by Ste Sharp
He was ignored too.
‘Seriously,’ Crossley said to John, ‘I’d have gone for that one if it was on his pile of weapons.’
A steady flow of surviving miners was joining them. Most were armed, some were injured. John saw a group of Korax, and pictured what had happened to Falen. He stared back into the dark of the mine and remembered the others they had lost: Yam-mit, Samas, Jakan-tar and Rar-kin.
Explosions made him turn back to the burning city, where fighting seemed to be erupting from every corner.
‘Look!’ Yarcha said, pointing to two bulky shapes jumping on the roof of a small building. ‘Weren’t they with our army?’
‘Das and Pod.’ John said. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘Were they captured as well?’ Yarcha asked.
‘I doubt it,’ Crossley replied with a sneer. ‘Plus they’re fighting with some guys I don’t recognise.’
‘Falen told me about the factions here,’ John said, ‘different armies holding ground around the tower. So they could be one of them.’
‘If we join them to fight the Ascent, we’ll jump from the frying pan into the fire. No, thank you,’ Crossley replied.
‘So what do we do?’ Tar-sone, the Sorean, asked.
‘Well, I’m not gonna defend these Ascent bastards after they put me in that place,’ Crossley said. ‘But if I’m fighting, I wanna know who I’m fighting for.’
The group huddled in the mouth of the mine entrance, armed, blinking and leaderless.
‘If Mihran was here we could communicate with the rest of our army,’ John said and looked at Crossley. ‘You never know, some might still be alive.’
Crossley shrugged.
‘But we must fight!’ one of the humanoid miners said with a long intake of breath. ‘I feel my strength returning.’
‘Yes,’ said another. ‘Time to show our prowess… prove our worth.’
John could feel his spirits lift too. He had felt weak in the mine, drained. But now something rejuvenated him and pumped him up. He breathed in the fresh air and scanned the cityscape for signs of anyone he recognised, friend or foe. He pulled the brown gun from his belt and gripped it with his metal hand. They felt good together, like they linked. He felt a charge of energy rush down his wrist and through his palm and the gun glowed.
‘We have to fight,’ John said with a nod.
‘Well, if I’m gonna fight, I’m on his side,’ Crossley said and pointed to the far side of the city, where a new set of soldiers had burst through. Some were on tocka – John caught a glimpse of Lavalle’s jet-black armour amongst the riders – but others were on foot. Or, in Mata’s case, on root.
‘What is that?’ a Korax asked.
‘He was one of us,’ Crossley said as the gnarled and spiked, leafless tree crashed through a single-storey building, sending out lightning-fast vines to grab the Ascent soldiers running away.
John remembered the wolves Mata had ripped apart back in the pine forest of their dome as he repeated the skill with even greater strength and speed.
The tocka who escorted Mata were wheeling in a wide arc to avoid the Firstborn fighters.
‘Look,’ Tar-sone said. ‘They’re coming our way.’
The tocka looked magnificent, John thought, and he longed to be riding again and back in battle.
*
Dakaniha felt alive! The wind rushed over him as he and the rest of the attacking guerrilla army sped on their tocka across the ground between the Ascent farms and city. With his four eyes open, he felt the full force of their attack with him in the centre, behind Lavalle on point. Euryleia was beside him, with two bows already primed. Cheng and his men of China took the left flank, while Sancha and a host of freed farmers rode on the right. Beyond them, the bizarre form of a rejuvenated Mata strode and glided on his roots.
To give them a chance against their larger-numbered enemy, Guang, on Cheng’s side, formed a field of bent light around them, hiding their approach. With his new temple eyes, Dakaniha squinted to see the process in action, white lines bending and converging as light waves were streamed around them. If he could sense it maybe someone else could? He worried, but it was too late – they were already attacking.
The plan was simple. They would take over the main centres of power – the water supply and the entrance to the tower – while Delta-Six handled the leaders. Anyone in their way would die. Euryleia had asked everyone to be mindful of the slaves with pins in their necks and handed out the deflectors Delta-Six had designed for the farmers.
‘They will join our fight,’ she’d said.
