Baranak: Storming the Gates (The Above Book 2)

by Van Allen Plexico

  One of the figures in black backhanded her and she went down with a cry.

  Jerome was firing now; I decided he had his situation in hand and so I dove for the guy on the table.

  The Sister Superior was already up and out of her seat before I could get to the table. She spun to her left and her right foot lashed out, the toe pointed sharply. She caught her assailant in the throat and sent him hard to the floor, choking.

  I was impressed. I gave her a nod before turning back, just in time to be tackled by two more of the attackers in black. They drove me to the ground and I felt a blade bite into my upper leg. Not deep, I guessed, due to the exotic material the pants I was wearing were made from. But bad enough. All I could see as I went down, before the spinning stars supplanted my actual vision, was Jerome being swarmed over by a horde of them. He was still firing as he vanished from sight, and at least two of the guys in black lay dead or severely wounded on the floor before him.

  I couldn’t feel the real pain yet from the knife that had stabbed me but I knew it was only a matter of time—probably very little time. And even less time before one of the two guys that currently lay on top of me found a more vulnerable spot and got in a killing blow. If not for the golden armor I’d put on a short time earlier, I was sure I’d be dead already.

  I squirmed beneath them and fought to gain any small bit of leverage. With all my might I kicked up with both feet, pushing, shoving at one of them while with my arms I fought to fend off the other one’s dagger.

  I managed to kick the first one away but the other was in my face now, holding me down, pinning me. His fierce, burning eyes hovered but a few inches above mine and the tip of his blade came down slowly, slowly as I fought to push it away; it descended so slowly yet so quickly, and was mere millimeters from my chest. And then a dark boot kicked that masked face and he flipped backward and off of me.

  I made it to my feet in time to see the Sister Superior taking down the attacker she’d just removed from me with a quick volley of deadly kicks. Impressive. I looked behind her and saw that the other corinda, Halaini, appeared to be okay. She was certainly not the fighter that her colleague was; but then, based on what I had seen in the past few seconds, few were. Then I looked the other way and saw that Jerome had vanished entirely beneath a scrum of black-clad assailants. I crossed the distance between us in a flash and grasped the robes of the figure nearest to me, jerking him back. As he looked around and into my face, I decked him with a right cross.

  Now I could see the bottoms of Jerome’s legs. They were still moving, still kicking. That, at least, was a good sign. I cursed when I realized I’d been in the armory earlier and hadn’t been able to acquire a weapon, since they’d all been locked away. Now I had to deal with what looked to be half a dozen remaining bad guys and I had nothing but my fists with which to fight. Frantically I looked around, seeking anything that could be improvised into a weapon. Nothing of any real use presented itself.

  But I had to do something. Jerome was still fighting, fending off at least four of the killers—the Sister Superior, I could see, was currently fighting the other two—while I stood useless. Cursing, I roared and grasped the next guy down on the pile atop Jerome, pulling him back and punching him hard in the face before he could react or defend himself.

  Something changed then. I can only imagine it was that they felt Jerome was done for. The others began to rise from the pile and turned to face me. I could see my uncle then, lying there unmoving, either unconscious or dead. I wanted to feel badly for him but I didn’t have the time, because the assassins now clearly wanted to put me in the same state. I glanced quickly behind me and saw that the Sister Superior was thoroughly engaged with the two still on their feet over there. This was all on me—live or die.

  I raised my fists, ready to go down punching. The assassins in black charged.

  And then a new shape emerged from the shadows, and a golden light appeared and swept out. I saw that light and I knew it instantly. It was the sword, radiant and gleaming, and Istari the Renegade, my traveling companion of late, wielded it.

  And wield it he did, like a scythe, like he was the Grim Reaper and for my four assailants the time had come. The golden blade swung back and forth and the figures in black robes screamed and fell, and blood fountained as they did.

