by DJ Molles
“Distract it?” Lux barked, incredulously, but Perry was already moving, pulsing in a sharp diagonal that carried him ten feet off the ground and to the left, out of cover.
He hit the ground awkwardly, his left ankle rolling with a sharp inner pop. He gritted his teeth, realizing as the Guardian’s fire tracked him that he’d been the distraction. He lowered his shield just enough to thrust his longstaff up, as though blindfiring, and let go two quick bolts that slammed the side of the Guardian, destroying the cannon that was trying to destroy him.
Lux took that miniscule opportunity to burst out of cover and send a rapid flurry of bolts in that way that Perry had never learned—nearly a dozen of them, each right on the burning comet tail of the other, small, but effective. They lanced the Guardian as it loomed over Mala’s position, sending it toppling onto its side, pouring black smoke, but not quite out of the fight yet.
“Mala, run!” Perry screamed, and this time, with the very briefest cessation of fire, she heard him.
As her shield went down, she snatched up two of the people, one in each hand, and started hauling them towards the temple, the other three scrambling to catch up.
Perry’s shield was at half strength, but he had a moment of reprieve as the Guardian tried to right itself from Lux’s assault, and he launched himself through the air again, registering that Lux had done the same, both of them aggressing on the machine at once, trying to press their tiny advantage.
The Guardian’s legs stamped about, catching itself before it toppled, then spun on its two attackers.
Perry’s boots skidded across the ground, his shield coming up in front of him, concave again, his mind straining to pull it back, and then let it fly. The pulse caught the Guardian right at the apex of its attempt to regain its balance, and slammed it backwards again, the spidery legs scrabbling at the air as the rounded hull rolled across the square.
Perry dropped his shield, and Lux dropped his, and the two of them gave it everything they had, longstaffs spitting death and hate—Lux’s fire rapid and small, Perry’s slightly slower but more powerful.
The onslaught of energy bolts sheared another one of the legs off, then another, and began to pound the copper hull, ripping bits of armor off with each explosion, the Guardian struggling mightily to get itself up again. One massive copper panel came spinning off with one of Perry’s bolts, and Lux honed in on the chink in the machine’s armor, screaming as though the Confluence was being ripped out of him as he pumped bolt after bolt into that opening.
The Guardian shuddered, arcs of electricity coursing across it, showers of sparks flying, black smoke pouring. A violent convulsion seemed to take it, and Perry yanked his longstaff back, shouting “Shields!” as he splayed his own out in front of him.
The Guardian ruptured, all of its parts expanding suddenly as though from some massive inner pressure, but it didn’t exactly explode. A smoking bit of some component or another came skittering across the ground and turned to molten metal as it touched Perry’s shield.
Perry gasped for air, then spun. Lux looked shell-shocked, amazed that they’d actually survived, but his gaze followed Perry’s to the south end of the square, and beyond.
The city of Karapalida was consumed in a pall of destruction. The temple square was littered with corpses and parts of corpses, and anyone living had fled back into the city. The two remaining Guardians couldn’t be seen, but Perry heard the constant hammer of their weapons wreaking havoc, and he saw the plumes of smoke rising in the air, the thunder of explosions, the rumble of buildings toppling.
“Primus help me,” Lux uttered. “They’re going to murder everyone.”
***
Stuber watched the dust sift down from the vaulted ceiling over their heads, and he’d had enough. A chunk of stone punctuated his concern, smashing into the spot between two wounded legionnaires, causing them to yelp in surprise.
“Petra!” he yelled, his eyes racing through the dim confines of the makeshift hospital. It had devolved into chaos within the span of only a minute. He heard the firefight blazing outside, like a siren song that he was drawn to and yet knew would kill him.
Legionnaires dragging legionnaires. The wounded screaming those mortal cries that Stuber knew so well, while their comrades shouted for help, shouted for the doctor, but there was only one Petra, and there were far too many wounded.
