Act VI, The Storm CitadelChapter 46
Chapter 46: Back to Back
A street a few blocks from the Academy.
No power, no flight, one rubble wall, and a crying boy holding on to Layla’s coat.
They had held the street for twenty minutes when the Enders found the weak end of the rubble wall.
Twenty minutes with no power and no flight. Layla’s cannon hung dead on her back. Behind them, civilians packed the street to the far corner.
Fanny had built the wall the way soldiers without suits had taught her: across the narrowest point, out of cars and doors and a fallen shop sign. One gap. The Enders came through it one at a time. Nobody swung until an Ender swung. When its chest opened, Fanny’s blade went into the core.
Now the sign at the wall’s end slid, and a claw came over it.
Layla threw her shoulder against the sign. The Ender struck at her. Its chest plates split, and Fanny’s steel went in.
Behind Layla, a small boy was crying with his fists against his eyes.
“If you’re scared, you can hide behind me.”
She did not say it as a joke. The boy took hold of her coat and stayed there.
Fanny knelt by him. “Don’t be scared kiddo, everything’s gonna be alright.”
Joe’s words, from the day of the breach. Layla had heard him say them over a girl with a pink rabbit.
“Is she your friend?” the boy asked Layla.
“She’s my teammate.”
In the lull, Fanny sat against the wall and wiped her blades. “My brother would have held this street alone,” she said, half to herself.
Layla waited.
“I don’t care what Tigreal would have done.” Fanny looked at the wall, at Layla, at the crowd. “I’m not doing it alone.”
Layla watched her face. She meant it. She isn’t looking past me now, thought Layla.
A street over, Ruby’s scythe still cut. The field had taken her power. It had not taken the edge.
Angela had no shield now. She was lifting a slab off a man’s legs with her bare hands. No human could have lifted it.
An Ender came over the slab. Its claw caught Angela across the back and threw her into a wall. She slid down it. Her left arm hung wrong, and sparks spat from the elbow.
Something came up in Ruby. She knew it. It had come once before, in a burning avenue, over a barrel with a crying child inside. Everything had gone quiet and hot, and she had cut down everything in front of her.
Not again, she thought.
The Ender raised its claw over Angela. Its chest opened. Ruby made one cut, into the core, and no more.
Then she was on her knees with both hands on Angela’s arm.
“It’s only the elbow,” said Angela. “It hurts. I know what that means.”
“I made that elbow. I can mend it.”
Another Ender stepped into the street. Ruby stood up between it and Angela, the scythe low.
“Don’t get in my way!”
She said it cold, and waited for it to strike.
The storm had not let up since the bolt went into the clouds. Then, over the Academy, the Storm Citadel lurched.
Fire ran along its ribs. It tipped and shed pieces of itself. Its storm began to thin. It did not fall. It hung there, listing and burning. Out over the bay, the Singularity shuddered and tore wider at its edges.
The power came back all at once.
Far off, below the Academy, two small yellow lights rose out of the smoke first. Guinevere’s drones.
Then Layla felt it in her own hands. The cells along her cannon’s stock lit cyan. Fanny’s blades threw arcs again. Fanny lifted them and looked at the light.
“A strong Aspirant spirit becomes the blade that cuts through despair.”
Through the gap at the wall’s end, a street over, Ruby knelt by a wall with one hand on Angela’s shoulder. Angela’s arm still sparked. Ruby’s eyes were blue.
Down the street, the Enders were still coming.
Fanny got up off the rubble and held out a hand. “All rested up?”
Layla took it. “Since when were we resting?”
They rose back to back over the street, the cannon and the blades lit.