Dark Gate Angels Complete Series Omnibus

by Ramy Vance

  Abby pointed to the corner, where one of the food-conjuring pads was. “Uh, yeah, we have one of those pad things. What are you doing here?”

  Anabelle yawned before shuffling over to the conjuring pad. She waved her hand, and a cup of hot coffee appeared. “Came to get started working,” Anabelle answered. “Terra’s the last project on my get-shit-done list, and I know you’re an early riser. Don’t know how. It’s fucking disgusting. But I couldn’t get any sleep last night, so here I am. What’s the plan?”

  “Just what I was trying to figure out. Was thinking ‘bout watching the footage I got yesterday.”

  Anabelle’s gaze was distant, unfocused for a moment, but she snapped back to attention. She looked like she was ready to fall asleep. “Sounds good. Mind if I watch with you?”

  Abby nodded as she faced the holoprojector, which flicked on to the footage she was thinking about without any physical input. Guess those nanobots really are trying to connect to everything, she thought.

  Anabelle kicked her feet up on Creon’s chair and leaned back as she blew on her coffee. “Not to beat a dead horse, but I meant what I said yesterday,” she said. “Anytime you need something. Even if it’s just someone to listen. Let me know.”

  Abby had never been much of a talker. Not that she was secretive. There just never seemed to be anything to talk about. She was content to let the things on her mind stay on her mind, and it never distracted her from what she was trying to do. Her thoughts had felt different recently, though.

  She tried to think about how to phrase the chaotic storm of her mind. “Uh, I think I’m a cyborg now,” was what came out.

  Anabelle raised an eyebrow as she drank her coffee. “Oh, you don’t say? I was thinking more about you having a crush or something like that, but sure, why not start with a huge existential question of humanity?”

  Abby caught herself laughing despite her entire body flushing with embarrassment. “We should start the footage,” she muttered.

  The pair watched the footage from the day before, combing over each detail as Terra was led through the catacombs of the arena by the Game Master. There didn’t seem to be anything useful in the video.

  Suddenly, Anabelle shouted, “Stop it right there!”

  Abby paused the video. It was the section where she had snuck away from Terra to film what had been behind a half-opened door. “Is that a Dark Gate?” Anabelle asked, pointing at a circular construct hooked up to an assortment of computers and monitors.

  Abby took a better look. She hadn’t been able to see it very well yesterday, she was so concerned with capturing everything as quickly as possible. The construction did bear some resemblance to the Gate that had opened at her farm. “Martin, could you bring up all the photos we have of Dark Gates?”

  The holoprojector displayed dozens of photos of Dark Gates that Middang3ard HQ had come across. For the most part, they were uniform, except for the last five, and the most recent one sent by Sarah. “It’s definitely a Dark Gate,” Anabelle murmured. “I wonder why it looks different?”

  Abby pointed out the timestamps on all the photos. “Maybe it’s an upgrade. See how the first few look the same? Then there’s a jump. They look cleaner.”

  The elf relaxed into her chair. “That’s our in. If we can get a hold of that Dark Gate, we can get Terra home.”

  Abby’s face shimmered, the nanobots running over her skin and disappearing as she considered the options. “And how are we going to do that?”

  “Had a little meeting with Myrddin last night. Turns out the Dark Gates work on our tech. The hadron collider tech. They gotta have one on that planet, and if they’re the same, we have all the info here. Think you can do it?”

  Abby turned to her computer, smiling. “Martin, gimme everything you have on the collider. We’re cracking another one.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Sarah had been hiding out with the gnomish resistance for almost three weeks now. The resistance was located in the old mines that had been in joint use back when dwarves still dwelled on the gnomish homeworld. The mines went straight into the heart of a mountain ridge on the outskirts of one of the oldest gnomish cities, Al Na-Hemith.

  The resistance was made up of gnomes who had managed to avoid the Dark One’s labor camps. These gnomes were hearty. Fighters, each and every one of them. They had found one another and formed a loose contingent of guerilla warfare groups.

