Kastor felt a warm sprinkle against his face. Hendrik had taken hits. After putting down one more cloaked Upraadi, Kastor waited, listened, then leaned forward. Steaming craters peppered Hendrik’s armor, whole chunks of his body gone. The drop team leader had expired in a rain of armor-buster bullets, his blood now trickling down the marble steps, sharp crimson against the white.
Above, a heavy crash vibrated the entire ship, rocking it back and forth, a sound like solid steel being ripped in the hands of a giant. The lights blinked. Dust drifted down the staircase.
Kastor hopped to his feet, averting his eyes from the muddle that used to be Hendrik, and rushed back up the stairs to the floor above. Radovan wanted any invaders on his ship to think he’d holed up in the engine room. But he hadn’t. Kastor saw that now. He’d have multiple traps set up in the lowest deck to ensure all invaders were consumed in the belly of his ship. He wouldn’t trap himself with no easy escape. He would hide in a much more conspicuous place.
Kastor stepped into the lounge again and pointed his weapon at the huddle of lady servants. “Which door is Radovan hiding behind?”
Their eyes grew wide, their faces steely. The huddle rose and split, pulling hidden handguns from their skirts or under cushions, firing immediately. Kastor crouched, shielded his face with his forearm, and took potshots. Their shots slapped his nanoflex, while his ripped through couch fabric and shattered glass vases and split polished tables. But his shots weren’t hitting his targets.
His gun clicked empty, and he tossed it at a nearby servant girl, cracking her square in the sternum. Kastor slashed out his blazer and throttled it to life. He rolled, blocked a shot with his forearm, and sliced through a servant’s abdomen, not cutting all the way through as the blade hadn’t fully heated.
A thick-necked commoner girl wailed in shock and anger and charged Kastor at full speed, discharging a stream of rounds into the nanoflex-armored forearm covering his face. Kastor yanked his blazer in her direction, sending the body toward the oncoming servant, distracting long enough to leap in a zigzag pattern and burn his blade into her rib cage. He felt the vibration of his boron nitride nanoblade sever her spinal cord before she collapsed.
Kastor wheeled around and slashed his blazer down, missing his next target, charring a black line through the white couch instead. His blade whisked out in time to block an incoming bullet, its path and timing predictable by the aim of the gun and the servant woman’s scrunching face as she prepared to fire. He flinched to block another and another until he’d edged close enough to hack through her leg above the knee and snatch her handgun.
From there, Kastor needed only to drop to the ground while twisting himself to face the other servants.
PAH-PAH-PAH. PAH.
His third shot hit the woman in the hip, so he fired off a fourth, thunking into her head and knocking her backwards. Sudden stillness filled the room. Six corpses littered the fine, plush carpet.
Back on his feet, Kastor stood in front of the double doors, waiting, catching his breath.
“Radovan! Come out. It’s only me. Or do I need to spill more Upraadi blood before you’ll face me?” Silence hung in the air. He waited. Patience thinned. “I’m tired of killing. But if that’s what you want . . .” He stepped to one of the locked side doors, where more noblemen undoubtedly hid—the noncombatants of Upraad’s court. “Perhaps I could finish off the others in here.”
The double doors swung open. Two enormous, armored brutes emerged, brandishing double-bladed spears. Helmets presented their faces as eyeless black skulls. As they separated, the Frontier Lumis himself stepped between them, wielding a pair of curved blazer hatchets—ancestral weapons. Radovan powered up their heat, and his personal guards heated their weapons alongside him.
Kastor squared up with them, dragging the tip of his blazer through the carpet. A black, charred path snaked behind him, adding the smell of burnt garments to the odor of burnt flesh.
Kastor met Radovan’s stony eyes. “It’s too bad so many of your people had to die. I thought you were supposed to be a kinder lumis, caring for your subjects.”
“I mistook you as well,” Radovan said, voice small but steady. “I thought you might’ve had some soul left to preserve. Seems you’ve sold it wholly to Zantorian.”
A twinge of guilt flared in Kastor’s chest. No, not guilt. Regret. Merely an echo, bound to die out soon. That’s what Kastor told himself, commanded himself to believe.
