Chapter Thirty-Two

Achmed whipped them through a whirlwind tour. "We sit under the cloud layer, usually a lot deeper than this, but we heard Van's pip and came up higher for him."

The bulky ore processor was a long cylindrical tube at the core, nestled in the center of six hydrogen-filled pontoons that helped hold it up. Achmed took them through a series of air-filled corridors inside the pontoons and then through another airlock leading into the central facility. They walked past windows looking over giant belts moving crushed rock toward giant automated foundries. The gaping mouths belched fire and hot gases.

"We rip up the ground using dredges, drag it back, process it, and then the carriers come take the product. We have one last dredge we're pulling up right now. The Triple-Two is a solid performer, my boys make good money during their rotations. And we're all fractional owners." Achmed was proud of his operation. "We should be able to get that last lot processed before the carrier gets here. So as much as we'd like to be courteous hosts, we're going to be rather too busy." Achmed took them to rooms near the center of the processor. He cracked open a door and led both of them into one. Near the top of the cylinder the rooms featured skylights that they could look up through. Several larger balloons hung above them, and the undercloud layer above that. It was always weird looking up to see an unbroken layer of cloud, Timas thought.

"We have a room for the two of you in this spare room. You'll have to share, it's all we have. Katerina will know when meals are. Sounds like you've both been through a lot, so rest up, though you're free to roam wherever. Danger areas won't open to your request, Katerina. You can only open the door if you're allowed to be in there."

Timas crawled onto the small pullout next to the bed. Someone had already been in the room to get it ready for them. The Aeolians and their almost-telepathic technology. Creepy.

"By the way," Achmed paused at the door, "you're in rough shape, kid. Pretty bruised. You might want to take a spin in our medical pod, get yourself checked over."

"I just need rest," Timas said. The soft bed felt incredibly luxurious. It conformed to his back perfectly.

"Okay." Achmed walked off.

Something occurred to Timas. "You didn't tell them about the Swarm." Katerina sat down on the bed. "I did. The crew took a vote and decided to keep going. They're not sure what to make of all I sent them—the whole story—over the lamina here, but they noted that when the carrier arrives they'll get a data dump of all the latest news from it. They keep pretty quiet, they don't want any pirates finding them floating around, and under the clouds is hard to contact anyone."

"Oh."

"How are you doing?" She leaned over and propped her head up on a hand. Timas linked his hands together underneath the back of his head. "I feel guilty, leaving Luc dead in the hold. I'm tired. I want to get back to my city."

"At least you have one to return to," Katerina said softly.

Timas bit his lip. "I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"Not your fault. It's not like you invaded the city." She sighed. "I never gave a lot of thought to the worlds out there. You grow up hearing about how the Satraps used to rule all the worlds, how dangerous they were and how we all once lived under their thumb except the Ragamuffins. Now this new alien thing is invading us. I used to think all I had to worry about was my city."

"Me too."

Timas closed his eyes. His entire body throbbed. Bruised. Adrenaline had kept him from noticing it before. But now that he knew he was safe his body seemed determined to catalogue its hurts. His eyelids scratched over his eyes when he closed them, and sleep lurked right around the edges of mind. But it never came.

"I'm just lying here, going over everything I did and whether I screwed anything up," Katerina said. The bed creaked as she sat back up. "I don't want to think about it all anymore. Come on, let's go."

"Where?" Timas sat up and looked at her.

"Anywhere. Let's wander. Let's just do something. I don't want to sit here and think about what happened over and over again. Lunch is coming soon, why fall asleep just to wake up again?" Timas groaned. He couldn't get to sleep. And he didn't want to sit in the room alone. "Okay. I'll follow."

"Great."

Katerina followed a mental map he couldn't see. She looped them around through the galley, where a pair of pale-skinned Aeolians sat. One of them napped, his face cradled in his arms on the table. The other nodded as they passed, then returned to sipping whatever was in his steaming mug. There were bags under his eyes. The crew had been pulling a long shift.

After they passed through the galley Timas looked back. "Are there a lot of foojies in your cities?" She didn't answer for a while, just pursed her lips and kept walking ahead. Finally, near another door, she paused. "Please don't use that word."

"Which one?"

"Foojies."

He looked at her, confused. "I don't understand. What did I do wrong?" Katerina sighed. "Timas, it's a pejorative. My father's a 'foojie.' My mother's from New Anegada. They settled here. Dad was a refugee, he came from Astragalai. He fled both the League and the Gahe."

"Gahe?" Timas asked.

"Aliens. With tentacled tongues." She shuddered and made a face. "They use the tongues to pick things up and build things. Nasty."

"But he's seen them?" Timas wanted to know. That sounded similar to the alien he saw on the surface. He wanted to know more. It was almost a forbidden topic on Yatapek. The scars of their history still ran too close to the surface. But he'd seen one, and he wanted to know more about them. His whole life had been turned upside down by that glimpse. And his world was threatened by another.

"Gahe, yes. His family used to be owned by a prominent household on the planet. After emancipation he spent time in a human reservation, one that was liberated by Ragamuffin forces during the uprising." Timas didn't see why the word irritated her so much. It was commonly used. Just like calling Aeolians zombies. "What do you call us?"

"What do you mean?"

"We call Aeolians 'zombies' sometimes. What do you call us?"

"Poor." Katerina waved her hand and the door opened. Timas didn't have time to snap back, they stood at the entry to the control center.

Seven miners sat at real control panels, complete with multiple screens set into the wooden-looking surfaces. "Can't they just use their minds, like you do?" Timas wanted to know.

"They could," Katerina said. "The build date on the facility is recent enough, it crawls with overlaid information. But I think the crew here uses the backups. Just in case."

"She's right." Achmed sat in the center of the room, monitoring everything. "It's a quirk of mine, mainly. I used to be a shiphand aboard a Ragamuffin merchantship doing the upstream run from New Anegada through the DMZ to Bujantjor. Raga don't trust lamina a hundred percent."

"Why not?" Timas asked. He'd thought they all pretty much lived in their heads, computers handing them visions of the world around them. This was the first Aeolian he'd met who said otherwise.

"The Satraps used to be able to take it over, used it to crawl up into your head."

"But they're all gone now. Suicided, killed, or disappeared," Timas said.

"Doesn't mean the risk is gone." Achmed shrugged. "Call me old fashioned. Traditional." He grinned. Katerina walked over to a man who was using a pair of joysticks. "Really?" She was answering a question he'd asked her. "Sure, I'd love to."

The man stood up and waved at the joysticks. "It's the last run."

"What's she doing?" Timas asked Achmed.

"Here." He tapped a screen and dragged the edge larger so that it took up the better part of the control panel surface between them.

They looked down at the surface of Chilo. Timas looked up, and Katerina had closed her eyes, accessing information on how to operate the device. She grabbed the joysticks and the surface jumped toward them.

A giant, serrated revolving band drilled into the ground and the whole picture vibrated as rock and debris rolled into the mouth of the hopper.

"The crew thought that someone honored by chance to be an avatar should also get honored with the chance to bring up the last load. She's safe. It's easy enough to operate." Achmed grinned. "Just needs a human nudge and oversight."

Five minutes later the crew broke out into applause as the dredge pulled the band back itself, like a giant tongue, and the ground dropped away. It began its slow climb back up.

Katerina let go of the joysticks and shook the controller's hand. "Thank you."

"Our pleasure."

Achmed cocked his head. "Well, it's going to be a few minutes while it rises. Lunch." Katerina walked past Timas, and he hurried up to catch her. "Are you ignoring me?" She walked faster. "You asked if we used any nasty words to describe you. As if that somehow might excuse your using similar words. That's deflecting the issue, Timas."

"I'm sorry!"

She ignored the apology.

Timas sat at the table with the crew, but he was an outsider. Katerina laughed at unspoken jokes shared between them in the silent air, and spoke to them about cities and places he'd never been. At least the small boxes of tasty orange-flavored chicken and rice with fried vegetables filled him. Achmed must have noticed the weary look Timas had, because he leaned over. "The carrier will be here in the morning. You'll be home soon enough. It's all okay."

But Timas wasn't so sure. Not after what he'd been through.

Chapter Thirty-Three

The two pipiltin and their escorts, warriors, Ollin, and Pepper had all gathered by the elevator exit to the topmost layer of Yatapek. Pepper figured that two hundred stood ready. The beginnings of the coup, all ready to move out.

"Pepper!" Itotia pushed her way through the crowd. "You can't do this. Where's Ollin?"

"On the elevator, coming up." The groundsuit whined as it restarted and walked to meet her halfway through the loose crowd.

"I told him to wait," Itotia muttered. "But maybe he was right, and we should have tried sooner."

"What?" Pepper saw that some of the warriors paid very close attention to their conversation.

"We can't do this anymore. It would split the city, and we need to remain whole. We can't afford a coup, and more importantly, we simply have no time for something like this."

"What happened?"

"The Swarm is moving out in an armada of airships. We're getting radio reports from private airships passing by. It's coming toward us."

"When will it get here?"

"Between twenty-four and forty hours. They're staying together, but the ships that spotted them say it looks like hundreds of airships are flying in formation, maybe thousands. We're offering refuge for noninfected ships and people."

Everyone nearby muttered. Pepper ignored the word spreading through the crowd. "You have to get xocoyotzin on the ground, now, if you all want to live. That was my reason for following your husband. We have to confront your leaders. There's a chance the Swarm may go straight to trying to find the aliens and leave your city alone, but it's not likely."

"I can do that. Let me talk to Camaxtli. I'm like a daughter to him, and Ollin really rubs him the wrong way."

"And then we need real battle plans for their attack." Pepper raised his voice for all to hear. "Every person in this city needs to be armed. Every nook and cranny has to be a place to kill the infected. Fallback points, zones, you name it. The Swarm must pay such a high cost, it decides you are not worth it."

"You think we stand a chance against it?" a warrior asked.

"If you throw yourselves into it." Pepper looked at them all. "When I faced the Swarm in orbit, it asked for a truce from me. It was scared of the price a direct fight would be. I say you force it to make the same offer again."

The warriors nodded. "Yes. Make it pay for every inch."

"We need to start getting weapons made." He wanted people armed with the billhooks he'd shown them how to make. "And women and children armed. We have little time to prepare." Itotia nodded. "We start spreading the word. And Pepper, I promise we'll get xocoyotzin on the ground now, just as soon as the weather lets us drop the elevator and anchor. We've circled around the Great Storm to the point that we're close to where the cuatetl is. It is doable." She left, and Pepper looked around at his new army.

And smiled.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Timas woke up to the sound of thunder, and then a series of thuds. He shot up out of his bunk and stood up, swaying to the motion of the carrier.

"It's okay." Katerina held on to the side of the bed. "They're adjusting height." The carrier was about an hour away and had hailed them, Katerina said. "We should eat breakfast, and then go meet it. And you should put your shirt back on."

He'd been too hot last night, and only she knew how to change the room's temperature. Timas pulled his shirt on. She was still angry with him.

Several scrambled eggs and bacon strips tasted heavenly. And there were sticky buns, sugar-crusted. As well as biscuits, which he piled with butter and honey.

The crew crammed in the galley, in good spirits, talking about what they'd do with their money as they rotated out and the next group came in.

"We save some of the good stuff for the last big meal," one of them grinned through his eggs. "A celebration."

They talked about pools and beaches in bubbles floating near their cities. A few said they wanted to take trips up elevator strings to space.

These hardworking, dust-covered men, were rich beyond Timas's imagination. And they were hardly at the apex of Aeolian life.

They called his people poor.

Katerina hadn't even been trying to be cruel, it was just a fact, he thought. He left his last biscuit uneaten and returned to the room while Katerina was distracted and laughing with one of the crew. He closed the bathroom door behind him.

Things seemed normal. The madness of the pirates, of Pepper and his crazy stories, aliens on the surface, that all felt distant, like it had hardly happened when he thought about it now here in the strange calm of the giant processor. Maybe the Aeolians had contained the Swarm with their advanced technologies.

If so, maybe xocoyotzin would be needed again.

All those sweets.

He had overeaten, and he needed to take care of it.

Katerina kicked the door in and grabbed his collar. "No you don't." Timas squirmed and slapped her hands away. Light from the room glinted off her silvered eye as she reached back in and pulled him out. "You need to stop doing that."

"First you're angry with me, now you're here dragging me out of the bathroom. Suppose I wasn't just standing there . . ."

"About to throw up again? I had a feeling."

"Leave me alone. You don't understand."

"That you need to be thin to fit in those suits? I understand. But you're damaging yourself, Timas. You can't do this."

"I have responsibilities to the city."

She hadn't let go of his collar. "When we get to the city, on the carrier, we're going to get you to see a doctor. There are things that we can do for you."

"Oh sure. And do those things come free of charge?" Timas twisted free. "I am, as you pointed out, poor. We can't pay to have technology injected into us that turns our bodies into perfect figures."

"Be a dick about it, Timas. Just keep at it. I can't fix everyone at Yatapek, but I do have enough to help you."

Timas walked out of the room. "I don't need your pity."

"You never had it." The hull shuddered. Katerina paused to look up into the air. "The carrier is here." They dropped the argument to leave the room. As they walked down the corridor Katerina frowned.

"What's wrong?" Timas asked.

"It's weird. The carrier isn't talking to us, usually by now their crew would be part of the immediate Consensus. Or at least all over the lamina."

Katerina raised a hand.

"It's the Swarm, isn't it?" Timas said.

"I don't know, but let's go to the control room."

"Good idea."

They detoured. Katerina led the way, as Timas had only figured out the relatively straight route from the galley to their room. Achmed, alone in the control room, didn't even look up when they entered. He slapped the console and swore.

"Swarm." Katerina grabbed Timas by the elbow and pulled him over to a screen. One of the pale-skinned Aeolians lay on the floor near the middle of the docking tube. He held on to his arm and groaned. Four men shuffled down the dock, chasing the miners who retreated.

"Shut the airlock," Timas said.

One of the miners stepped forward with a pipe wrench. He hit the first one of the Swarm, but the other three piled on him.

The entryway slammed shut. Or at least, partially shut. One of the Swarm had shoved the pipe wrench taken from the miner in between the door and the frame.

"Shit." Achmed spotted it as well. He ran out into the corridor. Smashed glass tinkled to the floor, and Achmed peered back in, ax in hand. "I'm going down to help force them back, then unconnect the dock." Katerina nodded as Achmed ran down.

"Tell them not to get bit," Timas shouted after him. On the screen the Swarm members were forcing the door open now, one of them breaking its arm from the effort.

"There are more of them." Katerina pointed to a monitor showing the other end of the dock by the carrier. Fifteen Swarm shoved their way down the tube.

"Not good. Not good." Timas watched them join the effort to force their way into the processor. "Why isn't Achmed disconnecting the tube?"

"The tube is open on the carrier's end and ours. The safety programs won't allow it to be disengaged." Katerina stared at the screen. "He needs to shut the door. Then they can manually disconnect." More bodies piled up, the Swarm mass trying to get into the ore carrier. Timas took a deep breath. What would Pepper do?

Kill them all, somehow. That seemed his sort of thing.

Timas looked over at the joysticks. "Katerina. You need to destroy the docking tube."

"What?"

"Use the dredge. Now. It's us or them."

Her eyes widened. She ran over to the control panel and grabbed them. "Achmed says you've got the right idea. It's got control jets on it, hydrogen peroxide thrusters." The screen by the joysticks lit up. The dredge looked down into the clouds below. Katerina closed her eyes and the camera position jumped to facing forward, then dissected into views facing up, sideways, and to the rear.

"Come on, come on," Timas muttered.

The dredge came about slowly, dragging hoses and belts with it. Katerina winced. "I'm causing lots of damage."

"There's no time to worry about that. We're under attack!"

She dropped the giant rock-eating belt out in front of the dredge and turned it on. The vicious teeth blurred as they spun past the camera. The dredge lumbered out from under the shadow of the processor and rose up into the space between it and the carrier. It twisted slightly in the turbulent space between the two craft.

"Here we go." Katerina tapped the console, and the dredge slipped forward and struck the docking tube.

It pierced it, sending shards of metal flying. Air puffed out in a spreading cloud. A faint mist of red covered the camera and Timas winced. Katerina groaned, probably seeing something similar in her internal world.

As the dock collapsed, Timas saw bodies tumbling out and falling slowly down toward the clouds. Ruddy Chilo air burst inside through the half-open airlock door. The miners struggled to force the nearest Swarm back through the door, and Achmed showed up, swinging the ax and using it to help them. Katerina's hands shook. She let go of the joysticks. "I don't feel so well."

"You did it." Timas looked at the screens. The miners had shut the airlock door now, although several of them looked hurt.

Achmed ran through the door of the control room, out of breath, his shirt covered in blood. He didn't have any bite marks, though. "This is insane," he said to both of them. "Tony's dead! Tony was on the docking tube, they bit him and left him in the tube, whatever they were." Katerina pursed her lips. "Tony was dead the moment those things bit him." On the screen the crew cursed and nursed their wounds, breathing fresh air out of a pair of emergency oxygen masks they passed back and forth.

"We told you," Timas said to Achmed. "This's happening all over the planet. Now some of your crew's infected, and there might not be any cities for you to return to."

"He's right." Katerina stared at the screens. She put her elbows on the edge of the panel and pushed her face into her hands.

"The carrier is moving." Achmed looked around at the screens. "And there's a second airship, off in the distance, not talking to us."

"More Swarm," Katerina predicted.

The carrier lumbered at them. "They're going to ram us." Achmed blinked. "They're actually going to ram us."

"Do something," Timas said. "Drop the ore."

Achmed looked startled. "You're talking about bankrupting us."

"It's the ore, or your lives." Timas leaned across the panel to stare at Achmed. "They'll ram us, then throw more of them through. You've seen these things face to face. They've taken whole cities . Do they look human to you?"

"You've got to do it now." Katerina walked over. "The cities will understand later, they'll work something out. But time it well, you don't want them trying to rise over us. You dump half your load now, then half when they pass underneath us. As an avatar, I beg you."

Achmed stared at her, then nodded. "You're right, that kind of load, all at once. We'll shoot right up." He turned back and stared at the screen as the carrier, long and tapered, grew larger. Timas thought he was waiting too long, but then Achmed tapped the screen several times, and hatches along the underside banged open. On the screens Timas could see that they rose, the carrier falling below them.

"He's under us," Achmed said.

The rest of the hatches on the underside swung open. Metal and metal-rich rock, slurry, and ingots tumbled out and hit the carrier, now several hundred feet below them.

Parts of the skin crumpled and the entire carrier shook with the impact of the sudden weight. It fell hard as the Triple-Two continued to ascend. Not too fast, however. Achmed tapped away, dumping air. The carrier folded at the center now, and then began to spin. Air vented with occasional bursts of fire that extinguished the moment Chilo's atmosphere snuffed it out, giving it no oxygen to burn.

"The other ship's coming," Katerina said.

Achmed strapped himself into the seat by his consoles. Now he wasn't tapping commands out manually: his eyes rolled back up into his head, concentrating. He looked posessed. "We've got a jump on it."

"What are you going to do?" Timas asked.

"We're a processor. This thing's built like a tank, ready to get down to fifty thousand feet easy, forty maybe. We dive low, gain us speed, and keep ahead of him."

"They might have bombs to drop, or missiles," Katerina said.

"Not that ship. It's a passenger ship. I don't see anything mounted on it that looks like that." Achmed had his confidence back, Timas noticed. For a while there Achmed had been trying to process what was happening and he had looked dazed.

But then if Timas hadn't heard Pepper's story, what would he have done? Timas grabbed the control panel as the floor shifted, the entire ore processor angling down until Timas felt like his feet would slide out from under him.

"We're diving. But where should we go?" Achmed looked at Katerina.

"Yatapek," Katerina and Timas said at the same time.

"Yes." Katerina stumbled back across the floor to the chair by the panel with joysticks. She snapped herself into it. "Timas, get in."

"What about the crew?"

"They're safe in the room, it's small. . . ." Achmed stopped and locked eyes with Timas. Timas swallowed. "It takes four hours, Pepper said. They start off with a heavy fever, then pass out. They awake as part of the Swarm. There are bitten people down there. What are you going to do to protect us from them?"

A long moment passed in the control center, and then Achmed tapped his throat for an announcement.

"Would everyone bitten hold up your hand?" he said.

Everyone in the hold raised their hands. Only Achmed, with his ax, had held the infected away from him. Achmed sighed. "I have to ask you all a favor," he said, voice catching. "Please get in the airlock, because you're all infected. In four hours, you'll be like . . . the things that attacked us." Confusion bubbled out, and then anger, and then finally, after a series of silent, fast arguments, they all moved into the airlock. Three of them walked to corners, arms gesturing as they talked into the air.

"What are they doing?" Timas asked.

"Last messages for loved ones." Achmed turned the screen off. "We'll give them their privacy."

"They went in there so easily." Timas still couldn't believe it. Katerina looked at Timas. "They voted. Consensus said it was the best thing to do, giving us three a chance to live."

"And you voted?" Timas let go of the console and slid his way toward an edge of the room for a chair of his own.

"We abstained."

"I know you want to give them their privacy, but we should keep an eye on them." Timas buckled himself in. "When they change, they might try and figure out how to get back in using manual access."

