Thread Skein (Golden Threads Trilogy Book 3)

by Leeland Artra

  “ILLEGAL POWER SOURCE DETECTED.”

  The display screen showed a map, and the triangulation calculations were already running as the defense system used various directional sensors to pinpoint the disturbance. The sweeping sensor’s triangles of coverage narrowed rapidly, until they were unmoving lines, which intersected directly on Llino.

  “What?” Arkady manipulated the virtual displays, creating a new data stream onto which he overlaid maps and satellite information.

  “Well?”

  “I’m trying to locate it. Hang on, got it. Huh? That’s something new. Vesta, you need to see this.”

  Vesta gave coordinates to 100,000 combat drones, and let them navigate automatically to give herself the free processing power needed to pay attention to whatever Arkady had found.

  Turning her attention to the display feed, she saw Arkady had already added sixty live video streams to it via enforcers that he broke off and had on the way to the disturbance.

  “What are those?” she asked as she looked on the twelve glowing, two-dimensional, parabolic arches that had appeared precisely 10,000 feet above the city. They were a slightly different color from the sky, and invisible from one side. Arkady had calculated their size: each was precisely eighteen feet high at the center and eight feet wide at the base.

  “I don’t know. But I don’t like them there. They’re emanating 5,322.6 rellums per second each.” Arkady began shooting projectile bullets from his approaching enforcers at both the visible and invisible side.

  The data stream showed every single bullet’s trajectory from sixty different angles. Vesta released another 100,000 combat drones to deal with the additional data, while she continued to harass that annoying mage and Warlord Eshra-Zunia. She hoped she’d get lucky, and they’d make a marginal mistake. So far, both were avoiding her attacks and continuing to make some progress towards the palace.

  The bullets reached the U-shaped arches, and the impossible happened. Those that struck the visible side went into the arch as if it was a tunnel or doorway. The bullets that struck the invisible side continued on, as if nothing was there at all. As she was trying to reason out what the things were, she realized there was only one possible conclusion.

  “Those are mage-gates!”

  Arkady shook his head. “No terminus. Nothing on this end. Could they really have figured them out to this level?”

  To confirm her conclusion, a man stepped into view on the central archway. He was a handsome man by any measure. She was struck by his features. He was a silver elf, and tall for his race, standing 6’1”, a full 3.5 inches taller than average. She knew it would be obvious to anyone, even without the incredible armor and beautifully carved ivory-handled swords on his belt, that he was a warrior. He had heavily muscled shoulders and arms. She estimated his weight at about 224 pounds, and that he could probably lift 600 pounds, at least.

  The armor was in the same style as all the Nhia-Samri, or perhaps it was the other way around. Maybe all the Nhia-Samri imitated his. The glossy black-enameled armor was piped with grey and inlaid with a beautiful vine pattern. His shoulder plates flared out and up into sharp points. His helmet matched, but left his whole face open with a clear field of vision. He had long, silky black hair, pulled back into a ponytail that went all the way to his waist.

  Arkady made the same connection she did. “That’s Shar-Lumen.”

  Arkady hadn’t stopped shooting the bullets into the mage-gates, and the one Shar-Lumen stood in was no exception. A full 6,489 bullets had already been shot at Shar-Lumen, but they had zero effect. Their momentum was stolen, causing them to stop a few inches from him and drop to the ground. He casually reached out and caught a bullet as it fell. He held it up before him and turned it over, examining it from all angles.

  He stepped to the boundary of the gate, his toes hanging out in open air. His boots were so dramatically different from his armor and dress that Vesta spent some processing cycles to examine them more closely. The armor was well cared for and perfect, not a single stitch out of place. But describing the boots as shoddy was an understatement. They were soft, thick leather knee-high boots with soft soles. From the threading, Vesta could see the boots had been repaired many times.

  Shar-Lumen’s eyes swept over the approaching enforcers, and he examined the open combat weapons port. Arkady took advantage and launched sixty missiles at him. The combined explosion was impressive. Once the smoke cleared, Vesta was surprised to see Shar-Lumen standing exactly where he’d been, still studying the coming enforcers.

