“No, an eidos—he appeared to me out of the rocks in the mine.” Zain’s voice grew more faint. He was struggling for breath. “We should have died in the blast, but he saved us, protected us. He told me to get into this tunneler and warn the others. He said that Bryce was going to destroy this place—”
“But how? How could he possibly—” Sierra interrupted, but Zain waved weakly for her to be silent.
“You don’t understand,” he wheezed. The air was becoming hard to breathe from all the dust and debris. “The Life of the World was not meant to be exposed in this way. But the eidos said that it was the will of Numinae to stay his hand. ‘The veins of the land will open and its blood will wash away the evil of men’, he said.”
Another boulder slammed into the tunneler, shards of rock flew all around them. One of the larger ones zinged into Sierra’s shoulder, but she felt nothing.
“Go, Sierra,” Zain said. “I am beyond help. I go now to the Eversky…where there is no pain, no sorrow…”
“No!” Sierra sobbed. “I won’t let you go!”
But at that moment, the Wayman who had dropped down into the hole reached up from inside and pulled her down into the ship as the air erupted in a shower of jagged stones.
“Why did you do that?” Sierra knifed the words at him, her face plastered by a mixture of dust and tears.
The heavyset Wayman ignored her, dragging her further away from the edge of the hole which was rapidly filling with rubble and debris.
The air was so choked with dust it swallowed the lights of the cavern, leaving them in total darkness.
The hole was gone, and with it her access to Zain. Sierra moved as if in a dream, fumbling through the dark and choking on the dust as the world around swayed in every direction.
And then, as if they passed through a curtain, the darkness parted and they found themselves in a hallway sealed at the end by a locus energy door.
“I just saved your life, you know. Are you ready to take me to Malthus now?” the Wayman asked impatiently.
Sierra looked into his bloodshot eyes and scruffy face. He seemed to be leering at her, as if he had a dozen intentions at that moment, and none of them good. The overwhelming impression she got from what she saw there was that this man was not to be trusted. “I don’t care!” she screamed, pulling at her hair. “Zain’s dead! He was—that was my friend up there.”
She doubled over and began to sob again.
The Wayman took two steps to her and slapped her in the face. Though she felt nothing physically, the action jarred her emotionally, snapping her out of her grief in an instant.
“Why did you do that?” she said, angrily. But when she caught sight of the savage look in his eyes, her anger quickly turned to fear.
“Death is no big deal,” he said coldly. He leaned in close, the javelins on his back rattling. “Now you can either help me kill Malthus or I can send you off to the same place your friend went to, eh?”
He was so close she could smell his loathsome breath even with her bioseine dampening her senses. All he had to do was slip the knife from his belt to follow through with his threat. And she had no way to defend herself. He was holding the cutter as well.
“Who are you? And what are you doing here?” she asked, trying to steady her nerves.
“Name’s Nox,” the man said, “and as I said, I’m here to take out the leader of this place and I figured if he was going to be anywhere, he’d be in this flying fortress. It’s the one I’d pick if I was the Reeve of this place.” He let out a seditious little laugh.
Sierra was about to tell him she had no idea if Malthus was on this ship or not, but then realized that perhaps he had a point. She had no desire whatsoever to help him in this task, but it occurred to her that if Malthus was in charge of this ship, Nox might actually be willing to help her in commandeering the praxis. And considering his threat to kill her, at this point she really didn’t have much choice anyway.
“If he’s in command here, I might be able to help you find him, but we need to take control of this ship or it won’t matter what you do to Malthus. It’s the only chance we have of getting out of this place alive.”
Nox shrugged indifferently. “Fine. But we kill Malthus first.”
Sierra gave a reluctant sigh. “Before we do anything I need you to get me out of these clamps.” She pulled her hands up and showed him the black clasps.
“Hmm,” the man scratched his forehead. “I left my pincers back at the sar. Guess I’ll have to shiv you out.” He pulled out a jagged knife from his belt.
“No, wait. That will take too long,” Sierra said. “Just use the cutter you picked up.”
“The what?” Nox asked.
“That metal tube. The one I told you to pick up.”
Nox’s eyes lit up with recognition. “So that’s what this thing is, a cutter. I like the sound of that name. How does it work?”
“Just reach inside, grab the handle and flick your wrist to the left. Then swipe the middle panel up to extend the blade.”
Nox eyed the tube with suspicion, inserting his arm into it slowly, as if he were expecting it to hurt him. After several moments in which the level of consternation grew steadily on his face, a long red blade of light finally appeared, shining out from the end of the cylinder.
“No, left, not right,” she corrected him. “And watch where you’re waving that thing.”
Nox stifled a grunt and the blade shifted from red to yellow. “Interesting,” he remarked.
“Now slice the binders on my wrists,” Sierra told him.
She heard a subtle hiss as the binders split in two.
“I didn’t nick you, did I?” the Wayman asked with a nervous giggle.
“It won’t cut living things,” she informed him, starting to make her way towards the locus doorway, “Not when it’s yellow.”
“Well, what good is that?” he asked, looking at the object in sudden disgust.
