Shadow Heart

by J. L. Lyon

  He paused for a moment as the larger buildings of downtown Prime came into view, including that massive arch that defied credulity and the gothic-style building beneath it: the city capitol that housed the Stone Hall. The warrior had seen grander cities than this in terms of scale, in the World System and across the sea, but there was something ethereal about Corridor Prime. Part modern, part medieval, it was beautiful yet eerie, promising wonder and danger at the same time.

  He started to move forward again but stopped when a high-pitched scream pierced his ears. It was not the scream of a person, but of a machine. He switched off his helmet to prevent himself from going deaf and searched the skies for a vessel, believing they might have been seen. But there was nothing.

  Shahzad had stuck close by him throughout the trek, and he covered his ears, not having the advantage of a sound-shielded helmet. But even with the helmet, the warrior could hear the second scream, and suddenly he knew where he recognized it from. This was not an enemy that a Spectral Gladius could dispatch.

  Before he could warn the others, a massive blast of light filled his visor, like lightning struck that refused to fade. The blast sliced through everything in its path: stone, roads, homes, and skyscrapers. One building nearly ten stories tall appeared cut in half, and as the light slowly began to fade he watched the structure collapse with its inhabitants still inside.

  He turned his helmet back on, knowing that the piercing noise would be gone, but now it had been replaced by the screams of those suffering below.

  “Solithium fence,” he explained to Shahzad. “But…why would she?”

  “She would not,” Shahzad said. “But Corridor Prime has been emptied of its armies. It is vulnerable. Open to attack.”

  The black-clad warrior stared at the shimmering shield, which now separated him from his objective in the Stone Hall. There was no way to get through it. They would have to go around it, and in the process would lose precious time.

  “Back to the river!” he shouted. “We no longer have time for stealth, gentlemen! Run, as fast as your legs will take you!”

  He jumped off the building and hit the ground, launching into a running speed that no human could have achieved, but his armor made possible.

  39

  GRACE HELD ON TIGHT to the railing of the balcony, looking on with horror at the wall that had split her city, cutting her army off from the downtown sectors and leaving them no room to retreat. And yet, even if Van Dorn managed to crush her army against that wall, it would keep them out as well. What was the advantage?

  “Magistrate!”

  She turned to see Bruce come out onto the balcony, and his face went white when he saw the wall. “Good God…”

  “How could something like that happen, Vice-regent?” she asked.

  Bruce shook his head, “Back-up pylons. We’ve been putting them in place in preparation for an attack by the Imperial Guard. Van Dorn’s men must have turned them inward. But why would he cut himself off from the city?”

  “He wouldn’t,” Grace said, as the gravity of the situation became painfully clear. As if in answer to her thoughts, screams rang out much closer to them, and she shifted her attention to the city square. Just beyond, on the opposite side, fires ignited in the streets, projecting the shadows of fleeing citizens on the surrounding buildings. And from those shadows emerged the form of a man, Spectral Gladius gleaming white and held casually by his side, walking confidently into the city square. “But he would.”

  Derek Blaine. And behind him, the perpetrators of terror and the harbingers of more to come.

  “The Spectorium,” Crenshaw said. “They found a way to corner us at last.”

  “Not just yet they haven’t,” Grace replied. “Bruce, send word to Davian. Recall the Halos carrying my Silent Thunder warriors. We will fight the Spectorium with our full strength.”

  “I…cannot, Magistrate.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s what I came here to tell you. Van Dorn’s men have taken control of the air defense systems. By the time we retake it, the Spectorium will have overrun us, and only one in ten of the Halos would make it through the defenses. Our only chance now is for them to bring down that wall so the army can get back to us.”

  Explosions ignited on the horizon, and Crenshaw said gravely, “The battle has begun.”

  “They have their own problems, now,” Grace replied, the weight of command settling back down on her shoulders. These last days had been a mess of politics and not knowing which decisions were the right ones. But the way forward now was clear. This was the very same challenge she had weathered her entire life—and the inevitable battle that she had been expecting since fleeing Alexandria more than one year ago.

  The time had come to command.

  “Crenshaw, with me,” she said. “Let’s give Blaine the fight he came for.”

  “Magistrate, you can’t be serious!” Bruce stepped forward as if he might forcibly prevent her from leaving. “They outnumber your Silent Thunder operatives almost three to one! The city square will be an open battlefield. It will be a slaughter!”

  “What else can I do?”

  “Live.”

  Grace set her gaze on the fiery destruction being wreaked by the Spectorium, imagining the sight of her fifty warriors watching floors beneath her as this great chance—the taking of Corridor Prime—slipped away before their eyes. She could not leave them to face that alone. The breeze washed over her face, soft and gentle as though it knew no such thing as war. The fight would come, the ground would swallow their blood, and the breeze would pass on.

  Life is but a vapor, her mind whispered. All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of the grass. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

  Her father had spoken those words to her long ago, a phrase from a book she had never been able to read in full. But even then she had wondered whether it would remain true if Napoleon Alexander succeeded in stamping out Christianity. How could the word of the Lord remain if there was no one left to speak it? There were so few of them, now, and before the day was done there would be even fewer.

