He and Abanastar excused themselves and disappeared into the Root Palace.
With the atmosphere reduced from official to casual, Jav rushed to Ren and Froster, clapping each on the shoulder. “Congratulations, you guys!”
“Thanks, Jav!” Ren said excitedly.
“We never expected this, but we’ll do what we can,” Froster added.
“Jav, let me introduce you to a very good friend of mine.” Ren took Jav over to the young woman. “This is Brin Karvasti.”
“Nice to meet you, Miss Karvasti,” Jav said.
“Please, call me Brin,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you, too.”
Jav turned and regarded Vays. “This is Forbis Vays.”
Vays stood with his arms folded, looking smug. “That’s not necessary, Holson.”
Jav shot a look from Vays to Brin.
“No,” she said, eyes shining, “Forbis and I are well acquainted.”
A shadow fell over Ren’s face, but was quickly replaced with a bright smile. “Brin, can you believe it? It’s just like we talked about when we were kids and here we are, both of us Shades.”
Brin nodded noncommittally. “Well, it’s not exactly the way we imagined it. It would be better if I had managed to edge out Elza and she was here receiving an emergency Artifact.”
“She’s right,” Vays said. “None of you has much to be proud of. Artifacts in numbers may be a necessity under the circumstances, but I think we’re just going to see a repetition of the final competition: the winners will win and the losers will lose.”
Jav’s face contorted with shock and disgust.
“Thanks for the analysis, Professor Friendly. Or, I’m sorry, was it Dr. Tact?” Ren stared Vays down and won, receiving a condescending sigh and a wave of the hand.
“What’s your problem, Vays?” Froster said. “Isn’t there enough room for all of us and your ego?”
“Ego? I think you’ve mistaken my knack for seeing the truth for something else.” Vays feigned a theatrical yawn. “I’m suddenly very bored. Maybe sleep would liven things up a bit. Brin, under any circumstances, it’s a pleasure to see you, and I’ll look forward to seeing more of you later.” Acknowledging Jav and ignoring the other two, Vays turned and walked away with one upraised hand as a parting greeting.
Jav was still dumbfounded by Vays’s behavior. During their mission to Secrei, Jav had seen nothing to indicate that side of his personality. Had something happened? Or was he just that much of a jerk?
Ren’s anger had subsided, but a new anxiety filled him. “Brin, what did he mean by that?”
And by the desperate tone of Ren’s voice Jav suddenly realized that this was the Brin Karvasti. This was the girl whose name Ren had let slip when he came to train with Hol. Brin Karvasti, the instant source of an endless blush, whose name, out of pity and understanding, Jav had finally agreed to stop mentioning.
Brin smiled at Ren and touched his arm. “It was nothing.”
“How do you know him?” he said, trying to sound uninterested.
“He was a part-time student at the Locsard. We hardly ever ran into each other, Ren. Relax.”
Her tone was soothing, almost too much so, and Jav recalled with a touch of dread the Emperor’s description of her power.
8. CRITICAL TEST
10,688.053.0537
Knowing what to look for, the Astrophysics Division knew immediately when the Gun Golems emerged from the wormhole. The jump deck and monitoring probes were destroyed as they passed, but they were already close enough to be monitored by equipment housed within the Root Palace. There were nine of them this time: one female and eight males. The Shades had been lucky so far in having to cope with only one female at a time, but all wondered secretly when that luck would run out and what would happen when it did.
Before any of the Gun Golems could get within their estimated firing range, Barson, working with Abanastar, struck. In the courtyard atop a broad tower tall enough to see over the surrounding wall, Abanastar had set up a series of lenses much like the one he had during their first encounter with the Gun Golems. Barson powered his Singularity Punch and drove his fist through the lenses. The female Gun Golem was instantly reduced to limbs held together and spreading from an impossibly small point like the petals of an exotic flower with the shriveled wings courting would be pollinators. Usually after a successful strike, Barson dispelled the forces that made his punch so deadly, leaving behind a microscopic grain of neutron-degenerate matter, but today they had further need of the waning singularity. When he withdrew his fist, the female Gun Golem’s eight companions were instantly drawn to her as if she were a powerful magnet, making a small, tangled mass of metal bodies with arms and legs jutting like roots seeking soil.
