by Jacob Holo
“Stay out of this, Vierj. This is personal.”
“As you wish.”
Vierj pulled up and away. She landed one factory back along the ring and crouched like a vicious bird of prey.
Jack took a deep faltering breath, then expanded his blade-wings. Their edges blurred and ignited with blue fire. He swept in with deadly intent.
Seth flew up to meet him.
Jack swung in, and the two clashed in the snap-flash of meeting blades. Their energy weapons ground against each other, spewing showers of purple and blue sparks. Jack pushed forward, threw Seth off balance, and swung upward with the edge of his shield.
Seth blocked the attack. He dashed away and curved around to Jack’s side. Jack dodged back and raised his sword. Their weapons connected once again. Seth pushed in and tried to stab a dagger past Jack’s defenses.
Jack grabbed the incoming forearm. He pulled Seth along his intended path and threw him into the factory.
Seth spun wildly. He crashed into the factory’s outer hull and knocked it out of alignment. The star strand passing within the factory wavered for a moment before fountaining outward in a wild cone.
Seth tore himself free of the wreckage, pushed off, and flew out.
All the while, Jack had lost track of Quennin.
She looped behind him and fired her fusion cannon squarely into his back. The beam struck his barrier and exploded into a spray of energy.
“Gah!” Jack grunted.
Seth dove at him.
Jack dashed to the side, making Seth overshoot him. Jack thrust down, trying to skewer the black seraph’s back, but Seth spun around and knocked the blow aside with calculated ease.
Seth fell away with the white dwarf at his back and regrouped with Quennin along the closest factory’s star strand.
Jack flew down after them.
Seth and Quennin fired their fusion cannons, but Jack dodged out of the way. Both beams punched into the factory above and bored through, vaporizing metal and machinery. The factory listed uncontrollably, allowing the star strand to cut effortlessly through its side.
Jack approached along the star strand, flying by guiding rings that kept the plasma stream tame. Seth and Quennin fired once more, but not at Jack.
At first, Jack wondered if the archangel squadrons had activated, but he quickly he realized the true target. Both beams made precise hits on a guide ring halfway between Jack and the two seraphs. The beams weren’t strong enough to destroy the ring, but they did knock it out of alignment.
The thick cord of plasma changed directions as it passed through the maladjusted ring. A wild cord cut through the space, obliterating anything it touched.
Jack dodged frantically to the side. The nimbus of his arm’s barrier touched the the passing cord, and the short contact sent hot needles of pain dancing up his arm.
“Gnh!”
The seraph said nothing.
“I know! I know!”
Seth gave him no time to recover and charged along the undamaged portion of the star strand’s guides. He slashed in, and Jack was forced to block with his weakened shield. Its edges lost definition and wavered, but Jack forced it to hold. His arm burned with pain. In a sense, it actually was on fire. His barrier was not some piece of technology but rather a part of him magnified by the seraph’s influx amplifier.
However, as wounded and stunned as he was, Jack’s abilities dwarfed even Seth’s. His shield held, and he threw Seth’s attack back and thrust in with his sword.
Sword met dagger in a powerful flash of light. Jack pressed in. Seth dodged back sharply, and Jack’s blade stabbed through empty space. Seth and Quennin regrouped at a distance.
“Six seraphs are approaching our position,” Vierj said. “They are making a circuit of the facility-ring destroying negators along the way.”
“Nothing I can do about that, Vierj.”
“But I can. Do you need assistance?”
“No, I’ve got this.”
“Then I think I will have a little fun. These fake seraphs should provide ample amusement.”
“Don’t give anything away.”
“Naturally. I will restrict myself to basic attacks. Let us see how they fare.”
Vierj took off from her factory perch, spun slowly around, and sped towards the Renseki.
Seth and Quennin flew in. Jack accelerated and met their attacks.
***
Jared Daykin surveyed the archangel factory’s defenses with a vastly accelerated mind. Chaos energy circulated through his body, greatly enhancing his reflexes and intelligence.
