Sierra crawled back along the wing and down inside the ship.
“You know, to be honest, I really didn’t think that was going to work,” Raif admitted.
“Don’t ever let me do something like that, again,” she told him, her heart pounding in her ears so loud she could barely hear the sounds of battle outside.
“Okay, next time, you drive,” he said, laughing.
Sierra took in several deep breaths. They were not out of the Core yet, but she was beginning to think they might have a chance. All they had to do was reach the exit tunnel ahead. The skiffs behind them no longer seemed to be firing directly at them. In fact, it seemed like they were merely laying down fire on one side in order to keep them from reaching the tunnel. The hovlands were holding off any direct fire as well.
As much as they needed to make for the exit, there was nothing they could do. The citus was too weighed down to outmaneuver the skiffs.
Soon Sierra saw what the harassment fire of the skiffs was doing. The somatarchs had only been buying time for the rest of the ships to mobilize. Up ahead of them, it seemed as if half the fleet was rising off the cavern floor. There were dozens of skiffs, an entire flight of the smaller vapor ships and another half-dozen hovland cruisers all going airborne at the same time.
What filled Sierra with dread, though, was the ship in the center of the pack. It was one of the praxis assault ships. Though the citus would easily be able to outmaneuver it, even in its overburdened state, the power and accuracy of its weapons far surpassed any other ship in the fleet, especially at long range.
Beyond its imposing bulk and the almost uncountable number of weapons clinging to its burgeoning frame, there was something else about it which gave Sierra pause. She had seen the strange glass-like material which covered it in many of the buildings below. Why the Administrators had used the same material here, Sierra had no idea, but whatever the reason, she had a feeling it would not turn out to their advantage.
Thirty-Six
The Praxis
Ten pulses of white light sliced towards the Sentient ships from halfway across the cavern as the praxis let its first volley fly.
Every single one hit Nance’s ship. Nine were absorbed by the shields, but that was all they could take. The tenth pulse passed through as if no damage had been done, but disruptor beams weren’t designed to destroy a ship, only disable it. The lancer plummeted.
“Eject, eject, eject,” Raif sent the mental message, though Nance was too far away to receive it.
Eight figures burst from the roof of Nance’s ship and floated towards the cavern floor, the speed of their descent minimized by the small lev pads they clung to. Most of them did not reach the ground before skiffs swooped in and captured them, carrying them away. Nance’s lancer slammed onto one of the pathways below, bursting to pieces with an echoing boom.
“There’s no way we’re going to make it out of this, Sierra. There are too many ships. We can’t possibly outrun them all.” Raif’s thoughts were dark and desperate. Through all the dangers they had faced in Oasis, this was the first time she had ever known him to give in to panic.
But Sierra was not ready to give in. You were not meant to die like this, she told herself. She had no idea where the thought came from, but it galvanized her courage.
“We don’t have to outrun them,” she told Raif with a private thought. “We just need to take out one ship.” The image of the praxis flashed from her mind to his.
“What? The praxis? You’re insane. That thing has more weapons on it than it’s got places to put them. You saw what it did to the lancer.”
“Yes, but if you can get me inside that ship, I can take control of it and use it against the rest of the fleet.”
“Take it over? By yourself?” Raif asked, incredulous, “That ship is probably crawling with somatarchs and assessors. There’s no way you’ll take them all out by yourself.”
“I have to try. It’s the only chance we’ve got. Get me over there before it shoots us down.”
Raif paused, wrestling within himself as dozens of ships closed in on them. He and Sierra steered the ship in wild, unorthodox patterns, trying to make it as difficult as possible for the praxis to target them, but it was only a matter of time before one of the locus beams or disruptor pulses hit them.
“I suppose I could blow the propulsors and get there in one shot, but I don’t know how long I can keep this thing in the air. You’ll have to be quick.”
“If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it.”
Raif’s mind spun, but came up with nothing. “I hope I don’t regret this.”
