The girl, however …
The girl would die.
He turned to check the reaction of Horus, not wanting to betray his dismay. He was still confused by the series of events he’d just witnessed on the big screen, broadcast from that room, no time yet to consider how it happened, what forces were truly at work, how the girl got free after being locked securely to the massive X-brace with no change, no indication that something like this was brewing. He’d seen what she could do, so once she was out of the braces it was no great surprise to see her take out a handful of soldiers in a confined space. But … how did it happen? How did she get free?
Horus was, for the first time, not straining. Raal wished he could kill him. Right then; wished he had a way to drive a sword through his heart. He turned away.
Horus had definitely seen his dismay.
He walked closer to the screen. Watching as the girl did whatever it was she did, hurling whatever supernatural force she mustered, knocking the broken door—the door she broke in the first place—from its frame and rumbling out into the hall. Then she was through the opening and new monitors switched to show her progress.
Surely here, this room where they held Horus, would be where she tried to come next.
The queen is gone!
What now?
**
“It’s too much!” Bianca was shouting. Frustrated tears stung her eyes, threatening her vision and making her miss. The Kel had managed to swarm, too hot, too fast, totally dragging them into a net of engagements and Bianca kept having to maneuver away, further and further away, peeling off again and again and putting more and more distance on their objective until now they were halfway around the planet from where they wanted to be.
And still they were running.
She wanted to give up. It was too intense, it was too hard, and soon they were going to get hit bad enough for it to all be over. Death was the only way out.
She just hoped it happened fast.
CHAPTER 63: A MOST INEVITABLE THING
The fortress was huge. A labyrinth the size of a city, and as Jessica’s desperation rose she tried not to panic, no sign or clue whatsoever as to where they might’ve taken Zac. As she fought wave after wave of Kel, those same, maddening, maze-like halls working to her advantage, allowing no more than a few to stand against her in any one assault, she reached out desperately for him, calling to him, trying to find him, turning up empty. Whether the Raza or the range or the fact that she had no idea where to fix her focus, simply casting a net of both mental and very real, very loud shouts for him … whatever the cause, there was no Zac. Panic hedged tighter. What if they’d found a way to kill him?
“HA!” she bombed four Kel at once, dropping their entire front line, bringing to bear more power than she had yet. After channeling such energy to break the shackles with no physical direction, now, with the full movement of arms and legs, the power of voice, shouts of fury—with the addition of those components she was directing a force that was nearly atomic. The four Kel soldiers exploded from within, shattering armored chest pieces, blood seeping through as they fell in a tumble, even as others behind brought rifles to bear.
Jess launched into those even as the first to die were falling, sword swinging, cleaving bodies in half by two’s, blade driven by that same energy, powered by it, running others through as she shouted and threw repeating attacks, killing them as fast as they came.
“HA!!” and she was past another squad, down a hall to yet another door at the end with no useful indication as to where it led or what it was, and she was blowing it open, rushing through, ready for whatever waited, flying out right behind the broken door …
Into the brightness of daylight.
The sudden glare as she followed the door into space assaulted her senses, cold white reflecting back from a vast expanse of snowy surfaces. Outside was a snow-covered plain, stretching away to a line of green forest in the distance, upward to an equally white, cloud-laden sky.
No!
She landed a dozen yards away, calf-deep in snow, the door flipping away to a stop in a spray of white powder. She halted her rush, whirling to squint up, side to side, the dark portal of the door she’d just exited mocking her. It was set into the black wall of the fortress, that wall extending upward and away in both directions, out of sight, lost hundreds of yards to either side in a thin fog, hundreds of yards into the sky. Climbing upward across the face of the mountain.
The dark, massive mountain.
No!!
It was too much. The fortress was beyond colossal, and if Zac was even still in there …
She would never find him.
She swallowed.
Hopeless.
It was all hopeless.
She turned in place, away from the daunting structure, out to the distant line of forest and the entire, hostile, alien world.
This was where it ended.
Then, as if to drive an exclamation point into that reality, a whistling sound rose on the wind, something ripping the air, coming toward her, and when she looked up, expecting a missile or some other dramatic, violent end to her little escapade ...
What she saw was far worse.
No.
Clear against the white backdrop of the hellish sky, arcing in high, yellow and black, horns sticking out crookedly at the sides of his head, fangs bared in victory …
Kang.
POOMF! he hit the snow a dozen yards away, a perfectly aimed leap, coming in from what had to have been half-a-mile away. A ton of snow lifted into the air at the point of his strike, falling with a mighty thud and creating a small embankment between them. Jess felt the ground pulse.
He rose. Strode two steps to the top of the fresh mound of snow and stood, looking down on her, a pose filled with absolute confidence.
“Well, well,” he sneered. “I thought I heard something.”
Her knees felt weak. Kang’s breath was like a locomotive in the air before him, a fog of ice crystals that shot three feet from his nostrils with each terrific exhale.
Unstoppable.
