Moments later they heard another hail of laser fire, but this time it was deeper in tone and the roar of engines overhead told them the Phantom had returned to chase off the fighters.
“Team One, are you there?” came a frantic voice on the comm.
“We’re intact, Phantom,” Kristof radioed back. “We’ve fallen into what seems to be the temple remains. We’d really appreciate the continued cover, we don’t want to have to live down here.”
“Copy Team One,” the Phantom responded. “The fight up top seems to be fierce, but from what we can see our group is doing well now that the shock has worn off. We are remaining silent for the time being so as not to call any more trouble down here. Would advise you hurry if possible, though, sir.”
“Will do, Team One out,” Kristof said with a worried frown. The Clovani choosing here and now to show up was no coincidence. He thought again of Stephan’s belief that the Clovani had attacked Durani in response to finding the temple replica, and suddenly the Dark Priestesses possessing clairvoyance wasn’t so unbelievable.
Anasha switched on her suit’s search lights and lit up the chamber they’d fallen into. There were fluted columns just like they’d seen in their vision, as well as angelic sculptures, though the room was filled with dust and debris as well. They could see the way that had once led up to the surface, now collapsed and broken, which left them only one way to go if they meant to search still.
“We’re stuck here until the battle upstairs ends, so we may as well look around,” Anasha said, and Kristof nodded as he switched on his own lights.
“Any idea about what the fuck we are looking for?” Kristof asked as they went.
“Not a clue,” Anasha responded, “But I suspect we will know it when we see it.”
The tunnel went deeper and they went slowly, frequently checking the condition of the roof above them. Neither had a desire to be buried down there.
“Sabine!” Anasha suddenly gasped as Kristof also felt the tiny Queen’s panic.
Kristof reached out to her and saw a vison from her eyes, a vision that made his blood run cold.
“Karina!” Kristof hissed in anger and fear.
~Interlude 2~
The command deck of the Queen’s Honor was bustling with activity as Max watched from the command dais. The Phoenix and the positions of Kristof and Anasha were displayed on a large screen before them. He was happy to know that his calculations and directions had seemingly paid off as the icons on the ground headed towards the south side of the hill represented in different shaded of green pixels.
Suddenly, alarms began to sound all around them as the lighting immediately turned red. Max did not need to see the computer monitors to see the flashes of hyperspace outside of the viewports, or the Clovani warships that emerged. Sabine’s guards formed up around her and urged her to head for the ship’s armored battle bridge, but she refused.
The little queen was as stubborn as her husband, Max reflected, as took his personal blasters from a pouch on his belt and plugged them into his forearms. He couldn’t say why he felt the need to do so, he just did it. A part of his mind chalked it up to his newfound emotions that he still did not understand. He idly wondered if humans considered intuition as an emotion while the bright flash of laser blasts reached out between ships.
The Clovani had the element of surprise and they were trying to press that advantage for all it was worth. Max surveyed the tactical screens on the command deck below, and saw that the Clovani would not be able to hold their advantage for long. They had brought a dreadnaught of their own, but it was much smaller and less heavily armed than the Queen’s Honor. Even now the Honor was pummeling the rival dreadnaught with EMP blasts that disabled the other ship’s mass launchers, which had been in the act of powering up.
The air was suddenly joined by a new alarm that drew Max’s attention back to his surroundings on the command deck. The alarm was an intrusion alarm. At the far end of the command deck, a disturbance in the air began to appear with dark swirls of a thick black cloud that raced around to form a small globe.
Sabine’s gasp of shock made Max remember why he was here, and he placed himself between the tiny woman and the black disturbance fifty feet away even as the Queen’s guards did the same. The disturbance continued to whirl and spin, and out of its midnight depths stepped a woman. Her hair was a burnt reddish color while her eyes were a green ringed in black fire. She was dressed in black robes, but Max could see that the veins in her hands and neck had turned black.
“Karina!” Sabine said in shock, and realization dawned with Max.
