by M. R. Forbes
The warehouse was stacked with rows and columns of crates. They were sealed and labeled, most of them containing food and clothing. It turned what would have otherwise been an open floor into a maze, one that only added to the Asura’s ability to sneak up on him. That is if he stayed on the ground.
There were benefits to being a Gant, and one of them was, he hated to admit, monkey-like agility. He hopped onto the crates, scaling them easily, climbing to the top and scouting the path to the south. He could see the far end of the warehouse, and the giant freezer there, in the form of a thick blast door with a climate control on the side. A group of Legionnaires were in front of it, smacking at it with their blades, trying to force their way through. Thankfully, they weren’t the most intelligent of creatures.
He bounced from one stack of crates to the next, at the same time Pik began leading the Freejects into the warehouse. The Legionnaires noticed the movement, pausing their assault on the blast door and then vanishing.
“Joker, we spooked the Asura. I think you’re clear to evacuate.”
“Roger, Gant,” Benhil said. “Except the door only opens from the outside.”
Gant chittered in laughter.
“Yeah, very funny,” Benhil said. “We didn’t know that when we ran in here.”
Gant kept laughing softly as he bounded across the top of the crates toward the freezer. He was halfway there when he noticed an Asura Legionnaire phase into view, surrounded by a dozen others.
It was carrying the Darkstone.
“Joker, can you hold out in there?” he asked.
“What? Shit, it’s freezing.”
“I’ve got eyes on a high-value target.”
“Damn it, can’t you let us out first?”
“It might get away.”
“I guess I can hold Cherub for warmth.”
“You can hold Uriel for warmth,” Jequn replied. “Gant, go.”
Gant leaped from one stack to another, leaning over it. The Asura remained in view, motioning to the others, giving them directions on how to attack the Freejects.
He stood up slowly and silently, taking one of the knives and drawing back his arm to throw it.
The Legionnaire’s eyes shifted, finding him there at the same moment he released the blade.
It passed through the empty air, hitting the crate on the other side and clattering to the ground.
“Damn it,” Gant said.
He jumped down, leaning over to pick up the blade, a small smirk on his furry face as he did.
The Legionnaire phased in behind him, blade arcing down to stab him in the back. He rolled onto his side, grabbing the knife with his foot, picking it up and throwing it. The Asura didn’t expect him to be so nimble and wasn’t paying attention to his feet. The blade sank into its side, leaving it wounded.
Gant bounced up, charging the soldier. It howled and swung the statue at him, nearly connecting and bashing his brain in. He barely avoided it, rolling to the side and getting back to his feet facing the Legionnaire. It reached for his knife to pull it out of its side.
A flash of silver, and then Jequn was there, her Uin slipping easily through the soldier’s arm, cutting it off at the elbow. It howled again, turning toward her as the statue fell to the ground.
Gant dove to it, grabbing it and tucking it under his arm. The Asura used its good arm to reach out for him, but he slipped away. A second soldier appeared ahead of him, blade arcing for him, and he avoided that one too.
Clearly, holding the statue wasn’t going to stop their attack. In fact, he had the impression it was making them more desperate.
“Okay, I’ve got the Darkstone,” Gant said.
“What’s it a statue of?” Pik asked.
Gant glanced down at it. “It looks like Queenie,” he said, not completely surprised.
“Cool,” Pik replied.
“Yeah, this is all very cool, really.”
He rolled to the side as an Asura soldier appeared ahead of him, blade slamming the ground where he had been a moment earlier. A round of gunfire swept along the row, hitting the top half of the Legionnaire. Gant turned his head, finding Uriel positioned at the edge of the crates, weapon in hand.
“I need to get rid of this thing,” Gant said. “I have an idea. Keep me covered.”
“Roger,” Pik said.
“Roger,” Jequn and Benhil said.
