Rise of the Defiant: Book Two of the Warpmancer Series

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

  It was a short flight and James could already see the harsh, fake metal walls of Nexus with its captivating sea of crystals below. The glow still made him weak at the knees. That is what powered him, and what powered the Imperial war-machine. He couldn’t let them take it.

  As they approached the entrance to the cargo bay in Underbelly Alpha, Ruble pointed at something.

  ‘What’s that?’

  James looked and was also dumbfounded. Draped along either side of the cargo-bay entrance were two large banners. The banners were mainly black but possessed two blue streaks, crossing along the top.

  James felt Marshal’s presence behind him.

  ‘It means ‘one who does not bow’ in the Grengen tongue,’ Marshal whispered. ‘It seems that Aven finally made his move.’

  ‘What move?’

  Marshal winked. ‘You’ll see.’

  James did see. The cargo bay was full of Zonians wearing blue headbands and carrying guns. They were cheering. The black and blue banner was streaked everywhere, but what truly surprised James was the presence of a huge poster, depicting him leading his squad against the Xank.

  A black and blue clad man seemed to be fuelling their fervour. The man’s back was to James but as he turned, he revealed himself to be Gretswald. James caught Gretswald’s eye and the smarmy man from Red Sand ran up to him, childlike joy on his face.

  ‘Defiant! Defiant! I have spread the word of your deeds. These people know you now. They know how you saved me when you could have, should have, slew me. They want you to lead them. Yes, I’ve spread word of the Defiant. Please lead them!’

  James was dumbfounded but soon found himself being pulled in by a crowd screaming: ‘Defiant!’

  The group who had come with him were initially shocked, but they soon realised that there was no real danger here. These people worshipped James.

  So, this is what Aven has been doing.

  Marshal had wanted him to lead his people and Krag-Zot had wanted him to be a god. James wanted an army but this didn’t put him at ease.

  Everyone wanted to touch him. To feel that he was real. He was their freedom made flesh. It was not so much him that they adored, but what Aven had told them.

  Then a gunshot sounded. Then more. Machine gun clatter brought the cheering to an abrupt stop.

  ‘Yellows! A man shouted, and the crowd dispersed into battle formation. Guns were at the ready and James’ group was ready for combat. Some Zonians passed James’ men additional guns.

  Many turned to James for reassurance. Reluctant god or not, he owed it to his people.

  ‘Zonians! For our people! For our planet! For freedom!’

  The cheer that followed was thunderous as the militia charged out to meet the Yellows in hand-to-hand combat.

  James followed, his Troopers by his side. All he had was a pistol, but it was all he needed.

  He never thought he would shoot a Trooper. Well, after his life as a gangster in Galis, but the Yellow armbands on these men discounted them as true Troopers. They were puppets to the monsters who had destroyed his homeworld. They would receive no mercy.

  A slight squeeze of the trigger and a hole appeared in a Yellow’s helmet. Another and blood spurted from his comrade’s shoulder. When the gap closed, James slid through the melee and kicked a Yellow in the leg, flipping it up straight afterwards and hitting the Yellow’s submachine gun out of his hands. Swinging the weapon as a club, James shattered the Yellow’s gasmask.

  Shouting and gunshots overrode the sounds of crunching bones and masks. This was Zona Nox. James was where he belonged. In the blood bath.

  His heart was thumping in his chest and ears. All that mattered was himself and the enemies that he dispatched. He felt himself being grabbed from behind but as he turned, the culprit had already been beaten to death by Zonians. They looked at him with devotion and charged at new enemies.

  ‘Don’t let them slaughter our families!’ a man shouted from atop a metal container, wildly firing an assault rifle. Normally, a man like that would be making a target of himself, but no bullet hit him. As if by divine will, he continued shouting and spraying his rounds at his oppressors.

  ‘We ain’t no Zarxian zots!’ Frank taunted at his opponents, turning to Yobu to reassure him that he was excluded from the insult.

