by Shay Zana
“No,” Natheus replies. “Serenity shut them down the moment Kronos was invaded. Nobody can leave the city through the platforms, but nobody can enter, either, unless by airlift. Air defences are getting a workout, but the gamble paid off, half their forces can’t even touch down.”
“We lost contact with Kitera, also,” Mazayus adds, using an egg to administer a coat of elixir to a wound. “Ranity intercepted reports of Altair listed as MIA.”
Suddenly, Boone feels the wind’s bite as he peers at the blue glow still sweeping through the clouds above. “You think that was them?”
Mazayus shrugs and follows his gaze. “It had to have been. But let’s not assume the worst until we have all the details. After all, we thought Altair had died on us once, and we were wrong.”
Features pinched with worry, Boone shakes his head. “You guys go help Deo out, I’m going back to find Kiya.”
“And how are you going to reach orbit?” Mazayus counters.
“Call in an airlift.”
“We have been trying that for the last half hour and have been unsuccessful. There’s nothing available. Civilian extraction is top priority right now,” Mazayus says. “Ranity has made contact with Kronos forces and is attempting to dispatch transport for us, but she is simultaneously communicating with others all over the Fortunate Isles requesting the same thing, and the fact that she can no longer communicate off-world is part of the problem.”
An unconvinced frown plays on Boone’s face as he squats down in anxiety before shooting upright again, a coat of hope plastered over his concerns for Kitera’s safety. “So how are we going to get to the skycity, then?”
The men all exchange awkward glances, until Neal breaks the silence.
“We’re... still workin’ on that one.”
“Great,” Boone puffs before flopping himself back down within the sand, plumes of grain scattering. “So we’re stranded on a beach, on some lonely island in the middle of a warzone, while there is a super-space-tornado forming in orbit... Just, what the fuck is that?”
“It’s a spatial distortion,” Natheus answers bluntly, hand under his chin, eyes still firm on scanning the map of Babylon.
Boone gives a scoffing grunt. “So in other words, it’s all bullshit.”
“Reality is distorted, and from what Kitera has learned, our dimension is merging involuntarily with another,” Mazayus says. “Quantum physics is distorted and without sequence, disrupting the balance of wave-particle duality and the laws of matter and radiation. The gods are warring, so this would be the result of it. They possess the natural ways of each dimension, atomic and subatomic physics as well as transcendent reality and the infinite layers of dimensions, so through them, this is nature’s way of retaliating against the destruction humanity has cast upon it. The only way for the Demons to destroy sapient life is to distort life itself and restart from the very beginning of time, rewriting the genetics of natural evolution to prevent any lifeform from evolving to adequate sapience.”
Boone gives a blank stare for a second. “You guys seem really clued in on this shit. What the hell did I miss?”
“We listened,” Natheus supplies.
Neal has wandered off further down the beach to a secluded area, trying to contact anyone and request a transport, while the three marines, Carter, Pelevin, and Reed scuff their boots in the sand or observe the raging skies, rifles clutched anxiously. A sudden brightness obscures their vision, but only lasting for a fleeting moment before a familiar orb of light generates close to the torn guardian station. At first, nobody speaks, silent with only the hush of the sea and the distant battles stimulating their eardrums.
“What the flying fuck was that?” Boone asks at last, shattering the silence.
“Altair,” Mazayus assumes. “It has to be.”
“How are we gonna summon it without long-range comms?”
Natheus wordlessly trudges through the sand toward Boone and yanks the Genesis from his back holster before he can stop him. Ignoring the protest, Natheus hefts the heavy weapon skyward and launches a single incendiary fragment. They all watch as a fist-sized fireball ascends with increasing speed, and when it reaches optimal height, Natheus detonates it, and the now hardly visible fireball evolves into a giant corona of fire in a destructive display that wreaths the skies over the island, setting the surrounding clouds aflame. Hopefully Altair will notice that explosion more than the tornado in the upper atmosphere.
While Natheus watches the skies for any reaction from Altair, Boone eyes his Genesis and snatches it back, cradling it almost protectively while glaring at him.
