“Bazzo, the reverse thrusters... ”
Didn’t activate.
“Ah crap,” he said, “I knew I shoulda gotten them fixed. Plan B, Gio.”
Age-old spoilers on the wings lifted at the AI’s request, slowing their voyage to a steep drop.
She sucked her teeth and stomped her foot, scowl glued to the cockpit.
The front wheel straddled safety on the glacier’s edge, and, in a rush to get them off the aircraft, the exit hatch lowered to the ice. Florence took her first step down the ladder, her sword cradled in one hand.
“See, easy as pie.” Bazzo exited the pilot seat. Careful not to upset the plane, he reached back to nab a handle of Bundaberg rum on the dashboard, and said, “This’ll take the edge off.”
The vehicle groaned at his choice. She fell off the steps backward as the fragile, unsupported ice gave under the plane’s weight. Cloth layers, piled on as a defense from subzero air, did little to pad her ten-foot fall. She scrambled to her knees and yelled, “Bazzo!”
She tried not to jump to conclusions, horrified as she witnessed the nose of the jet, then wings, and last, its horizontal and vertical stabilizers plunge over the edge. Even after hearing its crunch against the glacier’s side and fire’s faint crackle, which preceded the plume of smoke rising from the wreckage, she would not accept her companion’s casualty. Her mind would not search its emotional closet for distress. Her heart’s rusted gears would not crank to speed its beating. Her ducts wouldn’t sign for the package of delivered tears. She grabbed the Cynque from her pocket, and fumbled to turn on its flashlight. Six senses on alert, she combed for evidence of human life, and inched to the vertical cliff, afraid she wouldn’t like what she found.
Coughing. Grunting. “Little help?” the voice of her Aussie colleague echoed, winning its competition with the continent’s winds.
Air released between her lips.
One set of his gloved fingertips had made it onto the frozen ledge. A miraculous feat when the other was in a cast strapped to his body. Bazzo strained below her light and hoisted himself up until both elbows rested horizontal in the snow.
“It was broken anyhow,” he offered. Kaboom. Kabloom! A bonfire lit the ice shelf. Dark smoke surged to the sky.
Prepared for tenderness in her tailbone, Florence took his wrist, dug her nails into his puffy jacket and heaved her associate up. They laid on their backs, breathless, like children having run around and made angels in fresh fallen snow.
Bazzo looked over at her. “Sorry?”
“Don’t be. I’m billing you for it.”
“Fair enough,” he said, stretching. Bazzo unzipped his parka. Inside, between his ribs and the cast, he’d nestled the thin glass bottle. “Cheers.” He uncapped it and took a long swig. “Half in the bag and I can still feel the cold and my hand. I swear to bloody God.” He thrust the bottle at her.
Cringing as a waft of vanilla and spices hit her nostrils, she rolled her eyes and refused his offer. “I’m not in the mood.” She pushed the gold booze to him.
He got up and used his good arm to haul her to her feet.
Florence put on airtight goggles engineered for the South Pole’s extreme conditions and gave a curt nod to the vacant ice sheet. What she sensed made up for what she didn’t see. “The base is here, somewhere. Can you double check the coordinates?”
“Hold your horses,” he mumbled. “No Cynque signal this far south.” His fingers snapped, and a lone bolt landed on the ice and sparked a frenzy that fried C20’s electromagnetic cloaking mechanism. “Gotcha.”
A domed force field shimmered into reality. The ever-elusive C20 base loomed in windowless perfection, resembling a vertical metal castle inside an unshaken snow globe.
On second thought, she nudged him for the alcohol, endured the first sip, then tipped it back. Two months overdue. A bit musky, a bit salty, a bit sweet, abrupt and violent on the tongue. Still good medicine for what sliver of her soul she held onto. Done grappling with the aftertaste, she sighed in celebration of Bazzo’s survival.
Rum kept the spirit of vengeance (for her) and liberation (for him) in their bloodstream.
He returned the liquor to its hideaway and zipped his military parka closed. Bazzo Sparks, though new to her life, was an odd extension of her family. She’d become uncharacteristically fond of this young, devoted superhuman trudging to save his sister. Possibly, trudging to his death. Florence admired the kinship he and Bridget shared.
