Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (29 page)

Nemo hissed and leapt off the railing, running toward the lower decks. Mira turned to Dresden.

“We have to get out of here and into the train cars!” she yelled. “They’re metal. This ship is
wood.
”

Dresden gave her a severe look. “I’m not leaving my ship.”

“As noble as the ‘going down with the ship’ thing is, you’re being a horse’s—”

More explosions ripped through the ships on either side of them.

They both watched as the swarm overtook them, finally meeting in the middle and converging into one gigantic, buzzing mass of small machines. Mira could see them now. Flying metallic discs, colored either yellow or black, each about the size of a Frisbee. The buzzing came from their outer halves, which spun in blurs.

Three of them slammed into the deck of the
Wind Shear,
burrowing straight into it in torrents of sawdust. Seconds later … they exploded in fireballs that sent the crew flying, leaving gaping holes in the deck. The things were basically exploding, flying saw blades, Mira realized in horror, and there were
thousands
of them.

Mira and Dresden hit the deck as they swarmed past, almost taking their heads off. Max barked violently, trying to leap after the things, but Mira grabbed him and held him down.

“Damn it!” Dresden yelled in agony as the beautiful, colored patchwork sails of his ship fell apart. The ship rocked again and flame shot out the sides, more of Dresden’s crew fell.

Mira stared at him pointedly. “We have to—”

“I know!” he shouted back, and there was pain in his eyes. “I know.”

He turned to Parker. “Get the wire crew out of the masts, and order abandon ship. Take cover in the train cars.”

Parker looked just as sick as Dresden, but he didn’t argue. He shouted orders, and the crew started leaping off the ship; the kids in the masts slid down what was left of the guy wires and just in time too.

Two more discs burrowed into a mast … then exploded.

The whole thing collapsed, the wires running between it and the secondary mast pulling both of the structures crashing onto the deck.

Dresden grabbed Hamilton and Jennifer, shoved them toward the edge of the ship. Mira grabbed Max … but the dog pulled loose and darted away, running like he had a purpose.

“Max!” Mira started moving for him, then felt Dresden’s hands yank her back.

“That dog’ll outlive all of us,” he yelled. The discs were everywhere, buzzing through the air, and they seemed to be thickening. She had a pretty good idea what would happen if one of them hit her, and she pushed away the image of her head flying off her shoulders.

They all leapt and landed on the ground, and Mira felt her ankle almost break. She groaned, limped forward, and Hamilton pulled her into one of the old cargo cars with Dresden and Jennifer.

The car was rusting and dusty, but empty, except for about four White Helix at each door, firing their Lancets into the air. Dane was with them, yelling orders into his radio.

She could see Antimatter crystals streaking through the air, blowing apart a dozen discs each, but it made no real difference. White Helix weapons were meant for big targets. This was a swarm, and Mira had never seen anything like it.

To make matters worse, Mira could see the “mother ship,” the one that had come in through the gateway. Some of the Antimatter crystals fired in its direction, and every time they were deflected away as some kind of sparkling, wavering energy field burst to life around the thing.

The ship was shielded, just like Ambassador’s Brute walkers.

She slammed her back against the wall of the car as more Landships buckled and collapsed on either side of it.

Guardian,
Ambassador’s “voice” filled her mind again.
What transpires?

More explosions, more screams. She peered out the door. Some of the braver White Helix were spinning and jumping through the swarm, cutting the machines down as they moved, but not making any real dent. As she watched, one of the discs sliced right through the center of a warrior’s Lancet, splitting it in half, and he fell out of sight. Mira winced as an explosion flared up where he fell.

All is not lost,
Ambassador projected back, sensing her emotions.

What can we do?

The mother ship,
Ambassador projected.
Its reactor. It lies in the center.

Mira watched more Antimatter crystals bouncing off the ship’s energy field.
But we can’t get through the shield!

Another can. Look.

Mira watched again, concentrated as more explosions rocked the ground. Two of the drones buzzed into their train car, and the Helix inside dispatched them before they could explode. In the sky, the mother ship still hovered, still pouring out more and more of the deadly drones, the area becoming saturated with them.

