“What do I await?” Sutuhr asked, and deeply inhaled.
“We will await the news that you have purged your ship of all incursions,” the Great Widow answered. “We know we will hear such news, quickly.”
Sutuhr pursed his venom-wet lips to speak again, but the spider was gone. He caught Crucis casting a glance at him and heard his Ship Master sigh. Sutuhr narrowed his sideward eyelids and focused his arachnid eyes on Crucis’ wingless back.
“Your blood would not purge my reactors of this infection, Crucis.” Sutuhr said slowly. “But it would cleanse my deck plates.”
“I serve in whatever role my Lord wishes.” Crucis said while still faced forward to his screens.
“Be sure I wish that role to be as a living demon.”
Crucis bowed his head while still faced forward.
Uruk awoke. He was being pulled. He was in space. His vision was blurred. He felt his face healing from burns even in the sub-freeze of vacuum. The acrid taste of his dark blood laid siege to his mouth. He was missing teeth. He turned his head and saw a huge red mass ahead. He blinked from the brightness. His focus resolved the red mass into the blaze of a Hell ship. He shook his head and jerked himself free from what pulled him. Zahl barked.
“You are awake, Field Master!” Zahl remarked.
The survivors of the reactor blast circled Uruk. The arcane forces that powered Hell’s monsters drove their wings beats through space. They were close to the ship. A dark hole contracted and bent beams straightened at its edges. Even out of control, the ship still healed itself. Uruk realized an explosion beneath that spot had blown them into vacuum. His burns and those on Zahl and the surviving demons told him the reactor had exploded. The Ignitaur Not had tried to kill him. But failed.
“As you napped, I ordered our forces to regroup at the main drive's maintenance deck, but not until they can egress with minimal casualties.” Zahl informed with a slight smile bending the singed thorns on his face. His voice was nothing in the vacuum, but his words were carried on the wavelengths native to Anguhr’s horde.
“Wise,” Uruk replied in the same manner. “We will—”
Another secondary battery deployed and opened fire. The squad dispersed on instinct. At so close an angle to the ship, the fired plasma spilt the hull’s red fires. The gun blast shot through Uruk’s scattered formation. He summoned his hellish energy to propel himself towards the ship's aft near the main drive. The others followed.
“They are here,” the voice pressed across the Great Widow like magma.
As the Dark Urge increased her energy output even more, her voice was everywhere and at once. It was deafening. It was the only sensation felt by the Great Widow. The voice of the Dark Urge became the universe. She strained to answer it over the roar of the Forge, stoked violently to make power to fend away all things, entreating and hostile.
“Who, mistress?” the Great Widow strained to ask.
Everywhere the spider looked with all her eyes, she could only see a shadow of a woman staring overhead as if into a nighttime sky. It was impossible to have a shadow without light, but that was the Dark Urge.
“One, the Devoted. One, the Destroyer.” The Dark Urge answered.
“Sutuhr. Anguhr.” The spider summoned all her strength to speak.
“They are my children.” The Dark Urge said.
The Great Widow paused and carefully considered her reply, but decided to only agree. “Yes, mistress.”
“So strong.” Even with the Dark Urge’s voice thundering it contained a wistful quality.
“Which one, mistress?” the spider asked.
“So very strong.”
“They are both successful Generals,” the Great Widow offered. “They serve you well.”
“So strong,” the Dark Urge repeated. “She fled.”
“She, mistress? Azuhr?”
“Azuhr was the first.” The Dark Urge answered with sudden, sharp remark.
“A strong precedent.” The spider strained to make her reply. “She—”
“She is dead!”
“Most likely, mistress.” The spider felt crushed.
“She is not dead,” The Dark Urge furthered.
“She, mistress?” The Great Widow paused and again carefully considered just what this omnipresent power was thinking. The spider hoped the Dark Urge was indeed thinking, and that madness was yet to fully overtake her.
“You can say the name,” the Dark Urge said, softly.
“I would rather not, mistress.”
“You think it.” The Dark Urge now sounded playful. “You think: Zaria.”
