by Ste Sharp
*
Euryleia gripped her tocka tight with her thighs, feet and hands as they cut a tight corner. Her bow primed in her second pair of arms, she released her explosive arrow as the block of Ascent soldiers came into view. This bulk of enslaved soldiers the Ascent had mustered from the workhouses and night guard had been marched out of the Ascent leaders’ inner sanctum nearest the tower’s base to protect the last gateway. Heads and torsos nearby told Euryleia all she needed to know about the Ascent’s rule of law.
She could feel that her tocka wanted to leap in to attack the phalanx of slave soldiers, but Euryleia guided it away, knowing the riders behind her would follow suit. As ever, Lavalle had other plans and had split his cohort to neutralise the Lutamek.
‘We need more troops,’ Euryleia told Cheng as they reached safety behind a long building, ‘or we won’t be able to get into the Ascent stronghold.’
‘No news from Delta-Six?’ Cheng asked.
Euryleia shook her head and felt that their grasp on the battle was slipping. The Ascent had been taken by surprise but were proving more resourceful than predicted.
‘We need to get the pin mirrors to the slaves,’ Sancha said as he peered around the corner.
‘They won’t let us get near enough,’ Cheng replied.
‘Then we need to go where we can get near,’ Euryleia said and pointed to a tall building across an open plaza, where explosions suggested a battle was raging.
‘Yes,’ Sancha said. ‘I see humans and Sorean. We just need to get across safely without–’
‘Shit!’ Cheng gasped. ‘The Lutamek are back.’
Euryleia felt her pocket vibrate and remembered the device Delta-Six had given her. She saw several large bulks moving out of the Lutamek site. Had Lavalle stirred the hornets’ nest?
‘Quick, with me!’ Euryleia ordered.
‘Wait!’ Sancha shouted.
Two seconds later, a wave of bizarre, shelled creatures like nothing Euryleia had seen before swept in from the farmland and smashed into the pockets of Ascent guards manning the Ascent gateway. Among them she caught a glimpse of a long, serpentine beast and a Brakari-like soldier with a red rather than blue shell.
‘They must be a rival faction,’ Euryleia said, feeling her courage lift. ‘Which means the Ascent are losing. Can you see any more coming?’
‘No,’ Sancha replied.
‘Then we move! Guang, build me a light shield and let’s go!’
Euryleia dug her heels in and her tocka leaped forward, followed by the rest. Streams of light swept past her as they rushed across the open stretch of ground, the tower and the newcomers on her right, their exit to the farms and desert on their left.
Halfway across the plaza and still invisible, Cheng shouted, ‘What the hell are they?’
‘Don’t slow down!’ Euryleia yelled back but allowed herself a quick glimpse back. Out towards the fields she saw a horde of new soldiers advancing in neat rows, ahead of a procession of three huge, shimmering blobs walking on thick tentacles. Their colours fluttered and flowed as they seemed to flicker in and out of view. Euryleia gasped for breath. No battle had ever been so disorientating. She forced herself to look ahead, where the group of humans Sancha had seen was taking up position around the building’s entrance.
‘Do not let the chemicals control you!’ a robotic voice blasted from Euryleia’s right, where the Lutamek strode out of their centre to form a protective semicircle. ‘Resist your urge to fight unless absolutely necessary!’
‘What do they mean?’ Guang asked as they closed in on their allies by the scorched building.
‘Mind games,’ Cheng replied.
Euryleia recognised some of the humans in the pack ahead, so slung her bow over her shoulder and raised her arms in a peaceful pose. More soldiers were pouring out of the building – there had to be more than fifty and some had tocka. Among them, she saw a glowing figure floating several feet above the ground, flanked by two small Lutamek. Squinting, she recognised the samurai.
‘You have come,’ Isao said.
‘We needed strength before attacking,’ Euryleia explained.
‘Your timing has coincided well with another advance,’ Isao continued, the distant look in his eyes as disturbing as the way he floated. ‘I felt their presence and they moved fast. But I do not know what course we should follow.’
