Dusk

by Ashanti Luke

  Toutopolus hit the flatdeck hard, and when he lifted himself up and looked to see if he was still in one piece, he saw the auto-cannon, or what was left of it, cut clean through to the bottom section where the ammo belt fed into the gun. Part of the gyroscopic base was gone as well as the seat—the fucking seat he had been sitting in. The rest had been disintegrated, cleanly wiped from reality itself, just as the top half of his own body would have been if he had not looked up at the moment he did.

  And the idea alone, knowing he did not want empirical knowledge of whether or not having his molecules turned to radiation would hurt, seemed to lift him from the flatdeck by itself. He stood, removed his sidearm from his belt, and with clear, calm inflection, subvoced Uzziah to take him up to the Echelon fighter.

  Milliken dove right for the soldier that had kicked the Squib out of the windshield, catching him off balance. Milliken dipped his shoulder as something collided with his knee and smashed the soldier into the weapon rack on the wall of the ship. The fighter was still climbing slowly, but the incline sent Milliken sliding away as his own footing faltered, moving his back out of range of the kick that he had not seen coming behind him. The kick missed Milliken and hit the soldier he had tackled somewhere in the midsection, crumpling him. Milliken steadied himself against a bar on the wall, but it came loose, and he realized it was a weapon. He took another step backward and planted his butt against the wall to regain his balance, but his legs were clipped from under him. As his butt slid down the wall, Milliken realized there were entirely too many people in the room, and they all wanted to kill him. But the thought perished in his mind quickly as his tailbone collided with the floor, and the muscles from his glutes to his toes loosened in the wake of the pain that spread through them.

  Something hit him in his chest, sending mucous from his nostrils as the air in his lungs evacuated. Then, in a flicker of light, he saw something moving toward his face that could have only been someone’s boot. Even as he moved his head to the right, he realized he still had the gun in his hand. It felt like a shotgun because his hand was on the pump. As his head moved out of the path of the kick that slammed against the wall, Milliken cocked the shotgun. He brought the butt of the gun into the back of the kicker’s knee, and then, in the same motion, brought the barrel across to the inside of his knee. The man collapsed over Milliken and was falling as something hit Milliken’s left temple. Milliken still managed to catch the falling man’s crotch with the muzzle of the shotgun. He pulled the trigger, not even bothering to shelter himself from the inevitable spray.

  Yet there wasn’t any. There was only the loud peal of thunder as the darkness in front of him receding into an array of orange flickering lights. Something hit him hard, and his own body was bounced off the wall behind him as if he had been shot himself. He felt knees and shins collide against him as his body rolled across the floor of the fighter.

  When he finally stopped rolling, he was in a pile of writhing bodies, and he was unarmed. He felt his brain rolling around in his head, but the darkness and instability of the room itself made his own vertigo seem more stable. He spun his legs beneath him, crossed and extended them, but as he stood, he was immediately caught in the chest with another kick. This time, thicker fluid than mucous erupted from his nose, and a metallic twinge filled his nostrils. He stumbled backward up the incline toward the front of the still climbing fighter. The wind buffeted his back as he steadied himself, and despite the howling of the air rushing in through the destroyed windshield, he heard the pilot moan. The soldier in front of him emerged from the darkness into the soft blue glow cast by the holomonitor. The man was drawing a dull-colored knife from his belt as he moved over someone on the ground. Milliken lifted his leg and thrust it backward into the pilot’s seat, knocking the pilot’s dazed body forward. The pilot’s weight was more than Milliken had anticipated and it knocked him off balance, but as the body flopped across the controls, the ship dipped back toward the planet, and the soldier with the knife stumbled toward Milliken. Milliken launched himself forward and drove his forearm into the man’s face, snapping the man’s head back violently and sending him backward to the floor with force.

  But something that felt like another leg came out of the darkness and hit Milliken in his stomach, knocking him to the side across the controls. The ship dipped a little more, but Milliken caught himself against the wall with his foot and launched his body at the man who must have kicked him.

