by Scott Moon
He threw her on the ground and looked up to the jump-off point where Wingers were falling back after their well-planned and executed attack was defeated by savagery. Clavender hovered in the air, wings beating powerfully despite her obvious injuries. He understood the effort it took for her to remain aloft without forward momentum. Since arriving in the Ror-Rea, he had learned that her power was strongest when she was not touching the ground.
Susso laughed maniacally and ran toward a Mazz airship that hovered twenty meters away. Rickson burst from the melee and chased her. All around him there were Wingers and Reapers blinking out of existence as shapeshifter commandos abandoned their act. That is how they survive, Kin thought. They cheat.
No one knew the natural form of a shapeshifter. The common belief was that they were sort of gray humanoids that were unable to defend themselves without trickery. The fighters Kin saw now dispelled the myth entirely. He understood that their strong bodies and lupine posture could be yet another illusion, but their fortitude in this particular slice of Hell suggested they knew how to fight
Chances were good he had fought beside their kind before. He was too tired to dwell on the revelation and might have dismissed the incident with a curse for Susso and her kind if not for one shapeshifter he recognized. William Orlan, the son of Kin’s rival that was almost a friend at the end, stared through the smoke and deflected sunlight of the Ror-Rea.
He waited for the boy to explain or apologize. Like most battlefield moments, it was shorter than it seemed and ended when the boy simply turned and ran after Susso and the others of his kind.
Kin cursed. He had work to do.
When the real Clavender spread her arms and used the new wormhole, she seemed consumed by darkness. Her wings blackened for the first time. Everything changed. Kin watched the sky that was Crashdown melt and disappear as Dax ordered warriors to gather around him. Ceana was there, standing apart from his companions by the virtue of his mismatched armor and weapons. To Kin’s surprise, Trak and a score of Mazz warriors came to the Ror-Rea King’s call. Something was discussed in haste and the squad of Wingers, Mazz soldiers, and Earth Fleet troopers braced themselves for action.
Something like multiple gravities pressed down on him and he lost consciousness. For a moment, he saw Clavender in a dream and she spoke to him.
“I will die,” she said.
PART THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Revenge of the Winger King
“CAPTAIN Trak is too near the Winger woman and the fools trying to help Kin Roland,” one of his Mazz generals said. “The Rage may be pulled into Hellsbreach.”
I sincerely hope he does, thought Omis-tri-valeon. He was the Omega of the shapeshifters and Emperor of the Mazz people for a reason and it was neither his strength nor his charisma they needed. Omis understood plots, mastered them, used them like tools. The Rage was less than a plot and perhaps more than a tool, but for him to use or discard as he saw fit.
Captain Trak was also useful, though to a lesser degree. It was good to have a true believer to call upon. “It cannot be helped. As soon as Clavender sends the Reapers through the wormhole, open fire on the Earth Fleet jump ship.”
“My men can capture the vessel. It could be useful to us.”
“No,” the Omega said. “It is not worth the risk.”
His generals, the actual Mazz leaders and his own agents that infiltrated their ranks, moved through the assembled soldiers and armored vehicles. The only thing that could thwart his plan would be for an army to take Clavender’s portal back to Crashdown, where the center of all wormhole power was hidden in the planet’s core. So long as they fought on that cursed rock, there was a possibility that his enemies could escape and rebuild their ruined empires.
He walked to the edge of the battlefield and watched the destruction. His army was strong enough to push one side or the other to victory, but that wasn’t his goal. He was only here to be sure his enemies died in the Ror-Rea or went to Hellsbreach. Kin Roland and the Reapers were the important piece in this game. If he could get Wingers and Mazz and the volatile and troublesome Rage from the board, success was guaranteed.
“Emperor, a Winger approaches,” a Mazz officer warned.
“I do not wish to be approached,” the Omega said in his best Emperor Filoussage Onderbock voice.
Anti-aircraft weapons opened up on the Ror-Rea King and his bodyguards. Red mist filled the air. Body parts and shattered wings spiraled downward. Some of the feathers changed from black to silver or white as they fell. Others were obliterated by the battle.
