Cee stumbled. She heard it, but she didn’t hear it, then it hit her—and she realized how the words reached her. Directly in the center of her head. The girl’s mouth never moved. No sound, pure thought …
She dropped the sword. Clang! That made a sound, a loud clatter, and the shock of it seemed to restore the volume in the room—as if she’d been made momentarily deaf by whatever the girl did—and Cee grabbed for something, anything, but there was nothing; she was alone in the center of the room, standing before the demon girl in the lock braces, sword on the floor at her feet, and it was suddenly all she could do to keep from falling to her knees.
This can’t be!
Cee could scarcely latch onto what was happening. It was all she could do to continue standing there.
Cee was asking herself that question harder than she ever had in her entire life.
**
Bishop Raal’s satisfied expression had fallen. He felt it in his face, noticed it all at once and wondered how long it had been that way. He’d only just been gloating to the contained Horus, watching with him as, on the large screen that covered one wall of the room where they’d brought him, the queen engaged her interrogation of their prize captive. Raal had been careful to insert his own, translated comments for Horus at just the right moments, goading him in his purple energy. Raal considered it his duty to prep the super-powered human, to apply his own efforts to break him down, in the event they might squeeze additional information from him before turning him over to Kang.
If that was even needed.
But Raal did not believe it would be. The girl knew what they were after, and, until short moments ago, he’d been confident the queen would have that information soon enough. The girl had finally started talking and Raal was certain, as was Cee, that this so-called herald had already found what they sought and, with the right application of persuasion, would reveal it. They were so close. Raal could not have been more filled with anticipation. Only …
What was going on in that interrogation room?
He looked to Horus. Horus could see it all. He could say nothing, straining in place as he was, but it looked to Raal as if he knew. Horus knew something, or sensed something, and Raal could swear his grimace had turned into a grin.
Raal looked back to the screen.
Cee and the girl were just staring at each other. The girl had stopped talking, though it looked like she was still talking, mouth unmoving, the queen had dropped the sword, quite unexpectedly, like she’d just seen something quite alarming, and there was nothing there. Nothing had happened, the girl had gone quiet and the soldiers near Cee were all looking at the queen with a similar sense of growing confusion as she, in turn, stared wide-eyed at the girl with a look like she wanted nothing more than to bolt from the room.
Raal began to feel his own, tingling sense of dread.
CHAPTER 62: HAIL MARY
“Here they come.” Nani had been tracking the positions of multiple Kel ships, a small fleet gathering in orbit near Kel; quantum pings that were, if Bianca thought about it, one of the most amazing things the Reaver had yet done, and this ship had done some pretty frickin amazing things. “They’re engaging their drives.” The response force was coming and Nani and crew had decided to wait. Part of their desperate strategy, one that could never work—not all the way through; not all the way to actually getting Jess and getting the hell out of there—but if there was to be any chance at all then every little thing had to be done with maximum effect.
This was step one.
“And there they are,” Satori was looking to the giant view screen, watching the tiny flashes of light out there in space as the ships that had just been millions of miles away, engaging quantum drives with the planet Raag as their destination, began reappearing near the giant purple planet. Bianca watched them on her screens, tactical readouts giving more information than she wanted on the size and the scope of the enemy.
They were outgunned so bad it wasn’t even funny.
But they weren’t staying to fight.
“Ok,” Nani prepared their maneuver. “That’s the last of them. They’re moving to formation.” All watched as the last flash dissipated and the starry night was empty once more. Instruments told them what waited out there; true visuals would not be long in coming. The Kel were shaking off the jump and forming for the attack.
In her peripheral Bianca saw Nani brace herself.
“Punch it.”
Bianca did. Rolled the throttles and they were off. Back in the heat of battle, almost like they’d never left, surging forward, hard enough to cause the gas giant to expand in size unnaturally fast, then the Kel ships were in sight and getting close, surely not expecting this response, a few taking matters into their own hands and splitting away, breaking formation, knowing full well, no doubt, what the Reaver was capable of. Bianca was sure they’d been briefed.
But there was no need. It was a classic feint.
“Hold on,” Nani warned, and, just at the safe-limit of engagement, threw the switch on the quantum drive and …
They were gone.
Pow.
Just like that and the purple planet was gone and Bianca was holding her stomach and squinting her eyes, cramped from too many engagements of the drive in the last hour, and then she was forcing open her eyes and there was Kel, spread wide above them; giant, white and black, snow and ice and darkness, curving edge to edge across the top of the view screen.
And somewhere up there, in that frozen Hell, crawling with elfin demons with guns and a million machines that could kill them, was Jess.
Nani coughed. “We’re clear.” Her voice was harsh; struggling to force her recovery. The others were groaning. “You’ve got your target,” Nani spoke specifically to Bianca. “Go.”