Shame she was a criminal.
Florence draped her cable knit scarf over the thermal mask to envelop her chin and mouth. The katabatic winds objected to their intrusion and for every step forward, they slipped backward almost as much. Head on, they confronted the would be spotless white desert, greyed and blackened by sunlight’s six-month absence.
“The dome!” she shouted.
Bazzo extended his hand toward the ground, drawing stolen electricity through his palm. He shouted back, “All over it!” The dome dimmed, brightened, dimmed again, and then dissolved to nothing. Soldiers spilled from the doorway, weapons raised and ready, and fanned out to defend the base.
“Plan?” Bazzo asked.
“Don’t get shot!”
Unwilling to wait for hostility, she grabbed the sword’s handle with all the strength she had and charged ahead.
Zosma Caster
The Subconscious
Glistening red, green, blue, indigo, and yellow light penetrated Zosma’s inner psyche and collected itself into liquid globules. Melded to one creamy color and elongated at the top, it shifted from whitish transparency to opaque silvers. The head and face of a womaformed, accompanied by a bone-straight brunette mane. Next came a black tattered cape, and muscular trained arms outfitted in matching gloves to the elbow. The double-breasted jacket covered a V-shaped torso, and a narrow waist gave way to long legs accessorized in thigh-high boots. Leesa Delemar had returned.
Undisturbed fog in the barren space drifted away from the new arrival, and suctioned into a representation of Dylurshin within her mind. Its wispy shoulders rose and spread, guarding the way to the hidden portrait of Uragon’s countryside. Guarding the way to Zosma.
“What is this insolent phantom?” Dylurshin asked, as he attempted disassembly. “How did you infiltrate this domain, counteract my power?”
Light washed over Leesa like a waterfall, though enlivened her complexion none. Death’s irreversible color saturated her skin.
“You know me, Hexforth,” she said, eyes blazing. Her telekinetic grasp imprisoned every atom in the creature’s body. “You’ve known me for eons. Where. Is. Zosma?”
“You are a figment. A figment of her imagination.”
She took a step. The blue Z-energy wall stifled behind Dylurshin’s oppressive presence glimmered with obedience. The energy filtered through her outstretched fingertips and its numbing force shot from her palms. Z-energy penetrated the entity’s core, and obliterated its physical form. Leesa ran full speed across the triangular threshold to the perilous war-torn terrain, cape flapping in the turbulence of a troubled mind. She somersaulted to dodge sharpened rocks jutting up out of the ground, and doubled back, a stone’s throw from falling.
“Zosma!” Leesa yelled, “If you can hear me, say my name!”
An infinite drop separated her from the fortress consumed by molecular mist. Dylurshin’s grin enveloped a sky in reddish grey dominance. “Is this Neight’s pathetic attempt to save his daughter? With an astral projection?”
Sinister black lightning struck the frail edge. Leesa screamed, arms flailing, eyes frozen in diligence, as she fell into the endless canyon.
“Leesa,” Zosma whispered. Names of people she’d cared for, people who’d helped her, people who needed her to wake up, were dealt on mental cards. And with all those cards on the table, it became clear she’d won the hand. Whatever the game, her prize was free thought. For all she stood to lose for existing, there was no future in which Dylurshin could win. “Neight... Florence
,” she continued. “Allister.”
Speaking each name grew her sense. Zosma’s fist clenched on the ground. Surrounded by the luminosity of a newborn star, her limp, overrun figure fought the outside influence.
“I will banish you, if it is all I do,” she said to Dylurshin.
The reversal began. She purged herself of the mist, forced it to retreat down her body and across the roof.
A wave, similar to the destructive ones she’d elicited so many times before (the kind that annihilated people, cities, planets), rippled through the picturesque reincarnation. And for the first time, the Z-energy restored beauty.
“You are more than evil,” Zosma said, hand raised above her, “but you are less than me.”
“No! I have come too far!” The final syllable echoed in surround sound as Dylurshin dove, open mouthed, to devour her.
