"Oh!" Maya exclaimed again, her blush deepening. "I guess I can go wait in the garden..." She floated across the floor without making a sound, but somehow Ratt knew when she had reached the door to his lab.
"Wait," he called out, sitting up and turning away from his work. "I'm sorry. I know it must be excruciating for you, waiting like this. Please. Stay."
"Uh-huh." Maya nodded and flashed a wry smile for just a second. Returning to Ratt's side, she asked if there was anything she could do to help.
"No, not really," Ratt replied, "just keep me company, please."
Maya spent the next fifteen minutes in anxious silence, trying not to distract Ratt as he punched away wildly on the keyboard. The whiz-kid ran scan after scan and test after test, trying to find the source code that had to be buried somewhere in the Spartan nanobots.
"Only one place left to look," Ratt murmured. He paused, took a deep breath and then pressed a single key. Line after line of code ran up the monitor at a blinding rate. "Hey! I'll buy that for a dollar!"
"Huh?" Maya asked.
"Oh," Ratt laughed, "just me and my movie lines." Then, shaking his head and standing up, he exclaimed, "Maya! This is it, I found it! Jon was right!"
"That's wonderful!" Maya hugged him, smiling. "Can you fix Carbine, then? And the others?"
Ratt hugged her back and then broke away. He adjusted his goggles with the push of a finger and looked into her eyes. "Yes," he said, "but not from here. I need to do it at the command terminal. The place from which the signal to the nanobots is, or was, broadcast.”
Maya's smile vanished, and a slight furrow appeared on her smooth brow. "Where is that?" she asked, afraid of the answer.
Ratt turned back around to the computer and typed a few commands. The code on the screen stopped and was replaced by a single line that spelled itself out, one character at a time. Once it stopped, Ratt read it and then answered Maya's question.
"From what I can tell, it has to be the uppermost floor of the Ziggurat."
"Warbak's chambers," Maya said quietly.
Ratt sucked his teeth, shrugged and rocked on his heels, nodding.
"I wish I had better news," he said finally.
A moment of awkward silence passed with Maya deep in thought. "There might be a way," she finally said.
"Maya, the Zigg is a fortress. It would be a miracle to get inside the ground floor, and certainly impossible to get to the top one."
"I can open portals, remember?" She winked at him.
He started to smile, then stopped, frowning. "No, now wait a sec. You can only open doors to places you know well. Like back-of-your-hand well. You said so yourself!"
"That's true," Maya admitted.
"And you've never been to Warbak's chambers— wait, have you?" The kid's face was awash with horrid disgust, his mind no doubt suddenly filled with revulsion and worry for what Maya may have endured while prisoner.
"Not physically, no," she admitted once more.
"Huh?"
"I've been in Warbak's mind. That's how I knew about the Purge," she began to explain.
"Okay, I'll play," Ratt said cautiously.
"In his mind, I found his secret place. It was a garden, and indoor garden, like mine, only more of a forest. This forest was surrounded by four inwardly sloping walls. Like being in a pyramid. It just has to be the Ziggurat!"
"Yeah but, like, what if it's not? We step through a portal to an imaginary place, and we are gone, right? Like, gone for good?"
"Yes," Maya said, "that is a risk."
"A risk? Maya, no offense, but that's the understatement of the year," Ratt scoffed.
"Maybe so." Maya lowered her gaze for a second and then raised it back up in a snap. "But I can't do this alone! I can only get us there. I need your help, Ratt! I'm asking you to trust me. I feel I must be right. I can't explain it, but I touched his mind. I feel it. Please! It's the only way."
"Well," Ratt said and kicked at the floor, marking it with the sole of his antique shoes, "this wouldn't be the first miracle I've witnessed you perform. Probably won't be the last either. I trust you, Maya, always have. Everybody does. Screw it. Let's go."
He awoke to searing pain. Not only along his body, but inside as well. With every ragged breath he drew, it felt as if he were swallowing fire.
"Son of a goddamned bitch," Taylor muttered and tried to open his eyes. Only one would cooperate, the other stoically refusing. "Where the fu—" he began to wonder aloud, then remembered.