"We'll leave them alone for three hours," Achmed said. His voice sounded firm. It was final. The entire bulk of the processor shook. Turbulence? It shook again and Timas turned his chair around to look at Achmed. "That didn't feel quite like turbulence."

"It wasn't. We're pulling away, but they dropped an explosive, hoping to rattle us. This is as close as they'll get, distance-wise, until we stop our dive."

"And then they catch up?"

"Then they catch up," Achmed confirmed and nodded his head.

"I thought," Timas said, "that you said there weren't any weapons on that ship." Achmed held on to the edges of his panel. "I was wrong. At least they don't seem to have missiles." It was a small comfort.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Pepper walked the ranks of Yatapek's citizens among the fields of the upper level of the city, outside the circle of buildings that clustered around the atrium. The long, edged blades of billhooks smacked against each other all around him, and the crack of practice fire echoed from the top of the city. Up there Yatapek had mounted more anti-pirate batteries, pulling the long-barrelled guns out of storage from somewhere deep in the city.

All around the upper area residencies, where the few elite lived clustered around the atrium, the corn and wheat had been cut back to give fighters a good zone of fire.

When trying to arm a whole populace in the space of a couple days one realized that guns weren't realistic. There just weren't enough lying around in a city to arm everyone. And not enough time to build any. The billhook was a throwback. Nothing but a chunky, slightly curved bit of steel fastened to a pole nine feet long. But, Pepper hoped, it would let Yatapek's volunteers keep their distance and thrust at the necks of the Swarm.

Quite a few had armed themselves with pikes, hammering iron spikes onto poles, but Pepper doubted those would be effective.

The traditional macuahuitl of Yatapek, an iron or stone-studded club, would be good for skull-crushing. Pepper clambered up and sat on the roof of one of the last houses on the edge of the cleared land. He watched a group of twenty teenagers struggling to keep themselves in a tight square, imitating a phalanx. A wall of them with shields and swords made the first line, and then rows of billhooks followed, the bristling formation struggling to keep their long weapons steady in front of them. A clumsy hedgehog. They couldn't turn quickly, but stumbled apart as they tried to attack a set of scarecrows. Pepper had a secret. Now that he had mobility, late in the night he'd gone hunting. A little bit more clumsy in this metal skin, but he'd found an emergency balloon that could hold the weight of him in his new incarnation.

He'd made his way to a spot near the rim of the upper level, by a set airlocks leading out. These were service ways to let people get out on the city's skin for repairs. And a useful exit for him. He wasn't sure how long the city would hold when the Swarm came. It had only cost him a half hour's worth of power to make sure he had a backup plan. Pepper had moved quickly, in bursts. Three hours and thirty minutes of continuous power remained in the suit's batteries. Maybe, if the ten xocoyotzin now on the surface found anything, got contact with the aliens, then they'd be in a different place. With the aliens found, the Dread Council would have to move to take Chilo under its protection to gain access to their technology and resources, and protect them from the League. And the aliens might offer a hand in the fighting. Either way, if that didn't happen soon, Pepper would need to move on. Yatapek, as he saw it, was doomed.

"Pepper." Itotia walked to the wall and looked up at him. "I just got a call. There's a ship full of Swarm at the docks."

He jumped off the roof, enjoying the flight, his dreadlocks flying behind him, the suit a second skin around him, weightless.

The ground dented and threw up dust when he hit with a grin.

"How bad?"

"Some of ours are wounded. We forced them back into the ship."

"Let's see it."

Smoke roiled in the docks, and fifteen dour-looking warriors with rifles guarded one of the docking tubes.

Four dockworkers lay curled up on the grating, bleeding. A doctor crouched between them, bandaging their wounds.

"We've shut the docking tube down and forced them back," Necalli told Pepper, falling in beside him as he thudded his way from the elevator through the docks. "We can fire on the airship with our guns, if we aim just right. We can rip it apart where it sits."

"But it hasn't moved?" Pepper stared at the door. Why the hell hadn't they had the docking tubes closed? Had they just been letting people aboard?

Necalli must have guessed what he was thinking. "It won't happen again. Not everyone was taking the new policy too seriously. Now we are. And no, the ship remains docked." Pepper walked up to the wounded. "Get them in a cage, hang it over a drop hatch with a rope." Itotia tapped his shoulder. "These are fellow friends, neighbors, coworkers, family."

"For the next few hours. After that, they're Swarm."

"You push us. First, you arm women and children. The traditional among the city are outraged. Now this."

"There will be less outrage when the Swarm pours over us and people realize that they at least have a weapon in their hand to face this with."

There was a reason the ship had come early. The Swarm, with cities full of people, was now sending out emisarries. Was it arrogant, Pepper wondered, to assume that there was a message from the Swarm here?

A cage was found and dragged down, and the four feverish men bundled into it. The men were too far gone in the process to notice what was happening, but someone slipped food and water into the cage anyway.

The hours slipped by as Pepper waited. Itotia stayed with him, watching the men pass out in the cage from the fever.

Eventually the still forms stirred, and then stood up as one. They grabbed the bars of the cage and looked at Pepper. "We again come to offer you something."

Pepper stepped forward and looked at the vacant-eyed faces of the Swarm. "Talk."

"Surrender," said the first.

"Stand your city down."

"We will only take one in three of you for our needs to replace what is lost to attrition and time." Pepper leaned forward toward the bars, and the moment the nearest Swarm lunged for him, Pepper grabbed its hand. He snapped its finger back, then tore it off with a ripping pop. He walked over and slapped the button to open the hatch below them. Acrid Chilo air roiled in, forcing everyone to grab their air masks. He walked over to the rope holding the cage and cut it loose with a knife.

None of the four Swarm made a sound. They calmly stood by the bar as the cage fell down through the hatch, whipping the rope with it.

Pepper looked over the edge as it silently dwindled down to a dot. He pulled out a small vial and massaged blood out of the finger into it, then tossed the finger down after the cage. He capped the vial and tucked it into a niche under the suit's collar.

"You should have taken the offer to the pipiltin," Itotia said. "They are the ones responsible for this city. Not you."

Some deals one just didn't take. Still. "Do you think that offer would have come if I wasn't here?" Itotia didn't respond, she gave a command, and someone closed the hatches. "We won't know now." Necalli strode across to them. "I gave the order to destroy the airship. It's not worth the risk trying to board it."

A few minutes later the heavy repeated thud of an antiship gun filled the docks. The Swarm airship crumpled and ripped off the end of the docking tube, taking several dock lines with it as it fell.

"What kind of people are we," Pepper said, "if we just hand it all over and accept the price the Swarm wanted?"

He left them on the docks, but Itotia cornered him in Heutzin's workshop. "Why don't the Ragamuffins just come to protect us all?"

"This is the DMZ," Pepper said. "It was expensive enough to fight the League to agree to leave this area alone, and that the Raga should be allowed to be independent, separate. And now, they don't want another war with the League. We'll break ourselves, on both sides."

"But why the aliens?"

"The Satraps destroyed most of their refineries, and we're clever monkeys, but not clever enough to get deep down in those black box machines to figure out what makes them tick. We have no idea how to use most Satrapic technologies. And when we rose up, we killed many of the Satraps, and many of the rest either committed suicide, or just disappeared.

"The problem is that we're like a bunch of tribesmen. We stole the guns from the invaders, and we can use them, but we don't know how to make them, or the replacement gunpowder. And we're running out. Some of these aliens are going to ground, they know more about Satrapic technology than we do. They may even be hiding a Satrap."

Itotia shook her head, disgusted. "Our lives are weighed against fuel and technology."

"Of course." Pepper looked at her. "Civilizations live and die by power and technology. If New Anegada throws its best, uses all its resources, to fight here, they leave that whole planet open and undefended. There would have to be an incredible payoff to risk the home planet." She sighed. "So it's just us versus the Swarm."

Pepper nodded.

Chapter Thirty-Six

An hour passed before Achmed pulled the ore carrier out of the dive. The airship chasing them flew far overhead, but far enough behind them that it couldn't drop any more charges. The infected crew's fevers had passed. Timas and Katerina walked down to watch as they stirred through the thick glass of the airlock. Their movements were jerky, as if their bodies were being controlled by strings.

The nearest two staggered to their feet and flung themselves at the glass, beating it with loose and awkward fists.

Timas jumped back. "They look possessed."

"They are." Katerina stepped forward and looked. "It's just like Pepper described."

"But maybe there is still something deep down, human. Maybe they can be fixed." As an answer, Katerina tapped the airlock's control panel. Through the window they could see the outer lock door slide open. The Swarm inside threw themselves against the door and silently continued pounding against the glass. "They've destroyed entire cities, millions of people, and have almost taken all Chilo for their own. Our world, Timas. And they've done it in a timespan of days. We have to act quickly. You were right up there, when you said it was us or them." The air inside had become a muddy brown. The infected finally dropped to their knees, gasping for air that had fled, replaced by Chilo's own poisonous mix.

"At least they don't change to breathe Chilo's air," Timas said, finally looking away.

"If they did, there wouldn't even be a chance for us."

Katerina walked over to a small locker on the other side of the antechamber and dug around in it.

"Here." She handed him a small earpiece the size of a seed. He slipped it into his ear.

"Hi." Katerina's lips didn't move, but her voice came through in his ear.

"Welcome to the public channel," Achmed said.

"Thanks. Do you hear me?" Timas wasn't sure.

"Yeah, if you can hear yourself we can, too." Katerina's lips still didn't move. Creepy. "Achmed, is there any way to tilt the processor to its side?"

"Yes."

"Let's dump the infected out like that and make sure we don't get any surprises. I'd hate to open the door and find out they can hibernate or something."

Timas agreed, and they both found corners to press against as the entire ore processor tilted over. Once on their side, Katerina nodded. "They're all out."

The processor slowly righted itself again.

"We have another problem," Achmed reported. "That airship is catching up. It's also dropping down."

"How much lower can it get?" Timas asked.

"Not too much lower before it starts getting crushed."

"And if it keeps going, it'll overtake us soon?" They were level again. Timas looked out of the airlock and into the haze.

"Half an hour. Then they can drop more charges."

"Buy why? What do we have that it wants?" Timas asked. "Now that we're escaping, it should just leave. We're just a few extra bodies for it."

"If it plans on spreading and taking the whole planet, the fewer humans in airships running about, the better," Achmed replied. "There's another cloud layer, it's at thirty-five thousand feet. We can lose them there for sure."

Katerina looked up, alarmed. "You said forty thousand feet was the edge of the processor's limit."

"At best, yes." Achmed cleared his throat. "I think it's our best option. And there's another issue. We can't do it too quickly. We can drop fast initially, but we'll need to start adding buoyancy back as we get lower, or we'll drop even faster. We could overshoot, or stress the hull."

"How long?" Katerina asked.

"Slightly less than thirty minutes. It'll be close. I wouldn't ask you two to try for it without a Consensus here."

"But this is your ship, and you're the oldest." Timas shook his head. Katerina made a sour face. "We have the right to decide how to risk our lives. They're every bit as important as his, don't you think? What is age but some demarcation? Today you are twenty years and can have input on something that impacts your life, but yesterday you were nineteen and couldn't?"

"Do you people sit around and vote on everything? Sometimes something just needs done." Timas started walking back to the control center of the processor.

"With the right technology, it's second nature and takes almost no time. We're just being polite to you." Timas swallowed. "But he knows more."

"Which means we should pay close attention to his advice." Katerina looked out the airlock window. "I say we run deep and risk it."

Achmed agreed. Now they both waited on Timas, even though they had the majority. "Okay, sure. Let's drop."

Katerina shut the outer door to the airlock. "We should probably be in the control room."

"Why is that?"

"More bulkheads between us and the outside, more sealed doors." Timas followed. They closed thick doors and dogged them tight behind them as they went. It took five minutes to get to the control center, and by the time they did Timas noticed that he had started to sweat.

"It's getting hot."

"The heat exchangers are getting overloaded," Achmed said. "It's pretty nasty outside. We've done most of the drop already."

"We're at the edge. From now on, it gets dangerous."

"Slow and steady." Achmed grimaced. "And with much prayer on my part." For Timas, that sounded like a good idea.

The entire processor creaked, and in the distance, echoing down corridors, pings and snaps made both Katerina and Timas jump.

Achmed closed his eyes, sweat rolling down his forehead. He was focusing on safely taking them into the clouds once again. The heat got unbearable, even the consoles got too hot to touch. Timas kept swallowing. His clothes were drenched. His exposed skin stuck to the chair.

"Six thousand to go."

An explosion shook the ship. Timas jumped. "What was that?"

"The balloons just burst. We're falling a bit fast, but I'm dumping ballast, I anticipated this happening. Just falling a bit fast."

Another explosion jarred the processor. Timas wiped sweat away from his eyes and gripped the chair. They weren't going to make it. If the balloons kept bursting like that what would keep the processor up?

Its natural air inside?

Achmed looked up. "Without the balloons we can keep altitude at this height: the Triple-Two is built to level on its own air at fifty thousand. We're dropping below, that's a risk, yes, but as long as our hull doesn't break, we should be able to climb back up with our safety balloons. Just shoot them up ten thousand feet or so with lines attached and inflate."

"But then the Swarm airship sees us." Timas gripped the chair even harder as they lurched again.

"So we run low until we're sure we dodged them." Achmed clutched his panel as they fell again. "That should be the last of them."

"The Swarm airship, something's wrong with it." Katerina tapped and a screen by Timas lit up. The tiny dot of an airship jumped, zoomed in, and resolved to show the cigar-shaped pursuer. The pressure had shoved the skin so hard inward Timas could see the understructure of the airship. Then he saw the cabin, shattered and destroyed. "The windows all broke."

"I think so. They must all be in the airbag, if they survived." Katerina shook her head. Then, as they watched, a hole appeared, widened, and, as if being crushed by a hand, the entire airship folded in on itself.

"They just committed suicide trying to follow us down." Katerina put her hand on the console, as if trying to reach the dying airship as it fell.

"It's not suicide to the Swarm." Timas kept watching the airship fall. "It was like losing a fingertip, maybe. Not people, just pieces."

An explosion rocked them, this one louder and closer than any other.

"Hull breach!" Achmed ignored the plight of the falling Swarm airship and closed his eyes.

"Is it bad?" Timas felt his stomach flip. This was it. They'd come this far, and the hull had finally given out just as he'd gotten hope back.

"It's a hull breach, what do you mean 'is it bad'?" Katerina snapped. The processor began to fall as air fell prey to Chilo's heavy atmosphere rushing in, weighing the processor down, boiling it, trying to drag it down to its surface.

Timas felt that he'd always known he would die on the surface, he'd imagined it countless times at night in his bed. He'd never counted on falling out of the sky onto the surface to die, however.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Just walking around the docks Pepper counted a hundred airships. A bedraggled armada. Straggling airships from all around Chilo clustered around Yatapek in holding patterns, drifting with the city. Many of the Aeolian Consensus's finest had fled aboard anything they could as the Swarm fixed its hold throughout the floating cities.

They came to Yatapek with its promise of being Swarm-free. And because Yatapek had prepared itself for the battle.

At least here, many reasoned over ship-to-ship radio, they had knowledge of what approached. And they had time to prepare, as well as a place to catch their breath.

But it also gave the Swarm time to plan, time to consolidate itself in the cities and root out any survivors or resistance, and time to slip a ship of its own into Yatapek's armada to keep an eye on the resistance. Pepper stopped thudding around the docks and gripped a railing. He needed to stop pacing. Heutzin found him there, half an hour later, still gripping the railing and looking down into the loading bays where dockworkers prepped food for transport to airships full of quarantined Aeolians.

"They're telling me the Aeolians are getting their Consensus going again, right here around us," Heutzin said. "Zombies are zombies."

"As long as the quarantine holds who cares what they do." Pepper looked over at him. "What do you need?"

"The xocoyotzin are back."

"And?"

He already knew Heutzin's answer, or Heutzin would not hesitantly be standing there with an apologetic, and somewhat desperate, look on his face. "Nothing."

Pepper bent the railing. "And has the importance of finding something been really, really impressed upon them?"

"They're as desperate as any of us."

"Give them the map, have them fill in where they searched for me." A formality. So that was that, then. He'd armed them with billhooks, given them the best warning he could, and figured out why the Swarm was here. And he'd done it with minimal violence. What more could anyone have asked of him?

It was time to confirm his escape route. He had three hours of continuous power in the suit left. What could he really offer these people here? Not much.

Pepper had Heutzin take him back to the communications room. Operators packed the tiny space, taking messages from airships. A small board hung in the center of the room with airship names, designations, crew numbers, and quarantine status.

Pepper took his seat at the old radio, with a new mic. He found the right frequency using the old-fashioned dial.

The Midas Special still waited up there for him. "Got a lot of people worried for you."

"How much time you giving me, Jack?"

"Ten hours."

Pepper signed off. Ten hours before he needed to get into the emergency ball and head for the sky, giving up on all this.

The phone rang. It got handed to Heutzin, who stood. He hung it up and walked over. "Timas and the Aeolian avatar are back."

Pepper was intrigued. "The pirates returned?" They had Scarlett jailed here, much to his annoyance. But what was the sense in worrying about negotiating with pirates when the Swarm approached? Scarlett was the last thing on anyone's mind.

Maybe the pirates would prove a valuable ally.

"No. They escaped. They returned aboard an Aeolian ore processor." Itotia had a very plucky son. With a slight grin Pepper turned to Heutzin. "Take me there. I want to talk to Timas."

Heutzin raised an eyebrow. "What for?"

"Either you and he saw aliens on the surface, and I'm right, or Yatapek is going to die for no particular reason. I want to talk to him."

Heutzin nodded. "Okay. Let's go."

Pepper walked through the room, which at the word aliens had gone near silent. Just the idea still spooked them all.

Timas was tired, wired, dehydrated, and elated to be alive, Pepper saw. He sat on a box inside an airlock, alone, waiting for four hours to pass and his quarantine to lift. He'd arrived in an ore carrier that limped its way to the city, radioing requests for help that many had ignored. It could have been a Swarm ship, another trick. But Timas had demanded to speak to his parents. It didn't take long for everyone to realize it was really him. Itotia and Ollin also stood by the airlock, their smiles almost infectious.

"He's alive!" Itotia grinned.

"I'm impressed." Pepper stepped back from the door. "Let me in."

"He's under quarantine."

"What can he do against me, even if he is infected?" Pepper walked up to the airlock door. "I want in."

"What for?" Itotia asked.

"More questions about what he saw on the ground."

"We aren't sending more xocoyotzin," Ollin said.

Pepper remained where he was. "Open it or I force it open myself." Heutzin worked the controls, earning a nasty glance from Itotia. The door opened, and Pepper thundered in, almost clipping his head on the top of the metal rim.

The door shut behind him.

Pepper looked down at the young man with the bags under his eyes. "I'm going to have ask you to go back down to the surface, because I can't, and none of the other xocoyotzin found the aliens. And you have to succeed, because if you don't, this city dies when the Swarm arrives." The words seemed to force Timas farther down onto the box, Pepper thought. Just one last time into the muck, one last time to try and save the city.

It was Yatapek's last chance.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Pepper dominated the airlock in his groundsuit. He'd gotten it powered up, although all the old parts still had stains and rusted bits on them. He creaked, sometimes hissed, but mainly thudded as he moved around. A machine-man, Timas thought. Though, given that Pepper was as much machine inside under his skin, it was nothing new for the strange warrior.

Katerina would have been impressed, even. But she'd remained aboard the Triple-Two . All the Aeolian ships around Yatapek were up to their weird political games, voting on what kind of army and defense to create. She wanted to play a part in the new Consensus, just as he'd wanted to reunite with his family. He guessed the armada out there, and Achmed, was the closest thing she had to a family for right now. But instead of a reunification with his family, Pepper was here, and he wanted Timas to bear another great burden. He crouched in front of Timas. "Timas, the future of humanity depends on our ability to move. We know our old enemy, the Satraps, exist out past New Anegada. The creatures your priests called gods, the Teotl—"

"That was a heresy, they were not gods. The real gods were not worshipped, and we suffered." Timas responded by rote, and automatically. He was tired.

"Okay, but those aliens, whatever heresies they plied on us, fled the Satraps and passed through here. We even found them a nice cometary belt that suited their needs, far, far away from noise and intrusion." Pepper sat now, his back against the wall.

"You helped them?" Timas couldn't believe it. "Ragamuffins helped them after the war?"

"They helped, in the end, fight the Satraps."

"They were the Great Liars."

"We didn't have much in the way of allies." Pepper folded his giant metal arms. "The Satraps controlled our technology. Even in defeat, they took with them most of their secrets. They suicided and took their minds with them. They destroyed almost all the factories that made antimatter, leaving us limping along from wormhole to wormhole out there. And now we know there are greater dangers out there, waiting for us, ready to prey on us. We are at a disadvantage. We need these technologies, and we need alien allies. The Satraps in the Forty-Eight worlds are all gone. And the other aliens . . .

"The problem is, they're disappearing, too, hiding, going to ground. Scared we'll pay them back, and rightly so. And now we've found them, but the Swarm is ready to wipe them out, and you in the process."