Stepping back, Barson waited while Abanastar adjusted his lenses, giving them a wider, more inclusive view. The cluster of Gun Golems floated high above them, over a red planet that was held fast by the Vine. Barson pointed the index and middle fingers of his right hand at the Gun Golems and began drawing them towards the planet.
“Ready?” Barson said.
“Ready,” Abanastar replied.
The image through the lenses changed rapidly now, focusing and refocusing on the Gun Golems as they began to make planetfall. Between image shifts, Barson raised his fingers up and began to pull them down again, fighting isometric resistance. His arm was shaking with effort, but the knot of metal was coming down faster and faster, hotter and hotter, until he seemed to reach and overcome some threshold and his arm swung down like an axe, crashing the directed meteor into the planet’s surface about a hundred kilometers away from the Root Palace and raising a small mushroom cloud in the process.
The female Gun Golem was not longer a threat, but the remaining eight, in spite of the punishment they had just received, rose from their crater and exited the radioactive pall. They flew low to the ground, which was a relief: they didn’t seem to realize the advantage they had in the air and simply advanced relentlessly on their enemies.
Abanastar focused his lenses on the incoming Gun Golems and a white, robotic panther, as tall as Barson at the shoulder, stepped forward. Despite its appearance, the cat was not a robot but Aila Schosser transformed.
Barson patted her flank. “Good shooting,” he said.
“Make sure you come back in one piece,” she responded, her green eyes glittering and the Cat’s-eye Marble, triple its normal size, pulsing with a spark deep in its center.
“I always do.” Barson turned to Abanastar. “Aim straight, huh?”
“I always do.”
The black horse Shade leapt to Gran Kwes, which was waiting nearby. He waved the Shades below forward and they proceeded through the open gates. Once they were through, the gates closed and a shimmering veil of colors covered the Root Palace.
Upon a balcony above the main entrance to the Palace, Sana Bale, was a bright collection of shifting crystalline shards of white light. Her hands were buried in a waist-high terminal that was connected invisibly to a series of special machines placed at strategic points about the Palace and the enclosing courtyard wall. After many hours of brainstorming with Gilf Scanlan and more hours of tests and experiments, they had come up with this: an extensive barrier powered and controlled by Sana Bale herself, backed by her Artifact, the Prismatic Scales. They couldn’t produce a perfect shield in the laboratory, though, and it would likely require ongoing, real-time adjustment. Once she was able to determine the most effective formula, she could help Scanlan build a machine that could do all the work by itself, but they needed a live combat test first. Ideally, the Shades would hold and defeat the Gun Golems before they reached the Palace, but Bale was, as usual, prepared for and expecting the worst.
Brin Karvasti rode along with Barson atop Gran Kwes, which galloped towards the enemy. Vays, Jav, and Laedra Hol sprinted and made great, bounding leaps, keeping easy pace with the Gran. Kimbal Furst, Ren Fauer, and Gast Froster were the fastest, each flying in his unique way. A vol
ley of bright green, fist-sized spheres launched from behind the advancing Shades, rushed past them into the midst of the Gun Golems. Two of the spheres, shots from Schosser’s Cat’s-eye Cannon, struck Gun Golems, ringing sonorously and upsetting their progress.
The Scavenger Cloud descended upon the enemy group and Froster struck every one of the eight invaders almost simultaneously. But, just as his teacher, Cov Merasec, had discovered, the Wind Fission Sickle could not penetrate or even scratch Gun Golem steel. Within the Cloud, face guns flared and pistols thundered, but the Emperor hadn’t exaggerated: none of the Gun Golems’ weapons could touch him; not even the pistol shots caused him the slightest discomfort.
Ren rushed forward and responded to a burst of face gun fire by stopping in an instant and deflecting the myriad projectiles with his kaleidoscope blades. Every bullet was slapped harmlessly away and not a single blade was broken. He didn’t want to try the same method with the pistol shots, however, and had to move quickly to avoid a series of them.
Furst told Froster to get clear or have his first go with incendiaries. Quickly acknowledging and obeying his one-time teacher, Froster focused his Scavenger Cloud on a single Gun Golem and unloaded his every Wind Fission technique upon it.
