Chapter Thirty-One

"This could be dangerous for you," he said to Elegy, moving through the main cab. "I'm sorry. I'll try to close the door quickly and not lose too much of your air."

"Why do you care…about me?" she asked, frowning.

He stopped by the door. "Human beings have a natural sense of decency, Elegy. Yours might have been burned away. I know a little of what that's like, but it's not how we're meant to be."

"You said you used to live for your friends," she said. "To fight for them. Because of decency?"

"That and so much more," he said. "Aux, I'm not going to be able to speak out there. You'll have to do your best to interpret my emotions."

Understood, trusty valet.

Once upon a time, their bond had been close enough for Nomad to speak his thoughts directly back to Auxiliary. That ability, like several others they'd enjoyed, vanished when Auxiliary had mostly died.

Nomad threw open the door. Of course, that resulted in rapid decompression—but he was prepared. His long coat whipped around him as he jumped out, then threw his weight against the door, slamming it closed and doing up the lock. He wasn't certain how much air he'd retained for Elegy. Hopefully it—plus her natural Investiture—would be enough.

For the time being, he had to worry about the entire city. He ran to the side of the city-ship and reached the empty water vessel. Slow-moving, weighty, intended to move through fields and water the crops—it now hung tipped to the side, deadweight. He immediately figured out the problem.

Ice. They had moved up through the same icy snow he'd noticed during his solo flight—but had spent much more time in it. The deck was crusted in ice, and the locking mechanisms that held the ships together obviously weren't designed for such cold environments. They had frozen over, and many refused to unlatch when activated.

He summoned Aux as a crowbar and found one that hadn't unlatched, ramming Aux in place and throwing his weight against the tool. With some work, he got that lock and the next one undone.

The ship didn't fall, though all of the latches on the deck were now uncoupled. Storms. The locks underneath the vessel, connecting it to the main body of the ship, must also be iced over.

That's…bad, isn't it?

There was only one solution. He had to find a way to undo the latches on the underside of Beacon. While flying. He dismissed Auxiliary and ran to his cycle at the edge of the city-ship. They hadn't refilled the water compartment. Damnation.

Damnation, Auxiliary said. What do we do?

He popped the seat on his cycle, getting out the towline he'd seen Rebeke use earlier. He threw the coil of reinforced metallic rope over his shoulder, formed Auxiliary as a hook and chain, then stepped up to the side of the ship, standing on a portion that wasn't part of the water ship, just in case it broke free. He gazed down at the ringlit mountainside.

Oh boy, the knight says in a joyless monotone. This is going to be fun.

He hooked Auxiliary in place, then swung down over the side of the ship, descending until he found a secure handhold. He grabbed it, holding on to the metal, then reformed Auxiliary, this time with a knob replacing the hook. He wedged that into a gap nearby in the metal and reformed Auxiliary to fit exactly so that it couldn't just pull free.

That gave Nomad a secure anchor to climb down farther, until he dangled just below Beacon. He looked out across the underside of the composite ship, where eight jets had been spaced equidistantly around the larger one underneath the hub. The tenth ship was being used for lateral motion, its jet tilted up and firing toward the horizon.

When he'd hit the release button, the water ship's engine had disengaged. So it had become an even bigger deadweight, now not contributing thrust to the flight. He hung there for a moment, peering past the brilliant red-orange engines spitting superheated steam in geyseral jets, thinking about the careful balancing of thrusters that was required to get all these engines working in concert. Too much thrust on one side would have flipped the city, but the Beaconite machinery compensated for that distribution instinctively. Zeal had mentioned, when he'd asked, that the Chorus helped somehow.

Did they have something like a rudimentary Awakened difference engine doing these calculations? Fashioned by a shade? That would be…

He shook out of it. No time for such thoughts. If he didn't break that deadweight free, the entire city would slam into the mountain—leaving them all stranded until they were engulfed in a deluge of sunlight that would melt the city-ship to slag.

