Cry Havoc

by Jack Hanson

  “Not yet,” said the human, kicking Jane in the stomach and throwing her into Salem. “Something happened that made you flare, and now you’re on the precipice. But it’s no matter. It’s nothing you’ll have to concern yourself with shortly.”

  Jane thought back to the headache, right after Hailey died. She was silent for a moment as she looked up at the black warrior.

  “Ah,” he said, nodding. “Something rang true, didn’t it?”

  As the FOSsil stepped past the fallen Paris, the Rillik lunged, tackling him at the knees and trying to bring him down. Cursing, he kicked his way out savagely, and stood on Paris’s neck. The cadet’s muscles bulged as he fought to keep the FOSsil from crushing his throat. He managed to turn and look at Salem and Jane.

  “Run!” he grunted.

  They couldn’t fight this thing, Jane realized, but she wasn’t leaving Paris and Sand behind either. She rose to her feet, Salem joining her. They were going to die together, here, attacking this monster from the past, and that was alright.

  It was at that moment, as they decided to fight for their teammate, feeling the stress of not being able to save one of their own, that the headaches returned, this time to all of them. The world shifted, permanently. Neurons in the brain that only activate once or twice in a lifetime began to erupt with electrical impulses, triggering cascade reactions that opened up new chemical stimuli. Perceptions that usually manifested as lucky guesses now became near certainties as the organic computer began to work at higher capacity. Hormones only vaguely known to most biologists began to flow, causing tissue to flex and increase in strength, as they responded to the new impulses coming from the brain.

  The golden glow that Jane had seen before filled her vision, lines running from her and Salem and Sand towards the FOSsil. Silver played around Paris as he struggled, the color green blazing from the FOSsil.

  Salem could see what the green fire obscured, and suddenly the tricks that the FOSsil had been using to misdirect and beguile them became apparent to her.

  Paris’s muscles bulged with sudden strength, and felt the foot his throat loosening. His vision clearing, shimmering with silver as he breathed in. with a surge of strength, he launched the FOSsil into the air.

  Sand stood up, eyes heavenward, blade in his hand, the knowledge he had acquired in the arts of war distilling into an elixir of mastery as everything came together at once. The others watched as he rose, and saw that he shone blood red in their new vision. Behind their eyes, each cadet had a sense of the others; what they were going to do and how to best leverage their skills to win this fight. It was a gestalt that suddenly seemed as natural as breathing, or feeling the grass under your bare feet.

  The FOSsil landed smoothly, shaking its head.

  “More fool me. I should have just killed you and saved you from this. Now we’re going to have to do this the hard way, I imagine,” it murmured. As Paris stood, he could hear the edginess beneath the nonchalant words.

  There was no time to question what was going on. The FOSsil was suddenly on them. Jane’s blade whipped up to parry the attack, turning her weapon at the last second with a new instinct so that the edge of the dreamblade would only chip, not slice through the blade.

  Salem instinctively saw her opportunity, and lashed in with a speed she hadn’t possessed a minute ago. Jane thrust at the same moment and the FOSsil split its sword into two identical weapons, one in each hand to parry both attacks. The metal screamed as it divided and the assassin retreated from the two women.

  “From behind!” shouted Sand as he rushed towards his foe. His fist caught the FOSsil on the shoulder as he leapt by. Sand tucked into a tight ball, rolling as he landed and coming to his feet. The gauntlet he wore had shattered from the impact, and he tossed it aside as he turned towards his enemy. His muscles danced under his skin, fully under his control and aching to break free.

  The FOSsil didn’t seem to acknowledge the blow as he turned towards Paris, who had picked up his sword. The silver-shrouded cadet rushed in, following a golden line that had suddenly appeared to him. His attacks were parried deftly, even as the other three added their blows to the fray in a moving storm of steel. All anyone looking on would have seen was a blur of motion, until finally the training blades took one notch too many and shattered at once.

