Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven Part 4: Sacrificial Altars (Shattered Gates Volume 1 Part 4)

by Bryan S. Glosemeyer

  My body is my weapon.

  She squeezed tighter. The leg lock cut off blood flow to Grandfather Spear’s brain. First, he would struggle. Then he would pass out. Then brain damage. Then death. She wouldn’t need the dagger.

  Spear’s left arm was slick with blood, and he strained to slip it free. If she didn’t have the yarist gem still touching her skin, he would have easily slithered out of the choke and been crushing her again. But she did have the gem, and she held tight.

  “See me,” she grunted through clenched teeth. “See the killer you made.”

  Spear’s head swelled, turned red and bruised purple. Ams drooped, went slack. His entire weight started shifting slowly down. Even on the edge of blacking out, his silver eye never ceased staring into her.

  “I never wanted to be Handmaiden. I wanted to be you. I did what you said. Killed who you said. No more. Now I choose who to fight.” Tears pooled in her eyes, streamed down her cheeks, carrying bitter grit to her lips. “Who I kill.”

  Grandfather’s silver biomech eye, gifted from the Divine Masters in reward for faithful service, dimmed, rolled up into its socket.

  “Now I choose . . . Gods damn you! You killed Maia! You killed . . . We killed so many. I killed so many.”

  Spear’s engorged head hung limply in her legs and turned a dark, mean red.

  “I choose.” She pushed his limp, bloody torso off her.

  Sabira stood, grabbed the nihkazza and slid the blade into her belt. She found his palukai next, laying near Spear’s three severed fingers. Streaks of blood and grime covered its length. She wiped off what she could and configured the stick into a bladed assault rifle. She didn’t bother to wipe away the tears.

  Sabira stood over her blood-grandfather, his palukai in her hands, his blood on her tunic. He lay at her feet motionless. She felt powerful and terrible. Furious and sad. Battered and exhilarated. All at once.

  His remaining fingers twitched, then his leg. Normal color started slowly coming back to his scalp. He would live.

  “I choose,” she said, through tired, heaving breaths. “I choose.”

  43.

  MERCY.

  SUCH A foreign concept. Such a forbidden idea. Sabira stood there, awestruck by the strange power of it. She didn’t kill him—she couldn’t kill him—though he would have torn the heart from her chest to redeem his honor before their Masters.

  Mercy for the merciless. At least this once.

  Grandfather Spear roused himself to weak and battered consciousness. Rolled onto his back, breathing deep and heavy.

  She wondered if this was how she appeared to Cal and Ed that morning on the rooftop, when they could have killed Daggeira and her with a flick of the wrist. When they chose mercy. Even Cal, with a burning hatred for the Unity and its Servants, showed her mercy.

  Cal was right. We were all slaves, mind and body. Our choices, our identities, stolen from us. All of us. Even the killers. Even the true believers. We never had a choice.

  “I wish I could hate you, Grandfather,” she said. “I wish I could kill you for killing Maia. But you don’t know. How could you? It would be so much easier to hate you.” She paused, afraid to utter the words she needed to say. “But I forgive you.”

  “You dare?” Spear spat out a wad of bloody phlegm, between deep, gasping breaths. “You dare to forgive me? I gave you the stars. I should have left you to birth mine rats back in the tunnels. You have no right—no right—to offer me forgiveness. You are a shame to the bloodline.

  “You could have had everything. Everything. Now, you’ll be hunted. Destroyed. You’ll be nothing.”

  “I’ll be free,” she said.

  “Free? Free! Selfish arrogance. Look what it brings. Look around at what your selfishness cost. You could have conquered the stars for Heaven itself. And you choose this . . . this meaningless chaos.”

  From behind, a voice spoke her name. Sabira whirled, palukai ready. From a grank’s weapons platform, a glitchy holo projected Orion as if he was standing there.

  “Whoa whoa,” Orion said, “don’t kill the hologram. You’ll spook the granks. I just got them calmed down.”

  “You really were real.”

  “Orion Ex Machina, at your service. We have to get you all right the fuck out of here. We’re running out of time. Ed needs the cure, and the Monarchy—”

  “Did you do this?” She gestured at the widespread carnage around them.