Max had never met Kristof’s brother or sister, nor had he seen their pictures until a briefing months ago, but the woman before him only resembled the woman when you looked for it. Sure, her red hair was mostly unchanged, but her features had grown skeletal, and the black veins and fire ringed eyes also served to change her appearance greatly.
“I may not be able to see my brother and his bitch on the planet anymore,” Karina’s voice growled, “But look what I have here, the Queen Bitch herself. Your death will be a great victory for the Empire and my Master.”
Black lightning raced across the command deck and exploded several consoles and struck down many bridge officers as it raced towards the command dais. Sabine’s guards and other officers on the deck drew weapons and fired at the Dark Priestess before them, but their blasts met with a cloudy shield that stopped them short of hitting Karina.
Max placed himself completely in front of Sabine and also fired his blasters at the woman before him, while Sabine’s Su’Tani guards formed a large personal shield around themselves and the Queen. The lightning continued to advance and suddenly Max found himself being struck by its twisting tendrils.
The shock of being struck sent Max’s systems into emergency mode, but the insulation built into his combat frame took the brunt of the blow. Max struggled to remain between Sabine and Karina as he began charging his wrist blasters for a high-powered shot that in other circumstances would blow a large hole in a concrete wall. Warning signals sounded in the vaults of Max’s mind as the lightning threatened to overwhelm him.
Max fired his augmented blasts, and Karina’s shield of protection flared with the first hit and exploded with the second, sending the gaunt woman flailing against the bulkhead behind her,
“Damn you!” Karina screamed as she was struck by a laser shot from one of the officers near her. Karina stepped back into the swirling orb that had brought her there, and was gone just as suddenly as she had appeared.
Falling to his knees, Max struggled to make sense of all of the warning alarms that rang in his mind. The lightning had burned through his insulation in several places and burned out several systems. His central motor control systems were damaged, as were his power supply cooling unit.
Sabine rushed to his side, her expression fraught with concern for him, and Max found he was touched. It was still a shock to him to find himself so included in the family of the Queen. He tried to reach up and touch her face, but he found he could not.
“Don’t worry, Max,” Sabine said, her voice sounding strangely warbled to his hearing. “Techs are on their way, we’ll get you fixed right up.”
Max smiled as he commanded his secondary systems to reroute essential functions and many of his non-essential primary systems to go to standby. His sensors detected the small plasma fire within, but the suppression systems were offline. He would have to take drastic action to preserve his primary memory, he knew.
“I did not fail to protect this time,” Max said softly, and then allowed his systems to go offline.
~21~
“She’s ok,” Anasha whispered, her voice echoing through the tunnel anyway. “Max is hurt though,” she added.
“Yes, I felt that too,” Kristof agreed, his voice etched with worry for his friend. “Was it just me, or did you seem to actually feel Max get hit by the lightning?”
“I wondered what that was I was feeling,”
Anasha said in wonder. “How can we be feeling Max, though? Even if he is experiencing emotions, he is still a machine.”
“I have no idea, and we can’t answer it here,” Kristof said after a moment of thought. “Let’s keep moving and finish what we come for. I want to be gone from this cursed world.”
Anasha nodded in agreement, but the question didn’t leave her thoughts so easily. The only sense they should have gotten was from Sabine and the guards around her, not an artificial being. But Max’s presence had flickered on the edges of her awareness like a moth flittering against a window screen, outside of the live awareness of the Queen, but still there.
The corridor that they followed deeper under the hill was beautifully sculptured, Anasha saw as they went. The ravages of damage grew less as they went further, with less debris from above and less damage to the structure itself. They came to other corridors that branched off to either side after a time.
“Which way now?” Anasha asked, giving each of the side corridors a long look.
“I think we need to go straight,” Kristof replied after a moment, before adding “It just feels right.”
“I agree,” Anasha said quietly. The echoes didn’t seem as bad as before, but she still remained hushed in her speech.
