Demon in White

by Christopher Ruocchio

  I might have cheered.

  Still breathing hard, I tried to sit up. Where was my sword? I’d lost it at last in the fall. It must have rolled away. I twisted round, trying to locate it on the floor.

  But the vayadan had not forgotten about me.

  Even severed, the machine body of the giant obeyed its animal brain.

  The iron fist slammed shut once more, trapping me in its grip. I groaned, tried once more to wrestle free while the chimera went after Bassander and his men. I had one arm still free, and cast about for my weapon. There! The deck plates were uneven, ridged and folded like the insides of a living thing, and my sword had rolled against one of these. It took every ounce of effort to strain toward it with my free hand. The fingertips just scraped the pommel, and I groaned.

  No good.

  I dug my heels into the floor and pushed, trying to scrape the huge hand and the severed arm across the floor, but it must have weighed more than a ton. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Unless . . .

  Relaxing, I shut my eyes and tried to master my breathing, to call to mind a number of Tor Gibson’s old aphorisms against fear and panic, to reach that quiet place where my mind could see with eyes unclouded. Surely there was a way, a place in time where some errant bump or motion of the ship slid the weapon into my waiting fingers. I could just see it, I only had to reach out and choose.

  Bahudde’s massive, clawed foot smashed the ground not three yards from my head. The vision shattered. Above me, the giant tore another catwalk from the gantry above, tumbling three men to their doom. Abandoning my previous plan, I strained once more, willing myself to stretch just that little bit more. Then something impossible happened.

  I squirmed free.

  The hideous strength of the giant’s hand just disappeared. I seized my blade and stumbled to my feet, wheeling to face the severed limb with highmatter kindling in my fist. The fingers twitched. Spasmed. Went still. Red lights along hatches on the inside of the wrist went dead.

  “ ’Tis well I was not left on the Tamerlane, mm?” came a cutting voice from on high. I looked up. Valka was leaning against the rail of one of the highest catwalks, peering down at me.

  I raised my sword in salute.

  “ ’Tis thrice now I’ve saved you,” she said, calling down since my suit’s communications were still closed.

  “Yes, yes.” I shook myself. “Noyn jitat.”

  At the other end of the hold, Bahudde snatched one of the Irchtani from the air and slammed it headfirst into the wall, denting steel and spattering dark blood across the metal.

  “Are you all right?” Valka asked.

  I’d taken a few steps toward the general, meaning to rejoin the fight.

  “I’ve had worse.” I stopped sharp. “What about the bridge?”

  I could practically hear her eyes narrow. “You’re welcome.”

  Half a dozen retorts flew to my lips, but I bit them all back. She’d come back for me, just as I would have done. I opened my mouth to respond—though whether it would have been in thanks or a smart riposte I never learned.

  Valka screamed.

  No shout of surprise this, no shocked curse. Hers was the sound of deepest, purest agony, a sound older than human reason, an animal’s terror and pain. Cold fingers seized my heart as surely as Bahudde’s had. Looking up, I saw her arch backward and fall convulsing on the catwalk above, limbs tearing, scrabbling at rails and floor.

  “Valka!”

  Where was the nearest ladder? I looked round, the drill, the giant, the war itself forgotten in that instant. Nothing mattered. Nothing but her. I started running.

  “That will teach you to meddle!” came a high, nasal voice, ringing off the walls. “Rob the prince of his prize, will you? Oh no-no no-no no . . .”

  I froze where I stood.

  It was the voice of Doctor Urbaine.

  The Extrasolarian had survived.

  At once I understood what was happening. Valka had opened her mind to comms channels to use her praxis on Bahudde—to save me—thinking the MINOS doctor dead. In doing so, she had only exposed herself to the predations of the doctor himself.

  Even as I stood there reeling, a silent alarm began. Red lights flashed about the chamber, and the hatchway at the fore began to open, revealing the white face of the Storm Wall not two thousand feet away.

  But I had other things to occupy me. Valka was still screaming, still writhing a hundred feet above my head. One of the men nearest her seized her arms, trying to still her.

