by Jacob Holo
Seth came alongside Jack. Tesset appeared behind them.
“Looks like Veketon beat you to it,” Jack said. His seraph had seen better days. The exterior skin was pitted and scarred. Whole armor sections were missing, exposing delicate internals along the chest and left arm. Two of his wings were warped back, deformed by the intense heat of the antimatter detonation.
Jared and the rest of Knight Squadron formed up with them.
“Yes, he did,” Seth said. “It was well hidden. I couldn’t find it until he activated that tunneling mechanism.”
“Well, you did have a whole planet to cover,” Jack said. “So, how come Veketon and Quennin could pass right through without their thrones shutting down?”
“Keeper technology. That spherical structure is neutralizing the Gate effect. It allows chaos adepts like us to cross safely. My portal lance performs the same function but on a much smaller scale.”
“Good. Then we can pass through as well.”
“We need to move quickly if we’re to catch him. How are you holding up?”
“I imagine I look worse than I feel. Most of the damage is superficial. I’ve got my second wind. But damn did that hurt!”
“I imagine so.” Seth switched to a squadron-wide channel. “Okay, here’s the plan. Jack, you’re coming with me. We’re going to punch through that blockade and stop Veketon. Jared, your job is to cover our approach.”
“Sir, the Alliance is already mounting a counterattack on that Gate tunnel,” Jared said. “Shouldn’t we wait until they break through?”
“We don’t have the time. We need to reach Lunatic Ziggurat before Veketon can activate it.”
“Lunatic what?”
“You’ll know it when you see it. Trust me on this.”
“Yes, sir.”
Seth angled his wings and shot down towards the Earth. Jack, Tesset, and Knight Squadron followed him in.
Seth switched to a private hypercast channel. “Tesset, I want you to stick close to Knight Squadron. Let Jack and me handle the thrones.” He fully expected a debate on this topic.
Instead, all Tesset said was, “Got it.”
“What, you’re not going to argue with me?”
“Nope. Well, not this time anyway.”
Seth smiled. “I don’t know if I should be happy or disappointed.”
“Just promise me one thing,” she said, her tone now completely serious. “Whatever happens next between you and Quennin, just come back alive, okay?”
“I have no intentions of dying today.”
“That’s not exactly a promise.”
“No, it’s not.”
The formation of seraphs powered through the atmosphere, heading for the Outcast rearguard over the Lunatic Gate. Beams cracked through the air like solid bars of lightning. The Outcast ships launched volleys of fusion torpedoes and tactical seekers, and the Alliance seraph’s found their path littered with detonations.
They descended through the battle until they reached the Gulf of Mexico, then flew across the water at tremendous speeds. Outcast ships guarding the tunnel entrance turned about. Beams shot by their seraphs.
“Knight Squadron, clear the way!”
“Target the frigate in the center,” Jared said. “Fire!”
Ten kinetic bolts left tracers of superheated air in their wake. The closest frigate took several direct hits to the nose, and one punched clean through. The vessel’s gravity drive failed, and it crashed into the waters, releasing a tall geyser of white spray and steam.
“Target the frigate on our right,” Jared said. “Fire!”
Beams and kinetic bolts exchanged across the gulf. Another ship, its hull riddled with holes, fell away and sank lazily into the waters. Secondary explosions snapped across its length, blasting out great domes of steam and debris. The Alliance seraphs flew straight through the steam clouds, looped up and around, and dove down into the Gate tunnel.
Seth rushed towards the Gate. Hexagon stone plates blurred past, and his wings burned hot with power and effort. Random fire shot past them from above.
They fell into the mammoth Gate chamber, each seraph a point of light within the hollow sphere. Below them, the mercurial surfaces of the Gate bulged and undulated. Seth reached out through the portal lance and examined the Gate’s condition.
A part of him was appalled by what he found. The Gate had only been secured by the most tenuous of bonds. Sloppy work, Veketon, he thought and quickly went about rectifying the problem.
