Empress of the Sun (29 page)

Her hands covered her mouth. Her eyes were wide in horror.

‘And because you always always
always
have to have the last word, I’m going now,’ Everett M said. ‘I’m gone. Shut up. Go away. Nothing you can say.’

And he turned and he walked.

‘Everett!’ Noomi screamed after him. He kept walking. ‘Everett!’

Safe. She would never come near him again. And so she would be safe from him, safe from Charlotte Villiers, safe from the Order that could reach across worlds to hurt and harm and kill. He had done right but he was dying inside: a blackness devouring him like Nahn, eating him from the inside out. He had not done right. He had done the worst thing he had ever done. Bringing the Nahn back from Earth 1 he had no choice. He would have died. And he had made that wrong right. He had tracked them down and exterminated the Nahn infestation. This had gone too far. He had said too much, the vile things had spewed out of him. And what was so unforgivable: they were true. She was all of those things he had accused her of. She was kooky and self-centred and astonishingly selfish and really into how things looked and she loved to play games with people and that pissed him off but at the same time they were the things he really liked about her. They annoyed him, but he adored them. The things that made him smile when he thought about them. The things that turned his heart over.

The things he wanted more than anything else. Almost he stopped to turn back. He could never do that. He had made sure that she would never forgive him. He had made himself a monster. But she would be safe. Charlotte Villiers would never come near her.

Everett M walked on. His eyes were like black holes in the sky. His heart was filled with thunder.

That’s another one I owe you, Charlotte Villiers. That was one name for the darkness. He had another: anger. The darkness filled up his sight. He couldn’t see …

The darkness was
real
.

Everyone on Green Lanes had stopped in their tracks. Every car, every truck, every bike, every bus was stationary. It was afternoon but dark as midnight. Everett M looked up.

Silence is not an absence, a state of no-sound. Silence is solid, silence is real. Silence can be heard. Charlotte Villiers heard it the moment the elevator motor switched off and she opened the cage. London, totally silent. It was the most terrifying thing she had ever heard.

The locks opened to her touch. Charlotte Villiers stepped out into the silence. Piccadilly was at a standstill. Not a bus, not a van, not a taxi or car moved. Not a motorbike or bike courier or cyclist. Not an office worker or a shopper or a Chinese tourist or a traffic warden. Every human on Piccadilly, on foot or in a car or bus, was looking up.

Silence, and darkness.

The object hovered a thousand metres over London. It blocked out the sun. Its shadow was dark as night. Camera flashes flickered in the crowd. A thousand hands held up a
thousand phones and iPads, taking photographs, shooting video.

An underground train rumbled far below. On any other day it would not have been heard. It broke the silence. In an instant, London found its voice again. Phones ringing, people making calls: hello
hello?
It’s
massive
; car radios blaring, horns blaring, people blaring; people talking, people shouting, people all asking the same question: what is it?

‘It’s a Jiju cityship!’ Charlotte Villiers called from the side of the footpath to anyone who would listen. ‘It’s not just London, they’re everywhere!’ The people standing by their cars gaped. The radio reports were confirming what the mad shouting woman was saying. ‘It is the end of the world! Earth has been invaded.’

The view from the bridge destroyed any doubt, or hope. Where Palatakahapa, the palace of the Empress of the Sun, had floated, glittering with ten thousand windows, was a void. Nothing. Dead air. Everett could see across twenty kilometres to the pinprick lights of the far side of the shaft through the world. The slender bridges were snapped like cut threads. The streamers of lightning below arced without interruption across the great pit.

‘Where did it go?’ Sen asked.

Kax stood at the great window, hands against the cracked glass. ‘Where do you think?’ she said in a voice like winter.

Everett shivered. He hated Kax using his mum’s voice; the tone she had used was exactly the same as his mum’s when she had told Everett that his dad was gone, wouldn’t
be back, they were splitting up. The End of Everything voice. ‘My mother has initiated the Final Victory. It’s not just Palatakahapa. It’s every single Sunlord city. The invasion has begun. And she has left me …’

The realisation hit Everett like a physical blow.

‘The sun!’

‘Yes,’ Kax said. She turned from the great window. ‘The order to fire the nova sequence would have gone out at the same time as the cities jumped off the Worldwheel.’

‘Mr Singh, get us out of here!’ Captain Anastasia snapped.

‘Now!’

