This time she took cover at the base of a half-demolished wall, gritting her teeth and trusting the sheer mass of its blocks to keep her safe. It was a good call; the violence of the blast shook the ground, and heat like a starship’s thrusters flowed around her.
Again, she wasted no time in recovery. But she could feel the strain on her muscles now; she was used to her fights being over long before this. Her arms burned, and her legs were turning rubbery — the stim-pill, deserting her at the worst possible time.
No wonder the damn things are illegal.
She staggered clear of the wall, risking a glance back at the scene of the explosion.
Viktor was still on his feet, though flames licked around them. Great rents had been opened in parts of his carapace, and cracks webbed his armour.
I can finish him! She reversed her course, forcing her tired legs to move as she clambered over the rubble in her path.
But Viktor was not defeated. Perhaps recognising the danger, he suddenly decided to keep her at arm’s length. Grabbing huge fistfuls of shattered stone, he flung it at her vulnerable human body. She dodged as best she could, taking several glancing blows that tore her suit and drew blood everywhere they hit. The pain brought a renewed sense of purpose to her limbs, spiking adrenaline levels that she’d thought long since depleted. Pulling her swords from her waist, she swung them into the path of the next missile he sent; a great block of stone, which she sliced in two.
She followed up with a thrust, her blade extending all the way to that damaged carapace, but he swept an arm up to deflect it. She refused to let up, sending the other blade curving in from a different direction, but with a computer’s plotting power he intercepted its path perfectly.
And as she rained down frantic blows on him, he ignored them completely. Instead, reaching to one side, he tore a huge slab of masonry from the collapsed building next to him and flung it at her with all his mechanical strength.
Her swords slashed up, carving the heavy piece into halves and then quarters — but there was nothing she could do to stop one of the chunks hitting her.
It smacked into her shoulder like a wrecking ball, flinging her backwards. She landed awkwardly, and the breath was driven from her lungs. Pain flared from more injuries than she could process at once; her shoulder throbbed, and several sharp things had been driven into her, puncturing her suit and the delicate flesh beneath it. She’d fallen on the remains of a building, and she felt every edge of the broken blocks beneath her. Her swords were still in her hands, but she didn’t know if she could summon the strength to wield them anymore.
She sensed Tris and Ella racing to her rescue, leaping over collapsed walls, but they were too far away. And as she struggled to rise, Viktor stomped towards her.
“Nice try, Kyra.” The words rolled out of him, betraying no sign of strain or effort. “If it makes you feel any better, I would definitely have hired you.”
I don’t know why I’m surprised. That machine is only a body, and it’s not even his. Why should he care what damage I do to it? It’s not like he’s footing the repair bill.
She felt the last morsel of fight go out of her. He truly was invincible; nothing she’d done to him had made the slightest bit of difference. On the upside, she was about to be in good company; the ghosts that had plagued her for so long would be all waiting for her on the other side.
I wonder if they’ll hate me.
Viktor reached the bed of rubble that she lay on, his steel feet chewing up the ruins of her city and sending clouds of dust to dance above her. His ugly frame blocked the sun, casting the last shadow she’d ever see. And as he loomed over her, savouring the kill he’d been waiting half a lifetime to make, she spied an opening. A small chink that he hadn’t decided to cover in worm-hide, perhaps out of vanity…
His face.
Only one of her hands obeyed her call, but it was enough. With the last ounce of strength left in her fading muscles, she thrust the tip of her sword directly into that tiny glass window, and the horrible parody of a face that lay beyond it.
The squeal of tortured electronics that came from his synth-unit could have been called a scream.
Logic would have suggested burying the most critical components inside the thickest chunk of machinery, where less important systems would act as extra armour. Not so, in Viktor’s case — the blade now skewering what passed for his head seemed to have hit something vital. All his limbs spasmed at once, then seemed to lock in place; her last, desperate strike had paralysed him.
Leaving her sword lodged in his delicate bits, Kyra climbed wearily to her feet. Every part of her ached; quite a few of them dripped blood as well, but that was something she could worry about later.
