Star Angel: Rising (Star Angel Book 4)

by David G. McDaniel

  Where?

  She scanned the entire, miles-wide breadth of the city. Imagined searching Manhattan for some random thing she knew nothing about.

  No way.

  Appeal to Arclyss, Galfar said. Of course! Why waste time ducking and hiding or running for something she had no idea even existed, in a city that was miles of twisted metal and concrete, overgrowth and a million million little nooks and crannies? Oh, and filled with the Scourge. Whatever that was. Monsters, probably. But there was a solution! Just go ask Arclyss.

  Leader of the monsters.

  Of course, she thought bitterly. Of course.

  Simple.

  Then: How big were the Amkradus? Were they a box? A simple book? Were they a vast library? Was the sword to unlock a giant building, a door to a pyramid …

  There was so little to go on the whole prospect of going into the Necrops at all was suddenly—rightly—absolutely insane.

  Galfar kept talking and she realized how fast her mind was racing. “I have reason to believe he is aware of the Prophecy,” he said. She stared at him, heart pounding.

  “Arclyss?”

  Galfar nodded.

  How did I ever get into this?

  When Zac came falling out of the sky she should’ve just run inside and hid.

  Fearfully she looked back to the dead city, watching as it fell slowly beneath the shadow of the approaching storm. Derelict, abandoned, ruined. Fires burning. Things were alive in there. Things that made fire.

  Arclyss.

  The wind picked up, blowing her hair across her face. Nervously she reached and pushed the flicking strands behind one ear. Haz had come a little closer, on her left, and he and his father now formed a sort of shield to either side. She sensed their desire to protect her—thwarted by the understanding that they could not. This was all they could do. They’d done their part and gotten her to the key and gotten her here and now it was up to her. From Galfar she continued to get a sense of supreme confidence. Stupidly, it seemed. Not hope, not wishful thinking, not unwarranted conviction … a real lack of worry. He had no fears for her success. Kind of like Darvon, actually, good old Darvon, believing in her without condition, but where Darvon believed in her Galfar believed more in the Prophecy itself, the destiny that had been crafted by Aesha so long ago and was so clearly coming to pass, right there on that dangerous field.

  She tried to latch onto that. Tried to make that certainty her own. All she kept getting, however, were crashing waves of glee.

  Wheee!

  There was no way this was going to work.

  Then Haz spoke.

  “He waits for you.”

  Arclyss? she almost asked, so unexpected was his voice—and his comment—but in that instant she knew that wasn’t it.

  She knew exactly who he meant.

  Zac.

  Haz didn’t know Zac by name, of course, only as the man she went back for on the plateau, but Haz knew Zac was the one to whom her heart belonged.

  “I lied before,” he said. “On the ship. I was angry.” All at once he looked a little ashamed. He turned away and said softly: “You will see him again. I knew that even then.”

  She couldn’t believe it. “You … know that?”

  Haz nodded. A reluctant nod and Jess could tell this was difficult for him. Haz cared for her and, more than his own feelings, here at the bitter end wanted her to know what he saw. Telling her this was more important than selfish desire.

  He looked up from his smaller mount, into her eyes. “You’ll be with him again. I see it clearly now.”

  Her mouth was open. She could feel it hanging but couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

  “I don’t know more than that,” he cautioned. “Only that you will. In your future … he’s there.” He looked down at the ground—as if getting a deeper sense of whatever he perceived. “He’s crushed,” he said, pulling impressions from the ether. “Since he lost you. He searches.”

  Jess felt her heart beating fast.

  Haz looked up, more depth in his shimmering green eyes than she’d yet seen. So much so that when he spoke it was almost as if he channeled something far beyond him:

  “He loves you,” he searched her gaze, feeling fully what he said. Awed by it. Like true prescience; Other Vision. “He loves you, Jessica. As much as you imagine and more.

  “More than anything.”

  Somehow, in that moment, it was the most incredible thing anyone could’ve said to her.

  She cried.

