Most spacecraft didn't watch for a biological life form to drop out of the sky and onto the top of the hull of the ship. Mikhail banked his wings and sped up on the vessel's blind side, his heart pounding as he gave thanks for pushing himself so hard to regain some semblance of his former strength. This is what his species had been bred for. He was an elite soldier. Angelic Special Forces. And he remembered his training now that most of his memories had returned.
Clicking the Cherubim battle meditations to fully ascend into the killing dance, Mikhail crept up the hull as quietly as he could as the ship hovered, aiming at key strategic targets which had obviously been specified beforehand. He found a plasma cutter which had been jury-rigged to act as a mining laser. He twisted the wire that was feeding energy to the weapon until it shorted out. A moment later, he sabotaged a particle beam weapon on the other side of the ship which was about to take out Pareesa’s house, and then several smaller defensive weapons.
He needed to get inside the ship to take out its crew, but unless they were nice enough to open the hatch, there was no way to do that without a plasma cutter to slice through the hull. The red light blinked at him from his pulse rifle. He was almost out of power. Theoretically, he could blast small holes in the hull until he created a hole large enough to crawl inside, but he not have enough power to do this. There was only one shot left. He needed to make it count.
The ship lurched to one side. They were onto him! It rocked and rolled, trying to shake him off the hull, and then bolted towards the south.
The wind tore through his feathers. At these speeds, his wings were a liability, catching at the wind and threatening to tear him off. He pressed his wings along his body, flat to the ship, to stay attached as it banked and flew through the air. He could just simply let go, but there were other weapons systems he hadn’t knocked out yet. The lizards would simply circle around and continue to provide air support for the troops he knew would launch an invasion into the village right behind the shock and awe fireworks designed to subdue them.
His muscles shuddered as he fought the g-force of the accelerating ship to hang on. Hand over hand, he reached for each handhold and painstakingly moved back along the hull towards the engines. This ship had two engines, but he only had one shot left in his pulse rifle. The lizards wouldn’t limp home like Lucifer had done. If he only took out one engine, they would go back to Assur and provide whatever air support they could with the engine and weapons they had left, which were still formidable against a people wielding nothing but sticks and stones. Somehow, he needed to take this ship out with one shot. It was possible, but only at point-blank range.
“Kyō wa, shinu yoi hidesu,” he muttered in the clicking Cherubim language as he crept along the last few feet. Today is a good day to die. He turned the power up as high as it would go, pressed the barrel of the pulse rifle directly against the hull where the plasma conduit for one of the engines should be directly underneath, and pulled the trigger.
His mind registered the hull melting beneath his hand as the explosion caused a chain reaction which brought down the ship. He never saw it. His mind succumbed to blackness as they crashed into the Pars Sea.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 93
February: 3,389 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Pareesa
Pareesa lived in a smallish house with far too many people and not enough room for them all to spread out. She slept in a bed with her grandmother and her little sister, and only inches away snoozed four of her younger brothers. As she breathed deeply in the carefree sleep of a thirteen-summer girl who'd spent the previous day training, she ignored the frantic warning buzz which tried to rouse her from her happy dreams of swordplay and alert her that the rumbling sound which shook their house was not her granny snoring in her ear.
"Pareesa?" her little sister Zakiti whimpered. "I think the house is falling down."
An explosion reverberated through the village.
Pareesa shot upright and threw off her covers. She crawled over Zakiti to rouse her next younger brother from his sleep.
"Namhu! Wake up!" Pareesa shouted. "This is it. The day Mikhail said would come."
All six brothers and sisters scampered out of bed and helped granny down the ladder to wake up their parents and bundle up their seventh, baby sister for evacuation. Pareesa slung her quiver across her back and then motioned for her eldest siblings to do the same.
"You know what we have to do," Pareesa said. She grabbed her knife, her spear, and a bundle of extra arrows she'd fletched only this past week, and then she strapped her sword around her waist.
