by Jacob Holo
“Yes, I’ve come to understand that all too well, Brother.” Othaniel bowed her neck slightly. “The time we’ve been separated was… an unexpectedly painful period for me. I have no plans to leave again.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Zophiel said. “You know, it really is wonderful having you back. Even Riviel is pleased by your return.”
“Are you quite sure?”
“She’s just not very good at showing it.” Zophiel quirked a smile.
“Obviously.”
The two of them shared a private laugh.
“How would you like me to help us prepare?” she asked.
“Riviel will acquaint you with our new weapons and armor. Start there. I think you’ll find at least some of them to your liking.”
“Sounds intriguing.”
“And now, unfortunately, I need to commune with Vayl.”
“Then please finish.” Othaniel rose from her seat. “We can talk some more afterward.”
“Yes, I’d like that.”
Zophiel saw her out the door. It shut behind her, and he was once again alone.
He knelt on the floor, closed his eyes, and concentrated. In his mind, the room no longer existed. He floated in space, ripped free from his corporeal senses. Sight, sound, smell, touch, taste. All of them no longer penetrated his thoughts.
He couldn’t feel the heat of the room, or hear the distant hum of the ship’s ventilation, or smell the fading aroma of his half-eaten meal. Everything in existence dwelt within his mind: a universe of one.
Memories surfaced, and his heart raced.
He remembered the first time he ever spoke to Vayl, of how the pain and the loss of sight had brought a cruel purity. He opened those memories now, allowing his body to experience them as if they were fresh.
—confusion—
Vierj threw him into the wall. He struck with such force that metal warped and his bones cracked. Black barrier energy snapped around his body, but it was a feeble defense against Vierj’s limitless power. He slid down to his knees and collapsed onto the cold floor.
Riviel shouted at Vierj, but the scrawny child was powerless to stop her.
“It seems defiance is contagious today,” Vierj said.
Through the haze of pain, Zophiel saw Vierj’s bored grimace. With the slightest gesture of her hand, a whip of black energy appeared and struck Riviel in the chest.
The child flew back. Her head cracked against the far wall, and her body slumped to the ground.
“Hmm, I was hoping for her to put up her defenses.” Vierj sighed heavily. “She isn’t maturing as fast as you did. Oh well, I suppose that will do for her punishment.”
Vierj turned to Zophiel, gazing at him with dispassionate silver eyes. Fear gripped his heart.
“I have tried to be patient and reasonable with you, but you continue to defy me in these petty ways. It is truly growing tiresome.” Vierj took his face into hands and placed her thumbs just below his eye sockets. “I do not enjoy causing you pain, but your continued defiance has led you here. Perhaps a wound that will take you some time to regenerate from is called for this time.”
Zophiel’s breaths came short and fast. Vierj held his skull in an iron grip, straining his jawbone with intense pressure. Her thumbs came up and touched his closed eyes.
“Don’t,” Zophiel hissed through clenched teeth.
Vierj pushed her thumbs into his eyes and kept going past the first knuckle. Along the sides of his face, her fingers tore through muscles and his jawbone as if they were soft clay. Zophiel screamed and screamed and screamed, blood pouring from his ruined eyes and face.
Nothing existed in his world. Nothing except his cries and the unbearable pain. Pain! PAIN!!!
Agony gave way to emptiness, and on the edge of that emptiness, another mind appeared.
Are you there, my lord? Zophiel’s thoughts echoed in the emptiness.
Silence followed, and then…
Yes, my young disciple.
My lord!
—clarity—
The emptiness twisted around them, becoming a whirlwind of mingling sounds, sensations, and colors. It spun rapidly, the disparate mind-noise smoothing out, forming a blue metallic floor, walls, and a low ceiling. Zophiel saw himself on the floor, slumped against a wall warped by his impact. Blood poured from his ruined face and pooled underneath him. He saw a child Riviel, picking herself up off the floor and limping towards him.
Vierj had left.
The memory slowed and then stopped completely, Riviel in mid step, tears pausing in their trek down her face.