  Like a switch, all the pent up emotion jammed inside bursting forth. Not an audible cry. No sound, not a sniffle, not even a sob, just tears; simple tears, forming and streaming down her cheeks and suddenly she was crying.

  She smiled. At Haz. At the coming day. Tasting the salty drops as they trickled into the corners of her mouth.

  Thank you! she wanted to say to him but couldn’t; she wanted to grab him in a hug but there was no way, seated on horseback as they were. He was right beside her, head barely to her knees on his own, smaller horse, and she had no easy way even to touch him.

  A fresh round of thunder rolled across the land. The ground trembled with its force.

  The storm was closing.

  Whether Haz had that sort of prescience or not, whether he could really know she would see Zac again, he believed what he said, completely, and she was buoyed by it. It was enough, the thought of it, to unstick her.

  The time had come to act.

  “All will go as foretold,” said Galfar and Jess turned to him, wiping away the tears. He was smiling warmly.

  She looked at them both, sitting to either side, far below from her perch atop the mighty Erius. Wanting to squeeze them. Wanting so badly to take them both in her arms and pull them to her.

  Her voice caught and she cleared it. “I’ve never been very good at goodbyes.”

  She was about to try, about to pull together what meaningful thing she could say in parting, knowing no words would express what she was feeling when, unexpectedly, Galfar laughed. A loud, hearty laugh, this one so full of vitality he didn’t start coughing as before. In that moment he was Young Galfar, charged with the energy of the moment.

  “Goodbye!” He acted shocked. “This is not goodbye!” he practically boomed, shaking his head. “Goodbye! Indeed!” He laughed heartily at the silliness of the notion. Then: “Let’s stop wasting all this time. Blah blah blah … Finish this before I die! Please! I want to live to see the Prophecy fulfilled!” At that he laughed harder, if that were possible, thoroughly happy and, to her mild surprise, Jess found herself laughing too. A welcome release, the last of the brief tear-fall shaking free, and she was looking over at Haz and he was laughing too, in spite of himself, shaking his head at his ridiculous father.

  The time to go was now.

  She felt it. Right then. Nothing more to say, nothing more to do. No time—and no need—for goodbyes.

  Go.

  And without another word she was gone. Kicking Erius into motion and he was off. Lunging and pumping to a gallop, heading for the edge of the hill and down the steep slope to the plains beyond. Only when she was underway did she think to call out, to say something, but there was, truly, nothing else to say and so she stuck to her impulse.

  She didn’t look back. Her laughter faded to a confident smile and she was underway. At the bottom Erius turned up the speed and soon they were thundering along, pummeling dirt and straw grass, the roar of wind and hooves masking all other sound. Haz and Galfar could’ve been shouting at the top of their lungs and she wouldn’t have heard. But she knew they weren’t. Sharp cracks of lightning ahead touched the ground with increasing frequency, even their thunder failing to penetrate the rush of her world. She and Erius charged across the barren field, no more reason to hold back, no other riders to consider and so he stretched, like he so yearned to do and she let him, running so fast it was amazing, absolutely sucking up ground as he flew, across the land that stretched in all directions without interrupt
ion as far as the eye could see; a lone rider in the middle of the ruined wastes. The murderous black storm gathered beyond the city, closing on it, racing in from the south even as she charged at it from the north. That background, the whole setting was too ominous, far too cinematic to be real.

  But it was.

  She worked to feel Galfar’s confidence, to feel the destiny of the Prophecy, to make it her own.

  I’m really doing this.

  What sense was there now in being afraid? Maybe there’d been use in that before. Maybe a good dose of fretful introspection could’ve guided her at one point. No more. Now she was on her way, rushing across the open, desolate, lifeless plain, objective clearly in sight, all decisions made. Everything lay before her.

  The way out is the way through.

  She’d been through so much already. This current challenge would not stop her. She thought on this.

  And found her core.