Granny retreated with Zakiti and the screaming baby into the grain-cellar, the part of their house most likely to survive all but a direct hit from the terrible weapons Mikhail had said the lizard-demons could use to annihilate them. Both of her parents grabbed their weapons and then stopped their offspring from running out into the street.
"Only Pareesa is old enough to fight," her Mama looked terrified. "The rest of you are to all stay here and defend each other."
"Yes, Mama," both Namhu and Akiya said without an argument.
Mama and Papa hurried out the door, Mama with her atlatl and Papa with his spear. The moment the door shut behind them, Pareesa gestured for Namhu and Akiya to follow her to the goat shed. They stepped out the door and stared upward. Namhu's mouth dropped, as did her next younger brother, Akiya. Neither of them had ever seen a sky canoe flying through the air before even though she had described it to them. The one which sat over their house like a fat, squat toad was different from the one she had taken out the eye of, but it was a harbinger of death just the same.
With a whirr, an enormous, grey arm rotated around and then tilted downwards towards their house. Crackles of blue electricity began to build between the fingers at the end of the arm. Pareesa realized she was staring at the weapon which had taken down Nineveh's walls.
"Granny! Zakiti" Namhu shouted. He ran back towards the house even as Pareesa shouted 'No!'
A small blue ball of lightning sped upwards from somewhere on the ground and hit the sky canoe in the rear. Fire erupted out of the back, showering them with sparks and bits of debris.
"Look!" Namhu whooped. "The gods have sent lightning to smite our enemies!"
The roaring wind which had awakened her took on a different sound, from galloping auroch to a high-pitched whine as smoke poured out of the sky canoe.
"That wasn't lightning," Pareesa said, her tone scornful because she was afraid. "That was Mikhail's firestick."
The whining grew louder, and then the sky canoe began to wobble like a man who had visited the widow-sister's house and imbibed in too many fermented beverages. A clump of fiery sky canoe fell off and crashed to the ground only inches from where they stood. Pareesa shrieked and dragged her two brothers back into the goat shed. For a moment she feared the sky canoe would drop out of the sky onto their house, but then it crept away, spewing smoke and debris in its wake.
"We are saved," eight-year-old Akiya said.
"Mikhail saved us," Namhu cuffed him on the back of the head.
"Silence!" Pareesa snapped at the both of them. She pointed up at the roof. "Take up a defensive position. If any lizard-men come to take granny and the babies, I want you to shoot them right through the heart."
Pareesa filled her quiver with arrows from the shed. Her brothers took the rest and carried them up onto the roof. She hurried into the pre-dawn murkiness, past terrified villagers who ran from their houses and cried out that the end was nigh, until she got to the house where Mikhail lived. The house was completely destroyed.
Amidst the shattered mud-bricks and fiery wood, Immanu kneeled on the ground, his arms held towards his devastated house as he keened an ululating cry of grief. The flames highlighted every wrinkle, making him look far older than his age.
"Why have you forsaken me?" Immanu wailed. "When I have devoted my entire life to serving you?"
Pareesa ran u
p to Ninsianna's father, daring to adopt an authoritarian tone with an elder who was far her senior.
"Immanu," Pareesa said. "You don't know that they were in there."
"I should have been there to protect her!" Immanu doubled over, clutching his gut as he sobbed. "I should have been there! Not in the Temple of She-who-is."
Pareesa swallowed her own tears. This was Mikhail's house, too. But she was certain he was not dead. She was not so certain about Needa.
"Immanu," she touched his shoulder. "Somebody shot blue lightning at the sky canoe and then it flew away and left me alone. That had to have been Mikhail. If he got out, you know he would not have left until he'd gotten Needa out as well."
Immanu blinked at her as though he wasn't certain what she'd said.
"They got out?"
"The old god says yes," Pareesa said, even though the old god told her no such thing. She tugged Immanu to his feet. "I'm on my way to see the Chief. If I were Mikhail, that is where I would have sent Needa."
