Before the Shattered Gates of Heaven

by Bryan S. Glosemeyer

  “I can walk. Just let me—” He gasped with pain as he tried to press off his amputated arms to get up.

  Sabira crouched low, grasped beneath his armpits, and hauled the big man to his feet. It felt odd to be so intimately wrapped around a naked man and not be trying to drill or fight, but there was nothing sensuous about the contact. Desperate haste and barely controlled fury were the limits of her current emotional capacity.

  “Follow me, and keep your eyes open,” she said. Sabira drew the nihkazza and picked her way through the tumult of wreckage, looking for the other altars. Gabriel followed, bare feet cautiously maneuvering through the ruins.

  A sudden clang of metal and ceramic crashing down startled them both. Sabira looked up through the open wound of the deck above. Another pack of granks rammed straight up through the air into the upper decks. They still had hover pods installed from the invasion, allowing them to charge vertically through the heart of the pyramid, unimpeded by the ship’s artificial gravity. The other gravity-bound granks separated off into small packs and plowed their way out through the pen walls.

  “Over there, to our right,” said Gabriel. The curved tusks of an altar stood askew behind a misshapen mound of piping and valves.

  Chunks of the ship’s interior continued to rain down into the grank pens. Shockwaves of chalky dust blew across the deck with each loud, jarring impact as they stumbled their way to the next altar. They found the dead ahno godseer first, ahns head and shoulders flattened beneath a long metal strut. Splatters of green blood trailed over a mess of beams and ductwork, dripping towards the altar encaging Maia.

  The altar rested at a precarious angle on the other side of the jagged mound of piping. Maia’s head tilted down. The sharp tusks were still savagely wedged into her left ribs and had shredded her breast during the fall. Blood and grit streamed down her neck, pouring over her bruised, upside down face.

  Sabira thought about how they would share the same deformity now. She pulled open the ribs and freed the Oracle within. Gabriel supported Maia’s lolling head as she slid free.

  “Cut some strips out of that dead priest’s robes,” said Gabriel. “Wrap that around Maia. Make it tight over the chest. Then go find Ed while I take care of her.”

  Sabira did as he instructed, bandaged Maia’s streaming wound, and left her in Gabriel’s care. She found Edlashuul a few meters away, hidden beneath a jumble of twisted ducts and heavy cables. The altar had cracked open from the fall, spilling the young vleez free of the ribs. Both of his hind legs were bent in shocking angles. Thick smudges of black vleez blood coated his broken limbs.

  “Be alive. Still be alive.” She scrambled through the wreckage to get to him. Two of his sense tendrils rose, swayed listlessly in her direction, and collapsed again as she approached. She whispered for him to hold on. Insisted that he stay alive, that they would get out of this, that he would be cured. Healed. Just stay alive. Just stay with her a little longer.

  She carried him like a child, limp and bleeding against her breast, and headed back to the others. Every pained murmur from his grafted respirator urged her forward.

  When she reached them, Gabriel held Maia’s listless body to him. The bandages Sabira had wrapped around Maia’s breasts were soaked. Dark red seeped out, pulse by pulse, saturating the cloth. Maia’s eyes were open, but unfocused and dazed.

  “Ed’s alive,” gasped Sabira, “but only barely. We’ve got to hurry. Orion said his ship is nearby. The drop ships are on this deck. We can take one. Can you help her walk?”

  “We need you to protect us on the way,” said Gabriel. “You’ll need at least one hand free for your knife. Give me Ed, and use your free hand to support Maia.”

  “No,” said Maia, head wobbling as she shook it. “No, we won’t leave the others. Rain, Coraz . . . all of them. Not without them. I won’t.”

  The adrenaline and urgency boiling within Sabira wanted to argue with Maia, force her to flee with them as fast as they could. But Sabira knew she was right. They were all brood now; their fates were entangled. Sabira looked to Gabriel. The same agreement was in his eyes.

  “Let’s get our people and get the hell out of here,” he said.

  Sabira handed Ed over to him. He seemed even smaller, frailer, cradled against Gabriel’s wide, dark chest. Sabira pulled Maia up, wrapped her left arm around Maia’s blood-soaked shoulders. She pulled the nihkazza blade free from her belt and searched through the choking haze of dust for the best route.

