Andrea Cort 03: War of the Marionettes

by Castro, Adam-Troy

language as a piece as they struggled to unite the climatic community into a force capable of getting Ambassador Kroy to stand down Skye only knew a few of the languages they spoke but had no difficulty following the gist all the other embassies hurt too much from their own losses in the last couple of days to worry over much about Kroy to military action if anything their responses wreaked of tacit approval of the very sort that would evaporate into thin air and become angry condom nations once the smoke cleared and the casualties could be counted they could afford to be hardliners when it came to inflicting their judgement on humanity it was the only way they’d ever wash away their own guilt in the meantime she could feel the imminence of the Villani advance the brown semicircle that marked the conjunction of desert and sea with Nureyev at its midpoint was now completely bounded by an Ocean of black the hundreds of thousands perhaps even millions of lonny who had advanced that far and no farther in preparation for the final charge until a minute or so ago the leading edge of their lines had been as clearly defined as any boundary Skye had ever seen so distinct that the Villani might have been some black liquid contained by invisible glass but now the glass had sprung a hundred pinpoint leaks and rivulets were pouring through the holes the front line looked ragged and diffuse as uncounted vani leaders by some criterion that only Avani could know advanced a few great strides beyond the others and stood ahead of the others twirling their whips in what could be the last stirring call to battle what were they saying kill them all and what of the dance pilgrims who had left their doomed city on mass and now stood gathered around it in a smaller semicircle that seemed a pathetic parody of the superior enemy they were all dancing to their altered limbs and prosthetic whips waving above their heads in a performance that was as much ballet as the one the crisis had interrupted what were they saying to these creatures who’s right they had sacrificed so hard to join we forgive you or do your worst or remember what we were to you there is still time to turn back it could even be something alien to human experience something that only the Villani would understand that only human beings altered to approximate Fulani could possibly say to them and then it happened like the floodwaters flowing downstream upon the collapse of the dam the Villani surged forward their shared screams so loud that they rumbled like thunder she screamed no no no and hammered the side of the skimmer with her fist as the Black Tide advanced seeking blood meanwhile deep underground Fox’s screams drowned beneath a torrent of even angrier sounds hundreds of vani lost in agony and rage as open warfare erupted among them it was the same sound I’d heard the make on the night of the aborted ballet when the most sacred Rite of their species cannibalized itself but it was worse now we were in a dark enclosed space now and the sounds of bloodshed erupting among the Villani around us could only echo against the walls and build I only understood it when of lonnie head slammed through the grid work a few body lengths to my right it’s shattered titan breaking up into smaller pieces on impact with the floor one spinning shard embedded itself in my calf and I fell to my knees in sudden agony as a thousand other fragments pelted every exposed inch of me more screams joined the chorus I heard among them the Villani egg that had been having such a perverse time testing out its human voice the amplified voices of ricard and Liezel fain and cheetah Pok who was somewhat nearby

  unable to shield herself from the debris raining down from above uncertain where to run torn between helping cheetah park and going after fox or just saying to hell with it and doing whatever I could to help myself I spent a heartbeat frozen by the familiar seductive call of despair the one that had always told me there was no hope and trying and that I should just drop and let the chaos swallow me whole then the boy Cory came after me again his whips lashed tight around my midsection yanking me off my feet and slamming me hard against the ground it was the kind of impact that reminds you that you’re made out of meat my ribs flared and my insides turned to jelly and I lost all the air I had I gasped for breath but was denied it by another whip lashing shut around my throat Cory’s face appeared above mine his actual expression was lost in shadow the outline of his face backlit in green but he was snuffling hysterical no longer the happy little idiot lost in whatever derangement his savage mind had constructed for him I don’t know whether it was because I’d hit him before or because his private hell was collapsing but either way his wails were bereft and

