GHOST

Andrew Hall

© Andrew Hall 2018

Cover art by Gerry Arthur

All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission.

This novel is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

1

A dark figure pulled on dull gauntlets. Flexing clawed fingers, with a sound like writhing chains. The vault around him glowed like dim winter, and stank of strange metal. His silhouette reached for a long cruel blade, sheathing it with an icy grind. Alex’s blond hair glowed like a halo. A deathly deity, shrouded in thick church dark. A blue corpse lay at his feet; stiffly contorted and pooled in bright blood. Half-devoured. The soft silver of the ship’s fake daylight painted his tail-whipping shadow. An armoured angel, burning too fast. Alex’s face blurred and sharpened in the room’s lurking atmosphere. Quiet breaths, the only sound. His stark gaze rose slowly; scorching in the moonlit silence. Murderous.

*

A young woman clipped on a thin meshed chestplate. She tied her red hair in a ponytail, walking quickly through a sunlit stateroom. Fastening on a tactical belt, she filled its pouches with glowing ammunition. Watered her hybrid plants and pushed a living pistol into its holster, with a coarse rustle and a click. Golden daylight streamed through the Ministry windows, painting her face in a warm summer glow. Tabitha’s gaze lingered on the wasteland beyond the plaza. Serenity’s darkened ruins; the corpse of paradise. Lurking on the horizon, the Watchers’ monstrous ship. And him. She stared for a moment, a silhouette against the bright dead city. Standing tense; armed and armoured. Ready to make her war.

She had to look away from the ruins. Focussing on her work, and some way she could make a difference for these survivors. The Watchers had already killed every circuit and power station; thrown this world into ash and violence. She couldn’t imagine how many lives they’d taken in the night. They’d already butchered her family; her friends. Her world. And Alex… he’d murdered Deep Roots.

I’ll make him suffer, she told herself. I swear to god, I’ll make those bastards bleed.

A sharp knock at the door broke off her thoughts.

‘Hey,’ said Aelu, walking in slowly through the room’s grand shadows. The slender blue woman glanced around warily at the growing mess in here. There was a smell like trees, and fresh bitter dirt. Tabitha’s sleepless scrawls cluttered every spare surface; hurried and obsessive in the plants’ starlight glow. Fishbowl’s fairy-lit forest crept glassy up the walls around her.

‘Hi,’ Tabitha replied absently, clearly distracted. She was searching through piles of scribbled papers; doubtful strategies and drawn dissections. Labelled sketches of the Watchers’ living weapons, that haunted her struggling sleep.

‘You aren’t alone in this, y’know,’ Aelu said softly. ‘This is everyone’s fight. We’re all with you.’

‘I know,’ Tabitha sighed, with a grim grateful smile. Glancing back to the sunlit city ruins. She returned to the map spread in front of her, and tried to look every bit as busy as she was. But Aelu was lurking. Leafing idly through some papers. Trying to come out with it.

‘You scared?’ Aelu said quietly. A trembling tone in her voice. ‘What’re you thinking?’ she watched Tabitha for a moment and wondered if she was even listening.

‘…I think I have a job to do,’ Tabitha replied, matter-of-factly. Aelu caught another glimpse of the woman who’d gone to war, to free her Sky Tribe. The one who’d led them here to fight this invasion, saving all the lives they could.

‘Guess we all do,’ Aelu agreed, trying to smile past the dread she felt in her stomach. ‘So you really think we can win this? Drive the Watchers off Serenity?’

‘No. That’s not enough,’ Tabitha replied, scowling at the thought. Maybe she didn’t know it, when that dim light flickered in her eyes. But Aelu saw it, clear as candle flames. ‘If it’s war they want, it’s war they’ll get,’ Tabitha snarled. ‘They took my world from me. They took the people I loved. I want to wipe those bastards out.’ Aelu’s worn expression faded quickly, as she held the woman’s stare.

‘…I’m with you,’ she replied, standing straighter. ‘Where do we start?’

‘The barracks,’ said Tabitha, studying scribbled strategies in the sunlight. Crossing off cleared essentials from her growing schedule. Every task colour-coded, by order of importance. ‘Any word from the gunners?’ she said. Smiling in response, Aelu bowed her head.

‘Your artillery stands ready,’ she replied. ‘Majesty.’

*

Far across the ruined city, a stretched figure paced angrily on the mothership’s command deck. He moved with a princely bearing, pale-skinned and statuesque, with fleshy white feathers in place of hair. He wore steely-silver armour; thinly organic and elaborate. Golden-eyed and glaring angelic, into the hologram glow of a grand bio-console. Watching screen readouts obsessively, as vast quotas crept to completion. His tense grip tightened on the black podium’s corners; creaking in his gauntlets until its bone surface cracked. He snarled sonorous orders at bowing subordinates, to cease all harvesting and devote full power to the growth chambers. He’d waited long enough.

2

‘Hm. You still have your thinking face on,’ said Aelu, as they walked the Ministry’s grand gloomy halls. Waiting expectantly for an answer. But Tabitha seemed lost in her thoughts. ‘…Unless it’s top-secret royal business, Your Highness?’

‘Sorry,’ Tabitha smiled back. ‘Is Atha keeping everyone busy?’

‘He’s declared martial law,’ said Aelu, distastefully, as they passed fine portraits and sweeping statues. Beyond the bright windows, the Ministry complex bustled with activity. An ornate fortress holding thousands of survivors, alone in the swarming city ruins.

‘The Guardians are salvaging everything they can,’ Aelu continued. ‘Food, weapons. Beds and drinking water for the civilians, what little we can manage. Still no star-net. Hardly any medical supplies. If any illness breaks out, we’ll suffer for it.’

‘Outside contact?’ said Tabitha.

‘Still nothing, on-world or off,’ Aelu sighed. ‘No sign of reinforcements. Looks like we’re on our own.’

‘Well, the outer worlds already know their ships’ll die in orbit,’ Tabitha reasoned. ‘They might be leaderless since Serenity’s gone dark.’

‘Could be fighting civil wars, if the invasion left a power vacuum,’ Aelu agreed.

‘Unless the Ministers are still running things, from somewhere else on Serenity? Emergency transmissions or something?’

‘We haven’t picked up any broadcasts on the working wristcoms,’ Aelu shrugged.

‘Either way, we can’t expect much help,’ Tabitha replied. ‘The outer worlds will be busy with their own defences. They won’t keep sending aid that can’t get through.’

‘While billions on Serenity die in the siege,’ Aelu sighed. ‘Let’s face it. We’ve no resources in here. The Watchers killed every native warship in the Guardians’ blockade. This world’s armies have been thrown back to the Stone Age. We’re screwed. We’ve done everything we can to prepare for what’s coming.’

‘Everything we can think of. For now,’ Tabitha countered. ‘We only got here yesterday. We’ll have more ideas. There’s still time.’

‘Yeah?’ Aelu smirked. ‘And, er… how long ‘til these survivors realise that a crown and title don’t make you their magic saviour?’

‘They must never know,’ Tabitha replied, smiling in quiet conspiracy.

‘Well, at least this artillery should be interesting,’ Aelu conceded, as they headed outside into a grand courtyard. ‘Even better if it keeps the swarms back a while longer.’

‘Unless our geeks-in-chief find something in the Archives first,’ said Tabitha. She had Saa and Irren trawling the Ministry’s cavernous reference library, as insurance for the city’s survivors. Searching endlessly for a way to evacuate the complex unseen, beneath the swarming ruins outside. Maybe a sealed old tunnel leading beyond the city; one the Watchers’ hordes hadn’t found.

‘I wouldn’t get too hopeful, there,’ said Aelu. ‘They’re finding nothing but planning permissions. Endless old blueprints for dams and stuff. Not quite the treasure trove Irren was expecting, apparently. I’m pretty sure he had more hair when he went in there yesterday.’ Tabitha sighed; feeling tense and knotted as they walked on down the corridor.

‘They’ll find something,’ she replied, with total conviction. ‘Give them time.’

‘Well, that’s why you’re in charge,’ Aelu shrugged. ‘If I wanted that much confidence I’d have to snort it off a table.’ Tabitha smiled, but watched her carefully. Slowing their walk to a standstill.

‘Aelu, we have to believe this can work. Fierce-Hope, remember?’ she said more seriously. ‘We need to be sure we can win this, before anyone else will even pick up a gun. We’re here to set the standard. We’re Ghosts.’ Aelu’s dry smile shrank to a sterner look. A nervous sigh, and a nod.

‘No, you’re right,’ she conceded. ‘I’m just… coping with the nerves.’

‘Head back for the firing range,’ Tabitha replied more gently. ‘I’ll take the scenic route. Inspire the masses and all that.’

‘Show ‘em who’s boss,’ said Aelu, with a reassuring smile. One that vanished quickly, once Tabitha had walked away for the main lobby. Maybe it was just her job now, thought Aelu, to seem brave for everyone. If she’d actually stop joking about it, and admit the full brunt of her fear… well, that wouldn’t help anyone. She watched Tabitha go, and carried on downstairs for the old fort barracks.

Passing by an open door, Aelu caught a glimpse of a man changing in one of the dark VIP suites. His powerful body and ash-blue skin. She liked what she saw, and checked him out for a second. And realised, when he turned slightly, that it was Atha. She caught a look at his scarred bare torso, lean and muscular, before he pulled on his shirt. It was wrong of her; of course it was wrong. They’d just been at war with the bastard. Sky Tribe had been dying because of him. Something should’ve stopped her looking. Still… she wasn’t exactly pure herself. Or Sky Tribe, for that matter. Ghosts, Guardians, the absent Ministers… they were all killers here. Lately it felt like life itself was beyond redemption. Like it really was survival of the fittest.

…Or just survival of the vicious. But her vices kept her sane from the horrors of it; she’d take any enjoyment she could get. So, she lingered on for a secret look at him. A quick dirty thought in her head.

‘Kinda creepy, when you stare like that,’ Atha said gruffly; his back still turned. Caught by surprise, Aelu glimpsed his glare in a shadowed mirror. She only shrugged and smiled in silence.

‘Did you want something?’ he said sternly, leaving the room as he buttoned his uniform.

‘Perhaps,’ Aelu replied casually, never taking her eyes from his. It hadn’t escaped him, the way she stood. How she leant back on that wall. Cornered, willingly. Her split-second smile, as slight and passing as silk. War put a boldness in people. Certain instincts.

‘Yeah?’ Atha said darkly. ‘Well. I don’t think you want it from me.’ His eyes weren’t lying; there was a warning glint in them that thrilled her. A piercing look, wrapped in silent shadow. He leant in closer. She felt his low voice in her ear. ‘Or maybe that’s exactly why you want it from me.’ He caught Aelu’s look in passing, before he walked off down the corridor. That spark in her eyes. The tiny shift in her body language.

‘Make yourself useful,’ Atha commanded her coldly, without looking back. Smiling, biting her finger, Aelu pushed herself from the wall as she watched him go.

*

Barkless Tree sat silently in a corner of the gardens, wearing Guardian armour over his coarse dark fur. Watching the survivors’ makeshift village taking shape. Minnis-Re; that was what they called this place. As fine and sheltered a home-cave as he’d ever seen, and all of it carved so grand and ornate. Barkless didn’t understand this alien world, but he admired their pride and stone likenesses.

He stooped again over his work, staring intently with cold blue eyes. A quick sniff in his short broad snout. He cleaned his hybrid rifle carefully; it had a glassy glow to its innards like that sparking celestial tree. One of the dead weapons that Dark Storm had brought back to life, somehow; it fired scorching light and he prized it like a holy relic. He felt the gentle presence of a soul inside it; they called it current here. Carefully, as if in meditation, Barkless tore a length of rough cloth and wrapped the rifle’s grip for a better hold. He knotted off its twin strands and tucked them attentively beneath the tight wrappings, in a peaceful moment of no-thought. Looking up now and then at hurried passers-by.

There were all kinds of tribes in here, of many different races. Coming and going with anything they could scrounge from the vast dark halls of power, arrayed beyond the trees and cloisters. Trying to build homes of sheeted shelters and fires. There was a tension here, so strong and shadowed that it hung in the air like stormclouds. So much quiet fear, simmering. But not among the Sky Tribe. Glancing around, picking out their solid shapes in the crowd… he could tell what they were thinking from the calmness in their eyes.

Death is ever-present. The ground bore us, and to the ground we must return. This wasn’t a time to be fearful; it was the truest test of Fierce-Hope. This war, these death-gods, in the strange realm beyond these towering walls… it was the greatest chance at glory they’d ever known. The making of heroes, as the elders would say. Sagas would reach Stormworld of the battles fought here, by Dark Storm and her Spirit Guard. Her Gosts.

Barkless breathed life, and treasured the here-and-now, and turned his heart to stone. These peoples’ young ones still ran and played between the rooms and shelters, even now. The ones who hadn’t seen horrors, at least. Full of questions but hidden from everything; from that great deadly world beyond this home-cave.

May they always be so innocent, he told himself. Barkless stood and slung his precious rifle, and prowled off to guard their walls from devils and death. For Sky Tribe, and Deep Roots, and these People of Minnis-Re. For my Queen.

Turning, he saw villagers crowd to the head of the gardens as the grand doors creaked open. Guardians and Tribals marched out among them, parting them like a sea. A loud shout echoed, commanding the desperate crowds to move aside.

‘Make way for Her Majesty!’ came a bellowing voice. The varied crowd jostled to see her. Many had heard stories about yesterday, but hadn’t got close enough for a look. More survivors had been rescued from the ruins since her arrival, before the swarms took hold of the city. They’d heard second-hand how the people had knelt to her, bloody and victorious, around her glowing tree. The Sky Queen of Stormworld. An army of savages at her back.

Barkless smiled to see her distant shape, and felt a strong sudden pride at the sight. Her red mane; her fierce look. His tribe-sister Dark Storm, striding out with her troops and tribals in full armour. She had a sterner face lately. A stare that silenced, and commanded respect.

She never did take to that crown he’d given her… but he saw the change in her look. Her bearing. Today, she reigned.

He’d taken her aside yesterday. Once the crowds had knelt, and pledged their lives to their queen. Later that evening she’d been unsure of herself, as she always was. But he’d told her again, just what Deep Roots had said before. He’d shown her the idea of those strong bound sticks, and given her the truth. If she couldn’t unite these people and forge them into one tribe, then no one would. If she didn’t take her throne here, and lead the war as their strongest fighter, then these people would die. The time for doubt was over.

Forget Kha V’ha, he’d told her, over their tea by the fire. Become, war-spirit. Be Queen. She’d sighed that she knew it, really. That she’d come here to prove herself, and shouldn’t wait to be told. Then she’d fallen quiet, all through their tea-drinking. Slowly, something changed in her look. She finally understood.

She’d promised him, then. Asked for his glass knife. She’d cut her arm and gripped his hand, and bound herself in blood. He remembered what she’d said, there by the flames. What her signs and alien words had meant:

I promise you, to bring Fierce-Hope to these Lost Spirits. I swear it by your Ancestors and mine, and by all the tribes to come. This is my vow. This is the path I will walk.

Today the crowds watched her stride by in hushed chatter; their children stared at someone from rumours and tales. An alien princess, who slept just an hour each night, or so they’d heard. She never ate, and rarely spoke. She’d survived her dead world and been raised by savages, and knew tree-spells like a witch of the woods. She rode the black dragon Sever, bloodthirsty and terrible; hunched gigantic on the high fortress walls. The Sky Queen hunted monsters, wherever they ran.

Tabitha never could get used to so many stares. She’d spent her life shrinking away from attention, only to be thrown straight to its glaring centre.

You’ve lasted this long, she reminded herself. Adapt. Make it work. Of all the places she’d been, all the things she’d survived, these claustrophobic walls were a new kind of tough. Everyone here relied on her. It was the desperation on all those faces, and the lost children staring at her. Hunger and terror. Grief.

…I’m here to help them. And I will.

Tabitha walked faster through the chattering crowd, towards her shining volt-tree. Their living Hearthfire, surrounded by glowing blooms. She always felt lighter here, in her hybrid flower patch. Recharged. Looking to a Guardian beside her, he gave her the nod. It was all double-checked; ready to go.

A legion of volunteers had been working through the night; spooling endless yards of strange rubbery vines across the complex. The Sky Queen had worked tirelessly by her strange bright tree; her touch and a spark were all it took to grow the plants like twining weeds. Coiled and cut and taken away by hundreds of men and women; laying and tucking them through every room and hall. Spreading them slowly across the darkened Ministry, like a vast web. Grafting them together through the maze of corridors, with a circling mesh across the gardens’ cloistered walls. It was almost dawn when they finished their work.

Tabitha stepped up to the volt-tree cautiously, as if the Celestial still lingered in that shard at its centre. Taking a nervous breath as she closed her eyes, she pressed her palm to the trunk. She felt its energy fill her up, like a reactor. Then… she felt nothing. Panicked. But heard gasps around her. Sudden chatter and a growing cheer. She turned around to loud applause, as the crowd stared at the walls surrounding them. White lights shone like a spiderweb, so vast and eerie-brilliant across the buildings that it pushed the deep morning shadows away. Growing ever brighter, like a net of blinding floodlights; Tabitha touched the tree to calm its volts and dim the vines. She looked back, smiling widely at the chattering crowd. At least they had power now, and lights to work by; they’d have to try reviving the water pumps next.

The hushing survivors watched her, like they were waiting for her to say something. But she remembered what Sea Mist had told her by the fire.

Better to say nothing, and give again. It was true; actions spoke louder. With a parting smile to the chattering crowd, Tabitha led her troops towards the inner gates for the old central fortress beyond.

‘Sky Queen!’ came a high clear voice. It was the little girl she’d seen yesterday; hidden among the flowers where she’d planted the volt-tree. She was running across the staring courtyard, with a large scrap of paper flapping in her hand.

‘I stayed up late, but I finished it!’ the little girl called across the gardens. The crowd smiled all around them, as she hurried over importantly to present her portrait. ‘Your dragon’s black this time! I did it better. And, and, that’s your crown,’ she pointed out. Grinning widely, Tabitha accepted the picture and studied it carefully. The crisp bold lines, the meticulous crayon work… a cautious white space left for Seven’s eye, among all his black scales… she could only shake her head in wonder.

‘It’s a masterpiece,’ Tabitha said simply, as if nothing more could ever be done. Smiling warmly as the little girl beamed from ear to ear. ‘Would you mind if I kept this? Please?’

‘I did it for you,’ the girl replied, mid-sneeze. ‘So you could have it.’

‘Well thank you, very much,’ Tabitha said happily. ‘Private,’ she commanded a Guardian beside her. ‘Take this to my rooms, please. I insist that it hang directly above my bed.’

‘At once Majesty,’ he replied, hiding his smile. Walking off with the picture scrolled officially beneath his arm.

‘What’s your name?’ said Tabitha, kneeling down so that they were eye-level.

‘Calia. Majesty,’ the little girl replied.

‘Calia, I want you and your parents to come to me, any time you need anything,’ she told her. ‘Any time you’re lost, or if you ever get frightened, just say that you need to see me. I’ll do everything I can to help you.’ The little girl watched her, and shook her offered hand; smiling right back. Turning to her parents, who called again quietly from the crowd.

‘Thank you Majesty,’ Calia replied hurriedly, leaving with a careful curtsy that her parents had taught her. Tabitha watched her go, and wished to god that the Watchers hadn’t come to this world. She dreaded to think about it. All the kids like her, who…

Enough, she told herself. Just save the Calias of this world who survived. It’s all you can do. Tabitha’s sad look hardened as she turned back to the volt-tree. To the open gates beyond it, and the old army barracks in the Ministry’s heart. She took her leave quickly; spurred on by a burning thought.

We’re going to win this, even if it kills me. I’m going to bring that bloody ship down.

*

Tabitha walked on through the old stone fortress, her retinue of guards marching behind. Past gated arches and ancient cobbles stood the Guardians’ base of operations, built long before the Ministry complex that surrounded it.

The castle grounds bustled with activity; dead weapons were being revived en masse. Threaded and wrapped with the volt-tree’s celestial matter, and sparked into growth by glowing offcuts like potted plants. Glancing around, Tabitha checked that her web of celestial current was glowing here too. Technicians were already plugging cords into the volt-tree’s fleshy conduits. Reviving dead terminals and wristcoms into flickering half-life, while soldiers scribbled inventories by flowerlight.

‘Hi,’ said a growling voice beside her.

‘Hey you,’ Tabitha said warmly. Sea Mist relieved herself from her post to walk at her sister’s side, wearing Guardian armour over her light-brown fur. ‘How’s guard duty?’

‘Good,’ Sea Mist growled, with a proud nod. ‘Keep Minnis-Re Tribe, safe.’

‘Ministry,’ Tabitha corrected her, with a smile.

‘Minnis-Tree,’ Sea Mist tried. Thinking of her sister’s light-tree, she supposed that made more sense.

‘Hm. Bored,’ Barkless grunted, pushing in at her other side.

‘Well, we’ve got something new this morning,’ Tabitha replied brightly. ‘It needs testing out.’

‘Boom?’ said Barkless, hopefully.

‘Big boom,’ Tabitha chuckled, as they walked on for the firing range.

‘Good,’ he growled back. Eyes glinting with his grin. Guardian soldiers of every species saluted Tabitha as she walked by; she’d never get used to it. She’d wanted to stop them yesterday, and tell them not to bother. But, her advisors made the case in favour. Some semblance of authority was good for morale, Atha had said. All the airs and graces were good for the progressive community outlook, Saa had suggested, in shameless jargonese. A sense of continuity, Irren had explained, where panic and chaos would reign otherwise. Reluctantly, she’d agreed.

Suppose I can take a few salutes and Majesties for the team, Tabitha told herself. I’ve had worse.

‘You’re still doing that deep-in-thought thing?’ said Aelu, as she walked up alongside to join their procession. ‘You don’t win wars by brooding.’

‘…Is that a slogan or something?’ said Tabitha.

‘Don’t think so. I just thought it and said it,’ Aelu replied.

‘Hm. You should get that on t-shirts if we win this.’

‘I think you’re drifting off-topic.’

‘Yeah, could be ADHD,’ Tabitha muttered to herself.

‘What’s aedee aetchdee?’ said Aelu.

‘Sorry, I slipped into English.’

‘Whatcha talking ‘bout?’ Big Fish rumbled massively, as he dropped a crate mid-transit and wandered over. Brushing brickdust off his pale skin and mane of amphibian fins.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Aelu and Tabitha replied, in eerie unison. Eyeing one another suspiciously.

‘Gods, you’re scruffy bastards,’ Atha muttered gruffly, as he walked up to meet them in the cobbled courtyard. ‘Majesty,’ he added dryly, with a cursory salute.

‘You could take his head off for disrespectful shit like that,’ Big Fish told her, as Tabitha stifled a smile. ‘He’d look better anyway.’

‘Meaning you’d fuck yourselves militarily and free me from your intolerable company,’ Atha replied, as he led them towards a hefty weapon on the firing range. ‘That’s two points to me. Good luck winning an impossible war with a headless General.’

‘You can’t win an impossible anything. That’s why it’s impossible,’ Aelu mumbled out of earshot. Big Fish shrugged in reply.

‘One bloody big cannon, I believe you said,’ Atha continued. Presenting Tabitha with his finished night’s work.

‘That’s… way bigger than I expected,’ Aelu conceded.

‘That’s what she said,’ Tabitha agreed, watching Aelu’s puzzled look.

‘That’s target practise?’ said Big Fish, nodding at the dark horror down the firing range.

‘May as well test it on the real thing,’ Tabitha replied. She’d had Seven lift the great dead monster inside from the plaza, last night. Now it was strung up like a giant scarecrow on the barracks’ old firing ground, gripped by a grown scaffold of twining branches.

‘So the gun took the Celestial ok?’ said Tabitha, admiring the hybrid artillery.

‘Well, it looked like disgusting hi-tech plant matter getting way too intimate with irreparable military hardware. And then becoming it,’ Atha replied. ‘If that’s your definition of ok?’

‘Sounds hot,’ Tabitha confirmed, stifling a smirk.

‘Erm. Ok,’ said Atha, uncertainly. ‘So… you’re sure about this?’

‘If it’ll go through that monster, it’ll go through hordes when the time comes,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Let’s try it.’ Atha shrugged and moved them all back, and checked the firing ground was clear. Tabitha smiled in surprise when Sea Mist took hold of her hands and covered her ears for her, like everyone else had around her.

‘Artillery!’ Atha barked at his crouching gunners. ‘Fire!’ The laser cannon’s thundering blast was terrifying; its blinding lightbolt burst the dead monster to cratered gore. Raining blood over the lawns.

‘Gods,’ Aelu muttered, as the Guardians cheered all around them. Tabitha smiled back at her Ghosts.

‘Like!’ Barkless growled, a grin all over his face.

‘Do I still get naming rights on that thing?’ said Big Fish, eyeing the revived artillery.

‘Is the name still Mega Gun?’ Aelu replied. ‘Then no. You do not get naming rights.’

‘But it was my idea,’ Fish grumbled.

‘It was my idea!’ Tabitha protested. ‘It’s Laser Bastard!’

‘Mega Gun!’

‘Laser Bastard!’

‘Why can’t either of you speak proper Trade Language?’ Aelu muttered, rubbing her tired face in her hands. ‘Well the gun works, anyway,’ she sighed. ‘So long as it keeps those big bastards off us, call it whatever you want.’

‘Happy?’ said Atha, walking back from his gunners as they studied their carnage.

‘Absolutely,’ Tabitha replied. ‘I’d be even happier with two.’

‘The next one’s called Mega Gun,’ Big Fish insisted. Atha watched him suspiciously.

‘…I’ll see what I can do,’ her new General agreed, waving his gunners over to follow him for the barracks.

Tabitha walked on across the firing ground to see the monster’s silver-bloody carcass. Pacing a circle to study what was left of it, her feet squelching in the bloodsoaked grass, with a growing hope in her heartcore.

…We might even manage to defend this place.

‘V-Visual on the mothership!’ a startled Guardian stuttered on the walls. ‘It’s moving out from the power district!’

‘Where’s it heading?’ Tabitha called back, her stomach a sudden twisting pit. The soldier studied its far-distant shape through antique binoculars.

‘South and slow, towards the business district!’ he replied. ‘This way!’

‘Shit!’ Aelu snapped. Shouts and alarm bells already echoed through the fortress; commanders barked orders at running Guardians to arm up and assemble in the old parade ground.

‘Why’s it moving slow?’ said Fish. ‘Why not just come straight for us?’

‘In case we’ve got something that’ll damage it. Like the artillery,’ Tabitha explained hurriedly. ‘The Watchers are massing the spider horde ahead of themselves. They’ll get their swarms to overrun our defences first, before the ship’s beam destroys us.’

‘But that’ll kill their own forces?’ said Aelu.

‘Yeah, they don’t care about that,’ Tabitha shrugged. ‘Everything’s vermin to them.’

‘Holy shit,’ Fish muttered. ‘You weren’t kidding about ‘em, huh?’

‘Alright, emergency measures, like we planned!’ Tabitha called out to her Ghosts. ‘Aelu, grab the hall guards and get the survivors underground, into the vaults.’

‘There’s no way out of there!’ Atha objected, as he rushed over. ‘Those basements have been bricked up for years. If the civilians get trapped down there, with one of those monsters–

‘Did you want people climbing down the fortress walls or something?’ Big Fish interrupted. ‘There is no safe way out of here. Whole place is just a fancy aircar station, and we don’t have aircars. There’s no good way to escape.’

‘They won’t get far in the ruins anyway,’ Tabitha added grimly. ‘But there might be some ways into the sewers, down through the oldest vaults. If it comes to it.’ Atha watched her and sighed in reply.

‘If those are your orders, Majesty,’ he said, with a hopeless look.

‘They are,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Don’t question them again.’ Atha nodded darkly, as Aelu waited for Tabitha’s go-ahead and ran back for the main complex to evacuate.

‘Atha, you’re in command of artillery,’ Tabitha continued. ‘That mothership’s miles away. We still have time before it gets here. If we can hold back the swarm. How fast can you revive more cannons?’

‘Didn’t take all that long, once we’d finally worked out the wiring,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Hour or so, to grow that one into working order. Took a big team to do it, though.’

‘Then get to work reviving all the artillery this place is hiding,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Use living grafts from that cannon on the rest of them. If that plant matter’s learned the gun’s design, then reviving more of them might come easier with cloned cuttings.’

‘Good idea,’ Atha agreed. ‘Just make sure you keep that Alex bastard away from us.’

‘Oh, I’ll kill him on sight,’ Tabitha replied bitterly. ‘You just throw everything you have at their ground forces,’ she continued. ‘Hold them off long enough for Seven to get me inside that mothership. I’ll get to its power source and destroy it.’

‘You realise that’s suicide?’ Big Fish rumbled, as Atha strode off to bark orders at his gunners and engineers.

‘It’s our only chance at winning this,’ Tabitha sighed nervously. ‘If I don’t try then we’re all dead anyway.’ Big Fish paused for a moment, and nodded grimly. ‘Sea Mist. Barkless. Get Sky Tribe on the walls,’ Tabitha continued, pointing along the high battlements to make it clear. ‘Bring arrows. And all your shields, all your spears.’ Nodding dutifully, the pair ran off howling to Stone Shore and the assembled Tribe.

Tabitha hurried on with Big Fish towards ranks of worktables, looking over the celestial laser rifles they’d managed to revive already. She took a smaller submachine gun from the stockpile, and belted on some spare charge packs. Testing an idea, she found that the weapon’s hybrid matter stuck it handily to her back.

‘I’ll stay with you,’ Fish rumbled. ‘Y’know. Keep you covered.’ Tabitha smiled, but shook her head.

‘I need you armoured up, mate,’ she replied. ‘You cannot let those spiders get inside here, do you hear me?’

‘No. No way!’ he protested. ‘I’m not shooting from the walls while you go up against that mothership on your own–

‘Fish,’ she interrupted. ‘We already agreed. You’re the only one strong enough to hold a barricade against those monsters. If one of those things gets through the gates into the hallways, you’re the only one who’ll keep these families alive. It’s on you. I need you.’

‘…Fine,’ he replied doubtfully. ‘But only once I’ve helped you–

‘Fish,’ she cut in. ‘Please.’

‘…Alright,’ he sighed heavily. ‘Wall it is. I guess.’ Fish looked over the living armoury laid out on the tables, until his big eyes lit up at a giant shape at the back. A fearsome multi-barrelled weapon, with a glowing celestial core. Salvaged from a ruined gunship, and big enough to need bolting down.

‘Suits you,’ said Tabitha, smiling as he lifted the gatling laser to check it out.

‘Ship’s moving for the city!’ Atha barked down from the battlements.

‘Alright, better get going,’ Big Fish rumbled, as he hoisted the huge gun with a grunt. Pausing to squeeze Tabitha’s shoulder with a giant hand. ‘Just… don’t get killed. Again.’

‘They haven’t managed it yet,’ she replied, smiling as she left. ‘Give ‘em hell, Fish.’

Tabitha’s mind was racing as she whistled out to Seven from the walls. Watching the ruins impatiently, she waited as he circled back from his flight. She could see the Watchers’ mothership beyond the city; still a stormcloud miles away. But edging closer, slow and constant. Raining fresh swarms from its sides.

She could guess at the Watchers’ intentions. Their monstrous horde of metal-eaters would soften the Ministry’s defences first… before countless spiders swarmed in here to harvest the city’s last survivors. Killing every Guardian gunner; every warrior in Sky Tribe. Making it safe for the ship to blow away this entire part of the city. Maybe then they’d grow a hive here. This was the kind of stadium space the Watchers preferred. Gritting her teeth, Tabitha snarled at the thought of them. Beating herself up for not mounting their attack already.

This was supposed to be my war. Those bastards always move first. Still… she’d just fight through everything she could, for as long as she could. Counting on Atha’s troops and artillery to hold the walls, while she flew Seven right inside the mothership’s belly. See if she couldn’t kill whatever powered that ship… or at least take out its leaders before one of them collected her head. At best, she’d find Alex and kill him herself. Slaughter the Watchers to cut the thinking head off their army, and leave Sky Tribe and the Guardians with only a mindless swarm to wipe out in her wake.

…And deep down she knew, that was all just wild fantasy. But her gut feeling told the truth; twisting in cold dark dread. In the next few minutes, she was going to her death.

As Tabitha hurried nervously for Seven’s landing ground, Irren came running from an adjoining corridor. His green skin looked pale; there was an urgent look in his eyes.

‘We’ve found something!’ he said breathlessly. ‘Plans! Blueprints!’ he panted.

‘Blueprints for wh–

‘Down in the archives!’ he interrupted frantically. ‘It’s buried, u-under the city, somewhere! Probably dead. Possibly unsalvageable. But it’s incredible, i-if we can just – I know it’s insane, but even if there’s just a slim chance that this thing could–

‘Irren,’ she cut in sharply. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘A weapon. Out in the city,’ he said urgently. ‘Big enough to cut that mothership in half.’

3

Coming around coughing, a young marine kicked out his gunship’s shattered canopy. He had the dark blue hair and bronze tan of a native Serenian; staring bewildered from the wreckage. His sleek grey aircraft was dead and dust-covered; suspended in the toppled wall where it’d crashed through a great glass ceiling. Familiar stairs and storefronts lurked around him; he knew this mall. He climbed down carefully and hung as low as he could from the ship’s recessed ladder. Dangling a few feet from the marble tiles beneath him, he landed with a dustcloud on the rubbled floor.

Horror had gripped him, when he’d come back around. Now it hit him afresh in his dead surroundings, like a waking nightmare. Thoughts of the fires, and the sirens falling silent. The massacre of his world. Flying fast over the city towards some unknown invasion, he’d seen so many people. Countless families staring in the streets, at a sky full of shooting stars. Watching in wonder, until the bright summer blue dimmed to black. His gunship cut out; he’d lost all power. Watching tides of civilians, just running. The screams and the blood. The day the world went dark.

Now he walked alone in the ash, past stores that reeked of death. Dry mouth; racing heart. The marine raised his rifle, moving on cautiously through a pale powdered world. He wiped a sleeve across his brow and thin cheeks; ruffling dust and small glass shards from his cropped hair. Deafening silence pressed in around him, pounding in his chest. All those familiar stores, deep-black and abandoned. Taking cover to check his laser rifle, the thing was dead. He pulled its charge pack and stripped the capacitor, but couldn’t find the fault. He tried again to arm it, to no avail, and dropped it cursing. They’d killed all the power; every circuit there was. Whatever the hell they were. He moved on as quickly and quietly as he could. Sticking to cover and watching his corners, for whatever had made all those weird empty bodies in the ash.

Up marble stairs draped in skins, he passed a grubby window. A murky glimpse at the world outside. Yesterday, a bustling casino wonderland of life and vivid colour. Now just a lifeless desert; all dim towers and dust. Ruined skyscrapers stood like colossal shattered teeth. Poking grotesque from grey rotten gums; the dead Capital’s landslide streets.

His sidearm pistol wasn’t working either; he kept it holstered in hope of a fix. But he needed a weapon. Making his way quietly past blown-out stores, and stepping carefully around civilians’ sprawled sickening husks along the walkways, he stopped to unscrew a steel leg from a sturdy bistro table. He gave it a heavy whooshing swing like a bat to try it, and wrapped the end in a seat’s leathery fabric for a better grip. With that and his combat knife, at least he wasn’t completely unarmed. He stalked on past dead stores, his boots crunching sharply in broken glass. Staring up at the vast shattered ceiling, and the heavy grey sky beyond. This whole misted mall seemed painted in a pearl zombie glow; distant stores and walkways faded into haze. There was something eerie about that thick lurking daylight that haunted everything. Beyond the roof some sudden airborne monster thundered overhead, glow-eyed and reptilian. Ducking down in terror, the man scrambled for cover and hurried on quietly for a dim corridor. Twitchy, staring, he pressed his back to the wall and kept to the cover of a stone pillar. Listening intently, heart racing, until the hunted world fell silent.

His creeping silhouette headed on past dead restaurants, staying sharp on his corners; he tightened his gloved grip on the steel bar. A little medieval, admittedly… but still better than a dead gun.

More slumped bodies lined the way to the statued main lobby. Then, hundreds of them. Limp bloody heaps of twisted massacre, piled up in desperate escape against the walls. Like they’d been driven and herded by something; devoured against crammed exits. He’d seen death before, but not like this. Not so many people. So many civilians. Finally he stopped and threw up, despite himself; he leant on a wall and breathed hard through warping nausea. He had to turn away, and carry on. He just had to get outside. Away from the stench and that thick dead daylight.

There was an exit, up the hallway ahead. Rubble crunched like grit under his boots as he walked on towards a lounge bar and vast shattered windows. A clearer view from here, where the murky glass had broken away. He looked out past jagged windows to see whole stretches of the city in flames. Thick smoke was smeared so vast and grey over everything that it painted the sky itself. He leant his grip on a creaking chair beside him; breathing heavily as he took it all in. His towering city was a darkened jungle. Crawling silver specks glistened on the ruined buildings, bright and countless as constellations. A far monstrous shape ate an aircar wreck in the road. Even the streets were an endless assault course; torn and fissured like vast equipment had tunnelled beneath them. He couldn’t see any way through the city alive, and besides – was there anywhere left to go? He jumped as something moved then, up behind him in the dark. His stomach lurched as he stared in horror; an outsized silver spider came creeping down the wall. Like nothing he’d ever seen.

‘What?...’ he trailed off, backing away from it. It pounced from the shadows. He ducked aside and struck with the table leg; barely dodged its whipping tongue by an inch. Another missed strike and he was running. Its clattering feet on his heels. A frantic chase through echoing corridors; he burst through a hanging fire door into the ruined garden terrace outside. A shrill insect shriek followed behind him, as it burst from the door to run him down.

He sprinted past burnt-out aircars and tripped on bodies in the street. Tried to lose the scuttling spider through a darkened garage. Running in beneath an open shutter and up stone steps, and on through a blown-out exit. Glancing back, two spiders were hunting him now. A third dropped from a window as he hurtled past. A growing handful, scuttling after him into a ruined town square, where smoke and corpses lurked like an open graveyard.

Bare floorboards boomed as he ran on through a restaurant. Leaving the spiders caught and tangled in a mess of chairs and tables, he kicked out the kitchen’s back door. He raced on past a backstreet cafe; on through a shining shattered store. Chased, frantically, by a chittering pack through a cobbled courtyard and abandoned market stalls.

Out in the open streets they were gaining on him. Running on desperately for a small side alley, he ducked past an upturned car wreck and climbed a dumpster to scale an old stone wall. Mounting the wall-top, glancing back down, their weird tendrils shot and banged against the bins below him. He tightened his grip on the steel table leg and beat them bloody, as the drooling things clawed up the bricks. Breaking the tongue-tip that shot for him. The alley was narrow; the high wall a bottleneck. Forcing them to climb it one by one. Straddling the wall with his makeshift club, he let his leg hang like bait. Tempting them to keep climbing, to keep trying. As mindless as they were murderous. One vicious snarling swing after another, he tucked his baited leg up and struck them shrieking as their silver blood dribbled out. One after another he gave them everything they kept climbing for, and swung his club with a vengeance. Beating the brains out of their staring bloody heads. Clawing back some scrap of justice for his city, until the last spider dropped twitching and curled its legs away from the sky.

Catching his breath, the marine eased down from the wall on the other side and stalked out slowly onto a curving old road. An earthquake rift had been torn right through the street; half the stores here had collapsed into rubble. Thick black smoke trailed up across the dim ruins; a nuclear aftermath where the buildings stood like tombstones. The dry massive scent of brickdust. Watching the rooftops around him, the man stopped in his tracks. Hiding away quickly at the sound of giant breaths. There was something resting up there. Another vast grey monster; pale eyes watching the road. It wasn’t an aircraft, but not a bird or reptile either. The thing moved organically; almost prehistoric. But its eyes could’ve been robot lenses. Glowing vent-scales in its sides, like jet nozzles. He didn’t dare move until the thing stirred, and took off heavily; soaring out over the ruins like a spectre.

Creeping on quietly, he passed an antique store. Hoping desperately that there’d be an ancient lead-gun in there he could use. Anything to arm himself against those things.

Stalking in through the creaking doorway, the shop was a mess. A strong smell like death and broken timber. The shattered walls hung heavy; even his quiet footsteps crumbled plaster to the floor. A gentle trickling sound, as blood dripped thickly down the wooden stairs. Half a mangled body at the top. He turned in shock at a thundering landslide down the street, as leaning buildings collapsed one by one. Closing tremors, like something huge was forcing itself through the sewers. Rippling the ground and cracking the road. He heard the old store collapsing above him; made a mad dash back for the doorway as a brick wall sheared off silently and thundered down through the floorboards behind him. Leaping frantically for the doorstep as the floor fell away beneath his feet.

Peering outside, heart pounding, he checked up the street from the doorway. Whatever lurked in the sewers had forced itself on beneath the road; more creaking buildings jerked and toppled in its wake. A growing silence, as it vanished into the distance… and then a deafening bang like roaring demolition. The man looked up in shock as a skyscraper shuddered, further up the street; loose stonework sheared away and rained down like bomb blasts. There was no way the whole building could crumple like that on its own… something colossal was wrenching it down from the inside. Taking desperate cover in the shop’s solid doorway, he watched the whole tower fall like a rolling stormcloud. An earthquake impact; a vast fog of dust down the road. All he could do was hunch away in the store’s ruin; holding his coughing breath until the smothered desert darkness rolled by. Covered in dust, still choking and squinting in the blackout, he wrapped his coat collar across his mouth and staggered on up the hill.

More bombed-out bistros; a stone-still procession of slumped morbid husks. Empty skins were draped here and there, like pale leather in every colour. But it was the small skins that pushed him over the edge. The muted dread that’d been simmering away in him finally took hold, and despite all his training, his rage boiled up to the surface. Something was out here, directing all this. Whatever it was, he’d make it pay.

He hurried on faster between twisted aircar wrecks, searching dead windows and sticking to walls, until he froze suddenly at a trail in the ash. Deep careful footprints, treaded by alien boots, led up into cover inside a grand ruined house. A soldier; it had to be. Something responsible for killing his world. The marine knew it already; he might not last the day. But the next five minutes? Those were his. He’d make them count for something.

…If I go today, one of those bastards is going with me.

He crept inside the stale house quietly, tightening his creaking grip on the steel table leg. Silent staring moments, of breath and grey dust; that dim dead daylight glowed through the hall. Too late, he saw the bodies; dangling and skinned. He hid away quickly at the sound of clunking footsteps on the floorboards. Tucking himself tight against the corner, where the hallway turned right. He held his rapid breath and peered round. Something was walking; a black-armoured soldier. A tall slender shape in the gloom. Then, the sound he’d hoped against. It stopped. Crept closer.

Watching its faint shadow smear the floorboards by his feet, the man moved his mouth in a silent snarl. He heard its huge footsteps crunching close at the corner, and swung with all his strength. The bar crashed against its knee and dropped the giant with a sonorous yell. Standing to face it, the masked soldier was massive. Dark-angelic. He swung again fast and smashed its gun aside; it thundered white light through the wall. He dodged its sudden knife. Frantic creaks across the floorboards as he sidestepped its slash and clubbed its helmet before it could stagger to its feet. Another ringing smack knocked it sideways; his next swing smashed the blade from its hand. It grabbed the bar and tore it from his grip to throw it away out of reach. Stunned bloody by its massive punch, and it was on him. Fierce car-crash pain at its armoured headbutt; his broken nose poured blood. It gripped his throat and smashed him back hard against the wall; he struggled terrified and gasped desperate breaths in the derelict silence. With monstrous strength it gripped his neck and lifted him choking; pinned him for the kill. It ripped a pistol from its belt to aim point-blank as he knifed it slick and sudden through the eye. Gasping demonic, it dropped him. Fell to its knees with a shocked sudden thud. Gold blood streaming from its eerie statue mask, to trickle from its chin on the floorboards. The alien soldier seemed braindead; kneeling silently with its head bowed and streaming. Clutching his throat, struggling for breath, the marine staggered aside to grab the table leg. He took a tight baseball grip in his trembling hands, and beat it to death on the floor.

Staring, breathless, he stepped around its sprawled corpse and pulled the knife from its slick-sliding eye. He wiped the bloody blade on his sleeve and sheathed it, and searched the dusted body for anything he could use. But the massive rifle wouldn’t respond to him. The huge pistol, curled shut like a shell. They wouldn’t unlock to the dead giant’s fingers; maybe its touch needed signs of life. Growling quietly, he had to give up. Its bloody cratered helmet was outsized; the weird black armour too. Nothing useful but the large black knife, which he found on the floorboards down the hall. Retrieving his table-leg club, and wiping the grime from his bloodied face, he checked over his shoulder and stumbled on for the building’s back door.

His eyes were still streaming at his broken nose. Pulling off his gloves, he chanced it. Pressing his back against the wall, and then his head to steady it, he felt for the raw tender break. He put his fingertips either side of his nose, and pressed them in gasping agony. Trembling, he pushed hard until the broken bone clicked back into place. Gasping, breathing, he grounded himself calmly as the fierce pain subsided. Stalking on through the door for the gardens.

He snuck away through an ivy courtyard, and on through a gate into ancient back alleys. Creeping on, he heard a sudden creaking. Massive breaths, like a giant blowtorch. Looking up, he saw a hulking mass feeding on a crashed cargo ship. A rubber-metal monster, black as the night. Before he could hide, its pale eyes snapped on him; it dropped into the alley like a tank.

‘…Seriously?’ he growled. Bloody and exhausted, and running suddenly for his life.

Fear spurred him; the metal taste tingled in his mouth. The thing’s giant shoulders came crashing through the bricks behind him; a thunder of toppling walls in its wake. Sprinting desperately for open ground, he zigzagged through archways and around tight corners to outmanoeuvre it. Its thundering roar, answered by an echoing shriek, told him more spiders were hunting him too.

Ducking around dead wreckage, he leapt a fallen pillar on the high street and tore away down another alley. The brute was crashing closer in his hearing; it spewed sudden molten goop that hissed on the road and sprayed him. Yelling breathlessly, he beat the flames from the drops that’d hit him. Tearing off his burning jacket as the slop seared through to his back. The marine made a desperate last dash towards the Ministry in the distance, as he neared the tree line and the plaza’s open ground. A frenzied horde clattered close behind him.

Pulse pounding, he cleared the splintered trees and stumbled down stone steps into the plaza. Yelling and rolling, he launched himself on to sprint the open space. The rising sound of scuttling legs filled his head, countless and closing in. He wasn’t even halfway to the Ministry doors, but felt spurred on suddenly as gripping claws latched on to his heels. Kicking them away frantically as he ran. Nearing the plaza’s centre now, as the spiders jumped up close behind him. Leaping and missing; a frantic silver flood. They were shrieking suddenly; clattering apart. That monster was hurtling for him. He lost his table leg as the charging machine bit down and devoured it; he saw it stagger furiously onto tumbling spiders beneath its feet.

The silver swarm scuttled inches behind him, chasing his boots in the flying ash. He made a final mad dash towards the Ministry doors, dodging the spiders’ stabbing tongues. The vicious creature was staring murderously as it chased him down again; pale eyes fixed on its prey. Heart hammering, lungs giving up on him, the marine made a desperate last effort towards the steps. But it was hopeless. The swarming spiders were on his heels now, snatching his feet to tire him faster. That drooling tank of a creature, ploughing through them again to run him down. Barely enough time to stagger aside from its stone-shattering pounce; it lurched and swiped him tumbling to the ground. It snarled and leapt again for him, as the spiders hung back from its strength. A drooling audience, cutting him off from the Ministry’s opening doors.

The monster smashed the tiles as he scrambled aside, until it pinned him painfully with a crushing hand. Sparks flew as he struck its armour uselessly with his knife. He snarled up at Death; its furnace mouth dropped to devour him. Smashed aside suddenly by a crash like a freight train. Something colossal tore the monster away; pinned it savagely and ripped it apart screaming. The black dragon silenced it suddenly with a terrible crack, and roared melting white fire through the swarm. The beaten marine scrambled to his feet at the sight of it. Turning in dread as the screeching spiders came right for him.

A red-haired woman landed suddenly beside him; he watched her in shock. Met her hard gold glance and saw her charge full-force among the swarming spiders; clawed hands sparking as she ripped the horde apart. She fought like an animal. Knifed and kicked and beat them bloody in a fierce feral frenzy, as some strange aquatic giant stomped past him to let loose with a gatling gun. A deep ripping chaos of blinding laserlight; mowing the spiders down by the dozens as they came scuttling and shrieking across the plaza. Holding back the silver tide. Sniping shots threw spiders back smoking, out of nowhere. A furred female pounced and ploughed into them; shock batons flashing as she spun them crackling and shocked them dead. Another, her armoured partner; his rifle rattling lightbolts through the bloody swarm as he covered her back. The young man turned to see strange armoured beasts charge in all around him; roaring like all hell as they slammed scuttling spiders with their shields. Spearing them through in bloodburst shrieks. A hard shout and a thrum, like bowstrings behind him; sudden arrows whistled past and dropped the spiders jumping for him. A bronze-furred tribal dragged him aside.

‘Weapon! Give me a weapon!’ the young man yelled, over the crashing chaos all around them. The warrior grinned and shoved its weird glowing gun in his hands. A quick nod between them, as the creature pulled a large knife of carved glass. The young marine followed him into the fray. Fresh vicious focus, now he finally had a working rifle in his hands. He shot spiders to the ground as they pounced for him; filled them shrieking with burned bloody holes. Bruised and beaten, he shoved and elbowed his way through to the pack’s wrestling shield wall. Forcing himself in between the dark-furred primals to get his staring shots on the swarm. He took aim and dropped another. And the next. Glaring, intense, he shot down a pouncing spider and saved a tribal’s life. This was what he’d trained for; to stand with a team. To win the fight or go out shooting, with whoever the hell these warriors were. At least now he could play his part.

The great black terror roared wildly, raining spattered blood high above them. Dropping down on panicked grey dragons, he dwarfed them. Snarled white fire and tore them limb from limb. A fearful shout echoed, as another drooling monster came barrelling across the square. Those tribal warriors shrank back from it; the Guardians opened fire but retreated in its staring shadow. But one still walked towards it.

The marine watched the red-haired woman sprint past them; gold eyes glowing and fixed on that monstrosity. Claws sprung; hands wreathed in lightning. The swarming spiders were nothing to her; she smashed and shocked and tore her way through them. Screaming a sudden war cry as she hurtled for the roaring monster to dodge its pounce and kick off from its snapping head. She buried a knife in its spurting shoulder; ducked its grasping hands in fast feline leaps. Clambering quickly up its huge twisting back, fluid-fast and yelling demonic, she sank her voltbursting claws in its skull. The flailing monster hit her; smashed her aside. It turned and beat the ground savagely where suddenly, she wasn’t. It spun around snarling, terrified, as she leapt onto its back to tear its armoured neck and machine-gun its skull to spurting gore. She punched through screaming to shock its brains with a sudden bloody bang. The monster stopped. Swaying in the silence. Steaming gore slopped from its huge hanging mouth. Breathless, she leapt aside as the limp giant crashed dead. A sudden roaring cheer all around her. The marine watched the redheaded woman clutching wounds that were healing, even as he walked towards her.

‘…You’re alright?’ he said, staring in disbelief. The young woman nodded back, bloody and breathless.

‘You?’ she replied, with a strange pronunciation. He’d never seen her species before. ‘Did the spiders sting you?’ he shook his head in reply.

‘I’m ok. Thanks,’ he said. ‘You saved my li–

‘That’s what we do,’ she cut in quickly, with a shrugging smile as she hurried away. Her small army rushed in to help her back across the square. ‘We need people like you,’ she added, over the noise and the crowd. ‘Fighters, I mean. Welcome to the Ghosts.’

‘Ghosts?’ he muttered, puzzled. But he was already being shoved and ushered aside, as the strange primal warriors picked over their bloody kills at his feet.

‘Hey, Tabitha,’ Atha called to her. Reaching her in the crowd, he put something heavy in her blood-silvered hand. A compact tube like a blowtorch, with a flat steel nozzle. ‘Plasma cutter,’ he explained. ‘In case you need it, to get inside that vault.’

‘It’s dead?’ she replied, trying the useless trigger.

‘Should work fine if you get it working,’ he shrugged, with a dry smirk.

‘…Thanks,’ she said sarcastically. Scowling as Atha walked away. ‘Everyone back inside, quickly!’ she called out to them. Watching the distant mothership creep ever closer.

The young marine marched on toward the Ministry with the more familiar Guardians, as dozens of savages hung back to pick over gory remains. Wrenching off spiders’ toes and teeth for adornments. Some inspected the swarm’s bloody grey armour; wrenching it loose with glass knives to lash the gory pieces to themselves. Pushing his way politely through the crowd, the marine finally found her again.

‘You all came out here just to rescue me?’ he said, as the red-haired woman quickly mounted that great black terror in the square.

‘You’re one of us,’ she said with a shrug, as a strange living harness grew around her. ‘And, you’re a local. If you got through those ruins in one piece, we need your training on our side.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ he said with a smile.

‘Tabitha,’ she offered. Turning her vast dark dragon aside.

‘Reigo,’ he replied. Watching her in fascination, as she spurred the monstrous reptile skywards on bright thundering jets. ‘She’s going out there?’ he asked the others, watching her shrinking shape over the city ruins. ‘There’s nothing out there,’ he said urgently. ‘Nothing but death.’ But the primal warrior beside him said nothing, as Reigo handed its strange rifle back. It only nodded up at the distant sky, and the deep dark stormclouds over the city’s far heart. An endless black shape was writhing in the fallout. Looming larger; creeping slowly over the skyline.

…What the hell is that thing?

‘Sky Queen, fight. Dark gods,’ said Swift Blood, in growling broken Trade Language.

‘Sky Queen?’ Reigo muttered. Watching the warrior’s grim nodding stare.

‘Demon ship,’ he told him, looking back towards it. ‘Death.’

*

Seven stayed quiet as Tabitha pushed him on above the ruins. Jetscales flaring as he soared overhead. White toppled towers rolled by far below; the city’s vast bones in the ash.

‘Hm?’ she asked him, as she felt a warning jolt through her thoughts. Distant shapes were rising up from the ruins; a flock of reptiles in the milky light. Roars already echoed through the swarming land around them, as Seven’s mindless siblings raced in for the kill. Tabitha gripped the lip of his saddle scale with a leathery creak; teeth gritted hard as she channelled all her rage for the fight. She pressed the bony bump in front of her on the saddle to sink into the cockpit, as the distant shapes grew larger.

‘Angry?’ she asked his white fleshy walls around her. Pulling the ribbed console close in the pilot seat. Seven’s fierce thought filled her head; filled her world. A choir-tone bloodroar; a burning black hurricane. Glyph-bright demonic as it rolled through her soul.

‘Good,’ she replied, watching the dragons hatefully through his sight. ‘Use it.’ Seven snarled fire and shot for their neat formation. He threw himself in with a suicide smash and wrestled a thin grey dragon from the sky. Tearing its screeching throat to gaping gore. He dropped it limp on the ruins, like a bleeding plane crash. A tower-toppling dustcloud rolled up behind him as Seven snarled and tore away. A dozen dragons dropped fast to tail him low between the skyscrapers.

Down below, metal-eating monsters stopped at sudden thunder in the streets. Spiders hid from his shadow. All of them snarled in fear as a great dark phobia shot past overhead. Seven shook walls and blew out windows in his bomb-blast wake. Grey dragons whipped past behind him. Booming supersonic past dead roads and rubble mountains.

Seven twisted and swerved down a towering street corner, and forced another dragon to a bone-breaking stop against the bursting building ahead. He flared his jetscales and shot away down a hard left turn. Diving down low between darkened skyscrapers as he followed the racing road. He smashed himself through a toppling tower block; threw the dragons off his tail in sudden fright. Seven spun and shot back through the dust like a staring nightmare. Gripped another in his crushing claws and bit off its screaming head. As the flapping corpse fell, Tabitha saw its pilot bail out from the cockpit. The panicked Watcher leapt for a passing tower in desperation; smacked it hard and dropped flailing to its death. But the rest descended to mob Seven like a pack. Tearing and biting; ripping scales from his staggering wings.

Get them on the ground, Tabitha told him. Finish it fast. She’d learned her bloody lesson with him, since that chase through the desert on Earth: a pack of dragons could be lethal in the air. But down on the ground, Seven’s sheer muscle and scarred experience gave him the edge.

He thumped down like an earthquake on the ruined road. Punching his hard wings into the asphalt, and rolling them lengthways into huge hollow arms, Seven watched the circling pack descending. His white eyes were blazing. Growling guttural, at all that target practise above him. Fresh meat.

As the pack slowed and circled to slam down around them, Tabitha breathed deeply and poured all her burning anger into his. Seven pounced. He wrapped himself around the first leaping dragon and tore its ribs open. Flung it away bloody to crash and die as he turned on the next and ripped off its screaming head. Leaping airborne, he grappled another in a sudden down-spiral to smash it to gore on the road. Tabitha bunched Seven’s two-toed wings into fists. Beat their huge victim to death in the street. The rest piled on him; tore gory chunks from his back. Seven spun snarling in a wild bloody rage. He throttled one behind him in his twining tail; a sudden jerk in his monstrous grip and the thing dropped dead with a crack. He punched gigantic and floored another in shock. Beat and bit and battered the pack with a deafening white-fire roar.

One by one he wrestled them down; his size and brute strength wore them out. Teeth bared and pouncing on their scrawny screeching bodies, to pin them. Break them. Seven caught them as they scrambled and murdered the final few. He turned killing machines into limp torn giants, thrown back bloody against toppling stores and bursting hotels. The whole silent squadron, reduced to gored-open mounds in the road. Wide streams of silver blood gooped along the kerbs, reflecting the ruined streetlights.

Seven looked on the last limping creature with a deep bloody growl; the king of his carnage. A vast dark madness with a fierce white stare. Silver gore slopped from his tyrant jaws. Panicking, the sole survivor took off over the city. Racing back for the distant ship. Tabitha was a mindless passenger now; it was all just Seven in there. It was his bloodlust instinct that tore after it, like panicked prey on a plain. His black burning thoughts, as he caught it screeching and bit into it, and mauled it mercilessly where he crashed it down on a tower block. He gripped its limp neck savagely in his bear-trap teeth; crunched down vicious with a crocodile strength. Its gasping head fell clean away as he flung its flailing corpse from the roof. A booming bloody thud on the cratered street below.

Seven soared gigantic like a night-black statue, racing past a tower’s grand gold precipice. There was only him now, the dread-imperial, and all was right with his world. Only his burning, bellowing, blood-raining roar, as he rose prehistoric and claimed the whole dead city for himself.

Watching her hard hands shake for a second, Tabitha sighed with relief in Seven’s cockpit. Rising the pilot seat back up into its saddle-scale, they raced on past the creeping mothership in the distance. They were out here searching for a weapon to use against it; something to strike back.

…Slim as it is, we’ve still got a chance.

‘Hey!’ came a sudden shout in her earpiece.

‘Christ, Irren!’ she snapped in shock.

‘We found the project map. Should lead you right to it,’ he said. ‘In theory.’

‘In theory,’ Tabitha replied flatly. Watching the skies for any more distant shapes. ‘You want me to leave the Ministry unprotected, because I could find this weapon in theory?’

‘There’s a second entrance. A maintenance tunnel or something. Should still be accessible through the ruins,’ he replied. ‘Just give me a minute to find the door in the city’s layout,’ he added, among a frantic rustle of papers. ‘I’ll get back to you soon.’

‘…Fine,’ Tabitha sighed impatiently. ‘And not to pressure you or anything, but the spiders are massing out here.’

‘Shit. Ok,’ he muttered. ‘I-I’m working as fast as I can here.’

Tabitha sighed, watching the tiny silver specks nesting and lurking across the ruins. A countless glinting galaxy of them, seeding and growing and lingering in the bright sunshine. All moving now. Streaming down the buildings to join in a swarm, like a great sparkling river.

‘Suppose I’ll just fly in circles then,’ Tabitha muttered impatiently, as she swept Seven high across the city.

‘It’ll be worth it,’ Irren assured her, with a smile in his voice. ‘We could win this today.’

‘Just find it quickly,’ she replied, staring at the gloom that filled the horizon. ‘The ship’s getting closer.’

4

Saa and Irren pored over blueprints on a revived holo-terminal. Two small figures in an island of torchlight, dwarfed by the Ministry’s pitch-black Archives.

Saa studied the plans for its city location, double-checking its stamp of completion. It was all here; every last screw and circuit. Shrouded blueprints, locked and encrypted, but sure enough it all opened up when she’d tapped in the passcode they’d found. Yet another shadowy project of the absent Ministers… and practically hidden beneath their feet.

Why the hell would they build this under so many civilians? Unless… it’s there for a time like this? She met Irren’s look in shocked silence.

‘You really think this’ll work?’ she said uncertainly. ‘…What if the swarm traps her inside?’

‘It’s the only plan we have,’ Irren sighed tensely. ‘Call her back.’

*

Tabitha swept Seven lower in search of it. The hot tropic sunlight filled her up to the brim.

‘Hey,’ came Irren’s urgent voice in her earpiece. It startled her. ‘We’ve worked out where they buried it. It’s northwest of you, towards the coast. Look for a white skyscraper.’

‘…Really? A white skyscraper?’ Tabitha replied dryly, scowling as she studied the crowded skyline. An endless cityscape of pale colossal buildings. ‘Any chance you could narrow that down?’

‘It’s a building with three split towers, just outside the business district,’ he replied in her earpiece. ‘Way out across the city. Look for the buildings with corporate logos.’

‘…Oh yeah, I can see it. Three split towers. It’s a biggie,’ she said. ‘That’s heading close to the mothership.’

‘Shit,’ Irren replied. Tabitha sighed heavily at the prospect.

…Suppose I should’ve known this would be a gamble.

‘Well, what choice do we have?’ she muttered. ‘I’m heading there now.’ Tabitha turned Seven’s flightpath with a thought. Racing out over a jungle of sky-hazy towers and office blocks, fading from bright gardened white around her, to hazy blue silhouettes in the distance.

This’d better work, she told herself grimly. But Seven didn’t share her lost grey feelings. His thoughts were burning; fire-bright and fierce as ever. Death or glory. She even smiled a little, as his jetscales roared thunder and they tore over the swarming city. They’d fight this together, he told her. Just like they always had. There was nothing the Watchers could throw at them that they couldn’t overcome.

*

Serenity’s vast ruins sprawled along the bay; a colossal demolition. Tabitha swept Seven high over endless rubbled streets. Watching the slow constant movement in that growing stormcloud beyond them, where the black ship crawled over the city’s heart.

‘Alright, I’m circling the installation,’ she told her earpiece. ‘What now? Where is it?’

‘Underground,’ Irren replied. ‘You’ll have to get into the basement, then down a deep-level elevator to reach it.’

‘Oh good,’ Tabitha sighed reluctantly. The thought of a blacked-out basement, possibly with a spider nest, crowded and lurking... well, it didn’t exactly appeal.

‘Hey, I saw what you can do to those things,’ Irren assured her. ‘Anyway, you’re the only one who could pull this off. We’re counting on you.’

‘I know,’ Tabitha sighed reluctantly, checking that the revived submachine gun on her back was still blinking its living lights. Seven was dropping lower; slowing himself towards the triple skyscraper in the crowded heart of the city. Buried beneath it, their chance to fight back. If she could get inside.

Her star-eyed terror growled quietly as he descended, hovering and landing in the corporate courtyard as gently as he could.

Offering a wing to lower her down, Seven watched as she headed on through the silence. The air itself was a grey-dusted glow; a zombie winter of ash. Beside fog-lurking statues and a grand shattered fountain, a round dead lump of hardware had crashed close by. Half the size of an aircar, with a cluster of dead lenses coated in brickdust. A drone.

‘Take that back with us,’ she told Seven, watching him stomp over casually to sit beside it. ‘I’ll be a while.’ Tabitha pulled the laser-SMG from her back and stalked away down a gloomy car ramp, leaving Seven in the cramped plaza and the towers’ vast shadow.

Tabitha walked on into cold pitch-black; heading down into a maze of basements. Taking a volt-tree cutting from her belt, she passed her current through it and held it high. A living volt-vine with a brilliant glow, painting light through the concrete tunnel ahead. With a nervous breath, and a sudden twist in her stomach, her small silhouette delved on deeper.

If Irren’s right about this place… well. We might just win this war before it can start.

*

Birdsong sunshine poured golden across the Capital’s south side. Flocks of batbirds flurried up from the silent ruins; fleeing suddenly at a change in the northern wind. Down on the streets, a bright blue fox looked up from its scavenging. It stared away suddenly, sensing something in nothing, and crept off quickly for its pups. All things that hopped and crawled in the ruins poured away from that place, as if life itself fled suddenly from a great calamity. The bright sky darkened to a churning fallout. The wild world was dimming, and silent as the grave. The ground was rumbling now; relentless tremors that only grew. Ash and pebbles rained down from the trembling ruins; the roads fell dark in seeping shadow. The Watchers’ vast ship was moving in its stormcloud. Swimming endlessly overhead, and eclipsing the summer sun. The distant Ministry, hidden in the skyline, stood lonely in the ship’s eerie sights. It lurked on closer, like a viral tide; hell-colossal and wreathed in poisoned night. Its endless belly grew with a lightbeam inside. A slimy split peered open, along the length of its underside; an oozing highway through a black rubber hill. The ship crept on across the sprawling city, as its horde of thousands chewed and scuttled in the ruins. Looking up suddenly from their devouring, to move as one for their war.

*

The Ministry’s halls and gardens were abandoned. Silent in the dimming daylight, while the city’s survivors locked themselves away in the vaults and basements deep below. There were only armoured figures lining the walls now; Guardians and the Tribe. Standing shoulder to shoulder, with bows and rifles at the ready. Grim and watchful; nowhere near enough of them to hold back their fate. Waiting for the stormclouds. Listening in silence to the growing chitter of the swarm.

Irren watched it all from the high fortress walls, sweeping old binoculars across the ruined horizon. Studying the triple towers where the weapon was buried. Seven’s tiny shape had dived and vanished now; Tabitha must’ve been heading down to find it.

…I just hope I’m right. Irren stared suddenly, frozen and terrified, at the swelling clouds in the distant sky.

‘The ship’s moving faster,’ he muttered into his wristcom. ‘It’s coming in!’

‘Guardians!’ Atha barked into his earpiece. Pacing their tense ranks on the battlements. Soldiers across the shouting complex listened intently to the speakers. ‘There’s a fortress between us and them. One that’s never fallen. Its walls are high and thick. Defend them with your lives, and these walls will shield you. We will not allow Death to pass inside them. We protect these people. These families. We’re their Guardians.’ Shouts rose up across the battlements. ‘Aim well, and work together. Ignore the ship and focus on the horde coming for these walls. Hit them hard, with everything you have, and we will win this war. Trust in your queen, and we’ll end this! We’ll end them!’ the soldiers cheered across the vast fortress walls.

‘Fierce-Hope!’ Stone Shore bellowed to the Sky Tribe. ‘Fierce-Hope for these Lost Spirits! For the Sky Queen!’

‘For the Sky Queen!’ the warriors roared back in unison. Levelling their bows and rifles at the distant swarm. Cave Clan; Bronzeback; Red-Eyes. Giant Polars and small grim Grey-Furs, from Stormworld’s freezing sea. All ready to play their parts in the Grand War, against Darkness itself, in this far dead heavenly realm.

*

A metal blast-door sprouted a bloom of sparks, crackling bright in the pitch-black. It traced a glowing line up and around, like an igloo doorway, and the slab crashed down heavily in the dust. A volt-flower torch cast a cold white glow on the corridor inside; a cutting-edge crypt. Lighting Tabitha’s cautious stare as she slung her gun and slipped inside the vault. Atha had advised her to forgo the standard laser rifle, for the kind of SMG she had now. Smaller and rapid-fire. Not much use over open distance, but up-close it was hard to miss. She was fine with that; she preferred up-close. Just had to remember to cradle the short foregrip, if she wanted to hit anything. The stubby gun had a hell of a kick. She just hoped she wouldn’t need to use it in here.

The radio crackle in her earpiece made her jump.

‘Move faster,’ came Atha’s voice. ‘There’s activity. Spiders in the square. Main horde’s massing beyond the tree line. We’ll hold them off as long as we can.’

‘Kill some for me,’ Tabitha replied, as she headed on into a dark gigantic chamber.

‘Will do,’ Atha chuckled hopelessly.

‘…I’ve found it,’ she said, staring up in awe. Brightening the volt-flower’s glow through the chamber, she could make out a gloomy landscape of pipes and cabling. Immense struts like temple columns, fading up into the blackness.

‘Best news I’ve had since we got here,’ Atha replied gladly. ‘Shit!’

‘What’s happening!?’

‘Ship’s closing in faster,’ he said, with cold dread in his voice. ‘We’ve got visual on the main swarm, they’re in the plaza. Holy shit.’

‘I’m firing up the Project!’ Tabitha replied urgently. ‘Just hold on! Atha!’ she couldn’t tell if he was listening; everything sounded distant now. Yells and gunshots crackled over the radio. She hurried on down a dozen tiers of metal walkway; echoing clatters in the abyss. Her flowerlight hinted at the edges of a vast assembly in the heart of the chamber, towering up into the dark.

‘Open fire!’ Atha barked, as the line crackled dead. Leaping down the final few steps, Tabitha ran for the Project’s central structure. Her light glinted on glass screens in the distance. Command consoles. She plucked a volt-tree cutting from her belt as she hurried closer. It was the biggest machine she’d ever laid eyes on. And, like everything else in this world, it was dead to the last circuit. The Ministry was about to be wiped off the map, and every survivor with it, if she couldn’t resurrect this thing in time.

…Really wish I had Seven’s energy around right now. I just hope the effort doesn’t kill me.

*

Pale eyes stared from the tree line around the plaza. A dozen, and more. Giant shapes; massive crackling breaths. A rank of dark monsters, waiting like a pack. A large alpha snarled deep in the heavy silence; surrounded by the swarm. One thought from the stretched soldier behind them, and the horde was unleashed. The monsters’ massive alpha raced out ahead for the Ministry, swerving lasershots as it thumped across the plaza to leap and claw rabidly up the walls. Slowing and staggering as the Guardians’ desperate shots burned through it, the brute dragged itself to the top. It snarled hissing molten slop and tried to haul itself over the battlements, reaching murderously for soldiers who quickly backed away. The monster’s white eyes shrank to sudden dots. Beyond the Guardians’ parting ranks, it came face to face with a celestial glow. Artillery.

‘Now!’ Atha bellowed. The shrieking shot blew its head apart, in a silver blood-cloud boom. Its limp body toppled and dropped from the walls in tumbling gore. Its monstrous pack-mates were snarling as the alpha’s body crashed on the steps below.

‘Nothing passes these walls!’ Atha roared at his troops, as they hurried back into formation along the battlements. Watching hatefully as the sky darkened completely, and the coming swarm filled the plaza below. ‘Open fire!’ he bellowed. ‘Give ‘em hell!’

*

Heartcore pounding, racing against time, Tabitha set down her living torch by a lifeless screen. She tore away a panel to fuse her volt-tree cutting with the dead equipment. The thing wasn’t taking.

‘What the hell’s going on!?’ Atha demanded in her earpiece. ‘The ship’s coming right for us!’

‘I’m going as fast as I can!’ Tabitha snapped, forcing her bright crackling volts into the glowing plant matter. Breathing deeply, she summoned every shred of power from her heartcore. Lightheaded, then trembling in a sudden cold sweat. Nearing blackout with the effort, to force its twining circuit-veins through the machine that dwarfed her in the dark chasm. Passing out, she felt the new volt-tree pulling the life from her. A few more seconds and it might even kill her. Drain every volt right out of her–

Something changed. Something massive. She felt miles of circuits, pulsing. Lights and diodes blinking back to life. The soft whirring of terminal screens. Gentle glows, as they cycled code and rebooted. Clicks and hums, and a rising sound as the whole vast thing powered up. Giant clacks echoed through the silo, as industrial lights clunked on in sequence and burst into life up the thick central column. Something massive shuddered and hummed; a reactor racket trembled in her bones. A colossal cannon woke beneath her, buried in far deeper ground. It rose like an earthquake; like a wrathful god. It roared gigantic through the towering chamber, and thundered up deafening through a sudden opening to the blue sky above. Vast divine artillery, that spun and opened and locked in place between the triple towers high overhead. The SPEAR Project; the Ministers’ hidden superweapon. Its vast gun barrel taking aim on the Watchers’ crawling ship. A targeting screen flickered to life on the consoles. Hidden lens turrets, high on the skyscraper, turned and locked themselves onto the unknown ship in their skies.

Getting her breath back, Tabitha wiped the sweat from her face. Snarling; victorious. A sudden blazing vengeance in her. All she had to do now was tap in the codes Irren had given her. Pushing chunky buttons in sequence, she primed the vast weapon to charge. She looked up at a massive whirring, and felt the cannon’s power source shake the floor beneath her feet. Then, a warning screen. Something was missing.

‘It worked! I can see it!’ Atha yelled in her earpiece. ‘Fire it! Now!’

‘I’m trying!’ Tabitha shouted back, lit by the bank of glowing screens. Fumbling frantically with the chunky key Irren had given her, to slot and turn it beside the main console. Too late, she noticed the plants half-hidden in the chamber’s far reaches. The eerie glow of Watcher flowers, charged into life in the high places. There were sounds up above her; something slick. Her face dropped at a sudden shape up there; a writhing gorgon of a thing. A giant black mass, uncoiling itself like a twisted spine. She pulled her gun; opening fire on smoking bone-plate armour. A snarling head revealed itself, blind and dripping. Tabitha leapt away from the serpent’s thundering burst, as a sudden slimy spike punched through the floor where she’d stood. One after another, they spurted and slammed through the steel grating at her feet. Bolts like bony broadswords that forced her away from the controls. The serpent dropped like a train crash. Gasping, Tabitha leapt aside as it snapped for her. She ducked its giant tail and rattled lasershots into its monstrous head; jumping away panicked as it smashed down where she’d stood. Her gun did nothing; she pulled her knife with a snarl and ran right at it. Drooling black slobber, the growling serpent coiled tightly and pounced.

*

‘Charge the cannons again!’ Atha bellowed on the walls. ‘Don’t you fucking dare stop firing!’ Their artillery thundered another blinding volley from the fortress roofs. Blowing monsters to gory craters in the writhing plaza, as more hurtled rabidly for the walls. The Ministry’s whole perimeter was a boiling mass; a chittering chaos as the spiders kept flooding in. Endless waves of them crept up the walls, only to shriek at non-stop lasershots and drop away dead. Atha spun at sudden screaming; another of his soldiers wrangled with a pouncing spider and fell dead on the battlements. Desperate shouts as troops and tribals turned from the fighting to kill the spiders among them. Turning back to the swarm, jaw clenched and staring hatefully, Atha saw a stretched figure in the distant trees. Training his rifle scope frantically, he took aim on its stark staring face. He took his shaking shot and cursed at the near miss, as the Watcher smiled and disappeared into the trees.

Sea Mist spun snarling on the frantic battlements and cut down another pouncing spider. Yelling furiously while they just kept coming. Barkless fought beside her; he wouldn’t leave her side. Roaring wildly as he leant over the battlements, and machine-gunned screeching spiders to raining blood.

Aelu lay on a higher rooftop, staring coldly through the scope of her new heavy rifle. She was flat on her stomach; the only safe way to fire a weapon this big. An old aircar killer, buried in the barracks’ armoury. She picked out another distant monster, in the treeline. Her sniping shot cracked like thunder, and kicked up a sudden dustcloud. The recoil was a bitch. A thick blinding laserbolt from the rooftops, that dropped the far monster to crashing wreckage with a burst bloody head.

Big Fish roared across the swarming walls, hauling his gatling laser over the top parapet to rip rattling shots through the climbing horde. Yelling wildly as he pulled the trigger, to fire constant bolts through the spiders that swamped the western ramparts. The light was blinding; the rattling shots so rapid that it echoed like a constant deafening rip. Dropping the swarm screeching in bright bloody massacre, until the huge gun finally spun on empty. Teeth gritted, Fish dropped it red-hot and hissing to pull a giant makeshift blade from his back. Roaring and hurtling for the climbing horde to cut them apart, before their shooting stings could find the gaps in his body armour. Barkless charged in beside him to drop the spiders creeping close at his back. Sea Mist ran tirelessly between them, sticking the climbers that reached the top with snarling bloody stabs.

‘Forget the brutes! Aim for the nearest spiders! Bring them down!’ Stone Shore bellowed at his Sky Tribe. Leaning over the walls, their arrows just glanced off the monsters’ impossible hides. Only the warriors who’d chosen the new living rifles were able to wound them. The walls were a thundering chaos of bright gunshots. A tumbling tide of shrieking creatures, barely held back from the top.

‘They’re coming over!’ yelled Swift Blood. His Bronzebacks were spearing everything that came close, but there were too many now. Tiring warriors yelled and toppled under pouncing spiders. Grappling in panic with their legs and writhing stingers, and dropping dead beneath the creeping swarm. There was no great black bird-spirit to protect them now. They were being overrun.

‘Shields!’ Cold Moon barked back. Her Red-Eyes closed ranks around them where the spiders clambered thickest for the top. A silver tide, piling up on one another; clattering over the battlements to kill them. The spiders crashing into their shield-wall were speared savagely in return.

‘Fall, back!’ a tribal growled at Atha, turning to him from the distant massacre along the walls.

‘If we retreat from the walls then they’ll kill everyone in here!’ Atha roared back. ‘We’ll never hold them back in the hallways, do you understand!? Keep fighting!’

Aelu kept firing, slaughtering monsters, but it wasn’t enough. The walls below crept with chittering silver. Glancing down, she watched Big Fish reflect her desperate look. Sea Mist and Barkless shared a glance and raised their weapons, snarling as they faced Death side by side. All of them cast into thick growing gloom, as the mothership crawled colossal above them. Creeping over the park; the plaza; over their heads and the Ministry itself. An eerie light growing in its belly. Painting the losing battle with a deathly starlit glow.

‘…Ghosts go out fighting,’ Big Fish rumbled to his friends. Guardians and the Sky Tribe gathering close around them, as the spiders crept in on all sides.

‘Keep firing! Keep firing!’ Atha bellowed across the walls. ‘Fight, to the fucking end!’

*

Tabitha knifed the vast serpent with a wild gory scream. Slashed it hard and shocked it like thunder. Leaping away bloody as its bone-armoured tail crashed a crater through the floor.

‘Why won’t you die!?’ she snarled at it, exhausted by the fight. She leapt away breathless, again, as it spat another spike at her head. Wearing her out. Her running gunshots couldn’t find its fleshy face; not with its strikes and spines keeping her constantly off-guard. Running and dashing non-stop around it, just to keep from being crushed by its bony tail. It struck again; glanced against her and knocked her down hard. It lunged for her as she rolled aside yelling, and she leapt up wildly on its tail. Tabitha sank her claws into its bony shell; climbed its giant segments and leapt snarling for its vicious head. It reared up roaring as she clawed its fleshy face; she finally shocked its skin with a bang.

The mouth’s the weak point. That’s the only way this bastard’ll die.

The gorgon writhed and snapped around frantically. It tossed its huge head and threw her down hard on her back. Rearing up to kill her.

…This is it. Its massive mouth dropped to devour her, as Tabitha roared where she lay and machine-gunned its open jaws. Wild-eyed and screaming, her furious face lit with flashing gunfire, she emptied every rapid shot into it. Piercing its skull through the roof of its roaring mouth. Scorching bright holes through its bloodspurting brain, until she’d finally put the bastard down. A sudden gore-slopping silence, as it crashed right down on top of her.

Screaming, broken ribs mending, Tabitha dragged herself from its massive fangs to stagger to her knees. She glimpsed the tracking screen, on the weapon’s distant console… and saw the mothership crawling to its final glowing stop above the Ministry.

I’m too late, she told herself, as she limped frantically for the command console.

*

Monsters had overrun the Ministry’s northern walls, leaving a trail of gored-open bodies in their wake. Tearing down Atha’s artillery with a bloody vengeance.

Further along, Atha and his Guardians held the swarming spiders at bay with the last of their ammunition. Snarling, Big Fish stared around uselessly. He spun for the wall to cut more spiders down as they reached the top. He shared one last desperate look with the Ghosts around him, as the mothership’s light grew blinding overhead. A booming hum in their trembling chests, like digital static through the world. Its vile vast belly peeled apart, revealing its beam high above them.

‘Guess Tabitha didn’t get there in time,’ Aelu muttered to Fish.

‘Kha V’ha,’ Sea Mist growled into her earpiece. ‘If, hear this. Love you. Sister.’

*

Tabitha heard a crackling hum in her earpiece; she couldn’t make out the voice. Ornate crosshairs flickered to life on the weapon’s main terminal; the targeting computer gave her a clear view of the sky. Trembling, clutching her bloody side, she gripped the stubby control stick frantically and whipped the cameras around to see the giant stormclouds across the city. The Watchers’ black ship was lurking over the Ministry. A fierce final light in its belly. Ready to annihilate her tribe.

…Fuck you. She flipped the final switch guard and stabbed her thumb in the flashing button. The giant cannon blew like blinding thunder; a god-collider that shook the darkened world. Roared a supermassive lightbolt screaming across the city, to bore a sudden slopping gouge through the mothership’s side. The ship boomed deafening and writhed aside in agony; the bright glow faded from its belly. Tabitha snarled furiously at the targeting screen, wild-eyed and wrathful. Teeth bared and staring murderously as she primed the charging switches. She listened for the beep and hit the firing switch again, so hard and sudden that it cracked right through. The cannon thundered again on the tower top. Another colossal lightbeam tore through the skyline and bit a fierce glowing hole through the mothership’s bloody hull. Finally, she had a chance to hit back at those bastards. To make them bleed for once.

Tabitha snarled and hit the chargers again. Waiting impatiently for the power bars to climb up the display. She listened for the beep and jabbed the button again, in soaring bloody vengeance. A scorching thunderous hit through the side of its belly, forcing the vast panicked mothership away from her tribe. Her family.

She punched the charge and hit it again, to cut a sudden gory trench across the ship’s giant hunched back. Raining sparks and bleeding silver waterfalls, it crawled away from the Ministry in the distance. Wounded, roaring like an earthquake, the ship was turning. Hurtling toward the cameras and the weapon itself. Dry-mouthed, pulse racing, Tabitha hit the fire button again. The shot blew a glowing crater in the great black curve that passed for the mothership’s head. But dozens of holes were melting open on it; pores that sprouted its own fierce artillery. A sudden barrage of it, blasting huge tremoring holes through the skyscraper above her head.

One more. Just one more shot, Tabitha growled wrathfully. Waiting desperately for the readout screen to show her a full charge. Frantic now, to fire a final killing bolt right through its wounded head. To burst through its bridge and burn every Watcher on board. But the ship’s whipping artillery shots converged on the cannon, and the camera feed. Suddenly the screens went blank.

‘Shit!’ she screamed out furiously, as the giant weapon shuddered and exploded high above her. The mothership was moving right over the tower. She didn’t need to guess what was coming next.

Tabitha grabbed up her gun and sprinted back frantically through the cavernous silo, clattering up the metal walkways for the concrete corridor and the blast door she’d cut through. Racing away from it; her fate. An earthquake impact shook the ground beneath her, as the ship lashed out at the tower above her head. The shaking walls were collapsing around her; the concrete ceiling cracked and dropped in the corridor behind her. She felt a growing clatter off to her left and spun around with her gun raised. Breathing fast and panicked as she fired bright rapid shots into screeching spiders in the black. They were creeping up in the darkness, lit by her gun’s strobelight flash. Shrieking and falling back as the shots melted holes through their skin.

Tabitha heard clattering, as she ran terrified through the basements ahead; a fresh swarm of spiders flooding through to find her. She tore through them; shot more of them dead. Struck back screaming and shocked them apart in blinding bangs. The ceiling toppled behind her. The whole place was coming down around her.

‘Seven!’ she yelled out, sprinting back up the concrete ramp. Running clear of the building as he hurled white fire down into the falling basement behind her; filled suddenly with the spiders’ burning screams. Tabitha turned staring, gun at the ready, but saw nothing else. Nothing but a dustcloud, as the basements crashed down inside. The towers’ foundations cracked and toppled all around her. The whole dusty courtyard was lit with a sudden deathly glow. Silver blood glistened gigantic as it rained down hard on her head. The mothership loomed above her; blocking out the sky. Belly opening wider, as a fresh eerie light grew inside it. The toppling towers rained booming rubble all around her; boulders of crashing concrete from every side.

‘Get the drone!’ she yelled out, sprinting for Seven’s offered wing. A massive thoom up above put the fear of god in her. The sound of the mothership’s lightbeam, that said that they were too late to escape. But it stuttered in a sudden thunderclap; the power choked and the blinding light faded away. Its weapon was damaged; one of her shots had found its mark. Tabitha snarled victoriously, though her look soon faded. Roaring monstrously, the ship gripped the triple towers furiously and tore them toppling from their foundations.

‘Go! Now!’ she yelled at Seven. Growing his harness around her, Seven snatched the dead drone from the dust and turned to stomp away. Spreading his wings and flaring his jetscales, he thundered out from the raining concrete above. The mothership was toppling the towers; crashing them down all around them. Tabitha glanced back at the destruction. The wind whipped her hair and rushed in her ears as Seven soared away from the churning violence behind them.

‘Go!’ she urged him. Tabitha switched out her gun’s empty charge pack and spurred Seven to full speed. Racing desperately toward the swamped smoking Ministry in the distance.

Guardians, Ghosts and Sky Tribe still defended the last scarred stretch of the Ministry walls; their laser rifles screeching and scorching into the silver horde that was massing to kill them. Holding back the endless tide with what little ammunition they had left. Creeping spiders shrieked and shuddered at their smoking shots, and fell away from the walls to crash down on the distant steps.

‘Get those climbers off the windows!’ Atha barked down the line. The giant shutters over the windows were still protecting the building’s towering sides, but he didn’t know how long they’d last now. Not with that big dark brute clawing its way toward them, with a fiery glow behind its grinding teeth. Atha set his rifle sights on another reaching spider and dropped it from the walls with a bright crackling headshot.

‘Stay behind the shields!’ Fish called out desperately, as he ushered the surviving soldiers back behind him. Armoured from head to toe, he’d made himself a living blockade against the onslaught. Still grunting and roaring as he swung his blade through creeping spiders with the last of his strength.

‘How’s your ammo?’ came Aelu’s terrified voice, as she rushed down to join them.

‘Not good,’ Atha admitted. Picking off two spiders and then another, as the silver swarm gradually covered the lower walls. ‘Single shots!’ he barked across the battlements, through their forces’ endless laserbolts. ‘Cold and controlled!’

‘Yes sir!’ his tired Guardians shouted back. Surrounded, now. Their grim last stand.

‘That big bastard’s climbing real fast, sir!’ someone yelled down the line. The monster was clawing its way up in rapid clattering clouds of stone dust. Snarling fire; pale eyes fixed on them. Twitching and bleeding from their lasershots, and climbing on regardless.

‘Aim for the eyes! For the hands!’ Atha yelled desperately, as the creature rapidly scaled the wall towards their last refuge. ‘Drop it! Now!’

Reigo, the new marine they’d rescued, broke rank and ran across the wall to join his men and women firing on it. The brute was getting way too close. Their bright shots were just smoking through it; by now the thing was too rabid to hurt. A few more seconds and it’d clear the top. Massacre them where they stood.

‘Grab my legs!’ Reigo barked back over his shoulder. The soldiers on either side helped him climb the wall’s edge. They gripped his calves to hold him firm, as he leaned right over the precipice; giving him the angle he needed. His shots tore through the creature’s claws, leaving them bloody and buried in the stonework. The shocked monster came apart from its smoking hand; roaring molten metal up the wall as it hung there and scrambled uselessly. Snarling, rifle pounding near empty, Reigo’s shots finally cut its other hand apart. He watched it drop. A fading roar as it shrank and smashed a cracked bloody crater in the steps below. But the soldiers’ cheers were short-lived, as they hoisted him back onto the battlements. Further along, another dark brute was scaling the wall. Another behind it, and another. They wouldn’t stop until they’d wiped them out. The horde was never-ending.

‘Out of ammo!’ came a woman’s shout down the wall.

‘Out!’ another voice joined in. Atha stared furiously as his men and women pulled their knives, to go out fighting. Everything they’d been through to get here, to hold these damn walls... and it all came down to ammunition in the end.

…Guess it always does.

‘Out of shots!’ came another yell, along the wall to his left. Atha thought of all those people, crowded and staring in the vaults down below, inside the Ministry complex. All those frightened families and young kids. Looking to the Sky Tribe, Atha saw they were out of arrows. At a loss. Many had lost their spears, and their knives too. Buried in bloody spiders that’d dropped dead to the pavements below.

‘Fight! Throw rocks if you have to!’ Reigo bellowed back at everyone. ‘Smash the stones loose!’ He turned back to hammer his rifle stock at the mortar in the wall. Kicking at it viciously until an ornate top-block crumbled away and dropped, taking a shrieking spider with it. The rest of the crowded fighters followed his lead.

‘Smash the stones loose!’ Atha echoed down the line. ‘Hit ‘em with your helmets, if you’ve got nothing else! Those bastards will not get over these walls!’

‘Yes sir!’ his troops shouted back. That clawing black beast was almost on them. Snarling and roaring as a stone smashed it in the face, and still climbing on furiously toward the top.

‘I need a knife! Anyone!’ A Guardian yelled out desperately, as her shots ran out. The tribal beside her hammered away another stone block to drop down on the monster’s head. Another cursed as his ammo ran out, and another. All of them watching those cold staring eyes, as the monster reached the top and made a vicious grab for them. Atha watched in horror.

…It’s over. They’ve won.

A sudden black blur threw them back with a jet blast; it dropped down deafening and ripped the monster from the walls. Soaring away, Seven opened his claws to send the torn roaring creature plummeting into the plaza below. Broken and screaming where it smashed into the stones. Tabitha swept Seven back to hurl white fire along the wall, dropping the horde in a glowing molten curtain down the Ministry’s sides. Tearing off overhead, as her army yelled and cheered in sudden victory. The siege was broken.

Tabitha swept Seven low; torching burning bloody trenches through the frightened swarm. Driving them back for the trees and ruins, as his searing flames cut molten arcs through their clattering ranks. Even the monsters fled from him now; they snarled and turned back for the distant streets. In moments the onslaught became a sudden desperate retreat.

Seven watched the horde shrinking away from the walls, suddenly spooked and leaderless. He made a sweeping circuit around the Ministry, torching the swarming battlements and driving every spider away, until he was satisfied.

Setting Tabitha down on the silenced ramparts, Seven took a higher perch on the Ministry roofs. Roaring fierce bloody dominion over his burning plaza.

Tabitha pulled her knife on the battlements and dropped the final creeping spiders around her. She yelled and shocked and clawed them bloody, and spun to kick one pouncing clean off the walls. Breathless, searching for her next fight, she finally found herself alone. She caught her breath and staggered against the solid stones beside her, and tried to will some strength back into her trembling limbs. She hadn’t killed that mothership; only driven it away. The war itself was far from over. But at least this battle was won.

She breathed a little easier now. Wiping a hand at the silver blood down her lip, she turned back to the wider Ministry ramparts as shouting soldiers broke their shield walls and crowded in around her. A deafening cheer surrounded her as the survivors rushed in towards their queen. Her Ghosts; her Sky Tribe. Her Guardians. Bruised smiles and worn-out hollering, filling up her heartcore until she grinned. Sea Mist pushed past Big Fish and Aelu, and grabbed Tabitha tightly in a crushing hug. She stepped back to smile widely into her sister’s eyes, and hugged her tightly again.

Past all the shouts and chattering cheers, Tabitha looked away to the city ruins. Staring, in soaring vengeance, as she watched the gored black mothership limping away in the distance. It crawled on weakly in vast plumes of smoke, raining torrents of blood down on the streets. Spilling all the monsters it could and retreating for the hills on the horizon. But the damage was done; it didn’t seem like it’d stay airborne much longer. Disappearing in its stormclouds. Shrinking, finally, over the hills and mountains beyond the city.

Do me a favour you bastards, she thought. Just find somewhere to drop, and bleed to death. Seven’s glowing embers still drifted in the high breeze. A slow fiery snow that tumbled around her. Tabitha watched the crippled ship vanish; a hard growing light in her stare. She’d wanted to end this war today. To finally bring the Watchers down in flames. And him.

…At least it’s bought us more time. I need to make every second count.

5

High in the limping mothership, the Watchers’ tall princely being watched the Ministry in shock. Gold eyes glaring; snarling in wild contempt. Staring hatefully at those gathered specks; the inconsequential life forms that still defended the ruins of their world. He knew it was her, the red-haired ape, that’d caused so much chaos. Slipping eternally from his grip.

That blond-ape cannibal, the lethal parasite they’d had to work around, should have killed her by now. He’d broken their agreement. He was to blame for this utter disgrace. Every muscle in the Prince’s body was tense; his mind churned with indignation. In hard sonorous shouts, he ordered his soldiers to mass on the ship’s bridge with the new machines they’d been developing. Commanding that the blond ape be destroyed, finally, and at all costs.

*

Alex looked up from his dead native victim, at the rear of the ship’s bridge. Still chewing flesh from bloody bone. Wiping the gore from his mouth with the back of a clawed hand, as he swallowed the raw meat and smiled. He watched the chamber filling with troops around him, out of nowhere. They planted a strange machine in the translucent floor, that bloomed and cast a sudden shimmering light-wall around him. Like a forcefield, trapping him. Well… trying to, anyway. They must’ve been working hard on this; it was the only way they’d found to overpower him. They’d wanted him dead ever since he’d butchered his way aboard. Now they were trying their luck.

‘You guys really want to go another round with me?’ Alex said with a grin, floating and stuck inside the strange light, as the Watchers’ soldiers closed in around him. Hurriedly reinforcing the energy-prison around him, with more of those living machines. ‘…Or did you get your space panties all in a wad, because she just kicked your ass?’ Alex was chuckling; bursting massive writhing volts against the forcefield around him. Trying and failing to destroy it. He tried again, and again. The futility got him furious. Made his voltage stronger. The fact that he felt it sapping the power from him, daring to weaken him… that threw him into a wild bloody rage.

Alex turned up the voltage. He gave those leeching machines what they wanted. Too much of it. Overloading them with his power. His lightning volts grew fiercer. Blinding. Making the bony generators whir, then scream, like overrun engines. Forcing them faster until they burst like bombs. Suddenly free, Alex laughed and shot for the nearest soldier. He tore its throat and spun from their shots to cut through another and murder a third. Alex snarled and shot volts in a thundering barrage around him, like bright blue bombs through the ship’s bridge. He cut down another Watcher at the knees, and tore the head off a monster that ran for him. In a split-second blur he shot through soldiers and gored the yelling crew. Blowing open ribbed consoles along the walls with a sweep of his hands. Smiling savagely. A bright massacre burned all around him; a chorus of agonised screams. The Prince watched in horror as the blond ape ran grinning for him. Eyes burning; black blade raised and ready to take off his head. Then, Alex stopped short. Floating up to meet him at eye-level. Smiling demonic; wrestling with a force inside him.

‘Sorry. I’m forgetting,’ Alex chuckled. He rubbed his brow, and shook his head. ‘I need you alive to get me home.’ The Prince glared at him, trying to understand him, as the blond ape smiled and walked away in his lightning cindercloud. Wandering on through the flames and gore that he’d made of the ship’s fleshy command deck.

‘It’s ok to tap out of a fight. Just so long as you know your limits,’ Alex assured the glaring Prince. ‘I’ll do the real work,’ he shrugged, smiling pleasantly. ‘You just have to ask.’ With that he left the wailing chaos that remained of the bridge, and headed out into the ship’s silent corridors.

Alex breathed deeply of the ship’s strange protein smell, and relished the thought of some exercise. Tutting to himself, he shook his head forgetfully and went back in through the melting door. The Prince was still standing there, staring at him. Watching those who’d survived him, as they limped and staggered from their burning consoles.

‘Just need something for the road,’ Alex called to him pleasantly, across the staring silent chamber. ‘Getting all hungry.’ He proceeded to wrench an arm from a dead Watcher, for a snack. The ultimate insult. Or he tried to, at least. He couldn’t seem to pull the limb away from it, without flailing the dead body like a ragdoll.

‘Sorry,’ Alex chuckled casually. ‘Guess those machines took it out of me.’ He smiled at the furious Prince, and tried again with the body. Planting his foot between its shoulders for some leverage. Snapping off the limb, finally, with a cartilage crack. He licked at the gold blood like dribbling chocolate sauce, starving for it, and sank his dark piranha teeth into the skin with a fleshy scrunch. The Watchers stared in horror, and did nothing. That blond ape-hybrid was unstoppable.

‘Mmm,’ Alex agreed, pulling a rich straining mouthful of raw muscle from the bone. Relishing every blood-streaming chew of it, like an animal. ‘You breed the best meat, Your Highness. I really mean that.’ With that, Alex vanished again through the melting doors. The parasite that haunted them; the anomaly they couldn’t kill. The Prince glared murderously in his wake.

Alex walked the corridors idly. He summoned up some crackling energy, and blew a great slopping hole through a certain stretch of wall he didn’t like. Clamping the Watcher’s severed arm between his teeth, he climbed on through to the patch of sky beyond the ship’s bleeding armour. Soldiers were running up behind him. The corridors belched a sudden alarm at his breach in the hull. With a deep smiling breath, Alex pushed off. He dropped in a wind-rushing skydive, down through the mothership’s glooming storm.

Eyes shining, grinning manically, Alex slowed his dive with a burst of static and floated the last few feet to the roof of a shattered factory. He tore another blood-dribbling chunk from the Watcher arm in his grip, chewing in sloppy satisfaction, and took a smiling moment to get his bearings. The buried thoughts came back for a while, when he was eating. Dark thoughts, and deep. A few minutes where that pale old reflection surfaced inside him; when that maddening instinct wasn’t yelling for food. Old thoughts swirled with fresher ideas, like a cocktail. Making sense of it all, finally.

He’d been thinking, lately. Thinking a lot. Perspective was everything. Changed everything. It’d taken all this, all these meals and revelations, for him to finally see the truth. In his nightmares, he saw it. Laid out clear as a graveyard.

History’s written by the victors. He’d heard that a couple of times. But that wasn’t the whole story. Now, he saw things clearly. It was life itself, the whole fucking freakshow, that was designed by the victors. They shaped it. Always had. Engineered every detail, from top to bottom. All the rights and wrongs and rules he’d been raised with… everything he knew, about how life worked… it was all just centuries of whims and decrees, courtesy of the ones who won. And who won? The same ones who always won. The psychos. Control freaks. Sharks among men, starved in cold ambition. When there was blood in the water, the ones who wrote history were the ones who attacked. And didn’t stop tearing and twisting and thrashing until the other guy was just a scarlet cloud in the sea. Those animals were the ones who shaped life; shaped the whole damn story. Every kind act, every decent person… they were all just puppets, hanging from the victors’ architecture. All just bit-parts, on their stage. There weren’t any gods behind the curtain; humanity’s heroes were psychopaths. Warlords and conmen. Their ideas won by massacre, and cold martial law. Yep, even the good ones. Even the holy of holies. The Watchers had shown him that; they’d shown him how life really worked. Morals were a construct, and nothing was fair. Power reigned. Nothing more.

It was all just a food chain. And he happened to have his own winning ticket to the top.

He could be gore on the street by now, rotting in an empty world. If not by the Watchers, then the humans instead. And still, they hadn’t killed him. He was still alive despite life, not because of it. His whole bloody survival was a resounding Fuck You, and the only bastards on his side were Darwin’s darkest dreams. Because real life was savage… and simple.

Live like a predator, or die like prey. At the top of the food chain, there’s only room for one. Either you were the apex, or you fed it.

Alex pulled his blade and leapt from the roof. His hard feet put a thumping crack in the concrete. With a deep grinning breath, high on life and armoured for the fight, he set off into the ruins to hunt.

6

A yawning man rubbed his face in the darkness. Waking up, on a distant world. He pulled on stale creaking boots before dawn. Kissing his sleeping wife, he stepped carefully past the twins and whispered to the boy to go back to sleep. Promising again that he’d take him. One day, when he was taller.

Winding a damp-smelling rag around his neck for a scarf, the man pulled on a musty highland jacket. He slung a rifle at his shoulder and filled a pocket with sparse rounds. Heading through the caves to Up Top, he breathed the cold morning air and smiled in satisfaction. He’d always liked being up first. Up and working, in Skye’s sweet silence and peace, while the noisy caves slept on. This was his great prize; a few hours to himself before he had to play leader again. Until every problem, every bickering argument, came flooding back into his life. Buttoning his coat against the whispering sea wind, Big Steve headed off down the slopes to hunt.

Treading through the rustling grass, he always got to thinking. Life on Earth was lethal now, though it felt more lived. Surer, and simpler. Tactile and textured, and bloody hard work. An older kind of living that put sharp aches in you, and demanded more muscle and mind. Only real things to worry about, like disease and starvation.

There weren’t any bills to pay, or a mortgage hanging over him. No jobs miles away, or sleepless nights glued to screens. Nothing more complex than keeping warm and staying fed, when it came down to it. All that mattered was the land around him; the food he could kill or find. The only real meaning was the village, now. Survivors who just carried on, and joked, and worked to make life worth living. People of all different voices and flavours, who cared and loved and laughed regardless. Some people were difficult, but what could you do. There was plenty of wild to get lost in, when they finally got on his nerves. Save for Natalie and the twins, getting lost in the wild was his favourite thing. The dark countryside opened up before him.

It was funny how people’s senses came back to life out here; hardened in the caves and watered in cold streams. Like there were all these ancient instincts in them, suddenly put to good use in keeping them alive. Just waiting for a bit more wilderness to come along.

The bats were still darting; he could just make them out in the black-blue dawn. Quick tiny clicks above his head. His stomach grumbled. A grounding kind of thought, he supposed, to be just as hungry and hunting as everything else. He’d set plenty of traps in the forest, and the teens would fish in the rivers come daylight. But the hunting was getting thinner, at least on this stretch of the island. He’d found himself going further every morning, just to find something worth a bullet.

The spiders hadn’t found this northern island, thank God. But they’d need to keep a low profile just in case. It was hard enough just finding enough food to keep everyone alive, and hardly anyone here had the wild old wisdom it’d taken their ancestors millennia to perfect. Granted, there were farm kids, fishers and some mechanics among them… But for the most part, all the survivors knew were computers and TV. Sports, and office politics, and service jobs. Food had always just come from supermarkets, or later from looting shops; it wasn’t a living yelping thing that you killed and skinned yourself. Still, they were learning. They’d survive.

Taking a mossy seat on the forest’s far edge, Steve checked the wind and loaded his rifle. He took a final stretch before the stillness began, and hunkered down among the trees. He unbundled a muddy tarp and pulled it over himself, and wrapped his human scent in the smell of dirt. Sighing a quiet breath, he settled down into his sniping spot.

The waiting was worst. He always felt like he was wasting his time. At first he’d tried tool-carving, or fixing broken things, but the animals wouldn’t show themselves. Even the smallest twitching, as well-hidden as he thought it, seemed to keep the bigger wildlife away. So, he did nothing but wait. One hour, and more. It wasn’t noble, and it wasn’t fun. It wasn’t warm bedsheets, or sleeping bags, or Natalie’s perfect toasty body pressed to his. It was sitting in the dirt like a pile of stale rags; waiting to kill something and pull its stinking guts out. All for life’s materials, and a bite of something roasted by the fire. Still, that was how it went. They had to eat, and they needed bone and tendon for most things. Like everything now, survival was dull and hard-won. But, things always came along once you gave up hoping, it seemed like. He’d learned to give up hoping early on.

He’d caught himself dozing; sniffed a breath and straightened up. His bleary eyes found a sudden focus, at something hunched and gliding cautious in the first scrap of light. Distant, but a clear shot if he was quick about it.

There were things about foxes he’d never known before. Like how they’d freeze and listen to inaudible sounds, only to creep and pounce on hidden rodents a hundred yards away. Or how intelligently they survived; hunting each day to create tomorrow’s food stores. Shoring up dead reserves in countless buried caches, and living well on anything that moved and would fit in their mouth. He liked how capable they were; more cautious and independent than many people he’d ever known. He liked how they grazed on flies where they gathered low in the grass, swaying their heads to harvest them from the sticky dew. Like this one had ventured out to do right now. Holding his breath for a steady staring aim, Steve squeezed the cold trigger and shot. The fox dropped in a sad furry heap in the distance, as birds rose up panicked from the rifle’s echoing crack.

He hated to kill foxes; they’d always been his favourite. But he hated it more to see his family quiet with hunger. The kind of hunger you could hear. The sort that weakened you, and killed. He’d seen that, along the way. Seen plenty.

The new world didn’t leave much room for human ideas, like what was nice and what was moral. And the hunger had a way of cutting through those thoughts. It pooled up inside you like gnawing empty acid, until your firmest beliefs weren’t so strong any more. It only took days, really. Eroding the vegans and the whatevertarians, until in time they were gnawing meat and fat off the bone for sheer living calories, like everyone else. None of them here had really known true hunger before. None of them had felt what it could do. These days, he’d shoot a fox without a thought. Lean tough meat was better than none.

About to stand and walk down to it, he paused for a second and watched his kill. There was something else there, grazing in the half-darkness; it was strange for any animal to run toward the sound of a gunshot. Until he saw the dawn light glimmer on it, and felt his whole world fall apart. He heard a squelching stab in the wild silence, as it straddled the fox and drained its insides. Staring in horror, stomach in knots, Steve ducked back through the trees before it saw him. Leaving the silver spider to its feeding, as quick and quiet as he could.

7

A solemn silence hung over the Ministry. A crowd of thousands watched from every window and cloister; gathered in the gardens and filling the giant courtyards. Through their parted centre, a funeral procession emerged from the barracks. Guardians and Sky Tribe carried their shrouded dead on makeshift stretchers. Walking in silent grief toward the main gates.

Beyond the walls, a space had been cleared in the war-torn plaza. Tabitha followed on with her retinue as her soldiers lay the stretchers down. Dozens of fallen troops and warriors, laid in grim ranks on a bed of kindling. A funeral pyre was fitting for these heroes, everyone agreed; though no-one mentioned that it would limit the risk of contagion too. Better to burn the bodies than bury them in the gardens. A cold thought, but the truth.

Coming forward, Tabitha knelt to set the spark and lit the funeral pyre herself. A massive blaze growing, as her Ghosts and Guardians looked on. Seven guarded the walls watchfully; they were still at risk here outside the gates.

Clearing his throat, a tall man came forward to face the crowd. Eyes like twin galaxies; the first man to kneel when Tabitha had arrived. A lightning-ribboned master of ceremonies.

‘Today, we commend these brave soldiers to the infinite,’ he addressed the crowd. ‘May we remember their great sacrifice, when our worlds know peace again. Let their noble deeds be remembered through their families, and their friends, for every generation to come. And may it never be forgotten, that we owe these men and women the greatest debt of all.’ He watched the solemn crowd; tearful tribe-mates and Guardian comrades, who looked on in sniffling silence.

‘But we move forward, with a glad heart,’ he added; his voice growing stronger. ‘We will honour these soldiers by living, and fighting, as they did. By taking up the light they carried, of freedom and fierce-hope! By striving on, for the cause they fought for; the greatest cause there is. The war for life itself. We shall continue, as life itself continues. And we shall not forget.’

‘We shall not forget,’ the crowd echoed back. Looking to the crackling pyre, they watched their fallen disappear in the blaze. Tabitha stared; eyes glistening with tears. Teeth gritted and furious at herself.

I didn’t prepare these people to fight the Watchers. I could’ve done so much more. They’re mourning friends and families, because of me.

‘Majesty,’ Saa said quietly, with a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s time.’

The funeral procession followed their queen back inside the Ministry, through the waiting crowds and on into the gardens. By now the Sky Tribe were wailing in heartbreak, or beating their chests in the echoing courtyard. Growls and long calls rose in a sorrowful tide, that slowly came together in a single mourning howl to their dead. Among the onlookers, some had to dry their eyes at the sound. They’d never heard anything so raw and open-hearted; so sad. Their howls gave way to slow silence as the procession moved on, when other species called out and mourned their warriors. A sad brash song for the dead, loud and hard-felt; a clear grey sorrow that put a lump in Tabitha’s throat.

‘…Not much passion from these guys,’ Big Fish muttered quietly, his voice still thick with grief. Glancing around at Serenity’s natives, standing silent and stoic as they passed them by.

‘It’s just their custom,’ Tabitha replied gently, with a quiet sniffle. ‘Outbursts are considered unseemly.’

‘You read that somewhere?’

‘Yeah.’

‘So they don’t show any emotion?’ he said.

‘They just show it differently,’ she replied quietly. ‘Like that.’ Nodding ahead of them, the crowd of citizens had gathered around a platform, by the gardens’ shattered eastern wall. A small group stood on a raised stage in the corner, bowing as their queen came forward to watch with the mumbling crowd. A smart elderly man smiled at everyone until they fell silent, for their concert in the ruins to begin.

A polite cough; a gentle old smile. His ragged group sat hunched over strange instruments; scorched originals and makeshift approximations. A string quintet, of sorts. Dwarfed by the rubble, curving up behind them like a ruined theatre. The young solemn lead shouldered a strange charred something, like a violin. He took steady breaths in the shuffling silence, and blocked the crowd from his mind. Running the bow across otherworldly strings he produced a rising violin solo, rich and baroque; an abrupt spring melody that carried through the sunlit gardens. Joined by the quartet in full joyous harmony, that suddenly had Big Fish captivated. Their instruments painted bright living music on the summer air; gilded and statuesque to hear. Such a strange sudden beauty, among the ruins and sunlit rubble; a burst of hope like a lightning bolt. High rapid notes like glorious birdsong. The crowd gathered closer to see; parents held young staring children high against their shoulders to watch. Weary people, beaten and grieving, gathered around a precious remnant of better times. Kids and teenagers listened with fresh novelty. They’d heard of physical music, and the old wooden instruments that produced it, but it’d been out of fashion for centuries. But older survivors smiled along to the tune, in gentle familiarity. An old lady beamed as she listened to it; she hadn’t heard it in years. One small figure in a tired happy gathering, standing close around their joyous music.

Tabitha looked on the scene in silence, smiling despite herself. Listening in rapture to a gorgeous artwork, strummed and sawed and strung in silver-sweet divinities. A hopeful glimpse of civilisation, in the city’s torn hazing ruins.

The music took a melancholy turn; a brief mournful interlude that faded into solemn silence. And then, rising. Harder, and determined; colder and more beautiful than before. Constant stabbing violin notes, like ice and twining metal. Building, relentlessly, to a coming crescendo. The young violinist stood suddenly and broke into a hard slicing solo. So cold and fast and intense that the whole dead birdsung city stopped to listen. His face was set in stern determination, as he played rapid-fire in fierce virtuoso. Making his mark on this dim dying world, whether it wanted him or not. Years of endless practise, distilled in the greatest minute of his life. The quartet joined in the hard gorgeous harmony; the crowd watched in spellbound silence. Other species witnessed the wintry music in stunned fascination, wondering at its beauty; as if gods themselves had descended. A constant coursing of fierce frozen feeling, sweeping tidal through the crowd like a great north wind. Rising again to a stern ferocious harmony; an ancient authority like silver and cold-rolled steel. Tabitha felt such a fierce sudden rising in her chest; fresh purpose at the gorgeous sounds. But it wasn’t just the art and talent that she saw in those people. It wasn’t even about the music, as beautiful as it was. It was that sheer energy; their dedication. Undying commitment to something greater and more perfect than themselves. To conjure thoughts and tears from wood and string and hard scorched silence. Carving angels from solid sound. The kind of will and artful determination that’d built this ancient city in the first place.

The kind that could rebuild it too, she told herself, as the quintet faded and the crowd applauded like they’d never hear music again. All they need is a fighting chance.

*

Tabitha left the concert early, striding quickly for the barracks with a sterner look.

‘Hey,’ said Irren, hurrying to keep up as she passed him in the corridor. ‘If you have a minute, I think morale may be an issue. I’ve been looking at ways we may be able to produce some kind of propa–

‘Not now, Irren,’ she cut in abruptly. ‘Sorry.’ Nodding in surprise, he stopped in his tracks and let her walk on. The way she looked right now… well, it probably wasn’t a good idea to get in her way.

Passing through thick-painted doors into the fort’s old barracks, Tabitha strode on past sitting soldiers who shot up to attention. Sudden salutes as she passed them by. On down the next corridor, she turned a corner into an antique office.

‘Majesty,’ Atha said casually, with a half-arsed salute from his desk as he drained his spirit glass. ‘And what mad unreasonable request can I perform for you today?’

‘Enough of that shit, Atha,’ she shot back. ‘Act like my General or I’ll find someone who will.’ He watched her in sudden silence; his smirk disappeared. Whatever he was about to come back with, he thought better of it. He just cleared his throat, and stood from his chair.

‘…Yes, ma’am.’

‘Your soldiers are dying for these people,’ Tabitha told him. ‘My tribe’s dying for them, while they just shelter in the vaults. Heading back out for concerts and funerals, once the battle’s over. Of all those people who knelt down to me when we arrived, only a handful actually volunteered for the walls today,’ she said angrily. ‘The people of this world aren’t fighting for it.’

‘Agreed,’ said Atha. ‘I’ve no issue with concerts and funerals, or prayers. But it won’t win this war.’

‘Exactly. They don’t get to sit out this fight any longer,’ Tabitha replied. ‘They’re part of this world. They should be fighting for it. Conscript them.’ Atha sighed, and nodded in reply.

‘They’ll never reach the same standard as trained Guardians,’ he said. ‘There’s no time.’

‘Make time,’ she insisted. ‘Train them hard enough and we may even stand a chance.’

‘They’re completely unprepared for this. You’ll put them on death’s door,’ Atha chuckled hopelessly.

‘Still better than what’s waiting for them outside these walls,’ Tabitha reasoned. Prying open a glass case nearby, to test an antique knife with a special-forces insignia.

‘Well, can’t argue with that,’ Atha smiled back. ‘I’ll get on it. See if I can’t find a few decent soldiers among them.’

‘Soldiers aren’t enough,’ she disagreed, looking up as she clipped the sheathed knife to her belt. ‘I need Watcher killers.’

8

‘He’s been walking around for hours with serious wounds!’ the beige man argued. ‘He must come inside the ward so I can take a look at him.’

‘I, heal, him!’ Sea Mist growled defensively. Helping Barkless Tree away from the strange room, with him limping slowly against her shoulder.

‘But he requires medical help!’ the tall man protested, his black eyes glinting in the daylight. ‘His dressings aren’t sterile! Th-they aren’t even dressings!’ He couldn’t even tell what they were made of. Was that… moss?

‘I, heal, him!’ Sea Mist yelled back at him. ‘Tribe heal tribe!’ The man sighed heavily, and watched the pair limping away down the plant-lit corridor. Smoothing back his neat grey hair, he clutched his ridged forehead at yet another tension headache. He couldn’t persuade a single one of the Stormworld species to come into his makeshift hospital, and allow him even a quick checkup of their wounds from the fighting. At the very least their fur was bound to be carrying parasites from off-world, and who knew the risk that posed as regards contagion. Breathing deeply, the man took a moment for himself outside. His work was never-ending; the medical room had expanded into five. Every pill, bottle, bandage and syringe had already been scrounged from the Ministry complex, and they were rapidly running out. Best of all was the survivors’ wrongheaded belief that he was a medical doctor. He’d never even treated a graze before; he’d worked in biomedical research.

He’d been trying and failing repeatedly with the silver blood samples Her Majesty had given him; something far more suited to his expertise. But every test so far was unresponsive to her cells’ miraculous regeneration. Her plants, too – a goldmine of potential applications in healing and medicine. None of which were forthcoming now, of course, when they were in true and desperate need.

Still, at least they had electricity through the ward, courtesy of Her Majesty’s fascinating tree. So much easier to help the wounded when he could see them… despite the fact that he’d had no training whatsoever. He’d vague memories of first aid courses, once upon a time. But his white lab uniform, which he’d worn since his final doomed commute, just seemed to scream doctor to these people. They just didn’t make the distinction. He was their healer; their medical priest in white. If it wasn’t for the trainee nurse who’d ran here to find him, a saint of a girl with good sense, then there’d be even more funerals to come.

Still. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. Rubbing his stubble, he noticed how his hands were trembling. He’d never seen so much blood before. He’d witnessed what those silver spiders could do to a person, and worse still if the sting didn’t kill them on the spot.

‘Hey, Lotor,’ a volunteer porter called from the doorway. ‘You’re needed. Quickly.’

‘Yes, of course,’ he replied, sighing a shaky breath. He headed back through for their makeshift ward, and the groaning bloodstained horrors inside.

‘Hey, am I free to go Doc?’ said a passing marine. A young Serenian, bruised beneath the eyes from a formerly broken nose. His bandaged arm hid deep claw wounds.

‘Hm?’ Lotor replied, distracted. Tired of telling people that he was nothing like a Doc whatsoever. ‘Oh. Yes, yes,’ he dismissed him hurriedly. ‘There’s no sign of poisoning. Just keep it clean.’

‘Thanks Doc,’ Reigo replied, as he headed out into the main corridors. Joining the busy traffic of people who seemed to move constantly around the Ministry’s grand hallways. Always on the lookout for salvage and valuables, left behind by the late great Ministers.

Heading on toward the gardens, Reigo passed larger offices that’d quickly sprung up into market stalls. Loud locals touted liquor and valuables, pilfered from the Ministers’ accommodations, among haggling crowds keen to drive a good bargain. Reigo smiled at the nonsense of it. Overnight shopkeepers selling to penniless customers, here at the end of the world. Neither having ownership to begin with.

Trust Serenians to do business in the apocalypse, he told himself. It was more than just basic economy; commerce was this city’s favourite sport. A Good Deal, their opiate of choice.

‘The General’s up in the barracks?’ Reigo asked a Guardian in passing, who pointed him on toward the far end of the gardens. The young marine walked on through a sunlit shanty town, past ornate flower patches and a big bizarre tree with a volted hum. The pretty nurse on the hospital ward had mentioned something about a General Atha. His offworld battalion had already set up a command centre in the old military museum, from back when the Ministry was more fortress than palace.

Heading on through the gates to a large cobbled yard, Reigo passed from civvie chaos into sudden military order. Neat armouries, arrayed in antique workshops. Familiar shouts and ancient snare drums, as new volunteers drilled in the square. Teams of gunners did strange glowing things to dead artillery from the walls, which didn’t seem to be quite so dead any more. Or quite so much like artillery. He glimpsed ranks of rifles, revived on a production line; weirdly fleshy and clear. Similar to that tree in the gardens.

Still… at least they’re working.

It was cooler inside the barracks. Dimmer and peaceful, with a smell like old carpets and boot polish. He found himself surrounded by grand military heritage; photos and paintings of the great commanders who’d lived and fought here. Reminders everywhere, of the early codes and systems that’d made the old empires work.

Looking around the museum hallways, there were none of the screens and holograms he’d been used to in his old life. This place was all pure physical. No digital projections of shining swords or historic uniforms, but the priceless objects themselves.

‘You lost, soldier?’ said a passing officer. ‘You’re local Marines?’

‘Sergeant Tohe Reigo, ma’am. Reporting to General Atha,’ he replied. ‘Am I going the right way?’

‘Straight down the hallway, third door on the left,’ she said. ‘…You look like shit, Sergeant.’ Reigo glanced down at his torn dusty uniform.

‘Apologies, ma’am,’ he replied.

‘See the quartermaster in the old gym stores,’ she added, a little less formally. ‘He might be able to kit you out. He’ll find you something to eat, at least.’

‘Appreciated,’ he replied, smiling slightly in return. With a curt nod, she left him to wander on down the hall.

Atha sighed heavily over the paperwork on his desk. The damn stuff followed him everywhere, even to the end of the world. Turning over another sheet, he scribbled on in whispering pencil.

At least I’m not tapping it into a bloody screen. It felt good to be around all the old stuff here; wooden desks and rare mechanical pistols. The real deal. If not for the paperwork, he may even have had time to enjoy the place. A knock on the door gave him some much-needed distraction.

‘Yeah,’ he replied from his work. Possibly a bit too un-General-like, he considered. ‘Come in.’ A young man entered uncertainly. Atha eyed him for a moment. ‘What can I do for you, son?’ He liked saying son, since his recent promotion.

‘Sergeant Tohe Reigo, General,’ the young man replied, with a cursory salute. ‘Aerial Marines. Reporting for duty.’

‘You’re the downed pilot?’ said Atha. ‘Impressive escape from the city, Sergeant. I wouldn’t put money on anyone to come through those ruins in one piece.’

‘Just dumb luck, sir,’ Reigo smiled back.

‘Drink?’ Atha offered.

‘No thank you, sir.’ Atha grunted dismissively and poured himself another strong glass.

‘How about your aircraft, hm? Salvageable?’

‘It’s a wreck, sir,’ Reigo replied. Jaw tightening. A growing look in his eyes.

‘You’re pissed off,’ Atha surmised. ‘Speak freely. Get it off your chest.’ The young man sighed; all his anger boiling up.

‘…They came into my home!’ Reigo snapped, snarling darkly as he paced the room. ‘They killed my city! My friends!’ he yelled furiously. ‘Just… wiped it all off the fucking map!’

‘I understand, Sergeant,’ Atha replied stoically. ‘We’ve all lost friends to the Watchers. If it’s vengeance you want, you’re in the right place.’ Atha watched him walk the room furiously. The young Marine was shaking his head; lost in thought.

‘Let me get one of those new rifles, sir,’ Reigo growled. ‘I’m going back out there. I’ll hunt them down myself. Give me a squad and we’ll murder those bastards.’

‘I know how you’re feeling, son. But you’re worth more to us alive,’ Atha replied. ‘Innocent lives depend on you. You’re needed within these walls.’

‘Not going to happen, General,’ Reigo snarled back. ‘I want blood, before they kill us all anyway! At least I’d go out like a fucking warrior, instead of just… waiting in here to die!’ A passing Guardian couldn’t help but hear the outburst outside. She walked on more slowly down the corridor; the horror of that hard truth preying on her mind.

‘I’m going to ask you to change your tone, son,’ Atha said calmly. Holding the young man’s angry stare. ‘You’ve said your piece.’

‘…Yes, sir,’ Reigo conceded, with a cautious glance. Sighing out a tense shaking breath, as he regained his composure. ‘Apologies, General.’

‘You’re entitled to your anger,’ Atha shrugged. ‘But I’d prefer that you put it to good use, in defending the families behind these walls. We have a duty to these people.’ The young man straightened his stance. Composed himself for proper duty. A brief silence hung between them, as he breathed heavily and set his jaw. Reigo nodded to himself.

‘Just give the order, General. Wherever I’m needed.’

‘As it happens, I have an opportunity for you,’ said Atha.

‘I like opportunities sir,’ the young man replied, with a stern look. ‘Sign me up.’

‘Good,’ Atha smiled, draining his glass as he stood from his chair. ‘By Her Majesty’s orders we’re enlisting every able-bodied civilian to help us win this. I need a drill instructor, with full oversight. Someone who’ll make it happen. As one of the most capable survivors within these walls, I’d have you take the job.’ Reigo nodded; suddenly his mind was racing.

‘I’ll liaise with the officers now, General,’ he replied. ‘We’ll arrange recruitment and processing prior to public announcement. Stagger the inductions. I’ll begin training recruits ASAP.’ Atha watched him and smiled.

‘Work them hard, Sergeant,’ he replied. ‘We need the best civvie soldiers you can make.’

‘With pleasure, sir,’ Reigo nodded back. There was a knock on the door; a lean blue woman invited herself in.

‘You asked to see me, General?’ said Aelu. Her quick sultry smile said she wanted to rip his clothes off.

‘Ah, yes. Take a seat,’ Atha replied professionally. ‘That’ll be all Sergeant,’ he nodded to Reigo.

‘Yes sir,’ Reigo replied, leaving the room as the serious-looking woman edged by.

‘Oh, one more thing,’ Atha recalled, before the young man disappeared. ‘There’s another part to the job. I want you to give special attention to one of our recruits. A particularly able student, who needs to be the best.’

‘Just point the way sir,’ Reigo replied. ‘All I need is a name.’

*

Tabitha headed on into the Guardians’ drill ground, for the lump of dusty hardware that Seven had set down by the corner wall. The hulking dead drone she’d found in the ruins, that’d crashed down in the courtyard between the SPEAR Project’s towers.

‘Let’s try and bring you back among the living,’ she sighed, a little nervous in case something went wrong; this was the only surviving drone they’d seen. She knelt down with her volt-tree cutting, unsure if her plan would work. That drone was far more complex than a rifle, but didn’t the same principle hold true?

Only one way to find out. Pulling away a maintenance panel, Tabitha reached into the hefty drone’s innards and grafted her plant cutting inside it. She jolted the stem with a gentle current, urging it to grow among the wires.

An hour or so later, and the celestial matter was reaching right through it. Overgrowing its armoured shell slowly, with pale hardened tissue like bark. It seemed ready for a little more encouragement, to join the new living tech with the old. Carefully, Tabitha stepped up the volts… and a little more–

Blinking lights and a shouting static BARP, and the hybrid drone shot up to a jet-hissing hover. Studying her with quick tilting lenses, that could just as well have been eyes. The thing was a brute; probably military. Clearing her throat, Tabitha stepped around it. Watching her creation cautiously, as it rotated to follow her face.

‘Can you, er… understand m–

BARP, it replied.

‘Oh, you can,’ she said brightly. ‘Er, yeah. Cool. Can you, er, maybe grab that table and bring it over here?’ She wanted to test it out on something simple.

BARP. With that it floated off quickly, snatched up the table in large emerging arms, and came straight back to set it down soundlessly in front of her.

‘Nice job!’ Tabitha said happily, patting its round staring shell.

BARP, it protested, revealing sudden guns to press the point.

‘Whoa! Whoa,’ she told it, watching its lenses carefully. ‘I’m not… er, hostile. Ok?’

BARP, it conceded. The drone tucked its whirring cannons away again, and floated off efficiently to scoop some rubble into a bucket.

‘Think I’ll call you Barp,’ she told it, as it floated by to dump the rubble in a corner.

BARP, it replied on the way back.

‘You talking to yourself again? What’s Barp?’ said Aelu, walking out from the barracks and smoothing her messy hair. Looking aside suddenly, at a big floating shape she hadn’t noticed. ‘Whoa.’

‘I know,’ Tabitha replied. ‘That’s Barp.’

‘…Barp?’ said Aelu, quizzically.

BARP, the passing drone called back.

‘Oh right,’ Aelu replied. ‘That’s original,’ she muttered to herself, meeting Tabitha’s scowling look. ‘So… you just celestiafied it? Celestialised it?’

‘Celestibricated?’ Tabitha wondered.

‘Hm, that kinda sounds more dirty than technical,’ Aelu considered. ‘I think celestialised sounds better.’

‘Of course you do,’ Tabitha muttered back.

‘Heyy?’ Big Fish said in wonder, as a living drone floated busily around him. ‘Look, it’s clearing all the rubble into a corner. That’s pretty cool,’ he said admiringly. Looking to Tabitha, and her proud beaming smile.

‘What the hell is that thing? Is that a defence drone?’ said Atha. He’d slipped out from the barracks’ side door; Tabitha pretended she hadn’t noticed him. Or his efforts to smooth down his messy hair too. Aelu barely acknowledged him.

