Star Angel: Prophecy

by David G. McDaniel

  Her overtaxed mind flashed to the first time she used the Icon, the moment she and Zac fell through, materializing in this same spot high above the city, leaving the safety of the playhouse for the hell of war. The playhouse, crushed now beneath the weight of a Kel spaceship. Her room, her house … ruins. Now the war was back there, not here. Here was calm.

  Vertigo cinched her gut so hard she nearly puked, an involuntary grunt escaping her lips, lost in the howl of the wind. For a fleeting instant she felt the camera slapping at the end of its straps, the sword sheath smacking against her back in the turbulence.

  Impact was not far away.

  Imminent death, however, was no longer a novelty. Sadly that’s true, she had the presence of mind to think in that terrifying instant. This was not the first time she’d been about to die. And though raging doubts at what she’d just done assaulted her, the idea that maybe she should’ve tried something else, maybe she could twist the Icon and pop back—which, of course, would mean an even greater fall, and put her right back in the middle of a Kel assault and would, of course, lead to the capture of the Icon and so that was pointless—coupled with a touch of sadness, then anger, that she’d only just managed to figure out who the hell she was and what the hell she was trying to do and now it was about to be over …

  Those fearful, fatalistic reactions raced through her in those first instants, a version of her life flashing before her eyes, body plunging, but it was her newfound clarity that came surging to the fore.

  There must be a way.

  The plummet, the looming impact … Reflexively she released the Icon—no need to hold onto it now; it was safe from Kel hands here—and her arms began pin-wheeling madly, legs pedaling to keep her upright in the hurricane wind; eyes tearing and blurring, fighting to discern a solution among the alleys and congested building roofs below. Long hair snapped violently across her face as she roared downward at terminal velocity …

  “HA!” she threw out a fist, aimed toward her point of impact, a blast of force managing to reach the particular roof she was now definitely going to hit. A shock of dust blew away from it at that range, but there was no recoil back along the arc of her descent. There had never been a recoil. Not when using the blasts before.

  She was going to die.

  “HAAAAAA!” both fists this time, a different direction of the force, something she’d never tried but which felt natural. A back and forth, as if channeling energy in both directions, pumping it at the roof and back toward her with fevered intensity, setting up an impossible, pulsing charge between her and that deadly surface, like a brake or a cushion or ...

  “HAAAA …” it seemed to be working, focus at full volume as she came hurtling from the sky “…AAAAAAA!” all the way to the roof …

  Realizing in that last second she hadn’t slowed nearly enough.

  The smack of her boots as they hit—way too fast—was the last thing she heard. The spike of pain the last thing to go shooting through her overtaxed mind.

  All went black.

  **

  Willet rose and moved. Slowly he made his way through the kitchen, then the living room, situational awareness at maximum. He was on, senses strained as he stayed low behind furniture, Kel rifle up and pointing around corners, left and right, tracking high. There was a huge gash in the front of the living room where the front wall of the house had been blown in. Through that hole, moments ago, he caught a glimpse of the Kel craft out front taking off, wondering if they were about to level the house. Simultaneous with that a huge racket upstairs had only just stopped …

  Kel were suddenly coming down the stairs.

  Crack! he fired at the first dark-armored alien that came into view, shiny orange visor, nailing him to the wall. Wallpaper behind him flashed black and curled away with the overspray from the charge. As that one slid down, leaving behind the echo of his shape, the next crouched and took a defensive sweep, looking for the source of the attack. Willet caught him straight in the chest and that one too spasmed against the wall and fell, tumbling down several steps before coming to a stop. More motion upstairs and Willet rushed across to the next vantage, keeping banisters and the remains of a low divider in the foyer between him and whoever was left. A glimpse of Kel armor around the edge of the hall upstairs and he fired in that same instant, dead aim, vaporizing a chunk of Kel helmet. The alien spun sharply and fell to the floor. One moved just out of range and fled back down the hall.

  Then movement in the corner of his eye and he whirled, barrel on point …

  It was Zac, coming in from the darkness outside, leaping through the gaping front wall.

  “Where’s Jess?” he looked frantic; as if he’d just rushed back from somewhere much further away.

  “Last I saw she came in here.” Willet nodded upstairs. “I think she went up there.”

  Before he could say anything else Zac was past him and up the stairs and out of sight down the hall. Willet heard the dull sound of impacts even as a few blasts from the Kel rifles cracked and illuminated the walls.

  With a short curse he checked outside, made one more sweep of his barrel across the living room, then followed up the stairs, back to the wall, gun trained on the lower landing until he reached the top. There he found Zac in Jessica’s room.

  The tall, dark-haired Kazerai spoke as he entered. “She’s not here.” Zac stood among the dead Kel, illuminated by a single, softly bright lamp in the corner. The decorative little lamp was on the floor but still on, despite the absolute destruction in the room.

  “She was coming for the Icon,” Willet reminded as he walked further in. Jessica’s room was a complete wreck, a splintered hole in the ceiling big enough to drop bodies through. It looked like that was exactly what happened.