  Where had the doctor’s body fallen? There was the catwalk he’d been standing on when Udax struck him down, fallen like a ramp to the floor. Ignoring the giant and the fight raging around us, I hurried toward it, ducking round the struts that supported the massive body of the drill.

  “Time is short, general!” Urbaine was shouting. “Biqqa totajun! Kill them and have done!”

  Above our heads the huge drill began turning slowly in its housing, the titanic bit extending, sliding forward toward the open front of the crawler platform. The Wall was closing in.

  I saw the doctor’s body then, one arm broken beneath the narrow chest. Metal bones protruded from the ruined neck, and with growing horror I realized that Doctor Urbaine was no man at all. He was a SOM. I knew then what I had already suspected, knew what I must find.

  “Biqqa totajun, vayadan-do!” Urbaine shrieked. “I cannot hold her!”

  Hearing that, I could not help but grin savagely behind my helmet. Whatever the doctor was doing to Valka, she was still fighting. Her screaming rebounded off the reservoir dome above, and I shoved a packing crate aside and found it.

  The Extrasolarian’s head lay against the heavy base of some alien mining implement. He was upside-down, and so I had a clear view of the severed neck and the machine lights blinking in it, the torn wires beside torn arteries and the silver shine of bone. Udax must have sheared clear between the vertebrae, and I marveled at the skill and chance of that blow.

  Aiming the point of my sword directly above the doctor’s eye, I said, “Let her go.”

  Urbaine leered up at me, mouth open. The lips did not move as he said, “It is too late. The ram has touched the wall!”

  “Not yet!” I looked up at the drill telescoping fifty feet above my head. We still had a thousand feet or more of empty tarmac separating us from the Wall.

  “There’s nothing you can do,” came the voice from the severed head at my feet. Snarling, I stooped and seized the creature by the ear, holding it sideways with my blade whispering just below it. “Even if you stop this wave,” Urbaine’s jaw hung slack, “we are only the vanguard. I said your heroics were redundant. Succeed, and the Prince will but land his fleet.”

  Beneath my mask, I bared my teeth. The doctor was right.

  “It is inevitable,” he said smoothly. “You would do as well to fight entropy.”

  On the walk above, Valka screamed again.

  I crushed his ear in my fist. “Let her go.” Urbaine’s leer only widened, wrinkles forming at the corners of his eyes. Blood dripped from the ruin of his neck. “Let her go, damn you!”

  “Never,” he said.

  I let him go. The head fell and met the edge of my sword. Highmatter cut without resistance and sliced the head in two. I brought it down on the cranium for good measure and stamped on the pieces. My hand was halfway to my much-neglected sidearm before I realized . . . the screaming had stopped.

  An explosion rocked the chamber the moment after, and turning I saw the giant reel and crash into the wall. One of its ankles was smoking, tossing sparks. Someone had gotten a grenade wedged in a flange of its armor and blown the adamantine plates apart. In retaliation, the giant pointed its remaining arm at a trias of men on the ground. Flares fired from the wrist, followed by the silent whistle of darts. Evidently the giant had recalled it had some weap
ons it could fire without damaging the crawler at large.

  I saw Bassander Lin running on an upper balcony, location betrayed by the gleam of his sword. The Irchtani flitted about him, firing down at the giant. Even as I watched, Bahudde shot one of them full of holes, and he tumbled from domed ceiling to ridged floor in instants. The whole crawler rattled, and high above those of Valka’s little team not watching over her quiescent form were still trying to cut their way onto the bridge, but the doors were of titanium, or of some alloy of it that would not easily burn.

  “Valka?” I opened my suit’s communications. “Valka, are you all right?” I was close to tears. Close to shouting. “Valka, it’s Hadrian. Are you all right?”

  No answer came. Aside from Valka, no one on the crawler had their comms open for fear of Urbaine’s sorcery, and no signal could penetrate the crawler’s metal shell. There was nothing but silence.

