Heart of a Traitor

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  She looked down with dissatisfaction. He had trampled all over her favorite dress.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Descent into Darkness

  Psychics are not Sorcerers, in the same way that a musician is different from a man with a radio. They are the first phase in a great evolutionary step that mankind is embarking on. The Luminarch began it and we are fools to impede its progress. If I have done nothing before this council this day than earn my own execution, then so be it.

  -Attributed to Æren Jeager, Executed Heretic 13.08.6167rl

  The barriers between realspace were momentarily shattered as the Onikano slipped back into existence. A heartbeat later thousands of other ships and trillions of Kuldrizi arrived around her. The queen hung over everything in the Excelikas Crusade like a canopy.

  “Bring in the sails, prepare to switch to standard drive,” Inami ordered from her command chair in the Onikano, really getting into using Rochestri’s voice as she impersonated him.

  “Prepping standard drive for full burn,” Shika announced.

  “All ships report ready, Marshal. Full burn to target,” Kotone reported.

  “Okay, starting the countdown,” Rochestri said, tapping a rune on the command chair. An automated voice came over the communication network.

  “13...12...11...”

  “That’s a pretty weird number to start a countdown from,” Kotone observed.

  “7...6...5...”

  “Hey, what happened to 10, 9 and 8?”

  “Don’t worry,” Rochestri calmed. I programmed it to ignore those numbers and continue the countdown.”

  “2...1...mark.”

  Like a great swarm the hive of ships and aliens began to move inexorably forward as one. It was truly an impressive sight to see. From the bridge of the Surrey, General Browning and his command staff looked out. There seemed to be no end to the Kuldrizi lazily swimming around them, starlight reflecting off of their black shells.

  Before them lay the demon world of Bael’Eth. From here it looked like a world on fire. Rivers of molten lava flowed through space into it, giving it the appearance of a great eye of fire covered with veins.

  “Permission to crap myself, sir?” Captain Forloy asked quietly.

  “Granted, son.” General Browning replied, wide-eyed as he looked around.

  “Give me a max ether ping,” Inami commanded as she adjusted the collar of Rochestri’s long coat. “No sense in keeping a low profile at this point.”

  “Now we find out if everything we did was worth the price we paid,” Mai said coldly as she stood next to Inami, wearing her disguise as Sister Katherine.

  “Ether ping returned,” Mieko reported, her long rabbit ears twitching back and forth as she studied the data. “There should be thousands of enemy ships, but I’m not picking up any of them, Marshal.”

  Rochestri grinned. “Right now every ship they have is bombarding the Archfiend’s homeworld of Korr’Use back to the stone age. It will take them a week to get back here.”

  Rochestri elbowed Sister Katherine, who sighed then handed over a gold coin.

  “I told you it would work,” Rochestri boasted. “What about the defenders?”

  “Difficult to tell through the interference, but I’d estimate only one percent of the normal garrison is present.”

  “He left behind nothing but a skeleton crew to defend his homeworld,” Rochestri exulted.

  “We’re being hailed by the Surrey, Marshal.” Kotone reported.

  “Yeah, go for it,” Rochestri said, picking up a tropical beverage from a tray being held out.

  A holo-window appeared in the air before them, displaying the gruff image of General Browning.

  “Marshal Rochestri, my ships are detecting a huge Gunoi flotilla.”

  “Strange that we have not,” Rochestri said, eying Mieko sharply.

  “That’s because they are not in orbit,” General Browning clarified. “They’ve all been pulled down to the ground on the eastern continent. Thousands of them pierced by metal spikes. We’re also picking up battles on the ground between the Gunoi and the traitors.”

  Rochestri elbowed Sister Katherine, who handed over another coin.

  “Don’t worry about the Gunoi, General, we invited them,” Rochestri boasted. “Now the fortress has been emptied further to deal with the Gunoi. It will take them hours to travel back, hours they no longer have.”

  “That’s crazy, no one tells the Gunoi what to do,” General Browning responded.

