by Chris Walley
“Sarudar, I hear your words. I do not treat them lightly. But we must resist. We have no choice. But I have a question for you: if this defense is so doomed, why do you stay?”
“I have made a promise and I will keep it. Fate writes our days for us. We must all die somewhere, and here on a world of sun and air and sea is as good as anywhere. I have brought my banner.” He gestured to the tube at his feet. “And, at the last, I will fight under it.”
“I disagree with you on how things work. But you can leave if you wish. I am happy to release you from your promise.”
“Thank you. But that would be a matter of cowardice and dishonor. And Fate cannot be so easily cheated. A man’s destiny cannot be dodged by running. But don’t worry, I have shared my doubts with no else. I will fight, and you’ll find that I’ll stand firm—until death, if needed.”
“Thank you, Sarudar. I can but pray you are wrong.”
Lloyd, who had walked over to peer into the fieldscope screen, suddenly beckoned Merral over. “Better take a look, sir.”
The image on the screen lurched from the effects of vibration and haze, but it was all too easy to see that the high gates in the fence had been flung open wide; through them a gray horde of creatures poured out.
Merral glanced at his watch—five past nine. I hope someone is logging all this for the historians, came the irrelevant thought. He looked back at the screen, now seeing not just the Krallen, but a half dozen dark objects flying leisurely above the gray flood. Slitherwings! He shuddered.
He swiftly made his way down to the command room where the imagery compiled from two remote cameras was much clearer. Merral’s first impression was of colors: a gray fluid moving slowly on the black strip of road between the blues and greens of the wetland and the brown rocky ground of the peninsula. But a closer look showed a more troubling reality: a vast army moving with extraordinary precision along the road out of the Langerstrand base.
The Krallen marched in neat lines, twelve abreast, on the road. Even closely spaced their ranks were too wide for the road and the outer members of the lines were sometimes reduced to running in order to keep up. Within the hundreds of lines of gray forms were other moving objects. There were four with angled batteries of tubes on their backs that strode forward on six legs.
“What are those?” Merral asked Vero.
“They’re what we might call cannon insects—mobile artillery—with about a kilometer range. We’ll want to try and take those out.”
Merral pointed to where long articulated cylinders on stumpy legs marched forward.
“Those?” Vero looked around. “They are . . .” He stopped as if suddenly aware that everyone was listening to him. “Our guess is that they are Krallen repair units. They rebuild Krallen that have been damaged.”
“How many Krallen are coming?” Merral asked, trying to keep the alarm out of his voice. “And what’s their estimated arrival time?”
“The column is around three kilometers long,” a young man at a desk said. “Say sixteen to eighteen thousand. The rest must still be in the compound. At their current speed, they will be here within the hour.”
Colonel Lanier shook his head and tugged at his mustache as he looked at Merral. “You know, Commander, I really don’t care for those numbers.”
Someone tugged at Vero’s sleeve and gestured to the screen. “Mr. V., what are those things?”
Almost at the very back of the column, five black vertical cylinders mounted on sturdy insectlike legs marched along amid the Krallen.
“Those are the human soldiers in armored shells,” said Vero. “They’ll coordinate the attack on the ground.”
Merral stared again at the long gray snake of the convoy as it made its unhurried way along the edge of the peninsula. He turned to Vero. “I think now is the time to use the fliers.”
“Agreed. Get in first before the irregs attack.”
Merral stepped into a corner of the room to contact the airstrip.
“Launch the two attack fliers,” he ordered the officer at the strip. “The enemy have mobile artillery—on six legs, like insects. Make those a priority.” He paused and took a breath before adding reluctantly, “And there are men at the rear of the column in armored shells. I’m afraid we need to make them targets.”
He then returned to where everyone watched the screen.
The front line of the column was beginning to turn round the margin of the marsh and head eastward along the road at the foot of the Hereza Crags.
Eastward to Tezekal; eastward to Isterrane.
