by DJ Molles
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE BATTLE FOR KARAPALIDA
Mala watched the skiffs rise up, thrumming and scattering waves of dust into the growing mass of people below. They were manned only by two praetors each—one at the controls, and one at the forward weapons. Any more would simply be needless.
Needless deaths, Mala noted, gritting her teeth.
She remembered flying into the East Ruins. She remembered how the Guardians there had targeted her skiff. Forced her to crash land. She supposed it was best that when the Guardians obliterated those skiffs, they’d only lose two praetors a piece.
Dismal math, perhaps. But that was the math of survival. And survival was the best they could hope for.
If in fact the Guardians were actually coming.
Her irritation was starting to curdle inside of her. Mixing with a deep-set uncertainty. And uncertainty is the worst when entering into a battle. Uncertainty was an enemy in and of itself.
She swung agilely around the outside of the temple timewheel. She’d spent enough time staring into the east—that might’ve been where Whimsby had spotted them coming, but they weren’t coming from that direction any longer. Could they have fanned out? Each of the four coming from a different direction?
The landscape of the wastelands stretched out, pale and desolate in all directions. To the south, the dark ripple of the craggy hills in the distance. To the west and north, just an endless expanse that disappeared into flat horizon.
Nothing. No sign of the Guardians.
Where the hell—?
A shattering, crashing boom shook the structure of the temple, causing Mala to cry out and grasp instinctively for a handhold, though she had no reason to fear falling. The noise of the explosion was so sudden and all-encompassing, that she couldn’t tell from which direction it came.
She swung rapidly back around to her overlook of the temple square and froze in a haze of smoke of fire.
A plume of black in the air, still rippling with incendiary gases, two trails of black marking the path of two halves of a skiff as they plummeted towards the city below, the dark figures of the praetors toppling through the air, their black capes billowing behind them.
A cry of panic from below that seemed to emerge as the thunder of the explosion abated. People running every which way, trying to get out of the path of the tumbling pieces of skiff. But Mala’s eyes did not fixate on them—they were extraneous.
She shot her eyes to the sky, where the other skiffs were now buzzing in different directions like hornets from a disturbed nest. But it wasn’t the skiffs that drew her gaze—it was the four blooms of light, bright and white-hot in the pale blue sky, like meteors plummeting through earth’s atmosphere.
“They’re here!” she shouted, but no one heard her.
Below, the two halves of the skiff struck the temple square, one right after the other, sending shockwaves up through the stones that Mala felt in every particle of her body. One half slammed into the outer band of buildings that encircled the temple, crushing the concrete to rubble and dust. The other half hit the center of the square and rolled like a murderous boulder, spewing stone and wreckage as it flattened a cluster of hapless people, their screams drowned out by the screeching and rending of metal.
“They’re here!” She screamed again. “Above! Above!” and then, not knowing if her warning had been heard, she thrust her longstaff out and let fly a flurry of green bolts as rapidly as the Confluence could flow through her. The bolts arced into the sky, and the burning meteors of the incoming Guardians spread like four huge buzzards letting a flock of sparrows flutter harmlessly by.
Two of the skiffs, in loose formation, swung to bring their weapon pods to bear, letting loose a salvo that strung out into the sky like orange beads on a thread. She saw the strikes on one of the leading Guardians. It bobbled in the sky, but didn’t stop coming.
Two of the Guardians sprouted innumerable contrails that swarmed through the air, locked onto a target, and their paths went from seeking to finding, straighting into deadly lines that slammed into a second, then a third skiff, obliterating them completely in the midst of their evasive maneuvers, and leaving nothing left but shrapnel to ping and clatter off the stones of the temple spire.
Mala activated her shield just in time to absorb a smattering of metal fragments, turning them to molten beads that splattered the timewheel.
She had just enough time to right herself and lower her shield, trying to bring her longstaff up again, when she registered that one of those incoming meteors was heading straight for her.
She flung herself off the tower just as the Guardian smashed the top of the spire to rubble.
Her shield encompassed her in midair, taking the brunt of the stone debris that washed over her, as she twisted, trying to right herself to the threat.
Steam and smoke rose from its superheated hull. The Guardian did not crash through the spire, but somehow managed to halt itself right there at the very top, as though it had intended to perch there. Its spider-like legs shot out, gripping the remnants of the spire, as parts of its hull separated, its weapons systems emerging and transphorming it from a copper-colored ball, to a bristling war machine.
She pulsed her shield to stop her trajectory, and used that miniscule moment of hang-time to lower her shield and let out another burst—five bolts from her longstaff. They slammed into the Guardian, each one a direct hit that would have vaporized a rank of legionnaires.
All it did to the Guardian was cause it to jerk and stumble on its delicate perch. Then it swung rapidly around, multiple weapon systems honing in on her.
Mala tucked herself into a ball, her shield around her again, and let herself drop straight down.
A fusillade of tracer-orange projectiles shredded the air where she’d just been, tracking her straight down as she fell.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM
She knew the impacts before she saw them—the other three Guardians slamming to the earth, close by.
