Drowned by Fire (Tales of a Dying Star Book 4)

by David Kristoph

  "Sir," Pavani said, letting a hint of urgency trickle into her voice, "we need to keep moving."

  Julian rose. He looked terrifying in the interlocking blue plate armor, his black skin hiding his face within his helmet, showing only piercing eyes. For a moment Pavani was certain he was going to throw the Emperor over his shoulder and carry him, regardless of what the God had ordered.

  But then the Emperor began moving, the slow shuffle that was the fastest pace he could manage. The Flameguards jogged ahead, followed by the third Shieldwarden. This time Julian stayed back to guard the rear, letting Pavani move up in front of His Luminance.

  Despite their speed, they somehow stayed ahead of the oncoming men. They passed through two more segments without issue before one of the Flameguards darted to the side of the corridor. Pavani followed her to the wall, where a girl in a pilot uniform was lying on the ground. Her helmet was discarded a few feet away, and her uniform stained black from smoke.

  The Flameguard knelt over the girl, pointing her flame-throwing fingertips with malice.

  Instinctively, Pavani spread her arms wide to activate the shield. The electronic barrier extended to the floor and above her head. The two halves connected in front of her face and behind her head, enveloping the Shieldwarden entirely.

  "Who are you?" Pavani asked, throwing as much menace in her voice as she could. "Are you one of them?"

  The girl looked terrified. If she was one of the Children of Saria she didn't realize what she'd gotten into. "I'm just a pilot, my ship crashed," she said.

  Without looking up, the Flameguard said, "Do you think she's telling the truth?"

  Pavani eyed the girl. The Children had turned young boys and girls into bombs, detonating throughout the flagship during the ceremony. This girl certainly looked too young to be a pilot, especially one elite enough to be brought along with the Exodus Fleet. Every instinct told Pavani to kill the girl.

  But she looked scared, visibly shaking on the floor. Pavani glanced over her shoulder; the Emperor and the others were already safely away, halfway to the next segment. It would hurt nothing to let her live. "Maybe. Can't risk her detonating like those others. Tie her up and let's keep moving."

  Pavani deactivated her shields with a whoosh and sprinted back up the corridor to join the others, ignoring the girl's cries.

  They stopped at the next divider so again the Emperor could rest. Two of the guards with rifles appeared from the doorway, followed quickly by Julian. He pressed a button on the door, closing it.

  Pavani looked around. They were short one Flameguard. "Where's Lucius?"

  "Ignoring my orders," Julian said, nodding back the way they'd come.

  Pavani saw him two hundred feet away, in the middle of the tunnel, near the crates where they'd tied up the pilot. He was jumping and spinning in the air, avoiding the laser blasts that streaked across their vision. Flames shot from his fingertips where he pointed, engulfing the soldiers. Within seconds he'd killed four of them.

  But Lucius stood over the defeated a moment too long, and more laser fire blossomed from the segment beyond. Pavani did not see him struck, but he fell backwards to the ground as if punched in the chest. She thought she could see him writhing on the ground in pain.

  Your oaths. Protect His Luminance. With effort, she pulled her eyes away.

  Julian was arguing with the Emperor: "...could have stayed on the flagship. We were safer there. Out here we're exposed."

  "That's not our flagship anymore," His Luminance declared, pointing. They all turned to look. The Olitau, long and spear-shaped and the size of a city, hung above the moon's surface a short distance away. It drifted across the landscape, the turrets on its underside spraying green lasers across the ground. It was targeting the remaining defensive towers around the shipyard, Pavani realized.

  "My Empire crumbles away, Primeshield," the Emperor said, sadness in his voice. "If anyone truly understands the extent of the rot, it is I. If we had stayed on the Olitau we would have been captured."

  Julian said nothing, stubborn as ever. He grabbed His Luminance by the arm, pulling him along in spite of his protests. The rest followed, falling into the defensive formation.

