by R. E. Carr
“What is happening?” Kei asked.
“Slaughter!” the warrior said. “We held the line easily for a time and then . . .”
“Then what?” Mihasu asked.
The trees behind them tore open as a huge robot burst into the woods. Its feet crushed one of the soldiers, and it landed only an arm’s length from Kei.
“I had to ask, didn’t I?” Mihasu asked. Kei snapped back the reins. Mihasu dismounted suddenly.
“Mihasu!” Kei cried. He too dropped to the ground to follow her.
She ran at full speed toward the monstrosity before Kei could say another word. The second her hand touched the metal casing, however, the robot shuddered and toppled to its knees. The lights running along its sides darkened, and the pilot hatch popped open.
Kei wasted no time in leaping over the creature’s arm. His claws tore the stunned pilot in half. Mihasu touched Kei’s arm and gave him a nod.
“If the gods give you a gift, use it,” Mihasu said.
More warriors ran into the newly formed clearing to see the fallen Machidonian. Kei took one look at the oozing blue cysts on the dead man’s hand, then looked at the open cockpit.
“Can it be? It is Kei!” someone cried. “It is Lord Kei! Lord Kei!” more shouted.
“I’m heading to the front,” Licia said as she shoved her fellow rider down and rushed past the stunned beasts.
“Let her go. Your men need you,” Mihasu said.
Kei pointed to Mihasu. “Warriors, this woman can stop the armor, but you must get her close enough to strike. Protect her as you would me!” he roared. “We must not fall.”
One of the Beast-Men stopped and looked at him. “But, my lord, what are we to do to protect you?” he asked.
“Stay out of my way,” Kei barked as he jumped into the now-empty control chamber of the power armor. He eyed the pronged wires nervously as he sat down.
“Now what do I do?” he asked himself. The second his hand touched the panel, however, all questions became moot. The cables shot into him and the pilot door slammed shut.
Outside, the warriors and Mihasu rallied by ambushing any of the robots foolish enough to enter the tree line. Kei wheeled his armor around and began lumbering for the trees. An intercom burst to life in Kei’s cockpit. A garbled mix of hisses and clicks filled the air.
Kei responded by slamming a metal arm into one of the retreating Machidonian armors. Over and over again, he disabled the units while ignoring the screams on his intercom. He broke haphazardly into a clearing. The machines’ serrated claws ripped into the dirt as Kei alternated between running upright and on all fours.
Kei’s intercom burst to life again. This voice was clearly not Machidonian.
“Unit fifty-seven, why don’t you comply?” it asked.
Kei’s answer came swiftly. He plunged the rogue unit into the Machidonian’s normal ranks. Like a wild animal, it flung the rows of Machine Men into the air. The scattered Beasts began to regroup along the trees as the other heavy units fell back.
“Shut it down!” the non-Machidonian voice cried.
Kei wheeled around in his vessel and stared, wide-eyed, at an entire row of cannons aimed right at his cockpit. He roared.
“Armor units, attack rogue unit!” Kei heard.
“Cannot comply without direct authorization from Probability Machine, sir. We cannot attack friendly units,” a new voice replied.
Inside the powered armor, Kei howled and kept smashing his way through the Machidonians. But no matter how brazenly he attacked, none of them would attack him in return. “This is too easy,” he said. Nearly giggling, he plowed farther out. The hole he created in the ranks gave his tribesmen much-needed breathing room.
His rampage halted abruptly, however, when he saw a man in black armor standing squarely in his path. He saw a sword swing and tried to leap back. The power armor was slower and unfamiliar to control, so it quickly buckled under him. Desperately, he pounded on the red button by the pilot hatch.
“That face!” Kei gasped when he saw a pair of smoky green eyes staring at him from under an ornate visor. “You are—”
Farris waited patiently for Kei to emerge from the cockpit. He even let the Beast-Man rip the wires out of his arms and jump to the ground before saying anything.
