Not Karlan.

As a boy, he heard those stories about great warriors who were happy only when they were in battle. But what he had learned already as a fighter was that battles brought nothing that was happy. Gunfire scared him to the core, and he was no different than the others. But what attracted him—what found Karlan in these moments and what lingered afterwards—was the sense that most of existence was nothing. Life was an empty place full of nothing, like one of those heavy jars in the labs where they pumped out the air and the heat, leaving nothing but the void. Only in these little moments of terror did something true and real rush into the emptiness.

This moment wasn’t joyful and it wasn’t unpleasant. Now and for the next long while, Karlan would experience the absolute clarity that comes when life begins and nothing else has room. A mind could engage so fully that it would race past the ordinary, and that’s why he left the trembling slayer behind. Crawling into the smoke, Karlan grabbed the shot slayer by the back of his armor. The man was still bleeding, still dying. He was easy to hold up high, and Karlan stood and fired into the clearing smoke just once, just to draw attention, and two soldiers shot the doomed slayer and Karlan kept holding him, pieces of coral finishing the job.

The papio had to steal this ship fast.

They advanced bravely, and Karlan used the dead man as a shield, putting down four of the enemy before his clip was empty.

The fifth soldier got into the hallway.

And then it was nothing but hands and feet and teeth, and yeah, maybe that part of the battle got to be fun.

THREE

The two of them had never touched.

“Hold my hand,” she said, standing close to him but not close.

The spotter was already excited by everything happening below. Looking at the woman, he was startled and a little thrilled to discover that she was prettier than he recalled. She wasn’t watching the battle through her little telescope. Looking at him, her hand was outstretched with those long fingers rippling, and that fine young face was showing some him some kind of smile.

He took the offered hand.

Something cut into his palm.

He said, “Ouch,” even as he tried to hold on to her. But the pain was too intense, and he took back his hand, shaking it slowly, stoically.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

The spotter meant to say that it was nothing, forget it. But his words started to pile up on his thickening tongue.

“Sit down,” the pretty woman suggested.

Sitting was the last thing that he wanted to do. Blinking hard, he looked through his telescope’s eyepiece. Except the giant corona had turned into one very dark blur, and the fletches and papio wings were nearly invisible against the yellow shine of the demon floor and the world beneath.

He rubbed his eyes, using the hand that didn’t hurt.

Then he stopped rubbing, and without feeling any sensation, he quietly dropped to the floor.

The woman stepped over him. She was still quite pretty, except her face was wrong in the middle, dark human eyes replaced with bulging domes that resembled brightly polished crystal. And that was the moment when, for many fine reasons, the man lost consciousness.

Mayhem ants stung bark rats and other prey with this toxin. Creating the molecule was simple. Using it successfully was more problematic. The man could stop breathing, which would leave her with the unwelcome decision of employing the antidote or not. Or the man could die of cardiac failure, which would present her with another dilemma—whether or not to eat his empty body.

But thankfully the man’s breathing remained steady.

Quest claimed his telescope—the big better telescope. Her new eyes were more powerful than anything a proud hawk would sport. Through the glass, she saw three fletches burning, bladders and torn hulls splattering against the demon floor. One more fletch was hovering above the great corona, a hair of steel tight between them. The corona was the greatest in Creation, its interior gorged with hot air and vacuum, and the circular body shook every time hot air roared out of its mouth, shoving it a little higher. Every strength was being spent to maintain its slight altitude above the glistening floor, and it spoke only as it breathed again, falling slowly—speaking as waves of yellow light that swirl across the bloated gray body, the effect pitiful and magnificent.

The papio had surrounded the corona, throwing cannon fire at the free-flying airships and flares at each other, and then they weren’t firing anymore, circling their quarry at a wide, watchful distance.

Quest considered stepping outside, remaking herself with the sleek shape of a champion hawk and then leaping.

But one bold thought woke old fears, nailing her current feet to the floor.

And then as if proving her wisdom, new aircraft arrived at the battle site. They were swift despite being burly, odd bones riding some very powerful jets. Quest had studied every papio weapon, and these resembled nothing else—entities created just now, for this special day.

One of the new aircraft rushed the corona, jets pivoting as it slowed abruptly, parking beneath that lone fletch that had lashed itself to the creature.

The corona blew air and hovered, and the other fletches converged, making a larger circle around their round quarry. And the swift papio wings circled in the distance while the new ships hovered in a single watchful mass. All of the fuel in the world wouldn’t keep the papio aloft for long, she thought. And then the corona let out a bright flash of yellow light, and one side of the body dipped far enough to slice into the demon floor. The floor broke, splitting like the face of water in a bowl, and the creature dropped farther, necks pulling back as if to avoid this fate, and then the great body flapped its edges and blew air and swelled even more, lifting up once again, defeating its weight and its drag for another few moments.

Flares were dropped from the other fletches.

A new plan was found.

Half of hunter ships attacked the corona, piercing it with harpoons tied to lines that dragged dozens of flattened bladders into the bright furious air. Pressurized hydrogen turned the bladders into taut white balloons. The miserable corona continued to flap and blow, but now a hand was lifting it from above. Altitude was bought, and the corona quit struggling for a moment or two, and it was easy to imagine thankfulness in those next flashes of blue light, and then more flashes far beyond purple.

Then the papio attacked again, en masse.

For Quest, time wasn’t defined by how long it took one human mouth to finish one recitation. Time was the accumulation of incidents and activities, and if nothing happened, no time passed. Or like now, everything below her happened at once, and time had never been swifter. Those blunt new aircraft singled out fletches to attack from below, presumably to steal them from their crews. Other fletches were attacked by warrior pilots onboard the roaring hawkspur wings. She could hear the battle, the gunfire and explosions and the occasional blaring horn pushing through the morning air. She heard the concussive blasts of breath coming from the dying giant. What had been scattered fleets turned into a single confused maelstrom. Even her spectacular eyes and swift reflexes fought to keep track of every ship. Nothing was certain. But it seemed as if the papio had the initiative, tearing apart two and then another three fletches with no losses of their own. And every one of the new aircraft was positioned beneath a target—sometimes two underneath the same target. All the fuel in the world wouldn’t keep them aloft for much longer, but this was a one-way mission. Papio soldiers must have drilled and drilled in secret, probably for hundreds of days, learning how to steal the fletches and save themselves while giving their species the spectacular gift.