by Voxley, Vi
It was the most painful thing she'd ever done, to push her hands back into the engine, trying to pull the coils free. Down below, she heard the Host give a deafening roar of despair. She heard Ryden call something to her, but whether it was approving or not, she didn't understand.
Aria kept pulling, biting her lip in a hopeless attempt to dull the pain, but it felt like burning. The pain was so sharp she nearly blacked out, but the first coil came loose. The engine gave a furious twitch under her, nearly throwing Aria off again, but she held on.
The Host was up now, she saw, looking down at the deck floor. Aria peeked over the railing, down deeper into the core. Then she threw the coil over the edge as hard as she could, hearing it smash below a moment later.
The hive mind was howling at her, cursing her in its own tongue that Aria didn't understand. But he wasn't coming up. She didn't have time to check again, but it had to be Ryden holding the Host back. Aria's hands shook, pulling the second coil loose, praying that she'd disabled the electromagnetic current correctly or it would burn her to cinders.
With a pained cry, the second coil came loose and went over the edge. The engine started to shut down around her, fighting to remain going on the emergency reserves, but Aria knew which parts to pull. She was disabling her bomb now, breaking the ship that her fated commanded.
With a furious hiss, the last coil she needed came loose and the engine shut down around her. Only thrusters were keeping the Conqueror in place now. Aria was out of breath, terrified that she'd done something that couldn't be repaired and... where was the Host?
Now that the engine was no longer filling the huge room with its signature hum, Aria could hear the silence. She didn't hear the Host anymore. She didn't hear Ryden, either.
Her heart in her throat, Aria peeked over the edge. The bodies were covering most of the deck below as they had before. There was the broken Clayor knife, but the spear was gone.
Aria didn't know where the fighters had gone, but she couldn't stay up there like a sitting duck. Not after she'd killed the Clayor hive mind's last chance at victory. There would be no more speeches about betrayal waiting for her, Aria had no doubt about that. The next time the enemy saw her, she'd be dead in seconds with no remorse.
Climbing down went as slowly as going up had. Cradling her arm against her body, Aria descended back to the deck floor. Still no one around. Perhaps they'd slipped through the entrance? She found that hard to believe. Aria didn't like the idea of leaving the bodies of Joya and everyone else lying there, but there was nothing she could do for the dead now but escape.
Even walking hurt, because the hand wasn't fixed into place. Aria picked her way between the dead, wanting to give them the dignity of not stepping on them again, at least.
Then she heard the war cry behind her. In the next heartbeat, she felt like a character from a horror movie who, instead of running, chooses to look the killer in the eye.
Aria turned to see the Host climbing up the railing, coming from a lower level. Whether the hive mind had been trying to catch the coils or if Ryden had thrown him over the edge, she never knew. All she saw was hatred, a loathing so deep it turned her blood into ice.
Farther away from the enemy, she saw the general jumping over the railing too, the spear back in his hand where it belonged.
The Host was closer. And there was only one wish she could see in its eyes.
"Run, Aria!" Ryden roared.
Aria ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Ryden
The Host charged after Aria. It was slipping up.
The hive mind was making mistakes, one after the other. The part of Ryden that didn't thirst for the creature's blood and wasn't willing to rip the beating heart out of the Host's chest understood. The hive mind had lost. There was nothing else for it, no more tricks up its sleeve, no more clever schemes.
He hadn't known what Aria was doing in the ship's core, until it became very clear. The general didn't deny every inch of him rebelled at the idea of something being done to harm the Conqueror, but her plan was brilliant.
Apparently the hive mind shared his judgment about that. Only it was considerably less favorably inclined to praise her for it. The Host had finally decided to kill Aria. So far it had merely used her as a toy to get Ryden's attention or to try and manipulate him.
Now it was after her for real.
He saw her standing there, fragile and defenseless. More beautiful than ever to his eyes, exactly like that, in her torn gown, her long golden hair messed up, triumphant despite everything.
And the Host was seeing her too.
"Run, Aria!" he roared, only a moment before the Host moved.
Aria survived the first turn that should have been her last because of two reasons. One, she was running for her life, sparing no strength and reserves. Two, the backup warriors Ryden had ordered to the position had finally broken through to the core. For a single second, he allowed himself to think of the possible future where he chose to go with his warriors instead of jumping through the core hall.
The warriors let Aria pass, barring the Host's path as soon as she was through. Seeing Ryden coming after him, the Host brutally cut himself a way, sparing many lives in his haste. The warriors parted for their general as well, trying to keep up with him, but ultimately falling behind.
Aria survived the second turn as well, because the Host had to halt his charge every other second to see which way she'd chosen to escape.
Ryden knew the Conqueror by heart; there was no other way for him to exist. Not only that, he knew each and every member of his crew and warriors and where they were stationed. Sprinting after the Host, he took a precious moment to open the com link to his entire crew.
"Attention," he ordered roughly, never faltering in his strides. "This is a priority order. I am in pursuit of the Host. Clear way across deck Eta, be ready to close bay door EL-3 at my order. Captain Hastien, prepare to meet the enemy behind those doors. Ready to evacuate from EL-bay."
