by Dan Schiro
Orion shouted at his team as the first pulse bolts fizzled on their tight clump of lightshields. “Focus your attack, try to collapse the entrance! We can’t let them get down here.” While Aurelia, Kangor and Dalaxa spaced out to return fire, Orion snapped back to L’yak. “Not to be ungrateful, but how long is this going to take?”
“First, I need to find the spirit of Thegra’s Sword on the ether route network,” s/he said, face slack. “Then I need to convince it to talk to me.”
Orion glanced back to see if his friends were slowing down the manowars at all. Kangor threw grenades up at the seating tiers, the explosions echoing with concussive force, blazing with bright fire or coating manowars in ice depending on what he pulled out of his sack. Aurelia added javelins of emerald energy, spinning and chanting in the rolling language of the Green as she threw them, and Dalaxa’s explosive rounds collapsed the entrance on the manowars still emerging.
“Spirit?” Orion said to L’yak.
“Understand,” s/he said, voice almost too soft to hear over the detonations. “The ship-stone is alive with the manacite that runs through it. I have to seek it out, speak to it in its language.”
Another explosion blew dust and debris in through a corridor a tier above them. As more manowars flooded in, Orion’s team pivoted their combined assault. “Hurry, L’yak,” Orion blurted. “We can’t hold them forever!”
“Out of shells,” Dalaxa said, clicking the trigger of her multi-fire assault rifle. She flipped a switch and blazed away with a stream of pulse bolts.
Kangor hurled a final incendiary and tossed the empty grenade sack aside. “Very well — let us do battle with tooth and claw!”
“Good idea,” Aurelia cawed, her body bright with an aura of green flame. “Come on down, you soulless husks!”
“Orion,” said L’yak. “Use your spellblade.”
“I’d love to,” Orion yelled holding up the silver gauntlet covering his right arm to the elbow. “But I’m kind of out of juice at the moment, and the manowars don’t fuel it!”
“There’s blood in the air, Orion.” L’yak seemed relaxed, oblivious to the chaos that swarmed them. “This city is awash in it. You simply need to reach out for it.”
Orion extended his armored hand and found s/he was right — the life forces of soldiers and civilians were floating through the air, and all he had to do was open the mouth of his hungry spellblade and let the river of blood flow down its throat. The veins in his gauntlet soon pulsed with vivid red light, and Orion turned to the group of manowars scrambling down from the galactic rep seating to the main floor.
“Battering ram,” he said, and a clear bolt of concussive force blasted the encroaching manowars into the air like bowling pins hit with a vicious strike.
He turned his gaze to a group of pale blue enemies two tiers up. “Knives,” he spat, and a hail of blades flew forth like silver birds to shred biosynthetic flesh.
Yet another squad of manowars charged in through the tunnel on the main floor. “Acid,” Orion growled.
As a geyser of sizzling liquid stripped away synthetic skin and muscles hard as steel cords, Orion found himself laughing. He threw spell after spell as souls from the city under siege flowed into his spellblade. Soon he found that he was losing himself in his symbiote’s bloody exultations. Still more manowars stormed the Grand Chambers, but whatever remained human in Orion refused to be subsumed by the living metal.
“It’s too much,” Orion gasped as he pulled the spellblade back into his arm. He stumbled, but Dalaxa’s nimble hands were there to catch him. “Fall back, fall back,” he yelled as manowars flooded over the short wall between the stadium seating and the main floor. “AD, draw a force field around L’yak!”
The manowars charged at them, but their thundering steps were suddenly dulled, their grim, identical faces gently distorted by a dome of green luminescence. As Aurelia strained to hold off the circle of blades, bolts and heavy fists, Orion spun out of Dalaxa’s arms and dashed to L’yak’s side.
“L’yak, tell me you’re close?”
The Engineer still wore the same slack expression, eyes bright with white light. “Almost… Almost…” L’yak smiled. “That’s it.”
“Do it now,” Orion barked.
The sparkle in L’yak’s blue eyes faded, and s/he turned to Orion. “You realize I can’t go with you. I have to find out what happened to my people. I have to know if there are any of us left before I die for any other cause.”
Eyes wide, Orion clapped L’yak on the shoulder. “I understand, and I wish you luck,” he said urgently as Aurelia fell to her knees. “But I need you to put me on Thegra’s Sword, and not a second later than now.”
