by Tom Julian
“It’s gone!” Achilles said. There was nothing out the rear porthole anymore. “We shook her!”
Salla stared out the front window, lips parted. “There!” was all she could get out.
The Trike was perched on the hood of the vessel now, like a gargoyle looking in, a mass of muscle covered in knotty armor. Salla dove into the highest cloud layer and the Trike grimaced as it struggled to hold on, crinkling up the hood of Santa Maria with its claws. Once through the clouds, the Trike shook off its breather, exposing its awful teeth and licking its lips. There was a smash as the Trike’s mighty tongue, tipped by a small wrecking ball, struck the windscreen. It did it again and again until a crack appeared. They were in the high atmosphere now, the next cloud layer right below them.
“Go for that! Take us right through.” Achilles pointed to something out the window below them. At first glance, Salla thought it was a cumulonimbus cloud, but it was solid and pulsing with long tendrils hanging from it. It was a living gasbag creature, the kind that had swiped at Nemesis earlier.
“Go through that thing?” Salla asked.
“Sure, you won’t hurt it!”
The Trike clawed its way closer to the windscreen, focusing on the humans within. It braced a claw on the roof right over their heads, preparing to tear the front windscreen off. The gasbag was just a few thousands yards away now, taking up the entire view behind the Trike.
They pierced the side of the gasbag creature like they were going through a paper bag and were suddenly in inky darkness. An instant later, they burst through the other side and the Trike was gone. Santa Maria’s hood and front quarter-panel were torn off, exposing the whirring engine underneath. Behind them, the gasbag fell like a deflated balloon, the Trike writhing within.
The tenor of the engine changed and a component popped out and pinged against the windscreen. “I’m not sure we live through this!” Achilles’s calm was gone. He checked the scopes and readings and input something into his smart-device. “Take us to six, five, five, one and dive!” he told Salla.
She turned the ship in the direction Achilles indicated, dropping through more cloud layers, the engine sputtering. Lightning flashed outside now as a heavy rain fell. The crack in the windscreen spread further and Salla felt the wetness from outside on her arm. With no warning, the engine went silent and emergency alarms began to scream. Achilles silenced them with a slap of his hand. “We’re a glider!” Salla winced. “Three miles up!”
“We’re almost there!” Ahead of them, at the coordinates he had indicated, a bank of dark clouds was flattening out, creating a ledge in the sky. They hit the cloudbank and fell through, but it felt like a net had caught them. They bobbed up over the clouds again, supported by something underneath.
“Thank you, Penny!” Achilles breathed a sigh of relief. Billions of nano-machines in the atmosphere supported them now, pulled together into an ad hoc suspension net. The net began to lower them gently through the clouds and down to the surface.
Salla stared at Achilles, overwhelmed by what just happened. With a wave of his hand, a projection of the suspension net appeared as a hologram in the cabin. There was Santa Maria, cradled in it, altitude readings showing them slowly descending. Achilles closed his eyes, finding a moment of peace. She didn’t ask Achilles any questions and couldn’t bear to. She found herself with her head in her hands, somewhere between relieved laughter and tears.
A few minutes later they landed, but so gently she barely realized it. Outside was just a gray curtain of vapor. Salla looked through the windscreen, searching for features. The cabin was silent and Achilles still sat with his eyes tightly closed. She waved her hand in front of him, but he didn’t move. She heard something outside in the distance; whooshes followed by crunching impacts. The ground shook, like artillery was falling far away.
Salla checked the atmosphere outside. It was Earth-normal, but she put on her breather just in case. She opened the door and leaped to the dusty ground below. She put her hand out in front of her, but the mist was so thick she could barely see her fingers. In the distance, glowing balls of light showed through the vapor. She heard the crunching more clearly now and made her way through the mist, stumbling over a stone in her way. Then, like she was stepping through a shower curtain, she was suddenly in the open.