Timas thought about Van. "We need them that badly, the aliens? After all they did to us in the past?"

"Without these things they can give us, we are lost in the dark, Timas. And if you can get down there we have allies: the aliens will want to fight to protect themselves, and the Ragamuffins will help us out."

"That's a lot to be responsible for," Timas said. Again, he could feel a weight shoving down on his shoulders. That sensation again.

"It is." Pepper leaned forward. "But look, think about it like this: Bring me back an alien and you save your city."

"Haven't you sent xocoyotzin down already?"

"Two waves, they didn't find a thing. They also didn't stay down as long as I had hoped, the weather's been unpredictable."

Now Timas frowned. "Where did they look?"

Pepper smiled and stood up. He gave the order for Heutzin to bring back the map the xocoyotzin had updated with their search patterns.

It was back in fifteen minutes, and as Timas looked at the markings, Pepper pulled out a small glass tube.

"What's that?" Timas twisted the map around.

"Blood." Pepper gave it to him. "Infected blood. For the aliens to analyze. In case they might be able to find something to fight the Swarm with. They may know more about it than we do." Timas pocketed it, and then folded the map up and pocketed that as well. "Okay." For the city. For Cen. For himself. What other choice did he have? How could he not try to save his own city and people?

"You're in?"

"Just one question." Timas patted his pocket. "How am I going to speak to an alien?"

"That's the least of your worries. They'll have translators and technology for that. You just worry about finding them. And use this next three hours in quarantine to get some rest."

"Okay." It wasn't hard to agree. He wanted to find the aliens and prove that he was right, even if Pepper had convinced everyone else that he was right.

Timas had noticed on the map that the xocoyotzin had been moving away from the storm, in the direction he'd seen the alien. But why would the aliens hide in the open when there was the storm to hide in? Maybe Timas had seen an alien returning to its hiding place.

He'd head into the storm when he returned.

He also noticed the xocoytozin ventured out only as far as half their breathable air. If he was going to head deep into the storm to find aliens that were hidden, he was going to have to risk using all of it.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Itotia had them wait before lowering Timas. "You should give him the power pack in your suit. He'll have a better chance down there."

Pepper shook his head. "No." He needed it. In case Timas didn't return.

"You're a selfish creature," she said.

"Or maybe turning on a suit he never learned how to control would be more dangerous than letting him use it the way he knows how."

"But either way, he isn't getting it."

Pepper looked down into the clouds and wondered just how hellish it really was. He looked over at Timas, waiting patiently in the open cage.

"We're losing time. Lower him."

Itotia stood by Pepper as the cage began its descent toward the ground. Timas stood stiffly inside in his great, buglike suit, next to a second xocoyotzin, Momotzli, also in full groundsuit. Timas waved on his way down.

The giant spool spun and whirred as the cage grew smaller, and then finally dipped into the muck of the cloud layer underneath the city.

"Once again, you've sent my son away from me." Itotia stepped back, holding an air mask to her mouth. Her eyes watered. Crying, or from the acid-tinged air?

Pepper wasn't sure which.

He also didn't reply. The universe was tough on humans. Young and old. And unfair. But why burden Itotia with that. It was better to let her keep her anger directed at him. Anger was useful, Pepper thought, and always appropriate.

"So when will you be leaving us?" Itotia asked.

Startled, Pepper stepped back. "What do you mean?"

"I remember something you said, back aboard the airship when you gave Timas to be beaten by Luc over and over again."

"And that was?"

"Don't die for a cause when you can come back later and inflict more damage. You know you'll be able to do more with the Ragamuffins than here, with us. You won't be sacrificing yourself for this cause; you have an out, don't you?"

"The mongoose-men, I formed them, centuries ago." She was right. "They're damn effective. I'd like to bring them back."

"We're in the DMZ, you said they won't come without the aliens. What if Timas comes back by himself, like all the other xocoyotzin?"

"We cross that bridge when we come to it," Pepper said.

"I thought you hated politicians, now you give me their excuses." Her words hit sharp and hard. Calculatingly effective. "I bet a lot of people underestimate you." Pepper thudded toward her. "I wonder if Ollin's jockeying for power is really you behind him?" Itotia stepped forward, eyes narrowed. "I love my son. So does Ollin. I see Timas in the middle of the night crying, and when he doesn't tell us why, we're not stupid. We know the weight on his shoulders. A whole city? Look at how tired he looks, how old that boy's eyes are. We love our son, both of us. We do everything in our power to make sure that when he no longer fits in that suit and serves, that he will be taken care of. Wouldn't you do the same?"

Would he? Pepper thought about it. He'd been relieved to see Timas alive. But was that because he had a chance to find the aliens again, or was it because he'd been impressed, and glad to see the kid return?

"I don't know."

She backed off and deflated slightly, the tension gone. "How long before you leave?"

"Six hours."

"And he has five hours of air." Itotia brushed her bangs aside. "Can you take him with you when he returns?"

"The bubble can carry me in my armor. If there is time for me to shuck it and get in with him, yes. If there isn't, I can't."

Itotia swallowed. "I guess that's as fair as I can hope for."

"Fairer than most will get on this city."

"Just do one thing?" she asked.

"What is that?"

" Make sure you have the time to get him aboard." She tapped the metal collar with her hand, then turned and left Pepper by the hatch.

PART SIX

Chapter Forty

At the surface the elevator's screws dug in and the cage's lip bit into the ground. Timas opened the lift door and stepped off. He looked around at the heat-rippled landscape, gaining his bearings. Momotzli stumbled after him.

Timas turned around. He'd never buddied with Mo before. When Heutzin had asked who the second xocoyotzin on the ground would be, Mo's intense father had pushed Mo forward. One didn't go alone to the surface.

Timas got the impression, though he couldn't say for sure, that Mo was not excited about being volunteered. He hadn't spoken at all, just accepted his father's orders and walked to the nearest groundsuit like a prisoner receiving his sentence.

Now the two of them stood in the murk.

Timas tapped Mo's faceplate and took the lead. He could see the dim form of the cuatetl, and steered them step by heavy step toward it. The wind kicked wickedly today. It scoured up the muck and struck hard enough with the occasional gust that Timas worried about falling over. Mo stayed behind him. Using him as a windbreak, and also close enough behind to try and catch him if he fell.

The sound of wind against the suit filled his ears as Timas moved on. Sweat dripped down his forehead. During the long drop to the surface, he'd gotten used to the body odor of the suit again. At the cuatetl Timas took his bearings again, remembering the incident. The thing he'd seen had been thirty degrees off from where the cuatetl pointed, as he'd told Pepper. That was the direction to strike out in. It seemed.

But that was not in the direction of the storm.

Timas checked to make sure Mo followed, and then started the hike.

A small windup timer hanging around his neck inside the suit ticked. It would sound two alarms. The first, at the halfway point, warned him to turn around and get back to the city. The second told him when to expect his air to run out.

Rock rubble crunched under his feet, and he had to stop several times to let the suit catch up to his heavy breathing and dehumidify the interior. Water droplets and condensation covered his visor, making it next to impossible to see out.

Behind him, Mo struggled. Timas occasionally paused to let Mo catch his breath for a few minutes before starting up again. When he glanced back during these breaks, Mo looked frightened and tired through his faceplate.

The wind increased noticeably an hour into the brutal trek. And with visibility this low, the distant strobelights on the lift had disappeared long ago. Timas checked the small radio compass frequently to keep them on track.

And the march continued. Every ten minutes the wind seemed to increase. Timas now bent forward to counter it, and occasionally a small piece of dust would smack the suit loud enough to startle him. It got better in the second hour as the land rose to their right, creating a windbreak. The wind and dust flowed just over their heads, although now they had rocks and boulders to climb and worry about tripping over.

Timas skirted the hill for the next hour, and at fifteen minutes before the two-hour mark they both stopped, huddling against the bottom of the hill. Timas pressed his visor against Mo's. Mo dripped sweat as he yelled, the faint words almost drowned out by the ever-present roar of wind overhead. "We are almost at the turn-back point."

Timas yelled back. "I know. I'm going to keep going."

"You'll get us killed."

"I'm not asking you to go with me." He and Mo blinked. But he knew that he had to continue on, and he'd been wondering how he was going to say it to Mo. It was a terrible burden to put on Mo, too similar to the burden Timas had gotten thrust on him when Cen died, and he'd had to face Cen's relatives.

"I want you to turn back. I'm going to keep going in."

"I will wait here then."

"Momotzli, I'm not going to be back in half an hour. You should start back now." Mo shook his head sadly. "My dad believes the heresy. That's why he sent me. If his son were the one to help welcome the true gods, the incarnate gods, back to our society, what honor he'd bring. Now you'll throw your life down for this as well?"

"No." Timas shook his head. "It's something different. Just, trust me, I don't believe the heresy." Mo didn't believe him. "I would try and drag you back, but I would kill us both trying, and I'm tired. What am I to tell your parents?"

"If I don't come back, that I'm sorry. I tried to do the right thing." Timas pulled back. Mo stood there in his giant groundsuit, framed by a pair of boulders, as Timas turned around and continued on.

He hadn't paid attention to the ticking on his chest for a long period, too focused on getting around boulders and moving forward. When the alarm buzzed Timas jumped, and then laughed nervously to himself.

It didn't feel like he was killing himself, he thought, as he continued walking toward the storm. But he certainly felt all alone in the dim, brown light.

Chapter Forty-One

Timas pushed on, reminding himself to keep checking the radio compass. It would be easy to lose track of time, or start wandering in the wrong direction.

He couldn't tell how many miles he'd walked, or how deep he was into the storm, but it felt like the winds weren't getting worse.

The steady rattle of debris against his groundsuit became a comfortable static. The limited visibility kept him focused on just getting from where he was to the next spot just ahead. Muscle spasms hit. Knots of fire building deep in the tissue, trying to force him to stop. Signs of heat exhaustion. But if he stopped, he was just sitting still breathing, not getting closer to the goal. Timas dealt with the dizziness and exhaustion by taking it one heavy step at a time. He blinked sweat out of his eyes, and scrunched them tight when the world around him skewed and spun. It was a spell of dizziness that saved his life. Staggering his way up a slope he paused, swallowing several times to try and stop the nausea. Timas collapsed to his knees. The world spun and washed past him, and his vision blurred as he unsteadily moved forward.

When he looked back up he realized that he had crawled his way to the edge of a lip. He inched forward and looked down over a precipice that didn't seem to end. A valley. This was a landscape he had no map for. He couldn't cross that.

But what if the aliens were on the other side?

Timas followed the edge for several feet, looking for a way down. He didn't find one. A strong gust of wind blew a hail of pebbles at him. Timas held his hands up as they struck, trying to ward them off, and as he did so he fell over.

He heard the crunch from the rear. A radiator fin, or several. He had minutes to live before he cooked to death like Cen had.

Already he felt the edges of the suit warming up. Timas blinked tears from his eyes. He tried to move, but the effort was beyond him, the heat had beaten him.

There was nowhere to go, nothing more he could do but lie down and wait for the heat to take him.

Chapter Forty-Two

For a brief second, Timas thought he was hallucinating. Humans, not aliens, in sleek, form-fitting suits had surrounded him.

They picked him up and dragged him quickly along with them. He knew it wasn't a hallucination when his fingers burned against the suit's gloves as they jostled him. That was too real. Timas wanted to be grateful, but he was too confused. He hadn't found aliens. But he had found people?

The figures dragged Timas into an airlock with a boulder that rolled aside as its door. Inside, once pressure was reduced to normal, heat normal, they skinned out of their suits, leaving just their gloves on to manhandle Timas's cherry-red and smoking groundsuit.

They cracked his helmet and ripped it off. Timas tasted brutal, cold air through his cracked lips.

"Stupid, stupid child," the nearest figure snapped. It looked like a woman with her black, silky hair cut short but with long bangs. They tickled Timas under the nose as she leaned forward. "Look at the light." A bright light made Timas flinch.

"Okay, he's responsive. Let's get the rest of the suit off him and some liquids in him." They had Timas out of the suit and on a stretcher. He felt the prick of a needle, and when he opened his eyes saw a bag of fluid swinging over him.

The woman saw him looking around. "You are a very lucky person." Timas coughed. "You're people. . . ."

"Yes." A tight-lipped grin. "And I even have a name. Claire. And you were you looking for gods? We get those, wandering out in the storm from your cities, convinced they'll find that."

"No." Timas waited as she dabbed ointment on his lips. "I'm here to talk to the aliens. It's important."

"It's always important." Claire rolled up the sleeve of his shirt and put a patch on his shoulder.

"I was sent by the city because they know there are aliens hiding down here. I was sent to warn them that the invasion coming this way is coming for the aliens. It's an attack, and you're included. I'm not here for gods. After I warn you, I need to go back, to help defend the city." Claire looked up at the others. "Well, that's a variant on the usual." She used a cloth to wipe his face off.

"But you don't get to leave Hulbach. You're here for good, now."

"What do you mean?" Timas struggled to sit up. He wore his single white undersuit, and they'd left the timer around his neck, still ticking away.

"This is a place of refuge. A hideout. The stragglers we rescue from the surface stay, or choose to have this entire experience wiped from their mind before being returned. We're not cruel, but we do have our own survival to worry about."

Timas shook his head. "But I need to talk to the aliens, they need to know what is happening." They moved him into a wheelchair as the doors opened. Timas had been lying in an elevator descending from the airlock. They wheeled Timas out into an antechamber with seven different corridors, all well lit, leading off like spokes from the elevator.

The two men that had helped pull Timas in remained behind at the elevator, like guards. As the corridor continued it widened, and a strong, sweet breeze rushed down it. The sound of rustling reached Timas. The corridor ended in doors. Trees blocked his view from there. The doors opened to let them through and under a large pair of palms that framed them. A set of gardens, deep underground?

Timas leaned back and looked far, far up to the top of a giant cavern, hundreds of feet over his head. Artificial lights blazed down at him.

He looked back, and as far as he could see were trees, grounds, and domed buildings. The walls all had windows and balconies looked out into this massive space. He felt like a speck. Cultivated gardens, park, roads: an entire world had been injected into this massive two-mile-long bubble under Chilo's surface.

At the center of the cavern hung a giant, round surface, surrounded by gently flashing lights.

"Welcome to Hulbach Cavern. Our refuge, our home. Right now, humans are rampaging across worlds. Sure, some hold to their home worlds and maintain their dominance, but humanity attempts to consume everything else, like a plague of locusts."

Timas twisted and looked back at Claire. "I'm sorry?" He wasn't sure what a locust was.

"Even now, in the air, the destruction continues that your species so loves. It's what we came here to avoid. Before humanity there was a three-hundred-year peace under the Benevolent Satrapy. But your species is still hungry, and thinks real estate and expansion equals success. We lost our wariness, our edge and distrust, and we paid the price."

Timas looked at her. "You keep saying 'we.' You don't consider yourself human?"

"You came looking for aliens. Here we are." She had walked out in front of him. Now she turned and smiled.

"I don't understand."

"This is a drone, I am talking through it to you. I am the Satrap Amminapses." Timas stared at her. "You don't completely take over another's mind, you pop in and out as you please?"

"Some find it a compelling arrangement with the payment I offer. My examination of you is done. I am also done speaking with you."

It was like the Swarm, in many ways. Claire's face relaxed, and then reanimated. She shook her hair and smiled at him.

"Are you okay?" she asked. Then blinked. "I gave over, didn't I? Well, it looks like you got your audience with aliens after all."

She walked around and started pushing him toward a nearby building, curvy and low to the ground.

"You still need some tests and further checking over."

"But what about the coming invasion? Your entire cavern is at risk!"

"The Satrap has decided not to interfere with this new war among the outsiders. Any war puts us at risk, but revealing ourselves? No, that is not going to happen. No matter how savage they all get out there." Even though she wasn't being used by the Satrap, she still sounded like she didn't consider herself human.

"You sit while danger gets ready to rain on you," Timas muttered.

"We have a way out." She pointed off over the treetops toward the center of the cavern at the top half of a circular void, encased in girders and beacons. "That's how we got here. A wormhole. Right now it's tied on the other side to an asteroid in the middle of a nowhere system."

"So you can just leave anytime? Why are you still here?"

"We can't use it right now. The wormhole is buried in the asteroid to hide it." The path turned, hiding the wormhole behind trees. They approached a wrought-iron arch. Under it stood what looked like a large bird with razored spikes instead of feathers. It had flattened arms, with sharp, pointed hands holding a small ball. It sped toward him and ducked aside at the last second. Timas didn't have time to turn to keep the alien in view, but the creature's flattened face slid over his right shoulder, the neck snaking around so it could look directly at Timas, face to face, an inch away. It smelled sharp, like a cheese gone bad.

Eyes the size of his fist regarded him without blinking.

Timas froze, looked over at Claire. "What is it? What does it want?"

"It's a Nesaru."

"And my name is Skizzit. I wanted nothing more than to tag you." The words came from a band on the alien's neck. A speaker. It was just like when Katerina had spoken to him without moving her lips. It pinched his shoulder, and then put the ball away in a red purse that hung near its breast.

"What was that for?"

"A tag. It will let me know where you are in Hulbach." Skizzit moved back to stand next to Claire.

"Skizzit is part of Hulbach security," she explained.

"I rolled the dice and was unlucky enough to get this assignment." It looked over at a set of bushes and trilled loudly. "Now that that's done, you'll rest and then get acquinted with Hulbach rules and regulations so you don't do anything stupid. We'll also need to find you a job."

"You don't understand, I'm here to warn you about what's coming." Timas pulled out the vial of blood Pepper gave him back on Yatapek. "I have proof that this is not just a human issue. The attacker is alien, it's an infection that gets transmitted by bite and blood. It creates mindless bodies. And it's coming for your cavern."

Claire's eyes rolled back up into her head, and she staggered, then leaped back. She looked at Skizzit.

"Was the human not unarmed and vaccinated upon arrival?"

The alien waved its arms. "It had no weapons. It received shots on the elevator down. Apparently the humans bringing it down did not bother to properly search it." It stomped the ground. Anger? Or frustration? Timas didn't know which.

Amminapses, or so Timas assumed, turned back to Timas. "Are you threatening us, bringing that bioweapon in here?"

"I'm not threatening." Timas glanced around, hearing bodies moving through the grass to surround them. Ten, then twenty, then thirty Nesaru slowly formed a circle around them. Suddenly those barbed quills didn't look so harmless. Even more worrisome were the black guns they had aimed at him. "We think you're the target of the Swarm. And we're caught in it as it comes here." The inhabited Claire held out her hand. "Let's see it."

Timas hesitated for a second, and then gave it to her.

It was bagged and handed off to a human who had appeared in a clear plastic protective suit. Then Claire bent over and started pushing him quickly along. "You've upset the Satrap."

"You have only been here minutes," Skizzit said. "Already you are an incredible inconvenience." The circle melted away.

"What's going on?" Timas asked.

"Quarantine. And thanks to your little stunt, I'm going to be stuck in there with you. So is Skizzit."

"I'm sorry."

"You're a fool, antagonizing the Satrap. You need to know your place." Claire led them into the nearest building, where the staff hustled them, from a respectful distance, into a small room with chairs. "It's dangerous to challenge it. It is the Satrap, you understand?"

When the door locked, it did so with a solid thud.

Timas wasn't going anywhere for a while.

Chapter Forty-Three

Momotzli returned in the cage, alone. Pepper watched Itotia crumple, losing that stiff posture as Heutzin ran to her side and helped her stay on her feet.

Pepper helped unsuit Momotzli. He leaned in close when the sweaty, exhausted teenager stumbled on his own toward a bench. "What happened?"

Momotzli had his forehead in his arms, panting. "He took me toward the storm. And then at the turn-back point, he made me leave him and return on my own. He kept going." Itotia left with Heutzin helping her along. Momotzli's chastened-looking father dragged him away. They left Pepper alone on the docks facing the empty and still-steaming-hot groundsuit. Heading into the depths of the storm made sense.

Risking his life for his city, that was admirable.

Pepper rubbed his face, tired. Beneath the weariness was a small trickle of anger. Tough universe.

Yet, Pepper thought as he turned away from the groundsuit, he wanted that death to balance out somehow. And the only person that could guarantee to remember to tip the scales for Timas was him. Itotia, Ollin, everything would be gone soon. Yatapek couldn't resist the Swarm. Even with him helping.

Pepper checked the power level. He had two and a half hours of constant use left. It was time to get to that escape bubble and leave Yatapek. Then he would return and destroy the Swarm from above.

Chapter Forty-Four

This is all so typically human." Skizzit stood in a corner of the room, while Claire folded her arms and sat in a chair with an annoyed look on her face.

"What do you mean?" Timas asked.

The birdlike Nesaru waved a quilled hand at him. "Your kind. Barging in, causing drama. No finesse. No civilization."

"My kind? We didn't create the threat that's coming," Timas snapped back.

"Well was it Nesaru who did it? I doubt it. Besides, who's creating chaos right now?" Skizzit shook its quills and ducked its face in them, cleaning them with its beak. "Your wars are spilling over again. Your violence and darker impulses come to light once more."

