Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven

by Bryan S. Glosemeyer

  “Give me a gun, too,” Cal insisted.

  “How about this.” Sabira handed him a sheathed combat knife. “Press it here, and then hold it against the side of your leg for a second. It’ll stay attached until you press there again.”

  The pyramid rocked and lurched beneath them five times on the way back to the shaft doors. The big hits were coming more frequently now. What little time they had burned away faster and faster.

  Dawn balked when she saw the hole she had to lift herself through. Insisted there was no way she could get through and pull herself up.

  “I’ll go up first and help lift you,” said Sabira. “It’s not far.”

  “And I can help lift from below,” offered Derev, speaking for the first time since their liberation from the brig.

  “Don’t you worry, Dawn, no one is being left behind,” said Rain.

  Sabira instructed that someone should post lookout at the crossway while she went up. Torque volunteered and jogged a few meters to the intersection. Once Torque was in position, Sabira braced her feet on the inner lips of the warped doors and pulled her head up over the lip. The grank was still there. It had already turned itself around to face back the way they had come. The bore tunnel was widened where it had turned, a cavity scooped out of the side where the rupture field had passed.

  No signs of warseers. A stirring of hope sprouted through the heavy fatigue. Orion’s plan, as crazy and destructive as it was, had worked so far. Maybe they really had a chance. She gave the all clear, tossed her palukai near the grank’s feet, then pulled herself the rest of the way up.

  With Derev and Rain lifting from the bottom, and Sabira pulling from the top, Dawn came up without much difficulty. Then Coraz and Playa. Cal insisted that the eeshl come up before him. The respirator still hung from her neck. The little, six-legged creature scampered around and clicked her mandibles excitedly beside Sabira as she pulled up Cal. Zonte was next. Sabira told him to take lookout near the grank as Coraz and Playa helped Dawn climb atop the weapons platform.

  They had just gotten Dawn into place when Torque’s screams echoed up the shaft. “They’re coming! Warseers! Warseers!”

  The sizzling whine of plasma fire punctuated her cries.

  45.

  A CACOPHONY OF screams and disintegrating metal erupted below them. The warped-open doors spasmed under fire, burst free, and fell, ablaze and spinning, down the black shaft. A phase-shifting hum of return fire followed. Between volleys, Torque’s agonized shrieks punctuated chaos.

  “Derev! Go get her!” Rain shouted over the sizzling whine. “Stay down! Down!”

  “Hold on!” Sabira reached for her stick. “I’m coming!”

  “Sabira no!” shouted Playa.

  Coraz hurried to her side. “Wait, don’t,” ahn insisted. “We can’t lose you, girl. We lose you, we lose everyone.”

  “Don’t leave us,” pleaded Dawn from atop the grank. Beside her, Cal stared with wide, fierce eyes.

  The screeching chaos of the firefight below roared on. Even drained to her core, with every muscle and joint burning, the battle called to her. A mental flash of her holding the yarist to her bare, scarred breast with one hand, the palukai spitting death in the other, the warseers dying at her feet.

  Is that who I really am?

  “Sabira,” called Derev. “Torque’s hurt. Help me lift her.”

  She handed her stick to Coraz and turned to kneel. Hanging her head out into the shaft, she spied Derev to her left, looking up at her, the fear and desperation plain on his face. Rain crouched on her lower right, firing ceaselessly down the corridor. Return fire sizzled past them, the far side of the transport shaft exploding into clouds of white-hot vapor.

  Once Derev saw Sabira, he hunched partially out of her sight and lifted something heavy. When he turned back, he held Torque cradled in his thick arms. Sabira reached down, took her left hand, and pulled. Torque’s face hung slack, her skin clammy with sweat, eyes unfocused. Her right arm ended in a crude, black stump just below her elbow.

  Sabira felt like a fist clenched inside her chest, squeezing the breath from her lungs with its tight, horrified grip. After all the carnage of the past hour—drill me, has it been less than an hour?—the acute connection to Torque’s suffering came as an unexpected shock. They were brood now, but there was more to it. They had drunk eon together. They were entangled in ways she was still discovering.

