Chapter Eighteen

Nomad wasn't truly faster than most projectiles.

He missed stunts like this one more often than not. It depended on how well he could position himself, and how soon he could ready a throw before the trigger was pulled. He'd once spent weeks training to deflect bullets and had only managed about one in ten.

Fortunately for Rebeke, today he was on point.

It made a compelling trick when he succeeded. Even more so here, with the blast exploding into a firework of light, throwing sparks.

"Idiot," Nomad said, summoning Auxiliary back into his hand as a simple metal sphere. "I was considering your offer—until you gave me a reason to look forward to killing you."

Those in the room gaped at him. Their moment of stunned disbelief gave him a chance to lunge and grab Rebeke. The two Charred immediately blocked the exits on either side, so he shoved her through the door into the pilot's station.

Before Nomad could follow, one Charred bodychecked him, slamming him against the wall with the Cinder King's treasure cabinet—including the tiny sunheart—causing the contents to rattle. Nomad turned and looked at this Charred; his face bore long red streaks, like someone had run burning pokers across his skin.

The Charred grinned and stepped back. Nomad reflexively raised his fists—then froze against his will. This let the enemy punch him three times in succession, dropping him with ease. Nomad slammed to the metal floor and groaned softly. But there wasn't time to stop and rest.

Never seemed like there was time for that. He pushed himself into a crouch and hurled himself to his feet, dodging past the Charred who tried to pile onto him. Nomad's quick steps brought him into the small control room with Rebeke.

He immediately slammed the door, then formed Auxiliary into a door guard. Clamps at the side fuzzed and locked onto the frame around the door as he pressed it into place. When the two Charred tried to shove the door open, they found themselves completely blockaded. Not that this wooden door would last long with armed people on the other side.

Rebeke backed into the cab's control panel. "Did you just knock a bullet from the air?" she asked.

Nomad grabbed the pilot's metal stool and threw it at the windshield, cracking it. Glass, contrary to a lot of his master's stories, was strong stuff. But the windshield rattled in its frame. Good enough.

"Nomad?" she asked as he threw the stool again, which bounced off this time, then they ducked as bullets began blasting through the door.

"Yes, I deflected a bullet," he said. "I can manage it about one in ten times. Get ready to run for my cycle."

"One in ten?" she said, growing paler.

"Fortunately you're the one. Pay attention!" Another shot came through the door. They assumed he'd somehow thrown the dead bolt and were trying to shoot the doorknob off.

Nomad jumped up onto the control panel and slammed his shoulder into the windshield, completely breaking it free of the frame. Together he fell with it outside, where he rolled to his feet and ran across the deck. Rebeke found her wits and scrambled out after him.

To his vast relief, he found the cycle where he'd left it. Yes, they'd docked it and chained it in place, but they didn't seem to have sabotaged it. Auxiliary, as a crowbar, let him pop the chain from where it had been mounted to the deck. Rebeke climbed behind the controls and unlatched it from the side of the ship. Nomad leaped onto the seat behind her.

The Cinder King strode out of his cab, pistol in hand, firing wantonly—and Nomad blocked with a shield. A second later, Rebeke dove the cycle toward the ground, nearly tossing him off with the sudden acceleration. He managed to hang on with his knees and grip her around the waist with one arm, keeping his shield up and intercepting a few more shots as they descended.

"This is going to get awkward," he remarked in Alethi, "if they start shooting at the cycle and not me. Can you get a little bigger and protect the whole thing?"

You are at just over ten percent Skip capacity, the hero warns. I'll need some of that to grow. If we drop below ten percent, we won't be able to make new Connections, though you'll maintain the ones you made before.

"Do it," Nomad said, feeling Auxiliary grow weightier in his hand—feeding off the Investiture they'd gathered. He expanded to about five feet across, just in time to block more shots. That size increase wouldn't be permanent, and would continue to leech Investiture from Nomad while he remained that size.

Rebeke continued to dive, and he realized she was going for the other hovercycle. He could see the edge of it peeking out into the ringlight from the stone overhang below. Apparently the officers who had grabbed her had left it.

"Rebeke!" he shouted. "We need to get away!"

"These are one of the only sets of cycles we have!" she shouted back, turning her head so he could hear over the wind. "I'm not going to abandon one."

Nomad looked up. The Cinder King appeared at the edge of the deck above, his glowing eyes like the coals at the heart of a campfire. He held something else in his hand. The key?

The fake key. He slammed it and his pistol to the deck in obvious fury, then held out his hand to the side, where someone handed him a rifle. He took aim, and blast after blast hit the shield.

"Rebeke!" he yelled. "You might be low on cycles, but if you stop down there, he is going to pick us off from above. Do you understand?"

