Star Angel: Prophecy
Page 38
“HA!” a snap of force that smacked the Bok right into the paws of the great cat.
With a terrible roar, stunned to action by her command, the tiger met the man’s fall with a lust for the kill, claws gripping, fanged maw open—thick, white-yellow fangs clamping his entire head and … biting his skull like an apple. An instant of wide-eyed shock as the man’s head crumpled, a mighty snap that brought with it a gory disfigurement of his expression and a horror-movie scream that locked her attention for a dangerous instant. The scream gagged to a gurgle and she could not look away …
But behind her. The expected attack was coming and she snapped to it; a force punch she felt coming with a tingle at the nape of her neck; ducked beneath, all the way to the floor, an inhumanly fast change of position that lost the blast; followed by a lunge and a slide, a sweep of her sword in one move, the tip of it cutting through both ankles of her attacker, cleanly, separating the Bok from his feet. He stumbled in an ugly dance, jamming bloody ankle-stumps futilely against the floor in an effort to stay on feet that were no longer attached.
“HA!” a concentrated focus right in the center of his head and his tongue bulged from his mouth, even as his eyes and ears ruptured and bled. She spun and rose on instinct, a situational awareness that could not be explained with the usual five senses. Something alerted her. A Bok across the way had come round an upended piece of broken table, gun in hand, and she was looking down a dark barrel from a dozen feet away.
BANG!
Fwiiip! CLANG! a brilliant snap of sparks as the blade cut the air before her, deflecting the bullet. She knew better than to be stunned by the action—not now, there would be time for that later—and hard on it whipped the next two shots—CLANG! CLANG!—sparks and the shimmer of metal as she leapt the distance between them in the same action and ran him through.
The shock on his dying face was enough for them both.
The other two Bok on that side had fallen back near Lorenzo. The last three on the other side were rising from the chunks of flipped table. One girl, four guys. Lorenzo. Six against one.
They’d started with twice those odds.
There was a moment where no one knew what to do. Her focus suffered a risky lapse. Intuitively she realized she wasn’t faster than bullets; she just wasn’t. Couldn’t be. It was just … like she could see the man’s aim and his squeeze of the trigger and so knew where to have the blade in the instant before the shot. It was prediction. Anticipation. Impossible, incredible, but it didn’t look like she’d have to test that skill again. None of the remaining Bok were pulling guns.
Yet.
One of the tigers growled. A low, lethal rumble. The growl rose to a roar and another joined it; a fearsome sound in those confines, rattling the heavy glass of the windows, punctuating the deadly anticipation in the air. The slow clank of metal links as one moved; one had snapped its chain and was slinking freely across the room, eyes warily on the people at the other end. Out of sight behind the fragments of the table the other gnawed idly on its fresh kill with sickening, crunching sounds.
Jess whirled the sword and held it high in both hands, over her shoulder. “You knew it was me,” she said this directly to Lorenzo. The other Bok were taking up position at either side of him. To her left, in her peripheral vision, the last three stood ready across the remains of the table. There was one other guy, in the corner, watching all this—not one of the Bok, she could sense that much—but otherwise they were alone.
For a moment Lorenzo was speechless. When he managed to get words to his mouth they were a desperate shout, spittle flying. “You’re the legacy of a whore!”
He drew himself tall; defiant; working back to composure when, from the looks of things, he should’ve been begging for his life.
“This world is ours!” he raised his voice. “We trace our line farther than anyone! Our legacy!
“It is our right!” he declared. “You’re nothing more than the pathetic, failed prediction of a false priestess!”
Lorenzo still thought her the herald. Of course he did. None of them were that bright. Too much stood in the way of them perceiving the reality of the thing before them.
“She abandoned us,” he said when she continued to stand there. Forced a difficult sneer. “She failed. Not us.” He watched for her reaction. Managed a small bit of that infuriating smugness: “You may be part of a hallucination she had way back then, but you mean nothing. Nothing! Believe it. You change nothing.”
To her surprise she felt a rage rising the likes of which she’d never experienced, baited by his words; the rage of a millennium, a thousand lost years, channeled from some deep well of hatred she never anticipated and, having not intended to allow the bitterness of that past to take hold, she recoiled from her own reaction as she rocked the room:
“I AM your priestess!”
It shut off every other sound. Like a switch. Nothing moved. Not the tigers, not the Bok—nothing. No more gnawing. No sound of idly moving chains. In fact, for the instant following that violent declaration it seemed as if no other sound existed in that room at all.
And …
Lorenzo saw it was true.
Deny it if he would, in his heart he knew it. He saw the truth of it, and his expression fell in that same instant and he understood. Maybe he’d feared it. Maybe he’d known but didn’t want to believe.
No longer could he hide.
“YOU abandoned ME!” she aimed the force of it right into his head, for him alone; not so much a scream, though the volume of her delivery was beyond any scream—the very room pulsed with it—but a statement, one that impacted with tangible force.
He reeled before her.
She lowered her intensity.
“Now look at you,” she said, disgusted. “You’ve sold out the whole world. And that was never your right.”