‘We need to fight!’ Cheng said, turning his tocka around to face the battle between the new, shelled soldiers and the Ascent.
‘Or we let them weaken each other?’ Gal-qadan, the Mongol, said, standing almost naked. ‘And fight the victors at the end?’
Euryleia gave him a look and realised some of the soldiers hadn’t changed at all.
‘I agree,’ Olan, the Viking, said. ‘We must regroup – find a fortification and wait.’
‘But whoever wins will come for us next,’ Sancha said. ‘And I don’t like the look of this new army.’
As he spoke, the bulky procession of huge creatures pushed into the main square, taking fire from groups of Ascent warriors who had come in from the opposite flank. Even the Lutamek opened fire on the new army, but the lines of soldiers in the vanguard – a myriad strange aliens, some of which Euryleia recognised from the dome – didn’t return fire. Each shot was absorbed by an unseen force, which sparked around the advancing army as it pushed through single-storey buildings like an immense multicoloured slug devouring everything in its path.
‘They are the Tathon,’ Isao said, his eyes turning dark. ‘From our dome. Hyper-evolved. Enemy or salvation, I can’t tell.’
Euryleia watched in horror as tentacles from the three huge Tathon picked up dying soldiers from the battlefield and threw them into vats of steaming liquid, to then be dragged out by a set of tall, bony creatures and strapped into large grey machines pushed by a set of bulky beasts similar to the one Belsang had ridden during their battle.
‘They revive and enhance new soldiers for their army,’ Isao said.
‘So none of us are safe?’ Euryleia said, feeling the fear like never before.
*
John clutched his gun and paced around the cave entrance. He desperately wanted to fight but he was overwhelmed by the battle raging before him, across the Ascent city. The fighting rose and fell like a rough sea, with new groups of soldiers joining the melee, making it impossible to tell who was fighting who. An instinct made him reach for his gas-mask bag but his metal hand found nothing; his organic fingers found the tin soldier at his neck though.
Peronicus-Rax had returned and was ready to fight. ‘Follow me to join the Lutamek,’ he said.
‘You obviously weren’t with us in the desert,’ Crossley replied, nodding at the metal behemoths, who were forming a defensive line around their encampment. ‘We’re not going anywhere near those bastards!’
‘But we must fight!’ a Korax said.
‘They are our best fighters,’ Yarcha added.
With a long sword in one hand and the battle rage in her eyes, John thought she looked like a different woman.
‘But–’ he started.
‘You can’t protect everyone, John,’ Yarcha said, gripping his arm. ‘Fight with us or fight here, we must survive.’
‘Yes, but…’ John looked back down into the dark chambers of the mine.
Yarcha released his arm and the group of fighters left with Peronicus-Rax for the Lutamek enclosure. A rush of movement made John turn as Lavalle rode up on his tocka, his coal-black armour scorched with white battle scars.
‘We have spare tocka for you to join us,’ Lavalle shouted to the crowd, who remained with John. ‘We must mount an attack on the leaders before they re-strengthen!’
A dozen alien soldiers and the remaining Sorean stepped forward and leaped onto vacant tocka, unclipping weapons from their sides. John moved backwards into the crowd, avoiding Lavalle’s eyes. Although his body told him to fight, John’s mind was still questioning why. He turned to run, wanting only some peace from the battle,
and found Crossley staring at him.
‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’
‘Err… yep,’ John said with a nod.
‘Damn right!’ the American replied and slapped John on the shoulder. ‘Come on, let’s go and get some.’ He ushered John along. ‘Don’t worry, the guards are all dead. I figured we could easily set up a mortar and use the entrance for protection.’
‘Yeah,’ John said, happy to go along with any plan that involved being sheltered.
He wanted to get somewhere safe, even if it meant walking back into what had been his prison.
‘But who will we fire at?’ John asked, checking the gun was still in his belt.
‘Anyone we see our guys fighting against, I guess.’
