by Ren Garcia
"Jump off, Captain! Jump!" he cried, seeing his life coming to an end.
Davage put his arms around Carahil's large neck and did the only thing he could do—he Wafted.
Poof!
He re-emerged about a hundred feet from where he previously was, and Carahil was with him. He felt no strain, no heart-pounding exhaustion he expected to feel trying to Waft such a huge creature along with him. The Silver tech, he thought, it flows through his body. It must have properties favorable to Wafting.
Thoughts began to flood into his mind; possibilities began to unfold.
He looked down far below. He could see the black Shadow tech hordes, but nothing else. He Sighted. There standing in his Sight were five Black Hat Painters, calmly controlling their hideous creations as though they were simply watching some sort of horrible theatre. No Sten, no nothing—wide open, confident in their illusion's invincibility.
"Carahil!" Davage shouted. "It's time we impose this fight upon the pupetmasters instead of the puppets! Are you game?"
"I see nothing but the dark masses below!"
"They are there, hidden under a Painted Cloak. Will you stand with me?"
"I will go where you will! I stand with you, Captain!" he shouted, ready.
With that, Davage Wafted.
He emerged about twenty feet from a Black Hat. Again, she stood there, unmoving.
In a moment, Carahil was upon her.
Davage swung his CARG. The Black Hat fell headless. Davage had just killed her. He had no choice; the Shadow tech had to go.
Another Black Hat, standing there shocked by this development …
Another swing of his CARG. Another Black Hat fell. The Painted Cloak came down, its creator now dead.
A third, enraged, lifted her arm to Point.
Swing, dead. Three Black Hats dead in as many seconds. He looked to the heights. A great many of the Shadow tech creatures were capering about, insensate. Many stumbled off the side of the temple; others were blasted off with silver. Some separated into a smoky mist and drifted to the ground.
In a moment, a wall of Hulgismen sprang as if from out of nowhere and Carahil flew right into them, knocked to the ground in a living tangle. There was a confusion of slashing arms and legs, and soon he was standing once again on the flat dirty plain of Metatron in a mass of people. Sighting and swinging his CARG, he fought with all of them at once and none at the same time. He recalled his lance and let it fly.
Hulgismen fell. He knew not how many. He could hear Carahil, roaring somewhere behind him, battling the Hulgismen.
Where were the last two Black Hats? He had to engage them. He could not give them pause to regroup, to recover from this shocking indignity, and improvise a plan.
For the people in that temple, they had to die.
The Hulgismen were taking their toll on him. They clawed and pummeled, and they slashed him with dirty blades dripping with Shadow tech Nyke poison. He guessed he was probably Nyked hard, fatally so.
A few more Hulgismen fell, and a few, bloody and mangled, were tossed forward by Carahil who faced their fury with a fury of his own. There, standing a few feet away, were the other two Black Hats, and what they were doing shocked Davage to his core.
They were retreating, hobbling away. With no clear lines of battle, no Sisters, no fealty from their foes, they had no idea what to do, how to fight. A moment later, in a blast of smoke, they Wafted away and were not seen again.
Elsewhere, farther down the battlefield, three more Black Hats, the last on the field, stood like three red statues.
Davage readied himself to Waft to them.
In a flash, the remaining Silver Warriors, eight in all, and a riderless seal following Davage's example raged down on them, fighting close, giving them no space.
Silver flashed; a Black Hat fell. The last two then Wafted away, leaving their Hulgismen and their black creations to their fate.
They were beaten.
Before long, the remaining Hulgismen were dead and the Shadow tech creatures made unsubstantial, though their combined cloud lingered around the temple as a sooty fog.
Davage stood there on their plain, the pain of his wounds aching. Soon the Silver Warriors were all around him, roaring with ecstasy, discharging their weapons into the bleak sky, shaking their gauntleted fists
"Look to Captain Davage, there, I had said from the heights!" Durman shouted. "Look how he fights! Now we have victory!"
Amid the clamor, he looked up at the Silver Temple. The hole was gone—sealed. Instead of retreating back inside, the Silver Warriors chose to stay outside and fight. He couldn't help but admire them.
A large door opened in the base of the temple, and Drusilla and an armored contingent of females came out, all holding weapons.
Durman told Drusilla what had happened. She ran to Davage and embraced him, knocking his CARG from his hand and sending him into the dust with her on top. The Nyke in his wounds was starting to work; he was losing strength.
"You are truly heaven-sent!" she cried.
"The Shadow tech that entered the temple, what came of them?" Davage asked.
"They threatened the central village, and we held them at bay for a brief time. Then they simply faded into smoke," she said.
From high overhead, a long lance of energy hit the temple walls with a crack.
Cassagrains, from the cloaked Ghome transports.
Davage Sighted. He could see about twenty of them, blundering about.
He then saw something else, something far away in the sky but rapidly approaching.
He smiled.
Behind him, in the streets of Metatron's lower quarter to the south, came an ugly roar.