“The fliers are taking off now. They’ll be over the target in five minutes,” came a message from a desk.
Merral made his way to the roof. Now, even with the unaided eye, the column was easily visible: an ash gray cancer nibbling its way toward them at the foot of the high crags, sending birds flying upward with its passage.
As Merral watched, he heard the fliers take off, heading east to gain height in a spiral. The first flier banked to the west, lined itself up above the village, and began a dive toward the head of the Krallen convoy.
Barely a hundred meters above the ground, two tiny objects fell from the flier, striking into the middle of the column and exploding with bright yellow flashes. As untidy flames bubbled skyward from the ground, a neater jet of red flame erupted upward and struck the flier.
The flier tilted, began to trail smoke, and plunged toward the marsh. Just before it struck a patch of brown reeds, there was a small white puff of smoke at the front of the flier as the pilot ejected. As the noise of the explosions echoed around the hills, Merral saw a tiny set of rotors extend from the top of the seat and the pilot flew away toward them.
The second flier tried a different tactic, circling wide over the marsh and attacking from the rear. The convoy was ripped by two massive explosions, but again there was answering fire. A fragment flew off the flier’s wing; it dipped and then took a nosedive into the lines of Krallen below. This time the pilot didn’t eject.
With a heavy heart, Merral walked back down into the house. There was a subdued attitude in the room and Merral felt that people looked away from him. He gazed at the wallscreen. The column had stopped and fires burned along its length. But even as he watched, the Krallen ranks began to re-form, like some plastic substance. Small brown creatures could be seen scuttling about collecting fragments and dragging them back to the articulated cylinders. Above the lines, the slitherwings banked in slow circles.
“So what’s the result?” Merral asked.
The young man at the desk barely looked up. “Several hundred Krallen destroyed, many permanently. One, perhaps two, of those cannon insects disabled. Perhaps two of the men killed.”
Damage. Useful damage, but far from enough.
On the screen, the column started to move again.
Vero, who had been listening to his earpiece, nudged Merral. “Any second now,” he whispered. “We mined the road.”
Suddenly there was a dazzling flash of yellow light on the screen as a massive explosion ripped open the Krallen lines. A cloud of debris flew skyward. As white splashes blossomed in the open water of the wetland, a dull, distant rumble shook the room.
There were other explosions now, farther along. A cannon insect exploded in a column of flame. Two packs of Krallen bounded up a steep-sided gully and were immediately blown up in a seething fiery mass.
“Good!” Vero muttered in excitement. “Very good! We’re decoying them off the road into traps.”
For the next ten minutes or so the Krallen advance was slowed by a succession of attacks by the irregulars. Sections of the road blew up, scattering fragments far and wide; barrels of explosives bounced down from the crags and erupted on them. Rockets were launched at the convoy from remote pinnacles and even from within the marsh.
Merral watched Vero staring at the wallscreen, listening to his earpiece and every so often issuing orders or making inquiries. He noticed how Vero moved from foot to foot in evident agi
tation. Slowly though, his look of excitement faded into one of determined hope, which, in turn, slowly ebbed into one of gloom.
Within ten minutes, it was obvious that the Dominion forces had regrouped and were now on the march again. The irregulars kept firing from within the marsh and from among the trees on the cliffs but their actions were increasingly ineffectual. For every Krallen felled, another ten took its place.
Merral caught Vero’s eye. His friend looked at the screen and shook his head. “They did well. And there are still some left. But . . .” His voice faded away.
Merral looked at the map. The enemy would be at the entrance to the gorge within twenty minutes. He decided he couldn’t watch the fight from the command center.
“Colonel,” he said, “I’m going down nearer to the lines. I want to see things with my own eyes. I’ll stay in touch.”
“Is that . . . wise?”
“I’ll tell you later. But if they break through, here won’t be safer for much longer.”
“I guess not. You don’t intend fighting?”
“Only if I have to and if Lloyd lets me.”
