Serenity came instead. Kind of washed over her, actually, and at first it startled her. Out of nowhere, so calming. So … pleasant, and after her initial reaction to the complete unexpectedness of it she let herself sink into its embrace. Such warmth, replacing the intensity of the pain.
It felt nice.
She smiled for her dad. Happy she was able to do so.
He was a good man.
He would tell her story.
She let her eyes close. Just to get a little rest.
Yes, she thought.
A little rest would be nice.
Dad would see that everything was taken care of.
She loved him so much.
And she knew, she felt, how much he loved her.
It was such a wonderful feeling.
CHAPTER 51: DICHOTOMY
Heath hustled across an open stretch of ground, staying low. He reached the concealing copse of trees that was his destination and paused to ID his next contact. It took him only a moment to find Willet and Pete, about fifty yards ahead through the trunks. He made for them.
“What’s the status?” Pete asked as Heath ran up and came to a crouch.
“Kel squads on-scene are dispersing.”
“We need to move to the next checkpoint before their sweeps bring them through here,” Willet advised.
Heath looked past him, deeper into the woods. After the brutal firefight at the safe house everyone had split to their designated fallback positions. Those that survived.
“We’ve got positive locations on our key players,” Willet reported. He’d been in touch with Drake. “They’re in position and have confirmed the pings.”
This amazingly effective little resistance cell had been flushed and was on the run, but their work was done. The ones that needed to make it made it—a harsh way to imagine it, but that was reality—now all they had to do was get those players into position and wait.
The counter-invasion was coming.
It promised to be utter chaos. Thousands of armored units popping into existence around the globe, as Heath understood it, some sort of quantum entangled teleportation device like the one Jess used, which the invaders would then recalibrate to launch and land aboard Kel starships in orbit, siege-boarding and taking as many as they could.
If it went off anything like it was described it would be the most insane version of asymmetrical warfare ever devised.
Heath gathered his focus.
Drake and Fang and the smart guys had made transport and were on their way to set up limited shop and keep doing what they did. They were the first out when the Kel struck, shielded and sacrificed so they could get away safely and spearhead the things still to come. Many died for their sake; probably half the cell. Heath thought of the offworlders, who most certainly did not belong in that group, most specifically father and daughter; Darvon and, as she wanted to be called, Egg.
Heath would never forget the image of her sacrifice. Even as Heath himself was rushing two of the hackers clear, laying down fire and fully expecting to be vaporized any second …
Egg, yelling some sort of battle cry, filled with a suicidal intensity that could never have been summoned except in a moment like that, grabbing a gun and opening fire, driving back three Kel that had the fleeing group in its sights. Saving, in a sense, Heath and the two he rushed to evacuate. In the chaos of the melee too much was happening, too many targets were on both sides, and in a horrifying instant she’d given her life for theirs.
Egg was dead. She’d gone down screaming but Heath knew it was the end for the young girl, even as he witnessed that terrible tragedy. It almost sent him rushing back into the fray seeking revenge, but the tactical part of him managed, just barely, to maintain focus on the thing that was so critical to their success, and he got the others clear.
Egg didn’t belong there. None of them did, but she especially. She did not deserve to die. Not on this world, a world that wasn’t even her own, giving her life for people she hardly knew. As with any such sacrifice—and Heath, in his less than thirty years of life, had experienced this far too many times—it was too much to bear, and he felt the pain of the loss acutely.
Willet got them going.
“Let’s move.”
**
Zac rode behind Jess on Erius, arms around her, fingers interlocked loosely in her lap. She leaned into him, curved against his torso, kind of like a human recliner, his chin just above her head. Occasionally he rested it there, the gentle pressure making her eyelids flutter. Many problems waited, but this moment held none, and so she sank into it, snatching the rapture, allowing herself to experience the joy of that slice of infinity, the pleasant sensations and all else. Erius plodded along at a steady pace, the slow, heavy clomp of his hooves like a metronome, swaying gently, the Necrops directly before them. By now they’d drawn close, the first dark shadows of the outer streets only minutes away. Broken buildings towered into the sky, laced with the indomitable greenery of vines; life overcoming the artificial, always thriving. Jess wore her armor, the sword and other gear slung in packs across Eriuses’ rump. Zac wore his Earth clothes.
