Just when he started to feel his strength flag, the space around him grew warmer, and suddenly a burst of flames behind him, scattered his pursuers. Smiling triumphantly, Jane banked around to catch up with him.
"Glad you're not dead," Billy said. "Why are you smiling?"
"Look up, goofball," Jane said.
Billy twisted so that he was facing back out into space, away from the planet. When he saw them, he started to laugh.
"The old man did it!" Billy said. "He actually got help!"
I knew he wouldn't fail, Dude said. Horizon would never let us down.
The other Luminae were too far away to make out clearly, but it had to be Suresh and his allies. Who else could it be? They boldly tore through the back end of the fleet, diminishing the Nemesis armada's overwhelming numbers, clearing a path to the Earth.
"We should—"Billy started, but Jane was a step ahead of him.
"You take the left, I'll get the right?" she said.
"You got it."
They split apart, each taking half of Billy's pursuers with them. Billy lifted up, leading them away from the Earth's atmosphere, toward… something, a tangled mass of wreckage near the moon. No, not just wreckage, a ball of combat with Korthos in the middle, that weird loincloth-wearing-Tazmanian-Devil-whirlwind-of-destruction.
"Hey big guy, coming at you!" Billy said.
'Bring forth more of thy enemies, little glowing man!" Korthos yelled into his earpiece, making Billy's ear ring. "I shall smite them all!"
"Get ready to smite like you've never smote before!" Billy yelled. He and the immortal man met in mid-flight. Nemesis ships crashed into each other unable to bank away in time, and the rest began to fall from Korthos's axe and Billy's blasts of light.
One of the other Luminae hosts broke free from their attack pattern and headed straight for Billy. He wasn't surprised when he saw the man approaching him.
Suresh, white hair even crazier and more out of place than the last time Billy saw him, flew up alongside and put a hand on his shoulder.
"Told you I'd be back," Suresh said.
"I don't think you made any promises," Billy said.
"Well, let me tell you something, son. Those guys up there, they've been waiting for this," Suresh said.
"For us?"
"For the chance to help a planet that was fighting back," Suresh said. "They're all survivors of dead worlds. And they've wanted payback for a very long time."
"Y'know, before you came along, I thought I was unique," Billy said.
"Sorry about that," Suresh said, breaking away to take on another wing of Nemesis ships. "We all start out that way."
He saluted Billy and winked, heading back out, a gleeful look on his face.
"Was he always like this?" Billy said.
Horizon always did have odd taste in hosts, Dude said.
"Coming from you, that's a compliment," Billy said.
Chapter 73:
Pinocchio and the whale
Titus barely had to fly the little aircraft as it passed into the mouth of the brain ship. He'd headed out of the Tower essentially on a straight course, and shut down the engines to try to mask his approach. Surprisingly, none of the fighters seemed to pay him any mind. Either they were too focused on the bigger picture, or he didn't seem like much of a threat.
His craft passed into the cavernous mouth at the front of the brain ship. Titus kicked the engines back on and landed. Never having practiced flying any of the machines in the Tower, it wasn't a pretty landing, but he figured it didn't much matter. The engine was coming with him. If this worked, he'd have to find another way home.
He opened the hatch and stepped outside, feeling the amulet he'd taken from Doc's office growing cool as it protected him from the environment. Though not armor, it had a spell that would let him breath if the air here turned out to be toxic, which was a start. But he could tell right away it wasn't so different from home. Murkier, yes, with a slight variation of gasses, but Titus would be able to breathe even without Doc's magical help.
He left the amulet on just in case. You never know, he thought.
Titus followed the instructions Neal had provided to open the engine and start pulling out the ship's futuristic fuel core. He'd wanted to ask Neal exactly what the little flyer's power source was comprised of, to really dig down into the mechanics of it, but there just wasn't time. He pulled a dense, glowing blue cylinder out from the chassis and wrapped it up in a backpack, which he slung over his shoulders. Inside that backpack was also an incendiary trigger. A football field in every direction, Titus thought. That should do it.
