He might as well be dead. The outer layer of his flesh was raw and burned. Dust from his dissolving suit had gotten into his lungs. He had difficulty breathing and his chest burned. If he had looked like a smiling demon prior to the injury, he was sure he now looked like evil that had returned from the dead.
It struck him as mildly amusing that even now he was able to assess the situation and think through what he should do next. Anyone else would have gone screaming through the hallways or else begged to die. Philo, his Fianna training serving him even to the end, thought over his options and how best to deal with his current plight.
He did this while sitting with his back against the nearest wall. There was no way he would be able to stand yet. His mind was ready to fight but his body had a lot of catching up to do. If he tried to get to his feet, he would likely just collapse and pass out.
His fingers, no longer covered by gloves, traced along the contours of his face. Part of his Fianna mask had burned his mouth and nose. Both openings were disfigured with raw flesh that obstructed his ability to breathe correctly. It was also likely that whatever the Juggernaut’s atmosphere had limited oxygen compared to what he was used to.
He was also limited by the fact that his vibro halberd was gone. It had disintegrated while he was still holding it. The weapon was now nothing but ash on the floor.
Here I am, he thought, a warrior without a weapon, who can barely breathe.
A blur of movement caught his eye and he looked up to see a large object in front of him. His vision adjusted and he realized it was a speeder with the human pilot at the controls and the Basilisk and the other human at the back of it. He hadn’t heard them coming and realized his senses must have been more dulled by his injuries than he first realized.
“Are you okay?” Talbot said as he and Traskk approached.
“I’m fine,” Philo said.
The Basilisk that had tried to kill him hours earlier hissed something and Talbot said, “He wants to know what you’re doing.”
Philo couldn’t help but smile, no matter how much pain it caused. “I’m paying for my sins.”
“Here,” the pilot said, having gotten off the speeder and walked over to Philo.
Quickly put a small mask up to Philo’s mouth and nose until Philo’s hand came up and held it in place. Cool oxygen came washing into his throat. It burned and felt cold at the same time, but he took deep breaths until his head cleared and his senses came back.
“It’s not the best but it’ll do,” Quickly said.
Philo nodded and said thanks. He still remained seated, though.
Traskk hissed something else and Talbot said, “He wants to know if you’re still able to fight.”
“I’ll fight until I’m dead,” he replied, coughing as he said it, knowing he must look as if he were already most of the way there.
The Basilisk growled and stalked two paces closer so he was standing directly above the Fianna. Philo knew what the creature must be thinking, that there would never be a better opportunity to get payback for the suffering he and his friends had experienced.
One of the Basilisk’s armored gloves reached down and took Philo by the neck. It was going to happen. He was going to die but not by the mechs as he had thought. So be it.
Traskk didn’t crush Philo’s throat, however. Instead, his other hand came down as well, scooped under Philo’s armpit, then lifted the Fianna up to a standing position. The reptile’s hands remained there, steadying him, until Philo nodded to indicate he could stand under his own strength.
Traskk hissed again, then turned back to the speeder.
“He said we’re wasting time,” Talbot said.
Quickly walked back to the speeder’s controls. Talbot sat on the back edge. Traskk looked like he was going to as well, but then motioned for Philo to take his place.
“Do you have anything I can fight with?” Philo asked. “A weapon of any kind?”
Quickly shook his head. The speeder was small and didn’t have weapons to spare. Talbot had his Meursault but surely wasn’t going to hand it over. Traskk hissed and began to take his helmet off.
Talbot said, “He doesn’t want to wear the suit anymore. You can have it.”
Piece by piece, Traskk took off his space armor and handed it to Philo to put on. With each new section of the suit on, he felt the power and stabilizers of the space armor help him feel strong again.
Traskk motioned for the breathing mask that was around Philo’s face. They traded Traskk’s helmet for Philo’s breathing mask, which the reptile put over his snout. Philo scooped the helmet up and put it over his head.
Traskk hissed again. This time, Talbot didn’t need to translate because the sounds were spoken by a generic voice inside the helmet.
“I fight better with these anyway,” Traskk had said.
Philo looked over to see what the Basilisk meant. Without the space armor on, Traskk’s long and powerful tail, his fangs, and his claws were all exposed and ready for combat.
Traskk motioned for Philo to sit next to Talbot on the back of the speeder, then began running down the hallway.
“I’m glad he’s on my side,” Philo said to Talbot.
“We all are.”
129
“You okay?” Lancelot said, looking over at Swordnew as they jumped up at another intersection and began along a new stretch of corridors directly above where they had been.
Swordnew nodded and said he was fine.
Only another Carthagen could appreciate what he was going through. One of his four arms has been destroyed and much of the rear portion of his armor had melted away, and yet he didn’t care. To be a Carthagen was to expect suffering and pain. From the very first time the elders had each warrior step into the middle of the Dauphin’s chamber and enter into one-on-one combat, each of them understood that they were going to experience physical trauma.