She spent a few seconds analysing the robot’s damage, and zeroed in on the places where the lattice of brown bars had been compromised. “This is for Paxi,” she said, as she swung her other blade. It bit deep into the metal of Viktor’s arm, shearing off a sizeable portion. That was one part of him she wouldn’t have to dodge any more. “And this is for Katrix.” Her backswing took off the rest of the arm, severing it close to where it met that massive torso. She studied the immobilised carapace, looking for other weak spots. “This is for Innes,” she said, slicing through a knee joint; the piston behind it sent a spray of lubricating fluid up into the air. “And this one’s for Jule.” Her next cut took the second leg off, separating this one closer to the hip. No way he’s coming after me now.
With her enemy legless, she risked pulling the first sword free of its target. As she’d suspected, some fast re-routing went on behind the scenes and the stumps of Viktor’s limbs began to thrash. She darted back out of the way, conscious of the fact that even an accidental blow from something so powerful could be fatal.
“No,” Viktor said, the word coming out between bursts of static, “you can’t.”
“Oh, but I can. This one’s for Madam Celestre.” And she swung both blades, in a move the old sword mistress would have been proud of. Only one bit, but it was enough to remove the last arm. That allowed Kyra to move closer again, safe from being dealt a crushing blow.
And bizarrely, Viktor began to laugh. The sound issued directly from wherever his speakers were concealed, a disturbingly human thing to hear from something so obviously mechanical.
“Ah, Kyra! We’ve been here before. You think you’re so clever, just because you’ve managed to chop a few bits off an instrument that was already long past its expiry date. You want to know a secret? I’m smarter than you. I didn’t challenge you myself. I didn’t even come to Esper myself! My original memory engram is in a nice, safe place, just waiting for all this to be over. You’re fighting a back-up, you halfwit! You have been all along. When I come back, I’ll be in a far more powerful body. I’ll lay waste to this planet, murder every living thing on it, and turn its raw materials into an army that can sweep the galaxy clean. You think you’ve won? You think any of this has meaning for me? You sad, pathetic little meat-sack. I’ve grown beyond the point where you can touch me. I can wait a thousand years, until even the memory of you is dead — or I can build a new body tomorrow, and use it to hunt you down. Yes, I like that plan! I think I’ll do that first. Oh, Kyra… think of all the fun we’ll have together, as I make you pay for all the effort you’ve cost me.”
She tried to ignore his rambling, but the words chilled her to the bone. Damn it. After all this… I should have known he’d keep a back-up. Hell, I used to keep back-ups of my old comm-chatter. She let out a breath laced with pain and despair. The back of her suit was slick with blood, and her legs were barely supporting her. Sweat ran down her face. Her head started to droop, and she fell to her knees in the stinging rubble.
Tris and Ella had moved up beside her for moral support, and Ella leaned into the gap between Kyra and what was left of Viktor. “Hi there,” she said to him, with a cheerful wave. “You don’t know me, but you hired my sister once. Anyway, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands lately. I loo
ked you up. And I heard a funny thing.” She dug into a pocket of her barely-there jumpsuit. “I heard that you had a lovely big base, only a few systems from here, filled with tough guys and weapons. That’s right up my alley, so I just had to check it out.” She plucked a small silicon wafer from her pocket, and turned it so that the light glinted on its delicately-etched surface. “I had to ask a lot of questions, of course. But it turns out that even mercs know a thing or two, when you make it important enough for them to remember. And that’s how I found this.” She flicked the wafer with a finger, and it rang like metal. “Do you know what this is? It’s a memory engram. It’s a really nice one — it must have cost a fortune. You don’t get to see many of these in the wild, because they’re so delicate.” She gave the wafer a shake, and her voice turned wistful. “Your people really didn’t want to give it to me. I had to kill so many of them… it was barely worth detonating the bomb I left behind. But I heard what you said earlier, and I think it’s important to have a hobby.”
