"Don't worry, we can work something out," he soothed. "What you know can never be allowed out in the greater universe, but we can build a quarantined virtuality for you to live in. Death's not the end for the likes of us."
"Then you won't mind if I kill you," somebody said. Holon's body jerked as several bullets hit it.
"Don't be ridiculous, old man," said the outsider as one of his whiplike arms shot out to wrap around Jacoby Sarto's throat. Holon dragged him over the wall and Jacoby lost his one-handed grip on the carbine he'd fired. As this happened, though, a blur shot across the room from the other direction.
Venera yanked at Antaea's pistol, which was still held in one of Holon's coils. Holon turned, twitched his arms, and sent Venera across the room. She hit the wall, but she'd also held on to the gun, and had managed to turn it. Venera jammed her finger against the trigger and a shot spanged off the ceiling just over Holon's head. He roared and ducked, and her next shot took him at the base of one of his four branchlike limbs.
Then he'd swung Venera and Jacoby, bashing them against one another. The pistol went flying, and the two were shoved violently through a cloud of corpses to fetch up next to Antaea.
"Enough of spectators," said Holon. "I'll finish this alone." He raised four of his branches, their sharp ends hovering like poised snakes. Antaea closed her eyes.
The ever-present hum that filled the command center went silent and so did the red light penetrating her closed eyes. But there was no pain. After a second, she opened her eyes.
"What...?" It was Venera's voice.
The lights came back on, and the command mirror flickered back into life. Holon hung in the middle of the room, frozen in place like some grotesque statue. Beyond him, the mirror showed the metal crab shapes that had surrounded Candesce's generator. They had also stopped moving.
"Get the gun," mumbled Jacoby. "And finish the bastard before he wakes up."
"Good idea," said Antaea. But it was too hard to move. She felt herself drifting off to sleep, and it seemed like such a good idea that she closed her eyes, and smiled.
* * *
"YOU CAN STOP screaming," said Keir. Leal coughed and fell silent. A good thing, too: her throat was raw from her performance.
The army engineers had finally dragged her aboard their open-sided vessel, but not before she'd led them on a merry chase around Keir's machine. "No, don't kill me!" she'd screamed. "I don't want to die. Get away from me!" She'd played the hysteria to the hilt, while Hayden clambered out of sight of the engineers and fired up his sun's mechanism.
It had started huffing and thrumming now, and the engineers were alarmed. Hayden appeared around from behind it, waving his arms. "It's okay!" he shouted. "It's not a bomb!"
"Surrender!" shouted an engineer. The man was trying to sound authoritative, but against this sky he stood little chance. Hospital ships and looters were arriving in equal numbers, and as the last of the smoke drifted away, the sheer monumental scale of the damage was becoming clear. The engineers would be clearing unexploded ordnance from the skies of the principalities for years.
"Look!" Keir pointed. Leal peered at the clots of smoke and fire surrounding Candesce. They were appalling, and she shook her head.
"No, look! The lasers have stopped."
She blinked. "Don't you see?" he said. "It's working."
Hayden had drifted over, his hands on his head in deference to the guns pointed at him. "We're generating an analogue of Candesce's suppression field," he said.
"How big is it, Keir?"
"Probably not more than four hundred miles in radius," he said. "But that's big enough to have stopped the attack."
Leal shook her head. "Here, maybe. But at the edge of the world..."
"Get us clear," the engineers' commander was saying. "We'll detonate this one from a safe distance like we did the others."
"Wait!" "No!" Hayden and Keir leaped up together, only to be forced back by armed jittery men. "You can't destroy it!" Keir continued. "It's what won the battle!"
The commander looked at them sympathetically. "They're all going to take a long time to recover from this." He sighed. "Ready the two-inch gun. We'll pick it off from a half-mile out."
* * *
"--NOT COMFORTABLE LEAVING him like that," Venera was saying. "Didn't he say that body was designed to live in the suppressive field? Then why...?"
Antaea blinked at her. "Wha--?"
"It doesn't matter, the field's obviously back on somehow. He's frozen. Shoot his limbs off and throw the pieces out the door," said Jacoby.
"Where--" Pain lanced through her side, and the sudden sound of gunfire woke Antaea further. She remembered it all suddenly: the fight, the monsters, her fighting back. And Holon.
She pulled against Venera, who was hauling pieces of Holon toward the blockhouse's exit. "Wait, you don't understand."
"You're fine, Antaea. We're going to get you out of here." Antaea drifted for a minute, and when she awoke again Venera was back, this time encircling her waist with one arm. Jacoby had appeared on her other side.
"No, no, wait." She was finding it hard to frame her thoughts. And what about that tone in Venera's voice? It was the sort of soothing cadence you used with someone who was dying.
Antaea tried to pull away. "Day's not going to come."
They both let go of her. "What?" said Venera.
"Holon ... turned off the dawn. Candesce..." She was finding it hard to breathe. "Candesce won't come on again unless we tell it to."
They'd kept drifting through the maze as she spoke, and the exit was approaching. "Shall I, or do you think you can do it?" Venera said to Jacoby.
"Let's get her to the sloop first," he said. "Then we'll both go." He pressed the switch that opened the door, and it slid silently aside, letting in hot, smoky air.
"Ouch," said Antaea. She flexed her fingers; at least her left hand was working. "And where's the key?" she demanded.
Venera held it up. "I picked it off Remoran. He--" Praying she had the strength, Antaea made a grab for it. Venera was so surprised she let Antaea take it--and kick her in the stomach.
Antaea had been holding on to the edge of the door as she'd done it, so as Venera sailed out into the night, she reoriented herself and grabbed Jacoby by his bad shoulder.
"Ah!" He doubled up around the pain and she hauled with all her might. He, too, went through the door.
"Somebody has to turn on the sun again!" she cried at the two receding figures. "And how are you going to lock this door? It needs the key to do it!"
Venera swore as she reached impotently to any kind of purchase on the empty air. "We'll lock it from out here!"
"And I'm to trust you?" Antaea shook her head. "This has to end here. The key can never be used again. And the only place in the world where it can never be recovered is right here."
They were shouting at her to stop, to reconsider, but the redness was starting to overwhelm her sight again, and a roaring like thunder was in her ears, so she shut the door.
Then she raised the key to Candesce, and locked herself in.
* * *
IT TOOK FOUR shots before the engineers hit something vital. Then, instead of exploding, Hayden's generator simply sparked spectacularly, and went black.
"Aw, no," said Hayden. "That was good work."
Keir waited for scry to reappear. The seconds dragged on. No new lights came on from the region of Candesce, and while the thud and fire of battle still continued on the other side of the sky, the gauzy blue of lasers was still missing.
When that light still hadn't reappeared after two minutes, he let out a ragged breath.