  “I know, right?” Rochestri said, taking a swig of the fruity beverage. “You would need a huge holo-projector and what? About forty thousand...

  “Actually forty-five thousand square feet,” Sister Katherine corrected.

  “Right, forty-five thousand square feet of silk screen to project it against.”

  “The point is, Marshal, the second we get close our fleet is going to be dragged down to the surface just like the Gunoi ships were.”

  “Be patient, think of your children.” Rochestri advised, tapping a rune on the command chair and closing the holo-window. “Sister Katherine, can you set us up to broadcast a message to the whole system?”

  “Of course, Marshal.”

  Rochestri jumped up in his command chair and drew his saber. “Demon Lord Yar’Katah. You have rejected the Luminarch’s holy light, made war against His children, invaded His territory, and made Him your enemy. This day you will pay for your crimes. Prepare to taste my wrath, the wrath of the Excelikas Crusade!”

  Rochestri waved his saber around dramatically while everyone else looked on.

  “Um, Marshal. I haven’t turned the comm system on yet,” Sister Katherine explained. “No one can hear you.”

  “Fusho! I swear you do that on purpose!”

  “I really don’t, sir. You didn’t ask me to open the line; you only asked me if I could.”

  “Just shut up and open a channel to Nori,” Rochestri said, pinching his nose with his fingers.

  Another window opened up with Nori, looking like a bug with her multi-lensed helmet on.

  “Nori, you ready to wake up the queen?”

  “I was born ready, Marshal,” Nori responded enthusiastically. “Just give the word.”

  Rochestri pointed his saber dramatically at Nori. “The word is given.”

  There was a wave, nearly invisible, like a compression of air that passed silently through the command deck. Many of those present became light-headed and had to grab onto something to keep from falling over. Still others, a little more sensitive to the ether, doubled over and wretched in disgust.

  Emanating from the queen, a perfect sphere grew out farther and farther. As the sphere enveloped the planet, the rivers of molten metal cooled and dissipated. The entire planet seemed to wither before their eyes, changing from a living thing to a dead thing. Auger scans showed images of the mile-high factories, now subject to the laws of physics, crumbling and crashing to the ground. Already the atmosphere was being filled with dust plumes that would soon envelop it.

  The sphere extended out toward the edges of the system, a shadow in which ether no longer flowed.

  “And that, my friends is how you turn a god into a mortal,” Rochestri said, eyes alight.

  Mieko’s long rabbit ears shot up in alarm. “Marshal, something big just came around from the dark side of the planet. It’s an orbital defense station...Bastion Class.”

  Everyone looked at each other in concern.

  “We’re going to lose an awful lot of ships if we have to take on a Bastion Fortress,” Shika said aloud.

  “Ladies, don’t worry, this is already taken care of,” Rochestri said, taking another drink.

  “Taken care of? Just how do you plan on dealing with a platform that size?”

  Rochestri smiled. “With space-leeches, of course.”

  Inside the cargo bay of the Space Fortress Mor’Irse, men and beasts ran and scrambled about. Under the whips of their masters, they tore open crates and ran
off with the contents, desperately trying to prepare for the incoming fleet that was less than an hour away. Chief Initiator Gerard, however, was standing calmly taking a good look at the rotting power cable that he had revealed behind the access panel. Bastion Stations were older than the Confederacy itself, the design and manufacture of them having been lost several centuries before the Great Revolution. In all likelihood, there was no place in the galaxy where a replacement for this particular power cable could still be manufactured.

  Shrugging with his hunched and deformed shoulders, Gerard pulled out a large rusted torsion wrench from his tool belt and began hitting the cable repeatedly, small pieces of red flesh slipping off of the weeping sores on his arms from the impacts. Some of the cables writhed and squealed under the abuse. A few strikes and a curse or two later, the cable sparked and came back to life.

  “I bet their Technossiah never thought of that one,” Gerard cackled as the panels above him hummed back to life. A group of aggravated soldiers slopped through, their skin covered with tattoos. The air of the station was thick with aggression and Gerard knew how to stay out of the way.