  This was unlike any battle James had ever fought. There was no strategy. It was a struggle, one which they were winning.

  Bullets flew and the melee left Yellow armbands covered with the true Trooper colours.

  As quickly as it had started, the remaining Yellow Troopers retreated and left the Zonians cheering.

  ‘Defiant! Defiant!’

  Gretswald had climbed atop a parked shuttle, holding a bloodstained machete.

  ‘Our saviour…is here!’

  The crowd roared.

  ‘Our freedom,’ Gretswald continued, ‘is upon us!’

  An indescribable explosion of fervour and excitement erupted louder than the Xank bombs on Galis. If voices could level cities, then Nexus would have fallen deep past the crystals that funded it.

  As the people, James’ people, shouted their defiance, devotion, hate, love and adoration, a young woman approached James carrying a box.

  ‘Defiant, I have something of yours.’

  James accepted the parcel and opened it. A smile spread across his face. It was his Aegis FireBolt.

  He was complete. He was the Defiant.

  “The Grays are subjugated throughout known space, apart from Grag-Tec owned planets which have them as a founding race alongside the omni-present Exanoid businessmen. They have existed for as long as any spacefaring race can remember and despite their weaknesses, persist like the stars.” – Extract from Grays: A Lost Empire?

  Chapter 19. Dreaming in Grey

  The room swirled in patterns of grey, red and black. The colours glared as if through a fishbowl. Kurt could sense movement around him but not much more. He felt a sudden overwhelming bout of nausea. He attempted to repress it. Acidity grew and gas filled his closed mouth. His restraint was to no avail, and he found himself spewing vomit onto the metal operating table and floor.

  The sounds were just as disorientating. What seemed a thousand aliens, were taunting him.

  What was that about aliens?

  Ah, yes. He’d been killing them a moment before. No, no…they were killing him. Were they killing him? Kurt wasn’t quite sure. He was quite sure that he had been killed, but if that was the case, he wouldn’t be here right now.

  Kurt was not a religious man, and did not believe in an afterlife of any sort. He was a wisecrack, a joker, younger than his years and most of all, a cynic. He had not thought about life after death, and had just presumed that there was nothingness. But this was something. Was he dead? It was like nothingness. All he perceived was a grey void dappled with red and black. It was like waking up in the middle of a movie that you could not remember starting. Kurt often dreamt in grey, but this was different. Like a child who hadn’t ridden a bike in an age, he was in dire need of some training wheels. He had an inkling that he may be in a dream, but if that was the case, he would probably have woken up. This was different, and Kurt did not feel his usual honed instincts give him the clarity of the world he often took for granted.

  A dark and swirling figure approached him from the side and Kurt tried to ask it to help him get back on his bicycle. The figure did not comply and immediately proceeded to stab Kurt in the chest. In an instant, Kurt’s vision cleared and he let out a thunderous gasp. A loud beep almost burst his eardrums, leaving him in shell shock. But then it cleared to reveal the anxious chatter of countless people. He was in a stark metallic medical room. Blood stained the floors and the table he lay upon. A small nurse with her mouth covered stood in the corner of the room. Her small hands were covered in blood and the bags under her eyes revealed that she had not seen a bed in quite some time. Sticking out of his chest was a syringe with a hand-long needle.

  ‘Clear. Next,’ a
voice to Kurt’s side ordered.

  The nurse wheeled him out of the room, only pausing once outside to take the adrenaline shot out of his chest. The hall in front of Kurt was littered with the sitting and sleeping wounded. Men were missing limbs, had stitched up guts and head wounds which would put them in a home for the rest of their lives. The most terrifying of the wounded had no bloodied bandages, however. They were the bluish, greenish, grey tint skinned. Their skin bore a myriad of colours so dramatic that Kurt could not identify the hue. Besides their skin colour, they seemed fine – all except for the look in their eyes. Kurt somehow knew that he was one of them.

