by M. R. Forbes
“Uh, Witchy,” Bastion said. “A little help.”
Hayley turned around again. “What, do I have to fragging do every-“
She shut up. Two forms had jumped from the lead transport, still a few hundred meters above the rooftop. One had qi that shimmered red and gold. The other’s was green and copper.
Mazrael and Thetan.
“Go,” she said. “Now.”
Seeing the Gifted and the Collective seemed to be the right catalyst. Jil and Bastion broke off their fire, turning and running down the stairs. Hayley stayed behind, watching the two entities fall.
Then she turned, too, rushing down the steps behind the others. She damn well wasn’t going to wait for them to touch down.
“Hayley, help!” Less said again, this time directly in her mind. She winced at the pain caused by the force of the girl’s telepathy.
“Doing my best,” Hayley said.
She heard the pair of light taps as Mazrael and Thetan touched down on the rooftop. A moment later, she heard a hiss from above. Another Shifter. It didn’t last long against the pair.
“Less, how many floors have you gone down?” Hayley asked.
“Five so far.”
“Keep moving, Riders,” Hayley said. “Don’t even think about slowing down until I say so. Your refusal to follow a simple order has already turned this into a bigger shit show than it already was."
“You sound like Quark,” Tibor said.
“Nah, you sound like Queenie,” Bastion argued.
They cleared the third landing just as a hatch opened behind them. Hayley looked back over her shoulder, watching as dozens of Asura began filtering into the stairwell and heading up.
That should keep the Nephilim busy for a few minutes at least.
“Hayley, they stopped going down,” Less said. “Eighteen floors.”
“Roger,” Hayley replied. “Hang in there, Less. We’re coming.”
“Affirmative,” Less said.
They were coming, but would they get there too late?
36
The Riders hurried down the stairwell. The sound of fighting became louder above them, grunting and shouting mingling with the sounds of gunfire and the clang and clash of swords. Hayley had no idea how many Asura had come out of the doorway further up to attack. Guessing from her experience on Yeti-4, it was probably a lot.
They wouldn’t be able to stop the Collective and Thetan. She was sure of that much. But if they could put the hurt on the blacksuits and the other Nephilim soldiers that had come down with them? Every one they killed was one less the Riders had to worry about.
Of course, they had enough to worry about. The Collective and Thetan for one. The Asura for another. The Shifters had taken Less. For what purpose?
“Less, where are you now?” Hayley asked, reaching out through the comm.
There was no reply.
“Less?”
She checked her visor, bringing up a menu that displayed the active links, still amazed that she could see words on the overlay. Less’ connection was broken. Was she dead?
If she was, Narrl was in for the chewing out of his life. He’d be lucky if she didn’t throw him out of the next airlock she could find. He had left her behind. To help rescue her, but that wasn’t the point. Less was a kid.
“Witchy,” Narrl said. “I’m sorry. It was only going to be for a-“
“Not now,” Hayley said. “Not ever. You fragged up, and I don’t want to hear excuses.”
Narrl didn’t try to argue.
They reached the eighteenth floor down. There was a closed hatch against the landing, old and rusted. There were chips of rust on the ground around it, proving it had been used recently.
“Witchy, listen,” Tibor said.
Hayley paused to focus on the noise down the stairwell. She could still hear fighting above, but there was something else, too. Feet on the stairs.
Thetan was coming.
“We keep leading them in,” she said. “The Asura will kill them, or they’ll kill the Asura, but either way they’ll be slowed down. We have to find Less.”
She looked at the hatch. There was a manual button on the left. The hatch slid aside when she pressed it.
“At least that works,” she said.
They moved through, into a long corridor. Narrl hit the button on the other side, closing the door behind them.
“Hayley!” Less said, her voice strong in Hayley’s head.
“Where are you?” Hayley replied.
“Go straight. There’s a big room. The reactor is in the center.”
“Roger. We’re coming.”
They ran along the corridor. The next hatch was visible at the end, a hundred meters away.
It opened as they ran toward it. Hundreds of creatures started coming through. Most were as small as Less, with hard black skin and disproportioned arms and legs, their claws nearly the same size as their heads. They scrambled along the floor, and then along the walls, pouring toward them like ants.
The soldiers followed behind them, out of phase where they should have been invisible. They were holding the reins of a creature that sent a wave of fear through Hayley.
It bore a resemblance to an Executioner, with spiked and mottled skin and small eyes. It was big enough to fill the corridor, and its teeth were long and sharp, its four legs muscled and powerful. The soldiers were barely managing to keep it under control.
The Riders started shooting, bullets tearing into the smaller demons and knocking them from the walls. Hayley joined in the defense, firing her plasma pistol as quickly as she could pull the trigger. There were so many she didn’t need to aim.
Dozens of the small monsters fell, their rounds quickly thinning the attack. The Asura soldiers must have decided they had enough because they let go of the larger monster’s restraints.
It growled as it launched down the corridor toward them.
“Throw everything you’ve got at it,” Hayley said, turning her plasma pistol on it.
