by Ashanti Luke
Jang was so calm in his delivery, for a moment it sounded like he was still subvocalizing, “Will the fire inside the ship go away too?”
“What do you mean inside the ship?”
“Well, I looked to see if I could find Cyrus by his locator, and I noticed one of the zones in the holomonitor is on fire alert. I cancelled the halon system because Cyrus’s blip is in that section.”
“There’s no way the fire should have breached the hull. That hull could take a meteor hit, or two, before it lost its integrity.”
“I’m just giving the news, not the editorial,” Jang said, again matter-of-factly as he struggled to keep the ship inside the pipe. The Paracelsus had electromagnetic and gravity compensators that made adjustments smooth, but this flying hotel was still too large for his tastes. As smooth as the corrections were, the overall process was like trying to guide a levitating brick through an elephant’s bowel tract.
Six threw off his own harness and grabbed a fire extinguisher. “I am going to see what’s keeping old boy.”
“Great,” Jang mumbled to himself, unaware he was subvocalizing, “I get to crash-land a burning, three-man brick all by myself.”
Septangle Mueller Kanto sat monitoring the lev traffic control gram, but was baffled. One of their ships had disappeared from the imager. It could have been destroyed, but by what? There had not been anything else on the radar since the ship had radioed it was being attacked by another ship that had actually never appeared on the gram. The stellar flares had bungholed the communications on the J.L., and it was possible the flares could have been interfering with the systems on their base, but it seemed unlikely because the comm-sat they were receiving their signal from was geosynchronized over the dark side of the planet.
But nonetheless, the ship had disappeared, and Septangle Kanto was barking orders at the Hexads beneath him to get his system back up and running again. They had scrambled two other light attack fighters to assist the distress call, but suddenly, the ship was back on the gram, and was sending in the coded entry signal. The command to open the bay doors was issued, but before the doors even opened all the way there was a hail of missile fire. And then the controls went dead. He himself could feel the familiar tingle of electromagnetic pulse that raised the hair on his neck. He had instinctively dived away from the window, but as he stood, he saw the entrance to the hangar bay consumed in flames. It was hard to keep breath inside his body as he felt for the communicator controls on his badge. “Plan Theta! Plan Theta!” he yelled, not bothering to subvocalize as he issued the command to evacuate the most coveted secret of the Shadow Prolocutor.
Cyrus stumbled from Tanner’s room holding his side. The ship shook periodically as he walked, rattling his wounds painfully against his clothes and bandages. He had gotten up because the holomonitor had reported that the living quarters were on fire. And he, Jang, and Six had been through too much nonsense to leave to burn the item that had stalled his egress in the first place. He had known the living area was on fire, but standing there, watching it spreading through the hallway around him, he was perplexed at how the fire had started inside the Paracelsus. It was all very strange. The ship was designed to handle the stresses that atmospheric reentry exerted, and someone would have to screw up much worse than they had to have generated this much internal damage.
Cyrus tucked Tanner’s Bible under his left arm, away from the cut in his side. It sent a burning sensation through the wound in his back, but it was much better than the pain he expected to come from pressing the hard-bound volume against his ribs. Each step sent ripples of pain through his side, and his body’s involuntary reactions stiffened his walk. He steadied himself against the wall, staying away from the opposite wall that was being slowly consumed by the fire. It was amazing how hot it was even at this distance. How the fire could have started here continued to perplex him until he rounded the corner and the answer became abundantly clear.
Before him stood Six with a gun to his head, held hostage by one of the Eurydice regulars with a face Cyrus vaguely recognized. Whoever this monkey wrench was, he was not nearly as bright as he was ballsy—setting the fire had lured Cyrus back here, but the only reason the halon system had not engaged automatically was because either Jang had deactivated it, or the Shipmate had not been rebooted. If that system had engaged, this man would have found himself locked between bulkheads and gasping for oxygen-deprived air. But sometimes balls were enough.
“You’re going to set the locator beacon on this refuse heap to all frequencies, or we’re all going to die right here,” the soldier demanded.
