Chapter 13 #2
Joy moved through the chaos, her eyes darting from one cluster of people to the next. She carried an armful of bandages and old towels, distributing them to anyone with a scrape or burn. She didn’t talk much. She pressed a cloth to a forehead here, a shoulder there, then moved on.
Gascha set up a triage line under the Casino’s front awning.
She used a folding table from the ballroom, laying out the med kits and the ration packs in rows.
She gestured two Ci Dyn to help her, and they organized the food and water with a brisk, military efficiency.
When the table was full, she had them start sweeping glass from the steps, then clearing the entry so nobody would track blood or oil inside.
Joanne and her crew arrived late, having come from the Sea Hunter, which had been on the far side of the bay during the fight.
They walked up the road at a fast jog, Joanne leading, her hair tied back and her face stone.
She took one look at the scene, then started helping move the next set of crates up the steps. Not a word. She got to work.
The sun was setting behind the Casino, throwing long shadows across the parking lot and turning every oil puddle gold.
The fire from the robot cat’s main section was still putting off a steady stream of heat.
I told two of the girls to keep an eye on it, make sure it didn’t catch anything else, and then to leave it until morning, when we could break it down properly.
I made the rounds, checking each group, not giving orders so much as letting them know I was there. A hand on a shoulder, a nod, a quiet word if someone looked like they needed it. There wasn’t much to say. Everyone had done their job. Everyone was still alive.
Autumn finished her healing run and found me at the far edge of the lot, near the sea wall.
She looked tired but bright. Her hair was full of grit, and her dress had a fresh rip at the hem, but she seemed taller than before, more solid.
She didn’t say anything. She leaned into my side and let her arm slide around my waist.
We watched the sun slip into the ocean, the air cooling fast. All around, the work went on: the scrape of shovels, the ring of dropped metal, the hum of women singing low as they worked. I felt the pulse in my chest slow a little.
The wind off the water carried the sound away, then brought it back, softer.
I let Autumn lean, and let the world be still, if only for a minute.
We had made it through.
* * *
The Casino parking lot emptied fast after the last crate moved.
The women went inside, first the wounded, then the helpers, leaving only the night watch and the ruins of the fight.
The strings of light over the lot buzzed and flickered, pushing yellow stripes across the busted cars and the still-smoking panther hull.
I took a spot against the seaward wall and let my head fall back, the concrete scraping at a spot behind my ear.
The cold off the channel bit sharper as the sun went down.
I felt it through the cotton of my shirt, wet with sweat that had nowhere to go in the thick, humid air.
Out on the tarmac, two Ci Dyn paced the perimeter, boots crunching wet gravel.
They didn’t speak; they did a slow loop, ears up and tails level, passing every sixty seconds like wind-up toys on patrol.
The robot panther sat where it fell, dark and reflective, the blue oil pooled around it in mirrors that caught the light from Horizon’s hull and doubled it.
I didn’t realize I was alone until Lyubor stepped out from the shadow of the main entrance. She didn’t have her staff. Her hands were empty, arms loose, not the usual poised, old-world posture she liked. She walked across the lot like she was measuring every step.
When she reached the wall, she stood a few feet away, not close enough for conversation, but not far enough to pretend it was by accident.
She didn’t look at me. She watched the panther wreckage.
Her hair, platinum and loose, moving in the wind, falling around her shoulders and catching the yellow from the string lights.
Her jaw was set, lips pressed flat. I’d seen that look on men at funerals, or on women the moment they realized the world was never going to reset back to “normal.”
For a long time, she didn’t speak. I waited.
At last she said, “That thing frightened me.” Her accent got thicker, words pushing hard through the consonants. “More than anything since we came here.”
I shifted against the wall, felt the scrape of concrete through the shirt, let the ache in my ribs do its job. “Yeah,” I said, not trying to fill the space. “Me too.”
Lyubor’s eyes tracked the ruined machine.
“I tried everything. Detect, disrupt, even bind.” She tapped a finger against her thigh, the movement sharp and angry.
“Nothing. Not a shimmer. My magic slid off it like water off chrome. Even when I forced it, the spell rebounded. It is not alive, not even a little. It is not of this world.”