“Go,” L’yak said with a smile as the glowing glyphs on floor shifted through a spectrum of colors. “Do the things you were meant to do.”
The light of the jaunt pond grew blindingly bright, stamping the silhouettes of Orion’s friends on the back of his eyelids as he squeezed them shut. Then he felt like he was falling, not as one body, but as a rain of atoms.
Chapter 30
Though it only lasted an instant, the bodiless state nauseated Orion. Then the blazing white light faded, and Orion blinked his eyes clear.
“Did it work?” Kangor growled, his every muscle tense and ready to fight.
“And not a Goddess-damned second too soon, as usual,” Aurelia panted, still on her knees. She rose slowly, the effort of holding the force field passing.
“But where are we?” Dalaxa asked, her eyes sparkling with fascination. “What is this place?”
They stood on a matching jaunt pond at one end of a brightly lit, cathedral-like space. Along the main aisle, living metal sculptures flowed from one abstract shape to the next. Here and there floating spheres of tiny worlds circled incandescent sparks in glass globes. A pillar of multicolored sand spun like a tamed sandstorm, its eerie hum oscillating with every revolution. Taxidermic alien beasts glared at them perpetually ready to pounce, strange weapons gleamed atop pale pedestals, and androgynous humanoid statues sculpted from pale stone towered along the seamless white walls. The artifacts seemed so different, Orion doubted they could all be the work of the same artist, perhaps not even the same race.
“This is a trophy room,” he said as the realization came to him.
“I think you may be right,” Dalaxa said. She ventured a few steps closer to what could only be described as a great glass tree and gazed up at the softly swaying translucence. “Perhaps these… things were collected as the Engineers annexed other cultures.”
“They were conquerors,” Aurelia scoffed, her cruel lips verging on amusement.
“Ravagers,” grunted Kangor.
Dalaxa opened her mouth as if to say something but stopped. The s’zone’s face scrunched with concentration for a few seconds and then went slack. Her pink eyes rolled back in her head, and she touched a hand to her sculpted face as she fell forward. Orion rushed in to catch her, cradling her in his arms as milky blood streamed from her petite nose and coursed down her pale neck.
“Dalaxa,” Orion said softly. “Can you hear me? Do you know me?”
She coughed, and her eyes fluttered weakly for a moment. “I… remember.” Dalaxa straightened in his arms and sat up. Dabbing at the blood flowing from her nose, she smiled. “It’s broken, fragmented, but… I remember this place.”
“You do?” Orion met her wide-eyed gaze as he helped her to her feet. “Do you know how to shut it down?”
“I know where to start.” Bracing herself on his shoulder, Dalaxa pointed a long finger toward the other end of the room. “I remember, it’s that way. We have to pass through the mirror to enter the throne room. That’s the soul of the ship.”
Orion set his jaw. “I bet I can guess who we’ll find sitting in the throne.”
The four of them set out down the central aisle, careful
to keep a safe distance from the strange artifacts occupying the cavernous museum. Against the far wall, Orion saw a mirror that must have stood three stories tall and half as wide. An ornate frame of golden sea foam encrusted with colorful jewels curved around its polished silver rectangle, each sparkling gem the size of Orion’s fist. For most of their tense advance through the trophy room, Orion saw his team reflected in miniature. Yet as he gazed into the glass, his teammates disappeared and he watched himself change. First, his hair grew out, spiked elaborately, and then a beard appeared. A few feet closer, and his combat garb morphed into black robes. As the lines deepened on his face, a glowing plug replaced one eye, then a curve of gleaming metal appeared along his jaw. He lost more and more pieces to cybernetic replacements, and at a hundred feet from the mirror, Orion saw a broken old man limping along alone. Yet when they came a few steps closer, the surface of the mirror rippled open. A hunched, shadow-draped figure shuffled out to meet them.
“Greetings,” said the short creature. He had beady red eyes in a pallid face, a hooked nose and a bald, scaled scalp that gleamed with greasy sheen. A grin twitched at the corners of his small mouth. “At last, you arrive.”
Orion drew a bladed bo staff from his living-metal gauntlet. “Who are you?”