Minutes tick by, until at last, a ship sweeps down into a gulf of nebulous gas and glides sideways toward them, its hull a dark matte grey with flecks of glowing cyan. It gravitates steeply, and when in earshot, a piercingly loud and rather excited sounding call swoops at them, similar to that of a humpback whale song.
They all watch, transfixed as the ikamanu dives into the ocean a few hundred metres off the island, slowing its descent as to not swamp them with a tidal wave. Now, a content sounding whistle escapes from the vessel, much like that of an orca whale, and it slowly paddles its way to them, sloshing the water about lazily with its four reinforced fins. The men all wade their way into the ocean until the water reaches their waists.
A soft hiss signals the ikamanu’s starboard airlock pressurizing and opening, where the Cipher emerges, looking ill and stressed, her navy cloak crimpled about her and eyes hollow in their sockets.
“Kiya,” Boone greets with relief oozing from his voice, right before the drained Cipher’s energy disintegrates within her and she crumbles forward. Quickly, all the soldiers go to catch her, but it is Boone who cushions her fall in his arms before her head goes under the water. “Are you alright? What happened? You were reported as MIA.”
Kitera sighs as she clutches onto Boone, dizziness causing her insides to tumble. She nods, pressing at her forehead as an acute pain niggles. A warm wetness leaks from her nose, hand drifting it only to reveal blood.
“Shit, what happened to you?” Boone frets.
“I am fine. I will explain my experience in due time... where is Deo?”
The three Paragons all look to Babylon, the skycity vaguely visible in the distance now, and Kitera follows their gaze, instantly fearing the worst.
THE TEMPLE OF ANZAC
Rahna banks the Dagger aggressively, slipping through a string of enemy fire and curving her way around them, heading back to the temple. Once she lines her trajectory to pass directly over the top of the centre spire, she gives Deo the thumbs up. “One insane Paragon, locked, loaded, and dropped!”
Deo gives her a curt nod and drops feet-first from the hatch on the underside of the Dagger, his fall steep and perfectly aligned with the towering spire. He can feel his stomach lurch and his senses rush in a sharp falling vertigo, increasing his adrenaline. The fall takes him down erratically, his streaming surroundings all a vertical whirr, focus pooled into keeping his body locked in a sturdy position. Soaring over from above, he is vaguely aware of the beating thrum of the three Daggers as Rahna swerves away from the temple, leading her attackers off the scene to give Deo the best possible chance at landing without the distraction of enemy fire raining down on him. Despite her efforts, stray fire is still mailed his way, emphasising his need for a speed-drop.
Plunging, Deo sets his sights on what appears to be a flat rooftop, but as he engages his optic irises to scope in his vision, this rooftop appears to be slanted glass. The perfect entrance. He should be able to break through with minimal damage.
Wind streaks over the curves of his armour plating as he spreads his limbs to increase aerial friction, slowing his descent. But to the Paragon’s surprise, his expectation receives a jarring impact, specifically in the legs. The rooftop is not glass, but transparent nikita. The spurting protection of his entity pillows his smack of a landing, but the impact still fractures his armour and mauls his augmented bones. He gives a
grunt, rolling down the slanting roof uncontrollably until he spreads his arms out and reaches for any kind of leverage that may be available.
Too late, he slips off the building, tumbling where he manages to clutch onto a jutting windowsill made of stone, but only for a mere matter of seconds as the panelling gives way under his weight. It falls with him, skimming multiple ledges as if to punish his screw up. Eventually, he lands ungracefully on one of the many balconies bordering the exterior of the temple, the wreckage of the windowsill landing upon him just for a bonus.
Groaning in both battered pain and annoyance, Deo rises to his feet and cracks his neck, dusting himself off from the ash and debris that had accumulated during his fall through a pylon of smoke. After quickly nursing his bruised pride, the Paragon takes a swift observation of his immediate surroundings, utilising his magnified and thermal vision to both scope out the area and scan for hostilities. The balcony is spacious and grand, constructed mainly of stone panelling and decorated with plants potted in elegant kinetic pots, all of which are native to Kronos and respectfully harvested from the environment. The balcony is fenced off with a sheer wall of nikita, water trickling down to create a hazy liquid effect through the transparent material. The stone panelling is now craggy with damage, deep cracks snaking their way from the balcony to the walls, jaggedly twisting on angles. Deo cannot detect any life on this floor, though most of his thermal vision is picking up the obscuring heat of fires spreading from within.