The brain ship felt like the belly of a whale. It reminded Titus of watching Pinocchio as a kid, when Monstro swallows up the puppet at sea. Or maybe a bit like the thing that tried to eat the Millennium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back.
Listen to me, Titus thought. I've turned into Emily.
He wondered briefly if he'd have a chance to tell her about all this. She'd regret missing out on an adventure like setting foot in a living alien space ship.
Titus looked into the darkness, a looming cave lit sporadically with veins of glowing red. Somewhere in there, he'd find the brain itself. The off-switch for this entire fleet.
He willed himself to transform into werewolf, maintaining as much control over it as he possibly could. His amplified senses kicked in. He smelled warm bodies, blood flowing. He heard things moving in the dark.
He set one clawed foot in front of the other and went looking for those bodies. Wherever they were, they had to be protecting what Titus sought.
Titus wound his way through strangely empty corridors, a stray blood cell in a vein. The trail was easy to follow. His internal compass told him that he was heading toward the center of the ship, though he understood he shouldn't fully trust his senses in here. For all Titus knew, he could end up traveling in a circle.
But then he found the first of the parasite-wearing protectors of the ship, waiting for him at the end of a wide hallway. Of course, he thought, staring at the scarred and tusked things. They wanted me somewhere they could gang up on me.
They crouched in the darkness, simple weapons in hand. Titus wished he hadn't left his spear on the Tower. He'd done so thinking that it would be too much to carry, the spear and the engine, but that meant he'd have to take on these warriors with his bare claws.
And they did seem like warriors. Titus wondered what world they'd been conscripted from. All the aliens they'd fought so far had been mind-controlled by those parasites on their chests. Val and Bedlam had been intended for the same fate. If I destroy the brain ship here, will they be set free? Or will they die?
It doesn't matter, Titus thought, baring his teeth and preparing to fight. It's us or them.
I'm so tired of us or them, the werewolf thought.
* * *
An intruder had invaded the ship.
This is what they've kept us here for all this time, the chieftain thought. Warriors for an inevitable battle. Sometimes, when the conscripted soldiers began to degrade, when the control the Nemesis fleet held over them weakened or their bodies started to fail, they'd be assigned on a mission to scout a potential world. Others were sent away because their physiology was well suited for the planet to be invaded, and so they became spies, or first strikers, or suicide missions.
The chieftain envied them. Their valiant deaths. Why the creatures controlling this fleet kept him here, he never knew. Maybe they thought he was stronger than the rest. Maybe he had taken to their control better than others. Or maybe—and this is the assumption the chieftain believed to be true—they just forgot he was here. Another blurry, faceless slave in a ship full of mindless monsters.
But an intruder. They all knew instantly this enemy was on board. The parasites they wore let them know. Fear, anger. Protect the hive, protect the core. Kill it. Kill the thing that threatens the whole.
The chieftain picked up the old weapon he'd brought from his home world, a curved blad
e, one honed and handed down for generations. For years, he'd wanted to turn the blade on himself, to free him from the endlessness of this existence with the fleet. To die and join his wife and children in the beyond. But the parasite holding tight to his body wouldn't let him. The fleet needed him. Just in case.
The parasite instructed him to find this intruder and kill it. Slowly, reluctantly, the chieftain did as he was ordered. He had no choice. He might have resisted, once upon a time, but the days of fighting back were long gone. He was just a puppet now, an attack dog, a toy.
He walked the familiar reddish pathways of the ship, toward the sound of combat, the smell of blood. The chieftain arrived in time to see the intruder kill his brother, cutting the parasite that had manipulated him for years with one clawed hand while the other lacerated his throat. The chieftain watched his brother die on the floor of this ship and was glad. Finally you are free. Finally you can go home.