  The surprise was enough of a window for a stunning circular kick that laid out the quartet, sending them sprawling. Just as quickly, each felt a pricking at their throat. Four thin spires had exploded out from the FOSsil’s weapon, and were waiting for their owner’s command to run them through.

  “You would have been amazing, I admit, but you have to die. We swore there would be no more, no matter what the consequences were, and I keep my oaths,” it pronounced and the spires struck.

  Chapter Nineteen—“My dear old friends, remember Jerusalem”

  Born to Serve, Fated for Glory.

  —motto of the FOSsil Corps

  Sand gasped, swearing afterwards that he had felt the blade prick his skin before the FOSsil stumbled backwards. A rock spun high in the air after slamming into the enemy’s armor with enough force to knock him back a step. It was only a second, but Black exploited that window as he slammed his body into the FOSsil and sent him tumbling end over end.

  “Hello, Rick,” snarled Black, as he tore the remnants of his uniform tunic off, baring himself to the waist. It was no wonder he had always gone with long sleeves around them—his body was an awful network of scars, highlighted by his extreme musculature. Small circular scars ran along each arm and down the curve of his spine, testament to some repeated trauma. While there were various lines all over his torso, three long, jagged white bands ran from his left shoulder around to his right hip.

  The bloody rupture on his arm had scabbed over, and pink flesh was appearing at the edges as his body regenerated the wound. He had healed enough to grip his own sword, and now the metal flowed into scissor blades with jagged teeth that slapped together menacingly as the dreamblade responded to his commands. As the weapon flowed, a tattoo was visible across their teacher’s left upper torso:

  CLAY—FOSsil—SERIAL NO. 003R

  The four cadets gasped as they realized the truth of their situation: Black was Clay, and one of the lost FOSsils. As if in confirmation, their teacher blazed in the center of a corona of pulsating red-gold; overshadowing even Rick’s deep green with its intensity.

  “I weep,” Clay said, and his sword flashed in front of his face as he closed the distance between himself and Rick. The renegade FOSsil had leapt to his feet adroitly after recovering from Clay’s attack. Now he managed to whip his blade around fast enough to block the first attack that came screaming in from Clay’s scissor blades. A wailing filled the glade, and it took the cadets a moment to realize that the tortured noise was coming from the weapons as they clashed against each other.

  Paris had heard Clay’s statement, and he followed the trail of ruby droplets that hung in the air as Clay had blitzed towards Rick, and now the two dueled with a ferocious intensity that moved nearly too fast to follow. Paris’s memory clicked as the two combatants turned in the grove, and he saw the lines that Clay had cut under his eyes.

  He paled as the realization hit him, and he came to his knees.

  “That… That’s the Weeper,” Paris stammered, remembering what the Peace Federation Khajali had said to him. It had not made sense at the time, but now it was so clear.

  “The what?” asked Salem, trying and failing to rip her eyes from the two men dueling in the shadow and sunlight.

  Black… or Clay, as it were… had only been playing with them before. She saw his massive bulk flow around strikes that were black blurs through the air. He used his body as a juggernaut as he slammed elbows, knees, and fists into his foe with little regard to his own wellbeing.

  The two dreamblades engaged in their own fantastic combat as they twined a
nd whipped around each other, seeking flesh. The blades continued to morph as each FOSsil used his imagination as a weapon. Rick’s blade split into what seemed like a thousand needle stilettos that drove towards his enemy. Clay’s blade flowed into a serpent with a devouring mouth that snapped down and trapped the field of needles, pulling Rick in towards Clay.

  “That’s the Weeper, or the Whe’pah, the one who broke the Khajali on Scylla and earned a place in the pantheon of the Khajal as a punisher of the false and a humbler of the proud,” Paris said. He spoke quickly. “So that’s…”

  “… also The Last Reaver,” finished Salem. “He cried blood as he killed the Khajali, and was the first ever to see their backs fleeing in a battle. But Archer said...” She trailed off.

  Either they had been lied to, or Archer had been ignorant of the explosive secret under his nose. Salem was sure that she was not the only one who doubted that he was that big a fool.

