by Scott Moon
“This is stupid!” Rickson said as he staggered from a slash to his arm, then held it to slow the flow of blood.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Shock Trooper Down
REBECCA looked to her right and saw the Ror-Rea princess watching the battle with pain, regret, and anger on her face. She was beautiful, even though her back bent under the pressure of her mistake. Rebecca didn’t understand her power — didn’t need to. Clavender was the only one who could move so many living creatures between Crashdown and the Ror-Rea. This was her fault.
She understood shapeshifters well enough to know she didn’t like them. Trust them? Hell no. As the battle intensity increased from one end of the field to the other — war cries growing louder, numbers of Wingers on the attack increasing — Rebecca spat into her reclamation tube. To her right was Clavender. Far away to her left was something that looked like Clavender but wasn’t. Kin was being drawn into the middle of a fight he couldn’t survive, much less win. Before long, the real Clavender would be forced to toss the Reaper horde through a wormhole and Kin would find himself separated from reinforcements.
Rebecca slapped Dogface on the arm, then Mikey-Danny on his chest plate. “Let’s get Kin.”
“Wish we had our Mechs,” Dogface said.
“I second that request,” Mikey-Danny said. “I feel small in this gear.”
Rebecca ignored the byplay and jumped from the ledge, landing so hard that the impact dampers of the FSPAA-IIA overloaded and vibrated from the soles of her boots to the top of her helmet. The Reaper she landed on fared much worse. The dark blood of Hellsbreach squirted like a starburst across the ground. Stumbling, catching her balance with one hand, she slid on a knee and ducked as a swarm of enemies came over her lowered position. Nearby, Dogface and Mikey-Danny were flinging bullets on parallel courses just above her head. She stayed low and stayed alive.
There had been only a few times when crawling in modern armor became necessary. The sensation was strange, like getting lost in a tunnel as it collapsed. She could hear and feel her friends marching a pace behind, clearing a space with their heaviest weapons.
Both men stopped to reload. Rebecca sprang to her feet, rushed a group of Reapers. She used her peripheral vision to aim at two individuals, sending them to hell even as she smashed forward to strike the middle creature with her helmet.
I am such a badass in this armor. She wondered what her adversaries would think if they saw she was just a little girl — toughened physically, mentally, and emotionally by combat — but just a girl.
“I am glad to hear you laughing again!” Dogface yelled over the radio.
“Battle bitch!” Mikey-Danny.
“Settle down, MD. You know how you are when you get carried away.”
“Oorahhh! Motherfuckerskissmyballs!” Mikey-Danny yelled.
Rebecca smiled as she killed everything that crossed her path.
Wingers came to help, then abandoned Rebecca’s area of dominion. “Pick up the pace!”
Dogface and Mikey-Danny complied. Rebecca almost forgot what they had come here for. “Get Kin!”
“They’re pushing back,” Dogface said. “We can’t hot-dog this shit all day.”
“Ahhhhhh!” Rebecca bulldozed her way through a crowd of Reapers that had stopped to feed. She kicked one while it was down, punting his head across the battlefield. “This is the last time!”
“Rebecca,” Dogface said.
“Kill! Them! All!” she screamed, firing weapons with her right and left hands at the same time.
Mikey-Danny flinched as a bullet caromed off his helmet. “Ouch!”
“You are not in a Mech!” Dogface screamed.
When she heard him, her stomach felt empty and sour. Shock Trooper Mech units were the expression of pure battle rage, the center of the wedge and called upon to drive through enemy formations. It was strange to realize Dogface was the calming force this time.
He was right. She wasn’t in one of the large Earth Fleet Mechanized Units that not only possessed more mass but carried more ammunition.
“Okay. Okay,” she said.
“Are you back?” Dogface asked.
“Yeah. I’m back. We need to link up with Dax’s warriors and have them work our flanks.”
“Fuck!” Mikey-Danny said, stomping a foot. “I liked it better when she was a battle whore.”
“Battle bitch, you cock,” she said. “Dogface, step out of formation. You are my Winger liaison officer now. MD, you and me. We’re going to keep Droon’s pieces-of-shit busy until we can get this party started.”
