Absence of Blade

by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  Modular seph armor the dull gray of wet slate. The other Osk stood in a low stable stance. Arms loose at his sides. No weapons in his hands. The mane beneath the helmet looked brown in the blue night-lights, but Gau knew it was red.

  Paralysis froze Gau to the pavement. The details had congealed into a picture that left no room in his mind for analysis. The day when Za fell looped in his head, a memory he’d revisited many times: Mose lying on the sidewalk, gasping at the toxic air. It was the only time Gau hadn’t confirmed his kill. For once he shouldn’t have had to.

  Mose Attarish shouldn’t have survived. But he had.

  21

  The last tendrils of black smoke drifted past as Mose broke his cover. Even across twenty-five meters he could see Gau go rigid, all of his muscles pulling against each other in a tensile immobility that might snap at any moment. His scent, carried to Mose on the wind, was electric with shock.

  He was downwind of Gau, and grateful for it. The taut few minutes of aerial battle had saturated his scent with a fear that was still dissipating on the breeze. Mose took deep breaths through his snout and held each one for several seconds, filling his body with the oxygen it now needed. His limbs still trembled as he took the first few steps outside his ship, but not with fear, nor the sick apprehension that usually came before he engaged his targets. Now that Gau was in reach, a hot determination surged in Mose and seared the fear away.

  Mose kept his steps measured, resisting the impulse to just charge at Gau and instead forcing himself to assess every detail of the situation. He could not afford to miss a thing. All the pieces were in place in a way they’d never be again. On the brink of achieving his plan, Gau was powerful—but he was also vulnerable. Mose had the chance to take it all away from him here and now. Gau was not going to expose this kind of weakness a second time.

  Behind Gau, the multitude of aliens started to fidget in uneasiness as they waited for their leader to respond. Gau glanced at them for a second, taking in their reactions. His shocked expression disappeared as if a switch had been flipped. He began to walk forward, his steps slow, measured. Both Osk halted in the middle of the access corridor, a careful five meters away from each other.

  “So. You’re alive, Mose.” Gau’s words were carefully devoid of inflection, merely a statement of fact.

  “I’m amazed,” Mose hissed quietly, “that you remember my name.”

  Gau jabbed once. “Of course I do. You were a loose end.” A snarl forced itself up Mose’s throat, and he clenched his teeth to hold it in. Gau’s eyes narrowed. “What I would know is, why didn’t you die in Za with the rest of them?”

  “The rest of them.” Now Mose did bare his teeth. “ None of us were real to you, were we? When you betrayed Za, did you imagine it would be a matter of letting the Terrans capture a few pieces on some war map? They had names, they were people, and you murdered them!”

  “I murdered them?” Gau’s pupils widened in mock amazement. “That’s interesting, considering it was the Terrans that released Fate’s Shears into Za.” He gestured at the canisters mounted to his ship. “I’m simply trying to set things right.”

  Mose dug his nails into his palms. “You want to know how I survived? As a tool. The Terrans rebuilt my lungs with nanotech implants. They saved my life, but only so they could use me to hunt down the sephs who escaped your betrayal.”

  Gau raised an eyebrow, not exactly in surprise, but as if to say go on.

  “I obeyed. I killed our own people.” An ache, old and deep, lanced through the scar across his chest. “I did it so I would have the chance to kill you. And now I’ve found you.” His voice hardened. “This is the end, Gau. Neither you nor Fate’s Shears will be leaving this place.”

  To Mose’s shock, Gau opened his mouth in a full-throated laugh. He stepped back and spread his arms wide, encompassing the panorama of parked ships laden with their deadly cargo.

  “This is it, is it? You’ve arrived just in time to foil my plan, kill me and . . . what? Save the lives of millions of Terrans who, if they even knew of your existence, would feel nothing but contempt and scorn for you? Who, at best, would view you as nothing more than a regrettable but necessary tool of Terran peace? Perhaps all those years spent killing for CoG have changed your loyalties more than you think.”