  But even though they had heart, they were losing the war. The gnome world had nearly been destroyed. If the constant deaths weren’t dragging them into the pits of despair, watching their homeworld burn was guaranteed to send them over the edge.

  The resistance fighters had been reduced to hollowed-out creatures, the light in their eyes having faded long ago. Now they moved as corpses, uncertain if they were alive or dead.

  Sarah watched the gnomes go about their business day in and day out, waging their small skirmishes and hoping to win back a bit more of their world. She helped where she could, but there was not much to be done. Her expertise had always been sticking to the shadows.

  Due to the shit state of the gnomish resistance, Sarah had no resources to exploit. She had begun to feel like it was time to try to return to Earth. At least there she could have made a difference.

  That was until Myrddin and the elf Anabelle had reached out to her. Sarah had been able to relay some valuable intel but, more importantly, Myrddin had promised to send her what she needed.

  Since a new satellite had been dropped into the gnomish world’s orbit, there was a strong enough signal for minor teleportation from Earth. Sarah wasn’t going to get any reinforcements, but she could get tools for her own kind of mission.

  Sarah had talked it over with Kravis the night before. The red-bearded firecracker was hard to convince, but he’d eventually caved. Sarah could see his heart aching for his planet. There was no way he was going to turn down a chance to hurt the Dark One.

  That was why Sarah was out in the middle of the night, in the bone-chilling cold, trying to track the coordinates for the teleportation drop spot. Kravis had wanted to come along, but Sarah had convinced him otherwise. If anything happened to her, the gnomish war effort wouldn’t be damaged. They couldn’t risk losing Kravis.

  Sarah, on the other hand, was mostly a free agent. The gnomes in the resistance respected her as an ally against the Dark One and took her advice seriously. But that wasn’t the same as living on their burning homeworld. Their plight sparked a different kind of fight.

  As the night waned, Sarah sat underneath the moon, watching clouds drift overhead. The gnomish world was the closest place to Earth that Sarah had seen throughout the realms. She wished she had come here in better times.

  Life was ending too suddenly. Sarah couldn’t get that thought out of her head. It cropped up all throughout the day, ever since the Dark One came. Whatever Sarah and Kravis were doing, it wasn’t living. It didn’t even feel like surviving.

  There could be a place for them somewhere. For a long time, she’d considered running away from the war, but running wouldn’t achieve anything. The war would just follow. Before long, all nine of the realms would be at war. Why run from something inevitable?

  A few feet away, a portal opened. Sarah recognized it instantly. A hadron collider portal. Just as quickly as the portal opened, it closed.

  Sarah went to the spot where the portal had appeared. A knapsack sat on the ground. She opened it and dug inside. A small black discus was in the sack. Figures Myrddin would have had a few of them made, she thought, smiling. Even if Myrddin could be an asshole, he knew how to come through when he was needed.

  Sarah checked over her shoulder before returning to the camp, doubling over her route to flank anyone who might have followed her. Then, she hid in a cave for a few hours, watching the stars, waiting to see if she was being tailed. Once she was certain she wasn’t leading anyone back, she returned to the camp.

  The night air felt great. The last few nights had
been sweltering. Kravis had suggested sleeping outside, and by the time they settled on it, most of the other gnomes had dragged their blankets and sleeping bags outside as well.

  It took Sarah nearly two hours to hike back to the camp. By the time she arrived, everyone but the sentries was sleeping. She slipped into her tent, where Kravis was snoring lightly.

  Tomorrow she’d open the discus for Kravis to see. He was still always delighted by human technology. It was vastly different than gnomish tech. Sarah was glad she could still show Kravis things to bring a smile to his face. Lord knows, she had a hard enough time with herself.

  Kravis was never one to wake early. It took a good deal of cajoling to get the gnome out of bed, but it was worth the effort. When Sarah showed Kravis the discus, his face lit up. “Is this what Myrddin sent?” he asked.

