eyeball, I see a fifth colored light. This one is purple.

  “The purple dot represents Epsilon-One, Captain,” the room says.

  Gaston stares. “We’ll call it the Eel. Show me the Eel’s projected time to arrival in orbit.”

  A long, curved purple line appears, connecting the new dot to Omeyocan.

  “At current rate of speed and factoring in deceleration, the Eel will reach orbit in fifteen months, ten days, Captain Xander.”

  Gaston’s shoulders sag. His veneer of leadership fades away.

  One of Matilda’s school lessons flares to life in my thoughts. They taught her about solar systems. Planets and their moons, all orbiting around a central star. That’s what this display reminds me of, except the “star” is Omeyocan, and the “planets” are alien ships.

  Alien ships coming to destroy us.

  Zubiri’s cheeks gleam with tears, reflect the colored lights of this horrible reality.

  “We’re in hell,” she says. “Ship after ship after ship…they will keep coming. We’ll never beat them all.”

  A high-pitched wail comes from the walls and ceiling.

  “Alert, Captain Xander—incoming projectile fire from the Basilisk.”

  Gaston hops off the Well and runs to join Spingate on the platform.

  “Show me,” he says as he slides to a stop at the pedestal next to hers. Spingate’s hands are already moving, grabbing floating images of light, moving them, twisting them.

  “Attack-level magnification,” Ometeotl says.

  The glowing display of Omeyocan swells like we are plummeting toward the planet. We don’t see the entire orb anymore, just a curve of it. At the center, so small I barely recognize the huge city wall, I make out Uchmal and the surrounding jungle. High up above, the tiny blue dot of the Basilisk. Thread-thin blue lines reach out from it, streaking down toward our city.

  “How many projectiles in the first salvo?” Gaston asks, his hands moving just as furiously as Spingate’s.

  “Seventeen,” Ometeotl answers. “Time to first impact, thirteen minutes and seven seconds.”

  “Are the missile-defense batteries active?”

  “Chancellor Borjigin confirms three of the four batteries are functioning, Captain. I have full control of physical systems. Targeting and tracking system active.”

  “Fire at will,” Gaston says. “Shoot the godsdamned things down.”

  “As you command, Captain. I will initiate automated defense fire as soon as the projectiles enter the stratosphere.”

  Spingate’s hands are a blur of light and color. I have no idea what she’s doing. I feel stupid and useless.

  “Batteries one, two and four active,” she says. “A total of thirty-one combined antimissile bursts available. That’s not enough…should we only target the projectiles aimed at the Observatory?”

  Gaston snarls, thinks for a moment. I can almost see the anger simmering inside of him.

  “If we only protect the Observatory, they might figure out we’re low on ammo,” he says, talking out loud as he works through the problem.

  There are no easy answers here—for once, I’m glad the decision is not mine to make.

  “The Basilisk is close enough to safely launch landing craft,” Gaston says. “But it hasn’t yet. We have to assume that’s coming, make sure we can shoot down at least some of those ships. Ometeotl, target the first twenty projectiles, regardless of where they are aimed. Save the last eleven antimissile bursts for incoming aircraft only
. If the Observatory or Ximbal are directly targeted, use those reserve rounds.”

  “Affirmative, Captain.”

  He’s making an impossible choice, protecting our people and our only working spaceship, possibly at the expense of being able to shoot down the alien ground troops. I could jump in, I could tell him what to do, but in all honesty, he knows more about air combat than I ever will. I trust him.

  Gaston glances at Spingate. “Battery three, the one that doesn’t work, are there any rounds in there?”

  Spingate moves icons. “Another twelve rounds.”

  “That gives us a little more breathing room,” Gaston says. “Ometeotl, tell Borjigin to have people evenly distribute the ammunition from battery three to the other batteries.”

  Zubiri starts crying again. Maybe she’s a genius scientist, but right now she looks like a terrified little thirteen-year-old girl.

  Twelve minutes until the streaks of fire split our sky and shatter our city.

  Twelve minutes…

  “Zubiri,” I say, “the telescope is working—does that mean the Goff Spear works? Can we shoot it?”