With the enemy exposed, Furst dashed into the nearest one and disappeared within it. To the eye his presence was marked only by the odd pink corona surrounding the Gun Golem, but clearly the Gun Golems saw differently. No less than three turned on their pink-lit fellow and fired their pistols into it. Three holes with great jagged cracks radiating out from them opened up in the Gun Golem’s torso.
Furst was aware of two things: first, that the pistols were fairly efficient against the Gun Golems themselves, and second, that while one shot at a time was tolerable three at once were almost enough to make him pass out from the pain and the shock to his system. He felt something rupture and spread warm liquid throughout his insides, which didn’t jibe since his body right now was made of pink, nuclear fire. He fought against encroaching darkness, struggling to maintain consciousness and his Darkened state. He wanted to finish off one Gun Golem—he had to. Slowly he felt molten steel pour down into pools on the ground, and just before another round of shots came, a volley from the Cat’s-eye Cannon saved him. Jav and Hol were there, too, engaging the closest enemies and leaving Furst free to catch his breath.
Hol was brutal and unrelenting. Her claws raised crushed bits of Gun Golem steel with every strike and left one of the invaders a veritable invalid. It moved almost comically and was like a bizarre dummy with strangely placed joints of loose, crumbling gravel. Nothing could resist her fingers, but she was careful to increase her power incrementally so she would waste no energy unnecessarily. She finally concentrated on the Gun Golem’s head and with four last strikes, pulverized it into a sparkling cloud of dust and shrapnel. Though not unfazed by the effort, Hol found that she could continue fighting in this manner and not exhaust herself all at once like she had in her first encounter with the Gun Golems.
Barson had left Gran Kwes and Brin behind and rushed into the approaching Gun Golems. He and Vays, fighting side by side, were now engaged in combat.
Still at a safe distance atop Gran Kwes, Brin watched the fighting. She had a keen analytical mind as well as a bit of a mean streak, which, along with her psychic discipline, had the combined effect of making her feel invincible; she could always sit back and watch, sometimes stirring the pot to make it more volatile, and never come under scrutiny herself. Since she had no experience outside the classroom, she understood the threat of the Gun Golems as fact, but she could not begin to comprehend it as reality. She exerted her power, seeking a mind among the silver automatons to probe, not realizing that she was actively signaling the Gun Golems, rather than spying on them in secret. She found something that was in some ways like a mind, but that was as overwhelmingly powerful as it was simplistic. That it was simplistic, uniform, and undifferentiated she could easily tell, but anything more specific was wholly obscured by its staggering power. Brin was so busy concentrating on her task and so comfortable in the routine of going unobserved that she was completely unaware of being targeted by one of her subjects.
Beginning in his adolescence, Ren Fauer had progressed in his feelings for Brin Karvasti from crush to genuine friendship to love. Whenever he could, he watched out for her and now was no exception, which was why he did not fail to notice that she had become a target.
The Gun Golem rose and drew closer, aiming its pistol at Brin’s heart, but before it could pull the trigger, Ren literally appeared out of nowhere, slamming with incredible momentum into the alien invader, knocking it from its place in the air with an explosion of shattered blades that rained down and stabbed into the rocky ground.
“Brin!” he shouted, panting.
His voice brought her back to the here and now, and she quickly understood what had just happened. This was the second time Ren had saved her life, and the realization awakened old, confused feelings that she had forgotten—or intentionally buried away—and she vowed to herself to be kinder to him.
“Thank you, Ren,” she said just loud enough for him to hear.
But he wasn’t the only one who heard. Some of the other Gun Golems were pressing forward, driving the Shades back, already as far as Gran Kwes. “Don’t thank him for doing his job!” Vays shouted.
Ren shook his head in disgust, but the comment barely registered as he examined himself and the damage he had received from impact. All the blades that had come in contact with his opponent were now glittering like stars in a dirt firmament, but where they had broken, they were now growing back as he watched. Crashing into the Gun Golem had been jarring. His head hurt a little, but he was otherwise unhurt. Still, the results of his attack were disappointing, and though he was no quitter, he was already having doubts about how much he could really contribute to this fight.
Brin looked down at the man who was her lover then back to the man in the air who thought he was. She looked away and said in a low, beaten voice which Ren could not hear, “Yes, Forbis.”
Vays, sword flashing, completed his reprimand, “Now act, Brin!”