“My name is Vargas.” He shuffled toward them with a faint scratching sound emanating from beneath his robe. “I have been sent by the Grand Warlord to make you an offer.”
“Is it his unconditional surrender?” Orion said with a smirk as he twirled his silver staff. “If so, I’ll give him a quick, clean death.”
“Not you, you pink fool.” Vargas stopped and folded his spidery fingers. “Kangor of Clan Kash — this is your last chance to join Lord Typhus. Together, you can bring the Union to justice. You know what they did to your people.”
“I know what they did,” Kangor said, acid in his voice. “But the slaughter of innocents does not justify the slaughter of innocents. That is something I have learned since the fall.”
“You are not seeing the whole picture, my vycart friend.” Vargas’ uneven shoulders shook with silent laughter. “The Mad Thinker is a genius beyond compare. With this wondrous ship and a bit of DNA, your race can be reborn. Will you stand beside the Grand Warlord as he unfurls a new empire of infinite crimson?”
“Reborn?” Kangor’s tensely coiled body relaxed some small degree. “What do you mean?”
“Don’t listen to him, Kangor,” Dalaxa scoffed. “The best cloning technology in the galaxy can’t bring vycart DNA to maturity, and I would know.”
“Ah, but I am not talking about this galaxy’s technology.” Vargas spread his hands wide and grinned. “This ship is a thing of magic, vast and powerful. There is little it cannot do.” He tipped his oddly shaped head to one side. “What say you, Kangor of Clan Kash? Would you like to live among your people again? Would you like to have a family again?”
“A family,” Kangor said, exhaling deeply. He turned to Orion, Aurelia and Dalaxa with a tortured expression on his face. His lips curled back to bare his fangs, and his huge hands drew into trembling fists.
“Whoa, buddy,” Orion said, swallowing hard. “Please tell me you don’t believe him.”
“Slaughter your companions, Kangor,” Vargas cawed, his bony fists balled. “Join us in this glorious orgy of blood. You can have a million sons and daughters, all created in your image.”
“No,” Kangor said at last. “An army of clones would not be the rebirth of the vycart race. It would be a perversion of it. And as for family?” He glanced at Orion and Aurelia again. “I have a family.”
“Well said.” Orion snapped into his Skywalk Strike stance, his bladed bo staff held forth at Vargas. “Last chance to step aside, little guy.”
“Oh, I’m afraid not.” A wide smile stretched across Vargas’ face, distending his thin flesh. “I’ve lived far too long to fear the likes of you,” he added, his voice changing.
They still stood a good distance away, so there was nothing Orion could do as a rapid change came over the small creature. His black robes fell away from his hunched frame, and Orion saw a pale sack of skin stretched thin by jutting bones. As Vargas unfolded, the papery skin ripped open, bones snapped and shifted, and even his face tore away to reveal a long jaw, large, gleaming red eyes and a mouth full of knife-like fangs. In mere seconds, Vargas unfolded to stand some nine feet tall, with huge clawed hands and long, gray limbs. Horns curled forth from his head, talons emerged from his elbows and knees, and spikes sprouted along his spine.
“Come,” Vargas said, his voice deep with demonic timbre. “Face death incarnate.”
Orion took a deep breath and compelled his mind into the White Room. “We do this toge—”
“I’ve got him,” Aurelia shouted.
The Lady of the Jade Way extended both hands and unleashed a sudden torrent of green fire so hot that Orion and the others stumbled back. Yet before the scalding stream reached Vargas, the ghastly creature threw up a clawed hand and conjured a large black disk. The green fire swirled into the darkness, steaming weakly as the black disk consumed it. Still Aurelia poured out energy, trembling as if she could not stop. Behind the blinding glare, she wore a panicked expression on her normally droll face.
“No, no, stop it,” Aurelia gasped as she fell to her knees, her arms shaking as hot radiance erupted from her palms. After a few seconds, the blaze faded to a trickle and died out altogether. Aurelia collapsed to her hands and knees, her firm green flesh withered and sagging with the harsh, heavy reality of millennia. “What are you?”
“An old creature from a dark realm.” Vargas laughed, his mirth echoing maliciously. “An exile, like you.”
Kangor roared with primal rage and charged. “Don’t,” Orion yelled, his hold on the White Room faltering.
