Seriously? That’s your—
“Nate?”
Gwen’s voice brought him back to the dim corridor, where he was dumbly standing there wasting precious seconds, and his friends were watching him like he might’ve officially cracked.
“Are you talking to yourself?” Marty asked quietly.
“Trying to picture the ship in my head,” Nate lied, turning to continue on.
With any luck, they could skirt right around this Knight and get the others to safety before he had to worry about who wanted to slay whom. He didn’t want to think about how many troglodans might be combing the streets below, or the fact that it was looking a lot like it was him they were looking for.
How many people had already died because of him?
How many more taken prisoner?
Nate pushed on, telling himself that the only thing he could do right then was to take care of the people behind him. Which was about to get complicated enough, he realized, as they reached the next intersection.
In the distance, Nate was sure he heard the sounds of fighting now. But that wasn’t nearly as concerning as the troglodans he saw when he peered around the corner. Three—no, four—of them, turning the far corner down the corridor to the right, headed their way with weapons ready.
No way the entire group was darting through the intersection unnoticed. No way they could backtrack fast enough to hide. No way he and Marty were going to win a firefight against four troglodan soldiers, even if they called up their plaid-shirted rear guard to help.
You might try the gravitonic lift across the corridor to your right.
Nate followed the Excalibur’s directions to a nested alcove on the far wall to the right, where a wide circular panel dominated the floor space, surrounded by thick, battered-looking cables.
It is not unlike the one in the aft loading bay. Suitable for one diversionary runner, perhaps.
One diversionary runner who’d have to charge headlong at four armed troglodans for ten yards or so before they reached the lift that may or may not be operational. Glancing at the corridor of scared faces behind him, though—faces that might well only be there because of him—he wasn’t sure what the hell else he could do.
“Four trogs coming,” he whispered quickly to Marty and the others. “I’m gonna lead them off, but—”
Marty started to object, but Nate cut him off.
“No time to argue. You stay quiet until it’s clear, then you keep going straight.”
“Nate...” Gwen whispered.
“You can’t,” Marty finished for her. “How will you… How will we…”
“I’ve got us,” came a voice from behind. Jogger Girl, Nate was surprised to see. “Go.”
“But what if the lift doesn’t work?” Marty asked, eyeing the newcomer with understandable confusion before rounding back on Nate. “What if—”
Right pocket, the Excalibur’s voice broke in over Marty’s. Give it to your friend.
“—are you gonna get out then?”
Nate just plunged his hand into his pocket, out of time for questions. He handed Marty the plain black earpiece he found there, every bit as surprised to see it as his friend was.
Now or never.
“I’ll meet you at the lift,” he said to their dumbfounded expressions.
Then he turned and charged into the intersection.
27
What’s Up
For ten yards, Nate ran faster than he’d ever run. Half blind on fear and adrenaline. Eyes locked on the alcove ahead, and the thin promise of salvation. Dimly aware of the guttural shouts of startled troglodans at the periphery of his senses. Dimly aware, too, of the sounds of weapons fire ahead, and of the jolting shock of the hard deck underfoot, and the dangling chains rhythmically smacking against his battered body. Something punched into his left shoulder. Nate took two more lunging steps and dove for the alcove.
Amped as he was, he overshot the lift pad, hit the alcove wall beyond, and tumbled back to the deck, cursing himself and everything else.
The pad, if you will.
Nate rolled over with a grunt, all too aware of the thundering footsteps closing on the alcove. He was only halfway to his feet when the humming gravity well—or whatever the hell—caught him like a feather on an updraft. He nearly dropped the cannon in the sudden rush. Upward push shifted to sideways push before he could even begin getting his bearings, and he toppled onto another hard deck, just like the one he’d come from.
Right behind two troglodans.
