They may have been zealots but they did, at least, appear to have some common sense.
“Do not kill any human girls,” Cee spoke with her ground commander via a comm link to the lower hold. They prepared to set down and offload. Small turrets would first pick off the warriors atop the walls, then the Kel would sweep into the castle and clear it. “Round up all females up for interrogation. Is that understood?”
“Understood, my queen.”
At this point it was going to be hard to continue to deflect her real intent but she would continue to try. Once they’d rounded up their captives she would be the one to ID the girl.
Jessica.
One of the technicians on the bridge turned to her.
“We have riders, my queen.”
She saw them. A group congregating in the stable areas, visible through the roofs on infrared, mounted up and clearing the covered portions. Quickly they formed ranks in the courtyard, in plain sight, casting nervous looks at the behemoth looming above, hovering threateningly in the sky.
“Hold.” Cee spoke to her ground commander listening via comm. She moved closer to the screen.
The gate to the drawbridge began to notch upward, opening. The last of the group formed up, some forty or fifty riders in all. The rider at the fore, red bearded, red mohawked and clearly in charge, gave a shout—there was no audio at the moment, but when he raised his fist and his mouth opened wide, directing a command back at the others, it was clear enough. He reared his horse and was charging through the open gate and across the bridge, the group following en-masse behind. In no time the archaic riders were clear of the castle, on the trail and kicking up a spray of muck, each looking over his shoulder now and again, random flashes of faces scattered among the mob, checking to see if the warship followed.
Cee decided to oblige them.
“Give them some distance,” she said. “Maintain this altitude and follow.”
CHAPTER 57: FACING WHAT MUST BE
Three Kel crusiers fired on the Reaver, relentless. Bianca executed a frantic dance more inspired than any video game. Hits connected, most missed, she levied return shots, cracking the keels of the enemy or blowing holes—the relentless engagement they’d been spinning through for what seemed like an eternity, since the battle began, and all she could think of was Jess.
“We have to go!” she shouted, snapping left-right and pulling back and over, head on a swivel as she tracked targets visually on the wildly careening images whipping across the full overhead dome, matching those flashes of action with the sterile images on the tracking screens.
“We can’t!” Nani was just as frantic, managing so many channels of activity while targeting and firing with the Reaver's small turrets. They were taking damage but so far all systems were up, and they were dishing it out way worse than they were getting. Already they’d taken out half-a-dozen Kel ships, crippling a bunch more.
It was true, though. There was no way this battle would end anywhere but with human defeat if the Reaver left. Probably even if they stayed, but definitely if they left. Already three of the Kel ships the humans had commandeered were destroyed, two more were out of the action. With the inexperienced human crews at their helms, minimal hands and green, the results so far were not pretty. There were minor victories, of course, but this battle was not going in their favor.
That wasn’t likely to change, short of a miracle.
This was so bad. Jess had sent the pic and what info she could in a single transmission, noting in the same send that she was erasing the tablet. The implications were the worst they could possibly be. Somehow the Kel found their way to that other world, to Hamonhept, and at least one ship—the worst one possible, the queen’s dreadnought—was already there. More would surely be coming.
Not only were the Kel going to capture Jess, they’d probably get the all-important “Codes” she was trying to hide.
So bad.
Dammit! Bianca snapped the controls to the left and held them in a barrel-roll, drilling a much larger Kel battleship that had joined the mix, managing a sustained, rage-fueled lock that delivered enough force to crack it visibly along the spine. The Kel tumbled away, hammered by the impact and ejecting debris into space with flashes of internal explosions.
Lindin called in, connecting directly with Nani; Satori and Willet continued their coordination of forces on the ground. Now and again Bianca caught a glimpse of Darvon, Heath and Pete, still white-knuckled and holding on. She caught bits of Lindin’s comm; his crew and the battleship had taken out two Kel ships.
“We’ve got to save her!” It was suddenly too much. Suddenly all the training, all the transformation that had happened over the past weeks and months fell away and she was teenage Bianca again and her friend was in trouble and they had to go save her. They could destroy the queen’s dreadnought before it found Jessica or killed her and Bianca didn’t care about the bigger picture.
Jess needed them.
“Let me think!” Nani was a whirlwind of activity. Bianca held her breath. There was nothing to think about as far as she was concerned.
A hit and the hull throbbed. Minor damage. She banked away, hard on the attack.
**
“We can’t.” Zac pleaded with Jess, trying so hard to be calm—she could see his effort, and she appreciated it—but where one time it might’ve given her pause, his care for her, now it was just getting in the way.
“What we can’t do is hide,” she told him. They’d joined Arclyss and Haz, deep in the heart of the Necrops.
“Then you,” he said. “You go with them.” He looked to Arclyss, Galfar and Haz, the trio prepared to flee, then back to Jess. “I’ll face the Kel.”