  Zac was staring at the bookshelf inside the door. Remarkably the shelf, like the lamp, was intact. Willet remembered that was where Zac put the Icon.

  It was gone.

  Zac shook his head. “She took it.”

  Willet couldn’t believe it. “You mean … she used it?” How could she have done that and survived? It dropped over Osaka, way high in the air.

  There was no way.

  “You sure it was her?” He looked around. More thoroughly; behind the bed, under it.

  No sign.

  Zac looked completely lost. As if everything else had faded.

  He could only manage to utter:

  “She’s gone.”

  **

  Cee Ranok waited with false patience in the adjoining room, listening with grinding teeth as her Praetor, Voltan, addressed the Earth’s former leaders. These were the figureheads of the conquered world, or most of them anyway, the ones the Kel forces had been able to scatter and gather up, the ones that controlled the world until so very recently. Why Voltan insisted on undertaking this exercise to inform the deposed heads of state continued to frustrate her. Increasingly her Praetor saw the way forward differently than she, and if it weren’t for her unbearable desire to continue her guarded pursuit of the legacy of the Bok she would be exerting far more of her own will where this was concerned. As it was she left it mostly to him. As it was she could scarcely wait to be off.

  Kang stood near, occupying the room with her and several Kel officers. They waited as Voltan finished his discussion with the humans, Cee put out by the situation—and agitated by the furtive stares and the silent commentary she could almost hear among the Kel senior commanders. She knew the tension developing among the rest of the officers at her continued association with the beast, the worst of it openly by Voltan. Voltan was a warrior, a staunch believer in the Old Ways—which held true across most of the Kel military—and her personal choice where it came to Kang, her decision to elevate the Bok to figureheads … these things had created rifts. She was not blind to the fine line she walked. But she was crafting a New Way, and they would either follow in the evolution of her dynasty or be crushed before it.

  She looked around. There was no denying the nerves of her top
commanders as they shared the confined space with the beast. The room was large, but no space would ever be big enough to make them at ease in Kang’s presence. She, too, felt a heightened state of fear, no matter how familiar she and Kang had become, and in fact since she, perhaps unwisely, allowed their union to become physical the monster presumed more than ever. In her most lucid moments she wondered just how far he would slip beyond her control. The handling of him had become such a complicated game of tactics—she found little more joy in it. Small moves led down new paths, and if anything went too far before an adjustment could be made she might find herself in a situation from which she might never recover. Still, something about the beast drew her. It was both exhilarating and terrifying all at once; a spiral that could be headed in either direction—victory or defeat—and suddenly she just wanted to scream. Standing there, in that bitter moment, to thrash everyone in the room and exert full dominance. Since the arrival of Kang grand new possibilities had opened up, one after the other, even as her own iron grip had, simultaneously, slipped further with each new twist. Before Kang there was no question of her authority.

  Voltan entered the room. He shut the door, sealing them off from the humans.

  “We should be interrogating them,” Cee said to him at once. “Not addressing them as if they were equals.”

  Voltan refused to be baited. “We may yet need them in the time to come. Their consultation has always been part of the plan.”

  “They possess information!” Cee tried unsuccessfully not to yell. “It is foolish not to know what they know! Everything they know until they are bled dry!”

  “They know little of what we truly need,” Voltan continued in that infuriatingly calm voice. “We gain little by killing them under duress. We gain more by beginning the process of inclusion.”

  “Inclusion?!”

  “I warned against installing the Bok,” Voltan stuck to his point. “The world does not accept them. The Bok were not part of the plan.” Now his voice rose a little, pushing back. “Our entire strategy required each and every step be taken, as planned. Skip one, even one in a system this large, with this much entropy, change it, and the whole effort can crumble. We are seeing hints of that even now.

  “These people,” and he pointed back to the other room, “are the ones we need as liaisons with the humans. Familiar faces. We have one more chance to maintain some semblance of trust between us and them. They are more valuable to us as tools than as eviscerated corpses, tortured until they reveal scant bits of information we very likely already know.”

  Cee fumed.

  “The Bok should never have been part of the picture,” Voltan pressed, and as he kept talking Cee imagined, quite vividly, reaching up and snapping that smug little eye patch hard against his socket. Maybe a slap in the face.

  She had no time to deal with this. Voltan recognized how distracted she’d become and it was very clear how he was taking advantage. As much as she wanted to debate, to apply the time and the energy to hold her grip over all of them, over all the affairs of this conquered world, to squeeze harder than she’d ever squeezed, she could not peel her mind from the other prospects before her.

  The communicator in the room blurped, snapping her attention to it. Everyone else looked as well.

  “Lord Voltan,” the voice on the other end requested.

  Voltan answered. “Yes?”

  “A disturbance, lord. Developing on the world below. Warlord Eldron is reporting.”

  “Transfer him.”

  “Yes, lord.” A pause, then Eldron came on the screen on the near wall.

  “Lord Voltan,” his image stood on the bridge of his warship, crew working in the background. He noticed Cee and bowed his head. “My queen.” In the same motion his eyes also found Kang, and his expression drew tighter.

  Voltan said: “What is your report, Eldron?”