  But the man was fast and ducked under Milliken’s punch, parried his elbow, and then twisted Milliken into a choke hold. Milliken managed to slide his left hand between the man’s forearm and his own throat, but he could not stop the man from securing his grip. Milliken flailed his legs and hit the pilot in the face. The pilot’s body collapsed to the floor and the ship tilted back in the opposite direction. Milliken saw the stars outside eclipsed by another black blob, but he couldn’t tell if it was the other fighter, a building, or the ground. And then the man yanked him around. Milliken felt for something vital around the man’s waist to grab but only found round, cold metal. He grabbed it, but it loosed from the man’s body and provided no leverage.

  Another figure emerged from the darkness with a knife screaming something about painting the floor with bowels, but Milliken’s head was pounding, and the sound of “We’re coming!” across the earwig overwhelmed his hearing. The man trying to choke him leaned, trying gain leverage to pull Milliken off his feet, but Milliken bent his legs and dropped his weight. When the man steadied himself to yank again, Milliken planted his feet beneath a body on the floor and allowed himself to fall. An arm or a leg must have tripped the man choking him because they both fell forward, barreling toward the man with the knife as Milliken let out a fury filled scream. The man with the knife lifted it and lunged, catching Milliken across his hipbone. The pain sent cracks of agony through Milliken’s body, but it abated his scream. What must have been perceived as a battle cry or frustration to the men in the ship had not been an emotive reaction, but a calculated and acute distraction used to conceal the activation beeps of the Valois Squib Milliken had just activated. And though the pain and warmth from the stab wound, and the man gaining leverage and tightening his hold behind him were both disillusioning, the fact that the man who had stabbed him now had an active explosive device magnetically stuck to his gun gave Milliken the poise he needed to lift both his legs, fold his knees to his chest, and kick out with all the strength remaining in his body. The man, evidently unaware of the Squib in his belt, tried to resist, but when Milliken connected, the strength in his legs, after months of training in Earth’s gravity, sent the man reeling backward into the wall.

  Milliken lifted his arm to shelter himself from the bright flash as the ear-splitting whine pierced the air in the room. He felt the man behind him press into his body as they hit the wall. His grip loosened, but as Milliken tried to step away toward two more men emerging from the flickering shadows, the wound in his hip protested, and he found himself stumbling into a stronger chokehold, without his hand to protect his neck.

  Septangle Fennon Thurber was about to reactivate the laser-bit when the bulkhead began to slide upward on its own. He placed the bit on his belt, raised his sidearm, and took a low defensive stance. Halber and Ori dropped to the ground on either side of him to cover the jetway from beneath the rising bulkhead.

  As the bulkhead rose, it revealed an empty jetway. The visor on Fennon’s mask revealed a pathway that seemed innocuous other than a strangely low oxygen count. Octad Dunhill moved forward, observed the jetway, and then pointed to five of the seven men under his charge. With two fingers, he waved them forward to the airlock door on the opposite side of the jetway.

  They made their way gingerly across the floor until a metallic thud shook the entire jetway. They turned and saw the bulkhead shut behind them, separating them from the Octad and two others as chatter began spreading over their earwigs. Gherig carried the other laser-bit, and in only a matter of minutes, they coul
d cut through the bulkhead. But as the airlock door before them slid open, Fennon wondered if they may actually have the minutes they needed. He took two forced breaths to trump himself up and barked through his microphone, “Sharpen your elbows!” as they all focused on the rising bulkhead that slowly revealed a solitary man wearing a gas mask and holding a wooden staff. Even through the mask they could see it was the man they had come for, the man who called himself the Knight of Wands, the man that had roused so much trouble that he had flushed them out of hiding.

  “Set down your weapon!” Fennon yelled, his mask amplifying his words through speakers mounted on it.

  “Come and take it from me,” the man said, holding out his staff.

  They all raised their guns, training a bead on this man who was either completely off his day-counter, or knew something they did not.

  “We will count to five, then we open fire,” Fennon bellowed through his speakers.

