"Robots," Giga whispered.
"Clockwork men," Riff muttered.
The three Alien Hunters raised their weapons and fired together. Riff's gun fired plasma. Steel's longsword beamed out searing light. Giga's katana lashed out lightning. The blasts slammed into the automatons, but the machines kept clanking forward, shedding rust and cobwebs with every step.
"Company behind us!" Lenora shouted.
Riff glanced over his shoulder and cursed. Anubis warriors were entering the tomb, having traveled here from Dee's cell. Behind them, the hippo-heads were roaring. Riff blasted plasma their way.
He spun back toward the automatons, but not fast enough. One of the clockwork robots charged toward him, and rusty claws lashed across Riff's chest. Blood dripped and stained his Space Galaxy shirt.
"They desecrated the holy sigil of Space Galaxy," Dee whispered, then roared with rage. The disheveled scientist lobbed himself forward, kicking at the rusty robots, fighting furiously.
"Riff, get rid of the automatons, I've got the guards!" Steel shouted. The knight thrust his blade at an Anubis warrior. The jackal-headed woman swung her scimitar, parrying the blow.
Riff fired his gun again, and the plasma melted the inner gears of an automaton. The creature fell and kept crawling across the floor, spilling bolts and springs. Another automaton leaped toward Riff, and he fired again, knocked it back. A third robot leaped toward Lenora, grabbed the scientist, and bloodied her thigh. Lenora screamed and fell, helpless to stop the machine attacking her.
"No," Giga whispered. "No, I will not let my fellow robots do this. No!"
With the rustle of silk and the flash of steel, Giga leaped into the air. She somersaulted, kicked off the wall, and landed behind the automatons. As the rusty machines kept advancing, Giga reached into their innards. Her fingers worked in a fury, moving gears, unscrewing and tightening bolts, and shifting springs. She moved so quickly her hands were but a blur.
"More guards breaking in!" Steel shouted, swinging his blade. "We have to get through!"
Riff glanced over to see a dozen prison guards entering the hall. A towering warrior with a hawk's head opened his beak and cawed. The jackal-heads yowled. The burly tawerets chomped on Steel's blade with their hippo jaws, trying to shatter it, and one grabbed the knight's arm.
When Riff glanced the other way, he still saw the automatons blocking his passage.
Trapped, he thought and fired his gun at a guard. The taweret fell, only for another to replace him.
"Done!" Giga said. "Go, robots! Attack the guards. Slay them!"
She pulled her hands back. Rust coated her fingers. Their inner gears rearranged, the automatons clanked forward. Shedding dust and cobwebs and loose bolts, the machines walked right past the Alien Hunters and the Rosetta siblings. They reached the prison guards, howled, and attacked.
The automatons' fingers, made of bronze blades, slashed at the guards. Their bear-trap jaws bit. Their gemstone eyes beamed out light that seared through armor.
"Run!" Riff said.
As the machines crashed against the guards, the companions ran. They leaped over the last loose bolts, barged into the far tunnel, and vanished into the shadows.
"What did you do there, Giga?" Lenora cried, clutching her wound as she ran.
"Ancient programming," answered the android.
Dee laughed. "Wonderful creatures, the 75 C-i's. Did I mention that I helped create them?"
As the guards' footfalls sounded behind, they kept racing up the tunnel, traveling through the veins of the pyramid.
* * * * *
They ran for what seemed like kilometers. For a long time, the sounds of battle rose behind them, but finally the screeches of the automatons died, and once again the prison guards were pursuing.
"How much farther, Dee?" Riff shouted.
"Almost there," Dee answered. "The tunnel will take us to the top of the pyramid. That's where the pharaoh's soul was said to escape his tomb and rise to the sky."
Indeed, the tunnel was steeper now, an incline that left Riff sweating and breathing heavily. He couldn't imagine how Steel, in his plate armor, was feeling. Lenora was limping, her thigh still bleeding; Giga helped her run. Riff's own wound was bleeding, an ugly scratch across his chest.
When Riff thought he couldn't take another step, the tunnel opened up into another chamber.
He paused, panting, and stared.
"Wait," he said to the others. "Careful."
