by Jacob Holo
“Well…”
“I’ll have you know, that last one was an accident, okay? Read my lips. An accident. Would you like me to spell it out for you in your crude Earther language?”
Jack chuckled, and Tesset joined him a few seconds later.
“Tesset, promise me you’ll never change.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You Earthers can be a pretty bad influence, sometimes. I can’t make any promises.”
“What, and Aktenai make great role models?”
“Who’s the better role model? Seth or Jared?”
“Now you’re just being mean.”
“But did I distract you from the heat?”
“A little. Thanks.”
Jack grabbed the next slanted strut and eased along the utility conduits.
“So why do you think Veketon’s using couriers now?” Tesset asked.
“We’ve used ‘secure’ information against him one too many times. He may not know I can tap into his hypercast transmissions, but he must suspect they’re compromised. Vek is many things, but he’s not stupid.”
“That almost sounded like a compliment.”
“And when I finally get my hands on him, I’ll tell him how smart he is. Right before I peel his stolen face off and shove it down his throat.”
“Ah. Now there’s the Jack I know. Much better.”
The utility conduits came to an end, connecting with the Governance Tower. Jack sat on his knees in front of a service panel on the tower exterior.
“You in a good spot, Tesset?”
“I have a perfect vantage of the Governance Tower. My seraph’s stealth field is intact and all weapons are hot.”
“You’re not going to give us away like last time, right?”
Tesset muttered something under her breath.
Jack thought it might have been the word “accident.” He grinned, easing himself closer to the service panel.
In truth, Tesset was his top choice for backup on an infiltration mission. Not only could she keep her seraph stealthed better than any other pilot, but he trusted her completely. Unconditionally.
The other pilots on the Judgment could never truly understand what merging with his seraph had done to his mind. But Tesset’s unique sense allowed her to see the scars in his soul. She knew, and it didn’t bother her at all. She accepted him for who he was, flaws and all, and that acceptance had forged an unbreakable bond of trust between the two pilots.
It also didn’t hurt that Jack had never tried to kill her. Not even once. He was rather proud of that record.
“Okay,” he said. “Here we go.”
Jack drew upon the flows of chaos energy within his body. A tiny pinprick of light ignited between his hands, and then a thread of blue light extruded outward, almost invisible to the naked eye.
Jack sank the thread into the Tower’s outer wall. It entered with a barely audible hiss, then wormed into the panel’s hardwired security systems. With a delicate flick of the thread, he disabled the alarm circuits.
Jack unbolted four manual latches at the corners and lifted the hatch off. He backed into the utility crawlspace and closed the hatch behind him.
“I’m in.”
“Five floors above you. Fifty meters towards the center. The courier has been in the room for twelve minutes now.”
Jack shuffled backwards on his hands and knees through a space barely large enough for him to pass. He found a spot wide enough to turn around and continued along the utility crawlspace until he reached a vertical junction.
“I’m at the utility shaft.” Jack glanced up and down the dark pit. Bundles of power cables and thick colored pipelines coated its cylindrical walls. Pale red lights at each level gave him a sense of the shaft’s height. It must have stretched from the bottom all the way to level five hundred at the top.
Jack whistled. “Now that’s a long drop.”
“Proceed up seventeen stories.”
“Moving.”
Jack worked his way out of the cramped crawlspace, selected a sturdy-looking set of cables, and began to climb. He tried to ignore the fatal drop below him.
Tried and failed.
Two hundred stories from here to the bottom. Crap, don’t let go. Don’t slip. Otherwise it’s yaaaaaaaaaaa—SPLAT, okay? Don’t let go. Don’t let go. Why the hell did I volunteer for this?
“Courier is moving out of the room,” Tesset said. “I think she’s done loading her message into the Tower’s data core.”
“Don’t let go. Don’t let go.”
“What was that?”
“Sorry. Just concentrating on not falling.”
“Oh, big deal,” Tesset said. “Like a fall could kill you these days.”
