Damned If You Don't (Chaos of the Covenant Book 5)

by M. R. Forbes

  “Too easy,” Pik said, shifting his aim and firing another burst the dropped three more of the creatures.

  There were so many of them, and they continued pouring into the corridor, bottlenecked by the smaller space and apparently unconcerned with throwing their lives away. They pushed over their fallen counterparts, drawing closer and trying to spring at the Rejects, knocked away and killed by return fire they couldn’t match.

  The Rejects’ advance slowed as the corridor ahead became littered with the dead creatures. Still more of them came, climbing over corpses and trying to attack, drawing fire and collapsing.

  “I’m dry,” Benhil announced, throwing his rifle to the ground.

  “Shit, me too,” Bastion said a moment later.

  Abbey looked ahead. The only enemies attacking them were these frog-like things. But what about that other noise she had heard?

  “Dry,” Phlenel reported.

  “Dry,” Erlan said.

  The volume of fire was slowing as each of the Rejects started running out of ammo. Fortunately, the volume of the enemy was finally decreasing as well.

  Almost in direct proportion to the amount of firepower they were producing.

  Abbey felt a chill run down her spine. Could it be?

  “Cease fire,” she said. “Cease fire.”

  Uriel, Jequn, Phlenel, and Pik stopped shooting immediately. The front line of creatures continued toward them, and Abbey moved forward to meet them, extending her seraphsuit into claws of her own and quickly dispatching the targets.

  No others followed, leaving them standing ahead of a corridor filled with corpses on either side, the floor slick with their blood.

  “Disgusting,” Bastion said.

  “At least we won,” Pik replied.

  Abbey glanced back at them. They hadn’t won a damn thing.

  “It was a trap,” she said.

  “Come again?” Benhil replied.

  “A trap,” she repeated. “Okay, how many rounds do you have left?”

  “Thirty-two, Queenie,” Pik replied.

  “Queenie, are you suggesting these things were intended to absorb our bullets?” Gant asked.

  “Frag me,” Bastion said.

  The secondary cadence Abbey had recognized resumed.

  “Let’s go,” she said, rushing forward, navigating the bodies.

  “We’re still running toward them,” Bastion said. “I can’t believe we’re still running toward them.”

  Abbey gathered the Gift as she ran, spreading it out ahead of her, creating a shield that filled the entire corridor. At first, she moved on without incident, the hallway in front of her clear.

  Then the Gift flared, and for an instant something invisible became visible. It was dark and ugly, wearing armor of some kind and carrying a jagged blade. It pulled back for a moment from the impact with the Gift, and then impossibly passed through.

  “What?” she said as the creature vanished from sight. It reappeared again, directly in front of her, blade raised to strike.

  She barely moved out of the way, slipping aside and bringing her claws around, catching it in the neck and cutting it deep. It howled and vanished again, reappearing a moment later on the ground, dead.

  “Retreat?” Bastion suggested.

  Abbey looked back the other way, throwing her hand out and sending the Gift to the rear of their line. As it extended back, it hit two more of the new creatures, causing them to become visible.

  “Shit,” she said, watching as the targets passed through the shield and vanished again. “Watch your asses.”

  The first of them reappeared beside Trinity. It tried to stab her in the side, its blade skipping off her armor. She returned the attack, slashing at it, but it vanished again, leaving her to strike the air.

  The second came into view beside Uriel. It nearly skewered the Seraphim, but Jequn managed to get her Uin in front of its blade before it could. She spun, quickly cutting it with her other blade before it could disappear again.

  The end of the corridor was right in front of them, leading to a larger room. Abbey swept the Gift out toward it, revealing an entire army of the invisible targets as she did.

  She froze, momentarily unable to breathe. This was bad. Very bad.

  What the hell were these things?

  “I mean, we were in Hell,” Bastion said, his eyes darting back and forth, trying to spot the enemy. “But that wasn’t hell. This is.”