It took on a weird, translucent shape in her vision, as though it were half-in and half-our of their spacetime, partially phased. Their rounds passed through it without harming it, though they did cut into the soldiers at its back.
“I’ve never seen one like this before,” Bastion said, cursing as his rifle went empty. He quickly started swapping the magazine.
Not quickly enough. The beast was on them, throwing its front leg across its body. The arm solidified long enough to hit Bastion in the chest, throwing him into the wall. He smashed into it and bounced off, rolling away before the thing could get its teeth on him.
Hayley turned to charge it, stopped short when the smaller demons reached her. They jumped at her, claws slashing, some of them scraping off her lightsuit. She kicked them away, at the same time she swung her Uin through a pair of them, killing them instantly.
Tibor roared, tearing through the little bastards with teeth and claws, his form well-suited to exterminating them.
“I’ve got it,” Narrl said, leaping at the monster as though he was going to mount it like a horse.
Surprisingly, he didn’t fall through, somehow finding something solid to grab. The monster howled and bucked, pushing Narrl up against the top of the corridor, which shoved him down toward the spikes along its body.
He threw himself away from it before he could be impaled, barely getting his hands up in time to keep its jaws from snapping around him.
Tibor hit it, slashing along its side. His claws dug into it, and it phased out completely, only its qi visible to Hayley.
Which left it visible to all of the others.
They steered away from it, all the while continuing to shoot at and defend against the smaller demons. Hayley caught one on her Uin as it dove toward her, shot a second with her pistol, and spun and punched a third, the force enough to break its body. Jil was having her way with them as well, smashing them into the walls and stomping them with her battle suit.
Then, suddenly,
the attack stopped.
Or rather, it redirected. The large monster howled and ran by them, going right through Hayley on its way past. It headed to the closed hatch behind them, pausing as one of the smaller demons hit the button to open it. Then it and the remaining monsters moved out into the corridor, climbing up the stairs.
Hayley heard the fighting almost immediately, the roar of the monster and the screams of the Nephilim. She could see the red-gold of the Gift bleeding down in front of the doorway.
“I guess it thinks Thetan is a bigger threat,” Bastion said.
“She is,” Hayley agreed. “Are you okay?”
“I’m still alive.”
“Then keep moving.”
They regrouped, continuing down the corridor. More Asura soldiers were arriving, though they remained out of phase.
“Be ready,” Hayley said.
The Riders advanced more slowly, prepared for the Asura to target them again, monitoring the enemy soldiers until they were gone.
The fight on the stairwell gained intensity, enough so that Hayley could feel the tingle on her body in response to the use of the Gift. As they neared the end of the corridor, she heard a blood-curdling howl of pain from behind them.
The monster was dead.
Were they next?
37
They scrambled through the hatch at the far end of the room. It led them out onto a platform near the top of a massive, open room. There were more stairs to their left, mounted to the metal wall of the room and enabling them to descend toward the bottom. There were eight more rows of platforms, and they circled the entire cavernous space, with catwalks spread equidistantly to lead to the device at the center.
The reactor. It had to be. It was narrow and cylindrical, with tubes and cables and wires spreading out from it along the ceiling and the floor. It was very similar to the ebocite reactor Don Pallimo had built on Rage Station, only much, much larger.
There were two other major differences that Hayley noted immediately:
One, there was no containment field surrounding the deep vat of liquid containing the crystals. Two, and probably more importantly, the liquid didn’t have any ebocite in it.
“Hayley!”
Less shouted in her mind, dragging her attention away from the reactor. There was no ebocite in it, but somehow it was still operational. She could see the energy passing out of the thousands of cables leading away from it and into the walls.
“Where-”
“Down here,” Less said before Hayley could finish the thought.
Hayley leaned over the side of the platform, looking down. Less was there, standing on the ground, a pair of Asura flanking her.
She recognized them both. Mazrael had fought one on Yeti-4 after it had shot her with a lightning bolt. Those Shifters possessed some form of the Gift. Some kind of magic, technological or otherwise.
The sound of gunfire was getting louder behind her. The Nephilim forces were advancing, and getting closer to the corridor they had just crossed.
“I need one of you to cover the doorway,” Hayley said. “The hatch opens, you blow the shit out of whatever is standing behind it.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Jil said. “Close to suicidal.”
“I’ve got it, Witchy,” Narrl said. “I owe you for my frag-up.”
She wasn’t going to argue. “Jil, give Bullseye your rifle and whatever mags you have left.”
“Roger,” Jil said, unhooking the weapon from her battlesuit and handing it to the Curlatin, along with three magazines.
“You don’t think you’ll need them down there?” Narrl asked.
Hayley shook her head. “Guns aren’t going to help against those things. Besides, they haven’t killed Less or attacked us yet. I have a feeling they want something.”
“Fresh meat?” Bastion joked. “I know, they don’t eat meat.”
“Come on.”
Hayley led them quickly down the stairs, skipping three risers at a time on the bounce down. The gunfire above faded as they moved from it, leaving her to look back every few seconds to check on Narrl.
He stayed fixed in place, directly in front of the door. He held a railgun in one hand, a heavy-caliber rifle in the other, both aimed toward the hatch. If Thetan was the first one through? Even she couldn’t stop bullets from such close range.