  **

  Drake couldn’t believe the Bok, who they’d been chasing for so long, were now in charge. The Esehta Bok, led by the lovely Lorenzo, were their new overlords. Everything was still in flux of course, the world’s organizations in a continuing state of chaos, but there was no doubt the Bok would be the leaders of whatever new hierarchy was eventually formed. For now it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been; mostly only the world’s ability to fight back had been removed and, in some ways, large parts of the world’s infrastructure continued to operate normally, but the end of the Earth as they knew it was here. What had at first seemed to be a bit of an underwhelming approach on the part of the Kel, who could’ve crushed and shut down the world entirely, was turning out to be rather clever. Confoundingly so. The aliens had preserved the world’s goods and commerce and they weren’t yet having to deal with large revolts. In fact most people were just waiting to see what came next. If the Kel played it right they might actually pull this off.

  Drake grumbled to himself.

  There was still resistance. While the Kel had removed the ability to fight openly—there were no more organized armies or forces or even much working hardware left to make a difference—they had, at the same time, seemingly failed to predict the human propensity for defiance. Small groups with determination could be every bit as effective as an army, as anyone with a basic knowledge of human history would know, and Drake and his small group comprised the heart of one such resistance. And they’d been making progress.

  They’d moved their location again since gathering the small group of operators and smart people that made up their cell, though they remained in the European theater. They were in sporadic contact with others like them around the globe, maintaining mostly extreme independence in order to stay off the grid, carefully remaining concealed as they went about piecing together what they could on the Kel. The Kel knew about them, had access to the entirety of humanity’s conveniently documented existence—the Kel had been mining the world’s data and there was no way to stop it, and in fact efforts had been made to copy, harden and protect the most important items in case the Kel eventually decided to wipe it—but there was little known of the alien invaders and their technology. Drake and his group were changing that. Slowly.

  He looked over at Bobby. His senior analyst sat with Fang, the brilliant Chinese hacker that had been making great strides in dismantling and understanding the Kel devices they’d recovered. Together they’d taken apart the odd tablet Drake and his team found at the club during the botched operation in Spain, the one belonging to Jessica, which they had now confirmed as Kel. They were unable to read any of the information on it—yet—but that combined with other pieces brought in from the field were painting a picture of how the Kel worked.

  Happily, it wasn’t that much different from how humans worked.

  So far what they were finding was that, though the Kel were quite clearly far beyond them on the macro tech—starships, energy weapons, materials tech, wave manipulation and so forth—they weren’t that far beyond them on the micro. Their electronics appeared to be configured mostly the same, similar design methods to their processors and so forth. The cores were likely light-based rather than electrical charges, perhaps even quantum, though that had not yet been determined, and seemed to store and transmit information using a base language not unlike the binary used by computers on Earth.

  As Fang summarized in his succinct and perfect English: “They use electronics to run their shit just like we do.” Electronics needed programs, he said, instructions, and programs could be hacked. Like any typical sci-fi story 101, the way to bring down the mighty aliens might be through something small. An infection. Since that time Fang and his other imminently talented coders had been diving in on how to do just that.

  Drake surveyed the room. Caught sight of Pete, sitting with Heath and the rest of the operators that made up the action core of their little group. Pete still got a chuckle out of Fang’s name. But the two had hit it off. And even Pete, though not the sharpest tool in the shed, knew Fang and the smart guys would likely be the ones that found a way to give them a fighting chance.

  Fang and his team, with their help, could be the ones that saved the world.

  CHAPTER 42: THE NECROPS

  There was no precise, defining edge to the ruined city, not up close, but as remnants of ancient roads began to appear, broken slabs of something like asphalt jutting through overgrowth that marked the beginnings of a past civilization, Jess began to slow and consider a way in.

  Before her the toppling, collapsed structures that had formed a solid wall from afar could now be seen for what they were. Gaps were everywhere, some small, some large, leading into the congestion of decay within. She galloped slowly for a bit, angling to the left to more carefully scrutinize the outskirts, then slowed Erius to a walk. Any way in was as good as the next, she gathered, and faced with the daunting reality of the derelict city at that proximity she very nearly lost hope once more. The rain was coming. The city was huge.

