by James Somers
Kale wasn't even acknowledging the rebel commanders except to try and protect them. He charged toward Viche with his blade held high. The men reached for him as he pushed toward the bewildered Captain Viche. Kale was too fast for their attempt to restrain him, seconds were passing like hours. Viche went for his blaster pistol strapped on his side. He wouldn't have made it, Kale was already pushing between Viche and another man trying to get past them-a figure was forming from the dust of the ground behind the group.
The Agonotti warrior had only just congealed his form when Kale landed the first strike with his ignited Barudii blade. The warrior was covered by the same morphing exoskeleton Kale had seen on them inside the first underground rebel hangar. He had learned the weakness of their armor in that encounter and wasted no time exploiting it, striking a deep thrust into the joint between the deltoid plate and the left pectoralis plate. He drove the ignited blade up to three quarters of the way in. The Agonotti howled in pain as Kale sliced sideways to remove it through his chest, doing even more fatal damage.
Laser fire erupted all over the valley floor as seemingly thousands of Agonotti materialized among the rebel forces. The rebels present, were utilizing a heavier version of blaster rifle than those he had seen them using before. The rebels were retreating into groups, covering each other in all directions as the Agonotti tried to close in. It wasn't going to be as easy as might have been expected; the rebel blaster rifles were being fired in short bursts that was doing damage to the Agonotti.
Kale was fighting furiously, with Juli in tow. He was trying to find some safe place to take her, but the battle was raging in every direction he turned toward. The Agonotti were taking down the stray soldiers with ease utilizing their melee weapons, but it was the small groups of rebels putting up the most resistance.
Kale spotted Jael and Merab and headed for them, trying to protect Juli as best as he could. An Agonotti warrior materialized behind them and snatched Juli from his grasp, hurling her several feet through the air as he focused on bringing his large, spiked mace to bear on the young Barudii warrior. Kale dodged allowing the head of the mace to chunk into the ground next to him. He swiftly severed the mace's chain and in the same stroke, he hurled his blade between the breastplates of the Agonotti's armor. The Agonotti staggered and Kale hit the creature with a massive kinetic burst that sent it reeling away to the ground some feet away. He ran to help Juli up from the ground and called his weapon from the disintegrating body of the Agonotti. The blade leapt away to find Kale's hand as he continued his move to reach his Horva companions, Jael and Merab.
TWENTY-ONE
LUCIN watched with his troops from the edge of the plateau, where it began to descend steadily into the valley. Laser fire was erupting everywhere on the new battlefield. The Agonotti were disintegrating and materializing according to their special abilities and doing a great deal of damage both to the rebel soldiers and their transport vehicles, but it was not to the extent he had hoped to see. The rebels were actually holding their own in the fight and it surprised him.
"It looks as though my brethren cannot complete the job without my help," said Lucin under his breath.
All of his thousands were ready to descend into the fray at his command. Storm clouds were gathering over head. The wind began to whip up as the weather system gained very steady strength. How odd, Lucin thought, the sky was clear only moments ago. Perhaps, he thought, the weather is freakish here as it sometimes had been on the twin worlds of Castai. He turned to his troops who were kneeling in row upon row, with their weapons at the ready.
"We Attack!!" shouted Lucin as he stood up and drew the Barudii blade he had procured back on Castai-an elegant weapon in the right hands. He charged forward down the natural incline toward the battle raging below, his body still clad in the morphing black armor, an extension of his inner symbyte form. The masses of troops following after Lucin had not been assimilated long enough to be able to form the living armor in them, but it was definitely on his list of things to do once this battle was won and the planet secured. Lucin intended to reform this new human army into the likeness of his former Baruk clan army. They had been a terrible force to contend with. He would regain that power and more. The only world that remained unaffected by his forces was the home-world of the Vorn clan, Demigoth.
He had never set foot on the planet, neither with a human host. Demigoth was virgin territory. The Vorn military had been in covenant under the Baruk for control of the twin worlds of Castai, but they still maintained complete control of Demigoth, at least for now. Lucin and his troops raged toward the ongoing battle, ready to tip the balance of power and destroy the rebels and the Barudii once and for all.
