by Jacob Holo
Clamps descended on rails and latched onto his wings. A catapult shutter snapped open beneath his feet, and the clamps thrust him downward. He cleared three shutters and flew out into the emptiness of space.
Seth unleashed the full yield of his talent. His barrier shimmered with tiny sparks of purple electricity. He spread his wings and filled them with power. Their edges burned with light and he shot forward, clearing the cylindrical bulk of the Resolute.
Eighteen other seraphs launched and joined him. All six Renseki and all twelve of the pilots in Jared’s squadron stood ready for his orders.
“Epsilon squadron at full readiness, sir,” Jared said. “Fold engines fully charged and calibrated.”
“Renseki standing by,” Zo said.
Seth called up the probe data from exodrones near Imayirot.
Nearly four hundred Grendeni warships fought against the automated defenders with more ships folding every minute. The Grendeni would pour every available ship into this fight. They had to know the Aktenai fleets were out of position and weakened by civil war. Already, they had succeeded in driving a wedge through the orbital defense grid, though they had paid for it with over sixty smashed warships.
The Aktenai fleets would attack regardless of the skewed odds, and Seth led only a fraction of the two hundred seraphs committed to the attack.
A hypercast message carried the Choir’s orders to all seraph squadrons.
Seth started a squadron-wide countdown. “Fold on my signal. We’ll come in directly behind the Grendeni formations with our fleet in tow. Do not engage the defenders unless absolutely necessary. Focus on the Grendeni ships and watch for archangels. They’ll show up shortly after we do.”
“Confirmed, sir.”
“Understood.”
The countdown reached zero. Nineteen seraphs folded to Imayirot.
***
Space exploded around them.
Hundreds of beams crisscrossed between dense formations of ships and the orbital defenders. Thousands of fusion torpedoes and tactical seekers blossomed into white-hot suns wherever they hit.
Seth oriented himself with the Grendeni fleet ahead. The enemy ships flew towards Imayirot and away from him, beams converging on their formations from all sides. Grendeni frigates and dreadnoughts died by the dozens, smashing themselves against the weakening orbital defenses.
The great black shade, a disc thirty thousand kilometers across, no longer rested between Imayirot and its sun. It now orbited the planet, slowly approaching the weakest part of Imayirot’s defenses. Cannons all across its circumferences fired on the Grendeni ships.
Light caressed Imayirot for the first time in millennia, illuminating its lifeless landscapes. No atmosphere hung above its barren surface. No ocean washed up along its cold shores. Cities that once stood tall and opulent now existed as rubble and debris. Domes lay scattered about its surface, some cracked open, revealing dilapidated cities and long tunnels leading deep into the planet.
Far below the orbiting weapons, yet hundreds of kilometers above the planet, was an incomplete patchwork of reflective mirrors and metal canopies. Like the domed cities, these had been Imayirot’s attempt to stave off the brutal forces of entropy while its inhabitants tried to live without a sun.
Somewhere within the long, endless tunnels of Imayirot, the Choir hid the Gate, Seth thought. And the only people who know the exact location are the Original Eleven.
Behind Seth, the Aktenai fleet began folding in, its colossal ranks of frigates and dreadnoughts pursuing the Grendeni. Orbital batteries, not caring who intruded into Imayirot’s sacred space, wheeled about and opened fire.
The battle was joined.
Seth marked the closest Grendeni dreadnought as a priority target. Jared moved epsilon squadron up and opened fire. Fusion beams and rail-rifle bolts shot across space, impacting against its glowing, deformed hull. White beams vaporized armor and breached the hull.
Torpedoes struck the wounded warship, and not all of them from Jared’s squadron. Shoals of weaving, dodging projectiles spewed forth from the defenders. The torpedoes took heavy losses penetrating the dreadnought’s defenses, but over half slammed into its hull.
Warheads exploded across the dreadnought’s full length, sundering it.
