by Charles Case
“The attack out in the wilds.” Seena cocked her head. “That was an attempt to capture me?”
“The Lady Tis wants you by her side. She would do anything to get you back.”
Seena’s face went hard once again. “We can use that. Now, we just need to know where she is. Dianna, where will the next attack happen? I will go and meet with Tis, and let her know that you did your job very well. You convinced me to go. I’m sure that will be worth quite the reward.”
Dianna’s eyes went wide with excitement, then she sagged back in her seat. “I do not know where the Lady strikes next. Our appointed meeting time has passed, and she will assume I failed her.”
“Well, shit,” Seena growled, turning for the door. “Come on, let’s see if Ren has anything. We’re done here.”
One last glance back at Dianna showed that her mania had subsided with the realization that she had failed utterly. Corbin almost felt sorry for her. Almost.
They exited the temporary jail to find the area around Ren and Mara in chaos. The same rebel that had informed them Dianna was ready to talk was running toward them, obviously sent by Mara.
They jogged to meet him.
“What’s happening?” Corbin asked, meeting the man in the middle, and making him keep up as they continued toward the consoles.
“There’s another attack happening on Rush,” he said, panic making his breath come short. “It’s happening on the outskirts of the capital. The military is already there, and more are on their way. It’s shaping up to be a full-scale war zone.”
They reached the consoles and Corbin leaned in, looking over Ren’s shoulder at the monitor. There was a feed from a satellite, showing thousands of golems rushing toward a hastily-erected line of soldiers. It seemed that Tis didn’t want to waste any time. As they watched, fifty more Kubla-style ships dropped from orbit and began disgorging more of the stone golems by the dozens.
“It started ten minutes ago,” Mara said, stepping up next to Corbin and Seena. “We got the feed up a few seconds ago.”
Corbin turned to Seena and saw the color drain from her face. “We need to get there, now. We might have a chance to stop this before my mother goes too far to stop.”
Corbin nodded. “Agreed. Are you up for a confrontation?”
Seena set her jaw. “I better be.”
“Mara, has Brast sent any more troopers?” Corbin asked, glancing over at the one military-grade dropship Brast’s men had brought with them.
“Just the first group. But, there are only a dozen of them. You can't be thinking of going down there without an army behind you.”
Corbin started marching toward the dropship, and the men seated around it in a small camp of their own. “We don't have an army, but we do have Seena and me. That’s going to have to do.”
He felt another person keeping pace on the opposite side of Seena and glanced over to see Ren, her head down in a large tablet. “Where do you think you’re going?”
Ren glanced up and gave him a roguish grin before looking back down at the tablet. “You’re going to need technical support, and I’m the only one here who has access to the network. You don't want to go in there blind. Don't worry, I know how to handle myself.”
Corbin did know that Ren was highly trained from her years in the army, and she was right, they were going to need eyes in the sky. He didn't like it, but he knew she was right.
“Fine, but no stupid risks.”
She snorted. “You mean beyond flying into a war zone with only a dozen heavy troopers and two supers?”
“Yeah. Beyond that.” Corbin used military hand signals as they approached Brast’s men, and was pleased to see that they not only knew what the hand signals were, but followed his orders immediately and began preparing for takeoff.
Two minutes later they were on the dropship, holding onto the restraints as the ship bucked and screamed its way out of Cinder’s atmosphere.
26
Dropships were fast. But on a cosmic scale, fast is relative. The military model that Brast had sent along with his men was outfitted for fast deployment, so it sacrificed a good chunk of its cargo hold for bigger engines and power plants. Even with the larger engines fitted on the relatively small craft, it was only able to get up to fifteen percent the speed of light.
Ninety-three million miles an hour is fast, but when traveling between planets it meant that the flight from Cinder to Rush, the closest planetary body besides Cinder’s two moons, was an hour and a half long.
The troopers took the time to check, double-check and triple-check their equipment, then suit up, and settle into the charging harnesses so they would be ready to go the instant the dropship hit the ground.
Corbin was jealous of their routine because it meant that they got to distract themselves for much of the ride, where he had nothing but his thoughts to keep him company. He thought about talking with Seena, but he could tell she was still not ready to talk, so he tried to catch a little sleep.
He must have succeeded, because his arm tablet buzzing and ringing woke him with a start. Glancing around the cargo hold he saw that most of the troopers were locked into their charging harnesses, and appeared to be resting or talking over their comms. Seena was seated on the floor, her legs crossed and deep in meditation. Corbin scolded himself for not thinking of meditating, but the ringing brought him back to himself and he checked the display.
He pulled the earpieces from the tablet and answered the call. “Lore. What’s up, man?”
“Corbin.” His voice was tight and lacked its usual jovial tone. “Hey, man, listen. I just saw a requisition for twenty dropships to launch from Lieu Tower come across the comms.”
“Okay? What does that have to do with anything?” Corbin felt a little dense.
“Normally, it would mean that there was some kind of exercise going on, but their destination is Rush. And that’s not all.” Lawrence’s long pauses could be infuriating at times.