Gant raced through the warehouse, not taking the time to try to scale the crates again. Asura soldiers appeared around him, reaching for him, stabbing at him, doing their best to stop him and regain the Darkstone. The Rejects tracked him, appearing along the way, laying down cover fire or physically blocking their path. A soldier phased in right in front of him, only to be slammed in the head by Pik’s mechanical hand, knocked aside so hard its skull caved in. Gant dove between the Trover’s legs and back to his feet, the entrance to the building drawing near. He could still hear Dog outside, roaring in frustration because he couldn’t find the stone.
He made it to the doorway and through, back out into the street.
“Dog,” he shouted. “Here Dog.”
He held the Darkstone up.
“Come on, Dog,” he said. “Over here.”
An Asura soldier appeared beside him, reaching for the statue.
A massive head stretched down, grabbing it, picking it up, and throwing it aside.
Dog glared down at Gant, eyes ravenous for the Darkstone. Gant didn’t know what the dragon was going to do with it, from what Keeper had said they needed a General to use the energy to feed them. Whatever. If the creature wanted it, what the hell? It could have it.
“Here you go,” he said, holding it out. “Just please don’t eat me.”
Dog’s head lowered slowly, not quite trusting him. Its mouth drew closer and closer, until he could feel its hot, fetid breath on his fur.
“Take it,” he said, still holding it up. He turned his head away. He didn’t want to know if the dragon bit his arm off.
It didn’t. It took the Darkstone lightly in its giant mouth, holding it between its teeth. Then Gant was knocked over as it flapped its wings, rising backward from the ground. He watched it ascend, the Darkstone cradled in its mouth, carrying it away from the city and out of view.
“Okay, what are the Legionnaires doing?” he asked, hoping their plan had worked.
“They’re gone,” Pik replied. “All of them. They disappeared and haven’t come back.”
Following the Darkstone. Gant let himself heave out a sigh of relief. Thank Gantrean. Thank Queenie.
He laid flat on his back and groaned, looking up at the sky. He could see the outline of the fleet in orbit above the planet.
He had done his job.
Now it was Abbey’s turn.
10
“It looks like Aqul is packing it in,” Bastion said.
Abbey looked at the HUD. The new Prophet’s transports had all been swallowed by the surrounding vessels, no longer consolidating Apostants from their respective craft to a single starship. It seemed that without the threat of the Covenant, Aqul had no intention of honoring her agreement with his father.
She would see about that, the son of a bitch.
“Head for the flagship,” she said. “I’m not letting him get away with my fleet.”
“Roger,” Bastion replied, adjusting the starfighter’s vector.
There was no hesitation, no question that they could stop him despite being a single small fighter against a multitude of warships.
“Sensors are picking up an increasing concentration of disterium,” he said a moment later, as a haze of the gas began to form around the ships. “I think we’re too late.”
“We’re not too late,” Abbey said. “The Rejects are depending on us.”
“I hear you, Queenie,” Bastion said. “But we can’t stop an entire fleet from going into FTL.”
“We don’t need to stop them,” Abbey said. “We need to join them.”
“What?”
&
nbsp; “You heard me. Get us into that plume.”
“And then what?”
“Hope we don’t get turned into a bowl of mush.”
“Are you sure about this?”
Abbey looked back at him, fire in her eyes. “Not at all, but I’m not leaving the others to be killed by the Asura, and neither are you. You’re the best-damned pilot in the Republic, so get us to those ships.”
Bastion’s face tightened as he focused, jamming the fighter’s thrusters to full and flicking the controls to add the vectoring thrusters to the overall push. It became harder to keep the fighter in a straight line like that, but he managed, making the right adjustments to the stick and sending them blasting toward Aqul’s ship and the disterium plume growing around it.
“Even if we make the plume, it won’t do anything for us without being attached to one of those ships. We don’t have FTL drives of our own.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Abbey said.
Bastion nodded, altering vectors to bring them closer to the trailing ship in the fleet. The forwardmost vessels began to vanish, zipping away into light speed surrounded by gas.
