Alone

  We fly over the wall. Beneath us, buildings and streets are a blur. A Wasp fighter flies past, trailing a fluttering cape of red and orange flame. It arcs down, smashes into a ziggurat and erupts in a fireball that quickly fades behind us.

  “Starting our run,” the Admiral says. “Gunners, keep them busy!”

  We’re flying north, directly above Latu Way. I can see right up to the plaza and the Observatory beyond it. The Wasps have set bonfires all around the Grub, a spotted ring of flame that casts flickering light upon the cause of countless deaths.

  The God of Blood is massive. Wriggling and vile, it’s already grown bigger than when we left.

  Among the fires, I see tanks, eight-legged ticks, and tiny things moving around—Wasps. They surround their god. Are they worshiping it? Waiting for their chance to “merge” with it?

  “Zubiri,” the Admiral says, “prepare to fire.”

  I’m close enough that I can hear her voice through his helmet.

  “Armed and ready. Forty-five-second delay to let us get clear.”

  That creature destroyed millions of lives—now it will pay the price.

  I stand next to Xander. I point my finger forward and down, toward the coppery God of Blood.

  “Burn that bastard son of a bitch, Admiral. Burn it.”

  The Observatory rushes toward us, massive beyond compare. On either side of us, the city shoots past as a haze of black and brown.

  “Ximbal, upon detonation, set rear pilothouse display to five thousand pulses per second,” the Admiral says. “Our Empress would like to watch. Zubiri, release payload, now, now, now.”

  The shuttle trembles. Everything vibrates, everything thunders. The howling wind cranks higher, screams so loud I’m sure the entire ship is about to shatter into a billion shards.

  A flash of gold shoots forward, covering a thousand meters in the blink of an eye. I see a cloud of stone powder-puff up from the base of the Observatory’s south wall.

  The Admiral raises his hands to the ceiling: we tilt up, start climbing.

  The extruded arm holds me in place.

  I turn to face the pilothouse’s back wall, which shows everything behind us as if the rest of the shuttle wasn’t even there.

  Our main engines blaze full-out. Ximbal shudders under the strain.

  Fighters angle up behind us, giving chase. Past them, I see the plaza, the Observatory, growing smaller by the second.

  Smaller…

  Smaller…

  A flash. The pilothouse wall darkens, protecting us against the blinding light.

  The explosion happens in the blink of an eye, but the pilothouse screens slow it down for me, play out every millisecond in glorious detail.

  A ring of orange flame expands from the Observatory’s base, cascades across the plaza, engulfing the Wasps. They pop like a thousand tiny fireworks. The hated tanks are sent flying, melting as they tumble and spin. The ticks become splashes of liquid steel.

  The ring of fire swallows the Grub. The coppery monster actually resists the blast of pressure and heat, survives it for the briefest instant, then massive chunks of metallic flesh fly free. Whatever passes for its blood instantly boils into dark-blue jets of steam.

  The God of Blood’s long jaws tear off, spin away.

  Finally, the monster bursts as it vanishes in a growing ball of fire.

  For a moment, the Observatory actually rises, as if it has engines of its own, then the impossible mountain swells and cracks. The expanding fireball rips it into a million pieces that are swallowed by flame and lost forever.

  The bomb’s shock wave radiates out, leveling everything around it. In a flash, a hundred buildings disintegrate, their broken remainders scattered outward in a roiling hail of gravel.

  Uchmal disintegrates. A fireball soars into the sky, turning night to day.

  A sensation of pure satisfaction envelops me.

  The God of Blood is dead.

  I’ll never know if the blast also killed the last two eggs. I hope it did.

  I turn to face forward, see nothing but stars ahead. Peura is lit up again, back at his copilot duties.

  “Accelerating,” he says. “Full escape velocity.”

  The restraining arm holds me in place, but the thrust is so great that I feel my body flattening.

  The walls blare with a piercing alarm.

  “Eight bogeys in pursuit,” the Admiral says. “We have enough distance that they won’t shoot for fear they’ll have to fly through their own bullets. They’ll wait to attack until we escape the atmosphere. Rear gunners, hold your fire until they get closer.”

