Star Angel: Prophecy

by David G. McDaniel

  Her general retreated, but not fully. “They are led by the ancient Kel ship,” he said, and suddenly Kang was closer than he had been for the entirety of the conversation. “It is a vast unknown. We believe it has played a major role in what has happened so far. We may not enjoy the upper hand we imagine.”

  “Horus!” Kang hissed before Cee could say anything in response. “Horus is with them!”

  She whirled on him. “Forget Horus! Horus is gone!”

  “My queen.” It was her lead scientist. His quieter voice held the room, and all eyes were on him. Forgotten, in the heat of it, and now Cee’s curiosity spiked, then a shot of raw greed as he said:

  “With regards, my queen. I bring news. We have unlocked the coordinates of the gate.”

  CHAPTER 56: DREAMING

  “What has that told you?” Galfar asked, pointing to the Kel tablet in Jessica’s lap.

  She looked down at the dark screen. The last communication from Nani was right before they made their leap to Earth. By now the battle should be well underway. There’d been no word since that brief exchange. Nor did Jess expect any.

  “Nothing in a while.”

  She shifted where she sat. She and Galfar were atop one of the higher buildings in the Necrops, right at the perimeter of the ruined metropolis; a perch scouted some time ago by Haz, visited now and again by he and his father. Galfar had come with her to get some space, her intention to have a view and gather her thoughts. Earlier she’d connected scanners left by Nani and begun the discovery process that would unlock the Codes, having no idea where that investigation would lead, truly, or how long it would take.

  Her gaze shifted, far into the distance, until she lost focus entirely, all things in her vision becoming indistinct. She thought to say what she feared, but was silent.

  Distant sounds of the city were the only disturbance to the peace; indistinct, faint things, the yawn of vast distances and huge, cramped spaces. Galfar asked: “Do you wish you were there? With them?”

  Slowly she stretched her legs out in front of her and leaned back onto her hands. The surface of the roof was rough, partly covered with vines and tenacious vegetation. She wore her armor, Galfar his usual loin cloth. He sat cross-legged with bent back, walking stick across his lap, palms resting on it. He and Jess were at least twenty floors up, clear, unobstructed views across the plain, out to the hills and even as far as the castle if she looked hard enough, its slate-gray shape slipping now and again from the haze. Distant, fairytale spires. “The battle they fight is a war among titans,” she said, using words Galfar would understand. “There is no place for me there. My place is here.”

  She sighed.

  “The Amkradus are the Way,” she said, then turned her head to face him, resting her chin on her shoulder. “This is where I will do the most good.”

  It was interesting how their relationship had shifted. She was still getting used to it. On her first visit Galfar treated her with respect, of course, thinking she was destined for something, the way a good teacher would approach a star pupil, but at the time he was still very much the master. Now, in some ways, he had the vibe of pupil. The way he stared at her, trying to grasp the reality of her existence. As if looking to her for guidance. For insight. And why not? It turned out she was the priestess after all. Not some fresh-faced herald carrying out a prophecy laid down a millennia ago. She was the Prophecy. The very thing that had shaped his entire life, the sole purpose to his existence for eight decades or more, watching for signs, for the return of the one that would finish what Aesha started.

  Never guessing Aesha herself would show up.

  She could almost feel the reverence in him.

  She turned back to the horizon.

  “I want to save him.”

  It was a change of subject, but Galfar knew who she meant. Galfar, of anyone, sensed the depth of her bond with Zac. When Jess explained their long and complicated relationship Galfar seemed already to know it, as if he sensed Zac’s fate and her own to be intertwined from the moment he met the mighty warrior.

  He pondered her statement. “I thought you said he was indestructible.”

  “He is.” Sadly that did not mean immortal. “But he can die.”

  In the corner of her eye she saw Galfar shrug. “Bodies, no matter how strong, are not permanent. You, of all people, should know this.”

  “But he could die soon. Forty, fifty, sixty years from now … fine. Not now.” She turned again to face her wise mentor. “I’m worried. The way Zac’s body was altered … it could be used up. He might not last as long as I do.”

  “How long do you intend to last?”

