She snapped her eyes back to the ramps. And there, coming down the middle one, small as the rest from that range but standing out like Godzilla, a yellow anomaly that spiked her fear …
Kang.
Her foot was sliding back. Digging in, sword coming higher as her mouth went so dry she could hardly swallow.
The Kel soldiers were dispersing, moving into a crescent of sorts, readying their rifles, a few bringing them to their shoulders but none firing. The range was still too great for any of the Fist to engage without a charge, and, as yet, Cheops had not given that order. Jess had the idea the Fist warriors might be waiting for her, but her attention was all at once sucked fully into the beast stepping arrogantly down the ramp, clothed in black garb, something ill-fitting, crooked horns making the outline of his figure that much more demonic. Then, not far behind, a group of Kel clothed differently, some sort of hovering device the size of a refrigerator moving between them, something with an odd barrel, like a sci-fi cannon, and she thought at once it must be some sort of high-power portable turret. A field gun they would likely use to kill all the Fist in a single, withering volley.
Then the queen. Jess had never seen her in person, had only seen images, but she knew her. Somehow the queen was familiar, and it felt like meeting her nemesis at last, in person. Despite a lack of contact they’d both been, she and Cee, in their own way, working steadily against the other.
Working toward this encounter.
Cee Ranok. Jessica’s eyes locked to her, seeing the other stand-outs only peripherally. There she was, surrounded by the dark shapes of hundreds of Kel soldiers, Tremarch of the Kel. Queen. Jess knew little else about her, other than a ream of suspicions, and as the queen reached the ground and continued onto the field with the same arrogance as Kang, clothed in a cape and a billowing, white, fur wrap that draped her shoulders, the only bare head among the crowd, starkly beautiful even at that range …
Jess found she’d entirely lost her core. No matter that this was precisely what she came for, no matter that this was what she expected, the arrival of Cee Ranok amid that show of force was all at once enough to snuff the flame she’d been fighting to keep lit. With a spike of fear she realized her will was entirely gone. The very thing, the thing she would need to get through this.
Gone.
Flying away on the wind.
She was small again. Nothing.
“Guess we know who I’ll be fighting.” Zac’s voice startled her. She snapped her eyes to him, desperate, staring up at him from the side and registering his attempt to ease the tension only after the unexpected shock of his voice passed. At a time when there was nothing at all to find humor in, after trying so hard to get her not to do this at all—when he should’ve been trying one last time to convince her to just get the hell out of there, to let him create a diversion and run for her life—he was being strong. For her. All arguments leading up to this impossible moment put behind, and it boosted her.
For Zac’s sake—for her sake—she tried to think of something equally light in return.
“You mean the queen?”
It actually made him laugh.
He set himself. “Yeah. She looks pretty bad-ass.” He got pretend-serious. “I’m probably the only one that can take her.”
Jess found herself capturing the welcome energy of the exchange—how else could they approach this deadly moment?—and, turning with fresh confidence, her certainty flipped and she was ready to get this started …
A change. An abrupt change in the air around Zac, an instant of confusion as her eyes were back on him and she was trying to understand what was happening …
A beam had locked him. A light shimmer of air, wrapping him in a purple field, and he was rigid and falling backward as she watched in horror. Almost she dove to her knees beside him but primal instinct warned her against that as she knew suddenly, exactly, what this was, and it could kill her, and her eyes were flying back along the path of the beam, finding its source and it was the hovering turret and …
NO!!
She staggered, stepping back in fear, torn between trying to help Zac and having no idea how, mind racing with all the things this meant.
NO!!
Zac was contained.
The Raza energy! How did the Kel have it!? Did that mean they found Anitra?! In the short time since Nani was gone had Anitra been compromised!? Only the Dominion had the Raza, and now the Kel did. A million possibilities raced through her mind, a million ways this changed everything, and she almost fell quivering to the ground.
It was over.
