She felt great.
"Do we have enough power?" Jane asked. She was already racing across the rubble, climbing the rungs to the cabin. She threw her windbreaker and blouse out the portal into the living room and slammed the hatch. Her flight jacket was waiting for her. She zipped herself into it.
"It will have to do." Melanchthon's words were mild, but his tone was confident, smug in his strength and destructive potential. One by one his engines were coming up, rattling the walls and causing the soft green instrument lights to flicker. There was a helmet—Jane pulled it on and tucked her hair in. The cabin smelled of leather and lubricating oil. She fit the oxymask over her mouth.
Jane settled herself into the couch, seized the rubber grips, and twisted. The needles stung deep into her flesh. The wraparounds closed about her head. Once again she was resting in the warm center of the dragon's sensorium.
To three sides of Termagant there were too many skyscrapers to plot a safe course through. They would have to fly east, into the rising sun. Already, bits of cornice and brick were falling, shaken loose by vibrations from the dragon's engines. Jane called up his weapons systems, and the controls spread out before her in three tiers, like the keyboards of that great organ on which the Lady had played the very first sunrise.
Everything was in place. "Are you ready?" Jane asked.
"Before I existed, I was ready."
"Then let's do it!"
* * *
Three floors were reduced to dust when they blasted free. Jane glimpsed the pyramid-topped upper section of Termagant falling slowly into the gray cloud, outlines softening as the walls crumbled. Windows shattered for blocks around, filling the air with a sparkling crystal mist that burned red with the reflected glory of their jets. Then they were gone. The Great Gray City spread itself thinner and thinner beneath them, the tight grid of streets and buildings gradually giving way to the exurbs.
They came in low over Whinny Moor, flying at what would have been treetop level had there been any trees. The mud flats and industrial parks, the shanties, oil tanks, and chemical dumps, flashed by beneath them. Light turned the shallow ponds and rivers silver and kicked up rainbows on the oil slicks. Narrow roads whipped and twisted like snakes.
"Up!
Up
!" Jane screamed, and the dragon strained skyward, skimming a string of high-tension power lines, missing them by yards, leaving them lashing furiously in his hot wake. "That was too fucking close! Give us some more altitude, why don't you?"
"We're going under their radar," Melanchthon growled. "You've heard of radar, I trust?"
The dragon works were a smear on the horizon.
Jane brought the two cannons on-line and called up the aiming systems. A sun cross appeared at the center of her vision, floating up and down slightly as they hugged the contours of the ground. "First flyby," Jane said. "We'll be taking out the front gate and the Time Clock, and blasting the Goddess stone to gravel." She felt wild, free, vengeful, obscene—unstoppable. "Serving the Bitch notice." She knew that there was no Goddess, save as a metaphor for what was otherwise inconceivable, that the forces they were going up against were as impersonal as they were vast. But it felt more satisfying this way.
"That won't get her attention," the dragon snarled. He was willing to play along with her; if there was one thing he understood, it was the mechanics of hatred. "Nothing less than a heat-seeker right up the wazoo is going to get her attention."
Jane adjusted the trim a feather's touch, pulling the sun cross down onto the factory walls. "It's what we're going to do."
They passed over the front gate like thunder, low and hard, flying subsonic, and left twin gouts of flame blossoming behind them. Melanchthon twisted right and they flew over the marshaling yards, dropping hellfire and elf-blight.
Dragons screamed behind them, twisting in agony, burning, raging for vengeance over every frequency of the electromagnetic spectrum even as they died. One somehow managed to lift up into the air before a fuel tank ruptured and exploded, sending him tumbling end over end into the side of the orange smithy.
Melanchthon was laughing and Jane was too, cheering and whooping as they swung around tight for a second run. Black specks were pouring from all the buildings. Flames shot up from the orange smithy. Staticky voices welled up on the radio between the dragons' mad cries, demanding that they identify themselves, calling for help, warning them away, ordering pursuit craft into the air.
