But the lights Deidra and Galia saw were hardly exclusive to what was above. Underneath them, the luminous scales of the hundred-meter-long dirgesnake flickered. It zipped right past them, in search of a bigger target. Like those on the crystal towers, the dirgesnake watched the Dreamweaver. By the will of its original captain, the ship rose from the waters one last time. Its reserve jets pushed it just high enough to wobble for the Hammer’s crystal tower. They fired everything they had left at its sleek black hull. Rey felt every shockwave and heat spike through the shieldless deck. Beneath the waters, the spectral song of the dirgesnake rose through the zipping escape pods. The audience above quieted, holding their breath to listen. To watch Rey and the Dreamweaver charge straight through enemy fire.
“Goodbye, Galia,” Rey smiled.
The Dreamweaver crashed into the base of a gigantic crystal spire. The names inscribed on it were lost in the explosion. So, too were Corelia and the rest of the Hammer. Bits of steel, glassy violet shrapnel and bodies rained down into the Reverie Lake. The dirgesnake sang its way to them. The deceased plunked, one by one, to a radiant, watery grave. The dirgesnake wrapped them in its coils, and dragged them deep, to peace, with a haunting lullaby.
Through a blurry screen of tears, Galia watched the beast wrap up the wreckage. It sunk to the dark. Galia and Deidra sped on a hundred feet beneath the two remaining crews.
They watched bursts of light through the warped lens of the Reverie waters overhead. The Terra Eagle spiraled through heavy fire from the Torrent survivors. Galia knew each weapon by the misfires that jumped through the water around her. Particle bombs opened orb-shaped voids in the water. The muffled crack it made sent a chill down her spine every time. Thermal beams dissipated long before they could reach her and Deidra’s depth. They turned from zipping red bolts to lines of bubbles that boiled away. Artillery shells splayed out across the shimmering underwater expanse, like deadly lead sunbeams.
Through it all, the Terra Eagle persevered above. She used her iron feathers to jerk abruptly to a safer path across the lake. She dipped down low enough for her talons to graze the waters over Galia and Deidra. She even flapped up into a backflip once to evade a particle bomb blast. In the rare moments of impact, she bounced back with the unparalleled grace of practice. It was all Galia could do to watch, to distract herself from the loss of the Dreamweaver and its captain.
She saw then, equally unbelievable, the sheer speed that immunized Daniel to enemy fire. He zipped ahead, feet per second faster than any gun the defeated crews had at their disposal. Thermal rays and shells had long since abandoned him as a mark. By the time any weapon could strike where he’d been, Daniel was two ship-lengths closer to the far shore. His ship became a black lightning bolt, destined to strike for victory. Galia traced the path of his ship, until a soft whine grazed across her eardrum. It seeped into her, through her. It slithered between the cells of her blood and the very tunnels of her marrow.
“Galia… you hear that?” Deidra came in through her pod transmitter.
“Hear it? I feel it. What the hell…” Galia trailed off. She hardly had a chance to theorize before lights rose up around her. The whine became a note in a gorgeous gentle song. Then something slid along the underside of her pod. The song dropped an octave. “Deidra, scramble! Get close to the surface and strafe back and forth. Keep it random!” It was the best Galia could come up with on the spot, given the way she’d watched the beast take down the Dreamweaver.
“Got it!” Deidra answered. She turned her pod up for the firebursts above. Galia grasped her controls to do the same. Whatever the dirgesnake had done with the others, it was satisfied with. It had two new targets now.
Galia jumped back in her seat when the coils glowed into existence, a bright fluorescent yellow, around her. The dirgesnake has been gone seconds ago; now it was everywhere around her. Can it camouflage itself? was the last thought Galia managed on her own, before its song blared through her being louder than ever. All thoughts then vacated, except for, what a nice sound.
Galia’s hands released from the controls. This wasn’t so bad, after all. The subtle quakes that rattled her pod were a bit like a massage. The tinkle of running water from the leak behind her head reminded her of her riverside home of years gone by. So what the pod was shrinking? Who needed all that space? What a nice sound… Galia closed her eyes.
“Hey, Galia!” the voice of fury itself invaded her paradise. Deidra rammed her pod straight into the scales of the dirgesnake. It loosened around Galia. Its song turned to a
shriek.