The aliens. They fired some superweapon.
He recalled the flash. He looked around at his surroundings with his one open eye.
Darkness punctuated by the red glow of emergency lighting and the lashing tongues of orange fire.
Smoke, so much smoke.
Hadn't he been up top? Of course he had. He’d watched the Harvesters escape, just before they opened their can of whoop-ass on his company.
I must've fallen back down inside.
The scene was confusing though, didn't look right. Was the transport smashed up? On its side? He couldn't tell. Only thing for sure was it was burning up.
Frustrated as all get-out with the disorienting scene around him, he tried again to open his other eye. Nothing. He wondered if it was even still there. His body was racked with so much pain it was impossible to determine the nature and severity of one wound over the other. He went to reach up to his face with his hand and found his arm was pinned.
But it did try to move, that's a good sign.
He relaxed as much as he could and focused his mind, trying to breathe through the pain. Guided by his focused breath, a breeze picked up in his head and blew out the cobwebs there. Clarity slowly took hold.
The transport wasn't on its side. He was.
And lying flat on the ground near the base of the ladder, something heavy was on top of him, and he believed it to be the control console that Captain Jackson had been manning when he left him to go up top. The whole place was on fire and would no doubt either explode once the fire reached the munitions, or if he didn't change his situation, burn him alive. He knew what he needed to do; rescue wasn't something he could expect.
Alrighty. Time to suck it up, buttercup, he said to himself and braced for what was to come.
Wincing and breathing through the excruciating pain, Taylor flexed every muscle he owned and pushed off the ground, lifting the control console with him. With a pop-like push, as if performing a clapping push-up, Taylor bounced up and to the side, throwing the debris off him.
"Ungh!" he groaned as he hit the deck once more, now free. The pain washed over and through him as he lay there, panting. After a moment, determined not to die this day, he rolled over and sat up. His clothes were torn and burnt, and he could see the black blisters of charred flesh peeking out in the gaps in his uniform. That would explain the pain, he thought and raised his now free hand to his face.
His eye was still there, thank goodness. It was only hiding behind a grapefruit-sized lump of swollen flesh. Nothing a little ice and a nurse with a short skirt can't fix. Taylor glanced up and was relieved to find the ladder—at least most of it—was still intact. Come on, ol’ boy, get your shit together.
Gritting his teeth, Taylor stood up and began to climb up the ladder. The vestibule acted like a chimney for the burning transport and so choked and blinded the colonel as he exited the flaming wreckage. Coughing, and hoping he wasn't sending himself to his doom, Taylor pulled his legs up over the edge of the hatch and rolled down the side of the transport. It was the second time today he proved to be lucky, for he rolled clear of the billowing smoke, down the side of the transport that was jagged, ripped or burning, and plopped onto the cold ground.
His lungs spasmed and coughed, purging themselves of the last of the oily smoke. Once the fit had passed, Taylor climbed to his feet and took stock of his surroundings.
The company, his whole company, had been wiped out. With only one goddamned shot! Smoking black husks of infantrymen scattered the fla
t ground here and there. Heavy Mechs lay crumpled like empty beer cans crushed and tossed aside. At a glance, there were no survivors, but a second later, Taylor could hear the moans and cries of wounded men. Few and far between. We overplayed our hand, he thought. We're royally fucked.
The sound of an explosion echoed across the eastern front, off the western mountains and right to Taylor.
The bastards are attacking Home!
As fast as his broken body could carry him, Taylor moved out from behind the ruined command transport and climbed onto the back of a nearby slumped Mech, retrieving his collapsible binoculars from his back pocket and hoping against hope that they still worked. From his new vantage point, he had a clear view of the Ziggurat and its environs just to the north.
There was no sign of the Harvester ship. However one of the new obelisks, those secret machines so pivotal to Chairman Warbak's plan, was missing its crowning jewel. The glass sphere atop it was gone. A split second later another one exploded in a brilliant flash of light. Taylor squinted against the bright morning sky, magnified through the binoculars. He quickly spotted a single, gnat-sized speck in the sky, pulling up and away from the freshly detonated orb.
