But the MINOS woman had something else in mind.
A light cold and blue as forgotten stars blazed in the drum—the tank—before me, and a moment later something huge and heavy thumped the glass from the inside. Hairline cracks spiderwebbed from the point of impact, and I lurched backwards, scrambling to put as much space between myself and the thing, the failure, that lurked in the woman’s tank.
It struck again and the glass splintered. Super-cooled fluid flooded out, changing the air to a thick, white fog that dragged the thing within outward like an unborn calf from the corpse of a stranded whale. The thing within lurched on unsteady limbs, hands and feet of steel clanging, scraping the ground as it struggled to rise, to right itself.
Words fled me, and my mind with them, and for a single, terrible moment it seemed I stood once more upon the shore of the sea beneath Vorgossos, with that great daimon of the ancient world rising to meet me.
“Hadrian!” a voice cried out. Siran’s voice—and I remembered.
Remembered who I was and what I was there to do.
Remembered the sword in my hand.
The failure pushed itself to its feet, and hunched and lurching as it was still it towered over me: ten feet or twelve of white metal and jointed bone. It had no face that I could see, for like the helms of our legionnaires its visage was blank and pitiless as ice. It lunged towards me, clawed hands outstretched, but it lost its footing and crashed to its knees. One of the arms biforcated, the upper half folding up and out from its shoulder like the pinion of some dreadful wing. Seeing my chance, I lunged, hewing at the creature’s arm. The highmatter blade bounced off, ringing my hand like a bell. Wincing, I recoiled, boots unsteady in the rapidly warming coolant. I might have known. I had fought the Exalted before, on Vorgossos and after, and I should have guessed this creature’s body would be proof against highmatter, forged of adamant or some composite whose molecules would not be cut.
I bared my teeth.
Things had just gotten a great deal more difficult.
Siran opened fire, violet plasma scorching the side of its head. She might have been throwing rocks at the Horse for all the good it did. The beast turned to look at her, and I fancied I could see the wheels of its still-organic mind turning. I could see common metal shining in the elbow and shoulder joints, beneath the armored carapace. It had weaknesses. I took a measuring step closer, hoping to try to my luck. I didn’t make it far. The third arm that sprouted from the top of its shoulder whipped round like a peasant’s scythe so fast it vanished. My reflexive flinch was far too late, and I was saved the impact only by the energy curtain of my shield flashing about me.
Letting out a piercing cry, the living failure rose once more to its feet, one leg sliding out from under it. This time it steadied itself, one massive hand striking the wall of the tank beside it. I wondered what was wrong with it. Something in the way the Exalted’s mind interfaced with its new machine body? Something that made it slip and stagger so?
“Stand aside, beast,” I said, aiming my sword at it like an accusing finger. I had fought worse and more dangerous creatures than this. The beast howled again and cracked its third arm like a whip as it advanced, loping forward on legs bent like a dog’s. As a young man in the coliseum on Emesh, I had battled azhdarchs and ophids, manticores and gene-tailored lions large as elephants. And once, after our victory on Pharos, I had faced a charging bull with no shield and only a rapier for defense.
The principle here was the same.
By rights, the abomination ought to have been faster than me, fast almost as that evil appendage that sprouted claw-like from its shoulder. By rights, I should already have been no more than a dark smear on the floor of that hall.
Siran shot it in the head, for all the good it did. The creature shook it off like a slap. There was something in the way it shook its head that was familiar to me, pulling its ear towards its shoulder in sharp, repeated movements. I had no time to think about it, only about the way its fist slammed down like the hand of God. I threw myself sideways, aiming a desperate cut at the side of one knee. The blade pinged off the metal, and just like the bull on Pharos I swung round my enemy like a gate about its hinge, undoing the magnetic clasp of my cape as I went and tossing the garment aside.
“Go find the doctor, Siran!” I ordered, “Don’t let her get away!”
“And leave you?”
