by Mick Fraser
Varo came at him, and Drenno leapt sideways, batting the blades away with his shield. He rounded, waiting for an opening, but the To’ecc gave him none. The longer life afforded by his species gave him a quarter of a century’s experience on Drenno, and if twelve years as a Harlequin had taught Drenno anything it was to never underestimate an opponent. Varo was a notorious scumbag and an even more prolific suck-up, but he was also a warrior with fifty years’ experience in the field.
Drenno looked around for anything to bring to bear, but Varo was giving no quarter. He came in fast, and Drenno barely managed to parry the succession of blows. He staggered back under the onslaught, dropping halfway to his knees. He saw Gaelan and Gage fighting side by side near the airlock doors, Six-Tails, Illith and Shimmer engaging a fresh influx of reinforcements on the far side led by a huge white-maned Endrani in a Marauder suit. The others were depending on him; they couldn’t win this fight alone, not against a foe like that. He gritted his teeth and focused on Varo, holding the shield before him and charging like a battering ram at the approaching To’ecc. His broader frame and greater strength gave him the advantage here, and he managed to force Varo back before dropping lower and aiming a savage punch at his opponent’s left knee. As Varo cried out, Drenno rested the magnablade from his right upper hand, gathering momentum as he rose and spun to bat the dagger from Varo’s hand and follow with a left cross that almost sent the To’ecc sprawling.
Varo recovered, wiping his wide reptilian mouth, and stepped back, gathering himself. “I saw her die, you know?” he spat. “I watched her pilot that ship right into the Hero’s bridge. It was magnificent. A stupid, pointless waste of life, but magnificent nonetheless.”
Drenno grunted. “If you’re trying to piss me off, save your breath. I’m already there.”
Varo nodded amicably. “Fair enough.”
He came forward with renewed force, but Drenno swayed back. It had been a while since he fought with a magnablade, but the training was rushing back with every heartbeat. Varo swung high with his left arm, low with his right, and Drenno managed to parry both, losing ground. Varo’s confidence grew and he became bolder, booting Drenno hard in the chest and knocking him back before catching him with a hilt across the temple. Drenno almost fell, half-blinded; the world seemed to rise up to him on the left and he swayed, shaking his head. He saw Varo lunging forward again, but this time planted both feet and pushed back. It took Varo by surprise; he’d been expecting to gain more ground, but instead Drenno stepped into the attack, holding his stolen blade two-handed and slashing it down between the To’ecc’s defences to slice through his thigh. Dark yellow blood fountained up and Varo went down, but as he did Drenno slashed again, this time across his upper shoulder. He dropped a second blade, and Drenno swiped his own back up, sending one of Varo's daggers clattering to his feet. The other tumbled from his fingers as blood continued to pump from his thigh wound.
As Drenno raised his blade again, Varo threw up his hands. “Wait!”
“Would you?”
Varo suddenly laughed. “No, of course not. Ha! Killed by a fucking traitor. A perfect end. You know my only regret? Not killing you when I had the chance. When I killed that snivelling coward Rathe, or back when your bitch of a wife—’
His words were cut short when Drenno rammed the magnablade through his chest. “You know what, Varo? You talk too much.”
The To’ecc gargled, and Drenno picked up his other blade. “That one was for Rathe. This one’s for Keera.” He shoved the second blade in beside the first, and retrieved Varo’s daggers. “This is for Gaelan. And this one is for me.” He slammed both blades down hard, punching through the To’ecc’s collar bones with a sickening crunch. Varo toppled forward.
Drenno gathered his handcannons and swung for the airlock doors, where Gaelan and Gage were almost overwhelmed.
CHAPTER 49
~WE COULD BE HEROES~
ANGELA FELT THE heat building in her arms. The restraining disc they had put on her neck was stopping her from arcing, but not for long.
“Evayne!” she shouted. “Let me out of this damn machine!”
From halfway up the assembly, Evayne replied, “I’m afraid I can’t do that, child. We are in motion now, and we stop when we are done!”
“You’re insane!”
An explosion from beyond the security panel made Angela start, as above her, Evayne located the port and, using her left hand to cling to the assembly and its various outcroppings to hold her weight, carefully slotted the missing piece into the Machine.