  My father, Pavani thought as they fled. If the flagship was taken, her father was surely captured with it. Or killed. But they were more likely to capture an Admiral, use him for ransom or leverage. She glanced sideways at her frail God, limping down the corridor. Pavani shook her head. Focus on your task at hand, she could hear her father's voice. The things outside your control should be outside your concern. Eyes forward, not backwards.

  They passed through the next segment unmolested. Pavani stole a glance over her shoulder. Nobody followed them. Had they stopped giving chase? She became immediately suspicious, searching outside the walls at the bleak grey moonscape. It must have been a trick. Had they found a way to flank them, to get around? We should have been overrun by now, she thought. The Emperor has slowed us down, and yet they still haven't reached us.

  Her concerns became muted as they passed through the final barrier, into the Chain's base. It was a massive structure, the size of a small city, geometric glass shapes forming a dome around them. The eight-railed Chain itself emerged from the center of the ceiling, falling through the center of the room and anchoring into the floor ahead of them. From a distance it appeared thin, but in actuality it was thick enough that a hundred men holding hands would be unable to stretch around its circumference.

  Its cars were the size of small buildings, several stories tall and nearly as wide as the Chain itself. Two sat waiting at the base, on opposite rails from one-another.

  That's not what occupied Pavani's gaze, however. A fight had occurred here. A slaughter. The walls were scarred black from laser fire, and red in other places. A body rested in an unnatural position at the far end of the car platform. As they followed the outer wall more bodies came into view. They looked so small--

  Motion at the edge of the room made Pavani whirl. A man came at them, sprinting across the floor. Instantly, Pavani's shield came up, providing an interlocking barrier with Julian's on her left. Two of the Flameguards stepped forward. The guards pointed their rifles.

  The man fell to the floor of his own volition. He rested on his knees, arms extended, prostrating himself forward. "Your Luminance," he cried, "I am relieved at your safety. When the fighting began near the shipyard..."

  Pavani hesitated, but Julian spoke without lowering his shield. "You're the Chain attendant. Lorne. What happened here?"

  Lorne raised his head and froze, eyes on the Flameguards a few steps away, still pointing at him. He seemed unaware that he'd been perceived a threat until that very moment, and the new knowledge froze his tongue. He hesitated, then he leaned back and stood. He was aged, at least sixty years, judging by his white hair and pinched face.

  "It was Victor," Lorne began. "He'd been acting strange all shift. I've worked the Chain every day for four decades. Victor has been with me the last four years. He's a smart lad, but always shirking his duties, stealing away to the office to play games on his computer. That was fine mind you, it didn't hurt anything, especially when we weren't busy. He always came back when a car came into the station, and that's all that truly matters.

  "But today Victor was different. He was nervous, as if he knew a pretty girl was coming on the next Chain car. A girl he was anxious to see, if you follow my meaning. Stayed out here on duty all damn day, never moving, not even to take a break to eat. I'd never seen the boy miss a meal. Well I let him, thinking nothing of it." Pain lay just behind his words, then. "It wasn't my fault, couldn't be my fault, to let the boy pull some extra duty. I thought he was showing some initiative. I helped when the car came in, but once the work was done I let him stay out there alone to watch the passengers exit."

  "Lorne, if you please..." Julian said, but the old man continued.

  "Well I was back eating my own meal when I heard a blast. I thought it was one of the hydraulic motors
giving out, which would have given us a real delay today, but that's when I saw him. He was shooting them! Women and little boys, just a few of the last families coming to join the Exodus Fleet. Victor shot them where they stood, shot them dead. I grabbed my own rifle, and... well..." He looked around at the Emperor's retinue, his pleading eyes finally stopping on Pavani. "What would you do? If you saw someone killing children, wouldn't you do anything you could to stop them? Even if they were your friend?

  "Well, I stopped him alright. And when he was dead, one of the small boys he'd been shooting at came out of the Chain car and charged me. He glowed green, like a leaf, and exploded before my very eyes. Knocked me across the room, spreading green residue all over. Those boys and girls were bombs. Victor had been defending me. Victor was doing what he had to do, and I killed him for it."

