The Gender End (The Gender Game #7)

“We don’t pollute anything this badly,” Amber pointed out, a snide touch to her tone. “We have to tell them, right? They’re destroying the river. Making it harder for us to live and survive.”

I hesitated, genuinely torn. On the one hand, she was absolutely right: assuming they weren’t doing it on purpose, they did need to know that dumping their waste in the river was creating a threat to us. On the other hand, telling them that would key them in to where our societies were located, and that could mean them coming to us. After all, Devon had eyed the heloship with a hunger that made the hair on my neck stand up. And CS Sage had basically threatened to blow us out of the sky if we ever came back. It was not an easy call.

I looked at Viggo, who seemed deep in thought, considering the problem. “I think we had better…” He trailed off, his eyes going to the tower. “Amber, what is that?”

“Um, hold on a second,” she said. I heard her clicking a few buttons, but I was squinting, trying to see what Viggo had spotted. “I got an enhanced image on the holotable, Viggo.”

I turned, the holotable glowing brightly as it activated. Then the image of the tower flickered into view, the 3D picture showing a view from much closer than we actually were. I immediately spotted what Viggo had seen, and frowned. One of the platforms seemed to ripple, as if something had just impacted, and a shockwave was radiating outward.

My frown deepened as I moved over to the table. Nothing had hit the tower. There was no impact, no missile, and nobody to fire such a projectile but us. Instead it seemed the panels of glass were lifting up off of the wing jutting from the side of the tower. There were rods attached to the underside of each one, and the dark brown glass shone a bright white as they caught the rays of the sun.

“What is that?” I breathed, repeating Viggo’s question. The panels were rearranging into a bowl shape, as the rods behind them reoriented the newly configured… whatever it was to point toward the west.

I felt my stomach drop as, suddenly, the array flashed white under the bright yellow sunlight, catching the rays of the sun so intently the glass bowl glowed with a brilliance that rivaled the river and the sun combined. I wanted to squint my eyes, even looking at a camera feed patched in from the hull of the ship.

“Where’s Belinda’s ship?” I asked, and Viggo moved over to where an inset keyboard was on the opposite side of the table and clicked a few buttons. The image zoomed up as the outer camera panned, and I could see the other heloship making its way—slowly but steadily—following the glowing blue part of the river back to Matrus. Studying it, I realized the bowl thing was pointed almost directly at them, and I felt the pit of my stomach drop out completely.

“You have to warn them,” I shouted at Amber. “Broadcast all frequencies and tell them—”

The glowing seemed to have reached some sort of critical mass, because even as I spoke, a beam of spectacular white light burst forth from the bowl, streaking toward Belinda and Kathryn’s ship.

For a second, I hoped that whatever the light was, it would just be some sort of high-technology gadget that didn’t cause any harm. A scanning beam. A warning signal.

The next moment, my fragile hope was shattered. I gaped as the beam of light cut through Belinda and Kathryn’s ship, slicing it cleanly in half, the edges of where the beam of light had touched bright red even from this distance and clearly melting into slag. The two halves of the ship plummeted downward, each tumbling on an oblong axis toward the broken earth below.

“No, no, no,” I gasped, taking a few hesitant steps toward the window, unable to comprehend that they were just… gone. It wasn’t fair. We had worked together to save ourselves, and in under a second, our hard-won victory had been ripped away by the people in the tower.

“It’s moving toward us,” said Viggo, and I turned. Sure enough, the dish was twisting toward us, much faster than it had zeroed in on Belinda and Kathryn, and I felt a stab of anger.

“Amber! Dive!” I shouted, just as the panels on the array began to glow white.





13





Viggo





Amber was rushing to move the heloship almost before Violet shouted. She threw the control beam forward, her arms extending straight out in front of her, her teeth gritted. The deck dipped, and the view through the bubble was suddenly filled with earth and water rushing up to meet us at a phenomenal rate. I felt myself go weightless, and a high-pitched noise filled the air.

I caught sight of the holotable in time to see the white streak of light filling the screen—then the table went dead, and a juddering, jolting shudder ran through the ship. Something splattered onto the deck, and a klaxon alarm began to sound. Looking up, I could see that a wide strip of the roof grating overhead had turned red hot, and bits of molten metal were dripping down to the deck below, landing with sizzling plops.

Heat blossomed inside the cockpit, and sweat formed instantly across my brow. I pulled Violet away from the dripping wound in the ship, trying to get into a more secure position in the heloship.

“Arm the missiles!” Logan was shouting at Amber. “Shoot the bastards back, dammit!”

“Shoot at a giant beam of light? Are you crazy?”

“Not at the light beam, at the… the weapon!”

Amber’s voice sounded dangerously close to hysteria. “If you have time to aim right now then do it yourself!”

Logan lunged at the controls with a grunt, but he stumbled and slid across the cockpit as Amber began to yank back on the helm, shifting us left at an uncomfortable angle. “And get that damn alarm shut off!” she ordered, the muscles in her arms straining as she angled us up and away.

I managed to toss Violet onto one of the built-in seats before the rise of gravity again began to pull me back. My foot slipped out from under me as the deck grew steeper and steeper, and I would’ve fallen flat on my face had Violet not reached out to grab a fistful of my shirt.

“HANG ON,” she yelled, and I wrapped my hand around her forearm.

She looped her other arm through and around the unbuckled harness behind her, gripping the one from the seat next to her, and then she was holding my weight, as I was suddenly dangling from her arm. Violet gave a pained grunt, and her legs came around my chest, hooking behind my back, under my armpits, her hold the only thing keeping me from plummeting into the bulkhead below.