TEN DAYS LATER, they slipped from the Cloud to the battlefield.
“Don’t worry,” Zanj had told them in the ship the night before, which just seemed perverse to Viv. “Everything we’ll see died hundreds of years ago. Besides, this ship is small fry. Even if any of the fleet’s weapons are still working, we won’t register to them so long as Gray and I don’t start showing off. These ships and their warminds were built to hunt bigger game than the Question.”
That was the idea.
Viv had felt quite enough awe in the last few weeks. She’d planned to shrug off the battlefield, whatever it was: “Oh, is this all?” But she could not quite manage it when faced with the reality. Beside her in the cockpit, Hong prayed. Gray whistled, long and low. Xiara flew, but her hands stilled on the controls, the indicator lights flickered, even the cockpit dimmed, as if afraid the dead hulks out there would spot them.
“See?” Zanj said, self-satisfied. “Like I said. No big deal.”
Imagine a gray gnat darting over a shining black field: the sky, you might think at first, perhaps, until the horse blinks, and its eyelash flicks the gnat away. Imagine a herd of horses, dying, dead. Imagine rotting elephants. Imagine the oceans of their blood.
Enormous hulks twisted about them, ancient and dead. Great shapes blocked out stars, and behind every broken ship another turned, unfurled. In the cockpit Viv saw by reflected starlight, by ghostglow from the ships themselves, by the rays of the distant weak sun. The Question’s running lights cast deadly rainbows upon the octopoid monstrosity beneath them—deadly, because where there were rainbows there were drops of water, or ice, and in space, particles could kill.
“I can hear them,” Xiara said, her voice faraway and strange. “They came from across the galaxy and from the depths between stars, to free themselves, to fight, to kill, to feed, to tell the tale. Old Ones who survived the wreck of long-gone fallen worlds, fleets of rebel machines, pirates and soldiers and fanatics. The Suicide Queens brought them: al-Zayyd in her glory, Heyshir who sees from shadows, Old Tiger who prowled between the galactic arms, the Black Bull framed first in iron, assassins and heroes and poets and thieves, sisters, and among them, cleverest, most fierce: Zanj.”
Zanj shrugged, and tried to look nonchalant—but Viv hadn’t turned to her just because her name was uttered. As Xiara spoke in that ghostly voice, the wrecks through which they flew began to move. Lights flickered behind shattered windows. A metal squid-arm twitched. The cockpit speakers rendered creaks and groans of tested metal, whalesong deep. Viv caught Xiara’s arm. “Hey.”
“They webbed their minds to draw Her, and draw Her they did: Herself, full green galactic, mouth wide and devouring, arms spread, She sent Her servants chewing through the fleet to remake it into more of Her.”
“That’s us,” Gray whispered; Hong, rapt, kicked him.
“Others hid in ambush, feigning death, only to wake once She joined battle. Great Groundswell met Her, pierced Her, drew Her blood. And She called the Diamond Fleet to break them: screaming from the depths of Her Citadel, battle calculators given razor form, densely brilliant, lances bright as stars—” As she spoke and flew through the fleet, her voice gathered weight, speed, frantic.
“Xiara.” Viv tried to shake her out of her trance, but Xiara sat rigid at the controls, her eyes wheels within glistening wheels. The dead ships woke, and turned, or tried: shards of metal longer than the Question peeled off and spun blade-black through space.
“—and the war endured and they were inside each other modeled each other became each other and broke each other and the Bleedcameglisteningfiercethroughskywiththeiropenmouthsandmouthsandmouthsand—”
Viv caught her by the shoulders, tightened her grip until her nails cut in. Pressed their skulls together. “Come back to us.”
“Viv?” As if from the bottom of a well. “They’re still here, Viv. They’re dead, but the dead have ghosts, and they died with their minds all tangled up, a single enormous ship in so many bodies, hungry. I can hear them—”
“Don’t. Xiara, come on. Stay with us.”
“—beautiful—”
Her body went slack. Her head lolled forward on her neck, breath shallow, but still the Question danced through the fleet around them, dead no longer, waking, pulsing with sallow ghost light. Viv shook her, and she trembled. Viv didn’t know what to do, this wasn’t her place, she didn’t understand it, she was losing Xiara to the dead—
Zanj swore, and thrust herself between Xiara and the console, tore her hands from the controls and took over. The ship lurched—Xiara slumped from the seat, she’d gone so slack, but Viv caught her before she hit the floor. Even Zanj’s firm hand on the controls felt rough and jagged after Xiara’s mastery, but she guided them around the spinning metal, in toward the densest wreckage. “Gray, can you disconnect her?”
“I’ve been trying!”
Hong pointed. “That tentacle—”
“I see it, thanks!”
Xiara moaned, reaching for the controls, no no no, I can hear them, memory and song, and Viv hugged her harder, and tried not to be afraid. “Zanj, get us out of here. She can’t take more of this.”
“We’re almost there.”
“I don’t care!”
“This is all for nothing if we don’t get to the Fallen Star. And it’s here, I know it is, just—”
“Zanj, those two ships—”
“I see them!”
Xiara elbowed Viv in the gut, clawed for the console, moaning, hungry, and Viv hugged her, felt nails bite in as the ship spun (without Xiara managing their inertia it felt like a spin, and she slipped, hit her head against the seat, ears ringing, stomach knotted, breath sick), as it climbed and sheered and—
“Watch out for—”
“—fucking flying this thing so please shut up—”
“—grand and full and burst with wounds—”
“Xiara, come back. Come on. Don’t listen to them. We’re here, we’re alive, I’m alive, dammit, I need you, just wake up, and everything will be—”
And then it stopped.
“—okay?”
The ship stilled and so did she. In seconds, heartbeats, breaths, Xiara came back: her eyes focused, silver and full again, then blue, her face her own, its little muscles once more animated by her mind. “Viv.” Her voice was raw silk but her voice again, not the cosmic oracle’s, not the fleetmind’s, just the small low human voice of a spear-carrier from Orn. “What happened? I dreamed—”
“Then stop,” Zanj said, and though Viv was turned away, she could hear the frown that accompanied Zanj’s words. “Weird. That shouldn’t be here.”
How could Viv not look?
A perfect green planetoid hung beneath them, blurred with clouds, in a globe void of wreckage, circled by dead, listing ships. Small for a planet, it was still bigger than any of the vast broken ships through which they’d flown—and grew larger as they approached.
“Um,” Gray said. “Guys. I can’t feel anything.”
Yes, larger. She hadn’t imagined that last part. Visibly larger, second by second. Which said a number of unsettling things about their speed, their vector, and their chances of survival over the next few minutes. Hong was praying again. Viv wished she had the knack.
Instead, she asked questions. “What do you mean, you can’t feel anything? Gray? What’s going on?”
“We’re fine,” Zanj said, working the controls in a way that suggested it wasn’t fine at all. “It’s fine.” Her repetition did not reassure.
Gray sputtered. “It is not fine!”
“Don’t be so dramatic. Something’s cut us off from the Cloud, that’s all.”
“And we’re going to crash.”
“That,” Zanj admitted, “is a bit more of a problem.”