A figure not from the memory suddenly appeared, first just black smoke near the floor, then twisting upward, gaining definition and dimensions. The black smoke became a humanoid figure.
The creature stood tall and lanky, with a black leathery cloak concealing most of his body. Elongated arms ended in thin fingers, as if the creature were stretched or malnourished. Bone pressed against his sunken, night-black skin.
The cowl of his cloak hid all but a glimpse of his dark, bald head. Twin eyes like infinite blue furnaces watched Zophiel, but despite their strangeness, the eyes still communicated a great sense of compassion and kinship.
Zophiel dropped to one knee and bowed his head deeply. “My lord Vayl.”
“Please rise, my young disciple.” The creature’s voice was ancient and fatherly.
“Yes, my lord.”
“I sensed much excitement in you. So much so that I felt the need to commune with you. Tell me what has brought about this strong emotion.”
“Of course, my lord. It is simply that I will soon possess the seventh portal lance.”
“And with it, you will finally be able to complete the Aperture Halo.” His eyes brightened ever so slightly. “Ah, at last. This is excellent news indeed. And yet something troubles you, tempers this excitement. Please, share your concerns with me.”
Zophiel nodded. “This lance will not be as easy as the other six. It is in the possession of a powerful seraph pilot.”
“More powerful than you?”
“Perhaps. But Othaniel has rejoined us, and we have the weapons you sent through the Aperture Halo. These together should be more than sufficient.”
“Then why doubt yourself?” Vayl dismissed the notion with a withered hand. “I understand your caution, but I have faith in your abilities.”
“It is simply that I do not wish to fail you, my lord.”
“And you will not,” Vayl said. He approached Zophiel and placed a hand on his shoulder. Zophiel felt warmth and approval and an almost fatherly sense of love filling him.
“My lord?”
“Yes?”
“I have a request.” Zophiel found it hard to make eye contact.
Vayl’s eyes flickered with bemusement. “You wish to see it again?”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Very well.”
Vayl stepped behind Zophiel and placed a skeletal hand on each shoulder. The frozen moment from Zophiel’s distant past faded away, turning into insubstantial blue smoke, then twisting, twirling, accelerating, and finally forming into a new reality.
Zophiel found himself standing on a black craggy plateau overlooking a blood-red desert. Smoke and fire and brimstone filled the sky above. Huge brass orbs like giant eyes exhaled fire from their irises. There were dozens of them, hundreds of them, each making a slow trip around the planet.
Immense winged shapes moved within the firestorm, shrouded from direct view by the swirling inferno. An enormous brass tower rose above the desert and disappeared into the flames above. At its base were the collapsed structures and broken highways of a human city, now little more than a heap of ruins.
The fate of this cruel universe, Zophiel thought with satisfaction.
The image wavered and faded, then snapped back into focus. They were in the air, floating within the center of an endless sky of the most perfect crystal blue. Expansive cities of white stone, silver, and clear crystal floated
serenely. Scale was difficult to judge, but some could have been the size of whole continents.
The Homeland, Zophiel thought. He spotted several winged shapes in the distance. And the Keepers. The enemies of my lord.
“Behind us,” Vayl whispered into his ear.
Zophiel turned. Huge brass eyes exhaled clouds of living fire and ash. Some of the eyes were so vast they dwarfed the continent-cities. The firestorms expanded, engulfing one city after another. Swarms of distant black shapes swooped down. Pure-white explosions dotted their approach, and the Keepers flew up to meet them.
“A future like this leaves a scar of pain,” Vayl said. “It resonates in time both before and after it. These events will come to pass.”
Zophiel closed his eyes, his doubts erased and his faith rekindled.
“The cruel legacy of the Keepers and their seraphs will soon be destroyed,” Vayl said. “Together, we will make it happen.”
Chapter 5
Tyrant and Destroyer
Jack’s smoothly curved white seraph passed through the intra-gate and slammed full-force into the atmosphere of a planet.