  As I watched him I thought once again how peculiar that such a slender, frail-looking figure could carry and use such a heavy weapon. Yet Istari wielded the golden sword as easily as if it were nothing more than a small knife.

  Mere seconds later, all the assassins were down, some in pieces. I turned from staring at their bodies to address Istari, but before I or anyone else could say a word, all of the felled killers erupted in flames.

  A mere moment’s shock and hesitation and then I leapt for Jerome’s unmoving form and began dragging him away from the fire. The Sister Superior joined me quickly, helping to move him, while Istari merely looked on, frowning. The flames roared hot and fast over the bodies but for some reason didn’t catch on the carpet or walls—something for which I was grateful.

  The taller corinda was staring up at the wraithlike, alien Istari, her eyes wide, even as I began to check my uncle’s vital signs. He was alive, though I could see he had sustained multiple stab wounds.

  At that moment, and seconds too late to actually be of any use, help finally arrived. Six men and women in the royal blue uniforms of the house security guards charged around the corner from the stairs, pistols drawn. They came up short as they saw the situation. All the black-clad attackers were down, their bodies now almost entirely disintegrated. The fires were going out.

  As the guards rushed over to Jerome’s side and I stepped back from him, I started to demand what had taken them so long. Then I saw their condition and I bit my tongue. They were worse off even than we were. Their uniforms were disheveled, bloody in spots and cut in places almost to ribbons. Every one of them looked as if he or she had gone at least a dozen rounds in a top-ranked boxing match. I absorbed this information and I reeled; clearly we here in the dining hall hadn’t been the only targets of these attackers. How many more of them, I wondered, had suddenly appeared in other areas of the palace? And how many of our guards were now down—wounded or worse?

  I cast another quick glance at Jerome and saw that two of the guards were acting as medics now; they’d brought emergency response equipment with them in anticipation that one or more of us would be needing it. The near-frantic way they were working on him indicated to me that he was still alive—a fact that seemed nigh-miraculous, given what he’d suffered. Then I turned to our tall alien guest and fixed him with a look that, I hoped, carried with it all the anger I felt at the moment. “Who,” I demanded, “were those guys?”

  “Assassins of the Church,” the Sister Superior answered before Istari could speak.

  We both looked at her. She was bruised in places and still catching her breath, but she appeared to be intact. “You know them?” I asked, surprised.

  “I know of their kind,” she said.

  Sister Halaini, who alone among us all had come through the crisis unscathed, stepped up next to her. “They are Purifiers,” she said. “Secret warriors of the Holy Church. They arm themselves with the sacred daggers of the high sept, and nothing more. It is their tradition.”

  I looked at her and something in my mind pinged. “You called them ‘we.’”

  The two women looked at me. Halaini nodded.

  “I did. They were part of our Church. I thought I could warn them that no legitimate targets of their wrath dwelled here—that their assignment must have been a mistake.”

  “Assignment?” I asked. Now the Sister Superior was looking at her, too.

  “I assumed they were assigned by the Church to come here—to kill you all, and I wanted to stop them,” Halaini explained, blushing now. “But they didn’t listen to me.”

  I could see the bruise on her cheek where one of them had hit her and knocked her down.

/>   “She meant well,” the taller woman said. “But clearly these were not from the Church on our world. They were rogue elements, perhaps, or from your own planet, or—”

  “I think there’s less of a difference among the Churches of the various worlds than you might guess,” I told them both. “I just wonder how they got in here.” I looked around, then, “That ties into what I’ve been learning in my recent travels with my new friend here.” I nodded toward Istari. He bowed.

  They stared at him unabashedly. Meanwhile I leaned in and inquired as to Jerome’s condition. I was informed that he had lost a lot of blood and was unconscious but stable.

  I exhaled deeply and gritted my teeth.

  Then I began to wonder where Aurelia had gotten off to. Jerome had said he was to meet her here, but instead of my aunt, he’d encountered an assassin squad armed with daggers. Interesting.