Galfar and Arclyss and the Codes were here, somewhere in that gnarled maze, and for the last little bit Jess had been experimenting with reaching out to the old man telepathically, trying to find him, kind of like shouting into the dark, hoping he would hear. So far it didn’t work. Like before, like always, it seemed, you at least had to have the person in sight. You had to know where you were placing the communication. She guessed that made sense. Still, it would be nice to be able to shout randomly into space.
She had the idea, as they clomped gently along, that she might begin showing Zac telekinesis. The way he took so quickly to the telepathy … maybe here, with Galfar’s help, she could show him how to move things as well. How to project force. Zac, with his impossible strength … if he could also move things with the mind, how unstoppable would he be?
Perhaps he could be her first pupil.
“Sentries,” he spoke softly over her head. She looked up into the crumbling skyscrapers. Colossal, square trees, they were, the vines giving them their leaves. She was sure many pairs of eyes watched from those black windows, though as yet she could see none. Zac, no doubt, saw them all.
“A horse is coming,” he added. As with the sentries, she could hear no sign. A rider must’ve been sent to greet them. And it struck her: It was interesting to be riding to this horrific place in anticipation of a greeting, a warm welcome, when not that long ago she’d ridden here for the first time in panic, fearing all manner of terrifying scenarios, most of which involved her death.
In a way Hell had become a refuge, its demonic, malformed denizens her friends.
And as she peered into the very real shadows ahead the shadows of all her doubts fell heavy across her.
She now had a directive senior to all else.
Whether by knowledge Galfar possessed, or Arclyss, or Nani, or the technology of Man, or Kel, or—and she believed in this as an ultimate failsafe—knowledge contained in the Codes … Zac would be saved. She would save him. One way or another she was going to find a way to snap him from his fate. Cryptic and daunting though the Codes might be, she knew they would, ultimately, contain insight. Something she could use. There would be a way.
She settled into him as Erius continued his rhythmic clomp-clomp, bringing them steadily closer to the city edge.
Zac seemed so fine, so full of life, it was hard to imagine his demise might be at hand. Hard to imagine he might be gone for good. Could these little hiccups he’d been experiencing be nothing at all? Overblown fear that, in the end, would prove to be completely … nothing? Zac himself only had speculation, based on things unknown by the Dominion—people who did not even fully understand what they’d done in creating the Kazerai in the first place. Yes, Zac was changing, yes, things were happening to him that could be construed as proof of that morbid speculation, but did that really mean it was inevitable?
She heard the horse. Distant hooves, beating fast, echoing sharply within the irregular angles of the city, bouncing from hard surfaces. A lone rider burst into view around a corner.
It was Haz.
She sat straight and turned to look up at Zac behind her, finding herself a little nervous for her boyfriend to meet her once-suitor. How would Haz respond to seeing Zac in the flesh?
None of the things she worried over came to pass. In fact she found herself impressed with how Haz continued to mature. It was like he was more grown up each time she saw him. They ended up talking telepathically, Zac as well, which covered the language barrier smoothly and easily, and Haz was polite and friendly and he and Zac got along fine from the moment they met. Of course Zac got along with everyone, and he had no idea Haz once had his eyes on Jess, but it seemed as if that was behind Haz now and the young man from Hamonhept knew the bond she and Zac shared.
Today he was the consummate gentleman.
He took them to Galfar and Arclyss. Along the way she jokingly asked what he saw of the future, knowing how grim things were, hoping to have some fun even as she claimed her own prescience was a bit strained—which it was—and when Haz didn’t laugh, when he tried to defer, obviously experiencing too much difficulty with what he saw to make light of it, even jokingly, she regretted using such a loaded question. Haz could see the future, kind of, and it was, apparently, from his reaction, too horrible even to make fun of.