“Not to Zantorian. To his title. To his glory.”
Radovan heaved a laugh, sweeping his gaze over the landscape of tattered bodies. “Is this the glory he promised you? Slaughtered servants?” His white eyes came to rest on Kastor again. “Was it worth it?”
Kastor thought of Guerlain, of Guarin, of Hendrik, of all the faces from which he’d taken life or watched it fade. He thought of the horrible sacks of blood and bone and muscle that people became when life fled the body—puppets cut from their strings.
He thought of Pollaena as the life drained from her. Her agonized eyes, laced with pain deeper than a blazer wound, searching him as her final moments ran out. The memory refused to fade, an image burned into his brain as vividly as Radovan standing before him.
All for glory.
Kastor raised his blazer and gripped the hilt with both hands.
“Yes,” Kastor said. “My answer is yes.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Glowing blades whirled like lightning in a tornado, slicing burn marks into the carpet. Kastor dodged backward with their every swing until he ran into the couch and leaped backwards over it. One of the Upraadi brutes backhanded the couch, flipping it through the air. Kastor ducked to avoid it.
Their powered armor yielded startling strength. It could pulverize his ribs with a direct blow. The brutes moved swiftly despite their size, whipping their spears with seasoned finesse. Kastor kept his distance and searched for patterns but found none. These two must’ve trained at an academy. One did not become this proficient at any weapon aside from expert training.
Kastor rolled backwards across the slick coffee table to avoid a downward slash as it splintered the fauxwood. The bodyguard’s heavy boot crushed a corner of the low table as if it were paper, making a loud, splitting crack. The blazer spear twirled vertically, chipping shards of wood at Kastor, who flicked his sword to block them. Fauxwood vaporized into smoke as it hit his blade.
Then he went on the attack, leaping to the right to isolate one of the bodyguards. Spear and katana blades collided in a hail of sparks. Another blade swung from below. Kastor blocked and jabbed, but the brute struck away his sword. Glowing blades blurred all around as he dodged and rolled away. Instinct took over. His childhood of training had formed well-trod neural pathways in his brain. Each snap of the blade was thoughtless, reflexive. Amid the interplay, an old melee tactic began to take shape.
Kastor buckled his knees after a hard block, grunted, feigned weakness. An even harder swing came in from the side, but Kastor was ready for it. He ducked and thrust himself—and his sword—forward into the brute’s bulk. The blade crunched uneasily through thick, graphene-coated armor, broke through the inner layer of nanoflex, and lodged in place. The brute groaned and stumbled backward as the blazer sizzled in his armor and his flesh, sticking halfway out his body.
The brute took one hand off his spear to grab hold of the katana hilt, letting the spear burn a line into the floor. Meanwhile, the other brute mashed down the back of a couch with his steel-knuckled fists enough to step over it.
Kastor was unarmed. He dashed for the wounded brute’s spear, yanked it away, and slashed through the stocky armor on the creature’s leg, making him plunge to a knee. Kastor whipped the heavy spear powerfully in his hands.
The second brute surged forward, spinning his spear like a helicopter’s rotor. Kastor held his ground, driving the blade of his spear into the fray, disrupting the spin. It took the brute off guard. For a series of contacts, they fought as equals, each focused o
nly on where the other’s next blade strike would come from. Then the brute forced the tip of Kastor’s spear into the ground and kicked his mighty boot against the champion’s chest, sending him flying backward.
Kastor smashed into polished fauxwood cabinets full of liquor bottles. They shattered and sprayed him with sharp-smelling alcohol. When he fell, he left a crater in the cabinets and wall. With the air knocked from his lungs, it took a moment to reorient himself. First, he threw himself out of the way of the oncoming Upraadi. The brute’s spear minced the floor where Kastor’s head had been a split second before.
A handgun lay on the carpet between Kastor and a dead servant girl—a fortuitous find. He grabbed it and fired a salvo. The brute blocked half the shots with his quick spear. The other half simply bounced off his armor.
Kastor saved the last two shots, beginning to panic as the armored monster closed in on him. He searched for any sign of vulnerability
There. At the knee joint.
KAH. The brute locked his knees and froze in place. The bullet bounced off his thigh plate. Both of them waited. Tense seconds passed. The brute growled and lunged forward.
