by Dan Schiro
“What?” Again she stopped, then scrambled to stay within his datacube’s light. “That’s not possible. When did you memorize it?”
“On the way to Konnexus,” Orion said, sorry he hadn’t just lied. “And it’s not impossible. I did it.”
“Oh, come on,” Dalaxa scoffed. “Maybe it’s possible, sure, for a pure genius. But I’ve known a few, and you’re… not one.”
“No,” Orion chuckled, “I’m not.”
She stopped with a splash and propped her hands on her hips. “So it’s all bullshit, and you have no idea where you’re going.”
“I’m leading us straight to the basement of the target.” Orion whirled on her, his face set in a frown. “And it is possible, for me, because this is what I’ve been trained to do.”
Dalaxa laughed sarcastically, the sound echoing down the dark tube. “There’s no ‘training’ that can give someone eidetic memory.”
Orion leaned closer to her and lowered his voice. “Look, just because they don’t teach what I do at GCU, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. An old durok taught me everything he knew of… of an ancient discipline, and it’s a lot more than memory tricks. He taught me that the truth of what’s possible is a lot weirder than what most will accept.” He held up his spellblade gauntlet and raised a rippling coat of spikes.
“Arcane secrets and E-tech? Really?” She stepped closer to him, uncowed by his display of power. “I believe what I can quantify and replicate in a lab, nothing more. As for the Engineers’ old toys, no scientist worth their degree trusts that stuff. There’s too much we don’t understand.”
“Look, I’ll make you a deal, Doc.” Orion stepped back with a shake of his head, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I’ll follow your lead when we’re working a centrifuge, and you follow mine when we’re trekking through sewer pipes to take down intergalactic madmen.” He turned and started walking again, his datacube floating out to take the lead.
“Wait,” Dalaxa hissed, hurrying behind him.
They trekked a few minutes more in silence, and then Orion stopped. “This is it,” he whispered. “We should be right below the basement to the warehouse.”
Dalaxa looked around the interior of the pipe as if scanning for a door or a hatch. “Okay…”
Orion took her right hand in his left. “Time to trust me again,” he said as he raised his gleaming manacite gauntlet and opened his armored hand. “Ghosts.”
His spellblade’s red veins pulsed bright and drained dry, and a flash of smoky-white light flowed over them. The gentle, rancid breeze blowing down the tube seemed to relent, but in fact it passed right through their intangible bodies. Dalaxa gasped and gripped Orion’s hand with panicked strength, but he merely grinned.
“I told you they don’t teach what I do at GCU.” He swam up with his free arm, and they floated off the floor of the pipe a few inches. “Take a deep breath.”
Despite what sounded like an argument on the tip of her tongue, Dalaxa did. They drifted up as Orion pulled with his spellblade arm, and stroke after stroke they rose. They floated through the top of the waste pipe, then through the thick sub-strata of the platform before finally emerging in a crawlspace. Light filtered down through a few gridded openings, and the floor close above their heads rang with heavy footsteps. Luckily, Orion and Dalaxa had made it through the foundation of the building in time. Their intangibility quickly faded, the strain of phasing two bodies instead of one sapping the spell’s duration even more than Orion had guessed.
Dalaxa clapped a hand to her mouth as her weight returned and she dropped to the dusty plasticrete floor. Her pink eyes stretched wide, but she held it together and remained quiet. Orion smiled and put a finger to his lips. Stooping, he moved stealthily toward what looked to be a drainage grate in the floor above them. Tipping his head, he tried to make out the muffled conversation above.
“…delivery drone should arrive any moment, Lord Ruga,” said a mewling man with an ambiguous accent. “Then it will be a simple matter to load the last of the components into a cargo capsule and—”
“The Grand Warlord is impatient, Tobir,” said a deep, husky voice, its rough tones definitely durok. “There is a possibility that the plan has been compromised.”
“Worry not,” Tobir assured him. “The gangs we paid and armed to patrol Tatumu District have kept the authorities away for months. And,” he added, seemingly scrambling for something that would placate the durok, “the holes they’ve melted in the platform have made this warehouse quite inaccessible.”