Plus there’s the whole… rampant sexual glow about the two of them, Tabitha considered. The conscious effort to stand far apart, and attract no suspicion whatsoever. I’d rather not think about it.

‘Majesty?’ a young marine interrupted, and saluted her. Tabitha recognised him from the plaza; the one they’d headed outside to save. A handsome guy, beneath the bruises. ‘I believe you requested some additional training, if you have a minute to talk?’ he said.

‘Yes, of course,’ Tabitha replied, walking with him for the barracks. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she told Fish and Aelu, leaving them with Atha in the yard.

‘…Fly,’ Big Fish muttered beside Atha. The General looked down quickly, clearing his throat as he zipped himself up.

‘Er, thanks,’ Atha said quietly, as Aelu walked off to find some lunch. ‘Just… took a piss,’ he assured him casually.

‘Yeah, it sounded like a good one. From the open window there,’ Fish muttered, nodding up to the barracks. ‘Very satisfying.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Atha replied awkwardly, clearing his throat again as he looked around the courtyard. ‘Well, lots to do.’

‘Of course,’ Fish agreed. Smirking to himself as Atha walked away. But Fish just played it cool. Keeping it to himself. Just enjoying that secret leverage he had over him–

‘She a wild one?’ Fish blurted out.

‘Oh yeah,’ Atha chuckled back.

Big Fish stood alone in the courtyard for a little while, watching Barp float around hard at work. He sniffed and itched his nose in the silence, and put his hands on his hips in thought.

‘I wanna bump uglies,’ he lamented quietly to himself, as he wandered off alone for the makeshift kitchens. Wondering if that pretty octopus-lady might want to be friends.

*

‘…I think it’s clean now,’ Barkless growled in Stormish, still wincing through the fierce pain from his shoulder wound.

‘Better to be sure,’ Sea Mist replied sternly. Grabbing a fresh lump of moss to dip in the water and sponge it again, with ungentle strokes. ‘You cannot allow it to fester.’

‘It won’t,’ Barkless assured her, taking her wrist to coax her nursing efforts away. She’d already washed his wound, and bound it. Then unbound it. Then pressed it to bleed it, for venom she was convinced was in there. Now she was washing it again.

‘I just… wanted to be sure,’ she fretted. ‘In case anything happened. To you,’ she added, hesitating.

‘Why do you care if anything should happen to me?’ he said, with a teasing smile. But Sea Mist looked serious. She held his gaze for a silent moment.

‘…Do you not know?’ she said quietly. Watching his eyes, and his mouth, as he leaned in a little closer. Until he felt her sweet breath mingle with his own.

‘Barkless Tree! Stuff the damn wound and have done with it!’ came a brash Stormish voice behind them. ‘Then take care of mending your flesh!’ he joked, with a crude grin between the pair of them. They felt a heavy hand on both their shoulders, as his crouching form tore their silence apart.

‘That isn’t how the healers work here, Stone Shore,’ Sea Mist replied dutifully, hiding her anger. ‘In-feksh’an can kill the wounded while they’re healing.’ Stone Shore just chuckled, and spat at the foreign word.

‘You use their words as if you understand them,’ he mocked her. ‘You play at healing, like they do. Pretending, like a child.’ Sea Mist looked away; keeping her silence out of respect for their former alpha. ‘Remember the old ways of your tribe, Sea Mist,’ he growled, low and threatening. ‘Lest the tribe forget you in turn.’

‘Leave us,’ Barkless snarled up at him. Holding his stare. Stone Shore grinned in surprise, and looked between them.

‘Leave you? Who are you to make such demands, Barkless Tree?’ Stone Shore mocked him. ‘Are you my king? Hm? Are you the one who–

‘Leave us in peace, before I beat your stunted wits out of you!’ Barkless snarled furiously. Standing up to face Stone Shore, while distant tribe members stared in silence. Despite the new rule of their Sky Queen, the tribe’s ancient alpha-politics still ran far deeper.

‘…You would threaten me?’ Stone Shore growled, squaring up to him. Baring his sharp teeth.

‘I would warn you,’ Barkless replied, staring through him, as Sea Mist watched tensely. ‘I know a dozen ways to silence you, while all you know is one. The loud way, the brutish way, which is all you’ve ever had,’ he growled. ‘I have followers too, Stone Shore. Silent, and watchful,’ Barkless assured him. ‘Those who hated your reign as much as I did. They tell me things about you. They tell me when you’re weakest. They tell me when you sleep. If you speak that way to Sea Mist again, I could visit such silent horrors upon you that the tribe would be changed forever. Don’t test me.’ Stone Shore studied his look bitterly, and kept silent. Watching certain tribe-members in the shadows; stepping closer in support of the outcast Barkless Tree.

‘I am of Cave Clan no longer,’ Barkless continued. ‘Sea Mist is of Cave Clan no longer. We serve a greater Queen, with a higher purpose, and I will suffer you no more. Be warned.’ Stone Shore glared silently, and finally walked away. Barkless nodded his shadowed supporters away, and sat down again; his angry breaths the only sound. The distant Tribe were chattering amongst themselves. Sea Mist watched him carefully, moving closer, and dressed his wound without a word. A tiny hidden smile on her lips.

*

‘By decree of Her Majesty, every able-bodied man and woman will hereby enlist in the Serenian Royal Army!’ a broad-shouldered Guardian called out. Her clear voice echoed through speakers to the crowded courtyard. An ocean of shocked mutters and furious objections suddenly came to life ahead of her, as the civilians railed against their sudden conscription.

‘Making friends with the locals?’ Big Fish rumbled, as Tabitha watched discretely from the cloisters high above.

‘Just giving you a few more guns in the fight,’ she replied. ‘You think it’s a bit much?’

‘Nope,’ said Fish, full of conviction. ‘They pledged to follow you. They should fight for you,’ he added. ‘How’s it fair that off-worlders fight and die for them, when these people won’t fight for themselves?’

‘That was the thinking,’ Tabitha agreed. ‘You lot deserve some help.’

‘No need to tell me,’ Fish chuckled. ‘That swarm’s fucking… ass-tighteningly, terrifying.’ Tabitha laughed despite herself.

‘Please be our official war poet,’ she asked him. ‘I want to see fucking ass-tighteningly terrifying written in verse.’

‘Depends,’ he shrugged. ‘How’s the pay?’

‘Hm. For poets, not so good,’ she conceded. ‘You’d have royal patronage, though.’

‘Can’t buy food with royal patronage,’ Fish countered.

‘We can’t buy food here anyway,’ Tabitha reasoned. ‘…I could grow you some, I suppose. The slow way. I can only fast-grow moonflowers, and that celestial stuff. But I’ll plant some veggies for you.’

‘Hm. Deal,’ Fish replied thoughtfully. ‘You give me free food, I’ll be your Poe Wit.’ Tabitha paused, and watched him carefully.

‘What?’ he said.

‘You… don’t know what a poet is, do you?’ said Tabitha. Fish just shrugged in response.

‘Pay me up-front and I’ll go and find out,’ he countered. ‘I’m not doing job training without any pay.’ Tabitha chuckled, and looked up at him. He seemed serious.

‘Never change, Fish,’ she said warmly.

‘So now I can’t change either? Or, like, grow as a person? You ask a lot of favours, for a boss who doesn’t pay her Poe Wits,’ he grumbled. ‘Meh. I’ll think about it,’ he added, with a bored tone. He turned and wandered off, clearly done with the conversation. ‘I’m gonna go take a shit.’

‘Ok, Fish,’ she chuckled. ‘Enjoy.’

‘Always do,’ he replied brightly, as he walked away. Tabitha smiled and shook her head; she looked back down to the mass protest among the newly conscripted civilians. She thought she’d feel a little guilty over the decree, at least. But she didn’t. It wasn’t just necessary; this was a matter of life and death for Serenity. Everyone in here who was able to train and fight, should. It was their planet; those were their families. If it took a little force to encourage them, to make fighters out of them, then that was what she’d do. That’s what it was going to take, to defend this world from extinction. After all, they’d knelt to her when she first came here. That had to mean something, and she had to hold them to it. It was what a Ghost should do.

Not just that, though. It’s what’s needed. It’s what’s right.

*

Tabitha made her way on through the ornate corridors, past door guards who saluted her, in search of someone she hadn’t seen in a while. He was holed up in the top levels, apparently. Hard at work, or so she’d heard, in the suite he’d claimed for himself. The Man Who’d Knelt, when she’d returned here to fight for Serenity. A smiling trillionaire.

‘You can’t do this to us, you bitch!’ a woman snarled at her in passing. ‘Do I look like a soldier to you!? Do you even know who I am!? You can’t force us into your war!’

‘You’ll address your queen with respect!’ a guard snarled at her, as he stepped in to hold her back.

‘It’s alright,’ Tabitha replied calmly, when she remembered to keep things regal. Watching that frightened look in the woman’s eyes. She’d been wealthy, before the invasion. Hair styled expensively, and made up to perfection. Now she was fraying. Trying her best to keep up her appearance, like a fine painting that was starting to fade. More than a few survivors still lingered in their dusty high fashion, despite having no wealth left any more. The bitter and frustrated, still clinging to this world as it had been. But those who succeeded had adapted to change; urbanites who’d already given up on their lost lipstick and fading foundation. They’d showered off in the cold water, and altered their thinking if it got in the way. The ones who’d adjusted had switched expensive outfits for tougher scrounged clothes, that would take a day’s work and not fall apart. This woman was not one of those people. Though she was fine with enjoying their protection so far, and their sacrifice. Coasting along upon their hard work, and their vicious hunger that went with it.

‘No, I can do this to you,’ Tabitha corrected the woman, in reply to her accusations. Holding her furious stare. ‘You don’t look like a soldier, and I don’t know who you are. But you’re right about one thing, that I can’t force you into this war. Which is your war, by the way. Not just mine.’ By now the finely dressed woman was too angry for words; the Guardian beside them had to step in quickly to restrain her.

‘But I won’t force you to stay inside these walls,’ Tabitha told her calmly. ‘You’re more than welcome to leave the Ministry. I’ve never told anyone that they weren’t free to go.’

‘I’d die out there,’ the woman snarled, as if the Earthian girl was stupid.

‘You would,’ Tabitha agreed. ‘So, if you prefer your chances of survival inside the Ministry then I’d ask you to grow up, and help defend it. No one’s going to carry you.’ The woman was glaring at her, lost for words, as Tabitha walked on for the higher rooms.

…Wait. I didn’t make myself clear. Tabitha stopped for a moment, and looked back at the well-bred woman where she stood. ‘Either find my recruiters, or find the front gates,’ she commanded her. ‘If you’ve done neither in an hour, I’ll have you thrown to the ruins.’ With that Tabitha turned and left her staring, and walked on down the gleaming hall.

9

‘Hello again,’ Tabitha said wearily, as she took a seat in the higher cloisters beside the Man Who’d Knelt. An elegant master of ceremonies, with dark starred eyes like twin galaxies. Tall and tanned and beautiful. He was looking down on the courtyards from high above, with plans and accounts piled in his lap.

‘Good afternoon, Your Majesty,’ he replied keenly, with a winning smile. ‘Might I express my deepest admiration for your exemplary industriousness?’

‘Oh. Thanks,’ Tabitha chuckled. Mortified, once she’d realised. ‘…I’m really sorry, but I’ve never asked your name.’

‘The fault is mine entirely, Majesty,’ he lamented, as he clutched his heart. ‘Wholly barbaric of me, having neglected to introduce myself sooner in the presence of our great warrior queen. My name is Thier Isse.’

‘And do you always speak with so much flair, Thier Isse?’ Tabitha replied, with a tired-eyed smile.

‘Not at all,’ he said, much more simply, with a sudden grin. ‘I made my name in business, primarily. But what would a master of ceremonies be without a little… ceremony?’

‘Good point,’ Tabitha conceded brightly. ‘I just wanted to thank you, for supporting me. You tried to warn me about the Ministers, the first time I came to this world. Then that dress you sent me… and being the first one who knelt to me, when I came back here. Thank you. I couldn’t have started this without you.’

‘Nor could I without you,’ he replied, in all seriousness. ‘I’m simply glad that order and good sense have prevailed within these walls, even now. Far easier to conduct an orchestra when they aren’t beating the daylights out of each other.’

‘…You’re running the village?’ Tabitha guessed. ‘The survivors?’

‘Hm, near enough,’ Thier considered. ‘Stockpiles and inventory. Crime prevention, with your Guardians’ help. Food and salvage, that sort of thing. Our economy.’

‘We don’t have any money though,’ Tabitha said curiously. ‘It was all digital?’

‘Economies are composed of things, Majesty. Not currency,’ he replied. ‘A common misconception.’

‘A barter system, then?’ she replied. Thier nodded thoughtfully.

‘I documented some pronounced market volatility, early on,’ he replied, with a serious tone. ‘To be expected, of course. Price rediscovery must take place. How many socks are worth a sandwich, that sort of thing.’

‘Someone traded socks for a sandwich?’ Tabitha grinned.

‘These survivors trade everything for a sandwich,’ Thier shrugged. ‘Another day or so and they’ll spoil, meaning they’re now growing obscenely expensive. I believe we’re about to see the burst of our Sandwich Bubble.’

‘You’re keeping track of our food stocks?’ said Tabitha, nodding at his scribbled accounts. ‘Looks… hectic.’

‘We’re starving,’ he replied grimly. ‘People have panic-traded for food wherever they’ve found it.’ He nodded to the barracks below, and the round shape moving there. Hard at work for the Guardians. ‘I could certainly make use of that military drone you revived, to solve the issue of food. It’s being sorely wasted in its current role.’

‘I’ve got it reviving weapons, to keep us alive?’ Tabitha replied. Suddenly put off by his arrogant tone.

‘When it should be reviving more drones,’ he countered. She paused for a moment.

‘…You’re right,’ she conceded. ‘I was in a rush, I suppose. I just set it to work on something. Anything that might help us.’

‘My apologies, Majesty. I didn’t intend to accuse you,’ Thier replied, watching her weary look. ‘But we aren’t short of resources, beyond these walls. There’s an ocean of steel and stone out there, and enough supplies to last us for years. It’ll take an entire horde of drones to get a hold of it… but once we do, we may be able to thrive here. And fight back.’

‘You want to set up drone supply lines,’ Tabitha replied. Thier nodded.

‘Moving forward, and in my experience, increased automation should be the first priority on any production line. Increase basic output to meet demand,’ he added. ‘We can use our first drone to salvage more drones from the ruins. A greater variety of models, giving us more scope for specialisation between tasks. Greater efficiency, and more problems solved.’

‘Agreed,’ Tabitha replied brightly. ‘I’d no idea you were such a business-brain.’

‘A conscious concealment, Majesty. The public merely see my external theatre, for the sake of High Society,’ Thier smiled back. ‘Though my first love has always been profitable process.’ Tabitha studied him for a moment.

‘…Which is why I’m giving you full authority over drone and salvage operations, from now on,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘Make it your business.’ Thier’s dark starred eyes lit up at the prospect.

‘With pleasure, Majesty,’ he replied happily, setting down his accounts to get to work. ‘Ah, I almost forgot,’ he added. ‘Incidentally, I’ve made note of additional opportunities for greater efficiency around the Ministry grounds. I could run it more like a company, rather than Atha’s martial state. With team-focus and incremental systems in place to ensure our grand citadel’s optimal function, performance and quality of life. Under the circumstances, at least.’

‘Be my guest,’ Tabitha replied happily. ‘Just… try to keep the conflict with Atha to a minimum, ok?’

‘Of course, Majesty,’ he said, bowing deeply as he took his leave.

‘…Thier?’ said Tabitha, as a thought occurred. Before he was out of earshot. ‘The first time I came here… why did you buy me that dress?’ Thier smiled, and glanced away. Like he knew it’d come up sooner or later.

‘Would you prefer my honest answer? Or one that makes you feel good?’ he replied, meeting her look. It wasn’t unkindness in his tone; more like blunt truth. Respect.

‘I was an investment, wasn’t I?’ she said. ‘A piece on the chessboard. You wanted that piece in your own colours.’

‘Of course,’ Thier replied happily, with a show of hands like there was nothing he could do about it. ‘But believe it or not, Majesty, politics really isn’t my thing. Our Ministers do try to attach themselves to good businesspeople, unfortunately,’ he explained. ‘But as for the Sky Queen… you were something new. New sells. I’ll admit it, I wanted in on your branding rights.’ Tabitha watched him carefully. She saw where he was coming from, and let slip a smile.

‘A shameless capitalist,’ she replied. ‘So, is that all people really are to you? Investments, and intellectual properties?’

‘It’s my first consideration, of course,’ Thier replied, unashamed of it. ‘I don’t waste time on false friends and poor returns. I value connections I can use, among people of good substance. It’s often mutually beneficial,’ he offered.

‘And what makes me a good investment?’ said Tabitha.

‘You’re honest,’ he replied, holding her look.

‘How can you possibly know that?’ she said.

‘Our first meeting, in the bar at the Platinum Room. In a den of liars, you looked completely out of place. I thought that a very good sign.’

‘A polite way of saying I’m not too bright,’ she replied.

‘Not at all,’ he countered. ‘You’re smarter than you think, when you actually apply yourself. When something fires you up. There’s good upside potential in passionate people. Often well worth the initial investment.’

‘Wow, you really are all business,’ Tabitha sighed. ‘It’s like you’ve made capitalism your entire reason to live.’ Thier shrugged.

‘Show me another system that could’ve built all this,’ he said, with a glance to the city’s colossal ruins. ‘I happen to be very taken with it.’

‘Ego and self-interest,’ Tabitha replied.

‘Which builds wealth for entire nations, when harnessed correctly,’ he countered. ‘Creates jobs. Raises families. Puts cheap food in starving bellies. Raises the sick and impoverished out of short miserable lives. Self-interest is good for everyone. It builds worlds.’

‘And it can bring them down too,’ Tabitha replied, with a look at the ruined city. ‘Capitalism invited the Watchers here. Greed let them in.’

‘No. Corporatism brought this invasion,’ Thier countered. ‘Inside connections, amoral profit-seeking. Because no one challenged those in power,’ he said. ‘Because this world got rich, then comfortable. Then, lazy. Let the leaders worry about how the system works, yes?’

‘But these people trusted their Ministers to do what was best for them,’ said Tabitha, growing more heated. ‘Those leaders betrayed them.’

‘Trust?’ Thier chuckled. ‘Trust is earned, not expected. No, the People just didn’t want to bother with all that responsibility, to hold their Ministers to account. That’s no fun. And, inevitably, those Ministers grew too powerful to challenge. Corruption sets in, like rot. Soon enough the whole thing crashes down, one way or another. Happens to every empire.’

‘Power corrupts, I suppose,’ Tabitha considered. ‘But that was the Ministers’ fault, not Serenity’s public. These people didn’t do anything.’

‘Precisely!’ Thier shot back. ‘These people did nothing. They let this great ruin happen on their watch. Too lazy, comfortable and trusting to question anything outside their own leisure, and petty desires.’

‘…Maybe you’re right,’ Tabitha conceded. ‘But these people didn’t have the power to stop their top Ministers contacting the Watchers. Not while it was happening.’

‘Again, their own fault. To let that happen,’ Thier said bitterly. ‘The powerful can only go so far as the People allow them,’ he said. ‘Whatever the powerful do, whatever they try to enforce, they’re always outnumbered by the ones they rule. If the ruled are too lazy and irresponsible to see the corruption, it’s their own bloody fault.’ She heard sudden anger in his voice; unbridled frustration at the whole grand tragedy. ‘It was the people who brought this world down!’ he snarled. ‘They had that responsibility, to hold their leaders to account! Everyone with a vote had a duty to this world! A duty to their children! These idle people failed themselves.’ Tabitha didn’t know how to reply. His words seemed so harsh, but he was hurting. She couldn’t think of a way to disagree.

Why am I set on defending these people? She wondered. Didn’t I help Stormworld resist those Ministers myself? …The same Ministers these people allowed to rule, and never stopped to question?

‘Maybe these people did fail themselves,’ Tabitha considered, once she’d mulled it over. ‘And now, we’ll help them save themselves too.’ Thier sighed, and managed a smile in return.

‘Do forgive my outburst, Majesty,’ he said regretfully. ‘My perspective tends to frustrate, at times. I’ll set to work at once.’ Thier smiled afresh, restoring his inner order, with a courtly parting bow as he left.

*

Tabitha walked slowly through the old fort barracks, just to give herself a break from everything outside. This place was a military museum, with ornamental weapons begging to be sharpened for fresh use. Silverware shone in glass cases; worn drums and tasselled sabres lined the hall. She passed by strange shapes like bagpipes, weathered and aged beyond use. Photos of long-gone battalions filled the drab-painted walls. A brass plaque crowned a small chapel to the soldiers’ sacrifice; In Proud and Grateful Memory of historic wars.

She passed old portraits of decorated generals and moustachioed brigadiers. Faded busts of royal visitors, and ceremonial belts still shining under lit glass. Tattered warrants by an emperor’s decree, to muster the city’s men to its imminent defence. She browsed displays of trench art, and half-rusted sword bayonets. Half-wood machine guns from the empire’s violent Fronts, back when Serenity was at war with itself.

Returning to the main corridor, Tabitha peered in glass cases at endless keepsakes and badges of rank. A commemorative coin stood out from the rest; larger than the others and etched in shining silver. Glancing around stealthily, and heeding her inner magpie, she tried the case lid and forced it open. That coin was far too shiny to stay in there.

…Mine. With a heady rush of danger, she picked it awkwardly from the felt lining and closed the case. Walking away quickly to admire her stolen prize. An emblem of empire; a fierce-looking ruler in profile.

There’s history inside these walls. A wealth of it, she considered. Maybe there’s something, some idea, that’ll inspire these people to defend their city. Some kind of passion, buried in their memory, so I don’t have to force them to fight.

‘Majesty,’ said an officer, walking up the hall behind her. Startled, hiding her coin in her palm, Tabitha turned around with a nervous lurch in her stomach.

‘…Yes?’ she said uncertainly. Did he see me take the coin? Am I under arrest? …Can they arrest their queen? Or is it my property anyway?

‘Report from Intelligence, Majesty,’ he said, very officially. Handing her a piece of old paper imprinted with neat scribbles.

‘About what, sorry?’ she replied.

‘Classified, Majesty,’ he said, smiling in apology. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘Ah. Ok,’ Tabitha replied uncertainly. ‘Thank you. Soldier.’ She couldn’t tell his rank.

‘My pleasure. Majesty,’ he finished, saluting as he left.

…I’ll never get used to all this queeny stuff. It’s weird. Opening the top-secret report, scribbled in orderly pencil, Tabitha deciphered the first few lines of Trade Language. Relaying something that Sergeant Reigo had mentioned, about outsized cephalopods he’d seen tunnelling through roads and buildings in the ruins. About the risks posed to the Ministry structure, and advising that preparations be made for the eventuality.

He’s seen the Watchers’ giant squids. She’d killed one with Seven, back on Earth. Blown it to pieces with a blast of his breath.

He’s not wrong about the risk to this place, if they come tunnelling here. But short of leaving the walls undefended, while I hunt them down with Seven in the city… I don’t know what else I can do. Although… maybe there was one other thing she could try. Just in case.

Tabitha folded the report and struggled to find a pocket to put it in. She tucked it into an ammo pouch on her tactical belt, and sighed at one more worry to add to the pile.

‘Feeling the pressure?’ Atha said with a smirk, as he walked down the hallway and led her into his office.

‘From pulling an entire civilisation out of the wreckage? Just a bit,’ Tabitha replied. Taking a creaking old seat that faced his desk.

‘I’m still trying to work out why you insist on doing everything yourself,’ he said, easing into his own leather chair. ‘Haven’t you ever held a position of leadership? Delegate, for gods’ sake.’

‘I don’t have time to find a job for everyone here,’ she replied in frustration.

‘So delegate the delegation,’ he chuckled. ‘Look. You’re the best among us to fight them. No one doubts that. But you can’t be all things to all people. If you’re going to specialise in what you’re good at, then give other people a chance to do the same. Let others run the Ministry for you, and handle the day-to-day. Trust your seconds-in-command, to make things work.’

‘…No, you’re right,’ she replied. ‘Guess I’ll need to appoint some seconds-in-command.’

‘You’ve got the Guardian hierarchy already,’ Atha replied shortly. ‘I’ll pass on your orders, don’t worry. And I’ll find special jobs for all your… all your little group of special heroes,’ he added, dismissively. ‘Spooky Survivors, or whatever you’re calling yourselves.’

‘Atha,’ she warned him. ‘Stop being a dick.’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he surrendered, lighting a plundered cigar. Puffing rancid smoke for her benefit. ‘I’m being nice, look. Just sat here all quiet, smoking priceless antiques from the Old Empire. S’good though.’

‘Just call this meeting, will you?’ she said impatiently. ‘All the Ghosts too. Let’s get things sorted tonight.’

‘Yep. Majesty,’ he added. Atha nodded to a nervous Guardian aide who’d walked in, then promptly scurried out with her written orders.

‘You’ve got no problem bossing people around, have you?’ said Tabitha, as she stood up from her chair. Atha puffed stale cigar smoke, and looked at her like she was mad.

‘You’re the one with the problem, if you’re not ok with letting people carry out your orders,’ he advised her. ‘Try doing everything on your own, and you’ll kill yourself. Even with superpowers.’

*

The Ministry walls bristled with soldiers that evening, growing ever tenser as the daylight faded to orange dusk. The courtyards and gardens glowed richly with the volt-tree’s cabled branches; bustling with civilians being marshalled through Guardian recruitment. Beyond the high battlements, the ruined sunset city bled into vast creeping shadows.

‘Long day,’ Atha sighed, in the parliament’s underground war room. Looking around as several faces nodded in agreement. Glancing to Tabitha and her Ghosts, with Irren and Saa beside them. All lit by volt-vines and the flickering glow of a gigantic table, which was trying and mostly failing to show a vast stuttering map of the city. A three-dimensional hologram of the capital as it had stood; not the half-toppled ruins it’d become.

‘We’ve a new addition to our little council here, by my request,’ Atha continued. ‘This is Sergeant Tohe Reigo. He made it out of the ruins this morning.’

‘Well, almost made it, General,’ Reigo replied. ‘I’d be a red mess in the plaza, if not for you guys. I owe you my life.’

‘Good to see you again Sergeant,’ Tabitha told him, noting the insignia on his clean uniform. ‘You’re special forces?’

‘Aerial Marine, ma’am,’ he confirmed proudly. ‘Born to kill.’ Tabitha nodded approvingly; cringing inside.

‘…Guardians,’ Aelu muttered beside her, in a whisper so quiet that Tabitha barely heard it herself.

‘Alright. We’ve been all over the place today. I need us all on the same page,’ Atha told the room. ‘So here’s what we know. Post-SPEAR Project, the Watchers’ ship was last seen moving through the Blue Hills National Park, several miles north,’ he said, as he pointed to the flickering mountains on the far side of the hologram map. ‘Without any form of long-range intel, we have to assume the ship’s in hiding and carrying out repairs for future engagement. But, at least there’s no sign of Watcher reinforcements yet.’

‘They operate from the one mothership,’ Tabitha chipped in. ‘But they won’t stop until they’ve taken this planet. They’re too arrogant to retreat.’

‘We should be hitting their ship now, while it’s grounded,’ Big Fish rumbled. ‘While they’re weak.’

‘Hit it with what?’ Aelu shrugged.

‘Seven,’ Tabitha suggested. ‘I could take Seven out there and find it. End this war tonight.’

‘And what if we lose you and Seven tonight?’ Aelu replied. ‘What’s to stop them winning the war, if they bring you down? What if this… Alex, collects your head?’

‘Let’s just start from where we are right now,’ Atha interrupted. ‘We’ve had zero contact from any other Guardian forces. We know the Watchers are surrounding Serenity in something, that stops any aid getting through. Both the Defiance and the Vigilance are dead in orbit, where we left them. Luckily, all crewmembers were able to drop with us yesterday. But we’ve no option of orbital support to help us win this.’

‘That loses us some serious ordnance you were carrying in orbit,’ said Reigo. ‘No chance we can take Seven up there, and recover some of that weapons hardware?’

‘Who’d protect us in the meantime?’ said Saa, looking around at the rest.

‘No. Seven has to be here at all times,’ Atha told the room. ‘He’s the one deterrent we have.’

‘Saa’s right. I won’t risk leaving the Ministry undefended. Not for that length of time,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Seven’s still the only one keeping the swarm from coming back here. And they will try again, whenever they see the chance,’ she added grimly. ‘In the meantime, they’ll keep growing their numbers until they can swamp us.’

‘Just keep reviving guns and drones, I guess,’ Fish rumbled.

‘Well, at least cyber warfare isn’t a concern in the meantime,’ Irren added optimistically. ‘I haven’t seen any attempts from the Watchers to hack that hybrid drone, or our terminals.’

‘And we’ve prevented a massacre, two days in a row,’ Aelu offered. ‘But all we’ve really done so far is establish a stalemate. Since they’ve lost their ship, the Watchers are bound to change their strategy. That means we’ll have to change too.’

‘It’s always a numbers game with them,’ Tabitha replied. ‘We need to match their forces. We need a horde of our own.’

‘What do you mean, a horde?’ said Atha. ‘You mean you can turn their spiders, to fight for us? Hack ‘em with that celestial stuff?’

‘No, I already tried that,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Repeatedly,’ she sighed. ‘The technologies won’t interact. I meant something I’ve just discussed with Thier,’ she told them. ‘He’s going to use the drone I found to revive a few more drones, in the ruins. Each of those will revive a few drones themselves, and so on. Military models, maintenance drones… anything we can find. Even droids, if we can revive them. I’d need to oversee it.’

‘A celestial army,’ Big Fish smiled approvingly.

‘Exactly,’ said Tabitha. Aelu sketched out the idea on a notepad, for Barkless and Sea Mist to interpret to the Tribe. ‘The more we can automate, the more time we have to spend on training recruits, and building our defences before the Watchers recover their strength,’ Tabitha explained. ‘It’s an arms race.’

‘That’d buy us some manpower to set up a kill box or two,’ Atha agreed, more for Reigo’s benefit. He was studying the map, and the clustered towers around the vast Ministry plaza.

‘…A what now?’ said Fish.

‘Kill box,’ Atha repeated. ‘We’d topple the surrounding ruins strategically, to form the rubble into mounds and channels around the Ministry,’ he explained. Pointing at certain towers on the hologram map.

‘Engineering the landscape, basically,’ Reigo told the room. ‘If we can form valleys and bottlenecks in our surrounding geography, we might be able to funnel the spider swarms into designated areas,’ he explained, pushing his hands together like tightening walls. ‘There we can focus our artillery fire, to stop the swarms reliably. Turn our wall defence into a manageable system.’

‘Freeing up you and Seven to move things forward, for a counterattack on the mothership,’ Aelu suggested, turning to Tabitha.

‘Sounds good to me,’ Tabitha replied brightly. ‘How soon can you make your kill-box thing happen?’

‘No sense hanging around,’ Atha replied, with a serious look. ‘And Seven would be a big help. I’ll get as many troops on this as I c–

They were interrupted suddenly by a thundering boom; everyone looked up as the ceiling rained dust. A look of dread on every face.

‘…Ever get the feeling we should be having these ideas sooner?’ muttered Aelu.

‘Atha, Reigo. I need every rifle on the walls. New recruits as well, if you have to,’ Tabitha told them. ‘Saa, Irren, get every remaining civilian down in the vaults. Ghosts, you’re fighting the swarm with me.’ She watched their ready looks, smiling in return. ‘Let’s mess ‘em up.’

10

Sky Tribe and the Guardians hurried across the walls, staring into the heavy night with their rifles ready. Gunner crews scrambled around their celestial cannons, fine-tuning the charges and angling down to aim the artillery at the plaza. All of them were watching Seven out there, stooped and snarling over his cratered kill; another grey dragon that’d circled the Ministry high above. He’d snatched it screeching and dive-bombed it into the plaza. A ground-shaking crack as he’d torn it apart. Growling guttural into the night around him, Seven turned and took off at Tabitha’s whistle. Landing down heavily on the Ministry’s inner walls.

‘Any visual on what’s out there?’ said Atha, straining to see beyond the plant-lit plaza.

‘Not yet, General,’ the female soldier replied. ‘Plenty of noise, but nothing like the spiders. Sounds bigger.’

‘Let it come to us. I’m not wasting shots in the dark.’

‘Yes General,’ she replied, as he walked on down the wall.

‘Whatever comes out of that night, it does not pass these gates!’ Atha roared at his standing ranks.

‘Yes General!’ they replied in unison. Civilian raw recruits lined the battlements in rows behind them, by Atha’s orders. Most were terrified, though a few were ready for the fight. There was no intention to throw them into it; Atha just wanted them prepared for basic training tomorrow. Forced to stand and see just what their defenders were up against. What they’d been sheltered from so far, down in the ancient vaults. Another noise carried from the distant dark; clearer this time.

‘Rifles!’ Reigo barked across the walls. A sudden clattering tide, as the soldiers levelled their guns on the tree line in unison.

‘Be ready,’ Tabitha told Seven gently, as she rubbed his huge rumbling snout. Leaving him watching from the walls behind her. Her mouth felt dry; her insides were a gaping pit.

Should be used to the feeling by now, she told herself. But it never really went away.

‘Ok?’ she asked Sea Mist, descending stone steps to the main courtyard.

‘Ok,’ her sister growled back, with a hopeful smile. Suited and booted in her Guardian armour. They walked on together through a grand Renaissance hallway, lit with vines and eerie in its emptiness. The whole Ministry complex was on lockdown, waiting for the attack.

‘Never did find another charge pack for that gatling gun,’ Big Fish complained, as he joined them toward the main gates.

‘…So what’s that?’ Tabitha replied, nodding at the giant weapon he carried now.

‘Dunno,’ he shrugged, as Aelu and Barkless joined their procession.

‘Well where did you get it?’ Tabitha tried. ‘Did Barp fly it in from the ruins or something?’

‘Who knows?’ Fish rumbled. ‘It was just… around.’ It looked antique; half-celestial and half-mechanical. Something designed to stop tanks. It was halfway to an artillery gun.

‘You stole it from Atha’s gunners, didn’t you?’ Aelu guessed.

‘Stole is such an ugly word,’ Fish replied gingerly. ‘I didn’t see anyone else carrying it.’ Tabitha considered the logic, and conceded the argument with a tilt of the head.

‘…Suppose there’s a kind of reasoning there,’ she muttered, as they walked on together. Leading her Ghosts through the opening main gates, into the deep night and the cratered steps to the plaza. Glancing up at the army on the walls, high over their heads. Guardians stood aiming in watchful ranks; tribals checked their arrows or leant on their spears. A sudden noise carried heavily through the night, from out in the blackness beyond the far toppled trees.

‘Wait for it here,’ Tabitha told her Ghosts, as the gates boomed shut behind them. ‘Stay together. Let them come to us.’

So, they waited. Big Fish coughed; Barkless sniffed and then stretched his arms. Another few moments passed, and Sea Mist watched Tabitha quizzically, as Aelu stared around at the night. Then…

More nothing. Tabitha cleared her throat; checked her submachine gun. She heard Fish breathe a giant sigh behind them, tutting a tune while they waited for a bit more nothing to happen. Aelu’s face grew into a frown; she looked at Tabitha beside her.

‘Is anything actually out th–

‘Open fire!’ Atha bellowed on the walls. The staring Ghosts stood ready to fight, as bright bursting thunder erupted from the battlements. A screeching chaos of lasershots. Artillery pounded the ruined plaza in blinding cracks and booms. Another barrage made cratered gore of the monsters galloping out from the darkness. Their bright staring eyes slumped and faded, as some crawled on mangled and slowly dropped dead. The last crashed down with a bloodgushing skull, as Aelu lowered her sniper rifle.

‘Good, shot,’ Barkless growled.

‘Meh, it was getting pretty close,’ Aelu disagreed. ‘…But thanks.’ She coughed politely, to break the long silence that followed. With the artillery the gunners had managed to revive today, it seemed like Atha pretty much had the walls covered.

‘Pfff,’ Big Fish offered, sighing through his lips. Hanging around uselessly with the rest.

‘…Wait,’ Tabitha said quietly. ‘There’s something out there.’

‘I don’t see anything,’ Aelu muttered beside her. But Tabitha was staring at… something. Not so much sight, as feeling. Something drawing her attention, as if new instincts warned her to its presence. A faint sixth sense, strange and sudden.

Since that giant serpent, she realised.

‘It’s huge. It’s coming,’ Tabitha said darkly, turning to the others. ‘It’s coming for the gates.’

‘Incoming!’ Big Fish bellowed up to the crowded walls. ‘It’s heading for the gates!’

‘…There’s nothing there!’ Atha called down. A sudden horror lit the night in a cloud of bright flame; a pale inferno with a vast dark devil at its heart. A monstrous bastard of dragon and steel-eater, toppling the ruins to pound primeval across the plaza. Snarling feral, eyes fixed on the strange new giant, Tabitha ran right for it as her Ghosts opened fire. She yelled and leapt as its molten spew hurled after her, scarring a great crescent through the plaza with a hissing red glow. Tabitha gasped and jumped aside, again and again, as its giant crackling punches dropped out of the dark. Crushing cindercloud craters through the plaza as she sprinted and dodged from its tremoring strikes. The tribe’s whistling arrows glanced off its stony hide; a constant hail of rifle shots shrieked from the walls and thumped uselessly against it. She heard Atha’s roar, and saw the blinding barrage that followed. His growing artillery blew bright burning holes in its rocky flanks, in crackling clouds of smoke and cinder. Aelu’s sniping headshots distracted it, while rifle fire at its eyes from Barkless and Sea Mist dragged its attention back to the walls. Big Fish dropped his rifle, running closer with his artillery gun to take aim. The gorgon’s snapping tail flung him back viciously, pounding him against the Ministry walls in the distance.

‘Fish!’ Tabitha yelled, watching in horror as his huge shape rebounded and crashed unconscious on the steps. Her Ghosts rushed over to check on him, still peppering the gorgon with useless shots. Turning back furiously to face it, Tabitha’s eyes were blazing. She leapt its black-clouding strike and climbed its arm, sinking in her claws as she went. Yelling and pouncing to cling to its back, as its vast molten mouth turned to snap shut right behind her. Tabitha pulled her gun and rattled shots at its eyes; turned its vast crackling head away from her. She’d bared its neck just long enough to pounce and rip into it, as another artillery barrage boomed bloody bursts through its chest.

The thing was cracking, and crumbling apart; bright fractures shone in its stone-metal skin. Clearly not intended for a long existence. It was raw burning power; a molten battering ram. Meant only for the Ministry gates, to melt them through and destroy them. If it got inside the fortress, then more hordes would follow. If they let that happen, it was all over. The survivors’ families would be massacred.

Seven dropped like a planewreck, ripping great bloody chunks from its writhing back. But the gorgon just kept clawing towards the Ministry, like it was built for worse fire than his. Built for destruction; both the gates and itself. It caught Seven in a sudden great wrestle; floored him and beat him senseless before he could attack. Snarling desperately, Seven writhed to get away from it.

‘Atha!’ Tabitha yelled, in sudden panic.

‘Fire!’ he bellowed on the walls. The artillery thundered; blew the gorgon’s side apart. A hazing bloody tide of molten steel. The night-gorgon roared bright dripping thermite; dragging itself on for the gates. Another booming volley tore its face to screaming shreds, and still it hauled itself up the Ministry steps. Gushing blinding flame and slopping magma through the terrified battle. Coming for their home and the thick fortress gates that seemed flimsy before it. If Seven couldn’t stop it, then nothing would. The gorgon saw him diving and levelled Seven with a thundering punch. Only distracted by the artillery on the walls above it.

‘Again! Hit it again!’ Atha yelled desperately, watching the vile giant crawl onwards to the foot of his walls. ‘Bring it down! Bring it down!’ Another volley staggered it; Seven’s fierce bite dragged it back. Reaching for the gates, so close now, the gorgon smacked Tabitha aside screaming and let its thick leg tear away. Seven fell back with its severed limb in his mouth, as the gorgon breathed deeply in its crackling throat. Hurling molten vomit for the Ministry gates as some immense new impact blew it aside. Big Fish was roaring, wild-eyed and bloody; walking towards it with the tank-killer kicking colossal on his shoulder. One thundering shot after another, punching sudden shells through the gorgon’s staggering shape. The rounds thumped gigantic and exploded inside it. Bursting non-stop holes through its toppling skull; bleeding out its molten vomit like a flaming waterfall. Staggering to her feet, Tabitha stared in shock as Fish dropped the smoking cannon and pulled the huge blade from his back. He ran roaring for the staggering thing and cut clean through its wrist to collapse it. Breathless and bleeding, Fish watched Tabitha rip past him snarling to leap its gory shoulder and claw her way up to its pouring head. Climbing the colossus as it struggled again for the waiting gates, she clawed a great gouge in its gooping skull. Tabitha screamed possessed and punched right through it, and shot the giant reeling with a sudden volted shock to the brain. Roaring like thunder, the burning beast reared back; staggered on the ruined steps and toppled like a flailing tower. It crashed down dead in the plaza, as Tabitha leapt breathlessly from its corpse. Clutching his wounds, Big Fish looked around as the walls erupted in cheers. Another thundering burst of artillery flew blinding from the walls, to make sure the thing was dead.

‘God, Fish… are you ok?’ Tabitha panted, as he sat down wearily beside her in the burning plaza.

‘Meh. Been better,’ he grunted painfully, half-covered in gleaming blue blood. ‘At least we saved the gates though, yeah?’ Guardians rushed over with the Ghosts to tie torn sheets around his wounds.

‘Seven?’ said Tabitha, worried out of her mind as he stomped over wearily. She felt his growling thought in her head as he nuzzled her bloody shoulder, and almost pushed her over. Touching his side, she felt his angry firework storm and an impolite word, as he glanced at the gorgon’s carcass.

‘Yep, it was definitely one of those,’ Tabitha replied wearily. ‘It definitely was.’ She stroked Seven’s snout as the rest of him crashed down noisily behind her to recover. They watched the growing crowd flooding down the steps; awestruck at the burning violence. Raw recruits piled in around them, cheering happily for their queen.

‘Contact!’ a Guardian yelled out. Sitting exhausted, Tabitha was taken completely by surprise. Saved from a pouncing spider by the soldier’s keen eyes and quick trigger finger. The group opened fire on a screeching pack of spiders behind her, squirming suddenly from the gorgon’s insides, and the whole gory fight was over in seconds. Tabitha looked back in shock.

A fresh fear hung over them now, as trained Guardians ushered everyone back inside the gates.

Bloodspattered, pulse racing, Tabitha glanced back at those strange new spiders. Their first pairs of legs weren’t small claws like the rest, but oversized mantis limbs. Like scythes.

…Like that batch was designed to take off my head.

*

Thoughts churning, and leaving Big Fish to recover on the ward, Tabitha dragged herself back to her suite that night. She closed the doors, and collapsed exhausted among her indoor garden. A glowing grotto beyond a wall of black anemone trees, where her vines and moonflowers framed the corner walls like an alien forest. She crawled down among the tall soft grass, and found the big tuft of blue moss she’d grown for a pillow. Breathing deep and sighing wearily, she felt her garden’s lightglow heal her, and fill her up like supper. Her twilight refuge; a place to recharge.

‘Hey,’ she whispered, as Fishbowl tapped a floating hello across her fingers. Breathing deeper and falling fast into sleep, as her peaceful gardener pulled large leaves closer to cover her up.

*

Tabitha was woken groggily by a vibrating alarm on her wristcom, a couple of hours later. Sighing wearily, she dragged herself exhausted to the Guardian barracks, and her rough new bed with the others. She was a raw recruit, after all.

11

The Guardians’ new conscripts were woken from their rough bedding by sudden shouts and shrill whistles. Officers marauded the hallways at dawn.

‘Up, ladies and gents! Out of your pits!’ Reigo barked at them, storming through the room to rip their sheets away. A sudden flurry of activity, as the nervous conscripts hurried to stand bleary-eyed beside their makeshift beds. Similar rackets played out all through the barracks, as endless more recruits were shocked from bunks and sleeping bags.

‘Beds straight! Bodies straight! Eyes on me!’ Reigo called through the long room. Pacing their staring ranks; sizing them up as he went. Tabitha stood wearily by her bed on the end of the row, with Barkless and Sea Mist to her left. Yesterday she’d been keen to know how the Guardians operated, to learn anything that might help. Though she was less than enthusiastic this morning, from her bare hours of sleep.

Woken again from her bunk last night by an urgent message, she’d dragged herself down nocturnal corridors to the cavernous library. Saa and Irren’s desk jobs kept them working late into the night, discussing ideas like morale and propaganda. Discussions Tabitha had managed to avoid so far, until they’d learned that she may have some time to spare. Hence the emergency meeting, with Saa scribbling hurried notes.

During which nothing got decided, and nothing got done, Tabitha told herself. Guess I should’ve seen that coming.

She blinked back her drowsiness, and remembered where she was. Trying to focus on the loud voice down the row of beds.

‘First off, you shut your holes when I’m in here,’ the marine commanded them, raising his voice to the room. ‘My name is Sergeant Reigo. You will call me Sarge. Clear?’

‘Yes Sarge,’ the city conscripts replied, mumbling and out of whack.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘Yes Sarge!’ Tabitha and the others barked back together.

‘Let me make it clear that I’m not here to bully you,’ he told them sternly. ‘But I will be respected, and I will be hard on you. It’s my job to train you to a standard. Both myself and my fellow officers are here to make you fit for combat, in the limited time available to us.’

‘Yes Sarge,’ said a random recruit, and regretted it in the hard silence.

‘Don’t reply unless I ask you to, yeah?’ Reigo advised him firmly. ‘…Yesterday was easy,’ he continued to the room. ‘Today, the learning curve goes straight up. Get it right, or you’re going to be in pain.’ The recruits nodded obediently, as Reigo went about their mass induction.

*

‘Think we should’ve signed up?’ Big Fish rumbled to Aelu, as they watched platoons of jogging conscripts from the higher battlements outside. He was leaning painfully on the stonework; half-covered in makeshift bandages since last night.

‘Nope,’ she replied, very definitely. ‘I happened to have been married to a Guardian for several years,’ she added bitterly. ‘Every day was boot camp with him.’ She missed Raia, sometimes. Mostly when she’d been drinking. Then the tortured thoughts of his shouts and beatings crept in, and her cold regret seemed to fade. She never really missed him for long. But Atha would do, for now.

‘Where’s Barkless, anyway? And Sea Mist?’ Fish considered.

‘Guess,’ said Aelu, with a nod to the raw recruits. Their dark furred shapes were jogging easily among the rest.

‘She made them join too?’ Fish smiled in surprise. ‘Poor bastards.’

‘No, they wanted to,’ Aelu replied. ‘You should know by now, they’ll never leave their queen.’

‘…Well now I really feel bad for not signing up,’ Fish rumbled.

‘Recruiting office is just through that archway there,’ Aelu offered. ‘Go on.’

‘…Naaah,’ he reconsidered, picking canned breakfast from his teeth. ‘I don’t feel that bad about it.’

‘Start limping,’ Aelu advised him quietly.

‘Huh?’

‘There’s officers coming. They’ll find us work to do,’ she said hurriedly. Taking his giant hand, Aelu made a show of helping Fish limp painfully along the battlements.

‘You seem to be healing well?’ said one of the officers, in a well-bred tone, as they passed by importantly.

‘Oh, yes,’ Fish rumbled, with a pained smile as he limped on. ‘…Not too well though.’ He flinched suddenly as Aelu jabbed him in the ribs.

‘Well, keep on the mend,’ the officer said brightly. ‘There’s a lot of respect around here for what you did last night. You madman,’ he chuckled. ‘Let’s get you back in action as soon as possible, eh?’

‘Can’t wait,’ Fish replied, with the best fake smile he could muster. Limping on carefully, as the officers marched ahead and disappeared through an ancient door.

‘…Now imagine being married to that,’ Aelu muttered quietly.

‘Echh,’ Fish replied, with a look of distaste. ‘They’d have to be insane in the sack. Insane. …And a she,’ he pointed out. ‘I like women.’

‘Ok, Fish,’ Aelu replied, rolling her eyes. ‘He was just an example.’

‘Yeah, well. Should’ve been a woman you were talking about, is what I mean.’

‘Ok Fish,’ she sighed, still helping him along. ‘You can stop limping now.’

‘Oh. Yeah,’ he realised, straightening up to stride on by her side. ‘...So is there any food left in here? I’m starving.’

‘Nope,’ Aelu replied wearily. ‘Plenty of meat in the plaza though, if you like the taste of bioweapon. I heard someone nearly died from eating that stuff last night, can you believe that? Tried to barbecue a chunk of that thing you killed.’

‘Ha! What an idiot,’ Fish chuckled back, with a shake of his head for good measure. Glancing at Aelu quickly, to check that she didn’t suspect him. Gorgon steak hadn’t been the wisest choice he’d ever made.

*

Tabitha caught her breath in the parade ground, with Sea Mist and Barkless walking beside her, as their slowing platoon finished another training session. She glanced around the yard in sweat-damp exhaustion, where countless columns of conscripts were being jogged along or yelled at to break them in. Just looking at the varied faces running past told her the kind of resentment she was up against from these people.

If I don’t at least prepare them for what’s coming, this world doesn’t stand a chance. We need more soldiers. Everyone here has a stake in this war.

‘This is the hardest thing you’ll ever do,’ Reigo assured them, as their platoon stood in ragged ranks in the yard. ‘I don’t expect you to become experienced soldiers, in the length of time I have to train you. I don’t even expect a team of cadets. But I do expect some fighting spirit from you, and commitment in defending your home. We’re fighting a war here, and we’re going to do the best with what we have. Yes?’

‘Yes Sarge,’ they called back in unison.

‘If you want to find out what you’re truly capable of, it’s here,’ Reigo continued. ‘That real honour and respect you’ve been looking for all your life, that’s here,’ he said. ‘If you’re lucky enough to have friends and family inside these walls, your opportunity to protect them is here in this training yard, through your own sweat and blood. Yes?’

‘Yes Sarge,’ they replied. Glancing around, Tabitha could see that hit a few nerves among the city’s survivors.

‘If you’re alone in here, and you’ve lost everyone and everything that ever meant a thing to you, then your chance at vengeance is here in this yard too,’ he told them, raising his voice. ‘If it breaks your heart to see your whole world in ruins, then this is exactly where you should be. I’m going to make killers out of you. And we’re going to take this war right back to the Watchers. Yes?’

‘Yes Sarge!’ they called back, with more feeling in their voices.

‘And here’s something to think about,’ he continued. ‘Everyone dies, one day. With that ship out there, we might all die a lot sooner. But we, here, will die as warriors. Defending the people, and the values, that make up everything we live for. If you won’t step up now and fight for those things you cherish, then we’ve already lost this war.’ The staring recruits listened in grim silence. Some were nodding; some just watched. ‘Here, as soldiers, we look Death in the eyes and stick him with a bayonet before he takes us. That’s what it means to be a Guardian Marine. Follow my orders, and that’s what you’ll become. Yes?’

‘Yes Sarge!’ the recruits barked back.

‘Alright,’ he replied calmly, as he looked around at them. ‘It won’t have escaped your attention that Her Majesty is training in this platoon alongside you. That doesn’t change anything. I expect the same effort and commitment from her as I do from all of you.’ Tabitha felt their stares around her; she looked back neutrally. A couple of respectful nods to her in the silence.

‘We expect another attack at any time. So we’re giving you experience in all aspects, as fast as possible,’ Reigo told them. ‘This morning we’re moving right into basic weapons training,’ he commanded them. ‘Move out.’ The column of recruits followed his lead toward the firing ground, trying and failing to march in step.

*

‘Message from the Economic Bureau, Majesty,’ said Reigo, having waved Tabitha aside from her bayonet training. Putting another scribbled old piece of paper in her hand.

‘Economic Bureau?’ she replied, catching her breath as she unfolded the note.

‘A Mr. Thier Isse,’ Reigo explained, with a shrug. ‘Delivered here via Saa. If the exchange between two desks constitutes a Bureau. I’m not sure.’

‘Thank you Sergeant,’ she replied, as he nodded obediently and walked off to supervise her platoon. It was weird to be the commanding officer of her commanding officer; she supposed she’d just have to get used to the duality.

Taking orders, then giving orders, she considered. Maybe we could switch hats. Studying the note quickly, she could tell Thier’s writing at a glance. Scruffy and rushed; straight to the point. Revealing the time-strapped businessman, beneath all his outward flair for high society:

Your Majesty.

First drones reclaimed from city were revived successfully. Now flying continuous routes in nearby ruins to return several more drones for parts/revival. Minimal losses so far, presumed destroyed by hostiles. Intend to outnumber drones lost with drones revived. Currently managing relief efforts to distribute drone-recovered food & supplies. Once established & delegated, I will move forward with weapon/salvage stockpiles towards war effort.

‘Busy bee,’ Tabitha said quietly, with a growing smile.

‘Good, news?’ said Sea Mist beside her, peering at the note in her hand. Despite the fact that she couldn’t read it.

‘Good news,’ Tabitha grinned back. ‘Food.’

‘Good!’ Sea Mist replied, her eyes lighting up. ‘Hungry. Ready to, eat, spiders.’ Tabitha gave her a warning look. ‘Joke,’ Sea Mist added, with a sharp cheeky smile.

‘Mist! Get back on your bloody rifle!’ Reigo bellowed at her. Sea Mist glanced at Tabitha; snarling and clenching her fists as the Sergeant came storming over. Mist didn’t like being yelled at. She was used to a life where she could do something about it.

‘Just do what he says,’ Tabitha advised her quietly. ‘Do it for me?’ Her tribe-sister sighed in reply, and nodded her obedience. They walked back together for the laser-flash chaos of the firing range.

*

Tabitha and her platoon went to bed hurting that night, but at least they’d finally eaten. Thier’s revived drones, around a dozen, had been ferrying supplies from the ruins all day. A motherlode of packet meals had arrived that evening, unearthed from a crashed cargo ship and floated in by their new hybrid assistants. They’d been met by the starving survivors like a cavalry to the rescue.

Nor had Thier hesitated in taking the credit for their salvation, when he’d presented the rations to the crowds. His reputation shone with his smile.

A self-promoter to the end, Tabitha considered, as she’d ripped into cartons of fresh water for a decent meal. Still, he does get results. If all Thier wants in return is a boosted ego, I’m sure full stomachs wouldn’t object.

Climbing in between rough sheets, the Sergeant’s words still echoed in Tabitha’s head. They seemed much truer now, when she finally had chance to reflect.

If you don’t eat fast, you don’t eat, he’d told them all, over their hurried high-calorie meals. By the end of today, sleep will feel better than sex. She tried then, for comparison, to remember how sex felt. Sure enough, she was pretty sure it’d never felt like this rough bed did right now.

Unless I’ve been doing it wrong, she considered. Thinking back to John, her long-gone ex. Pretty sure I found the parts that go where. Still… could’ve been faulty parts.

Setting another silent alarm on her revived wristcom, for a painfully close time from now, Tabitha put her head down and tried to clear her buzzing mind. She’d just have to snatch any small amount of sleep that she could.

She was still paranoid about Alex; he was bound to show up when she least expected.

…Just be ready for him. That’s all you can do.

12

‘More practise?’ said Reigo, as he walked across the echoing hall behind the barracks. His voice was drowned out by Tabitha’s constant kicks and slams on the makeshift dummies around her. Two of the strung-up spiders were beaten to bloody ruins.

‘You were good with us today,’ she said breathlessly, breaking off to wipe the sweat from her face. ‘Plus, everyone’s too exhausted to waste energy hating me. Makes a nice change.’

‘Not everyone hates you,’ he said, smiling. ‘Some people have really jumped into this.’

‘Can’t be the majority, though,’ Tabitha replied. Reigo shrugged and shook his head.

‘They’ll come around. It takes three or four days for people to adapt to the routine.’

‘You’ve trained soldiers before?’ she said, between strikes on a tall Watcher dummy. Reigo nodded as he watched her. Beaten dust churned in the plant-lit air around them.

‘The trick’s in spotting people’s weak points early on,’ he replied. ‘To be a balanced fighter, you need to find your weaknesses. Bring those up to standard first. Build a solid base.’

‘So what are my weaknesses?’ Tabitha replied, catching her breath.

‘Watching you so far… I’d say it’s your control,’ he replied. ‘Or lack of it.’

‘Oh,’ she said quietly, with a quick look. ‘…Ok.’

‘It’s nothing personal,’ he added, with a growing smile. ‘I’m just saying it like I see it. This is business to me. I’m not here to put you down.’

‘Fair enough,’ Tabitha conceded. ‘Do you think you’ll have time to train me? To work on my weak points, my control?’

‘For the Saviour of Serenity? Suppose I should probably make some time,’ he said with a smile. ‘As corny as this sounds, you really are our only hope. I’ve never known anyone to walk off wounds so quickly. Healing on the spot like that. If there’s one person worth training to kill those things, it’s you.’

‘Thanks,’ she replied. ‘I appreciate it.’

‘Well, there’s time to change that,’ he assured her. ‘If you don’t hate me after a training session, then I’m not doing my job,’ he said. ‘Training hurts. My training hurts more.’

‘Thanks for the warning,’ Tabitha replied, with a slight smile. ‘Shall we get started?’

‘Now?’ he said.

‘We could all be dead in an hour, for all I know,’ she said with a shrug. ‘If you can make me a better fighter before they attack us again, it’s probably good to get started.’

‘You expect me to train you up in an hour?’ he chuckled.

‘Better than nothing,’ she replied. ‘We’ll just go harder. For as long as we can.’ Reigo looked away suddenly; pretending to check the doorway while he hid a dirty grin.

‘Good work ethic,’ he said, turning back to meet her look. ‘I’ll remember you said that, when you want to tear my head off in an hour. Let’s get started.’

*

Tabitha’s legs and shoulders were killing her. They’d been going over basic strikes ad nauseam; well past the hour they’d agreed. But she couldn’t afford to quit now. Not when there was so much still to practise. Sighing, exhausted, she shook out the muscle aches and paced in a circle. Curling her metal fists tightly, she went at the target again.

‘Shit,’ Reigo snapped at her, studying her form, as she messed up her third combination in a row. ‘Again.’ Grunting breathlessly, Tabitha went at the dummy Watcher for the hundredth time. Left punch, right punch, kick to the leg. Left, right, kick. Faster. Harder. Left, right, kick, left, then jump-claw-stab. Wrenching the knife out from the dummy’s torn-up throat, to climb down from its shoulder and start over again. And again, and again. So many times now that she was beyond sick of it.

‘Giving up?’ said Reigo, watching her catch her breath. Not a question; a challenge. Tabitha watched him in return. She sniffed, breathing heavily, and wiped the sweat from her face. He studied her glare, and nodded in reply. ‘Go on then,’ he added, with a glance at the dummy. ‘Again.’

*

By now her shaking muscles just kept messing up. She centred herself, and tried again.

Left, right, kick… she staggered with her footwork.

‘Shit! Again!’ Reigo barked at her, prowling around her. Voice echoing in the empty hall.

‘I’m trying!’ Tabitha shot back angrily.

‘Try harder!’ he bellowed in return. He was pacing the mats like a predator, watching her every move. It’d been hours; her muscles ached and trembled like she’d never known. She swallowed her fury. Took it out on the dummy. Again, and again, until she messed up the sequence.

‘That was shit!’ Reigo snarled at her. ‘Fuck up like that and you’re dead! Do it again!’

‘I can already do this stuff!’ she yelled at him, finally losing her temper.

‘You’re still thinking about it!’ he snapped, pointing an accusing finger as he prowled around her. His voice was a booming echo through the hall. ‘You don’t have time to think!’

‘Of course I’m thinking about it!’ she screamed at him. ‘How the hell can I not think!?’ But Reigo didn’t answer right away. He paced and watched her; regained his control. She could see his own training, working away behind his eyes. His emotional tools weren’t getting results right now. He turned off his anger like a switch.

‘Remember what I said before, about building up your weaknesses?’ he said, more calmly. Tabitha bit back her first snapping response, and took some breaths. She saw his point. She cleared her head, and put her own feelings aside.

‘Sorry,’ she conceded. Taking a second to breathe and detach, like he’d shown her.

‘…Good control,’ he told her, more gently. Holding her stare. ‘Remember. All these moves, all these combinations, we’re driving them into your muscle memory,’ he said, as he hammered his knuckles into his palm. ‘It’ll free up your mind for–

‘Strategy,’ she cut in. ‘I know.’ A brief smile lit his stony face.

‘Alright,’ he replied, going back to his pacing circle. Nodding at the scarred Watcher dummy. ‘Again.’

13

Walking back stiffly to her bed in the barracks, Tabitha crawled in between the rough sheets. She whispered to Sea Mist and patted her arm, as her sister woke cautiously in the next bed beside her. Tabitha told her to go back to sleep; desperate for a snatched hour herself before dawn. She lay her head down on the coarse sack pillow, eyes closed in seconds, and slept like the dead.

*

The wider Ministry worked on tirelessly, ticking over like a living engine. All across the plant-lit complex, Guardians and Tribals walked the towering walls on yawning night duty. Staring into the starlit ruins for any sign of spiders, or teaching one another pranks and checker-games by their fires. Hoping, cursing and praying to their gods, that the dreaded bells stayed silent.

*

Floating lights streamed to and fro around the Ministry’s makeshift warehouse. Eerie celestial glows, trailing in and out like pale fireflies in the night. Flying on for the dead city.

Smiling, Thier watched the drone lines from his high balcony. Endless hybrid convoys of them, picked off constantly in the ruins, but reviving new drones exponentially. Specialised now, in more suitable roles for their varied designs. He had drone shippers and pickers; revivers and repairers. Some armed models too, flying wide circuits of the complex for reconnaissance and defence. But the cargo drones were still his pride and joy; streaming in tirelessly for the stockrooms with the city’s rich salvage. Filling orderly crate zones with food and medicine; weapons and tools. Goods in, and civilian stackers ready; the empty drones filing out for more supplies. A smooth one-way system. The automated constancy of it all, more beautiful to him than any ballet.

He worked his shelf-stackers hard for the generous food rations he paid them; an army of people too young or infirm to sign up with the troops. But the work and good food agreed with them, and most were glad to play their part in the war effort. To have companionship through their grief, and roles to occupy their worried minds. Most of all, people seemed glad to have some semblance of their old lives back. A fresh sense of duty, or control. There were those who objected to the work, of course… but the messier jobs assigned to them by Her Majesty agreed with them even less.

Thier sipped his steaming drink by the moonflower’s lamplight, and set back to his papers afresh. Studying the plans he’d discussed with a scientist, a man named Lotor, who’d volunteered his service in the makeshift hospital wards. A goldmine of a man, well-versed in bio-development. Wasted right now on the kind of patch-up doctoring that a droid could do.

Frowning at his paperwork, Thier scribbled more efficient transit paths through a map of the ruins. Dreaming of bigger things.

*

The Ministry’s antique armouries were a fierce orange fury. Bustling with shadows; fires roaring and hammers ringing through the night. Bricked-up kilns had been stoked back to blazing life, where practised hands worked the forge like their forefathers on poor distant worlds.

A silhouette in the firelight, one of many, wiped the grimy sweat from his craggy face. He rolled his strong aching shoulders, and went back hard at the work that might save his children’s lives. Pulling glowing metal from the fierce coals to pound and beat it into shield panels and blades.

A glinting mound lurked beside him in the age-old stables, where dead bloody spiders were being butchered and skinned. Dragged from the plaza like kills in the wild, to be cracked and smelted and poured and set into endless bricks of shining metal. A strange new alloy, smithed afresh by ancient races, who still knew older ways to work. A growing chaos of anvils and grindstones, improvised from the ruins, where bright pounding sparks chimed in the dark. Clattering boxes filled quickly with spear tips and arrowheads; silvery hinges and nails. Carted by drone to the barracks and courtyards, where timbers and girders were hauled and levelled onto thick shouting scaffolds. The whole clustered complex, made ready for war.

*

Tabitha woke at her next silent alarm, vibrating strongly from her wristcom. She dragged her aching body from her bed, zombified with exhaustion, and reminded herself why she was doing this.

…Suck it up, woman. Rise above. Still in her training clothes, she slipped from the dorm door and out into the chilly corridors.

A bright voltflower, leeching current from her hand, lit the way like a torch. Back across the cobbled yard; back through those old paint-crusted doors. On into the cavernous training hall, and the looming straw Watchers in the dark. Flushing current through the voltvines around the ceiling, she brought the place back to glowing life. She set down her voltflower, and paced a warm-up circle on the creaking floorboards. She remembered Earth, and sprung her claws snarling, and went hard at the dummies again. No more wild-animal flurries; no Sergeant Reigo to watch. Just her, and the strike patterns he’d shown her, and endless repetition. Pounding strikes in the night.

Shit, she snarled at herself, ruthlessly, as she beat the booming dummies to death. You’re better than this. Go harder. Faster. Again.

*

Saa rubbed at her eye-strain in the towering library, and went back to her hurried census on the screen. The Guardians’ recruiters had made things easier for her and the remaining Ministry staff, in documenting every conscript and passing her their files; though many more civilians were still unaccounted for. Sipping her floral tea, Saa tapped in another name from a neat stack of pencilled reports.

Age unknown, world of birth unknown. Trade Language: very poor. Yet another shadow in the system. She looked over at Anero, slumped and snoring with little Lea on his chest, in the easy chair where Tabitha’s glowing flowers grew thickest. Saa smiled to see them so safe and peaceful.

This was the best job she could’ve hoped for, really. Something she’d trained in; something she knew. Absolute luxury, to set up camp in the library by themselves.

It’d be perfect if not for Irren, their drunk nextdoor neighbour in the media archives, and his constant disagreements about the curse of central control. Seriously… what the hell was his problem? Didn’t every crying child need feeding? Wouldn’t they need to organise their incoming rations, to make sure everyone had their fair share? He’d just babble in return, in his selfish man-child way, about plentiful production and free-market forces, and something patently insane about the collective good of shameless self-interest. But she was far too busy to pay him any mind. She’d tried to explain, over and over, that she had countless matters to organise here or things would never get done. Maybe she’d never understand him. He’d certainly never understand her.

*

A lone hooded figure checked over their shoulder, making their way quietly through the Ministry’s labyrinth of basements. The eerie glow of a living torch bounced off vaulted archways above their head. Distant drips in the echoing dark, as the shadow turned again to make sure it hadn’t been followed. Searching, endlessly, for something buried down here in the vaults. It had to be around here somewhere; the classified maps from the archives had pointed straight to it. Another dripping cellar, another rusted cell…

Wait – that was it. The power wasn’t on down here, luckily. No risk of alarms, or someone tracing the break-in. Pulling a stolen plasma cutter from their coat pocket, the silhouette crouched by a thick metal wall and shot crackling sparks through the dark. Hissing and rasping as the cutter traced a slow curving arch around the door. Molten metal blobbing and dripping as it went.

It took longer than they’d expected; it was far louder than they’d hoped. Still, it seemed like the crime had gone unnoticed. There just weren’t enough troops to guard every lurking tunnel and ancient vault, and certainly not this deep beneath the Ministry’s foundations. Glancing back down the endless catacombs, the coast seemed clear. With a few grunting shoves, the curved slab creaked and scraped out of the metal wall, and dropped down inside the pitch-black vault. It thumped down quietly, massively, onto pallets of discontinued cash. Just like the floor plan had shown. The hooded figure crawled inside, casting the light of a moonflower around the thick vault walls. Staring, speechless, the silhouette dropped a tough satchel and wandered further in. Creeping on, past shelf after shelf of it. The thief’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of it all. Shining gold coins and endless tempting ingots, glistening like nightmares in the dark.

14

Beyond distant hills, hidden from the city on a dead horizon, a colossal garden writhed in cold clear moonlight. A sprawling forest of pitch-black trees, waving like sealife, glowed dim with hellish current. Glutting power, knotted and gigantic, pooled like an ocean among their volted roots.

In the heart of the forest, a silvery plant had reached its full growth. It creaked like rubber; bent its leaves into spindly legs. Settling into its arachnid shape, it tore itself from the dirt. More shoots around it, trembling too. Splaying their silver leaves and following suit. Twitching, and juddering, one by one, as they jerked and wrenched to uproot themselves from the rich heated soil. More plants moved around them, and still more beyond. A glimmering field of them, writhing into life all at once. The whole wild wood, fertilised by the city’s plentiful dead. Pumping buried reservoirs of dripping pink remains.

The spiders’ young legs moved silently. Fresh silver blood through swelling muscles. Dragging; creeping; scuttling forward. Pouring out like a plague to join more endless ranks of the silver crop. Countless and chittering, swelling like the sea, under the nightmare glow of false moons. New seeds drifted down in their wake, wriggling in the soil to take root.

Beyond the trees, alien wildlife scrambled and crawled in a blue night garden. Small scaled birds sipped current from orb-headed blooms. A staring creature floated by indifferently, like an airborne nautilus. A slow peaceful conquest, grazing and multiplying. Strange strong fauna to push the native wildlife away.

White grass rippled of its own accord. Suddenly crushed, and left indented, by giant black hands prowling past. Molten steel dripped smouldering patches through the blue moss, where the brute’s moonlit shadow came to a halt. Savage arms, and monstrous shoulders; a cruel head with a piercing-pale stare. Drooling bright metal from gnarled piranha teeth. With a furnace growl, the monster prowled on to climb its growing spire. Beyond it, a steely landscape mounted ever higher. Dark hulking shapes like itself, working in dozens. Vomiting up this world’s rich metal to build and shape it around their towers. Huge latticed spouts, where vast flowers sprouted slimy and turned like turbines in the wind. A legion of black squid floated between them; harvesting current and streaming for the hive’s central growths. At the heart of it all stood a stark gothic cluster; a black-bone cathedral in colossal mid-growth. Churning at its core, a thundering powerplant. Forcing the dark armada into rapid unnatural life.

Vast ranks of dragons lay dormant beyond it. A great black horror writhed in the mud. Bastards and gorgons, re-bred and perfected, stared like flames from the foothills’ shadowed caves. Endless monsters waited for the strengthening sunrise, or died screaming when their starving siblings turned on them. Rooting out the weakest, while the strong lingered on for their war. A swarm to conquer Serenity. Extinction, engineered.

Through it all walked strange stretched figures, controlling their creations at will. Careful inspections and paralysed slaughters, as the Watchers refined their sinister works. Acres of spiders stood ready for their bidding; some had waited so long that they’d starved. Their masters weren’t concerned; the dead just fed the strongest. The strong crops lived on. Purging their ranks by themselves.

High in the hills, in their crystalline towers, the elites watched over their horde. Discussing repairs, in resonant tones.

All but one, who stared from a higher window. Cold and angelic; a great Prince among them. Beautiful and terrible as the dark. Studying the city with bright deathly eyes. Beyond miles of toppled ruins, he could make out a glow. Dim, and very distant. But growing. A fortress, hiding the city’s last remnants of subordinate life. The sole burning aim of his hate.

15

Tabitha was up painfully early, watching from the walls, as the fiery dawn spread across the sky. The city was towering wasteland; a forest of girders like ribs. A world of torn urban silhouettes, standing sharp black against the pink-clouded daylight. It was still dim enough to make out a glow, beyond the far gloomy hills. Cold and distant, and quite faint. But growing. A feeling she’d known in New York.

…A hive.

Quietly, Tabitha headed on for older bunkers hidden beneath the parliament buildings. She nodded to a guard as he saluted her, and walked on down old iron steps for centuries-old vaults far below.

Checking over her shoulder, alone in the deepest reaches, she produced a glowing seed from a pocket in her belt. Hard and clear, like living plastic or silicate; about the size of an egg. Prising up a stone slab from the paved floor in the corner, she planted it in pressed ancient soil. A glug of water and a jolt of current, and she left the glowing shoot to grow.

*

A strong lean figure stood silently on the castle ramparts. Below, the sleeping barracks waited for his wakeup call. Reigo looked out over the ruins of his city, and it hurt. Not a pain like gunshot surgeries; it was deeper and duller than that. More like a suffering, inside.

The first girl he ever loved, he’d shown her this view. Every other girl too, when he finally got to come back here on leave.

Capital City at dawn. No finer sight in the galaxy. He’d tried to will his dates and exes, every one of them, to be as impressed as he always was. For them to feel that bright rising joy that he’d always felt for this place. He’d always been in love with this city. Trying to sleep on campaign, in bunks and cells and frozen Guardian foxholes, he’d think about it. Saving every damned credit for whatever tiny apartment he could afford here, some day. Just to wake up to this view again.

And now… this. His home was torn rubble. So many towers, that used to glow like gods in the night. Now they were carcasses, pale and colossal in the stark sunrise. Blown away to struts and girders; bent and bare. Like bones. The best city in the world; in any world. The one he’d fought and killed for, whenever the doubt set in and he fell back on bare ideals. Life, love, liberty. Capital City, where his old man raised him alone, and raised him right. And now it was gone. All of it. Sad, and grey, and dead. The thought crept in again.

…What’s left to fight for?

*

Tabitha lay awake, back on her rough bedding again. Listening to Sea Mist and Barkless sleeping softly at her side. Even now, their coarse fur carried a smoky Hearthfire scent about it. A woodsmoke smell, like home. Tabitha turned to watch the ceiling, and wondered if she even had the energy for today. Between all the meetings, and sparring, and nightmares that jolted her awake… and now, this. Another day of basic training. Probably just a couple more minutes, really, until–

‘Up you bastards, and bastardettes!’ came a sudden loud pounding on the door. Reigo burst in with his officers, prowling the dorm to yell the groggy conscripts into action. Tabitha was up fast, forcing hard cool breaths to perk herself up. She shook Sea Mist gently by the shoulder, who shook Barkless Tree’s shoulder in turn. Tabitha blinked her eyes wider amid all the shouting, and tucked in her bedsheets tightly for inspection. Shaking off the sluggishness, she focussed on her heartcore, in case it had any lurking energy left to spare.

The ranks of recruits stood tall and nervous by their made beds, as Reigo prowled and inspected the room. Eyeing the sloppier conscripts he’d made note of yesterday, to spend an extra moment on their shoddy presentation.

‘Your bed looks like utter shit, do you know that?’ he told a green-skinned woman. Watching her in silence; her big dark eyes and nervous breaths.

‘…Do you speak?’ he added expectantly. Glaring right through her, with that menacing stare.

‘S-sorry, Sarge,’ she stuttered quietly. Quick and well-spoken.

‘What?’

‘Sorry Sarge,’ she repeated more clearly.

‘You’re not sorry yet,’ Reigo replied, quieter, as he tossed her personal effects and pulled her bedsheets up into a pile. ‘You don’t know how hard I’m gonna push you today.’

‘Yes Sarge,’ she replied stiffly.

‘Get it right,’ he threatened her, with a quick nod at the mess he’d made of her belongings. Leaving her to her frantic second attempt, as he paced on down the line. He held another merciless glare at a scaled man halfway along, who hurriedly pulled up his imperfect bedding to make it again. A repeat offender.

‘Third day in a row and I’m gonna redefine suffering for you,’ Reigo growled at him.

‘Yes Sarge,’ the panicked man replied as he worked.

‘Alright. Courtesy of the drone supply lines, you’re getting breakfast today,’ Reigo told the rest of them. A silent commotion of glad smiles. ‘So there’s no excuse for the same lagging shit-show you gave me yesterday,’ he barked at them. ‘Today, I want your best. If your best isn’t good enough, I’ll know,’ he said. ‘Then, you’ll know. Every muscle and joint in your body, will know,’ he promised them. ‘Now dress for PT and exercise. If you’re getting fed, you’ll work for it.’

*

Still shaky and recovering from their first gruelling circuits, Tabitha sat in the warm sunshine with her bodyguards. She had a cup of hot water in hand, snatching all the bright breakfast sunlight she could absorb before the other recruits finished eating. Rubbing the aches from her calves after their PT drills, and all the extra efforts Reigo pushed her to, given her physical advantage.

‘You, quiet,’ said Sea Mist, with a look of concern, where she sat cross-legged behind her.

‘Quiet-er,’ Barkless added, with a sharp friendly grin. ‘…Ok?’

‘Yeah, I’m ok,’ Tabitha sighed, with a warm weary smile.

‘Tired,’ Sea Mist fretted, as she picked through her sister’s red mane for any bugs. Though there weren’t any lice quite so big and tasty on this world. Nothing at all, so far.

‘This, Sky Queen,’ Barkless replied, in Tabitha’s defence. ‘Not get, tired.’

‘That’s right,’ she chuckled. ‘I don’t get tired.’

‘Hmm,’ Sea Mist replied, in quiet worry. Continuing her careful work. ‘…Hmph!’ she snapped, giving up on Tabitha’s curls. ‘Noth, ing.’

‘No bugs?’ Tabitha replied.

‘Nobugs,’ Sea Mist sighed, throwing her hands up in defeat at the whole sorry matter.

‘Maybe tomorrow,’ Tabitha told her brightly.

‘Maybe,’ Sea Mist echoed, with a sad shake of her head. ‘Must, hope.’

‘I’ll try to find some older vaults, underground,’ Tabitha assured her, patting her tribe-sister’s rough hand. ‘There’s bound to be some juicy bugs somewhere. I’ll rub my hair right in ‘em. Promise.’

‘…Ok,’ Sea Mist replied, a little happier now. Smiling widely, right from her pale gentle eyes.

It seemed like they’d barely sat down when Reigo’s barking orders carried through from the makeshift mess hall, close behind them in the museum’s customer cafe.

‘Sarge,’ Barkless snarled, like a curse. Shaking his head; puzzled as ever. ‘Sarge not, king, of you,’ he protested quietly. ‘But… Sarge train, for war,’ he supposed, with a shrug and a sigh of defeat.

‘Yeah,’ Tabitha agreed. ‘But it’s not forever,’ she assured him, with a smile. Rubbing her tired face with a forearm, she hauled herself back to her feet. Bum muscles tender, thighs stiffening, she walked off the aches for their next round of drills.

Suck it up, woman, Tabitha reminded herself. This is your war, after all.

*

‘Lotor Usila?’ said a tall well-dressed man, walking through the busy makeshift hospital in the old Ministry offices.

‘Hm? Yes?’ the scientist replied, distracted. Looking up hurriedly from a bandaged patient; a young red-skinned Guardian. Amputated at the elbow, since her slow-acting spider sting. She was stable now, mercifully. To be reassigned to desk work, he presumed. Unless a lucky supply drone happened to return from the ruins with an advanced prosthetic.

‘Mr… Isse, was it?’ said the professor.

‘Call me Thier, please,’ the smart man replied pleasantly. Lotor recognised him then. From the media feeds, back in the old world. The smiling trillionaire.

‘And this young lady is?’

‘Esha, sir,’ the bedbound patient replied dutifully. ‘Third Battalion, General Infantry. Aboard the Defiance out of Stormworld.’ Thier smiled warmly and shook her remaining hand.

‘Esha, I’m in need of particularly disciplined section managers, as our stockpiling efforts expand,’ Thier offered. ‘I’d be honoured to welcome someone with a solid military streak, to lead our warehousing teams efficiently. Ensuring the careful marshalling of our resources, to make the absolute best of your fellow soldiers’ hard work.’

‘…Desk job, sir?’ she guessed.

‘With generous rations and first-class perks,’ Thier said happily. ‘Considerably more comfortable than your time on the walls. Or on Stormworld, certainly.’

‘Desk job sounds real good, sir,’ she replied wearily, with a growing smile. ‘But I’d need to request–

‘Transfer from the Guardians? All will be taken care of, I assure you,’ Thier interrupted. ‘With an executive suite reserved for you on the upper tiers, naturally, given your position in my team. And I’ll see about sourcing a robot prosthetic for you, if you’d be interested. As a matter of fact, I’d like robotics to become a singular focus of your work.’

‘…Sign me up sir,’ Esha replied happily. Smiling to herself, as the two men left her to rest.

‘Do you make a habit of headhunting the wounded in convalescence, sir?’ Lotor said quietly, as the two of them walked down the ward for his corner office. ‘I mean no disrespect,’ he added. ‘But I prefer my patients’ recovery to be uninterrupted by… professional concerns.’

‘My apologies,’ Thier sighed, on reflection. ‘I have a certain compulsion, to conduct business at every opportunity. Though work can be an effective rehabilitation, at times.’

‘Hm. Well… I suppose I can’t argue the logic,’ the scientist conceded. ‘Just run the job offers through me in future, would you? I have a duty of care to these people. They must be given time to recuperate.’

‘Spoken like a true healer,’ Thier smiled back. ‘Perhaps you’ve a calling in medicine after all, Professor?’

‘…Yes. Well,’ Lotor replied uncertainly. ‘Though I believe you’re here to discuss a matter pertaining to my previous employment.’

‘You received my message?’ Thier replied, as he closed the office door behind them.

‘…Ah. I’m sorry,’ said Lotor, checking his desk hurriedly for paper memos, as if it made a difference now. ‘I suppose I can spare a couple of minutes,’ he sighed, as he eased himself wearily into his seat. ‘You asked something about military craft, was it?’

‘Precisely,’ Thier smiled back. ‘I’d like to propose a joint venture, if it’s of interest to you.’

‘It’s of immense interest to me,’ Lotor replied, with a note of frustration, as he studied yet more dubious prescription requests for powerful salvaged painkillers. ‘But I don’t have the time to give you, I’m afraid,’ he sighed. Peering at him over his reading glasses.

‘You don’t have staff to cover for you?’ Thier replied, with a hopeful smile.

‘My nurse, singular, is on the verge of breakdown,’ Lotor explained. ‘We’re finally coping with the wounded warriors, since the attack two days ago. But, forgive me for saying, that our number of workplace accidents has increased significantly since then. Yours being the only place of work here. Involving fast-moving drones, and people, in close proximity.’

‘Regretful, truly,’ Thier replied. ‘Not every drone can be revived in a completely stable condition. The more spirited revivals have a tendency to become… independent.’ Lotor glanced up at him, despite himself; his interest piqued at the hint of hybrid drones with increasingly organic traits.

‘But we’re now taking significant steps to screen all revived drones, before and after each working shift, just to be safe,’ Thier assured him. ‘Look. I’m not a heartless tycoon, Professor. My workers’ wellbeing is as much my concern as it is yours. I’m made aware of every workplace incident, I assure you. They pain me a great deal. Any injured employee will receive a very generous compensation.’ Lotor studied him for a moment, trying to read the man and his mysterious intentions. He disliked the cut-throat business sort… though he’d be lost for medical supplies, certainly, if not for Thier’s ingenuity. And perhaps he couldn’t see anything truly disingenuous in the man. A profit-driven capitalist, certainly. But possibly just as enthused by the Celestial’s potential as he was. Eager to revive more of Serenity’s technology, with their combined expertise, to help these people live on.

Even still… he couldn’t just abandon the ward to play army with that hybrid celestial material. Patients in recovery were more important than his own obsolete ambitions. At any event, the request was impossible.

‘I’ve no time,’ Lotor sighed, decisively. ‘I wish I had, truly. But I won’t allow any more of those people to lose their lives on my watch. Not if I can do anything about it.’

‘I understand,’ Thier replied, with a calm retiring smile. Watching the professor thoughtfully, as he returned for a moment to his work.

‘Though... this nurse you mentioned,’ Thier considered. ‘Would you trust her to run this ward, if it came to it?’

‘Of course I would,’ Lotor replied, without hesitation. ‘She does already, in truth.’ Thier smiled at that.

‘And you’ve confidence in her ability to delegate to other professionals, were they to offer their help?’ Thier tried, doggedly. Lotor looked up at him quizzically from his mounting stack of reports, barely hiding his impatience.

‘Sir. If you could resurrect the finest doctors on Serenity, recently deceased in the distant craters where our hospitals once stood, then yes. I would leave this department immediately, if my expertise would better serve these people through your revival of military craft.’ Thier said nothing; he simply opened the office door in reply. He clicked his long fingers, and swept his arm toward a troop of figures walking and floating through the staring ward.

‘Medical droids,’ he said, presenting them proudly. ‘Salvaged by drone from said hospitals. Expertly revived by my most experienced professionals.’ The hybrid robots were static and staring, ready for duty; a host of carers and surgeons with an eerie celestial glow. ‘What say you, Professor?’ Thier continued. Watching the staring scientist with delight. ‘Would you trust your patients’ care to the best robotics experts in the galaxy? Leaving you free, to begin their greatest work?’

*

Out on the drill ground, Reigo had just finished his midday briefing. Tabitha stood aching in rank, the weary platoon around her, and tried to keep herself from collapsing. This afternoon promised more of the same; essential but gruelling. Endless running and improvised assault courses, broken by combat training and more sprints in the yard. Making the most of the limited space they had, to hammer these masses of ex-civilians rapidly into some kind of physical shape.

That’s the idea, anyway, Tabitha told herself. Seems like all we’re getting out of this is pain. Still, she supposed there had to be some benefit to their rushed training. Mentally, at least. There had to come a point where these people would start to think and act more like an army. She’d let Reigo and the Guardians worry about the details, and the lack of time they had to make it happen. There were bigger things preying on her mind.

Every night, that light in the hills gets brighter. How long do we have, really, before the Watchers make their move?

16

‘They suit you,’ said Aelu, between delicate bites of her lunch. ‘The scars, I mean.’

‘Hm, I think so,’ Big Fish agreed, where they sat at a table outside the Ministry’s makeshift cafe. ‘Seem to get more glances from the ladies, for sure.’ He winked at that octopus-lady over in the kitchens, who smiled back shyly while she worked.

‘Probably just more glances in general,’ Aelu replied. ‘You’re Fish the Giant Slayer, after all.’ Nodding thoughtfully, Big Fish shovelled the full contents of another ration pack into his gigantic mouth. Chomping in loud contentment, he glanced around at the courtyard’s bright bustling walls, where the bouncing sunlight dazzled him. His booming sneeze sprayed food all over the table.

‘Giant Slayer. I like that,’ he replied. Pointing the huge wooden spork that Sky Tribe had carved for him. ‘Hey, what’s that look for? You look angry.’

‘…You just covered me in your lunch,’ Aelu growled, with a dark stare. Swatting his huge hand away in a sudden temper, as he reached over to wipe the bright food-mush off her shoulder.

‘Oh, hell. I’m sorry,’ he rumbled, plucking a serviette with great difficulty to try to dab at her again.

‘Stop it. Just… just stop,’ Aelu hissed quietly. Pulling a serviette herself to clean up. Glancing around quickly as she did so, when her old high-society instincts kicked in.

‘Ahh, no one cares,’ Fish said dismissively, still chewing, as he screwed up his empty ration packets and dropped them in a huge ball on his oversized plate. Wiping his big messy hands down his front.

‘Look, now we’re even,’ he said, pointing to the food stains down his giant Guardian shirt. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Cool scars, Fish,’ said a four-armed conscript in passing.

‘Hey, thanks man,’ Fish replied happily. Still cleaning up the food he’d sneezed on the table.

‘Why do I hang around with you?’ Aelu sighed, while she finished her drink.

‘Because I’m cool,’ he shrugged. Not a hint of irony about him.

‘…Sure, Fish,’ Aelu replied, as they pushed in their chairs to leave for the barracks. ‘Sure.’

*

‘NO!’ Stone Shore bellowed in Trade Language, at the Guardian veterans sparring all around him. ‘Weak! Put, strength!’ The Minnis-Tree soldiers learning from him were making an endless racket; training with Sky Tribe’s warriors in the ways of knife and shield. Practising their bow-arms and spear-thrusts, over and over, against dead spiders strung up in a sunlit courtyard. Stone Shore prowled moodily, scrutinising every block and knife-stroke around him. Barking furious orders at the sight of weak strikes and sloppy footwork.

These Lost Spirits were all but useless in the Ancient Way of combat. But he would see them wield true weapons honourably. Over time, he’d set Fierce-Hope burning in their hearts. These strange alien warriors would be carved out of rock.

*

‘Again!’ Reigo barked at the conscripts. His favourite word. Tabitha and her platoon took up their fleshy laser rifles wearily, where they sat on the grass beside the firing range. Stripping their guns, over and over; drilling the procedure until they could do it in their sleep. Exposed all the while to the sound of live fire, from the platoon practising on the targets nearby.

Tabitha still struggled with the finer points of disassembling her rifle, with her hard hands; though she was nowhere near as clumsy as she had been back on Earth. She heard Reigo’s stopwatch ticking past as he paced down the line, and felt all the old pressure of a school exam.

Strip charge pack, she told herself quickly, as she pulled the gun’s oversized battery away. Detach stock. Detach grip. Slide sight assembly. Pull rear takedown pin. The celestial rifle clattered busily in her hands. Pivot charge assembly. Strip charge assembly. Detach capacitor. Check chamber seal, detach barrel. Strip beam focus block. Heartcore pounding, staring at the neat components on her square of cloth, Tabitha sat silently with the rest while the last stragglers finished and sat still. She saw Barkless grinning. He was first to finish field-stripping his beloved rifle, as always.

‘Not good enough!’ Reigo snapped at everyone. ‘Start over!’ Tabitha dropped her frustration and picked up her rifle. Slotting it back together automatically, while Reigo paced their ranks again. He was watching them, waiting for them. Stern in the sudden silence. He raised his stopwatch, and waited for the last of them to finish piecing their laser rifles back together. Ready for disassembly.

‘Again,’ he barked at the platoon. Another clattering chaos erupted all around her, as Tabitha set back to it with the rest.

Strip charge pack. Detach stock. Detach grip. Slide sight assembly. Pull rear takedown pin. The pressure of Sarge’s stopwatch forced them all to step it up. Now the momentum was starting to sink in; the shock of capture wearing off. Everything was starting to happen with a little less fear. There wasn’t time to think about it. There was only do it, and do it right.

*

‘Be bold,’ the instructor reminded them, in her level tone, as they shot their targets on the firing range. She was cooler-headed than Reigo and the yelling drill instructors. Calmer, and cautious. More exacting.

Suppose she has to be, Tabitha considered, in order to build their calm confidence with a firearm. Switching out the charge pack quickly, Tabitha armed her rifle afresh and lined up her stare down its glowing iron-sights. She held her breath; sighting in on the distant target. Stilled herself and took her next sequence of bright shots, whipping away down the firing line, as her platoon’s rifles shrieked on either side. She squeezed the trigger and let go. Stopping and starting, firing in quick controlled bursts, as she steadied her aim again. She kept firing until the charge pack beeped on empty, and studied her scorch marks on the distant target. Still not great, but her groupings were getting tighter. It was like their instructor said: once she could land shots with some tight consistency, the rest was just putting them in the right place. It all just came with practise.

Next came PT and manoeuvres. Again. Reigo yelling them through their assault course, again. Tabitha didn’t know about anyone else, but she was feeling it now. Not just sore, because she definitely felt that. But… different. Like she was just a bit more taut; her mind pulled tight. More switched on.

Drilled into all of them, on an hourly basis, was focus. Agility. To blot out the gunfire and focus on your target. Or drop your thoughts and feelings, to focus on your platoon. To mind the environment with every sense… or block it out completely when needed.

Later came more theory, in the old dust-smelling lecture room. But at least it was a chance to sit down. Heads bowed at their desks, the recruits scribbled rapid notes on technique and best practice. Growing observations on Watcher tactics and swarm behaviours; basic biology and critical strike points. All courtesy of Tabitha’s after-hours consultations. The lectures continued, through first aid and field dressings, into tactics and navigation. Flanking and fire teams; use of the environment in every engagement. The purest definition of crash course, forcing them to step up and adapt.

‘We’re rushing you through this, I know,’ Reigo concluded to his class. ‘We’ve no choice, and we’ve no time. But I will make able soldiers out of you. If you trust in the method, and stop ballsing up. Yes?

‘Yes Sarge,’ they replied, as the lecture came to a close.

‘So. Takeaway point. You live in cover, understand? Find it, stick to it, work around it. Spend every spare second looking for it. If you can’t get to cover, you make it. Tip tables, hide in doorways. Cover is half the job. Yes?’

‘Yes Sarge,’ Tabitha and her platoon replied in unison.

*

‘Combat uniforms,’ Reigo told them abruptly, slamming plastic boxes down on the dorm’s hard floor. ‘Berets,’ he added, tossing a full plastic bag down with it. ‘Pen, for your names in said berets,’ he finished, chucking that down too. ‘The drone lines turned up a military shipment today, so I get first dibs,’ he told them loudly. ‘That means that my platoon’s the first to stop looking like a bunch of bloody amateurs, and start dressing like soldiers. Because you’re my special, fuckety, unicorns,’ he concocted, ‘and you deserve to look just fabulous.’ He watched them all standing there; lined up obediently along their beds. ‘Well get into it then!’ he barked impatiently, as the recruits hurried forward to pull the packages apart.

‘Tomorrow morning I want all of you suited and booted,’ he commanded, watching them try their dark urban-camo uniforms on for size. ‘And if something doesn’t fit you, stop being an embarrassment all your life and swap it with someone else. Lights out in five minutes. Kissy kissy, sleep tight.’ With that Reigo slammed the door shut; leaving the recruits to their frantic rummaging through their new kit.

*

‘You’re looking… sharper,’ Aelu considered.

‘Thanks,’ Tabitha chuckled, over their drinks that night. ‘Was I that scruffy before?’

‘Oh, total mess,’ Aelu confirmed, with a grin. ‘I wanted to die rather than be seen with you.’ Saa and Irren smiled across the table.

‘This coming from a former homeless person,’ Fish rumbled beside them. Flinching with a grin, at Aelu’s sudden punch on his arm.

‘You need some training,’ Aelu accused him, sipping from her wine glass. ‘I still think you should sign up with the Guardians. You get bitchy when you’re not occupied.’

‘…You need some training,’ Fish countered, muttering into his drinking vase.

‘I’m working with Thier and that scientist chap on something, remember?’ she said.

‘Not really,’ he sighed, gulping his beer loudly. ‘I can’t remember everything you’re always babbling about.’ Aelu glared at him, and crossed her arms in a sulk.

‘Well, you need to do something,’ she said. ‘I say sign up with the Guardians on something you want to do. Before they drag you into something you don’t.’

‘Yeah, Fish,’ Tabitha teased him. ‘I could always make you sign up. Such are my royal powers, after all.’

‘Pfft,’ he replied, wiping beer from his chin. Setting down the large flower vase with a clunk on the table. ‘Do you really see me being ordered around by Guardians? I’ve tried it before, anyway. It didn’t work out well for their mining gear.’

‘Hey, I thought you didn’t drink?’ said Aelu, watching him chug his vase of beer.

‘Meh. I’m coming round to the idea,’ Fish shrugged. ‘Could be the constant sense of impending death,’ he explained. ‘Or, knowing that the forces of darkness are arrayed endlessly against us.’ Aelu said nothing in reply; she just clinked his vase with her wineglass in mutual understanding.

‘Well, you really came through for everyone the other night, Fish,’ said Tabitha. ‘You’re the only reason those gates are still standing.’

‘Nah. Team effort,’ Fish replied, as he shook his head. ‘Anyway, what’s all this extra training gonna do for you?’ he continued. ‘You’ve survived this long, haven’t you?’

‘…Yeah,’ Tabitha said uncertainly. ‘But those were a new kind of spider that burst out of that thing. They’d been bred to take my head off. I got careless,’ she told them. ‘Looks like Alex isn’t the only one who knows how to kill me.’

‘It’s no guarantee that those spiders could’ve killed you,’ Saa replied, trying to set Tabitha’s mind at ease. ‘The Watchers tried before, didn’t they? You still came out in one piece.’

‘But they aren’t standing still,’ Tabitha explained. ‘They’re not using the same old tactics each time. I can’t afford to either.’

‘Fair enough,’ Aelu considered. ‘But, I mean, is Reigo really the best person to train with? Didn’t we have to save his life, when he tried to run across that plaza? You’re already faster than him. And stronger.’

‘You’d probably kill him, if you actually sparred,’ Fish agreed.

‘But he still survived those ruins, and everything the Watchers could throw at him,’ Tabitha countered. ‘He killed one of them. That qualifies his training as far as I’m concerned, it was just stamina that let him down. That’s something I have more of.’ Aelu went to say something, but hesitated. She let Tabitha continue.

‘But I don’t have Reigo’s technique,’ Tabitha explained. ‘Or his control. Those are tools that might help me win this.’

‘His technique, eh?’ Aelu replied, her thoughts getting the better of her. Raising an eyebrow as she smirked. ‘And you’re sure it’s just the combat training you’re after? I mean, who doesn’t like a man in uniform?’

‘There’s no time for that,’ Tabitha said abruptly, dismissing the whole topic. ‘Not that I would, anyway. I don’t see him like that.’

‘Fair enough,’ Aelu conceded, with a shrug. Watching her all the same. Saa glanced at Tabitha curiously; maybe even hopefully. Wondering what she’d meant.

‘Any, training, good training,’ Barkless considered. ‘Keep us, alive,’ he told the others. ‘Should train,’ he nodded. ‘All, should train. Hard.’

‘Buddy, I could not agree more,’ Big Fish replied. ‘And I shall continue to train you,’ he said, pouring Barkless more beer, ‘to drink… like a Fish.’ Tabitha sighed, smiling in despair. Glancing across the table at Aelu’s withering look.

‘…Stop,’ the blue woman warned him.

‘Good,’ Barkless replied, taking his beer mug from the table. He slurped it noisily, grinning at the rest with a foam moustache. ‘…Mm. Good.’

‘Majesty?’ Big Fish offered, lifting the beer keg he’d liberated from Thier’s warehouse.

‘I’d better not,’ Tabitha smiled back. ‘I’ve got sparring soon, anyway,’ she explained. ‘I don’t think Reigo knows Drunken Master style.’

‘Y’know, I think I finally worked out your superpower,’ Fish said thoughtfully, pointing a rough giant finger. ‘You just don’t fucking stop.’ Tabitha couldn’t help but grin.

‘It does help our chances of survival,’ Aelu agreed, sipping her wine. ‘There’s only one thing practise makes. And, if you practise every hour of every day…’

‘There’s talk in the courtyards, Majesty, about how hard you’re working for the war effort,’ Saa agreed pleasantly. ‘Many people find it most inspiring.’

Many people? thought Aelu, sarcastically. Come on, Saa. Your crush is visible from space.

‘Yeah, well. It’s you I’m worried about,’ Irren told Tabitha drunkenly, with a nod to her across the table. ‘You look exhausted.’ Surprised by that, Tabitha glanced around at them quietly. She looked down to her glass of water, as she turned it on the table.

‘I mean, I don’t even know when you find time to sleep,’ Irren continued. ‘If you’re not talking intelligence and propaganda with me, you’re meeting with Saa to discuss Ministry management and social programmes. Or spending time with the Tribe, in the gardens. Or reviving more wall defences with Atha. And I don’t even know what you’re up to with the Guardians during the days.’

‘So you’ve been working on, after you finish training nights with Reigo?’ Fish said in disbelief. ‘How much rest are you getting? Any?’

‘…I can handle it,’ Tabitha assured them, with a confident look.

‘Truthfully?’ Aelu replied. Watching her with fresh concern. Tabitha nodded back.

‘It’s tied up with the healing, and my heartcore,’ she said. ‘I mean, yeah. I get tired. But y’know, blast of light and a glass of water, and I’m good to go. I promise,’ she added, glancing around at them. ‘So stop worrying,’ she said, with a warm smile. ‘Anyway, I’m late for my next training session. I’ll see you soon.’ They watched Tabitha wave a smiling goodbye, as she hurried away for the next items on her checklist.

‘You believe her?’ said Fish, once she’d gone.

‘Not a word,’ Aelu replied. ‘I mean, I didn’t even know,’ she said, with a look to Irren and Saa. ‘But… would it be worse to second-guess the one who’s leading us?’

‘Or undermine her in front of her friends,’ Saa added thoughtfully.

‘Wrong, to question, Queen,’ Sea Mist offered. ‘Wrong, to question, strength.’

‘But she’ll run herself into the ground,’ Fish protested. ‘We have to call her out on it, like Irren did,’ he appealed to them. ‘She’ll work herself to death if we don’t say something. Or, or slip up, when the real fighting starts. We have to tell her.’

‘Unless…’ Irren sighed heavily. Finishing his strong drink. ‘Ah, it doesn’t matter.’

‘What?’ Big Fish rumbled. Irren just shook his head, and got up from the table to leave.

‘It’s nothing,’ he assured them hurriedly. ‘I was thinking about the Watchers’ ship, on the first day. It’s not even relevant. Forget about it.’

‘What, Irren?’ Aelu demanded. Pinning him with a stare, until he shook his head and sighed a boozy breath, and finally came out with his darkening thoughts.

‘…What if it’s gonna take her life anyway, one way or another, for us to win this war?’

17

Tabitha’s wristcom vibrated as she strode through the castle arch toward the barracks. She tapped the living screen to cancel the alarm, already on her way to the empty gym and Reigo’s next training session. Tired as she was, she’d been looking forward to it. Nothing worked out the stress like tearing those dummies apart.

Eyes glowing dully, Tabitha snarled and laid into a Watcher scarecrow. Deep thundering punches, vicious and rapid-fire, echoed through the darkened old hall. Teeth gritted, drilling her combinations, she kicked and knifed and pounded the sacks and clawed their tough stuffing to shreds. She leapt to slash a second dummy through the face and pounced feline for the third behind her, clinging on to mount its shoulders and beat it to flying ruins. For the first time all day, she felt free. Satisfied. She ducked imaginary swipes from a fourth and pounced at it, spinning herself behind to strike its spine with a bang of sparking volts. Kicking a sudden loud break in its splintered legs, she dragged it down hard to tear its head apart on the floor. A split-second yell as she buried her knife in its burning chest.

‘Something he said?’ came Reigo’s voice, in the pale plantlight behind her. ‘You’re early again, I see.’

‘No, you’re late,’ Tabitha replied breathlessly, patting out the flaming dummy as he walked over. ‘It’s unacceptable.’

‘My apologies, Majesty,’ he said, with a courteous bow to lay his sarcasm bare. ‘Now sort out your stance, will you? You look like a fucking amateur.’

*

‘What’s the plan, Coach?’ said Tabitha, stretching quickly as they met on the sparring mat.

‘Finessing your technique,’ Reigo replied, as he wriggled his hands into a pair of makeshift boxing pads. ‘Are you any better with a rifle yet?’

‘Getting there,’ said Tabitha, as she rolled her stiff shoulders.

‘Alright. Similar principle. You want to keep your body tight and controlled,’ he explained, demonstrating with his fists. Half-hunched over them like they were weapons themselves. ‘That tightness over your limbs gives you more control. The less you need to stretch yourself out, or reach right out like this to land a hit, the less chance that you’ll get grabbed or blocked in return. Got it?’

‘Think so,’ Tabitha replied. ‘I’m kind of more freestyle about it.’

‘If it works, use it,’ Reigo said with a shrug. ‘But control’s always better. Remember that. And there’s no harm in knowing a few different ways to fight. That way you can mix it up for each situation. It’s just more tools in the box.’

‘Alright,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Show me.’

It took longer than their last session, but Tabitha was happy to learn anything that’d help her kill Watchers. Like how to turn her elbow on her punches, to stop the joint locking up. Or how to bring her whole body into the hit, recruiting the strength from every muscle, up and around into a more powerful pivoting hook. Reigo showed her how fights worked in safe zones and danger zones, depending on proximity. How to set up a right-hook with a stretched chest, like a rubber band, to multiply her muscle power as her punch snapped back hard against his sparring pads.

‘Alright. Now try it out on the dummies,’ he said. Shaking his hands out painfully as he took off the pads behind her. He watched Tabitha critically as she practised her new fighting stance.

‘Go slow,’ he advised her, watching her hands carefully. ‘Get the technique down first.’ Tabitha nodded, and landed her first hit slowly. Strike after strike, picking up speed; slamming and echoing on the dummy in the silent space. ‘Keep going. Get your knees in,’ he said with a nod. ‘Once it’s all muscle memory, you’ll start to get that fluid movement you need.’

‘Am I moving my hips right?’ she said, on her next slow-motion swing. Tilting into it slowly, to make sure she turned properly on the balls of her feet.

‘Looks good,’ said Reigo, with a growing smirk. Studying her waist as she moved.

‘For the punch?’ she added impatiently, trying to keep things focussed on her technique. A quick glare thrown in, to emphasise that she really didn’t have time for it. He got the message.

‘You don’t need to pivot so much on your feet,’ he added professionally. ‘That’s better. Now focus on bringing your hip and shoulder back around faster, in one smooth flow. Better. And again.’

Tabitha’s pounding punches slammed and echoed through the dark hall. Beating the dummy to sponge-bleeding ruins, while Reigo studied her every move for technical faults. Two small figures in a light-glowing circle. Refining her footwork; her knife technique. Slashing claws and crackling shocks, engineered to her own hybrid style. Perfecting her strikes, harder and faster; endlessly. Building a killer.

Their silent session was interrupted by a sudden loud bell, and a shouting commotion. An attack on the walls. But Reigo just watched her.

‘We have to get out there,’ Tabitha said urgently.

‘We’re training,’ Reigo protested, with a hand on her shoulder to stop her marching past.

‘There’s a horde outside!’ she argued back.

‘One bell,’ Reigo countered. ‘Just spiders. Let the gunners handle it,’ he assured her. Sure enough, she could already hear thumping artillery across the complex. Shouts and orders echoed from the walls outside, as rifles shrieked and laser flashes flared like lightning. She heard Seven racing over, with a rushing breath of fire through the screeching spiders beyond the walls.

‘I should be out there helping them,’ Tabitha disagreed, trying to push past him again. But Reigo gripped her shoulders; looking hard into her eyes.

‘We’ve got systems now,’ he assured her. ‘We’re getting better at killing them, before they hit the walls. And you’ll help your army more by training for tougher fights,’ he said. Letting go of her shoulders, but never looking away from her stare. ‘Look. We already agreed on this,’ he told her. ‘If we hear two bells, we all go out to fight. Three bells, and we have to get you involved. But if the Guardians and your Tribe can handle this one, then you have to let them. We can’t afford to waste your time fending off every attack.’ Tabitha watched him, and slowly took his point. Sighing, she cooled off and turned her back on the battle beyond the windows.

‘Alright,’ she conceded, with a shake of her head. ‘Train me for tougher fights.’

*

Guardian rifles flashed and shrieked, making a bloody massacre of the swarm from the walls. Sky Tribe was roaring fiercely, finally testing their new arrowheads on the horde. The hard shining stuff, mettall, pierced the spiders’ shells like their old glass arrows never could. Fearsome shafts that skewered them screaming, and pierced them dead like driven spears. Their new alloy shields, too, that seemed like they could stop a charging stag… though they didn’t get to try them out. The spiders were being culled in the plaza and blown to gore by artillery, before they ever made it to the foot of the walls. Thier’s defence drones flew endless passes over the rushing swarm, flashing laserbolts through scores of spiders each time.

A few minutes later, the ruined tree line was silent. Nothing else coming for them in the night. A cheer went up, but lessened this time. Calmer, and quieter, like there weren’t such great odds stacked against them. More just confirmation, that their growing system worked.

‘…That’s all?’ said Cold Moon, the Red-Eyes’ leader, in her quiet Stormish growl. Shamed unbearably to sheath her alloy knives, without first drawing the enemy’s blood.

‘A scouting raid,’ Swift Blood replied, leaning on his silvery new spear beside her. ‘Testing our defences. Nothing more.’ Cold Moon stayed silent; snarling at the city ruins beyond their walls.

‘I’m tired of these petty attacks,’ she growled at the night. ‘I wish they’d just come in force. I wish they’d meet us in battle, and get this over with!’ But Swift Blood watched her silently; he pointed past her shoulder to a pale haunting glow on the north horizon. A vast zombie aura, picking out the mountains miles away.

‘…Do you?’ he replied. He left her there to stare northward, as her Fierce-Hope ebbed away at the sight. The hive’s grim halo; growing and hidden from her. A cold uneasy feeling in her soul.

*

‘No. That’s wrong,’ Reigo told Tabitha, as he raised his narrow fighting knife to demonstrate. ‘You’re holding it like a dagger. It’s a knife, turn it around. Now bring your thumb and forefinger around the top of the handle, so they’re touching. And close your other fingers now. Good. That way you can wrap your palm around it.’

‘Like that?’ Tabitha checked, trying with her own knife.

‘That’s it,’ Reigo replied. ‘Now listen. The sharpness of the edge doesn’t matter, alright? It’s all in the point. That needs to be sharper than fuck.’

‘That’s the technical term for it?’ she said with a smile.

‘It is, yep,’ Reigo grinned back. ‘Now if your knife-point’s sharp enough, you don’t need to lash out like a madman with it, all over the place,’ he said, as he demonstrated in slow-motion. ‘You hold it in close to yourself. That way, you can just pull someone straight onto the blade. You’ll have more strength and control if you pull them towards you.’ He made a sudden fierce grab at an invisible victim, pulling them onto the knife-point to demonstrate.

‘What about avoiding the fight, and just dropping them?’ Tabitha replied. ‘Without making a sound?’

‘That’s the best way to fight,’ Reigo agreed. ‘Alright. If you’re behind someone, you’ve got your knife ready like this,’ he demonstrated. ‘But you’re not going to slice across their throat. Best way is to push the knife-point straight in, through the jugular. Straight through to the other side. Then you punch the blade forward, hard.’ He demonstrated on their invisible victim, with a vicious thrust. ‘Shove the blade away from you, straight through the front of their neck, and you rip the throat out with it.’

‘Christ,’ Tabitha muttered. Taken back by his casual tone.

‘Come on. We’re both in the killing business,’ Reigo shrugged. ‘It’s messy. But that’s how it is.’ Tabitha watched his demonstrations intently, trying to hide her discomfort. Carving up spiders was one thing, but it seemed more horrifying to talk about killing people so indifferently.

…As if I haven’t done brutal bloody things to people already, she reminded herself. She was no more mild-mannered than him. I’m going to win this war. I’m going to slaughter those bastards.

‘Show me again,’ she said, raising her knife to practise beside him.

*

Walking alone in the early hours, Tabitha whistled up to Seven on the higher walls to wave hello. Smiling with her nose scrunched, when he tried to wave a giant wing in return.

She was surprised to see people up and celebrating, out in the Ministry’s main courtyard beyond the barracks. Thier’s warehouse was still bustling, though it looked like a team of workers outside had just clocked off from their late shift. Gathered around dining tables for a grand supper.

Suppose they have to eat sometime, Tabitha told herself. She could take two minutes, she supposed, before her next meeting with Atha in the main building. She just wanted to see some ordinary life here, from a distance. Best not to get involved, though.

People were eating and drinking in the flower-lit gardens; dancing in couples as an old man played something like a violin. Peering from the pillars, Tabitha couldn’t help but smile at the nocturnal sight. It all looked so…

‘Majesty!’ said a short old man, tanned and hardy, in glad surprise. Passing by from the shadows with more bottles of wine for their meal. ‘Come, come,’ he urged her, taking her strongly by her hard black hand. ‘Come and share a drink. I’ve heard you can’t eat, more’s the pity,’ he said, with a sorry look for her. ‘But we’ll fill you up on wine, eh?’ he added, with a mischievous wink.

‘I can’t, I’m afraid,’ she said apologetically. ‘I have a meeting with the General–

‘Ohh, nonsense. Nonsense,’ the old man insisted, pulling her on warmly by the hand. ‘You’ll drink our wine and hear our music, and I won’t hear a word said otherwise.’ His loud call turned everyone’s heads; they were smiling and ushering her in to join their meal.

‘See? Life doesn’t stop just because of some siege,’ the merry man scoffed, while they took seats at the busy table. Batting at the thought of the Watchers, like a fly. He smiled as he wrapped a big rough hand around the neck of a dusty wine bottle, and took off the cork with a warm gentle pop. They were eating simply, but well. Meat, bread and hard sliced cheese, washed down with a few vintage bottles from some hidden cellar beneath the Ministers’ halls. One of many surprises buried in these ancient foundations. Likewise, there was a hidden bedrock to these hardier locals too. Beneath the sheen and polish and delicate good breeding of their high society, what they really knew best was living.

‘Ah. A glass for a queen, look,’ the old man said happily, presenting a piece of intricate crystalware from their random assortment.

‘…I’m sorry, I really can’t just now,’ Tabitha said politely, thinking of her impending meetings, as the man went to put the wine glass in her hand. The bright blue vintage looked like a cold winter sky, bottled and distilled. But the more she refused, the more he raised his face while he disagreed; shaking his head stubbornly at her objections.

‘No, no. I won’t hear of it, Majesty,’ he insisted passionately, shaking his head emphatically.

‘I’m sorry. There’s just too much to do–

‘Ohhh,’ he groaned theatrically. ‘Ever are we beset by grief and grand misfortune,’ he mourned, with a knowing smile to the others at some unknown classical verse. His face was drawn, with a lamenting look. ‘…No, my queen. ‘Tis in drinking deep of life’s simple joys, that we defy all death and misery,’ he quoted to her, with a philosophical air. ‘And hence, may we call our brief spell life at all.’ Tabitha couldn’t help but smile with him, as his happy look melted her heart; his big warm words and honest grin. Someone who lived life on full volume; full colour. Emma would’ve loved him. Clearly there was no declining his offer.

‘…One glass,’ she said, by way of a compromise, as they cheered and raised a toast in the moonlight. The city’s blue wine tasted richer and more powerful than any she remembered; it seemed to flood straight to her head.

‘Ah, we’ll make a Serenian of you yet, Majesty,’ he said warmly, shaking her shoulder as he smiled.

*

Thier watched intently as a team of drones hauled their sole massive salvage over the Ministry walls.

‘…You’re certain this will work?’ said Lotor, standing beside him. Watching a landing-square, hidden from the main complex by partitions, as the drone pack hovered down their cargo with a great metal creak.

‘That’s for you to find out, Professor,’ Thier smiled back, as he took his leave. ‘Use all the staff and resources you need. I’ll leave this in your capable hands.’

*

The thief crept again into their broken vault, hidden deep beneath the Ministry’s oldest hallways. Working by flowerlight, the figure wrapped more glinting gold ingots in ragged cloth, to stifle their clinking sound. Packed carefully, though not too many, into the rough-worn satchel on their shoulder. Amassing a hidden fortune, for better times than these.

The busy figure froze at a sound, echoing up from the deep black catacombs. Spooked. The thief took their chances and hurried away silently, from strange deeper noises in the city’s most ancient vaults.

*

Tabitha turned from her work, startled by something; small sounds through the deep black catacombs. A native rat, probably; there were plenty of those down here. Turning back, she put a hand on her creation. A creaking form, planted in the corner, that now filled half the room. Her face was bathed in its brightening glow.

It was growing fast; wild and unruly. She pruned it again, and thought her apology to it for the discomfort she was causing. Wondering if it could hear what she felt. Directing its growth, she spurred it on with fresh current. Feeding it, shaping it, she had to pull away weakly before it sapped every volt from her core.

Tabitha left it expanding, rooting and creaking, as she traced her path back for the stairway. It was reaching for the walls and the heavy stone ceilings. It wouldn’t be long until its branches pushed through.

18

Tabitha woke with a sudden sniffing breath, in the cosy perfumed scent of Fishbowl’s garden around her. Gorgeous sunshine warmed her side deeply where she lay. She stretched in satisfaction; hardly rested but still a little recharged. Smiling to see the creature working nearby. Its black rubbery tentacles were multitasking efficiently, beneath its vase-like body and calm clear orb. She still didn’t know what it thought about, or how it felt.

‘…I was dreaming about our beach,’ she told Fishbowl drowsily. ‘Deep Roots was there. He hated the heat,’ she said with a smile. ‘I think the Tribe were going to shave off their fur and turn into fish, or something.’ Tabitha watched the overgrown fairy-lit ceiling, and wondered where all that dream had come from in such a short sleep. Or why it’d made such good sense at the time. Looking beside her, she studied the flowers in blurry close-up. Petals so near and glowing-intricate that it ached her eyes to focus on them. She noticed a native beetle, no bigger than a ladybird; climbing the blue grass and trying to make the best of Fishbowl’s alien landscape.

Keep going mate, she thought. Uncurling a hard black finger, and hovering her claw-tip close, to see if the bug wanted a lift to the open windows. A sudden great bell chime from the barracks shocked Tabitha awake. A second warning chime sat her bolt upright, staring silent and breathing heavily, with a nervous twist in her stomach. The troops needed reinforcements. A third chime would mean–

It rang out again. Tabitha shot from her bedroom and ran for the door. She vaulted the stone balcony and dropped for the courtyard as Seven caught her in his saddle and tore off for the sky.

There were straight grey shapes soaring closer; pale dragons in tight formation. Sweeping ranks of them, clutching long dark objects beneath. Tabitha sank into Seven’s cockpit as he shot straight for them. Gripping a dragon savagely, Seven gored its throat and dropped it bloody from the blue. He circled them fast and tore through again; slaughtered a handful and torched what they were carrying. But the rest weren’t chasing him; they flew straight on for the Ministry itself. Too many to kill before they’d begin their bombing run. Tabitha dropped Seven again in a roaring dive. He tore a desperate bloody trench through another half-dozen, and massacred three more as they circled back. But they were close now. Too close to stop.

‘Fire!’ Atha bellowed on the walls. His artillery shrieked and thundered skyward, dropping more dragons in spiralling smoke trails as they swept on high over the plaza. Guardians, Sky Tribe and the survivors watched the sky in terror, as the whistling bombs began to fall.

‘Go through them again!’ Tabitha yelled out, panicking in the cockpit. ‘Torch them! Bring them down, Seven! Now!’ jetscales screaming, he ploughed gleaming gore through a whole burning rank of them. Matched their speed and tangled bloody violence through them, biting and brawling to drop as many as he could. But they just kept going, rank after rank, until the Ministry lay bare beneath them. Dropping dark payloads from their claws.

The Ministry echoed with screams. Guardians yelled at the flooding survivors to get underground, as the drones and defences unleashed a barrage on the sky. Most bright shots found their targets; exploding the bombs high above. But not all.

Reigo watched in horror as a row of explosions spread thrashing black clouds across the west gardens. There were more booming bursts overhead on the battlements; still more on the roofs. But no explosives… just a coal-black fog.

‘Gas!’ Reigo roared through the panicked courtyard. ‘Gas! Get inside!’ Recruits and civilians were already dropped and choking where the black mist spread thickest. More bursts hit across the northern walls. People were screaming and shouting, gasping for air, where soldiers and Sky Tribe staggered and died.

‘Soldiers! Get inside!’ Reigo yelled desperately, ushering screaming crowds for the corridors as the Ghosts and Guardians helped him clear the open spaces. Up above, on the abandoned ramparts, Thier’s drones fired on in tight unison. An endless barrage skywards, to burst more bombs before they struck.

‘They’re turning!’ Tabitha told Seven desperately, as the bombing formation peeled back. ‘Don’t you dare let those bastards get away!’ Seven shot snarling and mauled more dragons to ruins, racing on for the rest as they banked away. He tore another bloody trench through their strict ranks and snatched the outliers that dived for him, wrestling them to screeching gore as he went.

Thier’s gun-drones still thundered from the battlements, as the last bombs burst high above. Hitting a final few targets in their keen hybrid lenses, until they fell silent together on the walls. Thier turned, then, at the roar of a cannon. Beside him, a lone artillery gun still boomed shrieking lightbolts at the shrinking dragons. Atha, snarling fiercely into the sights. Thier watched him; a man possessed. Still firing, while the formation climbed too high to hit.

‘General,’ Thier called to him, between the deafening shots. ‘Atha!’

‘Fuck ‘em all!’ Atha roared back, punching the gun sights furiously. ‘Fucking scum!’ Thier just watched him sadly, until his own stony silence took hold.

Pale-faced, breathing heavily, Atha turned to the scene in the courtyard. Dozens of bodies were sprawled across the complex, dark-grey and poisoned, as the black mists cleared in the wind. Soldiers; tribals. Kids. For the first time in years, he felt sick. He stared at Thier beside him, who tapped grimly at his wristcom and instructed the defence drones to stand down.

‘Can those drones fly at altitude?’ Atha said bitterly. Thier nodded.

‘Destroying those bombs was the priority,’ Thier replied.

‘Well now those reptiles are the priority, in case they come back,’ said Atha, glancing at the sky. ‘Send ‘em after those bastards,’ he added, with a grey tone. ‘Give Her Majesty a hand.’

Snarling furiously, Tabitha dropped Seven through the dragons’ bloody ranks again. High over the city now, they were flying back for their vast clustered hive beyond the mountains. Black growths, like living artillery, were already taking bright distant shots at Seven’s shape. Missing widely at this range, but flashing countlessly as they drew ever nearer. Seven had to take down those dragons now, before he flew too close to the hive’s lethal cannons.

But it was the pale dragons’ sheer indifference that had Tabitha raging most. Those animals had no pilots; there was no instinct to survive. These versions seemed weaker than she’d seen before. Barely any fight left in them. They were pale shadows of Seven. Newer, and far less powerful. Like they’d been mass-produced, faster and cheaper, just for sheer numbers.

It doesn’t matter to the Watchers if they lose every last one, she thought to herself. These creatures are expendable. There to be used or destroyed… like us. Seven’s passionate reply just made her fight on harder: that that was the reason he fought for her. That he fought for his True Feeling, as he called it. And the living, his Tribe, which he had True Feelings for. For that precious thing the Watchers hated, above all else.

…The freedom to choose.

Tabitha understood, then, why Seven went at his brothers and sisters with so much violent ferocity. He despised them for it; the same thing he’d overcome. Their weakness of will.

Minds fused, murder-bright and boiling, she and Seven tore through their enemies together. Screaming and roaring in wild mirror-image, as they dropped the pale dragons in rabid ruin and bursting silver rain. By the time Thier’s defence drones raced high to join them, there was nothing left to kill.

*

The Ministry’s silent crowds were gathered around a space in the largest courtyard. A small group stood near the centre; ranks of shrouded forms lay beyond. Tabitha watched the funeral rites sternly. Hard and grieving. Her look softened for a moment, as Sea Mist put a gentle hand on her shoulder. Glancing back at her, Tabitha went forward as the funeral concluded.

‘There’s no need, Majesty,’ Saa advised her quietly.

‘I have to see them,’ Tabitha replied. ‘I have to see their faces.’

Her Majesty strode out solemnly to the shrouds; walking along their rows as Guardians lifted the sheets from their heads. Troops gathered around her like a living partition, to shield the crowds from the sight. Tabitha was looking at each face in turn; poisoned and pale. There was the four-armed soldier who’d stood watch outside the makeshift market; always smiling. And there was the lonely little boy from the city, orphaned by the invasion, who’d tagged on with the Tribe like a family. Swift Blood, the Bronzebacks’ leader, lay beside him. A veteran of great battles, who’d pledged his spear to her in grief on Sacred Mountain. Fallen in the poison, trying to save his adopted son. Further along, Tabitha saw dozens of faces she’d known in passing. Snatches of stories; glimpses of shattered lives. But all together, working hard, behind these familiar walls. Up early every day; breaking their backs to raise something good from these ruins. And there was the old man she’d had supper with, just last night. All that warmth, and heart, and colour, was drained out of his tanned hardy face. A piercing pain in her heartcore.

…I was meant to protect these people. It’s because of me that the Watchers came to this world. I should never have told the First Minister about them. It’s all my fault.

As Tabitha walked back towards them, Aelu could see she’d been tearful. She’d dried her eyes quickly; she refused to let her retainers see. But Sea Mist and Barkless knew. They didn’t say anything about it as their queen returned. They welcomed her in, and held her close. Walking on with her quickly, turning back for the main chambers, to get her away from the crowd before she broke down. Sky Tribe, Guardians and Serenity’s recruits gathered to light the funeral pyre in her wake.

‘Call a meeting at midday. In the parliament hall,’ said Tabitha, stifling her tears, as she walked on through the complex with her retinue.

‘Yes Majesty,’ Atha replied, without hesitation, in a grey grieving tone. ‘You need room to address all the recruits?’

‘I need room for everyone,’ she said.

*

‘…You made me your queen, because I promised to fight for you,’ Tabitha told the whole silent parliament. Her voice echoed through revived speakers, around the Ministry’s watching crowds, in endless seats where their former Ministers had held government.

‘Today, I failed you.’ She looked around at their countless faces. Every man, woman and child. She didn’t feel her old stage fright any more. She glanced quickly at her script on the podium. Awkwardly written in her own patchy Trade Language, but expertly translated by Saa.

‘We each lost a piece of ourselves, today,’ she continued, steadying her trembling voice. ‘Loving family, or treasured friends, who brought these walls to life. They each believed, wholeheartedly, in what we were doing here. In what we’re still doing here. And I believe that it’s our duty, for the love we felt for them, to continue our Ministry as they would.’ Despite her grief, despite the fear she felt that the crowds would turn on her, Tabitha was surprised at the sound of growing applause. She stooped her head quickly, to take a shaky breath and scan over her speech.

‘Every one of you joined me, in building a new Ministry here. Each one of you stepped forward, despite the fears we share, to do your great duty. United into one army, with one cause,’ she continued, raising her voice to the highest seats. ‘To defend ourselves, and the people we love, from the gravest threat this world has ever known.’

Tabitha paused in the heavy silence, feeling a sudden rising in her heartcore. ‘To lose our faith now, and surrender to our fear, would cast aside everything we’ve worked so hard for,’ she continued, with growing passion in her voice. ‘Because our cause, our battle, is for life itself!’ she told them clearly, with growing conviction. ‘And we will not go quietly from this life, without a fight!’ Tabitha looked around them sternly, her heartcore racing at their growing shouts. ‘Today we lost good friends, and people we loved,’ she told them all. ‘But let it also be the day that we closed ranks, and drew up our shields, around our loving memories of them. Let this be the day that we stopped merely defending ourselves, against an enemy we’re all united against!’ their thundering cheers lit a bright new fire inside her. ‘Let this day be remembered, for the hour we drew our knives together, as one army. And struck Death back, at its heart!’

*

In a glooming glassy chamber, in growing structures among the distant hills, the Watchers’ Prince studied floating reports. Hologram statistics, swirling and cycling in the palm of his hand.

The poison gas had been successful; the remnants’ young and weak were particularly well hit. When combined with the virus they were quickly perfecting, the Ministry’s crowded survivors would be driven underground once more. Packed tightly together, for the coming contagion to work best. An insurance, against unforeseen developments.

With the mothership grievously wounded, they’d had to improvise. Refining cruder creations, from older times. But every experimental weapon had been successful; each with its own part to play in the coming war. Gas to drive out the resistance, paired with the new mutagen in their final assault. Bone-clad serpents, breeding in the caves and hardened against laserfire, would destroy their drones and artillery. Dark squid massing, too, in their tunnels beneath the city. Several killed by strange roots, but still biding their time for open war.

And a full perfected pack of fire-throated gorgons, paired with the dragons they’d been bred from, to tear down the Ministry’s gates and high walls. All clearing the way for their metal-eating monsters, and starving acres of silver spiders, where only the strongest still survived. Ready to flood the Ministry’s corridors and massacre its hidden vaults.

But the Prince still waited impatiently for his grandest abomination. Beyond the breeding fields, in vast mud pits the size of a crater, its tentacles lurked like a forest. Dozens of Watchers manned consoles along its boundaries, marshalling its nutrition and reporting all growth. An unmoving mound stood at the centre, shining wet in a shrouding fog, where a great black chrysalis gestated its finished form. A singular appetite for resources, to rival any of their largest hordes. But a worthwhile investment. Enough to snare that rogue black dragon; inescapable. They’d finally pull it apart screaming, removing the remnants’ last defence… and conquer this paradise world they deserved.