The chieftain surveyed this newcomer, tall as he was, almost as big, with silver fur spattered by the black blood of the parasites and the multi-colored bloods of the warriors who wore them. Bodies were scattered all around, some from the chieftain's species, others from more distant stars. All great warriors who had been laid low by these conquerors, who had their dignity and power stripped of them to be used like weapons.
"I'm glad you're a warrior as well," the chieftain said in his own language to the fanged creature whose clawed hands were covered in blood up past his wrists. "This is the death I wanted. The end I've wished for."
The creature seemed to comprehend. Something far in the back of his golden eyes, some rational realization, some connection between the chieftain and the beast.
"This will be a good death," the chieftain said in his own tongue. He raised his blade and charged.
* * *
They must have been collecting these beings forever, Titus thought, putting down another of the parasite-controlled aliens in his way. The deeper he got into the ship the more common it became for them to resemble each other—small groups of the same race or species gathered together, all scarred and strong, clearly saved by the fleet to be guardians against their will. He could easily imagine the werewolves of earth serving this same purpose. If the Nemesis fleet gathered collections of creatures to serve as their warriors, then Titus's own people were a prime choice for the job.
One more alien strode forward from the darkness, carrying a sword that looked older than time. This creature looked older, too, lined face, broken teeth, an empty socket where his left eye should be. His body was a mass of scars.
The creature muttered something in a language that Titus realized would die with him. Stolen from a dead world. Kept here. Forced to fight Titus to the death. The alien looked like a war god on his last legs. He spoke to Titus, locking eyes with him, connecting on some deeper level. Fighter to fighter, warrior to warrior, dead man to dead man.
Titus couldn't comprehend his words, but understood their meaning.
The old alien charged. Titus met him, filled with the werewolf's fury, batting away his sword hand and lashing out with his claws at the parasite on his chest. The alien bashed Titus's mouth with a huge, armored shoulder, stunning the werewolf, making his eyes water. Titus struck back, claws raking across the being's midsection, nearly gutting him.
The alien slashed downward with that old blade, catching Titus in the meat of his ribs, sliding down, cutting into his abdomen. Titus roared, but the monster inside, the beast, beat down the pain, swallowed it, used it. He caught the alien's sword arm, claws dug into his wrist, then snapped it, forcing him to release his blade.
They locked eyes again, like dancers. The alien said something else, in a whisper. A thank you. An apology. For death. For both of them.
Titus couldn't stop the werewolf he shared his body with from piercing the alien's neck with its fangs, blood poured over his face and chest. The alien stopped struggling, and Titus turned his attention to the parasite, tearing it apart more brutally than he'd done any of the others, all the rage and pain and sadness and death washing over him. He threw the dead parasite aside and looked once more at the old warrior, now separated from his captor. Titus realized that the alien had died reaching for one of the others, a creature that looked like him, green-gray skinned, scarred and strong. He dragged the older one's body to the younger and laid them side by side.
They looked like brothers.
The strange blade still protruded from his torso. Titus pulled it free and watched his own blood gush out. He felt weak. His knees wobbled. The wound started to heal, but slowly. Not fast enough for what Titus needed to do.
He limped on, deeper into the ship, carrying the old blade with him, leaving a trail of blood behind.
Down a corridor and up a set of strange, slick steps, he found what he was looking for.
The circular room was lit with a faint green light of bioluminescence; the walls, foggy but translucent, were veined with strands of plantlike bands. When Titus looked inside the almost-clear walls, he understood why.
Beings floated in stasis behind those walls, the round shape of the room allowing them to look at each other. They hung in fluid like a womb, unmoving except to take slow, shallow breaths. Their skin, tree bark in texture, was shiny and black like the Nemesis fleet ships themselves. Their bodies were elfin, thin. They almost looked like part of the fleet, some component to a larger machine.
Titus struck the wall with the blade he'd taken from the dead warrior, the alien metal ringing with each strike but not leaving a mark. He dropped the sword on the ground and started to lash out at the walls with his claws, pounding on it with is feet and shoulder, roaring, screaming. The glasslike substance did start to crack, but not nearly enough. He'd never break through.
