“Wake up,” he told his roommate, shaking the bunk before giving the lazy boy one little twist of a fist.
Like a pill bug, the boy pulled himself into a ball, trying to protect his belly.
“So what, there’s sirens,” he complained.
Slayers didn’t fire cannons with the ordinary troops.
“It’s not the damn sirens,” Karlan said. Then he dragged the boy off the high bed, watching him fall to the floor.
The boy was named Ticker, and he didn’t like to fight.
“What’s this about?” Ticker asked.
“Something’s been spotted, and we’ve got to go.”
They didn’t hunt unless a worthy corona was flying directly beneath the District of Districts. Otherwise it was a sure loss of equipment and probably lives, and no spoils would come home in the end.
Pulling on trousers, Ticker asked, “How big?”
“Barely big enough,” Karlan lied.
The boy did love to hunt though, which was the only reason he didn’t find himself thrown him back with the common soldiers.
“Faster,” Karlan said.
Clean shirts were too much of a challenge. Ticker threw on yesterday’s shirt and then started lacing into the armor.
Then a voice pushed through the wail of sirens. One of the original slayers was down in the hanger, shouting, “The prize won’t linger.”
“Is it?” Ticker asked.
“They think so,” Karlan said.
“Damn, you could have told me,” the boy said, bursting through the door with his battle gear only halfway secured.
At his own pace, Karlan dressed. The armor was special-made for him, oversized and half again thicker than anyone else’s. A fortune in corona scales had been fused together, and the helmet was a marvel of tiny interlocking scales harvested from the tiniest coronas. Karlan wasn’t shy about using favors to get the best for himself. The hero who killed the Eight the first time deserved a lot more than accolades. Nobody else put an end to the rampage that murdered Merit, and he certainly didn’t start any wars in the process. Merit’s adopted son generated a lot of opinions among slayers, but in these ranks, Karlan was always offered free drinks and his pick of duties, and the women slayers had granted him a lot more than wine and the ship’s prime gun.
The ship was a fletch called Tomorrow’s Girl.
Once a warship, it had been reconfigured to hold double duties. The front high-hand turret had been dragged clear up to the nose, affording its gunner a grand view of everything. The harpoon gun was a marvel when it came to killing—a combination of the explosives to stun the prey and wires leading back to a bank of capacitors that would cook any corona to death. But that gun wasn’t brought out until there was some beast to shoot. For the rest of the flight, Karlan was the master of a cannon that threw out fountains of hard rounds mixed with bursts of explosive rounds. Three shattered wings had been credited to his marksmanship, and he was confident that others had flown away injured, probably dropping through the demon floor before they got home.
Dressed for his day, Karlan was the final crewmember to stride into the hanger.
The captain considered words but didn’t risk them. Whatever he thought about his big spoiled hero, he had learned not to complain too openly about these flashes of independence.
Besides, the Girl wasn’t ready to fly. The big engines were running hard, but half of the crew was helping overfill the special ballast tanks, including Ticker. Too many hands were as bad as too few, and that’s why the rest of the crew stood beside the open door. Karlan joined those admiring the new day. The morning light was even more staggering than normal, the rain having washed the air clear while the coronas’ realm was less yellow than usual, slightly more transparent.
“See it?” one man asked.
Another man said, “Yes,” and then, “No.”
The prettiest woman smiled at the newcomer, offering him the smoked glass so he could stare down at the sun.
“Wait,” said the first man. “Here it comes again.”
What was coming?
Karlan wasn’t often startled. But then the shadow swept over them. It wasn’t total, and it certainly wasn’t like the stories told from before. Night didn’t come when the giant eclipsed the sun. But the sun’s raw brilliance faltered for a blink, and inside the grayness were odd hints of motion and design, swirling according the titanic motions of what was possibly the largest entity in the Creation.
Karlan never had time to look through the darkened glass.
“Launch,” the captain called out on the loudspeaker.
They broke into running gaits, taking their stations faster than they ever managed during the drills.
Karlan’s oversized seat had extra belts and a piece of fur from a royal jazzing that everyone insisted would bring luck. But even when he was buckled in place, the Girl remained in its berth. Intercom noise was about new orders. Ticker waved at him from inside one of the back turrets, and the two men opened a gunner’s line.
“We’re with the second wave,” the boy said.
More than that was obvious. Karlan could still hear the sirens over the roaring engines, and a lot of planning and more rambling conversations pushed into his thoughts.
“We won’t get our shots,” Ticker said.
“We will,” Karlan said. “Don’t worry.”
But other fletches were already plunging out of the station’s hangers, one and then another diving past their open door. If they left with their first chance, they already would have made it a long ways to the target.
“That other giant,” Ticker said. “She was slow and didn’t fight. Killing her was nothing. So yeah, the first wave is going to have this one dead and trussed up before we even get close.”
“Trust me,” Karlan said. “We’re lucky people, and get your head ready.”
And just like that, the Girl rose off the hanger’s floor, the engines erasing every other sound in the world. That big fletch was ridiculously heavy, and most of its ballast wasn’t even pulling yet. With Karlan at the nose, leading the way, the ship pushed into the scrubbed and blazing air. A thin trickle of rainwater hit the backside of the turret, splattering and then pooling against the flat scale-covered hull. Then the swollen ballast bags were dragged out behind them—six bags made from woven growler hides. Each bag was secured by short strong ropes, and each was filled with the cheapest, most disposable product in the world. Water leaked at the seams, but that wasn’t important. The bags didn’t have to hold together for more than a few recitations. The target was far below, probably flying weakly over the demon floor, and this was what slaying was today: drop hard and fast, making the kill without wasting a breath, and then fight to secure the carcass and bring it home again before the papio decided to attack.
Except today was different.
Karlan knew it.
The ballast bags were dragged across the hanger’s floor, and then they fell, dragging the Girl downward at a staggering, wondrous pace.
Everybody screamed, at least inside themselves.
Karlan yelled heartily for a full recitation, loving the sense of motion and how the ship trembled at its core, and that was before he spotted the round black blotch of a corona that already looked huge from up high with a long way to go.
War loved secrets, and here was one of the big secrets that everybody talked about when they thought nobody was listening: what if someday, with warning or without, another giant corona surfaced?
One of those old beasts surrendered four dangerous children to the world. Another litter of cherubs could be hiding inside the next giant, which made everybody hungry and scared, and in ways that were definitely not normal, it made them smart. That first giant was just one of an ancient generation of coronas. Her peers were old and dying, and each one of them would emerge at the end. If one lady had a belly full of indigestible monsters, then all of them could be bearing gifts. Or curses. Whichever they were.