He turned.
Rising up into the empty sky was a monstrous thing—a roughly man-shaped creature that looked like it was composed of mud and clotted blood. It grew and grew until it stood head and shoulders taller than the surrounding buildings, at least three thousand feet tall.
The Dark Thing that had come out of the Black Hat's arm, the thing he had fought, beheaded, and neutered. There it was, now huge and terrible—fully formed again.
Davage looked up at the towering black monster. It swayed in the dull heights. It began greedily looking around. It trawled the craggy streets and alleys of the city beneath it, apparently not interested in them for the moment.
It spied something and roared with evil delight. It reached down and grabbed, clutching with its terrible hand. It then rose, something held fast.
Curious, Davage Sighted it. Clutched in its disgusting paw was a tiny, struggling bit of red.
A Black Hat, one of the ones who fled the field.
The black creature had its priorities—first, punish the Black Hats who had been defeated and make them suffer. Time enough to deal with the Silver Rabble later.
It needled her for a moment in his palm and then devoured her tiny form. Davage had the feeling that that wasn't the end, that she will live in its belly, tormented.
It began trawling the streets again, looking for the other three, homing in on their darkness. It walked to the west, smashing all in its path as it did so, a rising plume of dust and crushed stone trailing it. It found another Black Hat, clapped her in his hand to stun her, and then threw her tiny body up into the air. Several seconds later she came back down and splashed into the shallow waters of the bay. Searching for her, he picked her dripping body up, shook it, and ate her.
Davage had seen enough. He knew what was about to happen here. He stood up. Drusilla stood and picked up his CARG with both hands.
"Drusilla, you must to your control tower, engage your engines, and suffer this place no more."
"We cannot break free of the darkness. It will hold us fast!"
"Leave that to me. I will break the hold, and you must away."
Drusilla stood there, holding hiss CARG. "Are we to never see you again, sir?"
"You've the heavens to explore, Drusilla. You've your dreams to make real."
&n
bsp; "And if, in the landscape of my dreams, I see nothing but you?"
She pushed her helmet up and away from her eyes. "Come with us. Think of all we could share together—what we could create, the two of us! Think of what we could mean to each other!"
"I cannot, and you know that. But, rest assured, I will never forget you."
Drusilla stood there with his CARG, giving him "that look" again.
"I will tell your Mother of what I have seen here, of what was wrought with her blood, of the courage and honor that was nurtured from her light. I will tell her of her children and how they stood here in this place, all alone, and turned back all the vileness the Black Abbess could muster."
Tears dripped from Drusilla's eyes. "And you, no longer a creature of myth and lore … not a god, but a living Elder-born man, brave and true. And how the lore of the god pales before the truth of the man."
Another cassagrain hit the side of the temple.
"Hurry, Drusilla."
With that, she took one last pleading look, dropped his CARG, and ran toward the temple, holding her face in her hands.
Carahil was still at his side. He could see Davage was in distress, the Nyke building.
"Are you all right, Captain?"
"I'm fine. You should get yourself inside and make ready to launch, my friend."
He was not fine, the Nyke … He looked at Carahil for a moment, concerned that he might be Nyked too. He seemed fine. The Silver tech within him must have counteracted it.
Carahil sniffed him. "I can smell poison within you, Captain. Please, come into the temple and let Drusilla help you."
"There is no help for me here, my friend. Only the Sisters can save me. Go, return to the temple and make ready to depart."
Carahil regarded him with those large, bright eyes. "I've no words, sir … for this day. I … never believed in answered prayers, but here you are." He shuffled his whiskers, his big, bright eyes appearing sad. "Fare thee well, god who fell from the sky and became a man, who became an honored friend and then became a god again," he said finally.
"Speed well, and please—tell Drusilla she is her Mother's image, in both body and spirit, and tell her that, should circumstances have been different, I would have gladly shared her dreams with her," Davage said, patting him on the back, and Carahil was gone, flying at a high speed back into the temple.
He watched the transports blunder about in the sky, slowly circling the temple, taking pot shots at it. The sheer size of the temple minimized the damage, but still, eventually the shots would take effect. To the south, the Dark Man rumbled about in a racket of destruction, chasing down the remaining Black Hats—his echoing laughter filling the night.
The walls of the temple began to thrum and flash. The ground began to tremble. The temple was readying for launch.
He had promised he would free them. To do that he needed the Seeker, which he knew was ready to soar into view any moment now. He'd seen it … He'd seen it.
12
LT. KILOS
Kilos stood at her station on the bridge. Even though she was in command, she still stood near her familiar OPS panel, though a crewman manned it—she felt most comfortable there. Syg was nearby, sitting sheepishly in Dav's chair.
Ahead in the viewer, Ergos's lopsided bulk grew larger and larger.
Dav was down there. Her mentor and Captain. Her friend.
Dav …
She remembered how it all began, almost ten years ago.