  “Might I suggest…” the man began saying, but Fennon interrupted him with a resounding, “One!”

  “…that while you count to five…”

  “Two!”

  “…you check your methane reading.”

  This man’s calm in the face of their phalanx was unnerving. They were protected with Comptex battle suits, lightweight, bulletproof, and certified against chemical and biological agents as well as radiation. As far as they knew, there were at least two malfies inside the ship, but no more than four or five. What could he possibly think could save him? So Fennon subvocalized the command to switch his mask to atmospheric analysis so he could at least see what this man, the father of the Sword Scourge himself, had in his medicine bag.

  And then he saw; the methane count in the air was well beyond safe levels. Fennon expected the Knight of Wands to give them some sort of demands, to tell them to stand down as he retreated into the ship, but he didn’t. He merely took an emphatic step forward and dropped into a fighting stance as the airlock door closed behind him.

  Ori’s grip tightened around his weapon. “Punt five, I’m going to burn him rightforth!”

  “No!” Fennon yelled, dropping his own gun in an exaggerated motion as he tried to clandestinely slide his left hand behind his back. “If we cast slugs in here, it might blow. That’s what he’s gambling on.”

  “You going to stand here in the poot gas all day, old man?” Fennon asked, moving his hand further behind his back slowly.

  “No. I only need three… more… minutes.” The gas mask shifted on his face as his eyes squinted behind the visor and Fennon was sure he was smiling at them. Fennon grabbed the hold-out knife from behind his back and took a step forward, but the ground shook beneath them, and the stars outside the window of the jetway jiggled as if the entire universe was being rattled. And then the Knight of Wands, that deranged lunatic, rushed toward the five of them with no visible weapon except a wooden staff.

  As Cyrus’s feet moved him toward the five armed guards, he could not help wondering how his life had gone so wrong that this seemed like a good idea. But the charges set in the space elevator disintegrated three of the tether cables, and the centripetal force of the planet itself sent the J.L. Orbital wrenching against the remaining cable. As the cable caught, a wave rolled through the jetway floor and seemed to propel Cyrus forward. The guard who was apparently the leader of the black-clad, bug-eyed men drew a combat knife from his back—most likely some kind of resonating blade. Cyrus slid the staff up through his left hand and swung the left end of it forward. Even in their Comptex suits, these men were fast—just as Cyrus had expected. The jetway lurched beneath his feet as the man to Cyrus’s left caught the staff.

  Cyrus planted his feet and threw his legs forward as the leader brought his knife around, aiming at Cyrus’s ribs. “Invert the G-drive now!” Cyrus subvoced.

  The man who had grabbed the staff wrenched at it, but it was too late. The gravity waves around them flatlined, and the kinetic energy that Cyrus had built before the inversion sent his legs into the man with the knife and the man next to him with concussive force. Something scraped against one of his ribs, and as Cyrus extended his legs, he saw the knife that had cut him spinning across the jetway trailing hovering droplets of blood. The two men flew backward, bowling into the man directly behind them, and spinning another off balance, knocking his feet from beneath him. The man who had grabbed the staff had stiffened his body to pull at the staff, and now, thanks to his own tension, was rising off the ground. Cyrus held on to the staff with his left hand, planted his right hand on the edge of the jetway, and let the slight resistance from his kick send him back toward the wall like a feather. As the man who had grabbed the staff tried to reorient himself, Cyrus pushed off the wall and brought his legs toward the man’s chest. The man tried to block and Cyrus forced the staff back into the visor of his mask. His head snapped back, and as Cyrus’s feet connected with his arms, he spun into a flip.

  The largest lurch yet rocked the jetway. Cyrus pulled his feet underneath him and used the momentum of the wavering jetway to launch himself at the soldier who had been twisted. The soldier was now pulling his feet to the floor as he activated magnetic clamps on his boots.