But even as the ship died, two more dreadnoughts folded in behind it, along with over a hundred archangels. Like vast clouds of copper skeletons, the archangels wheeled about, and bore down on epsilon squadron.
“Archangels!” Seth reached for his chaos swords. He gripped the extended handles and pulled them free from his wing clusters. “Take them down!”
Seth brought the twin swords in front of him and let chaos energy flow down his arms and into the blades. With almost no effort, the edges ignited with brilliant fire. Seth readied the blades and flew up to meet the closest archangels. Six Renseki seraphs followed him, their own chaos swords ready and burning with vengeful light.
Behind Seth, Jared’s EN seraph gun-line opened fire with their rail-rifles, protected by a screen of six Aktenai seraphs. Kinetic bolts tore through the archangels, but the huge mob pressed on.
Seth closed with the first archangel and cut in. He met the archangel’s sword with his own, and the two flashed brightly as they met. But even though this foe had the same technological edge, it had none of his strength, and its blade faltered almost instantly.
Seth cut through sword and torso, hewing the archangel cleanly in two.
More archangels dove in, and Seth rocketed through them, slashing apart any in his path. Behind him, the Renseki cut a vicious path through the archangels.
Epsilon squadron volleyed their fusion cannons and rail-rifles again into the archangel swarm, pulverizing scores of the copper machines. Seth pulled up and away, a trail of hewn corpses behind him, his twin swords blazing with purple fire.
The archangels began to thin under the onslaught of Renseki swords and epsilon squadron guns. Seth flew back into the swarm, and archangels fell in around him with suicidal focus. Two archangels approached from his right, and he spun around, bringing a massive sword through both foes in a single cut. Another came at him from behind.
It never had a chance.
Seth flipped, shearing the archangel’s sword arm off with the first blade and cleaving the archangel down the middle with the second. Space thickened with dismembered bodies and blackening fluid.
Far ahead, almost unnoticed in the grand battle of Aktenai versus Grendeni and seraph versus archangel, two seraphs folded in, one white and one black. They flew across the head of the Grendeni fleet and dove through the weakest section of Imayirot’s defenders.
All nearby Grendeni craft opened fire on the traitor seraphs. Seth supposed it only made sense. Not even the Grendeni would knowingly ally with the Bane. They must have figured out the truth at some point.
More archangels folded in, but not all of them near Alliance seraphs. Whole squadrons arrived at the head of the Grendeni fleet formation, oriented themselves towards the planet, and dove after the two traitor seraphs.
Perfect.
Seth opened a private channel with Zo.
“Go ahead, Seth.”
“Zo, take command here. I’ll head across the Grendeni formations and do what I can to delay the traitors. Join up with me when you can.”
“Now hold on, Seth! That’s crazy! We break through their lines together.”
“No offense, but you’ll just slow me down.”
He spread his wings and shot into the heart of the Grendeni fleet.
“Seth, you don’t stand a chance alone!”
But he ignored her words. Seth had spotted the only foe that mattered, and nothing short of death would stop him.
Chapter 19
Where It All Began
Jack looked over his shoulder at a horde of over sixty archangels. They weren’t all clustered together, but still, that was a lot. He descended towards Imayirot, flanked by massive spherical defenders. They spun around to face him.
Vierj lashed out with twin cords of black light. They whipped through space, expanded into flat triangles, and swallowed the defenders whole. Cold, broken husks drifted out the other side, and the triangles vanished into fields of winking black motes.
The swarm of archangels closed in from above.
Jack descended with his back to Imayirot. “Can you feel where the Gate is?”
“Not yet,” Vierj said. “There is something here interfering with my talent, but I am unsure where it is coming from. I will try to locate it.”
The first archangels dove in. Jack ignited his shield and blade, opened his wings, and flew up to meet them. The lead archangel came at him, raising its sword above its head.
Jack shot past it. Two halves of the archangel separated slowly, fluid pulsing from the wound.
