Legacy of Shadow

by Gallant, Craig;

  Soon enough, K’hzan Modath was standing before Marcus, his breath deep and even, and this time the Variyar had to look up at him, which was a nice change. Although they were closer in height than he would have liked.

  K’hzan looked up at him, his staff held warily across his body. “I am speaking to Marcus Wells, Administrator of Penumbra?”

  How he had known Marcus was inside the metal he could not know. But he found himself nodding a heartbeat before the thought occurred to him that maybe he should have just pretended he didn’t understand.

  “You cannot kill this beast, alone and unarmed.” K’hzan gestured to Taurani, who now craned his head from one to the other in confusion. “To do so would be wrong, placing us in the same damned and doomed camp as his masters.”

  Marcus felt metal eyes narrow as he looked down at K’hzan. From his appearance, there was nothing to tell that this alien king had grappled through a desperate deep space battle, and now had fought his way through half an Ntja army to come to stand before him.

  Who was he, this little thing, to tell him what he could do? Ancient hatreds rose once more, and he sneered down at K’hzan. He felt his hand begin to vibrate itself into a broad-bladed sword.

  K’hzan noticed the movement and took a step back, raising his staff. “Marcus Wells, we have much to discuss. Much and more has happened here today. But please listen to my words. If you end Taurani this way, there will be a grave price to pay. We will be no better than our rivals. Do we not strive to be better than those with which we contend? Otherwise, why do we fight at all?”

  The words made sense to a part of Marcus, and he settled back in his stance, his hand reforming. The thought of all the death he had dealt out so far that day suddenly weighed heavily in his mind. He had never killed more than a mosquito in his life, and now he was literally drenched with blood. He looked down at his hands. The metal hands of the statue he had somehow become.

  Once again it was all too much. This was all too far from his old life for him to even grasp at a frame of reference. He wanted to weep. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to scream.

  The ancient, alien hatred in his mind rose up, and he pushed it back down. This wasn’t him. He wasn’t a killer, despite the evidence to the contrary. He needed to master this new thing that was coiled behind his eyes, or he would be gone as surely as if he had died in the chamber below.

  He was no killer.

  Then his eyes settled on a dull metal object lost amidst the tumbled debris on the floor. An Ntja falchion. The sword Angara had tossed at his feet.

  The sword was tiny in his huge metal hand, but he managed to spin it in his fingers until he was holding it by the base, its hilt fully engulfed in one massive fist, the blade gleaming dully as it stretched out before him.

  There was almost no resistance as he pushed it through Taurani’s robed body.

  The Ambassador looked down at the blade emerging from his chest in confusion. The glittering eyes flared, the mouth opened wide, and fine, long fingers rose to grip weakly at the blade. Then the eyes dulled, the mouth fell slack, and the fingers relaxed as the body slid to the floor, a dark stain spreading through the pearlescent fabric.

  Marcus looked down at the dead Ambassador. He had expected to feel a rush of joy, or shame. He had desperately wanted to feel vindication. Instead, he felt nothing. If there was to be a price to be paid, it wouldn’t come due today. He forced himself to raise his eyes to meet the empty blackness of K’hzan’s burning glare. He opened his steely mouth, but there was nothing he could say.

  A sudden wave of exhaustion swept over him and he felt himself collapsing onto his knees. There was a sensation across his skin as if water or sand were streaming over him. His vision blurred, faded, and dimmed. The harsh light around him was suffused with green, and he found himself slumped into the huge command throne deep beneath the surface of Penumbra. Only a moment ago he had been a colossus, striding uncaring through battle and crushing his enemies before him. Now he was collapsed in the massive chair, surrounded by the stench of death, in the center of the ancient control chamber.

  A thousand aches and pains made themselves immediately known, and he sank further into the throne in exhaustion. He shook his head, unwilling to open his eyes.

  Somewhere overhead, K’hzan still stood, burning with his righteous anger.