  Maia’s chest disintegrated into a mist of scorched flesh.

  Sabira felt the cringing heat of the plasma bolt. Felt the life burned from Maia’s body in an instant. Felt the weight of her droop and slip away as she fell dead at Sabira’s feet.

  Battle instincts whipped her attention to the line of fire. Thirty meters ahead rose a misshapen tumble of wreckage that was once the walls of the Servants Hall. A torn banner draped the twisted face of the mound, the glyphs for the Pyramid Zol-Ori barely legible. Atop the jumbled pile, the shooter stood, palukai at the ready, staring directly at her through the haze.

  Grandfather Spear.

  42.

  SABIRA CHARGED, SCREAMING, wild with pain and hostility. The fury unleashed by the yarist gem, no longer held in check by the force of her will, propelled her toward combat. Toward Grandfather.

  Unable to charge directly at him across the broken terrain, she leaped as she ran, zigzagging from mound to mound of rubble and bodies. With the gem touching her skin inside her boot, she was faster, stronger, more agile. Harder to hit. Spear fired his palukai again and again. Bolts of plasma burned through the haze, slagging where she had been a fraction of a second before.

  Torn cables writhed like biomech tentacles above them, showering sparks and steam into the heavy air. Through the gaping wound in the ceiling, even more heavy, jagged slabs of the upper decks came crashing down. A thick chunk of flaming machinery smashed in the center of the grank pens. The impact shuddered through the debris field and wobbled Sabira. A shockwave of hot dust stung her eyes, burned like acid up her nose.

  She kept moving, knowing she couldn’t let herself become an easy target. With one hand wiping the grit from her eyes, she felt her way forward with the nihkazza extended before her, probing for a way through the chaos. Deep, wracking coughs shook her whole body.

  Sabira was finally able to see again, blearily, as the newly fallen machinery exploded into a blossom of fire and sparks and metal. A pair of granks burst through the heart of the explosion, their ballistic force and rupture fields annihilating everything in their paths.

  They headed straight for Spear.

  Sabira ran as fast and as straight as she could. She had to beat the granks to him. They were faster, but she was closer.

  The granks won.

  They smashed into the rubble heap beneath him when she was still more than a dozen meters away. The same instant their rupture fields plowed into the rubble, he leaped straight up. Cracked slabs of metal and chunks of ceramic blasted around him. He tumbled in midair with the wreckage and landed hard on a grank’s hind eye mound. One hand gripped armored plating as his legs dangled wildly from the back end of the war beast. Through it all, he kept hold of his palukai.

  Sabira froze, watched it all happen in a span of a few racing heartbeats. When the heap erupted she dove behind a wet pile of bodies to avoid shrapnel. From within a grisly tangle of human and warseer limbs, a woman stared back at her, alabaster face smudged with red and green blood; swollen eyes trembled with the last, fading spark of life; slow, raspy, hollow breaths stuttered from gray lips.

  Buried beneath Sabira’s rage, a harsh sadness and shame gnawed through her guts. All the lives she couldn’t save. All the blood and pain and death catastrophically converging to give her a chance to escape.

  Then the fury crashed through her again like a flood, body and mind swept up in its currents. Sabira wiped her eyes and spied over the rim of bodies, eager to resume her attack.
The two granks continued their charge, plowing a wide, circling arc through the wreckage. She could just make out Spear pulling himself up the biomech beast. Once atop the stable platform, he appeared to quickly gather his wits. He scoped his palukai across the pens, searching for her.

  Sabira darted. Spear fired. The plasma bolt seared into the mound of dead and dying. She burst into her zigzag charge through the rubble, but now she had to zone in on a moving target.

  Spear only fired once more before the grank started bucking. Hind legs veered straight up like massive pistons. He managed to lock his feet into the platform well enough to keep from being thrown off by the first two wild bucks. The third launched him straight back. He landed in the open strip the war beasts had cleared out by their passage.