Goddamned Hopper. What in tarnation is going on over there?
Taylor spun in place, searching around him. That'll do, he thought, finding what he was looking for and then climbed down. He navigated the smoldering ruins of his company, ignoring the cries of his men, wounded and dying until he came to the one Mech he’d spotted that was less damaged than the others. A twisted arrow of steel the size of a human leg had impaled the cockpit of this unit, a splinter to the giant machine, but a battering ram to the pilot. Taylor climbed up the legs of the squatting Mech and, placing the bottom of one boot against the cockpit, wrapped both of his arms around the shard of steel and pulled it free. Grunting, he tossed it aside and opened what was left of the cockpit's front-facing hatch.
The sight inside was gruesome, but Taylor wasn't squeamish. He reached in and pulled out the two halves of the torn man.
"Rough day, bucko," he said as he watched the remains of the man tumble to the ground. "You won't be needing this anymore. And it looks like I have a fly to swat."
019
JON SAW them before they saw him. He had been expecting them. He was one, they were many. He had failed the final test to become a Hopper pilot, while each one of them had passed.
He was human, they were machine.
But human or no, Jon shifted into the machine-like state of mind that being a combat pilot required. No time for indecision, no time for fear. Jon abandoned all thoughts and emotions, reflecting only for a second on the motto of the ancient, pre-Storm soldier elite, "Nothing extraneous, in mind or body." Gritting his teeth, he felt for the accurate responses from the extension of his body that was the power armor, like a stretching athlete before the big game. Liking what he felt, he turned the Hopper and dove in to attack.
From out the side of the Ziggurat came two dozen Hopper units; individual, yet synchronized. They shot out into the air above the Shanty like a volley of the mini-missiles they all carried.
They all carry, but I don't.
Jon gulped at those odds. Chad had expended his payload before they’d grappled in the trash-tube, and even if he hadn't, they had retrofitted his missile pods to hold the sacks of Weaver. Regretting the unavoidable combat, Jon mentally cautioned himself to take extra care in making sure the Weaver wasn't lost or compromised. Or all this is for nothing.
Jon knew the overhead sun would blot out his outline to all but the most perceptive Hopper-jock, and so he held his trajectory, bearing down from above on the scrambling units. He waited until the time was right, until the surprise they had in store revealed itself, popping up like a fully armed and battle-tested jack-in-the-box.
As if on cue, streams of tracer rounds leaped into the air from two dozen different locations across the Shanty. The air became filled with streaks of fire, like a meteor shower in reverse. At least three Hoppers instantly went down in flames, and the rest broke formation, launching into evasive maneuvers in an attempt to break free of the anti-aircraft barrage.
Now! Jon steeled himself, clenching his fists as he raised both arms straight towards his unsuspecting enemies. Pulling both triggers, he let fly dual streams of endless plasma discs and cranked his Hopper into a downward spiraling barrel roll. The result was magnificent, lighting up the sky with two more exploding Hoppers before the others in the area even knew what was happening. Jon kept on mashing the triggers, taking out a third unit and only relaxed his fist when he broke the plane of the launching Hoppers. He blew right past them, piercing a gap in their broken formation and made it halfway to the base of the Zigg before twisting in place, bringing his suit's thrusters to bear on the ground below him. The Spartans were recovering, some breaking off to eliminate the threats from the Shanty, others focusing on Jon, opening fire and moving to give chase. Looking up at them as his fall slowed, balanced and then became an upward climb, Jon re-clenched his fists and gave the incoming jocks another taste of his plasma launchers. The dogfight had begun. It was on.
They found Lucy in the common area with the children too young and the adults to sick or old to fight. Wyntr was with her, as planned. Even if everything went wrong, if they lost the bet they had placed all their chips on, Wyntr needed to live; Wyntr must live, for she was the key to finding the Morning Star. If Lucy was bitter about her orders to stay behind and protect the child, she hid it well, accepting her Lady's orders as she always did, in the end.
"You have to be kidding," Lucy said. She looked from Ratt to Maya and knew right away that they were not.