  Cyrus pulled the staff back into his right hand and snapped it around as the man’s rubberized boots stuck to the jetway. The man lifted his own knife to advance on Cyrus, but must not have expected Cyrus, or Cyrus’s staff, to be right in his face. Cyrus brought the staff across the man’s throat, twisted his own body over the staff as it stopped on the man’s neck, and pulled against the staff as if he were trying to stop himself using the man’s chin for leverage. The motion stripped the man’s mask from his face, and as Cyrus’s momentum slowed, he twisted again in the air, carrying the man’s mask with him. Cyrus flung it from the end of the staff at a man next to the bulkhead who was trying to activate his boots.

  There was a wet heat building in Cyrus’s midsection now, but he had to keep going. Cyrus moved his feet to the ground and bounded again. The Orbital must have broken loose from its tethers, because the lurching had stopped completely. He stretched out and reared the staff back to swing again, but he stopped abruptly. The man whose mask he had snatched off was holding his ankle. The man gagged as the thickening methane assaulted his lungs, but using his magnetic boots as an anchor, he yanked Cyrus’s ankle back and slammed him against the wall.

  Cyrus had twisted the staff as the man had swung him toward the wall. Cyrus planted it against the wall as he collided side-first into it. The staff slowed the collision, but his shoulder, even though the Eos had healed it, took a wallop.

  Cyrus leaned against the wall and threw his free foot at the unmasked man. The man dodged, but Cyrus brought the end of the staff back into the man’s knuckle. He wailed as his hand released Cyrus’s ankle, and Cyrus quickly pulled his knees to his chest and placed his legs between his body and the wall. The three men against the bulkhead had activated their clamps, and there was a bluish line of fiery light from the laser-bit spreading from the floor on the bulkhead behind him. Cyrus was running out of ave, and three minutes was a lot longer than he had anticipated.

  He launched himself toward the three as they reached for weapons. The two on either side of the leader reached for their knives, but the leader, who had dropped his knife, was reaching for something else. Cyrus held the staff out with both hands, hoping one of them would grab the end of it, but they would not fall for the same trick twice. The two men stepped to either side, their magnetic clamps mechanically activating and deactivating with the natural motion of their ankles. The leader turned as he moved, pulling some sort of rifle or shotgun from behind his back as Cyrus collided with the bulkhead.

  Something slashed against his back, sending a bolt of pain through his entire left side, but Cyrus kept moving. He drove the staff downward across the switch on the boot of the man to his right and quickly snapped the staff upward under the man’s chin. The boots disengaged, and the man flipped as Cyrus heard a familiar, yet hard to place, whine
. The gas that filled the room, invisible before now, swirled and caused the lights in front of his face to bloat and tweak.

  The Spellcaster. Its nickname made more sense now as the whine began to rise in pitch. But Cyrus knew if he let his fear of the weapon get the best of him, it would all be over. There was only one way back home, and it did not include that gun pointed at his head. Plus, if what Aerik said was accurate, at this range, it would hurt both of them just as much.

  So Cyrus took his chances, brought his elbow up beneath the barrel of the gun, and as the leader resisted, he used the leverage to bring his foot down across the side of the leader’s boot, deactivating the magnet. Cyrus pushed against the bulkhead with his other foot and dropped his staff. Cyrus simultaneously reached for the leader’s gun hand with his right, while grabbing a strap on another man’s shoulder with his left. Cyrus’s palm collided with the leader’s hand and he squeezed. There was a low oscillating whirr, and then a sudden thump that expanded the air and spun Cyrus like a turbine blade. There was a snap, like a plant being snatched up by its roots, and the jetway spun around him like a malfunctioning hologram. His legs collided with something with enough force to send a shockwave of pain up to the base of his skull. Cyrus had to focus to fight back the spasms in his esophagus as bile filled his throat. His head pounded, and when his vision cleared, he saw the man to his left slumped awkwardly against the wall of the jetway, feet still pinned to the floor, and another man vomiting blood in the corner as he clutched at his chest. Cyrus now held the Spellcaster in his own hand, and was holding a floating slug thrower by a strap that had globules of what could have only been blood floating behind it.