Unlike other facilities in the nebula, the archangel factory possessed considerable defenses in the form of thick mnemonic plating, dozens of seeker ports, and hundreds of laser blisters and railgun turrets.
But none of these stood a chance against the fourteen seraphs bearing down on it.
Like most EN seraphs, Jared’s was configured for maximum ranged firepower. He carried an eighteen-shot fusion cannon on his arm and three tactical seeker pods, one on the other arm and two on his wings. This gave him a total of ninety archangel-killing tactical seekers. His two leg conformal pods were stocked with sixty ship-killing fusion torpedoes, half of which he’d already pumped into three now-dead negators.
In addition to this already massive arsenal, every EN seraph carried an MR2-X rail-rifle into battle. Back when the Alliance first formed, Earth Nation scientists and engineers had provided a fresh perspective on seraphs and their miniaturized fusion cannons, and they wondered what really limited a device connected to a seraph’s barrier.
A seraph’s power output always equaled “as high as required” within the pilot’s individual limitations. So theoretically, a device connected to a seraph’s barrier could draw almost limitless power. Development and experimentation between combined corps of Aktenai and Earth Nation engineers led to the development of evasion pods and rail-rifles.
Jared leveled his rail-rifle at the closest weapon blister and fired. Armor superheated and vaporized in the exchange of kinetic force. White-hot debris exploded from the defensive railgun battery.
The rest of epsilon squadron rained kinetic bolts and fusion beams upon the archangel factory. Its defenses withered under the fusillade, and the main body cracked open. The star strand blew out of the factory in an ugly cone of white-hot plasma. Grendeni guns fell silent.
“Recon the factory,” Jared said. Six Aktenai seraphs swept towards the factory’s large rectangular plate. Eight seraphs waited, rifles and cannons ready. Yonu held formation with Jared.
This close to the factory, Jared detected a transit system running through the plate’s topside that connected to each of the archangels.
That must be how they get pilots to the archangels, Jared thought. If pilots were in the factory, they didn’t have a lot of time.
Before the Aktenai seraphs reached the factory, twenty archangels powered up on Jared’s chaos scanner. The archangels pushed off from the cargo plate and faced oncoming seraphs. Long swords ignited with yellow fire, and they flew out to meet their foes.
“Open fire,” Jared said.
The EN gun-line unleashed a round of rifle fire. Seven kinetic bolts slammed into the archangels. One exploded when a bolt tore through its stomach, but the rest shrugged off the impacts.
Another salvo hit home, splattering five into clouds of broken metal and yellow goo. The surviving archangels approached without fear or hesitation. Only six seraphs met them, but these were some of the best pilots in all of Aktenzek, and they were ready.
The Aktenai seraphs lit their daggers. They charged in, parried the archangel swords, and cut them down with killing strokes.
Another group of archangels began to power up.
Jared spotted an archangel tumbling out of the melee. He lined up his rail-rifle and fired. The kinetic bolt struck the archangel’s shoulder, flared briefly yellow against its chaos barrier, and punched through. The archangel blew apart, its appendages spinning away
.
More archangels launched from the factory plate, glowing red in Jared’s thoughts. His accelerated mind played the battle out to its conclusion.
Act quickly or be overwhelmed, he thought grimly.
“Gun-line, keep up the pressure,” Jared said, flying out of formation. “Yonu, cover me.”
“Following!” Yonu pulled in behind him.
Jared looped around the growing melee. Aktenai seraphs continued to cut through the archangels, and EN seraphs poured volley after volley into them. But the archangels kept coming.
Jared stopped with his line of fire perpendicular to the next archangel swarm. He selected six targets and flushed his conformal ordnance pods, launching all ninety tactical seekers in a single volley. The cloud of munitions refined into six tightly packed arrows of death.
Fifteen tactical seekers slammed into each archangel. Flashes of heat and radiation erupted like short-lived suns. Of the six targets, a single archangel survived. Yonu blasted it to pieces with a fusion shot.
Three archangels broke from the swarm, heading for Jared and Yonu.
