Pride x Familiar

by Albert Ruckholdt

  But she lacked the combat skills I’d honed during many years as an Artemis. Even if I only had a month’s practice with the Black Camellia, I was able to draw on my Artemis’ experience to balance out the difference in power between our respective machines.

  Compared to me, that girl was a child cutting and swinging wildly, throwing punches that came close but failed to connect. The Avienda took my cannon fire and weathered it, but she had yet to land a single hit on me, and I could see it was beginning to frustrate that child.

  The smile splitting her pretty face was ever so steadily turning into a snarl.

  Her four cannon vanes aimed my way in a heartbeat, and we stood like two gunslingers with weapons drawn.

  Time—I needed to give Induran time to pick up Gabrielle, Rylan, Capella and the others.

  I used the Black Camellia’s eyes to watch Induran slow to a hover over the academy cafeteria.

  A thought pulse distracted me.

  The Avienda’s pilot was signaling me.

  She wanted to talk?

  I answered the call.

  “So you’re the great Celica Desanto. I expected more from you.”

  “Any more from me and you’d be a smoking wreck, you silly child.”

  “You really think you’re challenging me? You really think your Warlord is up to the task? It’s not even an original.”

  I blinked then frowned at her. “What do you mean?”

  “The fact you’re asking proves how little you know, and it proves your Warlord is not one of the twelve that came across into the realm.” She shook her head. “But still, it’s impressive what they could achieve back then. A lost art. A lost talent. The means to create inferior copies of the original twelve.”

  Unease crept into me.

  Four Rho-Khans, eight Seer-Khans. I knew they comprised the Warlords operated by the Original Twelve, those Familiars that had chosen to fight for the Aventis.

  So what did that say about the dozens upon dozens of other Warlords that took part in the War of Supremacy?

  I narrowed my eyes at the girl. “What’s your name?”

  “Fallon. It’s Fallon Acacia afil Avenir.”

  “Are you one of the Twelve?”

  “I’m a descendant of the Original Twelve, just like your brother.”

  I frowned at her. “My brother? Aren’t you forgetting about me?”

  The girl, Fallon, smiled slowly; a truly malicious smile that had no place on a face so young.

  Then I heard her soft laughter. “You didn’t know? Now that is truly a surprise. I thought Crimson Crescent might have revealed the truth to you.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “The truth about you.”

  I felt a frown flicker across my brow. “What about me?”

  Fallon’s smile contorted. “You’re not blood related.”

  For a moment, for a heartbeat, my mind blanked out.

  Fallon’s next words felt like a knife through my mind. “You’re not family.”

  I stared at her in disbelief, then my demeanor hardened.

  My voice sounded like steel even to me. “My brother and I were born to House Desanto. Samuel and Chantal Desanto are my parents.”

  Even at a distance, I clearly saw Fallon mockingly scratch her right cheek. “Well, by all appearances they are your parents. But at the same time they’re not.”

  Confusion ran through my blood.

  I yelled at her, “What the Hell does that mean?”

  Fallon added with a voice that dripped cruelty. “Well, it’s not surprising you didn’t know. After all, I doubt more than a handful of people know the truth behind the two of you. Even your parents were probably oblivious to your origins.”

  What did she mean by that?

  Caelum and I were most certainly not adopted.

  In his case, I was there at the hospital when my mother gave birth to him, and my father was in the room with her at the time.

  And there was no evidence to suggest I was adopted either.

  When Falken revealed my parents lineage to me, it was clear he believed Caelum and I were descendants of an Original Twelve family.

  “You’re lying.” I glared at her. “You’re lying!”

  Fallon shook her head sadly. “I’m not lying at all. The two of you are not blood related. That much I know for sure.” Surprisingly, she raised her arms to indicate confusion. “However, while I do know his origins, I have no idea where you came from. But one thing is certain, you were rejected by the Ravana, yet chosen by the Black Camellia. That alone proves you’re not a descendant of the Original Twelve.”

  I narrowed my eyes at the girl.

  How did she know about that?

  How did she know about that particular incident almost six years ago?

  With my heart trembling under an onslaught of doubt and suspicion, I willed the eight quantum cannons fanning around the Black Camellia to swing down.

  The black mist surrounded the Warlord’s hands, and heartbeats later they each held a ten foot long curved sword, with shark-like fins acting like guards around the hand grips. The Camellia’s hands tightened around the sword hilts as though they were my own hands.

  I cleared my throat forcefully. “How do you know what happened to me in the Vault six years? Who told you?”

  Fallon smiled. “That’s a secret.”

  The swords quivered in my Warlord’s hands. Anger was beginning to blossom in and around my heart, fueling it with an unpleasant heat.

  “Tell me!”

  I screamed and instantly willed the Black Camellia to channel its energy to its surroundings. The Warlord crouched despite standing upside down on the ceiling. In the blink of an eye the Camellia launched itself at the Avienda. I crossed the two hundred foot distance in a millisecond.

  But this time I didn’t use the reaction cannons.

  I used the two curved swords I’d summoned from the Camellia’s Pocket Space.

  If cannons weren’t going to work, it was time for a different approach.

