I kicked the Jareet away and he stumbled backward. When he came at me again, I sent a spike through his shoulder which caught him mid-air and threw him to the ground. The Jareet immediately jumped up and pulled the spike out as blood sprayed from the wound. His face was the embodiment of rage, but before he had a chance to attack me again, I was a step ahead of him.
My palms slammed down on the already weakened floor of the bridge, sending out a massive wave of nanites that tore at the very construction. There was only one way I could turn this whole thing around.
“Let me show you what it means to be the Bloodmancer, Vogron.”
23
Neither Vogron nor the Imminy Absolute expected to find themselves two decks below the bridge in a massive pile of rubble. But the two of them weren't the only ones surprised by our crushing arrival in the large Idolian’s arsenal department.
As the smoke and dust cleared, hundreds of Federation soldiers expectantly watched to see who would rise from the devastation. We broke into the arsenal amid a fight between rebel Federation soldiers and those still loyal to the Ka’s Empire.
I fell through the floor mostly unharmed, having my nanites protect me from the fall. Within seconds of landing, both Vogron and the Imminy appeared, dusty but fairly healthy. My goal wasn’t to destroy them, and neither would a few tons of rubble be able to do it, no. My goal was one of enlightenment.
Vogron pulled himself out from under a massive metal beam, two of his four arms broken. He used his two good arms to perform a violent twist on his broken appendages and set them back into position. Within seconds, his bones would heal and become even sturdier. He explained to me once how indestructible a Jareet body was.
The species that had created them thousands of years ago made sure their subjugates could last even after deadly injuries. They could even survive without several organs while their engineered bodies regrew them. With every injury they survived, the Jareet would become stronger.
The Imminy, on the other hand, had nothing to repair. He was completely unscathed by the destruction I had caused. An Imminy could control a vast amount of nanites. No Technomancer I knew, except perhaps Major Uriel and myself, could come close to controlling the swarms as well as they could. Still, an Imminy despite their otherworldly intelligence, never quite developed the creativity I saw in human Technomancers. At least that’s what they had told us back in the Guild. This was the first time I was testing that theory.
The troops and officers in the arsenal compartment stood motionless as they watched us dust off two decks worth of rubble as if it was nothing. Several Cardanisian officers were hunkered down in the far end of the giant room and hundreds of soldiers, mostly human, Takkari and Brizel, were scattered behind pillars and boxes. It was apparent that they had no idea what was going on or what to do.
“You want to join this, Vogron? An Empire whose forces kill each other at the first sign of trouble?”
Vogron scanned the arsenal and I knew he didn’t liked what he’d seen. But Vogron wasn’t someone who would easily be swayed. He charged me instantly, swinging his dual blades at me. I tried to trip him with a nanite chain, but he jumped over it and came down on me like a comet. The clank of our swords echoed through the room. He put his whole weight behind the attack and I could feel the force of it in my entire spine.
We clashed again swords cutting through the air. His attacks were quick and coordinated, and it took my entire focus just to defend against them. Several times I tried to blast him away with a shockwave of nanites, but just before I had a second to do so, another slash or hack would force me to block with my Ro Sword shifting my attention.
I barely managed to penetrate his thick skin with a spike just below his chest, but by the time I turned around the wound was already sealed by an even thicker coat of skin. Truth be told, there were ways I could have ended Vogron fairly quickly but only at the expense of most of my nanite reserves. I couldn’t do that since there was an Imminy Absolute waiting in line to kill me, and I was quite certain I needed most of my strength for that.
“Soldiers, bring down the Technomancer!” the Imminy ordered when he realized our brawl was taking too long.
The soldiers around us were stuck between loyalties to their commander and someone they knew had been a hero of their race.
“Free yourselves! Now!” I yelled as Vogron kept coming at me in full force. “We can’t be slaves to the Imminy! Fight back!”
A human soldier, finally having decided that enough was enough, pointed his gun at the Imminy and fired a shot. The oversized squid, however, wasn’t even grazed by the primitive projectile-based weapon. On the contrary, a tentacle reached for the soldier, decapitating him in an instant.