One of the warriors made it through the slaughter. The Omega lifted one hand and signaled for the Winger King to be spared.
“Why do you fire upon us? We suffer the wrath of a common enemy!”
Mazz soldiers in shining SKIN armor placed themselves around the Omega, unaware he was not their Emperor but an imposter.
“Your warriors should be fighting the Reapers and the Slomn-Reaper that terrorized even the bloodthirsty monsters of Hellsbreach,” the Omega said.
“Yes, you creature of deception,” Dax said.
The Omega realized his mistake too late. “Get him away from me!”
“My daughter sends you a gift,” Dax said, then flung a rope of silver beads at the Omega.
Light flared from the artifact — not only appearing as an extension of her power, but smelling and tasting like a wormhole opening. The Omega nearly changed his shape but controlled his surprise at the last instant and stumbled backward instead. Several of his guards were sucked through the portal after the Reapers and a section of the Ror-Rea battleground. One of his ships tried to fly clear of the disturbance and was ripped in half. He heard guns firing on the Earth Fleet ships as he had ordered, though now he desperately wished to countermand that order.
I will need the Earth Fleet jump ship. He continued to shove through ranks of confused soldiers, hoping he might escape Clavender’s trap. It was, of course, impossible. She had seen his plans and caught him off guard. All that was left was to prepare to fight on the Reaper home world.
He would have no friends there, not after betraying Roland, the Rage, and most of his best Mazz servants. Clavender had banished him once before and he knew what to expect. That did not make the ordeal easier or less painful.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Towers of Hellsbreach
KIN found himself on top of a rock tower with a wormhole headache like he had never known; damaged armor constricting his chest like a mountain. His mind failed to comprehend the force that had been applied to his ruined FSPAA-IIA.
“God, that is too much!” He twisted sideways and struggled against an enemy he couldn’t escape. “Initiate full release!” he screamed into his computer.
Pressure.
Loss of oxygen.
Pain throbbing in his vision.
He clawed at the emergency release, terror mounting. Pieces were missing. The primary latch had been shaved smooth by an unknown damage source.
With little choice but to die on this strange place at the end of Clavender’s final wormhole, he relaxed. He stopped fighting. He allowed his brain to work through the problem.
Slow seconds later, he turned his head and saw the sword Dax had given him what seemed ages ago. Conserving energy, leaking tears at the misery of suffocation, he crawled his right hand toward the weapon, gripped it, and hauled it back.
Prying off his helmet felt like a hundred lifetimes in hell but couldn’t have been longer than a minute.
Darkness came like a blessing. When he woke, he was surprised at the joy he felt. Glad to be alive, he disassembled the armor and sat near the pile.
“Looks like a Reaper army and a Slomn-Reaper ran over you.”
Only Dax’s sword remained. It seemed a pitiful weapon in this place, but he loved it as he would a faithful friend whose main purpose was to kill. Dark thoughts came easy on this planet.
Hellsbreach. He had seen this type of natural for
mation from a distance, almost like a tall, narrow plateau, a kind of spire with a blunt tip. Hundreds of similar formations surrounded him. Some were much taller. Others looked up at him, inviting him to jump.
It’s not that far down to the next one. You might not break both your legs.
Better to climb down, then die in the Sorrow.
Why is the sky orange?
Kin savored the ridiculous question as a means to avoid memories of failure. Orlan’s son hadn’t meant to betray him. The son wasn’t the father. He was, however, a shapeshifter. Ten versions of Clavender danced in Kin’s memory, drawing him deeper and deeper into the melee until the real Sun Princess had no choice but to banish him along with the rest of the killing machines.
What do I know about shapeshifters? He tasted the thought, felt it laughing at him. What did I ever really know about William?
Surviving a battle was a lot like swimming up from the bottom of the ocean. His mind functioned poorly, which was why everything seemed a divine revelation. Images of the Ror-Rea battle — of Clavender struggling to escape, of Mazz soldiers betraying Earth Fleet soldiers who were in turn betraying themselves — resembled the final days on Crashdown. The players had changed, but it was just another reenactment of every battle since humans started banging rocks together.
