by Richard Fox
Thank God for small favors, he thought as a shadow passed over him.
A Marine soared past Hale, his anti-grav lining propelling him forward faster than the wind.
“Standish? Is that you?”
“I’m going three for three as the first man on another planet, sir!”
Hale grit his teeth and angled toward the approaching lip of the city. A blast of wind slapped Hale aside and he struggled with his risers, fighting and failing to keep them untangled. Hale swung his legs back and managed to separate the carbon-fiber lines attaching him to his ribbon-chute. The wind relented and Hale twisted back toward the city, the distinct edge of which was closing fast.
A panicked cry for help came through the IR in a rush of static.
Hale found Standish hanging from his half-crumpled ribbon-chute and falling fast toward the city’s edge.
“Standish! Dump your chute and go to your backup!”
The other Marine yanked at his risers…and descended beneath the plane of the city. Standish smacked into the bare rock. His parachute continued on and fell against the alabaster floor. Wind kept the canopy open, bouncing up and down.
Hale quickly guessed his rate of descent and the edge of the city.
“Chute! Ribbon!”
The parasail snapped up and morphed into a spiral. Hale fell faster, slowly angling toward Standish’s flailing ribbon-chute.
Hale’s boots slammed to the deck and he pulled the rings where the risers met his armor. The ribbon-chute slipped away on the breeze. He slid to a halt, grabbed Standish’s ribbon-chute and heaved. He reeled the chute up…revealing ripped and frayed risers. He stopped, the lines tight and vibrating in resonance with the wind.
A creak came off the strained ribbon-chute and one of the lines snapped in Hale’s hand. He snatched at the other but it broke just as he touched it. Hale leapt forward, grasping for the line as it snaked toward the edge.
“Standish!” The frayed edge slipped through his fingers and went over the edge.
Hale grabbed the white marble and looked down to the cloudy plain below.
An armored hand grabbed Hale by the wrist. Hale reared back and pulled Standish up and onto the city floor. Standish hugged the ground, his fingers trying to burrow into the marble.
“I like the ground,” Standish said, his voice high and reedy. “Nice ground. Hard ground. No more fall.” Standish tried to kiss the floor through his visor. “So pretty.” Standish rubbed his hand against the marble from side to side.
“Standish, are you OK?”
Standish’s head snapped up and looked at Hale as if he hadn’t known he was there. He got to his feet and brushed himself off.
“Sir! Yes. Fine. Just fine. You’re the first man on Sletari. Well done. Figured you deserved to win at least one.”
“It’s not a race, Standish. You’re good to go?”
Standish winced and shifted the seat of his armor.
“Knew I should have hit the head before we left. I see the rest coming down toward the center. Shall we get moving and perhaps never mention this incident again?”
Hale drew his rifle off his shoulder and shook his head.
“Just get moving, Standish.”
They ran toward the center of the city, past the base of a great tower so high its spire seemed to disappear in the sky. Smoother sections of the ground denoted roadways between the buildings, none of which had doors. Light refracted off the high bridges, casting golden geometric shapes that shifted with the wind.
“This place weirds me out, sir,” Standish said. “Kind of like Malal’s little hidey-hole.”
“There’s a reason for that.” Hale stopped next to a tall square outcropping on a building and quickly peeked around the corner.
“Got you, sir,” Cortaro said through Hale’s helmet. “You have Standish with you?”
Hale ducked around the building and ran toward his Marines who were huddled within a garden of fern-like plants made of clear glass. Tiny motes of light moved up and down their veins.
Hale did a quick head count then asked, “Where’s Stacey? Malal?”
Cortaro looked up and nodded.
A creature with bat-like wings and no head corkscrewed to the ground, holding Stacey in claws as thick as her arm. It let her go ten feet in the air and she shrieked and landed feetfirst. Her heels hit with a metallic clang and the rest of her flopped to the ground. Her head struck a low bench, knocking an alabaster chunk loose with the impact.
