Chapter 17
“You,” Vera tells Lament and me as she starts up the split-wing, “are going to owe me for this.”
Jester, Lament, and I have all piled into Vera’s Sky Runner.
It took more than a little coaxing to convince Lament to ride along with us rather than travel separately in his skimmer, but apparently he’s more likely to fly with others if he’s not doing the actual flying.
Not that he’s coming quietly. He made an enormous fuss over Vera’s takeoff procedures, admonishing her for forgoing her preflight checklist and, in his words, “prioritizing convenience over convention.” Then he started in on me for the way I was buckling my safety harness, slapping my hands away to tighten the straps himself.
He even had a go at Jester for forgetting his anti-reflection visor spray before Vera snapped, in frankly frightening tones, “You can nag the rest of us all you want, but leave Jest out of this.”
Now, Vera flips a few final controls, pulls the split-wing’s throttle, and up we go. “See?” she says sweetly as the land shrinks beneath us. “No checklist needed.”
“That’s a gross overgeneralization.” Lament has his arms crossed, his shoulder wedged against the door.
His mouth has turned perilously close to a pout.
“Just because you got us off the ground doesn’t mean we’re in the clear.
The checklist is there for a reason. Do you want to lose a wing before we get to Mount Kilmon? ”
“We’re not going to lose a wing.”
“You could. If there’s a loose bolt—”
“There isn’t.”
“Or your radar system malfunctions—”
“It won’t.”
I peer out the window as they continue to squabble, watching our shadow slide over farmlands and fields and wide, gray rivers.
It’s all so typically Venthros: green and brown, wet and dry, like swirls on a marble.
Sparse, mostly. Wild and unpopulated. Mount Kilmon sits way in the distance, a massive, singular presence, and though I can’t see it from here, I know the village Longji—and Master Ira’s school—is sprawled somewhere in its foothills.
If Ran Doc Min is right and Mount Kilmon spews poisonous gas across the planet during its next eruption, Master Ira will be among the victims.
Is that what Professor Morton meant back on Skyhub? Is that the threat to the Master’s life?
Vera tips her controls to bring the Sky Runner low over a forest, close enough that the trees shuffle in our wake. Mount Kilmon looms larger the closer we fly, its ashen face stark in the light of the setting sun.
“What are those?” Vera asks, pointing to a row of large metal cylinders visible at the volcano’s base.
“Heat collectors,” I reply.
Vera glances back at me. “Oh?”
“That’s how the people of Venthros capture the energy needed to power the planet.
” I strain for a better look, but we’re still too far to really see any details.
“Every nine years, the collectors trap heat from Mount Kilmon’s eruption and transfer it to Venthros’s Grid.
It all happens within a matter of hours.
It has to, because eventually the lava reaches the units and submerges them.
It doesn’t destroy the collectors—they’re made of magma-resistant alloy—but it does cut off their ability to transfer power.
Once the lava cools, the collectors are dug out, and the cycle starts again. ”
There’s a silence. I realize too late that Vera’s question was likely intended for Jester, since he’s the Sixth’s intelligence officer with access to the Legion’s knowledge repository, or maybe even for Lament, given he’s the resident know-it-all.
“Wow,” Vera finally says. “How do you know all that?”
“Oh, um—”
An alarm on Vera’s dashboard starts beeping furiously.
Air quality warning, Jester says. Unknown fumes detected.
Vera pulls the split-wing into a hover. We’ve reached the point where the trees give way to open grassland, which slopes into a valley and then back up toward the volcano.
Vera flips some levers on her dash (no idea what they do, but it looks complicated and official) before tossing Jester a look. “Can you pull up the map?”
Jester goes still for a second, concentrating on the image inside his visor. I’ve got it.
He clicks a button, and a live 3D image of Mount Kilmon projects into the cockpit for us to view.
And it’s wild, how you can look at something so many times you almost stop seeing it, only to encounter that thing years later and realize you still have it memorized.
I was raised in Mount Kilmon’s shadow. I recognize every angle, the jagged gouge near its base, the way the light catches its crags and peaks.
I compare Jester’s holographic image to the real-life Mount Kilmon outside my window, and it looks exactly like I remember.
Almost exactly.
Because there, seeping from the volcano’s stunted peak, is a filmy halo of a substance I’ve never seen before. Doc Min said the voroxide is a type of gas, which I assumed meant it would be clear, but the haze leaking out of Mount Kilmon isn’t clear. It looks … well, it looks like white mist.
