Heart of a Traitor

by Aaron Lee Yeager

  “You didn’t know about any of that, did you?”

  “No, we didn’t,” Mai said truthfully. “We chose you for the blood of Junasto that flows in your veins. We care nothing for your secrets, whatever they are.”

  Normally Jenther would have laughed, but now was not the time for such things.

  “Irony is a bitter mistress, indeed,” he mused.

  Jenther looked out at the black shapes of the Kuldrizi as they hung in space all around the planet.

  “I wish I could see how this day will end, but those creatures have cut off this whole system from the ether. With them here I have lost my sight. I can only imagine what it has done to the demon world below us.”

  “It has stripped away its immortality,” Mai explained.

  “I would have liked to see such a thing,” Jenther said, nodding, “But my time has come. My life is to end now, whether by my hand or by those of another. I would rather those hands be a friend.”

  “But, I am not your friend,” Mai said with difficulty. “I only just met you.”

  “That may be true,” Jenther admitted, “but your face and the images of this day have been with me every day of my long life, a constant reminder to cherish the days of my life while I had them. So, you’ll forgive an old man if I choose to call you friend so quickly.”

  Mai didn’t know what to say. He was going to a place where she could not follow. Mai quietly pressed the injection gun onto the jugular vein in his throat.

  “I give my blood to you, in the hope that one day; you may join me with me in the paradise of the three goddesses. In return, I would like to ask something of you. Please watch over my battle-brothers. They will not understand. Keep them safe this day.”

  “It’s the least I could do,” Mai said quietly.

  The injection gun gave out a small pneumatic hiss as the enzyme was pumped into his body.

  Deep inside the fortress of Bra’Neish, a large encrusted door became concave before tearing free of its hinges. A terrible crack of air rushed into the room as the door skipped and skidded along the floor. Taka’s battle suit slipped backward through the ruined doorway, firing her particle rifle at a couple of beasts before they could return fire.

  “Now where are we?” Taka complained. “I hate getting lost like this.”

  Taka thrust into the room and the doorframe burst apart along with much of the surrounding wall. Yet another disturbing creature set its sights on them in the next room. It was built like a slug, but was the size of a whale. Its skin was covered with brown scales that overlapped at times and pulled away from each other at others, allowing a yellow fluid to seep out and drip along its flank. A short thin tail like an elephant’s swung lazily behind it as it slithered.

  Taka’s fire tore wet chunks out of its hide, but it proceeded on undaunted.

  Sorano’s and Sakurako’s suits zipped into the room, releasing a swarm of missiles that engulfed the soldiers pursuing them in a ball of fire.

  “These guys know what they’re doing,” Sorano grunted as she dodged the slug’s bull-charge, “They know we’ve got them beat in numbers, so they’re collapsing tunnels and corridors to make us choose between digging them out, or spreading ourselves thin as we fan out looking for alternate routes where they can ambush us.”

  The spawn gurgled and flopped itself over toward Taka, attempting to crush her with its massive bulk. Taka’s suit slid sideways, slipping out from underneath it as it came crashing with a slurp against the bulkhead wall. Sorano jetted her suit up into the air and landed down on top of the creature, demolition charge in hand. She fired her particle rifle several times into the same spot in its back, burning through a brown armored plate and spraying her suit with yellow fluid. Sorano shoved the charge into the bubbling hole as the creature bucked upwards, sending her suit crashing into a ceiling rib.

  The demo charge exploded, tearing a large portion of the creature’s back away in an eruption of bile and flesh. The creature roared and shuddered, but continued to attack, sending out a stream of fire from a mouth-like orifice. Sakurako squealed in disgust and rolled forward, the flames burning through the bulkhead where she had been standing.

  Keiko sped into the room and released a volley of missiles that burrowed deeply into the body of the spawn and exploded, but the creature fought on, beating itself against the ceiling of the room in rage, threatening to bring the level above them down on top of them.

