Andrea Höst - And All the Stars

"Once people work out what these challenges mean, they’ll start betting on them. Guarantee it." Min, smiling cynic, sat back as if the idea pleased him.

"Two years until we get our world back too," Emily pointed out, more in defiance than certainty.

"That’s what we’re aiming for Millie." Noi changed channels, then restored sound.

A terse voice told them they were looking at a view of the Mumbai Spire, which had one of the closest webcams available. A dozen Blues were standing together, holding umbrellas to keep off heavy rain, and someone at the broadcaster was drawing lines on the image pointing out the Core, who was a slim man in his early twenties. The image looked slightly off, and that was because the Blues held themselves in an attitude of conversation, but didn’t move their mouths. Speaking Moth.

Two of the Blues handed their umbrellas to a Green standing to one side, and then turned and walked into the Spire. Seamlessly, without an opening or a ripple, as if the star-studded darkness truly was the night sky, and they had been swallowed by it.

Nash had already been sitting unhappily upright at the appearance of his home city, but at this he turned to Fisher: "Could it be they brought their shield down? Have they just shown us an opportunity?"

"Possibly." Fisher was reserved, not ready to be drawn.

"Still, these challenges could mean a missile at the right moment–"

"We’re cutting to a broadcast direct from Manila," the presenter said, as the image changed to a different Spire, surrounded by many more people, with more arriving, walking out of the darkness of the Spire to spread over closely maintained grass. The presenter helpfully pointed out what Madeleine had already seen: the two Blues who had walked into the Spire at Mumbai had emerged a few moments later in Manila.

Noi, sounding annoyed, said: "Okay, so either the Spires have teleportation devices…or they aren’t ships at all. They’re gates. Great big pointy wormholes."

"It felt like stone when I touched ours," Madeleine reminded her.

"Either you weren’t at the In point, or it has an on and off mode." As alien song began to sound an accompaniment to the images Noi glared at the screen, then slowly let out her breath. "Guess we get to watch the Olympics after all. I just…seriously, have they really half-wrecked our world for a pissing contest? They couldn’t decide their primacy shit on their own world?"

"They said and business of our own ." Min had risen to his feet to approach the screen, but glanced back at Noi. "I’ve a bet of my own – this other business is nothing we’re going to like. Maybe when they leave they take all our water, or our sun or something."

He turned back to the screen and pointed to a tanned Blue at the edge of the ever-widening crowd. "I remember this guy from Bondi."

It was the woman standing beside the tanned man who had Madeleine’s attention. Short-cropped blonde hair and a lovely line of neck and shoulder.

"Asha." She exchanged a glance with Noi, then added for the benefit of the room: "One of the people we met going through Finger Wharf. We cooked dinner together."

"Every country – every Spire is sending two people to compete?" Emily asked. "What was the little glowing animal picture for?"

"I guess we’re about to find out."

The flow had stopped, the crowd forming into a loose circle around the Spire. The weather in Manila was a step up from Mumbai: only overcast and drizzling, and most of the Blues moved with an eager, alert step, though some must come from time zones when they’d normally be well asleep. The air filled with oscillating song, and Madeleine wondered if they were just saying hello, or were sledging each other, or boasting about their stolen bodies.

She glanced at Fisher, sitting attentively, and could almost feel the roil of anger swelling in him. The room was thick with it, with resentment, and worry, and over it all, helplessness. Was this how it would be? They would spend two years hiding and watching, feeling as though their faces were being rubbed in their loss? The cheerful excitement of the Manila crowd, and the wash of language impossible for humans to understand, seemed to declare the irrelevance of any audience but the Moths. They had co-opted cities, people, technology, and would use them as they pleased.

The chorus of song died away, and one Blue outside the circle climbed onto a rock, raising a single thin warble.

"Speeches?" Min said. "Skip to the good stuff."

Quite as if she’d heard, the Blue standing on the rock raised one hand, and produced three short notes.

Fireworks. All around the circumference of the Spire, about twenty feet from the ground, balls of light burst out in unison. But instead of popping, or arcing to the ground, these zigzagged away, leaving a suggestion of a trail behind.

The circle of Blues gave chase, the sudden intensity of movement wholly at odds with their light-hearted cheer of moments before. One woman, particularly quick to react, leapt impossibly high into the air to intercept the nearest ball.

"Shield jump!" Pan cried, while the ball curled at the woman’s touch, no longer trying to move.

A second Blue had followed the woman into the air, aiming not for the ball, but for her. He hadn’t quite connected when another woman punched at him from the ground, clipping him so that he spun away then tumbled down, slowing at the last moment as the grass and dirt bellied out below him beneath the cushion of a shield.

"Are they wearing any flags or colours to tell which team they’re on?" Min asked, frowning at the screen.

"I guess all they’d need to know is their partner. Everyone else is on another team." As the two women sprinted for the Spire, Pan leaned back, visibly resisting being caught up in the competition. "And maybe they can see something we can’t."

A different pair were trying to intercept the sprinters, gouging a channel into the bright green grass with a punch which knocked both women sideways. The one holding the light animal – dangling it by its ears – somehow angled her landing so that her shield bounced her toward the Spire. With a stumble, she ran into starry darkness.

At the end of the muddy gouge her companion lay broken. She had been a short woman, maybe twenty, with dark braided hair and bronzed skin which set off the blue of the stain. The fine drizzle dewed her skin, and glimmered in the light of blooming wings.

The Moth lifted, a slow undulation, and swam through the rain into the stars.

"There’s a leader board," Fisher said, and tilted the laptop so Madeleine could see a web page where a name had appeared in two different scripts, with the number 2 beside it. "That’s the São Paulo clan." He paused, looking across at Noi, who was grey, lips set, and added: "You don’t have to stay."

"Yes, we do," she said. "They’re showing us their limits. Their attacks."

Madeleine stared at the screen, as the image shifted to another part of the golf course in Manila, to another group of Blues chasing long-eared balls of light. The second time a Blue died, the Moth seemed to be fatally wounded as well, emerging only to slump to the wet grass, colour leaching from its blue pattern. Other Blues were merely injured, and limped or were carried away, helped by Greens stationed near the cameras.

The chase for the long-eared balls of light was quick, brutal and efficient. There were many more teams than balls, and soon the losers were returning to their home Spires, to face the widely varied reaction of their Cores. Two dozen corpses remained, human and alien, but it wasn’t particularly comforting that most of the Moths had died with their hosts.

"The garage," Madeleine said stiffly, when it seemed they were done. "Practice? If we use a look-out?"