  He pointed at something to his left, and she saw his mouth moving, but she couldn’t read what he was saying. She replayed it a few times, running through all the languages she knew of. There was no match in any of her archives.

  Dressed in armor colored similarly to Shar-Lumen’s, Nhia-Samri warriors stepped into view in the remaining gateways. They all stood there, waiting for something.

  Arkady shifted the sixty enforcers into two groups patterned to fire the combined photon plasma cannon attack at maximum power. As soon as they had alignment, he fired. Both beams were targeted at Shar-Lumen.

  His reaction was unexpected. He dodged left, like a bending reed, causing him to fall out of the gateway. As he fell, he drew his odassi blades. Arkady growled and tried to track him, sweeping the beams in a bright arc after him.

  Shar-Lumen had a lot more control over his fall than should have been possible without an anti-gravity jet pack. He twisted in a sharp arc and dodged at right angles as the beams swept after him, trying to score a hit.

  Vesta predicted the pattern and cried out, “STOP!” But it was already too late. The beams of each enforcer group swept the opposite ones as Shar-Lumen slid between them.

  The auto-stop systems of the two groups detected the mistake and cut the attack off, but that still left enough time for the weapons on each side to do significant damage to the opposing ones. A dozen enforcers in both groups exploded, throwing the remaining enforcers in random directions. Some of them were lightly damaged by shrapnel, and others had broken wings or destroyed circuits that couldn’t be repaired before they hit the ground.

  Shar-Lumen spun in the air, landing with bent knees on nothing, yet he straightened to stand tall, as if he were on the top of a wall. He took in the falling enforcers, his brows narrowing critically with one raised.

  “He’s surprised that worked. Frankly, so am I.”

  “Skeed! Sorry about that,” Arkady spat as he slammed his fist into the virtual console.

  Vesta was redirecting 300,000 combat drones. “We aren’t perfect. It might be useful that it happened. It might make him overconfident, leading to a mistake.”

  “What now?”

  “We attack, of course. I’m transferring control of half the remaining enforcers to you, as well as 100,000 combat drones. See if you can slow down this lucky mage. I’ll deal with Shar-Lumen.”

  Arkady turned around, creating three new system displays, and smoothly took over the units she gave to him. “Why do you get all the best targets?” he groused.

  “‘Cause I’m the leader. And it’s my city.”

  Vesta took direct control of 5,000 enforcers, splitting her concentration. She maneuvered them into a series of attack formations. She could feel the air rushing over their bodies, their wings beating the pattern needed for fine flight control.

  Time to step up the game.

  She pumped hard once with their wings, and then snapped the wings close to the body in a swept-back position. Firing the jet systems, she felt the sudden rush of speed and G-forces in 5,000 slightly different ways, and the sensations were wonderful.

  This is as close to being a flight-capable creature as anyone can come.

  She noted the smoke trails she was leaving. The Daggers and guards needed some moral support. The cost in lives,
defending the city, was far too high.

  Even one life is too much. I hate wars.

  She maneuvered, rocketing groups of enforcers in a series of turns, banks, and spins, keeping the combat formations. She heard cheers from guards and Daggers who were witnessing the first such action in 13,002.61 years.

  They think the display of power is a good sign. I hope they’re right.

  In perfect unison, she lifted all of their noses up, towards the mage-gates. At the same moment, she fired the jet boosters of 200,000 combat drones. She divided them into support groups, each for a set of enforcers.

  She smiled, noting that the roar of 205,000 jet boosts caused the Nhia-Samri combatants to duck, looking up defensively. The city fighters took advantage of the distraction and added to the Nhia-Samri losses.

  Shar-Lumen pointed down, towards the coming wave of combat units, and spoke clearly in Imperial. “With me!”

  Vesta opened fire on him and all twelve gateways.

  Shar-Lumen jumped up in a long arc, and Vesta adjusted, keeping him in the dead center of her targeting. Bullets, missiles, and beams of light from the photon cannons flew around him as he twisted and shifted in the air. None of the missiles managed to hit him, but the bullets and cannon fire pounded his magical shields.