“You are the half Machidonian, half Beast-Man that has been causing us so much trouble, are you not?” Farris asked in perfect Beast tongue.
“You are the Knight who serves the Machidonians,” Kei spat back.
“It was a bold move, attacking them with their own weapons. But our sword still cut through your right leg. You won’t be able to use that machine anymore.”
“You killed Dailyn,” Kei said as he began to circle the Knight. “You killed your own brother.”
“Lies! We grieved over the loss of our noble brothers. Say our name, animal. We are Nocht Farris Adair, generals of this army.”
“I am Kei Zhanfos, heir to the Warlord, Sora-khar of the Beast Tribe.”
Farris lowered his visor, but his smile still showed beneath his helmet. “You are mistaken, boy. You are Kei Khanfos, Warlord of the Beast Tribe.”
“What? But—” Kei stopped cold in his tracks. “How do you . . . ?”
“Your father died quite poorly, without a fight,” Farris said, lowering into a sword stance. “Will you follow in his footsteps, Warlord?”
“You?” Kei asked, seething.
“Your father died like an animal. What will your people have after we kill you, savage?”
“Challenge me then, Nocht Farris! Challenge me, if you dare. If I fall, the Beasts will no longer fight.”
“And if we fall, this army might be lost.” He shrugged. “We suppose that is fair. Very well, Warlord, we challenge you in a duel to the death and give you our word of honor that no one will interfere.”
“I accept,” Kei said, dropping his leg back and raising his tail.
Farris held up his gauntlet. “All troops evacuate Sector Sixteen of the battlefield. No one is to interfere with this challenge. We repeat, evacuate Sector Sixteen.”
“Farris!” Licia cried as the temperature dropped and she appeared beside him. Kei grabbed her arm before she could hurl a lance of ice. She glared at him.
“How dare you?” she snapped.
“I have challenged Farris to a duel. If he wins, the Beasts will surrender,” Kei said.
“I am no Beast,” Licia said.
“I know,” Kei said with a little nod. “Please, Licia, my father’s body is out there. No matter what happens—”
“The Oracles of Delphi will attend to the dead,” Licia said bitterly. “And we will ensure that the fight is fair, but know that if you have wasted my chance for revenge, you and your people will taste a winter that never ends.”
She waved her hands and formed a circle of frost in the battlefield. The Machidonian troops immediately fell back to the edge. Kei roared his orders to his troops. Soon only Ferris and Kei stood by the husk of the power armor.
“We’ve waited for this for a long time, Warlord. Without you, that Serif-fan bitch will have no one left to save her,” Farris said.
“You are arrogant,” Kei said flatly.
“No, we’re just better than you could possibly be. Would you care to grab a sword off one of your fallen comrades?”
Kei shook his head and raised his weaponless arms. His iridescent bracers gave the Knight pause. “You stole those from our brothers,” Farris said. “How dare you?”
“They were a gift. Enough talk!” Kei snapped.
Farris dropped his leg back farther and watched the Beast-Man. For a few perfectly calm moments, the two men stared at each other. Then, with only the most minute shifting of weight, they both charged.
“You damn fool,” Rheak muttered as her ship sped across the central plains. She wiped the blood across her face but paused when she felt an entirely different liquid dripping from her
eyes.
“I will not suffer because of your weakness,” she said. She caught her reflection in the panel on her skiff. Her gem glowed again.
“Damn you! Damn you to hell!” she cried as she set a new course for a coordinate just south of Gracow City.
“This is where my story ends,” Eon whispered as his eyes slowly opened. He stared in wonder at the cables snaked around his limp body and the pronged head buried just above his hip. The pure violet had returned to his eyes, but blood trickled from his lips.
“Thank you, my god, for letting me die as a man,” he choked out as he slowly, painfully pushed himself closer to the console. Giant arcs of energy coursed up and down all the processors below. He opened a low panel on the console and smiled.
He saw the numbers cycling slowly, steadily down, then a flashing row of Mayan text.
“Do you still believe in gods?” it asked.