She looked desperately between Zac and the turret, lines of Kel soldiers between she and it, the queen smiling near the device with grim satisfaction, Kang beside her, his wicked face unreadable.
And the pendulum swung. A hard bounce against her core, and with an electric surge she was on in a way she’d never been. Not even when fighting the Bok, not even at the peak of that impossible fight ...
Never like this.
The Kel were not ready.
Leaping. Straight for the turret. High and far, that sense of crushing defeat blown utterly away and in its place—with a vengeance—a lust for the kill. This was not how it was going down and that turret was her first target. A surge of incredible force and she was halfway to it, clean in the middle of the Kel soldiers, knocking aside closely spaced armored bodies, hammering them to the ground as she hit, boots jamming kicks outward and up, unnatural power in her limbs, her fists, hurling blasts, Kel going down like dominoes and she was swinging the sword and they had no answer for her, not in those first seconds, and she was swarming, cutting them down like grass. Two, three, five, nine before they gathered their reaction to this impossible thing, this girl, once standing a hundred feet away, suddenly among them and thrashing, a banshee of impossible speed, impossible force, fury, cutting their armor with a sword—a sword!—taking them down, driving through them and they were firing, too late, bright flashes of energy splitting the air, no coordination to it, shots of freaked defense, the whole body of troops in her vicinity reacting like finding a horde of wasps in their midst, shooting madly in those first instants, no regard for what lay beyond, driven only by desperate self-preservation, firing wildly at the deadly human, missing and killing their own.
It was instant carnage.
Jess spun and squatted, leapt and drove, throwing out blast after blast of invisible force with ferocious shouts. “HA!” and the Kel were knocked backward and down, battered, cleaved and run through, “HA!” synchronized with the glint of blued steel, a complete blur of deadly action, the end of her ponytail flying about her head and across her vision in a mad whip.
Nothing brought her down. Kel were dying en masse. A string of deaths, screams of their dying, punctuated by shouts at the outer edges, those Kel not yet involved in the chaos, yelling instructions, trying to make sense of the bloodbath suddenly taking place before their eyes. Then she heard them. Deeper yells. Through the pounding in her ears, the pant of her heavy breath and the sounds of death all around, as she brought focus to her berserker attack she heard them.
A chorus of bellows.
The Fist, and she saw them, glimpses, at the flanks of the Kel, multi-colored hair crowding the dark fringes, splashes of vibrant hope among the blacks and whites, flashing images of their assault as she dove and spun and dodged, her ancient armor singing with the shots of Kel rifles. The armor dissipated the shots somehow, those that connected, a perfect shield against the rifles’ energy and she plowed on, leaping closer to the turret that held Zac in its thrall. And she saw the Fist were dying, and their horses were neighing in pain and fear and the battle was on, the small Kel army making short work of the powerful warriors and it was such a waste, and she was nearly to the turret and she vaguely heard the frantic shouts of the queen yelling Don’t kill her! Adding her command to the tumult of voices. Don’t kill her! Desperate that Jess live.
Knowing she held the secret.
But C
ee would never have it. Jess was nearly to the Raza turret and—
UMPF!
She was tumbling. Sword flying away.
Kang!
She’d lost sight of him in the madness. Now he had her.
NO!!
Fresh rage came as he grabbed her mid-tumble, exploding instantly behind a rush of hate, and with an overwhelming surge of pure conviction she was going to kill him. She would kill Kang. Not Zac. The beast would not die by Zac’s hand. He would die by hers.
ME!
I will kill you!
She twisted in his grip, jerking around before he could discover her true strength, his arms too loose as he yet had no full idea what he held, palms jamming into his chest—
“HA!!” the force warbled her in that proximity, splintering her arms all the way to the shoulders, but it hurt him, and his grip loosened and she was clear and on her feet and Kang was stumbling and—
“HA!!” she knocked him all the way back. To the ground and on his ass and he was clearly not ready for anything remotely like this. No matter what he’d just seen her do he had no idea what she was capable of and she leapt, arcing directly over and toward him, and as she came down with a vengeance she saw it in his eyes …
A flicker of fear.
