Rebel Sword

by Peter Bostrom

  “Except, perhaps, our fingers,” Rand said.

  I ignored him. “Here we go,” I said. They both set down their rifles—Kovac stood to the right of the door and Rand to the left.

  The heroic, brassy theme came into my mind and I pictured the same large dragon I’d imagined outside. I shrank her to the size of a toothpick and then flew her between the turbo lift’s doors. As the tiny dragon in my mind grew larger and its wings stretched wider, the doors in front of me began to move apart.

  Kovac and Rand quickly grabbed the edge of the door closest to them and began to pull.

  I made the dragon’s wings push farther and farther apart in my mind, and in just a few moments, my crew had pulled the turbo lift doors completely open. I mentally patted the dragon on the head and hopped inside the lift with my cape trailing.

  I called to the others, “Come in—quick. I’ll hold them.”

  Rand slowly let go of the door, picked up his rifle, and leapt inside. Kovac grabbed his, too, and quickly followed. As soon as they were clear of the doors, I let the music die down and the turbo lift doors slid shut behind us.

  I pressed the comm unit again. “Lopez—we’re in. Take us up.”

  “Um, I thought I told you I was locked out of the system,” Lopez said.

  “No,” I said. “You told us you couldn’t open the doors because of the system’s encryption. Which means—”

  “Which means she has no way to break the encryption for the controls inside the lift, either,” Rand said.

  I shook my head. I was afraid of this, but I was more afraid of the idea Lopez had given me earlier—about “magic-ing” myself up to the top floor.

  “Okay, soldiers. Brace yourselves—we’re going up. Hey, Lopez,” I said into the comm unit.

  “What?”

  “If I die trying to take this elevator up several kilometers with my magic powers, please know that it’s your fault.”

  “You’re welcome in advance,” Lopez said dryly.

  I stood in the center of the lift and let my hands fall to my sides.

  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and summoned the purple gem’s swelling trumpets and trombones. In my mind, I imagined I was holding a blowgun between my lips and there was a turbo lift-shaped dart wedged tightly into the other end. I blew into the mouthpiece—softly at first, then harder.

  I could feel the lift began to rumble beneath me. This just might work.

  In my mind, I let the pressure build inside the blowgun behind the dart that was caught there. I kept blowing, and as soon as I’d put enough pressure on the dart, it suddenly shot out of the blowgun. A nanosecond later, the lift shot up, too.

  I felt the artificial gravity pulling me down to the floor as we flew upward. I looked at the control panel next to the door, and the numbers were rising faster and faster.

  “See?” I shouted. “Piece of moon pie!”

  Kovac struggled to raise his head against the acceleration, but as soon as he did, he turned his head to face me.

  “Can we stop?” He asked.

  I knew I’d forgotten something. But I couldn’t just push back against the the lift’s ceiling—it could blow a hole in the top and we could go flying out, and I really didn’t want to see if I could fly. Not yet, anyway.

  So I let go of the heroic purple cadence and summoned the fast-paced orange music. I imagined a blazing white unicorn with a rainbow-colored mane at the bottom of the shaft, and as soon as I pictured myself lassoing its horn, the lift stopped and we hung suspended for a split second a centimeter or two above the floor. The instant I pictured myself reeling in the unicorn with the golden lasso, we shot back down the shaft even faster than we’d gone up.

  Clearly, this wasn’t going to work, either. I was going to need to alternate quickly between the two forces—pushing and pulling—if I had any hope of getting us up to the top.

  The next several seconds were rough. I was afraid the three of us would get terrible whiplash as I shot several meters up before changing directions and dropping a meter or two, only to go racing upward again—but for twice as many meters as before. Aside from the strain this was putting on my neck, though, I was feeling pretty badass.

  Rand was a different story. His face was looking paler and greener with every change of direction. When the indicators on the control panel finally settled on “Administrative Floor” and the turbo lift came to a stoop, Rand leaned over and vomited an endless stream of lentils. I grabbed the edge of my cape and yanked it toward me to avoid getting splashed.

