The Shivered Sky

by Matt Dinniman

  Moloch's room was much bigger than Rico originally thought, and the moment he stuck his head in, he felt that time resumed back to normal, not slowed down like in the other room. Moloch had another bar in here, filled with bottles of different colored liquids, and a large, flat bed. Blood stained the sheets.

  The monitors dominated the wall. About one hundred fifty small, round ones, all surrounding a rectangular main screen the size of a two-meter long wide-screen television. At the head of his bed was an open touch-screen panel that glowed and blinked with hundreds of lights.

  “Listen,” Rico said. But he stopped when his eye caught the main screen, depicting a heated battle between Dahhak and Kostchtchie inside of some building. The demons fought hand-to-hand.

  “Look,” Hitomi said, “almost all of them are on people. Like the cameras are inside their eyes or they're wearing spy glasses.”

  Rico tried to take in scene after scene. A majority of the screens depicted people on various transports, tightly packed and huddled together. One monitor constantly switched from a Dahhak temple floor to another and another, cycling through all of them in succession. These weren't on a human, but affixed to a wall. Most of these were just empty rooms, but every once in a while there would only be white noise or a scene of fire.

  “What's that?” Gramm asked, pointing to a camera on the edge of the cluster.

  Hitomi examined the touch screen panel. She put down her finger and dragged it across. The image on the main monitor switched over.

  “The camps,” Rico whispered.

  Rico had heard plenty about them, but he never had the opportunity to see them. The view was from a human standing in a long line with others. In the distance, transports landed several at a time. Humans poured out of them, being prodded into long lines by Shishi and Pazuzu. There was no sound, but all the demons wore strange headgear. Many of the humans held their hands to their head, many on their knees in obvious pain. Blood and liquid freely flowed from the ears of the others.

  “What's wrong with them? What's going on?” Gramm asked.

  The camera holder turned his or her head, revealing a scene of complete terror. Even though Rico despised the angels, the panorama before him now turned his stomach.

  “No,” Gramm said, covering his mouth.

  “Moloch told me they can't kill all the angels because it will upset the balance, so they keep them here,” Rico whispered. He couldn't stop looking at the screen. He knew it stretched for over a hundred square kilometers.

  Each angel was spread out on a rectangular metal rack with a metal cover locking over their torsos. A spike pierced each hand and foot, and the wisps of their wings were stuck, wrapped around their bodies. A final restraint was welded around their necks, permanently affixing them to the rack. They couldn't move at all. Then the whole thing was slid feet first into a slot of a great vice that could hold several hundred of them vertically. The closer to the center of the camp one got, the higher the machines rose.

  Several secondary machines snaked in and around the closely-packed stockades. One administered random electrical shocks to avert thinking processes, and another sprinkled a medicinal dust about them to heal them of the festering wounds about their bodies. Though it did little more than keep them from falling off the edge.

  “They hold their ears because of the angels,” Gramm said. “The sound of one angel in pain is unbearable. I can't imagine how this many sound.”

  Hitomi had tears on her cheeks.

  Something else gave Rico pause. What were all the humans doing there?

  “They're being sent into that building,” Rico said out loud. “Why? What is it?”

  They watched as the person with the camera walked, then crawled through the mud and rain along the line until he got to the round metal building. Several of the people around him tried to flee, but the guarding Pazuzu shoved them back, or lashed out with their claws, touching the humans on their faces. Their deaths were sickening.

  Inside the building were more demons. The door behind them closed, and the cameraman looked around wildly. Then he began to fall, the floor gone. He grasped onto the leg of a Kostchtchie and looked down at the fire that consumed all those who had been around him in line. The demon, using its own wings to hover, hit the human in the head with its gun, and he let go. A moment later, nothing but white noise.

  “Shit,” Rico said. He looked around the monitors again. Scene after scene humans were on transports, some already landed, being put in line. “They're killing them all.”