  “I don’t know!” It was an innocent question, but it annoyed her. She saw what Galfar was doing. Yes, of course, no one knew how long they were going to live. Anything could happen. But Zac quite possibly had an expiration date. She calmed herself. “I don’t want to lose him.”

  “Lose him?”

  Stop talking like Yoda! she wanted to yell at him. “If he dies. If he dies now, or soon, and I have to live without him … I don’t know how I can do it.”

  “Zac is your true love.”

  Anxiously she looked around. She and Galfar were alone, totally alone, high up on the roof of the abandoned skyscraper, smack in the middle of a dead metropolis.

  She slumped into her shoulders. “Zac is my everything.”

  “That should give you heart,” said Galfar, as if it really should. “Death cannot stop true love.”

  She turned her eyes to his, certain he’d just unknowingly quoted something. Was it … yes, that stupid line from The Princess Bride. First Yoda, now he was quoting movie lines. She didn’t remember the exact words but it sure sounded like it. Actually the line wasn’t stupid, and she loved the story, but right then she was starting to get mad at everything.

  She looked away and Galfar went on: “You introduced him as your collaborator from your time as Aesha.” She had, in fact, introduced Zac as her companion of a thousand years before. Galfar and this little group here were probably the only ones she could make such an introduction to and be met with acceptance. She didn’t like where this was going. “If he was your true love back then,” Galfar reasoned, “then clearly you’ve found each other after all this time.” He looked smug. She hated his “wisdom” right then. He smiled, what she was sure he believed to be a reassuring expression. “You cannot truly lose him. You found him once. If he dies, you can find him again.”

  To her own surprise she snapped. “I don’t want to find him again! I don’t want to wait another thousand years!” Him and his aggravating philosophy. He sounded like Zac; just accept it and let’s live for the moment and screw all that.

  But her outburst failed to sway him. The sharp-eyed old man—green, piercing eyes—became more philosophical, not less. “Time is only a consideration.”

  She let slip an exasperated, almost-whimper. “Why can’t you just agree with me? Stop trying to be so clever. I don’t care if what you’re saying is probably true. Don’t you see that? Don’t you see, Galfar? I need a human friend right now, not a wise elder. I’m a girl and he’s a boy and we’re in love and I don’t want to lose him. Can’t you see that?” Tears had begun to sting her eyes, angry tears, and she just wished she could stop crying at these moments. She so thought she’d put all that behind her.

  Galfar, however, was merciless. “A thousand years is but a breath against the vast stream of this universe.”

  She decided not to fight him. “It doesn’t matter,” she huffed. “I’m going to save him.” Even as she said this, however, she continued the effort to convince herself Zac actually wasn’t shutting down at all. Not permanently. It was all just a false alarm, and the little signs, the little changes, did not mean for sure his end was near—and there was enough science on hand to fix him even if it did. At the end of all this Zac was going to be just fine.

  “That’s not yours,” Galfar’s voice brought her from her internal rant. She looked
to him, trying to tie those words to the conversation—noticing at once that his keen eyes were staring far out into the distance, over her head.

  The shift in his focus alarmed her. She turned.

  And her skin began to crawl.

  “It’s bigger,” he said. “Is it an ally?”

  Her mouth was suddenly dry.

  When she spoke it was barely a croak:

  “No.”

  **

  “Incredible!” Cee knew the grin on her face was too revealing, but she no longer cared. This was incredible, and she was suddenly filled with confidence; confidence she was closer than ever to what she sought.

  It was a whole new world.

  “Coordinates on this end are a match,” said the navigation officer. Everyone was at their station, operations running as at any other time. “Global scans indicate at least nineteen other derelict cities of similar size worldwide. The city below is the origin point for the gate. Coordinates match.”

  Cee looked around the bridge. Kang stood near, looking at the giant bridge screen showing the plains below and the hills scrolling lazily beneath. It was a ruined world, one left behind, forgotten in the aftermath of a cataclysm now centuries old. Relic of the Great Wars. It had to be.

  “We have confirmation, my queen.”

