EVEN AS SABIRA cried his name into the black, more plasma bolts shot up through the hole in the tunnel floor. The others were far enough back from the hole’s melted rim to be angled out of range. But only just. Vapor and hot shrapnel blossomed from every impact and rained down on their heads.
Should you find yourself before the Shattered Gates of Heaven, may the—
A jolt of voices called out her name. No time yet to pray for the ones she had failed.
“Everyone on top of the grank!” she yelled. “On top! On top!”
Sabira and Zonte made it atop the grank’s wide back last, each scrambling up the weapons platform on either side of the biomech.
“Everyone grab hold of something. Orion, let’s go. Jump over the hole!”
The grank reared back its thick, tri-horned head and bellowed. Beneath them, the beast tilted to the left, then to the right, shuffling its hooves into a tighter alignment. With her left hand, she gripped the platform’s edge, with her right she pulled free a grenade. She waited expectantly for the grank to spring forward. Instead, as it shuffled it was rotating itself back around. Steaming bits of metal continued to scatter over them as the plasma bolts seared into the tunnel ceiling.
Orion’s holo projected onto the air. “Not that way. No way it’ll hold our weight. Too damaged. Better chances jumping the shaft. It’s damaged too, though, so don’t worry, it’ll still be terrifying.”
“What? You don’t sound very sure,” said Sabira.
“Don’t glitch. She can make it. Right, girl?” said Orion.
The grank bellowed, finishing its rotation back to face the transport shaft.
“Here we go,” said Orion. “Keep holding on.”
“Wait,” Sabira commanded. “Give us a countdown.”
“Sure. Takeoff in five . . .”
“This grank shit still has to die.” Sabira twisted the grenade, arming it, and winged it through the blast hole. “Shut your eyes!”
“. . . two, one.”
The grank bounded forward to the bent lip of the shaft and sprang its armored bulk into the air.
Sabira squeezed shut her eyes. Flash-incinerated metal screamed and the biomech tilted and lurched as a shockwave of heat and light blasted over them. Bellowing, the grank landed heavily on the far side. The hard lurch of impact replaced the loping rise and fall of running. She opened her eyes to look back. The dark transport shaft receded away into the miasma. No return fire chased their exit.
Rain’s last words haunted her. Had he really seen his dead brood-brother and sister in vision, and then again here, moments before his death?
Thudding echoes and rumblings continued all around them, melded into a background din of hypnotic, ambient doom. She was so tired. The deep fatigue, the rhythmic sway of the running biomech, and the nonstop, droning booms all merged into one discordant soundscape, lulling her into a shocked trance. It became harder to hold a thought, stay focused. Easier to slip away from the fresh memories of the old man falling, of Maia burning. Easier to let herself drift deep into blank, dark numbness.
“Sabira, Sabira.” The voice was vague, indistinct. A hand grasped hers. “Don’t die. Please don’t die. We need you.”
Like lifting a heavy stone up from the mineshafts, she opened her eyes. Cal, the eeshl still tucked to his chest, sat over her, rocking with anxiety. She managed a brief, faint smile. The grime and dried blood cracked across her cheeks.
“Don’t you worry,” she said. “I’m not . . . I’m staying. Just need rest.”
“There’s so much blood.”
“I know,” she said. “Not all mine.”
They traveled through another tunnel bored into the ship by the previous granks, back around to the pens. Coming out of the tunnel, seeing the vast carnage, the others all gasped as one.
As a young mine rat, the Chosen had told Sabira stories of the hellish Vleez planets. Horrific images had haunted her dreams, images eerily similar to what stretched before her now. But she was the one that had brought forth this hell to her people. Not demons. Not Vleez. Her.
Eyes burning, she scanned for signs of Grandfather Spear. Fires burned blue and green and white hot in the upper tiers, erratically shinning through hole after hole of ruptured open decks. Angular, toxic shadows danced madly across the rubble. Broken machinery and the severed biomech organs of the pyramid were mangled together with the slick viscera from thousands of bodies. Dead faces everywhere, but not his.
A dull anxiousness grew in her chest as she waited for another surprise attack, another sudden death, another instantaneous failure to protect her new brood. But no shots fired. No forces ambushed them. Even the klaxons had fallen silent. Only the constant, echoing booms of the Monarchy attack and the rhythmic thud of the grank’s heavy steps.