  The two granks both reared up on their hind legs and pushed backward as they stomped. For a stiletto thin moment, she was sure they had crushed him beneath their wide, flat hooves. Then she caught a glimpse of him rolling back, alive and evading the beasts.

  She continued to run for him, only meters away now. “No,” she screamed. “Don’t kill him!”

  The granks bucked again but didn’t lunge back after Spear, stomped their hooves straight down instead. They shuffled erratically, still irritated and volatile, though somehow restrained. They circled around to face Spear as she ran up to the rim of their trail.

  “Don’t kill him!” she yelled again, not quite screaming anymore. “He’s my fight.”

  The granks backed off, jerking their thick heads back and forth, legs stomping harder than needed as they moved. She could feel their steps vibrate through the thick line of ducting she stood atop.

  Using his palukai like a staff, Grandfather Spear rose to his feet. Blood dripped from a wide array of wounds. His natural eye was red and swollen shut. His silver biomech eye locked straight on her.

  “That’s right, child of my blood,” he said. “I’m your fight.”

  His palukai blurred with precise, deadly motion. As it spun, he transformed it into a curved halberd blade on one end, plasma blaster on the other.

  Sabira knew his techniques. After a lifetime of following his path, observing and learning and emulating in every way she could, her reflexes knew the precise angle of his first shot. She launched herself. Plasma bolts crackled past her, searing empty air. But she still had ground to cover, and he had the longer weapon. His diamond-sharp halberd scythed toward her head. Her instincts expected that too. She parried with the nihkazza and kept moving to try and close the gap.

  The blaster end of his palukai swooped up, firing instant death, and forced her to maneuver away. She crouched, ready to spring at the first twitch of his next attack. Instead, Grandfather Spear paused, gripping the stick in a ready position, blade forward.

  “What did they do to my granddaughter? What did they do to poison her heart against me? Against her people? She could have been Handmaiden one day. She could have been raised up. Seen by all. Did their drugs really do this? Tell me, what did they do to her?”

  “They freed me.”

  She lunged forward with the sacrificial blade held low and ready. Watched for the angle of the stick’s spin to anticipate the direction of plasma fire. He moved as if to swing the blaster end up, but speared the palukai straight toward her instead. She twisted away. A stinging bite on her left ear and temple felt more like an abstract idea of pain.

  They fought in the center of the cleared-out grank trail. Blades swung and parried and clashed. Sparks and grit fell from above, and plasma bolts scorched through dust clouds, missing their mark. Even with one eye blind and fighting an opponent surging with the yarist gem, Spear proved he had earned every glyph of honor and glory on his head.

  The yarist made Sabira nearly indefatigable while his thrusts slowed as the fight went on. A fraction of a second was all she needed. She quickly snatched the shaft in a tight, strong grip. When he yanked back on his weapon, she swung hers up.

  The palukai dropped, clanking on the floor. Three fingers from his left hand fell in soft, wet flops beside it.

  And then he plowed into her. His thick shoulder slammed her gut, knocking her off her feet and hard onto her back. His full weight smashed down on top, crushed the breath out of her. Her grip broke, and the nihkazza slipped free.

  After a breathless heartbeat, his weight lifted off her right side, favoring his maimed hand. She rolled with his shifting weight. Her legs lashed out like serpents across his back and shoulder, trapping his head and left arm between them. She locked down the choke. His swollen-shut eye bulged out like it would spurt from his skull, while his silver eye stared into hers, cold and unchanging.

  “See me, Grandfather,” she grunted, legs squeezing tighter, hand groping for the lost dagger. “See me now.”

  Sabira glanced to the side to look for the blade, eager to finish this. The nihkazza lay where she couldn’t reach it without releasing the chokehold.

  My body is my weapon.

  She squeezed tighter. The leg lock cut off blood flow to Grandfather Spear’s brain. First, he would struggle. Then he would pass out. Then brain damage. Then death. She wouldn’t need the dagger.

  Spear’s left arm was slick with blood, and he strained to slip it free. If she didn’t have the yarist gem still touching her skin, he would have easily slithered out of the choke and been crushing her again. But she did have the gem, and she held tight.