“Defend yourselves!”
Either from shock, fear, confusion, anger over how little they were worth to the Imminy, or an actual sense of justice, the soldiers opened fire on the Imminy and all hell broke loose as bullets ricocheted all around the room.
The Imminy began spinning incredibly fast, jumping from one position to another and tearing soldiers apart like a black twister of death. The troops had no chance and I felt as if I had sent them to their deaths.
“Vogron! Enough is enough! Can’t you see? Look at what he’s doing to his own men!”
“Traitors die,” Vogron just replied, keeping up the pressure with his continued attacks.
The ship trembled under another massive salvo from the Redeemer. Alarms screamed but were deafened out by gunshots within the arsenal. The Cardanisian officers left cover and jumped into action, helping their master to get rid of the insubordinate human soldiers. Leo was trying to contact me over the INAS, but there was no time for a status update.
I created distance between Vogron and me, and reached into my pool of nanites to finally finish this pointless brawl with the Jareet general. I used six chains to lock Vogron to the floor. He struggled with amazing strength and one of the chains came loose immediately. I channeled another burst of nanites into the chains, leaving me at less than half my reservoir. It wouldn’t be enough to kill the Imminy, I thought, but I had to react now and leave the problems of the future to the future Richard Stavos.
“Release me, you little piece of gahin!”
I had him pinned and I knew it wouldn’t last for too long, but the Imminy was my priority now. As the Absolute jumped to yet another squad of helpless soldiers, I raised a massive chunk of debris and catapulted the piece of metal toward it. The block hit it directly, slamming the squid into the wall. It was disoriented and I jumped at it with my Ro Sword in one hand and a ball of accelerated nanites in the other.
I slammed the nanites into its torso, smashing the alien bastard once more against the wall. The impact caused its nanite-armor to shift and create the smallest of openings, I stabbed my Ro Sword right into the hole, eliciting an intense scream. The soft body of the aquarian alien had no chance against Eres steel. It twitched and left out a harrowing shriek which almost left everyone in the arsenal compartment deaf.
My moment of triumph was short-lived as the Imminy blasted me away with one of the tentacles, and I flew almost twenty feet into the rubble at the center of the room. The landing made my INAS go red with warning signs. I felt dizzy, and even nausea struck as I had reports of internal bleeding and a damaged spine. I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t budge. Great, I’m fucking paralyzed.
The Imminy’s shriek attracted the attention of his officers who came running to its aid. The sub-ruler of the Federation was furious beyond reason and decapitated two of the aliens as they approached. The rest of them stopped in their tracks, suddenly not knowing what to do.
“Useless vermin! All of you!”
The Cardanisians, half machine-half plant, were one of the oldest races in the Federation. Their Empire had over a thousand worlds while the Imminy still cowered in caves before the many predators of their ocean planet. I knew that Vogron also knew this, as he was a student of history. I also knew he wouldn’t let his
race be treated like the Cardanisians. The Jareet might not crave honor as the Eres, but they were still very proud.
The Imminy lost no time. It moved at me with an intent to kill. I used what nanites I had to prop myself up since my legs wouldn’t move of their own volition. I was using my H-Nans to help stimulate the muscles and my O-Nans to create a thin coat that would help me move. My INAS told me the spine injury wouldn’t let me walk, which was almost as good as a death sentence. The improvised prosthesis was workable but far from stable.
The Imminy rose above me like one of the old gods from Earthern mythology. Clad in black with an ever-shifting skin, ready to devour souls, cities, and worlds. I wasn’t going to lie that, then and there, I was afraid. Not as much as I had been during my stay on the prison planet, or during some of the battles, but I was afraid.
“You’re the first and last human ever to harm an Imminy,” it said with a sneer. “I will destroy you, and after I do, I will decimate your worlds. All of them!”
“Fuck you, slaver! I don’t care what you’ll do when I’m gone!”
