That name always had purchase among slayers. The captain wasn’t sure how to debate the point.
Then the pilot interrupted, announcing, “They aren’t firing on us, sir.”
“What?”
“The papio are standing back,” the pilot said, trying to be happy about the news.
Karlan joined the pilot, pushing binoculars against his eyes. Maybe the first wings were holding back, but a second wave was coming fast as bullets, and he didn’t recognize their design.
Oh, he had to smile.
“Surrender your weapon, son,” said the captain.
“I’ve seen this before,” Karlan said. “The papio are going to board us. They want our ships.”
“Impossible,” the captain said.
These new wings were blunt but powerful, faster than any other wing that was capable of hovering, but that’s what they intended to do, pushing close as the jets began to tilt, killing their terrific forward momentum.
“Oh, sir,” the pilot said.
“Your weapon,” said the captain, showing a trembling hand.
Karlan ran. Three strides and he was off the bridge, out of sight. The captain had so much free time that he could come across the intercom, telling his crew that the young ensign was insubordinate and possibly a traitor and to take all necessary measures to bring him under control.
The cargo hold was in the ship’s belly. If Karlan had to jump onboard a moving fletch, that’s where he’d make it happen. But a couple slayer/soldiers were waiting in the hallway just outside, automatic weapons aimed at the criminal.
Karlan stopped and dropped his pistol, and then his empty hands lifted a little higher than his waist.
He smiled until the faces relaxed. Nobody was about to be shot.
The roar of jets ended the peace, followed by one hard blast.
The Girl lifted and two slayers fell. Then Karlan was between them, grabbing up one of their guns and both of them, handing over his pistol to the unarmed man.
“What’s happening?” that man asked.
“I don’t know,” Karlan said. “Let’s look.”
The doorway into the hold was jammed by the blast. Karlan stepped back and kicked it once, and it was open. Sunlight rose from what should be darkness. He stayed back and fired just one round, and a bullet came back at him, striking the metal doorframe before turning into coral dust.
Coral instead of metal; the papio didn’t want punctured bladders by accident.
Karlan cursed and fired but stayed back, hiding his body.
The man with the pistol was much braver. Jumping into the opening, he screamed, “We’re boarded,” and fired once before sitting on the floor with his throat shattered and blood pumping down the front of his cheap, badly fitted armor.
Karlan put his free hand on the other slayer.
“Wait,” he said.
Just as he guessed, a flash grenade came rattling out from below. He jumped on it and flung it back below, and one of those fine rugged papio curses could be heard just before the thump of the blast.
Smoke came next, thick and black.
Again, Karlan told his companion, “Wait.”
Papio soldiers were shouting at each other. Karlan couldn’t understand any words, but five distinct voices seemed to be arguing tactics.
The slayer beside him was shaking with nerves.
Not Karlan.
As a boy, he heard those stories about great warriors who were happy only when they were in battle. But what he had learned already as a fighter was that battles brought nothing that was happy. Gunfire scared him to the core, and he was no different than the others. But what attracted him—what found Karlan in these moments and what lingered afterwards—was the sense that most of existence was nothing. Life was an empty place full of nothing, like one of those heavy jars in the labs where they pumped out the air and the heat, leaving nothing but the void. Only in these little moments of terror did something true and real rush into the emptiness.
This moment wasn’t joyful and it wasn’t unpleasant. Now and for the next long while, Karlan would experience the absolute clarity that comes when life begins and nothing else has room. A mind could engage so fully that it would race past the ordinary, and that’s why he left the trembling slayer behind. Crawling into the smoke, Karlan grabbed the shot slayer by the back of his armor. The man was still bleeding, still dying. He was easy to hold up high, and Karlan stood and fired into the clearing smoke just once, just to draw attention, and two soldiers shot the doomed slayer and Karlan kept holding him, pieces of coral finishing the job.
The papio had to steal this ship fast.
They advanced bravely, and Karlan used the dead man as a shield, putting down four of the enemy before his clip was empty.
The fifth soldier got into the hallway.
And then it was nothing but hands and feet and teeth, and yeah, maybe that part of the battle got to be fun.
THREE
The two of them had never touched.
“Hold my hand,” she said, standing close to him but not close.
The spotter was already excited by everything happening below. Looking at the woman, he was startled and a little thrilled to discover that she was prettier than he recalled. She wasn’t watching the battle through her little telescope. Looking at him, her hand was outstretched with those long fingers rippling, and that fine young face was showing some him some kind of smile.
He took the offered hand.
Something cut into his palm.
He said, “Ouch,” even as he tried to hold on to her. But the pain was too intense, and he took back his hand, shaking it slowly, stoically.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
The spotter meant to say that it was nothing, forget it. But his words started to pile up on his thickening tongue.
“Sit down,” the pretty woman suggested.
Sitting was the last thing that he wanted to do. Blinking hard, he looked through his telescope’s eyepiece. Except the giant corona had turned into one very dark blur, and the fletches and papio wings were nearly invisible against the yellow shine of the demon floor and the world beneath.
He rubbed his eyes, using the hand that didn’t hurt.
Then he stopped rubbing, and without feeling any sensation, he quietly dropped to the floor.
The woman stepped over him. She was still quite pretty, except her face was wrong in the middle, dark human eyes replaced with bulging domes that resembled brightly polished crystal. And that was the moment when, for many fine reasons, the man lost consciousness.
Mayhem ants stung bark rats and other prey with this toxin. Creating the molecule was simple. Using it successfully was more problematic. The man could stop breathing, which would leave her with the unwelcome decision of employing the antidote or not. Or the man could die of cardiac failure, which would present her with another dilemma—whether or not to eat his empty body.
But thankfully the man’s breathing remained steady.
Quest claimed his telescope—the big better telescope. Her new eyes were more powerful than anything a proud hawk would sport. Through the glass, she saw three fletches burning, bladders and torn hulls splattering against the demon floor. One more fletch was hovering above the great corona, a hair of steel tight between them. The corona was the greatest in Creation, its interior gorged with hot air and vacuum, and the circular body shook every time hot air roared out of its mouth, shoving it a little higher. Every strength was being spent to maintain its slight altitude above the glistening floor, and it spoke only as it breathed again, falling slowly—speaking as waves of yellow light that swirl across the bloated gray body, the effect pitiful and magnificent.
The papio had surrounded the corona, throwing cannon fire at the free-flying airships and flares at each other, and then they weren’t firing anymore, circling their quarry at a wide, watchful distance.