  “See me,” she grunted through clenched teeth. “See the killer you made.”

  Spear’s head swelled, turned red and bruised purple. Ams drooped, went slack. His entire weight started shifting slowly down. Even on the edge of blacking out, his silver eye never ceased staring into her.

  “I never wanted to be Handmaiden. I wanted to be you. I did what you said. Killed who you said. No more. Now I choose who to fight.” Tears pooled in her eyes, streamed down her cheeks, carrying bitter grit to her lips. “Who I kill.”

  Grandfather’s silver biomech eye, gifted from the Divine Masters in reward for faithful service, dimmed, rolled up into its socket.

  “Now I choose . . . Gods damn you! You killed Maia! You killed . . . We killed so many. I killed so many.”

  Spear’s engorged head hung limply in her legs and turned a dark, mean red.

  “I choose.” She pushed his limp, bloody torso off her.

  Sabira stood, grabbed the nihkazza and slid the blade into her belt. She found his palukai next, laying near Spear’s three severed fingers. Streaks of blood and grime covered its length. She wiped off what she could and configured the stick into a bladed assault rifle. She didn’t bother to wipe away the tears.

  Sabira stood over her blood-grandfather, his palukai in her hands, his blood on her tunic. He lay at her feet motionless. She felt powerful and terrible. Furious and sad. Battered and exhilarated. All at once.

  His remaining fingers twitched, then his leg. Normal color started slowly coming back to his scalp. He would live.

  “I choose,” she said, through tired, heaving breaths. “I choose.”

  43.

  MERCY.

  SUCH A foreign concept. Such a forbidden idea. Sabira stood there, awestruck by the strange power of it. She didn’t kill him—she couldn’t kill him—though he would have torn the heart from her chest to redeem his honor before their Masters.

  Mercy for the merciless. At least this once.

  Grandfather Spear roused himself to weak and battered consciousness. Rolled onto his back, breathing deep and heavy.

  She wondered if this was how she appeared to Cal and Ed that morning on the rooftop, when they could have killed Daggeira and her with a flick of the wrist. When they chose mercy. Even Cal, with a burning hatred for the Unity and its Servants, showed her mercy.

  Cal was right. We were all slaves, mind and body. Our choices, our identities, stolen from us. All of us. Even the killers. Even the true believers. We never had a choice.

  “I wish I could hate you, Grandfather,�
�� she said. “I wish I could kill you for killing Maia. But you don’t know. How could you? It would be so much easier to hate you.” She paused, afraid to utter the words she needed to say. “But I forgive you.”

  “You dare?” Spear spat out a wad of bloody phlegm, between deep, gasping breaths. “You dare to forgive me? I gave you the stars. I should have left you to birth mine rats back in the tunnels. You have no right—no right—to offer me forgiveness. You are a shame to the bloodline.

  “You could have had everything. Everything. Now, you’ll be hunted. Destroyed. You’ll be nothing.”

  “I’ll be free,” she said.

  “Free? Free! Selfish arrogance. Look what it brings. Look around at what your selfishness cost. You could have conquered the stars for Heaven itself. And you choose this . . . this meaningless chaos.”

  From behind, a voice spoke her name. Sabira whirled, palukai ready. From a grank’s weapons platform, a glitchy holo projected Orion as if he was standing there.

  “Whoa whoa,” Orion said, “don’t kill the hologram. You’ll spook the granks. I just got them calmed down.”

  “You really were real.”

  “Orion Ex Machina, at your service. We have to get you all right the fuck out of here. We’re running out of time. Ed needs the cure, and the Monarchy—”

  “Did you do this?” She gestured at the widespread carnage around them.

  “The biomech animals were trickier than I expected,” he said. “Did you know they have two brains? But I got the hang of it. I’ll explain it all back on the Shishiguchi. But right now, we have to get your asses out of this mess.”

  Sabira wanted to scream. She wished she could squeeze his skinny hologram neck. “Are you drilled in the head? What were you thinking? You almost got us all killed. Maia almost . . .” Sabira’s throat clamped tight before she could finish. She remembered the heat of Maia’s chest melting away in a flash, her falling lifeless at her feet.