by Ian Whates
Energy blade she realised, hidden within the handle of the knife. The length was governed but it still extended a good way beyond its fixed counterpart, more than doubling the weapon’s reach.
Jen had leapt back instinctively as he attacked, but not quite far enough to avoid this unexpected addition. Pain exploded in her left side as the energy blade bit home.
She staggered backwards, continuing her retreat, but he pressed his advantage as a good soldier should, following, not allowing her any respite. He struck again, arm extending to thrust the knife at her midriff.
Pride had made her want to do this without relying on shadowtech, to fight her former commander on a level playing field: soldier to soldier, blade to blade, may the best warrior win, but screw pride; he’d been the one to break the rules of fair play, after all.
She stepped into shadow.
The shock on his face was reward in itself. Clearly, he hadn’t worked out who she was – things must have happened too rapidly for him to appreciate the significance of her all-black outfit. He must have realised that she was allied with the New Spartan banks and the forces they raised to oppose Saflik’s ambitions, but not until now that she was the Dark Angel known as Shadow.
“Well I’ll be a…”
He got no further, as Jen leapt at him, crossing from shadow to solid form as she did so. She’d moved quickly, striking from a different position and giving him minimal time to react. He didn’t see her coming – from his side and slightly behind – until the very last instant, enabling her to thrust both her blades deep into his exposed side. She didn’t overthink it, didn’t attempt to target specific organs or maximise the damage to tissues, she just channelled all the rage and frustration that had accumulated over many years; her hatred for this man, her horror at what this once proud regiment had been reduced to under his command and her shame at ever being associated with it. All of this she put into the twin strikes, which had to be among the strongest she had ever delivered.
He screamed. General Haaland, feared commander of the Night Hammers, the iron fist that shaped and wielded the most feared of all military units, let rip an unbridled admission of raw pain. It was a reaction he would have ridiculed and punished if it had issued from the throat of any of his men.
Haaland crumpled in on himself, knees threatening to give way, and Jen thought for a moment he was about to sink to the ground, but somehow he kept his feet. She hesitated, holding back the blood lust that battered against her resolve and urged her to step forward to stab him again and again and again. It was important that she should keep control. To lose it now, to savage him as the primal part of her wanted to do so badly, would be to sink to his level, and she refused to do that.
“Come on then, bitch,” he half snarled, half panted. “Finish me off, if you’re up to it.”
He clutched at his side, she thought to stem the loss of blood, but then his right wrist twisted and his hand opened. She had a split second to see the two flattened silver pearls he tossed down before they hit the ground and erupted.
Flare stones! There was just time to start turning her head away and begin to close her eyes, but not sufficient to do either fully, and some of the searing flash still got through to dazzle her and leave her temporarily blind.
Cursing, Jen fell back into shadow, not wanting to leave herself vulnerable to any retribution Haaland might have in mind. At the same moment, a claxon blared to life: piercingly shrill, deafening. Cleverly done. This had to be deliberate, the timing was too convenient otherwise. Having robbed her of sight, he then removed her ability to hear as well, which meant she couldn’t tell which direction he might take should he choose to run – and what else could he do? – and wouldn’t be able to keep pace with him in shadow until her eyes started to recover.
To be this prepared… Did he know who I was after all? Then she remembered the energy weapon that had reached into shadow to hurt her in Sketch’s basement soon after this all began. They’d done their homework, Saflik and the Night Hammers, so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that their commanders routinely carried countermeasures. All she could do for now was wait. There was no point in heading off in some random direction – that way she stood as much chance of going away from her enemy rather than towards him. In her head, to pass the time, she ran through all the things she intended to do to Haaland once her vision cleared and she was able to track him down again.
Leesa didn’t have time to worry about Jen. She had more pressing concerns. They were being met with increasing resistance, and the fighting was ferocious. The tactic of using Frame’s reality shifting to soften the enemy up had worked the next couple of times but then Billy had been wounded. How badly, it was difficult to say. They’d stopped the bleeding, but he had barely been able to muster a flicker of warping since, and she feared for him.
That left her and Ramrod as the shock troops, with Shadow still missing. Her reservations about Nate had proven unfounded, so far. He fought well and seemed to be getting a taste for the action. It still felt odd, fighting beside Ramrod again and knowing this wasn’t Kyle, but she was able to put that to one side. Nate’s technique was a little bit too much by the numbers for her liking, but he was still new to the harness and that would change with experience.
The captain remained as proficient as ever with his smartguns, providing covering fire that swapped between bullets and energy and microbombs as he deemed appropriate, with Mosi laying down his own fire in support.
It worked, and they made good progress, until they came to the door.
This was no flimsy divider of the sort found in a home, but rather a heavy armoured plug more suited to an airlock or even a high security vault. It stood at the end of a long straight corridor which they had fought their way along, and presumably had been installed as part of the defences. Half a dozen Salik lay dead in front of it, but the rest had managed to flee through the door and slam it shut before the Angels could reach them.