They all froze in the doorway, breathing heavily, and stared into the room. Several sarcophagi lay here, the stone coffins carved into the shapes of humans with animal heads. Smaller sarcophagi shaped as cats, dogs, and snakes stood in alcoves in the wall. The sound of pursuit rose louder from behind.
"I thought this wasn't an actual burial pyramid," Riff said.
"It's not," Dee said. "But every pyramid claims the lives of several workers. Slaves, usually, crushed by stones, worked to death, sometimes beaten by their masters. When they die during their labor, they're buried within the pyramid, given that final honor."
"Well, their final rest is going to be disturbed." Riff stepped into the chamber. "Come on, hurry everyone."
They entered the chamber. They had only taken a few steps when the sarcophagi's heavy stone lids began to rattle.
Riff sighed and charged his gun. "Why am I not surprised this happened?"
He had taken another step when the stone lids dropped, hit the floor, and cracked. From a dozen sarcophagi they rose: rancid mummies, their shrouds tattered and drooping to unveil the desiccated flesh within. The mummies' mouths opened, revealing yellow teeth. They had the heads of various animals, and worms crawled within their eye sockets. On the walls, the smaller sarcophagi opened, and animal mummies emerged.
Riff fired his gun, blasting a hole through one mummy. The decrepit man kept advancing, the hole in his torso smoking, and reached out clawed fingers. Steel swung his sword, casting out a disk of light, slicing through two mummies. The tops of their torsos slid off and hit the floor. They kept crawling forward, snapping their jaws, while their legs walked on their own. Giga leaped, bounced off the walls like a pinball, and swung her katana, cutting off mummy limbs. Even Lenora and Dee fought, kicking the mummy cats and dogs that raced toward them.
Yet all their weapons didn't stop the mummies. The corpses raised their severed arms and reattached them. They kept advancing, reaching out their claws, snapping their jaws.
"We can't kill what's already dead," Steel muttered as he lashed his blade.
Riff shook his head. "No, but we can still push through them. Steel, help me lift this thing."
The brothers knelt and lifted one of the heavy sarcophagus lids. The stone was engraved into the shape of a man with a crocodile's head. Lenora and Dee struggled to lift another lid, while Giga lifted a third lid—the largest one—on her own. Together, they charged forward, knocking mummies aside with their stone shields. The beasts fell back and slammed against the walls. The stone lid drove against them, crushing them against the walls, snapping their old bones. The creatures disintegrated into dust.
"Kill the criminals!" rose a voice from deeper in the pyramid. "Kill them all."
The companions dropped the stone lids, leaped into the far tunnel, and kept running.
The tunnel was so steep now, Riff could barely keep running. He thought he could smell the hot, dry air of the desert. They were getting close. From behind, he heard pounding footsteps, yipping beasts, and clattering blades—getting closer, closer. The companions kept running.
Shadows stirred across the walls, and cackling laughter echoed.
"The walls are coming alive!" Lenora said.
Riff cursed. Across the tunnel's brick walls, the hieroglyphs were awakening. Crocodiles, falcons, cobras, warriors—all peeled themselves off the wall and charged toward the companions. Riff fired his gun. Steel and Giga swung their blades. A painted falcon, a living hieroglyph, swooped toward Riff. He blasted it with his gun. A sn
ake slithered across the ground, painted gold, and Lenora stomped on it. Golden scarabs leaped up, and Steel sliced them with his blade. They kept running, charging through thousands of the painted enemies. Their tiny beaks, teeth, and claws tore at them, further ripping Riff's shirt, bloodying his skin. He kept firing, kept running, and all the while the guards pursued.
Finally Riff could see it—light at the end of the tunnel. He ran with new vigor. The light grew stronger. A gust of dry wind blew, scented of sand.
We're almost free. Almost outside the pyramid. We're going to get out of here—run to the Dragon Huntress, blast off this planet, save the cosmos, find Nova and Twig, be together again.
He ran with every last drop of strength in him. This nightmare—of ghosts, of creatures in the dark, of Nova gone—would all soon end.
The light grew brighter. He could see it ahead: an archway exiting the pyramid. The blue sky.