  He began weeping, but none of the Shieldwarden or Flameguards moved. There was a genuineness to the man, but Pavani remained suspicious. She'd seen enough treachery that day to not trust anyone, no matter how harmless they seemed.

  The Emperor was the one to finally speak. "Anything done with pure intent is holy. Tell me, Lorne, are you a loyal servant of the Empire?"

  The man wiped his eyes, sniffling. "Of course, Your Luminance."

  "Then your actions are forgiven." He said the words simply, a matter of fact.

  Lorne stared for a moment, his eyes watering anew. Then he threw himself prostrate again, mumbling praise and thanks.

  "Can you help us operate the car?" Julian asked. "We need to return to Melis, now."

  "Aye," Lorne said, shaking off whatever emotion he'd felt. "I'm not a usual car attendant, but the others are all gone, and I know what to do."

  "Then let's go."

  They marched into the closest car, Pavani eying the man suspiciously. The entrance room was mostly open space, furnished simply, with doors leading to sleeping quarters and cleanliness rooms.

  They led the Emperor to a chair, while Lorne went to a control pedestal in one corner. Within seconds the door closed and the car was moving. It passed through the electronic shield that protected the interior of the Chain station from the vacuum of space. Suddenly the car was outside, in the black.

  As the car climbed their view of the moon improved. All laser fire had ceased by the shipyard, the Olitau flagship hovering above the Latean surface ominously. The Chain car held no weapons, no shields or armor to protect them. All the flagship would need to do was travel a few thousand feet and fire upon them. Pavani tried not to think about that.

  But it stayed in place, unmoving. Did that mean the Children of Saria no longer controlled it? Had the fanatics seized its bridge momentarily, only to have it recaptured by Empire loyalists? There was hope for her father, if so.

  A light began illuminating the outline of Melis. Saria, their star, rising behind the planet. Pavani looked back down: they'd climbed high enough along the Chain that she could see down into the tunnel's clear ceiling. A crowd of people stood against the wall, two segments from the Chain's base. The Children who had followed them, shooting at them. She knew they prayed three times a day: dawn, noon, and dusk. Had they stopped to pray, accepting this as the closest thing to dawn as the moon received? Had the Emperor been saved by the very fanaticism that drove the Children to arms against him?

  "Uhh..." said Lorne, bent over his computer terminal. "There's something strange here."

  Julian looked up. "What is it?"

  "A video message, relayed from the Ancillary." The Ancillary was the space station that orbited close to their star, harvesting power from the solar ring before relaying it deeper into the system by laser. Pavani's sister, Beth, worked as an engineer on the station. She rose from the Emperor's side, joining him at the terminal.

  "What's strange about that?" she asked.

  "Well," Lorne began, "normally nothing. We get messages from them all the time before they relay their power to the acceptance station here on Latea. But they normally come from Javin, the Custodian of the station. The signature on this message..." he trailed off, pressing a button.

  The video began playing.

  A man's face filled the screen. Or at least, what should have been a face. The man bore a severe deformity: the left half of his face was metal instead of flesh, the skin pulled tight and puckered where it connected down the middle. His right eye stared calmly, but his left eye, red and electronic, darted around randomly as if controlled by something else.

  "This is the Ancillary power station. Who I am does not matter. This station has been taken by hostile forces. The transfer laser has been realigned. We are under duress, and cannot move it back into proper position." The transfer laser is what sent the stored energy deeper into the system, where it would strike a collection panel there on Latea.

  Another voice spoke from outside the view. "Tell them. They need to know."

  The electronic man held up a hand to stop him. "We calculated the repositioning. The laser will strike the base of the Chain on Latea."

  Taken by hostile forces. Beth. Pavani almost blurted out a question, asking if her sister remained unharmed, but then she remembered it was only a recording.

  The man leaned forward toward the camera, his red eye finally stopping. "We did not know. Again, we only acted under duress. Please, evacuate the Chain of all personnel while you can."

