Malya shook her head and turned from the approaching enemies to the means of their arrival. The gate seemed solid; she could see no moving parts from this angle. Even the writhing and twisting of its lower systems seemed like a consequence of the gate’s function rather than a key to it. She cast around for anything that might be a point of weakness. Mr. Tomn leapt down and hovered just above the oily surface and searched frantically. They could all feel the Void Reaper bearing down on them.
One of the gray wisps shifted and curled around her cypher. A small, thin creature materialized behind him. Its white robe matched Harbonath’s armor, and its cruel scythe mirrored the one his relic bore. The thing seemed surprised to find Mr. Tomn there, but before the rabbitlike cypher could react, the grim imp swept its blade through his body.
Mr. Tomn only whimpered—Malya howled. The connection between them vanished in an instant, as if someone had turned off a faucet. Pain and weakness from the psychic backlash raced through her whole body. She focused long enough to see Mr. Tomn fall past the gate toward the cavern floor, his body fading as he went. From her left, she heard Harbonath laugh, almost cackle, and saw tendrils of black esper edged in gold swirling about him like dust. Cross was on his feet and running, but he would never reach them in time.
The superficial damage on the Void Reaper’s relic vanished. “Well done, my cypher,” he called to the imp. He moved more swiftly, and his voice had renewed strength. “Now, princess,” he shouted as he closed, scythe raised, “for you.”
Gunshots rang out, and Harbonath staggered. He turned slightly and a bullet coated in yellow esper caught his relic in the left side. The ribcage snapped closed to shield him from the blast, but the strike drove him off course.
Harker lowered his pistol. How he had crawled this far, or found the strength to raise the weapon—let alone summon an esper attack—she could not guess. He looked too pale to even still be conscious.
Caesar streaked in at the robed imp and clawed at it. It hissed and swung its scythe with little effect. Green healing esper rose around her instinctively, and she dove toward the pirate.
“The gate,” Harker called, so weak she could barely hear him. “Nothing else matters. The gate.”
She pulled up so sharply that Rook barely held on. He climbed up to her handlebars as she replied, “How?”
“The talons,” Harker said, weaker still. “They condense and transfer esper. Break them.”
“But you—”
“Can’t,” he said. “So you must.” His eyes flicked to the side, where Harbonath was back up and charging. “Only speed matters now, princess.”
She nodded once, tears back in her eyes, and fired her thrusters. Sedaris whipped around and shot forward like a bullet. Another glance showed her that the Void Reaper would reach the gate just an instant after she did, and she opened her throttle all the way. It was not enough, she could tell, and with the connection to Mr. Tomn lost, she had no more energy to give. A thick haze hung over the disk like morning mist, and she knew that at least some of the enemy would materialize in a few seconds. She deployed her blades, hoping to destroy one talon at least before he struck. She looked back and saw Harbonath moving faster than she would have thought possible, raising his scythe. Blood flowed from a wound on his head, but his smile betrayed only exultant joy as his scythe began to swing.
Rook rose and leapt from her handlebars toward Harbonath. With a speed only possible through esper, the cypher moved into the path of the scythe. Blue light wreathed his armored form, and then he seemed to collapse into himself. With a thunderclap of displaced air, Sebastian Cross stood in his cypher’s place. Malya barely had time to duck under his massive relic.
As she rose and looked behind, she saw the paladin’s head slightly bowed and his hands together in prayer. His relic had the Shattered Sword drawn up before it as if in salute. She heard the Void Reaper’s hiss an instant before his blade struck the great Knight. The scythe punched through the shielding around the mecha with ease. It struck the Shattered Sword and, for the briefest of seconds, hesitated. Then the Sword exploded apart into four distinct pieces. Two flew past Harbonath and lodged into Sedaris’s rear armor. The scythed pushed on and ripped through the relic’s heavy armor until it pierced the paladin within. It struck him just below the sternum and sank to the haft before it stopped. Cross made no sound or motion.