The first time he had one of his arms cut off in a duel, he had panicked and allowed a shocked cry to escape his lips. The Dauphin had hissed with disapproval and he had never uttered a sound again, no matter how many times he was impaled, sliced, or bludgeoned. One time, Lancelot had cut off all four of Swordnew’s arms before the elders halted the duel. He hadn’t made a sound except to growl in frustration.
Pain was accepted because it would pass. Each Carthagen knew they would have new limbs attached by the medical bots. Each warrior viewed severe injuries caused in combat as nothing more than an electric shock. That was why Swordnew didn’t pay his lost arm much attention. He considered the ways in which he would have to modify his traditional fighting stance now that he only had the use of three weapons, but other than that, he was okay.
The greater concern was the damage to his armor. The sensor inside his helmet indicated he still had a sealed suit, but the blast-proof coating was gone from the rear side and any further degradation to his back would likely penetrate his armor. He didn’t mind the prospect of more injury. He minded the idea of not being able to survive in space if his suit was compromised. He needed a way to get back off the ship once they defeated the mechs and that was hampered if his armor had holes in it.
He and Lancelot turned another corner, then jumped down an open intersection and began running through the next hallway. He had lost all sense of direction. The only reason he had an idea of which way they were going was because of the sensor in his helmet.
They still heard the mechs all around them but as they raced back toward the exterior wall, they saw them less often. Lancelot slowed to a jog and Swordnew asked what she was doing.
“Something’s bothering me,” she said, then slowed to a walk.
Swordnew looked all around them for signs of the mechs but saw nothing, only heard the humming of their hover transports nearby.
“The only time they tried to attack us,” she said, reversing the grip on her pair of Meursaults, “was when we stopped running and I cut through the floor.”
She jabbed both invisible blades into the
glowing surface beside her feet. Both easily passed through the floor, and she began to draw a square. The swords hadn’t cut two feet before the mechs appeared. The gray mech sent a wave of energy rippling at them. From the opposite direction, the white mech sent an ion arrow at Lancelot. She tried to dodge it but it glanced off the reinforced armor of her upper right shoulder. He noticed that the arm immediately went limp and hung from her side.
No problem, he thought, now she’s down to three arms like me.
To his side, the black mech approached, its arm outstretched and a cloud of energy spreading from the scale in its hand.
The good news, which he was sure Lancelot observed as well, was that there were only three of them. The rust-colored unit was no where to be found.
His satisfaction at seeing only three mechs was short-lived. Lancelot dodged the next ion arrow but was struck by the edge of the gray mech’s next energy wave. It knocked her off balance and sent her tumbling into the far wall. Rather than see if she was okay, Swordnew tended his own problems. The black mech was sending its toxic energy cloud directly toward him. He had nowhere to go but closer to the white mech and its ion bow.
Without a better option and to take attention off of Lancelot until she was able to recover, he turned and sprinted toward the white mech. He was only halfway to it when it released another ion arrow. Without time or distance to evade the shot, he accepted the pain that was going to come his way and hoped his momentum would carry him where he needed to go.
The shot, when it hit him, was unlike anything he had felt before. It was akin to the shock and pain he had felt the first time he had lost an arm in combat, only magnified a thousand times. It felt like his heart had been ripped out of his chest, along with all of the driving motivation and energy to stand or breathe or do anything at all. His legs were weak and even though he tried to command them to carry him closer to the white mech he found himself on the ground.
When he brought his hands up to raise his swords in defense, it took all of his strength just to continue holding the weapons. Confused, he looked down to see what the ion arrow had done. The shock of what he saw made him wince.
Much of his abdomen was missing. All of the armor from the middle of his chest, all the way down to his hips, was gone. Along with it, he saw a massive opening where his stomach and part of his rib cage should have been.
The injury was so severe that for the first time in his life, no matter how severe his other injuries had been, he began to go into shock. No longer remembering that the white mech was directly in front of him, his swords clanged on the ground.
Lifting his head, he saw Lancelot running toward the white mech, whose lower leg she impaled with one of her vibro lances. He heard her shout, “We could use some help!” and had no idea who she was talking to. Then he closed his eyes and let the sense of weightlessness come over him.
130
Quickly resisted the urge to glance behind him and see how Philo was doing. Beside him, Traskk bounded in long, vaulting strides, his tail flowing behind him and his claws clanking against the floor with each leap. The Basilisk had a glint to his eye, happier now that he wasn’t wearing the space armor because it had confined his claws and tail.
They traveled through a series of passageways in search of Lancelot and Swordnew. A sensor on the speeder tracked two tiny blips, and over time the two signals got stronger until Quickly came around a corner and found them.
Their condition wasn’t encouraging. Swordnew was on the floor and appeared near death. Lancelot was limping and one of her arms was dangling at her side. They weren’t alone. Lancelot was at the feet of the white mech, driving her lances through its leg. The black mech was to their side. The gray mech was behind them.
“We could use some help,” Lancelot shouted, seeing the speeder racing toward them.
Without waiting to coordinate attacks, she darted around the back of the white mech to avoid its ion bow and sliced the back of its leg with her Meursaults. Traskk angled toward the gray mech. He raced forward another thirty feet, then leapt as high as he could, directly toward the top of the mech. The Basilisk sank its fangs into the gray mech’s helmet with a roar. His claws thrashed, searching for anything that might be an external sensor, sending sparks flying everywhere.