  uncompromising bone I couldn’t even get my fingers around it at all by the time I gave up on that and went for his face instead with hands curled into claws there was no strength in them the touch of my fingers to his cheeks was at worst a mild rebuke so completely without force that my own imminent murder might have been nothing more than a breach of etiquette that deserved no more than a mild scolding then some hot splattered against my face something that stung my eyes and burned my tongue I coughed on blood not my own saw another pair of whips larger than any of the boys sawing back and forth between us like a blade dicing meat they had both impaled the boy in the middle of his back and ripped him apart like a bag of blood the human bone an inhuman machinery that gave him form cracking apart and flying in multiple directions some of the things that landed on me must have been the parts he was born with others must have been the enhancements his parents put in place at the eggs behest they felt like the machines they were but no less horrible as shrapnel the last thing I saw was his head still nothing more than a black oval rimmed with green convulsing less than an arm’s length above my own I squeezed my eyes shut to avoid seeing what came next and spared myself the sight of that coming apart - but nothing protected me from the sound his grip on me loosened allowing me a desperate ragged breath before the whips that had just torn the boy apart came from me my neck jerked to one side almost cracking as I was hoisted aloft with a grip almost as heedless of human frailty as the one that had taken me from the ruins of the feign lab days ago again I was certain that I had heart beats to live and again there was part of me that welcomed that but then another whip curled under me to support my back the pressure around my ribs eased and I was able to focus that long last on what was happening it didn’t help the darkness the uncertain light and the chaos of thousands of Lonny tearing each other to pieces rendered full comprehension impossible also the perspective seemed crazed the straight lines of the grid were now bent or shattered in parts collapsed entirely convulsing Villani or Vani parts lay atop it writhing in ways that hurt my eyes all around me hundreds of them fought one another slicing each other to pieces with great swipes of their limbs the shrapnel that had once been living creatures flew in all directions in waves rendering the madness even harder to parse the Villani carrying me strode over the remains of the grid each 30

  meter step and exercise in avoiding the many dangers of the open warfare in the chamber around us all around us hundreds or thousands of its kind were killing each other or dying I even caught a glimpse of one standing in the middle of everything as if it had no idea what to do starting to tear it itself ripping out two of its whips before a slash from another Vani nearby finished the job it had rendered itself too crippled to complete a phalanx of other Vlade that had fallen into place around us fought off others trying to get to me fell in pieces and were replaced by more allies who felt just as quickly the screams were beyond deafening the shifting light and fluid whip movements too disorienting to follow I didn’t have time to think about the implications but I was able to remember that I wasn’t the only one in danger here I screamed tarah just Park Ave Lonnie had loomed nearby affording me a convex reflection of my own face in green the only recognizable parts of me were my eyes which looked half crazed everything below them looked glistening and raw then the head struck by something I couldn’t see exploded the debris was more powder than liquid stinging my eyes and making me feel like I’d just been sandblasted I covered my eyes with my hands coughed out a cloud of grit and shouted again I’m not leaving them do you understand me I’m not leaving them the Villani carrying me screamed and released me it must have been throwing me even as it died dow
n by an attack by behind I fell not down but up performing an arc through a surreal landscape of slashing shadows understanding none of it only the moment of weightlessness told me when I had reached the highest point in my trajectory and was once again plummeting toward a bone-shattering impact

  Skye from Skye’s vantage point above the battlefield it was like the advancing Villani had just listened to her cry of denial their advanced hiccuped and then throbbed the first line of leviathans turning against those behind them and driving them back with great savage swipes of their whips they were all dead a second later struck down by superior numbers but even as that second group stepped over the sectioned bodies of the first they also shuddered turned around and faced the wave behind them with another lunatic suicidal attack the vast Legion of flan II began to boil clouds of what looked like black smoke but were actually kite inist debris puffing above them in angry Thunder heads it was the invading force tearing itself to pieces in a sudden incomprehensible orgy of self slaughter one line at a time

  bill goth made a choking noise what are they doing I don’t know it looks like some of them are trying to stop it that doesn’t make sense I don’t claim to understand it there’s and then all the strength went out of her legs at once there was an appalling moment of disorientation followed by an equal amount of relief and joy has two sets of experiences long kept apart and refused the opportunity to meld reconciled she remained the woman in the rear gall skimmer high above the battleground outside