“I can’t hide.” She hated the pain in his eyes. “I have to face this. This is no random discovery. They didn’t just end up here. They followed me. Me, Zac. They came here chasing me. Somehow they found the gate on the other end and managed to follow it to the one on this end. As much I want to run from it, I can’t. This is my fight.”
“Jess,” it seemed he couldn’t decide whether to shake her or hold her—whatever it took to make her listen. “That’s a Kel starship out there. A big one. I don’t care how you’ve changed, I don’t care how ancient or timeless or whatever, I don’t care how strong you’ve become … this is insane.”
“I have to confront this,” she said, simply. They were running out of time. She didn’t want to. She desperately didn’t want to. If she could just run off and hide under a rock with Galfar and Arclyss she would.
But she couldn’t.
“The Kel are the last link on the chain. They’re here for a reason. They want what we found. They came for me, but they probably think you’re here too. I don’t doubt for a second they want us both. And they want the Codes.”
“Then why turn yourself over?!” He lost his careful composure. “What could you possibly hope to do?!”
“Nothing. I don’t know. But I don’t have a choice.”
“You don’t have a choice?! Are you serious?”
She was.
He threw up his hands. “You’re going out there because you don’t have a choice?! That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said!”
As the anger in his tone echoed in the small space she realized it was the first time he’d ever called her stupid, and for an odd moment she almost smiled.
Their relationship was growing.
She inhaled patiently. “They know we’re here. If I don’t face them they’ll tear everything apart looking for me. We have to buy Galfar time.” She looked to him, to Arclyss.
Zac calmed himself. “Then let me go. Just let me go. If this is so important. I’ll scour that ship. I’ll kill them all. I’ll buy you time. I’ll find you. I’ll find you, Jess. I will. They won’t capture me, they won’t kill me. There may be a thousand of them, two thousand, but I will win that fight.”
“This is my fight,” she countered. “Zac. I can’t run from it.”
“You
can run. Run. Hide. Arclyss, Galfar, Haz—they can hide you.”
Those three, Arclyss, Galfar and Haz, stood to the side watching. Not understanding any of what the two of them said right then, arguing as they were in English, but they surely understood the emotion of the moment.
“Zac. I’m not done. Don’t you see that? This is just the next inevitable moment.” She truly wanted him behind her. “I’m going to end this, and I’m going to end it now. This world was supposed to be safe, our refuge, no one was supposed to find it and they have. The worst has happened. I have to face up to the fact that this is not over. Not yet.”
“But our son!” he was desperate now, and that fear, that hovering, omnipresent fear, was suddenly out there and shining bright.
Of course he was right.
But she couldn’t let it sway her. “He lives or dies with us,” she said, not liking how heartless that sounded. “Our son is part of this. He’s here for a reason, Zac. I’m here for a reason. You’re here for a reason. At this moment, at this time and in this place, you, me … we have to do what’s right. We have to face this.”
“Why?!”
“You know why.”
Of course it was implied that Zac would understand. His expression fell. And in that dim light, standing so close, looking down plaintively into her upturned face, six-foot-five or whatever he was, broad shoulders, dark bangs hanging across his forehead, beard and steel-blue eyes …
He looked like a little boy. Crushed. A boy who had just been denied the one thing he ever wanted. Not pouting, no longer angry but … a look of such sadness, such loss—there would be no ice cream today, certainly no sprinkles—and it was adorable, and it was wrenching, and the transformation nearly pulled her heart from her chest. It made her ache, so bad, hating that it had to be this way but it did.
“I won’t let you do this,” he practically mumbled. But there was no more feeling behind the words, they just came because they were supposed to. His last line of defense, the last ultimatum he’d been prepared to give only now it carried no weight. It was just something to say. He’d given ground so often, yielded to her demands, to her dangerous, insane decisions, let her put herself in harm’s way time and again … this was one battle she could see he’d been determined to win. And as much as she wanted to make it better for him, to restore a sense of his self-determinism, there was no time and she had no more ideas.
She turned to Galfar.
“Take the Codes,” she switched to speaking Kel. “Into the wormways.” She looked to Arclyss. He would know the way. “Far,” she said to them both. “Hide yourselves and hide the Codes and be ready. Take it all, take the devices I brought and the Codes and go. Others may come.” She looked to Haz. Wondered how much of the future he could see. “You will know them if they do. Otherwise no one must ever find these.”
Arclyss, tall, mighty Arclyss, a good foot taller even than Zac, spoke for the first time since they arrived. “We should go with you, my priestess. Your fight is ours.”
She shook her head. “You’ve both filled your roles better than I could ever have expected.” She looked between Arclyss and Galfar. This was a horrible, horrible decision to have to make. For everyone. To throw herself into this, to go willingly into the maw of the Kel.