“Nyaaaah!” one of the Bok from the other side, the one furthest behind and barely in her peripheral, leaping the table with force-enhanced motion and taking her by surprise, a sword of his own in hand. A katana, she noted, not so different than her own, time slowing as she spun to parry his descending attack, blades tsinging across each other, stepping back, maneuvering to position even as the Bok unleashed with unbridled fury. Slash, slash, yelling in enraged intensity with each swing, driven to a berserker bloodlust. She weathered the onslaught. He was good and the sword looked to be of high quality; probably a priceless, super-strong relic crafted by some amazing sword master of yore, painstakingly forged over long stretches of time; a multi-folded steel beauty and the Bok knew well how to use it.
Pity to ruin it, she thought, as she brought hers around in a deliberate motion and ...
Cut it in half.
A cross chop that met his downward swing at a precise right-angle, ancient Kel blade cutting the other cleanly in two. The end glinted away into the air, the Bok’s eyes open in disbelief as he looked incorrectly at his neatly cut shiny blade, mistakenly thinking he had a split-second to do so; mistakenly thinking he had a split-second to do anything—only to snap that same look of disbelief sharply to his own torso as her blade came around in a full arc, her continuing action so fast, so smooth, it did not at first register that, like the sword, he’d been cut in two. His severed body was already sliding in half as he looked down, nice and neat, gore surging from the edges as it slipped, all the way round, and suddenly he was screaming, flailing and pinwheeling as he flopped to the floor in two bloody pieces.
By now she was amped far beyond any concern of failure. Though she could die as easily as any of them she no longer worried of that, and as the remaining Bok launched at her—finally a coordinated effort—she felt a fleeting sense of sadness for the descendents of the Esehta Bok in which she once placed such hope. Not forgiveness, not understanding for what they’d done, but through her anger she admired the way they’d managed to rise to this level of mastery, and was disappointed by their ultimate fa
ilure.
Their end was at hand.
In that time and in that place she was a one-girl teenage riot, unleashed; like some kind of real-life Kill Bill. Fierce beyond anything with which they could ever hope to contend. This last surge became a battle of the very thing she’d mastered, wielding forces locked up in space, in the air, all around; something the Bok thought they understood but which she’d truly exceeded them at in all ways. She was on a whole new level. She felt their blasts of force but, in the end, they were as nothing. They leapt, they vaulted across the room, onto and across the ceiling, hurling attacks, absorbing and deflecting and this was the closest the Bok had yet come to a challenge. Had they done this as a collective from the outset things might’ve gone differently.
But she was greater. Such force, such power in that brief fight … blue arcs popping from her hands with each motion, each thrust; a continuous blur of energy as she charged the air with deadly annihilation and the Bok died and the tigers roared and the blood flew. In very little time the room was a wreck. The rest were dead and Lorenzo was all that was left and she had him by the collar, on his knees, bending over him with one fist cocked and poised to strike. She stared into his trembling eyes, giving him time to absorb her presence and the dominance in it. Time to absorb his defeat. Then she shoved him back, to the floor, drew her sword and stood over him. She put the point to his chest.
“Tell me,” she told him calmly. Voice like ice.
He knew what she meant.
You know exactly what I mean, she pierced his gaze with her own. Don’t you.
But he turned his head slowly side to side, pretending ignorance. “Tell you what?” Even beaten, utterly beaten, he remained foolishly defiant. Zero remorse.
“Where?” She pushed the blade harder against his sternum—until it drew blood. He winced, a sharp hiss between his teeth, and she watched the red stain seep against the inside of his shirt, expanding. Raggedly he drew a breath … but didn’t move.
“Where is it?” she held the point pressed against him.
He grimaced from the pain. “You’re too late,” he groaned. “The Kel already—”
“Not what you’ve shown your Kel queen,” she twisted the blade in its tiny incision, eliciting a sharp cry of pain. “Not the same lies,” she said. “That won’t save you from me. The truth. The real secret. That’s all that will get you out of this.” Then, her voice like a punch to his head: “Tell me!”
Lorenzo winced but was silent. She glanced across at the man still standing in the corner. He’d been there the whole time, fearful but watching. He was the last threat, but was truly no threat at all.
She looked back down at Lorenzo.
It was also clear he knew where the real secrets were. He knew exactly what she was after.
As she knew he would.
But … Suddenly he started laughing.
The laugh of the damned.
“This is the end for you,” he said. “You’ll never know. I’m the only one that knows and I’ll die first.” He turned his head to the side, looking at the carnage in sight, the destruction. “All this, and you failed.
“You’ll never get what you came for.”
And she was in his head. With a vengeance. So forcibly inside him she very nearly withdrew in shock in that same instant, afraid of what she’d done. But she let the rage carry her. Let whatever this was, whatever hellish intention got her there continue, holding it such that she might get what she sought. She wasn’t reading his mind, it wasn’t that, not a new trick, but she could feel his fear at her sudden and unexpected presence, enveloping his psyche in its entirety, sheer panic that she was there at all, in his deepest core, wrapping him, a smothering blanket like waking to find a monster in bed beside you, holding you fast and you couldn’t get away, and she was the monster and Lorenzo was suddenly scared out of his mind.