And so he made a comment about something else. Choosing to say how their son would be great, clearly hiding the fear of the darker things he saw, and Jess didn’t dare press. Wishing she hadn’t tried to lighten the mood.
She let it go.
Resolving she would never allow that darker future to be. Whatever Haz saw … she wasn’t going into agreement with it. She would not be bound by a timeline that had yet to occur. Nothing was set in stone, no matter what precognition was involved, no matter the continuum of time; past, present, future.
Her fate would be her own.
CHAPTER 52: A COLLECTIVE BREATH
“You abandon the One True God!” voices among the zealots assaulted Cee with her own manifesto. She sought the sources, even as their shouts were systematically silenced by the crack of Kel rifles. Still they shouted. More voices to replace the ones killed. The zealots were rapidly becoming martyrs, and the assault among the crowd shook her—not because it was yet more of the Prophecy fanatics trying to make a scene. It shook her because it wasn’t.
“You betray your own lies!”
They were shouting her own condemnation. Pointing to her abandonment of the ways she professed to uphold. The opposite of those she persecuted. These should’ve been her supporters, and yet … they accused her of being one of the very heretics she damned. The very group she’d been mercilessly rooting out and killing.
Now she was hated on both sides.
She shouted back, not knowing why she did, apoplectic, covering her sick terror with forced indignation, voice lost among the din. It was a reaction to the cries of accusations, a shout into the void, no specific target, no way to relay it with the force she so desperately wanted in that moment. She was back. On Kel, and she’d been in transit aboard her official car, traveling with a full procession of other open-air vehicles through the Kel capital, Voltan and Kang with her, neither particularly happy to be there, on the way to begin her campaign of rebuilding confidence on the home front when …
Attack.
“She follows the Prophecy!” one shouted from the other side, and suddenly it was both groups, and she was confronted by hate on both sides; those who cursed her for seeking the way, those who cursed her for not openly declaring her support of the same. What drove this?! What did they know?! How much?! Suddenly the fear of that, that they knew what she’d been up to, scared her as much as anything else. “She knows it to be true!” That voice was silenced with a sharp crack and the flare of another Kel rifle. “She kills us for what she too believes!” Crack! another killed. “She consorts with the Prophecy!”
Each new shout brought a shot and the offending voice was silenced, the guards ringing her giant car aiming down into the clamoring bodies. The crowd was growing. “You forsake him! You see the untruth!” Crack! “The only hope is the Prophecy!” Crack! “Admit your lies!” Crack! And still they shouted. What started as a single, shouting accusation had been driven to a full-blown riot; two sides, her stuck right in the middle. She could not see where the bodies flooded from, even from her perch atop the large car, but the street was filling—those stationed along the route to observe her passage having transformed with the rest; they must’ve been in wait—and for an instant, as the intensity of her protective ring of fully-armed guards shifted and they were suddenly not just picking off offenders but holding the mob at bay … she actually feared for her life. Wide-eyed, no longer trying to challenge that which she could not control. She cast about at her retinue of dignitaries. All were as scared as she was. All except Voltan, she noticed, and as she witnessed his reserved demeanor she wondered how he could possibly not be affected. In fact, it looked as if he was glad for this spectacle. Of course he would want to see her ruined, but right then his life was on the line as much as hers. Was he not afraid?
Then there was Kang. Pacing to one edge—as if they’d forgotten the beast was even there.
That foolish moment of forgetfulness came abruptly to an end. He reminded them of his presence with authority.
“ENOUGH!” If her voice was lost among the rest Kang’s was the complete opposite. Cee recoiled in shock—everyone did; the whole mob, the whole street, her soldiers and anyone anywhere within a mile. As that single word rocked like a hammer between the buildings she was certain Kang had unleashed his full volume, and for a heart-stopping instant worried it had killed her; locked in place, breathless. But then a gasp, and she was alive, and it looked as if his thundering bellow had actually knocked people down, whole waves of bodies stumbling away and falling. She unstuck herself and saw everyone cowered in the street. The entire crowd, her guards. Even Voltan had his hands to his ears.