The big man shrugged his shoulders. “Sir, if you have to fight, I’m behind you.”
Merral took up his helmet, fixed his earpiece in, found an XQ rifle, and checked that the magazine was full. Lloyd put an XQ rifle on his back, filled his bag to the brim with ammunition, and then picked up his shotgun.
Suddenly, the colonel, who had been watching them, stood up. “Well, I guess I’ll join you. A man can’t run a battle from behind a desk.”
Five minutes later, they stood on the edge of the gorge, looking past ledge after ledge of shattered rock to the black road snaking its way below.
Merral felt conscious of the growing heat. The breeze had faded, giving a breathless calm, and on the flagpoles nearby, banners hung limp. The expanse of the sky had become the color of liquid metal.
At the bottom of the gorge, tiny figures distorted in the haze still labored with feverish activity. Yellow machines were hastily piling up banks of earth and stone across the road, and lines of soldiers were swiftly taking positions behind earth and rock revetments. In the still air, Merral heard the sounds of many orders, the throb of engines, and the rhythmic cries of soldiers passing out sandbags and equipment along the lines. Yet his eye was drawn across the marsh to where, curving round the margin of the Hereza Crags, the cloud gray snake of the enemy column approached under a pall of dust and smoke.
They were about to descend a well-marked path to the floor of the gorge when Merral heard Vero’s voice over the earpiece. “The column has stopped. We don’t know why. Hang on. . . .” There was the faintest echo of another voice in the background. “Ah. There’s a communications silence as well. Wait. . . . There seems to be something happening at the tower. Let me patch the images through.”
As the other two gathered round, Merral pulled his diary off his belt. The screen flickered and then cleared to reveal a hazy image of the strange dark gray tower. At the very top, plates slid apart. A spinning column of pale dust emerged and rose into the sky.
Merral felt oddly disturbed by what he was seeing. “Vero,” he asked, pressing the transmit stud, “is that exhaust gas? some sort of whirlwind?”
“No. B-but it’s more than an atmospheric phenomenon. The irregs on the ground are reporting psychological disturbances.”
“I see,” Merral said, aware of a growing feeling of foreboding as he watched the dirty smudge slowly climb into the sky. “So what is it?”
“We’re afraid it’s the b-baziliarch. It seems to be heading this way.”
Merral looked up from the diary through the growing haze toward the peninsula. He could see an odd darkening of the sky there and shivered.
“‘The baziliarch’?” Colonel Lanier repeated, with apprehension in his brown eyes. “What new horror is this?”
But Merral didn’t answer him, because his attention was now entirely taken up by the approaching phenomenon in the sky. What exactly it was he found hard to determine. It was if some small—but growing—part of the sky had turned in on itself. The more he stared at it, the more he felt that it looked like a hole in the sky.
Yet, he realized with a chill that struck right through him, it was more than some physical trick of atmosphere or light. The phenomenon brought fear with it. As Merral turned to the colonel and Lloyd their faces were pale and trembling.
Merral’s stumbling fingers found the transmit stud. “Vero,” he said, hearing his voice quaver, “what is it exactly?”
There was a delay before Vero answered. “Our expert says that the baziliarch has wrapped himself in a Below-Space singularity. He brings with him the darkest parts of the Nether-Realms.”
I’m not sure I understand that, but it has a horrible logic to it.
With a relentless ease, the phenomenon drew nearer, rising ever higher in the sky as it did. As it drew closer, Merral felt a growing sense of being threatened. He looked around, overwhelmed by a sudden desire to seek somewhere among the rocks to hide.
He was aware now that others had seen it. Below, the barrage of orders stopped, to be replaced by shouts of alarm. Pale faces stared skyward and arms pointed. The incessant activity faltered as men and women slunk away to rocks or under the trees.
It is as Azeras warned. In the presence of the baziliarch, all our resolve and courage drains away.
