The Bearer's Burden (Phantom Pact Book 1)

by Chad Queen

  “But we can’t. We’ve come so far,” pleaded Jace.

  Elon shook her head. “Don’t you get it? The Foundation team is dead. There’s no way we can take out the Thread now. We need to leave and warn—”

  “Warn who?” Jace cut in. “Carlon is probably dead, and we already know what side the king is on. We’re all that’s left.”

  “What do you propose we do then?” asked Elon.

  Jace paused a moment, watching the Skex as they filed into the entrance of the Nexus. “I say we find out what these Skex are up to. I would be surprised if there aren’t more inside. My guess is the Wraiths are hoarding them here for something big.”

  “You don’t think they are going to take Rynth, do you?” said Ashlyn.

  Jace nodded. “What else could it be?”

  Ashlyn just shook her head. How could her father let this happen?

  Elon rubbed her chin, considering the theory. “Assuming that’s correct, if we were to move this bomb into the center of the Nexus, where they are stockpiling these creatures…”

  Ashlyn finished her sentence. “We could take them all out in one go.”

  Jace frowned. “What about the Thread?”

  “Jace, the Wraiths have the railbuses locked down. We may not be able to attack the Thread, but we may be able to save Rynth,” said Elon.

  Jace looked at the orb he had set down near his feet.

  Of course, thought Ashlyn. She put her hand on his shoulder. “We can’t save them all, Jace. I’m sorry.”

  “I know,” Jace said, nodding slowly. He sighed, picking up the orb and returning to the cart. The Skex clustered around them and began to move once more.

  They crossed the threshold and marched into the heart of the Nexus. They stayed close to its outer perimeter, which, she discovered, spiraled upward, revealing floor after floor of inert Skex.

  They came to an abrupt stop as the ramp ended. Ashlyn, exhausted, was thankful that they had the Skex to move the heavy cart, or they may not have made it to the top. On the last floor, strangely, there were no Skex present. Instead there sat what looked like an oversized railbus in the center of the room. It didn’t quite look like any Ashlyn had ever seen. It had sleek flanges on each side, like the wings of a bird. On its rear was a large copper-colored cylinder with four smaller flanges mounted around it.

  Jace bounded from the cart. “It’s really here.”

  “A railbus?” asked Ashlyn, confused. “But where’s the track?”

  Jace began feeling along the side of the railbus, as if searching for something. His hand met a small black strip, and a door swung up in a vertical arc, revealing the interior.

  Jace shook his head, smiling. He pulled out his codex and flipped to a page near the end. He held it up, tapping on a drawing that looked just like the railbus before them. “Not a railbus. It’s a starship.”

  “Wait. A what?” Ashlyn pulled the book toward her. The sketch in the book looked almost identical to the machine before her. Jace grinned, snapping the book shut and tucking it back under his arm as the hurried to the door of the ship. The ship resembled the Ancient-made train cars, including the smooth metal-plated door. She watched as Jace took a deep breath, held it, and pulled the handle. The door slid open, and he hurried inside.

  Ashlyn looked to Elon, who shrugged. Ashlyn pushed Elon into the ship. The inside was quiet, and the air was musty from years of lying derelict. The ship was spacious, possessing what looked like a front bridge, crew quarters, and a sizable loading bay in the back. They could see Jace darting from room to room, scribbling down notes and diagrams in his codex.

  “Jace, we’re supposed to blow this place up,” Elon reminded him.

  “I know, I know. But! But maybe we don’t,” he said, continuing his exploration of the ship’s interior.

  “What are you looking for?” Ashlyn asked.

  “I don’t know. An artifact, a record of some sort. They had to have left us something.”

  Ashlyn set her hand on his shoulder. “Jace, I know you’ve spent your life looking for this. But the entire city is at stake here. If we detonate now, we can take out this army. We can’t miss this chance.”

  Jace slumped against the wall, dejected.

  Elon wheeled toward him. “Let’s get the cart into position.”

  The ship clicked, and the lights sprang to life. Alien characters scrolled across the panels before them.

