Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven

by Bryan S. Glosemeyer

  The red outline of Attendant Spear led them toward the towering arches. Caller Arrow took the rear guard behind Sabira. She felt relieved to have him there. Invisible or not, the thought of marching straight into the heart of a hive city, surrounded by tens of thousands of the enemy—monsters ready to capture, torture, and devour their bones—kept grinding at the edges of her fear. Knowing her caller was at her back gave her some sense of assurance though. And since Daggeira had thwarted her plan to prove herself, the desire to be seen by Caller Arrow lingered unfulfilled deep in her belly.

  Attendant Spear, an infiltration tactics expert, led them through gaps in the shifting crowd of socializing vleez. They spaced themselves out to maneuver around passing locals and still keep everyone’s signature outline in view. Sabira checked the signatures of the left arm as they entered the southernmost of the tall archways and whispered a quick prayer for them.

  More carven tableaus of heroically posed vleez stood at the base of the columns. She was near enough now to smell the thick, sweet aroma of the vine flowers. The scent, amplified by the pills, was like nothing she’d ever known.

  On the other side of the archways, a long plaza stretched before them, filled with the smells of exotic foods and blossoming flora. The droning, warbling music grew louder, and the crowds of local vleez denser. Here and there in the crowd, she spotted other Monarchy races she’d never seen in person before. Aliens with wide, ballooning necks and writhing arms. Others were much smaller, with bulging black eyes and rows of long needles bristling over strangely shaped heads.

  This inner plaza was more brightly lit, illuminating the colorful and vibrant vleez clothing. She’d only ever seen them armored or in rags. Seeing them dressed in such strong, bright colors, she felt a brief confusion, an uncertainty in just what exactly she was looking at.

  On this side of the archways, Sabira finally had an unobstructed view of the city. The heart of the hive lay directly before them and rolled up the curving slopes of the bowl all around. To her left, she could see the length of the ancient fortress, spread across the undulating curves of the hilltop. Sabira spotted the source of the green light. From the top of the central tower rose a pillar, resembling a thick rope of petrified vines that held a large sphere. The orb glowed emerald green against the black sky.

  “The Gods see us,” transmitted Attendant Spear. Directly before them, the crimson, glowing smear of the Shattered Gates rose above the eastern slope.

  Spear led them along the plaza’s southern edge until they found a smaller, uncrowded courtyard. Hexagonal stones paved the ground, and a tall, angular sculpture poked up from the center of the six-sided court.

  “What under the rocks is that thing supposed to be?” asked Cannon.

  The sculpture seemed nonsensical to Sabira, as well. Just shape with no apparent meaning.

  “Doesn’t matter,” answered Daggeira. “In a shift’s time a pack of granks will be charging through, then all this vleez shit will be one thing and one thing only. Smoking rubble.”

  “As decrepit and decadent as this hive is,” said Sabira, “a whole pack would be overkill. A single grank could reduce this place to dust.”

  “Stay focused, skins,” commanded Caller Arrow.

  “Listen to the caller, skins,” added Attendant Spear. “The route to the target area gets tighter from here. Keep your eyes on the servant in front of you, and mind your corners. Know where your blind spots are. And please try not to step on any vermin feet.”

  He led them out of the hexagonal court through an archway in the southeastern side. The passageway was narrow compared to the wide open road and plazas they’d traversed so far, just wide enough for three men to walk abreast. The corridor was created by the sides of buildings, grime-covered walls standing six stories tall and draped with more flowering vines. Ahead, the corridor opened to a landing, the base of a ramp curving slowly uphill.

  They stayed close to the wall as they traversed the corridor but far enough out to not disturb the vines. A group of four vleez entered the corridor from the other side as Sabira passed through the archway. Attendant Spear gave the order to halt.

  While the vermin spoke, their sense tendrils and arms jerked about in sporadic gesticulations. The outlines of Cannon and Daggeira stopped still ahead of her, the flailing claws coming within centimeters of their armor. Something about the vleez’ voices seemed particularly weird. They weren’t the scraping buzzes Sabira had always heard before, more like droning warbles. Sabira realized she had never heard a vleez speak that didn’t have a biomech respirator grafted to its face. For the first time, she saw their vertical mandibles quiver as they spoke, and the sight unsettled her in its alienness.

