We reach the hotel’s hangar just as the Nova’s shuttle comes in to dock, landing gears resting on the ground with a soft thud.
The side hatch opens and Trix emerges, broad frame blocking the doorway, lasrifle in her hands and Ocho perched on her shoulder.
Trix walks down the steps and Mookie breaks away from me, stumbling forward, one hand on his head, the other reaching for Trix. He puts an arm around her as Ocho jumps clear and trots over to me.
“What’s wrong with him?” Trix says, holding Mookie tight.
“It’s started: his mind’s being joined up to the rest of the Legion.”
Ocho trills as she approaches then stands at my feet staring up at me. I get down on my haunches and she maows, rubbing her chin on my knee.
“I know, little one; I’m sorry.” She jumps on my lap and I grab her, hold her to my shoulder, and stand. I scratch the back of her head and she purrs. “I missed you too, jerkface.”
“How do we stop it?” Trix asks. She seems pained, with fine wrinkles gathered around her eyes and her lips drawn down.
“I don’t know, Trix. I don’t know how they communicate, I don’t—I don’t even know if we can.”
They break off the hug, but Mookie stands holding Trix, head resting on her shoulder. He groans loudly then stops.
“You said you’d fix him,” she spits.
“I will,” I say. “But right now we’re wasting time.”
* * *
I let Waren fly, but join him in the shuttle’s cockpit, leaning forward in the seat because Ocho’s asleep in the hood of my cloak.
“Can this thing go any faster?” I ask Waren.
“It’s only a shuttle,” the AI says, voice right inside my head. “Perhaps if you hadn’t crashed my ship, we’d be able to get there sooner.”
“You missed me, I can tell,” I say, teasing.
“I miss my ship,” he says.
“Yeah, well, I’ll find you another one; I promise.”
In daylight, I can see that the spire of light in the center of New Tangier is actually the communications tower atop the Homan Security Command Center. The pylon is snaked with cables and dotted with box antennae, relay dishes, and optic data ports. Waren says it’s the link between the security command center and Homan Sphere: it’s how they ride the envoys and control the powershields; it’s how they torture, beat, kill, or transform the prisoners they hold indefinitely.
Waren is sure I can tear the tower down and sever their connection with the Sphere, but I can’t take the chance that they have backup systems in place.
He says it’s time we can’t afford to waste, but I need to deal with Rathnam personally. I’m going into the command center to rip it apart from the inside.
We dodge through the heavy traffic that careens across the sky as people rush to evacuate, plumes of debris rolling down city streets like waves. Military units converge near the fallen cannons, but if they’re looking for what did this, they aren’t expecting to find it riding shotgun in a nondescript shuttle.
Waren brings us in low, and we land on the eastern side of the Security Center rooftop, next to the comms tower. Sunlight falls through the metal structure in shafts, shadows crisscrossing the roof and wrapping around the shuttle.
“I’m going back to see the others,” I tell Waren, then I unclip myself from the pilot’s seat.
I hit the button beside the cockpit door and Waren says, “Things do tend to be less boring when you’re around.”
I smile. “See? You missed me.”
Trix and Mookie are in the passenger hold, strapped in tight. Mookie is doubled over and Trix rests her hand on his back.
I crouch down in front of him. “Are you alright?”
He makes a sound like a low howl and the hairs on my neck stand up. “So many voices,” he says. “So many . . . people . . . in my head.” He snaps back, sitting straight up, hands going to the buckles of his seat belt. “I need to go. They need me. We need me.”
“Strap him down, Trix, quickly.” I reach for the storage container beneath the seats and toss her a length of polyplastic tether.
She works quickly, restraining his arms by his sides, while I bind his legs together.
“I’m going into the Command Center. Stay here with Mookie,” I tell Trix. “Waren—if things get dicey, take off, but keep close.”
“I’m coming with you,” Trix says, taking her lasrifle from the overhead rack.
“The Legion will be here soon,” I say. “You need to stay and keep Mookie safe.”
“He’s not going anywhere, and I have to kill the bastards that did this to him,” she says.
I know she feels guilty, I know that violence is the only solution she understands—fuck, if anyone gets that, it’s me—but I shake my head. “If we lose him now, we might never get him back.”
I hit the controls to open the shuttle door, and the ramp whines as it extends.
“We should have let you die in that ship,” she says. “If Squid listened to me, we would have.”
Her barb is a sharp pain in my chest; the truth of it hurts the most—they should have left me to die, their lives would be so much easier if they had.
I don’t respond, I can’t.
Trix stands, and before I can tell her again to stay, she says, “I’ll take a defensive position on the roof, stop them getting near him.”
“Fine,” I say, because there’s no arguing with her. We step out onto the rooftop. Surveying the skyline, the city looks still, but emergency service sirens drift in the distance. The noise brings Ocho out of my hood, to perch on my shoulder and take in the scene. She makes a curious-sounding trill and disappears back into the relative safety of my cloak.
“Waren, have you picked up the Legion fleet yet?”
The AI’s voice sounds in my head: “Scanners onboard the Nova have detected a large fleet approaching Seward.”
“They’re coming here, not heading for Homan?”
“Correct.”
“Good. Okay. Make sure Squid knows they don’t have to free every single prisoner, not if it means putting themself at risk.”
“You could open a link to Squid and tell them yourself,” Waren says, “but no, don’t bother; I’m an unnaturally intelligent being, surely I won’t mind acting as a messenger daemon.”
I ignore Waren and focus my attention on the skies overhead. I jack up the zoom on my ocular lens and scan across that expansive blue, cluttered with the distant shapes of MEPHISTO ships. At first they’re just gray shadows, then the vessels disappear behind a burning glow as they hit the atmosphere.
The only ship that doesn’t start to burn is the largest—Hamid’s flagship, waiting in orbit.
The quickest ships—the fighters and corvettes—have already stopped burning, and their contrails dissipate into the air. I raise my hands and grab them one at a time, crushing the craft and dropping each mangled wreck as I reach for the next. I destroy twenty, thirty, more maybe, but still the sky is filled with MEPHISTO vessels.
“Go, Mars! I’ll guard the ship.”
I glance over at Trix. She’s standing by the shuttle, lasrifle aimed at all that approaching doom, plugged into the shuttle’s power for overcharge.
I rake the air with my thoughts one more time, catching a score of ships so they tumble, plunging out of sight and into buildings. They explode as they hit, distant booms echoing across the city, dopplering off the faces of skyscrapers.
I reach the rooftop access door and glance back at Trix one last time.
I hope you find whatever peace you need from this fight, Trix. Fuck knows it’s going to be a big one.