  The warlord took a breath. “We began accumulating anomalous info centering on the continent of North America, in a city called Boise. Nothing of particular note, but enough to draw my attention. I decided to investigate. I put down a small craft and it was attacked and the crew killed, along with another that followed. In the chaos we identified the superhuman. The one that fought against Kang.”

  Cee looked to the beast, wondering if he caught that, but there was no question that he had. His lax, annoyed stance was instantly transformed and he was fully alert, translation wand coming to his face.

  “Horus?” he growled, voice more animal than human. It was as if he grew more monstrous each day. “Horus is down there?” And he looked in that direction, at the floor, as if he could peer through it, where the Earth would be, rage building. Cee steeled herself for what she saw coming.

  “Are you sure?” she asked Eldron directly.

  “Confirmed, my queen.”

  She looked now to Voltan. Demanded: “How did he get back?” As if Voltan would have answers. “He left with that other starship. The ancient one. He was gone.” Now she turned to Eldron, to the room—to anyone who might know. “Did it return? Did the old warship return?” The prospect of that set them all on edge.

  Eldron answered: “No, my queen. The ship is advanced, but if it had returned we would know of it.”

  “Could it be another?” Again she addressed them all. “Another of the super humans?”

  On the screen Eldron shook his head. “No. This is the same human that attacked our forces and fought Kang. We’re still putting together information, but we believe one of the transit devices was used.”

  Kang’s voice grew ominous. “Show him to me.”

  For a moment Eldron looked uncertain, watching to see if Kang’s demand would be countermanded. When it wasn’t he signaled on his end and an image came up. Specifically one of their landing craft making for orbit, then an access door along its side was blowing outward as if from some terrific internal force, followed by a human leaping from within. The image paused and enhanced and there, on the screen, clear in monochrome light, was the human they all recognized. Horus. Kang stepped closer.

  “Put me down there,” he said. In that moment he loomed, seemed more immense even than he was; the crooked, horned projections from his skull, his yellow, scaled hide, fearsome eyes and jagged fangs … Here was a bomb that had begun to tick, and all in that room were trapped with it.

  Cee struggled to collect her resolve. Between Voltan’s infuriating pace of things, his highly questionable decisions and constant yet subtle subverting of her own desires, now Kang, who was rising to reinstate his own brand of difficulty …

  She must control them. All of them. Kang, Voltan, the fleet of warriors and commanders that were growing to despise her. All of them. Every one.

  “Put me down there,” Kang repeated. “I will finish him. Horus is mine.”

  Cee pulled herself straight. “We have no time for personal vendettas.”

  Kang whirled on her. “Horus is mine!” His voice was restrained, yet it pulsed the metal walls of the room. The computerized translator relayed his words dutifully in its meek, tinny voice.

  “He is ours!” Cee shot back, refusing to be cowed. “Horus is not your problem alone!”

  “Horus is mine,” Kang repeated, seething. “Put me down there!”

  “So you can fight him, waste precious time and energy and possibly lose?”

  Instantly Kang was in her face and she was taking a step back before she could check her terror.

  “You dare!” he hissed into her upturned face.

  She steadied herself.

  “I will destroy him.” Kang remained leering over her but she held now, outwardly strong, body ready to collapse.

  She decided to divert.

  “How is he even here?!” She demanded of her people, taking the opportunity to step away from Kang. She turned her frustration to them. “You say another transit device?”

  On the screen Eldron nodded. “The signals we’ve collected would seem to indicate that, yes.”

  �
�There are other Icons,” said Kang. He looked at Cee. Then back to the image, his most hated nemesis frozen in mid-flight, leaping toward the ground. “Horus may have used one to return.” Hearing his gruff voice make a rational conclusion seemed to calm the room.

  “But ‘how’ he got here is of little consequence,” he said. “Put me down there to face him.”

  Cee said nothing.

  “Give him to me!” Kang shouted, and for an instant it spiked her hearing and she cringed. Instead of reinforcing her fear, however, it raised her anger.

  “No! That is my command!”

  Kang seethed. “Then I go without your command.”

  “How?” She nearly laughed, such was the tension in the air. “How will you reach him?”

  “I’ll leap from this craft. I will have him.”

  “Then do it,” she invited, and realized they were likely past the point of physical violence. Though Kang could kill them all, kill everyone aboard and even destroy the ship from the inside out if that became his overwhelming objective, he was helpless without them. And he knew it.

  She shook her head. “This is ridiculous,” she said and turned away, to Voltan. Still hoping to defuse the situation. Filled with all her own rage at these events, having to subvert her own outlets in order to rein in Kang.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” she said, exasperated. Then, over her shoulder to Kang: “Your Horus is about to be no longer.”

  And she turned back to Voltan, fixing his gaze.

  “Destroy the area,” she said. “It’s about time we made a real example.” Now it was her turn to exert.

  Voltan’s eyebrow raised; the one over his eye patch.

  “Destroy it?”

  “Annihilate it!” Her turn to exhibit some rage. “The entire city! Now!”

  CHAPTER 7: AN IMPOSSIBLE PLAN