Celestial Hit List

by Charles Ingrid

  “What?”

  “Yessir.”

  Kavin returned Rawlins’ smile. “That I want to see. Is he on the com?”

  “No, sir. His suit’s not functioning one hundred percent. He’s had some trouble, I guess.”

  “Well, your assignment’s been changed. Don’t go guard Colin, go and get him. I’ll meet him at the front gate. With any luck, we can get Storm inside and take the hovercraft to staging.”

  Rawlins snapped off a last salute. Kavin watched him streak out the barracks’ door. He made a few minor adjustments to his dress uniform, added a weapons’ belt, and made his way to the wall for the second time that morning.

  Rawlins hesitated outside the Thrakian Embassy. His skin crawled at the thought of seeing where the bugs actually… lived. The thought of running into one of them eating… slurp, gulp, burble, without a privacy screen, churned his stomach. But he had his orders, and so he approached the gate.

  Only one house in Sassinal was gated. But it raised the hair on the back of Rawlins’ young neck that the fencing was not guarded, and it swung open eerily to a push of his fingertip.

  He half-pivoted on the ball of one foot, ready to go back. But he thought of Kavin… saying St. Colin might be there without friends. Rawlins wasn’t a Walker. He didn’t even like Walkers. But he knew both his commander and his captain held the man in high esteem.

  So Colin must be worth something to somebody somewhere.

  He swallowed and went through the gates, half expecting to get a Thrakian bullet through the chest, or have his legs lasered off below the kneecaps.

  The front door, which was a real door, another oddity on Bythia, was also unguarded. Now that sent more than the hair up on Rawlins’ neck, it made his testicles crawl.

  He leaned inside the doorway cautiously as the door opened to a push of his toe.

  Bile rose in his throat and he gagged as he saw the half-crushed body of a Thrakian guard inside the doorway. Ichor ran across the flooring from under the sable chitin.

  “Christ.”

  Then he choked. Where was Colin?

  He vaulted the Thrak. The movement took him skidding down the front corridor. He stopped, turned carefully, listening…

  Voices… down the right wing.

  Rawlins did not walk. He sprinted down the corridor and when he came to the doorway, he did not stop, he threw himself into the room.

  So it was his body Winton’s rifle fire caught instead of St. Colin’s.

  With a grunt, Rawlins thudded into Colin, bowling him over, and the saint cried out, as the projectile slug plowed into his side, scouring his ribcage with wildfire and pain.

  Winton stood hunched over in the room. Dhurl and his aide lay fallen at his feet. Ichor stained the tiles, pooled, and ran together with the crimson tide that issued from Rawlins.

  Winton paused a moment. Coherent thought returned to his dark eyes. Colin saw his glance flicker toward him, and, grasping Rawlins’ body in his arms, closed his eyes. Don’t let this boy’s sacrifice be in vain, he prayed.

  Breathing hard, Winton clenched his weapon. He knew the bullets had probably torn through both bodies. Projectiles were hard to come by. He had a few left in the magazine. He wanted to save them for Storm… just in case.

  He turned and ran from the embassy.

  Rawlins moaned. He tried to sit up, palm over the hole in his gut. “Sssaint…”

  Colin moved out from under the boy. His ribs smarted and his over-robe was scored, but the norcite interwoven fabric had taken most of the damage. Rawlins was a different matter. Colin laid his hand over the boy’s.

  “Don’t cry, son. Just lie still.”

  He prayed again. He prayed to be filled with love and power, not his, never his, himself only a channel… a miracle to be repeated.

  Rawlins quivered in shock, unable to stop trembling, legs icy—were they even his—heels pounding the floor, teeth chattering, the only warm spot in his own body his stomach where his guts pushed up and out, squeezing between his fingers, blood pumping out…

  He ceased moving.

  Colin stayed where he was, until the tremendous warmth flooding his arm from the shoulder down flickered out, then was gone. For a moment he felt on the verge of tears and terribly bereft.

  Then, under his hand, Rawlins took a deep, sighing breath. His eyes fluttered and he looked up.

  “Sir?”