"It's the only way," the goddess explained. "Jon is up there by himself, and you know as well as I do that even if we get to the Morning Star, we can't retrieve the Anvil without him. Besides..." Her words trailed off, and her eyes began to water.
Lucy took a deep, unnecessary breath. Her lungs, like ninety-nine percent of her body, were cybernetic, but she retained her human mannerisms, especially when she was tacitly expressing a thought or emotion.
"I know," she said. "Very well. Let's go save the world. It has to beat playing babysitter." Then, looking down to the little girl playing with a doll at her feet, she added, "Sorry kid, no offense." Wyntr looked up and smiled, either oblivious or wise beyond her years; Lucy wasn't sure which.
"Let's go to the garden. It's quiet there, and I will need to concentrate," Maya suggested.
"Yes, please," Ratt added. "I'd rather not disappear from all existence, thank you very much."
Lucy nodded and bent down, offering her hand to Wyntr. "Come with me, I have to go with Lady Maya now. You are going to stay here, with the elders."
"Okay!" Wyntr said cheerily and accepted Lucy's outstretched hand. A minute later, Wyntr had returned to playing with her doll, while Lucy explained to the most responsible elder in the Vault, a bronze-skinned woman named To-kan, the importance of keeping Wyntr safe.
"This child must live. If the Spartans make it down here, you must keep the girl safe. At all costs. Do you understand?"
"Yes, Lady Lucy. No harm will come to her," the woman replied.
"Alright then." Lucy turned to Maya and Ratt. "Lead the way."
They entered Maya's prayer garden and closed the door behind them. Ratt and Lucy stood by quietly while Maya closed her eyes and began to hum a tune. Once more, using her melodies as foci for shaping Strange.
Lucy was not averse to risking her life, especially if it meant serving the goddess that had granted her freedom from the State, but she wished there was more that she could do. She wished that she could somehow remove her Lady from the hell that was this war, this world. Something deep inside told her that no such thing or way existed, that it would get worse before it got better. She had to endure watching her Lady continue to risk herself and everything that she held dear. She knew what finding Jon meant to Maya, even if Jon didn't know himself. And yet, Maya had stayed behind d
own here in the Vault and watched him go off, by himself, in that stolen Hopper. Lucy considered herself tough, considered herself brave, but she knew that compared to her Lady, she was a pitiful, selfish coward. One reason, among many, that I serve.
Maya's humming had turned from gentle humming to a full-fledged song. A song without words. Maya, eyes now opened, sang aloud with all the beauty and grace of a thousand angels. Literally. Somehow, through the ways of Strange, her Lady sang with not one voice, but many. The one voice that was many then reached a ringing crescendo and stopped. In that instant, a rift between them and the tree in the center of the garden tore itself open. Like gazing through a window, Lucy could see into and beyond the Strange door. On the other side was a soft green carpet of moss, shadowed by a copse of feathery trees.
"It worked!" Ratt exclaimed.
Maya exhaled and sagged. Lucy knew that this was taking it out of her. Even a goddess couldn't shape Strange as often and as powerfully as she had without sapping herself.
"You can stay behind," Lucy offered. "Correction. You should stay behind."
"No," Maya said softly, then straightened her spine and added, "I need to see this through.”
"Very well." Lucy nodded, long past done objecting to her Lady's wishes. Uncrossing her arms from her chest, she drew both of her Macuahuitls and her pistol. Clasping the grip of her pistol, she kept it in close to her chest, poised and ready, while the two war-clubs spread out wide, like wings of death. "I'll go first."
Lucy stepped through the portal and into the forest. She paused for a heartbeat, using all her enhanced senses to detect any threat of immediate danger. Finding nothing, she continued across the padded forest floor, eyes darting left and right, pistol at the ready. Maya came next, then Ratt. Once the kid's heel had cleared the threshold, the portal disappeared without a sound. It had worked. They had made it to the place Maya had built from Warbak's memory. Lucy suspected Maya was tapped, unable to shape Strange until she rested. It was the way her Lady carried herself—tired, spent. All or nothing. For better or for worse, they had made it to the top level of the Zigg, and they were trapped there.
The Goddess Gambit Page 36