Harbonath roared in triumph. “Hah! The twice-Shattered Sword! Little good will it—” He stopped as he pulled on his weapon, but it did not budge. He pulled again, and then wrenched on it with all his relic’s might. “No! What is this?”
Sebastian Cross’s eyes opened, too slowly, and Malya could see their light going dim. He looked past his murderer to Malya. “Princess,” he said in his quiet, commanding voice, as if they stood in sunlight with all the world before them. “The gate.”
Malya drove Sedaris forward without another thought. The energy around her blade flickered weakly. Without Mr. Tomn, she felt like she had lost a lung, but she feared more that she would not be able to break the talons. A haze like that from which Harbonath had emerged had gathered over the disk and continued to grow. She was running out of time.
Then Caesar settled on Sedaris and squawked. A thought entered her mind, a point of failure in the machine’s stone. She angled down, and struck the first claw below where it held up the disk. The impact nearly threw her from the relic, and she had to struggle to keep control and get her speed back, but the machine shuddered. She swung around and saw a similar fault in the next tine. She sped up, hope flaring in her heart, and suddenly energy raced along her blade. This hit sheared cleanly through the stone, and through the next talon, and the next.
The whole disk shifted and began to slip. The conduits and connections below the gate began to whip like a wounded snake. She cut the last two supports, and arced up over the lip of the disk. The smoke above its surface began to form into a half dozen of the malevolent aliens, but inside the gate’s blackness, the distant army had lost its definition and its cohesion. Indistinct figures milled around and seemed to flee from her.
A wail rose through the chamber, thin and high and chilling. One of the newly arrived aliens, its face shrouded by a deep hood, spread esper wings and charged at her with a clipped shout and a burning sword. She twisted and dove again. The image within the abyss wavered as the Void Reaper kept screaming denials, and then cracks appeared across the disk. With a sickening tear, the surface split, the oily fluid drained away, and the abyssal hole in the world vanished.
Malya flew beneath the failing structure, guided by the most tenuous intuition. She saw brief movement, a flash of white fur against the slick black mechanisms, and reached down. Mr. Tomn raised a paw and caught her arm as she raced by. The connection returned, surging back as she fed him esper. She pulled up as they emerged into the dim light, and turned toward Cross. The disk slipped again behind them, and the whole gate machine collapsed. As it fell, so did Sebastian Cross. The Void Reaper’s scythe sprang suddenly free from the paladin’s body, which could only mean that his will no longer held it. His relic fell like a stone and smashed on the cavern floor. Even as this speed and distance, Malya could see that the Knight was dead.
Caesar squawked again. Malya glanced up and saw the angelic monsters diving at her. As she turned away, Malya saw movement on the cavern floor. Harker raised his pistol yet again. He fired once at her pursuers and then collapsed. Caesar whined piteously.
“Not both of them,” the princess swore though gritted teeth. “Not all of them. Not today.” She swung around and grounded next to the pirate. Mr. Tomn helped her hoist him up and drape him across the back of the relic’s saddle, wedged in place by the shards of the Shattered Sword sunk into her armor. With a kick and a roar, Sedaris rose again as the aliens came within range of their strange weapons. She dodged easily. Harbonath stood, desolate, over the wreckage of the gate. “Not today,” Malya shouted and raced from the cavern.
Chapter 26
&nbs
p; Origin Point
Kasaro To watched with mounting frustration as another wave of berserkers died among the paladins. “How much ammunition do they have left?”
The priestesses around him said nothing and kept their fearful, respectful distance.
How many berserkers did he have left? The thought struck him as odd the moment it entered his mind, and he could not recollect having asked that question before.
He summoned a priestess without looking. She approached no closer than the edge of his vision.
“Contact the ship. Tell them to prepare dahons, and get Rashinma To. I wish to speak to him about the beasts he has remaining.”
She bowed and hurried off.
