Marduk’s chin lifted. “Then it is time to bid farewell to this planet.” He laid his hand on the panel. “Fire the main engines.”
Chapter 28
The faint hum of the Tiamat’s engines shifted to a lower, deeper key, as ominous as the slow thump of a demon’s beating heart. Sometimes, Zamir almost thought he heard that familiar sound, awake or asleep. That was when he knew he was back on the Dalkhu Libbu.
No, not him. Zamir pressed the heels of his hands against his temples. Arman.
It was his fault.
It was one thing to instinctively tap into Jackson’s or Arman’s capabilities in a moment of desperation and panic.
It was something else entirely to consciously draw upon them. He had deliberately torn down the walls that kept his soul shards separate from his awareness.
And now the walls would not go back up.
Zamir was no longer clear where Jackson began, and Arman ended, where Nergal began, and he ended.
He only knew that he needed all of him—every bit of his faceted, shattered psyche—to save the Earth.
Even if he did not know what it meant for him after that.
Zamir placed his hands upon the control panel. He closed his eyes and steadied his breathing.
His thoughts calmed.
Something shifted in him, like cards reshuffling with smooth, seamless silence.
When Zamir’s eyes opened and fixed on the control panel, he knew, immediately, what he needed to do. His fingers flew over the panel, overriding the engine’s safety parameters. When the capacity reached a hundred percent, it would not throttle back. It would blast past it. It would self-destruct, taking out the Tiamat’s right wing.
As long as it’s not over the Tree of Life, a part of him noted quietly.
Zamir didn’t know if the voice was Arman’s or Jackson’s. It didn’t matter. That voice was right.
He had to ground the Tiamat, but not over the Tree of Life.
And he had to take out the Tiamat’s other engine too. Inanna and Nergal, too forward-thinking for their own good, had designed the Tiamat to fly on only one engine.
Zamir sprinted across the arched walkway that curved through the Tiamat’s spinal column. His boot skidded against something slick. He bent down, but did not need to touch the crimson stain to know that it was Kai’s blood. Kai had dragged himself all the way along the central corridor. He had to be nearly at the Tiamat’s head—its bridge—by now.
For an instant, Zamir considered heading to the bridge to intercept Kai before he tried to take on Marduk, but no—
Zamir was the only person—Nergal was the only person who could bring the Tiamat down. He raced across the walkway, and into the left engine chamber—a mirror image of the right engine chamber. He laid his hand upon the control panel. It was time to let Nergal do what Nergal did best.
Destroy.
* * *
From the passenger seat of the SUV, Ginny peered out of the windshield as the dragon rose out of the ground. The dust streaked off like a veil blown aside by the wind—a triumphant rebirth after millennia buried within a grave.
The dragon wasn’t alive in any traditional meaning of the word, but the subtle arch of its body as its head turned toward the skies, the tremble of its wings as they flapped, and the sinuous sway of its long, spine tail made it seem vividly, vibrantly alive. It moved with organic grace, apparently oblivious to the small fighter jet that carved precise figure eights around it. If the Tiamat were likened to an eagle, the fighter jet was the size of a fly—present enough to be noticed, not threatening enough to be worth reacting to.
But that was until the fly darted around to the back to the Tiamat and accelerated. Its sonic boom rocked the trees. The twin explosions that followed, one after another, were even louder.
Ginny’s jaw dropped as she stared at the black smoke and flames pouring from the Tiamat’s rear.
Beside her, Jacob’s eyes narrowed. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and squinted at the ship. “Tell me that Zamir didn’t just literally fuck the Tiamat with that thirty-million-dollar fighter jet.”
Ginny’s chest hitched against the irreverent bubble of laughter. “I…think he did.”
Jacob grunted. “If he survived the crash, it was probably a smart move.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Tiamat would have to seal all exits before heading into space. All of the ship’s natural openings probably have seals, but not necessarily an opening that was just smashed into the hull. Marduk is going to have to delay his departure until that hole is fixed.”
