Blood Crown (34 page)

The first blast to strike rocks my confidence.

It knocks me from my seat and is followed by another before I can regain my footing.

Minn has also been rocked from her chair, but instead of getting back up she crawls under the console at Dillon’s feet. I don’t blame her—and I figure it is as safe a place as any for her right now. Dillon, though, works the weapons controls like a seasoned pilot and I think again how amazing and resilient humans are. The Mind is wrong for wanting to annihilate us. We are not the abandoned link in the evolutionary chain—we are its purpose, its fulfillment. It is the Mind that doesn’t belong.

The Mind rebuffs our attack for nine minutes . . . and then falls silent.

I take tally of our fleet’s damages. “All our fleets took heavy damage,” I say. “The rebels . . . they’ve been hardest hit.”

Nic bobs his head. “We expected that. They were the first wave of attack—it makes sense any response was more heavily focused on them. What about loss of life?”

I know he could discover for himself, but I don’t question his request. I call up the information, then find it’s hard to make my tongue move. My gaze flicks to Minn who sits on the far side of Dillon now, her elbows on the console and her hands in her hair. She looks utterly out of place. I answer Nic privately.
Not all the reports are in, but over nine hundred, at least.

Nic’s face is as pale as the stars, with red spots high on his cheeks. He blanches a little as he processes my words but makes no response. He, Dillon and I keep our hands hovering over the controls while we wait for the next attack. But none comes.

“Stage two. Now!” Nic hollers into the com as he whips around and dashes for the transport. Nic and a handful of men from each of the remaining rebel ships will board the Mind vessel and eliminate them. Nic will search for Galen, first—we are fairly certain that if we can take him out the rest of the andies will fall with relative ease.

“Wait!” I fly from my chair and hurry after him, meeting him near the transport. He grabs me into his arms and presses a kiss to my lips.
Be safe
, I say.

Be safe
, he echoes. Then he turns and enters the transport. “Keep them safe!” he calls to Dillon who stands with his arm around a trembling Minn. Dillon nods curtly.

Nic throws me a cheeky grin before the wall coalesces and he disappears from view.

I return to the console and close my eyes, willing myself to focus on Nic. I know when he powers up the pod, discovering there is barely enough power to get him to the
Crown
and back. I know when he docks on the
Crown
—without any kind of resistance. But then I feel . . . nothing.

I stand there, my eyes glued to the dark, looming ship in front of me. Our coms are quiet. I scan every one, even though we agreed that there should be no communication until the Mind are subdued. Still . . . I had hoped our Bond might bridge the space between us, but apparently it doesn’t.

The three of us stand helpless, watching the ship for any sign of how the fight fares.

We wait. The
Capital
tells me it’s been three minutes, but to me it has been an eternity in a hell made of separation and silence.

And then Nic’s voice comes over the com—not just to me, but to the entire fleet. “There’s no one here.”

Similar reports flood in from the other soldiers who’ve gone aboard—the Mind are gone. The ship has been abandoned.

“The ship has been set on some sort of auto-repel program,” Nic says once he’s climbed back into his pod to return to me. “It was set to launch a limited counter attack and resist to a certain point so it would appear they were here.”

He doesn’t say it out loud, but of course we are both thinking the same thing.
If the Mind wants us to believe they are onboard their ship, then where are they, really?

The pod has almost reached the
Capital
when I detect commands firing in rapid succession from the Mind ship. Something is happening, some protocol has been activated.

I search for it through the bundles of meaningless code that have just been dumped into our upstream—
there
. A self-destruct sequence with three . . .

I whirl, see Minn and Dillon looking at me in confusion. “Get down!”

. . . two . . .

Nic! Get aboard!

. . . one . . .

The docking bays are open, the coms silent. I dock next to Kevin’s small ship and wait in the hangar while he and six of his men disembark. Two of the rebel teams boarded before us.

“Ahead,” Kevin says, gesturing to our left with his weapon.

I seek the ship but she is silent. She feels wrapped in the sticky black sinews of the virus and I think she is dead. As I step through the access hallway though, I know immediately—things are not right. And not just the ship—this, everything about it, feels wrong. Black veins snake across every surface. And . . . there is nothing here. Only death.

I raise my hand, fist tight.

“Hold,” Kevin says in his com.

I reach with my nanos and try to scout the ship—without her help it isn’t easy. At first I feel . . . nothing. And then . . .

the whisper of something that doesn’t belong.

The whiff of death.

“Run,” I say. “Run!”

Our boots pound the floor back to our ships. I throw myself into the pod, but wait until Kevin and his men have cleared the bay before I launch.

A countdown begins—it fills every screen. When I open my com my ears are bombarded with it.

Two . . .