Hale ran to her and reached out to help her up, but pulled his hand back at the last instant.
Stacey looked up, a puff of chalk over her forehead. When she looked at him with those still eyes, Hale felt a pang of guilt.
“I’m fine.” She got up and rubbed her arm across her head. “I’m rather durable like this.”
“Sorry.” Hale inched away from her as a chill crept into his armor.
The bat creature landed gracefully a few yards away and folded its wings to the ground. Its surface shimmered and then the wings drew inward. It morphed into a human form with all the detail of a blank mannequin.
Malal tilted his head back, then twisted it from side to side.
“It has been too long,” he said. “Just as I remembered it. The sky is different. The old constellations are gone, lost to the dance.”
“Malal.” Stacey snapped her fingers at him. “People are dying to buy us the time you need to reactivate the defenses, not feel nostalgic.”
“We’re not far.” Malal walked off, his limbs lengthening to a pace Hale matched with a jog.
“Watch the skies,” Steuben said. “The Eagles pulled the drones away but they may return.”
Hale fell in just behind Stacey and Malal. His heart skipped a beat each time an odd reflection caught on the bridges and buildings polished to a mirror sheen.
“Malal, why did you build this city on that rock column?” Stacey asked. “Doesn’t seem like a place to build something you want to last.”
“We didn’t.” Malal looked at her, his face elongated and his eye sockets bulging out ever so slightly. “The city did not move. The mountains did.”
“But that kind of erosion, a shift in tectonic plates…it would take millions of years,” she said.
“This was a place of rest, repose. A pause from the archologies and the great task.” Malal slowed and veered toward a building, a pyramid with the upper third missing. “I amused myself with the natives, mammals much like you. I harvested them all to prolong her life. When she saw what could be done with the technique, she used my knowledge, my work, to open the door. And when it came time to claim my reward, she slammed it in my face.”
“Malal…” Stacey said with a warning tone.
“What’s he talking about?” Hale asked.
“Nothing that matters to us,” she said.
“Malal, did this she of yours leave any defenses?” Standish asked. “Valuable stuff tends to have alarms. Guard dogs. That kind of thing.”
Malal sauntered up to the side of the incomplete pyramid and waved a hand across the surface. A golden three-dimensional lattice appeared in his hand’s wake. Segments of the lattice jumped from node to node without any pattern. Hale felt like he was looking at a screen from a dead television channel.
“There is no need for guards if no one can find the door,” Malal said.
The longer Hale looked at the pyramid, shapes formed in the ivory wall. Aliens with the elongated heads and bulbous eyes close to those Malal displayed earlier walked across the wall, their outlines bright like the afterglow of a sharp light across his eyes. Behind each of the aliens, a diminutive form followed, a half dome shape with long arms dangling beneath. Crystal plates caught against the light.
“Stacey…are those…”
“Not now,” she said.
“Contact!” Yarrow pointed his rifle up and over the pyramid. Four Xaros drones whipped around a building and sped straight toward the Marines.
“Egan, Q-shell.” Cortar
o switched the selector switch on his own rifle to HIGH power and took aim.
Hale took cover next to the pyramid. The IR channel to Durand and her fighters had a poor connection, but it was something.
“Gall, this is Roughneck Six. Hostiles inbound, we’re in the open and need air support.”
All he got was static.
“Gall, Roughneck Six, how copy?”
Egan’s rifle snapped as he fired the quadrium shell. A streak of silver zipped toward the first batch of incoming drones and exploded into sky-blue bolts of lightning. The energy arced from drone to drone, knocking them off-line and sending them into free fall. The Marines opened up, shattering all but one of the drones before they hit the ground. The survivor crashed into a small grove of trees, shattering them with a crack of breaking glass.
“More!” Standish shouted. “Five o’clock.”
Hale aimed his rifle at the mass of jagged trees and swirling dust and saw no trace of the drone.
“Rough…come in!” Durand said through the IR.
