‘Why the void have they taken so long?’ James asked pointedly, staring disbelievingly at the message from Yobu. It didn’t explain much. Just a status report and congratulations on the campaign.
‘The Aegis emissary has concluded his business, but missives from the Word Lector state that he has remained on Mars to conduct other business.’
‘Doesn’t explain why my people are still there. I need my commanders, and my pilot.’
James tensed his hand on the data-tab. There were plenty of times he’d have wanted Erryn piloting his flagship. Too many times to count.
‘Missives sent while you were absent explained that while the High Protector is personally sympathetic to the cause, he cannot circumvent High Command in this matter. The other Council-Generals see our nation-state as an upstart border world. Nothing more. They also don’t want to legitimise us, due to our…how should I put it? Termination of Dedelux’s rule.’
‘He was a skiting traitor.’
‘He was never put on trial for that.’
‘And neither was I.’
Penholdt bowed to James’ wisdom.
James sighed. ‘That’s enough, Penholdt. Thanks. You are dismissed.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Penholdt bowed, much to James’ chagrin, and left.
Extra notifications were appearing on James’ holo-screen, but he was tired. They had only docked two days ago. He needed more time to recover. Not only from his battlefield tended wounds, but also from the excitement. One didn’t just immediately adjust back into peaceful life.
A thought occurred to James to visit Re’lien.
No, seen enough of her and her of me.
But she was probably also adjusting. May be a bit upset by the xenophobia…
Don’t want to add fuel to the fire.
But she’s a friend. And friends look out for each other.
Before he could account for his movements, James was on the way to Re’lien’s quarters. And before he could catch himself again, he was opening Re’lien’s door.
Re’lien and James stared at each other, wide-eyed. A look of surprise crossed Re’lien’s features. A look of shock crossed James’.
‘Um, what’s up?’ Re’lien said, repressing a slight stutter and pulling up her pants in a haste.
James’ face went as red as Trooper crimson. Incompressible babble escaped his mouth. Re’lien, finished dressing, rolled her eyes.
‘There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before – but you should still knock.’
James didn’t reply. Re’lien sighed. ‘That’s one thing I don’t understand about humans. Nudity isn’t something to get so worked up about.’
James still stood in the doorway, face hot. Nudity was a rarity among Zonians. Thermal-cleaners kept people hygienic without taking their clothes off. The only reason to ever be nude was for excretions and…intimacy.
Re’lien snorted in amusement. ‘Well, come in.’
After some brief hesitation, James entered and closed the door behind him.
Re’lien’s quarters were larger than James’. While James had specifically chosen a smaller room, since he hardly used it, Re’lien had been given the official Trooper envoy’s quarters. While not lavish, it was comfortable, with a lounge area jutting out from the bedroom, a bathroom and a food-processing unit. James noted a lack of syns. Re’lien also had a distaste for them.
They both took a seat. Re’lien leaned back, legs crossed and fingers steepled on her lap. She smiled faintly, expectantly.
What am I doing here? James asked himself.
‘Uh…just checking up. How are you doing?’
Re’lien sighed and shook her head.
‘It’s been an adjustment, James. Almost a year on campaign. Got used to it…’
‘Really?’
As much as Re’lien had proven to be a powerful warpmancer, James didn’t quite see her as the soldiering type.
‘Sure.’
Re’lien frowned. Her ears twitched.
‘Well, not all of it. I thought I had left killing behind me, then I did it again, then I thought I’d left it again.’
James’ bemusement showed. Re’lien sighed again.
‘I don’t like taking life. I’m not sure you do either, but it seems to come easier to you.’
A vision of an old man bleeding on his concrete floor invaded James’ vision. James repressed a shudder but couldn’t help but rub his hands together. Re’lien’s ears twitched and her eyes darted to his hands. She didn’t comment and rather continued.
‘I told myself a few times that I would never kill again. Each time was a lie. But I do not feel bad for lying to myself. I see now that killing is necessary. If I do it for the right reasons, for the right people, then I will abide it.’
James, shaken out of his brief reverie, looked up and couldn’t help but admire the girl before him.
What am I thinking? He shook the thought away.
