Entering the city was no challenge at all. Manned trucks and barricades had been set up on either side of, and several hundred meters back from, the driver’s exit way, but Stoakes thought that, while security had definitely increased since his arrival, the purpose of the trucks and barricades was to protect Issians from getting too close and endangering themselves, rather than to keep intruders out.
One powerful leap landed him atop a building on the fringe of the city. He returned to normal and moved to the side of the building that overlooked the rest of the city. From there he could better see how the streets were laid out. The mass driver was nestled between two three meter walls down its entire length. Near the midway point, though, was what looked like a public square, bisected by the walls and succession of coils, but connected below by at least two tunnels—he could see the stairs leading down—and above by a sturdy, enclosed concrete footbridge. He thought that he might be able to collapse that bridge, but because of its position in relation to the copper coils, it would likely have make do as a barrel jam. From that height, though, there was no guarantee that the fallen concrete would remain in big enough chunks to obstruct the launch way. Even if timing were favorable and a collision resulted between payload and falling debris, he would be caught in the explosion, which, despite his desire to be a good Viscain soldier, was not something he sought.
He stepped closer to the very edge of the building. Below, several men and women toiled at loading a truck with familiar crates. He could set about destroying the explosives themselves, he supposed, but without a sufficient chain reaction, finding all the explosives might take a long time and his goal was to destroy or disable as many of these stations as possible.
Without a clear answer at his disposal, he sighed, took a deep breath, and cried out as loud as possible, “The King of Spades is here. Look to the sky. His shadow hangs there, but the King is here now!”
Stoakes stepped off the edge of the building, going Dark only as he was about to touch ground. The sound of his voice had reached the workers below who only watched with concerned expressions. How else could they be expected to react? Stoakes landed and brought his Suicide Knife down upon a man’s head, where it sank evenly down to where the man’s nose met his upper lip. The sound of the blade crunching the man’s skull turned the onlookers’ expressions of concern to ones of horror. The man’s eyes went white instantly, and he fell to his knees, his hands reaching out reflexively. Stoakes put a foot to the man’s cheek and yanked his blade free. He paused purposefully, turning his blank shadow face to look on each of the workers. He picked another man out of the throng of ten that were outside the building, and thrust the Suicide Knife towards him. They were separated by at least three meters, but it was as if the blade had pierced the man just the same, violently and explosively, with a red splash out the small of the man’s back.
Stoakes paused again. If they didn’t get angry, if they didn’t turn into a mob, this was going to take longer even than finding all of the explosives and detonating them. He looked at a young woman and made a conscious decision: he would never again turn his blade upon any woman he was not ordered to kill unless she threatened his life or stood directly in the way of him accomplishing his goal, whatever that might be. He didn’t think that this young woman would survive the day, had no doubts that he would ultimately be responsible for her death, perhaps later with the Midnight Mirror, but he would not lay his blade upon her. Another then. Stoakes moved and brought his blade down like an axe on the back of a man’s neck, all but severing his head. The man dropped to all fours and poured all the blood out of his body before collapsing limply into the pool he’d just created.
“This is what Iss has to offer? You shoot at the sky, but here I am. The King of Spades will kill you all!”
Finally, someone from within the building, perhaps someone who’d witnessed the carnage from far enough away not to be overwhelmed by the suddenness and horror of what Stoakes had done, was roused to anger. He dropped the box he was carrying and pulled his sidearm. He shouted for his fellows to join him, waving his gun in wild exhortation.
Unseen to any, Stoakes smiled beneath the smoky black shroud of his Darkened state. He took another step and jammed the Suicide Knife into a man’s chest, but this man, run through as he was, attempted to grapple with Stoakes just the same. He found little to grab, though, and his forward motion sent him into a spin that landed him solidly on his back. The jolt sent up a brief geyser of blood which subsided into a gurgling sputter that spilled the rest of his life away.
Stoakes faced the small but growing group of those who were angrier than they were terrified, took several more tentative steps backward away from them, ensuring that he would be followed, then turned and started to run—or at least gave that appearance.
As he proceeded down the street, he cried out at intervals, announcing the arrival of the King of Spades, inciting rage born of fear wherever possible. Occasionally he would stop just long enough to stab some confused, unsuspecting man along the way to build the outrage and expand the mob. Stoakes saw that a mob had indeed formed and that some of them were now using handheld communications devices as they pursued him. All to the good. He navigated the nearly clockwork truck traffic easily, weaving through the vehicles sometimes, sometimes running close to building fronts out of the lanes. Many of his followers had pulled the mass driver pistols with which Stoakes was now very familiar, but his progress amongst the vehicles and through other as yet unaware groups of bystanders prevented efficient use of the weapons. Occasionally, he felt the hot needle jab of the pistols pierce his back, and though each penetration made him wince, the pain was only momentary and was something to which he was becoming accustomed.