  We killed half of them. Will that be enough?

  The seconds roll by.

  The Admiral twists a glowing icon. “Exiting the stratosphere.”

  The wounded Ximbal’s constant shudder starts to taper off. Less air resistance up here, I think.

  “Exiting mesosphere,” the Admiral says. “Rear gunners, here they come!”

  I turn to look at the rear wall. Eight glowing streaks blaze toward us, closing fast. They are directly behind us.

  I look forward once again: our trap is springing shut.

  Five black blurs dive straight at us.

  Just as we couldn’t see the Wasp mother ship hiding behind the Goblin, our shuttle is directly between our pursuers and the Macanas—the Wasp pilots have no idea our fighters are about to pounce.

  The Macanas rip past us so fast I hurt my neck turning to watch them attack. The five craft instantly close on the Wasp fighters, Gatling guns blazing. Our five pass by their eight, leaving behind explosions so rapid and bright I squint against the sudden light.

  “Six enemy fighters destroyed,” Old Gaston says. “We lost one of ours.”

  I don’t ask who died.

  The two remaining Wasp fighters turn and bank, moving into another exchange with our Macanas. The pilothouse wall magnifies action that would otherwise be nothing but tiny lights.

  The enemy ships move like they were born and raised in space itself. Our Macanas seem clumsy and awkward in comparison. As the fighters pass by each other, a Macana sparks briefly, then slowly spins toward Omeyocan. I silently wish for it to pull up, to gain control—it does not. If that pilot is still alive, he or she has only minutes to live.

  The loss is costly, but it lets our three remaining Macanas get behind a Wasp fighter. A flash of light; the enemy ship breaks up into a hundred pieces.

  Now it’s three against one.

  Our fighters bank and twist, coming at the lone enemy from multiple directions. I hold my breath, watch the Wasp fighter’s impossible maneuvering. Another of our fighters sparks, then breaks into tumbling pieces.

  In the end, our numbers prove too great. Our last two fighters close in—the final enemy craft glows brightly for a split second before snapping in two, both halves spinning away.

  “Enemy bogeys destroyed,” the Admiral says.

  The pilothouse walls crackle first with static, then the sound of a familiar voice.

  “Macana Four to Ximbal. We should be outside the interference range, do you read me?”

  It’s Kalle.

  “We read you,” the Admiral says.

  “No damage,” Kalle says. “Ammo capacity down to sixty percent.”

  “This is Macana Two, no damage, ammo at seventy percent.”

  Aramovsky’s voice.

  The Em part of me breathes a silent sigh of relief, while the Matilda part grieves a little more—McWhite, Dibaba and Goldberg are all dead.

  Peura is panting so hard his breath steams up the inside of his visor. He’s terrified.

  “Multiple casualties in rear section,” he says. “Zubiri reports the Goff launcher is damaged.”

  “Dammit,” Xander says. “Opening up all comms. Savage, get back there and see if you can help.”

  The metal tentacle-arm releases me, slithers back into the pilothouse ceiling.

  I’m weightless. I’d forgotten about that. I turn and clumsily
push for the rear wall, bumping into the floating top half of Abrantes as I do. I spin the wheel lock and open the pilothouse door. I kick off the frame, shooting through the corridor to the area that used to be our coffin room.

  Benga Basuki has no head. The stump of her neck trails a bobbing stream of shivering red liquid. Old Yilmaz floats lifeless, her suit torn open, ripped red-gray-coated intestines dangling behind her slowly spinning corpse. The air is clouded with detritus: severed limbs, bits of metal, chunks of plastic, splinters of wood, a Springer leg. A stab of panic and loss, wondering if the leg belongs to Lahfah, but I see her trying to patch a head-sized hole in the hull.

  Zubiri, Lahfah, Marcus and Aeschelman are cutting and pulling on the twisted remains of the bomb rack. I’m not sure why they bother—the front half of Borjigin’s launcher is ripped to shreds. A half-dozen gaping holes in the walls, ceiling and floor reveal stars twinkling against the blackness of space.

  Yong, Bishop, Bawden and Victor must still be manning their guns.

