Fall of Angels

by Matt Larkin

  David coughed, rubbed his head again. “Prepare for strafing run. We’re going in close. Laser batteries and MAG cannons only.”

  “Uh, how close?” Phoebe asked.

  “Very close.” David wove the Sephirot around a plasma blast and dove right in on an Adversary ship. The Sephirot handled like a dream—the finest craft he’d ever piloted. He evaded plasma streams and closed within a hundred meters of the enemy. Then pushed it closer.

  The Sephirot’s MAG cannons and batteries pounded into the Adversary, ravaging its shields and carving out pieces of its skin.

  “Damn,” Phoebe said. “I didn’t know you meant close enough to kiss the fuckers.”

  David banked around the Adversary, passing around again from the other side. It tried to break away, but he stuck to it like a lover. They couldn’t safely target him from this range. Their allies couldn’t target him.

  His blood roared from the rush. Only a few pilots in the universe could fly this close this fast. David was one of them. He was born for this.

  Born to lead the greatest battle in history.

  Crippling explosions rocked the Adversary ship. His crew let up a whoop, joining him in his scream.

  David broke away, then immediately dove in on another Adversary ship. This time, it tried to flee immediately. It threw plasma nets and streams at him. He banked, darting through a hole in the net, then swerved in so close he could see the pores in the thing’s skin.

  He had the bloody buggers now.

  “It’s the Azazel!” Ensign Barry said.

  David couldn’t take his eyes off the ship he’d closed on. A fraction of a second, a hint of a mistake, and they’d collide with the enemy.

  “The Ark is calling for aid.”

  Rachel.

  David glanced at his fleet display. The Ark had shot down three Adversary ships, but now the Azazel had begun to close on it. Atmosphere vented from multiple hull breaches on the Ark, and it banked away, trying to flee the larger Adversary ship. The thing was a nightmare—thirty kilometers of shimmering darkness and golden, fiery eyes. Tens of thousands of eyes.

  RETURN TO THE TRUTH.

  Blinding pain rushed through David’s nerves and sent him into convulsions. He tried to scream, but his throat seized up. He lost control of the Sephirot, and it collided with the Adversary ship. David shook his head, coming around, as the skin of both ships ripped open.

  Damage readings flared all over his console. He couldn’t breathe. Lost half a deck. Dozens of crewmen lost.

  YOU ARE OURS.

  He screamed, trying to block out the visions the Adversary sent of its own universe. Of the black hole devouring him and sucking his soul down into that reality. Of his mother being consumed as the Balthazar vanished into hell.

  The flight stick slipped from his grasp as David clutched his head, trying to block out the voice.

  Leaning, he toppled out of the chair. Even speaking took momentous expenditures of his willpower. “Knight … take over for me.”

  52

  “And if darkness might be withstood, perhaps then, would humanity ascend to something greater than you yet imagine. We seeded within you a spark to ignite potential buried deep in your DNA. It begins, as it always must, with the psychics. It begins, but it does not end, unless you are swept away in the dark. And then we will have failed, utterly.”

  Sefer Raziel, translated by Dr. Rachel Jordan

  THE GREAT ATTRACTOR

  The Sephirot jerked and recoiled, then spun wildly as David fell from the command chair. Knight raced to his side in an instant.

  “Take the stick,” David rasped out.

  Fuck. Knight slipped into the seat.

  “Can you do it?” Phoebe shouted.

  He had to. Should have practiced more. No way he could repeat David’s strafing maneuvers. Flying that close at thousands of kph was well beyond his capabilities.

  The Adversary must have gotten to David. The captain lay on the floor, groaning and struggling to climb back to the chair.

  Knight slapped his comm. “Suzuki! Get up to the bridge. MacGregor’s down.”

  Hundreds of warnings flashed over the consoles. Too many—too many things to keep track of.

  Focus. Mind over matter. He had to boost his adrenaline. Speed up his heart.

  This was no different than hand-to-hand. Timing. Speed. Precision.