  The target appeared in front of him, its blade coming down on his shoulder. He tried to duck aside, but the weapon bit into his arm, sinking through his lightsuit. He cried out, falling backward onto his rear as the creature moved in for the kill.

  A bullet caught the creature in the head, knocking it back.

  “Why am I the one who always gets stabbed?” Bastion said, clutching at his shoulder.

  She heard Pik grunt, and when she looked, he was holding one of the creatures stuck to the claws of his mechanical arm.

  “Ugly fraggers,” he said, dropping it.

  “We can’t fight what we can’t see,” Trinity said.

  Abbey pulled the Gift back, momentarily revealing the creatures as they moved in. There were at least sixty of them, and they weren’t advancing like bloodthirsty monsters. They were marching in an organized formation.

  Soldiers.

  If the Gift didn’t disrupt their cloaking mechanism, the Rejects would have been dead already.

  “Back up,” Abbey said, sending the Gift out to their rear again.

  They were clear to retreat, but would be slowed by the corpses they had already left behind, a tactic that she was sure had been intentional. But what kind of monster would let so many of their own be wantonly killed?

  “Get behind me.”

  The Rejects did as she ordered, starting to retreat as she moved the Gift forward and back, momentarily revealing the oncoming soldiers as she did. The Rejects fired at them as they became visible, and a handful of the targets fell.

  “Keep shooting,” Abbey said. “Cover fire. Single shots only.”

  They did, each of the armed Rejects taking turns sending single rounds at the enemy, hoping to slow their advance. The bullets sparked when they hit the sides of the corridor, leaving them all stunned again.

  Whatever these things were, they weren’t cloaked. If they were cloaked, the bullets would have hit them. Somehow, impossibly, they were simply gone.

  “Frag, it’s like they aren’t even there,” Benhil said, right before he tripped over one of the dead creatures, falling on top of it. He scrambled to get back to his feet, helped up by Uriel.

  “Now we know why the Seraphim never came back here,” Uriel said.

  The enemy was catching up, drawing close as the Rejects tried to escape. Abbey swept the Gift around them, revealing them only a few meters away. She tried to use it to attack, sending a wave of blue flame out from her hands, but by the time she did they were gone, invisible and impervious to harm.

  “I don’t believe this,” she said, whipping the Gift through them again, causing them to appear.

  “We need to force them to stay visible,” Trinity said.

  “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “The Gift is doing it. How?”

  It was a good question. One she didn’t know the answer to. A mystery she needed to solve, or they were all going to die.

  Or maybe she was thinking about it all wrong. Maybe she couldn’t affect the enemy with the Gift, but there were other ways to use it. The soldiers were closing in. She wasn’t sure if she could save herself, but at the very least she could save her family.

  “Get them out of here,” she said to Trinity, turning her back on the enemy.

  “What?” Trin replied. “Queenie, wait. You can’t.”

  “I have to. Do it.”

  She thrust out her hands, the Gift rocketing forward around her. Trinity was resistant and barely moved, while Gant wasn’t touched at all. The others behind her were swept up by the power, lifte
d and thrown down the corridor.

  “Sorry, Gant,” Abbey said, grabbing his arm.

  “What are you doing?” Gant said.

  “Protecting my family.”

  She physically threw him back, watching as he hit the ground and tumbled back to where the others had landed.

  “Void, go,” she said, finding Trinity still beside her.

  “No,” Trinity replied, standing pat. “You aren’t doing this alone. And you can’t throw me like a Gant.”

  “Fine,” Abbey said. “I can’t stop you.”

  She pulled her hand down, the metal frame of the corridor making a sharp wrenching sound as it was pulled inward, folding and collapsing, creating a passage too small for the enemy to squeeze through. Hopefully, they couldn’t walk through walls.

  “Queenie?” she heard Gant say from the other side. She saw him out of the corner of her eye as she turned back to the enemy, running up to the small opening in the frame and looking through. “Damn it, Queenie. Not again.”