He would have to reach those locks, which meant traversing across the bottom of Beacon until he reached the proper location. It was mostly flat, though it had plenty of nooks for him to lock in Auxiliary's hooks. However, moving around down here would take him uncomfortably close to at least one of those scalding jets.

At least he wasn't deafened by their roar. It was barely there in this thin air. The near vacuum would also insulate him from the worst of the heat, as long as he avoided direct contact, which was another small comfort. He grabbed the bottom lip of the side of Beacon, then dismissed Auxiliary, hanging by one hand—for a few heart-pounding moments—above a drop of hundreds of feet.

By now, the people of Beacon might be getting light-headed from the lack of oxygen. Some might be slipping into unconsciousness already. So if he fell here, they'd never wake up. And his long run would be stopped not by the Night Brigade, but by the day's deadly sunlight.

He reformed Auxiliary into a chain with hooks on both ends, then swung under the ship and hooked Auxiliary on a valve. Then he took the other end of the chain and used that to swing by one arm to latch that hook into another location. Each time he swung, he would make the end fuzz to indeterminacy and then reform, locked into place in an indentation on the bottom of the ship.

It was eerie, doing this in silence, Investiture helping his body compensate for the low pressure and lack of oxygen. He couldn't do that indefinitely, as his stores would eventually run out, but he had plenty for this task. Keeping him alive, renewing his muscles so they didn't fatigue and drop him. He used this arm-under-arm swing to maneuver slowly around the nearest of the jets—a blinding column of superheated steam and light, violent and powerful, that could be felt as infrared radiation in the vacuum.

The fact that he felt anything from this jet was an indication of just how much energy was pouring out of it. He rounded it and reached the place where the deadweight ship was locked onto the rest of Beacon. There, he hung for a moment to gather his wits.

Once, he'd found it difficult during moments like this not to gasp for air, but his training had often required him to hold his breath. The power that had fed him during his youth escaped when he breathed, so he learned to hold it in, even during frantic moments of battle.

He started forward again, eyes on the first lock just ahead. He undid his left-hand hook and swung out—but his right-hand hook had not been latched in as well as he'd thought. In a moment of visceral terror, he felt it slip. Storms! In a panic, he seized the chain with both hands as it went taut.

He jolted, clinging to the tenuous chain, the sweat on his skin instantly vaporizing in the low-pressure environment and boiling away. The chain ground on the steel above him, slipped, then caught again—but that second jolt made him drop a little farther, his fingers barely clinging to the end of the chain.

Damnation, Auxiliary said. Nomad. Hang on. Please.

Nomad tried to stabilize the hook, mentally commanding it to grow wider—but his mistake had been placing it on a little rim that Auxiliary couldn't easily form around to get a proper grip.

Beneath him, the bleak slope of the mountain was getting ever closer. And in the distance, the very first lights of false dawn grew on the horizon.

Nomad, Auxiliary said. It may be time to do something drastic. I have…strength left. You could fly again. Only a little, but perhaps enough to—

No. NO! He thought it forcefully.

They both knew this truth, but had never said it out loud. In the past, he'd burned away Auxiliary in a moment of power, ignorant of what he'd been doing—of what he'd been capable of doing. His body had sought whatever energy it could find, and his friend—made of pure energy—had been too convenient a source.

All these years, Auxiliary had existed as a mere remnant of what he'd once been. But it was the most important fragment—Auxiliary's personality and mind—that remained. Fuel, if needed.

Never, Nomad thought.

I can't let you die, Auxiliary said. I can't let the city crash. If you could fly—

In response, Nomad started climbing. Hand over hand, determined, feverish. With cracked, dry hands, trembling at the thought of…of again…

Auxiliary fell silent, but Nomad knew what his friend would do if the chain slipped. The unspoken horror.

NEVER AGAIN, Nomad thought, reaching the bottom of the ship and slamming the other end of the chain into a more secure position. He dangled there as sweat beaded on his face and instantly vanished, fleeting kisses of cool.

Thank you, Auxiliary said, for caring.