  Sabira pulled her friend the rest of the way up. Coraz and Playa were immediately at her side. A volley of plasma bolts burst into the shaft below them, followed by a howl of pain.

  “Derev? Derev!” yelled Rain.

  “My leg! Oh shit, my leg!” Derev growled.

  “I’ve got her.” Playa kneeled to pick up Torque. She and Coraz carried her to the grank.

  Sabira shifted over to the other side of the tunnel and knelt above Rain. She pulled a grenade from her bandolier. “Here. Catch.” She lobbed the grenade into the old man’s open hand. “When I say, twist the top part, and throw it at the intersection. Then cover your eyes, and turn away.”

  She turned back to the others. “Everybody take cover behind the grank now. Quick!” Once they were all in position, she called for Rain to throw it.

  “Everyone cover your eyes!”

  Sabira turned away, buried her closed eyes into the crook of her arm, feeling exposed and vulnerable without her armor. The visor filters would have allowed her to look straight at a blast without damaging her eyes. As long as she was more than a meter outside the blast radius, the plating would have protected her from the radiant heat. Since servant armor was crafted from grank plates, huddling behind the war beast was their best and only protection. For Rain’s and Derev’s sakes, Sabira could only hope that he had thrown the grenade far enough.

  A shockwave of heat and light flared all around them.

  Silence.

  “Dancer’s tits. Look at that,” said Zonte.

  Sabira opened her eyes and looked for her people. Playa and Torque were balled up behind the grank’s left hind leg, Coraz and Zonte behind the right. Dawn and Cal huddled together up top. Everyone had a slightly dazed look on their faces but no new injuries.

  About six meters past the grank, a steaming emptiness had replaced the tunnel floor. A four-meter diameter circle of glowing, hot metal circumscribed the hole and continued arcing up, forming a burned-out dome in the wreckage of the tunnel.

  The grank bellowed but remained still. In the distance, deep thuds continued to echo through the pyramid. No sounds of incoming fire resumed below.

  “Rain. Derev. Are you alright?” Sabira called down.

  “A little cooked, but still alive,” Rain answered. “Derev was hit.”

  “I’m still here,” said Derev, his voice straining with hurt. “Most of me, at least.”

  “Get ready. I’m going to lift him up,” Rain said.

  Sabira and Rain helped lift Derev up to the tunnel. Sabira laid him down as gently as she could. Derev clenched his jaw shut tight, struggling to stifle the gasps of agony that came with every movement. Unlike Torque, his limb remained attached, though a chunk of his knee and calf had been scorched away, leaving an ugly, blackened cavity.

  “I was wrong,” Derev said through gritted teeth. “You came for us. To save us.”

  “Don’t be hasty,” she said. “None of us are saved yet. Coraz, Playa, come help.”

  The others gingerly lifted Derev up on the grank, positioned him next to Torque along its spinal ridge. Zonte remained at the foot of the beast, palukai ready.

  “You next, old man,” Sabira called down. “Let’s get you out of there and get off this godsdamned pyramid.”

  “I’ll meet you halfway.” Rain handed up the palukai first. It was warm to the touch, almost too hot to hold for long. He found a foothold in the frame and hoisted himself up.

  Sabira reached down and grabbed his arm. “Got you,” she grunted, pulling hard.

&
nbsp; Rain’s body jerked violently in her hands. Jets of vapor sprayed from his back, haloed by mists of seared flesh and bone. His arms slipped through her sweaty grasp. Sabira grabbed his hand with both of hers and fell hard onto her chest.

  Rain looked past her, his face calm, serene. “My brood,” he whispered. “I see you.”

  A volley of plasma bolts tore through the lift entrance. Pieces of him disappeared into vapor and ash before her eyes. His body, lurching madly into the open air from the barrage of fire, tore free from her grip and fell, silently disappearing into the darkness below.

  46.

  EVEN AS SABIRA cried his name into the black, more plasma bolts shot up through the hole in the tunnel floor. The others were far enough back from the hole’s melted rim to be angled out of range. But only just. Vapor and hot shrapnel blossomed from every impact and rained down on their heads.