“Oh? How interesting. You sure are a prime sample of your species, I can see that, but your lack of self-preservation is disturbing.”
“Oh? As if you slavers care about us!”
“You think we enslaved mankind? This is only the beginning. We will take your kind to the bio-pools of Jannashar and twist your minds and bodies into eternal submission! You will be less than alive and yet not dead, vermin!”
He shot a tentacle toward me, but I blocked it with my Ro Sword. Further enraged, the Imminy shot two more, one of which I blocked with a quick nanite barrier but the third one got me in the chest. My vision blurred as I screamed out in pain. My Fyre Armor rushed to close the wound but the Imminy wouldn’t pull out his tentacle. My INAS was screaming both with warnings of catastrophic failure and Leo’s and McGill’s messages.
With what little power remained in me, I opened a channel to Leo and recorded a short message: I’m done, destroy the ship. Before I could do anything else, another tentacle struck my left arm, pinning it to the ground.
“Vogron—” I said as blood spilled from my lips. I knew he was watching; I knew he was listening, but my hope of him changing sides was dwindling with every second. Sympathy for my suffering wouldn’t do much to soften a Jareet’s two hearts. “I failed.”
My voice was so weak that I barely even heard them myself. I don’t know if Leo would be able to destroy the Idolian Wallbreaker in time, and that was my greatest regret. If that soulless monster survived, and we both knew that its promise wasn’t just an empty threat. They never had been. So I was going to die knowing that I had condemned my entire species to eternal suffering. Leo had to kill him now, even if it meant detonating both Star-Eaters.
“I have sent a light-speed message toward Federation space already. In a few weeks’ time, they will know everything that happened here whether I live or not,” the Imminy said as if reading my thoughts. Not even the translator box could hide the loathing in his words. There was such hatred in that being. Such overwhelming lust for bringing suffering upon others that it seemed pathological.
No race had felt the boot of the Ka as harshly as the Imminy, so they knew very well what it meant to be stepped on, yet they enjoyed doing it to others as much as living. It seemed that pain begets pain; the Ka had created a legion of demons that channeled the fury of their masters toward everyone and everything beneath them.
I thought of my sister on Earth. The thought of her being transported to some far-off planet where they would experiment on her body and mind until it was twisted beyond recognition sent a wave of fear, fury, and helplessness through me. What the hell had I done?
“Don’t—please,” I begged. I had told myself that I’d never beg anyone for anything, but those people hadn’t wronged anyone. Why would they have to suffer for what I did?
The Imminy said no more. It brought the razor-sharp tip of its tentacle an inch before my left eye. Then it shuddered, let out a confusing shriek as the tentacle disappeared. It stumbled backward and fell over with its appendages flailing in all directions.
Vogron had grabbed the Imminy from behind and held it in an improvised chokehold, or as much one could actually hold a metallic squid in a chokehold. The Imminy flailed maniacally, stabbing Vogron in several places. The Jareet’s body sealed the wounds quickly but more appeared by the second and soon his system would be overwhelmed.
“Now, Bloodmancer!”
I barely managed to prop myself up into a sitting position. Vogron was being torn apart but his clutch was even too strong for an Imminy to easily break out of. What utter monsters these Jareet could develop into, the thought flashed by.
“Now!” he howled as a tentacle cut him across the face.
I put my left hand on the torso of the Imminy, suffering cuts by its appendages but not even close to what Vogron was enduring, and with the last of my energy, I sent in the entirety of my nanite reserves into its armor, burning out his defenses.
“You can’t do that!” the Imminy wailed in disbelief. “We are your lords! We are your masters! How dare you raise your hand against us?”
No creature could ever dream of mastering the technique, let alone use it on an Imminy. I kept my focus sharp, and despite my mostly-destroyed body, my mind was as awake and ready as ever. Never in my life had I more of a motive to do something than right then. The Imminy’s nanites fought back and so did its tentacles, tearing into Vogron with utter brutality. The Jareet was being ripped apart alive and I couldn’t even dare to look at him. But he didn’t cry. No, all he did was tighten his limbs even further as his regeneration fought to hold out just a little longer.