“Gall, this is—”
A pair of ruby lights rose from the broken trees. Hale snapped off a shot that hit the ground just in front of the lights, sending up a shower of dirt and grass. A red disintegration beam slashed out and struck the pyramid just over Hale’s head. He rolled to the side and banged off another shot into the fog of soil and pulverized trees.
A beam clipped his thigh. The aegis armor resisted the beam’s effects, but the glancing blow felt like someone had slapped his leg with a hot poker. He lurched over and fell against the pyramid, his leg twitching of its own accord.
The lights in the fog bounced around as his Marines inundated the area with gauss shots. A ruby beam struck the ground a few yards away and cut a line through the ground straight for him.
The pyramid holding him up vanished and Hale felt something jerk him aside. He landed face down on a floor made up of interlocking starburst tiles, each seemingly alive with tiny gold lights across its surface. He looked up and saw Stacey’s booted feet.
“This isn’t meant for him,” Malal said.
Hale got up and swept his rifle back to the direction he’d fallen from. He was inside the pyramid, but the interior was impossibly big, much larger than the volume of the structure he’d seen outside. The inner walls were matte white, extending up to a bright point of light at the apex of the pyramid. Crystals the size of footballs floated motionless in the air along the walls. There was a single opening the size of a garage door. Hale saw his Marines locked in combat with drones, but there was no sound of the battle.
Hale reached out to the doorway and his fingers stopped against an invisible wall.
“Let me out! I need to help them,” Hale said to Malal.
“This isn’t meant for him,” Malal said from just behind Hale.
“Then open the door so I can—” Hale froze as Malal pressed a thumb against the Marine’s forehead. Hale’s mouth stayed open mid-sentence.
“What did you do?” Stacey asked.
“I have no time for him. He will remain there while we get what we came for.” Malal turned around and walked toward a dais in the middle of the pyramid. A churning column of light extended up from the floor to the point of light high above.
“This is just like your vault,” Stacey said, “the one where we got the codex.”
“It should be. I built them both.” Malal stopped a few feet from the wide column. Wisps formed near the surface, like fish clustering around the side of a tank when feeding time neared. “Hello, my pretties. Did you miss me?”
Ghostly faces formed in the column, mouths opened in terror, and the wisps fled away.
“The defenses, Malal, turn them on before the fleet is destroyed,” Stacey said.
“What of my other purpose?”
“Get the code to destroy the drones after the battle is over.” Stacey pointed back to the doorway. “Hurry! They’re dying out there!”
“It’s time for you to meet someone.” Malal pressed a hand to the column and a pulse of light shot up the column and through the tip of the pyramid.
“What are you talking about?” Stacey’s hand crept toward the kill switch on her belt. A single press of a button and the governor in Malal’s chest would render him down to a rapidly expanding mess of subatomic particles.
The ancient being’s hand snaked out and caught her by the wrist.
“None of that.” Malal yanked her off her feet and dragged her toward him. His arms coiled around her, binding Stacey from her shoulders to her ankles.
“Stop this! You’ll never get what want. We had a bargain, damn you!”
“I made a better one.” Malal pulled her away as a searing light descended the column and resolved into interlocking gears nearly half the width of the pyramid.
Stacey struggled weakly. She tried to turn her head away from the apparition, but it pressed against her mind, its image burned against her closed eyes.
“This is the Engineer,” Malal said to her. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Don’t do this…” she said quietly.
“It is already done.” Malal leaned back to gaze upon the Engineer. “Here it is,” he shouted. “This one knows where the ascension gate is hidden. I know how to open it. Take her mind and together we will find eternity.”
The Engineer’s gears shifted inside out.
“Come forward,” Malal said. “Do not fear this one. She is a mockery of immortality, a weak servant to her betters. Come and claim her.”
The Engineer’s form contracted, morphing into deep-green armor over a photonic body nearly twenty feet tall.
Terror coursed through her as the Engineer raised a hand, light swirling in its palm.
