Again at the base of the Palace, a great bay opened up, and from this came the four-legged mechanized tanks that turned Barson’s Coordinators—all that would be used of his own army—into steely centaurs, each backed by its own atomic power plant. A great shadow fell upon these five hundred as Gran Kwes bowed to clear the upper reach of the bay and stepped out onto the earth with a bass thunderclap. Upon Gran Kwes’s giant equine head stood Wheeler Barson, Dark, his head a smaller reproduction of his Gran’s but with a twisted horn of what looked like black soapstone that gouged at the sky. The Gran took more thunderclap steps, clearing the Palace bay and wading—harmlessly—through the gene soldiers.
Stafros Lowe came buzzing through the air from the bay, his legs vibrating invisibly with the power of his Lead Cloud Steps, to take up his position as Barson’s personal back-up. Though he seemed like an insect in the air, when Dark Lowe was encased in a metallic electric blue shell and actually was more like an anthropomorphic frog. Pods that dwarfed his head adorned each shoulder and were the source of but one of his secret weapons.
Almost unnoticed upon the ground, the remaining Shades fanned out on either side of Gran Kwes to bring up the extreme rear. To the Gran’s right were Jav, Kalkin, and Abanastar. To the Gran’s left, on the sea side, were Icsain, Raus, Vays, and Bela Fan.
When Vays inquired of Dolma Set to Bela, she pointed with her chin to the sea and let her eyes linger there. First Vays regarded her, impressed with her Darkened state. She was armored as he was, but her armor was white enamel with cobalt blue markings instead of polished silvery steel. Where in appearance Vays was sharp and angular, Bela was smooth, round, and stout. This included her writhing tail—an artificial extension of her spine—which was twenty-five centimeters thick at its origin, two meters long, and tapered to a one-centimeter point.
Vays’s attention was suddenly wrested away, taken to where Bela had indicated, where the ocean was rising up, the waves thrashing eighty meters into the sky and not falling. The tons of rushing water made a sound that was eerily like that of some primordial beast, like a thing that had been born out of the chaos of creation when the universe was still young, a thing that might have crept into the husk of cooling planet in search of refuge, a thing left alone to cry in the night simply for being.
“What the hell. . .?” Vays whispered in awe.
“Hmph,” Bela breathed, a smile evident in her tone behind her concealing faceplate, which was featureless save for eye marks. “That, Mr. Vays, is Un Azameio. With a large enough volume of liquid, Set can match any Gran, new or old.” Obvious pride joined her unseen smile.
A great, rounded crest blotted out the horizon above the already tumultuous sea. The wall of water rolled forward towards the beach upon which the Viscain army now marched, and when the water touched dry ground, bass shudders rippled outward, recasting the sandscape in intricate waves. When Un Azameio cleared the ocean, its shape was more discernible, but as it was comprised of nothing but water, its shape was ever changing. Its great head probed, appearing to sniff at the air like a dog, as the thing pulled itself along the beach with two massive arms that separated from and were reabsorbed into the main body at intervals. After a fashion, it altered its orientation so that its upper body rose erect, and it slid along the ground upon a pseudopod like a giant tread that was at least eighty meters in diameter. As the behemoth drew closer to the Viscain army, Dolma Set could be seen suspended, with his arms folded authoritatively, within its head. Soon Un Azameio drew up beside Gran Kwes and kept pace with it. Icsain took a position between the two giants, while Raus, Vays, and Bela shifted their positions to the outside of Un Azameio.
As the line advanced, Jav watched Abanastar who was busy consulting a series of floating lenses stacked in a way that suggested a telescope.
“What do you see,” Jav asked.
“The opposition,” Abanastar said matter-of-factly, without looking away from the lenses.
“The opposition? Already? And in force?”
“Yes, yes, and yes.”
“How many are there?”
“Hold on, I’m about to broadcast.”
And Abanastar did. Through his Artifact to theirs, he spoke to every Shade at once. “A ground force, consisting one hundred percent of human foot soldiers, is approaching from the population center. There appears to be a steady wave, like an orderly exodus, making it difficult to assess their numbers. This, I believe, is immaterial, however.