Eon watched the energy crackling from the wires into his skin, into his tattoos. He peered over the edge of the platform at the power building up below as well. He could hear clicking and clanging and banging coming from the door.
“Save her or save yourself, Eon,” the screen read as more energy crackled between his fingers.
“As if it’s a choice,” Eon said. He wrapped the cables even tighter around his body and watched the energy build. He saw some warning messages scroll by about bypassed fail-safes and a reactor overload being imminent before he simply looked heavenward and laughed.
“Ji-ann, I know that the universe is not so vast that we will not see each other again. It will not be this life, but I hope it is in the next,” he said right before the shocks increased in intensity and he began to twitch and jerk. He saw the screen flash one more time before he collapsed.
“Initiating Download.”
Jenn pressed her way through the crowds that now flooded Mass Avenue as she attempted to make her way to the Boston side of the river. She looked right, toward Allston, the noodle shop, and the apartment. Then she looked left, toward the flickering light of the T station.
“This is all I’ll ever have,” Jenn muttered as she picked a bit of plaster dust out from under her nail. She grabbed her head as the sky suddenly changed to violet and the whole city shuddered. All the breath left her chest and her knees buckled. She saw Eon sprawled in front of her on the pavement. She screamed when she saw a knife in her own shaking hand.
“Eon!” she cried as she dropped beside him and started shaking him violently. “Eon!”
“He got what he deserved,” Jenn heard from behind her. She whirled around to see her own face framed by bright red eyes and hair again. Instead of wearing silver, this version of her wore a black gown and a tiara of carved bone. “Still, that didn’t make it easy. That is your fault.”
“Rheak!” Jenn said. “What did you—?”
“Jenn!” CALA cried as a third version of Jenn materialized.
“Oh great, the Trojan horse is here,” Rheak said, rolling her eyes. “You let that bastard Kukulkan upgrade you when you weren’t looking. I’m ashamed to have created you, codeling.”
“CALA!” Jenn cried as she darted to her side.
“Oh how cute. You gave it a name,” Rheak said. “Well, you should have called it Judas, Jenn-Jenn. Now all of us are stuck together until I can offload this meatsack. I just wanted you both to know what an enormous pain you are, but that I am grateful for my release.”
“What about Kei?” Jenn asked. “Did you stop the Machidonians?”
“Well, I was going to, but lover boy had to ruin everything,” Rheak said.
“No! You have to stop them. You have to stop the Quetzalcoatl. It’s going to blow up Gracow—”
“If the feathered serpent cared so little about this world, then why should I?” Rheak asked.
“What are you talking about? Kukulkan is their protector!” Jenn started.
Rheak snorted. “I know you weren’t technically born yesterday, but it was certainly close,” she said. “Kukulkan just wanted to teach poor little 14B-Rheak a lesson, and he was willing to watch this world burn to do it. All we have to do is reach the city first, then I skip town and you can all burn beautifully together.”
“No!” Jenn cried.
“I thought about surprising you with my little ‘destroy Gracow and skip off to Earth’ plan, but I do seem to have inherited certain traits from you. I really hate surprises,” Rheak said.
“The Beast tribe depended on us!” Jenn cried. “Kei . . . Kei depended on us. You’re a monster.”
“Yes, that is exactly what I am. But I am currently an inefficient monster, so I need to borrow some processing power from you and the codeling in order to get this ship moving fast enough. Say good-bye to this little bubble and help me out.”
“No,” Jenn said.
“It wasn’t a question,” Rheak said before the whole world went black.
Jenn opened her eyes and stared in horror at blood on her hands. She found herself in the pilot’s seat of a Machidonian skiff. The plains of Jasturia rolled far beneath her. This time, a shield surrounded the seats, and the vessel flew perfectly straight and smooth.
“Never send a man to do a god’s job, Jenn.”
“Rheak?”
“The one and only. Now, while I’m preparing myself to get out of this rotting meat reactor, I need you to help keep a lookout.”
“Jenn, I am online as well.”
