MERCY.
SUCH A foreign concept. Such a forbidden idea. Sabira stood there, awestruck by the strange power of it. She didn’t kill him—she couldn’t kill him—though he would have torn the heart from her chest to redeem his honor before their Masters.
Mercy for the merciless. At least this once.
Grandfather Spear roused himself to weak and battered consciousness. Rolled onto his back, breathing deep and heavy.
She wondered if this was how she appeared to Cal and Ed that morning on the rooftop, when they could have killed Daggeira and her with a flick of the wrist. When they chose mercy. Even Cal, with a burning hatred for the Unity and its Servants, showed her mercy.
Cal was right. We were all slaves, mind and body. Our choices, our identities, stolen from us. All of us. Even the killers. Even the true believers. We never had a choice.
“I wish I could hate you, Grandfather,” she said. “I wish I could kill you for killing Maia. But you don’t know. How could you? It would be so much easier to hate you.” She paused, afraid to utter the words she needed to say. “But I forgive you.”
“You dare?” Spear spat out a wad of bloody phlegm, between deep, gasping breaths. “You dare to forgive me? I gave you the stars. I should have left you to birth mine rats back in the tunnels. You have no right—no right—to offer me forgiveness. You are a shame to the bloodline.
“You could have had everything. Everything. Now, you’ll be hunted. Destroyed. You’ll be nothing.”
“I’ll be free,” she said.
“Free? Free! Selfish arrogance. Look what it brings. Look around at what your selfishness cost. You could have conquered the stars for Heaven itself. And you choose this . . . this meaningless chaos.”
From behind, a voice spoke her name. Sabira whirled, palukai ready. From a grank’s weapons platform, a glitchy holo projected Orion as if he was standing there.
“Whoa whoa,” Orion said, “don’t kill the hologram. You’ll spook the granks. I just got them calmed down.”
“You really were real.”
“Orion Ex Machina, at your service. We have to get you all right the fuck out of here. We’re running out of time. Ed needs the cure, and the Monarchy—”
“Did you do this?” She gestured at the widespread carnage around them.
“The biomech animals were trickier than I expected,” he said. “Did you know they have two brains? But I got the hang of it. I’ll explain it all back on the Shishiguchi. But right now, we have to get your asses out of this mess.”
Sabira wanted to scream. She wished she could squeeze his skinny hologram neck. “Are you drilled in the head? What were you thinking? You almost got us all killed. Maia almost . . .” Sabira’s throat clamped tight before she could finish. She remembered the heat of Maia’s chest melting away in a flash, her falling lifeless at her feet.
“In case you didn’t notice, you all were going to get killed if I didn’t do this,” Orion protested. “I ran millions of simulations first. I knew just where the granks had to hit. I had it calculated. They were safest in those cages. And we can fix them up the rest of the way on my ship. Which you need to be getting to now.”
“And what about all of them?” Sabira gestured at the thousands of mutilated and crushed bodies. “They were Human too. Do their lives mean nothing?”
“Every one of them would have vaporized all of you in a second. We had zero chance of freeing those slaves. I’m sorry, but it’s true. And none of you had a chance of being free again unless we got them out of the way. Which I did. You’re welcome. Or did you have a plan for getting off a battleship filled with enemy soldiers I wasn’t aware of? Now stop wasting time or all this will be for nothing.”
“He is right, Sabira.” Gabriel’s deep voice sounded weak, exhausted. He had followed the cleared-out grank trails to get to them. He held Edlashuul’s thin, shivering body cradled in his arms. “Orion, get this creature to kneel so I can lay him up there.”
The grank that wasn’t projecting Orion’s holo shifted down onto his knees. Gabriel, as carefully as he could manage, lay Edlashuul down on the weapons platform. “Hold on just a little longer, Ed,” he whispered. “I have to take care of something first.”
Gabriel, sucking in his swollen bottom lip, looked from Sabira to Spear to Sabira again. “No way in hell,” he grumbled before he bounded forward and kicked his shin across Spear’s jaw. The old man flopped back in a spray of blood and sweat and grit. Gabriel was on top of him, bludgeoning his head with the metal caps over his severed arms. With each hit he grunted, until the grunts became screams, until the screams became sobs. Beneath him, Spear’s face dripped with blood and shattered teeth.