“In the forefront there are those who I believe will offer us our only real challenge. They are variously arrayed with the heads of animals or with some other fantastic adornment. While I can’t quantify it exactly, they are possessed in varying degrees of some intrinsic energy which may put some of them on par with Shades. I count two hundred and thirty-three of these.
“At our present speeds, I estimate contact in ninety-seven minutes. Give or take.”
“Understood,” Barson said through his Artifact. “Since we don’t know exactly what we’ll be up against and since they’ve proved to be ready for us so far, I don’t want to split us up, even though some of us could close the gap in moments. We’ll meet them together, in force.
“In the meantime, we’ll have the Palace start up with the armaments made possible by Specialist Kapler.”
Five minutes later, the dark, clouded sky lit up with sheets of lightning issuing forth from the Root Palace. During transit, some of the Tether Launch stations had been modified into Lightning Gun batteries. These were used to good effect against the incoming ordnance from the three planets while still in space, now they would help cull the approaching enemy troops. With all the power of the Vine behind them, the batteries had an effective range of one hundred kilometers, an eight hundred and fifty percent increase over the output possible from Kapler’s Tower.
Through his lenses, Abanastar saw the lightning touch down and rake through the ranks of men and women, raising them up like dried leaves blown by a sudden gust of wind. Again and again the lightning struck, killing thousands and causing something like panic through the mass of native soldiers. Abanastar watched avidly, but noticed that the front line, the super normals, had escaped almost entirely the ravages of the Palace’s Lightning Guns. More, he noted a concerted reaction from them that might be cause for alarm. He adjusted his lenses to account for sound now. Long before planetfall, the Palace had monitored what radio signals there were to monitor from the three worlds—though, there was nothing ever of a military nature—and so the languages of the locals were well known to them, but he’d tuned in too late. There was too much noise from the destruction being wrought by the batteries. Abanastar’s breath caught in his chest when he saw what followed.
A tear, almost like a zipper, opened up immediately to a two meter height before the entire advancing line and they poured into it but advanced no further. As they entered, they disappeared. Even before Abanastar could understand the full import of this and what it might mean, he heard shouts from some ways away at the head of their own column.
“They’re here!” Abanastar cried. Though he may have been stating what was already evident to some, his booming declaration made clear the fact that the fight was now, that there was no need for any undue confusion. One or more among the enemy could fold space the same way the Empire’s jump decks could. Perhaps their methods differed, but it mattered little. Ninety-seven minutes had been reduced to three.
Indeed, some hundred meters distant from the Viscain line was a tear identical to the one Abanastar had seen through his lenses. From this rip in space, the planet’s defenders came out in the hundreds to engage the gene soldiers and Barson’s mechanized horsemen.
Abanastar’s amphibious fish men, armed variously with ultrasonic pulse rifles, gyrojet launchers, and high-frequency tridents for melee encounters, engaged the enemy with genetically programmed efficiency. They were, like their reverse harpy sisters in the air, machines of meat, blood, and bone, incapable of thought beyond carrying out simple orders fr
om prescribed individuals. And so, unlike Barson’s Coordinators and the Shades themselves, the gene soldiers needed no time to consider the shock of being set upon suddenly. They simply reacted to the enemy now before them, as best they could—at least until their weapons started to malfunction.
A high-pitched whine built in intensity until all the ultrasonic weapons, of both the fish men on the ground and the harpies in the air, began to smoke. The power sources were overheating, causing some of the weapons to blow apart and some of them to melt where the power source was, causing the weapons to fall away in two pieces. The fish men were too close for their gyrojets to be effective—though, those employed by the harpies found their marks better—and so had to rely on their tridents, some of which still functioned, vibrating at high frequency to make them unstoppable, some, for unknown reasons, were still. These could still be deadly, but the enemy soldiers were showing themselves to be highly competent hand-to-hand combatants, superior by far to the simple-minded gene soldiers.