Her own exhausted breath drifted from her mouth in tiny wisps, hair hanging in her eyes, legs trembling.
Suddenly she had no will to go on.
Should she flee? Into the fortress?
That would do no good.
She glanced over her shoulder, at the door she’d just blown open. Turned slowly back at Kang.
There was no escaping this.
**
Bishop Raal was smiling again. For an instant he imagined his own grin mirrored that of the beast. Kang stood tall on the snowy plain, visible on external monitors; any further Kel efforts to stop the girl held in check.
The yellow demon would take care of her now.
A small, yet sharp, pop from behind, and reflexively Raal turned to see Horus straining once more in the field. Eyes fixed firmly on the big screen and the image of Kang and the girl. The sound of the machine’s hum had changed, subtly. Maybe only Raal’s imagination, but he could swear it was different now. Without thinking he inched a little further away, what was happening outside the fortress momentarily forgotten.
Deep in that purple field of energy Horus looked positively enraged. He strained. And as he did the field crackled ever more strangely. Would it give?
Could it?
Raal began to sweat.
“Increase the field strength!” he commanded the device’s operator, frustrated at the obvious fear in his voice.
“There is no adjustment, lord. It interacts directly with—”
He waved the operator silent and made himself turn away. Back to the screen and the snowy field.
Sweat beading at his neck.
**
Kang was part of the Prophecy. Jess tried to reason. In the face of him now she tried to cram reason into every corner of her mind, all the spaces, anything to block out the fear. Kang was a part of the Prophecy, a big part, a clear and definite thing that, unlike other elements of tha
t ancient prediction, she could not have made happen. Certain events she could’ve set in motion, other things she “saw” she could’ve seen to, either by force of will or power of decision. By instilling belief. Kang, however …
Kang she could not.
Kang was the one part of this she most definitely must have foreseen, pure clairvoyance, the yellow demon, and if that was true, if she really did have that foresight back then … Was he not defeated? In every version of the Prophecy, he was. The rushing, tick-tock of the doom clock in her head hurried her consideration to panic speeds, staring at the unstoppable monster right in front of her and wondering what to do next, how not to just give up and fall down in the snow; holding herself erect through force of will alone, casting about desperately to summon, once more, her deeply-buried core. Kang was here—Kang!—a short leap away. Her back was to a mountain, a field of nothing stretched before her in every other direction. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere to run.
It was impossible to quell the spine-tingling terror.
Her Prophecy could not have been right.
This was the end.
“So,” Kang wondered, supremely confident, no hint of fear in him, so far maintaining a conversational air, “why are you here? Surely you didn’t come looking for me.”
“The queen is dead.” Her voice was shaky, projecting cold steam into the frigid air before her. She raised her sword and fought hard not to start shaking bodily, not to let the tip waver, and all at once the combination of these obvious signs of weakness steeled her resolve. At least enough to stand firm.
She would not go down in fear. If she was to die in this snowy waste, and that looked to be her fate, she would die giving it absolutely everything she had. And as she firmed that resolve further, as in other such moments of misplaced lucidity, flashes from the past came to her; so human, so everyday Earth, so normal—so out of place there in that alien Hell … they moved her.
She held to them.
Leave it all on the mat, she recalled Master Lenny telling her back in Boise at competitions.
It was time to do just that.
“Ah,” Kang nodded in response to her announcement of the queen’s death, not noticing or not caring what inner turmoil she battled. “I expected you to escape. The queen was a fool not to see it. I knew you would kill her.” An odd sort of expression passed across his face—loss? Regret?—and was gone just as quick.
Jess wasn’t sure what to make of it.
Then Kang snorted; a loud blast that thundered hard against the towering wall behind her, randomly timed, no seeming reason for it—almost like he sneezed—and a plume of steam ten feet long shot from his nostrils.
To her satisfaction she didn’t flinch. Only after the tremendous, unexpected sound passed did she realize how calmly she’d held her ground.
It fortified her.
Steadily she raised the sword higher.
Kang took a step closer; stopped on her side of the little snow hill, breath still billowing. He was like a bull. The great Minotaur, and she’d just escaped the labyrinth only to find him waiting for her in the cold. Ready to kill.
“She’d outlived her usefulness,” he continued the conversation. “It’s high time I take charge.” He looked up, over her, at the mountain-sized fortress so close behind; left to right and into the sky, at the world all around. “This world is mine now. Its armies. Its machines of war. Mine.”
It was a prime opportunity. The first attack, if she lunged, could be hers. Kang was literally four big steps away. She could be on him instantly. Could hurl a blast of force, plant it right inside his chest before he could do anything.
She couldn’t move.
He brought his gaze back to her, yellowed eyes locking her own.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” he wanted to know. Then: “No matter. I’ll take care of him next.” His grin widened, and she expected him to say something crass. He did. “I remember the day I found you. Breaking up your little picnic. How stupid you both were. Thinking you could hide. You behind a tree, him thinking he could save you. How adorable. Thinking he could defeat me.” He took another step. Closer. “I should’ve finished you both then.” He seemed to muse: “I won’t make the same mistake.” Then, pausing to give her the briefest regard: “What you’ve done against the Kel is impressive. I feel I have to say that. But your tricks won’t save you from me. You know that already. You had your chance and you saw how badly you failed. You can’t stop me.”