He flew close to the Gate, extended the portal lance, and removed Veketon’s seal. The Gate bobbled slightly, then settled into a perfect sphere. Seth shaped the Gate’s bonds, twisting the dimensional construct into the form he chose. Movement appeared just underneath the Gate’s surface, pressing outward like a submerged creature trying to break free.
Seth finished the bond, and then loosened it just so. The Gate would stay like this for roughly a day, then collapse again to a size no ship or seraph could traverse. Again, Seth experienced a sense of rightness about the Lunatic Gate. A thought came to him.
Keepers do not leave the Gates open in their absence. If I fall, it shall seal itself.
“Everyone through!” Seth plunged into the Gate first.
The Alliance seraphs appeared within the Gate tunnel spanning the two realms. A globe of harshly cut black rock surrounded them. They pressed on through the giant stone-ribbed tunnel to the opposite Gate chamber. Again, Seth worked the portal lance, adjusting Veketon’s sloppy craftsmanship and fortifying the Gate. He placed another dimensional timer on the aperture so that it would close on its own in one day’s time.
“Sir, what is this place?” Jared asked.
“A buffer between our universe and the next,” Seth said. “Stay focused and keep moving.”
All thirteen Alliance seraphs passed through the final Gate. Seth cleared its liquid silver surface and then lurched down suddenly. He flared his wings out and corrected.
“What?” he said, surprised by the intense local gravity.
His comrades filed out of the Gate.
They were in a giant brass eye, the interior empty with gothic supports running up the sides the chamber. Seth spotted a circular opening, the iris, and headed for it. He flew through and entered an endless writhing storm of fire and smoke. Lightning flashed from cloud to cloud.
In the distance, a mammoth silhouette rose through it all, shrouded by clouds of flame. It vanished on either end, disappearing into the cloudbanks above and below, an infinite impossible tower of brass.
Lunatic Ziggurat.
“Well heck,” Jared said simply. “That doesn’t look ominous at all.”
A flotilla of thirty Outcast warships hovered halfway between the Gate chamber and Lunatic Ziggurat. They came about with the Glorious Destiny in the lead.
***
The Glorious Destiny opened fire with its centerline antimatter cannon and struck a Knight Squadron seraph dead on. The pilot’s barrier flashed briefly, then vanished. Without her barrier, the seraph’s mnemonic skin shriveled back and its internal systems vaporized. Nothing remained.
Alliance seraphs scattered out of the Gate chamber.
“Keep clear of that gun!” Jared shouted. “Focus your fire on the Destiny! Take it down!”
Knight Squadron swarmed vengefully over the Outcast command ship. They flushed their torpedo pods and showered it with rail-rifle fire. But this was not some thin-skinned frigate. This was the Eleven’s own command ship, and its hull resisted their attacks. The outer armor chipped and shattered with each powerful strike, revealing secondary mnemonic layers underneath that actively regenerated.
Seth stayed back and cranked the gain on his chaos scanner to maximum. He searched for any sign of Veketon or Quennin, but the fiery cloudbanks blocked his scanners.
“What are you waiting for?” Jack asked.
“I can’t locate Veketon,” Seth said.
“You can’t? They entered the tower here.” Jack linked th
e coordinates for a small doorway built into the Ziggurat’s side.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. There’s a lot of noise on my chaos scanner, but I can see them inside. Plus Quennin did something to that door. It feels a little like her now.”
Once again, Seth was struck by just how different their talents were. The space ahead was a giant influx splotch to Seth, but Jack knew precisely where their targets were.
“All right, Jack. Let’s go.”
Seth and Jack skirted the edge of the battle and pulled up along the Ziggurat’s exterior. They sped past angular outcroppings and buttressed structures. Some of the architecture could have been anything, but other parts had a decidedly weapon-like quality. They were giant devices, uncomfortably similar to human eyes and as large as the mightiest ships in the Alliance fleets. All the devices were closed and dormant.