The decision made, Raif engaged the burst cycle on the propulsors. The citus shot across the cavern straight for the praxis, threading a single, tight line through the floating mass of Collective ships.
As their ship pulled alongside the enormous hull of the praxis, Sierra slid her window open again and sat up in her seat.
“I’ll stay close,” Raif told her. “If this ship has one weakness, it’s got almost nothing for close ranged attacks.”
“I’ll send you a message once I’ve secured the ship,” she told him.
Raif brought the citus’ wing within a hands-breadth of a maintenance ladder that ran up the side of the praxis. “I’ll just hang out and chew the kern with my friends. Take your time.”
“I’ll be in and out before you even notice I’m gone,” Sierra promised.
With that, she leapt from the citus onto the ladder. The glassy outer surface was too smooth to climb, but the rungs on the side allowed her to scale her way up to a little ledge below a square maintenance hatch. It was sealed tight.
As the citus dipped underneath the praxis, Sierra pulled out the cutter. The yellow blade flared out from the end of her arm. She traced around the hatch, hoping to break the seal, but the cutter left no visible mark in the bluish material of the ship. She blinked in disbelief. There must have been a glitch. She tried it again. Nothing happened. Panic set in. She made several quick slashes into the hull but it remained untouched.
This can’t be happening, It’s the celerium vein all over again.
Instinctively, she looked around for Raif and the citus, but he was gone.
This was a bad idea.
The citus may have disappeared, but three skiffs were now speeding towards her. She gripped the rungs tighter, her legs weak and unsteady. For the first time she noticed just how high up she was. Thoughts of what would happen to her if she fell raced dizzily through her mind.
She started to climb. She had to get off the side of this thing. What she was going to do about the skiffs she had no idea, but she couldn’t stay where she was.
Ten rungs to go from the top, one of the skiffs pulled up alongside her, mounted by two somatarchs. The gunner reached out to grab her while the pilot stared blankly ahead.
Sierra locked her elbow around one of the rungs just before the creature latched onto her feet and started to pull.
She slashed with the bright yellow blade, cutting off the front of the skiff. The ship lurched to the side. Pain shot through her legs as the somatarch’s fingers dug into her feet at the ankles, trying to hold on. The skiff torqued to the side and her boots were ripped from her feet. The somatarch flailed about in the tetherless air, still holding her empty boots. The skiff spiraled out of control and plunged towards the ground, crashing into one of the blue glass buildings. It shattered into pieces, but the windows did not show so much as a scratch.
Sierra strapped the cutter to back on her belt and raced up the ladder. The cold and unforgiving metal was jarring to her bare feet, but she didn’t care. The other two skiffs were right behind her.
Perhaps seeing what had happened to the first ship, the other two landed on top of the praxis instead of attempting to grab her mid-flight. Their ships had barely stopped moving when the somatarchs, all four of them, jumped out of their vehicles and took off after her.
Sierra jammed the cutter back onto her arm a
nd flipped on the red blade as she turned to face them. The somatarchs stopped and waited to see what she would do.
Only five or six paces separated them, but before either side could make a move, a tremendous cracking noise exploded down the length of the cavern. A multitude of fractures popped out along the walls, slithering down like infected veins. A low rumbling shook the chamber, but the somatarchs ignored it, never taking their eyes off their quarry.
Seeing she didn’t advance, the somatarchs moved forward, approaching with caution. She thought about trying to run around them and get to the skiffs, but knew she wasn’t fast enough. Her only hope was the cutter.
As they closed they made no move to grab her. Taking a risk, she lunged at the one on her far right, but the creature reacted in time to avoid the streaking blade. In perfect synchronization, the somatarch beside it kicked her legs out from under her. She slammed down on the impenetrable fuselage. Before she could get up or even roll away, a third somatarch leapt on top of her and the fourth one pinned down the arm with the cutter.