With the white and gray mechs occupied, Quickly aimed his speeder at the black mech. His trigger finger twitched over and over, sending a stream of laser blasts that pelted the mech. The shots did no discernible damage but they did force the mech to turn its attention away from Lancelot and focus on the speeder.
“Slow down,” Talbot said, so he and Philo could get off and help.
Instead, Quickly swerved to the side and then at the next open intersection of hallways, he turned again.
“What are you doing?” Talbot called from the back of the speeder.
Quickly didn’t answer. Instead, the pilot guided the speeder to the next intersection and took another right. They were approaching the battle from the opposite direction. Traskk was still atop the gray mech, trying to evade the scythe that slashed through the air. He wasn’t able to dodge the mech’s free hand, though, and he was flung across the passageway, slamming into a wall. The Basilisk got back up to his feet as the speeder raced by. Quickly fired four shots at the gray mech, then another two at the white mech.
He pulled back slightly on the speeder’s throttle and Philo slid off the back, careening end over end until his space armor stabilized him. Talbot shrugged and did the same. Without the extra weight, the craft immediately picked up velocity and began racing through the tunnels at twice the speed, allowing Quickly to attack from one direction, loop around, then attack from another.
The main problem, as he saw it, was that the black mech’s cloud was spreading to envelop much of the nearby space. If it kept spreading, it would kill all of them.
“Keep going,” Lancelot shouted at him as his speeder passed by the next time. “All of you”—she motioned toward Philo, Talbot, and Traskk—“draw them away.”
Quickly had no idea how to make that happen and was flying too fast to ask. On his next loop, he saw Philo and Talbot trying to get near the gray mech while avoiding the black mech’s poisonous cloud. Traskk was facing the same predicament.
“Head that way,” Lancelot yelled, pointing to an open hallway. “Draw them away.” Talbot asked how and she said, “Attack the walls,” then darted around the white mech’s hover platform to slice the side of its knee.
Quickly was on his way around for another loop so he wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. Attack the walls? With a speeder that wasn’t able to damage the mechs anyway, he shrugged and squeezed the trigger again. A single laser blast streaked down the hallway, where it eventually hit a revolving panel that glowed with circular lights like every other wall.
He turned right to begin going back toward the battle but a portal exploded into life in front of him, forcing him to swerve sideways. Another portal burst open beside him as his speeder rushed through the passageways. Then another. The gray mech had appeared from one of them and was racing after him.
At the next intersection, another portal opened. The black mech appeared from it, forcing Quickly to swerve to the side to avoid a head-on collision. All around him, projectiles were bursting into circles of light that allowed the mechs to appear without warning. No matter how good a pilot he was, he had no way of out-racing all of them.
131
Philo and Talbot rushed across the open hallway, racing to close the distance between them and the gray mech as fast as possible.
“Keep going,” Lancelot had shouted at Quickly on his next pass through the passageway. “All of you, draw them away.”
Talbot had no idea what she meant or how they were supposed to make the mechs do anything, let alone leave the current fight. Even now, as he and Philo were almost at the gray mech, the black mech’s cloud of energy began to cut them off, making them alter course.
“Draw them away,” Lancelot yel
led as she moved to stay behind the white mech.
Talbot asked how and she told him to attack the walls.
“What does that even mean?” he shouted back to her from across the hall but she was too distracted by the white mech to hear him or to answer.
The roar of Quickly’s speeder faded as it vanished around the corner. Talbot assessed his options. He couldn’t face the black mech because the toxic energy cloud was surrounding it. The same deadly cloud was cutting off his access to the gray mech. His only alternative was to dart toward the white mech. His Meursault left a trail of silver vapor lingering in the air behind him as he ran.
An odd thing happened when he was only halfway to the mech. Instead of turning to find Lancelot or facing Talbot, it hovered backward, and vanished into a portal.
With Lancelot no longer in immediate danger, he turned to see how he could help against the gray mech. But it also hovered backward, away from Traskk, while sending a wave of energy at Philo to keep him at a distance as well. Then it also vanished into a circle of energy. Similar portals burst open all around them, each large enough to allow one of the mechs to pass through.
“This isn’t going to be good,” Talbot muttered, knowing any of the mechs could appear from a hundred different places around them at any moment.
The black mech was the only unit remaining. Any chance of attacking it was negated, however, by the dark cloud of death it sent forth. Talbot turned and began toward Lancelot, who was on the ground next to Swordnew. Only a few feet away from reaching her, the black cloud drifted into his path. He could make out her general form through the haze of energy, but as it got thicker that too began to fade.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“I’m fine.”
With her Carthagen voice modifier on, he couldn’t discern if there was any pain in her voice or what she was thinking.
The black mech seemed content to block their advance and separate them from each other. Talbot turned to watched its poisonous cloud spread farther past him to cut him off from Philo, who was looking all around for signs of the other mechs’ return.
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