Gathering herself, she did. The Gun Golem several meters from Ren convulsed and seemed to undergo a kind of seizure. Its arms and legs spread so that it looked like a giant X, and behind it an elaborate black clock face or wheel was becoming visible which seemed to hold the Gun Golem immobile.
Satisfied that she could take care of herself for the time being, Ren called out, “Be careful!” and dove back into the skirmish.
Barson was powerful. He was one of the strongest Shades the Empire had ever seen, so perfectly did his natural talents synch with the attributes of his Artifact, but there was a limit to what he could do. The resources for the Singularity Punch had been spent and would not be replenished until sufficient rest could be had. Regardless, he was an expert fighter and the Nine Order Fist, while not as fast as AI styles, could produce comparable results.
The Nine Order Fist was sometimes called the Hammer and Shield Fist: as the exponent concentrated his power into one fist for striking, he used his other arm, already leaden with concentration, for blocking. One man might have surpassed Barson in his mastery of the Nine Order Fist, but that man—Sanger Faiks—was dead. Now Barson’s right fist was a hammer sounding a knell with each impact, and his left arm kept the deadly pistol off target. Where his punches landed, cracks inevitably spread. It was slow, but he was in total, composed control, methodically destroying his opponent bit by bit.
Nearby, Vays was biding his time, waiting for the right moment and fighting an animal urge to use his humming blade like a club and beat his opponent down. He knew from experience, though, that the outcome wouldn’t match his vision of primitive violence. His patience was rewarded, and, as his moment came, he activated the power he had perfected at the Academy. Using his mind, he supercharged his body to 120%, causing his armor to unlock its secret vents and allow his power to flow unchecked.<
br />
“Union Blade!” he cried out, dragging his blade up from the right and then in a vertical line from crotch to crown, splitting the Gun Golem in two. The Gun Golem quivered, still appearing whole for a moment, then fell away in two equal halves.
Back to normal now, Vays dropped to his knees, his right arm stretched out and held up only by his sword, stuck in the ground. It was perhaps the most perfectly executed stroke ever, sure to have made his father proud, but being a perfect stroke, it was as draining as it was destructive.
Furst felt sick. He had lost control of his transformation twice, resuming his normal state and coughing up copious amounts of blood and something else—something more solid—both times.
Jav and Hol could see that he was in trouble and covered him.
“Kim!” Hol cried. “Are you all right?”
“I. . . I don’t. . . it’s all wet. . . I. . .”
“Teacher!” Jav shouted. “You have to get out of here. Now!”
Hol winced at Jav’s use of the word “teacher”, but composed herself instantly. “He’s right, Kim! Can you make it?”
Furst managed a nod. Jav used the Kaiser Kick, sending one of the Gun Golems careening away from his one-time teacher.
“Please, Teacher!” Jav cried.
“S-Sorry,” he sputtered and limped off in the air towards the Root Palace, taking more than a few dangerous dips as he went.
A Gun Golem closed in and fired its face gun at Jav. Jav stepped aside and delivered a series of taunting blows. He wanted it to raise its pistol, but not before he put himself between it and another of its kind. That done, the pistol roared. He fancied that he saw the bullet, big as a hen’s egg, coming at him and, just as it was about to crack open the first of his skulls, he was gone. The bullet whizzed through a skeleton of smoke and into the unwitting Gun Golem beyond. Now behind the shooter, Jav saw his own smoky afterimage which he hadn’t noticed before—but what an unexpected, confusion-inducing treat, at least for foes that would have the sense to appreciate it. In the back of his mind he dubbed his displacement technique the Ghost Kaiser, and proceeded to beat the Gun Golem’s head with savage claw strikes from behind. Before it could turn to face him, he gripped its right wrist with his own right hand and used AI to kick as hard has he could the Gun Golem’s elbow, attempting to smash the joint and disable its arm. Fragments of crushed metal sprayed from the impact and, encouraged by the results, he kicked twice more in the same fashion. The arm was still attached, but it was limp and useless from the elbow down; the pistol was dead weight now. Jav spun his opponent around, catching the Gun Golem’s head in his hands. He ignored the face gun that tried to cut him apart and used the Kaiser Claw to devastate its head and wrench it free from its trunk.
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