“Nice landing,” Rahna teases through the comms link. “Listen, I gotta shake these guys off, but I’ll join you as soon as I can. If I don’t, you’ll have reinforcements arriving soon to back you up. Comms are fluctuating, do you have any way of signalling for extraction?”
Deo thinks for a moment. He can feel the temple swaying with stress beneath his boots, hear the yawning of stretching foundations, the occasional vibrations of crumbling debris and walls and floors caving in. This building will not be standing for much longer, especially after he is done here. “A collapsing building be enough of a signal?” His voice is steady and serious, yet Rahna takes it as dark humour.
“Yeah, that’ll do the trick,” the Paragon laughs. “Good hunting. Out.”
Briefly watching the red sky bleed into the hazy, war-torn lands below, Deo catches the last glimpse of Rahna’s Dagger before the distance of Babylon swallows her. He steels himself and proceeds across the cracked balcony, dusty hands drifting to his rifle. He is mindful of where he stands, making sure not to place too much of his weight down near the cracked flooring, and when the building gives a creak beneath him, he stops, listens, and finds another way across to the inside of the building through the nearest shattered window.
Once inside what appears to be some sort of deistic centre, he sidles up to the nearest wall and makes his way across to the entrance of the floor’s hallway. The interior of the temple has obviously been constructed to resemble an ancient civilisation’s structure when humanity was primitive on Earth. The walls are flecked with carvings of Serenity’s depiction of the Zodiacs, from their appearance, their deeds, goals, and numbers.
Whilst cautiously making his way through the eerie room, rifle trained ahead, Deo cannot help but stare at some of the stone carvings in curiosity. Some images portray the Zodiacs to be an army of immortal human beings, others show them as shapeless entities, or a single form with many minds merging together, or pillars of light descending from the heavens and saving cursed men and women from the Underworld, and a few carvings depict them as the stars, spreading endlessly throughout the universe. Deo sees carvings of star-gods giving life to nature and giving birth to a man and woman, spawning the beginning of humanity. He sees orbs of light watching over forests abundant with wildlife, hands creating the mountains, lips creating the winds, and tears creating the oceans. In the centre of the holy room is a pair of eyes carved into the ceiling, looking down onto an empty spot on the floor where shoals of light pour down from the pupils, obviously guided down from an entry point in the top of the temple. To Deo, the entire temple looks like it should belong on a Spiritual Native planet, some place like Sparta, where Natheus was born. It seems out of place in Babylon, a skycity of lights and tech. Though its design is aesthetically primitive, it has nikita structural designs sweeping over the ceilings. The temple is more a hybrid of ancient design merged with modern design, and the ancient portion is just for show.
Leaving his curiosity within the room, Deo exits through the larger than necessary stone doorframe and finds himself in the hall, the floor slightly tilted to the right and the walls on a discomforting lean. The Paragon edges his way along, passing many doorframes leading off into strangely large rooms that seem to symbolise a meditative environment for the royalties, decorated with grand and unique furniture, statues, and ornaments. The surrounding peace begins to have its effect on him, and he can feel himself relax slightly, his muscles not so taut, blood not so highly concentrated with entity particles.
Without warning, the temple gives a hideous shudder and a shriek as somewhere above him, he can hear the sounds of aerial bombardment. The entire floor juts in the centre, forcing Deo to lunge into a sprint to keep himself from being swallowed by the caving floor and the splintering walls around him. He dives beneath a pillar fallen from above, and instantly has to dodge a chunk of stone and clamber the remainder of the way to the large staircase at the end of the hall, half jumping down the steps, half tripping. Behind him, the entire floor appears to have been crushed under the floor above it, and the structural damage is creeping down after him. Deo looks back for a moment, realising how close he had come to being crushed with the floor, but now the sounds of gunfire grab his attention. Snapping his rifle up into position, he pushes on through the slowly collapsing temple.