Kin turned away from the memory of the Slomn-Reaper cutting down his friends.
Farther back, before the battle — the intrigue began with the arrival of Earth Fleet reinforcements and Captain Trak’s duplicity. He found himself thinking of how Trak had stolen him from Major Eagle. Mazz soldiers in SKIN armor had descended on Kin like hungry Crashdown wolves running after prey. They put their newest SKIN armor — black and red and chrome — against Major Eagle’s FSPAA-IIA gear. That had been a close fight, almost as close as the Ror-Rea debacle.
Kin thought about the Mazz Emperor and the revelation of Kin’s genetic gifts and predestined him to destroy the Reapers like a messiah-weapon — like a counter-measure built into the Reaper genetics. He saw through the man’s false godhood. The Bleeding Grounds, an anomaly of the Wormhole Nexus, had not kept the leader of the Mazz race alive for eons, moved him across the galaxy, caused him to dream of life and pretend to wisdom. He was just a man, or something like a man.
In fact, Kin now understood that Filoussage Onderbock had a lot more in common with William Orlan than he was likely to admit. What would Trak think? For several satisfying moments, he imagined Trak beating the false god, the false Emperor, to death.
Regardless of the facts that Kin could not prove, the Mazz army followed the Emperor, not the up-jumped Earth Fleet traitor who had outlived his usefulness.
He thought of Clavender, hoping she would hear his thoughts and reach out to him, but there was only the hot wind of Hellsbreach all around him. He missed the woman, not young but always seeming young to Kin, and needed her help if she was alive. Of all the times he wanted to ask her questions, now was the most dire.
Gusts of wind, fierce even for Hellsbreach, battered Kin where he stood. The red rock beneath his feet extended twenty meters before ending abruptly. He walked to the precipice and stared across the Red Plains of Sorrow. Earth Fleet had never dared cross the wasteland. It looked like sand, but he knew a battle tank could sink in the fine red dust and a man could become lost without reference points. Reapers, on the other hand, especially young warriors, loved the place. They liked to run in small packs across the panoramic death field driving prey before them.
Fucking Trak, I trusted you. The image of Captain Trak refused to leave him. For a short time, Kin had a friend among the Mazz. The captain had protected him during the putsch and backed him as leader of the Mazz forces. He had betrayed him to Earth Fleet Major Eagle, then rescued him, then taken him before the Mazz Emperor. Kin made a mental note to ask the man what the hell his problem was and why he couldn’t just be a soldier. The man was good at that; he needed to stay away from political intrigue.
And me. It would be nice if governments would just leave me alone. Kin focused on small details of his environment, hoping to clear his mind and get hold of his situation.
For several moments, Kin delayed facing his predicament, thinking instead of the days spent learning the Mazz armor and weapons. He thought of Trak’s jokes. At first, Kin had found the man’s humor strange and childish, not even rising to the realm of juvenile crudity. Battle brought them close. Trust came easily when you had saved a man’s life and had yours saved in return a dozen times.
He cleared his head, realizing he couldn’t remain alert for long without water and shelter. Plenty of things could kill a man on Hellsbreach, including the sun. He toured the spire top and thought of his last moments in the Ror-Rea.
Trak, Ceana, and a score of Mazz soldiers and Wingers had lined up, ready for Clavender to send them through the breach between the Ror-Rea and Hellsbreach. Kin had seen Droon’s poison in Clavender and understood the bridge she was making would fail. If the Reaper King couldn’t have her, he would kill her or drag her down into the abyss of nightmares and insanity.
It had been too late. Kin had seen Hellsbreach, known he could reach it, and decided to go alone. The worst that could happen was that he could die and take all the Reapers on their home world with him. Trak had charged after him. Ceana and a few of the Wingers had passed the Mazz captain on wings of glory.
Then Kin smashed into the top of this spire.
Feverish, wounded, dazed — Kin’s mind reached for solace in memories, realizing too late what a huge mistake that was for the Traitor of Hellsbreach, the Enemy of Man, the infamous Kin Roland.
