Forged by Battle (WarVerse Book 1)
Page 20
But the round did not kill her. She was no longer a girl, no longer human. She was the flame, and the pain only made her angrier. The round passed through her molten center, melting in the intense heat, and passed through to the other side as slag. She staggered in the air, her wings bent as though broken, even though they were born of flame. The anger pulled her back together, forced her to burn even hotter. Her thoughts slowed to mere words: Destroy. Consume.
Another round struck her, and though it was traveling just as swiftly as the previous one, this one barely made it through her. The heat was so intense that the round melted before it even reached her, and it was liquid by the time it hit her center.
The air around her ignited in the intense heat of her anger. She was growing ever larger, ever stronger. And the bright spots were moving, running.
Chase. Devour. Ele twisted in the air and pulsed the heat to propel her forward. It was fast, but she was faster, and the more she grew, the easier it would be to destroy.
The dots were heading towards something. Something she couldn't understand in her primal state. It wavered like the absence of heat, and at the same time it was warm. It did not make sense, and that made her madder still. She would destroy the thing. Destroy the dots, destroy everything. Consume it all.
She stopped noticing the rounds that flared and died before they could even pass through her.
Two of the dots she chased flared in size, growing hot enough to block out all other sights. Then they were gone, devoured by the strange thing below her.
No! They were hers to burn. A swell of heat and rage poured off her, and she dove for the thing that had taken her prey.
Flaming wings pulled back, Ele put on all speed, her rage screaming a comet's trail behind her. There was no sound or grand flare when she struck the portal. One second she was an inferno made real, screaming and roaring towards the ground, and then she was gone. An impossible serenity took her place.
Ele passed from Aberdeen into the battlefield beyond, and her eyes took in the thousand bright lights of heat that scrambled beneath and flew above. She would consume them all.
Chapter 52
Vincent
"Rover, I've got a loose stabilizer in the port engine, see if you can lock it down." Distracting the robot from its task would only delay the inevitable, but it was worth it to Vincent. Rover retracted the tool it had jammed into the fried communication array and skittered over to the engine, just out of Vincent's view.
In a moment of maniacal distress, Vincent considered trying to shake the robot loose. He quickly dismissed it; even with the drag of flying in atmosphere, Rover still had fantastically strong magnetic clamps on his claws. Not to mention the fact that Vincent might need him.
Vincent knew he was hoisting a sail without enough rope, and it was only a matter of time before it collapsed on him. He needed to find that elf camp—he needed it yesterday. Desperation tinged with just a hint of panic grasped him, and Vincent pushed hard on his sticks, shooting his fighter well into the view of the pursuing ferals.
"I'm fine, Zombie. You and Duchess stay low. I've got to see if I can find this camp," Vincent said, breathing heavily, his body pressed back into the seat. His warning lights flashed as the ferals he had been avoiding in the cloud cover made a beeline for his newly revealed position.
"Set the scanners to max, visual and thermal," Vincent ordered. He wouldn't have time to look on his own once the ferals closed. Without the element of surprise or his wingmen, Vincent's movements would have to be perfect. As if to emphasize that point, his ship bucked and twisted to port under an unseen force before Vincent could react and stabilize.
An eagle with a wingspan half a football field in length was tearing at his wing. Each beat of the massive wings shook him and threatened to tear off his fighter’s wing and send him on an express trip to the ground.
He twisted his fighter, first port, then starboard, into a barrel roll as he tried to shake his new passenger off. Its claws tore unpleasant holes in the fighter’s wing as the g-forces ripped it away. Vincent tried not to pass out.
As he righted himself, he could see the eagle flying up beside him. The grotesque bird twisted gracefully in the air with wings spread full, and with a cry Vincent heard through his hull, snapped both wings together and buffeted the ship with a blast of magic-strengthened turbulence.
"Damn it, AMI, find that base before these monsters summon a hurricane." Vincent twisted his ship away again. He depressed both floor pedals to the ground, deploying his wing flaps, slowing his climb. Twisting to bring the eagle into his sights, he flipped up the safety on a missile. "Seek the heat," he muttered, and when his crosshairs loomed over the monster, he slammed the trigger.
Without waiting to see if he’d hit the thing, Vincent pushed down on the sticks to level off his dive and give him more maneuvering room. His ship bucked again, though this time Vincent saw a flash of movement, and craned his neck. A falcon analog was clinging upside down to his starboard wing. Before he had a chance to react, it flashed in blaze of plasma, and Vincent was loose again.
"I thought I told you to stay in the tree line," Vincent returned, though there was no anger in his voice.
Vincent smiled. "Alright, keep them off me long enough to find this camp." It had been reckless of him to fly solo, and he'd probably be a smear in the forest now without them.
Vincent looked up to the portion of his screen that was receiving the Duchess's data on a direct beam transmission. The camp was approximately twelve kilometers away to the north, but only four kilometers from the portal where the ground forces were fighting.
In a moment of embarrassment, which was tinged with profound disappointment at his own hubris, Vincent realized his sensors were down, and probably had been since he disabled his communications suite. AMI had been warning him in a text field at the bottom of his screen, but in his haste he had ignored it, assuming he knew what he had broken.
