by A. R. Knight
“So we have to get the two of you into the power station,” Evva says. “And leave you there long enough to run your program, then get you out?”
“That would do it!” Nobaa says. “Of course, there’s no sure telling how long this might take. The system might be easy to crack, and we’ll be ready to go in a few minutes. Or, it might be a day.”
“That’s not going to work.”
The discussion ebbs and flows from there, eventually driving Sax close to insanity. There’s too many variables on hand, too many unknowns to make a plan capable of success. What they need, really, is more information. What they don’t have is time to gather it.
That desperation forces a compromise: Nobaa and Engee, along with their program, will try to get as close to Cavignum as possible so that when Sax, Bas, Plake and Agra-Red figure out a way to crack it open, the two Teven can take advantage. Evva, Avan and the rest of Quell will work on creating diversions and, if possible, get ready to hit the Meridia once the two Teven open up the front door.
It’s a loose, fractured plan with plenty of holes. It’s also the only plan they’ve got.
So Sax, Bas, and Plake board the skiffs not long after. Coorvin has a contact for them, someone who should be able to get them close to, if not inside, the power station. The problem, as Coorvin states, is that this contact operates on greed and greed alone.
They’ll have to convince it that bringing down the Chorus is going to bring up its profits.
Coorvin delivers the coordinates and Sax, Bas, Plake and Agra-Red drop the numbers into their skiffs. Their miners have been charging all night, they’re stocked with arms and provisions, and both Sax and Bas have their masks on and ready to go.
It’s as prepared as Sax has been in a long time and his claws are itching to take advantage.
Plake offers to take the lead, and they link their skiff to the Vyphen’s so that when she starts her ascent, Sax’s ride lifts up with hers. He sneaks a glance back down to the Quell base and notices not a single soul is busy watching them - they’re all getting geared up for their own assignments.
As it should be.
Their target is a city, one of the few on the planet not directly linked to the Meridia. Called Terrodyne, it’s a the planet’s manufacturing center. Powering all of those factories is Cavignum, built around a hole burrowed into the planet’s core. Set far north of their current location, it’s going to be a long ride.
As the skiff start to accelerate, Sax gets his head beneath the windshield, where the noise of rushing air dies down and it’s possible - barely - to speak. Plake’s out in front as they blitz across the vines, leading a diamond formation with Agra-Red as the rear point. Across from Sax, he can see Bas, hunkered down like him, looking beautifully pink in the bright light.
It’s a peaceful ride. There’s no sign of storms, and the endless vines beneath them break up occasionally to show mag-lev train tracks or signs of small habitations. Sax would almost call it pleasant, except that it grows boring. There’s nothing to do except sit and take in the same view as the minutes pass.
“Eyes up,” Plake’s voice warbles through the skiff’s small intercom. “We’ve got skiffs coming in from the left, and it looks like they’re on an intercept.”
Sax tries to look that way, but Bas cuts between him and the view. Raising his head up high might blow Sax off the craft, so he has to trust what the Vyphen can see.
“They’re armed,” Bas hisses. “Do we have any weapons on these things?”
“Not seeing any,” Agra-Red says, and Sax hisses in agreement.
There’s nothing on his skiff except the pair of levers to control the craft’s pitch, the right one with a trigger for acceleration and the left for braking. A small display on the windshield gives coordinates against a geographic map of the world, highlighting the path to their destination. No sign of a weapons system, of shields, or anything of combat relevance.
“We’ll have to out-fly them, then,” Plake says. “I’m unlinking us. If something goes wrong, meet up at the target however you’re able to.”
“Don’t lead the enemy there,” Sax says. “The mission above yourself.”
He wouldn’t have said the words if only he and Bas were here, but Plake and Agra-Red are mercenaries. They can’t be trusted to make the sacrifice.
“Unlinked!” Plake says and Sax immediately feels loose in the skiff.
He’s fading to the right, because Sax is leaning that way. The Oratus stabilizes himself, the skiff helping ever-so-slightly to keep Sax level. He nudges himself left, then back right again, getting a feel for how much he has to move to get the skiff turning. Then he pulls back on the levers, sending the skiff angling up, above the other three.