“Is that…?” Vera points at the wispy tendrils in Jester’s hologram, which are outlined by a yellow line that reads UNIDENTIFIED FUMES. “Could that be…?”
Lament is frozen at my side. His mouth is tight, the veins standing out on the back of his hands. “Take us down.”
Vera casts him a worried glance. “I don’t think that’s the best—”
“We need to know for sure.”
“I’m not taking us there,” she says, twirling a finger at Jester’s projection. “Not within range of those fumes. We’ll land farther back.”
It takes Vera a minute to find a break in the trees, and by the time we descend through the forest canopy and land on uneven ground, the sky has blued to dusk. The foliage is thick, the earth quiet. Mount Kilmon has vanished from view.
“Air quality?” Vera prompts.
We’re clear if we stick to the forest, Jester confirms, but we’ll need masks if we want to venture any closer.
“Um,” I say. “I hope these are super-special impenetrable masks? On account of not wanting to inhale what may or may not be rabid space mist?”
Not quite. Jester gives a weak smile. They’re MeshGuard. But they do have a hookup for oxygen.
“And do we have any oxygen?”
Jester grimaces. No.
“We’re not going close enough to require masks,” Lament says as he opens the Sky Runner’s door. “Vera’s right. What we’re looking for can be found—”
A screaming ape launches from the trees and goes for Lament’s throat.
My ray gun is firing before I’m conscious of pulling it off my hip.
The beam connects with the ape’s thigh, but somehow the beast manages to spin with the impact, continuing its mad fall onto Lament.
Its massive canines sink into Lament’s shoulder, its nails into his arm.
Lament makes a strangled sound and I shoot again, clicking the ray gun into Exile Mode, blasting the ape with such force it’s catapulted back into the trees.
But it doesn’t matter—it doesn’t matter—because Lament is losing his grip on the door, stumbling the rest of the way out of the spacecraft, catching himself on one knee on the ground below. His whites are raked with bloody lines.
“Lament.” I hurl myself through the door after him.
The gash on his shoulder is deep, ragged from where the creature’s teeth went in.
Lament’s face is sheet-white, and he’s blinking down at his fingers like they don’t belong to him.
Vera starts speaking frantically into her wristwatch while Jester pulls gauze out of a medical bag.
The world wavers before my eyes. “Lament, Lament, are you okay?”
Overhead, another ape gives a cry. I let out a snarl as I twist to take aim, and—
Eyes. In the branches overhead, stretching in every direction. We’re surrounded by a horde of apes with glowing blue eyes.
Time seems to slow. Behind me, Vera falls silent.
Jester’s feet grind to a halt. Lament is still on his hands beneath me, wounded, exposed.
I take a single, dry breath. I won’t panic.
I won’t, because I’m trained for this. Made for it.
I’ve got a ray gun in my hand and the enemy in sight, and I know at any moment my instincts will take over.
I’ll become filled with that sense of rightness, that starburst feeling of strength and surety that steadies my aim and sharpens my vision and makes me feel invincible, makes me feel powerful and superhuman and alive.
Except the sensation never arrives. All I feel is my lifestone hard against my chest, and the wavering heat from the Sky Runner’s power packs, my own mounting terror.
There must be a hundred apes overhead, each of them man-size, bigger, with keen, naked faces and mounds of corded muscle.
I can’t take them all alone, and Lament is bleeding out at my feet, and I’m suddenly very aware that the gun in my grip isn’t even mine.
It’s a fancy Legion-issued confection that’s got a thousand bells and whistles and no soul at all, and the apes are tensed to attack, and I’m scared to fucking death.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I breathe to Jester. My pulse is so loud I can hardly hear my own voice. “You and Vera get Lament in the Runner. Slowly. No sudden movements. I’ll stay back as long as I can and hold—”
Another ape screams, and like a dam breaking, they descend.
“Go!” I yell as I begin blasting apes from the sky.
Jester and Vera pull a half-conscious Lament into the back of the Runner while I fire with everything I’ve got, no special feeling of empowerment, no fucking ninja-Zen, just a chest full of adrenaline and fear and me fending off the onslaught one blast at a time.
One of the apes bares its teeth, saliva threading between two yellow incisors, and how can I even see that unless the creature is already too close?
I punch the ape in its slitted nose; the impulse judders painfully up my arm.