She dropped down, landing lithely. “It’s a distinct possibility. Now hold still.” Evayne hit the lever, and power exploded through Angela’s veins like wildfire.
DRENNO picked his way across the hangar’s empty middle section, leaping Exethan bodies and trusting to pure luck to keep the plasma out of his arse. The white-maned Endrani had peeled away from the group fighting against Illith and Shimmer and was charging towards the airlock doors where Gaelan stood back to back with Gage. As Drenno passed Six-Tails he bellowed, and the Endrani med-tech despatched the Marauder before him, slung his great hammer onto his back and dropped to all fours, scooping Drenno up as he bounded across the room.
They reached Gaelan and Gage just as the ring of encroaching Exethan looked prepared to overwhelm their cover position, but the red-suited Endrani reached them at the same time. Six-Tails deposited Drenno and leapt directly onto the enemy’s back, causing him to spin and give Drenno a clear view of the motif on his mechsuit. It was Four-Claws, Evayne’s security chief and enforcer. Tearing his eyes away, Drenno gunned down the Exethan nearest him and joined his daughter in cover.
“You took your damned time,” she snarled, her skin flushed as red as fresh blood.
“Varo’s dead,” he replied, and she nodded.
“Golden.” She pointed over his shoulder. “Now what the hell is that?”
Six-Tails was trading blows with the mechanised Endrani, who lifted him into the air and slammed him into the ground, hard. Drenno cursed. “That’s Evayne’s head of security. We need to get out of here. Her reinforcements are endless, and by now word will have gotten to AEGIS. They’ll scramble long-range support fighters from Amman Math and Dizzy’ll be surrounded.”
He stood up and raced towards the two Endrani, saw Shimmer and Illith sprinting the other way. As he neared Four-Claws the huge security chief released Six-Tails and bore down on Drenno, backhanding the Captain with such force that he lifted up and sailed through the air to hit the ground beside Gaelan. He sat up groggily to see Four-Claws going berserk, trading blows with the deceptively strong Shimmer and using his palm-shield to block and absorb Illith’s projectiles. Six-Tails dragged himself up and crashed his hammer against the Marauder’s side, pushing him back, but the suit’s endurance was prodigious. Four-Claws weathered the blow, smashed Illith to the ground, hit Shimmer with a blast of invisible force from his right wrist and caught Six-Tails’ hammer on its return swing. He pulled back his arm and struck the med-tech so savagely that he barrelled away across the smoking, plasma-burned floor and lay still.
Gaelan struggled with the airlock controls, trying to make the bypass stick. Something in the room was interfering with her databand – she suspected the Machine behind the security panel that now held Angela trapped and possibly dying. She swore, and Gage slammed into the wall beside her. “Cover me, little one,” the Auton told her. “If I get shot, you’re in the shit!”
From her waist she produced a circle of metal attached to a glowing wire that seemed to spool from within her. She attached the metal end to the airlock controls, and went rigid. Her eyes glazed over, then began to flicker rapidly left and right. The control panel beeped and the inner doors began to close. As soon as they sealed, the outer doors would open and Dizzy could drop the Shadowstar’s cloak and get inside.
Gage snapped out of it, retrieving the wire, but as she did so she was hit high in the chest by a bolt of white plasma. She spun, collaps
ing against the wall. Gaelan shot the Exethan who had fired and knelt beside the Auton.
“What… did I fucking say?” Gage growled. “I knew this was a stupid fucking plan.”
“Shit!” Gaelan shouted. “Are you okay?”
“Do I look okay? I’ve a new fucking hole in me!”
“I didn’t see it—”
Gage gave her a wry smile. “It’s a good thing you’re pretty, snow-top. Go help Drenno – we’ll discuss it later.”
Rising, Gaelan turned to see that the Endrani in the mechanised suit now held her Do’vah by the throat. He began to squeeze.
DIZZY sat up in his chair as the airlock doors began to open. With no line of communication to the crew he had no idea what was happening inside. For all he knew, he was flying into a trap. Winston hovered behind him.