As it was for the wild, so should it be for their conquest. To the final victor belonged the greatest spoils; it was self-evident. Right, and true. The pure natural order of all things. One way or another, they’d have a human hybrid in their grasp. They needed only one, the male or the female, to create their deadliest weapon of all.

19

‘Good speech,’ Big Fish rumbled, as they walked the Ministry’s marble corridors toward the command rooms below-ground.

‘Thanks,’ Tabitha replied, with a slight smile. Relieved to hear it.

‘Yeah, strange to hear someone speak publicly here and mean it,’ said Aelu, as she got the door ahead. ‘Utter any more truth in our Ministers’ grand chambers and the walls might crack.’

‘What’s, plan?’ said Barkless, walking on beside her.

‘Change in strategy,’ Atha replied.

‘We’ve been fending off their attacks for long enough,’ Tabitha told her retinue, as they followed her inside the blue glow of the war room. ‘It’s time we went on the offensive.’

*

‘The Watchers are escalating. All the assaults we’ve seen so far were only testing our defences,’ Tabitha told her silent council, who stood around their vast war table and the city’s hologram map. The sprawling model flickered only slightly now, since Thier’s technicians had recalibrated its celestial components. The map had been partially updated to show the local ruins, courtesy of surveillance drones that still survived the swarming city.

‘The Watchers’ next move will involve a much bigger force,’ Tabitha continued. ‘A conquering horde, with greater numbers than we could ever handle. They won’t waste any more time or resources on the smaller attacks we’ve already seen.’

‘Meaning no disrespect, but how do we know this?’ Atha replied. ‘Based on your experience?’

‘Yeah. Based on my experience,’ Tabitha said confidently, thinking back to the second battle at Will’s castle. ‘Painful, and personal. We won’t see any more single attacks,’ she said, looking around at her Ghosts and advisors. ‘Not now that they’re testing airstrikes on us. We might need to risk evacuation. Or be completely overrun.’

‘Agreed. We’re facing a joint strike, most likely,’ Reigo told the room. ‘Using everything we’ve seen so far.’

‘Just getting all the ingredients right, huh?’ Big Fish said darkly, as the others glanced over with nervous looks.

‘I caught a glimpse of the hive with Seven, just over the northern hills,’ Tabitha continued. She pulled the hologram map across, to place the city’s vast national park at the table’s centre. ‘It’s massive. Probably growing things we’ve never seen before. New ways around our defences. It’s not like the Watchers to give up on a fight.’

‘Same here,’ Reigo snarled vengefully. Gripping the table’s edge, he glared at the ruins of his city. ‘It’s time we tested your training. Out there.’

‘What did you have in mind?’ Tabitha replied, arms crossed where she stood opposite.

‘That strategy we talked about the other day? About blowing the ruins down into a kill box?’ said Reigo, nodding at the shattered towers in the scrolling hologram. ‘We’re making it happen. I want you on the team. Prove that I’ve actually taught you something.’

‘It’s a risk,’ Saa said cautiously, from the far side of the table.

‘Everything’s a risk,’ Atha replied. ‘We’re at war. It’s time we showed those bastards who’ll win.’

*

‘Still remember your dropship training, Majesty?’ said Reigo, as they walked the main corridor together.

‘Oh, you mean the wooden climbing frame that we practised jumping out of?’ Tabitha replied teasingly.

‘Hey, that was elite training,’ Reigo replied with a smirk. ‘…For one afternoon,’ he admitted. ‘Ahh, you’ll be fine,’ he said dismissively. ‘It’s everything that comes after the landing that you need to remember.’

‘Watching my corners, breach and clear, all that stuff,’ Tabitha agreed. ‘Still just seems like abstract theory to me.’

‘You knew you’d have to put it all into practice, before it starts to click,’ Reigo said with a shrug. ‘Obviously I’d have liked longer to train you, but–

‘There’s no time?’ Tabitha interrupted, with a grin. ‘I know. You’ve said. Repeatedly.’ She gave him a quick side-glance, to see if his silence was sulky. But he was just smiling to himself, as they walked on for the parliament’s main lobby.

Tabitha looked around at new defensive measures, crowding every stair and grand corridor. Thick timber barricades were being hammered together rapidly in the main rotunda. They’d all learned a hard lesson since the attack that morning; this place was hardly prepared for an assault inside the walls. Following Atha’s orders, by early afternoon the Ministry had been sectioned up into semi-blocked hallways and defensible corridors. Strategic spaces and bottleneck corners, manned by Thier’s fearsome defence drones. Guardians on watch were kitted out in blacksmithed alloy armour, melted down from dead spiders in the stables. Sky Tribe sparred ferociously in the gardens with metal shields and shining spears, or trained their archery tirelessly with shell-piercing bodkin points.

Tabitha smiled proudly at Sea Mist, as she passed her standing guard in the cloisters. Her tribe-sister gave a sharp grin in return, before she remembered her training and stared back ahead at the distant doors.

‘I’m impressed,’ Tabitha told Reigo, as they walked out into the crowded main courtyard to begin their first mission. Looking around in surprise, this seemed more like a spectator event than the quick quiet take-off she’d expected.

‘Indeed, Majesty. Our General has been busy,’ Thier considered, pacing on suddenly at their side. Slipping back into his smiling showman persona, that he loved to present for the watching masses. ‘But permit me an attempt to outdo him?’ he added happily, with a flourish of his hand. Drawing Tabitha’s gaze towards a distant parting, through the chattering crowds. Almost like…

A parade?

The watching crowds were falling silent. Backing away to the courtyard’s vast sides, as a massive procession appeared from the far gates by the warehouse. Countless spindly figures strode through the courtyard in strict marching lockstep; ordered by type and glowing faintly with clear celestial eyes. Clutching lowered rifles in their hard jointed hands.

‘Droids?’ Reigo muttered beside him, as their blank stares and varied shapes kept striding past to fill the corridors. ‘Where the hell did you find this many?’

‘Well, this is a world capital, Sergeant,’ Thier smiled back, with a glance toward the ruins beyond the walls. ‘Once Professor Lotor’s trials and theories with the celestial matter could be codified overnight, I… took some initiative, and… automated our recruitment exponentially.’ Tabitha glanced at Thier uncertainly. Still staring in awe at the sheer number of them. Endless foot-thumping columns of thin robot soldiers, staring dead ahead in endless procession. Ready for war.

‘A living soldier’s worth twenty of those things,’ said Reigo, with a bitter tone. ‘They don’t watch your back. I’d know.’

‘Nor are they afraid to fight on until their destruction, against an overwhelming enemy,’ Thier countered pleasantly. ‘We’re fighting a war of numbers, Majesty,’ he appealed to her. ‘I merely wished to increase those numbers further. I’ve already sent heavy drones ranging into the surrounding countryside, in order to run additional search-and-revive operations.’

Impressive, Thier. And very much needed, Tabitha told herself. But it would’ve been good of you to let me know. I can’t even control the Celestial myself.

‘…You disapprove,’ he said sadly, studying her expression.

‘Thier, it’s not that,’ she sighed, trying to find the words. ‘It’s just… well, I think you might’ve taken more initiative than I expected. Let’s talk later, ok?’

‘Of course, Majesty,’ the tall man replied, bowing slightly. Wearing a crestfallen look, as he turned back to watch the droids’ final ranks marching by. Tabitha couldn’t help but glance at him. She hadn’t meant to throw all that work back in his face.

‘Please, don’t think I’m not grateful,’ she added, watching his brightening look with a proud smile. ‘Those droids could save a lot of lives. They’re amazing, Thier.’ The man watched her curiously, then. Smiling gracefully… but all the while wondering what he’d done that was quite so controversial.

‘I thank you, Majesty,’ he said pleasantly. ‘But there’s more to come,’ he added, as her Ghosts and advisors made their way over to join her. Thier nodded back to the empty parting in the crowd.

‘We’d have wanted longer, but the Watchers forced our hand,’ said Reigo, over the noise of the chattering crowds. ‘After the attack this morning, well… no one could hold them back.’

‘What do you mean?’ Tabitha replied. But Reigo didn’t say anything more. He just nodded over to the bustling crowd, who’d gathered around a growing noise from the archway toward the castle barracks. Strict shouts echoed there, with a deep thumping drum. Then sudden pipes, sharp and glorious, in bold rising unison. A growing column of troops.

‘Queen’s Guard!’ came a hard raw bellow. Looking closer, Tabitha could make out his face.

…Atha.

More heads turned at the booming beat of the drum. Snare drums rattled, tight and rapid-fire, like machine guns in the yard. A sound like brash bagpipes rose up against the courtyard walls, as silhouettes filed out in columns from the ancient arch. Tabitha was shocked to see them all. The frightened survivors who’d fled for the Ministry a few days ago were now an endless striding unit. A sea of killers, marching in lockstep. Hard stares dead ahead. Black uniforms; badged berets. Moving as one, a battalion; a dark endless column marching to their city’s defence. Behind them, her own stern Sky Tribe. Bristling in bones and feathers; a striding wall of silvery spears and bright arrow quivers. Marching a ceaseless path through the chattering crowds, who smiled in reverent silence to see them. Young kids watched in fascination from their parents’ shoulders. Old veterans stood straighter in the crowd, as they watched their boys and girls march by. A smiling woman saw her grown kids pass by in the striding column. The drums and pipes were a bold sweeping tide; a rising feeling in Tabitha’s chest.

…Hope.

A number of marching troops carried large square banners. She saw Irren’s proud smile beside her, at their new royal insignia on display. A bright thorny moonflower on a field of black cloth; crested by spears and circled in a horned blue crown. Thick fabric, trimmed and gifted from Thier’s bustling warehouse, and embroidered by drone. Saa’s quietly organised fingerprints all over the finished effect.

Atha’s hard yell stopped the soldiers in their tracks; they turned and stamped as one. They’d seemed so fearful and scattered, when Tabitha first saw their hunched grieving shapes crowd the Ministry on that first day. Now, though… maybe it was just all that fresh order and purpose about them. But there somehow seemed to be more of them.

‘Present, arms!’ Atha bellowed in the silent grand courtyard. A single clattering tide, as the standing army gripped their shouldered weapons and shunted them forward as one. It was the other faces Tabitha was watching; her Ghosts around her, and the civilians too old or young to fight. Applauding their fighting men and women, arrayed in uniform before them.

*

‘Ready for your first mission, Majesty?’ said Reigo.

‘We’re taking off from here?’ Tabitha replied. ‘Why?’

‘Good optics,’ Irren said politically, at her left shoulder. Nodding to the crowds with a smile. ‘These people have a soldier queen,’ he shrugged. ‘They want to see her fly off into battle, with their brave Guardian troops. I’ve got camera drones recording it.’ Tabitha watched him curiously. ‘You wanted to restore morale,’ he added. ‘This can’t hurt.’

Together they glanced up at a growing jet-noise. A hovering shape rose from a distant corner of the complex; a fierce hybrid gunship. Recovered by drones from the city ruins, and revived into working order via Lotor’s endless experiments. The Ministry crowds were staring in awe at the aircraft’s sleek celestial shape, its dull gold skin and grand sweeping feather-fins, as it landed down before them in the chattering square.

‘Well, that’s our weird-ass ride,’ Reigo said happily, dragging his eyes from his gunship’s glorious resurrection. ‘Lead the way, Majesty.’ He and Tabitha strode on together for the gunship’s open side-door, both quickly kitted out with gear and weapons by scurrying soldiers. All for Irren’s careful propaganda, while camera drones followed them through the cheering crowd.

‘Lucky for me, we don’t have to sit our arses directly on that plant matter,’ Reigo added quietly. ‘That’d be too much interfacing for my taste, I saw what it did to the artillery. But, it looks like the interior’s been left pretty un… uncelestitified,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Uncelestialised?’ Tabitha offered, as they reached the gunship’s open side-doors.

‘Yeah, that one’s better,’ he muttered back.

‘Oh, I’m totally taking the credit for that term, if that’s a thing now,’ said the lean blue pilot, smiling over her shoulder from the cockpit.

‘Aelu?’ Tabitha replied in shock. Gripping a rail to haul herself up into the gunship’s cramped rear seats.

‘Like I said, Thier had a job for me,’ Aelu replied happily. ‘…You don’t remember me saying that, do you?’ she realised. ‘Over drinks, the other night? …No one ever listens to me,’ she muttered unhappily.

‘Atha listens to you,’ Reigo offered, as he strapped himself in beside Tabitha. ‘But, he probably doesn’t have much choice.’

‘Ahh, shut your face,’ Aelu mumbled back. As Tabitha clipped her harness together, she saw that there was room for two more on the seats opposite. Promptly filled by a grinning bright-skinned youngster, and then the most serious man she’d ever seen. Both heavily laden with pop-stud pouches across their military harnesses, and the explosives they’d need to topple the ruins. The winged insignia on their shoulders matched Reigo’s. Aerial Marines.

‘Your Majesty, this is Ontas Cephal,’ Reigo said of the grey serious man, as the ground crew cleared and Aelu took the gunship carefully into the air. ‘Everyone just calls him Tape.’

‘I admire the multitudinous utility of adhesive tape, of all kinds,’ the grey man agreed, shaking Tabitha’s hand dutifully. ‘Particularly whilst on campaign. It was something of a revelation to my kind.’ Sure enough, thick rolls of duct tape filled the smaller pouches on his laden combat vest.

‘That’s… how Tape is,’ Reigo muttered to her, as the hovering gunship rose past the Ministry’s outer walls. Seven soared on behind them, as their growling air support. ‘And this is Pri Etta, otherwise known as Sunshine.’

‘So you’re the new intern?’ he said, grinning as he shook her hand. ‘Majesty,’ he added, respectfully. The young man’s eyes were quick and glinting.

‘Why Sunshine?’ Tabitha replied, smiling quizzically.

‘Desert campaign on Selura,’ Reigo explained. ‘He escaped a raider camp unarmed, and torched it with a binocular lens. Killed nineteen of the enemy trapped inside. We couldn’t have evacuated our refugees without him.’

‘Me or them, ma’am,’ Sunshine said brightly. Tabitha smiled back uncertainly. ‘I’m sure glad you arrived here when you did, ma’am,’ he added with a grin. ‘I’d hate to survive a whole desert campaign, just to get drunk by a bug.’

‘Well I’ll do everything I can to prevent your drinkage, soldier,’ Tabitha replied with a smile.

‘Watch for movement on the streets,’ Aelu called back from the pilot seat, as they raced out low for the towering ruins past the plaza. ‘I’m taking us down for the first building.’

20

‘This’d be a whole lot faster with jump packs,’ Sunshine grumbled, as Aelu dropped them in the ruins and lifted the gunship away. Circling high above them to keep watch.

‘Nothing we can do about it,’ Reigo replied sternly, as he led them forward. ‘Stay on-task.’

‘Yes Sarge,’ Sunshine conceded. He hunched tightly over his lowered rifle like the others, as they hurried on quietly for cover nearby.

Tabitha glanced around constantly at the vast city ruins, looking for any distant sign of Alex. This was a perfect opportunity for the bastard to attack. But Thier’s drones hadn’t spotted him yet; nor had Seven on his constant patrols.

…But she had to focus now. She couldn’t afford to let Alex prey on her mind.

‘Alright,’ said Reigo, taking a knee, as he waved his squad to huddle close. Studying a marked map intently. ‘As discussed. Seven’s going to blow down the target ruins to the north and distract anything that’s crawling around out here. And kill it, if it starts drifting our way. Either that or they’ll hide at the sight of him. At least that’s the plan,’ he added, with a nod to Tabitha for the strategy she’d put forward. ‘While Seven’s putting on a show for the enemy, we breach these western towers as drones take the east and south,’ he continued, with a glance at the ruined cityscape running around them in a rough circle. Each dead tower block had been chosen for its relative size, with the intention of toppling further buildings like giant dominoes. Forming a new rubbled landscape around the Ministry plaza, to direct the flow of any more spider swarms.

‘And there remain no signs of life among these buildings? No survivors?’ Tape double-checked.

‘Nothing from Thier’s surveillance drones, as usual,’ Reigo confirmed. ‘Now obviously the demolition drones move faster, so they’ll wait for our signal. Then we’ll blow the whole lot simultaneously,’ he continued. ‘Atha’s cannons will try to drop any towers that don’t fall properly, but we don’t want to waste any more artillery shots than we have to. Just get our charges down and get out fast, while Aelu keeps an eye on–

Glancing back at a sudden landslide, they watched a distant tower topple in a thundering dustcloud. Seven, roaring victoriously, as he attacked the next ruin along.

‘Guess we’ve started, then,’ Reigo sighed, as they watched him in the distance.

‘…You get used to him,’ Tabitha told them apologetically.

‘We’d better get moving,’ said Sunshine. Nodding silently, Tape stood first and helped him up with his heavy backpack of strange explosives.

‘Are those going to be enough?’ Tabitha said quietly, nodding at the charges on their tactical vests, with a look at the size of their target buildings towering ahead.

‘They’re sufficient,’ Tape replied, with a serious nod.

Rifles aimed, watching constantly for movement in the ruins, the squad headed quickly for the first tower’s derelict doors. Tabitha glanced at the others non-stop. Trying to match up her training and theory to the way they moved in reality.

‘Spiders,’ Tape said quietly. Reigo stopped them immediately to take cover among shattered concrete walls. Signalling to Tabitha behind him, to hang back closely and watch.

‘Just two,’ Sunshine whispered, studying their distant shapes down his rifle scope.

‘Clear shots?’ Reigo muttered. Tape nodded back from his gun sights. ‘Alright. Pick your bug and take it.’ A prompt laserbolt each from Tape and Sunshine, stifled but not fully silenced, dropped the spiders dead in the distance.

‘Clear,’ Reigo added quietly, as he signalled them on toward the doors. ‘Stay tight,’ he reminded Tabitha, over his shoulder. ‘One shriek out of a spider and they’ll blow our cover. Eyes on everything.’

Pausing hurriedly by the shattered glass doors, Sunshine studied the building’s lobby beyond a toppled girder inside. Giving them the all-clear, he led them in quietly towards the gigantic rubble that blocked their path.

‘Little help?’ said Reigo, spotting a way through. Tabitha gripped the fallen girder with him, sinking her claws in for a better grip. Grunting as she lifted it with him, she noticed his smile as her strength took over.

‘D’you work out?’ he said, with a quick grin. Ducking on through with the others, as Tabitha lowered the steel beam behind them and caught up. Prowling the haunted lobby in silence, a couple of quick finger-points from Reigo directed Tape and Sunshine to the building’s stairways, on either side of the dead elevators.

‘Alright, you’re with Sunshine,’ Reigo told her quietly. ‘Watch his back. You’ll be fine.’ Nodding in reply, Tabitha kept her rifle shouldered and hurried up the stairs with her partner.

The demolition work was painstaking, though mercifully uneventful. For the first time Tabitha noticed the sheer fatigue involved, in being constantly switched on to any signs of movement around her. Rifle at the ready, she watched over Sunshine’s quick work from every corner and stair angle as they moved up the floors to plant his charges. Surprisingly small squares of them, she noticed, as he stuck each package quickly to a loadbearing column and nodded them on for the floors above.

*

‘Charges set,’ came Reigo’s voice in their earpieces.

‘Same,’ Sunshine replied quietly, leading Tabitha downstairs for the lobby.

Moving quickly, and lifting the girder again in the doorway, Tabitha followed her squad outside to the next target building. They had it far easier getting through the next entrance and up into each successive floor, though the faded spider-prints in the brickdust had everyone on edge. But again, nothing came of their caution.

‘Lucky lucky,’ Sunshine said with a smile, as he finally finished setting all his small charges and led Tabitha back for the grand dead corridors. They hurried downstairs for the dust-wrapped entrance and the next building along.

‘Feels like more people should be doing this with us,’ Tabitha said politely, keeping careful watch as Sunshine went at his work inside the third tower.

‘Absolutely,’ he chuckled back, breathing more heavily from all their stair-climbing, as he set down his heavy backpack again. ‘We’d usually have multiple squads on a job this big. But, then we’d need multiple aircraft to insert ‘em all too. Multiple aircraft to extract ‘em all at the same time, if the job went wrong. This is tougher, and it’ll take longer, but we’re safer with seats reserved on our one ride outta here. It’s all logistics.’

‘Ah, yeah,’ Tabitha supposed. Still, she wondered if Seven could’ve made quicker work of the whole job on his own. Or if Thier’s drones couldn’t have sped through here more efficiently.

‘As for those demolition drones,’ said Sunshine, like he’d read her mind, ‘they’re handy and all, but stupid as shit. Totally screwed if there’s wreckage in the way. And if you haven’t dusted off the spot first before they plant a charge, and kissed their little robot asses for ‘em to go ahead with it, three times out of ten they won’t plant it. They ain’t the holy grail of demolition tech everyone makes ‘em out to be.’

Well… it’s probably just the niche demolition community who recognise that debate, Tabitha told herself.

‘And it’s good to keep meatbags like us in practise, I spose?’ she said brightly.

‘Exactly,’ he replied, as he finished up and stood from his dust-covered knees. Leading her on for the corridor again. ‘Tech’s always best used in joint tactics,’ he explained. ‘There’s things we can do that drones can’t, and vice versa. Same goes for tanks, tools, take your pick. Same with your, uh, Seven too,’ he added. ‘I watched him rip apart entire formations up there. But I bet he can’t make a sandwich for shit.’ Tabitha laughed at that, quietly, despite her caution in the hallways.

‘No, I don’t suppose he could,’ she replied, smiling to picture Seven’s lame attempts. And, thinking about it, maybe the combined effort of blowing down every building around them on his own might have killed him. Or at least put him in recovery for a day or two, when they really couldn’t afford that lack of protection.

‘Anyway, if it’s all drone work then I wouldn’t get to blow shit up myself,’ Sunshine concluded, as they watched their corners and headed back down the endless marble stairs. ‘I love this job.’ But Tabitha was looking past him; no reply. Her sharp gold stare fixed on something moving. Before Sunshine knew what was happening Tabitha shoved him aside and pounced for it. She knifed the monster’s roaring head and shot volts through its skull in a bright thumping cindercloud. Fists flying fast in sudden sequence. Raining dents in the shocked creature’s face as it staggered back on the steps and crashed down the stairway. It tumbled to a stop on the next landing down, and she was on it again. Machine-gunned its hazing mouth and ducked its swipe to smash fierce punches through its jerking skull. She spun a kick in its staggering knee and knocked it thundering to the next floor down. Her pouncing shock blew it clean through the balustrade; she rode it flailing to crashed gory ruins as it broke her fall against the booming lobby floor. Her squadmates opened fire on the spiders swarming in around them.

Broken bones healing, Tabitha spun snarling and pounced for the spiders behind her. Reigo stared, stunned at the sight of her, as he watched all her training in fierce fast-forward. A human whirlwind; all burning black smoke and lightning strikes. A spinning flurry of bursting knife cuts, painting the air in flying blood as half a dozen spiders crashed dead in screeching unison. More spiders followed them; flooding in through the lobby’s shattered windows as Aelu’s gunship cannons rattled and burst through the horde outside.

‘Protect your queen!’ Reigo barked at his squadmates. Their stifled shots rattled bright and vicious around her; Tabitha spinning and clawing spiders apart before they reached her soldiers. Sparking and striking in rapid bloody ruin, as the squad watched her violent flurries in pulse-pounding shock. Their own dark hellion; a destroyer. Tabitha landed from a leap, fire-eyed and breathless, as the last torn spiders crashed down around her.

‘Everyone alright?’ she panted as she turned to them. But the soldiers just stared at her. They didn’t know what the hell she was, in that bright violent moment. Glimpsing some strange new lightning aspect of her, black-wreathed and burning formidable, that faded quickly like a passing storm.

‘…Yeah,’ Reigo muttered back, still staring in shock with his soldiers.

‘Lead the way Sergeant,’ she replied, catching her breath. ‘Let’s get this done.’

*

‘Last one,’ Reigo said quietly, still wiping the spiders’ silver blood from his face. Leading them on towards the fourth main tower along. Checking the rubbled streets that were dwarfed beneath it, for any sign of more spiders among the stores’ cracked walls.

‘We’re only demolishing four towers?’ Tabitha replied, in welcome relief. ‘I thought it’d take more than that, to make all the mounds and valleys you were talking about.’

‘Four structures of this size are sufficient,’ Tape confirmed flatly, but not unkindly. ‘Merely visualise the total volume of their materials in their current vertical state, rapidly dispersed across the total area achieved during their destabilisation and fragmentation.’

‘He means they’ll cover more land than you think, once we flatten ‘em,’ Sunshine translated for her, with that quick glint in his smiling eyes. ‘And topple more buildings with ‘em, ideally.’

‘That’s the plan, anyway,’ Reigo chipped in. ‘C’mon.’

*

‘Well, bye towers,’ Sunshine said brightly, where the squad took cover at a distance. Aelu hovered the gunship down carefully behind them, ready to lift them out. ‘Wanna do the honours, Majesty?’ said Sunshine, offering Tabitha the remote trigger to detonate them.

‘Nope. It’s all yours,’ she replied happily.

‘Ahh, I was kinda hoping you’d say that,’ he grinned back. ‘Boom.’ Clicking the trigger with a tiny beep, all four towers blew in bright banging sequence up their giant sides. Toppling in sections, piling down floor upon floor, until the colossal buildings thundered down like an earthquake all around them. Now the eastern skyscrapers too, then more echoing booms south of the Ministry, as the drones completed their work and coordinated their own demolitions in turn. Seven had already finished dropping his towers on the Ministry’s north side, and seemed to be working to his own plan regardless. Tabitha watched his distant shape tearing down another building anyway, probably just because he felt left out. The whole surrounding cityscape boomed and burst and toppled gigantic around her.

‘…Any more of those explosives? Lying around?’ said Reigo, turning to Tape. Still in awe at the punch they packed.

‘I have a small few more in containment, for personal use,’ Tape confirmed, in all seriousness.

‘Personal use?’ Tabitha muttered quietly between them.

‘I might need to requisition those,’ Reigo mumbled, still staring at the towers’ rising brickdust.

‘Of course, Sergeant,’ Tape replied.

*

‘You couldn’t have left the massive bloody dustclouds until I’d lifted you out?’ Aelu complained, as she opened up the gunship’s jets and flew the squad away over the toppling ruins.

‘Where’s the fun in that?’ Reigo grinned back. ‘It’s flight training, anyway,’ he added. ‘Adverse conditions.’ Aelu muttered something back about creating some adverse conditions for him, but she trailed off quietly. It wasn’t a particularly good comeback.

‘Huh. Looks like that actually worked,’ said Reigo, nodding them all to look from his side-door. Stretching out beneath them was a dust-drifting landscape of pale rubble, creating a vast ring of strut-poking hills beyond the Ministry walls. A handful of streets remained half-clear among the rubble valleys, presenting easier ways through for the Watchers’ hordes. Intended to funnel their swarms into concentrated clusters, where Atha’s focussed artillery could do its worst.

‘…Sh-shit! Spider!’ Sunshine yelled in his seat. Opening fire in sudden horror, as the silver stowaway fed on Tape’s slumped body beside him. Screeching at Reigo’s pistol shots, the spider scrambled back outside along the gunship’s fuselage. Panicking, Aelu tried to fly unsteadily and shake it off the aircraft, before it punched its tongue-spike through the glass canopy beside her. Its claws were sunk too deeply; Aelu was yelling as she dodged its whipping tongue in the cockpit.

‘Fly straight and bring us down!’ Reigo yelled at her, trying to hit the spider with rifle shots from the side door.

‘Shit, Tape!’ Sunshine yelled in panic, shaking him hard as if he’d come back around.

‘He’s gone!’ Tabitha shouted, heartbroken. She looked desperately for Seven to help them, and saw that he already was. A roiling cloud of bloody silhouettes in the distant sky, with Seven snarling and roaring at its violent heart. Ripping dragons apart to cover the gunship’s escape.

‘Gods!’ Aelu snarled, as the spider gave up on its whipping tongue-spike and crawled aside from her pistol shots. Jaw clenched, still strapped into her seat, Tabitha searched for the spider on the gunship’s front. She knew this fight was on her. Their lives depended on her. Heartcore racing, she struggled to unclip her harness.

‘What are you doing!?’ Reigo yelled at her, trying to grab her arm as she climbed out from her seat. The wind whipped through her hair as she struggled out through the side door.

‘I’m landing us!’ Aelu screamed back at her. ‘You’ll get yourself killed!’ But the spider was working too fast on the glass canopy; wriggling its legs through the shattered holes. Watching it in panic, and dropping the speeding gunship as fast as she could, Aelu would still never land them in time.

‘If that thing gets in with you then we’re all dead!’ Tabitha yelled back, over the deafening windspeed by the open side-door. Springing her claws, Reigo snarling beside her, Tabitha sank her grip into the aircraft’s fuselage and climbed outside across its bodywork. Yelling as she slipped and clawing on for dear life, she dragged herself on towards the spider on the front canopy. The bastard was too fast for her pistol shots; it shrieked at a lost leg and moved further around the gunship’s front to attack the glass again.

‘You can’t land us in the plaza!’ Reigo bellowed at Aelu from the back, as Sunshine tried frantically to save Tape’s life. ‘The explosions drew the swarm out! They’ll swamp us! Get us back inside the Ministry!’

‘I’m about to fucking die!’ Aelu screamed back at him, trembling in terror. The slamming spider cracked the glass above her head; wriggling in a leg to try and sting her.

Wind thundering in her ears, more scared and focussed than she’d ever had to be, Tabitha pounced for the spider on the gunship’s canopy. She wrestled it screaming and gripped it hard, to shotgun her volts and throw its limp carcass off the aircraft. Pulling a severed leg-stinger back through the glass, where it hung an inch over Aelu’s head.

Breathless, heart pounding in her throat, Aelu watched Tabitha cling to the canopy struts above her. She focussed her trembling grip on the flight stick, and hovered the gunship down into the Ministry’s main courtyard.

‘Get Lotor!’ Tabitha called urgently to staring soldiers, as she jumped down from the gunship roof. ‘Someone’s been stung! Help us!’

‘Hey!’ said Reigo, dragging Sunshine away by the shoulders, from where he’d desperately continued his CPR on Tape. He’d get himself killed. ‘There’s venom inside him! He’s gone!’ Reigo yelled, pulling the young man away. Having to half-wrestle him, when Sunshine struggled back to take hold of his best friend. ‘He’s gone, mate,’ Reigo told him, with a gentler tone, as Sunshine gave up the fight. The man shoved Reigo away to yell and curse in the courtyard; pacing snarling circles with his hands gripped behind his head. Shaking, Aelu climbed unsteadily from the cockpit with Tabitha’s help. Both hurried around to Tape’s lifeless body, where Guardians rushed from the staring crowd. Lotor ran over with his medical droids, crowding around him and searching for a pulse. Big Fish and the Ghosts watched in silence with the Tribe. Standing up slowly, with a careful look to Tabitha and Reigo, Lotor sighed and shook his head.

‘You could pump the venom out!’ Sunshine said desperately. ‘Y-you can revive him!’ he appealed to Tabitha, with a broken look. Tabitha felt her throat tighten, as she watched him silently. The way he was staring, hopelessly, just waiting for her to say that she could.

‘…It doesn’t work that way,’ she replied quietly, as she watched him with a pained look. ‘I’m so sorry.’ Sunshine just turned away and yelled out raging in response. Dropping to his knees in the courtyard as Lotor hurried Tape’s body away. Feeling broken, on the verge of tears, Tabitha went to hold Sunshine where he knelt.

‘Best to leave him,’ Reigo advised her quietly, stepping in to coax her away.

‘He needs people around him,’ Tabitha disagreed. ‘He needs friends.’

‘He had one friend in here,’ Reigo replied, glancing back at the broken man. ‘I’ve known Sunshine a bit longer, yeah?’ he offered gently, as he walked away with her. ‘He’s angry, so let him be angry. For now, just leave him be.’

*

Walking alone through the corridors, reeling from Tape’s death and everything she might have done to save him, Tabitha felt her jaw tightening as she passed them by. Rank upon rank of them, guarding every door and hallway. Staring coldly, and possibly half-living. Keeping watch, with the intention of making everyone feel safer. But the opposite was true. No one much liked having so many hybrid droids around, watching them from every corner. And things were only getting worse, according to certain rumours: that the robot soldiers were too black-and-white about who could pass through their doorways. That they were quick to bare their rifles, if people tried to explain themselves or disagree.

‘Majesty,’ Saa said breathlessly, as she caught up with her in the main hall.

‘More incidents?’ Tabitha sighed. Saa nodded grimly.

‘A young boy,’ she confirmed. ‘Threatened at gunpoint, for looking through drawers in the old offices. Unauthorised personnel, according to the droid that cornered him. He was almost shot.’ Furious, Tabitha stormed away for the Ministry’s higher levels.

*

‘You wanted to speak with me, Majesty? My sincere condolences, for the loss of your comrade–

‘What the hell are you doing, Thier!?’ Tabitha shot back. ‘I left you in charge of our drones. Now you’re reviving droid armies?’

‘Merely taking the initiative,’ he tried to explain. ‘We are at war. I thought it beneficial to move quickly, into the revival of more useful military assets.’

‘Living military assets, that we haven’t tested, with live weapons and minds of their own!’ Tabitha snapped. ‘Didn’t you think about the risk involved in that, with all the people cooped up in this place? What if any one of those robots misfired, when you marched them past the crowds out there? What if that droid had shot a little boy because it felt like it!? They’re cross-breeds, Thier! We don’t understand them yet!’

‘Regretful, truly. But those droids are still bound by rules and protocols, Majesty,’ he tried, soothingly. ‘Despite appearances they would never allow harm to come to anyone within these walls.’

‘Tell that to the boy and his mother you’ve scared into hiding!’ Tabitha snapped. ‘As if these people aren’t frightened enough! I’m doing everything I can for these survivors Thier, and you’re up here working against me!’

‘…I apologise Majesty, if I required your prior permission–

‘Just let me know first, will you!?’ she yelled at him. ‘I’m responsible for these people! I’m supposed to be keeping them safe!’ Sighing tensely, Tabitha took a trembling breath and tried to cool off. Thier watched her in heavy silence; unsure of what to say. Recalling her training, and stepping back from her feelings, Tabitha gave up on her anger. She tried to be more objective about it, like Reigo had taught her. His hard words still rang in her head.

If it won’t change anything, and doesn’t move us all forward, drop it. Focus on what you can do next. Focus on fighting this war.

‘…I’m sorry, Thier,’ she added, once she’d weighed it all up. ‘I shouldn’t have shouted at you. It’s not like anything’s even happened with the droids,’ she sighed. ‘What with the funerals, and this bloody war, and now Tape…’ Thier watched her trembling, and considered her position, as she sat down wearily in an old chair.

‘…Feeling the pressure?’ he offered carefully, as he took a seat beside her. ‘I have some experience there.’ Tabitha watched him, and stilled her emotions; following the ancient practice she’d been reading about. Keeping to her objective thoughts.

Look for the lesson; the way to improve. There’s always something to learn.

‘So, how do you break off from it? The pressure?’ she said wearily. ‘What could take your mind off all this?’

‘Well… taking your mind off a problem isn’t always the most effective way to deal with it,’ Thier considered. ‘I’ve often found that any anger and frustration arise out of paralysis, or a lack of forward motion,’ he explained. ‘And a given problem, isn’t necessarily the problem. Only the lack of time, effort or knowledge I’ve invested into solving it. Once a solution is found, with time and hard work, all the anger and frustration seem to disappear. As if they were never there.’

‘I… think I get you,’ Tabitha replied, mulling over his words.

‘Well,’ Thier continued. ‘Have you ever known days where you were so hurried, with so much to do, that the workload seemed impossible?’

‘Definitely,’ she said, managing a smile through all her worry.

‘And yet you survived them,’ he replied. ‘Results were achieved. But how?’

‘It was just automatic, I suppose,’ said Tabitha. ‘You’re down in the thick of it… you can’t even think… and the only way out is to keep going, hard. Or work around it.’

‘Go hard, or work around it,’ Thier echoed, with a growing smile. ‘Step back and see the bigger picture, and break off the next small piece in the sequence. One simple task at a time.’

‘I suppose so,’ she conceded. What is the next small task, anyway?

‘See, you already know the solution to your frustrations, Majesty,’ Thier offered. ‘You need only apply it.’

Go hard or work around it, Tabitha considered. One thing at a time. ‘Thanks, Thier,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I think I needed this.’

‘Glad to be of service,’ he said, with a delighted bow. Eager to get away.

‘But don’t think I’ve let you off for the droids,’ she added, in gentle warning. ‘We need you, Thier. We need what you’re doing, for our forces. But I’ll revive what we need by myself, if you keep risking lives for your own ambitions.’

‘I understand completely, Majesty,’ he replied, bowing again as he took his leave.

‘Work with Saa,’ she told him. ‘And test your new creations outside the walls.’

‘Of course,’ Thier conceded, with that winning smile as he left. The smile she knew, now.

One tool among many, that tend to get him whatever he wants.

*

‘Think we should go over?’ said Big Fish. Watching Sunshine’s hunched figure in the corner of the cafe.

‘I wouldn’t,’ Aelu advised him quietly. ‘You didn’t see him earlier. I thought he’d fly that gunship back out there by himself.’

‘No-Hope,’ Sea Mist agreed beside them, as she studied the silent man. ‘Give, time.’

‘Fierce-Hope, re-grow. Take, time,’ Barkless advised them. ‘Alone, time.’

‘Yeah, I guess,’ Fish considered. ‘You’re all smarter than me, anyway.’ Aelu watched him carefully; he looked serious.

‘…You’re smart, Fish,’ she replied. Studying him for a moment. ‘What’s up?’

‘Nah, I was just thinking about that mission this morning,’ he replied. ‘Like, why I didn’t get asked to go,’ he added, hiding a hurt look. ‘So, like, maybe I’m just too big and dumb for special, demolition, surgical… y’know.’ Sea Mist and Barkless were watching him, with looks as if they shared his sentiment.

‘Fish, you weren’t asked to come because you’re not a demolitions expert,’ Aelu replied gently. ‘Same goes for both of you,’ she told the tribals. ‘And even if you were there Fish, and I know this sounds terrible, but… what if it was you we lost today instead?’

‘That’s pretty harsh,’ said Fish, glancing back over at Sunshine’s lonely silhouette.

‘Harsh, and, true,’ Barkless replied. Aelu seemed distracted, though. She couldn’t help but overhear a conversation nearby, among a couple of conscripts in clean uniforms.

Yeah, must suck pretty bad to be Her Highness right now, she heard one man reply. All her training, and all that power, and she couldn’t even save that guy anyway. I mean… what’s she gonna do to win this, really? It’s a shitshow, why’s she even in charge? Aelu was fuming; she couldn’t bite her words back any more.

‘Hey, dickhead,’ she snapped at him. ‘How about you come out there on our next flight, and you try saving a soldier who was already gone?’ she snarled. ‘Then climb out onto a moving gunship, to save three more lives before you crashed? …Or maybe you wouldn’t last two seconds outside these walls, since you’ve never even fired a bloody shot?’

‘…You talking shit about Tabitha?’ Fish rumbled loudly, standing up from the table with a fearsome stare. A ton of scarred muscle, suddenly towering over him. Sea Mist and Barkless were growling raw threats at him, at such blatant disrespect for Dark Storm. The word spread quickly; the cafe chatter died down. A crowd of soldiers and tribals grew around them, loyal and ferocious as family. Closing in together, to watch the nervous man.

‘Hey… I’m sorry–

‘Get out of my sight,’ Aelu snarled hatefully. ‘And if I ever hear you talking about our queen like that again, I’ll throw you to those spiders myself.’ Nodding nervously, the pair of conscripts put down their drinks to leave.

‘Hey, Private,’ said a male officer, from the silent crowd around them. ‘Watch yourself. Don’t come here again.’

*

Tabitha sat alone, in a small marble grotto past the gardens. A fountain spouted ahead of her, powered by the celestial, and rained down softly into cold clear waters. It was framed by small twin rivers, flowing down gently from tiered walls and bare ancient rock. At the fountain’s peak stood a time-worn statue. A winged warrior, handsome and defined. Pinions spread and sword held high, in glorious Baroque dominion. Tabitha looked back down to the gravel at her dark feet, and sighed quietly. Holding back tears.

‘You blame yourself,’ came Lotor’s voice, as he walked in slowly to join her.

‘I agreed to that mission,’ she sighed. ‘It was my plan. And my fault that it went wrong.’

‘It was a joint strategy, Majesty,’ the tall professor replied, easing down wearily on the stone bench beside her. ‘Essential to the Ministry’s defence, and carried out by experienced professionals who were well aware of the risks,’ he explained. ‘As for blaming yourself… well, I doubt the Sergeant would have gone ahead with the strategy if he’d disagreed on its margin of error. And speaking from experience, there are margins of error in all things.’

‘I should’ve seen it. The spider,’ she said, shaking her head as she stared at the clear rocky pool. ‘I should’ve been looking out for them. I got distracted.’

‘Hm. And you think that no other being in the universe ever gets distracted?’ the beige man replied, with a calm enquiring look. Tabitha sat in silence, her tears coming anyway, and sighed a trembling breath. Smiling for a second, to take the handkerchief he offered her.

‘If only I had the power to see all, at all times,’ he added, with a sad smile. ‘How many lives I could have saved since we came here,’ he sighed.

‘But you’ve been working non-stop,’ Tabitha disagreed. ‘You’ve done everything you possibly could to help these people. You still do,’ she said. ‘I mean, you’re not even a doctor, but everyone still expects you to be.’

‘And you aren’t a trained soldier,’ Lotor replied gently. ‘Or monarch, or messiah. And yet we expect it of you. You’re simply doing the best you can, as we all are,’ he concluded, as he stood uncomfortably from the stone bench. Looking down at her, until she met his stare. He watched her for a moment, as if he was reading her. ‘Well. I’ll leave you to your thoughts,’ he concluded, with a calming look. ‘But here’s a thought of my own. Grieve now for that soldier, and the pain you all feel in losing him.’ Tabitha watched him carefully, nodding slightly in reply. ‘And then, know that your work must continue, and push yourself on to the next task at hand. It’s the only choice we have.’

‘To take my mind off it,’ she replied.

‘In part,’ he said. ‘But more importantly, because there are many more lives at stake if you don’t.’

‘…You’re right,’ Tabitha conceded, quietly. ‘Thanks,’ she added, smiling back sadly.

‘Honoured to be of service,’ Lotor replied, with a gracious half-bow. ‘We’ll win this yet,’ he whispered, with an encouraging smile.

‘Oh, your handkerchief?’ Tabitha remembered, turning to him before he left.

‘Keep it, please,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Or tie it off by the statue there if you like, for good luck. We could certainly use more of that.’

‘Who is it? Anyone special?’ she replied, looking up again at the classical figure. ‘A god?’ Lotor took a sharp breath in warning, as he came back to stand beside her.

‘God, you say? I’d be careful of speaking such heresy on this world,’ he advised her, with a growing smirk. ‘No, Majesty. That, is Virtue. Sacred summit of philosophical thought. Moral engine of every good citizen who here resided. The only true deity this city ever had.’

‘I’ve seen him before,’ she considered. ‘On a silver coin in the museum, that I… saw,’ she lied. Still feeling guilty about the stolen property, lurking even now beside her bed.

‘Oh, Virtue’s everywhere in this city,’ Lotor agreed. ‘Any angel you see, most likely. Either man or woman,’ he explained. ‘Fanciful artists, I suppose. Banned from depicting a pantheon of gods, and so they had to make do with Virtue in either case. Though there may be more varied depictions of the Qualities, in the city’s older quarters. Frankly the whole idea seems rather intertwined, if you ask me.’

‘So which gender is it supposed to be?’ Tabitha replied, looking again at the statue.

‘Irrelevant,’ Lotor shrugged. ‘Neither, really. It’s an idea. More concept than deity, for an atheistic people like these. But, old instincts do love shrines and saints,’ he added pleasantly. ‘Point being, that anyone is capable of great virtue and common decency. What matters are our choices, and how we live our lives.’

‘…To treat others as we’d wish to be treated,’ Tabitha agreed quietly. Glad to know at least some of her parents’ devoutness had stuck. Lotor turned thoughtfully, and met her gaze.

‘Just so,’ he said with a smile.

‘Sometimes, I… I just don’t know where to turn,’ she admitted. ‘How to lead us forward.’

‘Well, Majesty. Tell me this,’ Lotor replied. ‘If your next action were to be your last, what would you do? What would be the course of highest virtue?’ Tabitha looked away from him to watch the fountain, deep in thought.

What if I die here? she wondered. What could I leave these people, to carry on the fight for Serenity? For all their worlds, against the Watchers?

‘…Hope,’ she told him, with total conviction. ‘I’d give people hope.’

*

A young marine sat alone, in a quiet corner of the gardens. Glinting eyes staring down at the bright grass. At nothing, really. Sunshine still couldn’t grieve for his friend; it all felt too numb. Not during the funeral pyre, and not now in the lonely aftermath.

The whole damn war just felt more hopeless, and even his best wasn’t enough. Blowing down a few ruins wouldn’t make the slightest difference; not in the long run. It hadn’t made any difference for Tape. There were only so many times he could fire himself up every morning, staring at his ruined city, for a fight that was always going to take his life. Seemed like it’d take everyone and everything he loved first, though.

The broken marine turned suddenly, jolted from his thoughts, as a man sat down silently beside him. Reigo put an arm around Sunshine’s shoulders, and hugged him strongly beside him, and let go with a look. Then, he just stayed with him. Suffering the loss, together. Abiding by his side.

A few moments later there were huge footsteps over on Sunshine’s left. The amphibian giant he’d never spoken to, and who didn’t speak now. Big Fish just eased himself down heavily beside him, and stayed with him. Then, General Atha himself. Officers with him, and Aelu their new pilot. Two furred tribals, a male and a female; then more of their species with them. Soldiers too, and raw recruits. Then, his queen. All gathered around him. Heavy hands on his shoulders, squeezing firmly, like brothers and sisters. A vast silent pack, together.

21

A lone figure sighed heavily. A woman’s silhouette, shouldering a heavy pack in a sunlit stone corridor. Mind churning, and recalling Lotor’s directions, Tabitha walked alone for the Ministry’s oldest reaches. A hidden world of worn stonework and antique weapons, arrayed and waiting in the castle’s ancient heart. A hall of kings, lined with stern glooming statues.

Dim windows shone silver glows into deeper, darker rooms. A rich musty smell like church and wood polish; like dust and history. Silent as a crypt in here, but for her own quiet breaths. Thick floorboards creaked beneath her feet.

She made her way up worn granite steps, through palatial attics hung with tattered coats-of-arms. Past wood-panelled walls of carved vines and flowers, still half-painted in cracked gold leaf. Something tangible here, unless that was just her feeling. But there was some kind of gravity about this cold deserted place, as if all its raw heritage still lurked in the air.

She finally reached an ancient chapel, buried in the castle’s oldest origins. Dimly lit and carved from bare rock; a temple to their high godless deities. Their shrines of philosophy. Hope, and Truth; Justice and Courage. And there among them, their winged king. Worn and rudimentary, but still staring at her from history. Virtue.

Returning to the bold ancient armouries, and setting up camp in a patch of milky sunlight through the old leaded windows, Tabitha opened her pack and set to work.

*

The Ministry was growing into a tireless war machine. Thier’s drones ranged out in every direction, reviving countless more models from the ruins. Streaming back with salvage into orderly lines, to stockpile parts and firearms for a growing droid army. Smaller drones floated out neatly from the packed warehouses, shipping high-calorie meals through kitchens and barracks to feed their Guardians-in-training. The forges rang and hammered with basic armour and glinting weapons.

Civilian recruits drilled incessantly, spurred on by rumours about their queen’s bloody fighting in the ruins. Inspired by the sight they’d witnessed from the walls, of the dead landscape toppling and reshaped to fit their war. More conscripts practised again on the rifle range, or ran tired sprints in the yard; fired up en-masse to earn their place in Serenity’s history. Defending their world, their ancient civilisation, from those strange alien tyrants beyond the hills.

*

Tabitha rubbed her heavy eyes. With a deep breath, she shook off the sleep and ploughed on through another old book by the glow of her growing volt-vines. Still searching for some great breakthrough. Ancient secrets and winning tactics, that just weren’t there.

‘Do you ever stop?’ said Reigo, as he walked in through the stone doorway. Carrying two steel mugs of otherworldly tea.

‘Can’t afford to now,’ Tabitha replied wearily. ‘Thanks,’ she added, taking the cup with a metal clink and hunching over it in both hands. Taking a warm welcome sip, it tasted sweet but unfamiliar; Serenity’s natural stimulant of choice. Perking her up a little, as she read on through the musty book spread before her.

‘Did you find anything?’ said Reigo, taking a seat and gulping from his cup. ‘Everyone’ll be heading for the war room without you, unless you wrap up soon. For the strategy meeting that you arranged, I seem to recall,’ he smiled. ‘You wanted to take this war to the Watchers, didn’t you? The Great Assault, to kill their ship and end this?’

‘The Great Assault that might take thousands of lives,’ Tabitha sighed heavily.

‘And might not, if we plan this right,’ Reigo reassured her.

‘Either way, these survivors need to know what it is we’re fighting for,’ Tabitha disagreed. ‘That means I have to understand these people first.’

‘Well, we like sports, and deal-making, and fine dining and stuff,’ Reigo replied. ‘Theatre shows, and movies. Just like every other world.’

‘Exactly. That’s too generic,’ Tabitha replied. ‘I’m talking about your history. Ideas that’ll speak to something deeper in these people, and bring out the very best in them.’

‘They’re fighting for their families,’ Reigo said with a shrug. ‘They’re fighting for you.’

‘But there has to be something greater. A higher ideal,’ she replied hurriedly. ‘Like this.’ She pulled an open book from her finished pile, which was marked with a rushed note. ‘It says here that Capital City is only the new name for this place, since the Ministry was formed. But for centuries before, it was called Brightspire.’

‘Silverspire,’ Reigo corrected her. ‘Tricky to translate, that old High Serenian,’ he added.

‘Silverspire,’ Tabitha muttered to herself, as her gaze stumbled on through the strange text. Grasping maybe half of the alien print, at most. Reigo smiled subtly as he watched her studying. ‘…Named for the first high temple which stood on Seaward Hill,’ she read out loud, importantly. ‘And listen to this… once known as the highest seat of learning and philosophy in the Great Southern Empire.’ Reigo met her look, and wasn’t sure what to say. He never did have much to talk about with nerds.

‘I sucked at history,’ he chuckled, apologetically. ‘Why’s this so important?’

‘It’s just like with Fierce-Hope, Sky Tribe’s philosophy,’ she realised, thinking out loud. ‘We only won the war for Stormworld once I understood where the tribe was really coming from. We won the war because of their belief in Fierce-Hope.’ She watched him, watching her. Clearly she wasn’t getting her point across very well. ‘What I mean is, it doesn’t matter about the weapons and technology, or the training, when what we really need is to harness the values that’re worth fighting for,’ she tried to explain. ‘That’s what separates all our different worlds from the Watchers. It’s what unites us against them.’

‘Well, the weapons and technology still matter quite a lot,’ Reigo reasoned.

‘But wars are won by the ones with the strongest conviction,’ Tabitha countered. ‘You can’t have the best military without the strength of belief that pulls the trigger.’

‘Fine. I agree with you there,’ he replied. ‘But this is all just theory. At this point, we should be talking strategy.’

‘This is strategy,’ Tabitha replied. ‘This is what I’ve been looking for, I just didn’t realise,’ she said, full of fresh energy as she sifted through piles of her sketches and scribbles. ‘We’ve got the weapons, the supply lines, and the soldiers. But we won’t win this war until we inspire these people.’

‘They’re as motivated as we can make them,’ Reigo replied.

‘But people don’t just work by motivation, they run on stories,’ Tabitha countered. ‘We’ll only stand a chance of surviving the swarm if we restore some faith in our story. Our own beliefs. When the story’s clear and the reasons are right, and people know that they’re fighting for something good, something bigger than themselves… that’s morale. That’s how we turn ourselves into the winning side. It’s about the story we tell ourselves.’ Reigo was just watching her; he looked lost.

‘…Yeah, I agree with you,’ he said, growing impatient. ‘But what do you mean? What’s this story going to do for us?’

‘Order from chaos. It’s the oldest idea. The primal story of civilisation,’ she explained. ‘Same as Stormworld. The safe home, the noble city on the hill,’ she said. ‘It’s the story about these people’s freedom. And raising their children in a good world, that knows right from wrong. Serenity, the tribe, Silverspire, the great temple of wisdom… it’s all the same story. The story that wins wars. It’s our… our moral engine, that power of belief… here. Look.’ Sifting through the rustling mess on the table, she rummaged something out and passed it to him. Her stolen silver coin.

‘Virtue?’ said Reigo, puzzled, as he looked up from the coin. ‘What about it?’

‘Not just virtue,’ Tabitha explained, digging through books for a pen and paper. ‘History. Your heritage,’ she said, nodding at the endless weapons and antiques all around them.

‘Yeah, the ideas that kept this city standing,’ Reigo agreed. ‘But that’s ancient history.’

‘It’s a story, that people fought for,’ Tabitha replied. ‘A story we can resurrect.’

‘…These people don’t need stories to fight the Watchers,’ said Reigo.

‘No,’ Tabitha conceded. ‘But they need hope.’

*

Irren oversaw the new work himself, carried out rapidly by a growing legion of drones and droids. Smiling in satisfaction, finally, at the act of mass propaganda he’d been waiting for. Setting Thier’s robot teams into full production, all across the complex, to go about his grand captivation.

Tabitha had sent him books and ancient etchings, of a great walled city on a hill. Silverspire; the Old Kingdom. This place as it had been, before the Ministry and its downfall.

…The Big Idea.

As a younger man he’d dismissed it all as costume and theatre. Basic tribalism, and some primal need to belong. To be on the team. But now, older and a little wiser, he was starting to see past his own snobbery. These were the things that mattered to people. The ideas that built societies and made them function. Kept people happy, and safe. Without that identity, that power of belief, there were no standards to live by. No moral code to keep everyone working toward the same prosperity. Only chaos, rushing in to fill the cracks and voids.

Certainty. That was all people really needed, in lives that offered no shortage of fear and doubt. Now more than ever he’d seen people flock to what was certain. Rules, and moral order. A crest and a queen. Their own classical version of the tribe’s Fierce-Hope, he supposed. Maybe they’d never needed it more.

Droids worked non-stop, in their hundreds. Posters were printed. Banners were sewn. The troops’ black uniforms had already been in full production; dyed from clothes or cut from salvaged cloth. All complete with their queen’s royal crest. A giant rebranding for the forlorn Ministry, and its grieving rag-tag army. No longer just surviving in the ruins of Capital City, but rebuilding. Pulling something far older, and more poetic, from the ashes of their world. Chiselled and engraved, by rapid robot hands, in the stone arches above their heads. Aligning the whole grim war around it; all their hard grieving work. Like a flame.

Silverspire, Irren smiled to himself. The city that never died.

Thier joined the work with particular enthusiasm. A fresh challenge for his mass-production mind, setting every spare drone to the task. Working incessantly, obsessively, until laser-etched logos covered every last mug and letterhead. Rifles were painted with it; alloy shields adorned with it. The great walled fortress; the Moonflower Crown surrounding. Silvery ingots from salvaged spiders, smelted down to shape a shining new plaque for the war-room doors. And new flags, embroidered in moments; shipped to the barracks and hoisted high to ripple on the walls. Sharp symbolic kindling, to light a fire in people’s minds.

Walking through the gardens, Tabitha smiled to see the effect. To see how folks noticed their new flags in passing. How some people screwed their noses up at the posters in the corridors… and how many more took growing pride in the paintings and battalion photos. The artful designs had Irren’s hand in them, but the speed and scale were all Thier. And she knew it already; Thier wanted property rights. Total monopoly on the latest Big Thing.

Again, he’s welcome to it, she told herself. If all that drive of his helps me to save these people’s lives.

*

The Guardian recruits were assembled in strict ranks along the parade ground. Led by Reigo and standing to attention, where Tabitha watched them from a raised timber platform. Beside and behind her, the Ghosts and her commanders bore witness. With a quick nod from Reigo, the city’s massed conscripts commenced their new oath.

‘I swear by Virtue, and by those here assembled, that I shall be a Guardian to all free worlds,’ they said clearly, in unison. ‘I swear fealty to Her Majesty, in person, in title, and in territory, and pledge my life to her service and defence. May my honour be as a brilliant light, to burn fiercely in hope, for all to see and follow. This day, and for all my days, I Stand Guard.’

‘You Stand Guard,’ Reigo echoed back to them. His voice carried through the crowded parade ground. ‘For centuries, men and women like yourselves have stood where you stand now, and uttered those words. And for those same centuries, this city was a shining light for all the world to follow. Not because of its wealth, or its pretty towers. But because of its beliefs. Its freedoms. The foundations on which our prosperity was built. It was because of this city’s people, and their unwavering trust in philosophy and shared virtue.’ The ranks of new Guardians watched him attentively; standing straight and silent.

‘For all those centuries, despite every war, every invasion, this city stood strong,’ he continued. ‘Its people stood strong. And fought back tyranny and rank mysticism, wherever its shadow crept in. It was that unwavering defence of our ideals that kept our city standing. It was our belief, in Virtue, that made this city what it was. And our ferocity in battle, through tireless training, that preserved our city through every attack on these walls. Today, your city would ask the same duty of you.’ Their assembled ranks watched him soundlessly.

‘To rebuild our ancient home, and reclaim our lives of peace and prosperity, I would ask you to defend it,’ said Reigo, raising his voice. ‘Not for me, or for the shining towers that stood here. Defend it for the ones you love. Protect them, from an enemy who would destroy all life on this world. We are our city’s Guardians. And We Stand Guard.’

‘We Stand Guard,’ the troops replied in hard unison. Commanded as one to a stern stamped salute, as Tabitha smiled proudly and stepped forward.

‘We’re all in this fight together,’ she told them, without trying to affect a formal tone.

…I’d just balls it up, anyway.

‘Thank you, all of you, for your oaths. But I won’t ask you to fight for me,’ she added, raising her voice to their ranks. ‘As Sergeant Reigo said, I’d ask that you fight for your families here, and for your friends. Fight for your homes, and your lives. And I swear, to everything that’s still good and peaceful in this world, that I’ll fight to the death for you too.’

The rising applause caught her by surprise, as she stepped back from the podium.

‘You seem shocked,’ said Irren beside her, quietly, as Atha stepped up to finish his barking address to the troops.

‘I just didn’t expect to get a cheer,’ Tabitha replied. ‘I was only telling it like it is.’

‘Exactly,’ Irren replied. ‘A rare enough quality in a leader. Plus the fact that you’re leading the war from the front, and not just talking about it. I think you’re more well-liked than you realise.’ Tabitha smiled widely at that, and felt a fresh energy for all the work ahead of them.

‘Thanks,’ she said quietly.

‘Just telling it like it is,’ Irren shrugged, with a strong smell of spirits about him. Smiling as he watched the troops move out.

‘The meeting begins shortly, Majesty,’ Saa advised her quietly, with all the cool efficiency of a personal assistant. Tabitha smiled her thanks, and knew not to correct her formality any longer. Saa really did just enjoy the professional approach. Addressing her friend as Majesty was simply the way she preferred to work.

‘War room?’ Irren checked with her.

‘War room,’ Tabitha confirmed, with a tense sigh. ‘We’re striking back.’

22

‘We’ve done all we can to shore up the Ministry’s defences, and restore morale,’ Tabitha told her war-room assembly. Leading their strategy meeting around the table’s hologram glow. ‘According to Thier’s scout drones, the Watchers already have forces growing rapidly, elsewhere on Serenity. Meaning we’re still unable to evacuate our people anywhere safer than here.’ She glanced around at everyone; some nodded grimly as they accepted their fate.

‘We’re still getting no contact from any other world,’ Tabitha continued. ‘Every message we’ve sent is either silenced, or the drones hunted down before they reach orbit. Same with the celestial cuttings we’ve tried to ship off-world, and overseas, to immunise any reinforcements against the Watchers’ blackout. Whatever’s happening out there, the messages we’re sending and the help we need just aren’t getting through.’

The room watched her without a word; a glooming jungle of tense stares around her. ‘Added to that, we have every reason to believe that the Watchers’ next move will be a massive assault to overwhelm us,’ Tabitha told them darkly. ‘As I see it, the only option we have left is to strike first. A surprise attack, to spark the final conflict ourselves. To root out the wounded mothership and destroy it, while the horde’s sights are still fixed on the Ministry. Using every drone, droid and soldier we have.’

‘I beg your forgiveness, Majesty,’ said Saa. ‘But wouldn’t that leave those of us unable to fight exposed here? At risk of attack?’

‘We’ve been living at risk of attack, non-stop,’ Irren countered. ‘Maybe you can’t see that glowing horizon from down in your library, Saa, but the Watchers’ final attack is coming. Soon. And there’s no amount of surveys and spreadsheets that’ll organise our way out of that massacre. You can’t just wish us all safe, don’t you get that? We have to strike first.’

‘Irren,’ Tabitha warned him. ‘We take your point. But keep it professional?’ The green man merely shrugged in reply, and shrank back from the tense crowd around him.

‘Someone’s been hitting the medicine,’ Aelu whispered to Big Fish, with a quick nod at Irren across the room.

‘Like Her Majesty said. Reinforcements aren’t exactly forthcoming,’ Atha continued, for the benefit of everyone assembled. ‘And we can’t afford to split our forces in two, if we’re gonna have any hope of mounting an effective assault.’

‘We either focus everything on a last-ditch defence of the Ministry, and mass-evacuation. Or we bet it all on a precision attack to kill the Watchers’ ship,’ Tabitha told the room. ‘That’s our choice.’

‘Before they roll out the mother of all swarms, that’ll bring these walls down in either event,’ Reigo added, for the nervous crowd.

‘So… there’s really no decision to make, is there?’ said Aelu, arms crossed at the far side of the table. ‘The Watchers won’t stop until they’ve wiped us out, and no one’s coming to save us,’ she told the room. ‘We can wait here for that giant swarm to kill us, or we hit out first with a slim chance of stopping it.’

‘Slim chance, versus no chance,’ Big Fish reasoned. Looking around, as some in the room began to nod and agree.

‘Pre-emptive strike it is, then,’ said Atha, looking around at the majority. ‘Majesty,’ he added, giving her the floor.

‘The Watchers will always knock out the greatest threat first,’ Tabitha told the room. The hologram map simulated a vast virtual swarm, rapidly covering the miles of ruins toward the Ministry. ‘Right now, that threat is the Ministry complex itself. And our artillery.’

‘But they’ve thrown hordes at these walls before,’ said a reptilian female officer. ‘Between the drones and droid soldiers, and more revived artillery, maybe we could still hold them off.’

‘Not against a joint strike,’ Reigo countered. ‘Expect everything, all at once. Every tactic and weapon we’ve seen so far.’

‘And the mothership to finish us off?’ said Big Fish.

‘No. I don’t think so,’ Tabitha replied. ‘They won’t risk taking that kind of damage again. We’ll have to go hunting for it. Or, more specifically, I will.’

‘But flying Seven out there loses us our best defence here,’ a gunner chipped in.

‘Agreed. But he’s our only chance of getting Tabitha inside the Watchers’ ship,’ Atha replied. ‘Our one gunship won’t last two minutes out there. At least Seven can take a beating and stay airborne.’

‘You really expect Seven to fly over the city in one piece?’ said Aelu. ‘They’ll see him coming a mile off with that kind of artillery. And every dragon they have will be after him.’

‘He’s not going to fly over the city,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Seven’s amphibious. I’ll take him out under the bay. Hopefully unnoticed,’ she explained, pointing along the coastline on the flickering map. ‘I’ll leave the water here, after I pass the hills. And hunt down the mothership once the hive’s emptied its swarm for the Ministry. Seven blows a hole in the ship’s blind spot, then it’s on me to fight through to the power source. And bring the Watchers down for good.’

‘Beforehand, we’ll position our droid army defensively through the ruins, to thin out the swarm as much as possible en route to the Ministry,’ said Atha. ‘Catch them off-guard and blow everything that’ll burn, then throw the droids at them in open war. Street-to-street, house by house, fully expendable. Dug in like ticks, to slow the swarm down. We’ll carry out as many coordinated drone strikes and demolitions as possible, to take out their heavier weapons before they reach our walls,’ he continued, pointing a path through the vast ruined city. ‘With any luck we’ll shrink the swarm significantly before it reaches the rubble mounds on our perimeter. With those new valleys and bottlenecks around us, our troops and artillery might even hold off the horde long enough for Tabitha to get inside that ship, and destroy it.’

‘That ship could be healing on the far side of the world, for all we know,’ Aelu disagreed. ‘Or up in orbit.’

‘Not if they’re the control freaks I think they are,’ Tabitha countered. ‘I think it’s still nearby, maybe even under the hive itself. Still wounded, and vulnerable. Either buried underground or submerged off the coast. No surveillance drones have survived long enough out there to tell us. But we’ll find out tomorrow,’ she sighed nervously.

‘Tomorrow?’ Saa replied in shock. ‘Are we even prepared?’

‘If we leave it any longer, ma’am, we’ll start to grow less prepared,’ Reigo replied.

‘I’ve already retrieved most of the city’s resources within safe reach,’ Thier explained.

‘And we’ve passed the peak number of drones and robots we’ve been able to locate,’ Lotor advised them. ‘Moving forward, I suspect that our total forces will only begin to dwindle.’

‘If we leave it much longer we’ll lose our chance altogether,’ Atha agreed, nodding at the mountains on the map. ‘I’m surprised the Watchers haven’t moved on us already.’

‘…It just seems like there’d be a better way,’ Saa protested, politely. ‘Something safer.’

‘We’re at war, ma’am,’ Reigo replied. ‘If anyone does have a safer strategy, by all means put it forward now,’ he told the room. The staring silence in return was deafening, and absolute.

‘Objections?’ Atha checked, looking around at the quiet crowd. Again, silence.

‘It’s a risk,’ Tabitha told the room. ‘But we’ve been taking risks already, every day, just to survive here. Tomorrow we’ll risk everything,’ she admitted, grimly. ‘And stand one last chance of saving this world from the Watchers, before they spread and take it anyway.’

‘War takes sacrifice,’ Atha agreed, looking around at the room. ‘This is our last chance.’

‘The Watchers have made life hard for us here. But not impossible,’ Tabitha told the assembly. ‘Some of us survived on my homeworld, with no army and no drones. With those forces on our side, we at least stand a chance. We may even end this war tomorrow, and kill those Watchers by ourselves.’ Nods and fierce looks spread through the crowd around her. ‘And anyway… we’re a damn sight tougher than they are.’ Tabitha smiled as her Ghosts and officers cheered in reply. ‘Get some sleep tonight,’ she told them, growing more practised in her authority. ‘Come daybreak tomorrow, we’re going to bring those bastards down.’

23

That evening, a woman’s silent silhouette entered the old gym one last time. She dropped her kit bag in the corner, tying her hair in a ponytail. Stretching her neck side-to-side as she paced to the light-vine on the wall. Grasping a tendril, Tabitha put current through the web of branches high above her. Lighting up the ceiling, the stone walls, her face, with a bright living glow for her work.

Fists up, her stance corrected, Tabitha pummelled a straw Watcher with a vengeance. Destroying the tall figure utterly, in a fearsome volley of rapid-fire hits. Her mind was clear; all just pure muscle-memory. She pounced fast and knifed another, flooring it savagely with a roundhouse kick through its splintered knees. She sprang her claws spinning to burst the third with a bang. Breathless, pulse pounding, Tabitha laid into the last scorched dummy and dropped it crashing with a knife in its throat.

She sprinted for the hall’s shadowed corner and her new favourite toy. With dull denting punches she half-destroyed the monster propped on its scaffold; perfecting her form and tearing its throat out. Her bunched knuckles slammed its head to battered ruins. Black piranha teeth clattered across the floorboards as she tore its skull apart. Straining for breath, Tabitha flew back in a pounce and drilled again, over and over, until she ached. Until she hurt beyond her body’s healing, and the sprung-steel strength in her muscles. She stopped to pace a circle and shook her hands out for a moment, as the stinging jolts ran through her wrists. Snarling savagely, she went again.

She fought until she’d burned through her current; until the sweat was shining on her skin. She broke off to pace another sighing circuit, and went again. She ran and pounced on scrap-metal targets; tore one down and sent it crashing across the floor. Leapt away screaming to punch and claw another in a sudden bright shower of sparks. Smashing dead dummies, sprawled and torn on the floor, with shocks and kicks and yelling right-hooks. Training to the brink of blackout.

Tabitha caught her breath and bent forward, leaning on her legs in exhaustion. Watching her sweat drip to the floorboards in small shining dots. Gulping cold water, she stretched out and shook. Going back to her training again.

Whatever she’d been doing, and thinking, and dwelling on lately… something more was waking in her. Her mind and her heartcore, growing ever more aligned. All her bright churning cocktail of hybrid cells, finding balance. Symbiotic. Form and technique, as practised as her rage. All her energy, newly channelled. Refined.

‘What’s next?’ she said, catching her breath, as Reigo walked across the hall.

‘Next is the war,’ he shrugged. ‘You’re ready.’ He nodded at the targets’ torn chaos around her.

‘There must be something else you can teach me,’ Tabitha replied, getting her breath back. ‘Another kind of knife strike, or something?’ But Reigo shook his head.

‘As I recall, you wanted me to make you a Watcher killer,’ he said. ‘…You are.’

*

‘Ready for the fireworks?’ said Reigo, as they walked down twilit corridors toward the northern walls.

‘Just a bit,’ Tabitha smiled back. ‘I’ve been looking forward to this.’

‘Make sure Thier’s ready to go, before it all starts,’ Reigo reminded her. ‘It’ll buy us some time to move them out, but not long. There’s only so much ammunition we can afford to waste.’

‘Not a waste, necessarily,’ Tabitha considered. ‘More like a long-term investment.’

‘…Yeah, I’ll give you that,’ Reigo grinned back. ‘Providing all goes to plan, of course.’

‘It will,’ Tabitha replied, with total certainty. ‘I’ll make sure of it.’

‘Hello Majesty!’ came a young familiar voice, bright and clear in a doorway behind them. It was Calia, the little girl from the gardens. Passing by with her mother Liina, as the tired woman collected her from the Ministry’s makeshift daycare.

‘…Is he your boyfriend, Majesty?’ Calia enquired.

‘No, he’s not my boyfriend,’ Tabitha chuckled gently, as Reigo smiled to watch them. ‘Have you been drawing more pictures?’ The little girl unscrolled her crinkling paper hurriedly, to display her artwork in full upside-down glory.

‘Oh,’ Calia muttered quietly, as she looked down at it. Turning it the right way round. ‘It’s the Guardians,’ she declared proudly. ‘That’s Daddy,’ she explained, pointing to the biggest figure in the middle. ‘He’s protecting people, because he’s brave.’

‘He certainly is,’ Reigo agreed, as he studied her drawing carefully. ‘Are you going to give him your picture?’

‘Yeah, he said he’ll keep it in his pocket all the time,’ Calia explained happily.

‘We’ll have to give it to him now, won’t we?’ said her mum, smiling at them. ‘Before bedtime?’

‘Yeah, we have to give it to him now,’ Calia apologised, for Tabitha’s benefit.

‘Well I think he’ll really like it,’ Tabitha said warmly. ‘I’ll see you soon, ok?’ she added, watching as they waved goodbye and walked on down the hallway hand in hand.

‘Bye Majesty!’ the little girl called back.

‘Oh, Calia?’ said Tabitha. ‘Never stop drawing, will you? I think you’re going to be a very famous artist when you grow up.’ The little girl beamed at her, elated at the idea. Her expression changed then; she looked deep in thought.

‘…You’ll save us from the Monsters, won’t you Majesty?’ she said.

‘Yeah, I will,’ Tabitha replied gently. Hard conviction burning beneath. ‘I’ll save everyone.’

*

‘So, the recruits are up here with us tonight?’ said Tabitha, as she and Reigo walked on for the towering battlements.

‘Final step in achieving full proficiency,’ Reigo confirmed, as they climbed the old stone steps to the walls. ‘Application.’

‘Yo,’ Big Fish said deeply, giving them a giant fist-bump each as they came to stand beside him. ‘This better be the lightshow they promised me, y’know,’ he added. ‘I was all cosied up in bed, before Aelu dragged me out here,’ he said mournfully.

‘…Cosied up?’ said Reigo.

‘Hey, it’s a man’s right to be cosy,’ Fish replied defensively. ‘I’m not ashamed of that. I grew up where cosy wasn’t even a thing.’

‘Well, we all have to make sacrifices in war,’ Tabitha replied. ‘Sorry we had to get you out of bed, Fish.’

‘That sex dream was really good though,’ he rumbled sorrowfully.

‘…Are you familiar with the term overshare?’ said Reigo.

‘What’s that?’ Fish replied, scratching his scarred cheek. Prompting Reigo’s careful explanation, as Tabitha smiled to Sea Mist walking over.

‘Hey you,’ said Tabitha, responding to her sister’s fist-bump, which was apparently now an established Ghost formality. ‘You ok?’

‘Hm, good,’ Sea Mist considered, weighing everything up. ‘War, unsure,’ she explained, tilting her clawed hand in a so-so motion. ‘But, Barkless Tree, good mating. Strong,’ she assured her, with a satisfied smile. ‘Good.’

‘Again, the overshare thing,’ Tabitha muttered, as Sea Mist watched her expectantly.

‘So now you know,’ said Aelu, coming to stand beside her. ‘Is it just me who doesn’t share every bodily function in conversation?’

‘Meh, everybody knows about you and Atha already,’ Tabitha replied.

‘Probably just the power thing,’ Aelu shrugged beside her. ‘So… how about you and soldier boy there–

‘No,’ Tabitha cut in quietly, before Aelu went where she was going. ‘…No.’

‘…Why not?’

‘Because I might be dead tomorrow,’ Tabitha replied, matter-of-factly. ‘Maybe all of us.’

‘Hm. True,’ Aelu conceded, without an eye batted. ‘That’d spur me on, personally. Anyway… is this show actually happening tonight?’ she pondered, looking around at their massed forces on the walls. ‘Atha said–

Their chatter was interrupted by a sudden blinding explosion. A fire-bright shower of colossal sparks, as an artillery shot lit the night in the ruins beyond the plaza. All around them, a sudden laser barrage thumped with deafening force and tore the darkness apart.

‘Now, Thier,’ Tabitha told him through her wristcom. ‘Make it fast.’ Further down on the western walls, Thier set his forces in motion. Every cargo drone he could spare, lifting off together with racks of his droid soldiers slung beneath. Streaming out in night-blackened procession, to drop the robots in the distant ruins. A stealth operation, hidden from the city’s spiders and staring monsters, while they swarmed and scurried for the bright artillery blasts far away.

‘Huh. It’s working,’ Big Fish rumbled, watching the city’s swarming spiders from the walls. They were scurrying frantically towards a battle that wasn’t happening. A noisy diversion, where Atha’s artillery barrage was thundering down. Buying time to move out the droids in secret.

‘You sound surprised, Fish?’ Tabitha replied, looking up at him.

‘Atha won’t waste much more ammunition,’ Reigo advised her. ‘Thier better get his army out there soon.’

‘I dunno, it’s a pretty big distraction,’ Aelu considered, by Tabitha’s other shoulder. Still enjoying the hardcore firework show. ‘As long as we get a couple of hundred droids embedded out there, right?’

‘That’s the plan,’ Tabitha replied.

‘Hey,’ said Reigo, with a reassuring nudge. ‘You said it yourself. We’ll make it work.’

‘…Yeah,’ Tabitha agreed, remembering herself. Her old doubt… that wasn’t her any more. ‘It’ll work.’

‘They’re coming for the walls!’ a Guardian bellowed further down.

‘Yesss,’ Big Fish growled happily, pulling the giant blade from his back.

‘One last round, for practise?’ said Aelu, watching Tabitha as she whistled loudly to the night sky. Waving Sea Mist and Barkless over to join them, while they armed their rifles for the fight.

‘Ministry!’ Tabitha called out loudly.

‘Majesty!’ her army roared back. Seven thumped down to perch on the battlements beside her. ‘I already know you’re lethal,’ she told them all. ‘Now prove it to them. Show them what happens when they try these walls! Show the Watchers we’ll never back down from this fight!’

All along the battlements, Sky Tribe and Guardians armed their clattering rifles countlessly at the coming swarm. Grim marines and nervous raw recruits. Standing together, shoulder to shoulder, as screeching spiders clattered into their kill boxes and blew apart suddenly under Atha’s artillery. Half the vast swarm still swept across the plaza.

‘Nock!’ Stone Shore barked at his Cave-Clan archers, with the new medieval terms he’d been learning. ‘Draw!’ he roared out. A chorus of creaking bowstrings drew tight all around him. Staring Tribals lined the battlements; their bright alloy arrowheads waiting for the command. Watching for the swarming spiders as they scuttled into range far below. ‘Loose!’ he bellowed. The Tribe’s glinting arrows rained down on them, impaling countless screeching spiders where they crawled.

‘Guardians!’ Reigo called out to his raw recruits. ‘Target!’ he yelled at them, as if they were back on the firing range. A blinding chaos of laserbolts flashed down from the battlements, dropping the great swarm dead in endless firing squads. Mounting up the spiders’ flailing bodies, countlessly, at the foot of their bloodstained walls.

‘…This is boring,’ Big Fish rumbled unhappily, giving up on the fight from the battlements. Every spider he aimed at just died before he could spin up his gatling gun. Dropped too quickly by smoking laser bolts, or screeching and bloody as arrows pierced them through.

‘Gates?’ Barkless suggested, equally bored. Leading him on with his rifle at the ready.

‘You’re going out there!?’ said Atha, watching them with mixed shock and confusion. ‘…Why?’

‘I’m fine with covering you from up here,’ Aelu replied, raising her smoking sniper rifle from the fight below. ‘Have fun, though.’

‘That’s the idea,’ Big Fish grinned back. Leading Sea Mist and Barkless on down the stone steps, for the heavy front gates below.

‘…Must like collecting scars or something,’ Reigo shrugged, as he fired again on the spiders swarming for the walls.

Tabitha soared Seven over the night-lit battlefield, watching the racing swarm from the saddle. She’d finally finished torching their backup monsters, that’d crawled from the deeper ruins toward the sight of Atha’s bright artillery. Still itching for a fight herself.

…Suppose the swarm’ll have to do.

Diving Seven lower with a thought, Tabitha unclipped her harness and leapt from his saddle. Screeching spiders warned the rest about her. The Hybrid. A volt-bright curse descending.

She pounced down on the plaza with a stone-cracking slam. Sudden bloody murder at the frightened spiders’ backs.

The Hybrid’s eyes were burning hellish. Her hands were wreathed in bright lightning. Tabitha’s snarling sprint tore dozens to bloody splatters beneath the walls. Racing through them like a black-clawed hurricane; spinning and tearing them in a vicious goring dance. Yelling possessed as they crowded in around her, to machine-gun them down with a scream. She didn’t see the monster racing for her.

‘Hey!’ Big Fish bellowed, where he’d charged in full armour from the heavy gates. Ploughing through the swarm with Sea Mist and Barkless at his back; covered from up-top by Aelu’s sniping shots. He flung his vast sword to Tabitha; she pounced high and snatched it from the air. Brought it straight down screaming through the charging monster’s skull. Dodging its flailing claws as it swiped at her head. Tabitha snarled and yelled as she wrenched the bloody sword out, and took off the monster’s leg at the knee. She sliced off its head in the dust with a final steel-ringing strike. The scuttling swarm behind her were engulfed in a sudden white firestorm, as Seven blew his breath and swept down terrible over the plaza. The last spiders were a sea of glowing embers in his wake. The crowded walls cheered at their victory.

Tabitha felt something shocking-new in that moment, as Seven thundered down to land beside her. A fresh bright synchronicity, as if she was suddenly far less human and much more of something else. A fast pulse shook her soul, like a rapid desert heartbeat. Sweet smells like vanilla-cinnamon. A taste on her tongue, better than blood. A volt-bright sunlit melding, as strange glyphs turned like circled spells in her head. Psychorgasmic and phosphor-transcendent; burning like pale Greek fire. Unlike any feeling she’d ever known.

…That’s you, she told Seven, with a fierce rushing thought between them. That’s really you. By now their twined feelings weren’t just joined at the middle; they were one.

‘Hey!’ Big Fish repeated, as they watched Tabitha snap out of her daze. ‘You alright?’

‘…Never been better,’ Tabitha smiled back blissfully. Glancing around at her Sky Tribe, cheering at their victory. She saw seasoned Guardians around them, and their grinning raw recruits. And her friends, her family, where they gathered in close around her. Her fearless fighting Ghosts.

*

‘…You smoke after a fight?’ said Reigo, where they sat together in the makeshift cafe.

‘Amongst other things,’ Aelu replied, with a suggestive smile. Watching for Atha’s jealous response, which wasn’t forthcoming. Barkless was sitting beside them drowsily, with Sea Mist already sleeping in his arms.

‘So what was that?’ Fish asked Tabitha, as he gulped his vaseful of nightcap beside her. ‘You just, like, pure zoned out for a minute.’

‘Don’t know,’ Tabitha replied, still blissed out to think about it. Drunk on nothing; her Sevenly high. Though she knew full well, and she could’ve explained it… she didn’t really want to. That sacred feeling was hers, and Seven’s. No one else could truly understand.

*

That night, Tabitha wandered back hesitantly for her stateroom. Unused to much sleep these days, and trying to kill all the time she could before tomorrow’s great assault. She paused in a higher tier of the heavenly main lobby, to study a grand gothic fountain in the Ministry’s vast sanctum. Plaintive statues, shrinking and demonic, looked away in terror from the shining might of the Angel Virtue. Standing stern and victorious above; his sword held high. An all-conquering fierce divinity.

…That guy really is everywhere, huh. Now that Lotor had explained it, she saw the angel in every other tile and cornice.

‘Majesty?’ said Saa, walking over from an adjoining corridor. ‘It’s so late… is everything alright?’ Saa studied her, for what felt like the first time in months, and noticed a certain change in her. That edge she had; a killer presence. Hard-eyed and pure-professional. A stern heroine, more lean and gorgeous than she remembered. Maybe it was just the wine she’d had, to steady her nerves and help her sleep. But Saa just felt so much for her. She wanted to say something; do something. Anything at all. To reach out, and hold her; even kiss her...

'Suppose we should get some sleep,' said Tabitha, warmly. For a sudden heart-fluttering moment, Saa wondered if she was being invited. But the longer she looked, the more she knew that just wasn’t the case.

'...Yes, Majesty,' Saa replied neutrally, with a dutiful smile. Dismissing her thoughts, her true feelings, with a slight nod and a graceful exit.

Tabitha turned back to the grand black fountain, oblivious. All those perfect faces, staring blank and elegant from ancient history. All the impossible weight of it; the greatest civilisation ever built. It all depended on her.

*

Worn out over days, and finally too exhausted to stay awake, Tabitha returned to her ornate stateroom in the early hours. She stripped off her Guardian fatigues in sheer exhaustion, setting down her wristcom and changing sluggishly into her catsuit. This was her real skin; a monster’s skin. Her ribbed black shield from the world.

Easing down stiffly, and rubbing at her aches, Tabitha lay back among the moss in Fishbowl’s glowing garden. Trying to forget tomorrow, and running her fingers through the creature’s tapping tips, as her tentacled assistant pulled large leaves over her like a living blanket.

Her thoughts could wait; they’d have to. No amount of worry would keep her from the deep sudden sleep that claimed her now.

24

The thief crept again through ancient catacombs, hooded and hunting by the light of a moonflower. Walking on silently beside familiar walls, to the old opened vault in the Ministry’s buried heart. Checking that they hadn’t been followed, they ducked inside again.

The figure worked more quickly now; more practised. They took glinting gold ingots and wrapped them in rags, to stack them soundlessly in a tough old canvas bag. Jolted from their work, suddenly, by a distant scream and a crack. A sharp stifled crunch, as if through flesh and bone. Then… nothing. Only raw dark horror, to fill the massive silence that followed.

…There’s a monster down here.

Grabbing the heavy bag, the thief snuck terrified from the vault. They hid the moonflower’s bright glow in their hands and hurried back the way they’d come, to get out of the vaults and away from that terrible yell. And whatever had pulled that horrible sound from its victim, before it could–

The thief tripped over something slick in the darkened corridor. Scrambling away in terror, she pulled off her hood to look around her. Staring, breathless, Aelu held up her moonflower to see what she’d tripped on. A twisted bloody shape; a man torn open in gore. A glimpse of sickening bone, where his bare skinned skull stared back at her. And movement ahead, up the dark distant corridor. Eyes. Bright like candle flames. Gazing indifferently, as its monstrous shadow climbed the steps for the complex above. She realised who it was, from what she’d heard about him. And that mauled corpse too. Not just a murder, but a meal.

Aelu dropped her bag and ran for the stone steps desperately. Yelling out for help in the Ministry’s empty night-corridors, hurtling up stairways for the higher tiers, as she raced in horror for Tabitha’s distant room. Slipping in blood puddles on the slick shining floors, where a string of murdered guards lined the way.

*

Tabitha slept deeply. Too deep to know, as a black-armoured form crept angelic from the darkness. Floating soundlessly; cloaked in shadow. A dull clawed gauntlet, rising silently, pulled the murdered man’s mask from his face. Clutching a sword hilt, to slide it from the sheath with a cold metal grind. Burning eyes in a hard snarling face, as Alex raised his sword to take off her head. Tabitha stirred suddenly, at a volted presence like her own. She looked up too late as the blade came down. A shocked sudden bloodburst flashed between them, as Fishbowl took the swordstroke itself. One glimpse at Fishbowl’s fallen body made Tabitha roar out loud; turned her wilder than she’d ever felt in her life. Sudden instinct, primal-deep and ferocious. Eyes blazing, snarling feral, Tabitha tackled Alex hard in a bloodboiling rage. Screaming demonic as she beat his face to a grinning ruin. She sprang her claws to rip open his head as he punched her aside painfully and swung the blade for her. She dodged his swings and tail-strikes and laid into him hard; a fierce burst of light flung her back yelling against the far stone wall. Alex hunted her. Roaring and slashing, destroying the room around her, as she leapt from sudden blasts that blew Fishbowl’s garden apart. Another blue-black explosion flung her sideways; thrashed her yelling against the wall in a cloud of raining cinders. Staggering frantically, Tabitha shook off the concussion as Alex stormed over furiously to swing his sword. He stopped and staggered, roaring out loud, as a bright gunshot punched a crackling hole through his back. Snarling wildly at Aelu, where she stared terrified in the open doorway behind him. She raised her rifle again as Alex threw a lightning arc, his power drained by the strange tangling garden around him, and threw Aelu back screaming in a sparking cloud. Flung her down lifeless in the yelling hallway, where the raging Ghosts rushed in.

‘Aelu!’ Tabitha screamed desperately. She ran at Alex to gouge his face; he flung her aside with a blinding bang. He turned furiously at the growing racket, and countless running boots outside. Roaring tribals and a scaly giant, held back outside by his fierce bright volts across the doorway. The weird writhing garden in here was draining the volts from him, as if it was trying to earth his current. He turned in shock as Seven burst through the windows like a burning black plane crash. Alex pulled up all his crackling power to bomb the place, as Tabitha buried a knife in his throat and boxed him savagely to stagger him back. Reeling battered from her rapid strikes, he lashed out with raw power and punched back hard. Dropping Tabitha to her knees, pinning her thigh with his tail-point, Alex raised his sword to end it. Her hand shot out and gripped his wrist; she wrestled his strength as he strained demonic to take her head. A sudden stalemate, Tabitha staggering to her feet, and he was getting cornered. Seven was reaching for him rabidly; the Ghosts’ shots pummelled through him. Snarling, cheated, Alex grabbed Tabitha yelling by the neck and burst from the room like a lightning bomb. He took a shocked sudden beating and dropped choking to the gardens, as Tabitha crushed his windpipe in her grip. They hit the garden grounds like a bright-splintered comet. Rolling hard and flailing, they landed far apart among the flowers.

Tabitha staggered up painfully and pushed off from the sparking volt-tree beside her. Something changed; her palms tingled from its touch. Gripped by a sudden shift, deep inside her, as a strange dormant something met her adrenaline and spread.

She turned to Alex, feeling new, as he flew at her in a thundercloud rage. His next lightning bolt just supercharged her. And another. Absorbed; insulated. Captured by something celestial in her, and shot bright through her veins like Life itself. Immune to his massive voltage.

Alex staggered in shock as she rained vicious punches that he just couldn’t stop. His blond head reeled like a bloodspattered punchbag; roaring frustrated as his sword strikes missed and she weaved in feline to batter him again. He was stumbling and staggering; snarling in a rage as the fight went her way. Alex burst his voltage; Tabitha just absorbed it. He lashed out violently; she leapt and pounced from his claws and sudden tail-stabs. Bloody and bellowing as she dodged his swordswings, trying to claw the long blade from his grip. Yelling, wrestling, with every shouting soldier around him filling him with laserbolts, Alex staggered and dropped at Tabitha’s fierce breaking kick in the knee. He floated back in horror from her endless whipping knife strikes, as the fire-eyed bitch tried to take his head in return. A dark fear gripped him, as Alex struggled and staggered just to survive his own massacre. Straining to heal from so much violence.

He hadn’t the power left now to nuke the Ministry; Tabitha was draining his current. A vast Guardian firing squad raged all around him. The Tribe’s piercing arrows, and the bitch’s raw feral stamina. Growling, furious, Alex realised; he’d never win this fight on the ground. It was all he could do, just to take Tabitha’s sudden knife in his stomach. Had to get her alone. He gripped her wrist snarling and burst away for the starred night sky.

Tabitha raged and wrestled in his grip. Soaring over the city, Alex looked back; Seven’s rabid shape was tailing him. Unable to torch him, the dragon came up fast on them. Seven struck and dropped back shocked, at Alex’s sudden practised sword-stab to his skull. His next slash scored Seven’s throat. Alex just spun away smiling; avoiding Seven’s every lunge and snapping bite. He outmanoeuvred the raging dragon, over and over. Tried to drive his sword through its blazing eye.

‘No, Seven!’ Tabitha screamed desperately through the windspeed, still wrestling and beating at Alex’s healing grin. ‘He’ll kill you!’ She put her own thoughts into his; tried to force Seven back for the Ministry. If he left the walls undefended, then the Watchers would strike tonight.

Go back! Tabitha told him fiercely, as Seven struggled to grip them and reeled back bloody before Alex could slit his huge throat. Growling wrathfully, but trusting her thoughts, her furious ship finally turned away.

With Seven retreating, Tabitha struggled afresh in Alex’s powerful grip. She freed a fist to give him a fierce sudden beating, draining his current and clawing his eyes; threatening to crash them both in the ruins.

Tearing away over the city, covering miles in mere moments, Alex couldn’t take another round of her punches. He felt his fast-burning power drop rapidly, where her palm seemed to drain out his heartcore. Gripped by a mortal panic, he gave up on the mountains and dived from the sky.

‘What the fuck happened to you!?’ he bellowed furiously, throwing her viciously at the cratering pavement to press his point. Floating above like hellfire judgement. He launched his black sword like an air-tearing javelin, to slam through the ground where she scrambled away.

He floated down like a deathly angel. Alex’s battered face was healing, his broken skull rearranging, as his body mended all over again. ‘Where did you get that speed!? Huh!?’ he demanded breathlessly, like he was entitled to it. Watching Tabitha stagger up a few feet away, beaten bloody and healing too. Gold eyes burning, fists up like a boxer, she took her stance for another punishing round.

‘Practise, shithead,’ Tabitha growled back. Alex roared in a rage and ran for her. He missed every slash and staggered exhausted. Spinning and clawing, dodging and battering, Tabitha reversed the brutal fight on a beat. Volts burst blinding as she savaged him. Alex yelled and dropped from her lightning-fast flurries; still bent and bloody-nosed as she gripped his head and crashed her knee into his face. Over, and over, jolting his skull with fierce knockout force, until Alex wrestled away wildly and dropped in a daze. Gasping in panic, his blood streaming and cheekbones mending, as Tabitha paced off to catch her breath. Watching him patiently, prowling in the distance, with a lethal peace. She could’ve knifed through his neck in that second, Alex told himself. Could’ve tried, and could’ve failed again.

…No, he realised. Heartcore running on empty, as a growing horror gripped his mind. She’s gonna tire me out first. That bitch could really kill me.

Frightened, unthinking, Alex turned wildly and pooled the last of his power. He burst it blazing and shot towards her, and didn’t see what she was pointing straight at him. Time crawled to a painting; volt-bright vicious and wreathed in tilting shadows. The nightglow ruins sprawled at their backs.

Alex flew demonic. Snarling cruel fangs; eyes glinting genocidal. Tabitha stood staring, leaning all her strength into it… and let the bastard’s fierce power run his sword through himself. Stone-cold and silent, releasing the sword-hilt from her grip, Tabitha turned as he passed in his bloody impaling.

Alex screamed in shocked agony, where he crashed to a stop far behind her. He looked down in horror at his bloodspattered sword hilt, buried deep through his armour and his sparking heartcore. The bitch just watched him, waiting for him to die. Crawling, staggering, Alex stumbled and panicked in a last growing blackout. He felt all his life flooding out of him; streaming down his front like quicksilver. And her, stalking him. Circling him, closer now. Pulling her knife, ready to saw off his head. Gasping, terrified, a feeling surged in him; that strange new something that refused to die. It pulled the last dying dregs of his power, from every screaming cell in his hybrid body, and gripped him possessed. Something far more primal in his eyes. As Tabitha came near, Alex made a sudden monstrous grab for her; launching them both bloody over the bay.

Yelling and airborne, struggling in his unnatural grip, Tabitha wrestled an arm free as the wind rushed deafening in her ears.

‘You’ll come to the ship,’ a voice told her, as she tried to struggle away. Alex tried desperately, teeth clenched and spit frothing, to grip her jaw and rip her head off. Or impale her, somehow, on the hard blunt sword hilt that stuck from his chest. His clawed hands ripped her catsuit collar to shreds as he tried to get a grip on her bloody neck. Strange sounds oozed from Alex’s mouth, but they weren’t his thoughts. Something else was watching her, something more ancient, behind his blank stare.

‘You’ll come to the ship,’ it said again, as they flew for the distant mountains. Commanding her. Alex emerged again; straining against her to pull at her skull. Struggling free, Tabitha sprang her claws and gouged his face screaming while he ripped her apart. She snatched her knife and buried it upwards in his gasping throat. Levering the knife-hilt to wrench off his head. Blinded, screaming in terror, Alex reeled and shoved her away. He dropped her suddenly, flailing and clawing, toward the night-black sea far below.

Raging and bellowing, cheated again, Alex ripped the knife from his throat as he tore off back to the mothership. He tried to pull the sword from his chest, and screamed in fierce pain at the effort. Clawing at his heart in terror, where his scorching core had healed and fused around the blade. Raining blood, mortally wounded, he dived down in panic beyond the mountains for the Watchers’ hidden ship.

Flailing terrified, Tabitha took gasping breaths as she fell. The freezing airspeed blinded her; thundering in her ears. A skydive with no parachute. The endless city ruins towered like bones in the moonlight, as the gleaming black sea loomed large beneath her. Yelling and tumbling, gut-twisting and breathless, Tabitha smacked into the ocean like a vast black wall.

25

Gored and gasping, bleeding out in slopping silver puddles, Alex staggered back aboard the wounded mothership in panic. He blew a last desperate hole through a fleshy white wall, tearing through its trickling tissues to fall down yelling into the Watchers’ eerie labs. Dragging himself in a bloodtrail.

He gripped the sword hilt again, straining and screaming to pull it out from his sparking heartcore. A scorching bloody mess as he dropped it with a clang on the smooth living floor. Shaking and pale, sweating and collapsing as his life left him, Alex hauled himself weakly into one of the Watchers’ clear fleshy pods. Crystalline coffins, full of thick numbing gel. The ones he’d seen them resting in, to regenerate their cells. Bloody lungs crackling, his sparking heartcore failing, life faded to black as he watched the lid seal shut.

Watchers merely observed from the ship’s command deck, relaying the development to their Prince in his sprawling tower. Notifying him, finally, that they had one of the hybrid apes locked in stasis. The male, their parasite, who’d tried their patience for far too long. Now too weak and powerless to fight back, while a strong steady stream of sedation would keep it that way.

The Prince studied the blond ape’s failing biometrics on a floating hologram. Unlikely that it would survive. A stroke of wild fortune, truly, that the ape pair were dead-set on tearing pieces from one another. Were they ever to unite, even breed, doubtless it would have brought ruin.

But the Prince’s problems were now diminished by half. He had the dying male. Its bizarre genetic mutation was ready to manipulate, at long last. Enough cellular potential to complete his most ambitious work yet… infused with whichever dark experiment that survived the breeding pits.

*

Tabitha was stunned from the impact. Broken-boned and bloody; screaming bubbles. Sinking in the sea. A limp tiny silhouette, drifting down freezing into endless blue-black gloom. She stared in panic; struggling to raise herself up for the surface. Flailing maimed in her silver bloodcloud, shining huge around her in the rippling moonlight. Something reached up. It coiled her leg and dragged her deeper; vast and dark as death. The shining surface slid away, far above her. Her small reaching figure sparked and struggled in the bottomless deep. Tabitha grasped desperately for her catsuit collar, her pull-out hood and hardening breather helmet, and found it in useless tatters. She was staring; snarling wildly. Shocking and clawing the rubbery limbs that coiled her. Nothing. It did nothing. She just kept straining; bones mending as she wrestled herself away. But she couldn’t free her hands fast enough to claw and strike, before the black mass gripped her arms afresh. It was toying with her; exhausting her. No strength left to struggle, as her lungs heaved for air. She knew, then, that this thing was going to kill her. She was drowning. Hard to come back from this, if there wasn’t air left to breathe. No volts or sunlight down here, to supercharge that strange life inside her. Maybe this was it. That vast thing would devour her.

And… yeah. Maybe a part of her even wanted it. For all the fighting to finally stop. A dark drowning end to everything.

But what she wanted didn’t matter. This wasn’t about her; it never was. It was for all those people inside the Ministry, shattered and grieving and still hanging on. It was about Serenity, and Stormworld. And Earth. For whatever light and innocence that still survived in this galaxy, and spared her this long to fight for it. She’d made a vow, to everyone.

For life itself. Tabitha writhed and jerked and struggled against the limbs. She freed her claws just long enough to bury them in her own sparking chest. She blew her bloody heartcore like a bubbling fire-bright bomb, and wrestled free from the gorgon’s roaring gore. Thrashing and reaching for the rippling surface. Life and light and the world, miles above. An endless fading climb through the blackout deep. Bitter freezing water, already filling her dying chest. Stealing the strength right out of her. Crushing the air from her lurching lungs, before she’d ever reach the surface. And those dark searching tentacles, rising again from the deep to drag her down and drown her. Tabitha yelled out; her lungs convulsing. Her panicked sight was darkening. The surface, so close now, was slipping away from her outstretched hand.

And… nothing. The sea was vast and still under bright dead moonlight. Rippling black waves in the night.

Broken suddenly by a coughing, screaming wretch. Tabitha swam for an eternity. Snarling; gasping. Choking. Struggling on through her own silver blood.

She crawled ashore like a rabid black revenant; faint eyes burning in the night. Retching and coughing the freezing bitter sea from her lungs. Checking behind her, staggering on the sand, she saw nothing but ocean. No reaching tentacles; maybe the wounded creature had given up. She dragged herself dripping and slapping from the waves to collapse exhausted on the moonlit shore. Screaming hopelessly into her trembling hands, to stifle the sound from the ruins. Breathless, bleeding, she clutched her sparking chest. Gasping crackled breaths, blood pouring through her fingers, as she bit her sobs back and crawled away shivering from the rushing surf. Drained, and gored, but still…

Nothing’s killed me yet. And I refuse to drop dead now. Breathing, and mending, Tabitha denied her panicked feelings and clamped her palm hard on the gouge through her chest. She told herself that the agony would fade; that the wound would heal. Riding out the deathly dread that ran through her, with words that echoed in her head.

…Not yet. When you’ve brought the Watchers down screaming, in blood and flames, then you have permission to die. Snarling bitterly, eyes lit dully, Tabitha dragged herself to her feet.

She had to keep moving. Already her catsuit was warming her. Drying her out, her second skin, while she wrung the cold dripping sea from her hair. She crept away quietly for cover, among the boat wrecks on the beach. Running through Stormworld’s wilderness in her head.

Priorities. Safety, shelter, warmth, she told herself. Weapons, and camouflage. That was the most important now; to pick her path and move unseen. Maybe the swarm didn’t know she was out this far, hidden deep in the darkened ruins. She intended to keep it that way. Getting off the beach quickly, Tabitha glanced around for anything watching her in the night. She kept low and quiet, and crept on for the dead moonlit stores that lined the seafront.

Crouching cautiously by the toppled shops, she dusted her catsuit quickly in the pale grey ash. Broke up her black silhouette, and tried to wear as much of the ruins as she could. She striped her face with the sandy dirt, and wrapped herself in a grey tarpaulin from a ruined food stand. Looking, and smelling, as much like the city as she could.

Before she moved on quickly, something caught her eye. A small soft glow on her arm; calm and light-coloured where it was caught between her catsuit’s scales. Pulsing like lightning. A thin severed stalk of moonflower, no bigger than a beansprout. Shining celestial. Probably caught up before, when she’d woken in Fishbowl’s garden, and…

Oh god, no. Fishbowl. It hit her hard, like she’d lost a part of herself. She saw its bloodbursting shape all over again, when Alex’s sword had sliced it apart. The creature had sacrificed itself for her. Saved her life, without hesitation. Scowling and heartbroken, eyes closed tight as her tears welled up, Tabitha breathed and stopped herself.

If I fall apart now, then we’ll lose this war, she reminded herself. Her grief would wait; she had a job to do. Glancing around the promenade, and shutting down her feelings, Tabitha pulled the flower stem carefully and hid its giveaway glow inside her catsuit sleeve. There was only one thing she could do for Fishbowl now.

…Revenge.

Moving on soundlessly through the night-black ruins, she had nothing. No knife, no gun; no armour. But she didn’t have her fear any more, either. Nothing but a hard weary look, and a sole solid thought in her head.

That strange voice, that came out of Alex. It said to come to the ship. It had to be close, then. The mothership. Probably hidden in healing beyond those mountains, like she’d guessed. That was where he’d been flying to, before he let her fall. That was where the night sky glowed eerie; where the hive had expanded so fast.

She knew, then, that she wasn’t going back to the Ministry. Not now, when she was already halfway there. Glancing around again, and making sure she was unseen, Tabitha stalked on through the derelict night.

She picked her path towards a great looming building, beyond the dark shattered stores in the distance. Maybe a gallery, or a museum from the looks of it. The best bet she could think of to find warmth and water, and still have space and shadows to hide or escape. Possibly tools in there, or clothing, to help keep her alive.

…Maybe even a weapon.

*

Out in the hive, a group of Watchers circled a writhing black pit. A screeching bloodbath echoed below. The roars and tortured screams were never-ending. A rabid pack of genetic mistakes, tearing each other to yelling pieces down there. Rising up, a steam of panicked breaths in the night. Sentient shouts that knew no words. The warm iron stink of torn flesh. Wet slaps and bloody spatters, as the weaker fighters were ripped open and disembowelled. Crackling volts and fiery bursts lit the gleaming black walls.

There were fewer now; snarling and circling in their great deep pit. Half a dozen shifting shadows, sizing up their lethal opposition. The more measured, intelligent creations that still survived. Calculating; resourceful. Feeling with their feet for bumps and blood-puddles in the bony pit floor, that might trip or stagger their opponents for a kill. Ripping up the corpses quickly, to wield their bloody bones like clubs. A sudden fight broke out; a fire-breathing brute against the rest. An instant pack that tripped it and tore it open; watching all the while for the weakest amongst themselves. When the beast dropped dead they turned on each other. Endless scuffling; yells cut short. Panicked shouts, and the meat-slap beats of endless punches and rips. Bone snapped like a gunshot. A bloodgurgling gasp, as one last shadow choked the life from another. Suddenly the massacre was over, with a final piercing scream.

Only one experiment survived. The most human. The one they’d cloned from corrupted victims, on a blue-green planet called Earth. A fluke result, engineered from scratch. It hadn’t been configured with the ape-hybrids’ voltage, or the monsters’ molten breath. Just a leaner quicker opponent, that those abilities couldn’t hurt. It was looking up at them; staring crouched and vicious from the gory pit. Pacing now, powerfully, as it studied its makers high above. Coated in dull black bone; one skeleton inside another.

The Watchers above glanced at one another; a muted conversation in smooth sonorous tones. With a look and a nod between them, it was decided. The blond hybrid’s cells would strengthen it. Their new creation, made ready for war.

*

Creeping on through the ruined museum, Tabitha stopped short. Froze solid. There was a Watcher there. A soldier, armoured and gigantic. It was staring at something. Studying it. What was that, a fossil? A skeleton or something?

Tabitha watched it hatefully from the shadows; a huntress. Clenching her fists with a leathersteel creak.

*

The Watcher startled, and turned at a distant sound. Searching the shadowed hall for any sign of anything. Wait… there was a shape there. Dim but moonlit. The soldier’s statue-head mask stared into the darkness. It pulled the pistol slowly, soundlessly, from its ornate belt. Taking aim on that hiding silhouette.

It didn’t see Tabitha crouching, waiting, up behind it. Staring with cat-glow eyes. She pounced from the balcony above it; straddled its shoulders and choked it. Snarling and struggling as she shocked it into spasms and dropped it to its knees. Jerking and smoking from her crackling volts. She strangled it down in a deathly wrestle; it was flailing and gasping choked alien words. Fell back down on top of her. Arms reaching; legs writhing. Struggling for life in the vast haunted silence. Its armour grinding and squeaking on the hard shining floor. Jerking and shaking, and turning its gun on her. Tabitha tore the knife from its belt and cut its throat before the deafening shot. She held the Watcher hard in a death-grip headlock, pinning its limbs and twitching with its death throes, until it finally gasped in panic and struggled its last crackling breath. It fell limp and gigantic on the moonlit marble, in a growing pool of golden blood. Sighing with relief, lying still to catch her breath, Tabitha grunted and shoved away its body on top of her.

She ripped the belt roughly from its waist. Checked the heavy black pistol and gulped a good half from the scaly water bottle. She sheathed the Watcher’s knife horizontally across the back of her new belt, like the Tribe.

With one last look at its limp bloody corpse, pooled and spread-eagled among the glooming skulls and fossils, she was gone.

26

‘Still no sign of her, General?’ said Reigo.

‘Nothing,’ Atha replied, as they paced through the rubbled ruins of Tabitha’s stateroom. The full scale of the damage was laid bare now, as the dawn light grew across the Ministry. Tabitha’s scorched wristcom was still by her bed; there was no way to contact her.

‘Everything hinged on her and Seven,’ Atha sighed, defeated. ‘The entire operation’s on hold until we know whether she survived. Looked to me like an even chance that the blond bastard might’ve killed her.’

‘Yes sir,’ said Reigo, with a grim nod. Guardians and volunteers were hard at work around them, boarding up windows and clearing shattered stone since the explosions. Fencing off the ruins of the marble balustrade outside the door, and the torn cratered gardens far below where the pair had fought like animals. Tabitha had warned them about Alex; she’d lost sleep over him. They’d always assumed that they’d see him coming… and that she’d handle him, with their help, when he finally showed up. If not for his sudden flight to abduct her, it looked like she’d have won the brawl.

‘And Aelu, sir?’ Reigo added.

‘Stable, on the ward,’ Atha sighed, with a poorly hidden look of relief. ‘Wish I could say the same for the soldiers on guard duty last night. We’ll hold their funerals this morning.’

‘Yes sir,’ Reigo replied bitterly, as they left the ruined doorway for the hall. ‘What about Seven? Anything?’

‘Well, it’d help if the damn lizard would bother to fly out there and look for her,’ Atha grumbled, as they left the drones and workers to their repairs. Nodding up at Seven’s hunched shape, where he perched like a giant statue on the Ministry’s highest roof. He was watching the ruins, as ever, for any hint of another attack.

‘No one’s been able to communicate with him?’ said Reigo.

‘Unless he doesn’t want to communicate,’ Atha sighed. ‘No, Sergeant. Even the Professor’s strangest attempts haven’t got a meaningful response out of him. All he’ll do is turn his head towards the ruins, like he’s waiting for her. Our assault can’t happen until that bastard goes looking for her, unless Tabitha gets back here on her own. Could be that the drones and gunship team find her first, as long as those grey dragons don’t get to them.’

‘…Unless Her Majesty doesn’t want to be found, sir?’ Reigo considered. Atha gave him a querying look. ‘We know she has some kind of connection with Seven,’ Reigo explained, as they walked on. ‘And we know they were in close contact, when he went after her last night. Then he flew back here empty-handed. Nothing to show for it but a few ugly sword wounds, mostly to his head and throat.’

‘So that blond bastard stood a good chance of killing him?’ Atha reasoned.

‘And Her Majesty wouldn’t want to leave this place unprotected,’ Reigo replied. ‘She knew we needed Seven, for the joint attack on the Watchers. She sent him back.’

‘Then they might’ve agreed on something different,’ said Atha. ‘A change of plan.’ Reigo stayed silent for a moment, thinking, as they walked on down the grand corridor.

‘…Maybe not a total change, General,’ Reigo considered, with a nod towards the hive’s eerie glow beyond the distant hills. ‘Could be that she killed Alex. Or she let him abduct her, just to get inside the hive. Knowing her sole objective and motivation, and the need for her to get in there unseen… well, my guess is that she’s carrying out the strategy on her own.’

*

Hooded and camouflaged, checking constantly for any sign of spiders, Tabitha crept on through the city’s derelict streets. Placing her dark dusty feet softly, carefully, as she searched through the wreckage for anything she could use. Any way to make contact with the Ministry.

The ruins were an endless grey desert around her; an ashen landscape of immense toppled towers. Bent steel rebar, jutting like bones from fallen blocks of poured marble. And dry dead skins in the stone-dust, of every shape and colour, which Tabitha tried her best not to see.

Her plan was no different, really. To reach the Watchers’ hive, and their hidden ship if she could find it. Today’s grand assault had become more of a solo venture. Her plan was just happening a couple of miles further in from the distant Ministry, along the shoreline. And a hell of a lot slower than she’d intended, with no Seven to fly her past those hills on the horizon. But, possibly, it was a safer bet. If she could just survive the ruins, and somehow reach the hive unseen – easier done alone, than with a droid army or a great black dragon at her back – then the Ministry might even avoid open war altogether.

She trekked along the dustblown beachfront; a gorgeous orange glow that surrounded her in the sunrise. Feeding her body, with a warm summer light she could taste. If only the sad lurking sights didn’t ruin the feeling. The misted sands, strewn with drained bodies and boatwrecks. She realised, then, that the old Tabitha was coming out in her. Wandering aimlessly, and caught up in the tragic sights.

…This is probably the worst place to be, she considered. Open space. Poor cover. Correcting herself, adopting her hunched Guardian stance, Tabitha hurried quietly for the store fronts and wrecked aircars in the road. She watched her steps and listened intently, for any tapping legs inside the shadowed shop doors.

Further down the long curving seafront, she noticed a small smooth shape in the rubble. Kneeling quickly, Tabitha checked around her and dug it from the dirt. A miniature drone, tough and compact; not much bigger than a grapefruit. A dusty staring lens at its centre. Maybe a news camera, of sorts, judging by the logo on its side.

And there’s the reporter I suppose, she told herself grimly. Stepping away carefully from a dry empty skin, with great hair and a smart dusty skirt suit.

Pulling the moonflower stem from her catsuit sleeve, Tabitha prised the dronelet open and tried the plant cutting inside its dead circuitry. A careful jolt of current from her fingertip, and the plant matter kindled to life and spread. Closing up the pale beige casing, she smiled to see its lights flicker back on. A rising whisper, then gentle silence, as the staring dronelet’s anti-gravity floated it free from her opening hand. Wetting a patch of dirt with her water bottle, she smeared the metal orb with muddy stripes. She could feel its floating propulsion, resisting her strength like magnetism, as her muddy fingers pushed against it and applied its disguise. Its lens watched her; a soft hybrid beep protested.

‘Shh! Silent mode or something,’ she told it quietly. ‘Just shush. I’m camouflaging you.’ The floating dronelet kept quiet, and suffered its makeover in peace. Something moved then, soft and unfurling, on the doorway beside her. A strange white flower on a long dark stalk, opening up as the sunlight touched it.

That’s Watcher tech, she told herself. Trying not to make a sound as she moved away quickly. But not quick enough. The bloom’s sudden spurt shot a thin black barb. Tabitha reeled away in shocked agony; she took a trembling grip and slid the thin spike from her bloody throat. Pulse pounding, scurrying away from more flowers on the wall, she studied the bloom’s black skewer once she’d reached safe cover. Crouching between two aircar wrecks in the road.

Then, she waited. Paying close attention to how she felt, and if she was burning or breaking a sweat. Tabitha dabbed at the puncture wound in her throat, to find it’d already healed. She felt a slow bitter chill, stinging and paralysing, and then… nothing. It faded just as quickly, and let her cramping muscles go. Like her first spider sting, she supposed. Again, something in her new cells must’ve burned off the toxin, or somehow adapted to it. Making sure she hadn’t been poisoned, and finding no other use for it, Tabitha bunned her hair at the back and pinned it with the skewer like a chopstick.

‘…Bastard,’ she whispered at the distant flower, still raging at herself for being so careless. She checked around herself, walled in and hidden by the aircar wrecks. The sound of the waves might stifle her voice, and this seemed as quiet a place as she was likely to find. Motioning to the dronelet where it hovered beside her, she cleared her blood-tasting throat and gulped from her water bottle to wash it down.

‘Hey, drone,’ she whispered softly. She noticed a tiny white light by its camera lens, blinking rapidly in recognition. ‘…Can you find a local network? A couple of miles away?’

*

‘Phonecall for you, General,’ said an aide in the barracks, with a look of bemusement.

‘From?’ Atha said expectantly, without looking up from his scribbled report.

‘…Her Majesty, sir.’

‘Where the hell are you?’ Atha demanded of his wristcom, as he marched down the busy main corridor for the war room. Glancing at a blank caller picture on the screen, still too dark and flickering to make out.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Tabitha whispered back. ‘You’re on speaker. I don’t have an earpiece.’

‘Well find one, as soon as possible,’ he advised her, more quietly.

‘I’m on the coast,’ she replied. ‘About halfway between the hills and the Ministry.’

‘Your wristcom’s still in your rooms. What are you calling me on?’

‘Drone I revived,’ came her hushed reply. ‘Is everyone ok? Tell me Aelu’s alive,’ she pleaded.

‘She’s stable,’ he replied, hearing Tabitha sigh with relief. ‘She’s on the ward now, in recovery. Your misfits are taking good care of her.’

‘They better be,’ she replied, with a smile in her voice. ‘I’m so sorry about your soldiers, Atha.’

‘So am I,’ he replied bitterly. ‘Just tell me you killed that bastard in the end.’

‘No,’ she said furiously, in a whispered growl. ‘I was close. He’s gone back to their ship, but now I know it’s nearby. The second I see him, I’m collecting his head.’

‘Good,’ Atha replied. ‘Your monster’s fine, by the way. Both of them, come to think of it.’

‘Fishbowl’s alive!?’ she said, in a frantic whisper.

‘It’s missing a few arm things, but Lotor managed to stop the blood loss in time,’ he explained. ‘He’s trying to reattach its limbs in surgery, this morning. Good thing it’s made of rubber.’

‘You’ve no idea how happy I am to hear that,’ Tabitha whispered back tearfully. Heartcore soaring.

‘Yeah, well. Spare a thought for the funerals too,’ Atha replied. ‘So where are you heading?’

‘I’m sticking to what we planned,’ she confirmed. ‘I’m going to get to the Watchers’ ship by myself. Somehow. I think it might be under the hive.’

‘Without Seven? You do know that’s suicide?’ said Atha, raising his voice. He got only a shush in reply.

‘…Meh. I hear that a lot,’ Tabitha whispered back. ‘It’s kind of worn off for me.’

‘So you want Seven to stay here, and defend us? During the conflict?’

‘That’s the idea,’ she said. ‘No sign of the swarm yet, I hope?’

‘Nothing yet,’ Atha replied. He heard her sigh again in relief.

‘That’s good to know,’ she whispered. ‘Listen, I have to go. We’re running out of time before the Watchers make their move. I’m staying silent from now on. I can’t risk getting caught.’

‘There’s a lot riding on you, right now,’ he sighed heavily. ‘If anything happens to you then we’re all buggered.’

‘Well I’d better not get caught, I suppose,’ she replied. ‘I guess you’ll just have to put some faith in me, won’t you?’

‘…I suppose so,’ he conceded. ‘Well, there’s no undoing it now. You’re already halfway to the hive, and maybe the Watchers don’t know about it. That’s as good a foothold as we can hope for. I’ll lead the defence as planned, draw the enemy’s attention, and wait for some kind of signal that you’ve found the mothership,’ he replied. ‘It’s more likely to take you days, multiple, to get through those ruins. Especially if you’re moving slowly and carefully, which I’d advise,’ he added. ‘We’ll carry on with the preparations in the meantime. Harden this place against the swarms, if we can. I’ll make it known to the others that you’ve gone dark.’

‘Yeah, that sounds cooler,’ Tabitha agreed. ‘Well, give my love to all the little Ghosties.’

‘…I am not saying those words to your band of rejects,’ Atha replied.

‘Ok,’ Tabitha sighed. ‘Then just give ‘em a little smoochy smooch? Tiny little one?’

‘Just go,’ Atha replied shortly. ‘And good luck. We’re all counting on you.’

‘I knew you’d say that,’ she grumbled back. ‘Try and come up with some new action-speak while I’m gone. Y’know, something original.’

‘…Just go.’

Tabitha ended the call, dropping all pleasantry, and sighed furiously at the hate she felt for him. Despite her best efforts to keep things civil with Atha, for the sake of winning this conflict… she’d never forget the Night of Burials back on Stormworld. All the grief and death Atha had left behind him, while Sky Tribe had gritted their teeth and waited so patiently for justice to be done.

…Atha will get what’s coming to him, she told herself. For now though, I need him and his battalion on my side. If we’re ever going to save these people’s lives.

27

Tabitha tightened her belt and checked around her. She hurried on from her hiding spot, with her new drone companion hovering by her shoulder. Creeping quick and quiet through the ash-wrapped ruins, under a grey zombie dawn.

Unfastening her catsuit a little, she peered down at her chest to check if her heartcore was healing. There wasn’t any outward sign of a scar, and the bright sunlight fed her skin faster than back on her home turf. It certainly made a more filling meal than the pale winter sun on Stormworld; she felt it more strongly in her veins.

I’ll get my full strength back. But I need to see where I’m going. Glancing up at the darkened store fronts, she searched down the seaside street for an alleyway. Tabitha picked her path carefully through the rubble until she glimpsed a grand back door in the distance. And a ladder, set and semi-hidden in the rear wall of a restaurant.

Climbing wearily to the flat gravel roof, Tabitha crept across it and crouched down to hide by the low wall on the far side. She couldn’t risk being seen, if a dragon happened to go gliding overhead. Studying the broken city landscape, she took her bearings. Couldn’t see the Ministry any more, beyond the forest of buildings on her right. But the hills still towered on her left, far off through the vast dead city. Wreathed in unnatural cloud, vast and deathly dark. The old her would’ve dreaded to look at it; so many miles of desolation. And glinting spiders, scattered like stars across all those shadowed skyscrapers. But things were different now. Her fear just wasn’t the barrier it used to be. Maybe she was numb to it, or hardened by it. Maybe her anger outweighed it; the sheer bloody drive to see those bastards dead.

…It’s a challenge. It’s fuel. And I can’t wait to get back in the hunt.

Climbing back down to the street, Tabitha passed wealthy homes along the beachfront. She set herself the goal of reaching the grand pier in the distance, to break up the endless journey ahead of her.

Just reach the next landmark along. That’s the only way you’ll get through this.

Dead bars and cafes lined the rising boardwalk, with the bright clear ocean lapping beside her. Toys and windblown postcards were strewn across her path. Creeping inside a diner on the pier, and making sure it was empty, she refilled her water from the bottles in the puddling fridge.

Taking a minute to sun-feed, Tabitha looked out from the pier’s end-railings. Thinking of her mum, and a dream about the pier back home. She saw speedboats and giant leisure craft, grounded along the shore; cracked and dented or upside-down and destroyed. She didn’t have to guess what was lurking out there in the water… but still couldn’t resist another look. She saw one almost instantly, and another further out. Sunken black shapes like ships and krakens, bone-clad and luminous, like they were strewn in fairy lights. Either of them could’ve been the one that tried to kill her last night. Devouring drowned aircars and toppled ruins alike, way down in the bubbling deep. And another one, out on the beach to her left. Writhing like a squid in the tumbling surf; big as a beached black whale. Grazing among the puffed floating corpses, coiling its limbs around them, until it gathered its fill and sank back into the water. The sight horrified her, and sparked a fire in her. For Earth, and this world too. Clenched fists creaking, Tabitha turned away from the sight.

Heading down the wooden steps from the pier, and creeping on between the seaweed-covered struts that supported it all, she quickly realised that this wasn’t a good place to be. Silver fronds in the distance told her that the spiders liked it down here; they grew like monstrous weeds in the wet golden sand. Bigger than she remembered, like this summery place truly suited them. Must’ve felt as good for them here as it did for her. Tabitha veered off to her right, walking closer to the shore, to put more distance between them. She couldn’t afford for her presence to wake them up.

The dormant spider-plants spurred her away, but it was something else that put a nervous rush in her to escape the pier’s supporting scaffolds. Something different.

Walking on quickly through the cold strutted shadows, Tabitha looked around at a kind of aqueous grotto. Ooze, like a web, had set hard like clear resin. Stretched and smeared among the struts, like a puddled forest. A lifegiving habitat, saline and primordial; growing strong with the sea’s rich minerals.

Sleeping at the heart, its keeper. A gleaming black boulder in the shadowed sand. It was a huge, striking, unsettling thing; smooth-bodied and utterly alien. Matte leathery skin, scratched and scarred like whale hide. Dull and breath-swelling in the dim light. It twitched, as she edged away silently in the distance. Then creaked, and unfurled itself, and sniffed blindly for her. Suddenly it came scuttling through the struts towards her, as fast as she could run. A freak crustacean, aiming whiplash limbs that shot and scudded on the scaffolds as she ducked aside. Pulse pounding, Tabitha rolled and leapt away as it pounced past her with a prison of snapping legs. She drove in her knife and shocked its flesh through the hilt, before it could turn around and rip off her head. All that stopped it were her trembling volts; she forced them in stronger to stop it screeching for help. Draining her heartcore with the effort. Her last fierce shock fried its brains, and cracked its black shell with hissing flesh. Dropped it dead, with a huge creaking clatter among the pier-posts. Catching her breath, and checking around nervously, Tabitha hurried out for the warm sunlit sand. More black boulders in the distance persuaded her to get clear of the beach entirely.

Heading on, and sticking to the road now, the beachfront hotels were smothered in sand drifts. Great damp dunes of it, seeping from broken windows like shattered aquariums; the aftermath of a massive tidal wave. Bent girders and broken pillars poked from the silt like ribs. But it was the peering remain that drove her on down the street; a pale hand lurking in the wet buried sand. Not dry empty skin, for once, but a rotten fleshy reminder. Tabitha felt her nausea rising and couldn’t look away fast enough. She hurried on, breathing rapidly as she trekked silently up the long curving road ahead.

The sick feeling wouldn’t leave her, not after two dozen shopfronts more. For the first time here, she felt a tension. Shaking shallow breaths, like a weight on her chest. The world was dizzy and warping; possibly shock. Or the bright blue flowers, maybe, that she noticed now along the kerbside. Not white and menacing, but small and dainty. Hundreds of them, the further she looked. A pollen mist of stressing pheromones, compounding her deathly dread. A bright dead cat-creature in the road told her all she needed to know. Coughing, dry-throated and itchy-eyed, Tabitha pulled her catsuit’s healing hood into a helmet and hurried quietly away.

Taking her breather-hood down, having cleared the long thin flower patch, she stopped in a doorway on the adjoining road. It took her a minute to get her senses back, from what felt like a drugged sudden stupor. A venom-vicious hangover followed, like she’d just spent three nights on the town. An all-time low, that made her want to stop and give up completely. Clearly the Watchers had been busy; branching out from bioweapons into chemical tactics too.

If those flowers reached the Ministry walls, they’d make people throw themselves off. It seemed like the ruins were a Watcher testing ground, for more novel horrors to win their wars. Or just miles of living minefield, to keep any would-be attackers from the hive. Getting to her feet, Tabitha held that jagged thought and made it a challenge. She checked the small drone that still shadowed her, and walked on.

...Just try and stop me.

Further down the seafront she paused for a second, at a sudden overwhelming sensation. That weird hyperlight feeling running through her again, that she hadn’t felt fully since Stormworld. God-gold sunlight on the sweeping tide; a batbird call through the peace. A wild-tingling moltenmind trance, in the shifting summer sunlight and the salt-scent bliss of the breeze. Like all her senses bloomed in a sudden unfurling, slick and shining as soul-quicksilver. They told a sudden different story, of life beyond and behind what was there. Sudden spellbound wonder at a new deepness in the sky; sapphire-inky and swirling deeper than leviathan seas. Every rustling, rattling, unseen footstep of the city’s bugs and bright lizards, tapping and tickling through a goldenglow web in her veins. She looked around and felt it fading. The grey dead ruins filled her view.

Seeing the stores and landmarks afresh, Tabitha recognised where she was. An estuary; a toppled juice stand beside the railings. This was the promenade she’d visited with Saa and her retainers, when she’d first come to this world. These were the dead streets she’d walked with Deep Roots, no more than a smiling memory. She paused and sighed, and missed him terribly. Needed his calm peaceful presence, now more than ever. And caught herself slowing down.

…I can’t stop here. And I’m done grieving. There’s no time. She couldn’t dwell on everything Alex had taken from her. All she could do now, really, was take a life from him in return. The only life that mattered to him.

And there it was, beyond the dead empty market; the ruined commune that she’d practically been kicked out of. A temple of science, dedicated to robotics. Drained skins, of every shape and pale colour, lay slumped among the rich apartments that tiered above. A heartbroken sight that caught in her throat. That great petalled roof, too, that now stood half-fallen and shattered beneath the grim misted sky. Tabitha cringed at her memory of this place, of when she and her wild retainers had attacked that poor robot horse. Mistaking its approach for a charging predator. She remembered the broken man who’d created it, and watched it collapse in a stabbed sparking heap. And Saa, of course, jumping in to smooth their ruffled lab coats. Now the whole place was dead and gone. The Watchers had taken everyone; everything.

…But she had to move on. She could still save the ones who’d survived this invasion. Maybe she could open up the dronelet here, and take some celestial growth from its innards. See if she couldn’t revive a few more droids in storage, to help her out. But she reconsidered. Anything extra would only draw attention to her, and clumsy glowing robots wouldn’t be the stealthiest allies. Easier just to slip by alone, undetected, if she could help it. Pulled from her thoughts, Tabitha heard a tiny sound beside her, like a shutter click.

‘Did you just take a picture of me?’ she whispered to the dronelet. But its light was flashing at her. The small sphere flew forward, to bump itself against her shoulder. Warning her. Tabitha turned and saw spiders, scuttling rapidly down the commune’s ruined walls.