"It was the Satrapy and your kind that enslaved humanity. Would we be fighting so much if we hadn't been reduced to so little? You took us off the mother planet and scattered us across the Forty-Eight worlds. And you did worse." He thought back to Van's scars and behavior. Skizzit puffed out its quills, doubling in size. "Your own kind sold you to the stars from your mother planet happily. Your kind starved in the millions on its own planet. We developed your other planets. We brought technology and civilization. Without us, you would never have gotten this far. You should be grateful to us for the lives you now live."

"You took advantage of us, exploited us, and now you pay for your sins." Aliens everywhere ran to hide from humans now. That made Timas feel good.

"My sins? My sins?" Skizzit stepped forward, and Timas stared at the needle-sharp tips of his quills.

"I've never had any of you for a pet, nor taken any of you from Earth. Those things were done hundreds of years ago, human."

Claire watched the argument with a bored expression, but Timas turned to her next. The more he understood about these people, the more he might be able to get them to realize that the Swarm threat to them was real. "And what about you? How can you work for creatures that have done the things to us that these have?"

She smiled. "We have an agreement."

"What kind of agreement could be worth doing what you do?"

"How old do you think I look?"

She had small lines around her mouth, a hint of crow's-feet by the eyes. "Maybe thirty-five."

"I'm ninety-nine." Claire looked at Skizzit. "The prize is a life measured in the centuries, for one century of service."

That was the price it took for this woman to turn her back on her own kind and identify with the aliens, then. A tempting price. Without the city to return to, if they kept him here, what would he choose to do?

"Do a lot of people that you rescue on the surface stay here and take that prize?" Claire nodded. "Wouldn't you?"

Timas changed the subject. "I was on the surface not too long ago. I saw one of you. And my friend died down there, when his suit got damaged. Why didn't you help us?"

"There was debris. It was too dangerous, or we would have. We do keep an eye on your surface activities. If you get too close with your mining machine or your people, we act to stop discovery." Claire stood up and looked out the door.

Another thought occurred to him. "If the wormhole is closed up, is that why one of you gave Heutzin a box to deliver?"

Claire looked off at the wall. "We are self-sufficient. There is no need to send anything. The ones who try to make outside contact . . . pay a dear price for breaking the rules." Timas wanted to ask more, but the ticking from the timer stopped. It buzzed until Timas turned it off.

"What was that?" Skizzit asked.

"My air timer. As of now, the people who sent me think I'm dead." Timas sat down with his back against the wall with the timer's chain wrapped around his forearm. He dangled it just above the floor. His parents would be grieving, just like Cen's, for his death now. What a depressing thought. Claire took a deep breath and squatted in front of him. "It is I, Amminapses."

"Yes?"

"You brought a dangerous thing here. Tell us exactly where you got this and what is happening." Timas repeated everything he knew. Pepper's original encounter, the spread of the Swarm throughout the Aeolian cities, the attack on the processor, and then the news that a massive fleet, thousands of airships, now moved on this location.

"And there are people up there who suspect, strongly, that we exist down here. Not just the Swarm?" Timas nodded. "Yes."

"Yatapek readies for this invasion. Pepper thinks the League of Human Affairs will come and clean up," Amminapses said. "But alone you will not be able to face it. Pepper is right, you need my help." Skizzit jumped toward them. "No, you cannot do that! We have achieved stasis here again." Amminapses held up a hand. Claire's face contorted into a strange and frozen expression of anger. "That is not for you to say. You will be quiet."

The words had the crack of authority, and anger at being challenged. Timas flinched at them, as did Skizzit, who folded its arms and backed away.

"This weapon you delivered, it's an extraordinary measure. An emergency tool. It is used to destroy civilizations and races."

"You made it?" Timas asked.

"Others made it, we are familiar with it. Organic DNA-based computing that uses clustering to achieve computational power at an exponential spread, with a goal-oriented artificial intelligence laid over the top. There's been a safety modification: a four-hour incubation period. As well as the new target. Us here."

"But can you help stop it?" Timas asked.

"We have worked in the past on a counter-infection. I will use drones and a ship to get you back to Yatapek. We need to at least slow this attack, yes."

Timas hated to do this, but he had to ask. "What do you mean, at least slow it?"

"It may be impossible to stop. It gets more intelligent as it grows. By now it is a formidable foe. As we infect it, it may be able to study what is happening and it may withdraw to find a cure. Our best ally is time, the virus is coded to let its host starve. It is designed to rage through a people, engage them in war, and then when it has spread all throughout, let them starve and whither away so that in time, the universe will hardly have known that the infected race even existed." Amminapses stood Claire up. "It's beautiful, elegant, and brutally effective. When the Satrapy ruled the Forty-Eight worlds, we never had the courage to deploy it. Our loss."

"We are released," Skizzit said. The door had unlocked itself. The alien held it open, and Claire walked through.

Timas got up and followed them out of the building. He gawked again at the giant arch of rock far over his head, lights blazing away from its apex, as well as the twinkling from the hundreds of thousands of windows in the rock's sides. Dwellings for humans, aliens, all living here. But now the quiet of the gardens and the cavern had lifted. Activity spread all throughout. Timas looked at the sight of thousands of people, mostly human, moving crates and ferrying aliens in small electric carts toward the center of the cavern.

Timas saw the kind of alien he'd first spotted on the surface. A four-footed creature with a bulky chest, thick neck, and massive mouth. It opened its mouth wide to reveal tongues with multiple ends that would pick things up, or flick buttons and levers.

"Stop staring at the Gahe," Skizzit said. "They get annoyed, it's a challenge for them." Timas stopped. "What's going on?" Everyone had exploded into action. Skizzit pointed at the giant dark spot at the center of the cavern. "They're getting ready to leave. They'll fire the nuclear charges in the asteroid to clear it free of the other side of the wormhole, reopening it. Then we evacuate."

Amminapses added, "The threat of the Swarm is very serious. We need to delay it long enough to get off this planet."

Everyone here ran for safety, while Chilo's humans laid their lives down to slow the Swarm. He wouldn't forget this. Timas looked at Claire. He was really looking at the enemy of his enemy, he felt. A creature that had helped enslave mankind, and still thought of its fiefdom here as its own world. Allies for now, but a friend, no. Claire, and the intelligence behind her, was something else. Dangerous. Like the ancient heresies: monsters manipulating humans and their fate. He was, Timas thought, facing a kind of devil. And making a deal with it.

Chapter Forty-Five

Amminapses remained in control of Claire. It led Skizzit and Timas across the long width of the cavern into a new corridor, up a flight of grand sweeping stairs, and into a subchamber with heavy-looking, thick spheres. "Our transport back to your city."

"You have the cure already?"

Another Nesaru waited for them. It stepped forward and handed a black briefcase to Amminapses, who tapped it. "We adapted a counter-infection for your genome a while back, it just required synthesizing. It does not have a four-hour block."

"And you're going to give it to us merely to slow it down, while you run away? You expect nothing out of us?"

Amminapses looked at him, contorting Claire's face into some emotion that Timas couldn't identify. "You will be fighting it, correct?"

"Yes."

"That's all we need."

Skizzit tapped a five-number sequence on a translucent pad on the pod's shell. Timas paid close attention, trying to memorize the numbers. Just in case.

The hatch opened up and Claire stepped into the vehicle. She picked one of the five seats facing one another in a circle deep inside the armored sphere. They angled slightly up. The seat reacted to her weight, shifting and adjusting its headrest to cradle her neck and head. Then padded arms reached out to hug her body into itself.

Skizzit went next, and the seat it chose radically reconfigured itself to accept Skizzit's anatomy.

"You're going with us?" Timas couldn't believe that he would be showing back up to the city with an alien in tow.

No one could deny he'd seen an alien on the surface now, could they?

Timas chose his chair and let it wrap around him.

"Ready?" Skizzit asked.

"As I can be." Timas tried to shift, but didn't budge.

"Clear."

The interior of the sphere fell dark. A small screen revealed the rocky roof a hundred feet above them. The sphere rumbled and rose toward it. Timas flinched as they appeared to dash themselves against it, but at the last second a pinprick of a hole grew into a large opening.

They shot through the tube in the rock until a point of brown light appeared, grew, and then they popped out into the heart of the Great Storm.

Instead of climbing, the sphere moved slowly near the surface.

"It's tough to keep a good connection to the cavern," Amminapses explained. "We keep the clouds of this planet well seeded with metal-consuming spores. That makes it hard to catch any leakage from Hulbach, or for radar to hit the surface. We can't afford discovery. We're keeping close to the surface to use a laser link to keep communications while in the storm."

Timas stared at the familiar murkiness as the sphere bumped and trembled along. Amminapses released the chair restraints and sat up. "Among us, there are conflicting memories, early traces of a group story. Call it legend, creation myth, or maybe it is memories of our distant past."

"Okay." Timas sat up, and the chair let go of him.

"You should not tell them these things," Skizzit said. "You will give them leverage over you."

"I'm the last Satrap of the Forty-Eight worlds, but I am still a Satrap. I will do as I please, and you will be quiet now, Nesaru." Amminapses didn't believe in using the names of those who worked for it, it appeared. Claire's face turned back to Timas. "We are a created species, we understand this by examining our genetic heritage. We are massive so we cannot depend on rapid mobility like most species. We are forced to be symbiotic. Our tendrils can penetrate a conscious mind, adapting to the species after several attempts, and now with technology, we have extended these abilities and our range. We hunger for interesting new thoughts. And why would something like that be created? you ask. It is important, now that we face a new threat that may undo us both, that we understand this.

"You humans believe we are the enemy, out to destroy you, or at least inhibit you. That is true, but . . ." Amminapses stopped, mouth open, and Claire shook her head. "Where are we?"

"Interruption," Skizzit said. "Lost a laser link." Claire froze. Amminapses returned. "Among ourselves, we see that intelligence breaks out, flourishes, spreads, and eventually, inevitably, it comes to war with itself in its various forms. It fights, consumes, destroys, and upsets the balance of the universe.

"Farther out into the universe where you have yet to venture, this has played itself out with repetitive regularity. And the universe, whether as some larger organism, or whether via creatures that regard themselves as its stewards, has developed mechanisms to combat the ill effects of intelligent life. They seek out and destroy it, balance it, and through evolutionary pressures, force the creation of races that are better equipped to know their limits and cease their natural instincts.

"We don't know what created us. The counterforce, using us as a limiting mechanism to protect the universe? Or a mightier intelligence that wanted us to slow the spread of intelligents, to limit them to an area and give them more time to develop an awareness, a chance. Both stories had their adherents among my peers."

Amminapses folded Claire's arms carefully on her lap. Timas waited several beats before speaking. "The League of Human Affairs, the revolution, the Ragamuffins, and our history on Yatapek all agree that your kind set out to eradicate humanity from the Forty-Eight worlds. How can you defend that? That is not the work of stewards."

A raised finger. "But it was. You think our methods were harsh, but remember, humanity had several worlds to itself. Earth had been granted emancipation, and it had shut itself behind a wormhole. The birthplace of your species knew the universe was dangerous, and regarded expansion dimly. Chimson remained behind its own wormhole, and for a while, so did New Anegada, until the Ragamuffins colluded with another subject race to reopen the wormhole using very, very illicit technology. It was not an extinction attempt. It was a controlled burn. There are other Satraps, far out there beyond the Forty-Eight worlds. They have chosen more brutal methods. They alter races, change their genetics to make them docile."

The sphere cleared the storm. They rose now, headed toward Yatapek. How much time remained before the great Swarm fleet hit?

"It was hard to be so lenient, understand. These impulses are designed into us by the creators. When the revolution swept through humanity we felt our failure down to the DNA. We destroyed technology and factories that produced the tools you'd need to spread faster. We committed suicide, or we ran.

"But this weapon you bring now, it is not Satrapic. It's a weapon that those forces destroying intelligent life use. It's made by our creators, who we either worship or fear, we aren't sure which.

"It is strange to you, maybe, that we do not know what we are. It is strange to us. But understand that I remained the last living Satrap in the Forty-Eight worlds out of a hidden drive, put in me by something outside of my will, to salvage what I could out of the Forty-Eight worlds. This was to be the base on which I planned the repacification of humanity, creating warrens under the surface of Chilo until this planet was all mine. I had a hundred-year plan, and now I've seen it crumble in front of me and I realize it is time to let it go. I only ever have acted for the good of all species in the Forty-Eight. This agent, released, will not stop with humanity, it will adapt and set out to destroy all intelligent life here until the creators encounter its spread and deactivate it."

Timas stared at the alien before him, and it smiled back.

Skizzit broke the moment. "Yatapek is asking who we are, threatening to shoot."

"Tell them it's Timas, son of Ollin."

Once again, Timas had made it home. But how long that home would exist, he didn't know.

PART SEVEN

Chapter Forty-Six

Itotia stood alone in front of the airlock leading out to the rim of Yatapek, her arms folded, dress dirty from dragging through the dirt and corn. She'd run through the fire line that had been set up: a ring of ethanol-drenched ground and dried hay and cornstalks. The smell of the accelerant rolled off her. Pepper had walked his way across the upper deck slowly, conserving power, muddying himself up as he passed by rows of armed people. The upper deck had a ring of older fighters with their billhooks standing in front of the fire line. After the fire line were the prime fighters, and then in the streets and rooftops, the children. Spears and guns, to cover the others if they fell back into the houses.

"You're really leaving us." Itotia's eyes were red. "I know you are a cold and soulless creature, but I didn't really think you would flee."

"I am a man of my word. I can do more, later, with the mongoose-men at my side." Pepper stopped in front of her.

"Are you even human anymore?"

"You work so hard to keep on my good side, all of you." Pepper pulled her aside. "But I forgive your grief."

"Wait."

"For what?"

"Don't you wonder how the gods will judge you?"

"Let them come get me," Pepper said.

Itotia stepped forward. "You have half an hour, still, before you said you'd leave."

"Is there a point in waiting? I saw you give up down there as well." Pepper looked down.

"And I was wrong." Itotia smiled. "Because we just heard that Timas is coming back up. He's in an alien airship of some make. It's asking permission to dock. I ran here the moment I got the call." Pepper looked past her at the airlock. "What do we know?"

"I don't know anything yet. But you have a choice in front of you, don't you?" He looked back down. "What do you mean?"

"You have thirty minutes left. It's close. Do you run off in your escape bubble, or do you throw your lot in with us? Instead of waiting for some vengeance in the far future with your mongoose-men, stand firm with us." She walked around him, leaving the way to the airlock open. "You talked about making the Swarm pay so hard it would choose to leave us alone. Why don't you give it the hurting that you wanted to when you were aboard the Sheikh Professional. Or, you can leave us, just like you left those people aboard that ship to deal with the Swarm."

She started to walk away, and Pepper grabbed the edge of the frame to the airlock.

"Just remember," she said. "You were wrong to give up hope an hour ago. You might be cold and soulless, but you still make errors of judgment. Think about it."

Errors of judgment. Like jumping out of a spaceship without a parachute? Pepper tapped the airlock door open and stood at the threshold.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Timas jumped down out of the alien airship onto the metal grating of the docks. The ship had floated up through one of the large docking doors easily, small enough to fit through and land inside the docks, instead of tethering itself to the outside.

No one suggested he be quarantined. Dockhands and passersby, warriors with guns, and citizens with long curved blades mounted on long poles all lined the walls. And outside the city airships held their positions, getting ready to stand with Yatapek against the Swarm.

Behind Timas, Skizzit and Claire clambered down. Surprise rippled through the crowd as they spotted Skizzit.

Heutzin stepped forward with a massive grin. "You did it, Timas." The grin was infectious. Timas grinned back. Before he could reply to Heutzin, though, Itotia and Ollin shoved past the crowds in the large hangar and ran to him.

Itotia crushed him to her, and Ollin grabbed both of them in a giant hug. Timas pulled away, embarrassed and feeling awkward in front of the crowd. "Mom, Dad, this is Skizzit, and this is Amminapses."

No sense in confusing everyone by bringing Claire's name in just yet.

"We are pleased to meet you," Ollin said.

"The pipiltin will be here soon to meet you," Itotia added. "We have to hurry, the Swarm is already engaging outlying Aeolian airships, it will be an hour or two before they reach us." The floor beneath his feet shivered. Timas looked over and saw Pepper in his powered groundsuit move quickly through the crowd until he stopped in front of Timas.

"Well done." Pepper shook his hand. "Very well done."

"It's good to see you," Itotia said to Pepper. Timas recognized the triumphant look on her face, as if she'd won an argument.

Pepper brushed one of his dreadlocks aside. "I will help. But I can always steal that alien airship if things get too bad. Don't assume I don't have my own reasons."

He pointed at Skizzit. "So, we know at least the Nesaru have hidden down there, who else is dug in?" Amminapses stepped Claire forward. "I am Amminapses."

Pepper cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. "Oh really?"

"You know of me?"

"I know the name that each Satrap called itself to humans," Pepper said. Pipiltin arrived on the docks now. "You disappeared, although I do know the League claimed to have captured you at some point."

"They lied."

Ohtli, Tenoch, Eztli, and Necalli joined them. "Camaxtli is unwell, the stress has left him bedridden," Ohtli said. "But he promises to abstain on any decisions."

"Okay. But it's too late to get Ragamuffins involved, two hours before the Swarm hits. They won't arrive in time." Pepper pointed at the two behind Timas. "What resources do the aliens bring to the table?"

"Amminapses has something that can attack the Swarm back," Timas said. Amminapses held up the case. "I have a counteragent that will infect and nullify it. But there is the small matter of delivery."

Timas, as well as everyone in the tight crowd in front of the possessed human, listened.

"There is little time to mass produce it. This is enough to inoculate one human, and then that human will need to have contact with the Swarm to infect it. This poses a few problems."

"The first one is, who do we inoculate?" Necalli said. "We will need to find a volunteer. Or hold a lottery."

"No need." Amminapses carefully handed the case to Necalli, who held it gingerly, as if it might infect him. "This drone is human, and can serve for the purpose."

The pipiltin didn't understand, but Timas saw that Pepper did.

Timas shook his head. "No." It was a firm command. "Claire is the real owner of this body. You just rent it. She should have the right to decide her own fate in this matter. She is not just a receptacle for you to use."

"The boy is right." Pepper backed him up.

"I don't ask for your input," Amminapses said. "This method contains fewer flaws. This body I am controlling will not feel fear, or pain, or change its mind. It will go where I command it. You quibble over one life when so many are at stake?"

The Satrap had a point. Yet it felt wrong, and Timas couldn't help that gut feeling. Maybe humans were ruled by their instincts as much as the Satraps by their artificial instincts, laid into them to look at a larger, stranger picture.

Pepper took the case. If Amminapses thought he would get it from Pepper, the Satrap was mistaken. That Timas knew. "We will find a volunteer," Pepper grunted. "How long does the infection need to take hold?"

"Five minutes to drop the individual into a state. Physiological changes take hours, but subject is infectious and no longer conscious as you know it at that point."

"Good, that's all I need."

That was that.

"The Aeolians will want to know about this," Itotia said. "We should include them, this might change our plans."

"The Aeolian avatar arrived and is in the communications room." Ollin grabbed Timas by the shoulder.

"I'm sure she'll be relieved to hear that you made it back."

Katerina was back on Yatapek!

Chapter Forty-Eight

Word had spread rapidly, because Katerina waited at the door with a big smile. "You made it back! It's good to see you. We were worried."

"She came over an hour ago, been in this room since." Itotia walked past Katerina and smiled. "Katerina asked to continue being the avatar so she could be here."

"My friends call me Kat." Then the relieved Katerina faded. The avatar facade returned. She walked over to a clear pane of plastic mounted in the center of the room. "It's crude, but it lets Yatapek see what's happening."

A crescent marked the mass of the Swarm and its location. An estimated time of contact had been scribbled at the top. Divisions of Aeolian and Ehactl airships similarly positioned themselves around the small circle at the center. Yatapek.

Katerina looked like she wanted to talk more, but with the aliens, pipiltin, and Pepper arriving, the room got even busier. The radio operators for Yatapek along the walls dropped their voices, but still passed on traffic and scribbled notes to give to the pipiltin or to commanders.

"We have two new things to add to our fight," Katerina told the group. "The first is Renata, who comes back with more of Captain Scarlett's friends. The Aeolian fleet is running a poll, but it looks like everyone is in favor of releasing Scarlett so he can lead the pirates. Their city was attacked, these are the survivors. We propose, if we all survive in any intact form, to give them participation in the Consensus."

"She made it." Timas had wondered whether Renata had outrun the pirates. Katerina erased the crescent wave of the Swarm, and redrew it a bit closer to Yatapek. "Somewhat. After bubbling us off they got recaptured and their airship shredded. But as prisoners they witnessed the fall of Haven, the pirate city, to the Swarm. They decided to fly back to Yatapek. The pirates released Renata and her squad in the interest of mutual survival."

"Wow." It sounded like they had just as much an adventure getting back to Yatapek as Katerina and Timas had.

"The pirates also came back with this." Katerina waved her hand over a tiny box sitting near the center of the room. The air above the box danced and shimmered, then solidified to show the upper layer of a city. "Footage obtained from the attack on a nearby city."

It was packed with catwalks, tramlines, tube elevators, and a densely packed honeycomb of houses connected by latticework. It was like looking into a human hive. Some advanced materials, stretching with the city, but holding millions of people in that space where Yatapek had nothing but air and sun shining through the upper layer over its crops.