0
TIET, Wynn and Grod had passed through the mountains only moments ago and were heading out over the plateau to the north of the Valley of Sayir. The signal the trio had been monitoring of a mass of indeterminate life readings suddenly changed when they cleared the mountains. The signal strength became very strong and Wynn was the first to report it to the others. "Do you see it? The scan says those signals are definitely human."
"It must be Lucin's ground army, but where are the big ships?" asked Tiet.
"The army is moving into the valley. Maybe Lucin realized the large cruisers would alert the rebels to his presence. Now, he seems to have surprise on his side."
"I'm reading something else," said Wynn. "There's a multiplicity of gunfire down in the valley already."
"I'm trying to reach the Equinox," said Tiet. It took a moment of silence before Emil's voice came through Tiet's cockpit speaker saying, "Yes, sir, this is Emil. The Agonotti are attacking!"
The Agonotti! "Emil, where's my wife and Kale?"
"Dr. K'ore is here on the ship with Ramah and Kale was out in the Valley meeting with the rebel commanders when the attack came. Merab and Jael are out there with him and Juli and I'm on my way now to help them."
"No! Emil, I want you to stay with my wife and Ramah. They'll need someone to protect them in case the Agonotti get to the Equinox."
"Yes, sir, I'll protect them with my life!" swore Emil.
"I have every confidence that you will. Your father and Wynn and I are inbound right now from the north. We are coming up on thousands of ground forces coming into the valley. We think it may be Lucin's forces, but we're going to try and slow them down."
"Understood," said Emil and he signed off.
Tiet spoke again to his friends flying in formation with him and said, "I spoke with Emil. The Agonotti are attacking in the valley already. They must be coordinating with Lucin and his human army."
"If they are what Aija has told us, then it makes sense," said Grod.
"We're coming up fast on Lucin's forces. Let's dump everything we've got left on them," said Tiet.
"I've got some missiles left," said Grod
"Just unload everything into their ranks," said Tiet. "We'll make multiple passes and see if we can thin out their ranks a little before they can intermingle with our people."
The three ships shuddered as the sheering forces of the increasing wind began to whip at their aerial fighters. They could see the ominous weather system hovering over the Valley of Sayir and it appeared to be growing quickly in intensity. Tiet led the other fighters in a descent towards Lucin's ground forces as thousands of symbyte assimilated humans ran hard for the raging battle ahead.
Tiet and the others triggered their weapons sending missiles and automatic laser fire into the sea of Lucin's army. Multiple explosions rocked the landscape sending bodies into the air, and more were cut down in mid-stride by the assault of pulse cannons from the three aerial fighters.
Lucin turned from his push toward the valley. "Destroy those fighters!!"
Many of Lucin's troops began to turn on the fighters with larger weapons they had slung across their backs. Sights sprang from the tops of the weapons and the soldiers began to track the fighters individually, painting them with infrared lasers to guide the rockets th
ey were going to fire. They let loose the salvo and the rockets climbed skyward toward the three targets coming in for another pass.
Tiet and his group of aerial fighters lined up again on the advancing soldiers and began to fire their pulse lasers into the crowds. Alarm calls began to sound in their cockpits as they spotted clusters of vapor trails rising up away from the enemy forces. Tiet broke left trying to evade the rockets but there were just too many. His display was giving him a description of the weapons that were locked onto their ships. They were laser guided, normally not a problem, but there were at least one hundred of the weapons flying skyward toward them from different directions. Every direction that he turned the fighter found him facing multiple rockets. Tiet fired again, into the rockets, taking out some of them, but not enough.
He turned as a rocket struck his ship. He heard the shouts of Wynn and Grod coming through the speaker-they were being driven from the sky as well. As Tiet tried to regain control of his fighter, he heard Wynn's voice saying, "Eject men!"