My heart is trying to escape through my neck, and my hands are shaking so badly I nearly miss my next shot, and then I really do start to panic, because the wall of apes is closing in. It’s like the cave raptors all over again, except these things aren’t after each other, they’re after us—
“Hartman!” Vera screeches. “We’ve got him. Get in!”
I hurl myself into the Sky Runner, kicking an ape in the face as it tries to clamber in after me.
I have to try twice to yank the door shut as the creature shoves its arms inside, and I’m whimpering and flailing and totally out of my mind with terror.
Vera blasts us off the ground before my door is fully closed, and I think nonsensically, She really doesn’t care about the checklist.
The apes slam into the Sky Runner’s sides as we clear the trees. I finally manage to get the door shut, which blocks out the screams as abruptly as someone switching off a radio. “Oh,” I croak. “Oh hell.”
“Hold on,” Vera says shakily, speeding us away from the forest. “This might get bumpy.”
Lament has slid halfway down in his seat, his eyes hooded, skin so pale he’s practically translucent. There’s a lot of blood, too much, and for a moment it’s all I can see. Jester is there in the back seat with us on Lament’s opposite side, holding a wad of gauze, applying pressure to the wounds.
“How can I help?” I ask. “What can I do?”
Try to keep him awake, Jester says.
I slide up next to Lament, ignoring the coppery smell, the way his whites are soaked through. I try to put my face in his line of vision. “Lament?” He focuses for a moment, but then his eyes start to drift closed. “Hey, hey, stay with me, okay? Talk to me. Tell me something.”
He gives a cough. “No.”
“Oh, oh good.” I can hardly catch my breath. “You’re still a stubborn bastard.” Except, my voice comes out like a dead frog because I’m this close to completely unraveling. I look at Vera in the pilot’s seat up front. “How far?”
“Four minutes.” She sounds like she wants to cry. “I’d shift into hyperspeed but we’d overshoot it. I’m going as fast as I can. I’ve called the others—Illiviamona is waiting and ready at the cargo craft.”
“Four minutes,” I tell Lament, but he’s closed his eyes. “Lament, come on. You have to stay awake.”
“Tired,” he manages.
“I know, hey, I know, okay?” I scoot even closer and take his hand. His eyes come open. I link our fingers together, and he blinks rapidly. “How do you feel? Listen, okay? I need details. Has the transformation begun yet?”
“Transformation?”
“You know. The shift. I’ve read the legends, don’t think I haven’t. This is what happens after a monster bites you. You’ll start to grow fur and claws and before you know it, you’ll be howling at the moon.”
He wheezes a breath. “Idiot.”
Talking. He’s talking. This is good. “I’m just saying. That’s how it works, right?”
“I’m not a werewolf.”
“Are you sure?”
His eyes go unfocused.
“Lament.” I tug on his hand. “Want to hear a secret?”
Another wet cough. “You don’t have any secrets.”
“Sure I do.” I run my thumb over his palm, back and forth, little motions I doubt he can even feel. “I tried looking you up before I got to Skyhub. I wanted to know who my new partner was going to be.”
“Who says we’re partners?” he croaks.
That gets me smiling, and fucking hell, how am I supposed to not crumble into pieces?
“Problem is, I could barely find any info on you. I even called in favors—do you know that NewsNet correspondent Rudy Rivon?—to try to help me dig up something. And for what? You were a pain in my ass even before we met. But you want to know something?” I lower my voice so he knows I mean this.
“I’m glad it wasn’t easy to look you up.
I think if I’d been able to read about you before we met, I’d have come armed with all these preconceived ideas. ”
“Because your first impression of me was so stellar.”
“No, I know it wasn’t. But it was real. And that’s—” My voice is trembling. “That’s what I want. You know? For this to be real.”
He doesn’t reply to that. But his hand tightens in mine.
“Almost there,” Vera says. “Beginning our descent.”
When we touch down, Illiviamona is waiting outside The Bargainer with the rest of the Sixers.
There’s no stretcher on board, so I get my arm up under Lament’s good side and help leverage him out of the spacecraft as carefully as possible.
“Take a step?” I coax, and he tries, but sways ominously.
His pupils are too large; his wounds weep fresh blood. I think he must be in shock.
I attempt to stuff down a swell of emotion.
“All right, here we go.” I swoop his knees out from under him and carry him the rest of the way into the cargo craft.
He wraps his arms around my neck without complaint, and I think everyone must fear how bad of a shape he’s in, because even Vera—who would normally be falling over herself by this turn of events—doesn’t say a word.