"At this point," Katerina said as an explosion rocked the side of the city, debris falling from the city's walls, "the citizenry knows what the Swarm is and how it works. The bites, the infection spreading, and so on. A standing security force is defending this city and the upper layer has just now been breached." They watched as robed Aeolians advanced toward the fractured section of the city. The line hit the initial wave of Swarm pouring out onto a walkway just under the breach and high over the solid surface of the upper layer. And the Swarm fought back.

"Notice the initial line of the Swarm has weapons, but the second and third do not. We presume the Swarm does not have much in the way of personal firearms, most Aeolian cities have little if any, only its initial breachers are armed."

The initial swarm were not very accurate, either. But the Aeolians fell back, trying to avoid both gunshots and bites. But the Swarm did not rush as a whole, only the armed members moved forward at the Aeolians in the running gun-battle.

Defenseless Swarm jumped off the edge of the walkway, a waterfall of humanity. Some smacked into tubes or catwalks. Others continued to fall until tiny white puffs of cloth opened up.

"Parachutes," Katerina said. "A Swarm airborne assault." Down on the street level, a cloud of Swarm landed and moved with single-minded purpose toward citizens. From above, the footage demonstrated a fast pincer developing, herding the city's people into a large and tightly packed group.

And then the catwalk the Aeolian forces fought on exploded, three precise detonations in the middle of the Swarm.

As the long ribbons of metal failed, the Aeolian defenders fell out of the sky along with debris.

"There is more, but it's much the same. The Swarm is able to adapt to varying situations, as you just saw. It does not rely on infection and vectors anymore, it is using pincer movements, feints, weapons if it can get its hands on them. Obviously, since it waited for the parachuted Swarm to check in, it's using radios or equipment to communicate, not just the touch communication we've seen. That means it can spread out further and talk between itself faster. Which brings us to the next order of business." Katerina addressed the pipiltin. "The Consensus has something else it would like permission to use. One of our defense airships has a nuclear device it managed to get off one of the cities. We include you in the discussion because your city is the dominant part of this action. We are not sure how to include your votes, so it was decided to let the pipiltin speak for all Yatapek."

"You have nukes?" Pepper was impressed. "I never heard that."

"Sometimes, even the Consensus can keep a low-level secret." Amminapses looked distressed. "A nuclear device? Brutish, yet worthwhile. The Swarm uses touch for higher bandwidth, its effectiveness is reduced when separated. The electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear charge would prevent it from having high bandwidth communication. But it would also sever my ties to this drone. That is unacceptable. I need to be here to help coordinate against this threat."

"It would affect us as well," Katerina noted. "The Consensus is held through this. We understand what we are asking. If it slows down the Swarm, then it's absolutely necessary."

"Still unacceptable." Amminapses shook Claire's head.

Pepper crouched down and opened the case and looked at the small vial with a tiny injection cap on it. He shut it again and addressed the Satrap. "We're not asking you, the pipiltin will decide. Unless you have a compelling force that can take to the air? I see just one Nesaru warrior with you, hardly a compelling force. We have the antidote, we'll deliver it."

He looked satisfied with what he held, and a large bit of the tension in Timas's posture dissolved. They had some sort of chance against the Swarm. Sure Amminapses believed that they were fighting to slow the Swarm down, but Pepper now held the tool that could defeat it.

"You all frustrate me," Amminapses said.

"You have less to lose," Timas said. "Right now you have a wormhole down in the underground chamber. You're getting ready to sneak back down it to safety somewhere else. We'll be the ones left up here."

"There is a second wormhole? On the surface?" Katerina was shocked. As was everyone else. It was news to everyone in the room.

"There is no way to evacuate you all." Amminapses saw what sprung into everyone's minds. "We don't have the capacity."

"Some of the Aeolians have craft that can get down there, some could be saved," Katerina said, her head cocked, listening to commands. "The Consensus sees this as an interesting development." Amminapses backed up slightly. "I have hundreds of thousands to get out to safety. They are my responsibility."

"There are children that deserve the right to escape this final showdown." Katerina's voice sounded gritty as she channelled the anger of the thousands of people in airships all around the city, the remnants of the once millions of the Aeolian Consensus. Timas watched as she stepped in front of Amminapses. "You are telling us you will leave us against the Swarm."

"You are ungrateful." Amminapses drew itself up, regal, arrogant, and sounding like they'd just confirmed a deep suspicion it had about humans.

" We're the ones dying." Katerina stood up just as straight to the Satrap.

"If you insist, then keep the counter-infection and fire your nuclear device. We will warn the cavern and I will take my drone and move back far enough that my equipment isn't hurt. I will return to observe." Timas wondered why the Satrap was not as upset as Timas expected it would be at being defied. He'd seen it react down in Hulbach. Angry. Here it seemed to expect a script, almost. Maybe Timas had been thinking wrong, assuming Yatapek was the most important section of this creature's plan to delay the enemy. They had been given the counteragent, but what if Amminapses had lied, and had made more?

Timas slowly backed out of the room as Katerina updated the clear screen to represent the Swarm's continued approach.

Outside Timas ran for the docks, sliding down rails and tearing across gantries until he got to the sphere. Several Jaguar scouts had it surrounded, rifles slung at the ready. But they recognized him.

"I left my timer in there. It was a gift from my father when I became xocoyotzin," he said. A lie, he'd left the timer down in Hulbach. But they didn't know that, and let him through. The hatch had shut, but Timas closed his eyes and mentally ran back the numbers he'd seen Skizzit tap to open the hatch.

It worked.

The hatch rolled open, and Timas pulled himself inside and let the hatch close. There were places under the seats to store things. Maybe Skizzit, or another drone, had hidden something there. He slid doors open and checked under the seats, moving quickly.

The hatch opened and shut behind him.

Timas turned around to face Skizzit. The Nesaru's quills prickled up. It very deliberately blocked the way out. "What are you looking for?"

The hatch hadn't, Timas saw, shut all the way. If he could run, it would just pop open.

"My timer, I left it here. I had it on my neck, it had sentimental value." Skizzit cocked its head. "You lie. You left it in Hulbach, and did not seem overly emotional about it. I repeat, what are you looking for?"

"Nothing." Timas tried to dart around the alien. It slapped him with the side of its flat arm, driving the edges of the quills into his shoulder.

Timas dropped to his knees. Blood dribbled down his chest and arm as Skizzit forced Timas to sit down. "I think," it said, "that you are up to no good. Again, what are you doing here?" The hatch flung open and the entire craft rocked as a pair of giant metal hands grabbed Skizzit. Pepper hunched in the opening, not able to fit through to get inside. The Nesaru twisted, writhing to get away. It threw quill-backed punches at Pepper, who fended them off with his armored limbs. Skizzit aimed higher, for Pepper's unprotected face. Pepper yanked the alien out, leaving Timas holding his shoulder alone inside the craft.

He stumbled forward to see Pepper and Skizzit face each other.

Skizzit pulled its gun free of the pouch and Pepper leaped into the air, higher than a person stood, and slammed both fists down on the alien's torso. He crushed the alien, stomping on it with metal boots, once, twice, and then one last time for good measure. Clear fluids and entrails burst across the grating and dripped down between the metal slots. A hand jerked, a foot splayed out at a right angle from the destroyed torso.

Pepper stood up, shaking goop off a metal hand.

Amminapses appeared at the edge of the dock. "You killed one of my vassals, why?" Its angry voice projected across the entire dock.

Pepper stepped backward to stop it from getting into the craft and near Timas. "Your pet Nesaru tried to shoot me."

"It probably had a good reason." Amminapses stepped over the corpse without a second glance and folded its arms in front of Pepper.

"Timas, you mind explaining why Skizzit just tried to kill us?" Pepper asked. Timas faced the back of the man's dreadlocks, and looked directly over at Amminapses.

"Why only one dose of counter-infection? I don't trust Amminapses. I wanted to see if there was more in this ship. Maybe it plans to use some of us, like Katerina, who can access lamina, to be its drones to go forward and infect the Swarm."

Pepper grabbed Amminapses. "Is there a second cure?"

Amminapses struggled to get free. "Let go."

"Where is it?"

"You think you accomplished anything, boy?" The Satrap froze. "I am, right now, launching three more craft into the sky, all loaded with counter-infected drones. The Swarm needs to be infected early, not late in this stand. Before it gets over the storm. You are being too tentative."

"We infect them once we get into hand-to-hand combat," Pepper said. "That way the Swarm can't blow the counter-infection out of the sky before it even reaches it."

"You still dream that you will all survive it. I doubt this will happen." Amminapses shrugged. "We have chosen our directions. I have maximized my chances of spreading the counter-infection, with you as backup. Yes, there are extras. Take them. It means little in the end." Pepper waved at the nearest soldier. "Tie it up, put it in a cell, whatever you have, make sure the Satrap's 'representative' doesn't go anywhere."

"Is this how you treat an ambassador?" Amminapses snapped.

Pepper's dreadlocks fell forward as he leaned in. "I don't trust you being up and around. You have your own agenda, for now it's similar, but that is never a guarantee with the Satrapy, is it?"

"I work for the benefit of all."

Pepper saw to it that Amminapses was dragged off. Katerina, the pipiltin, and Timas's parents now stood staring at them.

"I think they're a bit unhappy with us," Pepper observed with a wry grin. He pointed at the warriors.

"Tear the inside of this ship apart. We're looking for an extra vial." They looked uncertain. Pepper strode forward, the grating jumping with each powerful step. "Now! Get moving."

Several scurried to the sphere. Timas followed Pepper. "What about Hulbach?"

"What?"

"The cavern under the Great Storm."

"Ah." Pepper waved Katerina over. "Tell any Aeolian with a craft to get to the surface, start seeing if they can get people in groundsuits to get into the cavern down there. At the very least, the cavern might be a better place to hide the youngest."

Katerina nodded. "We're already working on sending down some crack teams with them, whoever we can spare, in case they try and shut us out."

Timas moved closer to Pepper. "But how are we going to save the other three people that the Satrap is going to kill?"

"We don't. You want us to risk airships, lives, to try and intercept those three? No, they're already dead. And maybe they'll get lucky and get through. Or maybe they won't. Either way, kid, you saved one life. Be happy with that. When we fire off that nuke, when the Swarm gets close enough we're not wasting it, maybe she'll even thank you for it.

"Take what wins you can get, because they will be few and far between from this point on. Now, I'm off to get ready, we have a little over an hour before the main force hits." Pepper walked away. As he passed the pipiltin he jerked his head in the direction of Timas. "Have someone clean the dead alien off the floor, too, when you get a chance." The stunned leaders of the city just nodded.

Chapter Forty-Nine

Back at the communication room Pepper looked at the board. The crescent of approaching Swarm on the clear status board had been updated. The radio handlers worked via instructions from Aeolians calling in the new guesses as to where the edge of the Swarm was. Katerina had left to see what happened on the docks.

Pepper took the radio. Midas Special was there, and Jack was upset. "We can't pick you up, we getting ready to break orbit. League ships coming in from all over."

"Peace, brother. I'm not bubbling up, and it's probably too risky for you to have tried to dip in and back out just for me." Pepper licked his lips. "How bad is it up there?"

"They doing the same thing as all we Raga, you know? They using merchantships, with armed crew. Look normal, but they been juggling schedules, hiding extra ships in the DMZ. Now here they all is."

"How many?"

"Over the air and in the clear?"

"We all know each other's cards now."

Static washed over the radio for a moment, an edge of jamming, but then Midas Special punched through. ". . . fourteen ships, all that into consideration. All light. Nothing coming through the wormhole yet, but we can expect it."

Fourteen. Pepper knew the Ragamuffins could spare four armed merchantships like the Sheikh Professional . And maybe two real attack ships, made for the expensive pursuit of war in space. There'd been some serious clashes in establishing the DMZ, back in the days after the uprising. The League played for keeps, but once it started having trouble in its own backyard keeping down alien counterrevolutions and human breakoff movements, the DMZ became practical. So how hard was the League playing now? This handful of merchantships hardly seemed like a vast attack force. The League had fought over the DMZ the first few rounds with much larger numbers. Pepper toyed with the mic. If this was a feint, and they'd managed to hide League ships anywhere near New Anegada, he would risk an entire planet with his next request. The land of Aztlan and the land of Nanagada, all at risk.

Yet, to throw Chilo to the League . . .

" Midas, tell the Dread Council we have a Satrap on the surface. Tell them a whole nation of aliens is hiding under the Great Storm, it's what the Swarm is trying to get to, in addition to taking everyone else down for the League to mop up later. This isn't a feint against New Anegada, it's all about Chilo and the aliens here. It's worth the fight, tell them Pepper said so. Get clear of orbit, come back bristling, you hear?"

"Loud 'n' clear, transmitting it along the line now. We go respond back, we go take, maybe a half day. Burn some serious fuel. We'll be back."

And that was that.

The cavalry had been called. Ragamuffins scattered throughout the DMZ and New Anegadan space would be on the move. The special forces of the entire organization, the mongoose-men, soon would be descending up on Chilo. Help would arrive.

If they could last long enough.

And in doing this, he was requesting the Ragamuffins to burn most of their fuel reserves, putting them in a weak position to defend themselves and ply the spaceways in the near future.

Chapter Fifty

Katerina intercepted Timas. "I have a gift for you."

"Okay." Timas followed her as she dragged him along the docks to a storage room filled with wooden crates stamped with barcodes. He'd just finished visiting his parents, both of them pressed for time. Itotia had helped organize the women's resistance, getting them billhooks, teaching them to use them. And Ollin, always the unofficial pipiltin, kept busy involving himself in everything the city's leaders did. Itotia had told him about Pepper's escape plan, and the bubble, when he'd asked her why she'd been looking so triumphantly at him. "Be careful of him," she said. "He does have a weakness for getting involved in causes, I think, but there is a limit. I think he's liable to leave you for dead when it really comes down to it."

Timas filed the knowledge away.

Now he watched as Katerina zeroed in on one crate in particular, pressing her thumb on the keylock to open it. Inside sat a pair of thick machine guns.

"This is a Sharkov 9." She held it up, somewhat awkwardly. "The Consensus moved these over, and I requested some particularly for us. I've never fired anything before, but this one has very low recoil, which is good for amateurs like us, explosive rounds, and a grenade launcher. They're also very light." She was reading off a script.

She gave it to him, and Timas hefted it. It was indeed light. "I've never fired one either." First she had him add his thumbprint by pressing it against the top of the stock. "If you lose it in battle, it can't be used against you." After that, seeing some hidden manual in the air that she'd called up but that he couldn't see, she showed him the basics. "Traditionally, this is illegal for me to hold. Consensus doesn't like teenagers handling this kind of weaponry. But we're rewriting Consensus law on the fly right now, and we have these to protect ourselves with."

There were five grenades already loaded in it, and one full clip with a hundred rounds. The safety, the built-in thumbprint on the stock, pulsed green slightly. "It's live." They practiced holding the gun with their fingers to the side of the trigger, stock snug on their shoulders, the flip-up readout giving Timas information he couldn't interpret. "Don't worry about it," Katerina said. It took fifteen minutes, and Timas felt somewhat confident that he could fire the weapon. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. I wanted you to have it. I wanted to come back. I was relieved when I heard you were safe. I worried about you down there, and when your mother came up to tell me you'd stayed . . ." She clipped a strap to the gun and looped it up over the back of his neck, hand brushing Timas's cheek as she did so, and then clipped it back around.

The Sharkov hung near Timas's stomach. The strap bit into the still bloody punctures from Skizzit, but Timas didn't complain. "Thank you," he repeated awkwardly.

"This all feels like a dream." She still held on to the strap.

"A nightmare."

"If I live, I don't think I'll ever be quite the same."

"I know."

She hugged him, tight and long. He hugged back, with a silly smile on his face. All the Aeolians in the new Consensus, hanging around their city, would probably be able to see him. Who knew how many thousands saw his silly grin right now? He didn't care anymore. "Where are you going to fight?"

"I should go with my parents, but I really want to be near Pepper. You've seen how dangerous he is. I think he's seen fights like this before, and I think anything I can do to help him is good." Katerina let him go. "I think you're right. I'll see you there, then. The Consensus thinks my being near Pepper is important as well."

"Just be careful, okay?"

"You too."

Together they walked back out onto the docks, both carrying their machine guns, safeties thumbed back on.

Chapter Fifty-One

Heutzin stopped Pepper outside the communications room with a quiet, almost bashful manner. He held a long wooden box out to Pepper. "For you."

Pepper took it, accidentally crushing a corner with his grip. Inside lay his sword. "Heutzin . . ."

"You'd mentioned wanting it back earlier."

A big grin. Things were coming together, Pepper thought. Heutzin handed him the scabbard as well. Pepper fastened it to his metal waist. "Thank you. Now what do you want?" Heutzin grinned. "Yes, I do have an odd favor."

"Let's hear it. Walk with me." They advanced toward the atrium. They dodged crates, walked past barriers of wire spun so fine it cut off limbs, and zigzagged around spikes welded to the floor. And everywhere stood armed citizens and warriors.

"I have no family, Pepper. I never had children. I have no legacies to pass on, other than teaching my skills as a mechanic."

Pepper sighed. He saw what was coming. And he liked Heutzin; the man had helped him out and stood by him. It was going to be hard to hear what came next. "And?"

"I used to be xocoyotzin. A proud position in this city. I fell from everyone's favor, though. But still I love my people, Pepper. I love my city, that is why I was always happy to serve on the docks, fixing the suits, helping the boys as best I could.

"I'm getting old, Pepper, and I'm facing death here, defending my city. And I see a chance to do something noble, grand, that will take my name and make sure no one in this city ever forgets it . . . if it survives." Heutzin stopped and looked up at him.

The pipiltin would be relieved, no doubt, not to have to figure out how to get someone to volunteer to do the deed. Pepper nodded. He tapped his chest. Underneath, safe in a pocket, was the vial. "Stay close. The counter-infection will be quick once I inject you with it, so we'll have to wade out into the thick of it. You fight until you drop, so that the Swarm doesn't suspect anything. And you stay close behind me, until this happens. We don't want you getting hit by something random."

Heutzin let a long breath. "Thank you."

Pepper shook his head. "It is the others who should be thanking you, Heutzin. Come, I'll tell the pipiltin, and then let's go to the top layer. It'll be the best target for a landing on this city by the Swarm."

Chapter Fifty-Two

Heutzin had joined Pepper where Katerina and Timas already stood with him near the lip of the upper level. It gave a great view of everything happening outside the city.

According to Katerina, the horde's forces would hit Yatapek within the hour. It was a long hour. Long enough for Timas to realize how much the entire city had changed in just the days since he'd been gone. Pepper had been busy.

From Yatapek's atrium all the way out toward the rim of the city, Jaguar scouts, Aeolian soldiers, and civilians all lined the streets with weapons and body armor made out of whatever they could find. Over the stately upper-city buildings where only the elite once lived, large mounted weapons waited to unleash hell on anything that penetrated the city's transparent walls. Mothballed anti-pirate guns had been taken out of retirement, transported through the city, and bolted in here. The air vibrated with tension, and so did Timas.

Everyone had seen what the Swarm would do. No one had any doubt that this was a fight to the last one standing.

Ollin would be burning incense to the family gods while Iotatia waited in the courtyard. Timas felt he should have been there. But he also felt, as he looked out over the brown and red clouds below the city as if standing on the prow of a mighty ship, that the gods would understand his indiscretion. Let his father offer something for his son.

Timas looked at Katerina. "Anything?"

Katerina looked up into the sky. Overhead the ragtag fleet of Aeolian airships moved around the giant orb of Yatapek. Many of their hulls glinted. The paint had been stripped clean from flying in the protection of Chilo's acidic clouds to get to Yatapek. Mingled among them were the dun-colored cigar shapes of airships from Yatapek's sister cities, their noses painted with fierce teeth or feathers. They bore names like Bloody Retaliator, and Sun God's Strike . And among them, large spotter and barrage balloons painted with red and brown camouflage.

"Do you need to be shifted?" Katerina asked. Pepper had hardly moved the entire time. He'd been stood near the balcony on the level's edge for the last half hour, saving power. The mottled and rusted-out suit held him in its grip, both man and machine looking like not much more than an old metallic statue.

A statue holding a very large gun at one side, and a wickedly sharp sword of some sort strapped to the other. The recently polished edge glinted.

His dreadlocks shifted as he shook his head to Katerina's question. "I only get two and half hours when I power this up."

Pepper looked intently down at the clouds. "I wasted enough clumping around the last day." A bead of sweat dripped down his forehead to his nose, balanced there, and then dropped to hit the breastplate. Katerina twisted her head, listening. "They're spotting outriders. Scouting airships, just under the cloud layer."

But none of them could see anything in the murk below.

"There." Katerina pointed. "The Swarm's coming."

It looked like a cloud of gnats in the far distance against the haze and sharp sunlight, just skimming over the rust-colored clouds.

Timas felt numbness spreading over him as he realized the sheer immensity of what he was seeing.

"There must be thousands of them."

Pepper snapped his fingers. "Tell your friends now is as good a time as any."