  Kravis had never had a chance to meet Myrddin. The wizard, along with many of Earth’s secrets, still sounded like something out of a fable. Especially when it came to the wizard’s power. “Yeah, he sent it last night,” Sarah said. “I didn’t want to spoil the surprise.”

  Sarah pressed the middle of the discus and it split apart, opening from the center and expanding outward, a combination of nanotech and magic. In the middle of the discus was an emblem fashioned in the image of a snake. At its side were two pistols. Beneath was an assortment of gadgets. A cloaking device. Sound dampeners. Electric brass knuckles.

  This was one of Sarah’s specialized grab bags, loadouts she had put together for various scenarios. Each mission required something different, but sometimes you didn’t have the time to pick and choose as you wished. This discus was for those moments.

  Kravis was looking closely at the discus and its working parts. “This is amazing craftsmanship. And you say it’s hardly supplemented by magic?”

  “I think the only magic is in getting the items smaller, but I’m not a hundred percent sure about that.”

  Kravis straightened and looked out of the tent. His small size and slender frame almost made him look like a human child. He turned back to face Sarah. “So, when are we leaving?”

  Sarah shook her head as she walked over to him. “We already talked about this. You aren’t coming with me.”

  “If you’re gonna give me that line about not being able to keep up, I’m going to remind you that we first met when I caught you trying to sneak plans off this world. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  Sarah ran her hands through Kravis’ hair as she hugged him. “Hardly. I think one of the hottest things about you is how sneaky you are. And deadly. But if anything were to happen, the resistance would be fucked. It’s not about us screwing up. We’re going in against ridiculous odds. And I need you here.”

  Kravis agreed. He never liked to argue with Sarah. If she had a good reason for what she said, he accepted it and left it at that. But Sarah could tell he felt uncomfortable sitting on the sidelines.

  “I put together a team like you asked,” Kravis said at last. “They’re waiting for you to brief them.”

  “Let’s get breakfast first, then head back here for a little bit. There are some other things I’d like to take care of before I head out.” Sarah grabbed Kravis’ butt as she walked out of the tent. “You know, end of the world-type things.”

  The gnomish spies were gathered around the war table set up in the commander’s main tent. They were mostly younger gnomes, none past their first pinnacle. That really didn’t mean anything, though. Sarah had been in the game since she was eighteen. Age had nothing to do with talent.

  Commander Jerkin and Kravis were looking over a map of the area that Sarah was planning to break into. It was one of the larger command centers the Dark One had set up. Heavy defenses were set up all over the place, and the building itself was practically a labyrinth.

  The labyrinthian setup of the command center was a misstep on the Dark One’s part. Gnomes had spent most of their existence underground, tunneling much like the dwarves did. They weren’t merely used to complex structures, they relished them.

  Kravis and Jerkins outlined the plan, and Sarah listened along with the rest of the team. She’d gone over it multiple times with Jerkins and Kravis already and didn’t have anything to add. As usual, she preferred to stay in the background and watch what was happening.

  That wasn’t going to last, though. Sarah was taking the lead on this mission, and the resistance fighters were under her command. She waited patiently for Kravis and Jerkins to finish explaining the bare bones of the plan before she spoke.

  Sarah watched her team. She knew they weren’t all going to make it back. She hoped they knew that too because she didn’t want to say it out loud. “You all probably noticed that there’s not a whole lot of instruction for this one,” Sarah said. “We’re sneaking past the Dark One’s defenses and hunting down a piece of tech that we think can be used to exploit the Dark Gates.”

  The resistance members nodded or grunted that they understood. Sarah continued, “The reason is that we don’t know what kind of defenses we’re going to come across. The setup is similar to some of the circle defenses we’ve seen him use before. But other than that, we’re walking in mostly blind. Which is why improvisation is going to be your greatest skill to use.”

