The Stars Are Legion(30)

I come up alongside Anat’s body. Her suit has rotted off. A giant cephalopod rises from her side. The iron arm she has menaced us all with is no more. All that remains is a stump of an arm, cut off at the elbow.

I stare long and hard at that arm and remember Anat’s fake displays with it. Why haul that arm around at all, if it is worthless? And what will Rasida do to Jayd now? Has she flushed Jayd out into space too, left her to asphyxiate?

No, the key is the arm.

Why would they take the arm? Why would I have taken it? Probably because, after a display like Anat put on, I thought I could control Katazyrna with it.

Understanding dawns. I turn my vehicle abruptly away from the dead and speed back to Katazyrna, and the invasion I know is already underway.

*

The Bhavaja forces make two broad arcs around Katazyrna. I hide just behind the nearest world, hoping they will think I’m some salvager or scout from another world. But they pay me no mind. They are wholly concentrated on Katazyrna, sending wave after wave of cephalopods and bursts and scramblers into its defenses. Katazyrna is awash in blankets of red and blue and green defenses. The energy rolls off it in thick bands. The world glows so fiercely now that this close, I could almost say it rivals the sun.

Then I see them breach the skin of the world. It tears up under their weapons, curling back like burnt bark. I let out a breath. They are going to get in.

Half the Bhavajas wheel around and dive directly into the broken skin of Katazyrna, seeking to destroy all that I know of the universe, all that I know to be true.

I kick my vehicle forward, powering hard and fast for Katazyrna. I think a whole host of things in those blazing seconds as I power toward the world. The Bhavajas are very likely to fire on me. My own world might not recognize me. It is a desperate, risky move, but so is being alive.

I hurl myself toward the breach, opening up the fuel line as wide as it will go. I look back once and see the misty yellow belch of my spent fuel spiraling out behind me.

The fuel gives out four hundred paces from the surface of the world. I hunker low, though I suppose it won’t matter—there is no atmospheric resistance—and ride the wave of my momentum down and down, toward the breach in the world’s skin.

I zoom between two Bhavaja lines, so fast that when I glance back, I see them still signing to one another, trying to determine if I’m friend or foe.

I have no way to slow my momentum—I’m out of fuel to shoot out the front of my vehicle—so I hit the spongy floor of the first level of Katazyrna hard. The momentum throws me from the vehicle.

I crawl across the floor, trying to get clear of the breach. The massive hole in the skin of the world is mitigated by its thin atmosphere; I might be able to breathe for a while if I take off my suit, but I’m not going to risk it until I get down a few levels. I wonder if the ship has defenses against a breach in its skin.

I run down the empty corridors, past bodies hunched in the thresholds of doorways, all dressed in the black-and-red cut of security personnel. I come to a broad, fleshy wall at the end of the corridor. It’s been carved open with some weapon, and now it stares balefully at me like a weary eye.

I squeeze through the busted door, realizing I not only have no weapon but also no plan. Find a weapon, get to my sisters, and help them hold off the Bhavajas is about as far as I can get in my reasoning.

I round a bend and come face to face with two Bhavaja women arguing. I punch the first in the face, easy as breathing. The second raises her weapon but has no time to fully draw it, let alone fire it. I have a vague recollection about how I can best a better-armed target who has not pulled a weapon so long as I’m within ten paces, but my body knew it before I consciously considered it.

I disarm the women neatly and shoot them both with the cephalopod weapon. Their suits dissolve around them. They gasp in the thin atmosphere. I heft the weight of the weapon in my hand and continue on down the corridor, navigating by sight as opposed to sound. I miss Jayd in my ear, miss the soothing sounds of the single person in the whole world who seems to give a shit.

What has Rasida done with her? Murdered her? Tossed her out into space? Or is she really as important to Rasida as she pretends?

I step through another broken corridor. A woman stands over two bodies. I heft my weapon, but as she turns, I see that inside the spray-on suit, it’s my sister Maibe.

Maibe signs at me. “The others?”

I sign back. “Dead. Anat too.”

“Jayd?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come with me,” Maibe signs. “We’re holding out in the cortex. This isn’t the main force.”

Maibe opens a gummy hatch in the corridor; it comes away from the sticky surface like pulling off a scab. I crawl after her in the darkness, dragging the weapon awkwardly in one hand while holding my weight with the other.

The darkness goes on and on. I wonder, again, how long the air in my suit will hold out. Does the suit recycle air? Do I have a limited amount? I have no idea.

Green-and-violet light spills out ahead of us. Maibe steps out and reaches a hand back for me. I have a long moment to wonder if I’m being lured into a trap.

But I take her hand anyway, and we squeeze into another long corridor. It’s like a series of umbilical cords that connects the levels of the ship. We walk for some time until we come to what Maibe signs to me is the second level and the cortex. Cortex sounds important, and I figure it’s some kind of control room.