Willet watched Zac standing in Jessica’s room, the mighty Kazerai stunned, framed by the ruins of her teenage things. Delicate colors, furniture and personal items, destroyed, gaping hole in the ceiling showing stars in the night sky above. Burn holes in the walls, fragments of what had once been a refuge. Sanctuary.
Gone.
Willet almost said she’d given her life to save Anitra, but stopped before he did. Zac was well aware of what Jessica had done. He did not need any reminders of her probable death. Willet felt it too, but the truth of it was lost in the deadly urgency of the moment.
“I have to believe she’s safe,” Zac said. “She’s stronger now. She survived.” Willet wanted to find his own confidence. Could that armor have been more advanced than it looked? Could it have shock systems that would protect her from such a fall?
“She made it back,” Zac seemed to bolster his own confidence. Then: “Now it’s up to us.” Willet could see he was crushed at having lost her again. Whether merely working to convince himself she’d made it or whether Zac did, in fact, believe she survived, the Kazerai was at least thinking clearly enough to realize they had no time to dwell on it.
They had to move.
Noise caught their attention, high in the sky through the gaping hole. Both looked and there, circling in view against the night was another Kel landing craft, moving methodically across the field of stars. Destruction of the house, of them—of everything—just a cannon shot away.
Willet accelerated the moment.
“We’ve got to get out of here.”
**
It took Voltan a moment to respond.
“Our troops are still down there,” he managed. Cee could see his mind churning as he scrambled for a way to divert her dramatic demand. For once she had him off guard.
She pressed. “Withdraw them!” She would have her order followed, no mater how extreme. She would not waver in this.
“Flattening that area risks far too much,” Voltan gathered his resistance. “The entire city? There is no precedent in the eyes of the humans for doing such a thing. Obliterate an entire city to kill one person? One small group?
“Doing that will set us back years in our diplomacy.”
“Diplomacy?!” She felt little bits of spittle flick from her lips as she yelled. She no longer cared. “This is conquest!” She sneered. “You were so eager—” to destroy a whole city to be rid of Kang! she nearly screamed, catching that deadly statement cold—just before it finished spilling into her stream of rage. And as the thought of those dangerous words passed across her mind her blood chilled, imagining the results of having said them in front of Kang. But she caught herself in time and it gave her perspective. Enough, at least, that as her anger continued its run, no time for the terror of wondering what might have been, she tempered her delivery.
“We’ll not hold ourselves in check over our desire to pacify the humans,” she finished.
“This has nothing to do with pacification,” Voltan insisted with measured calm. “It has everything to do with maintaining our grip and furthering our goal of control. Annihilating one of their cities will not aid that goal.”
At that Kang weighed in.
“I want him by my own hands,” he growled, translator wand doing its job with cold efficiency, turning his harsh voice into the language of the Kel. And while Kang and Voltan were not allies—not in the least—Cee felt the infuriating burden of dealing with their unique obstructions as one.
“It is the key to our strategy,” Voltan mostly ignored Kang, though her Praetor grudgingly welcomed his view. Whatever their individual motivations, in this Voltan agreed. “We’ve already conquered them. They have nothing. If we continue to inflict pain without thought, the usefulness of this world will be lost. We’ll be faced with a planet filled with resistance and loose technology and any hope of full, controlled domination will take decades.
“The setbacks we face will be enormous.”
Cee clenched her fists, teeth grinding as Voltan turned to Kang:
“I propose we send Kang, as he wishes.”
**
Zac came to a conclusion. “We’ll never run from this,” he said, staring up through the hole in the ceiling. Then he looked down at Willet, a hard look in his eyes, and for one of the few times in Willet’s professional career he worried he himself was not anywhere near up to the task at hand.
Zac looked like some sort of mad god.
“So we do what we came to do.” The Kazerai drew a deep breath; heavy chest filling to its fullest. “Jess is gone. We finish our mission.”
Willet felt himself staring.
“We go get Satori.” Zac looked toward the remnants of the room’s second-floor window. And, before Willet could say anything in response, the tall warrior was stepping across the room and … leaping through. There he went, taking parts of the wall and the rest of the glass with him, shooting outward into the darkness, landing somewhere out of sight in the back yard.
Reflexively Willet ran to the ragged exit hole and looked out. He carried the Kel rifle, still wearing the jeans and shirt belonging to Jessica’s dad. Civilian clothes made for comfort, for leisurely pursuits, and he was about to die in them, and he caught sight of Zac in the night, somewhere out toward the field beyond, leaping high into the air and …
Impacting one of the Kel craft. A small behemoth, it was, hovering out there high in the sky unseen, but now Willet saw it, and Zac hit it from below like a bullet and stuck, banging through. Though the craft itself was nearly silent, the terrific pound of Zac’s impact and his fists as he punched the rest of the way through resounded across the land, god-like hammer strikes echoing back with terrific force and, as Willet watched in fascinated horror, the tiny Kazerai was peeling his way inside and the craft was still hovering—as yet unaware he was there, Willet had to imagine—all of it happening so fast until, as Zac scrambled in through the breach he’d created with his own hands, those inside the craft must’ve come to a decision and it began a rapid ascent.
