Bloodwood boards sagged and shattered, but the massive framework beneath managed to weather the impact. The landing tilted before finding a stable angle that might last ten breaths or maybe forever. The corona’s body radiated heat like an open smelter. A thick yellow light poured out over everyone. The corona’s necks lay scattered, limp. The two heads closest to the abattoir and people did nothing for a long moment. Then the triple eyes opened and one head lifted and the other rose and fell weakly before pulling in the neck’s slack, giving it the leverage to rise to its neighbor’s height. The corona’s light washed over every surface. The triple eyes took on a rich golden color. The triple jaws opened, each as long as a man was tall, and the teeth turned gold as both heads slowly examined the humans that were doing nothing but standing, not one arm moving and nobody daring to breathe.
One head closed its jaws.
The weaker head left its mouth open, bright sharp tongues emerging to taste the thin cold and nearly useless air.
A big turret was perched on top of the abattoir. Its gunners could see the corona below, but the cannons had safeties to assure that nobody would stupidly pummel the landing during some otherwise reasonable battle. Those safeties had to be unlocked. The work took cursing and muscle and memories that had never quite become routine, and then the frantic men who finally accomplished that job had no time or patience left to contemplate the fragile peace below.
The corona had done nothing but collapse.
Then the cannons began boom-booming, precious rounds of junk metal and explosives battering the helpless body.
A squealing roar came from deep inside the creature, emerging from the mouth and then every head, and the body twisted while turning a vivid blackish purple, and half of the remaining necks reached upwards, trying to kill what was killing it.
Then a second turret found its freedom and fired.
Another corona—smaller and stronger, already high overhead—turned and dove down to help its brother. Coming like a spear, its scaled carapace smashed armored glass and the men, and it got its body became trapped inside the ruined turret, badly wounded and furious and deeply unsatisfied by whatever revenge that it wanted to accomplish.
Necks and heads dangled down across the abattoir’s front.
The first corona said quite a lot with its light, its mournful noise, and with potent scents that normally kept coronas calm and thoughtful.
It begged the world’s coronas to do nothing more.
But there was no normal, no decency.
The trapped corona let twenty heads drop as far as they could on rubbery necks, jaws opened and then slamming shut again. Diamond hadn’t moved since the three of them hunkered down for no good reason. Elata was in the middle. A big man in a government suit was standing on the other side of Diamond, and a sharp bright sound brought the barest sense of motion, and then the corona head was gone and the man was almost gone. Just his legs remained, the left leg managing to stand on its own an instant longer than its mate.
Inside the next moments, with scorching efficiency, that densely packed crowd of bodies was shredded, pieces of bodies scattered, and the few dozen survivors were lying on their stomachs, holding a little still or very still, begging the Fates for just one more recitation of life.
The second corona stopped the slaughter abruptly, retrieving its necks and its focus in order to try and pry itself free.
The first corona turned yellow again, but not as bright anymore. The two inquisitive heads pushed forwards, followed by many more. Corona heads were what saw the world and touched the world and sometimes made noises, and they were what guided prey and pieces of prey into the real mouth. Carefully, slowly, those heads passed over corpses and soaked red clothes. People’s breakfasts and wet brown feces had been freed from various rectums. The triple eyes had turned red and brown, and the jaws were held shut, and the corona seemed to be counting the living, nudging each one, watching startled people react or not react. Curiosity might be at play. Diamond thought as much, when he thought anything. And then the strongest first head saw Elata and came close before the jaws spread and three tongues emerged, ready to taste her face.
She made a soft miserable sound but refused to move. Glaring at the creature, she closed her mouth tight and took a useless breath through her bloodied nose and held her face steady, just for an instant, summoning the will to tip her head into the mouth, inviting whatever came next.
Diamond reached out, grabbing the raspy tip of the nearest tongue.
The tongue jerked back and the head did much the same, putting distance between them. But a fresh thought or old notion took charge, and ten different heads came forward, wanting to examine the odd organism huddling with the dead and condemned humans.
Again, the corona’s body changed color. What looked deep purple to a human eye was just the lazy end of the high-purple spectrum—a powerful scalding light that could carry a lot of meaning, or a single message repeated millions of times.
Fascination was a human word. But the heads and their necks pushed against one another, fighting to gain a closer viewpoint of a singular entity huddling in the gore. Corona flesh made the air hot and suddenly quiet. The roar of siblings and guns and every other nightmare was dulled when those many eyes came close to Diamond, and then seemingly as an afterthought, studying the tiny monkeys on either side of him.
“What?” Diamond said.
Then he climbed up on his knees and stared at the first head, asking again, “What?”
Bunched together, those heads provided easy targets. Soldiers fired from the gun ports beside the doorway, big slugs chewing away at the jaws and eyes. But even as the pedestrian doorway was opened, even as electric lights washed over the scene, the surviving few heads stared at Diamond and the other two children.
Once more, the first head pushed forward and opened.
Having no shot, the soldiers held their fire while watching three tongues embracing the alien face. Bristles even harder than corona teeth left Diamond’s cheeks and chin bloodied, but not too deeply, and he was mostly healed after the corona slumped into death and the soldiers returned him to his mother.
SEVEN
Quest was ready.
Telling herself so didn’t make it true. And confidence was always the worst trap that a soul could set for herself. But Quest spent effort and anticipation wondering what could happen and what she would do in response, and despite being more visible than she had ever allowed herself to be, she wasn’t sick with worry. She was safer inside this one reinforced structure than anywhere else. One wretched event after another had arrived, and the human animals had no time or will to spare on one ghostly being. Besides, Quest was responsible for some chunk of this madness, and maybe all of it. An urge had claimed her and her siblings, but it was her finger that touched the bottom of a simple tube, which happened to be the moment when the sun vanished. Did she cause this torment, or was this coincidence? How could anyone know? But the point was that everyone believed she was culpable, including Quest, and the most hopeful thought in this wild unimagined set of nightmares was that the finger that ended the world might well bring it back again.
The giant room was filled with scared people doing nothing. The dead corona was strewn across the floor, its heat and its stench thickening the pressurized air. The Archon was standing close, and Meeker too. Sometimes the men spoke on call-lines, sometimes to one another. But mostly they did nothing except watch Quest help with the work. They wouldn’t dare touch her. Not in these circumstances, not with their lives and every bigger thing at stake. That was the shell of her confidence.
“No,” she said, looking at the big piece of paper. “That line bends here.”