She struck. Sword on point and thrusting with a charge of force behind it that could shatter a wall “HA!!!” and she ran him through.
Only … the visualized result of that tremendous action did not materialize. The blade in fact struck and held, penetrating not at all and instead curved hard in her grip, her body following around. She walloped against Kang’s chest in a very ungraceful collapse, snapping her grip tighter so as not to lose the sword entirely, processed the failure of the attack and turned the collapse into a follow-on leap, away from him—escape! Get away!—hurtling up and over in a somersault and landing a dozen yards behind him, sword up and ready.
That was everything she had.
Kang turned.
Grinning.
“Even you,” he was shaking his head, no sign of the strike at all; just the gash in his black shirt, not so much as a prick beneath it. “I thought you were smarter than the rest. Even you don’t seem to pay attention. Nobody does.” Beneath the torn fabric, flapping in the breeze … nothing. No sign she even stabbed him. No blood. Not even a mark. “Do you truly think you can hurt me? Do you really think you can fight me?”
Miraculously she held the sword steady. Breath heavy in the air, strands of hair in her face and blowing in the breeze, worn from the fight with the Kel, from the escape from the queen, from her capture before that and now this. The fight hadn’t even started and already she was drained.
Her question was as much for Kang as for herself:
“What choice do I have?”
He thought on it a moment.
“True.”
And he was lunging, a yellow blur she barely perceived in time, wall of snow kicking out behind and he was to her and she was rolling aside nearly too late with a sweep of the sword, cutting one of his legs from his body but that didn’t happen either, the blade sliding hard across his skin like a plastic sword across diamond.
Zero effect.
He stabbed his feet into the ground beyond her and stopped his lunge, whirled and was on her again. Again she managed to sidestep, but this would not last. Swinging and slashing, she hurled blasts, knocking him back but not enough; snow whirled in a hurricane of white, kicking into a storm and blocking her view and the flashes of yellow were just missing her and when they did connect she would die, the force of her blasts were not having an effect and the sword was useless …
Snatch. Kang had it. The sword was wrenched from her grip with a sting and she was tumbling away and back to her feet, standing slowly in the snow.
Disarmed.
The whirlwind of white dissipated and there he was standing a little bit away, sword in hand. Looking at it.
“Impressive,” he studied the blued metal, turning it in his hands. He gripped one hand at the tip, one on the handle and … twisted. She saw the mild exertion; saw he expected it to snap easily.
Surprised when it didn’t.
“Most impressive.”
Could the ultra-advanced metal actually withstand him? If so that would at least mean Kang had limits.
A tiny hope began to swell.
He re-gripped, kind of like realizing the stick you wanted to break was a little tougher than expected. He didn’t put it over his knee, didn’t use some other crutch to help; simply gripped it a little harder, one hand at each end, no visible change of exertion, blade flexing—it’s flexing!—until …
POW! The snap of something that could not break, stressed to impossible torque, a perfect forge of space-age material, tensile strength a thousand times
that of steel … broken. The violation of physics protested with authority across the landscape, the sharp sing of that colossal snap echoing far and wide and continuing.
Kang was grinning.
He dropped the two halves into the snow.
**
So far they were still in the air. In space, in the air, in and out of the atmosphere—they were still flying. The Reaver hadn’t yet been blown from the sky.
But they were no closer to Jess.
“There’s cross-traffic!” Nani sounded surprised. There was no longer a sense of up or down, only the expansive white and black curving sheet that filled the screen and was the planet, spiraling all around the view screen in every direction as Bianca continued to beat the odds. By then she was in glee. There was just no way they should’ve made it this far, still flying, still fighting.
“Their primary command channel has cross-traffic on it!” Nani checked this new thing even as she ran her station and the Reaver’s turrets in support of Bianca’s mad flying. Willet and Nani had jumped in to help where they could. Mostly the rest just held on.
“Cross traffic?!” Bianca didn’t look at her, eyes floating across only the things she needed to see, on a different plane.
“I’m trying to figure it out! Something’s going on!”
**
Jess flew into the air, snapping her arms up and down, directing a pillar of force from above, directly down and into the center of Kang’s head.
“HA!!” the air around his skull warbled. He staggered slightly to the side, looking up and launching his own leap at her as she fell back to earth. She twisted and avoided the impact—so far avoiding all impacts, knowing full-well the armor and whatever supernatural power she possessed would never save her from a direct hit. Glancing misses had already knocked her tumbling. Painfully.
“HA!!” she threw another to the side as Kang passed, punching him hard in the ribs and knocking his body onto a different trajectory, a victim in those airborne seconds of simple physics and gravity.
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 67