She came out of the cloud wall at the bottom of The Eye, the clear column reaching up from the surface. The cloud wall curved away from where she stood, rotating ever so slowly. She looked across the space and saw the other side, miles away. A far-off door stood unnaturally in a sheer rock face. She turned and wiped her hand through the cloud wall. The vapor leaped back like it had a memory. Turning again, she saw several pillars of black smoke rising in the distance.
The crunching came again, and Arnock landing cylinders streaked towards the surface, trailed by tails of fire. Just a few thousand yards up, the intact ones deployed huge golden parachutes and settled gently onto the soft ground. Others crumbled as they fell, spilling their innards out and disintegrating into lines of debris that landed far away.
For the hundredth time since this all started, Salla was amazed by what she was seeing. Somehow she felt no fear. The scene in front of her was many things, but she couldn’t help feeling that it was beautiful. She knew Arnock were dying by the thousands—she could feel their last seconds. But the streaks of fire, the disintegrating cylinders, the wall of clouds and the wonder of The Eye itself made a staggering tableau. She fell to her knees and took it in, fine shards of metal raining down not far away. Achilles appeared behind her and put his hand on her shoulder.
Salla hadn’t noticed she’d stepped over a set of railroad tracks in the dust. A small, creaking train car stopped behind them and Achilles beckoned her to get on.
“I have a million questions,” she said.
“Just wait a minute. You’ll have a million more,” he responded.
THE TORCH
D.P.E. Archangel—Twelve Hours Out from Highland
“There is a nuclear device in the possession of an unpredictable party down on Highland?” Conrad confirmed with Dr. Tier, trying not to sound incredulous. He was being as clinical as possible. He had been personally summoned to her office five minutes ago by Captain Tirani. It had been the captain, not Dr. Tier, who informed him that he was now in charge of the operation. The captain stood outside with several guards, counting down the fifteen minutes he had allotted for Dr. Tier to hand off all her knowledge to him. Dr. Tier had prepared a punch list of the major items and Conrad went through them one by one.
“Yes,” she responded. “Jude Izabeck, a former personal valet of Cardinal Jacob Bin Cavill, who is of course, right down the hall.”
“You offered Cardinal Jacob control of the finances on Highland in exchange for reestablishing communications with Timberwolf Velez?”
“Yes, that may be in excess of one point two trillion dollars.”
“And Timberwolf Velez is now dead.”
“Presumably,” she responded. “We have been unable to verify. We have tried to interface with Timberwolf’s rig through Jacob’s device, without success.”
“And I am in charge now because Captain Tirani discovered you were ingesting Terecine, a banned substance, while issuing level-one orders?”
“Yes.”
“And you were under the influence while we bumped Challenger?”
“High as a kite.”
Conrad paused a second too long and she registered that he was appalled. “Are you under the influence now?”
“No,” she said, smiling.
He brushed that off without digging further. “You are in touch with Jude Izabeck, via Cardinal Jacob’s device? You have maintained the cardinal’s identity for these conversations?” She nodded. A smile cracked on the bottom of Conrad’s lip. That’s a good one. “What was your plan for when we got to Highland?”
Without pausing, she responded, “The operation is now yours. Do as you see fit.”
Her curt resp
onse told him all he needed to know. You mean there is no plan?! he asked with his eyes and a raised brow. She nodded and pursed her lips, as if to apologize.
“I’ll continue speaking to Izabeck, impersonating Cardinal Jacob. I’ll speak with the cardinal when I feel I need to.”
“The good cardinal has threatened to expose our identities and our families.”
“Fine, then I’ll expose his.”
She tilted her head. The Clergy were to remain celibate servants of god without familial ties. If Cardinal Jacob had a hidden family, it would be an unbearable scandal. Conrad had never told her he had this on the cardinal. Maybe he hadn’t been certain. Maybe he was keeping it in his back pocket. Either way, Dr. Tier was impressed.
“Time.” Captain Tirani opened the door and beckoned Conrad.
“Tread carefully…please,” Dr. Tier said as Conrad left, the concern betrayed in her voice. He was about to take over a dangerous game, and she hoped he was up to it.
