A handsbreadth from the fog, I cut the fuel to my vehicle and drop like a stone, so hard and so fast, they don’t know what’s happening until they plunge into the yellow fog, bubbling and sizzling, colliding with one another like broken stars.
I come out of the drop and up, fast, so fast I nearly smash into another Bhavaja vehicle, one of the ones that hung back. I circle the crater once and see not one of my soldiers still riding the Mokshi’s thin atmosphere. I’m alone. The yellow mist covers the whole mouth of the crater now, blocking entry. There is no way in; I’ve lost the brief window between the world’s first and second defensive deployments.
Another of the Bhavajas comes at me, taking lead of the group, and she signs at me: “You won’t make Katazyrna space. You won’t make it home.”
“What’s happening?” Jayd’s voice.
I answer by hitting the dash and propelling myself abruptly upward, bursting through the atmosphere so fast, I feel the heat of the friction on my suit.
I pop free and let the burst of momentum push me from the weak gravity well of the world. I see the crimson wave of the defense grid coming up behind me. I try to twist my vehicle around and counter the red wave with the burst shield. The wave glances off the edge of my shield and I spin out of control, tumbling end over end through the desolate inky spaces between the worlds.
The impact of the defense wave burns the left side of my suit, blackening my vision on that side. I squint through my one good eye, blinded by the auburn glare of the misty sun of the Core.
Ahead of me, a dozen worlds burn with the auroras of their outer defenses, casting off waves of vermillion, turquoise and misty emerald light.
I see the kid’s gasping face again, the thick fingers of dark hair, while light flares again and again across my field of vision.
A vehicle zips past me—not mine but Bhavaja: one on the left, then one on the right.
I fight with my vehicle’s propulsion system, thighs gripping either side of it hard, trying to keep my seat.
A cephalopod thuds into my vehicle’s undercarriage.
It gives me the push I need to right myself. I reorient myself and shoot past the two vehicles that flank me. I can see Katazyrna rising ahead of me. Wispy, snarling white tentacles grow out of the Katazyrna’s surface. I see bits of debris caught in those sticky tentacles. If I can reach the pull of the world’s gravity, I can lunge for them and climb back down planetside.
I push hard for the world. It grows into a great amber disk as I near. Another thud judders my vehicle. I correct it before I spin out.
One of the Bhavajas comes up beside me. Her expression is hard: brows meeting over deep, hooded eyes, a twist of a mouth from which peeks a pink tongue, held tightly in clenched teeth.
The Bhavaja raises her weapon and fires.
I release my vehicle, stretch out my arms, and launch myself off it like a space swimmer, catapulting toward the shimmering white tentacles of Katazyrna.
A cephalopod clips my leg. I feel the frigid rush of vacuum and the creeping horror of the suit dissolving around my leg, sickening from the outside in, peeling away like a gory fruit rind.
My grasping fingers take hold of one of the waving tentacles streaming from the surface of Katazyrna. It curls around my arm, yanking me down and down to the surface of the world and the cold, thin atmosphere of home.
I hit the spongy surface just as my suit dissolves around my face and my oxygen runs out.
I have time to suck in a painful breath of frigid, too-thin air and make an obscene gesture at the Bhavajas as they shoot out and away in the face of the world’s blue defenses. Katazyrna pitches wave after wave of radiant energy after our snarling enemy.
“Home,” I say through cold, parched lips into thin, crackling air, “home,” and black out.
“WE ARE ALL SERVANTS OF THE LEGION, SOME MORE SO THAN OTHERS. OUR POWER COMES IN REALIZING THAT SERVITUDE IS NOT A NATURAL STATE BUT A LEARNED ONE. OUR POWER COMES IN KNOWING WE CAN REMAKE IT ALL.”
—LORD MOKSHI, ANNALS OF THE LEGION
4
JAYD
The first time Zan came back from the Mokshi with no memory, I thought it was a blessing from the War God. We had done too many awful things to one another by then, and I feared we would never achieve what we’d set out to do. She was always more emotional than me, which made it a miracle she had achieved so much before we began to work together.
In truth, I never expected to play this game so long. But my mother, Anat, Lord Katazyrna, is stubborn, and so are the Bhavajas. They have been fighting us so long, I don’t think they know how to stop, and Anat certainly can’t stop them alone. Zan and I believed we had a way to end the fighting and save Katazyrna, and perhaps the Legion, too. But some people don’t want to be saved.
I am thinking of this as I head down to see Anat. I’ve had visual confirmation from the surface-walkers that Zan has reached the well of Katazyrna’s gravity, and they are going to pull her in. It makes me nervous not to be the one to welcome Zan back, but Anat is already suspicious of me, and I don’t want to inflame her any more than she already is. We have come close to swaying her so many times. I touch my stomach. Everything we planned so very long ago depends on Zan being there, flinging herself at the Mokshi, and me being here, rescuing her from it, until we can convince Anat that I can better serve her in the hands of our enemies.
After this latest failed approach on the Mokshi, I prepare to debrief our mother as if I am a soldier preparing for war. It’s how our mother raised us all. We are Katazyrna soldiers, born and raised for just this purpose. But I find soldiering false, a broken way to manage people who should be bound to you in love, not fear.
Love worked far better on Zan than fear, I found. At least until she found out what I did to what she loved most. I have made many mistakes. I am the first to admit that. But forgiveness is a luxury I cannot afford to court. I’m not convinced I would deserve it, even if I got down on my knees and cut open my palms and begged Zan for it.