“It was started,” Mikey-Danny sulked.
“That was more of an orgy,” Dogface said. “Becca, watch that ridge. It’s full of boogies and we need to pass it to reach your boyfriend.”
“Copy that.”
The Wingers swooped into line as though they had been waiting for the humans to regain their sanity. Dogface rejoined the shooting line, and they pressed forward quickly and methodically. Wingers protected their flanks and launched textbook-perfect counter attacks. Kin was so close now that Rebecca shouted at him.
“Kin! We’re coming for you!”
She saw the fire before the words left her mouth. Her brain was slow to process the image. Looking back in the flash-moment way her mind worked during stress, she remembered seeing a more distant and smaller version of the giant, flame-covered Reaper. Now it stood on the horizon — well above the lowland area of her current situation — like a titan of bad destiny. Before, there had been fire in its eyes, an occasional flicker from the seams of its body. Now it burned like a torch, hot — going red to blue to I’m-gonna-kill-everything.
“It’s beautiful,” Mikey-Danny said. He stared with his weapons ready.
“Shoot it!” Rebecca screamed. She moved to get an angle that would allow her to attack without killing her squad mate. The Reaper burned brighter, the flames reaching higher and straighter than before. It charged.
Mickey-Danny threw up both arms to shield his face, then disappeared.
Should have been shooting, Rebecca thought, pissed off and guilty at the same time. She swung her entire formation, mostly Wingers now, to deflect the attack of the burning Reaper. Her weapons roared to life and her ammunition counters flashed warnings.
“We are going to be knife-fighting real soon,” Dogface said.
In that moment, Rebecca knew Dogface was dead. He wouldn’t back down, despite being the most rational Shock Trooper on the field. This thing couldn’t be stopped. Not without a lot of air support and a couple of dozen Mech units. Wingers and Reapers fell like wheat before a thresher in Hell. The visor of her fancy new armor darkened to protect her eyes, but it wasn’t enough. The scene became black spaces contrasted with blue fire.
She retreated.
Dogface moved with her.
The fire changed to red and black and she wondered if her eyes were damaged or if the flaming Reaper had started to cool or somehow change its form.
Wingers abandoned the fight, leaping into the air and fighting for altitude as the monster snatched them back to earth and burned them down. Others ran on their long legs, then vaulted skyward.
Rebecca ran out of ammunition.
“I’m out!” Dogface yelled.
“It’s been good to know you, Randal.”
“Yeah.” He charged the giant, flame-covered Reaper.
Rebecca raced him, but he was always faster, especially when she was putting herself in danger. The Reaper either was out of heat or bored with incineration. It struck the FSPAA-IIA of Randal Dogface with both fists, pounding him down into his boots like a vintage beer can.
Fuck! She hurled her unit backward and hated herself. God, Randal. What did you do?
Rage owned her as though her entire life had been rented from rationality and this was her true state of being, her energy output, her soul in its real form. She might have attacked for an hour or a second, but when she found the monster kneeling on her chest with one hand ar
ound her armored throat, she felt blood flowing from her vocal cords.
That can’t be good, she thought. Where are you, Kin?
“Kin-rol-an-da-Becca,” a voice said from behind the Slomn-Reaper son-of-a-bitch. “Droon Zeabl has your death, Slomn-da-Reaper-da.”
The monster stood and turned away. Rebecca rolled onto her side and looked for Droon. The damaged battery of her FSPAA-IIA hampered her vision and movements. Lurching like a wounded drunk, she dragged her feet close to her body, then levered herself upright. She fell sideways and caught her balance with difficulty. Wingers fled from the battle between Droon and the super-Slomn Reaper.
With Droon came a flood of Reapers. For several disorienting moments, she thought they were falling from the sky, climbing up from underground, and racing down hillsides that surrounded the battlefield.