  Nureyev but she was also the man in absolute

  darkness far below ground listening to the rising sounds of chaos as they rose through the earth she was Skye and she was Ocean and she was the gestalt entity known as the Porrinyards when Skye spoke again it was in a different voice one an increment more resonant than the one she’d been using before I think Andrey has done something meanwhile I thought I was dead I mean that literally as in I didn’t think I was about to die I thought I already had the sudden shift in trajectory the force that seized all my forward momentum and directed it somewhere else was that abrupt that painful it turned out the lights and sent me plummeting into darkness the realization that I was still hurting too much to be dead came a second later followed by understanding the Villani protecting me had passed me like a ball in some child’s game to another capable of protecting me I don’t know how far I’d been thrown or how many hostiles had tried to intercept me in flight but the catch had left a lot to be desired my new bodyguard might have been off-balance and might have had only limited experience with the fragility of human beings but the sudden stop had come uncomfortably close to breaking my neck I didn’t know whether I’d be able to survive many more of those but another black thing darker than the shadows around it cut this latest vlog need own and I fell again only to be jerked around again as I was picked up by another something slammed into us a rock wall crumbled something inhuman screamed next to my ear and died in mid sound I heard Fox yelling somewhere in the middle of that incomprehensible wall of sound but could not tell whether she was

  crying out in terror or in agony I shouted for her but did not know whether she heard me the point of a whip slashing through my latest protectors defences cut my calf open I was too overwhelmed by sensory overload to do more than noted another Vlade died within arm’s reach I coughed out a mouthful of chitin dust and caught a glimpse of something that seemed terribly wrong a black wound in the air above us incremental II darker than the chaos that surrounded us I only recognized it as a tunnel leading upward when the Villani carrying me plunged into it so desperate to escape the madness below that it miscalculated and scraped it’s big black head against the walls the tiny avalanche of debris against my cheeks could have been stone or chitin I looked down at the now almost indistinguishable tunnel opening inside eclipsed by dozens of whips closing the gap we were being chased Skye the Vlade lines surrounding nuri have surged again in a sudden massive pulse proving that even the sudden resistance by so many of their number would not be enough to hold back the many who still wanted to advance thousands scrambled over the piles dead and began to race across the emptiness in that manic spinning wheel gate that would eat up the distance between them and the city in minutes but even they advanced less than a kilometer before half the Villani out in front spun in place and once again began hacking at the armies behind them Skye was lost between that and the sensation of being Ocean as well failing him trapped in a cramped little alcove with Pikeville Ania as the sounds of battle rose from the darkness below she heard Villa Nia say what’s happening and was part of Ocean when he told her he didn’t know pill goth noted the obvious whatever your counselors done it’s not