The corridors had been done in white marble with veins of gold and silver in it. It reminded Anasha of the silver and gold fountains they’d seen in their vision, and it made her sad that such a beautiful world as Suthanara had been so marred and turned lifeless. She wondered what the universe would have been like with the Gods still present and working for the greater good, rather than their absent, selfish lack of involvement now.
Far ahead in the corridor, it seemed that a faint blue glow appeared. Anasha looked to Kristof and saw that he had also noticed it. She watched as Kristof loosened his blaster in its holster, but she didn’t feel any hostility in the immediate area. The light seemed to flicker some as they drew nearer, like candlelight. The light seemed to be coming from a large room, and she could see that it contained several statues, benches, and various artifacts.
They stepped into the room carefully, and Anasha gasped loudly as they saw the source of the blue glow. Before them stood her father, Subat, made up entirely of thin blue lines of flames. Subat smiled as Anasha and Kristof stopped dead in their tracks and took in the sight of him.
“Is it really you?” Anasha asked, her voice filled with emotion.
“Yes, my child,” Subat said with a smile, “I am really here.”
“Oh father,” Anasha cried and rushed to Subat’s side, and then stopped as she realized she could not hug him like she had wished to.
“Be easy in your mind, my daughter,” Subat said, his love for his daughter clearly expressed in his face as he smiled at her. “I am in a good place, now. I have gone to serve our Mistress Cassandra, our beloved Anza’Tai, and I am happy.”
“How is it you come to be here, then, father?” Kristof asked as he joined Anasha and embraced her from behind, feeling her need to be hugged.
“The war marches on,” Subat said, and his smile faded. “Death had ravaged the Underworld in his madness. As a result, my Mistress has created a realm that stands between life and the Underworld for those of the Su’Tani, and it is from there that I have come to you now.”
“Why have you come, father?” Anasha asked, though the answer mattered little to her right then. She only cared that he was there with her. It did stick in her mind, however, that when she had died her spirit had gone to the Hall of Heroes in the Underworld and not to some separate Su’Tani afterlife.
“My Mistress has chosen to remain neutral and will not come forth into the war,” Subat said sadly. “She will not willingly aid in the death of one that she loves, even after all the harm that Death has done. I know that this cannot be, for the entire universe will fall into darkness if Death is not stopped. So I have come to aid you in your quest to find Cassandra.”
“Where is she, then?” Kristof asked.
“I cannot tell you directly, my son,” Subat told him regretfully. “That ability has been forbidden to us all. I can aid in your discovery, however. This item here will aid you in your search.”
Subat’s spirit pointed to a curious ringed object near him. Upon closer inspection, the object had several rings within its hollow body that were hinged so that they would spin. Anasha recognized it as an armillary sphere, but it was more ornate and finely detailed than any she’d ever seen before. The sphere and its rings were clearly the finest gold, while the engraving had been highlighted with silver. The pedestal was carved black obsidian banded in gold.
“This is Cassandra’s Sphere of the Universe,” Subat told them. “With it, her followers were able to see into the farthest reaches of the universe once they learned to use it. It will show many things, including things meant to be hidden.”
“Such as where Cassandra has holed up,” Kristof suggested.
“Yes,” Subat replied with a smile. “She does not know that I am showing you this. Those of us in the Garden of Light have been forbidden to interfere in the war, but I could not stand by when my family stood to suffer from our doing nothing.”
“Will you get in trouble for this, father?” Anasha asked worriedly.
“Perhaps, but our Mistress is very forgiving,” Subat told his daughter with a smile. “I must return now. I cannot tell you how to use the sphere, but I have great faith in you all.”
Subat stepped forward and hugged Anasha, and she was shocked to feel that his ethereal form became solid for just a moment. Anasha sobbed as he stepped back to smile at her.
