The Stars Are Legion(31)

Maibe turns off her suit, and it dissolves around her. She signs at me to do the same. “We’ve got good pressure on every level but the first,” she signs.

I mimic her movements, sliding two fingers up my left wrist until I find a series of raised bumps. I plug in the combination, and the suit falls off, peeling quickly away like shedding my own skin. I pick the little pieces off as I follow Maibe to a big green banded security door. Maibe knocks four times.

I hear raised voices on the other side and a heavy thunking sound.

The door opens. Prisha stands there, holding a big weapon like the one I used out on the assault on the Mokshi.

“Mother?” Prisha asks.

“All dead,” I say.

She narrows her eyes, as if convinced that I had something to do with Anat’s death. If only.

Finally, she nods and motions us in.

I’m not sure what I expected of the cortex, but this isn’t it. It’s a tight, round room with high ceilings and interfaces embedded in the walls. Organic tubing sticks out from each station, like they were meant to hook up to something that has long since been removed. The room is packed with people, all my remaining sisters and many others I don’t know—more family, maybe? They seem familiar. All are armed. It occurs to me that there are no children here. The youngest person is just past menarche. The oldest isn’t much more senior than Anat.

If this is the center of the world, it is unassuming and in terrible disrepair. I can’t tell what anything in the room is meant to do.

The whole lot of them is fixed on the origin of the thunking sound: the great round portal on the far side of the room. I can just make out the seam of it on the wall. I don’t have to be told the Bhavajas are on the other side.

“How did they know where this is?” I ask Maibe.

“How do they know anything?” Maibe says. “Spies, probably. Or their witches. Some witches remember how the worlds work better than others.”

“Why hold here?” I ask. “If we keep going down, we can find places to hold out and regroup on other levels. We can—”

Maibe frowns. “Zan, if they take the cortex, they take control of the world. There’s no point in going on once they have this room.”

“But . . . what does it do here?

“She can hook into the mind of the world here,” Prisha says, looking back at us. “She can twist it to her purposes. Maybe better than we can. It’s a mad ship, but the Bhavajas . . . you’ve seen what they do to other worlds.”

Have I? I don’t remember, but the point seems moot now.

The air in the room is tense. It stinks terribly: too many unwashed bodies pushed together in sweaty fear. I survey the room, trying to assess our tactical options. When the door goes—and it will, I am sure of that—we can retreat through the secret way Maibe and I had come in, but there doesn’t appear to be any other exit. And retreating through there is going to be tight, far too tight to get very many out. This is a last stand. My sisters intend to win or to die here . . . and those are in fact the only options if what Maibe says about the cortex is true.

I check the remaining cephalopods on my weapon. I don’t like the idea of losing. I especially don’t like the idea of losing to people who’ve bought Jayd as if she were a brood animal. What happens to Jayd if I’m dead? Who will go after her when I’m gone? No one. She’ll be on her own.

The thunking continues. I stay posted at the entrance to the escape route, more to ensure no one comes in than in the hopes I can be the first one out. Maibe is right—running now won’t mean anything if it we’re just giving the world to the Bhavajas. Idiot Anat, for trusting them. Foolish Jayd, for going along with it. And here I am, useless and pinned down.

The breach comes sooner than I expect. As the first weapon punches through the door, three women try to get past me through the exit. One loses her will completely and starts screaming and tearing at her hair. I hit her in the face with the butt of my weapon. She goes down hard on her ass. For me, the breach is a relief. I don’t know how to wait. But I know how to act.

Two women at the front of the room shoot back at the breached door, foolishly, because their weapons only serve to help open up the first hole.

“Hold!” I yell. “Hold until you have a clear shot!”

Something whumps against the door so hard, the whole room trembles. The ring of the portal moves perceptibly inward.

Those at the front arm their weapons.

I know what’s going to happen, but I can’t figure out how to avoid it. The door is going to come inward when they push it open. It is going to crush the first twenty people on the other side of it. But we are packed so tight, they have nowhere to go.

“When it falls, come over to the breach!” I yell, but there is so much fear and confusion, I’m not certain anyone is paying attention to me. Prisha is yelling at them too, and Maibe.

There is a second powerful burst, and the door comes free.

The door crushes the first ring of women inside the door, messy and horrifying. I duck, fearing a volley. And it comes—a blast of multiple weapons. Four or five dozen cephalopods explode into the room, taking down the next ring of women. And then the Bhavajas come in after them, storming the only entrance, cutting us down like so many beasts, their faces broad and grinning and purposeful, like this is the inevitable end to the game, like they knew this was coming all along.