A moment passed, the cycle still screaming toward the ground. Then, with obvious frustration, she pulled up and shot them along the ground—leaving the other cycle behind, abandoned. The Cinder King took no further shots. Indeed, Nomad thought he saw the man stalk back to his cabin, though the distance was now too great to be sure.

He has figured out, the knight conjectures, that the Beaconites replaced his key and are hunting for the doorway.

"You think?" Nomad grumbled in Alethi, dismissing the Investiture-draining shield, then called to Rebeke, "Trade me places."

"What?"

He forced her to slow, now that they were out of range, and let him take the driver's seat. There was barely enough room on the cycle for that, and as he got her on the back portion, she refused to hold him around the waist.

He frowned at her.

"We don't…touch," she said. "It's not comfortable for us."

"Even through clothing?" he demanded.

She looked away. "It just feels strange to—"

"Yeah, whatever. I don't care." He locked her in place by the legs with an improvised variation of Auxiliary's door blocker. Then he tore off toward the main body of Beaconites and fired up the radio. "Contemplation," he said, "we have a problem."

"Alas, my news is of a similar nature," she replied. "We've gone over the region twice and found nothing."

"He's been lying to you," he said, "about the location of the doorway. Obscuring it by making a big show of stopping in this region."

"As I explained previously, some of us have seen it."

"And how precise is their memory of the exact location? Did they memorize the positions of the stars? There are no persistent landmarks on this world. So—"

"So," she admitted, "those who saw the door could have been in a different location entirely. And it is reasonable, I admit that the coordinates we're relying upon could be a lie meant to confuse people, in case this very situation arose."

"Exactly," he said, leaning low against the wind. "I just had a chat with him. He's a tyrant, but fortunately for us, he's a stupid tyrant—with more ego than brains."

"Pardon, but you chatted with him?"

"Yeah. Long story."

It's really not, the knight observes. He stopped by. You flew up.

"That's not the long part of it," he said in Alethi. "The long part would be explaining why I flew up there." He continued in the local tongue. "Contemplation, he knows. He's figured out you swapped the keys."

"Not to offend unduly, Sunlit—but did you tip him off to it by accident?"

"Think that if it makes you feel better," he said, "but he didn't need any help from me. I watched him piece it together—all he needed was the information that Beacon was searching this area and that you'd brought everyone from your city. He isn't as smart as I first thought him, but even he could put two and two together."

Contemplation was quiet over the line.

"Look," Nomad said. "He's gathering his forces and will be upon you soon. It's time to pull out and retreat to the darkness."

"If we retreat," Contemplation said, "we will be dead before we can rotate to this position again."

"If you don't retreat, you'll be dead a lot sooner. Doesn't seem like a difficult decision to me."

She sighed. "I'm just…so tired of running."

"Lady," he replied, "you have no idea how well I understand that."

"I shall speak to the rest of the Greater Good," she said, "and we shall decide. You have young Rebeke with you still, I hope."

"I've got her," he said. "She's a tad stormy because I made her leave a cycle behind, but she's in one piece—and has no extra holes in her."

"It is well," Contemplation said. "She may not be our Lodestar, but she is a symbol to this people now that her siblings are gone. I offer this request: endeavor not to get her killed. At least, not before the rest of us fall."

She cut off, and Nomad was left to worry that they wouldn't heed his warning. Fortunately, by the time he got back to the main body, they were organizing as he'd wished and moving back toward the darkness—which had moved pretty far off by that point. The horizon was growing brighter. Probably still an hour or so from full daylight, but he dipped his cycle lower anyway, to be deeper in the planet's shadow.

Down here, the plants were growing. Not as quickly as they'd been just on the edge of dawn, but the growth was perceptible. The landscape he'd left behind had been barren, full of mud and crags. This one was overgrown with life, moss on virtually every surface, grass waving in the winds, and it even bore small thickets of trees, their branches reaching toward the rings. It felt like an entirely different place; landmarks he'd noticed before leaving were now obscured by the foliage and deep greenery.

How did seeds survive the cataclysmic heat of the day? Storms. The plants on this world must be something extraordinary. And the animals? As he zoomed past, he startled a group of gazelle-like creatures, who leaped up from feeding and bounded toward the darkness. Their eyes glowed faintly golden. Invested in some way.

He found the quadcycle's central fuselage where they'd left it, the other jets keeping it aloft. After locking the smaller one into place—and releasing Rebeke, who took over driving—they joined the rest of the ships, flying away from the sun in their ceaseless trek.

For a time, Nomad thought maybe they'd actually escaped. Then they reached the rim of the cloud cover, where even reflected sunlight didn't reach—and he saw something in the darkness beyond. A multitude of burning red lights. Seconds later, several dozen enemy ships zoomed out, on the attack.