"Almost there!" Riff shouted. "Light ahead. Freedom—"
No.
His breath shook.
Oh gods, no.
He skidded to a halt. His companions froze around him. They stared ahead, blood dripping, weapons raised.
In the archway, the sun at their backs, stood a group of knights. Among them, sword raised, was Lord Kerish Rosetta.
CHAPTER TWENTY:
MAN OF HONOR
Steel stood in the tunnel, armor cracked, wounds bleeding, sword raised. He stared ahead at his old mentor, refusing to look away, refusing to cower.
Kerish stared back, his blue eyes livid in his puffed, red face. His mustache bristled. His lips peeled back in a snarl. He seemed almost like one of the native aliens, a man with the head of a beast, his the head of an enraged hog.
There he stands, Steel thought. The man I once admired. The man I sought to be like. The man who let me join his order only to cast me aside.
"Stand aside, Sir Kerish," Steel said, voice calm. "No more blood needs be shed this day."
Kerish took a step deeper into the tunnel, his sword held before him. Six knights stood behind him, their own blades drawn. The sun blazed at their backs, and in the distance, Steel could see the city along the river. The enemy had reached this world too, he saw. Their tesseracts screamed across the sky, and their smoky soldiers flowed across the desert.
"Now you are truly disgraced," Kerish said, pointing his blade at Steel. "I banished you from my order when you dared doubt my wisdom. Now you try to smuggle out one of my prisoners. Your punishment will be more than exile this time, Starfire, but death. And I will mete out your sentence myself."
"One of your prisoners?" Lenora shouted. She stepped forward, clung to Steel's arm, and glared at her father. "He is your son! Your son, Father! His name is Dee. Your only son. And you locked him up here, all because . . . all because he's not a knight like you. All because you can't understand the things he studies, because—"
"You too will die, girl!" Kerish roared. "He is no son of mine. You are no daughter of mine. You are traitors, all of you! Heretics! And this." Kerish's voice trembled with rage, and he pointed at Giga. "This machine, this abomination of life, walks among you. A sinner. A foul demon of metal."
Giga tilted her head. "Cannot compute, sir. I am more than a machine. I am life."
"You are a perversion!" Kerish shouted. "You all are, every last one of you. Now your time of death has come. Men! Slay them. Slay them all."
The knights advanced, blades at the ready.
"No!" Steel said, voice ringing through the tunnel. He stepped forward, placing himself between the knights and his companions. "I will not let blood spill here. Not as an enemy of darkness attacks outside. I no longer carry the sigil of Sol upon my breastplate. But honor still beats in my heart, as it does in the hearts of my brother and friends—even this android that you scorn. Honor once beat in your heart too, Kerish. Do not let your pride blind you. Join me, Kerish. Fight with me. Against the dark enemy that flows outside, slaying the innocent even as we speak. We were once brothers-at-arm! Fight at my side again."
Kerish stared at Steel, silent, rage in his eyes. And suddenly all those memories flowed back into Steel. Suddenly he was a youth again, a boy courting a girl. He was making love again to Lenora under the stars. He was standing alone under those stars, cursing the sky, howling in his pain, as Lenora flew away to explore the cosmos, as he remained with the life he had chosen. He was donning his armor for the first time, holding his first sword, speaking his vows. Kerish was knighting him, then banishing him. All that old sweetness, pride, pain—it all flowed into Steel again. It had all led to this day.
He raised his sword.
So it has come to this . . . the battle I was always meant to fight.
With a roar, Kerish pointed his sword forward. Light coalesced across the blade, then blasted toward Steel.
The beam slammed into Steel with the power of a shattering sun.
He took a step back. His armor cracked and fell in pieces. Heat washed across him. Yet he refused to fall.
Steel thrust his own blade, casting out light.
The beam drove toward Kerish, but the lord swung his sword, parrying the light, deflecting it toward the wall. The tunnel cracked, and a chunk of stone fell.
The other knights blasted out light. Riff fired his gun and Giga leaped, katana flashing. As the battle raged outside, so did the battle of Steel's life flare inside the tunnel. With light. With blood. With broken promises and broken lives.
