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

by Bryan S. Glosemeyer

  After closing the main doors, Sabira picked up the warseer’s head by one of his horns. The orange eyes, though vacant now, continued to stare, bulging with terrified disbelief. She held the severed head, so it faced the interior doors. A red beam automatically scanned over it, and the doors slid open.

  Shadows jerked across the brig corridor. One remaining light strip sputtered erratically along the ceiling and dripped burnt, bioluminescent globs down the walls. Nine cell doors ran down either side of the corridor. She had never been in the brig before, but it looked similar to the quarantine cells they had kept her in. One by one, she held the Gohnzol-Lo’s face before the cell doors to open them. The first three were dark and empty. When she opened the fourth, a scream of terror greeted her.

  Dawn, Coraz, Torque, and Playa sat huddled together in the back corner of the dark cell. Only the stuttering light from the corridor shed any illumination within. Thin, gray tunics had replaced the soft colors of their embassy clothes. Dawn continued to scream, vainly trying to scramble farther back into the wall. Coraz held her protectively.

  A thudding boom echoed all around. Sabira realized how she must look: a silhouette smeared in gore, a gun in one hand and a severed head in the other. Before she could speak, Dawn screamed again, curling herself around her belly.

  “Just be quick and finish it already,” shouted Playa.

  “No—” started Sabira before Dawn’s cries cut her off again.

  “Sabira?” asked Torque.

  A deep rumble rocked the ship. The floor lurched beneath them. Sabira stumbled forward but managed to stay on her feet. Torque ran into her full force, wrapping her arms around her, yelling Sabira’s name over and over, and they stumbled back against the wall. A hundred wounds screamed in pain all at once. She dropped the head and embraced Torque with her free arm, squeezing her tight despite the burning pains.

  “Sabira? What happened, girl?” asked Coraz, rising to ahns feet. “You’re covered in . . .”

  “I’m alright. Is anyone injured?”

  “No one’s hurt,” said Coraz. “Terrified. But not hurt.”

  Playa helped Dawn to her feet. Tears streamed down their faces as they came forward and joined the embrace. Coraz, also tearing up, joined in the group hug. Sabira didn’t want it to end.

  “We have to go.” Sabira reluctantly pulled herself from the collective embrace. “Where are the boys?”

  Torque pulled away, her tunic now covered in blood and grit. “Just across the hall,” she said.

  “Good. I’ll go get them.” Sabira picked up the severed head. “Start helping Dawn out. We’ll meet in the anteroom. Go.”

  When she opened the door across the way, a swift, angry blur launched forward and tackled her hips. Fighting instincts nearly slammed down the butt of her stick on his spine, but she pulled back. She dropped the severed head and wrapped her forearm under Cal’s waist and lifted him off his feet.

  “Stop stop stop. It’s me, you crazy mine rat,” she said.

  Zonte burst from the cell, ran around Sabira to the other door, and fell into Playa’s arms. They both cried as they kissed.

  “Sabira, is it really you?” asked Rain from inside the cell.

  “As real as I’ve ever been. But we must go now. Rain, Derev. Now.” She tried to turn away, but Cal still clung to her, no longer struggling, but burying his face into her ribs, squeezing her waist. Before she could pry herself free, Rain grabbed her by the shoulders.

  “Thank you, Sabira,” he whispered. “Our champion.”

  Another impact rippled through the ship. “There’s no time. We have a way out, but we must hurry,” she said.

  Derev emerged last from the cell. Wordlessly, he grabbed Cal’s hands, loosened them from Sabira’s waist, and pulled him toward the exit.

  “No, wait!” Cal yanked free and ran back into the dark cell. Returned a moment later with the eeshl clutched to his chest.

  They all gathered into the anteroom. Sabira stepped into the guard station, holding the severed head in one hand, palukai in the other. The security displays were all dead. She peered through the window to make sure the outside corridor remained empty.

  “There’s an armory at the far end,” she said. “We go there first, but we have to be quick. Coraz, you stay with Dawn at the crossway and keep lookout. After that, down the corridor to the lift. There’s a biomech waiting for us. We’ll ride it to the hangers on the grank deck. Orion’s ship is nearby. Gabriel and Ed are already on their way.”