He stopped once to drive his fist into the front of a truck, crumpling the body like foil, then with a mighty heave, he overturned the vehicle. As fuel pumped out, he fixed his stance and jabbed the Suicide Knife at the source from several meters away. The invisible force created a small crater in the metal surrounding the fuel leak just before the metal ripped, scraped against itself, sparked, and got the fuel to blazing. If the munitions caught and exploded, too, that wouldn’t hurt, but it wasn’t his goal at the moment.
Stoakes continued down the maze of streets, seemingly at random, turning here, favoring to continue on straight there, ranting as he went, killing only enough to keep the mob on the razor’s edge of intensity, but he knew exactly where he was going. Some of his pursuers had guessed it as well, or at least knew where they might trap him. But who was trapping whom?
He couldn’t believe it, thought it was the shouts of those behind him echoing off the building facades, but as he entered into the public square he’d seen from that first rooftop, he couldn’t help but laugh out loud at his success. The square was filling from all directions with hundreds and hundreds of people, from street intersections, from the tunnels leading to the other side of the mass driver, from everywhere. Perhaps they rightly associated him with the destruction of two of their mass drivers. Good.
As the square began to swell with the liquid mass of people, streaming in from all over the city, all clamoring for Stoakes’s head, Stoakes leapt up abruptly, alighting on a building that was opposite the mass driver and which accommodated one end of the concrete footbridge.
He surveyed the crowd below, took a moment to cut apart five men who came out of the covered footbridge, then addressed those down in the square. “Look well upon the King of Spades. They died,” he said, indicating the five. “You will die. All of you.” He shook the short, chisel-tipped blade, dislodging all the blood from it in that one sharp, powerful movement. He held the blade up and showed them the Midnight Mirror. “Look well at the instrument of your destruction.” His words, he knew, were trite, the stuff of pulp fiction—of which there was no lack in the Viscain Empire—but they served his purpose.
Everyone looked. Why wouldn’t they? How could that lone, tiny figure forty meters up in the air expect to scare them with a kn
ife, even if he had wielded it with such mastery? To look was to die, though. Everyone who looked at the Midnight Mirror was ensnared by it, and the only succor possible was Stoakes’s mercy. He was not completely devoid of this quality, but generals of the Viscain Empire, even former ones, did not display it while at work.
He waited no longer than it took to record every face in the crowd. Then with a swift, sure motion, he slashed his own throat, deeply, from ear to ear. Stoakes was completely unaffected by the action, but in an instant the square was doused with a uniform spray of bright red blood from every throat of every man and women who’d been captured by the Midnight Mirror. The angry mob was silenced in that instant. No one remained standing. No one remained alive. The square was like a red swamp, with corpse mounds making small islands here and there throughout its shallow depth.
New shouts, these from further away, began to intrude on the quiet scene. A great and sudden whoosh through the mass driver made Stoakes flinch. He had about ten minutes, then, to try to clog the launch way.
Stoakes crossed the roof to the opposite side of the building and jumped down. He hadn’t been paying attention and so hadn’t heard the explosion, but from that perch, before he dropped, he’d seen flickering light and smoke that was indicative of a fire much larger and more intense than from just one ruined truck.
The street below was filled with identical trucks with identical loads. He didn’t know how to operate the vehicles, and though they were big, they weren’t too heavy for him to drag. He sank his Dark fingers through the front grill of a truck and started to pull, yanking with smoother and smoother results, bringing the vehicle up a curb, around the corner of the building, and around to its base on the public square side. Bodies half submerged in blood were everywhere here, and he slipped more than once in the mess, losing his footing while trying to heave the truck forward. He zig-zagged it by pulling, then got behind it to push it up against the building’s facade. Now satisfied with its position, he tapped along the truck’s side, listening for the hollow thump that would reveal the location of the fuel tank. Finding it, he punched his fist through the thin sheet metal containing the fuel and the liquid splashed out, mixing with and discoloring the blood on the ground. As before, Stoakes jabbed his Knife in the direction of the source of the spouting fuel. Again, a spark danced and set the fuel to burning.
He went back around the building to the opposite side and got ready. He didn’t know if it would help or not, if he had the strength or not, but he didn’t know what else to do, so he waited. When the series of explosions from the other side started, he crouched, gathering every ounce of strength he had, and shot himself, leading with his shoulder, into the side of the building, hoping to exert sufficient force upon the structure to tip it over on what he hoped was a crippled foundation. And, to his own surprise, he was successful.
The bridge suspended over the mass driver fell first, almost as one mass. It had cracked and the pressure had split it in two, but those two great halves fell exactly between two of the copper coils. The building, not so tall and not so close to the mass driver crashed down, filling one half of the launch way for the length of a city block. How the coils had fared beneath the rubble of the building was impossible to know, but anything coming down the launch way would go no further.
It was time to go. While he was pretty sure that he’d succeeded in disabling the mass driver, he didn’t think the end results would be quite so spectacular as those of his two previous outings. That was okay. There would be an explosion, sure enough, and he didn’t want to stick around for it. Plus, he had to at least try to knock out as many more of these installations as was possible. He leapt to the top of a building, heading back out of the city the way he’d come in from building top to building top. He paused for a moment, looked over his shoulder and was struck by a sense of. . . what? Foreboding? He wasn’t sure. But he saw that the Vine had passed this planet while he was at work, and he knew that it would be making planetfall very soon now. He thought again of Faaylin Olaff, really wondering now where the others like him were if not here to defend their mass drivers or to engage earthbound foes. They couldn’t all be on that other planet, waiting. . . could they?