  Moloch wouldn't allow this. He had to be told, but Rico had no way of contacting him if he wasn't here. He ran out of the room, found the shelf that contained the other periscepter and grabbed it. He also picked up a Pazuzu gun from the weapons wall, rushing back into Moloch's room. He shoved the big gun into Gramm's hands.

  “We can't let this continue,” Rico said. Moloch would thank him. Hitomi already had out her periscepter. Gramm nodded fearfully after a moment.

  “You take us there, I'll bring us back,” Rico said.

  “We gotta do this right,” Gramm said. “We need ear protection. And we gotta come in at the right place.”

  “Okay,” Rico said, scrambling around, looking for something to use for their ears. “We gotta hurry.

  “Here,” Rico said. They had several of the angel helmets in the chest where he kept the supplies for his training. They were battered, but they would work. And they could use them to talk to one another.

  “These are too big,” Gramm said, pulling one over his head.

  “They adjust automatically.” Rico slid his over his head, and the interior padding quickly molded to his features. All the exterior sounds were immediately cut off, a moment later resuming, but filtered through the helmet. The angels, at their best, were superior to the demons when it came to this sort of thing. But as Moloch once pointed out, almost all angel technology was gleaned from human scientists and engineers.

  “We ready?” Gramm asked, studying a monitor intently. His words sounded odd through the filter. Even though they didn't know the exact location of the camp, he could bring them there if he had a good picture of it in his head.

  “Let's go,” Hitomi said. She had her helmet on. It looked as if it was devouring her head.

  “Ready.”

  * * * *

  Much time passed as the Overseers alighted. The ones who had already landed began marching off into the wall and toward the battle. Slowly but surely. Neither beast nor Overseer seemed pleased to be out in the rain. Those with the feathered headdresses had to abandon them quickly as they weighed them down.

  The third line of transports were finishing up. There was only one more line behind it. Each row stretched down far, probably about 400 ships per line. And each massive multi-leveled transport could normally carry about 1200 Overseers each, but probably had less than half that with the inclusion of the Vangs. The lines and lines of mounted demons continued to slosh past Ko and through the wall. Ko noted with disgust some of the Overseers had bulging pouches at the front of their armor. They were packs to carry humans with easy access to their pleasure nodes. Already, the heavy stench of the Vangs filled the air, and the ground was muddied with their excrement.

  It began to dawn on Ko that this just couldn't be, even though he was witnessing it himself. When he had to leave the Overseer world—which was one of three staging worlds for the initial assault on the angel realm—the Overseers had required the reading of several poems before the ships could depart. It had taken hours. And the actual loading of the ships took longer than the unpacking.

  They got here too fast.

  Either they were planning on an assault of their own already, which Ko doubted, or they somehow knew this was going to happen. But if that was the case, why didn't they warn their own? It simply didn't make sense. Unless....

  “Captain,” Ko cried. “Captain, we need to speak immediately.”

  Captain was standing nearby conversing with a Nidhogg commander.
Both had their weapons slung over their shoulders. He turned slowly to the Geyrun. He looked irritated.

  “What is it?”

  Behind him, the fourth row of ships finally finished pulling up, their massive jaws all opening simultaneously.

  From the belly of this final row of ships came the Dahhak. Black death filling the dark sky like bats.

  “Ambush,” Ko screamed, firing his weapon over the captain's shoulder and at the maw of a transport. Dahhak and metal exploded. Ko looked back, and the line of Overseers headed for the entrance to the city suddenly turned, facing the Footies trapped between them and the ether. The Asag artillery suddenly became very accurate, too. Up and down the thin strip of land, the Sedim guns began to explode.

  The Overseers charged, firing their weapons, cutting them to pieces. Above, the Dahhak rained blasts down on them while maintaining wide gaps in their spaces for the Asag artillery. The winged Sedim and many of the Shishi burst up to meet them, but they were terribly outnumbered, and the Dahhak weren't hindered at all by the rain.

  “Focus on the Overseers and get out of here,” Captain screamed.

