Heaven's Queen (44 page)

At that thought, my anger crystallized into action, and the virus faded, falling under my control. It was just like back in Reaper’s cell, only now I understood exactly how I’d done it, and I knew I could do it again. The virus was now mine to control, mine completely, and I knew what I had to do.

I stood up in a rush, making Rupert jump. Maat’s body was still clutched in my arms, but I held out my hand anyway. My clean, uninfected hand. She took it a second later, and I smiled as the warmth of Maat’s illusionary touch pass through my suit to grip my skin. United, we turned back to face the lelgis queen, who backed up several feet.

You don’t know what you do!
it cried.
We are the mothers! Guardians of that which touches everything! If you persist, if you tear down the wall, we will diminish and all will suffer.

“That’s what you say,” I replied, lifting my chin. “But let me tell you what I see.
I
see a bunch of cowards hiding behind us and saying their lives and happiness are worth more than ours because they’ve been alive a long time. That our deaths are justified because your lives are more important. But they’re not. You might live in the oneness, but it doesn’t belong to you.”

Foolish child
, the lelgis hissed.
You would destroy the infinite to save those who are already doomed to die?

“That’s the thing about infinity,” I said. “You can’t destroy it, and you can’t control it.” Even as the words left my mouth, I couldn’t believe I was quoting Dr. Starchild, but truth was the truth, no matter where it came from. “Death and change are part of life,” I went on. “You can plug that hole and hold back the phantoms for a long time, but eventually they’ll get through, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Because the infinite
isn’t
pure. It
isn’t
static. Like it or not, the universe goes on with or without your help, and we’re done dying so you can maintain your illusion of control.”

So you would have us stand by and do nothing while the oneness is corrupted?
The lelgis roared, weighing the words down with so much doom I almost couldn’t breathe. I found the air somehow, and though I’d asked nearly the same question myself not twenty-four hours ago, I wasn’t surprised to find the answer waiting on the tip of my tongue.

“What you do is your business,” I said. “But just because you’re too cowardly to fight for yourselves doesn’t give you the right to sacrifice us or the phantoms or anyone else.” I held up Maat’s hand. “We’re done suffering for your comfort. This ends right now. I’m freeing Maat. I’m freeing the phantoms. I’m freeing the daughters and the Eyes and all of humanity from your bullshit war to keep your pond clean. I’m going to fling that door wide open and set us all free. If you don’t like it, you can go cower at the other end of the universe, but this cycle of forcing us to suffer and die so you can maintain the status quo is over, and if you don’t back off, you will be, too.”

I pulled away from Maat as I finished, unlocking my glove to reveal my bare hand. When my fingers were free, I focused until the tips turned black and reached out, holding my dirty hand out toward the lelgis’ soft, midnight flesh.

Before I could even extend my arm completely, the alien turned and fled. They all did. The huge crowd of lelgis, all the different types, turned and ran as one, vanishing from the halls as quickly as they’d appeared until Maat, Rupert, and I were alone.

I dropped my black hand, pulling my controlled anger back. The virus vanished as well, and I felt a surge of pride as I bent down to retrieve my glove. When I looked up again, Maat was standing right in front of me.

“The queen ran,” she whispered.

“Cowards always run,” I replied, grinning as I slipped my glove back on. “I have to admit, though, I’m surprised you held back. I was all blacked out for a while there, but you didn’t even touch me.”

Maat set her jaw stubbornly. “You kept your promise. You’re the only one who’s ever kept a promise to Maat, so I will hold faith, too. Maat will not touch you until we’re safe in hyperspace and the daughters will not die.”

“Brenton kept his promise, too,” I said softly. “We couldn’t have gotten you out without him.”

Maat went very still as I said this, and then tears began to roll down her cheeks. She blinked in surprise, reaching up to touch them. “I can’t remember,” she whispered. “John was always important, but there are so many memories, Maat can’t tell which are hers anymore.”

She started to cry in earnest then, and I reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. “Come on,” I said softly. “Let’s finish this.”