He didn't need to say anything about letting Aria pass, because by that point every last Brion aboard knew of her and the general was confident they'd protect her with their lives. All he needed to do was make sure she had somewhere to flee until he caught up with the Host.
The bay doors were straight ahead when Ryden made a quick left and saw the Host right in front of him in a long corridor, with Aria not far ahead. A deep indentation in the wall showed him the Host had cleared the turn with even greater speed, unwilling to slow down.
"Prepare to close EL-3 after Aria," he ordered.
The crew responded with affirmatives, but she was still a distance away from the doors and limping. Ryden dashed forward, willing himself to move as fast as it was possible. He saw a bright flash ahead and heard Aria's cry, but it was the Host that bellowed in pain. The plasma shot had probably gone right past her to hit the enemy.
The general didn't know who had given the order to lighten up the corridors before Aria's escape, but that someone was looking at a commendation. Aria seemed to get over her surprise quickly and kept running, while the Host reeled from the blast. It had dodged the direct hit, but the shock wave had knocked it against the wall, hard.
Ryden saw Aria dash through the doors, thought he glimpsed Captain Hastien calling something after her, and then the huge, reinforced doors closed behind them.
The Host turned, furious, backed into a corner. For a second, he seemed to glitch before Ryden's eyes and most of the warriors with him let out a surprised cry at the apparent disappearance of their enemy. The ones who'd been dangerously close to the Host were cut down where they stood by the hand they didn't see.
Using the techniques he'd been taught, Ryden strode forward to engage the hive mind himself. The warriors gave them room, but the Host was still playing. Now it was attempting to use the warriors as a shield between it and Ryden.
Only its eyes betrayed the sick, feverish anguish it felt. There was no remorse, no attempt to take hostages,
which was a ridiculous concept with the Brions. Every opportunity it got, the Host cut the throat of the warrior who lost their grip on the mind techniques.
Ryden couldn't blame them. The hive mind was one of the most powerful beings in the galaxy. Resisting him was a task a mere warrior naturally struggled with. Even he had to double check his vision, which made his advance slow.
All of it gave Aria time to flee and Captain Hastien precious moments to set up a perimeter around the Host.
"All I wanted was to exist," the Host spat at him as Ryden came closer.
The way it said the words could almost be called innocent, if not for the fact the hive mind used that moment to stab the long knife through another warrior.
"Back away, all of you," Ryden snarled.
Several warriors' valor squares showed reluctance to obey, some from unwillingness to leave him to face the enemy alone, some resisting the implication of retreat it posed. The general didn't care for any of those, and they all obeyed in the end. One by one, they drew back to positions far away from the Host, who watched them go with cautious cruelty, snatching a few before they could escape his clutches.
"You already existed," Ryden said, to divert attention from his men.
"No," the hive mind said. "Not in a galaxy ruled by the Union. They would never have agreed to our existence. Sooner or later, they would have sent you to destroy me."
Ryden couldn't say no to that accusation with absolute certainty, but he doubted that action could have been authorized without provocation. Like attacking Ilotra.
"You can't know that," he said, truthfully.
The Host's thin lips twitched, its pale blue skin darker now from the exertion of fighting for hours on end.
"I can," it hissed. "I studied you. That is the presumable outcome. The Union doesn't like beings like us. I had to protect myself."
"You see this as protecting yourself. You think we are attacking you."
"Essentially, you are."
"Preventive attack. Not even Brions believe in that."
"You have practiced it in the past!" the Host threw back at him.
"No," Ryden said darkly. "We don't attack a foe on a presumption. We simply shoot quicker."
The smile came and went on the Host's lips, the champion backing away toward the door. Ryden was not surprised when the bay doors slowly began to slide open behind the Host's back. He brought his spear on guard.
"Enough running. This ends here."
The Host backed into one of the larger bays on the port side of the Conqueror. Ryden had figured it would get the door open and the look on Captain Hastien's face proved his assumption. He saw the officer struggle to throw the mind control off, but the hive mind was not holding back anymore.
"You must think I'm truly desperate, to fight this your way," the Host said with dark fury. "Do you think I don't know what would happen if I gave you the fight you want?"
Ryden followed the Clayor champion with slow, purposeful paces, keeping its gaze on him until the Host finally realized. Like an animal that sees the cage too late, it snarled at Ryden, something akin to cheated rage on its features.
Serves you right, Ryden thought. For all the tricks you played on me.
The bay in which they stood had no other exits. Somewhere above them, he knew, was Aria, pulled up by the cranes they used to lift heavy transport. Probably watching.
"Not giving the enemy the fight it wants," he repeated seriously, holding the Host's raging gaze. "That is something we can agree upon."
Behind him, the doors closed again. After a moment, he heard Captain Hastien's affirmative through the com link that the locking system had been damaged enough to be impossible to open, even with the Host's mind tricks.
A neat little trick, sabotage. He'd have to make sure Aria knew how helpful she'd been in catching the hive mind.
Of course, it left him there alone, cut off from his backup. Face to face with the Host, at last.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Ryden
The scene dropped away from Ryden at once.
