He clicks a button, and a live 3D image of Mount Kilmon projects into the cockpit for us to view. And it’s wild, how you can look at something so many times you almost stop seeing it, only to encounter that thing years later and realize you still have it memorized. I was raised in Mount Kilmon’s shadow. I recognize every angle, the jagged gouge near its base, the way the light catches its crags and peaks. I compare Jester’s holographic image to the real-life Mount Kilmon outside my window, and it looks exactly like I remember.
Almost exactly.
Because there, seeping from the volcano’s stunted peak, is a filmy halo of a substance I’ve never seen before. Doc Min said the voroxide is a type of gas, which I assumed meant it would be clear, but the haze leaking out of Mount Kilmon isn’t clear. It looks… well, it looks like white mist.
“Is that…?” Vera points at the wispy tendrils in Jester’s hologram, which are outlined by a yellow line that readsUNIDENTIFIED FUMES.“Could that be…?”
Lament is frozen at my side. His mouth is tight, the veins standing out on the back of his hands. “Take us down.”
Vera casts him a worried glance. “I don’t think that’s the best—”
“We need to know for sure.”
“I’m not taking usthere,” she says, twirling a finger at Jester’s projection. “Not within range of those fumes. We’ll land farther back.”
It takes Vera a minute to find a break in the trees, and by the time we descend through the forest canopy and land on uneven ground, the sky has blued to dusk. The foliage is thick, the earth quiet. Mount Kilmon has vanished from view.
“Air quality?” Vera prompts.
We’re clear if we stick to the forest, Jester confirms,but we’ll need masks if we want to venture any closer.
“Um,” I say. “I hope these are super-special impenetrable masks? On account of not wanting to inhale what may or may not be rabid space mist?”
Not quite.Jester gives a weak smile.They’re MeshGuard. But they do have a hookup for oxygen.
“And do we have any oxygen?”
Jester grimaces.No.
“We’re not going close enough to require masks,” Lament says as he opens the Sky Runner’s door. “Vera’s right. What we’re looking for can be found—”
A screaming ape launches from the trees and goes for Lament’s throat.
My ray gun is firing before I’m conscious of pulling it off my hip. The beam connects with the ape’s thigh, but somehow the beast manages to spin with the impact, continuing its mad fall onto Lament. Its massive canines sink into Lament’s shoulder, its nails into his arm. Lament makes a strangled sound and I shoot again, clicking the ray gun into Exile Mode, blasting the ape with such force it’s catapulted back into the trees. But it doesn’t matter—it doesn’tmatter—because Lament is losing his grip on the door, stumbling the rest of the way out of the spacecraft, catching himself on one knee on the ground below. His whites are raked with bloody lines.
“Lament.” I hurl myself through the door after him. The gash on his shoulder is deep, ragged from where the creature’s teeth went in. Lament’sface is sheet-white, and he’s blinking down at his fingers like they don’t belong to him. Vera starts speaking frantically into her wristwatch while Jester pulls gauze out of a medical bag. The world wavers before my eyes. “Lament, Lament, are you okay?”
Overhead, another ape gives a cry. I let out a snarl as I twist to take aim, and—
Eyes. In the branches overhead, stretching in every direction. We’re surrounded by a horde of apes with glowing blue eyes.
Time seems to slow. Behind me, Vera falls silent. Jester’s feet grind to a halt. Lament is still on his hands beneath me, wounded, exposed. I take a single, dry breath. I won’t panic. Iwon’t, because I’m trained for this. Made for it. I’ve got a ray gun in my hand and the enemy in sight, and I know at any moment my instincts will take over. I’ll become filled with that sense of rightness, that starburst feeling of strength and surety that steadies my aim and sharpens my vision and makes me feel invincible, makes me feel powerful and superhuman and alive.
Except the sensation never arrives. All I feel is my lifestone hard against my chest, and the wavering heat from the Sky Runner’s power packs, my own mounting terror. There must be a hundred apes overhead, each of them man-size, bigger, with keen, naked faces and mounds of corded muscle. I can’t take them all alone, and Lament is bleeding out at my feet, and I’m suddenly very aware that the gun in my grip isn’t even mine. It’s a fancy Legion-issued confection that’s got a thousand bells and whistles and no soul at all, and the apes are tensed to attack, and I’m scared to fucking death.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” I breathe to Jester. My pulse is so loud I can hardly hear my own voice. “You and Vera get Lament in the Runner. Slowly. No sudden movements. I’ll stay back as long as I can and hold—”
Another ape screams, and like a dam breaking, they descend.
“Go!” I yell as I begin blasting apes from the sky. Jester and Vera pull a half-conscious Lament into the back of the Runner while I fire with everything I’ve got, no special feeling of empowerment, no fucking ninja-Zen,just a chest full of adrenaline and fear and me fending off the onslaught one blast at a time. One of the apes bares its teeth, saliva threading between two yellow incisors, and how can I evenseethat unless the creature is already too close?
I punch the ape in its slitted nose; the impulse judders painfully up my arm.
My heart is trying to escape through my neck, and my hands are shaking so badly I nearly miss my next shot, and then I really do start to panic, because the wall of apes is closing in. It’s like the cave raptors all over again, except these things aren’t after each other, they’re afterus—
“Hartman!” Vera screeches. “We’ve got him. Get in!”
I hurl myself into the Sky Runner, kicking an ape in the face as it tries to clamber in after me. I have to try twice to yank the door shut as the creature shoves its arms inside, and I’m whimpering and flailing and totally out of my mind with terror. Vera blasts us off the ground before my door is fully closed, and I think nonsensically,She really doesn’t care about the checklist.