  I found a ladder and started to climb, heedless of the drill and the giant and the battle around me. Damn the Wall, damn the war, damn it all if she was not all right. I skirted a torn spot in one catwalk. The crawler shook again beneath my feet, and a horrific grinding filled all the air. Without warning, the entire crawler tipped and fell to one side, shifting everything not secured on the floor below. I gripped the rail to steady myself, unsure of what had happened for just a moment . . . until I realized.

  The crawler had stopped.

  It was Barda, I realized, Barda and the Irchtani wing that had carried us to the crawler in the first place. They had remained outside, keeping the enemy soldiers distracted. They must have succeeded in destroying one set of the mighty treads that pulled the impossibly huge vehicle forward.

  “Earth!” came the expected cry from ragged throats above and below me. “Earth! Earth!”

  I did not join them, but found a way up to that highest level and went to my knees beside Valka, tearing at the hard switch on my neck that released and collapsed my black helm.

  “Valka!” I cradled her head in my hands, numb fingers fumbling for the catch on her own armor. The helmet hinged open, folding back to reveal her face. Never had I seen her so pale and lifeless. The elastic coif beneath the helmet was sticky with sweat. “Can you hear me?” I whispered. “No no no, don’t be dead.”

  “Sir . . .” One of the legionnaires stepped in. I realized I’d been saying all this aloud.

  “Don’t touch me!” I snarled, and the man backed away.

  “Quiet, anaryan,” she said, lips barely moving.

  Gold eyes fluttered open, and the hand I held tightened.

  A strangled sound, half-laughter and half-sob, escaped me.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  I felt her arm spasm. She shook her head. “Hadrian?”

  “It’s me,” I said.

  Her eyes could not seem to find focus. My own vision blurred with tears. One of her eyes drifted, the pupil contracting, dilating randomly, giving her a deranged appearance. I felt a leaden weight forming in the pit of my stomach.

  “ ’Tis something in my head,” she said.

  The weight only grew heavier. I know little of machines, knew less then. “Can we fix it?”

  A tremor ran through her. “Maybe. I think. Not here.” She clenched her teeth. “I can stand.” Before I could stop her, she was moving. I rose with her, and caught her when one of her legs convulsed and went out from under her. I tried not to think about the fighting below, about what the men around us thought of the witch at my side and the price she had paid for her magic. One arm hung limp at her side, and the hand that still held mine opened and closed spasmodically. Her whole body shook. “I can’t control my hands . . .” she said.

  “Demons above and below . . .” I breathed. “What did he do to you?”

  “Virus,” she said, as if that explained anything. “What happened?”

  “We stopped them,” I said. “Barda and his men took out the wheels.”

  Beneath us, Bahudde pounded another of our men to death beneath his feet.

  “Not yet,” Valka said, looking down at it with her one still-functioning eye. I followed her gaze to the metal giant below. As I watched, she whispered in my ear, and for a moment I did not recognize the words, for it took me a moment to realize she was speaking the tongue of the enemy. “Weme uja,” she said. But I’ll die.

  Looking round, I raised inquiring eyebrows at her. “What?”

  Her lips moved, and breathlessly she spoke, another voice answering the first. “There is no other way, ushan belu.”

  Ushan belu. Beloved. Prized one.

  “I have failed you, master,” she murmured, and I realized she was speaking for the giant crouched below. Turning, I saw Bahudde crouched in the rear of the hold, arm across its face, shielding itself from the Irchtani and Bassander’s men. Somehow, some part of Valka’s mind—of the machines that dwelled within her mind—had reached out and touched the mind of the vayadan.

  Her damaged eye twitched, pupil expanding more than any ordinary human’s should. The other voice answered, pulling Valka’s vocal chords high and tight. “For which you must pay. You must light the fire.”

  Valka was silent a long moment, and I thought that whatever fey connection there was between her and the great chimera had broken. But she spoke again, still in that high and breathless way. “For thus were you made.”

  Silence again for a great moment. Silence, then, “Your will is, Aeta ba-Aetane, and I obey it.”