“Yes, mistress.” The Great Widow instinctively drew in a long, hot breath through her abdomen’s trachea. She winced. “I apologize. I—”
The shadow became a giant, black hand that reached down to the spider. Its fingers gently stroked the Great Widow’s abdomen.
“Have fear,” the Dark Urge said in impossibly loud but delicate tones. “But do not worry. I love you.”
“Of this, I am so very glad.” The spider said, and stayed motionless.
“I may be death.” The Dark Urge added.
“You are the Dark Urge, mistress.”
“I have fear,” the Dark Urge said in a paradoxically reassuring voice.
“I would ease it,” the Great Widow said.
“You do. You kill for me. You are death.” The Dark Urge spoke in a sing-song voice that changed from an adult inflection to a child’s voice.
“I serve as best I can, mistress. I serve you.”
“So did Azuhr,” The Dark Urge still held the child’s tone and still stroked the spider as a giant, dark hand. “She is dead. So does Anguhr, and now he can kill me.”
“No, mistress. No.”
“No,” the Dark Urge repeated. “Will you kill him?”
“I will if I must, mistress.”
“But he is hard to find.” The Dark Urge’s voice regressed to such a young manner she sounded almost as an infant.
“He is, unique.” The spider remarked.
“Yes,” The gentle, adult tone of Hell returned. “I love him.”
“As I am sure, he loves you. You are his mother.”
The stroking hand vanished. The spider now felt the pulses across her body of intense, manic laughter. The throbbing pressure brought pain. The Great Widow’s only thought was the same as her very first impulse. Crawl. She did so. Slowly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The grapnel and rod were secure onboard Anguhr’s ship. They sat guarded by Solok and his elite strike wing. Zaria and Gin watched the bridge screens beyond Proxis. Zaria compared symbols displayed with the images to symbols in her memory. She attempted to grasp the evolution of Hell’s language and communication, and anything else she could glean from the free intelligence. A deep-toned question came from behind Zaria.
“Why do you look like me?” asked Anguhr.
The General also sought information. Zaria lifted her bound arms and turned to face Anguhr. He looked as relaxed as she had ever seen him. He was nearly slumped back in his throne. His axe was at last in its locks beside the massive, stone seat. Yet he still wore the black helmet. She began to wonder if he could take it off.
“Parallel evolution.” Zaria offered.
“No.” Anguhr replied. “I have seen similar warriors. Similar methods. Products of biological and social evolution. There are creatures with analogous forms, if differing molecular bases. Yet never have I found a thing as exact as you are to me. I am unique among Hell.”
Zaria stayed silent as she studied Anguhr.
“He mimics you,” Anguhr pointed at Gin. “But—”
“Are you as unique as you think?” Zaria asked.
Anguhr didn’t reply. Now he kept a stare fixed on Zaria.
“On Eden there are vast catalogues of life,” Zaria said. “They record living—and thanks to you and all Generals—many extinct creatures from vanished worlds. You will find your answer, there.”
“I want it now.” Anguhr demanded.
“I want to be free,” Zaria said and lifted her bound arms toward Anguhr. “Shall we trade?”
Anguhr thought to speak another threat. He halted. It would waste more time. He would learn what he needed, and gain the weapon soon enough. Strategically, the weapon was more valuable. Thus, he would keep his prisoners alive.
“We will not trade,” Anguhr said in an assured voice. “You will show me all I wish to know when my horde lays conquest to your world.”
Gin saw Proxis smile.
“Yes. You will learn, General.” Zaria also replied with certainty. “This I conceded with no desire for balance.”
Zaria saw Anguhr narrow his eyes through the spaces of his helmet.
“Coordinates, then,” Anguhr pointed to Proxis, “to your next lecture and my next conquest, teacher.”
“Already entered,” Gin said. “The keystroke buffer. It’s a simple and separate system contained within your entry surface.”
Gin gave a quick thrust of his head at the dais. Both Proxis and Anguhr glared at him.
“I only transmitted coordinates!” Gin did his best shrug in his black bonds. “No data was entered other than the destination! I have honored my pledge!”