‘So, you got used to being on campaign?’
Re’lien smiled.
‘Yes. It was, I dare say, exciting. Like an action v-flick. But that’s not it, really. It made me feel like I belonged. At first, it was like everywhere else I’ve been. Soldiers looked askance. Some reached for their guns without thinking. Was just you, for whatever reason you have to trust me, and Krag-Zot by my side. But after Sekai, everyone started to change. They smiled when they saw me. They greeted me. They invited me to sit with them in the mess hall. After Sekai, they saw me as one of them. Not just some edal witch who has her claws in their leader…’
‘You put your life on the line for them. Served in the trenches with them. Went over the top with them. You saved their lives…and mine.’
James whispered that last part. If Re’lien noticed, she didn’t respond.
Damn diplomatic façade!
There was a pause, and before any awkwardness could erupt, James continued.
‘I’m glad the troops see that you are an ally. I just wish the civilians would realise this.’
‘I don’t blame them.’
James raised his eyebrow. Re’lien crossed her arms.
‘Well, sure I do. Nobody likes to be alienated – even if they are an alien. But I get it. On Mars, I was attacked because of the Ganymede Incident. People felt an honest to void anger at me for something that happened over a decade ago. And I felt they were right in their hatred. If I even apply a little bit of that logic to the Zonians, then they’re justified. People who look like me took away their planet only little more than two standard years ago. Void! Why don’t you hate me for it?’
James frowned, and leaned in. Re’lien had started speaking loudly at the end. She was usually so reserved. So formal. Almost cold in her ability to remain calm. But her blue cheeks were reddening, forming an odd purple, and her breathing was quickening.
‘Why don’t you hate me, James?’ she asked, as if more to herself than to him.
He didn’t respond. He couldn’t. He leaned closer and Re’lien seemed to want to recede further into her chair. Her eyes darted all around him, anxious, unknowing. No façade of a trained diplomat. Just Re’lien. And James knew that he did not hate her and never had. For, while her race had taken so much from him and his people, she had not. And while she had grown up countless light years away, with blue skin and pointy ears, James knew that they had both suffered and lost.
James placed his hand on Re’lien’s knee. She didn’t recoil. Her breathing halted and so did his.
And then James felt a pang in his gut.
A product of his feelings?
No.
He had felt it before.
Back at Pebble Rock.
Before…
The wall exploded. A flash. A gust of wind and the suction of the torrential outdoors. Geradite walling turned to white powder and ash. James’ head felt full of nails. He blinked, and his vision blurred. His ears rang.
Re’lien…
Where?
A dark shape before h
im. He reached out. His shoulders screamed at him. But he reached forward and gripped the shape. Hard. Cold. His vision cleared, just a bit.
And then he saw them.
Hooded. Like wraiths. Humanoid shadows. They twisted by the hole to the outside, as toxic fumes rushed in.
Re’lien…
By their feet. She lay prostrate. Eyes closed, arms splayed. Her black pony-tail was covered with white powder.
The figures advanced, and as they did, the incorporeal twisting of shadow below them turned into legs covered with black melding fibres. James couldn’t count how many of them there were. They were individuals, yet a morass all the same.
And then one stopped by Re’lien.
And James’ senses returned to him.
Visualise.
James’ conduit glowed.
Manifest.
James lifted himself to his knees, despite the throbbing in his head, and held his conduit glove towards the advancing figures. They stopped.
Act.
Fire. A hell-storm of blue flame erupted from James’ hand and strafed across the room. James felt the heat on his own skin. It devoured everything, including the toxic particles trying to invade the room from the crystal fields below.
And then the flames extinguished.
The shadows remained.
Warp-shards flew, and James raised a shield, deflecting them. Re’lien still lay by the foot of the figures. James gritted his teeth and charged. Shards flew, blasts buffeted against him. He deflected and dodged. Missed projectiles seared his flesh. Cutting him. Sending excruciating pain through his entire being. He closed the gap, and the figure closest to him flinched. Its head exploded as he let out a blast alongside his punch. Red blood sprayed and stained the ash.
James’ body burnt.
Just a bit more.