As flames spread from the floor up to the ceiling, Cyrus wondered why the designers of the ship had not used more flame resistant materials. Then a wisp of smoke arrested his lungs. It was not a toxic smoke, but it was enough to tweak his lungs into a spasm. A cough escaped his throat, and the band of the subvocalizing unit constricted painfully against his Adam’s apple, conveniently reminding him of its existence.
He was careful not to mouth the words as he subvocalized, “I need you to kill the internal grav-drive.”
“Under these circumstances?” came over the earwig. Jang’s reluctance was unnerving, but Cyrus knew he would at least check his holomonitor.
There was a shimmy in the ship. “Nothing to say, dexter? Give the order now, or I finish him, complete!” The soldier’s face contorted as spittle erupted with his threat.
“Do it now,” Cyrus subvocalized, sure his lips had moved this time. He took a short step forward, but before he could put his foot down, Six was already in motion.
Six moved his head from the path of the gun and reached across his own body, twisting the soldier’s wrist along with the gun, until the barrel pointed at the soldier’s own chest. Cyrus ignored the pain in his side and lunged forward. Six moved to adjust his grip, but the soldier moved faster than either of them had expected, revealing a small hold-out pistol from behind his back. The ship shimmied again and they were all airborne when the gun fired.
Uzziah marveled at the scale of the hangar beneath the pyramid as he saw the lines etched into the wall in shapes and forms that were hard to discern at this speed. He no longer needed to watch the smaller square in the holomonitor that showed the reentry trajectory of the Paracelsus, but he left it on anyways. He took a moment to press the record button on the holographic imager as he noticed shimmering lines of light dancing here and there behind the mysterious lines carved into the rock. The Echelon was firing small ordinance at them from the ground, but their fighter was moving too fast, and the shield protected them. Paeryl quietly manned the weapons systems from the seat next to Uzziah as the two small Apostate fighters had returned and synchronized their attacks as they sped ahead the apportioned Echelon craft. According to Jang’s scans, the pyramid had four bay doors on each side that led to a large chamber beneath it, which was flanked on each side by smaller hangars. Even knowing the layout, it wasn’t until the door leading to the central room opened that he realized the ominous room they had just sped through was one of the smaller rooms.
The sheer scale of the central hangar boggled the mind into vertigo. “What in the Miasma is this?” Uzziah heard Paeryl murmur as they passed the massive transport-type ships inside the central hangar that seemed to be in the final stages of construction. The transports were of relatively contemporary Earth design, but they were much larger than any Earth endeavor could have created. The Sagarmatha Mobile Fortress had been halfway constructed by the Uni before the Uni had reassigned the funds to this ill-fated mission to Asha. That monstrous ship would have been at least a quarter smaller than the five titanic constructs before them. And then, the words Uzziah’s rapidly beating heart had been waiting for came over the earwig, “Fire on the mountain, run boys, run.”
Paeryl fired off two more incendiaries and two pulse missiles as their escort fighters fanned out and then slowed as Uzziah activated Jang’s overboosters.
Six had heard the command to disengage the grav
ity through his earwig, and was surprised that he knew the Knight of Wands well enough to have expected it. What he had not anticipated, even as he had brought his right elbow up and back into the chest of whoever had gorgejacked him, was the gravitational shift to relieve the leverage he had exerted on his assailant’s gun hand enough for the assailant to draw a small slug caster from behind his back.
Cyrus had lunged forward, and the loss of gravity caused him to twist as he flew across the hallway. Six felt an emptiness spread across his stomach, and he realized the gravity dampers had not been inverted, they had been turned off, and Cyrus, he, and the soldier were all falling. Then the gunshot obscured his thought. Cyrus’s body snapped backward and his legs flipped upward at different rates, forming an odd scissor as the shot set him spiraling backward against the burning wall. The Comptex should have protected him, but its integrity had been compromised by the damage he had taken in the jetway.
A rage built up in Six like kiln. He turned to face the man who had put the gun to his head, but the elbow Six had delivered as the freefall began had separated them by half a meter. Six’s turn had shifted his weight away from the man’s left hand, the hand that had held the first gun, and the man was now pulling his other gun around to aim at Six. Six used the momentum of his spin to bring his legs around, and he planted both feet into the man’s chest. The gun fired and Six felt the whip of wind as the slug coursed past his cheek.
