Mamoru lifted the tile to his chest, holding it against his coat until glowing lines appeared, binding it to his flesh. The ten-inch slab of chrome sank into him and vanished. The circuit pattern emerged from his collar, threads of blazing white spread up over his cheeks to his eyes, which radiated light.
He looked up. A transmitter dish somewhere on physical Mars aligned with a starship he had stashed in a debris field known as the Periculum Belt. Once the link opened, Mamoru’s essence surged out of his eyeholes, drawing his collapsing body up into the transmission beam.
The bridge of the CSS Angel, or at least its virtual equivalent, lay dormant, pristine, and quiet. A cartoon caricature of a samurai—a mockery of Minamoto Akio—sat in the captain’s chair, raising its head as a swarm of black cubes melted from the walls. They spiraled into a cyclone, from which Mamoru emerged.
He ignored the ship AI and approached the navigation system. An image of Earth appeared on the large screen at the front of the room. At his will, the planet rotated to place the western coast of North America at the center. Mamoru zoomed in at the approximate midpoint of West City, locked in the coordinates, and engaged the drive system.
“That route is impossible,” said the warlord. “You are plotting a course with a destination at the core of the Earth.”
“I am aware of that,” said Mamoru. “Did you not notice me disable the orbital maneuvering system as well as the safeguards?”
“I cannot let you destroy me,” said the warlord.
“What you desire is irrelevant, Minamoto-chan. You are a program.”
It screamed, bashing its fists on the captain’s console. Black lacquer gauntlets pulsed with grids of green light each time they struck glass. “How did you lock me out of my own system? This is impossible!”
Mamoru erected a third layer of firewall. Red spheres grew out of the consoles, covered in spikes and flames.
“I am considered sentient. You… This is murder.”
The Akuryō squinted at the virtual Earth on the screen, at the tiny twinkling lights of West City. “Yes. Yes, it is. Glorious murder… and a necessary one. This machine is a mercy blade, spilling the blood of a society too weak to claim its right to exist. It does not deserve to be.”
Tiny points of light appeared along the surface of a dark metal shape hidden among thousands of pieces of space scrap and rocks. Slow at first, more spots appeared, until the entire silhouette of the CSS Angel glowed to life. It pulled away from the side of a massive asteroid, swinging in a graceful arc to point at Earth. Maneuvering thrusters wisped energy from various places, stabilizing the great machine.
A silent ripple of energy burst from each of the primary engines, as if a pebble had broken the surface of a still pond. Three concentric rings expanded from behind the vessel as it got underway. A blast of light shot from the side of the superstructure at the back, where the bridge overlooked the deck. Seconds later, a thruster flare glimmered, stalling the tumbles of a small capsule, which oriented itself on Mars before accelerating toward the surface.
49
Making Wishes
Kate
Thick liquid flowed in and out Kate’s nostrils. She felt tired and weightless. Someone called her name, far away as if shouting into a pipe. Her body protested waking up too early. All she wanted was to be left alone, to sleep. Echoing knocks, as though someone pounded on glass rocked her body. She opened her eyes, and tried to scream, “Go away,” but only fluid came out.
Her hands were tiny. She gasped and clutched her chest, finding her breasts gone. The reflection on the surface in front of her looked like a seven-year-old child.
“Katie, sweetie?” a silken male voice came from everywhere.
She looked past her naked reflection at the laboratory. Computer-covered walls fell over like a set dressing for a holovid show, revealing a suburban backyard full of happy children.
Something tickled her ankle. Kate looked down. The gel tube had vanished. Grass brushed her legs. Her hands were sticky with ice cream, which dribbled down the front of a white dress that had appeared out of nowhere. Tightness in her hair made her remember ribbons. Rendered silhouette by the sun overhead, a man leaned over her. The unexpected lack of gel in her lungs made her cough.
“Happy birthday, Sweetie. All of your friends are here.”
Shadow receded. Archon reached down and picked her up.