Maat nodded and faded away, her glowing image vanishing like a projection after the power’s cut. I stared at the space where she’d been for a long second before turning back to Rupert.

He was still where he’d been when I’d woken up, standing right behind me to guard my back. Now that the lelgis were gone, he’d pulled the scales back from his face and was looking at me with blatant confusion. “Do I want to know what just happened?”

“Sure,” I said, shifting Maat’s unconscious body so that it was resting comfortably against my chest again. “The lelgis are cowards who tried to brainwash me into shooting myself, but I broke free with Maat’s help, told them straight up that we were done with their bullshit, and then I sent them packing. So that’s over and now we’re back on the ‘get Maat into hyperspace’ plan. Which way was it to the dock again?”

Rupert stared at me for almost half a minute after that, opening his mouth and then closing it again like he’d thought better of whatever he’d been about to say. Finally, he didn’t say anything at all, just shook his head and bent down to retrieve my guns.

“Thanks for watching my back,” I said as he fixed Mia to my back for me since my hands were full with Maat.

“Always,” he replied, slipping Sasha back into her holster as well. “I’m afraid I used up all your ammo.”

“I’ve got another clip,” I said, but Rupert was already shaking his head.

“You
had
another clip,” he corrected, giving me a sheepish look. “There were a lot of them.”

That was the understatement of the decade. There’d been so many lelgis that you couldn’t even see down the hall, but Rupert had held them all back so he could watch over me, and if that wasn’t worth every bullet I owned, nothing was. “Thank you,” I said again, leaning into him.

He froze for a moment, and then his arm slipped around my waist. “I’ll always fight for you,” he said softly. “Always, until I die.”

I believed him. At this point, I’d have to be an idiot not to. I stayed like that a moment longer, resting on his strength, and then I pushed away. “Let’s go.”

Rupert nodded and we started down the hall toward the stairs he’d mentioned earlier, but though we were still in enemy territory, he didn’t let go of my waist, and though I knew this was a damn stupid way to proceed that would likely get us shot, I didn’t make him.

T
he rest of the station must have abandoned ship when the lelgis started tearing the place apart, because we didn’t see a soul. The traps were still there, but with the hull breach alarm going off like crazy, all of them seemed to have gone on emergency lockdown, and with no one to take them off, they gave us no more trouble. The dock, however, was another story.

Thanks to the swath the lelgis had cut getting to me, the station had subdivided, locking the remaining atmosphere into sealed compartments. A computer voice was announcing the compromised sections by code, and though I couldn’t make heads or tails of the alphanumeric strings, Rupert recognized one of them as our dock, which meant we were now stuck.

“Please tell me there’s another one,” I groaned, because seriously, how much worse could this shit get? The only good news was that Maat’s arm of the station hadn’t blown yet, which meant Brenton was either still alive or the charges had malfunctioned. I preferred to believe the former, because horrid as the old man was, I wanted Brenton to at least live long enough to know his sacrifice hadn’t been in vain. Assuming, of course, we could get off this hunk of junk.

“They haven’t said anything about the second wing,” Rupert said. “The old fighter deck might still be functional. Let’s try that.”

Anything known as “old” in this antique didn’t sound too promising to me, but I followed Rupert as he shifted course, doubling back to the station’s center before setting off into what was clearly a less used area. The lights were off here, probably an automatic shutdown in deference to what were usually the more vital areas of the station. The orange glow of the emergency lights was still enough to see by, though, and when the big bay doors for the dock came into view, safety lights on and clearly functional, I started to let myself believe we were actually going to make it.

Rupert opened the doors and went in first, motioning for me to stay back. He returned a few seconds later, his face excited. “It looks clear. There’s a bomber at the end of the bay that’s unhooked and ready to go. All we’ll need to do is get in, hit the engines, and we’re gone.”

It sounded too good to be true, but I followed him anyway, hugging Maat to my chest as we ducked through the door. Just as Rupert had said, the dock was clearly out of use. The fighters and the larger bombers clamped to the high walls were all a decade or more out of date, and the bay floor, rather than being kept open for crews to assemble like Republic regulation demanded, was stacked with dusty boxes. Even so, there was plenty of room to see the line of ships prepped at the edge of the bay for immediate deployment, including the bomber Rupert had mentioned, which was sitting like a forgotten trophy at the far end of the deck with its dusty ready light still shining a bright, cheery green.

