The possibility of his disfigurement didn’t concern him in the least. The only thing that mattered was getting his senses back, including the fortitude to overcome the pain. Only then would he be able to get out of the bunker and figure out what was going on.
Reaching his hand out, his fingers came upon his vibro halberd. At least his weapon was still there. That was something.
After a minute he tried once more to push himself upright so his back could rest against the bunker wall. The pain was amazing. It reminded him of the years in which he had trained to become a Fianna, not because the training itself had broken him, but because it had been focused on causing the maximum amount of suffering in his victims.
With his back against the wall, he closed his eyes until the flashes of light and the urge to vomit gradually subsided. He was aware that he was making tiny cries and groans but wasn’t able to stop them. When his eyes opened, a series of shadows revealed themselves. The bunker walls. Sandbags. But no Dindraine. Her blaster was also gone.
As his senses began to come back to him, he realized a constant buzzing was being generated. At first, he thought it was only inside his head, the effects of the laser blast that had nearly killed him. But as he collected himself, he realized it was coming from outside the bunker.
Looking up was going to be a bad idea. He knew that, but he also needed to know what was going on. Just as he predicted, leaning his head back brought on another wave of throbbing pain behind his eyes. He would have been okay with throwing up if his helmet were off, but with the demon mask stuck to his face, he needed to do everything in his power to keep himself collected. Eventually, his head hurt a little less and he opened his eyes again.
At first, the little he could see through the slits of the bunker’s ceiling didn’t make sense. It was extremely bright. His eyes hurt and he closed them again. Without knowing how long he had been unconscious, it was certainly possible that his eyes just needed a chance to get accustomed to the daylight. But something about the humming, bright glow didn’t seem like daylight. It was too pure, too sparkly.
Over the course of another minute, he gradually opened his eyes again, letting in more and more light until he could actually stare at the gap of space above his bunker. In addition to the hum of energy, there were sporadic crackles like a bug catcher zapping tiny insects. It seemed to be coming from the bright light directly above him but he knew of no device that might cause them.
As he watched the light and tried to make sense of it, a giant metal disc appeared above him, blocking out much of the light and sending down waves of heat into the bunker below.
As the transport moved forward, Philo began to understand what was happening. It was appearing out of a portal located directly above his bunker.
Which meant...
One of the mechs was ten feet above where he was hiding.
63
Room by room, Margaret packed all of her belongings. It was fast work. Much of what she and Julian had accrued over the years only took up space and she was fine leaving it there. An entire closet was filled with knick-knacks that meant nothing to her. An entire room contained furniture they never used.
None of it would be making the trip with her to Auster1-Tersa, the smallest of three moons that orbited the planet Auster1. While the planet and its other two moons each had assortments of colonies, Auster1-Tersa was the only planet or moon in the entire Alchemite sector that had an atmosphere naturally suitable for life without the need for a containment field.
Margaret chose it because it was a place neither she nor Julian had ever mentioned. Not only had they never discussed the possibility of one day living there, as they had with Edsall Dark, Hadrin-Major, and a variety of other places, she and her now deceased husband had never even uttered the moon’s name during their many decades together. Without Julian in her life anymore, it was important for her to go someplace that would never trigger memories of him. That was also what was driving her to leave CamaLon as soon as her affairs were in order.
She wasn’t leaving every memory behind. There was a box of holographic photo albums filled with images of Julian. It would be a long time before she would be able to look at a hologram of him, though. She was also taking a couple things from his time as a naval officer. There were the holocube images of his graduation from the academy, his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel a couple years after she gave birth to Talbot, and his promotion to General. Everything else, even his fully adorned general’s uniform with all of the medals he had earned over the years, would be left behind.
She had contacted a teacher at the academy to see if they wanted it. The woman had served with Julian on two of his early campaigns and had jumped at the chance to have General Reiser’s uniform added to the Round Table museum.
The thought crossed Margaret’s mind to ask why more items were being added to the museum if the Hannibal were approaching and all civilization might be wiped out. However, she kept the question to herself and was happy to be rid of four boxes’ worth of useless belongings.
It cost more than she thought it should to reserve space in a freighter for the few things she was planning on taking with her.
“It was a fraction of that to move here,” she told the male Tricknon, a slender, cream-colored alien that was taking her reservation.
The Tricknon sang a series of noises back to her that were translated in the store’s display as, “Unfortunately, there is a growing demand to leave Edsall Dark...” He didn’t have to explain why.
Part of her wanted to explain that she was not running away from the Hannibal. She was simply running away from having to see reminders of her old life. The knowledge that she was fleeing all the same, if not for the same reasons as the others who chartered the freighter, made her leave without saying anything else.