For an instant the sudden silence floated, empty. What had been a veritable din of murder … gone. Complete emptiness in the wake of Kang’s shocking, sonic assault.
Then he was jumping to the street, landing among them and the carnage was underway. There was no way the crowd would actually stop. Kang knew it. Cee knew it. They all knew it. Though the shock of his command held them, it would not for long. These people had come for one purpose only; to die for the cause.
And so the dying began.
With a perverse grin of enthusiasm the yellow demon began his rampage. Contained for too long, it was as if he’d realized an opportunity and this was his pent-up release and he would follow through. That command, Enough!, was as much for himself. He’d had enough, and would unleash his wrath. The crowds could’ve gone to their collective knees, begging for mercy, and they would not have had it. Kang would not have it.
He would kill them all.
As illogical as Cee knew that to be—Kang simply could not kill everyone—there was very little logic in that first instant of ultra violence. He flung bodies with impossible speed, unthinkable power, like an explosion racing through the Kel, limbs and flailing torsos launching high and far, some with screams, most without, death coming too fast, Kang hurling them down the street, across the street, into the cars and into the buildings, up and into walls, high into the sky such that a rain of bodies and body parts began, some even falling with heavy thuds to the deck beside Cee … as Kang engaged that rampage Cee felt her eyes painfully wide in fascinated horror.
Kang had the force. Every ounce of the force she so desperately wished to unleash on this crowd of hate just moments before, and now here was that force in full effect and it was stunning. Breathtaking, and the execution of it handled all her immediate desires for retribution.
These heathens were getting far more than anything they deserved.
&
nbsp; It was wonderful.
And it was terrifying.
A yellow blur, Kang was, punctuated by a steady spray of red, all along one side as those on the other came close to fight back, foolishly, seeing the sheer impossibility of it, and as those of weaker will fell over each other in retreat in the face of Kang’s onslaught, Cee’s guards picked up their interrupted objective and gunned them down.
Ugly. Kang wreaking havoc across swaths of bodies. The non-stop flash and crack of rifles mopping up others. It was wickedly enthralling, and with the occasional sidelong glance Cee noticed those dignitaries sharing the car with her felt the same. Even Voltan watched intently in awe this fantastic display of raw power. At the core of it the horrific spectacle was something any Kel could appreciate. Intensely Cee felt the primal shift among all who bore witness, and she began to recoil before it.
Startled, at once. Fear for her life replaced abruptly by fear for the future. As Kang slogged through a carpet of bodies, literally climbing hills of them at points, as he finished at last and deemed his work done, jumping, bloody, back to the platform to stand beside her, she could feel the pall that hung over the scene; a very real specter, a tangible cloud that would haunt them.
It would haunt every possible future.
In that result both factions that came to thwart her had been a success, and she cursed them for it. Shuddering at the reality that, now, she had enemies on both sides.
She looked to the bloody, casually snorting Kang. At the rest of them. Her subjects.
Feeling brutally exposed.
It was her against them all.
**
“Been a while for you, sir?” the kid in the Skull Boy suit next to Lindin asked; a nervous expression, understandably, prepared as they were to leap through the void.
Lindin was nervous too.
“Too long,” he answered, rotating and extending one arm, then the other, getting used to the Skull Boy armor. Both he and the kid were suited up but had their helmets off—dozens of others around them were also helmetless, not yet having donned the skull caps and gone completely live—and the youth had finally managed an approach. Lindin noticed him kind of circling, wanting to speak to the vaunted ex-commander, intelligence chief and, most definitely, a guy who, by rights, had no real reason being there. Lindin was at a level to be leading this entire operation from afar, and yet there he was, down on the field with the rest, preparing to lead not the army but a squad, less than a dozen units, directly into battle.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 57
