Exodus, page 66
“We can fly faster,” Ellie said, but she sounded dubious.
“Get on the other side of the web,” Gyvoy said. “It’ll hold them for a while.”
Finn didn’t believe that for a minute, but didn’t argue.
“What about the pilots?” Ellie asked.
“They’re dead,” Gyvoy replied immediately.
“We haven’t checked.”
“You want to waste time on that, go ahead.”
Ellie was already flying toward Koa. She pulled up outside the passenger cavity opening, helmet lights shining in. “He’s moving! He’s alive!”
“Fuck!” Gyvoy snarled. “All right, quick! Daves, help me cut a way through.”
Ellie dived into the cavity. Finn followed her. Inside, Dylan was drifting about, his head badly bruised and grazed, clothes slick with large bloodstains. He was keening softly, hands pressed to his temple.
“Dylan, come on. We have to get out,” Ellie said.
“Dead,” he wept. “My beautiful Koa is dead. She’s dead.”
“I know, but we have to leave.”
“No. I’m going to stay with her. I can’t leave, not my Koa. Not like this.”
“Dylan—”
“No! No! I won’t—”
Ellie shot him with a nervejam. He shook violently before losing consciousness.
“Let’s get him out of here,” she said. “We can tow him back to the Silver Cloudspear.”
Finn was so startled at what she’d just done all he could do was mumble: “Sure.”
He helped maneuver the inert body out through the opening. The others had cut a slit across the web at the side of the dead Ovar. Bensath, a Dave, and Elsbeth were already through.
“Move it,” Gyvoy said tightly.
Between them, Ellie and Iarik eased Dylan through the gap.
Finn followed them with Gyvoy close behind.
“The pirates are moving,” Uemi said. “It looks like they’re coming our way.”
Finn glanced at the tunnel opening six hundred meters up ahead. “They’re going to take out the Silver Cloudspear,” he said. “We’ll be stranded here. There’s no way we can make it back to the shell on our own. The suits don’t have enough power.”
“Jazon says he’ll fly a loop around the factory,” Uemi said. “We should be able to outrun them; then we can pick you up on the way around.”
“Factory’s a circle,” Elsbeth said. “They’ll just outflank you.”
“I have a couple of missiles left,” Iarik said. “They might have enough range.”
“Me too,” Elsbeth said. “If we can get to the end of the tunnel, our sensors should be able to track the pirate airboats.”
“You’ll have to hurry,” Uemi said. “They’re heading for the top of the factory. You’ll lose line of sight if they get past it.”
“We’re not going to make it,” Ellie said numbly. “The nightweid will catch up with us before we even get out of the tunnel.”
“We’ll get out,” Gyvoy said. “And we have some ten-kilometer-range missiles.”
“Where are they?”
“In a case. In Kaizen.”
Finn wanted to yell wildly in fury at fate’s killer blow. Kaizen was a half-crushed mass of broken tissue and shattered carapace smothered below the Grozlamia.
“I get it,” a Dave said. “I cut in.”
“No,” Finn groaned. “Even if you got the missiles, we still have to give them a target. The nightweid will be on us before we can get halfway to the end of the tunnel.” As he said it, he could make out the flock closing fast. They were less than a minute away now. Not even Dave could hack and tear his way into Kaizen’s collapsed passenger cavity by then. “We need…” What do we need? A miracle. We have better weapons, but there are thousands of them. We will die, because killing the intruders is all they have known for uncounted generations, a compulsion passed down from the original lords of the factory—
“Shit,” Finn gasped. An idea was forming, coming from nowhere. No, coming from the giant gift of the factory’s knowledge—plus a bit of his own cunning. Asteria, I never knew I could think like this. Fear is a great motivator. “Dave! Both Daves.”
“What?”
“Grab a nightweid for me.”
“What?”
“No time, just do it. Please. I have an idea. First one that hits the web near us: grab it, bust its weapon, but hold it still. The rest of you, fly for your lives. If I screw this up, you’ll still have a chance.”
“Is this plan going to work?” Gyvoy asked.
“Not even Asteria knows!”
“Aww, crap.”
“Go on, please, everyone take off. Ellie?”
“I’d rather make my last stand with you.”
The horde of nightweid was only seconds away, so close he could even make out individuals in the gloom. They weren’t advancing in any kind of unified formation. Several of them were racing on ahead of their flockmates.
Just before they reached the web, they must have sensed it, or realized why the dead Ovar and armored Grozlamia were suspended mid-tunnel. The leaders pitched up and began to beat their wings frantically to halt their headlong plummet. Several of them managed to stop a few meters out from the web. Their reprieve didn’t last; the huge bulk of hurtling bodies behind had exactly the same problem. They were still trying to reverse their trajectory when they collided. All of them juddered forward, smacking into the web amid a cacophony of angry screeching. Their fury redoubled, and they began firing their pistols at the armor-suited humans hanging tauntingly in front of them. Those stuck to the web struggled wildly. Finn even saw a couple of them try to bite the threads, only for their mouths to become trapped by the adhesive.
“Go!” he bellowed at the Daves.