It was the only thing to do. Tiet's aerial fighter began to spin out of control toward the valley floor. He slammed a fist on the flight chair's ejection switch. The canopy immediately slid back into the body of the small ship and a charge launched him and his flight module away from the doomed fighter. The flight module was a small wedge of the flight chair that contained an antigravity pod inside allowing the pilot to make a controlled descent to the ground.
Tiet descended toward the valley floor nearer to the battle already raging between the rebel forces and the Agonotti. He could not see his son among all of the turmoil on the battlefield. Then something caught his eye as he drifted closer, still thirty feet from touching down. He could see one of the fighters slamming into the midst of Lucin's soldiers as they descended into the valley. It wiped out quite a few, but they did not halt their advance. Then he noticed Grod already on the ground removing his flight module and heading into the fray. He could not see Wynn, but hoped that he had survived.
Someone jumped at him, it was an Agonotti. Tiet reacted quickly, bursting away from the flight module as the Agonotti sliced into it with a broadsword composed of his own molecules. He dropped the remaining distance to the valley floor and pulled his blade, igniting it as he touched down. The wind was blowing furiously through the valley and lightning was flashing all around. He wondered if a vortex might form and tear them all away from the ground, hurling them into oblivion.
The symbytes were beginning to press the rebel soldiers. Tiet could see one at the forefront of the fray; it had to be Lucin himself. He stood out from the others as the leader. Lucin was enveloped in a black as midnight skin of morphing exoskeleton. He was tearing furiously into the rebel ranks, pushing his advance further into the valley.
Tiet allowed the fury welling inside him to sweep him away, he was charging toward the mastermind of all of this death and destruction. He could not think of himself as merely a man taking up combat with a Mithri. He had to trust that Elithias was going to fight the battle for him. He would be an instrument in the hand of Elithias. The madness of this war had to end and he intended to end it now.
0
KALE was backed into an alcove of one of the larger rebel freighters. Its landing gear had been torn away and it lay on its side. Kale had Juli tucked away just inside of the vessel while he, Jael, Merab and other rebels taking cover there fought off the onslaught as best they could. Many rebels had died already and the symbyte troops had bolstered the power of the Agonotti. There were thousands against the dwindling ranks of the rebels. Kale had spotted three aerial fighters strafing the advancing human legions, but they had been blown out of the sky. He felt as though his father was still living and that the king was somewhere on the battlefield, but he couldn't see him.
Most of the rebel ships were crippled beyond the ability to fly. They were their only defense against the advancing enemy forces now emboldened by laser weapons that the human army was wielding along side of the Agonotti. The lightning producing storm clouds hovering ominously above the valley had turned the scene into a grisly horror show and for the first time since coming to the planet, Kale lost hope of winning the war.
Then he remembered the words Aija the prophet had left him with, "the arm of the flesh will fail, but when hope seems gone, pray."
Kale stopped firing his pulse rifle. He looked at the battle raging all around them in the valley. The rebels were nearly surrounded by the enemy forces and it would only be a matter of time before Lucin's army and the Agonotti moved in and completely annihilated them. Kale's father was nowhere to be seen. From where Kale was, at the freighter with Jael, Merab and Juli, he couldn't see any of their team members. He couldn't think of any better example of the arm of the flesh failing than this situation-they were all on the verge of being killed and hope certainly appeared to be gone. When that happened, Aija had said to pray and from all that Kale could perceive, there wasn't anything else left to do.
Kale dropped his pulse rifle on the ground and fell to his knees next to it. Jael and Merab were watching, bewildered by the young prince's actions.
"Kale, what are you doing?!" cried out Merab.
Kale didn't answer. He was concentrating on forgetting the slaughter around him in order to pray unto Elithias. He said, "Elithias in Mithrium. We are but men and we haven't the strength to defeat this enemy. We know that you can do all things and your Logostus promises that the battle will be yours today. These Mithrial sons are mere insects compared to your glorious power and I beg you to reveal yourself. I pray only that your will would be done and your name glorified above your enemies this day."
Kale remained on his knees in prayer as laser fire blazed all around him. The enemy continued their press, but something else was beginning to happen.
