by M. R. Forbes
The question was: what was she going to do with her second chance?
Something had happened to her when she touched the Hell brand and came into contact with the Light of the Shard. She said she had felt something that she wasn’t able to describe, but whatever it was, it had saved Abbey’s life. A hint of conscience, maybe? A sudden ability to determine right from wrong and truth from lies? The other Shard had hinted that such a thing might be possible with the help of the original Covenant. All she had to do was find it.
“Trinity?” Abbey said. Five minutes had passed since she had finished her story. Trin still hadn’t moved.
“I can’t cry like this,” Trinity said. “Not visibly. I can’t express any emotion in a meaningful way. It is awkward and difficult. I lied to him, Abigail. To Ursan. I knew what Thraven was, and I brought him into this war on deceit. I told him Thraven cared about the Outworlds when I knew he didn’t. You were right about me. What you said back on Drune. Power. I wanted power. The Gift. If you aren’t careful, you believe you are in control of it, but in truth, it is in control of you.”
“I know,” Abbey said, remembering the battle she had fought with it, when she had seen the Light of the Shard for the first time.
“We must all assert,” Trinity said. “That’s part of gaining the Gift. But it never stops trying to take over. It never stops trying to subvert you. You say the Gift is composed of machines of some kind? I struggle to believe that. If they are machines, they are intelligent ones. They have minds of their own. Primitive? I’m not sure.”
“I know,” Abbey agreed. “The Gift had Ursan, too. He wouldn’t listen to me. He only saw your death. It didn’t matter how Thraven was using him, or that I was only defending myself from you. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to kill anyone. I don’t blame him. He loved you. But I couldn’t let him kill me.”
“I loved him, too. At least, I believed I did. But I lied to him. I tricked him. In truth, I know his blood is on my hands, not yours. I want to be clear with you, Abigail. We aren’t enemies. Not anymore. I forgive you for killing me. I forgive you for killing Ursan.”
Abbey wasn’t sure why she needed forgiveness, but it was a fight not worth starting. “I forgive you, too,” she said. “We need to forget about the past and move forward from here.” She turned and pointed out to the Fire in the distance. “We need to get in there. I need the Serum. I have to stop the change.”
She held out her hand. There were ridges along the back of it pushing up the skin, and she had pressed her hand against the back of her demonsuit. The tail was still only a stub, but the stub had grown.
“We need one of those ships as well,” Trinity said. “But clearly, they know you’re coming.”
“They don’t know I want the Serum. That may work in our favor. They’ll defend the area outside the Fire more heavily. If we can get past it and get inside, we can choke them up in the corridors and force them to come at us in smaller numbers. The starfighters and mechs will be useless inside, too.” She reached into a tightpack, withdrawing one of the two remaining teleporters. “I have these. We can set one and throw the other forward, and use it to move through the enemy line.”
“This is technology of the Shard?” Trinity asked, taking it and turning it over in her hand.
“Yes. From what I understand, the Seraphim tech is more advanced than ours, but none of it was originally intended for war. The Nephilim on the other hand-”
“I know. They created the Fire and the Brimstone. They created me. In a sense, they created Thraven, too. He wasn’t always a Nephilim. He didn’t always have the Gift.”
“He didn’t?”
“No. Thousands of years ago, he was a slave. A Terran from a place called Egypt. The Nephilim took him and made him a different kind of slave. He broke those chains and became a Prophet. He promised the Great Return would happen. He helped settle the wars that plagued his people. Now he is trying to fulfill the Promise of their Father.”
“Lucifer.”
“I suppose. He never mentioned the Father by name to me.”
“Thraven is human?”
“He was, once. I don’t know if I would call him that now.”
“I don’t know if I can call myself that now. Do you believe in the Promise and the Great Return?”
“I used to. I hungered for the power that came from dominion, especially over the One who called himself a god. I sacrificed Ursan to it.” She paused. Abbey didn’t know if she was crying again. “How many have suffered under this corruption, Thraven included? How many have died in the name of freedom for a people who are already free? I’ve lost almost everything, Abigail. The Promise is a Lie. An excuse to make war and steal control in the name of the ones they are stealing it from.”
“I’m glad you see it my way,” Abbey said. “If we hurry, we can get close by nightfall, although that body of yours is going to light up like a star on sensors.”
“It won’t,” Trin said. “Why do you think the soldiers never saw me or that Elivee never knew I was coming? Watch.”
She didn’t vanish. Not completely. But the light around her was shifted, and only a faint outline could be seen.
“You’re cloaked,” Abbey said.
Trinity reappeared. “It uses a lot of my energy reserves, but I can hide myself from sensors. If we’re going to go down there, we need to keep moving.”
“Is your vision augmented? Can you see the perimeter from here?”
“Yes. There’s no weakness in it, if that’s what you’re asking. But you were a Breaker, and I was an assassin. Between the two of us, we should be able to get through.”
Abbey smiled. “Between the two of us, we should be able to do a hell of a lot more than that.”
Trinity laughed. It was the first true sign of emotion Abbey had heard from her. “Then let’s.”
