1491625 was saying something in livid frantic flashes of light. Cheris had interpreted part of it—The base is active—when the explosion hit.
Heat. Fire. Jedao’s weight atop her. The side of the needlemoth tore open and formed tormented flanges of metal. The meat reek of scorched flesh, except with that peculiar cloying undertone that she associated with Jedao’s black blood.
The attack wasn’t over. Why should it be? Always follow up an advantage, and so on; lessons from a lifetime of soldiering. The needlemoth rolled as something hit it, a hammer-blow like a giant’s fist. Jedao clutched at her, his face twisting as he landed on the broken arm. Cheris had enough time to feel sorry for him before smashing into the far wall. At least the chairs were bolted down or one would have landed on her.
Jedao scrambled back to a low crouch only to be knocked down again by the next round of explosions. He struggled upright, scrabbled for a mask and air tank, thrust both at her. His face was ghastly pale, and blood ran down from a cut at his temple.
Cheris accepted the mask and tank. Her lungs didn’t hurt—yet—but a faint edge of panic threatened to overcome her, the body’s insistence on breathing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a glistening membrane stretching over most of the blown-out carapace as the automated repair system sealed the breach. The membrane was perilously thin, and wouldn’t withstand much of a barrage.
“Knife,” Jedao mouthed at her, signing the word as well for emphasis. Then: “You—sealant.”
A knife was a peculiar weapon to demand when they were under missile fire. Cheris could only guess at the reason they hadn’t been destroyed yet: the needlemoth’s primary defense was stealth, and its carapace couldn’t withstand a determined assault. Nevertheless, she pointed out the location of the survival kit, hoping he understood her.
At least sealant she understood the need for. She reckoned it more urgent than the knife, although surely he had his reasons. She wasn’t sure they had enough sealant on board to reinforce the membrane. But better to try than give up. She crawled, bracing for each new impact, to the cabinet of emergency canisters. Clawed at the hatch until rational thought reasserted itself and she was able to toggle it open.
Bright hell-flashes sizzled through the debris and smoke in the air. It took Cheris several abstracted moments to figure out that 1491625 was signaling her. She clung to one of the hand/footholds like an awkward spider, shouted at Jedao, quite unnecessarily, to get out of the way, pointed the canister at the breach, and opened the nozzle.
Foam gushed from the nozzle, expanding like an immense hungry fungus. (Like many Kel, Cheris had a horror of fungus—specifically the dreaded weapon known as the fungal canister—even if she’d only seen it used once during her original life, and that from an unimaginable distance.) For a second she thought she had gone blind, that everything would forever be swallowed up in a rush of bubbling murky gray.
Then the foam clung and shrank, setting as it made contact with the carapace and walls and membrane. Cheris was glad she hadn’t gotten any on herself. She’d heard of people getting cemented to foam sealant and having to be extricated with cutters and stinging solvent. Or worse, being entombed in the foam, suffocating as the foam forced itself down your throat and blossomed grotesquely in the lungs—
Cheris shook off the gruesome vision and slithered over to Jedao, where she received a shock of an entirely different sort. He had retrieved the knife—good—except he had buried it hilt-deep in his chest and was carving himself like a demented roast. Cheris stared in frank astonishment as he yanked the knife out and pulled out a chunk of flesh oozing the familiar black blood.
“Jedao,” she wheezed as the needlemoth lifted off—thankfully, they still had a maneuver drive left for 1491625 to work with—“what in the name of fire and ash?” At least she thought that was what she said; the particulates in the air caused her to hack and cough. The acrid metallic stench mingling with the alien reek of Jedao’s blood didn’t help.
He shook his head without meeting her eyes, as if that meant anything in the haze of smoke and foam off-gas and stinging metallic fibers. Cheris glimpsed a pulsing nest of maggot-like tendrils knotting and unknotting where he should have had a heart. He reached into the wound with his fingers, grimaced, and twisted, then removed his hand. “Got it,” he mouthed.
Drenched by dripping gore was a small device of metal and crystal. Cheris’s heart clenched. A bug or a tracking device.
“It must have been in one of the bullets,” Jedao said. “I should have noticed it earlier, but its density is such a close match—” He brought the device up to his mouth, placed it between two molars, bit down hard. There was a crackling noise and a pungent spark as it combusted. He spat it out; Cheris didn’t see where it went.
“Who?” Cheris asked. But she already knew.
“The Shuos,” Jedao said, bitter.
All that time flying stealthed and it hadn’t made a difference. The Shuos had followed them here in their shadowmoths—surely more than one—and now they might die before either of them achieved their goal. “’25,” she called out, because in her haste she didn’t have time to pronounce the servitor’s full name, “status?”
She didn’t like drawing attention to it; Pyrehawk Enclave’s protocols forbade it. But she needed to communicate with it, and she suspected that Jedao had already guessed 1491625’s sentience.
It spoke at the same time, hijacking the needlemoth’s own imaging systems to warn them. Cheris had never known it to do that in the past. Servitors were generally discreet about the degree to which they could nose around in grid systems. The emergency couldn’t be denied, however.
Under fire, 1491625 sent to them in hell-red flashes, the world lighting up in gory crimson. At least two shadowmoths, probably more still stealthed.
Cheris’s heart sank even as a part of her thought, not a little snidely, Great, two Jedaos and we’ve finally met a scenario we can’t fox our way out of?
“We need to parley,” she said. They couldn’t win a battle of attrition. The question was, would their attackers be willing to talk? Especially after Jedao had attempted to eat one of their comrades?
Only one way to find out.
“Fuck, no,” Jedao said. He grabbed for her arm, missed. She twisted past him and squeezed by the disgusting mess of sealant, shuddering from the rubbery texture against her cheek, then hurried toward the cockpit.
1491625 didn’t have to be told to slam the cockpit door in Jedao’s face. Cheris told herself she wasn’t being spiteful. Shuos operatives wouldn’t react positively to Jedao running around loose, and never mind that they were unlikely to think kindly of her, either.
Jedao immediately began banging on the door. Cheris suppressed a growl. Why couldn’t he ever be convenient? Even when he’d been a ghost stapled to her shadow, as opposed to a regenerating menace with a teenager’s moods and memories, he’d never been convenient.
“Comm channel’s open,” 1491625 flashed at Cheris. “Have fun.”
It would have been nice if someone around here had any faith in her. “This is Ajewen Cheris,” she said, speaking loudly to be heard over the thumping. At least it was only (only?) thumping and not more explosions. “Request parley.”