Lost Change

Chapter 80

Minna made it all of thirty seconds before she moved to the front of the shuttle and overrode the autopilot. I felt a surge of speed and saw the ground speed by faster through the cockpit window. My claws dug into Minna's shirt a little more from my growing nervousness as we raced along.

It took about two minutes of Minna's piloting before the crash came into view. A jagged furrow cut through the street and yards, visible even from high in the air in the dark of night, and flames flickered randomly along the trail. The streak ended at the side of a building, where a ship the size of a building had slammed into the side of a large Kymari house.

More details became clear in the few seconds it took Minna to close the distance. A tree had been snapped in half in the ship's path. The material the streets were made of had turned a bright gray color, almost white, and had a huge chunk scooped out of them where the ship had traveled. Something that reminded me vaguely of a cleaning robot was smashed into a hunk of metal in the street. The yard the ship had come to rest in was ruined - dirt had been scattered everywhere, and the few clumps of grass that I could still make out were being consumed in smoldering embers cast off by the crash.

I wasn't sure what the ship was supposed to look like, but it looked damaged. The front of it had run into the building and smashed through the wall, leaving a giant hole in the side of the building, and the hull seemed to have been flattened in places that probably should have been curved. There were random holes in the ship where pieces were simply missing, probably lying somewhere in the swath of destruction leading up to the house. Smoke billowed up from the crash, but it was hard to tell just how far into the night sky it stretched.

Through the window I could see two other shuttles parked on one side of the yard. Several Kymari huddled near one of the shuttles, with most lying on the ground while a few moved between them in a flurry of activity. A group of what looked to be fifteen heavily armed guards formed half a ring around the building and the crash. As we flew over the yard I spotted a pair of injured Kymari and a heavily armed guard emerging from one of the jagged rips in the crash. The guard escorted the two injured Kymari through the ring and towards the parked shuttles, where one of the standing Kymari guided the injured Kymari to the ground and began running some kind of handheld machine over them.

Kymari triage? The equivalent of EMTs, helping the injured?

Minna guided our shuttle to an open area beside the other two. Some of the Kymari on the ground looked up as Minna flew towards the other parked shuttles, and one of the guards began to run towards us as we settled down.

I got a good look at the other buildings around this one as Minna messed with various controls on the console. They were all houses. Not the buildings the Kymari used for business. Not places that would be empty until morning.

Homes.

I felt more nervousness and pressure as I glanced at the neighborhood. I doubted anybody was still asleep after the noise of the ship crashing, especially this close to the source, but it would still mean there were a lot of potentially helpless targets for the sicora to go after. Could the sicora do that? Find its way into those houses and kill the people inside?

A quick check through the Blood Memories informed me that the sicora not only could do that, but quite happily would. Even if it was hurt from the crash, if it got loose in this neighborhood... people would die.

Unless we caught it first.

Unless I caught it first.

"Ivy?" I tried to reach the green dragonet again, but again only got the strange echo that told me my thoughts hadn't reached her.