  “Please, Gant,” Abbey said. “Go back to Kett. Help him fight. Save Hayley.”

  “This is bullshit,” Pik bellowed, his fist slamming into the twisted wall. It dented inward but didn’t give way.

  Abbey faced the soldiers, sweeping the Gift through them. One of them appeared directly in front of her, and she barely got out of the way in time to avoid being stabbed, slipping to the side as Trinity skewered the attacker.

  “We can’t go back,” Abbey said.

  “Then we go forward,” Trin replied.

  They bounced ahead at the same time, carried by the strength of their suits and the power of the Gift, leaping fifty meters in a fast, low arc that put them in the center of the army. Soldiers appeared around them as they landed, flashing in and out of existence, making quick strikes as they did. Abbey managed to block two of them, getting her fresh claws up in time, pushing them aside and leaping forward again. Trinity took three strikes against her armor, the blades creating deep marks in the metal but not breaking through. She stabbed one of them before jumping, catching up to Abbey.

  They repeated the process twice more before reaching the larger, open space beyond the corridor, a space that turned out to be an observation deck or some kind. Debris was piled up in the corners, burned and bent and decayed. The floor was stained dark. Blood? To their left, a large, transparent pane revealed space beyond the Shardship, empty and black and lonely. The wall on the opposite side had a large hole in it, jagged and rough with torn wires and conduits.

  Abbey landed, ducking low as the enemy became visible around her. She was ready to defend herself against their attack once more, but this time, curiously, the attack didn’t come. As Trinity landed beside her, the entire army became visible at once, filling the room. Not sixty soldiers but nearly two hundred, all of them holding their blades ready, baring their teeth and hissing.

  “What the frag?” she whispered, holding her claws out, ready to fight.

  “They must have come through that hole,” Trinity said. “It probably leads deeper into the ship.”

  “Then that’s where we’re going.”

  “Through this?”

  “Over it.”

  She tried to jump, to lift herself above the army in the direction of the hole.

  She failed.

  “What the hell?” she said, trying again, and again unable to leave the ground. “Can you jump?”

  “No,” Trinity replied.

  “This isn’t the Gift then?”

  “Not any that I have encountered before.”

  The enemy around them began to move, shifting to the side, creating an aisle from their position to the hole she was trying to reach. Then they all dropped to a knee, placing their blades across their knees and bowing their heads.

  “It appears you aren’t the only royalty on this ship,” Trinity said.

  Abbey faced the hole, switching her posture to one of defiance, joined by Trinity as they waited for whatever was coming to meet them to appear.

  It did a moment later, coming into existence already halfway down the aisle, its form causing Abbey to flinch slightly. It had a massive head, bony and rigid, that angled forward into a smaller face. Long, crooked limbs and oversized hands fed into a narrow torso covered in heavy robes, while its lower half seemed too slight to support it. It was as if someone had taken an Atmo and crossed it with a Plixel.

  It looked down at them with small, black eyes, silent as it approached. The Gift began to tingle beneath Abbey’s skin when it neared, drawing back in fear at the presence of the thing, and at the power that she could suddenly sense surrounding it and them. It reminded her of the Gift, but at the same time it wasn’t the Gift.

  “You are a Queen?” it said, it’s voice entering her head in crisp, clear English.

  Why had it asked her that?

  “Yes,” she replied.

  The creature made a satisfied humming sound. “It has been so long. We are trapped here. We are hungry. You will help us.”

  “Why would I do that?” Abbey asked.

  The creature lifted its hand. Immediately she was in pain so intense that she fell to the ground, leaning over and clutching at her head. A high-pitched whine filled her senses, her shardsuit falling apart around her, the trillions of naniates scattering along the ground at her side.

  “I am your King,” it said, its voice booming in her mind. “You will obey me.”

  Abbey’s body shivered, and she raised her head to the creature, naked and bowed before it.