For a moment they stood panting, frustrated. Behind them stretched the corridor, unbroken by any other doors or passages. They could go back until they found another route and try to work around the door, but that would mean losing ground and momentum. They could try going through the walls, which were likely to be weaker than this bloody door, but, the chances were, not by much: why build a door like that and then surround it with flimsy walls?
Billy clearly wasn’t up to anything this big, which left…
“Geminum,” Cornische said, having evidently reached the same conclusion.
“On our way, Captain.”
There was a sense of panic on the far side of the door. These were Saflik rather than Night Hammers, and they feared the Dark Angels.
“Good. So they should,” was Naj’s reaction.
The soldiers were trying to organise a defence in anticipation of the door failing, and arguing about how best to do so.
Naj and Mosi studied the door. Presumably its mechanism couldn’t be fully automated, or Raider would never have allowed the Saflik to close it on the advancing Angels. There had to be a manual override.
“That big red button, do you reckon?”Naj said.
It was built into the frame of the door at around chest height.
“Either that or we’re about to blow the entire area to smithereens,” Mosi replied. “Shall we?”
“Bro, I’m scared.”
This wasn’t an admission he ever expected to hear from Naj. “What, of the device they used against us on Darkness Mourning?”
“Yes. If they trap us again, there’ll be no Jen or Leesa dashing to our rescue, not this time.”
“Listen to me. That device was installed. It was already there, waiting for us, and it relied on an officer with augmentation. They’re on the move here, in hostile territory. They won’t have something like that with them, and even if they do they won’t have had time to set it up yet.”
“I know… I know. You’re right. It’s just that I was asl
eep for so long, away from you, and now that we’re together again, I don’t want to lose you, not so soon.”
“You won’t. We’ll materialise, activate the door, and phase out again before anyone can react. We have to do this. The others are counting on us.”
“I know. Sorry. I’m okay now.”
He knew she wasn’t. “Never thought I would be the one giving you a pep talk,” he said.
“I guess at times we’re more alike than we realise.” He sensed her smile. “Let’s get this over with.”
They phased into solid state with Najat’s hand already hovering over the manual control. By the time one of the soldiers saw them and shouted a warning, the button had already been pressed and the door was swinging open. By the time anyone thought to raise a weapon, they had already faded and were snapping back into Mosi’s physical form.
Jen’s ears were still ringing but she was no longer completely deafened and she could see again. A trail of blood spots on the floor gave her something to follow. Not constant, not in an unbroken line, just occasional bloody red breadcrumbs drawing her on.
There: a smear on a corridor corner where a blood-stained hand had reached for support. More spots on the ground, and then, abruptly, they stopped.
Haaland had found allies, someone to stem the bleeding and effect temporary repairs, no doubt patching the wounds with nuskin. Not to worry. He couldn’t be far ahead. This merely delayed the inevitable, it wouldn’t save him.
All thoughts of rejoining Cornische, Leesa and the others had been put on hold. Before she could do that, Jen had someone to kill.
Cornische was growing increasingly concerned about Billy. He’d taken a hit in his side. They’d stemmed the bleeding and patched the wound with nuskin, but that was just a temporary fix. He couldn’t keep up unaided and they were taking it in turns to help him. Cornische was loath to leave him behind, with the fighting being so fragmented – goodness only knew who might stumble across him – but he was slowing them down. They had to find somewhere secure to hide him against later retrieval, but as yet nowhere had presented itself.
The sounds of conflict ahead were growing closer, which meant they might have to leave Billy temporarily, to free up hands and weapons.
Abruptly the corridor turned a corner and opened up into a cavernous room, which might once have been an artefact chamber but not any more. It had been cleared of Elder treasures and was now the setting for a pitched battle.
Arrayed in front of him was by far the largest concentration of Night Hammer and Saflik troops they had yet encountered, and they were fighting in a more disciplined fashion. Facing them were an odd assortment of mechanisms and things – he wasn’t sure how else to think of them. Vaporous clouds that crackled with energy but faded rapidly, gelatinous blobs that were proving to be anything but fireproof – one going up in a violent flare of heat and light as he watched – tentacle-like vines that wrapped around an enemy and constricted, flying, darting things – bird-sized but evidently packing a disabling sting… and more.
There was an air of desperation about these bizarre defenders, as if this was their last stand and the battle would be won or lost here, in this chamber.
Then Cornische spotted a presence he had been expecting but not entirely looking forward to seeing. A bloated body reared up above the combatants: prominent dark eyes and a wide lipless mouth fronted a face that projected from the greenish body without the delineation of a neck. The whole was supported by a mass of tentacles, two of which shot forward to grip one of the flat-bodied robotic defenders, pulling the machine apart as if it were formed of cardboard.
Somehow, despite being preoccupied and facing in a different direction, this bloated caricature of the small fluffy alien that had sat on his shoulder for so many years sensed him.
Drake! said an all-too-familiar voice in his head. I’m so glad you survived. I felt cheated by your abrupt disappearance from the Enduril cache chamber. You’ll have to tell me where that artefact sent you, by the way. Not that you’ll have any choice but to tell me.