“He appears to be truthful, Lord.” Proxis growled as he observed a screen where a torrent of data became a simple series of numbers. “I have copied it to navigation.”
Anguhr leaned forward and focused on the navigation screen as it rotated into central position. A three-dimensional map flowed out across a corridor of spacetime. The coordinates were far from Old Jove. They were to another system with a single, white star. Eden, it seemed, was nowhere near Hell. He was still tasked with finding and destroying Eden. He could still destroy Asherah and the nigh-undetectable moon orbiting Old Jove, and even the massive Old Jove. If that pleased the Dark Urge, so be it. Or not. Anguhr thought it may well please himself and add to his legend. However, such easy destruction may not pay tribute to War.
Detonating the mines or assaulting Old Jove with his ship could act as a show of compliance to the Dark Urge. He may need such a demonstration of loyalty should his gambit to complete the weapon fail. Finding and then destroying Eden would also serve that tactic. The weapon. Eden. They were two sides to his plan, just as there were two sides to his axe. It revealed two sides to Anguhr. Loyalty. Doubt. If he was utterly faithful to the Dark Urge, he would not seek a weapon to break her power, or perhaps even destroy her. He sensed Zaria knew this. The mystery of Zaria was as yet unrevealed. It was another side to this complex battlefield of deception. He wondered if he dare think the world insurrection.
One aspect of Anguhr’s double-sided plan cut his psyche. To complete Zaria’s weapon—now his weapon, Anguhr needed to take his ship from the Iron Work. Somewhere near it was another Hell ship with his loyal lieutenant Uruk. Anguhr had yet to know if Uruk was being successful on the mission to secure Xuxuhr’s warship. Anguhr didn’t wish to abandon his Field Master, even for a short time. He knew demons were resilient. Uruk, could, with little more training, become a General in his own right. And now his Lord faced the quandary of searching for him, or leaving the system to complete the great weapon.
Sutuhr was also prowling between here and Hell. He may secure Xuxuhr’s ship. Then, a weapon of greater power than his main guns would be a useful deterrent or necessary, final option. Time was constricting choice. Anguhr made a leap of faith.
“Proxis, make the main sail.” Anguhr ordered. “We travel to Eden.”
Uruk and his surviving squad alit on the ship’s port quarter and clambered across the beams to the hull’s aft. The Red Giant appeared to hang above them as a vast, crimson sky while the ship continued to drift and the interior battle still raged. Safe from large guns across this comparatively small section of hull, they flew the last leg. They kept their course straight by orienting their flight against the main drive that blazed at their backs. The drive’s exposed maintenance deck was nothing more than an aft gangway with wider decking and a control dais at its center. The only tools were lines of force projected into the star-like engine from the three pincer arms that linked it to the ship. The deck rested just below the base of the pincer arm that branched from the top of the hull. Its plane had the same orientation as the bridge. Its perspective overlooked the brilliant main drive.
On the deck, gravity felt as though it was a series of waves crashing against and reflecting back from the radiant main drive. Uruk sunk his foot claws into the deck plates with every step. As the ship slowly swung end over end, the Red Giant appeared as a burning surface below the blue orb of the main drive. The engine’s pincers became titanic bird talons snatching a star. These decks were rarely used on Hell ships. Vacuum, radiation, and the ship’s hellfire blocked its access to all but the scion of the Dark Urge. Only the Ignitaurs showed possible exception to this security rule. Uruk wondered if his squad were the first demons to stand of this deck. They were not.
Triat roared as he leapt down from the burning hull beams and landed in front of Uruk. “You betray us all, foul demon!”
“I am trying to save us all, you fool!” Uruk barked. “Help us right this ship and retake it!”
“I would rather see it burn in the home star’s flames!” Triat bellowed.
All the rifles of Uruk’s squad suddenly flanked him and pointed at Triat.
Triat clutched his own rifle. “This is without glory! Praise the Dark Urge!”
“Glory?” Uruk barked. “Death is what you seek.”