  “Lie still. You’ll be weak. But you won’t die. I’ll send help.” Colin shambled to his feet, and felt his age, his years, his fatigue.

  The boy lay his head back on the tile, and slept.

  There wasn’t a Thraks alive in the embassy to hurt him, so Colin did not hesitate to leave Rawlins there. He had to get to the wall, to the Eastside gate, to stop Winton from whatever further madness he planned. He had to work at making his legs obey him, and he staggered from the embassy like a very, very old man.

  Rawlins never heard the click, slide, click, slide of insectlike legs and chitin across the tile.

  Mortally wounded but alive nonetheless, Dhurl plucked off the Dominion weapon belt from the boy. He hoisted himself up.

  The Thraks eyed the human on the flooring. This one ought to die for what the other had done, but Dhurl’s time was limited. He, too, made for the door and the gate.

  Jack pulled up on the crest. He could hear himself breathe and, worse, he could smell himself sweating. As the gray-purple dawn edged up the sky, he could see the wind had finally gone, taking the dust storm with it. He reached up and took his helmet off, and hooked it on his belt.

  There was an ocean of beings on the plain below him. Jack headed down the crest, wondering if he saw dead or living Bythians. He rubbed his eyes. The rear cameras had been out on the suit. He wondered what was at his back. He turned and looked behind.

  Windsails billowed against the horizon. Hundreds more Bythians followed him on foot.

  “Shit. I might have known,” he said.

  *Colin set you up.*

  “Maybe. Or maybe they’re just coming in for water and supplies.”

  Bogie laughed, a deep, booming sound. Jack massaged his forehead wearily. *At least they’re not fighting. I calculate the Eastside wall to be the best approach, there’s a natural corridor there, and the power vault will carry us out of range after two short bursts clear the way… *

  “Save your tactics, you bloodthirsty half-life.”

  *Saving.*

  “If you want to be good for something, locate Amber. She’s supposed to be sitting in the hills somewhere.”

  There was a pause, then: *Amber is the second form sitting in front of the gate.*

  “What?” Jack broke into a run.

  Bythians moved aside for him like a boat keel sunders a tide. He did not care that his suit made him a moving juggernaut. He yelled, “Amber!” and heard his voice cut across the noise of the murmuring Bythians like ice cracking on a clear winter’s day.

  She got to her feet.

  Or it was supposed to have been her, but he slowed, digging in his bootheels for traction, staring at the veiled and headdressed creature that got sinuously to its feet.

  Dust and cloth covered it from head to toe. It was Amber’s height. It could have been Amber.

  Jack slowed to a walk, unaware of the commotion beginning at his back as the Bythians got to their feet, and fragrance filled the air, thick and pungent, their trilling voices beginning to rise.

  “Amber?”

  She moved her arms out from her cloaking. Only her eyes stared out from her face, all else was covered by the dust, her thick hair hidden under a Bythian headdress that was, bizarrely, a cobalt blue feathering which repeated the blue tattooing of her skin.

  Her skin!

  The bastard had gone and tattooed her to match a Bythian skin patterns.

  “Amber!”

  She blinked, nothingness in her golden brown eyes.

  Jack halted in front of her, his heart pounding in his throat.

  “Jack! Jack!”


  He looked up to the wall, saw Kavin standing there. Stunned, he looked back to Amber.

  Before he could do anything else, the Bythians erupted in a roar of sound as the High Omnipotent Hussiah got to his feet also. His whistle cut through the din of sound.

  He looked at Jack and repeated what he had just said. “It is time.”

  The gates opened up and three hundred suited Knights moved out onto the field. The Bythians grew deathly still.

  Jack pushed past Amber. “Get ‘em out of the suits, Kavin, for god’s sake. They’re infested!”

  Kavin elegantly climbed down the wall to a point where he could jump, then landed lightly on his feet. “What’s wrong, Jack?”

  “I just spent the last two days in hell wondering if I could get back here in time. The suits are carrying a parasite… a parasite from Milos. You might have heard about it—maybe not. But the thing lives off heat and sweat, incubates, then it attaches itself to a live body. Then, it… consumes it. It’s called a Milot berserker, and I ran into six of them out there… the six guys that were carried off from Black Piss River. I don’t know how or why, but I do know what—and every minute that armor is worn, is a minute closer to one of the worst deaths I’ve ever seen.”