  Trinity took a step forward, and the thing turned its hand to her, expecting the same results. It drew back slightly when she continued to move, but then the soldiers were around her, a dozen blades pressed against her armor.

  “Interesting,” it said, unconcerned. It looked back to Abbey. “You will help us.”

  “Help you how?”

  The pain subsided, her control of the Gift returning, the shardsuit reassembling around her flesh. The creature motioned for her to stand, and she did.

  “Follow me,” it said.

  38

  “Frag, frag, frag, frag, frag,” Bastion shouted, kicking at the wall of the Shardship, leaving small dents with the force of the lightsuit.

  “Queenie?” Gant said, trying to get her to respond on the comm. “Queenie, come in.” There was no answer. Gant clenched his teeth, resisting the urge to bark in frustration. “She’s not responding.”

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Pik asked.

  “You heard the lady,” Uriel replied. “Get out of here, go back to the fight.”

  “Not an option,” Gant said, cutting through the middle of the group. “Queenie needs us.”

  “Nobody’s arguing that,” Bastion said. “But what the hell are we supposed to do?”

  “I’m arguing that,” Uriel said. “There’s nothing you can do. We can’t fight those things, whatever they are.”

  “I’m with him,” Benhil said. “As much as I hate to say it. Trying to rescue Queenie is going to get us all killed. She knew it would, or she wouldn’t have kicked us back here.”

  “Of course she sacrificed herself for us,” Jequn said. “That’s who she is. That doesn’t mean we should just accept it.”

  “It’s just like you to take the first chance to run,” Bastion said. “As soon as I think you’re ready to stop being a coward, you go right back to it.”

  “Coward?” Benhil said, getting angry. “I’ll give you a fragging coward.” He advanced toward Bastion, fists up.

  “Can you both cut the shit?” Gant said. “This isn’t about either one of you; this is about helping Queenie. Whoever wants to go back to the Faust is welcome to, but I’m staying. I’d rather die here than live knowing I abandoned her.”

  “Me too,” Pik said. “I’m staying.”

  “So am I,” Erlan and Phlenel said at the same time.

  “And me,” Jequn said.

  Benhil backed down. “I guess I’m outnumbered again? Okay, I’ll
stay. What the hell. Galaxy’s going to be shitty to live in when the Republic loses, anyway.”

  “That’s the spirit,” Bastion said sarcastically.

  “Uriel?” Gant said, looking back at the Seraphim. “You’re the only holdout.”

  “I know Queenie wants me to be part of this motley crew, but this is suicide. They aren’t cloaked. They aren’t invisible. It’s like they’re phase shifted or something.”

  “Phase shifted?” Gant said. He paused and then chittered softly. “You may have something there.”

  “Did I miss something?” Pik asked.

  “You always miss something,” Bastion replied. “Phase shifted?”

  “I don’t have time to describe multiverse theory to you,” Gant said. “The short version is that one of the theories holds that universes are stacked on top of one another. Parallel universes. But they aren’t really stacked, they’re kind of intermingled, but matter, as in us, can only occupy one space at any given time.”

  “Not following,” Bastion said.

  Gant sighed. “You know how if you blink your eyes in alternation quickly, your vision shifts slightly because your perspective changes?”

  Bastion blinked in rapid succession, alternating eyes. “Okay. Yeah?”

  “Now imagine the left eye is one dimension, and the right eye is another.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, we’re standing here, but only in your left eye. And those things are standing in the same place, but only in your right eye.”

  “Fragging creepy,” Pik said, copying the instructions.

  “Phase shifted,” Uriel said.

  “So what does it mean?” Erlan asked.

  “Somehow these things can move between dimensions. Or maybe they’re already between dimensions? I’m not clear which it is, or how it would be scientifically possible, but I have a feeling the Shard has something to do with it.”

  “Which is great to know,” Uriel said. “But we still can’t fight them.”

  “Not if they can stabby stabby poof,” Bastion said.