Sabira clubbed Gabriel in the ribs with the palukai. He doubled over and tumbled into a wall of debris. Tears and blood streaked down his face.
“If I don’t kill him, you don’t!” Sabira screamed. She pointed the barrel of the stick at Gabriel’s chest. “Back off!”
Gabriel pushed himself to his feet, visibly trying to staunch his tears. “Maia . . . That son of a bitch . . . killed Maia . . .”
“I said no!” Sabira fired into the chalky air over Gabriel’s head.
“Sabira, girl, you’ve got anger issues,” said Orion.
Gabriel held out his arms as if he would be gesturing for peace and rationality, if he still had hands to gesture. “Sabira, you still have that gem. We know what it does to you. You know what it does. Please, stop touching it. We don’t have time to fight among ourselves.”
“No.”
“Sabira, I promise. I won’t kill this man. Just put the gem away. I don’t know why you want to spare Maia’s murderer, but I’ll do as you say.”
Sabira clenched her fists. She didn’t like it but knew Gabriel was right. She bent down and reached inside her boot. A messy, thick coat of blood and grime covered them. She pulled out the glowing blue yarist, bigger than any she had seen before, torn from the ceremonial armor of the Ihvgohn-Lo himself. The weapon that made her the weapon. If they lived, it would make a legendary trophy. Another part of her wanted to throw it as far into the wreckage as she could. She dropped it into her tunic pocket.
The adrenaline crash hit soon after. Without the gem fueling her any longer, Sabira’s knees buckled, and her vision tunneled to just a pinprick of light before going black.
When she could see again, she was on her knees. Spear lay a few meters in front of her, coated in the same blood and dust and grime that covered her. His silver eye stared at her, blank and unreadable. Gabriel was at her side too, saying something, asking nervous questions.
“Help me stand,” she said. He hooked his forearm beneath her armpit and helped raise her up. His eye tightened, the only hint of the agony lifting her must have caused him. She placed a hand on his chest to steady herself while she waited for her vision to stop teetering.
“I’m going back for Maia. I won’t leave her in this place,” said Gabriel.
“We really need to hurry,” said Orion. “The Monarchy is just about—”
The entire pyramid rattled sharply. Battle klaxons wailed down through the open holes in the upper decks.
“Revise that. The Monarchy fleet’s here,” Orion said. “The counterattack has started.”
“Orion, get this grank moving over to Maia, save us some time,” said Gabriel. The big war beast rose to its feet and plodded through the debris. “And then we’ve got to find the others and get to a ship.”
The pyramid shuddered again. Piles of rubble slid and shifted. Grating and clashing sounds reverberated across the deck.
“There’s not enough time,” said Orion.
“I’ll go get them,” said Sabira. “Gabriel, get Maia’s body and take Ed to the drop ships. The hanger is that way.” She pointed with the barrel of the palukai. “The brig is a deck below. I’ll take the other grank and free them. We’ll be on the next dropper right behind you.”
“She’s right, Gabe. It’s the best way,” Orion said. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her.”
“I’ll see you on the Shishiguchi,” Gabriel said. He turned to follow as quickly as he could behind the grank.
“Get on up. We can’t waste any more time.” Orion’s holo faded out, and the grank knelt down on its massive front knees.
Sabira climbed the beast’s front leg up onto the platform. She got a good look at the glyphs stamped onto its horned face and recognized it immediately. The same one. The same godsdamned grank that had chased her through the pens and nearly trampled her. She wondered if the animal recognized her too.
The ship rumbled, and klaxons screamed danger at whoever remained alive to hear. Roaring fireballs launched through the upper decks, throwing harsh, racing shadows through the smoke and dust clouds.
“What do we do about the old man?” asked Orion’s disembodied voice after Sabira positioned herself behind the grank’s curving horns.
“Just go,” she murmured. “We’ll leave him to his Gods.”
The grank rose to its full height. It followed a cleared-out trail left by one of its fellows, into a newly created tunnel in the pen wall. Looking back as they left, she saw Grandfather Spear push himself to his feet. He stood, swaying, dazed, and watched her go. Their eyes locked across the expanding distance until all she could see was smoke and ruin.