by Tom Julian
“You didn’t hear me asking?” Salla snapped.
“I…everyone is mad at me. I kept to myself. Everyone is dying. Achilles, Sergey, Vladimir, Ivan, Hannibal, Elias are all dead. I have caused so much trouble. So much war. Spread so much suffering.”
The doors behind Penny strained, the first Sabatin had found their way up.
“Yeah, so maybe start making up for all that?” Salla said.
“Of course,” Penny said, wrapped in guilt. A slab in the floor retracted, revealing a staircase. Timberwolf nudged Salla towards it, but she hesitated. Penny glowed a pale blue and faded all the way to white. “I’m so sorry, Timberwolf. For everything. Your pain. Your life. I have something for you.”
Timberwolf knew what Penny would be offering. “I don’t want it.”
A panel swung open, revealing a new rig of Sabatin armor.
“I know you want to finish what you came here for,” Penny said.
“Go!” Timberwolf gripped Salla’s shoulders firmly but with a tenderness she didn’t know he had.
“I know what happened to you. I’m sorry,” Salla said.
“Got into my file, huh?” He smiled.
“You’re not coming with me are you?” she asked. He shook his head. “Are you going after Gray? Or the Arnock?”
Claws scraped the door behind Penny.
“You really gotta go, Vice,” Timberwolf said.
“I can send you to the landing bay. Achilles kept a few lifters there. Poor man.” Penny glowed a deep yellow that turned the color of a sunset.
Salla went to go, but before she knew it, she’d kissed Timberwolf on the cheek. Then she was halfway down the stairs. “I don’t leave people behind,” she called up to him.
“You almost got him. Thanks. Gray has it coming.”
She hesitated a moment, then left, the slab covering the stairs. Timberwolf looked to the Sabatin armor, ran his hand along its side and its helmet. “Can I have another glass of water?” Timberwolf asked Penny.
HER EYES
Penny had a trillion eyes and she used them all, knowing she wouldn’t be in her current form much longer. Through the nano-machines floating like motes of dust, she looked over all of Highland. She watched for just a second, then averted her eyes from the horrible slaughter happening by the bridge. She saw the writhing horde of Sabatin coming up from The Warehouse, clawing over each other to get out. She watched Salla running down a dark corridor, following glowing arrows on the floor. Gray stood on the stairs, shouting orders. She looked closely at his face, old and troubled but creased with life in the heat of battle. She saw Timberwolf, the new Sabatin rig wrapped around him. He knelt on the roof of The Chapel, looking over the battle below.
She took herself up into the atmosphere of Highland, to the raucous and sentient machine clouds that enveloped the world. Gasbag creatures collected themselves at the top of The Eye in a mating ritual that wasn’t familiar to her. She felt cold and knew this would be her new home soon. She’d be unhooking from the physical machine she was. She found the idea scary, becoming defused.
A flash of silver went by her sensors in The Chapel. The Sabatin were filling the place now, howling and shrieking. She felt the first damage as they slashed at her console, but she was glad to see them. She hadn’t seen so many children together in so long. Her panel glowed like a smile and then with no fanfare, Penny went dark.
THE CALL TO WAR
Izabeck was on all fours, his arms freed now and scribbling madly in his notebook. Gray watched over his shoulder.
“I am an unworthy vessel. A dry leaf longing to be burned.” Izabeck was ashamed. He had wavered and Gray had called him on it. He hadn’t trusted God’s plan. He’d opened his eyes and doubted. The things that were happening here were of a new paradigm and he had been so bold as to question it. “I am an unworthy vessel…”
Gray stopped him. “Son, just write. And don’t blow us up, got that?”
Michael and Warner appeared by Gray’s side. “The Phaelon are holding!” Michael reported.
Only one of Droma’s clan lay dead below, struck by a sniper. The Arnock continued to clamor forward, driven to take the bridge at all costs.
“Five to one against us. They’ll do better today. Too bad they all have to go. Where’s Timberwolf?” Gray asked Michael.