  “Ed! Is he alright?” asked Cal.

  “He’s hurt and sick, but he’s alive. Orion has a cure for him. He has a cure for all the Vleez.”

  “You didn’t mention Maia. What about Maia?” asked Rain.

  Sabira’s throat contracted. She could only manage to shake her head. Even in the dark room, she could see the sting of loss on every face.

  Sabira led them to the armory, opened it with the warseer’s face, then tossed the head away. Inside, she grabbed palukai for Zonte, Rain, Derev, and Torque. She configured the sticks into assault rifles and gave them a quick lesson in firearms: Only point it at what you want to kill, then press the trigger. She also confiscated a bandolier of grenades for herself and a handful of field medic kits for Coraz and Dawn to carry.

  “Give me a gun, too,” Cal insisted.

  “How about this.” Sabira handed him a sheathed combat knife. “Press it here, and then hold it against the side of your leg for a second. It’ll stay attached until you press there again.”

  The pyramid rocked and lurched beneath them five times on the way back to the shaft doors. The big hits were coming more frequently now. What little time they had burned away faster and faster.

  Dawn balked when she saw the hole she had to lift herself through. Insisted there was no way she could get through and pull herself up.

  “I’ll go up first and help lift you,” said Sabira. “It’s not far.”

  “And I can help lift from below,” offered Derev, speaking for the first time since their liberation from the brig.

  “Don’t you worry, Dawn, no one is being left behind,” said Rain.

  Sabira instructed that someone should post lookout at the crossway while she went up. Torque volunteered and jogged a few meters to the intersection. Once Torque was in position, Sabira braced her feet on the inner lips of the warped doors and pulled her head up over the lip. The grank was still there. It had already turned itself around to face back the way they had come. The bore tunnel was widened where it had turned, a cavity scooped out of the side where the rupture field had passed.

  No signs of warseers. A stirring of hope sprouted through the heavy fatigue. Orion’s plan, as crazy and destructive as it was, had worked so far. Maybe they really had a chance. She gave the all clear, tossed her palukai near the grank’s feet, then pulled herself the rest of the way up.

  With Derev and Rain lifting from the bottom, and Sabira pulling from the top, Dawn came up without much difficulty. Then Coraz and Playa. Cal insisted that the eeshl come up before him. The respirator still hung from her neck. The little, six-legged creature scampered around and clicked her mandibles excitedly beside Sabira as she pulled up Cal. Zonte was next. Sabira told him to take lookout near the grank as Coraz and Playa helped Dawn climb atop the weapons platform.

  They had just gotten Dawn into place when Torque’s screams echoed up the shaft. “They’re coming! Warseers! Warseers!”

  The sizzling whine of plasma fire punctuated her cries.

  45.

  A CACOPHONY OF screams and disintegrating metal erupted below them. The warped-open doors spasmed under fire, burst free, and fell, ablaze and spinning, down the black shaft. A phase-shifting hum of return fire followed. Between volleys, Torque’s agonized shrieks punctuated chaos.

  “Derev! Go get her!” Rain shouted over the sizzling whine. “Stay down! Down!”

  “Hold on!” Sabira reached for her stick. “I’m coming!”<
br />
  “Sabira no!” shouted Playa.

  Coraz hurried to her side. “Wait, don’t,” ahn insisted. “We can’t lose you, girl. We lose you, we lose everyone.”

  “Don’t leave us,” pleaded Dawn from atop the grank. Beside her, Cal stared with wide, fierce eyes.

  The screeching chaos of the firefight below roared on. Even drained to her core, with every muscle and joint burning, the battle called to her. A mental flash of her holding the yarist to her bare, scarred breast with one hand, the palukai spitting death in the other, the warseers dying at her feet.

  Is that who I really am?

  “Sabira,” called Derev. “Torque’s hurt. Help me lift her.”

  She handed her stick to Coraz and turned to kneel. Hanging her head out into the shaft, she spied Derev to her left, looking up at her, the fear and desperation plain on his face. Rain crouched on her lower right, firing ceaselessly down the corridor. Return fire sizzled past them, the far side of the transport shaft exploding into clouds of white-hot vapor.