A sonic boom crashed out. He flared his wings and gained altitude, rising above the barren gray crags below. Outcast machines crawled over the surface, their metal skins gleaming in the heat haze as they slowly consumed the world. They looked like fat mechanical caterpillars, each half a kilometer wide.
Tesset’s green seraph pulled through, her vents burning brightly. She rose, following his trajectory over the wasteland. Her craft faded from view, but a hypercast link kept Jack appraised of her position.
Jared Daykin’s metallic gray EN seraph and Yonu Nezrii’s smoothly curved blue Aktenai seraph followed. All four seraphs formed up and flew towards the Fellerossi aerial fortress Vigilant Sentinel.
Their target loomed over the horizon like a spindly five-point star. Four warships were docked on the tips of the star.
“The Sentinel’s gravity blades are active,” Jared said. “It’s ascending into orbit. Estimating twenty-eight minutes before it reaches the planetary fold envelope.”
“Crap,” Jack said. “We have less time than we thought.”
“Shall we abort?” Jared asked.
“No,” Jack said. “I can be in and out with time to spare.”
“Just make sure you’re clear before it reaches orbit,” Yonu said. “We don’t need to go chasing you all over Fellerossi space.”
“Again,” Tesset added pointedly.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said.
Four warships disengaged moorings and floated away from the Sentinel, their sleek, reflective hulls bright against the clear blue sky. Drive blades engaged, and the four ships sped out to meet the approaching seraphs.
The three closest ships were frigates, each armed with a centerline fusion cannon and dual torpedo tubes. They targeted Jack and fired in unison. The trio of blinding plasma spears struck his barrier and splashed off like water.
“Why, hello to you too!” Jack lined up his own forearm-mounted fusion cannon. The weapon loaded a warhead into the focusing chamber and drank in power from his barrier. It was only one-fiftieth the size of the frigate’s main gun.
He fired. The beam blared out the barrel and stabbed into the frigate’s reflective armor. Sun-hot matter ate through the whole ship and punched out the drive blades on the far side. Secondary explosions erupted from the ship’s center. The gutted warship dipped its nose down and crashed into the sun-bleached rocks below.
Jared and Yonu reached over their backs and retrieved their long-barreled rail-rifles. Chaos shunts on either side of the barrels glowed hotly, and the two pilots unleashed a rapid-fire barrage. Accelerated bolts crashed into the bows of the remaining frigates with all the kinetic force of nuclear weapons.
Two more Fellerossi frigates plummeted out of the sky.
But behind them was a dreadnought: a half-kilometer-long behemoth armed with three centerline fusion cannons, twelve torpedo banks, scores of point defense railguns, and a heavily compartmentalized hull.
It would take time to kill. Time they didn’t have.
A trio of dreadnought beams etched scorching lines across the blue sky. One of the beams slammed into Jared’s seraph. For a moment, his seraph appeared cocooned within an orb of red glass: the visual manifestation of his chaos barrier.
With reflexes only a seraph pilot could have, Jared dodged beneath the beam’s fury.
“Gah, that stung!”
“We don’t have time for these idiots,” Jack said. “Tesset, take it out!”
“Moving in!”
Tesset flew underneath the dreadnought and dropped her stealth field. Her seraph carried a slender bandolier of mnemonic armor with six innocuous canisters hung from it. She retrieved one and slapped the grenade against the dreadnought’s flat underbelly.
Tesset reengaged her stealth field and darted away. A hypercast countdown reached zero, and the grenade’s containment field collapsed. Carefully sealed anti-hydrogen ice met an equal quantity of hydrogen ice. A flare of purest white erupted underneath the dreadnought, equivalent to five thousand megatons of TNT.
The dreadnought became a black silhouette for the briefest of moments, then vaporized. A small sun birthed over the wasteland.
A shock wave struck the Vigilant Sentinel. The tip of one leg blackened and shriveled, but its armor held, even at this close range. The aerial fortress continued its ascent.
“Close in!” Jack shouted.