0
LUCIN continued his charge across the Valley of Sayir. The rebels were mostly contained around the area where they had landed their transport ships. Many of the vessels had sustained irreparable damage and some were on fire. The landing zone had become a loosely formed fortress from which the rebels were able to fire from cover. Lucin was sending his troops along with the Agonotti to surround the area so they could press towards it from every side. It would only be a matter of time before all of the rebels were killed. There were still groups of rebels intermingled among his forces on the open battlefield, but they had even less chance of survival.
The storm was all wind and lightning and Lucin was finding himself more drawn to the happenings in the sky. His senses were tingling with a feeling of familiarity that he could not quite place. Lucin scanned the other side of the valley as it began to ascend up the mountain. He saw the ship that the Barudii had used to escape to this planet from Kosiva. From his time spent within the Barudii prince, Kale Soone, he remembered that the ship had transgate technology on board. Lucin decided that it would be a valuable asset for his conquest of Demigoth once this campaign was complete.
The ship was far enough away to have been spared a part in the actual fighting. He noticed that it appeared to be crippled and the ship was presently listing to one side. It didn't look flight-worthy, but he could still have the transgate components stripped out of it. Just beyond the Barudii's crippled ship, in his line of sight, he noticed something else. It was a man standing some distance beyond the ship on a ridge that intersected the base of the mountain and trailed all the way across this face of Mt. Sayir.
The man did not look like a warrior. He was dressed in a tattered robe and his hair appeared gray. The man reminded Lucin of men of long ago; in particular of many prophets of Elithias he had killed over millennia. A staff was in the old man's hands and Lucin couldn't take his eyes off of him. Even from his great distance away, Lucin could see him raise the staff into the air and then bring the lower end to the ground again in a striking gesture. It was then that he saw the others.
Even with the eyes of his human host, Lucin could not have mistaken the beings that were appearing all across the ridge befor
e the mountain. These beings were his former brothers, the Mithri-the mighty host of Elithias. Fear struck at Lucin's dark soul while he watched chariots of fire leaping forth from the mountain ridge as seemingly hundreds rode through the air descending toward the valley floor and the battle being fought there. The lightning began to fall, like fire from Mithrium, into Lucin's ground forces, especially the Agonotti. The lightning branched into death-filled fingers that destroyed the Agonotti forms with every touch.
This was it, thought Lucin. The Eternal One had tricked him into coming into this valley to destroy his army and cast him into the pit until the great Day of Judgment. Lucin panicked and ran for his life from the approaching horde of Mithri. Vock stepped into his path, holding him and asking, "My lord, where are you going?!"
"They're here, I must go!!"
"Who is here?!"
"Our brothers, from Mithrium! Don't you see?!" screamed Lucin with his finger pointing into the air toward Mt. Sayir.
But Vock did not. He said, "I see nothing!"
Lucin looked at Vock and then back to toward the mountain-the chariots were still coming.
"Stay if you like, but Elithias will not take me so easily!" shouted Lucin and he pulled away from Vock, running around the other side of the rebel landing zone in an arc that would ultimately bring him back toward the base of the mountain.
Vock followed the fleeing form of his master in bewilderment. Has he gone mad? Vock trained his sight back on the area that Lucin had been pointing to. His Agonotti were being impeded by the sudden ferocity of the weather. It was too coincidental. Lucin had to be right. Vock noticed an invisible wave that was sweeping into the valley from the western side, before the mountain. The human soldiers were collapsing and his Agonotti were bursting into their molecular forms and disappearing altogether, but he could not see any attackers. Vock turned to run as the invisible wave came closer affecting everything in its path. For a moment he thought, I can vaporize my form and escape, but a flash erupted in his path and for a fleeting fraction of a second Vock could see the terrible, bright form of one of his former Mithrial brothers in the way before him. The strike, invisible to all others, disintegrated his physical form completely and sent his dark soul to its imprisonment within the bottomless pit to await the final dreadful judgment of the last days.