“Nevertheless,” growled Ruga. “I’ll endure no more delays.”
“Checking the ETA of the cargo capsule now, my lord.” A computer console bleated gently. “There we are — tracking shows it’s minutes away.”
“Good,” Ruga grunted.
Pulling his datacube out of his cloak, Orion opened a holographic interface and dashed out a silent message to Aurelia and Kangor. Found TMT agents in position to strike dog ok? He pinged his location.
He waited a few moments while the durok paced above his head, and then a line of light green words tagged with Aurelia’s signature appeared. Mopping up thugs fart machine fine hold position. Another moment passed, followed by more green text. Need to see to wounded then will rally hold position.
Orion dashed a line back. Attack location ASAP make big noise.
Hold position, appeared almost immediately.
Orion shook his head. No time.
He tucked his datacube away and swiveled in the dust to face Dalaxa. “Stay hidden, stay quiet,” he whispered to her, his voice barely audible.
“Wait,” she mouthed to him.
Orion shook his head and pointed to the reinforced corner of the crawlspace. “There, go,” he said in a hushed voice. As he turned away from her and crept toward the light of the drain, he heard the two men above talking again.
“Ah, the drone’s arrived,” declared the sniveler, Tobir. “Touching down in the launch yard as we speak, Lord Ruga. Shall we?”
“Yes, of course,” said Ruga. “But first start the meltdown protocol for the equipment. Your work is done here, Tobir.”
Orion heard the tap-tap of keys, a warning tone and a chime. Then the footsteps above him converged and a door opened with a pneumatic hiss. Orion waited for a few thumping beats of his heart, ensuring the odd couple had exited the area above him. Then, no longer worried about making noise, he slammed his manacite-armored fist into the metal lattice above him. It held fast for the first few punches, but on his fourth grunting uppercut, it burst free from its concrete fixture.
Orion hauled himself up, leaped to his feet and scanned the large, square space. The walls of the windowless gray lab were scored and smeared with age, but machines between them gleamed as if straight off the assembly line. He noted a strange mix of diagnostic stations, holographic terminals, 3D fabricators, laser lathes, anti-grav tubes and more, and for a moment he wished he could save the evidence that might aid their cause. But all of the holo-interfaces showed the same dial ticking from green to yellow to red. A soothing digital voice emanated from hidden speakers, saying, “Preparing for thermal sterilization. Please evacuate the area. Preparing for thermal sterilization. Please evacuate…”
“Dalaxa!” Orion bent and shouted down the hole. “Stay below if you like having skin.”
Orion had to stop that launch — those final components might be the difference between a weapon of planetary destruction and a pile of useless parts. He charged through an open cargo door and pelted up a gentle ramp with long scrapes in its surface, emerging into the windy launch yard of Govan’s Resale Warehouse. High, white floodlights illuminated a flat square of plasticrete between the administrative building and the huge warehouse. Towering walls crowned by loops of razor wire wore coats of black soot from countless launches and landings over years. In the middle of the launch yard, two figu
res worked together between a delivery drone piled with packaged goods and a tall cargo capsule. They moved quickly to cram the parcels into the open hatch of the capsule that would take the supplies to orbit for pick-up.
Orion conjured a longsword to his hand. “Union agent, stop right there,” he yelled at the stocky durok and the hunchbacked mole-man. “Lay down on the ground and prepare to be arrested.”
The mole-man gave a soft yelp and spun to look at Orion, almost tripping on his wrinkled green smock. The fire-red durok pivoted slowly, the ammo vest atop his leather jerkin clinking, and turned his two twisted horns down at Orion. “Keep loading, Tobir,” said the durok, his husky voice carrying across the windy launch yard. “I’ll deal with this.”
“But Lord Ruga, he has a—”
“I said, I’ll deal with this,” Ruga thundered as he stalked toward Orion.
Orion raised his sword and pointed the tapered tip at Ruga. “Lay down now or die, scrub. You have no idea who you’re about to try.”
Ruga smiled, baring his short fangs, and narrowed his yellow eyes to slits as he advanced. “On the contrary,” he said, extending his right hand and letting the living metal of a spellblade cover him to the elbow. “This is the moment the Grand Warlord forged me to face.”