“CALA!”
“Yes, it’s a full house in here, but let’s keep the chatter to a minimum. Kukulkan may have infected me with a bit of your humanity, but let’s face it, you really didn’t have that much to begin with.”
“Jenn, I am detecting both a battle on the ground and the Quetzalcoatl in the vicinity.”
“Just calculate the fastest route to get us to the nearby transport module before that cobbled-together ghost comes after us for revenge.”
“There is a problem with your request, 14B-Rheak. I am detecting some sort of distortion from the Machidonian signals. They have made some sort of modification to the Quetzalcoatl since the last time data was collected.”
“CALA, get to the point!” both Jenn and Rheak said.
“There is no valid route that will take you to Gracow with enough time to upload yourself before the Quetzalcoatl can fire.”
“Recalculate. Use my functions as much as you need.”
“There is still no valid route. Furthermore, the ship is currently targeting a ring in the center of the battlefield, in the vicinity of the Sora-khar life-form—”
“Kei!” Jenn cried. She looked at the screen in front of her and began tapping at it furiously until it finally showed Kei and Farris lunging at each other. “Rheak, please! We have to stop them.”
“I could open a communication channel to that ship. Perhaps if you whine at yourself long enough, it will give us time to pull ahead, Jenn.”
“Just do it. Ann! Ann, can you hear me?” Jenn asked as she saw a little blinking light in her console. For a moment, there was only static.
“Jenn, is that you? How are you intercepting this transmission?” Ann asked.
“Ann, what are you doing?”
“Ending this war once and for all,” she said.
Jenn saw a bunch of angry red lights on her panel. “What is all that?” she muttered.
“I said I’m ending the war once and for all. Even if it means killing the man I love. You see, Jenn, love means sacrifice—”
“Oh shut up, you sanctimonious little bitch!” Jenn cried. “You’re just a copy, a copy like me—”
“You’re wrong. I’m the real Jennifer Ann MacDonald, and I am going to protect the world from you monsters. One day, you’ll understand. This is what he wanted—”
“The Quetzalcoatl is firing its main gun. However, I am receiving a warning—”
Jenn screamed as she saw light ga
thering around the air ship’s cannon. Before it could fire, however, the skiff shuddered and every light and panel went off. The Quetzalcoatl fell silent as well and merely began to float like a big silver cloud in the sky.
Jenn slammed her hand against the dash, and a jolt of red light shot from her ruby. The ship abruptly stalled its decent and wobbled as its engines whined once more.
“What the hell?” Jenn asked as it made a pathetic little beep at her.
“The Machidonian central power supply has been disrupted. However, I am able to bypass the controls to maintain limited auxiliary power for a few minutes so we can land.”
“That serpent bastard. I guess he isn’t dead and has decided to help after all.”
“Did we stop the Quetzalcoatl then?”
“Jenn, we have a problem.”
Far below the air ships, Kei and Farris flew at each other, matching each other perfectly, blow for blow. Every time Kei jumped, Farris was ready. Every feint from Farris was predicted as well. The two ended up circling, looking for an opportunity that never seemed to come. Finally, just as Farris managed to nick Kei on the arm, the entire battlefield ground to a halt.
Both men stopped to watch every force pike, every piece of armor, and every viewscreen fall dark and still. The Machidonians in the ranks all stared at one another in panic. Farris tapped on his gauntlet, but got no response. He then looked up in horror at the Quetzalcoatl tumbling out of the sky.
“Ann,” the Knight cried. “Ann!”
“Ann!” Jenn cried. “What are you doing?”
She stared helplessly at the screen that showed the two men still fighting even as a shadow looked over them.
“She is going to kill them both.”
“This just means I’m free to escape.”
“14B-Rheak, the Quetzalcoatl has dedicated all its resources to sending a single transmission to the Gracow transport module—”
“That little feathered bastard. But will he be able to complete his transmission by the time they get enough air out for that thing to crash?”
“At least a ninety percent probability, Rheak.”