“I don’t like being the sole survivor,” she said, tears running hot. Kin was farther from her than before and she barely cared. He was going to die just like everyone else.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Deception
KIN turned to help the boy and saw a second Clavender facing the Burning One, saved only by the time it took the giant, fire-eye Slomn-Reaper to fling its enemies backward like broken toys. He looked to the Clavender he had been approaching and she was gone. Another had appeared at a right angle from the first. He assumed she appeared because there was no way she could have moved that distance on the crowded battlefield.
“That one is definitely a shapeshifter!” Rickson said.
Kin agreed and was about to say so when the newest shapeshifter lost concentration and allowed the image of Clavender to vanish. Iso-tri-tross retreated from several of Droon’s warriors and a Crashdown wolf, terror plain on his face.
I liked Iso, Kin thought. “We can’t help him. Go for Clavender.”
Rickson hesitated, took a step toward Iso, but decided to follow Kin. Iso went down under a wave of bloodthirsty monsters. Two other Reapers transformed into versions of Clavender, then quickly resumed their monstrous Reaper disguises to flee the field. None of them were able to save Iso.
Kin had been a prisoner of Nander the Mazz general when he first met Iso-tri-tross and thought him a kindred spirit in many ways. He was an outcast, working for masters that never trusted or freed him completely. That had also been the day Kin encountered Susso and the cruel duplicity of the shapeshifter race. Pain and fatigue punished him, causing doubt and distraction to grow at the exact moment he could least afford it.
Thoughts of Iso, Rickson, and even Clavender ceased to matter. Kin stared as the Burning One flew into a killing rage, then burned with blue-white heat that forced him to look away. If a nuclear reaction could be angry, this was what it would look like. Part of his mind clung to rationality. That understaffed, not terribly committed section of his brain speculated that all fire was angry, or not angry, or something else. Kin moved behind the curve of the landscape for cover as the killing commenced at an unprecedented rate.
Droon moved with his best warriors to stop the Burning One. Three Earth Fleet units retreated and were overrun. Wingers fell like birds caught in a firestorm. Kin thought about Rebecca and grumbled a thinly used soldier’s prayer that Rebecca would make it out of this one alive.
Know your enemy. The voice in Kin’s head sounded like a cross between his father and a long forgotten drill sergeant. Rebecca whispered for him to run. Clavender told him that all wormholes were one and Orlan called him a fucking dead man.
“Look who’s talking,” Kin said. There was a point in every close-quarters battle when endurance meant more than strategy or tactics. Survival was what it took to continue the fight and continuing the fight was what it took to win battles and wars. He was so far from safety now that his world seemed to be a sea of Reapers, Wingers, and dying things. The Burning One cut through the melee several times, chasing Droon with a vengeance.
He looked for his old nemesis, knowing the Reaper was here for the same reason he was here. Kin wanted to find Clavender because she was his friend, almost a family member. Droon wanted to rule her and consume her body and soul. Dax wanted her to throw the invaders out of the Ror-Rea and all the High Lords wanted Dax to be thrown out with them.
If Kin didn’t reach Clavender soon, she would be forced to banish him right alongside of the Reaper horde. Do it, Clavender. Just get it done. Save your people.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Banished
CLAVENDER leaped into the air, soaring straight upward with unequaled determination. The Burning One jumped twice its own height and grabbed her foot. When he came down, he slammed her on the ground like a stick he wanted to break.
There was no reason for Kin to stand and fight. Only her genuine attempt at flight suggested this was the real Clavender — and the disturbing fact that the Burning One had ignored all the other versions of the Ror-Rea Sun Princess. Kin’s heart ached to save her. New energy filled his veins as he rallied for one last fight.
He aimed, fired until his pistol was empty, and charged forward. Rickson tried to keep up. Again and again, he was driven back or forced sideways. Kin was surprised and thankful the young man was still alive. Fatigue beat his courage into a shabby thing. He wanted to save Clavender from the Burning One if she wasn’t already dead. He also wanted to be done. Dead or alive, enough was enough.
Where is Rebecca? Where are the others?