  enough they’re still advancing true and if they get any farther Kroy will order the attack and this will all be for nothing ambassador her path clearly resented being distracted from his furious negotiations what I require your permission to seize control of this vehicle and risk all our lives in a desperate and probably futile gesture her paths acquiescence was signaled by nothing more demonstrative than a mild lessening of the taut angle of his head granted rear Gong eyes do not widen or bug out at moments of dismaying surprise but pill goth managed to convey the general sentiments anyway what Skyee pushed past him and set herself down at the control panel disabling the auto and establishing a direct touch linked to her own mental commands she was still setting the vehicles local graph to override the planetary when she became aware of pill goth hovering beside her with something like horror doesn’t her path need you to continue seeking a diplomatic solution I’m sure he does he’ll goths said but I’m still concerned I don’t blame you do you have any idea what you’re doing probably not there was a lurch as the skimmer surrendered control Skye let the skimmer wobble back and forth in flight as it calibrated itself to her command and then without confirming the accuracy of the connection sent it into a screaming vertical dive corrected by the vehicles local grav their perspective on the embattled plane that surrounded Nureyev transformed the done landscape into a vast vertical wall no longer below them but dead ahead any sense of acceleration was corrected by the local graph but the terror remained the same even if the experience was more like racing at full speed toward a towering and not plummeting at terminal velocity toward the ground Skye performed a barrel roll and pulled away at the last second passenger cabin oriented toward the ground which was now neither flood nor wall but low ceiling they were only about 50 meters above the desert when she leveled out well below safe cruising altitude for any vehicle that wanted to remain beyond the reach of angry leaping Villani some would not have had to leap but merely reach their whips as high above their heads as they could to present a danger but Skye was not flying over them but less than 50 meters ahead of their lines passing over the embattled landscape at multiple times the speed of sound it was not the kind of flying Skye the singlet could have accomplished it required all their shared powers of the pouring yard Gestalt and pushed their limits even so but even ten more Minds added to the whole would not have made managing the trick any easier she passed the farthest ends of their line and had performed a loop to fly the same course only in the opposite direction this time she flew with the passenger cabin oriented toward the advancing lines and was not pleased to note that while most of the advancing Villani had backed off a few paces to avoid being run down by the crazy pilot there was still nothing about their hesitancy that could be taken as assurance they wouldn’t work up the nerve for another advance I’m going to have to cut the next pass even closer Skyee said not just hold them at bay but drive them back there was no sense of movement inside the skimmers local graph but that did not stop Pihl goth from holding on for dear life what makes you think they’ll have any problem with a suicide rush to force a crash what part of desperate did you fail to understand another loop Skye swept the ground a missile one twitch away from disintegrating on impact the Villani visible over the side became a gray black blur terrifyingly close it was impossible to focus on any one of them to determine whether it was ch
arging forward or holding itself back a single Villani bull stepped into the space a few hundred meters ahead blocking her way with its body she directed the skimmer to rise clearing its outstretched whips by a hair before descending to sweep the ground again on its other side her path called over ambassador Croix wants to talk to you the skimmer shuddered a Skye sheared through a half-dozen Villani whips extended Skyeward in a vain attempt to drive her away they didn’t so much break off as disintegrate the shrapnel forming a peppery cloud that blackened the ionic field before disappearing in the distance behind them I’m a little busy right now take a message I think you can imagine the message another loop at the end of the flan Uihlein and Skye ascended enough to gain a glimpse of the field from altitude her interference had disrupted the Fulani advance but not fatally though thousands had fallen back or frozen in indecision many hundreds more had not been deterred and had simply waited for her to pass before advancing beyond her flight path one intrepid individual was already hundreds of Fulani paces beyond the others 000 of the way to Nureyev and there were dozens of others who had advanced nearly as far this was like trying to catch a gout of rushing water with two cupped hands she deformed the stream but the flood was still unstoppable even the increasing chaos among the Villani horde the thousands stopping in mid-stride and either turning on their neighbors or lowering themselves to the ground like beings ashamed of acts committed during a violent dream was not going to be enough to prevent either the massacre of every dance pilgrim in noria v’ or the slaughter Freud would commit to stop it a fleet of skimmers sweeping the dirt between the hostile Vani and their intended destination might not have been enough the Horde was still going to reach Nureyev he is quite insistent her path said Skye could only dive and sweep the field again targeting the Villani who did vance the furthest aware even as she did so that her delaying action amounted to trying to catch a torrent in a teacup patch him in Kreutz coarse voice raked at her ears I appreciate what you’re trying to do bondsman but it’s not working in a second we’re going to have to start bombing whether you’re clear or not the skimmers shuddered and almost ate dirt as an angry slash from one of the advancing Villani almost knocked it out of the Skye listen to your analysts ambassador listen to Hammersmith in particular I’m sure he’s telling you that most of them are starting to turn back a pause which Skyee spent looping around for another pass at