  He felt time begin to slow around him as his pulse quickened to superhuman levels. There was no reason preternatural reflexes couldn’t be used in the pilot’s chair.

  Confidence was everything.

  Chronoton streams shot toward him. He saw the trajectories in his mind and swerved, evading them as David had done. He didn’t need to be prescient. Just adapt quickly.

  An energy stream blasted out of the Azazel and slammed into the Ark. Rachel tried to bank away but too late. It carved a piece of the Ark up like a scalpel. A section a kilometer long drifted out into space.

  Knight jerked the ship around. He didn’t have time to play with the other Adversary ships. The Azazel was going to kill Rachel.

  More and more damage readings cropped up on his screens. Hundreds of them. The other Adversary ships pursued him as he closed in on the Azazel. All too eager to use those weapons now there was a bit of distance.

  A spin of the ship evaded the greater number of bolts, but dozens of others impacted the hull.

  “Kinetic shields are down!” Ensign Barry said.

  Fantastic.

  The ship rocked from impact as more chronoton beams drove into it. Power relays blew all over the bridge. Someone screamed as electrical fire engulfed him.

  “Helmets up!” Phoebe said. She fired the antiproton cannon—thankfully not waiting on his orders. She was really in command here anyway.

  Another impact sent a shudder through the entire ship. The Sephirot suddenly became sluggish in responses and careened to port.

  “What the void?” he said.

  “We lost an engine!” Phoebe said. “You need to break away.”

  “I can’t!” Even if he could, Rachel was on the Ark.

  The Azazel and the Ark traded fire. A Wrath beam blew open a hole in the Azazel, but it cost the Ark another segment, which flew free.

  With an engine down, Knight’s attempts to evade chronoton streams had become ten times as difficult. But as he drew up on the Azazel, the other Adversary ships began to cease fire. Returning to focus on the Lotan.

  Knight tried to repeat the maneuver David had done, but he wasn’t the pilot the other man was. And with an engine down … the Sephirot scraped the Azazel’s hull, breaching the sides of both ships.

  “Don’t do that!” Phoebe shouted. “We have to break away. We’ve taken too much damage, Knight.” And yet she continued firing—though Knight’s display told him they’d already lost half their weapons.

  They were all going to die. The Azazel would destroy the Ark, then hunt down the Sephirot. They couldn’t escape, wounded as they were. There was nowhere to run.

  Rachel would perish in a singularity. Phoebe and his unborn child would burn away to ash.

  All because Knight couldn’t do what David had done.

  The Sephirot rocked as another piece blew away.

  Knight wasn’t David.

  But there was one thing he could do. “Order an evacuation!”

  Phoebe groaned. “Damn it!” She slapped her console. “All hands abandon ship. Repeat, get to the escape pods immediately. Break away and regroup.”

  Knight veered hard, trying to stick close to the Azazel. Close enough they couldn’t shoot at him.

  Phoebe jumped up from her station, waving her hands. “All right, go, go, go! Everybody off the bridge.” Crewmen abandoned their stations and ran. Leah arrived just in time to help grab David. “Come on, ninja boy!”

  “Go! You know I’m the fastest. I’ll buy everyone time to get to the escape pods then get off the ship.”

  “Uh, no. I’m not leaving you!”

  Stu
bborn woman. “Get yourself and our baby out of here, now! I promise, I’m not going down with this ship.”

  Phoebe hesitated for a moment, then grabbed his shoulder and squeezed. “If you get yourself killed I’m gonna kick your ass.” And she ran.

  Thankfully.

  Just a little longer. He had to keep close to the enemy. Just long enough for them to escape. Because he had to save them all.

  There was one thing he could do better than David.

  Better than anyone.

  “Computer. Plot trajectory to the Azazel’s hangar. On my screen now.”

  He glanced again and again at the escape pod report. At last they were all gone. No one else on this ship. Just him. And one more mission.

  He banked around the Azazel one more time, broke away, then looped around. “I’m sorry, Phoebe.” Maybe there was no redemption for a Pariah. But he was damn sure going to try.