  “What did you do?” asked Ashlyn.

  Jace shook his head.

  A large panel flickered and lit up, revealing a familiar face.

  Ashlyn stumbled back and gasped. “I don’t believe it.”

  41

  Mission

  The war we waged with the Wraiths…I take no joy in our victory. The Wraiths, they are like me in many ways. But they cherish themselves above all. And I…I cherish you.

  —From The Book of the Traveler

  Cade began his descent into the Thread’s core, his new burden already settling upon him.

  He came to a doorway and heard activity within the room. He pressed up close against the wall and peered into the doorway. Within, Skex scurried about, hauling metal chests from the transport car of a railbus.

  A hulking Skex came lumbering down the hall next to him. Cade encoded to tungsten and raised his fist. The Skex ignored him and continued into the room, joining the others who were unloading the car. Not even one gave any indication they were aware of or cared about his presence.

  He took a cautious step forward, but the Skex remained unconcerned, instead focused on their work. Cade, still on guard, made his way to one of the chests stacked against the far wall. Opening it, he saw hundreds of large packaged rolls of chipcoins.

  They must somehow be using them for the Ascension Drive. That explained why the Chalician banks were so anxious to cycle out the old currency.

  Cade placed as many of the rolls as he could carry into his pack. He slung it onto his back, the added weight already straining against his shoulder. He hoped he didn’t have far to go.

  Cade left the room, keeping a wary eye on the workers until they were out of sight. He hurried down the adjacent passageway, where he discovered a large door. To the right was a smooth black panel, identical to the ones Eos had used to enter the other rooms.

  Cade checked the ammunition cylinder on his caster. Empty. He checked his bandolier. All that remained was the newly forged shell Jalek had given him back in Solak. Cade pulled the shell from the belt. He hesitated, turning the shell over in his fingers, and slid it into the cylinder.

  One shot left.

  He chuckled, shaking his head. It was like a scene from the pulp novels he read as a kid.

  He snapped the cylinder into place and opened the door.

  Deep in the center of the large room was the beam of the Thread itself, surging into the earth. It was contained by a dark shield that dulled the overpowering light emanating from the beam. The whole room vibrated from the immense power flowing through it.

  All was not well in the room. There were Acolytes, shouting and running back and forth between the different consoles around the room. Circled around the outer perimeter of the room, Cade saw over a dozen Wraiths suspended in strange pods. He watched them rocket skyward, one after the other.

  Leaning over one of the consoles was the Wraith Cade had talked to earlier.

  Despite all the commotion and the hum of the Thread, the Wraith wheeled around when Cade entered, as if sensing his arrival.

  “I should have given you more credit.” His face looked different than it had earlier. Annoyance? He turned and gestured to the group of Acolytes, who had stopped what they were doing.

  “Take care of him,” he barked as he turned away, taking out Eos as he approached the Thread.

  The Acolytes obeyed without hesitation. Cade could tell these Acolytes were not trained for combat. But they were not timid. The first one rushed him and encoded with what Cade figured was lead and diamond. The man threw himself on Ca
de, hoping to pin him. Cade noted these Acolytes, like the Skex, were prone to self-sacrifice. He could only guess that it was part of the reconditioning.

  Cade encoded to aluminum and sidestepped the leaping man, who crashed onto the floor with a loud thud. Cade triple encoded with diamond, tungsten, and lead and stomped on the man as he moved to get up. Not an honorable counterattack, but honor required more time than he had.

  He looked up and saw an Acolyte now had a caster leveled at him. A distraction. He had been overconfident.

  He heard the familiar crack of the caster.

  He flared aluminum for speed, sidestepped, and charged the gunman. He plowed into him at full sprint and crushed him with a metal fist. The bullet did not change its course. They were using the dummy rounds.

  Cade ducked behind a column just as another round whizzed by. Even in the bedlam unfolding around him, he could hear music playing. It only took a split second for him to understand it came from the Acolytes he had dispatched. He spoke the words, sealing even more Pacts. It was too many, but he needed their power, and he didn’t plan on living much longer anyway.