He growled again, frustrated, as he watched the last of his warriors die or fall back into the blood-soaked forest of crystals. “Nozuki take them all,” he muttered. “We must—”
A wave of heat, like opening the door to a furnace, swept over him. It flowed from the cavern, and as he and the priestesses turned toward it, they all heard a soft wail drift from deep within the asteroid. The heat passed, and Kasaro To licked his fangs. The air tasted different but he could not say how. “What has—?”
A tall priestess convulsed as if an enormous hand had caught her in a crushing grip. She struggled to breathe for a second and then arched her back and rose two feet into the air as if lifted by her breastbone. A nimbus of red-black esper surrounded her, and the voice that issued from her mouth sounded like nothing in this universe.
“My servant,” the voice said mildly, echoing from the stone. The esper crystals around them vibrated to its strange intonations, and many of them instantly cracked.
Kasaro To dropped to one knee. For the first time in more cycles than he could remember, he felt afraid. He knew that voice. “I am here, O Endless Hunger.”
The voice of Nozuki, who had never spoken directly to him outside of the ritual chambers of the blessed temples, slithered around the jagged surface of the asteroid. “My servant. You have failed.”
Kasaro To felt sick, genuinely queasy for the first time since Azi had appeared to him. He looked up at the suspended priestess. “Great Nozuki, I beg you, no. I have not driven the paladins from this rock yet, but I—”
“You have failed,” his god repeated, each word falling like a stone. “The Knights of this galaxy have penetrated the inner chamber and prevented the Herald’s ritual from completing. You were to guard her, to stop them. You have failed.”
“Coiled One, no, I—”
“You contradict me?”
Kasaro almost said ‘no’ before he caught the word on his tongue. He swallowed. Sweat broke out all across his body. His arms began to tremble. “Great One, please understand. She insulted me—us. She denigrated you! She boasted so much of her great strength and the prowess of her people that I thought she could defend herself. We kept them from the chamber as best we could, but—”
“You lie.” Nozuki’s voice stayed mild, which made the indictment all the stronger. That cut through Kasaro as no weapon ever had, for he knew it was true. “You think I do not know all that has passed here, all that you have done and thought?”
“She was weak!” he shouted desperately. “She was weak and unworthy of you. She deserved destruction if she could not win with her own strength.”
“Her worth is not for you to judge. Your place is not to know my mind or to claim your desires as my will. Your place is to do as I command. You have failed.”
Instinctively, Kasaro To tried to rise. He reached for the priestess as if he could clutch his god’s hand and beg still more. The possessed priestess moved with divine swiftness, however, and touched a fingertip lightly to the Relic Knight’s brow. Every nerve in Kasaro’s body seemed to catch fire. He howled in agony and writhed away from the fingertip. His muscles clenched as if trying to rip free from his bones. The pain passed in a few seconds, but his body continued to shudder and spasm.
“You must atone,” Nozuki said a moment later, when Kasaro To could again process the words. “And you shall. There is yet value in this lonely, forsaken place, so here you will remain. You will drive the paladins from this rock, as you always should have done. You will secure the asteroid for our allies and guard it, as you always should have done.” The Coiled God’s voice dropped impossibly deep so that it vibrated through every organ in Kasaro’s battered body. “And you will not fail me again.”
The priestess collapsed in a heap beside the Knight, gasping for air. They lay together on the powdered crystals and cracked stone, twitching. Kasaro To recovered first and struggled to his feet. Blood seeped from a dozen cuts under and around his armor, and leaked from his ears and mouth. He spit and wiped his lips clean.
Azi appeared on his shoulder and fed him healing esper. Kasaro felt a few bones knitting back together. He desperately wanted to kick the unconscious priestess, still shaking on the ground before him. It would help nothing, he knew, and held back since Nozuki would be watching. He struck the cave mouth with his tetsubo instead, cracking the stone further, before leveling the weapon at the terrified priestesses watching him.
“One of you get me the ship. Now. Our god has commanded, and we obey.”
