Heart of a Traitor

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  A great vibration in the mountain range became stronger and stronger, turning into a great earthquake, the force of which broke off the tops of the mountain ranges and cracked the very foundations of the planet’s crust itself.

  Everything was forced and absorbed down into the barrel and for a brief moment everything went silent. The silence was broken by a titanic explosion that expanded out in the air as a beam of raw ether shot up into the sky, scattering the clouds and dragging the bulk of the upper atmosphere with it as it roared into space.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  To Loose the Beast

  And on that fateful day a great golden wave burst forth out of the Luminarch’s dying body. A sphere of purest white light that extended out to the very edges of the galaxy. It touched every human, from the least to the greatest and wrought a great change within them. On that day, mankind was reborn as his spiritual children and thus do we call him the Man of Light.

  -Traditional Prayer read during the annual Ascension Festival

  Inami dropped down into her lavish command chair and wiped her face with her sleeve, creating a clean streak amongst the grit and grime. Snapping her fingers, she called for wine to be brought to her in large quantities.

  “Signal everyone in the fleet. Crusade successful, they can all go home now, job well done, we will mail their medals to them, blah, blah, blah, long live the Luminarch.”

  “Signaling fleet,” Kotone reported.

  “Taisa, we’ve got a problem,” Mieko began.”

  “A problem? We’ve got a basketful.”

  “The Gunoi flotilla is taking off from the surface. They seem to have repaired some of their ships.”

  “How in the world did they fix them so fast?” Mai wondered aloud.

  “Give us our best speed to exit the system,” Inami ordered.

  “Ryokai, full burn Taisa,” Shika responded.

  Slowly the Onikano turned away from the rest of the feet, but the Kuldrizi swarm remained where it was, intermingled with the Confederate ships.

  Inami tapped a control rune and a holo-window of Nori appeared in front of her.

  “Nori, why aren’t the Kuldrizi following us?” she asked, accepting a glass of wine from a robot.

  “I’m not sure,” Nori said, perturbed. “I think the release of so much ethereal energy so close to us has overloaded the entire network. I’m working on it as fast as I can.”

  The Onikano rocked to one side and Inami dropped her glass as she grabbed onto a servant robot to keep her balance. A tactical display came up showing Inami the situation. The remnants of the Gunoi flotilla had broken orbit from the northern continent and was now flanking the Onikano, which had made itself an easy target when it separated from the main fleet.

  The Onikano batteries came alive, the particle lances tearing deep into the rocky hulls of the lead Gunoi vessels, venting jets of atmosphere and bodies into the space around them.

  “Target the propulsion systems,” Inami ordered. “We don’t need to destroy them, just slow them down.”

  The Gunoi ships spit out crude missiles and rockets, twisting and veering in all directions and occasionally coming back to strike the ships that fired them. A fair number reached their mark, however, and the Onikano’s defensive barriers were stripped away by the atomic explosions that stretched out along their surfaces like bubbles on water.

  The Gunoi ships were larger and more heavily armed than the Onikano, but they were slow, so Inami ordered the Onikano to turn ninety degrees to the right, placing the Gunoi ships directly behind it and the now distant planet to its right.

  “Redistribute auxiliary power to the drive systems,” Inami ordered, raising a fresh glass and giving a silent toast to herself.

  “What auxiliary power?” Nori asked from her holo-window, steam and smoke rising up from the background behind her.

  “You know, the power we don’t normally use,” Inami said, sniffing the bouquet of her wine.

  “What, do you think we just vent extra power into space? We’re already using all available power.” Inami opened her eyes and would have responded, but another window appeared with Shika in it.

  “What I can do,” Shika interrupted, “is temporarily disable the engine limiter. That’ll give us a lot more speed.”

  “I would advise against that,” Nori cautioned. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “The engine has a limiter?” Inami gasped, “Why didn’t anyone tell me about this?”

