Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(72)
Then two strong hands are grabbing me under my arms, and Jubilee’s there, gritting her teeth as she pulls us free of the pile. I keep Sofia pinned against me, and we scramble the last few meters on hands and knees, falling through the open shuttle door, where Flynn’s waiting to help us through it. Chase is running back to Merendsen’s side now, holding him back as the shuttle doors close—she’s talking in his ear, but I can’t hear what she’s saying over the noise of the Daedalus falling apart around us.
“Jubilee,” Flynn shouts from up by the cockpit, “unless you want me flying this thing, you’d better get up here!”
Jubilee spares one more agonized look for Merendsen, and then she’s scrambling free to run for the pilot’s seat. “Right.”
Sofia and I lie tangled together on the floor as the engine pitch rises, and with a soft rumble, the shuttle breaks free of the Daedalus. Sofia’s breath is coming in soft moans, but slowly she’s falling silent, and I’m pretty sure that’s not a good sign. When I force my eyes open, the first thing I see is her hand—blistered red from where her plas-pistol exploded, wounds weeping a glistening fluid.
When I lift my head to look past her, Merendsen’s bracing himself against a chair, eyes closed as Flynn works to pop his shoulder back in with a grunt of effort. Somehow, Cormac looks as put-together as he did at the start of the evening, tux still perfect, one curl falling down over his forehead. By contrast, Merendsen’s missing the jacket he tore up for Lilac, his white shirt bloodstained.
“Brace,” Jubilee shouts from the pilot’s seat, and Merendsen doesn’t even react—Flynn shoves him back against the wall, ignoring his wince of pain, and straps him into the seat. He grabs at another chair to steady himself, and I hunker down next to Sofia. I brace my feet against the bottom of a row of seats as the shuttle banks sharp left, tilting at a forty-five-degree angle, engine screaming a protest.
“There’re shuttles all over the place, and debris coming free,” Jubilee warns us. “Keep hold of something, I’m getting clear of the field.”
We all hold our places as she does, and I curl my arm over Sofia where we lie together, closing my eyes. I start to count silently, trying to distract myself as we swoop and dive, my stomach surging up into my throat, the frame of the shuttle itself quivering under the tension. I reach one hundred and twenty-seven before we level out, and Jubilee punches the autopilot commands, peeling out of her chair. “Should be safe to move,” she says, eyes going first to Flynn and then to Tarver, who’s staring now out his window, his whole body sagging in his harness.
“Please,” he’s whispering. “Please, no.”
As one we’re scrambling from our seats to the windows lining one side of the shuttle.
I can think of a dozen things he might have been pleading for, but one glance is enough to tell me that none of them are coming true.
The Daedalus is falling.
Sheering in on an angle, she’s disintegrating in the sky, sections the size of skyscrapers wrenching away from her hull to plummet toward the city below. She’s impossibly huge, and yet my mind keeps seeing a model ship breaking into pieces, as if the enormity of what’s happening can’t be real.
The first chunks of debris are hitting the city below, now, and all the breath leaves my body as I watch one cut a swath four blocks wide through the suburbs of Corinth, cartwheeling in to land and cutting through apartment complexes like a knife through butter. Flames bloom far below us, black clouds of smoke obscuring the ruins. The next piece falls, metal gleaming in the light for an instant before it’s buried in flame and smoke.
I’m watching thousands of people die, and when the bulk of the Daedalus hits, I’m going to watch hundreds of thousands of people die. I can say the words to myself, but though they circle in my head in a horrified chant, I can’t understand it. Corinth is invincible. Corinth is always there. Corinth will always be there.
Corinth is burning.
“Please, no,” Tarver’s whispering again beside me, resting his forehead against the window, tears streaming down his cheeks as the Daedalus screams down toward the city.
It’s like watching a stone land in water—debris goes flying up in the wake of the huge ruin of a ship, whole buildings disintegrating, sending up showers of dust and smoke, twisted metal and flames.
Corinth is burning.
I spin away from the window, and Sofia comes with me. She throws her arms around me, and I pull her in close, burying my face in her hair, and I breathe in her warmth, her life, trying desperately to block out the images of the dying city I can see even with my eyes closed. For this moment we’re not the Knave and the con artist, and there’s no artifice when she pulls me close. When I lift my head, Flynn has his arms around Jubilee, and she’s whispering something in his ear that only has him squeezing her tighter.
And Tarver Merendsen’s alone, still watching at the window, white as a sheet in his bloodstained shirt, as though he’s watching his own execution.
And in that moment, whatever I held against him, whatever part of me blamed him for taking my brother’s place—that part dissolves into nothing. This is a man Simon would have wanted for Lilac. I see that now.
He loves her. Watching the death and destruction below, knowing the creature capable of this has stolen her from him, I know he does.
“Tarver.” My voice is hoarse, and I don’t bother trying to clear my throat. I think my cheeks are wet as well, and they should be. My world is bleeding below us.