“The red is for cutting living things,” she explained, though the moment she said it she wished she hadn’t.
“Ah…” Nox’s eyes lit up. “Yellow for made stuff, red for bloody stuff. Got it.”
“All right,” Sierra said, reaching out her hand. “You can give me back the cutter now.”
Nox gave her a shifty look. “What, this?” he asked, then wagged his head, grinning. “Well, I’m not one for gears usually, but I think I’ll keep this trinket for the moment. I have a feeling I might need it in the near future.”
Sierra did not like his response, but the malevolent gleam in his eyes told her that arguing would be a mistake. This man was dangerous. Extremely dangerous. She shrank back from him, wishing there was some way she could escape and doubtful whether or not he would even help her on her mission in the end.
Nox appeared not to notice her reaction and instead turned his attention to the glowing door, giving it a puzzled look. He tried slicing through the sheet of energy with the yellow blade. When nothing happened he tried the red.
“That won’t work,” Sierra told him, staying well back as he took another wild swing at it.
“How do we get through this…light or whatever it is? This thing isn’t working.” He banged the cutter against the metal wall beside the door.
Sierra stared at the door, the thrumming of rocks on the hull turning her thoughts back to Zain, Wik, Yor, and Ket. They had given their lives to save her, but she would gladly have taken their place.
“Useless machines!” Nox blurted out as he turned to her. “I thought you were going to help me find Malthus.” The glowing red blade on his arm and the menacing expression on his face startled her out of her thoughts.
“You know, it would probably be best if we went straight down, actually,” Sierra said. “Just cut through the floor. It will be much quicker and they won’t be expecting it.”
Nox let out a shout of excitement. “Ha! I knew you’d be good for something.”
He started to cut a hole in the ground, but wh
en nothing happened, he cursed and shook the cutter and the blade flickered back to yellow. He then proceeded to trace a wobbly shape in the floor. When the paneling fell through, he stepped back, admiring his handiwork.
“I think I might like this cutter of yours,” he said and Sierra could not fail to miss the cruel light simmering inside his eyes.
That light only seemed to grow more sinister as they carved their way through the next two levels, burrowing down until they had dropped into the central passage which ran outside the control room. They had managed to avoid meeting anyone up to that point, but this time when Sierra landed, she immediately spotted several somatarchs heading towards them.
There were six of them in all. Nox let out a howl and charged with the cutter blazing red. The lead somatarch paid no attention to him, instead mechanically drawing the oscillathe it wore at its hip. Sierra turned around to hit the floor and ran right into the white neutralizer blast of an assessor who’d come up behind her.
Thirty-Eight
An Unstoppable Force
A foul odor assaulted Sierra’s senses just before she regained consciousness. When she did open her eyes, she found herself staring at Nox’s hideous face. As terrible as his breath was, it was distinct from the odor pummeling her senses at the moment. This new smell did not feel like anything that would come from a person. It was more like hot iron, and it was all around her, breaking through the filter of her bioseine.
“Ah, the beauty stirs,” Nox said, chuckling. “It’s about time. I was starting to think I might have to leave you behind.”
Sierra sat up and looked down the wide hallway and at once understood what the smell was: blood. Everywhere she looked the passage was strewn with disfigured somatarch bodies. Though she knew they were not fully human, in death, it was all the same. She tried to look away, but the carnage was everywhere.
Her gaze swung back to Nox. She regarded him with a look of disgust. He must have been even more brutal than she thought.
She knew from her bioseine that she had only been unconscious for a little over a microslice. It was unusual that she had regained consciousness from the neutralizer so quickly, but it was baffling how Nox could have killed so many somatarchs in such a short time; there must have been over fifteen bodies all lying in close proximity to each other, far more than the few she had first seen.
“How many did you kill?” she asked numbly, her brain attempting to make sense of the scene.
“Oh, I’m no good with numbers,” Nox said, his eyes lighting up with glee. “They streamed in here like Welkin running to water. Must have been twenty, thirty, maybe more by the time they finally stopped coming. I guess ghosts die as easy as men when it comes down to it.”
“But how—” she began and then stopped, realizing that she didn’t want to know. The details would only make her more afraid of him. “Well, thank you all the same. I suppose this is the second time you’ve saved my life.”
Nox’s chin rose vainly. “I used my last bit of almamenth on you, too,” he said, pointing at her arm. One sleeve was rolled up and the arm was moist. She had missed that fact, as well as the wonderful smell, because her bioseine was masking her pain. “You better be worth it.”
“Well, we still have to find the control room. I think it might be behind those doors over there.” She pointed towards the double doors in front of them, but Nox, on hearing the word ‘doors’, headed off towards the ones at the end of the passage instead.
“Wait,” Sierra called after him, “not those. They’re too big. They probably lead to a cargo bay or something. I mean these two, over here by me.”
“Is that where Malthus is?” Nox asked.
“I think so.” She rose to her feet, stepping around the carnage. “At least that’s the first place we should look.”
Nox snorted giddily. “I guess it’s time to do what I came for.” He walked up to the doors and tried the handles. As Sierra expected, they didn’t budge.