Orion let his sword drop for a split second, surprised to see his ancient weapon matched. Ruga conjured a large, jagged barbarian sword, and as Orion reassessed the violent variables of the equation, Ruga charged. As the two of them met blade-to-blade, Orion could tell the durok had been drilled to near technical perfection as he parried and attacked, parried and attacked. Still, Ruga didn’t have the shadow-society training Orion did. Their swords clashed a dozen times before Orion took advantage of Ruga’s chronic reliance on power strokes and tripped the durok’s slow feet out from under him. Yet as Orion readied the killing thrust, Ruga rolled away, ripped a small canister from his ammo vest and flung it back at Orion.
If he had been spared a second to think about it, Orion might have been blown to shreds. But a mix of White Room mathematics and pure instinct moved his sword in time, swatting the tiny bomb across the launch yard. It zipped through the air and into the open hatch of the cargo capsule as if riding a frozen rope, and Tobir the mole-man barely flung himself away in time. The cargo capsule rocked with a spurt of fire and furious sound, and though the explosion couldn’t pop the space-worthy hull, it toppled over with a plume of smoke churning out of its hatch.
“Looks like your Grand Warlord isn’t going to get his goodies,” Orion said as the durok scrambled to his feet. “You can’t beat me, you know that, right? You know it’s over, right?” Orion took a few slow steps to close the space between them, his spellblade yearning to taste fresh blood.
Ruga sprinted toward Tobir and plucked the diminutive alien off the ground by the front of his green smock. Before Orion could intervene, Ruga drew back his jagged barbarian sword and impaled the mole-man. Tobir’s buck-toothed mouth opened as if to scream, but the crackle of the burning cargo capsule drowned out his last rattle. Bright red blood flowed down Ruga’s spellblade gauntlet as he tore the sword free, and the metal of his living weapon pulsed with neon green veins. He kicked the limp body away and spun to face Orion, a menacing smile on his red face.
“My father will be very pleased when I bring him a new spellblade for his collection,” he growled.
Gauzy green light danced over Ruga’s body, and even as Orion took his first step to strike him down, Ruga transformed. Bones snapped and rearranged, and the durok screamed as he sprouted to over nine feet tall, suddenly impossibly muscular and weighing at least several tons. He enlarged his barbarian sword by a factor of three, the blade wicked with disemboweling barbs, and screamed at Orion. “Now you die, Union dog!”
The goliath leaped, and Orion felt the chill of his great shadow coming down on him.
Chapter 10
Orion vanished his longsword, dove and rolled, narrowly escaping the swinging barbarian blade that cleaved the plasticrete launch pad with a splintering crack. He sprang to his feet ready to attack, but the colossally mutated durok wrenched the sword free and swung again. Orion bent back like a reed in the wind, and the blade sailed over him with a hum that seemed to split air molecules. Going with the momentum of his body, Orion fell into a back handspring and flipped away from another stroke of the barbed sword. Ruga lunged after him, cursing and frothing, and Orion turned and ran.
He sprinted for the corner of the tall walls surrounding the launch yard, Ruga thundering after him like an enraged bull. Leaping, Orion planted a foot on one wall, then the other wall and propelled himself toward the top. His gauntlet’s clawed fingertips managed to catch and dig into the ledge by the narrowest of margins. After pulling himself up with a desperate grunt, Orion rolled over the razor wire, counting on his smartcloak to save his skin from shredding. He fell some 20 feet to the other side, but his kinetic bodysuit absorbed the impact, and for a moment Orion thought he was safe. Then he took a step forward to gather himself, barely catching his balance at the edge of a large hole melted through the planetary platform. A gust of wind tousled his hair as he stared into an abyss as wide as a dropship, the dim lights and open fires of lower structures winking up at him.
“Backup,” Orion gasped, clawing for his datacube. “Gonna need backup.”