“Maybe, but cut me some slack,” Jack said. “The last time I died it almost killed me.”
Tesset blurted out a laugh.
“What?” he asked.
“Do you know how many things were wrong with what you just said?”
“Well, it’s all true.”
“It still sounded stupid.”
“Getting stabbed through the heart by Quennin was one thing. Breaking every bone in my body and pulverizing my organs is entirely different.”
“Your barrier would cushion the fall.” Tesset chuckled and added, “Probably.”
“Can we please stop talking about me falling to my non-death?”
“Sure. I guess so.”
Jack climbed one more story.
“Okay, I’ve reached the router box.” With one hand holding a death grip on the rope of cables, he retrieved a small Aktenai data-drill from his belt pouch. The innocuous device resembled a black finger ring that hinged open.
Jack opened the router box and placed the d-drill around its main IO antenna. The d-drill’s mnemonic inner surface morphed to match the antenna’s base, and data started flowing to Tesset’s seraph via secure hypercast.
“Solid connection,” Tesset said. “We’re starting to pull their message buffer now.”
“I’m sealing the router box.”
“Watch it, Jack. Combat aircars launching from nearby towers. I count ten so far. They’re heading straight for the Governance Tower.”
“Ah, crap. They know I’m here.”
“Looks like it. Forget evidence removal. You need to get out of there.”
“I’m on my way out.”
Jack gripped the cable rope with both hands and began climbing down.
“Fellerossi warriors are entering the Governance Tower,” Tesset said. “Looks like squads of twelve entering at floors two hundred, two twenty, and two forty. They’re all in full assault armor and are converging on your position.”
“Crap.”
“Shall I take them out?”
“Hold your fire. I need to get clear of the Governance Tower first.”
“I can get you out now.”
“They are thousands of Fellerossi civilians in here with me. We’ll do this without causing the whole city to crash.”
Tesset mumbled something under her breath about “accidents.”
Jack descended down the utility shaft four stories when something started interfering with his stealthsuit. He didn’t know what because every active system in the suit shut down all at once. Its surface changed from a carefully fabricated optical illusion to pure matte black.
“Detecting active scramblers from—Jack, behind you!”
A panel exploded one floor beneath Jack. Its hatch spun away into the dimly lit shaft below. Two armored Fellerossi warriors crouched at the new opening and raised their heavy carbines.
“Oh, no you don’t!” Jack shouted.
Chaos energy surged through his body, and a faint blue shimmer flowed over his skin. The Fellerossi warriors fired their carbines on full automatic, spraying Jack with a mix of depleted-uranium bolts and explosive shells.
Jack clenched his teeth and grunted, each hit a spike of hot pain. Solid bolts ricocheted off his barrier and zinged back and forth through the shaft. Hot
explosions rippled around him. The power conduit he was holding onto broke free, and he started to fall.
Jack kicked off the utility shaft’s walls, propelling himself at the Fellerossi warriors like a missile. His energy sword materialized in his left hand, and he crashed into one of the warriors, driving his sword through the man’s gut.
The blue energy blade cut through plated assault armor as if it were damp paper. Jack and the warrior skidded across the floor of a long, narrow service corridor. Now on his back, the impaled warrior placed his carbine against Jack’s head.
Jack pulled his sword up and through the warrior’s chest, splitting his upper body in half. He spun around and cut down the second warrior.
Further down the service corridor, a third warrior aimed his weapon. He carried some sort of beam cannon Jack didn’t recognize, though he instantly knew being on the business end of it was bad. The huge shoulder-mounted cannon looked as heavy as the warrior carrying it.
“Crap!”
Jack’s entire world turned white. The beam struck him in the chest and threw him back into the utility shaft. Warrior corpses around him flash-incinerated, and the beam punched him through the other side of the shaft.
