Relief hits me so hard it buckles my knees. It’s all I can do to keep from collapsing.
He swings a leg over the ridge and drops down. My sense of command and responsibility vanish as I run to him, throw my arms around his neck. He squeezes me tight, so tight I can’t breathe, but I don’t want to breathe, I want him to hold me like this forever so I know he’s real and he’s alive and he’s mine.
Bishop steps back. He places his right arm on my shoulder. I place mine on his.
“Hail, Em.”
“Hail, Bishop.”
He’s as happy to see me alive as I am to see him, but there is work to be done.
“Three troopships landed inside the city walls,” he says. “One was heavily damaged. Barkah’s Springers got to that one first. They took no prisoners. My unit found the other troopship. We had them surrounded, but they kept fighting. It’s almost like the aliens didn’t want to live at all, like they came here to die.”
Just like the ones I fought. There is something to that, something I need to figure out quickly.
“Was the landing ship damaged in the fight?”
He shakes his head. “Not much. I figured if it landed, it could fly, so I charged it on foot, killed the two aliens inside and captured it.” He pats my shoulder, gives me an admiring grin. “I sure wish I’d been smart enough to drive a spider inside of it.”
I see the pride on his face. It makes me feel good.
We didn’t plan to capture any ships, but under fire he and I had the same instinct. Now we have two troopships. Can we learn to fly them? Or do they have fuel that would work with Ximbal’s engines? If either answer is yes, our new enemy has made a critical mistake.
“What about the Dragon?” I ask.
“Gaston sent a runner with news. It was out of range by the time the Goff Spear was ready to fire again. We can’t hit it, but at least we won the day. We’re victorious.”
I glance around, take in our casualties.
This is victory?
“There’s something else,” Bishop says. “Gaston’s runner also had a message from the hospital—it’s Brewer. His end is near, and he wants to see you.”
The hospital has never been this full.
Most of the white coffins are closed, wounded circles, circle-stars and Springers inside. I still don’t have casualty numbers, but the battle cost us dearly.
Smith, Yilmaz and Pokano try to be everywhere at once, constantly checking dozens of wounded. The three of them must be exhausted, but they fight on, show no signs of slowing.
I sit in a chair next to an open coffin at the room’s far end, away from the bustle. Inside the coffin: Brewer. The pedestal display beeps in time with the slow beat of his heart.
The time for questions has passed. This is about him now.
“Of all the people I’d want by my side when I die,” he says, “you’re last on the list.”
Kenzie told me there’s nothing left that can be done.
B. Brewer is in his last moments. Yilmaz gave him drugs to take away most of his pain. Considering he’s spent an eternity in agony, that’s a blessing.
His mask is gone. A thin, clear tube runs into the fleshy folds where his mouth should be.
“If you’d like someone else, I’ll get them for you,” I say. “Suit yourself.”
His wrinkled body jiggles with laughter, the bone-scraping-bone sound I remember all too well, but there is something new in it. This is real laughter, the kind made from joy—not from sarcasm.
“Oh, my-my-my,” he says. “Did you hear that, Mattie? An actual laugh. And it didn’t even hurt.”
His voice is soft, weak. He knows he is dying, yet he seems to enjoy these final moments. To suffer for so long, then to be free of pain…that must be like heaven itself.
He called me Mattie. A small part of me remembers that name—that’s what he called Matilda when they were little. When they were childhood friends.
He again thinks I’m her. If that’s who he wants at his side, I’ll play along as best I can.
“I’m sorry for everything,” I say. “I know that doesn’t help, but I am.”
He stares at me for a moment. His big red eyes are fading to pink.
“Do you know why you’re the last person on that list, Mattie? Because everyone else on that list has been dead for a long, long time.”
He raises one thin, gnarled hand toward me. I take it, hold it gently, afraid I might break him. His skin feels paper-thin. Only a trace of warmth remains.
“Where did we go wrong?” he asks. “We did what we were told. We obeyed. We served. Why didn’t we get the reward that was promised to us?”
His words dig at my soul. He never had a choice. And because he stood up to Matilda—for reasons I still don’t understand—he lost his chance to be reborn.
“Because people lie,” I say. “They tell us what we’d like to hear so they can get what they want.”
His other hand rises up, pats my knuckles.
“At least I got to see Omeyocan,” he says. “So many did not.”
I hear his heartbeat slowing.
“I wish there was something I could do,” I say.
He gently pulls his hand away.
“There is…one thing,” he says. His voice is so soft now I have to lean close to hear him.
“Anything, Brewer. Anything at all.”
Color briefly flares back into his eyes. “Tell me it was worth it. Tell me all the pain, the sacrifice…the loneliness…tell me it was worth it. Tell me my life mattered.”
People lie, yes, but this time, at least, I can tell the honest truth.
“You saved us,” I say. “Yes, your life matters, because you used it to give life to others. The Birthday Children will never forget what you’ve done. They will never forget you.”
For an instant, the red eyes sharpen. They see me, recognize me.
He doesn’t have a mouth, but I think he’s smiling.
The eyes fade from red to pink.
The heartbeat changes from a slow beep to a flat, unwavering tone.