  “The biomech animals were trickier than I expected,” he said. “Did you know they have two brains? But I got the hang of it. I’ll explain it all back on the Shishiguchi. But right now, we have to get your asses out of this mess.”

  Sabira wanted to scream. She wished she could squeeze his skinny hologram neck. “Are you drilled in the head? What were you thinking? You almost got us all killed. Maia almost . . .” Sabira’s throat clamped tight before she could finish. She remembered the heat of Maia’s chest melting away in a flash, her falling lifeless at her feet.

  “In case you didn’t notice, you all were going to get killed if I didn’t do this,” Orion protested. “I ran millions of simulations first. I knew just where the granks had to hit. I had it calculated. They were safest in those cages. And we can fix them up the rest of the way on my ship. Which you need to be getting to now.”

  “And what about all of them?” Sabira gestured at the thousands of mutilated and crushed bodies. “They were Human too. Do their lives mean nothing?”

  “Every one of them would have vaporized all of you in a second. We had zero chance of freeing those slaves. I’m sorry, but it’s true. And none of you had a chance of being free again unless we got them out of the way. Which I did. You’re welcome. Or did you have a plan for getting off a battleship filled with enemy soldiers I wasn’t aware of? Now stop wasting time or all this will be for nothing.”

  “He is right, Sabira.” Gabriel’s deep voice sounded weak, exhausted. He had followed the cleared-out grank trails to get to them. He held Edlashuul’s thin, shivering body cradled in his arms. “Orion, get this creature to kneel so I can lay him up there.”

  The grank that wasn’t projecting Orion’s holo shifted down onto his knees. Gabriel, as carefully as he could manage, lay Edlashuul down on the weapons platform. “Hold on just a little longer, Ed,” he whispered. “I have to take care of something first.”

  Gabriel, sucking in his swollen bottom lip, looked from Sabira to Spear to Sabira again. “No way in hell,” he grumbled before he bounded forward and kicked his shin across Spear’s jaw. The old man flopped back in a spray of blood and sweat and grit. Gabriel was on top of him, bludgeoning his head with the metal caps over his severed arms. With each hit he grunted, until the grunts became screams, until the screams became sobs. Beneath him, Spear’s face dripped with blood and shattered teeth.

  Sabira clubbed Gabriel in the ribs with the palukai. He doubled over and tumbled into a wall of debris. Tears and blood streaked down his face.

  “If I don’t kill him, you don’t!” Sabira screamed. She pointed the barrel of the stick at Gabriel’s chest. “Back off!”

  Gabriel pushed himself to his feet, visibly trying to staunch his tears. “Maia . . . That son of a bitch . . . killed Maia . . .”

  “I said no!” Sabira fired into the chalky air over Gabriel’s head.

  “Sabira, girl, you’ve got anger issues,” said Orion.

  Gabriel held out his arms as if he would be gesturing for peace and rationality, if he still had hands to gesture. “Sabira, you still have that gem. We know what it does to you. You know what it does. Please, stop touching it. We don’t have time to fight among ourselves.”

  “No.”

  “Sabira, I promise. I won’t kill this man. Just put the gem away. I don’t know why you want to spare Maia’s murderer, but I’ll do as you say.”

  Sabira clenched her fists. She didn’t like it but knew Gabriel was right. She bent down and reached inside her boot. A messy,
thick coat of blood and grime covered them. She pulled out the glowing blue yarist, bigger than any she had seen before, torn from the ceremonial armor of the Ihvgohn-Lo himself. The weapon that made her the weapon. If they lived, it would make a legendary trophy. Another part of her wanted to throw it as far into the wreckage as she could. She dropped it into her tunic pocket.

  The adrenaline crash hit soon after. Without the gem fueling her any longer, Sabira’s knees buckled, and her vision tunneled to just a pinprick of light before going black.

  When she could see again, she was on her knees. Spear lay a few meters in front of her, coated in the same blood and dust and grime that covered her. His silver eye stared at her, blank and unreadable. Gabriel was at her side too, saying something, asking nervous questions.