The
Capital
is too far away.

One . . .

Sera
.

The blast sends me flying across the room and slams me against the far wall. Minn smashes her head on the corner of the console and Dillon cannot rouse her.

My vision swims as I get to my feet. Warning lights flash on the console and endless streams of data race through my mind. Several of the fleets lost ships, countless soldiers dead or wounded. And the Mind ship is gone. Just . . . gone.

And so is Nic.

I sink into a chair and search for him—but I can’t find him, can’t feel him.

“The Prince?” Dillon asks moments after Minn starts to moan. It’s a good sign—she’ll be okay.

I can’t find my voice.
No. He didn’t make it.
I stare, numb, at the console. The Generals are hailing me, demanding to know what to do next. But I ignore them. Then the ship’s windows flash and switch to video mode. Even though I don’t open communications, a rogue image appears.

It is Galen. Looking exactly as he did before. Trim and elegant, and utterly relaxed in his tailored red suit and impeccably combed hair. He reclines on an ornate chair—on a throne, I realize with a start. In his left hand he holds a goblet with the crest of the East on its side. In his right hand he has a grip on something that’s just below my line of sight.

“Why hello, darling girl,” Galen says once he’s certain I’ve ascertained the truth—The Mind are alive and Galen has overthrown the Empire of the East.

I erect walls around my heart as I have done my whole life. Galen cannot harm me. I will survive so my people can survive.

Galen makes a clucking sound with his tongue. “So much vim and vigor. I must admit, humans are entertaining, if nothing else.” He takes a sip from his cup, then sets it down on the tray next to him, held aloft by a child’s trembling hands. Galen smoothes her fly-away blonde hair while casting a dark glance in my direction. He’s pouring it on thick, maybe overplaying his hand. I can use this against him.

Though how, I am not entirely certain.

“I’m sure you are estimating how you can survive, calculating a plan, even as we chat.” He offers me one of his signature, cold smiles. “But I assure you, the attempt, while brave and predictable, is fruitless.”

He places a finger to his lips and closes his eyes. When he opens them, they hold a wild glint. “You have seven minutes left. If I were you, I’d spend them wisely.”

I finally find my tongue and cough out, “Seven minutes for what?” Dread crawls up my skin like a cold wind, but I refuse to show this
android
my fear.

“Why, to live, my darling. Being a sentimental lot, you’ll likely want to say goodbye—I believe someone wishes to speak with you. His eyes flick to my right, and then I am turning, and crying out when I see Nic exit the transport.

He stumbles forward and I rush to him, taking his weight and helping him to a chair. His left eyebrow has been singed off, the skin on his forehead and left cheek burned raw and seeping blood. He is covered in soot and blood, his clothing in ruins, his breathing rough and labored.

“I’ll be all right,” he wheezes and then promptly coughs for too long. I swing around, but the screens are dark. And I still have no idea what Galen meant by seven minutes.

Six minutes, now.

And then I know.

Nic’s eyes fly open at the same moment mine search for his.

A bomb
.

The bastard has planted an explosive—
in each of us
. And more than that, he’s connected our symbiants to those of my
Capital
, which are in turn connected with each of the ships in our fleets, and the West’s ship-states. Everything within our network is connected. He will destroy all of us in five minutes.

My hands fly to my head as if I can pull from it the solution, the way to break free of this death sentence.

“We have to warn them, we have to give them a chance!”

Nic takes hold of my arm, forcing me to stand still for a moment. “There is nowhere for them to go—there’s no time, Serantha.” I know every word costs him, and my heart breaks as I imagine losing him, losing everything when I’d only just gotten it back.

Minn and Dillon limp to us, Minn leaning heavily on Dillon’s arm. Blood mats her dark hair and leaves a sticky trail down her right cheek.
Minn
.
I can’t just watch her die!

“What’s happening?” she asks, her voice rough with tears.

As I look at her, I am speechless. I can’t say the words that will destroy her world. Wouldn’t it be better for her to spend her last moments in blissful ignorance? So instead of weeping, I smile. “It’s good you’re together. I’m glad for it.”

Minn smiles up at Dillon and leans closer to him while he tightens his grip around her waist. I can tell from the look on his face he knows something of what is about to happen. He nods at Nic and me, before turning Minn away and leading her out of the control room. He tells the transport to take him to their quarters—and I am happy they will be together, peaceful, at the end of it all.

Four minutes.

Nic’s fingertips touch mine, our hands tangling together. I lean forward, as he does, our foreheads, and the useless Blood Crowns, touch. I take a deep breath . . . and realize I can feel the bomb inside of me. It throbs like a second heartbeat, buried deep behind my own heart where its rhythm largely masks the bomb’s.