But it was the only way.
She locked eyes with the ebon giant.
“Protect him,” she indicated Galfar. “He’s your charge now. The Codes are your charge. Not me. No longer. Once again you must protect our future. My fate lies out there.”
She turned fully to Galfar.
“I don’t know why you chose this fate.” She managed a little inside joke. It wasn’t easy but she gave him a tender smile, an understanding smile, knowing he understood that their destiny was their own, and whatever was about to happen, to him, to her, was their choice. She saw the life in his green eyes. “I certainly don’t know why I chose it. But here we are. You’re the Watcher, so maybe this was your destiny all along.” She shrugged. “Maybe I was meant to bring you the Codes. Maybe all this was meant to be, and you, not I, will bring us the Golden Age.”
Galfar shook his head. “What happens out there … happens. But you, Jessica,” his use of her name touched her, “you’ve brought us our future. The Golden Age is now.” He looked up to Arclyss, then back to her. “We will be its guardians.”
**
Kang stood stiffly at Cee’s side, imposing himself closer than ever, on edge like never before; absorbing everything that was said, listening through his translation wand, held close, forming his own conclusions about this new world. Another human world, like Earth, like Anitra, apparently part of the Kel collective long ago. There was no mistaking the eagerness of the queen. All of them were fascinated at what they’d found, but she in particular was making no effort to conceal it. Kang suspected she couldn’t.
“Why do they ride for the city?” she wondered aloud. She was at the front of the bridge, right at the giant forward screen, gazing down on the herd of bearded warriors charging across the landscape on horseback. They’d formed up and left the castle shortly after the arrival of the dreadnought. They were almost to the decaying, derelict city.
It was now most clearly their destination.
Cee turned to look back across the bridge. “No activity at the castle?”
“None of note, my queen,” came the report. She returned her gaze forward, looking ahead and down.
The riders kept glancing back, over their shoulders, the shadow of the giant ship not yet eclipsing them, the sun not yet overhead. They were primitives, no knowledge of such things; at least, they should have had no knowledge, and Kang puzzled at their reaction. It was as if they were rushing to take up a better defensive position. Could the city house some sort of weapon? Something as yet undetected, a secret weapon the barbarians thought would have an effect? Their judgment of such things was obviously very flawed, after watching them attack the dreadnought in earnest with arrows, but there remained the outside chance they harbored something truly dangerous. The city ahead was ancient Kel, after all. There was no telling what the ignorant warriors might be hiding.
“Can you detect anything ahead?” Cee seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “In the city?” Kang noticed her focus had risen to the horizon, to the broken outline of buildings and fallen structures, not very far from the desperate dash of the small army of riders. “Anything they might be after?”
“Life forms, my queen. An abundance of life forms. The city is filled with them. No energy signatures of note. If there is some technology there it gives off no evidence.”
“My guess is this is simply a reaction to our presence,” said another officer. “Perhaps they simply see the city as a refuge. More likely than not, that is where they flee.”
Cee shook her head, unconvinced. “These are warriors. They left everyone else in their castle behind. If they flee for safety then they have vastly different morals than any humans we’ve yet encountered.”
Kang had had enough. “It’s the girl you’re after!” He turned from the screen, fighting down a swell of rage, then whirled back. “Why do we float along like a feather behind a bunch of men on horses?! We know the signal came from here! You tracked her precious gate to this location! She’s here! Put down and release your hounds! You’ve an army of your own! Scanners and weapons and sensors and … Find her! What are we doing?!”
Before Cee could respond, wrestling to dismiss the shot of fear and indignation he’d just sparked, one of the Kel was reporting a new reading.
“We have two life forms separating from the mass of signals in the city,” he said. “Coming out onto the plain.” Adjustments were made, the signals were locked and a section of screen was magnified and framed, showing two figures emerging onto the open plain outside the city.
Kang was at the screen at once, blood boiling.
Horus!
“He is with her!” Right up against the giant screen and nose to nose with his nemesis. The
re he was, beard thicker, dark hair a little longer, wearing some ridiculous civilian garb, a white shirt and blue pants, alongside the girl—Jessica!—she wearing form-fitting armor with a sword at her back. “I knew it!”
He whirled on the entire bridge.
“Set down now!”
But Cee was before him at once, as if ready for his reaction.
As if she’d been harboring a secret, it occurred to him in one flash of insight.
She’s been waiting for this moment.
“Stand down,” she told him with icy calm. “You’ll not overrun this. I’m not leaving the two of you to slug it out all over this planet until you have your revenge.”
“Set me down,” he mirrored her icy edge. “Now.”
“You’ll have your chance,” she said. “But not here. Once I have the girl and I have what I want I will give you Horus, in your own private arena, if you wish, and you and the elusive Horus will have your fight. But not before.”
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 61