  Ko didn't have time to think about how or why this was happening. His helmet didn't automatically target Overseers, so he uttered the command to switch it to manual.

  An Overseer with three human pouches barreled down on Ko and Tix. Ko aimed his gun and fired. It was like smashing rotten fruit with a hammer. He aimed at another Overseer, then another. Screaming the whole time as fire and water rained.

  “Come on, Ko!” Captain yelled as he and the others scrambled up the muddy rock. A thick line of Overseers blocked the entrance to the city, but they were not battle disciplined, and they fell back. Overhead, the Dahhak had already dispatched the onslaught of winged Footies and were swooping down, strafing the retreating soldiers.

  Captain's chest exploded in a red mass, falling over only feet from Ko.

  “Nooooo,” Ko roared, flipping over and firing wildly into the air. The Dahhak scattered, some flying right into the blast radius of an Asag artillery shell.

  Of his platoon, he could only find Tix now. All around him, soldiers grappled with swooping Dahhak or were fighting for their lives against Vang charges. The mud ran red, and he had trouble keeping his footing.

  The Dahhak were mostly ignoring Ko. Perhaps they thought he was with the Overseers. He didn't know. He used it to his advantage, firing death into the air whenever a group of Dahhak got too close to one another.

  “If we break past the Overseers, we can make it to our side,” Tix yelled.

  Ko aimed his gun at the jagged archway above the exit. The uneven rocks that had been carved out by the Dominion shattered and fell on the Overseers below as Tix sent several blasts at them. The Vangs panicked, bucking off the Overseers, sending a chain reaction.

  “Go!” Tix called. She launched herself into the air, corkscrewing, strafing fire at the bewildered Overseers. She cut through several. Their cries of pain rose like miniature explosions. Ko sent a blast through to finish them off.

  Ko couldn't move fast, but he went as quickly as he could. A small group of wet Daityas, Nidhogg, and Kostchtchie huddled together as they squeezed through. Ko became disoriented as they emerged back out to the landing area. The transports they had used to get here were all bombed out and burning. Ko spun around, trying to figure out where to go. The red flag of Moloch flapped over the transportation depot, but it looked like the mechanics and workers had burned most of the inventory before they were overrun. All around, Overseers struggled with their steeds.

  Above and to the north, a full Pazuzu division filled the sky. In battle formation, they were like a net spread across the heavens. But even at this distance, Ko could see they were unsure of themselves in the rain.

  “That way!” Ko called to Tix, but his Shishi friend was nowhere. He turned, and looked away in horror at the sight of her body being rent apart by two riderless Vangs.

  “Where to?” a Daityas asked. The tall demon was speaking to him.

  “This way!” Ko called. “Under the approaching Pazuzu.”

  They found cover behind a stout building as the battle moved to the sky. It had a wide awning, and it offered meager protection from the rain. There were only fifty of them, most carrying wounds. All the officers were gone.

  The whole thing had been an ambush. The Asag to lure them in, the Overseers to trap them, and finally the Dahhak to kill them. They had been decimated. Two whole regiments, maybe more, reduced to fifty soldiers.

  The Overseers had betrayed them.

  “I no longer have a home,” Ko suddenly said. Next to him, a Kostchtchie put a webbed hand on his shoulder.

  “You fought well,” he said. “You carved our path to freedom.”

  Ko had just raised a weapon in anger against the masters of his own world. The Overseer nation would have expected him to immediately turn on the Dominion and take up arms alongside the giant demons. If it became known he had slain several, his bank accounts would be seized, his family executed.

  He put his face into his hand.

  * * * *

  An instant later they were there, the landing not nearly as rough as when Rico did it. Gramm had placed them in a small space where three storage towers of angel prisoners met. It was the metallic backside of the mechanisms, and the angel stacks were on the other side. The rain still found even this narrow place, and the water collected here, up to Rico's ankles.