“I am so very proud of you, my dear Anasha,” Subat told her with a smile, “As is your mother. You have fulfilled our greatest wishes for you and more.” Turning to Kristof, he continued. “As have you, my son. When Anasha first told me of you, I fear that I did not react well and hated you for many years. Yet having seen the happiness and love you bring into my daughter’s life, as well as the amazing deeds you have done for our people, I love you as the son I had wished to one day have. My love and blessing go with you both, and with our dear Sabine who even now desperately waits for you.”
“I love you, father,” Anasha whispered as Subat’s form wavered and faded away. Her tears fell then, and Kristof held her tightly in the now dimmer room deep under the surface of Suthanara, now the dead world of Dorcanus II. She collected herself soon, though. There was much to be done still.
The sphere was large, roughly three feet in diameter when not including the large base that held it. Kristof inspected it closely, but did not find any easy way to move the artifact. There were two handles at either side of the artifact, but the size meant that two people alone would not be able to move it far.
“Now what?” Anasha asked. “We’d need some anti-grav lifters so move it by ourselves.”
“We’ll have to call the Phantom down so we can get some, then,” Kristof said as he grabbed one set of handles anyway and lifted. The sphere tilted easily and he almost flipped it over accidentally in his surprise. “Grab the other side,” he said quickly.
Anasha went and grabbed the other set of handles and found she could lift the sphere easily. There was almost no weight, though the artifact should have weighed six hundred pounds or more.
“How is this possible?” Anasha asked in wonder.
“Figure it out later,” Kristof said. “For now, let’s just get it out of here. I want to know what’s happening in orbit.”
Anasha nodded and together they began carrying the sphere back towards the surface. Her heart felt lighter as they went, her grief from her father’s death having been lifted from her heart at seeing him. It felt as if a long festering wound that started healing in her father’s home had healed at last, and she smiled as they went.
It took them a half hour to retrace their steps, but finally they reached the spot where the roof had collapsed and dumped them into the underground labyrinth. There was no clear way to get out as they
set the sphere down and began to look for a way out.
“Team One to Phantom, come in,” Kristof called into is radio.
Moments later the black hulled ship appeared overhead.
“Phantom to Team One, it’s good to hear your voices, sir,” came the response. “We’ve been trying to reach you for an hour now.”
“The ruins down here are laced with heavy metals,” Kristof told the hovering ship. “What’s the status of the engagement in orbit?”
“The Clovani have been driven off, sir,” the Phantom answered.
“Good. We are going to need a cargo cradle sent down to us,” Kristof said. “We have an artifact to bring aboard with us.”
“Roger.”
Within minutes a small platform attached to cables was maneuvered down through the hole in the ceiling to rest on the floor nearby. Kristof and Anasha settled the sphere on the platform and then held tight to the cable as they were lifted from the ruins. They swayed and spun as they rose through the air towards the Phantom, until the crew was able to catch hold of them and pull the platform into the cargo hold.
Two crew members came forward to grab the sphere’s handles, but when they attempted to move the artifact, it remained solidly in place. Anasha gave Kristof a questioning look, and his return look was just as perplexed. Going to the sphere, he grabbed a pair of handles and lifted, and the sphere moved easily.
“Either we got very strong down there, or something is odd about this thing,” Kristof said.
“Father said Cassandra had made a home for her people,” Anasha said as she thought her way through an idea. “The Su’Tani are her people. Maybe this artifact will only respond to them, to us.”
“Let’s get this thing secured then and we can figure it out later.”
Together, they moved the sphere deeper into the hold where it could be strapped down to the floor so that it would not move around in flight. Once secured, they climbed up to the command deck.
The Phantom was climbing up away from Dorcanus II as Anasha led Kristof onto the command deck. They could see the burning hulks of several Clovani ships and a few Puranni vessels as well. The Queen’s Honor had taken some damage as well, they saw, but not much. The Phantom was directed back to Bay 1 where they had launched from and the corvette slowly glided into the bay and landed.
The Smuggler's Ascension: The Ties That Died Page 13