Jared drew down his rail-rifle on the leader and fired once, twice, three times before its barrier gave out. The final bolt punched through the abdomen with such force that its torso burst apart.
Two archangels left.
Jared stowed the rail-rifle on his back as the final two archangels came in. He ignited his deep red chaos dagger and awaited their attack. The first archangel raised its sword over its head and slashed down. Jared met the sword in a short flash of chaos energy, pushed the sword up, and slashed his dagger through its armpit.
The archangel’s sword arm tumbled away, thick fluid pulsing from the wound. Though stunned and defenseless, the archangel clearly had no concept of self-preservation. It rushed in and tackled him.
“No!”
The second archangel flew above them, sword held high, ready to cut him in half. Jared tried to jerk his arm free but couldn’t pull out in time.
The second archangel swung down. Yonu sped across, her dagger cutting through its chest. Pressurized fluid gushed from the wound. The second archangel’s sword struck Jared and rebounded harmlessly off his barrier.
The sword’s edge, along with the pilot, was dead.
Jared freed his arm and stabbed through the first archangel’s cockpit. He kicked the dead machine off.
“That… was close,” Jared said. “Thanks, Yonu.”
“No problem.”
“Renseki, we’re at the archangel factory. What’s your status?”
“Two negators left,” Zo said. “We’ll fold to you once their fields are down.”
“Confirmed.”
Jared and Yonu approached the factory from the side, avoiding the worst of the seraph-versus-archangel action. Epsilon squadron was holding out, but archangels kept activating in droves. They wouldn’t hold out much longer.
Jared retrieved his rail-rifle and hovered at the edge of the factory. Most of the factory plate was covered by dormant ranks of archangels, but he spotted long crates at the ends of each row, just the right size for storing archangel swords lengthwise.
“There.” Jared linked coordinate data. “Those crates at the end of each row.”
“I see them,” Yonu said.
“Crack one open,” Jared scanned the ranks of crouching archangels with his rail-rifle. “I’ll provide cover.”
“Moving in.”
Yonu landed on the edge of the cargo plate, ignited her dagger, and cut through the exterior of the closest crate. She jammed her fingers into the glowing rent and pried it open.
“Archangel swords,” she said. “About forty to each of these crates.”
“Grab the crate. I’m coming down to pick up one of the inactive archangels.”
“Understood.”
Jared descended towards the nearest row of archangels.
A group of fourteen archangels activated and took off. One took its sword and backstabbed another. Both shut down and drifted away. The other twelve came at him.
“Watch out!” Yonu said.
“Last negator down,” Zo Nezrii said. “Redeploying to assist.”
Six Renseki seraphs flashed into existence above the factory. Fold points expanded outwards.
The Renseki dove at the archangels. They moved in a precise and deadly ballet, as if each seraph was simply one cog in a larger machine. They fired their cannons, launched seeker volleys, and finally ignited their daggers. In seconds, not a single archangel remained.
Jared had never seen anything like it.
“Moving to assist epsilon,” Zo said. The Renseki streaked into the melee.
“I’ve got the crate,” Yonu said.
Jared selected an archangel and landed next to it. The archangel was locked into position with heavy clamps on its limbs and wings, but these stood no chance against a seraph’s strength. Jared grabbed the archangel’s torso with both hands and pulled. He ripped the torso free, but the limbs stayed in place.
“Ahh, crud. This is harder than it looks,” Jared said. He flung the torso aside and flew over to the next archangel. This time, he tore the clamps open one by one, grabbed the archangel underneath its arms, and hefted it up.
“We have what we came for!” he said.
“Fall into formation with us,” Zo said. “We’ll hold this position until all units are ready to fold.”
“Where’s the commander?”
“Pilot Elexen is currently engaged.”
Jared and Yonu pulled into formation with the Renseki. The fighting around the factory grew increasingly intense. Whole squadrons of archangels began folding in, but the Renseki demonstrated just how far the archangels had to go before they could match seraphs. Wave after wave fell to their tightly coordinated attacks.