  “Help me stand,” she said. He hooked his forearm beneath her armpit and helped raise her up. His eye tightened, the only hint of the agony lifting her must have caused him. She placed a hand on his chest to steady herself while she waited for her vision to stop teetering.

  “I’m going back for Maia. I won’t leave her in this place,” said Gabriel.

  “We really need to hurry,” said Orion. “The Monarchy is just about—”

  The entire pyramid rattled sharply. Battle klaxons wailed down through the open holes in the upper decks.

  “Revise that. The Monarchy fleet’s here,” Orion said. “The counterattack has started.”

  “Orion, get this grank moving over to Maia, save us some time,” said Gabriel. The big war beast rose to its feet and plodded through the debris. “And then we’ve got to find the others and get to a ship.”

  The pyramid shuddered again. Piles of rubble slid and shifted. Grating and clashing sounds reverberated across the deck.

  “There’s not enough time,” said Orion.

  “I’ll go get them,” said Sabira. “Gabriel, get Maia’s body and take Ed to the drop ships. The hanger is that way.” She pointed with the barrel of the palukai. “The brig is a deck below. I’ll take the other grank and free them. We’ll be on the next dropper right behind you.”

  “She’s right, Gabe. It’s the best way,” Orion said. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her.”

  “I’ll see you on the Shishiguchi,” Gabriel said. He turned to follow as quickly as he could behind the grank.

  “Get on up. We can’t waste any more time.” Orion’s holo faded out, and the grank knelt down on its massive front knees.

  Sabira climbed the beast’s front leg up onto the platform. She got a good look at the glyphs stamped onto its horned face and recognized it immediately. The same one. The same godsdamned grank that had chased her through the pens and nearly trampled her. She wondered if the animal recognized her too.

  The ship rumbled, and klaxons screamed danger at whoever remained alive to hear. Roaring fireballs launched through the upper decks, throwing harsh, racing shadows through the smoke and dust clouds.

  “What do we do about the old man?” asked Orion’s disembodied voice after Sabira positioned herself behind the grank’s curving horns.

  “Just go,” she murmured. “We’ll leave him to his Gods.”

  The grank rose to its full height. It followed a cleared-out trail left by one of its fellows, into a newly created tunnel in the pen wall. Looking back as they left, she saw Grandfather Spear push himself to his feet. He stood, swaying, dazed, and watched her go. Their eyes locked across the expanding distance until all she could see was smoke and ruin.

  44.

  SABIRA COULDN'T SEE more than a few meters ahead of the beast's horns, not that she could steer the biomech one way or the other. It charged at nearly full speed through the tunnel. The thick mass of its stride and momentum undulated beneath her. She had to trust the grank, and Orion's control over it, not to smash through a bulkhead and spit them both out into cold vacuum.

  The deck floorings that separated each tier of the pyramid were more than three meters deep, stuffed with biomech conduits and machinery that kept the ship operating. The grank pens were recessed into the deck itself, so when the beasts plowed through the pen walls, they tore into the ship’s innards like a drill carving a tunnel through stone.

  Ruptured pipes and cables spewed thick clouds of steam and gases into the tunnel. The damaged biomech conduits oozed a noxious, blood-like oil. Small fires burned everywhere, adding more toxic fumes and stinging odors to the miasma. With one hand Sabira held the collar of her uniform tunic across her nose and mouth while keeping her palukai leveled and ready with the other.

  After stashing the yarist gem, exhaustion pulled at her bones. Sharp pains bit at every part of her. It wasn’t until she climbed on the grank that she realized a hundred cuts and bruises covered her entire body. Her head rang. Her heart raced. She remained as alert and cautious as she could, but the exhaustion made focus difficult. Sitting on the grank’s wide neck gave her some small bit of rest.

  The tunnel had been bored out by a pack of charging granks, rupture fields disintegrating everything they contacted. Armored plates and stomping hooves demolished everything else. Several grank tunnels veered off, causing the main shaft to narrow the further in they went. The tunnel shrank until it was barely wider than the beast itself.

  The grank abruptly stopped. The heavy momentum settling into its frame crashed like a wave beneath her and startled her back to full wakefulness. A transport shaft cut vertically through the tunnel before them.

