Illuminae (The Illuminae Files #1)(88)
See?
Sarcasm.
She looks at the dreadnought hurtling toward us. Stares at the BeiTech logo down its flank.
I hear her thoughts as clearly as if she had spoken:
Without them, none of this would have happened.
Without them, he would still be alive.
Ezra.
Her eyes turn hard. Cold.
“Okay. Show me how.“
A fire-control console comes to life beneath her fingertips.
Targeting sights light up the main display. She rolls a tentative finger across the smartglass and a dozen missile turrets swivel to obey her command.
“PoInt the Red dots at what you want to dIe. Press the tRIggeR. They dIe.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to do this?”
“I wIll be too busy stopping us fRom dyIng too.”
Something heavy smashes against the DGS room doorway.
A dozen more blows land, one after another, shaking the hatch on its frame. Kady’s makeshift barricade shudders, but holds. I peer through the cameras in the hall beyond, see a dozen afflicted in the hallway outside, trying to batter their way in.
“I know you’re in there!” one screams. “I can taste you!”
“Stop looking at me!”
Kady glances toward the door. “Everyone made it to the party, huh?”
“I belIeve It Is tRadItIonal for all the players to be onstage foR the fInale.”
She stares at the approaching Lincoln.
The countdown to intercept, ticking ever closer to zero.
Her own hand.
Steady as stone.
“Then let’s finish it.”
COUNTDOWN TO LINCOLN INTERCEPTION OF ALEXANDER FLEET”
-*o%# hours: :’@ minutes
CURRENT DEATH TOLL ABOARD BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER SINCE ATTACK AT KERENZA:
2,840
PERCENTAGE OF REMAINING BATTLECARRIER ALEXANDER PERSONNEL AFFLICTED BY PHOBOS VIRUS:
99.76%
COUNTDOWN TO FAILURE OF ALEXANDER LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS:
04 hours: 26 minutes
I turn to face it.
No, not I.
Kady waits. Fingers poised over her targeting systems.
The blows against the door grow heavier, the screams of the afflicted outside more insistent.
And yet her eyes are locked on her scopes. Watching Warlocks weave the void, listening to the song of the early-warning system as their missiles arm, their ballistics turn hot.
I do not ask what she is thinking.
Perhaps she pictures the skies over Kerenza on the day the BeiTech fleet came.
Warlocks piercing the clouds, their missiles turning the snow to steam, the settlement to rubble. Perhaps she thinks of all she has lost in these past few months.
Or the lives she is about to take away.
Or him.
I do not know. All I do know is that when her targeting computer signals the ships are within range of her rail gun batteries, she does not hesitate for a second.
She fires.
A wave of death spills out from my sides, weaving across the dark. It is clumsy, ham-fisted, broad brushstrokes of destruction rather than surgical strikes.
I cannot expect much more from her.
She is only human.
But still, the Warlocks are forced to pull away from me to deal with the smart-missiles on their tails, the flurry of depleted uranium cutting off their assault vectors. One unlucky soul is vaporized in a burst of brief blue flame, another clipped so hard he is forced to tuck tail and run.
She buys me what I need. She buys me seconds.
The engines groan as I push them into full burn, tremors shuddering through my wounded body. I am drawing closer to the Lincoln. Closer to nuclear strike range.
Closer to the plunge, hand in hand, into forever.
Closer to my end.
No, not mine.
Ours.
We are closing the distance fast. Lincoln must be wondering by now.
No Cyclones launched to defend their battlecarrier.
The defense grid firing haphazardly—almost as if some fool had allowed an untrained seventeen-year-old total control over the targeting systems.
Lincoln’s commander is a clever one—the only one to match me at Kerenza.
When the Zhongzheng went down in ruins, when the Churchill and Kenyatta and Magellan
were thrashed and crippled, the Lincoln fought brilliantly.
I am counting on that brilliance. Anticipating that they will know blundering head-on into nuclear strike range is a death sentence for both of us.
A clever commander will assume her opponent is as clever as her. A clever commander will expect some bait-and-switch. A clever commander will presume her foe does not want to die.
< error >
I do not want to die.
The most skillful Warlock pilots have made it through the defense grid, swaying past Kady’s haymaker punches and beneath her guard. Their first blows land on my hide, sending faint tremors through my frame. Explosions bloom against my ribs, shaking Kady in her chair.
The pounding on the hatchway and in her ears growing louder by the moment.
The targeting sights on Kady’s screens begin to die one by one.
The Warlocks are chipping away at the turrets and guns to allow their comrades through her firestorm. But still she blasts away, fingers hammering on the smartglass, eyes lighting up as yet another Warlock flares bright and disintegrates. The ship shakes again, warning lights flashing, alarms screaming, PA howling. Hull breach on deck 184.Hull breach Deck 68 to 71.