Michael looked to The Chapel, doors straining from the Sabatin swelling within. Gray took a step to it, but Michael held him.
“There’s no going in there, Emmanuel. With him you waver.”
An Arnock mortar smashed nearby, but Gray and Michael stared at each other as the others shrank for cover. Gray turned to Warner. “Put mortars to their back line. They’ve got a master back there. Let’s kill him.” Warner nodded sheepishly and Michael continued to stare at Gray.
Gray and Michael didn’t speak, didn’t say one word to each other, but so much passed between them that neither would look away. Michael had taken something that belonged to him. Maybe the only thing that really mattered. The one thing that Gray cared about making right. Michael’s ear bud beeped. It was Droma. “Wessei min ter!”
Droma was calling Michael to join Clan Wessei at the bridge. Michael went.
COMMAND LINE
A mortar exploded near Kizik at the back of the Arnock line, mangling one of his techs—someone who would have been useful once Highland was taken. Kizik had started the assault, made sure that his forces had the drive and direction to take the bridge. But as they kept rushing to the slaughter, he realized something horrible.
I can’t turn this off.
He’d tried to pull his troops back, but he’d whipped them into such a frenzy that he was losing control. He sensed the sentry Arnock approaching, just a few minutes away from the chamber. They’d be able to step right over the chasm and bypass the bridge, but many would die before they got here.
Above The Chapel, he saw something leap down. Then he felt the familiar presence in his mind. It was Timberwolf; he knew it had to be. An anger filled Kizik, something pure and cold.
Timberwolf!
He’d been the root of so much destruction and pain. The thorn in Kizik’s side and a quintessential mistake. A force he thought he could control that had turned and bit him. He’d been both the burning sun and the coldest wind. It was time for him to die.
TIME ENDER
Timberwolf leaped down from the roof of The Chapel. He landed along the side of the chamber and jumped over the chasm. From the shadows, he watched the battle taking place at the bridge, magnifying Droma and her clan-mates in his heads-up. They threw plasma spears into the Arnock line, lashed out with flamethrowers and tossed white-hot shurikens into their ranks that came back covered in dark blood.
Rushing from behind, Michael joined the ranks of the Phaelon. The Arnock were still so focused on taking the bridge that their mind-bending was ineffective. Michael took the place of the Phaelon who’d fallen to the sniper and dropped the Arnock in bunches with blasts from a plasma shotgun.
Timberwolf’s new Sabatin rig was even better than the old one. It fit him perfectly and the weapons interface was easier to access. He opened up the cyber-weapons package and quickly hacked into Droma’s communications.
“Droma, you understand me. You’re fighting for Dynata.”
Droma fired a harpoon through her shield. She pulled an Arnock back to her like she’d speared a fish. She hung her head for a moment and Timberwolf knew she’d heard him.
“Gray ends your history. After he’s done with the Arnock, he’ll take what’s here and end your people.”
The Phaelon were resigned to dying as a species, but on their own terms—dying like this, in battle and with weapons in hand. But Dynata was something different. It was the end of time, literally the stopping of clocks. It was something shameful, something administrative. Some non-Phaelon hand declaring their time was over.
“You’ll be your own destruction. Step aside. Don’t give him this.” Droma hung her head in thought.
T
he clan leader shouted an order, but the warriors didn’t respond, still enthralled with the slaughter. She bellowed a longer, louder order and turned her back to the Arnock. The clan-mates looked to her, disappointed, but sheathed their weapons obediently. Timberwolf could hear Michael panicking over his earbud.
“Droma, wessei min ter?” Michael shouted, confused.
But the fight was over.
A VOICE
Gray scanned through his handheld device, looking for a way out of here that didn’t involve going through the Arnock. He’d released micro-drones that reported back and generated a schematic of the surrounding area. A clamor came from The Chapel above and the doors strained on their hinges. He didn’t like the one option that presented itself. A steep hill to the left of The Chapel led to a tunnel that went back up to the bone yard. Though direct, that had them running across three hundred yards of open ground.
