Umbrella of the Apocalypse
Ruuel woke me up just on dawn with an override and a typically curt text message: "Aft lock."
Not sure if it was an emergency, I released my pod’s lid, making my nanosuit grow back its feet and gloves as quickly as I could manage. I did bring a bag of normal clothes along, but it’s simpler to wear the suit to bed precisely because of mornings like this one, though I guess I mainly wear it because I would have felt embarrassed slopping around in pyjamas while everyone else was in uniform.
Mara was with Ruuel and one of the greensuits, standing on the small ramp down to the trampled dirt outside. Ruuel touched my arm and then turned to gaze into the half-light.
"Possibly just a false alarm," Mara said, squeezing my shoulder in apologetic greeting. "Combat Sight is giving me nothing specific, but I can’t escape the sense that something’s there."
Mara’s turn for the late watch. She’d woken Ruuel, who in turn had woken me because he was no more certain. I looked out at the hazy shapes of the stacked trees and the endless stretch of whitestone buildings. The air was sharply crisp, with a fragment of breeze rattling leaves. Otherwise, nothing.
"No birds," I noted. That early, bird-calls should have been just starting up, but it was like the city was holding its breath.
Ruuel glanced back at me, then nodded at Mara. "Something is coming. It’s still in near-space." He set off a full alert alarm and headed back into the ship.
"Go quickly and grab something to eat," Mara told me, after a rather wry look at Ruuel’s back. "There’s only one thing any of us are likely to be able to sense while it’s still in near-space. This isn’t going to be easy."
A massive. That’s what Ruuel said, as he brought all the Setari and the greensuits and Tsel Onara into a channel and gave them one of his terse briefings.
"We’ll retreat," Tsel Onara said immediately.
"No time," Maze said. "If we can feel it, it’s right on the verge of emerging. The Diodel isn’t manoeuvrable enough to avoid an attack during take-off, even if we could manage that immediately."
I’d run, not to get something to eat, but to go to the toilet and to wash my face. Maze ordered both squads outside even as Mara said: "It’s emerging. Mark seven, almost on top of us."
Eight squads. That’s what I was remembering as I ran back to the aft lock. The last time they’d fought a massive they’d needed eight squads, and Maze’s wife had died. We didn’t even have any of the big hitter squads, and for all I knew how much more powerful I made the Setari, I still felt bug-small when I reached the ramp and felt what was above us.
Not with psychic senses. Felt in the way you do when there’s something really big moving, like when the Litara is flying overhead. The thing was standing beside the park, not directly over us, and was bigger than the Litara. It had to be one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen – a black and bulky central section low to the ground, but with two twisty sub-bodies raised far higher up on either side by scads of long spindly legs which reminded me of the collapsed spokes of an umbrella. I watched one of these reach with a lazily deceptive speed and pluck something from the ground below. It was too far to see just what it was, but the massive moved it over to the central body and dropped it on top.
"We’ll draw it away from the Diodel first," Maze said. "Spel, Gainer, Eyse, Halla, remain with the ship on alert for accompaniment."
"First assessment is that it will be resistant to elementals," Ruuel said calmly, and gave me one of the molasses food bars which were standard mission fare. He had a handful of them, was passing them out.
Maze grimaced, but didn’t seem particularly surprised, setting the enhancement rotation as he touched my arm. "We’ll go over the top," he said. "Don’t underestimate the reach of those arms."
Eight people. Instead of eight squads, they were going to try and fight the thing with eight people. But still, even though they were looking super-serious, they weren’t acting like they thought it was impossible, so when Auron hitched me into his side all I did was hook my arm obediently across his shoulders.
We went very high very quick, the cold air making my eyes stream. There was a crunching noise below, and I realised it was one of the buildings the massive’s main body was resting on. Even whitestone couldn’t stand up to the weight of it. After one brief glance where I saw that the top of it looked like a massive Venus flytrap, I didn’t look down again.
"Higher – we’re in reach," Ruuel said, and we shot up abruptly even as some of the umbrella spokes came toward us. Maze set the tip of one, a horrid fingery arrangement, shrivelling and burning and Ruuel said: "Sonn," which prompted her to drop a ball of lightning down into the mouth, and then we were on the far side.
"The large building at mark nine," Maze ordered, and we dropped down to the roof of a long, single-story building, moving way too fast for my comfort. The fact that I have to be carried instead of levitated makes whizzing about scary.
"Swoops at twelve mark," Ruuel said. "Fast approach."
"Your targets Kettara, Senez." Maze re-enhanced, starting the cycle over. "How much reaction to that lightning?"
Ruuel’s eyes were fully open as he gazed back at the massive. "No more than pain."
It was moving toward us, surprising me by being a lot quicker and less awkward than something that big and weird should surely be. Off in the direction Mara and Lohn had gone was the white flash of Lohn’s Light wall, and a gargling wail before some heavy things crashed and skidded in the street below.
"Focus debris damage on the join points between the centre body and the outliers," Ruuel continued. "Then debris and elementals on the outliers. They are its weapons."
"Right side first," Maze said, wasting no time in pulling a boulder out of the ground below and hurling it at the massive. It fell short: we were too far away. Even Ferus, who has the strongest Telekinesis of the two squads, couldn’t quite reach.
"Haul above," Maze ordered, and he, Zee and Ferus gathered everything loose and heavy from the immediate area – trees and rocks and chunks of broken whitestone – and zipped upwards.
"Retreat back four streets," Ruuel ordered, because the massive was uncomfortably no longer too far away. Auron lifted me, Mara, Lohn and Sonn backward to the roof of a two-story building up the hill, landing just as the others began hurling things downward with maximum strength.
The massive didn’t like that. It made a low, deep noise and stopped moving as its right segment was almost completely severed. As the three telekinetics dipped back to the ground to gather more missiles, the massive’s two outer segments lowered all their spindly umbrella arm-legs until they were about the same height as the main body. The right segment didn’t seem like it was going to drop dead or stop moving just because it was no longer fully joined, although both of the segments had pulled down completely into defensive bunches.
The tiny constellation of the Setari rose again, moving to attack the other segment, which seemed to be tilting so that it faced in my group’s direction.
"Scatter!"
I gasped, wrenched by abrupt and rapid movement. Ruuel had stepped behind me, slid both arms under mine, and gone straight up. He’d brought Mara, Lohn and Sonn with us, and Auron followed after a moment’s shock. Ruuel was moving as quickly as he could fly and I slid helplessly down, clamping my arms over his and trying not to panic until he bound our suits and I stopped sliding, just as a wave of purplish light washed out the dawn, filling the air with the scent of burning metal.