Nate swept the cannon up and jabbed the thumb trigger well before he had time to do things like think, or aim. The closest troglodan staggered into his friend and took them both crashing into the wall. Nate didn’t wait to see if the shot had done any real damage. He rolled onto all fours, tripped on one trailing shackle chain, and then took off down the corridor like an Olympic sprinter. Booming shouts followed him. Something about a spotted runt, and eating his bones. When the bulkhead directly ahead of him dented inward as if struck by a thrumming iron fist, the details hardly seemed important.
He rounded left into the next corridor, taking the corner so fast that he slammed into the opposite wall, shoulder first, nearly hard enough to make his own dent. He kept running.
On your left. Another lift.
Nate didn’t stop to ask questions. He just angled for the alcove ahead—and promptly tripped straight into an open shaft.
His mouth tore open in a silent scream. Then gravity itself caught on and pulled him upward with inexorable strength, his chains dangling upward at static attention. He hit the deck one floor above on shaky legs and narrowly managed to avoid falling over.
No troglodans in immediate sight. They must be close, though, he realized on second listen. Because it sounded like someone was fighting a full scale war nearby.
That would be her, I do believe.
Her—singular—causing that much calamity? He glanced back at the lift shaft, wondering whether he should risk his chances that way.
“Nate?” Marty’s voice broke in out of nowhere, almost as clearly as the Excalibur’s. “Nate, can you hear me with this thing?”
“I…” Nate touched a hand to his head, not sure how or why Marty should be able to hear his reply. “I hear you, Marty.”
“Okay, okay.” His friend was too winded and shaken to question the nuances. “I think we found the bay we came in from, and uh… Well, everyone’s—I mean the big alien ogre things… They’re all dead.”
All dead?
“The floor’s, uh, open,” Marty was saying, “and we can see State below, but uh—”
A cracking thud from behind made Nate jump and spin—just in time to see a huge troglodan crumpling limply to the deck at the mouth of the nearest corridor, a huge dent punched in the bulkhead behind him where he’d apparently struck.
Nate turned and ran his ass off, not wanting to know what on earth or anywhere else could send a troglodan flying like that.
Perhaps we should return to a safer floor.
“Perhaps?!”
“—still hear me?” came Marty’s voice.
“Little busy,” Nate grunted, sprinting on. “Is the lift active?”
“We don’t know,” Marty said, “we—”
Do not worry about your friend right now, the Excalibur’s voice cut in. I will attempt to activate the lift remotely, and, failing that… Oh.
“Oh?”
“—think it’s working!” Marty’s voice cut back in. “Tessa just threw something in and… Yeah, yeah! It’s floating down! Nate, you need to get here before they—”
A hellish troglodan roar ripped through the deck before Marty could finish telling Nate what “they” were going to do, or who the hell Tessa was.
“On my way,” Nate gasped between breaths, not slowing until he blew into the next intersection, caught a flicker of motion to the left, and slid to a hard stop on the far wall, chains swinging like pendulums as he poked back around to check his flank.
It was
a mistake.
By the sheer ferocity of their battle cries alone, Nate might’ve guessed the trogs in the next hub over were charging into battle against a respectable foe. What he wasn’t ready for, though, was the hyperkinetic dance of death that came speeding to meet them.
It happened too quickly for Nate’s eyes to follow.
One moment, five hulking troglodans were charging through the intersection. The next, a copper blur streaked past in a crackle of hazy blue light, darting from the walls to the deck to the roaring trogs with a speed and grace that didn’t seem physically possible.
Before Nate could blink, four of the trogs thudded to the deck, unmistakably dead, and the copper death blur materialized in front of the fifth, halting long enough for Nate to observe a tall, humanoid form, fully armored, planting a crackling, double-bladed staff to the deck. She reached out, as poised and regal as she was terrifying, and drove the trog that must’ve outweighed her by several hundred pounds down to its knees like it possessed all the bulk and comparative strength of a small toddler.
Run.
Nate didn’t need telling twice.
His last glimpse of the fearsome warrior goddess was of the dark tendrils he mistook for hair coming alive with a faint ember glow… and wriggling to attention like a nest of snakes.