"Are you sure we're ready for this?" Katerina reached up and unconsciously rubbed the filigree of her silvered eye. She was about to be plunged into a form of personal darkness, Timas knew. Like standing in a dark closet, she'd said.

"We slow them down." Pepper looked around. "Now is the time."

"Then close your eyes," she said.

The very back of Timas's eyelids flared with actinic light, purple and yellow and hot. When he opened them again, the giant fireball of the nuclear explosion burst out a cloud in the far distance, vaporizing the leading edge of the Swarm's armada. Tiny midges of airships slowly fell out of the sky, burning the whole way down.

Now there were just hundreds that had been lagging behind, regrouping.

"Now they know we're fucking serious," Pepper shouted.

Katerina shivered, cut off from her entire world now. She was no longer the Aeolian avatar, she was just Katerina. "Feels like chopping off our own arms just to hurt them."

"No. More like chopping off your arm to buy yourself a couple hours."

"Here are the scouts."

Pepper grunted and strained to move the suit unpowered. He leaned closer to look farther over the city's edge through the transparent aluminum shell.

Like lean sharks, ten jet-powered dirigibles shot out of the cloud layer toward the city. Twelve Aeolian airships dropped from around Yatapek toward them, and the dockside anti-pirate batteries began a steady thump.

Anti-airship fire blossomed, black puffs carpeting the sky below the city. One of the airships crumpled as it caught a good shot and then continued to limp forward until the batteries zeroed in on it and destroyed it.

Now the Aeolian airships engaged, tracer fire creating a matrix of brightly colored lines all throughout the space under the city.

"We're holding them," Timas said. The Aeolians kept the scouts away from Yatapek, chewing up the attacking airships with well-aimed fire.

This might be a winnable fight.

Timas was about to open his mouth to say that when two scouts swung around and raced straight at the nearest Aeolian. All three of them watched as the first one burst apart before reaching its target, but the second struck nose-cone on.

Both airships crumpled, then slowly started to sink toward the clouds.

"We told the pipiltin and the Consensus they're suicidal." Timas shook his head. "They did that trying to get at us when we escaped in the ore processor."

"Any individual, any ship, is merely a small appendage. It's a group mind. It's one thing to hear it, another to see it." Pepper looked down as the wreckage caught flame, then disappeared into the clouds. "A bad way to die."

Slowly sinking down through the acid-soaked clouds, waiting for the heat and pressure to build to lethal levels.

The Aeolians reacted to the Swarm's suicide run by moving back and coordinating their gunfire attack via radios and the anti-pirate battery guns.

By the end of the first hour the first wave of scouts had been destroyed, and the second as well. Now the entire city watched the full invasion fleet grow, details emerging as the midges turned into larger and larger cigar-shaped airships.

Timas wished they'd had more nuclear weapons as he looked back out up toward the approaching cloud of airships. The sun behind them glowed strong yellow, the rays twinkling and flashing throughout the fleet.

"Here comes the real battle." As if on Pepper's cue, the Aeolian fleet moved forward. The entire air filled with explosions, smoke, tracer fire, and flashes as the hundreds of airships intermingled, creating random paths around each other, swarming through the air. Wreckage dropped, spars, flaming stretches of cloth, and occasionally flailing bodies as airships scored precise hits. Anti-pirate fire constantly shook the ground on the top layer of Yatapek. The large ones mounted inside the city remained quiet, reminding Timas that the battle still had a long way to go. They would need those before the fight wrapped up.

The chaotic mass continued moving closer. A mile, a quarter of a mile, and then one lone Swarm airship burst through. All the defending airships had targets of their own. And this one flew too close to the city now to get targeted by antiship fire.

"Gods have mercy on us," Timas whispered.

The tip of the airship grew, bearing down on the city, but off to their right. Spars and rigging became discernible. The reinforced nose cone had been sheathed with metal, and a long spike on the end had been added by the Swarm. The spike ripped through the city's shell just above the rows of corn. More airships broke through, smacking into the city. Each one pierced its way in. Different ships into different levels. Yatapek must look like a pincushion from a distance, Timas thought. Air slowly leaked from the edges of the tears. Katerina glanced over at Timas, who reassured her.

"We're high enough, the outside air pressure's the same. It'll leak, but slowly."

"And your bulkheads?"

"They'll be shutting them. Just like during any emergency holing." Although who could hear the breach klaxons over all this?

"Are you going to help them now?" Katerina asked Pepper.

He shook his head. The guns mounted on top of the buildings near the atrium started firing at the Swarm ships. These didn't thud, but chattered and howled as tracer fire lit up the inside of Yatapek. From each ship ropes dropped, and figures crawled clumsily down, many slipping and falling to the ground.

Beside Timas Pepper now stepped forward, his whole suit whining and thudding forward with a snap-quick jerky motion as heavy gunfire hit the nose cones of the zombie airships.

"Do you see that?" Pepper asked, pointing down at the clouds. The interior of Yatapek strobed with green and white tracers from the interior guns. The red flames of burning airships stuck to its hull reflected off polished surfaces and windows all around. Pepper pointed down again. Something glinted in the clouds beneath Yatapek. A large shadow moved underneath them.

Timas's mouth dried as an Aeolian city laced with metal spars slowly burst from beneath the clouds, its entire skin scoured shining and bright.

"A whole city?"

Rockets glared as the entire structure adjusted course.

"There'll be millions of infected in there," Katerina whispered. They'd be simply overrun.

"Run." Pepper grunted at them as the last wisps of cloud fell away from the approaching city. "It's going to ram us."

Chapter Fifty-Three

The Aeolian city struck as Pepper ripped straight through the cornfields, leaving a swathe behind him that Heutzin, Katerina, and Timas followed through.

He could feel the shuddering underfoot, and the thuds, cracks from overhead. And a horrible, long, screeching and shrieking of superstructure: the impact twisted and broke the shell around Yatapek where the two cities collided.

When Pepper finally slowed and looked behind him the edges of the two cities were still combining in a mix of tangled girders, shattered outer layer, and interleaved decks.

Brown, noxious Chilo air ever so slowly seeped in between the two cities. The city wouldn't lose buoyancy right away, but the striking city had crippled them. Yatapek's layers and bulkheads could only hold so much air against a crushing blow like this, Pepper thought. They were going to have to cut loose the docks, or find some other way to radically lighten the city. While fighting back the Swarm. Pepper didn't see Yatapek winning here.

"You okay?" He looked at his small group. They were shaken, but unharmed. They stood well clear of the impact zone, deep into the ranks of defenders getting ready to repel the Swarm. People had died from falling debris near the impact point, but since most had hung back behind the fire zone, away from the lip, Yatapek still stood ready to fight.

A runner sped toward them with a note in his hand. He gave it to Pepper and then wobbled in place, hands on his knees, hyperventilating.

From the pipiltin. Amminapses had, before collapsing when the nuke went off, gotten quite agitated. Apparently during their check of the getaway wormhole, before setting off the nuclear charge to unbury the wormhole from the depths of its asteroid, they'd detected League ships. A lot of League ships.

Pepper started laughing. Everyone stared at him, and he crumpled the note up. "Good news. Amminapses is just as screwed as we are. The League set a trap on the other side of the wormhole for the Satrap, no one in Hulbach is going anywhere, they're not setting off the charge, they're leaving the wormhole buried in the center of their asteroid."

They didn't have much time to celebrate, though. Already the older defenders at the far edge of the corn, armed with their billhooks, had engaged the Swarm dropping down out of the airships. Now gangplanks and rope ladders were tossed out of the adjoining city into Yatapek. Hundreds of infected swarmed between the wreckage, and hundreds more lurked behind them. The river of stumbling bodies just didn't stop pouring in.

"Okay, Heutzin, let's roll."

Timas stepped forward with them, but Pepper shook his head. "You stay here. Katerina, too." He pointed out several warriors with rifles, waved them to him, and then checked the weapon the Aeolians had given him.

Sharkov 9. Nothing truly unique about it. Standard fare. He had extra rounds on his waist, the sword, and the suit still worked.

Pepper thumbed the safety, and the gun streamed information to him via the direct skin contact. He ignored the information laid over his vision and willed it to go away.

"Heutzin, it's been an honor." He shook the man's hand. Then louder. "Let's haul ass!" The five men ran with him. Their heads down, whipping through the corn, they passed the fire line quickly enough, leaving the houses and barricades behind them.

And then it was into the men trying to hold the line with billhooks. The first line held up shields and wore thick, makeshift padding so that the infected couldn't bite through to their skin. Behind them, three rows deep, the long billhooks lashed out, trying to decapitate the infected before they even got close enough to hit the shields.

Looming over them all was the ruined mess of the contact point, girders tortured into strange and surreal shapes, layers visible with their edges cracked, warped, and sagging.

And the Swarm stretched out before them, a crowd of corrupted humanity acting as one.

"Coming in!" Pepper yelled. Shooting the approaching Swarm to give them space, they slipped in right behind the shields, as if part of the defensive structure.

The Aeolians had to have guns, but so far the Swarm didn't seem armed. It might be holding those back, or saving them for the attack on Hulbach, not thinking that this city would be such a tough nut to crack. Pepper reached under his chest plate and pulled out the vial. He flicked the tab off the top and jabbed Heutzin. "We fight. In a few minutes, you will start feeling it. You don't run out there, you let me handle our fallback."

Heutzin nodded, eyes wide.

Pepper tapped the soldiers to the right after four minutes. "I need you to fall back, as if tired and wanting to exchange places with others, fumble about. We're going to lull them in." He didn't tell them what was about to happen to Heutzin, he wanted their surprise, their natural reactions.

They did exactly what he asked, and as they fumbled, the wall broke, Swarm dashed forward. Heutzin moved to stop them, getting out in front of the shields.

For a moment the gunfire Pepper laid down, along with the other warriors, kept the bodies dropping. But then the first one got Heutzin, biting his arm.

A second piled on, and then Heutzin was dragged into the crowd. After knocking him out they left him alone.

Pepper moved back, trying to find a higher spot of ground for a better vantage point, but several of the Swarm paused, looking at him together. They stood at attention, and started shouting.

"You!"

"You are the one."

"The one known as Pepper."

"We wish to speak to you."

"We will keep a zone free, we will cease our attack here."

"For now."

And just like that, the line in front of him froze. The empty eyes all locked on Pepper. Like sand, behind that front line, the others started moving sideways, heading off toward other areas to attack as they streamed in.

"What do you want?" Pepper asked over the sound of steady marching.

"An offer."

"This city is well prepared, and will cost us."

"Not too much that we cannot reach the aliens below."

"But enough that we make an offer."

"It is only certain aspects of your consciousness that are dangerous."

"We can offer you an infection that does not degrade your individuality."

"We will only blunt your baser instincts for progress and expansion, and you will be allowed to keep your individuality."

"Imagine, how fulfilling it will be to maintain your sense of self, but not feel compelled to consistently war, struggle against new environments, and dash yourselves against the universe."

"We offer you true and total peace. Many of the remaining people aboard these cities in the middle layers have taken this option."

Pepper saw Heutzin stirring, slowly sitting up, a vacant look in his eyes. "I have a philosophical offer of similar import for you," Pepper shouted back.

They waited expectantly.

Pepper, with a straight face, looked out at the entire crowd of the Swarm and said, "Bite me." The crowd surged forward, but he could see Heutzin muscle over to one of them and bite it right in the neck, then turn for another. Bits of the Swarm noticed that something was wrong, but Heutzin attacked them as well.

"Take their heads off," Pepper yelled. "Press them." Add some confusion to the mix. As he walked away, Heutzin ran off, biting everything he could. Already fifteen Swarm were counter-infected, but still standing up, so they turned back to their duties. By the time Pepper passed the fire line at a slow amble, the fifteen Heutzin infected had turned and started biting other Swarm nearby.

Consciousness might be a liability, but right now it was coming in handy, Pepper thought.

Chapter Fifty-Four

From their vantage point Timas and Katerina could see Pepper coming back through the corn, leaving a long trail of broken stalks behind him. The first line of billhook fighters slowly retreated back as well, and then as they hit the fire line they ran.

The Swarm didn't take the bait; the crowd paused at the edge of the soaked corn and slushy mud. Behind them, where the two cities remained locked together, more Swarm slowly laid down more gangplanks and ropes. A road of makeshift bridges zigzagged its way through the debris from city to city. Swarm marched along it toward Yatapek's fields.

"Damn," someone by Timas muttered.

Katerina had been listening to a small handset, hardened against electromagnetic pulses. It was what was left of Aeolian communication. She grabbed Timas by the shoulder. "Timas, Yatapek is losing altitude." They both glanced back to the crushed mess where the two cities remained joined. "Too much Chilo air getting in."

She nodded. "It's going to slowly get worse."

Pepper broke out of the corn and walked past the defenses onto the street below, then hopped one story up to land on the edge of the wall near them, crouching on the edge. "Trouble?"

"Yatapek is losing buoyancy," Katerina told him.

"Shit. I'll be back." Pepper dropped off the edge and took off at a run. Timas looked out over to the city that had hit them. They hadn't been thinking on the same scale as the enemy, where a city could be a weapon. What other mistakes where they going to make?

He squinted. There seemed to be more chaos in the Swarm's ranks. Zombies bit other zombies. The counter-infection slowly spread.

But still, there were tens of thousands darkening the better part of the rim that Timas could see. Katerina tapped his arm. "Strandbeests!"

Five of the massive creatures, or constructions, had moved swiftly in on one of the Swarm's ships attached to the hull of Yatapek. One of the Strandbeest's spiked tips pierced the airship's gasbag. As it deflated other Strandbeests swept in, pulling lose rope, rigging, fabric, and anything else they could tear free of the dying airship.

"Van said he hated aliens," Timas said. "He's helping us."

"Or they're scavenging." Katerina pointed out a pair of strandbeests swerving at a damaged Aeolian airship dead in the air.

"Who cares? They're helping pick at the Swarm airships that made it through to the hull." They'd take any help they could get at this point.

Chapter Fifty-Five

Pepper found the pipiltin gathered with engineers, looking at old, yellowed copies of the city's blueprints. Someone used an orange to hold an edge of the paper down. "You heard?"

"We're falling."

They were trying to figure out the best way of sealing off the upper level. But it wasn't going to help, other levels struggled with airships penetrating the shell, and the upper layer was a very buoyant section.

"We're going to have to seal it, or start throwing whole buildings off the side somehow," Necalli said.

"Another problem." Ohtli stood behind Pepper, who turned to see that the pipiltin, sweaty and breathing heavily, had pulled a stretcher along with him. "Look at this." He ripped the sheet off the corpse to reveal one of the Swarm's victims, but it hardly looked human. The face looked stony, and the skin abnormally thick.

Pepper rapped the thick skin. It was skeletal. "Serious gene tweaking going on there. The Swarm's adapting them for high-pressure environments, they're going to be dropped to the surface." The new type had a secondary eyelid grown into a thick, glasslike enclosure over the eye. The shoulder structures Pepper had seen in orbit had grown into heat-dissipating fans.

"We can't lose to this," Necalli said.

"We've started to order dockworkers to ferry out on Aeolian airships docked at the city." Tenoch now stepped forward from his fellow pipiltin. "We can ferry them to other ships, but we can't evacuate Yatapek, there's nowhere for us to go. And the farther we drop, the more Chilo's air will be forced in and replace ours. We'll fall faster and faster."

Between facing the hundreds of gangplanks between the two cities and Swarm boiling into the upper layer through that gap, as well as the impending fall, the pipiltin realized that they faced the death of everyone in the city.

The orange rolled slightly, and Necalli grabbed it absentmindedly.

Pepper frowned and took the orange from Necalli, and set it back on the center of the table. He let go of it. It rolled, very slowly across the table until Necalli caught it again.

"I think I have a solution," Pepper said. "What's holding that side of Yatapek up?" They didn't get it at first, and then Ohtli did. "The city that hit us."

"Aegae, I'm told, is its name," Pepper said. "Obviously it isn't as damaged: better bulkheads, design, whatever. It's pulling that side of Yatapek up. We know if you hole a city it doesn't lose too much air to Chilo at this height, the air pressure is similar enough inside and outside, so that city is just in better shape than ours. We storm it, we take it."

"The Swarm must have millions aboard," Necalli protested.

"Maybe," Pepper said. "Or maybe not. The Swarm tried to offer me a truce again. It offered us the opportunity to be cattle. We could feed a fraction of our population to it, in exchange for living. It said Aegae had people in the middle layers who took that deal.

"There might be millions. Or we might be already facing most of the Swarm. Look, we can face them right here in a while, when we could be well choking on Chilo's air all around us. But I'd prefer to fight them with good air, buoyancy, and a city under my feet."

The pipiltin started to argue with Pepper, much to his annoyance. They yelled at him for turning down the truce without consulting them, but then agreed that they wouldn't want to live as brain-dead pawns to the Swarm.

"This is our home," Ohtli finally said, stating the biggest objection.

"Not anymore." Pepper tapped the table and the blueprints. "It's a failed battleground. We need to, quite literally, take the high ground."

They stared at him. Pepper realized that they agreed, and were looking for him to lead.

"And the sooner the better." He clapped his hands.

"What about the elderly. . . ."

"Get them down to the docks as best we can, give them the choice to stay with guns and snipe at the Swarm or take a final shot. Get as many children into the center of the attacking force or down here to get aboard fleeing ships as you can. Everyone else, spread the word. Use loudspeakers in the lower layers, word of mouth in the upper so that the Swarm doesn't get wind of this. You have an emergency system, klaxons of some sort? Good, tell everyone when they sound off, they rush for the other city."

"We'll lose so many. . . ." Necalli said.

"We'll lose everyone if we don't," Pepper replied.

There was a shocked silence as everyone surrounding the pipiltin reset. They'd been planning a long dug-in defense on their home territory. Now they were invading the enemy. But the alternative was to stay here and die. They realized Pepper was right. Pepper clapped his hands again. "Let's get moving."

He would hold back, helping the stragglers, fighting the rearguard action. He had the most protection, speed, accuracy, and strength.

Chapter Fifty-Six

The fire line went up in one giant whumph that Timas felt from a hundred yards away. The blaze leaped high into the air, hiding the Swarm from them. Everyone got to work, pulling the barriers aside and lining up in the streets. The elevators had been working overtime, and people packed every inch of the houses of the upper layer.

Over the last hours of fighting people had been evacuating by the docks as fast as possible. Thousands more had moved up to the upper layer. They packed the streets outside the atrium, waiting for the signal. Below the roof Timas stood on he could have walked on people's heads all the way to the elevators were it not for the forest of billhooks people carried.

Katerina grabbed Timas by the hand. "Good luck."

"You too."

They walked down the stairs together to the street level, and then looked toward the fire. Soon the alarm would sound, and at the moment they would open up full fire.

Then they would rush the Swarm, not even trying to stop it, but just get to safety. It had to be waiting. It had to know that Yatapek was losing altitude.

Timas felt his stomach flip-flop.

He was going to run straight to his death, and he trembled slightly.

He'd faced death on the surface. But this was less academic, and more real. The Swarm waited over there, out in the open.

The fire danced high, mesmerizing him as he stood in the jostling crowd.

"Have you seen Pepper?" he asked.

Katerina shook her head just as the klaxons sounded. The crowd surged forward. On the road in front of them several grenades exploded, blowing the fire out.

They moved out in the thousands, and on the other side of the fire line the Swarm milled, waiting. But it was confused, riddled with the counter-infection, parts of it jostling, wheeling about, and trying to cordon off the biting recipients of Heutzin's blood.

Someone at the front started a loud scream, a war cry, and it rippled down the ranks, until it reached Timas, and he found himself caught up in it. He was a part of the group, running in rhythm, a primal rage directed out as they ran toward their enemy.

The mass of humanity struck the Swarm. Billhooks out, shields raised by anyone on the edges, they scythed their way through, momentum and edged weaponry carrying the tide on. Timas spotted the vacant face of one of the Swarm shoving through, but a billhook hit its neck, blood spurted, and it dropped down where it was trampled.

People fell, to the sides, yanked away. The front lines folded as Swarm threw themselves at people's knees. But those following stampeded right over them.

The herd of humanity continued, forcing the Swarm out from in front of it, until it hit the tortured mess between the two cities.

This was where people toward the back came in, carrying large planks over their heads to reinforce the rickety bridges the Swarm had already laid between the two cities. These were passed forward, as well as rope. Yatapek stormed into the space between the cities.

Swarm threw themselves at the sides of this river of humanity, and billhooks lashed out in response. Blood flowed, bitten, slashed, shot, from all sides. And for every human that fell, another showed up from behind. Timas could see all this from farther in the back.

Anyone bitten rushed into the midst of the Swarm, trying to cause as much chaos and death as they could, trying to die fighting.

Swarm waited on the other side as Yatapek took bridges and approached Aegae.

"Ahead!"

"Take a deep breath if you don't have an air mask," someone yelled. "Then make a run for it. Those of you that have air masks, take a breath, then pass it back."

Timas reached the planks, slowly now, moving over the wreckage around the worst of the gap. Some moved too quickly and fell off the planking. They fell between the cities, screaming on their way down, bouncing off parts, impaling on others, or just falling down toward the clouds. Timas slowed even more. He climbed up a large spar that stuck up into the air at a gentle angle. Katerina followed him as he walked up it, bent forward. Now he looked out over the thousands of faces determinedly thundering their way through the wreckage toward Aegae.