‘But we won’t be able to see their pins,’ Cheng had replied.
‘They’ll be the ones not fighting,’ Lavalle said with a hard glare. ‘So if they fight, kill them.’
The herd of tocka ran a curve around a cluster of huts and aimed for the first gateway. It was manned by two guards, who were transfixed by something inside the city walls. Dakaniha sniffed the air deeply and felt invincible. Nobody could stop them, he was certain. He lifted his pulse-crossbow, squeezed his knees tight around his tocka’s muscular back and fired. Others followed suit, and the guards were blown to pieces, along with a stretch of the metal wall.
Mata was way ahead, ripping a string of metal fence panels out, creating a gap for tocka to stream through. The second wave of soldiers – the farmer slaves who travelled on foot – would be here soon, ready to support them if they ran into any serious resistance.
‘This way!’ Lavalle bellowed, guiding Dakaniha and the others towards a bulky building riddled with white pipes.
If they could control the water, they could control the Ascent. The problem was the Ascent knew their weaknesses and had placed a small platoon of soldiers to defend the water plant. The second Dakaniha rode into open ground, they opened fire. As tocka fell around him, sending their riders flying into the dirt, he fired back. Smoke billowed, and the group split as the tocka wheeled around to avoid the attack.
Only Mata didn’t alter course.
The huge, tree-like soldier, whose face and tattoos could still be seen through his protective bark and spines, leaped at the enemy with vines. He pulled two soldiers away as the others turned their fire on him, giving Dakaniha time to turn and rush back in.
‘From the left!’ Euryleia shouted as the tocka cantered in the shelter of a low building.
She turned and led them in, firing her explosive arrows.
Mata had the enemy guard busy, but new Ascent fighters were joining them. One had no weapon and Dakaniha felt the tocka jolt when it saw the long-tailed, black-handed Scarpinelloss. It raised its hands and shot flaming lava from its palms, striking Mata’s roots and lower trunk, fixing him to the ground in solid rock.
Dakaniha patted his tocka and whispered, ‘So this is the soldier that entombed your army?’
He got no response – he didn’t expect one – but the other tocka were grouping now, looking for their leader, and slowing their attack. Dakaniha knew they had to push on or risk defeat.
‘Concentrate on the lava thrower!’ he shouted at the nearest riders and fired his own weapons at the Scarpinelloss until it stopped attacking Mata and turned their way.
Plumes of molten lava sprayed from the beast, creating great arches of fire, which solidified into rock as they hit the ground. Some tocka were caught, trapping them or setting them on fire, while their riders rolled away, dead or injured, and, while Dakaniha’s group panicked, the other Ascent soldiers took potshots with their laser rifles. They needed organising. Dakaniha couldn’t see Lavalle or Euryleia, so shouted and corralled the group together, out of range of the lava flows and laser fire.
‘We must take out the lava soldier,’ he said to the other riders when they were clear, ‘and free Mata. We need a two-pronged attack,’ Dakaniha explained and continued his plan with one eye on the enemy.
The tree-like Maori was still fixed to the ground – his roots encased in rock – but had sent long vines into the water-reclamation
plant to plunder the rare resource, which gushed out of broken pipes now. At his base, Ascent soldiers kept out of range of his spikes and lower vines but fired at his trunk, burning holes in his body.
Dakaniha’s crew took off as one, with the tocka deftly dodging the dead and the piles of hot rock. Dakaniha stared at the rock with his new eyes and noticed a strange colouration that matched the ground beneath the volcanic soldier.
‘Get him in the air!’ Dakaniha shouted as sped in. ‘He’s drawing rock through his feet!’
As they came into laser range, the group split in two, the riders rolling and dropping to form an infantry unit, shielded by a deflection bubble created by one of the freed farmers, while the tocka circled away in a feint movement which would lead them around a set of huts and behind the Ascent fighters. Dakaniha’s plan would only work if they could absorb the fire for long enough.
They struggled forward, until the protective bubble burst under pressure and the soldiers ran for cover behind the blobs of still-warm rock. The Scarpinelloss moved to a new spot of ground, nearer to Mata, who had withdrawn his vines. Dakaniha fired his crossbow, drawing the ire of the Scarpinelloss, and molten rock soon splashed around him, burning his skin with orange globules as he rolled behind a large block of rock.