  Perhaps what some say is true. We stand at the end of the world, and were never meant to win.

  “Those are my people out there, Vice-regent. I will not leave them to save myself. As leader, I will lead. As commander, I will head the charge. Those who would have others fight their battles for them are not worthy of being followed. Let's go, Crenshaw.”

  She left a dumbfounded man in her wake as she left the balcony, her resolve growing stronger with every step forward she took. She unclipped her World System cape and let it fall to the ground, then removed the robe as well. Beneath she wore her old Silent Thunder commander uniform.

  Crenshaw shadowed her as they bypassed the elevator and descended the stairs, “Expensive robes to simply toss aside.”

  “The men do not need the magistrate, now,” she said. “They need Shadow Heart. And that is precisely what they will get.”

  “Looks good on you,” he said. “Good colors to die in.”

  Grace became suddenly somber. She had faced death before, in the Wilderness and in the Central Square, but something seemed different this time. A year ago she might have looked to the other side of her final moment with regret that she wouldn’t be there to see it. Now, there was nothing. No regret. No plans unfinished. Just an encroaching void of blackness...a drab and dreary world in which her only goal was to survive. It was as if all the light had gone out of her future, and she only just now understood it.

  The things she loved and cared about most...those were all in the past, memories that in time would grow blurry and cold. There was a truth inside her that she could no longer deny. She had been running from it for over a year because of her duty to Silent Thunder and then her elevation to magistrate, but now she could not deny her heart:

  She did not want to survive.

  Those who had gone on before her waited in th
e world beyond. Her mother. Her father. Lauren Charity. Perhaps now, at last, it was time for her to join them.

  “You’ve been like a father to me this past year, Crenshaw,” she said, forcing down the lump in her throat. “I know sometimes it seems like I don’t appreciate everything you have done for me...everything I have learned from you...but I do. I—”

  “There will be time for that later, Grace.”

  “There won’t,” she stopped on a landing and met his eyes. “You know it. I know it. Now is the only time we have left.”

  Crenshaw opened his mouth as if to object, but then merely nodded. Derek Blaine had them firmly in his grasp, and all they could hope for was to keep him occupied long enough for the army to return and secure the city. Doing so would undoubtedly require all fifty-two Silent Thunder lives. And even then, they might fail. Still, there were worse ways for the story to end.

  “I suppose if we’re saying the things we have too long left unsaid,” Crenshaw said, and the two continued downward. “You should know that I have served with many great leaders, in the Old World, in Silent Thunder, and the time since I left. But I have never been prouder to serve with any of them, than I have been to serve with you.”

  Grace felt warmth spread through her at the compliment, part joy and part embarrassment, “Even though I pry into your secrets?”

  “Especially because you pry,” he smiled. “Everything you do, you do to protect your people. They may call you Shadow Heart, but I know the truth: you love them, as they love you. There have only been two female commanders of Silent Thunder, and in my opinion they were the best of us all.”

  “High praise,” Grace said. “Though I’m not sure I will ever live up to the kind of woman and person Lauren Charity was.”

  “She was my sister,” Crenshaw replied. “And I think that makes me somewhat of an authority on the subject. You remind me of her, Grace, almost every time I look at you. And every time I wonder how two people who look absolutely nothing alike can seem so similar. I think it is something about the way you carry yourself: a quiet strength...determined, but not arrogant. She always had a gentleness about her, one that made the people love her. She gave them hope, and that is an ability not many possess.

  “That is what you have done for Silent Thunder this past year, and you had so much more to overcome than Lauren when she first became commander. When I think about the things you have been through, the losses you gave endured...most people could not emerge from that without bitterness and hatred. Your father, your mother...Lauren...they would all have been proud of you.”

  Grace felt a stab of guilt. That may have been what Crenshaw saw when he looked at her, but it was not the person she knew herself to be on the inside. She had hidden it well, but yes she had tasted bitterness. Yes, she had hated. On top of the Communications Tower she had nearly struck out in a rage to kill Derek Blaine, and every time he crossed her mind all she could think of was repaying him for what he took from her.

  It only worsened when she thought of the moment his blade pierced Elijah’s body, a man he had called friend, and held him there until the MWR shot the man she loved in the back. She could still hear the shots; still smell the smoke of the pyre that she should have burned upon; still hear the sounds of her own screams in her ears. She had been dying a little inside every day since that night, just hanging on by the threads of duty that remained.

  Now the end would come, and when her body was destroyed she took comfort that her hate would die with it. But love...perhaps that would go on.

  “Do you ever wonder about him, Crenshaw?” she asked.

  Crenshaw hesitated for a moment, “That depends on what you mean by ‘wonder.’ You know I don’t share your hope that he survived.”

  “I know,” she said. “I don’t either, not anymore. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I ever did. Maybe I just needed something...a possibility...to keep me going. But that’s not what I meant. We’re facing death in the next few minutes, and I believe everything my father taught me about what awaits in the world beyond. But if I arrive in paradise only to find that the man I loved is not there and never will be...how do I reconcile something like that?”