Brewer’s eyes turn white.
He is gone.
We gather around a crater to say goodbye once again.
It’s a bigger crater than last time, because we have more bodies.
Three rows of them this time.
In all, we have seventy-two dead: Brewer, eight young circle-stars, nine circles, fifty-four Springers, lined up shoulder to shoulder in no particular order. Brewer lies at the center of the middle row. Coal-black, withered and gnarled, he’s flanked on one side by a circle-star boy of thirteen, and on the other by a Springer missing part of her head.
The Malbinti usually bury their dead, but not this time. Barkah insisted that his soldiers fell fighting for Uchmal, so they should be memorialized as people from Uchmal are. They fought together, they died together, they will burn together.
It’s a touching sentiment, further cementing the bonds between his people and mine.
Humans and Springers line the crater’s edge. Barkah already gave his speech. Now Walezak is giving hers, the ceremonial funeral torch held high.
I wonder how many more of these mass burials we’ll have.
Considering there are only 249 Birthday Children left, there won’t be that many before we’re all gone.
“So we say goodbye,” Walezak says. “And we say thank you for being part of our lives.”
This time I don’t miss my cue, but I no longer give a damn about words that came from some meaningless religion. With everyone watching, I walk to Walezak and take the torch from her hand.
“You will not be forgotten,” I say. “Those responsible for your deaths will pay. I swear it.”
I toss the torch into the crater.
Flames catch instantly, a whoof that engulfs the corpses as one. Borjigin seems to have his accelerants under control. That’s good, at least—we need every weapon we can get.
The Dragon has again vanished beyond the horizon.
/> Bishop is in charge of redistributing our troops, filling in gaps left by casualties. Borjigin is repairing our spiders, Opkick is distributing ammunition, and so on. It’s a team effort, really.
Except that right now, the effort doesn’t involve me.
I sit in my room in the Observatory, sharpening my spear. I’m waiting for Peura to come get me. The Xolotl is in range again. He assured me that it won’t be long until he makes contact.
Right now, I want to be alone. I need a few minutes to think about our situation.
My personal things were destroyed when my home collapsed. This room contains a straw mattress made by the Springers, one extra pair of boots, two extra black coveralls, and my weapons.
We are at war—what other possessions do I need?
Just one: the white pedestal that stands in the corner, waiting to be activated.
I run the sharpening stone along the blade, as Coyotl once showed me. The sound of stone on metal is comforting. This is something I can control.
I miss Coyotl. I miss so many people.
The Wasps launched six landing craft. Each one held 666 enemy soldiers—an invading army of almost four thousand. Half of them died when their ships were shot down by tower cannons or the Observatory’s antimissile defenses.
Two craft landed successfully. One crash-landed. Schuster counted a total of 1,612 alien troops that made it out of those ships.
We killed them all.
Bishop and Farrar are raving that we “only” lost seventy-one soldiers, are elated about a “kill ratio” of almost twenty-three to one. They’re sad for our losses, of course, but at their core they’re built for war; they accept that every battle brings casualties.
Which is part of why I want to be alone. The fact that Bishop is excited about our “major victory,” as he calls it, disgusts me. The battle had an effect I didn’t see coming: my people seem much calmer. The tension and the increased need for violence have eased away. That in itself disturbs me, as if our desire for blood is quenched.
For now, anyway. I have a feeling that desire will build up again, and soon.
I need answers. Brewer is gone—I must get those answers from someone else.
From someone I never wanted to speak to again.
A knock on my door.
“Come in.”
The door opens. Peura enters. His lips are horribly chapped. He’s been chewing on them, a nervous tic. Poor kid is a wreck.
“The Xolotl is in range,” he says.
I stand. I think of putting the spear in a corner, but change my mind—for this conversation, I’d rather hold it.
“Connect me,” I say.
We step to the pedestal. He waves his hands over the flat top. Glowing symbols appear. He moves them, turns them, then steps back. His hands grip each other, squeeze so hard the fingers look bleach-white.
“It’s ready,” he says. “Just tap the pedestal, and it will call the Xolotl. I don’t know who will answer, or if anyone will answer at all. Do you want me to stay and make sure it works?”
“No. Stand in the hallway, please. Close enough I can call you if I need you.”
He leaves, closes the door behind himself.
I tap the pedestal. Sparkles of color flare to life, a glimmering, shining cloud that appears out of nowhere. The sparkles immediately coalesce into a gray shape that darkens, then turns black.
It is the head and shoulders of a Grownup.
A Grownup with one eye.
Matilda.
“Thank the gods,” she says. “You’re still intact.”
Genuine relief in her voice, but those words—not you’re alive, but rather, you’re intact. To her I am not a person, I am an object. A vessel to be filled.
Her good eye whirls with intensity, with blatant hunger for my mind, my body, my life. The other eye is covered by a hard, shiny piece of white plastic. That’s the eye I ruined when we fought.
The very sight of her makes my skin crawl.
“Yes, I’m intact, no thanks to you. You fled when the Goblin came close. You’re the same coward you have always been.”
“Oh, please,” Matilda says. “Our ship has already been through one battle, darling-dear, which was one too many. Or did you think the vessel that brought those hopping vermin simply dropped them off and then flew away?”