  Sorano managed to pry herself free of the ceiling and her suit came falling down toward the base of the creature. Sorano fired the jets in the back of her suit and righted herself, allowing the powerful artificial muscles of the suit to absorb the impact as she landed on the floor with a deep thud.

  Suddenly the bay grew silent. Small streams of dust rained down through cracks in the ceiling, but the creature was no longer moving. Slowly, at first, then with gathering speed, the giant spawn slumped to the floor, lifeless.

  They looked around at each other questioningly, but none of them had any explanation for the creature’s sudden demise. Finally Sorano looked down and moved her suit’s armored foot to the side, revealing that the slug’s small tail had been crushed when her suit landed on it.

  “You mean that was its head?” Sorano puzzled.

  “You see, this is why I hate the Uragan,” Taka complained. “Why would you make a huge armored monster with a teeny exposed head like that?”

  Michi’s suit flew into the bay, analyzing the situation.

  “I’ve got a strong reading just up ahead,” Michi said excitedly. Shiro squad jetted down the corridor, which opened up into an enormous natural rock formation.

  “Are we actually underneath the fortress now?” Sorano asked, looking around.

  “It appears that way,” Keiko responded.

  They crossed over a natural bridge made of rock to a mesa that rose up from the cave floor. In the center of the room was a teleportation pad with a single pink crate sitting on it.

  Keiko and Sorano tore off the top of the crate.

  “What took you guys so long?” Ami complained as she sat up, packing material sticking to her hair.

  “It’s your fault,” Keiko chided, the relief in her voice coming through even over her suit’s external speakers. “You could have teleported to any pad in the fortress and you chose the one hardest for us to get to.”

  “No, I didn’t,” Ami insisted. After I set the platform’s furnace to overload I chose a pad near the macro-cannons, but it sent me here instead. They’ve hard-wired all incoming teleports to come here.”

  “Why would they do that?” Keiko asked, looking around suspiciously.

  As Ami climbed into Keiko’s battle suit, the squad turned on their searchlights, which barely illuminated the distant cave walls. Keiko switched her suit’s augers to infrared. The walls of the cave were giving off heat. She increased the magnification and the heat sources clarified themselves into smaller heat sources, lined up at regular intervals along the cave walls.

  They were moving.

  Sakurako screamed and everyone turned around. She had flown her suit over to a nearby wall and was now recoiling.

  “It’s people!” Sakurako choked. The others jetted over to where she was and threw their searchlights on the wall. Men and women, or at least what used to be men and women, were bolted to the cave walls, their skin covered with wild and bizarre symbols and patterns. Black tubes ran in and out of their bodies. Wide-eyed and hysterical, they whispered and mumbled to themselves, looking forward to the gifts Bra’Neish would give them in return for their willing sacrifices. Their combined whispers filled the cave with an eerie background hiss.

  “We’ve got to get a message through to the Onikano,” Keiko stated.

  Back on the bridge of the Onikano, Inami, in her guise as Rochestri, looked on in delight as reports came in. The assault on Bael’Eth was becoming nothing short of a massacre. The Kuldrizi poured into the foul cities by the millions, crushing and destroying what little scattered resis
tance the cities could offer. Starving from their long hibernation, the Kuldrizi fed upon the vile inhabitants, ravenously consuming their bodies often while their victims were still alive.

  Settled into her command chair, Rochestri watched curiously the video feeds sent in by the cameras mounted on some of the lead Kuldrizi. Nori stumbled over and nearly lost her footing and grabbed onto the arm of the chair for support.

  “I-It doesn’t even seem real, does it?” Nori asked, a little tipsy.

  “It has been weeks since you have slept for more than a few minutes at a time,” Rochestri noted as he placed a strawberry in his mouth. “Your body is finally giving out on you.”

  “I’m delighted,” Nori gushed. “For the first time in my life, someone has worked me so ragged, pushed me so hard, and burdened me with such a monumental task that I do not feel even the least bit bored.” Nori leaned back and let her arms drop, reveling in the sensation.

  “Are you always this weird or is today just a special occasion?” Rochestri asked, a grin on his face.

  Nori chuckled. “Very special.”