Stuber regretted his decision to charge towards the door to the sanctuary to spy what the hell was going on after that last big boom that had threatened to cave the whole temple in. He’d been concerned that the temple was falling down on their heads. That concern hadn’t abated, but now he was concerned that he’d let Petra out of arm’s length.
A flash of auburn hair off to his left. Lit by a lantern on the ground. Petra’s face, searching for the source of Stuber’s voice.
Stuber charged towards her, nearly bowling over two legionnaires in blood-spattered armor framing another that had absolutely no chance of living—they should’ve known that. His entire bottom half was missing, pale ropes of entrails dragging behind him, eyes goggling in shock, head wobbling around. Stuber was surprised he was still conscious. They should’ve just given him The Mercy and been done with it.
Petra spotted him coming, and as though that made her feel safe, she turned back to her work trying to put half a man’s head back on. Gods, but no one was triaging this shit properly! Petra shouldn’t have wasted her time.
“Petra!” Stuber shouted again over another treacherous rumble of the structure they were in, threatening to entomb them. “We gotta get out of here!”
Petra shook her head, her hair tossing sloppily. “I’m trying to work, Franklin! Help me or get out of the way!”
“This whole place is about to come down on our heads!”
She whirled on him, her face tight and severe. “I’m fucking working!”
Stuber was in no mood for marital argument. That was the farthest thing from his mind. This wasn’t about love or duty. This was about survival. His job was to keep her alive, and he meant to do it.
He reached down and grabbed her by the arm, the roughest he’d ever been with her. He yanked her up as though she weighed nothing, and ignored the tiny spurt of guilt he felt when she cried out in surprise and probably a bit of pain.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, batting at his iron grip with a bloody hand.
“I’m getting you out of here,” Stuber growled, pulling her towards a shadowy passage that he knew led to a rear exit from the temple.
Her batting hands balled and she started to slam his forearm with hammer fists—a well executed attempt to break his grip on her, he had to admit. Might’ve worked if Stuber hadn’t been so numb to pain in that moment.
She punctuated her strikes with seething words: “I’ve. Got. Patients!”
“And I’ve got a wife,” Stuber snapped back, twirling her body easily with one rough jerk so that he could loop one arm around her chest and lift her kicking feet off the ground. “And I intend to save her, even if she is being unreasonable!”
He was basically carrying her now, and she was none too pleased about it. She writhed in his grip like a cat in a bag, seemed to realize that she wasn’t going to batter his arms into letting her go, so she went with a different tactic that proved far more effective.
Her hands scrabbled up to his head and seized on his ears, pinching the lobes hard and twisting.
Now, Stuber was a tough man, but there’s just something about having your wife try to wrench your ears off that becomes unsettling.
“Gods, woman!” Stuber shouted, trying to shake her grip, but not wanting to shake his head too hard, lest his ears come off.
“Put me down!”
Stuber roared like an angered beast, but Petra was about as stubborn as he was, and she wasn’t going to let go. Finally, right about when he thought he heard the cartilage tearing away from his skull, he released her.
She hit the ground on her feet and turned on him
again, all fire and wrath.
Stuber wasn’t entirely sure what she was planning to do with all that anger, but he knew he wouldn’t like it, and he was well trained in violence. He fleetingly considered just knocking her out, but he remembered a few unfortunate events where a punch from his fist had broken skulls. An unconscious Petra would have been much easier to handle, but a Petra with a cracked skull would be unconscionable, even for their dire circumstances.
So instead he shot his hands forward and grabbed her face, holding it tight at arm’s length so that she couldn’t get to him by flailing about. Her face mushed with the pressure of his palms, but his grip was absolute.
“Petra!” he screamed in her face, feeling spit fleck his lips. “Stop it!”
“Franklin,” she said, suddenly going limp in his grip, though the ire didn’t fade from her eyes. “If you take me out of here, wounded people are going to become dead people.”