A dozen archangels fell in around him. Jack wove through their ranks, cutting and slashing at targets of opportunity. As clumsy as they were, each archangel posed a very real threat. A solid hit from their swords could cripple his seraph or even kill him.
An archangel came in from the right. Jack spun around, deflected its sword strike with his shield, then cut up and through its torso. A dozen chopped-up archangels floated near him within a cloud of spilling conductor fluids. Twenty more archangels moved in for the next attack.
“Damn, there are a lot of you!” Jack shouted.
The seraph did not speak.
“Yeah, I know!”
Jack sped down and away from the horde, regrouping near Vierj. More archangels kept folding in, bloating the size of the swarm. They waited this time, gathering their numbers into one decisive clump. He didn’t know if he could handle so many at once. One mistake on his part, and that was it.
“Vierj? The Gate?” Jack asked urgently.
“I believe it is here. There is something here interfering with my ability, though it is quite weak and distant. I need more time.”
Fifty archangels charged towards him. Jack darted out of the way, let the leaders sail by, then flew into the side of the formation. He dismembered two archangels in the first seconds, clipped a third with a sharp kick that sent it spinning out of control, and stabbed his sword through the head of a fourth.
Archangels turned slowly and came in from all sides. The swarm was almost a solid suffocating mass around him. Jack fought against them alone, killing them over and over again with brutal repetition. The swarm constricted around him without the slightest hint of fear.
Below, Vierj hovered over Imayirot, perfectly still.
Jack cut down two, sometimes three archangels with every attack. Severed limbs, broken torsos, and dark fluid choked the space around him. Archangels pushed through the floating detritus, swinging their swords in slow motion compared to his blinding speed.
Jack butchered his way through the swarm. He killed and killed and killed until only a few remained.
The last four archangels charged him together.
Jack stabbed the point of his shield through the rightmost archangel cockpit. From the left, three brought their swords crashing down. Jack met their combined attack with his own blade. The blow released a flash of energy and rang through his body like a hot, burning spasm.
Jack cried out. His blade flashed brighter, and he threw the three archangels back. His foes tumbled wildly and he closed in, cut two down in a single stroke, and thrust forward for the final kill.
Jack kicked the archangel off his blade and checked his surroundings.
“Vierj?”
“I am not getting anywhere. The Gate is here, but I cannot pinpoint its location.”
“Do we need to get closer?”
“That may help, but I want to try something first.” Vierj spun around and lined up with Imayirot’s orbiting shade. “We shall move to a different position over the planet. Follow me.”
Vierj took off towards the shade and Jack followed her lead. Orbital defenders opened fire on them, but they darted through the crisscrossing lines of white light.
The shade loomed close now, a tall black oval against space, ringed with turreted weapons. Beam cannons all across its circumference poured continuous fire into the Grendeni fleet, and a few plasma lances impacted against Aktenai ships folding in behind the main Grendeni force.
Jack focused his active scanners on the Aktenai ships, searching and cataloguing the massing ranks of dreadnoughts, frigates, drones squadrons, and yes, seraphs.
Where are they? he wondered.
Jack sifted through the raging battle, looking for six silver glimmers in a tight formation or a distinct black and red seraph pair. He couldn’t find either, but that wasn’t surprising, given the scale of the battle. Even his chaos scanner was useless. Between the seraphs and archangels, all the influx signs blurred into a single bright slurry.
Vierj passed underneath the planetary shade and slowed.
“I’ll try to sense it from this angle,” she said.
A formation of three Grendeni dreadnoughts broke away from their main lines and headed for the Imayirot shade at maximum power. At first, Jack thought the gesture useless, but then he noticed the relative velocities between the three dreadnoughts and the shade.
Shade fusion cannons fired, tearing into the three Grendeni dreadnoughts. Two of them broke apart under the torrent of plasma. The final dreadnought was nothing more than a glowing shard of ruined armor when it struck the shade and vaporized.