He turned to resume his exit, and the mass driver cycled up, providing a prelude to the brilliant flash that lit him from behind as he bounded from one concrete island to the next.
10,691.150
“Blue Squad,” Witchlan said, “you have our apologies that, though you are retired, you will feature so prominently in this invasion. We will be landing close to the sea. Exact coordinates are impossible to calculate given our rate of descent and imperfections in the warp fields brought on by the planet’s gravity, but Mr. Set, immediately upon planetfall, you are to find your way to that sea. Accumulate as large a volume of water as possible and rejoin the main force on land.”
“Yes, Minister,” Set said.
“Mr. Lowe, you will support Mr. Barson from the air,” Witchlan said.
“Yes, Minister.”
“Miss Fan, you will join the other Shades following the main force.”
“Yes, Minister.”
“The main force will consist of gene soldiers, who will be dispatched en masse as soon as the waning influence the stitch drive allows us access to their containment cells. Their numbers are back up to quota levels, and they are expendable. As usual, the gene soldiers will be directed by Mr. Barson’s Coordinators. Support troops are to be provided by Mr. Holson and Mr. Kapler, should they prove necessary.
“Mr. Barson, from atop Gran Kwes, you will lead Icsain, Mr. Abanastar, Mr. Kalkin, Mr. Holson, Mr. Vays, Mr. Kapler, and as already mentioned, Miss Fan. Miss Winn and Miss Karvasti, you will remain within the Palace in case the planet’s defensive force should somehow break through our offensive line.
“While we may be operating at close to full capacity, it has been made abundantly clear that we are expected, and that we ourselves can expect resistance, likely of a different character, than we have so far observed.
“Our projected landing site is close to a population center. Impact will no doubt ruin that center’s infrastructure, but we should anticipate a swift response to our arrival. If such is a premature concern, it hurts us little. If it is an accurate assessment, we must be able to meet with whatever force they have prepared for us. We will not underestimate them. Is that understood?”
As a group, the Shades gathered around the low, glass-topped table in the war room, responded in the affirmative.
“Excellent. You are all dismissed from further duty today. Return to your quarters and prepare for landing. Mr. Barson, have all the necessary precautions been taken with Gran Kwes?”
“They have, Minister.”
Witchlan nodded. Moments passed before he finished by saying, “That is all.”
• • •
Alarms sounded through the halls of the Palace for the duration of the day. Technicians and Palace personnel locked down everything that wasn’t already. Except for certain access ways that provided express exit for the Shades from their quarters, all doors and apertures were sealed with viscous resin excreted from the very walls, which dried and hardened in seconds, further strengthening the internal latticework that supported the Vine against all intrusions of external force.
In their quarters, Jav and Mao cuddled in their bed, which for landing purposes had been converted to its alternate configuration. The mattress was now filled with a thick fluid designed to substantially reduce kinetic energy. They were enfolded within the mattress, which held them like a womb, and which was open only at the top.
He would hold her there, pressed close to him, for as long as possible, confirming every second that she was with him, that she was alive, that she was warm and breathing and not somehow getting away from him and winking out of existence.
18. ON DRY LAND & WATER
10,691.151
(Year of the Church 1084)
Preceded by the jump lens, the Vine raced towards the
sixth planet. Their orbits had taken the other two planets out of firing position, but the sixth planet continued to make use of its mass drivers. Unfortunately for the natives, though, the jump lens was working. Everything the sixth planet sent out was being returned. Just as soon as a projectile came within the operating disk of the jump lens, it passed through folded space and was directed back at the source. The plan was a complete success up through its conclusion when the jump lens made contact with the planet’s surface just before the Vine touched down. The earth there, for kilometers around, was tilled on a grand scale in an instant, and made suitable for planting.
The Palace crashed down like judgement, half upon the dry land and half upon the water. With the added momentum provided by the Stitch Drive, the impact cracked the planet all the way through. Quakes and tidal waves radiated out to spread until those mighty ripples met themselves on the opposite side of the planet, creating another riot of unending temblors which competed for devastation. Black clouds of dust and debris were raised kilometers high to blot out the sun and choke the inhabitants of two continents. Hundreds of millions died, but those Entitled by God were ready and on their way.
When the heavier bits of rock and soil blown high up into the air had settled back down upon the ground, a streak shot from high up on the Palace, making for the sea. From points all around the Palace at a similar height, what looked like a particulate fog spilled out. From a distance, it looked like clouds of gnats, but these were in fact the winged gene soldier harpies that made up Tia Winn’s army. From the base of the Palace as well, Mefis Abanastar’s gene soldier army of mermen spewed forth in shocking numbers, covering the upturned ground like liquid.
The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) Page 28