  Chapter 32

  The cavern was cool and dark. The vague, soft sounds of distant water were soothing counterpoints to the thoughts surging through his head. The low, bronze ceiling loomed overhead, but he found it more comforting than confining. The reservoir had swiftly become the only place in the city he could go to escape the burdens of his duties and the expectations of others.

  Sadly, from the expectations of the city itself, there was no escape.

  The heavy thoughts of the thing that lived coiled within the Relic Core were always there, lurking in the back of his mind, inextricably entwined with his own thoughts and emotions. At least, he thought they were his own. Telling them apart was getting more and more difficult with each passing day.

  It took all of the discipline he had ever possessed to keep his mind focused on matters at hand when the ancient voice in his head clamored for revenge and the return of Human domination to the galaxy.

  Trying to reestablish normalized relations with countless alien species calling Penumbra their home, this devolved into quite a distraction.

  He missed Iphini Bha more than he would have thought possible, now that he was the ruler of the city in truth as well as name; and there was no one standing beside him whose advice he knew he could trust. He often found himself thinking about their time together and wondering if he could have done anything to alter their paths.

  Those were the hardest thoughts. The foreign voice in his head did not take kindly to soft recollections about alien traitors.

  The scuff on the metallic floor behind him came exactly as he knew it would.

  He lowered his head and shook it gently. Even the surprise of happy reunions had been taken from him.

  “Hey, hero.” The voice was rough and weak, but welcome nonetheless.

  He turned smoothly, rising to his feet, and smiled at Justin. He kept his face schooled to pleasant stillness against the surge of emotions he felt at his friend’s condition.

  Justin’s wounds had very nearly killed him, he knew. Angara had barely gotten him into the medical cist of her ship in time, and even then it had been close. He had stayed in close contact with her since the battle, and knew how much effort the Variyar expended to save his friend’s life.

  But once he learned that Justin was out of danger, he had turned his mind to other matters. He had not thought what that kind of injury and convalescence might do to a person.

  Justin’s dark skin was ashy pale, the flesh of his face was limp; the hard, chiseled lines softened from his long recovery. Somehow, though, he had found the time to shave his head, and it gleamed in the light of the reservoir cavern. It had been almost a month since the last Ntja had surrendered, and Justin had spent all of that time in a medical ward aboard K’hzan’s flagship.

  “I know, I look like shit.” Justin smiled as he said it, but he winced a little as he shrugged, closing the distance between them with a slight limp. He lowered himself beside Marcus with a grunt of effort, shifting slightly around something on his hip, and then took a few slow breaths as if he had just run a great distance.

  “You don’t look like shit.” Marcus tried to sound reassuring, but he had never been able to fool Justin. “Well, you don’t look like total shit. You look …, vaguely shit-like? I see you’re wearing a new accessory with your outfit.”

  His friend looked down at the pistol settled on his hip and shrugged. “You’re not the only hero, turns out. I’ve got to look the part of the intrepid gunslinger, now that I’ve got the rep to go with it.”

  Marcus shook his head. “I thought you ran out of bullets shooting your way out the first time.”

  Justin’s smi
le widened. “I told you I had three clips. I didn’t mention there were a couple extra boxes in there as well. Of course, I’m going to have to find some more soon, if you’re planning on continuing with your vigorous diplomatic efforts.”

  Marcus could only laugh. It was one of the first times he could remember doing that in a long time, and it reminded him of his friend’s injuries. “Speaking of looking like shit, or not, how’s the belly?”

  Justin grinned, and his shoulders gave a slight tremor as he tried to suppress a laugh. He shook his head and turned to look out over the dark water. “You’d think these aliens and all their futuristic technomagic would be able to deal with a simple stab wound.” He propped himself up with one arm.

  “A simple stab wound?” Marcus didn’t try to suppress his own laughter. “From what Angara said, that damned dog-face spitted you. And don’t try to deny it. I saw the skewer.” His smile faltered at a moment as the words echoed out over the subterranean lake.