  Should you find yourself before the Shattered Gates of Heaven, may the—

  A jolt of voices called out her name. No time yet to pray for the ones she had failed.

  “Everyone on top of the grank!” she yelled. “On top! On top!”

  Sabira and Zonte made it atop the grank’s wide back last, each scrambling up the weapons platform on either side of the biomech.

  “Everyone grab hold of something. Orion, let’s go. Jump over the hole!”

  The grank reared back its thick, tri-horned head and bellowed. Beneath them, the beast tilted to the left, then to the right, shuffling its hooves into a tighter alignment. With her left hand, she gripped the platform’s edge, with her right she pulled free a grenade. She waited expectantly for the grank to spring forward. Instead, as it shuffled it was rotating itself back around. Steaming bits of metal continued to scatter over them as the plasma bolts seared into the tunnel ceiling.

  Orion’s holo projected onto the air. “Not that way. No way it’ll hold our weight. Too damaged. Better chances jumping the shaft. It’s damaged too, though, so don’t worry, it’ll still be terrifying.”

  “What? You don’t sound very sure,” said Sabira.

  “Don’t glitch. She can make it. Right, girl?” said Orion.

  The grank bellowed, finishing its rotation back to face the transport shaft.

  “Here we go,” said Orion. “Keep holding on.”

  “Wait,” Sabira commanded. “Give us a countdown.”

  “Sure. Takeoff in five . . .”

  “This grank shit still has to die.” Sabira twisted the grenade, arming it, and winged it through the blast hole. “Shut your eyes!”

  “. . . two, one.”

  The grank bounded forward to the bent lip of the shaft and sprang its armored bulk into the air.

  Sabira squeezed shut her eyes. Flash-incinerated metal screamed and the biomech tilted and lurched as a shockwave of heat and light blasted over them. Bellowing, the grank landed heavily on the far side. The hard lurch of impact replaced the loping rise and fall of running. She opened her eyes to look back. The dark transport shaft receded away into the miasma. No return fire chased their exit.

  Rain’s last words haunted her. Had he really seen his dead brood-brother and sister in vision, and then again here, moments before his death?

  Thudding echoes and rumblings continued all around them, melded into a background din of hypnotic, ambient doom. She was so tired. The deep fatigue, the rhythmic sway of the running biomech, and the nonstop, droning booms all merged into one discordant soundscape, lulling her into a shocked trance. It became harder to hold a thought, stay focused. Easier to slip away from the fresh memories of the old man falling, of Maia burning. Easier to let herself drift deep into blank, dark numbness.

  “Sabira, Sabira.” The voice was vague, indistinct. A hand grasped hers. “Don’t die. Please don’t die. We need you.”

  Like lifting a heavy stone up from the mineshafts, she opened her eyes. Cal, the eeshl still tucked to his chest, sat over her, rocking with anxiety. She managed a brief, faint smile. The grime and dried blood cracked across her cheeks.

  “Don’t you worry,” she said. “I’m not . . . I’m staying. Just need rest.”

  “There’s so much blood.”

  “I know,” she said. “Not all mine.”

  They traveled through another tunnel bored into the ship by the previous granks, back around to the pens. Coming out of the tunnel, seeing the vast carnage, the others all gasped as one.

  As a young mine rat, the Chosen had told Sabira stories of the hellish Vleez planets. Horrific images had haunted her dreams, images eerily similar to what stretched before her now. But she was the one that had brought forth this hell to her people. Not demons. Not Vleez. Her.

  Eyes burning, she scanned for signs of Grandfather Spear. Fires burned blue and green and white hot in the upper tiers, erratically shinning through hole after hole of ruptured open decks. Angular, toxic shadows danced madly across the rubble. Broken machinery and the severed biomech organs of the pyramid were mangled together with the slick viscera from thousands of bodies. Dead faces everywhere, but not his.