Just before she struck the ground of the temple square, she pulsed hard to her left, sending herself careening to the right. The tracking rounds pummeled the cobblestones into dust, chopping a swath of panicked civilians into nothing but disorganized parts.
She didn’t register what she was doing until she saw a man’s face, just in front of her flight path, and then watched him turn to a gout of pink mist as she slammed through him.
She deactivated her shield out of sheer horror, thinking only of the people that she might vaporize in her path. Her body, still being carried through the air by her momentum, crashed into a crowd, sending them all tumbling into a heap.
She scrambled to her feet, head rocked, ears ringing, limbs numb—moving only through the force of her will. She registered the distinct splat-splat-splat sound of caustic rounds and could only assume they were meant for her.
On instinct, she hunkered down, her shield forming into a dome over her and a collection of five groggy civilians that moaned and cried out and thrashed to their hands and feet.
“Stay down!” Mala bellowed at them, her words cut off by the impact and the frying-pan sizzle of caustic green slathering the top of her shield. She winced at the inward pain of her shield taking a hard hit—and the damage didn’t stop. It kept dripping away as the hellish caustic material clung to the energy field, sucking Confluence right out of her and depleting her shield.
Standing there, the civilians huddled beneath her, weeping, screaming, crying, while the green haze that coated one side of her shield just kept on eating away at it, she had the sudden realization that this was going to be her final fight.
She wasn’t going to get out of this alive. None of them were.
***
Perry burst from the temple into a scene that was too hard to take in at once.
Mobs of civilians, no longer pressing towards the temple, but instead fleeing, scattering to the exits of the square. It didn’t make sense until he registered the cascade of rubble falling fr
om the top of the temple, the stone arm of one of the timewheel’s statues nearly crashing down on top of him.
He activated his shield against the debris, catching sight of a stream of caustic projectiles pouring down from over his head, targeting the dome of another energy shield out in the middle of the square that could only have been Mala.
Guardian on top of the temple!
Three other Guardians—one just inside the northern end of the square, and two more clinging to the tops of half-collapsed buildings just outside their perimeter. The sun flashed umber off their copper hulls as fire belched from their cannons and swarms of micromissiles spewed from their backs.
Gouts of tracer fire going ever direction, a buzz-saw clatter of projectiles criss crossing the air, the ground, the buildings, lancing effortlessly through the crowds of people, sending bodies twirling, parts just falling off of people like poorly made toys.
One autoturret responded, and then another, and then a third, each targeting the Guardian inside the square as it tramped on its crablike legs deeper into the rush of fleeing humanity. The machine lurched and listed under the onslaught, rounds sparking and pocking its hull, an arm of one of its cannons going up in a great geyser of blue fire and gray smoke, but it never stopped, singular in its purpose, spewing death and extermination from every edifice in its construction.
A block of legionnaires stood their ground to Perry’s left, metal shields all around and over top of them, like a single armored organism, automatic rifle fire thundering from the tiny cracks between shields.
Perry was down the steps before he even realized his legs were moving, and was glad that they had—his mind was still trapped trying to process the carnage around him, trying to prioritize the threats, trying to figure out some mysterious algorithm that would lead to him not being shredded the instant he stepped out of the overhang of the temple.
His shield was already up, his longstaff humming in his grip, the Confluence flowing through him like a mad river of red, building into a massive ball of energy that gathered at the tip of the longstaff’s muzzle.
Mala.
His eyes shot to where he’d seen her shield. The caustic rounds had coated the dome, frizzling and sparking across it so that he couldn’t see what lay beneath, save for a pair of dusty, black boots and the huddled figures of desperate people.
His first instinct was to charge towards her, but that wouldn’t do her any good.
He whirled, as he felt his ball of energy growing to critical mass, straining against his mind’s ability to hold it back, like a thin strand of cordage leashing a powerful beast.
He cleared the overhang of the temple’s front, saw straight up the spire to the top of the time wheel where the Guardian stood, its clawed appandages sunk deep into the stone while it rained death to those below.
He dropped his shield at the same instant that the blast of energy broke from his mind’s restraints. He thrust his longstaff at the machine, hurling the energy, acutely aware of the destruction he was about to cause and hoping to any deity that might still exist—and give a shit—that it wouldn’t cave in the temple.
The Guardian spotted him at the last second, its caustic turret swiveling deftly at the same instant that a flurry of micromissiles screamed from one of its pods, all of them converging in his direction.
Perry didn’t have time to see if his blast of energy would be affective. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t fly. And the destruction that was heading his way seemed more than enough to pound his shield to nothingness, and vaporize the frail human body that it contained.
But he raised his shield anyways. Pulling at the center of it until it was a deep concavity before him, like a cup to be filled with all that destruction.
And at the last microsecond, he let it go.
The shield pulsed violently. A series of explosions rocked the air, pushing Perry backwards with their force, sending him pinwheeling senselessly across the hard ground.
Breath. Harsh. Acrid. Bitter.
Eyesight. Foggy. Speckled with bit of imaginary light, like the stars were falling all over again, though it was broad daylight.
Touch. Pain. Stone. Rubble. The grind of dust between his teeth.
Taste. Blood.