  The four vleez passed her and went through the archway to the courtyard when Sabira’s heightened senses picked up movement. At first, she couldn’t tell from where. She quickly scanned the corridor and saw a vleez climbing down the side of the wall from an upper balcony above the red outline of Daggeira. It maneuvered down the tangled vines with a deft haste. Acting faster than she could speak, Sabira scooped Daggeira’s arm in her grip and yanked her close. The vleez landed where Daggeira had just been standing. Two more climbed down behind the first.

  “Don’t worry. Sabira sees you.” Sabira patted Daggs’s invisible, armored butt, hoping bravado concealed her racing heart and tingling nerves

  “Right arm, let’s move,” Attendant Spear commanded when the last of the vleez passed through.

  Caller Arrow’s red outline finally entered the corridor through the archway. “Good work, Sabira,” he said. “Keep an eye on one another, skins.”

  “Checking blindspots means looking up, too,” added Cannon.

  Finally, Arrow sees me doing right, Sabira thought, not caving-in the works for once. But it was Daggeira who she kept seeing in her mind’s eye. Knowing how competitive Daggs was—how they both were—instead of being grateful, she’d probably want to spar Sabira until they were both bruised and bloody. And then they’d drill.

  They hustled down the corridor and regrouped on the landing. Attendant Spear led the way up the long ramp. Behind them, at the base of the landing, stood a tall black tower, roughly spiral in shape and one of the few structures not covered with cones or foliage. The ramp varied in width and steepness as it curved up the hillside. Sometimes as wide as ten meters or as narrow as four, the ramp was populated with small pockets of vleez, eating, talking, or warbling their droning speech. Along the way, they came to more landings. Some were merely a connection point of intersecting corridors, some were the wider passages of cobbled roads for low hover vehicles, while others were open terraces offering a panoramic view of the bowl-shaped city dotted with white and yellow lights.

  Walking through the hive city gave Sabira an uncanny feeling. She originally attributed it to being surrounded by thousands of enemy aliens before she understood what was really causing it. The architecture. Close walls and tight passages were second nature to her, but always with a ceiling overhead. In the corridors and plazas of the hive city, the vast sky loomed far above.

  The right arm reached a grassy terrace near the summit when they heard it.

  Vvvrrllluuumm.

  The sound filled the air like it came from every direction. The locals barely gave a hint at noticing it. A group of eight vleez children was also on the terrace, young enough their sense tendrils hadn’t matured into leaf-shaped tips. They played some kind of game, chasing around a floating, multicolored light and hopping over the players to get to it. A few adult vleez lounged together nearby.

  Vvvrrllluuumm.

  The sound came again, but the little vermin played on.

  “Right arm, halt. Group up. What are we hearing, Attendant?” asked Caller Arrow.

  “I’ve got no intel on what under the rocks that is, Caller, if that’s what you’re thinking,” answered Spear. “I’ve never heard anything like that before.”

  Vvvrrllluuumm.

  “C
ould it be an alarm? Maybe the left arm has been detected?” asked Daggeira.

  “The locals don’t look very concerned,” said Sabira.

  Vvvrrllluuumm.

  “It must be that green thing, or you can toss me down a shaft,” said Cannon. Sabira followed the red outline of his pointing arm out across the bowl of the city to the ancient fortress and the glowing green orb above it. The orb pulsed brighter as they looked.

  Vvvrrllluuumm.

  “Looks like we won’t be dropping you down a shaft today, skin,” said Caller Arrow. “Enough gazing at the pretty lights. Mission clock just clicked six-spot-three hours.”

  “Caller’s right. You know the protocol, skins. Back in formation and follow me,” Attendant Spear commanded. Sabira felt glad to keep moving. The sound from the orb unnerved her, and the children hopping after the floating colors were getting uncomfortably close. They needed to move out before one of the little infidels bounced right off them.

  The orb pulsed again, far brighter than it had before. The night and all the city turned green around them as the strange sound echoed off the walls.

