Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(76)
“But some have?” Flynn lifts his head, eyes tracking Gideon as he sets the palm pad down on the table, setting up the holo-projection interface.
Gideon nods, not answering until after the palm pad’s screen pops up to life, hovering just above the table where we can all see it. “Pictures of the destruction, a couple of the crash itself from people whose devices synced with the cloud before they—” He stops, lips twisting, and doesn’t finish the sentence. “I think this site’s got a live feed running.”
He makes a few gestures, navigating through a few different sites until he finds a streaming video. The images spring to life, accompanied by the tinny audio from the palm pad’s speakers.
“…from the different reports we’re getting, but we can confirm that the estimated death toll has now increased to a hundred and fifty thousand—that’s a hundred and fifty thousand estimated casualties of the crash.” The image shifts from an aerial view of smoke and flames to a woman’s face, drawn and white underneath her makeup. “If you’re just joining us, this is breaking news coverage reporting that the Daedalus orbital museum, in the middle of its opening night gala, has fallen from its orbit and crashed into the surface of Corinth. The ship and pieces of wreckage have caused massive damage to at least three city sectors, and it’s unknown whether there are any…”
She trails off, eyes going distant as she presses a hand to her ear. “Okay,” she says, voice shaking. “Okay, I’m getting reports now that several diplomatic shuttles—four or maybe five—were seen leaving the Daedalus before it hit the atmosphere. We’re hearing that President Muñoz was evacuated and taken to an undisclosed location as a security measure, where she will remain until the extent of the threat is established. It’s unclear who’s making calls within the government at this time. We do not have confirmation as to who was onboard any of the other shuttles, or whether the ship’s creator, tech magnate Roderick LaRoux, was among the survivors.”
I glance over at Tarver, but I can’t tell if he’s even listening to the report. He hasn’t taken his eyes off the window.
The reporter takes a breath and then continues, clearly fighting to keep her calm and do her job. “Roderick LaRoux, founder and CEO of LaRoux Industries, is confirmed to have been aboard the Daedalus shortly before the crash, along with daughter Lilac LaRoux and future son-in-law Major Tarver Merendsen. It’s unknown whether the Icarus survivors have—” The reporter stops, her haunted eyes staring at the camera for a moment. “Their current whereabouts and conditions are unknown.”
The image flashes back to that aerial shot, a slowly shifting panorama of destruction—billowing clouds of smoke obscure much of the sector, those buildings not leveled by the shock wave still on fire despite the hordes of firefighting drones swarming the scene. The reporter starts summarizing events again, and with a jerk of his wrist, Gideon mutes the feed and then drops his head into his hands.
Jubilee’s eyes are rimmed in red as she watches the footage, her face as haunted as the reporter’s had been—it’s like she’s watching a memory, a ghost. Flynn’s arm tightens around her, and she clears her throat. “We have to assume she survived, and that she’s not done.” Her gaze starts to swivel toward Tarver, by the window, but she stops herself with a visible effort. “Which means we have to stop her.”
“She tore the Daedalus out of the sky with a single thought.” Gideon lifts his head from his hands, numbness creeping in to buffer the shock of the past few hours. “How do you fight something like that?”
Jubilee’s eyes go to Flynn’s. “The same way we’ve been fighting the impossible all along. Bit by bit. All of us, together.”
Something about the footage grabs my eye, and I rise on wobbly legs from my chair so I can look more closely. Flynn takes a step toward me but I wave him off, wishing I could peel back the layers of smoke and haze concealing the city in the projection. Then a sliver of green shows through, and I know what it is—a crescent-shaped courtyard.
“That’s LaRoux Industries,” I whisper, staring at the footage.
“What?” Flynn’s voice is sharp.
“These images, they’re from LRI Headquarters—or where it used to be. See, there—that block, that’s where the Applied Sciences division was.” It’s only rubble now, but as the smoke shifts, we get a glimpse of something that should be impossible—at least one structure still standing, amid the pieces of wreckage from ship and building alike. I know the area by heart, after a year spent researching ways to infiltrate it, and I know it even on fire. My mind’s scrambling, trying to understand. “She crashed the Daedalus into LaRoux Industries Headquarters.”
The feed cuts back to a shot of the reporter, whose wild-eyed gaze—from someone used to being stoic in the face of galaxy-rocking news—makes me want to run and hide. “Breaking news—our reporter on the ground has located a pocket of survivors at the heart of the crash site, including LaRoux Industries CEO Roderick LaRoux and his daughter, Lilac LaRoux. There is no sign of her fiancé. We’ll go now to the scene.”
The feed cuts to two-dimensional footage, projected flat like a screen from the palm pad. The shot is shaky, like it’s being filmed from a handheld device, probably not too different from the one Gideon’s using to show us the feed. It’s dark, the scene lit only by generator-powered floodlights. But despite the nausea-inducing sway of the camera, despite the throngs of people milling here and there, despite the bloodied injuries in the background, all of us are staring at what’s in the foreground.