64
Without even realizing he was doing so, Pompey held his breath as he watched the black mech make its way through the network of underground tunnels. At least one Hannibal projectile went down every fork in the passageways and then exploded into a portal. Three or four portals were aligned at various distances in front of and behind the mech as its hover disc carried it through the enclosed areas. The circles of energy directly in front of and behind the mech were only feet away from the edge of its transport. The others were dispersed a hundred feet and a hundred yards further down.
Pompey could guess what the mech was doing and why it was doing it. It was giving itself an escape path down any number of various routes in case it ran into danger. The former Vonnegan general was dismayed to realize how adept the units were at ensuring their survival. If the mech was ambushed simultaneously from the front and back, it could still jump into a portal that was only a split second away and appear in a side tunnel. If the entire underground system turned out to be unsafe, it could connect through a portal and reappear back on the planet’s surface.
Dismay came over the military tactician because he knew most if not all of the traps he and Thidian had planned for the ancient tunnels would be ineffective. Pompey considered not activating the first trap at all. Not because he had given up on the people of Greater Mazuma—he knew there was no giving up in this battle. Just as warships could be turned around and flown away from a conflict, so too could troops on one side of a battlefield retreat from the enemy while others fought. It didn’t mean a white flag had been raised, it simply meant a new strategy needed to be employed.
It made sense to leave the trap deactivated because it would likely not result in any harm to the mech and might only alert it to the fact that it was heading in the right direction. After all, traps weren’t built in places no one cared about. They were used to deter someone or something from going where they weren’t wanted.
He looked at the holographic display beside him that showed a pixelated version of the tunnel system. Places that were glowing blue had women and children hiding in them. Places that were flashing red had traps he could activate. The mech was less than half a mile to
the first cavern, where two hundred thousand people were huddled.
It was also less than fifty feet from the first trap, which was a water barrier. Both ends of the tunnel would slam shut and the section that the mech was in would be flooded.
Forty feet.
Thidian had calculated it would take just over two minutes to flood the corridor. The mech would easily escape by then.
Thirty feet.
But if Pompey didn’t at least try to deter the mech, it would surely continue toward the civilians.
Twenty feet.
If he did nothing, he would be a traitor to the Vonnegan people. He hadn’t led men and women into battle just so he could later allow his people to be slaughtered.
Ten feet.
He closed his eyes and took a breath, then opened them and slammed a fist down on the glowing white button that would trigger the pair of steel walls to slam shut and the water to begin rushing in.
The hologram that Pompey was watching didn’t receive audio, but he could imagine the loud and echoing boom that would sound as the heavy doors hit the ground and locked in place. Immediately, water began to rush in from the ceiling. The mech froze in place. It only took a few seconds for the water level to reach the bottom of the mech’s hover transport and the two portals within arm’s reach of the mech. Pompey could see the water sizzle and spark as it touched the transport’s energy source.
“Please,” Pompey mumbled, hoping the liquid might disrupt something in the portal’s ability to function.
It didn’t. The mech looked behind it, then moved forward, into the closer of the two portals. Water continued to rush into the passageway after the mech had vanished but Pompey didn’t care. He was sure the mech would find a different way into the underground tunnels.
The holographic map of the system showed that two of the Hannibal portals were located further along the route the mech had been taking. As Pompey watched, a stream of new dots appeared on the map. More projectiles had come through one portal and would turn into additional energy fields. Soon after, a mech also appeared, a hundred yards past where Pompey had tried to trap and drown it.
Undeterred, the mech continued farther along down the corridor, closer to where the first group of people was hiding.
65
Huddled in the corner of the ancient aqueduct, Thidian watched the holographic feed as it showed the progress of one of the mechs.
“Come on,” he had mumbled as he watched the dot representing the enemy move along the tunnel leading to where he and thousands of other Vonnegans were hiding.
The dot had vanished, tricking Thidian into a moment of elation. It reappeared a second later, past the water trap. In a perfectly empty and quiet room, he would have been able to hear the two giant steel doors slam shut when the trap was activated. Even though everyone was being as quiet as possible, the breathing and shuffling of so many people created enough noise that no one inside the safe zone had heard the boom.
That was a good thing. If one of the children did hear it, they might have started to cry. As it was, it was amazing that every single person, young and old, was able to keep fairly silent. Thidian had no idea what kind of sensors the mechs had, but it seemed likely that just one crying baby would be loud enough to be detected.
On the tiny display in his hand, he watched as the dot moved a quarter of a mile further along the underground route. Every once in a while it skipped a section of tunnel and Thidian realized this was where it was passing through one portal and appearing from another, either to save time or because it detected something it thought might be a trap.
“What’s happening?” a man next to Thidian asked, unable to make sense of the tiny hologram in the city planner’s palm.
The mech was only seconds from entering the next trap, one that would jolt it with enough electricity to power all of Greater Mazuma for twenty four hours. There was no living creature in the galaxy that could survive being hit by that much voltage.
“Come on,” Thidian mumbled again, too caught up in praying for the mech to stay on course to reply to the man.