  Justin didn’t appear to notice, and chuckled. “Yeah, well, you’d still think they could patch me up quicker with some of their hocus pocus.”

  Marcus forced the smile back in place and shrugged. “Angara said it was something in the metal the Ntja use for their weapons. I guess it interferes with the nanites, or something like that.”

  Justin shook his head. “Well, whatever it was, K’hzan’s people set me to rights soon enough. I won’t complain too much.” He smiled again. “Not where any of them can hear me, anyway. There’s not a lot of room for thinking when you look down at your stomach and see the dull end of a giant alien sword sticking out, but I wasn’t thinking anything good.”

  “So, you’re best friends with K’hzan Modath now? You going to go sailing about the galaxy wearing matching outfits?”

  Justin lowered his head with a smile and cast a sideways look at Marcus from beneath his heavy eyebrows. “Jealous?”

  Marcus sat up. “What’s there to be jealous about? Penumbra’s a hell of a lot bigger than anything the red king can claim to rule.”

  Justin’s smile slipped a little, and Marcus realized that maybe he was jealous; just a little bit. He shrugged. “Sorry. Anyway, didn’t he want to kill you the last time you were face to face?”

  Justin looked at him a moment longer then turned back to look out over the water. “Yeah, well, he might have come around on the whole ‘Human issue’ just a little bit.”

  They could both smile at that. “They do like to fight. He probably would have been willing to share a drink with an Ntja, if they’d let him fight.”

  “They were willing enough, at the end, to oblige him.” Marcus joked, but his heart wasn’t in it. The comment about ruling Penumbra hadn’t been his. He was pretty sure of that, and he resented the thing interfering in his reunion with his friend.

  “Yeah, so I hear.” His smile got a little thin and he patted his belly gently. “I was a little distracted at the time.”

  Marcus turned to his friend. “You’re lucky she got you back to the ship, you know. In the middle of all that craziness, no way were you going to get out of there otherwise.”

  Justin turned back to look out over the reservoir. “Yeah, she’s got her good points.”

  Marcus watched his friend’s dark eyes, and then nodded to himself. “So; you and Angara?”

  Justin’s smile widened. “Me and Angara what?”

  “You’re a … You’re a thing?” Marcus made a vague gesture with his hand. His feelings on the situation were decidedly mixed, and he was honest enough with himself to admit that not all of the negativity could be blamed on the new awareness sharing his mind.

  Justin’s face softened as he continued to watch the ripple of the lights on the distant water. “A thing? Well, we’re something, I guess you could say. Going to give it some time, see what develops.”

  Marcus settled back, turning out in the same direction and resting back on his locked arms. “Until the next one comes along, right?”

  Justin shook his head, his face serious, and shifted around to face him. “No. I don’t think so. Not this time.”

  Marcus smiled. “Good,” he said, his face straight ahead. “Because if you piss her off, she’s more than capable of slaughtering both of us.” Then he smiled, giving Justin a quick push with his shoulder that almost knocked the other man over.

  “Well, she might be able to slaughter me, weak as I am. But I hear she might have a harder time getting at the hero of the hour.” Justin pushed him back, with considerably more force. “Where’s your big metal suit? I heard you had a big badass metal suit.” He tilted his head back the way he had come, and continued with narrowed eyes. “And I noticed you brought friends down with you?”

  Marcus didn’t look back. He didn’t have to. All he had to do was close his eyes and he knew exactly where the two automatons were standing, one on either side of the low entrance to the reservoir’s observation point.

  They were always with him now, standing guard outside his rooms at night, and following him wherever he went during the day. Two had approached him in the command chamber after the battle, and taken up positions on either side. They never talked, of course, and he couldn’t be sure if they were the same ones all the time or not. All of the alcoves in that frightening room deep beneath Sanctum were filled again, and not a single statue had the slightest sign of damage.