  Mose went rigid all over in rage, his snout flushing hot with blood. But part of him, the part that had never stopped assessing, wasn’t listening to Gau’s words: it was watching his body language. Even as he baited Mose, Gau was backing slowly away, putting himself out of range of an attack. Gau threw a glance that was little more than a twitch of his head at the Embassy ships. He’s going to walk away from me again, thought Mose. And I have no way to stop him.

  Or did he? Gau had to have a weak spot; something he’d said in the interrogation that Mose could twist, make him hesitate just long enough for Mose to figure out what to do next. If Mose missed it—let his nemesis slip away—he wouldn’t get a second chance.

  Gau had put two more meters between them. “Well, this has been interesting,” he said, “but I have a city to destroy.” Gau had half turned to dash for the ships when Mose lashed out with the first thing he could think of.

  “Lorsk must have been desperate if he was willing to take you.” Mose sensed at once he’d struck deep. Gau whipped around, his mocking smile gone. In its place was a blankness that seemed at once paper-flat and infinitely deep, as he struggled to keep any emotion from showing there. But Gau couldn’t control the scent that boiled off him, bitter and metallic with rage.

  “What did you say?” he spat.

  Got him. Mose smiled grimly. “Jace said some interesting things before you killed him. About you and Chii Ril. You must have been a child when the enclave fell.” He let the conjecture hang, daring Gau to refute it. “I didn’t know Lorsk had reached the point of training children.”

  Gau’s scent had gone incandescent with fury. His nostrils flared as he took deep breaths, fighting to restore his composure. The struggle lasted only a few seconds before the anger drained from his face. His scent modulated back to a neutral guardedness.

  “You confronted me even though you are outnumbered,” Gau said at last. He glanced back at the parked ships, the huddled teams awaiting whatever orders he might give. “I could still order them to take you, and there would be very little you could do about it.”

  Mose said nothing.

  “But I’m not going to do that,” said Gau, “because this does not concern them. This is between us. A conflict between sephs.”

  “You are no seph,” Mose spat.

  Now it was Gau’s turn to shrug. “Semantics. I have the skills of a seph, and I downed you once already.”

  Then Mose’s nemesis did an unexpected thing. He hunched his spine to diminish his already small size and let his arms hang loose in a formally non-aggressive posture. “I am offering you the chance to walk away,” said Gau. “But if you continue to interfere, I will not hesitate to kill you.”

  Mose stared hard at Gau as he tried to decide if he was lying. He scanned for tells in the subtle shifts of Gau’s scent and microexpression, posture, even the pattern of his breaths. He could afford to miss nothing: it was completely within what he knew of Gau to pretend to let his enemy walk away, then strike when his guard was down. He could easily order one or more of his teams to target Mose as soon as he was far enough away to no longer threaten their cargo of Fate’s Shears.

  But Gau’s physical cues didn’t lie. He meant what he’d said. He would allow Mose to walk away. He knew this was Mose’s one chance to destroy him.

  “Walk away? I’m sure you’d love for me to walk away from what you’ve done.” Mose balled his fists. “Fifteen years, sunspawn—fifteen years as Shanazkowitz’s tool, and it was all because of you!”

  The air was heavy in Gau’s lungs. He could see the other seph was not going to retre
at. Gau could smell the resolve in Mose’s scent, could almost see it: an aura of hatred tightly channeled and controlled, enveloping Mose like a static charge. Mose had spent fifteen years honing himself down to this single point of desire. It was an accomplishment Gau felt uniquely qualified to appreciate; he himself had devoted his life to a similar goal, to the culmination of the only game that mattered. Gau had never met another player of his unique type of game.

  Until this moment.

  Deep in his throat, he silently subvocalized a message to Pri: Are you there? He couldn’t feel her presence, but knew she must be back among the teams somewhere.

  «Yes.»

  If this isn’t over in five minutes, I want you to take the teams and continue without me. I will rejoin when I can.

  «What are you going to do? »

  Deal with this one. It was reckless, it was foolish—and it was something Gau could resist no more than he could the pull of a star. He could not meet a true opponent for the first time in his life and not join play with him. It went against the nature of the game itself.

  First he had to reclaim his advantage: put Mose off balance, goad him into a stupid mistake. His opponent was already angry; Gau had to make him furious.