  She looks up at me, eyes wet and wide.

  “I haven’t verified that yet. The Goff rounds are nuclear weapons—without testing, we can’t take a chance that they might malfunction and detonate inside the Observatory.”

  “A second enemy salvo has launched,” Ometeotl calls out. “Seventeen additional projectiles, time of impact estimated at twenty-one minutes, fourteen seconds. Total incoming projectiles—thirty-four.”

  Gaston points at Zubiri. While she looks like a little girl, he suddenly looks like a grown man.

  “Load the Goff Spear,” he growls. “Immediately.”

  She shakes her head, screams back at him in a broken voice. “I just told you, I haven’t had time to test it! For all I know, it could blow up instead of launching. It could kill us all!”

  Gaston looks at me, nods once, returns to his mad work above the pedestal. I’m the leader of our people, but with that brief glance I realize that in here, he is in charge, and he has just given me orders.

  I walk to Zubiri and haul her to her feet.

  “Let’s go,” I say. “We’re loading that weapon.”

  I’m breathing so hard from sprinting here. I feel the Observatory shudder. Our antimissile batteries, shooting at yet another incoming meteor. I marvel at weapons so powerful that just firing them can shake this man-made mountain of stone.

  Zubiri isn’t breathing as hard as I am—for a scientist, she’s in better shape than I would have thought.

  “Lock it down,” she says to Okereke. “Johnson, use those clamps on top, make sure they’re secure.”

  We’re in the room with the Goff Spear rounds. The golden hexagonal chunk known as Goff 2 lies in the strange cart. It fits perfectly, like an egg in an egg carton. Okereke and Johnson fasten a hinged bracket down on top. They close clamps, tighten screws. The cart’s solidity, the padding, the tight fit, the springs that support the wheels—the Grownups didn’t want the hexagonal object jostled in any way.

  I think of what Zubiri said ten minutes ago in the Control Room: For all I know, it could blow up instead of launching. It could kill us all.

  We can cower in our stone mountain and hope we aren’t hit, just like the Springers hid in their underground cities. Or we can take our chances and fight.

  Attack, attack, when in doubt, always attack.

  Sometimes the voice of my father is wrong. This is not one of those times.

  “Move faster,” I say. “Move!”

  —

  Okereke, Johnson, Ingolfsson and a younger circle boy named Daniel Roth roll the cart down the hallway. Okereke is singing a song; the circles’ steps land in time to the beat.

  The cart has a long handle with four handholds. There is no motor on it, nothing like the engines that drive the spiders or the trucks. I wonder if the Grownups wanted to make sure people had to really think about using this weapon. Is that why the rounds are so far from the telescope? Is this weapon so horrible that they wanted to make sure people had more time to consider if it should be used at all?

  Up ahead, Opkick is standing in front of an open elevator I haven’t seen before. This one is wider than the one that leads down to the Control Room—just wide enough for the cart that carries the Goff round.

  “That elevator leads to the loading chamber,” Zubiri says. “Only a few minutes now.”

  She’s jogging behind the cart, next to me.

  The floor beneath us shudders again—another round fired in our defense, or an enemy meteor punching home?

  Opkick waves madly for us to hurry. She has her messageboard pinned under her armpit, and a hand cupped under her pregnant belly.

  “Come on,” she calls out. “You’re slowing down!”

  Her words give the circles new energy. Okereke increases the song’s rhythm. The circles increase their pace to match.

  We’re almost to the elevator when the building shakes again, but far harder this time. Dust trails down from the ceiling. I see a tiny bit of the wall’s surface chip free and fall to the floor. The cart’s wheels run over it, crushing it to powder.

  —

  The elevator opens to a place I haven’t seen before.

  For some reason, I expected a big, sprawling room, like the landing bay up on the Xolotl. This room is cramped. No wasted space. Just wide enough to roll the cart in.

  Heavy, curved, gleaming metal brackets—not gold, but a similar color, perhaps it’s brass—support the bottom of a large cylinder made of the same material. The cylinder angles up steeply, through a channel cut into the Observatory’s stone. It really does look like the barrel of a massive rifle.