The far wall of the grank pens stood nearest to the pyramid’s hull. A series of gated chutes led to hangars of drop ships. Each chute divided into nine tributaries designed to funnel granks from the pen to the cargo slots of the droppers. One of the chute gates had been smashed in. Gabriel and Ed must have gone that way. The light strips were all blown out inside the chute, but spasms of illumination flickered from the far end.
They entered the chute and came out into the hangar. One of the three droppers was missing. Sparks rained down from a frayed knot of cables dangling along the ceiling. Red blood painted the floor like morbid graffiti.
In the dead center of the hanger stood Daggeira, watching them emerge from the dark tunnel. She held a palukai configured as an assault rifle. The barrel swayed casually beside her leg.
Sabira told Orion to stop, and the biomech halted a couple of meters in front of Daggeira. Sabira crawled down the side of the beast and stood before her. Numbness and pain all melted together as one. It took all her strength to stand straight. She held her palukai like a supporting staff, tried not to show any weakness.
Daggeira didn't move at all as Sabira approached. She was also covered in grime and dust. Dark blood stained her uniform, was smeared across her face. “I was in the infirmary when shit started blowing up. I didn’t want to believe it was you, but I knew. I just knew. When I saw a dropper missing, I thought you were already gone. I didn’t want to believe you could betray us, that you could possibly do this. You should have died on that target planet. We both should have.”
Sabira groped for the words that would somehow, miraculously, make Daggeira understand. If those words existed, Sabira couldn’t capture them. She wished she could just take Daggs’s hand, kiss the corner of her lips, let her touch say all the things her words couldn’t. “I'm here for them. That’s my duty now.”
“Nameless cowards and blasphemers? Really? You would fight me for . . . them?” Daggeira gestured toward the grank casually with her palukai.
“I don’t want to fight. But if you make me . . . Daggs, no one else needs to die here. You could come with us. You could be free. Isn’t that better than killing each other?”
“Look at you. You can barely stand. You think you can fight me? You think I'm the one who will die here?”
“Please, don't do this. The Warseers are liars. The Masters are liars. It’s all lies. I can show you. Come with us. Come with me, and I’ll show you.”
“I heard you, you know. When you were talking to me back on the planet. But I didn’t want to believe it. I thought I must have dreamed it. But it’s true, isn’t it? The Stargazer I knew could never say those things.”
“Daggs, please. There’s so much . . . Just come with us. We can be free, together.”
“I can’t betray everything I believe in. I’m not like you.”
“I have a yarist gem,” said Sabira, touching the pocket with her free hand. She tried to stand taller, hold back her tired shoulders. Truthfully, she wished she could let go of the pretense and bravado. Fall into Daggs’s arms. Feel the electricity of her touch and know they would all be safe.
“You think that will help you? You couldn’t beat me at obezya, you couldn’t beat me when I invoked Conqueror, and you sure as grank shit can’t beat me now. Gem or not. I could take your head if I wanted and nothing this side of the Gates can stop me. I’d be promoted straight to caller. Maybe even first drum. I’d be covered in glyphs.”
“We can stop you,” said Zonte from atop the grank, aiming his palukai. “We could slag you right now.”
“Don’t even try to hurt Sabira,” warned Cal. “Our grank will stomp you dead, dead, dead.”
Sabira didn’t turn to look but gestured behind her for them to back down. A rapid succession of thudding booms shook the hangar. Sparks poured from above.
“Daggs, kill me or let us pass. But do it now. Otherwise, we're all going to die in this pyramid.”
Daggeira stared at her, left hand twitching as she gripped the palukai. “Even if I let you go, they'll come for you. The Warseers will hunt you across the galaxy.”
“Not where we’re going,” she said. “They’ll never find us.”
“And what about the Gods, can you hide from them? You'll never pass through the Gates now. Is freedom really worth that?”
“The Gods always demand a sacrifice, you were right about that,” said Sabira. “Whether it’s Warseers hunting me across the stars, or Gods exiling me from Heaven, if that’s my sacrifice so be it.
“But see me now, Daggeira. I see you. I see you like no God or Master ever could. Do you see me, too, here now, before you?”
“I see you, Stargazer. I always have.”
“Then believe me, this isn’t a trick. It’s not a game. We can escape the Unity forever. We can travel to the farthest end of the galaxy, together, free. Or we can die here now, together, for nothing. For nothing at all.”