“Contacts, dead ahead!” he hears a female voice call out, right before gunfire slashes through the smoky air. A nearby detonation rattles him into cover behind a pillar. Risking it, Deo peers around to sight the activity of Serenity marines fighting off an infiltration team of specialised UEU. Knowing there must be a reason for the fighting to be thick here, he locks his aim on one of the marines that has branched off from the main group, attempting to slink his way across the hall to flank the Serenity soldiers. Deo slowly squeezes his trigger and watches as the man spasms from a few lightning shards, lurching forward as his kinetic shields burst in a blast of energy. He finishes him off quickly and rushes from his cover, drawing the attention of the other soldiers.
Under the command of one, two adjust fire to Deo whilst the others move up, pushing the Serenity troops back further into an alcove. Deo responds by ducking into a roll, dodging their assaulting sniper shards. Mid-roll, his free hand snatches his Phoenix, shredding the two men with united velocity. Their bodies shrivel, one atomising, the other animated in sparks.
While the marines battle it out through the interweaving halls of the temple, Deo charges in, morphing his shotgun for close quarters combat. This will get their feathers ruffled.
His shotgun leads the way, barrel picking out targets shrouded in dust and debris, demolishing shields, pulverizing armour, splitting flesh and cracking bone. His fists make contact in hooks and uppercuts, his boots knock out limbs underfoot and crack fallen skulls, elbows and knees collide into hotspots, and his weapon stock becomes an instrument of trauma.
The battle takes a turn for the worse. Debris spits out in the aftermath of more aerial strikes, pillars cracking, walls crumbling, floors caving in. Marines are consumed as flames slurp inward, their explosives kindling into a chain reaction. Deo is sent flailing, his entity shielding him from crushing stone as he is sent crashing through barriers and skidding across rubble.
Ears ringing, the Paragon claws his way back to his feet, realising he had lost grip of his shotgun in the shockwave. Just as he sights his weapon lying ahead of him, hostile troopers emerge through the gauze of the blasted zone, organised into a retaliation assault.
Halting mid-walk, Deo in
stead darts out of the line of fire, his entity revving up in a glistening red frequency to absorb the shards. Seeking cover, he leaps into an adjacent corridor right before a nikita grenade goes off in his wake, spitting out sharp spears in a wide radius that penetrate right through the stone walls.
As he lands on his stomach, Deo feels something large smack at his back, realising that his entity had deflected a spear. His armour plating may not have been able to catch that if it were not for his entity. He crimps himself up against the wall, sensing the dip in stamina from the tensing of his entity. His fingers rip open his utility pouch and grab for a shot, stabbing the liquid star energy stimulant into his thigh. Tilting his head back against the wall, he sighs in pleasure as he feels the crisp reignition of the alien organism sharing his body.
Legions of shards attack his position, stone fragments fuming his view or splintering into his entity. The Paragon leans out and hurls a handful of shards at the marines. With his telepathic connection, he sets the shards to explode with strings of thoughts laced through coded data. Motes of intermingling elemental energy vomit out at the marines. The energy cores exploding in unison do the job of lowering a few shields and knocking them back like bowling pins.
Still, the unscathed continue to assault his position with relentless fire. Pissed, the supersoldier emerges solidly from behind his cover, fists set at his sides, stance rigid to endure pain. His entity devours shards, sending the solid rounds ricocheting off wildly. He advances on them, each step fluid, movement emitting confidence and ease, but inside, his nervous system thrashes at his mind.
The troopers hold their line across the hallway’s width, and the front ranks drop low to give those behind clear line of sight, their combined fire chewing into Deo. But as he saunters nearer and nearer, the marines realise their efforts are in vain, some even backing up.
The Paragon stares down his opponents with each step, stooping to retrieve his shotgun and cocking it violently. A grenade is hurled his way, impacting his entity with a slam of force that nudges his stride. Riled, Deo tugs on the trigger and pounds the marines one by one, scattered shards pulverizing and slamming. He fires from the hip in continuous pumps, each stroke of rage felling a soldier until his proximity is adequate for hand to hand.
