Clarkesworld Year Ten by Neil Clarke & Sean Wallace

Author:Neil Clarke & Sean Wallace [Clarke, Neil & Wallace, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: anthology, clarkesworld, science fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
ISBN: 9781642360219
Publisher: Wyrm Publishing
Published: 2019-09-04T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 6/6: FLIGHT

Coordinates.

The route to Leseum Blue, encoded in their neurowebs.

The Fractured want to win the war, and to do that they need a Leseum Commander—or a Commander’s insurance policy: their children. They need Rokri and Sephine. And Rokri and Sephine have offered themselves up to the enemy.

The humiliation cuts her inside, the betrayal. And it just gets worse and worse as she puts the pieces together in her head.

Why New Leseum was never attacked. How the “Vierendelen” had sourced the materials for her wings. How both she and Rokri had made it up here without being vaporized by the Leviathan. All perpetuating the illusion. How could she not have seen it? The voice in her head the night before flashes into her memory . . . that should have been enough, enough to tell her things weren’t right.

The city was never attacked because the Fractured couldn’t risk killing either of them. The attack on the Farside Basin that day had been a ruse—probably delivering the materials for her filament wings.

Sensra had been right: all arrogance, no foresight.

Sephine feels nothing but devastatingly stupid.

“We have to get out of here,” she says in a weak, trembling voice. “Rokri, we have to get out.”

— You could always jump. Kill yourselves. It’s a long way down.

Rokri sees the sudden, horrified expression come to her face. “Turn off your ‘web. Turn it off now.”

— Of course, if you do try that, I’ll probably just send a—

Sephine switches on her neuroweb’s privacy settings. The Leviathan blips into silence.

“What do we do?”

“We go back down, into the construct.” Rokri is already heading back, pulling her with him. “Now you know, they’ll make their move.”

He’s still dragging her, but doesn’t have to for very long; she runs with him. They dart through the towers together, past the elevator from which they emerged. They’ll be expecting them, Sephine figures. Rokri knows where they are going—time to test his mapmaking.

A loud hiss. The sound of machines. A tower opens to their right, and vomits a swarm of drones, dispersing and coalescing together, shimmering through the air like static. Rokri clocks the swarm and his gun is up barely before Sephine even registers they’re being attacked. The swarm makes a layered, stuttered groaning noise and collapses in an iron hailstorm.

“Come on,” he says, running past her.

They run until they come to another black tower, another elevator. The door snicks open, and Sephine swings round, met by the Fractured again, only this time it’s not a swarm, but a single machine, bristling with weapons and made of countless contra-rotating components creating the vague shape of a face. Whose she doesn’t know. She swings the splinter-rifle over her shoulder and fires, backing into the elevator. The Fractured jerks sharply, components locking as the splinter collides with a festoon of wires in its middle. Its weapons fire indiscriminately and it tumbles to the ground.

As the elevator door begins to close, the machine shakes and a metal limb cracks and groans and points at her.

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