Earth Fleet fought on the far side of the battle as though unable or unwilling to commit to the struggle that would decide all of their fates. Major Eagle and Captain Trak probably understood that Dax’s people wanted Clavender to send them all away. They probably didn’t want to be lumped together with a bunch of angry Reapers about to enter Bloodlust on an unprecedented scale. A battle against the monsters was just a battle unless they changed. When they went berserk, it was like the worst moment of the Bleeding Grounds. With their Reaper King being chased by the Burning One, panic grew among the horde of Hellsbreach. The mood resonated like burning, vibrating ice that could only be sensed by the deepest, most primordial regions of a person’s soul.
The clock was ticking fast. Kin heard a dog bark and saw Rickson working his way through the battle, fighting as little as necessary. His gun was gone and his staff was now a three-foot-long stick that had been chewed off at one end. Kin marked the boy’s position but made no attempt to go to him.
Searching for a way to reach Clavender took all of his attention.
He finally spotted Droon because the Reaper King was the only humanoid shape on the field that stopped charging after Wingers were trapped on the ground by the press of battle. Droon squatted on a pile of bodies, a writhing victim with broken arms pulled near his mouth. Between bites, Droon stared across the bloody landscape toward Clavender and the Burning One.
“Droon! Help her,” Kin shouted.
Kin-rol-an-da! He looked at Kin as though he had always known his location. Kin-rol-an-da must kill the Burning One!
Frustrated, Kin focused on reaching Clavender’s downed form. The Burning One rampaged around her, clawing at Wingers, Reapers, and the ground like a demon gone insane.
Droon stood, hurled aside his half-eaten and still living victim, then sprinted toward Clavender like death itself.
“He’s going to kill her!” Rickson yelled.
Kin, having the same reaction, stepped on the face of a Reaper and bounded over a fight where several one-winged Wingers were losing a death match. Something slashed his leg, but he didn’t care.
A female Reaper blocked his path by holding both arms wide. The head of a Ror-Rea warrior dangled in each of her claws. Kin jumped, kicked, and sent the hateful creature onto her back. He landed on her pelvis with both knees and slammed his armored fist into her throat.
Tumbling to one side, Kin came up with a nicked and chipped Ror-Rea sword. He looked for Clavender and couldn’t see her. Droon was still heading for the Burning One, so Kin ran parallel to his old nemesis and strove to reach Clavender first.
Warriors of the Ror-Rea fell all around him. Rickson was gone again. Iso was gone, but the image of his hand reaching toward the sky for help wouldn’t leave Kin’s mind.
The Burning One roared a challenge.
Too many Wingers were fighting on the ground. Diving, striking hard, and launching into the air ended as more and more Reapers held Wingers in one-on-one combat. Face to face, the monsters of Hellsbreach were hard to match even by the best of Dax’s army. The farmers and artists who answered the call-to-arms fared far worse.
A Mazz airship dashed overhead, flanked by Earth Fleet light-attack craft that fired into the Reapers. Tracer rounds of greenish-white phosphorous divided the landscape, stitching the gory scene like a quilt. Kin hoped they were trying to miss Dax’s warriors, but saw little evidence this was the case. Another ship swooped low, causing him to duck and stumble. He regained his bearings and saw two Clavenders.
He cursed and wondered how any of the shapeshifters had survived this long during a battle that had experienced warriors falling like green recruits.
The Burning One cocked its head and looked from one winged woman to the next, then roared with the anger of a supernova.
“I actually kind of agree with you on that one,” Kin grunted as he approached the nearest Clavender. The first good thing happened since the battle started. Dax and his best warriors dropped into a protective ring around the other Clavender.
“You better hope you are the real thing,” Kin said, then ignored that part of the scene to deal with what was before him.
“Kin Roland!” another Clavender said.
“Who are you?” Kin asked. He wanted to shoot this imposter.
She strutted forward with exaggerated innocence. “I am the Sun Princess. Please, please save me.”
Sword in his left hand, pistol in his right, Kin advanced. He holstered the pistol and grabbed the shapeshifter with the idea he would shake off her disguise. The tactic half worked.
“You can never defeat us,” Susso said. Her skin was perfect ivory, her eyes the most brilliant purple Kin had ever seen. Her hair, white and silver and just like silk, flowed over her flickering wings.