  After ramping the MAGs to full fire, he braced himself, clutching onto the edge of his command chair. MAG rounds blasted open the already weakened hangar. The Sephirot screamed forward.

  A heartbeat before collision, he reversed the thrusters, slowing his ship. It scraped along the inner hangar, tearing a massive gouge out. Even with inertial negation, the impact flung him from the chair, and he rolled along the bridge to collide with another console.

  His ship shrieked to a halt, now wedged deep in a hangar open to space. Fires sprang up all over the bridge.

  Knight pushed himself up. It was time. These little shits had no idea what was coming for them.

  53

  “I have to believe, with open eyes, mankind will realize the angels were not messengers of God at all. They were … people. People who made mistakes. People who preyed on human weakness, doubt, and gullibility to cast themselves as divine. They came to us with technology maybe millions of years beyond our own, and we thought them gods. But they were like us … and their sin was pride.”

  Dr. Rachel Jordan, Lectures at New Eden

  THE GREAT ATTRACTOR

  Pain flared through Rachel’s psionic nerves—the mental screams of the Ark as the Azazel tore her to pieces. It was like having someone carve off pieces of her own flesh. Almost more than she could bear.

  “Rachel!” Jeremiah shouted.

  She waved him away, and he returned to the weapons console. Her brother was no natural, but he seemed to feel better helping.

  Rachel wasn’t certain she should keep shooting at the enemy flagship. She’d seen the Sephirot crash into it, but there was no implosion. It meant the ship was still whole inside—possibly with someone aboard. She’d swooped to pick up as many escape pods as she could, but she could never be certain there were no people left alive on the ship. David … he must have flown the ship inside. What desperation forced his hand, she couldn’t guess.

  Instead, she launched wave after wave of Wrath beams at the other Adversary ships. With a mental command, she opened a channel to the Lotan.

  “How much longer?”

  “We will. Be ready very. Soon.”

  Soon? How soon was soon? Did these aliens even understand her conception of time? Allied ships disappeared from her screen rapidly. This place had become a graveyard. How many ships had they lost so far? Two thousand? More than that? And just as many on the other side.

  It was Armageddon. This was how the universe ended. Swept away and swallowed by the greatest sin of the angels.

  But Rachel would not give up while she had breath left. If it cost her life, she would take down as many of the Adversary ships as possible. Let the rest of the universe manage Asherah.

  Another Adversary vessel crumpled and imploded under the Wrath of Heaven.

  The Azazel sent a similar beam at the Ark. Rachel banked away, trying to escape it. The thing was too powerful to fight alone. All she could do was try to keep the other ships between her and it.

  Her enemy pursued her at first, then turned on the Lotan.

  Shit.

  She couldn’t win. Rachel spun the Ark around, drawing another barrage of Wrath streams along the Azazel’s hull. Even if David was inside, she … she had no choice. If the Lotan failed, the whole universe was lost. She had to save humanity … she had to …

  And yet, she could only bring herself to fire along the ship’s wings. She couldn’t risk actually destroying it with her husband inside. She just could not do it. God forgive her.

  The bridge door swung open, and Phoebe rushed in. “Get us in there!”

  “What?”

  “Knight’s on that ship! The mangy, stuffed, monkey-brained man-child decided to go one-man army on them! Get me over there, Rachel!”

  “I-I can’t, Phoebe.”

  “What the void do you mean, you can’t?”

  A moment later, David stumbled onto the bridge, his arm draped over Leah’s shoulder as the rahab supported him. Blood streamed from David’s nose and ears like he’d been forcefully delved by a telepath.

  Phoebe grabbed Rachel’s shoulders and shook her. “Get us back there.”

  A second later, Jeremiah pulled Phoebe off her. The hori didn’t fight it—which was good because Miah would have gotten his ass handed to him.

  David was safe. God, David was safe—even if he looked like void. “It’s not possible,” Rachel said. “I have to protect the Lotan, Phoebe. And even if I didn’t, we can’t close on the Azazel. We’re too big, and we’d be blown to pieces.”