As he watched, the mech continued straight ahead. Thidian stopped breathing. He didn’t blink. Every part of him was frozen in place as he watched the mech move further up the tunnel, up, up, then...
The lights in the old aqueduct flickered. The fan helping to circulate air stopped working. Thidian knew it wouldn’t have been just their chamber that would have been affected. All of Greater Mazuma would have just lost power for a split second as the trap was discharged.
The mech, only two minutes from where everyone was hiding, had just been electrocuted with one million kilowatts of electricity.
“We got one,” he said to the man next to him. Then, slightly louder, a smile crossing his lips, said again, “We got one.”
66
Moments before the electrical trap was activated, Philo opened his eyes, unsure of why he was on the ground again. Without moving, he let his senses come back to him and realized he must have passed out again, either because of the pain or the injury to his head. As his equilibrium came back and his memory filled in gaps, he remembered the mech had been directly above him. It was gone now, although a portal was still buzzing above the bunker where he was located.
His first instinct was to take off his helmet, but an alarm went off inside his head, forcing him to pause as the memory came back of the pain that had crippled him the first time he tried to take it off.
“Dindraine?” he said again, although he knew even as he said it that she wasn’t there.
He groaned at his own nonsensical behavior. Over his years of training, he and the other Fianna had been taught to ignore survival instincts and focus entirely on defending the Vonnegan ruler. The drills they had gone through had stripped away fears and base impulses that affected lesser soldiers. Such behaviors and inadequacies had been beaten out of Philo, and for years he was the epitome of the warrior who fought intelligently but without regard for himself. In the years since the Vonnegan Empire’s defeat, however, he must have slipped back into being almost like an ordinary Vonnegan. That was why he called for the person who might be closest by, even though she might put a second laser blast into his helmet and finish the job if she knew he were still alive. If the members of his old Fianna unit could see him now they would kill him for the dishonor he brought to their ranks.
Driven by a need to find the woman who had been assigned to his bunker, he pulled himself up to his knees. Years earlier, he would have sought her out in order to get revenge, to make her suffer much longer than he had. It was important for everyone to remember what happened when you underestimated a Fianna. Now, though, he wanted to find her not so he could kill her but to keep her safe.
Yes, he wore the demon armor, but only because an enemy was approaching. He wanted her to know he wasn’t the same man who had committed atrocities in Mowbray’s name. If she were able to understand that, maybe it could mean he had finally found a way to begin repaying his debt to Vonnegan society. If he could make her understand that he was no longer a monster, maybe he could believe it himself.
His main problem, as he saw it, was that he could barely move. His legs were shaky and he wasn’t sure he could stand. His head was spinning, forcing him to hold onto something. Every part of his head and neck felt like it was on fire, the residual effects of the laser blast being absorbed into his helmet while he was wearing it.
Ignoring these weaknesses, he gathered all of his strength and pulled himself up to two feet, his weight leaning against the bunker wall so he didn’t fall over. His vibro halberd, rather than serving as a weapon, became a crutch to support him.
Before the shot to the back of his head, he could have leapt out of the bunker with no problem. He could have rolled over one shoulder and been in attack position. Now, he had to remain still for a few seconds after doing something as simple as getting to his feet. Once he was sure he wasn’t going to collapse, he brought one foot up to the first step leadin
g out of the bunker, placed a hand against the wall, and made his way closer to the street surface.
He did this five more times. After each step, he paused and collected himself. After the sixth step, all of him down to his shins had emerged from the bunker, and he finally allowed himself to pause and assess the situation.
The street to his left was gone, buried underneath thousands of tons of metal that had once been a high-rise. The defenses that had been straight ahead were nothing more than pockets of fire and debris.
A buzzing noise caught his attention.
“Huh?” he muttered, trying to make sense of what it could be.
Turning, he looked at the portal above his bunker. The reddish brown mech was there, directly in front of the circle of energy. It peered down at him, then raised its giant ion sword.
Before it brought the weapon down, however, it froze in place. Philo noticed that every light, everything that had been humming with energy, fell silent—everything except the mech and the portal it appeared from.
Still disoriented, Philo was barely clear-headed enough to deduce what had happened. One of the underground traps had gone off.
Rather than finish the strike, the mech darted backward into the same portal it had just appeared from, vanishing in an instant. Philo, alone again, couldn’t help but smile because he knew what the rapid retreat must mean. One of the mechs had been destroyed and the others were going to its rescue.
They were going to win the battle.
67
Vere saw everything that was going on around Greater Mazuma. Pompey wasn’t aware of her presence, but she stood beside him and witnessed the struggle as it unfolded. She also walked the street where Philo stumbled about, neither the Fianna nor the mechs seeing her there.
Amidst the violence, she closed her eyes and allowed her mind to drift away. Everything around her was a void, blacker than space. No stars. No planets. Even notions of up or down, closeness or distance, faded away.
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