  The floor here is steel. The walls, too, at least where we can see them; equipment I don’t recognize covers everything. Flashing lights, knobs and switches, levers as long as my arm. Two pedestals are active, images already swirling above them.

  Zubiri pushes past me.

  “Stay out of the way,” she says. “Okereke, open it. The rest of you, unfasten the brackets and get ready to load the round, but don’t do anything else until I tell you to.”

  Okereke steps to a round hatch mounted on the side of the massive gun barrel. At the center of the hatch, a panel with our familiar symbols. He taps out a pattern; I hear the loud clank of bolts sliding free. He grabs a handle and leans back hard. It takes all his strength to pull the hatch open. Most doors in this building open effortlessly. Some even open on their own. Okereke’s struggle is yet another reminder from the Grownups: Are you sure you want to fire this weapon?

  Zubiri climbs through the open hatch. She moves well despite her missing arm, but her motions are still awkward. She looks around, craning her head this way and that. Unseen lights play off her dark-brown skin. She flips white switches, turns black dials.

  “It’s ready,” she says. She crawls out, steps to me and takes my hand. Her fingers are warm. They squeeze in time with her words.

  “Em, please. We shouldn’t do this. My progenitor wasn’t trained to operate this weapon. If I get something wrong, the bomb could blow up right here or it could jam in the barrel. It’s been at least two centuries since this equipment was checked. The aliens haven’t attacked the Observatory—we’re safe here for now.”

  Zubiri isn’t a warrior. I am. I don’t know why the Basilisk hasn’t hit the Observatory yet, but when it does we will be done for. I don’t care if using this weapon is risky—we need to stop these attackers while we still can, before they launch shuttles of their own and invade.

  “Load it,” I say. “Right now.”

  She doesn’t want to. She does anyway, telling Okereke and the others exactly what to do.

  I leave the cramped space and sprint for the Control Room.

  —

  By the time I rejoin Spingate and Gaston, I’m exhausted, soaked in sweat.

  I rush to join Spingate on the platform. “What’s our status?”
r />   “Five defensive rounds left,” she says. “Not counting the eleven Gaston is keeping in reserve.”

  For once, she isn’t wearing her sling. Joandra Rigby wears it instead. She’s a circle who sometimes works as Kevin’s babysitter, when both Spingate and Gaston really need to focus on their work. Joandra is down on the floor, holding little Kevin in her arms. His crying screech is impossible to ignore.

  Gaston stands by the Well’s red wall. His outstretched arms are bathed in light, dozens of glowing symbols floating on or near his hands. He’s looking up at a mix of images: a top-down map of Uchmal with flashing red circles; live scenes of broken and burning ziggurats; meteors streaking down followed by their long orange tails of fire; the Basilisk, tinged in blue, and far away from it, the Xolotl, tinged in red.

  He looks down at me. “What’s the status on the Goff Spear?”

  “They were loading it when I left,” I say. “It should be ready by now.”

  “We’re in bad shape,” he says. “We’ve stopped a lot of incoming rounds, but several got through. Impacts all over the city.”

  “Grandmaster Zubiri reports that the Goff cannon is ready to fire.” Ometeotl’s words give me hope. “The Xolotl and the Basilisk are both in range.”

  On the display of Omeyocan, the blue and red dots flash rapidly.

  “Target the Basilisk,” Gaston says.

  His voice reminds me of Bishop’s when we’re in combat. The two boys are so different, yet when lives are on the line both of them are calm and reliable.

  On the hovering display, the Basilisk’s blue light pulses faster.

  “Target solution confirmed, Captain.”

  “Then hit that bastard,” Gaston says. “Fire!”

  Nothing happens. I feel the room vibrate.

  “Four defensive rounds left,” Spingate calls out. “After that we’ll need to use our eleven-round reserve.”

  “Ometeotl, I said fire,” Gaston says. He’s not so calm anymore. “Shoot the damn weapon!”

  “Of the people present in this room, only Empress Savage may authorize firing of the Goff Spear.”