SELF
This is goddamned weird, Timberwolf thought. He had an awful headache but the presence was smaller than he had ever recalled. Kizik was still there, but he felt like a memory. Something had shorted in his suit behind his right ear and knocked him out. He found himself half-crumpled up along the monitor bank in the Infiltration Office. Even when Kizik wasn’t interested in him, he always felt him in the background, lurking somewhere. This is really goddamned weird, and quiet. But now there was almost nothing. It was like Kizik was busy.
The word Copacetic still blinked on the monitor. Kizik is busy? He considered the implications of that.
If Kizik is busy, then he’s coming down here, Timberwolf thought. He needed to take Gray out, and immediately. He burst from the Infiltration Office back into the hall and ran back the way he had come, hurdling the melted security barriers.
He found himself out in The Catalog and leaped up to the top of a building to get the lay of the land. Altogether, he’d lost almost an hour with Kizik’s detour. Timberwolf checked his sensors and Gray was nowhere to be found. He dropped back onto the path and began running, trying to make up time.
Then he saw it out of the corner of his eye—a crashed Glox lifter, its front half buried in the dust. Timberwolf stopped in his tracks. There was something about it that felt familiar. He knew he should have been moving on, but he couldn’t help but look within. Inside was a macabre scene: A dozen or so dead Glox, all in blue flight-suits, were strewn about the cabin, dark red blood, thick like jelly, stained the floor and walls. Timberwolf nudged one of the Glox with the end of his gauntlet. The body crinkled and white stuffing showed through a tear in the jacket. The body was plastic, the scene a demonstration. Medium-sized Highland containers were strewn about the cabin and cracked open. He scanned the space and found that there was one body on the ship that wasn’t fake; and it wasn’t Glox.
Timberwolf stepped over the mess, slipping on the fake blood. He moved a faux-Glox aside and he saw a mat of dark hair. It was a human body wearing an old, red-green armored rig from the Phaelon Prime campaign. He turned the form over and saw a familiar jawline.
Why am I lying here? he asked himself numbly. There he was though, his self from twenty years before, his face soft, still and unmoving.
But was it dead? He checked his readings and the form below him wasn’t decomposed in any way. There was no blotching and no rigor mortis. He could detect no trauma. It seemed to be in suspended animation. He bent in for a closer look and he passed through some sort of invisible barrier that sizzled and popped when he touched it.
Timberwolf’s doppelganger opened his eyes suddenly and blinked with surprise. He managed to prop himself up on his elbows and he looked at Timberwolf with a familiar, quiet surliness that seemed to ask, What the hell kind of rig is that?
Without a second thought, Timberwolf put a full-force plasma burst into the thing’s chest and knocked it to the back wall of the cabin. He stumbled to the front of the cabin, blood splatter on his visor. Real blood, which he knew was his. He checked his readings, his other self had the last remnants of a life sign but that quickly went gray. Then he was sitting in the dust outside the lifter, his helmet off.
What the hell was that? he asked himself. He noticed that his heart rate had climbed way up into the red. Even in the most intense combat situations, he’d barely get into yellow, but now the muscle in his chest pounded like a jackhammer.
His com link beeped. He ignored it, but it beeped again. He looked inside his helmet and saw that it was Achilles. A drop of blood rolled over his knuckle and into his palm. He tried to make sense of what he’d just experienced, but nothing came to him.
Achilles301: Timberwolf, I see you moving. Something shorted in your suit.
Timberwolf4545: I just shot myself in the chest.
Achilles301: Are you using your med-kit?!
Timberwolf4545: No, I had it coming.
ASSASSIN
The train moved along the perimeter of The Eye and then slid back behind the cloud wall. Ahead of them, the vapor formed itself into a tunnel as they passed.
“I wanted to do something special. Be a part of something bigger than what I was doing. I was an errand girl for a petty crook,” Salla said, as she leaned against the window.
“We’re all errand girls and boys,” Achilles responded. “You still want to be a lawyer?”
“I may have broken hundreds of laws over the last few days. I just want to live through this.”