"Mikhail never got there," Immanu said. "I just came from the Temple of She-Who-Is."
"Then Needa is probably frantic," Pareesa said, "searching for her husband."
"My wife no longer cares if I am alive or dead," Immanu said softly. It struck her how very vulnerable he looked right now, the man she'd spent the past three moon cycles cursing for his irrational behavior.
"I doubt very much that is true," Pareesa said. She dared jab her finger in his face as though she was the adult and he the child. "But you have much to atone for your behavior lately! So go find her and tell her you are sorry. And then you need to tell us about how to work this great magic Mikhail had us working so hard to complete."
Immanu set off without her, his stance determined as he pushed aside the panicked villagers and made his way back to the central square. Pareesa trotted after the man, not certain if his newfound determination was a good thing, or bad, given how erratically he'd been behaving ever since Ninsianna had been kidnapped.
The shaman broke out in a run. With an ecstatic cry, he embraced a disheveled woman wearing nothing but a blanket. He sobbed as he kissed Needa and told her how very thankful he was she was still alive. Pareesa stood awkwardly in the circle, searching for her B-team. She spotted Ipquidad first, taller than any man except for Mikhail, not all that stocky any more, but still looking lost as the 'real' warriors bustled around him.
Somebody touched her on the shoulder.
"Ebad?" Pareesa said. She threw herself into his arms. He was safe! Though of all the people for the lizard people to target, she had to admit that her B-team probably ranked last on the lizard people's list of people they wished to smite.
"Have you seen Mikhail?" Ebad asked.
The other B-team members huddled around them, including Yaggitt, Ipquidad, and the other members who made up her little group of rejects.
"I saw blue lightning hit that sky canoe," Pareesa said. "And then it went away."
"Which one?" Ipquidad said. "I counted two of them."
"Three," Yaggitt said. "I counted three sky canoes."
"Three? You saw three?"
"Just like there was the day Mikhail was ambushed."
"All I know is that one of them came to hover right over my house," Pareesa said, "and then someone shot it down. That had to be Mikhail."
The Chief kept shouting for them all to be quiet, but without Varshab here to enforce order, nobody stopped to hear what the plan was.
"Where's Siamek?" Pareesa asked.
"Needa came and got him," Ebad said, "and then he disappeared. That's all I know."
"Mikhail has a plan," Pareesa said. "I don't know every part of it, but the first part is to defend the outer wall just long enough for Siamek to set a trap."
"But how will we fight if Mikhail is not here?" Yaggitt said.
"Are you certain there were three sky canoes?" Pareesa asked.
"The first one shot at Immanu's house," Yaggitt said. "I didn't see the sky canoe actually fire the lightning, but I ran out of my house just in time to see Mikhail lift up that firestick the elite warriors always said could summon bolts of lightning, and then he did it. He called down the lightning, only it was smaller. And blue. It was definitely blue."
"You're not being very helpful," Ipquidad said. "Which way did he go?"
"Well then he saw the sky canoe that was floating just above your house, Pareesa," Yaggitt said. "So he did it again. He summoned the lightning to smite it. And then he flew into the air and I have not seen him since."
"Where did the third sky canoe go?" Pareesa asked. "I don't see any flying over the village now?"
"I don't know," Yaggitt said. "But I think maybe he landed on top of it."
One of the elite warriors came up behind them and grabbed Pareesa by the arm. It was Firouz, one of Siamek's seconds, and a rather lonely second ever since his best friend Dadbeh had left the village.
"He needs you," Firouz said.
"Who?"
"The Chief," Firouz said. "He told me to come and fetch you."
Pareesa gestured for her B-team to stick together as they forced their way through people who'd all taken up their arms, ranging from now-11 swords to the simple digging sticks they used to hoe the fields. Such weapons were paltry defense against the kind of attack that could come from the sky.