  Once Derev saw Sabira, he hunched partially out of her sight and lifted something heavy. When he turned back, he held Torque cradled in his thick arms. Sabira reached down, took her left hand, and pulled. Torque’s face hung slack, her skin clammy with sweat, eyes unfocused. Her right arm ended in a crude, black stump just below her elbow.

  Sabira felt like a fist clenched inside her chest, squeezing the breath from her lungs with its tight, horrified grip. After all the carnage of the past hour—drill me, has it been less than an hour?—the acute connection to Torque’s suffering came as an unexpected shock. They were brood now, but there was more to it. They had drunk eon together. They were entangled in ways she was still discovering.

  Sabira pulled her friend the rest of the way up. Coraz and Playa were immediately at her side. A volley of plasma bolts burst into the shaft below them, followed by a howl of pain.

  “Derev? Derev!” yelled Rain.

  “My leg! Oh shit, my leg!” Derev growled.

  “I’ve got her.” Playa kneeled to pick up Torque. She and Coraz carried her to the grank.

  Sabira shifted over to the other side of the tunnel and knelt above Rain. She pulled a grenade from her bandolier. “Here. Catch.” She lobbed the grenade into the old man’s open hand. “When I say, twist the top part, and throw it at the intersection. Then cover your eyes, and turn away.”

  She turned back to the others. “Everybody take cover behind the grank now. Quick!” Once they were all in position, she called for Rain to throw it.

  “Everyone cover your eyes!”

  Sabira turned away, buried her closed eyes into the crook of her arm, feeling exposed and vulnerable without her armor. The visor filters would have allowed her to look straight at a blast without damaging her eyes. As long as she was more than a meter outside the blast radius, the plating would have protected her from the radiant heat. Since servant armor was crafted from grank plates, huddling behind the war beast was their best and only protection. For Rain’s and Derev’s sakes, Sabira could only hope that he had thrown the grenade far enough.

  A shockwave of heat and light flared all around them.

  Silence.

  “Dancer’s tits. Look at that,” said Zonte.

  Sabira opened her eyes and looked for her people. Playa and Torque were balled up behind the grank’s left hind leg, Coraz and Zonte behind the right. Dawn and Cal huddled together up top. Everyone had a slightly dazed look on their faces but no new injuries.

  About six meters past the grank, a steaming emptiness had replaced the tunnel floor. A four-meter diameter circle of glowing, hot metal circumscribed the hole and continued arcing up, forming a burned-out dome in the wreckage of the tunnel.

  The grank bellowed but remained still. In the distance, deep thuds continued to echo through the pyramid. No sounds of incoming fire resumed below.

  “Rain. Derev. Are you alright?” Sabira called down.

  “A little cooked, but still alive,” Rain answered. “Derev was hit.”

  “I’m still here,” said Derev, his voice straining with hurt. “Most of me, at least.”

  “Get ready. I’m going to lift him up,” Rain said.

  Sabira and Rain helped lift Derev up to the tunnel. Sabira laid him down as gently as she could. Derev clenched his jaw shut tight, struggling to stifle the gasps of agony that came with every movement. Unlike Torque, his limb remained attached, though a chunk of his knee and calf had been scorched away, leaving an ugly, blackened cavity.

  “I was wrong,” Derev said through gritted teeth. “You came for us. To save us.”

  “Don’t be hasty,” she said. “None of us are saved yet. Coraz, Playa, come help.”

  The others gingerly lifted Derev up on the grank, positioned him next to Torque along its spinal ridge. Zonte remained at the foot of the beast, palukai ready.

  “You next, old man,” Sabira called down. “Let’s get you out of there and get off this godsdamned pyramid.”

  “I’ll meet you halfway.” Rain handed up the palukai first. It was warm to the touch, almost too hot to hold for long. He found a foothold in the frame and hoisted himself up.

  Sabira reached down and grabbed his arm. “Got you,” she grunted, pulling hard.

  Rain’s body jerked violently in her hands. Jets of vapor sprayed from his back, haloed by mists of seared flesh and bone. His arms slipped through her sweaty grasp. Sabira grabbed his hand with both of hers and fell hard onto her chest.