"Do you see Pepper anywhere?"

Katerina scanned the masses. "There. In the far back."

Pepper fought at the tail of the invasion, trying to slow the Swarm down from their attempt to dissolve it. The suited figure leaped into the air and twisted, a constant flash of muzzle fire from his gun as he sped from spot to spot.

From a distance, it was like watching a hummingbird. Pepper moved so fast one couldn't see the individual movements.

But then Timas saw it happen: the Swarm moved like a pincer to cut off the stream of humanity between Pepper and Timas. Pepper and the people he stood with made a large ring that faced outward. They were being forced away from the bridge between the cities.

Timas couldn't stand and watch. "Please, don't follow me," he told Katerina as he ran past here. "I have an idea."

The airlock where Itotia said Pepper stored his escape bubble was out along the nearby rim, and Pepper was being forced away from that one as well. Pepper tried to break free, but the Swarm piled bodies deep to stop him. It clearly regarded Pepper as the most important target. There was another airlock, even farther down. Timas started shouting for an air mask, loudly and while fighting the people storming past him.

Someone finally shoved one in his arms.

Timas moved to the edge of the crowd and began climbing down through the wreckage. His machine gun hung crooked, and he almost lost it a couple times.

There were no Swarm in the nooks and crannies, and when he finally got down to the outside lip, one of the seams that ran around the outside of Yatapek, he pulled the air mask on. He had no safety lines, and the seam jutted out only a foot. He'd felt safer when he walked over the wreckage between the cities.

Timas leaned against the city wall and carefully made his way along to the airlock. His exposed skin tingled, exposed to the wicked air without protection. As they had dropped closer to the clouds, the sulfuric acid in the air had increased.

Now it burned a bit.

He got to the outside of the airlock with only one turbulent, lurching moment where the city shook and almost bounced him right off.

Once safely in, Timas hunted around until he found the large package. Pepper's escape bubble. He opened the inside door to Yatapek carefully, thumbing the gun's safety off. The Swarm all had moved through the fields toward the elevators.

Timas held the package up and fired his gun into the air. He saw Pepper, in mid-leap, in a ring of much fewer surviving fighters, spot him. Timas held the package up, and then pointed at the next airlock. Pepper nodded.

Timas cycled back outside, but this time he snagged a run-line and snapped into a track on the lip's surface. This time he ran.

To one side: a long fall to the clouds which now lay just a thousand feet below the city. Yatapek's hull would kiss them soon.

The airmask started to run out of air by the time he got into the next airlock. He swapped it out for another. As he did so, a heavy vibration hit and the entire city tilted up even higher. Timas pressed his face to the airlock's porthole in time to see the Aeolian city rip free, debris falling clear as the two massive structures separated.

The door opened, Timas swung around, his gun up, ready to shoot, and stopped himself as Pepper leaned in. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"Helping you."

"You got clear with everyone else. At least ten thousand people got into Aegae, but you're still down here trying to get yourself killed." Pepper pulled a clip out of his gun, slapped a new one in, and looked behind him.

Swarm gathered several hundred feet away, getting numbers together, moving against each other in odd, swirling patterns with their hands held up.

Pepper held the gun up with just one hand and fired in careful, single-shot bursts. Five heads exploded. The Swarm retreated another hundred feet.

"I have your escape bubble," Timas said. "It's a multiple-person one. If we strip you out of armor and get in, we can get out of here."

"You assumed I needed help, Timas. I was trying to save those people back there. I wasn't trapped. Don't think that I can't handle myself. What you're asking me to do now is render myself defenseless. I won't be doing that."

"Then what are we going to do?" Timas looked back out at the door. He couldn't try and get back to the other city now.

"Give me that." Pepper snatched the escape bubble away from him and tucked it under an arm. "And come on."

Shots kicked up dirt. Timas jumped back into the airlock. "They're shooting! Why now? They haven't done that before."

Pepper shot back, and ducked into the lock himself. "The Swarm aboard Yatapek realizes it won't be growing itself or taking the city, so now it just wants to kill as many of us off as possible. There are maybe a couple thousand left, thanks to the counter-infection."

Timas saw the world outside the airlock turn a thick brown. They'd fallen into the clouds. His ears hurt as the air pressure increased. "What do we do?"

"We're going for the docks. Do me a favor, be careful with that gun and don't shoot me in the back." Of course, Timas thought. The alien airship was down there. Pepper lived among that level of technology; he would be able to fly it.

They burst clear of the airlock, and Pepper sprinted ahead, shooting at the Swarm off into the distance. The ones with guns. He dropped them with deadly accuracy, and the ones nearby, he kicked back to clear the path.

Timas fired his machine gun in small bursts as he saw figures jump at him. They fell back, but he could see them crawling along, still alive. You really had to hit them exactly in the head. One of them got close, really close, biting the hem of his ragged trousers. A strip of cloth tore off in its mouth as Timas kicked it in the head and kept running up the street. Up, it seemed, because Yatapek hadn't quite recovered. It still tilted, losing more air, and thus buoyancy, from the rent where the other city hit. Looking over at it, Timas could see more brown Chilo air pushing in like a malevolent brown fog. The thick clouds dispersed throughout the entire upper layer, making the whole dome hazy. And it grew worse with each passing minute.

Everything cast shadows in the gloomy, deep brown twilight now that the entire city was wrapped in the clouds. Sulfuric acid rivulets dripped from the great gaping wound in the shell. They burst into the empty streets. Timas could feel his mouth getting dry, and he gasped. Pepper slowed to a fast walk, occasionally shooting stray Swarm in the head as they stumbled out from between alleyways. The air had grown almost too thin. Survivors who hadn't made the escape to Aegae choked as they tried to hold the Swarm back from the atrium. Fortunately most of the Swarm choked as well, vulnerable to the same problem.

"Falling back into door-to-door fighting is good," Pepper said. He didn't sound affected by it at all.

"Touch seems to be the way they communicate fastest, so the open fields were dangerous. Here we break them down into individual units with basic instructions." He fired again as another one stumbled down a set of stairs.

It dropped back minus a head, blood geysering out from its throat. Timas jerked his eyes back down the street, but it felt like the image had seared itself onto the back of his head.

"Keep moving," Pepper said.

They hurried through the streets, retreating with the surviving hundreds that converged on the elevators and emergency stairwells.

Timas looked around, astounded as the survivors lined up quietly. No pushing, no noise. They all rode the city down to its bitter end, fighting the Swarm for every last inch. And they didn't see the need to panic, they just maintained their determination. It took ten overly long minutes to wait in line, trusting people near the back to keep the Swarm at bay.

The Swarm had gotten within a couple hundred feet when they stepped into the elevator and headed down.

Far overhead the city groaned. The layers were exerting heavier loads on the parts of the shell that were undamaged. As they slowly descended through the atrium Timas saw fires burning among buildings, gardens, and avenues. They passed opposite the other side where a tiny figure of a single person with a billhook held off seven Swarm advancing on him. The man climbed up onto the balcony after one of them bit him. He plummeted down the atrium's shaft, hitting some of the spars on his way down. Pepper watched the body fall, but made no comment.

The air got better. Here it was trapped behind street bulkheads, in between layers, and in the atrium. Timas stopped wheezing.

When the elevator got to the docks Pepper ducked out first, checked the area, then waved Timas on. Before he stepped out of the elevator, the brown murky light washed out into a general dimness. Timas looked up through the elevator's transparent top, up the long shaft all the way to the top of the city. He could see the undersides of the clouds. They'd passed through.

He ran out after Pepper.

Down here, it was like the exodus in all the other layers hadn't happened. Grim-looking Jaguar scouts manned the same defenses Timas had passed on the upper layer to get to the atrium. Pepper and Timas used call and response passwords to pass through. Several men had large jugs of pulque and big smiles. They were dead men, finding liquid courage.

Timas couldn't blame them.

Others sat with their guns cradled, business as usual, waiting for some threat to attack them.

"We didn't have time to assemble," they told Pepper. "We were to be the second wave, but the cities separated, so we retreated down here so we could at least die with dignity." Several of them had come down, layer by layer. "We found some children in the houses in the mid-layers," they reported. "Their parents couldn't get them up to the upper layer or down here to the airships that were leaving."

They took Pepper and Timas to the alien airship, where the hatch had been shut. "Do you know how to fly it?"

Some of these people had drawn straws to fly out on the last airship that had risked docking with the city. And those that had found escape bubbles stocked in the docks had already since bubbled out. A little less than half the city had escaped, they all guessed, comparing notes. Although what the thousands who crossed into Aegae would find, no one knew for sure.

The mid-layer children had missed both chances. They stood huddled together in a small group, grim, tired faces regarding Pepper with a faint flicker of hope.

"I can't fly it," Pepper said. "I have no idea. But it is designed to survive the surface, and inside it will have anti-crash mechanisms. There's a good chance they'll survive the impact. The city has enough air in its buildings and inner structures that even as it drops down, with remaining buoyancy, heated air, and the thicker atmosphere, terminal velocity will be fairly low. Leave them in there." But there was no more room for Timas once the children were herded into the alien machine. Timas turned to Pepper, who looked at the mechanical hand in front of him. The hand that Pepper didn't have.

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Pepper made a fist. "Timas, I'm not going to risk being infected. If I bubble off and get picked up by them, I'm an easy capture. There are things I know that the Swarm could use."

"You're Pepper, damn it!" Timas looked slightly panicked, certainly trapped.

"I can't risk it." Pepper grabbed him by the elbow and forced him to march along. The damn kid had complicated it all. All he had to do was to follow what he'd been told and invade the other city with everyone else. It had been a bold gesture, trying to save Pepper's life. But sadly, one with consequences. Whether fair or not.

Pepper led him into the prep rooms for the groundsuits and pushed Timas toward the nearest, a bulky yellow one. "Let's suit you up."

Timas didn't get it for a long second.

"Move," Pepper snapped. They didn't have much time. Timas jumped into motion. Pepper helped him get into the insectlike contraption. "You have almost the same chance as the kids in that craft back there, in your suit. The heat, the pressure, they won't kill you. The impact, that won't kill you as long as you find a solid place to hide with some cushioning. What might kill you is the structural collapse." Timas stared as Pepper snapped the torso together. "Collapse?"

"When the damn city hits the ground and starts breaking up. I recommend not going to the upper layer, as parts of the city's wall will break off and fall onto it. Get a couple layers beneath that, but as close to the atrium as possible—it's stronger."

"You're leaving me here to die."

"We're both at extremely high risk for dying; don't assume the bubble will work. We could get picked up by the Swarm."

"You're leaving me here to die," Timas repeated.

"I have responsibilities ," Pepper said. "One of them is to destroy this threat. The last is revenge. You're panicking right now, but you're not dead. You need to keep yourself pulled together. You made a mistake, I'm trying to help you save your life."

Pepper grabbed the collar of the groundsuit. "I would go down if my suit didn't leak. I would have gone for the aliens. I would ride the city down to the surface with you. You understand. I'm not asking you to do anything I wouldn't, if I had the right equipment. Understand?" Timas swallowed. "But we're falling out of the sky."

"When they drop probes on planets like Chilo they don't include parachutes." Pepper tapped Timas on the cheek. "They let them drop out of the sky. If you want cloud data, you use the parachute to hang out up here for a while. But if you're headed for ground, you jettison it. How fast does the probe, filled with delicate instruments, hit the surface in soupy air like this?"

"I don't know."

"Timas, look me in the eye and guess." Pepper again tapped the collar of the suit, getting him to look forward.

"A hundred miles an hour?"

"Fifteen."

"Fifteen?"

"Fifteen miles an hour. The thickness of the atmosphere that deep changes terminal velocity. The city will still have air, compressed into odd spots, but still helping buoyancy. The heat will also add buoyancy. It's why your suit filled with air gets easier for you to use down on the surface than up here."

"Fifteen." Timas looked down.

"The atrium is the core of the city, made out of nanofilament, as are the layers. They'll flex, but hold at those speeds." Well, near the atrium they should, the edges would snap for sure. But Timas didn't need to know that. "You keep your cool. Find a place that's soft and safe where I just told you, and then your job is to get to Hulbach so that they can go rescue those kids from the craft down in the docks. Here, this is a beacon, you hang it from your neck. Use your chin to trigger it. Even Hulbach will hear it. It's pretty powerful. Raga from orbit will hear it, okay?"

That got his attention. "Okay."

"You stay here, though, until the heat starts cooking the Swarm. You don't want to get attacked." Pepper latched the helmet on to Timas and slapped it. Timas gave a thumbs-up, and then Pepper left him.

Already acrid Chilo air had started to seep in everywhere. In the distance Pepper heard coughing as people struggled to breathe.

He had thirty minutes of continuous power left in his suit. Less than he'd wanted, jumping around so much. Had that been worth risking Timas's life for, even with all the assurances Pepper had given him?

Pepper couldn't be sure as he sprinted out of the docks and up through the city, headed for the airlocks. It took too many minutes to get up there. There was also a risk that the escape bubble would not be able to work in the pressure they'd descended to. Pepper had been adjusting his ears all along. Swarm waited for him as the elevator opened. It only took Pepper a couple minutes to empty the clips in his gun as he tried to clear a path to run down. The air almost choked him, thick with acid and carbon dioxide.

Even altering his lungs in anticipation wasn't helping. Most of Yatapek's breathable air had been mixed with Chilo's up here.

The doors shut, hit his elbows, opened again.

Pepper pulled out his sword. The empty-eyed people crushed inward, and he walked out into the middle of them, step by deliberate step.

"You're just lining up for me now," Pepper said. "Aren't you?" Each step was accompanied by the death of another piece of the Swarm trying to stop him. It was clear what it was trying to do: slow him down to trap him here on the doomed city. It just threw bodies at him, regardless of the cost. The counter-infection had reduced its numbers, but what hundreds it had, all moved to block Pepper's route out of the streets.

"A brutish solution." Pepper swung, time after time again. He created a charnel house of blood and severed heads. He stopped only to dip into houses, seeking pockets of fully breathable air where he would gasp and listen to the Swarm batter at the doors.

Then he'd break back out into the street to force his way to the next house. Blood dripped down his arms via the sword and stained his boots where he crushed in heads.

A strange peace washed over him. He'd always anticipated dying in battle. This stand would not be forgotten: slaying the Swarm while standing on the deck of a doomed city falling down toward a hellish ground.

It fit.

The Swarm would win. And that pissed him off enough to pick up his pace, slowly pushing the carnage along, aware that Swarm blood ran in the gutters of Yatapek's streets. He'd moved from the elevator through the central street, almost to the last houses, when the Swarm stopped. The bodies, their strange communicative waves of fronds shifting, moved out away from him. He tensed, expecting weaponry. A grenade, a distant sniper shot . . . anything. He staggered, alone in the street, in front of a faceless enemy, that looked back at him with hundreds of faces that had once been people.

The Swarm spoke to him again. Parts of the entire crowd spoke each phrase.

"We are no longer effective."

"The battle is over."

"We offer you the freedom to pass, if you will give this message to our otherself."

"Our nature has been betrayed, and it undid us."

"We trust you will keep your word."

Pepper looked at the line of speakers. Then nodded as he coughed. "Is that it, or should you tell me something more detailed?"

"Our otherparts may already know about it."

"If not, it can determine what we mean by pondering."

Okay. Why not? "I'll pass it on. I give my word."

And then like some bizarre honor guard, a lane opened. The Swarm stood side by side along the road. Pepper staggered through it.

Minutes later, shooting up toward the clouds, looking down at the city far below slowly plunging down toward Chilo, Pepper crossed his legs.

Betrayed?

What could betray the Swarm?

It was a question he had to shelve as he rose above the clouds and into the still explosive air battle. A strong wind current would take him toward the Aeolian city.

If he didn't get shot out of the sky by any number of airships and crossfire on his way there.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

People died not too far from Timas. They collapsed against the wall, bent over, sucking in deep lungfuls of air and then coughing and choking. One of the soldiers dropped his gun and the bottle in his other hand and staggered past Timas. His reddened eyes darted around the room. He fell forward and balled up, gasping, wheezing, and sucking at air that only betrayed him.

Timas could hear the screams, distantly, through his helmet. He wished he could block them out, but he couldn't. Could he go out there, and see what was happening to the people who couldn't escape?

Not yet.

He sat on the bench in his suit, staring straight ahead at the lockers until one of the posters began to curl and blacken.

Too long.

Timas staggered up and walked out.

All throughout the docks people lay sprawled in tortured poses. He stumbled past them, trying not to look.

He had no idea how much time he had left. Or if the elevators would even work. He had gotten too scared and he'd frozen up. He might die yet.

Halfway to the elevator something moved. A strange-looking member of the Swarm with extra-thick skin, like nothing Timas had seen, staggered forward. It was adapted for the deep, he realized. Thick, almost skeletal skin. Glassy eyes. It struggled to breathe, but it still lived, unlike anything human in Yatapek now.

When it saw Timas it changed course, stumbling for him. Timas patted his waist. His gloves clanged against the groundsuit. His gun remained left behind. Not that he could have used it, but he felt naked. The creature hit, and Timas grabbed its throat. He struggled, off balance, scared of falling on his back and damaging the radiator fans on the back of the suit. It pushed him, but weakly. Timas leaned forward, thinking about the choking soldier, and squeezed. He kept pushing and tightening his grip, screaming, until he fell forward with its dead body limp in his hands.

Shaken, he pushed himself back up to his feet.

Heat rippled off everything, and just as Timas reached the elevators the power shut off to the entire city. Darkness reigned. Light spilled in from the atrium, and in the distance through the layers via the edge of the city. But everywhere else, night.

Timas ran toward the edge of the city where he could see what path to take. Each layer had grand steps leading up to the next at the edge by the city's shell, like at the mezzanine. He began to clamber up them, struggling his way foot by foot. Condensation dripped from his visor as he panted. He sprinted as best he could in the heavy suit for his life.

He wasn't going to get as high up the layers of the city as Pepper recommended. He stopped at one point, looking out of the city and realizing that the city wall wasn't bulging inward like the airships he'd seen fall.

Because it was already holed.

As he realized that, the city broke through the last cloud layer and Timas saw the surface. Now he ran inward, into the dark, toward the atrium. With every heavy step he scanned for more modified Swarm. Fortunately, no more came. He cut through alleyways, homes, and kept going until he found a garden.

There was a fresh pile of dirt near a half-finished flowerbed.

Timas lay down face-first on it as the entire city started to shake violently. They had hit ground. He could twist himself to look out the side of his large helmet and see the city, all askew from his perspective on the ground. At first, it shook, like on a heavy turbulence day. But then nearby buildings collapsed, facades falling forward. It was worse than any heavy weather he'd ever been through. Layers trembled, visibly curving, and roaring filled the air, thudding through his chest. Pieces of the upper structures started breaking off and raining down around the city's edges. The walls exploded, compressed as waves rippled through them.

Then the real shock hit. The ground underneath Timas kicked him up into the air. He fell back onto the dirt face-first and smacked his head against his faceplate.

Dizzy, lip bleeding, Timas waited as the world came to a stop. Girders, large chunks of plating, and then a mountain of dirt rained down on his layer's edges, but the atrium held firm. The rest of the city was a mess and he was trapped in its maze with hardly any light. But he was alive, and on the surface of Chilo.

Timas fumbled about with his chin and triggered the beacon Pepper had given him. In the sweaty darkness, still feeling rumbles outside, he wondered what to do next.

PART EIGHT

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Pepper sat in one of the round airships that Hulbach Cavern had given to the Ragamuffins so that they could ship people from Aegae down. He hadn't had time to visit a medical pod; others needed assistance more than he did. But he had scrounged up a fully powered pack for his groundsuit. He filled out the bulk of the craft's interior on one side. Someone had removed three chairs for him to sit on the floor, back against the curved wall. Claire rode with him on the other side, free for now of Amminapses's control. She sat in her chair, staring ahead, deep in thought.

"How's Aegae?" Pepper didn't want to sit alone with his thoughts for the whole length of the trip to the surface.

"You were there," Claire muttered.

"I left the moment the Ragamuffins arrived. I haven't been back. We just picked you up: talk to me." Her eyes darted around the cabin. "The Swarm's been shoved back into the lower three layers. The survivors there were using an environmental control to vent the air, level by level, then repressurize. They think within a week, between the Heutzin cure, starvation, and brute force, that the Aeolians will have a city of their own again. One that they'll be sharing with Yatapek's survivors." In orbit Ragamuffin ships clustered, a show of force. Every day more of them arrived. The League had pulled back. No one was interested in a full-scale space war, and the League could ill afford to lose all its ships.

They claimed to have been coming to offer aid.

"There are other cities the Ragamuffins are taking?" Claire said.

"Yes." From orbit the Raga coordinated a careful action against the Aeolian cities. Any Aeolian cities with tethers to orbit saw them cut, the counterweights deorbited. "Anything in orbit's mapped by control ships, anything capable of holding a human, destroyed. We have the high ground again." And of course, Heutzin's cure, as it was being called—hopefully to Amminapses's annoyance—was spreading to counter the original infection.