System defense craft were responding to the sudden presence of the intruder in orbit; Bianca captured them on scans, but that response had yet to be brought to bear. The ships they’d just left back at Raag would be figuring this out, getting reports from Kel, learning where the intruder arrived and be on their way back in no time.
But they’d created a window. A slim window. And they were in it, rushing through, and Bianca had the coordinates locked and the throttles rolled forward and the Reaver was off.
Surging.
**
“You found the Amkradus!” Cee had flipped. Lost her mind, Jess could see it, and as the queen made a wild, desperate effort to get control, launching a forced tirade fronted with rage, an attempt to shove herself above the terror, to escape the absolute panic of the Earth girl invading her mind … Jess wondered when her nemesis would snap for good.
This was nearly over.
“I know you did!” Cee fumed, her bold façade underpinned by stark, raving madness. “The Bok told you where to find it and you found it! Now you’ve hidden it, back on that world and that world is mine! I control it and I will find the Codex! I will find your little secret an
d it will be mine, and with it I will unlock the universe!” Her chest heaved and her fists bunched and, as Jess watched, she mustered a little more control. Overcoming a bit of the fear, it seemed, gaining the righteous indignation she felt she deserved. This was her house, after all, Jess imagined her reasoning.
The queen stepped closer. Forcing courage. “You had your chance to tell me! I’ll scour that world and find what you’ve done! I will find your secret, and I will become as a god!” She came even closer. “You claim to know the Prophecy,” she nearly spat. “That ancient witch, that long dead priestess, who somehow predicted your presence in this future reality was a fool. Her prophecy means nothing.” Jess knew Cee didn’t get it. “Your end is now, sorceress. There is no future but mine!”
Jess let the silence hang. Then, as Cee gathered herself for the next installment of her rant, she spoke calmly into the heaving pause:
“Do you want to know the truth?”
Aborted words caught in Cee’s throat. Her yellow eyes were wide. After a stunned moment she made herself laugh. A harsh sound, no humor in it.
“Please,” she spread her arms wide. “Tell us.”
Jess looked directly at her. “You’re the leftovers from the mess I made.” She passed her eyes across the sword laying on the floor, then back to Cee. “Now would be the time to pay close attention. Despite what you want to believe, you’re nothing more than a player in this game.”
Again Cee forced a laugh. “Words! You threaten me with words. The prophecy has filled your head with delusion,” she spat. “Do you honestly believe this will play out any differently than it is? Do you not see where you are? Do you not realize your fate? Your death is at hand, herald, and the pathetic predictions of an ancient priestess aren’t going to make that any different.” Cee mocked her. “Foolishness! You think that legend is real?” The queen tried to maintain her tenuous feeling of control. She even glanced to her soldiers in the room, checking that they appreciated the absurdity on display. That they understood, as did she, that their poor little captive had finally lost her mind. “Player?” She turned back to Jess. “You’re the player. Nothing but a pawn.” Then, haughty: “That legend is old. Fake. A legend that never was.”
Jess maintained eye contact. “Your ancestors were a little smarter than you.”
Cee studied her. Asked, though Jess could tell she was trying not to sound confused: “Ancestors?”
Jess concentrated, channeling the thing she’d been working to refine. A redirection that did not require the same physical movement she’d learned to master. Something new. She felt it.
Time to see.
Again she made a mental note of the location of the sword, laying on the floor, then lifted her chin and closed her eyes.
Building. Raw energy, from her core. Radiating out.
Now Cee was getting it. Maybe she even felt a deeper sense of what Jess was about to do. A sort of primal comprehension. Nothing she could truly understand, certainly nothing she’d grasp in time, but Cee felt it. Once more she did not want to ask yet did, voice rising a little. “What do you mean, smarter?”
Jess opened her eyes.
“They killed me when they had the chance.”
And she had it. Amped to the breaking point and …
In that final instant she saw the understanding in Cee’s eyes, dawning, as it had for everyone who had to learn the hard way what they really faced. And she held the queen’s freshly terrified gaze, even as she pushed at her bonds with an expanding flow of inexplicable energy, right through her own limbs; no physical movement to direct it but it was surging, a concentration of power that poured into the weakest points of the shackles, their metal shapes bearing the entirety of her focus …
The room went silent. Jess saw the looks on their faces.
“That’s right.”
POW!POW!
The shackles popped and she was free, dropping agilely to the floor. She landed at a crouch, right in front of the Kel queen, even as their metallic clatter echoed sharply around the room.
She looked up.
“I am your legend.”
The next seconds were a blur. Jess grabbed the sword. The soldiers were the first to go, the only real threat. Cee ran for the door in a panic; Jess shut her down, casting her aside with a focused shove, followed by a second blow to the door itself, much harder—much, much harder—jamming the hinges to the side, cracking the frame and wedging the whole thing off-center.
No one was going in or out.