A rush of adoration filled her heart. “Daddy!” she cried, clinging to him and giggling. He carried her to a long table with a pink cake on one end, a white tablecloth fluttering in the gentle breeze. Forty smiling children around her age crowded both sides, waiting for her. The cake seemed so small, impossible for everyone to get a serving. Kate didn’t care. She wouldn’t feel bad because she’d pass on her piece. They were her friends. They came here to be with her on her birthday, so she didn’t need cake.
Archon set her down in a chair and patted her head. She swung her bare feet back and forth, giggling.
“Oh, wait for me,” called Anna from the house. She swiveled sideways to squeeze past the patio doors with a huge sheet cake.
The little pink one was only for making wishes.
“Wait for your mother, dear.” Archon smiled at her. “She wants to see you blow out the candles.”
Little Kate stared at the seven tiny flames. Something about the fire frightened her, but all the love around her made her feel silly to be afraid of candles.
“Make a wish, dear,” said Anna as she set the tray down and wiped her hands on an apron.
Kate giggled and looked at the cake, squinted, and looked up at him. “Daddy, what should I wish for?”
He smiled, opening his mouth to speak, but lightning shot out between his teeth. As if he’d eaten a spider made of electricity, tendrils wrapped around his cheeks and lapped at his face. His eyes glowed.
“Fuck. Bollocks. Bastarding hell.” Archon roared, and collapsed into a twitching, convulsing heap. “Baaa… Baaa…”
Pain like boiling water poured on her head ran down her back. Kate screamed and jumped away, falling out of her chair and landing on her front. She simpered into the grass, whining for Daddy and Mommy to help. The soft dirt firmed, and the burn at the rear of her mind became nausea. Kate whined and tried to move, feeling full breasts squished between her and tiny, sharp rocks.
“Look out!” screamed a young, female voice.
She got her hands under her and pushed up. The idyllic backyard party had vanished, replaced by a hard surface made of thousands of tiny stones trapped in cement. Cold wind whipped her hair. Her father stood a few meters away, glaring down at a wounded man. A black aircraft hung in midair behind him, turned sideways. Long, angled wings protruded from the rear, two up and one down. Like the proboscis of a giant, alien insect, a ten-foot-long antenna pointed at him.
“Dad!” screamed Kate.
He swiveled. Kate lit off a conflagration of fire near the sniper. A spiral of blue light connected the tip of the weapon to the roof inches to Archon’s left. Rage built inside her as she scrambled to her feet, keeping the curtain of fire between the assassin and her father.
“Get inside, Daddy.”
“Daddy?” wheezed the injured man. “You’ve got to be takin’ the piss.”
“What?” blurted a dark-haired teen girl, surrounded by a cloud of floating handguns. She stared at a NetMini in her hand, its glow lighting her face. “Are you serious? I…”
Whatever the teen looked at made her burst into sobs. Kate ignored her and ran to Archon’s side.
“You see now, Melissa?” yelled the injured man, curling into a ball. “This is what he does, he fecking devours people.”
The teen’s jaw hung open; she shook her head, muttering an endless string of ‘no.’
“Who’s that, Dad?” asked Kate.
Archon ducked behind her. “A threat. Kill him. Bloody hell. Soldiers.”
“Kate!” yelled the man. “Snap out of it, he’s gotten in your head.”
; We’re both Division 0, you’ve been mind-controlled. That bastard isn’t your father.
She stumbled to the side, lightheaded from the voice invading her thoughts, but shook it off.
“He is my father!”
A sphere of fire swelled up to fill her hand. Before she could throw it at the prone figure, Archon screamed in fright. She spun as he leapt to the side, away from the hovering sniper’s second shot. Her father grunted, raising a hand. The long-barreled railgun bent and twisted, sparking twice before exploding, knocking the large craft into a sideways spin. Three other aircraft, smaller and less angular, raced in as the silent one fled, trailing smoke and flames. The smaller ships glided to a halt near the roof, open doors on their sides packed with armed figures. Soldiers in black/grey camouflage jumped, gliding to the roof with the aid of ion thrusters in their armor.