He brushed off the spots of liquid fire before they burned through his flesh, then waited as the battle rose in volume – more explosions and screams – then silence. The sudden change shook his nerves and Dakaniha slowly peered around the rock.
When he finally did, he smiled and exhaled.
*
Millok slid to a halt and waited for the humans to catch up in their lumbering hollow robot. She blasted acidic gas out of her spiracles and sucked in fresh air, cursing Doctor Cynigar for giving her speed and fighting adaptations but nothing to improve her sensory or scouting abilities. Still, her Scion showed a variety of useful skills suitable for reconnaissance and the long-range journeys that had been forced on them by the Brakari doctor while they were still in the egg. Despite the taint, she was proud of them, her own personal army. Her brood.
‘Another hour and they’ll need a rest!’ Althorn shouted from atop Troy.
‘We don’t have time to rest,’ Millok replied. ‘Has nothing I said sunk in yet?’
Althorn didn’t reply and, after a quick scan to make sure her troops were in position, Millok ordered them to fan out ahead of their advance, while she slowed to keep pace with Troy.
‘I think you’re underestimating the threat of the Tathon,’ she said, for the benefit of the soldiers inside Troy, as well as Althorn. ‘They took over the entire dome, and everyone in it, within days.’
‘But not you and your army,’ Althorn replied.
‘No,’ Millok replied, unsure how she could explain how close they’d been to capture and what she’d seen the Tathon do to their captives. ‘They have General Panzicosta,’ she said, ‘among others… Maybe some humans too, I’m not sure.’
‘And they develop them, you said?’ Althorn asked. ‘They force mutation?’
‘And bend them to their will,’ Millok said, looking ahead, where a change in ground colour and a scattering of huts signalled the beginning of the Ascent’s farms.
‘But they’re just a bunch of losers,’ a voice came from within Troy.
‘Yeah, everyone left in the dome is a loser!’ another voice said, followed by laughter. ‘We can take ’em.’
‘Silence, Carter!’ A voice boomed.
Millok would have ignored them but their situation was too dire.
‘The Tathon are incredibly intelligent – more so than any species I’ve met yet, maybe even of the level of whoever brought us here. They have such abilities… have you not felt the change?’ she asked.
‘What change?’ Althorn asked.
‘The rise in confidence,’ Millok replied, trying to describe what she’d felt and seen in her Scion. ‘An eagerness to fight.’
Althorn grimaced and shook his head. ‘Maybe, maybe not. We’re in a land of soldiers – everyone wants to fight.’
‘But this is different!’ Millok was losing patience. ‘I’ve seen it before. It’s overwhelming. The Tathon release a set of pheromones on the wind, set to infiltrate their enemy before they arrive. It emboldens them – makes them stand up for themselves and their beliefs.’
‘Which leads to them fighting each other before the Tathon get there?’ Althorn asked.
‘Sometimes, but the hormones also coerce them into making reckless decisions… even in well-defended fortifications it leads to them coming out to attack. Then the Tathon capture, kill and mutate.’
‘And you think the Ascent won’t be able stop them?’ Althorn asked.
‘I’m not sure any army can stop them–’ Millok replied but was cut off by her scouts, clicking in the pared-down, subsonic Brakari language they had developed while tracking and avoiding the Tathon.
The news wasn’t good.
‘I know little of your Ascent,’ she eventually said to Althorn, ‘and would say numbers are no factor in a war against the Tathon. Maybe some warriors have adaptations that could help resist their march but, from what I’ve heard, it’s too late. Your rebels are already attacking the Ascent, along with neighbouring factions.’
She could see lines of smoke ascending from the grey smudge at the base of the tower, where tiny flashes of light spoke of hidden skirmishes.
‘Then what choice do we have?’ Althorn asked.
‘We fight!’ came a shout from Troy.
‘And if we fight,’ Millok said, ‘we must fight to the death, or risk being in the Tathon’s army forever.’
