Act III, Vexana: AbsentChapter 33
Chapter 33: The Sky Opens
Selrick Academy, the command deck. Morning, the same day.
The star over the bay tears open. Lesley gives out the roles, and Chang’e asks for the front line.
Lesley stood at the window with her rifle on her shoulder. Out over the bay, the small star in the sky was tearing open.
It split from four points into a ragged hole, ringed in magenta. Wind screamed into it. The bay heaved.
Something slid out upside down: black blocks and ribs, a city hung from the sky, wound in a storm. Smaller ships poured out around it.
Lesley knew it from the oldest records the Academy kept. The Storm Citadel.
The ships spat Enders. They dropped onto roofs and streets across town. Purple portals opened over the wards, and more came through. Sirens rose in every district.
The records said that storm killed every machine beneath it. Lesley keyed the command channel.
The placeStorm Citadel
“All posts. Report.”
“Gate, clear. Hall, clear. Tower, clear.” Every voice came back clean.
The channel held. She did not know why. She used it.
Chang’e stood at her elbow with a tablet half her size, Mr. Bunny at her shoulder. She was already reading.
“Roles,” said Lesley.
“Fanny, Layla, Guinevere: frontline assault. They meet the Enders head on.” Chang’e’s thumb flew. “Ruby and Angela: rear support. They hold the line behind.”
“Selena: mobile support.” Chang’e looked pleased. “She goes wherever the fight bends. Her machine is the fastest in my division.”
“Send it.”
The names went out. Chang’e lowered the tablet.
“Put me on the front line.”
“No.”
“I can’t keep hiding in Big Sis’s shadow. I’ll fight and grow, too.”
The old answer was already in Lesley’s mouth. No. Stay where I can see you. It was the answer she always gave.
“Don’t make me do this. Chang’e...”
Chang’e did not move. Mr. Bunny hung very still.
Lesley looked at the small girl in the child’s coat. Then at the Enders in the streets. There was no safe place left to put her.
“Rear line,” she said. “The hall’s back terrace. Ruby and Angela hold it. I take a roof with a line on you.”
“That’s not the front.”
“It’s as far forward as I can stand.”
Chang’e thought about it. “Deal.”
Lesley keyed the channel again. “Ruby.”
“Commander.” It was the polished voice, the perfect one.
“Chang’e is on your line. Nothing reaches her. That is an order.”
The channel hissed. Lesley waited for “Yes, ma’am.”
“It doesn’t have to be an order,” said Ruby. “I’d do it anyway.”
Lesley held the key a moment too long. Then she let it go.
She took a dormitory roof four hundred meters off and lay along the cold ridge. In her scope the hall’s back terrace sat small and clear. Chang’e’s console stood under a pane of Angela’s pale shield, and Ruby at the top of the steps with her scythe grounded.
“That’s very far, Big Sis,” said Chang’e in her ear.
“Distance is just a number. There’s no target beyond my reach.”
Chang’e’s voice came again, bright, on the open channel where every post could hear.
“Look! Mr. Bunny, it’s a new friend for you.”
In the glass Mr. Bunny floated up to the doll at Angela’s shoulder and tipped his ears. Angela held Tetra up to him in both hands. His screen showed a smile.
“Introductions,” said Ruby, “on a battle channel.”
“It’s polite!”
An Ender’s blast bit a slab off the hall’s cornice. It dropped toward the console. Lesley’s finger tightened, and there was nothing to shoot.
“Front,” said Chang’e, not looking up.
Mr. Bunny swung under the slab. It struck his casing with a bang like a dropped pot and skidded aside across the stone. He rose again. Chang’e had not lifted her eyes from the screen.
Lesley eased her finger off. She noted the word, and the machine that obeyed it.
“Mobile support,” she said. “Report.”
Nothing answered. She wrote the post down as empty and went back to the glass.
Chang’e’s console showed a spike taller than any she had seen.
The Citadel was the tall one, a spike wrapped in noise. She laid it over the old records. It matched.
Behind it ran a second trace, thin and slow and far away. It matched nothing. She searched every file she had. It fit only her void notes, the pages marked working on it.
A guess is not a claim, she thought. I have a guess.
She keyed the command channel.
“Big Sis. There’s a second pattern behind the Citadel. I can’t identify it. It fits nothing but my void notes.”
She swallowed. “This is only a guess. Something larger may be coming.”
“Larger than that?” said Ruby, with one eye on the black hulk overhead.
“I said it’s a guess.”
“Logged,” said Lesley’s voice. “Keep reading.”
The second trace sat on the console, thin and gray, and did not move. In the corner of the panel, the mobile-support light was still blinking. Nobody had answered it.