Survival

LIKE HER aunt’s terrier, the Ro were single-minded in their violence, expending all their force against a hole in the ground. Mac and Brymn huddled together on the terrace, feeling that force through the ground beneath their building. Mac tried not to imagine the carnage and destruction deeper still, in the tunnel system, but her breath caught in her throat at the thought of the helpless oomlings and their caregivers, the Progenitors and their pufferfish, even the Wasted hiding in their tunnels.

Brymn had his own opinion, expressed in a doleful bass. “The end is near, Mackenzie Winifred Elizabeth Wright Connor Sol. I am grateful to spend my last moments with you.”

Mac used the hand not trapped against the Dhryn to thump him gently. “I won’t admit to last moments just yet, Brymn Las. They seem to be confining their attack to one area. We may be safe here—”

“The Progenitors? How?” Mac rubbed soot from her eyes, already stinging from the acrid Haven rain, and tried to see anything through the low clouds of smoke. At least the constant downpour was washing the lighter particulates from the air, making it possible to keep breathing and watch for falling objects. She’d dared to relax, very slightly—until now. “What do you mean?”

It? Mac didn’t see anything happening, beyond the Ro’s assault. Brymn’s more sensitive hearing must have given him advance warning, for the terrace abruptly began to tremble in earnest, the vibrations continuing until portions of the rail began to spring loose and drop away, landing with a clatter on the terrace below.

Brymn might have sounded fatalistic, but he moved as quickly as Mac could wish to pull them both close to the shelter of the wall.

The trembling went on and on, enough to put Mac’s teeth on edge and drive her heart to pounding so hard she thought it could be heard outside her chest. Except that Haven was making noise of its own.

Mac covered her ears, but the sound drove past flesh and bone, threatening her sanity. Just when she started screaming herself, it changed to a dull grinding from every direction at once. She closed her mouth and dropped her hands, looking out on the unbelievable.

Lines drew themselves in the city below, some crossing the angry sore that was the Ro attack. The lines deepened as Mac watched, ripping wider and wider. All of them at once.

The destruction caused by the Ro was nothing to this. Buildings toppled into newly formed valleys, roadways were torn apart, and still the lines widened as far as Mac could see.

Then, Mac no longer needed to be told. She could see for herself. The planet was breaking apart. Her mind’s eye flashed to the tunnels, the massive doors she’d compared to air locks. What if they had been exactly that? What if the Progenitors had rebuilt this world so it couldn’t be a trap for them?

“We have to get below,” Mac shouted at Brymn. “Maybe there’s a door still open!” Standing was like riding a skim through a gale. Mac braced herself and pulled at the Dhryn. “We have to try!”

“We do not matter. That which is Dhryn will survive,” he said, lowering his big head. “The Progenitors have always been ready.”

“To run again?” Mac found herself trying to shake him, as if her muscles could shift Dhryn immobility when the entire planet couldn’t. “The Ro will follow. We can’t let—”

The fire-rimmed hole caused by the Ro was no longer empty. Now, it contained a towering splinter of bronze and light, shaped like no ship or machine Mac had ever seen before. More splinters, smaller yet identical, hung in the air above it. More, smaller still, above those.

And breaking through the clouds were ships Mac did recognize. “Those are Human!” she yelled at Brymn, jumping up and down. “Human!”

The Human ships headed straight for the Ro, weapons firing. Mac was no expert, but the combination of percussions and lightninglike arcs looked deadly as they landed among the motionless Ro. She waited for the splinter-ships to fall from the sky, or blow up, or . . . do anything but what they did do . . .

Mac was almost tossed to her knees by another, more powerful tremor. The Human ships hunting the Ro were flying over a landscape being torn apart along multiple fault lines. “Is there any way for the Progenitors to stop splitting the planet?” she demanded. “Is this reversible?”

“Next time—” she staggered and grabbed Brymn for support, “—next time I’m stuck on a dying alien world, remind me to make sure it’s with an engineer, not a damn archaeologist!”

Settling down together, side by side, Mac and Brymn looked out over the end of a world. In the distance, entire portions of the planet were already lifting free, shedding their thin cover of civilization to reveal the thickened forms of the ships beneath before vanishing into the clouds. Wind was howling around the remains. Mac wondered what the Humans thought of it all. They’d come to vanquish the Ro and, instead of triumph, were watching the planet they’d successfully defended destroy itself, its inhabitants so many refugees fleeing what should have been victory.

Had too many hopes failed? Mac wondered when she could feel nothing but numb at this news. She glanced up anyway. Brymn wasn’t wrong. One of the Human ships had released a handful of skims, now heading in their direction through the rain.

Self-preservation took over from hope. Mac rose to her feet on the cracking terrace, pulling Brymn with her. She started to wave, then dropped her arm. They’d never see her.

It didn’t seem to matter. The skims continued straight on course toward them. How? The bioamplifier! “Nik?” she whispered, tasting the rain and soot on her lips, feeling life surging through her entire being. “Nik!”