*
Praahs was running so fast through the thin air, across the bare landscape between domes, that she felt like she was swimming again. The hardened soles of her feet were almost numb to the surface she pounded along, and her aerodynamic form barely felt the air rushing over her. Huge domes swept past and the great glass tower loomed larger and larger.
She was well aware of the biological tricks and psychological games the Tathon were playing with her, but her mental conditioning and altered physical body gave her no choice but to go along with their plans. For now. She would fight to the death for them but, as soon as she had the chance, she would break these biological bonds and escape.
From what she had heard about the size of the army she and her Cirratus warriors were about to face, she would have plenty of opportunity to escape, with the right help.
Panzicosta was by her side, her second in command. Despite her authority, Praahs knew the Brakari had important qualities she could use. He was more ruthless than her, would take control of the entire Tathon army if given the chance, but Praahs needed that razor-sharp, selfish instinct if they were going to survive both the battle and the Tathon.
Praahs watched Panzicosta and could tell by the way he rested pairs of legs that he would need to take a break before they attacked. She wondered what he was thinking and whether he had created a plan for how they would break away from the Tathon army.
Small huts appeared ahead as predicted.
‘Slow and rest!’ Praahs shouted and her platoon of tiny Tathon responded.
Panzicosta followed suit too, blasting moist air out of holes in his shell.
Praahs looked back to where the bulk of the Tathon army advanced. They would be here shortly, but they expected serious damage before they arrived. Whatever Panzicosta had in mind would have to be put into action soon.
Praahs let her second in command rest before asking, ‘Any new ideas?’ She kept her questions open to avoid the Cirratus guessing their plans.
‘Some,’ Panzicosta replied, his voice low. ‘The fog of war leads to many accidents, but I expect this battle will proceed swiftly.’
‘Yes,’ Praahs said, noting a tang of despondency in his tone. ‘Sometimes events occur after the battle as well.’
‘Which we must be mindful of,’ Panzicosta replied, with one set of eyes turning to the Cirratus. �
�Plus, after victory, who is to say what each soldier’s true value will be?’
Praahs wanted to ask more but held back. For now, the mission was more important. She had been given specific instructions to attack the Ascent first and neutralise the most dangerous soldiers for genetic renewal, before moving around the tower, attacking each faction in turn.
She released her gills to cleanse her blood and wash away the acids from her muscles, and tasted the chemicals in the air. She felt strong. Invincible. They would be victorious. She gave her army another minute before reeling her gills in and setting her protective bones over her most vulnerable organs. She knew the rush of hormones giving her a buzz was orchestrated by the Tathon leaders, designed to subdue her fears. She knew her problems wouldn’t go away. But the rise in energy and confidence felt so good. Addictive. Her worries could wait.
‘Shields up,’ she ordered, feeling ready for the fight.
This was going to be so much fun, she thought, and could almost taste wet flesh.
‘Trident formation!’ she called out and, with her on the left prong, Panzicosta on the right and a horde of the most manic Cirratus in the centre, they charged.
They rushed through the empty farms, past headless corpses and battle-scarred landscapes, through the rambling huts, to a broken metal wall. Battle raged within: fires; smoke; explosions; laser fire. Praahs took it all in. This wasn’t just a battle craze created by the Tathon hormones; there was a battle for supremacy raging here.
‘Do not choose a side!’ Praahs yelled as they stomped over a flattened barricade and the bodies of Ascent guards. ‘They are all our enemy!’
Around her, the Cirratus sped forward and washed over the enemy: a tsunami of armoured cuttlefish, spearing with their metal-hard tentacles and leaping on fleeing soldiers, wrestling them to the ground.
Praahs’ claws lengthened and her lips peeled back as she focussed on a bulky, white-headed soldier firing a blaster-cannon at a fast-moving group of bipeds riding quadrupeds. Noticing her army, the guard turned and fired at her. She dodged with ease and leaped in to clamp his torso between her dagger-tooth jaws, crunching through his toughened bones, feeling the life squeezed out of him. The Tathon didn’t need this one, Praahs told herself, as she felt the creature’s blood ooze down her throat.