  Kovac took one look at the half-digested beans and started gagging in response. He got up and rushed over to the door, trying to shove his fingers into the vertical crack.

  “Open it now!” Kovac shouted.

  “Just a second,” I said, before squeezing the comm unit.

  “Hey, Lopez—are we good to exit?”

  “Not yet,” Lopez replied.” Hold on just a second—all of the troopers are marching toward the main turbo lift.”

  “No more seconds!” Kovac said, before he started gagging again.

  The comm was silent. Then, “Okay—now!”

  I summoned a little light music and quickly pushed the lift doors away from each other horizontally. Kovac burst out into the lobby, while Rand was still bending at the waist and breathing heavily.

  I looked down to the end of the hallway and saw a handful of red capes turn the corner, apparently unaware of our presence.

  “Come on, Rand,” I said.

  He looked up at me with a face pale enough to rival the vampiric trooper I’d seen earlier. Rand spit on the floor, stood up slowly, and staggered off the lift. I brought up the rear.

  “Quick,” Lopez said through the comm unit. “Down the hallway to your right, then duck behind the left-hand side of the intersection.”

  The three of us hurried down the hallway and then leapt behind the corner of the next intersection. We heard the sound of trooper boots growing closer to us on the polished synthetic stone floor, but then the noise began to fade. Damn, how was she so good?

  Lopez led us down several more hallways without any interruptions, until we reached a much larger hallway with a vaulted ceiling and an arched door in the center—a miniature of the main doors into the capitol building, carvings and all: old man Hades on one side, and fresh-faced Persephone with her fruit on the other.

  “What’s that door open into?” I asked.

  “That, good citizen, is quite literally the center of Hell—Pluto’s senate floor,” Rand said.

  “What’s the situation inside?” I asked Lopez through the comm unit.

  There was a pause. Then, “There’s no feed inside the senate room, so I have no way of knowing what’s on the other side.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “But there can’t be many soldiers in there,” Lopez continued. “Nobody’s come in or out of that door for at least two standard hours.”

  She paused for a moment, then, “How lucky do you feel?”

  I stepped forward, rolled my neck, and cracked my gloved knuckles. “I feel like I could take on the entire Dominion.”

  Which, it turns out, was a terrible thing to say. As soon as I used the heroic purple power to shove the double doors wide open, I saw a low, central space filled with troopers wearing bright olive-green armor. There were also a few wearing even stranger uniforms, scattered throughout the group—one with what looked like large lobster claws for hands and wearing a bright red breastplate and a bumpy, toothy helmet, another wearing a crocodile-like suit of two-toned green armor with a thick tail, and yet another with what looked like two separate, fanged helmets side-by-side, an abnormally wide torso, and armor that was colored blue on its left half and purple on its right.

  We’d just interrupted a meeting of the Dominion’s top brass. And every one of the colorful crew was staring straight at us.

  29

  I GUESS A room with a dozen or so Dominion commanders wasn’t the worst thing I could’ve wa
lked in on, but it had to be close.

  They were all gathered a few short flights of stairs below us, in the center of a large, circular room with several tiers of padded seats. The commanders were leaning over a circular table that had large pieces of tan-colored paper spread across it. It was probably important information they had been discussing, but now the most important piece of information was that someone from the opposition had just gotten through their defenses and had crashed their makeshift headquarters.

  Now, who could that be?

  Their T-shaped visors and grotesque helmets had snapped up from the table when I’d pulled the door open, and they stayed fixed on us for another heartbeat before they began reaching for their weapons.

  I raised my left hand and suddenly had the upbeat music drumming in my ears. My glove began to glow orange just as the Dominion commanders leveled their weapons.

  With a sharp pull, I yanked at their crossbows and swords. I expected all of the weapons to instantly leap from their hands and leave my enemies helpless. Instead, their crossbows and swords lunged toward me, but didn’t completely tear free from their masters’ grip. So the room full of Egghead commanders just looked like they were leaning forward and shaking their weapons at me.