  A dull anxiousness grew in her chest as she waited for another surprise attack, another sudden death, another instantaneous failure to protect her new brood. But no shots fired. No forces ambushed them. Even the klaxons had fallen silent. Only the constant, echoing booms of the Monarchy attack and the rhythmic thud of the grank’s heavy steps.

  The far wall of the grank pens stood nearest to the pyramid’s hull. A series of gated chutes led to hangars of drop ships. Each chute divided into nine tributaries designed to funnel granks from the pen to the cargo slots of the droppers. One of the chute gates had been smashed in. Gabriel and Ed must have gone that way. The light strips were all blown out inside the chute, but spasms of illumination flickered from the far end.

  They entered the chute and came out into the hangar. One of the three droppers was missing. Sparks rained down from a frayed knot of cables dangling along the ceiling. Red blood painted the floor like morbid graffiti.

  In the dead center of the hanger stood Daggeira, watching them emerge from the dark tunnel. She held a palukai configured as an assault rifle. The barrel swayed casually beside her leg.

  Sabira told Orion to stop, and the biomech halted a couple of meters in front of Daggeira. Sabira crawled down the side of the beast and stood before her. Numbness and pain all melted together as one. It took all her strength to stand straight. She held her palukai like a supporting staff, tried not to show any weakness.

  Daggeira didn't move at all as Sabira approached. She was also covered in grime and dust. Dark blood stained her uniform, was smeared across her face. “I was in the infirmary when shit started blowing up. I didn’t want to believe it was you, but I knew. I just knew. When I saw a dropper missing, I thought you were already gone. I didn’t want to believe you could betray us, that you could possibly do this. You should have died on that target planet. We both should have.”

  Sabira groped for the words that would somehow, miraculously, make Daggeira understand. If those words existed, Sabira couldn’t capture them. She wished she could just take Daggs’s hand, kiss the corner of her lips, let her touch say all the things her words couldn’t. “I'm here for them. That’s my duty now.”

  “Nameless cowards and blasphemers? Really? You would fight me for . . . them?” Daggeira gestured toward the grank casually with her palukai.

  “I don’t want to fight. But if you make me . . . Daggs, no one else needs to die here. You could come with us. You could be free. Isn’t that better than killing each other?”

  “Look at you. You can barely stand. You think you can fight me? You think I'm the one who will die here?”

  “Please, don't do this. The Warseers are liars. The Masters are liars. It’s all lies. I can show you. Come with us. Come with me, and I’ll show you.”

  “I heard you, you know. When you were talking to me back on the planet. But I didn’t want to believe it. I thought I must have dreamed i
t. But it’s true, isn’t it? The Stargazer I knew could never say those things.”

  “Daggs, please. There’s so much . . . Just come with us. We can be free, together.”

  “I can’t betray everything I believe in. I’m not like you.”

  “I have a yarist gem,” said Sabira, touching the pocket with her free hand. She tried to stand taller, hold back her tired shoulders. Truthfully, she wished she could let go of the pretense and bravado. Fall into Daggs’s arms. Feel the electricity of her touch and know they would all be safe.

  “You think that will help you? You couldn’t beat me at obezya, you couldn’t beat me when I invoked Conqueror, and you sure as grank shit can’t beat me now. Gem or not. I could take your head if I wanted and nothing this side of the Gates can stop me. I’d be promoted straight to caller. Maybe even first drum. I’d be covered in glyphs.”

  “We can stop you,” said Zonte from atop the grank, aiming his palukai. “We could slag you right now.”

  “Don’t even try to hurt Sabira,” warned Cal. “Our grank will stomp you dead, dead, dead.”

  Sabira didn’t turn to look but gestured behind her for them to back down. A rapid succession of thudding booms shook the hangar. Sparks poured from above.

  “Daggs, kill me or let us pass. But do it now. Otherwise, we're all going to die in this pyramid.”

  Daggeira stared at her, left hand twitching as she gripped the palukai. “Even if I let you go, they'll come for you. The Warseers will hunt you across the galaxy.”

  “Not where we’re going,” she said. “They’ll never find us.”

  “And what about the Gods, can you hide from them? You'll never pass through the Gates now. Is freedom really worth that?”