The carnage was brutal, swift, and done. Nothing clean and tidy about killing with a sword. Or a hammer. That’s what the blows of invisible force were like, being struck with a massive warhammer, and bludgeoned skulls with shots of gore accompanied the cleaner cuts of the blade, the results of both the same. Bloody death.
Jess stood over the last Kel soldier to draw a breath, watching the prostrate queen across the way. She was conscious. Jess could tell she hadn’t been knocked out. Yet Cee remained face down where she’d fallen, not moving; like playing some childish game of possum. Hoping maybe Jess would just go away and leave her alone.
She sheathed the sword.
“I know you can hear me,” Jess spoke into the quiet. After the brief rampage the room was deathly so. No noise in the hall. Quiet everywhere. For the moment they were alone.
It wouldn’t be long before that changed.
She studied the queen where she lay. “I’m going to kill you.” It was a matter-of-fact thing to say, and the sound of her own voice saying it gave her momentary pause.
But it was true. There was no reason to pretend otherwise.
Cee’s voice came to her, soft, face to the floor, then louder: “If you give them power your kingdom will crumble.” Her voice was clear but subdued. Muffled. “If you give them freedom you will fall. Chaos will be the result. You cannot do what you intend.” Jess felt a small chill at her words. “Promise of attainment is the only way. You cannot give it to them. They must hope for it only. They must never achieve your ideal.” Her words were so strangely philosophical, flowing as they were under the circumstances, so completely unexpected, the delivery so almost ethereal, coming from a beautiful alien ruler, laying on the floor where she’d just been knocked down by telekinetic force, about to die, robes and that beautiful white fur wrap thrown across her in disorder, speaking with great thought directly into the floor …
It shook Jessica.
Cee said again: “You cannot give it to them.”
Jess came a little closer.
Cee was silent. Unmoving.
Jess continued and stood directly over her. “You mean the Codex Amkradus. Why?”
No more forthcoming. Cee just lay there.
Jess drew herself straighter. “That’s small-minded. The thinking of the weak. The thinking of the afraid.” There was no time for this, yet she couldn’t resist the hooks. Was it a ploy? Was Cee trying to engage her? Hold her in place? Delay her? “I do not intend to fear my own position,” Jess told her. “To enforce it by denying, by weakening others. If we know how, if we discover the way, then everyone should have that knowledge. That’s the flaw in every rule. The goal, wrongly, becomes to make people less dangerous. Remove rights. We weaken the good and protect the wicked. The true path to greatness is exactly what you profess to fear: people should be allowed to realize their full potential. Each of us should be made more dangerous, not less.” She paused. “That is the only path to greatness. As powerful as each possibly can be. Only then will we have true freedom. The wicked cannot thrive in the face of a powerful whole.” The words were hers, but she felt as if they came from a more distant time. Something she might have debated before. “If we have it in us, if we know the way, then all should know it. Everyone should be a god. Not just a chosen few.” She looked Cee over. “You say my kingdom will crumble. How much greater will that kingdom be if I allow all in it to become powerful? How much? Imagine it. A kingdom filled with gods.”
These were unwelcome
ideas to be having, too long of a conversation and a very unexpected thing to be considering, especially here, especially now; she’d never dwelled on this, and now was certainly not the time.
It was casting doubt.
She needed to find Zac. That impulse rose to the fore. She needed to keep moving. Cee would never tell her where he was, and there was no time to make her. She needed to find him.
“Turn over,” she told her. At first Cee didn’t move. Then, slowly, she obeyed. Rolled to her back, looking up with, what Jess had to admit, was probably the most genuine regard she’d yet seen in the face of the Kel queen. In that moment, in some ways, she reminded her of herself a thousand years ago. Her reflection in the dream. A beautiful Kel. Yellow eyes; perfect, Elven features.
Jess felt sad for her.
“This is the way it has to be.”
Cee’s expression was calm.
“I know.”
She’d been the source of pain, of misery, of countless deaths, destined to preside over a dynasty filled with countless more. Suppression on an epic scale. But before that turn for the worse she was a warrior. Perhaps a long time ago, but at one time Cee was something more noble. Though she’d strayed, though she’d lost that origin along the way, it was, at the heart of it, who she was. There, at that bitter end, she found it. Jess saw it in her expression. In her heart, Cee Ranok, Tremarch of the Kel, queen, was a warrior, and in the end she was again.
In the end she died like one.
**
Raal stood stunned. Soldiers were on the way, rushing to the chamber where the queen conducted her interrogation, but the bishop knew they would never make it. Not as he watched in shock, the girl standing over the queen, talking calmly with her, having just massacred everyone in there. The girl had already said she was going to kill Cee. It seemed only a matter of time …
She did. Ancient sword right through the heart, and his queen was dead. The rallying soldiers would be too late to save her.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 66