  Even through the helmet Rico could hear the angels, though the agonized wail was distant. It shook his entire body. The noise made the very ground rumble, and when he touched the metal tower, it was vibrating with a tortured energy. And the smell. The helmet did nothing to block that. It smelled like the dumpster behind the tocineria.

  “There aren't that many of them,” Gramm said. “They're just spread out.”

  “Maybe we can free some angels. They can help us,” Hitomi said.

  “No,” Rico said.

  Rico jumped from the space. They wouldn't be able to blend in here, not with the helmets. All around him were angels, clamped in the restraining devices. Eyes rolled back into their heads or clenched shut against the rain. Their mouths were open, emanating their painful shrieks. They were packed here like animals. He felt sorry for them. No one deserved this, not even treacherous angels.

  Hitomi fell in beside him. A line of jailers stood only a hundred meters away, but their backs were turned. Beyond, more transports landed by the moment, but the pilots weren't sticking around. After they spilled their belly of the humans, they took off again, leaving the humans on the ground writhing in pain until they were gathered up.

  “Wait until this last transport lands. Then get them all. After, I watch our back. Gramm, you strafe the sides,” Rico said.

  “Be careful,” Hitomi said.

  “Wait a second,” Gramm whispered frantically. “We haven't thought this out enough. What're we gonna do after? Most of them are deaf by now. How are we going to communicate? Where are we going to go? We can't take all of them back with us.”

  “I don't know,” Rico said. He didn't like having to think that far in advance.

  “I have an idea,” Hitomi said.

  They didn't have time to discuss it further. A Shishi looked back over its shoulder and looked right at them. Before it had the chance to scream, Rico and Hitomi simultaneously lit them up. Up and down the line of humans, the demons around them died. Rico flashed his light at the cockpit of the transports on the ground.

  They rushed forward. The ching ching ching of Gramm's gun constantly rang.

  “Above,” Gramm called. Rico swept the light over his head. A shadow of something tumbled away, spraying blood.

  Rico ran forward to the metal building and ripped open the door, shining his light inside. Behind him, Hitomi was shouting something at the people. He turned, and they were still trying to push their way past him and into the door.

  “No,” Rico cried. “No, stop! It's only death in there. Don
't go in.”

  “They want to go,” said Gramm over the radio.

  Rico pulled the door shut, searching for a way to lock it, but the mass just pushed it open. He grabbed the closest man by the robes, pulling him to his chest. “Stop, you idiot,” Rico yelled. But the man cried, blood on his shoulders.

  The people piled into the room, but thankfully whatever mechanism opened up the bottom trap was out of reach. They searched the walls like madmen, scratching.

  Hitomi mopped up with her light. Not a single shot had been fired their way.

  Gramm tried to shoo them away, coax them into running. A few did, especially those who had just gotten there. Most were still on their knees, hands clenched to their heads.

  Then Rico saw that Hitomi had pulled an angel free. She had gotten the torso lock off but was struggling with a spike in the hand. Six of the deafened slaves jumped forward. She let them take over while she covered them.

  “No,” Rico yelled. He shot his light at a group of Shishi rounding the corner of a containment tower about two hundred meters away. His stomach burned. “Don't free the angels. We don't have time.”

  “We can't leave them like this,” Hitomi called. They had the hands and feet free, but the angel's neck was still welded down. A balding man picked up a gun from one of the fallen demons. He expertly switched it on, lowering it to a welding arc. The metal restraint was off in moments. The angel sprang forth. Hitomi flashed it with her light, and it seemed to invigorate it. Its wings began to glow a little more.

  Instead of flying off like Rico would have expected, it began to help the humans free a second angel. Then a third and a forth. The more that joined the effort, the faster it went.

  A new group of transports landed, and Rico flashed light into the cockpits. Only thirty of the demon weapons were available for removing the welds on the angel restraints, and they were all in use. They set up a quick disassembly line. Every angel who could move helped. The others rested on the ground as Hitomi washed them with the light.