  The Knights stood and looked at one another. Lassaday was the first to shuck his armor.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I heard of ‘em. Thought they was one of the craziest rumors to come out of the Sand Wars.”

  “It was no rumor, sergeant,” Jack answered him.

  “Then ask him how he knows.” A strange voice cut through the air.

  Jack put a hand out to Amber, who stood in his way between his view and the now open gate. He moved her aside ever so gently.

  Winton smiled grimly at him.

  It is time, Hussiah had said. Jack felt his heart slow and steady. He took a step forward, a step forward through time and space, headed for an ancient enemy.

  It was Hussiah who stopped him.

  “This is our time,” the Bythian High Priest said, his eyes glittering with emerald fire. “You are a Champion.”

  He trilled his words out to the thousands of Bythians surrounding them. They responded with a flood of noise.

  Amber uncoiled then, awareness coming into her eyes, taking off her cloak and veil, dropping them into the dust at her feet.

  Hussiah took her hand. “This is our Champion.”

  He translated a second time.

  Jack looked back to where Winton had stood. Bythians jostled him, he could no longer see his enemy. He clenched his jaw.

  Then silence fell as the broken body of a dying Thraks reared in the open gateway.

  Dhurl had studied his Bythian history well. As he crept close to the Eastside gate, he smelled the moment about to happen. His face plates shuddered and he assumed a mask despite the trail of ichor he left behind him.

  This world had to be theirs.

  There were three champions prophesied.

  All he had to do was provide one to take the Thrakian side.

  Intelligence reports had come through, finally.

  He knew one of the Knights had been theirs. It was time to take advantage of long ago implants. He gained the gateway.

  “Halt!”

  The sea of Bythians surged and fell silent. Hussiah stood with his arms raised, and he turned also.

  He did not try to contain the aroma of disdain as the Thraks took the gateway. It was injured, he saw with pleasure.

  “What is it?”

  “I demand the third,” Dhurl said. “For the Holy Trials.”

  “You are a temple desecrater!” Angry trills nearly drowned out Dhurl’s rasping reply.

  The Thraks paused and said again, “We did not mean to desecrate your grounds. We were raising our young there. Raising a hatchling to be our Champion in your Holy Trials, in the shadow of your Holy place.”

  Hussiah did not believe the Thraks for a moment, but he translated. There was a murmuring, then another Holy Priest rose. Hussiah eyed Suh-he-lan with disdain.

  “I support his demand.”

  Hussiah decided nothing would come of it. Who could the Thraks choose who would defeat either Amber or the Suit of All Light? He shrugged and turned back.

  “Choose.”

  Dhurl rose to his greatest Ambassadorial height. He looked across the assemblage of Knights.

  Winton stayed within the gateway, in the shadows, doubly pleased. The Bythians had not torn Jack apart. So he would get his second wish—the chance to see Jack exposed as the traitor he was, and Winton himself would destroy him. He cocked the rifle.

  Dhurl tore the synthesizer out of his chitin. It made a substantial hole and caused him a substantial amount of pain, but it was just one small irritation in his mortality. If he would die, he would die in his native voice.

  He clicked. It was a windy, husky noise, for the synthesizer implant had ruined what passed for a Thrakian throat. But it passed. He made a series of clicks and whistles, painstakingly, for the Knight who was meant to hear them someday.

  Kavin saw Winton tense. He knew the WP commander was up to something. He saw the man’s feverish, intense stare focused on Jack. The muzzle of the rifle was pointed. He calculated the line of fire.

  Jack, again.

  Then, as Dhurl spoke, he knew.

  Winton had pegged Jack Storm as a lost Knight. Would kill him here and now, no matter what the circumstances, even if it ruined whatever other ambitions the man might hold.

  He saw Colin appear at Winton’s elbow. The saint was bowed and grayed. But he did nothing, as he lifted his squared chin and looked out over the assemblage of Bythians.