“Okay, I’ll bite. What else?” Corbin prompted.
“I was digging into the black servers some more, and it looks like William is up and moving. I think he’s on one of the dropships along with a bunch of his souped-up guards.”
“Shit.” Corbin frowned. The last thing they needed was William mucking up the works. “William is going to blow this whole thing. We’re hoping Seena will be able to talk Tis down, but if he comes in and starts trying to throw his weight around, it could be a disaster.”
“Well, on the bright side, if you can't talk her down then there won’t be much for him to mess up,” Lawrence said, helpfully.
Corbin furrowed his brows. “How is that a bright side, man? That means she lets this horror loose, and we all die.”
Lawrence was quiet for a second. “I guess it’s really more of a murky brown side, then.”
Corbin rolled his eyes and chuckled. “You are a strange man, Lore. Have you talked with Ren?”
“No, why?” he asked, suspiciously.
Glancing over he saw Ren strapped in, her nose still in her tablet. “Because she’s on the ship with me. Figured you would want to talk with her, you know, just in case. I thought you two were getting pretty close.”
Corbin waited for Lawrence’s response but nothing came. “Hello? Lore?” He looked down and saw that Lawrence had ended the call. He was confused at first till he heard Ren’s tablet start ringing.
“I found her!” Ren shouted, motioning for Corbin to come over.
They were ten minutes out from entering Rush’s atmosphere. Corbin had been pacing back and forth, trying not to bug her too much. Seena was still in meditation, trying to grab every bit of power she could before the confrontation, but at Ren’s shout, she came out of it and followed Corbin over to Ren and her tablet.
Corbin made space for Seena beside him, and they leaned in to look at the tablet. Again, they saw an overhead view. The image showed a group of golems encircling a much smaller figure in red and silver. As they watched, she sent blasts of e
nergy from her hands into the line of mechanized soldiers closing in on her and her guards. In seconds, she had reduced three large mechs and over fifty heavy troopers to slag. It didn't look like she had tried very hard. After the attack, she went back to floating above her golems, her arms crossed.
“Have they started digging?” Corbin asked, concerned they weren’t going to make it in time to stop her.
Ren zoomed out and the hole immediately became apparent. However, this time there was a lot more than just a hole. They had uncovered something. Something extremely large.
It took Corbin a second to realize that it was the outside of a structure similar to the bunker on Cinder. The structure was smaller, but still massive in its own right. Unlike the bunker, this structure was square. Since most of the top and two sides that were over three hundred yards long were exposed, it was obvious that one of the sides had a large set of doors built into it.
“Shit,” Seena growled. “It looks like they’re close to opening that thing up.”
“Actually, I think they’re doing it now,” Ren warned, pointing out that Tis was moving toward the structure.
The massive amount of action happening across the city’s edge was nearly impossible to follow. Tens of thousands of combatants were slaughtering each other, with reinforcements arriving all the time. More than a thousand golems were working at breakneck speed to uncover as much of the structure as possible, and they were making incredible progress with nothing but their hands.
“How long until we can get there?” Corbin gritted his teeth. They needed to be on the ground now.
Ren checked the flight data. “Not for another six minutes. We’re just now coming up on the planet. We’ll hit atmo in three minutes, then we have to find a place to land in this mess.” She waved a hand at the screen.
“We don't have time to land.” Seena pointed at the tablet. “Look. The doors are opening.”
Sure enough, the huge doors split down the middle and began to retract into the walls. It became clear that the golems had only dug about halfway down the wall when a landslide of dirt and mud deeper in the ground funneled into the opening. Hundreds of the large stone beasts tumbled in with the avalanche, but more were able to leap out of the growing hole.
Their satellite view was at only a slight angle, so while they could see the doors opening, they couldn't see what was inside.
Corbin watched as Tis moved closer to her goal. He felt the pressing need to get out there, but all he could do was watch.
The ship began to shake and the windows began to glow orange. Corbin and Seena had to reach out and grab handholds to keep from falling over as the dropship did what it was designed for; drop through the atmosphere to the planet below.
Tis was only a few hundred yards from the now-open doors, and nothing the military threw at her even slowed her down. Either a threat was taken out by a group of golems moving ahead of her entourage, or she blasted them to molten steel with a flick of her wrist.
“Will you be able to take a hit like that?” Corbin asked Leela.
Ren looked up at him like he was crazy. “Why in the nine hells would you think I could take a blast like that?”
Corbin ignored her but chastised himself for not thinking about Ren hearing him.
“Smooth, Corbin. Real smooth,” Leela snarked. “But to answer your question, yes, I could take a blast from her, but not much more than one. Seena and Gert, on the other hand, would be reduced to ash nearly instantly. You need to remember that they are only around a tier seven or six by your super scale. Gert doesn't have the raw metals to channel that much power away.”
Corbin gave Seena a look of concern but nodded. “Hopefully, it won’t come to that.” This time he barely spoke above a whisper, and that was lost in the rumbling of the dropship smashing through the ever-thickening atmosphere.