“It couldn’t possibly take long. The ship can repair itself,” Ginny reminded him.
“Any time Zamir can buy gives him that much more time to figure out how to ground that ship permanently. If we can get closer—”
The ground erupted beneath the all-terrain vehicle. Ginny’s world turned and twisted in jerky heaves as the car flipped and rolled down a steep incline. A wrenching smash flung her forward, and only the seat belt kept her from flying through the windshield.
Her head still spinning, Ginny groaned. Her head lolled back on the headrest and she glanced at the driver’s seat. Jacob was still breathing, but that was the best that could be said for him. He had taken the brunt of the explosion. It had blown out the glass on his window, and his face was cut, bleeding from the flying glass.
Ginny peered out of the car, her bleary vision swaying in shades of ghostly gray, as a slender figure strode down the hill toward her. Ondine?
Why wasn’t Ondine on the ship with Marduk and, presumably, Badur too?
Ginny scarcely noticed her scrapped and bleeding knuckles as she released the seat belt. The door refused to open, however. It had been too banged in by the car’s ungraceful descent to the foot of the hill. She kicked against it, but it refused to give. The glass perhaps—
The bright green glow outside the car snapped Ginny’s attention back to Ondine. An aether storm danced at Ondine’s fingertips, then unfurled in flashing arcs of lightning. Instinctively, Ginny brought up her hands. A seemingly thin purple foil, more translucent than transparent, spread out to shield the car. The green lightning struck it, and rippled over the layer of purple.
“Jacob.” Ginny spared him a panicked glance. “Get up? Are you okay? I need you to get up.”
He groaned softly, his head turning toward her. The bleeding wounds on the left side of his face were already closing, thanks to Nergal’s self-healing power. “I…”
“Ondine’s out there. And she doesn’t look like she’s in the waiting mood.”
“Go…get out,” Jacob breathed. He shifted in his seat to pull himself out after her, but green lightning encased the car, jolting agony though Ginny and Jacob. She screamed and coiled into herself.
Jacob’s scream, however, was like that of someone dying. Green lightning pierced the windshield and rippled over him like a living waterfall of incandescent light. “Jacob!” Ginny shrieked. From her hands, purple arcs of light washed over him.
She saw it, with her own eyes, or she would never have believed it.
A translucent outline of a face separated from the top of Jacob’s forehead, then continued peeling off the rest of his body. A different face. Thin nose, aquiline eyes, and sharply angular outlines. Not unlike Arman’s chiseled features, but even sharper, with a harder, crueler edge.
Nergal.
She was looking at Nergal.
The face, now a full body, flowed smoothly along the green lightning arcs, as if they formed a channel. It passed through the car and stopped right in front of Ondine, locking eyes with her.
It melted into Ondine’s body.
Ondine’s head snapped back, and her eyes flashed bright green for an instant. The assault of aether lightning faded, leaving only the faint scent of ozone in the air.
Jacob’s breath was erratic, and his head lolled against the seat, as if he were struggling back to awareness. His eyelashes fluttered, and his eyes, wh
en they opened, were glazed and unfocused.
Ginny growled deep in her throat. Jacob wasn’t going anywhere. Not for a while.
She dragged herself out of the car and hobbled upright, ignoring the pain that shot through her left foot. She glared at Ondine, who was looking down at her arms with an oddly satisfied expression on her face. “I suppose it was too much to hope for that you would leave the Earth behind as well,” Ginny said.
“I never had any intention of leaving,” Ondine said. “Marduk is enamored with Aldebaran. He has fond memories of what he left behind. I don’t.” Turning her back on Ginny, Ondine paced the clearing, each footstep measured, not quickened by anger. “It’s hard to rule as king, let alone as a god, when you’re just like everyone else. When you, like everyone else, live in Inanna’s magnificent, massive shadow.” Ondine’s upper lip curled back in self-mocking, sardonic humor.
“Are you still blaming her for your inability to get on with life? You need to just deal with the fact that she’s not that into you.”
