POV: nomad
Summary
Nomad howls in frustration as Glowing Eyes turns from the spear and strides back toward the podium to shout orders. Red-white blaster fire is raining down from the sky onto the arena ring. Glowing Eyes yells, and a wave of his ember warriors — two hundred at least — pours out of the docked ships onto the rims. Their embers dull in unison. So do Nomad's freeze bracers — but in a panic, with seconds to spare, he summons Aux as two thin inner bracers connected by a rod between them, slipped between his skin and the outer cuffs. Aux compliments him on the strange shape; it works. The outer bracers buzz uselessly, denied contact. The ember warriors, unprotected, drop into the mud like toddlers laid down for a nap.
The attackers have a way to freeze them all at once, then. Glowing Eyes spins around in clear shock as his army falls. He is given no time to react: the ship Nomad is chained to lifts, climbs five feet, and is blown apart by a direct hit. Nomad drops, and a smoking sheet of the ship's wall comes down on top of him. The mud saves his ribs. He is now pinned face-down in soft muck under a chunk of debris, one wrist still manacled to the wall over him, a firefight unfolding above, and the dawn still on its way.
His attempt to summon Aux as a knife fails — the Torment insists a knife is a weapon — but a jack for lifting heavy weight is plainly a tool. He works it through trial and error from a half-buried schematic in old memory, gets it to form against the metal edge near his free hand, and cranks. The wall rises perceptibly. Aux notes, with rare warmth, that some of the old Nomad is showing through. With air now and room to manoeuvre, Nomad flips the slab over himself and ends up sitting on top of it, staring up.
The aerial battle is less an air war than dropped bombs and rifle-decked hovercraft. The ships top out at fifty or sixty feet — they can't go higher without straying into sunlight territory. The arena field is already sprouting weeds in the reflected light of the rings. Nomad asks if there is harvestable Investiture in the rings' light; Aux confirms, but slowly — ten or twenty BEUs an hour. Not nearly enough. The arena ships have launched and Glowing Eyes is nowhere in sight; many of his ember warriors lie in the new grass. This is the best chance Nomad will get.
A small four-person hovercycle roars down nearby. A man and a woman jump off, the man carrying a rifle. Neither wears the white coats of Glowing Eyes's officers. They are searching for something in the weeds. Nomad shouts for help. The woman glances at him; the man ignores him. A larger ship goes screaming past loaded with captives from the field, and Nomad realises the attackers are running a rescue — but not for him. The two near him heave a muddy figure up by her arms: it is the silver-streaked ember woman, dazed and disoriented. They drag her back to their cycle and manacle her into the back-right seat. They do not trust her either. They walk right past Nomad without looking at him.
He breaks his other thumb trying to pull free of his manacle. It doesn't work. Aux warns he is heading below five percent reserve, where his enhancements start dropping away. Then the man rescuer is hit on the shoulder by an energy blast; the second shot vaporises his head. The woman screams and ducks behind the hovercycle. Overhead, the podium ship descends, Glowing Eyes standing on its edge with a rifle, sighting on her. Nomad calls her over and waves his crowbar. She glares back. He gestures please, agonised, hand mangled. She finally crosses to him while Glowing Eyes is briefly distracted by other attacking ships, takes the crowbar, and throws her weight on it without breaking him free.
She holds up her fallen companion's rifle. Nomad nods and lies that he is a good shot; Aux corrects him; she does not understand either of them. He summons Aux as a shield on his arm, intercepts Glowing Eyes's next shots, then alters Aux into a shielded ground spike so he can fire one-handed. He blows the manacle's lock off his own wrist. He fires the rifle wide of everything — and learns that the Torment lets him pull the trigger only as long as he aims at no one. The woman snatches the gun back and pins Glowing Eyes down properly with it. She gestures at the cycle and Aux translates her offer: she will take him if he shields her from behind as she flies.
Before he climbs aboard, Nomad scans the weeds where the podium had been. A body lies near-buried in mud. The gap-toothed man — leg twisted, face bleeding from a kick. Nomad curses himself for a fool, raises Aux as a shield, and ducks across the bombed field — the weight of forgotten oaths on his shoulders. He hauls the man out of the mud, throws him across his shoulders, and runs back to the hovercycle through bomb plumes and rifle fire, dropping the man into the back-left seat. The man whispers something Nomad cannot translate but does not need to. Aux, surprised, says the rescue was uncharacteristic of him. Nomad answers that the man reminded him of an old friend.
The woman counts down on three fingers; he leaps to the centre of the fuselage between the seats, expands Aux into a shield big enough to cover them both. She lifts and flies low through the new grass. Glowing Eyes watches them go, untroubled — because the other ember warriors are now hauling themselves to their feet again across the new grass, the silver-streaked ember woman manacled to the back-right seat is awake and screaming, and ships are already swinging around to give chase. Nomad's cycle, slowest of the fleeing group, falls behind. The ember-people ships target him.