Nomad tried to send an impression of anger—of insistence that Auxiliary never bring up this topic again. He swung once more to reach the proper lock, then unwound the tow cable. It looked like all four of the locks on the bottom side had frozen closed. But hopefully he wouldn't need to undo them all before the weight of the ship snapped the others.

Now what? the hero asks hesitantly.

In response, Nomad used the tow cable to tie himself into place. He gave the line a little slack, so he hung down four feet beneath the ship. Then he formed Auxiliary into a large metal pole with a flat end.

Nomad wedged the flat end into the lock, then heaved, putting his entire weight on the bar. Auxiliary's physical form was literally deific—and wouldn't break or bend under any natural circumstances. But the Beaconite engineers had done their jobs well, and this was not a good angle from which to pry open the mechanism.

Worse, friction was working against him. Above, the locks had popped free easily, but that was because the angle of the ship detaching had helped pull them free. That same angle was putting weight on these locks, making them difficult to wedge apart.

Nomad. The mountain.

He didn't need to look. Yes, they were close—and drifting closer. Only a few dozen yards from collision. Moving slowly, but inevitably. He heaved harder, but nothing happened. And he worried he'd made a miscalculation again. These ships, when they locked into place, probably had mechanisms at the sides—not just the top and bottom. The latches he was trying to open, they might not even be the most important part of what kept the ships together. Too flimsy.

There might be reinforced clamps or docking mechanisms he couldn't see. If that were true…

He tried again, angling the long crowbar differently. Nothing. He needed something better.

Storms. The people. They needed him.

But he couldn't…he couldn't make a weapon. He…

Not a weapon, Auxiliary seemed to whisper. Just another tool. To protect the city, Nomad.

The end of the crowbar sharpened.

In that second, he held something he'd not held in quite some time. A symbol from Nomad's past. The implement of a warrior, practiced in secret, then displayed in grandeur. Sharp enough to slice through metal. He rammed it upward into the gap, slashing free the lock and something above, a bar or mechanism locking the ships together.

That was enough. The ship lurched, then broke free and crashed to the barren stone beneath, tumbling along the mountainside, ripping up stone as it went. Nomad hung on as Beacon shook, its primary engine roaring and spraying heat in a column of light and fury. He felt the ship rise faster, though it was almost imperceptible from his vantage.

Heart pounding, Nomad unhooked himself and used Auxiliary to reach the perimeter of the ship. Soon after, he climbed onto the metal deck. He stood tall, looking toward that terrible horizon. Sunlight trying to break free as the ship rose to meet it. Higher. Higher.

The right side of the ship ground against stone, sending tremors through the entire structure. Nomad fell to his knees, still looking west at that terrible light.

The grinding stopped as the ship finally, barely, crested the top of the mountain.

We did it, the knight rejoices. Nomad, we did it. But we're still rising.

Storms. Nomad turned and scrambled for the control building, terrified that they'd get this close to their goal, only to end up rising so high that—

Sunlight bathed him as the ship left the shadow of the planet. Calm, warm, ordinary sunlight.

What the hell?

He stood there for a long moment, suspended above the mountaintop, but nothing happened to him or Beacon. He'd noticed earlier that the Night Brigade ship had approached without its shield being overwhelmed. What was going on? Why could they hang there, in the light, and not be destroyed?

Damnation. He hated working on so little information. If the solar strength was extremely high, it would have ripped away the atmosphere of this planet, so far as he understood. And why were there always mountains at the poles? Shouldn't the planet, constantly being melted, form a sphere? Or was it naturally an oval, with gravity pulling more air to the equator, making it seem like there were mountains at the poles when, in reality, those were just the edges of the oval sticking out of the atmosphere? Was that even possible?

As he pondered, Beacon stopped vibrating. He frowned at the strange stillness. The engines had cut out. What did that mean? Why would they…

They were out of water. No more propellant.

With a sickening twist deep in his core, he felt the entire Beacon complex begin to fall down the back side of the mountains—with no engines to slow its descent.