Now Sax gets a clear view of the pursuit - a half dozen skiffs coming closer by the second. They’re in two uneven lines, a W spread, and they’re homing in on Plake’s lead. Sax’s ascent puts him behind his own party, which gives the Oratus a chance to take the initiative.
Sax leans left and pushes the levers down, turning the skiff into a dive towards the approaching group.
“What’re you doing, Sax?” Agra-Red manages to ask. “Getting yourself killed?”
“Maybe,” is all Sax bothers to reply.
He plunges towards the oncoming skiffs, and Sax sees they’re all piloted by Flaum wearing the same deep blue Chorus uniforms, including thick, visored helmets. Not elite, then. Not expecting resistance like this. Each skiff, though, looks like it has a pair of assault miners strapped to the front of it, sticking out like needles.
They’re not caught off-guard, though. As Sax gets close, the Chorus skiffs scatter, some heading up, others right to cut beneath Sax, and the last pair cut their acceleration hard to try and keep Sax from hitting them.
A tactic that would work, if not for Sax’s tail. The Oratus boosts his speed to the maximum, leans hard left, pulls back on the levers to sweep his skiff over the two braking hard. The Flaum glance up at Sax, just in time to see the Oratus, his skiff flipped on its left side, slap down with his tail and nail the first Flaum across the face.
The impact ripples pain along Sax’s body and throws the skiff into a wobble that has Sax spinning over his second target. Apparently going that fast and striking another object isn’t what Oratus tails are made for. Sax, though, manages to pull left again and swing around in time to see the results of his strike blooming into an orange fireball below.
“Juke right!” Plake cries through the intercom and Sax flips his weight as blue-white fire streams where he would’ve been.
There’s two options here - Sax can either focus on evading the pursuit, or finding a target and, in attacking it, hope he loses that pursuit. Sax, of course, takes the second one.
As he’s already juking right, Sax leans into the turn, wrapping himself around and coming into a collision course with the second skiff he missed during his first tail-whipping assault. That skiff is just accelerating, and the Flaum has no time to react as Sax’s skiff shoots towards it. Sax himself only manages to jerk the levers back on his ride, slanting up the nose just as it strikes the Chorus skiff.
Sax’s own harder hull crashes through the windshield of the other skiff, including the Flaum behind it. The impact makes an expected end of Sax’s enemy, but a pair of bleeping red lights and a constant shower of sparks from the front of Sax’s skiff indicate he didn’t exactly make out unscathed. In fact, his skiff seems to be in a constant, gradual decline, and those vines aren’t too far away.
“Going to need a new lift,” Sax hisses, though at least the enemy fire is gone.
Apparently everyone can see Sax isn’t a threat; the Oratus sends his skiff left, corkscrewing his decline, and catches a swirling mess of a fight; Agra-Red dives and twists frantically as a pair of skiffs cling to its tail, filling the air with lasers. Bas seems to have a momentary advantage on her opponent, beating the Flaum through a tight loop and getting behind it, though Sax isn’t sure what she’ll do, seeing as the
ir skiffs don’t have weapons.
Plake, though, has her target in her sights, and has a miner held tight in her right hand. She’s taking pot shots over her windshield, though every time she raises the weapon, the wind seems to knock her aim off course.
All told, Sax’s two-for-one victory is the best the group has going for them right now. It’s also bought Sax some isolation, so he uses it. Rather than keep the forward thrust, which forces the skiff into a dive, Sax pulls the air-brakes and locks the levers into their hovering position. The skiff isn’t perfect here - those dead front jets mean Sax is still sinking at an angle - but now he’s stable enough to pull out his miners.
“Line’em up for me!” Sax calls through the comm.
Agra-Red takes first advantage, swinging its now-smoking and sparking skiff into a line above Sax’s firing angle. Because Sax is low, the Chorus Flaum don’t see him, continuing their straight pursuit after the Whelk. Sax holds down his triggers, lets the energy fly free, and delivers a staccato set of shots to the closest skiff, skittering the bolts into the underside of the craft.