KAH.
The shot made a different sound than the one before—deeper and duller. Still metal against metal, but not the same invulnerable armor plating that covered the rest of his body. It only halted him a moment, but it was long enough for Kastor to dash past and yank his blazer sword out of the other, still-groaning brute.
Another exchange of blows, crackling clangs of blade against blade. Then Kastor tossed a mostly intact bottle of cognac straight into the Upraadi faceplate. The effect wasn’t blindness but visual distortion. Their next round of contacts were sloppy as the brute twirled his spear without precision.
All it took was a quick feint to the left and a roundhouse spin to land a hard strike on the right. Kastor’s blade sunk into the brute’s shoulder with a hiss. The muted scream from inside his helmet still had enough volume to deafen Kastor in one ear. His sword swished out and blocked an immediate counter, slashed at an armored wrist, and cut halfway through the Upraadi’s forearm.
Burnt carbon steel bent into his cauterized flesh. The spear fell to the carpet. An agonized howl escaped the helmet before Kastor plowed his sword straight through the Upraadi’s neck, just under the chin of his helmet. Steam sputtered upward, smelling like iron and acid and roasting flesh. Blood as black as tree sap escaped the wound. Kastor twisted the blade and slashed it out sideways, spraying more scorched blood across the fine carpet and couches and dead servants’ uniforms.
The first brute forced himself unsteadily to his feet and wound up. Kastor avoided the telegraphed punch. The brute’s momentum carried him straight into Kastor’s blade, slicing through graphene, carbon steel, nanoflex, and flesh. Kastor threw his sword down into the brute’s helmet, stopping halfway through his head. He heard the crack of something other than metal—like a giant knuckle pop.
When he pulled away his blazer, the brute’s body slumped over. Both metallic giants were dead. Now Radovan stood alone across the room, tightening and loosening his grip on his hatchets, adjusting his stance. Kastor blocked the only way out.
Kastor grinned. “Nervous, Radovan?”
“No.” Radovan’s fists gripped the hatchet handles so tight they made a squealing sound like the pulling of rope. “Only sad. You’re a fine warrior, Kastor. You could’ve been a great one.”
The Frontier Lumis let out a shriek and charged. A flurry of hard strikes rained down on Kastor, strikes stronger than the brutes’ spears. And brisk. Radovan moved with the swiftness of a bluntnose on the hook. Kastor had to adjust to his speed and dexterity since he’d been fighting slow behemoths with weaker attacks. With every few parries, Kastor had to leap backward out of melee range to avoid being struck. He had no chance of stringing together an effective series of moves that way, but at least Radovan’s hatchets weren’t chopping him to ribbons.
If Kastor was to alter the flow of the interchange, he’d have to separate Radovan from one of his hatchets.
He swung to the left, ducked to avoid a sidewise strike, then sent his sword diagonally into Radovan’s chestplate. The lumis dodged in time to escape with only a burnt crevice in his armor. He looked down at it, incredulous at first, then glowering. This time, he approached with tight, measured movements, hatchets up. They twitched every few seconds, making Kastor twitch in return as he matched Radovan’s footwork. His boot ran into something soft and fleshy—an arm. His eyes flashed downward, and that was all Radovan needed.
Another flurry of strikes pushed Kastor back as he stumbled past the servant girl’s blood-streaked body. Clangs accompanied flying sparks from each clash. The vibrations shot down the blade and through the hilt into Kastor’s hands. It quickened his heartbeat and his reactions.
Radovan slid Kastor’s sword to the side long enough to swipe a curved hatchet blade across the champion’s shoulder. Searing pain swept across his skin and flesh, followed by a hot sting as the wound parted and blood escaped. Kastor tried to haul his sword up to counter, but Radovan headbutted him square in the nose. Kastor fell backwards, catching himself only enough to keep hurdling in the same direction, until he smashed through a door and into a dim room—compact but glossy with fine materials and furniture.