  He shifted as he started to fall, as if landing on something, with his feet spread apart and his knees bent. He began to spin faster as he fell towards the combat units coming for him. His hands pumped and danced, throwing blasts of magical energy almost as rapidly as the missiles fired back at him. He used his magic bolts to destroy 67.4 percent of her missiles, dodging the others.

  Vesta compensated the missile trajectories, managing to drop his ratio down to 23.8 percent missile loss. The added explosions around him were now throwing him around. His eyes narrowed as he changed tactics. He shifted to hitting the drones firing the missiles in between, dodging all of the missiles. The drones couldn’t maneuver as fast as the missiles, but their armor held up better. It took him several hits before a drone would explode or fail, falling back towards the city.

  She managed to begin predicting his next target. That reduced his effectiveness by 29.33 percent, but there were too many variables, and one out of every ten of Shar-Lumen’s attacks successfully hit his target. He learned quickly that her enforcers had strong enough armor to withstand his strikes, but the combat drones weren’t so lucky. They also had so much ordinance onboard that when his attacks broke through they exploded, knocking some of the other ones out of alignment.

  Vesta compensated, bringing her enforcers in tight to protect the combat drones. Still, she had to leave gaps for the combat drones to fire at Shar-Lumen. Those gaps worked both ways; he used them to get at the drones.

  Vesta expected what happened next, but she still gasped. Nhia-Samri warriors, all wearing black and grey armor, came running out of the mage-gates, dodging and jumping around the heavy suppression fire she was putting on all twelve gates. She managed to take out twenty-four of the 350.

  They jumped far out into the air and began falling. Half of them drew their swords immediately. The others threw magical blasts exactly like Shar-Lumen. He’d been probing and learning how to fight her, and now his group used this knowledge effectively. All of them had shields strong enough to deal with the peppering of combat fire Vesta was able to target them with as they dodged and flew down.

  Sixty of them bent forward and rushed downward to form a large circle pattern around Shar-Lumen. When they came even with him, they spread-eagled, lying down like parachute jumpers in a ring, drawing their swords and spreading their arms wide. Three flat rings of warriors formed around him, their feet towards him, looking like the rays of the sun. As soon as they were in position, their swords glowed brightly, and all of the weapons fire Vesta was directing at Shar-Lumen began to strike a wide shield that surrounded the entire group.

  Looks like a nice target to me, with Shar-Lumen the bull’s-eye!

  Arkady said, “That looks practiced.”

  “Ya think?” Vesta growled back.

  Shar-Lumen and his warrior rings came into contact with the combat drones and enforcers. Any unit that came directly into their path bounced off the shield and burst into flames. Bullets, rockets, photon cannons, and every other combat weapon she used had limited impact. Vesta’s main group was shattered, with all the other groups of drones and enforcers dodging wide around Shar-Lumen.

  Ignoring the fact that if Duke heard of this it would be a dead giveaway she was awake, she activated the aerial defense systems. Hatches on the walls of the palace and city snapped open, exposing the 64,344 missiles loaded in the launcher grids. She overrode the launch protocols that fired the missiles individually and launched every missile at once.

  The force blew apart the launcher platforms, causing secondary explosions inside the walls. It worked. 64,344 missiles flew at Shar-Lumen from every side. He had nowhere to dodge — there was no escape. She saw fear bloom on the faces of his ring of protectors. Instead of panicking, their faces tightened into determined glares at the approaching attack. The central circular etching on their breastplates flared, illuminating the city below, and Shar-Lumen wove his hands together so fast they blurred slightly in her high-speed cameras.

  The energy shield around them darkened. The explosion blinded her sensors, and black smoke flew across the sky. The concussion threw combatants in the streets down and blew in 163 doors, destroying all the windows and collapsing three wooden buildings in that part of the city.

  “That was a bit extreme,” Arkady jovially said.

  “He made the target,” she smirked back.