“Listen to me!” he urged. “This temple can’t take many more hits! And then it’s going to come down and kill everyone in it, including you, and including your patients!”
Her eyes zig-zagged to the sides, doubtless trying to see all the poor bastards that were going to die in the cave in.
“You’ve gotta help me,” she said, suddenly.
“That’s what I’m trying to do!”
“No! Help me get them out of here!”
Stuber bared his teeth at his wife, all the cords in his arms standing out, still gripping her head to keep her in place. Gods, but he loved this woman. Even if she could be a stubborn bitch sometimes. And what was a good marriage without compromise?
“Alright, fine!” he barked. “Fine, fine, fine! But you listen to me: I’m going to get you out of this fucking death box, and then I’ll start bringing you the wounded—the ones that actually might survive, not fuckers with half their head missing!”
To her credit, Petra saw the compromise as well, and accepted it in an instant. Stubborn, yes. But also realistic. “Okay.”
Stuber released his hold on her head, grabbed her wrist, and made for the rear exit, wondering how many of the wounded he was actually going to be able to get out of here before the Guardians collapsed the whole godsdamned temple.
***
“It appears that this temple is no longer structurally sound,” Bren observed, eyeing the dark ceiling above.
“Don’t worry about the ceiling!” Sagum lurched from side to side, grabbing this piece of equipment, jamming this wire over here, yanking this lead over there. “I need you to explain how this works so I know what the fuck I’m supposed to be doing right now!”
“Ah, yes. My apologies. Our imminent destruction had me somewhat distracted.”
“Bren! Shut up and start talking!”
Bren frowned, and Sagum thought he was going to say something about how that command was contradictory—at which point Sagum was going to start kicking him in the face—but he simply nodded instead.
“You’ll want that dual-band cable connecting my core processor to Whimsby’s. That will enable me to access his memory storage while remaining fully conscious myself.”
“Right, okay, this one?” Waggling the cable in front of Bren’s face.
“Yes, that one.”
“Alright.” Sagum rammed one end into a port in Whimsby’s core processor then fished for the other end and crouched in front of Bren. “What are you going to do?”
“While Whimsby’s memories have corrupted chronology, I was able to isolate what appears to be an anomaly in how his system encoded those memories. It doesn’t appear in all of memories, only about half of them. And the anomaly appears to be more pronounced in some of the memories. I’ve extrapolated this data, and it appears to show a graduated curve.”
Another explosion rocked the ground beneath them. Made the stones all around them groan as though in pain. Sagum felt panic raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Cold sweat on his back.
“Oh?” he stammered as he seized the plug on the end of the cable and bent closer to spy the port where he could plug it in. “What the hell does any of that mean?”
“I theorize that this anomaly is consistent with Whimsby’s growing sense of self, over time. So my hope is that by arranging the memories in order of the least to most anomalous, I’ll be able to recreate the natural chronology of when those memories were encoded.”
Sagum slipped the cable into the port. Leaned back. Took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear any of that. But I trust you.”
Bren blinked. Raised his eyebrows. “You…trust me?”
Sagum nodded vigorously. “Yes! I fucking trust you, Bren! Now do what you’re going to do!”
Bren’s mouth twitched into a slight smile. A closeted sort of pride. “Very well. This will take…approximately two minutes and thirty-nine seconds.”
“Oh, gods…” Sagum dragged his hands down his sweaty face. That seemed like an eternity when you were about to be buried in rubble at any second. “Okay, fine. Do what you gotta do. I’ll…” he glanced around at the stones that had seemed so safe and secure only moments before, and now seemed like a death sentence. “I guess I’ll just wait.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE WRATH OF GODS
They were still fighting in the temple square. Stuber registered the sounds as though it was someone else’s problem. Which it was, at least for the moment. It was Perry and Mala and Lux’s problem. Right now, his problem was Petra and a bunch of wounded still laying in a temple with half its spire missing and the rest hanging on by a thread.