  It had taken him a while to figure it out, but he knew, now, that whatever the voice was that he heard in his head, it was the motivating force behind the statues, and pretty much everything else in Penumbra.

  He grunted. “Nanites.” He lowered himself onto his back so he was staring at the bronze ceiling. Because of the width and breadth of the room, the height often seemed low. But that gleaming metal surface was more than thirty feet over his head. “Just like the stuff Nhan’s staff is made out of.”

  Justin adjusted himself, rolling onto one hip to look down at him. “You were covered in that stuff?”

  He took a deep breath. “Still not sure, to be honest. Covered? Coated? Sealed? I didn’t know what was going on.”

  He had not told anyone about all of the drama that had apparently taken place in his head that day. He would have spoken to Justin, except that Justin was preoccupied by his continued refusal to die. Everyone else assumed that he had somehow used the Skorahn to unlock further abilities of the city’s defenses. No one knew about the conversations he had been having within the silence of his own skull. He had hoped to talk to Justin about it when his friend was feeling better, but now that the time had come, he was reluctant. How do you talk about a person, or an entity at least, when you literally cannot get away from them?

  Justin saw it, though, and was too good a friend to let it go. “Marc, I know there’s a lot of heavy shit coming down right now, but you look like you’ve got more to say, and if I can drag my sorry, wounded ass all the way over here, you can damn well open up.” He smiled, taking some of the sting from the words. “It’s not like there’s another Human within a billion miles that gives a shit.”

  Marcus shook his head and looked at his friend. “It’s not so simple.”

  He was startled as Justin barked a harsh, loud laugh that echoed eerily around the enormous cavern. “Not simple?” He sat up and gestured all around them with one hand. “We’re sitting on the metal shore of an underground lake located within a floating city in space a billion light years from Earth after getting kidnapped by a purple-skinned warrior woman who saved us from a squid driving a Prius.” His eyes were intense. “So, since we’re starting at a pretty screwed up baseline for ‘not simple’, why don’t you just tell me what the hell is going on? I’ve heard stories, and believe me, if you don’t tell me what it is, I’m going to make some shit up that will put a serious dent in your reputation.”

  Marcus smiled, slowly sitting up, and shook his head. Justin always got what he wanted out of him. And so, on the shore of that strange lake, he told his friend all about the conversations that had taken place
in the place that wasn’t anyplace, and about what had happened during and after the battle. He even shared with him the impulses he believed the voice placed in his mind, and his growing alarm at the realization that he was having a harder and harder time differentiating between his own thoughts and those of the voice. He kept the last moments of the battle to himself; K’hzan’s words, and his slaughtering of the helpless Taurani. He wasn’t sure the Variyar king was right or not, but somehow, he did feel as if he had surrendered something, in that vengeful, violent moment.

  When he had finished, Justin stared at him with wide eyes for a moment before speaking. When he did, his ragged voice was even more noticeable. “Damn. That’s … not so simple.”

  Marcus wanted to hit him, and almost did before remembering his injuries. “You’re an asshole. You know that, right?”

  Justin’s teeth were bright against his dark skin as he grinned a manic grin. “It’s part of my charm.” But, having gotten a smile out of Marcus, he turned serious quickly. “So, you have some ancient alien racist in your head, is what you’re telling me?”

  Marcus shook his head. “No, exactly not that. I think I have an ancient Human racist, or speciest, or shapist, or whatever the hell it would be, in my head.”

  Justin gave the two statues standing motionless by the entrance a sidelong glance before continuing in a lower voice. “What the hell is it?”

  Marcus shrugged. “I don’t know. It won’t tell me. I don’t know if it knows what it is.”

  Justin searched Marcus’s face, but there wasn’t even the hint of a smile there now. “And you caught it, or whatever, down in that room below the old ship?”

  “The oldest ship, and yeah. Whatever it is, it got ahold of me down in the command chamber.”

  Justin nodded absently, turning away. “Why do you think it’s Human?”