Instead of one huge bay, he now firmly saw three and possibly one more, overlapping all of them. One was littered with bodies, both Brion and Clayor, as if a big fight had taken place there. In another, the hull of the ship was breached and the bay was stripped of everything not fixed in place.
Seeing that vision made him feel suffocated, as if the vacuum was really there, killing him. In the third, the Host was not alone, but with a squadron of other Clayors, including the last Host he'd fought.
The one overlapping them all had Aria lying dead in one corner, her head in another.
None of them were true, he knew that, but Ryden found himself unable to shake them off. If he concentrated very hard, he saw figures and shadows moving, indicating that one of them might be the real Host. It was a shallow hope that one of the ten shadows moving in his line of sight might be the actual enemy trying to kill him.
All of that passed before the general's eyes in the manner of a heartbeat. Then instincts kicked in. The spear was already on guard and he turned, trying to keep the last place where he'd seen the Host for sure firmly before him.
It was a great temptation to close his eyes and rely on other senses. A Brion warrior could do that. In dire circumstances, for example when a warrior was blinded, they could still fight back through their sense of hearing and smell and touch.
And it was also true that the hive mind's tricks mostly affected sight and no other senses, but he couldn't allow the luxury with an enemy like that. To close his eyes was to cut himself off too much, even if what he saw wasn't real. The truth was somewhere before him. He only needed to find it again.
Not seeing didn't mean he was blind. Concentrating his gaze into one place helped. It focused the rest of the world into a fixed system with the point in the middle. In the morphing, ever-changing mess of visions, holding onto anything stable was vital.
And the Host didn't seem all too happy to attack him. It had lost the advantage it had back in the core where, for a brief moment, Ryden had been weaponless. That had been the hive mind's first mistake. It should have attacked at once, should have destroyed the spear if it could.
Even kicking it over the edge would have helped, but it was too fixed on him. Later, it had foolishly tried to catch the coils Aria was breaking, leaving Ryden the moment he needed to retrieve the weapon.
It knew. The Host knew it was going to die and all it wanted was to take him along.
Ryden felt no fear as he slowly turned, following a shadow that seemed most likely to be the Host. To die fighting the Clayor hive mind was a death worth remembering, one that wouldn't have shamed anyone. All the warriors who had died trying to delay the Host had died with honor, bravely taking the fight to an opponent that was far stronger than they were.
Instead of fear, all he felt was a tinge of regret. If he died there, he'd never bind to Aria, never feel her warm, soft body in his arms again.
The shadow he'd thought was the Host charged him at last. Ryden only had time to block the death blow of the knife. The general's battle awareness was working to discern even an ounce of the reality from the distorted visions he saw. Right then, catching the knife before it sliced him in half, hearing came to his aid. He'd heard the blade come whining through the air, and he definitely heard the frustrated cry of the Host, its sneak attack failed.
When it tried to move back to try again, Ryden pushed forward. Now that he momentarily knew where the enemy was, he had to keep the Host near him or risk losing it in the shadows again. By touch and sound and smell, he tracked the Clayor champion's retreat, trading furious blows to keep it from slipping away.
He found that the Host had more trouble creating illusions around the knife than around itself. The blade reflected light that was hard to predict, and more than once, Ryden knew it saved his life when he saw a flash in the shadows, only to dodge a second later when the knife came crashing down.
He pushed the Host b
ack, relentlessly forcing it to retreat, never giving it quarter. It could take his sight, but not the knowledge of the room they were in. Ryden could count his steps, could calculate the distance of the walls from the point where he'd started. When the Host cried out in dismay when its back nearly hit the wall, Ryden already knew.
His next blow would have cut the Host's head clean off if the creature hadn't dodged with unnatural speed, bodily charging him in the next.
That did surprise Ryden. Physical strength was the one thing the Host most sorely lacked when compared to him. It was bound to lose a barehanded fight, but that wasn't its attention. It took the general only a few moments of messy, frantic tooth-and-nail fighting to understand what the hive mind was doing.
Driving him away from the walls and messing up his count. It was trying to disorient him, but Ryden couldn't have that. In a situation where he couldn't trust his eyes, there had to be some point of reference.
The Host's kick caught him in the ribs, sending him stumbling back, and the enemy was on top of him in the next moment. Ryden's first thought was to protect his heart, but the Host brought the knife down on his much weaker arm guard. With a cry, the general felt his hand contract in pain. The spear clattered to the floor.
Ryden heard the Host kick it away, to the land of visions and lies.
He had no time to mourn the weapon. Once more, he caught the knife inches from his throat. Brion warriors healed fast, but it stung to have the wounds he'd received to his hands before opened up again. Warm blood trickled down on his face as the Host pushed down with unnatural strength. It occurred to Ryden that perhaps the hive mind had never been as weak as it had showed them. Or maybe it was the visions dragging him down.
It didn't matter. Dying without killing the Host was not an option. Gathering all his strength, Ryden pushed the blade away, hearing it cut into the deck right beside his ear. Above them, he heard some noise. It made the Host look up too, and the general needed nothing more than that single glance to throw the enemy off him. Now they were both weaponless and he could make his superior strength count.