detail as we close in. I see my people at the edge of the jungle, hiding behind trees and cowering in shallow ditches. Most of them hold tools that should be used for farming, and most of them are circles—fodder for Aramovsky’s war.
The Springer lines stop. A staccato flash of glinting metal as hundreds of muskets take aim. As one, they fire, and are obscured by a long grayish cloud of smoke.
One of the advancing spiders slows to a stop.
From the other three, beams of white light shoot out, sweeping across the Springers. Clouds of dirt and grass fly into the air, clouds that I know also contain meat and bone, blood and brains.
Barkah cries out, a howl that rends my heart.
The remaining Springers flee. What came forward as an organized line runs away as scattered individuals.
But the spiders don’t stop. On they march, to the middle of the clearing, beams blazing new holes, turning living beings into explosions of fluid and char and vapor.
I feel so helpless.
“Dammit, Gaston, get us there!”
“The poles you’re holding aren’t designed for aggressive flight,” he says. “There’s too much inertia to—”
“Do it! We’ll hold on! Put us down between the Springers and the spiders. We have to push our people back.”
Spingate looks away from the little images of light floating around her, locks eyes with me.
“We’re in range for the shuttle’s missiles,” she says. “We can destroy the spiders.”
The missiles…I’d forgotten that Gaston told me the shuttle has weapons.
But if we destroy the spiders, will we kill whoever is riding them? If we had left a few minutes earlier, we might have stopped this. And now the only way to end it is if I order the death of my own people?
The image before us now shows the battlefield in perfect detail. Torn earth. Burning vines. Smoldering corpses. Severed limbs. Springers, trying to crawl despite missing legs, or hopping around holding bloody stumps that used to be arms. In the motionless spider, I see two young circle-stars and a tooth-girl, unmoving behind the protective ridge, a pool of blood filling the deck beneath them.
“Thirty seconds to landing,” Gaston says. “We’re coming in fast, so this is going to be rough—hold on tight.”
“Em, I have missile-lock,” Spingate says. “Do you want me to fire on the spiders?”
I open my mouth to say yes, but nothing comes out.
Something rolls forth from the Springers’ side of the clearing—dozens of those strange wooden wagons Barkah showed me. Springers push them along at a fast clip, wheels bounding over uneven ground. The wagons aren’t empty anymore: each one carries a boulder bigger than the biggest Springer, a boulder wrapped in ropes. The long wooden tails no longer trail behind, but stick up at an angle like some kind of off-center teeter-totter.
A spider-beam lashes out, catches one of the wagons dead-center. Springer bodies pop and burn; the wagon flames bright, becomes an instant inferno of wood and rope.
The wagons halt. The wooden tails swing straight up, snapping tight the ropes around the boulders; the boulders swing backward, then up, then over—they streak through the air toward their targets.
The heavy rocks hit the ground, bounce and roll at terrible speed. The first two whiz past the lead oncoming spider.
The next one hits.
Stone smashes into metal. The full-speed spider not only stops, it’s thrown backward, metal shell now wrapped around the embedded boulder. A human body flies free, spinning limply. The spider flips and skids to a stop. Broken and twisted yellow legs stick up in the air. Two more riders stumble to their feet, disoriented, probably injured.
Another boulder grazes the second spider, shearing off two legs as it rolls past. The spider crashes, spins wildly. Bodies fly, moving so fast and so violently that if the riders aren’t already dead, they will be when they hit the ground.
The other boulders sail past, all misses. They tumble across the clearing, losing speed—except for one. It must have hit a hard patch, because it sails higher like a ball bouncing off a floor. The boulder smashes into our side of the clearing, pulverizing human bodies.
In a span of seconds, the “outmatched” Springers have destroyed two spiders and killed the crew of a third. Now I understand why the Springers wanted the spiders in one place—with that many wagons, at least some of the two-dozen-odd boulders were bound to connect.
The last attacking spider’s legs flash in a mad chopping motion as it slows, stops and retreats.
From the edge of the clearing, a fresh wave