Arankadash and I smash the oncoming women in the face. They go down, and we take their cephalopod guns, but not before one of the women sprints away. Arankadash fires at her, but she isn’t very good with a gun yet.
Casamir pulls at my sleeve as we start again, her face pained. We are a stinking, filthy bunch. The bloody arterial spray has caked our hair and skin and has been slowly flaking off. We have all lost weight, Casamir most of all, and she looks hungry and exhausted.
“We can’t just walk in there,” Casamir says.
“Why not?” I say.
“Because I didn’t come all this way to get shot here at the end,” Casamir says.
“Jayd is right up ahead!” I say.
“And what else is ahead of us?” Arankadash says. “We don’t know.”
“So what, we split up?” I say.
“We take the time to think it through,” Casamir says.
I point my weapon at the opposite wall and fire. The cephalopod rams itself into the flesh of the wall. The wall begins to blacken and crack, making a large circle of rot around its tentacles three paces in circumference.
I point at the rotting wall. “That’s what’s happening to this world,” I say. “All that time we traveled, what did we see? A dying world. We’ve got nothing to go back to, none of us. There’s only up. There’s only forward.”
“We are not arguing with you,” Arankadash says.
“We’re your friends,” Casamir says, “but you shouldn’t have let that woman run away.”
“You want me to leave behind a trail of bodies?” I say.
Casamir raises her voice. “If we’re all going to die anyway, what does it matter?”
Arankadash sighs. “Stop yelling,” she says. “Use your heads up here. You are heading in the opposite direction of the woman who’s clearly running for reinforcements,” she says. “If I was that woman, I would go straight to my commander to report you; wouldn’t you?”
I stare at our captive, who looks back at me with big eyes. I hit her in the face with the butt of my gun and she goes down.
“When did you become the dumbest person here?” Casamir asks me.
I nearly butt her in the face too but check my anger. We have made it too far to screw this up.
We hear the armed party before we see them. I raise my gun and power forward. Yes, I’m the dumbest of the bunch, and I don’t care.
Eight women stand outside a large round door. They’re firing cephalopod guns into it, which have rotted away all the organic tissue from the outside to reveal a big metal door. The tattered, ruined bits of the surrounding wall also reveal a metal core.
The woman at the center of them is yelling up at a blinking eye above the door. I know the woman immediately for Rasida Bhavaja.
“The things I’ll do to you when I get this open,” she says, “are extraordinary. It’s mine, Jayd. Get your—”
She sees me before her women do. I’m already firing.
Rasida drops below the first line of women and takes off. She snatches at a hand weapon at her belt as she goes but does not turn.
I press myself against the wall and fire again. The cephalopod gun is slow to reload.
Casamir and Arankadash catch up to me and exchange more fire.
We have the element of surprise. Four women are already down. One is wounded. Two more take off after Rasida.
I run up to the door and stare at the blinking eye. “Jayd?” I say. “It’s me! Jayd!” No response.
I point at the door. “Can you get this open, Casamir?”
Casamir bites her lip. Nods. She hands her gun to Das Muni. “Cover us, all right?”
Das Muni stares at the gun in her hands. I pat her cheek. “We’re almost home,” I say.
I expect to see delight, but she only stares hollowly at me. I don’t have time to understand that. I tell Arankadash to help Casamir hold the position, and pick up a second gun from the fallen women on the floor. I take off after Rasida and the other two Bhavajas.
I hear them ahead of me and pick up my pace. There’s something familiar about the corridor, and when I turn and see the huge open hangar door, I recognize it immediately.
The two Bhavajas have taken up positions at it and fire on me. I hurl myself to the ground so hard, I lose my breath. I roll to one side, firing both guns. One cephalopod goes wide, hitting the top of the door. The other clips one of the women. She swears, goes down.
I fire twice more, heaving for breath, and the second woman skitters inside.
I run.
The lights in the corridor change colors. They blink blue and yellow now. I see the hangar doors closing. I shoot again. The cephalopod smacks the door, burning away the organic shell, revealing metal beneath.
I lunge through the doors just as they close, and roll to a halt inside. I bring up my other gun and fire, hitting the fleeing Bhavaja in the back. She sprawls forward.
Rasida is spraying on a suit.
I fire at her.
She ducks. Picks up a big weapon from the case of them along the far wall, and rolls behind a vehicle.
The hangar lights are on, brighter than I’m used to after so long in the dark. I squint and stay low, moving vehicle to vehicle and using them for cover.
“You don’t have to go through with this, Zan!” Rasida says. “Whatever Jayd has told you is a lie!”
“How do you know I don’t remember everything?” I say. I check my weapons. One of them seems to have failed to reload. I bang it on the ground next to me. It rattles. I leave it there and eye the big weapon rack that Rasida pilfered from.
“If you remembered everything, you wouldn’t be trying to kill me!” Rasida says. “You’d be as keen to murder Jayd as I am.”
“I thought you were in love with her,” I spit. I look underneath one of the vehicles, trying to get an idea of her position. The room is so big that it distorts our voices.
“There’s no such thing as love in the Legion,” Rasida says. “There is birth and there is death. That’s all.”
I peek above one of the vehicles and fire off a test shot.
Sure enough, she fires back. I sight her position and shuffle forward. I jump over one of the vehicles and half-crouch as I hurry down the next row.
“Zan?” she says.
I stop moving. Press my back against a vehicle. I hear her footfalls and low breathing. She’s close. I breathe long and slow, keeping as quiet as possible.
“You know who you are yet?” Rasida says. “I worked it out, though Jayd fought it. Refused it. She never would have told me, which is fascinating in and of itself. You aren’t some grunt from the Mokshi, are you? No . . . no. You’re the lord herself.”
I swing around the vehicle. See her peeking over another one two rows down. I fire. The blast goes wide and buries itself in the far wall. A ring of rot appears.
“I didn’t believe that for a minute,” I say.
“She thought you were quite convinced,” Rasida says. “You really thought you were her sister?”
I gaze over the vehicles again, but she’s taken cover. I do the same. Waiting.
Rasida is silent for some time. I listen to my own heartbeat, straining to hear the sound of her movement, but there’s nothing but the pulse of my blood and the purr of the vehicle behind me.