  “You’re not the first to ask that question,” Crenshaw said. “I have been fortunate in my life that every time I lost someone dear to me, I could take comfort in the knowledge that they are in a better place. Until Elijah. So yes...I wonder. I wonder every single day.”

  Silence stretched between them for a moment, the only sound that of their rhythmic footfalls on the steps, but Grace was desperate for some sort of answer and could not let the subject go, “And? What did you decide?”

  “Hell is an easy doctrine to believe in,” Crenshaw said softly. “Until someone you love might have gone there. Elijah’s death was the first time I really thought about what Hell is...or at least, what they say it is: a place of eternal torment where the fires never go out. And then I think of that little boy, running through the halls of the Silent Thunder base so innocent and so full of joy. To imagine him in a place like that...it chills me to the bone.

  “But then I remember that as he became a man he did some terrible things, wronged people in ways you and I will never know. Perhaps there is someone out there in the world who feels the same way about Elijah as you do about Derek Blaine. If you arrived in paradise and Blaine was there despite never caring about his own redemption, how would you reconcile that?”

  “There has to be some sort of balance,” Grace argued. “Hell must exist for the truly evil, but maybe salvation is more complex than what we realize.”

  “Yes, but who are we to say who is truly evil, and who is not?” Crenshaw asked. “We loved Elijah, while others hated him. You despise Derek Blaine, but there are undoubtedly those in the world who care for him, who see qualities in him that might be considered redemptive. Even Napoleon Alexander was a great man, once. How should he be judged? There has to be some kind of standard, Grace. The traditions say—”

  “I know what the traditions say,” Grace cut him off sharply. “But I also know that Elijah was a part of me. How can I dwell in Heaven if a part of me burns in Hell?”

  Crenshaw just shook his head, “That is a question for one with far more authority than me.”

  They reached the landing for the lobby floor and passed through the doorway. Her operatives waited for her at the center, like darkened statues against the overcast light steaming in from outside. Explosions sounded from far away, though she could still hear the screams of those outside. This must be quick.

  She spoke as she made her way to the front of the line, taking pleasure in the fact that they all noticed her change of attire and seemed heartened by it. “Gentlemen,” she began. “Words can’t express how honored I have been to serve as your commander. Nor can they describe your courage in volunteering for this assignment. Our enemy outnumbers us, and they come with the intention to eradicate us all. The men standing here, our families who have taken refuge in this city, all of us.”

  Grace reached the front of the line, and could now see clearly what was happening outside. The Spectorium had formed up into lines and was preparing to assault the building. She turned back to her men and went on strongly. “You may still hold on to some hope of survival. Let that hope go, for we will all die here today. We each have our own reasons: some for God, some for love...some for liberty or redemption. Hold tight to your purpose, for it is all you have left. In that approaching force there are three Specters for every one of you. Three men who want to destroy you and then destroy everything you fight for.

  “As my last act as your commander, I do not ask that you fight bravely. I do not ask that you give it your all. All I ask of you tonight, men of Silent Thunder, is that before you die you take three of those bastards with you!”

  The men shouted their affirmation, and Grace felt the adrenaline of battle begin to surge through her veins. She drew Novus Vita, and as it came to life in a flash of white flame she was relieved to know
that she would die with a Gladius in hand.

  Her action was followed by the activation of fifty-one more blades, and the terrible harmony of all of their songs playing at her back.

  “Like father, like daughter,” Crenshaw said softly beside her.

  “Let’s hope that’s true,” Grace replied. “I intend to take a lot more than three with me.”

  “I would expect nothing less.”

  “If you see Derek Blaine, save him for me.” She broke into a run, crashing through the door into the open air, and led the charge down into the city square.

  - X -

  “Here they come, sir!” Gentry pointed.

  Derek's eyes narrowed in the direction of the oncoming enemy as they descended the stairs from the main entrance. He wanted to give them a little breathing room so his men could surround and overpower them, though it took all the patience he could muster. He had not engaged an enemy on the field of battle in months, not since the Conglomerate had shifted their focus to South America. The notion of waging war again—real war, not these cat-and-mouse tactics—exhilarated him. His only regret was that as grand admiral he was responsible to direct the fighting from the rear and only participate if forced to do so.

  As such, when the Spectorium charged forward across the field, he and his entourage would remain behind them.

  “Now, Gentry,” he said. “Order them forward.”

  Gentry whispered into his comm, relating the orders to all of the Specter Captains, and the Spectorium surged forward. Derek smiled. They would meet just short of halfway across the square. Perfect positioning.

  “You may have your work cut out for you today, Gentry,” Derek said. “When we join the battle, I will need you to watch my back.”

  “When, sir?”

  “Yes,” Derek smiled. “I have no intention of sitting this one out. I’ll bet you anything Grace Sawyer is with that group, and I won’t let someone else take what is rightfully mine. I made a promise to an old friend, and the time has come to fulfill it.