Ondine smirked. “She has been as thwarted in love as the rest of us have been in life. The one man who did not fear her, the one man she could have imagined loving, loved her sister instead.” Ondine’s chuckle was low and smooth. “And now, he loves you. If I were you, I would be a great deal warier of Inanna, should she come bearing gifts.”
“I don’t want alien gifts. In fact, I would prefer it if you all went back to your home planet, and took your so-called gifts with you. Including this.” Ginny conjured up the purple glow of aether in her hand.
Ondine threw her head back and laughed. “I don’t think you realize that your control and possession of aether makes you more an alien to humans than even the Beltiamatu. You have nothing in common now with your people. You are almost a goddess.”
“Unless godhood helps me grade all my student papers on time and without a headache, I’m not interested. What I want back is my life.”
“Your life…without Beltiamatu, both ancient and evolved. Without starships made from dragon bones or demon hearts.” Ondine smiled. “I can return you to your life, if you will give mine back to me.”
“What do you want?”
“The piece of me that resides in the mer-king. I want to be whole.” Ondine met Ginny’s gaze. “Like you, I want my life back.”
Ginny’s eyes narrowed. Her hands, curled into fists, did not uncurl. “What will it take?”
“I did not place my soul shard in Zamir, the way I did with Jacob, and therefore I cannot recall it. You can, though. Aether dances to your command. You can split Zamir’s chimeric soul the way you rip Kai’s body.”
Ginny’s heartbeat stuttered at Ondine’s deliberately cruel words. “You’re goading me. What’s the catch?”
“There is none. When Zamir’s soul splits into its four pieces, I will recall the shard that belongs to me.”
“And what happens to Arman and Jackson? What happens to Zamir?”
“It would depend, I suppose, on how attached Arman and Jackson feel to Zamir.”
Ginny’s breath caught. “So, he could lose his soul?”
“His soul?” Ondine arched her eyebrows. “The soul is Arman’s. Jackson’s. Mine. Zamir has no soul. He never had one. He never will. When he dies, the souls trapped within his body will flitter away to the afterlife. They are not his souls. He’s merely keeping company with them for a while.” Ondine walked up to Ginny. “They are trapped. Like I am trapped. Against my will. Bound to a power-hungry mer-king.”
Power-hungry?
Ginny’s thoughts raced through all her interactions with Zamir.
Guilt-ridden, certainly.
Focused.
Driven.
Given to ignoring anything he didn’t think was important.
But regardless of how he might have behaved when he actually was the mer-king, he had not acted out of self-serving need since. Zamir was far from perfect, but he was not who Ondine made him out to be.
All the more reason to remove Nergal’s soul shard, once and for all.
Ginny did not even question if her aether powers could reach across the expanse of the sky and find Zamir in the vastness of the Tiamat. The aether did things and she had learned, simply, to trust, and to imagine.
Ginny reached up.
Aether arced into the sky and sliced into the Tiamat.
Chapter 29
The Tiamat tilted an instant before the ship’s primary engines churned into motion.
Damn it.
The starship was shifting into position to fire its main thrusters.
Zamir scrambled across the platform and activated the control panel. The glowing lights shifted through a repeating pattern, confirming that the engine was perfectly functional. It did not matter that he had triggered the other engine to fail the moment it reached its maximum capacity. The Tiamat could fly on one engine.
He had to take out this engine too.
Zamir drew a deep breath and allowed his consciousness to fade. The knowledge deep within him—Arman’s knowledge, Nergal’s knowledge—bubbled to the surface. His fingers moved over the panel, entering commands, programming sabotage. He glanced at the code as the Tiamat angled for flight. Almost there—
Sudden wrenching pain sliced from his neck to the base of his spine, as if something were tearing out of him.
Something in his head blinked out.
Emptiness. Utter silence where there used to be knowledge and awareness.
Nergal was gone.
And with it, his knowledge of how to reprogram the Tiamat engines to self-destruct.