“HA!!” that one pressed him to his back and to the ground, yellow demon body rippling and shoving into the dirt; like he’d been stepped on by a giant. In the next instant she was landing on his chest with both feet—just like she had when in the Skull Boy, back on Anitra so long ago, when she was normal and so was he.
Neither of them were normal now.
Both hands extended, right at the stunned look on his face: “HA!!” and his head smacked back, pressing in further. “HA!!” she tried to plant one inside his skull. To blow his cranium apart. “HA!!” standing atop him, triumphant, but his arms were up, and his dazed expression was gone and before she saw it coming …
He had her in his grip. Both arms, one in each fist, and he was rolling and standing and she was trapped.
This time he knew what he held. This time he would not lose her.
His power was too great.
He stood all the way. The battle with the Fist raged nearby but it was almost done. Very few roars of attack came from the warriors fighting on her behalf, nearly all of them dead. The Raza beam hummed over it all, holding Zac fast. Kang gripped and extended her to arm’s length, a hand on each bicep, like holding out a child. Her legs dangled. His expression continued its return to normal, having weathered her best effort, and as it fell back to haughty disdain he restored the sneer that was so permanently Kang.
“I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he mused, fangs pinching his lips as he talked. In that proximity he was utterly repulsive. Not simply because of the monster he’d become. A monster like that, in form, would not have been repulsive if a friend. But Kang was no friend. Kang was pure evil. His grin straightened. “But first the queen has other things in mind.”
Now Jess saw her. Walking safely from the melee, no conflict taking place anywhere near her, the last of it out of Jessica’s view and dwindling. A cadre of Kel soldiers flanked their monarch’s approach. She came closer and stopped, looking up into Jessica’s face, a forced smile on her own. Jess could see the fear behind it. What Jess had done …
It shook Cee.
One of the Kel continued all the way up, some sort of syringe in his hand. Jess could do nothing.
He jabbed her neck.
Things began to go blurry. She heard the last shouts of the Brotherhood of the Fist.
CHAPTER 59: NO EXCUSES
Lindin braced himself in the Skull Boy armor, holding to a thick crossbeam with one hand, in his other the heavy rail-gun. The inertial dampeners of the Kel warship, combined with the Skull Boy’s own gyros, had been keeping him mostly planted on both feet, but now and again a particularly violent series of maneuvers had him off balance—once or twice the sharp cuts coming hard enough that he actually felt his footing go decidedly light, the vertigo in the pit of his stomach squeezing tightly. And so he held on, the Skull Boy tall enough to span the height of the bridge, floor to ceiling, feet planted, arm extended overhead and pressing down against the beam.
“Hold there!” he shouted, directing the fight. “Lock it!” He and his team had found their rhythm; him watching the forward screen and tac screens overhead, spotting and calling points of maneuver, trajectories of feint and attack, directing his pilot and gunner as they flew. Two of the team kept monitor on systems and internal metrics, including action within the ship itself, any insurrection by the dispossessed Kel. So far what few remained were incapacitated or hunkered in wait. From comm back and forth this same pattern was holding true on the other commandeered Kel vessels.
So far the plan was, remarkably, working.
“Hold—fire! Fire six! Fire six!”
Shots and thrums, blasts that could be felt as they ripped along the giant cannons mounted at the keel—a persistent vibration of ungodly power, energy and force holding three-million tons of advanced warship in its grip; holding it, moving it, flipping and flinging it, forward, reversing, hooking tight, accelerating and firing, guns from the spinal mounts, turrets on all sides; such phenomenal energy directed outward in all directions, punching other battleships like this one, cracking smaller ones, absorbing hits, strikes that shook them, some that shook everything—those impacts surely kicking Lindin off balance, more than once battering them so hard the entire crew nearly lost consciousness.