Abbey reached out with the Gift, pushing it toward the bridge of the ship in front of them. The haze of disterium thickened around them, signaling they had made it into the field. Far enough? She gripped the Nephilim starship with the Gift, linking the naniates to her own and spreading them around the starfighter. Either they were going to make it, or only parts of the ship would make the jump, leaving her sitting in Bastion’s lap with nothing but space around them. He would die almost instantly. She didn’t know how long it would take her to die, but she couldn’t survive in a vacuum forever.
The fighter began to shudder as the trailing ship started to accelerate into FTL.
“Hold her steady,” Abbey said, straining to keep the link against the acceleration. The laws of physics were different in the field, alleviating the g forces. Even so, she felt herself being pressed tightly against him, her hair nicking his cheek as she was shoved back. The universe became a colored haze around them, the vessel they were linked to almost impossibly catching up to the ships that had left seconds earlier, keeping its formation.
“Oh, shit,” Bastion said, looking around. “You did it.”
“I’m not done yet,” Abbey replied. They had made it to FTL, but they couldn’t afford to wait to arrive wherever Aqul was going. Gant and the others were in deep shit, and she had to help them.
“Thrusters don’t work in here, Queenie,” Bastion said. “How are we going to get any closer?”
“Magic,” Abbey replied with a smile.
She could feel the bridge of naniates stretched from the fighter to the starship ahead of them, a rope connecting them to the Nephilim fleet. She reached out, the naniates responding. They fell back, losing ground.
“I think this is the opposite of what we want,” Bastion said.
“Think of the Gift like a band of elastic,” Abbey said, stretching it out further. She could feel the link beginning to strain to hold together. “And hold on.”
“How do you know how to do all of this?” he asked, wrapping his arms around her. She glanced back at him, and he smiled. “You said to hold on.”
“This isn’t what I meant,” she replied without pushing him away. “I don’t know how to do it. I just demand it to happen, and it happens. It’s instinctive.”
“I feel that way about flying.”
“Then you know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“It doesn’t hurt that knowing Thraven has Hayley is fueling my rage. Here we go.”
She sent the signal to the Gift, causing it to contract. The motion yanked them forward, adding velocity they couldn’t have gotten on their own. The fighter zipped past the nearest starship, Bastion flying it smoothly, wrapping it around the enemy craft toward Aqul’s flagship.
“Get us in the hangar, there,” Abbey said, pointing.
“The doors are closed,” Bastion said, smiling. “I know, not for long.”
She spread her hands, feeling the Gift responding ahead, her constant anger making it easy to control. The hangar doors didn’t so much open as explode from their place on the ship, the metal tracks tearing away and setting them free. Bastion looped the fighter around the heavy slabs, coming in hard toward the fresh opening. They could both see the surprised Nephilim inside, scrambling to figure out what the hell was going on.
“Open fire,” Abbey said.
“What? It’s going to hit the shields.”
“You heard me.”
He didn’t question her again. His hand shifted on the stick, triggering the wing-mounted cannons. The rounds didn’t hit the shields. They spread open, overwhelmed by Abbey’s Gift, torn away like the blast doors. Rounds chewed into the hangar, ripping into soldier and tech both, tearing through a transport that was parked inside. The fighter passed the shields, entering the space and beginning to drop, hit by the artificial gravity. They slammed down hard on hastily extending landing skids, sliding across the floor of the hangar. Bastion triggered vectoring thrusters, turning them aside before they could hit the transport and bringing them to an abrupt stop.
The canopy slid open, and Abbey stood in her seat. Nephilim soldiers fired on them, bullets coming hard and fast at the fighter. They all came to a stop before they reached the craft, piling up against an invisible barrier. Abbey flicked her wrists, and the rounds reversed, forcing the soldiers to take cover.
“My fight isn’t with you,” Abbey said. “I want Aqul.”