  Quite a few members of the house’s staff had come out now into the dining hall and were gathering about. Some were buzzing about Jerome’s injuries—particularly his chief adjutant and intelligence advisor, a colonel by the name of Markos—but most were gawking at Istari. At least, I saw, he’d put the sword away. I turned to him and started to address him—I cannot tell you what I was going to say, though—when a shrill, nearly deafening alarm reverberated throughout the hall.

  The guards that weren’t directly involved in assisting my uncle stood and drew their pistols once more, instantly on guard. I looked about wildly, wondering what could possibly be happening now.

  “That’s the attack siren,” the nearest guard told me, shouting over the sound of it.

  “Okay, well—it’s a little late,” I shouted back. “Turn it off.”

  He spoke a few very loud words into the mic at his collar and a second later the wailing ceased. I shook my head, my ears still vibrating. I could see that he was listening to a report coming back from the other end of the line.

  “What was that?” the Sister Superior asked, scowling.

  I held up my hand to hold her off for a moment and turned back to the guard, whose name badge read LOHANDAR. He was nodding as he spoke into his mic and his face grew ashen.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “It wasn’t about this—whatever it was—my lord,” he reported, gesturing to the blackened spots on the floor where the assassins had burned. “It was the orbital sensor warning.”

  I blinked at this. “Orbital—?”

  Another trooper, this one with eyes wide and nearly hyperventilating, rushed in and informed me, “The defense platforms in orbit have detected a ship passing through the Sarmata Gate and firing an array of missiles, my lord. They are hyper-velocity warheads, and—” He looked away for a moment, his hand to one ear, indicating he was receiving more information, probably from the same source as the first guard. His eyes were wide as he looked back at me. “They are quantum warheads,” he said.

  “Quantum—?” I frowned at this and looked past the man to where Jerome still lay on the floor, the two medics working on him. I really needed his expertise and guidance at the moment. Unfortunately, those things were unavailable because of his current condition. That also meant everyone would be looking to me to make the decisions. And I wasn’t even entirely sure I understood what they were talking about.

  “Quantum warheads,” I repeated, frowning, not linking the sound of those words together. I stepped up to the first trooper and looked him directly in the eyes. “What exactly are we facing here?”

  He looked about ready to jump out of his skin. He pulled himself together and managed, “Hyper-velocity quantum missiles are something your father has been working on for some time; long enough for our sensors to recognize the type of weapon when it encounters them.”

  “So what does that mean for us?” I asked, growing impatient.

  “It means that, if they are targeted on this palace, or this city around us—” He paused, shook his head. “We are all dead.”

  “Can’t our defense screens deflect them? Or the weapons platforms shoot them down?”

  “No,” he said, shaking his head slowly. “They’re quantum-state and hyper-velocity. They can’t be blocked or targeted by defensive systems.”

  “And there’s a whole swarm of them inbound,” the other guard added, swallowing with difficulty.

  I started thinking about evacuation methods—ways to get out of the palace, out of the city, out of the general area before it was too late. We had spacecraft and aircraft and a few other high-speed vehicles down in the basement facilities...

  “How much time do we have before they arrive?” That seemed the most pertinent question I could ask at the moment, so I asked it.

  The second trooper was listening to something on his earpiece again. “Less than five minutes,” he reported.

  “Five minutes?” I felt the ground sliding out from under me. That was barely enough time to even get down to the hangar bays of the lower levels of the palace, much less fire up a vehicle or two and fly it anywhere. And how many people were currently in the palace? I looked around and could easily count a hundred, maybe more, now milling about in the dining hall and adjoining areas. I felt truly sick inside, because I knew they and I were all about to die and there wasn’t a thing I could do about—

  My eyes settled on Istari then. He was looking right back at me. And he was offering that same sly smile I’d seen so many times already on our travels.

  Of course.

  A glimmer of hope made its way through the gloom pervading my mind and brightened me. The Paths.