  It was a terrible time to spread my powers too thin.

  As I strained even harder to rip their weapons free, the loose papers on commander’s table began to rustle and the coffee mugs just behind the commanders on the senator’s stations began to rattle. A moment later, a storm of much smaller objects were airborne and hurtling toward me. I guess I hadn’t focused enough with my orange gem and was now paying the price—good to know.

  At the same time I had started pulling with the stone, Kovac and Rand were busy fighting with the guards who were standing on either side of the door when we had barged in. We’d surprised them, too.

  Both had light swords in hand, but they hadn’t been ignited yet. Kovac immediately activated his vibro-hammer and swung its blurry head upward at the guard on the right-hand side of the doors. The sword shattered on impact and the guard fell backward. Kovac leapt and brought the hammer down into the guard’s chest with a loud crunch—the unfortunate trooper went still.

  Rand’s simultaneous encounter with the other guard wasn’t quite as dramatic. When he raised his light sword to strike, Rand leaned forward, pointed his plasma rifle downward, and shot a slug point blank into the guard’s foot. As the trooper doubled over in pain, Rand rotated his rifle upward and delivered a plasma slug to the underside of the guard’s helmet, knocking him backward. Dead.

  Both Kovac and Rand had disposed of the guards at about the same time as the storm of crossbows, swords, papers, and mugs were flying toward us.

  “Everyone down!” I yelled.

  We dropped to the ground, and the objects all either crashed against the wall behind us or kept flying out of the still-open double doors and into the lobby of the senate’s meeting room with an ear-piercing crash of printed ceramic.

  I popped back up from the ground, cape trailing behind me, and raised my other hand—now glowing purple—toward the scrambling Dominion commanders. With my brows knit in severe concentration, I imagined a giant blue and white-crested tidal wave racing toward them, and when it hit, they were all thrown by an invisible force against the low wall behind them.

  The commanders were dazed, but quickly recovering. My shoulders slumped—partially from focusing so hard on that wave, and partially from realizing I wasn’t finished with the Eggheads just yet.

  “I sincerely hope you’ve thought of a plan for this,” Rand said.

  I hadn’t. But seeing the commanders sprawled out on the floor reminded me of our battle with Sinistra at the Charon comm tower. What had she done? She’d plastered my crew to the wall with a strip of metal.

  I scanned the senate’s floor and found its long seams of metal paneling.

  In my mind, I dug a set of imaginary claws into those thin seams and tore them up. Dozens of screws popped out and the room was filled with a low screeching noise as a long, wide strip of metal peeled away from the floor. With the flick of my purple glowing wrist, I flung the sheet of metal against the Dominion commanders and pinned them against the wall behind them. And since they were all yelling, I sent a quick wave of energy—or whatever it was—toward them, rocking their helmets backward and knocking them out.

  After this last burst, I could feel my legs start to shake a little, and my stomach started grumbling. I pulled out a couple pieces of dried synthetic meat and started chewing furiously. Rand was right next to me, shaking his head in disbelief.

  “Very nicely done,” he said.

  Kovac was still on the ground, but he had moved over beside the guard with a severely-dented breastplate. The dull metal of the guard’s light sword was scattered in a hundred pieces across the floor. Kovac had plucked up something from the sword’s remains and was staring at it—a small red stone.

  “I feel something,” Kovac said softly.

  This could be huge. “What does it feel like?” I asked.

  “It’s . . . a tingling,” Kovac said.

  “That’s a good thing,” I said.

  I heard the Dominion commanders grunting as they struggled against their makeshift metal restraint, which brought me back to the situation at hand.

  “Keep it,” I said. “We’ll talk later. Right now, we’ve gotta kick Craniax’s ass—if he has one. He looked kind of bony to me.”

  Rand actually granted a courtesy chuckle to my pun. My powers were definitely growing.