The fluid inside the walls began to leak through, grimy and earthy, like swamp water. The creatures behind the glass began to stir. Sleepy yellow eyes opened in their tree-like faces, their mouths, childlike but punctuated by curved pincers like a bug's, moved and twitched.
But they were sluggish. How long have they been behind that glass? Who put them there? Were they born here? Engineered to be this way? Would we ever know?
He tried once more to break the glass with the sword. If he had hours and hours, he might eventually get through, but there were a thousand ships on a mission, receiving commands from this room, and the Nemesis fleet had never, ever left a planet alive.
Titus willed himself to transform back into human shape.
Instantly he felt all the pain from the wound in his side. He looked down. Still raw, not even half-healed, it was bleeding and ragged. He fell to his knees and eased the makeshift bomb on his back down onto the ground. He slid the glowing cylinder from its bag and started attaching the incendiary device to it, exactly as Neal told him to. Titus laughed a little. I could've been an engineer if I'd had an ordinary life.
He checked the settings on the improvised explosive and sat down on the floor, looking at the trigger Neal had helped him build. Just a remote control from one of the machines back in the Tower. Range of maybe twenty or thirty feet. Titus couldn't risk getting too far away.
He sighed and activated his earpiece.
"Who's out there," he said, shocked at how gravelly his own voice was.
"I'm here," Billy said. "Where are you, Titus?"
Titus looked around, wiped blood from his eyes. The aliens behind the glass were stared at him, not in anger, but in curiosity. He wondered what they thought of him. If they realized this was the end.
"I'm on the brain ship," Titus said. "If we have anyone close to it, you better pull back."
"What?" Billy said.
"I can't kill it," Titus said. "I thought I could, but I was wrong. I'm going to have to blow it up."
"The hell you are," Billy said. "I'm coming over there."
"How many fighters would you drag with you if you headed my way, Billy?"
Silence on the other end of the line. Titus heard his friend breathing.
"Who else is out there?" Titus said. "Are we all still alive?"
"Yeah furball, we're all still here," Emily said.
"Do you have the amulet I told you to take," Doc said.
Titus was glad. He'd been wondering if Doc were out there. He wanted to hear the magician's voice one more time.
"I do, boss."
"Don't give up hope then," Doc said. "You're carrying a little bit more luck with you than you think."
Titus smiled, looking around at the tight quarters here in the middle of this hellish ship, at the glowing blue engine full of some sort of fuel that hadn't even been invented yet. He needed more than luck.
"Kate?" Titus said.
Kate didn't answer. Titus smiled. Of course not. He knew she was listening. Talk to her about business. Always business with her.
"Hey Kate, how's the problem with that last seed ship," Titus said. "I don't think destroying the brain ship will stop it from doing what it's intended to do."
"I've got a plan, Titus," Kate said without hesitation.
"You always do."
Neal's voice chimed in.
"Designation: Whispering. Your channel with Designation: Dancer is now direct," Neal said.
"Don't you dare die on me," Kate snapped.
"Trying not to," Titus said.
"You're the one person I've never been able to protect," Kate said. "I hate that."
"Well, that goes both ways Kate Miller," Titus said. "I promise I won't let you down."
Kate sighed. "I mean what I said."
"I know," Titus said. "I've always known. Go save the world, Kate."
"You too," she said.
The line went silent.
Titus activated the incendiary device, then half-walked, half-crawled down the steps that led up to the room where the fleet's controllers still slumbered, using the old alien's sword like a cane to help pull himself along. The stairs wouldn't offer much protection, but maybe that little bit would help.
This is what we were all put here to do, he thought. Defense mechanisms for the world. White blood cells. Immune systems. Here to keep this place spinning for one more day.
Like A Comet: The Indestructibles Book 4 Page 33