He had nearly killed himself for nothing.
The moment passed quickly. He had found Rodrom, and now he only needed to lead the ground forces to his location.
"Let's go clear a path."
Chapter 53
The Exile
"Condemned Actual, this is Reaper One. How copy? Over," the com unit crackled on Killswitch's waist. He snatched it off his web gear and thumbed the trigger.
"I read you, Reaper One. Send it."
"Grid coordinates incoming; we'll cut you a path. Out." The com beeped as it received the incoming data. Killswitch hoisted the view port that dangled off the side, evidence of Locksmith's repair job.
The Exile concentrated and summoned her spectral arm, then tapped the coordinates from the com unit into her MPU. A small hologram floated over her wrist, giving her current position as a blue dot, and the objective as a red downward facing arrow.
"We're only three klicks out." Killswitch drew his finger across the hologram between the two points. "Not as tough as I thought it would be..."
Killswitch's words were lost in the bellow of the tank they crouched behind as it fired its main cannon. The vehicle rocked back and coughed up dirt and leaves as the energy of the blast shook the ground.
She felt tug as a sharp influx of emotions and the edges of her Web shuddered. The elves had spread out around her advance and were nipping at her flanks.
She reached out for her platoon members closest to the incursion. Cowboy on the right, Rehab and Blackout on the left.
Exile crouched lower. Despite his disrespect, Killswitch was right; she was allowing
herself to be drawn into her Web. Distraction brings death.
She allowed her Web to sink further back into her subconscious and took a good look at her surroundings. The dense jungle made it difficult to see much further beyond the paths the tanks had created for themselves. The vehicles were making slow progress between the massive tree trunks, and the soldiers were hesitant to move too far from their protective cannons.
Fear and uncertainty pressed down on her despite her efforts to concentrate on her surroundings. The elves had pulled back their all-out attack to run small raids out of the jungle. A sudden movement, a yell, and shots fired were all they had seen of the enemy since they had pushed off from the base. Either the air support had done more damage than Exile thought, or the elves were planning a big push. She assumed the latter.
Exile looked into the forest beyond, at the shadows and blackness between the oversized leaves and foliage.
Without a doubt, the Elves were watching right back. The feeling was instinctual. With her concentration spread so thin as to encompass the entirety of the advancing forces, Exile didn't have the power to reach out and touch whatever might lie beyond the shadows. Dropping her attention from the soldiers would be detrimental, since she not be able to reach out to encompass them all again.
Exile stared into the darkness, allowing her mundane senses to spy any movement. A pair of too-familiar yellowed eyes opened and stared back.
Exile suppressed the urge to grasp her horn. How could it be there? It was flying above her, disguised as a pilot. But there could be no mistaking those unblinking yellow eyes. They seemed to draw in the surrounding light. Exile tore her gaze away, opening herself back up to the Web. Better to be distracted by commanding her forces than by the Shadow. She schooled her thoughts, lest she have too strong a reaction and alert it.
"This is your plan?" came a high-pitched voice from behind her. Exile twisted around, but saw nothing. "To crash through the jungle with all the subtlety of a storm? Why spend months infiltrating and summoning me if you planned to die in such a fashion?"
Exile did not have the strength to maintain her Web as well as seek out the Shadow's mind for a connection. She could only listen. Killswitch gestured to her to stay with him as he crouch-walked down behind one of the tanks. The sergeant gave no indication that he’d heard the disembodied voice.
The voice came again, but it changed again in pitch and candor. As a soft baritone, it said, "This much noise, all these men, you will never make it to the camps. No wonder you gave me so much power. Compassion is weakness. You cannot save these men from death. They are outnumbered, and outmatched. Send them forward with their metal coffins to distract your enemy. Take your team and infiltrate the compound while they fight their worthless battle out here."
Exile narrowed her eyes. The monster wasn't wrong—it would no doubt work better than a concentrated push into the camp where the elves would fight like demons. Looking around at the men moving between the trees, she felt a moment of remorse, but quickly stamped it down, reminding herself what was at stake.
"You feel compassion for these creatures? Who have viewed you as an outcast, only to use you for the abilities that set you above them?" The Shadow laughed.
Killswitch remained oblivious to the noise. She knew the Shadow was just acting out its nature. Sowing chaos even as it drew in power.
The humans did treat her people with indifference at best, and more often than not, with outward contempt. If not for her abilities in combat, she had no doubt she would be treated as less than a second-class citizen. But the humans were a necessary evil, just like the Shadow. Worse things lurked beyond the fringes of space, and no amount of scorn, exile, or pain would make her forget that.
The humans were expendable though, she needed to treat them as such. When the voice came again, she did not need further orders to convince her of her course of action. Already she was reaching out to the infantry leaders with her Web, subtly altering their course so they would take the fighting away from where her own men needed to go.
"You should... What's this?" The Shadow hesitated. "That power..." A lance of pain exploded in her mind. "You must get me that power. Plunge the dagger into it, release me!" It screamed with a ferocity she had never experienced, and the Exile collapsed, her Web tearing and leaving her blind.