  Still looking for your damned evidence, Kavin thought. This was a religious happening, and Colin was bound not to interfere.

  But Kavin wasn’t. A stinging warmth came to his eyes as he stepped out, knowing the Thrakian message fell on deaf ears, all of them—except his.

  “I answer Dhurl. I will be the Thrakian Champion.”

  ***

  “No!” screamed Winton. “You can’t be! It’s him, I know it is, it’s Storm!”

  He raised his rifle and set himself.

  Kavin turned. “No, Winton. I’m the one. I was just a boy when the Thraks picked me up, but they were impressed that a child would try to operate a suit. They had me for… years. Then I escaped. And one of the first things I did was start killing Thraks wherever I could find them, Treaty or no Treaty. I’m your goddamn, fucking lost Knight.”

  Jack said, “Scott Randolph was murdered because of you.”

  “Probably. The Thraks didn’t know I’d been deprogrammed. They didn’t want the broadcaster exposing their plants.” Kavin moved slowly, deliberately, into Winton’s line of fire.

  His face went livid. “Goddamn, I’ll kill you anyway!” He surged forward firing.

  Kavin threw himself that last hand’s width of distance between Winton and Jack.

  Jack caught his body even as Winton threw the rifle down and ran.

  His friend sagged into his arms. Jack looked down, uncomprehending, at the holes in Kavin’s torso. Then at his own armor, where the slugs had just flattened like so many useless tokens.

  The norcite covered armor.

  Jack picked up Kavin and cradled him. Humor flickered in half-open brown eyes.

  “Why did you answer the call?”

  “Because Winton expected… you to.” Kavin coughed. Blood-flecked foam speckled his lips. “I… couldn’t let a friend take the blame… for me. I never told you…”

  Jack looked up, anguished. “Help me! Help him!” He looked at the girl who stood closest to him. “Amber…”

  She turned eyes without recognition or pity on him.

  Kavin shook his head. “Let me go.” He coughed again. “There’s so much I meant to tell you…”

  Jack knew there was no hope. He held his friend close. “I know. I was a Knight, too.”

  “I knew it!” The triumph in Kavin’s voice was
there, if weak. “Did you know my brother?”

  “No… but your brother died fighting for my brother on Dorman’s Stand.”

  “Good.” Kavin smiled.

  Colin sagged at the gate. He went to his knees, breathing like a torn vacuum hose, unable to dredge up the strength he’d had earlier. He saw the death and could not defeat it this time. He put his hands over his eyes. Across the gateway, Dhurl gave a gurgle and toppled over. A foul stench drifted into the air.

  Kavin tried to form a last word and settled for clutching his friend’s hand.

  Jack’s eyes filled. Lassaday came forward, his face red. “Let me take ‘im, captain.”

  “No.” He looked for Winton. But he did not fight as Lassaday and Travellini gently took the broken body from his hands.

  Around him, the Bythians had fallen back in shocked dismay. Hussiah felt his guts twist. He drew in a great, sucking breath of air. He told his people what had just happened.

  Many of them cheered.

  As for himself, he felt only a great weight settling on his chest.

  The Third Age had just begun. One Champion had brought back a quality into the world that had been missing from the Bythians for many a century—the ability to put another’s life before one’s own.

  “Kill him,” he ordered Amber. “Show him to be the Deceiver he is.”

  Amber pulled back, hearing her teacher’s voice. Her time had come. She sensed the heat of the bodies around here, smelled the aromas of anticipation and victory.

  She was preparing to strike when something grasped at her, something not of this earth, in her mind.

  *Amber,* it said. *We love you. Come back.*

  Her throat tightened. She could not breathe. She looked at the Deceiver towering over her in the suit of All Light, bright as the sun that could burn out her eyesight.

  She remembered. “Jack—”

  No. Jack was dead.

  *Amber, hear me. We love you. We need you.*

  She threw back her head and screamed. “Jack!”

  He was going to find Winton and rip his still beating heart out of his chest. He was going to take his gauntleted hand and tear flesh away until he found that blood-pumping organ, then take it and—