They made it to the ground. Hayley could see more of the Asura now, hiding out of phase and in the shadows of the reactor. There were dozens of them, not hundreds or thousands like she would have expected.
The two Shifter Generals turned to face her. So did Less. She looked past the trio to the base of the reactor. There was another of the tall, lean, long-headed Asura Gifted there. It was sitting on the floor, one of the cables from the reactor stripped into threads and wrapped around its head and shoulders like marionette string. They had sunk into its flesh enough that they looked like they were growing out of it to the reactor instead of the other way around.
It was holding the ebocite in the palm of its hand. A chip no bigger than a thumbnail.
Energy flowed from it, along its arms and into the cable, from the cable up and out. Hayley saw now why the other Asura were standing so close to the reactor. The energy from it was bleeding out and into them. Feeding them.
“Hayley,” Less said. She pointed at the Asura. “This is Zeus.”
Hayley stared at the Asura. Its eyes opened. They looked ancient. Tired. They stared back at her.
“Zeus?” Hayley said.
“I had a girlfriend once who had a cat named Zeus,” Bastion said. He looked over at Less. “You knew about this.” He turned to Hayley. “She knew about this. She didn’t bring us here so the Asura could thin the Nephilim out.”
“Less, why did you bring us here?” Hayley asked. Bastion was right. The Oracle had guided them to Genesia because of this Shifter.
“Probabilities,” Less replied. “So many probabilities. So many threads. So many branches. This one bore the most fruit.”
Zeus continued to stare at her, unspeaking.
“Crabapples, maybe,” Bastion said. “How is this going to help us?” He pointed to the top of the stairs. “Thetan’s going to be here any second.”
We want to make a deal.
Hayley heard its voice in her head. The way the other Riders reacted, so did they.
“No way,” Bastion said. “Witchy, no fragging way. You can’t deal with these things. They’ll stab you in the back first chance they get.”
“What kind of deal?” Hayley asked, ignoring him. She looked up toward the platform again. Narrl was still standing there. Still waiting.
We are dying. The ebocite is nearly used. We want to go home.
“So do I,” Bastion said.
“Can you shut up?” Hayley asked, flipping her head in his direction. “Seriously.”
He didn’t respond.
“I’m not transporting you off the planet,” Hayley said. “I’d rather we all die here.”
She knew what the Asura would be able to accomplish if they escaped Genesia. The Nephilim were bad enough, and they weren’t invisible.
Not off the planet. Back through the Veil.
“Less, how did you know about this?” Hayley asked. She wasn’t ready to trust so easily. Not after the way Mazrael had tricked her. “How did you know about them?”
Less sighed, annoyed she had to explain. “Human mythology originates from the history of the Seraphim and the Shard’s creation of life in this universe. It is trivial to take the data and extrapolate the truth from the myth.”
“Trivial for you, maybe,” Bastion said. Then he clapped his hand over his mouth before Hayley could admonish him again.
“So you knew the Asura were here and that they were old. How did you know they needed help?”
“I didn’t. Probability, Hayley. This is the best chance we have. Thirty-two percent.”
“You said three percent before,” Bastion said through his hand.
“It’s
gone up because they need our help.”
Hayley could tell Less wasn’t lying. Then again, the Oracle was probably smart enough to fool her vision.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” Less said, pushing her to make a decision.
“How can you help us?” Hayley asked.
We already are.
They were attacking the Nephilim before they had a deal. Talk about good faith.
“Witchy, they’re almost here,” Narrl said, his voice breaking through her comm. “I can hear them on the other side of the door.”
“Bullseye, get out of there,” Hayley replied.
She didn’t want to make a snap decision. She didn’t want to be so quick to put her faith in anyone else. But they couldn’t defeat Thetan and the Collective on their own, and they definitely couldn’t afford to add the Asura back to the mix of opponents.
“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this together.” She looked at Zeus. “All of us. Tell me what you need.”
38
What they needed was simple.
Power. A lot of power. More than the chip of ebocite could provide. It had been feeding them for thousands of years, but it was almost dead. The Asura on Genesia were almost dead.
They wanted to go home. To escape this universe and go back through the Veil. Zeus could open a portal, what it called a subroute. All it needed was the energy to make it happen.
And the Riders had brought that energy with them, in the macabre machine that powered the Hornet they had stolen from Thetan, in the naniates of the Collective, and in Thetan’s Gift.
Now all they had to do was gather it.
There was nothing easy about that.
Narrl bounced halfway down the stairs before vaulting over the side and falling, letting the battlesuit’s enhanced exoskeleton catch him and keep him from breaking his legs. He joined the rest of the Riders near the reactor, turning and looking up at the hatch above at the same moment it finally slid open.
“Fire at will,” Hayley said.
Narrl raised the railgun and started shooting, catching four of the Nephilim blacksuits as they moved into the space, knocking them down before they even knew what hit them. Then a red-gold field went up ahead of the incoming force, and the Curlatin’s rounds struck it and fell harmlessly back to the ground.
