Nova War

She felt like she was going to be sick, and it occurred to her that she had absolutely no idea how the filmsuit would react if she vomited. Whatever design limitations it had so far remained a mystery.

She curled herself tight around the strut, and waited with eyes closed until her vertigo felt like it might be subsiding.

I can get through this. I've got my filmsuit back and I'm still alive, when by all rights I shouldn't be. I can get through this.

But why had her filmsuit activated just when it did? She'd spent so many long, lonely weeks staring out at the skies beyond her cell, wishing she could switch it on and throw herself down onto one of the platforms outside.

She focused on steadying her breathing, using calming exercises she'd learned a long time ago while still a student on Bellhaven. As she thought back to those times, it felt like she was experiencing someone else's memories: someone younger, more idealistic and much more sure of herself. In at least one respect, she was forced to admit Moss had been right: she'd been looking for an opportunity to redeem herself and to find a way back into her own good graces – let alone anyone else's.

Then she remembered how the filmsuit had worked, very briefly, while she was undergoing interrogation. But the Bandati had somehow prevented it from fully forming, perhaps using some form of remote signal to suppress it, or some other method she simply couldn't imagine.

But if it indeed was some kind of signal, or – for the sake of argument – some kind of field that prevented her filmsuit activating while she was still inside her cell, then its effect must have been highly localized.

Which meant all she'd ever needed to do was climb out far enough from her cell, and her filmsuit would have started working again.

She wondered what would happen if she just let go of the blimp. After all, following the destruction of Bourdain's Rock, her filmsuit had saved her when she'd collided with a chunk of rock the size of a mountain.

All she really needed to do was to let herself fall, all the way to the ground. The evidence suggested she'd walk away like nothing had happened.

Doing so was, however, an altogether different matter. Every nerve and muscle in her body screamed at her to hold on.

Unfortunately, it was starting to look like she might not have much choice. The blimp was sinking faster, and starting to come apart. The invading spacecraft meanwhile was in the process of touching down on a clear spot near the banks of the river, not far from a random collection of buildings and what had once been either gardens or cultivated fields, but were now – in common with much of Darkwater – thoroughly ablaze.

Fuck it.

She let out a bellow of frustration and let go of the blimp just as the flames spread to consume the section where she'd been clinging so desperately. She screamed as she dropped free, catching sight of the burning blimp as she fell. It crashed into the tower platform closest to her cell, which was itself already ablaze.

The air whistled past her ears and she screamed again, suddenly unsure of her filmsuit's ability to protect her from such a long drop.

As the ground came rushing towards her, spreading ever wider below, she could see the invading ship more clearly now. Tiny figures were emerging from openings in the upper part of its hull, and began gliding around its nose on wings spread wide. That they were Bandati was clear. Some of them broke away from the invading ship and started making their way toward the same stretch of river Dakota was currently dropping towards.

Coming for me.

She felt sure of it.

A pulse ca

It occurred to Dakota that, if she was going to survive this latest crisis, she wanted to land somewhere she could easily evade being caught. Landing in the river or on open ground was just going to make it even easier to pinpoint her.

Angling her body slightly, effectively swimming through the air, she aimed for a collection of rooftops separated by tightly winding alleyways and passages, and away from the Bandati invaders she'd sighted moments before.

The ground rushed up, faster and faster. Some of the rooftops directly beneath her burst spontaneously into flames, smoke and heat blooming towards her and obscuring her vision. She guessed a pulse ca

In the last few moments of free fall, prior to impact, she got a look at the nearest of the Bandati that had emerged from the Orion ship. It looked like a remarkably detailed sculpture cut from black stone that had come to life, more like a mobile winged silhouette, incongruous amongst the dozens of bright fires that had broken out across Darkwater.

They had filmsuits, she realized with a shock, and it was the first time she'd seen anybody else with the technology since the botched deal that had led her to Bourdain's Rock.

Dakota hit the ground four seconds later. The road surface immediately under her cracked as it absorbed the kinetic energy of the impact, leaving her miraculously undamaged. As in her encounter with a flying mountain, she had failed to feel a thing. Except that this time she had experienced a brief moment of blankness – as if time had skipped ahead half a second at the precise moment of impact.

Her implants flagged an alert: the internal battery pack that powered her filmsuit was at zero, so she wouldn't be using it again any time soon. Indeed, as this knowledge slipped into her thoughts, she felt the filmsuit pull itself off her bare body, draining back through the pores of her skin and leaving her naked and defenceless on the streets of a burning alien city.

She crouched like an animal, taking in her immediate surroundings.

What she hadn't been able to see from way up in the tower was that every building down here at ground level actually stood on stilts several metres high. Yet no two constructions appeared to be alike, and each one was so thoroughly asymmetric as to appear to have been built by a team of blind architects without any prior design specification.

Hearing some kind of commotion nearby, she moved quickly into the shadows beneath one large habitation, and spied dozens of Bandati gathered together in a narrow open space nearby, all clicking and chittering at once in a great cacophonous racket.

She crept forward to find several ladders leaning against the side of the neighbouring building. A wide door set into the wall had been pushed to one side, revealing a large warehouse-like space within. Some more Bandati, positioned at the top of these ladders, were lowering bundles of what might have been large fleshy sacs – eggs? – to their companions still on the ground. Others simply spread their wings and hopped up into the warehouse, apparently intent on retrieving what they could. Smoke drifted across this busy scene and the noisy clicking of the Bandati grew more frenetic.

Dakota whirled around on hearing the sound of something thud into the wet sand behind her. She saw several more Bandati come to land immediately next to the building she'd hidden under, except these newcomers were sheathed in filmsuits identical to her own.

One of them caught sight of Dakota, and stepped into the shadows surrounding her, his liquid shield quickly draining away to reveal a complicated harness worn over his shoulders and fitting between the two sets of wings sprouting from his back. The Bandati pulled a long pipe from his harness – no, not a pipe, she realized, but a shotgun of some kind, with a trigger and guard clearly visible.

The newcomer reached up to his throat to activate an interpreter hanging there. 'Dakota Merrick?' he asked.