The massive’s brightness climaxed in a tremendous arcing halo, a display of lightning to put anything the Setari could do to shame. The wind brought the scent of ozone so strong it felt like my nose was being scoured, and I had my eyes squeezed shut when Ruuel said: "Go."
I haven’t watched the mission report showing them fly underneath the thing as it leaped forward. The whole idea of it makes me nervous, because it could so easily have crushed them. I stayed down, resting back on my heels, and didn’t even let myself look using the transport’s view until I heard the faint relieved sound Sonn made.
Caught a second time, with its underside blasted from below, the massive reared up perilously and then flipped backward, trying to jerk itself free. If it had managed it in the first lunge it would probably have escaped, but instead it exposed itself in the worst way to further layers of ice, was pinned wrong-side out and unprotected from unrelenting pounding. The fliers carefully manoeuvred in to join the Setari, blasting away with their weapons.
The thing was just so damn large, and didn’t have any kind of head or heart they could concentrate on. It took ten full minutes of relentless hammering before it stopped trying to break free. The last enhancement cycle, I really started to feel it, a painful effort every time anyone so much as brushed against me and they weren’t even halfway through the cycle before I looked up at Sonn and didn’t have to say anything at all. I think she’d been about to call it anyway, immediately saying: "Devlin’s at her limit. Returning below."
Par levitated me down, then he and Sonn were called away to support the escort-chasing group, who were close to being overwhelmed by something like fifty swoops, but had held off reporting numbers until the massive was beyond escape. Everyone who wasn’t in a state of collapse went off to help them. One of our entourage of greysuits made me drink something which tasted like caramel and hot milk, and I even felt her touch as effort and protested a little incoherently before passing out in the seat next to where Mori was already sleeping.
Zzz.
I woke on a very flat, hard bed in a nook hidden by a curtain. A girl of about eleven was standing clutching the corner of the bed by my foot, staring at me. She was totally Wednesday Addams: tight black braids, big forehead, huge eyes. It took me a minute of staring back at her to decide I wasn’t hallucinating.
"Are you just going to lie there?" she asked, when I didn’t do anything.
"Are you just going to stand there?" I asked. It was so disorienting, to be on the ship, and then somewhere else with someone I’d never seen before, and no sense of transition at all.
"No. But I can’t interview you while you’re lying down. It would look bad."
I blinked at the impatient tone, and rubbed sleep out of my eyes. "I under impression that random junior reporters not able record my image."
"I can log your outline." Scornful now. "Hurry and sit up. I’ve a lot of questions and hardly any time."
"I tell you what," I said, propping myself on one elbow. "I trade you question for question. You first: where is here?"
"Timesa. My turn. What do you miss most about your home world?"
"My family."
"Other than your family."
"That a different question." I smiled at her provokingly, shifting to prop my back against the wall while looking up Timesa in the encyclopaedia. It was another of the little food-processing settlements scattered through the Array. The interface told me it was two kasse (about five hours) since the massive battle. "We’re waiting out that storm here?"
"Uhuh. What, other than your family, do you miss most about your home world?"
"My friends," I said, grinned at the look on her face, and added: "And the food, the music, the stories. I miss a lot some of the things I was reading, because I don’t get to find out how end."
"What’s the biggest difference between the people on your world and the people here?"
I considered pointing out that it was my turn, but instead glanced at the team lists to see who was awake. Most everyone was out of it though, here and back at base. First Squad was back from their rotation, but asleep. I had some emails from them waiting for me. "Tare less diverse than Earth," I said, after thinking about it. "Everyone here speak same language; Earth has hundreds. On Earth, more variety in the way people look. Many more different customs." And more misunderstandings and wars as a result. "But no psychic people."
Ruuel was awake, but I’m being very strict with myself about contacting him, so settled on Nils instead. I sent him a text: "Need to be saved from precocious little girl."
"You get to work with the Setari, right? What talents do you have?"
"Talent for getting headaches, mainly. Do you have any talents?"
Nils, sounding like he was laughing, opened a channel and said: "Glad to see you’re awake. What’s this dire peril?"
"Levitation," the girl said tightly, though I couldn’t tell if she was annoyed at me for being facetious or for the question. She tilted her head, and I realised that like me she was having a conversation with someone else at the same time – people feeding her questions, judging from her expression as she asked: "Which Setari is the best looking?"
"Third Squad captain," I said without hesitation, adding: "Being able to fly one of best talents. Would like to have that one. Is that how you got in here?" To Nils I said: "Intrepid girl reporter woke me up for exclusive interview. Being very indiscreet."
"How much of The Hidden War episode about you was correct?" the girl asked, ignoring my question. "And did you like it?"
"There was a lot of made-up stuff," I said. "But some of it was real, like that bit where I was nearly stood on by something in the middle of the night. Don’t think I could ever really enjoy watching that. At the time was very upset because someone had taken the things which had happened to me and turned into entertainment, just so they could make money." I thought about adding a stalwart defence of Fourth Squad, but was spared having to decide if that was a good idea by the faint shushing noise of a door.
The girl glanced around, then crossed her arms and waited defiantly as the curtain pulled back to reveal both Nils and Ruuel. "You’re interrupting," she snapped, totally unfazed by six-foot-something, black-suited, uber-dangerous psychics.
Nils laughed, sounding surprised but unbothered. "I’m often told I have no sense of timing," he said easily. He gestured with his hand and the girl rose a couple of feet off the ground. "But I am irresistible," he added, and walked off with her, ignoring her outraged demand to be put down.
Highly amused, I looked at Ruuel and realised he was annoyed, his eyes narrowed and his mouth very flat. It’s such a rare thing for him to show anything but his captain expression that I felt sick with dismay, and said in an embarrassingly plaintive tone: "Would have felt silly sound alert on little girl."
"You’ve forgotten the lesson of the cat," he said, but something had shifted in his eyes and he suddenly seemed more his usual self.
"Ghost kind of a mixed lesson," I pointed out, trying not to show how relieved I was. "And if she’d wanted to hurt me, she could have done it before waking me up and asking me questions. Is everyone all right? I fell asleep before fight was over."
"No fatalities." He stepped back as one of our attendant greysuits showed up. "Food down the hall when you’re done."
The greysuit – one from Gorra who didn’t usually have a chance to test his theories on the stray – was really interested in whether being pushed to my enhancing limits had had any effect on me, but frustrated that they didn’t have any of their fancier scanning equipment on hand. I was distracted by the rest of what proved to be Timesa’s small medical facility, which was overcrowded with seven injured Setari, and me in for observation. I was surrounded by little alcoves with curtains and wanted to see if any of my friends were behind them, but the only person I could see enough of was Hasen from Eighth, her nanosuit partially withdrawn and the exposed skin of her shoulder covered with liquid bandage.