The Stars Are Legion(93)

But Casamir unhooks her pouch of potions and comes over to me, presses her ear to the ground. “I can get it open,” she says. She pulls a vial from her bag and makes a circle of it on the fleshy floor.

There’s a hissing sound and then the smell of burnt flesh.

We all come up around the edge of the hole, and we wait.

The fleshy cap half falls out, revealing a wash of blue-green light from below. I kick at the flesh. Wherever we are, I’m heading down now, not up, for the first time in this long, exhausting trek.

The flesh tears farther. I punch out another seam and squeeze through, huffing out my breath as I do it to make myself smaller. I see the ground below, and it’s not too far. I let myself fall and roll onto the porous floor.

The green-blue light seems very bright after the dim of the artery, but also familiar. I raise my head—

And stare into the armed tentacles of a cephalopod gun.





PART III:


RESURRECTION





“IF YOU CANNOT KILL WHAT YOU LOVE, MAKE BEST FRIENDS WITH IT.”

—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION





35


JAYD


I stagger into the hangar on Katazyrna like a dying woman, and maybe I am. I pinch off my suit, and it dissolves around me. I take in fresh, warm air.

I fear the world inside of me will miscarry. I had to come here because I still know Katazyrna better than the Mokshi, and without the arm, the Mokshi will murder me. I can pin Rasida here. Maybe not easily, but it’s far more likely than it would be on Bhavaja. We are closer to the Mokshi. Closer to Zan.

I stumble through the interior hangar door, cephalopod gun up. Rasida won’t have been able to let them know that I’ve escaped and to look for me, but I don’t look like a Bhavaja. I’ll stand out for what I am.

I make for the witches, to the holdout they always use when the ship is under attack. It’s how they’ve survived so long here when so many others have perished. If I can make it there, I know I’ll have a safe haven to sit and wait for Rasida to find me. I have the world, and she has the arm. Perhaps the witches may even help me hold out there. Allegiances shift when there are fewer options.

I shoot three women along the way to the next umbilicus, and my vision tunnels. Focus. One foot. Another. Pain is a constant companion. My walk is painfully slow, like a drunk, like a mutant, like some maimed, disfigured thing. And I am all of those things now, aren’t I? Some savage merging of Katazyrna, Bhavaja, and Mokshi. I’ve been slashed and battered and changed by all three. I’m something else now.

I find the place in the wall and drag the bodies of the women I’ve shot up under it so I can reach the thin scab that covers the metal hinge of the door. I lever it open and pull myself inside. I close the hatch behind me. It’s dark and smells of piss and sulfur. I crawl for ten thousand steps. I know because in the heat and darkness, the counting is the only thing that can keep me calm.

The heart room where the witches are is different from the cortex. I don’t know its function, but when I come up over the organic mesh above it, I can see the witches inside. They are resting on the large slab at the center of the room, gabbling to themselves in an unknown language.

They peer up at me as I punch through the organic mesh with my weapon.

The left head says, “This is a foolish final stand.”

I heave the rest of my body through the opening and dangle there a moment. When I let go, I drop heavily to the spongy floor. The witches scuttle toward me, hands reaching for me, but I raise the weapon again.

“Foolish,” the right head says.

“Every stand is foolish,” I say.

“What will you do?” left says.

“I’m going to wait for Rasida,” I say. A twinge of pain shoots through my belly. I wince. I don’t want to give birth to this world on Katazyrna, but if that’s what happens, so be it. At least I will have upheld my part in this long, agonizing drama. I wish only that Zan knew how close I came before the end. “I need her arm,” I say. “The world and the arm. I’m going to get those two things together if it’s the last thing I do with the last of my breath.”

“We are all destroyed,” right says.

“I’m remaking it,” I say. “You never did believe that’s what we were going to do, but it is. Working with other worlds is the only way to save the Legion.”

Right begins to speak again, but left rides over her, says, “There has been too much death.”

“If you want Lord Bhavaja here,” right says, “we’ll need to broadcast where we are.”

“Do it,” I say.

The walls light up: misty red, whorls of blue. I prepare my final stand.





“ALL I AM, AND ALL I LOVE, IS WAR. I DON’T KNOW WHO I WILL BE IF I STOP. THE WORLD, IF IT IS TO SURVIVE, NEEDS A LEADER, NOT A WARMONGER. THE WORLD I WANT TO MAKE DOES NOT REQUIRE ME.”

—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION





36


ZAN


When I dream in the long throat of the artery, it’s often in hazy snatches, half-dream, half-memory, but what I see with the cephalopod gun in my face is not a dream but a memory, so stark and abrupt it bowls me over.

I’m in a room full of people I don’t trust, but I don’t trust myself, either, so none of that is very surprising.