His warning came too late. Kangor charged headlong without cover or strategy, and Vargas hurled the black disk with a whip-like movement of his long arm. It spun at Kangor as thin as a line of ink and as fast as a pulse bolt, expanding as it crossed the distance. The disk sliced through Kangor’s torso like a guillotine and came spinning back to its master as the vycart’s two halves splattered to the ground. Still alive, Kangor screamed with the echoing agony of a wounded lion.
“Bastard,” Orion cried as he pushed Dalaxa back toward cover among the alien artifacts. He tried to force his mind deeper into the White Room. “I’ll—”
Vargas cocked his arm, and the disk came spinning forth again, its shadowy edge aimed at Orion. Instinctively, Orion transformed the staff in his hand into a silver katana. Then he fell to one knee and swung the sword with all the strength his arm had. He caught the leading edge of the thin, shadowy disk with precise timing, and it shattered into splinters of black glass all around him.
“I don’t know what you are,” Orion said as he rose up amongst the darkly glittering shards. “But I’ll kill you.”
Vargas reared back as if surprised. “Very well,” he said over Kangor’s moans. “We will do this the old way.”
They charged each other, and Vargas’ great speed ate up most of the distance while Orion took a few steps. All Orion could do was throw his body into the air and spin as Vargas’ claws came at him. Luckily, fate’s violent dice rolled in his favor. He barely cleared Vargas’ lowered horns, and as the beast lurched under him, Orion had a clean shot at his back. His katana plunged into spongy gray flesh and wrenched free as spinning momentum sent Orion crashing to the ground.
Vargas cried out and staggered forward, clutching at his back with a clawed hand. “A long time,” he laughed as he turned. “Thousands of your years since someone has wounded me physically.” A wriggling smile exposed dripping fangs. “Take that honor with you to the afterlife.”
Black blood dripped from Orion’s sword, and red veins crawled up through his spellblade gauntlet. It seemed that a mere taste of this hell-beast’s life force m
ade for obscenely potent blood magic. “I’m going to take more than honor,” Orion said, his spellblade all at once ravenously hungry for more. “I’m going to take it all.”
They ran at each other again, and this time Orion plied Blades of a Wheel to dance between jaws and claws, supremely confident. His spinning katana cut nicks in Vargas’ lean body that made him yelp, but those were little better than superficial. Orion only needed to wait for the right moment to deliver the killing blow and drink deep of Vargas’ dark life force. Yet the spellblade’s hunger clouded Orion’s judgment and made him sloppy. A flailing backhand from the freakishly strong creature caught him beneath the ribs and launched him through the air.
Orion’s stomach flipped as he fell, pain radiating through him. Then he crashed through the slowly swaying glass tree and slammed to the floor among millions of sharp, tinkling splinters. Even before he hit the ground, Orion could feel tiny cuts all over his face and shorn scalp. Thankfully, Orion’s kinetic bodysuit saved him from a shattered tailbone and broken back when he smashed into the unyielding white stone. For a second, he groaned and tried to brush the embedded glass from his blood-streaked face, only deepening the stinging cuts. Then he struggled to his feet with a pained cough, but he couldn’t even raise his sword before Vargas’ lithe shape came speeding at him. His clawed hand closed around Orion’s neck, and in the blink of an eye, Orion found himself lifted off his kicking feet.
“Any final words, frail creature?” Vargas’ slavering smile stretched wide.
Orion looked up at the stone sculptures lining the room. Between a taste of Vargas’ black blood and his own leaking life force, Orion hoped it would be enough. “Help,” he croaked, casting his desperate spell.
“There’s no one to help you,” Vargas clucked. “Now you die alone, like the crude animal you are beneath all your—”
Vargas cut short his derision as one of the tall, gladiator-attired sculptures leaped down off its plinth and came thundering toward them, its heavy steps overturning smaller museum pieces. Vargas growled, dropped Orion and spun to defend himself, but the animated sculpture was too fast. As Orion rolled away gasping for breath, the stone gladiator raised a weighty foot and stomped on Vargas, once, twice and a third time in rapid succession. Then it looked down at the twisted gray body beneath it with an emotionless, androgynous face and stepped back, returning to nothing more than pale stone as Orion’s spell faded.