A concentrated beam shot down its throat and exploded outward, eroding what parasitic power remained. Binary star’s magnificence vaporized wisps of leftover mist.
“I’m here,” Leesa said, and stopped her fall. “I’m always here.”
“But where did you go? I thought you were lost in the chasm? And before, you were restrained inside the wall? I could not feel you.” Zosma peered at their feet. The locked tower now open, theories broiled in her mind. Leesa wasn’t a human spirit lost in limbo. She was the physical representation of the energy inside her. An energy that had never left and was always there, so long as she had the consciousness and confidence to call upon it.
“You understand now. We are meant to navigate this universe together.”
“Yes,” Zosma replied. “I will make sure Dylurshin does not find what it seeks.”
Chapter Eight
The Last Zaian
Neight Caster
“Zosma represents the future of our great universe,” a voice, smooth as a string instrument, breathed into Neight’s ear. “If her birth was not to be, it would not be. And so, if my death is not to be, it will not—” His dead soulmate’s final declaration expired as he came to.
Subdued staff, including Myra, fussed over a master screen encompassing the center of the basement. It showed fifteen flashing white circles on a world map.
“They’re in place,” she said, “Agents are moving in to secure each perimeter, so we don’t have a repeat of Morocco.” Her hand fumbled for the back of a chair and landed on Russell’s scarf. “Shouldn’t Mr. Ashur be back by now?”
“He is preoccupied dying a traitor’s death,” Dylurshin answered.
Ten additional U-generators had been activated during Neight’s brief slumber, meaning 75 percent of the Z-energy circulated the globe. Zosma was strapped to a table using titanium bands and locked inside a translucent box. The containment center’s remote operating mechanism held the leftover 25 percent captive, hindering her defenses.
His eldest daughter screamed, awakened by the excruciation of energy force sucking through her pores. When the final four generators activated, the entirety of Zosma’s power would irrigate to the machines, leaving her torn to pieces.
Dragging himself to stand Neight said, “It cannot be,” and repeated, “It cannot be. Stop this, you do not know what you are doing!”
A single row of sharks’ teeth arranged in a permanent smile snapped together inside powerful jaws. “I have shown enough mercy today. Engage the centrifuge!” Dylurshin thundered.
Three agents walked over to activate the prison centrifuge, and achieved several unsuccessful pokes to the big green button.
“What is happening?” Dylurshin asked.
“Influence, over the living, the weak, the broken, the scared. Confidence, in the living, the strong, the resilient, the fearless. A difference between two ancient things who placed their faith in alien beings. Humanity has shown it has choices, and they speak in liberated voices. I draw power and prayer from our sacred Z-energy source, help bring an end to Dylurshin Hexforth.”
He spoke the incantation three times. Long muscular arms rotated counterclockwise to an imaginary drum beat. The incision he made in the capsule flashed blue, split the titanium down the center, lengthening and widening into a full-blown hole.
“I misjudged your capacity for compassion. An admirable quality in a ruthless tyrant,” Neight said.
“You do not know tyranny until you know the truth about Andromeda’s Sanctuary. Its laws, its morals, its practices. A creation baptized in conquest’s red fire, doused in dishonesty’s sour taste.”
Neight needed to buy time. Though the currency of their conversation had diminished in value over the last few months, it meant he’d have to spend more. He shook his head, stepping to freedom. “It will be a pleasant surprise for you to see Zosma’s true power.”
“She is nothing,” Dylurshin scoffed. “An obstacle I will overcome like innumerable others.”
“It’s a demon!” a bewildered scientist exclaimed, jabbing a finger at Neight’s crouched body.
Though hunched to a quarter of his eight-foot height, elongated fangs, a square jaw, and velociraptor-shaped talons were a stark contrast to a female Uragonian’s gentler features. The grimace he wore alongside spiked shoulder pads and forearm guards didn’t help.
Myra doubled back, her glasses fell, and she fell on them. Through swift nasal inhalations, she stammered, “What... what... are...” without finishing the question, she scurried to the emergency exit and escaped with fellow fleeing scientists.
Stalling to ensure the basement’s emptiness, Neight said, “You have misjudged your new ‘people.’ Imagine they saw you for what you are?”