That explains why we’ve never seen any sign of a Springer mother ship. The Grownups must have destroyed it about the same time they bombed the Springer city.
“So you can’t help us,” I say. “You can’t help defend this planet you’ve spent your too-long life pursuing?”
“We’re trying to build a tanker ship. If we can deliver fuel to the shuttle, you can come up here, out of danger.”
The laugh that escapes me sounds like that of an insane woman.
“Out of danger? How in hell’s name do you think me walking into the viper’s nest, coming to you, puts me out of danger? You, who sent a senile old man to do your dirty work, want me to come up there and, what…trust you?”
She waves a hand, dismissing my words.
“Brewer doesn’t have a receptacle. His brain is rotting away. He’s useless.”
“And now he’s gone.”
She pauses.
“Brewer is dead?”
“He is,” I say. “Natural causes.”
She sent him here, knowing his days were numbered, but his passing seems to catch her unawares, as if reality suddenly doesn’t match how she thought she’d feel.
“It’s irrelevant,” Matilda says. “He’s lucky that I gave him a final way to serve and didn’t have someone slice his throat.”
I feel a mad grin spread across my face.
“You would have someone else do it, because you’ve never done your own dirty work, right? You don’t know what it’s like to put that knife in, to twist it, to watch someone die at your hand.”
Her spindly fingers curl into a shaking fist.
“Who do you think you are? I made you! You are nothing. You don’t exist! Did you take my body out to fight the invaders?”
I lean close to her image, so close that if we were actually face-to-face the spit of my scream would splatter against her good eye and plastic patch both.
“You’re godsdamned right I did! I led my people. I’m willing to die for them, if need be—unlike you, you sniveling coward!”
Her twisted knot of a fist becomes a frail finger aimed at my face, jabs out and hits my forehead in splashes of multicolored sparkles.
“You put my perfect body at risk defeating that little token force! I’ve waited twelve centuries for that body, you horrible little worthless bitch!”
Matilda vibrates like a leaf in a tree. Spit hangs from her mouth-folds. Her one red eye blazes so bright it lights up the gnarled black skin around it.
I was just as furious as she was, but my fury was blasted clean away by two words.
“Token force? What does that mean?”
She leans back. She wipes the wetness from her mouth-folds. The glow of her eye returns to normal.
“It means the ships that landed in Uchmal were a diversion, you stupid infant. They screened your radio telescopes from seeing the real force, which they landed a few hundred kilometers to the northeast, well beyond the ruins of the vermin city.”
She’s lying. She has to be. We won. But…during the battle…
“The other rockets I heard. I thought those were an echo.”
“They were not,” Matilda says. “There’s some kind of interference coming from Omeyocan that is screwing with our sensors, so we don’t have exact numbers, but Gaston thinks at least twenty troop transports landed.”
Gaston. Her Gaston, the one she fled the planet with.
Wait…twenty? No, it would be twenty-one, another godsdamned multiple of three, I know it, and if those troopships are the same size as the ones that landed in our streets, that would be a force of…
“Fourteen thousand.” The words leak out of me, little m
ore than a whine of escaping air. “They landed fourteen thousand troops?”
“So it appears,” Matilda says.
“Why didn’t they just land with the others? Those numbers would have overwhelmed us.”
“Because they didn’t know what your defenses were,” Matilda says. “Basic strategy, darling-dear—send a probing force to find out what your enemy has and how they will react.”
I think of the Wasps we fought in the streets of Uchmal. Even when outnumbered and outgunned, they didn’t run for cover. They fought hard, yes, but they fought like they knew they were going to die. Their behavior now makes sense—they were on a suicide mission. They were a sacrifice to hold our attention, to tie us up and keep us from seeing the real threat.
Now that threat is safely on Omeyocan. Even with Barkah’s army, we’re outnumbered five to one. The Wasps have better weapons, better armor…how can we possibly defeat them?
“Tell me where they are,” I say.
“Why, so you can go get my body destroyed? I don’t think so. And I couldn’t tell you if I wanted to. We detected their launch and were able to roughly extrapolate their landing area, but that is all. Thanks to that interference, we can’t see anything on the planet. We don’t know where the bastards are.”
We need to find the Wasps and find them now. We have to gather information on our enemy. I can send Maria. No, I’ll go with her. I have to see for myself what we face.
I will do that, but I don’t know when I might talk to Matilda again. There are things I must know.
“Tell me why you came here,” I say. “The church, all of you. Dad, Mom…why did people come here?”
“Didn’t you ask Brewer?”
“I’m asking you. Just tell me. Give me this one thing.”
She stares at me. A gnarled hand reaches up, lifts the hard eye patch and tosses it away. She’s going to tell me, but the price is looking at what I’ve done to her, at the ragged hole where her eye used to be.
“We came because of the Founder’s prophecy,” she says. “I met her once. Do you remember that?”
I shake my head.
“The first time I entered the Mictlan compound. I didn’t speak to her, I only saw her. As ancient as she was, she was just mesmerizing. So much power. The Founder heard the call from Tlaloc, then built the church up from nothing.”