Darin Stock breathed heavily as he set down the last ammo box at the top of the bluffs overlooking the valley below.
“These traitors sure can skedaddle when they need to,” Darin said as he pulled out a fresh belt and fed it into his autocannon, Dragonlady.
“I’ve seen ’em issuing barrels of some kind of black liquor to their troops,” Sergeant Hood explained calmly between drags on his cigar. “Lets ’em fight without sleeping, lets ’em get inna’ mighty hurry when they need to.”
“Perhaps the Luminarch would be so kind as to issue a suitably delicious beverage to us as well.”
“Don’t you worry, boy. By this afternoon every last one of them traitors will be compost.”
Sergeant Hood shouted for all to hear. “You hear that everyone? Anyone here who doesn’t get liquored up and laid tonight is a sissy!” The men and women cheered, waving their helmets in the air.
Before them was all that remained of the traitor legions that had invaded this world and yet they still seemed to stretch on past the horizon. In the air above, fighters from both sides twisted and scrambled with each other for dominance of the skies. Far beyond the valley, Darin could distantly make out the towering forms of the enemy dropships. One last push and the traitors’ drop zone would be in range of the long nines and then it would be over.
Darin cocked Dragonlady and slapped the barrel for good luck. The confederate line stretched out nearly ten miles in each direction, and they now controlled the high ground.
“They just realized they can’t go no further,” Sergeant Hood said with a smile, peering through his rangefinder. Darin and the other members of his squad called out the readiness of their autocannons.
Tanks and walkers were now shifting to the front of the traitor formation, preparing for an assault. Darin knew it wouldn’t be long now.
“Let the Man of Light guide my hands, let His will still my heart and let His justice pierce His enemies this day,” Ryan and his squad intoned in unison.
Darin could make out some of the traitors in the valley below. They were some of the filthiest creatures he had ever seen. No two dressed alike, no two carried their weapons alike. Some had long bony limbs like insects, others thick and hairy like bears and still others that defied classification, rolling balls of flesh and organs that expanded to envelop their prey and consume them. Were these really the forces that had so often beaten back the Luminarch’s splendid armies? It made him sick to his stomach just to look at them.
“Permission for overkill, sir?” Darin asked with a grin.
“Permission granted,” Sergeant Hood said. “Make Him proud, everyone.”
A great bestial roar came up from the valley below.
“For Power and Glory,” the traitors roared.
“For the Luminarch,” the confederates shouted back.
The entire valley seemed to come alive and advance up the slopes toward them. Loathsome banners waved in the air, the pounding of five million feet shaking the ground itself.
Darin and his squad pointed their barrels down the slope and fired. The air before them was alive with lead. Darin thought to himself that a man could have swept his hat through it and caught it full.
Thousands of traitors fell dead to the ground, their companions clamoring over the fallen bodies with glee as they ran. A cacophony of colors, energies, and sounds streamed out from the traitor lines, each as different and as varied as the demon patrons who bestowed them. In one place, a wave of clear energy passed over the confederates, fusing the men and women to their equipment. In another place the ground became alive, chewing men and women up with stony teeth. In another, swarms of buzzing insects were conjured and stripped men and women of their flesh. Still others were hit by sorcerous bolts and their bodies melted like wax.
Through attacks of fire and ice, rock and lightning, fumes and plague, the confederate line held. After releasing their spells, many of the traitors found their bodies shriveling up into lifeless husks. Darin could not guess what led these men and women to worship the dark powers. Whatever their reasons, they had all been deceived.
The traitor advance was driven back down into the valley. All along the bluffs a great cheer went up. Confederate tanks were brought forward, preparing for the final assault that would surely shatter the traitors’ lines.
“There’s no kill like overkill,” Sergeant Hood chuckled to himself.
Darin bowed his head in prayer, giving thanks to the Man of Wisdom. He could hear clearly in his heart the Luminarch’s soft voice. “When you serve with gratitude, I accept it with gratitude.”
“All service to Him,” Darin said, clapping his palms against his chest.
A great shadow fell over the bluffs and Darin looked at the dark sky above them. Two great confederate dropships pierced through the clouds as they descended. Darin thought it very bold of the brass to send fresh regiments directly to the front instead of having them land safely at Jerricus.
Ryan’s brow furrowed as he realized something was very wrong. Everyone around him grew silent. The dropships were descending quickly, far too quickly. They were going to crash. With the dark clouds covering the battlefield, the dropships should be under the direct control of the Jerricus Spaceport to guide their descent and prevent something like this from happening.
“What has happened?” Darin asked as the men and women around him began to run in all directions. Darin could only stand and watch as the two enormous vessels grew larger and larger above them, approaching the ground with terrifying speed. Reaching inside of his shirt, he grabbed hold of the locket his wife had given him.
“Luminarch save us.”
The two ships collided into the bluffs, sending out a shockwave that was felt for thousands of miles in all directions. The force compacted the ships, folding up their metal structures like accordions, until a moment later they exploded in a titanic fireball which ripped through the confederate lines, engulfing and consuming everything in its path.
The fireball blazed up into the air, a raging column of heat and ash that parted the clouds above it, pushing them aside like foam on water.
