She beat wing and elevated to the other pair of amateurs she was supervising. Aguella and I shared a sigh of relief that she was gone.
And then Equatorial High Crystal blew apart.
A hammer blow on my head. Wings snapped back by the concussion. Spinning. Fire, fire everywhere!
One second I was working and grinning at Aguella, and in the next instant my ears were bleeding, my eyes swimming. My mind was a mess of shattered bits and pieces.
What was happening?
I was cut in a dozen places by flying shards. A six-inch spike of crystal was lodged in my left pod. I pulled it out, yelling and crying and falling through the air as I did so.
What was happening?
Aguella — where was she? Nothing I saw made sense. Debris still flying all around me, falling away now, but twirling and glittering as it fell.
The MCQ3 still held station. Where was Aguella?
“Aguella! Aguella!”
I heard a moan, barely audible past the ringing in my ears. I looked up and saw her. She was using her talons to cling to an unpolished bit of spar.
And then it happened again. And this time I saw it. I looked up at my friend, at the streams of dull, burnt-orange blood coming from her face. But past her, above the MCQ3, up through the masts and spars I saw the raked cylinders, the arched neck, the dagger points of an alien ship. It cruised slowly through the atmosphere, taking its time. Nothing like a Generational or Illaman ship. Nothing like anything I’d seen or imagined.
It seemed to circle slowly around my home crystal, watching, waiting, and then it fired again. A beam of energy, pale red. The beam lanced down into the core of my home crystal, my poor damaged home. This time I expected the concussion as overheated crystal exploded, blew apart.
My world dropped, fell away. It was in two pieces now. A fragment equal to a third of the whole spun, spiraled down. Wings beat frantically but the balance was lost. And too many wings would never beat again.
The remnant of Equatorial High Crystal was scarred and burned. Ends broken off. Jagged and rough. But it still maintained lift. I could see thousands of my brothers and sisters, all straining, all lifting together. Free flyers were rushing to dock anywhere they could, anywhere to provide lift.
But the alien ship wasn’t done with its work. This time no beam weapon. This time it sprayed a cloud of flechettes. Small, so small they could barely be seen with the naked eye, millions of tiny shredding metal hooks. The sound was like a volcano blowing. The flechettes sprayed for five seconds, no more, but at the end of that time every unshielded Ketran was torn apart. The entire crystal might have been dipped in blood.
The bodies began to fall away. The crystal itself began to fall. Straight down, down, and gathering speed, with no one left to hold it up any longer.
It would take a long time to fall three hundred miles.
“Aguella!” I flapped to her. She was conscious, but barely.
“Dock you fools! Dock now!” a voice yelled. Jicklet. “We’re powering up!”
I heard the low whine of the engines warming. I grabbed Aguella as well as I could; her wings were beating but weakly. I grabbed her and steered her, hauled her to the nearest dock. The dock we’d just finished installing. I pressed her back against it.
“Clamp on! Listen to me: Clamp on!”
She nodded, eyes wild, wandering. I saw her chest tighten. She was docked. Now it was my turn. The nearest open dock was fifty feet away.
The alien had spotted us. At first we must have looked like a part of the home crystal. But now he could see that we were still flying, that we were self-contained. And yet he was in no hurry. Why should he be? We’d been unable to resist. We were helpless.
The alien ship drifted lazily around, bringing its dagger tip to bear on us. With numb fingers I fumbled to the dock, twisted, lined up, and the alien fired.
The beam this time. Deadly accurate. It hit us on center.
But the force field had been raised by someone thinking more clearly than I. The red beam glowed and a disc of bright light appeared at the limits of the force field.
The alien sheered off. I was on the ship’s uninet now, hooked in, able to watch the readouts from the engines. At ninety-five percent of power they could be engaged. We were at sixty-five percent.
Everyone I knew was dead. My sire and dam, dead. Inidar was dead. Wormer, dead. I looked down and saw her, my home, a bright glint still falling away. How long to fall three hundred miles? How long till it hit the lava fields, crumpled, and was burned out of existence?
The alien ship hovered close. It seemed curious. Interested. Like a scientist studying some new microbe under a lens.
Then a small craft, a boxier, winged version of the main ship, dropped from its belly. It hovered then flew close, probing toward us, feeling for the force field. It stopped. Engine readout at eighty percent.
The small craft nosed forward, very slowly. It pressed against the force field, pushed at it. The field held. Engines at eighty-four percent. I could see a single shape, a form through a transparent window at the front of the little ship. He was no more than twenty yards away. I could see him, he could see me. It had become intimate now, personal.
The small craft began to glow, as if it were heated from the inside. It glowed brighter and brighter till the light hurt my eyes.
“It’s going to get through,” I said.
We had nothing. No weapons. I understood weapons in the abstract, what gamer doesn’t? Besides, we knew that Generational ships were always lightly armed. But we ourselves had none. Never had.
The