  The screen went blank.

  "What did the message say?" the Emperor asked from across the room. He rested his head back in his chair, eyes closed.

  Everyone stared at the screen. Finally Julian spoke. "That's impossible."

  "What is?" Pavani asked.

  "Realigning the transfer laser. The coordinate change would have been noticed at the acceptance station. Someone there would have seen it and raised an alarm, unless..." he trailed off. Unless they're traitors too. It would have seemed impossible mere hours ago, but just then it was entirely too plausible.

  The Children in the tunnel. The way they had chased, just enough to push them... "They were herding us," Pavani realized out loud. "They wanted us here, in the Chain."

  Julian shook his head. "Why kill us in the Chain when they could have done it down below?"

  Lorne cried out, pointing. They all turned their heads, including the two other Shieldwardens and the pair of Flameguards. Visible out the car window a line of blue streaked across the blackness of space, striking Latea in the distance. The transfer laser.

  Everyone spoke all at once.

  "Can we return to the surface?" Julian asked.

  "Escape pods?" Pavani said. "What does the car have?"

  "Primeshield!" one of the Flameguards called. "Primeshield, what do we do?"

  The thick, blue laser slowly moved across the moon. They had less than a minute.

  Lorne's face lit up. "I know somewhere safer than the car." His fingers moved over the computer terminal, and the car jolted to a halt. Pavani felt her stomach lurch as the car began descending again.

  "We have enough time to return?" she asked.

  Lorne grunted, "No, not by a long shot."

  Julian rounded on the man. "Then why are we--"

  The car shuddered, stopping again. Lorne darted toward the back of the car, yelling, "Follow me!" over his shoulder.

  Julian wrapped an arm around the Emperor and led him away, the others following close behind. Pavani took one last look at the laser, which was crossing the moonscape with incredible speed and would reach them within seconds, before joining the others.

  Lorne led them through one of the supply closets containing boxes of dehydrated food and other essentials for the two-day journey. He knelt at the back of the pantry, working at something against the wall Pavani could not see. A moment later he tossed aside a metal grate.

  "In here." And with that, the aged engineer disappeared.

  Pavani didn't understand where he'd gone at first, until the others began to follow. One by one they disappeared until she was alone with His Luminance and Julian. A maintenance corridor, or air
vent, or something like that lay open on the wall, leading into darkness.

  Julian appeared torn. "We need to get somewhere safer," he said, his arm still around the Emperor. "We should--"

  The explosion sent them to the floor. The lights inside the car went out. The darkness of the air vent wasn't so intimidating, then. "Let's go!" Pavani yelled, because there was not much else they could do.

  Julian helped the Emperor to his knees, and the God crawled on all fours into the vent, with Julian close behind. Pavani joined them, her armored shoulders nearly too wide to fit. She did not suffer claustrophobia the way some did, but just then she understood the fear all too clearly.

  The floor beneath her hands and knees began to shake. "Faster," called Lorne from deeper inside, "I need to close the hatches. You need to be through now."

  A new light glowed, the source somewhere behind Pavani, a terrible orange and red. She hurried as fast as she could in the tight space, the Primeshield's feet right in front of her. They passed over an indentation in the vent, and then another. The vent material on the new side felt different, somehow. Pavani was too hurried to care.

  The glow behind her brightened. Someone screamed, and then Pavani was thrown against the wall.

  Chapter 8

  The light abruptly faded, returning them to darkness. Pavani blinked, willing her eyes to adjust. After a moment she saw a faint glow ahead, and the soft sound of voices. She crawled the rest of the way until the vent suddenly ended.

  A tall, cavernous space opened before her. Pavani stopped at the edge, peering down: the space was shaped like a tall cylinder, ending at a flat floor twenty feet below. Above her it extended forever, or at least so far that she could not see where it ended. The members of their group stood on a walkway that ran around the wall in a circle.

  We've left the car. We're inside the center of the Chain.