The firestorm pushed out toward the traitor line, where it struck invisible walls conjured up by their screaming sorcerers. In many places the barriers failed and a swath of the traitor line was overcome by fire and shrapnel as well.
The center of the confederate line was now dominated by two overlapping craters, which burned and raged in an inferno of fire, each nearly three miles in diameter.
With a blood-chilling howl, the traitor line advanced.
Chapter Four
The Rite of Damnation
Be not ashamed of your fear, for fear is not your sin.
Your sin is thievery. You stole that body, those hands, that heart. They do not belong to you. Your life is not yours to protect and your feelings are not yours to guard.
Return them to their rightful owner, let Him do with them as He wills and then you shall fear nothing.
-Book of Cerinţǎ, Chapter 12, verses 8-10
Nariko found herself sitting on top of the ruined remains of Jerricus Spaceport. Pillars of black smoke still rose in the dim morning light. Dark and hateful banners flapped in the foul breeze. Nariko noticed that on top of one banner pole sat the head of H’Kar’Jun, whose incompetence had not gone unnoticed by his superiors. It had been nearly a month since the disaster on the Gobin Bluffs and the planet now completely belonged to the traitors.
Nariko grabbed the sides of her head in pain. Thousands of coded messages ran across her vision, her ears were flooded with millions of voices, their endless expressions rolling together into a kind of elemental roar.
Nariko slowly relaxed her muscles as the vision subsided, but her breathing did not slow. Looking out over the midday landscape, she could see that the sacrificial pyres were already being erected all over the surface and the repugnant incantations had begun that would seal this world to a demon lord. The traitor invasion force, now under the comman
d of Gual’Du’Har, had fought through the gap at Gobin and had shattered the confederate line. From Jerricus Nariko had been able to subvert every attempt the confederates made to regroup and retake the initiative. She had sent out conflicting orders, falsified location reports, diverted supplies and misdirected artillery strikes. At one point she even managed to force one confederate detachment to attack another during a moonless night assault. When the last defender was dead, Gual’Du’Har’s legionnaires had blasted their way into CIC where they found Nariko patiently waiting for them inside.
Nariko placed her trembling palms over her eyes and screamed. It felt like hands, millions of hands, were just behind her eyes, grabbing at her and pulling her down, pulling her out of her own body. Nariko bit down on her own tongue as hard as she could, forcing herself to remain conscious. One by one she pulled free of the hands in her head, swatting them off of her, until finally she regained enough control to lower her hands again.
The twin suns of this world were now setting in the east. Nariko looked around, confused.
Is it nightfall now? How could it be nightfall? Was I sitting here all day?
Nariko balled her fist in anger, but just couldn’t make it stop trembling. She had never bound herself to something so massive before and she regretted it deeply. The exhaustion was not physical, it was spiritual. She had never had such a large piece of her removed at once and the trauma of the experience had left her in a kind of shock.
Am I going mad?
Nariko wrapped her hands around her knees and remembered that for a time she really had gone mad. For days she had laid on the floor of the CIC repeating the same words to herself over and over again. The human mind was never designed to experience such things. Only the fear of being seen like that had drawn her out again.
No one can ever know. I would die from the shame of it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of approaching footsteps. No, footsteps was too soft of a word, they were, to Nariko, more like thunder steps. Gual’Du’Har strode before his bodyguards, his body already swollen with power granted to him by his demon lord. Nariko rose to meet him, but he towered over her, her head barely reaching the level of his hips. Unwilling to step back and unwilling to crank her neck up like a child to meet his gaze, she instead settled on tilting her gaze up enough to see his chest.
His suit of armor was broken into chips and fragments that had fused to his crimson skin. His whole body hissed and cracked as he breathed. He was on the very cusp of immortality and when this world was fully dedicated he would become an immortal demon prince himself. The stench of it made Nariko’s insides wretch.
From the opposite direction strode up Nariko’s superior with her staff, Miho Hoshi, Taisa of the Second Division, glorious in her full suit of armor and flowing jade mantle.
Miho bowed respectfully to Gual’Du’Har as she approached. Nariko could tell that Miho had no more love for these traitors than she did, but Miho was willing to accord their employers with much more deference than Nariko was willing to give.
Both sides began introducing themselves formally, but Nariko couldn’t hear it. All she could see was the face of that young boy she had killed in the trenches. Normally battles could be surprisingly impersonal. You fire quickly along with your squad at the enemy and then move on, often not knowing which if any you may have hit. But in the trenches it was different. Nariko was directly responsible for the death of millions at Gobin, but that did not haunt her nearly as much as that young boy in the trenches. She didn’t feel like a warrior anymore. She felt like a murderer.
“My Lord, the great Osi’Rah rewards those who serve him well and has commanded me to bestow upon you a rare honor,” Gual’Du’Har explained, his voice like hissing stone.
Gual’Du’Har pulled a taloned finger through the air and an ugly black tear opened up before them, an open wound in the fabric of reality.
Looking at him, Nariko felt anger welling up inside her. This...thing had once been a human. Remembering her training, Nariko clamped down on the feeling.