Jack landed and rolled, his barrier sizzling like static around his body. He rose to his feet in an empty office complex of some sort, its walls splashed with orange-and-black Fellerossi swirls. The beam had burned a thick hole straight through a line of waist-high walls. Furniture burned, and the walls melted and sagged, clicking as they cooled.
Fire suppression systems along the ceiling engaged, dispensing targeted globs of foam.
“That looked like it hurt,” Tesset said. “You sure you don’t want my help?”
“It’s all… under control,” Jack panted. He picked the exit on his left and started running.
In a distant corner of his mind, Jack sensed his seraph’s restlessness, even with light years separating them. He tried to send the seraph calming thoughts, to placate the overly protective beast, even as he dashed through the Governance Tower.
“Where are you heading?” Tesset asked.
“Central airshaft. I have an idea.”
Jack hurried through one cramped office after another. Several times, he had to force his way through large throngs of fleeing, screaming civilians. But while the civilians slowed him down, it also delayed his pursuers, who would not fire through their own citizens. At least a dozen warriors hurried after him with more converging from other directions.
After a few minutes, Jack reached a lounge overlooking the wide central airshaft. The square shaft cut vertically through the building, open to the sky above and below with docks for aircars jutting from each level.
Jack stepped up to the edge of the lounge’s aircar dock and placed a hand on the yellow railing. He looked down. It was a hell of a drop, though the puffy clouds below didn’t look too bad.
“Jack, get out of there!”
A shrill whistle drew his attention high above. Two combat aircars descended down the shaft, their blunt noses bristling with weapons. Guns barked, and a rain of kinetic bolts tore through the dock. A few shots hit him and deflected off his barrier with little snaps of lightning.
The platform lurched down at a sharp angle, forcing Jack to grab the railing tightly. Behind him, warriors poured into the lounge.
“Tesset! Escape Plan J!”
“What are you talking about? What’s Escape Plan J?”
“WHAT DO YOU THINK IT IS?”
Jack leaped off the aircar dock.
“Jack!” Tesset shouted, but he didn’t hear her voice. He was too busy screaming.
The combat aircars dipped their noses and dove after him, their front weaponry spewing bolt fire. Over two hundred levels howled past Jack’s head, and then he was out in the open, falling towards the cloudbanks beneath the aerial city.
Jack spun around and watched the aerial city recede from him, its rectangular grid of towers and bridges disappearing into a thickening white fog.
The two aircars exited the Governance Tower and pursued him. One launched a cluster of missiles while the other sprayed him with kinetic fire. The six missiles spread out, engaged miniaturized gravity blades, and sped towards him.
They never stood a chance.
The cloudbanks parted around a massive invisible shape, and all six missiles exploded against this absence in bright flashes. Both aircars followed, but giant, unseen fists grabbed them and crushed their hulls.
The invisible shape flung the ruined aircars aside and approached Jack. It matched speed with him, white clouds flowing around a gargantuan humanoid outline.
The air above him shimmered. Tesset disengaged her seraph’s active stealth field, revealing a six-winged giant of green armor, its sleek lines gleaming in the bright sun. Vents along its torso, limbs, and blade-like wings glow bright green, radiating the huge machine’s waste chaos energy.
Tesset cupped giant hands underneath Jack and slowly brought them up to meet him. He settled into the seraph’s wide palms with feathery lightness.
And he was still screaming, though a little hoarse at this point.
His shout died away into a low, nervous sigh. Jack crawled across the seraph’s palm until he reached a thumb. He put his arms around the person-sized digit, and locked his hands together.
“Escape Plan J, huh?” Tesset asked.
“That’s right.” Jack shut his eyes and held the seraph’s thumb tightly.
“And that was the best you could think of?”
“I knew you’d catch me,” Jack said. “Just one thing.”
“Yes?”
“Let’s never do that again, okay?”
***
They passed through the intra-gate, a white disc just wide enough for Tesset’s seraph, and emerged within the cold blackness of space between stars. The thin eye of the galactic core shone to their right.