Though their weapons were similarly affected by whatever the enemy had done, Barson’s Coordinators themselves were not, their power sources were too potent and well-shielded, so they tore through the approaching natives with machine-backed strength, implacable and deadly.
When the first flash came through, a great blazing ring of white-gold that eradicated every gene soldier in its path and carved through the right third of Un Azameio’s body, Abanastar worked quickly to adjust his lens to the enemy at hand. Scanning through the throng of the enemy he came across two men who’d been given a wide birth by their fellows. About two meters behind each of them were three men, each in horse stance with his hands pressed against the back of the man before him. The last man in each of these chains had his hands outstretched towards the man ahead, the leaders perhaps. One of these leaders looked startlingly like a Gun Golem and Abanastar couldn’t suppress a shiver from running up and down his spine. The other was as black as Barson, but instead of a horse’s head, he wore that of a snake. This one was moving, preparing to strike.
“Look out!” Abanastar cried.
Of course there wasn’t time to adequately warn anyone, but Abanastar’s cry was not in vain. From atop Gran Kwes, Barson saw in time the column of black smoke—the rushing torrent that in moments took on the aspect of a streaking snake—and commanded Gran Kwes to move. Gran Kwes reared and the great black stream managed to engulf only the lower portion of his back left leg. The gene soldiers along the course of the snake could not escape in time, though. They withered instantly. Every drop of moisture in their bodies was made to evaporate on contact. Coordinators in the snake’s path simply stopped where they were, their heads and arms going limp. As with the gene soldiers, the cubes comprising Gran Kwes’s affected leg seemed to deflate and fall away like giant flakes of dead skin. Gran Kwes faltered at this, but managed to stay upright. In seconds the Gran lost something of its size as cubes shifted and reorganized to rebuild the lost member.
Ultimately, Un Azameio was as unaffected as Gran Kwes. Though some of its body had been blasted to steam by the intense heat of the giant golden circle, Set had simply brought the separated portions back together. His will was the only thing animating the monster, but even though Un Azameio was in no real danger, that could not be said for the rest of the Viscain. Something had to be done about these dangerous threats. He urged Un Azameio forward, avoiding Barson’s Coordinators but treading down upon the fish men in his way. Some of these were swept up harmlessly into the beast’s watery belly only to be willfully expelled by Set.
Nearly all who watched were shocked by the speed and agility possible of something so immense. Only Bela and Stafros Lowe were really accustomed to seeing Un Azameio at work. And to work it went. Great paws consisting of tons and tons of water crashed into the midst of the resisting army, and once again, men flew like old, dead leaves on the wind.
Those that were not scattered plied their fists and their other skills to Un Azameio’s hide and found it to be nothing more than animate water. Set began to notice that the enemy, almost every one of them, had crowns of light. Some form of radiation issued from their shoulders and surrounded their heads. And it wasn’t exactly light, since at least one of the crowns was like writhing black oil. Some of these crowns flared and pierced Un Azameio with heat or with cold or with electricity or by some other means. Set could feel each of these in turn, but no single one of them was of sufficient threat, except maybe one. One of these flares was so brilliant that it drew his attention immediately. When he looked, he saw that it wasn’t the light of just one, but that of three working together. Between them, they raised up a great ring of fire, some fifty meters in diameter. This they loosed at Un Azameio and at him within.
Set covered his face instinctively, but the fire didn’t hit him directly and wasn’t hot enough to be of real concern. The ring of fire was snuffed out immediately on contact with Un Azameio, but in that instant of contact, it had converted fully half of Set’s pseudo Gran to steam. Set dropped down to the ground, laughing. He held his finger up and brought it down, aiming at the defending army. He couldn’t gather it all, but some of the rising steam stopped its assent and followed the course indicated by Set’s gesture. The steam came down, again taking on the form of Un Azameio, still connected to its liquid haunches in fact, and scalded everyone who lay in its path. Several cried out, great blisters rising up upon their strange skins. Some of these died. Some were merely wounded or deformed, but the majority seemed unaffected by the temperature of the steam. Set condensed the collected steam back down to a liquid and Un Azameio was as before, though still hot to the touch and somewhat diminished.