The thing—the hole in the sky—still climbed. As it rose, Merral saw that the sky around the mysterious disk changed as if light was being buckled and distorted around it. Suddenly, he was aware that the day was becoming darker, almost as if the sunlight was being sucked into the disk.
“If he comes here and opens his wings to let the darkness in . . . ,” Azeras said.
With that awareness came the recognition that what they faced was not just a force, but a being—an intelligent and malign opponent that sought their destruction. He had a certainty too that at the heart of this phenomenon was the same being he had encountered in the center the day before. Today though, his energies were not constrained into reading minds, but unleashed in a hateful power.
As he watched the brilliance of the midmorning light fade away, Merral felt certain that it was not just light, but hope, that faded. They had lost. How could they have ever hoped to win? An iron despair settled over his mind. It was barely midmorning and the sky was cloudless, yet the light was so drained that it might have been late in the evening.
Suddenly, a phrase Jorgio had said earlier came to mind: Remember, Mr. Merral, you won’t be alone. “Lord,” he prayed, “unless you defend us, all is lost.”
Vero’s voice spoke in his ear. “W-we have big trouble. Morale is slipping. There are soldiers on the front who want to run away. Zak is threatening to kill anyone who deserts. What are—?”
“Look!” said Lloyd, gesturing behind them.
High in the eastern sky a small, sparkling point of light moved. A star! But Merral’s opinion changed as the speed of the object registered.
“Vero, this may sound silly, but have we launched a missile?”
“We have no missiles,” Vero replied. “But I see what you are seeing.” There was awe in his voice.
The gleaming star raced overhead and struck the hole in the sky.
The disk of emptiness buckled and deflated like a punctured balloon. It became a dark smear of cloud that writhed as if trying to wrap itself around the star. The star seemed to escape being encircled, moved back, and suddenly looped round the disk as it tried to reestablish itself.
There were sounds now: an immense crackling noise that played around the rocks and great reverberating claps that shook the ground. The star struck the cloud again and this time, gleams of dazzling light played around the disk.
A battle. A tingling sensation ran over him. An awesome, titanic battle between the powers.
The disk warped again as if it were being punched and suddenly turned into a streak of dark cloud. The star became a gleaming coil
of light that wrapped itself around the gloomy cloud as if the two elements were in some atmospheric wrestling match.
In an instant, it was over. The darker strand slipped free and, trailing a gray line of vapor, fled northward. The shining point of light pursued it and in a second both were lost from sight over the mountains.
The sunlight returned, and with it hope.
“Do you think that was what I think it was?” There was relief and wonder in Vero’s voice.
“That the envoy reminded the baziliarch that he doesn’t have freedom to do what he wants?”
“Yes. But I feel the baziliarch was not destroyed. I guess he’ll be back, but not today.”
Merral looked to the road where the Krallen forces still advanced. “Just as well. We still have an ugly situation.”
Colonel Lanier, Merral, and Lloyd moved down the track toward the upper level of the defenses.
Down in the gorge the heat was even worse. Merral felt sweat trickling down under his armor.
As they approached the first line of soldiers, Merral saw that they were placing sunshades over the long-barreled, tripod-mounted sniper rifles.
A petite woman with short blonde hair and an armored jacket that seemed too long for her came to meet them and saluted. “Captain Karita Hatiran,” she said, smiling at Merral. “Welcome, Commander. The Central Regiment sniper team is ready for action.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Merral replied, seeing the pairs of women in their shallow depressions adjusting weapons, aligning mats, and peering through sights. Just like the drills, only this time, it’s real.
“If we had more time, I’d like to look around. Any problems?”
“Not really, sir. There’s no wind, which eases targeting. It’s a bit hot; we’re trying to keep the barrels cool.” She paused and stared into the hazy distance. “Just a lot of unknowns,” she said, giving him a glance that exposed deep apprehension.
“The unknowns trouble me too, Captain. But they’re going to be a lot less unknown soon. Very soon.”
Merral glanced at the sword she wore, which also looked too big for her.