  “You know, I never properly thanked you,” Gau said. Mose’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement. “I’m also here because of you.” He inclined his head in a mock bow. “If it hadn’t been for your faulty intelligence, I’d never have gotten warning of Fate’s Shears. I owe you my life.”

  White noise filled Mose’s thoughts. With a wordless bellow of anguish he lunged across seven meters of pavement, his extended blades pointed straight for Gau’s throat.

  But Gau wasn’t there anymore. He curled away from the trajectory of Mose’s thrust like smoke and threw a brutally fast slash at his neck. Mose parried the strike, his teeth rattling with the reverberation as his blade slid down Gau’s. They leapt apart. Gau moved unlike any seph Mose had ever fought, in a fluid arc that kept reversing direction, drawing Mose’s eye away from where Gau would be. Mose watched Gau’s feet, drawing air into his nasal cavity to analyze his scent for changes. Gau’s scent was rust and rainwater, a neutral on-guard scent. Then it turned salty and Gau lunged.

  Mose was ready. Bone grated against bone as their blades met. Sweat trickled down Mose’s back under his armor as he slashed and jabbed, trying to use his greater size and reach to press the attack. But Gau flowed away from his strikes with almost no apparent effort, in a continual flanking curve that forced Mose to pivot so Gau wouldn’t get behind him. The smaller seph threw one strike for every three of Mose’s—every one a precise killing blow directed at his throat, his eyes, his neck. Mose dodged them by centimeters. His breath started to rasp in his chest as he searched for an opening in Gau’s form.

  As Gau danced out of his reach once more, Mose grasped the pattern. He favors his right arm. Even as he coiled his footsteps around Mose in a snare, Gau always kept his right side turned toward him.

  White flashed at the edge of Mose’s vision as Gau’s right blade speared toward his eye. This time Mose turned into the strike. He knocked the blade aside, yanked Gau’s left arm straight and hammered his fist into Gau’s shoulder.

  Gau’s lips went white with shock. Mose seized his chance, darting behind Gau and twisting his arm behind his back. Vicious satisfaction coursed through him as Gau screamed in pain. He swept his blade in toward Gau’s throat.

  Colored spots exploded before Gau’s eyes as Mose wrenched his arm, nauseating pain spiking through his shoulder. A flash of white was all the warning Gau had as his opponent slashed toward his throat. Gau caught it on his free blade a centimeter from his skin. His breathing grew ragged as he strained to hold the block, and he felt his strength begin to ebb away.

  “How does it feel, Gau?” said Mose. “How does it feel to be helpless?” The joints creaked in his pinned arm as Mose pressed him closer. Black spots swam in Gau’s vision from the effort of holding both their blades away from his throat. His knees started to buckle. His shoulder joint was a mass of agony.

  “You’re not the first seph I’ve killed,” Mose hissed, his snout so close Gau could feel his breath. “But you’re the only one whose death I will enjoy.”

  His enemy’s voice sounded far away, tinny. Gau could barely hear the words through the roar of his blood in his ears. His heartbeat seemed to slam through his body, not from his chest but from a point in the middle of his back. Then he realized it wasn’t his heartbeat—it was Mose’s.

  His opponent’s pulse was like thunder, doubled from the effort of keeping him pinned. From a shrinking corner of lucidity, Gau saw his opening: Mose’s strength was formidable, but it was not infinite; nested inside it was a kind of weakness. Mose was straining to keep up this brutal yet delicate push-pull balance. His attention was wholly diverted to it.

  “Goodbye, Gau.” Mose’s right blade pressed toward his throat. Gau lurched against the restraining pin—backward, throwing Mose off balance. He felt an agonizing pop in his left shoulder, but Gau won the space to slither down out of Mose’s hold. Angling his entire body horizontally like a fulcrum, Gau kicked up and out with both back feet. His boots crashed into Mose’s midsection at the hinge where his upper and lower halves met. Then Gau flipped his entire body, hurling Mose over his head onto the pavement.

  A harsh gasp of pain wrenched itself from Mose as he felt his flesh and bones give under the force of Gau’s attack. He didn’t even realize he’d been thrown until his entire side flared up in agony as it smashed against the asphalt. His armor stopped the skin from ripping away, but the hard plates stabbed into his ribs and spine as he skidded along the ground.