+Release me,+ Malal sent to her. His grip on her arms and hands loosened, allowing her to grasp the kill switch. +Release me before it realizes the mistake it made.+
Light burned through cracks in the Engineer’s armor as it reached for her.
Stacey tapped a code into the kill switch. Malal flung her aside as the governor, a sphere of bent hoops, fell out of his chest. Malal’s hands morphed into blades and he rammed them both into the Engineer’s chest. Raw light spilled from the wounds as a squeal rose in the air.
Malal grew larger. Golden light coursed up his arms as he slid his blades deeper.
“Greed and impatience are poor qualities for a god.” Malal cracked the Engineer’s chest open and slammed the Xaros lord to the ground. Malal raised a blade and morphed it into a wicked claw that he plunged into a gap in the armor.
The Engineer thrashed wildly, breaking the tile floor with each hit. Malal withdrew a glowing orb from the armor. Light seeped out of the Engineer’s husk and into the ball. The armor collapsed to nothing but a mesh and a few plates, empty.
Malal held the Engineer’s essence up to the sky.
“Such potential…wasted!” Malal crushed the globe between his fingers and light oozed down his arm. Malal absorbed the light, then tossed a few shards of glass back to the deflated armor.
He picked up the governor and pressed it back into his chest, then went to the column of mottled light.
“What was that, Malal?” Stacey was on her side, her eyes glued to the Engineer’s remnants.
“You want the code to stop the drones. The Engineer had it. I can give it to you soon. I must digest all he has to offer.” Malal raised his hands and the golden lattices appeared. “Now to end the problem of the Xaros reinforcements.”
“You used me as bait!”
“You wanted the code. I told you this is where we would find it. What is the problem?”
“Why didn’t you let me in on this little plan of yours? You think I wanted to have my mind almost drained out by that-that-that…” she pointed a shaky finger at the Engineer’s remains.
“Raw emotion cannot be faked. If you knew the plan, the Engineer would have felt it in your aura. Your fear lured him in.”
“How did you know I wouldn’t hit your kill swi
tch when you gave me the chance?”
“You chose to survive beyond the limits of your flesh and blood. I knew what you would do given the choice between killing me and dying at the Engineer’s hand, or trusting me with the chance to live.”
“I didn’t choose this.” Stacey tapped her fingers against her cold metal chest.
“Then return to your old body.”
“I will die in seconds if that—” Stacey snapped her mouth shut. A very small moment of clarity touched her mind, and she understood what Malal was getting at. Her body was nigh-immortal. It could last for thousands on top of thousands of years, and she would rather live on like this than embrace the end.
She looked from Hale to Malal and realized that she had moved beyond the humanity of her birth. What Malal wanted out of his bargain with her and the Qa’Resh made a great deal more sense, even if the price still horrified her.
“Many of the other cities have fallen to time,” Malal said. “The world spirit is weak, but still useful.” The golden lattices faded away.
“That one doesn’t need to know.” Malal walked toward Hale. He waved a hand toward the Engineer’s armor and it began to burn away like a destroyed drone. His omnium body glowed slightly from within, dampening the surrounding shadows. “I dislike this one. He possesses a conscience that may interfere with our task.”
“That is why I care for him so much,” she said. “He is a good man. Not like you. Not like my grandfather…and not like me. Not anymore.”
“Prattle.” Malal swiped a thumb across Hale’s forehead as he walked to the door.
“—get out there and…what happened?” Hale pointed at the clear door where Orozco and Egan tapped at the outer wall. The rest of the Marines formed a perimeter around the door.
Malal stopped across from Egan and waited for the Marine to knock on the wall again. Egan’s hand went forward and bounced off Malal’s face.
The Marine reared back, raising his rifle.
“Jiminy Fricking Christmas!” Egan angled his muzzle away from Malal.
“Told you there was a door here.” Orozco glanced around Malal. “Captain and the VIP are both here.”
“Give me an update.” Hale stopped over the threshold. He ducked his head outside to gauge the size of the pyramid, then leaned back inside and confirmed that it really was bigger within.