  Even as Valka spoke, the giant in the hold below stood, great arm sweeping aside four Irchtani as easily as though they were a flock of sparrows. It shambled forward, slowed by its damaged ankle. Shots fired by Bassander and his men nipped at its heels, but still the chimera seemed not to heed them and it limped forward with the inexorable gravity of a funeral march.

  Aeta ba-Aetane.

  Prince of Princes.

  The other voice that Valka’s praxis had channeled was no less than the Scourge of Earth itself. Syriani Dorayaica. And the Prophet had given its deadly orders.

  “Destroy it!” I shouted. “Bassander, take it down!” As if the soldiers needed any encouragement. Deep in the heart of the metal giant there was doubtless an energy source great enough to put a hole in the Storm Wall, a grain of antimatter, or a microfusion reactor no larger than a wine barrel.

  It would be enough.

  A horrid premonition gripped me. With the drill compromised, the crawler would be of no use to that dark power above, and though Dorayaica desired me for a captive I little imagined that desire would outweigh the benefits of removing the only threat on the field to his general’s last, suicidal mission.

  “Lin! Udax!” I shouted at the Irchtani below. “Don’t let the chimera off the crawler!” Turning to the men about me, I said, “We have to move.” Not slowing, I scooped Valka up in my arms, held her tight to stop her spasming, and made for the stairs. Below Bahudde struggled with a knot of men near the ramp. The drill still turned uselessly above as we hurried down the uneven alien steps. Twice I nearly fell, nearly crushed the injured Valka beneath me. We reached the ground level even as the giant flattened another of our men beneath its fist.

  Blood dripped from iron fingers, and Bahudde’s deep voice filled the hold. “Why won’t you die?”

  Still carrying Valka, we retreated down the ramp, gunfire and the flash of grenades halting the advance of the limping chimera. Bahudde opened fire, letting forth a rain of heavy darts that peppered the tarmac about our feet. One of them slammed through the breastplate of an unshielded peltast and left a hole big around as my thumb. He lumbered on a moment, blood rushing down over his white armor before he fell. Turning back, I saw Barda’s troopers wheeling over the black tower of the crawler like vultures above the carcass of some stranded whale. And there was Bahudde, framed by the door of the ramp, the snarling teeth of the drill above its head.

 
Even absent an arm and limping on one damaged leg, the giant was terrifying. Its white carapace shone sickly in the thin light of the occulted sun, and the flame of its lone remaining eye was like the sun going down in wrath. As it advanced down the ramp, one clawed foot opened and released a mangled shape that once had been a man.

  It was not alone. Two dozen of the Cielcin came with it, the pilots and their guards. Dorayaica had surprised me, not calling down its weapon on the ruined crawler. I ground my teeth. This was about to get harder.

  Lin retreated ahead of the enemy, his men about him. Udax and his Irchtani flew between us and closed ranks. Unsteadily, I set Valka on her feet. She sagged against me, whole body still shaking.

  “You two.” I gestured toward two of the Irchtani who alighted around us. “Carry Doctor Onderra back to the Wall.”

  Before they could hop forward to take her, Valka seized me with one half-working arm. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “You need me.”

  “You can’t even stand!”

  Her eyes—unfocused—drifted to a point over my shoulder, back toward the wreck of the crawler and the monster emerging from it. “I don’t need to stand,” she said. “I can still fight.”

  I had no mask then to hide my tears. “I can’t lose you,” I said.

  “You won’t,” she answered, fingers twitching against my cheek. “Not ever.” She leaned forward and in the sight of men and xenobites alike pressed her lips to mine. “Go!” She pushed me away and stumbled, hissing with the pain as one of the Irchtani caught her. “I am with you to the . . . to the end,” she said. “Finish this.”

  CHAPTER 85

  THE WINGED CENTURION

  THE SHADOW OF THE crawler loomed before me, crooked and burned from where Barda’s men had crippled it. The Pale giant looked almost small before it, one clawed hand at the ready, dragging its mangled foot. Bassander’s men kept firing on it, and the Irchtani swooped above, raining fire on Bahudde’s shield. The shot I expected to fall from the heavens never came. The giant, our men, and the crawler were all too close together.