There was nowhere to run.
She held tighter. Unable to extract anything by force but holding to him in the hope she might terrify him into releasing what he knew. Whatever this was, however she was doing it she had him and she wasn’t backing off, and he was freaking out and she was furious and if she amped it even further she just might …
Lorenzo’s eyes were so wide she thought they would pop out of his head. She was raping him. Mind rape, and her eyes were just as wide, she knew, barely seeing. His mouth hung open and he squirmed against the blade, trying to bore into the floor, away from the beast looming above him.
The real archives. The ultimate secrets. Where was it! He knew. He knew exactly what she was looking for. The things she left behind long ago; vaguely she could recall them herself, secrets leading to secrets. In the intensity of that moment she had the epiphany that, even back then, seeing the Bok’s future and their failure, she’d left these traitorous guardians with only clues. Clues for herself, when she returned.
Clues for now.
And there it was. He was looking right at it, so desperate for her not to see but he was fearfully looking right at it and as he saw it …
So did she.
What he’d been hiding. A place, not far, the Great Secret he’d been holding to so hard, wanting no one to know anything of it ever and there it was. The real Bok treasure. Truth pouring from the depths of his madness. The barest of thoughts; images, the place he held most secret, and she felt his candor, exposed fully before the body-wracking waves of terror gripping him. And, just like that, all was revealed.
Laid bare.
And he was weeping. Violated. Totally, stripped of his deepest knowledge and he knew at once that all and anything he had left was lost.
He’d failed.
She snapped from whatever deep penetration bound them; the thing she did, yet did not, understand; an impulse that worked beyond anything for which she’d hoped, gazing down on him with absolute power. Lorenzo was not just crying but weeping, the tears of a crushed soul, loss beyond measure.
Defiance returned. That quick, now that he was released, and she marveled that anyone could be so belligerent. He snapped to the present and leaned his head from the ground, yelling through the tears:
“You’re a witch!”
She held his gaze, steady, not flinching in the face of his enraged, raw emotion.
And admitted, for herself, and for him:
“Maybe I am.”
He was pathetic; and as she felt that sense of disgust, guard down, he rose; a last-ditch effort, a foolish attack; the mouse snapping at the eagle when it saw all was over, nothing left to lose, curling a hand to muster a blast …
She ran him through.
Without thought. The tip of the blade pierced him and chinked hard into the floor at his back and he stared up at her in shock, a reaction that lasted only an instant before his head dropped, eyes wide, blood gurgling from the corners of his mouth.
Dead.
Slowly she withdrew the sword. Regarded its bloody sheen. Bloody not just from him, from everything. For a purely practical moment she held it and examined the edge. The runes along its sides were intact. Blood traced the etchings in shiny red but there were no dings, not even a scratch. Not even the bullets had marked it.
Indestructible, as Nani said.
She got her wits about her. Stepped away from the corpse, grabbed a handful of thick cloths from the floor, some kind of napkins that had been on the table, scattered when it went sailing, bunched them and ran them down the blade, back and forth until it was clean—trying not to shake as she did. She looked over at the man in the corner.
As predicted, he was not a threat.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
He blinked. “Hansel.”
Definitely in their employ.
“You’re not one of them.”
/>
He shook his head. Confirmed: “I work for them.” Then, quieter: “I’m not sure that makes me any better.” It was as if he truly did regret his involvement. He looked all around the room and she did too. Twelve dead bodies. Brutally dead. Not just bullet holes and some blood. The room was filled with death. Dismembered, headless, cut-in-half bodies, exploded bodies, ruined from within, gore and lots of blood; shattered furniture, things of all kinds strewn everywhere.
Chaos.
She turned to him.
Hansel.
Only man left standing.
“They’ve got a secret way out of here?”
He nodded.
She gave the sword another wipe and sheathed it.
“Show it to me.”
CHAPTER 30: FINAL APPROACH
It could’ve been the bay of a C-17. At least in some ways, thought Heath, and with his team squatting patiently along the walls of the lander in their various combinations of HALO gear and body armor, if he concentrated on narrow slices of that view it looked just like one. Green monochrome lighting, ribbed superstructure, men ready for the fight. If he expanded that view ... not so much. Dead alien bodies in the corner. Clearly alien machinery that was not a C-17. Wrong overall shape. And so he held his focus to the narrow, trying to focus on the similarities.
Trying to believe in what they were about to do.
Conversations had died. The usual smack talk, bravado, final observations and other comments that filled lulls like this in any mission, no matter how dangerous, no matter how bizarre, had given way to introspection. Death waited, probably, at the end of this short trip. More likely before. Instant annihilation, a hammer strike from above, a shot from one of the waiting starships, vaporizing the lander and them with it. They were used to that feeling. Any operator was. It was hard to ignore the pucker when you were at the mercy of others. There were times, on any mission, where you were kind of a sitting duck. Times when, truthfully, you could get killed with no chance of fighting back. Usually during transport, and this was one of those times. Only option you had, really, was to ride it out and pray you made it. Pray you made it to the point where you could fight.