Turbulence bounced the cannon fire up and wild, taking out one side of the erection shop. But not before enough fire found its target to blast what remained of the front wall into rubble. Jane thought she saw tiny figures, smaller than ants, glimpsed and gone, darting into the smoke. Taking their chance to escape. Go for it, she thought. They flashed over the marshaling yards, making sure the first overflight had done its job. It was an inferno down there. Through the smoke she spied two dragons locked in blind combat, furious even in their dying moments. Others still writhed in the chemical flames. There was no danger from any of them.
Jane started to loop the dragon around for a third run. Most of the wall was down. "They're coming!" shouted Melanchthon. Radar showed three blips lifting up over the horizon.
"Once more."
The final time over, Jane held the weaponry off-line. She strained to make out Building 5, where her dormitory had been. She fancied she could, but by the time she had picked it out it was gone behind her. It was like something seen by lightning flashes. Run, she commanded the children silently. Don't look back. If Thistle and Dimity were still alive, they'd make it out, she was sure of that. They were opportunists. But some of the others…
"I've kept my part of the bargain," Melanchthon said. "See that you keep yours. Hold steady and bank right when I tell you. At their speed they've got a monster turning radius. We can use it to eat up some of their edge."
"Gotcha."
Their pursuers were visible behind her as amazingly fine miniatures, no larger than grains of sand. Jane could hear their voices over the radio, the cool and arrogant young technocrats and their angry machines.
"We have visual. Hawk, keep steady. Anybody got a positive ID?"
"Roger. Adjusting a point. That's our rogue, all right."
"Rip their fucking guts out!"
"Spitfire, you're too wide."
"Lemme shove one up the bastard's rectum!"
"Hawk, Spitfire, ready your AAM. Bring 'em on-line."
Jane felt her face freeze. She knew that voice! It was Rocket! For a giddy instant it seemed impossible—she had left him sleeping, miles away from any interceptor base. Still, he had access to House Incolore, whose many doors, Lesya had said, opened everywhere. How long would it take him to reach his base if he were summoned? Not long at all.
"Now!" Melanchthon shouted. Jane brought them around hard and tight. The interceptors overshot wildly, air brakes out, dwindling with distance. Melanchthon was headed due north now. Jane opened up the throttle.
"Full power," the dragon commanded as he reconfigured for maximum speed. "No more dicking around. We're going straight for Hell Gate."
"Where is it?" The navigational systems were no help. "It's not marked! I can't find it anywhere."
"Where is it? Fool! Hell Gate is not a place—it's a
condition
."
At his direction, Jane lifted Melanchthon's nose straight up. Before he could stall out, she cut in the afterburners. G forces slammed her back into the couch. They flattened her face and narrowed her vision—everything was jumping; she dared only look straight ahead. The dragon seized control of her autonomous functions and pumped blood back into her head to keep her from blacking out.
The pillars of smoke towering above them shrank to nothing.
"Moving into position. Look at them climb."
"Hold back, Spitfire."
"I think I can squeeze off a shot."
"Hold back."
Flyspeck alphanumerics flicked off and on as the dragons spoke, tagging them with their public IDs. 2928: "C'mon down, sweetheart. We want to teach you a little lesson in experimental entelechy."
6613: "Hah!"
8607: "Is your pilot listening? I got a message for him: Spread your cheeks, dipshit, and brace yourself for a shot of ontology in action."
Disgusted, she slapped a masking function on them, leaving only the calm chatter of their pilots.
"Hawk, can you lock on radar?"
"Ah, negatory, Rocket."
"Craziest damn tactics I ever saw. What do you make of it?"
"Looks like a DG maneuver to me."
"That's my reading too. Spitfire, set up your point of intercept. Hawk, ditto on the left. I'll sit on his tail and drive him straight at you."
"Roger."
"Double affirmative."
Their pursuers had altitude. Climbing above them used up half the distance Jane had over them. "Cocky bastards," Melanchthon said. "They think they've got us pegged. Bring up the rear guns. If they come anywhere near range, give 'em a burst. Just to dust 'em back."