  Mai sighed from her position behind Inami. “Because we knew you’d just turn it off every chance you got and burn out the engines.”

  “You’re right,” Inami admitted, “and it was wrong of you to deny me that privilege. So, let’s make up for lost time and burn them out now.”

  The heart of the Onikano roared louder than ever before and the ship surged forward, Gunoi missiles and shells streaking around it as it pulled away from its pursuers.

  Just as Nori had managed to re-establish the inner layer of barriers, a terrible screech rang out through the ship and red klaxon lights signaled a hull breach.

  “What’s going on down there?” Inami demanded, frustrated at the continual interruptions to her victory celebration.

  The image of Nori was obscured with static and the glow of fire.

  “Number three drive thruster just had a catastrophic pressure failure. I’m going to have to take it off line before it ignites the plasma feed.”

  “You should know better than that,” Mai criticized, “When a Forgemaster tells you that something is too dangerous, then it is.”

  Inami sighed and put her bottle down.

  “The celebrations will have to wait for a while, it seems,” she complained. With their speed reduced, the lopsided Gunoi ships began closing again and the rear barrier took a beating from the crude shells and unguided rockets that impacted them by the hundreds.

  “How long before we can make an ether slip?” Inami asked as she issued orders for all squads to mount up in the remaining battle suits.

  “Without the bubble of the Kuldrizi to shield us, the ether storms in this system are wreaking havoc on the ether induction trigger. We’ll need another ten minutes at this speed first,” Nori reported, holding a fire extinguisher.

  “We may not have ten minutes,” Inami complained as an explosion rocked the ship. “Are the boarding teleporters still working?” The systems officer nodded in affirmation.

  “We can’t send over boarding parties,” Mai scoffed. “There won’t be time to retrieve them.”

  “Who says we’re going to beam over a boarding party?”

  Several minutes later, in the command pit of the Gunoi Stoneship Gutripper, Captain Grugnap kicked his navigator, bellowing at him to get there faster. The loss of Grunteif meant that there would be a good scrap to choose the new boss and Grugnap wasn’t going to let any other ship get there before him. It would be the first step to proving who was the biggest and meanest.

  Grugnap’s engineer mewed at him through the communications tube that connected the command pit to the boiler rooms. He said that teleport beams were locking onto the command pit and suggested raising the force field to stop them. Grugnap would hear none of that. If the enemy wanted to bring the fight to them, which would just get them into the scrap sooner instead of later.

  The room flashed brightly and the Gunoi covered their eyes with large clumsy fingers, growling in pain. When the light subsided, a large conical dome sat in the center of the command pit. Grugnap approached it cautiously and poked at it with the tip of his axe. It looked an awful lot to him like the tip of a torpedo.

  The Gutripper was torn apart as internal explosions ignited the ammunition and fuel storage levels. Two more Gunoi ships experienced similar failures, the half-mile long pieces of rock and stone that comprised their former hulls crashing into the Stoneships around them, sending some careening into others.

  Inami enjoyed very much the havoc she was witnessing within the Gunoi fleet as the Onikano pulle
d away from it again. Nori’s team had been forced to cut a hole through a bulkhead wall to get the warheads to the teleport pads, but it had only taken them a few minutes.

  Her celebrations were cut off by a titanic explosion that threw her out of her chair. The entire ship listed and the emergency lights flickered on to dispel the darkness.

  “That was no Gunoi rocket,” Mai guessed from the sound. “That was a Confederate cannon.”

  Sitting in his crew quarters, scratching his double chin with a broken thumbnail, Mitchels Iwata chose to ignore the angry chirping of his communicator. If he answered it, it would surely just be a call from his supervisor to come in for overtime, so he let it ring unanswered.

  With thick fingers he probed around the interior of the bag of corn chips he had been eating. Finding only crumbs, he instead wet his finger and coated it with the crumbs, placing the whole thing in his mouth and slurping on it.