  Admiral Gaston’s voice in my helmet: “We’re closing in. The Xolotl will be in missile range shortly. As soon as the Xolotl engages the Dragon, we make our run.”

  We’re so screwed.

  “Admiral, this is Savage. The Goff launcher is ruined.”

  “Then fix it! The Dragon’s ship-killing cannon will be in can’t-miss range in…dammit, twenty-three minutes, eleven seconds.”

  “This thing is not going to fire,” I say. “Can we attack their cannon? Can Kalle and Aramovsky attack with us?”

  “Our weapons are too small to punch through its armor. And we won’t get anywhere near it—their point defense will focus on protecting that cannon and their engines. Figure out another solution, fast.”

  I try to stay calm. All of my parts—Matilda, Em and Mattie—struggle against the fist of stress and anxiety that squeezes tight my soul.

  I shoot across the coffin room, grab onto the twisted bomb rack to stop myself. The rack is a mess, but the hexagonal gold bomb itself…it looks undamaged.

  “Zubiri, will that thing still detonate?”

  She wedges herself into a space in the wreckage, leans close to the bomb. She’s looking at a readout of some kind.

  “Arming computer is fried,” she says. “Twenty minutes to fix it. But what difference does it make? The launcher is destroyed.”

  “It’s a nuke,” I say. “Can’t we just get the shuttle close and detonate it?”

  “The Xolotl survived two proximal nuke strikes,” she says. “Goff rounds work because they penetrate the ship’s armor, explode from the inside. Without the launcher, we can’t generate enough velocity to do that. Just setting off the bombs won’t stop them.”

  There has to be a way. Has to.

  Wait…maybe there is…

  “Admiral, their ship has the same layout as ours, right?”

  “From everything we’ve seen, the ship designs are almost identical.”

  “So you know where the Dragon’s landing bay would be?”

  “If it’s in the same place as ours, yes.”

  “The younger version of you opened the Xolotl’s landing bay doors from the outside,” I say. “You know how the emergency access works?”

  “Of course I know how that works!”

  Even in this dire situation, Xander can be offended? Amazing.

  “If it’s the same, could one of us open the landing bay doors?”

  There is a pause.

  “You want to nuke their ship from the inside?”

  “Yes. Can you open it or walk someone else through the process?”

  He should be the one to do it, but I need him piloting Ximbal.

  “Yes to both,” he says. “That’s assuming the access system is identical.”

  I glance at Zubiri. “Does the landing bay count as inside their armor?”

  Wide-eyed, she nods.

  “Admiral,” I say, “as soon as the Xolotl engages with missiles, take us to the landing bay.”

  In a half-destroyed shuttle with the survival of our race on the line, Admiral Xander Gaston starts to laugh.

  “You always were a bitch, Savage, which is why I always followed you. Aramovsky, Kalle, on my wings. Gunners, prepare to board—we’re going in.”

  I’m in the pilothouse, the extruded arm wrapped around my waist and chest.

  0:8:57

  0:8:56

  0:8:55

  The Admiral is piloting. Peura is getting ready for his exowalk. It will be up to him to get us in.

  I pull my bracelet from its bracket, slide it up my arm over my pressure suit.

  Xander has put the countdown clock in the upper right corner of our helmet displays. When that timer hits zero, the Dragon’s version of the Goff Spear will fire—the Xolotl will die.

  As Ximbal closed in on the Dragon, I used my remaining patches to pin Abrantes’s body to the deck. Both pieces of it.

  Out in the void of space, two massive starships launch missiles at each other, a crisscross of shooting stars.

  The Xolotl is tiny, a flickering dot thousands of kilometers away.

  The Dragon is close; its slowly rotating cylinder takes up most of our view. The smooth copper surface reflects Omeyocan’s reddish sun in a burnished gleam. The Dragon looks almost new, completely unscarred by battle.

  That’s about to change.

  A volley of Xolotl missiles closes in. Most are destroyed by the Dragon’s point-defense guns, but some get through, impact with frightening fury, kicking up massive fireballs that spray out expanding clouds of copper shards, leave liquid yellow craters cooling quickly in the void’s freezing embrace.