Willet could scarcely believe what he was seeing.
But the effort on the part of the Kel was too late. Their escape was not to be, their ascent abbreviated, quite harshly, and the craft curved and went erratic, angled down, then up, then curved and headed straight back toward the ground ...
WHUMP! the colossal impact vibrated the foundation of the house, even that far away, hitting the field beyond and throwing up a wall of dirt and grass that briefly obscured the stars on the night horizon.
Shit!
Zac had just tackled a landing craft.
Willet worked desperately to clear his mind. To focus. To get a grip on what was happening and find his place in these rapidly unfolding events. What now? What was Zac doing?
What am I supposed to do?
He looked out the second floor window, numb in the silence of the aftermath; gauged the height, decided not to risk injury—there were plenty of opportunities for that coming—turned and ran back to the hall, down the stairs, through the living room and the kitchen, out onto the back porch and into the back yard. Outside he skirted the landing craft in the back yard, slagged in the middle and still burning, metal glowing white-hot. Past the burning craft he hooked down the small rise and out into the field, sprinting to the lander Zac had just dropped from the sky. Almost as an afterthought he waved his rifle left and right, sighting targets or possible cover, ready to fire on any Kel that might pop up.
None did.
Reaching the side of the crashed ship he tried to find the opening Zac made. The nose of the thing was plowed in, aft portions sticking high into the air. It was fully intact. These Kel craft were beyond sturdy, Willet was learning; he was sure the swan dive did no real damage. It looked wrong for the thing to be stuck in the ground like that, but it was likely still functional.
What did Zac have in mind?
And for a second Willet began to fear the young Kazerai had lost his mind. The loss of Jessica for the second ti
me, the harsh reality that she would not have survived the plummet on the other end, no matter how optimistic he was … these things must finally have sent him over the edge.
Willet found the jagged opening, just above his reach, up along the side and too high above the ground.
He decided to shout. Everything had gone to shit anyway.
“Zac!” he yelled. A frantic scan of the sky and he caught no sign of other craft.
That would no doubt be changing very soon.
“Up here,” Zac’s voice came from the opening. Dim green light shone from inside. Willet found him, looking down calmly from the ragged metal edge.
“Here,” he leaned out and reached a hand. It wasn’t far. Willet jumped and grabbed it and Zac pulled him up, helping him into the hold. The floor was dramatically slanted from the impact angle but there was a protrusion to brace against and he put a foot against it and stood, looking around, re-gripping the Kel rifle though he knew he wouldn’t need it right then. Armored Kel lay scattered about the compartment, dark blood visible in the green light as shimmering stains.
Behind him Zac crouched in the ripped opening, glancing now and again outside.
Willet tried to slow things down.
“Okay. Let’s say we do find Satori,” he said. “We have no Icon. No way to get back.”
Zac glanced out the hole. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Listen,” Willet tried to reason, “I want to find her worse than you do. We came here to rescue her …” he broke off, nearly choking; finding himself surprised with the strength of the emotions sweeping through him suddenly. “I … you know how I feel. I would do anything to save her. Anything to bring her back. But, anything that has a chance. Striking blindly is just going to get us killed. This has no chance. There’s no way we can—”
“We’ll figure it out,” Zac insisted. He crouched in the opening, eyes reflecting the green light, so filled with determination that Willet, for an instant, had a hard time not believing him. “We take the next step and we figure it out,” he said. “We know what we need to do.”
“That’s a fine philosophy,” said Willet, “but we need more than—”
“We can do this.”
“You’re indestructible!” Willet paused to get a grip. “That’s all fine for you,” he said more calmly, “but how do you expect me to get through this? How do you expect her to get through it? If we find her, how can she … ?”
Zac had no answer.
Shit! Willet wanted to go for her. He did. If there was a chance, any chance, however remote …
“I admit we don’t have many other options,” he tried to share his indestructible friend’s confidence. Zac was here, Zac was willing and Zac was determined. Zac just might be able to make it work, despite the odds stacked against them.
“But the whole Kel fleet!” The suicidal reality of that, alarms screaming in his head, would not yield. Reason was just too strong. In the past Jess had convinced him to do ridiculous, stupid things, but in each case there was at least a hint of possibility. Here there was none. Zero.
“There’s nothing covert about this anymore. Nothing. All eyes are on us. We’re sitting ducks and we’ll probably be vaporized any second.” At the voicing of that likelihood his skin began to crawl.
But Zac was like ice. “Which is why there’s no way we’re getting away.” Maybe he had lost his mind. “As I said, we’ll never run from this. Whether we think we can do it or not, it’s our only choice. Our decision has been forced on us. We go get Satori.”
He stepped down from the opening and stood tall on the slanted floor. “If we can’t, at least we go out guns blazing.”
Willet made a little psshyeah sound and looked at the measly Kel rifle in his hands.
“Our blaze will be more like a match.”
As much as he wanted to believe what Zac was saying …
“We can’t even seal this against the vacuum,” he pointed to the ragged hole. That was just the first of their problems. “Even if this thing flies, even if we can make it to orbit we’ll never reach them. Even if we can fly it … this thing won’t hold air.”