If those were activated… Seth wondered.
Judging by their size alone, they could dissolve a whole fleet of dreadnoughts in seconds. Around the larger weapon batteries, Seth spotted smaller blisters. These also resembled closed eyes.
Suddenly, a dozen smaller Ziggurat eyes snapped open.
“Jack, evade!”
Beams of black light spewed out from the smaller eyes, tracking their seraphs quickly. The beams were void-like, black and empty, but whatever they touched died. Seth pulled away, and five beams followed his movements, shooting past and carving effortlessly through the Outcast ships beyond. Explosions blossomed across the enemy formations.
Seth and Jack evaded the black beams, climbing higher along the Ziggurat. But while Seth was one of the fastest and most agile pilots in history, Jack was the powerhouse of the two. He relied on brute force to achieve victory, and wounds from previous battles ached across his body.
A beam grazed his barrier in a flash of black sparks. It ate into one of his wings, vaporized the mnemonic skin and melted the internal mechanisms.
“Damn it!” Jack pulled away from the searching beams and powered up across the Ziggurat even faster.
They approached a strange multipart door recessed into the exterior. The two pilots dashed in and landed on a small ledge that thankfully provided cover from the Ziggurat’s weapons.
Was that just a fraction of what this tower can do? Seth thought. Only a few of the smaller eyes fired, but a single beam melted through Jack’s barrier like it wasn’t there.
“Give me some room,” Jack said. “I’m going to cut our way in.”
Seth backed into the doorjamb’s corner.
Jack lit his sword and smashed it against the door, but his blade rebounded off.
“What the hell? That normally works.”
Seth spotted a strange contraption near his side of the door that could have been a lock. He placed his hand over it and immediately felt it peel away a small portion of his barrier. Grooves inside the lock flashed brilliantly white. Parts turned, receded, and then sprang back to their original position. Seth tried again. Again, the lock refused to release.
Seth brought his lance around. “Let me try a different approach.”
“All right.” Jack backed away, carefully staying concealed from the Ziggurat’s weapons.
Seth picked the central point on the door where three sections met and shoved the portal lance into it. Brass melted and dripped quickly down, carried by the intense local gravity. It gathered underneath the door in a growing puddle of molten metal.
“Were those weapons firing chaos energy?” Jack asked.
“I think so.” Seth worked the portal lance in deeper. “I think Quennin switched them on somehow. Did you notice the beams had this pale green nimbus at their edges?”
“No. I was too busy getting shot at.”
Seth forced the portal lance deeper, then pushed down, using the lance as a lever and the door as its fulcrum.
The door began to open. Jack gripped the sections with his hands and pried them apart. Together they forced the opening wider. Each section resisted for a time, but then something inside broke, and Jack shoved the section aside easily.
When the door was open wide enough, they dashed in. Behind them, the door regenerated from the damage fast enough for the eye to see.
“We’re inside the Original Eleven’s laboratory now,” Seth said. “Be on guard.”
The corridor ahead was perfectly sized for seraphs. It appeared similar to the Keeper fortress in many respects. Silver and gold and white stone flowed in elegant shapes, forming arched passages and half-columns along the walls.
Seth lifted off the ground and flew straight ahead. He came to a junction that broke off in six directions, the largest leading straight down.
“Are they beneath us?” Seth asked.
“Yeah. It’s getting difficult to track them. There’s even more noise than before, but they’re definitely below us.”
Seth dropped down the shaft, not even bothering to ignite his wings. The realm’s gravity pulled him down, and he slammed into the shaft’s bottom. Jack dropped down behind him.
The bottom of the shaft opened up, forming a wide cylindrical chamber. Glass vessels lined the walls, each roughly the size of a seraph. Most were empty, but some held odd remnants locked in place with dark, congealed fluid. Seth thought the remnants looked skeletal and disturbingly human, though giant in proportions.
“This way.” Jack pointed out a side path leading further down.
