Gretyl let go of Iceweasel’s shoulder and wrestled a shitblaster. Iceweasel stepped quickly out of her way as she prodded its back panel, struggling to keep the array of coin-sized bowls pointed in the right direction as they shaped a pulse of infrasound, tuning it up and down through a range of resonant frequencies, hunting for the one that would—
The driver tried to pitch forward, but the mecha couldn’t bend that far without keeling over, so it locked him in a thirty-degree bow, like a sulky kid after a forced performance. The bottom half of his face—beard, lips, square teeth—twisted. The shitblaster didn’t just make your bowels loosen, they did so with cramps that were between childbirth and cholera.
Gretyl panted. Iceweasel hauled her out of the mêlée’s center. Three mechas were converging on them, having wrecked the wagon. Iceweasel and Gretyl were nearly knocked over by people running away from them, people she recognized but not quite. They ran, colliding with more people. It was panic.
“I’ve got to—” Gretyl said. The rest was lost, but Iceweasel knew what it was. She and CC were the only ones who could fight—she looked around, saw CC aiming his weapon at a mecha, watched the owner lose consciousness, saw two of their own nearby drop to their knees, clutching their heads and screaming. The pain-ray made your skin feel like it was on fire, and the shaped infrasound rattled your skull and caused deafness and near-blindness.
Half the mechas were incapacitated, the rest waded through the crowd, and Iceweasel watched in horror as they stomped through her crewmates, flinching as their arms swung to counterbalance their drunken stagger, expecting at any moment that those arms would cave in skulls or pick people up and hurl them into the treetops.
But no, Iceweasel saw, the mechas were … escaping. Running for the bush, right past people, and that meant—
“Shit, we have to go,” she said to Gretyl. “Now!”
The drone was back, and for a moment her panic morphed it into a big, missile-carrying craft like she’d seen in the videos of the destruction of WU. But it was only the familiar B&B drone. She blew a plume of stale stress and limped for the trees. “Come on, everyone, come on!” She dragged Gretyl, sneaking glances at the drone, thinking of her B&B crewmates, watching and chewing their nails, retransmitting to the rest of walkaway, even to default, where the spectacle of an unprovoked attack on a column of scientific refugees might shock the conscience of the public beyond the ability of spin-doctors—
The B&B drone nosedived. Her interface surfaces died. Three more drones—sleek, with low-slung missiles and dishes for high-energy electromagnetic pulses—screamed past, a supersonic boom following them. They disappeared over the horizon and there were screams in their wake, panic redoubled as the crew headed into the trees, running in blind panic. They’d seen the missiles.
Iceweasel and Gretyl hovered at the woods’ edge, tracing the contrails in mute horror as the white streaks bent into Ls that became Us as the drones executed precise rolls in formation, corkscrewing upright and doubling back.
Iceweasel squeezed Gretyl’s hand. Gretyl squeezed back. Cool detachment settled over her, like she was being tucked in fever bed by a lover’s hand.
“It was worth it,” she said, thinking of the people who would never die again, of Dis, who would shortly be conscious, who would remember her as someone who had helped cure the most terminal disease of all.
“It was,” Gretyl said. “I love you, darling.”
“I love you, too,” Iceweasel said. “Thank you for letting me help.”
They watched the drones draw closer.
[vii]
The missiles went over their heads into the woods where the mass of the crew hid. Iceweasel understood with her detachment that the drone operators would use thermal and millimeter wave to choose targets. Hiding in the woods was about as effective as pulling up the blanket to escape the bogeyman.
The second round airbursted a hundred meters behind them. The woods roared with flames, the sound almost masking the screams. The drones shot past again, headed for another impossible turn at the horizon’s edge.
The drones were nearly upon them when, out of the iron sky, five missiles came directly at them, seemingly from nowhere. Three hit, fireballs and then thunderclaps, a few seconds later. The other two missed and disappeared from view. Gretyl and Iceweasel craned their necks, and then they saw it: a huge, silent, cigar-shaped zepp, one of the bumblers from the golden age, the sort Etcetera heaved nostalgic sighs for. Its emergency impellers keened as it held its position, tracking the drones as they passed, and then, as they circled, it neatly shot them out of the sky with another volley of counterdrone missiles.
The zepp dipped and spiraled toward the pathway. Once it was ten meters off the ground, it dropped ladders and ziplines and people poured out, clutching first-aid gear and spine-boards, wearing fireproof suits. They ran for the woods and Iceweasel and Gretyl ran with them, without discussion, hot knowledge of salvation coursing through them, firing new reserves of energy.
They labored in the woods for hours, searching, getting the wounded and the dead onto stretchers and into the sky. More people joined them, then more, and when Iceweasel ventured back to the path with a stretcher crew, there were dozens of B&B vehicles on site, from mechas to cargo-bikes, running in relays to bring the wounded back.
She helped load an unconscious person—she saw with a shock it was CC, rainbow hair charred, face and chest a mass of burns—and stood. The other stretcher-bearer turned to her and took her hands, looked into her eyes.
“Iceweasel, hey, Iceweasel?”
It was Tam, sooty and exhausted, and worried. Iceweasel wanted to put her at ease, didn’t want to be a burden, so she tried to say, It’s okay, let’s go help some more—but nothing came. She was alarmed to feel tears slipping down her cheeks. She tried to shake off the feeling, but it wouldn’t shake. Some part of her she could not dial down by pinch-zooming an infographic had been shattered and was floating jagged-edged in her mind’s soup.
“Why don’t we take a break, huh?” Using pressure on her shoulder—pain flared and she gasped—Tam sat her on the ground and hunkered down. “You’re in shock,” she said. “You’ll be okay. I think you should get evacced, get warm and clear, get some liquids.”
“Gretyl—” she said.
“Yeah, Gretyl. That old girl’s probably crashing through the woods like an angry rhino. Nothing’ll stop her. But she’ll worry about you, huh?”
Iceweasel nodded. She didn’t want Gretyl to worry. But she also just wanted Gretyl there, a solidity to rest her head upon, touch of her fingers in Iceweasel’s hair. The rumble of her voice, heard through the pillow of her breasts. She didn’t want to go without Gretyl. She shook her head.
“I’ll wait for Gretyl,” she said.
“I hear you, buddy, but that’s not an option. Not a smart one. Come on, Iceweasel, you know the deal with shock. Warmth, rest, elevated feet. You’re covered in sweat and panting like a chihuahua.”
Iceweasel knew she was right, felt cold sweat on her face, but still—