The two Silicates swept toward the web that was distending from the sheer inertia of nightweid it had caught. Long undulations were churning across it.
It’s not going to last, Finn knew.
A nightweid had gotten its arms through the web to claw at thin air as if that alone could pull its prey closer, leaving its torso and one wing stuck fast. It screamed its hatred at the approaching Silicates.
The Daves each clamped a hand on its arms. Kinetic projectile impacts flared in little sunbursts all over their crystalline exoskin, adding to the radiance that was growing across their bodies. They returned fire with their own pistols.
“I need its hand,” Finn told them. His own gauntlet segments separated, freeing his palm.
One of the Daves held the nightweid’s skeletal hand and twisted. Its shrieking reached a peak. The thin, claw-tipped fingers opened wide.
Finn let out a moan of relief as he saw a neural patch on the thing’s palm. He sort of knew it had one, but he’d gambled everyone’s life that the factory knowledge was correct, that his hyperactive brain wasn’t imagining things. His hand slapped down on it.
The mind he connected with was a frenzy of hatred and determination, powered by a single purpose: Eliminate the Violation. It didn’t have the kind of higher rationality possessed by the Awakened that Finn had grown up with in the palace stables. But it did have a predator’s guile, and a very basic level of intelligence. It had thoughts.
Finn focused a command and slammed it into the seething routines. His compulsion was so much greater than those he used when he and Otylia went riding on the Awakened from the palace stables. This version was relentless—irresistible. This is what must be done. Those are your targets. Leave these visitors alone. Do not deviate. Inform your nest brethren immediately. OBEY.
That last was delivered by a mental blow strong enough to stun the nightweid into silence. It stopped struggling.
“Cut it loose,” he told the Daves. “Fast.”
The Daves did as he said. Finn even helped, using his power talons to snip several threads.
By the time they were done, the pressure from the sheer mass of nightweid bodies crushing those on the net was starting to create a bulge. Threads were cutting into skin. Kinetic and energy strikes on his armor were starting to reach critical. The multitude of weapons shooting him were old and weak, but the numbers were against him. His suit wouldn’t be able to take much more punishment.
The nightweid he’d given the command to wriggled around urgently and slapped its neural pad on a neighbor’s hand.
“Exponential,” Finn whispered to himself. “It’s exponential. It’ll work. It will, sweet Asteria, please.” Like a virus of the mind. It only needs to be passed on a couple of times and it’ll become a contagion.
His suit flew him backward from the straining web. He could actually see the change manifesting. The nightweid who had received his compulsion had stopped struggling to reach the armor suits drifting ahead of them. Instead they were turning instantly to their brethren.
“What the fuck did you do?” Elsbeth asked with trepidation.
Finn almost giggled. “My family’s had hundreds of years of practice ordering people around. I just put it into action.”
“Not such a useless uranic after all,” Gyvoy said. “I knew I’d chosen the right man for this mission. That was one smart move, Finn.”
“Thank you. I think we should maybe get tight against the tunnel walls. The nightweid will be coming through any minute now.”
“Coming through?” Ellie said. “I thought you’d just turned them around.”
“No. The Silver Cloudspear is in danger from the pirate airboats. Can’t allow that, can we? Jazon is our ride back up to the shell. I just changed their prey, that’s all.”
“Hellfire!”
The nightweid with blades started cutting methodically through the web strands. They began to fly through the gaps as the whole structure gave way, tearing off the tunnel wall.
Along with the others, Finn sank back into the waving ribbons of the airkombu as the nightweid streamed past. Their call of anger and hatred rose again, even louder in the confines of the tunnel. It took nearly twenty minutes for the vast flock to fly past.
“What have you done?” Uemi asked breathlessly. “Whatever it is that’s coming out of the tunnel has split into three clusters. They’re going after the pirates.”
“Found us some allies,” Finn replied. “Tell Jazon not to do anything rash. They’ll ignore you.” I think.
After the stragglers flapped past, Finn and the others started to fly along the tunnel. Once they reached open air, his sensors easily picked up the three nightweid clusters as they chased after the pirate airboats. Bright stars were streaking out from the airboats, detonating within the mass of their pursuers. The nightweid never faltered; they just kept on going.
“It’s a massacre,” Elsbeth muttered.
“It will be,” Finn told her starkly.
They continued to watch as the mass of nightweid finally caught up with the airboats, swarming around them until they were each occluded by a spherical hurricane of black specks. Weapons flashed like lightning inside a thunderstorm. After a while they diminished, and the nightweid contracted to what appeared to be almost solid globes. Minutes later they dispersed. There was no sign of the airboats, just expanding constellations of broken planks.
“Let’s move,” Gyvoy said. “Not that I don’t trust whatever orders you gave them, Finn, but…”
“Oh, I’m with you,” Finn assured him. “We need to get the hell out of here.”
“Uemi, come and pick us up.”
“Roger that.”
* * *
—
The flight back up to Mytalport took seven days. Ellie spent most of it in the sixth deck cabin with medical bands across her abdomen. She was convinced that whatever sedative the medic system was infusing made the time pass in slow motion. That meant she had to listen to Finn—a lot. Guilt made him bad company. Guilt over not being part of the fight with the Ghosts; guilt over not even being injured.
