Scowling, Darius walked around the debris in the entrance hall to face Tanik once more. Only three of the Keth remained with him.
“Cowards!” Darius yelled, his voice amplified by the speakers in his helmet. He flourished his sword and set his feet in a wide stance, but they didn’t budge. Tanik was probably waiting for the others to circle around and block off any possible avenue of escape. Darius couldn’t afford to wait around until that happened.
Reaching for the mountain of rubble lying in the courtyard, he picked it up with his mind and threw it at his enemies. They saw it coming and managed to deflect the debris into the walls of the palace. The entire building shook under the assault, but Darius didn’t stick around to see the front walls cave in. He turned and vaulted up the stairs to the second floor, using his Awareness to track the nearest Keth.
There were two of them, just coming into view at the end of a long corridor. They locked eyes with Darius, and he rushed toward them. In a matter of seconds, they were crossing blades in the tight space. Two swords flashed against his one, both trying to sneak past his guard. Darius grabbed one of the Keth in a mental hold, freezing his limbs and body. In that same instant, he gave the second one the hardest telekinetic shove he could. She flew into the wall at the end of the corridor, hard enough to make a physical impression, and then slumped to the ground—unconscious or dead. Turning back to the one that he’d frozen, Darius’s swept his sword through the alien’s midsection. The Keth’s glowing amber eyes widened in horror just as his abdomen vanished with an explosion of fiery ashes and a greasy puff of smoke.
Darius walked over to the unconscious Keth and skewered her with his sword, punching a charred hole in her stomach to make sure she was dead.
Two down. Twelve to go, he thought, just as Tanik and the three Keth reached the top of the stairs.
“Now who’s the coward?” Tanik chided. “Stand and fight!”
Darius darted down the next stretch of corridor, running through the palace at top speed and tracking the next Keth. He had to reduce their numbers before he stopped to face Tanik.
Chapter 44
Cassandra found the door to the Data Center unguarded, but locked, when she arrived. The lock didn’t last long under her blade. After cutting it open, she ran down the aisle of blinking blue and white data cubes to reach the Archive Room where Gatticus should be. There was still a hole in the door from last night when she’d broken in. She found Gatticus in the exact same state as before—powered down and plugged in at the hip to the nearby data terminal. Her gaze darted to the holoscreen. Now the progress line above the scrolling green lines of text read: Scan 79% Complete.
She couldn’t wait here for it to finish. Chewing her lower lip, Cassandra studied Gatticus more carefully. He had to have an on/off switch somewhere. She ran her hands over his body to look for hidden access panels, but couldn’t feel any buttons or switches lurking under his clothes and artificial flesh. There had to be some way to turn him on!
Maybe if she pulled the data cable out of his hip, he would automatically restart. She yanked the cable out, and the text on the holoscreen stopped scrolling.
Cassandra looked at Gatticus’s face. His expression was still frozen, his eyes a lifeless gray. She checked the port where the cable had been plugged in. Bingo! There was a likely-looking button there. Just as she stabbed it with her finger, she felt the hair on the back of her neck rise in warning. Faint, whispering voices tickled her eardrums. Something was wrong.
Gatticus jerked to life, and Cassandra glanced at him. Was he the threat she was sensing? Just them, a shadow ran into the room brandishing a glowing sword. Cassandra tried to draw hers to block, but there wasn’t enough time. Gatticus put out his arm to block the blade, and Cassandra fell backwards in her hurry to get away. Gatticus’s arm evaporated in a flash of molten metal, and he retreated hurriedly.
Their attacker advanced, backing them up against the data terminal and boxing them into a corner. Cassandra saw the pale, sparkling face of a Keth male behind the faceplate of his helmet. She finally managed to draw her sword and summon a shield to protect herself. “Stay back!” she said, shaking the glowing blade at the alien.