I thought of the blue glow, the way the robo cat dropped out of the portal like a package with a shipping label and a deadline.
How it moved and shrugged off every rifle round and every impact until a vital part finally gave.
I’d hit it hard with the Inferno, full sheath, everything I had, and it still came on.
Against a living animal, that much heat would have cooked it from the inside.
Against this thing, it was another problem it had to ignore until the plating finally cracked.
It was like going up against a heavy tank. I could have burned it down eventually if I’d had the range and the time, but standing that close, I wouldn’t have lived long enough to finish the job. The firebolts I’d practiced could reach two hundred feet easily.
I need to fight smarter, because this will not be the last encounter with a threat strong enough to kill every last one of us. Of that, I’m sure.
Lyubor exhaled, then let her head fall a fraction.
“We are not ready,” she said, the words flat.
“My people will need new ways to fight things that are not alive.” She paused to look at the robot’s remains.
“I am not convinced that even the dragon, Beldryth the Ancient, could have destroyed such a thing.”
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t a right answer to that. I kept my back pressed to the wall, ribs hurting, hands in my pockets. I let her words settle in.
The wind shifted, pushing cold from the ocean straight across the lot.
The fine spray from the surf brought the tang of salt and oil, then pushed it away.
The Horizon’s hull threw back a faint blue glow that skated across the puddles and flashed in the oil like a string of tiny beacons.
The watch team did their rounds, always in pairs, the rhythm so tight I could have set a watch to it.
Lyubor’s fists were loose at her sides, but the knuckles stood out pale and hard. Her face didn’t move, but the line of her jaw made it clear she was grinding her teeth to dust. I caught a glimpse of her in profile, the edge of her cheek lit up against the night.
I flexed my hands, felt the dull throb of bruised knuckles, then pressed them flat against the wall.
Lyubor turned to me at last. Her eyes were bright, but the rest of her face was blank. “Do you have a plan?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “But I’ll find one.” I thought about the words, then shrugged. “We survived. For now, that’s the job.”
She took this in, then nodded. “We will watch. We will learn. But next time, if there is next time—” She left the sentence open, then let it die.
There was no threat in it. Only a fact.
We stood there a while longer, neither looking at the other.
The lot was empty except for the night watch and the robot’s corpse.
From inside the Casino, I heard laughter, low and uneven, the sound of women too tired to be afraid, or maybe afraid to stop moving long enough to remember what happened.
Lyubor stepped away from the wall. She walked back toward the front door, but she didn’t hurry.
I watched her go, then turned my face back to the water.
I waited by the railing until my shirt dried stiff and the wind in my ears made every other sound too soft to matter.
The oil-slick moon laid a streak over the harbor, wide enough to see the anchor lights from the Sea Hunter and the faint white gleam of Chesapeake’s patched masts.
I counted three shadows walking the lot below, two human, one Ci Dyn.
The human pair circled the wreckage of the panther, heads bent together, shoes leaving black streaks in the wet.
The Ci Dyn sat on the hood of a car, eating from a tin and not bothering to hide it. There was nothing else moving.
I checked the side door and found Joy waiting, arms folded, watching the same patch of sea as me.
Her hair was back in a twist, with a few black wisps stuck to her cheeks in the damp.
She wore jeans and a blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and her bare feet were flat on the wet concrete.
She blinked once at me, then at the dark.
Akia leaned in the doorway. She had a notepad in her left hand and a pencil in her right, its tip jammed into the fur above her ear.
Her skirt was wrinkled, hem stained with grease, and she had a piece of tape over one nipple, like she’d started fixing it and given up halfway through.
She didn’t say anything until I came up even with her.
“Alpha,” she said. “You are ten minutes late for perimeter check.”
I offered a small smile and said, “You have the watch?”
“I have the watch,” she said, then gestured at Joy. “She is a shadow. I am lead.”
Joy’s lips pressed together with the smallest show of teeth. “If you want to skip it, I’ll say we did it anyway,” she said. “But Akia will remember.”
I looked at Akia, who nodded with solemn certainty. “I will remember, and I will tell Casey.”
“Let’s walk,” I said.