In full sight of whatever passed for Viktor’s eyes, she offered the memory engram to Kyra.
Kyra took it, not even trying to keep the satisfaction from her face. “This is for Daysi,” she said. She held the wafer up in front of him, and with the edge of a single Arranozapar, she slowly, deliberately, shredded it.
The lights behind his eyes tracked every movement of her blade. His voice had taken on an electronic monotone, as more of his systems fizzled and died. “You can’t… that’s cheating!”
Kyra favoured him with a final grin. “You know what? That’s my hobby.”
And she drove both blades into his head.
The mangled robotic body gave a final twitch, sparks bursting from all the bits that had power left — then it lay still. And even though he was invisible to her Gift, she knew that Viktor was finally gone.
She felt the trickle of tears, and blinked them away. She had enough fluids staining her, what with blood and oil and whatever the hell was still leaking from the hole her swords had made.
Ugh! Dead Viktor is even more gross than live Viktor. She felt the powerful urge to take a bath.
Tris helped her to stand, though he was wise enough not to try and support her. It didn’t matter what kind of state she was in — that kind of shit would have earned him a swift knee in the nuts.
“Who were all those people you mentioned?” he asked her.
The silence stretched out, as she thought about the girls she’d lost fighting Viktor. And her stern-faced teacher in the ancient arts of Arranozapar. And her prissy, arrogant, self-sacrificing older sister. “Ah… no-one that matters.”
She wondered for a moment if she’d pay for that flippancy; if the spirits of all those she’d wronged would reach out from beyond the grave to make her burden even less bearable.
But their ghosts didn’t rise in response. The world around her seemed to take a breath. A kind of peace came over her, as she realised that she had finally let them go.
And then she began to cry.
EPILOGUE
Tris felt better than he had in ages. It was amazing what difference a few nights’ sleep could make. To say nothing of a full day in Laugarren’s hospital — currently the most advanced facility on Esper, following the complete destruction of the one in Kyra’s city.
Tris had been prodded and poked, injected with all kinds of wonder-drugs, and had high-tech casts on bits of him that he hadn’t even realised were broken. Apparently, one of the effects of stim-pills was to suppress pain and injury messaging in the brain; jumping out of the Ring-dweller’s spaceship had left him with serious stress-fractures of both shins. Who knew?
He was glad he’d done it, though. Mostly because their ship had never landed. Rather than returning to Esper, it had continued to ascend. It had last been seen passing the Ring, heading out to deep space, destination unknown. It hadn’t exploded — not by the time it left the system, anyway — but it was a strange end to an even stranger tale. He still hadn’t been able to convince Kyra that the Hall of Martyrs was a real thing; every time he brought it up now, she just shouted, “Lies!” and fixed him with a suspicious stare. There wasn’t even anyone he could ask to back him up. Jen was far too busy, and Alek was keeping a constant vigil in the hospital. Kyra refused to visit him, on the grounds that she’d almost certainly end up strangling him.
That only left the handful of the Faithful that Tris had managed to extricate from the battle on the Ring. They were nowhere to be seen; rumour had it they’d disappeared into the vast labyrinth beneath Laugarren, and that was pretty much that.
While Tris had been receiving medical attention, Queen Lavinnia of Esper and joint-commanders Jenofa and Aldur of Laugarren had been thrashing out the next step for the citizens of their beleaguered planet. It had been decided that the Royal City would never be rebuilt; mostly because there was now a rather conspicuous half-mile-deep hole at the centre of it, and a large portion of what they called ‘the Dome’ had collapsed into it.
Instead, a new settlement would be constructed from scratch, a little way to the north. It would be a joint venture between the two peoples, though of course the Ring would do all the heavy lifting. In this brave new city, no distinction would be made between nobility or commoners, and it was hoped that people from all of Esper’s different societies would choose to live in harmony there.
Kyra, inevitably, was skeptical. Although that hadn’t stopped her suggesting that they build the place around a shopping mall.