‘…Oh,’ she muttered. There wasn’t time to escape this place; they’d already seen her. Hurtling towards her in a starving pack. Better to tackle them here, inside, than let the noise carry through the streets and give her away. Tabitha took a leaping kick off the wall beside her and tore the first pouncing spider to gore. She sprinted hidden through the ruined pillars to shock another dead and bury her knife through a third. Silent, staring, she watched the whole drooling pack racing for her. One glance at those dead scientists lit a fury in her. A sudden fire inside.

She sprinted for the swarm in the central arena and clawed one apart as it leapt for her. Threw another back broken with a ringing uppercut and tossed the third away flailing in bloodgushing halves. Her running-jump stomp crushed the fourth to slopping wreckage; she grabbed it up snarling and flung it spinning in a bloody hammer-throw. Its corpse dropped another mid-pounce and cracked it dead on impact. A vicious dropkick broke another spider shrieking; a spinning stab butchered the last to spurting shards. Tabitha felt her heartcore racing; fists back up and ready for round two. She heard a small slick sound behind her; a tongue-spike ready to shoot.

She tore the creeping spider apart and swung it clean through another. Punched it fierce and rapid-fire to drop it dead and mangled. She snarled spinning and knifed another through its staring head, and shocked the one that followed like a shotgun blast. Sprung her claws to tear the next and flung another bloody against the concrete wall behind her. She caught one leaping and forced it back against a pillar. Pinned it there shrieking with her knife through its bursting chest. She shocked another silent and clawed two more in rapid succession. Grabbed the last one pouncing and ripped it limb from limb, as the blood slopped down in a bright glinting gush.

Staring breathlessly, her fierce fire fading, Tabitha rolled her shoulders and stretched her arms. A puddled circle of silver corpses twitched around her; cracked shells trickling blood. Catching her breath, and checking that was the last of them, Tabitha paced back over to the concrete pillar. She wrenched the creaking knife from the dead spider pinned there, dropping its corpse with a clatter on the shattered floor.

Wiping the bloody blade on her tarp-cloak before she sheathed it, Tabitha headed on for the cracked chasm in the distant wall. Glancing back to make sure her dronelet followed. A small blue light blinked off beside its lens.

‘Wait, were you recording all that?’ she said curiously. Its tiny white light blinked rapidly. ‘…You’ve been recording me this whole time? Since I revived you?’ Its light blinked quickly again.

‘Does that mean yes?’ she replied. ‘What’s no?’ the hovering drone stared for a moment, and delivered two slow light-blinks instead. ‘So… you could send that footage back to the Ministry?’ she wondered. Her mind raced with new plans. ‘Is there a terminal you can pick up there? Or send it like a call?’ She waited for a while; maybe the drone was checking for networks. Tabitha waited longer, watching impatiently, and sighed. But its light blinked again, finally, to say yes.

‘Address the footage to Irren, if you can,’ she instructed it. ‘Add a message with it. Say, Get to work.’

28

‘Hey, Sparky,’ Big Fish teased her. Stepping carefully around delicate medical droids as they attended their patients on the ward. Fish took his regular bedside seat on the sunlit floor, when he remembered that the chairs here didn’t much like his weight. ‘How’re you feeling?’

‘Like I’ve been shocked half to death by a lightning bolt,’ Aelu replied dryly, propped up on pillows in recovery, with some vicious branching scars beneath her gown. ‘Same as every other time you’ve asked me.’ Fish saw her smile and grinned in return. He turned at a strong tap on the shoulder, as Sea Mist took her seat beside him and budged him over.

‘Heal, well?’ Sea Mist growled in concern. Promptly standing up again, to adjust Aelu’s pillows and try to smooth out her hair.

‘I’m doing ok, thanks,’ Aelu replied awkwardly. Persuading Sea Mist back with a kind smile.

‘…Hey, how come she doesn’t get all your sarcasm?’ Big Fish complained.

‘Because she doesn’t get all my sarcasm,’ Aelu replied. ‘It just doesn’t go over at all,’ she shrugged, as she slurped her packet of juice with a straw. The sole crinkling sound in the sudden silence, when it dawned on them that they’d already talked about everything an hour before. And the hour before that, and before that too.

‘…Good juice?’ Fish enquired, breaking the sunlit silence.

‘Do you mean am I enjoying it, or can you have some?’ Aelu replied. Fish fell quiet.

‘…Can I have some?’ he tried, hopefully. Aelu sighed and put the packet in his giant hand.

‘So, any news about Tabitha?’ she said, watching him fumble with the tiny straw. Taking the juice off him again, to squeeze it into an empty flower vase on the side table. Smiling gratefully, Fish took the vase more easily and sank it with a satisfied gulp.

‘Mm,’ he added brightly. ‘Good juice.’ He sat back smiling, and stretched contentedly. ‘…Hm?’ he realised, as Aelu watched him expectantly. ‘Did you ask me something?’

‘Tabitha?’ she replied impatiently. ‘Any news?’

‘Ohh, right,’ he yawned, sleep-deprived. ‘I was thinking about something else.’ Aelu tutted hopelessly and looked elsewhere for an answer.

‘Kha V’ha? Nothing,’ Barkless informed her, with a worried look, as he took a seat on the opposite side of her bed. ‘How, long, here?’

‘Oh, a good while longer, I should think,’ Aelu replied, a little weakly. ‘Still need plenty of R and R before I’m fit for any work,’ she added, with a gentle smile. ‘I just hope that Tab–

‘ARE YOU EXPERIENCING CHEST PAIN?’ a medical droid demanded loudly beside them, in a harsh static voice that made them all jump.

‘Gods,’ Aelu muttered, watching it in shock.

‘ARE YOU EXPERIENCING CHEST PAIN?’ the floating droid repeated. Staring into her soul, with those glowing circular eyes.

‘No,’ Aelu replied defensively. Sea Mist had been snarling at it, until she was sure that the strange mettal golem meant them no harm.

‘YOU SHOW NO SIGN OF ARRHYTHMIA OR CARDIAC DAMAGE. YOU ARE FREE TO LEAVE.’

‘Wh… Just like that?’ Aelu said in surprise. ‘Don’t you need to monitor me, for–

‘YOU ARE FREE TO LEAVE,’ the droid repeated abruptly, ushering past Fish’s elbow. ‘PLEASE DRESS. YOU ARE FREE TO LEAVE. THIS BED IS REQUIRED. YOU ARE FREE TO LEAVE.’

‘Alright, I’m going,’ Aelu protested, climbing out from the bedsheets before it decided to tip the mattress from under her. Clutching her hospital gown tightly behind her in modesty, as she gathered up her clothes from a bedside cabinet.

‘…Dude,’ Big Fish objected, as the droid ushered them all away with small flapping hands.

‘I, strike,’ Sea Mist growled wrathfully, raising her fist, as the robot fussed her away.

‘No. No strike,’ Fish advised her, escorting Mist and Aelu down the ward with Barkless in tow. ‘You didn’t see what happened to the poor guy who complained about breakfast. They hunt in packs.’

*

'At least let me lead in a squad to support her,' Reigo urged Atha, in the privacy of his office. 'We'll drop in at a distance. We won't give away her position.’

‘You’ve changed your mind, Sergeant?’ Atha replied. ‘This morning I had the impression that you wanted to leave Her Majesty to the job.’

‘I’ve had time to think, General,’ said Reigo. Breathing restlessly as he stood from his seat.

‘…Or dwell?’ Atha suggested, as he finished his strong spirit and set down the glass at his desk. Offering Reigo the decanter, and being politely refused, before he poured himself another.

‘General, I’ve been out there, in the ruins,’ Reigo insisted. ‘She can take what they’ll throw at her. But it’s no guarantee. For the success of this operation, she needs all the help she can get.'

‘I understand your feelings, Sergeant,’ Atha replied professionally. Resisting the urge to imply that those feelings might be personal. ‘But we haven’t received any distress signals from the drone she has with her,’ he added, trying to reassure him. ‘And right now, the element of stealth is paramount. We can’t risk her detection. The survival of this world has to come first.’

‘But… this is insane!’ Reigo objected. ‘I know what she’s capable of, but she needs a team to survive this! What good will it do this world when that city rips her apart!?’

‘…Do you really have so little faith in her?’ Atha replied. Reigo sighed angrily in response. ‘A squad can't stay hidden like a single soldier,’ he added. ‘You know that.’

‘But she’s not a soldier, General–

‘Sergeant,’ Atha interrupted, raising his voice, with a look that brooked no further argument. ‘She’s survived more than any soldier that you, or I, have ever served with. And despite the role Her Majesty plays within these walls, first and foremost she’s a weapon. One that you helped create. That was our agreement, the first time you stepped into this office.’ Reigo studied him, but he couldn’t argue against the fact. Still, it didn’t sit right with him. It wasn’t right. He’d never been one for leaps of faith. Despite his own opinion, Reigo kept his uneasy peace. The General’s orders came first.

'It’s a lethal environment to insert just one soldier. There’s no denying that,’ Atha added, less harshly. ‘But inserting more troops into the ruins will multiply her chances of being seen. It will put those soldiers’ lives at stake. Loss of lives could affect her motivation to complete that mission, and further jeopardise every innocent life within these walls. That’s my decision, Sergeant. One both strategic, and moral. And on my head be it, should this operation fail. I’d ask that you do me the courtesy of following orders.’ Reigo watched him, and finally nodded his agreement. Cooling off, slowly, as he kept the bigger picture in mind.

‘I need a capable Lieutenant,’ Atha continued, with a sip of his glass. ‘Help me beat those bastards and the job’s yours. Question my orders again, and I’ll demote you to Corporal.’

‘…General?’ said Reigo, taken by surprise. A hell of a promotion, to skip four ranks in-between. By the book seemed to be a looser guideline lately, given their desperate situation. Though broken rules were nothing to the General, it seemed, given the rumours he’d heard about Atha’s previous postings.

‘I’ve got plenty of Enlisted to keep this place running,’ Atha explained. ‘What I don’t have are veterans of the Watchers’ bioweapons in higher-ranking positions. I’ve already had to replace a Captain since last night’s attack,’ he added grimly. ‘There’s a vacancy.’

‘…You need me to make something happen, General?’ Reigo guessed. Watching Atha’s stern nod.

‘I’m giving you full responsibility to reinforce our defences,’ he replied. ‘You’ll have complete control of our warehouse stock for the effort. Full use of drones too, if they’ll salvage anything of use. If that Thier fella happens to object, have him removed from his post. I’m gambling every resource we have on this operation’s success. It’s our last chance.’

‘Yes, General.’

‘Good. Get to work Lieutenant.’

*

Walking the Ministry’s grand hallways, Reigo wasted no time in delegating duties to his new team of junior Guardians. He didn’t hesitate to discipline them either, if certain Enlisted men and women objected to his leap up the ranks. His mind was racing. His old superiors had worked hard to shore up the stocks and barricades, but no amount of preparation would ever be enough. There was no shortage of aircar wrecks and fallen girders, still lying close by in the city ruins. New soldiers in need of experience, and Thier’s army of drones at his command. If only he could find that elusive man, to get some much-needed help with the Ministry’s defences.

‘Private, find Thier will you?’ he asked a guard in the corridor, relieving him from his post.

‘Yo,’ Big Fish rumbled, pacing up alongside him. ‘You look busy.’

‘Incredibly,’ Reigo agreed. ‘…Was there something you needed, Fish?’

‘Wanted to know what the deal is. With Tabitha,’ Fish replied.

‘Nothing new since her drone call, mate,’ said Reigo. ‘Orders are to leave her to it.’

‘We should be out there with her,’ Fish objected passionately. ‘This is bullshit.’

‘Well. We can still help Her Majesty from in here,’ Reigo replied. ‘I could use your gang’s labours, for a start.’ Big Fish sighed sharply and watched him. Massive arms folded while he listened.

‘Maybe the General’s right,’ Reigo explained. ‘Heading out there to support her might only give her away. And get everyone killed. We could help her more with the work we do here.’

‘…Fine,’ Fish conceded, as he saw the reasoning. ‘Work sounds good,’ he shrugged. ‘Better than just hanging around with Aelu, anyway. I’ll give them a call.’ Fish clamped his huge hands to his mouth, like a loudspeaker. ‘GHOSTS, UNITE!’ he bellowed through the courtyard. His booming voice echoed through the staring Ministry gardens, as the busy crowds suddenly fell silent.

‘Literally right behind you,’ Aelu replied flatly. ‘And I heard what you just said about me.’

‘…This guy here needs our help,’ Fish replied, pointing a massive finger at him.

‘Reigo,’ said Reigo. ‘…You didn’t know my name?’

‘Yeah, Reigo here. Needs our help,’ Fish explained, for Aelu’s benefit. ‘With… something,’ he continued. ‘I didn’t ask.’

‘Yep, heard all that too,’ Aelu confirmed.

‘K,’ Fish replied uncertainly, with a feeling like he was starting to lose his position as self-appointed leader. ‘Well, guess I’ll go get Barkless and–

‘They’re right there,’ Aelu interrupted impatiently, pointing across the bustling corridor at the other two. ‘Let’s just… do the thing. Whatever we’re doing,’ she sighed. ‘Oh, and Reigo? For the love of the gods, please take over from Fish.’ Aelu noticed the small glinting bars pinned to his uniform. ‘Congrats on the promotion, by the way.’ Reigo smiled in reply.

‘Why, not you, take over Gosts?’ Barkless asked Aelu, as he and Sea Mist followed on.

‘Well, because then I’d have to manage Fish,’ she replied. Half-shoved aside suddenly by Fish’s massive hand, as he caught her teasing smirk.

‘…Ow,’ Aelu replied angrily. ‘Watch the fresh lightning scars, please?’

‘Oops. Sorry,’ Fish muttered back. ‘Sparky.’ He took her angry punch in the arm with a grin.

*

‘Down tools! New orders!’ a Guardian officer barked at her team on the mounting barricades. Boots clomping, prowling through them, she nodded her engineers with her towards the main gates. ‘By order of Lieutenant Reigo we’re to redirect all defence efforts to excavation work, in the plaza grounds circling the outer walls,’ she commanded them. ‘Uta, you’ll lead a second team on those buttress walls in the meantime. I’m giving you free reign to requisition any drones that Thier Isse won’t give you willingly. We need those girders and shock composites in place yesterday.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ the red man replied dutifully, peeling off across the courtyard with his dust-covered workers in tow.

‘Excavation, ma’am?’ said a blue-skinned soldier, keeping pace beside her. ‘Trench work?’

‘Dry moat,’ the officer explained. ‘Laced with vines from the volt-tree. The Lieutenant believes they might shock those spiders to death on contact, once Professor Lotor works out the wiring. Mass-produce some murder of our own for a change.’

‘Moats and high walls,’ an amphibian woman considered, marching on at their right. ‘Sounds kinda medieval to me, ma’am.’

‘Correct,’ the officer confirmed. ‘Engineered geography against an endless horde. Medieval’s exactly what we need.’

‘Yes ma’am,’ the woman smiled back.

‘Questions?’ the officer finished, with a quick look between them.

‘No ma’am,’ they replied in unison.

‘Good. Make it happen. When those fuckers come knocking, we’ll blow ‘em straight to hell.’

*

‘How’s Sunshine?’ Big Fish rumbled, as they walked on for the barracks.

‘Holding up,’ Reigo replied. ‘I’m keeping him busy in the armouries. Keep his mind off it, y’know.’ Fish nodded in reply.

‘…Hey, where’d all those droid soldiers go?’ Fish considered, looking around the empty main courtyard as they passed it by. Aelu glanced at him, and wondered if he really did have a memory to go with his nickname.

‘Already embedded in the ruins, across a couple of miles surrounding us,’ Reigo replied. ‘Currently dormant, and dug into tower blocks. Only a few engagements with stray spiders so far. Still waiting for any sign that the main swarm’s on the move. Early warning system, of sorts.’

‘Any news on that?’ said Aelu. ‘The swarm?’

‘Nothing,’ Reigo sighed, with a note of frustration. ‘But, I guess that gives our stealth operative more time. She might even reach the hive in one piece.’

‘Yeah, it’s kinda the part after that I’m worried about,’ Fish replied. ‘I mean, what if this huge, end-of-days swarm hasn’t emptied out towards us when Tabitha gets there? She’ll never get past them unseen.’

‘Then we’ll draw them out,’ Reigo replied, with a determined look. ‘Drone strikes, or suicide runs if we have to. I’ll take the gunship and fly an airstrike out there myself, if it comes to it.’ Aelu glanced at him, wondering about something. ‘She has to get in there undetected,’ said Reigo. ‘Everything rests on Her Majesty now.’

‘…You can just call her Tabitha, y’know,’ said Aelu, smiling at him. ‘Soldier boy.’

‘Yeah. You, one of, Gosts,’ Barkless added beside him.

‘Warrior. Teacher,’ said Sea Mist, nodding in consensus. ‘Good. Make us, stronger.’

‘So I’m a Ghost now?’ Reigo said with a smile. ‘Officially?’

‘Ahh, we don’t do officially,’ Big Fish rumbled. ‘Be in the Ghosts if you wanna,’ he shrugged, as he scratched his itchiest scar. ‘I mean, good, if you did. But… don’t care.’

‘That’s some good commitment there, Fish,’ Aelu muttered.

‘Thanks,’ Big Fish replied brightly. Oblivious. ‘…Where we going, anyway? Or are we just doing the hero walk-on thing down this corridor?’

‘Armoury,’ Reigo replied, as he led them out of the archway for the Guardian’s sunlit central fort. ‘Half necessity, half public relations. You’ll like it.’

‘…Puvvvlik? Rr’ LLaeshanz?’ Barkless repeated uncertainly, scowling at the unfamiliar words. Sea Mist shrugged beside him.

‘He means we’re getting presents,’ Aelu explained.

‘Oh! Like, prezzants,’ Sea Mist replied happily. Pale eyes glinting with her sudden smile. A subtle glance at Barkless, to see if he got the hint. ‘Good.’

‘Tarial here’s going to check they’re a good fit for you,’ Reigo explained, as he introduced the stern weathered smith at the forges. A stout stained engine of a man, with broad shoulders and a craggy tanned face, who shook Fish’s hand with a grip he actually felt.

He led them on inside the flower-lit workshop, where hard black shapes hung menacing in the fire-glow shadows. The Ghosts stared in surprise at a pale fearsome spectre inlaid on every chestplate. Dark combat armour. Strange alloy, lightweight but steel-solid; wrapped and riveted on tough cloth like thick nylon. Reforged and shaped masterfully, from the hard black hide of dead monsters in the stables’ stockpile.

Aelu watched the others happily, as they eagerly tried on their sets. Silent, and paranoid, in case her nocturnal activities had since come to light. There were ragged sacks of gold bullion in her bedroom, a fortune in fees, just waiting to be tracked down by dutiful Guardians. Still…

Keeping Atha satisfied might just be enough insurance. Our glorious General, with plenty of dark secrets of his own. Some leverage, at least, until I can get off this bloody world.

Barkless Tree stared silently, still standing reverent before his great dark gift. He pulled a silvery alloy dagger from its sheath beside him, forged from dead spiders, with his name chalked on the leather. Etched on the base of the blade was an ornate snarling spirit. Turning it over, he saw Dark Storm’s words engraved:

For my First Queensguard. Fierce-Hope.

Barkless felt a sudden proud lump in his throat, honoured a thousandfold. Lost for the few alien words he knew, as the smith took his armour from the stand.

‘You ready to try yours on, buddy?’ said Big Fish, as Tarial unfastened the metal clips on the chestpiece. ‘…You’re looking pretty serious there, pal.’

‘Ready, for war,’ Barkless growled in the firelight, with a stern strong look that gave Sea Mist fluttering mothbirds. ‘For Glory. For Queen.’

*

Three figures stood around a glowing terminal, deep in the Ministry’s shadowed library.

‘Look at her,’ Saa muttered. Her eyes were fixed on the vicious video footage, rapid and bloodspattered, as the dronelet’s tracking camera strained to keep up with her combat. Saa was just glad to see that Tabitha was alright; she’d been beside herself with worry since Alex attacked.

‘Most impressive, Mr Amsira,’ Thier agreed, studying the flickering video with interest. ‘I’ve no doubt it would hearten the troops to see it.’ Irren tipped his head in response, distracted, as his fingers flew across the keyboard beside a second terminal.

‘It’s not soldier morale I’m going for,’ he replied, as he stared intently at the bright screen. Finishing off his article quickly, to add it to the packs he’d stored in preparation.

‘…I’m afraid you may need to be a little more specific in your needs, my friend,’ Thier smiled graciously, breaking the long silence between them. ‘If there’s anything I might contribute to your intended strategies, you have only to ask–

‘I need hard copies,’ Irren interrupted busily. ‘Paper stock. Photos. A printing press.’

‘Barbarous antiques,’ Thier replied, smiling dismissively. A smile that faded, when he saw just how serious Irren actually was. ‘Though, I’m sure those facilities might be arranged, or constructed. With the proper resources.’

‘You still haven’t told us what this meeting’s actually about,’ Saa said impatiently, as Irren sank another strong drink and went back to work on some kind of design template.

‘That’s your trouble. You see the world in meetings,’ Irren muttered bitterly. Barely dragging his eyes from the terminal screen, as he continued his careful work. ‘The world works on stories,’ he said, finally breaking off from his writing to face her. ‘Life. Death. The whole grand theatre show in-between. It all just runs on narratives. Smoke and mirrors,’ he said, with a growing passion. ‘Good guys, bad guys. My cause, your cause. The right tribe, and all the wrong tribes outside. Left politics, right politics… I’m right, you’re wrong... On, and on, and on. Everyone just believes the stories they’re told about the world, because it’s harder to question it and think for yourself. To unpick all the lies, and find the stories that really matter, and who the bad guys really are. Complacence. That’s what brought the Watchers down on us. That’s how the old story ended.’ Thier studied him, with a growing smile. A like-mind, finally, within these walls. ‘But now we get control of the story,’ Irren continued, watching them intensely. ‘Not the Ministers, or the news-casts. We get to decide how this plays out. Right now, we’re the news out of Serenity. We shape the story that reaches the other worlds. If we ever get a surviving drone into orbit,’ he added bitterly.

‘We control the story,’ Thier agreed, smiling as he looked around at Irren’s piled-up paperwork. Pausing for a moment, to study what the grand mess of notebooks actually said.

Wait. This is…

Thier glimpsed bold new ideas; seductive and incendiary. ‘…You’re lighting the signal fires,’ he realised, meeting Irren’s look with newfound respect. Studying the messy words and sketches that filled his office, with sudden fresh perspective. Every scribbled leaflet; every sleepless note. All of it formed one new narrative, scrawled and evolving. Certain words, buried in all those drunken thoughts.

Death gods. Watcher Killer. Virtue. Droids. Silverspire. Moat. Sovereign. An endless host of quiet conversations, transcribed in many different hands, from every corner of the Ministry. Every secret and strategy, overheard and pouring back here, to Irren’s glooming den. Posing as a drunk idealist, in the heart of an unseen web.

‘These noble walls have ears, it would seem,’ Thier said with a smile. Passing a transcript to Saa.

‘Always have,’ Irren shrugged, as he drained another glass and went back to his work.

‘…You’ve been spying on everyone? Through the drones!?’ said Saa, in sudden horror.

‘Nothing so sinister,’ Irren replied dismissively. ‘Just good old-fashioned informants. I put mine in place, before anyone else put in theirs. A few good men and women. Loyalists.’

‘Loyalists?’ said Saa, puzzled. ‘Loyal to what?’

‘A new story. For changing times,’ Irren replied cryptically. Watching her, as she studied the working titles and broadcast scripts beside her. ‘…And every good tale needs a hero.’

29

Tabitha looked over her shoulder warily. She checked the ruined grey road ahead, walking on deeper into the toppled super-city. Away from the coast and the shop-filled leisure quarter, toward the towering business district beyond. The tallest skyscrapers loomed ahead like a bright dead heaven.

The day felt summer-hot around her. The air smelled sharp, like dry attic dust. She watched a flock of batbirds rise in the distance, a rare glimpse of life. Tiny winged shapes across the skyhazing towers and the cloudless afternoon sky. Beyond the green-gardened ruins, a dark fog deepened in the distant hills. She dragged her mind away from it, and what that lurking gloom meant for her. A wrenching feeling, like a black hole twisting inside her.

Ash drifted up in powdered clouds as she strode on, swirling grey around her dusted black feet. Hooded and cloaked, and sticking to the car-wreck shadows. Searching all the while, through windblown wrappers and snowdrifting trash, for tools or weapons she could use. Ignoring the endless emptied bodies, as best she could, in every pale dead colour there was. She’d never seen so many before… but she had to keep her mind fixed on why she was here. Where she was heading. Terrified, really. Every thought led back to that great hidden hive, and the lurking truth that it would finally kill her.

But she walked on; something compelled her. An engine of vengeance. She’d never felt so sure of anything in her life. Far beyond her timid old existence, this threat was very real. Her path was laid out before her; that scared her stiff. And still, something much older kept her going. Instinct, rising up to meet it. A blade on a grindstone, pushing right back.

I made a vow. Fierce-Hope, for my tribe. For my friends. Fists clenched, teeth gritted, Tabitha walked on toward her bitter end. Glancing at the small drone beside her shoulder, she waved it back to float further behind. Capturing the cinematic scene in her wake.

The aircar wrecks were closer here. Packed and piled in twisted carnage. Half-buried in places, where the city’s white towers had fallen to hills. An eerie peace lingered; a graveyard peace. Like all crawling life had given up and gone. And the spiders with them, so it seemed.

The silverbright daylight lurked in lazing rays; misting gorgeous among the vast faded buildings. Her cloaked pilgrim silhouette, tiny on the lamp-lined street between them, dwindled into sunglowing mist. Her ashen footprints vanished in the breeze.

Further on, where the buildings opened out, the dust lurked like fog in a desert. The landscape was lit with a rich citrus glow, lemon-bright and weird-delicious, from wherever the sunlight seeped in. Tabitha glanced around constantly; more cautious in the murking mist. Heartcore pounding with her quiet breaths. She stopped in shock at a hunched black form, hard-skinned and metallic in the distance. Just a car-wreck corner, charred and shrouded in the smog. Breathing deeper, claws sprung in waiting, Tabitha stalked on without a sound.

The ground was pale moonscape; a carpet of ash inches thick. A bright haunted place that stifled all sound; emptied of life long before. Bitter-scented silence pressed in all around her. Like a crypt.

The dronelet tailed her striding silhouette, where stone giants loomed in the haze. The capital’s modern gods; stern statues of self. Gorgeous techno-deities, wreathed in stone ribbons or backed by giant halos. Staring fearlessly into a future that never was. The kind of classical self-regard that impressed her, the first time she’d come here; the high culture of a proud heavenly world. Nothing now but a punchline, for the grandest fall of all time.

Clearing the statued square, Tabitha climbed a vast rubbled mound to get her bearings. She checked around cautiously, the floating drone following behind, and disappeared into a building’s torn-open side.

Those far bright windows seemed promising, past the dead office terminals and abandoned desks. No sounds or smells in here that might warn her, and no trace of spider tracks on the walls. It seemed clear. A chance, finally, to sit for a minute and grab a decent meal.

Easing down stiffly on the bright sunlit flooring, Tabitha lay back for a moment and felt her catsuit appreciate the warm stone slabs. Wondering what kind of empire used to operate from here.

Stark minimal architecture… weird sculptures on clean-cut pedestals… classic corporate headquarters.

With a deep calming breath, stretching and satisfied, Tabitha soaked in the yellow sunlight that filled this grand smooth sanctum. Square pools reflected rippling water-patterns across the walls, like ghostly netting and sparse clouded skies.

She felt fuller now. Happier, for a little while at least. Feeding in bliss on the hot summer daylight. Feeling a washed-out syrup aspect, that tasted gold like sating butter. Soft nectar scents and snow-speckling lights in her head. Filling her up in moments, that bright spring feeling, like a glowing-honey cuddle. Complete.

The sunlight felt stronger now. More insistent, like a lover. A sudden summer feeling, heavenly-strong and tantalising. Tingling chills on her skin. A gasping glimpse of pure holy power, roaring nuclear beyond the summer sky. Turning glyphs and blinding colour, rolling through her soul like a great golden tide.

Tingling longer, breathing quick and quieter still, Tabitha closed her eyes and let the gold-twining rush take over. Giving in to that full wondrous feeling; soaring godly and crashing orgasmic. Hot, and cold, and trembling in the light. Hiding her fast breaths from the world. Her cheeks blushed; her lips flushed red. Groaning tense and writhing silent. Shivering, colossal, to a fierce gorgeous climax. A tide-crashing wonder, floating her sated soul from a higher state, as the rush faded down to soft welcome warmth.

Gold eyes opened, Tabitha stared at the star-struck ceiling as she caught her rapid breath. She’d never known a feeling like that. Sighing, satisfied, she dragged herself shaking to her feet. Then… a thought.

‘…You weren’t recording that, were you?’ she asked the floating drone, which seemed to have been turned away politely at the far side of the room. It looked around, and blinked no in response. Tabitha watched it carefully.

‘You can’t lie, can you?’ she added suspiciously, as she waved it closer. It blinked no again. ‘Well,’ she supposed, as she cleared her throat awkwardly, ‘I’m putting a lot of trust in you right now, er… Vincent,’ she considered, off the top of her head. As if naming it would somehow swear it to the truth. ‘If I ever find out that you lied to me, well,’ she said. Trying, and failing, to think of an appropriate threat. ‘…Well let’s just say that there’s room in my apartment for a useful, drone-shaped appliance. Or ornament. And as soon as I’ve worked out what I mean by that, I’ll come back to you with a more complete threat. So… yeah.’ Vincent’s lens just watched her uncertainly. ‘Consider yourself warned,’ she added, for the sake of simplicity. Satisfied by its light-blinking reply in the affirmative.

‘Anyway. Come on,’ she finished quietly, pulling on her tarp-cloak as she headed for the stairway. ‘Let’s see what we can see.’

Tabitha braved the building’s dim haunted stairs to get as high up as she dared, and peered from a blown-open office like a cliff face. Endless storeys up, red curls tossed in the breeze, she could see way back to the Ministry. A clustered fist of walls, tiny on the horizon. Watching closely, she could just make out the drone supply lines. Still streaming in and out of the ruins, with whatever food and materials they could salvage from the city’s buildings and cargo wrecks.

She couldn’t help but worry if everyone was alright. She supposed that was the point of all their work, really; to make the Ministry self-sufficient. Freeing her up, here and now, to do what she did best. Tabitha caught herself dwelling; drifting off-task.

Every second you waste puts them in more danger. Move. Before she left the torn-down window, a distant flash caught her eye. It was Seven, a tiny black shape in the blue; the Ministry was being attacked. Bright sudden bolts from Atha’s artillery, and rapid laser-lines where Thier’s drones machine-gunned from the walls. Shining silver bursts in the sky around them, like bloody fireworks, as Seven’s booming sounds finally reached her. Panicking, helpless, Tabitha relived her training and stopped herself short. It wasn’t the Watchers’ great swarm; the walls were untouched. No drifting black gas-clouds, and nothing beating at the gates. Could’ve been just another dragon pack, testing Seven’s strength and impatience.

…Good luck with that, dragons, she told herself. Smiling at the thought of him.

She’d never truly know what was going on there, and she couldn’t reach it now anyway. She couldn’t risk making another drone call because of the sound or signal, and the Ministry’s crackling network was probably out of range. She had to keep moving ahead.

As long as Seven’s protecting that place, the Watchers might think I’m still inside him. I have to get to that hive, before they find out I’m not.

Looking north, Tabitha took her bearings for the way ahead. She tried to memorise landmarks and monuments to look for later, down on the roads. Picking out the straightest path, she paid special attention to the dead pylons, and their half-broken lines that led straight to the power district beyond. Handy to follow if she lost sight of the horizon, among all those towering ruins.

With a sudden thought she remembered Reigo’s training. Crouching cautiously, Tabitha realised how badly she’d been messing up. Nothing would give her away like that; staring from a high torn wall in broad daylight. Sinking back into the shadows, it didn’t look like she’d been seen. But she’d lasted too long on pure luck; people were counting on her. She had to think what was tactical in the short-term, and strategic overall; the quietest way to get the job done. Checking her pistol, her bottle, her knife, she tightened her belt and stalked on for the stairwell. Re-dusting her catsuit in the piled-up ash, and wetting a dark patch to stripe her face afresh. She just had to ignore the thought, for her own survival, that she might be coating herself in the dead.

Reaching the tower’s sunlit lobby, and creeping away cautiously from the grand doors, Tabitha clawed fast holes in the tarp she wore for a cape. She threaded them through with weeds in an alley nearby, and tore strips from the husks’ ragged clothes. Camouflaging her cloak until it was halfway to a sniper’s ghillie suit. Wearing the grey landscape, as much as she could, to break up her shape as she moved.

‘…Oh yeah,’ she whispered, glancing at Vincent as she headed on. Not much use in disguising her own silhouette, when there was still an obvious orb floating around beside her. Pulling the hood from her catsuit collar, she persuaded Vincent inside it. She slung the dronelet behind her like a heavy staring fruit, cloak-covered in its scaly hammock-hood between her shoulders. Walking on, she could’ve sworn that Vincent vibrated in protest. With the tiniest shush, she fastened her cloak with a grey cable and crept on through the ruins ahead.

Tabitha moved quickly between the city shadows, cut out like black jagged voids in the bright daylight. Sticking to walls as she stalked through the ruins; lying flat in the grass and rubble to check that the next dead road was clear. Studying every scene, every car-strewn street, before she moved on. She froze suddenly, and dropped back quickly to the dirt. Lying on her stomach, watching like a cat, as the monstrous shape woke from its mangled nest and stomped by. The creature was bigger than any she’d seen before. Far smaller than the gorgon that appeared at the Ministry gates, but heftier than any average monster she’d gone up against. Growing stronger in Serenity’s sunlight.

Hooded and cloaked, and far enough away to seem near-invisible, Tabitha waited for the monster to scale a skyscraper nearby. It shrank away quickly, to a small devouring dot at the tower’s gleaming summit. Eyes locked on it, between checks up the road ahead, Tabitha hurried past in the shadows for the aircar wrecks to hide her.

…One glance from that monster, and it’s all over. The whole horde that these ruins were hiding would come racing for her; she’d never get to that hive unseen.

Breathing quietly, Tabitha stared up the street from an aircar doorway. She glanced to a darkened bar nearby, and thought of a rainy violent day back on Earth. Remembering the first monster she’d ever faced, with a fire-axe and a paint tin, that’d given her these black hands and feet.

A frightened girl, she thought. Lost in herself. That’s not me. Tabitha clenched her jaw and thought of every life that counted on her. Feeling a sudden faint sensation, a tingling sense of gravity, that seemed to pull her on.

Further down the road, with plenty of distance between her and that monster’s chewed-up territory, Tabitha stopped for a quick swig from her bottle. She gulped the cold water gratefully; the brickdust kept drying her throat. Trickling some water onto her palm, she dripped it onto Vincent in her hood. He vibrated agreeably, as if his plant-aspect appreciated the drink.

‘You ok in there matey?’ she whispered over her shoulder. The drone vibrated back.

…I hope Fishbowl’s ok, she fretted. Lotor better be taking good care of it.

The far end of the road was blocked by toppled buildings; seemed like the only way through was a grand hotel closer up the street.

Lots of people in a posh hotel, she reconsidered. Lots of spider food, and big windowed rooms to nest in. Rethinking her route, studying the shattered stores and restaurants, Tabitha felt that strange dark sensation again. Like gravity. Eyes drawn, suddenly, to a shadowed stone arch hidden among the toppled skyscrapers. An ornate doorway beyond.

Looking up as she headed in deeper, she saw stern grey stonework from an older time. Staring gargoyles and grand crenellations, crowning the ruin’s edges like spines. Gorgeous-gothic and buried Baroque. A hidden basilica, built to a sky with no gods.

…You’re seriously going in there? she asked herself. But that weird sense of gravity gripped her again. A dip in her stomach, like a rollercoaster, or a steep sudden hill in the road. Pulling at her, then coaxing her forward, like a strong subtle wind at her back.

It felt like there was something, further inside there. Whatever she’d been feeling, in those rare peaceful moments back on Earth… that nature-bliss connection was lurking here too. Tied to the Watchers; it had to be. A remnant intelligence calling out to her. She only had to think of the Celestial to know that there were deeper, older things in this galaxy. It felt like there was finally an answer to the riddle.

I need to understand it, and why I resonate with it, she thought. I have to know what makes that feeling. I have to know what that feeling makes me.

It was cooler inside the basilica. Much darker, and empty of life. Antique silver fixtures glinted in the sacred shadows, reflecting the daylight at her back. She glimpsed charity boxes and pamphlets on philosophy, in place of hymn books on the shelves. Creeping on into the central aisle, she saw dim statues lining the walls. Robed and bearded, with stone scrolls in hand. Staring fierce from history.

Tabitha headed on past empty benches, toward something like an altar; her black feet padded silently on the polished stone floor. An ancient feeling, like a soundless hymn. A gorgeous chorus filled the void inside her, though nothing was here. Gold eyes gazing up in wonder, at the sheer artistry in here. A great twining wall towered behind the central pulpit, of lowly grieving statues with their eyes cast to the heavens. Mourning in morbid glory, to the gold-spiked sun of Truth high above them. Fallen and suffering below, in mystic ignorance.

…Serenity’s cardinal sin, she remembered, from her studies. A patchy history at best, from antique books in the Ministry, and documentaries on her prison-cell screen. But she’d learned enough to know that even these people didn’t always follow the wiser paths of their ancestors. The only people she knew like that, with such loyalty to their history, were Sky Tribe… though they didn’t write their teachings down. Their wisdom was inherited, from one living memory to the next. The cubs had learned Fierce-Hope at Deep Roots’ knee, with a kind smile and a guiding hand, by the warm crackling Hearthfire. The tribe’s sacred wisdom was entrusted to their growing minds, like a treasure. They weren’t lectured to like subordinates, in some cold dark house of the gods.

Something pulled her attention away. It felt like drums and luring violin strokes; silver and soundless. Hooks through her shivering soul. That gravity again, drawing her on towards its heart. She saw deep shadowed chambers, beyond the altar and the statued wall… and a pitch-black crater beyond. A chasm, ripped through the grand back walls. Heading lower, like a cavern. An eerie light from far below.

She felt it far deeper now, like she was finally coming into focus. Meshing with that sharpening feeling, overlaid and synthesised. Walking on, cautiously, as that great unknown felt more familiar. Compelling her forward, into the chasm beyond the torn marble floor. Dark vital mysteries that pulled magnetic. Taking Vincent from her hood, Tabitha let the drone float freely. Small lens staring, it resumed its footage and followed her inside.

It was pitch-black in here; she almost slipped and fell on the bare rocks. Tabitha opened Vincent’s case, and took a gentle cutting from the capsuled garden inside him. Closing him up, she spurred the stem’s celestial growth in her palm. She held it up like a living glowstick, volting it brighter, and delved on deeper in the gloom.

The only sound down here was her breath. The only feeling, that bold silent hymn. Chilling, and sacred. The cold white glow of her living torch painted her face in the blackness, reflecting in her eyes. Searching the rocky buried dark, for the source of that constant feeling. New shapes, now; fresh textures. A garden down here, flourishing in the dark. Casting the light higher, she could make out a hidden grotto. Peaceful; beautiful. And no longer dark, from what she could tell. There were petals; she felt the plants’ vitality.

Countless flowers glowed to gentle life; bioluminescent around her. Lighting the black like a sudden gothic summer. Not violent white, or aiming barbs at her. Not innocent blue either, with a cloud of deathly hormones. Just… flowers. Red, yellow, and green. Native hybrids. Clearer now, as the cavern brightened to a moonlit glow. That massive gravity was pounding in her chest. The soundless hymn split and flourished, like many voices in harmony. A looming revelation, finally, in the heart of this gardened cave. Tabitha stared; enchanted.

Something was resting there, in the deepest reach of the grotto. Not a Watcher, or a vile monstrous weapon… but a woman. A Serenian, judging by her deep blue hair, and the tanned bronze colour of her hands. Lean and gorgeous; statuesque. Another hybrid. Turned away and sleeping.

She’s grown all this, Tabitha realised, as she felt her heartcore soaring happily. That’s why I can feel her. She’s mutated, like me. I’m not alone.

‘…Hello?’ Tabitha tried hopefully. Staring, wide-eyed, as the waking woman turned towards her. An ungodly horror where her features should’ve been; more plant than face. Huge writhing petals, flowing back like a mane, in place of her eyes and forehead. Half-mummified in slick black bindings, but for her pale nose and mouth. Cloaked in grim bright blooms, that opened into writhing life as she stirred. A lady of flowers.

‘…What the hell did they do to you?’ Tabitha muttered sadly, her voice trembling. Broken-hearted at the sight of her. Looking back, the distant entrance was a closing tangle of vines. The rocky walls, and the ceiling too. A Venus and her trap.

The cavern was creeping with a pollen mist. Lit eerie, like a graveyard, in the flowers’ dead glow. The rising light showed the gentle knolls for what they really were. Bodies. Curled and shrinkwrapped in the moss. More of them, half-buried in the living ceiling, where only bare necks and backs still showed from the roots. Gnawed bones, scattered in the woman’s central nest. She hadn’t hunted these people; she’d lured them in. Corpses in storage, of trusting victims trapped here, for that writhing wretch to live out her miserable days.

‘…You’re me,’ Tabitha realised, horrified, as the silent woman stood. ‘You’re what I could’ve been.’ Sighing heavily, and knowing from her feeling that this was only going to end one way, Tabitha took off her cloak and tossed it aside. She stretched her muscles and rolled her shoulders, as Vincent watched in the silence. The distant hybrid struck suddenly. Not with clawed black hands, or Alex’s spiked tail, but that cloak of flowered vines. Splayed and striking, pinning her in a second, before Tabitha hit back hard and wrestled free from the cage.

God she’s fast, Tabitha told herself, as she ducked away from the woman’s pounces and vile hissing fangs. Shocking her back with a fierce sudden volley. Tabitha’s pounding punches, a vicious combination, bruised the woman’s pale cheeks and dropped her in a volt-crackling heap. Tabitha paced at a distance, to see what the hybrid would do.

‘That’s your warning,’ Tabitha told her, in Trade Language. ‘Let me go.’

She’s had her chance. If she comes at me again, she’s dead. But Tabitha felt weaker already, like the air itself was a dazing mist. She shook her head to refocus, and tried crackling her volts to cleanse the air around her. But the pollen was already making her nose run. Itching in her eyes, a stinging reaction, until her tears were streaming. Eyelids pink and swelling. Half-blinding her, as the moss and flowers clutched her feet like sticking mud. The woman stood and came at her again. Staring, hateful, Tabitha clenched her jaw and closed her fists. Forgot her fear and ran straight at her. She beat the woman bloody in a sudden pummelling hail. Knifing her strangling vines to severed stumps, she staggered and stunned her with a volted black-blue bang. Raging, fighting back the vines, Tabitha pounced and got in another round of bone-slamming punches. The woman struck back hard and floored her. Vines writhing; a vicious hybrid strength of her own. She opened her pretty mouth, far wider than her jaw should go, and bared her true self with a slick-sliding revelation. A staring skull, peeling back her flowered face like a hood.

…Now she’s pissed off. Breathless, Tabitha leapt away non-stop from the strangling vines. Struck suddenly by a giant root, as more of them writhed from the floor. Not countless and reaching, like that mollusc-tree on Stormworld, but massive and sweeping. A sudden crashing assault course, ever-changing; forcing her to duck and weave and pounce away endlessly just to keep from being crushed. Clawing the branches breathlessly, and knifing them back just to keep from being caught. Tiring her out, she realised, as the monstrous woman came closer through the parting plants. Baring her fangs, as the thick roots coiled Tabitha powerfully and she struggled free again. Tiring and trapped. Clouds of pollen were choking her. Vines from the ceiling, strangling her. Draining her current. Lifting her throttled, like a hanging. Terrified, Tabitha grasped the vines above and tried to cut them before they choked her. Exhausted, blind eyes streaming, she coughed unstoppably and tried again to struggle free from the massing trap. The looming hybrid came closer, to wrestle her limbs and tear her apart. Closing the gap to kill her.

But the woman didn’t see Tabitha’s own quiet fury, boiling up and burning colossal, with a Seven-black flavour all its own. Eyes lit. Black fists trembling and creaking closed. Granted, she couldn’t throw her volts like Alex. But if something made contact, it was all over. The wrapping roots made contact. The hybrid woman, and this whole writhing cavern, made contact.

…Enough. Eyes glowing bright, Tabitha screamed savagely and emptied her scorching heartcore. She burst the roots like a deafening thunderstrike, in blinding-fierce hellfire. Blew the whole twining cavern to sudden burning splinters, like a spark-bright bomb in sequence. A fiery rain of drifting embers, as Tabitha pounced wildly for the shocked woman and tore her apart. Hitting the woman back hard with a rain of pounding punches, Tabitha clawed her staggering to kick her back yelling in the dirt. She drove her knife down hard in the woman’s struggling shoulder, to pin the screaming wretch to the root beneath her. Felt nothing for her now but hate. Maybe Seven was right, about his brothers and sisters. It was his choice, to fight for the living. Maybe it all came down to force of will. The woman at her feet, that horror she’d become… there was nothing she’d been through that Tabitha hadn’t faced herself. That lusting temptation, to trade all her morals for strength. Survival at any cost.

...You’re just like Alex. Tabitha felt herself hesitating. But one last glance at the moss-wrapped bodies was all it took. Those people had sought refuge here, with her. A false promise. Their bodies, pulled apart and devoured. That wretch was a monster; a cannibal. Everything Tabitha swore she’d never be, and fought back against. That corruption; that gleaming blood-addiction. Standing up, Tabitha pulled the Watcher pistol from her belt. She put the bitch down with a bright sudden shot, for every poor wrapped body that lined her rank cave.

…Fuck you. All of you. I’m coming for you. Standing over her, staring hatefully, Tabitha watched the woman’s sap seeping out. She holstered her pistol and walked away.

With a final glance around the glowing cavern, she saw the body the woman had been feeding on. Deeper back, where the flowers glowed like living lanterns. A dead Guardian. Stripped of his belt and body armour. His gear, cast aside like junk.

Tabitha slipped the soldier’s meshed chestpiece over her catsuit and clipped it shut. She pulled on the stretchy armoured sleeves that’d wrapped his limbs, like tough plastic bracers and greaves; no thicker than light layered fabric. Fastening the Guardian’s nylon belt over the one she’d taken from the Watcher, she checked the sheath for a combat knife. Missing. She opened the belt’s pop-stud pouches, revealing four charge packs. Three dark skinny cylinders too, capped with click-tops, that looked like thin grenades. Searching around, the man’s pistol sidearm was missing. But she found something better. Pulling the soldier’s stubby SMG from the roots with a dull clatter, she worked fast to revive it. She wrapped the submachine gun in a root from Vincent’s growing insides, and fed it current until it spread. Its small function lights glowed dimly behind the gun’s rubbery grip. Blinking back to hybrid life. Recalling Reigo’s training, Tabitha thought the laser weapon might be worth a field-strip just to make sure. The Guardians’ guns hadn’t always revived in working order.

Strip charge pack, she reminded herself, kneeling down to pull the large battery from the gun. Detach stock. Detach grip. Slide sight assembly. Pull rear takedown pin. The submachine gun clattered in her practised hands, not much different to their rifles in basic training. Pivot charge assembly. Strip charge assembly. Detach capacitor. Check chamber seal, detach barrel. Strip beam focus block. If there was any fault, she couldn’t find it.

…Good enough. Reassembling the gun, Tabitha stuck its hybrid matter to her back and hurried on. Retrieving her tarp-cape, she swung it over her shoulders to cover up her dark new armour. She walked on past the woman’s seeping body, and felt nothing for it but hate.

You betrayed these people, when you could’ve protected them, she thought. Broken-hearted for those corpses as she strode by. You could’ve fought for what was real inside you… what was decent. And you didn’t. I’ll never be like you.

Vincent watching, Tabitha sprang her claws and tore the charred rattling vines from the chasm entrance. She lit her way with the stubby volt-vine, and climbed back for the light above.

Taking one last look at the gorgeous statued wall behind the altar, she walked back down the marble aisle through the basilica. That feeling had faded. That gravity, gone. Maybe she’d never understand it, or find out what she really was. A younger her would’ve dwelt on her aimless misery, just like those grieving statues. Suffering in ignorance, endlessly. But now she knew the truth. It was life that mattered; not the tyrants that tried to trap and dominate it. People mattered, and the virtue they needed to live decent lives. She’d seen now, what her mutations could make of her. She could be clinging coldly to a cannibal life, safe and hidden in her cave. Or carrying on out here, past the temple archway, into a violent sunlit world. But its horrors just hardened her. Only made her more of what she was.

Checking the street was clear, Tabitha hid Vincent back in her catsuit hood. She tied her grey cloak and stuck to the shadows, and walked on toward her next landmark. Toward the distant hive in those hills. Cheated in faith, but full of fresh conviction. She left the temple and that street behind, with all the religion she’d ever need.

*

The Watchers raised their creation from the hive’s bloody pit. Hosed off the gore of its bastard siblings, and scorched a sole dark purpose in its primal mind. Snarling, tortured, in vile antithesis. A thick black skull staring back. The Prince himself looked upon it and smiled.

They filled its bone-armoured grip with a vicious blade, and let the dark thing loose from its prison. A stalker. Climbing savagely into a seed-like pod, that launched over the city like a shot.

30

The afternoon light was fading into a rich orange evening. A hulking monster prowled closer, deep in the city streets, toward the dimming ruins of grand shadowed towers. Following the scent of something, like itself. But not quite. A layered scent; something not right. It smelled like… like… everything. Spiders, monsters, and dragons too. And something else entirely. A deep ancient dread, that spooked it suddenly and shrank its eyes to furious dots. Something lethal.

Burying its claws in the stonework, the black monster hauled itself up the towering building. Sniffing hungrily, drooling molten steel, as the scent grew stronger now. It hunched down heavily through a high broken window, snout to the stone flooring inside, and tracked the strange scent up the corridor.

So close now. Drooling for the taste of that strange metal. It could sense the thing nearby; its resting prey that terrified it. The monster crept on for it, just through that distant doorway. Huge head swaying as it walked. Dribbling, staring murderously, it prowled on. Black hands walking it, clawed and massive, towards its kill through the shadows. Deep inside the next room, it glimpsed a heap of murdered spiders. Cloaked in sheets and chemicals, to stifle their bloody smell. It stalked on silently. Its massive arm fell suddenly, dropping through a cloth-covered hole in the darkened floor. A trap. The fall smashed its huge head against the tiling ahead of it, as it struggled in shock to pull its shoulder from the gripping pit. Pinned and panicked in a tangling web. Fast-growing and freakish, strange plants creaked from the flooring and held it firm. Wrapping it, pinning it, with a cold deathly glow. Celestial. Snarling and ripping, wrestling for its life, the monster didn’t see those watchful eyes. The striding figure. A strong sudden knife stroke, driven in hard through the base of its bloodspurting skull. Dropped it dead before it could roar out in panic. White eyes dimmed to black, in its cruel piranha head.

Tabitha wrenched out the Watcher knife quietly. She wiped the silver-bloodied blade quickly with the inside of her cloak, and glanced around carefully as she stood and sheathed it. She studied the grand office corridor, cold and dispassionate, to make sure nothing else was tracking her. A grey woman, vanishing in the gloom.

*

Tabitha made her way on to the building’s rooftop, and the half-toppled skyscraper that leant colossal against it. Climbing the rubble that bridged them, she picked her way on down the gentle slope of the leaning tower’s side. Moving on, eternally, toward the glowing hills in the distance. Clearly she’d need to find a safer place to bed down for the night, before the sun set over the ruins. Didn’t much fancy her chances out here in the dark.

Further down the toppled skyscraper, she found that she could slide to the rubble hills below with her rough palms and feet to slow her. A small shadow descending into the dim dead streets. She kept to the growing dark, and pulled Vincent from her hood to float silently beside her. A third eye, watching over her shoulder, now the haunted daylight dimmed.

Searching constantly for cover in the walls and windows, she walked on. Checked on the celestial cutting again, tucked into her catsuit, that she’d used for a glowstick back in the grotto. It’d already grown a little stronger in the bright daylight; she soaked it in water from her bottle to make sure it lasted the night. She’d plant it down and uproot it tomorrow, if she could find a sleeping spot with some dirt.

A tall toppled office looked hopeful; a darkened window hidden among giant ruins. Tucked away in a range of wreckage, and hard enough to reach as it was.

Ducking down inside, her eyes catching the last of the evening light, Tabitha looked around the dead boardroom for any footprints. Satisfied, she crept on through. Straining her eyes into gloomy rooms, for anything she could use to survive.

Sighing, defeated, she saw claw marks through the toppled tables and knew she’d have to leave. She just couldn’t chance it now; sleeping in a building where the monsters had already been.

Tabitha pulled her cowl tighter, and headed on with Vincent down the cool darkening street. Nearing an aircar wreck on the distant pavement, she ducked inside through the twisted metal. She knifed open the driver’s seat, ripping the fabric quietly, and tried her best to pull the foam cushioning out in one squishy sheet. Checking around her, and rolling the foam quickly like a sleeping mat, she tucked it beneath her cape and crept on. Better than bedding down on a cold hard floor, wherever she found herself sleeping tonight.

…If I actually find somewhere to sleep.

*

Tabitha had to pounce and kill it; the spider got too close. It would’ve shrieked if it found her there, as it crept into the alley where she hid away. Pressed to the wall, heartcore pounding, she’d waited. Watched for its spindly footsteps around the corner bricks, and trusted her stealth to the cowl that covered her. She could’ve been a heap of rags and rubbish, for all the spider knew. Piled up by the wall with the rest. But the spider showed too much interest. Maybe it nested here. She took the gamble; forced to act. Tabitha shot out her hidden hand and shocked its leg quietly in her grip, with dull crackles that stopped any shriek before it came. Stunned it; killed it. She caught its limp weight, before it fell with a sound. Her ragged heap came alive in the quiet rubbish, and hid the spider’s corpse in the darkened dust-drift. Buried it in the ash. She doused the gathered mound in cleaning fluid, to cover the dead smell of it. Thin bleach, to hide all scent. Salvaged from an office kitchen and watered down in a drinks bottle, that she kept lashed to her twin belts with a rag.

Checking her corners, and moving on silently, Reigo’s words still ran through her head. Finessing her technique, that she’d learned in Stormworld’s hunted woods.

It’s one thing to make a kill. And another talent entirely, to convince the world it never happened.

But she was growing frustrated, as she crept on. Still hadn’t found a quiet sleeping spot, and the evening wasn’t going to give her much more light to find it.

She couldn’t bed down around here, anyway. The next street was hung with bloody totems. Flapping skins and rotten forms. Strung up and crucified, on grown black barricades; aliens of every shape and colour. Flayed dulling flesh laid bare. Staring from eyeless skulls, where the batbirds pecked. Tabitha stared furiously; clenched her fists at the sickening sight. A rising pulse in her, that wanted vengeance for those poor people.

Shut it out, she reminded herself. You can’t give yourself away now. Turning away, she made herself carry on. Gave the whole grand commerce district a wide berth, and crept away on a detour for a safer place to rest.

Vincent watched her back, primed to bump her quietly if it saw anything, as Tabitha climbed a crashed cargo ship. Hiking quietly up its huge ashen side, into a more promising building to the east. She’d already checked the ship’s fallen containers, hoping for Guardian nightgoggles or some cool urban camouflage. Maybe a silent jetpack; nothing too fancy. But the whole thing was filled with glass sculptures. Ready to topple in an endless crashing avalanche, if she searched any further inside.

Tabitha delved deep through another derelict office, towards hidden shadowed rooms at the back. Scavenging along, door after door, she stuffed her Guardian chestpiece with a stack of papers she could burn. A rare find, in a landscape of offices that relied entirely on dead black screens.

She rolled out her foam mat in a darkened office corner, as the evening sun shone fiery outside. She’d learned it on Stormworld; the trick to keeping warm was insulation beneath. The cold ground had drained her body heat; sapped her energy and made her core’s central heating work harder. That and the weak winter sun, and every fight on Stormworld had felt that much tougher. She dreaded to think about that small freezing cave on the shore.

This place was a hidden cave too, she supposed. Nestled among desks and slanted pillars, that stank of dry brickdust but thankfully not much else. Just a safe place to sleep, finally. Hidden away from the glooming world. She’d set celestial vines lurking in the doorway, to tangle anything that might stalk inside.

She’d have preferred not to sleep at all, and carry on under cover of darkness. But she wouldn’t see a thing out there. The swarm had the advantage.

Best to stay sharp, anyway. Seven will just have to protect everyone ‘til dawn.

‘Get some rest, matey,’ she whispered to Vincent; coaxing down the hovering dronelet to the floor. ‘I made you a bed, look,’ she added quietly, as the staring ball found its ring of rags and settled down beside her. She gave the hybrid drone a small goodnight kiss, just for keeping her company. Just to feel love and care for something, before… well, before the end. Tabitha breathed, and put her head down, and tried not to think about it. Wrapping her tarp-cloak around her, shuffling for some comfort, she curled up tight with a sigh. Too exhausted to dwell on the thought for long.

*

Tabitha shot up at something; wide awake. Vincent was nudging her too. A sound; massive and distant. She stared wide-eyed in the shadows, that really weren’t that dark. There was still fading sunlight outside, so she couldn’t have been sleeping for long. Rolling up her bed in silent terror, she put on her cowl and nudged Vincent to follow her away. She pulled the bleach from her belt and doused the spot quickly where she’d slept. Sneaking away soundlessly, as the huge distant sniffs drew closer.

Creeping down the road for the next skyscraper, rushed and panicking to get off the streets, Tabitha searched the dim lobby for cover. A torn silence in here; a dim-misted space. There were great smashed holes through the gorgeous walls; a network of demolitions. The place was littered with severed limbs. Rank muscle on splintered bones.

…I’ve run into the bloody thing’s nest. Tabitha jumped and turned at a vast shadow in the doorway, filling it completely. No choice but to sling Vincent in her hood and hide away. She’d try to creep back around it, now its stomping footsteps hauled it through. Or find a back door, somehow, without being seen. Pulse pounding, searching frantically for it, Tabitha couldn’t find an exit among the dim-lit walls. Trying to see it, before she made a wrong turn in the maze. She just heard it, prowling. A massive breath in the dark. Then, a black glistening glimpse of it. Something new; something engineered. Snatched sights of it through the torn-down walls. Something massive, and moving.

Tabitha crept away silently. Eyes fixed on where she’d seen it lurking. She didn’t see the movement beside her, nestled in a corner wall; a huge white flower. Impaled suddenly by a long black skewer in the thigh. Maddening agony, that she barely kept quiet in the gloom. A giant barb, like an arrow, jutting bloody through her leg. A ferocious pain, jostling on muscle and bone as she tried to limp away. Panicking, stumbling, she checked around to make sure her gasps hadn’t attracted that monster.

Limping on for the doorway, and struggling to push the huge barb through like a harpoon, Tabitha finally stabbed it out from the back of her thigh. Trying to stifle her sweating scream. Bloody, giving off a gory scent, she moved on to hide and escape. Glancing back at a shifting rubbery sound. The monster was moving. Sniffing the air for her. Spiders outside, prowling in the street past the doorway. No escape but the shadowed stairs behind her. The only way out, was up. Tabitha limped up the steps as her flesh knitted closed.

She looked back terrified from the fourth staircase, as the beast roared a grunt at her scent. The sound drew packs of spiders inside, lurking and chittering in the lobby. Climbing the walls already. Hunting for her. Tabitha bleached her tracks and hurried on soundlessly. Desperate for a window on the high first floor, where she could climb back down to the street and slip by unnoticed. But silver shapes were lurking there, in the distance. Legs tapping at every broken window. Driving her on up the staircase.

Tabitha was trapped, and panicking. Spiders crept endlessly up the walls outside, cutting her off from any window she could climb through. They were filling the lobby now, as the beast prowled on up the first flight of stairs. Following her patchy scent. Staring, breathless, Tabitha could only carry on. Driven ever higher up the empty stairways, running and tripping painfully, as silent as she could. No hiding, and no escape; at least not below. She’d never get past unseen.

She was forced on finally through a door to the skyscraper roof, and the sunglow evening all around her. A massive dead shape in one corner. There weren’t any toppled buildings leant against this one, like she’d hoped for. No escape. Only the fall, that she might still survive – and promptly give herself away to the swarm. Nothing left but cold creeping dread, at what was coming for her below.

…You idiot! How the hell did you let this happen!?

She looked again at the hulking wreck on the roof’s rubbled corner; an aircraft. A drained-out pilot, who’d clearly ditched his fighter here and tried to bail out. Caught by the spiders before he could get down to the street. A fate she’d soon be sharing with him, apparently.

Looking down over the roof edge, more spiders were still crawling up from the streets. Trying to find the intruder in their ruins. Listening carefully, breaths rapid and heartcore pounding, Tabitha heard the beast’s thumping footsteps from the doorway behind her. Wide-eyed; searching desperately for an escape route. Nothing. There was nothing up here. Terrified, she ran for the aircraft wreck. She skidded and hid behind it, facing the vertigo precipice, as the monster smashed its shoulders through the doorway in the distance. Sniffing the air for her. She glimpsed it through the aircraft canopy, from the far side on the ledge. Pale eyes searching for her. Ten feet of horned black predator. Spined and prehistoric, and hunting. Taking deep savage sniffs of the dimming evening, to narrow in on her scent. Stomping closer now, hunched and colossal. Gasping silently, Tabitha crouched down and edged away. Nothing between them but the bulky dead fighter, that kept her hidden from its sight. Vincent still slung in her hood. A sickening drop beneath her, past the roof ledge and her hard black toes.

…Think! She was out of options, though. The drone used some kind of anti-gravity, but it would never slow her fall. The beast’s massive hand shook the wreck as it gripped it. Creaking it, leaning on it, with a dull metal straining as it sniffed for the fighter’s far side. Edging the whole wreck, glacier-slow but relentless, toward the building’s edge. Tabitha felt it now; pushing against her heels. Nothing she could do to stop it, as the monster sniffed and shoved. She couldn’t fight the giant; the searching spiders were too close. They’d probably come scrambling out of the windows far beneath her, shrieking to the city, and then it was all over. But the monster was climbing the fighter wreck now, to lean over it. Wary of the roof edge itself, with its massive weight. Any second now, its giant head would peer over the wreckage and see her there, clinging to it. She had to do something, anything, before the grinding wreck dropped and took her with it. She pulled off her cowl quickly; Vincent still hidden in her catsuit hood. She threaded her cape frantically through the shattered frame of the aircraft’s canopy, like a rope around the metal beam. Taking a firm hold of both ends around the fighter’s riveted strut, she turned the tarp around her wrists for a better grip. The wreck was creaking now; sliding nose-first over the edge. Jerking and shuddering, terrifying, as Tabitha breathed quickly in dread. Tightening her hold on the tarp-rope, like a parachute harness. The monster’s attempt to climb the wreckage only shoved the whole thing further. The ledge fell away beneath her feet. Tabitha was dangling now, strained and terrified. Staring up breathlessly at the tarp and the canopy strut that held her weight. She closed her eyes, as the whole creaking wreck began to tip. A skyscraper drop gaped beneath her. The high wind whistled in her ears.

…I’m ready to die, she told herself. Almost convinced herself, too. But the sight below knocked it out of her. That breathless fall. The wreck was toppling now; teetering on the edge. One more shunt and the searching monster would push it clean off the roof. But it stopped reaching. Stopped trying to climb it. Tabitha waited in silent dread. Moments passed; tense and non-eventful. She heard its massive footsteps stomp away. The beast was giving up, before it fell with the teetering wreck. Eyes closed, sighing silently, Tabitha was trembling. Searching around her, she tried to find a way back up from her dangling fate. Arms straining, painful in her sockets, she tried to haul up her bodyweight on the tarp-rope. Tried to wrap her wrists further with its length. But she was stuck, with each hand dependent on the other; if she let go with one then her weight would pull the tarp clean through. Desperately trying to think of some way to climb back up, without tipping the aircraft off the edge.

…That’s it. Closing her eyes, she pulsed her current. Focussed all her thought on it. Reached out mentally to her volt-vine glowstick, still nestled in her catsuit from the cave. Sparking it to tiny growing life, until it branched out rapidly from her sleeve. She gasped in shock at a sudden grunting crash, as the whole wreck dropped above her. Shunted off the rooftop, grudgingly, by the monster cheated from its meal. The beast snarled victoriously, as it watched its hidden prey drop to the street in a thundering wreck. The monster crashed its way back through the door, for the ruined stairways to the street far below. Frantic spiders poured from the skyscraper windows toward the aircraft’s scattered wreckage.

Tabitha watched them, streaming away like a glinting tide. Heartcore pounding, and sure that was going to be her grizzly end. She was wrapped and clinging in a desperate growing web, where her volt-vines anchored her to a window ledge outside the top floor. She strained and turned, arms killing her, to wrestle free of her branching harness. Climbing through the window and checking her hood, to make sure Vincent was alright. Still nestled there, in her catsuit’s gripping fabric.

This was her chance to get away, while the horde searched the fighter’s wreckage. Tabitha ran through silently for the far side of the building. Half-leaping the office stairways, rushing down through the skyscraper, until she found giant rubble blocking her way. Hearing spider chitters, thinking fast, Tabitha ran back for the corridor. She wrenched open the doors on a grand dead elevator and leapt for the greasy steel cable. Fear lurching in her stomach, she slid down quickly on a taut rattling thread through the building. She tightened her hard grip, trying to slow her endless descent.

Her feet hit the lift-top louder than she’d meant to, but all she could think was get away. Prising open the lift hatch to drop inside, she dragged the doors apart and squeezed through the gap for the corridor outside. Nothing here, but she heard the spiders massing in the lobby below. Frenzied and hurtling back up the walls. If she didn’t find a way out now then they’d scent her, and bring the whole bloody swarm here looking for her. She had to escape this place.

…I can do this. Pulse pounding, Tabitha raced down the corridor for a high shattered window. She wrapped a growing vine tightly around the window’s centre-strut and spurred the celestial’s long growth in her hands. Climbing outside carefully, her stomach twisting at the drop beneath her, she turned and gripped the glassy vine tight. Dimming its glow to nothing, so it wouldn’t give her away. Breathless, terrified, Tabitha abseiled the last stretch of the building as quick and reckless as she dared.

Dropping the last few feet to the dusty pavement, checking on Vincent and searching for a clean escape, she vanished down an alley for the next quiet road beyond.

*

Weaving through cover, Tabitha hurried on silently towards a grand central station. Just anywhere to get off the streets. Pausing for a moment, she dropped her panic and focussed afresh. Catching her breath in the hidden rubble, she made sure the pack hadn’t followed her. She took a gasping gulp of water, and tried to tell her pounding heartbeat that she wasn’t being chased.

The fading light cloaked her; the aircraft’s fallen wreckage was a few streets back. Breathing deeper, she calmed herself. Found her grounded state of no-emotion, of here-and-now, that Barkless and Reigo had trained into her. She noticed her senses, and the still present moment. The city’s drains were rank and reeking, without power to the pumps and pipes. No sounds; no lurking shapes. Tabitha dusted her armour and striped her face; quick and practised in the pale-stone dirt. Wearing this new white habitat, she bleached her scent behind her and vanished. One last glance to make sure the road was empty, and she crept on quickly for the station’s back door.

*

Tabitha made her way on through ornate corridors, towards the massive central aircar station beyond. It stank of death in here. No smell like it, on any world. Drained bodies were piled in the dim white corridors, where people had tried to escape.

Stumbling across the husks of two Guardians, seemingly bodyguards or special forces, Tabitha found their charge packs. She pulled the laser SMG stickily from her back, to check that its function lights still blinked to life. She swapped out a charge pack for a new one, to make sure they’d fit. The chunky batteries seemed interchangeable, across different weapons.

Good to know. Before she walked on she noticed the gun, by the second corpse. An SMG like hers. A dark tube on the barrel, like a silencer. She unscrewed it from the dead weapon, and studied the dark narrowing lenses running right through it. A kind of beam suppressor, she supposed. A stack of domed rings lined its insides, to stifle the shrieking sound of a laser bolt. The tinted lenses must’ve made the laser bolts dimmer; narrower. Less powerful, but also harder to see.

Anything that helps. Tabitha screwed the silencer to her own submachine gun, adding one last tightening turn. Stepping over the bodies grimly, she added their memory to the slow vengeance rising inside her.

She searched on toward the main aircar platforms, stepping over dead Guardians in the ash. Troops who’d tried and failed to fight back the horde during the invasion. Collecting their ammunition, Tabitha remembered her Ghosts back on Earth. Taking up those soldiers’ rifles, and cremating their skins on the moors where they’d found them.

…Carrying on the fight.

The station’s main hall was mostly empty; this seemed as good a place as any. Piling up some ragged clothes from the ticket desk’s lost-and-found, Tabitha bunched them together and made her bed in a hidden corner. She picked out a handsome hooded cape to replace her lost tarpaulin, and set about ruining it in the dust. Wrapping it around her, she finally settled down to rest.

Despite everything, the city view from the windows was golden and gorgeous. Blushing orange and pink in the hazy sunset. A graveyard of torn jutting architecture. Brand-new ancient ruins, painted fiery in the dying summer. It made her drowsy to look at it; she felt so tired. Made her want to just… close her eyes. Only for a minute.

*

A dark stretched soldier followed her footprints, in through the station’s back door. Stalking silent through the murdered corridors. Tracking her. Black rifle aimed and ready, to take its sniping shot.

The Watcher crept on toward the main lobby; lurking hidden in the hallway. It glanced around quickly, and saw her sleeping. Hidden away in the corner on a ragged pile of clothes. Clearly exhausted. A survivor, probably just a local, who’d somehow avoided the spiders so far. Steadying its shoulders, the Watcher knelt and took aim. It held its deep breath and squeezed the trigger. A single shrieking shot, an execution, punched ferocious through her covered head. The ozone air was warping in its wake. The Watcher waited for any movement. Standing, then creeping closer, it kept its rifle aimed. And saw a message, on the large stone plinth beside it. Fresh graffiti, scrawled in charcoal beneath the grand central statue. A smiling face, crosses for eyes, and Trade-Language words that it didn’t understand:

WELCOME TO SILVERSPIRE

A stifled gunshot blew its head open. Dropped the Watcher dead on the marble, in a growing pool of golden blood. Staring cold down her gunsights, Tabitha pulled off her dusted hood. She walked out from the shadowed pillars into bright dying daylight, opposite her sleeping decoy in the distance. Made with rolled-up clothes from the station’s lost-and-found. Gun smoking; the grand statue above her. Standing for a second by her crumpled kill. Tabitha didn’t see the lens behind her, as Vincent caught the photo. Walking on for the station’s main doors.

31

‘Gods,’ Irren chuckled, in his dark messy office at the Ministry. Disbelieving, as the photo finally sent through from one of the dronelet’s rare connections. The scene looked staged; he couldn’t have dreamt of a poster so powerful. The rich dying daylight to the left, in ruined Central Station, that said the sun was setting on old Capital City. The dead invader, and the huntress by her kill. Gun smoking, a soldier in armour; striding away for distant doors.

…Onward. Towering above her in the photo, the station’s tourist attraction. Winged Virtue, the Knight Angelic, his sword held high for war. Best of all was that graffiti; a single moment when the stars had aligned. An instant slogan, quick and defiant, to spark fresh hope across the Ministers’ downtrodden worlds.

Welcome to Silverspire. It was all there; his ideas laid out for him. The Ghost; the sovereign. Their dark avenging angel.

‘Could we sort out a partition, please?’ said Saa politely, as she walked up bleary-eyed. ‘It’s hard to sleep with all the glow from your terminals, y’know.’

‘Hey, the war–

‘Comes first,’ Saa finished. ‘I know, Irren,’ she scolded him. ‘But the war also relies on us getting some sleep, for once. Just an hour?’ she berated him.

‘Whatever,’ he muttered, going back to his work. ‘So you wanna take a look at your friend, or what?’ he said, smirking back at her.

‘Wh… that’s her?’ said Saa, looking again at the photo on his screen. ‘Did you edit this together?’

‘No. For once,’ he grinned back. ‘There’s your hearts-and-minds. That’s propaganda.’

‘If only we could get a messenger drone past orbit, for the other worlds to see it,’ Saa replied mournfully.

‘…If only,’ Irren sighed back. Keeping his secrets, his plan-in-waiting, playing over in his nervous mind. Deep down Saa was still Ministry property, for the security it offered her family. He was sure of it. But he’d other ideas about the rule of these worlds. And he wasn’t alone.

He’d start it all, tonight. Something she’d never let him do; not in a million years. Something far too dangerous. Something insane.

*

Irren waited until Saa and Anero were asleep with baby Lea, down in the library section below. Gulping his strong drink, and sucking a breath at the burning spirit, he snatched the silvery disk from the terminal. His only precious hard copy of the media pack he’d slaved over. Saved on there was Tabitha’s new poster he’d been waiting for; the crowning glory of his work.

The spark.

Pulling on his jacket, and glancing around from the darkness of the archives, he hurried on silently for the courtyard.

*

‘Dark,’ Irren said quietly, to a woman outside in the shadows.

‘Storm,’ she whispered back, snatching the disk quickly from his hand. Walking on calmly, alone, past a makeshift cafe full of people she’d never trust. There were more agendas within these walls than the Sky Queen’s. Old agendas, that’d lurked behind the mining on Stormworld, and would’ve preferred that Project Silverspire didn’t happen. A revolution, that’d put all their old-guard necks on the block.

No. It was down to Irren’s network, her network, to make sure those people didn’t get their same old way. The way that’d given Serenity its Four Ministers… and the hubris and arrogance that’d invited the Watchers in.

Crossing the busy main lobby, the woman put the thin disk in the hand of a swift passer-by. A finned man, who vanished casually in the crowd of night-shift workers. No one around them any the wiser. Not least the Ministers’ countless sympathisers, who’d crush the revolution before it started.

‘Clear night,’ said the finned man, to a Guardian he’d never met.

‘Stars are out,’ the unfamiliar soldier agreed. Another level of security; deniability for all involved. Slipping the disk from the man’s scaly hand, before the night worker aroused suspicion on his way inside the warehouse. The disk passed from the guard’s hands to a woman’s, as she left the warehouse on his left with the crowd clocking out. A red-skinned woman; an ex-soldier turned manager. Hiding the disk in her pocket, with a new robotic hand. She strode on for the barracks, to file her daily report. A double agent herself: reporting to General Atha about the activities of Thier, her wealthy new employer. She’d report back to Thier later, on every story she’d spun for the General. False figures and alibis, to keep the old-guard off their scent. Reviving new rifles in secret, if the Ministry’s cramped tinderbox should finally come to civil war. The Watchers weren’t the only tyrants in this world.

The red woman passed the disk to Sea Mist, who stood guard in the main castle archway. Hiding her secrets from Reigo, who smiled as he walked on by. Sea Mist passed the disk to Aelu on her next patrol, who slipped it to Big Fish in mid-conversation on the walls. He waited a minute, then carried it casually from the battlements to Barkless Tree, still patrolling the higher levels of the fortress keep. Only a few short feet from Seven, who perched above on the highest roof. Timed to perfection, a hulking defence drone floated by on patrol. It lost its tracking signal suddenly, as Thier tapped his wristcom on the far side of the complex.

‘Sir. We’ve lost the status display on one of the defence drones,’ said a watchful Guardian in the command centre. Tapping the terminal screen as it glitched. ‘Wait… it says it’s offline,’ he added, with a growing look of concern. A Sergeant cursed behind him, stepping up to the bank of screens. A neat man, and ruthless. Still loyal to the Ministers’ rule, like many more within these walls. Sky Queen or not, he knew his allegiance.

The way it always has been. The way it must always be.

‘I’ll find it myself,’ the Sergeant muttered shortly. Prowling outside for the walls.

Smiling to himself, lounging in his penthouse in quiet conspiracy, Thier tapped another button on his wristcom screen. Telling several rigged supply drones, planted quietly in the city ruins and seemingly killed in action, to blow up suddenly in fiery sequence. Certain salvaged chemicals had been planted inside them, to make the blasts glow white.

‘Dragon!’ A Guardian yelled on the battlements, watching a trail of white fire rock the darkened ruins nearby. Arming her rifle in panic to take aim at the black night sky. The barracks were a sudden shouting chaos below her.

‘Get after it, Seven!’ yelled an officer beside her. A loyalist, with Her Majesty’s insignia worn proudly on his black sleeve. ‘Bring it down!’ he waved Seven on into battle, swooping like thunder over their heads. They watched his monstrous white fire light the darkness, as he chased a non-existent dragon high into the night. Atha’s echoing command told the gunners to ready the artillery, unaware of the deception, in case any more dragons should appear.

No one trusted Atha. Not among the loyalists, at least. Sky Tribe had stories about the Bastard of Greysea; he’d get what was coming to him if there was any justice. Now, thanks to Irren, the wider worlds would hear what he’d done. They’d hear about certain high Ministers pulling his strings.

*

Irren waited impatiently for his plan to play out. The scores of SOS drones they’d already sent into orbit just kept being destroyed, by some kind of Watcher defence system; Atha wouldn’t allow them to waste any more on the futile effort. No more official drones, at least, with Ministry-approved information on board. A monopoly on the media, that Irren and his contacts had been up against for years.

General Atha was still convinced that forces elsewhere on Serenity would rush to the aid of their fallen capital, or somehow fill the ruined airbase beyond the city limits with armies to fight this war. Until that day ever came, Atha would never allow Seven to disappear from the Ministry and leave it lethally undefended. Especially if Seven also happened to be carrying certain secrets, about Atha’s conduct on defenceless worlds.

Amoral self-interest, Irren considered. Risking this conflict to cover his tracks. Atha’s lockdown, and all his old allegiances and careful cover-ups… he’ll doom everyone within these walls.

Irren and his Sky Queen loyalists had been forced to work around him, to push the new agenda forward. Despite Atha’s orders, Seven wasn’t his to control. Even now the black dragon was racing higher through the night. He’d disappeared; chasing a Watcher dragon that didn’t exist. It was all Irren’s idea; a pitch-black pretext. An excuse to ship their revolution off-world. That silvery disk, their message in a bottle, might finally make it through.

The Watchers had things lurking in orbit, killing every drone and scrap of celestial matter destined for the wider worlds. But Seven… he actually stood a chance of getting a drone out there. Getting news to more dissenters of the Ministry, past the Watchers’ blackout. Only Irren’s news, with his own story about Her Majesty and the Ministers. A media package, with articles and fresh evidence; a ready-made revolution. Bold new truths; seductive and incendiary. A new poster too, ripe for reproduction, of the Sky Queen’s bold mission towards the hive. Saving this world by herself, with winged Virtue towering at her shoulder, while Serenity’s own Ministers hid in cowardice.

It all depended on that drone, now. A final culmination of their royal conspiracy, with a glassy glowing root to break the stalemate. Every life had been gambled on Seven getting through.

*

Seven shot for the atmosphere and knew that time was against him. The Watchers would know he wasn’t guarding the Ministry. They’d know this was the time to attack.

He tore on higher, burning fiery orange, as he flung the drone he carried into space. Tackling the lurkers in fierce bloody fury; the Watchers’ eerie black satellites in their graveyard of ships. They hung like a net that spanned Serenity; a black constellation. The Watchers’ grim living barrier, knocking out any technology that tried to help the people of this world. Starships, drones, aid shipments… all of them floated like corpses. Nothing ever got past their unseen siege wall. Nothing before now, at least.

Seven tore in among the Watchers’ lurking satellites and grappled one to shreds. A dark pulsing cluster, bigger than him. The vast plants couldn’t stun him, or cut out his current; he was one of their own. But their spurting artillery almost cut him in half. A fierce sudden agony; a glowing new scar across his chest. Snarling white light, Seven scorched another satellite into bloody weightless limbs. Clouded silver carnage, drifting apart in zero-gravity. A couple killed, at least, before their piercing shots forced him back from space.

Seven dived supersonic, back to the world. Down for that summer continent and familiar miles of sprawling city. He wanted to shoot straight for Tabitha now, if he could find her. To keep her safe. But he knew, deep down, that it would give her mission away.

Instead he veered back for the Ministry. Racing for it, desperately, where it lay undefended. It was under attack already; lit by laserfire in the night. Seven smashed the pale dragons that raced up to meet him. Left them destroyed and dismembered in his wake. Forcing more away, viciously, before their pack reached the forlorn Ministry. A roaring black dread descended on them, come to murder them all.

Seven torched rushing spiders and tore monsters to shreds, as more dragon packs dived in where the Ministry had been left unguarded. His flames lit the ruins around them; a wild thundering dogfight through the night.

Beaten and bloody, soaring back in exhaustion, Seven barely came through the brawl in one piece. By the time his bloody rampage was over, the surrounding city was filled with dead dragons and thundering white flames.

‘Where the hell have you been!?’ the female Guardian yelled at Seven from the walls. He swept by suddenly with a bloodcurdling roar, as Atha’s artillery shrieked and shot to keep more dragons away. Ghosts and Guardians; Sky Tribe and recruits; all defending the walls together. Watching the plaza, and their new glowing trenches, for any sign of a swarming attack. Most of them none the wiser, that Irren had just gambled their lives to get a last lucky drone into space.

‘What took him so long, to kill that first dragon!?’ the female Guardian demanded. ‘We were sitting ducks down here!’

‘He’s a busy chap, Private,’ said the officer beside her. He kept his victorious smirk a secret, like his loyalist pride, as he watched Seven’s carnage light the night sky again. Protecting them, fiercely, like he always did. Dropping the pale dragons in screaming bloody ruin. Ending their attack by himself.

Seven thumped down massive on his rooftop throne, as the crowded walls cheered for their jet-black mascot. Eyes proud and staring. Twin blazing stars, wreathed in smoke and flame. He roared his raging challenge to the hive on the horizon. A raw bloody bellow, for his ex-masters to send him all the weak-minded practise they dared. He’d take on the world; every world. These were his walls. His tribe. They were protected.

*

‘Lieutenant!’ said a neat officious Guardian, finding Reigo smiling on the walls at their fresh victory. ‘Lieutenant, I’ve reason to believe that one of our defence drones has malfunctioned. And been commandeered.’

‘I wouldn’t be too surprised, Sergeant,’ Reigo replied. ‘That celestial tech’s still patchy. We’re always losing supply drones to spontaneous development.’

‘But this drone was a military asset, sir,’ the man insisted. ‘We cannot allow any lapse in standards, particularly in the case of possible theft! May I have your leave to launch an official enquiry?’

‘I understand, Sergeant,’ said Reigo, calmly. ‘But no, you may not. It’s unfortunate, but not a priority for this campaign. I’m sure the missing drone will reappear at some point. In the meantime, we’ve several more drones under repair. You’ll just have to replace it.’

‘But Lieutenant–

‘And I expected far better from you, than the shitshow I witnessed just now,’ Reigo interrupted darkly. Turning the conversation on a dime.

‘Lieutenant?’ the man said indignantly.

‘You’re responsible for the defence of these walls by our drones, Sergeant!’ Reigo snarled at him. ‘Where were you!? Huh!? Off chasing one missing drone, while your brave men and women marshalled the defence of these battlements!?’

‘…L-Lieutenant, my apologies–

‘You worry me,’ Reigo growled, looking him hard in the eyes. More stern gravity in those words than any foul-mouthed threat. ‘Any more dereliction of duty and I’ll consider your replacement. Effective immediately.’

‘Yes Lieutenant!’ the man said obediently.

‘Get out of my sight,’ Reigo snarled back.

Left in peace, Reigo turned back to the walls. Deep in thought. A Ghost himself, in name. Though not a trusted one, clearly. He knew what Sea Mist was carrying, when he’d passed her in the arch. Of course he knew. A silvery disk of Irren’s secrets.

…And he’d never tell a soul. Reigo liked to think he was a loyalist. Maybe he just had a long way to go, to prove his honour to Her Majesty’s team.

*

Out in deep space, the lone artillery drone raced on. Lens staring ahead, braving the void, with no concept of the destruction it’d just avoided among those lurking satellites. Carrying its hybrid shoots, its footage and propaganda, to who-knew-where in the endless black. Irren’s bold new story.

A sudden burst and a ring of light, as the drone’s salvaged drive kicked in. Launching it to lightspeed. Vanishing for the stars.

32

Stalking, exhausted, Tabitha finally passed beyond the city’s central district. The buildings here were only half as tall; the streets and stonework much older and more closely packed. Fewer silver shapes, as far as she could tell, where she walked on carefully in the moonlight.

She crept through cobbled streets in the city’s lamp-lined historic quarter, and up stone steps into an ancient library. A safer bet. Fewer people meant fewer spiders, and this grand antique building seemed completely abandoned. The higher tiers were cavernous, with smooth stone floors beyond the sweeping staircase. The best place she’d found to snatch some rest, at last, before the city and its horrors dropped her dead with fatigue.

She pulled Vincent from her hood, and let him float off where he liked. Feeding his own curiosity, as his lens studied the library’s maze of darkened shelves. If anything lurked in here then he’d find it and race right back, to bump her silently on the shoulder. But it looked like the place was clear.

Tabitha chanced a fire in the library’s highest reaches. She made a ring of stone rubble to keep the kindling contained, and buzzed her volts through the rare paper she’d looted from a derelict office. It seemed a shame to prise these beautiful chairs apart for firewood, but the library’s deep dark rotunda wasn’t exactly warm. Worth it though, for the crackling flames to lift her spirits. Even just a little.

Breathing deeper, letting herself relax, Tabitha sat down wearily beside a grand marble column. She hunched in closer to her campfire, and snugged up in her dusty cape. Hugging herself tightly, more for comfort than cold, she smiled to watch Vincent nestle in her crossed legs like a cradle.

…Like Mog used to. Mog would never understand, if she tried to explain everything that’d happened to her since she last saw him. Partly because it was all so strange. But, mostly, because he was a cat.

Tabitha watched the woodsmoke lazing up towards the vast domed ceiling, which was covered in a masterful curve of gold-patterned frescoes. Every grand painting showed these people’s haloed non-deities, standing in classical grace against scenic vistas. There was the goddess Reason, with her shining spear. And Logic, an all-seeing brute. Next around was Blind Justice, holding his scales of Balanced Law, not unlike the statues from Old Earth. Foremost among them was Truth, a pure illumination; it held no cruder form. Beneath it lay Courage, a roaring beast, to speak it. Standing boldly in Truth’s light were a man and woman in gleaming armour. Winged Virtue, both. Swords drawn, always, to defend the Highest Good; to do as one would be done by. For an atheistic people, old Serenity still seemed to have enjoyed its god-figures.

…Maybe it’s just easier to believe in something with a face.

Tabitha yawned widely as she glanced around the library’s fine stone tiers. There weren’t actually many books in here, to pose a risk of her campfire torching the place. Any scraps of paper were locked in glass cabinets, great tomes and tenets and treatises, like ancient holy relics. Most of the shelves just held ranks of disused tablets and holo-scrolls. The whole grand building seemed to have been preserved for tourists.

The fire’s warm crackling light cast a primal drowsiness on her. The bright embers rose like fiery snow. Dragging herself up before she fell asleep, Tabitha scrounged some bedding to lay on the hard stone floor. She pulled some holo-scrolls from the bookshelves, and laid them out like plastic sheeting by the fire. Layering up the inactive material, which needed a star-net connection to show its wealth of knowledge. Though the stuff was still handy for a sleeping mat, she discovered, as she lay down wearily on an inch-thick stack. Folding a few more for a pillow.

She’d closed her eyes in seconds. Curled up tightly in her cloak by the fire, with Vincent held close in her arms. Sighing out her terror, she slept like the dead.

*

Tabitha woke hours later. Still dark. But she hadn’t been spooked by a noise, for once. She just felt rested; wide awake. She scattered her mats and doused the fire’s white embers, and cleared all trace but for the black scorchmark on the floor. Waving Vincent with her, she headed on silently for the roof.

The moonlit view was incredible. All grand ruined domes and watchful statues; a classical bliss-nocturnal. The hive’s eerie aura glowed vividly, past hills that drew ever closer. Her path couldn’t have been clearer, or more terrifying. But she was up here on the rooftop for a different reason; one that was all her own. She had to find that strange feeling again.

Legs crossed, eyes half-closed, she sat. Just, sat. She let every thought pass her, like clouds in the sky. Focussing solely on her living breath. Tasting the silver moonlight, and how it painted the world so differently. A cold clear holy sensation, so different to the honey-warm sunlight. Just abiding in this; her state of no-mind. A sacred peace, that helped her carry on to her morbid fate.

Be like a mirror; like reflecting water. That was what Barkless had said. And, similarly, how Reigo had trained her to fight.

…Detach. She tried to be just another part of Existence. Not separate, or special in any way. Not clinging to life or petty ego; that was unseemly to the Tribe. To live, so Barkless had said, like she didn’t exist.

…Breathe.

She lost track of time. They weren’t thoughts that kept rising in her, but sensations. That sense of gravity again, that clearly wasn’t just a lure by the lady of flowers. Seeding and branching, and expanding colossal inside her. Tabitha breathed deeply at the clear gentle feeling; that pure electric magnetism. There wasn’t the same vampiric hunger she’d felt in the past; only peace.

She’d never felt this before. Felt her pulse slowing, and all Self disappear. There was no sense of time, or idea. Nothing to be afraid of; nothing left to control. Nowhere to go, that was better than where she was right now. Eyes closed, legs crossed, she didn’t see the volt-vines growing all around her. Barely felt it creep from her sleeve. Branching into dozens, sprouting from the roof felt, and glowing softly in twining resonance. A rising garden around her, lighting her restful face.

It ended in revelation, when she left every stunted sense behind. Seeing beyond her own crude form. Lightning cascaded in biting neon; a rain of sparks like tumbling stars. Suddenly she was nowhere, and felt everything. A super-textured omnibright connection. Cold life’s vicious glow. Pulling her onward, out there in the ruins, towards its source.

*

Sea Mist was breathless. Pale eyes wide; pupils gigantic. Writhing and soaring, outside and in. Watching him spellbound, her strong Barkless Tree, in his powerful arms by the fire. The sacredness came in growing waves; that gorgeous rush he gave to her.

But… the thought still haunted her. Her lust fell away. No heart now for lovemaking. Her weather had changed.

‘What’s wrong?’ Barkless whispered. ‘…Dark Storm?’ he guessed.

‘I’m so worried for her,’ Sea Mist sighed, as Barkless pulled gently away. His heavy arm closed around her shoulders, as he wrapped her with the sheet in their bed-cave.

‘I worry for her too,’ he admitted. ‘And, I have great faith in her. I feel both.’

‘…I do too,’ Sea Mist replied, nuzzling in close against him. Fretting for her sister’s safety. The very thought, that Dark Storm might be going to her death… and here she was in Minnis-Tree, without a thing she could do about it.

‘She’s no stranger to Fierce-Hope. Not lately,’ said Barkless, in his deep comforting voice. ‘Trust in her.’

‘…I trust her,’ Sea Mist sighed nervously, as she settled down into his warm shoulder and tried to get some sleep. ‘I know she’ll survive it,’ she whispered to him, with total conviction. ‘I know it in my heart.’

*

Tabitha hurried on over moonlit rooftops, towards vast industrial ruins in the distance. She looked up in shock at the sound of a dragon; a thundering rush of wings nearby. Scrambling for cover, she watched it fly overhead. Hunting but oblivious, as it soared out over the towers beyond.

She moved on quickly, making the most of the darkness to hide her progress. A hooded shadow against the black-blue city, shrouded in the spectral night. Climbing the bouldered rubble to the next rooftop along, Tabitha dropped down quietly to the building’s shorter side. Leaping and lifting herself over a maze of clustered rooftops, as she headed ever closer for the hills.

The jumps were getting easier; the gaps between the roofs lost their dread. Picking up the pace, letting instinct take over, she was freerunning. Something she’d never dreamt of before, but now she was finding her feet. Learning faster ways to scale the slates; leaping ledges and vaulting over wall-tops. Hanging to cross a sturdy power line, like a rope between two rooftops. High up and quiet, safe off the streets, she didn’t need to be quite so cautious about the swarm. Moving on faster now; getting ever closer to the factories in the distance.

Tabitha leapt another rooftop and scaled a ruined cargo ship. She clawed her way silently into a torn-open building, and crept on carelessly over a cracked floor–

that gave way. She was yelling. Falling. A forty-foot drop broke her back.

Her ears were ringing; her world was all dazed agony. Vincent floated down in staring concern. Tabitha stifled a wild scream in her palms. She’d never felt so sick before, or a raw stunning stab so ferocious. Down past her stomach, she didn’t feel a thing. Gasping, dragging herself, she couldn’t move her legs. Then she saw it, felt it, jutting through her side and out of her back. Four cruel feet of it, impaled between the plates in her armour. Skewered by shrapnel. Desperate to scream again. Looking back to a plinth, the broken thing had been on display. A long spiked shard of bronze; a cruel metal remnant of some ancient world war. Crawling in panic, dragging her legs, Tabitha snarled and sobbed and tried desperately to get away. Slipping in her own silver blood.

She wanted to wail. To yell out for help, and urge Vincent to do something. Anything. She’d be found down here; the horde would smell her blood.

…Detach. Handle it. Get to cover.

Tabitha dragged herself into deeper shadows, breathing quickly and bleeding out, until her spine gradually healed and she managed to rise to her knees. She could’ve yelled out loud, sweating and retching, as the jagged metal moved and ground against gored muscle and bone.

Only one way past this, she told herself weakly. Tabitha gritted her teeth and gripped the huge shard tightly. Grasping it in panic, where its long vicious shape speared her through. Trying to blot out the pain, she took a deep blood-crackling breath. Trembling, gasping in agony, she pulled on it strongly until its cruel twisted length squelched back through her. Jumping in pain as it ground against bone.

…Just another few inches. Do it.

Breathing quick and terrified, Tabitha clamped a hand over her mouth. Screaming and sobbing desperately, stifling the sounds, as she pulled the spurting skewer back through her wound. Bloody hands trembling, she finally gripped it snarling to drag the fucking thing out. Setting it down soundlessly, to avoid its giveaway clang on the floor. Pale and trembling, she forced her shaking palm against the streaming wound.

Tabitha curled up crying on the cold stone floor, as she writhed in her blood-puddle and healed. She just felt so lonely out here. Hurting, and scared. Nothing ahead but the Watchers’ hive, and the fate that would finally kill her.

…Stop it. Stop crying.

Watching the ceiling, wiping her tears, Tabitha breathed deeply and gathered herself despite the pain. She had to think. Had to get away from here.

All the fear and hate she felt right now was just mental energy. Energy she could redirect, and put to work in her favour. That four-foot shard was a resource; its sharp cruel tip could make a shank.

Teeth gritted tightly, pulse pounding furious, Tabitha grabbed the jagged metal and limped away with it. It was just another tool on her path.

*

Tabitha took a seat in the next shadowed building, an ancient bathhouse, and set about making her prison knife.

The moonlight glowed from a high shattered window; the pool rippled its light on the ceiling. Tabitha gripped the shard’s tip and bent it, then bent it right back on itself. Over and over, stressing the metal, until a foot of it finally snapped away. She looked around her, at the rough antique pillars. The sculpted stone was hard enough to scratch the metal, when she ran the short bronze spike against it. Hard enough to sharpen it. Working quickly, she ground its rough edges into a shining vicious blade.

Arms trembling, she bent the shank over on itself to make it shorter, by a third or so. Punching its wider end blunt, she crushed it in to make a knife hilt. She wrapped the new handle with strips of a rubber swimming cap, tightened and knotted off, that she’d found in the changing rooms nextdoor. It was just like Deep Roots had shown her, back on that freezing lakeshore: a good knife-grip counted most of all.

With a final look at it, scrutinising its sharpness, Tabitha slipped the new blade into her Guardian sheath and strode on for the cafe fridges. Looting some bottled water, she filled her canteen and crept on outside. Stalking swift and silent through the streets.

*

The Watchers’ Prince stared from his tower windows, high in the shadowed hills. Listening expectantly, at growing footsteps behind him. Black-armoured boots strode across the crystalline floor. A ferocious figure. His kneeling General confirmed it; that their last great horror was hatched.

The Prince turned at that. A hard deadly stare, like Hell. His slight single nod set the real war in motion. Silent and satisfied, he looked back to the ruins. His final grand horde, unleashed.

33

‘Incredible,’ Lotor muttered to himself, in his makeshift lab in the Ministry offices. Desks and tables were littered with silvery dissections and monstrous remains. For now, though, he merely observed Fishbowl hard at work. The creature floated tirelessly between ranks of potted vegetables, and wide planters salvaged by the drones. Eager for the first signs of fresh shoots from the soil. Its form of dark natural latex seemed to be healing well.

He’d make note of Fishbowl’s behaviours, during his work with the celestial matter. A touch of water here; a careful air-jet there. Pests and spores it would not suffer to land. An entirely optimised machine, engineered to ensure its crop was optimised in turn. Whatever that crop might be.

Whether it was capable of notions such as friendship and nobility, he was as yet unsure. Though it had the capacity for inter-species bond and loyalty, evidently. Her Majesty may not have survived the Alex being without Fishbowl’s swift action to obstruct him.

Regardless of the time left to him on this forlorn world, Lotor busied himself with the Fishbowl Experiment. An ongoing study of the Watchers’ airborne cephalopod, its genetic programming and manner of propulsion, and every aspect in-between. He sought any discovery that might aid them in this conflict; a weakness or a way to control the Watchers’ creations through the Celestial. Seven too, if the furious animal would ever allow him to take tissue samples for study. It was all so fascinating… if only he had the proper facilities. Any potential developments were unforthcoming.

His work would be made somewhat easier if he could only keep his hands from trembling, given the Ministry’s precarious situation. But his ration of rare tranquilisers would only last so long. He’d keep them in reserve, for more important work… or more dreaded surgeries on the wounded, if Thier’s hybrid medical droids should falter.

But the Fishbowl automaton was something entirely different. Far more durable, and unwavering in its work. At the very least, Lotor supposed he could harness the creature’s productivity to propagate some small crop of fresh vegetables for these survivors. The children enjoyed the variety of sealed foods recovered by the supply drones; though he used the term food loosely in that regard, and with some disdain. Thier’s mounting cans and ration packs could hardly compare with the sustaining nutrition of living foodstuffs, grown fresh by this creature in good kept soil.

Lotor returned to his latest dissection, spurred on by Fishbowl’s tireless efforts. Stooping intently over his scalpel-work, in search of any tissue he might harness for the Ministry’s defence.

*

Far across the complex, walking the grand arched gallery, Saa couldn’t stop thinking about her. Not since that photo on Irren’s screen. Her courage, and her friendship, and how…

Anyway. Saa knew it was wrong. She’d tried to distance herself, with great difficulty, ever since Her Majesty had returned here. She’d tried to forget how close they’d become on her first visit to Serenity. A better time, before Tabitha had uncovered her horrid secret… that she’d simply been helping the high Ministers to get their way. The same Ministers who’d threatened the lives of her family, in the most horrific manner, if she refused to play along with their plans for Stormworld.

The Sky Queen had returned here to face those Ministers, only to find these people abandoned and left to their fate. Saa still marvelled at these survivors’ enduring strength. All around her in these corridors were people Her Majesty had pulled from the ashes, and sharpened like weapons, to resist those monstrous things.

It helped, to think of Tabitha as Her Majesty. As if that formality might erase the feelings she had for her. A little, at least.

Saa walked on down the Ministry’s main corridors, to buy some breakfast for Lea and Anero. Thier’s salvaged rations weren’t free, as they obviously should be, despite her constant campaigning. Thier and Atha had everyone working to afford it; exploiting these people’s hunger for their labours. Everyone should’ve had their necessities taken care of, freeing them up to fight this war. That was right, and kind, and they could afford to do it. Others agreed with her; that it was only moral. Together, their labours were a reservoir. Something better spent among everyone, shared out equally, among those too old or wounded to work.

But some just won’t see it that way, she fretted, angrily. People on his side. Saa wasn’t sure that she could share the library with Irren much longer. He had a problem with her, in general, and she simply couldn’t understand why. Anero didn’t like him, though she’d tried to keep the peace between them; she regretted ever finding that file on Irren in the first place. She never would’ve recommended his expertise to Tabitha, if she’d known how extreme his beliefs actually were. Perhaps it was her own fault that Irren, The Artist, had found his way here on Tabitha’s ship. She’d created a monster.

Lately Irren had become unbearable, and Saa had always thought herself a patient person. That strange man was utterly nocturnal, constantly muttering to himself, and regularly drank himself into a stupor. To cope with her, he’d said, during one particularly honest tirade. Obsessing nightly over facts and statistics, far away in his spy games and drunken fantasies, while these people’s lives and basic needs were clearly the greater issue.

She sighed, feeling at a loss, and carried on toward the courtyard market. The elegant Ministry she’d known and commuted to had become a maze of military barricades, while every Guardian soldier and Sky-Tribe warrior drilled constantly for what was coming. All of them hoping, or praying if they were so inclined, that Her Majesty would win this terrible war – before it came crashing with a vengeance against these walls.

…I suppose everyone’s thinking about her, lately.

Saa headed on through an exquisite carved doorway, onto a bustling corridor of fine artworks. Many storeys beneath her feet, buried out of sight, something writhed in the Ministry’s oldest vaults.

Ancient tunnels ran down endlessly, past a rotting unseen body and a room piled high with gold. Way down deeper, where age-old stones had been steeped in secrets and imperial plots. A snow-soft carpet of thick soot, centuries old, where only Her Majesty’s footsteps had delved so deep. An endless trail of her footprints through the shadows. Winding and creeping through an ancient stone archway, to something gigantic. Something she’d grown.

*

Tabitha looked up warily at a rising noise on the wind. That same old insect chittering, carrying from the hills that loomed ever larger. A bigger swarm than she’d ever heard before.

…I’m running out of time.

Bright sunshine warmed the summer morning. The cobbles passed quickly beneath her, centuries old, as Tabitha delved on deeper through the city’s ancient heart. Dead flowerpots; dusted husks. Pulling her cowl-camouflage closer, she and Vincent watched the clear skies as they crept on towards distant factories.

Tabitha turned a street corner to find another vast crater, where grand ancient buildings had toppled to an impasse. Studying her route from the shadows, the large temple building on her right seemed to be the only way through.

Creeping inside, Tabitha stalked down the darkened corridor to a thick locked door. She shoulder-barged it quietly, trying to persuade it open. Springing her claws, she gripped the handle unit and tore the big lock away.

She pulled her submachine gun quickly, its silencer attached. Her body was hunched up tight and controlled around it, slipping into her training, as she searched the next room down its glowing gunsights. The grand hall ahead looked empty enough, but she had to be ready for anything. Just like the Guardians had taught her: breach and clear. It was all about speed and aggression; ready to take anything by surprise. She spotted her exit, way down the hall, before she moved on further inside.

Stalking through the shadows, Tabitha found herself in a blown-out gallery. Masterpieces hung in shards and tatters, lit by sunrays through the great shattered roof. Priceless sculptures stood dismembered among the pillars, or broken to staring fragments on the polished stone floors. Powdered scatters of grand marble grit, that crunched under her feet where she didn’t tread carefully.

…Tread more carefully.

The scattered tour-droids were dead robot statues; frozen mid-speech where they pointed to fallen masterworks. The gallery’s visitors were drained-out fossils and dusty heaped skins. Tabitha had to look away. She glanced up then, at a ring of speaker dots in the ceiling. The artificial intelligences that haunted every building were dead, and out of bounds for revival. They’d still be hostile if they recognised her. To them she was a criminal; a fugitive from Ministry law.

They’ll serve the heck out of you as a servant, she considered. As a master, though… maybe not so good. She’d never forget her time in that prison cell. She’d never forgive, either, for that candle-flame brainburn that tamed her beneath its lens.

…Leave ‘em dead. I’m glad.

The galleries gave way to an entrance hall; a trail of destruction told her sad lost stories. She stepped around small cracked wristcoms and fallen plush toys, like there’d been a school trip here. She saw tiny matching raincoats, dustblown and scattered in the fallen main lobby. Dead drones, and quick-printed photos of smiling young faces, scattered like waste paper in the dust. Tearful reminders of every innocent life she hadn’t saved. The feeling pained her viciously, and caught in her throat; she couldn’t help it. She just couldn’t look.

Dead-eyed and grieving, drying her tears, Tabitha crept further into vast museum storerooms. She’d take some vengeance for those poor kids. She’d stride on for them; she couldn’t really care about herself. Checking constantly for monsters or spider swarms, that seemed to have moved on long ago.

…Shame. The Watchers and their hordes deserve to die slowly for what they did here. For a very, very long time.

She passed by cliffs of antiquities; a maze of precious shelves. A thick grey sheet draped an alien sarcophagus. Tabitha took the tarp and shredded it quickly, and tied off scraps of torn costumes to make a camouflage net. A new ghillie suit, tight and improved, that she tied on tight over her dusty hooded coat. She stuffed a few cloth-scraps in her twin belts, handy for wicks and dressings if she needed them, as she headed on for a ladder to the roof.

*

Searching the city below, and looking out for water sources, Tabitha spotted a grand fountain in the distance. It was one of the landmarks she’d memorised, to find her way through the ruins; a tourist leaflet mapped her path. She studied the rooftops ahead of her, planning a route among the slates and grand spires. With bone-breaking drops to the alleys between them, that she’d already suffered first-hand.

…Or she could just stick to street-level, she supposed. Move more carefully down there, and weave slowly around the clustered spiders that gleamed in the sunshine, and–

Oh, balls to that. There’s no time. Tabitha stepped out nervously onto the roof ledge, breathing deeply, and didn’t look down. It wasn’t the building’s fault that she’d fallen last time. Just her own lack of skill, and caution, and confidence. Things she could change with practise.

Get back on the horse, I spose. She leapt powerfully, and landed fine, on the next shorter rooftop ahead. Didn’t stop to think about it, as she ran quietly for the next tall building. Reigo’s words echoed, now more than ever.

Switch on. Move to your objective. Don’t get sloppy again.

Far below, a snarling monster turned to watch the road suspiciously. Thought it’d heard something, though there was no sight or smell. High above it, moving unseen, a quick pouncing silhouette cleared the wide gap between two rooftops. Spider packs twitched at the changes in air current, and prowled the higher ledges for any sign of something. But the way was clear; there was nothing but settling dust.

Tabitha sprang and sprinted over rushing roof slates; eyes fixed on the buildings ahead. Moving faster now; the high ruins raced in a blur. Scrambling walls and ducking under vent pipes when her assault-course training kicked in. She heard her breath quickening; felt adrenaline spurring her forward. Vincent floated on quickly beside her.

She broke through fierce vertigo to cross a high toppled column, and let her reactions take over. Gripping a wall-top, Tabitha pounced an alley chasm to the next roof along. Each lethal leap woke her new muscles further. Every grab and sudden scramble, perfecting her form over the white-stone rooftops. Heartcore racing; lungs keeping up. Sharpening her skill in fast-forward.

Her landing feet pounded; she rolled through the tumble and ran. Hurtling now. High on the rush. Tabitha’s hybrid muscles worked overtime; lean and strong as tight-sprung pistons. Every pulse, every tendon, her relentless living engine. Legs pumping; arms steering. Gold eyes darting, to map the coming rooftops as she ran. Sprinting unseen past unwitting streets; guarded by brutes and crawling with spiders. Her hidden figure raced high above.

34

Tabitha paused breathlessly, running out of rooftops, and checked on Vincent floating beside her. The buildings ahead had collapsed into a vast pooling crater, like the mothership’s beam had bored right through to the bedrock. Still, she supposed she’d made good progress. She’d just have to work around it.

Descending a tiered fire escape to street level, Tabitha hurried on silently through the ash-scent shadows. Another sweltering summer day shone around her, where splayed spiders lurked across every tall building in the distance.

The next ruined street past the crater was crowded with fallen aircar wrecks, piled high in junkyard mountains. There were rivers of torched possessions, endless clothes and toys and shattered furniture, where the high-rise mansions above her had exploded to the road. Walking faster, Tabitha tried to ignore the road’s occupants. She was staring straight ahead, to the street’s end and the far apartments. Looking past the skins and husks, which lined the way and crinkled softly in the breeze. But the feeling was rising in her; a sickness she’d tried to bury. It spun her head and darkened her sight, and grabbed her hard by the stomach.

…Oh god. There’s so many of them.

Something cracked; something loud. Stonework toppled and thundered in the road. She felt her breath quickening. A growing rumble carried through the ruined street ahead. Tremors. The buildings were collapsing. Tabitha watched trembling bricks fall above her, running for her life. She scrambled in quickly through a shattered window, racing through before the ceiling collapsed. The buildings ahead were toppling like a tide. A limestone landslide swallowed the road in choking dust. The feeling grabbed her like the reaper, when she realised what was happening.

…This is it. They’d toppled this street by design. Something was making way.

Tabitha coughed quietly, hidden deep in higher cover, and tried to creep through the buildings unseen. Giving that fallout a wide berth, in another street that ran parallel. All the while watching in dread. Their shapes appeared in the distance, through the flying stonedust. Ranks of monsters in the settling smoke. Tossing aside the aircar wrecks and the fresh steel girders that blocked them. Vast squids crawled slowly behind them, keeping close and thorough, to clear the rubble like monstrous vacuums. Rings of industrial teeth, grinding like endless earthquakes. Vents spewed the processed rubble aside, like concrete, to clear the path slowly and wall it.

Next came those same old silver shapes, lurking from the mist, as Tabitha watched hatefully. But these spiders looked stronger. The monsters, newly horned and hulking. All marching in countless columns, slow as shuffling zombies, that the Watchers clearly controlled.

…Guess we’re not the only ones who’ve been upgrading. They just kept coming, endless terrible ranks of them, leading the way slowly for great staring giants in their midst. There were bone-clad serpents, like she’d faced beneath the SPEAR Project. And giant flaming horrors, like the gorgon that’d knocked at their doors. Near-invulnerable.

There were figures, too. Watcher soldiers, masked and armoured heavily; prowling in slow procession. And rapid wretches; cloned mistakes. Bred for speed and armed with black sabres, and clearly intended to take off her head.

She saw chrysalis-casks, hauled by twisted bastards, that seemed like living catapults. Carting the same containers that the pale dragons had dropped in their raid. Poison gas, or maybe something contagious. Glancing up, there was still no sign of Seven’s new siblings. But they were bound to appear in force, once the horde was in position. Winged ranks of them, filling the skies, once the Ministry’s long standoff finally turned to open war.

…When I do see dragons, I suppose it’s all over. They’ll time the assault all at once.

The rank armada just kept coming; still no end in sight. Slow as a glacier, and just as unstoppable. Bred beyond devastating. Nothing did overkill like the bastards in that ship.

It was so tempting, now. A suicidal rage grew inside her. If only Seven was here… they could burn through those forces right now. She’d even take a good lot by herself, if she volted up fully and went at them.

And get myself torn apart in minutes, after I’ve come all this way unnoticed. She couldn’t even signal to the distant Ministry, just to warn them; Vincent’s messages wouldn’t send any more. They were too far out of range. No… she had to get into that hive. She could wipe out this army today, sacrifice herself, and they’d only make more creations. To end this war she had to kill that ship. Teeth clenched tight, and against all her instincts, Tabitha crept away to get around them. Scared to death for the Ministry. For her friends.

It’s not over yet, Tabitha told herself, though she could feel herself losing hope. Watching from the windows, she could see the scouting spiders. There was no way to slip past that great swarm on street-level. No way to take a longer diversion, and still have time to reach the hive. The toppling rooftops weren’t an option any more, and she certainly couldn’t risk signalling Seven to fly out here and help her. If she stayed here much longer they’d find her. But that horde was colossal. There was just no way past.

Unless…

Tabitha headed on down a staircase, and snuck from a doorway to the next road along. Creeping out desperately, while ranging spiders searched the half-toppled street in the distance. She had to find it now. Before those things got any closer, around the hiding rubble, and shrieked the alarm when they saw her.

There it was; buried in the ash. Only a ring of neat holes gave it away. But the spiders were getting too close. Frantic, Tabitha crouched and pulled away the manhole cover. She doused her scent-trail in bleach and climbed the ladder quickly for the sickening sewer below. Slipping the manhole cover back over quietly, to hide her tracks as the spiders crept closer. By the time they’d climbed the ruins in the road, the alien scent had disappeared. Sniffing hungrily, none the wiser, the pack scuttled on down the street.

*

Coughing and gagging, Tabitha pulled some volt-vine from her catsuit sleeve to put a current through it. Lighting her way, and her wary breathless face, as she and Vincent crept on through the gloom.

It smelled like hell down here; like shit and open graveyards. Enough to make her retch violently, dry-heaving, as she tied a ragged cloth-scrap around her face just to filter it. She tried holding another few cloth-scraps on top of it, like a layered surgeon’s mask, to see if it helped. It really didn’t.

…Still. At least she hadn’t been spotted, if there really was a bright side to this. Rank as it was, the sewer made a straight rancid highway below the city. Holding her glow-vine high, Tabitha crept on down the narrow stone walkways lining the sewer.

She was forced to pick her path at a junction, and was sure her route lay straight ahead. No choice now but to step down into the cold sloshing water, seemingly blocked and lying stagnant for days, where certain shapes floated and other shapes swam. Gagging again, repeatedly, she pressed on. Waist-deep in the sickening stink.

*

There had to be some way to make this easier. Anything to block this stench, that only grew worse as she went. Her hood-helmet, maybe, though that’d make it even harder to see. Or something, anything, to–

Burn it off, she realised. Pulling a rare thin railing from a wall ahead, Tabitha bent the metal to stress it and snapped off a shorter piece. She wrapped one end with her remaining cloth scraps, and tied a cable from her cloak around it. Sparking the fabric in her hands, she managed to light her new torch. And ducked in shock at a sudden bright fireball, that scared her half to death.

…Methane. Makes sense. Well, she had burned it off though. For a moment. Tutting, searching by vine-light, she couldn’t find her torch in the rank water. But she’d never dry it out anyway… and without oil it’d burn too fast. All she could do was press on, searching for daylight and any distant way out.

*

The rank water sloshed endlessly around her. Tabitha didn’t know how far she’d travelled by now; it was hard to tell. But she and Vincent had been moving straight on at every countless junction; searching for shafts of sunlight and following the highway north. It almost made the stench bearable, to know she was still making quick hidden progress past the hordes.

Crossing the next sewer junction, her knee bumped against something floating in the water. Breathing nervously, she moved the vine-light over it. A body. Core pounding, Tabitha pulled her submachine gun as she checked around her. Gnawed gruesomely, the corpse of the native floated between four tunnels. No way to tell which way it’d come from. Or whether the thing responsible was still down here with her. Knowing her luck by now, it had to be lurking straight ahead. The same way she had to go. And, knowing her mind now too, she’d bloody well go straight through it.

Sloshing on quietly through the rancid water, Tabitha checked the charge pack in her submachine gun. She edged her belt around to keep the Watcher knife handy. Three grenades too, which she dearly hoped she wouldn’t have to use. Gun held ready, she carried on nervously through the dripping darkness. Despite every rotten remain, every ghastly twist in her stomach, she steeled herself for what was coming. Glaring bitterly ahead.

Something’s waiting for me down here. And yeah, it’ll be terrifying. But more importantly… it’s in my way.

*

Vincent’s torchlight shone dimly, flickering weakly, and blinked off again. Tabitha sparked her glow-vine afresh to take over. There were more shapes in the water; more bumping corpses in her path. Tabitha’s pulse was pounding; her quiet breaths quickening. She raised her gun ready as she carried on, towards growing sunlight in the distance. And whatever horror she’d face before she escaped. Searching the shadows ahead down her gunsights, where the sewer finally opened out into a wider space.

Something was nesting here, in a broader chamber. An ancient dim-lit cistern, wide as a buried brick barn. The walkways were piled with mud and shattered bones. Tabitha’s vine-light bounced off rusted rungs, up ahead on the wall. The tiniest slivers of sunlight shone from above, through a manhole cover at the top.

Creeping further inside, her gun still pointed, Tabitha checked the shadowed cistern nervously. Studying every wall, every wet pipe, for what was waiting… and there it was. Lurking in the shallows, a few yards away, where her vine-light rippled against it. A slick black coil of something, dagger-toothed and staring gigantic, like a monstrous deep-sea serpent. Lifeless where it lay.

…Suppose it just got old and died, Tabitha told herself sulkily, as she wandered over to it. Kicking it, cautiously, and maybe just the tiniest bit disappointed. But it did seem pretty set on being dead now. Like, permanently.

‘…But,’ she muttered feebly, with a quiet sigh.

Well, she thought unhappily, with one last hopeful smack across its vicious head. Its ugly face rocked in the water, with a rotten fishy stink, and fell still again. And here she was, built up for the fight and everything. And this big eerie cistern was perfect for it, all dripping and what-not.

…No, she felt kind of cheated, actually. Tabitha pulled her long Watcher knife, and stuck it squelching through the monster’s head anyway. But it was joyless. Empty, really. Its mere dead presence dented her pride.

…Huh, thought Tabitha, surprisingly unscathed, as she climbed the rungs to lift the manhole cover. Taking deep grateful breaths of the fresh summer air above.

Creeping into the city’s deep shadows, and glancing around carefully, this small town square looked clear. She’d made good progress, and the huge horde had vanished on. A great distant dustcloud, moving slowly, with miles of ruins still to cover.

And there was that colossal fountain, her next landmark in its toppled grotto, not too far ahead. Tabitha shrugged, disappointed, and carried on cautiously toward it. Expecting a fight at any moment. This all felt way too easy; it was weird. But she had to use this chance to cover ground more quickly. Before that horde found the Ministry first.

35

Bathing quickly in the statued fountain, Tabitha grabbed her stinking clothes and soaked them. She pulled some overgrown moss from the hanging masses around her, and bunched it in the water like a sponge. Scrubbing the sewer filth from her lightweight armour, she draped its trickling pieces over an outstretched statue in the sun. She cleaned her knives and drenched her cloak, and found that neither hybrid firearm minded the water.

Her clean catsuit had dried itself, by the time she’d washed the sewer’s telltale stench from her gear. Looking around cautiously, and shivering slightly from her grand cold bath, Tabitha slipped her catsuit back on and took a minute to sun-feed. Sighing, satisfied, while the hot summer sunshine warmed her bones. These overgrown gardens felt like a world away from the ruins. The midday light was a soft dusted glow. Batbirds still gathered and grazed here, oblivious to the devastation. She could’ve happily stayed longer, just to feel this life and gold light… but anyway.

Better get moving.

She sipped a handful of water from a running font nearby, to test it. The flow was clear and fresh; probably from a natural spring. Tabitha paused to fill her bottle. The worn font was ancient, and shaped like a mythic serpent; the water flowed from its snarling mouth. Chiselled into the weathered stonework was an antique motto, in old High Serenian:

LET NONE PAY FOR THE WATERS OF LIFE

…Wait. I’ve seen this place, on a postcard by the pier. Looking around the toppled stonework, she recognised the statues. A vast ancient sculpture, half-hidden in the green heart of the city, that she’d seen with Saa during their first flying tour. The great shattered monument was filled with dynamic forms of people hard at work. Techno-deities and man-made saints, all labouring at classical production lines. Celebrating their industrial revolution, even in antiquity.

While we still prayed to Zeus, she remembered. It was tragic to see so much history brought low. But it lived on with those survivors, rebuilding their Ministry fortress, even just to spite their conquerors. She’d never seen so many races, and all of them working so hard. Like it’d brought out the best in these people to have the odds stacked so high against them.

…We just need the right reasons to act virtuously, she supposed. A powerful Why, to make gods and deities of ourselves. These gardens had been called the soul of Serenity; the first ideas that built this civilisation. It seemed like Vincent shared the sentiment, as he circled her with his staring lens. Catching photos of the Sky Queen among the overgrown ruins.

The ape-female’s face had been changing, ever so gradually, as the dronelet caught more pictures of her. More determined; a hardened kind of look in her eyes. Staring straight down the lens, with the glorious greening ruins off-focus behind her. Three worlds away from a girl who ducked at butterflies.

Tabitha hurried back to collect her stuff, which looked mostly dry by now. She felt energised in the summer sunshine; felt faster and stronger than she’d ever been on Stormworld. Reminding her, uneasily, that her mutations made her kind of half-Watcher too.

Walking over quickly for the fountain, her next footstep dragged and tripped her. Tangled in something. Sticky strands caught between her fingers, where she’d thrown out her hands to break the fall. Cold horror dawned when she realised. This entire patch of ground was laced with a web… and none of her weapons were close to hand.

This isn’t a watering hole. It’s an ambush site. Hitting those strands must’ve triggered it; she felt a sudden huge shadow above. Tabitha leapt away snarling as the fountain exploded. She landed crouched, claws sprung and sparking, as the gorgon lurked in the stonedust. It was massive. Tank-sized. Darker than most, and armoured like crustaceans. Drooling slick black slurry as it stared.

…Now that’s a spider.

Eyes lit bright, claws trembling furiously, Tabitha growled wildly and sprinted for it. She dodged its vast pounce and rolled as it swung for her, and leapt aside gasping from a thick gory spear of a tongue. She rolled and kicked the ground away. Clawed it deeply in a shower of sparks and ducked in quick to pummel it. She dodged its swipe and threw a vicious one-two, denting its monstrous face as it snapped for her. Another rapid combo shocked it back on the defensive, while she made the most of its surprise. Staring bright; current coiling in her claws. A booming blue-black firework as she dodged its stab and spun in sudden to shock it staggering away.

What was it I said, to that first silver spider I’d ever hit? …Oh yeah.

‘Get away?’ she tried, with a savage smile. It didn’t seem to work on this one either. Tabitha snarled and dashed for it, pouncing herself clean over its snapping head. Airborne. She kicked off hard from its arching knee, rebounding fast to straddle its back. She crunched her claws in viciously and tore vast bloody shreds from its skull. It roared and spun, and threw her off in a roll she’d expected. She ducked its tongue and leapt its striking leg; the poisoned spike flashed like a dagger as its huge claw whipped past. The thing was colossal, but hardly slow-moving; she was gasping just to stay clear of it. Leaping in close, Tabitha stunned it again and spun through its thick legs to bury her claws in its bellowing head. Not deep enough; she missed the brain completely. Then learned her lesson painfully, as the giant spider lashed out and snatched her close. It locked her suddenly in a cage of vast legs; its spiked tongue slipped and stabbed at her inside. Its armoured legs wouldn’t rip apart quick enough; Tabitha wrestled desperately before the closing limbs crushed her. She gripped the huge tongue as it shot for her and sent a booming bright shock through its head. Buying back a single bloody moment, where she snarled and screamed and burst her sparking fist through its underside. Blowing fierce hissing shocks through it, wild and relentless, until the monster roared and reared and bled its slick silver guts all over her. Tabitha was breathless, dripping in it, as the brutal spider crashed down dead around her.

‘…That’s better,’ she muttered breathlessly, redeemed at last since the sewer, as she wrestled its legs apart to climb free. She was drawn, instantly, to that same old oily smell. That silver star-juice taste, where she licked its spattered blood from her lips. Still intoxicating; orgasmic as ever. She paused, and sighed the scent of it; she even thought about it. Pupils dilating. Old bloodmeal urges swam back to the surface. Just another natural part of her. If she could just get a small sip of that silver blood again… only a quick taste, though…

And become a second Lady of Flowers? she warned herself. Lurking in the ruins, just another vampire wretch in its lair? She’d fought through all that. She’d survived it. Demanded better of herself.

…Rise above. Tabitha shook the silver thought away, heady and lustful though it felt. She washed at the wellspring, and quickly gathered her drying gear. Ignoring the spider’s vast carcass, and the gallons of glistening gore that poured from it.

‘Did you get all that?’ she said, as she walked away from huge temptation. Floating on beside her, Vincent’s tiny light blinked in the affirmative. ‘Nice,’ Tabitha said with a smile. ‘I wouldn’t mind watching it back, if I get chance,’ she added quietly. ‘That was way too noisy. I need to work on my takedowns.’

*

Dusting up her clothes, and painting her face in fresh camouflage, Tabitha headed on past the toppled gardens for the streets beyond. Checking over her shoulder, and heading for the shadows, in case anything else came creeping up behind her.

A few streets further she passed an aircraft wreck; a medical rescue ship. She nodded Vincent to follow her, and ducked inside the wreckage to search the cluttered packages. She didn’t have much use for those bandages… though they might have been useful as torches, or cordage. She stuffed a few sealed packs in her coat pocket, just in case. Syringes and drips, not much use to her… no weapons or ammunition, on the husks that she tried her best to blank out…

Ah-ha! That was paracord. Thick nylon climbing rope, a neat tied bundle of it, by the aircraft winch.

Mine. Rummaging further, she found packets of clear blue gel, that she’d seen in use as instant dressings. And tubes of adhesive, like superglue, to seal up lacerations like she’d done for poor Laika. There were painkillers too; she’d appreciate those at some point. She was running out of pocket space; they barely buttoned shut. Searching the bodies gingerly, she peeled a leather jacket away from its empty ex-owner. She pulled her knife and cut the leather into strips, and bound the grips on her Watcher pistol and submachine gun. Sticking them off tightly with superglue, she tried her aim with the grippy new holds against her metal palms.

…Better.

Signalling Vincent to follow her, Tabitha popped her head from the wreckage to check the street ahead.

Creeping on, and glimpsing movement, she stopped suddenly and crouched in cover. Taking careful aim before the searching spider turned and found her. Tabitha dropped it quietly with a few fast suppressed shots. No others here from the looks of it, as she strode on forever through the dust. Beyond the rooftops, the city’s towering industry quarter loomed like a forest of fists.

*

A figuRe wAtcHed Her, hiGH in the hidden shAdowS. StuDYing Her. LLearning the wwAY she mMmoved. The wayy she’d fffouGHt that GiAnt SpideRR. DraWn by the NOISe. Its pppale EyeS sTAred; utterly ffFeral. It shRrrank awAy in the DDdaRk.

36

‘How goes the rescue work, Lieutenant?’ said Thier, as he poured the man a hot drink in his grand apartments.

‘…Not well,’ Reigo sighed from a lounge chair. Nodding his thanks as he took the steaming cup. ‘We’re only finding small pockets of survivors outside the city, like Her Majesty supposed. Evacuating them back here, by gunship, wherever we can. When the sky’s safe enough,’ he added grimly. ‘I only wish my evac teams were busier out there. It’s not looking good for the wider world. Still nowhere safer than here, to evacuate to.’

‘But you are finding some survivors,’ Thier replied, as he sat in the fine chair opposite. ‘You must take solace in that.’

‘Yeah, I suppose so,’ Reigo conceded. ‘All we can do, is all we can do.’

‘Indeed,’ Thier smiled grimly. Taking a sip of his alien coffee. ‘…Speaking of which, I’ve continued the work toward our greater efficiencies. Reviving salvaged gunships more quickly, that sort of thing,’ he explained. ‘Strengthening our scout drones, and having them range out further to revive more of their kind. We may soon have enough military hardware to launch a larger salvage operation, and strengthen our counterattack. Time permitting, of course.’

‘Ever the pioneer, eh Mr Isse?’ Reigo said with a grin. ‘Well, sounds like good news to me. I’ll assume you already have an ambitious plan in mind. And that you need some of my men and women to make it happen.’

‘For a payoff that may just end this war, Lieutenant,’ Thier replied. ‘The decision is yours, naturally. Or indeed the General’s.’