The shots melt away the microjets, leaving the Flaum in a skiff that has no upward thrust. The creature’s smart enough to realize it’s not surviving here and takes a hard tack out of the fight, leaving Sax to aim for the second one.
Only this Flaum isn’t oblivious to what’s happened to its friend, and it’s looping up and over, turning down into a dive at Sax. The Oratus raises his miners to greet the descending skiff and its two heavy cannons. There’s not a hope of winning this firefight, but Sax pulls the triggers anyway.
The Flaum’s bolks spray around Sax, belting into the skiff. Sax’s own shots burrow into the front of his target, and then Sax leaps, because to stay would mean death. As Sax flies, he twists, keeps his miners focuses, and pours laser into the descending enemy. His own skiff explodes, superheated into a mini-nova, followed moments later by a smoking, burning second skiff as Sax melts his target past the point of control.
The Oratus, though, is now in free fall, plummeting the rest of the distance into the vines. Sax has long enough to take a breath, to speak one name.
There’s a bite of pain, then, and the world goes dark.
15 Moonfall
The lift opens into a top level entryway that may have been beautiful at some point, but that is now a wreck of shredded furniture, with a great, broken hole where I think a door once stood. The colored walls - bright blues and yellows - of the rounded atrium are pocked with scorch marks, and the light above, a bronzed flavor coming from a full, somehow whole sphere dangling from the ceiling, washes the scene in a hazy cast, as though we’re stepping into a memory and not the full, deadly now.
“Looks like we’re a little late to this party,” Viera says as we leave the lift.
“Unfortunately,” Gar adds.
“I prefer not getting shot,” I say. As soon as we’re all out of the lift, its doors shut behind us and the thing starts its descent. Soon we’ll have prisoners and more Sevora arriving up here. “Let’s keep moving, before this gets complicated. Viera, Gar, you two take point.”
Which leaves me with Malo, and Lan bringing up the rear guard. I figure an Oratus on either side is going to keep us safest, especially as we move on from the atrium into a wide hallway - big enough for the four-clawed lizards - with plenty of side rooms. There’s more evidence here of a crawling battle, with miner burns etching staccato patterns into the sides, floor, and ceiling around us.
Something larger detonated not far ahead either; its orange plasma burns marking a halo around our path and leaving a once-molten groove across the ground.
“Jel’s forces came with firepower,” Lan hisses as we go, slowly. “Be cautious. One explosive thrown back our way could kill us all.”
“They’re fighting for their lives,” I reply. “They’ll use everything they have.”
I know I would. I know, if I was fighting for the last bit of humanity, I would throw every weapon, every soul I had into the battle even if there was no hope of winning.
The hallway ends in a full-width door, one that’s also been forced open. Apparently Nasiya’s forces weren’t able to use the tight quarters to finish the fight. We stalk up close, bunch up and look through into the vast space on the other side.
Big enough to be the other half of the sphere, with the neat translucent wall effect going on through the entire ceiling and along the downward sloping side away from us, Nasiya’s private docking bay has plenty of size. And plenty of bodies.
We’re too late to see most of the action; like the lobby, smoking corpses litter the ground both directly in front of our doorway and at the boarding ramp of the ship, a great diamond of a thing with a hull that shifts colors even as we stare at it. At first I think the changing is random, but then I realize that it’s playing to the surroundings, and the yellow-orange streaks appearing are the result of the ship catching the flashes of the Vincere bombardment outside.
“Beautiful,” Malo says softly.
“Sure,” Viera replies. “If you want to call it that. What I’m worried about, though, is that there’s nothing left alive in here.”
She’s right. There’s racks of batteries and cannisters of things I don’t know littered around the docking bay, along with crates of what must be emergency supplies, but nothing’s moving, and there’s no sound. At least not out here.
The ship’s boarding ramp, though, is down. It, too, is wide enough for an Oratus. Apparently Nasiya’s had its host for a long enough time to have this built with its size in mind.