“What… what the hell?” Galia mumbled, between reality and illusion. Another ram from Deidra loosened the dirgesnake’s death grip. Galia saw everything now for its far less pleasant, real-world truth. Water had filled her pod halfway up her shins. Cracks had spiderwebbed across her pod’s glass shield. That nice sound was the lullaby of an enormous predator, which was now tied in a knot around her pod.
Galia jerked her controls up. Deidra drove hers down. The two pummeled the dirgesnake from the inside and out together. Its song turned into a screech. Its coils raced around in a mad dance of rings and spirals. It took Galia a few disoriented, pummeling seconds to realize what it was doing. Then an eye the size of her pod froze before her. Its pupil widened to fill its green socket with black. Then it narrowed to a slit of murder. The serpent arched its neck back. Its scaly lips popped open to glint a mouthful of wicked scimitars. The snap of its jaw was hauntingly audible through the water.
Especially for Galia, who had steered inches clear of it. She stomped the thruster pedal through sloshing water on her feet. Her pod ripped past the dirgesnake’s throat, straight for the rising banks of the shore. Deidra was feet behind. The dirgesnake was feet behind her. They raced it while sand scraped the bellies of their pods across the shallows.
“That’s it, folks! We have our winner!” Cybil announced above. The very second he did, the audience seemed to forget all about Rey and his sacrifice. They roared alive again. “Both Daniel and the Terra Eagle have survived the Reverie with their ships intact! This puts Daniel at three bonuses to win the Olympia Go-”
Cybil bit his lip in his stumble back from his podium when two steel eggs rocketed from the waters of the lake. They skidded across the shore so far below their competitor’s ships. No sooner than they’d stopped, both hatches popped open on top of them. Galia sprung up first. She lunged to Deidra’s pod, to offer her hand. The two shared but a moment’s glance to agree, without a word. Galia helped her up. The two gazed up to their rival crews, to Cybil, and the audience. With tears pouring over, Galia screamed:
“We challenge Daniel for the Olympia Gold Medal!” Cybil only stared, with his two bewildered, clashing-colored eyes.
“It’s within our rights as runners-up, with two bonuses!” Deidra shouted. Despite the fact they had no ship, she was right.
“We-we-well then, folks… it seems I’ll need to amend my previous statement. We have our… finalists.”
Chapter Seventeen: Finalists
Galia’s hand trembled up over her lips. She dropped another accursed purple capsule down the hatch. She forced her eyelids shut, sore from emptying her soul all over the regal area rug of her final hotel room. Galia savored every sensation of the little pill. The sandpaper grind down her throat. The arrival in her churning bile below. The subtle recession of thorned branches of agony from around her lungs. The pain eased back, as if to poke, instead of pierce her, but it never truly went away. Not anymore. Galia wrestled with the reflection in the taxotrol bottle, she tried not to give in to the desperate face looking back at her. More, it said, you need more! A sharp thud on the door shook her half back to awareness.
“Galia?” Deidra’s voice came through the gilded, hardwood door. Everything in this room was gilded, either by thin plates or accent threats of pure gold reserved for finalists.
“Yeah,” Galia called back with all the wind she could suck. Deidra pushed her way inside. Her new, alterable combat boots sunk an inch deep in the crimson-gold rug over rich, old Homeworld wood planks. She crossed to the bed and plopped beside Galia.
“What do you say we go down to the Forge? See what Clarabelle can do for us, or… well, there’s only one round left,” Deidra got around to saying. Galia watched her own reflection in the girl’s big, watery eyes. They said what her mouth wouldn’t dare. You’re not acting like you. You’re scaring me. “I thought we should go out for a drink together.”
“Are you… asking me on a date?” Galia forced her heavy face muscles to smirk.
“I am,” Deidra said, though she came off more as asking permission from her captain to use some high-clearance weapon. She was so stiff but so driven. Galia’s hand climbed up to Deidra’s face. It took everything she had just then to coordinate her fingers, to run them down the girl’s smooth cheek to her collarbone.
“It’s a shame. I still have so much to teach you,” Galia laughed, “But not tonight. Tonight I have to stay here.”