40
“You’re sure she’s coming this way?” Venerant Koy said. “How do you know she didn’t go back to the crater?”
“I don’t,” Quark replied. “Other than the fact that we pulled up all the starships there and brought them here. If she goes back, so what? She can kill a few more soldiers. Whoopie. She’ll have to head this way sooner or later. Why? You got a date or something? Your old flame is dead.”
“Gloritant Thraven is expecting results. You said you weakened her, but instead of hunting her down while she’s weak we’re waiting for her to come back strong.”
“Are you questioning my methods? We can weaken her again. I’ve got three platoons armed with poisoned darts ready to slow her down to a crawl. That’ll be easier to do in the chaos of a large-scale confrontation, one that we know she can’t avoid if she wants to get off the planet.”
“What if your soldiers can’t hit her? You took her by surprise out there. There are no surprises here.”
Quark shook his head in disagreement. “Not so. There are always surprises.”
He turned his attention away from the Venerant, looking out of the viewport of the Fire. Koy had told him the ship had been disabled and torn out of space by some tech he called a Focus. It had left the vessel mostly intact, save for the damage to the hull when it had slammed into the ground and the loss of the original power supply. It had since been replaced with backup generators that allowed the lighting and the basic systems to function, and was now giving them a secondary base of operations, one that was more open and at the same time more secure than the crater had been.
He put his eyes on his two dropships, Scylla and Charybdis. They were positioned half a klick away from the gaping hole in the belly that served as the entrance to the starship, heavily defended by mechs and infantry in battlesuits sitting behind portable railgun batteries. They were bait stations, targets that he hoped Cage would go for, but only vaguely expected she would. The insides of the dropships had been stuffed with explosives, ready to blow her to shit if she managed to reach the cockpit. He didn’t want to lose one of his ships, but it would be a small price to pay to pu
t her out of commission, and he could expense it, anyway.
Those were targets Alfa and Bravo. Target Charlie was the real meat of the deal. The Fire’s hangar, currently unapproachable from the outside, sealed off by heavy blast doors. All of the ships inside had been smashed to scrap when the Fire had hit the dirt, their electromagnetic clamps failing due to the lack power. But there were a few new vessels sitting inside, including the Shrike Thraven had used to reach the Fire after its crash. Any one of those ships was capable of getting into orbit and going into FTL, and his opinion was that they would be a lot more attractive to someone like Cage because they weren’t out in the open. Koy didn’t know it, but most of his units with the isotopic rounds were hiding out there, waiting for the Demon Queen to make her move.
“We should send out some drones to look for her,” Koy said. “Look at the terrain, Colonel. She could be watching us right now.”
“Could be,” Quark said. “I hope so, if only to get a move on things and shut you the hell up. Does the word patience mean anything to you?”
“We’ve been waiting thousands of years for this, Colonel. Patience means a great deal to me.”
“Thousands, huh? How many of those have you been crawling around?”
“Seventeen hundred.”
Quark glanced at the Venerant. “No shit? You don’t look a day over fourteen hundred.” He laughed at himself. “How old was Vee?”
“A little younger. Not too much.”
“Oldest woman I ever slept with, I’m sure,” Quark said. “I wouldn’t have known it at the time. Anyway, someone your age ought to be handling this better.”
“I’ve seen power before,” Koy said. “I’ve been in its company and watched it destroy entire worlds. But if Cage has somehow gained control of even a portion of the Shard’s power, our victory is far from assured.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Shard?”
“It doesn’t matter. I think you’re overconfident in you and your soldiers’ abilities, Colonel. I’ll caution you one more time not to be.”
“Thanks for the advice, really. Go frag yourself.”
Koy glanced at him but didn’t respond. Asshole. Just because he was old didn’t mean he was wise.
“Maybe you want to go to your suite and get a little shut-eye,” Quark suggested. “I’ll keep an eye on things here.”
“No. I’m going to be here until this is over.”
“Suit yourself.”
Quark scanned the landscape. There was no sign of Cage out there. Shit, there was no proof she was even still alive. Maybe that final play had been the end of her, like a death throe. He laughed to himself. They could be waiting here a long time. Maybe he should send a drone out to check on her?
Nope. He wasn’t going to give Koy the satisfaction, even if he were to decide it was the right thing to do.
“Say, Koy,” Quark said. “Cage mentioned to me before I almost killed her that she had nothing to do with the attack on the Haulers. She intimated that your side was responsible.”
“Desperate words,” Koy said.
“Maybe. But the Devastator hasn’t been found to prove it one way or another. I mean, the Don only has your Master’s word to go by.”
“Thraven hasn’t lied to the Don before, why would he start now?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care in the end. I get paid whether she was innocent or not, and I’m the last person who should be making moral judgments. I was just curious if you knew anything about that. Figured we could shoot some shit since we’re killing time.”
“No. I don’t know anything about that.”
Quark watched Koy’s face as he said it. His augmented vision tracked all sorts of things that would suggest dishonesty. As far as his tech was concerned, the Venerant was telling the truth.
“Cage said she could give me the coordinates so I could check it out myself. How much do you think the Don would pay me to get to the bottom of things?”
