Chapter 41: Beside an Ender

Fanny stood at the platform’s rail with her blades low. She had not raised them since the two stars went in.

The Singularity burned over the bay, wide open. The Mother Matrix stood in its mouth with its wings spread. Layla was counting under her breath, past two hundred.

Then the Singularity flared white.

Two lights shot out of it, one gold and one violet. They rose over the Matrix’s crown and turned. Then they came down at its chest together, from the city’s side.

Light broke over it. The Mother Matrix gave ground, one step, then another, back into the Singularity’s light, until that light closed over it. Where it had stood, there was only the burning rift.

Pushed back, thought Fanny. The Shield never calls a thing dead without a body.

The two lights dropped onto the platform. Guinevere landed laughing, her pink hair wild, both drones burning at her shoulders. Vexana landed beside her in her Ender robe, blue-lavender hair fading to magenta, the staff in her hand.

Her left sleeve was still gone to the elbow. The arm under it, burned raw before the charge, was whole.

“Took you long enough,” said Layla.

“We were busy saving each other!”

Then portals tore open over the wards, and the Enders poured out.

They fought down off the platforms and through the streets toward the Academy. Guinevere and Vexana fought back to back. The drones took the Enders at Vexana’s back. The staff took the ones at Guinevere’s. Neither of them said a word.

Fanny flew low on Vexana’s left. Layla ran the roofs above them. One street over, Ruby and Angela held a crossing under the shield.

An Ender stepped out of a doorway behind Vexana, on her left, where she was not looking. Its arm went up. Its chest plates began to split.

Fanny had been raised for a world with no place for the Enders. No place for mercy on the battlefield, her sergeants said.

Vexana wore an Ender’s robe and carried an Ender’s staff. Fanny had watched her charge the Matrix for all of them.

Cover her, Fanny told herself, as she would have told a squad. She put her blade between them. It went into the open chest as the claw came down. The Ender burst apart over Vexana’s shoulder.

Vexana looked back and nodded, once.

On the roof above, Layla was grinning.

“And now, it’s our time to shine!”

“Hey,” said Fanny. “That’s my line!”

The storm overhead dropped.

The Storm Citadel came down out of the clouds, lower than it had hung all morning, huge over the Academy’s roofs. Rubble lifted off the street. Stones the size of trucks rose into the air and hung there.

A sphere of light spread from the ship’s belly. It grew, and swallowed the towers under it one by one.

The Enders came all at once, from every portal. They drove into the street in a wedge. Guinevere’s pink streak was forced one way and Vexana’s violet one the other. Then Fanny could see neither.

She and Layla fought clear into a side street a few blocks from the Academy. It was packed with civilians who had nowhere left to run.

Lesley’s voice came on the command channel.

“Fanny. Layla. Chang’e’s map shows that crowd, and you’re the only ones near it. Hold that street.”

“Understood.”

The sphere’s edge came over the roofs. Fanny was in the air when it reached her.

Her flight rig died. She dropped two stories to the street and rolled. Above her, all across the sky, the Aspirants’ lights went out like sparks.

Her blades threw no arcs now. They were steel, and nothing more. On the roof, Layla pulled the trigger and the cannon gave nothing. A street over, Angela’s shield went out.

Fanny’s legs still worked. So did the channel.

“Comms are working,” said Lesley. “The suits aren’t. It’s not the storm from the records.”

The records said that storm killed every machine. This one had left the comms alone and taken only their aspirant power.

Behind Fanny, a child was crying. Down the street, the Enders came on.

Fanny got up.

“As humanity’s last hope, I can’t afford to give up.”

FannyVoice line

The Storm Citadel.

Obsidia stood at the edge of the Citadel’s lowest deck. The city lay close beneath her now: smoke, rain, and small lights darting between the towers.

She had watched two of those lights drive the Matrix back into the Singularity. That was a move she had not planned. It interested her.

“Shall we begin?”

ObsidiaVoice line

She raised her hand. The stones of the city rose to meet it. Her field spread from beneath the Citadel, a sphere of light, and swept over the streets. She had drawn her storm in tight against the hull. A dark city would show her nothing of the pawn. The field would take only their aspirant power.

She counted the lights as they went out. Wings. Drones. A shield. A pink-haired fighter dropped out of the sky into the smoke.

Now for the pawn. It had never once answered her recall. Today it would come.

She thought of the night she had set it down. Rain on scorched earth. A tarp between two broken walls. At the end of the row, a child curled alone.

To Obsidia, it was merely another string casually plucked over the course of her long existence. She remembered every detail of it.

A recall could be followed back to its sender. She could close that road with a thought. She left it open, as she always had.

She lifted one finger. Far below, the recall went out into the storm.