  Clay’s blade spiraled around Rick’s before a sudden vicious jerk sent them skywards. The dreamblades suddenly flipped up and spun end over end in the air. The two weapons drove themselves into the soft ground, flowing back to their boxy, inelegant shapes as their owners began to tear each other apart with their bare hands.

  Rick’s armor was not cracked, but was streaked with blood where Clay’s bleeding body had impacted against it. The odd lurch and sway in Rick’s movements showed that the strikes had not been mitigated totally by the armor, and he was feeling the results. He took a second as he grappled with Clay to draw his arm back, and a blade shot out from the underside of one gauntlet with a shunk.

  It was a straight, stiletto blade that he punched in at an upward angle, trying to drive it under Clay’s ribs. Instead, Clay’s hands wrapped around Rick’s wrist before the blade drove into his body. Using his momentum, the larger man spun and lifted Rick into the air before slamming him to the ground. The impact was enough to send tremors to where the cadets sat, transfixed by the battle.

  Clay leapt on his prone, stunned foe like a pale spider, arms and legs hooking around Rick’s limbs as he took the FOSsil’s back. Clay attempted to bring the bladed arm around Rick’s neck, but the FOSsil fought back, lashing out with his free hand and smashing it into Clay’s face. This seemed to empower Clay, who went so far as to let the stiletto sink into his shoulder.

  With a laughing gasp, Clay exerted a final burst of strength and locked the arm around Rick’s neck. The sound of the armor’s servos grinding made a discordant note in the glade.

  “I’m going to break your neck,” Clay snarled through smashed lips as he began to force Rick’s head around. “You won’t feel me rip your liver out of your body before I eat it in front of your face.”

  The sound of footsteps racing over gravel pulled the cadets out of their stunned reverie, and they turned to see Commandant Archer racing down the path at a speed that would have done a man a third of his age proud.

  “Hold your fire until I give the word!” he shouted, coming around the corner and gasping for a breath.

  “Stay down,” he said to the cadets in a whisper, using his cane for balance as he approached Clay and Rick.

  Weak from the fight, and stunned from the revelations, as well as unwilling to approach the duelists in the brutal battle, the cadets found it easy to comply.

  “Old man,” murmured Rick as Archer approached.

  “Last words for him?” said Clay, his muscles bulging with the exertion of keeping his foe pinned.

  “Clay,” said Archer, holding out one hand. “I just talked to the others on Elysium…”

  “Oh, they’ll get some of this as well,” Clay spat. “I’ll take my time killing them… Send an assassin after me and mine!”

  “Rick, were you sent here?” asked Archer.

  “He broke the oath, Fletcher. He had to die. Maybe the others didn’t see that, but he had to die,” Rick said.

  The cadets were close enough to hear the words that revealed Archer as Arch Strategos Fletcher, Spymaster of the League of Silence.

  The skin over Jane’s spine went clammy at once, and she realized that there was no telling where the deception and truth separated. She wondered idly if they had been saved from this rogue FOSsil, only to die at the hands of one of the most ruthless beings in a merciless galaxy.

  “You think I’d break an oath I swore by Ale’mah’s name? Do you think I’m that faithless?” Clay asked, jerking Rick’s head with each question. The man grunted as his neck was pushed to its tolerance.

  “We have no kennels here, Rick. There are no dogs. We have a plan for them,” Fletcher said.

  “Not that you’ll know,” added Clay.

  “Clay, the other FOSsils on Elysium asked for him back. Alive. I have to ask that you let him go,” Fletcher said.

  “When have you cared what they thought?” said Clay.

  “Remember Jerusalem, my boy. Would you have your students’ first encounter with the earlier generations be on the other side of a battlefield? We cannot afford a second FOSsil Civil War, not when we are still repairing the legacy of the first,” Fletcher responded.

  Clay stopped jerking on Rick’s neck, and licked his bloody lips in silent consideration.