The doors to The Chapel strained again and Gray saw claws and teeth when they parted. That’s when Gray heard the voice.
God’s voice wasn’t booming, or of particular authority, but he knew he heard it. A voice in his mind that was not his own. It was clear and sound and said, “This is all your doing, Emmanuel. This is not my concern.”
Gray stopped looking for an escape for a moment and pondered what he was hearing. Humans and Arnock and Phaelon tore each other to shreds before him and God was not impressed by the performance.
This is all my doing, Gray resolved.
And with that, Gray heard what sounded like the closing of a book in his mind, the finality of this enterprise. The sheathing of the Sword of God. Then he looked out to the battle and the unthinkable was happening.
The Phaelon were striding back from the bridge, like players casually leaving a rugby pitch. Michael ran ahead of them, holding his head and stumbling.
“Jesus Christ!” Gray exhaled.
RUN
The glowing arrows passed under Salla as she ran through dark corridors. They led her through the turns and levels and finally the glow of daylight was ahead of her. Then she was overlooking a huge landing bay filled with dozens of lifters.
“That’s more than a few lifters, Achilles!” she said, eyes wide. She mourned for her friend for just a moment, even though he was a construction. There had been many others like him and possibly more to come, but she felt ashamed she’d considered him less than human. He was a good man. She took Ivan’s cufflinks out of his pocket and attached them to her sleeve. “Thank you for saving my life again.”
She was halfway down the stairs to the landing bay level when she saw it. Amongst the lifters strode a huge sentry Arnock. It hadn’t seen her yet and she silently slipped between a row of ships. She saw a lifter up ahead that was open and she moved towards it, removing her boots and walking silently in her socks.
The open lifter was just twenty steps away when she nudged a toolbox and knocked a wrench to the ground. The beast stopped its circuit, sending its gaze across the rows of ships. It stared for more than a minute, Salla standing perfectly still. Suddenly, the sentry rushed directly at her, flipping lifters over as it came.
Salla ducked under a wing of a lifter and the sentry passed. At the end of a row, it turned around and began to walk back on top of the ships, its razor sharp claws crushing cockpits and piercing wings. It scanned methodically, giant red eyes gleaming. Salla slipped into another open lifter, just one row over from the sentry. She locked in to the pilot’s seat, flipped open a cover on the dashboard and hit the red emergency launch button underneath.
Without a countdown, the reactors ignited and instantly the engines hanging under the wings roared. She was thrown back in her seat as the lifter rose on a pillar of fire and a ring of destruction expanded below. The thrust from the launch tossed the other lifters like toys. The sentry slammed into an outer wall of the bay, burning and limbs trailing.
She winced as the G-forces pressed her and the inertial dampeners strained. The lifter passed through the first cloud layers and arched over in low orbit. She’d park up here until she could figure out what to do. It reminded her of on Nova Turin when she’d gone back half-a-dozen times to pick up trapped settlers pinned down by Gray’s forces. They’d called her a hero, but nobody had taken her name. For the moment, she was happy to be above the trouble going on below. She wondered if Timberwolf was still alive. If Gray was still alive. She looked down and saw a hole in her sock and a toe sticking out. For the moment, she was just happy to be safe.
THE HILL
The Arnock funneled across the bridge. “I felt them, clawing at my mind! I felt them!” Michael was back up on the stairs now. “They’ll be on us in seconds!”
“We’re going up that hill.” Gray pointed to the steep, earthen hill off to the left of The Chapel, an unfinished construction project that climaxed in a plateau.
“I’ve got us ready to go!” Warner had marshaled the human fighters to depart. “Sebaldi’s dead, mortar. Thaum by a sniper.”
“Go! I’ll be right behind you.” From the adjoining column room, a half-dozen sentry Arnock stooped and entered.
Gray knew he had just seconds to spring his trap before the Arnock invaded his mind. They were still an unfocused horde locked in a primal mode. “You’re going to want to chronicle this part,” Gray said to Izabeck, motioning to the door.