Now Koy started to look a little uncomfortable. Maybe he didn’t know what had happened to the Haulers, but he didn’t seem convinced of what the truth was either.
“I can’t venture to guess,” Koy replied. “If Thraven was involved, which I’m not suggesting he was, I’m sure he would be willing to negotiate with you to keep your mouth shut.”
Quark smiled. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
“Good.”
Quark turned back to the viewport, his eyes sweeping across the field to once more, freezing when they reached the Charybdis. “Shit,” he said.
The soldiers behind the batteries were down, and they had never even called in a fragging alarm.
The Charybdis exploded.
41
Abbey watched the dropship detonate from her position nearby, crouched behind a section of rock that looked almost as if it had once been a piece of a wall. Trinity appeared beside her, stepping out of the teleporter.
“That should keep them distracted,” she said.
“You almost didn’t make it out,” Abbey replied, smiling as debris dropped across the field, and the soldiers nearby reacted to the attack, ducking down and bringing their weapons into a ready position. The mechs nearby started to move, sweeping the area for any sign of them.
“I had to trigger the thrusters to force the explosives to detonate. But I did make it. Thank you for worrying.”
“Don’t thank me until I get the Serum and we’re off this planet.”
“How did you know the ship would be rigged?”
“Educated guess. With any luck, Quark will think I’m dead, and he’ll drop the detail around the real trap. He doesn’t know about you, which gives us a massive advantage.”
“It’s a good start.”
They lingered for a moment longer. A starfighter flew overhead, surely running sensor sweeps to check the area. Trinity faded beside her, turning on her cloaking system. Then she reached out and took Abbey by the arm, pulling her in close, lifting her and pressing her against her chest. She could feel the current of the cloaking field press against her and then wrap itself around her, hiding her from prying eyes as well.
“Put your feet on mine,” Trin said. “It will make it easier for me to walk.”
Abbey did, relaxing her body so that it could follow Trin’s motions as they began moving laterally to the Fire, ascending the slope of a nearby hillside. Abbey craned her neck back toward the remains of the dropship. The commotion was growing, and now she could see Quark moving out from the Fire to check on it personally.
“Frag you, asshole,” Abbey said softly.
They crossed the slope and then switched directions, turning toward the Fire. Trin began moving faster, trying to spend as little time as possible with the cloak active.
Quark reached the scene, staring at the mess for a moment. They had moved further away, but Abbey could still make out his face.
“He isn’t buying it,” she said, getting angry. “Fragger is more suspicious than I hoped.”
“We’re almost there,” Trinity said.
Quark turned his head, looking in their direction. He remained that way for a few seconds before turning his head back to the dropship.
“He saw us,” Abbey said.
“How do you know?”
“His eyes are mechanical, like yours. Can you see you when you’re cloaked?”
“We need to move faster.”
Abbey jumped from Trin’s feet. The Fire was still a good quarter-klick ahead of them. She knew Elivee’s blood had made her stronger. How strong?
“Try to keep up,” she said, bending her knees.
The Gift came so easily now, and with such fury that she momentarily wondered if she was still in control of it. She bounced away, launching high into the air, crossing the distance in one massive leap. She bounded over the edge of the Fire’s hull, toward one of the creases in the upper decks, approaching it way too fast. She cursed as she pushed against it with the Gift, slowing herself and landing roughl
y, her body slamming into the metal side.
She didn’t waste any time. There was a docking hatch further up. She bounced again, climbing toward it. She heard Trinity reach the ship below, metal feet clanging on the metal surface.
“Abigail, incoming,” Trinity said.
Abbey looked up. The starfighter had circled toward them and was headed their way. She looked back toward the burning dropship. Quark was gone, and the external forces were in motion.
“We’ll handle them better inside,” she said, jumping up to the next level.
Trinity didn’t jump. She used the blades on her wrists to climb, slamming the rhodrinium into the small gaps between the plates that composed the Fire’s armor and pulling herself up.
The starfighter started firing, projectiles pinging the alloy around her, the rounds closing in. She put up her hand, raising a shield to block them and at the same time bringing her other hand up and sweeping it down. An invisible wave seemed to catch the fighter, dragging it downward and into the top of the Fire as it passed overhead.
“Your Gift has gotten much stronger,” Trinity said, catching up while she had paused to handle the fighter.
“For better or for worse?” Abbey said.
“You can find out once you have the other half.”
“By the way, I haven’t mentioned it before, but call me Queenie.” It seemed like a strange time to bring it up, but hearing Trinity calling her Abigail wasn’t sitting that well. She didn’t want to associate her given name with any of this shit.
“Queenie?”
“That’s what my Rejects call me. If you’re helping me out, you’re a Reject, like it or not.”
“Very well.”
Abbey jumped again, going up to the next level. Trin jumped with her this time, staying in sync. They traveled up four more decks, finally reaching the top of the starship. Abbey paused to look over the edge, finding the ground troops organizing in a line beside the ship, aiming their rifles up. They were out of the fight, unable to get an angle on them from down there, left with nothing to do but wait.