  Eighteen slowly rotating burnt bodies fell out of the smoke cloud, leaving a black trail. Behind them, Shar-Lumen, surrounded by the remaining forty-two warriors, emerged in a tight group. Sixteen were unconscious, carried by their comrades.

  “Urdu! What does it take to kill this elf?!” Vesta screamed.

  “He does have significant support,” Arkady pointed out.

  Shar-Lumen drew his blades, and his warriors broke out of their group, moving around as if they were jumping from one platform to another. They continued to fall, but their rate of descent had nothing to do with gravity’s expected speeds. They spun, twisted, and dodged the drone attacks, while using their blades against any unit they got close to. The unhindered warriors supported the ones carrying the wounded.

  Vesta stopped using most of the weapons. The only attacks that had any impact were the photon-directed plasma cannons, and the hell’s-fire electrical attacks of the combat drones. Six enforcers overloading their power packs had a chance of taking out a warrior through his shields and disrupting others to good effect. However, those could ignite other units. Still, she liked the explosions. They had a chance to overwhelm one of Shar-Lumen’s warrior’s shields.

  Shar-Lumen was unbelievable. He’d taken to walking on her drones and enforcers, as if they were stepping stones put there for him. His progress through the drone cloud left not a scratch on him, and yet thousands of her drones were being destroyed or disabled by his actions. He turned, jumped, and cut through without pause. It was like watching a masterful and inspiring dancer perform a unique show exclusively for her — one she hated with every fiber of her being. She sent group after group at him, and she overloaded hundreds of combat drones near him, but his shields remained impenetrable.

  When Shar-Lumen was 1,345.3 feet above the city, a dozen bursts of energy rushed towards him, slamming him backwards. He twirled in the air, looking for the source.

  Vesta traced the energy bursts’ flight paths in the sensor data, and located six groups of six mages on the roof of the Mages’ Guild, all waving their hands in the air in various patterns. At their core was the massive Magus Nillo, head of the Guild.

  There were 129 mages throughout the city, fighting with the Dagger tea
ms, but this group didn’t include any of those she’d already registered. All of these men and women were old enough to look in need of walkers and canes, even though none of those items were present. Only Councilor Nillo had been out in the fighting. In fact, Nillo had a bandage over his shoulder that was oozing blood, dripping down his shirt.

  These must be the senior instructors and retired mages. Nillo must have gone to get them when he saw the mage-gates open.

  Vesta brought her drones around and swept in from various angles, firing everything they had at Shar-Lumen. Six amazing magical attacks joined in. One group had created a white-hot ball of energy that weaved and zoomed past her drones to slam into his shields, throwing crimson sparks out and inward. He lifted his arm, protecting his face from the sparks breaking through. She adjusted the aim of some of the drones to target the same location.

  Another group of mages pointed and closed their eyes. She wasn’t sure what that was about. Ignoring them, she adjusted another group of drones to avoid a barrel-width beam of energy generated by another group, directed at Shar-Lumen.

  Lightning arced between yet another group of six mages, coalescing in the center of their semicircle, and jumped to Councilor Nillo. He caught it with one hand and focused it, creating a steady bolt of lightning, which he directed at Shar-Lumen. Shar-Lumen brought his feet together and dropped like a rock towards the ground, causing the bolt to miss.

  The mages and Vesta redirected their attacks, trying to keep him targeted. The lightning bolt thrown by Nillo didn’t continue onward; instead it bent back towards Shar-Lumen, tracking him like a homing missile. He spun his swords in a pattern. The blades flashed a bright white, reflecting the lightning bolt back at Nillo. The bolt hit the roof next to Nillo, and the explosion threw a few mages off the rooftop. All of their attacks were disrupted.

  Shar-Lumen spread his arms wide, reversing his fall, and like a bullet shot from a gun, he flew up at the cluster of drones she’d directed down to follow him. He slammed into them with his swords, which were moving so fast that they looked like silver rings around him. By the time he’d passed through that group, another 649 drones were damaged beyond repair. Moreover, 193 of them exploded behind Shar-Lumen, taking out another 10,026 drones in a chain reaction.