The lights were still working in the cave, which was littered with the bodies of guards and miners who had lost their lives in the escape. Crossley stepped over them, searching for weapons as he passed, but John only had eyes for the dead. Back in this fetid air, his thoughts seemed clearer, if less positive.
‘What are we fighting for?’ he asked when they passed Falen’s deconstructed body. Limbs lay like forgotten bones around her glass-eyed head.
‘The same as before,’ Crossley answered without stopping. ‘We fight for our allies and to stay alive.’
John closed his eyes and saw little Joe. He remembered Rosie’s smile and felt his eyes water.
‘I’ve hardly thought about them,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘I’ve hardly thought about them,’ he said, swallowing. ‘You know, my family… Rosie and Joe… they were my reason to survive, during my war.’
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ Crossley replied. ‘Come on.’ He beckoned John down a shaft he hadn’t been down before. ‘It’s different now you found out they’re long gone, right?’
John remembered his conversation with Li and everything she had told him about Joe, who had grown up an orphan and fought in Crossley’s war. He’d survived, had children and died at a ripe old age.
‘Yes, but Rosie’s always been gone, I–’
‘They were linked to you,’ Crossley said as he pulled open a rusted metal door to reveal a set of shelves cut into the rock, each filled with explosive charges, ‘and to each other,’ he continued. ‘You fought for Joe so you could fight for Rosie, right?’
He handed John charges, loading them up in his arms.
‘But now they’ve both definitely gone and you can’t get home. You can’t fight for any of them, can you?’
‘No, I suppose I can fight for vengeance, but…’ John remembered what had powered his anger during the battle against the Brakari. His knees felt weak. ‘But it’s too much. How can we find out the truth here? How can we find who brought us here when all these battles for power are kicking off?’
‘If they destroy the tower we’re really screwed,’ Crossley said, and flicked his head for them to start walking back to the main cavern.
John followed and thought about his time at the tower and with the lock. The darkened glass and the obelisk within. They were walking through a cave he recognised, weaving round the scattered shaft pits dug into the ground.
‘That’s it!’ John said. ‘Enter to complete your path of ascendancy… that’s what it said on the obelisk inside the tower.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ Crossley said, walking ahead. ‘But how does that help?’
‘We need to protect the tower!’ John said as they passed through the section he used to mine. ‘Are these safe if you drop them?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, they’re not primed so… shit, no!’
John stopped by his old shaft and let his hoard of tubular-shaped explosives tumble down. He listened to them rattle and thump their way down the spiral staircase that Yam-mit, the Korax, had built for their first escape attempt.
‘We needed those!’ Crossley shouted.
‘We’ll be more use defending the tower, believe me!’ John said and waited for Crossley to follow suit. ‘We need to grab more weapons.’
‘Jeez, you Limeys are crazy,’ Crossley said and shook his head as his armful of explosives dropped down the hole. ‘This better be a good plan,’ he muttered as he thrust a rocket launcher into John’s arms.
‘We need to protect the tower, right?’ John said as they descended the spiral stairs and emerged into the chambers below, where the failed escape had taken place. It all looked the same, apart from some cracks John could have sworn weren’t there before.
‘I get it,’ Crossley replied, keeping up with John. ‘You know a way out that leads to the tower.’
‘Well, sort of,’ John said. ‘The guards had a way in here somewhere and they’re–’
‘Shh.’ Crossley raised his hand, turning to point. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he whispered.
‘No, someone’s already here!’ a voice boomed behind them.
John dropped his rocket launcher, sending a clattering crash echoing around the caves.
‘Das and Pod?’ Crossley said and smiled at the tiny, scaly mammals. ‘Good to see you guys! How did you survive? You were with Gal-qadan’s troops, right?’
‘Looks like you had the same idea as us,’ Das said. ‘Cut round the back?’
‘No,’ John said, ‘we’re trying to get out. To protect the tower.’
‘What do you mean “round the back”?’ Crossley asked. ‘We’re not Ascent. Who are you fighting for?’