Mudball. The alien’s presence in his mind, which had once felt so reassuring, now made his spine crawl.
Come, come, that’s no way to react to an old friend, is it? Think of all the fun times we had together, and they’re not over! Once I’ve fully cleansed your mind and taken control of your body, you can help me finish off these little friends you’ve brought along for me to play with.
The alien’s presence seemed to expand, exerting a mental pressure unlike anything he had experienced before. But it wasn’t enough. Mudball, he thought calmly, clearly, allow me to introduce another old friend of mine. Raider, meet Mudball.
Hello, Composite. I’ve been looking forward to this. You’ve been avoiding me, but we knew you wouldn’t be able to resist taking advantage of your old link to infiltrate the captain’s thoughts when the opportunity presented itself, so I’ve been waiting here for you...
No!
Drake couldn’t recall ever having sensed fear in Mudball’s thoughts before.
Finally they had caught up with the main body of invaders. Leesa had begun to think they were destined to fritter away their time in skirmishes with outlying units, but this could only be the main event. Ahead of them was, by her reckoning, a deployment of around two hundred enemy troops, locked in battle with a motley of truly surreal defenders.
Somebody must have noticed their arrival – a squad of Night Hammers had peeled away from the main formation and were coming towards them. Leesa studied their approach – relaxed and confident – and was preparing to kick their asses, when a voice said: “Hel N, guard the captain at all costs.” Raider, speaking in her ear. “He is likely to be distracted for a brief while, but what happens to him in the next few minutes may well decide the fate of everything.”
Distracted? They were in the middle of a full blown battle for Elders’ sake, how could anyone be distracted?
Yet he clearly was, lowering his guns and gazing in unfocused fashion at goodness only knew what.
Cornische made a tempting target like this, and clearly Leesa wasn’t alone in reaching that conclusion. Even as she grabbed him and started to pull him down into at least a sitting position, something struck her shoulder. Judging by the heat generated by the impact, it was most likely a plasma bolt, though her suit did its job, deflecting and absorbing the blast.
Nate stared at her, clearly having seen the direct hit and its lack of effect. “Are you invulnerable inside that suit of yours?”
“No, but I’m damned hard to kill. Now, go take care of those bastards, will you? I have to cover the captain.”
“With pleasure.”
Jen, where the hell are you? She grabbed one of the captain’s guns from his unresisting fingers, and set about laying down some covering fire. Mosi crouched down and did the same, as Ramrod charged.
Inevitably, the Night Hammers’ fire centred on Nate, who offered the most immediate threat, but the momentum he built up while running meant that Ramrod’s defensive field was at maximum strength. Bullets and energy beams simply bounced off him.
At the same time, Leesa and Mosi were free to choose their targets, largely untroubled by return fire.
Four of the Night Hammer squad were still standing when Nate reached them. To their credit, they hadn’t turned and run but continued to rain fire on him until the last.
One he struck full on, with a force that Leesa knew would crush bones and rupture organs; a second caught a glancing blow but was unlikely to fare much better. A third came at him with a knife – which took a special kind of stupid after bullets and energy weapons had failed to make a scratch. Nate punched him, a blow that sent the unfortunate sailing through the air to crash to the ground many metres away, where he lay unmoving.
Only then did the survivor apparently conclude that a tactical retreat might be in order. Nate made no attempt to stop him as he sprinted to join the mass of his comrades.
Nate looked back at Leesa and Mosi and grinned. For a moment she feared he was about to give them a thumbs up, but thankfully he stopped short of doing so.
Too late she saw the sniper. Too late she saw him fire.
“Nate, your defence! Keep moving!” she yelled, but again too late.
The bullet, an explosive charge, had enough momentum to break through the fading shields generated by Ramrod’s earlier charge. It struck Nate in the back and detonated, ripping his torso apart.
Leesa targeted the sniper, a woman, and fired. Again and again and again.
The sniper went down. But too late.
Cornische was a bystander. No, that wasn’t right. A bystander would be able to observe what was going on, to evaluate the ebb and flow of fortunes within a struggle. Here, his consciousness had merely been shoved rudely to one side, incidental to all that transpired. He had no sense of progress, no sense of loss or gain, nothing by which to understand the methods employed as the two Elder aspects strove to establish dominance over each other.
He wasn’t an observer here; he was merely the conduit, the battlefield in which titans contested.
Raider had made it sound so simple when outlining the plan back on the ship. “The composite is avoiding me,” it explained. “By posing as your chirpy companion Mudball, it was able to infiltrate a series of Elder caches, overwhelming the guardian entities and subsuming the essence of their psyches. In this way it grew stronger, until it felt complete upon absorbing the Enduril entity.”
“At which point it no longer needed me,” Cornische had interjected.
“Precisely. Now, however, it fears taking on my psyche in a similar fashion. Although we are of comparable strength, it is a patchwork creature, forged from components melded together, where as I am a unified whole. If I can grapple with the composite psychically, I plan to unstitch those essences one by one, weakening it at every turn. It knows this, so will not confront me.