  “Hmm, their response time is beginning to lag quite a bit,” Sister Katherine commented as she stepped up and enlarged one of the holo-windows that caught her attention. The feed had some static, but they could clearly make out long rows of amniotic tanks, organs, and bodies floating in their green fluids.

  “I’m turning down the aggression of the Kuldrizi in there,” Sister Katherine explained as she tapped a control on her data slate, “We don’t want them smashing up everything.”

  “Haiiro squad, be careful not to discharge your weapons, we think you have reached the cloning facility,” Rochestri commanded.

  “Ryokai,” Tani responded.

  Nori licked her lips as she thought of all the fun she would have with that equipment once they got it back on the ship. There was nothing more forbidden than cloning rituals and the bigger the taboo the more Nori enjoyed breaking it.

  In the center of the large hall of tanks they could make out one larger tank that dwarfed all those around it, the black cables at its base growing out like dark roots and the cables at its top reaching out like dark branches.

  As the Kuldrizi came up to the edge of the tank, Haiiro squad jetted up to it. Nori could make out the image of a large muscular human, with dark skin and long black hair like the night sky. He floated silently curled in the fetal position, tubes and wires sprouting out of his body like rootlets.

  Sister Katherine tapped a control and the window grew large enough that everyone on the command deck could see it.

  “My dear ladies,” Rochestri announced through the loud speakers, “I am pleased to introduce you to Kurson Deltmar, the third son of the Luminarch.” Cheers and hollers rose up from those present. Even though Deltmar had died eight centuries earlier, from this clone they would get the blood they needed to end the curse.

  The image became noisier until all they could see was the snow of background radiation. Nori and Inami were too busy celebrating to notice, but Mai caught it.

  “This isn’t right,” Mai warned as she began checking data on her slate, “with the cognition filter working we should be able to get clear impulses all the way down to the core. Didn’t we make upgrades to boost the signal?”

  “Of course we did,” Nori defended, pulling out a handful of small vacuum tubes from her pocket, “I designed these especially for this mission. All we have to do is install them into the Kuldrizi comm-hubs before the attack starts.”

  Nori and the others grew quiet as they looked at the small devices in her hand.

  “Sweet Luminarch’s Teeth!” Nori cursed.

  The Sorcerer Hurdilicia stood alone amongst the bodies of beast-soldiers and his apprentices that lay dead along the base of the great stone doors leading to the throne room. He tossed his staff aside and uncurled his wiry frame. Extra arms unfolded themselves out from underneath his black robes, each holding a dagger made from carved obsidian. The robes fell away, revealing the thick suit of armor he wore.

  Reika, on the other hand, rested one hand on her hip and moved to scratch one of her feline ears before remembering that they were inaccessible underneath her priestess head tress.

  Hurdilicia threw his helmet to the ground and held his daggers in the oath stance.

  “I am Kondur Alerix Hurdilicia of the plain-axe tribe,” he said solemnly, “Usurper of Helm and Victor of Bremming, servant of Yar’Katah and favored champion of my god Bra’Neish ...”

  Reika waved her hand and Kuroi squad opened fire. Rocket-propelled grenades burrowed deeply into his armor tearing out chunks and rocking his body with the force of their impact. A lone shot hit his exposed forehead and the greater part of his head was pulped, his dead body slumping heavily to the ground.

  Reika walked up and patted his body on the shoulder sympathetically. “I’m sorry, but your introduction was just way too long,” she said.

  Rini stepped up alongside her and looked at the dead warrior. “What’s the point of wearing armor if you are going to go around with your helmet off?” she wondered.

  “Maybe he doesn’t like helmet hair.”

  “I could understand it if it was for that, but this guy is bald with cables coming out of his head.”

  Reika shrugged and tapped the comm-rune on the collar.

  “Marshal Rochestri, we have secured a route to the throne room.”

  “What do you suppose this room is for,” Sorano asked as she looked around. This cave was unlike the others. It was dominated by a stalactite of metal and flesh that hung down from the ceiling thousands of feet above, cables and pipes bursting out of its form at random intervals and burying themselves in the surrounding walls. A smaller stalagmite sprouted up from the floor, nearly meeting its sister to form a column but for a few inches that separated them.