  “Landing bay in view,” the Admiral says. “Mapping defensive batteries that can hit us when we’re close. Aramovsky, Kalle, transferring locations to your targeting systems—take them out.”

  “Roger that,” Kalle calls, her voice tinny and full of static. “Come on, Boris, let’s cook ’em!”

  The two sleek Macanas zip ahead of us, one above, one to our right. I don’t know who is in each one.

  The Dragon’s big gray landing bay doors look exactly like ours—will the emergency access panel be in the same place as well?

  Defensive batteries fire at us. The pilothouse walls flash as bright as the sun. Ximbal shudders, shakes.

  “Damage to engine two,” the Admiral says, calm as can be. “Shutting it down.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask. “Are we going to explode?”

  “It means we’ve lost one-third of our thrust. We can still maneuver, but getting back to the Xolotl will be tough.”

  I almost laugh. He thinks we can go back? I assumed there was no chance of that. The thought that we might plant the bomb and leave—that I might actually survive in this young body…

  Beneath us, the Dragon’s kilometers-long copper cylinder slowly rotates. Another Xolotl missile lands, creating another puddle of molten copper that quickly cools as it slowly rotates away from us.

  Ximbal vibrates madly. The pilothouse walls start to flicker.

  A defensive gun flashes one last time, then erupts in a gout of flame as one of our fighters takes it out.

  “Great shooting, Kalle,” Old Gaston says. “That was the last battery that can hit us. We’re in the clear. Peura, you ready?”

  “Ready,” a thin voice calls back.

  The Admiral maneuvers the shuttle into position, matching the Dragon’s rotation just like he did when we reached the Xolotl. My feet once again press against the floor—gravity has returned. It seems like we’re perfectly still, a copper behemoth floating motionless above our heads.

  Close by, a Xolotl missile hits and erupts, a here-then-gone flash of orange and spinning bits of metal. The crater’s molten center briefly bubbles.

  Peura’s voice sounds in my helmet.

  “Exiting airlock. Beginning exowalk. Wish me luck, guys.”

  A chorus of good lucks answers him.

  The pilothouse walls flicker, giving me a staccato v
ision of a boy in a thick gray pressure suit floating through space. He is alone out there. The hopes of an entire race ride with him.

  Peura was beyond brave to volunteer as copilot, but this? Exowalking on an alien ship while missiles explode around us? I wouldn’t have thought he had it in him. Sometimes courage is carried by a roar—sometimes it is hidden within a wavering voice.

  Ximbal trembles continuously now, the shake of a dying animal.

  The approach to the landing bay: a deepening groove leading to flat gray doors. It looks exactly like the Xolotl’s. Exactly. Peura follows that groove, reaches the bottom corner of the massive doors. The flickering pilothouse display makes him look so close I could reach out and touch him.

  Sure enough, there is a copper-colored access panel, right where Young Gaston found one on the Xolotl.

  Can this uniformity of design be our savior?

  Peura opens the panel. Beneath are parallel rings, just like on the Xolotl.

  “Activating emergency access,” he says.

  He plants his feet on the copper hull. He pulls the handles back, dragging out their cylinders with them. He twists both handles.

  I realize I’m holding my breath. I slowly let it out, and I wait.

  The landing bay doors begin to open.

  “I did it,” Peura screams over the comm. “It worked!”

  A flash of orange and yellow—a missile detonates between us and Peura. Copper shrapnel blasts outward, rips a dozen new holes in the pilothouse.

  I don’t move. I wait for the pain to announce that metal shards have punched holes through Em’s young body.

  “Peura, get your fat ass back in here,” the Admiral says. His voice sounds strained, forced. “Engine three is out. We’re down to one primary engine. Everyone, double-check your suit integrity—that shrapnel hit us hard.”

  My helmet would let out an alarm if my suit was breached, but I run my hands across my arms, legs, chest and head anyway, searching for punctures.

  I find none.

  The Admiral is not as lucky. His left arm hangs limply. I see air jetting from his shoulder, carrying droplets of blood with it.

  “Xander, you’re hit!”

  I pull suit sealant from a pouch and squirt it into the hole.

  “We need to see if you have internal bleeding.”