‘What kind of payoff are we looking at?’ Reigo replied doubtfully. ‘Tank drone or something? Or a crashed fighter-bomber? Whatever this salvage is, Mr Isse… is it really worth the lives you want me to risk for it?’

‘A destroyer,’ Thier replied coolly. Reigo watched him, his expression changing, and said nothing in return. ‘S-Class,’ Thier continued, sipping his coffee. ‘Downed on the plains, far to the south. My drones located it at dawn, but found no survivors. It appears to be a nesting site for our beloved arachnis argens. Though the starship and its weapons systems seem relatively intact.’

‘…You’ve got coordinates?’ said Reigo, as he straightened in his chair.

‘I have,’ Thier replied. ‘And all the droids or drones I can spare, to help revive it. Though the work may be too complex for them to complete unsupervised.’

‘I’ll inform the General immediately,’ Reigo assured him, as he drained his drink and headed for the door. ‘Thanks, Thier. This could change everything.’

‘Then I’d advise all haste, Lieutenant,’ Thier replied warmly. ‘The Watchers’ brutish servants appear to prioritise the consumption of any military hardware on sight. If they’ve followed our drones then they may already be at work consuming that starship. Posing considerable problems for any Guardians sent to retrieve it.’

‘You’re right. But it’s worth everything if we can get that destroyer working, and Watcher-proofed,’ Reigo considered. ‘We could destroy the hive ourselves. Create a way for Her Majesty to escape unharmed.’

‘Or get these survivors off Serenity, if the war cannot be won,’ Thier agreed. ‘I believe the revival of that warship is well worth the risk.’

‘For a few brave men and women,’ Reigo sighed heavily. ‘…Alright. I’ll lead the operation. I’ll take our best.’

‘Glad to hear it, Lieutenant,’ Thier replied. ‘I’ll ensure your pilots have the hardiest drones and gunships we’ve revived so far.’

‘I’ll fly Lead,’ said Reigo. ‘I’ve been grounded too long.’

‘As you will, Lieutenant,’ Thier replied. ‘Though… aren’t you needed here? To lead our defences?’

‘That’s the General’s position,’ Reigo shrugged. ‘If I can better serve these people out there in a gunship, then it’s my duty. I’ll speak to the General. I’ll make it happen.’

‘…A Guardian indeed,’ Thier smiled. ‘Good luck, Lieutenant.’

‘Thanks for the intel,’ Reigo replied, as he strode for the door. ‘We’ll get that warship back here. I’ll count on yourself and the Professor to finish the revival, with every engineer and technician we can spare. As of now, this work is Priority One.’

‘Of course, Lieutenant–

‘Contact!’ came a soldier’s distant shout, as both men turned in shock. ‘Northern ruins! Droids opening fire!’

‘…And battle commences,’ Thier sighed darkly. Giving up, suddenly, on all his shattered plans. He stood grimly and took his glowing rifle from the wall.

‘You know how to use that?’ said Reigo.

‘Somewhat,’ Thier shrugged, as they headed out quickly down the corridor. ‘I’m prepared to fight for innocent lives, at any rate.’

‘Good on you, Thier,’ Reigo nodded, as they parted ways. ‘Head for the northern walls. Anyone needs me, I’ll be in the barracks.’

‘Hurry, Lieutenant,’ Thier called after him. ‘We’re running out of time.’

*

‘Ahh, shit,’ Big Fish rumbled nervously. Leaning on the northern battlements as he watched growing smoke on the horizon. Death itself was coming for them, a distant dust storm, in torturous slow-motion.

‘…Yup,’ Aelu sighed beside him, feeling a sudden black hole in her stomach. Watching distant flashes of laserfire, where their droid army held back the coming swarm. Thier’s revived robots, embedded way out in the ruins, were already taking a beating. Even miles away she could see the sheer scale of the fallout; suggesting a horde far larger than any they’d faced before. Taking their time, as ever, until the Watchers had all their pieces in place. Their grand assault on Serenity’s last survivors.

The end of this world, Aelu told herself. With the capital lost, the outer worlds will follow. A hundred billion lives… all just food for the swarm.

‘Great War,’ Sea Mist growled darkly, as she walked up beside them with Barkless.

‘Greatest honour,’ her mate snarled defiantly. ‘Let them, come.’ Sea Mist watched him, all his fiery conviction, and smiled in return. Her strong Barkless Tree. He glanced around at the Minnis-Re soldiers, and saw their broken looks. There was no Hope here. Not among any of these peoples, who watched their grim fate from the walls.

…With holy hands, he struck the first flame in the darkness. It was up to him, to spread the fire. It was what a Gost should do. Barkless pulled his silvery knife and thumped his chest aloud. Pounding his armour like a war drum; forged from dead demons in this fort’s roaring Forges. He looked to them; Dark Storm’s retainers. All four wore matching black sets. Their chestplates, inlaid with a spectre. They were her Spirit Guard; they had a duty here.

‘Gosts. Rise!’ Barkless addressed them, with a canine snarl. A sudden ferocity in his stare. Aelu watched him and stood a little straighter. Sky Tribe and Guardians, standing nearby, turned to listen as Barkless paced the higher wall. ‘Fierce-Hope, for Sky Queen!’ he told them passionately, raising his voice to an audience of many peoples. ‘Fierce-Hope for cubs!’ he yelled, pointing to the families being evacuated into the vaults. Stone Shore watched him carefully, and put aside his bitter grudge with the outcast. He roared out to Cave Clan, and the mourning Bronzebacks, to take up their weapons for war. Cold Moon was nodding, down in the courtyard; she raised her dagger snarling for all her Red-Eyes to follow suit.

‘All people, die. In, time,’ Barkless continued, as Sea Mist growled and pulled her shock batons for battle. ‘Few die, with honour,’ he told his nodding audience.

Big Fish stood taller as he watched him, and the rising crowd around them. He finally felt a united Shoal within these walls; that most precious wealth of all peoples. His ancestors would smile on this moment; this rising Shoalbond. Now, at last, he could pull the giant blade from his back to protect it.

‘Few live, and die, for True Good!’ Barkless continued, in his raw Stormish growl. ‘For Fierce-Hope! For Vur-Tu!’ Single soldiers were shouting for him; cheering at his words. Many more were muttering, trying to understand what he’d said. ‘Sky Queen walks, alone,’ Barkless told them all, pointing a blunt-clawed finger to the far ruins. ‘Maybe, walks Last Path,’ he continued, with a heavy heart for his tribe-sister. ‘But. She, vowed. She, walks. She fights. For you.’ The cheers were growing now; his audience was doubling. Their mighty bird-spirit watched from the rooftops; their protector to the end. ‘Death comes, for all!’ Barkless called out, across the crowded courtyard. ‘All, must face Death! All, must choose!’ he told them. ‘Many, beg! Many, plead!’ he yelled fiercely, and spat at that weak notion. ‘But strong Tribe, face Death, together!’ he roared out to them, raising his clenched fist. ‘With knife! With fire!’ he bellowed, through their thundering cheers. ‘With Fierce-Hope!’

*

Fishbowl gardened peacefully, thriving in recovery, while Lotor focussed on a fresh dissection. He tried to ignore the alarm bells ringing through the complex; returning intently to his work. Examining another Watcher creation, killed in the plaza and pinned open on his worktable, in the hope of finding a weakness. Something of use in this conflict.

Her Majesty’s drawings were quite detailed, he considered, for an amateur in biotechnology. Though, admittedly, she’d a wealth of first-hand experience as a combatant. Not something he’d much care to attempt, given his far more comfortable background. No, he was perfectly content for the Ministry’s warriors to continue their brave work, while he set about understanding their monstrous kills. Seeking some trick, some way, to kill these creations more easily.

But despite every avenue, every experiment, the celestial matter still refused to interact with any Watcher species. Or indeed counteract them. Tutting impatiently, Lotor delved further between the specimen’s slick tissues. Attempting a neat excision on a gland he hadn’t come across before; perhaps a mutated venom sac?

He looked around curiously at a tiny rattling sound. His forceps and scalpels, trembling on the surgical tray beside him. The professor cast his eyes around the room, with growing dread at the commotion outside. Thier’s droid army was already at war, in the distant city ruins. But something else seemed so much closer. He downed his tools and hurried for the door, to watch yelling Guardians rush for the battlements. The final siege of their walls had begun.

*

‘Shit, sir. That’s a big bastard,’ a female Guardian muttered on the walls.

‘What did you expect?’ Atha replied gruffly, as he walked on down the line. He studied its lurking shape in the ruins; another Watcher experiment. It was hunched and thick-skinned; had to be five storeys tall. There may even have been eyes in there, somewhere, beyond all the drool and leathery scales.

‘Guess they needed something to test our defences,’ Reigo considered, as Atha walked up beside him. ‘They haven’t tried in a while. Their full forces must be in the post.’

‘Let it find the bottleneck first,’ Atha replied grimly, still watching the rubble hills on their perimeter. ‘Time to see if this kill box actually works.’

Seven swept low over the ruins to the south, blowing pale fire through a vast screeching swarm that gathered beyond the rubble hills. A tide of heftier spiders, trying to swamp the southern perimeter. Keeping him busy in fending them off, as if by the Watchers’ design, while their newest gorgon roamed the blown-out buildings to the north.

The Watchers’ drooling giant turned for the Ministry, as the ruins it’d sniffed at came toppling down in a dustcloud. Growling like a landslide, and filling its venom sacs, the staring brute found a gap in the high rubble. Scuttling faster, on legs thick as temple columns, it charged.

‘LOOSE!’ Barkless roared to the clans, unleashing a sudden thrumming volley from the walls. A cloud of flying arrows, forged from gleaming spider alloy, stuck deep in its scales as the Sky Tribe nocked their next bowshots. Stone Shore growled victoriously, roaring in defiance, as his longshot pierced one of the giant’s peering eyes.

Big Fish watched Aelu admiringly, lying flat on a raised wooden platform, as her giant rifle thundered again. A massive sudden lightbolt, punching through the distant monster’s skull with a bloodbursting thump.

The distant creation roared out furiously between the rubble hills, and charged straight into their kill box. The crowded walls erupted. Every arrow and laserbolt; every spare droid and defence drone. Snarling, utterly focussed, Sunshine punched a dozen shrieking rifle shots through the giant’s monstrous face.

‘Artillery! Concentrate fire!’ Atha bellowed. Bright cannonbolts scorched glowing trenches across the giant’s armour. Bursting bangs, constant and focussed, blew burrowing holes through its chest. Cutting through, finally, to its giant heart. The gorgon staggered, spewing its venom, and dropped gigantic in blood-hissing gore. An echoing cheer went up across the battlements. Sky Tribe howled; chanting the gorgon’s vile spirit to the underworld.

‘Quiet!’ Atha yelled across the watching walls. ‘There appears to be a massive dead bastard, blocking my favourite bottleneck!’ he roared out. ‘Consider that your live-fire induction, ladies and gents, to the almighty shitstorm that’s coming next! Get those cannons recharged and ready!’ he commanded them. …‘Lieutenant. Get Seven to drag that big dead freak out of my kill box. The damn dragon won’t listen to me,’ Atha continued. ‘The forge butchers are welcome to it, if it’s any use.’

‘And that destroyer I mentioned, General?’ Reigo replied. ‘The salvage op?’

‘Oh. Yeah,’ Atha nodded, distracted by the carnage, as he tongued a speck of dinner from his teeth. ‘Get on it. Good luck, Lieutenant.’

‘Thank you General,’ Reigo replied gladly. Striding away quickly for Seven’s hunched shape on the rooftops. He was itching to get back in the pilot seat; those celestial gunships were beautiful. As for an entire celestial destroyer… well. They hadn’t recovered it yet.

*

‘Thank the gods,’ Aelu muttered, sighing in relief. Every fight, every attack on their walls, shattered the last of her nerves unbearably. She needed something after that encounter. Only a pill or two, if the makeshift market still had any to sell. All above-board, obviously.

‘Good battle. Good, training,’ Barkless reasoned, as he reloaded his rifle and slung it.

‘First of many,’ Fish rumbled hopelessly. ‘But as long as we’ve got you around, eh bud?’ he added happily, with a slick fist-bump they’d been practising. Barkless grinned.

But Sea Mist said nothing, as she watched Seven roar victoriously. Her only thoughts now were for Dark Storm. She couldn’t bear the notion of her being so far out there, alone. It felt like an eternity since that air-demon Aliks had torn her sister from the gardens; the All-Cursed One who’d taken her grandfather’s life. They’d have their vengeance on him, before the end.

These attacks on Minnis-Tree will only worsen, and swiftly, Sea Mist told herself. Her icy eyes studied the distant wasteland, wide with worry. I hope, I pray to you, First-Ancestor, that my sister doesn’t walk her Last Path. May she take all my Fierce-Hope for her own.

37

Among the capital’s towering central ruins, celestial droids fought on as the orange daylight faded. Still thinning the silver swarm as best they could. Their hail of bright laserbolts dropped tides of spiders in the dust-coated road. Dead drones littered the pavements. The droids’ staring rifle shots lit the carnage from shattered windows above.

An aircar wreck sat bent and cratered; a monster sprawled dead on its roof. Lobbies and stairwells were piled high with sparking scrap, where scouting hordes had torn Thier’s robots apart. Curled spiders lay among them, dismantled in bloody ruin.

Only the droids’ more capable variants remained intact; those of higher processing. Mismatched bunches with bright eyes glaring; covering one another’s retreat. Spiders pounced viciously and dragged a limping robot to the road. Torn apart by a charging monster before the droids could shoot it dead. An impossible tide crept towards them.

The robots beeped and chattered low modem noise. Withdrawing rapidly, in stubborn dozens, to buildings which were not yet compromised. Expending their rifles and improvising clubs. Striking spiders dead with industrial limbs.

The droids’ front line was shattered. Their frames lay mangled in the scuttling silver swamp. But a lone team fought on, undefeated. Stranded in a high-rise block. Gunning down spiders, endlessly, as they climbed and crept for the highest windows.

CR-597 aimed the last of its rifle shots, and stared at the distant burst spider with dim flashlight eyes. Turning its spindly frame, the droid waved a thin metal paddle of a hand. Warning half a dozen teammates away from the office doors. All their audio sensors picked up on it; a monster was climbing the stairs. Those with vibro-trackers felt its footsteps through the stonework. Coordinating their teammates behind rubble and scorched furniture, scant rifles aimed and ready, they waited for their desperate last stand against it.

The dark brute smashed through the doorway. Bellowing bloody as their shots cut through it. The monster burst through the rubble and tore IO-737 in half. It pounced on FP-633 and pulled it to sparking pieces. It turned at the shots and bit YT-6’s head clean off, then crushed the body into its grinding bright throat. Growling low at the cornered survivors, the brute lashed out savagely. Dodging its destruction, and leaping aside quickly, CR-597 grabbed up a fallen rifle and put a bright shot through the monster’s staring eye. The beast reeled back in agony. The deep wound was slowing it; its snarling skull bled out while they mobbed it. But it still had brains enough to spew its molten payload.

CR-597 watched its three surviving teammates flail helplessly as they melted apart. The brute had it backed into a corner now. The lone droid could only leap from the tower window… or fight back until its destruction. Rifle empty, expecting its own disassembly, the small survivor charged at the wounded monster and climbed its huge shoulder to reach its head. Beating it powerfully, paddle-hands closed into fists, as the dying brute curled vast fingers around its middle. The droid saw nothing but flashing warnings as the monster’s huge grip crushed its body. Its frame integrity would soon fall to zero. Staring, sparking, CR-597 fought on fearlessly. It drove a hand through the monster’s gory eye socket, and spun a wrist-servo that’d once drilled through rockfaces. Its fast-spinning hand minced the monster’s brain like a blender blade, stopping the great brute in its tracks. The broken droid bled battery acid; its round eyes dimmed to black. Both opponents crashed dead in the dust.

Beyond the blown-out windows, the old highway crawled with endless zombie shapes. Creeping like a death-black glacier. Powerful spiders and massive horned monsters, behind giant squids that cleared their toppled path. Marching figures and crawling gorgons. A living war machine on the move.

An armoured boot crushed a droid’s sparking head beneath it. The Watcher’s tall figure turned from the horde behind it, studying the road ahead. Its dark statue mask saw the light-glow, growing larger in the distant sky. They were moving ever closer for the Ministry, still hidden through the ruins miles away.

…But no species had more patience than they. Slow though the grand horde’s progress, this world’s inferior beings simply hadn’t the means to stand against them. Nothing had ever survived them; not by the bitter end.

*

Tabitha sat and studied her route from a rooftop terrace, in one of the few beautiful buildings left on her path. She’d reached the city limits. Out ahead lay nothing but sprawling factories and powerplant walkways. Hundred-foot chimneys and miles of giant pipes. What Saa had called the power district, beyond the industrial quarter. Half of it cratered, every powerplant destroyed, since the mothership’s first assault.

Beyond that built-up strip lay the capital’s Tiam River, if she’d remembered that right; past the ancient city walls. A natural border into the Blue Hills National Park, and the forested slopes that half-filled the evening sky. And that zombie glow, just beyond them. Her final stop. A gaping pit in her stomach, that trembled her hands and terrified her. She had to close her eyes and abide for a moment; to clear her frightened thoughts and detach. There was no her. No Vincent.

…We all die anyway, and how I feel doesn’t matter a damn thing. Just the families I might save here, despite it all. Life’s all that counts. Opening her eyes, Tabitha breathed deeply and stilled herself. She just had a couple more landmarks to reach.

‘Hey you,’ she told Vincent softly, where the dronelet rested in her crossed legs. ‘Come on.’

Searching the sloping wreck of a cargo ship, and squinting in the fading daylight, Tabitha took a crowbar stowed beside the crates and containers inside. As she climbed out quietly onto her next rooftop, wrapping her dusty cape around her, the ashen world wore a fierce orange glow. Blazing in her eyes while she watched it. The sky was clear and citrus-coloured; powder-pale and darkening high above. Glowing clouds hung low over the ocean, the flaming-bold colour of blood and Hearthfires. Even the city ruins looked scenic, in this lazy orange light. The most gorgeous sunset she’d ever known. Maybe the last she’d ever see. It reminded her of an evening on old castle walls, with cards and drinks in a fading summer. Days spent with Laika, when Jim had tried to hide his grieving tears for the family he’d lost. Her ancient Ghosts, a life away.

But Will’s grand ambition lived on; it’d spread to alien races. Nothing could kill an idea, especially one worth fighting for. Whatever happened, whatever her fate, Tabitha had made her choice. She’d go out fighting.

…For them. For everyone. Itching her nose, and turning fear to Fierce-Hope, Tabitha tightened the straps on her combat vest. She slung her gun and checked on Vincent, and walked on for her final landmark. Beyond it lay the edge of the city. A wasteland ahead.

*

The highway here was blocked by rubbled ruins. The surrounding blown-out buildings were impassable crags, unless she tried her doubtful chances with the climbing rope. Wary as she was, it looked like the only common-sense way past her landmark was straight through it. She walked aside for its twin towering archways, half-crushed in the landslide.

Tabitha peered cautiously between grand carved doors, and slipped inside the toppled temple. Stunning statues watched over her; wreathed in stone ribbons and frozen mid-dance. The air felt cooler, and smelled of faded incense. Gazing up, she saw a stunning secret world of black and white marble. Vast walls, pillared and fluted, and crowned with golden gothic, in heavenly High Baroque.

…And dead reaching skins, piled high beneath the gleaming columns. A glooming vision of hell. Desperate for sanctuary, and massacred here. Another gruesome punchline in the Watchers’ sick running joke.

Mosaic murals lined the entrance vestibule, depicting noble leaders as they helped heal the wounded. Further walls showed great warriors, leading the defence of their fortress city against the mystic hordes. This was the Hall of Ascension; a towering tourist attraction. Hallowed ground, where Silverspire’s ancient citizens had crowned their first emperors.

Hurrying on down the centre aisle, past ornate benches and statues of dead benefactors, Tabitha strode over slabs of paved engravings. Sunrays glowed heavenly through the fallen back walls. Ancient stone arches, gorgeous in their complexity, curved like ribs around the grand shattered windows. The batbirds startled her, as they fluttered away through echoing heights. She passed wide pillars and hanging candelabras, dripping loose rust in the sunset. An endless masterpiece covered the high vaulted ceiling, of angelic citizens transcending their Fear of Death.

Passing the busts of great philanthropists, and priceless paintings of ancient enlightenments, Tabitha dragged her eyes from Serenity’s moral teachings and masterworks. Sniffing and rubbing, again, at the ash that itched in her nose. As she walked on, she saw what remained of the emperors’ grand tombs. Every glass case, every statued sarcophagus, had been smashed wide open and defiled. Every trace of iron and gold had been harvested, from ancient swords to the city’s famous Broken Chains. Relics of these people’s great victories and emancipations. All of it plundered like scrap metal, for the Watchers’ war of extinction.

Heading on for her sunlit exit, the rear stone walls had been melted wide open. Slumped shapes occupied the charred front benches. Ragged skeletons, scorched by dragonfire, as if desperate couples and friends had hurried here during the invasion. Maybe for shelter, or one last look at their high Golden Throne. But even the city’s ancient seat was shattered. Its statued walls, ripped down into sad gorgeous fragments. The coronation steps, warped by molten rubble, looked like a writhing river of stone. All around her, shining in the sunlight, the stained-glass windows had melted to frozen waterfalls. Pouring and still from the high toppled stonework, where they’d set like rainbowed icicles in thick spiked clusters. The temple’s great rotunda, torn down savagely above. The dazzling sunset showed giant clawmarks in the stones.

Tabitha climbed the grand rubble towards the daylight, Vincent floating beside her, and checked the next road ahead. Just a few final buildings, then the arched ancient walls that led out of town. She heard her drone’s lens snap a photo. Sad and staring, framed by melted stonework, Tabitha walked on for the city’s blinding sunset. Her silhouette shrank in the glow.

*

This was it. She’d reached the industrial quarter, finally. Tabitha hurried on through torn-down fencing and climbed a broken window. Creeping on through the oil-stink shadows, in the first cavernous warehouse on her path. She passed some grubby hi-vis jackets, and grabbed them from their coat hooks to bundle them up and knot them. Walking on for the distant shutters, and the fading daylight beyond. At this rate, she considered, she might even make it to the hive before the aches of old age set in.

…I know Atha said it’d take me days to cross the ruins, but seriously. I’ll be eligible for an airbus pass into that bloody hive. If all the buses hadn’t crashed and burned, I mean.

‘C’mon, Drone Face,’ she sighed to Vincent quietly. Walking on wearily, adjusting her path, towards a gloomy distant ladder for the roof. She needed a better view before sundown.

*

Pale eyes glimpsed her from the shadowed crate stacks, and shrank to wild white dots. Stalking silently, snout pouring smoke, the huge horned monster crossed the grimy warehouse and climbed the walkways after her. It could taste her scent; she was close. It saw her shape through the grating, on the next metal walkway above. But the monster wouldn’t chance a cautious creep. It coiled its muscles and pounced up viciously through the steel flooring. Scrabbling for a claw-hold and smashing her limp body furiously. But there was no blood; no gore. It ripped open her fabric carcass. Sniffing, ponderously, at a cape filled with knotted coats. Something beeped behind the monster; a small staring lens. A floating ball of alloy, well worth devouring for the hive. Watching, drooling, the brute moved to steady itself. Tensing again to make a pounce for it. A sudden shape fell on the monster, from the shadowed rungs high above it. Pierced its skull and shocked its brains out, and dropped it dead with a crash.

…Crap, that was loud.

Hands still buzzing with voltage, Tabitha wrenched the crowbar from the monster’s bloody head. The bar’s straight end made a piercing conductor for her current; a handy trick to know. She’d need every technique she could think of, every sudden takedown, to survive the road ahead of her. But she had to kill them more quietly. They’d be searching this place before long.

‘Nice baiting there, Drone Face,’ she whispered happily, as Vincent stopped recording and floated closer. ‘Tasty little monster-morsel like you,’ she added, with a pat on top of its casing. She didn’t know why; it just felt good to talk to something. The Ministry was bound to be out of range by now, so no one was listening anyway. She pulled out the knotted jackets from her cape-wrapped decoy, and half-covered herself with the thick rank residue that coated the steps and handrails. A change of camouflage, for a change of habitat. Oily and rust-smelling as it was, at least it might keep her alive.

*

The building’s ladder hatch opened into a concrete hut on the rooftop. Gun pulled, Tabitha edged outside and checked around her. The Watchers’ plant life was rooting here too; she gave the strange pale blooms a wide berth outside the doorway. Keeping low, beneath wall-level, she hurried for the roof corner to plan her route before she ran out of daylight. The hills looked huge now. The hive’s eerie moonlight was taking over the sky, as the sun set over the sea. She couldn’t afford to sleep tonight. Not with the Watchers’ army on the move. And her friends, her tribe, just waiting for those horrors to reach them.

…Unless they already have.

A vast mess of chimneys and powerplants sprawled ahead of her. She saw distant spiders, as ever. They were definitely changing here, with so much sunshine and high-class prey. Bigger and tougher than those spindly things back on Earth. Their gleaming shells had grown more armoured; they stalked on plated legs like giant crabs. Lurking flat against walls wherever she looked, or creeping between vast gory sacs to fill their reservoirs. Spitting their brown-red soup of the city’s victims, guiltlessly and never-ending, to fertilise their giant plants.

She hadn’t found a single survivor on her travels… had the Watchers grown more efficient since their invasion on Earth? Rounded everyone up, or something? It looked doubtful that she’d find anyone out here; not by now. But there was always a chance.

…Focus, Tabitha reminded herself, as she studied the roof’s sheer drop beneath her. She didn’t want to leave her climbing rope here, on a descent from this rooftop; there was a toppled bridge far ahead where she’d need it more. She’d just have to sneak back through the warehouse quickly, and pick her hidden way through those factories. Follow her landmarks, and keep on going through the night. She could pass those hills by sunrise, if she set off now. It was only her cautious creeping that’d slowed the whole trek down. Maybe her sneaks would go easier in the dark.

But that weird sense of something was still pulling at her, like living gravity. Whatever it was, and whatever it meant for her, she was getting close.

Tabitha skirted carefully around those strange new flowers again, and ducked back inside the hut toward the ladder hatch. Shocked to see a Watcher in here, closing the hatch behind it. Staring right back at her. Fists trembling, eyes blazing, Tabitha saw raging red. It was equally startled by her sudden appearance; even more so when she snarled like a wildcat and savaged it. Her punch cratered its facemask. She kicked and pummelled every gasping breath out of it. Gripped its throat and shocked it fiercely before it could yell out for help. She winded it hard and clawed its helmet off. Stuffed a rag in its gasping mouth to stifle its bloody shout. The slender giant was reeling; silenced and staggered under a hail of fierce punches from a filthy wild brawler. This bastard had taken everything from her. She didn’t give it a split-second to change its fate. The crumpled Watcher was toppling. Punch-drunk and bleeding heavily. It swung too slow as she weaved in quick and battered it. Pure muscle memory, as she laid into it viciously again. Endless repetition drove her hits.

Just like those training dummies… though even they had more fight than you. Tabitha grabbed its lolling bloody head and directed it. She wrestled it bent and kept it headlocked; controlled it in the space. Getting in her knees and fierce kicks, over and over in its big streaming head, before she put the beaten giant out of its misery. She gripped its throat and shocked it hard, in a sudden crackling execution. Snarling, muscles straining, Tabitha grabbed its huge collar and flung the dead Watcher outside. When its body hit those strange flowers, they crucified it. A sudden snapping spike trap, hidden flat across the rooftop, that shot up like crossed clustered spears and impaled it.

So that’s what that does, Tabitha told herself. Trying to resist the weird vampire lust she felt for the Watcher’s golden blood. Studying her carnage all the while.

…Suppose I’d better cut him down. The damn thing’s a glaring advert for me.

*

Tabitha was still trying to find space for the trio of tools she’d looted from the Watcher: pistol, bottle and knife. Three belts was excessive, and her load was getting heavier, though she managed to make some room a little higher on her waist.

When going up against a swarming hive of apocalyptic monsters on a fallen extra-terrestrial utopia, a girl can never be too prepared.

The derelict factories seemed like cliff faces around her, lit dimly in the growing moonlight. Making her nervous, as she crept on through with Vincent hidden in her hood. Every sound, every creaking door she slipped through, seemed loud as hell in this heavy night-silence. But at least she wasn’t fumbling entirely in the dark. Luminous spores and Watcher plants were growing more densely now, as she drew ever closer to the hive.

On between the towering chimneys, creeping under rows of endless gas pipes, Tabitha glimpsed familiar signs of Watcher wildlife. A peaceful airborne nautilus, swimming through the night in the distance. Those tiny jet-birds too, probably searching for the orb-flowers she remembered from New York.

Stalking on, hidden among dead pylons, she saw different shapes from her hiding spots. Stretched soldiers, manning weapons on high grown barricades. Fixing scaled cannons onto grown grasping plugs. There were monsters roaming, and spiders splayed along countless factory windows.

…This is the Watchers’ front line. Tabitha smeared her face with the black dirt again; a growing obsession. As if a grubby face and a muddy cape would magically keep her from being seen. Still, it was the best she could do. Nothing about this journey seemed especially well-planned. Or even sane, come to think of it. But she was the only one who might just manage it. She still had a chance.

The factories and hangars were larger here; big enough to house the city’s cargo ships. This was a far narrower district than the city itself; she had to be over halfway through. But the way ahead was just too busy. Seemed like she’d have to go over or through those next buildings to slip by unseen.

Or under again? she considered, glancing over to a vast buried ruin on her right. Those toppled chimneys might even give her decent cover if she moved quickly. Creeping on, she committed to it. Picked a hidden side-route, and decided it was safer to sneak past those barricades underground.

As she got closer to those concrete cliffs, Tabitha noticed something among the towering rubble. A strange light glowed distantly, almost imperceptibly, through a small hidden hole that she might just fit inside.

…Unless I’m the only thing that can see that glow? she wondered, now that it seemed to spark her feelings more than her sight. And there was that strange magnetism, her old fleeting nature-bliss, calling out like a beacon from that basement. Torturing her, for so long now. Ducking down, Tabitha only just fitted inside the glowing gap. She had to find out why she could feel this. She needed to know what she was… or maybe even find something to help them win this desperate war.

A weapon? Maybe a new ability? she considered. Or a revelation?

*

Tabitha hadn’t seen what was stalking her. Deep in the shadows, on a twisted bloody walkway, past a broken forgeworks chimney high above.

It leT hER cconTiNue on HHer PAth, fOr NoW. She’D mmMaDe a MEsS of tHe sOLdieR wHo’d goNe sssSearcHinG fOr hEr ssSOunDs. iT diDN’t wAnT to MmMake the sSSsame MiSTAke. HeR sssstyle oF ViolENce wAs ssScorCHed innnTo its brbrbraiN, aNd rUnninG oN a CONsTAnt LooP. cccccCoPYCoPYCaT!

It KnEW hEr beTTER nOw. WiTh ppPPAtieNce, iT miGHt kNow heR bEttER stiLL. MaYbe eVeN iNsiDEs oUT.

38

‘Goddammit! They don’t stop coming!’ Fish yelled furiously, between thundering bursts of his gatling laser on the walls.

‘Why do you sound so surprised?’ Aelu called back, between deafening shots from her heavy rifle. ‘This is just the first wave.’

‘Seriously!?’ Fish shouted back. Pulling his gatling from the wall-top to rest his aching arms. On either side of him, Sea Mist and Barkless took more snarling rifle shots on the massing spiders below.

‘Fish! Get back on that wall!’ Atha roared beside them. Taking aim with his rifle to drop another climbing spider, in the glooming twilight over the city. He led the thundering firefight from the northern battlements, as a larger swarm tried their luck against the Ministry’s defences. Seemed like the Watchers were building up to it, now. The main event.

They’re making sure we’re all good and fatigued before the final battle, Atha supposed. Or maybe they’re just wasting all our ammunition first, on these useless pawns. I’m sure checkmate’s on its way.

All across the complex, Atha’s laser artillery blew scorching craters through the dwindling swarm in the plaza. Pounding the bottlenecks between their hills of high rubble, to massacre more spiders before they piled through. Thier’s defence drones rained down constant shrieking laserbolts from the air, hovering high over their heads, as veteran troops and tribals defended their walls yet again.

‘Hey, Seven!’ Sunshine yelled from the southern battlements, waving to get the dragon’s swooping attention. Anero and Thier took more rifle shots beside him, trying to improve on their aim. ‘We’ll mop up the stragglers here!’ Sunshine shouted. ‘Focus on the north walls!’ the Guardians watched Seven bank away from his next strike on the burning south perimeter; sweeping back over their heads with an ear-popping rush.

Seven raced high through a smokecloud and tore a circling spy-dragon from the sky. Jaws clamped tight on its skinny pale throat, he dropped with its body and dragged it through the north plaza like a wrecking ball. A sea of ploughed spiders scrambled to right themselves as Seven tossed the dragon and swept low to incinerate them. Patch by patch, the screeching swarm fell apart in glooping silver puddles. The scorched plaza was a vast network of scars, where Seven’s inferno breaths added a few more glowing crescents. Devastating the swarm beneath him. Sky Tribe and the Guardians were cheering for him. Seven swept low and torched another molten arc through the shrinking spider swarm, until the last died screeching in his flames.

Atha wasn’t celebrating; nor was Barkless beside him. Both knew this was only another endless round in the fight. The Watchers were wearing them down. Whatever those bastards were building up to – and if Her Majesty couldn’t stop it in time – then there wasn’t a chance in all hell they’d survive here.

Unless Black Squadron worked fast, in the meantime… and brought a lethal new piece to the board.

*

A lean grey aircraft tore on like thunder. Two more followed close behind. Reigo’s hard stare read the racing landscape from the pilot seat. Laser-focussed and searching non-stop for any threats to his Marines. Quietly overjoyed to be back in a working gunship, and flying full-throttle in a tight three-formation. Jet engines tearing dustcloud scars through the rushing grasslands; every weapons bay bristling with a fearsome array. Though, admittedly, the hybrid aircraft handled weird as hell. It probably did have a celestial mind of its own.

‘You’re sure about this, Professor?’ he called back from the cockpit.

‘Not at all, Lieutenant,’ Lotor replied nervously, over the engines’ droning jet noise. Seated between three more Guardians in the back. ‘Though if my expertise best serves our survival beyond the Ministry walls, then I’m honour-bound to attempt that warship’s revival.’

‘Good to hear, sir,’ a female technician said beside him, with a reassuring smile.

Flying their best-tested gunship as Squadron Leader, with fourteen lives in his hands, Reigo led his pair of supporting aircraft miles out over the darkening southern plains. Keeping his flightpath nap-of-earth low, hugging close around the hilly landscape, to avoid any dragons’ attention.

Lotor watched from a small side-window as a pack of hefty defence drones escorted them to their objective. Laser cannons ready; lenses glinting in the dying daylight. Lotor’s large hands were trembling, around the steel case of celestial matter he held tight on his lap.

‘Well Professor, it’s gonna be a hell of a field trip,’ said Reigo. ‘Just do your damnedest and we’ll return the favour. Get us a working destroyer out of this, and you’ll have the best few thousand friends you could ever hope for.’

‘Understood, Lieutenant,’ Lotor replied from the back, with a knot of raw terror in his stomach. The strong red Guardian sitting opposite gave him a nodding thumbs-up and a powerful pat on the shoulder, to try to reassure him. An immensely thankful man, who’d been a former patient of his on the hospital ward. He’d only attempted a few clumsy stitches on him; though luckily it seemed to have done the trick. Every life saved had made that ward’s bloody horrors just about bearable.

…I suppose there aren’t any guarantees lately, Lotor considered. We may all die tomorrow. The Ministry may fall today. Perhaps I could enjoy one last great breakthrough of my career before the end. A hybrid warship, of all things. Its mighty revival at my own hands… and maybe even this world’s salvation? We shall see. Weak-willed and doubtful as I am, we shall see.

*

Fishbowl floated placidly among its thriving vegetables, in Lotor’s abandoned laboratory. Those carrot-like crops were coming up particularly well; they were truly a joy to grow. High-yield, low-maintenance and particularly vibrant in raw vital energy. Shining spectral in Fishbowl’s strange senses. The creature swished away a fly before it could settle, being mindful of its tender surgical scars, and treated itself to a rather decadent round of shrub-watering. Opening a tentacle-tip like a small precision spout, to quench all thirsts among the plants in its care. Lost in satisfaction.

Another world; another mess of insanities beyond its garden. But not here, among its gentle plants. This planet’s streaming sunlight was perfection. The growth conditions, unrivalled. Fishbowl had never felt so contented. So blissfully complete.

39

Tabitha lowered herself carefully into a concrete basement, following her strange sensation. That calm light was calling to something inside her; a part of her nature. The rush kept pulling at her, swelling and breaking, like dark tidal magnetism. Stronger than she’d ever felt before. Gripping her like revelations. Maybe even the truth about herself.

Vincent floated beside her; the weird glow lit their way. These looked like utility tunnels, lined with endless pipes beneath a ruined powerplant. A cold concrete maze with a musty chemical stink.

Deep down a broken corridor, she passed eerie graffiti and growing neon glows. Living lights bobbed in the rustling flowers at her feet, growing thicker as she walked on. She heard a constant hissing, like a broken gas pipe in the distance. Nothing else but drips and rat-scuttles in the silence. A deep hidden hallway ahead.

Ducking under a toppled girder, and squeezing herself through a break in the next wall, there was a cratered path ahead of her. Pulse quickening, swallowing nervously, Tabitha searched the walls ahead with wide glinting eyes. The cold hard concrete was giving way to bent trees and hanging vines; a thick crushed forest as she headed on.

The plants were taking over now. Peering through the fractured concrete like thick glowing tendrils. The hard floor faded here, into thickening blue moss; the Watchers’ moss. Her blurred feelings were overlapping with something, like clear sharpening sight. With a bit more focus, she was starting to glimpse those roots in gleaming x-ray. She saw through them, to the pulse of their living current, and felt it tingling inside her. A golden network of energy, brimming with sunlight from these long summer days. Just like she’d sensed back on Earth.

The glowing roots were converging here, where cramped black-and-white trees crowded tightly. Running on together like lengths of pipes and cables, the roots formed a natural twisting bridge over a dark narrow chasm ahead. Stepping across carefully, Tabitha turned a final glowing corner towards the sound of running water.

Down a landslide dip in the rubble, where broken water pipes formed a clear gentle stream, she came to a fractured concrete wall lower down. A bottom corner of the wall had toppled flat, like a ramped jagged doorway, through a curtain of glowing plants. An ivy-strewn threshold, shining eerie blue, where the cold stream flowed ankle-deep into a final hidden chamber. That weird feeling held her completely; she’d never felt it so strongly before. Stooping through the wall-fracture and stepping inside, her jaw dropped at the sight.

An overgrown cavern shone around her. Lined with gothic gardens, where the Watchers’ monochrome pines grew on every rocky outcrop. The cavern sloped downhill to a calm pooling centre, filled with vast flowers and high hanging moss, and gleaming unnatural-bright. Glinting in her stare like a forest of fairylights, as Tabitha pushed aside the rustling blooms and walked on. Pulling aside the final flowers, there at the heart of the place, she saw a single black anemone-tree. Its vast branches were writhing; giving off that strange moonlight glow.

Hypnotised by the feeling, Tabitha climbed the tufted ground towards that great dark tree. She saw a deep shining pool beside its giant roots; lined with greening rubble and giving off a cold light all its own. Stepping closer, staring deeper, the water was clear but she couldn’t make out the light source. As if the alien algae that covered those sunken rocks was giving off the glow by itself.

Something in there was calling to her; something more than the Watchers. Showing her the living current in all things. Putting bright turning glyphs in her aching head. Racing visions, growing too intense now. A shivering void shocked her away.

Tabitha wasn’t sure how long she’d been staring at the water. The cavern was silent; the pond’s lapping edges put blissful tingles through her scalp. Walking around the bright pool, she felt her senses sharpening. She heard the foamy crackling of the blue moss beneath her footsteps; sharp and crisp in her ears. The clear trickling water was deafening. A breeze from the cavern’s open ceiling felt like a sudden arctic chill against her cheeks. That feeling from the water had terrified her. But whatever it was… she had to know the truth about herself.

Tabitha sat, finally, with an aching sigh beside the tree. She set her gun down with a fleshy clunk, trying to slow her breathing. She felt her volt-vines instantly. Seeping from her catsuit sleeves, and growing like weeds in the moss all around her, as if she’d sat beside a live reactor. That feeling took over; a thoughtless hyper-real.

Closing her eyes, she saw everything in golden x-ray. She stilled her thoughts and watched the dreamscape closely; a web of growing life across the cavern. And reaching roots, twining up through the towering floors above her. She saw a small hunched being, sitting among gleaming plants. A silent hybrid, breathing peacefully. Just a complex colony of cells and living current. A strange thing, now she studied it more closely. Until she realised... she was sensing beyond her body. She was watching herself.

Tabitha freaked and snapped out of it. Breathing quickly; heartcore hammering. She felt a sudden vertigo, like she was at the edge of something; that vast gaping void that frightened her. But she felt something closer. Something elemental. Her own strange affinity. Closing her eyes again, she focussed all her thought on it.

She could really feel it now, inside her. A bright hybrid cocktail, her hidden plant-aspect, buried in her sticky cells and deep jumbled genes. She was part silver spider; part black monster. She was part Fishbowl, and its turbine-flowers, and its giant dark anemones. She was part Watcher, and moonflower-tendril, and Stormish mollusc-tree. Gleaming Celestial and calm Serenian green. She was part Lady of Flowers, and the quickening new growth that it gave to her volt-vines. All of it, all of her, crowned in bright volts and raging reptilia. Wreathed in a blood-bright halo. Seven’s burning strength in her soul.

Opening her eyes, Tabitha watched her volt-vines become a growing forest. The garden blurred all around her, then shifted into sharp sudden focus. The cavern was filling with bright snowfall, as climbing blooms shed their seeds all around her. Glancing at the pool, she felt a deep growing lust for the living water.

She was starving for that moonlight. Pure-carnivorous for the glow. Lurking answers to primal mysteries, unfurled in the Deep Below.

Stripping to her catsuit, Tabitha stepped down gently into the cold clear water. Lit from beneath by the white-blue plants; gleaming neon-aquatic.

She floated on the surface, eyes closed and thoughtless, and breathed. Cool water lapping and glugging in her ears. Ash and dirt and old silver blood, washing away in thinning mist around her. Her streaming hair floated behind her, like blood-red curling seaweed. She felt alien static; life’s strange sensation. A glimpse of something far greater. It came on stronger, from somewhere deeper, when she chased her thoughts like a slipping dream. Ready to meet her maker.

The cavern ceiling became a vast night sky, fading grey-blue into soaring auroras. The stars were clear and countless; a glistening holy firmament. The soul-sacred noir of all things. She wasn’t there any more. Maybe her body… but not her. She wasn’t anywhere.

Eyes closed, seeing beyond sight, Tabitha found herself in a silent white space. Like the place she’d known within Seven; a kind of alter-dimension. It felt blissful; a hidden heaven where all her wild wonder might finally find its answer. She sensed soundless hymns in her heartcore, like higher knowledge from a far deeper source. She felt it in every nerve ending; an ancient intelligence that towered unseen all around her. The dreamscape spawned a giant light-sphere, turning like a bright neon moon. Flowing with calm clouded stripes. Was that the ancient intelligence?

‘Show me,’ she said quietly, almost to herself. But the sphere vanished. The bright space darkened into endless grey, scattering like windblown powders. It all fell apart like a shallow film set. There was something different now, like a great unravelling. Like all she’d ever known was a flimsy shadow, and unseen realities echoed far beyond existence.

Her breath caught; Tabitha gasped despite herself. It felt like all she’d ever seen was just the close-up weave of a far greater fabric. Like she’d been studying the pattern on her own stifling shroud, while a towering temple lay beyond it. The stunted short-sight of her mere mortal body. This was a greater dimension, that she hadn’t the words or senses to explain. Her thin mammal mind only coped by filtering everything into forms and memories that she could comprehend. It took the shape of architecture; a simpler mental language to understand.

She saw cities made of cities. Endless worlds, whose very cells were worlds themselves. All around her, endlessly beneath her, and infinitely beyond her… there was a whole unseen cathedral. Vast vaulted arches, and strange frescoes in cosmic divinity. Reaching far and fleeting from her, like a dark towering dream she just couldn’t grasp. Deeper shadows and brilliant light. Dimming and fading; lurking in dust and half-formed pixels on the edge of all she could comprehend. There was more to this greater existence than she’d ever have words for. Grand truths and endless feelings that her startled staring tears couldn’t begin to express. She was a fleeting speck in all of it; just a crude group of cells on one finite world. Beneath meaningless.

For a few fleeting seconds, all things were one gleaming tapestry. There was no world; no war. Just current and cells; endless elements and rippling vibrations. Connected endlessly, through light and space and tingling energy. She lost all meaning, all Self, in total revelation.

There’s no separation. No seams. No me. It’s all just… life. She was connected with something strange and endless. The infinite. A sudden heartpounding rush that shot her mind through all existence. Bleeding stars and churning galaxies. Lightspeed glimpses of sparking nerves and crawling evolution, on infinite worlds that formed and thrived and aged and perished in the blink of an eye. Life itself, accelerating. All of time, laid bare and rushing ever faster, until there was nothing to see but endless blinding light. Maddening time-space that shrank her and this world and this fleeting billion years to nothing at all in the whole pulsing flow of it. A mind-melting, light-searing, life-rushing ultraness, scorching and punishing and angel-orgasmic.

Then, Death. The void that terrified her. A gaping black hole, twisting cold-eternal, and seeping like a flood over all Existence. Everything she’d ever lived, and loved, and lost… it didn’t mean anything to anyone. It didn’t even measure on the scale.

…There’s nothing out there. Nothing truly matters. It never has, and never will.

Gasping, teary-eyed and overwhelmed, Tabitha had to bring herself out of it. She was back in the cavern, floating in its bright clear pool. It was all too much; too blissful and bleak. All this fighting, all these people… these worlds and galaxies… they weren’t even a grain of sand in the whole colossal unfurling. All just energy, one tiny unseen speck of it, forming and dying and reforming again. The whole Grand Scheme was nothing but space-time seasons, and no one cared, and nothing mattered at all. No plan, no purpose; no ever-loving gods. Just a burning glimpse of cold churning starlight, and infinite gorgeous oblivion. There was no creator, or ancient intelligence. Nothing out there to make her whole.

It didn’t matter if the Watchers won. It didn’t matter if they lost. Held up against all eternity, their whole great struggle here was beneath inconsequential. It was nothing; they were all just warring cells. The universe promised nothing more than indifference. She could’ve saved Earth, Stormworld and Serenity a thousand times over, and it wouldn’t have meant a thing to anyone. It’d all be lost and forgotten, in time. Nothing was special, nothing was sacred, and no one would ever care.

…Hardly the divine truth I was hoping for.

Eyes wide open, Tabitha felt numb. Like she’d been dust on the wind. It took long enough to gather herself back; to remember who she was and why. Like she’d stared with naked eyes into the blinding sun of everything. She floated in dark despondence, the bright water lapping quietly, as her mind slowed down and closed away from everything she’d seen. Like it was protecting itself, shielding her primitive understanding, from the whole bleak truth of it. Everything she’d known had been blown wide open, and nothing mattered in the end.

She felt exhausted; obliterated. Angry at everything, for fighting so hard for so long. She could’ve reigned like Alex for all it mattered. She could’ve reigned with him, and tamed him, and given birth to lethal gods. Or become a lone Scourge of Worlds, riding Seven’s flaming throne to destroy entire cities on a whim. She could leave this cavern, leave this dead planet tonight, and be the Death-Black Tyrant Queen. Why save Serenity from the Watchers, when it was already doomed by a dying sun in the next billion-year blink of an eye? Why not embrace blood-drunk hedonism, while she still had her fleeting chance?

Why suffer so much, for so long, only to die and disappear? …What do I owe anyone?

Tabitha climbed out from the water to drip-dry, grinding her teeth furiously. Her mind was churning. Torturing her with questions, until she was lost in despondence. Alone in this cavern; Death waiting outside in that hive. No one cared if she won this war. The Ministry didn’t matter. No world mattered.

People killed people every day. The Watchers killed whole planets, and no higher power would ever stop them or judge their souls. She had no Higher Blessing, and her power was all just fluke genetics. She’d never change anything for long.

If there’s no good or evil, and no grand scheme to anything… then what’s the bloody point? Why even fight? Death wins anyway. It always does.

*

Tabitha sat sadly, utterly broken, and missed her own people. Her Mum, her friends, her Ghosts. She missed Deep Roots terribly, her only real guide after Earth, and wondered what he’d say right now.

…He’d say it was a good time to drink tea, she told herself, with a sad smile. He’d always been so calm about everything; like even oblivion itself couldn’t break his Fierce-Hope. Unless he’d just seen life very differently, through his silent meditations. That made her think.

Maybe… maybe she hadn’t seen what she needed to, in that pool. Or she’d looked for the wrong answers. She’d been searching desperately, for something that only mattered to Her. But that wasn’t the way of Fierce-Hope. Sky Tribe’s stories taught the cubs that First-Ancestor thought only of others, and cared nothing for himself. Perhaps she’d just glimpsed infinity in her own selfish light, for what it might’ve given to Her. She’d seen it all through Self, through ego, which Barkless had warned her against. She hadn’t spent time in no-thought, as Deep Roots used to say. She hadn’t just Sat With Tea.

She’d seen the truth of existence; it was what it was.

…And it only hurts because of my attachment. My ego, my Self, is terrified of death. She simply hadn’t detached.

There was another way to find meaning here. A question she hadn’t tried yet, to make sense of all this. She’d only travelled outwards, questing and crusading and searching the stars, to feed her ego and find empty higher meanings that’d drive her Self mad.

Drying and dressing, Tabitha sat still and cleared her mind afresh. She focussed on her breath, in and out. Abiding in no-thought, like the Tribe by their Hearthfire. Detaching like Barkless had taught her, she searched her own perceptions. Her universe within.

That great void showed itself again, as she kept her mind clear by the anemone-tree. Infinity itself. But it didn’t have to feel overwhelming, or obliterating. Not if there was no Her, or Her desire to make the truth fit her feelings. She abandoned her ego, and thought about Barkless Tree’s words:

To live in this moment, like I don’t exist. She saw the stars again, and time-space, forever. There was no higher presence to judge her, or cheat her; there was simply nothing out there that cared. That knowledge could break Her, or completely set her free. Breathing quietly, Tabitha let Tabitha go. What she’d wanted from the infinite didn’t matter. She tried to be empty, and indifferent; just a mirror to it all. And slowly, it occurred of its own accord.

The truth raced to meet her. It shot her through endless stars. It showed her infinite evolutions, on infinite worlds, through infinite eons of time. All of existence, just endless pulses and cycles. Seasons and revolutions. Eternal expansions and contractions of the whole great flowering, to and from its vast blinding source. As above, so below. From atoms to planets; galaxies to the universe. Gradual dormancies, then gradual awakenings. From the astral dust, life was formed. To the astral dust, all life returned. Even Life itself, the great animating force, was nothing but matter and gravity. An indifferent mix of absolute energies, divine in its strange simplicity. Its truth was dawning on her.

One day, she’d die. Her dead cells and energies would become new cells and energies, over and over again, for all time. Endlessly forming new life, infinitely, beyond her brief mortal coil. Just as those same undying energies always had. It came to her; a revelation.

She was cells. Cells were atoms. Atoms were energy. Energy was everything, and never ceased to exist. Energy could never be created or destroyed; only transferred. That meant… it meant–

…We never truly die. Eternal Life isn’t a place; it’s occurring in all of us. We are the Life Eternal.

Time was warping, and bending in on itself. Blinding light reached her from countless scattered stars. She sensed the living cavern around her, in golden x-ray vision. An energy network through all existence. All life, across endless worlds, for all time. Churning chaos and subatomic order, shifting and orbiting from unseen elements that grew into sprawling galaxies, in mindbending clockwork complexity. Endless and ceaseless; form and formless. And suddenly, she knew it. Her non-meaning of life.

The point was pointless. The meaning, meaningless. There wasn’t any Grand Scheme to everything, and no higher intelligence to find. Except this time, there was no Her to get upset about it. The truth was what it was. Without her ego in the way, there was nothing around to get hurt.

Yes, all things died. Death was eternal, and reached like a void into all places. But so did bright glorious Life that followed it, eternally, into all places too. All she’d seen was the cycle of it. A time of growing and a time of shrinking back. To all things, a balance. An endless living pulse.

Detach from the outcome, and let Life and Death flow as they will. I get it now.

She liked that thought; it gave her peace. Existence wasn’t a cruel joke, but a blank miraculous canvas. Dreading death made as little sense as dreading any flower that opened and closed, or any lung that inhaled and exhaled. Any cell that occurred, and served its purpose, then ceased.

Despite the strange gravity that’d pulled her here, and the meaning she’d searched for, she hadn’t been completed by a higher power. Just contented by simple reality. With no ego, no attachment, there just wasn’t that pain she’d felt before.

Stop searching for a Creator, and settle for Contentment. Find peace in no-thought. Abide.

Tabitha felt a dark weight disappearing. The only meaning she’d ever find was the one she chose for herself; it was all an inside job. No gods were watching, or keeping count of her deeds. But that wasn’t the point, and it wasn’t free license to use her power like Alex had. It was up to her, to define herself. To live and fight for something greater.

The meaning of life… is just life itself. To pass on the genes and exist, and nothing more. The rest is up to us. I suppose Life itself is all that really matters.

Breathing deeply, she opened her eyes on a world that looked brand new. Smiling warmly, entirely untroubled, as Vincent hovered up silently beside her. Tabitha felt her body coursing with a warm-bath electrofeel; ambient and ethereal as she got to her feet.

…I have a job to do.

*

Tabitha slung her gear and took up her gun, and tightened the body armour across her chest. She felt weightless, like a burden had lifted. If there was no Her, no ego… then there was no one to be frightened, or angry, or conflicted about the path to that hive ahead. All she had left was simple consciousness, another tiny expression of Existence, that’d taken care of itself all along. Her mind was an open sky. It was up to her, if she’d insist on creating its storms and droughts to suffer through. But still her sky existed, overarching and unaffected, regardless of her changing moods. Her true nature, as still and reflective as that pool by her feet. Clear of desires; clear of suffering.

That water only pools and abides, until it’s moved by circumstance. It goes with the flow, then pools again. Nothing more. Why not this mind, too?

Pulling on her ghillie cloak, Tabitha waved Vincent to follow her and left the gleaming cavern behind. She hadn’t exactly found the clear-cut meanings she’d expected here… though maybe she’d found some better answers after all.

Tabitha picked her way upwards between the trees and rocky outcrops, climbing on towards a patch of starry night in the high cavern roof. She moved carefully, and took her time among the looser roots and branches… though it wasn’t exactly Sacred Mountain. No other climb would ever beat Sacred Mountain, in a biblical Stormworld storm.

Nearing the top now, Tabitha climbed the final few feet and peered above-ground to check if the way was clear. There was a gigantic curve of concrete ahead of her; the powerplant’s shattered dome. But no sign of anything Watcher-made in the derelict crater before her. It looked like she could make a clear creep towards that fractured wall in the distance.

She felt recharged, as she crept on through the darkness. Freshly energised, as if she’d woken from a full night’s sleep. For once she felt total clarity. Her mind was racing with it.

If my ego was all an illusion, and vain attachment… then I suppose I really don’t exist. Not like I thought, anyway. Barkless was right. I really could live like I don’t exist. All that really matters, in the end, is Life itself. Then that was what she’d fight for. For Life, and the lives of those survivors. The only meaning of life was the one she chose for herself.

…I choose Virtue. Flawed as I am, I choose my Highest Good.

Tabitha pulled herself through the dome’s narrow fracture, climbing out to the cool night beyond. Looking past high toppled factories, that strange light glowed against the clouds. The Watchers’ hive. Its eerie light reflected in her eyes. Pulling up her cloak hood, and hiding Vincent inside her catsuit’s, Tabitha hurried on between the night-dimmed powerplants. The hills lay ahead, gigantic on her path. Threatening, of course; she was probably walking to her death. But that thought just didn’t hold the same raw terror any more.

If all life’s eternal, and I can live freely like I don’t exist… then maybe there’s nothing to be afraid of either. No sense in being frightened of your own purpose.

What she was, and what she wasn’t… it didn’t really make much difference. She was just a passing expression of Life. An agent of the living, against beings who only sought to destroy. If she existed for a purpose, then all her strange aspects and abilities made it obvious. Just as the Watchers acted within their nature, so she’d act within hers.

Maybe she was just the Watchers’ counterbalance; an equal and opposite reaction. Just another small undoing, toward their natural end. Well, empires did always fall.

...I’m coming for you. All of you. For what you’ve done to the Living, I’m going to take you apart.

*

Hidden in high broken scaffolds, the stalker’s starlit silhouette watched her vanish in the distance. Leaning on a handrail ravenously, its creaking grip crushed the hollow steel. Its trickling saliva glistened in the moon-glow, and dripped on its clawed black hands.

…iT wOuLd FoLLow. iT wAs pppPaTient. iT woULd leT tHe hYBriD tRaP heRseLF.

40

‘There’s a nest. Close by,’ an old man sighed heavily, in a thick Scottish accent. ‘My money’s on the Fairy Pools, for the water source.’

‘Did you get a clear count?’ Big Steve replied grimly, leaning exhausted on the old wooden table in their Meeting Cave. They stooped together over a map by lamplight.

‘Counted two stones’ worth I seen marching out there,’ the old farmer assured him.

‘…In English?’ Steve replied.

‘Couple of hundred.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Steve muttered. Running rough hands over his stern face and short dirty hair.

‘Well, I didnae see Him out there,’ the old man replied, scratching his head beneath his woolly hat. ‘I’ll let you know if I do. We’ve no wine, and nearly no water.’ Steve nodded darkly as his thoughts ran to supplies.

‘And a day’s worth of dried meat, to feed the Five Thousand,’ he added wearily, rubbing his dark-ringed eyes. The old man shook his head fretfully beside him.

‘Seen another squid,’ a young woman said breathlessly, as she came in quickly with the smell of fresh air. ‘Out in the bay, not a mile down the coast. They must know we’re here, Steve.’ She was wide-eyed; trying to hide her terror from him. No shortage of that look now, through these hungry crowded caves.

‘We don’t know that,’ Steve told the pair of them. ‘They spread like weeds anyway. It’s natural instinct. We’ve all seen that before we got here. There’s no proof they’ve come here for us. All we have to do is get off Skye unseen. Somehow.’

‘And go where, pal?’ the old man said hopelessly. ‘Where are we gonnae sail to that those bastards havnae found?’

‘We’ll have to go north,’ Steve shrugged. ‘Put some more sea between them and us, until we get our strength back. Up to Stornoway. Could be more survivors there.’

‘What if they’re on Lewis already?’ the young woman chipped in.

‘Then your next stop’s the Faroes,’ the old man replied, opening the map further, to show the remote islands on its final two pages. ‘And good luck with that.’

‘They’re getting smaller, though,’ Steve considered. ‘The spiders. Did you notice that, before you found this place? The colder we go, the weaker they’re getting.’

‘Well, they’re plants,’ the old man shrugged. ‘You’ll nae grow Sorrento lemons in the Hebrides.’

‘I don’t even know what that means,’ the young woman replied.

‘Oh, you wannae see ‘em love. Lemons big as your head. Even yours.’

‘…Oi!’ she snapped, with a sudden affronted stare.

‘I’m only kidding, love,’ the old man chuckled, feeling guilty for her growing sulk. Steve was busy studying a rain-warped atlas.

‘…Iceland,’ he told them, looking up from his studies. ‘How do you rate our chances?’

‘Ha!’ the old man burst out, with a disbelieving look. ‘You’ve a rowing team full of Vikings knocking about, have you? …Iceland.’ He was shaking his head with a grin.

‘The trees do grow shorter there,’ the young woman added, supporting Steve’s new plan. ‘Seriously, like half as tall. I saw them myself, when I went there travelling. If any spiders are growing there, they’ll be a lot smaller.’

‘And easier to hold a castle against,’ Steve considered. ‘If there is a castle on Iceland, I mean. I’m sure we could find somewhere to make a fort out of.’

‘And what about when we all freeze to death?’ the old man chipped in.

‘There’s hot springs,’ the young woman shrugged. ‘All the electricity was geothermal. Once we adjust to the daylight, it might be one of the safest places we could go.’

‘Well, I’ll grab myself a brew and see yous off from the cliffs there,’ the old man replied. ‘No way you’re getting to Iceland in one piece. Thousand giant squids between you and Reykjavik. Or the sea’ll get yous first.’

‘We have to sail north, anyway,’ Steve concluded. ‘Stornoway first, then we’ll think about our next steps when we’re out of harm’s way. That makes it our priority to find everything on this island that’ll float. We’ll keep trying to get that fishing trawler running.’

‘I’d get praying to the Man Upstairs, Steve,’ the old man sighed. ‘I know God loves a trier, but…’ he sighed again, and shook his head. ‘Try something that’s gonnae work.’ They turned at hurried bootsteps, getting closer outside the small cave.

‘Spiders,’ said Natalie, with a hard look. A shotgun slung at her shoulder. ‘They haven’t seen us. But they’re close.’

‘Shit,’ Steve snarled furiously. ‘The entrances?’

‘Everyone’s moving rocks,’ Natalie confirmed. They’d have to brick themselves in here, and mask every trace of their hideout. Make the cave system look like a rockfall had toppled inside it.

‘Should I get all the kids to the emergency entrance?’ the young woman chipped in beside them.

‘Not yet,’ Steve sighed tensely. ‘There’s more risk in moving everyone cross-country, until we know those spiders are gone. Once we’re clear I’ll lead a team to that trawler again. Try to get it working this time. But for now, we’ll have to stay hidden and wait. I’ll manage the armoury in the meantime, if you two can help me out,’ he added, to the pair nodding beside him.

‘I’ll get our best Fighters on the emergency tunnel, just in case,’ Natalie considered. ‘We’ll have to barricade it for now. Double up on the camouflage.’

‘Get to it, love,’ Steve agreed. ‘Be careful.’ He gave his wife a quick wink as she left them, trying to hide how much he worried about her. The fact that they were both seasoned spider slayers didn’t diminish that. They’d only lasted this long because they were both afraid. There was no such thing as over-thinking, over-planning, or over-worrying. Those tools of evolution had never mattered more, now that the cautious inherited the Earth. The meek were already extinct.

‘Sting!’ came a panicked voice, raising the alarm through the caves. ‘They got Wendy!’ The three stared at each other in sudden dread.

‘Get her in the med room!’ Steve bellowed back, as he ran for the tunnel and the main caves beyond. ‘IV drip! Flush her system!’

‘I’m on crowd control!’ Natalie called back, as she went running to prevent a stampede.

‘Wendy’s too far gone!’ the running man told Steve, as they found each other in the wider cavern. ‘She won’t clot by now!’

‘Do it!’ Steve roared at him. He could see Wendy flailing and screaming; being dragged back urgently through the panicked crowd in the distance. Caught by a glancing spider sting, that’d liquefy her insides over hours. Fighters were opening fire on more spiders from the main cave entrance, while an army of survivors worked desperately to brick it up with rocks. There were already sounds of more gunshots, from further cave entrances beyond.

‘Code Black! Last stand!’ Natalie called out loudly from the outcrop. Her heart was racing in horror. She’d finally had to shout those dark deadly words from her nightmares. ‘Kids in the centre, Protectors armed and circling! Everyone else, get those entrances blocked off! Now!’

Steve’s pulse was pounding as he watched his wife with a fierce fearful stare. His whole body raced on adrenaline.

‘You. You,’ he growled out, pointing to his strong able Seconds among the rushing crowds. ‘With me,’ he said, striding on with them towards Up Top. A trio of hard veteran looks; their rifles ready in rough practised hands.

‘What are you?’ he asked them.

‘Ghosts,’ they replied in unison.

‘Show me,’ Steve growled back. ‘Let’s show these fuckers we don’t go out without a fight.’

41

A zombie-black glacier marched on through Capital City. The Watchers’ swarming war machine, raising great clouds of ash in its wake. Down on the derelict high street, snarling monsters threw the aircar wrecks aside. Making way for vast clearing squids, and endless lethal ranks shuffling on behind them.

The Watchers’ hefty masked General, armoured darkly in ribbed bio-metal, studied the thinning ruins far ahead. Tall buildings had toppled into a range of rubbled hills in the distance. Beyond their jagged summits… the Ministry’s scarred solid walls. They’d stood long enough.

The dimming daylight painted the General’s thorned figure in a dull black gleam, as he nodded his waiting monsters forward. Their circling dragons and scouting gorgons had compiled a full surveillance of the Ministry’s defences, in their wild overlapping ways. Those rubble hills formed a manufactured barrier to slow the horde’s progress. Several narrow paths cut through it, where the spiders were intended to pour in. Where the resistance would focus their artillery fire, as they had with the great armoured strider that he’d sent on before them. An admirable effort.

The Watchers’ General was always glad to oblige tacticians, if only to crush their hopes before the slaughter. Delighting in their futility. He’d fill those rubbled passages with dying spiders, relentlessly, until they flowed over in shrieking bloody tides. He’d pile their endless screaming corpses high enough to climb those vast walls in a stride. After all… it was a shame to bring so many strong crops into battle, and not hurl them relentlessly at their own mass-murder. Ripping down those walls, annihilating this resistance, and rooting out their defenceless young from the vaults beneath. A glorious massacre. Another conquest in his long storied titles; his high-halled world of prestige.

The General lived for these rich moments. Raw domination; nothing was more pure. With one heavy word he gave the order. This ripe world toppled at his command.

*

The wind was up, as the Ministry’s crowded walls watched silently. The sky had darkened slowly to growing grey. With Sea Mist close beside him, and Fish and Aelu right behind, Barkless Tree stared grimly at the rising ash beyond the circling ruins. No sight of the demons yet, but he could hear their insect chittering. A rising tide of it, like an endless plague surrounding them. Clearly intended to steal their Fierce-Hope, and take all heart from their fight. He looked around at fearful faces.

…You won’t dim my flames, spawn of Darkness. Your every effort builds them higher. Barkless tightened his black armour and pulled his silvery knife again. Studying the engravings. His queen’s words. Her Gost.

‘My Great Sky Tribe!’ he roared out to his people. ‘Unrivalled hunters, and fearless warriors all!’ he stood out from the watching Ghosts around him, to set Fierce-Hope burning brighter still. ‘Mighty Snow-Giants. Honoured Grey-Furs,’ he addressed them. ‘Cunning Red-Eyes, and fearless Bronzebacks, whose leader rests now in the stars,’ he continued. ‘And brave loyal Cave Clan, who gave life itself to Dark Storm, our greatest queen. Be assured in your spirits that she has not fallen. She walks ever closer, to strike these demons at their heart!’ A howling cheer rose up all around him, as Barkless thought on his next words.

‘Sacred Stormworld bore all of us, like mere seeds, from its holy soils and waters,’ he told them. ‘Many perish in childbirth, or fall to dark tragedy, or the jaws of starving beasts. But the strong live on, in Fierce-Hope. And the strongest stand here, beside you. The winds of fate have blown we seeds further even than First Ancestor, to this world beyond the heavens. We have brought His message to these Lost Spirits,’ he called out, over their growing shouts. ‘We have struck the first flames, where death and darkness would otherwise reign! We stand together, as one Tribe, to strike back fiercely at the devils who would claim us! All Life must fight this war! Whatever our fates, today we pass from mere life into Legend!’ He bellowed his war-cry over their howling cheers. ‘Today we live, and fight, in our greatest glory!’ he roared out to them. ‘His Great Holy Hearthfire awaits us!’

‘First Ancestor welcomes us Home!’ the Tribe yelled back passionately. Invoking their holiest words, on the darkening day that promised to claim their lives.

Atha watched the Tribals all around them, roaring defiantly at their coming end. The sound and the fury had his soldiers’ blood up, as they looked to their General in the growing silence. Studying the plaza, Atha could see the first wave of spiders trying the passages. The Watchers’ grand horde was coming for them. If he timed this right, his troops might even go out blazing by the end.

‘Guardians of Silverspire!’ he bellowed, pacing the high northern walls. Everyone shuffled closer to see him; frightened men and women of every race and circumstance. ‘Before this war, you were average,’ he told them all. ‘You’d work your jobs. Pay your taxes. Eat the same old food, in your same old lives, every damn day,’ he shouted out. ‘But look at you now! You’re trained! Practised! Stone-cold killing machines, every last one of you! You’ve pulled new lives from the ashes, and you’ve stood firm and fought for that privilege, against every possible odd stacked against you!’ His troops and recruits were nodding around him. Grunting their stern-faced replies. ‘I’ve watched you, since we came here,’ he assured them all. ‘I’ve seen frightened victims become hardened soldiers. I’ve seen solid new friendships, and people fall in love. I’ve seen grieving parents adopt the orphans this invasion left behind. And I’ve seen people of every colour, every creed, every united world, breathe life and love and flaming bloody ferocity into these ancient walls, that haven’t seen our like in centuries! Who are you!?’

‘Sons of Sorrow, and Daughters of Death!’ the crowd of thousands yelled out.

‘Who are you!?’

‘Sons of Sorrow, and Daughters of Death!’ they roared back to him.

‘Rifles ready!’ Atha commanded them, over their clattering racket across the walls. ‘Defence drones, aimed on standby!’ he barked to their vast floating halo above. Seven swept gigantic over their heads, racing for the ruins with a thundering growl. ‘Artillery, on my mark!’ Atha bellowed ferociously, as he watched the distant rubble begin to crawl with the grand horde’s first intruders. ‘FIRE!’ The walls erupted with deafening laserbolts; endless storms of fierce scorching light. Unloading all hell on the swarm.

42

Tabitha raced on rapidly over high shattered rooftops, where unwitting Watchers and their monsters guarded fierce barricades far below. The tangled metal world whipped past her in a derelict blur; a tiny grey shadow in a colossal forest of shattered steel. A quick caped spirit through the dawn. She hurtled on through the power district, dead and cratered all around her. Those vast glowing hills loomed ahead.

She sprinted silently along a high towering wall, and leapt for giant pipework to run its length like thick tightropes. Down below, a flaming gorgon glanced up at nothing. The source of the sound was gone.

Tabitha rushed through wind-whipping shadows for a huge toppled chimney ahead. Scaling scaffolds and slipping in through a vast shattered cooling tower, she sprang her claws and punched them into the curved concrete wall. A quick deep breath; Vincent staring beside her. A deadly drop lurked beyond her feet, through the cooling tower’s high hollow heart. Tabitha leapt from the walkway and slid fast down the smooth inside wall, raining dust and rubble where her sunken claws slowed her descent. Struggling to keep her claw-tips buried in the racing surface as she dropped breathlessly for the ground rising fast beneath her. Feet planted firmly, sliding down the concrete, as if she was skiing backwards down a sheer smooth cliff. Far below she saw a hefty silver shape, looming larger where it crept across the tower floor. Snarling feral, staring murderously, Tabitha pulled her claws from the racing wall.

The hefty spider was sniffing for something. Black lips peeling back from sharp cruel teeth. A sudden shadow crushed it; pierced its heart with a crowbar. A punch through the teeth to stifle its dying shriek. Tabitha wrenched out the crowbar with a tinny creak and glanced around beside its corpse. Cringing as she wiped her spider-drooly hand on her cloak. She pulled her hood and tightened her armour, as Vincent floated down beside her to keep watch. Heading on together for the tower’s latticed base-struts, and the blinding bright sunlight beyond.

It was another searing summer morning; the kind that her human side really hadn’t evolved for. What she wouldn’t give for a good old downpour. Or at least some grey drizzle, just for an hour. She’d have wilted by now in her cape and fitted armour, if not for her catsuit’s cooling effect. But that didn’t stop the sunlight from slowly baking her face.

I mean… I’m a redhead. Gimme a break. Tabitha tightened her gear afresh, sighing a few deep breaths for the final leg of her journey, and ran on quietly toward the vast Tiam River in the distance.

These were the power district’s outer limits; the National Park lay ahead. Though it looked like the unruly wild was expanding toward the city, unnaturally prolific, where the Watchers’ landscape shrink-wrapped the native forest in creeping blue moss.

…Focus, woman. There were only two more colossal buildings to pass by. A foundry in the distance, and a hydroelectric plant beside the fast-flowing river ahead. A huge half-toppled bridge stood before her, that hadn’t had the courtesy to fall in any accessible way.

Tabitha caught her breath for a second and sprinted on silently. It seemed like her days in the sun had strengthened her; she felt a new tautness in her legs and shoulders. Though maybe her muscles were just adapting to the city’s endless assault course, that she’d finally left behind.

Reaching vast concrete slabs that lined the rushing river bank, Tabitha crouched to press all her strength into the crowbar. Arms trembling, scarring the concrete, she bent its straight end into a horseshoe shape and finally into a small closed ring. Inspecting her work, she strained again and bent the crowbar’s opposite tip into a large rough hook.

It took a few failed throws, beneath the bridge’s ruined struts high above her. Constant searches over her shoulder, with Vincent keeping watch, to make sure she hadn’t been seen. But she finally threw her curved crowbar true enough to hit and hook on something up there, with a dull steel clank, high above on the severed bridge. Pulling at the medi-ship paracord she’d knotted onto it, she made sure her makeshift grapple hook wouldn’t budge. Sighing nervously, she nodded Vincent to float up ahead of her and check the giant bridge was clear.

…Just wish I’d revived a bigger drone. She’d already tried to attach herself to Vincent, in the hopes that he might float her up there behind him. But the anti-gravity drive that allowed him to hover wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to carry her too.

Taking a tight hold of her first knotted loop in the paracord, Tabitha hauled herself up powerfully between her handmade rungs. Straining against the climb, and checking around to make sure nothing was watching, she gritted her teeth and wrestled her way on up the rope’s knotted loops.

Clawing up wearily over the precipice, Tabitha dropped her rope ladder into the river and ran the bridge’s length in the shadows. There just wasn’t time to recover those tools, and the bridge’s far ramp was still partially intact anyway. Enough remaining walkway to put the rushing river behind her, where she climbed down cautiously to solid ground.

The hills were dead ahead now. There were only wandering monsters on her path, in the distance; easy enough to slip past through the hydro-plant’s clustered complex. Nodding at Vincent to keep up, Tabitha ran her weaving way between dead airtrucks and shipping containers. Racing on past sheds and tumbling skins, towards a strange sudden forest that’d sprouted from a warehouse wall. High over the powerplant’s main structure, a circling dragon forced her decision. She had to get out of sight.

Creeping through trees into the warehouse, Vincent stopped Tabitha suddenly with a bumping nudge on her shoulder. He stared aside to draw her attention to it. A hunting spider, already too close for comfort. None the wiser to her presence, for now, where she crouched unseen and unsmelled among the Watchers’ giant flowers. But the only way down that windowed corridor was straight past it. She’d have to take a chance on the kill.

The still spider wouldn’t turn to face her; Tabitha gave up on her gun. She couldn’t chance a silenced headshot if it wouldn’t show its head. Jaw clenched, she slipped the Watcher knife from her belt. She’d just have to go old-fashioned.

Her gold eyes were locked on it; shrouded in the gloomy overgrowth. The spider twitched. Tabitha froze. Hunting it, glaring at it; a tigress. Any moment now, that circling dragon would take its towering perch outside. Just like Seven, it’d claim its territory afresh. Spread its wings, and crane its neck, and–

…Roar. Its bellowing noise came like thunder. A racket to hide her attack. Her adrenaline was racing. The spider settled, and she saw her chance. Time seemed to slow as she pounced for it; the longest split-second she’d known. Soundless, airborne, Tabitha stared murderously with her black knife in hand. Driving the blade through the spider’s centre, and her wrapped left fist through its teeth, she silenced its screech and bear-hugged its corpse to roll with it quietly across the floor. She pulled her knife silently, crouched over her soundless kill.

The scent of its blood was pure temptation; she had to keep herself from licking the knife. She’d brought the dripping blade so close to her lips, like sheer instinct was guiding her hand. Tabitha wiped the knife and sheathed it, suddenly wary of herself. She felt a sudden gorgeous rush, where a blood-drop tickled her lip and she tongue-tipped it. It tasted bliss-vampiric. Dark-orgasmic through her fire-bright heart. She couldn’t keep her eyes from that spider. The shining heaven-silver that streamed from its curling corpse. Every cell in her was screaming out for it. Real food for her night-black nature. Surely one little taste wouldn’t kill her.

Only a small sip, for old times’ sake?...

She didn’t see the passing shadow, on the bright murky windows beside her. A lurking silhouette, that slipped past slight and silent. Prowling in puTriD pAraLLel.

…Enough, Tabitha berated herself, as she dragged her eyes from the spider’s corpse and crept away down the corridor. Not now, when I’m so close to that hive.

*

Tabitha hurried on through darkened offices and corridors, passing through the sprawling complex as quickly as she could. But there was something off about the control rooms ahead. Creeping quietly to the next corner, she peered around the wall… and hid again quickly in shock. The place was covered in spiders; every square foot. No choice now but to head back to the last door she’d passed, where she crept silently outside.

The sun was clouding over; the world seemed grainy-grey and washed out. That pale dragon was perched high in the derelict distance, though the acres of tarmac ahead looked free and clear. Just enough cover around her, between the crashed transporters and shattered metal crates, to hurry on unseen and–

…Was that a shout? Did someone just call out to me? Tabitha froze in hiding; glancing around the rough blue crate with her submachine gun aimed. There it was again; definitely someone’s voice. Calling out quietly for help.

Heartcore pounding, following the weak sound, Tabitha crept and scurried from crate to crate along the main building’s side. A green man in overalls was slumped weakly, watching her fearfully, in a small gloomy cave of fallen concrete among the far walls. He was bleeding out; reaching weakly with a grubby trembling hand.

‘Help,’ he called faintly from the distant shadows, in desperate Trade Language. Tabitha urged him to be quiet, pressing a finger to her thinned lips, before she crept across the open asphalt between them. Double-checking her surroundings as she hurried over silently, and creeping into the cave by his side. He was stiff and bleeding heavily; wrapped in filthy sheets. The smell was horrific, like his wounds had festered for days.

‘Just hold on. I’ve got bandages, and medi-gel,’ she whispered urgently in Trade Language, as she scuttled closer to take cover beside him. It felt so strange to speak to a real person again; she emptied her cloak pockets in a rush to find him some first aid. Until she saw the alien growth, running through him like hidden pipes. Dark Watcher vines, animating his body. Twitching his limbs and rising his chest, like a plant-root motor grown through him. Pumping cold blood through a slumped blinking corpse. A dead puppet in camouflage, meant to lure her out here. Tabitha scrambled away in frozen dread. She’d been tricked by something; that terrified her. Whatever had strung up that grim decoy had been calling out to her, in Trade Language, to bring her in close. It couldn’t be far away.

Scrambling away panicked, gun aimed and ready, she expected her death at any moment. But whatever was hunting her wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. It hadn’t even alerted that dragon. Clearly it wanted her to itself.

Spooked, Tabitha scoured her surroundings nervously from fresh cover. There were no shapes on the scaffolds; no eyes among all those gloomy crates. Whatever set that trap had left her here, alone, to stew in paranoia. Her nerves were tingling. Senses, heightened. Heartcore hammering. She could smell the brickdust, sharper than ever. The blue-bizarre perfume of alien flowers. And something else… the scent of her stalker. A faint lingering stink of rotten flesh. But no sign of it anywhere. She was raging, to have been caught out so easily. Ready to fight it right now.

…It wants me jumpy. Angry. It wants me to panic, and give myself away. Pulse racing, lungs heaving, Tabitha tried desperately to calm herself. Fighting back against her own raw fear. She couldn’t face it here anyway, whatever it was; there was too much risk of being seen. She had to be smarter than this. To get away from here, and lure whatever hunted her to a quieter killing spot. First and foremost, she had to get to those towering hills.

*

Tabitha raced on toward the powerplant’s final shattered structures. A cluster of high buildings around a massive central chamber, where she glanced behind her fearfully and searched for any way through. The place was all huge rubble; it looked like she’d have to climb that far ladder to get over the roof. Vincent was revolving where he floated beside her; watching every angle on high alert. Searching constantly for her stalker as they went.

Grunting quietly as she reached the high rooftop, Tabitha was met with a strange giant sight. A vast Watcher plant; a black anemone taking root through the ruins. Glowing cold like starshine; bigger than any tree she’d ever seen. Growing peacefully through all this devastation. It was bent through this building; a living bridge to the final factory ahead. Tabitha tightened her cape and hurried on to climb it, and felt its mammoth current flowing through her. Energising her afresh. White batbirds flocked away from its vast clustered branches as she balanced quickly across it.

She looked down, halfway over the chasm, and wished she hadn’t. A deadly drop loomed beneath her, down to hulking half-flooded generators inside the darkened powerplant. Spinning her senses and messing with her head. Tabitha took her eyes from the drop to concentrate on her footsteps, and focussed intently on moving quickly across. She looked up in shock at a distant crashing, out from the direction of the hive, where something colossal dragged itself into the sea. She’d missed it. But whatever that was, it wasn’t good.

Tabitha felt newly cautious, dreading whatever hunted her, as she climbed down the tree’s waving branches and leapt to the roof of her final foundry. Beyond its giant complex, past asphalt runways and a long bridge over a crater, there was nothing but fenced-off meadow and sprawling national park. There were tourist paths through those overgrown woods and hillsides, with plenty of natural cover to move more quickly. Hidden spots to trap her stalker too, and then finally end this war. She just had to get off this roof.

43

Tabitha ran a hurried circuit of the roof’s edge, passing several vent pipes but seeing no sign of any ladder or access hatch. She could climb down the wall on her volt-vines, she supposed… but that bloody dragon was circling the complex again. Another few seconds and she’d be seen.

Move it, woman. Move! She ran for the nearest vent pipe and pulled off the grating. Squeezing herself inside, with barely enough room to breathe.

*

It was sheer relief just to pull herself out from that venting inside the building, several feet further down. Tabitha ripped up the grating and lowered herself carefully into a pitch-black space. She felt lightheaded already, and lighting a volt-vine showed her why. The corridor was crowded with dainty blue flowers. She was breathing their poisoned pheromones. Tabitha hurriedly pulled up her hood into a breather helmet; its healed edges melded together into a hardening mask. She walked on quickly, Vincent floating behind her, and tried to will her sudden sickness to pass. These walls were claustrophobic, and shifting with strange grasping life. She ducked past tendrils that dangled from the ceiling; trying to coil her neck and hang her.

The overgrown corridors were getting narrower. The concrete walls were packed with lurking flowers, growing ever thicker, while white crucifix-blooms spread like vines across the flooring.

Leaping the patches carefully, Tabitha breathed in relief to put it all behind her. A heavy locked door lay ahead. She sprang her claws and made quick work of the mechanism, and tore away the crumpled block. The door was unlocked now, but still stiff as hell in all this overgrowth. She shoved at it; pressed her palms against it. Quickly grew impatient and shoulder-barged it. The creaking door flew open on a fifty-foot drop beneath her. A split-second reaction stopped her fall. Gasping, clawing desperately to the ledge in the doorframe, Tabitha leapt in dread for thick chains beside her and tried to slow her sliding fall. Gripping them hard enough, finally, to put the brakes on her rapid descent. Her bodyweight was enough to lower her more gently. Landing down quietly in a blown-out foundry, dark and monumental around her.

The thick stink of oil made her head swim. The scent of so much metal made her miss Seven terribly, like a hole in her heartcore. Milky daylight shone softly through high smeared windows, and cast a graveyard glow through the walkways and giant blast furnaces.

…Last building. Almost there.

Tabitha hurried on through the foundry’s derelict silence, across flooring that was sunk beneath ground-level. Even the haunted echoing scale of this place made her nervous. Countless batbirds roosted in the ceiling; oblivious to the Watchers’ invasion. Clustered in nests along the highest criss-cross girders, where the concrete ledges were painted white with their shit.

Alien rats scurried quickly along the walls beside her. Small eyes glinting in her vine-light, that reminded Tabitha to put the light source out. Searching constantly for any sign of her stalker, that she was sure would try to kill her in here, or find some way to trap her–

…Oh, shit. Tabitha froze solid at the sight. Heaving mounds lay ahead of her, dozens of them, swelling and falling with slow jurassic breaths. Monsters. She should’ve known they’d be attracted to a bloody foundry, how could she be so stupid? Signing to Vincent, Tabitha crept away in terrified silence. She’d have to keep creeping silently, if she’d ever get through this place alive.

Those huge horned monsters were sleeping, as she slipped past on the steel walkways high above their nest. The foundry’s shattered far wall lay ahead of her, and the glorious daylight beyond. She only had to stick to the concrete edging, moving slow and silent, where her footsteps wouldn’t creak on the grates. She made her pulse-pounding escape, finally, onto concrete steps halfway along. Just a final steel ladder to the walkway ahead of her, then her exit a hundred yards ahead.

Tabitha started up the ladder rungs soundlessly; pulse pounding and hardly daring to breathe. Checking carefully for any grease or oil that might slip in her grip and drop her. That was exactly the kind of bad luck she’d come to expect by now; some final stupid mistake that would crash her down loudly and wake every monster in the nest. By the time she heard the rattling crumbs of concrete above her, it was too late to climb the tilting ladder before it fell.

She dropped, hard. Smacked her back in an echoing dustcloud, and clenched her teeth to hold in her scream. Frantic, terrified, she searched desperately for an escape while the startled monsters snarled and searched in the gloom around her. A host of pale eyes, floating in huge shadowed forms through the darkness.

Tabitha hid desperately behind steel walkway panels, clutching Vincent tightly, as the prowling brutes closed in all around her. Breathless in her dread. There weren’t any tools, or handy chunks of concrete. Thinking fast, she pulled one of her two Watcher knives instead. She threw it hard and high, and listened for the monsters as they snarled and chased its distant clang against a huge foundry bucket. Stealing a few vital seconds, Tabitha scrambled for the long wide duct far behind her. By the time the monsters turned in search of her, she’d vanished into the pipe toward the ceiling.

Pushing her gun on ahead of her, Tabitha clawed and climbed in desperation. Vincent floated through ahead of her, to check the pipe was clear. He hovered back efficiently after several seconds, and blinked his tiny light in the affirmative. A safe hidden way past those monsters, if only she could keep her movements silent. Tabitha nodded to him, to send him on ahead and keep watch outside. Sinking her claws into the pipe’s curved walls, she cut her own handholds to climb its vertical length.

The caked dust and grime was choking her, smearing her face and half-blinding her, as she climbed for a T-junction where the vast duct finally ran horizontal. A claustrophobic eternity lay ahead of her, shuffling slowly with her shoulders, towards a tiny circle of bright glowing daylight in the far distance. Her deep panicked breaths were making her chest expand, so that the vile narrow duct felt ever tighter; she tried to calm down and focus. Taking slow shallow breaths instead, that seemed to take the pressure off as she inched ever onward.

She’d crawled a vast slow distance, towards that glowing daylight. There was a growing racket far below her, where the monsters frenzied and hunted for any trace of her. A sudden stampede of stomping footfalls, and then their chaos faded away. Tabitha didn’t care any more; there was only that circle of light up ahead of her. Flaming eyes fixed on it. Getting closer with every aching shuffle through the foundry’s grease and age-old soot. That circle of bright daylight meant her escape, and those hills, and the hive. It meant her bloody revenge.

Glimpsing the foundry through a narrow grating beside her, she gained a fresh sense of just how high she’d climbed. But now she couldn’t see those monsters at all. As if they’d all raced outside in search of her.

…Well now you disappear, you awkward bastards. Still; she was in this pipe now. Only one way out of it. Sighing, she crawled on. The daylight was so close now. Glowing like heaven ahead.

There was a sliding squirm, behind her in the pipe. Crackling and wet like an oil slick. Something was in here with her. Panicked, claustrophobic, Tabitha struggled on desperately for the daylight. That strange sound was gaining on her. Something was coming after her. She was gasping; terrified. Clawing the pipe in panic, to drag herself onward as fast as she possibly could. That circle of daylight was three feet away, then two feet away, then a few inches from her trembling grasp, when a thick coiling limb wrapped her legs. Dragging her in horror, as it pulled her back fast through the pipe. It reeked of rotten meat. The shrinking daylight glistened on it, where she caught a pitch-black glimpse. A small blind squid, no bigger than her. But impossible to fight in here, where she slid along panicked in its trail of oil-black slime.

Shit, that thing’s strong. Tabitha snarled and shocked it, and sprang her claws to try and rip at it. It was useless; she just couldn’t reach its tentacles. They coiled her wrists endlessly as she pulled free and struggled; pinning her repeatedly before she could strike at it. Its rubbery flesh seemed immune to her volts, unless it absorbed them. Heartcore racing, scrambling against it, Tabitha kicked and clawed away slippery to escape it; only for it to coil her again more powerfully.

It wrapped her again, over and over, as she broke free and snarled at its grappling limbs. Dragging her back to constrict her, wrestling her endlessly and tiring her, until she wanted desperately to scream out loud. She’d tear it apart in a street fight, but this bloody pipe made her hits impossible. It was all she could do just to claw at the pipe itself; trying to burrow back outside. Raging and volting as the black squid’s limbs coiled her arms. She was fighting against it in a desperate fury, as the horror slid more tentacles to try and block up her mouth. Straining powerfully to strangle and suffocate her. It was wrapping her; squeezing every panicked breath out of her. Melting her catsuit with its dark oozing slime. An enzyme cocktail, a biochemical haze, that drugged her senses and numbed her struggling limbs. That oil was dazing her; digesting her. Corroding her armour and stinging on her skin. Her strength wouldn’t help her; not while she couldn’t move freely. She just couldn’t fight it back. Tabitha realised then, as she struggled on into blackout numbness, that this thing was going to kill her.

…If she was going to die in this pipe, then she’d die on her terms. And take this bastard with her when she went. There was just one last desperate thing she could do, while she still had the strength and dazed wits to act on it. She’d always thought she’d tremble, or shrink from the deed. But she didn’t flinch; not now. She didn’t matter. Life went on regardless.

…I’m nnot afraid tto die.

Kicking and struggling furiously, Tabitha pulled her cloak aside and slipped a slim shape from her belt. A grenade. One of three, since the Lady of Flowers, that she’d never wanted to use.

…ddon’t think I hhave much choice. Numb thoughts fading, fighting off the squid’s sudden stranglehold, Tabitha pushed off the thumb-cap and clicked the switch on her thin grenade. The creature coiled a limb around her throat to throttle her. Straining to pull off her head.

Five… four… three… She was blacking out. The squid squeezed all breath from her.

‘Fffuck you,’ she whispered to it, with a dying grin. The pipe blew open in a sudden bright bang, thrashing their bloody bodies to the concrete far below. A rain of slopping silver slapped down hard around their horror.

Tabitha was flailing; deaf in both ears and gasping for breath. Half-numbed by the squid’s anaesthetic and still screaming like nothing else. She slipped in her blood as the mauled squid lurched for her; pouncing on its mass with a fierce feral beating. Missing an arm, and most of her right side, Tabitha laid into it like a mangled animal. Bloody eyes blazing; utterly berserk. She punched and tore and battered the bastard, screaming out loud in sheer primal hate for it, until the slick screeching creature fell silent. Crawling away furiously as it reached out to strangle her, Tabitha searched for her submachine gun. Found it dead and scattered in blown-open fragments. Nothing left but the blade on her belt. She dragged herself wrathfully, wrestling viciously against it, and knifed the shrieking squid through its heart. Breathless, broken, she collapsed in the gore by its corpse.

Tabitha was staggering; brutalised. Gushing blood at death’s welcome door, and grunting stunned like a limbless zombie. Ferocious pain tore through her muscles and tissues, more crippling than she’d ever felt before, as her mending body pushed out the shrapnel. Clinking down dully on the concrete beneath her.

…It felt like her tendons were healing. One-armed and shaking, staring dazed and muttering, she unclipped her mangled armour and let it drop away. Useless now. At least it’d taken the brunt of the blast. She felt it fiercely, pure blackout agony, as she woke from the squid’s anaesthetic. Falling to her shattered knees, her body bent and broken into splintered spare parts, Tabitha screamed out loud in the carnage. She just didn’t care any more; didn’t care if they found her.

I’ve been through enough. I just want all this to be over.

…And then the thought kicked in, past her hard crackling breaths in the silence. Her wild bloody fury. She gritted her teeth and snarled in defiance, and kept herself from collapsing. Feeling Fierce-Hope, and shining Virtue, and blood-boiling vendetta for her species. Life had spared her this long, to walk on for the Watchers and finish them. Seemed like Life had just spared her again.

I’ll heal, she told herself. I’ll live. And anyway... this isn’t about me. I have to protect my friends.

Limping and crawling, Tabitha collected her arm and shattered bones from the silver carnage. She gathered her scattered flesh from the blood-puddles, and pressed in her grippy jigsaw pieces, mingled in with the squid she’d destroyed. Fumbling and fainting as she felt for her bandages, and blacking out silently as she tried to patch up the ruins of herself. But the volt-vines wrapped her; spreading through her torn-up catsuit. Both alien textures formed a strange second skin, holding her together while she healed. Gripping her muscles and twining her spine, as she smeared on what remained of the numbing medi-gel she’d salvaged. She was coated in black grease and bloody silver. And the squid’s rank slime, that bleached her skin pink and stung fiercely on her torn flesh like rubbing alcohol. She’d have to wash it off soon, before that hot burning pain drove her mad. But she was mending.

Dazed and trembling, her blood loss lessening, Tabitha watched new muscle fibres regrow along her bared bones. Pressing her severed arm painfully against her shoulder, until it wasn’t quite so severed any more. Everything she’d faced, she’d survived. She’d healed and hardened, over and over again. She’d repair, regenerate, just like she always had.

What doesn’t kill you… well. She could’ve written the bloody book on the things that hadn’t killed her.

Your heartcore’s fine, she reminded herself, as she slipped and dropped weakly in the dripping gore. You’ll live. Tabitha sighed and staggered up slowly, mostly whole now, and limped painfully across the huge bloody puddle to salvage what was left of her possessions.

…Not much, apparently. Her laser charge packs were destroyed; so were both Watcher pistols and a scaly canteen. She’d lost the bleach bottle to hide her scent, and her two remaining grenades were nowhere to be found. Her ghillie cloak was bloody tatters, as she pulled it back on to dust it in fresh camouflage. All she’d salvaged was a Watcher knife and bottle, and the small bronze shank that she’d made for herself.

Staggering away slowly, Tabitha spotted an oil can by a vast steel pillar. She emptied its gooping contents into her Watcher bottle, just in case. Not much of an armoury, really, for taking on a whole Watcher hive. All she really had left was her Vincent.

‘Hey Drone Face,’ she said weakly, limping on towards him, as he floated back from the high doorway outside. His small lens staring, and possibly recording. ‘How’s my hair? Does my hair look ok?’ she said with a smile, as she smoothed down the frazzled red chaos on her head.

At least she’d got closer to the foundry exit, she supposed. But her dronelet came back with a warning; bumping frantically against her shoulder. She could hear those roaring monsters, racing back to all the noise she’d been making. She really wasn’t up for round two; they’d probably pull her apart. Sticking to the shadows, and moving easier now without her body armour, Tabitha finally scaled the steps toward the exit. Squinting in the daylight, she saw their stampeding shapes on the road bridge, which spanned the giant chasm ahead. But more monsters raced to fill the doorway around her, surrounding her, before she could make a run for it. Blocking off her escape. Sighing, snarling, Tabitha paced stiffly on the spot while they closed in around her. Seemed like she’d never escape this bloody building.

…Bring it on, you bastards. I’ll go through all of you. You’re not going to stop me.

‘Get back to the Ministry,’ she told Vincent hurriedly. ‘It’s too dangerous here. Get everything you’ve recorded to Irren Amsira. He’ll show everyone what we’ve done out here. Can you do that for me?’ Vincent blinked his tiny light in the affirmative. ‘Go on, then. And be careful,’ she urged him sadly. ‘Quick!’ Her dronelet blinked its light again in response, a hurried goodbye, and flew away fast over the leaping monsters’ claws.

Alone in the foundry, teeth gritted hard, Tabitha faced the drooling pack that surrounded her. She sprung her claws sparking. The brutes roared wild and charged her in force. Her eyes were sudden raging starlight.

Why did I even bother with that bloody pipe? …Doesn’t matter. I can do this.

Tabitha ran snarling and pounced for the first horned brute to reach her. She leapt its swipe and kicked off high from its head, to drop down screaming and wrench its skull aside with a full-body swing. Broke its neck in a gunshot crack. The brute dropped dead with a car-wreck crash behind her. The rest were roaring at the sight. Fists clenched, toe-stepping like a boxer, Tabitha took her stance. She let the bastards come to her. A second one charged straight for her.

Tabitha’s split-second spin let the beast lurch past her. A slow-motion opening, begging for its matador, as she pulled her knife beside it and stuck the monster’s lowered skull. Its corpse hadn’t crashed before she pounced for another and leapt to slit its throat. Dropped it shocked and screaming in a spattered silver spray. She weaved away fast from a leaping fourth; pulled the bottle from her belt and blinded its stare with a toss of thick black oil. She clawed its skull as it turned to find her. Burst its brain with a shotgun shock. Its body dropped smoking as she glared away at the prowling pack. A dozen more monsters at least. She saw daylight between them; an opening. She had to get outside to that bridge. The brutes were charging together; a sudden stampede. Barely a second for her quick sliding dive, that tumbled her through between their legs. Ducking and leaping as they smashed the ground around her.

She was finally outside the foundry; the sudden daylight strengthened her. Leaping away from the monsters as they pounced for her. She just had to get past that blocked-up bridge ahead of her, where a chasm of a quarry loomed below. Tabitha rolled from a savage swipe and leapt away gasping from a slop of molten metal. She saw her next gap and ran for it. A sudden burst of power flung her on like a sprinter; like every muscle knew a strange squid strength.

The monsters were gaining as she climbed the first ruined cargo ship. Another parkour assault course, as she leapt the aircars and vaulted over crates of rocky waste. The brutes just burst straight through it. Thumping and pounding like a pack of tanks behind her. Tabitha turned and pounced for the nearest monster. Slammed her palm on its snout and made contact. The shock blew it off the bridge in a sudden booming cindercloud. She raced on ahead to a patch of shattered concrete, and let the next monster’s weight do the rest. It fell away screaming as the road-edge beneath it gave way. Tabitha ran for the next crashed cargo ship but couldn’t climb it in time. The monster’s tackle shook the shipwreck from her grip; she scrambled frantically as she fell away to the mauling pack beneath her. She shot a burst of volts that almost killed her; a violent blue blast that bought a blind second to escape them. Lagging from the effort, Tabitha ducked a sudden smash and hurtled on over the aircar wrecks while the staggering monsters gained on her. She spun and sliced and sidestepped another, and ducked in swinging to crater its vicious face. She leapt by the road-edge to let the next brute falter; a spinning slice through its knee helped it fall to its death.

The end of the bridge was racing up on her; she tried to detach and let her body work on instinct. Leaping containers and hurtling over wreckage, she ducked toppled girders and put the whole bloody district behind her.

But a thundering roar put fresh fear in her. Glancing back as she sprinted, that perching dragon was airborne. It was tearing for her, pale-eyed and fire-throated; dropping fast in a jet-screaming dive. It stole all her hope, it was falling so quick now. Those monsters tore through the truck wrecks at her back. Muscles tiring, heartcore hammering, she’d never escape the bridge in time. She barely had the strength left to leap from this shipwreck, while that diving dragon loomed massive behind her. Tabitha pulled her knife and slowed from her sprint, and breathed deep one last time. Turning to face the dragon, she snarled and let it have her. Hit by a plane crash; screaming in its teeth. A sudden silver bloodburst as it snatched her away for the sky.

Gored and growling, blinded by the airspeed, Tabitha forced her last volts and shocked the dragon’s jaws slacker. Buying a second to pull off from its teeth and sink her claws in its scales; dragging herself out to dangle from its snout. A desperate stab at its nostril made the dragon reel back by reflex; turning away and baring its neck. Yelling wildly, Tabitha let go. Dropping in sudden freefall. Barely a second to sink the knife in, and let her falling weight drag the blade along with her. The cheated dragon roared out in raw horror; its slit throat gushed as its prey fell away. Red curls writhing, bright eyes blazing, Tabitha snarled to see its sudden panic as she fell.

Crying out in terror, the burning dragon dipped into a dying plummet. Raining blood in a steaming silver torrent. Crashing through the forest, a gory gleaming mess, as Tabitha dropped away wrathfully for the flooded crater far below.

The water raced up and hit like bare concrete. A sudden stunning smack, as she sank down in agony through a burst of churning bubbles. If not for her catsuit hood she’d be drowning all over again. Tabitha’s hardening space helmet gave her a minute to heal, her limp body sinking into the crater’s darker reaches, while her catsuit’s hump fed cool hissing air through the breather.

There were more things hunting for her, glaring gorgons and wretches, as she climbed raggedly ashore. Wading on fast through the shallows, Tabitha ducked in breathlessly through a pipe exposed by the crater. A cramped concrete tunnel, curving on into a flooded passage like a buried man-made river. A vast storm drain. Giant stomps outside forced her into a gasping dive through the water, as the surface above glowed sudden hellish white. A napalm blaze, sticky and searing, boiled the bubbling water above her as she swam for a distant grating.

But it wasn’t just that inferno that spurred her on in panic; there were shapes in this stagnant passage. Sunken bodies, rotten and drifting, where the bright flames shone a murk-misting light through the water. Pale dead faces and limp shattered limbs, bumping aside eerily as she forced her way through for the grating.

Her breather helmet hissed with a scuba-sound echo. The endless bodies bumped past. She felt a rising sickness in her throat, as the clearer water gave way to a cloudy red-brown haze. A thick zombie soup, courtesy of the spiders’ harvests; coloured by the city’s countless dead. She’d finally passed into their hive.

Tabitha climbed from the water into a grim dripping chamber, a kind of barred-off flood collector, where slumped grey bodies were piled high by the banks. She hurried away silently, heaving and retching at the rank graveyard smell. Rushing on through empty burrows, a nesting site for absent spiders, into a clearer-smelling cavern with a pale living glow. She passed turbine-flowers and stunted anemone trees. All tended busily by a dozen floating Fishbowls, that paid her no mind whatsoever.

She stopped by a runoff of clear rushing water; maybe down from rivers in the hills. Washing off all stinking trace of stagnation, from the deep-water horrors she’d left behind.

Peering above-ground, Tabitha found herself in thick pine forest. Native trees, for the most part, though it was all in the process of a rapid invasion. She glimpsed the Watchers’ giant flowers, and dark writhing trees. Blue moss and headless mushroom-stalks. An airborne nautilus, when she turned at its puffing sounds, like the kind she’d seen back on Earth. Swimming past calmly with the same blank indifference.

Beyond the towering treetops, she could make out a tell-tale glow. The Watchers’ eerie garden city. The feeling struck her with fierce finality.

…End of the road, I suppose. Breathing wearily, Tabitha ran for the hiking trail ahead. The fastest way on for the hive.

*

She’d covered ground quickly; there weren’t any monsters prowling these woods. At least not that she could see. Tabitha knelt for a second anyway, scooping up the soil and renewing her changing camouflage. Rich dark dirt, pine-scented and glorious, that made a welcome muddy change from all that factory grease and dead ash in the city. Her soaking cloak got a new ghillie-texture, as she threaded its holes quickly with fresh foliage and hurried on.

Another leg of weary cross-country brought her out in a clearing, up in the silent foothills. She had a closer view of the Watchers’ churned-up landscape, and the great monochrome forest that circled their bustling hive. She could see their towering structures now; grim and crystalline. Beyond them stood vast turbine flowers, and colossal anemone trees; their countless churning power plants.

No sign of their wounded mothership… though she glimpsed something just as terrible. Looming beyond their breeding fields, in the hazy heart of it all, stood a stark-black gothic structure. The grand hive’s towering core.

Blow up that core, and it’ll blow the whole damn complex. The mothership too, if it’s buried here. She was so close now… and still had no idea how she’d get through it all. Maybe she’d never really expected to get this far. But she’d make it work. Somehow. She had to, for the sake of this world.

Racing on, Tabitha’s eyes were drawn to frantic movement. Watcher troops were setting out in search of her. Dozens of them, and only distant, but they were bound to set everything hunting her now that she’d caused a scene.

I spose dropping a dragon in blood and raging flames might just do that. Mental note for next time, anyway. Glancing around, there was still no sign of her stalker though. Had she lost it?

…Of course not. Why would I expect that kind of luck?

Freezing mid-stride, Tabitha ducked down fearfully at the sound of growing jetscales. Hiding among the trees, she glared as the glooming sky filled with endless ranks. The Watchers’ pale dragons were starting their air raid; the last move in their final assault. Carrying those weird black casks again, to gas the Ministry en masse.

I’m too late, she raged at herself, in sudden raw heartbreak. It’s all over.

…But she’d come this far. Maybe there was still a shrinking chance. Some way inside that core that she just hadn’t seen yet. Tabitha tightened her ragged cloak and sprinted on silently, down through the wooded foothills to the hive. For her friends; her Ministry; her Tribe.

And flaming-vicious vengeance, for herself.

44

The spider hordes were chittering, endless and maddening, high above their stooping heads. Sounds like plagues and earthquakes shook the ground as the artillery boomed non-stop, far beyond the Ministry’s crowded vaults.

‘I’m scared,’ Calia whispered, where she held close to her mother’s side. Her voice was so small and innocent that her mum had to fight back the heartbreak. Nearby people glanced at them, quickly, with the same hard terror running through their heads. A huddled crowd in the plant-lit shadows. The city’s few surviving parents, among those too old or young to fight.

‘It’ll be alright, love,’ Calia’s mum assured her, as she held her little girl tightly. ‘Daddy’s brave, and all his friends are brave too. They’ll fight the monsters. They’ll keep us safe.’ Calia said nothing, and wanted to ask if Daddy might die. But she only cuddled in tighter. Afraid.

I shouldn’t have to lie to my little girl, Liina told herself, a rifle propped beside her, for the moment those monsters finally crashed through the vaults to massacre them. Either that or they’d have to try their faint luck through the vaults’ new escape tunnel, into the lethal ruins beyond. Out among the swarm, she supposed, with nowhere left to hide from their fate.

…But I’d do anything to protect her. I’ll murder those bastards myself. To my last breath.

*

Far above on the crowded battlements, where drones and laser cannons thundered through bursting hordes in the plaza, a grizzled Guardian conscript sighed a deep shaking breath. The troops’ bright laserbolts shrieked and rattled all around him as he reloaded his hybrid weapon again. Their black dragon swept low and snarling, raging tirelessly, and tore fierce melting flames through the plaza. Keeping those charging horned monsters from the walls.

The man had been one of the first civilians to sign up with Her Majesty’s forces, to defend their imperilled new home. Training his hardest, verging on blackouts, to protect his wife and little girl. Now he was unloading his rifle with his hardened platoon, here at the end of all things. He stared cold down his gun’s iron-sights, at more spider swarms massing beyond the vast rubble hills. Their Ministry stood like a square clustered island, awash in a silver sea of them.

Jaw muscles tensing, quick pulse pounding, he fired on more climbing spiders in their grim last stand. But these new stronger spiders could take a shot and keep on crawling. The bastards were saturating them. Thousands of them, filling the plaza and creeping endlessly up their walls. His next shot dropped another to its death.

Vik had left behind everything about himself. His friends; his parents. His bachelor reign and high-flying career. His good life with Liina, and all their world-hopping honeymoon wildness, back in the old world. None of that mattered now, and neither did he. These days he was only Daddy.

He’d kill any dark horror that came here for Calia. Spill every god-damned drop for her, on every world there was. He’d fight to any bitter end. Vik breathed deeply and sighted down his rifle afresh. Nothing was getting through those vault doors to his family, or Anero’s; a guy he knew on the southern walls. He wasn’t going to let that happen. He’d take on this swarm by himself. He dropped another spider down his gunsights, with a scorching-bright shot through the head.

…Bring it on, you screeching scum. If I go today, you’re all going with me.

*

The Ministry’s high crowded walls were a forest of moonflower banners. That great dreaded spider swarm, now only a mounting silver massacre beneath. Ranks of grim varied soldiers fired on in their proud dark uniforms, from Stormworld and Eitse and every planet in-between, here at Serenity’s end. They were Her Majesty’s fierce fighting all-blacks, united from every far forgotten world. No longer idle fantasy, and not just a simple idea. They’d paid for these notions by now, in sweat and bitter tears. All their jobs and jokes and bright twining volt-plants had borne firmer friendships than most worlds would ever understand. Strong grieving friends who defended their families, while their noble Ministers had fled from this fate.

Their spear-circled banners meant hope and solid safety. They stood for a war-queen, who’d saved their panicked lives from the Ruins. These walls were their world now. Their Silverspire. One last stubborn city, a fuck you to the Watchers, that they’d built from the ash by themselves.

*

Atha watched the war-torn plaza with a hard scarred stare. Breathing deep of Serenity’s smoke-smelling summer wind. This rough-worn armour had saved his life a dozen times, on half a dozen worlds out there. Today, it looked like he’d finally die in it.

That dark brutal figure was distant, and hard to spot among all its endless monsters. But Atha saw him. He had to be this legion’s great conductor. The Watchers’ deathly General on his hill.

‘Alpha, demon,’ said Stone Shore, striding up beside him. His cold eyes locked on the same tall shadow.

‘Fuck him,’ Atha growled back fiercely. Aiming his rifle and taking a shot that was way out of range. But making his point, that nothing was invincible. Stone Shore nodded at the deed, and set aside his hatred for Atha. An uneasy truce until this battle was over.

‘Fuk, himm,’ the tribal tried in return, as he loosed a high silvery arrow at the distant figure. ‘…Good.’

‘Spears and shields, General,’ Atha advised his fellow ranking officer. ‘These walls are about to get busier.’ Stone Shore nodded darkly, and strode away quickly to bellow orders to the tribe. Dead spiders were piling high through those bottleneck valleys, in the rubble hills around the plaza. Bigger darker things were wading through them. Fierce new creations that they’d only glimpsed before now. A vast swelling swarm of them. Wretches, gorgons and squids. Piling over the rubble-mounds into the plaza’s edges, where a hundred buried lights blinked in the ground at their feet.

‘Hey, Sunshine,’ Atha told the link on his wristcom. ‘Do it.’

Far across the battlements, Sunshine clicked a trigger switch on all his long hard work in the plaza. A great circling tide of explosions blew the horde apart screaming. Sunshine smiled bitterly to see his carnage from the walls, with the explosives that Reigo had requisitioned. He just wished Tape was here to see it.

‘…Damn,’ Big Fish rumbled at the bloody demolitions, further along the crowded walls. Pulling a giant charge pack from his hissing-red gatling gun, to replace it with his last core left. He grunted wearily and hauled his weapon back onto the wall-top, and held the trigger to spin up its barrels again.

‘Better hold off on that last charge pack, Fish,’ Aelu advised him, between her booming heavy-rifle shots on the timber platform beside him. ‘Especially if those things get through the doors.’

‘Which things?’ he replied, studying the swelling sea of monsters beyond them. ‘There’s a few kinds now.’

‘Well, I mean… I’m really just speaking in general terms,’ Aelu explained. ‘I’d rather not have any of them coming through the gates. If we can help it.’

‘Hm. Never had you pegged for a master tactician,’ Big Fish muttered quietly, as he bitterly set down his favourite big gun on the battlements. ‘I guess Atha gets chatty when he’s humping you.’

‘Hm? What’re you saying?’ Aelu replied absently, between her thunderous sniping shots. Her laserbolt flew through the plaza and blew open a horned monster’s skull.

‘Ahh, nuthin’,’ Fish replied, suddenly feeling terrible about it. For all he knew this could be the last time they spoke. ‘You do know I, er… I like you, and respect you. In a buddy way, I mean,’ he told her awkwardly. ‘…You know?’

‘Yeah, Fish. I know,’ Aelu replied warmly, with a rare gorgeous smile beside her smoking rifle. ‘Right back at you. You big lovely dope.’ Grinning widely, Fish looked up at fresh floating columns above them. Hulking new defence drones, their cannons armed and ready; settling into a vast new halo among their hovering comrades.

‘…Where did all those come from?’ Fish rumbled at their ranks.

Thier smiled to see his work in fruition. Endless planning, across countless square miles, to salvage every dead distant drone his scouts had made note of. Yet another secret project to fill his sleepless nights… though he was sure Her Majesty wouldn’t object this time. If Her Majesty yet survived.

‘Good work, Mr Isse,’ said Atha, as he walked up beside him.

‘Is this firepower sufficient, General?’ Thier replied.

‘It’ll buy us more time, at least,’ Atha sighed heavily. ‘And for our queen. If she’s still alive.’ There was a short heavy silence between them, as if the soldier had left it like a question.

‘…Yes, General,’ Thier replied brightly, having thought on the sheer lethal prowess that he’d glimpsed in her. ‘I believe she is.’ About to reply with his usual cynicism, Atha thought better of it. Maybe he just wasn’t that man any more.

‘Well. I suppose your faith’s enough for me, Mr Isse,’ he told him, as their fresh drones unleashed a blinding new punishment on the swarms flooding the plaza. ‘I hope you’re right.’ Thier smiled back silently, as the General strode away down the walls.

Against what was coming for them, Atha knew that no amount of firepower would ever be enough. The Watchers’ damned General was still only testing their strength.

…Speak of the Devil. He could see them now. Beyond the rubble’s distant bottlenecks, the Watchers’ real weapons were showing themselves. An endless living war machine, moving as slow and sure as a glacier. Come to topple their walls into dust.

‘The death-gods gather endlessly,’ Barkless muttered darkly, to Sea Mist standing beside him. He pulled away his rifle’s spent charge pack, reloading and opening fire again.

‘Let them come,’ she replied fiercely, to see him smiling back at her. Stoking up her mate’s Fierce-Hope anew. But beyond that bloody sea of curled dead spiders, they saw strange new shadows too. A sudden eerie glow in the rubble landscape… and a blast. Every fighter on the walls stared in shock at the force of it. A rolling colossal dustcloud, where the next hellish wave marched through.

*

Out in the clearing brickdust, the Watchers’ dark General smiled imperiously. Reaching for his sheath belt, he pulled a grand vicious sabre and held it high ahead of him. Commanding everything forward. His death-black conquering force.

*

Seven roared furiously as he dived down low to burn through them. A dozen napalm passes, and still the plague marched on. Vast squids tore gaps through the rubble. Armoured spiders marched in their wake. Then ranks of monsters; horned and hulking behind them. Columns of rapid wretches, and twisted living catapults with their casks. Bone-clad serpents and fire-eyed gorgons. Endless zombie rivers of the Watchers’ dark creations, splitting into halves as they filled the vast plaza to surround it.

Atha watched the horde’s soldiers hatefully. They were masked and armoured heavily, and prowling through the mounds in slow procession. His Guardians were terrified; even the Tribals were losing Fierce-Hope. If there were any gods up there, he could’ve really used their help right now.

But he didn’t doubt there was a Hell any more. He was looking at it.

*

‘…I love you, my Barkless Tree,’ Sea Mist said beside him, where Big Fish and Aelu headed up the walls’ grim defenders alongside. Barkless watched his mate in stern-gratitude, and held her hand strongly in reply. She could see that growing fire in his stare.

‘Rise up!’ Barkless roared at the forces around him. ‘Prove your great valour this day!’

‘And hold fast!’ Stone Shore bellowed close by, uniting the cheering Tribe with his war-call.

‘Hold fast, and turn your hearts to stone!’ came Cold Moon’s echoing reply. Sky Tribe’s fierce calls rose up all around them, as they led the chant with a fiery rage on the battlements. Cave Clan stood with Bronzeback. Red-Eyes with Grey-Furs close behind. The tribe’s white Polar brutes held great weapons at the ready; smithed from monstrous metal or carved in slayed black bone. Howling altogether, to the stars and their long-distant world.

‘Guardians of Serenity! Ready your rifles!’ Atha barked on the western battlements, across his soldiers’ grim staring ranks. Thousands of guns took fresh aim from the walls in tight clattering sequence. He’d known it for a while now; he’d never see his kids again. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t fight to keep them safe a while longer, out on their far-flung homeworld. He’d die on this planet… but at least he’d die for a cause. A shot at redemption, finally. For the last small vestiges of all that was good and innocent in this world.

…For Virtue.

‘Bows, ready!’ came Barkless Tree’s shout. ‘The Ancestors put strength in your hands!’ Sky Tribe drew their arrows in stern synchronicity and loaded their longbows as one. Staring down fiercely at their countless dark opponents, for the faithless fallen wretches they were.

‘Guess this is it,’ Aelu sighed heavily, reloading her heavy rifle on the platform.

‘Hm. Good day to die,’ Big Fish rumbled back, without his usual humour. Just a huge growing stare, as he mounted his gatling laser on the walls. His kind had never known such a fearsome enemy. Maybe Shoalbond would find him today, and hold his honour restored.

‘Best to die strong, in great battle,’ Sea Mist considered, with a muted tone.

‘And sit close by First Ancestor, to feast around First-Hearthfire,’ Barkless smiled back. ‘I know of no better place to die than by your side. I’ll be with you still, in the Beyond.’ Sea Mist watched him for a moment, and kissed her mate fiercely on the walls. They aimed their rifles side by side.

‘You will defend these walls, to your last breath!’ Atha told his gathered soldiers. ‘Whether in war, or in peace, we’re all dead anyway! All we get to choose is how we go out. And what we died for.’ Looking down the line, all he saw were frightened faces in the silence. Thousands of crowded soldiers, staring at certain death beyond their borders. But not all.

‘…Bring it on, sir!’ a woman called out boldly from their ranks. A fresh conscript, angry and reluctant at first, who’d once held on to her fine clothes and makeup for a little too long since the Fall.

‘For Her Majesty!’ a loyalist yelled out down the line. More shouting soldiers echoed his words.

‘This is for the sons I’ve lost!’ said a green man, passionately. ‘For everyone here who still has kids to protect! I’m protecting them too!’ Many more people called out in reply.

‘Those things won’t get over these walls!’ an older woman added fearlessly. ‘Not while I’ve got a drop of blood left in me!’ A cheer rose up all around her.

‘I’m not scared of those bastards!’ a young man bellowed, whose hands were better suited to violins. ‘I’ll kill a hundred of those things before they drop me! If they take my world, they’ll suffer for it! They’ll always suffer for it!’ The city’s raw shouts swelled like a tide all around him.

‘Incoming!’ Atha roared out to them, as he watched the plaza moving beyond their rising shouts. The first dark ranks were filling the dry moat that circled them. ‘Trench’s full! Let ‘em have it!’

Down below, the Watchers’ charging monsters staggered and stumbled into a gigantic circling trench, where hidden volt-vines glowed to life. A sudden blinding electrocution that dropped them in their hundreds, and forced their army back like a buzzing-blue wall of fire. A massacre. Atha snarled victoriously on the walls high above.

‘Sky Tribe, Big Fish, stay on those spiders! Open fire!’ he yelled out loud across the battlements. ‘Guardians, drop the monsters incoming! Snipers, pick off those catapults, before they get in close!’ all across the battlements, Atha’s ferocious forces opened fire on the coming grand horde. ‘Drones, focus fire on the perimeter! Keep those things off the walls! Artillery on those giants, bring ‘em down!’

‘Gunships scrambling! Stay with them, Seven!’ Aelu called out, as their small hybrid air force rose to open fire on the battlefield. Seven tore past the walls like a thundering phantom, with a roar they could feel in their chests. Blazing new violence through the horde in the plaza, as the Ministry’s walls erupted with fresh laserfire.

Seven raced out roaring napalm, annihilating the squids in his path. They toppled in gore on the plaza behind him, as he dropped on the wretches and ripped them apart. He swept off again on a raging-red massacre, spilling their silver in great slopping tides. Blowing apart serpents as they raced for the Ministry, and sweeping off supersonic for the Watchers’ General himself. A flash; an echo. Seven barely ducked aside as the Watchers’ blinding artillery bolt punched a gory trench across his chest. Their General watched intently, in a ruined city tower below. More shots forced Seven away.

Atha glared at the coming carnage, where Seven swept past furiously over their heads. The Ghosts, his Guardians, and Sky Tribe, fighting on fiercely all around him. Thier’s countless drones, machine-gunning; the hybrid gunships and artillery emptying every shot they had. Holding back a vast dark sea of them, and losing ground. They’d only ever buy more time for their queen.

Every bastard, gorgon and sword-wielding wretch was creeping in to surround their walls; racing on and falling in an endless bloody ocean. There were always more to replace them; all hell-bent on wiping these people out. Atha snarled at the swamping plaza. Cold black death surrounded them.

But more sudden shapes stole all heart from him. Angular, and airborne. Distant and growing. Black casks slung between their claws.

‘Dragons!’ he yelled out to his soldiers. Sparking fresh terror on the walls. ‘Gas! Gas inbound! Fall back for the hallways! Now!’ Jaw clenched, chest pounding, Atha stared down hatefully at that grim distant figure in the ruins. Ushering his Guardians past him, in retreat.

*

The Watchers’ dark General was smiling, as his monstrous air force came tearing in over the city. The horde’s first waves had entertained him; a little bloody theatre against those walls.

But he was done toying with them. With a nod to his subordinates, the bulk of his armada was unleashed. A sea of living weapons shambled on toward the Ministry; his soldiers striding slowly in their wake. His first armoured serpents already wound their way up the Ministry’s emptying walls; spitting spikes through dying drones and impervious to their laserfire. They were torn away screaming, where the rogue dragon caught them… but there were far too many for it to counter alone. Already, the General’s climbing creations tore the enemy’s artillery apart. He delighted in the remnants’ terror, as his living catapults launched gas-casks over their battlements. Driving the resistance indoors, then finally underground, where they’d trap themselves in the catacombs. His spiders would do the rest, leaving the ape-bitch stranded out there… and soon this world was theirs.

With a word, the General set vast flaming gorgons in motion. Striding monstrously for the Ministry’s barred abandoned gates. Squid were ripping at the walls already, while his forerunning dragons tore down those stubborn drones. Smiling and satisfied, looking overhead, his immense living air force began to drop their black-gas payloads. The glorious falling whine of his bombs.

45

Tabitha raced on through deeper parkland, overgrown by the Watchers’ plants and wildlife. That black-bone cathedral was closer now; she was creeping ever nearer. Ducking monstrous flowers and peering from black anemones. Checking for monsters, for anything, as she ran on quietly toward the hive and its towering core. She saw fierce living turrets planted in the hilltops; those same colossal guns that’d fired on Seven’s approach.

He’d never have survived the flight. It’s always been my path, and mine alone.

The national park was fading around her; a leaf-rustling blur as she raced through it. The wilds ahead were all pure Watcher. Native trees were coated completely in hard strangling vines; their tiny lights blinked like living stars. The landscape was shrinkwrapped in bright blue moss. Beyond it stood the Watchers’ monochrome forest, sheer acres of gothic Christmas trees, that she remembered from New York. But everything was bigger here, and clearly growing stronger. Maybe with this city’s perfect summer days.

Or the rich human soup they’ve been feeding on, since they took my world from me. Serenity’s super-healthy species too. Countless lives, reduced to plantfood.

The Watchers weren’t wasting any time. This conquered landscape was brimming with alien plants and animals, and those floating nautilus-things. There were shoots and giant bunches of strange plants; eerily familiar. Headless white mushroom-stalks and huge primeval blooms. And those orb-headed flowers, where small red jetbirds sipped the sparking current.

And something new, up ahead. Nectar-dripping fruitflowers, where the planet’s native batbirds were grazing. The size and shape were perfect for them; probably engineered.

Strange that the Watchers are feeding the native wildlife… unless they’re trapping them–

They were. A flower snapped shut suddenly; a batbird wrapped in its crushing petals. Squawking and struggling, writhing desperately for its life, while the plant huffed spores that poisoned it. Running over, Tabitha reached it quickly and opened its tough bright wrappings, but she hadn’t been fast enough to save it. The poor thing was curled horrifically; its stray feathers drifting down. Lured, unthinking, into a deathtrap.

Well there’s an omen, she thought darkly, as she checked around quickly again. Still… this ain’t my first deathtrap rodeo. If you bastards want to fight dirty, let’s go.

She saw a huge shape and took cover, as it prowled through the forest close by. Probably out here hunting her, after all her airborne commotion. The monster had been perfectly camouflaged between the vast black trunks around it… though now its bright drooling metal was something of a giveaway. Tabitha cursed, as she reached for the belt where her bleach used to be. Nothing to cloak her scent any more. She’d just have to get away quickly, through those oversized flowers, before it got in close. But nervous as she was, she seemed to sneak past it so easily. The brute barely twitched its snout.

It went the same way with more stalking spiders, as she raced on silently for the forest’s inner edges. Another pack too, that crawled from the trees even closer, as she passed by swiftly out of sight. Then another hunting monster, and another on the borders. Even those dazing blue flowers failed to trigger beside her. She slipped past spiders blissfully, still careful to keep out of sight, but with barely a sniff out of them. Like she wasn’t even there.

Unless… maybe that pipe-squid, and the strange hazing things its scent had done to her head? Its cloud of bio-chemicals, and the new sprung strength that she’d felt in her limbs… and with her just crawling around numbly in its carnage, to scoop up bloody parts of herself… her strange sticky cells may have adopted it.

What if I don’t smell like me any more? she wondered. Am I giving off Eau de Watcher? …Well there’s a thing.

Tabitha reached the forest edge quickly, and crouched to study the vast turbine-growths ahead of her. A hard vengeful stare, as she studied the Watchers’ distant forces from the shadows. She saw more growing armies of monsters and spiders, with dormant squids and pale still dragons around them. Striding soldiers and strange bastard growths. An endless accumulating force, probably preparing for their conquering world war. Readying to annihilate Serenity, once the Ministry had fallen, by sheer countless numbers alone.

And that stark ribbed cathedral. A cluster of black spikes at the heart of it all. Towering monstrous, with fierce dragons circling. Vast and half-faded in the hot summer haze. Her younger self would’ve been terrified, here on the threshold of it all. But there was nothing out there that she hadn’t faced already. She’d seen their cathedral, where they’d taken New York. She’d finally savaged the one who’d tricked her inside it. She wondered if Alex was dead yet… or whether she’d get to take her vengeance afresh.

…I’m still thinking of Self, she remembered. Abiding for a moment, and detaching like Barkless taught her, Tabitha slipped off her ego with her rank ragged cloak. That gleaming forest-cave had shown her everything.

There is no Self. There’s no one here to feel scared. Life’s all that matters, and I’m only one fleeting expression of it. I’m nothing.

Her family, her jumbled genes, her whole unwitting bloodline… maybe she’d been bred by fate to stop the Watchers.

…Or not. Maybe it was all just random probability.

An equal and opposite reaction.

*

Deep in the hive, through its towering turbine clusters, a pair of Watcher soldiers strode quickly for their great pink reservoirs. Rushing under orders, to redirect the city’s bloody slurry toward new gorgon growths in the caves. One soldier turned at sudden shouting, as the other stared aghast toward their southern borders. A great tide of smoke, filthy-grey and all-consuming, was blowing into the hive from its boundary. Bright rising flames stretched on endlessly, taking hold of more trees in mere moments. Their forest was on fire.

Coughing already in the smoke’s blinding tide, a dozen soldiers ranging further out were forced to pull their breather masks on. Searching the trees furiously for the source of it, while the blown smoke shrouded their sky.

