For now, for just a moment, he knew that this little woman deserved for him to stand beside her, one last time.
He was shocked, in truth, to realize that he did forgive her. It is hard, he learned, to look into the dying eyes of a truly penitent being and not be moved to compassion, no matter what the crime.
“It’s alright, Iphini. It’s going to be alright.” He placed one hand on the side of her head.
She shook her head, new tears welling up in her eyes and spilling down. Her claw-like hand grasped the medallion and pulled at it, yanking down and away.
Marcus’s heart lurched as he saw the desperation and fear in her eyes, and he put one hand over hers.
“No! It’s okay, Iphini. I’m here. I have it. I’ll get it.” He didn’t know what to tell her to ease her mind in these last, desperate moments. He would have told her anything at that point, if he thought it might soothe her pain.
But she continued to thrash weakly against him, pulling at the medallion’s chain beneath his hand. Finally, deciding he was going to cause her more pain by fighting her, he nodded and helped her to move it over her head. She thrust it at him, into his hands, and then with an incredible effort of will, threw her other hand on top of his.
She rose with a jerking motion, her eyes boring into his. Beneath the glossy sheen of tears they were bright, laser-focused. Their soft blue was blended now with blood flooding slowly into the sclera.
She trembled beneath him, her hands gripping his with a strength he never would have thought possible. Sitting up, shaking, she stared into his eyes and spoke two words, her voice vibrating with emotion and pain and effort.
“So … sorry …”
She settled back into the couch then, her eyes never leaving his, but her hairless brows twitched, begging again for forgiveness. Then her body relaxed, the eyes seemed to shift focus slightly, looking off over his left shoulder, and she was gone.
Marcus sat there for what seemed like a long time, staring into the dead woman’s face. The medallion was warm and heavy in his hands, but he could not pull himself away.
What had led her down such a dark and lonesome path? Why had she betrayed them, only to sacrifice herself like this now?
He was lost in that hopeless, never-ending loop of speculation when a cry went up among the Variyar outside the crumpled shuttle. He couldn’t make out the words, but the warriors seemed agitated.
He turned to where Ve’Yan and Nhan were standing by the large tear in the hull. “What are they saying?”
Ve’Yan shook her head, her face a mask, but Nhan ducked out, shouted something, and then was moving back in before the reply was finished. His eyes were round with fear.
“There’s another one coming. We need to get you to that wall.”
Chapter 28
The view through the piloting field was shifting alarmingly, but she ignored it, knowing that her instincts were equal to the task. It was a minor annoyance, however, and one she would have expected to be addressed by the usually detail-conscious Council techs.
It was only when she shifted her eyes from the viewing field to the bloody falchion on the seat beside her that she realized it was her eyes at fault, not the equipment. She shook it off, wiped the moisture from her face, and focused on the moment at hand.
The Ntja shuttle handled nothing like her beloved Na’uka, but it was armed, and had the benefit of being available while her own ship was busy on a much more important mission. This chunky little bitch had been docked off to the side, refueling in case the Ntja needed to make an emergency trip out to the fleet. It was fully loaded with ordnance, in accordance with Peacemaker combat doctrine. She had made sure before she ignited the engines.
She had no intention of flying over the whoreson bastards without dropping a little pain on them as she went by.
She shook her head again. There was no point in worrying at the moment. She was slipping through the towers, keeping low to avoid the city’s defenses and the notice of the Council forces. Somewhere above her, she knew, K’hzan was fighting for his life, and for his precious fleet. And the Ntja fleet was going to be coming back around to lock Penumbra down tight as soon as they were done with him.
There was almost nothing left for her to do. Taurani was racing toward Sanctum, where she knew Marcus and the others had headed after their crash. She did not think there was going to be anything she could do against the Kerie murderer and his thugs, but she could kill as many as possible before the end, and die beside those who had proven to be true companions, against all odds.
Her mouth twisted at the thought. This is exactly why her father had exiled her. This last stand nonsense made no sense. There was nothing to be gained by a pointless, principled death. No good Tigan threw her life away for anything so ephemeral.
The Ntja transport wove through the towers. There was no sign of pursuit to distract her from her thoughts.
Why would Taurani go to Sanctum? Even knowing that Marcus was there, the move made no sense, and was completely out of character. The Ambassador’s type never put themselves in danger when there was any other option. They stayed far from the fighting until the last remnants of resistance were wiped clean. Her father would have approved, she realized with another bitter twist of her lips.
She closed her eyes to consult with her implants. The interface with the Ntja technology was not ideal, but she could see ahead of her, the map of the eastern wing of the city dropping away beneath her mind’s eye as the flashing icon that marked her own position raced for the end of the Concourse, the Ring Wall forming an arena around the bronze plains and the Sanctuary in their center.
The plains were covered with Council forces, all moving for the ancient ship that had started it all. She opened her eyes again, rubbing the haze from them, and watched the edge approach. She was pushing the old crate for all it was worth, and the featureless gray expanse of the Concourse flashed by beneath her. It made for a marked contrast between the relatively modern construction and the dark bronze of the visible Relic Core. The line was an arc, actually, leaping ahead and away in either direction.