* * *
Malya flew as fast as she dared, glancing back every few seconds to see that Harker’s comatose form remained wedged in place. Each time, she saw that Mr. Tomn and Caesar had a firm grip on the fallen pirate. Each time, she thought he looked worse. She wondered if she would know if he died. She thought so, since she reckoned that Caesar would vanish with his Knight’s life. It occurred to her only when she extended Sedaris’s blades to cut down a trio of noh warriors near the tunnel’s mouth that she did not know that for sure. It seemed logical, but logic, she reflected, had been conspicuously absent lately.
She soared into the brightness of open air and climbed through the thin atmosphere with undisguised relief. She had barely noticed the claustrophobia of the tunnels and caves until it was gone. She banked quickly, dropped, and flew low over the crystals toward the landing zones. The blocky, battered shapes of the assault shuttles loomed up. She rose a bit higher so as not to surprise any twitchy paladins with pulse rifles.
Almost at once she saw Betty waving. The landing zones were a true, grisly horror; bodies from both sides lay across the crystals. Blood shimmered on the rocks. Malya saw Jeanne and a junior paladin jogging over toward Betty and the clear space beside the pit chief. All of them wore field dressings, the junior paladin with his right hand bound into a fingerless mass of dirty cloth. Malya set down with limited grace and discovered that she had started to cry again.
Everyone looked exhausted. “What happened?” Betty asked and seemed to realize the question’s inadequacy almost instantly.
Malya shook her head. “Later. I’ll tell you everything later. First thing first, we need a medic for Captain Harker.”
The junior paladin nodded and touched a comm in his ear.
“Second thing is that we succeeded. The device is destroyed, and whatever those bastards were trying to do failed.”
“What was it?” Jeanne asked. She glanced around, clearly looking for someone. She finally fixed on the racer Knight with a grim expression. “What were they trying to do?”
“They had set up some kind of, of gate, like a direct pipeline to the abyss. They were trying to bring through an army of those bitter angels.”
“There are more of them?” Betty looked stricken. “A few showed up here in the last attack, some troopers and a weird construct. They vanished when the last noh died, but I don’t think we killed more than two of them.” She swallowed hard, and her normally unflappable calm looked close to coming apart. “They almost killed Lug. Twice.”
“Is he—?”
“He’s okay,” Jeanne cut in. Now that she looked more closely, Malya could see the young Paragon’s nerve dissolving almost before her eyes. She was a Peer of the Shattered Sword, however, and kept focused. “You stopped them, though.”
Ma
lya nodded. “And destroyed their gate, or at least damaged it enough that they’ll get no use from it for a good long time.”
“You’ve done better than that,” came a voice from Jeanne’s feet. Her lion cypher Gallant bounded from around her legs and leapt onto Sedaris’s front panel. “We could feel the shift here. The esper wave rolled over the entire asteroid.”
“Is that what that was?” Mr. Tomn asked. “We were a bit busy at the time.”
Gallant nodded. “Undoubtedly. Feel the flows.”
Mr. Tomn closed his eyes and swayed ever so slightly, like a reed in a river. His eyes snapped back open a second later and the biggest grin split his face. “He’s right. He’s right! The flows have shifted. It must have been backlash from breaking the tines and collapsing the disk. They can’t channel esper into the device properly anymore, even if they can repair it.” He bounced again and again. “It worked! We did it!” Malya’s smile at her cypher faded as she looked back at Jeanne’s fixed expression.
“And Lord Cross?” Jeanne asked in a soft, barely controlled voice.
Mr. Tomn stopped bouncing and looked instantly chagrined.
“He—” Malya’s voice failed her. She saw two paladin medics and the green-haired Purifier approaching at the run. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and started again. “He—He fell. Saving me. Somehow he—Rook was with me, while Sebastian fought another Relic Knight. He called himself Harbonath, the Void Reaper. He broke free from Cross and would have caught me before I could get to the disk.”
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