“I just hope it flies,” I said as we started to run through the stacks of storage crates.

“It should,” Rupert said, jogging beside me. “These ships were all rated for fifty-year storage. All I have to do is get the bay doors open and we’ll be good to—”

I couldn’t hear what he said next, because at that moment, my suit alarm started blaring in my ear as a huge message flashed over my entire view space.

Weapon lock detected.

My heart jumped into my throat, and for a terrifying second, I was frozen in panic. Then, like a kick to the gut, nine years of combat experience snapped into place, and I threw up my sensors. But though it took my suit less than a second to pin down the source of the lock, dodging wasn’t an option. I barely had time to glimpse Mabel sitting behind one of the stacked crates we’d just passed before she raised the Terran anti-armor shotgun to her shoulder and unloaded the huge twin barrels straight into my back.

Anti-armor shotguns are short-range weapons, meant for taking down armored targets in close quarters, but this was just ridiculous. Mabel had shot me from less than three feet away, close enough that she hadn’t even needed the stupid lock. But I guess she wasn’t taking any chances, because the shot my Lady took across the back was full bore, and every alarm I had started going off as the barbed shrapnel ripped through my beautiful baby like she was made of paper.

If I’d been wearing a cheaper suit, that would have been the end. But my Lady is quality through and through. Still, even custom Verdemont armor can’t stop everything. Pain exploded down my left leg as one of the metal barbs punched through, digging into my thigh. I actually felt the damn metal sliver hit bone before my breach foam kicked in to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, nothing could stop me from falling.

“Devi!”

Rupert’s frantic shout came from far away as I crashed to the floor, rolling just in time to keep from crushing Maat. For a second, I couldn’t even believe Mabel had shot me considering just who I was carrying, but then sense kicked back in. For all that she looked delicate, Maat was still a symbiont. If something like this could kill her, we wouldn’t have had to go through all this nonsense in the first place.

It could kill
me
, however. The breach foam made it hard to tell where else I was injured, but my suit’s vitals only showed my leg wound, and though the shard of metal hurt like hell, the bone wasn’t broken, which was why my suit hadn’t injected the cocktail automatically. It was still giving me the option, but I pushed it away. I couldn’t afford to be drugged now, not with my Lady in this condition.

My suit was far worse off than I was. Nearly every gauge I had was in the red or unresponsive. I wasn’t even sure if I could sit up. I was about to try when I felt Rupert grab me. Before he’d even gotten me off the ground, though, another shot echoed through the dusty bay, the familiar boom of a disrupter pistol.

This time, I did panic. Rupert’s hold on my armor vanished as he crashed to the floor beside me, gripping his chest, which was now a bloody mess. I reached out to help him automatically, but my arm wouldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything except lie there and stare as Rupert began to bleed out, and then I felt the soft vibration of footsteps near my head.

The man standing over me when I looked up was a black, bulky shadow against the bright dock lights. The pearl-handled disrupter pistol in his hand looked just like every other Eye gun I’d ever seen, but that didn’t matter. I knew who it was.

“End of the line, Morris.”

I bared my teeth as Brian Caldswell leaned over to pull Maat’s body out of my limp hold. Gentle as a new father, he gathered her in his arms. The moment he had her clear, he said, “Shuck her.”

I didn’t take his meaning until Mabel appeared above me with that damned anti-armor shotgun still propped on her shoulder. She set her gun down to grab me, using her claws to peel away my damaged armor, shucking me like a shellfish, just as Caldswell had ordered. I fought her for every inch, but unarmored and bloody against symbiont strength, I might as well have been trying to box a mountain. She yanked me around like an unruly toddler, kicking my damaged suit, my beautiful custom Verdemont armor aside like so much trash. The sight made me so mad I would have infected us all right then, but two things held me back: my newfound control and my fear for Rupert.