Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [33]
With his aching hips he changed the balance inside the coiled mats and forced himself and Luntee to roll free. Like Cleopatra falling out of the carpet, the two men suddenly sprawled free. Keller tried to move his legs, but his arms shifted instead. For five or ten seconds he worked to retrain his brain on the use of limbs. When he found his legs, he crawled to Luntee. Hot, alive and not melted. The worst they each suffered was a bad sunburn.
Around them and rising several stories on one side was the cooked mess that had once been the free dancer that nearly killed them, now a mountain of blackened flakes.
“Why why did you” Luntee’s gasp ended in a weak cough.
Keller crawled to him, pushed him flat on the still-sizzling gum, and sat on him. “Shut up a minute. Braxan! Braxan!”
She didn’t answer… then, she did.
“Keller? Keller! Where are you!”
He couldn’t see where she was through the flying ashes and powdery remains of billions of toasted candleflies.
“She’s alive,” he growled down at Luntee. “So are you, chickenhawk.”
“Why?” Luntee choked. “Why would you save me?”
Possessed with sudden ferocity, Keller grinned and snarled at the same time. “Because I don’t have to accept the verdict of random order. Those aren’t gods in the sky. They’re animals. The free dancer chose you to die, but I choose for you to live.”
Luntee stared up at him. Behind the frothing hiss of the barbecued free dancer they heard the cheer and rave of the hunters who were just now coming to understand what had just happened. Donnastal was the first to appear. Braxan came behind him, her narrow face crumpled with fear. Next were Kymelis and her family, Issull and his brothers, Serren by himself, and two by two, three by three the rest of the hunters pushed through the mountain of ash and fibrous smoldering flesh until there were hundreds crowded on the melted segment.
Shaking with aftershock and satisfaction, he managed to stand up. With Donnastal on one side and Braxan on the other, he glared down at Luntee.
“Random order is finished here,” he announced, without any particular force. The word would spread itself. “I’m in charge now. We don’t belong here and we’re not staying. Finally, blessedly, we’re gonna saddle up and leave this moodless world.”
Frigate Challenger, Bridge
The twenty-ninth hour
“This is like waiting for somebody to come out of a coma, except with every hour there’s less brain activity. You know what’s coming, don’t you?”
“Clam up, Ring. Just clam up.”
“Flirt.”
“Both of you… this is unhelpful.” Shucorion didn’t enjoy interrupting Ring and Bonifay in their prickled communion, or in particular conversing at all. On the main screen, a view of the grave ship and the gateway’s flicker had become a torturous mock, and somehow worse than anything he had ever endured. A large statement, considering all.
Nick Keller was in a horrible place and to their nearest calculation he had been there more than a year. What could possibly take so long? Was he dead? Was he trapped?
On the sci-deck, Savannah Ring maintained constant contact with Riutta on the grave ship, monitoring the energy output to the gateway. As Shucorion watched her shoulders tighten and her body shift from foot to foot with nervousness, he realized how deeply this tragic decision dug into them all.
“We’re down to the last chamber of zombies,” she reported, sensing his gaze. “Any one of those corpses could nourish a power system on our side for months. But to keep that gateway open, we’re pouring them in like penny candy.”
She didn’t look down at him, or acknowledge that he heard her.
Shucorion clasped his hands tightly, very tightly. What should he decide, and when?
He crossed the deck to the starboard rail. At the impulse/mule desk, Zane Bonifay indeed made a pathetic sight, his face hot and wet,