"O-okay." Jane was being battered and rattled like a die in a giant's gambling cup. It was all she could do to follow his instructions. The instrumentation lights flickered as Melanchthon fired up the two barrel-sized banks of superconductors located just beneath the ventral hatches of his thorax. "I never did understand what those things are for."
"Watch and learn."
Melanchthon threw 350 degrees of enhanced exteriors onto the wraparound screens. Jane saw electromagnetic fields warping out from his iron body like vast invisible wings. Actinic blue light flared where the fields interacted with air ionized by the dragon's passage.
"There it goes, right on schedule. It's a DG maneuver for damnsure."
"Can't see why they'd want to hit Dream Gate, but nothing else makes any sense at all. Hold position, Spitfire. We'll do this by the book."
"Your call, Rocket."
They shot entirely out of the atmosphere and Melanchthon cut the burners. The blue flares of energy dimmed, became ripples in the structure of space. Briefly, they went ballistic. After the crushing forces of acceleration, the sudden weightlessness almost made Jane empty her stomach. She swallowed back the sudden upsurge and ran a quick check of all systems. Everything came up green. "Can you engage our pursuit on an electronic level? I want to have a private word with their flight leader."
"I've been engaged in electronic countermeasures since they came over the horizon," Melanchthon said disdainfully. "Here. You and your paramour can trade endearments on virtual."
Rocket's face appeared on the wraparound. "Jayne!" he cried in astonishment. "What are
you
doing here?"
She couldn't answer.
"You've been abducted," he said flatly.
Rankled, she said, "Fuck that noise! I know what I'm doing." In the background she could hear the indistinct mutter of dragons inadequately squelched, their anger carrying a conviction stronger than any words could express. She couldn't ignore it. It was as if her bones and viscera, her organs and innards had been given voice. "There's no future for me. All my life I've been stuck in a rigged game. The dice are loaded and I was declared a loser before I even began to play. These are not just words! What choice was I ever given? Only this one, right here, right now. I can swallow defeat meekly or I can throw the board up in the air and smash all the pieces. Well, I've been screwed from Day One—I have no intention whatsoever of being a good sport!"
Tensely, Rocket said, "You
can't
go back through Dream Gate. I don't care what your dragon's said, it's a lie. Dragons lie. You don't know what's waiting for you on the other side. If you cross over, you'll be—" His image cut off abruptly. But Jane knew Melanchthon's circuitry too intimately for him to work that trick. She overrode his commands. Rocket reappeared. "—forever. The mundane body you left behind is still alive. Like calls to like. You'll be drawn straight to it."
The streaming electromagnetic fault lines ahead fluttered wildly, as if struggling against a recalcitrant medium. "Yeah, yeah."
"You won't reintegrate." Rocket's dragon said something to him over his headphones and he shook his head impatiently. "You'll be trapped in your old body. No speech, no responses, no communication of any kind with the outside. Maybe no control over your own bowels."
"Stop behaving like an idiot, you asshole." She hadn't meant to speak so harshly, but the dragons' muttering distracted her. Their three streams of rage combined with her own dragon's suddenly rising apprehension to form a fast, jittery chord in her blood. "I just wanted to say—good-bye. I just wanted to say no hard feelings. That's not much. But you just keep on talking!"
"I have to make you listen. You don't know—"
She cut him off. "I know everything. I know the worst. There's nothing bad you can tell me—I've been kissed by the Baldwynn."
Melanchthon roared with fear and relief. This was what he had been trying to hide from her: That if they succeeded, she had a fifty-fifty chance of being thrown back to her original body in the aftermath. If the destruction were anything less than universal, she would spend the rest of her life a prisoner within her own alien flesh. But Jane didn't care. She'd figured that out long ago. Her will was as steady and unwavering as the dragon's own.
"I'm trying to help you, you fool!" Rocket was angry at last. "You're making a terrible mistake."
"Help me? What did you have in mind? If I turn back now, do I get to walk away free? No hard feelings? I can pick up my career where I left off? Maybe you're planning to marry me and carry me off to a clean white marble city on the grassy, windswept plains of Mag Mell. That it?"
Rocket bit his lip. His eyes were two coals.