“But you saved us,” she kept telling him. “What you did with the nightweid was awesome. I mean, it was basically magic; you’re a wizard.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“I should have thought of it earlier. They could have been our escort out to the Silver Cloudspear. Koa and Kaizen would still be alive.”
“Could’ve beens don’t help anyone—least of all you. We got what we came for, so how about you focus on that?”
“Sure. Sorry.”
“Is it complicated?”
“Yeah.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t tell Gyvoy, but I’m not sure I can just switch everything off. I mean, those engines have a lot of antimatter on board. You can’t just deactivate the confinement systems. There’s thousands of them; you’d probably shatter the atmosphere.”
“So don’t deactivate those bits.”
“But anything I can do, all the systems I shut down, a Celestial can just reverse.”
“Then you just have to get creative. Switch off a few safety monitors and let the components overheat or something.”
“Yeah, sure.” He couldn’t have sounded less certain. “That might work. But I’ll have to think. It’s big, Ellie, so big. I’m not sure my head can hold it all.”
“You memorized the whole operating system?” she asked in surprise.
“Not exactly. I understand how to connect with it, like I’ve got the key to the door. Once I’m in I just…I dunno, I merge with it. It’s kind of hard to explain.”
She patted his arm. “I trust you. Don’t tell Gyvoy I said this, but he was right to choose you.”
“I think he’s kind of in awe of you now, too. That fight—”
“Yeah, I don’t really want to dwell on it, okay? How is Dylan doing?” The pilot had recovered from the nervejam she’d shot him with before they returned to the Silver Cloudspear, but he’d remained practically comatose from grief ever since.
“No change, really,” Finn said glumly. “But then I’m used to that.”
Ellie stretched her mouth into a smile that was utterly mirthless. Oh, hell, not this again, please.
“Except now, I suppose,” Finn continued. “I wonder what Otylia is going to look like when we get back? And my nieces and nephews.”
“They’re my cousins as well, don’t forget.”
“Asteria, yes. Is that weird, or what?”
“Us being related through marriage, oh yeah.”
“Actually, I suppose I’ll have even more relations by now. Asteria, maybe even Everett is finally acting like a human.”
“Don’t worry yourself about Otylia, she’s going to be fine. I can’t imagine age ever changing her, can you?”
“No. You’re right. I mean, there is no change for us. There hasn’t been since the dawn of human society on Gondiar eight hundred years ago; the Celestials have seen to that. But now—” He grinned, looking at something light-years away. “I’m going to give the Crown Dominion the biggest kick up the arse since the first baby Imperial Celestial was misbegotten. This is going to be the start of our liberation, Ellie. The empress is going to realize you can’t treat humans like this, not anymore.”
The thought disturbed her more than she wanted to acknowledge. She realized she’d never given much consideration to the reaction of the Celestials if and when they stopped Dolod from going into orbit around Kelowan’s primary. Because it’s such a ridiculous concept even for me, and I was born on a starship. The behavior of the Knights that had come on board Diligent to supervise the decommissioning of the entropy drives suddenly featured large in her head.
“I’ll be properly free, Ellie. I bet some of those nieces and nephews will want to join us on the Diligent. They’ll know by now how terrible it is being a Jalgori-Tobu.”
Maybe she was tired. Maybe the drugs didn’t entirely kill the pain of her wounds. Or maybe he just never stopped his endless complaining. Whatever, she couldn’t stop herself. “For fuck’s sake, Finn, will you stop whining for five bloody seconds? You’re the epitome of privilege; there is no difference whatsoever between you and a Celestial. The life you had was utterly amazing. And boo-fucking-hoo you had to sit behind a desk and sign some papers once a year—a trial so hard you called it work. The entire population of Gondiar would kill to live in the luxury you never even had to earn. But you’re so selfish you never noticed what you had.”
For a moment she thought Finn was going to burst into tears. But eventually he stood up and nodded stiffly. “Sorry to be such a disappointment.”
“Finn, I…”
He turned his back and left the cabin.
“Oww crap!”
* * *
—
It should have been a triumphant return to the Diligent. Ellie certainly didn’t feel anything like satisfaction, let alone jubilation, as she glided in through the hangar’s airlock. If anything it was just relief that she was back in the familiar again.
First stop was the hospital, where the medics frowned disapprovingly as she was examined and scanned to map the damage and had her blood tested for infections. Renata was one of the nursing team, her big hands surprisingly delicate as she removed the thick support band from Ellie’s abdomen. Her skin was reluctant to let go. She could feel the scabs below tearing and winced.
“Is okay,” Renata assured her. She applied some cleaning lotion and slowly eased the rest of the band off. “But, Ellie, these support bands, they is not for this. They is meant for field triage. They stops the damage from getting worse till you gets you some proper treatment, see. You don’t have them on for a week, they doesn’t heal nothing.”
“Uh…okay. How bad is it?”
“Nothing we can’t fix. We needs to perform some deep tissue repair. Then we put some proper Cluster medicals on you. They helps you heal up proper in a few days, maybe a couple of weeks.”