  What am I doing?

  Thunder rocked the black sky, looming above the ancient structures. Behind her the sky was still bright. Safe. A stark contrast, the dividing line between the two. Before her, death and danger. Behind her safety.

  Without pausing to consider further she brought Erius to a halt, threw a leg over and jumped to the ground, the armored boots feeling solid against her soles. It was just her and her fate now, and it was up to her to make it happen. She walked around to face him.

  “I can’t risk you in this,” she laid a hand on his snout, palming the soft fuzz of his wet nose. “From here on it’s my journey. From here I go alone.” He nuzzled her, knowing what that meant and having no intention of doing as he was told. She could sense the inflexibility of his decision. He would not leave her.

  “I can’t explain it,” she said, talking aloud for her own sake. Somehow speaking gave her jumbled, racing thoughts clarity.

  “I just know I have to walk in there.” She looked to the city, stroking Erius on his broad forehead. He leaned his head into her. The concepts he was capable of understanding were far simpler than these, but he sensed what she was feeling. He knew she dreaded going into that scary place, but he also knew she was going to do it anyway. And he knew he was going with her.

  She looked him over; considered the saddle bags and what was left of her provisions. Deciding not to take anything. This was all or nothing. This was the end, or the beginning, and carrying the added burden of a bag of dried food wasn’t going to make it any better. She would travel light, just the armor and the sword, and she would throw herself directly into the unknown. Trusting only in her own determinism.

  Determinism is strong in you. Galfar’s Yoda-voice rang in her mind. She looked back across the vast distance, back to the hill where she left he and Haz. The hill was a small bump in the terrain that far away. No sign of them. No way to see them even if they were still standing up there.

  Here I go, she thought.

  A faraway shriek pierced the air and she
jerked her head to the city, heart lurching into her throat. Erius snorted, stepped closer and planted his feet solidly as he gave her the idea he would protect her from whatever that was. The shriek was so sharp, so unexpected—just when she’d come to grips with the sight of everything now … that.

  It was hideous.

  “It’s okay,” she tried to divert some of her attention to Erius, working hard and failing for a moment to gain control of her rapidly revving fear. Whatever made the sound was terrifying. Not human, not animal. A true monster.

  Her heart beat faster, pulsing in her neck.

  I’m stronger than this.

  The code of the Astake, as told to her by Zac, flashed in her mind. Fear is the Great Paralyzer, she remembered. A warrior need not carry a gun, or a sword, or have vast physical strength to be great. He need only be master of his fear.

  Without thinking she drew the sword, recognizing it in her hands only after it was there. Yeah, she thought, but a sword can sure help. Its blued steel glinted in the muted sunlight, shadow of the storm now eclipsing everything. The line of darkness was moving out over the plain, toward the distant hills.

  She turned to Erius. “Go,” she told him.

  He wouldn’t.

  “Go,” she compelled him, making him.

  He took a few tentative steps away, unhappy with the fact that he was moving yet unable to resist.

  She felt her power rising.

  “Go to Haz,” she told him and pointed with the sword. “Go to Galfar.”

  The power was coming on its own, she could feel it, from deep within. From that place where it welled before. And as it did she recognized the fear was superficial. It lay on top of her core. An unneeded emotion. Power was her being. Her essence.

  “Go,” she gave Erius a dose of it, of who she really was, and he saw it at last. Sensed in that moment she was far more than the small girl he’d born throughout this journey. Perhaps he’d had an inkling before, as when she cracked the trees with her mind, and likely he did, but in that moment he saw her fully, as he hadn’t yet, and as he did he realized she was as mighty as he—more mighty, perhaps—and it gave him sudden respect, a deeper awe, and he knew in that instant she would be okay. She was strong enough to face whatever frightening things waited in this dark place. And as the force of that washed over him he neighed in surprise and reared up on his hind legs, towering. A raw display of his own power.