  Slowly, with the greatest of care, Clay released pressure on Rick’s neck until his head faced forward again. As Black then began to release the arm he had trapped, Rick turned in a bucking display of agility, whipping himself around. Fletcher leapt back as Clay drove his knees into Rick’s chest, using that leverage to keep Rick’s stiletto from driving into his face.

  The cadets were on their feet, rushing towards the two and shouting their defiance at Rick’s foul play. They were stopped by Fletcher’s outstretched arm and the static dance that accompanied a mirror cloak unfolding.

  A man stood in front of Rick with a large bore shotgun pointed at his head, wearing armor similar to the FOSsil. Instead of being plain black, it was marked in icons like the man’s skeleton could be seen.

  Jane caught her breath as she saw that the helmet was a stylized skull. This was a Harvester Suicide Commando’s armor, and the skull was a grim reminder of his purpose.

  “Sir, call the shot,” the man rasped, not taking his eyes off Rick.

  “You heard him. Kill me, and there’s war,” said Rick defiantly.

  “No. If Clay kills you, there’s war between the FOSsils again. If a Harvester kills you, then they can take it up with the Temple,” said Fletcher with the faintest of smiles.

  The Harvester shrugged in response, and Rick took a moment to consider his options.

  Lasers began to paint his armor as they pierced the air in the grove. The dots didn’t waver as four more mirror cloaks dropped; revealing more Harvesters with long rifles kneeled in a semi-circle around the two FOSsils.

  “Don’t worry, Rick, the ammo they carry will shred through your armor like a sirocco through a spider web. You should know I take everything into consideration, including tantrums, and prepare accordingly,” said Fletcher with no emotion.

  “Try and die, Rick,” Clay said, his grin a bloody rictus. “I know what you’re thinking, that you’ll be able to escape. You were never as good as you thought you were – Kipling was always better – but even if they can’t kill you, I will, and the others be damned. I gave you a chance, and here it is right back in my face. No more chances.”

  His options numbered, Rick’s stiletto vanished into his armor, and he leapt away from Clay’s prone form. Clay rolled to his feet, spat blood, and went to retrieve his dreamblade. Fletcher looked at Rick as Clay walked away, shaking his head.

  “You did solve the problem for us. Thank you,” said Fletcher.

  “And what problem was that?” Rick asked, his voice slurred.

  “How were we going to get the third generation to Manifest,” said Fletcher. “Now go grab your dreamblade, go back to Elysium, back to where you an
d the others keep your hands clean while we keep the Empire running. This is your last grace. Next time, I will burn the very stars from the sky if any of you dare defy my mercy.”

  Rick seemed on the verge of saying something, but with the Harvesters still covering him, he retrieved his dreamblade in silence. When he went to look for his rifle, it was gone, and the first Harvester shook his head at Rick’s questioning gaze.

  The FOSsil did not waste time in vanishing behind his mirror cloak. The Harvesters took the time to salute Fletcher and nod at Clay respectfully. The first Harvester tilted his head slightly at the cadets before vanishing as well. Fletcher and Clay approached the four, and there was a silence that Fletcher finally broke after they stared at each other for a minute.

  “You have questions I assume?” he said.

  “That’s an understatement… sir,” said Jane, remembering the title out of respect and fear for who this person really was.

  It seemed to please the old man. “I thought I was going to meet with angry recriminations about how we used you and what awful people we were before we even had a chance to explain what was happening,” Fletcher said.

  “I want to know what it is,” said Sand, “but it saved us. Is it true, what that FOSsil… what Rick said?”

  “Parts of it,” admitted Clay

  “But everyone said you were dead? Even you did, sir,” said Sand, looking at Fletcher and remembering the night in front of Ale’mah’s memorial.

  “Sometimes, it’s useful to be dead for a bit,” said Clay, sitting on the grass and sheathing his dreamblade reverently.

  The cadets followed suit. They noticed that the glow disappearing, their vision returning to normal, but the sense of each other remained. They could also sense Clay, and it was comparable to knowing there was a mountain in the distance. Or perhaps, a smoldering volcano would be a more apt analogy.