The rear of the temple opened up into a small courtyard, but Stuber had no intention of leaving Petra out in the open. So he hustled her across the courtyard to the nearest building that looked like it would hold together, provided the Guardians didn’t target it. Which was no guarantee.
It was a single story structure, which made him feel better. Less weight. Less stuff to topple and kill his wife. He kicked the front door in—unnecessarily, as it was unlocked, but it did feel nice.
Inside, a few windows leaked in enough light to see.
“Okay,” Stuber said, breathing heavily and looking around, then fixing Petra with stern eyes. “Just stay right here. Don’t follow me. I know how you like to do the opposite of what I ask, but please…for me. Stay put.”
It looked like this was quite the internal struggle for Petra, but she managed to eke out a nod. “I’ll stay.”
“Good.” He turned back to the door and the temple beyond. “I’ll bring you some wounded.”
He charged across the open courtyard, registering a clatter of projectiles off to his right. They weren’t meant for him, but he didn’t care for the angle—made him feel like the fight might leak around to the back of the temple.
Back through the rear door of the temple where he nearly crashed into a man with only one leg. Haunted, half-vacant eyes stared at Stuber for help. The man had his missing leg held in one of his hands, dragging along behind him like a kid with a battered toy, leaving a bright bloody smear behind.
“Where’s the doctor?” the man mumbled.
Stuber considered helping the man, but he seemed to be hobbling pretty well on his own. He pointed behind him. “Straight across.” He also considered telling the man to leave the leg—it wasn’t like Petra could re-attach it. But then he decided that the news was probably best coming from a doctor. Stuber’s bedside manner wasn’t great.
The man trundled past, only to be followed by another, and another. A flood of the barely-mobile wounded, who’d seen Stuber drag Petra out, and were now following. Stuber swore and pushed through them.
“Straight across the courtyard!” he shouted at them as he passed.
End of the passage. The big, vaulting dimness of the temple.
A tiny splash of blue light on the far end.
Sagum.
Stuber froze, looking between the wounded that couldn’t move, leaning up in their makeshift beds, hands outstretched, begging for help.
Then to the little alcove with the blue light coming from it. Then to the masses of people lurching their way out the rear exit.
Stuber decided that Petra would have her hands full enough with the people that were hobbling their way towards her like a pack of mindless Nekrofages. He focused on the alcove and ran for it.
***
Mala shoved the last of the five people she’d saved through the doors of the temple. She wasn’t sure why she felt responsible for those sorry bastards, but she did. The legionnaires barring the door had made only a half-hearted effort to stop her. Maybe the look on her face had convinced them to keep their traps shut and make a hole.
“Go!” she shouted at the people’s backs.
“What the fuck is this?” A voice bellowed from inside. Mordicus, watching his little command center being breached by unwanted civilians.
“Just take them out the back!” Mala screamed at him over the heads of the legionnaires in front of her. “Get the hell out of this temple! It’s not safe anymore!”
She didn’t wait to see if Mordicus would comply. Warning given, she spun back to the square, spotting Perry and Lux standing near the smoking hulk of a dead Guardian. They were looking out towards the rest of Karapalida, where the other two Guardians had disappeared. She heard their weapons going off, heard the explosions, the screams. How much death could be wrought in so short a time?
It wasn’t until she nearly missed a step and a wash of faintness hit her that she realized she might not be in tip-top shape. Granted, her gut wound was still burning in the center of her, overstressed, the cauterized flesh feeling like it was tearing apart again.
She stopped, arms splayed out for balance as the world went tilt-a-whirl in her vision.
Ah. There was the problem.
Half her left arm had been eaten away. A faint greenish tint still clung to skin that looked like parboiled meat, raised and bubbled with semi-transparent blisters. The stink of it hit her nose, like burning skin and rot, all at once. A sharp, acidic tang to it.