He thought of his friends. He longed for Rebecca. Had her affection been mercy? Desperate loneliness? A complete lie? Where was she right now?
Don’t think too much, not now when you’re so tired. Not when your injuries scream and burn. Rest. Close your eyes. Find water after you’ve slept.
Kin stared for a long time at the landscape, searching for other survivors of the crossing and wondering how to survive on a planet that should have been shattered by World Breaker Nukes.
To the north and east, the Red Plains of Sorrow stretched toward ugly mountains in the distance. He had forgotten what open space looked like. There was precious little of it on Crashdown and the Ror-Rea’s sky made the entire place feel like it would be crushed by the larger planet it orbited.
South and east were more of the plateau spires, and to the west was Meridian Canyon, the seam of the world where Earth Fleet had planted the worst of the nukes. In the final moments of the campaign, Kin had detonated many of them, but in a random sequence that dispersed the force rather than build it beyond the world’s structural integrity. A nuclear bombardment might have cloaked the surface in clouds of ash and dust, but Earth Fleet leaders had wanted a rubble field in space, not a poisoned planet. A smaller number of nukes had been drilled deep into bedrock for maximum effect. That had been the reason for the invasion.
He looked at his work, coughing dryly as something itched in his throat.
Death filled his mouth. Heat cooked the back of his neck as his chin bumped his chest, causing a muscle to stretch from the base of his skull to the middle of his back. He lifted his hands, looked at the cracked skin, and wondered how long he had slept. The sliver of shade falling from the nearest spire was gone as though he had imagined it.
If you’re going to kill yourself, just jump and be done with it.
He was close to the edge. His problems could’ve ended while he slept.
I endured worse in the Reaper birthing pits the first time I was here. And in the space casket. And years on Crashdown.
He shook his head, annoyed with his thoughts. Nothing was as bad as this. He had always been the betrayer, the traitorous individual putting his moral code above the survival of the human race. He forced Rebecca to love him, or tried to. Where was she supposed to go on Crashdown that he wouldn’t find her? During the search for Orlan’s son, she’d chosen to fight the Slomn in a maze
of caverns and endure all the horrors of the Crashdown wilderness. Logically, her every move and decision made sense. Kin wasn’t feeling logical. He was feeling like she’d been running from him.
He was being punished by a cruel God that thought he needed to gaze upon the world he had destroyed but not destroyed. Were there Reapers left on this planet? How glad would they be to see Kin-rol-an-da? The thought caused him to miss Droon. They could kick back over a flagon of nightmare blood and reminisce about old times.
“Remember when I knocked a mountain down on you and that bastard Dax, the King of the Ror-Rea, just looked at you like a beetle on its back?” Kin laughed and pounded his thigh.
“Remember the time Kin-rol-an-da tricked Droon into getting eaten by Clingers?” Droon spoke in the voice of Orlan imitating a Reaper.
Kin laughed and rolled on his side, face peering over the edge of the plateau spire. Red sand-dust swirled hundreds of feet below, wind crashing it against the rocks like an ocean of dried blood.
“Droon wasn’t making a joke. Droon will watch you burn in the orange sun. Only weaklings die in the orange time.”
“How could you let me die?” Kin asked. “You’re my only friend.”
“Droon doesn’t betray Kin-rol-an-da. Kin-rol-an-da betrays himself. Too weak for Droon to eat. Too insane to have much fear. No good for Droon’s hunger.”
“Yeah, you say that like it’s a bad thing.” Kin paused, tried to swallow, but his throat was dry. “Remember the time I stopped Orlan from shooting you in the face?”
He looked up.
Droon wasn’t there.
Droon had never been there.
Kin was alone, dying of thirst, burning in the sun that didn’t look like the sun of Hellsbreach he remembered.
Without thinking, he shambled around his elevated prison, searching for a leather plant that concealed water in its leaves, but also formed a nutrient-rich gelatin beneath a web of parasite-covered roots. The entire space would need to be covered with the meager plants to keep him alive for a day, but he looked anyway, muttering conversations with Droon, Clavender, Rebecca, and Rickson.