  Gerard came from a favored minority of literate and educated family lines that existed within the Uragan, providing an experienced backbone of technicians and engineers that kept the wheels of war turning. Gerard wore the livery of Bra’Neish and offered up sacrifices to him, but felt no particular love to him. Gerard and his kind waded in a sea of madness and survived only by keeping their heads down and never drawing unneeded attention to themselves.

  A gurgling hover skiff came to a halt near him and a short young woman calmly got out. Normally it would not have caught his attention; she was wearing standard armor for a Bael’Eth soldier. No, what caught his attention was that the armor had been dyed a bright pink color.

  Gerard watched curiously as the young woman hummed to herself, taking a small cage off of the back of the skiff and then walked over and placed it along the wall.

  “Whatcha got there?” he asked aloud.

  The young woman popped her head up and then smiled sweetly when she saw him.

  “You wanna see?” Ami asked.

  “I guess so,” Gerard grunted as he walked toward her.

  The cage glowed with energy and had a large pink bow attached to one side. A nameplate had been added, with small flower stickers attached. It read, “Bunni.”

  Inside it something moved, or rather, the entire shape of the inside shifted, as if through a lens. Curious, he reached his deformed hand into his pocket and pulled out a piece of wire and poked it into the cage. The wire touched some invisible thing and whatever it was squirmed around slimily, making a kind of trilling noise.

  Ami took out her data slate and made a check mark happily. “All five hundred in place.”

  “What is this thing?” Gerard asked aloud.

  “They’re my pets. I rescued them from the ether pockets they live in.”

  “How’d you do that?”

  “I dunno,” she answered sweetly. Her data slate made a happy chirping noise and the cage popped open with a snap.

  The invisible thing slid out of the cage, moving quickly enough to make Gerard jump backwards. It latched itself onto the exposed power cable and began munching and crunching happily. There was a spark and the panels above them flickered and died.

  “It was nice meeting you. I got one more thing to do,” Ami announced cheerfully as she hopped on the hover skiff and sped away.

  Gerard opened his mouth to yell at her, but then another light went out at the other end of the bay, where he could see another open cage. Then another went out and then another. He could only stand by and stare. All over the station, power grids were failing, mechanisms malfunctioning, systems shutting down.

  Back on the bridge of the Onikano, cheers went up as they watched the Bastion Fortress begin to slowly list to one side, small gouts of flame and debris erupting from its surfaces.

  “The platform’s orbit is decaying, Marshal,” Mieko reported, her long rabbit ears twitching happily. “Projecting impact zone.”

  Rochestri stood there patiently waiting, until finally Sister Katherine handed over another gold coin.

  “Ready invasion wave, signal all go,” Rochestri ordered, playfully rolling the handful of coins back and forth in his hand.

  “Invasion wave on standby,” Sister Katherine announced.

  “All ships report ready, Marshal,” Kotone reported.

  In the command center of the great fortress of Bra’Neish, the sorcerer Hurdilicia barked out orders, trying to be heard over the screams of men and beasts and they scuttled and writhed about.

  “I want only two people to each battery!” Hurdilicia yelled, kicking a hairless tattooed man who was curled up with fear on the floor. “We need to man as many as we can!”

  “Even then, we won’t be able to man a tenth of the cannons,” a green-skinned man wept, falling to his knees. Everywhere the fear of Yar’Katah’s wrath was gripping them. Fear of failing their master.

  Hurdilicia slammed his staff on the ground, but his powers were stolen. He could not compel them to act. He felt sick, like there was no air and he couldn’t breathe. Somehow the ether simply didn’t exist around him anymore.

  The large holo-tank displayed the depth of their dilemma. The space fortress Mor’Irse was bathed in fire as it fell into the atmosphere above them, the friction of the air heating its armored surface to fantastically high temperatures and peeling off its outer layers. Thousands of Confederate dropships had broken moors from their warships and followed the burning fortress on its trip down to the planet.