The Aktenai long-range strike carrier Keeper’s Judgment hovered a few kilometers from the now closing intra-gate, its mirror-finish body dark from the lack of illumination. The carrier looked every bit the part of a Fellerossi warship, though that bit of deception had never been tested during its five years of service. Two seraphs from Knight Squadron flew close patrols around the vessel, while a squadron of stealth exodrones provided farther reaching surveillance.
Jack stood up, the soles of his boots sticking to the seraph’s palm.
“You okay, Jack?” Tesset asked.
“Sure. Why do you ask?”
“You know, you don’t have to wait outside on my hand like that. I can let you into the cockpit. Hard vacuum and all.”
“No, no. That’s fine.”
“Wasn’t your stealthsuit breached during the fighting?”
“Yeah, I think that beam melted a few holes around the chest.”
“And the vacuum isn’t bothering you?”
“Nope,” Jack said as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “I just stop time from passing in my body until I’m in a breathable atmosphere again. It’s no big deal.”
“I’m still amazed you can do stuff like that. It must be great being a bane.”
“Not really.”
Seth Elexen brought his seraph close, the black angular body glowing with white runic shunts. He carried a portal lance in his right hand, the flowing Keeper script curling around the powerful weapon, each character burning with the purest white light.
Seth came alongside Tesset, and the two seraphs headed for the Keeper’s Judgment.
“Hey, Seth,” Jack said. “Thanks for the quick getaway.”
“The technique grows easier with practice,” Seth said. “Though, generating an intra-gate of that size to the Omniscient Seer is at my limit.”
“Hey, Seth?” Tesset asked. “Do you think if you practiced enough you could make an intra-gate to take us all the way home?”
“I seriously doubt that. We’ll have to traverse the space via fold engine once our mission is completed.”
Jack grinned. That’s so like you, Seth. “Once our mission is completed.” As if there isn’t a doubt in your mind.
“I’ll see you both onboard,” Seth said. “Congratulations on a successful mission.”
“I wouldn’t call it a success,” Jack said. “They spotted me somehow.”
“Nonsense,” Seth said. “You are both alive, and our base’s location has not been compromised. Any mission that achieves those goals is a success.”
“I guess you’re right,” Jack said.
Tesset flew underneath the Judgment and pulled up into one of twenty-four catapults. Twin rails extended down, latched onto her seraph’s now folded wings, and hauled it up into the seraph bays.
The bays were divided into individual compartments, each self-contained and self-sufficient for servicing one seraph. Even with the wings folded, Tesset’s seraph barely fit. Its head almost scraped the ceiling, and the walls almost touched its shoulders.
Tesset placed her hand on the waist-high ledge in front of the seraph. Jack stepped off, peeled back his stealthsuit’s hood, and ran fingers through his hair. He turned, looking up at her seraph.
Panels opened in the ceiling, and multi-armed mechanisms descended. Robotic limbs latched onto the seraph’s conformal pods on its forearms, legs, and upper wings, disconnecting them from the seraph’s body and pulling them up into the ordnance bays. Others opened holes in the mnemonic skin in order to service interior systems.
Soft white light illuminated the space. Wide open airlocks on either side of the ledge led to other seraph bays, and a high control balcony overlooked them through thick panes of angled mnemonic glass. A constant bustle of Aktenai technicians and a few medics moved about the ledge, filling the space with a background din of conversation.
A gangplank extended from the ledge, forming a bridge with the seraph’s cockpit hatch. Tesset Daelus stepped out wearing a storm-gray interface-suit, helmet slung under an arm.
Tesset’s slim figure gave her a delicate beauty, and her short blonde hair, though damp and unruly at the moment, positively shimmered in the right light. But it was the blindfold that truly defined her appearance.
Tesset wore it to conceal the empty pits of her eye sockets. The strip of cloth wrapped smoothly around her head, adorned with a stepping pattern of lighter and darker shades of green, long tails hanging down her back.