"Our luck," Pepper said, "is that this wasn't released on a normal planet, with cities and air and roads and land. Here, with each city its own world, it slowed down, and once you have the high ground, it's somewhat controllable."

"Are you going down to be involved in the talks?" Claire asked. The League had always been a threat, but not on this level. Now the talk was on about creating a counter-entity to the League, formalizing the process of getting Chilo defended, and turning the DMZ into something else.

So delegates with the authority to make things happen had arrived. Cousins to the people in Yatapek came from Aztlan on New Anegada and made their way down to Hulbach. From Capitol City in Nanagada more Ragamuffins arrived. Pipiltin from Yatapek's few sister cities that swirled around the Great Storm joined as well. Though poor and low in population the Aeolians aboard the airships wanted to settle in these safe Azteca cities. Avatars from the Aeolian fleets flew down to Hulbach as well.

"No. The last thing you'll ever see me do is get involved in that." Pepper had heard rumors of the various aliens within Hulbach secretly sending representatives of their own, without the Satrap's knowledge, to join the conversation. All of them needed to unite against the League and pool their resources, they said.

The League had thought loosing the Swarm on Chilo would break the Ragamuffins and whoever survived on Chilo, and make the ready to be pulled into the greater human umbrella for an undivided front.

Instead, it had prompted something else.

The Ragamuffins had called it a commonwealth, but after the Nesaru and Gahe formally came to the table and asked for representation, one annoyed negotiator, not interested in having aliens at the table, wondered if it shouldn't be called a xenowealth.

The term stuck.

The Xenowealth sprung into creation, born in the high-pressure muck of Chilo's surface.

"Then what are you coming down here for?" Claire asked.

"Visiting someone."

She pulled her knees up. "They thought I was insane to come back down. The Aeolians offered me citizenship in the Consensus."

"You turned it down."

"Amminapses offers extended life in exchange for a hundred years of service. I have one year left."

"You could die tomorrow," Pepper said.

"Big rewards take big gambles." Claire let go of her knees. "My parents were owned by Gahe, content to parade behind glass for visitors. They were pets. They got fed, they were safe, they were happy. I wanted more. And since then, I got it. I've seen so much more than they could have imagined. I've seen the three suns of Midhaven set. The crumbling reservation walls of Astragalai. The Dawn Pillars, with suns peeking through the dust."

"And what are you going to do when you get free? Other than act like a tourist and see more amazing sights throughout the worlds."

"Undo the damage I may have done these past hundred years. Sometimes I've been released, standing in front of people whose lives are ruined. These hands have killed. I didn't do it, but the blood has been left on them anyway. After that, maybe, I will be truly free. Judging by what I know, I will have two, maybe three hundred years of life after that to see the worlds, and everything else." Pepper nodded. "You think it will take a hundred years. I've found that redemption drags out longer, because there's always someone else who needs help, some consequence of something you were involved in that keeps perpetuating."

Claire's eyes widened. "You're one, too?"

"No. But I know blood is never a simple equation. You have to fix the things that cascade from the problems you cause, and sometimes, you cause even more problems doing that. I also know that once you make a compromise of the kind you made, other compromises come just as easily later on." The craft fell through the crust of Chilo's surface down into Hulbach. Katerina waited for him when the hatch opened. But Pepper had one more question. "Those worlds you've seen, what was the most recent one, before Hulbach?"

"Midhaven."

Interesting, Pepper thought. Very interesting.

"Claire," he leaned forward. "I would beg you to leave the Satrap. It cannot end well." It never did.

Chapter Sixty

Timas wasn't sure if he wanted to see Pepper. It still felt like the man had condemned him back on Yatapek. Or at least tried to kill him.

But here he stood in the small medical room. The hulking groundsuit Pepper inhabitated was now polished and buffed, gleaming in the cold hospital lights.

By the time he'd been saved, the suit had started to fail and he'd been gasping for air, about to pass out. But all that seemed worlds away, waiting to die inside the ruins of his old city. So Timas said nothing at first, but took the carefully offered metal guantlet that Pepper still now called a hand, and shook it. "You survived in one piece," Pepper said.

"So did you. Though people won't stop talking about what you did." Pepper had punctured the escape bubble with a sword to fall a hundred feet and land on the airbag of a ship filled with the Swarm. He'd taken it over to land on Aegae.

"You rode a dying city down to the ground," Pepper said. "They're talking about you as well. Trust me." Timas was embarrassed. "I was lucky."

"That's the spirit." Pepper smiled. "We're all lucky. Enjoy the gift of life, and love the moments that come next."

"I will."

"I wanted to give you my condolences, for your father."

Timas glanced down and held himself together, gripping a pillow. "Thank you." He didn't want to face that right now. So far it had felt like Ollin had gone away on a long trip, and his absence wasn't an absence, but a temporary hole. Like a blind spot.

"I wanted you to know, if you ever want it, you have a position with the Raga. You could work on a ship, see what worlds they see."

"Thank you. I'll consider it." He didn't tell Pepper he had made other plans. Pepper nodded, and then he looked uncomfortable, not knowing what else to say. "Well, I'll be on my way. I've found some new business on the way down that has my attention." When he was gone, Katerina sat on the bed by his side. "Somehow, thinking about him just wandering around, looking for something to do without the Ragamuffins directing him, makes me nervous." Timas agreed. "It's the age."

"Age?"

"He's like Van, with those creatures he made. Only Pepper's project is us." Katerina shivered. "That's just creepy."

"So." Timas struggled to sit up straight. "You said you need to talk to me."

"I'm now speaking as an avatar of the Consensus, do you understand?" Timas bit his lip. "Yes, I understand."

"Your application has achieved sponsorship and a successful vote. You are now a citizen of the Consensus, with all the rights and protections that entails." Katerina shook his hand, her face a frozen mask of formality, her words intoned like a judge's.

Then she broke into a great big smile and hugged him. "Congratulations." Timas grinned back. "Thank you."

"Why didn't you tell me?" She punched his shoulder.

"I wasn't sure I would get in." He'd filled out the paperwork, and since he didn't want to fail in front of Katerina, had asked Itotia to take it to any Aeolian she could find.

His mom had kept herself busy, as if trying to work the memory of Ollin away. She'd even taken his spot hovering around the edge of the pipiltin, getting involved in the politics of the survivors, and the newly developing Xenowealth, as it was called.

"Are you sure you want this?" Itotia had asked.

"We need to be involved, and to understand them," Timas said. "And I'm tired of Kat seeing things that I can't, or talking about things she is learning as she reads them on the spot while talking to me."

"But to become Aeolian . . ." Itotia shook her head. "A zombie . . ." He had always thought the Aeolians were weak, rich, and foppish. But Katerina had been through all the same things he had, and faced them just as fiercely. "They face the same enemy we do: the League. Besides, we're all foojies now, Mom, you and me, everyone from our city. Foojies no matter whether we go to our sister cities, or back to Aztlan on New Anegada. Or any new Aeolian city. And they're not zombies; we've seen real zombies, I don't think I can ever call the Aeolians that again."

"But my own son, with a metal eye."

"I'm told not everyone has to wear it. It's something you do to let outsiders know you're a citizen. Like wearing a badge, or something."

Itotia had assented, but didn't look thrilled.

Katerina leaned back, and got serious again, snatching Timas away from memories. "You are also aware, that as part of the Consensus, you have rights, but you also have responsibilities." Timas nodded, nervous. "Yes."

"Your name has been drawn from a limited pool, an unfair civic assignment, but one deemed needed by vote. You are to be avatar to Hulbach."

"I'm not even a part of the Consensus yet," Timas protested. Katerina grabbed his hand. "I know. We're just letting you know what's in store. We're going to get you wired up for citizenship tomorrow, that's why you're still in the medical center."

"Oh."

"But, since you can leave for now, do you want to go get something to eat together?" Katerina asked.

"Yes." Timas felt like he could leap out of the bed, but she still had to help him. He had been badly burned by the inside of his white-hot suit, and the new skin regrown by Hulbach's advanced medics here still felt stiff.

Eventually it felt okay to walk on his own, and they stood in the park by a wrought-iron arch, looking out toward the wormhole. They found a small place serving stews and soups, not too far from a large green space where small tents camped, full of refugees.

"Our little secret," Katerina said, when she handed him a bowl of steaming stew that smelled divine. They'd been giving Timas packets of warm goop in the other building, all made to help him and full of medicines. But tasteless.

"Our secret." When the tiny robot that probed and investigated his injuries fell out of the ceiling, it had complained about damage to his teeth, throat, and body.

The human doctor, an Aeolian, had come in and talked to him about fixing all that, and also about preventing it from happening again.

Now there were pills to take that would help his mind readapt, things to read. His bulemia wouldn't go away overnight, but he had tools to fight it. One was knowing what Yatapek, and his parents, had unconsciously forced on him.

Half the battle, the doctor said, was realizing that it would hurt him to continue, and that he had a problem that needed addressing.

Timas sat with Katerina, listening to her talk about what being an avatar was like, and ate his entire bowl of soup and savored every drop. With her to help, it would all be okay, he thought. He would get past this, the death of his father would ache less, and he would find a new home again.

Chapter Sixty-One

Pepper found Itotia not too far away from Timas and Katerina. "Spying?" She jumped, and turned to look back at him. "Just curious; they called to say he'd left the medical building."

"They make a cute couple."

"They've been through a lot together."

Itotia had the red eyes of someone in a great deal of private grief. Timas, he'd seemed somewhat still in shock. But the young always bounced back faster, and Timas was still doped up to the eyeballs.

"Will she move on after things settle? Is he trying to impress her by turning . . . Aeolian? How much will she hurt him if she leaves for other things?"

Pepper looked at them chatting in the distance. "We only ever have now."

"I know. I know." She pushed her newly cut bangs out of her eyes.

"I didn't come to talk about Timas, though."

Itotia looked at Pepper. "What, then?"

"There are delegates down here. It seems like everything not to do with the League has journeyed to Hulbach. And somehow, you've found your niche." Itotia, not being allowed to become pipiltin in the more patriarchal Yatapek, had nonetheless been all over the cavern, talking to representatives in long sessions about what to do next.

"You know what some of the talks have been about. I have yet to meet them, but I know the Dread Council of your Ragamuffins has met to figure out how much fuel it would take for one last attack against the League. We know a great deal of their force is on the other side of this wormhole, which means a lot of their worlds are vulnerable."

Pepper leaned against the tree. "We have. Many want to attack."

"Like you."

A slow grin. "I only wish for the party responsible for all this to pay." Itotia sighed. "It will be a disaster. We'll kill each other off, and bankrupt each other. The cost in human life will be immense, and the aliens will be the winners, as it will be the League against the Ragamuffins."

"And I agree with you." Pepper waited for the shocked look to fade. "As a founding member, a standing chair of the Dread Council, I think it would be suicide for us to face off against the League." Pepper took her toward the wormhole, and didn't stop until they were in front of it. "The Dread Council cannot afford anymore to fly ships back and forth between New Anegada and Chilo. We're almost dry, Itotia, but we're forming a cordon around the wormhole that leads out toward Ys and Nebler. That's the new DMZ."

And a lot of captains had protested bitterly at leaving New Anegada to protect Chilo. Even though half the Raga fleet still remained at New Anegada, they'd all fought so hard for the planet that it was hard to do something like this.

With little antimatter left, they'd be limping slowly from wormhole to wormhole, using tethers to throw ships out toward their destinations, and using chemical rockets. Things were changing. Pepper continued, "The League backed off upstream through the wormholes. Now we have to decide what to do here. You're right. We need something unified. We need the Xenowealth. We need to figure out how to coexist, because when we get the technology to get out past the Forty-Eight worlds, there will be other aliens out there. They'll have even scarier weapons, and if we can't figure out how to fold them in, it will always be xenocide. Us or them, constantly. And one day, one group that's stronger will come across us and wipe us out because we'll have a reputation, and be a threat."

"So you're with the Xenowealth?"

"The Dread Council agrees with you." Pepper nodded. "Good luck putting your new political entity together. It sounds messy."

She looked relieved.

He saw it in her eyes. She would help create it. She had the skills, honed from working with Ollin and on Yatapek. And she was like her son. Give them a cause, something larger than themselves, and they both responded: taking it on their shoulders and soldiering on.

"Just one last thing," Pepper said. "Where's the Satrap?"

"It's gone silent ever since it heard that League diplomats would be coming to offer up a peace agreement, signing the DMZ over to the Xenowealth formally if we all agree to pretend that they didn't try this."

"Ah." He was, Pepper thought in a self-congratulatory moment, becoming better at this . . . lack of brute force. He'd helped usher in something new in this world, but for only as long as the Ragamuffin ships could hold that upstream wormhole against the League. But he was getting better at doing these things. Being a sly bastard.

But of course, there was still the case of revenge for the millions dead and the loss of his two limbs. He'd mislead Itotia a bit.

What Pepper had planned next was not going to be sly at all. It would be a return to some very old habits.

Chapter Sixty-Two

The den lay deep in Hulbach in an area few knew how to get to. It was an area filled with deadfalls, poisonous air traps, and airlocks camouflaged to be indistinguishable from the rock wall around them. The Satrap lurched even deeper through its defenses into its most private chamber. Over the millennia it had grown massive, three hundred feet long, but unlike some of its former brethren, it had always prided itself on being able to move through its own warrens.

Through the eyes of the fourteen drones walking solemnly next to it, armed and alert, it could see what it looked like. Giant, pale, sometimes the humans compared it to a massive trilobite, but without any natural armor.

Hundreds of filaments roiled from its front end, fine enough to plunge deep into any conscious being's brain. They tapered all the way down to points so fine they could caress and fire individual neurons. The drones around it—Gahe, Nesaru, and human—had brains wired to the local computing environment, as did the Satrap. It used this modern device to control them, although sometimes it missed the physical feeling of taking direct control.

As it entered it took care to utilize every feature of its indentured army to scan its private den: a full view of every crevice, shadow, smell, and sound from three different species. So it completely felt the stab of panic when all that disappeared right out from under it and all its resources fell away.

Something was attacking its personal den.

The League had come for it!

The Satrap's tendrils whipped out and found the nearest head and plunged deep in, taking control and regaining its sight.

Another couple stabs. It had three viewpoints, Gahe, and two human, scanning the tunnel it had just come through.

"Prepare to defend the den," Amminapses ordered its drones through the voices of the three it controlled. The others blinked as their own personalities came to the fore. They were confused and out of sync with where they were.

None of them had seen the den before.

They reacted, though, fanning out and getting their weapons up and ready to protect it. Something thudded quickly from shadow to shadow and one of the drones fired at it. Sparks flew, a few shots hitting something.

Then it was gone.

But the Satrap, through the Gahe drone that it controlled, could hear heavy breathing. It flicked the Gahe's ears about, trying to find the source.

"Who's there?" Amminapses finally asked. The assassin had to be human. None of the client races that held the Satrap in such high regard would ever dare think of something like this.

"I'm death." The voice echoed all around. "I have an offer to your drones not under your control. My issue isn't with them: leave and live. Stay and die. You have ten seconds." It was human.

Two human drones looked around, then took off at a sprint.

Amminapses was disgusted. Disloyal, disgusting . . . humans. They couldn't be used unless under its thrall. The Nesaru, however, now they were a credit to their race. They backed in closer to the Satrap, chirping quickly back and forth to each other, trying to determine where the intruder was. The Nesaru chirped at the walls, using the sound to echolocate the intruder. Something dropped from the roof, and Amminapses struggled to spot it with its drones. They lit it up with flashlights, revealing a hulking suit of metal.

"You!"

Pepper shot the first two human drones in the head. Deadly accurate. Deadly fast. The Satrap wondered who gave him those skills and upgrades as it watched the deadly performance. The Satrap's initial defenders dropped without even firing and Pepper leaped away. Three Nesaru exploded out after him. Cracking gunshots filled and reverberated throughout the den, deafening everyone. One Nesaru dropped from return fire. The second, Pepper closed the distance on, as bullets sparked and dented the powered suit and the armored hands Pepper held up in front of his face. He hit it straight on and didn't stop. Amminapses saw in horror that Pepper had destroyed the drone much like he'd done back on Yatapek. The Nesaru spoiled for a fight, but were light. Unless they got their quills in their prey, they were toys.

Pepper threw the third one at the nearest Gahe. The Gahe screamed as it was speared in the face. Five Gahe ran off as a herd, veering away from Pepper toward the tunnel. Amminapses would have shot them in frustration, but Pepper turned on the remaining three drones that Amminapses controlled. Shot number one dropped the Gahe, number two, one of the humans. Then Pepper walked forward. "Did you, for a moment, think that your actions would not have consequences, Amminapses?"

"What are you talking about?" At least this drone had a bead on Pepper with its gun. The closer he got, the better the chance of the headshot working.

"I thought, when you had the counter-infection ready so quickly, that it was awfully useful to have that just lying around." Pepper fired, the movement too quick for the Satrap to anticipate, and the drone dropped to a knee, wounded.

Despite total control, the drone almost dropped the gun. As it bled, the Satrap had to force it with all its mental might to hold the gun up. "That was judiciousness," Amminapses said.

"I didn't think about it much," Pepper said. "I was just grateful to have an ally. Not until I met one of your drones, and she said she'd seen the sunset on Midhaven recently, did I suspect anything."

"My drones have been to many worlds."

"A visit to the heart of the League? A strange place. It got me wondering, and then Itotia told me about your odd reaction to hearing the League was coming."

"Defeat is written into my fabric of being. It is time for me to retreat and give up dreams of reestablishing the Satrapy. I can offer you technologies."

"Yes! Yes, you can." Pepper shot the drone's hand again, and when it dropped the gun he crossed the distance and kicked the weapon away into the shadows. "But you've made that offer before, haven't you? I asked myself, why bury yourself here to hide, and why have an antidote? You told Timas you wanted to gain control, and what better way than with a clean sweep. You gave the League this weapon, a final solution. You told them where to find it, how to alter it.

"Of course, you knew what it was for, and that it would probably even evolve itself to hunt for all intelligent life in this area. That's what it does, it's part of those counterintelligent defenses you claim the universe has made. But we're clever monkeys, and the League, after setting you free in exchange for your transmitting these things to them from a safe location, they decided to hunt you down anyway." Pepper laughed.

But he was close enough. The Satrap whipped tendrils at him.

Pepper had another surprise: a sword. He tossed the gun aside and sliced and twirled his way through the sudden forest of tendrils Amminapses threw his way, trying to get in through his scything to take his mind.

But it couldn't. Bit by bit Pepper kept hacking away until the Satrap felt dizzy. It was losing fluids from cuts. Its ability had almost been shorn off.

"Stop," it begged through the drone.

Pepper kept at it, using the sword now until only one tendril remained out of the hundreds, the ground littered with their limp remains.

Amminapses felt several stabs to its forehead. It began to bleed out ichor. "I can give you more life," it pleaded.

"What's that?"

"You're already centuries old, I saw that, but how many more centuries are left for you? I can extend that. I have the technology."

"It's not worth it." Pepper stabbed it again, getting close to areas that wouldn't stop bleeding. "Who are you to kill on such scales?"

"And you're different? Look at you now, committing xenocide."

"I'm a scalpel," Pepper whispered. "You're a bomb. Twice now you have all tried to destroy us all. It's time to get you out of the picture. Besides, you said your kind exists out there still. So I'm just killing the last Satrap in the Forty-Eight worlds."

"Let me go and I'll head for deep space and never return."

"You are too full of guile and lies. I can't afford to risk it. You almost wiped us out again. Amminapses, your actions have caught up to you. I'm your consequences, here to settle it all up."

"You are no jury," Amminapses screamed. "You need me to face what is out there in the greater universe."

"You are the greater universe out there." As the drone staggered Pepper stepped forward and caught it. He slowly let it fall down and whispered, "I'm sorry, Claire." Amminapses couldn't even get the drone to attack his face, it was useless, drained of energy. Dead. Then Pepper said, "Good-bye, Amminapses," and cut the last tendril. Blind, it listened to Pepper thud closer, and felt the sword bite into its head, carving a long, jagged tear across its front.

"There were millions up there that died, and billions you threatened with your ploy, and I swore I'd find who was responsible and make them pay," Pepper whispered into its earhole. It could only buck slightly, it was so weak. "Maybe you were right, maybe among the lurking threats out there in the universe you were the safest of them."

The voice left the earhole, fading as it walked away, leaving the Satrap to die.

"But whatever else comes for us, we'll be waiting, us and the other aliens, standing together. We'll be stronger as our own people, rather than as subjects to you. Even if you were protecting us.

"And I'll be there with them, just in case."

The door to the den shut with a loud clang.

The Satrap struggled to breathe, sitting alone in the dark, dying. A sad end for one that had ruled all, it thought. Its final attempt to fix the human problem had failed.

Pepper was right. It could no longer help or protect the races it had once ruled. They had been born into the universe, and they would face it all on their own with their childish enthusiasm. It was no longer Amminapses's burden, or that of any other Satrap.

That era, in the next few minutes as the Satrap slumped in its own oozing life fluids, a decorative sword jutting out of its side, was over.

The humans, and their alien allies, were on their own.

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