Dense streams of defensive fire flinched out of the Vigilant Sentinel, but its weapons were designed for interdicting warheads or boarding craft, not fending off seraphs. Railguns fired hundreds of thousands of needle-like flechettes that simply bounced off their barriers. Lasers licked across space, reflecting off the seraph defenses wherever they hit.
Only the tactical seekers and fusion torpedoes were any real threat, and each seraph carried a store of countermeasures in their conformal pods for diverting them.
Except for Jack.
He flew straight in, the eruptions of fusion torpedoes marking his terminal trajectory. He impacted with the Sentinel’s spherical core above the equator and sank giant feet and hands into it. Reflective armor warped, buckled, and shattered. Several minor explosions popped off from within the fortress.
Jack segregated his mind from the seraph and became aware of his true body within the pilot alcove. With a mental flick, he signaled the cockpit open.
The seraph did not accept the order.
A wave of concern struck him, and Jack couldn’t help but smile.
“Hey, buddy, don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll be back before you know it.”
The seraph’s concern faded but did not completely vanish.
The cockpit opened, and Jack stepped into the twisted ruins of several corridors, now all compressed and melted together. Jack ignited his chaos sword, cut two diagonal slashes through the debris, and forced his way through the still glowing armor.
Klaxons blared, and lights flashed. Large groups of Fellerossi in black-and-orange uniforms ran through the corridor, many of them carrying equipment in their hands or on their backs. Jack engaged his stealthsuit and slipped past. He made his way through the tightly packed jumble of narrow passages typical of Outcast vessels.
Jack could taste the hypercast chatter in the background. It was a talent of his he’d never truly understood. Vierj had possessed it, but what hypercast and chaos talents had in common remained a mystery to him. Still, if he concentrated, he could feel the hypercast links between one ship and another and could even touch them, laying their contents bare in his mind.
Hypercast traffic filled the Vigilant Sentinel, and Jack zeroed in on the largest source.
“Crap.” He started running. “Guys, you’re not going to like this!”
“What’s wrong?” Jared asked.
“Most of the traffic is coming out of the center, but I need to get closer. Heading there now.”
“We’re clearing
out the Sentinel’s defenses,” Jared said. “If need be, we’ll push this hulk into a lower orbit to give you more time.”
“Good thinking.”
Jack made his way past the outer layers of the Vigilant Sentinel’s hull and found himself in a wide arcing thoroughfare. Despite the damage caused by his seraph, this part of the fortress was untouched.
Aircars flew past in ten continuous lanes, each vehicle hovering close to the ground. Most carried dull metal crates, possibly taking munitions and supplies out to the fortress’s docking legs. Empty aircars flew in the opposite direction.
Jack took a long look at the cars speeding by. They were moving awfully fast.
“Why do I keep volunteering for this garbage?” He dropped down to the street. “Running through traffic in an invisible suit. Coming on, Jack. Don’t think! Just go!”
Chaos energy surged through his veins. He sprinted across, running and dodging faster than any of the vehicles moved. He neared the far side, but the congested traffic served to block his line of sight.
A heavy aircar flew out of his blind spot. He crossed his arms and tensed every muscle in his body. Flows of chaos energy distorted around him, forming a perfect sphere of blue light.
The aircar crashed into Jack at top speed. Its power plant crumpled against his barrier. Rear-loaded cargo broke free, and huge crates tumbled out. They bounced off Jack and struck the ground, warping the metallic decking.
Two more aircars piled up behind it before everything in the thoroughfare came to an emergency halt.
Jack hadn’t moved an inch. He looked around cautiously. The cargo boxes next to him looked terribly heavy. Alarms blared and red lights flashed above the thoroughfare.
“Guys, they know I’m here.”
“Do you require extraction?” Jared asked.
“Not yet. I’m going to press my luck. Here goes!”
Jack broke into a run. He found the exit, dashed through, and took the passage deeper into the fortress. He hurried past a group of Fellerossi heading for the crash, then crossed a bridge spanning the next thoroughfares.
“I’m definitely getting close,” Jack said, feeling the hypercast chatter tickle his mind.