  Casually, Mitchels looked out the porthole and saw something he had never seen before. A faint bead of light, growing large and larger as it approached.

  “Oh no...” he said as the particle lance ripped through the hull of his quarters.

  The second barrage tore into the flank of the Onikano’s starboard side, ripping through the innards of the ship and bursting out the other side. Whole sections of the ship lost power and atmosphere completely and several crewmen were lost into the vacuum of space. The entire spine of the ship bent downwards, giving it the profile of a ruined boomerang.

  Inami pulled herself up, the thick blood trickling down her face quickly turning into a dark scab before it could even drip off of her. The blurred tactical map sputtered to life and revealed that the Angelus Noctem’s flagship, the Diabolus had broken away from the Confederate fleet and was flanking them from the right. Already the Diabolus had deployed its great white sails, ready to pursue them into ether space.

  Inami’s command station became overwhelmed with damage reports, rescue requests, status updates, and order requests. A hundred voices demanded her attention. She closed them all off except one, the transmission from the Diabolus with the smug face of Captain Lazarus.

  “You know how this works. Surrender and prepare to be boarded,” he said.

  Inami’s command staff grew silent as they awaited her response.

  “Fine, we surrender,” Inami said spitefully, refusing to look into Lazarus’ eyes, knowing what she would find there. She closed the holo-window with his image before he had a chance to smile and Mai launched rescue teams to gather the bodies of those that had been lost into space.

  Inami opened another connection to Nori. Nori was dressed in a pressure suit, sparks and clutter behind her.

  “Nori, I need you to initiate an ether slip before the boarding shuttles get here,” Inami prayed.

  “The ether drive is down, Taisa,” Nori reported. Inami ran her fingers through her green hair. “Can you try to re-route the power?”

  “To where? The ether drive has been smashed into three pieces,” Nori choked out.

  “Well, can’t you just bypass the system?”

  Nori groaned in frustration and stepped aside, so that Inami could see the shattered remains of the ether system. Building-sized chunks of smashed machinery floated around in the now zero-gravity environment. The light from the system’s sun shone in through holes in the bulkhead that opened directly into space.

  “How can you be so dense? Taisa, the ether drive has been smashed into three pieces, there’s nothing to bypass.”

  Inami closed the window and slumped back into her chair. “Shoot, that usually works,” she complained to herself.

  “Is there a backup ether-drive?” Inami asked hopefully.

  “The ether-drive system takes up nearly half the mass of the ship,” Mai explained, “There is no such thing as a backup ether drive.”

  “Well, there should be,” Inami complained, her eyes growing dull.

  “The Gunoi ships have regrouped and are approaching fast,” Mieko warned, her long ears hanging low.

  Inami slumped low in her chair, looking completely defeated.

  “Maybe Taisho Kayane was right, after all. It’s wrong for the dead to try to affect the world of the living. It isn’t our place,” she said quietly.

  “It’s not over until you say it is,” Mai encouraged, confidence in her eyes.

  Inami’s eyes flickered with an inner fire again. “Is the holo-projector still working?”

  On the observation deck of the Gunoi flagship, Engine Master Daguclot flexed his neck back and forth, feeling the piston-action of his crude prosthetic body. He was now technically the highest-ranking Gunoi left alive, but mechanics were barred from leadership. Their diminutive size made them too small. With his prosthetic body, however, Daguclot was far taller than any other mechanic and he reveled in the thought of being the boss for once.

  As he looked out into space and the purple backdrop of the Uragan, a blinding red light appeared and Daguclot saw the mountainous form of the Gunoi god standing before them in space. His dark skin and overpowering visage reminded Daguclot of why they had come here in the first place and he could feel the floor beneath him vibrate with the cheers of the Gunoi throughout the ship.

  With the voice of a thousand cannons, the god spoke.

  “You have smashed the gates of Kred-halla. You have proven yourselves worthy. No longer will you be mere champions of the gods. Instead, you will join our numbers.”