  It felt freeing to be there, on the cusp of her every single ambition. The absence of Voltan helped. His detention had gone quickly. There would be repercussions, of this she was sure, but the thought of that did not trouble her. She was here, at this new world, all she’d dreamed of thrillingly at hand. Her Praetor would no longer be free to inject his damning undermining of her objectives.

  “Is it …” she wasn’t sure how to phrase it. “Is it one of the old Combine worlds?”

  “It would appear so, my queen.”

  Yes!

  “Those are ancient Kel cities, with materials and design dating to that period. The one below is teeming with life, actually, though not Kel as near as can be determined. Primitive humans occupy the planet in small bands. The life forms in the city are likely also primitive. No active technology in use.”

  One of the other technicians added his assessment: “We have no match in our current records, but as you know much information was lost in the fallout of the Wars. Best guess would be that this is, in fact, one of the old Combine worlds, part of our old empire, and that after the Wars the native human population came forward over the intervening millennia to their current, degraded state.” Then: “There is no threat, my queen.”

  She was not concerned with threats. There was obviously no threat. She was concerned with finding the girl.

  And what she must surely be hiding.

  “You read that?” one of the technicians queried another, as if checking to confirm something he was unsure of. Something he’d just picked up.

  “What?” Cee was immediately over to him.

  “A pulse, my queen. Not unlike a quantum comm. A ping, really, but it’s gone. It was shielded, but against the backdrop of zero signals I caught it. No way to triangulate. Maybe it will repeat.”

  It’s her!

  Desperately Cee looked back to the wide, panoramic screen, spanning the entire breadth of the bridge, towering from floor to ceiling.

  She’s contacting someone!

  Visually it looked as if the entire fore of the dreadnought’s bridge was open onto the world below. If there were smells, or a breeze, the illusion would be complete.

  She stared hard at the city in the distance. Rotting corpses of skyscrapers covered in vegetation. Behind and off-center an oddly anachronistic castle. Otherwise there were no developments, no other cities or dwellings. It was just those two places, all else barren in all directions to the horizon.

  The city. The castle.

  The signal came from one of them.

  **

  “Lock two!” Nani’s hands flew. Screen after screen.

  “Got ‘em!” Bianca worked the controls with a vengeance.

  The Reaver flipped and tracked, responding with crisp precision to each, harried input. Tag-tag and she triggered two back-to-back pulses from the spinal mounts, crisp, clean lances of energy that cut the void, stabbing through one of the targets Nani marked.

  “Hit!” That one spun away. A heavy cruiser.

  Shots from another target seared the edge of the view screen, the double WHUMP! of a hard hit that rocked the entire superstructure. Alarms reported damage, adding to the total, and Bianca pulled the Reaver into a spin, arcing away in a rush, around and around, Earth spiraling madly on and off the screen, filling it and tumbling upside down and gone and into view again, hooking on a trajectory only the more advanced Reaver could attain and she shook the enemy, doubled back on it and had it in her sights.

  “Got his six!” and the spinal mounts lit up again, thrumming the floor as hot beams found their target; another heavy cruiser, and she raced up on it from high and behind, tracking as it tried to flip and pull away, laying down a relentless barrage that had the heat-sink alarms adding their cry to the others, warning her of points of overload but she ignored them and kept her finger on the trigger and the sustained impact was enough and glowing gashes multiplied across the cruiser and it went up hard. A white flash of destruction and the ship was gone, Bianca whipping to port and tight around.

  Pete and Heath held on. She saw them. White knuckles and all.

  Hang on, boys, she thought. This is only going to get better.

  “Copy Delta,” Willet’s voice could be heard amid the chaos, Satori’s also peppering the action, both of them intent at their own consoles, hanging on and trying not to pay attention to that which they could not control. They were hard at work tying together the movements of the units on the ground.

  “Lock one! Lock one!”

  “Got it!”

  Another double-tap, snap-right snap-left, hook and around, boring on another target and Bianca caught that one in the crosshairs, hammering until it spun off course, trailing a burst of white-hot slag into space at the points of impact. Nani had taken on the role of overall orchestrator, Bianca proving adept at maneuvering and attack. She was flying the Reaver while Nani fanned the vacuum with smaller hardpoints, turrets aiming out in all directions to deliver crushing blows to Kel ships on all sides.