“Go!” I ducked a mighty swipe of the creature’s arm and stepped forward. I’d seen a slight gap where the ribs ought to be, between the armored breastplate and the interleaved segments that passed for a stomach. How thin it was! Too long and too narrow to be human anymore. If I could get the point of my blade in that gap...there might be something underneath, some delicate system or piece of the mostly discarded flesh.
I did not find out.
The knee lanced out to meet me. Not fast—certainly not fast enough to engage my body shield—but it did not need to be fast. The knee was titanium wrapped in adamant and zircon. There were softer statues.
My armor alone saved my ribs and the heart and lungs beneath them, but the wind was driven from me. I flew backwards as if thrown and struck the wall behind me so hard I imagined the dull metal cracking like glass—or maybe that was only my skull.
Where were the others?
My vision slipped and blurred, righted itself only when I forced myself to slow my breathing and the mutinous hammering of my heart. It was coming, and there I was resting with my back against the wall like some derelict watchman. It leaped towards me, and it was all I could do to roll away as the machine collided bodily with the wall just where my head had been. I regained my feet, glad of the positive pressure in the suit forcing air into my lungs.
There!
Before the beast could turn, I lunged, the point of my sword burying itself in the back of the Exalted’s knee. Common metal parted like paper, and a violently white fluid bled out, running down the ivory calf to the floor. The scythe-arm lashed against my shield then, and slowly began to wind itself about me. I stumbled backwards, but the thing wound itself about my chest. I could feel the thermal layer hardening to protect against the pressure. The creature turned, reached down towards my face with a six-fingered hand.
Six-fingered.
“Iukatta!” In my winded state, the word was little more than a whisper, but my suit amplified it to a shout. Stop!
The beast dropped me, surprise evident in the way it just stood there.
“Nietolo ba-emanyn ne?” the creature asked. The alien within the machine. You speak our language?
I made the sharp sound that passed for yes in their tongue. The Cielcin tongue. “What have they done to you?” It wasn’t possible. The Cielcin and the Extrasolarians…working together? But no, the Cielcin clans had been dealing with the Extras since before they invaded the Empire—since before we had even known they existed. That they would work together against the Empire should not have surprised me, and yet...seeing the xenobite standing there encased in so much Extrasolarian kit...I felt a thrill of holy terror.
The creature’s blank faceplate opened like a jewel box and folded away, revealing the milk-white flesh; the eyes like twin spots of ink on new paper, large as my fists; and the teeth like shattered glass. “They have made us strong,” it said, gnashing its teeth. “Strong enough to defeat you yukajjimn.” Vermin, it said. Its word for human.
“Strong?” I echoed, drawing back, putting distance once again between me and this Cielcin-machine hybrid, demon and daimon. “You can hardly stand.” And no wonder. MINOS and the Exalted had had thousands of years to perfect the systems that bonded man to machine. The Cielcin were not men.
“We were only the first.”
In the quiet of my heart, I imagined armies of such creatures falling from the sky to sack world after imperial world. Dust to dust by the million, humans carried back to the stars and the dark ships the Cielcin called home. I remembered the slaves I had seen, mutilated by their alien masters, and I knew at once
what had happened to the rest of our lost legion. MINOS had offered them to their Cielcin friends in payment or in tribute. They were dead, and worse than dead: still living. This was something new. In all my years of fighting, this was something I had never expected: the black marriage of Cielcin and machine.
“Who is your master?” I demanded, “Which clan? Which prince?”
“You cannot stop him. Or his White Hand.”
“Iedyr Yemani?” I repeated the words white hand, not sure I had heard them correctly. Not sure I understood. “Who is he?” Its prince, certainly. Its master.