‘He cannae,’ Mchynlyth said in a quiet voice of bone-deep shock. ‘He disnae have the power.’

Everett tapped up the Infundibulum. The JUMP button was greyed out.

‘Heisenberg Jump not available,’ he said.

‘Mr Singh, we need answers,’ Captain Anastasia said. Her voice was supernaturally calm.

‘It takes eight minutes twenty-six seconds for the nova message to get from here to the sun,’ Everett said. ‘It’s a speed-of-light thing. And it’ll also take eight minutes twenty-six seconds for the blast to reach us.’

‘About two minutes since Palatakahapa disappeared,’ Captain Anastasia said. ‘Fourteen minutes until the sun blows up. That’s enough. Mr Mchynlyth, have we power for the impellers?’

‘Fart-in-a-hurricane territory,’ Mchynlyth said.

‘A fart in a hurricane will suffice. Sen, fire up the impellers. Gentlemen, to engineering. Kax, I need every hand. If you please, ma’am, break out the lightning array. I’m taking her down –’ Captain Anastasia pointed at the blue electric arc – ‘into
that
.’

‘You can’t!’ Sen cried.

‘Take her in, Miss Sixsmyth,’ Captain Anastasia said in her sternest tone of command. ‘Gentlemen, reptiles, you’re still here.’

*

‘The lightning array,’ Everett said, chasing Mchynlyth up steps, walkways, ladders, up between the gas cells into the heights of the airship. ‘Isn’t that where you fly into a thunderstorm to recharge the batteries?’

‘It is,’ Mchynlyth said. They were on a crawlway pressed up tight against the top of the ship, so low even Everett had to crouch.

‘Like, the thing where, if it goes wrong, it can burn up your airship?’

Mchynlyth’s face was purest disbelief. ‘Laddie, the sun – the
sun
– is about to explode and blow our dishes to the Dear. A wee sense of proportion here.’ And he was gone, scuttling like a crab down the cramped passage. Everett’s thighs complained with cramp as he scurried after the Chief Engineer.

Mchynlyth stopped under two large brass wheels set into the ceiling. ‘Haul for all your might, lad!’ The engineer
grabbed a wheel. Biceps, neck sinews, collarbone bulged as he wrenched the wheel round.

Everett’s watch beeped.

‘Six minutes to Sunburst.’ He had thought of the name on the race up the stairs from the bridge to the top of the ship. The end of the world, and he still couldn’t resist making up a name for it.

Mchynlyth banged his fist against the skin. ‘You know? I really. Really. Do. Not. Need. The final friggin’ countdown.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Bugger sorry.
Heave
.’

Everett grabbed the wheel and threw his weight on to it. It wouldn’t move. He took a deep breath and tried again. Every muscle screamed. It was agony: crouching cramped, arms up.

‘Gaaarghhhh!’ Everett cried. With a squeal the wheel shifted.

‘Turn! Turn!’ Mchynlyth yelled.

Everett hauled on the brass wheel. His watch beeped again. Four minutes to Sunburst.

Mchynlyth held up a hand.

‘We’re moving,’ he said. ‘We’re moving! Haul for Jesus and Krishna and the Dear!’

*

Sen felt it in every part of her body: the familiar vibration she had not known for so long now: the throb of the impellers. The constant welcome tremble that said you were on
an airship, a living, breathing machine with a life and a great heart, like a lion. The vibration was weak, but the ship’s heart was beating again. Sen lifted her hands from the engine-start levers. She felt as if she had worked magic: brought the ship back to life with a healing touch, in the same way the Genequeens had healed her. But she could not put those hands on the steering yoke. The lighting arc below her blinded her, paralysed her with fear.

‘Take us down, Miss Sixsmyth,’ Captain Anastasia said. She stood by the great window, hands behind her back, feet apart, looking out: her customary stance of command. That stance said:
I am Master and Commander of an airship
.

Sen reached for the yoke, then recoiled. She saw the wreck of the
Fairchild
, as she had seen it so many times in so many falling, screaming nightmares. She saw her parents’ ship spin end over end through the stupendous storm off the Azores; the lighting array unfurl like sails, one above, one below. She saw the lightning strike. She saw the killing arc. She saw the ship catch and burn.

She saw it happen again. She saw everything end in fire. She couldn’t do that to the ship. But if she didn’t …

‘Miss Sixsmyth! We have twelve minutes before the nova hits us!’