  “No!”

  Knight was out there on the flagship of hell.

  Alone.

  From the day they’d met, he’d been protecting her. At first, Rachel knew he’d told himself it was for money. But even back then, Rachel had known there was more to him than that. Now, in the End of Days, he was still protecting her. Protecting everyone. Her breath caught at the thought of it. At even considering leaving him there to face this by himself.

  But all she’d said to Phoebe was true. There was no way to help him, and she had to put the good of humanity first.

  “Phoebe … if he’s alive on there … what do you think he’d want?”

  “I don’t care what he wants—I want him! I want him back!”

  Rachel shut her eyes, allowing herself just a moment. She’d said her goodbyes to David, just in case. But Knight … she’d never really said it.

  And now, maybe she never would.

  “I’m sorry, Phoebe. Knight is on his own.”

  54

  “A knight should never outlive his queen, nor a father his daughter.”

  The Codex, Book of Zaqiel

  THE GREAT ATTRACTOR

  The airlock opened, revealing the decompressed hangar. His boots magnetized, Knight clung to the deck. The katana Raziel had given him was slung over his shoulder, his throwing knives strapped to his thighs, and a string of grenades stuck to his waist. His kyoketsu at his side and pulse pistol in hand. His QEMP tucked inside the suit. He had everything he needed.

  Everything except time.

  With a mad dash, he ran toward the inner airlock. It buzzed, and he stepped inside, accompanied by the whoosh of air as it filled. Still he kept his helmet formed. Beyond the airlock, his telekinetic senses picked up dozens and dozens of humanoid forms, weapons trained on him.

  In a split second, the doors would open, and they would riddle him with MAG rounds. This was the Asheran military, so they might even have plasma rifles. He arced his arms outward, telekinetically grabbing and priming eight of the ten plasma grenades off his belt.

  The doors opened. Knight leapt through in a rush, flinging his arms outward. Grenades flew forward in a semi-circle, detonating around the cargo bay beyond. Plasma explosions cascaded through the massive room. Asheran cyborgs screamed in the chaos.

  And Knight rushed forward. His pulse pounded. Time slowed. He shot a man in the face, then another and another as he dashed forward. He flipped over a stack of crates and swung his sword in the same motion, splitting a skull.

  Cyborgs rushed in around him. A man punched with
cybernetically enhanced strength and speed. Knight twisted to the side, and the blow landed with a thud on a crate, sending it flying into one of the man’s allies. Knight slid to his knees and chopped the cyborg’s legs off.

  He came up in a roll, shot another man, then leapt onto a woman’s shoulders.

  “Somebody kill him!” someone shouted.

  A twist of his ankles flipped the woman through the air, spinning her horizontally into her allies as Knight landed on another crate. He dashed forward, the crates exploding behind him as plasma bursts struck where he had stood a heartbeat before.

  “GR on!” he said. He jumped from the crates onto the wall, and his boots stuck fast, relativizing his gravity to the new surface. Continuing his momentum, he pressed on, running forward and shooting down any cyborgs stupid enough to get in his way.

  These people meant nothing. He had to get to the core. He had to detonate the QEMP. This would all be over. Every other person on this ship would be incapacitated. Just like the Ark. He could do this. He had to do this.

  He flipped off the wall and landed in the midst of a trio guarding the door. Before they could even draw a bead on him, three quick slashes of his sword had felled them all. Cyborgs pursued him as he rushed through the next hall.

  They would never catch him.

  Asheran fools taken by the Beast. Their lives and souls were forfeit long ago. The floor sloped beneath him as he sprinted downhill. Down to the inner chamber. He shot and cut down more people than he could count. They fell in droves. Blood splattered his uniform and blade.

  He needed to move faster. He skidded to a stop, then used his sword to slice a panel out of the floor. He leapt onto it, then lifted it telekinetically. With a mental command, he sent it shooting forward at hundreds of kilometers per hour. Even with his reflexes, he could never shoot all the foes before him at this speed. But then, they couldn’t well shoot him either.