Then she saw it. The shield flickered, for a microsecond, every time one of them was launched. The
drones
could pass through the shield. Her eyes widened, it must be what Ambassador meant, but she had no real idea what to do with the information.

“What is it telling you?” Dane asked as he took cover next to her, a blue crystal flying back through the door of the train car onto the end of his Lancet. He must have guessed she was communicating with Ambassador.

“We have to take out the ship,” she told him, shuddering as more explosions shook the train.

“How?”

Outside, Mira saw two more Landships crumple to the ground, saw more Helix fall, saw more Wind Trader crews engulfed in fire. This was a nightmare, this was—

“Mira!” Dane’s voice snapped her back.
“How?”

She told him, about the center of the ship, the shield, the drones, and with every word the same idea formed in her mind as did in Dane’s. She saw the same solution as him, and a feeling of dread filled her. There was no fear in his eyes, however, no regret. There was nothing really, because he’d accepted it. Perhaps he had accepted it long ago. “I understand.”

“Dane…” she said, the dread and the fear building. “Please don’t do this.”

Another explosion, they both saw his men dying outside.

“Who else can?” he asked, with a gentle smile. “One of my Arc? Should I ask them?” He would never do that, she knew. He held her gaze with strength and resolve. “Tell Avril…” he began, then stopped. The smile faded. “No. She’ll know.”

“Please,” Mira begged him. Her voice was desperate, her throat ached. “I
need
you, Dane. I can’t do this…”

His hand gripped her shoulder, but she didn’t feel it. She only felt a cold numbness spreading through her. “Yes, you can, Mira Toombs. Yes, you can.”

He held her gaze a moment more, then turned away, to what remained of his Arc in the train car.

“Defend this position with your lives,” he told them. “Obey Mira Toombs.
She
is your Shuhan now.”

The other Helix stared at Dane in shock … then he leapt out the steel door of the train car into the air in a flash of yellow.

Mira stood in the center of that door, explosions and shrapnel flying everywhere, but she didn’t notice. She watched Dane puncture a drone with one end of his Lancet, spin through the air, and lance another. The drones sparked and died, stuck on the ends of his weapon like speared fish. Then he leapt again, up toward the ship.

She felt Dresden tackle her, force her down to the rotted floor of the car, but still she stared after Dane, watching as the shield around the mother ship flickered and let him fly through, the drones fooling it. She watched as he grabbed onto the underside of the ship, watched as he fired both ends of his Lancet straight up into its center, watched them explode in blue and green flame out the top of the craft.

The ship exploded. Violently. A concussion blast rocked the train yard and everyone around her was blown down. The flaming debris of the ship tumbled out of the sky and crashed with a sound like thunder into the ground.

The buzzing all around them silenced. The drones began to fall, thousands of them, slamming into the train cars and what was left of the Landships like a hailstorm.

And then, finally, it was over.

The drones were gone. The Assembly had been beaten. The fleet was saved. But at what cost?

Mira rolled over. Dresden looked down at her, his eyes full not just of shock, but of remorse.

The train car shook as something jumped inside. It was Max, she saw, and he had an orange ball of fur in his mouth: Nemo, hissing and scratching, completely unappreciative, but
alive
. When Max let him down, the cat ran and jumped onto Dresden’s shoulders.

Dresden and Mira stared at one another, the smoke and the dust filling the air outside, and then pushing into the car, filling everything, mercifully drowning the sight of what had happened in a thick smog of gray.

23.
TONOPAH

THERE WERE MORE THAN FIVE HUNDRED DEAD
. Their pyres stretched almost out of sight in the rail yard. The Helix had insisted on performing the ceremony here, it was preferred to cremate the remains at the sight of a battle. It was ironic, really. There were more dead in this White Helix funeral than any other, but it lasted the least amount of time. Mira wasn’t sure if that was because there was so little to say … or because they were just getting good at it.