A pair of searching troops glimpsed a dripping black bottle; one of their own standard-issue canteens. Oil. Emptied out widely, across hurried piles of burning branches. The Watchers shrank back uselessly, as the vast towering blaze spread too fast and ferocious for them to stand. This bright summer country hadn’t seen rain since they’d invaded, while the pine-needle floor of their forest formed endless brittle kindling. Their trees had grown prolifically on this placid sunny paradise, covering dark sprawling acres in days. Every lipid, every oil-slick drop of their spiders’ pink slurry, filled their shielding forest with the fuel of rich dead citizens. The fierce-burning fat of this land.

*

The hive’s commanders sent out a great hurried spider swarm, filled with foam and water, to douse the distant forest. The vast spreading smoke hung so black now that the ranging Watchers could barely see their turbine-structures behind them.

Nor could one soldier see its missing partner, until it went in search and found their body pouring blood on the murking moss-fields. It turned in sudden panic; gasped a breath to yell the alarm. Barely made a gargle, when a leaping shadow slit its throat in a golden bloodburst. Bright blazing eyes that vanished in the smoke-clouds, as the tall toppling soldier dropped dead.

Another armoured Watcher fell back grunting; shocked to death in a soundless takedown. Three more soldiers dropped in shrouded succession, where they glimpsed their murdered spiders and a strange new apex-predator. A trail of clawed corpses in her path.

She swept past swift and silent; a spirit in spiralling smoke. Blinding their eyes and ripping bared throats out, wherever they showed weakness in the dark.

A small slight silhouette raced through their smoke-glooming borders. A banshee. Hunting Watchers with the wind, like a plains-clan had shown her. She wore the mossy landscape and came alive from the ground around them, like ladies made of flowers and deep strong strangling roots. A quick soundless shadow with scores to settle. It painted their blue moss golden. Left bloody executions in its wake.

It swept past their sight like an angel. Descending in sparks through their terror, like the dark-clouded devil itself.

It set spiders alight in vendetta. Sowed confusion wherever it passed. Striking down monsters silently, like a fierce fleeting hope through their hive.

Its quick-clawed shadow slayed giants. Somersaulting through their limbs to drop them dead. It knifed bloody wretches with the strokes of Special Forces, and enough sudden volts to kill a pantherwolf. A nightshade glimpse in smoke and coiling pheromones, and all their mighty guarding swarms couldn’t scent it.

All the world was shifting mist here. Soft-lit drifting and faded, like grim-holy deep ocean dust. Darklighting murky and strange.

The soft silent smoke shrouded bodies. Gold-spattered heaps and trails of them, that weaved a winding path through their hive. Terrified soldiers were haunted by a Watcher-Killer, prowling in from the blood and dust of their conquests. A dark living weapon; their ultimate chance creation. And now their final great unravelling. Glass-transcendent and calm as a clear night sky.

High in their crystalline towers, yelling elites demanded to know what was happening. Their world was a glooming smoke-scape, where endless hordes still hunted it. But it moved like thought and shadow. A far hidden glimpse and a sudden bloody scourge. A phantom bent on vengeance; forged from Earth’s murdered billions. A raven-black raw reaction, killing ever faster as it went.

It moved in violet pixel-mist; gloomlusting dark and magnetic. Volt-quick vengeance incarnate. It ran and sprinted and hurtled like wild bloody instinct, fearless-unthinking, as if it didn’t truly exist. The hive’s living airs warped around it, this reigning cellular cocktail, and couldn’t tell the difference from their plants. Letting it pass unhindered, where it raced through their network like a pure numbing pulse.

Soldiers dropped in lethal sparks and crackling cinders. Flew back fierce and flaming in its free-flowing feral fatalities. Stumbled grunting in golden gore and staggered down dead from its shadow. To the hive’s every sense and scanning synapse, that hybrid thing was more Watcher than them. Conjuring seas of confusion behind her, as she passed through her smoke-dream unseen.

*

Tabitha finally rested breathlessly, bloodspattered and hungover from her efforts, in a small dipping cavern among the vast turbine-flowers. The forest still burned far behind her, such a simple idea, like Sunshine’s arson escape from his desert prison. Like Deep Roots’ ancient stories, of the Mist King and his hidden army on the march.

She saw the Watchers’ core-cathedral ahead, through a small rocky opening in the cave wall. It looked so near that she could reach out and touch it. Just a second to rest here, before she crept on through her shrouding smoke inside it, and–

And then she realised, pacing on deeper through this strange peaceful cavern, that she was surrounded by rank mauled corpses. Peering in further, she saw eerie primal monuments made of raw-gnawed bloody remains. A growing stench of rotten flesh. A prowling sound like creaking bones. Its sudden shadow darkened her shoulder.

‘…I knew you’d find me,’ she told it quietly, with a deep sighing breath at its presence. Its stale-meat stink filled her head. ‘What took you so long?’ Pulling her knife, Tabitha turned in grim acceptance. And there it was, glaring back like a drooling nightmare. Her stalker. Drawing its jagged broadsword; a twisted proto-predator. A bLaCk-boNed ReAper aT hER BacK.

Its sudden sword-stroke slit the air in a split-second. A piercing-high ring sparked out bright where it hit. She’d barely time to catch the strike on her knife blade. Trembling hard just to hold back its strength.

46

The grand horde was never-ending. The scarred smoking Ministry was awash in a writhing sea. Its corpse-strewn battlements were overrun with brutes and bone-clad serpents, tearing down the last artillery in a rabid zombie rage. Countless dragons circled it, destroying the last of the remnants’ hybrid gunships, as flaming giants beat at the towering gates.

Seven burned through their numbers savagely, and all his great black fury was never enough. He crashed down suddenly against the clubs of shadowed gorgons, as he dived past the gates to murder a third. Their jagged swipes forced him back with bloody batterings. Vast dragon packs drove him away.

Out in the nearest ruins, the Watchers’ General smiled to behold his victory. The windblown ash of their Ministry flurried past him like dead grey snow. The song of their screams was pure poetry. The natives’ stubborn existence, unseemly. None so weak deserved to linger on.

*

Jaw clenched tight, terrified for his falling forces, Atha urged on their fighting retreat. The northern walls were toppling now, where those huge ripping squids coiled thickest. The roofs and cratered gardens were a cloud of vile black gas. If not for Seven’s sudden landing to push it back with gusting wing-strokes, and torch the freaks creeping down the walls with their jagged black blades at the ready, his troops would be falling as they fled.

…And now their walls dripped silver, as blood-bursting spiders swarmed in. Their towering gates had fallen. Shadowed gorgons peered inside. A monstrous flood passed the giants’ stomping feet. Hundreds of them died by firing squad, as all the Ministry’s gathered weapons unloaded on the doors across the grand main lobby. But as fiercely as the soldiers fought them, the hallways they’d barricaded barely held back the horde for a moment. The Watchers redefined expendable. In minutes, those bastards had thrown mindless thousands in the horde to their deaths.

‘Fall back!’ Atha bellowed again through the hallways, as he emptied his rifle on a roaring bloody monster that dropped. ‘Fall back for the vaults! Now!’

*

Thier’s final drones and droids fought on in the corridors, but couldn’t withstand them. They were torn to falling pieces at their barricades, where racing monsters pulled them apart.

Barkless Tree looked back furiously, firing on with hundreds more fighters, as they covered their army’s retreat. A hurried heartbroken exodus through their halls and cloistered gardens, as they watched all they’d built and fought for drop and burn in the horde’s rabid path.

Aelu and Sea Mist fought on together; gunning down spiders or knifing through those that scuttled too close. Their forces’ running column was covered finally by Big Fish, stomping on quickly and turning back constantly, to mow down the nearest swarms with his gatling.

Their army made fast fighting progress past the main gardens, and on through the stone arch for the grand old barracks beyond. A sea of shouts and laserbolts, as their columns gunned down charging brutes at their edges. Stone Shore and the Sky Tribe fought in their element; holding back the swarming spiders with their shield-walls and slaughtering them ferociously with their spears.

Gorgons in the plaza hurled vast arcs of napalm past the toppling walls, sending great slopping fires through the outer courtyards. The wilting flowers were burning now, where Calia had sat and picked them during the Sky Queen’s nervous arrival. Their queen’s web of light-vines darkened; they left her dying volt-tree in flames. A sudden falling monster ripped through them; murdering panicked fighters and cutting off a dozen more from the archway. Despite the army’s endless covering gunfire, they couldn’t hold back the swarm through the arch. The main force was separated completely from a lone pack of troops and shouting conscripts, circled by spiders and prowling monsters beyond their reach. Forced into a separate fighting retreat. Immediately, a dark scaled tribal was the first to take charge of their forlorn group.

‘Cold Moon!’ a young Red-Eye yelled out desperately, through the old stone archway. Struggling to reach his alpha in the swarming courtyard, where the staring monsters cut them off. He kicked and yelled uselessly as Stone Shore held him back.

‘Go!’ Cold Moon called back sternly, as her dozen’s flashing rifles held the creeping swarm at bay. ‘Fight on for those innocents, my brave Clouded Stars! Go!’ Her small group’s loud distractions pulled the monsters away from the army’s main column. Bought them time to escape.

Big Fish watched Cold Moon retreat into distant corridors with her group of stranded Guardians, before the burning courtyard behind them was completely overrun.

…But there was a chance. He felt fierce Shoalbond in that moment, and reached for the huge blade on his back. If he could just cut those monsters down, and–

‘Fish!’ Barkless yelled through the firefight. ‘Protect, Minnis-Re cubs! Need you!’ Big Fish sighed in response, and nodded with heavy hearts. Sea Mist and Barkless ushered him quickly through the barracks’ old stone archway, as rushing Guardians heaved the ancient gates shut behind them. Between their thick closing doors, Sea Mist watched in heartbreak as their great dimming volt-tree toppled in the blaze.

*

Cold Moon’s small group hadn’t a hope of rejoining the main fighting force. The horde pushed them ever higher through the Ministry’s stairs and crawling corridors, where sudden pouncing spiders dropped another dead among them. Ten remaining Guardians fired back from columns and statues, as the horde crashed and rampaged through the tiered halls behind them.

‘Through, here,’ Cold Moon commanded them, in a calm clear voice which had lately made its peace with Death. Since she’d seen Swift Blood’s poisoned body, after the dragons’ first air raid. Fallen in defence of his adopted son. She ushered her team quickly into a top-floor corridor, with a broken stone balustrade running alongside. An armoured spider leapt for them; dropped dead by her snarling dagger-throw.

The panicked few men and women finally found a sturdier doorway along their final corridor. Piling quickly into grand scorched chambers, they weaved in behind toppled columns to mount their last stand. The corner walls and ceiling were coated in a strange dying garden.

‘Take your cover, ladies and gents,’ a Guardian officer told them grimly. ‘Check your ammunition.’ Metallic shrieks filled the distant corridors past the doorway. Wide-eyed and terror-struck, the group watched each other and waited. All but one conscript, who turned away at something bright behind him.

Vik stared in surprise, heartbroken and smiling, when he recognised Calia’s crayon picture. He saw a fierce woman crowned in antlers, and her great black dragon in the sky. His young daughter’s gift to the Sky Queen, framed and hanging proudly over Her Majesty’s grand burned bed. He wiped his eyes quickly, smearing his hard grimy face. They’d practised Calia’s curtsy so many times, that first night they’d escaped here. Liina had laughed and teased him endlessly, to see her husband curtsy so daintily. But Calia had wanted to get it just right for Her Majesty; ever the perfectionist. His wife and daughter were hidden in the vaults, now. The safest place there was.

But he couldn’t fight properly back here. Vik sighed nervously and strode in closer to the doorway. Aiming his rifle as he knelt. He wanted a good shot on those bastards coming for them.

*

‘They’re breaching the battlements! Open fire!’ Atha bellowed beside his retreating soldiers. Mounting a fearsome rifle barrage with his old battalion, as the bulk of his forces fell back from the parade ground for the office doors beyond.

‘Into the vaults!’ Aelu called out to them, as the barrack buildings surged with their sudden crowds. Sky Tribe and Guardians; Ghosts and hardened conscripts. All rushing through the military museum in quick calm order. Veterans lined the corridors behind everyone, to cover their hurried retreat. Their laser rifles were screeching from the outer doors.

‘So this is the plan?’ Big Fish rumbled angrily. His big eyes lit with gunflashes, as he emptied his gatling laser through the creeping tide of spiders in the parade grounds.

‘Well what else would you have us do, Fish?’ Aelu snapped beside him, as she raised her rifle and shot down a monster that ran for them. ‘Do you know anywhere safer to fall back to? Hm!?’

‘Fine. Point taken,’ he grumbled, as Aelu tossed out a ticking Sunshine Special and Fish slammed the metal door shut behind them. ‘No need to get all pissy about it.’

‘…Meh, I’m pissy about everything,’ Aelu muttered in apology. ‘Sorry, Fish. You’re right. It isn’t a good plan.’ The bomb’s muffled bang behind them murdered scores of rushing spiders locked outside.

‘Still, it’s the only plan we’ve got,’ he shrugged back, as they strode on through the barracks with Barkless and Sea Mist walking ahead. ‘We’ll make it work.’ Fish smiled at her grimly, and offered Aelu his giant bunched knuckles.

‘Fuck these bugs,’ Aelu grinned back. ‘This’ll be the hardest bloody meal they’ve ever worked for.’ She knocked his knuckles in a quick clean fist-bump, as they walked on last for the bustling deeper vaults down the stairway.

Something slammed on the blast doors behind them. The first of many monster-dents, as the horde clawed and bit at its thick ancient steel.

‘Dark Storm still lives,’ Barkless assured Sea Mist in Stormish, where they walked on ahead for the Ministry’s bustling basements. ‘Her skill will save these innocents. Fight on fiercely, and we will see our hope renewed.’

‘…I know it, in my heart,’ Sea Mist replied beside him, smiling sadly. ‘I’ve prayed for days now, for the strength to fight on fiercely. Just as my sister fights on fiercely for us,’ she added, nodding with utter conviction. ‘She’s alive. She’ll survive it all.’

*

Atha and Aelu ducked into the deepest vaults behind their crowded fighters, where Big Fish hurriedly forced the huge door shut. A Guardian worked fast to lock it with him, by bar, wheel and a hefty antique key. Any last way they could manage, while soldiers and Sky Tribe dragged heavy girders closer on ropes. Bracing and barricading, rifles aimed and arrows ready, with Fish’s massive strength to raise the beams and prop them up against it. Putting every desperate measure between them and the growing scuttle-sounds outside.

Thier shared a dark muttering corner with Irren, while Barkless and Sea Mist made a count of everyone’s remaining ammunition. Saa had rounded up an army of Guardians and first-aiders, baby Lea in her arms, and busily worked laps around the crowded catacombs. Speaking with dozens she could help or comfort, and returning frequently to Anero’s hunched wounded shadow in the corner. Stone Shore led the Tribe in strengthening prayer. Many of the crowds were talking about Tabitha; their last desperate hope beyond the ruins.

‘Do you think she’s alive?’ said Aelu, where they checked on the frightened younger families in the deepest vine-glowing vaults.

‘Based on infuriating personal experience? Yeah. I’m starting to think so,’ Atha replied. Everyone turned in sudden terror, as an echoing slam boomed on their thick vault door. They could hear the monster’s grinding mouth and massive crackling breaths as it began to chew on the steel. ‘And if she is still alive, I’ll assume Her Majesty’s planning on doing something,’ Atha said darkly. ‘Now would be a pretty good time for her to get to it.’

47

The Watchers were reeling from Tabitha’s shrouded assault, and driving out their hive’s frantic forces to hunt her down. Hundreds of monsters scoured the landscape in the clearing smoke. Snarling dragons swept low between the towering turbine-plants in search of her. Passing by the small cavern entrance completely.

Down in the glowing caves beneath it all, Tabitha was locked in fierce struggling combat with her shock-proof stalker. Deflecting its rapid sword-strokes desperately with her knife. Every cramped airborne strike and acrobatic slash she aimed at it, the bastard was there to block and parry. Leaping and striking in eerie mirror-image, until all her wild useless efforts were tiring her too quickly.

…God, it’s strong. All the strength and speed she could muster barely bought her a moment’s rest from it, far across the cavern’s arena. Prowling through the shadows in its stink. It was spined and thin; vicious and serpentine. A horrifying ghoul. Its head was a staring black skull; unblinking. A bone-armoured corpse the colour of night. Almost a stunted Watcher; one without skin. But hunched and animal too. A hybrid like her. Maybe some primeval version of them, or a strengthened missing link from their past.

The thing had Alex’s speed, and his strength. But it fought unpredictably. An unnatural multiplicity of styles. What was worse, it anticipated her. Every bloody move. As if she fought her own random reflection.

It was prowling close again. It was hard-bodied; emaciated. Everything about it was a grown weapon, and it moved with the sound of creaking bones. Its round soulless eyes watched her like glassy golf balls; hungry and glinting in its dark staring skull. Peering from the shadows where it circled her. This creature was lethal; fast as lightning and vicious with its sword.

But she’d take it. She had no choice. She was so close now, to the hive’s cathedral core. Only this stalker stood in her way.

…Come and get it, you creeping bastard.

The thing pounced too fast. Jerking and dodging as it raced toward her, swinging its sword with animal breaths, it struck her knife aside and slammed her to the ground with a punch. It leapt back quickly from her sparking strikes and lunged to slice the dirt as she rolled away. Christ, it was fast. All she could do was dodge its blade; one sudden whistling swipe after another. Every one of them aimed at her neck. It knew just how to kill her; like it was engineered to collect her head.

The stalker’s sword-swipes forced her back, through deeper caverns. One split-second strike after another, shattering stones and screeching off the rocks in flying sparks. Staring right through her with those clear beady eyes. Every swipe and punch she threw at it, it dodged and parried more powerfully. This thing was faster than her.

She’d already learned that she couldn’t claw or shock it. Its bone-armoured body seemed hard as living rock. All her booming shotgun volts just wouldn’t get through to its flesh.

It took wide sudden sword-swings, crashing and clanging on her knife as she struggled to block its attacks. It swung up snarling and spun the longsword expertly, bringing it down ferociously over her head. Forcing her backwards with bone-jolting blows, just to catch its endless strikes against her knife-edge.

Every sword-stroke staggered her; the thing was so bloody powerful. Tabitha stumbled back, forced on the run when it tried non-stop to take her head off. The stalker’s next swing shoved her down on the back-foot; it heaved the long blade in a sudden vicious spin. Swiping it brutally through the clattering bones and totems that lined its caves. It was all she could do just to force her knife up continually, grunting and retreating uselessly, as she blocked its violent sword-strokes in her wake.

Its swings cut ragged notches in her knife blade. Jarring her wrists painfully and pounding in sparks on every impact. The bastard was too fast; she just didn’t have its instincts. It swept her knife wide and punched her savagely; knocked her back yelling with a break in her jaw. Tabitha leapt from its killing swing through the dirt and rolled away non-stop; scrambling aside from the ringing strike that it sparked through the rocks where she’d fallen. Dashing away snarling, broken bones healing, she finally put some space between them in the glowing cavern.

The glaring creature prowled a semicircle. A glooming predator. Watching for her weaknesses, and frustrated as she healed. Neither were expecting an easy fight.

Tabitha growled feline and attacked it fiercely. Fighting back ferociously, forcing its sword-swings back with her knife blade, to open up a staggering moment and punch it full-force in the face. But the black-bone bastard barely flinched. Its sudden rising sword-stroke threw her back again on the defensive. Gasping and staggering at its snarling volley as it spun and swung its sword down powerfully. Rabid hacking strikes, like the falling axe of an executioner, that finally dropped her exhausted. She could only block its swing as it cornered her. It knocked the ragged knife from her hand.

In the next split-second it had her pinned and struggling against the rock-wall. Wrestling its wrists in her bright sparking grip, resisting it frantically, as it forced the black sword to her throat. Tabitha yelled out uselessly. Arms trembling as she barely held it back. Her world was reduced to the stalker’s rotten-meat stench. Those round clear eyes, bent on murder, right up in her panicked snarling face. She couldn’t overpower it. Its strength forced the sword-edge through her skin. Cutting through her slowly; a blood-streaming slit in her throat. When her strength gave out it’d take off her head. She was yelling and wrestling in agony. Kicking and struggling frantically against her slow murder. Trying to claw a gap and electrocute it. Slow screaming torture as the sword-edge sank through her throat.

With the last of her strength, Tabitha gripped the sword blade itself. Screaming out loud where the Watcher metal cut her trembling palm. But obstructing it. Gaining the split-second of leverage she needed to coil a fist and box the stalker hard in the eye. She seized on its stagger and savaged it. A hail of jabbing punches and a thundering fast right-hook. Her kickboxing left flung the sword from its grip. She swung another punch before it realised. Shocked her dazed opponent with a knuckleduster crunch in the jaw. The staggering stalker stared back furiously, and burst her nose bloody with a lightning-fast punch of its own. It laid into her hard and dropped her. Gripped her wrist and beat the knife from her grip when she recovered it. Struggling desperately, Tabitha drove her knee up hard between its legs. Inflicting no pain that she could tell. But at least it forced the bastard off her.

Stepping quickly into her boxing stance, they were on her turf now. Tabitha ducked its punches and weaved past its kicks. Spun aside fast from its raging-bull swipes. But its vicious right-hook caught her stumbling. Knocked her punch-drunk onto fierce jagged rocks, where she barely rolled away from its pounce.

Staggering to her feet, fists up and furious, Tabitha could taste the warm blood welling as her teeth healed. And used it. She spat a sudden spray of it. Blinding her opponent for the split-second it took to block its wild jab. She struck back hard with a crunching punch in its cheek. Time crawled as she ducked in fast with an uppercut. She blocked the stalker’s raging swing; countered with a quick right-hook in its flinching ribs. Deflected its left and drove her knuckles in hard to crack its jaw. Staggered, half-blinded, it reeled back in shock as she clawed its eyes like an animal. Her swipe turned its head away; a vicious split-second where she kicked out its knee and swung a slick savage haymaker that levelled it. Down, but not out.

…Round three.

Tabitha was prowling. Snarling at it. Wiping the blood from her raw healing nose, and trying to catch her breath. Watching the stalker’s shock as it staggered to its feet. Searching all the while for a gap in its bone-clad body. Somewhere to drive her knife in and drop it.

The stalker swung back savagely with the sword it’d grabbed up behind it; she’d barely time to scramble aside from its swings. Snatching her knife from the corner to block the stalker’s sudden down-stroke over her head. Dashing away quickly as its blade struck sparks across the rocks behind her.

The stalker swung furiously. Nothing held back. Its strike knocked her knife low; its punch dropped her yelling to the ground. Growling viciously, it pounced for her. Tabitha snarled as she shot her knife up, deflecting a swing that would’ve severed her head. She fought back with a rapid flurry, deflecting its wild sword swings. It kicked her back suddenly in the stomach; collapsing her on the rocks with a grunt. Waiting for its killing stroke, Tabitha rolled aside and hit it hard. Rolling apart in unison, they leapt and attacked one another in sudden mirror image. Punching and blade-slashing in equal feral ferocity. But its sword swings staggered her. She dropped down dazed from its rock-hard backhand.

Tabitha crawled. Ears ringing and brow slick with sweat. Barely blocking the stalker’s sword as it swung at her; she grunted in exhaustion just to wrestle it back and stand up. She spun from its swipe and knifed it in the side as it passed her. For the first time, she heard it yell out. Locking stares as her strikes forced it back.

She had the stalker on the defensive; her strength was winning out. A hail of fearsome knife-strokes and another crunching jab on its jaw. Her bone-breaking right dropped it dizzy. She’d floored it. Didn’t waste a second. She knifed it hard and sudden in the eye.

And stared in cold horror, where her knife-point stopped short with a tink. Its bone-alloy body was impenetrable, right down to its glinting eyeballs. Her knife hadn’t sunk in an inch. She screamed in sudden agony as it ran the sword right through her. Thrown back bloody off the blade. The stalker shot to its feet and dropped her with a savage punch. Down on her knees, Tabitha yelled out as it grabbed a vicious fistful of her hair. Stabbing her knife between its footbones to wrestle free as the snarling stalker tried to decapitate her. She didn’t get chance to scramble away before it kicked her half to death on the cavern floor. It booted her face and straddled her; dropped its cumbersome sword. Swung a dozen feral punches that turned her face to bloody ruins.

Tabitha yelled out through the gore as it battered her. She couldn’t pull her arms free from under its knees before its thick forehead crashed down hard on her broken nose. Dazed her bloody. It snatched up its blade to take her head off. Tabitha barely gripped its sword-arm in time.

They were brawling in the dirt; wrestling for a stranglehold. In a moment she’d rolled out on top of it. She gripped its throat savagely and tried in fury to gouge its glassy eyes. The stalker was roaring; it threw her off wildly. It made a sudden lunge with a sword-swing but Tabitha wrestled in too close. The stalker gripped her throat to throttle her. She beat its head to sudden fractures. Yelling out wild as she pummelled it.

It threw her back hard and prowled at a distance. Better in her fight-style than her. Tabitha watched it breathlessly; broken-cheeked and beaten. Healing painfully for their next savage round. The stalker paced its circle, infuriating her. It let her pounce wildly and attack. By now she’d only tire herself faster.

THe aPe-fEmAle haD loSt hEr cOnTRoL. A WeAkeNed anGRy ViCtim, tRaPPing hERseLF.

48

The Ministry’s grand outer complex had fallen completely; overrun by a writhing silver sea. The bodies of soldiers had become dry husks and drained-out skins. Ravening hordes clambered endlessly through rooms and hallways, while great dark squids tore the walls to toppling rubble.

Bloody and exhausted, Seven dived like a nightmare and ripped another monster to ruins as he shot past the gates. He swept down low past the burning gardens, and courtyards filled with lingering gas. Soaring over the swamped stone archway and torn-down barracks, toward the swarming vault entrances that were rapidly being exposed by the horde. He dropped to melt the crowding monsters, but their stone-skinned gorgons swiped him away savagely. Forced off again by the Watchers’ screeching cannon bolts.

Beaten and wounded, fighting on in futility, Seven could only leave the digging hordes with a fierce parting shot. He blew a fearsome gout of fire through the vault tunnels beneath him, that might just buy the survivors more time. But the Watchers’ artillery gouged great gory holes through his scales. Roaring and raging, Seven took off for the ruins before they could kill him.

*

Big Fish listened nervously to the rush of a growing tide, beyond the battered vault door in the basements. A welcome screeching chorus of dying spiders, where it sounded like they were melting in Seven’s flames. But the good news faded as quickly as it came. In seconds, the horde’s fevered scratching and chewing returned. Rabidly replacing their dead comrades to reach the vast thick door and pummel it. The last thing standing between these survivors and bloody massacre. Fish heard spiders; monsters; a zombie horde of twisted wretches. Tunnelling for them obsessively, while rockfall crashes thundered beyond the vaults’ stone ceiling. Bigger things were digging for them above.

Big Fish snarled wrathfully, stepping back from the giant steel door as its creaking edges finally began to crumble.

‘Hey,’ Aelu said grimly, as she ushered him back toward the main huddled crowds in the vaults’ deepest reaches. She was pale; he’d never seen her trembling before. She didn’t know what to say to him. ‘I suppose… what I mean to say, is… it’s been an honour, Fish,’ she told him sadly. Watching the giant smiling, as he stomped along slowly beside her. ‘Y’know, for a while there… this was the best time I’ve had in a long time.’

‘Same,’ Fish rumbled gladly, as he held Aelu close to his side. Taking up his laser gatling at the head of their panicked crowds.

‘Same,’ Sea Mist added beside them. Barkless nodded as he held her strongly. Letting go to aim his rifle at the distant pounding door. A savage boom shook its thick steel in raining dust.

Beyond the vault’s crowded soldiers and terrified civilians, their hushed chatter was drowned out by a raging argument beside a sealed steel panel. A locked escape tunnel, recently dug by Thier’s drones, to open up a path into ancient sewers.

‘We have to try it! What other choice do we have!?’ Saa yelled at him furiously.

‘Open that hatch and you’ll kill us all!’ Atha roared back at her. ‘You can hear the fucking things in that tunnel!’

‘W-We can fight them!’ Saa countered, while Lea cried loudly in Anero’s arms. ‘We’ll fight through them! They can’t be any worse than what’s breaking down that bloody door! We have to get out!’

‘We’re playing for time! That’s all we can do!’ Atha bellowed back at her. ‘And the second you start sending people into that sewer, you’ll throw away all the bloody time we have left!’ But Saa was scrambling for the steel hatch anyway. Regardless of what may have squirmed and screeched beyond it, she was more scared for her family of the brutes beating at that main vault door.

‘Restrain her,’ Atha commanded bitterly. A group of Guardians had to hold them back screaming, as Anero fought Atha and yelled in his face. Baby Lea was wailing to see her mother being wrestled away. With the argument laid bare, and mistaken rumours spreading about the tunnel behind them, the Ministry’s panicked desperate crowds began to riot for any chance at escape. Sky Tribe and the Guardians barely held them back from the hatch. All but two, in the vast panicked crowd. A frightened woman and her little girl.

‘Vik Kosa?’ Liina asked another Guardian. Terrified that she hadn’t been able to find him in the crowds. ‘My husband, in the conscripts. Did you see him on the walls?’

‘Sorry ma’am,’ the bloodied female soldier replied. ‘Can’t say I recognise the name. I’m sorry.’ Liina nodded her thanks and moved on to the next Guardian she could find. None of these soldiers knew his name.

‘Did you say Private Vik Kosa, ma’am?’ a male officer interrupted. Liina nodded desperately, and told Calia to wait behind for a moment. ‘One of mine, ma’am,’ he added darkly. Liina saw his look; she was shaking her head in horror. ‘…I’m afraid he was cut off, in the archway. Before we reached the barracks,’ the officer continued quietly. ‘You may want to sit down, ma’am. I’m so sorry.’

‘…Thank you, officer,’ Liina said quietly. The man nodded grimly. Watching in admiration as the stern young widow stayed stoic, and walked back to take her child by the hand. Her distraught young daughter needed all the strength that woman had left.

*

Cold Moon snarled fiercely in the Sky Queen’s old chambers. Silvery blade raised, and taking aim. She sent her last knife spinning like a shot through the eye of a charging monster. Dropping it braindead in a spurt of silver blood, as her surrounded squad culled creeping spiders with their dwindling ammunition. There weren’t many of her soldiers left alive.

Vik spent his last rifle-shot on a screeching spider that pounced for Cold Moon from the ceiling. Nothing left now but the high-explosive grenade on his harness. The halls outside were a clattering chaos; what was left of the Ministry was completely overrun. His blood boiled to see another Guardian drop screaming under the spiders. But he’d meet the same yelling fate soon enough. The room was filling with a growing swarm of them, murdering his comrades as they tried to fall back.

‘Cold Moon! Over here!’ he called out desperately. Beckoning the tribal back with him toward Her Majesty’s bedroom, as the chambers behind them filled with scuttling spiders. Cold Moon slammed the door shut behind her as the swarm crashed against it; hacking and hammering the thick wood to splintering spikes. The dark-scaled woman watched him with wide red eyes, trying to hide her dread as Death came for them. Vik didn’t bother; he was terrified. In the few living moments they had left, he supposed they could jump from the blown-out windows. Maybe a better way to go than under all those drooling spiders. Instead, he took up a pen from the writing desk and walked over calmly to Calia’s drawing.

‘What, you, doing!?’ Cold Moon demanded, while she ripped a pair of metal light fixtures from the walls. Gripping them tight like twin clubs, as the spiders’ limbs broke through the door. But Vik wasn’t listening. He only finished his hurried note across the picture’s bottom corner. He kissed his grimy fingers and pressed them sadly on his message, and took a Silver Angel coin from the bedside table. He’d always liked those coins, ever since he was a kid. Walking back to stand with Cold Moon, Vik pulled the yellow grenade from his harness. The tribeswoman saw it, and nodded grimly at his intention. A rabid monster was breaking through the door.

‘…For Virtu,’ Cold Moon told him sadly. Taking his hand in her own.

‘And Fierce-Hope,’ Vik replied sternly, with a sudden ferocious stare. Pushing off the grenade-cap to click down the tip. They held each other close as the roaring horde broke through.

The grenade blew like thunder as the snarling swarm reached them. A sudden scorching end to all their lives. Far behind them, on the wall behind the bed, a trembling crayon picture survived the blast. It’d been added to quickly, in a hurried scrawl at the corner:

My gorgeous Liina. My miraculous Calia. I slayed monsters for you. I’ll always love you.

*

The Ministry’s wider complex was a smoking ruin, swamped by gorgons and endless scuttling swarms. But the spiders shifted quickly at a sudden signal, into endless orderly ranks at attention. The pale dragons broke off from hounding their rogue bloody sibling, and circled where they gathered above. Squids and serpents froze solid where they stood.

Watcher troops entered neatly through the Ministry’s fallen gates. From a sudden gap among them, their thorn-armoured General prowled in through the smoke. A nightmare.

He was smiling. Striding on, with sadistic intentions, towards the vaults’ swarming entrance through a far stone archway. The remnants’ last hiding place.

With a subtle nod, the General commanded it. The racing horde gathered all their monstrous strength at the vaults’ buried entrance. Snarling and battering to break through the floors.

*

A sudden hellish earthquake thundered through the floors above them. The huddled survivors were screaming as bricks toppled down over their heads. Another frantic riot broke out for the small hatch behind them, which Guardian soldiers struggled to defend. Atha was staring at them all; furious and terrified. Whatever lurked through that sewer couldn’t be any worse than the brutes about to tear through their ceiling. They’d have to fight through it, to the last soldier; try to get beyond the Ministry’s fallen walls and into the swarming ruins. For as long as they’d last out there, anyway. Atha stepped forward to give the order.

Big Fish snarled at the falling ceiling. Emptying his gatling gun through the first ripping holes above them, to throw roaring monsters back in bloody flashes. His Ghosts surrounded him; weapons drawn in waiting. Ready for their end. A sudden squid tore the ceiling down. Atha’s forces unleashed their final shots. Monsters roared and died bloody above them, as a smaller squid reached in for the screaming crowds. Coiling its tentacles around Big Fish’s struggling limbs, where he roared and struggled to wrestle free.

‘Fish!’ Aelu yelled desperately, as Sea Mist hacked at the tentacles and she frantically shot them apart. Barkless aimed his rifle on the squid’s slick body above them. Blowing burning holes through its screeching head. They glimpsed Seven, beaten and bloody, and diving for them. The gorgons near-killed him as he ploughed in to tackle them. Forcing him away on limping battered wings.

‘My hands!’ Fish roared in terror, as the squid strained to pull him up through the crater. ‘Grab my hands!’ Scores of yelling fighters were running for him; forming a frantic living chain to pull against it. Monsters pushed past the squids above to reach in for him.

‘Shoot it!’ Aelu screamed at their soldiers. ‘Kill the bloody thing!’ But where the first squid dropped screeching, two more coiled their limbs to drag Fish away. Strangling him as he roared and thrashed in panic. Sky Tribe and yelling Guardians were losing the tug-of-war. Barkless leapt fiercely from Sea Mist’s trembling leg-up, climbing the squids’ thick tentacles like vines. Hacking and cutting at them before they could take his dying friend. But Fish was blacking out. His straining muscles were giving up. Aelu shot and screamed out loud as the horde pulled Big Fish away from her, and–

And then the horde was gleaming, bright laser-blue. The strangling squids burst apart in sudden bloody thunder. Big Fish fell back down to them; a gasping blacked-out heap where Aelu rushed to help him. High above, a deafening new barrage tore the whole bellowing horde to ruined gore. Constant booming bursts of giant laserfire, punching through squids and gorgons as they scattered from the vaults in panic. The crowded survivors were a sea of frantic questions. Pulling each other away from the small steel hatch at the back. Through the vaults’ cratered ceiling, a great growing shadow dimmed the sunlight over the Ministry. Something was coming.

*

The Watchers’ dark General wasn’t smiling any more. His grand gathered horde was a sudden toppling bloodbath. The Ministry courtyard was a deafening cratered chaos of bright artillery blasts. Snarling, horrified, the General’s vicious face dropped at the sight of it. He roared at his circling dragons to swarm it. His shouting soldiers ushered him away from its vast shadow. Some strange new colossus was diving down from the blinding sunlight.

*

‘There’s the fucker!’ Reigo growled viciously, pointing through the large glass canopy on the destroyer’s celestial bridge. Staring down murderously from the hulking starship they’d recovered, at a tiny group of Watchers in retreat. Pale racing dragons were sudden bloody fireworks in their gunsights. Lotor watched as the rest of Black Squadron manned the gunner terminals to aim their screens’ bright crosshairs. Lieutenant Reigo’s formidable crew.

‘Locked!’ a female officer yelled out.

‘Fire!’ Reigo bellowed wrathfully.

A sudden blinding barrage tore the Ministry courtyard to thrashing dustclouds. The Watchers’ fleeing General roared in panic as his soldiers burst apart in deafening craters around him. Diving dragons were racing frantically to snatch him away from the battlefield. The yelling General was lost in a blue-black fallout, where endless thundering explosions blew him apart at the gates.

Reigo stared furiously from the ship’s bridge. Staying silent as he watched the General’s vast forces scattered in bright booming massacre. But this wasn’t just about saving the Ministry’s desperate survivors. He’d already lost enough friends just reviving this crashed destroyer. This was personal.

‘Confirmed kills, Lieutenant,’ said the female officer at the nearest terminal. ‘Got him.’

Reigo said nothing, and only pulled the commando knife bitterly from his belt. He rolled back a sleeve on his scorched spattered uniform and scored more bloody notches in his forearm. Adding to the others. Fully intending to get them tattooed, if he ever made it through what was coming next. But he didn’t have to wonder if Her Majesty was beating his bodycount. He was sure of it. He’d built a Watcher Killer, just like she’d asked him to.

…She’d better still be alive.

‘Do we continue toward the hive, Lieutenant?’ Lotor enquired, as he strode up beside him. Reigo shook his head in reply.

‘I saw their artillery on the scanners,’ he replied grimly. ‘The Watchers would drop us before we ever got in range.’

‘Your orders, Lieutenant?’ said his brown-scaled pilot.

‘Evacuation,’ Reigo replied. ‘Take us down, as low to the Ministry as you can get. We’ll shuttle the survivors with the gunships.’

‘Yes Lieutenant,’ his pilot said quickly, tilting fleshy controls to hover the hybrid warship down above the vault’s desperate crowds. All the Watchers’ grand hordes were gory smoking remains, while their last stragglers limped away fearfully through the city ruins. High above, Seven still hunted what remained of their dragons. Tearing them down in bloody silver bursts.

The Ministry’s ancient complex had been levelled; only a few fractured walls still stood. But its people survived. Guardians and conscripts; Sky Tribe and families. Waiting to evacuate their weakest aboard Reigo’s gunships, descending swiftly from the destroyer above.

*

Far below, in the crowded chattering catacombs, Atha oversaw the shrieking execution of a final few wretches beyond their torn-up vault door. He slapped a hand gratefully on the massive slab of steel beside him; sighing thankfully that they’d made ‘em like they used to in the right bloody place. Having opened up the door with his soldiers, studying its dented scars and welded craters, those great dead monsters had almost eaten their way through.

The Ghosts led everyone through the tunnels for the surface, with a few final gunshots out ahead as they dropped the last creeping spiders. Once the Ministry crowds reached the ruined training yard, Atha looked up at the hybrid destroyer like a god had descended. Pure salvation. He sighed and sat down heavily, among his weary gathering troops. Running trembling bloody hands through his hair.

Lots of folks were celebrating, and lots of people weren’t. For many the grief was just beginning. Atha watched a lone widow, walking with her young daughter hand-in-hand. Yet another conscript who’d never come back from those toppled walls.

…If he did ever get to see his kids again, Atha told himself, then his military career was over. He’d never let them out of his sight.

But anyway. At least his capable new Lieutenant was firing on all cylinders. Black Squadron’s three surviving gunships were landing and rising quickly, ferrying the crowd’s weak and wounded aboard their strange new destroyer. A shark-shaped main fuselage with four vast fluted engines, splayed and sweeping out behind the living ship like colossal wing-shaped blooms. All of it heavenly-bright, from the nose to its giant wing-tips, in white and gold plant-metal.

The Ministry’s smoking ruins lay in stark ugly contrast beneath it. Swamped in silver and dead monstrosities. The bodies of Guardians and Tribals filled the courtyards and the rubble of their walls. All this, and they’d still only won one battle. The war for Serenity was far from over.

‘General!’ said a distant soldier, in sudden alarm. Shaken with fresh terror, Atha strode forward as gathering Guardians watched a rising cloud in the far distance. Out over the northern hills, blooming on the horizon. A towering fallout, like a volcano had blown. There were growing tremors, and a sound like roaring thunder. Atha opened his dry lips, trying to say it.

‘…That’s–

‘The mothership,’ Aelu muttered darkly beside him. For the first time since he’d known her, the woman took hold of his hand. Gathering around them, the Ghosts stared grimly at the sight.

The crowded courtyard watched in horror, as the vast fallout grew in the distant hills. Whatever had kept it buried this long, the Watchers’ vast mothership was waking from its wounds. There was only one place it’d come to, when it showed itself in the sky.

Beyond their blackened courtyards, and the charred wreck of their fallen volt-tree, Seven landed down bloody and beaten to watch the city’s endless ruins. Breathless from the fighting, and perched in recovery on what remained of the Ministry’s war-torn walls.

Above it all, Reigo and his crew watched from their hovering hybrid destroyer. Doing all they could for the wounded, in what remained of the ship’s torn-up medical bay. But many survivors were coming in with reports of contagion; something the Watchers must’ve mixed with their gas. Already, Reigo saw scattered swarms regrouping in the ruins.

Probably waiting for their mothership to launch… and finish this war by itself.

Reigo watched the churning hills bitterly. Clearly those bastards weren’t going to leave anyone alive. All he could do now was return the bloody favour.

…It’s all on Her Majesty from here.

49

Tabitha was beaten bloody. Exhausted. She’d gone more than a few rounds with the bone-bodied bastard; she was a wreck. But the stalker was tiring too. With both their blades knocked out of reach, another fist fight finally gave her a chance. A sudden fierce earthquake shook the cavern. Tremors roared through the hive above them.

…The mothership’s moving. But I’m not done with these bastards. There’s still time.

Tabitha struck first with a vicious punch. The stalker blocked her hits; she deflected its snarling strikes in return. Dodged its swipe and cracked it hard on the jaw. It swung a sudden haymaker that dazed her, turning her aside painfully with the force of it. Followed in fast with a hard feral left. Raining down hits that forced her back against the rock wall. It pounced in quick with a punch to her ribs. Yelling out painfully, Tabitha swung her torso and ducked in fast. Cracked it on the jaw like a gunshot. But left herself wide open. The stalker gripped her arm and forced it out straight as it weaved behind her; a sudden locked lever that pinned her. It curled a fierce right-hook around her outstretched armpit to slam her jaw and daze her. Gripped her throat savagely to choke her. She tried to wrestle out of it; to turn its body with her. But it threw her back to the cave wall and laid into her viciously. Blocking its swings, she locked its arm and knocked it sideways with a rapid right-hook.

It trapped her left punch under its powerful arm; holding her fist tight to its ribs while it caught her flying right in its grip. Jolting her arm back, it jabbed in fast and punishing. Broke her cheekbone and lunged for her throat. She locked its leg. Tried to trip it. It kicked in fast and copied her footwork.

Stalemate. It blocked her jab. Broke her jaw. Locked her elbow straight and levered her. Twisted it back behind her to force her forward in agony. With her bent back bared, its skull-punch concussed her. Gripping her head to smash its knee into her downturned face. It had her now. Swung her body and slammed her down hard on jagged rocks. Hammering her face as she struggled. Gripping under her chin to try and pull her head off. Screaming for her life, Tabitha clawed its eyes wildly. She broke away to stagger past it. Fought back with a boxing flurry. But she was exhausted. Her tired hits were weaker, not least since that whiplash punch on the back of her head. The stalker caught her fist before she could land her next hit. It locked her left jab and booted her hard to the ground.

Tabitha was breathing heavily; her bloodied face chilled with sweat. Shaking off her dizziness, her black-eyed sight came back into focus. The stalker pounced for her.

It was feral. A round of brutal punches that she struggled to fend off. She was yelling. Roaring. Landing solid punches that weren’t hurting it like they had before. It’d finally tired her out. The stalker blocked her swing and stunned her with a rabid blow. Kicked her in the stomach and dropped her. Winded, staggering, Tabitha hadn’t found her feet before it gripped her throat and forced her back hard against the cavern wall. She broke its lethal grip and laid into it. But the stalker just rolled with her punches. It punished her when she faltered, with a dozen savage hits in return.

Tabitha reacted. The stalker let her lay into it again. It wanted her last tiring efforts. Forced back, her punches barely hurting it, it lured her on and dropped her with a roaring right-hook. Tabitha shrank back in exhaustion, fists up and staggering, as it prowled after her calm and glaring. Her final wild swings were too weak and sluggish to connect with it. It ducked in quickly and broke her ribs. Beat her viciously and jolted her head with a brutal uppercut. It kicked her knee from under her. Booted her bruised and bloody to the ground.

It gripped her throat and lifted her. Beat what was left of her shattered ribs. It tossed her down like a ragdoll; a limp growling heap in the corner.

…Come on! Tabitha screamed at herself, as the earthquake hit again and cracked the cavern ceiling. Finish the bastard off!

The stalker let her pounce and tackle it. When she laid into it weakly, the creature just let her try. It gripped her shoulders and dazed her; a sudden crashing headbutt that floored her. She tried to shock its glassy eyes uselessly, and it savaged her. Dropped her grunting in a hail of hits.

Tabitha was snarling. Broken. Heartcore racing, her cells devoid of sunlight in this glooming cavern, she had nothing left to fight back with. No way to escape that she could see. The stalker’s throttling grip caught her completely off-guard. Its vicious right-hook dropped her dizzy. Gasping, exhausted, it pounced where she’d fallen and pummelled her. Bony fists pounding her bloody skull like an animal. She was done. It left her gored and grunting as she healed. Prowling another circle to shake its arms out, it flexed its bloodied knuckles for the final round.

Tabitha launched herself at the bastard with everything she had left. Landed a hit but dropped back from its punches, and crumpled in a heap from its vicious kicks. It gripped her reaching arm and twisted it. Broke bones as she screamed out loud. Prowling after her powerfully, as Tabitha tried desperately to scramble away. It pounced. Grabbed her hair and smashed her face against the cave floor. Over and over, a bloodspattered daze, until she barely even knew where she was.

Tabitha was yelling. Terrified. Broken and bloody; lashing out sluggishly where she crawled from it. But the prowling stalker moved too quickly. It’d worn her out. It stomped her spine; a sudden vicious snap. Walking off to snatch its sword from the shadows. Dragging her back before she could struggle away. The stalker grabbed her arm as she lashed out, and cut off the other as she clawed it. One screaming stroke. A silver spurt of blood in the dust, as her severed arm dropped down with a thump. Tabitha crawled away weakly in panic.

…I can’t… can’t–

Its final savage punches felt like anvil blows. It’d saved its brute strength for the last. The stalker hauled her up and body-slammed her; Tabitha screamed out loud when her fractured back hit the ground. She’d nothing left to fight with. Bleeding, beaten, it throttled her. Tabitha screamed in sudden agony when it ran her through with the longsword. The stalker drove it deep through her sparking heartcore. Hammered in the sword-hilt to her chest. Three feet of its blade, buried in the ground beneath her. A cruel stake that pinned her kicking and screaming. One-handed, she fought against its strength but couldn’t pull the sword out. Struggling uselessly. Her legs writhed weakly in a spreading pool of blood.

The stalker sank in close as it straddled her. Filling her head with its rotten stench. Drowning her blurry sight with its glowing glassy stare, and blocking off her arm as she went for its throat. Then its chest; then its side. It just kept blocking her. With her last dying effort, Tabitha stuck it through the thigh instead. Piercing a bony gap with her short bronze shank. Her secret last resort, that she’d intended to stick through its neck, or somehow find a gap to its heart. But its leg was all she could reach to stab it, twisting it, now that it pinned her. The stalker just snarled and left it there. Tabitha struggled again, terrified, as it battered her senseless and left her skewered in the dirt. She yelled out in raw panic. She didn’t have the strength left to pull the sword that pinned her; its hilt was slick with her blood.

The stalker grabbed Tabitha’s Watcher knife from the cave floor. Pacing back through the shadows, glaring wild-nocturnal, it gripped the black blade firmly and savoured her terrified screams. Staring deeply into her panicked eyes. Kneeling now, as if in prayer. It dropped on her calmly to hack off her head.

50

Fishbowl suddenly stopped gardening in Lotor’s ruined laboratory, where the Watchers’ dead hordes had passed it by with indifference. Something had changed now, as if a node in its network blinked out. Like it was missing a distant piece of itself.

High on the Ministry walls, Seven snarled and flinched deeply at a strange phantom agony. Ripped away painfully from something unseen, and suddenly roaring demonic. A profound freezing absence at the back of his mind. He felt stark sudden emptiness, like he’d lost his beating heartcore. Reeling from it. The ape-female faded from his raw darkening feelings, like shadows and blowing pixeldust. He was alone.

‘What’s up with him?’ Big Fish rumbled, in the crowded Ministry ruins below. Nodding up to Seven’s crumpled shape on the battlements. People were chattering. Fish turned to Aelu, and saw a strange look in her eyes. Pure cold dread, sudden and growing.

‘…Aelu?’ he urged her, while stark shock crept down his spine. Shaking his head slowly as it dawned on him. ‘No. It’s not Tabitha. It’s not.’

‘…I’ve never seen Seven like that before,’ Aelu muttered quietly, watching the dragon’s bent despondent shape on the walls. She looked back at Fish; horrified in her heartbreak. ‘Can’t fucking handle this,’ she mumbled hopelessly, her face in her hands, fighting sudden tears. Shaking her head as she met his searching stare.

‘We don’t know that!’ Fish raged back.

‘But there’s nothing else it could be,’ Aelu mumbled, as her quiet voice faltered. ‘I’ve never known Seven to just roar out like that. I think…’ Aelu trailed off, sighing heavily. ‘I think she’s gone.’ Seven was stooped and silent in the distance; Barkless and Sea Mist watched Aelu in disbelief. After everything they’d fought for, after all they’d gone through to get this far, this was how it ended?

‘No. She’s alive,’ Big Fish insisted angrily, shaking his head. ‘She always gets through it!’ he snapped furiously, as Guardians watched them and morbid rumours began to spread. ‘She’s not dead! She can’t die!’ Big Fish was staring at them, with a desperate look. ‘Say something!’ he roared. Aelu watched her Ghosts tearfully, and sighed a shaking breath in the silence.

‘…Unless something severs her head,’ she muttered darkly. Big Fish said nothing in reply; he was all silent rage. Aelu jumped in shock when he put a colossal punch through a fallen statue beside them. Shattering it to toppled fragments in the staring courtyard. He snarled and paced frantically, dragging his hands down his face with raw bloodied knuckles, and said nothing while Barkless howled out furiously in his grief. Sea Mist had broken down beside him; a lost staring heap where she sat.

Aelu watched Big Fish prowling. Begging him to stop, when he beat the giant ruins to flying dust beside them. Bellowing wrathful roars in his heartbreak. All around them, among the crowds’ growing chatter, Sky Tribe’s lost howl rose up from the ruins. Her Majesty’s loyalists were stunned and furious; arguing over dark rumours in the courtyard. It spread through the stricken crowd like a tide.

*

Aboard Reigo’s hybrid destroyer, in its scarred medical bay, some strange new illness was already claiming the lives of the Ministry’s weaker survivors. Certain species seemed more susceptible to the Watchers’ viral gas, as did the young and elderly. Lotor worked hurriedly to help as many as he could. But all he’d succeeded in so far was to ease their quick passing… and attempt a hurried quarantine of the afflicted, to slow the spread of that cruel disease. Everyone aboard was acutely aware of their hopeless situation. It was simply a matter of time before the virus struck down more species among their dwindling numbers.

*

‘…I’m sorry Lieutenant,’ a female Guardian finished, beside Reigo on the ship’s bridge. Delivering news from General Atha, about Seven’s sudden despondence and Fishbowl’s unresponsiveness; their strange shared connection was gone. The Watchers’ buried ship showed fresh activity, and Tabitha hadn’t stopped it or given any kind of signal. She’d failed in her mission; no one had to guess why. Her Majesty was dead.

‘Thank you, Corporal,’ Reigo said quietly, after a hard stricken silence. He felt numb. Nothing he could do now but lead his crew to the bitter end. ‘…Prepare for the Ministry’s defence,’ he commanded her. ‘Get as many innocents aboard as you can.’

‘Yes Lieutenant,’ the woman replied, and quickly took her leave. Reigo watched the ruins from the thick glass canopy, caught between blinding anger and dark despair. Beyond furious at General Atha, and himself, for letting Her Majesty go out there alone.

A vast volcanic cloud churned skywards from the distant hills. The Watchers’ mothership was waking, like a great dark god from the deep.

*

Out in the Watchers’ glooming hive, in high crystalline towers above their smoking forest, the Prince snarled instructions at his subordinates. Preparing to leave by shuttle for the healing mothership.

By his orders, the entire hive burst into frantic industry. It would take days to replenish their forces, using every dead drop of protein they’d harvested. But that was inconsequential. Clearly greater numbers were needed, where their proud General’s forces had failed so miserably. The Prince wasn’t aggrieved to lose that particular General, nor the troops or his grand vicious horde. He was only furious that any resistance yet survived.

With a growling command, the Prince ordered the hive below his towers to empty out completely. An endless wave of new spiders and prowling monsters raced away for the hills through their smouldering forest. Hurtling en masse for the ruined city, and its fallen Ministry, to deliver their master’s final vengeance. To wipe the last living remnants of this city from the world. The Prince awakened his great black warship with a thought.

*

The Ministry’s hopeless crowds looked up in terror, as a thundering roar echoed from the distant darkening hills. Like Hell itself had been unleashed.

The massing Guardians were a sea of frightened muttering. Sky Tribe sat silently and led their groups in prayer. Still holding on for some shred of Fierce-Hope, though the grief for their Sky Queen hung over them like stormclouds. Those unable to fight were still huddled at the vast group’s centre, waiting in terror for the next descending gunship to lift them away for the hybrid destroyer docked overhead. But dark new rumours were spreading quickly. The ship’s medical bay had already been quarantined. Something new and virulent, that the Watchers had put in their gas. But that was the only ship they had. The only way they stood a chance of escaping this place.

‘Can’t he just land the bloody thing?’ said one survivor, holding her terrified children close to her sides.

‘No ma’am,’ a green-scaled Guardian replied dutifully. ‘Those destroyers are built for space travel. All we can do is shuttle groups up there on the gunships. We’d need a high-altitude docking station to board it en-masse,’ he explained. ‘We can’t risk damage to the ship by getting it any lower. That’d put every life at risk. I’m sorry.’ The Guardian watched calmly, hiding his sadness for her, as the raging woman stormed away with her frightened kids.

*

Among the Guardians, conscripts and seasoned veterans were already muttering their thoughts about beating a more drastic retreat. Mumbling a growing sentiment, that they could at least make a run for it. The hills’ smoking shadow was only growing larger. They could see that black ship writhing in colossal fog. Dustclouds rose in the city ruins, where the surviving hordes regrouped.

Passing by his soldiers despondently, Atha heard snatched whispers about leaving these survivors to their fate. About taking their rifles, a small group of them, and trying their luck beyond the city. A sea of frightened faces all around him, where hushed new plans spread like rot. Atha knew all too well, that honour and courage could fade as quickly as they came.

…Not today. Not now. He felt his fury rising up at the cowardice around him.

‘SOLDIERS!’ Atha roared at their shocked ranks. ‘You are Guardians of Her Majesty’s City! You will protect the people in your charge!’ Suddenly all eyes were on their General. Aelu watched him carefully beside her grieving Ghosts.

‘Her Majesty… is dead,’ he told them grimly. ‘That puts me in charge, for the short time we have left. I won’t say that deserters will be shot, because you won’t,’ he admitted, raising his voice to the quieting crowd. ‘I have too much respect for every one of you to stoop that low. But you are not free to leave,’ he commanded them. ‘Your friends, your family, your tribe, they’re all here. They’re all willing to fight, and die, for you. If you abandon these people now, here at the end of this world, then you deserve the fate that awaits you beyond our Ministry,’ he continued, to the sound of sparse rising voices. ‘Or you can fight on to the end, together, with the people who love and protect you!’ he called out to them. ‘We’ll stand and fight here, until every civilian is aboard that ship!’ he told them, with a glance at the destroyer high over their heads.

‘Every one of you here… you’re the reason we have cities,’ he called out clearly. ‘You’re the reason we have worlds. Because of the love and loyalty you share for your families. Your friends.’ Men and women were calling out. Sky Tribe raised their weapons with their voices. ‘We’ve had death hanging over us here from the start!’ Atha yelled out bitterly. ‘And we’ve faced it! We’ve fought it back! There have always been people ready to fight, ready to die, for the good we share across our worlds,’ their General told them. ‘That good built our worlds! And I’m ready to fight for it! Will you stand with me!?’ His question was met by a roaring response.

Atha nodded sternly before his forces. Without their queen to save them, there was only one way this war was going to end. But they’d choose how they went out.

…We’re all dead anyway. In time. The least he could do was put some last fierce fire in their souls.

‘Form ranks!’ Atha roared, watching the crowd come alive with grim discipline. ‘Close-quarters infantry, shield-wall and spears! Bows and rifles, circling civilians! Protect the landing ground!’ Atha watched his forces assembling as the Ghosts drew their weapons around him. Before them stood a multi-varied crowd of many species, forming up and raising their tattered Silverspire banners. Defending the torn shell of their Ministry, while the city ruins bloomed with growing dust.

‘Shields locked! Spears levelled!’ Stone Shore commanded them, as the Sky Tribe quickly formed their living wall in the Ministry’s ruined grand plaza. His men and women created a gleaming barricade of silvery alloy, smithed from the spiders they’d slaughtered. Behind them on the Ministry’s colossal rubbled steps, their archers and fellow Guardians gathered like one vast firing squad. Aimed and ready for the growing dustclouds that rose from the city in the distance. A new swarm was coming for them.

Behind them all, in what remained of the Ministry’s main courtyard, desperate survivors had formed orderly lines for the landing ground. Piling into Reigo’s three gunships, as they shuttled their innocents endlessly to the hybrid destroyer above. Racing against time to get everyone aboard.

‘Hey,’ Aelu called up to Seven. ‘You still in the fight?’ Perched above on the ruined walls, the great black dragon was stricken. But snarling loud and murderous in response.

‘Good on you, buddy,’ Fish replied numbly, trying to stamp his grief deep down. He held Barkless and Sea Mist close, where they stood silently in no-hope. ‘She’d want us to go out fighting. So let’s fight.’

‘…Yes,’ Sea Mist sighed, utterly heartbroken, but pulling the knives from her belt all the same. Barkless nodded as he followed suit. Just then a defence drone dragged itself from the walls’ huge rubble, on powerful extending arms. Recognising their facial profiles, it hovered down heftily beside them.

‘Oh, hey Barp,’ Big Fish rumbled. ‘I thought you’d be dead. Glad you’re still around.’

BARP, the big drone replied. Its large humming cannons were armed and ready for the fight.

All around them, Serenity’s grim survivors stood in rock-solid ranks. Banners rippling, and waiting for the swarm to close in from the dustclouding city. The Watchers’ ship was lurking, unfurling, in the distant hills. The skies around it were blackening with sinister shrouding clouds.

But Her Majesty’s army stood and faced it all. The ruins of their Ministry stood like vast beautiful bones. Toppled walls that might protect them, for a short while at least. The murdered grand horde was a twisted bloody sea all around them, where fresh silver spiders poured into the plaza. But the grim grieving soldiers were ready for them.

‘Incoming!’ Atha bellowed. Sea Mist and Barkless had never been more ready; blades drawn and waiting wrathfully to avenge Dark Storm. Aelu aimed her rifle while Big Fish snarled beside her; his gigantic sword drawn and ready. Seven took off vengefully in a snarling black cindercloud. Racing high to massacre the dragon packs diving from above.

‘Fire!’ Reigo roared on the ship’s bridge. The hybrid destroyer unleashed sudden thunder on the surrounding city. Blinding artillery beams held off the monsters and gorgons that piled in through the ruins, and dropped pale dragons screeching where Seven hadn’t torn them to gore.

A silver tide flooded in regardless; swamping the plaza’s edges like a tide. Reigo’s gunships ferried more panicked survivors as quickly as they could. He knew full well, that there was too much swarm incoming to fight off indefinitely. But they’d bloody well try while they could.

Below in the cratered plaza, through Reigo’s deafening barrage, the ruins’ lurking spider swarms were the first to race toward the Ministry steps. Teeth gritted, staring nervously, the survivors waited for their fate. The sky over the city was a blackening storm.

‘I’m glad to die beside you,’ Barkless told his mate, on Sky Tribe’s snarling front lines.

‘I’d be more glad if you fought beside me first,’ Sea Mist smiled back sadly. Showing Barkless Tree her love for him, with a fierce final kiss before the swarm.

The Watchers’ black ship bellowed in the glooming hills. The silver sea was racing for the Ministry; blown apart by Reigo’s artillery. Armoured thickly, greatsword raised and Shoalbond beckoning, Fish roared in vengeance and swung scuttling spiders to gore. Barkless and Sea Mist fought fiercely beside him; shields raised and long-knives ready. Sea Mist spun snarling and cut a pouncing spider in half. The swarm’s spikes bounced off their armour; crushed against shield-walls and dropping dead under Sky Tribe’s spears. Barkless slaughtered them. Big Fish stood against it all, roaring monstrous as he cut through scores of spiders in great bloody swipes. Holding back the tide by himself.

Barp’s cannons boomed bright slaughter. Aelu dropped the first charging monster with a smoking shot through the head. All around them, a raging mass of bows and rifles held back the horde’s screeching progress. Atha led his Guardians; Stone Shore commanded his dead queen’s Tribe. Endless fire culled the horde to bloody heaps all around them. Fighting on ferociously, while their innocents were flown to safety.

But Reigo’s airborne artillery couldn’t cover every corner. The Tribe’s ferocious spear-work wasn’t always enough to stop the swarm. Soldiers caught beyond the shield-walls were massacred. Mobbed and murdered by pouncing spiders, or dragged screaming by dying monsters. Torn limb from limb by the horde.

Side by side, their hybrid destroyer thundering above them, the Ministry’s leaderless forces waged their bloody losing war for existence. Utterly surrounded, and watching friends being butchered by the minute. Defending this ruined world as it darkened, one last time.

51

Watchers stood to attention in stark white corridors. A fleshy portal opened, where elite troops entered the mothership quickly in biting-black contrast. A terrible figure strode among them; all purpose and bloody ambition. Forcing his hordes’ dominion over countless finer worlds than their own.

A sonorous alert ran the length of the mothership’s cells; that their dark Prince had boarded from his living shuttle. Walking on calmly down bright ribbed corridors, while his bowing subordinates stood aside.

Translucent blast-doors melted open onto the mothership’s gleaming command bridge. The Prince glanced around with a satisfied look. His wounded warship had healed well in the hive’s buried reservoirs. Amounting to an unbearable fortune in bio-resources, all told, which had held back his hordes’ prolific growth thus far.

But no matter. This world held plentiful bodies abroad, to restore the hives’ protein pools. Pockets of hidden survivors out there, utterly powerless and waiting for their end. Despite constant efforts by this city’s remnants, still lingering in their ruined parliament buildings, none of their strange drones had reached other cities across this world. His ranging air force saw to that.

The Prince stared admiringly at his frantic hive below, as the mothership shrouded itself and resurrected countless dormant systems from their healing. He studied the ship’s floating readouts. The main beam was gathering power. Their living artillery cannons, newly refined and strengthened for long-range destruction, were hatching afresh. Taking aim on the distant survivors of this world.

He’d reactivated the breeding pits, and sent every shadowed creation toward the Ministry ahead of them. His General had failed; he’d deserved to die. The Prince would wipe out those damned remnants himself.

*

Bloodspattered, victorious, the Watchers’ vicious stalker crept on through their hive with its prize. It carried Tabitha’s severed skull in its hands; her eyeballs missing and every tissue gnawed to bare bone. Long red hairs still clung around it, where traces of her remaining flesh and silver blood stuck thickest. But She would be scrubbed clean, and made Glorious. The Bloody Caverns were no place for Her shrine.

The stalker saw Watcher soldiers, and strode taller in its primal victory. No longer starving. Silver blood congealed around its jaws. Torn hairs trailed between its teeth.

The Watchers stared in shock as they allowed the glaring wretch back toward their towers. Walking past proudly with a great grim trophy. It’d succeeded, where all else had failed. The ape-female was finally dead.

It cOuld fffeEl her, DiGesTinG, inSIDe its sStaRVing gUts. THaT blooDY tAste Of heR; dEliCiouS. HeR ssliCK fLlllesh, SsstUCK betweEn its ttTeeTh. A hOly SiLVer tAste uPon iTs tttToNGue. LiKe It wwAS prprprOMIseD. FiLLing iT uP aNd cccompleTiNG iT, liKe iTs liFe’s wORK was DOne. It cOuLd rrrRrEst noW, finAllY. AlL its tOrtuRed bbBONE-BLACK BRUTAL BLOODy BATTERING BEASTLY bbbbbbBASTARD BROKENBOTTLE THOUgHTS mmmmmmmMiGht FinALLy ccOme to aN EnD.

The stalker scurried on towards the hill-caves, coveting Tabitha’s bloody skull in its grip. A holy relic. It would build a new shrine to Her now, one made of finer bones, and honour Her. The stalker’s whole Blood-Beautiful Meaning to Exist. She could WwwAtcH over it in MmMercy, grinning her toothy skEleTon smile, as the creature lay down peacefully and died.

Born twtwisted, from black-void nothingness. To black-void nothingness, it would gladly return. But something was walking closer now. A soldier on patrol.

A passing Watcher Lieutenant, greedy for prestige, snatched the wretch’s trophy to admire it. Opening his palm to it, he gave the stalker a fearsome pain-signal. Throwing it down in throttled convulsions, when it snarled and protested the theft. He left it there roaring, like a dying wild animal. Floored and cheated. Flailing in its rage.

The Watcher strode on, admiring his prize. Her skull. Finally. It was gored and chewed to the bone; eyeless and sticky with silver blood. But enough flesh and hair remained to test it. Buried and tangled in its empty sockets and recesses.

A beeping scan confirmed it. The Watcher checked the skull’s flayed tissues against the ape-female’s data, taken by the mothership during her first failed capture on Earth. It was her. The damned hybrid was dead. The Lieutenant hurried for a shuttle to present it.

Down below, snarling in its hatred, the reeling stalker watched the living shuttle disappear toward their mothership in the hills. It raged at them all, and beat rocks to flying fragments, and crept on cheated through the hive. It passed great gorgons, and silver spiders in their hundreds. Just another spent weapon in the Watchers’ endless arsenal. Only looking for a final place to rest.

Licking the blood and gore from its mouth, it glimpsed a small empty cave in the distance. Its purpose complete, the stalker slinked away to live out the rest of its short life in deep creaking shadows. All the Peace and Glory it’d expected had bbbbBeEn A LiE.

*

‘Keep fighting!’ Big Fish bellowed at their forces, between the destroyer’s thundering artillery bolts through the horde. Fish turned away squinting at a nearby bolt-blast, a ground-shaking explosion, that blew a great tide of dirt and pebbles from the war-torn plaza. Snarling victoriously at the monsters blown apart in it, Fish ducked another spider as it pounced for him on the Ministry steps. Swinging his sword was a growing agony, added to the weight of his armour; the swarm was a silver sea all around him. Cutting through them breathlessly, his tiring efforts weren’t enough to hold back the tide. Barp’s cannons machine-gunned the racing spiders to screeching wrecks.

‘Barkless, I could use some help here buddy!’ Fish called out desperately. Barkless and Sea Mist came running in to help him; twin knives flashing as they cut the spiders down. An army of fierce lost looks at their backs. The sight of Her Majesty’s Ghosts pushed the soldiers’ shield-walls forward. Troops and tribals fought on to the end.

Aelu fired on above the Guardians, burning through her dwindling ammunition far too quickly. These monsters were weaker; not fully grown. Her heavy-rifle shots were more than enough to take them down. Two at a time, if the bastards stood one behind the other. But there were enough of them to start a massacre, if they got a good chance at the shield-walls and broke through. Seemed like it was all on her and Reigo to stop them. With her shots running out, though… soon enough those monsters would rip through their lines.

Atha snarled viciously, opening fire on more creeping spiders to the side. Their forces just about held the Ministry ruins, for now. Reigo’s thundering barrages still kept the gorgons at bay. But their army was losing ground; this wasn’t a war they could win. The vast bloody steps were scattered with torn limbs and lifeless bodies, where spiders had drained out the corpses and died in turn.

…More every minute. We’re fucked.

Sea Mist fought on beside her Barkless, beside her Tribe, and wouldn’t admit that all her Fierce-Hope was lost. That the strength of her knife-swings was failing. Their great black bird-spirit raged on in flames up above them, and swept down to melt constant fiery trenches through the horde. Dark Storm’s army was dying fiercely, with spear and shield still gripped hard in their hands. But for all their honour and fury, it wasn’t enough to hold back the swelling tide of them. It would never be enough to win this war.

Barkless roared beside her in frustration, and cut another spider down with the knife Her Majesty had given him. His Gosts fought more fiercely than he’d ever seen. But for all their kills, they were on the brink of destruction. The Death-gods’ horde just kept coming.

Atha roared another dwindling barrage from his soldiers above them, buying his allied forces a moment to regain their strength. Seconds later, more spiders rushed in to replace their dead.

Stone Shore held the shield-wall around their civilians, while their hybrid gunships strafed the swarm. But still only half of their innocents had been ferried to Reigo’s ship above them; firing on endlessly itself. But all their strength and Fierce-Hope was never enough.

Sunshine fired his rifle to empty, and pulled his combat knife to join the shield-wall. Taking up a spear from a murdered Bronzeback, he reached in snarling to help skewer the writhing spiders back. He glimpsed a conscript beside him, who’d run out of charge packs himself.

‘Hey! Anero!’ he called out, over the thunder of shouts and clattering metal. ‘Grab a spear, come help us!’ He nodded urgently to the weapon beside a Red-Eye’s body, sprawled bloody behind them on the line. But Saa’s husband only stared at him, and shrank from the fight in terror.

‘Anero! We need you!’ Sunshine yelled out, as they struggled to hold the line. ‘Anero!’ But the man just fled. Escaping the chaos, toward their innocents huddled in the centre. Running to be with his wife. Sunshine snarled at the shrinking shape of him. Forcing his spear past the shield-wall, to stick screeching spiders to death.

The sky above the warring Ministry had darkened to death-grey stormclouds. The mothership was writhing stronger in the hills. A strange static rush filled the city; booming bigger than thunder and trembling through their chests.

‘Seven! Little help!?’ Big Fish called out desperately, as he wrestled a monster powerfully where it chewed at his thick black armour. Forcing away its head in panic, it spewed its molten contents across the lowest steps. Fish forced it back and swung his sword roaring. Severed its head with a snarl. More monsters glimpsed its murder and raced for the remnants’ giant themselves. A rabid pack. If not for Reigo’s sudden shots from the destroyer, those things would’ve torn him apart.

‘SEVEN!’ Fish bellowed desperately, as he fought off more wretches that scrambled for him. ‘What the hell!?’ But their wounded black dragon wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even fighting any more. As Seven soared overhead, he just kept going. Racing over the city ruins; never looking back. Leaving the swarming Ministry to its fate.

‘Where’s he going!?’ Atha roared on the steps, as their last line of defence flew away.

‘It’s not just Seven,’ Aelu replied beside him. Glancing skyward, every pale dragon was flying back toward the hills. ‘That static sound,’ she said darkly, between her last few rifle shots. ‘I think it was a signal. Like the mothership’s overriding them. Calling them back.’

‘But Seven’s not one of them!’ Fish yelled furiously, amid the vicious fighting beneath her.

‘…Isn’t he?’ Aelu replied grimly, as her rifle finally ran empty. She pulled her silvery knife, and knew she wouldn’t last long now. ‘Maybe Seven’s always been one of them first.’

Sea Mist looked up furiously from her hard-fought carnage, as their great black bird-spirit retreated. Soaring off toward the hills ahead of his siblings. Even the Fishbowl creature reached out a scarred limb toward him, pleading silently from the cloisters, as the black dragon fled their defeat. Whatever faint embers of Fierce-Hope were left to her, whatever honour her father and grandfather had instilled in her, Sea Mist lost them in that moment. Their queen, Dark Storm, was gone. At their hour of direst need, her bird-spirit had abandoned them. The Death-Gods’ shrouded ship was rising, out in the furthest hills. Roaring its doom through this darkened world.

*

The Watchers’ elites stood calmly on the glassy command bridge, as their vast writhing mothership finally lifted away. Watching the hive-lands roll by before them, and the distant battle at the Ministry, while all things went as their Prince had planned.

Standing foremost among them, the Prince gave the order to move in. Watcher crews readied the mothership’s countless artillery, to begin launching shots once they came within range. The ship’s belly swelled with the beam inside it; moving over their massing forces in the writhing hive beneath. Crawling through its smog for the southern hills.

Scowling demonic, the Prince stared intently over his battlefield. One fierce final barrage and it would be done. With a last killing stroke from the ship’s main beam, the Ministry’s ruins would be turned to an ashen crater. This paradise planet was his.

A door melted open behind them. A Watcher Lieutenant walked in dutifully, bearing a great bloody treasure for his Prince. Their elites muttered in shock at the sight of it.

The Prince smiled, a rare event in itself, and snatched the silver-gory skull with great pleasure. Admiring it. The anomaly; that troublesome mistake. She was dead.

That must have meant that the black dragon returning to them had no pilot. It was vulnerable now, during its recall. The Prince commanded that the rogue animal be put down on sight, as soon as it landed aboard. He wouldn’t suffer such wilful rebellion again.

He promoted his grateful Lieutenant on the spot, who stood surrounded by his chattering advisors. Raising Tabitha’s skull, the Prince admired his grim trophy afresh. The ape-female’s head was his, at long last. Crowning his glorious victory over this planet.

Drawing colossal current from the hive beneath it, the Prince’s great black ship slid on toward the southern hills. Fearsome lights were growing inside it, to raze the distant Ministry from his world.

*

Barkless Tree fell back beneath a pouncing spider. Yelling desperately, Big Fish dragged him away quickly as the spider’s stinger shot for the steps where he’d fallen. Fish was snarling furiously, sword raised and pushing all his Ghosts behind him, as the swelling horde crept up the steps.

They were swamped; utterly surrounded. The dwindling artillery shots from Reigo’s destroyer were growing few and far between. Only Barp had any scrap of ammunition remaining; soon he’d be all the fire-support they had left.

The children encircled in the courtyard could see them now. The monsters. It was all the Ministry’s surviving forces could do, just to stand like a barrier between their families and the coming horde.

‘…Mummy?’ Calia said quietly, among the panicked survivors clambering for the gunships. Liina looked down into her daughter’s frightened eyes. But she didn’t know what to say any more; all she could do was hold her close. The frantic crowds had overloaded the gunship that landed for them. Fighting their way inside desperately, until the aircraft couldn’t lift any more of them away from their fate.

But it wasn’t just the horde that hunted them, or the mothership brightening in the hills. Something else was moving. Giant tremors shook the stones beneath their feet. A colossal dustcloud was blooming, in the ruins along the coast. Moving this way.

‘Back, everyone!’ Barkless told the Minnis-Re soldiers, in his gruff growling voice. Pushing the crowded fighters back behind him toward the gate-arch, as the vast Ministry steps were overrun. Bright-drooling monsters stalked up the stairs toward them from the swarming plaza. A handful dropped dead at the Tribe’s last arrows, and Atha’s final few shots. Barp’s smoking cannons ran empty, and folded away in futility. Reigo’s looming warship had no artillery left to give.

The Ministry’s shield-wall forces held on in the toppled courtyards. Guardians and Sky Tribe fought on fiercely with knives and spears. Their glaring Ghosts backed up into the ruined archway, guarding the high fallen gates by themselves.

‘…Go out like warriors, yeah?’ Big Fish told the others, as he raised his bloody greatsword for their grim last stand.

‘To meet, First-Ancestor, and Dark Storm,’ Sea Mist replied, with a stern fearless look as she raised her knives toward the creeping horde.

‘Well, anywhere’s got to be better than here,’ Aelu added darkly.

‘Best place, here,’ Barkless disagreed, snarling as he pulled his daggers. Watching that black ship crawling among the dark distant hills. ‘Die, with Tribe. With friends.’

Faint lights coated the Watchers’ vast mothership. A lethal constellation. Countless artillery cannons, aimed straight at the Ministry across the city’s distant ruins. Guns glowing dimly into life.

*

Far beneath the passing mothership, patrolling dark corridors in the hive’s central cathedral, a female Watcher turned a corner and stopped. She saw a trail of gored bodies ahead of her. Curled spiders, and murdered monsters; burst open or beaten to death. Pulse pounding, creeping forward, she raised her rifle and yelled out urgently for reinforcements.

Following bright bloodtrails, she found a fellow soldier down the next ribbed hallway. A slumped torn carcass with his pistol missing. His own knife buried in his heart. The female Watcher turned, looking ahead in sudden shock. Down the corridor, through the next distant doorway, a black-boned figure stared back at her. Glassy eyes in a dark vicious skull. It turned away, walking on, as the huge door between them slammed down shut.

*

The mothership’s cannons glowed bright beyond the capital. The Ministry’s doomed forces fought on to the end. Behind the Ghosts, among the courtyard’s terrified crowds, Irren glimpsed a small shape darting in from the city ruins. A dusty dronelet, floating down quickly into his hands.

*

Smog-clouds spreading, its vast artillery armed and glowing, the advancing mothership made ready to annihilate the distant Ministry. Reaching its full-charged strength over the hive.

Smiling victoriously, the Watchers’ Prince set down Tabitha’s gory skull beside him. One last imperious glance at it, before he gave the order to open fire. But his smirk faded; he snatched it up again to study it more closely. There was something wrong. This was… the shape… it wasn’t her. It looked human, but not human enough. The eye sockets, slightly too big. Too nocturnal. Engineered. One skeleton within another, a skull inside a skull… this was the stalker’s head. Her gore only coated its surface. The Prince bellowed at his soldiers in dread revelation. She was here.

*

Seven raced on with his siblings, high over the national park. But not for the mothership recalling them. He hid in plain sight among them, and grieved no more. He’d felt another signal of his own.

*

In the Watchers’ biogothic cathedral, deep inside its power-core chamber, the creeping stalker gripped its armoured skull. It took off its head like a helmet, with a fleshy black-bone creak. Death-red curls tumbled free of it. Tabitha stared; bloody and wrathful. Finally breaking off from the stalker’s twisted thoughts. Wearing its skin, as it wore her. Every Watcher, every monster, was coming for her. Running rabid and flooding through the hallways for the hive-core. Seven exploded through the chamber wall to join her; a sudden fiery plane-crash at her side. He drew a bright raging breath as Watchers charged through the doorway behind her. Roaring white infernos to burn the bastards alive. Buying her a second to end it all. Her volt-vines wrenched the tree trunk away from the hive-core inside it. Unleashing its reactor glow through the burning chamber. Tabitha aimed her stolen pistol, and shot.

*

Desperate crowds looked up from the Ministry, dreading the distant mothership’s glowing artillery, as a sun-bright explosion shook their world. A fierce blinding fallout past the far shadowed hills, that tore the mothership above it and dropped it roaring in bloodgushing ruin. Some great volcanic firework that echoed through the city, and struck the toppled ruins with vast arcing gore.

The Watchers’ hive was burning. Churned to jagged fragments in a deafening chain reaction. God-gleaming thunder lit the city’s glooming ruins, and echoed out wrathful through the bay. The black sky shone like lightning; twisted as nightmares and painted in flame. A great burning glow through the stormclouds. And Seven’s tiny silhouette, racing back like a shot from the blast.

High above the Ministry, Reigo and his crew yelled out in sudden victory. Below in the archway, the Ghosts sighed in shocked relief. Sea Mist watched it all with a tearful sunlit stare, even as the battle raged around her. Despite the endless fighting, their forces erupted with a great raging cheer. They fought on ferociously, clearing the gate arch, as panicked monsters watched their hive blow to ruins in the distance.

Sea Mist glanced at Barkless; they charged forward fiercely to wage war afresh. Aelu and Big Fish roared out behind them, and led their forces to fight back savagely for the steps. In all the horde’s confusion, the Sky Tribe reformed their marching shield wall. Atha’s shouting Guardians had taken up the spears of the fallen. Marching in lockstep, behind Stone Shore’s chanting warriors, to force the sea of spiders from their home.

Whatever fierce grief had first struck their bird-spirit, it hadn’t meant what Sea Mist feared most of all. Her sister hadn’t perished… she’d done exactly as she’d vowed. And set this hopeless world alight, with the greatest Hearthfire in history.

Those fearsome Death-gods were fallen. The Sky Queen had wrought her revenge.

52

Tabitha raced back towards the toppled Ministry in Seven’s saddle. Still coated in the stalker’s black-bone armour, and watching the battle raging with a fierce burning stare. The city’s towering ruins glowed hellish-bright around her, as the Watchers’ shrinking mothership fell in bloody flames far behind.

But her fury was just beginning. This suit gave her greater control. She could feel its stinging enzymes, digesting her; trying to assimilate her. Slowly, her catsuit felt like less of a catsuit. More like a medium, a weird clinging tissue, that fused her inside the stalker’s living armour. A powerful parasite, clinging and wrapping her, just to keep itself alive. But she’d worry about its separation later. Right now, there was only one thought in her head:

End this war. The stalker’s outer skeleton was a gift. A weapon to do just that.

*

The stalker had died, finally, just like anything else. Tabitha’s last deadly gamble had worked.

The bastard had floored her; impaled her. Pinned her screaming to the ground with its sword. It’d taken her arm off and picked up her knife, and knelt gladly to hack off her head.

In her final seconds, she’d remembered sitting by that great black tree in its glowing cavern. They’d only grown around her once she’d made herself calm.

She’d screamed out in agony, as the stalker sawed that knife in… and nothing more, when thin volt-vines slipped from her sleeve. Twining its wrist, wrapping the stalker silently, she’d pinned it before it realised. The vines drank her current and grew in rapid tendrils, like mollusc-trees and ladies of flowers, as the shocked stalker tried to wrestle free of them. Its bloodlust had trapped it; the creature had let down its guard. Now her volt-vines pulled hard at its limbs, as the glaring stalker writhed frantically against them. One shocked second for her to rip the shank from its bony thigh and force the crude blade through a gap at its neck. With a tight snarling grip she’d yanked the buried blade towards her. Ripped the bastard’s throat out, just like Reigo had shown her. The stalker had bled out like a water main, dying slowly beside her, as she’d pulled its sword screaming from her chest.

The creature had been coated in dull black bone; one skeleton inside another. She’d forced in the knife and skinned it, emptied it, before her shattered heartcore bled out dry. With her last dying efforts, she’d clamped her severed arm against her shoulder and closed the stalker’s living armour around her body. Trying anything that might’ve kept her alive.

But its sealed exoskeleton hadn’t just acted as the life-support she’d desperately hoped for. Wearing her stalker had been her way past every Watcher; every monster in the hive. Its black outer-skull had given her the stalker’s creeping tissues and nerve cells; its phantom thoughts and twisted instincts. It’d given her its sight in the dark.

One look at the stalker’s discarded inner body – a fleshy musculature on a human skeleton, that looked eerily enough like Alex to be a skinless bloody clone of him – had given her the idea of carrying its grim trophy. Her passport through the hive. In a couple of frantic minutes she’d scoured the stalker’s inner-skull clean, with her rough rasping palms. If the Watchers wanted her head so badly, she’d take it to them. She’d painted it, coated it, in her own flesh and blood. A necessary agony that she’d healed from. She’d sliced off stray locks of her hair and wrapped them around the sticky skull to complete it. Scoring a few scraping teeth-marks over it with the stalker’s dead outer jaws, and retching at the task of plucking its nocturnal eyes out, she’d finished her hurried decoy.

She’d only hoped the skull would lure them, when she bragged it as her own. They’d scan the lying gore upon it… or test the telltale bone.

*

Soaring back over the city in her aftermath, Tabitha searched Seven’s flame-bright thoughts. He was just glad to be reunited with her, and still wondering why he’d felt like she’d died. He’d been certain of it, having lost his connection with her, while she’d worn the stalker’s rambling undead skull. Like all sense of her had faded from his mind.

Until her surging touch through the hive’s strange flora; he’d felt that like it was amplified. Tabitha’s silent beacon, sent through the roots of their bio-network, and broadcast soundlessly through the city by the wider hive itself. Telling Seven that she’d survived, and that she needed him to come to the core.

The hive died in flames far behind her, but Tabitha only stared dead ahead. Seven swept her lower for the ruined Ministry, and a new hybrid destroyer, and the warring survivors still swamped by the Watchers’ horde. One burning thought, an obsession, raced wrathful through Tabitha’s mind.

…Get the fuck away from my people.

*

‘Gods damn these things!’ Aelu yelled out furiously. Jumping back from a sudden spider as it pounced up the stair-side to try and kill her. Fish’s giant sword-swing batted it into bloody halves across the swarming steps. He was breathless; his hearts pounding non-stop in all the creeping chaos around them. Sea Mist and Barkless spun slashing with their knives to give the pair a moment to recover.

The Ministry’s forces fought on to exhaustion, but the vengeful horde was still gaining ground. Monsters and gorgons piled in through the plaza from the city, wiping out any hold the survivors had won over the steps. Fish looked up in terror to see a pale dragon descending. A cruel light growing in its throat.

‘Get inside the arch!’ he yelled out, pulling his teammates from the fighting. ‘Everyone! Inside now!’

‘We’ll lose the gates!’ Aelu protested.

‘Look!’ Fish shouted back, as he dragged her away from the diving dragon above them; swooping down fast and about to blow its breath through their forces. But something jolted it aside painfully as it raced for them. Dark Storm had dropped on it, from Seven’s swift passing shadow. They glimpsed her wild dark figure tear its saddle-scale open; destroying the pale dragon from the inside out. Climbing its neck, screaming savagely, Tabitha pounced at its bellowing head. A sudden strike clawed its throat open, and the beast fell flailing with a dying roar. Murdered in mid-air.

‘Back, everyone!’ Big Fish urged the fighters around him. No one could take their eyes from the pale dragon’s falling shape. It hit the horde-strewn plaza with a tremoring thoom, bursting the sea of spiders apart. But the Watchers’ rabid hordes were staring up at something darker, that dropped from the sky in a burst of writhing static. Something far worse.

Tabitha hit the plaza like a storm-bright nightmare, in cindercloud sparks and a rain of silver dragonblood. Armoured neck-to-toe in a roiling cloak of smoking black bones, where only her lightning-lethal stare pierced through. A starglooming night queen, scattering the swarming sea in firework-spattered executions. Ripping death-quick trenches through the horde.

The crowded survivors stared in shock. Sprinting and pouncing, brawling bloody and fist-fighting feral, Tabitha spun kicks through bursting spiders and clawed toppling giants to carnage. Her great smoking cloak trailed like stormclouds. Shrouding her strikes and wrapping her in voltage that burst her attackers to flying shreds. A bloody whirlwind massacre through their screeching ranks.

Rushing in frantically to swamp her, the panicked horde only fed her more victims. Tabitha’s volt-booming punches, fierce and rapid-fire, blew apart dozens at a time. The shrinking spiders were terrified. Gorgons watched their siblings drop dead in great arcing lava-bursts, and backed away for the ruins before she found them.

Murdered mounds piled up all around her. Monsters charged in to rip her apart. The bloody banshee destroyed them in smoke-spinning slaughters. Rising from her lightstorm in spark-crackling static. Her smog-cloak burning; her splayed claws dripping silver. She was crowned and collared in dark deathly spikes; a halloween goddess of gore. Watching the whole nervous horde like prey, like practise, as the great writhing sea shrank back. Smiling wolf-wicked, Tabitha shot from the smoke and savaged them. Taking every pound of flesh and sizzling drop of vengeance she was owed. She was screaming; roaring. Pure animal. Her blinding-bright shock tore the plaza. The boiling swarm burst in a bloodbath.

‘She’s terrifying,’ Sea Mist muttered of her tribe-sister, as all their staring forces backed away from the violence.

‘She’s Death,’ Barkless replied. ‘Whatever those dark gods made her… I don’t think they can stop it.’

Tabitha clawed raw murder through the fleeing horde. She ripped through the spiders that ran from her; tore them to mauled pieces in her wake. Spinning and slamming and blowing them apart in vicious volt-explosions. Leaping for monsters to wrench their necks as they ran. She hung in the air for fleeting seconds, as if all her vast static suspended her. Pouncing for a panicked gorgon to rip slopping slits through its armour, and exploding its skull to kick it toppling back like wreckage.

She grabbed pouncing spiders and all but flew with them; leaping far higher than anything they’d seen. Launching her shrieking prey at the ground to burst them like shrapnel, and landing hard in a lightning burst to blow them apart in their hundreds. Seven swept down low to circle her, blowing white hellish trenches to stop the swarm’s escape. He dropped like a demon and mauled monsters to melting carnage, as the last dragons tailing him crashed down in bloody fragments. Nothing would get away from them; not after all they’d been through. The Watchers’ last desperate horde became a blazing lake of curled corpses.

Tabitha’s eyes burned bright like zombie candles. Her red curls floated like the sea. She tore through the horde on bloody instinct, and spoke only in raw demon screams. She felt its momentum; this strange smoking suit. Like the stalker’s sheer strength had multiplied hers, and twined itself gladly with her skin. Maybe some strange lingering imprint of the Alex-clone’s abilities. A viral chain reaction, spurring her speed and swelling her strength. Replacing her cells with its own. The pure primal pinnacle of their racing momentum. Wreathed in the Dark and bright crackling coils. Her true nature.

She glimpsed her Ghosts running toward her, from the Ministry steps up above. Faces she remembered, though their names didn’t spring straight to mind. But they couldn’t feel what was coming to this place. Something colossal.

‘Get back, inside the walls! It’s not safe out here!’ Tabitha urged them, though the words came with difficulty. She’d had to focus to shape those old sounds.

‘We, fight!’ Sea Mist protested, as she raced down the steps toward her sister. Staggering suddenly, as an earthquake tore through the plaza. Something gigantic burrowed in from the ruins to the north.

‘Get back! Please!’ Tabitha begged her Ghosts, as the cratered plaza cracked and shook all around her. ‘Out through the far walls, away from the Ministry!’ she commanded them. ‘NOW!’ Sea Mist shrank back at the sound and sudden look of her. That darkening fury in her changing face. That voice hadn’t been her sister’s.

‘Trust her,’ Big Fish rumbled, as he ushered them back up the steps. Unsure of what he’d just seen in Tabitha himself. Her eyes were blazing, Seven circling angrily above, as the earthquake tore down the towers before them. A sudden thundering dustcloud, where something monstrous-gigantic burst from the city like a writhing hill. A towering squid; the Prince’s grandest abomination. A black-boned kraken of a thing.

Tabitha snarled furiously and ran from its vast falling tentacles. It rained tumbling rubble and blocked out the daylight; swinging limbs so huge that they shook the ground beneath her staggering feet.

Seven roared and dived away from it, as the towering tangle shot tendrils to grab at him. He circled snarling and dropped on it, but all his rage and fire and fury wouldn’t harm it. It was reaching for him, smashing through the ruins for him, as if all its dread mass was intended for him.

Its flailing swings toppled buildings around her. A concrete landslide shattered the shaking ground at her feet. Tabitha growled and raced for it. She clawed quick gouging grips as she climbed its writhing tentacles; a tiny wild figure that scaled a god. She pounced between its vast limbs as they crashed together. Claws crackling, airborne, she leapt from its enormous tentacles and landed murderously on its huge armoured head.

…And failed miserably, when all her great dark strength and savagery wouldn’t stop it grabbing at Seven. Its forest of limbs struck out at her, while she snarled to see Seven entangled. A sudden swing swept her screaming from its towering mass.

Tabitha landed softly in a shroud of sudden static. Staring up furiously as Seven fought and burned at the kraken’s strangling grip. It coiled him close now; throttling him. Seven roared in panic; it was killing him. Desperate, terrified, Tabitha ran frantically across the mid-plaza for her hidden last resort against the colossus. She raised a volt-crackling hand in soundless crescendo.

‘…What’s she doing?’ said Reigo, staring down intensely from the bridge of the destroyer.

‘No idea,’ Saa replied, as she strode in with Irren from one of the gunships’ shuttling flights.

‘Probably get us out of the way, though,’ Irren suggested.

Seven was roaring in panic; all his strength and flames were useless against it. The dark towering kraken was coiling tighter, straining to pull his body limb from limb. Its giant tentacles were tearing down the Ministry behind its screaming survivors. The kraken’s sudden glow aimed a growing beam of light at Reigo’s destroyer; still turning away helplessly from the creature beneath it. The crowds watched in panic from its windows. A few moments more and they’d lose everything to it.

Tabitha breathed deeply in a silent second, and slammed her sparking palm on the plaza. On a volt-vine buried there, just beneath the stones. Her shock sent sudden volts coursing down to something colossal beneath the ground. A seed she’d planted, in a small patch of soil in a corner, in the deepest hidden vaults beneath the complex. A small living cluster that she’d tended to diligently, growing bright and rapidly, far below her Ministry’s bustling corridors. It wasn’t small any more.

Tabitha snarled savagely, watching as the kraken tried to devour her Seven. But her project was working; coming to life. The twisting air around the ruined Ministry grew sharper, heavier, into thickening stormcloud static. Glowing shoots rose countlessly from the vast cracked plaza around her. Swelling volt-trees reached high from the ruins, creaking open together at her will, and shed countless glowing seeds on the breeze. A firefly blizzard all around her. A sea of bright rising sparks.

Its vast buried branches were her batteries. The air itself, her giant clustered conductor. A seed-strewn snowstorm carried her sudden screaming shock through the plaza. A doming blast of lightning lit the world. The booming bloody kraken reeled back in agony, as Seven slipped from its lethal grip. High above them, the ship’s crowded bridge watched in awe. Pointing and chattering at the sight of Her Majesty’s fleeing smokecloud form, as she ran from the plaza and on inside the toppled Ministry. Seven was circling at a distance.

Sure enough, the kraken’s monstrous mass went after her. Dragging its gigantic body across the plaza, reaching ahead with fifty-ton tentacles, it ripped down what remained of the Ministry’s northern walls. Dragging and sliding itself through the collapsing complex around it, until the ruins of their hard-fought fortress were nothing but flattened rubble.

Its booming shadow loomed above her, blocking out the sky as it hunted her. Tabitha raced through the Ministry’s haunted courtyard for the torn-up gardens, where countless dead spiders lay curled among emptied skins. The grim murking sunlight glowed through a graveyard. Her first volt-tree was cracked twisted charcoal. She turned at the kraken’s vast shadow; all her dark violent aspect raged like the night.

Crouching quickly by the volt-tree, Tabitha shot massive volts through far deeper roots. A sudden great awakening, a lesson learned since the SPEAR Project, as she sprung the trap she’d been growing beneath the Ministry. A secret project of her own. Her superweapon.

The thundering kraken filled the courtyard, and roared out at a strange sudden feeling. Baited inside here, where something writhed up rapidly from below. Tabitha escaped it, the sudden swelling earthquake of it, as the stone floors cracked through the complex. Blinding light shone from widening faults and fractures. Something was growing.

The great kraken bellowed, trying to turn back for the plaza. Something here was coming for it. Tabitha glanced back wrathfully as a vast plant-column burst from the world. The kraken was impaled on it; lifted up bloody on a great grand growth. Her sudden tower skewered it; a blinding-bright colossus from the deep. A golden-glassy god of her own. Bursting the Ministry apart as it swelled and grew like a living skyscraper.

Bright eyes blazing, wreathed in volted darkness, Tabitha stared up in shock at what’d grown from that small seed she’d watered. She’d never expected anything so powerful. Seven stared down as he circled, roaring out in vengeance at the sight.

The stuck screaming kraken rained blood in flooding tides through the Ministry. As Tabitha’s writhing plant-colossus bloomed open, its vast piercing branches pulled the monstrosity apart. The great black kraken, the Prince’s grandest abomination, was slaughtered in seconds. Its giant crashing carnage fell apart like it’d never existed; reduced to bloody fertiliser for her new celestial tree. A bright new living landmark on the capital, unfurling in the sunset to its own colossal contentment.

Far across the city ruins, in the bright burning hills, the Watchers’ hive was a great blazing crater. Their black butchered mothership roared in its blood.

*

The towering new volt-tree was strengthening in the sun-glow, and seemed to have stopped its vast growth. The survivors’ weary crowds stared in shock at the sight of it, as they watched from Reigo’s ship and returned en masse from the southern ruins.

‘…That’d do it,’ Big Fish conceded, as he traipsed back exhausted with his dented greatsword.

‘Do you have to spoil every moment with an offhand quip?’ Aelu grumbled beside him.

‘Hey, what’s your problem?’ he replied. ‘We won, didn’t we?’

‘…Sorry, Fish,’ Aelu sighed shakily. ‘Maybe I could just do with a drink.’

‘Same,’ he grunted back. Hugging Aelu to his side as they walked.

The crowds could see its devastation now, as they wound between monstrous corpses to cross the vast southern plaza. The Watchers’ great kraken was nothing but a bloody silver reservoir. Pooling reflective around its own fleshy islands, and spurting through low cracks in their Ministry’s toppled walls.

Out ahead of the crowds, Barkless and Sea Mist were running. Rushing towards the ruins of Minnis-Re in search of her. Sky Tribe had seen a death-goddess fighting for them, and they weren’t the only species muttering about it. But Her Majesty was nowhere to be found.

*

Up above on Reigo’s destroyer, Thier watched the heavens from the ship’s crowded bridge. He saw the first signs of arrival, the speckled flashes of artillery in orbit, and glanced at the man beside him. A green man; scruffy and secretive. Smiling at shooting stars in the sunset sky.

The wider worlds had found it; Irren’s message in a bottle. Celestial vines, and war propaganda, sealed inside the drone that Seven had just barely launched into space. Risking every life to do it.

‘…Congratulations, Mr Amsira,’ Thier said warmly. ‘Always good to see a gamble pay off.’

‘Hm. The timing was less than impeccable,’ Irren conceded. ‘Still. They’re here now.’

‘In force, apparently,’ Thier replied, smiling agreeably. ‘No thanks to our esteemed General Atha.’

‘The man’s an idiot. A bloody crook,’ Irren growled bitterly. ‘Atha knows how to line his pockets, and cover his crimes. Nothing more. If we’d followed his orders and kept Seven grounded as a deterrent, we’d still be waiting for Serenity’s reinforcements to save us. Waiting to die.’

‘Hm. You know as well as I, that position isn’t always a reflection of competence,’ said Thier. ‘Speaking of which… I suspect you’re prepared for the return of our glorious Ministers? And what may be coming next?’

‘And not a shot fired, if I can help it,’ Irren replied, with a look of raw determination. ‘Revolutions are a bloody business. But, after the Watchers… maybe these worlds have seen enough conflict.’

‘Unified at last, by a greater enemy,’ Thier mused. ‘I hope you’re right, Mr Amsira. Truly, I do.’

*

Below on the quiet battlefield, Atha watched the flashing skies in sudden shock, and growing disgrace. His own desperate strategy had quietly hung by a thread. Still trying to reach out for Serenity’s local reinforcements, if they survived, to win this war and keep the established order in power. Protecting him, and his past, in return. Keeping control of the story for his employers.

For all the scout drones he’d wasted in search of them, Serenity’s local reinforcements hadn’t exactly been forthcoming. In fresh hindsight, with the Watchers’ hive in flames, it hit Atha like a ton-weight.

…I risked every life here, maybe every life on every world, to save my own skin. I don’t deserve to survive this war.

His own well-paid officers hadn’t been the ones to get word to those outer worlds; a plot had played out beyond his knowledge. Beyond the knowledge of many people here, who relied on the Ministers’ rule to return to Serenity… and to keep certain protected information from public view.

…At least someone got a message out. Celestial matter too, from the looks of it. Who? How? Glancing around the crowded battlefield, Atha could clearly tell who was on the Ministers’ side. Every one of them looked nervous, that things hadn’t gone exactly as they’d wanted.

However they’d done it, whenever they’d done it, someone had sent non-approved information off this world. There was no telling what kind of information that was.

*

‘…C-Communications are back online, sir!’ the First Officer said in shock. Reigo watched her silently by the destroyer’s command consoles; equally dumbfounded at the news.

Irren’s scheme… that plot among the loyalists… they really pulled it off? The Lieutenant cleared his throat quickly and took up the ship’s crackling comms-piece.

‘All ships, this is Lieutenant Tohe Reigo, of Serenity Aerial Marines! All inbound ships are cleared to engage the enemy mothership, downed over Capital City! We need artillery now!’ Tense silence followed. The crackling connection faded and flickered.

‘…This is Guardian Fifth Fleet,’ came a rasping voice in reply, as Reigo’s crew slumped glad and weary all around him. ‘Already inbound, Lieutenant. We have eyes on hostiles in orbit. Surface strikes en route.’ Reigo sighed with relief just to hear it. Just to know they weren’t alone any longer.

*

Far above Serenity, the Watchers’ web of lurking black satellites was coming under fire. Something they’d never experienced before. They’d been shocked into action; fighting back in panic with their own warping artillery. Losing swiftly to strange new opponents, whose fierce endless shots blew their countless shapes to sudden bloody scrap. An ocean of drifting silver bursts.

It was impossible. Those bright brutal starships should’ve been shut down by now; rendered dead and powerless in orbit. They were coming in far too close. Immune to them. Vast hybrid fleets of them, mutated and perfected from a single glassy root; recovered from a defence drone that’d crash-landed on a neighbouring world called Ima.

Since the message drone’s discovery, the wider worlds had thrown every possible resource into growing the Celestial’s strange material. With Irren’s evidence, and detailed instructions included, they’d set armies of specialists at work to proof entire fleets against the Watchers’ strange blackout. Through countless conscripted nations, electricity had been rationed for the war effort. Every megawatt and mile of cable those worlds could spare had been diverted to the work. Expert teams had driven the Celestial’s growing efficiency. Every Guardian base was set to the task.

The wider worlds had watched their besieged capital become a graveyard. Entire populations stood in protest, demanding that something be done. Now, they’d finally found a way to fight back.

The newscasts hadn’t any news or footage from Serenity; there were only Irren’s war posters and insane stories about the Sky Queen. The message drone carried articles and photos of a brave resistance in Serenity’s dead capital, from every united planet in the galaxy. Still fighting on against the Watchers, for all their worlds.

But the stories were changing now, on certain newscasts. There were strange new versions of the Ministry’s activities… and rumours about certain people, inviting the Watcher threat for their own financial gain. All unconfirmed, of course. The High Ministers couldn’t entertain every wild accusation levelled at them; they’d have no time to organise the Guardians’ Grand Armada.

*

More celestial warships were lightjumping in to join the war for Serenity. They were sleek and sweeping; winged angelic with great leaf-like fins. Appearing suddenly against Serenity’s bright curve, and wiping out the lurkers in orbit with endless bright artillery beams. Blowing through the Watchers’ strange dark satellites, to aim even greater weapons on the ravaged capital below.

The Guardians returned in force; a sudden host in the stars. Every member of their crews knew soldiers who’d died in the Watchers’ blockade massacre. Now, they’d take back Serenity in force. If not for the Ministers who ruled it, then for the warrior-queen of Stormworld who’d famously stood against them. The one from Irren’s viral videos, who’d fought through the ruins fearlessly, to save their united peoples from the Watchers’ genocide.

*

Past the capital’s sunglooming ruins, through the hive’s scorched wasteland beyond the hills, stray monsters turned and snarled at hazing shapes in the sky. Their crippled mothership was thrashing again on the hillsides. Wounded and roaring, and gushing great rivers of blood.

Inside the mothership’s shattered command deck, the Watchers’ shocked Prince stared skyward. Still roaring at his vast panicked crew to seal off the vessel’s wounds, and repair their healing drive-core for retreat. Their next launch attempt dragged the whole gory ship from the hills. Turning its wounded mass aside, they set it in motion. A sudden burst of light raised them rapidly for the sky.

Fleeing in fury from Serenity, the Prince surrendered his war for this world. Only then did he catch full sight of the hybrid armada descending. His warship’s black scaled surface, gleaming sudden bright blue.

*

The Ministry’s crowded survivors saw the Watchers’ gored mothership rising from the hills. Cheering for the sudden armada above it, as it fled for the sky in endless raining blood. The monstrous ship was limping miserably. Its belly was torn apart; its fearful main weapon destroyed. Crippled and bloody, it thundered away from their world to the sound of raging cheers.

Barkless watched victoriously with his cheering Sky Tribe, as the death-gods crawled off for the skies. Those great golden starboats fired ceaselessly on the vast black craft. An endless hail of holy light scorched blazing holes into it; as grand and blinding as the orbitbom he’d once seen with Deep Roots.

‘Don’t you dare let those bastards escape!’ Reigo roared at the fleets through his working wristcom. ‘Cut them off in orbit! KILL ‘EM!’

‘You heard the man, light it up!’ a large blue Admiral barked aboard his hulking flagship. The fleets’ fearsome barrage tore scorching holes in the struggling mothership. Blowing off vast black scales in bloody geysers, as the monstrous thing hurtled towards them.

But their laser cannons were scorching mere craters into thick armoured meat. The Guardians’ scans suggested that the mothership’s scales were converting their beams’ vast energy, or somehow dispersing it. Its desperate artillery blew their missiles away. All their countless devastating shots weren’t enough to slow its strange propulsion, as it heaved through their fleets and jumped to bright sudden lightspeed. Its eerie light-cloud was all that remained. A heaven-smeared nebula of slow glowing blood.

*

‘FUCK!’ Atha roared out from the Ministry, as his wristcom gave him the news from orbit.

‘Language,’ Aelu admonished him. ‘At least we saved Serenity,’ she shrugged, exhausted. ‘We’ll take the war to the Watchers,’ she assured him. ‘We know where they’re going.’

‘How could you possibly know where they’re g–

‘Earth,’ Aelu interrupted. ‘Tabitha’s homeworld. If it’s the nearest planet they’ve conquered and settled, then they’ll limp back there and recover. Maybe try their luck in other galaxies, without quite so much fight in them. It’s not like the Watchers to give any ground.’

‘…Maybe,’ Atha sighed wearily, with the oldest look she’d ever seen on him. ‘But, tragically, I’ve retired,’ he concluded. ‘As of right now. I can’t cope with this shit.’

‘You’d have to take that up with Her Majesty,’ Aelu replied. ‘Where is she, anyway?’

‘Tabitha?’ he said. ‘I thought she’d be with you, and your Spooky Saviours.’

‘Ghosts,’ she snapped at him. ‘I thought you’d take us a little more seriously by now.’

‘I couldn’t give a shit at this point,’ Atha grunted bitterly. ‘But no, I haven’t seen Her Saviourous Majesty,’ he sighed wearily, as he sat down on the Ministry steps. ‘Try poolside,’ he added, pointing a thumb to the toppled walls, and the kraken’s silver flood across the courtyards.

*

Aelu wandered on through the sad crowded ruins of their Ministry, wherever the gleaming bloody lake would allow people passage. Asking grieving survivors for any sign of her. No one knew.

She followed the crowds to a far staring space, where their torn-up barracks used to stand. Soldiers and Sky Tribe were gathered there, and the Ghosts ahead of them. But Big Fish was keeping everyone back. Far beyond him, in the distant rubble of their vast southern walls, Aelu caught a fleeting glimpse of Tabitha’s bright red curls.

Aelu pushed hurriedly through the crowd, but Fish wouldn’t let her get any closer across the empty space ahead.

‘Don’t,’ he warned her, with a strange look. ‘…That’s not her any more.’

‘What?’ Aelu chuckled, disbelieving. Sitting beside Fish, Barkless was snarling in agony. He had a great ugly claw-wound down his arm, torn right through his armour, which Sea Mist and a soldier were binding rapidly. Aelu peered past them to study the distant silhouette. But when the red-haired woman turned to see her… well. She wasn’t the Tabitha they remembered.

She was a hellish shadowed queen in the rubble; jolting and staggering in smoke. Raging and warring constantly with herself. Tabitha fell down screaming and struggling, wrapped in her strange dark armour, as if she was wrestling with something unseen. Yelling out as she clutched her head.

*

Ittt buRneD hher. BbBbroken thoughts takinG over. The staLkeR would never Let hEr Go. Wouldn’t let her oPeN uP iTs aRmOUR tto essscApE. It nnnNEeDed her, to staY ALiVe. It puNCtured Her Their her THEIR ffFLesH like rusTed nnnNaiLs and fiLLed hher head with a dDdDEaD-MEAT ssSTENCH. It wwwas glass-shArds grrouNd in fLeSHwouNds and off-key brbrBRoken vvvVioliNs. VioLins. VioLenCe. Vio Lens, via lens Vile leNDs viLe lenDs ViLE LENDS. Tabitha clawed her ssuit fRanTically, but its viral-cocktaiL cells were cLaiMinG her. iT sssSToPPed her sTrugGling awaY. GripPing hheR mmMuscles and ttttTwiNinG her ssSpine.

*

Seven stared furiously from the ruins above her, snarling in frustration and powerless to help her. He’d tried to connect with her; tried to touch his snout to her hand and calm her thoughts. He wore fresh bloody claw wounds now, a dozen of them, for his failing efforts. Bruised and trembling, Fishbowl was afraid to go near her again.

‘Enough!’ Sea Mist said angrily. ‘I must, help her!’ She left Barkless Tree to recover, and walked over fearlessly toward her snarling sister. Breaking their lethal stalemate beyond the crowd. Dark Storm erupted into a bright-eyed smokecloud. Pulsing in lightning, until she struggled to control it. A lurking bloody nightmare in the black.

‘Don’t!’ Barkless yelled out. Grabbing Sea Mist’s arm to stop her running toward the demon in the distance. ‘That is not your sister!’ he warned her again, as he held her back struggling. ‘Whatever strength those dark lands gave her, it’s no longer hers to control! She is possessed!’

‘She’ll kill us if we get any closer,’ Big Fish rumbled beside Aelu, as Sea Mist screamed at Barkless in protest. Furious at the injustice of it.

‘…What do we do?’ Aelu muttered.

‘What can we do?’ Fish replied hopelessly. Staring in shock, Aelu realised that Tabitha had clawed vicious bloody wounds down his far shoulder. A great gory gouge through his palm. ‘If she won’t let anyone help her… then maybe all she can do is save herself.’

*

All this lost world was a gloom-misting hell inside her. The stalker’s suit, its cells, its shadow, were taking over her. Creeping through her veins and raw nerve-ends, like mould. Clinging to life in her spine. Her blood. Her brain.

Tabitha screamed out loud, a tortured feral yell at all its chattering, and fell to her knees in terror to fight it back. Breathing hard and heaving. Her cold sweat dripped on the cobbles between her claws. The thing’s whispering thoughts were taking over; all its lust for bloody power possessing her. But it didn’t have to convince her. It was her. And as she stood, she knew. Prowling in her instincts, her loud mind sprouting revelations, she knew.

Right now, she was the total apex predator on this world. On any world. The Watchers were gone; they were scared of her. Dreaded her. This planet was hhers, and Seven would take her to any other wworlds that she fffoRced him to. Fishbowl would grow ggardens for her, and aRMies for her, and any peoples who fought against her would fffFEED HER. They were all just meat; that was the natural order. She’d reign over a galaxy she deserved.

Nothing would sstop her. Nothing couLD. Life was empty, and gods were a lie. She’d ssSeen that cold infinity for herself. Beyond this existence, there was only oblivion. Alex, the Watchers and her stalker-self knew it: only the strong survived.

…I’ve survived everythinG. I owe these veRmiN nnnNOTHING.

She saw the way, now. The only way that made any sense. She’d saved this world; it belonged to her. She’d create her own death-black gorgeous dominion. She’d be a goddess over these people. Shaping this fallen world in new strength. Forging it in flames, to serve Her and nourish Her. To mmmMaKe hER ssStroNgER.

It was maddening. Trying to hurt her, and kill her, whenever she managed to fight back against it. But it was part of her now; her Watcher aspect. More a part of her than her old humanity. Tabitha clung to words and names and memories, desperately, as the black-bone armour dropped her screaming to her knees. Setting fire to her thoughts in sudden searing agony. The stalker’s living armour creaked and tightened, and claimed its host. A churning smokecloud chaos all around her.

Bloodlusting, bewitched by it, Tabitha turned to watch the survivors wrathfully. Suddenly starving, and drooling bright-eyed at the sight of them. JusT one ttTaste, and she cccouLD be a GodDeSS. A ddDeStroYeR of wOrLds. LimiTless, LeTHAL, POTENTIAL.

Panicked survivors watched the creature coming closer. It was prowling for them. Flicking out its claws to come and massacre them. The frantic courtyard was clearing rapidly, until only the loyal remained. Guardians, Tribals, and Ghosts. Medics rushed in from the dropships descending; unable to get any closer. Big Fish raged against frightened reinforcements, who raised their rifles at her; as if she was a lethal animal to be put down.

Sea Mist locked eyes with the storm-wreathed demon as it rushed in closer to kill her. People pulled her away from it, but she struggled and refused to leave. She stood against the human-stalker as it came to rip her apart.

‘…Dark Storm!’ Sea Mist told her boldly, trying to hide her terror. ‘I’m, your sister. And I’m, not afraid, of you.’ The smoke-storming demon snarled wildly at her, and pounced in fast to murder her, but something held its claws back with a trembling inch to spare. Some fading trace of Tabitha that still remained.

Eyes glistening, voice faltering, Sea Mist felt her heart racing as the dark roiling thing strained to slaughter her. Claws sprung viciously and crowned in violent spikes. Jerking and shuddering; muscles taut and trembling. At war with itself.

‘…Sleep easy, my sister. Sleep deep,’ Sea Mist told her nervously. Her voice was trembling. ‘Take all, my Fierce-Hope, for your own.’ In a bright flaming moment, she glimpsed the demon’s snarling face change in recognition. The coiling smoke faltered. The stalker’s writhing-wrathful aspect slowly faded from her.

One moment, at last, where Tabitha’s scorched tortured thoughts were her own. She saw her sister, and her friends, and her Seven and Fishbowl, and every sudden thought was sparking snow and holy lightning. For the first time in forever, she smiled.

…I know you. All of you.

The setting sun filled her. Glowed on her. Tabitha sighed deeply, and smiled gently, and felt every spark of current draining out of her. One last exhausted moment, smiling with her sister, before every thought stopped and she fell down suddenly for the stones.

But Sea Mist caught her. Checking for her faint breaths, and holding tightly to her hard black hand where she lay. As the Guardians’ arriving medics rushed in, Sea Mist wouldn’t leave her. She’d always be there for Dark Storm.

53

Aelu stared into nothing. The stark corridor of a Guardian medical ship gleamed all around her, filling her head with its clinical smell. She bit her mauled thumbnail endlessly, where she sat waiting outside with Mist and Barkless. Couldn’t keep her foot from tapping.

‘Is she ok?’ she said, the split-second someone appeared at the gliding door.

‘We’re doing all we can,’ the scaled man replied. ‘Lotor’s consulting our surgeons in-theatre.’

‘Is she still… y’know,’ Big Fish rumbled, as he came back with stim drinks. ‘Her?’

‘…We’re doing all we can,’ the man repeated carefully. Meeting their nervous stares with a look that promised nothing. ‘I’ll let you know, as soon as we know.’

Beyond the ward’s windows, a dozen more white starships sat in orderly orbit. Receiving every survivor from Serenity that their rescue teams could find. The Sky Queen’s forces and families filled the fleet’s countless hospital beds, where nurses and specialists rushed to keep them stabilised.

In the ships’ busy labs and hangars, the Watchers’ dead creations were being quarantined and studied. Not least their vicious viral strain; clearly developed and tailored for Serenity’s brutal conquest. Already being studied closely under expert scopes and scanners, in hurried search of a vaccine for the afflicted.

*

Vast bright shapes dived as one from the hazy summer sky. Strange new warships, gilded in leaves and gleaming angelic. Dozens at first, then great thundering hundreds. Descending in tight formation from the high bright blue.

Then vengeful thousands. Soaring like shots and cloaked in blinding sunlight, as their small sleek fighters tore ahead to win back their world.

A young Lieutenant led them; slaughtering the pale dragons that raced for them. Taking back his home. Snarling fiercely as he let loose his cannons, from the heart of his hardened Black Squadron. Directing their strikes from his vicious experience, as lost spider swarms fled from their sudden shadows. Pounding cratered devastation through screeching nests and sprouting hives.

Serenity’s ruined cities saw the monsters turn and run from them. Ragged families watched their brave racing Guardians fight back.

Celestial fleets swept like tides across Serenity. Gleaming destroyers bustled with varied chattering crews, who relayed endless careful orders and coordinates. Ranks of staring gunners locked their screen-sights on far dark clusters, obliterating them in sudden bright explosions. Running thundering search-and-destroy beneath their watchful satellites.

Every Ministry planet added ships to the armada, following their peoples’ crowded grief and calls for justice. Serenity was flooded with them. Countless racing jetstreams of them, landing soldiers and aid teams in every nation. Spreading like nets and gleaming arrowheads across its continents, until the Watchers’ dark abandoned weapons couldn’t stand against them.

Over silent shores and distant toppled cities, grieving families watched their skies filled with bright new flashing shapes. Strange at first glance, but somehow familiar. Stricken and starving, climbing out from their hiding holes, Serenity’s survivors saw their fallen world reclaimed.

*

The Ministry’s night-darkened ruins were a sprawling construction site. Entire armies of builders worked in careful coordination; clearing its rubble and stacking vast scaffolds. Every PR-conscious Minister threw the wealth and weight of worlds behind it. Their dark cratered capital wouldn’t stay fallen for long. Reputations were at stake; the fate of their government hung in the balance.

Giant drones around the Ministry complex hovered spot-lit slabs into position, while countless shouting build-crews waved solid new foundations into place. Terraforming ships descended by the dozen, pouring busy oceans of concrete across the torn-up plaza. Drone armies laid rapid new tiles like card dealers. Up behind them, Tabitha’s colossal new tree was being airlifted by cargo ships. Finally lowered carefully, a massive operation in itself, to be replanted in a less political location.

Hundred-ton machines hovered slowly along the Ministry’s levelled walls. Circling its lengths, working inside to out, like a herd of steel elephants in line. The first heavy-engine wielded deafening rolling drums, that pulverised the jagged ruins in giant tungsten teeth. Drones racing past it scanned the levelled walls and simulated them. They sent constant plans and measurements to the next giant robots in line, which plugged up fallen stonework and trailed smooth new foundations in their wake.

Gigantic machines behind them clunked their huge nozzles open, printing brand-new barracks and battlements in endless liquid stone. Layering it up inch by inch, one bustling pass at a time, until the vast cratered ruins were a slow-growing map of stumpy new walls beneath them. Every shape and species of builder walked in careful teams beside them, studying endless gauges and readouts on their wristcoms.

Far off in the power district, teams of drones and Guardians were already hard at work restoring sparse supplies of water and electricity. A peaceful army descended on the ruined capital, hell-bent on construction.

Thier stood alone, in busy new landing grounds beyond the plaza. Smiling just to see it all happening. Order from chaos. The eternal story, on every world.

He did so love a system; there was nothing more beautiful to his mind. Especially in construction… and particularly when he owned the machines. Glancing at his wristcom, now star-net connected and swarming with messages, he smiled widely at a new alert on the screen. His stock was spiking, like never before.

He’d delighted in their frantic phonecalls. The absent Ministers were on their knees to him. To rebuild their palace, today. He’d gladly obliged, and jumped at the money; he had employees to pay after all. And a chance to twist the knife in; he’d been able to name his price. Thier was already funnelling the Ministry’s payments, every last credit of them, into a fund for the veterans and families he’d fought for.

*

Tabitha lay pale and lifeless under harsh surgical lights. Comatose; barely breathing. Drugged heavily, in an attempt to slow her flesh from knitting so rapidly.

Lotor still observed the Ministry’s military surgeons hard at work on Her Majesty, as they had been for hours now. Still picking and flushing and incising away on her, seemingly by every square centimetre of her. All quite inspiring, to his mind; their fine motor skills and sheer dedication. Reclaiming her anatomical systems from the virulent life-form which endeavoured most fiercely to override them.

…Would that I’d trained in the surgical arts, Lotor berated himself. I might’ve helped her.

He’d informed their highly accomplished team of everything he’d come to know of the Watchers, and their grimly fascinating creations. Sharing his endless notes, observations and detailed experiments via wristcom transfer. But now the dread task was entirely in these surgeons’ capable hands.

He stood ready, eternally, to consult them further on his limited expertise. He’d do anything within his power to save that poor formidable woman.

Bunching his hands tightly into fists, Lotor tried again to stop them trembling in such distinguished company. At least Her Majesty had finally stabilised, with whatever otherworldly energy-core that passed for her cardiac system. None among them had seen anything like her; a marvel of bio-engineering. A high-simian mongrel, comprised of so many mutant cells and unknown species that they hadn’t a clue where to start with her. Were it not for her cells’ unnatural regeneration, they’d doubted that she would survive the procedure.

The stalker’s parasitic matter had formed an entire microbiome, claiming her every cell and synapse. Spawning a rabid gut-brain of its own, a coiling primeval tyrant, to rule all sense and appetite.

Lotor’s breath caught in his throat when Her Majesty fell into Critical yet again. The team around the operating table fought hurriedly to save her. That dark vicious cell colony would simply refuse to surrender its wretched existence, without first claiming her own.

Outside the operating theatre, in the ship’s stark ward corridor, Tabitha’s Ghosts sat nervous and fidgeting on countless stim drinks. Still waiting desperately, with Saa and Reigo standing and pacing beside them, for any hint of news that she’d survive.

54

The weather was strange, that next morning over the ruined capital. Sunlit from somewhere, in a dark looming sky. Shining wet and schizophrenic.

And, finally, the heavens opened with sudden rolling thunder. Heavy rain shone through a bright gold day. The downpour turned the city’s ash to muddy rivers along the pavements, and washed at least some of the grime into the stinking sewers below. Elegant streetlights showed their first dim flickers, as distant drones and technicians tested their endless repairs on the grid.

Far across the ruins, in the city’s high central district, a scarred shattered tower hid a small growing glow of its own. A shadowed top-floor office held a sprawled dead monster; surrounded by broken droids that lay unsalvageable from battle. One spindly robot was still attached to the alien brute, with a small paddled hand embedded in its brain through a bloody eye socket. Its lifeless body hung suspended, crushed in a huge frozen fist, where they’d killed one another in tandem.

But the grim silent scene wasn’t all Death’s territory. Between the dark monster’s armoured chest-scales, a small bright shoot slipped through toward the rising sunlight. Growing rapidly, and blooming blue-celestial, where strange ancient life lingered on.

*

Aelu was slumped wearily in her seat, where Big Fish had nodded off beside her. Reigo paced another tired circuit down the starship’s clinical corridors. Barkless and Sea Mist looked up nervously as Lotor walked out from the theatre rooms. The tall man just smiled. Sea Mist shot up from her seat to hug him tight.

*

‘Her Majesty is in recovery,’ Lotor explained, with a pale tired look, as he led them on toward a separate ward filled with resting patients. ‘She’s weak. Physically, psychologically. I urge you to “take it easy” with her, for now. She needs her friends.’

‘Family,’ Barkless corrected him, shaking his hand gladly, as they caught sight of her sleeping in her hospital bed. ‘We are, her family.’

‘Thank you. For everything,’ Aelu said happily. Hugging Lotor gratefully, and the scaled chief surgeon beside him, for their hours of endless work in-theatre.

Leaving the ward with the ship’s surgeons, Lotor smiled calmly and said his farewells, and disappeared into a side office to shut the door behind him. And promptly sat down trembling, pale and sleepless and shell-shocked, from the horrors he’d seen during these dark infernal days.

*

Tabitha blinked her bright eyes open, hungover as all hell, and found herself in a sunlit hospital bed. Her Ghosts, her family, were gathered close around her. She sat up painfully. Plugged into an array of drips and beeping monitors. Clearing her dry scorched throat.

‘…Hi,’ she croaked quietly. Sea Mist just grabbed her in a sudden tight embrace, soft and strong and smoke-smelling as Hearthfires, and Tabitha could’ve died right there. Sea Mist held her close, and pulled back to see that rare happy look on her sister’s face. Smiling into one another’s eyes.

‘You look terrible,’ Big Fish rumbled. Stomping over to wrap her in a giant hug as she chuckled. ‘It’s good to have you back.’

‘You didn’t really think you’d lost me, did you?’ Tabitha replied.

‘For a while there? Yeah. We kinda did,’ said Aelu. ‘Whoever that was in there… it didn’t seem like you.’

‘…It wasn’t,’ Tabitha replied quietly. Lost in darker thoughts. ‘I’ve never known a place like that,’ she muttered. A haunted look crept over her.

‘Back now,’ Barkless said brightly. Walking over to give her a cuddle. ‘Back with, tribe. With family.’

‘…Yeah,’ she said quietly, returning his smile. She still felt the scars, deep down in the centre of herself. They’d never really leave her, she supposed. But she felt stronger with it. Strong enough to fight all over again if she had to, for the ones who stood around her.

Maybe that’s just the price I’ll pay. It’s worth it. For them, it’ll always be worth it.

Smiling around at everyone, when Big Fish finally pulled Aelu away from her, Tabitha saw their bandaged scars. Struck by sudden hazy memories, as if she’d only half been there.

‘…I did those, didn’t I?’ she said, staring at her wounded friends in growing horror. ‘I’m sorry,’ she muttered hoarsely, as her tears finally came unstoppably. ‘I’m so sorry.’ But her Ghosts just gathered in close around her, and held her happily, and didn’t say a word.

*

They’d been talking for ages. Filling Tabitha in on everything she’d been missing these past few days. Though she kept quiet, and changed the subject quickly, whenever her Ghosts asked about her time in the city ruins.

‘…So what the hell was that thing?’ said Aelu, as their long conversations drifted to the subject of her volt-tree colossus. ‘How did you grow it? What was it for?’

‘Backup plan,’ Tabitha replied, with a shrug and a smile. ‘Just some seeds I was working on with Fishbowl. Eventually we managed to breed a volt-plant that just kept growing. I’d meant it for the Watchers’ squids, or the mothership, if it ever came back for the Ministry. Still, I’m just glad it was useful. Nothing hurts my Seven and gets away with it.’ Sea Mist and Barkless nodded approvingly at their Sky Queen’s wrath.

‘Did you find Alex again, out there?’ Big Fish rumbled, and watched Tabitha shake her head. ‘Don’t tell me the bastard’s still alive.’

‘Probably,’ Tabitha sighed bitterly. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll get what’s coming to him.’

‘Just focus on your recovery first, ok?’ Reigo advised her, where he hung back respectfully behind her friends. Tabitha nodded in reply, trying not to think about Alex, in case her darkening thoughts spurred her right out of bed. Glancing past Reigo’s shoulder, she saw Irren appear at the doors.

‘…Well. We’ll let you talk shop for a while,’ Aelu concluded, standing up to hint her gang off the hospital ward. ‘You’re sure you’re ok?’