Either way, it ended in fire. Sen whimpered. Everett had talked about choices of evils. All the evils in all the worlds were here, underneath her fingers. But the two crossing arcs of blazing blue light filled her eyes and her mind.

‘Sen! Don’t make me take the controls from you!’

She could not touch the steering yoke. The ship would scream at her betrayal if she touched it.

‘Sen! Listen to me! The
Fairchild
– I was the pilot. Never forget that. I was the pilot, I took her into the storm. And I made a mistake. Sen, I flew that ship to its death. It was too much for me. And I can’t do this. You can do it. Only you can do it. You’re a better pilot than I ever was. Only you can save
Everness
!’

‘No!’ Sen shouted, and seized the control yoke. Slowly … very slowly … so slowly it hardly seemed like movement at all …
Everness
crept forward on the last whispers of energy in her batteries.

*

He was failing. He was in pain. It hurt too much. Every muscle was on fire, dipped in liquid lightning. Pull. Pull. Pull. Did this wheel never come to an end?

‘Come on, Mr Singh!’ Mchynlyth yelled.

With the last of his strength Everett hauled the brass wheel round. There was a moment of resistance when he felt his muscles might fail, and then the wheel clicked into place. Mchynlyth locked his wheel.

‘She’s up. Now let’s scarper. You don’t want to be up here when we hit the lightning.’

‘Have you ever done this before?’ Everett asked.

‘No. But I have a very strong imagination. It’s a Mchynlyth family trait. Anytime you like, Mr Singh. Nae rush.’

Everett covered the last metres of crawlspace on hands and knees, body contorted with pain. He hauled himself upright. The stairs went down and down forever between the ballooning gas cells.

‘Oh God.’

‘Ach, come on, you’re young, you’re fit,’ Mchynlyth said. He pushed past Everett and took the steps at a canter. Everett’s watch pinged. Another two minutes closer to Sunburst.

*

‘Power at fifteen per cent, Ma.’

‘Hold us steady.’

Sen held
Everness
straight and true for the place where the two arcs crossed. The great window was a wall of searing electricity. Captain Anastasia stood silhouetted against crazy lightning, black against blue.

Everness
shook. Sen trimmed the attitude controls. Her air-mojo was back; the inborn Airish gift for feeling the winds, thinking in three dimensions, reading the atmosphere. She reached inside her jacket and felt out the contours of the Everness tarot. She slipped out the top card and peeked at it.

Empress of the Sun
.

Sen flicked the card across the bridge. Another draw: a solitary tree within a circular wall at the top of a hill.
Lone Tree Hill
. Does the wall keep the tree safe from the world, or the world safe from the tree? People, events, circumstances can flip in an instant and still be the same.

Was the tarot speaking to her again, or were the visions and skills the Jiju had put in her head muddying her ability to read the deck? Or was the Everness tarot saying that, sometimes, all an oracle will tell you is the absolutely obvious. Save the ship, Sen Sixsmyth.

‘Lightning array is operational.’ Mchynlyth’s voice, suddenly at her side.

Everett slipped behind his station beside Sen. He nodded, gave her the briefest, sweetest, most pain-filled smile. Then he turned all his attention to his comptators.

‘“The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save.”’ So Sharkey was here too.

Everness
shook again, more powerfully. Electricity sparked from every exposed metal surface. In the corner of her eye Sen glimpsed Kax. The Jiju princess’s halo was pulled in tight to her head. It shone almost as blue and bright as the lightning.

‘Take us into the heart of the storm,’ Captain Anastasia ordered.

‘Aye, ma’am.’ She pushed the steering yoke forward. Creaking, groaning, whining, shuddering from mismatched impellers,
Everness
answered the helm. The great window was a wall of lightning. Sen could feel every heartbeat, every muscle in her body ordering her to twist the steering yoke, take the ship up and away. She held true. She held firm. She held her course.

Everness
jolted. Sen gave a small, animal cry but kept her
grip on the yoke. The ship was shaking now, thrashing like a dying thing. They were in the heart of the plasma stream.

‘Charge her up, Mr Mchynlyth,’ Captain Anastasia ordered.

Mchynlyth threw a brass lever and the bridge came alive with lightning. Sparks cracked from every bolt and rivet, St Elmo’s Fire danced along every trim and fitting. The bridge was filled with a cacophony of cracklings and fizzings and hissings.