  “Let’s find out,” Michi said as her suit jetted over excitedly to a control sphere at the base of the stalagmite.

  “There’s no way you’re going to interface with that thing,” Sorano warned. “You’ll get your suit fried that way.”

  Michi’s suit let off a chirping sound from its external speakers and a small robotic monkey came scampering out to sit on its shoulder.

  “How’d you get Hachikou in here with you?” Sorano asked.

  “I emptied out the spare parts compartment,” Michi explained.

  “Ooh, a monkey,” Ami gushed from within Keiko’s battle suit. “What’s his name?”

  “I call him Hachikou Mark 2,” Michi said proudly.

  “Why would you call it that?” Ami asked, displeased.

  “Well, she’s calling it a Mark 2, so I guess that means it will be twice as useless,” Taka observed.

  Ignoring Taka, Michi gave instructions to her robot and Hachikou hooted in acknowledgment. It leapt over to the control sphere, plugging its tail directly into an interface.

  “Well, if you need any of those spare parts I’m not lending you mine,” Sorano criticized, folding the arms of her battle suit. “And I’m really upset that I didn’t think of that first. I could have snuck a bomb in with me.”

  Hachikou hooted and hollered quietly as it fought a lightning fast duel with the guardian spirit of the sphere. The panel threw up virtual mazes, sent viral packages, and created encryption barriers to prevent Hachikou from gaining access. At the same time, the small robot created inoculations, traversed the mazes, and cut through the barriers. Normally such a duel would be decided by processing speed alone, but Hachikou’s emotive logic engine gave it something the panel could not have; intuition. Hachikou deftly anticipated the sphere’s actions and began setting up access breaches. Every time the panel initiated a defense barrier that Hachikou had anticipated, it would be solved much quicker and Hachikou could feed code directly into the system before another countermeasure could be thrown up. With each occurrence, Hachikou achieved a slightly higher access level.

  Within a few seconds this process had repeated itself hundreds of times
and Hachikou began initiating cross-barriers of its own. The sphere was now fighting against itself, trying to alter data pathways and re-write program protocols away from the compromised areas of its own internal network, but it was fighting a losing battle. The compromised areas gave Hachikou enormous insight into the actions of the rest of the system and the access breaches increased exponentially, until the guardian spirit was prohibited access to larger and larger areas of its own network. Within a few moments, it was limited to a small corner where it fought against Hachikou’s mazes and barriers.

  With a hoot of satisfaction, Hachikou commanded the control sphere to purge the area of the network that still housed the guardian spirit. A small wisp of smoke emerged from one side of the sphere and Hachikou announced its success to those nearby.

  “Now it is safe to access,” Michi announced proudly. The ring finger of her battle suit extended and inserted itself into a port on Hachikou’s neck.

  A metallic crunch gained Taka’s attention. Her suit looked down and saw a chunky thermal bomb spinning at her feet. Fearlessly, she scooped up the bomb and tossed it down into the darkness of a stone crevasse.

  Sorano backed her suit up and fired her particle rifle up at the distant breech in the ceiling that the enemy had used to drop the bomb through. The lances of energy penetrated the rock all around the opening and several dead bodies fell down into the room.

  The explosion of the thermal bomb sent a jet of fire from the crevasse that spun and writhed like a glowing tornado. Inside the pilot tank of Keiko’s suit, Ami began screaming uncontrollably.

  Taka grabbed a piece of scrap bulkhead with her suit’s hands and braced herself. Fire licked out around the edges of the twisting bulkhead. When the fire abated, Taka’s suit fell backwards, severely burned, black smoke rising out of the deep gash in its armor.

  Keiko tried in vain to calm Ami, but it was no use. Ami thrashed about, kicking and punching against Keiko and the walls of the tank.

  Sorano jetted her suit over to Taka.

  “How is Taka?” Sakurako asked.