The shade trembled from the impact like the head of a drum. A circle of armor six kilometers across blew open. Shockwaves rippled outwards, tearing its web-like support lattice free and silencing cannons along the perimeter.
Great rips formed like star-filled oceans, but the shade’s automated systems continued fighting. The outer ring had been damaged, but functional guns across its circumference resumed firing.
“I think I am starting to narrow down my search,” Vierj said. “We must descend. Follow me.”
“Right behind you.”
The swarms of defenders began to thin the lower they flew. They entered part of Imayirot’s jagged and broken mirror shell, each fragment permanently anchored to the planet’s gravity well in a short-ranged mimicry of geosynchronous orbit.
Vierj stopped above a continent-sized shell fragment, pitted and breached in hundreds of locations across its massive girth. The outer surface of the mirror shell was deathly black, even as the system’s yellow sun lit it for the first time in millennia, but the inner surface held a vast warped mirror.
“Any luck, Vierj?”
“I’ll have to descend down to the surface. And once there I should remain motionless. Moving about in orbit is making this difficult.”
“But you can find it, right?”
“Yes. It must be very deep in the planet or perhaps on the far side, but I will locate it.”
A rapidly approaching object caught his attention. Jack turned to see a lone black seraph fly clear of the Grendeni fleet.
So, Quennin did fall, Jack thought. Vierj’s attack hadn’t passed through the cockpit, but enough feedback could kill anyone.
“Vierj, head on down to the surface. I’ll stay up here and join you later.”
“Why?”
“There’s a seraph on approach. I’ll deal with him. You focus on finding the Gate.”
“One of your former comrades?”
“Yeah.”
“Perhaps I should stay.”
“No. This is my fight. If anyone is going to kill him, it should be me.”
“If that is your request, then I shall honor it. Fight well.”
Vierj descended towards Imayirot.
A squadron of archangels folded in and intercepted Seth. They wouldn’t delay him long.
First your son, then your lover, and now you, Jack thought. Come at me, Seth. Do your worst. God knows, I deserve it, but I won’t let you stop me. I’ve paid too high a price for this to fail now.
Jack wanted to call out to Seth and explain everything, but he buried those feelings. He
could send no message Vierj might intercept. Absolutely nothing he did could reveal what he planned, for Vierj needed to be unguarded at the last moment, or all the death he’d wrought would be for nothing.
Jack lit his blade once more, and waited above the shell fragment for the inevitable.
***
“Get out of my way!” Seth shouted.
He spread his swords to either side and charged into the archangel squadron. The closest two raced in, and he flew past, swinging his swords horizontally like a giant pair of scissors and cleaving them at the waist.
More flew in and more died. Seth tore through their ranks without mercy.
The Archangels tried to overwhelm him. They tried striking from multiple directions at once or crowding in front of his path to delay him or even colliding with him so that others could move in for the kill. They tried all they could to stop this force of nature, but nothing worked. Seth cut and slashed and fought his way through their ranks like a madman.
Finally, Seth broke free of the archangels, flashed his wings full of energy, and surged towards his true objective, leaving the sluggish remnants of the Grendeni imitations in his wake.
Behind him, the battle continued. No matter how many Grendeni or Aktenai ships died, more flooded in. Neither side was willing to give up the Gate, regardless of the cost. Seraph squadrons and archangel swarms dueled amongst the fleets, and Imayirot defenders continued to pour fire into the increasingly cluttered combat zone.
None of it mattered to Seth. His mind was made, his will set, and he flung himself towards Jack, who waited above a fragment of the mirror shell.
Seth sped through the last of Imayirot’s defenders and dropped altitude until his orbit came level with the shell fragment. He checked the Bane’s position, now dropping towards Imayirot. Whatever misdeeds the Bane might commit down there, it was still down there.
Jack was alone.
Seth received a hypercast signal and acknowledged it.
“I regret it must end this way between us,” Jack said.
“What’s your friend doing?”
“Going on ahead. This fight is between you and me.”