  The nurses called them ‘Cloudstruck.’ They were the ones who had seen the sky blacken. They still acted like they always did. Kurt still joked around. He was a wise-guy and a prankster. But when left alone, he stared into the abyss. He never spoke with other Cloudstruck, but all they needed was a look. They had seen eternity come to an end. They had seen the embodiment of death.

  Kurt did not need to watch Earth blacken as their ship sped out of orbit. The aliens let them flee. They had sent their message. Humanity had lost. Kurt did not need to watch his planet die to know that.

  Rumours spread fast and the news that was most prevalent was the surrender of the Exanoids. Humanity’s greatest ally against the Imperials had capitulated soon after the Fall of Earth. They did not want to see Eran fall in the same manner. A lot of the soldiers on-board the ship called them traitors. Pig-snouted, cowardly, greedy traitors. Kurt was not one of them. He saw the skies blacken, and he knew that no amount of bravery could face that.

  Their trip took longer than expected, as the pilot did not want to risk detection by any Imperial vessel. They landed in New London days after Kurt’s awakening to the grey dream. Upon exiting the ship, his vision was assaulted by reddish brown.

  This was Mars. The closest thing humans now had to a homeworld.

  Kurt never really adjusted to life on Mars. He re-joined the military but there didn’t seem to be a need. The aliens did not attack Mars and the only threat seemed to be that of lawlessness. It was not so bad on Mars, where the Cape Federation military were active, but news spread fast that gangs and pirates had taken over the smaller colonies of the human empire. It was an empire no longer, Kurt repeatedly had to remind himself. With their armies decimated, only a few governments had survived the Fall. With desperation came chaos and chaos led to the rise of unsavoury leaders. All the leaders of Mars could do was sit by idly and keep their own planet from tearing itself apart.

  That was until the day in which Kurt and his platoon were ordered to marshal in the courtyard of Cape Nova’s military headquarters.

  The courtyard was huge, being able to house a small suburb. It was designed to house all manner of landed spacecrafts. Within the gargantuan courtyard, seemed to be the main force of every single surviving military from Earth. The Cape Federation were represented in Khaki, the British states in Red, the Nippon Shogunate in white, and the Grand Duchies of Brazil in Green. A few squads existed from other nations, but they were overwhelmed by the quantity of other troops. All stood facing a stage. For those out of range, hovering screens allowed them to see the activities from their position.

  On this stage, a man dressed in a combination of each major uniform walked onto the stage. The very notion of his outfit would normally be laughable, but this man managed to uphold it with a dignity that Kurt could only dream of. Kurt could not fathom mocking the man, as he wore the united colours of the survivors of Earth.

  He was the only man on the stage, yet his presence filled the courtyard.

  He was Colonel Rothhardt, the highest ranking military official left of all the nations of Earth. He had never promoted himself to General, as in his words, someone higher ranked than him was responsible for that.

  ‘Soldiers of Mars and soldiers of our now dead Earth. I come here now, not as your commanding officer, but as a fellow man of arms who has lost something to fight for. When we lost our home and the skies blackened and consumed us, we lost our reason for being. We are fighting men, and we gave them all the fight we got. Never forget that. You men are the greatest that our race had to offer. Despite that, we failed in our duty. We’ve been living here for a year now, acting as police when we all know in our hearts that we are soldiers. We are soldiers, but there aren’t any battles here. Mars is conquered and peaceful, but there are other places that need our help. At this moment, our kin worlds are being tormented by criminals, aliens and terrorists. We hibernate here, scared of those who killed our home, but that’s not us.’

  Rothhardt paused. The crowd was as quiet as Mars was before humans arrived.

  ‘We’re soldiers and soldiers protect and serve those who cannot defend themselves. We may have our own cities on this red-hunk of rock, but we’re all human. We may all be single troopers fighting for our dead flags, but we’re all Troopers serving our race. We waste our talents and the lives of those we love when we refuse to help them.

  ‘With that, I have one question. Are you, soldier, willing to fight for your people?’