He struggled upright, realizing he was knocked on his ass, his longstaff still held in a death grip, humming eagerly despite his cloudy mind. He pushed for his shield, fully expecting to find it depleted to the point of nonexistence, and was shocked to see it shimmer in the air in front of him, full and mostly healthy.
He almost took a moment to congratulate himself on pulsing a cavalcade of death away from him—he bet Mala didn’t know how to do that shit—but then registered the hulking shape of the Guardian falling from atop of the tower amid a waterfall of stone.
He managed to project his shield in front of him in time to catch the shockwave as the thing smashed to the ground with a sound like a massive bell being rung. Chunks of the temple spire, some molten hot, slammed into the edges of the legionnaires, laying their shields flat and crushing and burning the men within.
Perry swam to his feet, unsure if the screeching he heard was the sound of dying legionnaires or the ringing in his own ears. His focus was absolute, pinpointed on the shell of that Guardian as it tried to rise again on one leg, a groan like overstressed steel girders coming from it. Half of its hull was gone, dim electronic lights and sparks illuminating a smoky, hellish interior of moving parts that looked somehow both organic and mechanical.
His feet, moving faster now.
His breathing, coming stronger now.
The wounded Guardian slammed its one working leg into the ground, burying the point of it deep into the stone, dragging itself towards Perry as though to meet him in a head-on collision, while one of its turrets tried to target him in a herky-jerky motion.
Perry had no intention of throwing himself into the maw of this machine. He swept his shield to the right, pulsed again, picking up his feet and letting the force of his push send him flying to the left, just as the turret spat lead at the spot where he’d been.
It tracked him, its targeting systems seeming fully operational.
Perry pulsed his shield behind him, sending his body forward with a speed that nearly cracked his neck from his shoulders. He stopped himself with another pulse, just before smacking into the side of the machine, let his feet touch the ground, and then rammed his longstaff as hard as he could into the thing’s unprotected innards and let fly a bolt.
Green light erupted through the Guardian, flashing through the cracks in its armor.
By some latent sense, he felt the pull of his shield forming to his back and knew that bad things were heading his way. He spun just in time to see a string of tracers pummel into his shield. He thrust himself backwards, his body toppling over the rounded hull of the dead—or hopefully dead—Guardian, and crashed awkwardly to the ground on the other side. Projectiles pinged and thrashed against the Guardian’s hull as Perry pushed himself to his feet, gulping air.
Well, what now?
He leaned around the left edge of the Guardian, spotting Mala again, her shield shrunken to a sad little lens between her and the other Guardian in the center of the square. You couldn’t exactly say its attention was on Perry, though it was still slamming his position with unrelenting projectile fire. It had multiple weapon pods deployed, and they all seemed to be targeting something different.
Its energy weapon, blasting away at Mala’s ever-shrinking shield. Another cannon belching mercilessly at the dregs of a fleeing horde of humanity. A burst of micromissiles that swam in low and obliterated the front half of the block of legionnaires, sending shields and body parts scattering in all directions. Its caustic turret picked off survivors with cruel precision, some of them screaming as the green muck ate away at them, others not conscious enough to perceive their own death sizzling through them.
“Mala!” Perry shouted, his voice ripping his throat, but he didn’t know if it was loud enough t
o be heard over the din of the firefight.
She stood her ground suicidally, trying to protect the five people under her ever-shrinking shield, but she wasn’t going to make it.
Not without help.
Perry tried to raise his longstaff to give the attacking Guardian something to think about, but a slurry of lead tracked into where he was leaning out, forcing him to jump back into cover while bits and pieces of shrapnel lit up his shield.
“Perry!” The voice was right behind him.
He turned just in time to see Lux’s boots sliding right into his face.
Perry was knocked back, the taste of blood reignited on his tongue. “Godsdammit!” he slurred, hand going to his cheek, which ached dully from Lux’s haphazard slide into safety. “Where have you been hiding?”
Lux clambered into a crouched position, close to Perry, his shield enveloping both of them as the Guardian side stepped heedlessly through the wreckage of the block of legionnaires, trying to target Perry and Lux with a better angle. The legionnaires were forced to pull back as the mechanical legs smashed into them.
“I haven’t been hiding!” Lux snarled back. “We need to get Mala out of there!”
“No shit!”
A brave legionnaire darted out of formation, both hands upheld as he screamed the scream of someone who knows they are about to die. Grenades in both of those hands, Perry realized, as the legionnaire threw himself at one of the Guardian’s legs.
The Guardian reared back, the turret it had been using to fire on Perry and Lux suddenly snapping down and unloading a burst of projectiles that turned the legionnaire to bits and pieces. The grenades erupted as they toppled from disembodied hands, ripping the bottom half of the Guardian’s leg to metal shreds.
The Guardian teetered, but didn’t fall. It splayed its other three legs wider to make up the difference, retargeted Perry and Lux with its cannon, and stomped towards Mala’s position, slamming her shield with three different weapons systems at once.
“Distract it!” Perry yelled, scrambling to his feet and reforming his shield around himself, letting Lux’s take the brunt of the automatic fire.