the Villani that had tried to crash her it was just leaping out of the way and receding in the distance behind them by the time Croix dritt earned most of them isn’t enough we can’t let even one of those monsters reach Nureyev I know that sir which is why hard ascent I’m not asking you to stand down I’m just hard descent asking you to be something other than a machine I’m asking you to another shudder another cloud of black powder as Skye clicked of lani leaping into the air to grab for them realize that you have alternatives to war you only need to 10 seconds WASC i looped around again to drive back another advancing line with an aggressive dive show enough faith in what’s happening to by us the one thing we seem to need I’m the skimmer seemed to buckle all at once a Skye and the two rear gulf found themselves enclosed in a cage of thin black bars piercing the cockpit on all four sides it was of lonny timing it sleep with impossible grace grasping hold of the hurtling skimmer and climbing aboard and the instant Skye slowed down for a vase of action for just an instant it towered over them one whip stabbing downward Skye rolled with a violence that snapped all six of the whips piercing the fuselage the lone Loni went flying she peeled away and the hitch-hiker became a hurtling cannonball its limbs flailing helplessly as it bowled into the others in its path kroy’s voice returned what do you suggest a wall of fire Skye said meanwhile the tunnel walls cut us off from the dim light we’d suffered in the chamber below and rendered following the underground battle impossible I experienced it as a series of violent jerks as the various Villani carrying me either advanced or fell back under the assault of others in the tunnel ahead blood and chitin is grit billowed at me in waves I cried out for Fox and imagined I heard her answering shouts echoing somewhere in the labyrinth behind me I shouted for Ocean instead and at one point thought I heard his beautiful voice shouting something off to my right but whatever he said was cut off by the thrash of shattering whips and the sudden agony of impact as I was dropped and slammed into a vertical rock wall whatever caught me retreated at a rate that amounted to freefall before rising again nothing happened I could understand until an eternity later when I suddenly realized I could see constellations above not that I’d really held on to any idea of the time of day but our emergence in tonight’s side stunned the shit out of me I would have guessed early morning the Villani carrying me led four others who had emerged from the warren at high speed they all plunged into the forest towering over it as their 30 meter strides took us farther and farther away from the feign factory I coughed the fresh air hurting lungs that had breathed in too much dust too much grit too much of the stench of blood one good thing the falling away of the tunnel walls lessened the assault of white noise enough for Oceans cries to get through I turned around as best I could turn around in my flaw knees grip and was able to make out that he was being carried by another one just as pock villain iya Tara Fox and the terribly altered cheetah pock were being carried I’m not somebody who feels happiness easily but my heart left at the sight of him I yelled are you all right better than all right the links working again and Skye like us up to her armpits in shit the trees passed by in a blur the night obscured too much even for eyes that had grown accustomed to darkness but I could tell that an army of other Vlade continued to follow us and some of them continued to do battle in our wake but I didn’t see the depth of the trouble we were still in until the lani carrying us burst into the clearing containing the wreckage of the Thane encampment and were met by four others approaching from the other direction Skye when the explosions began Skye was still on the wrong side of the flames Kreutz fleet of bombers following the plan she’d suggested and that he’d relayed descended with all the fury of vengeful angels and drew a line of white-hot fire across Philon sands the bursts were like glimpses inside the heart of hell so concentrated that each merged with the next all going off at once they drew a literal line in the sand radiating a heat that had to be painful even for the many Villani who had yet to approach within half a kilometer of the fire line the handful that were closer the closest only a hundred meters from the closest of the blasts were slammed back by the shock wave most of them would be too dazed to continue the thousands of Lani behind them at least those still determined to press on paused in their relentless advance long enough to consider just how much they wanted to advance into the Holocaust they could all see burning before them many of those that stopped either turned back or began to fight against the ones behind them the corpses began to accumulate by the thousands but it was a slaughter of lonny committed by Villani humans had only gouged a fence line in the dirt the moment had been cut too close for Skyee to pilot her path skimmer out of the line of fire her dedicated harassment of the Villani leading the charge slowed the advance enough for the Bombers to strike on unoccupied land but she now needed to keep up the interference until the absolute moment the explosions began flying barely 10 meters over the plane parallel to the line of explosions and in the same direction the Bombers flew as they peppered the ground she experienced the assault as a terrible deafening drumbeat growing unbearable in the air behind her she felt a wave of blast furnace heat that would have seared her lungs to ash had the skimmer been only a few vehicle lengths back and engulfed by the worst of the flames as the Bombers moved far faster than the skimmer there was no possibility of outdistancing the blast but she took that fraction of a second warning for all it was worth and banked the vehicle a hard right to position its fuselage between its passengers and the radiant heat the grass became a brown blur speeding by to starboard a broiling wind driving dust and debris past them at the moment the worst of the shockwave hit the world spun and Skye lost control just as the bombers descend
it again to draw a second line of white fire just behind the first the world spun