Amidst the onslaught of archangels, Jared spotted a single fold point. At first, he thought it was a lone archangel folding in behind its squadron. But as the distortion passed, Jared discovered who this new foe was.
“Azeal’s here!” Jared shouted. “Gun-line, new target!”
EN seraphs brought rail-rifles to bear on the featureless black seraph. Jared slung the archangel limply under one arm and retrieved his own rifle. Every EN pilot poured fire into the enemy, but shots that would have torn an archangel to pieces only ricocheted off Azeal.
The black seraph sped past the latest wave of archangels. Renseki and Aktenai beams fired, but it didn’t bother dodging. Every hit splashed harmlessly off its barrier.
Azeal crashed shoulder-first into one of the Aktenai, slashed across the seraph’s belly, then grabbed hold and ripped it in two. The pilot’s vitals flatlined.
The Renseki flew out, Mezen’s command seraph in the lead. He thrust in with his bright yellow dagger and struck Azeal’s shadowy blade. The two exploded against each other in a nova of light and darkness. Chaos energy threw the Renseki back.
Two more Renseki dove in, their twin orange daggers ready, but Azeal moved impossibly fast and their strokes found nothing but empty space.
Jared received Seth’s squadron-wide fallback signal, authorizing him to leave the area of engagement.
The Renseki and epsilon survivors folded space back to the Resolute near the edge of the nebular expanse. Alongside the carrier hovered four dreadnoughts and a negator, along with full squadrons of exodrones and frigates.
Seth and Quennin folded in and headed towards the carrier.
“Everyone land!” Seth shouted. The Alliance seraphs dropped directly onto the carrier’s exterior, not bothering with the time-consuming processes of docking internally.
Hundreds of fold points disgorged Grendeni warships, drones, and archangels. The Aktenai dreadnoughts and frigates moved in to protect the carrier, exchanging beams and torpedoes with the Grendeni ships.
Two winged shapes folded in, one white and one black.
Jared landed on the carrier last, careful not to damage his captured archangel. Every Alliance seraph was now within the carrier’
s fold envelope.
“Fold!” Seth shouted.
The Resolute engaged its fold engines and slipped away. Less than a nanosecond later, the Aktenai negator switched on its field. Unable to fold space and pursue, the Grendeni fleet continued to pound the Aktenai warships.
The Alliance seraphs had escaped.
Chapter 12
Before the Storm
They never expected the attack on Valiant Artisan, Jack thought, hurrying through the Righteous Anger’s northcity streets. The Grendeni Executives were finally ready to launch an attack on Aktenzek itself.
That tipped things in my favor. I finally have the leverage I need.
Even though Aktenzek and the Grendeni schisms were powerful industrial centers, their civilian populations shielded them from military aggression. Attacks against Aktenzek were often followed by retaliatory strikes against schisms and vice versa. Millions of Grendeni lives could hinge on the decision to assault Aktenzek.
Cars zipped by or took off for the northcity heights. The axial tube dimmed and reddened, simulating dusk.
Jack stepped off the street and entered the five-hundred-floor residential tower. He walked across the foyer and took a lift to his suite. Dominic had arranged the accommodations as one of many small gestures meant to placate him and buy time.
Jack preferred staying on the Scion, but living with the Grendeni was an important gesture of trust. Besides, the less time he spent near his seraph, the less nervous he made the Grendeni.
Though it doesn’t stop them from prying, Jack thought. He knew what the Grendeni had tried to do to his seraph, and how his seraph had responded.
On the top floor, Jack walked by a group of four Grendeni civilians who ignored him completely. He now wore the attire of a Grendeni administrator: black trousers, white tunic, and dark green jacket adorned with the gold sigils of rank. The clothes and honorary title were yet another gift from Dominic.
Hell, Dom, I’d wear a clown suit if it made you attack sooner.
Jack stepped into a wide room subdivided by white curtains. Most were pulled back against narrow fluted columns that met a high ceiling. He joined Vierj and collapsed into a couch with a weary exhale.