“Your cloak is holding, Lieutenant Zera. Against all probability.”
“I told you, tin-can, I know what I’m doing.” As he said it, the command console went dark for the briefest of moments, no more than half a heartbeat, then lit up again. Dizzy laughed nervously. “I’m sure they wouldn’t have seen that.”
“No,” Winston agreed, “I’m sure they didn’t.”
In unison, every hangar door along the Uncommon Hero’s security deck began to slowly draw open.
A voice burst through the Shadowstar’s speaker system. “Unidentified craft: remain still and power down. We are sending a squad to bring you in. Repeat: remain still and power down.”
Dizzy sighed. “For fuck’s sake.”
The airlock doors were wide enough, and he pushed forward on the steering column, guiding the Shadowstar into the open mouth. As the scanner registered his entrance, the doors immediately began to close.
“They’ll lock the inner doors,” Winston warned him. “How on Orren do you plan on getting in?”
Dizzy drove the stick forward, engaging the rear thrusters.
“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it!” he shouted as he angled the Shadowstar through the outer door.
RAW power coursed through the Earthborn girl, and the residual energy was so potent it caused the bank of monitors to levitate, the screens shattering and the cables bursting free with showers of red and white sparks.
Evayne felt the power thrill through her, igniting her heart, her mind, her loins. She felt alive in a way she could never have imagined. The white noise became cacophonous as the spark and shock and flash of the Resonance Engine lit the room up like a celebration. And there was a presence, a tremendous presence that seemed to fill her and the room, to seep into every corner, rattle every rivet, singe every molecule in the air.
He was coming.
Illumiel was coming.
She saw the girl fighting against the shroud, still trying to be free, trying to escape. It was futile. “You cannot break the shroud!” she roared triumphantly. “Even a Mestadon couldn’t break that. Accept it, Angela Strange: this is your fate!” She raised her arms, exulting in the presence of her Master’s spirit.
He was coming!
“Stop fighting!” she bellowed at Angela, who continued to strain against the holding shroud. “Feel his presence fill your soul—”
The girl erupted with a sudden explosion of golden light and Evayne screamed, rushing forward a step. Angela was gone; the cradle was empty. She almost collapsed in her anguish, swinging around, seeking her out. And then she found her.
The Earthborn stood behind her now, her glowing flesh gently steaming, her eyes boring into the High Sceptress with the rage of a thousand suns. Evayne did not understand. She looked at the Engine, still feeding from the Uncommon Hero’s Aethir bank, still quickened by Angela’s hybrid DNA.
“How did you…? What are you!?” she screamed over the rising wail of the machine.
“I’m a nobody!” Angela told her. “Just a girl from the streets, Highness.” There was another flash of golden light and Evayne felt herself lifted and slammed into the cradle where the energy of the Resonance Engine immediately seized her and held her fast. She raged against it, and Angela reached back behind her neck to pull the shroud clear. Evayne panicked, the realisation that she was now in the Machine coursing through her veins like ice water.
“Try not to think of this as losing!” Angela shouted, slapping the disc against Evayne’s forehead. The shroud enveloped the Sceptress, binding her limbs. The power of the Engine exploded through her body, burning in her blood.
Angela fell back, panting, clutching her head, as the wailing became so loud it tore into her mind like blades of ice.
DRENNO dangled helplessly in the grip of the Endrani Marauder.
The galaxy slowed down, time stretched, everything became pin-sharp. Every spray of golden sparks, every flash of white-hot plasma, every glinting fleck of shrapnel catapulting through the air. He saw Gaelan, Illith and Shimmer rushing to his aid, their voices lost in the quiet maelstrom. He didn’t want their help. They were here for Angela – she was the mission. He pointed at the security panel, bellowed at them to use the mag-wire.
Illith changed direction. She understood. She knew what he wanted, what he needed them to do. As Harlequins, the mission was all that mattered, but this was different. This was Rathe, all over again. This was Keera. This was Warden’s Gaze. Drenno had failed the people he loved and the people who followed him – he would not fail again.