But the mighty Kel battleship held together. After everything they were fully functional and hitting back. Hard. By the numbers the Kel were in the lead, far in the lead, but Lindin sensed a definite swing.
“Go! Take it!” Enemy ships ripped at angles across the bow. “Go! Go! Mark one, mark two!”
**
“We have to go!” Bianca shouted amid the whirl of frantic action. “She’s in trouble!” Battle intensity had been so high for so long, her level of multi-tasking so insane … she was somehow managing to engage the fight at three-hundred-percent and yet have this conversation as she worked the controls in a blur of movement. “We can’t let them get her!” She snapped right and held them straight, several seconds full burn and they shot like an arrow across the horizon, Earth just a few hundred miles below, spinning into darkness and they were on the other side and the sun was out of sight behind the planet and night fell and space exploded with stars. They continued their charge, cutting across two other massive engagements, beams searing the black as they plunged into a tight melee between a lone human ship that had been separated from the rest and was fighting for its life against four Kel. Bianca spotted that degenerating situation and was on it.
“She’s one person!” Nani was in the zone, same as Bianca, relaying calls for maneuvering, instructing positions and firing the turrets.
“How can you say that!” Fire, fire; lock and fire
“You know what I mean!”
Hook and up, pulling over and nailing a Kel cruiser, cracking it in half.
“I love her too!” The pain in Nani’s voice was clear, even above the strain of the fight. “As much as you! But we can’t leave this! Not even for her!”
Over to port; hard and out, a barrel-roll Bianca sustained, drilling one ship and smacking the control back, arresting the spin and locking another.
Fire, fire, fire.
“There has to be a way! If we go and destroy that ship at least maybe we can bring her back!”
“These drives are instant,” another voice cut the conversation, loud enough to be heard but not shouting with the same intensity. “It wouldn’t take long to go see.” It was Satori. She and Willet had become less active over the previous minutes, some of the ground battle winding down as the superior numbers of Anitran units overran the handful of Kel positions below. Communications between the Kel, including intercepted traffic back to their own homeworld, indicated reinforcements were massing for a counter-surge.
Things were only going to get worse.
Much worse.
But Satori had a point.
“Yes!” Bianca latched onto it, curving hard and hanging tight to a rapidly dodging heavy cruiser. “We don’t have to be gone long!”
Fire, fire. Trigger and fire.
“Any time is too long!” Nani was adamant. “I want her too but we have to figure this out!”
Darvon weighed in. The first time he’d spoken since this began.
“We should go,” he said. “We owe it to her.” Then, quietly but loud enough for them all to hear:
“We owe her everything.”
**
Cee stood outside the holding cells. One room held Horus, locked in his containment beam, the other the girl. Cee’s dreadnought had moved into orbit above the archaic world. She held the sword the girl had been carrying, turning it slowly in her grip, studying its keen edge; tiny, perfect etchings inscribed down its length. As swords went it was exceptional; she’d seen no finer example of Kel weaponry. It would be studied at length. The sword was not her chief concern, however, and as she carefully held her regal poise, waiting to be off, she could not banish the shocking images from her mind.
Inwardly shuddering at what she’d seen the girl do.
“We’re ready to depart,” her admiral informed her from the bridge. She stood in an alcove near the two prison rooms. Her admiral came to her on a small screen on the wall. In the hall several squads of Kel warriors waited in formation, along with their commander, her lead scientists, and Kang.
“Signal the Jakar fleet,” she said, keeping her voice calm. Cee was convinced the Codes were here, on this world where they’d just found the girl—they had to be—but she could little afford a planet-wide search. Not at this stage. Nothing that would so blatantly expose her desire. “Dispatch them here.”
Her admiral paused, visibly uncertain of her command.
“My queen,” he formed his words carefully, “the Jakar fleet is on standby to move in support of Earth.”
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 63