  He was now encoding to almost every ring on his finger. Cade became a blur of destruction. The remaining Acolytes were cut down one after another until only the last Acolyte remained. The man stood his ground. He could see the man’s jaw set, his teeth grinding in the same way he had seen the other Acolytes do. There was something in his eyes…resolve? Pity? Cade couldn’t tell.

  Cade picked up the strange caster from the incapacitated Acolyte that lay before him. He fired, and the man disintegrated into nothing.

  Disintegrated.

  Of course. Why didn’t I notice it earlier?

  He spoke the words once more, sealing another Pact. He would need all the help he could get.

  The Wraith finished with its work at the console. “That’s enough,” it said, its lips twisted and curled into an unnatural sneer. “Everything is ready to begin. But for you it ends.”

  Cade leveled his caster, but the Wraith was on him faster than should have been possible. Cade had started encoding tungsten when a blow to his midsection sent him hurtling across the room.

  He hit the far wall, winded but alive. Before he could gather his bearings, the Wraith was there, this time smashing his fist into Cade’s face. Cade had fully encoded tungsten, but his phantoms were struggling to maintain the encoding with this much abuse.

  “This is not hard for me…Elegy.” Another strike, the force of which sent him flying once again, denting the solid metal wall behind him. “I can keep doing this.” Before Cade could recover, the Wraith grabbed Cade and slammed him into the ground. “But can you? Your precious phantoms will fail you.”

  It was right. He couldn’t keep this up for long. Even with phantoms of the Acolytes, this type of sustained punishment would drain him within minutes. He had to do something.

  The pack.

  He reached. A monotone voice sounded in his head: Connection established.

  The Wraith took a step back, hesitating, as if it could sense what he was doing. It was brief, but the reprieve gave him precious moments to recover.

  Another strike followed, but Cade was ready. His lead encoding was strong, and Cade didn’t budge. Instead he sent his own diamond-assisted fist to the Wraith, sending it skidding backward across the metal floor, sparks flying from the friction.

  The Wraith stood, smiling. “You can’t stop the collection of Rynth. It’s already begun.”

  Rynth. Hells.

  Cade encoded diamond and aluminum and dashed over to his caster, snatching it up and turned to level it at the Wraith.

  Cade remembered the battlefield from his dream. The Wraith had crumpled onto the ground. Caster shells always disintegrated their target.

  He encoded to the marbled gold ring of Rynthium, and the Veris scattered. In the void before him, he saw a smoky white light directly before him. His caster. It was pointed at…nothing. But above where the Wraith should have been hovered an intricate creature, woven from twisted wisps of fine silver light.

  The creature of living light, the Wraith, sensed its detection, and shrieked as it lunged at him.

  He did not hesitate. He raised the white light in his hand, the caster Eos had called EonCull, which bore his last shell. He prepared his ritual for the sacred shell that had been forged.

  Dol Requiem. Coda Grandmaster. Brother.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Light poured out of the creature as the wisps unraveled into a thousand strands of knotted light. It became so bright Cade had to break the encoding.

  Before him, the Wraith lay on the ground. Parts of it began to grow black, like it had been dipped in tar, and the floor around it seemed to disappear into darkness.

  It looked at Cade with its dark eyes and spoke. “When we kill you…we know…you will make it to the Ascent.” The Wraith’s degeneration continued, and his voice came slowly. “But when we are killed…there is no salvation for us.” The encroaching darkness consumed the Wraith, and it was no more.

  “You don’t deserve salvation,” Cade said, rising. He bent down and picked up a caster one of the Acolytes had dropped, tucking into his belt. He collected the shells from the robes of the other Acolytes. He wasn’t sure how many he’d need, but it would have to be enough. He saw Eos propped up against the console the Wraith had been at and picked her up.

  Cade, we must hurry.

  “Eos, we’re taking down the Wraith ship.”

  That is not advisable. You are ill-equipped to take on a Wraith warship.