A group of soldiers John didn’t recognise appeared behind Das and Pod.
‘Where next, masters?’ a strange, three-eyed amphibian asked.
Das pointed towards where John and Crossley had come from and the troops tramped off in single file.
‘You.’ Pod selected a soldier, then another. ‘Take these prisoners – action one, five, six.’
‘Yes, master,’ a fox-like soldier in a long white robe replied and moved towards John and Crossley.
‘Listen,’ Crossley said as the Firstborn soldier checked him for weapons. ‘We haven’t picked sides… we were prisoners of the Ascent. We’re just defending the tower.’
‘We should all be defending the tower!’ John said. ‘A new army’s here and we must join forces.’
Das scampered over to John. In any other circumstances, John would have considered him cute.
‘Listen, human,’ Das said, ‘your meddling has brought this upon us. We allowed your questions and gave you the chance to fulfil your ancestors’ inquisitive nature by climbing to your dome cap, but in doing so you have risked every life on the disc. This new army, these Tathon, were created by you!’
‘Das, we don’t have time for this,’ Pod said, as a shudder shook the cave, shaking dust and flakes of stone from the ceiling.
Crossley was softly coughing as the last soldiers climbed up the steps, leaving the last two with them.
‘Yes, very little time,’ Das replied and pointed to the cave where Samas had died. ‘Action one, five, six,’ he ordered and scampered down a different passageway, with Pod behind him.
‘Where are they going?’ Crossley asked as the two soldiers advanced on them.
John felt cold sweat under his armpits and his cheeks burned. He stepped back and slipped on one of the explosive cartridges but kept his footing. Crossley did the same, sending the tube rolling to the wall, then kicked another to join it.
‘You can’t just kill us, okay?’ Crossley said to the grimacing soldiers, who raised their shoulder rifles.
‘Against the wall,’ the second soldier, a rotund toad of a creature, growled and pressed buttons on its weapon.
John reached for an explosive on the floor but Crossley shook his head.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered.
They backed towards the wall that Samas, Yam-mit and Rar-kin had been entombed in. John felt his heels scrape the wall behind them and, to his surprise, he felt a wave of relief.
It was over.
Finally, he could rest. He could join Rosie and Joe. He felt his shoulders relax and pictured Rosie wit
h young Joe as he remembered the boy. It had never happened in real life of course – she had barely seen the baby before she died – but that was how John liked to remember them: together; waiting for him.
The soldiers aimed their weapons. John breathed in. Crossley coughed and the cave disappeared in a deafening explosion of smoke and pure white light.
Chapter 22
In the shadow of the arena, Euryleia spotted a crowd of soldiers at the mouth of a cave, staring around like lost children. A group of tocka had just left them and now skirted the edge of the open ground towards the Lutamek’s encampment. Lavalle’s obsidian armour stood out on the lead tocka and she felt drawn to him. She felt the urge to protect him, to talk to him.
‘They’ve opened up the Ascent’s inner wall,’ Olan said with a shake of his head.
‘And they’re absorbing everyone in their path,’ Sancha added.
Euryleia saw the pattern in the Tathon army’s attack: the spearhead; the strongest troops on the wing taking out any resistance; the weaker soldiers mopping up the injured. It was like the shield walls Olan had mentioned where the young and old walked behind, despatching injured enemies. Only here, the injured soldiers were captured and processed through various machines and liquids.
‘They’ll be after us next,’ Cheng said.
‘What happens to the soldiers they take?’ Euryleia asked Sancha, trusting his keen eyes.
‘They’re still alive… but different,’ he said, squinting.
‘The Tathon are making them their own,’ Gal-qadan said with what Euryleia recognised as a look of admiration.
‘Which is a trap I don’t intend to fall into,’ Euryleia said. ‘It looks like we have a simple choice,’ the men looked to her, ‘we either fight now,’ she aimed her bow tip at the Tathon leaders, ‘or unite with stronger forces.’ Her bow swung to Lavalle and the Lutamek, who stood in a protective semicircle around their compound.