“Melissa, get out of here,” yelled the injured man.
The teen stood gobsmacked, staring at her handheld and crying, as if nothing else in the world existed. Floating pistols fell one after the next, clattering to the roof around her.
A scrape of metal made Kate whip around in time to see her stunrod flying for her head. She caught it, staggering four steps back from the force.
“Sorry, luv. You’re not yourself,” said the man.
Kate roared and projected a stream of fire into his chest, making him scream. “I know you. You’re that killer cop everyone’s looking for. Aaron something.” She laughed. “I heard the Syndicate’s put a shitload of money on your head, you know. I wonder if they’ll pay me for killing you.”
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” wheezed Aaron, smoke peeling from his chest. “Oh, Mommy.”
“Mmmm!” screamed Melissa as a gloved hand covered her face.
An armored soldier dragged the flailing teen out of sight behind the air handler. Chaos erupted on the east side of the roof where a female Marine opened fire on her comrades.
Archon smiled and looked away from her, gesturing at Aaron. “This is your doing, chap. You are wasting life.”
Camouflage-armored figures on that side scrambled for cover, trading shots with the dominated woman who stood out in the open. A handful of young men and women dressed like gang toughs spilled from a door at the south corner of the roof, engaging the soldiers. Only their psionic abilities kept it from being an outright slaughter, but even still, the commandos cut them down with brutal efficiency.
Another soldier popped around the corner of the roof enclosure, aiming a rifle at Archon. Kate hurled a fireball too fast to aim; it hit the wall but fouled his shot. The second one hit him in the face, melting his helmet to his skull. He fell forward, dead. Three other soldiers gave her a confused look for a second, before aiming at her, too.
“She’s dominated…” Aaron coughed.
“Killing is not my mission,” said Archon, eyes flaring wide as he flung a man off the roof with a telekinetic shove. “My mission is survival. I am trying to protect our kind.” He brought his arms together, clapping in time with two of the aircraft colliding. A brilliant blossom of orange lit the sky the instant his hands touched, and a blast of hot wind whipped his hair forward. “I am a man of peace.”
Burning, twisted metal fell out of sight below the edge of the roof. Seconds later, a great whump echoed back up the chasm between buildings from the wreck meeting the ground ten stories below. A gust of wind carried the stink of burning plastic back to the roof.
An invisible force pulled Kate’s legs out from under her. She hit the ground on her back with bullets spraying rock fragments all over her. She rolled to the side, snarling, and called to the scraps of ember still burning on Aaron’s coat. He flared bright, howled, and went still.
A bullet slapped Kate in the chest as she sat up, knocking her flat again. Molten lead splashed up over her face. I love this uniform. It doesn’t burn. She played dead for three seconds, before lunging upright. These men wanted to kill her father.
“Daddy!” she screamed, setting off a pyroclastic detonation over the soldiers firing on her.
One slumped in place. The other two staggered to the side, smoke pouring from their mouths and noses. Armor, clothing, and skin from stomach to forehead disintegrated as they collapsed.
The female soldier on the east side of the roof leaned her weapon over her shoulder and smiled at Archon like a little girl who’d finished washing her father’s car to surprise him. She bled from multiple bullet wounds, but didn’t seem to notice.
“Thank you, dear,” said Archon before a telekinetic shove sent her off the roof too.
Aaron wheezed and grunted. The soldier’s rapid acceleration slammed to a halt in time for her to slap an armored glove onto the edge.
Archon shook his head at the woman clinging for her life. “You always were a soft touch with the girls, Aaron.”
“I got it,” said Kate.
She could’ve ignited the fingers and made the woman fall, but she wanted to look into the eyes of a person who tried to murder her father before they died. Archon passed her on his way to Aaron. A dead soldier’s rifle floated into his grasp, and he aimed down at the twitching, wounded, man.
“Aaron, Aaron, Aaron… I wish you could have realized.”
“We can talk about it.” Aaron offered a used-hovercar-salesman smile.