  “Sorry, Eos. You can read my thoughts. You know I have to do this.”

  Cade… Eos fell silent.

  Scanning the perimeter of the room, he saw one pod that remained, hatch still open.

  Time to finish the job, he thought.

  Cade strode over to the pod and crawled inside. He pulled the hatch closed, and the lights of the pod sprang to life. The control panel lit up, revealing words in an alien tongue. Without him pressing anything, the pod shot up through the facility, and he found himself launched straight into the night sky, the beam of the Thread mere feet away.

  They will pay for taking my family. For Rynth. Was there still time to save Rynth? No. The Wraith was right. I can’t save them.

  He knew how to kill the Wraiths. If he didn’t act, he would lose his chance. I will avenge my family. He clenched his fists hard, his nails biting into his palms.

  Your mission isn’t our mission. Carlon’s voice. His hands started to shake as a trickle of blood flowed from them. Ashlyn. Jace. They would have saved Rynth, if they had lived. He screamed, slamming his fists into the hatch.

  Protector of the Realm. A farce. He slammed his fists against the glass, harder now. Dark silver fell like a shadow over his arms.

  Ashlyn had believed in him. Jace had believed in him. His children had believed in him.

  Maybe he could, too.

  He pulled his arms back and crashed encoded fists into the hatch, sending it hurtling below.

  He took a breath and leapt into the Thread.

  It enveloped him whole, a blanket of golden light wrapped itself around him. Music, an entire ethereal orchestra, filled his ears. The mysterious energy of the Thread, which he once feared, seemed to encourage him.

  He opened his eyes but was not blinded. He could see a vortex of light in the distance below him. He encoded lead, falling faster.

  The vortex rushed to greet him as he slammed into the iris of the Thread. The Thread itself seemed to flicker from his impact. He could see a crack form where he stood.

  Cade. Eos’s voice. The phantoms contained in the beam are activating a cross-plane reaction to my physical state. If you can wedge me into the iris of the beam, we might be able to damage the focusing lens.

  Cade pulled out Eos and noticed the shard was glowing bright blue. He plunged the shard into the crack that had formed.

  Blue arcs of energy flew from the breach in response. Jets of crys
tals shot out from the shard like roots from a germinated seed. Within moments, the shard was held in place by dozens of the crystal outcroppings. The shard’s decorative handle did not survive, and all that remained was the jagged edge of crystal. Cade reached out and grabbed it with both hands.

  A blast of blue energy shot out. His encoding of diamond deflected it. He pulled, but it would not give. He strengthened his encoding and wrenched harder, shattering the bolts of crystal from the blade. Still, the shard would not move.

  He wrapped his hands around Eos once more, breathing hard. The beam seemed to surge, and Cade felt as if a thousand hands had been laid upon his own, urging him on. He encoded diamond and pulled.

  It shot from the iris like a caster shell, but he held firm. The light of the Thread erupted forth. Strands of light sprung forth, unleashed from their prison, before evaporating into complete darkness. For the first time since the Wraiths destroyed Wythlain, the beam of the Thread was gone.

  “Eos?” he said, panting.

  Eos’s blue light was gone.

  “No…”

  The shard flickered and began to glow.

  We must act quickly. I’ll need you to interface me with the main console the Wraith was using.

  “Nice to see you, too, Eos,” he said as he walked over and placed Eos on the interface panel.

  Okay, preparations have been made. We must leave now. It won’t be long before the facility is recaptured.

  “Recaptured?”

  They will need to repair the Thread to finish the collection. Without it, they cannot complete the Drive.

  “Eos, the Wraith said they were going to collect Rynth. We need to stop them.”

  Agreed. Gathering sensor data in Rynth now. Interesting…

  “What’s interesting?”

  The square panel from the console in front of him lit up. It was like the screens of the Ancient artifacts, except this one showed a moving picture. Within it, he saw a familiar face.

  “Ashlyn?”

  “Cade? You’re alive!” she exclaimed.

  He hesitated for a moment as he looked at her. “I thought I had lost…never mind. Where are you?”