Instead, he took another step toward her and raised his blade for another strike. Cassandra reached into the ZPF and threw every single data cube in the room at him to create a distraction. They bounced off his exosuit and ricocheted off the walls and shelves. The assault seemed to give him pause; he stood there frozen and just out of reach, his mouth gaping open in shock.
Cassandra’s brow furrowed. Her attack shouldn’t have been more than a temporary distraction. Then she noticed the glowing blade poking through his stomach, rapidly burning a hole.
The Keth fell on his face, revealing his attacker.
“Dyara?” Cassandra could hardly believe it. “How did you...?”
The dark-haired woman rushed forward and wrapped her up in a hug. She withdrew a second later and glanced over her shoulder, as if expecting another Keth to come barging in. Looking back at Cassandra she said, “I sensed your distress and came to find you.”
“But Darius said you left the palace....”
Dyara hesitated briefly before nodding. She was probably surprised to hear her call Darius by his name. “I did leave, but I didn’t go far because I had a vision that you would return, and that your father was going to try to kill you.”
Cassandra swallowed thickly. “Oh.”
“What’s going on in the palace?” Dyara asked. “How did the Keth get here? And what happened to everyone in the courtyard?”
“Hang on.” Turning to Gatticus she nodded and said, “Gakram.”
The android flinched, and his eyes blinked rapidly for a few seconds. She gave him a moment, then asked, “Do you remember why we came to the palace?” Her eyes searched Gatticus’s as she waited for his reply.
“We came to infect your father with the virus.”
“What virus?” Dyara asked.
Cassandra explained everything as quickly as she could. When she was finished, she added, “It didn’t work. Darius didn’t get infected, so we need to get out of here before he finds us and kills us.”
Dyara looked torn. “Whoever wins, Darius or Tanik, it’s not going to be good for anyone. Unless they somehow manage to kill each other, there’s still going to be an evil dictator on the throne. We have to stop them.”
“How?” Cassandra asked. “Darius is too strong, and Tanik has the Keth on his side.”
“I might have an idea,” Gatticus said.
Both Cassandra and Dyara looked to him. “Go on,” Dyara said.
“I have a second canister of the virus in my utility compartment. If we can get it close to Darius and release the contents, he’ll be infected just like the others were.”
“That’s not a bad idea,” Dyara said. “And if we’re lucky, we should be able to infect Tanik while we’re at it.”
Gatticus nodded. “That is possible, yes. The virus will infect anyone it finds nearby. There is enough of it to infect multiple people.”
“But what about their suits?” Cassandra asked. “They’re all wearing exosuits, and Darius is wearing power armor.”
“That’s a good point,” Dyara said. “We’ll need to get past those barriers somehow.”
“You might not have to,” Gatticus said. His gray eyes found Cassandra, and he nodded to her. “How much air is left in your tank?”
She checked her HUD. “I’m down to twenty-seven percent, with almost thirty minutes left.”
“Then Darius’s tank won’t have much more than that—unless you started using yours before he did?”
Cassandra shook her head. “About the same time.”
“So we wait until he runs out of air,” Gatticus said. “At that point, he’ll have to remove his helmet or open the intakes in his suit. That’s when we release our virus and infect him.”
“Cass, you should open your suit’s intake vents,” Dyara said. “Save what’s
left of your air for when we release the virus. If it killed the others, you don’t want to get infected either.”
Cassandra nodded woodenly, and an icy trickle of dread coursed through her gut. “We’re going to kill my dad.”
Dyara fixed her with a sympathetic look. “Cassy, I know he still looks like your father, but...” She trailed off, shaking her head. “He’s long gone. In a lot of ways he’s already dead.”
Cassandra’s eyes burned with the threat of fresh tears, but she knew Dyara was right. She’d already come to the same conclusion herself. She wiped a solitary tear from the corner of her eye, and said, “Let’s do it.”
Chapter 45
Tanik sensed Darius cutting the Keth down one after another as they chased him through the palace. Before long he’d killed them all—except for the three following him.