The man’s body rolled as it floated away and Six twisted, planted his feet against the wall, and launched himself toward the opposite, burning wall as another shot ricocheted behind him. Six flipped the gun into the proper position in his left hand and returned fire, but the ship shimmied again. The ship’s velocity or angle must have changed because the burning wall lurched toward them as Six fired. He missed dramatically and braced himself as the fiery wall smacked into him, jarring the gun from his grasp. The gun flipped away to the opposite wall, but Six ignored it because the barrel of the gun in his attacker’s hand was now just a half meter away—and it was pointed at his left eye.
Taeryn of Four took her obligations very seriously. As the left-tenant of Paeryl’s van, and the drawer of the Justice card, she had developed a reputation for being exacting and callous in battle. So when the glimmer ship emerged from the bay doors beneath the pyramid, she descended on its holo-imager signature like a fritzed-out uberhound on an abusive master. Flying the mining ship that Cyrus and his van had appropriated from the Miasma was like trying to pilot a lev gurney by standing on it, but the mining lasers equipped on the front were a weapon the Echelon neither would expect, nor could defend against. Even as the glimmer ship powered up its glimmer drive, an action that would have rendered it virtually untraceable under the Miasmic sky, Taeryn, unseen to them thanks to black paint and Jang’s spoofing program, activated the four mining lasers on the façade of her craft.
She had practiced this technique numerous times, and here, above the disappearing fighter obliviously coursing into her firing path, her practice paid off. The bright flash of the lasers illuminated the cockpit as she pulled back on the controls and shaved the back end, including the glimmer drive, from the fleeing Echelon stealth craft. She smiled at the imager as a hologram of the severed rear end of the ship flew over the apportioned Echelon craft that sped from the doors of the pyramid escorted by two light fighters.
The blast had hit Cyrus like an unsuspected kick. When his body had snapped backward, it felt as if his brain had shifted in his head. He couldn’t tell whether or not he had closed his eyes, but he knew he could not see or feel a thing as his body had spun through the air until it collided hard against the wall. He was surprised when he did not bounce and the wall had pressed against him as if he had hit the ground instead. Then, as a tongue of flame licked at his ear, his body had quickly snapped back to its senses. Vision flooded back into him and he realized he was still carrying Tanner’s Bible.
It felt as if gravity was pressing him against the wall, so he used it, and he pushed himself away from the flames on all fours. The flames were unimaginably hot, but they did not seem to affect him in the Comptex. Even though his right shoulder throbbed as if it were on fire itself, the bullet had not penetrated the Comptex. He worried his bandages could catch flame, but they were evidently too saturated with blood.
And then, Cyrus noticed Six was incredibly still, and he knew something was wrong. Cyrus reached up and grabbed the doorframe, realizing gravity, once again, had little effect on his orientation. He ignored the excruciating pain that came as he tensed his arm, and he snatched himself forward with all the strength he could muster.
If Euston could finish the bald-headed manpunter in front of him, he might stand a chance. The pressure the wall exerted on his left shoulder kept his pistol steady, but then, just as he steadied the gun at the Apostate’s face, the pressure shifted away from his arm. The bald man moved, and his motion was so quick, Euston was not sure what had happened. Suddenly, Euston’s arm was hit from underneath and he fired into the ceiling. Then the bald man’s body moved away from the wall revealing the Knight of Wands flying through the flames. Euston tried to bring the gun back down, but it was too late. Something collided with his chest, forcing the air from his lungs as the burning wall retreated from him.
As Six moved toward the opposite wall, he saw Cyrus speed past him and collide with the Eurydician soldier. The wall had stopped pressing against him, and Six’s apparent weightlessness sent him all the way to the other wall. Cyrus’s attack sent the man back-first in the same direction as Six. The Eurydician moved faster than Six, and as he passed, Six tapped the switch to open the door to the room beside them. The man passed into the room, and Six dove away, but as he moved back toward the burning wall, Cyrus yelled, “Look out!”