“He will tear your worlds from the sky, human!” the Cielcin roared, and beat its chest with its hands. “He has conquered an army for himself, and he is coming!” Then the creature pounced, thinking me distracted. But I was ready, and lunging aimed my sword at the creature’s unprotected face. It was my only chance. My only hope was that whatever was wrong with the hybrid would slow it down. As it hurtled towards me, claws outstretched, I saw the visor begin to close like an eyelid snapping shut. The adamantine faceplate slammed with the point of my sword caught between its flanges, and almost the weapon was wrenched from my hand. I grinned savagely.
It had worked exactly as I’d planned.
The beast landed badly, and its ruined knee went out from under it. It fell with a crash, and I leaned all my weight against the hilt of my sword. I bared my teeth, eyes stretched wide as I pushed the sword downwards. The point moved only slowly, metal grinding against liquid metal as the highmatter sank home, piercing flesh and bone. And brain.
Like a muscle relaxing, the visor fell open once again, revealing the neat hole between the massive eyes, and the black blood running like tears.
I found Siran and the MINOS doctor moments later. My fears were justified. The doctor—a small, gray woman dressed in white—had indeed possessed some implant or artifice that had saved her from the stun. While I’d been distracted with her experiment, she had crawled along the catwalk to a room overlooking her lab.
Siran handed me the gun as I entered, cape firmly back in place. It was a strange thing, silver and strangely organic. I looked down at the body at my feet and the name embroidered above the breast pocket of her lab coat.
“Severine,” I read aloud, eyes wandering to the perfectly round hole she’d punched through the bottom of her jaw and out the top of her head. She had carefully missed the delicate hardware at the base of her skull. “She escaped then?”
“Like the others?” Siran asked, “Guess so. By Earth, Had. This shit’s beyond me.” Her blank-visored face turned up to look at me, looking for all the world not so different from the helmet of the creature I had slain. “Are you all right?”
I caught myself rubbing my hands—as if trying to remove some spot on the black gloves. “They were mingling the Cielcin with machines. That’s what that thing was.”
“Are you serious?” I could imagine the look of shock on her face, eyes white and wide in the dimness.
“The body is just down there,” I gestured to the room below. “We’ll need to bring it back with us, and everything we can get from these machines.” Breaking off, I looked round at the banks of computers rising all about us, the machines through which the ghost of Dr. Severine and her fellows had escaped. “The Cielcin said its master had raised an army. That it was coming for us.”
The centurion—my friend—moved to stand beside me, her arms crossed. “The Cielcin have been invading for hundreds of years. That’s nothing new.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “This time it’s different.” I let my hands fall, looked back through the open door to where the failed hybrid lay on the floor. “A Cielcin prince willing to work with the Extras… The world is changing.”
“Lord Marlowe!” a voice rang out from below, “Lord Marlowe!” The questing beams of suit lights blazed up from below. My men had found us. Too little. Too late.
I did not step out to speak to them at once, but turned to Siran. “Something’s coming. Mark my words. This war of ours is about to get a good deal worse.”
BIO
Christopher Ruocchio is the author of The Sun Eater, a space opera fantasy series from DAW Books, as well as the Assistant Editor at Baen Books, where he co-edited the military SF anthology Star Destroyers, as well as Space Pioneers, a collection of Golden Age reprints showcasing tales of human exploration.
He is a graduate of North Carolina State University, where a penchant for self-destructive decision making caused him to pursue a bachelor’s in English Rhetoric with a minor in Classics. An avid student of history, philosophy, and religion, Christopher has been writing since he was eight-years-old and sold his first book—Empire of Silence—at twenty-two. The Sun Eater series in available from Gollancz in the UK, and has been translated into French and German.
Christopher lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he spends most of his time hunched over a keyboard writing. When not writing, he splits his time between his family, procrastinating with video games, and his friend’s boxing gym.
LINKS
Author Website: https://sollanempire.com/
Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/Christopher-Ruocchio/e/B07GPTDQ4R/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheRuocchio
A Tale of Red Riding: Seduction of the Werepire
Neo Edmund
Glimmering light of the blood-red moon filtered down through the branches of the ancient oaks. The stench of blood and decaying flesh tainted the sweltering night air. Deafly silence stifled the land. Every living creature, big and small, cowered in the shadows, pinning hope against hope not to be discovered. An insidious beast had been ravaging the western territories of Wayward Woods for weeks on end, with no end in sight.