As she soared out onto the plains, she noticed a second wave of attackers swarming toward her friends. They were much taller than the soldiers around them, thicker and squatter-looking; the heavy infantry that had held the primary public docking bay against them during their initial assault.
The Council did not use such heavy shock troopers often or lightly. Their deployment here meant that Taurani intended for his control of the city to be absolute, but brief.
She refused to consider the further ramifications of their presence.
With a thought, she dropped two incendiary bombs off the stubby wings and watched with grim amusement as they tumbled down, small assist drives directing them in the absence of appreciable gravity.
As the two weapons fell, they began to emit a glittering mist, spreading outward in spiraling tubes that traced their trajectories. The heavy infantrymen below scrambled off to either side; trying to avoid what they realized was coming.
Just before each bomb struck the metal of the plain, they erupted in a fountain of chemical fire that ignited the glittering clouds around them despite the complete lack of atmosphere. Flowers of blinding light unfolded behind her, devouring several of the slower Ntja and dashing the rest into low-trajectory flights that ended as they crashed down in slow motion in a wide circle around the points of impact.
A low sound, suspiciously like a snarl, rumbled in her chest and she kicked the shuttle around in a spin so that it was pointing back the way it had come, angling the craft down at the scrambling soldiers. She keyed the cannons in the nose and sent a cascade of glowing plasma bolts into their ranks before bringing the ship spinning back around to orient on Sanctum.
Ahead of her, the core of the Ntja army was now aware of her presence and man-portable heavy weaponry erupted within their ranks. Winding contrails traced through the void as missiles rose up to meet her, and she threw the shuttle in
to a series of erratic maneuvers that would throw off all but the most tenacious weapons. For those, she saved her nose cannons, again swiveling the ship around on its axis to bring the weapons to bear, shattering the pursuing missiles and then sliding back to face forward once again. She unleashed the nose cannons on the compact formations before her now, keeping them too busy for a second volley.
Her first pass was satisfactory. Two more incendiary weapons blew massive ragged holes in the formations, and the cannons punched through light armor and heavy armor alike. She had no complaints concerning the performance of the Council’s hardware beneath her hands.
As she flashed past Sanctum, she was alarmed to see a sizable hole punched through the enormous, bulbous wall of viewing crystal. A containment field formed a thin skin over the hole, but something had obviously crashed through. Something large. She could see movement within, however, and an occasional shot snap out through jury-rigged firing ports, so she knew someone was still alive inside.
Her second pass proved one too many, as a lucky missile strike tore her left wing free to spiral away, forcibly making the case for the futility of her current impulse. There were hundreds upon hundreds of them down there. Probably close to the entire contingent of troopers from the orbiting fleet. One old shuttle was not going to put a dent in a force that size, while sheer numbers would eventually bring her down.
She came back around, pivoting upon her forward vector again to hose her nose cannon back and forth, keeping them down, and then rocketed through the massive hole in the dome. A chaotic scene flashed before her eyes, registering on her senses at an instinctual level.
The old standby shuttle that had been missing from the administrator’s executive docking bay was resting in a crater of ancient metal, its hull blasted, twisted, and holed in a thousand places. She kicked her own maneuvering thrusters in, taking up the momentum of her entrance and then spinning down for a fast but controlled landing nearer to the bottom of the tiered deck, where the observation dome came down to meet the floor plating along the old ship’s nose.
As she drifted toward her chosen landing site, she saw four Variyar warriors move quickly out of the way, standing back to avoid the wash of her drives. Higher up, back where a ramp led down to the legendary Alcove at the rear of the chamber, she saw the two mystics, a tall figure in black and a shorter one in white, standing together, watching her descend. There was a long bundle wrapped in fabric at their feet. It might be her imagination, or the energy surging through her body, she knew, but something about the way the two figures stood seemed odd, and she reassessed her first impression: they stood near each other, not together.
And by them, standing by the Alcove, stood Marcus Wells.
Seeing him brought it all back to her, and her vision blurred once again. She bowed her head down over the interface field as the shuttle settled gently onto its landing jacks. Without looking, her hand reached out and grasped the cold metal of the ugly sword beside her.
*****
Marcus watched the Ntja ship settle down on the big hydraulic-looking legs. Whoever had landed that had done a much better job than Iphini Bha had managed. He had a suspicion who it might be even before the door in the shuttle’s flank snapped open and Angara Ksaka dropped out. She was carrying something across one shoulder, but he wasn’t paying attention. He wanted to speak with Justin. He wanted the comfort of the only other Human nearby at his side.
But no one else emerged from the shuttle. And as Angara made her way up the tiered flooring, Marcus looked at her again, his eyes narrowing. Had she been crying?
Angara Ksaka was as exotic as ever. Her deep purple skin and the contrast of her long, wild mane of white hair were distracting when trying to read her emotions or reactions. Her violet eyes were red, however, and there was moisture on her dark cheeks.
Marcus felt light headed. Nhan reached out to steady him before he even realized he needed it.
