Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 411
Calandria leapt past her, carrying two metal cases. Axel
had never seen Calandria like this. It made him more than a
little uneasy--as if his own vivid imagination was underselling
the danger they were in.
"Hell!" Caught in her urgency, Axel swung the survival
bag onto his shoulder and, staggering under the load, followed.
Mounce accompanied him, her hands fluttering as she visibly
tried to find a way to help.
A strange twilight glow pervaded the shattered clearing.
Calandria had dumped both cases on the ground and was
frantically rooting through one of them when Axel and Mounce
caught up to her. Drifts of wood smoke stung Axel’s eyes and
the roar and heat of nearby flames made his head spin. Sparks
of static electricity were flying everywhere, and Mounce’s
clean hair puffed out around her head like a dandelion.
Suddenly Calandria cried out, and collapsed. She curled
into a ball on the smoking ground, hands clutching her head.
Axel felt it too--a ringing pain his head. It was centered
on the left side, just above his ear. Mounce cursed in some
foreign language and pulled off her crescent-shaped hair clip.
"What’s happening?" she shouted over an impossible
roar of sound. The sound of the fire was drowned out by the
approach of the swans. It wasn’t a single sound, but many, like
a thousand strings. The swans sang a single unison chord as
they reached to touch ground.
Lightning arced from the top of the starship. "Our
implants!" shouted Axel. "We’ve all got hardware in our
skulls. It’s shorting out from all this power! Calandria’s got
more than either of us--she’s augmented in a dozen ways." She
lay insensible now, twitching next to the golden gauze she had
half-pulled from the case.
"We’ve got to get her out of here!" He grabbed