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She suddenly raised her rodent head and emitted an ear-piercing screech through a circular mouth caged by fangs. Eyes glittered a devilish red. She opened what had been her arms to spread her new wings wide. The leathery membrane was thin enough to be translucent, revealing a lacework of minute black veins beneath the dark amber surface.
Oh, fuck,rubra exclaimed. No bloody way! I don’t care what she looks like, she weighs too much to fly.
That won’t matter anymore,dariat said. The reality dysfunction is powerful enough to sustain her; we’re in the universe of fables, now. If she wants to fly, she will.
Bo
She’ll catch me,a stricken dariat said. She’s going to reach the axis chamber before me. I’ll never get Tatiana out.“anastasia!” he cried. “My love, it can’t end like this. Not again. I can’t fail you again.”
Tatiana stared at him in fright, not understanding.
Do something,he begged.
Like what?rubra’s mental voice was faint, lacking interest.
Remember your classics,the kohistan consensus said. Before today, Icarus and Daedalus were the only people ever to fly with their own wings. Only one survived. Think what happened to Icarus.
Bo
She could now see that horn of ions retreating from the southern hub as Rubra increased the power flowing through the cables at that end. The magnetic field was expanding to squeeze the plasma along the tube. At the northern end, he cut the power completely to one specific section of the mesh. Plasma rushed out of the gap, inflating flamboyantly as it liberated itself from the constricting flux lines.
From Bo
“All this,” she cried disbelievingly, “for me?”
The air caught in the cup of the endcap was torn asunder by the racing plasma, sending her spi
A siren started to whistle as soon as Dariat broke the hatch seal; half of the corridor lighting panels turned red, flashing urgently. He ignored the clamour and floated through the small metallic airlock chamber.
The escape pod was a simple one-deck sphere, four metres in diameter, with twelve thickly padded acceleration couches laid out petal fashion. Dariat emerged from a hatch set at their centre. There was only one instrument panel, barely more than a series of power-up switches. He flicked them all on, watching the status schematics turn green.
Tatiana hauled herself gingerly through the airlock, looking dangerously queasy. Her dreadlocks swarmed around her head, their beads making tiny clacking sounds as they knocked against each other.
“Take any couch,” Dariat instructed. “We’re coming on line.”
She rotated herself carefully into one of the couches. Webbing unfurled from its sides to creep over her.
Dariat took the couch opposite to her, so that they were feet to feet. Are the other pods armed?
Yes. Most of them. Dariat, I don’t exist on the other side of the starscrapers anymore; I see nothing, I feel nothing, I don’t even think down there.
A minute more, that’s all.he reached up and pressed the launch sequencer. The airlock hatch hinged down. “I’m going to leave soon, Tatiana. Horgan will be back in charge of his own body again. Take care of him, he’s only fifteen. He’s going to be suffering.”
“Of course I will.”
“I . . . I know Rubra only forced us together to put pressure on me. But I’m still glad I met you.”
“Me too. It laid a lot of old demons to rest. You showed me I was wrong.”
“How?”
“I thought she’d made a mistake with you. She hadn’t. The cure just took a very long time. She’s going to be proud of you when you finally catch up with her.”
Two-thirds of Valisk’s shell was now fluorescing a lambent crimson; dazzling dawn-red light shone out of the starscraper windows. Inside, the possessed were united, they could perceive the entire habitat now. The flow of its fluids and gases through the plexus of tubules and pipes and ducts was as intimate to them as the blood pumping around their own veins and arteries. Rubra’s flashing thought routines, too, were apparent, snapping through the neural strata like volleys of sheet lightning. Under their auspices his thoughts were slowing and dimming, retreating down the length of the cylinder as their will to banish the curse of him from their lives grew dominant.
They knew now of all the remaining non-possessed Rubra had hidden throughout the interior. Twenty-eight had survived Bo
Profound changes were propagating outside the habitat. Nanonic-sized interstices flicked open, only to decay within milliseconds. The incessant foam of fluctuations was creating distortion waves similar to those generated by voidhawks. But these lacked any sort of order or focus. Chaos had visited local space-time, weakening the fabric around the shell.
Furious hellhawks swarmed above the northern endcap. Harpies and hyperspace starships spun and swooped around each other at hazardous velocities, their flights dangerously unstable as the massive distortion effects buffeted them as a tempest treated leaves.
The bodies!they clamoured to these possessed snug inside who were capable of affinity. Kiera promised us the bodies in zero-tau. If you leave now we will never have them. You are condemning us to a life in these constructs.