  Mose was still tumbling when a kick slammed into his cheek just below his eye, hurling him onto his back. He felt the skin of his cheek split. Pain shot through his head and neck. Warm blood welled down the side of his face. He tried to roll away, gulping air, his head swimming.

  Another kick, this time to his jaw. Another bolt of agony. He groped for Gau’s foot, but he had already danced out of range. “Oh no,” Gau snarled. “You’re not laying a hand on me again.” Then he dropped into a crouch and thrust a blade toward Mose’s throat.

  The strike was too close to block with a blade, Gau’s arm too far to grapple. There was only one part of Gau within reach. Mose didn’t think. He wrapped his hand around the descending blade and pulled.

  Mose grunted as the blade cut into the edges of his palm, his gauntlet turning wet with blood. Gau’s snarl dissolved into a gape of surprise as Mose yanked his thrust down and to the side. He threw a desperate left-handed slash at Mose’s head, but Mose parried it and launched himself between Gau’s spread arms, tearing off one of the plates that protected Gau’s neck and shoulders. Pinning Gau’s arms in a crushing embrace, Mose sank his teeth into his enemy’s flesh.

  Gau’s throat guard saved him. Mose’s teeth skidded off the hard plate and buried themselves in his left shoulder. The agony in that shoulder turned incandescent. Nausea churned his stomach as Mose’s jaw flexed: the plates surrounding Gau’s shoulder stopped Mose from getting the leverage to rip and tear at the arteries in his neck, so Mose started to chew.

  Gau’s mouth stretched around a scream, but he couldn’t get the breath for more than a choked hiss. With his arms pinned, Gau’s blades were useless hunks of bone. He stiffened the fingers of his right hand into a piercing wedge and drove through a chink in Mose’s armor up into his ribs. They weren’t very damaging strikes, but at that range and angle they would feel punishing to soft tissue. Mose jerked as Gau’s stiff fingers pounded at his diaphragm, loosening his hold on Gau’s arms.

  It was all Gau needed. His punch was neither elegant nor particularly powerful, but it connected at a lucky angle, cracking Mose across the jaw and wrenching his teeth from Gau’s shoulder. The two Osk sprawled apart. Gau scrambled to his feet on legs that felt made of glass, one hand g
ripping his bloodstained shoulder as he backed away. A harsh vibration seemed to fill the air around him—his own heavy breaths, magnified in his ears.

  A line of blood, bizarrely purplish red, dripped down Mose’s jaw where Gau’s gauntlet had split the skin. Mose ran his thumb along the cut, wiping it clean. Shook the blood onto the pavement. In another moment he would start walking forward.

  Gau realized he had no idea what was going to happen next. He hadn’t gone into this fight expecting an easy win against this seph-killer, but a few minutes ago he’d been confident he would win. Now Gau began to seriously consider that he might lose. He risked a glance behind him. The Carnivore was ten meters away, still tethered to Mose’s ship; if Gau could reach it, he could detach the cable and get the ship flying again. He could retarget its lasers to fire on Mose. But Mose wasn’t going to give him time for either of those things.

  A deep thrum vibrated through the air as the Embassy ships began to rise from the pavement, their engines glowing blue. The radio embedded in his vambrace blinked as the audio-analogue of Pri’s voice crackled through it: “Gau, stay where you are; Arkk’s coming to pick you up.”

  “I told you to leave without me if you had to,” he muttered back, but he couldn’t hide the relief in his voice.

  “Arkk refused,” Pri said simply.

  “Then I won’t disappoint him,” Gau said with a grin.

  Mose forgot the pain in his ribs as the parked Embassy ships powered up. One of the ships swung around and cruised toward them. Mose’s heart seemed to drop into his boots as the ship reached Gau and hovered two meters off the pavement, the hatch sliding open on the big Arashal from the hangar. Leaning halfway out of the ship, the Arashal stretched out its massive arm. Gau took it and pulled himself into the hatchway. He looked back at Mose with a smile like a knife’s edge, and the Embassy ship started to claw for altitude.