“Face me!” Triat screamed. “Face me in single combat!”
“Do you think I would risk a battle’s outcome on ego?” Uruk aimed his own gun’s muzzle at Triat.
Triat roared again and charged. Uruk and his squad fired. The blasts cut Triat into pieces and blood spray flying off the deck and into space.
“These demons are strange!” Zahl said. “There is a word, yes: stupid!”
For an instant, Uruk tried to follow Triat’s pieces drifting out towards the Red Giant partially blocked by the ship’s abaft region. The visible edge of the star now appeared as a massive, irregular crescent against black space. He oriented himself to the deck and accessed the system without using his remaining teeth. He used the control dais to change the master code and enter new orders for the engine. He also allowed himself the luxury of plotting a hunt for Not and repaying him in a manner as direct and final as Triat’s death.
Anguhr stared out into unconquered space. For the first time in his history, his horde stayed in the ship after completing a transit. Anguhr alone stepped into vacuum on the hull above his bridge and awaited a revelation. His ship orbited a gravity well at Gin’s coordinates. What made the well was yet to be seen.
After the jump, Anguhr ordered a recording bank from a reconnaissance probe to the bridge. Such probes were seldom used. Demons recorded all their experience and Anguhr preferred them to machines. The stored unit would have needed dust blown from its components if the ship’s fires allowed it to collect. Anguhr ordered Gin to use it to enter the commands Zaria said were necessary. Proxis scanned the trapped data before he entered it into the ship’s systems.
Anguhr stared at the starry void beyond the ripple of crimson. The void itself rippled. A vast, blue world appeared. The planet was a massive stone with a violent, molten core. It materialized far closer than where Anguhr had imagined its actual location. He wondered if the planet or the gravitational readings were true. He could see the planet’s surface with his own, arcane eyes. There waged a war between new oceans and hot gas and lava erupting from volcanoes and fissures. More eruptions went on it the depths. It was a new world. No garden or tracts of visible life were on the new, cooling land or within the seas.
“Lord, the prisoner Zaria says to head into the planet.” Proxis’ voice entered Anguhr’s helmet.
“I will not divide my force, even for a small reconnaissance party.” Anguhr growled as he sensed betrayal.
“No, L
ord.” Proxis said. “She says to literally have the ship enter the planet.”
“What?” Anguhr dropped back into the bridge.
“It is not a planet.” Zaria said. “It is a portal.”
Proxis arched his brows and looked at his General. They both turned their stares at Zaria.
“I can detect no—” Proxis began.
“Of course not.” Zaria cut in. “And that is why you never detected the portal, or the world it hides. Enter the façade.”
Anguhr said nothing, but glowered at Zaria.
“I am here, too. If we are crushed on impact—?” Zaria ended with a shrug within her bonds.
“Do so,” Anguhr ordered.
Proxis slowly tapped at his dais. The ship’s bow turned to face the volcanic world and accelerated. There was a sudden, total black. Nothing was seen or felt. And then creation flashed back on in blinding white light. It ebbed. Space appeared inverted and no stars burned anywhere. The only image outside the crimson ship was a distant dot on all screens against luminous, white space.
“Eden” Zaria pointed to the dot. “You will find it much like many terrestrial worlds in real space. Close in, and make orbit.”
A startled Proxis began his scans and plotted a course. Anguhr stared at Zaria. The bonds that held her and Gin lay at their boots.
Zaria looked at Anguhr. “I assure you General, we are no threat to you, just as you are no threat to Eden. Let us complete this mission. Together. In peace.”
Zaria turned to face Anguhr and extended her free arms to him as if offering her person as a sign of trust.
Anguhr growled.
Proxis scanned the surface of Eden. It was also a blue world, but its geology was at relative peace. Mists covered valleys. Dense forests surrounded them. Sharp mountains rose and gathered the mists into rain and snow clouds. Deep hues of blue dominated the world, even its plants. The world rested within an omni-luminous realm that acted as an all encompassing sun. Yet something unseen cast a night side over half the world. It appeared that shadow projected from the world, not lay across it.
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