‘I’m fine,’ Tabitha replied happily, as they hugged their rough goodbyes. ‘Space-morphine’s a hell of a drug.’

‘Nah, that’s just regular morphine,’ Reigo confirmed.

‘Oh. Well, same goes,’ Tabitha decided. ‘Now go and find something to eat, will you? You lot must be starving. I’ll see you back at the Ministry, ok?’ She watched her Ghosts leaving with a tired smile, quietly in love with all their oblivious chattering, as her loud motley crew piled out through the full ward’s restful silence. The thin green man approaching her merely smiled, and shook his head in admiration as he took his seat beside her.

‘Majesty,’ Irren addressed her warmly. ‘I’ve never in my life seen such ass-kickery.’

‘Did Vincent get back in one piece?’ she replied. ‘Is he alright?’

‘He’s fine, don’t worry,’ Irren said gladly. ‘And full of high-definition, expertly captured footage of your exploits, out in the ruins.’

‘Just as long as it’s useful to your media war,’ Tabitha replied. ‘I’m not keen on reshooting any of it.’ Irren grinned, and shifted in his seat.

‘Well. Since we’re on the subject, and now that we have some semblance of the star-net back online, I… took the liberty of sharing some of your videos,’ Irren explained. ‘I may have made some propaganda posters too. I hope that’s alright with you.’

‘Hm. Depends,’ said Tabitha. ‘Did it help get us any support from the outer worlds?’

‘Well,’ Irren smiled, victoriously. ‘I’d say that Vincent’s videos of you had since gone viral across the federated worlds, but that wouldn’t be entirely accurate,’ he explained. ‘What’s the next step up from viral? A plague, I suppose. They’re a visual plague. Billions of viewers are demanding more content from Tabitha Jones, Her Majesty the Sky Queen. Monster Hunter, Watcher Killer, and Saviour of Serenity. Oh, and those few crummy posters I made? All of a sudden they’re limited-edition war memorabilia. You’re a hit,’ he chuckled. ‘Better get training for new broadcasts, Majesty.’

‘Hm. They may have to wait a little while for that,’ Tabitha replied, with a tired smile. ‘I won’t be bed-bound much longer, though. Just give me a job list, if there’s anything I can get on with today. Speeches and what-not. Though I’d prefer more what-not, if there’s a choice.’

‘…You’ve done enough,’ Irren told her gently, with a warm level look. ‘Listen. This world’s about to see a very different kind of conflict. A war of ideas, and enemies that you can’t just claw to pieces. Dreaded politics. Let me return the favour, and take over your work to rebuild the Capital.’

‘You’re welcome to it,’ Tabitha replied gladly. ‘Just please, don’t take on the Ministers alone.’

‘Oh, I’d no intention of it,’ Irren smiled back. ‘It’s high time this world had some new voices at the Ministry pulpit. But, given your reputation here, this whole coup would go a lot easier if you, ah… gave the new Arch Minister your blessing.’

‘…Did you have someone in mind for the job, Irren?’ Tabitha replied, with a teasing grin. ‘I want to weigh the options first. But I know we need to move fast. We can’t let The Four crawl back out of the woodwork.’

‘The Three, now,’ Irren corrected her. ‘Or so I’ve been led to understand. Since meeting with the Watchers in person, our beloved First Minister is sadly no longer with us.’

‘Hm. Maybe there is some justice,’ Tabitha muttered in surprise. ‘Well that’s good news, anyway. Just give me some time to think about this whole succession thing,’ she added. ‘I’ll get back to you soon. But I think the docs need to poke some more holes in me,’ she concluded. ‘…Unless I can make good my escape through that window, there.’

‘Hm. Probably not a good idea, Majesty,’ Irren advised her. ‘You are on a spaceship.’

‘…Huh. I did not know that,’ she said in wonder, and glanced around again at the summery ward. ‘Those windows look all sunlit and such. I thought that was daylight.’

‘Electrical lighting,’ Irren explained carefully, with a growing smirk. ‘It’s amazing what we can do with technology these days.’ He was grinning at her.

‘…Irren?’

‘Yep?’

‘Bugger off.’

‘Of course, Majesty,’ he chuckled, with a quick bow as he took his leave. ‘Rest up.’

*

Slipping from her bedsheets sluggishly, and stealthily, and only feeling a raw crippling tenderness through every square inch of her body, Tabitha searched a small space-age locker beside her bed for any sign of her catsuit.

She was bored already; this calm ward was far too pleasant. The nurses, much too caring and attentive. She wasn’t used to it. She had to get up and dress, and get back to work quickly before these worlds’ less friendly Ministers restored every ounce of power they were accustomed to.

She found her healing catsuit, finally, in an open lockup beside the medical labs. Scoured microscopically of all its stalker cells, and cleaned entirely of all the grimy gore she’d put it through. Samples had been scraped from it, for the labs’ studies. Tabitha grabbed it up quickly, creeping away unseen, as a Guardian technician hurried back through a distant doorway.

Ducking into a patient bathroom, and tutting at the lean bruised disaster that was her healing body, Tabitha changed into her catsuit quickly and painfully. Checking from the doorway before she snuck away unseen for the staff quarters.

…They’d never discharge me so quickly. But I’m just so bloody bored.

Tabitha hurried through the ship’s busy corridors in a long white lab coat, disguised in glasses and a futuristic stethoscope, and no one seemed to bother her during her escape. But in truth, everyone noticed her. They were just too respectful to ask. It hadn’t occurred to her, through her hefty painkiller haze, that she was the only human in this stretch of the galaxy.

‘…Why’s Her Majesty pretending to be a doctor?’ a Guardian muttered, as the Sky Queen hurried on by.

‘Did you wanna go up and ask her that?’ a grey nurse replied beside him. ‘Have you seen the videos?’

‘Hell no, I’m not gonna ask her,’ he mumbled. ‘I like all my bones where they are. Gotta admit though, she ain’t all that normal.’

‘Well, she is royalty,’ the nurse shrugged, checking her wristcom busily, as she walked on by for the wards.

The slender grey nurse tapped a secret message into her wristcom screen, and sent it back hurriedly to her powerful employers on a distant world. The Sky Queen had already discharged herself. A change of plan was required.

The nurse quickly binned Her Majesty’s new poisoned pills, to be incinerated.

*

Seven was resting in the medical ship’s hangar, and had been since his human was shuttled up here from the capital. Growling and roaring rabidly when the shouting crews attempted to move him, and threatening fiery devastation whenever they tried to make him leave, they’d had to give up fearfully and just work around him.

But now he saw her, and smelled her, and sensed her, through the opening blast doors in the distance. His vast tail writhed happily at the sight of her, and smashed an engineering station to scrap. Seven sat bolt upright when she hurried towards him; pining gigantic. He watched her drop her strange disguise and run over painfully for him, limping and staggering to be with him, as the hangar crews called out urgently that she couldn’t be in here. Seven’s ape-creature hugged his snout desperately, and tearfully, and her sun-bright thoughts had never felt clearer. Sheltered in his wings now, like a vast black cave. He lowered one gently; scooping Tabitha up into his waiting cockpit. A place he could protect her. A place that felt like home.

*

‘…Where is our war heroine?’ said a large blue man in uniform. ‘I saw the images. And the footage of her, fighting her way through the Capital. Astounding,’ he added, in deep well-bred tones. ‘I’d very much like to meet this woman. I ought to thank her personally.’

‘My apologies, Admiral,’ Lotor replied pleasantly, as they walked on down the bustling ward. ‘Her Majesty’s… still recuperating,’ he added uncertainly. Glancing aside quickly, at the hospital bed she’d disappeared from. Though she had left a hurried note of her endless thanks, and a wondrous floral volt-vine grown in a glass for them, along with several drawn crosses beneath her writing for some reason. A custom of her species, he presumed.

‘I’ll notify you immediately, once Her Majesty is able to receive visitors,’ Lotor added pleasantly. ‘Though between you and I… I believe she may have moved on. And with good reason.’

The pair walked on down the ship’s main hallway at an easy pace. Stopping to talk again, only once the bright busy corridor was clear.

‘…And the election is already underway?’ the Admiral enquired quietly, when he could be sure that they spoke alone. ‘We’ve little time to act, Lotor. Silverspire’s Loyalists stand ready. On more worlds than you may imagine.’

‘Soon, Admiral,’ Lotor replied calmly, as he watched the starry black void beyond the windows. ‘Very soon.’

*

Seven had taken off quickly from the starship’s bustling hangar, straight into the panicked path of a medical shuttle landing aboard. He’d left a small army of frantic flight crews and space traffic controllers in his wake, and thrown Her Majesty’s expertly planned Schedule of Convalescence into total disarray. To the Ministry fleet’s carefully ordered Way Of Doing Things, this was unthinkable sacrilege.

…But he had her now. Floating distantly in the starry black nothingness, that felt like their own special place. Seven swore to himself that he’d never let the ape-creature out of his sight again. He felt her sad thoughts; furious at himself for not protecting her. She was feeling like a weapon. Something to be used and feared, then discarded when the grim task was done. He knew the feeling, he’d replied. She shouldn’t have to suffer alone.

Inside his pale ribbed cockpit, curled up in a ball in the pilot seat, Tabitha held herself tightly in screaming tears. Knees clutched close to her chest, crippled deep inside, and rocking desperately at the horror of it all. Holy numb despondence, for the past few days she’d suffered through. Her latest living hell.

Fishbowl’s tentacles wrapped Tabitha’s arm to comfort her. Sniffling now, and drying her eyes to pull herself together, she stared through Seven’s sight. Watching the starry void, and the bright vast world below, as if they weren’t really there just now. The distant sun flamed gigantic, and strengthened her, and healed the lost church-organ weariness in her soul.

Unchecked grief filled her sad gold stare. She wasn’t even homesick any more. There wasn’t anywhere called home to go back to. All there was, was fighting. And pressure. Everyone looking to her, constantly, for answers she didn’t have.

Why do I keep going? she wondered weakly, as she watched the stars glimmer beyond the vast sacred sunlight. Haven’t I done enough? When does it stop?...

‘Boo hoo. Poor me,’ Tabitha told herself sternly. Jaw clenched; thoughts hardening. As if all her welling grief had reached its limit, and flipped a sudden switch in her. There was work to do; she saw the challenge and rose to it. Serenity’s great bright curve lay beneath her, and those survivors… her growing tribe… they needed her.

‘C’mon,’ she told Seven, as she shook off her healing surgery and fired up his jetscales. ‘Let’s do this.’

*

A nearby Ministry satellite gave up on its targeting software, and its main laser cannon folded away. Sending back an error message, to powerful figures on a distant world. Its cold staring lens closed up again, as the Sky Queen’s organic spacecraft shot away quickly for the planet’s surface. It no longer had a killing shot.

The satellite’s newly hacked source code, a <RunCommand> “tragic error”: true, was no longer a viable solution to make The Tabitha Problem quietly go away. Its impending artillery misfire – aimed at Seven’s Watcher technology, which was sadly mistaken as Hostile – was no longer within high-precision range.

55

‘She still sleeping up there, y’think?’ Big Fish rumbled in the Ministry gardens, as he gulped fresh water from his favourite flower vase. Aelu just shrugged in reply, and watched the medical fleets’ distant stars gleam in the blue summer sky. Sipping her hot drink beside him, at a brand-new cafe table. But it wasn’t scratched and dented and graffitied, like the old war-time tables she preferred. Everything was changing.

The gardens around them were bustling with activity; filled with countless builders and news crews. Beyond them, fresh pillars sprang up and emerged in ornate detail from imported marble. Shaped out rapidly by busy sculpting drones, while high-profile visitors passed through brand-new cloisters to see the site of so much media coverage. This wasn’t the same place they’d fought for.

Aelu watched the Ministry’s newcomers, oblivious to what’d happened here, and resented their cheery presence. The poor ordinary people who’d won this war, and suffered through it, had been hastily swept aside.

…This is the Ministers’ sacred palace, after all.

The whole place felt brighter now, but dishevelled. A strange kind of peace, after all these walls had been through. It just didn’t feel the same any more; all those survivors had known each other like family. Now, they’d all been scattered abruptly. Flown out to medical ships, or shipped off for debriefings by Central Command.

Tabitha’s conscripts had been hurriedly de-conscripted by the Ministers. With many of the city’s survivors having no old lives to go back to, they were bitter about it. Hanging around quietly in their own conspiring groups, with Sky Tribe and the Guardians, and firm friends they’d made in the war.

…Like gangs, really, Aelu supposed. Tribes.

‘She seemed pretty good, on the ward,’ Big Fish considered. He wouldn’t leave the topic alone. He was probably just ready to leave these changing walls; waiting impatiently for Tabitha’s return. They’d both seen enough of the Ministry by now.

‘…I wouldn’t rush her, Fish,’ Aelu replied thoughtfully. She’d known that look on Tabitha’s face, when they’d seen her. She’d had the same feelings herself, once upon a time. Just after her son had come into the world. She’d felt like a husk, or something. Like she’d served her whole purpose now, to bring life into the world. Like nature was content, to just… fade her away. A sudden nudge from Big Fish snapped her out of it. He nodded Aelu’s attention to something high over the new walls. A growing silhouette in the sky.

*

Seven landed like wrath on the Ministry battlements, startling every crowded Minister who’d returned. Tabitha watched them hatefully; this forum of stuffed grand robes. Taking their rule for granted. They’d reappeared so quickly from their starships, and quite conveniently, now the invasion was over. As if it’d all been some brief distasteful interlude. A doom they’d invited, in their greed for new technology, when the Watchers had threatened their empire.

The Ministers’ teams and advisors were hurriedly shoved aside by Her Majesty’s Sky Tribe, and her lurking loyalists of every species, who’d refused to leave the grounds until she returned. But now a different kind of tension filled the Ministry complex. One that inched ever closer toward cold civil war.

Those wordless Ministers watched her as if their heads would roll. Tabitha climbed from the saddle sternly, and wouldn’t look at them. She walked down Seven’s wing for the courtyard, striding silently with her Ghosts through unfamiliar crowds. Prowling on past their stares and their mutterings, with time only for the people she’d served with.

The mood was strange, and soundless. The Ministers presumed their power, as they presumed Her Majesty’s too. Across every world, public sentiment was divided. Global markets were in turmoil, pending crisis negotiations. No one knew where loyalties lay; not least among the Guardian forces. Every Minister’s muttered comment asked what came next.

But Tabitha wouldn’t acknowledge them. She walked on for a meeting with her soldier-survivors; a happy mob of handshakes and back-pats. Marching on together, a ragged resistance, through gleaming new hallways beyond.

‘Majesty,’ said a graceful dignitary, coming forward from the gossiping crowd in the next grand courtyard. Tabitha recognised the robed man; that was Qos. The one who’d come to Stormworld, into Havenhall, to negotiate. Bound to be someone of great importance, she was sure. Perfectly happy to sell Stormworld off for development, after her sentencing. But now he was nothing; he was just in her way. Running his mouth as they walked the next hallway. She wasn’t listening.

‘If I could take merely a moment of your time, Majesty, to discuss the Ministry’s leadership transition strategy in greater detail–

‘Oh piss off, you smirking shit,’ Tabitha snarled at him. ‘I’ve got a tribe of warriors here who’d hang you from these fucking walls for what you did to their world. Stop me again in these corridors and I’ll let them do it. After I’ve carved out your eyes, like I promised.’ Qos watched her in stunned silence, while Barkless Tree shoved him aside. The terrified dignitary said nothing. He shrank back in Her Majesty’s wake.

*

‘I swear, these damned Ministers multiply every time I look away,’ Aelu muttered. ‘It’s like cell division or something. Are we sure they’re not Watchers?’

‘It’s a shame,’ Tabitha agreed. ‘I know how to deal with Watchers.’

‘Leave it to Seven, just to make sure,’ Big Fish reasoned. ‘There’s three absent Ministers who need to meet him, anyway.’

‘That’s a point. I’m surprised the Three haven’t had me arrested yet,’ Tabitha replied, as they strode on quickly for the Ministry’s underground war room. Still being restored to its former glory by bustling construction teams.

‘Well, the Ministers know how divisive this war’s been for Serenity,’ Irren advised her. ‘For the wider worlds too, according to certain friends of mine. So I doubt the Ministers would act just yet. Not until they know how the wind’s blowing. Maybe they want you in power here. For now, at least.’

‘Yeah?’ Tabitha replied, as they passed inside the new war-room doors. ‘Why’s that?’

‘You’re popular,’ Irren shrugged. ‘The Saviour of Serenity, so the media keeps repeating. That’s a valuable reputation to be around. The Ministers will ride your coat tails through the whole crisis, if they can. Raise you like a saviour, and get your holy blessing in public, to absolve them of their past indiscretions. Then… they’ll buy you off. Or bump you off,’ he added simply. ‘That way they could claim more power than they had before they invited the Watchers here. Succeeding an absolute monarch like you would make one of them an absolute monarch in turn. Since the people of these worlds crowned you themselves, we might just see the idea of royalty catch on. Or something like it. These Ministers would drop any idea of Capital City and bastardise Good Old Silverspire instead, if it’s in fashion among The People. Whatever gets ‘em ahead.’

‘…You’ve really thought about this, huh?’ Big Fish rumbled in reply.

‘Well, some people slay giant monsters, some people dissect the motivations of those in power,’ Irren said with a smile.

‘…Yeah, I’ll take the first one,’ Fish replied.

‘You know, Irren, I wouldn’t be surprised by anything you just said,’ Tabitha considered. ‘Or if the Ministers are trying to get rid of me, again. Now I’ve served my purpose.’

She’d already seen The Four in action. Back in that prison cell, before the Watchers hit this planet, she’d seen her captive Stormworld become a dream destination… and the latest primal fashion choice, on every grinning advert. She’d witnessed the wintry First Minister try to make a deal with the devil, inviting the Watchers and these worlds’ destruction, all for the sake of political ambition. Lining their pockets all the while.

…But now she had the power to change things. She hadn’t come back here just to play along.

‘Hey. Do right by these worlds,’ Irren said warmly. ‘Or I’ll come after you myself.’ Tabitha smiled in reply, as they parted ways in the crowded war room. Her Ghosts nodded their encouragement as they left her there, and took their places with Her Majesty’s ragged council around their war table. A large new hologram map of the capital rose bright and pristine across the table’s surface. Showing updated city ruins, where the Watchers’ hive was a great smoking crater among the hills. A tiny hologram version of the Ministry was being rebuilt in real-time.

Her quiet crowd was waiting. Ex-conscripts and Guardians; Sky Tribe and homeless families. Tabitha breathed deeply, clearing her mind… and set bold new worlds in motion.

‘First off… thank you,’ she told them all. Glancing at Stone Shore; at Atha; at Saa and her Ghosts. Then more widely, at everyone in the crowd who’d stepped up to help her within these walls. ‘You’ve all worked so hard, and fought so bravely, to save this world from a deadly enemy. And despite all that horror, and our great challenges… we’ve won back Serenity for its people. And for ourselves.’ Tabitha smiled briefly at their sudden applause. But quickly raised her hand to quieten everyone. With the old Ministers circling, she didn’t have a moment to waste.

‘But right now, your worlds are facing new challenges,’ she continued. ‘The Ministry needs new leadership,’ she told them. ‘And I need the help of its military. The old Ministers haven’t tried to depose us yet, but they will. Soon. We need to seize this chance while we can.’ She watched a crowd of nodding faces around her. More than ready for change.

‘Anyone with the will and good intentions to lead this world forward, and to lend me the aid of your military, see me with your proposals. Today,’ she commanded them. ‘Give me what I need, and I’ll return the favour. It’s time we used this crisis to build a better Ministry. For everyone, on every world.’ With a final nod during their brief applause, Tabitha’s look set everyone hard at work.

Her Majesty had already sent word ahead to her loyalists here, from her hospital bed up in orbit. Setting a new war machine into life. These ragged people didn’t need weapons, or the vast wealth of Ministers, to wage their revolution against the old-guard. This new quiet conflict was a war of ideas, to conquer minds and not bodies; waged in secret against these worlds’ current leaders.

Those Ministers had secrets; enough to bury them. There was footage. There were documents. Off-world facilities, way out in The Rim, that held risky assets just like the Celestial. Irren’s contacts had no shortage of ammunition.

Tabitha left the bustling war room, crossing another item off her mental checklist. Nodding subtly to her gang of retainers, her advisors, they followed her outside for the wider halls of power under hurried reconstruction. With her friends’ help here, and their hidden network watching every Minister who came crawling back…

…We might even leave Serenity alive.

*

Following Her Majesty’s departure, the war room was rapidly becoming a base of operations. One female Guardian among them carried an evidence bag, only just delivered by drone, containing a bottle of toxic pills which were destined for a medical ship’s incinerator unit.

A busy ex-conscript working beside her studied reams of hacked code on his terminal screen. The activity log of a suspicious Ministry satellite. The man’s searching eyes stopped on a certain run command, which had since been updated in the artillery satellite’s software. A “tragic error”: true, only just added, and not yet scrubbed from its code.

*

‘Majesty. I can’t begin to express my admiration,’ Thier addressed her warmly. He was dressed imperiously in a high-collared suit, where they met by the Ministry’s grand steps and strolled out together across the new plaza. Tabitha’s Ghosts followed closely behind, like bodyguards. The summer sunlight shone brightly across endless fresh tilework around them. Tabitha treaded carefully, so as not to crack the fine mosaics again.

‘So I take it that our hallowed hallways aren’t strictly ours any more?’ she said.

‘Afraid not,’ Thier sighed, casting his dark galactic eyes across the open space around them. ‘Out here, at least, we’ll catch sight of any would-be eavesdroppers.’

‘…So you got my message?’ she asked him quietly.

‘Received and acted upon,’ Thier confirmed. ‘I do so enjoy making full use of my time.’

‘And we’re still going ahead with the major landmarks?’ Tabitha replied.

‘I thought it best to begin with, for marketing purposes,’ he said. ‘Before long we’ll have enough of the material in place to create several more showpieces across Serenity. Though the revival of airbases and hospitals is the immediate priority, of course.’

‘Good work, Thier. Thank you,’ she replied. ‘We need to make it crystal clear, that it wasn’t the Ministers who turned the power back on for this planet. Make sure the ads and promotion put the real heroes of this world in the public eye.’

‘The Living Lights of Serenity,’ Thier confirmed happily. ‘Her Majesty’s Legacy.’ Tabitha cringed at that. Still, it wasn’t up to her. If her name carried weight now, Thier could use it.

‘Let’s just move quickly, ok?’ she replied. ‘The Ministry’s changing. We’re running out of time.’

‘Of course, Majesty,’ Thier said agreeably. ‘Though one’s time can achieve considerable results, when one knows how to multiply it. The work is underway as we speak.’

As Her Majesty thanked him and took her leave, Thier smiled in shameless self-satisfaction. He’d envied Irren’s propaganda work, for relighting the signal fires of sentiment across these worlds. Finally, he’d the chance to light a few of his own.

*

Shipped in swiftly from distant planets, Thier’s endless armies of technicians and construction drones laid fresh volt-vine cables through darkened cities all across Serenity. Growing new hybrid power grids, that needed no reactors; only bright branching volt-trees that soaked in the sun. Glowing and crackling into fierce colossal life.

Fresh current spread through their living roots like wildfire, connecting miles of patched-up cables and power lines. A growing web of light across this darkened world. A hundred hybrid drones revived a thousand more. Those drones gave new life to a hundred thousand. Then, millions. Racing out rapidly from town to city; factory to port. Every one of them shipping their own volt-vine cuttings, to bring light and power back to this world’s weary survivors.

Serenity’s towering technology blinked and shuddered into new life, while billions of office terminals shone again with fresh code. Super-celestial. A starburst sea of light and living colour, where ever-increasing drones thundered away to spread their glowing web across the world.

Dead airbases flooded fresh light across lonely landscapes, which still lay darkened in the night. Starving survivors staggered weakly from hiding, to see their homes and stores and fountains flicker and choke and burst into fresh-flowing life. Silent networks came alive again with frantic chatter. Every minute, there were more volunteers to help in the aid work.

Docks and depots patched in afresh to the Guardians’ fleets and satellites, rushing news of their developments to the wider worlds. Entire populations watched the newscasts closely; eager for the latest meagre news from the fallen capital. Homes and bars and phone-holding stockbrokers all listened intently, as reporters on the ground mentioned the same few names again. Not one Minister among them; only the heroes who’d survived the invasion. Working with a tall man, a certain smiling trillionaire, who ran endless media promotions of Serenity’s grand revival. Billions of people knew the name Thier Isse.

A Ministry aide worked with him; a pretty young mother named Saa Teol. In every broadcast, interview and article they gave, the well-dressed pair spoke constantly about one woman. A royal celebrity, with a once-chequered reputation, who’d acted far more quickly than their political leaders to save more lives since the war. The Saviour of Serenity, an innocent victim of corrupt High Ministers, who’d brought back the light in their wake.

*

Irren edited a scrap of dronelet footage intently, at his messy computer terminal in the war room. Working in stern silence; every hour there was. Producing a blockbuster in the corner.

*

Serenity’s Guardian reinforcements were reclaiming a ruined airbase, far beyond the fallen capital. Past its bustling hallways and darkened briefing rooms, a Lieutenant Tohe Reigo had quiet words with several ranking officers.

There was always a need to keep the troops entertained, he said, despite all the hard work needed to rebuild. But the same old movies and newscasts were getting stale, and only ever told certain stories. Despite a couple of nervous objections, many of his fellow officers were inclined to agree.

Lieutenant Reigo happened to know a film director, by the name of Irren Amsira, working independently here in the capital. Irren wanted to screen his latest work for the soldiers first, and to give this airbase the world premiere. A rough cut in need of feedback, so he’d said. But he seemed pretty confident about it.

Saviour of Serenity had a certain local appeal.

56

Tabitha watched happily as the Ministry’s new gardens quickly grew into homes for the city’s wandering wildlife. Blue-silver bees floated among the flowers. The shade of the trees smelled like life and cinnamon. She felt her cells thriving here, where the oxygen flowed so thick.

Spotting some movement, she crouched to watch a yellow-green birdlizard up-close. It was trilling and singing from its handsome new rock, between clustered ferns in the bright summer sunlight. She nodded slightly and agreed with it, as if they were mid-conversation.

‘What are you doing?’ said Aelu. Tabitha jumped.

‘Oh, er… nothing,’ she replied. Standing up, she noticed how people were watching her. ‘Quick mental breakdown, maybe.’ Aelu smiled, and shrugged as they walked on together for the cloisters.

‘Hey. Whatever works for you.’

‘Hiii!’ came a sing-song voice. A well-dressed woman they didn’t know hurried up to meet them.

‘Majesty, I’m so pleased to finally speak with you,’ the furred woman added pleasantly. ‘I’m Minister Dessa, Public Relations. I’d hoped we may be able to meet at some point, to discuss some small instances of potential contra-narrative activities–

‘No time, I’m afraid,’ Tabitha interrupted pleasantly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Minister,’ she concluded, and walked on quickly with Aelu.

‘Of course, Majesty,’ the woman agreed, in sickly-sweet sympathy. ‘You simply must include some opportunities to rest and heal, despite your responsibilities here.’

‘It’s not that, Minister,’ Tabitha told her sincerely. ‘I just meant that I have no time for people like you. Any of you. Please, work with my council in future. Never come to me again.’ Quiet groups watched the exchange carefully, as the Sky Queen left Minister Dessa speechless in her wake. Serenity’s Makeshift Monarch wasn’t exactly making friends in high places. Once their furious High Ministers returned here, she hadn’t a prayer.

*

Camera drones were swarming the Ministry lately. Its rebuilt halls were filling with frantic news teams and crowded Ministers, who hurriedly pushed older agendas back into place. All of them keenly aware of the new competition: a fledgling revolution against them.

It was said that this resistance worked from new outlying camps, deep in the lost city ruins. Civilian veterans of the Watchers’ invasion, bitter and forgotten, who were already hard at work. Among their groups were certain ragged culprits, broadcasting their own coverage of Serenity, who their increasingly uncooperative Guardians had yet to root out and arrest. A scattering army, outpacing the Ministers’ achievements. Waging media war, of stories and secrets, and turning ever more people against them.

*

Amid all the noise and chaos through the Ministry courtyards and gardens, an old man sat smiling on a park bench. Breathing peacefully, he scattered crumbs from his lunch to feed the batbirds, where they strutted and fluttered brightly around his feet. Life went on; the war was behind him. Serenity’s glorious sunshine warmed his bones.

Walking by quickly through the cloisters behind him, Tabitha glanced aside to smile at the peaceful old man and his batbirds. She saw a sunlit second that felt like pure silver; a soft wispy breeze of a feeling. As if all things flowed in a sudden gleaming spectrum. She breathed deeply, and smelled the plants on the calm fresh air. But now there was darkness too, with a night-taste like wine and black treacle, and strong tempting hands hovering just over her skin. Always there. Just waiting to be called on.

‘…You ok?’ said Aelu beside her.

‘Yeah,’ Tabitha smiled back. ‘Just a thought.’

‘Hey,’ said Fish, as he walked over with Sea Mist and Barkless. ‘Wanna hear something crazy?’

‘Of course,’ Tabitha replied happily.

‘Well. Down in the vaults, just when the war was getting started? Someone inside here was stealing gold.’ Aelu felt her stomach twist in terror. She watched the conversation carefully; feigning a look of surprise.

‘As in coins?’ said Tabitha. She still felt nervous about stealing that antique Silver Virtue.

‘As in bullion. Lots of it,’ Fish replied. ‘Thief cut through a solid steel vault to get to it. Still no sign of the goods, but that stuff’s state gold reserve. The Ministers are going ape shit looking for ‘em.’

‘The Guardians must have leads, though,’ Aelu said casually. ‘There weren’t that many people here, during the war.’

‘Reigo said there’s a few people been taken in for questioning,’ Fish shrugged. ‘Would not wanna be them when the Ministers catch ‘em. They’d never see daylight again.’

‘But it wasn’t the Ministers’ gold. It belonged to those survivors,’ Tabitha said bitterly. ‘That’s just… bloody infuriating!’ she growled. ‘What piece of shit would do that to these people? Steal their wealth, while they’re facing genocide?’

‘Sounds, familiar,’ Barkless added angrily. Sea Mist nodded beside him. Tabitha smiled sadly in reply.

‘Just hope they catch ‘em before they get off-world,’ Fish rumbled. ‘Make an example of ‘em.’

Aelu shook her head with the others, and kept her panic hidden as they walked on. Screwing Atha had been useful, for the tools and vault blueprints she’d quietly gained access to. If she could just keep the Ministry’s new pet General sweet on her, for a little while longer… and keep playing a little dumber and bad-boy-addicted with him than she actually was… well. It was like all her past sins had been washed away. She was invisible to these Guardians, as long as no one pulled up the file on her. Atha wouldn’t suspect her as a gold thief, and besides – he had more to hide than she did. Even if he did find out, she had Stormworld’s invasion to leverage over him. She’d planned it since they’d travelled to this world.

‘Majesty!’ said a rushing reporter. ‘Can you confirm or deny that the anti-Minister insurgents based in the city ruins are working under your direct command?’

‘I’m afraid I’m unaware of that matter. Nor would I wish to comment, without full possession of the facts,’ Tabitha replied neutrally, for the news dronelet floating beside him. She walked on agreeably; never looking back. She’d learned a lot from Saa’s consultations. Her Ghosts gathered closely around her, and ushered the reporter aside.

*

Tabitha strode on for her final meeting, deep in thought. With the old Ministers returning – many in favour of her, and many against – a fresh bustling tension had gripped this place. It was still assumed that she ruled here, by sheer loyal numbers, for now. But only as an interim leader, before their high-ranking Ministers returned.

She’d catch dry passing comments among them, and hot-headed accusations. It was a gamble, of course, to arrange her own succession with a new First Minister of her choosing. A shrinking opportunity to change Serenity’s fate. But she had to try.

Lately these halls felt like kindling. This Ministry was new, and detached from her; its walls didn’t protect her forces any more. It wasn’t the home they’d built in darker days.

She’d already flown out on Seven to thank everyone, and just to be around them again. Out beyond the plaza, acres of Guardian field tents housed the city’s survivors, just as they did all over Serenity. Crowds of cheering conscripts and smiling families came to see her, newly vaccinated against the Watchers’ virus, and rushed in around when she landed down.

She’d gotten a feel for the fresh tensions in the capital. She’d done what the returning Ministers hadn’t bothered to, and simply asked the people of this city what they thought. Their feelings couldn’t have been more clear.

The crowded fighters and families of the capital hadn’t fought this war for their Ministers. They’d suffered and toiled and bled here, for their new home. Silverspire. They’d built it and defended it for each other, and for their Sky Queen, who’d brought down the Watchers and protected them through it all. Silverspire was an older idea. A better one, they’d said. One they’d fought and died for.

Tabitha dwelled on it now, as she walked the New Ministry’s gleaming corridors to meet with Reigo. As terrible as it was, the war had made things simpler. But now the busy field-tent territories out there were quickly growing divided. There were people among those crowds who wanted to tear the Ministers apart, for inviting the Watchers here and abandoning them to their fate. And then there were others, who still stood for Serenity’s empire as it had been. Those who hadn’t fought for Silverspire, but Capital City. Defending their Ministers to the end.

Mostly people on the Ministers’ payroll, Tabitha considered. Or in bed with them. Personally… I think it’s time for new blood.

*

‘So. What do you think?’ said Tabitha, once her brief meeting with Reigo had concluded.

‘What do I think, Majesty?’ he replied, with a teasing grin. ‘I think the Ministers would never approve that kind of fleet. Not with every last one of ‘em in your pocket.’

‘Depends on the Ministers,’ Tabitha replied with a smile. ‘They aren’t all like The Four.’

‘…Speaking of which,’ Reigo muttered darkly, as Tabitha felt her stomach twist. Eyeing a smart pair of politicians who’d turned the far corridor corner towards them. Two of the same High Ministers, who she felt nothing but hate for. She couldn’t believe they’d show their faces here.

‘Ministers Zhae, and Enir,’ Reigo told her quietly. ‘I believe you’ve already met.’

‘Majesty,’ the willowy woman accosted her happily, as they met in the ornate corridor. ‘It’s been too long. You look well. I must congratulate you, on your decisive victory for our Capital.’

‘Honoured, as ever, Majesty,’ said her diminutive colleague, between his hissing full-helmet breaths. His glowing eye-bulbs stared up at her.

‘Ministers,’ Tabitha replied calmly, trying to hide her fury at the sight of them. It took all her effort just to show some restraint. ‘I was so sorry to hear of the First Minister’s tragic fate.’

‘Arrogance and hubris,’ Minister Zhae lamented, with a sorry shake of her head. ‘I’d have taken a different tack, in the First Minister’s place.’

‘Though I’m sure the Watchers would still have entered into your ambitions?’ Tabitha replied, with a smile that hid her fury. ‘It’s not like The Four to pass on an opportunity.’

‘Ah. We’re now merely The Two, sadly,’ Minister Enir sighed, with a hissing breath that followed.

‘Indeed,’ Zhae added, with a note of sorrow. ‘Our mutual reptilian friend Minister Skarrah is, I’m afraid, no longer with us. His private flight from these very halls was unable to escape the city’s devastation in time. We intend a full state funeral in memoriam, in due course.’

‘Tragic,’ Tabitha agreed flatly, while Reigo stood silently beside her. ‘You may be aware that millions of your constituents also happened to have perished during the invasion, Ministers,’ she informed them. ‘If you’re concerned with that sort of thing. Will they receive lavish state funerals, like Minister Skarrah? Or is that purely reserved for their betters?’

‘…Majesty. I’ve nothing but the deepest admiration for the people of Serenity,’ said Minister Zhae, with a look that said both women were in on the joke. ‘They will be honoured as heroes. Of course.’

‘It pains me to say this, Majesty,’ Enir added. ‘But at times… I believe you have very little faith in our leadership. Didn’t your brief spell within our justice system help to change your mind? Or our first tentative efforts, in civilising the good people of Stormworld? I’m inclined–

‘The people of Stormworld fought and died beside the people of Serenity,’ Tabitha snarled at them. ‘They won this war, not you. Their labours, and their sacrifice, defended these walls from the horrors that you brought down on them. They won this war for themselves, and their families. Not for your politics,’ she told them. Shrinking them back, with the dim light growing in her eyes. ‘So, Ministers. Now that you’ve finally crawled out from your hiding holes, when we’re already safe and rebuilding this world… why do we need you?’

‘…Was that a threat, Majesty?’ Zhae smiled back, with growing amusement.

‘Not at all,’ Tabitha shrugged, as she and Reigo left them in the corridor. ‘Just fair warning.’

*

‘I’ll assume you have some capable replacements in mind, for those good two Ministers?’ said Reigo, as he left Tabitha beside her temporary office in the higher tiers.

‘I’ve shortlisted some potentials,’ she replied, with a quick shrug. ‘Just two.’

‘Hm. That is a short list,’ Reigo considered. ‘Whoever you have in mind for the top job here, I just hope they’re a little more bearable.’

‘Well,’ Tabitha hesitated, as her smile showed through. ‘I suppose. In small doses.’

*

‘Majesty,’ her first candidate said happily. ‘I’m just so glad you’re alright.’

‘Right back at you,’ Tabitha replied warmly, with a growing smile. ‘Come in, Saa. Take a seat.’

‘I’ve never seen the Ministers so tense before,’ Saa confided in her, as she carefully took the chair opposite Tabitha’s grand new marble desk. She was turned out perfectly; she looked every inch the new leader to take Serenity bravely forward. ‘Tabitha, listen. Zhae and Enir are already assuming they’re back in control of the Ministry. And over the Guardians too. You’d need a miracle to get this place on your side.’

‘You mean your side,’ Tabitha corrected her, as her friendly smile faded to a more discerning look. ‘If you’re right for the job. So. Tell me why you want to take the lead here, Saa. You have lethal, powerful opponents, and a ruined world to rebuild. Pitch me some miracles.’

‘Well,’ Saa began, as she straightened up neatly in her seat. Though she was already sitting pretty straight. ‘I know the people of this city, Majesty,’ she said sincerely. ‘More than most Ministers ever could. I’ve lived among them, worked tirelessly for them, and delivered numerous progressive social programs and policies to keep the least able among us well-fed and cared for, during this terrible conflict. I’m an agent of real change, for the better. I want a safe new start for Serenity, and for every people, just as I want that for my own family. I intend to lead a better world, free from the disastrous risk-taking of our past leadership. I believe, and I certainly hope, that my results may speak for themselves.’ With that Saa presented a neat, succinct case file for Tabitha to leaf through. It showed concise charts and reassuring statistics of all the people she’d helped during her time in the Ministry, and how.

‘I’m classic, pre-war, fair-and-progressive Ministry,’ Saa continued. ‘A trusted friendly face, with all the existing professional connections to reassure our time-served Ministers and make true lasting change into the future. I want peace and security for every grieving family in this world, and every struggling community. I intend to reform a fairer, better Serenity. For everyone.’

‘…Thank you, Saa,’ Tabitha replied with a smile, as she handed the case file back. ‘I’ll let you know my decision in due course.’

*

Tabitha’s second candidate didn’t bother knocking. His scruffy suede shoes scuffed and squeaked across the polished floor abruptly. A booze-smelling presence dropped a ton-weight tome on her desk. Searching in vain for an ashtray, his grubby green hand doused its cigarette uncertainly in Tabitha’s half-finished tea.

‘I know, I’m late. *hic* I was ccelebrating.’

‘…Come in, Irren,’ Tabitha muttered redundantly. She looked up from her half-written speech, and glanced at his shoddy case file that seemed to nest and grow organically on the desk beside her. That stack of papers had to be a foot thick; its loose poking scraps were all handwritten. At least, writing seemed to have been the original intention. The scribbles’ unkempt owner had worn the same crumpled shirt for days.

‘…And this is?’ she said expectantly.

‘Proposal,’ Irren sighed wearily. ‘For leadership, I mean. Not the *hic* marriage kind. I doubt I could *hic* marry someone like you. No offence.’ He collapsed like rags in the chair opposite, then leant back indifferently until the fine seat creaked expensively. Scratching his stubble and sighing the smell of spirits, through the quiet sunlit space between them. ‘That was what you asked for, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘Leadership proposal? Did you forget about this meeting or something?’

‘…Did you maybe want to pitch me your case, Irren, to take over from me in leading Sereni–

‘No, I don’t wanna pitch you anything,’ he interrupted. ‘Don’t waste my time,’ he added with a grin. ‘Just read the sst *hic* stuff in there. In the *hic* in the book. File. Thing.’ Tabitha glanced at his case file again. Its loose scraps were settling out widely, like a paper puddle across her desk.

‘…Bit much there, Irren,’ Tabitha smiled back, trying to keep her patience with him. ‘Could you just give me the audio version? Abridged, if possible? I might not live as long as your species.’ Irren nodded as he coughed heavily, and eventually cleared his throat.

‘This is the collected labour of a loyalist network I’ve cultivated for years, in secret, across every Ministry world. It says jailtime, for certain high-ranking individuals,’ he said passionately, snarling the words, as he stabbed an ink-stained finger on the file. ‘This is evidence for the victimised indigenous of Stormworld, among other oppressed peoples. It’s justice for the people of Serenity, and the Watcher crisis that massacred them. And it proves a plot to disappear you, the Saviour of Serenity, right now in these corridors. Before that, in orbit. And before that, during your recovery in a hospital bed. You’re The Tabitha Problem to these High Ministers. They want you dead.’ Tabitha watched him carefully, and felt her heartcore pounding. She was hardly surprised by the news… though it still didn’t feel nice to know that people were actively trying to kill her.

‘So. Who’s worth the crown, or the *hic* the First Minister’s podium, once you leave this world?’ Irren continued. ‘Someone who wants peace and prosperity in her own city, and security in her own life? …Or someone who demands real justice for every world, and takes objective action toward it, and intends for that woman’s previous employers, your would-be murderers, to pay for their criminal legacy?’

Tabitha watched him carefully. Deep in thought.

‘…Thank you, Irren,’ she replied. ‘I’ll get back to you with my decision.’

‘Good-oh,’ he replied quickly, and shot up to leave.

‘…Take the file with you,’ Tabitha added. Irren grumbled curses and came back for it. ‘Oh, and Irren?’

‘Hm?’

‘If you do get the job… lay off the drink?’

‘…Does that mean I got the job?’

‘I said I’d let you know.’

‘Well, then I’ll let you know too.’

‘…Just go, Irren.’

*

‘So who did you choose for First Minister?’ said Aelu, over their drinks by the resurrected cafe.

‘Both,’ Tabitha replied, while Sea Mist picked hopefully through her sister’s red hair.

‘…Both?’ Big Fish rumbled. Barkless sipped his kkoffee quietly beside them.

‘Saa wants peace and security. Irren wants justice, and liberty,’ Tabitha considered, as she turned her glass of water slowly on the table. ‘No decent world should have to choose between those things.’

*

Walking through the Ministry lobby with Lea and Anero, Saa hurriedly prepared notes for the Ministers’ first parliament session since the invasion.

She froze in terror when she glimpsed two of her previous employers, amid the crowded central Ministers. There stood the diminutive Minister Enir, who’d promised her nothing but the cruellest career suicide if she’d ever go against him. And there beside him, charming her old inner circle, was Minister Zhae. In her darkest nightmares, Saa had never imagined such a sly pretty horror as Minister Kalis Yllia Zhae.

And Saa did something she’d never, ever done before. She spoke out.

‘YOU! You could’ve killed my daughter!’ Saa screamed at her. Pulled back suddenly by Anero, frantically, as Lea watched in shocked silence from his shoulder. ‘Y-You… evil bitch!’

‘…Saa,’ Anero warned her, with a nervous laugh in the crowded silence, as he stepped in to smooth things over. ‘I’m sure there’s due process for this kind of thing. The Honourable Ministers only retreated temporarily, to safer places,’ he said nervously.

‘Honourable?’ said a Guardian on duty, with a puzzled look. Turning to his partner beside him. ‘…Did we just fight the same war?’

‘I’m sure there’s a peaceful, rational solution to our differences right now,’ Anero tried, caught between his family and the Ministers who’d already threatened them. Saa watched him in horror.

‘Doubt it,’ Irren replied indifferently, as he walked by quickly for his next secret meeting. While he didn’t share the Ministers’ political pedigree, he could sure as shit outwork them. All they’d done was talk since they’d got here.

‘These people are tyrants,’ Irren advised the Guardians and construction workers all around them. ‘The High Ministers should be in prison for abandoning this planet. Tyranny’s all they understand.’ Some people were chattering more loudly around them now. Discussing new Ministers, for new times. Irren just sowed more seeds, more doubts, and casually walked away for his work. Ministers Enir and Zhae turned back to their affluent inner circles, and chuckled the whole strange business aside.

*

‘…What are you doing, Saa?’ Anero demanded of her, disbelieving, when they had a moment to speak in private. ‘Going against the High Ministers like that? They’ll have our heads! What about our careers? W-What about the Ministry?’

‘Fuck careers,’ Saa snapped. ‘Fuck the Ministers,’ she added, as she pulled off her wedding ring and handed it back. ‘The people of this world deserve better. My daughter deserves better.’ With that, Saa lifted up Lea against her shoulder and left Anero staring. She walked away to find new offices, and a new life without him, and didn’t look back.

*

‘Saa?’ a calm refined voice called after her in a corridor, leading on toward the crowded lobby ahead. Minister Zhae walked closer. ‘Don’t test me, Saa,’ the woman advised her quietly. ‘Certainly not in public, hm?’ she added. ‘We’re both mothers. You must love your daughter so very much.’

‘…You don’t frighten me,’ Saa replied calmly. A lie.

‘No?’ Zhae purred softly, with a look of growing amusement. ‘Then leave that with me, hm?’ she assured her, with a gentle smile like flickering flames. ‘We’ve all the time in the world.’

‘Feeling brave enough to threaten your colleagues, Minister Zhae?’ Tabitha interrupted. She’d followed silently behind them, catching the whole conversation on her wristcom, with a glance at Saa to let her escape.

‘I thought you’d have ventured beyond these walls by now, Minister, to check on your voting public?’ Tabitha enquired. ‘They’re so eager to see you.’ The blue woman watched her happily, smirking curiously, as if a bigger cat had come out to play. They walked on together through the crowded lobby. Zhae thought on Tabitha’s new wristcom evidence, and smiled, and let her speak.

‘I’d love to make certain matters painful for you, given your careful plans for Stormworld,’ Tabitha said sweetly. ‘But come to think of it… I’d imagine you’re relying on that kind of reaction?’ Tabitha was keenly aware of the high-society crowds and camera drones, keeping watch all around them. Making their disagreements physical would land her back in a prison cell – and make her new Ministers’ jobs that much harder.

…I can’t blow it all now. We’ve put too much time into this.

‘You always had such a keen mind for leadership, Majesty,’ Zhae replied warmly.

‘Not especially,’ Tabitha conceded. ‘I’m not a schemer. I don’t care about your politics,’ she said with a shrug. ‘You don’t matter to me. I came here to kill the Watchers, for taking my world away. I came here to protect these people. The ones you abandoned.’ Zhae smiled silently, and cast a warning glance toward the Guardians and Ministers all around them. But Zhae didn’t catch the usual subtle looks she’d expected from them. Something was different; the chess pieces had moved. All the Ministers and wealthy influencers in her long-established circles were currently being walked outside by Guardian officers. Zhae watched the chattering spectacle in growing horror. Tabitha stepped in a little closer, just to twist the knife.

‘…I wouldn’t take your influence for granted, Minister Zhae. Not if I were you.’ Camera drones watched and crowded Ministers chattered, as a small group of Guardians appeared around her.

‘…Officers, please take Her Majesty into custody,’ Zhae said with a smirk. ‘On grounds of sedition against the Interworld Ministry.’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, ma’am,’ Reigo replied, as he moved to escort her away.

‘…What are you doing?’ Zhae demanded coolly, still smiling at them. But the lobby’s crowded Ministers only watched in silence. No one came to her defence.

‘Emergency referendum,’ Tabitha explained brightly. ‘I’m afraid the honourable Ministers cast the vote for my successors without your knowledge,’ she added, with a sympathetic look. ‘You just missed the final count. In fact… I believe the results were announced while you were threatening our new First Minister and her family, only moments ago.’

‘Wh… This is treason!’ Zhae snapped.

‘Rule of law,’ Reigo corrected her gladly, as his Guardians came forward and cuffed her.

‘Lieutenant!’ Zhae snapped venomously. ‘I order you to–

‘These aren’t your soldiers any more, Minister,’ Tabitha interrupted, as more Guardians escorted Minister Enir towards her. ‘Together with the people of this city, these Guardians have defended their home from the most destructive enemy this world has ever seen. An enemy that you, and your close colleagues, invited. Certain Ministers have brought considerable evidence against you, with the aid of many more individuals across several worlds.’ She held Zhae’s look with a vengeful stare. ‘Minister Enir. Minister Zhae. You’re under arrest.’

The crowd of remaining Ministers turned aside then, as the city’s survivors rushed the gates. Yelling and chanting in furious protest, as Zhae and Enir were escorted through the grand new gates toward Guardian aircars outside.

‘Where were you!?’ a woman screamed at Zhae, over the rising protests around her. It took two lines of Guardians just to hold the crowd back. ‘Where were you, while my family died!?’

‘Where were you!?’ a furious man echoed beside her. Then another survivor, and another. The question rose quickly to a raging chant around them, as Guardian officers walked Ministers Zhae and Enir toward marked aircars in wretched silence.

‘…So. What about me?’ Atha said quietly, where he stood watching the spectacle beside Irren, on the high tiered walkway above. ‘The shit I’ve done for a paycheck… and mercenary henchman to The Four, to rob Stormworld, taking the lives of its people… I deserve all the prison time I get.’

‘Probably,’ Irren replied bluntly. ‘A matter for the courts, as far as I’m concerned. But I’m sure your part in this war will stand in your favour, General,’ he added. ‘For what it’s worth, Atha… I don’t think you’re the same man any more. Not all the way, at least.’ Jaw tensed, glancing down at the crowded Ministers beyond the stone balustrade, Atha nodded silently in reply.

‘…Whatever’s coming, that’s how it is,’ he said. ‘As long as I can see my kids again.’

He didn’t see Stone Shore prowling up furiously behind him; knife in hand as he stormed closer. Raising the glass blade wrathfully, with Atha in his sights. The war with those death-gods was over; the Sky Queen didn’t need this murdering thief any more. Now he’d finally caught him unaware, and mostly alone. Stone Shore would avenge the dead and grieving of Stormworld, today. He’d cut Atha’s throat where he stood. And unwittingly drop a bomb on everything that Tabitha, and her loyalists, had planned so carefully for the fate of every world.

Irren and Atha turned in sudden shock, as a group of tribals gathered quickly behind them. Stone Shore looked rabid, and ready to kill the General; a Stormian gang was holding him back. A powerful Bronzeback named Rising Gale had stopped Stone Shore in his tracks. Holding his knife-arm at bay, with a strong trembling grip.

‘Not a good idea, my tribe-brother,’ Rising Gale advised him calmly. ‘Barkless Tree forbids any harm to this one. Not in the Ancient Way. He must face the justice of his own people.’

‘Barkless Tree!?’ Stone Shore growled furiously; spitting on the name and struggling against them. But the outcast’s gang of retainers held Stone Shore back regardless.

‘It has been forbidden,’ a Red-Eye informed him, who’d been named Bloody Starlight for his prowess. ‘Atha will live.’

Staring beside them, edging away, Atha and Irren watched the gang’s heated words in confusion. The Stormians growled and grunted in their native tongue, though Atha had heard his name mentioned in anger. Whatever was happening, it seemed to conclude just as quickly. The gang escorted Stone Shore away from him, with a last vengeful snarl over his shoulder.

*

Tabitha studied her scripted speech for a moment. She looked up from the smooth stone podium, over a gigantic crowd in the plaza. A staring sea beyond the Ministry steps.

‘…Survivors of Serenity. Loyal Guardians, and fearless Sky Tribe. My people of every planet,’ she began. Her voice echoed from speakers through the endless crowd. ‘You chose in me a war-time leader. And now, our war is won.’ The cheering applause rose and echoed all around her. ‘Though… I’m not the one to rebuild Serenity for you,’ she continued. ‘I don’t have experience of your cultures. All I know are the Watchers, and how to fight them. I’m honoured to have led you, and to serve you all.’ Tabitha breathed deeply, and smiled at their rising applause.

‘…The war for your world is over. But it still rages on, out there, against more worlds that I can help. For the sake of families like yours, on further planets who face the Watchers’ genocides, now comes the day that I end my reign. This is a day for new leaders, who know and respect the rule of Virtue. It’s to those leaders, that I pass the vital task of reviving Serenity.’ The crowd’s applause thundered all around her.

‘I want to thank you. Every one of you,’ she finished. ‘For your courage, and sacrifice, and your bloody hard work.’ Tabitha smiled at their rising cheers. ‘So. It saddens me to say, that I’m your queen no longer. It’s been my honour. The best people to rebuild Serenity are those who fought for it, here inside these walls. Which is why I present your new leaders, for new years ahead. First Ministers Saa Teol, and Irren Amsira. Trust in these people, as I do, and together you will build a better world.’ Tabitha felt her heartcore pounding happily, leaving the podium and catching both their smiles, as Saa and Irren took to the platform in her wake. Ears still ringing to the city’s colossal applause.

Turning and waving, one last time, Tabitha walked away through the grand Ministry gates as Irren addressed the vast crowds behind her. He spoke passionately from the podium about their fallen High Ministers, and a fleet in aid of Her Majesty, as Tabitha strode on happily through the lobby. Feeling nothing but relief, like a great weight had lifted from her shoulders, as the towering doors gently thundered shut.

She smiled to her Ghosts, waiting inside the peaceful lobby, as she joined her motley family and walked on beside them.

‘Well, I don’t envy our new Ministers,’ said Reigo, glancing back at the muffled applause through the giant gates. ‘Politics is my idea of hell.’

‘Wait, are you in the Ghosts now?’ said Big Fish. ‘Is he in the Ghosts now?’

‘…What? Didn’t you say I could join you?’ Reigo asked him.

‘Does he know the access passwords?’ Tabitha replied. ‘And the Code of Honour?’

‘…No?’ said Reigo, with a look of confusion.

‘So you haven’t even crafted your Ceremonial Hat of Trials?’ Tabitha enquired. Trying to hide her smirk.

‘…Ohh. You’re that kind of merry band,’ Reigo replied. ‘No. I haven’t crafted the Special-Hat.’

‘Hm. Can’t join then,’ Tabitha advised him, with a mournful look. ‘Go on. Skedaddle.’

‘…Yeah, in a minute,’ Reigo sighed wearily. ‘I was walking down here anyway.’

‘Hm. You pass, the test,’ Barkless considered. ‘Only, the unsearching, will find.’

‘Sought, in not-seeking,’ Sea Mist agreed, as she nodded sagely beside him. ‘Good.’

‘See, I can’t tell with you two,’ Reigo considered. ‘Are you messing with me, or just being mystical?’

‘…Same, thing?’ Barkless wondered, raising a brow in reply to him. ‘Or not. But… maybe.’ Reigo shook his head and gave up on them, and assumed from all that nonsense that he was already on the team. Sea Mist and Barkless shared a quick grin behind him.

As they walked on through the shadowed lobby together, Tabitha noticed it again. Only since the stalker, but it seemed to have stuck. Sharper sight, in gloomier places. She saw through the low light more clearly.

…Cool.

‘So that speech. Did Saa script that for you?’ Big Fish rumbled, as he climbed the grand stone steps beside her.

‘Nope,’ Tabitha replied. ‘That was all me.’

‘Hm. I thought so. It wasn’t as good.’ Tabitha looked up to study him. He replied with a sincere nod. ‘Just being honest,’ he said with a shrug.

‘Thanks, Fish,’ she replied, with a sudden deflated look. ‘Where’s Aelu, anyway?’ she added. Sea Mist just shrugged in reply. ‘I’m fine with leaving Serenity without her, if that’s an option,’ Tabitha mumbled. ‘Just… putting that out there.’

*

Out in the pale city ruins, turned away squinting against the windblown ash, a lean hooded figure zipped up her coat collar higher around her neck. Hugging herself tighter in a lonely ruined doorway, and praying for the encrypted call to connect. The dial tone on her wristcom stopped beeping, but no one answered in the silence.

‘...Hello?’ she tried, after a few awkward seconds.

‘Who is this?’ the thick gravelly voice replied. Calm and disinterested.

‘You found me in the factory. Stitching myself up,’ Aelu tried. ‘You gave me those painkillers.’ She was worlds away from him, and a war veteran by now. And she was still nervous. Clearing her throat. ‘You told me it was where you worked. You said that if I got money–

‘I could break someone for you,’ the deep grim voice interrupted.

‘…More than one,’ said Aelu. ‘In the mob. They killed my son. I’ve got the money for it,’ she added quietly, glancing at the heavy glinting contents of her thick canvas bag. ‘I’ve got all the money you need.’

57

A lone monster still scratched out a living in frozen wasteland. Prowling weakly in search of any twisted wreckage; any washed-up can on the shores. It glanced up growling, pale eyes shrinking to dots, and turned to run for its life. Galloping off up the pebble shore, from a rank of growing shapes in the grey sky that terrified it.

Peering from the side-doors of the leading gunship, a Guardian glanced back inside and replied soundlessly through the massive jet-drone of the engines. Squeezing the trigger on a mounted gatling that hurled endless rapid laserbolts across the seashore. The creature’s dark shape fled frantically as the shore erupted all around it. The gunships’ endless thundering shots dropped the Watchers’ fleeing monster with a leg blown open, and quickly burst and spattered it into glowing gore.

The foremost gunner chalked another kill on the tally beside him, and marked the monster’s wreckage on his wristcom for the cleanup drones to deal with. His pack of hunting gunships tore on overhead. Their kills here were getting few and far between.

Across the world, the war continued for Serenity’s furthest reaches. Closer to its frozen poles, stunted spiders fled through the drab tundra. Desperately trying to hide and live on, as grey Guardian fighters dived suddenly and blew them away.

Entire hybrid fleets policed the planet’s oceans and thick forests. Scrambling drone swarms in their thousands, and scouring every city street with countless boots on the ground, to investigate any withering young nests and coordinate their demolition.

Clearing another room, in another ruined home, a team of young Guardians lowered their rifles’ torchlight from yet more ragged survivors in desperate need of aid.

A young private led the way. Escorting the civilians carefully into the blinking daylight, and aboard the medical dropship that descended for them in the town square.

Her wide-ranging companies and battalions had never known hostiles like the Watchers’ creations. Not least the occasional stranded monster, curled in city basements in shadowed hibernation. But they’d never known campaigns so rewarding, either. Seeing all those friends and families safe again, wrapped in smart-blankets and being hurriedly hydrated by their tireless field medics… it made every searching step through the devastation worthwhile.

As the Guardians’ gunships and medical craft lifted away, an army of drones floated on quickly in their wake. Scanning the Watchers’ rubble for every last seed and spore, before the reconstruction teams moved in to clear and rebuild another city from the foundations. Massive machines printed new walls in liquid stone. The Sky Queen’s living lights grew like weeds.

Street by street, layer by layer, Serenity was being rebuilt.

*

Deep in the heart of the world’s recovering capital, past brand-new battlements and great Baroque towers, a grand gleaming window looked in on a smart seated figure. A new First Minister, suited and shaven and stone-cold sober. Harder at work than he’d ever been before.

Perfectly content to throw every waking hour at the endless challenges laid before him, Irren finished another rapid message at his holo-terminal and returned to his in-depth proposals for the city’s great rebranding.

A new seal of office marked the letterheaded papers stacked before him: a moonflower within a fortress, arrayed inside a circle of spears. Such a small thing to change, really.

But he had to start somewhere.

*

‘I’m so sorry, about you and Anero,’ said Tabitha.

‘Thanks. But I’m not,’ Saa replied gently. ‘He chose his side, and it wasn’t us,’ she sighed. Saa was smiling sadly, as they walked on through bright birdsong corridors for the Ministry’s highest tier. ‘We’ll still see Daddy, a few times a week,’ she added, for baby Lea’s benefit, where she babbled and munched happily on her tiny fingers against her shoulder. ‘And… I’m sorry,’ Saa considered. ‘For being so distant, since you came back here.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Tabitha replied warmly. ‘I understand.’

‘…You do?’ Saa wondered, nervously.

‘Sorry mate. I’m just not into the ladies,’ Tabitha shrugged. ‘So, y’know. That could be a hurdle.’ She popped all the silent tension between them with a sudden cheeky smile. Watching Saa blush brightly beside her. ‘But I’m flattered as hell, by the way. Should I ever harken to the call of the ladypants in future… well. I’ve got your wristcom number, and yeah. Absolutely. You’re gorgeous.’

‘Tabitha, I believe that’s the sweetest rejection I’ve ever heard,’ Saa chuckled beside her. ‘Thank you.’ She smiled brightly, trying to hide just how much she’d miss her. ‘Well… suppose we’d better get you packed.’

*

Saa placed everything neatly and carefully into the box before her, beside the desk in Tabitha’s grand restored suite. Tabitha filled her own container roughly by comparison. Tossing in hybrid plants and scorched souvenirs, on top of her writings and scribbled Watcher strategies. Books on philosophy, and Serenity’s rich moral history. Saa watched Tabitha’s scruffy impatient efforts across the desk, and smiled sadly before Her Majesty saw.

The pair were deep-black silhouettes, set against a bright peaceful cityscape beyond the windows. Separated by it.

These rooms had always been reinforced; they were some of the few to survive the conflict. Fishbowl’s garden on the suite’s corner walls, dying off since Alex’s attack, had already been removed. All trace of ivy-marks had been scoured away during the New Ministry’s rapid reconstruction.

‘So. Feeling confident? Ready to build a better Serenity?’ Tabitha said brightly. Breaking the easy silence between them, as they finished packing her things.

‘Well, anything would be an improvement on the actions of our former High Ministers,’ Saa replied. ‘All we have to do is not invite the bloody apocalypse.’ Tabitha glimpsed a furious undertone in her look. ‘But we’ll stay in touch about everything, obviously,’ Saa added happily. ‘I’ve also commissioned a laser beacon, an intergalactic T-symbol, to signal you back here if the Watchers ever return.’

‘Have you really?’ Tabitha said with a grin.

‘Nope,’ Saa replied. ‘Calling seems easier. Intergalactic beacons are obscenely expensive.’

Just before they left the grand suite with her stuff, with Lea nodding sleepily against Saa’s shoulder, Tabitha noticed the lone picture still hanging over her bed. Calia’s colourful drawing of her.

The forgotten silver coin at her bedside was scorched and bloodied, but Virtue still showed through. Tabitha slipped it into a belt pouch, for a keepsake. Walking closer to take Calia’s picture down, she noticed a scribbled new addition at the corner. A hurried note. Something so tragic she couldn’t stand it. During their desperate siege against the Watchers’ grand horde, her fearless Cold Moon had died with several Guardians in one of the suites, so she’d been told. But she’d no idea that suite was hers. This was where Vik had given his life for those families. The hurried note on the drawing was his:

My gorgeous Liina. My miraculous Calia. I slayed monsters for you. I’ll always love you.

‘We should probably get going for the memorial ceremony… is everything alright?’ said Saa, as she came closer. ‘That’s the picture Calia gave you?’ Tabitha turned to her, tearfully.

‘…I have to give this back.’

*

Out among the cloistered courtyards, the New Ministry’s grand gardens were finished to bright summer perfection. Packed with watching crowds of the city’s veteran soldiers and survivors, as the Sky Queen unveiled their new memorial. It was a sweeping group of bright stone statues, showing Serenians and Sky Tribe, and every species in-between, who carried their wounded and weakest powerfully toward a rocky summit. The foremost fighters held their rifles high and looked on fearlessly, toward the strong new Ministry gates, in echo of ancient Virtue.

Each statue had a face of the fallen, like Swift Blood and his adopted son. Like the happy old man Tabitha had met one night, and Cold Moon who’d given everything for these survivors in bold Fierce-Hope. The foremost statue looked a lot like Vik.

The large gleaming plaques around the monument’s base carried too many names in memoriam, of the fighters who’d given their lives during Serenity’s brief brutal War of the Watchers. The polished brass panels reflected a sea of blurred shapes all around them. Sad proud people, applauding the heroes they’d known.

A weary young nurse applauded beside Lotor. A red-skinned former-Guardian clapped with her prosthetic arm. Thier, her new boss with a new offer of employment for her, applauded with the crowd alongside.

The applause died down as Her Majesty walked out through the staring crowd, to a heartbroken little girl and her widowed mother. Returning her picture in an ornate frame… along with a subtle cheque, from Thier’s ever-growing relief fund for the city’s survivors. Enough to care for Vik’s young family for life. As Tabitha knelt down to face her, the little girl wrapped her tightly in a tearful hug.

‘Your dad saved the world, Calia,’ Tabitha told her quietly, beyond the crowd’s distant applause. ‘You should be so proud of him. All these people will never forget him. He’s a hero.’ Tabitha nodded aside, toward his name, engraved high on the plaque beside them. ‘Never stop drawing, will you?’ Calia smiled tearfully, and shook her head.

‘I won’t, Your Majesty,’ she said quietly, as Liina hugged her and took her daughter’s hand.

‘…Well, he’d love this,’ Liina sighed, with a bittersweet nod at Vik’s statue. ‘He’d be on such an ego trip right now. The sculptor really captured his hero complex.’

‘Will you be ok?’ said Tabitha. ‘You’ve got everything you need?’

‘Yeah. We’ll manage,’ Liina said gratefully. Smiling slightly; quietly hard as a coffin nail. ‘…You, my husband, all these people, saved billions of lives. He’d tell me to be proud, and get on with it. We’ll be alright.’ Tabitha reflected their sad smiles, as the pair walked away through the crowd’s applause.

*

‘Oh, just one more thing,’ said Saa, before Tabitha walked on with her Ghosts toward the bustling barracks. ‘Sea Mist asked me to translate something, into Trade Language,’ she said, taking Tabitha to one side.

‘A poem?’ Tabitha replied, studying the paper she passed to her. Newly refurbished since the city ruins, Vincent floated over to read the writing beside her.

‘…By Deep Roots,’ Saa added carefully. ‘I believe he’d written it during your first stay in the Capital, in the park? Well, he wanted you to have it, when it was done. I hope I caught the spirit of it.’ Tabitha watched her, and felt her throat tightening in grief. She studied Saa’s neat Trade Language, penned delicately on the page. Reading the old man’s words, from beyond the land of the living:

The dark blue fury of storm-skies has left me;

I long for the perfume of struck sharpened glass.

No more the ice-blossom, nor the mothbirds’ song;

I pray to see Sacred Mountain again.

‘…That’s so sad,’ Tabitha mumbled, on the verge of tears. ‘All he wanted was to go home.’

‘Read the next part,’ said Saa, with a smile.

‘Where?’ Tabitha replied, flipping the paper over. But Saa motioned toward the new stone archway above them. And there it was. Deep Roots’ same poem, engraved in stone, over the archway’s ornate peak. A second verse followed it:

But the silver dawn brings deeper wisdom;

All that I long for lies within.

I must light Fierce-Hope in all others;

I will build Sacred Mountain anew.

DEEP ROOTS OF STORMWORLD

‘Thank you, Saa,’ she said happily, tearfully, and hugged her tightly in the archway. Tabitha smiled up at his words again, and knew what he’d want her to do.

…To walk on gladly, and sail in boats that cross the stars.

*

Tabitha walked on towards the barracks with Saa, one last time. A smiling group was waiting for her, welcoming her, before she and her Ghosts left the Ministry to rebuild. A bright hybrid dropship stood behind them; resting heftily on the parade ground’s ancient cobbles. Seven circled the complex and enjoyed his favourite rooftop perch, one more time, before they left Serenity behind.

‘Majesty,’ Lotor addressed her, with a smiling bow. ‘You’re quite the adversary. To Watchers and surgeons alike,’ he added, as Tabitha shook his hand warmly.

‘Thank you, Professor. For the operation. For everything,’ she told him happily. ‘So what’s your next study?’

‘Well, I shall be sad to lose Fishbowl there,’ the beige man sighed. ‘Though I’ve more than enough research awaiting me, in understanding and perfecting the celestial matter. By the Ministry’s invitation, and with the aid of my new assistant here, I shall be working toward the–

BARP, said Barp. The defence drone was startled by a small batbird, perching on top of its casing.

‘Toward the prevention of such crises–

BARP!

‘Confound it all – Yes, Barp! – the prevention of such crises in future.’

‘A joint venture, Majesty,’ Thier concurred. Grandly suited and smiling, he came forward with an elegant bow. A passing flash of that same cryptic smile, as he took Tabitha’s hand sincerely and gave it a courtly kiss.

‘Farewell, fair Queen of the Heavens. I wish you every success in the challenges set before you. By might or by majesty, I’ve no doubt you shall overcome them.’

‘Smooth as always, Thier,’ she replied with a smile. ‘You’ve been practising that line.’

‘Naturally,’ he purred quietly, with a winning smirk. ‘Take care.’ He winked a dark starry eye as he stepped back.

‘Well. Goodbye Saa. Look after yourself,’ Tabitha said warmly. ‘Both of you,’ she added, as she shook Irren’s firm hand beside her. But Saa came in to hug her tightly. Trying her best to hide her heartbreak. ‘And look after these people. I’ll come back here and avenge them again, if you don’t.’

‘Of course,’ Saa chuckled back.

‘Oh, I intend to,’ Irren added. ‘I’m terrified of these people. I’ve seen what they do to swarms of killer spiders.’

‘Everything going smoothly with the reinforcements?’ Tabitha asked him, conspiratorially.

‘Well, I made you famous out there. See for yourself,’ Irren replied with a grin. ‘And stop messaging me about Stormworld, will you? I’ll make sure they’re left alone.’

‘Thanks, Irren,’ Tabitha smiled back. ‘Good luck with the new job.’

‘Y’know, it’s a shame,’ he considered. ‘All this fame I’ve given you, across all those Ministry worlds… you’d have made a wonderful puppet dictator for my shadowy schemes.’

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ Tabitha chuckled. ‘But if you’re scheming for the right reasons, Irren, I won’t stop you.’ The thin green man merely smiled in reply.

‘…Well,’ Tabitha concluded happily, as she followed her Ghosts aboard the dropship. Its huge hover-drives lifted them gently from the cobbles. ‘Take care of this planet, peeps. You only get one,’ she told the small group beneath her, with a warm parting smile from the side-door. ‘See you around.’

Seven made one last soaring lap of the Ministry battlements, roaring white fire noisily, to get all the parting attention he deserved. Tabitha held tightly to the dropship’s hand rail, watching the New Ministry as she rose above it, while Sea Mist fussily fastened her harness for her. Big Fish held Fishbowl curiously, while Barkless studied Vincent in his hands.

Tabitha’s small group of advisors still waved them off from the parade ground; a shrinking sight beneath her. Calia and Liina waved to them among the vast city crowds. A sea of shouting survivors, cheering the Sky Queen’s dropship from the plaza.

Tabitha and her mismatched Ghosts waved back noisily, smiling widely, until she lost sight of everyone beyond the Ministry’s shrinking battlements. Then the Ministry itself disappeared; hidden away quickly by the towering city ruins around them.

…Lotor, Thier, Irren and Saa, Tabitha pondered, when the thought occurred to her. A new Four.

*

A calmer, quieter Ministry followed in the wake of the Sky Queen’s departure, with all her noisy tribals and loyalists being shipped away toward a new base of operations east of the city.

The afternoon faded into a sunglowing evening, where Saa and Irren shocked their newly reformed Ministers into yet more hard work on Serenity’s recovery. Irren had already announced cuts in several paychecks; funds which were sorely needed for Saa and her veteran programs. Ministry donors and contracts had already been cut in half. Many of the worlds’ more comfortable Ministers were worried for the post-war cost-cutting that lurked ahead.

*

‘You wanted to see me, Thier? Come in, come in.’ Irren motioned the tall man to a fine seat facing his own, by a grand glowing fireplace in his office suites. The mantel’s fine stonework was already inkstained with fingerprints. Cluttered with growing masses of notes and scribbled strategies. Irren largely ignored him; still hard at work on tomorrow’s meetings.

‘…I trust you’re settling in, First Minister?’ Thier said happily, as he took the offered armchair and studied the suite’s rapid progression into a dim chaotic studio.

Grunting from his work in the affirmative, eventually, Irren took a little more notice of his guest. Pouring him some of the native coffee, in a rare clean cup, and handing it to him like an afterthought. Then a vast silence opened up between them, as Irren scribbled busily at his work.

‘…First Minister, I wished to broach the subject of further expansion into the construction business,’ Thier began. ‘Creating new jobs for these poor people, you understand.’ Irren smiled in response.

‘Be my guest,’ Irren replied sincerely. ‘Put it through Planning Permissions, as before. Just don’t expect Ministry funds to pay for any more reconstruction of the city.’

‘Naturally,’ said Thier, with a smirk. ‘Cutting back on expenses, Minister?’

‘Something like that,’ Irren replied quietly, as he sipped his coffee.

‘So what’s it to be?’ Thier enquired, as he glanced at the sunsetting ruins beyond the room’s towering windows. ‘Capital City, or Silverspire?’

‘Not my place to say,’ Irren shrugged. ‘I’m just here to keep the lights back on. Though, Silverspire does have a little more personality to it.’

‘I thought Silverspire was just an idea, Minister?’ Thier replied. ‘A tool to win this war, and help these people to function. Merely a story.’

‘What do you think the Interworld Ministry was?’ Irren countered, as he stood away from his work and took a stretching walk to the windows.

‘…Was, Minister?’ Thier said with a smile, once they understood one another. ‘Now that is interesting. Anyone would think you’d used Her Majesty’s celebrity to assume your position of power. Perhaps even to further a different agenda.’

Irren just sipped his coffee. He watched the city ruins, and didn’t speak right away.

‘…You wouldn’t happen to have a problem with my friends, would you Mr Isse?’ he replied, as he turned back to watch him carefully. ‘There are several billion of them.’

‘Not at all, Minister,’ Thier replied warmly. ‘They happen to be my customers.’

‘Hm. Small worlds,’ Irren smiled back.

*

Ever since their heist to free the Celestial, Irren had worked in constant quiet partnership with Her Majesty. She’d given him his film career, after all. The man behind Saviour of Serenity. A feature-length version of her viral dronelet footage, now a blockbuster documentary across wider worlds, following the Sky Queen’s hopeless journey to save this city’s survivors. Tabitha’s wild action provided the entertainment factor he’d needed to embed his grand exposé, of corrupt former Ministers and their blown-open secrets. Turning more people, on more worlds, gradually against their rule.

During Saa and Irren’s final meeting with Tabitha, all three had agreed that Saa would ultimately be his cover, as well as his colleague. She was a trusted employee; a familiar friendly face to smooth the old-guard’s ruffled feathers. As long as the central Ministers saw Saa, they saw potential leverage to get their own way. She’d been Irren’s Ministry-approved passport to the podium. A way to get him inside.

Tabitha had scores to settle with the Ministry. For Stormworld, and Serenity, and for a dozen struggling worlds like Eitse, that still churned out casualties like Aelu and Big Fish.

And, finally, a score to settle for herself. To disrupt and dismantle, like they’d intended with the Celestial. She’d shared Irren’s intentions from the start.

58

Tabitha watched from the dropship’s small side-window as they passed over a bustling military base, far beyond the city ruins. Newly rebuilt and resurrected by the allied armada, stationed countlessly across Serenity. The landing grounds below were alive with activity, where marching troop-columns moved into position in growing numbers. The bright evening light glinted and glowed across the Guardians’ massing forces.

Vincent’s camera footage had reached billions of viewers across the Ministry worlds. Irren’s new feature film had leaked all over the star-net. People of every species had lost someone they loved on Serenity during the Watcher crisis, and now Irren and Saa were riding high on a wave of public opinion. Gathering their Ministers decisively, and calling for immediate action against the Watcher threat.

The wider worlds’ Guardian forces had answered, en masse. Staring from the dropship window, Tabitha saw ranks of celestial drones, droids and tall hulking robots; armoured and turreted like fierce upright tanks. She glimpsed heavy artillery arrayed beyond them, and rows of hybrid gunships, where hurried engineers and flight crews were hard at work.

‘Hey, Fish,’ said Reigo, breaking the easy silence in the dropship. ‘Did you and that octopus-lady ever… y’know?’ he described the deed subtly with his hands; poking an index finger into the tube he’d made of his other fist.

‘Ohh, I’ll never tell!’ Big Fish giggled, putting a giant hand to his mouth in false coyness. ‘…But yeah, we totally boned,’ he rumbled. ‘She was fantastic.’

‘Yeah, I’ll find you a notepad when we land. So you can explain everything in grosser detail,’ Aelu muttered. Fish glanced around at everyone uncertainly.

‘...Wellll, if you want me to? I mean, I dunno if it’d work the same for your species–

‘Fish. She was being sarcastic,’ Tabitha whispered.

‘Ohhh,’ he replied, in sudden relief. ‘Well that’s way less creepy. I thought you needed instructions or something, for doing Atha Two.’

‘…Yeah, what happened with Atha?’ said Reigo. ‘Last I heard, the infamous Bastard of Greysea is suddenly under criminal investigation. And what with close friends of Her Majesty getting into power? Amazing coincidence.’

‘Yeah, that is weird,’ Big Fish replied, with a smirk showing through. ‘And I’m sure your own request to have General Atha investigated had nothing to do with it, Lieutenant.’

‘Hm,’ Aelu considered. ‘Anyone would think you’d used him for a promotion,’ she told Reigo. ‘Then thrown him to the New Ministers in the aftermath, to answer for his past crimes under The Four?’ Reigo watched her carefully. His smiling silence spoke volumes.

‘…Or even slept with the General to shield yourself from Guardian attention, for previous misdeeds on other worlds?’ Tabitha added, with a level look at Aelu in return. The blue woman merely shrugged in reply, saying nothing about the gold she’d taken, and let her older crimes hide the new.

‘…Or exploited Atha’s military influence to hold off the Watchers here, only to have him turned in to the authorities as vengeance for Stormworld?’ Aelu offered in reply. Barkless merely grinned beside Sea Mist, and glanced across at Tabitha. Their Sky Queen had never intended for Atha, the Tribe’s mercenary killer-in-chief, to walk free after the conflict. He wasn’t the only one in his battalion, or among the Ministers, about to be hauled before the courts.

‘…I never could get it out of him, the kind of mining quotas they were taking from Stormworld,’ Aelu continued. ‘Still, it’s in Saa’s hands now. She’s handling reparations.’

‘Must sting pretty bad for Atha. Being used and abused for his resources like that,’ Big Fish said with a smirk. ‘Welcome to our worlds, huh?’

‘He had it coming,’ Tabitha replied bitterly, as she watched the Guardians’ massing forces from the window beside her. ‘No one fucks with Sky Tribe.’

*

The Tribe’s fierce armoured ranks awaited their Sky Queen around the landing pad, as her dropship slowed and hovered down. Tabitha strode out between neat motionless lines of them, her proud victorious Sky Tribe, all arrayed in Guardian combat armour. Their alloy spears were grip-wrapped and sharpened, and new silvery knives glinted at their belts. Their large shields now bore the symbol of Sacred Mountain.

She’d met with them on her bird-spirit, in the plaza beyond the Ministry, to speak with Stone Shore after the Greatest Fire had burned in the hills. They’d grieved together by their mourningfire, for Swift Blood and Cold Moon, and Deep Roots too. For every warrior that the Great War, and the air-demon Aliks, had taken from them.

Dark Storm had said again that they were free to leave this conflict, as they always had been. That anyone who so wished could return to the families on Sacred Mountain, without obligation, to rebuild their old lives without any further invasions. She’d never demand that they sail on with her now, on these heavenly star-boats, to more distant realms.

…And abandon our growing Glory? Stone Shore had signed to her; explaining himself in the painted words, with a stick of charcoal from the embers. Not a chance. First Ancestor tested our Fierce-Hope to its limits here, and blessed our hands, and spared us to fight another day. He will test us again, in the wars to come. We here are practised warriors, in great victory over the death-gods themselves... and what are warriors without war? What greater purpose could you give to us?

But it wasn’t up to Stone Shore alone. Tabitha had made her offer to every fighter in the Tribe, as individuals. But not a single one would leave her. Her own realm was not yet won.

*

Tabitha studied the Guardians’ massing forces as she walked. All around her in the landing grounds, teams in bright overalls were hard at work on their living gunships. Loading their cannons’ giant charge cores and running careful diagnostics at their field terminals, to interpret the crafts’ hybrid inner workings that they’d deciphered so far.

She passed by two engineers who inspected a fleshy engine turbine. A woman of a species she’d never seen before was checking along a gunship’s bark-scaled fuselage, for damage and solid seals.

Tabitha was impressed. All her random work with the Celestial shard’s evolution had been studied, codified and optimised exponentially by expert teams. All the Guardians’ military hardware here, now proofed against the Watchers’ technology. The engineer inspecting the fuselage noticed her staring.

‘Still working them out, ma’am,’ the orange woman said of the feather-finned gunship, in a warm well-spoken tone. ‘They’re a different animal. Or plant. As of yet, we aren’t quite sure.’

‘But they’re running ok?’ Tabitha replied. ‘No trouble, I hope?’ …What are they, my kids?

‘Well, we have the odd disagreement, during disassembly,’ the woman replied happily. Resting for a moment, with an oil-stained hand on her hip. ‘Though healing hardware is a pretty good trade-off. And the pilots’ lives are easier, and safer, now that their ships want to stay airborne as much as they do. Lets them focus on the fight.’

‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Tabitha replied happily, and nodded up at Seven above them. Still circling the base in endless curiosity.

‘…Honoured to meet you, ma’am,’ said the engineer. ‘Let’s give those Watcher bastards all they deserve.’ Tabitha shook the smiling woman’s offered hand, and left her to her work as the Ghosts wandered ahead.

*

‘Excuse me, ma’am? …Could you sign my cast?’ said a smiling mechanic, as Tabitha passed by their bustling workspaces toward the central hangars. He offered her a heavy-duty pen, and his broken left arm in a plasti-weave cast. A hybrid motor lay dismantled on his worktable. Around it, a chattering crowd of technicians gathered in to see a celebrity. The fabled Sky Queen herself.

‘What happened?’ Tabitha replied, as she took the felt-tip happily and carefully scribbled her name on his cast. A strange enough experience in itself, to be asked to sign anything that wasn’t just a job application.

‘Nahh, I’m just clumsy,’ the chiselled mechanic smiled back. ‘…I saw all the drone footage from the ruins, y’know? But the Super Spider’s still my favourite,’ he added. ‘And seeing Vali Fountain explode like that? And the way you ended it, with The Voltness? Supercool, ma’am.’

‘Thank you,’ Tabitha chuckled, a sudden blush coming on, while she drew a quick stick-spider beside her autograph for good measure. ‘See you around, soldier.’ The man smiled and saluted her, and went back to his work in their wake.

‘He, was hot,’ Aelu whispered beside her. ‘You’re never tempted to abuse your power? He could explode my fountain all day.’ Big Fish cringed behind them. Tabitha smiled slightly in reply, aloof to the comment, and gave nothing away as they walked on. ‘Wow, you really are royalty these days,’ Aelu considered. ‘You’ve got the poker face down.’

‘…Did you like that? I’ve been practising,’ Tabitha replied happily.

‘Meh, you kind of ruined it just now. Monarchs don’t need approval.’

‘Noted. Thank you, loyal subject.’

‘Well, you’re welcome,’ Aelu shrugged. ‘Keep the free food and shelter coming, and I’ll be as subjective as you like.’ Fish glanced between them, mid-stride. Suddenly paying way more attention.

…Wow, thought Tabitha, as crowding soldiers took yet more grinning photos beside her. More autographs too, and endless handshakes from the mobbing troops around her. Irren wasn’t lying about making me famous. She glanced around at more soldiers, drones and droids than she’d ever thought possible, from every scattered world under the Ministry. All armed and arrayed against a single shared enemy. Ready to follow her, one last time, into war.

*

Tabitha and her Ghosts walked on toward the airbase hangars. A straight clear path lay ahead of them, surrounded utterly by Guardian forces.

A dozen hybrid fighter craft tore overhead in tight formation. The skies were bristling with them. Gathering destroyers hung vast and motionless all around the airbase, or thundered past above her and blocked out the daylight for several moments, like angelic airborne battleships. A new manmade skyscape was growing beyond the ruined capital.

Her Ghosts couldn’t keep from staring at it all. Courtesy of her deal with Irren, in exchange for his new role in the Ministry, countless Guardians and free warriors of every shape and species stood in strict ranks all around her. Tabitha passed columns of countless combat droids. She looked up to see neat packs of defence drones, floating by quickly to take their places among the growing army. Hovering troop carriers, ramps down and ready in the distance. All of it glassy-bright and celestial, and proofed against the Watchers’ darkening ship. Above them, the readying space fleet was still expanding. More sky-hazy ships gathered from across their united worlds, of every form and design. An overwhelming force.

Tabitha shared these peoples’ sentiments. The Watchers had attacked their capital; struck at the heart of their ancient ideals. They’d murdered countless friends and families, from every world and culture there was. The crisis had outraged crowds of chanting millions on the newscasts, while their leaders and celebrities held vast concerts for aid and a swift response.

Now, the Watchers would get to see these peoples’ reaction to such a grim genocide.

…A Ministry reaction, thought Tabitha. And mine.

*

‘You’re an inspiration, ma’am,’ said a hefty grey Captain with a gravelly voice, as Tabitha approached him with her Ghosts in a concrete corridor. Shaking her hand powerfully, he led them through a distant doorway into a crowded briefing room. Every gathered Guardian acknowledged her arrival with a sudden boot-clomping salute.

‘I lost family during the invasion. Same as half the soldiers in here,’ the gruff grey Captain continued, and motioned them on toward a hologram table in the busy briefing room. ‘But with respect ma’am, seeing you hurting and bleeding in the ruins, and getting back up to carry on fighting for our soldiers and civilians… you’re a hero to us, Majesty. Glad to have you in the fight.’

‘Uhh… thank you,’ Tabitha told the staring Captain, and the silent crowded room. Surprised by it, and unsure of what to say. ‘I’m just doing what I can, to help people.’ Her uncertain response earned a sudden applause all around her. The Captain was nodding passionately, and invited her on toward the changing hologram on the war table. He glanced around at the quieting room, for everyone to take their seats. Tabitha breathed deeply, watching a hologram miniature of the Watchers’ mothership turning crisply over the table top. Even the small likeness of it put a twist in her stomach.

‘…Alright,’ Tabitha told the silent room, a little nervously. This was new territory. But at least she knew the subject. ‘We can’t know the Watchers’ next intentions for your worlds. But we know their ship is able to heal, from massive damage. And now we know that not even a full-fleet barrage is able to kill it.’ Tabitha put her hands on the hologram and moved them apart, and the slow-turning mothership expanded to fill half the room in front of them. A new overlay showed the latest damage the fleet had dealt to it. Considerable, but still not enough.

‘During the hive’s destruction, I believe the blast may have completely destroyed the ship’s main energy beam. Or at least disabled it. And judging by your fleets’ scan data, and personal experience of the Watchers’ hive structures, their mothership is hiding a huge quantity of power cells at its central core. Every square inch of meat and living scale wrapped around that core is military-grade, and engineered to protect it. The only way to kill that mothership is to get someone inside its energy core. Me.’ The crowded room watched her silently. Her Ghosts lined the wall sternly at her back. ‘You get me inside that ship, I’ll bring the bastards down for good.’ The briefing room erupted into cheers all around her. The Captain called out for silence.

‘…If we move quickly, we can hunt down the Watchers and corner their mothership, before the damage we’ve dealt it has time to heal,’ Tabitha concluded. ‘We know how to kill it. We know where it is. We believe the Watchers have fallen back, strategically, to the last safe world they colonised,’ she told the assembly. ‘Mine.’

*

The hefty grey Captain led Tabitha and her Ghosts down further corridors, and on through a giant blast door, into large rooms that smelled like metal and sweat. Guardian quartermasters revealed an entire military arsenal at their disposal.

Tabitha smiled as she passed by her lovely misfits. Sea Mist spun a pair of high-frequency vibro-daggers, and belted them fast with a sharp-toothed grin. Barkless pulled on a full bandolier of heavy charge packs, to fit the vicious plasma rifle he’d been recommended. Turning aside from the firing range, Aelu tightened the sniping scope on a terrifying Gauss rifle, and strapped on the thundering rounds it’d punched clean through the practise targets. Reigo was arguing passionately with Big Fish, that a giant decorative sword was the dumbest possible thing he could take into a modern military conflict. Snarling defensively, black stripes flushing furiously, Fish slung the monstrous blade anyway while he loudly disagreed. High on the wall behind them, the native Guardians’ enormous steel emblem was missing its central sword. Fish had hoped that the angry soldiers around him wouldn’t notice. He carried it off for sharpening regardless.

Tabitha walked on to the room’s far corner. A scarred armourer outfitted her with a light combat vest over her black catsuit, and the kind of celestial submachine gun she’d used in the city ruins. She fastened on a full belt of charge packs, and filed her metal claws with a sharpening steel. Then terrified everyone when she tested her growing voltage, and exploded a practise dummy into flaming fragments at a touch. Giving her meek apologies about the fireworks, Tabitha checked and belted the old Watcher knife n’ pistol she preferred.

‘You going for the master-of-two-worlds thing?’ said Sunshine, as he walked over happily with a bandolier of his new homework assignments. He nodded his question toward her Guardian gear, and the quarter-skirt of blue mothbird feathers that Tabitha wore on one hip. A gift from Sky Tribe.

‘Can’t forget where you came from,’ she replied brightly. ‘But let’s try for master-of-three.’ Sunshine grinned and shook her hand powerfully. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Better, thanks,’ he replied warmly. ‘I’ve got a few Tape’s Revenges for you.’

‘They took to the hybrid explosive?’ said Tabitha, as she studied the duct-taped cylinders that lined the belt he’d given her. Celestial energy bombs. Commissioned in secret, and tested on armour plating recovered from the mothership’s crash site. Intended to blow deep dissolving holes through the real thing, to get her inside it.

‘A bigger bang-for-a-buck I ain’t seen anywhere, ma’am,’ Sunshine said proudly. ‘They’ll bring her down.’

‘Got a minute?’ Reigo interrupted. ‘One of the heavy units is holding us up. Won’t take to the celestial stuff,’ he told her. ‘We thought you could have a look.’

*

A tank drone stared down at Tabitha with a cold jerking lens. A twelve-foot giant, twitching and turning fearsome guns with a dozen whirring servos. Moving too quick and jarring to feel animal, unlike its hybrid siblings; though the arguing troops around it seemed pretty attached to it. But if it couldn’t be Watcher-proofed then it was dead weight once they reached Earth, and the mothership’s circuit-killing influence. They’d have to leave this one behind. Tabitha thought of Seven, and knew where the troops were coming from. If this thing had fought alongside them, and taken hits, and saved lives... hard not to feel that connection, she supposed.

‘That’s Boomer,’ said a passing marine. She was smiling, with more than a hint of pride. Setting down a pair of ammo crates to scratch her oil-smeared forehead. ‘He’s high maintenance. Getting old,’ she confided. ‘But, I wouldn’t want any other heavy with me in a fight.’

‘He’s been around,’ Tabitha guessed, studying its mismatched limbs and plate armour.

‘With us since the unit started,’ the four-armed woman replied, with a dimpled grin. Her eyes lit up as she came over. ‘He’s had so many custom updates and part replacements, he’s not even the same drone any more.’

‘You’re his mechanic?’ said Tabitha.

‘Nah, just partner in crime,’ she replied happily. ‘I was there when he took an airstrike to the head, during the pirate conflicts,’ she added. ‘Turned him into burning scrap, and a big ugly crater. But that gatling laser still had power, and his brain was still plugged into it. He just kept firing until we won the checkpoint. Saved lives. Big dumb bastard,’ she said fondly. ‘But he’s our big dumb bastard.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Tabitha smiled back. Watching Seven lazing like a crocodile across the hangar. ‘So what’s the problem, exactly?’

‘Well, his central processor’s treating the celestial matter like an organic off-world parasite, compromising basic-functions integrity,’ the woman explained quickly. ‘Probably corrupted original-suite safeguards that should’ve stayed deactivated, unless an amateur systems admin butchered his OS custom kernel. Firewall cluster’s negating any complex interaction or software handshake that we’ve seen in successful heavy-unit conversions to C-Status. Celestial Status,’ she explained. ‘But nothing we’ve tried yet can switch that off in him,’ she sighed. ‘The guilty hard-code must be buried pretty deep. It’s messy in there.’

‘…K,’ Tabitha mumbled, and pretended she knew what the woman was talking about.

‘Or, it could just be a faulty batch of celestial matter,’ the woman continued. ‘Point is, we’d have to leave him here. There’s no time left to go in deeper on his wiring. But we hoped you could work your magic on him? Bring him over to the land of the living?’

‘...I can try,’ Tabitha admitted, with a smiling shrug. She’d just relied on genes and instinct so far, to celestialise whatever she’d needed. It was really more heart than science.

‘Ok,’ the woman replied, hesitantly. ‘But with respect, ma’am, I’d appreciate if you did more than just try. We’d hate to lose him.’

‘I understand. I’ll be careful,’ Tabitha assured her.

‘Appreciated, ma’am,’ the marine said with a smile. Hefting up her crates again to carry them off through the hangar.

…Well, let’s take a look at you. Walking around the tank drone carefully, Tabitha pulled a piece of coiled volt-vine from a pouch on her belt. Boomer's whirring lens stared coldly; the rest of the metal giant stood stock-still. Tabitha tucked the fresh vine beneath its armour plating, and pressed a palm to Boomer’s giant leg. Closing her eyes, she could feel the vines they’d already tried inside it. Her thoughts and current pushed at it. Worming it in more finely, cell by cell, through the drone’s patchwork processor. Then, the hybrid matter’s clear rubbery bark stuck and spread against the tank drone’s side. Feeling and creeping, its fine glowing tendrils meshed and blinked through the robot’s joints and circuits. Eyes closed and concentrating, Tabitha watched the matter’s bright-gold progress intently. Pressing a hard sparking hand against the strange material to direct its growth. Pooling her volts now, and ready to shock Boomer into new hybrid life. Or destroy its processor completely, and kill these Marines’ lucky mascot where it stood.

…God, I hope this works.

*

Atha sat silently in a holding office back at the Ministry, awaiting news of his first trial to come. But more importantly, he’d see his kids again. Very soon. He felt lighter, like he was reforming; as if older horrors were behind him and a massive weight was lifting from his shoulders.

He’d been caught out for Stormworld, with Zhae and Enir too. But at least this war was won. He hadn’t witnessed the Watchers’ fate for these worlds, or his family. Given the whole grand scheme of things, and how all this could’ve ended… it looked like everything was going to be alright.

…At least Stone Shore didn’t knife me to death, he told himself. So that’s something.

Atha’s mind was churning with new strategies and fresh objectives. Determined to salvage his family, and raise funds towards Stormworld’s reparations. Jailtime or not… at least he was still around to see his kids.

*

Tabitha was still getting respectful nods and ma’ams, and occasional stern salutes, from countless geared-up Guardians she passed in the bustling airbase hangar. All marching in yelling columns and companies, out into the landing grounds, where a legion of dropships lifted entire battalions away.

Her Sky Tribe boarded their star-boats fearlessly. On to the next realm, and Glory. Countless jetpacked marines strapped in to their dropships and rose away for their waiting destroyers among the clouds. Drones and droids, packed tightly into hulking cargo vessels, lifted off in endless thousands from the crowded air strips.

Tabitha smiled widely to her Ghosts, where they left her behind in the hangar. Watching her brave misfits pile into a waiting dropship, bound for the giant starships docked in the skies overhead. All across the crowded airbase, a tense growing silence had gripped the warm evening air. This was it.

Tabitha strode across the emptying hangar towards him. Beyond the vast opening ahead of them, Serenity’s setting sun shone like a fierce fiery painting through the clouds. He was staring at it; glowing in it. Well, he did like a sunset.

Her heartcore still rose and raced giddily, every time she saw him waiting for her. Her Seven. All they’d been through together. She grinned at his greeting growl, rumbling like thunder through her chest. She rubbed his huge black snout with her hard grinding hand, and ducked down beneath his neck to inspect his glowing jetscales on either side. A mess of darkening scars covered his body.

‘Well. You’ll do,’ Tabitha told him lovingly, and climbed the vast solid ramp of a wing he lowered for her. Taking her favourite seat, in all the worlds there ever were. His big comfy saddle scale, where the living harness grew around her like a tight hug. Tabitha’s deep happy breath filled her head with his metal smell, like hot engines. Their twining thoughts clicked by reflex, like a volt-bright plug in a socket.

…Fly.

Snarling flames, stomping prehistoric through the rushing hangar, Seven flared his jetscales to a rising roar and tore through the air like a rocket. Tabitha couldn’t keep from smiling at his huge firework thoughts, and the windrushing fire-bright thrill of him. Racing out over ranks of staring troops in the sunset landing grounds. Tearing ever higher, past Guardians in their countless climbing dropships. Higher still, past Sky Tribe and her Ghosts. Seven soared like a curse between sky-hazing starships in lift-off, as the Guardians’ last troop-carriers emptied their base entirely.

Down in the packed Ministry plaza, the city’s crowded survivors watched in silence. Over the dead city towers before them, great celestial legions rose endlessly through the summer-citrus dusk. News drones transmitted live footage of the fleets to billions of viewers, on every crowded holo-screen, on every waiting world. Saa and Irren smiled from their grand office windows at the sight.

Among the plaza crowds, Calia sat silently beside her mother. Staring up in wonder, and sketching the sight in her drawing pad. The Guardians’ gilded starships rose like flaming gods and avenging angels. Too many to count. In the future Her Majesty had given back to her, Calia wanted to paint masterpieces to it. The Ascension. The day their worlds fought back.

Seven tore above it all. His blazing eyes looked to the heavens; his dark burning shape raced to meet them. Twin stars in a jetroar smokecloud. Death-black supersonic. The Ministry’s endless forces followed after him. An army of worlds in his thundering wake.

Tabitha stared from his saddle; her red curls streaming in the high summer wind. She sank down inside him as Seven climbed through the clouds. Roaring pale flames, he led the starships into blackening blue.

Thousands more starfighters joined them in orbit, of every shape and colour. The space fleets of a dozen worlds. Engines glowing like grand constellations, as they swarmed as one for the void. Pouring away countlessly from Serenity’s bright curve, where webs of city lights spread back across its darkened continents.

*

Sealed away in Seven’s cockpit, Tabitha ran her fingers through Fishbowl’s reaching tentacles. She gripped the bony flight console; her toy flower swayed on its surface. Down beneath the pilot seat, she pushed at a loose heap with her heel. A blue-grey parka coat, shoved back among the boxes, where she set Vincent down to nest. Tabitha pulled open Seven’s star-map hologram, filling the cockpit brightly, and finally tapped her finger on a far lost world. The floating chart disappeared. Their course was set.

Tabitha flared Seven’s engines and led the light-jump. Vanishing for the stars. The vast fleets behind her disappeared in their dozens, joining the Sky Queen through an ocean of streaming light.

Sky Tribe. Guardians. Ghosts. Her grand armada.

Seeing with Seven’s eyes, Tabitha watched every bright star bleed to a burning glow ahead of her. Teeth gritted tight. Racing toward her vengeance.

Her bloody-red curls hid a scorching golden stare.

59

‘Still thinking about it?’ Natalie said gently, where she joined her quiet husband on the castle roof.

‘…Hard not to,’ Steve replied. Managing a sad smile as she came to stand beside him. She studied his grim stubbled face as he looked away to the coast, where it’d happened, and stretched up to kiss him softly on the cheek. Hugging in tightly by his side.

‘I know you blame yourself. But it wasn’t your fault. None of this is.’

‘There were smarter ways to get across here,’ he disagreed. ‘That boat made too much noise.’

‘It was the only way to save lives, Steve,’ she told him. ‘If we had any other choice you would’ve taken it. Everyone here knows that,’ she assured him. ‘They think you’re a hero. I do too.’ But Steve was despondent. Every loss only made him harder on himself.

Their drowning screams still haunted him, when he wasn’t busy taking care of the survivors. The trawler’s patched-up engine had drawn out the Watcher squid like a dinner bell. They must’ve lost a third of their numbers, during their doomed exodus from Skye. Women, children… it didn’t matter to a starving monster. Never did. It’d pulled them under with their ruined boat, by the dozen. Like a damn conveyor belt. A processor, by Watcher design.

And the grim punchline? Everyone who’d survived that crossing was a stronger swimmer than the rest. Earth’s new nature had rooted out the weak. Food chains weren’t big on compassion.

‘Steve,’ Natalie urged him. ‘I know it’s heartbreaking. It’s a sick tragedy. But you saved lives too. To honour the dead–

‘Help the living,’ Steve finished. Their private motto, that helped pull them through.

‘We can’t change what happened,’ Natalie told him. ‘And it’s not like we could’ve stayed on Skye. You did enough just by getting us away from the spiders. And getting us to Lewis. We both know what kind of life expectancy we’re facing these days.’

Steve glanced at her, and gave her a nodding sigh. Natalie could always tell when she was winning him around. ‘There’s a lot of people in this castle, love,’ she told him gently. ‘People you saved, who owe you their lives. Keep on fighting. For them, and for me.’ Steve watched her, and kissed her sadly. Holding her tight for a moment.

His wife had already told him about the horrors of that first castle she’d found, with her dad and the twins, and an unpleasant woman named Sylvia. He’d heard about the kind of people she’d fought alongside, and a certain strange woman who defied all belief. And he’d heard what’d happened to that castle, in the end. The chittering spiders had gathered in force to overrun it. Nat didn’t know what’d happened to the first Ghosts, after that day. She supposed they were gone, really. She said that she’d regret ever leaving them, to her dying day. Swearing to herself, for the sake of Robert and Grace, that she’d never abandon anyone again. Their doomed crossing from Skye had broken her heart.

‘…Steve?’ said Natalie, knocking gently on his forehead. ‘Anyone in there?’

‘Sorry,’ he muttered back. ‘I’m out of it today.’

‘Yeah, me too,’ she replied. ‘But we’d better bloody well get back into it, don’t you think? For their sake?’ She nodded his attention back towards the castle courtyard, and the surviving village who grieved in their groups.

‘…You’re right,’ Steve considered, as he shook off the dark mood.

‘Am I ever wrong?’ she smiled back.

‘All the time. I’m just too tired to call you out on it,’ he teased her. ‘No, we have to keep going. For them. We’ll find more people out there,’ he assured her. ‘We can help them.’

‘…There’s the man I married,’ Natalie told him tenderly. Kissing him and holding him tightly, as they walked back for the steps towards the corridors. ‘Now. How many people could say they were actually king of a castle?’ she said. Steve smiled in reply. ‘Go get ‘em, Your Highness. Pull everyone back together. We’ll get through this.’ Steve nodded, breathing deeply, and walked back with her for the castle quarters below.

Natalie could tell by looking at him. Steve had already hardened himself to the next big job, just like he always did. They’d lost a lot of people, these past few days. But many more were still alive. If not for her husband’s strength, and the way he’d just kept swimming back out there to help others reach the shore, then that wouldn’t have been the case.

‘I love you, Steve,’ she told him quietly, as they walked back down the main hallway. ‘And I respect the hell out of you.’ She watched him change, instantly. Sometimes that was all the fuel he needed, all the thanks and pride and prize he was looking for, to fire him up and rebuild these people’s worlds. He was walking taller; striding ahead as if to protect her. Leading the way towards the survivors outside.

She hadn’t told him because he needed to hear it. She’d told him because it was true.

*

Steve had never liked public speaking, so he’d never bothered with it. Nor did he bother with it now. He just did what he’d always done, to set people hard at work around him; he set to work by himself. Sorting through their meagre salvage and stores of dried meat, and moving it all into separate stacks on the castle courtyard. Birds chirped in the silence.

Weary people watched Steve working, and thought too highly of him to sit by and stare. The sudden shame of moping around mourning, while their leader grafted alone to set their new home in order, jolted more survivors into action. Their damp-smelling groups scattered to find work. Zayn grabbed a yard brush from the tool shed and swept the paths around them. His girlfriend, Jess, marched off to tidy the kitchens that’d preyed on her mind. Robert rushed to help Steve with his sorting, while Grace sat with Natalie to write an inventory. Tunde and Julie, his new ladyfriend, marked graves along the gardens for their dead. A young gang turfed up a corner of the lawn to make an allotment, in the best way like Natalie had shown them, which she’d once learned from a man named Jim.

The whole small crowd got busy with one job or another, until there was gradually less and less they could do. Finding their roles, new responsibilities, somehow gave their lives a glimmer of meaning. It was best not to sit still and think about everything. Better just to take things in hand, as tragic and terrible as they were, and get on with it. Either that, or they’d just lay down and die.

But with work to do, and people counting on them… well, that kind of selfish grief just wasn’t an option.

Steve glanced up from his sorting and smiled at the order he’d restored. His busy tribe, making the most of everything this hard life left for them. Squeezing out every last drop.

*

That evening, Steve sat down exhausted from his labours. Natalie watched him, and hugged him tight, and saw a changed man. He couldn’t have looked more different than he had this morning. Working hard, setting things in motion… it always did him a world of good, whenever he’d stopped too long to dwell.

Natalie nudged up close beside him, and shared their meagre rations from the homes and shops nearby. Their hunters hadn’t come back with much from the abandoned town, but at least there’d been something dried or tinned to put in everyone’s stomachs. The spiders hadn’t come this far north, to the Isle of Lewis. Or if they had already, then they’d left long ago.

Natalie still thought about that first castle, whenever she felt brave enough to tackle her guilt. She’d no clue what might’ve happened to them. Maybe she’d go back there one day, if she could.

She’d flipped out, lost her mind, when she’d seen her dad killed by that spider. Stealing Tabitha’s old car, escaping that town, she’d been running on instinct just to protect her family. Taking the twins far away from that war. As far north as they could possibly get, to colder climes where the spiders grew sparsely. Finding more hideaways, more desperate survivors along the way, to make up for those she’d left behind.

Then she’d met someone, a grizzled scruffbag, still leading some of those survivors further north. A tall handsome loser named Steve. Teaming up with him in their exodus, and getting to know the hard sweet man over days and weeks, she’d eventually been tempted to join forces a little more privately too.

Though their lives never got any easier, at least those dark winter months had become more bearable together. Steve hadn’t wasted any time in proposing to her. She didn’t hesitate to give her reply. Suddenly, there’d been far more at stake in helping the people around them.

She’d already had a working template to help these survivors, since Will’s castle. It stuck, and they’d grown in numbers as they’d travelled, because the notion worked. The Ghosts, just like she’d known before. Something to build on. A tribe.

Escaping from Skye… that was rough on everyone. She’d cried privately, and couldn’t stop. There were fewer people around them now, here in this restful castle courtyard, but they still knew their jobs. Hunters, Builders, Growers. All still Fighters. They’d go on here, in a new Safe Place, and try to rebuild. It was all they could ever do.

‘Everyone’s quiet today,’ Grace pondered out loud, in her high clear voice, as she scraped the final baked beans from her ration tin.

‘…Everyone’s sad,’ Robert replied thoughtfully. He’d already finished eating and picked at the grass beside him in small snaps, in that haunted way of his. He didn’t tease his twin sister any more; not like in the caves back on Skye. And no, he didn’t want to talk about it. Not yet. The boat, and the squid, and all that cold seawater horror they never should’ve been through… now he only wanted to keep his twin sister safe.

After Dad died, Natalie knew she couldn’t get through to her little brother. Not really; not like before. He’d grown up too fast, because he’d had to. The best thing for Rob now was when Steve set him hard at work.

He loved working hard with Steve, and had ever since he’d grown to trust him. Rob wanted to grow up into a man like him, who could think and plan and keep everyone safe. A man who failed sometimes, and took the hits, and carried on anyway. Rob was very set on what a man should be. Steve had taught the twins to take on every responsibility they could handle.

Even at their young age, Robert and Grace knew that there were no guarantees in this life. Everyone could only ever do their best. Trust was earned, and respect was earned, and survive was all that mattered. Natalie had said that every day since Dad died, making them repeat it to her, until it shaped their every thought.

Nat watched her little brother and sister, already wiser and tougher than hell, and she wanted to weep for them. She wanted to give them the kind of childhood she’d had. Before the invasion, and the monsters that hunted them. A childhood of toys, and dreams, and crayons and cartoons, before all this changed their world.

For all the toughness they projected, with their beaten outdoor clothes and their smell like the weather, Nat and her husband felt like bloody hypocrites. They’d had it so easy before the end of their world.

…But we’re here now. Together, Nat told herself sternly. We’re alive, and we’ll rebuild. We’re survivors. And I married the best survivor in the world.

60

The next day felt easier on Steve. He woke up extra-early, like he always did. Leaving Nat to snore on quietly under warm fresh blankets, a total luxury, in one of the castle’s classier antique bedrooms that smelled like flowers. He was still reading up on herbalism, and good useful plants they could eat and use to help them. But the appeal of flowers passed him by.

Having washed at an antique basin of freezing rainwater, Steve pulled on his old boots and a new coat from town, and walked the dim creaking corridors towards the castle courtyard. He passed the further bedrooms quietly, so as not to wake anyone before time.

There were plenty of rooms in this place, and Grace and Robert had asked for bedrooms of their own. Steve and Nat had gladly agreed to it last night, now that they were safe from the wild world beyond the castle gates.

With the twins playing with their friends in distant halls and bedrooms, and a team of trusty babysitters taking the load off for them, Steve and his wife had finally had some time to… how did Nat put it? Enjoy each other’s company. Just a friendly little chat.

Steve grinned like a Cheshire cat this morning, as he left the main buildings and walked on for the huge castle doors. He liked nothing more than enjoying his wife’s company. Nat could be friendly as hell.

*

He always felt better for his morning walk. The cold air cleared his head from the pressure, and grief, and regret. It just felt good to beat everyone else, and beat the sunrise, and get to work that much sooner. That way the rest of the day tended to follow the same winning streak.

…God knows, I need a winning streak now.

Steve pulled his coat collar tighter, stuffing his cold hands back in his pockets, and walked back up the hedge-lined hill toward the hefty castle gates. He’d only paced a quick lap of town, with a newly found shotgun in his hands, to make sure the place was still clear of spiders. Relieved, as ever, to find this further northern island completely untouched. The place had been abandoned, or evacuated; there were no clues or notes to explain the population’s mass disappearance. He only hoped that the islanders had found somewhere safer to be.

Even better, they might come back one day and help us. I can dream, anyway.

Steve breathed more easily, now he was getting close to the castle. He could’ve holed up in there, and played it safe. But he preferred to know what was going on outside. He felt better once he’d gone up against that tension every morning, and faced his worst fears as soon as he woke up. It kept him cooler in the face of it all. Trained him to handle that dread.

He had some ideas about defending this place, in case the spiders ever found them. Hopefully something that’d never happen… but it was wiser to expect it, so that they had a plan for it. Their last stand in Skye’s caverns had taught him new tactics. Collapsing every cave entrance had shown him how.

He’d been sure that they’d have to cave themselves in with explosives, that day when two hundred spiders came knocking. But it was the escape passage, the one that hadn’t blocked up properly and terrified them all, that gave him the notion of bottlenecking the spiders as they crept inside.

He and his Fighters had kept watch in that passage, from the new gap in the boulders. They’d piled the rocks up endlessly, until only a single spider at a time might fit through it. Making a murder hole, just like in a castle. A small gap where they’d stabbed or shot every spider dead. Baiting the bastards in, all two-hundred and three, with the human smell of everyone inside the caves. Only to execute them, with no lives lost, at their one remaining gap in the rocks. Steve had tallied their kills, sleepless and furious, and shot spiders dead until no more came hunting for them. Murdering every last one.

Clearing the rocks away with his Fighters, he’d taken the risk. Finally, they’d been free to get that damned boat fixed. Mounting a desperate escape from Skye before any more spiders found them. The sea crossing had been quiet at first; they’d been keen to do it quickly. Seventy miles lay between their launch point off Skye, and the castle they’d claimed now on Lewis. The crossing itself had been half that distance, though it’d felt an awful lot further.

The rest of that crossing was all doomed history; a terrible massacre when that dark squid came feeding on them. But up to that point… all those glinting specks swarming Skye had seemed so much worse. Come hell and high water, with their boat dragged under, they’d chosen to swim. They’d been so close to the shore ahead, when it found them…

…Anyway. They were here now. Most of them, at least. In time he intended to move them on, further north. Someday, and somehow, to places where the spiders grew ever smaller and sparser. They’d already faced horrors, and heartbreaks, and no bloody monster in this world was going to stop them. He’d promised to keep these people safe.

*

That same giant squid crawled ashore on Lewis, around midday. They heard it topple buildings down the road.

Now it came straight towards the castle; a monstrous black tangle. Levelling the town as it dragged itself on. Steve watched it hatefully through a gap between the vast castle doors.

‘…Out the back gate,’ he whispered, to the small panicked crowd who relied on him. ‘Move silently. Don’t talk. Stay low and stay put, once you pass the crest of that hill. And for God’s sake, don’t let it see you.’ He nodded to a bald bearded man, one of his trusted seconds, to lead the survivors ahead and keep them hidden. Steve ushered out his family with them. Looking back bitterly at the castle they’d moved into, and snarling for what could’ve been. Against a swarm of spiders, they might’ve stood a chance behind these walls. But not this.

The squid must’ve scented them. It was already heaving itself up the hill towards the gates.

*

Their ragged group moved quick and quiet through the bird-sung countryside, and put their toppling castle far behind them. Nat looked back beside her husband, broken-hearted at the distant sight of it. Their new home, another Safe Place, was being torn down to rubble. Grey clouds backed the town far behind it.

That dark writhing creature had taken so many lives from them already; now it’d come looking for the rest. Everyone turned at the landslide racket, where its thick coiling limbs pulled their castle walls down. Nat couldn’t stand to watch any more. There were times when even prayer couldn’t give her hope.

Steve looked to his lost survivors, and the grey-lit highlands ahead of them. They’d have to move fast, somewhere, before anything saw them out here. With that giant squid on the hunt for them, and hardly subtle about it, the silver spiders wouldn’t be far behind.

It’s never enough, is it? Steve thought furiously. There’s always more you scum can rip away from us. But I’ll make you bleed in the millions, before you finally take our world away from us. Dream on, you bastards. You haven’t killed us yet.

*

‘Steve,’ Natalie called breathlessly. ‘Steve! Slow down.’

‘…Sorry,’ he replied wearily, quietly frustrated, where he’d marched on ahead of the group. He’d only wanted to spot anything first, before it came for the rest of them. But every thought that his racing mind ran to ended badly for these people. Beyond running and hiding, endlessly, he just couldn’t see a way ahead.

‘We look after our weakest,’ Nat reminded him gently. More to keep his spirits up than anything else. Steve breathed deeply, and nodded that he knew it.

‘…Ghosts rise together,’ he replied, and loved to see his wife smiling back at him. That was all that kept him going, sometimes. Natalie’s smile, and her eyes, and that glimmer of hope he saw in them. Lighting a fire inside him.

Whatever happens, me and Nat will face it together. For the twins; for us. I believe that.

It was a journey that took the rest of the day, with their weak and wounded from the sea crossing to help along. Struggling through the chilly countryside, desperately, to get far from the glinting spiders that took over their distant castle.

Steve studied his map carefully, and folded it again to stop it flapping in the cold wind. He could only lead them on to the far side of the island. The western coast, and a village there, where deep hidden inlets lined the cliffs to the south. More places they could hide. This was all improvised, on the spot. Not the way he liked to work. But he just didn’t have the answers any more, and he’d lost his favourite old man during their ill-fated crossing. His grizzled Scottish advisor.

…I never did get to know what his real name was. The old git changed it every time I asked him. He’d know what to do, the funny old bastard. If you’re up there, mate… I could do with some help.

‘You ok?’ said Natalie beside him. Steve nodded grimly, and couldn’t muster a smile any more. The sick feeling in him wouldn’t ease off until he’d found them somewhere safer.

‘It’s not far now,’ he assured her, and Robert and Grace staring nervously beside her. ‘We’ll carry on for the west coast and regroup in the deeper caves, out of sight. We’ll get through it.’

*

The daylight was dimming when their big ragged group reached the island’s west coast. But at least they’d escaped that swarm to somewhere new; somewhere safe. No sign of any spiders in the distance. The village Steve had promised lay ahead of them; only one long road with a dozen or so houses strewn along it. The real sight here was an ancient circle of standing stones. All of them stretched and uneven, but still strong and straight in their cluster on the moorland.

Steve would’ve preferred to find the coastal caves today, but the light was fading. He’d lead a scout party first thing in the morning, to find a safe way down the cliffs for the others. They’d spot the caves down there, and hide everyone away until he could plan their next moves. If those squid were territorial, then maybe they’d already seen the only one lurking in these waters. That was still on the eastern coast. If they could just find a boat, then another crossing might go better. The spiders might never find them.

‘…Hey,’ Nat told her husband, with a gentle loving poke. ‘You did well.’ Steve nodded gratefully, and breathed deeply in relief. But welcome as it was, he couldn’t keep relying on Nat’s support just to keep him going. All their strength had to come from him.

At least they were somewhere safer now, if only for a little while.

…One day at a time, Steve told himself. That’s all we can ever do.

‘Thanks Steve,’ said a gangly teenager, as he passed them by with his girlfriend. ‘This was a good call.’

‘You’re very welcome, Zayn,’ he replied. Taken by surprise at their gratitude. Tired and hopeless as they were, people still patted Steve on the back and thanked him as they passed him by into the village. They were used to a life on the run by now; Steve knew they’d only just keep going for as long as they could. But Nat told him endlessly: you don’t have to be a saviour. Just keep being the man with the plan.

With rain blowing in hard from the glooming coastline, no one needed any persuasion to hunker down in the abandoned homes along the road. Julie and Tunde kissed, and cuddled, and huddled down happily together under a scrounged blanket on a sofa. A kid named Jack and his gang of teenagers claimed an end-cottage for themselves.

Most of the survivors were just glad to be out of the chilly wind, and resting their sore feet, after their cross-country escape from yet another ill-fated castle. Still, they’d left the spiders behind. They’d manage and keep moving, just like they always did. With Steve and Nat leading them, at least they’d had some chance at a life.

*

Steve stayed up late that night, deep in thought, while Nat and the twins slept in the pitch-black cottage around him. The bitter wind howled and pelted endless rain on the windows.

He was racking his brains to plan their next steps forward. If they couldn’t find a working boat along the coast, then what other choices were left? To stay stranded on this island, while the horde moved steadily west?

…No chance, Steve growled at himself. Those bastards can throw everything they have at us. They can hunt us to the ends of the earth, and they’ll never find us. I’m keeping these people alive.

61

A birdsong dawn glowed brightly, as Steve woke gently with Nat in his arms. He cuddled her close, and felt her comfort; the scent of her blonde hair filled his head. Smiling to himself, Steve was faced again with getting up early and not waking his family around him. But his scout group might be waiting for him already, to trek down to those coastal caves, and find anywhere hidden that they could–

…A monstrous shadow passed the curtained windows. Brutal breaths and molten drool. Steve froze in horror at something he’d never seen before. All they’d ever known were squids and spiders, so what the fuck was that thing? He nudged Natalie silently, and made sure she looked at him first before he urgently put a finger to his lips. Its heavy footfalls drew her eyes away to the windows. Grace’s terrified breath made the huge shadow stop and listen. Nat watched the twins desperately, staring them into silence, and led them out of the living room. Waking more survivors through the cottage around them, and swearing them to silence as they slipped away through the back door. Behind them, the sniffing monster ripped the front door apart in search of their scent.

The sound woke the street. Curtains twitching, survivors peered from every window and shrank away silently through back gardens. Following Steve’s terrified lead out of the village, with the homes between them to hide their escape. Everyone turned in dread at the toppling sounds behind them. Another squid, from the cliffs nearby. Tearing down empty homes in search of them. Steve urged everyone on silently. They’d have to escape unseen into the countryside, while they still had the chance.

The group’s quiet boots whispered quickly through the grass into the moorland. Steve and Nat led them on desperately toward hidden dips in the landscape. Anything to hide their escape. But the more he looked back, the more Steve felt his dark horror multiply.

The coastline around them was swarming. Many more of those monsters climbed the cliffs. Some weird grey aircraft flapped reptilian wings, and circled the hills in the far distance. Nat had only ever mentioned them as a rumour, from her days in the first castle she’d found. She hadn’t stuck around to see one up-close. His terrified wife watched him now, and the twins too. Desperate for hope, as they escaped past the village for the northern moors. But Tunde pointed to silver specks swarming out there. Turning east, more of those flying reptiles prowled the horizon. Looking south, a horde of spiders and giants was growing nearer.

So this is it. Today. There’s nowhere left to run. Steve didn’t have any more plans left to give them. Soon they’d be surrounded here, without a hope in hell of escape.

…We’re dead. The only way left was the way they’d just come from. The coastal cliffs. But the gasping group around him saw it first; a shocking new terror that reigned over their lives. The dawn light grew colder, and far darker. Turning at its shadow, Steve and Nat looked up in deathly dread. A great black mass blocked out the sky, and any last hope and heart fell away from them. A colossal ship; a sudden stabbing presence on the landscape. Cloaked in stormclouds and writhing night. Scarred and missing great fleshy chunks, somehow, like a whale-squid mountain turned zombie. Covering the island in chilling shadow. The creeping horde swarmed in on all sides, rushing across the moors and moving to surround them completely. Steve sighed hopelessly, and gritted his teeth anyway.

‘…Ghosts go out fighting!’ he yelled at everyone. ‘Get to the standing stones! Fighters, covering fire! Come on!’

Spiders poured out from the village behind them. Chasing and pouncing on the outlying survivors, to drop them dead in the group’s screaming wake. The desperate crowd ushered their youngest ahead of them, into the heart of the ancient stone circle. Surrounding their children instinctively, their big makeshift family, while the island crawled with the horde all around them.

Steve snarled in return at the swarm that was creeping for them. His brave Fighters were dying around him. Aiming his shotgun, walking backwards to cover his survivors, he emptied both barrels in a thundering crack on bursting spiders. Taking shells from his jacket to reload it, he backed up close to Natalie and fired furiously on the swarm again. A tide of screams and tears filled the crowd at his back; packed tight into the stone circle as if it’d protect them. Surrounded by a sea of growing silver.

*

High above in the mothership, the Prince observed Earth’s desperate survivors indifferently. Easy pickings, with some scrap of human protein available, which wasn’t to be overlooked. They’d found scattered dozens of human life since they’d returned to this world; all of them hunted down and consumed. All helpful in mending their wounded mothership. They’d amass new weapons, and pool their resources, and restore full control over this planet. Earth’s ragged last remnants would die.

A grand horde followed them; the Prince was arraying his forces. Paranoid about protection, since their recent bloody retreat. Now he was gathering this world’s endless swarms around him, with all the monsters and spiders that these grey islands had produced.

Spiders and squids had chittered the prey-sounds between themselves, and came streaming through the night toward this last human outpost. Mobilising northward, spewing from their hives and creeping over ocean-beds, where the mothership’s vast signal had returned to this land.

With the wrath of that female hybrid still etched insufferably in his mind, the furious Prince had commanded any remnants’ immediate extermination. He wouldn’t suffer any more anomalies from this world. It was imperative that they wiped out humanity thoroughly, before any more mutations occurred. His vengeance would be absolute.

But his quiet elites knew it; the Prince had lost face among his forces. He desired a victory – as did they all – to regain focus on their righteous conquest of further worlds. None had ever stood against them and triumphed. The natural order had to be restored.

With a nod to the standoff below them, the Prince signalled his surrounding swarm back from the ancient stone circle. His surviving soldiers lusted for vengeance, on the last of the human vermin. Today, he’d gift it to them. An execution at their crude tribal site.

*

The clouded highlands shone with bleak gold sunlight. Huddled in panic among their ancient standing stones, Earth’s survivors backed up tighter from the chittering swarm all around them. From the tall dark figures that came for them, and the lurking black ship that filled their skies in morbid shadow. The wind blew cold, and stank of blood.

Steve and Nat met one another’s terrified looks. Every gun emptied, their Fighters pulled their knives to defend their children. Waiting in hard silence on a cold sea-salt morning. There weren’t any more words they could say. Robert and Grace watched in wide-eyed terror as shadowed soldiers closed in around them. Steve pushed the kids back behind him, and told them he loved them more than anything, and stared ferociously at the strange giant soldier that came straight for him. Raising his knife for the fight. Spitting defiantly at the ground in front of it, as the striding Watcher pulled its sword in reply.

…Bring it on. You’re not taking these kids from me. Nat held the twins tight in their terror, her own knife raised and ready, and turned Robert and Grace away from the sight of it. The circling Watchers raised their black swords to butcher them, as a sudden shadow swept overhead. A dark crackling figure landed down between them, cloaked in a death-black stormcloud, with a sound like tombstones falling. A staring graveyard silence in its wake. The shocked survivors watched as the whole monstrous army shrank back from it.

Natalie stared in shock at its glance. She saw a smoke-shrouded goddess; a dark sparking hellion. Crowned with spikes and wreathed in bright lightning. Flame-eyed vengeance made flesh.

‘…Tabitha?’

The smoke-cloud stranger sprinted sudden wild carnage through the shooting soldiers. Turned Watchers to toppling corpses in her wake. Shocks and slashes and sudden bloody somersaults as she dropped the panicked figures one by one. Her fists flew fierce and cratered faces. Her quick spinning kicks blew like shotgun blasts; blue-black clouds that burst the last Watchers apart like gory fireworks. Outmatched; outfought. She tore half the screeching horde to slopping ruins. Pouncing wild and slitting throats to drop hulking monsters dead in slick bursting silver. Steve stared in shock at the violence. The crowd behind him barely made sense of her movements, as she spun and tore and blew charging monsters to splintered wrecks all around them. Dropping dozens of spiders smoking, where their metal skins spread her sudden voltage through the rest. The demoness strode back to rip a dead Watcher’s sword from its grip.

‘…That’s her? From the castle?’ Steve muttered in shock.

‘She wasn’t like this at the castle,’ Nat mumbled back. What the hell had happened to her? They watched in awe as the woman sprinted for the horde and climbed a raging giant. Tabitha dropped from its bursting chest and slit the roaring thing from throat to belly. Leaping up high for its toppling shoulders to blow its skull apart with a punch. Families’ screams from the stone circle brought her running. A charging monster hurtled for them. People stared in silence as Tabitha kicked off from the standing-stones and all but flew overhead. Time crawled. Bright snarl blazing, her black sword rising, Tabitha passed the pouncing monster as she sliced off its head with a scream. Its gushing blood arced around her, as she kicked out quick and blew its body aside in a burst like a booming thunderbolt. Tabitha landed in a crouch on a far standing-stone, flaming-fierce and feral, to watch the whole dark horde retreating. Throwing her longsword in a split-second whistle, she dropped a brute dead that dared to roar at her. Sending a message to those monsters, that she was Alpha here. A message for their masters, up above in the ship she’d come for, that these were her people now. They were protected.

A booming roar from the mothership forced every swarm and monster to race back in and swamp the survivors. But the crowd jumped and turned, as the silver horde burst into fierce white flames all around them. A great black dragon thundered down by their stone circle, and forced back the shrieking swarm in bright molten trenches across the moor. Seven growled wrathfully, turning his huge head on galloping monsters, and hurled a blinding lightbeam through their ranks. Great swathes of the screaming horde blew to ash as they fled from him. Seven was clearing a space around the stone circle, for strange new shapes descending. Earth’s survivors watched a bright hybrid dropship hovering above.