  Orion’s hologram projected into the open air of the shaft, mocking the ship’s artificial gravity. “This is the best access point I could find to the lower deck,” he said. “With all the damage, I’m cut off from any systems below the grank deck. Losing contact with a lot of the upper decks too. Last I was able to see, there were five warseers at the far end down there. This side there were only two.”

  Sabira climbed down from the grank and inspected the shaft. The dark interior spanned farther, both above and below, than she could see. Most of the utility light strips were out, and smoke clogged the upper reaches. Portal doors for the transport lift were directly above and below her. The bored-out grank tunnel continued on the far side of the shaft.

  “So once I get down there, you’re telling me there are at least two—possibly up to seven—warseers between me and the brig?”

  “Yes,” Orion said. “Possibly seven. Probably two. Probably.”

  She might need the yarist again. The gem had already drained her, and if she used it now, she might black out. Though, if she didn’t, she might be slagged by seven Gohnzol-Lo. Better to wait, she decided, but be ready to use it without hesitation, if needed.

  “I can’t open any of the doors down there,” Orion said, “but these lift doors popped open from the force of the previous grank jumping across.” He gestured at the open shaft, the movements stuttering and glitchy.

  “I still may need to fight seven armed warseers.”

  “I pity them,” he said. “Do you know how you can get the brig doors open?”

  “I know a way.” Her face, caked in blood and fumes and grit, almost cracked a grin. Almost.

  All around them the ship’s structure abruptly jolted back and forth, accompanied by the echoes of deep, resonating thuds. The Zol-Ori was getting hammered, on the outside from the Monarchy and from the inside by wild, flying granks.

  The lift doors to the deck below warped out and over on themselves, creating a hole more than wide enough to get through. Sabira lowered herself down one-handed, keeping the stick level in front of her with the other hand as she dropped. Crouching in the corner, she took aim down the corridor. Most of the lights were blown, but here and there, a few sputtering light strips revealed a plain, empty corridor. Bulges periodically protruded from the ceiling for as far down as she could see. Grank tracks.

  Sabira stalked down the corridor, turned left at the first crossway. Ihziz-Ri glyphs on the walls directed her to the brig. A few working klaxons continued their panicked wail, punct
uated by automated calls to battle stations. She made it to the next crossway and stopped before passing the corner. The brig was close. According to the sign, it was just down the adjacent corridor. So far she hadn’t seen any warseers and worried she’d turn the corner and face all seven of them at once. The signs also indicated an armory at the opposite end of the cross corridor. The temptation to raid the armory first was short-lived. Another explosion rang the pyramid like a bell. No time. She wouldn’t be able to open the armory yet, anyway. The brig first, then more weapons.

  Sabira closed her eyes, took a long, deep breath to center her focus, and turned the corner to the brig. The hall was dark and empty and dead-ended at a pair of reinforced doors.

  “You, servant. Come here,” commanded a voice in Ihziz-Ri. “Report to the guard station.” To the right of the heavy doors, a horizontal panel slid back to reveal a single Gohnzol-Lo face studying her as she approached. “Move it, skin, move it. We’re under attack. Stop wasting time.”

  “Yes, warseer. Sorry, warseer.” She jogged the rest of the way to the brig’s entrance.

  “Godshit skin, what happened to you?”

  “The granks, warseer. They all malfunctioned during the ceremony. They’re tearing the ship apart from the inside. The Gods have seen me, I’m alive.”

  The heavy doors slid apart, revealed a small anteroom with another pair of heavy double doors on the far wall. Inside the anteroom, a single door on the right slid open, and the warseer stepped through.

  “I command you to take over guard duties,” he said. “I must get to my station. The other Gohnzol-Lo guards will return so—”

  She blasted her palukai point-blank into his guts. A hole the size of Sabira’s fist burned clear through his torso in a flash of light and bitter smoke. His three pale orange eyes stared at her, wide with shock, as he dropped to his knees. Sabira spun and slashed. The blade along the barrel of her palukai sliced flesh and bone. His head fell one way, his body the other. Dark and viscous arterial spray splattered green across the walls, coated her chest.