  She actually looked surprised as I swung my right blade down at her.

  I had expected the warping to take effect, and for my sword to slide around the Avienda. Instead, the blade breached her barrier-field part way and slowed down to a crawl. I willed the Black Camellia forward, its thruster fields pushing hard against my back, while I applied more pressure against the Avienda’s barrier-field. Feeling it give some more, I concentrated on sharpening the piercer-field around the sword, and a heartbeat later it broke through the last of the barrier-field. The blade almost buried itself in the Warlord’s skeletal collar where the armor was thin. At the last moment, the Avienda darted back and to a side. The edge of my blade struck the domed shoulder armor instead, gouging a deep line into it.

  What the Hell had just happened?

  Why hadn’t space distorted around the Avienda?

  Had the pilot become exhausted? Had the fight just now depleted her concentration to the point she couldn’t direct the inertial fields?

  It wasn’t just a case of willing the Warlord to move. You had to keep a mental image of the fields surrounding it, including the inertial fields that gave a Warlord the ability to pull sharp turns in empty space. Using them, a Warlord reshaped a confined space around itself, allowing it to change direction at angles and gee forces that would normally tear it apart by cancelling out its resistance to change direction.

  Using inertial fields was something I hadn’t mastered.

  Avienda’s pilot could use them well enough to warp away my cannon fire. But it seemed she couldn’t use them effectively against a direct physical attack.

  I had no idea why.

  Using an effect-field to kick off against the ceiling, I chased after the Avienda.

  “Come back here,” I screamed at her.

  Part of me kept its focus. That part of me considered the possibility the swords themselves had cancelled out her inertial field. After all, the weapon had breached far into her barrie
r-field with surprising ease.

  I hadn’t considered it could be so effective.

  I had practiced with the weapons before, but I’d never used them against a Warlord, so their combat value was unknown to me.

  Quantum reaction fire wouldn’t work against her, but physical weapons like these might do the trick.

  I had a troubling thought.

  What if a Warlord’s physical weapons were for the purpose of being used against another Warlord?

  The analytical part of me shivered at the thought. I shelved it for now, then focused on chasing down the Avienda.

  The other part of me burned with fury.

  How dare she try to distract me with such a lie.

  How dare she claim Caelum and I weren’t family.

  I would cut my anger into her.

  I would forever brand her with my blades.

  The girl fell away from the ceiling, falling on her back gently to the ground. I decided not to fire upon her, but continued to chase her down, one sword aiming for her, the other angled for defense. A dozen feet from the surface of the habitat, I watched the air ripple around the Avienda, and the Warlord changed its vector, soaring mere meters above a street packed with cars and hundreds of people on the sidewalks.

  Someone had ordered an evacuation of the habitat, but it was proving difficult to execute.

  Avienda’s flight over the populace terrified them into a stampede.

  Flying on her back, the girl aimed her four reaction cannons at me and fired. Golden beams of light narrowly missed me, cutting the air and striking the habitat ceiling above and behind me.

  At a sharp angle I darted away down a side street, then turned to parallel her at the next intersection.

  The Black Camellia couldn’t sense her. I was aware of people, cars, buses and buildings, but the Avienda was invisible to me when out of sight. I expected her to charge at me down the next side street, or from over the district buildings.

  I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  She charged through the buildings, tearing them apart with her barrier-fields, and came at me swinging a double ended spear with Saracen style swords at each end.

  I guess she got tired of trying to shoot me down.

  On instinct I brought both swords up and blocked her downward slash.

  That malicious smile was back on her face, but now it was tainted with glee as though she was finally enjoying herself.

  I glared at her, then snarled like a rabid wolf.

  Caelum was family.

  Now and forever.

  Nothing this bitch said would ever change that.

  Nothing at all.

  #

  (Haruka)

  Most of the students on the top level of the cafeteria, including Duncan, Siobhan, Alistair and I, had retreated to the west side of the building, as far away as possible from the Familiars of Crimson Crescent and the Familiars who attended our school.

  A large number had taken shelter inside the corridors connecting the west wing to the cafeteria building. But if they tried escaping further, they ran into the intense artificial gravity that had crippled the student and administrative body. Inside the corridors and the cafeteria the gravity almost felt normal, so for now there was no choice but to remain put.

  I sat against a cafeteria wall, just outside the corridor entrance.

  Duncan sat beside me, an arm over my shoulders, holding me against him.

  I felt him tremble, and looked up at him.

  I saw anger being repressed by sheer will power.

  “Duncan?”

  He swallowed tightly. “So weak. So damn weak.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing we can do against them—against Familiars. Once they bring out their Fragments, there’s nothing any of us can do against them.”

  “Duncan….”

  “I feel so powerless, so helpless. If they’d chosen to take you, I’d have been helpless to stop them. Just like that guy whose girl they took.”

  I felt his arm tighten around me, and I saw the rage and frustration war across his face.

  Then he lowered his head and I heard his words quite clearly.

  “We’re supposed to be better than them. That’s what we’re told. So why can’t we do anything against them….”

  The rage and frustration ebbed away, seeming to settle into a cold, burning look in his eyes.