“Where’s Justin?” He demanded, his tone harsher than he had intended, but he didn’t care.
Angara was silent as she closed the distance between them. When she stood before him, she dropped the heavy sword she had been holding, and as he looked down at the weapon he saw that the blade was slick with bright red blood. Something about the situation told him everything he needed to know; it was Human blood. He looked up again, and this time there was no doubting what he saw there. Tears coursed shamelessly down the Tigan woman’s face.
Marcus shook his head. The draw to the shimmering blackness was strong. They had only paused at the top of the ramp when they saw the shuttle coming straight for the dome, thinking they might all die before he even got a chance to try. Now, knowing that it was Angara and not more of Taurani’s creatures, he wanted to go finish the quest, whatever it might be. He needed to finish it.
But he couldn’t turn away.
“Where’s Justin.” He repeated the words. He wouldn’t ask anything more pointed, terrified where it might lead.
Justin had been his best friend for almost his entire life. And now, since they had been kidnapped and dragged out to this insane asylum among the stars, he had also been the only Human in his life for months and months. That had come to mean even more since K’hzan had made his cruel revelations of ancient history.
She remained silent, however, her head moving minutely from side to side.
“Where … Is … Justin.” He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake her, even knowing how lethal she was.
But at the same time his mind was whispering to him, reminding him of half a hundred signs he had noticed over the last couple of months. There was something between Angara and Justin, even if they might not know it yet. And so he patted Nhan on the shoulder, stood straighter under his own power, and reached out for the tall woman’s arm. He had to know, before they could move on.
“What happened?”
She looked into his eyes for a moment, then away. When she spoke, her voice was harsh, full of self-recrimination and pain.
“We had cleared the Red Tower. Taurani was gone. No one was there. We were moving on the executive bay, to follow, when Justin ran ahead.” She looked down at the sword and nudged it with her foot. “This was in his belly when I caught up. They had struck him down and moved on to the Variyar without a second thought. I don’t even think they realized what they had done.”
Since Taurani had taken over Penumbra, it had been his fondest wish to see the only two Humans within it dead. Every one of his servants had lived only to serve that purpose. The irony of his best friend being randomly cut down in the heat of battle was not lost on him.
He nodded. “He’s dead.”
Her face twisted. “I don’t know.” She shook her head, and again refused to meet his gaze. “I rushed him back to my ship, dropped him into the medical cist, and had the ship fly him back up to rendezvous with K’hzan’s flagship.”
Marcus’s brain struggled to make sense of the words. “He’s not dead?”
It was her turn to glare at him. “I don’t know!” She kicked the sword, and he recognized it now as one of the heavy blades the Ntja carried for work beneath a suppression field. “This was sticking out of his belly!”
Marcus shook his head. None of it mattered now. There was hope, and that was all he was likely to get at the moment, so he needed to turn back to the more important matters at hand.
“I have the Skorahn.” He held it up, the sapphire gleaming as it dangled from his fist. He had not put it over his head yet, but even in his hand it conveyed a feeling of warmth. He felt better just holding it. He gestured to the huddled form at the feet of the mystics. “Iphini had it.” He felt his own eyes well up at the thought, and shook the tears away, confused and angry at the same time. “I need to go to the door.”
She stared in a disbelief that managed, in part at least, to penetrate her grief, and nodded. “Do what you need to do.”
He shook his head, almost smiling at that, and cursing himself all the more for it. “I hav
e no idea what I think is going to happen, or if the wall will open, or if there will be anything more than a broom closet on the other side. What I do know is that there’s nothing else left to do here.” He looked down the ramp at the silent door. “Everyone agrees, the city’s defenses have never seen off a force the size Taurani’s come up with, even with one of their big ships down. I’m terrified that, even with the Skorahn, there’s not much we can do.”
He was going to feel like a complete asshole if wall didn’t open.
Briefly.
With a deep breath, trying to focus on the moment, Marcus walked down the steep ramp, raising the medallion and dropping it over his head.
He immediately fell to his knees in agony. A glaring white light exploded behind his eyes, a screeching whine pierced his ears, and everything around him faded into insignificance beneath the sensory avalanche.
He didn’t know how long he huddled there on the ramp, but when he came back to his senses, Angara and Khet Nhan were crouching beside him, holding him upright and speaking to him in hushed whispers.
He didn’t pay them any attention. The torrent of light and noise had settled down to a steady stream of information pumping through his mind from some unknown source. Something immense moved in his mind behind his eyes. It stirred sluggishly, as if waking up from a long slumber, but it was enormous nonetheless. And with it, the information rose unbidden and nearly overwhelming, into his mind.
There were nine thousand, five hundred and eighty-three Ntja surging across the bronze plains. One hundred and twenty of them were carrying the weight of heavy infantry armor. There were six shuttles or assault craft in the airspace above them, including a diplomatic shuttle that most probably held Khuboda Taurani, standing off at a distance, observing the ebb and flow of the fighting around the Sanctuary. There were eight hundred and seventy-three other Ntja located in various spots throughout the city.
Legacy of Shadow Page 47