  But—could he lead so many people through behind him? Could he open the way here, inside the palace? If not, did we have time to get everyone down and out onto the lawn or beyond? I had no idea how it all worked. But I didn’t see that we had any other options.

  These and more thoughts were running through my head when I heard a whispering voice. It took me a moment to recognize it as Istari’s voice, because I was looking directly at him and his lips weren’t moving. He was speaking to me telepathically, so that only I could hear.

  “I believe,” he was saying, “that it is time for the two of us to leave this place.”

  NINE

  I nearly punched him.

  “Time for the two of us to leave,” he’d said.

  With the clock ticking down and no other way to avoid the oncoming storm of destruction, my alien companion was suggesting that he and I simply run away.

  That was not happening.

  I wasn’t about to abandon my family members and the house staff to that fate. Not if one potential avenue of escape remained.

  “They’re all coming with us,” I told the alien who stood before me, and I jabbed him in the chest with my forefinger as I said it. “We’re not leaving anybody behind.”

  For a second he looked as if he would object, but then he nodded ever so slightly in acquiescence. “Very well,” he said, “but we must hurry.” He raised the golden sword and pointed it at a shadowy alcove across from the stairs. “Have everyone pass through that doorway. But I must go first, to open the Path.”

  “Doorway?” I frowned. “There’s no doorway over there—” And then I looked more closely and my eyes bugged.

  An old, weathered door occupied the center space of the wall, almost hidden in the shadows. It looked nothing like any of the hundreds of other very elegant, carved doors that could be found throughout the palace.

  I rubbed at my eyes, very certain that no door at all had stood there previously.

  “Oh, it’s been there for some time,” Istari said, as if reading my mind—something I didn’t consider outside the realm of possibility by any means. “But it was hidden. Hidden, you might say, in plain sight. By another of my associates. The one who has visited here and met with one of your family members on numerous occasions, I would imagine.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Fortunately,” he added, “I noticed it immediately.”

  I nodded. “Where does it l
ead?”

  “Somewhere not about to be struck by quantum warheads,” he replied.

  I didn’t like the sound of that either, but there was no time to discuss it now. “Fine. Go,” I told him, pointing toward the newly visible door. “Lead them on. I’ll bring up the rear and round up all the stragglers.”

  I ordered the guards to access the house PA system and call everyone there as quickly as they could possibly come, leaving anything and everything behind. Fortunately the earlier alarm already had drawn many of them out into the hallways or down to our location, so they didn’t have as far to go. Within a matter of moments we had quite a crowd assembled there in the main hall.

  Getting their attention, I told the palace staff and others present to follow my strange friend to safety, and not to worry about his rather outlandish appearance along the way. I gave them my assurance that all would be well.

  I honestly had no idea if what I was telling them was true at all.

  Istari opened the door and passed through. I couldn’t see what lay beyond. The two medics carried Jerome’s limp body through next. A line of people, four wide until they reached the doorway, piled through behind them. They all seemed confused. Why wouldn’t they be? Why would they think that following a strange alien through an old doorway in the palace could possibly lead them to safety? I kept reassuring them to just trust us and go.

  Within about ninety seconds most of them had passed through. Meanwhile I was racing about the areas immediately surrounding the dining hall, shouting for anyone else to come on and come on now. Another half-dozen responded—mostly older people looking confused and afraid—and I bustled them toward the doorway, where they caught up with the last few waiting to pass through. Then, concluding that I’d rousted out as many as reasonably possible, if not all, and in any case that I had lingered long enough, I sprinted for the doorway. The last clump of staff members was waiting to go through; probably a couple dozen men and women.

  Aurelia, I thought then. Where had she gone? And—hadn’t she mentioned Stephanie having been there, too? I had seen neither of them, and certainly Aurelia at least would’ve spoken up in the last few minutes if she’d been present. I hesitated for an instant, then ran over to a house communications panel on the wall to my right and activated the PA system.