For his part, Tris was just happy to be out of hospital. Princess Elutarria had spent half a day recovering in the room next to him — and the other half day in his room, demanding he tell her more stores about his life on Earth. He had a horrible feeling she was going to ask him to take her there.
Her sister’s recovery was still a work-in-progress. A large group of brightly-dressed Commune-folk had ferried her in, still unconscious, and deposited her in yet another intensive-care suite. Her father hadn’t left her side since then, perhaps feeling the need to compensate for not being there when she’d been captured.
And right now, Tris was staring down at the other burden the Commune-folk had borne.
Princess Gianissima Loreak lay on a long table, surrounded by flowers. In death, as in life, she was heartbreakingly beautiful. Her body had been expertly cleaned and groomed by her loyal subjects, her long blonde hair exquisitely braided and styled. A slender circlet sat atop her head; Tris wondered if Kyra had once owned something like that.
Sadly, all of her childhood possessions had been incinerated in the surprise take-off of a colony ship that had lain buried beneath the city for over ten-thousand years. Tris had overheard her asking some of the soldiers still combing the wreckage to keep an eye out, just in case… after prioritising injured people and vital supplies, of course.
The fallen princess would lie in state for the next couple of days — in the one place she’d never imagined she would enter. The throne room atop the Lord High Commander’s tower had been pressed into service as a mausoleum — after being thoroughly cleaned and fumigated, of course. The columns and drapes lent an appropriate degree of solemnity to the place, and it wasn’t going to be used for anything else. Jen and Vinni had been ferociously hammering out their agreements in a conference chamber one floor below, but symbols were important at a time like this. Neither of them wanted to associate themselves with the throne room’s previous occupant.
Tris gazed down at Issi’s face, seeing something so disturbing that he knew it would stick in his head for a long time.
It was like looking at Kyra, only without the tension and stresses of combat; without the cynical glint in her eye, or the sarcastic twist to her lips.
Without the life.
He prayed to every god that he’d never see her like this.
Up on the dais, the real Kyra cleared her throat. “You keep gazing at her like that, your girlfriend’s going to get jealous.”
He winced. “Ugh! Isn’t it a bit soon
for that kind of thing?”
“Tris, I’ve seen a lot of death in my time. The dead don’t care what happens afterwards. It’s only miserable bastards like us who piss and moan about it.”
Under normal circumstances, he’d agree with her. But there was something so tragic about this, that he couldn’t dismiss it so casually. Maybe that’s the difference between us? I’ll never be able to treat death like a joke.
Kyra, on the other hand, was busy testing out the cushions on the Lord High Commander’s throne. She wriggled around, trying out different poses for comfort. Then she snapped her fingers, the sound echoing like a gunshot in the stillness of the room. “I’ve figured out what the Lord High Commander did wrong,” she said.
“Oh yeah?” Treading gingerly, Tris climbed the steps to the top of the dais. “Go on, then — enlighten me.”
She waved her feet in the air. “No footrest! See? Talk about a missed opportunity.”
Tris face-palmed, while she stretched out and made contented noises.
“Still, it’s not bad. It would make a sweet addition to Nightshade’s bridge.” She gave it a wiggle, then jumped up and put a bit more effort into trying to loosen it. “Hm. Might have to come back with tools.”
Her attempt at grand theft: furniture was interrupted by the chiming of the bracelet on her wrist. She sighed, and held it up to show Tris. “I dunno, you have a working comm-device for one minute, and everyone thinks they can just call you any time they want.”
“I think that is literally the definition of what it’s for,” Tris pointed out.
She stuck her tongue out at him. During the victory celebration, she’d grudgingly accepted a new top-level ID chip. After everything that had just happened, it probably seemed a lot less worrying to let her roam around the galaxy with one inside her. The ID chip had allowed her to register the comm-bracelet, as well as causing a near-fainting episode when she realised just how long it was since she’d browsed the Ring’s clothing catalogues.
Embers of Esper: A Sci Fi Adventure (Warden's Legacy Book 1) Page 41
