“And who are you?”
I turned—followed by my train of angry Krell ships—and buzzed over the six newcomers who had just arrived at the battle. I could barely get a visual on them because the destructor fire around me was so thick. I took another hit, and a fourth.
“Shield at forty percent strength,” M-Bot noted.
I stayed ahead of most of the enemies, finding the holes between shots, my instincts somehow reading the Krell motions.
Stars appeared in my vision. Pinpricks of light.
The eyes.
Jorgen’s voice rang through the channel. “Sir, with all due respect, she’s a person you should listen to. Now.”
Terrier grunted, then said, “Riptide Flight, all ships, engage those black fighters.”
“Not all,” I said, spinning right. “Jorgen, FM, you there?”
“Here, Spin,” FM said.
“You two. Take position near that bomber. I’m going to lead this swarm of Krell back around to it and hopefully give you enough of a distraction to get in close. When that happens, I need you to IMP that bomber. We don’t have much time left.”
“Roger,” Jorgen said. “On me, FM?”
“Gotcha.”
I swung in a wide loop, passing by Kimmalyn—who flew carefully out beyond the main battlefield. My entourage ignored her, presuming me to be the dangerous one.
“Quirk,” I said over a private channel. “I need you to shoot that bomber.”
“If that ship crashes, it will detonate the bomb,” Kimmalyn said. “You’ll die. You’ll all die. Even if you escape, everyone in Alta will die.”
“Do you think you can knock the ship’s engines out? Or do something to get that bomber to drop the bomb?”
“A shot like that would—”
“Kimmalyn. What would the Saint say?”
“I don’t know!”
“Then what would you say? Remember? The first day we met?”
I banked and spun back toward the bomber. Terrier and his ships, along with Arturo and Nedd, had thrown themselves at the black fighters. I bore down on it all, bringing the rest of the ships in to create a chaotic, frenzied jumble.
“Under thirty seconds,” M-Bot said softly.
“You told me to take a deep breath,” I said to Kimmalyn. “Reach up . . .”
“Pluck a star,” she whispered.
My arrival—and the ships chasing me—created the confusion I’d anticipated. Ships darted in every direction, and the black ships scattered out of the way, trying to avoid collisions with their own vessels.
In my mind, I heard a specific Krell order sent to the bomber. The eyes accompanied me, somehow growing brighter—more hateful—as I heard the Krell chatter in my mind.
Initiate countdown to detonation at one hundred seconds.
“M-Bot!” I said. “Someone above just set the bomb to explode on a one-hundred-second countdown!”
“How do you know?”
“I can hear them!”
“Hear them how? They aren’t using radio that I can monitor!” He paused. “Can you hear their superluminal communications?”
I caught a flash to my right. “IMP struck!” FM shouted, excited. “Bomber shields down!”
“Quirk, fire!” I screamed.
A line of red light pierced the battlefield. It passed between Krell ships, went right over Jorgen’s wing as he overburned away from the bomber.
And damn me if it didn’t spear the exact spot between the bomber and the bomb, severing the clamps. The bomber continued flying forward.
But the bomb, cut free, dropped.
“Lifebuster dropped!” Terrier shouted. “All ships, overburn out! Now!”
Everyone scattered, Krell included. Everyone but me.
I dove.
53
“Lifebuster dropped,” Riptide flightleader shouted. “All ships, overburn out! Now!”
Judy let out a long sigh as she stood, hands behind her back, watching the hologram. Around her, in the command center, a few people clapped. A few others prayed. Rikolfr wept.
Judy just watched the bomb fall. She’d done what she could. Perhaps humankind could rebuild, with the remaining ships that survived. Perhaps the Defiants would continue on.
They’d do it without Alta. She braced herself. Ships scattered, to try to escape the blast. All but one.
That one dove toward the bomb.
“The defect,” Judy whispered.
I speared the bomb with my lightlance, then pulled up in a curve that overwhelmed M-Bot’s incredible GravCaps. The force pressed me against my seat as, by a narrow margin, I crested a dusty hillside—towing the lifebuster bomb after me.
M-Bot put up a timer, mirroring the one on the bomb. Forty-five seconds.
“We need to get this thing outside the death zone,” I said, slamming the throttle full forward and putting everything into an overburn away.
“This will be close,” he said. “I’m extending the atmospheric scoop so we don’t rip that bomb off our lightlance as we accelerate, but above Mag-16 the scoop’s envelope will shrink too much to fully shelter the bomb, so that’s our max for now . . .”
We tore away from Alta, accelerating to speeds no DDF ship could have managed, despite that restriction. I felt the g-forces even through his GravCaps. We careened through the middle of a pack of DDF ships—they were gone in a blink.
“We’re going to make it!” M-Bot said. “Just barely. But we’ll . . . Oh.”
“What?” I asked.
“We’ll be in the middle of the blast when it explodes, Spensa. And I don’t want to die. This is very inconvenient.”
The countdown hit ten. Ahead, I saw a swarm of black dots in the air. Krell chasing after the DDF ships.
“There has to be a way out of this!” M-Bot said. “Booster and thrusters: online. No, not fast enough. Acclivity ring and altitude controls: online. Can we rise quickly enough? No, no, no!”
I felt at peace. Serene.
“Communications and stealth systems: online, but useless. Lightlance: online, carrying the bomb. If we drop it too soon, the wave will hit Alta.”
I sank into the ship, feeling—becoming—his very processors as they worked. I felt the number counting down to three.
“Self-repair: offline. Destructors: offline.”
Two.
I felt, more than saw, the blossom of the bomb’s first explosion behind. And I felt, more than heard, M-Bot’s diagnostic tool working.
“Biological component engaged,” his voice said.
One.
“Cytonic hyperdrive: online.”
An explosion of fire surrounding us.
“What?” M-Bot said. “Spin! Engage the—”
I did something with my mind.
We vanished, leaving a ship-size hole in the expanding blossom of flame and destruction.
54
In that moment between heartbeats, I felt myself enter someplace dark. A place not just black, a place of nothingness. Where matter did not, and could not, exist.
In that moment between heartbeats, I somehow stopped being. yet didn’t stop experiencing. A field of white appeared around me—a billion stars. Like eyes opening at once, shining upon me.
Ancient things stirred. And in that moment between heartbeats, they not only saw me, but they knew me.