The techs scrambled to escape as she burst into flame, her anger flaring. She could sense her reason diminishing, but she didn’t care. She didn’t have time for any of this shit.
The soldiers ran away at the sight of her, all except for a pair of more finely dressed military near the transport. They put their own hands up, spreading their fingers. She could feel their Gifts pressing against her, trying to counter her power.
She clenched her fist and then punched it out at them. Both were thrown backward, slamming hard into the side of the transport.
She jumped from the starfighter, walking toward the Venerants. They were back on their feet, and they each launched their own flames at her, scorching the metal between them. She knocked it aside, countering easily, opening her mouth and cursing at them. She turned her hand over, lifting one of them into the air and throwing them aside again, sending them back into the transport, hard enough to leave a dent in the armor. She remembered when Emily Eagan had thrown her into the wall like that. She remembered how powerless she had felt.
She wasn’t powerless now.
She put out her right hand to deflect the second Venerant’s efforts. The first was up again, and instead of reaching for her he reached for the starfighter, sending a line of fire toward the cockpit where Bastion was still extricating himself.
She used her free hand to grab the transport, pulling it in front of the Venerant’s attack and cutting him off. Then she charged, launching toward him, a furious missile. He tried to stop her, to push her down with the Gift. He failed. She reached him, slashing across his throat with sudden claws, neatly removing his head.
The second Venerant saw the first die. He stumbled back, raising his hands in submission.
“Wait, don’t-”
Abbey bathed him in flame, knocking him to the ground as a charred husk. She moved over to him, removing his head as well.
“Queenie,” Bastion said, jumping down from the fighter.
She rounded on him, teeth bared, growling and starting to reach for him with the Gift.
“Whoa, hold up. I’m with you.”
She recognized his voice. She stopped herself. The Gift danced beneath her skin, but she brought it back under control, pulling it back within herself.
“I thought he was going to hurt you,” she said.
“Thanks for caring. I thought you were going to hurt me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No problemo. You didn’t follow through. I think all the Lessers have decided against attacking us.”
Abbey found some of the soldiers crouched nearby, staying under cover. They didn’t move to attack them, waiting to see who would end up in control.
She already knew the answer to that.
She would.
11
Abbey stormed through the Morningstar with Bastion at her side. The ship was newer than the rest, but it was still old by Republic standards, an aggregation of other craft that had been decommissioned at some point and then bought or sold or stolen and carried back to the Extant for use by the Nephilim. It was clean, but it was dim and tight, and it carried a smell of blood and metal that Abbey found equally attractive and repulsive.
The Unders on board were easy to distinguish from the soldiers, even if neither one had enough motivation to attack her. They wore plain cloth shirts and pants that hung loosely on underfed frames, their gaunt and tired faces showing signs of sudden hope at the arrival of the Demon Queen. They might not have heard exactly what had happened on Jamul, but they had caught wind that something was happening, and her sudden presence on the ship while it was already in FTL only proved it.
They stood to the side of the corridors, eyes risking upward glances at her as she passed, small smiles playing at the corner of downturned mouths. They murmured to one another when a large number of the soldiers let them through, and they made louder comments when the minority didn’t, amazed by the way Abbey blew them aside with little effort. Even the Venerants they came across either bowed their heads or quickly found themselves without one, a stark reminder to her how far she had come. She would never, ever forget how Emily Eagan had nearly killed her. She would never forget how she had run from Gloritant Thraven.
She had no intention of running ever again.
What the hell was Aqul’s deal, though? The Prophet had made no effort to meet with her, to negotiate with her, or to otherwise admit she was on his ship. He was missing in action, letting his defenders die while he did what, exactly?
She continued through the starship, making her way to the bridge. She recognized it immediately. The Morningstar was a fifty or sixty-year-old Republic battleship, one of the most numerous and cheaply constructed starships that had once been in their arsenal. It had been designed and built during the height of tensions with the Outworlds at the time most had believed an all-out war was imminent.