  This was the only thing that worried Sarah. As a lover of jazz, she’d always been impressed by the ability to make things up as you go. It was something she’d become very good at. Playing things fast and loose wasn’t typical of gnomes, though. They usually preferred structure.

  “So, I’m hoping you guys can keep up with that because it’s all we got. Get a chance to sabotage something? Take it. Patrol of orcs that is particularly vulnerable? Snuff ‘em out. But we’re all going to be making our way to the middle of the command center. That’s where we’re going to find what we’re looking for.”

  This was the part Sarah knew the gnomes were going to love. “Anything that isn’t bolted down, literally and figuratively, I want you to grab. Take anything you can get your hands on.”

  All of the gnomes smiled widely. Collecting was a gnome’s deepest desire, so much so that the gnomes had some of the most complicated laws on stealing. If any of the resistance fighters were worried about the mission, the promise of adding to whatever bizarre hordes they had would bolster their morale. “We’re going to be moving out in an hour. We’ll split up into teams then. Dismissed.”

  The resistance fighters exited the tent, talking animatedly, leaving Kravis and Jenkins alone. “They seem excited enough,” Sarah said as she sat at the war table.

  Kravis sat next to her and peered at the map. “That’s not saying much,” he muttered. “Gnomes are always excited about something. Hell, some of them might just be excited about finding out what’s on the other side. Some of those kids are crazy.”

  “Better to have crazy than timid in this kind of thing. At least they have something to look forward to.”

  Terra woke up from a nightmare, gasping for breath, convinced she was drowning. The world around her had faded. Everything had been blackness. When she woke to the dim light of her cell, she wasn’t comforted.

  The suns outside her cell were beaming. It was amazing that her cell could still be so dark with that brightness outside.

  When Terra had first fought in the arena, she had believed this was something she could do, a place where she could make a name, cast off the lackluster life she had been living before. Now, she saw the arena for what it was. The place where she was going to die.

  Maybe things never really changed. Once a loser, always a loser. The only difference in the arena was that everyone would see her failure, and it was going to end with her death. At least on Earth, she could wallow in her bed for days on end.

  Not that she ever made it past a couple of hours in bed. Even if her life had been a steaming pile of shit, it had never stopped her from trying. That was all she could ever do. It was what helped her sleep at night. Knowing that even when things felt terrible, she was up every day,
trying to make them better.

  This wasn’t any different. But Terra did have control over one thing: how hard she fought. She’d already done the impossible. The crowd and her fellow fighters were all amazed she was still going. That had to count for something.

  There was supposed to be another battle today, but the Game Master had made it sound like it was going to be harder than the others.

  Terra thought about the Game Master’s offer to join the Dark One. Not because she was honestly considering it. She couldn’t join up with someone who snatched people out of their homes and forced them to fight to the death. Instead, Terra was thinking about what it represented.

  The subtleties of the war were still lost on her. She didn’t really know who was fighting who. All she knew was that the Dark One seemed like the asshole to end all other assholes. Orcs, goblins, and other races fought for him. But not all orcs and goblins. And those who didn’t were put to death in creative ways, such as the arena.

  Terra wasn’t an organizer. Not the kind of person to plan an insurrection, but there were kernels for one. Even she could see that. Maybe one day, the rebel orcs would rise up. They’d take their place and fight off the Dark One.

  But all that was beyond Terra. She wished to be a part of it someday. If she were fighting on anyone’s side, she’d want to be the one tearing the Dark One a new one. At the moment, though, it seemed like she wasn’t going to make it through the day.

  Terra stood and walked to the window, staring out at the three suns. “Come on, get your shit together,” she muttered to herself. “Moping isn’t going to do anything. You’re getting through today. Whatever the fuck they throw at you, you’re throwing right back at them.”

  A deep growl rose up in the cell. Terra recognized it as her stomach. She couldn’t remember the last time she ate. Maybe after the Game Master’s bizarre tour. Either way, she was hungry now, and her cell door was still open.