Disoriented, wild particles jumped away from Dylurshin’s form in heightened emotion, betraying the calmed delivery. “They will worship me when I fulfill my promise to preserve them, to make them the apex of mortal existence. Nothing will stop this civilization’s ascension to Andromeda. Not you, not her, and not the little hybrid boy you have put your faith in.”
Their lingering banter tiptoed toward conflict.
“You lost our previous battle, yet you challenge me now, knowing I am limitless,” Dylurshin taunted.
“Last time, I let my arrogance dictate my actions. This time, I let your arrogance dictate my actions.” His hands twisted one above the other and touched. Z-energy jogged fingertip to fingertip, and as his palms spread apart, Neight said, “Your influence over that contraption is no more!”
Energy blades sliced Dylurshin’s arms, severing its connection to the containment center controls. The amputated mist defied gravity. It observed the missing limbs while they drifted upward, straining to elongate and reconstruct them.
Neight let his daughter’s exhaustion-laced cries lead him to her. She trembled, unable to keep her body intact, as if a black hole had been opened in her abdomen.
His Z-energy charged fists pounded the entrapping box with all intended brutality, yet, it did not bend, moan or crack, constructed to repel the energy’s force inside and out. Four decades it had been since they’d both been of sound mind and body, aware of their surroundings and their Uragonian heritage. “Remember what I told you,” he said. His unwrinkled forehead touched the box’s ceiling, wishing to press against hers in sincerity as he’d done in her youth. “Daughter, my dearest princess, hang onto your, self with everything you can.”
“How did it consume me?” Zosma asked, swallowing multiple times before finishing the sentence, “I am controlling, distributing, accessing it all, at once.”
The three verbs brought recognition to her brow—she and the energy were one and the same. Neight and his queen didn’t know the mistake they’d made when they transferred the power thriving in the core of Uragon.
“I am to blame,” he muttered, disconnected from her unfocused gaze.
“You did this to me?”
Neight caressed the semi-opaque material like it were her smoldering cheek. “Creatures will strive to dictate who you are and what you are meant for, but when you know who you are and what you are meant for, it is all t
hat will matter in the end.” He showed his armored forearm and said, “The Caster bloodline survives the wrath of an infinite system.”
She nodded, and despite their separation, her flashing arm quavered on the upward journey to meet his. “In kinship and in loyalty,” Zosma choked out, then tightened her lip, “Go. Nothing is accomplished by our... sentiments.”
He obeyed. And recoiled, drawing his cape. Black daggers coated in sinful red energy, hurtled at him from Dylurshin’s chest.
“They rise, they fall,” he said, spreading his arm. Blue energy waves blasted them to oblivion. The ram-horned, magnesium alloy helmet tapped his heel. He rotated, scooped up the protection and fastened it to his head.
Fanged teeth barred, Neight charged forward. “Face me, Zaian filth!” The faceplate extended, hiding his eyes. He picked Dylurshin up and threw it. Writhing mist would’ve made contact with the wall, instead it parted like the Red Sea. He’d put his full force behind the follow-up right hook, sending his knuckles through metal and ice.
“What do you know about the Zaians?” Dylurshin asked, rebuilding itself amongst cold steel.
Neight tore his fist out. “I know they are about to be extinct.” Swarming darkness caught him by the chest plate, swiveled him around, and tossed him so hard the basement’s crystal wall shattered. On his knees, both forearms created an “X,” and a sparkling barrier blocked a dark energy-powered bombardment. Outdone, one arm fell and the second wavered, pleading for him to surrender. “That is enough!” he bellowed. A Z-energy orb diffused the attack. Repelled by the energy expansion, the body made of liquid mist belonging to Dylurshin demolished heavy-duty machinery and shorted the main CPU.
Mist chopped about like untamed waters and converged at Dylurshin’s open palms. “Indeed,” it said, and cocked back.
Drawing both hands together, Neight prepared for a similar attack. The helmet’s horns and crest glowed, adding fuel to his fire. In silent execution their blasts collided, respective energies booming and crackling as they tugged in war.
Zosma Page 29