To give the Shadow what it wanted was to court death, but the pain—the pain was too much.
She nodded, unable to do any more. Somehow it was enough. The agony ceased.
She had not prayed a single time since leaving the conclave, but she prayed now to every god she could think. Prayed that whatever the Shadow had sensed had the power to defend itself.
Chapter 54
Rodrom
The surgery was not going well.
A medic could simply tell, without the aid of monitors or machines, when someone was close to death. It was a sixth sense that slithered down the spine and settled in the gut, a primitive feeling that focused the mind and body to an external danger. When Rodrom joined the Joint Fleet, he had himself been a medic, and the instincts he had developed on the line served him well as a surgeon. He had that feeling now more than ever. He feared that no matter his skills or abilities, he would not be able to save Lorelei's beloved.
She had not said a word since beginning her song. She simply knelt beside the warrior’s head and allowed her lilting voice to fill the room. It was obvious this warrior meant more to her than any of the other wounded. She had never wavered before, not even an inch, since Rodrom had come to the camp.
Despite his concentration and his fear of failure, Rodrom thought he felt another emotion’s oily presence in his mind. For the span of a thought, he believed it might be jealously, though he quickly dismissed that notion. He was trapped behind enemy lines, with an alien weapon grafted to his spine, and a writhing shapeshifter beneath his fingers. Jealousy was the last emotion he should feel.
Performing open-heart surgery was difficult at the best of times, with a team of nurses and physician’s assistants, or preferably his holographic table. To do so on a vine platform, with a glass scalpel he’d fashioned himself, and tools shaped from branches and twigs, on a patient who was changing shape and mass, was damn near impossible. But it didn’t stop him from trying. He’d already found a way to temporarily stop some of the shapeshifting. Once he cut into the wound to see how deep the shrapnel went, he had discovered that by pressing his palm onto shifting skin, that it would stop the metamorphosis. Was it simply the pressure from the contact, or a facet of the weaveroot? He didn’t pause to figure it out.
With that obstacle temporarily bypassed, Rodrom was able to make the necessary incision to see deeper into the wound. The warrior’s ribs were in the way, of course, but he also had no way to open the chest from the center. He had no bone saw, or any other necessary tools, for that matter. The best he could hope for was to push two ribs away from each another and make a hole large enough to fit his custom forceps through.
Rodrom snarled in frustration and grabbed the nearest stick from a pile beside the patient. Snapping it to the length he needed, Rodrom abandoned all concerns about sterility and jammed the stick between the ribs. When it did not fit, he snarled again.
"Fit, damn you!" he cried, and to his shock, the stick twisted in his hand and pushed itself between the two ribs. It was crude, and looked flimsy, but it was holding. The weaveroot must have been responsible, though he had hoped the pendant Lorelei gave him would have suppressed it entirely. He assumed music was the key to activating its powers, but perhaps just vocal intent was enough.
He grasped the stick again. "Extend two inches," he said clearly, and the stick again moved beneath his fingers, though it grew the amount he wanted and then kept right on growing. "Stop!" he cried out, and was relieved when it did.
The space he’d created allowed him to see inside
the elf’s chest cavity, and into the shrapnel that pierced its heart. Rodrom was horrified to see that the weaveroot had wrapped around the heart, and that its roots reached out to every part of the chest. An almost bark-like sac surrounded the heart now, and there the shrapnel lay quivering.
How could he even attempt the surgery? The shame of failure twisted through Rodrom’s gut. Looking at Lorelei only redoubled his regret. He had not only let down his patient.
Lorelei's voice cracked and wavered as Rodrom stared at her. He tore his eyes away. The recognition was clear, even on her alien features. She shook, and slowly took her hands from the warrior’s head. She opened and closed her hands, staring down at them as if they held some answer. A small cry escaped her lips, then another. The sound was so heart-wrenching that Rodrom felt as though his own chest were full of shrapnel.
He sat back on his heels, and moved his hands down to rest them against his thighs. His hands had not wavered an inch during the operation. The moment he sat back, however, it was all he could do to hold them still. He turned them over and looked down numbly at his palms as they wavered and shook. It was not just his hands that had betrayed him, but his entire body. His shoulders shook too as the adrenaline wore off, leaving him empty. His breath grew ragged and forced, his eyes unfocused.
The grief that filled Lorelei's scream needed no translation. Her anguish was palpable as she clutched the head of her fallen warrior. Rodrom remained motionless, swept up in her torment, unable to look away, unable to keep his distance. Tears fell unabashedly from his eyes, carving canyons through the grime on his face.
Lorelei cut her scream short, and turned to Rodrom with bloodshot eyes. "I will not let him die." Her voice scarcely was above a whisper. "Even if I must sacrifice everything to save him."
Chapter 55
Vincent
Vincent tore through lightning-strewn storm cover as he raced back towards the portal. The ferals that pursued them had broken off, and only the unnatural black clouds remained. He was forced to rely on his sensors to avoid colliding with anything; the uneven canopy below boasted several trees that would make short work of him. His frantic search for the elf camp had taken him far enough away from his other pilots that they had lost communication in the storm, and the com relays the ground troops brought through weren't responding.