  He whispered harshly, “It’s the Fragments. They shouldn’t be carrying Fragments.”

  The floor under me trembled violently. The wall shook as well. Duncan pushed us both away from it, probably fearing we’d injure our spines.

  I looked up at the storm wracked sky visible through the atrium’s transparent ceiling.

  The black starship had returned, and was hovering low over the cafeteria’s roof, blocking our view of the sky.

  A flash of violet light lit the atrium ceiling.

  As I turned away I heard a rumble and crash.

  Opening my eyes I saw a large part of the ceiling had vanished into a cloud of powdered rubble. It was blown away quickly by the strong winds blowing over the rooftop. When it cleared, I saw three people standing on the edge of the large ragged hole, looking down into the cafeteria while unaffected by the gale force winds around them.

  The two members of Crimson Crescent – the man Steiner had injured, and the woman who supported him – walked to a point under the hole. Two of their companions on the roof stretched a hand down to them, and moments later the man and woman floated up into the air as though hoisted by invisible wires that were most probably effect-fields.

  As they flew up, I saw Caprice Steiner run to a spot under the hole.

  Her voice was clear as she plaintively cried out, “Mother!”

  Everyone who heard that cry stiffened in shock.

  Beside me, Duncan’s body tensed sharply. He stared at Steiner in disbelief.

  I tore my gaze away from him and back to the girl.

  Steiner was standing with arms outstretched, head thrown back as she looked up at the gaping hole in the ceiling.

  “Why?” she screamed. “Why mother? Why betray the Prides? Why did you leave me? Answer me!”

  I didn’t hear an answer, and the five members of Crimson Crescent on the cafeteria rooftop quickly moved out of sight.

  Not long afterwards, the starship began to ascend and it swung away from above the academy buildings. Caprice and the other girl – the Familiar with the large rifle – ran over to the south-side windows to watch it.

  Beside me, Duncan rose to his feet and walked stiffly over to the windows, obviously feeling the weight of the heavy gravity that afflicted the cafeteria.

  I picked myself up off the floor, and staggered after him.

  Caprice and the other girl were staring at the starship as it slowly moved south over the academy. They didn’t turn when Duncan approached them, and Steiner looked surprised when he grabbed her in his powerful arms, spun her round and slammed her back against the window.

  His whole body trembled as he yelled furiously at her.

  “You’re with Crescent? Your mother is with Crimson Crescent? This is all your fault. All of this is your fault—you Familiars are the problem!”

  I yelled, “Duncan—stop it. Let her go.”

  The girl with the rifle pressed the barrel against his head. “Let her go, or lose your head.”

  Duncan didn’t look at her. “Now you’re threatening us? You’re just like Crescent. Go ahead. Do it. You know what will happen to you.”

  I swallowed and yelled, “Please stop this, Duncan. Please, let her go.”

  Without warning Duncan flew back through the air, and landed some twenty odd feet away from Caprice Steiner.

  I didn’t understand what had just happened, but Caprice calmly stepped away from the window. The girl glared at Duncan who was slowly rising to his feet. “You know nothing about us. Don’t ever associate me with Crimson Crescent.”

  Duncan swayed unsteadily but p
ointed an accusing finger at Steiner. “You Familiars with your Fragments are the problem. You’re a danger to everyone. You’re kind can’t be trusted. Why the Hell do our Prides give you so much power?”

  “To protect you,” Steiner retorted acidly. “To serve as your dogs and keep your kind safe—safe from people like Crimson Crescent. Safe from people that despise the Prides, and the Aventis.”

  The emotionless mask that Caprice Steiner usually wore had vanished.

  The girl trembled and I saw it for what it was. Hatred, anger, bitterness.

  Her reaction was fueled by the encounter with her mother.

  I didn’t know the circumstances but it appeared that her mother had betrayed the Prides and abandoned her daughter for a life with Crimson Crescent.

  I could barely imagine the reasons why.

  However, I realized it wasn’t the only reason why Steiner trembled.

  The fact she was chained to a Pride burned her emotionally.

  Yes, she was granted the power of a Fragment, but I knew that deep down Caprice would trade it for freedom – the freedom to choose her own destiny.

  I thought of Crimson Crescent.

  I remembered reading about their possible mandate.

  It was something that analysts and experts could only speculate at.

  Freedom for Familiars.

  In many ways, Familiars lived lives far more restricted than Regulars. In fact, Regulars lived like ‘normal’ people. Many Familiars also lived normal lives but there were those Familiars forced into a life of servitude to one of the eight Prides. Those Familiars were like Caprice, and they were known as Specials. This much I knew because Severin Kell had explained this to Alistair, Siobhan and I only two weeks ago, yet it felt like a lifetime ago.

  Caelum was like Caprice.

  He was tied to the Lanfear Pride.

  People believed Crimson Crescent wanted to change this, but the Prides would never agree to letting Familiars act on their own.

  It was ironic how they used Familiars to fight Familiars.

  No, it was unjust.

  But Duncan was right about one thing: Familiars equipped with Fragments were a danger.

  Yet, Familiars like Caprice were a necessary evil.

  Who else was going to oppose Crimson Crescent?