“Tanik!” Feyra’s father, Vartok, roared. “I’m holding you personally responsible for the deaths of our people! You were supposed to have taken care of Darius before we arrived!”
“I am not all-powerful,” Tanik replied. Arrogant old fool, he thought, grunting as he vaulted up a winding staircase. Darius was heading ever higher. Eventually, he was going to have to come back down, or else jump out a window.
They reached the uppermost level, level twenty, and still, Darius was above them. “He’s on the roof!” Tanik shouted as he led Feyra, her father, and her father’s favorite concubine, Elisana, up the final flight of stairs. They burst through the metal door at the top to find Darius waiting for them at the other end of the roof. He was standing in the eye of his own personal hurricane. Thick clouds of rubble from the tower Tanik had torn down were whipping around Darius’s head at high speed. Violent winds generated by that maelstrom buffeted Tanik, threatening to send him tumbling back down the stairs.
“It’s the end of the line, Darius!” Tanik shouted to be heard over the wind. “Nowhere left to run!” They cautiously approached the swirling storm of wreckage.
“What makes you think I want to run?” Darius shouted back. And in that instant all of the debris changed directions, sling-shotting around Darius as if he were a planet. Chunks of wall with jutting metal rebar hurtled toward Tanik and the others at high speed. They used their powers to redirect all of the projectiles that they could, but the smaller rocks broke through and pelted them with bruising force. One about the size of a hover car slipped by and slammed into Vartok’s chest, sending him flying off the roof.
“Father!” Feyra cried.
Tanik pretended to be equally alarmed and outraged. He could sense Vartok’s life force ebbing away as he fell. His chest had caved in with the blow. The last of the debris flowed harmlessly around them. Vartok’s concubine didn’t seem at all disturbed by his sudden passing, but Feyra was out of her mind with rage. “I’m going to kill him!” she screamed. Without warning, she broke ranks and rushed Darius.
“Feyra, wait!” Tanik raced after her, but he reached her side after she’d already engaged Darius. Thankfully, she had far more experience wielding a blade than Darius did, so there were no immediate consequences of her facing him alone.
Tanik tried to circle around behind Darius, but he kept turning as he parried Feyra’s attacks so that he was always facing them both. Tanik snuck in a jab at Darius’s ribs, but Darius pushed off from Feyra’s blade in time to block the attack.
Tanik flicked an irritated glance over his shoulder to find that Vartok’s concubine was no longer with them. She’d decided to flee rather than try to avenge her master.
Tanik blocked an attack from Darius, and feinted left before slicing low for his legs. Darius back-flipped over that attack just as Feyra darted around to get behind him. While their enemy was in the air, he slashed down and sliced off her sword arm. Feyra screamed and collapsed, clutching her smoking stump.
A hot flash of fury tore through Tanik’s being, and he gave Darius a violent telekinetic shove just as he landed. It didn’t knock him off his feet, but it did stagger him. Tanik put himself between Darius and Feyra before Darius could think to finish her off. He launched a furious flurry of attacks, forcing Darius to backpedal around the roof.
The self-appointed emperor smiled wickedly behind his helmet. “It’s just you and me now, Gurhain. Do you remember how that went the last time? Because I do. How are the legs?”
Tanik gritted his teeth and screamed, intensifying his attacks and using every technique he could think of to put Darius off balance, all the while bracing himself against possible kinetic attacks and using his Awareness to look for more incoming debris.
Darius was a better swordsman than Tanik had anticipated, and what he lacked in technique, he seemed to make up for with speed. This was not going to be easy.
But just as he thought that, Tanik sensed two new arrivals emerge on the rooftop. He spun away from Darius, panting and gasping for air, to see three familiar faces: Cassandra, Dyara, and Gatticus—whom he couldn’t sense.
Maybe he wasn’t alone after all.
“Cassandra!” he yelled, his voice amplified by his helmet. “You have to help me stop your father!”
She gave no reply, but he could see her slowly shake her head. Convincing her to help him after he’d lied to her wasn’t going to be easy. He needed some last-minute trick of manipulation. Some new argument to convince her.