  Vvvrrllluuumm!

  “Oh, drill me!” said Daggeira.

  Sabira turned away from the terrace to see what she was cursing about. For a fraction of a second, she didn’t understand why Daggeira was upset. All she saw was her crew standing there. Then she realized that she wasn’t seeing a red outline representing her crew in the visor. She was seeing them, armor and weapons and all.

  The stealth fields were down. They were completely exposed.

  “Well drill me, too.”

  18.

  THE FIVE OF them stood there, silent and confused, viewing their armored reflections in each other’s visors. Each waited for the others to react or give an order or explain what the shit just happened.

  “The damned vermin can null out our stealth fields,” said Arrow in stunned disbelief. Even as he spoke, one of the playing vleez children leaped and crashed into Daggeira’s chest plates. She stumbled back a step as the alien child fell dazed to the ground, the floating ball of morphing colors clutched in its six-digit hand.

  Daggeira twisted and flicked her wrists. Her palukai extended long and sharp from either end. A single swipe severed the child’s head. Dark, thick blood spouted onto the terrace grounds. Another vleez child screeched in shrill, inhuman terror. The others stared mutely at their dead companion, immature sense tendrils pricking straight up.

  “Daggeira and Sabira, clear the terrace,” commanded Spear. “Quick and quiet. Cannon, cover down-ramp. Arrow, up-ramp. Clean shots.”

  Relieved to have a command, to know what to do next, Sabira snapped her stick into a curve-bladed halberd. The men configured their sticks into rifles and took positions as Sabira and Daggeira charged the terrace. The accelerants, now fully activated by Sabira’s increased heart rate, burned through her chest and down into her arms and legs. She set her violence free, exalted to no longer hold back her boiling aggression. She spun the palukai around her, diamond-sharp blade twirling in deadly orbit, and killed the screeching child first. Discipline and aggression moved her now. She didn’t even remember the strike, only the sharp cessation of horrendous screaming when its head split open.

  The young vleez scattered. The adults on the far side of the terrace raced in a panic toward their young, desperate to scoop them up and protect them from the invaders. Sabira cut them down next.

  When the last adult dropped at her feet, she registered Grandfather Spear’s voice, hollow and distant as if from the far end of a deep shaft. “Request immediate extraction. Fields down. Fields down. Request immediate . . .”

  Near the terrace lip, looking out over the homes of thousands of alien infidels, Daggeira cornered the last two youths. They clutched each other, held back from falling over the edge by an ornate stone balustrade. In one stroke Daggeira decapitated both. Blood splashed over the railing’s multicolored cones, coated her armor.

  A scratching from behind. Sabira spun blade first, but no enemy attempted an ambush. The back side of the terrace was a wall of blank stone. Halfway up the wall were three alcoves, each harbored grit-covered statues of vleez figures holding orbs that illuminated the terrace below. Between each alcove, long ropes of flowerless vines hung down the length of the wall. A vleez child scrambled up one of the vine ropes.

  Sabira snapped her palukai into a rifle, took aim, and fired. A single plasma bolt seared into its upper leg. The claw-like fingers of all four arms clutched at air as it fell. It landed with a crunching thud on the ground.

  The little vermin screamed in gargling agony as Sabira strode in for the kill. She flicked her palukai back into a spear and stood over the howling creature. Its immature sense tendrils quivered. Panicked mandibles glistened with fear. Shaking hands clutched its wounded leg. The screaming stopped when it saw Sabira standing over it, spear raised high, poised for the death blow.

  The boy had looked up at her that exact same way. His first pit. Her first pit. Both nameless. Both unseen. She had found the spear before him and sliced open his leg. (Just as he would have done to her, she had told herself a thousand times, if only he had found it first.) The nameless boy crumpled, bleeding against the rough pit wall. Clutching his leg. Eyes wide and wet with terror. Sabira over him, sweating and jittery with brew, spear held high. Sabira driving the tip through his chest, skewering his heart. The boy dying at her feet, forever nameless.

  “Sabira, what are you doing?” Daggeira came from behind. “We don’t have time to toy around with baby vermin. Let’s go.”