Zamir stared at the panel, the serenely blinking lights mocking his efforts to disable the engines. The power panel indicated the quick and steady climb toward maximum power. Seventy percent.
Seventy-five percent.
When it hit a hundred percent, the other engine would fail, but this engine would propel the Tiamat into space. The heat and energy expelled would ignite the vast acres of the Tree of Life. The explosion of aether would take out most of the northern hemisphere. And Ginny.
He had to take out the second—the final—engine, but how could he?
Whatever used to be Nergal in him had been torn away, leaving him mentally and emotionally bleeding. His breath came in sharp heaves, as if broken glass pierced his lungs. His thoughts flittered like fallen leaves spiraling in the autumn breeze.
The part of him he hadn’t wanted, hadn’t believed he needed, had been the key, after all.
And now—
Zamir stared at the engine. He had to bring it down!
His gaze swept over the complex machinery, identifying its components. Inlet. Compression chamber. Fuel injection. Flame holder. Combustion chamber. Nozzle. Exhaust…
Modern English converted seamlessly into ancient Beltiamatu. Somehow, Jackson and Arman were connecting in that same, odd way Arman and Nergal had connected. The knowledge of both uniting into something far greater than its parts.
He could still take out the engine. If he could cut off the intake—no, there was no way to seal it off fully. The mouth was too wide and the suction around it too strong. His gaze traced the length of the engine. That left…the nozzle.
Crushing the nozzle would dispel the compressed, heated energy into the chamber, instead of propelling through the exhaust. The engine wouldn’t fail. It would keep pumping out raw kinetic energy and heat, but it would fill the chamber and eventually spread to the entire ship—without ever passing through the exhaust.
The entire Tiamat, not just its engines, could go up in flames.
But it was the only way, and it would take out the engine without any immediate alerts that he had sabotaged the ship.
“Eighty percent.”
Zamir grabbed one of the adamantine plates stacked on the floor, and slammed its edge into the narrowest part of the engine—the nozzle. Adamantine smashed against adamantine, the sound of the impact rolling through the engine chamber.
“Eighty-five percent.”
He slammed the adamantine plate again, then stared at the scarcely perceptible dent. He wasn’t going to make it in time.
Movement darted into his peripheral vision. Instinct twisted him around.
He swung up the adamantine plate he held, but the blast cut right through it before searing a fraction of an inch away from his cheek.
An engine-repair and security drone swiveled on its central axis. Its laser, fashioned from aether crystals, was powerful enough to slice into adamantine. It would cut through human bodies as if they were paper.
“Ninety percent to full engine capacity,” the ship’s voice reported. “Please clear and secure the engine chamber for maximum thrust.”
Zamir rolled to the side as the laser blasted into the floor, tearing a huge gash in the thick layer of adamantine that reinforced all the surfaces in the engine room.
“Ninety-two percent.”
He scrambled to his feet, but crouched low in a battle stance, as he and the drone circled each other. Movement flickered at the side, and he dived forward as another laser cut through where he had stood.
The first drone fired again, spraying shards of adamantine against his back as he rolled forward.
Two drones. Zamir pushed to his feet.
It’s up to you now, Jackson. Save us. Save your planet and your people.
He drew a deep breath and allowed his awareness to shuffle Jackson forward. His thoughts smoothed into focused nonchalance. His shoulder muscles loosened in preparation for battle.
He shifted, slowly sidestepping until his back was to the engine, directly in front of the nozzle.
“Ninety-four percent.”
The drones swung around. Their quick furious motions might have seemed like mechanical fury, except that they were incapable of emotion.
Or of foresight.
“Ninety-six percent to full engine capacity. Please clear and secure the engine chamber for maximum thrust.”
The drones’ red laser targets gleamed, as if the light were spilling over, in preparation for attack. Zamir dropped to the floor as the lasers beamed out, striking the engine nozzle.
Cursed Legacy: Lord of the Ocean #3 Page 17