The battle I should have fought years ago.
Kerish swung his sword at Steel, and he parried. The blades clanged, sparked out light, shattered more stones. Another blast of light slammed into Steel. The last piece of his armor fell, leaving his chest bare, bleeding, burnt. No longer a man of metal, shielded behind an armor that hid his body and soul. Just a man mourning. A man who had lost too much. A man exposed.
"I believed in you once," Kerish said, face twisted with rage, but there was something new to his eyes. There was pain. There was sadness. "I thought of you as my son."
Steel drove his blade forward. Kerish parried again. Light blasted from the swords, cracking the walls. Boulders fell. The others fought around them, weapons firing and flashing.
"You were a father to me!" Steel said. "I chose to follow you. To join your order. To let the woman I love fly away."
"And you betrayed your order!"
"No! I would not betray my vows." Steel's eyes burned, and he fought in a fury, slamming his blade again and again at Kerish. "You turned to evil, Kerish. I banish you now. I exile you as you exiled me. You are no knight. I strip you of your sigil."
Eyes stinging, throat burning, Steel thrust his blade with both hands. The sword slammed into the sunburst sigil on Kerish's breastplate, tore through the symbol, and finally clove the armor in half.
"You are banished," Steel whispered.
As the battle raged around them, Kerish stared down at his shattered armor, then raised his eyes to stare at Steel.
"You love her," Kerish whispered.
Steel's fist trembled around Solflare's hilt. "I love Lenora. Yes, I—"
"The android," Kerish said. "You love her. I see it in your eyes. You love a machine. You love a perversion of life, a sin. So I will make you suffer."
His face gone pale, Kerish raised his sword and blasted out an inferno of light, a supernova of heat and sound and blinding energy.
The white beam tore the air, blazing over Steel's shoulder.
Giga screamed.
Steel turned around to see the light slam into the android, tossing her back.
He stared, frozen for an instant, a mere heartbeat, terror gripping him.
Giga lay on the ground, moaning, a hole in her chest. Torn cables crackled inside her. Her legs twitched. Her eyes flicked up and met Steel's gaze.
"Sir," she whispered.
Steel stared, unable to breath, unable to move.
Giga.
His eyes dampened.
Giga, the woman he had flown through
hyperspace for, pulling her back from the jaws of the Singularity. Giga, the woman who had pulled him from the wreckage of the Dragon Huntress. Giga, the woman he loved.
Arigato, she had whispered to him in the depths of hyperspace, the Singularity reaching toward her, his arms around her.
My lady, he had replied. His damsel to defend. His woman to love.
"Giga!" Riff cried, but knights held him back. Lenora and Dee stared in horror, knights grabbing their arms, tugging them away.
"Goodbye," Giga whispered, gazing into Steel's eyes. "Goodbye, my knight."
Kerish pointed his luminous sword at Giga's head.
"Now the abomination is cleaned," Kerish whispered and thrust his blade.
Armor fallen, body burnt, honor and duty and love pulsing through him, Steel leaped into the air.
He vaulted between Giga and Kerish.
The lord's beam of light slammed into Steel's chest.
Steel tossed his sword.
He hit the ground by Giga, a hole in his chest.
His blade flew through the air and drove into Kerish, through the crack in his armor and into his heart. The burly lord crashed down, the sword impaling him.
Steel lay on the ground, his wound cauterized, smoking, driving through him.
"My lady," he whispered, reaching out to clasp Giga's hand. "Are you all right?"
"Steel!" The voice filled the tunnel, hoarse, torn with pain. Riff leaped forward and knelt by him. "Steel! Oh gods, Steel. Oh gods. Don't move. I—"
But his brother's words faded. A soft song of angels seemed to fill the world, all other sounds—the cries of battle, the screams of dying, the shrieks of war—all fading, all forever silenced.
"Riff," Steel whispered. "Lead them onward, my brother, my captain."
Tears filled Riff's eyes. He was shouting something, trying to bandage Steel's wound. Giga knelt above Steel too, her chest pierced but her life spared. He had saved her, Steel knew. He had given his life for her.
Alien Shadows Page 17