“A wererpire,” the Alpha Huntress Red Riding muttered with a sarcastic sneer. “Do you have any idea how dumb that sounds?”
“No dumber than your endless yap-trapping when we’re supposed to be doing the stealthy hunters’ thing,” said Wolfgang Helheim, Red’s handsome yet rugged hunting companion. As usual, he was wearing ripped jeans and a dingy gray tank top. Red would often complain about his grungy appearance, though in truth his rugged bad-boy persona made her blood boil with want.
Side-by-side, the teen warriors slogged along a murky path. Their eyes keenly surveyed every nook and shadow, well aware that they could fall prey to an attack at any instant. On most nights they would have already taken their werewolf forms, but instead opted to hold off until absolutely necessary, much due to the western region’s insufferably hot weather. This was also why Red chose to leave her red cloak at home and instead wore only faded jeans, a black tank top, and knee-high boots.
“There’s no point in being stealthy when the thing we're hunting probably already knows were here,” Red said. She raised her head the way a canine would to take a few sniffs of the air. Her Alpha werewolf powers gave her the tracking skills that a bloodhound would envy. Somewhere in the near distance, she caught the scent of a creature with a lycan like aroma, but it lacked the sweltering warmth she would expect. The creature smelled almost icy cold, though Red couldn’t say for certain.
Wolfgang snapped a look back over his shoulder upon hearing the sounds of feet scampering in the nearby brush. “Maybe the werepire wouldn’t know we’re here if you weren’t so busy with your yap-trapping.”
“Maybe so. Maybe not,” Red said and raised a half-cocked fist. “What I do know is that if you say I’m yap-trapping one more time, my fist and your face are going to have an up-close and personal discussion about it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time. Won’t be the last,” Wolfgang said with a smug-shrug. “That is, unless your yap-trapping causes us to get bitten by the werepire and we end up turning into depraved killing machines.”
“At least then you wouldn’t have to listen to my endless yap-trapping about how dumb you sound when you say stuff like that,” Red said.
Wolfgang snarled. “The only thi
ng dumb going on here is that after two-years of living in Wayward, and all the menacing monsters you’ve put in the ground, you still doubt the existence of things like werepires.”
Red gritted down, fighting back her instinctive need to snark back. If she had learned anything during her two-year sultry relationship with Wolfgang, these sparring matches could go on for hours, and usually ended with them stomping off in opposing directions.
A bellowing howl from a mighty beast thundered in the near-distance. The tone sounded both depraved and desperate. Red and Wolfgang stopped cold in their tracks, waiting and listening for a tense moment.
Wolfgang faked a throat-clearing cough. “This would be the part where you’ve come to accept that werepires are a real thing and ask me to clue you in on what to expect when we encounter one.”
Again, Red fought back a snarky remark. As much as it irritated her to admit it, she was starting to suspect Wolfgang was right. “Fine. Tell me every little thing there is to know about werepires.”
Wolfgang reached over his shoulder and pulled out a katana style sword with a glossy black blade. He began to hack and slash through a patch of thorny foliage that was obstructing the path. “Didn’t your granny ever teach you to use the magic word?”
Red’s angst was boiling hotter by the second. She knew exactly what Wolfgang was getting at but wasn’t about to entertain his antics. “My granny has taught me a lot of magic words, one being a spellcraft that can make an adversary burst into flames.”
Wolfgang slipped his sword into the leather holster over his back and apprehensively turned to face Red. “Are you serious or seriously messing with me? Because the way you said that, I seriously can’t tell.”
“Only one way to know for sure.” With a deadpan glare, Red took a step closer to Wolfgang so they were standing nose to nose. “Look into my eyes and tell me where your future lies.”
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