  We ran around the top tier of the room toward yet another set of large double doors that were directly across from where we’d entered. But these doors didn’t have pictures of gods on them. Instead, they had giant recreations of the United Federation of Sol’s official seal. We’d finally reached the president’s office.

  I raised my hands and was about to tear them open when a thought struck me forcefully. We’d just surprised the Dominion commanders with a violent entry. What if we tried surprising Craniax with silence?

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out Colonel Hiller’s black and silver command glove. He’d received dozens of medals for heroism in the offices of several different presidents, which meant that he would have needed clearance to enter. I found an access panel next to the double doors and, crossing my fingers, pressed the glove against it.

  The doors swung open slowly without a sound, and I quickly shoved the command glove back into my pocket. The room was bright—its walls were actually windows that looked out over the city of Proserpina, and the light reflected brightly off the polished synthetic marble floor. Secretarial desks lined the room, but nobody was sitting at them—which felt surprisingly creepy.

  In the center of the room, a large hooded figure stood on a short platform with its back to us. Its crimson cloak hung loosely from its broad shoulders and moved slowly with the currents of recirculated air.

  All around the figure were ghostly images of a variety of Dominion commanders who were apparently making reports to their leader, but I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. When the last commander had finished speaking—a pale blue-armored figure with a helmet sporting two pairs of red eyes, fangs, and a pig-shaped nose—the hooded figure in the center of the president’s room responded with several short orders and, one by one, the ghostly images shimmered and faded away.

  There was something strange about the voice. It wasn’t the same nasally, sinister-sounding voice that came from the giant skull-shaped face that had holospoken to Monstros back on Nix. This voice was deeper and had a metallic edge to it that made everything in the room vibrate.

  When the lights from the ghostly images had completely faded, the hooded figure raised its arms and said in a bone-rattling voice, “I knew you’d come.”

  In one fluid movement, the figure turned around. Its robe billowed as it turned, revealing a muscular blue chest that was crisscrossed with long scars, thick silver stitches, and large
metal plates on one side. The figure raised its hands to it head—one was blue and muscular and the other was a large metal pincer.

  It gripped the crimson hood, pulled it back, and—impossibly—we were suddenly staring into the face of Colonel William Hiller.

  30

  WHEN I SAY that this large robed figure had the face of Colonel Hiller, I meant that it had the same eyes, same nose, and same general shape. But the face was a pale green and had a large, bright purple metal jaw with jagged teeth that matched its skull-hugging purple helmet. Even with these radical changes, though, it was still unmistakably the features of Colonel Hiller.

  “You are too late,” he said in his cold, metallic voice. “The Dominion has subdued most of your puny forces and has sent the rest scurrying away like insects. Soon we will find their secret hiding places and burn them completely off of this planet!”

  When he put his hands—well, his hand and his claw—to his hips, the robe parted and revealed a thick metal belt with a skull and crossed bones on it—like something off of an ancient pirate ship. Except most of the skull was made out of a bright orange stone, just slightly darker than the one I’d taken from Monstros.

  I had a hard time deciding which shocked me more—the fact that this thing was clearly part Hiller, or his claim that the Dominion had defeated all of the Peacekeeper forces on Pluto.

  “. . . Colonel?” Rand said. “Do my eyes deceive me, or is it really you?”

  Kovac and I both gaped at this strange figure. It was like Hiller had come back from the dead—only blue and green and part metal. And a little bit egomaniacal.

  “I know no ‘kernel,’” the half-man, half-monster said. “I am Superior Magus Latchjaw. And I will be your doom!”

  Even though the name kind of sucked, he did have a commanding presence—like Hiller had. But this couldn’t possibly be Hiller. Could it?

  Before I could figure it out, Latchjaw raised his metal claw at us. When the deep orange stone on his belt flared to life, I yelled, “Down!” and dropped to the ground.

  Kovac and Rand dropped, too, picoseconds before two of the secretarial desks that sat along the wall behind us flew forward. One of the desks skimmed Kovac’s back and tore a strip off his faded green fatigues. He grunted in pain, but stayed down.