The first to land before them was an alien giant with a gatling gun. A lean blue beauty leapt down beside him, arming a vicious heavy-rifle for the fight. A pair of furred warriors descended with them, where a jetpacking soldier hovered them down. Reigo aimed his machine gun on the shrinking spiders around them, as the fierce primal pair drew their weapons alongside. Tabitha pounced from the standing-stones to land down ahead of them; Seven roared flaming thunder at their backs. Earth’s survivors were staring at them; their strange black armour and the blazing spirits on their chests. Big Fish glanced back at the humans, where they stared in pale shock at the sight.

‘Heh. They look like they’ve seen a–

‘No, Fish,’ Aelu cut in quietly. ‘Don’t.’

‘Goddammit,’ he grumbled back.

Natalie’s chattering survivors turned at more landing figures, staring all around them, as airborne marines descended in an endless growing circle. A living barrier protecting them, of more otherworldly species than they’d ever dreamt possible. Opening fire together on the screeching swarms, to force the sea of spiders into retreat. A fierce furred tribe descended on ropes above them; striding out ahead of the soldiers and encasing them in a living wall of spears and shields. Fighting back the swarms as they raced in again for Steve and his followers. Natalie watched in wonder as towering tank drones thundered sudden laserbolts, blowing the hordes to gore around them. Endless artillery drove the vast swarm back. This whole stretch of coast was a sudden warzone. The startled survivors watched strange silhouettes fill the raging moors around them. Marching up the hills to stern barking orders, in tight columns that gleamed in the dawn. Armoured and alien; armed to the teeth. The humans turned at the sound of roaring jet engines, as more hulking dropships descended on the moors nearby. Bizarre spindly figures, unloading and unfolding, where Thier’s new droid army formed their rapid ranks and culled the coming horde like firing squads.

‘Tabitha… what the hell’s going on?’ Natalie muttered in shock.

‘Get everyone on the dropships,’ Tabitha commanded her, with a stern bright look Nat had never seen in her before. Tabitha nodded to the Guardian craft that landed down in their hard-won clearing. ‘I’m ending this,’ she explained briefly. ‘I’m ending them.’ Tabitha glanced at the Watchers’ mothership hatefully, as the bright skies filled with Guardian destroyers in a brutal heavenly host. Driving the black ship back with a hail of blinding artillery. ‘…Go.’ Natalie nodded in reply to her, joining Steve as they led their crowd of survivors away. All of them watching more starships descending, vast and endless in the skies above them, to unload countless more troops and artillery on the battlefield. Tabitha strode alongside the crowded survivors, watching for any more pouncing spiders that might come racing in. Natalie and Steve heard marching, distant and growing clearer, as the troop-ship ramps emptied more forces all around them. War drums pounding. Booming primal echoes, machine-gunning through the misted world. Faint shapes became a swelling host, fierce-faced and countless. Endless ranks of them. Spearheads glistening; shields bearing the shape of Sacred Mountain. Steve stared in utter disbelief.

‘…Who are these people?’ he said, leading his survivors away.

‘My tribe. My army,’ Tabitha replied, as she led them on quickly to the dropship ramps. ‘They’re here to fight for us.’ Stone Shore barked something in hard cold Stormish; the army halted beside them. Grace and Robert were staring at them as they were hurried past. The tribe beat their chests in unison, in a single echoing thump.

Guardian troops on the dropship ramps shouted out to the survivors to hurry aboard, in broken English they’d barely just learned, before the growing swarms closed in on them.

‘This is insane,’ Steve muttered.

‘…I don’t know how you did this Tabitha, but thank you,’ Natalie told her sincerely. ‘A-and I’m so sorry, about everything that happened between us–

‘Go,’ Tabitha urged her gently. ‘Now.’

Hybrid droids and tank drones slammed down around them with earthquake tremors; a crowded steel circle protecting them. Boomer watched over the humans as they boarded the dropships; newly alert and celestialised. The moors beyond filled with gleaming tanks and fierce soldiers, opening fire as the horde rushed back for them. Black Squadron’s gunships tore past overhead and circled them closely, driving away packs of screeching dragons as the dropships filled up. The rescue ships rose away quickly, as Steve and Nat hurried the last survivors aboard.

That black dragon circled them too, fighting off its feral siblings and ripping them to ruin, as the dropships took Nat and her family swiftly away from the vast growing battlefield around them. Racing gunships covered their evacuation to a distant fleet, booming bright shots through roaring grey dragons as Seven’s siblings tore in for the fight. But Seven was already diving to terrorise them. He dropped another screaming in a cloud of gushing blood. The grey dragon dropped in a gory wreck, where Seven flapped down like thunder above it. Lowering a wing for Tabitha to leap into the saddle, they tore away together to join their coming forces.

…The Watchers never should’ve come back here. Now they’re going to find out why.

*

The swarm was coming in again. Reigo emptied his laser rifle on them, out of ammunition, and launched himself skywards with a rocketing burst from his jump pack. Landing down quickly into his gunship’s open cockpit, where it hovered in wait above the battlefield.

‘…Good boy?’ he told the hybrid craft uncertainly, as the living cockpit canopy hissed shut around him. It was a trick they’d practised endlessly on their way here. This time, luckily, it’d worked. Reigo grabbed the controls and tore away on a bombing run; blowing monsters apart as he raced out over the swarming moors. He strafed a staggering giant with rattling cannon shots and twisted away to tail a dragon over the racing conflict beneath them. A split-second chase over Stormworld’s tribals, fighting fiercely in the stone circle below.

Tailing the dragon nimbly, unflinching as he watched its soaring shape from the cockpit, Reigo gradually steered his ship’s glowing gunsights ahead of it. Tilting his careful grip on the control stick, he squeezed the trigger and rattled bright cutting shots through its jetscales to drop the grey dragon in a bloody dive. His final parting shots blew its head open, as he tore past its body to hunt another.

The dead dragon crashed through a Watcher giant on the battlefield, as tank drones thundered shots through dying monsters all around it. Charging on behind them, Big Fish tore through the swarms with the last rounds of his gatling gun. He dropped it down hissing to draw the giant weapon from his back.

‘…Are you sure that sword’s sensible, Fish?’ Aelu said beside him. Her Gauss-rifle shot blew a charging monster to spurting pieces.

‘Nope,’ Fish replied through his helmet, as he cut another monster in half beside her. ‘Works, though.’ He swept the blade snarling; murdered a dozen at a time. Carving his own bloody path through the spiders, where they pounced and struck uselessly on his armour from every side. Aelu covered their backs and blew open another monster racing for them. Spiders dropped and burst in green flashes at Barkless Tree’s machine gun shots, while Sea Mist raced past with her vibro-daggers to carve through a dozen more like silver paper. Slicing the swarm to screeching halves as tribals and Guardians held the shield-wall around them. Seven’s shadow dropped a living lightning bomb on the battlefield; Tabitha tore through the horde in sudden violence. Sprinting and spinning and shocking dozens of them dead in her racing bloody path, to slaughter a Watcher soldier and snatch its sword. She leapt for Seven’s wing as he swept low again; pouncing into the saddle as he torched swarms of spiders and tore away roaring for the sky.

Sword in hand, Tabitha watched the black ship hatefully. Wondering if they knew what was coming.

*

Aboard the Watchers’ lurking mothership, the Prince bellowed his command to turn their artillery on the survivors’ fleeing rescue ships. But he turned at something; staring in shock at the sight. His pale startled eyes searched the sky above. Countless warships, of every world and culture; shining golden and cloaked in leaves angelic. Descending like Judgement from the wide bright dawn. A sudden thunder of endless artillery, as searing light rained down on the mothership. His grand swarm on the moors became a churning mass of bloody craters. The Prince’s sea of spiders was thrown airborne and blown apart bloody; shrieking and murdered in their thousands.

The Watchers heard a rumbling like thunder; a vast hailstorm of light. Colossal blue-white bolts of it, dropping like holy spears upon their hordes. More skyhazing warships descended, endlessly; more than the Prince thought possible. Great shining clouds of gunships came with them. Strafing through his dragon packs to drive them back in bloodbursting massacre.

Out in their climbing rescue ships, Natalie’s survivors watched from every porthole window as earthquake pyrotechnics raged volcanic around them. A vast blinding barrage boomed across that roaring black mothership; bursting great bloody craters across its reeling sides. Turning its glowing artillery aside from their dropships.

‘…Look,’ Steve muttered, as he pointed Nat to the black dragon’s shape in the distant sky. There were bright endless starships descending. Seven soared ahead of them; a sunglowing storm of destroyers. Leading them all from his saddle, a red-haired rider. Yelling out a war cry at the head of her armada.

Reigo’s gunship raced on behind her. Black Squadron soared at his sides. Every Guardian, on every warship, had a score to settle with these Watchers. They burst through grey dragons like a burning tide.

The Prince stared in dread at the golden sight of it. At the head of the skyborne charge came a fierce black terror; pale eyes shining like stars. Snarling flame and bearing a fearless rider, her black sword held high ahead of her; wreathed in bright lightning and screaming bloody war for her world. An avenging angel, leading silvergold legions, as they tore sudden ruin through the airborne horde around them. A ferocious heavenly host, painted in sunfire dominion.

All the fleets’ bright cannons were a glowing constellation. Sword raised, Seven roaring, Tabitha screamed her long-lost vengeance and pointed her blade at the dark writhing mass beneath her. Unleashing the wrath of worlds upon that ship.

The Watchers’ black craft reeled and fell bloody in blasts so blinding that Tabitha’s forces could barely look. It roared out loud like dying demons. Toppling down in an endless lightstorm on the world. A deafening god-bright barrage on the plains.

A blazing Ghost dived screaming on its fallout. Leaping from Seven’s saddle in freefall, Tabitha drove her sword through the skull of a dragon that raced for her. She wrenched the blade snarling, and kicked off in a skydive from its plummeting carcass. Caught by Seven’s saddle as he turned and tore away from the mothership’s fierce artillery. The Watchers’ light-bolts could blow them apart.

Tabitha snarled back furiously at the ship that just kept cheating her. To kill that thing, she’d have to get inside it… and she couldn’t do it alone.

There wasn’t any choice. She wouldn’t stop until the Watchers were dead.

62

Tabitha swept Seven down over the ruined swarm and landed him heavily on the moors, where her endless forces assembled to wipe out the horde. She paced her black dragon along the soldiers’ front lines, as yelling troops and tribals formed their huge numbers into ranks. After the Guardian fleets’ bombardment the ground stretching ahead of them was a great silver massacre, where only a fraction of the Watchers’ great horde still remained. Tabitha watched them swarming and regrouping around their vast fallen ship in the distance. Staring stern in the sunrise.

Her forces arrayed themselves into fierce lines beside her. Stone Shore’s warriors, and the Guardians’ soldiers; with endless droids and towering tanks among them. Flocks of defence drones hovered in formation above it all. High above them, the air battle raged on like grim distant fireworks. Countless fighters and destroyers held all this world’s racing dragons at bay.

Across the allies’ massed ranks, at the head of the charge-in-waiting, the Ghosts stood side by side.

‘…You’ve got a jetpack!?’ said Big Fish.

‘Jump pack,’ Reigo corrected him.

‘I didn’t know you guys had jetpacks,’ Fish mumbled.

‘Jump. Packs.’

‘When did you get that? Can you even use that?’

‘…D’you see this emblem on my arm?’ said Reigo.

‘Yeah?’ Fish replied.

‘The one that says Aerial Marines?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well… it says Aerial Marines. And has the entire time you’ve known me.’

‘…So?’

‘Fish. What do you think Aerial Marines implies?’

‘…Dunno. I always thought it had something to do with broadcast equipment,’ he said with a shrug. Reigo studied him angrily, and finally saw Fish’s tell-tale smile showing through.

‘Got you that time,’ he rumbled.

‘God damn you Fish,’ Reigo muttered beside him. Aelu and Sea Mist watched Seven prowling closer and shushed them both in unison. Sitting high in his saddle, Tabitha nodded to her misfits to make sure they were prepared for this. With a final glance across her army’s superiors, they confirmed it. Their allied forces were as ready as they’d ever be.

Far mountains peered from the clouds like old stone sagas. The sun shone through in one last desperate stretch, like bright glowing godfire above. Tabitha breathed deeply in the cold morning air.

…Do your damn job, woman. Give these people Fierce-Hope. She watched the massing horde in the distance; turning Seven to face her army of thousands. Searching their faces for the words to say.

‘…Hold fast!’ Tabitha cried out. ‘Hold fast, and turn your hearts to stone!’ she called to her Sky Tribe. ‘We’re worlds apart,’ she told all her silent forces. ‘But it’s what we believe that unites us. Those beliefs make us stronger than them!’ she pointed her black sword to the distant mothership. ‘We’ve fought these tyrants together, for the things our people have always lived and died for. For peace, and virtue. For Life!’ she said.

'…I won't bullshit you with words about pride, and sacrifice,' Tabitha told her crowded army. 'That’s Death on those moors, and I’m just as scared as you. But if we can’t stop those bastards today, then no world ever will.’ She watched her forces carefully; she saw the fear in their eyes. ‘…You have a choice. Either face the Watchers here, together, or wait for them to come back for every one of you. Alone. They’ll snuff out your worlds, your lives, your whole histories, just as they did right here. So either we fight for our lives today, or we lie down and die before those tyrants!’ She watched their faces. Her Ghosts; her Tribe.

‘Death isn’t a choice,’ she told them grimly. ‘In time we’re all dead anyway. Could be today, or decades from now. All we get to choose is how we go. Will we die on our knees, pleading for mercy? Or go out fighting, to our last bloody breath!?’ she watched their nodding faces in the crowd. ‘We only get to choose what we die for! I choose to die for a better world!’ They were watching her intently. ‘I'm going to die fighting, for the one thing I believe in. That Life must go on, and it will. And those enemies of Life,’ she finished, with a glance at the distant mothership, ‘are about to see all the bloody vengeance they deserve.’ Every crowded species cheered around her.

‘…Today we fight for the worlds we’ve built, and the lives we’ve reclaimed together! Today we look Death in the face and put that knife in before it takes us, and show the rest of history how it’s done!’ Countless shouts and yells rose up across the moor. ‘Those things out there? They’re afraid of us. We’ve sent them running and bleeding from one world, and now they know we’re here to destroy them. Your vengeance is right here, right now! So take it! Take it in blood! Follow me into one last fight, and let’s wipe these bastards out!’ Their cheers were thunder all around her. ‘Artillery! FIRE!’ she roared out. Every towering tank unleashed sudden bright murder across the moor. A fearsome barrage that burst the Watchers’ giants and monsters to firework gore. Racing airstrikes pounded the Watchers’ heavy forces to ruins. A shrinking sea of spiders was hurtling in towards them.

‘Get me through that horde!’ Tabitha called over her army. Every massed Guardian took a rectangular slab from their back; fanning out into riot shields at a touch. ‘Get me to that ship, and I’ll end this today!’ A colossal chant filled the moor in reply; their booming war cries echoed. Tabitha watched the writhing swarm ahead of them. One last trembling breath before the storm. She gripped Seven’s saddle. Looking back on her army, she raised her sword to the sky.

‘CHARGE!’ Her army of thousands roared in reply. Seven bellowed fire as their air force tore out ahead; making massacres of the horde as it surged for them. Tabitha spurred Seven into a stomping gallop; an ocean of shields followed with her. Stone Shore roared and raised his glinting knife; a sea of clattering weapons rose high around him in the morning light. Facing the Tribe’s greatest enemy, the Fell Shadow and its starving demons, he led their war-bands forward in a sprint.

The moors were flooding with them; ablaze in golden sunlight. Tabitha snarled in Seven’s saddle and sent him hurtling ahead for the horde. An army of worlds at her back. The Watchers’ downed ship was struggling, and roaring like thunder ahead of them. The sheer sight of it put a rage in her; one so fierce and feral that she smouldered and burned with it. Her eyes were blazing. Twin stars in Seven’s smokecloud, as Tabitha screamed bloody murder and sent him bursting and burning through the swarm ahead of them. Breaking their great mass apart in a gory trail of destruction. His bright brutal breath cut a great molten crescent through their racing ranks. He pounced down on monsters and ripped them apart. But for all his thrashing violence at the heart of it, the horde’s sheer numbers were slowing Seven down. A dozen monsters already tormented him; he couldn’t kill them fast enough before more swarmed in. If she kept him here, the horde would swamp him.

‘Go, Seven!’ Tabitha yelled to him, as she leapt from the saddle to run her sword through a monster’s roaring skull. ‘You’ll help me more up there! Go!’ Seven growled his objection at leaving her, torching blazing trenches through the endless swarm as he went. Taking off to slaughter the grey dragons that dived for her. Seven circled Tabitha’s bright bloody violence, there at the heart of the endless hordes.

Tabitha glanced up from her sparking carnage as Seven strafed the spiders in flames. Her sword-strokes severed monsters; her voltage blew spiders apart. The endless horde surrounded her; a lone figure against a great writhing sea. Suddenly broken apart at her back, as her roaring forces came running and racing and hurtling into a thundering savage collision. Guardians and Sky Tribe dropped spiders to ruins as they charged in to join her; a slamming shield-wall against them. Stomping tank drones opened fire, bursting monsters to wrecks all around her.

Sword held ready, Tabitha turned in the chaos and cut down a monster that raced for her. Slaughtering spiders and shocking them to shreds. Snarling, eyes blazing; a black crackling storm through the heart of them. Tearing a great bloody trench through the writhing sea around her, where the Ghosts raced in to help her. A savage flurry of shots and strikes and Fish’s sweeping sword-strokes all around her, as Tabitha tugged one of Sunshine’s grenades from her bandolier and threw it toward a stomping giant in the distance. Startling her warring forces with the most bright-vicious bang they’d ever seen, as the giant flew apart in a blue explosion. Cratering the horde ahead.

‘Come on!’ Tabitha yelled out, as she carved their bloody way forward. Pouncing on monsters that raced for Stone Shore’s warriors. Ranks of countless Guardians moved in behind their shields and thundering tank drones, edging ever forward as they opened fire on the vast shrinking horde ahead of them. Sky Tribe speared through spiders that charged and crashed against their shield-walls. Droids and defence drones put bright machine-gun shots through the swarm around them; blowing spiders to pieces or caught and torn to parts themselves.

Fighter craft raced overhead in their hundreds; destroying dragons and driving them away from the battlefield. Warships roared in with orbit-bomb artillery, holding down the Watchers’ mothership before it could rise again in retreat. Tabitha and her Ghosts fought on at the horde’s swarming centre, as Sky Tribe and Guardians pushed ever on with their shield wall and a constant hail of laserfire. Seven swept past to tear through the massing horde ahead of them; dragging a monster away into the air to savage it. Tank drones clashed with giants and serpents; a string of vicious collisions along the battle’s front line.

Tabitha turned and tore monsters apart as the war raged on all around her. Blowing spiders apart with her voltage. A one-woman massacre, her Ghosts in tow; carving the horde to gore as they went. Inching ever on toward the grounded mothership, as the grand horde died in their wake. Tabitha dodged around stomping tank drones as they fell back savaged by monsters. Countless wretches ran in with swinging blades to take her head; clawed down bloody as she sprinted flurried carnage through their ranks. Seven swept overhead like a shadow; smoke writhing and wrapping him as he went. Torching the swarm and tearing monsters down ahead of them, as the Ghosts and the Guardians’ shield-wall rushed to fill any gaps in the horde that they could win. Giant wall-drones hovered in fast over the battlefield behind them, to drop down hulking barricades which interlocked and opened fire. Guardians rushed up the barricade ladders to hold their new front lines. Construction drones worked endlessly to plant countless more barriers across the battlefield; securing every stretch of ground the soldiers won. Slaughtering the swarms as they climbed them.

Overhead the skies were filled with savage dogfights, as the air war raged high above. Celestial fighters chased down pale dragons and shot them to roaring ruin. Thundering destroyers held back an airborne ocean of reptiles. Unleashing constant booming barrages on the mothership, to keep it pinned in its vast crater on the moors. Trying to bore a hole through its armour, to get Her Majesty inside.

Tabitha slaughtered a final monster and looked around at the raging battlefield. They were winning. For all the fallen horror of it, all the Guardians who hadn’t blocked the spiders’ strikes with their shields, the horde was being utterly destroyed. Sea Mist and Barkless fought their way through the faltering horde side by side, daggers flying and machine-gun roaring, and glanced at Dark Storm in their growing victory. With all their tank drones and shield walls, their combat droids and Sky Tribe’s skill, they’d fought a fierce bloody path toward the mothership. Boomer launched deafening shots on the Watchers’ dying artillery. Tabitha saw her chance, and took it. She had to get inside that ship.

This is it, she growled to herself. I’m ending it. Tabitha whistled out loudly to the smoking clouds, to call Seven down and help her. A black spear shot from the sky and skewered her; a sparking spurt through her chest. Her forces yelled furiously as they ran to help her. Looking up, they saw him floating high in the distance. Alex. A vicious grin on his face.

…Should’ve seen that coming, Tabitha told herself furiously. The warships’ barrage was already forcing him away from the fight. Spreading his arms wide, launching flaring light from his body, Alex left a few parting shots that rained down on dying Guardians like giant bomb blasts. Aelu fired a snarling shot that clipped his shoulder, as Barkless and Sea Mist roared out wildly at the shrinking demon. Tabitha staggered and struggled as she tried to grip the spear shaft impaling her. Her core was sparking and sputtering through the wound. Alex would never go up against all these forces; he wasn’t brave enough for that. Her gathered armada opened fire and forced him away, flying high beyond the coast, until he disappeared over the sea.

‘…Prick,’ Tabitha snarled at Alex’s shrinking speck. Pale as a sheet where she’d staggered down skewered, while her Ghosts rushed in around her. ‘Give me a hand?’ she asked Big Fish.

‘You sure about this?’ he replied, taking a firm hold of the cruel black spear that ran right through her. Tabitha nodded, and screamed in agony when they forced the spear out together. Sea Mist rushed in to plug her two wounds with medi-gel; front and back. Dark Storm yelled out fiercely as she healed, while her Ghosts helped her back to her feet.

‘Don’t let any ships go after Alex,’ Tabitha warned Reigo weakly. ‘If any Guardians take him on, they’ll die.’ Reigo nodded and spoke into his wristcom, relaying Her Majesty’s orders to the thundering armada high above them. The gathered destroyers were still unloading their whole deafening arsenal on the Watchers’ mothership, to keep it downed on the moor for as long as they could. But the colossal ship was roaring, and righting itself. Hardening its scales against their endless artillery, and dragging itself bloody towards the sky. Tabitha saw Seven fighting furiously above it all, keeping endless grey dragons from the battlefield. If she pulled him out of that fight to use him now, then thousands of her soldiers would die.

The Watchers’ mothership was rising again. Fighting for its life, and firing back in devastating retaliation, until the Guardians’ barrages couldn’t stop it or keep it pinned down any longer. Its recovering artillery savaged one warship after another, as its living instincts drove it skywards to escape this world.

‘What the hell’s it gonna take to kill that thing?’ Big Fish growled furiously.

‘You’d know full well, if you ever listened to anyone,’ Aelu berated him. ‘Tabitha. Pull Seven out of the air war,’ she advised her urgently. ‘Just get up to that bloody ship.’

‘But he’s keeping those dragons off you!’ Tabitha protested, as the war still raged around them. ‘If I can get up there in a gunship–

‘There’s no time!’ Reigo urged her, as the horde fought back viciously against their forces. ‘Call Seven! Now!’

‘Don’t worry about us, just get in there!’ Aelu called back to her, between her sniping shots.

‘Seven!’ Tabitha yelled out, whistling to the gory skies above them. The second he descended from the grey dragons around him, the mothership’s artillery had a clear shot to pick him off. A sudden light-bolt blew Seven aside bloody. Tabitha yelled out in panic to see him falling wounded. Her stricken Ghosts watched him hopelessly, as Tabitha staggered and fell down behind them. Her wounded heartcore sparked violently as it healed. There was no way to get to that mothership now. It was rising slowly; leaving this world behind. The armada thundered endless barrages on it, but it was turning away. Rising colossal over the coast, as its writhing reinforcements hurtled in from the cliffs and held the Guardians back. The Watchers’ ship was escaping. Nothing would stop it now.

…It’s hopeless.

‘Hey. We’re getting you up there,’ Big Fish said stubbornly. His giant hand took hold of hers, and pulled Tabitha to her feet. A thundering shot dropped a charging monster dead ahead of them, in a crash of steaming gore. Boomer. His cannons thumped ferociously behind them; clearing a path of bloody explosions ahead. Annihilating the new swarms that raced for them. Sky Tribe and Guardians rallied around Her Majesty; defending her from the swelling horde around them.

‘Protect your queen!’ Reigo bellowed to her army, as soldiers and tribals around him nodded and shouted in reply.

‘Sky Tribe!’ came a sudden roar, as hard and heavy as a falling rock. Stone Shore dropped his hand; the Tribe let loose a volley of arrows into the charging horde around them. The Guardians’ shout followed it; an endless hail of searing light as they formed shield walls and firing squads around her. Cutting bloody shrieking waves through the spiders’ rising sea that surrounded them. Tabitha walked on weakly with Big Fish’s help, and felt a hand on her other shoulder. It was Aelu, holding her stare. Nodding up darkly at the mothership escaping above them. More fighters hurried in to surround her.

‘We’ll get you in there, ma’am,’ said Sunshine, opening fire close beside her.

‘Trust us,’ Barkless growled, as Sea Mist put the Watcher sword back in her sister’s hand. Her Ghosts gathered closely around her.

‘Keep moving forward. Keep fighting,’ Aelu urged her. ‘…Go!’ Tabitha glanced back fiercely, and left them behind in a sudden sprint. Running on for the rabid horde alone. Aelu’s sniping shots blew craters through the charging monsters ahead of her, as Tabitha hurtled on faster and cut her way through the endless spiders swarming for her. All of them dropping dead in endless laserfire around her. Guardians, Ghosts and Sky Tribe were yelling and roaring and charging on with her. Cutting a frantic bloody path all around her; a thin vicious line tearing deep through the swarm toward the rising mothership. Barkless and Sea Mist were racing on beside her in a lethal relay; slashing spiders aside to buy her time and push her through.

‘Go!’ Sea Mist yelled passionately, pushing Dark Storm forward, as she cut down pouncing spiders alongside her. Tabitha heard crashing stomps behind her as Big Fish took her hand. Ploughing deeper through the coming horde like a wrecking ball. Forcing their way, ever further, to get her to that rising mothership. A fresh flurry of gunshots screeched on either side of her, as Reigo and Sunshine sprinted on with her to carve a last bloody gap through the frantic spiders. Reigo tore off his hybrid jump pack to stick it between her shoulders, and suddenly she was flying fast over the silver sea. Snarling monsters leapt for her, futile and crashing on the moors. Her Ghosts looked on desperately from the vicious fighting far below. But Tabitha’s stare was fixed on that mothership. It loomed colossal ahead of her, growing closer by the second; a cloud of dragons tearing out from its sides to devour her. She flew faster still, rising in bloody vengeance for that ship, until her jump pack stuttered and stalled on empty. Suddenly she was gliding, and dipping; falling from the sky.

…And felt a massive shape rise up beneath her. His huge dark scale, cupping her like a saddle. A sudden vicious hurricane of rising rabid thoughts as her mind clicked with his. Wounded and bloody, Seven snarled a wild inferno through the diving dragons as he shot for the rising mothership. One last bloody golden feeling, from his head to hers. That she could do this. That she could end this war. End the Watchers. Seven clawed and beat and battered bloody through the dragons’ snarling formations. They were grabbing at him; slowing his momentum. Forcing him ever higher as they mobbed him. He’d never make it. Tabitha gritted her teeth, and pulled her catsuit hood into a helmet.

Throw me, Seven, she told him. Just get me to that ship. Tabitha unfastened her harness as Seven coiled his huge tail around her. He roared and spun and launched her on from the fray like a monstrous slingshot. Wind rushing, the sprawling battle laid out beneath her, Tabitha shot for the ship in a deathwish skydive. The Ministry’s destroyers descended with her; blowing bright roaring holes through the dragons that swarmed for her.

Tabitha’s tiny sparking figure dived out from an airborne war. Racing on lower for the mothership’s passing flank beneath her. Spreading her limbs to slow her skydive, she hit the ship’s moving side with a painful yell and buried her sword through its scales. Balancing on its hilt for a foothold, she slammed her hand against the mothership’s armour to plant one of Sunshine’s blinking bombs. Clawing aside quickly, she turned away squinting from its sudden blast. A fierce bursting trench through its armour. Tabitha made a frantic windrushing climb inside the new sizzling tunnel, and clawed her way on through the carnage. She was in.

Sliding down silently into a fleshy white hallway, and switching straight into a marine stance with her submachine gun raised and ready, Tabitha turned quickly and shot a running Watcher dead. Her quick muffled headshots dropped it in a heap. Glancing aside coldly, she lowered her weapon and took off her hood. There was nothing else on this corridor.

…Clear, she told herself. Gain access. Neutralise threats. Exploit environment. Pressing her palm to the living wall beside her, she felt for the Watchers’ bio-network. The ship’s energy core was a separate system. But at least she could turn out the lights. The mothership panicked at its sudden pitch-black.

Stone-cold and stalking, seeing through shadow, Tabitha strode on soundlessly for the bone-armoured blast door ahead. It mistook her for a Watcher, and opened readily at her hard black touch. She passed the ship’s living sensors like a silhouette; like vague shrouded glass through its soul.

She’d been the Watchers’ frantic captive, the first time she’d seen these ribbed corridors. Now she was hunting them. Coming for this black ship’s beating heart.

63

The Watchers’ elites turned at something; panicking in their darkened grand chamber. Down at the far end, flickering lights painted a silhouette. Stretched soldiers formed up, yelling in the darkness. Aiming rifles in the hard cold silence.

A shadow was moving there. And eyes. Piercing-bright and prowling. A Watcher yelled to open fire, prompting a lethal lightshow as their guns flashed and soldiers screamed under sudden crackling claws. Dropping dead before a frenzied demon, spinning and striking and butchering in the black. Strobe-light panic as the hybrid pounced and tore them apart screaming. Spattering their comrades in warm golden blood. Their blind gunshots wouldn’t stop it; the hybrid’s knife struck white-hot. A sudden whipping light that cut down soldiers spinning, and slit throats in hissing bloodbursts; crackling and glowing from the volts in its hands. A Watcher was yelling; banging on a door that’d sealed shut behind them. No reinforcements; no spiders left to help them. Only them between the core room and that staring nightmare. One by one, the Watchers emptied all their ammo into it. A few final flashing shots until the chamber fell silent.

Wordless breaths; panicked stares. The Watchers waited as the ship’s living lights flickered back. Until their glow rose up, and they saw her bloodspattered figure. Her smoking wounds were healing. Pulling their knives, the Watchers glanced at one another to make sure they could take her – but she was already running for them. Tabitha ducked and spun past the first soldier to knife a second across the stomach in a bloodspurt lunge. She shocked a third screaming and broke its knee with a stomping kick. A fourth came at her with its knife whipping; it missed its strike and stumbled at her shock before she broke its jaw with a punch. She gripped its neck; made it a living shield against the rest of them. Tabitha ducked their strikes and slashed back around it; she slit its throat and pushed it through the rest to stagger their attacks. Her sudden volts blew it apart. One crept on behind her; she kicked out its knee and broke its grasping hand. Buried her knife in its face and spun back to shock the oncoming troops.

Tabitha slipped in the blood. She went down hard, and they were on her. A hail of stabs and roaring punches until they flew back dead from her lightning bolts. She pounced on another with a yelling punch; a crack as she cratered its nose and killed it. Tabitha spun snarling and murdered another, and dropped screaming at a sudden blade in her back. She played dead for a moment to get her breath back, then knifed a creeping Watcher through the foot. She tore its stooping head in a fury and traded fierce punches with another going down. Two were staggering; many more lay dead in the blood. Some were writhing, moaning pitifully, and one scared survivor still stood. A Watcher’s hand grabbed her ankle; she stomped its skull to gore. Tabitha pulled its knife to slice another’s throat, and stalked through the groaning chamber towards the core. Conducting a string of executions as she went. The last Watcher female stared in terror; backing away with her gauntlets up for a fist-fight. She was twitchy and frightened; ready for the brawl. Tabitha watched it carefully; its trembling stare. Creeping across her tired bloody face, a smile.

*

A door melted open on a tall falling corpse outside. Spattered and sparking, Tabitha stepped over the Watcher’s slumped body into the giant writhing core-rooms ahead.

Vast tentacles in the ceiling were shifting, but they didn’t attack her. Monstrous statues lined the great ribbed hallway, of a fierce primal species she’d never seen before; painted in pure shadow and vile as deep-sea creatures. Unmoving.

She was close now. Squids and spiders lay embedded in every living surface; a lethal grand armoury arrayed in the ship-core’s defence. All of it dormant, as she quietly passed it by.

…The ship can’t tell me apart any more. I suppose that makes me a Watcher.

A colossal light-source glowed hellish through grown crystal walls, towering through the shadows in the distance. Tabitha walked on toward a large melting door, and a vast glowing chamber beyond it. The mothership’s pulsing core.

She felt the ship’s living panic all around her. She felt how empty it was. A great coiling arsenal surrounded her; a glinting Hades of every dark monster devised. Frozen in comas, like gargoyles and relics. Not one of their twisted species came alive as she passed them.

The walls in here crawled with creaking shapes. Clacks and squeaks like leather and bone. Tabitha hurried through a slick scaly hallway towards the glowing core ahead. Horrific experiments lined the way; curled abominations in ornate crystal vessels. Rippling aquatic light across the walls.

A sudden wailing belch of a siren filled the ship around her; the ribbed walls pulsed with living light. Whatever was going on with that core chamber ahead, it didn’t sound good.

The final glass-bone blast doors opened into a moonglowing chamber; a great grown cavern of living power cells. There was a tall regal figure in the distance, lurking among beautiful ribbed-metal pillars. He wore grimly ornate armour; patterned like tendons and tendrils. Cloaked in spines and skeletal scales. He was rigging the ship’s vast power source, overloading it, to wipe out this island and everything on it. A fair and final resort.

The Prince turned to face her, as Tabitha strode through the grand chamber towards him. Studying her with a gaze like Hell. He looked like a hateful angel; sweeping fleshy feathers crowned his head in place of hair. Watching her approach with more vile cheated ferocity than she’d ever seen in anyone. The thorn-twined cavern of core-cells around him glowed deathly bright and then darkened, over and over, as if something was lethally wrong.

‘…You’re going down with your ship,’ Tabitha observed, as she pulled her knife and dropped her submachine gun. Unfastening her bandolier, to leave her grenades to one side. Making it clear to him, about how this fight was going to go. ‘I thought you’d be running for an escape pod by now?’ she asked him. ‘Or turning loose a toxic virus on the atmosphere, to kill this world if you can’t have it? Something dramatic?’

The staring Prince couldn’t understand the creature’s strange words, but he saw her intentions quite clearly. She’d exhibited a sense of honour, with her weapons cast aside and a blade drawn in her mutated hands. She’d bested his forces in open combat; now she’d fought her way here for their reckoning.

…The war was lost. His forces lay dead; his conquest was concluded. Returning to the Empire now, in such shame and defeat, would mean a fate worse than death. Nor could he risk these deadly ape-hybrids returning to the Empire with him. The fate of The Species depended on her death.

In response to all his engineered animalia, all his grand armoury of fierce living weapons, two mutations had arisen from this world to contend with them. The male ape was a rabid parasite, without so much as honour to redeem him. But this ape-female… she’d overcome his every creation in combat. She’d integrated them, to strengthen herself and stand against him still. Genetics brooked no argument; hers were clearly superior. If she would prove victorious now, in a fair test of strength and prowess against him, then it was both unseemly and irrational to resort to dishonourable action. The Empire would not stand to see him return alone, in disgrace. Better that this female’s otherworldly forces be annihilated, today, and he along with them.

Victory rightly belonged to those most highly evolved. Such was the natural order, and this encounter would determine between them. Taking an unfurling pistol from his belt, the Prince tossed it aside in reply. He drew his black sword calmly for their soundless duel. One of them would survive this, for a brief time. Either way, his ship and her forces would be destroyed. Nothing this female might try would change that. He’d set every core-cell to explode.

The red-haired hybrid watched him now, in readiness. The stark cores shone like a frozen hell around them.

‘…Shall we?’ said Tabitha. A grim fiery glare, as she stilled herself for their standoff.

Tabitha circled the Prince carefully, the bright misting chamber making spirits of them, as she raised her knife and watched him mirror her. She emptied all thought, and kept her breaths calm and steady. This wasn’t a fight with Alex; two feral animals ripping one another apart. This tall regal Watcher was cold; calculating. Expert in his stance, and giving nothing away but his contempt for her. Seeing the slightest shift in her footing, the Prince went at her like a shadow. Masterful sword-strokes at a lethal pace, that she just hadn’t the technique to block or deflect. If not for her unnatural reactions just to dodge and leap away from him then the pouncing Prince would’ve disarmed her in seconds. He’d have slit her stomach and severed her toes, destroying her balance and crippling her swings, all in one split-second downward stroke. Again she barely weaved aside, as he thrust his sword and swept it spinning to strike sudden sparks beside her footing. Pacing a proud circle, staring like the devil, with his long thin blade aimed precisely at her throat across their duelling ground.

The prowling Prince let fear fester in her; this great pulsing arena and the thought of her execution. The knowledge he’d now gained of her, and held over her; that she simply hadn’t the skill to match her speed and strength. She’d only ever fought like an animal. Now, she’d die like one.

His next sudden strikes were a hellish combination; a split-second savagery of countless whistling slits. Tabitha pounced back screaming and leapt aside from his ringing down-strokes; clutching the deep gushing slice through her throat. She’d barely time to dodge again as the Prince brought his next whipping flurry across her; slicing endlessly for her skull and spinning in suddenly to skewer her shoulder. Barely missing her neck on his twisting strike across her. Turning his sword in constant swipes and lethal downstrokes to drive her back and slit her neck again in sudden spurting agony. Every vicious strike, designed to bleed and unbalance her. Wearing her out with coldhearted prowess; a hundred glancing cuts as she ducked and leapt ever slower. Working patiently, methodically, through spins and swipes and bloodspurting strikes, until he might finally sever her head. Tabitha dodged lightning-fast, over and over, and he still managed glancing cuts. The Prince slit her calf and sheared off her knuckles. Slicing her face and near-severing her hand, before she snarled and spun fiercely and finally caught the blade against her knife. A startled split-second, where Tabitha shot all the voltage she had; the current flashed through both their blades and staggered the Prince in crackling sparks. Her fierce feral punch blew him back in a booming smokecloud. Snarling wildly, seizing the second, Tabitha pounced and buried her knife in his jugular. A sudden shocked execution, where the Prince sprawled and struggled and choked on the blood through his throat. Staring and gasping; suffocating on it. Begging, with his wide-eyed stare, for the hybrid to end it quickly.

‘…Why?’ she asked him quietly. The bastard hadn’t made any of this quick for her, or her species. She watched for long moments, in stone-cold satisfaction, as the writhing Prince finally spluttered and died. Standing over him, staring furiously, Tabitha just sheathed her knife and walked away.

Pressing her palms to the huge glowing core-cells before her, she could feel a vast presence beyond them. A great writhing soul, or an alter-dimension; she still wasn’t sure. But the ship felt like Seven, and the black tree beside that strange glowing pool. Closing her eyes, Tabitha felt her thoughts flung inside it. Another place; hurtling toward super-nuclear. Pushed right to the brink by its Prince. With the mothership motionless, low over the battle beneath it… every life on this island was at stake. Its eerie glow was only pulsing faster. A coming chain reaction.

…Sunshine’s grenades weren’t going to solve this. She couldn’t bomb this strange ship to destruction; all she could do now was defuse it. Breathing deeply, Tabitha pushed her thoughts into its alter-dimension. A far bright beyond.

*

She could feel the whole pulsing mothership in here. A live racing web of connections, billions of them, running right through its colossal tissues like bubble-bright neon nebulas. Her racing thoughts passed through a shifting ivory threshold, into grand white voids like a heaven. Peaceful-bright and fascinating; some strange new bone-spire landscape that soared in great vaults like rainbow-creamy cathedrals. A comet-storm hurricane beyond all worlds.

It was all a pretty pretence; its depths held something different. Tabitha felt herself thrust all at once into a grim ghostly space; a neuron shadow-galaxy. Strengthened and fed for long wailing centuries on the sludge of conquered species. A place of nightmare voices, constantly shifting and bleeding all around her. Pouring and pixellating into nauseous multifocus.

Tabitha finally found herself in a strange dead place; a dark endless crypt of existence. Her every thinking movement trailed the pale dying dust of herself; writhing in biopixels as if she was slowly fading away. She looked up at a presence; sensing shadows unseen. There was… something, here. No form; no body; but something bending the ship to its will. Living software, or a consciousness. It spoke to her, but not with words. Not even with thoughts. Nothing but pure gut feeling, all cell-sparks and hormones; warning her away like looming death. A reflex so fierce that she could hardly fight against it. Overwhelming fear, and colossal pulsing panic, and the strange dark world fell away from her.

All sense of gravity vanished; she was floating away to dissolve in a grim churning nothing. But something was whole, still. Some scrap of self remained. Slivers of memories; a fading shred of all she’d fought for.

Friends… family. Tribe. Tabitha forced herself forward. Clawing her way up twisting grey-slate ground as it tilted into a rippling cliff face. Screaming at a sudden searing venom; a chilling hell through her soul. As if all that vast shadow wanted her dissolved in its ether. Gasping, struggling, writhing in its poison, Tabitha snarled and pulled herself on toward a light at this dark realm’s coiling centre.

…Y-you bastards haven’t killed me yet, she assured it weakly. You w-won’t kill me now. Gritting her teeth, gathering up what little she still felt of herself, Tabitha strained against a hurricane and reached for it. Squinting and screaming through dark whipping winds to find a small blinding light beyond its barrier.

There was an orb. Casting a glow across her, like light on rippling water. Watching it cautiously, moving in closer, Tabitha reached out with her thoughts and held it. Her world fell sideways in a slow-motion daze. Gravity faded, and lay her down gently on fresh growing ground. She stared blissfully into that light for a moment, as if all was right with the world. As if time had disappeared, and her worries were an ancient dream. Slipping out of all importance. There wasn’t anything but this moment, stretching on like silver-clear caramel. The world poured away to blackness and piercing distant dawn. No thoughts; no memories. Only what she knew now, instinctually and without doubt; gazing down on the star-boiling universe. Endless twisting vines of lava-lamp clouds. New worlds and dying suns, sprawling infinitely around her.

Struggling on, gasping for life, Tabitha snatched that fleeting light in both hands. She screamed in shock and trembled against it, this thing that held the ship in its influence, and pressed its poisoned presence against itself. A blazing agony took over her, as she crushed the searing light between her palms. All shadow and presence here was streaming back suddenly to implode on itself. Blinding light; a super-nuclear roar. She was straining; screaming. Pressing all its impossible strength into a final shuddering deletion, as its dark pixel world blew apart.

Tabitha came around gasping and staring in the mothership’s core-room. Bright thoughts buzzing; neon-electric through her head. Reality itself seemed to tingle around her; weird shifting static across her fingers. Vital; viral. It felt like she could finally breathe again, for the first time in minutes. Like existence shook and trembled all around her. Transdimensional.

She looked around at the towering core-clusters, as the ship’s power dimmed and faded. The vast darkening craft wasn’t compelled towards its lethal chain reaction any longer, and she hadn’t a bloody clue how she’d done it. Whatever living super-software had bound this ship to the Watchers, it wasn’t there now. The whole strange mental engine, churned and twined and fused hard within it, felt torn away and gone. Her weird bio-trance had played out by passion and instinct. She couldn’t have made sense of it if she’d tried.

All the world felt stranger; the air warped like liquid glass across her fingers. A shaking shivering fault through the fabric of everything. A sudden pulse in its gravity dropped her to the rubber-flesh floor, as its whole monstrous energy flickered and died. The Watchers’ ship was falling from the sky.

Kneeling, exhausted, Tabitha stared in a daze that she strained to shake off. Her mind and view and vision were a strange rapid shivering, like a fast-moving fault through a movie reel. Every thought she knew was a trembling tug-of-war, as the ship’s wild weird otherworld shook to its dying foundations.

*

Out on the torn smoking moors, the Ghosts’ weary winning forces looked up silently from the grand horde’s ruins all around them. With Seven’s help, and the armada’s dwindling barrage high above them, they’d held off the great rabid swarm to the last of it. Only a gleaming cratered massacre remained. They’d lost thousands from their gathered forces; the Sky Tribe were howling for their dead. But the war was over. The moors shone like silver swampland all around them.

‘…Well look at that,’ Big Fish muttered, as a black mass slid from the sky. The Ghosts relaxed visibly around him, beaten and bloody but still surviving, as they watched Tabitha’s last lethal work slide through the pale shrouding clouds above them. The Watchers’ writhing mothership, suddenly dimmed and lifeless, crawled out low far beyond them. Diving monumental on the world. It crashed down deafening through a bursting landscape on the distant coastline, like a grand murdered god to its grave. A storm of towering dirt-clouds bloomed around it. A thundering cheer went up from the allied army at the sight of it, while the scarred ground quaked beneath their feet.

*

Sea Mist sighed heavily, and prayed endless thanks to First Ancestor, when she glimpsed Seven’s speck soaring back with her sister. Dark Storm seemed unharmed, as her great black bird-spirit swept low and landed before them. Still, there was something different about her. It took the whole thundering cheer of their forces around her, before Tabitha came to her senses and smiled.

Tabitha dismounted Seven swiftly, rubbing his scarred snout lovingly, and walked back in among her staring army. A sea of rising cheers all around her, as the daylight glowed golden through the world. The fallen mothership was a great black mountain behind her. The Watchers it carried were dead.

…It’s all over. Thank god, it’s finally done.

Sea Mist rushed out to meet her, to see what was different about her. To check if she was really alright.

But Dark Storm was just striding calmly; a glad hardened look on her face. Wrapping her tribe-sister tightly, in a flame-fierce loving embrace.

*

The Ghosts sat in a weary huddle on the battlefield, while countless dropships and medics rushed across the moor at their backs. Their forces’ shields and armour had kept them alive against those endless spiders, while their barrier-drones and vast artillery had held the monstrous hordes at bay. But thousands of men and women were wounded, where they’d held their creeping barricades. Just as many were dead. Distant pockets of drained skins and torn-open bodies, on the edge of everyone’s nauseous terrified thoughts.

Tabitha couldn’t bear to think about it; all the lives she’d led to murder on these moors.

‘…Hey,’ said Aelu, as she tried to bring her out of it. ‘Just think about how many lives you’ve saved today.’

‘Hundred billion,’ Reigo added sincerely. ‘Give or take.’

‘We saved your species together,’ said Aelu. ‘Despite all the losses, keep that in mind.’

‘…Spose so,’ Tabitha replied, as she managed a slight smile for their sake. But her thoughts raced endlessly; filled with regret. Trying to think of any way she might’ve won this war by herself.

‘With respect ma’am, we all knew what we were getting into,’ Sunshine offered. ‘Every loss is heartbreaking, but it does kinda go with the territory. We’re soldiers.’

‘Well… it’s appreciated,’ Tabitha replied quietly, with a sad weary smile.

‘Hey, it’s over. All these people have safe worlds to go home to. That’s what counts,’ Big Fish rumbled. ‘It’s done.’ Stone Shore and Barkless nodded beside him.

Not quite, Tabitha told herself. She turned to look back at the ruined mothership in the distance, with a hateful stare as she dwelled on him.

‘I’d ask what’s next… but I think I can guess,’ said Big Fish. Sea Mist studied Tabitha with a worried stare.

‘Need some backup?’ Aelu offered, watching that dim light flaring in her eyes. Clear as candle flames. Tabitha glanced around at them silently, holding their looks, and shook her head in reply.

‘…Not this time,’ she said darkly. ‘That bastard’s all mine.’

64

A dust-coated spider dug for food in the rubble of Earth. A city lay in overgrown ruins all around it; a concrete garden. A graveyard desolation in bloom. The spider thought itself well hidden, but upright shapes hunted it from fallen walls and blown-out windows. Silent as death, stalking close. Their rifle fire dropped the spider dead with smoking holes through its silver skin. More leaderless spiders poured from their nests and fled the invasion; looking back with shaking senses and jarring panicked instincts as Guardian squads shot them down in their dozens. The marines leapt airborne with hissing jump packs and shot the panicked swarm dead in the road. Spiders screeched in agony as the thundering laserbolts scorched them through. Dust drifted up like dirty rising snow around them. The last spider slumped and clattered dead as they fired on it. Guardian heavy rifles tore through its body, turning engineered muscle and bone into charred ruins. The soldiers slaughtered every spider in this sector and vaporised them, relaying the message by wristcom to Central Command. Boarding the dropships that descended for them, the allied troops left the Watchers’ creations blowing to dust in the wind.

Across the overgrown world, on a sunbleached plain, a dark growling monster spotted fierce gleaming shapes in the distant sky. The silver-gold gunships that’d wiped out an entire hive behind it, and scattered the surviving monsters across this land. The horde knew that there was no running from these strange new conquerors; none could ever run from them. Great dust-trails rose behind them as the gunships tore towards it. The monster roared in futility and fled from them. The racing squadron locked onto their target and unleashed all hell on it, rattling bright laserbolts that crippled it. Their shrieking cannons blew the hulking monster to booming gore across the landscape, and another warring sector was won. The hybrid squadron shot past in seconds. Cleanup drones dived on the carcass like vultures and dismantled its bio-components. Lenses scanned its remains for any data towards the war effort, but found no further mutations. They scorched its bloody remnants to pale ash. Churning up a dustcloud with their anti-gravity drives, the drone pack was gone.

In the largest hive’s ruins, past blown-open squids on the riverbank, tall figures lay dead by the Potomac. There weren’t many of them; they’d been the Watchers’ upper order. Curled silver spiders lay around them, where they’d died defending their creators. The Watchers’ soldiers had been gunned down by laserfire, where they’d mounted a grim last stand from their grown barricades. Hulking black monsters had been blown to bloody wreckage. Guardian forces had secured this hard-won sector around the humans’ white palace, where the Watchers’ dead Prince had once stood in their room of command. Marines of every species prowled cautiously past white pillars scorched with laser marks, regretting the savage destruction. Human remains had been mounted on spiked growths in the lobby, apparently for the Watchers’ pleasure. Those same suited bodies were now being laid to rest in the palace gardens, with Guardian funerals and military honours.

A last terrified Watcher, holed up in the human leader’s room of command, had been shot dead during the marines’ final assault. Now Guardian soldiers were hard at work throughout the palace, restoring power and setting teams of construction drones to remove the Watchers’ weird ribbed architecture. Glancing around constantly at their strange new surroundings, the Guardians wondered how the Watchers’ monstrous race could ever have functioned. There were no works of beauty on their creeping bio-walls; no domes or beautiful spires on the roofs of their towers. Nothing in these Watcher hives ever seemed to broadcast thoughts of Virtue, to other worlds and cultures. They only sapped it away.

Guardian officers walked ruined corridors into the white palace’s high office, where the humans’ last leader had been scattered to ash and bone. He’d been imprisoned here for some time, according to Forensics; unable to defend himself against the Watchers’ brutal elites. He’d been murdered by an energy weapon, almost like focussed sunlight; a white-hot bolt that’d scorched him away.

Not only had these Watchers wielded sunlight as their weapon; it was reported that they’d fed and strengthened themselves with it too, in place of solid food. Just like plant species on the Ministry homeworlds. That morbid paradox baffled the Guardians and their scientists: of how a species with no need to take any lives for their survival, had somehow become masters of death and global genocide.

‘…Savagery, and stupidity,’ an officer said sadly, as he took off his cap to pay his respects. His soldiers gathered around the crime scene, taking off their helmets in turn.

The Guardians’ commanding officers had nothing more to gain from their time in the humans’ ruined palace. The highest-ranking among them stepped forward, unfolding this nation’s star-and-stripe flag, and laid it down respectfully over the human leader’s remains.

*

A green-skinned Guardian Major studied glowing reports on her wristcom, and finally took a moment to relax aboard the rising dropship as it thundered away. Leaving the humans’ white palace to the busy construction drones below, and the battalion holding these sectors to establish a base.

She couldn’t have wished for a smoother operation. There was endless work ahead of them; they had a planet to recover. Two planets, come to think of it. But they’d get there. Street by street, sector by sector, their troops and ships and scanning satellites would coordinate the entire colossal campaign to its conclusion.

Eventually, the woman told herself. But, they were Guardians. They’d handle it. With careful planning, and damned hard work, and… what was it that the new tribal species held so strongly to?

…That was it. Fierce-Hope.

*

Beyond Earth’s atmosphere, the Ministry’s hybrid armada hung countlessly in orbit. Aboard their immense flagship, the Guardians’ large blue Admiral watched the planet’s bright curve against the blackness, while their war raged on far below. A global conflict, demanding no end of resources… though it was mercifully one-sided. He’d already overheard his troops in passing, when they’d referred to the Watchers’ varied and dwindling hordes more simply as Target Practise.

The Admiral turned from the windows in his office, and resumed the reports at his gleaming desk. Still deep in thought as he worked. The Watchers’ sudden grave threat had been a shock to them all. The enemy’s swift defeat at the hands of the Sky Queen, an utter marvel.

There were strange hidden secrets about the Watchers; some ancient higher knowledge that they possessed. They were intelligent and aggressive, much like every advanced species among the Ministry worlds. But the Watchers were the poorer player, and they’d lost. The things isolated themselves, destroying all life that wasn’t theirs. They were redundant, a failed mutation; adept at bioengineering but completely unsustainable. By Ministry orders, the allied forces were to remove all Watcher life from Earth’s ecosystem. The creatures that the Watchers had bred for genocide would be wiped out. The crystalline towers they’d grown as their settlements would be demolished. Humanity’s last survivors would receive all the help they needed, to re-establish their fallen world. The wider planets were already keen to foster trade between them; though Minister Saa had prohibited any form of business until Earth had elected new leaders.

One step at a time, the Admiral considered. Certain people across the allied worlds seemed always to be in such needless hurry… though, he supposed he could see the appeal.

There was so much to trade and discuss with this new planet; these new high cultures which seemed so compatible with Serenity’s. Earth enjoyed such similar days; such strong sunlight. With aid and assistance, humanity would grow back stronger here in the aftermath. Happier, and better served by new technologies; forging new families to repopulate these fallen nations. For all their unimaginable losses, humanity now had a far brighter future than they’d resigned themselves to.

A video call on his wristcom broke off his wandering thoughts.

‘How’s progress, Admiral?’ said a smartly dressed man on the screen.

‘Swift and steady, First Minister,’ he replied dutifully. ‘The Watchers’ military assets are incredibly prolific. But without the mothership’s organisational influence, we’re effectively running mass pest control.’

‘And the human survivors?’ said Irren.

‘We’re still finding small pockets scattered across the globe. They’re in bad shape.’

‘Well, at least you’re finding them,’ Irren replied. ‘Look after them, Admiral.’

‘Of course, First Minister. Our medical ships are already en route to their locations.’

‘Excellent work,’ Irren finished. ‘I need you to make the reconstruction drones your next highest priority. Hospitals. Infrastructure. There are worlds watching us.’

‘By your orders, First Minister,’ the Admiral replied dutifully. ‘We’ll get them back on their feet.’

*

Far below on the planet’s surface, on a small rainy cluster of islands off the Continent, a vast ruined shopping centre was overgrown with sprawling gardens. The great green wild had claimed its stores and covered streets, where sapling trees tried their damnedest in every crack and crater. The darkened shops had once been raided by a lonely redhead; plundering clothes and smashing up premium electronics. A trail of destruction in her wake.

The domed roof of the food hall had been torn open savagely, long ago, by a raging grey dragon that had since blackened and reclaimed its own nature. Now the building’s great torn roof was bared to the bright blue sky, and let the rain come streaming down on forgotten tables and chairs. The wide warped floor tiles had flooded to ponds and puddles, where sparrows drank and fluttered. Falling dewdrops plinked growing rings across the pool’s gleaming surface.

Miles beyond it, past a cracked arching overpass, a city of ash held a dead toppled monster. Sprawled on the road in dismembered ruin, and greening over with moss where the wild took root in its axe-wounds. Its grim toothless head was still crusted in silver and thick white emulsion, where a wandering woman had wrestled her feet from its jaws.

Far to the north, way past a fairytale town and its sad melted castle, the last of humanity rebuilt their shattered lives on the chilly Isle of Skye.

Past black-rock spires coated in creeping green, beyond cloud-cloaked hills to a dull dark loch among the mountains, slate shacks had sprung up among an army of construction drones. Dozens of new homes lined the lakeshore. Their small windows glowed warmly, where Earth’s weary native species cooked their evening ration packs.

The newest hut under construction was a little larger, and destined to be The Taphouse. The next foundations along were intended as a small village shop. The fresh-laid paths were bustling, as Guardians and aid workers helped the native Earthians settle into new lives close to their growing base and field hospital.

There was a wide weary tribe of them; lifted in by dropship from every desperate corner of this world. All dressed warmly in new alien fashions, and strange sentient fabrics. Skinny ravenous kids ate otherworldly foods they’d never seen before, and still stared at every alien soldier and nurse who passed their new garden fence. Tunde and Julie ushered them back inside their new orphanage, while the rain blew in from the hills.

A young couple had moved in together nextdoor. Zayn held Jess beside him, warm and close and quiet on their camp bed, while she finally broke down at all they’d been through.

On another cottage doorstep, a blonde young woman kissed her husband lovingly. For the first time in forever, Natalie called the twins home for dinner.

Glowing celestial shoots were growing into otherworldly flowers. They already spread like weeds.

*

Beyond the fledgling village, mid-hike to take his mind off everything, a lone giant sat deep in amphibian thought. Staring silently at a country scene:

Sunlight glowed in silver shafts through crawling clouds.

Clear marshwater wind-rippled over vivid green grass,

As if fairy forests lay submerged in the cold clear pools.

A robin perched on a fallen fence. Small but tenacious, and fire-bright.

Big Fish studied the view carefully, sitting alone with his pen and paper, and scribbled a promising new verse among his messy notes. He’d dedicate The Robin to his little sister’s memory, once the Poe-Whim was ready. He just hadn’t found the real Shoalbond in it yet.

According to his studies, there was lots still to learn about being a Poe Wit. Even so… he supposed it was all just practise.

*

Out by the coast, Barkless Tree watched a strange grey-white bird, called a seeghul, calling on the mild evening wind. Rising past him with sad soaring grace. More of the same feathered species sat and rested on the shining wet sands in the distance. Compared with his beautiful mothbirds though, those things were ugly as sin.

Barkless turned and smiled grimly, and held his fretting mate close to his side. Sea Mist watched the hushing tide silently, and thought of nothing but her tribe-sister. Terrified for her. But despite all their passionate protests, her Ghosts were forbidden to follow.

Dark Storm was gone.

65

Alex felt a moment of gold-bright bliss, among New York’s overgrown ruins. Misted light glowed heavenly through the dead city’s garden streets, while he watched peaceful sunshine over the rippling bay. Thinking back to his brother for a moment, one of the few old memories he had left, and a time they’d laughed so hard that his sides ached. He felt closest to his family here. It was good to be home.

Seagulls were calling, and soaring past him along the bay. The gentle water reflected the ruined skyline, and limbless Lady Liberty out at sea. Alex thought about everything this world had taken from him, and all the wrongs he’d suffered, and how god-damn unfair this life had been to him. There were vague passing memories, of things he may have done to people, as if any of that mattered any more.

No, he had more important work to do now, and he’d need more energy to achieve it. He had to stay well-fed. No amount of meals were too many.

He felt at peace lately, after that sword in the heart and his dying coma in the mothership. Especially now since he’d come home, to his empty ruined city; it seemed like the war was over. But now he had a brand-new peaceful purpose. He’d resolved to rebuild New York. His New York. The raw power inside him was capable of so much more… if only he’d had the time to do it justice. With the Watchers gone, and the world up for grabs, this was his chance. He’d set up his own hive here. He’d take all this world for himself.

I need to learn from the Watchers, he considered. I need a way to pool my resources. To build an empire, you need rock-solid foundations.

…But he couldn’t rule his kingdom without a castle. He’d learned that lesson from Tabitha, and all her shiny dead soldiers, and the little army-girl fort she’d put together on whatever that other planet was called. But he’d do it bigger, and better. He’d grow the foundations right here. Build his power quickly, and then start his own bloody war for this world. The only thing that might stop him, was her.

But he’d get the bitch. If he had to rip apart every little friend and soldier and savage of hers to do it, he’d figure out some way to kill her. He just had to think about the best ways to trap her, when she was weakest. If he slaughtered her little buddies and maybe took one, and baited her back here once his hive was ready–

Alex turned at the sound of rippling water in the distance, where a great rolling ridge scudded up through the sunfire sea. Something submerged that raced in closer, growing to a hill, to a mountain, as twin tidal waves rose colossal around it. He watched in dawning horror. The ocean rained from its sides as it thundered from the surface and hurtled straight for him. A booming black mass; a runaway wreck. Shrouded in storms and wreathed in oblivion. Coming for him.

…That’s not the Watchers. It’s her.

The mothership crashed down upon him like Judgement; like a great dead god from the sea. Catching him in its landslide before he’d escaped it, and tearing a vast comet trench through the toppling city around it. Lower, and faster; a suicide run. It tore through the skyline like an earthquake; toppling city blocks in deafening wrath-volcanic. A great dark tsunami followed after it, turning all its vast new wasteland into endless brickdust swamp. The ship’s beam was glowing beneath it; aimed point-blank at its crater. It blew bright and deafening, and bored a suicidal blast through the molten bedrock beneath it. Toppling the dead city like a nuke.

Snarling, Alex burst out from the rubble of it; coughing at the ash-black blizzard that filled the sudden winter around him. Vast stormclouds poured from it; a weird black fog that shrouded the ship and crept through the darkening city.

Watching the mothership furiously, and floating demonic before it, Alex roared rabid and burst a wild volted hell to rip his way inside.

*

A hidden figure watched his furious fireworks in the distance. A faded silhouette, barely there; merely a shadowed suggestion. Staring from a dead windblown tower on the skyline. Her monstrous companion soared out of sight.

She was pure black umbra, and raw raging anima, and all this dark haunted city was nothing to her but hunting ground. A thought and a shadow, who’d hurt and hardened in rougher ruins than these. Alex had only ever flown high above.

Her silent silhouette studied him carefully, exhausting himself, while she turned and vanished into the black mist she’d brought here. Breathing sacred darkness; cloaked in a star-speckled void. Weaving a strange glooming world in her wake.

*

Skyscrapers toppled around him. Roaring and raging, Alex gave up on his carnage. He hadn’t found her on his deafening rampage through the mothership; he didn’t know what was left to destroy. He’d exhausted himself, blowing down buildings around the whole colossal crater. Staring around nervously, tail whipping where he floated, he snarled with fresh fear at the night-black fog that she’d left for him. Spooked.

He searched the darkening streets; he scoured the shoreline. Dust-pale and bloody, exhausted from his aimless barrage, Alex flew back furiously to inspect the grounded ship one more time. Landing down, finally, to recoup some energy for the fight that was coming. Suddenly the Watcher plants all around him were grabbing at him; writhing into rustling life. Yelling and crackling, Alex blew it all to flaming shreds and torched the ground they’d grown from. Frightened and furious, to be so tricked and hunted in his home. But he was loathe to fly away now; he’d need to recover some power for their standoff. Besides, he couldn’t let her see that she was getting to him. Alex kept hunting, and put a calm face on his fury. He was this world’s apex predator; not her. He was the one in control.

He hadn’t fed in a while; his draining power made him feel it. He couldn’t even see the highest ruins any more. New York was glooming to dusk all around him, even as the afternoon sun peered through the dark in the distance. The mothership still churned out its weird thick stormclouds, like a monumental smoke grenade on the city. Alex felt his heartcore pounding nervously, and flew to a tower block roof to get off the silent streets. The bitch had planned this; she was stalking him. Shrouding the whole ruined city in night.

*

The darkening roads and sidewalks were cracked black eggshell, where endless veins of moss crept through. Hard black feet strode by in soundless shadow. Elemental.

Alien plants sprouted beneath each footstep; drawn from the dirt at her presence. Vines and flowers swelled as she passed them, romanced by her fleeting sensation. Intoxicated at her touch. Bright growth bloomed at her whisper; stitched through the whole strange fabric. Life sprawled like a virus in her wake.

On her moth-feathered belt, three knives glinted like sin.

Guardian steel, and Stormworld glass,

And a Princely dagger of nightmare black.

The night-smokes spiralled behind her.

Her starred shadow slid through the world.

An equal, and opposite, reaction.

66

Alex tore through the smoke-darkened city like a blazing angel. His burning stare searched every street for her, and saw no trace but strange growing flowers. Flying over endless branching trails of them, to nowhere and nothing. Frightened, and cheated; snarling his vicious black teeth. But a distant light shone through the darkness. No; two lights. Blinking. A pair of shining eyes staring back at him.

He burst through the building like a car wreck and buried his sword in her stare. Hacking her body to spurting pieces; roaring in raw rabid violence. Until the brickdust cleared, and he saw the thick tangle of vines he’d been savaging. Growling in shock to find two weird flowers there, on the decoy’s severed head; glowing and blinking into split-second darkness. A lure.

Alex freaked and blew the room apart. Roaring and raging, he burst it all to toppling rubble and torched it with a lightning blast. Racing out airborne, to throw sudden blinding bolts across the city. He turned at every strange creak and annihilated them. Where the deep shadows danced he destroyed them. Striking down towers in bellowing obliteration. Tearing like a shot across the twitching city, to cut down every writhing blinking plant that could’ve been her creeping shadow.

Breathing heavily, staring bloody murder, Alex roared out demonic and blew skyscrapers to toppling stonework around him. Sending landslides thundering down through the smoke-darkened depths of his city. Snarling and soaring; diving on a hunched shape to destroy it. He crashed down furiously into the apartments beneath it.

‘WHERE ARE YOU!?’ he bellowed savagely. Turning where he floated, his wild stare fixed on it. Another distant light blinked in answer.

His sudden blinding volts blew the building down, and crushed the weird glowing decoy inside it. Another glow shone through the murk, down the street ahead of him; he shot for it and torched the web of volt-vines that tangled him. Straining and struggling indoors, hacking and slashing through the tendrils that reached for him, into a bright glowing basement beyond. A writhing neon nightmare.

She’d left a room full of glowing graffiti for him; shaped from the vines and smeared with their shining sap. Smiling faces, a galaxy of them, with dead mocking crosses for eyes. Alex torched the room furiously and shot away fearfully; paranoid that she’d trap him in here.

He flew in a fury for every glowing grotto, and found only dummies and shadows. Nothing lurked behind all those rustling plants but dancing branches and weird shining blooms, and sudden coiling vines that she’d left for him. Leeching his current as he raged and blew them away. Staring from the windows, panic-breaths heaving, Alex saw nothing but black-smoke oblivion. The bitch had brought this darkness; pitch-black and absolute. No light for him to see and hunt by, except his own fierce dwindling current.

Out in the distance, cloaked in a dust-grey sheet among the shattered towers, she wore the ashen world as she studied him. His glow stood out like a beacon in the black. The bastard was blazing more fiercely than ever, just to search for her and blow her hidden decoys apart in their grottos. Alex was burning bright… and slowly burning out.

*

Thoughtless, feral, Alex descended on a rooftop to rest. Gasping for breath through his blackout. He glimpsed her glowing eyes again, the only thing to see in the darkness, and shot through a distant wall to destroy them. Nothing but another heap of vines, that flew apart in his clawed raging hands. But the more of them he found and followed, the closer he’d get. He’d catch up to her; he’d play her cat-and-mouse. When he found her, he’d eat her alive.

Alex shot away for the next starlit tower; squinting and burning through the black. Bursting through basement walls to torch the twinkling vine-grotto around him. But this next burning dummy pointed its branching arm away from him, toward a glowing message on the distant wall. Her weird writhing flowers lined the way to it. The graffiti was finger-painted in bright bio-neon, nestled among more of her dead smiley faces:

I KNOW HOW TO KILL YOU

Alex flew back terrified and blew the strutted wall to thrashing shrapnel. A loadbearing wall; a trap. The skyscraper toppled above him. A rubble landslide crashed down on top of him.

Yelling, bellowing, Alex burst the walls and slabs apart to drag himself out of it. Broken and bloody; healing from it. He roared in a rage and shot for the sky; blowing down buildings around him. Straining to stay conscious, coated in blood and brickdust, he couldn’t find a single calm thought to work around it. All his starving mind knew right now was destroy.

*

A shadow heard his wild bellow in the pitch-black distance, and watched as he raced out in search of her. She simply wore the landscape, and waited. She’d dealt endless subtle slits through his energy. Tiring him; infuriating him. A drawn-out death, by a thousand cuts.

Studying him calmly, letting time and fearful pressure do the hard work for her, she vanished again through the smokeclouds. Sprinting and pouncing like a spirit. She passed over ruined rooftops in soundless-swift parkour.

*

Alex’s inner world was all fire and feral hunger; he’d grown so furious he could hardly think. Every glinting glow and rippling rustle had been planned out for him. Every gleaming doorway he tore through came alive with leeching vines; sipping and sapping at his current until he was staggering. Blue flowers choked him with their pollen; plundered from the mothership’s armouries. All his fear and panic and burning hate… it all came crackling through him. A sudden flash of something alien in him; a self that he couldn’t control.

‘WHERE ARE YOU!?’ he roared out wildly, without a scrap of sense or subtlety. He’d never needed it, and that weird alter-side of him wouldn’t stoop to it. He beat the walls and tore her glowing gardens. His growling voice echoed in the empty shells of skyscrapers. ‘WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU!?’

He couldn’t keep flying in search of her, and there was nothing left here to eat. He’d run down all his power before he found her; he’d still need it to fight her up-close.

One last basement shone in the distant darkness.

He found a final bright decoy; a shadow of her shape against the far glowing wall. He even tried to resist all his rage this time, and breathed deeply as he searched for any sign or footprint. Anything to follow and track her down. Dead smiley faces led a neon trail for him.

Turning at the glimmer of another message, he snarled at the sight. A finger-painted ghost. Beside it, three simple letters scared him to death:

BOO

Alex freaked and blew the wall to blinding rubble. He shot away frantically to search the darkened city for her, pulse pounding and breaths deathly-fast, and found nothing at all.

One more living light bloomed in the blackness. Alex flew down raging to find her… before she found him.

67

The last glowing basement was different. The shining vines led Alex much deeper, walking the ragged carpet cluelessly, where white flowers covered the floor.

His next sluggish footstep crucified him; roaring out in a bloodspattered rage. Pinned there. He burst the trap’s skewering branches to sparks and cinders. Gored and healing, starving for the scent of her, Alex floated on over a sprawling white garden through the basement.

…She’s forcing me to fly, he realised. Burning through his energy that much faster. He was starving; his thoughtless hunger drove him on for the taste of her. These blue-flowered walls were blinding him; clouding his mind and watering his raging eyes. The vine-lined ceiling was draining him. Bleeding him out constantly; he rushed on through before it drained him completely. Turning the corner for a deeper staircase, the glowing graffiti enraged him:

STARTING TO FEEL IT?

The neon sap was still dripping; her writing was only moments old. Alex shot down the stairway through coiling shadows and cramped dark forest, into rot-black lacrimosa. A slick creaking cavern that she’d grown for him; a tree-lined realm beneath the world.

The writhing branches flickered for him, as Alex searched the shadows in exhaustion. A glowing twilight kingdom. Roots twined his feet whenever he stopped floating; the ceiling crawled with throttling plant life over his head. The whole damn dell exhausted him. Alex glared furiously, still searching for any sign of her. Snapping and struggling away from it all.

He was blinded by a sudden searing light; shining heavenly all around him. The pitch-black followed it, when the black trees pounced and gripped him. Pinned him. Her sudden shadow stuck the knife in and snapped it. Alex roared out in shock and blew the grasping cavern to blazing splinters, but the shadow was gone. Shouting out in fury as the lights glowed up, clutching a stab-wound in his shoulder, Alex wrestled for the shard that she’d buried in him. Clawing it out frantically, he studied weird carved glass and crushed it; the clear blade was wrapped in thin roots. Roaring out wildly, Alex burst the trees to ruins and scorched all life around him.

He hunted through deeper basements. The stabwound in his shoulder wasn’t healing; buried tendrils pinned it apart. Growing back frantically, like thread-thin worms, where he snapped them angrily and cauterised his wound. They kept coming back, infuriating him; stretching the wound open at its sides. Bleeding him.

Plants tripped and grabbed him in the darkness. Thick vines coiled around him. He fought it all back and burned it; running for the next bright chamber. An apex shadow prowled above him; unseen. Peering through vines like grown scaffolds and ceilings. Hard eyes in a writhing smokecloud. Every light extinguished. In the sudden dark she saw him; dropped on him. Death from above. Alex yelled out at a matador stab. When he spun and lashed out she was gone. He roared out like a demon, his alter-side coming through in him, and tore out the combat knife she’d buried in him. The bloody steel blade had been coated in something; a dirty thick paste full of dots like weird seeds. The second knife-wound in his back was sprouting flowers. Coiling leaves that sapped his current. The parasite tendrils she’d put in him writhed and rippled toward his second bloody wound. Pinning his flesh open to bleed him out.

He lashed out with voltage; blew the whole cavern to flames. But she’d vanished. She was only wearing him out faster. Picking at his shoulder wound furiously, Alex snarled painfully and tried to dig out the bloody cress-tendrils with trembling claws. More grew back in their place.

*

She watched his shouting silhouette in the distance. The flames of his lightning raged around him. He was furious; frustrated. Unfocussed and emotional. Consumed by Self.

…Weak.

He was still lethal, if she let him catch her up-close. But he was bleeding now, and he couldn’t stop it. Her shadow vanished outside ahead of him. Disappearing into fog through the darkened ruins.

Sure enough, Alex followed her glowing sap-trail and flew out faltering from the cavern in her wake. A slower flight, over the ruins that hid her, where she pounced feline from a rooftop and clawed his chest to gory trenches. His raging shocks only strengthened her; every volt he could throw she absorbed. Alex roared and threw her down as he flew away.

Flailing and snarling, Tabitha dropped in freefall and smashed into the street far below. Broken and bloody, ears ringing, she leapt away in airborne somersaults as he crashed down behind her and tore the road to ruins. He snarled and shot skywards; disappeared in the black fog above her. Tabitha leapt away from the sudden sound of him as Alex punched the asphalt like a bomb blast. He staggered back grinning, as if he had her now. A dripping trail of blood followed his feet, from wounds that were pinned open painfully. His clawed chest couldn’t heal; her planted tendrils kept it pulled open. The bright flowers in his back drained his current.

‘Good trick,’ Alex grinned at her. He shot towards her again.

Tabitha pounced away from his stabbing tail and kept her distance; she only had to run out the clock while he bled. The buildings around them made a derelict arena. His sudden shocks couldn’t hurt her; they only made her stronger. Instead he shot towards her, swinging wild animal punches at her, and the whole thing descended into a fist fight. Beating and brawling viciously in the ash.

Tabitha weaved aside from his bloody punches and staggered him back snarling with a sudden savage uppercut. Machine-gunning jabs and hooks that jerked his head violently and stumbled him back in a daze. Snarling, soaring, she cracked his jaw with a brutal haymaker and laid him flat with a dustcloud crack on the asphalt. Snarling wildly as she pounced and straddled him, she beat him bloody on the ground. Working his dazed head like a frightened punchbag. For Deep Roots; for herself. No thoughts; no remorse. Just hit after screaming hit. Flesh-and-bone smacks in the raw brickdust silence. Fierce and feral; for everything. Tabitha wouldn’t stop punching. There wasn’t enough dead-star hellfire violence in the world to match her burning hate for him. She didn’t just want to end him. She’d beat and pound and pummel out every last bloody trace.

Alex roared and reeled and threw her off powerfully, and staggered up to try and rip her head off. Tabitha grabbed a jagged rock and cracked him across the temple with it. Threw dirt and ash in his bellowing face and blew a volt-bursting bang on his ringing ears. Torturing his dazed senses and leaping away from his wild blind strikes in return. She yelled and shoved him back through a hole in the ruins; a pitfall. Impaled him screaming down there, on twisted steel rebar. Another pouring wound that wouldn’t heal, as Alex shot up painfully to tear a chunk out of her.

Beaten as they were, at least she was mending from it. Alex was a blood-streaming mess, where the celestial tendrils held his wounds open. All she had to do now was keep her distance, and let the bastard bleed out dry. She’d engineer his undoing; dismantle him piece by piece. Time would take care of the rest.

‘…You got smart,’ Alex said breathlessly, with his old familiar grin. Spitting blood in the dust. ‘Very creative.’ His black fangs gleamed in the eerie light. Tabitha prowled at a distance, flexing her fingers and her bloody black knuckles. Pure patient vitriol in the shadows. Waiting for him to weaken further.

‘Seems kinda cruel, to me,’ he considered, in all his smiling insanity. ‘No normal human could be this sadistic,’ he added, pointing a finger to the vines that held his wounds open. The puddle of blood he was limping in. ‘And that’s been my point, this whole time,’ he added. ‘We’re not human. We’re more than them. They’re vermin to us.’ Tabitha wouldn’t rise to it; she knew he just wanted a reaction. Any kind of read on her emotions. Looking for a weakness, if he could find one.

‘But all this? You’re more of a monster than me!’ he chuckled, with a dark vicious grin. She didn’t respond to him. ‘I can’t understand why you’re so bitter with me. You’ve always just healed anyway. And look, if this is about killing your old-man creature, or a few fucking goons in your army… at least I killed ‘em quick,’ he said with a shrug. ‘In all my time on that mothership, I never saw anything capable of this much torture,’ he said, pointing to the bloody writhing mess of his shoulder. ‘You’re more them than they ever were,’ he snarled at her. ‘Guess we’re both fallen angels now.’

Tabitha didn’t have any words for him. She just ran and tackled him; laid him out with a bone-cracking punch. She took a running parkour leap off the ruins to put a break-neck kick across his skull.

They were brawling and battering; crashing through streets and ruined offices. A bloodspurting mess where his deep gory wounds just kept pouring. Alex was losing; he freaked out and grabbed her. He launched them both flying through a distant building. The toppling walls crashed and carried them, down into the ruins of the old hive he’d destroyed. Snarling at her punches, lashing out and missing her, Alex tackled her and flew like a shot for the hive’s ruined heart.

They blew through its great scorched crater into a subway station; tumbling apart in the clattering brickdust. Tabitha leapt to her feet and pulled her Watcher knife as he prowled for her. She hadn’t noticed the starving shapes around them. People. Prisoners. Locked away in shadowed pens, like livestock. Bound and beaten, and watching her in terror. Pleading desperately for her to help them. Her raw dark horror turned to hate.

‘…Oh you’re so dead,’ Tabitha snarled at Alex savagely. Raising her knife for their final brawl.

‘I had to take back New York. For my family,’ he explained, still bleeding in the distance. ‘I had to get stronger. I had to survive. Guy’s gotta eat,’ he said with a shrug. Tabitha glanced around furiously at the gore and gnawed bones that he’d left of these people. The surviving prisoners were screaming at her to help them.

‘I’m their apex predator. It’s only natural,’ Alex explained. ‘It’s natural selection.’

‘I’ll get you out!’ Tabitha called back to them, her voice faltering. Feeling her heartcore aching for those poor people, where they reached through the bony prison bars towards her. ‘I’ll come back for you!’ she told them all. ‘I’ll help you!’ Alex was smiling; shaking his head.

…They’re nothing but cattle to him. There weren’t just human prisoners down here, but strange shapes floating in crystalline coffins. Watcher creations, staring in zombie stillness. Twisted cross-breeds of several species. Many more lay dead beyond them, where Alex had fed on their flesh. Tabitha couldn’t put all her fury, all her horror, into words.

‘I found this place, after I blew up the hive. I think I’ll be able to control them, soon,’ Alex explained, smiling proudly as he glanced around at those hybrid creations. ‘They’ll help me run things. Earth, I mean.’

‘…Run it?’ Tabitha mumbled. Sickened to her core at just how far he’d fallen. ‘Who the fuck do you think you are!?’

‘I’m the future,’ he replied, grinning back at her. Beyond furious, Tabitha tackled him in the dirt and beat him brutally. Flashing her knife to swipe for his head. Alex threw her off painfully with the dregs of his power.

‘No. Not down here,’ he considered, as if he had a say in the matter. ‘I know where we can end this. It’s not far.’ With that he grabbed hold of her and shot them both skywards. A dustcloud explosion through the hive’s foundations, with the last of his bleeding strength.

Alex threw her to the ground before she could knife him in the neck. Tabitha tumbled painfully in a thumping dustcloud. Staggering to her feet among eerie Watcher ruins.

‘…Recognise it?’ Alex said happily, as he floated down demonic in the distance. These dark ribbed ruins had been blown apart, so that only the charred roots and foundations were left intact. A haunted arena surrounded them; the Watchers’ toppled cathedral. ‘I wanted to eat you here, remember?’ he chuckled, in warm reminiscence. ‘Still do. And I will, if you lose this fight… unless you wanna make love, not war?’

‘…What?’ Tabitha replied, in pure horror. Astounded by him.

‘It’s not too late for us,’ he said, with a vicious grin. ‘We could settle down, have some superkids. Repopulate the place, with a better kind of human. It’s just evolution.’

‘…You really don’t see it, do you?’ Tabitha replied. ‘There’s nothing human about you.’ Alex grinned. His spiked tail writhed while he floated. Silver blood streamed from his wounds.

‘I evolved,’ he said with a shrug. ‘You did too… and here we are. If I kill you here, I’m God of this world. If you kill me, you’re Goddess.’

‘That’s your problem,’ Tabitha replied. ‘All you see is power.’

‘That’s all there is,’ Alex grinned back. ‘Your strength, or mine.’

‘And all this time, you could’ve used that power of yours to help people,’ she growled furiously. ‘You could’ve saved millions of people from the Watchers. Why didn’t you?’

‘The Watchers killed my family. They killed my city,’ Alex snarled back. ‘People tried to kill me for what I turned into, just to stay alive out here. Everything wants me dead. Life wants me dead. What do I owe anyone, huh? Fuck ‘em! I can make this world the way I want it.’

‘But why!?’ she yelled at him. ‘Why do all this!?’

‘Because I can!’ he snarled back. ‘We won the gene jackpot, don’t you get it!? We’d waste the chance of a lifetime, if we didn’t reign over this world! It’s the natural order.’

‘…You’re no different than the Watchers,’ Tabitha replied bitterly.

‘No. I’m better than them,’ Alex growled back. He was grinning at her; that strange dark aspect in him was glaring at her. Flickering around his silhouette. His eyes were scorching lights. Whatever was inside him, it was finally coming out to play. Tabitha tensed up; claws sprung and sparking. Snarling right back.

‘You got strong,’ Alex chuckled, delighted at the prospect of fighting her. He strode to his salvaged stockpile, and pulled a charred black sword from its sheath. ‘So, you ready for our big showdown? As grand prizes go… I guess Earth and the future of humanity are up there with the big ones.’

‘I don’t care about ruling this world,’ Tabitha replied, as she pulled the Watcher knife from her belt. ‘I don’t matter. Life’s all that counts.’ Alex was smiling; staring at her. Trying to work out how to reply.

‘…You’re just gone, aren’t you?’ he chuckled, disbelieving.

‘And you’re still clinging on. You look desperate,’ she told him. ‘You’ve got so much to lose, and devour, and hold onto. You must be exhausted. You look pathetic.’ Alex said nothing. He only growled, burning up at the insult, and went at her with a hellfire fury. His bomb-blast punch flung her through the shattered walls in a vicious dustcloud.

Tabitha hit torn-up flooring, beyond the ruined bio-cathedral. A wide ribbed space among the Watchers’ toppled old hive. As she staggered up painfully, Alex was prowling for her with the sword in his grip. A dark flaming silhouette; a terrifying aspect that she’d only glimpsed on Serenity. An angel of death.

68

Crows scattered from distant carcasses where Alex landed down. Breathing deeply, watching him hatefully, Tabitha stilled her thoughts as he prowled the round ribbed floor towards her. A dead dark land surrounded them; lit by his lightning and her bright branching plants. Cloaked in mist around far shattered towers, where the Watchers’ latticed turbines had burned to twisted wreckage. The pair paced a wide staring circle; waiting for a chance.

‘This is more like it, don’t you think?’ he said, with a sudden vicious grin. He dragged the scraping sword-point beside him, with a noise like knives down a gravestone. Stalking a bright silver circle as he bled. His face dropped into a lethal glare. ‘Fight me with everything. I wanna see that wild in you.’ His voice was deeper; a raw growl. A death-bright flame lit his stare. ‘My head or yours. Your world, or mine.’

Tabitha gripped her knife tighter, and paced her circle; Alex raised his sword and pounced first. His overhead swipe rang out against her fierce blocking thrust. A sudden flurry of knife-strokes against his fast-flying sword; dodging his stabs and countering his spinning slashes. Tabitha snarled at his strength through her desperate deflections; Alex caught her knife against his sword and forced it down hard as she twisted past him. She shoved him away and struck back quickly; their blades bit together in ringing sparks and grinding metal. Both opponents shot crackling volts at the strain of it; twin struggling snarls between their locked weapons. Clenched teeth and cruel black fangs. Two stark blazing stares, burning murderous.

His roaring shove became a falling sword-stroke, caught against the knife above her head. Alex growled and booted Tabitha hard in the stomach to send her tumbling. She landed feline and scrambled from his sword strikes; bursting the ribbed ground to flying fragments. Alex struck snarling with his tail spike at her footing; Tabitha’s knife-stroke smacked his sword aside. Opened him up for a feral right-hook that knocked him sideways. Alex tripped her with his tail and throttled her. Too strong and furious to struggle against. Tabitha struck back savagely and screamed out in agony; she clawed his cheek open and leapt from his roaring swings. He’d ran the sword through her stomach. His alter-aspect drooled for her blood. Alex charged back with brutal swipes at her; faster and stronger than the stalker in its cavern. It was all she could do just to block the bastard’s hacking and hammering; she dealt a sudden wild flurry in return. She slit his cheek and sliced his forearm. Cracked his jaw and stabbed him in the ribs when he staggered. His booming black punch threw her yelling. Tabitha kicked off from the ruins and pounced back with an airborne slash; Alex was too weak and wounded to float. She struck back fast with desperate deflections and split-second slits. Bleeding him out through open wounds as she fended off his sword strokes with a growl. Alex swung a roaring swipe that staggered her; Tabitha escaped him too slowly. His fast ringing strikes overtook her; his next feral slice took her hand. He flung it off bloody with her knife in its grip, as she screamed out in agony and leapt away from his sudden execution. Scrambling aside in bloody panic to reach her severed hand in the distance.

As fast as she pounced, Alex was faster. He tripped her with his tail and ran the sword through her. Pulling it from her back to swing it savagely for her head as she sprang aside and escaped it. She staggered away to grab her hand up; pulling the knife from its hard black grip. Sheathing her knife quickly and tucking the severed hand beneath her armpit, Tabitha pressed her searing stump against it to heal. Alex was grinning; a mocking look of pity while he prowled.

‘…Looks tricky. Need a hand?’ he chuckled. ‘Sorry. Couldn’t resist.’ Tabitha fumbled with her bloody wrist to hold her hand there. Hoping, desperately, that the flesh and bone reattached themselves in time. It’d be weak while it knitted, but the tissue was sealing shut. Alex wasn’t waiting; that weird alter-aspect leapt out in him. Starving at the sight of her flesh and streaming blood. He struck too fast and staggered her; his feral pounce pinned her on the ground. Wrestling her; biting for her. Trickling his blood on her wild straining face, where his claw-cuts were pinned wide open. A fierce hellish strength was writhing in him.

Tabitha screamed out beneath him; he grinned and snapped his teeth where she choked him. Alex was overpowering her. Lusting for her flesh as he pressed the edge of his sword down through her silver-spurting throat. She was screaming and struggling, half-severed; half headless. Alex shot Seven’s skull with a vicious explosion where he swept down from the darkness to grab him.

‘Space dragon. You’re so predictable,’ Alex chuckled at her. Grinning at the skies, as Seven dropped away bloody in an agonised spin and crashed through the ruins in the distance. Tabitha couldn’t wrestle out from his grip; she was yelling and struggling uselessly for her life.

‘You’re still fighting it. Just let go,’ he said with a smile. ‘Let me end it for you, all this… tale-of-revenge thing you’ve got going on. And all this because I killed your pet creature, huh? Your old savage? Well, I wish I’d eaten him,’ he grinned. ‘All that well-done meat on him… he smelled delicious.’

‘…His name, was Deep Roots,’ Tabitha snarled back furiously. ‘He was family.’ Alex watched in sudden shock as she struggled ferociously against him. Slowly pushing him away from her. He’d crossed a line. Her eyes were blazing; a fierce bright current shone through her. Her tense arms trembled; forcing his huge strength away from her. Alex’s grin was fading, as her strange new fury wrestled him back. A bright eerie light writhed around her. Some strange new static pushed her up from the ground.

'…You killed my friend,’ she growled wrathfully, wreathed in bright lightning, as her eyes shone like stars. Her voice was resonant. 'I'm gonna collect your head.' Her sudden shockwave blew him away. Forced apart by the blast of it, the pair ran back snarling and smashed their blades together in a sparking explosion. Teeth gritted; both stares blazing. A single crawling second, where two feral gods matched their power in piercing-perfect collision. Thrashing sparks thundered from him; the ribbed ground cracked to fragments where they struggled. Glowing life exploded all around her; sudden writhing growth where her current shot through the roots beneath their feet. Fire and flora raged around their struggle. Tabitha had never been so furious. She felt her heartcore racing like a powerplant, as her strange new aspect rose up to meet his.

Alex roared demonic and went at her. Tabitha’s spinning sparking strikes warped the glassy air around them; her fearsome flurried fighting floated her for split-seconds and defied gravity itself. Her slick sudden slits spattered silver. Her pulse-pounding punches broke bones. Tabitha spun past his swipes. Sliced his tail off. She buried her knife in his chest and snapped the blade off, then broke his nose with the shattering hilt. She battered him brawling and levered his limbs. Beat him to a daze and spun a flying kick that floored him. Dirty and vicious; no-holds-barred. She fought neon-bright and animal. Wild blinding nature unleashed.

Their fierce clash thundered with Alex’s fire and cinder, and blew flames through her towering plants around them. She was sapping his power away, just as he burned away hers. Their ruined circle rained fire against the black mist beyond, where her tall twining plants burned and fell like flaming snow. A forest of leeching life sprang up and strangled him.

Tabitha closed her eyes and willed it; her glowing plants burst so bright that they blinded him. Her twining volt-vines coiled his legs, his arms; wearing him out where he hacked at them. Sapping him constantly. Alex was roaring, and struggling; tangled in vines that staggered him. The Celestial knew him; its circuit-veins coiled and tried to strangle him. Tabitha lashed out like an animal. Wild eyes burning as she struck and slashed and warped the air like rippling silken glass. Alex wouldn’t get away from her. Not this time. He’d killed the kindest, gentlest man she’d ever known. This bastard deserved worse than she could ever do to him. He roared a panicked bellow and shot away with her; they tumbled down bloody on a far ashen street. The wind was blowing the dark fog back; only a bright eerie mist hung around them. Tabitha pounced back first and savaged him.

Time crawled. Her dust-pale knuckles mashed his face like a squinting punchbag. Jolted his jaw and knocked him sideways. Staring, snarling, she ducked his clawed swipe and drove an uppercut home like a hammer blow. Staggering him back just long enough to jump him with a tackle and an ash-cloud slap on the asphalt. Beating him to death until he wrestled away.

Alex’s staggering sword-stroke descended on her. Tabitha rolled aside as the blade sparked across the sidewalk. Her hidden knife-stroke smacked his sword aside; a split-second opening for a vicious right hook. She cracked his jaw and pummelled him; gripped his throat and punched his face to bloody fragments. He struck her back roaring; Tabitha snarled and ran for him. She rolled and leapt from his sword-strike as it bit the road and split it. She spun and ducked in snarling to smash her fist in his teeth. A spray of silver blood as his mangled head reeled back. Another on the jaw; another on his busted nose. She beat and pummelled and staggered him back on the road. Flashed her spare knife in a split-second swipe to slit a bloody trench across his throat.

She ran rings around him. Blocking his sword-strikes and punching back hard. Whipping and dancing through high running leaps in her strange new banshee aspect. Sudden somersaults and spurting knife-strokes across his black-scaled torso. She was too fast to catch. Cutting him apart in a bloody airborne whirlwind. Bleeding him out completely. Her pounce launched her high above him. She dive-bombed him in a sudden explosion. Dodging his sword-strokes at lightning speed to beat him dazed and floor him roaring. Seven dived out of the sun like a booming black titan; blocking the daylight as he dropped through the gloom. Snarling furiously, turning for the tackle, Alex’s sword-stroke cut into the dragon’s open jaws and blocked them in a split-second stalemate. Locked and struggling with Seven, Alex watched in dread as Tabitha pounced for him. She only had a second; she wouldn’t waste it. Clawing a sudden bloody hole to his heartcore.

‘Now!’ she screamed. Fishbowl shot from Seven’s shoulders and stuffed a celestial seed into Alex’s open chest, as the bastard yelled raging and blew Tabitha away. She hit the road and tumbled hard, shouting out painfully; scrambling aside from Alex’s wild sword-strikes once he’d blasted Seven away in a bloodburst. But the seed was stuck inside him; his sparking heartcore tried to heal around it.

‘What did you do to me!?’ Alex roared rabidly. Clutching his pouring chest wound, where a strange seed was taking root. ‘WHAT DID YOU DO!?’ Tabitha didn’t say a word. She only prowled at a distance, watching coldly, as Alex reeled and staggered and dropped his sword on the road. Watching the celestial seed come to life inside him. Its shoot was sapping him. He was panic-stricken; clawing for it. Goring at his chest to dig it out of himself. He watched Tabitha in cold horror, his stark eyes shining, as the root drank his current and sprouted inside him. Its bloody tree-limbs burst out of him in a yelling instant. Skewered him screaming on a branching crucifix. Draining his dying power and pinning him; suspending him over the road.

Limping over wrathfully, Tabitha put a hand on the volt-tree’s trunk and bent the whole thing over at her will; forcing Alex down to kneel on the road. Stuck roaring and struggling on his creaking cross, while the huge hybrid plant drove its roots deep through the shattered asphalt. Alex watched her wildly; still fighting for his vicious life.

‘…I was gonna build a better world here!’ he yelled furiously; drooling silver blood on the dust-covered road. ‘What’s the point in fighting all this so hard, huh!? You’re gonna die anyway!’

‘Everyone dies,’ Tabitha replied coldly. ‘At least I stood for something.’ Alex snarled wildly in pinned frustration. ‘…You had all this power, all this time. And all you ever did was rage, and kill, and fill your gut just to keep from starving,’ she told him. ‘You’re less than a rabid animal. You’re nothing to me. You’re nothing to anyone.’ Alex roared out savagely at her, as Tabitha stooped and took up his fallen sword. One last moment, to study that final look of horror on his bloody face. Strange, really; how someone so consumed by death could still be so terrified of it. She tightened her creaking black grip on the sword hilt.

‘Wait!’ Alex yelled out desperately. Tabitha swung hard and took off his head with a final wild snarl and a gush of slopping silver. A bony slice echoed through the city.

Alex’s horrified head tumbled down in the rising dust. His scaled body still crawled and struggled on its creaking crucifix; writhing frantically for life. Reaching out reptilian with shuddering claws. It shook monstrously, and spasmed, and finally fell still as it died. Silver blood gushed from his neck and pooled around his severed head. Alex’s wild eyes stared blankly at the brightening sky.

Watching coldly, Tabitha dropped the sword with a ringing clang. She turned and left without a word or a thought, leaving Alex’s corpse suspended on his crucifix. Walking away down the ruined road. Seven, badly wounded and limping where he landed, took a great crackling breath behind her. His thundering white flames scorched every trace of Alex from the world.

*

Tabitha grew some final binding vines over Seven’s bloody wounds, where Alex’s blasts had blown his scales apart. Her monstrous ship growled back tenderly, in agony; nuzzling his snout against her hands while she patched him up.

The ash of New York made a pale winter world all around them. Their wet silver footprints gleamed in the daylight, where a bright misted glow lit the vast toppled city behind. These dead streets were towering, and silent as the grave. Fog cloaked the buildings above her. Tabitha stared skywards; dwelling on a future that was suddenly torn wide open. She still couldn’t believe the bastard was dead.

…It’s over. Her weary sigh dropped her aching shoulders right down.

Seven’s nudge shook her out of her thoughts. Stroking his scales with hard whispering rasps, Tabitha climbed his lowered wing to take the saddle-scale. With a glad smile and a gleaming thought, she sent him soaring up high over the skyscrapers.

There was Alex’s twisted farm to rush back to; she had to help those poor people from their prisons. Putting in a call on her wristcom, Tabitha asked for Guardian forces to evacuate every survivor to the medical ships. She could already hear their weak shouts from the hive-crater, where they’d glimpsed her small shape high above.

Seems like there’s always more horrors to find, she considered. I just hope this is the last. But they’d handle it, together. The best medics in the galaxy were coming to help them. With the drone-built village on Skye, at least they could give those scarred survivors new lives.

Beyond that… well. Who knew? She’d no future now, but the one she chose for herself.

69

In a sunlit seaside ruin, where the houses had once stood tall and thin, a pier and a long iron railing had collapsed into rust completely. A great scorchmark darkened a mossing pavement, where a monstrous alien squid had once been exploded in the road. Soaring seagulls called out over rubbled desolation, where a lone redhead had walked many times before. Her black-footed kick sent an ancient phone skittering back across the road.

Tabitha’s hometown was nothing but brick-strewn meadows, where blazing sunlight speared through thick clouds over the sea. Deer grazed along the distant woodland; blackbirds sang in the silent breeze. Bees plundered the wildflowers around her, and didn’t scare her like they used to.

Hands in her pockets, warm in her blue-grey parka, Tabitha watched the dull waves rush and tumble on the beach before her. Thinking of Jen and Emma; her willowy confidant and her bolshy force-of-nature. Wondering what she’d say to them, and whether she might’ve saved them, if only things had been different. She’d regret it for the rest of her life.

…I wasn’t the same person, back then. That wasn’t me.

But her friends weren’t here any more. Or her family; her old life. Walking the hill to her mum’s old house, she’d been welling up among the overgrown foundations. Nothing left but a wilding garden, and splinters of Dad’s old shed. It was nice to come back here, where she’d grown up and made her memories…

But now, that’s really all that’s left. Her friends and family would’ve hated for her to linger here, where there was nothing left of their lives. They’d tell me to get on with my own.

Seven watched her silently on the seafront, and sunned himself peacefully on the beach. Striding up old stone steps, and being careful not to trample the frantic ants, Tabitha saw that her green front door was nothing but buried fragments.

She stood up from her house’s shattered foundations, and poured a glug of water on the shining seed she’d planted there. A bright celestial shoot, glassy and glowing, sprang up from the ruins of her old life. This wasn’t home; it was just a place now. All her warm loving memories of them weren’t rooted here. They were hers.

Wherever I go… they go too. Something startled her; a small purring pressure across her calf. A prowling black fuzzchunk of feline indifference.

‘Hey you,’ Tabitha said tenderly. Crouching in surprise to fuss over him, she gave Mog some firm loving strokes and a kiss on his scarred head, where he rubbed strongly against her hand and circled her with his tail up. She felt his ear flick against her wrist as she stroked him. An Olympic purrer.

‘…I didn’t bring a plastic bag for you,’ Tabitha tutted. ‘But, I think you’ll manage,’ she said with a smile. He had more muscle than she remembered; he’d seen some action. With a last firm nuzzle against her, Mog was already wandering off on his way. He was loving life; an apex predator among the mice and sparrows. The Mog Dynasty was probably well underway.

‘Go on, get lost,’ Tabitha told him happily, when he settled into the tall grass and glanced at her. Prowling off like a shadow, back into his own life. ‘…I love you, you stupid cat.’

Tabitha looked up from the flattened brickdust of her old bedroom, to that great shallow sky above her. To other worlds out there, and other peoples who’d needed her, where she’d become so much more. Places where she’d learned to become shouty and passionate, like she used to daydream about. There were countless more worlds she hadn’t seen.

…Yet. With one last glance and a whistle, Tabitha summoned her starship. Her black dragon thundered down to meet her; eager to get going again.

The sun poured golden over silent waves. Seven’s monstrous silhouette soared her away.

*

Old paths raced by like a dreamscape. Deep silent woods, and a town she’d wandered where a fighter jet had crashed down. They passed high over an old petrol station, where silver remains still glinted. Where she’d saved her Laika’s life. Flying on past dead motorways, and finally to molten stonework, that Seven had burned to the bedrock. Where Laika had saved her life in return.

It was a sad ruined place, but she’d wanted Seven to stop here, to pay her respects. Tabitha planted a volt-tree in the castle gardens for Liv and Will; Paul and Jim. Grieving silently in the peace.

But now that she was here, walking through the grass and saplings of a wild new meadow, on a ruined old hill… this wasn’t the home she remembered. A Safe Place, once, where she’d found a new family and their idea had taken form. Where her Laika was buried. She tried to forget that the others had ever come here. Sylvia, and Major Blake… and Chris.

Making a call on her wristcom, Tabitha left their castle ruins behind. Soon there’d be a Guardian drone incoming. A construction model, with instructions for a certain memorial. Only a modest marker, for strong humble people who’d started everything. A rough-edged standing stone, carved with an ornate spirit, and words for anyone who wandered here in years to come:

HERE LIE THE FIRST GHOSTS.

*

Far to the north, on the Isle of Skye, Tabitha watched with Seven from a high windblown moor. At least, she did once Barkless had peeled Sea Mist away from her sister, in all her teary tight-hugging relief. Thanking Dark Storm endlessly for avenging her father’s father, and demanding grizzly details of the battle while she picked through her curly red mane. Tabitha sat and suffered her impromptu grooming with a grin.

Down in the distance, construction drones swarmed in the silvery sunlight. Guardian dropships came and went endlessly over a great dark loch. A hidden village of small slate huts was growing quickly there, and bustling with glad survivors among the alien soldiers and aid workers. Bright volt-shrubs grew like pests, bringing wild current back to the world.

The Guardians’ futuristic field hospital was still hard at work; a dropship full of human survivors had been flown in from New York in horrific shape. Alien medics and nurses were doing all they could to stabilise Alex’s former captives. Getting them checked and hydrated, and healing from vile conditions, in safe warm hospital beds. The Guardians’ many species mesmerised them, while their gradual nourishment brought them back from starvation; though many of those people would never be the same. All they could do now was try to outweigh that horror with happier lives, and new loving friends and families, here by the lakeshore on Skye.

At least that bastard’s finally dead, Tabitha told herself. He can’t hurt anyone now. She dreaded to think about it, the fate of humanity, if she’d lost that fight in New York. But her homeworld was finally safe.

…If only it still felt like home.

The Watchers were dead and gone. The Guardians’ global forces were rooting out every hive systematically, leaving only natural wilderness in their place. Scoured by drones for every last spider-seed. The ruins of towns and capitals were left empty, for humanity to rebuild in their own good time.

Alex’s tragic creations, formed with sinister materials that the Watchers had left behind them, were getting all the help that the Guardians’ medical ships could provide. Those of his sad experiments who survived were already being shipped back to the Ministry’s isolated outer worlds, under maximum security, with the hopes that Lotor might lend his experience in aiding them. If not by helping those creations to manage their afflictions, then at least giving them safe lives and gentle care, far beyond Alex’s twisted intentions for them.

‘You always were one for solemn silences,’ said Natalie, walking up beside her. Smiling sadly as Tabitha turned to her.

‘I’m really glad you’re ok,’ said Grace, holding her big sister’s hand. Moving in for a tight hug, when Tabitha crouched and smiled warmly before her. Robert wasn’t much for hugging any more; he only gave her the kind of stern handshake he’d picked up from watching Nat’s husband.

‘…I would say we owe you a great debt, and all that,’ Steve smiled, ‘but we don’t actually have anything to give you. Unless you like rocks and ration packs, in which case take your pick. But… y’know what I’m saying.’ Tabitha grinned in reply, as Steve gave her a hefty hug in gratitude.

‘Tabitha, I have to say it. I’m just so sorry for leaving all of you, at the castle. And for taking your car,’ Natalie sighed sadly. Welling up at the guilt of it all. ‘Everyone would still be alive, if it wasn’t for me. If I’d just… if only I could go back and change things–

‘Same,’ Tabitha interrupted gently. ‘After what happened to your dad… I do understand why you did it, for your family,’ she said sadly. ‘But, if you feel like you owe something, then do me a favour?’

‘Anything,’ Nat replied solemnly.

‘Take the lead, for the sake of those people down there,’ said Tabitha, with a glance at the growing village below them. Nat and Steve nodded in reply. ‘Earth’s changing,’ Tabitha continued. ‘I want good people to take things forward, and keep the Ministry’s involvement here at arm’s length. Despite Minister Saa, and Minister Irren, other people will try it,’ she warned them. ‘We’re trading with Serenity now. But just make sure we don’t become Serenity. Every deal, every decision, has to be for the good of humanity first.’

‘Majesty,’ Nat replied, shaking her hand firmly as she smiled. ‘You’ve got a deal.’

*

‘…You been taking extra queen classes or something?’ Big Fish rumbled to Tabitha, as they walked away toward the Guardians’ massing ranks in the distance. ‘All this diplomacy n’ delegation you’ve got going on.’

‘Shh,’ Aelu replied sharply. Nodding them on towards a military mass-funeral on the moors ahead, while Natalie and her villagers followed behind.

Tabitha and her Ghosts watched silently, surrounded by soldiers and tribals, as the military procession carried endless coffins past. Stone Shore watched in hard grief as his Sky Tribe’s fallen were carried by in Guardian caskets; painted by his men and women in traditional Stormworld swirls. Every lost troop and tribal was gradually laid to rest in a moor by the mountains, beneath gravestones engraved by drones.

Tabitha walked silently from the watching crowds, and laid a wreath of moonflowers by the war’s new monument. A massive standing stone, carved into twining branches, where the words and patterns of many different peoples had been engraved. Its design meant many worlds; one victory. Stepping back from the monolith’s shadow, she joined in the crowd’s solemn applause.

*

Tabitha and her Ghosts watched the sunlit village thriving vividly nearby, as a hulking dropship hovered down behind them by the loch. Natalie and the twins were waving to them from their small new garden, where they’d been putting down potatoes like Jim had shown them at the castle. Steve stood from his rock-laying to wave with a grin.

‘You’re sure you don’t want to stay here? Looks peaceful,’ said Reigo.

‘Well… I’m thinking that’s probably why I don’t want to,’ Tabitha smiled back. ‘I’m not sure I’m cut out for peaceful any more.’ She’d already mulled it over, on her way back here from Wales. To stay here with the last of humanity, and rebuild Earth; somewhere between Skye’s ancient stones and Serenity’s cutting-edge technology. Or she could settle back into her hut on Stormworld, an astro-hermit among the tribe she’d found there, with Fishbowl gardening and Seven reigning over that wintry world.

Or she could vanish again, into that dark sacred void beyond all skies. The more she’d thought about it, the clearer it became. There wasn’t any decision to make.

…It’s what a Ghost should do.

*

The Ghosts’ hybrid dropship thundered away into orbit, with Seven soaring on at their side. Tabitha watched Earth’s giant curve beneath them, and the Guardian starships protecting it; bringing back power with their vast fleets and forces that remained. A growing web of light across the world.

The blazing sun crested over it; a nuclear glow across her peaceful homeworld. But it just wasn’t home any more. Her memories weren’t down there; she carried them with her.

She was ready for more.

*

On a distant world, a red middle-aged man kissed his young son on the forehead, and closed the storybook that’d sent him to sleep. As quietly as he could, he pulled the bedcovers over and tucked the boy in, and closed the door silently behind him.

The man walked quietly down the hallway, rubbing his tired eyes with rough tattooed hands. Big day tomorrow; he needed some decent sleep. Boss wanted to give someone a dose of motivation, first thing in the morning; some off-worlder who’d skipped on his debts. Nothing a few severed fingers wouldn’t fix. One way or another, Boss’d get his money. He always did.

The man sighed wearily; the prospect of work always put a thirst in him.

‘...Why not,’ he muttered to himself, walking through his pristine kitchen to a stark smooth drinks cabinet. Pouring himself a quiet measure of golden spirit, then a little more on top. His wife would kill him if she knew about it. He took a guilty gulp, sighing as the hot taste went down. He stood stock-still, setting the glass down on the counter… and had a bad feeling about something. Was there someone–

The quietest footstep. A tall shadow gripped his skull with split-second strength and broke his neck. With gloved hands, the big silhouette shouldered the tattooed corpse to disappear it. Nothing personal; just business. He broke people.

His silhouette crept back outside through the sliced-out window; he resealed it and vanished in the night. Another name off the list; another stack of gold bullion with his name on it. Racking up the total in his head.

70

A strange ship descended on Stormworld, where the young and old of Sky Tribe gathered to watch by the stony lakeshore. Howling and cheering when they saw their Sky Queen returning to them with their brave warriors, and her mismatched retainers in strange foreign clothes. The fierce mountains towered above them; the bamboo forest rustled like paper gold in the winter winds. The skies were darkening to a great grey snowstorm.

Stone Shore led their returning ranks along the lakeshore. The home-tribe gazed upon hardened heroes, marching proudly from heavenly star-boats, beside Dark Storm’s scarred retainers. Every son and daughter of Stormworld returning from the Great Wars bore their Sacred-Mountain shields and silvery spears with great pride. Smithed for them by older races, from far-flung realms across the stars.

Stone Shore glimpsed his young daughter among the noisy crowd, and ran to hold her happily. The rest of the tribe welcomed him back with loud shouts and open arms. Though when the cubs and elders asked after missing warriors, and the fate of Cold Moon, and Swift Blood… a heavy silence followed among their army of many clans. When Stone Shore broke the news of their losses, half the Tribe howled out in grief. But their returning warriors argued passionately, and would not have it.

‘Each of our warriors fought as great heroes, for many peoples, of many realms!’ Stone Shore called out to them; consoling them. ‘First Ancestor himself would have fought no greater war! Today, we mourn for those we have lost. But for all days, we honour them. They rose up fearlessly with the Sky Queen, and fought Death Gods in great fallen heavens! They bought your peaceful lives with their blood and spears, with their knives and bow-arms! You will honour them, and tell tales of them at your Hearthfires. Your kin fought and died in greater strength and glory than you may ever know. Mourn for yourselves, my Sky Tribe, that you must live and die in peaceful years, in the vast shadow of your ancestors’ glory. They are to you as Sacred Mountain is to its forests and foothills. Honour them! Paint their names in the Pale Caves! You raised the greatest warriors this world has known.’

‘They will be honoured!’ the Tribe called out together, in strong solemn unison.

*

‘…So what’s the deal, are you gonna rule here now?’ Big Fish asked Tabitha, further down the rocky lakeshore. The Ghosts watched silently around her.

‘They already have a ruler,’ Tabitha shrugged happily, with a nod to Stone Shore in the distance. Leading his people in prayer, with his little girl hoisted on his shoulders. ‘The Tribe didn’t have to come and fight for me, or Serenity. But they came anyway,’ she said. ‘I owed them peaceful lives as payment, without any more Watchers or Guardians coming into their lives. And here we are.’ Smiling peacefully, Tabitha glanced around at an empty world, more beautiful and bleak than she remembered. Empty of mining engines and mercenary soldiers; only mothbirds and strange deer in the distance. The Tribe had agreed that their part in this war would finally buy their solitude back.

…The Watchers would’ve come here too. It was their map that led me here, after all.

Sea Mist and Barkless were smiling to be home again. Aelu and Reigo watched it all in silent shivering discomfort. Graceful birds hunted bone-armoured fish in the lake beside them. Big primal bugs crawled among the leaves and pipe-mould on the tree line. Seven circled high over the turquoise lake and roared out his dominance here, at least for a short while. Tabitha watched him happily.

Wherever he goes, that’s his kingdom, she considered. Such is the way of Seven.

With their prayer to First Ancestor concluded, Stone Shore and his warriors were being mobbed for tales of their great battles in distant realms. Reigo smiled to see their chattering warriors, with Grey-Furs and Polar brutes alongside them, using their arms to explain the sheer size of the terrible silver spiders. Every telling exaggerated the Hell Spiders further, and Minnis-Re’s great heavenly Kannons were already the size of tower blocks. Cubs and elders listened in wonder to their gorgon tales, and the courage of their mighty fallen.

Tabitha saw these people’s future mapped out for them, right there on the windblown lakeshore. Stone Shore, stronger and wiser, led the changing Tribe from its heart. Guessing at Tabitha’s intentions, Barkless gladly presented her with the black bony ring that’d followed her everywhere.

The chattering Tribe turned in sudden silence when Dark Storm, their mighty Sky Queen, approached in her antlered crown. Stone Shore held her look for a moment, and glanced around at his world of peaceful solitude. A silent thank-you in his pale scarred stare.

‘Kneel, Stone Shore,’ Tabitha told him, in the patchy Stormish she’d been picking up from her retainers. Taking the crown from her head as he knelt uncertainly. ‘…And rise, as King.’ He watched her in shock as she crowned him. Standing again to see Dark Storm smiling, and turning to a crowd full of howling cheers. ‘Sky Tribe’s yours.’

*

Tabitha paused from her hike for a moment; smiling around at the primal world and its distant soaring skywhales. The sun shone golden through wreathing mists, where bright blue mothbirds darted by. The Tribe was leading her gang up the slopes of Sacred Mountain, back towards the toasty glow of the Hearthfire in the distance. Growing strong around the warmth of it, their home at New Havenhall was flowering with the coming spring.

*

Slipping from the curtained doors of their hall for a minute, amid all the Tribe’s happy shouting and dancing and root-chewing with their glorious warriors, Aelu stepped outside for some fresh freezing air on the mountain.

She studied the new painted mural, along the length of New Havenhall; a gift from Serenity that dropships had lowered into place. It showed legendary likenesses of Deep Roots, and Cold Moon and Swift Blood, along with many more warriors alongside. All of them engaged in glorious battle, and fighting Air Demons and Death Gods in the Fallen Heaven they called Serenity. The grand artwork was a gift from Tabitha, presented to their glad rising howls; commissioned as a memorial from the peoples of Serenity.

The Tribe’s mined gold had been returned in reparation, along with considerable interest for their losses in the conflicts. But all they’d really wanted were their old lives back, lived in their hard proud Ancient Way. There were orphans to care for, and homes to rebuild. These peoples only wanted their solitude.

Aelu admired the beautiful artwork carefully, establishing her pretext; though there was no one along this side-wall to overhear it. Pulling back the coat-sleeve from her wristcom, she put in the call she’d waited so long for. The man’s encrypted message had reached her during the journey to Stormworld. She’d just needed a quiet moment to herself, to speak with him.

‘…It’s done?’ she asked the blank caller picture on her wristcom.

‘That’s the last of ‘em,’ the gravelly voice replied. A shadow from Eitse; someone who broke people. ‘He went easy.’

‘Good. Did you get the final payment?’ Aelu replied quietly.

‘Every brick of it,’ the Breaker confirmed. ‘Pleasure doing business. Anything else?’

‘No,’ Aelu replied, checking over her shoulder, to make sure no one out in the clearing had heard her. She couldn’t afford any loose ends; not now that her son’s murder by the mob had been avenged so neatly. Taking off to new galaxies, where Ministry justice couldn’t find her, was the best escape plan she could ever dream of.

‘No more contact. Ever,’ she said. ‘This never happened.’

‘Sure,’ the hard voice replied. ‘Take care of yourself.’ With that, the line went dead. Aelu was startled when she turned and saw Tabitha, climbing down from Havenhall’s beam-trunks beside her; she’d just added some final fresh growth to seal up some holes in the roof-bark. They watched one another for a silent second.

‘…How much did you hear?’ Aelu said grimly.

‘About what?’ Tabitha replied, feigning confusion. ‘I thought it never happened.’ Aelu watched carefully as Tabitha dusted her hands off from her roofing work, and walked away down the building’s outer wall.

‘Hey… are we ok?’ Aelu said tensely. ‘Do you want to know what that was about?’

‘Not really,’ Tabitha replied, with a dark doubting look. ‘You told me your story, the first time we came here together. I know you’re heartbroken for losing your son. And I heard the Ministry vaults were missing some gold bullion,’ she shrugged. ‘For everything you’ve done to help me, I’m going to help you in return, this one time. So yeah, if anyone asks… I didn’t hear a word of it. But if you ever do anything else that you have to hide from me? I’ll ask you to disappear.’ Aelu nodded in reply, watching her friend’s disappointment. Tabitha glanced at her sadly, and walked off towards the clearing in silence.

*

Tabitha hadn’t told Sea Mist and Barkless just why she wanted to disappear from Havenhall, and Aelu, so quickly. But her two retainers gladly obliged.

They’d flown Seven down to the lakeshore, where the sunlight shone silver on the cold glinting water. The breeze guttered Barkless Tree’s crackling campfire as he circled it with stones. Sea Mist set a thick glass pot in the bright flames, and ripped up their tea leaves while the water boiled.

All three watched the gentle lake-tide lapping on the pebbles, and sat in peaceful no-thought together. This was all she’d ever wanted, really; Tabitha couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so contented.

‘…To Deep Roots,’ she said a little later, proposing their toast with a sad smile, as they clinked their carved-glass cups together. Sipping his favourite tea, and watching the world from his favourite spot. Tabitha couldn’t help but think of the old man’s poem, engraved over the New Ministry’s gates on Serenity.

…I must light Fierce-Hope in all others. I will build Sacred Mountain anew.

A short while later, a call on Tabitha’s wristcom interrupted their skimming-stone competition. She didn’t mind; Barkless Tree’s throws were killing her tallied score.

‘Majesty,’ said the smart man in the video feed. ‘You’re looking well.’

‘Just Tabitha, now,’ she replied happily. ‘Stone Shore likes the crown much more anyway. And you scrub up really well by the way, First Minister.’

‘Thanks,’ Irren chuckled back. ‘Well I did say I’d lay off the booze, if you got me the job. Sobriety does strange things to me. Wearing suits, who’d have thought it?’ he added, with a puzzled look. ‘Anyway, I only wanted to check you were still in one piece.’

‘Yep. For now,’ Tabitha replied warmly. Glancing at her wrist, where her formerly severed hand had knitted back together with the rest of her. ‘How’s everything going? How’s Saa?’

‘Hi!’ Saa replied, budging him over on the video feed. ‘Congratulations on Earth! And what with Alex, and that terrible news about the prisoners, gods! Are you alright? Is the village on Earth ok? I’m so sorry for everyone’s losses, did Sky Tribe like the mural though? I hope the artist I chose caught their likenesses accurately, I’d hate for the Tribe to have to think who’s that? I didn’t know that person–

‘Yes. To all of that,’ Tabitha chuckled back. ‘The Tribe love it, Saa. Excellent work.’ Saa smiled back warmly, and missed her terribly, and did her best to hide her feelings. She strove to regain her classical poise and Ministerial composure; she’d been taking night classes to that end.

‘Did Lotor start his work with Alex’s… I hate to use the word creations,’ Tabitha said uncertainly.

‘They’re doing fine,’ Irren assured her. ‘The professor’s hard at work with possibilities towards gene therapy, I believe. Most of those poor buggers don’t have any capacity as regards learning, or socialising with one another. But, we’re giving them the best quality of life we can manage. As far from the Ministry homeworlds as possible, naturally. They’ll be alright.’

‘Thank you. Both of you,’ Tabitha replied gladly. ‘…Well, I guess we did it.’

‘That we did,’ Irren smiled back. ‘We won’t rebuild Serenity overnight, but we’ll get there. I fully expect Earth to do the same. We’ll give your world all the help it needs.’

‘Thank you. All of you,’ Tabitha replied happily. ‘Oh, and Reigo’s Guardian status?’

‘Designated a Special Operative, as we agreed,’ Irren replied. ‘He’s your asset now, but still technically a Guardian Marine. He’ll be expected to report back frequently with any developments. Serenity needs his eyes and ears on the Watcher threat, as a matter of galactic security.’

‘Of course,’ Tabitha agreed. ‘We’ll keep you posted.’

‘So, any plans for what’s next?’ said Saa, budging Irren over again on the screen. Tabitha smiled silently, and glanced at the ancient world around her. Its windblown lake; its gorgeous mountains. Vast and fierce as old tales. And a healing starship, there by Sacred Mountain. Not so much waiting as looming. Well… it wasn’t like the Watchers were using it any more.

‘Hm. I’ve got one or two ideas,’ Tabitha replied with a smile.

*

Sky Tribe saw them off with a happy racket of howling and waving, as the Sky Queen climbed her great bird-spirit beneath dark snowstorm skies. Her retainers boarded their strange black dropship by the wind-rippling lake. Brash cubs ran from the crowd to shout goodbyes to them, watching the twin shapes in wonder as they lifted away. Dark Storm waved back to them with a bright crackling current; a happy shrinking shape above the lakeshore.

With a final parting roar across this wild frozen world, Seven tore away for the great black mothership, lurking colossal by Sacred Mountain.

…I can’t just call it The Mothership, Tabitha told herself. It’s my home.

EPILOGUE

Breathing deeply as she lay on her strange new bed, Tabitha studied the ribbed white ceiling of her pale luxury suite. Dreaming of distant worlds. New bio-speakers gushed catchy pop music through her Princely rooms; she tapped her hard black feet to the tune. Stretching contentedly, she got up quickly and straightened her fresh-cleaned catsuit. There was work to do.

Tabitha padded through her soft-lit lounge to straighten her book-stacks. Her grand living desk was cluttered with new projects and diagrams; doodles and photos. Celestial potted plants and giant Serenian fruits filled every spare surface.

She was still learning to control the Watchers’ more basic creations, at the cellular level, to finally do some good with them. To try to spread life, where this black ship had only ever brought death and destruction. Still, she supposed that those spiders were just another kind of plant, after all. She’d just have to practise.

Having studied the Watchers’ endless star maps of potential dominion, there were so many planets out there to discover. Now, she had the power to help those worlds fight back. There were so many beautiful sights in this universe, and such horrors too. She wanted to see it all; to meet every species. To face and fight every terror, and root them out, and grow Life and Virtue and Fierce-Hope in their place.

Finger-combing her curls, Tabitha studied herself in a grand scaled mirror. Wearing a harder look than she remembered, from eyes that’d seen so much more. But for once in her life, the future was her own.

Life has no meaning, but the meaning we choose. She’d glimpsed the infinite on Serenity, but it hadn’t given her an answer to this existence. So, she’d decided on one for herself.

…The meaning is Life. Creation, for its own sake. Life, light and legacy. She caught sight of Fishbowl’s reflection, floating in the suite’s far corner. Smiling to see it safe and hard at work on her room’s new garden, where fairy-lit vines crept glassy up the corner walls. Vincent slept in her parka jacket, bunched up on the bedside bio-table.

…My monsters.

Heading outside into the ship’s bright corridors, Tabitha passed him happily in the fleshy main hangars. He was scarred all over, and utterly exhausted, but finally sleeping peacefully. Her Seven. She smiled to see him resting so contentedly, and walked on quietly past the huge hangar doors.

Further down the pale protein corridor, Tabitha passed bustling chambers that held her ragtag forces. Homeless loyalists from Serenity, and vigilante fans of her footage from the Ministry’s wider worlds; along with a small few warriors from Sky Tribe who’d insisted on travelling with her in search of glory. Most of those Tribals were Barkless Tree’s retainers; progressive sorts without much time for the Ancient Way of Stormworld. They were all resting and eating in the ship’s strange garden caves, by a clear placid pool amid the Watchers’ indoor forest. Quickly becoming one big clan.

Walking on, Tabitha couldn’t feel anything untoward about the ship any more; not since she’d dipped inside its strange alter-dimension and finally taken control of it. If there’d been any trace left of the Watchers’ malicious technology, still lingering in the ship’s living walls around her, then the Celestial’s circuit-veined presence must’ve rooted it out already.

‘Yo,’ said an alien giant, wandering out from the rec rooms beside her.

‘Hey Fish,’ she said happily, as they walked on together down the stark main corridor. ‘Finding your way around ok?’

‘Nope. This ship’s weird as hell,’ he rumbled back. ‘Is it still The Ship though? Did you think of a name yet?’

‘Yeah, I think so,’ Tabitha replied, smiling up at him. ‘The Silence.’ The grand doors ahead melted open onto the ship’s white bridge, still healing from the conflicts. Filled with a busy misfit family hard at work.

Reigo smiled dutifully as the Captain passed him. Sea Mist and Barkless nodded respectfully as Tabitha strode on towards the great starred darkness ahead. There wasn’t a single window in this ship’s armoured skin; only changing cells that mirrored the view outside. A flawless vision of space coated the curved ceiling around them, conjured in real-time on the bridge’s living walls.

‘Ma’am,’ said Sunshine, with a brief smiling nod from the ship’s gunnery consoles. Further stations were being checked and tinkered with by Reigo’s Black Squadron, while Big Fish took his trainee seat as Assistant Engineer.

Tabitha’s crew were still getting to grips with the bizarre floating icons that the Watchers had used to control their vessel; a monstrous black ship with a new Celestial soul. Setting sail for the great starlit void.

At least one of us is picking it up quickly, Tabitha considered. Probably just as well. She’s our pilot, after all.

‘Where to, Captain?’ said Aelu, sitting smartly at the curving main console to her right.

‘Here,’ Tabitha replied confidently, tapping a miniature planet in the star-web hologram laid before her. ‘Anywhere there’s Watchers.’ Aelu nodded at her strange living console, trying to ignore the atrocious Trade-Language grammar. Being extra-careful as she tapped their next coordinates into the strange pads of leathery gel at her fingertips.

‘How are we looking, Lieutenant?’ said Tabitha, turning to her left. ‘Good to go?’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Reigo replied, checking grand glowing readouts of the ship’s anatomy. ‘All weapons are healed and operational. All systems look, er… healthy.’

‘Course is set, Captain. Good to jump,’ Aelu added. Tabitha smiled at the view ahead of them. An ocean of stars beyond the ship’s vast vision.

‘Let’s go,’ she said happily.

‘…Hm. You should probably think of something more captain-like,’ Aelu muttered quietly. ‘Something catchy.’

‘Yeah, I’ll work on it,’ Tabitha mumbled back. Aelu smiled at her console, moving her fingers along the ship’s glowing control-sphere. Firing up its power-cores into colossal new life, until every crewmember felt its great static thunder in their chests.

Out in the void, the Silence vanished suddenly in a blinding supernova. Launching a new tribe forward at lightspeed, for strange distant worlds in the darkness.

Leading them all, a hybrid human; gazing happily into star-bleeding oblivion. A new breed of Watcher.

A Ghost.

* * *

* * *

What did you think? Please leave your review here at Amazon. All reviews are greatly appreciated, and I’ll plant a seed for each one I get. It’s what Fishbowl, Deep Roots, and Tabitha would want.

More books by the author:

Tabitha

Sky Queen