“Preferably painfully,” Janx added.
Janx and Hildra, who were not military and who would have only slowed the soldiers down, covered the attack with their respective guns (no one had ordered them not to), while Avery finally did hunker down and simply tried not to get shot. Peeking through a gun slit, he saw Layanna stymied by men with venom-whips, lashing her and driving her back, beginning to surround her. The Army troops advanced, firing on the men, and Layanna freed herself and plunged ahead, slaughtering the enemy whenever they reared in her path, and at last vanished down a circular organic doorway.
By the sound of the gunfire it seemed as if the invaders were winning, though bodies of both sides littered the ground, if it could be called that, blood leaking across the gray-pink surface. Avery wondered where Sheridan was, if she still led the defenders, or if she was looking for some means of escape. She could even be dead. Maddeningly, he hoped not.
Pain.
Avery cried out and collapsed, Janx and Hildra falling beside him. It was a lance of agony worse than before. But, just as soon as it had begun, it cut off. Avery panted, sweat streaming down his face. In that one blast had been the psychic’s own mental cry of agony and fear: his death scream.
“Layanna,” Avery wheezed. “She’s found him.”
He imagined a dim, dark chamber in the cranial cavity of the great creature, crackling machines and tubes plugging into an alien brain on one side and a near-comatose, shaven-headed soldier on the other, likely in a coffin container similar to those in Rigurd’s lair, when Layanna suddenly erupted into the space, ripping and tearing ...
The ray lurched. Everyone in the great hall that was still standing fell.
Tumbled.
Avery screamed as the dirigible slid across the now-tilted, mucus-lined floor. Other ships all around slid, too, crushing people and toppling over gun emplacements and equipment. With the psychic dead, the ray was diving out of control. Avery didn’t know if it had a mind of its own anymore, or if machines or drugs suppressed its will, but it made no move to right itself or fly. The ray plummeted straight toward the ground, which could be seen rushing up at them through the enormous maw. Avery wondered if they would all spill out of the opening before it hit, but either way meant death.
Then, only moments after the ray lost control, it did begin righting itself, then leveling off. The earth swung out of view, replaced by moon-lit clouds. Gasping, Avery stared at Janx and Hildra, and all examined themselves to detect any broken bones.
In Avery’s head, a familiar voice sounded, Run. Go. NOW.
All around people blinked at each other, and he knew they had heard the voice, too. Layanna had plugged herself in. She was piloting the ray.
Fly, she sent. Fast and far. You’ve done your part. You’ve gotten me here. I can survive what comes next. You cannot. Go!
With new haste, sweaty and wild-eyed, the soldiers still moving found the dirigibles that were functioning and readied them for lift-off. Colonel Versici, alive but sweaty and covered in blood, returned to the airship Avery occupied with a handful of soldiers and did likewise. Two of the soldiers were handcuffed Navy men. One was—
“Sheridan,” Avery breathed, as he fired up a burner.
She was battered and bruised but alive. Her eyes flashed at him in anger, and she said nothing.
“We got her as ordered,” Versici said. “I issued a bulletin to the whole squad to be on the look-out for her. She’d just reached an opening and was about to parachute out.”
“I’d like to see her manage the drop without a chute,” Hildra said.
Avery lifted off. Other ships were doing the same all around. Traveling in no particular order or formation, but with a speed born of fear, the dirigibles made for the tendril-fringed exit.
“This is going to be close,” Avery said. “The ray’s going about as fast as we are. I don’t think Layanna can slow it any further without it dropping.”
“Just go, Doc,” Janx said, shoving one of the machine guns over the side to lighten the load. Seeing his example, one of the soldiers did the same for the other mounted gun, or tried to; it proved too heavy for him, and a second soldier pitched in. Still they couldn’t budge it.
“Hold on!” Avery said.
The maw approached with maddening slowness, but at last he flew the ship out of it, along with the rest of the surviving fleet. His stomach lurched as he guided the ship in a curve upward, clearing the height of the ray. Not all the ships were so lucky. Hearing screams behind and below him, he knew the ray’s forward momentum had smashed several dirigibles into splinters. Curses and grunts came from all around as Janx, Hildra and the soldiers were flung against the gunwales and had to grab on with all their strength to ropes and nets or pitch over the side. Avery gripped the wheel so tightly he feared splinters had dug under his skin. Then they were soaring above the ray, accompanied by a dozen other ships.
Below them, the ray clove the sky, blocking out all view of the ground.
It began angling down.
When the creature had passed by, Avery saw that the Starfish had moved beyond the industrial sector, and in its wake smoke and fire rose from several leveled square miles of what had been important real estate, contributing to much of the nation’s economy, not to mention all the tenements where the factory workers lived. How many thousands had died already? Even now the great vastness of the Starfish, which had completely emerged from the sea, plowed through the city toward its heart, the government sector, including the courthouse building and the City Square where Prime Minister Denaris had narrowly escaped being sacrificed. Tall buildings fell before the Starfish, then were ground beneath it, and crowds of people streamed down the streets and alleys leading away from the being, but they were slow, too slow, and despite being so immense the Starfish moved all too swiftly. Its arms moved and rippled as it went, not stiff static things like those of dried starfish on display in some seaside shop but limber, flexible, and strong.
Bombers, having been scrambled from the airfield, flew runs over it, dropping payload after payload onto its miles-wide back. Smoke rose up and coral forests were shattered, but the Starfish, heedless, drove on toward City Square. Storied buildings, many hundreds of years old, a few over a thousand, succumbed to its advance.
The ray tilted downward still further, putting it on a direct line of collision with the Starfish. Down it swept, and down.
The Starfish strained ahead, destroying another wave of buildings and killing another thousand people.
The ray increased its speed.
Avery held his breath.
The bombers, seeing the approach of the great flier, hastily veered away, smoke still rising from the Starfish’s back where their last payloads had hit.
“This is it,” Hildra whispered. “This is it!”
The ray struck the Starfish with all the impact of a volcano erupting. Gore and exoskeleton exploded outward, raining viscera and bony sections out over the city for what might be miles in every direction. The earth shook—Avery could see dust actually lift from the ground, obscuring the sight of the massive echinoderm, but not completely. The ray smashed into the Starfish’s back and penetrated deep into its interior. The collision seemed to go on forever, both gigantic creatures moving with what appeared to be slowness but which was really otherwise. Gore continued to rain as the ray tore into the Starfish, then ceased, its momentum spent, and Avery imagined Layanna, shaken but alive, emerging from the broken body of the ray and, in her other-form, seeking out the Starfish’s brain, having to tunnel through endless heaps of flesh to get there.
For long, horrifying moments the Starfish continued straining forward, and Avery feared it had all been for nothing, the creature would live and lay waste to the continent.
The Starfish slowed ... and then slowed some more ... and at last ground to a final, breathless halt.
* * *