He felt the flesh of his throat begin to close, felt the bones strain under the weight of the Endrani’s grip. He saw Gaelan, her beautiful face twisted by agony and torment. He didn’t want to see her face like that, and he closed his eyes, felt the final squeeze of the Marauder’s metal fist.
Drenno fell, he fell for an eternity, through darkness as thick as woodsmoke that swirled around him and twisted softly against his burning flesh. He felt no pain, he felt no suffering, only a sudden and all-consuming peace that enveloped him on his journey ever downwards.
And then he hit the ground.
The shock jolted his eyes open and he sat up, fingers scrabbling at his throat as he gasped for air. Gaelan hit him like a wrecking ball, knocking him back to the floor, just as the Shadowstar’s belly-guns punched holes the size of skulls through Four Claws’ armour. Blood and oil and sparks gouted and the Endrani went down in a flailing mass of claws and metal and arterial spray.
Drenno heard Illith shout something, and the mag-wire charge went off, blasting a hole in the security panel that sent huge chunks of barium flipping into the air in a cloud of dust and smoke. The magnium coils spiralled through the air, clinging to any surface they touched and burning through it with the speed of concentrated acid. It wasn’t powerful enough to eat through the outer hull, but the boxes of alkidium it touched…
He dragged himself up to see Illith emerge from the smoke with Angela in her arms, sprinting towards the Shadowstar’s open embarkation ramp. Through the smoke, for a heartbeat, he saw Evayne, strapped inside the Machine, covered in the blue static of a holding shroud. And something else, something dark, swirling in the black smoke. He felt Gaelan hauling him up and rose. Shimmer was beside him, Gage slumped across her shoulder, and Six-Tails limped alongside, his hammer lost, the fur of his shoulders and back matted with thick blood.
Gaelan and Drenno reached the ramp just as the alkidium ignited, erupting into a mushroom of green fire that climbed the walls like spreading vines. Dizzy hit the cannons and carved a hole in the airlock door. The Shadowstar burst out into space in a cloud of flame and debris, and the subsequent chain of explosions caught almost all the Exethan stalkers that flooded from the other hangars. Those few that remained broke off, disoriented or damaged by whirring shrapnel.
Drenno slumped in the seat beside Dizzy. “Scan the Hero’s hangars for signs of life,” he ordered.
Dizzy hit the console’s touchpad, and it beeped in response. “Nothing,” said the To’ecc. “There’s nothing alive in there.”
EPILOGUE
SHE AWOKE TO a softness she had all but forgotten. The cushion ha
d crumpled under the weight of her sleeping head and formed a marshmallow of padding that swallowed half her face. Sunlight, or at least a close approximation of it, played against her heavy eyelids, poured from the moving mural displayed on the window of a summer’s morning, tree branches stirring in a mellow breeze.
An arm circled her waist, fingertips lightly caressing her skin, brushing the warm flesh of her breasts, and squeezed her, pulling her into an embrace. She felt hot, smooth skin press on hers, felt dough-hard nipples push against her back. A thigh slid over her own, and gentle lips laid kisses up and down the curve of her neck.
“Hey,” she whispered, nuzzling like a cat.
“Hey, yourself,” said Gaelan, nuzzling back. “How are you feeling?”
For the first time in a long time, the answer was a good one. She half rolled, sliding her arm under the Avellian and allowing Gaelan to rest her head on her chest beside her Saint Anthony. “I feel good,” she said. “I feel really, really good.”
She raised her hand, turning it this way and that. Her time in the machine had left her permanently marked – not scarred, exactly, just marked. Thick dark lines, like a tribal tattoo, now stained the skin primarily where her veins ran. Tiny, lightning-like branches snaked off in all directions, almost like the stem of a rose with slim barbed thorns. She concentrated, focusing the heat inside her that always blossomed before she arced, and the marks glowed with faint golden light.
“You’re getting better at that,” Gaelan said, reaching up to stroke the markings. The glow reflected from her pale fingertips.
“Not much use unless I lose my keys in the dark,” Angela joked.
The other girl chuffed. “Everything has a purpose, Earthborn. Maybe you should talk to Six-Tails about it.”
“Maybe I should.”
“But you’re not going to, are you?”
