Page 45 of Tears of Tungsten
I rubbed my temples, trying to chase away my horrible migraine. This was all my fault. If I hadn’t been inside the Sphinx, if I hadn’t connected with her, Sphinx wouldn’t have gotten distracted. She would’ve sensed Selene much sooner. But a tamer couldn’t pilot a chimera without a neural link. I’d gotten over my discomfort over our lack of compatibility, but that didn’t change the ultimate consequences.
A familiar voice wriggled into my head, snapping me out of my musings.“It’s not your fault, August. You can’t blame yourself for what happened. You couldn’t have known she’d be there.”
It was Charybdis. She still sounded weak, but she was undoubtedly awake. For good or ill, we’d accomplished our mission. Our chimeras had killed and consumed enough Terrans that Charybdis had stirred from her dormant state.
If the price for her awakening hadn’t been so high, I would’ve sobbed in relief. I was so happy that she was awake, but at the same time… At the same time, a part of me felt it hadn’t been worth it. I hated myself for the thought, but I couldn’t help it.
“It’s a natural thought, hatchling,”Charybdis said.“You’ve just lost your most treasured broodmate. You want her back. I’m not offended for you prioritizing her over me. But don’t lose hope. We still have a chance to save her.”
“Do you have any suggestions then?”
“I might. But you all need to calm down and come back to Tartarus Base. For the moment, no one knows the mission went sideways, and I think it’s better for things to stay that way.”
She was right. As long as our superiors didn’t realize Selene was missing, we had a better chance of going after her. Tartarus only knew King Philip would never authorize an official operation to find and free her.
Maybe Brendan realized this as well, because he gestured for us to get back to work. “All right. Let’s wrap things up here. Torch the rest of the settlement. Don’t leave any building standing. We need to hurry back and come up with a plan before anyone realizes Selene is missing.”
Sister Anya and the remaining Terrans gasped and stumbled away from us, having obviously not expected that. I was surprised they hadn’t used the opening to attack us and pay us back for what we’d done. But they were just civilians and their attempts to protect themselves had been pathetic. It was laughable that The Grand Judiciary had even bothered to send our unit after them. The four of us, on foot, could have probably taken out everyone in the village without too much trouble.
They did try their best this time around, and the ground started to shake as the priestesses summoned their gift. We didn’t give them the chance to finish channeling their power. Sphinx just lifted her paw and crushed the remaining Terrans under the metal.
It might have been something she only did for convenience, but the sacrifice still came in handy. We didn’t need to touch the blood for it to work. I could already feel the torn life of the Terrans feeding our chimeras, renewing the circuits that had grown weak in time.
Tanya Renard was the only one left unscathed, courtesy of her connection to Selene. As expected, she had no intentions of letting us get away with this. Her fire returned and Gaia’s Gift flared around her once again, as vibrant and intense as her grief. “That’s it then? You’re just going to finish the job, kill everyone here, even if you know very well what it did to Selene? You don’t even care?”
Already climbing into the cockpit of the Typhon, Brendan threw her a dismissive look over his shoulder. “If I cared about every single person who died in the world, I wouldn’t be much of a prince. Believe it or not, I do regret this had to happen, but I have orders, and I can’t afford to ignore them, not now. I have enough problems on my plate without drawing my father’s attention. We can’t look back, not if we want to have any chance to save Selene. She might hate me for my choice, but I’ll do what I have to, because I must. I’d think that, as her mother, you’d understand that.”
It was the right thing to say. She could have tried to stand in our way, to fight us off. It would have had no effect in the end, but we expected her to anyway, if only because it was her duty to protect Terra. She didn’t.
“I’ll come up with some excuse,” she said. “I’ll try to stall and pretend Selene is still with me. But I won’t be able to buy you more than a day or two at most. If you don’t find a way to get to the Apsid Quasar until then, we’ll lose all hope.”
“Two days is already too long,” Typhon mused darkly. “Time flows differently in the Apsid Quasar. At this rate, she’ll spend years there before we even get the chance to leave Tartarus Base.”
He was right. Fuck. Every second that passed here could be one extra day for Selene, another day she spent being tortured by the apsids.
Shaking myself, I reentered the Sphinx too and together, our group returned to the shuttle. Cerberus and Knox stayed behind to finish the job, as Brendan had instructed. It didn’t take him long to burn to the ground everything that was left and catch up with us.
There were still plenty of Terrans who’d gotten away from our assault, but we didn’t have time to worry about them. We’d killed enough for it to count and Charybdis was awake. The Grand Judiciary didn’t need to know anything beyond that. I’d have to forge some transmissions to make sure our coms didn’t hold anything suspicious, but I’d done it before. It wouldn’t be a big deal.
Pollux took the piloting seat once again and launched the large shuttle into the sky. Behind us, we left only devastation. The irony was that the desolate landscape mimicked the grief in our hearts.
I wanted to believe we still had a chance to get Selene back like Charybdis had said. I wouldn’t give up on that hope and dream. At the same time, though, I knew that priestess had been right. We’d paid the price for the blood we’d spilled.
No. I couldn’t think that way. Selene’s life and well-being wasn’t something I’d ever be willing to trade. And who cared about prices and scruples? Fuck that. Fuck everything. We’d followed orders to protect our friends, and we couldn’t take it back. I wasn’t convinced I would have, even if I’d had the chance. It had been necessary. If that made me a monster, so be it, but I wouldn’t let anything as stupid as remorse get in my way.
Gritting my teeth, I activated my back-link communicator and connected to the systems of each individual chimera. It was tougher for my friends’ mechas, but they allowed it, since the changes I needed to make weren’t too invasive. The communication logs didn’t have a lot to do with the actual mental processes of the chimeras, so I could do whatever I wished without harming them.
By the time I completed my task, the shuttle had already left Terra and was in view of Tartarus Base. “That was fast,” I said as I looked out the shuttle window. “Good job, Pollux.”
Pollux didn’t answer. I wondered if it had been such a good idea to entrust piloting to him, when he was seconds away from having another panic attack.
The others couldn’t have missed Pollux’s condition, but maybe that was exactly why they’d allowed it. Having something to focus on helped Pollux, kept his mind anchored in the moment and prevented him from succumbing to the demons of his past. Considering the recent incident with Stella’s shade, it was a bit of a miracle, but Pollux was obviously just as determined as we were to get Selene back.
At last, we entered the base and Pollux directed the shuttle toward the academy. He didn’t bother stopping by Charon’s Barge, since we had authorization to bypass that. Instead, he landed the shuttle in one of the private airstrips of the school.
Charybdis was already there, waiting for us. Lord Welton was by her side, and the smirk on his face didn’t match his pallor.“I may have reminded him where he stood on the scale of power in this school,”Charybdis said in my mind.“You might have temporarily provided food for us, but I’m not beneath eating him if he gets too cocky. Who knows? I might even get away with it if they think it’s a temporary malfunction.”
“I highly doubt that, Charybdis. Knowing them, they’d find a way to use it against us even if they’re not convinced it’s our fault.”