“If the fight is over, then whomever won will try to leave,” Lan says. “We have to hurry.”
Obeying her own command, Gar and Lan break into a clacking run across the docking bay towards the ship. I pull Malo with me, while Viera shrugs her way into a rear guard, watching the bodies with her miners drawn.
“Don’t get too far ahead!” I try to say to the Oratus, but they ignore me, hitting the ramp at a run and vanishing up.
“They were never really yours to command,” Malo says.
“Oratus only belong to the Chorus,” T’Oli states from my shoulders. “Anyone else is an ally of convenience.”
“Then let’s make sure we keep it that way,” I say and pick up the pace.
The ramp is a silver, slotted thing, the gaps providing grip for talons like those I don’t have. When we get to the base, I let Viera take the lead, as now there’s plenty of noise coming from inside the ship; hisses, bangs and snarls. Something’s alive in there.
“Can you stand on your own?” I ask Malo, and the warrior nods. “Then cover us.”
I hand the warrior one of my miners and take up the other - I might not be accurate, but in the close confines of the ship, I bet I can hit something. Besides, with T’Oli sliming down to my left hand and sharpening itself into a needle-sword, I think I’m well-covered.
Even so, Viera takes point, and together we clomp up the ramp. Nasiya’s ship is several times the size of the shuttle, and so when we get to the top, we walk into a large space, the fat end of the teardrop ship’s shape. Here, at least, Nasiya’s concessions to luxury are still apparent; those color-shifting paintings are everywhere, and jewels line them, providing glinting divides between the changing scenes.
Rather than netting, the floor of the ship is the same alabaster as the tube’s platforms, and it changes at our touch, firming up to catch our feet and, I’m sure, ready to mold over and keep us stable should the ship decide to launch. Light doesn’t seem to come from anywhere, but rather a soft illumination reflects off of everything, as though we’re walking into a morning glade.
The noises come from our right, so Viera takes a turn that way, tossing her eyes at me for quick confirmation. There’s a shut circular door to the left, across the alabaster room and towards what I assume is the rear of the ship, where, by now, I’ve learned the engines are likely to be. There’s no sounds from there, though, and no signs of struggle, so I let Viera lead a
nd keep my miner ready as we head towards the bridge.
Nasiya’s craft splits itself in the same way as the underground crop granary - big dividing walls split the main room off from the next section of the ship, with domed doors serving as the ways between. The one closest to us, leading towards the front, is open, and as we get close, words begin to pour out.
“No Sevora can match an Oratus,” Gar’s hissing voice says. “No matter how long you’ve been in there, you’re nothing.”
There’s a rasping laugh at that. “Nothing? I defeated an entire army. Me! Almost alone!”
“And you’re still nothing, and now you’re alone,” Lan replies.
I nod at Viera, and we both pass through the door, into the second, and final, chamber of Nasiya’s ship.
Nasiya’s bridge isn’t designed for a full crew - towards the front of the ship, everything inside the space narrows down to a single point; a swath of netting towards the very end, with two long screens sliding across the crystal-blue windshield on either side. The very apex, where I can just see around Nasiya’s huge body as it leans to the side, houses the flight stick.
Lan and Gar have Nasiya cornered, though on first glance it looks like the Sevora isn’t putting up any fight. Nasiya bears more burns than I’ve ever seen on a single body, so that its yellow-gold scales are more a mash-up of ash-black and bubbling pink blisters. Its left foreclaw is simply gone, and Nasiya’s tail lies limp on the floor, with some deep cuts around where it joins to Nasiya’s body.
None of the damage has stopped Gar from putting his right foreclaw up to Nasiya’s throat, and his midclaws into a lethal pressure position around Nasiya’s abdomen. If the Sevora tries anything more than a twitch, I have no doubt Gar would destroy the Sevora leader, and that Gar would love every moment of it.
“You’re alone?” is the first thing I say. I’d been expecting some sort of shootout, a ragged struggle against Nasiya’s most battle-hardened troops, but apart from the bodies outside the ship, there’s nobody here. “Lan, Gar, you didn’t find anyone else?”