Seena had a determined look on her face, but she kept her eyes glued to the tiny figure of her mother on Ren’s tablet. He hoped she would be able to deal with this without compromising her convictions, but when it came to family, Corbin knew that was her weak spot.
The comm came on, and the pilot’s voice boomed out over the sounds of reentry. “We’ll be above the battlefield in sixty seconds. I’m looking for a good spot to touch down, but we may need to do a jump. Activate your jump boots just in case.”
The announcement gave Corbin an idea. Glancing at the tablet again, he saw that Tis was now only two hundred yards from the door and about to start descending the dirt ramp her golems had dug out. He quickly activated the comm from his arm tablet.
“Pilot, take us on a route directly over the coordinates I’m sending you.” He pointed at Tis and motioned for Ren to send the location. “Don't try to land. In fact, burn out of there like your life depends on it, then circle around and try to land on another pass. We’ll be jumping on the first pass, and you will all need to catch up.”
He reached out and took Seena's hand. “I have a faster way down. Ren, we’ll have our comms on, so let us know if anything changes.”
Ren gave a short nod, then watched them walk to the rear of the dropship.
Corbin picked Seena up like she weighed nothing, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Are we insane?” she whispered, her lips close to his ear. “We don't stand a chance against her.”
“We don't have a choice,” he said, grimly. Then the corner of his mouth lifted in a grin. “But we have a secret weapon.”
“What’s that?”
Corbin furrowed his brows. “To be honest, I don't know. I was hoping saying it would make me think of something, but I’m coming up blank. Don't worry, though.” He reached out and hit the button to lower the ramp. “I’ll think about it on the way down.”
The wind tore through the cargo hold, threatening to pull him off his feet, but he sent a small jolt of power to his body and became rock solid with strength.
She smiled at him. The first real smile he had seen from her since they had been at Brast’s party. It filled him with a warmth he didn't know he had been missing. She leaned up and kissed him.
“That’s what I love about you, Corbin. Your never-ending optimism.”
He smiled back at her. “And my butt, right?”
She laughed. “And your butt.”
Corbin laughed with her, then using his gravity power, shot them out the back of the dropship and into a world of chaos.
27
Corbin held Seena tight as they plummeted through the air, the wind slipping past their skintight armor with little resistance. As soon as they had exited the ship, both Leela and Gert had formed their helmets so Corbin could no longer see Seena's face, but the falcon mask had a determined look about it, and he hoped he looked that confident to her.
Seeing the battle on Ren’s small tablet was nothing compared to witnessing the destruction firsthand. Everywhere Corbin looked, there was fighting or the burning remnants of a city ill-prepared for a full-scale invasion. It looked as though the military was holding their ground, but at a great cost in men and resources.
At first, Corbin was disoriented until he realized the satellite had been showing the battlefield from the opposite angle as their approach. Once he figured that out, he spotted Tis and her guards right away. Seena pointed just in case he had missed her.
“I see her,” he said through their comms. “I’m going to put us down right in front of her. We’re going to be moving pretty fast, but I’ll protect you from impact with my power.”
She touched his face with a gloved hand, and the falcon’s eyes softened for a second. “I know you will. I’ll try and talk to her, but you may need to keep those golems off my back while I do.”
“I have your back.” He shifted her weight in his arms. “Now hold on, this might be a little rough.”
For most of the journey through the air, they had just been falling, Corbin using his power only a little to line them up. Now that they were coming in hot, he began to feed more power into his b
ody and his gravity ability. He waited until they were only a hundred feet above the ground before feeding a large shot of power into reversing their fall.
His aim was true, and they smashed into the ground only thirty feet in front of Tis. His legs absorbed most of his fall since he switched his gravity ability to now focus on Seena. His legs flexed, and dirt exploded out from his feet. He stood and gently caught Seena's nearly weightless form, quickly withdrawing his power and dropping her to her feet.
Tis came to an abrupt stop, her hand raising and power gathering in her palm. Corbin was about to step in front of her to take the blast, but Seena was quicker and moved forward, her mask melting away so Tis could get a good look at her.
The glowing power flickered away, and Tis lowered her mask. The look on her face was a jumble of emotions Corbin couldn't even begin to decode, but he was a little more worried about the closing golems to think too long about what must be running through the woman’s head.
Now that he saw that Seena was out of immediate danger, he turned and fed power into his body, fortifying his already enhanced strength. The golems rushed for him, a few leaping, and the rest running with such speed that they tore divots from the earth with their clawed toes. Corbin was glad to see that the monsters were focusing on him and leaving Seena alone for the time being. That reinforced the idea that Tis was in full control of these things, or at least could direct them.
Sipping power from his well, Corbin changed the gravitational pull of the golem closest, one of the airbone ones, and it shot backward. It slammed into three of the golems behind it and crumbled to pebbles, along with one of the three it had impacted. He pulled the same trick on the next soaring golem, taking out a few more, but then they were on him and the true battle began.
Blasting a stone body away when it got hold of his arm caused a hole to open up in the press of bodies surrounding him, but it was quickly filled with more piling in behind it.