She stood next to Dane’s pyre. They’d found his body near where the wreckage of the mother ship had fallen, and a charred length of wood that was his Lancet. Only the crystals remained unscathed, glowing in blue and green. She held the brittle staff in her hands, and it had made them black, covered in soot. His Arc had asked her to stand by his pyre. In a way, it was appropriate. It was because of her he was dead. In all fairness, she should be standing next to every one of these pyres.

Manny, Carter, Pershing, Amanda …

There was no way to remember all their names, it was just too many, so Mira settled for memorizing the ones she had known. It was a very long list regardless.

Five hundred.
Mira felt sick.

The Wind Traders had piled onto their Landships to watch, the ones that weren’t burning or lying in heaps. The funeral was quiet, no one had spoken since they assembled, the White Helix standing in a half circle around the pyres. Each one was staring at her, but they weren’t looks of hatred or pain, it was merely as if they were waiting.

It suddenly occurred to Mira … that they were waiting for
her.

It was a shock at first. Why? Who was she to them? Didn’t they blame her, didn’t they loathe her the way the Wind Traders certainly did?

We’re not dying for your cause,
Dane had told her not that long ago.
We’re dying for ours. And you need to learn to honor it.

She wasn’t sure she could; it was a hard thing to learn, but she would try. Mira swallowed and stepped forward.

“There is only one thing we must learn,” she said, surprised by how easily she remembered the words. “One
last
thing. Tell me.”

“
To face death unflinchingly,
” the crowd of Helix chanted as one.

“We do not mourn the fallen.” The words hurt to say, but this was not her funeral, she reminded herself, it was
theirs.

“
We do not mourn the fallen,
” the crowd replied.

“We honor them.”

“
We honor them.
”

“For they have made us…” her voice broke, “stronger.”

“
For they have made us stronger.
”

She finished the rest of it, forcing herself to say words she didn’t believe. Then she raised up what was left of Dane’s Lancet and snapped it across her knee. She flinched like she had been struck. The sounds of hundreds of other snapping shafts echoed in the air, just as sharp and jarring. Mira placed the crystals on the pyre, underneath Dane’s body, and stepped back.

Almost instantly, it burst into flame, an unreal mixture of blue and green fire that engulfed everything and stretched toward the sun. Everyone else was moving back, to get away from the searing heat, but Mira stood and let the swelter from the blaze wash over her, let it burn, hoping the pain would override the guilt and the anguish she felt.

For the first time since Holt had left, Mira felt tears flow down her cheeks.

*   *   *

THE CALM AND QUIET
was unsettling now after everything that had transpired. Fires still burned throughout the rail yard. The damage had been catastrophic. Not one of the sixty-three Landships that entered this place had come out unscathed. Three of them were still in condition to work, albeit barely. Another eight could be repaired, according to Smitty. What was left, were total losses. Fifty-two beautiful, inspiring creations of the new world, more than ships, homes to their crews, each representing years of work, were gone. As difficult as that was to accept, there was an even darker statistic.

The death toll.

No one had come up with an accurate count yet for the Wind Traders, but it would be in the hundreds, just like the White Helix, there was no question. Every time she closed her eyes, Mira saw Dane, leaping upward toward that yellow-and-black ship. She wondered if she would ever not see that.

Mira climbed from the lower decks of the
Wind Shear
into the sunlight. Dresden’s ship had taken a good amount of damage, lost both its masts, and had gaping holes in the main deck and the starboard side of the hull, but it was in the group Smitty thought could be repaired. That was a bit of good news, at least. Mira had come to love the ship, its crazy combination of parts and pieces, the way the silver airplane wings held the colorful sails, and especially, the crew.

As she walked slowly toward the front of the ship, the crew was already busy making repairs, the sounds of hammers and saws echoing in the air. She reached the helm deck, where Dresden stood near the wheel, studying it absently. In the distance, toward the west, a storm was gathering. It wasn’t something she would have expected in this place. As she stopped next to Dresden, she watched lightning flash from the dark clouds.