“The Keth are dead!” he tried, thinking that this time the truth would work. He backed steadily away from Darius, using the zero-point field to drag Feyra away with him. He stayed between her and Darius to shield her from possible attacks. “I’m no match for him by myself!”
“You lied to me!” Cassandra shouted back.
“About what?” Tanik demanded, glancing over his shoulder at her as he drew near. “I didn’t know the virus would be deadly any more than you did! It was untested.”
Tanik reached Cassandra’s side and sheathed his sword to check on Feyra. She was barely conscious, her breathing shallow. Her arm stump was cauterized from the heat of Darius’s blade, so there was no danger of bleeding out, but Tanik knew from experience that the loss of a limb was excruciating. Feyra was probably in shock.
“You didn’t tell me you were planning to bring the Keth here,” Cassandra said. “And I don’t believe for a second that you didn’t know the virus would kill the others.”
“He manipulated you!” Darius said, casually strolling across the rooftop to join the conversation. “And he’s trying to do it again. I’m not the bad guy here.”
Tanik looked up sharply and shook his head. “All I want is peace.”
“Then why did you bring a sword and an army?” Darius replied. “We’ll never have peace as long as you’re alive.”
Tanik stood up and drew his sword once more. He sidestepped away from Feyra and began circling around the roof in an effort to keep the fight away from her. Darius pivoted on the spot, tracking his movements. Then he threw his sword like a boomerang. It came spinning toward Tanik, glowing impossibly with a shield. ZPF shields began and ended with physical contact with the wielder so Tanik couldn’t understand how he was able to do that, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. He raised his sword to block the incoming weapon—
But it missed and went spinning around him, back toward Darius. It never reached him either. Tanik watched in horror as the glowing blade went sailing toward Feyra. “No!” Tanik shouted. He reached for the weapon, using all of his strength to pull it off course. It worked. The sword went skimming harmlessly along the rooftop, drawing molten furrows as it went.
“Look out!” Cassandra screamed.
Tanik whirled around just in time to see a second blade sailing straight for his chest. A searing heat erupted there, and his mouth popped open in an airless scream as the sword sailed out through his back. It went whipping back around and smacked into Darius’s waiting palm. In his desperation to save Feyra, Tanik had inadvertently narrowed his focus and blinded himself to the real threat. Feyra’s sword.
Tanik sank to his knees wit
h acrid black smoke rising from the charred hole where his heart used to be. The smoke grew rapidly thicker, obscuring everything in sight. He saw Darius approaching, but only dimly; then came a blur of light and another flash of heat erupted in his neck. He saw the world tip and turn around him and glimpsed his headless body collapse just a split second before his oxygen-starved brain gave up the fight.
Chapter 46
Cassandra watched with wide eyes as Tanik’s head rolled across the roof. The Keth woman he’d been trying to protect was still alive, but unconscious from the loss of her arm.
Silence rang but for the wind whistling around Cassandra’s helmet.
“You!” Darius roared and jabbed a finger in her direction. “You tried to warn him!”
Cassandra glanced at Gatticus. He still had the virus locked in his utility compartment. He couldn’t take it out now without Darius realizing what they were up to. Furthermore, he still had his helmet on. He hadn’t run out of air yet.
But he has to be close, Cassandra thought.
Darius advanced on her with his sword raised and simultaneously summoned the one he’d thrown at the Keth woman into his other hand.
“Darius, calm down,” Dyara said, and stepped between them.
“Get out of the way,” Darius growled.
“No.”
Cassandra saw her father’s chest heaving with rage and eyed the swords in his hands. Drawing her own blade, she joined Dyara in staring him down.
Darius let go of both swords, but they didn’t drop to the ground. Instead, they hovered in the air to either side of him while he reached up and twisted off his helmet. Shaking out a mane of long, sweat-matted brown hair, he grabbed his swords once more and sucked in a deep breath.
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