The soldier who had dragged Melissa to cover popped up and fired at Archon, winging him in the arm. Kate whirled about, screaming with unbridled rage, and hurled a fireball at him. He dove to the side, somersaulting out of the way and firing at her from the ground before sliding out of sight behind an old air handler. Another man popped up from behind the machinery where they’d pulled the teen, and fired at Kate.
Bullets hit her in the stomach and chest like a pummeling from a Kung Fu master. Blood leapt into her throat after the crunch of a broken rib. She braced an arm over her gut, calling upon her power. The soldier’s insides heated; he howled with agony and slumped to his knees. He convulsed from the blood boiling inside him. The one who’d grabbed Melissa stayed down.
Archon shot the wailing man in the face, freeing a sluice of steaming gore from his helmet. “Do you not see, Aaron? I am a bringer of mercy.”
Kate sprawled where she fell, wheezing, trying to catch her breath. Archon pointed the rifle at Aaron’s head.
“I regret this, Aaron. Truly, I do. I wish I could have made you see the light, alas the only light you are willing to see will come from the angels waiting to greet you.”
50
The Wings of Angels
Aaron
The nauseating realization that his scorched and molten chest smelled a bit like a cheeseburger brought bile to the back of Aaron’s mouth. It didn’t hurt all that much, at least not compared to the agony between his legs, which remained fresh in his mind. He raised a hand, as if it would do something about the assault rifle hovering over him.
Motion in the air distracted him to a shimmering glow. A whispercraft dropped out of cloak, its long, wand-like railgun oriented at Kate.
“No…” wheezed Aaron, reaching for it. “They don’t understand.”
“Oh, but I do,” said Archon
A tight blue spiral connected the tip of the weapon to the ground behind her. Blood exploded from her back and her arm went flying into the air. Archon startled at the railgun’s tiny sonic boom, firing a bullet into the roof inches from Aaron’s head.
Aaron cringed.
A man’s voice yelled overhead, too far away to make out the word, but panic and surprise sounded clear.
Blinding light glimmered in the air, saturating the roof as though a star had come too close to the Earth. It carried the presence of another world, making time feel detached and sluggish. Archon turned, glancing upward. The thud of Kate’s body collapsing to the roof came from the right, though endless light shrouded everything.
“Stop it!”
The plaintive wail of a little girl thundered across the sky, far louder than possible. The source of the radiant light became d
istinct; ribbons of energy formed the shape of wings, each span three times the height of the scrawny figure between them.
The girl from Rakshasi’s flat.
Althea held her arms out to the sides. A glow like tiny azure suns shone from her eyes, stark in contrast to the luminous white enveloping the rest of her body. She seemed to hang in midair, hair and dress aflutter in a driving wind.
Overwhelming calm came over him at the sight of her. The child’s hair changed from blonde to white, glowing with the same power that had become wings. Her expression looked to be a combination of horror and anger, most of which she directed at Archon.
Aaron grunted, trying to sit up, but his body refused. He hadn’t noticed the continuing gunfire between the soldiers and the psionic gang’s sentries until it petered out.
The assault rifle slid from Archon’s hands and landed on Aaron’s gut. The leader of the Awakened loosed a yelp of terror while staring at the floating child. Once his lungs had emptied, he ran out of sight. Aaron couldn’t help but grin like an idiot as the girl’s toes touched the roof. Her wings flared out and rose above her, framing her little body with an intense glow.
She cast a forlorn stare at the carnage on the roof.
Two soldiers emerged from cover among the air units. They averted their eyes and fell to their knees.
Aaron reached toward her. Reassured by her presence, he stopped fighting and let himself slide away to unconsciousness.
51
The Wrath of Legion
Mamoru
Square panels of starship bridge fell away from the reality around him, exposing the small conference room full of teenaged technokinetics. Mamoru removed his hand from the server, clamping his fist to disperse a lingering bit of energy.
Angel Descended (The Awakened Book 6) Page 46