She struggled to break free, but the somatarch on top of her had little difficulty keeping her down. The cutter was jerked off her arm and shut down as they wrestled her hands behind her back. She felt something clamp shut around them. They had her.
Wrenching her to her feet, they marched her towards one of the skiffs. She had failed before she ever got inside the praxis.
From somewhere above the ship, another timpanous crack reverberated through the air. Sierra felt certain it was another tremor, but then a burst of blue light pierced the ceiling and came blazing down onto the praxis. The force of the impact sent a shudder through the entire ship and knocked Sierra and the somatarchs off their feet.
Looking up from where she’d been thrown, Sierra saw that a tunneler had carved its way through the ceiling and penetrated the roof of the praxis up to the drilling cone. As she watched, the brilliant blue color surrounding the front end of the tunneler faded and disappeared. The vehicle stood straight up where it had landed, rising from the surface of the cruiser like some monument to impossibility.
The somatarchs paid no attention to the new arrival, springing back to their feet and grabbing hold of Sierra once again.
The hatch to the tunneler could be heard sliding open behind her. This, at last, made the somatarchs pause. They turned and stared at the range up vehicle as several figures emerged from behind it. There were four of them, all dressed in garricks and kaffs.
“Let go of that woman,” Zain commanded as he drew a pinion from the bundle on his back. The others did the same.
The Waymen had survived! Amidst the tremors, the battle, and Sierra’s failure, this realization was like finding a pocket of calm inside a raging storm.
The somatarch holding Sierra yanked her to her feet and took a step back, but Sierra knew it was not out of fear. The other three somatarchs surged forward.
The Waymen focused their attacks on a single somatarch. They were at such close range they could hardly miss. The creature nimbly dodged one of the spears, but three of them struck home. One pierced straight through the heart. The somatarch sank to the ground and did not stir.
The other two charged ahead, but the Waymen dashed behind the tunneler so that their enemies would not have a straight shot at them. The somatarchs disappeared behind the machine after them, splitting to either side.
Loud cracking noises erupted all across the cavern, drowning out the sounds of the struggle behind the tunneler, but not entirely. Someone cried out in pain and one of the Waymen was flung beyond the edge of the vehicle. He landed like heavily and stayed where he fell, motionless.
The somatarch holding Sierra began dragging her back towards the skiffs. She dug in her feet and tried to squirm free but it was useless. With her hands tied behind her back and no weapons, all she could do was slow down its progress a little.
As she glanced over her shoulder, she saw another Wayman stagger backwards, this time from the other side of the vehicle. A white leg shot out and connected with his face and the man sank to the ground.
At last, a single somatarch emerged from behind the tunneler, its robes torn and blood trickling from its mouth, but otherwise unharmed.
“Raif, where are you?” Sierra wondered, reaching out to him with her mind. But the only answer she received was the quaking rumble of the cavern getting ready to fall down on top of her.
Thirty-Seven
Numinae Stays His Hand
The two somatarchs strapped the clamp around Sierra’s hands to a silver cord in the floor of their skiff and took off.
As they cleared the hull of the praxis, a howling yell ripped through the air. It sounded like something between a wail of pain and a shout of triumph. A skiff came hurtling straight at them from behind, spinning out of control. It was spinning so fast Sierra could not tell who, if anyone, was piloting it. The somatarchs maneuvered their ship out of the way, but the incoming skiff swerved unpredictably at the last moment and rammed into them.
The somatarchs flew from their skiff as the two ships locked together and barreled into the tunneler. Sierra blacked out, but woke up a short time later to the sound of someone groaning loudly. Pain shot through one of her arms and half a dozen cuts throbbed on her face. She shut off the pain at once and forced herself to stand. Looking at her arm, she thought it looked sprained, but not broken.
The silver cord was still attached to her clamps, but it had snapped in two and was no longer connected to the skiff. She pulled the clamps under her legs so that her arms were back in front of her.