He was already down the next corridor, running for his life, when it struck him that he’d just seen the same copper-armored, green-skinned alien he’d witnessed weeks ago during his galactic walkabout with the Lady. A gorgon, he remembered from Ex’s piecemeal lessons.
Left at the next intersection. Use the lift shaft.
Nate didn’t argue. Didn’t even slow to check the open shaft as he skidded around the next corner and leapt in, assuming it would catch him just like the others had.
It didn’t. Not when he thudded into the far wall, knocking the cannon loose from his hands. Not when he found himself rushing down a three deck lift shaft after the weapon.
“Exxx!” Nate cried. It was all he had time to do.
He closed his eyes, bracing for impact.
The shaft gave a mockingly peaceful hum around him.
Then something caught him like a thick bed of clouds, and relief defrosted his innards as the lift dumped his frazzled ass out onto the first floor deck. Or the one he’d started on, at least.
He thought.
We must discuss your overreactions once we have reached safety. The screaming, in particular, is quite unsavory.
Nate gathered his cannon and picked himself up, not bothering to tell Ex to kiss his ass, too busy shaking with everything from pain, to raw nerves, to an unexpectedly bubbly hit of giddiness at still being alive. He kept running, following what few directions his companion gave him until he passed through a considerably wider hatchway than anything he’d seen on the ship, and into a room that was sized to match.
The loading bay, he realized with a wave of relief.
It was far less dark and disorienting than what little he remembered, but maybe that was because he entered onto the main bay floor this time, as opposed to getting funneled through the conveyor apparatuses he saw to the sides of the room. The rest of the space was largely open, but for the sections of densely stacked, battered metallic crates, and the rows of big-wheeled, thick-plated ground vehicles arrayed to one side.
And there, below the enormous thrumming pad of what must’ve been the bay’s main gravitonic lift, were Marty and Gwen, waving with chained hands for the remainder of the evacuee line to step into the lift beam and descend through the halogen-lit night sky. There were about ten of them left in the bay, Zach and Kyle included, all looking like they were waiting their turn to file into an especially petrifying water slide. All but Jogger Girl, who was the first to turn at the sound of Nate’s sprinting footsteps, looking calm and collected. Gwen followed her gaze a second later, eyes considerably wider.
“Go!” he shouted, waving them all on. “Go, go, go!”
Luckily, he didn’t need to explain himself any more than that. The last remnants of the evacuation line grabbed onto each other and jumped in twos and threes. Gwen reached out for Nate, shouting him on. Marty turned to do the same, and gaped at whatever he saw over Nate’s shoulder.
Nate knew he shouldn’t have looked, but he couldn’t help it.
Troglodans were charging into the loading bay behind him, raising their weapons to fire.
“GO NOW!” Nate roared as he covered the last twenty yards to Marty and Gwen, and the bay came alive with weapons fire—pulse cannons and a few crimson blaster bolts that spat and sizzled where they scorched the deck.
Aside from flinching, Marty and Gwen stood their stubborn ground ahead, making no move to leave him. Not until Jogger Girl plowed into Gwen from the side, carrying them both over the edge and into the lift beam. Nate watched Gwen’s shocked face disappear with a mix of guilt and relief. Then he closed on Marty and sent his surprised friend after them with a hard shove to the chest.
That done, he turned and raised his cannon.
He wasn’t sure whether the troglodans would blow their own lift on purpose, or what they’d do to him if they caught him now, but he assumed it’d take his friends more than a few seconds to safely reach the ground. He had to buy them what time he could.
Despite his noble intentions, though, Nate only got off two shots—both misses—before something struck him in the chest like a battering ram.
A rush of air and motion, and then he was on his back, staring up at the bay ceiling, his entire torso throbbing in bright flashes of pain. A pulse blast? He tried to crane his neck to look at his own chest, but he could barely move. Maybe that was okay. If it was half as bad as the caved-in bloody messes his cannon had made of the troglodans in the brig, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see anyway. Better he just die in peace, knowing his friends might yet make it.