Gual’Du’Har put his hand into the tear and pulled out a long object, its form hidden because it was bathed and dripping with a black shiny liquid. Raw ether. Where the droplets fell to the ground the concrete warped and tore, changed colors wildly, and released squealing moans.
Nariko’s outrage swelled up stronger than before, straining her willpower. This had once been someone illuminated by the Luminarch’s pure light. Now...he was just a monster.
Gual’Du’Har grabbed one end of the object, which was a hilt and drew a mighty sword from its scabbard. The impressive blade was made of red steel. The surface moved and writhed as a living thing. Forms of faces and hands continually appeared along its length, as if pushing onto a membrane from underneath. Groans and shrieks accompanied the pulsating form of the sword and the air hissed where it made contact with the blade.
“The blade is a temple for the very essence of Lord Dral’eth and has allowed him to subsist on our side of the gate for a thousand years,” Gual’Du’Har explained as his vacuous eyes searched the depths of the weapon. “Its thirst for blood is...impressive, even by our standards. The entire populations of a dozen worlds in the far halo stars did not slake its lust.”
Gual’Du’Har returned the blade to the scabbard, which soaked up the remaining ether into it and held it out to Nariko with both of his taloned hands. Dral’eth began to glow with a dim purple light and changed its size, reshaping itself into a katana fit for Nariko’s size and strength.
Nariko’s rage broke through her training and willpower. Here she was, receiving a mighty gift from a grateful demon lord for murdering millions of the Luminarch’s faithful servants. She was...just like him.
This is your fault! You did this to me! You and your kind. It’s your fault I became this way! It’s your fault I became a monster!
Nariko’s lips twisted from a scowl into a wicked grin.
“I refuse,” she said defiantly.
“What?” Gual’Du’Har asked, a silence falling over those gathered.
“There is a heavy price for wielding a sword like this,” Nariko reminded him. “The only price a demon will ever demand.” Despite her impassive expression, Nariko’s hand flinched toward the blade.
“Know this,” Nariko said firmly, cocking her head all the way back to meet Gual’Du’Har’s empty eyes. “I do not serve your demon gods. I will not betray my vows to the Luminarch. I only won you this prize to fulfill our contract so that one day we may be free of our curse and be free of your kind.”
An outraged hush rippled through those present. Miho closed her eyes in disappointment.
Insulted, Gual’Du’Har threw down Dral’eth with a hiss and hit Nariko with the back of his massive hand. It happened so fast that Nariko couldn’t even see his hand move, let alone react. She experienced, almost detachedly, her head jerking to one side from the force of the blow and her eye going blind, before all went dark.
Chapter Five
A Crusade for Redemption
Freedom is an illusion. A flash of mist, believable only to the ignorant.
In all of time, there will never be born one who is not subject to another. Plant this in your hearts to make your mind clear, your only ‘freedom’ is to choose whom you will be slave to.
-Book of Cerinţǎ, Chapter 27, verses 42-44
Taisa Miho Hoshi kept her office sparse and humble. The insides of a Correllian warship made use of every single inch of space. Every panel opened to access vital components, every monitor capable of accessing any function on the ship. It was unusual in such an environment to see an office so sparse and underused. On a ship, space was a luxury and the wasted space was evidence of Miho’s privilege as Taisa. The only real decoration was the twenty-one crusade pedestals that lined the walls.
It has been so long, it makes me tired just to think about it.
Nariko sighed as she walked past them. There were so many empty spaces still on those pedest
als. It had been nearly three centuries since their crusade for freedom began. Lord Drak’Nal, the demon they belonged to, agreed to release them if they acquired blood samples from the body of the Luminarch and the Luminari, the twenty children he had sired during his mortal life. The survivors of Correll had been organized into seven divisions, each one tasked with obtaining three of the blood samples. After all this time they only had ten.
Nariko stopped walking when she reached the final three pedestals. All empty. The Seventh was the only division that had failed to acquire even a single sample.
“Eleven cycles of expensive, exhaustive service to Gual’Du’Har and you were willing to throw it away,” Miho said steadily as she entered the room. In her hands she carried a flask of pure silver.
Nariko came to attention and saluted by crossing her fist over her chest. The right side of her head was bandaged up, concealing the deep gash that now ran from her right temple, through her ruined right eye and ending at her jawbone.
Carefully Miho placed the flask on its pedestal and activated the stasis field around it. Miho held a calm dignity about her that was positively infectious, a very regal quality that inspired those under her to unerring loyalty.
“Our people have been without a Taisho to lead them since the fall of Correll,” Miho explained as she sat at her wooden desk. It was real hardwood from Correll, an irreplaceable luxury, given to the Taisa of each of the seven divisions.
“When the crusade began, it was agreed that the Taisa of the division who first obtained all three of their objectives would be named Taisho of our people. I intend for that to be me.”
She is always so honest. Why can’t I be honest like she is?
Nariko neither moved nor spoke, as she had been trained.
Miho tapped on her data slate as she spoke. “Do you know that Gual’Du’Har threatened to cancel our contract without payment because of you?”
Heart of a Traitor Page 3