He flailed at them with the yellow blade of the cutter, chopping the panels into a pile of scrap in quick fashion. Once the opening was big enough, he leapt through like he’d been shot from a spring.
By the time Sierra followed him in, he was already halfway down the ramp leading to the control bridge. A massive window composed of a single curved surface surrounded the chamber looking out onto the base. Her gaze was drawn to the scene of devastation which had overtaken the cavern of Manx Core. Half of the buildings were covered beneath mountains of rock, while others looked as though they’d been ripped to shreds from the inside out. Crushed ships littered the ground. Not a single one remained aloft. They had all either fled or been battered into wreckage by the endless torrent of rocks cascading down from the ceiling.
Where was Raif? Had he made it out alive?
The praxis was the only ship left. It hovered in the midst of the catastrophic scene defiantly, as if it alone had the power to weather the devastating rain.
The praxis’ behavior was puzzling, but there was something even stranger. Just below the ship, a fountain of neon blue sludge bubbled up from between several buildings, gushing forth from the cracks in the ground like an open wound. Rivers and pools of glowing neophosphorous formed around the crack, illuminating the hazy ruins with a haunting light. Within moments, streams of it began pouring down from the ceiling as well, pillars of light suspended amidst the immense amphitheater of destruction.
Why was the praxis still here?
A solitary figure dressed in the dark gray robes of an assessor stood near the window, looking out across the devastation, oblivious to the arrival of Nox or Sierra. Though the man had yet to move, Nox had stalked up behind him as quietly as he could, his red blade glowing menacingly.
Was he really going to just kill him without first finding out who he was? And was the control room really only occupied by a single person? It couldn’t be this easy. Something told her the man in gray was not as vulnerable as he looked.
Nox passed the long black tables and empty polymeric chairs at the base of the ramp and still the figure did not move. There was only open space between Nox and the assessor now.
Nox abandoned all pretense of stealth and sprinted the last few steps, his red blade swept back for the deadly blow which would end his opponent’s life in quick and bloody fashion. Sierra winced. It felt so callous, so wrong to kill someone like this. She wanted to scream at Nox to stop, but the cry froze in her throat.
The thin blade of light fell, passing through the assessor’s body, but with absolutely no effect. The only thing it did was invoke a shimmer of light across his frame. The assessor’s arm shot out and grabbed Nox by the throat as calmly as if he were picking up a cup to take a drink. The Wayman’s body was enveloped in an intense white light. Nox shuddered once and dropped from the man’s grasp, crashing to the floor and failing to rise.
A deep voice sounded from the dark robed figure. “I prefer not to be bothered just now,” he said, never taking his gaze from the enormous wrap-around window and its panorama of falling rock, sinking buildings, and glowing sludge. “I am trying to save my son.”
His son? Was such a thing even possible? Sierra thought that had been forbidden in the Collective. Surely this had to be Malthus, but there was no time to think about that now. She had to get control of this ship. Escaping the Collective fleet was no longer a priority. All the ships had either been wiped out by the quake or fled. But the cavern was coming apart before her eyes. The praxis, with its impenetrable hull, was the only hope she had for getting out of Manx Core alive.
“We need to fly this ship out of here,” Sierra said. There seemed to be no other choice but to try the direct approach.
The man said nothing. His gaze remained fixed on the scene before him. The deadly beauty of the glowing fountain below lit up his face like he was watching one of the firework shows she had seen in the esolace.
She followed his gaze to what he was staring it. Though it lay mostly in ruins, she could see from the bits
of blue glass and tall beams that it was the remains of the Command Center. Adan had shown it to the Sentients when he shared the scene with Gavin from the chronotrace. Flows of neophosphorous smothered the remaining buildings, pulling them down into the glowing lakes like huge chunks of salt dissolving in the rain.
From the praxis five bright yellow beams shot across the open space below, etching odd patterns into the flows and carving out chunks from the writhing slime in a desperate attempt to keep the building from collapsing altogether. But the neophosphorous pools grew far more quickly than the beams could cut it away.
Sierra reached down and quietly removed the cutter from Nox’s arm. It wouldn’t be of any use against this man, but it might allow her to wrest control of the ship from him by other means. Nox remained insensate, his bulky frame sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
“Raif, are you there?” She reached out to her friend, feeling a surge of hope when he answered.
“Sierra, you’re alive!” he replied. “Sorry, I had to duck out there for a while. This cavern is having a serious case of indigestion.”
“What’s your status?”
“Feeling pretty lonely at the moment. I was the life of the party until the tremors hit. But for some reason all the other ships zipped off down the tunnels when the world started to fall apart. They just don’t know how to have a good time, I guess. I’ve been hanging out underneath the praxis’ wings since then, but I’m not sure how much more even this ship can take.”
“I’m on the control bridge. I just need to find the bioseine interface,” Sierra informed him.
“You’re amazing.” Raif’s mind buzzed with ideas. “There are two interface panels on the ship. A main and a backup. The main is on the bridge and the backup is in the cargo bay.”
“Okay, I’ll take out the one in the cargo bay first since I’ll have to be on the bridge to fly this thing once the panels go down.”
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 67