Looking around, she saw what was left of the somatarchs. The other skiff must have clipped them both, one at the neck, the other at the waist for they now lay bloody and still on the shiny blue surface of the praxis. The fact that she had been sitting down and tied to the floor was probably the only reason she had not suffered the same fate.
The two twisted skiffs, now fused together, were embedded into the side of the tunneler which had tipped over, exposing an enormous hole in the surface of the praxis.
As Sierra stared at it, a chubby Wayman stumbled out from behind the wreckage, moaning and bleeding.
“You…look like you know something about this place,” the man said, addressing Sierra in a rough, gravelly voice.
It was not any Wayman she had ever seen before. For a moment she was so shocked by his presence she couldn’t think how to reply.
“I’m a bit lost,” he blathered on, clearing his throat and wiping the blood from his face with his filthy sleeve. “Looking for a shim named Malthus, ever heard of him?”
“No—I mean yes. Look, I don’t know who you are, but we can talk later,” she said as he reached her. “My friends are hurt.”
She brushed past him, rushing towards the tunneler, careful not to step on any of the shrapnel with her bare feet. For the moment, she forgot all about her mission to commandeer the praxis, her only thoughts were of what had happened to Zain and the other Waymen.
“Wh—Where are you going?” the stranger asked, taking a jagged path after her, looking only half conscious. Sierra ignored him.
As she ran, she spotted the cutter the somatarchs had taken from her. She could not hold it very easily with her hands still bound and she didn’t want to stop so she asked the Wayman to pick it up for her. He grunted in acknowledgement of the request, but she didn’t stop to see if he fulfilled it, she just kept running.
The moment she reached the other side of the tunneler she let out an involuntary cry. Scattered around the edge of the gaping hole in the praxis lay the bodies of two somatarchs and the four Waymen who had fought against them. When she spotted Zain her heart went into her throat. His head was bleeding badly and one of his arms was twisted at an odd angle.
“No,” she murmured, kneeling beside him. She leaned in to find a heartbeat. After a few moments she calmed down enough to detect a faint rhythm inside, feeble and fading, but still there.
“You’re alive,” she said, brea
thlessly.
Zain stirred at her words and opened his eyes. “Is it you?” he asked.
“Yes, yes, it’s me, Sierra.”
“You’re safe now?” He mumbled feebly, his eyes unfocused.
“Yes,” she said, breaking into tears. “You saved me.”
He did not seem to hear her answer. His face looked so very still. Sierra sensed she was about to lose him. She had seen that look in others many times before.
Another rumble echoed across the cavern. The rocks of the ceiling were pulling apart. More cracks opened up along the roof. Chunks of debris pelted the buildings and ships. Rocks, some of them nearly as large as the skiffs, pounded the praxis, but they shattered on impact, leaving the massive hull completely undamaged.
The thunderous tremors seemed to rouse Zain. His eyes flew open wide, as if he’d been awakened suddenly. His gaze fell upon the large Wayman coming up behind Sierra. His face clouded over, but his gaze shifted towards the ceiling of the cavern.
“It has begun,” Zain said. “You must leave this place.”
A head-sized rock shattered a few paces away, peppering the other Wayman with debris.
“The man is right,” the Wayman said, pulling on Sierra’s arm, “This ship is the only thing big enough to protect us from these rocks. We’ve got to get inside.”
The Wayman didn’t wait to see if Sierra would follow him, but turned and jumped into the yawning hole in the praxis’ hull.
“Are you strong enough to help me get the others?” Sierra caressed Zain’s bloody face, trying to keep him conscious.
“Bryce is the one doing this.” He spoke dreamily, unaware of what she’d said. “He wants to break the Life of the World.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“I saw him…after all these years—I saw him.”
“Who, Bryce? You know where he is?”
A large rock pummeled the tunneler. It swayed and the paneling groaned. Sierra feared it might roll on top of them, but it held for now.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 66