Six turned to see the man hanging from the door frame by his right hand and lifting the gun toward them with his left. Then suddenly, there was a snag at Six’s shoulder, and as the gun discharged, Six found himself outside the path of the bullet, heading toward the bulkhead warning line, and he heard Cyrus yell, “Activate the halon system, now!”
The mining lev piloted by Taeryn pulled up in front of the stolen Echelon fighter as both crafts closed the distance on the ship that had fled from the pyramid. The fleeing ship looked like it was sitting still as Tanner reached for the submachine gun stowed on the wall next to him. The two short swords he had brought along, meticulously forged by Fenrir, caught his eye, and he remembered why he had brought them—the mesh weave of Comptex could stop a round-tipped bullet, but did very little to stop the linear slice of a blade. He stood, forgoing the gun for the two swords, while Aerik, his own leg bandaged, began attending to Milliken and Toutopolus’s wounds.
Taeryn’s lev sped ahead, momentarily disappearing in the darkness and then reappearing, illuminated by a bright blue glow. There were sparks of electricity across the back of the fleeing Echelon craft as a largish chunk of misshapen metal flew free from the rear of the craft and through the astrapi shield. Tanner cringed as Taeryn fired, afraid the precious cargo inside would be damaged. But his fears were quickly allayed as Taeryn’s precision and poise had been honed in the training simulator that Jang, Uzziah, Paeryl, and Darius had developed–she was Paeryl’s lieutenant for a good reason.
The lights on the front of their fighter came on, illuminating writhing figures inside the craft. The light caught a glimmer of gilded angel’s wings as Tanner pulled the swords from their sheaths. The grips felt oddly warm in his hand, but he realized the warmth was not coming from without, but within. He could feel it swelling throughout his body. It was a familiar, although estranged, felling, but this time, as the fury he had tried to hide from most his life filled him once again, he welcomed it.
These heathens had held this relic for far too long, but he was determined that at the end of this exchange, whether breath still filled his body or not, they would not hold it for one minute longer. Uzziah retracted the windshield of their fighter, and they collided
with the rear of the stealth craft, and Tanner, to Paeryl’s loud protesting, lunged forward and vaulted over the console and through the fissure in the rear of the other vehicle.
Cyrus had planted his feet against the wall and had launched himself past Six as the Eurydician fell into the room. But the man had caught himself and had fired again as Cyrus snatched Six with him toward the bulkhead. Unable to focus in the smoke, Cyrus had yelled the command to Jang. He had turned in the air to grab Six with his right hand, and the snag, although slight, sent a wave of painful heat through his whole side. As they floated toward the bulkhead line, the ship shuddered again. The wall came to meet them again and the closing bulkhead seemed to retreat as red caution lights and an alert siren filled the hall. Six and Cyrus fell against the wall again, harder this time–Cyrus on his back and Six on top of him. The cut on Cyrus’s back scraped against the wall and he could feel what must have been the flaps of the wound separating as the bandage slipped. His whole body tensed and a haze washed over his eyes. But even through the haze, as Six used the pressure of the wall to stand against it, Cyrus saw the crazed Flying Monkey prop himself against the door frame and dive toward them as he lifted the gun again.
Six felt Cyrus’s body stiffen beneath him as Cyrus mumbled something that came across the earwig as gibberish. At first, Six assumed it was the pain of falling on his wounded back, but as Cyrus started to point at something behind Six’s back, he knew it could be only one thing. So despite the fact the pain alone might knock Cyrus out, he grabbed Cyrus’s collar and dove toward the closing bulkhead as the cold gas spread around them. Then another vibration sped through the ship, and the hold the wall had on them was gone. Cyrus mumbled again, but this time, Six glanced over his shoulder to see the pistol only a half-meter away from the back of his head.
As soon as Tanner’s feet hit the corrugated steel floor of the stealth lev, it was as if time itself had slowed down for everyone except him. Before he had pulled his feet beneath him, he had already cut two men who had been reaching for either guns or grenades.