  “They think they’ve won, but they are fools!” Hurdilicia hollered, trying to instill some confidence in those around him. “The fortress will pass over us. Tell all gunnery crews to ignore the fortress, target the dropships only. We will blast their invasion force out of the sky!”

  All along the surface of the fortress of Bra’Neish, enormous defense batteries whirred to life and waited patiently as the distances clicked down.

  As the space platform entered weapons range, its plasma furnace exploded creating a shock wave that pushed away the clouds of dust in the sky like a ring. The crippled station came apart high in the atmosphere.

  Inside the fortress, many of the gunnery crews abandoned their posts and ran in fear. Others took their own lives.

  “Fire! Fire you fools!” Hurdilicia yelled, grabbing shivering men with his hands and forcing them back into their seats.

  “Fire at what?” a scale-skinned man complained.

  “Ignore the wreckage,” Hurdilicia yelled, kicking a man crying on the ground. “Fire only at the dropships!”

  “The augers can’t tell the difference!”

  Hurdilicia leaned over the holo-tank. Above their fortress were trillions of targets, their small blips overlapping into a seething mass as it descended.

  “By the gods!” he muttered aloud.

  The massive naval batteries came to life, sending out countless beams of energy that tore into the falling wall of burning wreckage and descending ships. Every time a beam hit home, whether its victim was wreckage or a vessel, it inevitably broke apart into several more pieces of burning wreckage. And so the gun batteries fired wildly into the descending swarm, breaking it into smaller and smaller fragments and praying to Bra’Neish that some of the chunks they hit were dropships.

  Mixed in with the descending dropships were squads of Tsunami battle suits. The battle plan called for the Daughters to escort the dropships and spearhead the break-through and none had complained about leaving the criminally uncomfortable purity armor behind.

  All around Keiko were spinning and tumbling chunks of metal. Their heated surfaces peeled off of them creating red tails like a comet.

  From below, lances of energy rose up at them and through them. It was like watching rainfall in reverse.

  “Sorano, incoming debris,” Michi called out as she herself had to jink sideways to avoid a flaming piece
of metal girder that spun heavily past her. Sorano fired the thrusters in the legs of her suit and spun upwards in a cartwheel. The spiraling generator flew past her and collided with a large plate of armor, exploding into a cloud of dust and fire that flew up past them.

  A beam of blinding light shot up through the clouds at them from the fortress far below and the squad scattered, allowing it to pass between them and up into space.

  “Sakurako, watch your line,” Keiko ordered as Sakurako drifted sideways, nearly crashing into her suit. Suddenly a Confederate dropship came down on top of them as it tried to avoid a large piece of burning bulkhead. Shiro squad diffused around it, flowing around its surface fluidly as the dropship descended down below them.

  Keiko’s skills were being pushed to their very limits and she couldn’t help but feel the thrill of it... She twisted her suit sideways, avoiding a spinning lump of debris, then thrust downward just as a support rib spun past, nearly cleaving her suit in two. In the corner of her vision, she kept open the homing frequency for Ami’s beacon, yearning for a response.

  “I’ve got a volley of incoming objects,” Michi reported, darting backwards to avoid a whirling battery gun. A lance of glowing energy tore through the wreckage underneath them, peppering them with red-hot shrapnel.

  Keiko scanned frantically downward, trying to find something through the fire and debris all around them. Far down below, she could see several rising columns of smoke.

  “I’ve got a visual at ten by five,” Keiko reported, corkscrewing past a long length of burning pipeline, “Guided defense atomics.” A beam of energy struck a bulkhead to one side of them, clouding their vision with fragments and flames. The members of Shiro squad trained their weapons at the incoming missiles, the sensor mounts above the shoulders turning and scanning, the movements looking eerily organic.

  “I can’t get a lock,” Taka called out, “my system is being overwhelmed by all this buchi debris and the IFF signals are echoing off of everything.”