  They were making a great team.

  “Lock! Lock that!”

  “Got it!”

  It was hard not to keep shouting. The scene was just too intense. Bianca spared a glance at the tac monitor. The dozen or so Kel ships taken by the Anitran forces were in the fight and making their mark, but the odds were stacked big time against them. It might well fall to the Reaver to save the day.

  “These two! Go!” And Bianca had Nani’s new marks and was continuing the mad dance, no up, no down, no rhyme or reason, only the in-and-out view of the Earth or moon or sun giving reference to just where the hell they were or might be.

  Then she saw it. On her comm screen.

  What?!

  A strained glance and she saw Nani got it too.

  “What is it?” Bianca was frantic. A message had just come in …

  From Jess.

  A single burst, no request for connection. Merely a brief transmission of data.

  Kind of like a text.

  That couldn’t be good.

  “Checking!” Nani pulled her attention from the battle demanding it, not even a second to spare as Bianca looped them hard and out, ramming the throttles forward as she put a tremendous arc on the Reaver and shot them out at a g-force-inducing scurry; a brief pullout from the conflict that overtaxed the incredible power of the inertial dampeners. Everyone on the bridge gave an audible grunt; even Satori and Willet were pulled from their single-minded focus, looking up with a strain to see what the hell was going on.

  For a few brief seconds they were clear of the fight.

  “Oh my god.” Nani had gone pale. Bianca eased the arc and turned back toward the fray, knowing they couldn’t extrica
te for long. Desperately she searched her own comm screen.

  “What is it?”

  Nani’s mouth worked. “That’s the queen’s dreadnought,” she managed.

  “What?!” Bianca searched harder, all the information, all the things to look at, found the message and …

  Jess had sent an image. It was the sky over Hamonhept. The big blue Saturn in the background. Before it …

  A giant Kel starship.

  The Queen’s flagship.

  The Kel had found her.

  For a stunned moment Bianca sat back, hands still, just staring at that one spot on the screen.

  They found her.

  **

  Zac carried Galfar on his back. He found Jess and the old man hurrying through the streets, Jess shouting Zac’s name until he heard. He’d not been far from where she and Galfar went, and now he was carrying Galfar and rushing with Jess to reach Arclyss, running through the streets and she still hadn’t given him a straight answer.

  Something was happening.

  “Tell me again,” he insisted, being as careful as he could with the old man. “A Kel ship is here? They found us? How?”

  Jess kept running. Resolve growing.

  Zac could see it. That look, that impossible combination of terror and iron determination that only she got, the uniquely-her mindset that made her so dangerous, the sum of which, inevitably, led to ridiculous decisions and impossible follow-through.

  He didn’t like this at all.

  Whatever was going on she was about to do something rash, he could see it, he could feel it, and his hackles were up and he vowed this time he would not lose the fight to talk her out of it. Whatever it was.

  “I was stupid to think this moment wouldn’t come,” she looked on the verge of tears. So angry. Lost. “Come on. We’ve got to get to the Codes. We’ve got to talk to Arclyss.”

  Zac took a deep breath. Jess ran faster.

  **

  Cee studied the castle built precariously onto the face of the cliff. It was covered completely by the outswept shadow of her dreadnought. She’d elected to rule out the castle first, it being smaller and far more finite than the sprawling ruins of the city. The metropolis went on for miles. A sweep of the castle should take no time at all. It was a beautiful structure, actually, not fitting with any other part of this world, though upon examination there were themes she recognized. It was intriguing, the more she studied it. Inhabitants of the castle manned upper ramparts, sturdy human males, bearded to a man, staring up at them high overhead in the sky. By now the dreadnought had drawn close enough that it was no longer out of reach of their ballistas and handheld bows. At first the warriors held, observing the mountain-sized warship hanging impossibly overhead, far less shocked than Cee would’ve expected—almost like it wasn’t the first time they’d seen such a thing—but after that period of contemplation they came to a conclusion. This ship was not friendly. And so they unleashed. Scores of arrows and heavy bolts, fired into the dreadnought’s underbelly. Curiously, once committed they kept it up far longer than expected. At length they stopped shooting.