They followed the passage and dropped into another wide chamber. This one housed a single containment vessel that still held a gargantuan ancient trophy. In life, the creature must have been larger than most warships. Its skeletal structure gave vague hints of a grand winged shape, but the pieces had settled and deteriorated so much that Seth couldn’t picture the whole creature.
Jack led the way through a tunnel of white stone hexagons. They continued through winding paths, sometimes climbing up, sometimes dropping down, but always heading deeper into the Ziggurat.
Finally, they reached a small ledge and landed. An impossibly giant chamber rose up within the Ziggurat, disappearing into infinity both above and below. Thick conduits the size of warships spanned the chamber, and great coils lined it. The closest ones thrummed with immense power. Black lightning snapped between the coils, energizing the long-dormant systems of the Ziggurat.
“Damn,” Jack said. “How big is this place?”
“Stay focused.”
The two thrones were close enough now that Seth could detect them. He took off from the small ledge, powered his way up several kilometers, and found an opening. They flew in and hurried through a long passage.
The space ahead widened, its ceiling rising high above them. Tiered ledges lined the walls, making Seth think of an immense audience chamber, one designed for a host of seraphs a thousand strong. Ornate columns rose up to the great arched ceiling, silver and gold tracing across them like vines. Flowing text adorned every surface. A mural of a grand battle of seraphs took up the far wall.
On a high perch above the mural, two thrones stood before a doorway. The black command throne placed its hand near the lock, and grooves flashed alive with black light. The doorway spun and slid open. Quennin passed through, and the doorway rotated shut.
Veketon turned and clapped his portal lance against the perch. Blue sparks spat from the contact point.
“You’re too late,” he said.
***
Seth and Jack flew across the grand audience chamber.
“So the Keepers have grown so desperate they’ll accept trash like you,” Veketon said. “I should have guessed this when we failed to confirm your death at the Homeland Gate, and my error has cost me dearly. Ten of my colleagues are gone, but you still won’t stop us.”
“Your insults mean nothing.” Seth readied his portal lance. To his right, Jack lit his sword and shield.
Veketon raised the lance. The elegant characters across its surface shone with blue light. His halo-wings glowed with potential, and the shunts across his throne burne
d brighter.
“You may be a Keeper, but you are still only Seth. Still merely Seth. You are nothing but a freak accident. You do not claim lineage to any of the favored bloodlines nor did you arise from our experiments. You’re some sad joke the universe spat upon me. Do you think to frighten me with your new stick?”
Seth and Jack spread out, approaching Veketon from either side.
Veketon held his position and settled into a defensive stance. His command throne was immeasurably more dangerous than any other. The throne’s power output rivaled Jack’s, and Veketon wielded one of the most powerful weapons in existence.
“Your comrade is wounded,” Veketon said. “I can feel his strength waning. Together, you and that bane are dangerous, but you are still no match for me. Even now, Quennin is activating our laboratory’s defenses. It took ten thousand Keepers to assault the fully active Ziggurat and drive us from it! How do you think the two of you shall fare?”
“Ready?” Seth whispered privately to Jack.
“Let’s shut him up.”
“Now!”
Jack reached Veketon first and brought his energy sword around. Veketon responded with a sharp counter. Lance met sword in a flash of blue, and Jack flew back. He aligned his wings and fired their shunts to avoid crashing into the ground below.
Veketon still had his feet firmly planted on the perch when Seth attacked him. The two lances clashed, and the pilots struggled against each other. The throne’s shunts burned with energy, and Veketon threw Seth back.
The two Alliance pilots recovered and formed up. Veketon held his ground in front of the ornate iris doorway.
“Is that the best you can do?” he taunted. “Pathetic.”
“Again!” Seth shouted.
They reached Veketon simultaneously and swung in with perfect timing, but Veketon responded by spinning his lance clockwise. One end smacked Jack’s thrust downward and the other end knocked Seth’s lance upward.