* * * * *
She stepped off the old shaky transport New Providence holding her Marine duffel bag, and spilled, with all the other chattering, disembarking passengers, into the village of Blanchefort—a craggy, colorful seaport squeezed in between the sea and a frighteningly steep range of spiny mountains that spread into the vast interior of the continent. She was wearing her Marine uniform, red coat, thick white pants, tall black boots, and black cap, yet she shivered. She had heard Blanchefort, situated way far to the gray Kanan north of Vithland, was a cold place—cold enough to chill you to the bone if you weren't ready for it.
And she was cold—real cold.
She was from Tusck, a city in the warm sunny south of Onaris. Tusck was a dark, mouthy, urban bit of stone surrounded on three sides by a continent's worth of golden fields and farms, warm sands and rural simplicity.
She was a Brown, all of her family was Brown, her whole town was Brown.
What was a Brown? A Brown, in the traditional sense, was an Elder with virtually no Vith, Remnath or Zenon heritage—Onaris tending to have a higher concentration of Browns than Kana, the traditional home of those three favored tribes. People from Tusck tended to have large, soothing brown eyes and thick brown hair that easily faded to a golden blonde in the sun. Browns, having no Vith ancestry, had no Gifts. They were Giftless and were accordingly looked down upon by the Bluer Elders. They were generally poor. They rarely owned land, and they never had titles in front of their names.
Her hamlet was under the fealty of a Blue Lord, the House of Pittsfield of the Calvert line. He was a man who was rarely there in his manor on the hill near the sea. It stood unoccupied. He rarely interfered in their lives or caused them distress, but he rarely showed any interest in them either. His usual feudal duties were left undone or charged to poorly paid Brown clerks who were backed up in red tape by the years.
She was the eleventh daughter of a crowd of twenty-three brothers and sisters. Having little else, Browns often had huge families. A litter of twenty-three was actually a modest load. Ki was a smallish, pretty girl as a child, but her golden, smiling face hid a rough, quick temper—a feature that reared up and plagued her throughout her life. She frequently got into dust ups with the urchins and weedy lot that frequented her country hamlet in the shadow of Tusck. A boy about her age from down the lane often assisted her in these child-to-child brawls. They became friends, went to school together, and swam in the blue streams and creeks. Even as the boy stopped growing at a smallish size and Kilos continued until she was head and shoulders taller, they remained constant companions. Eventually they married in a small private ceremony in the Brown tradition.
Itemless, penniless, they struggled to make a life for themselves, often moving from place to place tending fields, picking the coffee that was all the rage in Kanan League society, cobbling roads, building walls, or doing whatever was available. Her husband dreamed of going to school, to the big university in Tusck. They had no money to pay for the schooling, and as Lord Pittsfield was never around, they could not receive a Letter of Honor, a merit grant on the credit of the Lord to attend for free for those students who showed promise, and Ki's husband appeared to be a born scholar.
And she so wanted to send her husband to school, to make his dreams come true. Drastic measures were required.
Being married, she couldn't join the Hospitalers—a sect always eager to accept Browns. Having little other choice and being a tall, strong girl, Kilos did the only real thing she could … she joined the Stellar Marines. She wanted to send her husband to school, and though it meant they would be apart for long stretches of time, she was willing to do it.
The Marines were her third choice—all things being the same. With the first choice unavailable to her, her second choice was to join the Stellar Fleet, learn a trade, and who knows from there, the Fleet often being a well-spring of opportunity for Blues and Browns alike. But, again—no Lord Pittsfield, no Letter of Recommendation, no Fleet. So, with tears in her brown eyes, she said good-bye to her husband and shipped out of Tusck port to become a Marine.
Being a standard-issue Marine could either be very, very good, or very, very bad. If you served well and if you were assigned to a prominent ship duty—or best of all, if you were selected to serve a squadron assigned to protect a Sister, then being a Marine could be an exciting and profitable experience—penniless Browns who joined could, if things worked out, retire fairly wealthy. And like all Marines, Kilos was taught to speak to the Sisters. It was a wonderful, unique
way of speaking, full of thought and feeling, light and sound. It was no wonder the Marines loved the Sisters like no other.
But if you weren't assigned a ship and you weren't assigned to a Sister, being a Marine was a dreary, humiliating, and often-brutal experience.
And so it was for Kilos. Assigned to a weary garrison in Bustoke, she toiled for several years, breaking up fights in the towns, chasing down petty criminals, even digging trenches, her beautiful red Marine uniform soiled and torn.
Why did Ki have such a hard time? Was she being singled out and shunned for some reason?
Nope—again, her rotten temper and quick fists got the better of her time after time. She punched out her commander while in training. She punched out her jailer while she was in hack for previously hitting her commander. She spent time in the brig for hitting a fellow trainee on Howst during a mercy exercise, of all things. She could never get anything accomplished, never finish anything without a visit to the brig, or worse, to the yard for a session with the sonic lash.