My nanites ran out rather quickly, and I realized I still hadn’t burned through half the Imminy’s reserves. I did what I could and pulled out as many H-Nan cells from my blood as I could allow before fainting, then sent those into the brawl.
The Imminy twitched and twisted. Seeing how we were grouping up on their master, the Cardanisian officers ran to its aid but the few remaining soldiers, invigorated by our actions, shot them down from behind and threw themselves at the Imminy, despite knowing they would die a horrible death.
My vision was already blurry and my breathing ragged, but I still held on. It finally happened just as I felt blood trickle down my nose and ears. I had burned out the nanites from the Imminy’s body, leaving the tentacles dangling by its side, defenseless. All that the Absolute had become was a naked squid flailing harmless appendages at us.
I left just enough nanites for the translator and breathing box of the Imminy so it wouldn’t die on me after everything we did, but that’s about as far as I got before I dropped on my back, fading out slowly.
The Imminy, either from exhaustion or just the fact it realized its helplessness, stopped flailing and moving altogether. I glanced at Vogron only shortly, seeing his mangled body beneath the squid. There was no saving the Jareet now. He had died on his feet trying to wrestle the Imminy off me.
What remained of the soldiers slowly approached me with their weapons raised. That’s when everything went dark and I finally passed out.
When I opened my eyes again sometimes later, I wasn’t on the Idolian Wallbreaker anymore. I was in the infirmary of the Tanaree with Leo, McGill, Arthur, and Fars. They stared at me with grimaces that told me everything I needed to know about my current state.
I barely kept my eyes open for several short seconds before I closed them again. Still, I could hear them talk amongst each other.
“He’s stable now,” Leo said. “I did all I could to extract most of the poison out of him, but his body has to do the rest on its own. His arm will grow back in time and his wounds are sealed.”
“Will he be the same?” Fars asked. There was genuine worry in his voice, and I felt a pang of guilt. Fars, despite all of his shortcomings, was a friend. He loved and cared for me in his own way, and I liked to believe Arthur did the same.
Le
o took in a deep breath before he spoke.
“Richard Stavos is never the same after a fight, especially not one like this. It can go either way, Fars. Let’s just hope that his body heals up properly first. His mind has suffered tremendous stress and the best way to treat that is with a healthy body. He burned out the nanites off an Imminy, so who knows what kind of lasting effects that could have left on him.”
“Immini—” I whispered without even trying to open my eyes.
“The Imminy is in our holding cell, Richard. You did it. You captured it,” McGill said with a hint of awe in her voice. It was good to hear her speak. It meant that she hadn’t given up on me after all and might just come to believe all that I told her. I didn’t know why it was so important for me that she believed me, but it just was.
“The soldiers aboard the Wallbreaker told us everything,” Leo whispered. “After you beat the Imminy, they took over the ship. The destroyer’s and the Wallbreaker’s crews have and pledged their loyalty to us now. You’ve done the impossible, Richard. Again.”
Leo’s voice was soft and almost motherly. How irritating. It should have been me trying to make him feel better after all he’d been through, but there I was. A mess and a wreck.
“What... now?” I whispered again.
“We’re en route to the homeworld of the Dusk Ascendancy,” McGill replied proudly. “You should be able to get up by the time we’re there. Rest now, and have some sleep. You’ve done more than anyone could have ever asked of you.”
The words did little to comfort me. Flashes of the Imminy’s threats still reverberated through my skull. My entire species turned to mindless underlings, doomed to servitude, twisted, grotesque… I felt tears swell up and my heart rate jump.
“Calm down, Richard. You’re fine. Nothing can hurt you.”
McGill’s words meant little to me now. It wasn’t about me. I could feel my body cramping up from the thoughts the Imminy had left me. Leo lowered his hand on my chest, and I felt a wave of warmth and calm wash over my whole body.
Redeemer: A Military Space Opera Series (War Undying Book 2) Page 26