Siamek appeared. He barked an order and the warriors spread out amongst the crowd, jabbing people and telling them to shut up so they could hear what the Chief had to say. Pareesa smiled. She'd become good friends with Siamek ever since Mikhail had fallen, and it was good to see him take command.
Pareesa stood awkwardly next to Chief Kiyan, doing her best to appear fierce and adult-like even though, right now, she felt like a little girl. The Chief adjusted his shawl to sit regally on his shoulders, and then climbed up to stand on top of the rocks which lined the central well so he would stand head and shoulders above the crowd.
"From the day the winged one came to our village," Chief Kiyan said. "Ninsianna prophesized that one day the Evil One would come with sky canoes from whence would pour all manner of demons to raze our village to the ground."
"No!" some of the villagers cried.
"Where is Mikhail?"
"How can we fight without him?"
"He flew into the air to take down the sky canoes," the Chief said. He pointed towards the brightening horizon. "Three of them came to destroy our village, but now there are none, he has evened the odds as much as he can. The rest now is up to us."
Chief Kiyan gestured for Pareesa to climb upon to the wall and stand next to him.
"Me?"
Pareesa looked behind her to see if he was pointing to somebody else. Seeing Yadiditum, who she was certain was not the person he gestured to, she stepped up onto the stones and balanced precariously on the edge, hoping she wouldn't fall into the well.
"Mikhail taught us how to fight as a single people," Immanu said. "He has done everything he could to prepare for this day."
The Chief turned to her, his expression worried.
"Siamek has set in motion the magical defenses Mikhail taught to Immanu and our flint knapper," Chief Kiyan said. "I need you to take the female archers and take up positions along the outer wall."
"But my B-team has not trained to act as an archer squad!" Pareesa said. "They are marginal shots, at best. You'd have better luck asking Yadiditum!"
"Your B-team has been reassigned to Siamek," Chief Kiyan said. "It was Mikhail's wish that you not be put at risk again."
"But I am the best swordsman you have!" Pareesa said.
"You are," Chief Kiyan said, "but you are also a thirteen summer girl going up against lizard demons. Now that I have seen them up close, I must agree with him. I will not order children to fight against hardened warriors."
Pareesa was so angry she wanted to spit, but all her life she'd been trained to defer to the chief. She noted how very tired he looked, how worried he appeared about their prospects for survival. He le
aned closer to speak more softly so the ordinary villagers would not hear.
"The lizard demons will try to breach the south gate while the rising sun is behind their backs to blind our aim," Chief Kiyan said. "You are the best shot we have. I need you to hold them off as long as you can to buy our men time to set up the inner ring of defenses. When you can hold them off no longer, fall back so Immanu can perform his magic."
Pareesa swallowed. So? She wasn't just being shunted aside because she was a woman?
"What about my sword?" Pareesa asked.
"I pity the poor fool who tries to part you with the weapon," Chief Kiyan said. He grimaced. "Our swords and spears are useless until the lizard demons run out of magic. Mikhail believes they haven't come after us directly before because they are as low on magic as he was. Harass them from the rooftops to trick them into firing their weapons at the shadows. If Mikhail is right, by the time they reach our second line of defense, we will be on equal footing, hand to hand the way men were meant to kill one another."
Pareesa's lip trembled. She'd come to rely upon her B-team as much as they relied upon her. She glanced back at Ebad, who had already been commandeered to stand in line between Firouz and Tirdard, two elite warriors he looked up to, something which had always been his dream. Who was she to tell him that he and the other B-team members were not worthy to fight along with the best? She gave her B-team a salute and forced herself to give them a false smile.
The sky had grown greyer. She beckoned to Yadiditum, the worst archer of Mikhail's original eight, and together they found Kiana, Homa, Gisou, Orkedeh, and Alalah and silently carried their arrows to the southern wall. One by one they scurried up the cedar-trunk which had been leaned against the house which doubled as Assur's outermost wall and crept up to the roof, mindful that if the sky canoes returned, they would be clearly visible from the air.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 93