Zac started for the front. “The cockpit seals.”
Willet was really having a hard time with this. He could think of no other way to stop this at the moment and Zac just kept moving, stepping all the way down to the door to the front.
“We can’t do this!” Willet shouted.
But Zac only paused for a moment. “Then we become heroes,” he said and entered, calling over his shoulder: “Legends.”
“Legends?! Legen—” Willet spluttered, waving the barrel of the rifle around the room. “Who’s going to tell our story? No one’s going to know a damn thing about anything we do here today!”
Through the cockpit door he saw Zac shrug. “Someone will.”
Willet pinched his lips; breathed harshly through his nose and collected what little composure he could. Carefully he followed, slip-sliding down the tilted floor as he muttered to himself. “Heroes. I’m not ready to have songs written about me.” He reached the cockpit and worked his way around one of the dead Kel, trying, and failing, to muster the cavalier spirit that so often got him through situations like this. It was all he had, and even that final refuge had left him.
In the cockpit Zac was at the main console, looking over the controls. “Are these like the ones on the Reaver?”
Willet made his way forward and braced himself against the edge of one of the seats, bringing his focus to the blinking indicators and lit displays. He was a little uplifted to see a few things actually did look familiar. He thought he recognized what were probably flight controls. Tentatively he touched a few input surfaces, looking for recognizable responses, straining to visualize everything Nani had showed he and Satori.
He found a control that brought the powerplant online.
Hm.
Maybe this could work.
At least maybe he could get it flying.
“So,” he found another input he recognized and got a response. “If we’re going to be heroes, where do we go?”
“Up,” said Zac. “Find the ship she’s on.”
Willet gave him a crooked smile as he continued looking over the controls. “I know that. I’m talking after we die. We’re going to be dead in less than an hour, probably sooner, so I’m thinking ahead. Where do we go when we become legends?” He found more things he could make sense of. “So we become heroes. What then? Is there more? Is there a Hall of Heroes? A place for us? Virgins waiting? Or is this the end? From here is it just … nothing?”
Zac gave it deeper consideration than Willet expected. He found a few more controls before Zac answered: “The Dominion always told us we go to heaven.” Willet knew what the Dominion taught, how the Kazerai were run and the promise that waited them as the Hands of God. “It was always such a vague concept,” Zac mused. “You either believed in it or you didn’t. Didn’t matter either way.
“It always seemed wrong to base so much on something you had absolutely no way to know.” Willet nodded; Zac went on: “I never really bought into it. Though Heaven is as good a concept as any. Kind of gives you hope.” He paused. “Maybe that’s all we need to get us through. Hope. Real or not.” Then Zac laughed, and the sound of it was so unexpected it got Willet’s full attention.
“It’s just,” Zac explained, “If heaven does exist, at least as told to us by the Dominion, it will be denied me. Ironic, eh? After all this I’m not going. I was stripped of my status as a Hand of God. I went against them. The Shogun, the witch, the Council. They disavowed me.”
Impulsively Willet laid a hand on his shoulder.
“If there is a heaven,” he said, “you are going. Any real heaven would not be off limits because you disobeyed. Certainly not because someone said so. I don’t care who they claim to be or what authority they claim to have. That choice would never be anyone’s to make. You’re a saint, Zac. If there is a heaven, it’s a place for people like you.�
� He turned back to the controls. “If anyone’s burning in Hell it’s those who condemned you.”
**
Everyone in the room stared at the large screen on the wall, Cee standing off to the side, looking on the developing situation with all the rest. Things on the ground were only getting more out of control, and it was happening faster than the Kel could react. The latest bit of news: the superhuman was apparently aboard another of the Kel landing craft—having attacked it in mid-air and brought it down—a startling reality that was only just beginning to settle—and had actually, somehow, brought the ship back to life and was now attempting to fly it to orbit, which meant he was most likely trying to reach them. He certainly wasn’t running away.
Kang was beside himself.
“He’s mine,” he seethed. “Do not shoot it down.”
Voltan ignored him.
“What else do we know?” he asked. Eldron was checking things on his end, consulting others on his command bridge. On the view screen he looked perplexed.
“We believe there is another aboard,” he said. “More info is filtering in on the disturbance prior. There may have been another human involved.” He looked at them on the screen. “We have a few things to sort out. Short answer for now, we suffered a massacre down there, probably at the hands of Horus though there may be others, one craft is destroyed and still down and will need cleanup, another was jeopardized and the one on ascent is in their control.”
That lander, the one Horus brought from the sky, had slipped backwards out of its crater, turned and began an ascent toward the fleet. In all this the only thing Cee could think was that she’d missed the opportunity to enforce a statement; to execute the destruction of an entire human city in front of her top leaders. They were all standing there, in person, watching her every move. With that audience she’d issued an unquestionable order, let it be questioned, then let herself, once again, fall into debate with Voltan, and Kang, and now this new series of events was too unexpected; far too much evolving far too quickly and her order to destroy the city now made no sense to carry out.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 10