  Rain looked past her, his face calm, serene. “My brood,” he whispered. “I see you.”

  A volley of plasma bolts tore through the lift entrance. Pieces of him disappeared into vapor and ash before her eyes. His body, lurching madly into the open air from the barrage of fire, tore free from her grip and fell, silently disappearing into the darkness below.

  46.

  EVEN AS SABIRA cried his name into the black, more plasma bolts shot up through the hole in the tunnel floor. The others were far enough back from the hole’s melted rim to be angled out of range. But only just. Vapor and hot shrapnel blossomed from every impact and rained down on their heads.

  Should you find yourself before the Shattered Gates of Heaven, may the—

  A jolt of voices called out her name. No time yet to pray for the ones she had failed.

  “Everyone on top of the grank!” she yelled. “On top! On top!”

  Sabira and Zonte made it atop the grank’s wide back last, each scrambling up the weapons platform on either side of the biomech.

  “Everyone grab hold of something. Orion, let’s go. Jump over the hole!”

  The grank reared back its thick, tri-horned head and bellowed. Beneath them, the beast tilted to the left, then to the right, shuffling its hooves into a tighter alignment. With her left hand, she gripped the platform’s edge, with her right she pulled free a grenade. She waited expectantly for the grank to spring forward. Instead, as it shuffled it was rotating itself back around. Steaming bits of metal continued to scatter over them as the plasma bolts seared into the tunnel ceiling.

  Orion’s holo projected onto the air. “Not that way. No way it’ll hold our weight. Too damaged. Better chances jumping the shaft. It’s damaged too, though, so don’t worry, it’ll still be terrifying.”

  “What? You don’t sound very sure,” said Sabira.

  “Don’t glitch. She can make it. Right, girl?” said Orion.

  The grank bellowed, finishing its rotation back to face the transport shaft.

  “Here we go,” said Orion. “Keep holding on.”

  “Wait,” Sabira commanded. “Give us a countdown.”

  “Sure. Takeoff in five . . .”

  “This grank shit still has to die.” Sabira twisted the grenade, arming it, and winged it through the blast hole. “Shut your eyes!”

  “. . . two, one.”

  The grank bounded forward to the bent lip of the shaft and sprang its armored bulk int
o the air.

  Sabira squeezed shut her eyes. Flash-incinerated metal screamed and the biomech tilted and lurched as a shockwave of heat and light blasted over them. Bellowing, the grank landed heavily on the far side. The hard lurch of impact replaced the loping rise and fall of running. She opened her eyes to look back. The dark transport shaft receded away into the miasma. No return fire chased their exit.

  Rain’s last words haunted her. Had he really seen his dead brood-brother and sister in vision, and then again here, moments before his death?

  Thudding echoes and rumblings continued all around them, melded into a background din of hypnotic, ambient doom. She was so tired. The deep fatigue, the rhythmic sway of the running biomech, and the nonstop, droning booms all merged into one discordant soundscape, lulling her into a shocked trance. It became harder to hold a thought, stay focused. Easier to slip away from the fresh memories of the old man falling, of Maia burning. Easier to let herself drift deep into blank, dark numbness.

  “Sabira, Sabira.” The voice was vague, indistinct. A hand grasped hers. “Don’t die. Please don’t die. We need you.”

  Like lifting a heavy stone up from the mineshafts, she opened her eyes. Cal, the eeshl still tucked to his chest, sat over her, rocking with anxiety. She managed a brief, faint smile. The grime and dried blood cracked across her cheeks.

  “Don’t you worry,” she said. “I’m not . . . I’m staying. Just need rest.”

  “There’s so much blood.”

  “I know,” she said. “Not all mine.”

  They traveled through another tunnel bored into the ship by the previous granks, back around to the pens. Coming out of the tunnel, seeing the vast carnage, the others all gasped as one.

  As a young mine rat, the Chosen had told Sabira stories of the hellish Vleez planets. Horrific images had haunted her dreams, images eerily similar to what stretched before her now. But she was the one that had brought forth this hell to her people. Not demons. Not Vleez. Her.