  There was silence. Only the faint sound of traffic on a distant highway could be heard. Kurt held his breath, then he let loose. There was a deafening roar as the veil of hopelessness lifted from the armies of humanity. Mars had given them shelter and security. Their survival had been assured, but they had no purpose. Not until Rothhardt had united them.

  The haze that Kurt had lived with for the years since the Fall of Earth had finally dissipated as he roared in unison with his fellow soldiers and Troopers. There was no grey left in his vision. There was only black and red.

  Kurt had woken up.

  “The Network is the ultimate testament to the effectiveness of anarchy. No government controls it. No corporation controls it. Everyone can use it. It transcends borders and cultures. It is the collective effort of the galaxy.” – Extract from ‘Transcending Barriers’ by Dr Gyarun Smitt, University of Cape Nova

  Chapter 20. Voices in the Dark

  A presence in the room gave James pause before he could ponder his dream.

  He had been sleeping in a private room located in a disused shuttle in Underbelly Alpha. The room had been carefully constructed by his devotees. He had, at first, refused the privilege and claimed that he would be more than comfortable sleeping in the same quarters as everyone else. Marshal advised against that, stating that his life was now more important than the rest of theirs. They could not risk him being out in the open. So, while his followers slept in plastic hovels and under the high, cold ceiling of the hangar, he was granted use of a metal structure as his home. On Galis, it would have been considered a good house.

  James had reluctantly accepted the room, while his fellow Zonians slept on the cold geradite floors. A strange term that. James had never thought of himself or anyone else as a Zonian. Strange that their united identity only formed because of their planet being destroyed.

  James pretended to be asleep, as he felt the strange presence stare at him from across the room. It made no sound and emitted no warmth, but James’ Warp-enhanced senses could pinpoint its exact location.

  ‘There’s no use feigning sleep, Warpmancer. I know that you know I’m here.’

  James lifted himself from bed and examined the source of the deep-voiced exclamation. Shimmering blackness, like smoke, filled the corner. But it couldn’t have been smoke. It was too think. Too solid. James focused and within the smoke, he could see what seemed to be the top of a cowl. All other human features were too obscured by the mysterious fog.

  ‘Who are you?’ James asked, hand on his pistol.

  ‘It is not really a question of who I am,’ the figure answered in a deep voice that seemed to reverberate while remaining quiet, ‘but who we are.’

  ‘Okay, then. Who are you, in the plural sense of the word?’

  The figure was not amused.

  ‘We’ve been watching you, Warpmancer. We make it our business to watch those of humanity
who show talents in the arts of our collective foes. It is believed by our enemies that they are the only ones with powers over the Warp. Your existence, and ours, is proof against that. But we find it best that the Imperials do not learn of humanity’s inclination towards what they like to believe is their craft. We have made sure to keep our existence secret for centuries.’

  James didn’t respond.

  ‘We’ve been watching you, and the Areq. Don’t play dumb. We know what you are.’

  ‘Fine, what do you want?’

  ‘A little bit of…discretion. It is imperative that humanity, and our enemies, do not learn of our Warpmancy.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This ice wasteland is a testament to the arrogance of Warpmancers – and more. Earth fell, but humanity survived. The Areq were hunted to veritable extinction because they were a threat. Don’t give the Imperials an excuse to wipe out humanity.’

  ‘They are trying already…’

  ‘Zona Nox was a small casualty in a bigger game, Warpmancer.’

  James gritted his teeth and clenched his fist. Small casualty!

  ‘Don’t meddle in affairs you know little about. Have your little revolution on this rock, but don’t validate those who call you god.’

  ‘Why should I listen to some fog in the shadow?’

  The figure chuckled, a deep and raspy laugh. ‘Just as your cult’s namesake suggests.’

  The humour in his voice disappeared as quickly as it had entered.

  ‘We survive because we restrain ourselves. We stick to the shadows. We let the Troopers wage their wars. We know the Imperials don’t care. But a Warpmancer threat…don’t give them a reason to blight anymore planets. Don’t give them a reason to blight, Terre help us, Mars.