While Dark, Set had the head of a many-fanged eel and was covered in highly specialized placoid scales—mostly beige with blue mottling—which he could smooth or raise at will. When raised, his entire body was abrasive enough to tear a normal man’s skin to shreds. When smooth, he was nearly frictionless. Now he was nearly frictionless, skating over the ground towards the three responsible for the impressive fiery feat. One man, whose head appeared to be multi-faceted gem moved to bar his path, but Set spared almost no time to stop and bite his arm at the elbow, shearing it off there. The man reeled, started to scream, gripped at the pulpy stump with his other hand and waved both arms, warding off invisible phantoms—hallucinations brought about by Set’s poison.
Set didn’t look back. He sped over the rocky, uneven ground like living oil. Those who stood in his way were struck with what appeared to be glancing blows, but every man went down. One of these blows proved fatal, three more merely staggered the recipients. He hadn’t seen who sent the golden ring or the smoke serpent, but he knew who was responsible for that fire. Few of the enemy seemed capable of really large scale displays of power, so eliminating those three fire users was a first critical step to ending this conflict. He reached them soon enough.
They were ready for him, of course. His progress could not go unnoticed. They stood in a circle with their hands joined, and together they once again built up a terrific ring of fire which stood on its edge, facing Set like a great, accusing eye. It hovered there, the rim the of rich, white-hearted orange flame dancing mesmerizingly until the whole thing burst into forward motion, threatening to engulf Set.
Set leapt like a fish, drew his arms in so that he resembled the eel after which he was modeled, and threaded the fiery eye, passing through its center where it was coolest. He landed with perfect grace, already driving his palms into his foes. His hide of placoid scales smoked from head to toe, but he’d done his five-hundred year term as Specialist in Blue Squad. He had seen his fair share of combat and had obviously lived to tell about it. This he accomplished by killing every enemy he faced. Now would be no different.
The first of his strikes landed squarely in the midsection of the one of the three closest to him. This one had the head and color of a red water bird with a long beak and black motes for eyes. The man doubled over, then stumbled backwards, appearing to gas
p, though his inhuman head was incapable of such clear expression. Bubbles rose up upon his strange red skin, as if his blood were boiling just beneath it.
And it was. “Infinite Ripple,” Set said.
The stricken man clawed at the air, helplessly seeking escape from his own blood until he fell dead.
His fellows, one also with the head of a water bird, the other a living statue of smooth, glassy obsidian, glanced at each other and acted instantly. The obsidian man was fast, moved behind Set, catching him between them where the air suddenly began to combust. The heat produced and the speed with which they produced it were both fantastic, but Set was never alone as long as some liquid or heavy gas was present. Presently, a column of water poured down upon the three of them, sufficiently dousing their flames and reducing the temperature. Neither were prepared for this, and Set used the distraction to strike, the second water bird fell as the first to the Infinite Ripple, but the obsidian man proved to be a better fighter. His glossy hide, too, seemed proof against the vibrations set up by the Infinite Ripple. It almost looked like a fight. Set went briefly on the defensive, moving liquidly as was his style’s trademark, smoothly bending, evading, turning with the slightest touch from blows that connected only fractionally. This he did—briefly—until he found the opening he needed and drove his palm into the obsidian man’s chest, in the process, crying out, “Transference!”
The man’s glassy black back instantly lined with spiderweb cracks, and a large volume of blood sprayed out in a thick mist from the countless fissures, the image made all the more dramatic against a sudden bright flash of light that lingered for seconds only because of its brilliance. For a moment the obsidian man remained there, as if hung upon the flat of Set’s hand, and then he just fell backwards, his “skin” shattering into what looked like a million black ice cubes.
Chaos remained all around. The gene soldiers were still engaging in melee, effective against some of the enemy, woefully inadequate against others.
The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) Page 29