Only he didn’t seem to be doing much dying, he couldn’t help but notice, as the sounds of fighting grew louder toward the entrance, guttural troglodan curses echoing across the bay.
Get up, Nathaniel.
Grimacing, he forced his way into a sitting position and saw that the copper-armored Excalibur Knight had caught up with him, that another couple dozen trogs had caught up with her, and that she was making them all pay for their audacious mistake.
For a second, Nate almost forgot to be terrified, so riveting was her movement, leaping from one trog to the next, cutting them down or smashing them through the air like freaking baseballs with that dark, bladed staff. Then the thing came apart in her hands and whirled through the air on lines of hazy blue energy, striking multiple targets at once. She caught one end, pointed it, and dropped another trog with a zipping blue bolt of blaster fire.
Six troglodans were dead in as many seconds.
Now would be a good time to leave.
Cursing himself for the wasted seconds, Nate clambered to shaky feet, took a few running steps toward the grav lift opening, and jumped—only to watch in horror as a speeding projectile smacked into the grav panel overhead, showering him in a rain of sparks.
Leaving him pitching into plain old night sky.
Before he could so much as scream, something snapped around his torso like a whip and stiffened, catching him motionless above the long drop like a hard iron lasso. He followed the segmented line of the mysterious device across nearly thirty yards of open deck, straight to the hand of the copper-armored Excalibur Knight.
It didn’t seem physically possible that anyone, no matter how strong, could hold him suspended against such a monumentally long lever arm. Something to do with the device itself, then, his frazzled mind reasoned as the Knight turned her ruby faceplate his way, hair serpents following, helmet beginning to peel away like a living thing.
Nate caught a glimpse of green skin and piercingly phosphorescent blue eyes, then the Knight jerked, struck in the back by enemy fire. Her helmet closed protectively, and she whirled to face the arriving reinforcements with her staff. Nate’s stomach dropp
ed when she released the long line holding him in place, but neither he nor the line fell as they should’ve. They just continued hovering there in midair as one troglodan died. Then another.
Break the line.
What? How?
Smithy’s blackened hands with your sniveling! Break the line!
Nate grabbed onto the mysterious midair flotation device. The slender line felt like solid steel. Except solid steel wouldn’t have crackled and popped and made his hands go numb where he touched it. He gave it a few hard yanks with both hands. No give. No way.
You must strike it with all of your strength.
“I’ll break my goddamn hand.”
Only if you believe you will.
Ahead, troglodans were dying as fast as they could pour into the loading bay.
“I can’t.”
Just like you can’t rip through troglodan chains?
Nate’s eyes flicked to the chains still dangling from his shackles.
Maybe if he struck with the shackle…
“Fine.” He gripped the line again, doing his best to ignore the buzzing numbness.
What was harder to ignore was the part where breaking the line would mean him falling a couple hundred yards with no working grav lift to catch him.
I have it all under control. Trust me.
Ahead, the copper-armored Excalibur Knight whipped around his way between kills, seeming to sense something was amiss, her serpentine hair writhing in an agitated cloud around her head.
“We need to work on your communication,” Nate growled.
Then he raised his bare, squishy human hand overhead, and drove his shackled wrist straight down at the harder-than-steel line with all his strength, forcing himself to aim through it instead of at it, trying to believe it would simply snap like a dojo pine board. Something rippled down the length of his arm. Impact, and a light cracking sound. His bones, probably. Except his arm and hand continued on, slicing straight through the space where his restraint line had occupied. And his hand itself…
In that freeze frame moment, he caught the briefest glimpse of something that made no possible sense: his bare squishy human hand—no longer bare, or squishy, but half-covered in a sleek gray gauntlet that was rippling into existence out of thin air, bursting the shackle off of his wrist, leading with a simple but dangerous looking blade on the striking edge.
The Eighth Excalibur Page 26