Orion took a deep breath but never had time to exhale. The gigantic durok bashed straight through the wall, blasting Orion with a blizzard of plasticrete shards. Ruga bellowed as he charged headlong into the hole, knocking Orion off balance on his way. Orion lashed back with his spellblade’s liquid-metal claws, and for a split-second he thought he would be able to haul himself back up. But the edge of the melted hole crumbled as he snagged it, and Orion plunged into a pinhole in Konnexus’ crisscrossing air traffic lanes, causeways, airlifts and platforms. Ruga plummeted close ahead of him swinging his barbaric sword, but even the oversized blade could not make up the space between them. After a moment Ruga simply called the weapon back into his gauntlet, opened his arms and fell, laughing up at Orion the whole way.
In the face of his enemy’s resignation, Orion’s mind raced to find a way to survive. With a fleeting thought, he wished he had not spent his “fly” spell back in his battle with LaVal LaVoy, or that he had a drop of blood magic to cast any spell at all. Instead, he groped for the pockets of his flapping smartcloak and managed to free his datacube and some diamond-fiber climbing wire. Quick and sloppy, he looped the end of the silky wire around the cube and fumbled with a crude double knot. The shadows around him grew ever deeper as he careened past the last few platforms and buildings with electricity, then past the bonfires and vague dancing shapes of lower structures. When he could see no more than the ruined silhouette of the city beneath the city he threw his datacube, saying a prayer to any god who might be listening.
The shadows were pure ink when Orion felt the diamond-fiber line go taut in his manacite-armored hand. He swung in a long arc, his bowels clenched tight as he prayed again, this time hoping not to hit anything on his unplanned bungee jump. After a few long passes back and forth, Orion’s momentum waned without collision. He almost had time to breathe a sigh of relief before whatever his datacube had snagged gave way.
“You’re kidding meeee—” Orion wailed as he fell again, the climbing wire slack in his hands.
His cry didn’t have a chance to run out of air before his backside crunched to the ground. Pain radiated from his tailbone, but even if his kinetic bodysuit couldn’t absorb all the sting, it had saved him from paralysis. He lay back in a stinking carpet of trash, groaning and stretching his aching limbs, trying to feel lucky to be alive. Then his datacube caught up with him and hit him in the forehead like a small brick.
When Orion recovered consciousness, his head throbbed and blood clotted in his eyebrows. He rose stiffly to his feet, making sure nothing was broken, and gave his senses a moment to adjust to the shadow-
land. He stood ankle-deep in a shallow carpet of decaying garbage, all rinds and wrappers and sludgy masses, but the lumpy surface beneath seemed compacted. The landfill rolled in gentle heaps and soft hills around fallen causeways, crumbling buildings and the immense platform pillars that stretched up toward the patchwork night sky. Rust-eaten aircars and small dropships peppered the surface, having either crashed to the lowest level or been discarded there long ago. The dark air was hot and thick, and Orion had to stifle a gag at the rancid stench. He wondered — had he found the ground floor of the ancient trade world, or was there still farther to fall?
Orion heard a crash in the distance, and he climbed a hillock of putrefying trash with careful steps. Not far from where Orion had landed, a monstrous, shadowy shape got to his feet in a great crater. Ruga roared with rage, still enormously muscled from the effects of his spellblade. A flashing glimmer told Orion that the durok had conjured a new barbarian sword just as beastly with barbs as his last.
“Where are you?!” Ruga screamed as he thrashed and swung his sword. “I’ll find you! I’ll break you! I’ll rape you to death for what you’ve done!”
Carefully, quietly, Orion backed down the garbage heap, hoping the soft tumble of the refuse wouldn’t give away his position. As Ruga tore bombs from his vest and hurled them into the shadows, Orion pulled his cloak around his body, settled in at the bottom of the hill and prepared to wait. If he could outlast the spell that gave Ruga his invincible strength, it would be a simple matter to slide into Sliver of a Shadow and assassinate him with a blade through the back.
Mere seconds had passed when a chittering rose in the darkness, the unnerving clicks growing nearer by the second. Glancing around, he picked out a pair of yellow-green eyes reflecting the fractional light. Soon another pair of limy eyes joined it, then more and more, each set bobbing as they cooed and clicked at him. Slowly, carefully, soundlessly, Orion pulled his blood-spattered datacube out of his pocket. “Illuminate,” he whispered, the cube held forth in his hand.