Achilles smiled. “So what do you think of my place?”
“It’s nice,” she said absently. “Homey.” She turned to him. “I thought you said you couldn’t come down here?”
“If I’m here with my brother, it’s more likely Gray can get Penny to do what he needs. It’s complicated.”
“Is there a way out of this mess for you?”
“Yes, but I’m not going to like it. I have to get Gray out of here so I can deal with the Arnock.” He handed her a tablet computer. “Uninvited guests.”
On the tablet there was a video feed from The Eye. An Arnock landing cylinder stood upright like a giant soda can. Arnock scurried about, forming into martial rows and columns. From behind the cylinder strode a massive sentry Arnock, a warrior-monster forty feet high. Achilles pulled the view back. There were a dozen other cylinders with similar scenes unfolding. He swept his view to Nemesis, nestled next to an outcropping, still unnoticed by the Arnock.
“I love surprises. Take this. Don’t drop it or leave it in the sun.” Achilles pulled a small backpack from under the seat and handed it to her. Inside she found several more of the small grenades he had given to her over Golgotha and other emergency supplies such as flashlights and signal beacons.
Salla held up a grenade. “You know these are lousy, right? They’ve got to be the worst thing you make.” She found a bottle of water in the sack and drank it all in almost one gulp.
“I’m working on a Sabatin that can fit in your pocket, but until then have a grenade or two.” He paused, knowing she would hate what he had to say next. “I have to make a deal with Gray.”
“You can’t give him anything!”
“You’re naïve. It’s charming. There’s a price for everything. We haven’t completely forgotten how commerce works. Gray’s spent a lot of different types of coin to get here. I’ll give him a trifling. It’ll be worth it to him just to leave.”
“You know he doesn’t really do what makes sense. He just pushes and pushes until things fall apart,” she said.
“He isn’t stupid. He just has a hard time changing his mind. He’ll see the logic.”
“He’s going on faith now!” she said. “I don’t think logic is part of the equation.”
Achilles didn’t have a response. He slowed the train down. They were at a small station, seemingly in the middle of nowhere.
“The Arnock will get control of this place if they stay. Their intellect will get through Penny. I’ll offer Gray something to get him out of the way.”
/> “You’re going to find him in person to do this?”
“Do you have his handle?”
Salla went through the backpack, palmed a small grenade for a moment and put it back. “You’re right. This works.”
He noticed her considering the tiny weapon. “Revenge?” Achilles asked. “Think you’ll be glad to see him?”
She looked him in the eye. “No, probably not.”
“Are you ready to die to get back at Gray?”
Through all of this, she hadn’t thought about dying. Until now, everything had been moving too fast for her to consider her own fate.
“Are you ready to die?” Achilles asked again. “Assassins rarely get to cash in their retirement plans.”
“Gray is an evil man,” she said, her eyes becoming slits.
Achilles took her hand, a deep tenderness in his eyes. “And you are a brave, brave woman! And a good person. His life isn’t equal to yours.” The door slid open and he got up, stepping onto the platform. Salla was thankful he didn’t wait for her to respond. She wasn’t sure if what he said was true or even relevant.
“Where are we now?” she asked.
“Back door!” he replied.
THE BOUT
Droma walked beside Wrath along the path, looking at him sideways. The Phaelon clan leader pushed the beast to the side and it snarled. “Wrath, dur mek!” Thomas scorned. A few minutes later, Wrath took his armored head and slammed Droma’s side. The Phaelon hissed and her clan-mates laughed.
Thomas went to intervene, but Gray stopped him. “No! They’re sparring.”
Gray looked back to the men. Their heads all hung since the loss of Jan. Wrath circled Droma now, clawing the dust. A Phaelon threw Droma a fighting baton weighted on both ends. The men and the other Phaelon crowded around now in a circle. Wrath charged and took Droma in the stomach, driving her into the air. The Phaelon smashed the baton down on Wrath’s skull and rolled away. The group cheered and whooped, money changing hands in wagers.