  Sabira lowered her stick and looked at Daggs. Saw only the reflection of her own visor mirrored back at her, an infinity of faceless reflections staring blankly one into the other.

  “I don’t know,” she said, confused, unsure if she was on an alien planet or deep in the fighting pits of Nahgohn-Za.

  What the shit is wrong with me?

  Daggeira shoved her to the side. “Will you come on, already? We have to go! Now!” Without even looking, she aimed her gauntlet at the youth’s face and sprayed a dose of toxins. It tried to scream but could only hiss and gargle as its respiratory tract dissolved. All four hands clawed at its face. Mandibles flapped and sizzled. And then it just stopped.

  “Right arm, listen up,” came the familiar commands of Caller Arrow in her helm. “This mission is not over. No extraction until we confiscate our targets. So let’s move, skins. Let’s go, let’s go!”

  “Come on, Stargazer,” urged Daggeira. “Don’t want to miss all the fun.”

  I am a Servant of the Divine Masters, enforcer of Divine Will.

  “My life is their weapon.”

  “You’re godsdamned right it is,” answered Daggeira. Sabira hadn’t realized she had spoken the last part aloud. “Caller gave the order. We’re moving, Stargazer. Now.” Daggeira ran back toward the rest of the right arm. “Sabira! Now!”

  Sabira was already moving by the time she shook off the unbidden memory. She flicked her palukai, reshaping it into an assault rifle with a double-edged blade extending from either side of the barrel. A perfect configuration for close and medium range combat.

  Vermin. Infidels. Kiss your old crumbling world down the shaft. The Servants are coming. Righteous, angry certainty felt so much better than doubt.

  A new wailing pierced through the city, loud and mechanical. She recognized the noise. Enemy alarms.

  Following Spear’s directions, Arrow and Cannon took point and led the arm up the ramp and then forked south on a narrow road. Sabira and Daggeira brought up the rear guard. Caller reminded them to check their vertical sight lines. Behind his commands, Sabira could just make out Spear’s voice. He was trying to coordinate their extraction to coincide with the right arm’s arrival at the target area. They were close. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she could almost hear drums, timing their movements, driving them onward.

  Sabira spotted a group of vleez rushing down the str
eet away from them. Perhaps word was spreading with the alarm, bringing the locals running to witness the massacre they had left behind.

  While Daggeira hustled to her next point, Sabira posted at a corner covering her and scanning their surrounding. They were extremely vulnerable. If any residents were armed, the crew could be sniped from at least nine different locations.

  Sabira had an open view of the city below. About thirty searchlights beamed into the night sky, illuminating the gray undersides of thin, rippling clouds. One by one, the sources of the searchlights rose above the city, rotated over, and pivoted their beams of light down to the streets and buildings below, then scattered off in their different search vectors. Vleez automated sentries. Each carried a full short-range sensor array.

  “Sentry drones are up and roving," Sabira informed the arm.

  “Engage your hover-field scanners,” commanded Arrow.

  Distant echoes of gunfire attracted a swarm of sentries. They converged in on the sounds of fighting to their east. The mission clock read six hours. Had it really only been minutes since the slaughter on the terrace?

  “Must be the left arm,” Arrow transmitted. “Our mission is still to locate and confiscate the target. Keep moving and keep quiet.”

  Attendant Spear led them through a tangle of twisting roads. Cone-tiled walls echoed with the wailing alarm. She no longer spied any curious vleez venturing out to see what was happening. All around them doors shut, and lights dimmed. No one came forth to challenge them. No sudden sniper fire barked from dark rooftops. Sabira thought they had a chance to actually clear the mission after all. Until the explosion.

  The blast came from the north, distant and reverberating, but still loud enough to be heard over the alarms. A fiery glow illuminated the low clouds from the far side of the hive city’s northern rim.

  “No,” whispered Grandfather Spear’s transmission. “Gods no.”

  Sabira had never heard him like that, so worried, and realized the wrecker was gone. She felt too far away from everyone else, too exposed. Only Daggeira was on the far edges of her view. She needed to get tighter with the rest of them, needed to be closer to Grandfather.