A svelte figure—a smooth-skinned young man with flushed cheeks—stepped into the light gripping a stubby knife. He raised it over Kastor and plunged it downward, but with a flick of the blazer, Kastor sliced his hand away at the wrist. The knife and hand disappeared into a pool of shadow by a dresser, and the Upraadi nobleman stumbled backward into a mini-bar, knocking over petite glass bottles, pinning the nub of his forearm against his chest and screaming.
Kastor leaped out of the room before the lumis could corner him. Both of Radovan’s hatchets bore down on his sword, pushing the back of the blade against Kastor’s chest and forcing him against the wall. The blazer blades burned against each other, making the hissing grind of superheated metal on superheated metal. Kastor banged his forehead against Radovan’s stoneskin cheekbone, barely making the Frontier Lumis wince. He felt like granite. Kastor suspected the blow had hurt him more than Radovan. He was trapped, two curving blazers heating him inside his nanoflex like a pressure cooker, waiting for his blazer to fail and give way to their lethal finality.
A drop of blood trickled from Kastor’s hairline down his forehead. He felt it reach his eyebrow as Radovan leaned in close, eyes ablaze with vengeance.
“You chose to be Zantorian’s puppet,” Radovan breathed through clenched teeth in a rich, deep growl. “You earned this.”
One hatchet reared back, ready to slice into Kastor’s midsection. Radovan heaved, and as the hatchet swung—
BANG. A gunshot rang in the room, stunning them both. Kastor heard a crack like an egg breaking. Radovan roared in pain and rage, dropping his blazer hatchet.
Kastor didn’t know what had happened, but he seized the opportunity. He shoved Radovan’s other hatchet away and whisked his sword against the lumis’s bicep, cutting through stoneskin layers and into dark, meaty tissue. Radovan bellowed again, dropped his other hatchet, and fell to his knees. Kastor noticed a wound in his side, under his arm.
Radovan turned to find Abelard standing in the doorway, spinning the round chamber of his long-barreled revolver. Grease streaks lined his face, arm, and hip. His pant leg had been torn enough to plainly reveal the mechanical leg. Signs that he’d been in whatever crash Kastor had heard above.
Abelard grinned and tipped his head to his revolver. “Made these bullets myself. Designed for one thing—to pierce stoneskin.” His grin grew. “Looks like they work.” He lowered his revolver, and it flared again with a BANG.
Radovan jolted and let out a long, groaning sigh. “I showed you mercy . . .”
“Regulations and pensions are not mercy,” Abelard said. “Not when I’m still a commoner.”
The Frontier Lumis tried to push himself to his feet, but Abelard
fired again. BANG. This round cracked Radovan square in the chest and knocked him onto his back. Kastor watched as the lumis held stony hands against his breast and wheezed. Gasped. Wheezed. Gasped. Eyes afraid—terrified—as they rested on Kastor. The mightiest of men, laid as bare and helpless as a child before death.
A voice like a soft chime called from the stairwell. “Abby? Is he—?”
The finely carved features of Seraphina’s face appeared around the opening, eyes agape and apprehensive, knowing yet uncertain. Her delicate fingers came to rest on the glossy doorframe, as if she wanted to enter but knew she shouldn’t.
Abelard extended an open hand to stop her. “Stay back, Sera. Go back to the top deck.”
“Is my father—”
“Go back, Sera!” Abelard demanded. “Now!”
Seraphina disappeared, and Kastor powered down his blazer, contemplating the interaction he had just observed. Abby? Sera? Could it be? The two of them?
Abelard met his inquisitive glare, seeming to read his thoughts. Kastor felt his expression turn dour.
“The world isn’t as black and white as you think,” Abelard said in a low voice—the same thing Seraphina had said in his bedchamber—as he hobbled toward the downed lumis.
Radovan struggled, eyes alternating between fury and fear as he held back wellsprings of dark, viscous blood flowing from his wounds. More gasping. More wheezing. Then—
BANG.
The air shivered, and the room stilled. Wisps of smoke curled up in disappearing trails from smoldering flesh and burnt carpet. The stoneskin’s movement ceased. His ragged breathing stopped. Radovan the Gracious was no more, killed by his commoner heir.
Perhaps Abelard was right. Perhaps the world wasn’t so absolute after all.
The Grand Lumis
Sacred Planet: Book One of the Dominion Series Page 20