Looks passed between them and they knew without him explaining what his plan was. Warner dropped his rifle and then picked it up again. Above them, the Sabatin threw themselves against the door of The Chapel. “Fucking run!” Gray barked.
Gray clambered up the stairs, a low Arnock croaking in his mind welling up. They were focusing on him now, the lone human in front of them. A mortar exploded behind him, stinging his ankles. Before him, like cardboard cutouts, ghosts appeared, at first shapeless but then taking form. Dov… Sol…Forestground…Jan…Thomas and the others…an Arnock parlor trick, showing you your dead.
At the top of the stairs, the Sabatin railed against the black doors. For an instant, reflected in the door, Gray saw an image of a Sabatin nailed to a cross, skinny and bleeding, a crown of thorns on its head. Gray took a breath, feeling the weight of thousands of minds seconds from falling on him.
He pulled the titanium bar from across the handles and dove away as the doors burst outward. Like a river of steel, the Sabatin rushed out.
Gray felt the relief instantly, the avalanche of minds pulling back. It was replaced by something else, not panic from the Arnock, but a sense of chaos.
The Sabatin were untrained and frantic, like wild street fighters flailing and biting. They tore through the Arnock on the bridge and flowed into their ranks on the other side. Sentry Arnock rushed over the scene, spearing and tossing the Sabatin away.
Sentries fired long, whining laser blasts from energy pods around their thoraxes. The back half of a Sabatin was melted into a puddle; its front half still snapped and bit. Ten Arnock tore a Sabatin apart limb from limb. A Sabatin split an Arnock in half and sent the flailing mess into the ravine.
As Gray slid down the side of The Chapel, he heard a crunching from within. A crack appeared and the whole front half of the structure shifted forward as something heavy moved inside. Then, like it was shot out of a cannon, a massive, three-horned Trike burst through the front of The Chapel and leapt on a sentry Arnock in front of the bridge.
The two beasts writhed on the ground, crushing smaller Sabatin and Arnock as they slashed and bit. Gray ran from them, but they rolled towards him. For an instant he was just feet away from their awful faces, contorted and shrieking at one another.
Timberwolf watched the violence from the shadows. He felt the Arnock now within his mind, but they didn’t bother him. To him they just seemed like noise.
He’d caused a lot of destruction in his time, but nothing like this. This was a pure meat grinder he’d set in motion. He had hoped Gray would be caught between the Arnock and the Sabatin, though it seemed Gray had parried his way out of that trap, but barely.
The monster or the spider? he thought to himself.
He abhorred the thought of Gray surviving, but he could only go after one of them. He thought of Gray’s face, looking down on him when he was helpless and strapped to a bed in Purity Hospital, twisting the truth, forcing him to carry Kizik inside his mind.
The monster or the spider? he considered again.
He imagined himself a year out, five years out, ten years out. He’s got a quiet place on a colony. There’s a woman with him. For a moment he let it be Salla. And with him as well, somewhere in the back of his mind was Kizik, still there. Maybe tormenting him. Maybe letting him live in peace. Either way he knew when he went to sleep, there would be the giant spider with glowing red eyes. “I want that thing out of my head.”
Timberwolf zoomed in on Gray one last time. He saw his face covered in dirt and grime. He thought about how small Gray was, truly. Just a man with a list of delusions longer than his arm.
Going after Gray was indulging in the morass of yesterday. Going after Kizik was choosing to live. He waded into the fray, heading for the spider.
THE FRAY
Timberwolf moved through the melee, both plasma blades on the end of his gauntlets aglow. On all sides, Arnock and Sabatin fought and died, some Sabatin killing each other. Through the slashing teeth and claws, he saw Kizik at the back of the line. Timberwolf cut an Arnock in half that challenged him and leaped through the air, landing just twenty yards from Kizik. Two Arnock blocked his way. They began to shiver with mind-bending intent.