  The Gunoi god cast aside his impossibly huge axe and outstretched his arms to them, beckoning them to come to him and become one with him.

  Daguclot had no need to order his drivers to change heading, but he gave them a swift kick anyway just for good measure. The Gunoi ships surged forward even faster, competing with each other to see who could be the first to become one with the gods.

  The Gunoi god turned its head to one side. “How was my performance? What? Oh, sorry. Come to me, my children, we have cake and wine and...really attractive Gunoi females...I guess.”

  Beams of energy struck out from the god, slicing into the Gunoi ships, but they paid them no heed. They had achieved what every Gunoi dreams of, they would be bigger than anyone else and they would fight for all time.

  When the Gunoi ships closed to within a thousand feet, the image of the great god faded away and they tore through white ether sails. Just before the bridge around him was fatally crushed and its contents vented into space, it occurred to Daguclot that, up close, the god looked a lot like the bulkhead of a human battleship.

  One after another, the crude Gunoi ships slammed into the hull of the Diabolus. Shattered rock, metal, and fire sprayed out in all directions, concealing the ship in a cloud of debris. The final impact hit the crippled vessel midline. The spine of the great battleship groaned and snapped in two. The two giant sections spun lazily in space, atmosphere and equipment spilling out around them as they slowly drifted.

  The Confederate fleet moved away from the Kuldrizi, most heading for the edge of the system, but a few moved toward the remains of the Diabolus, launching rescue vessels.

  The crippled Onikano shut down all power systems, silenced all communications and used dampeners to mask radiation emissions. Dead in space, it drifted out of the system, its occupants praying that their enemies would be unable to detect them.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  The Promise of Yellow Flowers

  The enemy has as many lies as there are people to hear them, but one lie is his favorite. The lie of cattle, which is that people who rebel against tradition are thinking for themselves, while those who follow tradition are just sheep who do not think. Like all good lies, it sounds true, but is not. The decision to follow tradition is just as much an exercise of free will as is the decision to break from it. For those in the sound of my voice who have fallen for the lie of cattle, I pity you.

  -Cardinal Ananna Deodo of Corrientes 03.11.1240rl

  The next thirty-six hours were an exhausting flurry of movement aboard the
Onikano as everyone on board frantically worked to rebuild the ether drive. Not only did the angrier elements of the Excelikas Crusade know they were drifting somewhere in the system, but the converging traitor forces in the area knew as well. The Onikano was just one little ship, but it felt like the entire universe wanted them dead and everyone on board felt the pressure of it.

  In conditions like that prioritization was extremely high. Anything that did not directly involve getting into ether space was being actively ignored. Thus it was that no one noticed that certain areas of the ship were completely without power.

  Keiko yawned uncontrollably as she walked up to the blast doors of the confinement center. It had been nearly four days since she had slept and it was all she could do to keep herself from falling over. The tray of food she held contained extra portions and some of Ami’s cookies, an apology to Nariko for not having brought her any the previous two days. In her mind, Keiko rehearsed the little speech she had prepared about how busy she had been and how she knew that Nariko probably wouldn’t need the food anyway, but none of it really dissuaded her guilt.

  At her authorization code, the blast-doors opened. A second later, the tray of food dropped to the ground. Keiko stepped back, her hair shimmering jade. The confinement center had no power, the barriers were down, and the room was empty.

  The Onikano was placed on full alert. Guards and robots broke into access passages and service tunnels. Non-essential personnel were restricted to quarters. What made the situation worse was that Nariko was not only familiar with the ship, but with their own security procedures, making her all the more dangerous. To make matters even worse, without the presence of the Kuldrizi, there were only a handful of weapons on the ship that could reasonably injure her demonic form, meaning that whoever stumbled onto her first would be in an extremely dangerous situation. Consequently, many of the search teams focused on looking busy in the hope that someone else would stumble onto her before they did.