He ducked just in time as a blade passed over his head. He spun and grabbed the leg of the assailant. He cooked its blood and burst its arteries. It cried and fell back, its lower leg splitting off from the upper with a squelch and spray.
Heat strafed across James’ back, but he didn’t cry out. He gritted his teeth and let loose a volley of warp-shards with a desperate flourish. The glowing blue knives were deflected but some hit their targets, causing them to stumble. James leapt at the closest assailant and caught them by the throat. Its mask was flung off in the chaos and James found himself looking into the eyes of a middle-aged human woman. Her eyes were frightened, but her mouth was caught in a sneer. She tried to send a blast at him with her conduit, but he twisted her arm just in time. The blast hit one of her compatriots, sending them reeling. James aimed his conduit at her face, but she batted it out of the way, and then kneed him in the crotch. Despite his combat padding, the blow winded him.
Warp-shards flew.
Shadow figures fell.
Wide-eyed, the middle-aged woman locked in melee with James looked behind him. He broke out of her hold and blasted her stomach away with a point-blank blast of pure warp-energy. He spun.
Re’lien stood, hunched over, eye closed and covered in blood from a forehead cut, with her conduit levelled at the shadows. As one, James and Re’lien released a barrage. Fire. Shards. Blasts. Raw power. There was no time to visualise, to think. There was only the time to release their primacy. Their untamed power.
A faint-blue bubble erupted around the shadows. Some within fell, bursting into pink mist. The others advanced.
And then Re’lien and James stopped.
The shadows charged, and James met them in a melee. Kicking, punching, dodging, grappling, smashing. Warp was used like a shotgun, levelled against the head of a man to be executed. James was soaked in blood. His own and that of the countless shadows pouring into the room. In the chaos, James could not see Re’lien, and that made him all the angrier. All the more willing to spill more blood.
And the shadows thinned. Blast, head smashed, arm severed, blood on the roof and floors. And James saw Re’lien. Her skin was caked in red. A patch of her hair had been burnt off, leaving a scorched scalp. She was surrounded, and behind her, a man with a knife.
James yelled, a primal roar, and let out a shockwave, pushing back all those around him. He shot like a rocket, letting loose all his energy at the man behind Re’lien. Like a shotgun shell, the man burst into bloody tendrils. Re’lien noticed the blood splatter on her and then James heading towards her. She made a move towards him, and then fell with a cry as shards protruded from her legs.
No…
James screamed and with the last of his energy, let out an inferno that consumed all those immediately around him.
There was silence.
James keeled over and vomited onto the scorched fake metal. Charred skeletons surrounded him. Fewer than he would have thought. The shadows seemed to stare at him in horror. So did Re’lien, who was on the floor, legs singed and bloodied.
Then the shadows let forth a volley of warp-shards.
James put his hand out to raise a shield.
And then felt his chest explode.
He looked down. Holes the size of fists. Blood. Black. His skin was turning to ash.
‘No!’ Re’lien yelled and tried to stand. She couldn’t move her legs.
James’ vision went black, and all he could hear was screaming.
Re’lien saw red. She saw James collapse. Every shard sent a puff of blood, like red smoke. She screamed and tried to lunge forward. To make a shield. To take the blows herself. But she couldn’t. And James fell.
So, she screamed. She screamed as she had never done before.
And she became the Reaper. The Devil Child. Fear Itself.
The shadows became human. No longer incorporeal wraiths. And while Re’lien lay prostrate on the floor, in a puddle of her and other’s blood, she let out a wave of pure terror.
The shadows froze, like mozar caught in head-lights. And then they fell. They turned on each other. They screamed. One tore its mask off and began clawing at its own eyes. And the others ran. Re’lien clenched her fist, holding herself up with her one arm as she lay on the ground, her lower body limp. Then she let loose pure power. The shadows popped as they attempted to retreat. One by one. Bones protruded from exploded limbs. Until there was one left. Re’lien took aim and stopped.
Kei.
Kei stood before her. In the outfit he had worn when they had first met. He looked the same, but sad. He stood on the precipice, wind buffeting his blonde hair and clothes. Re’lien still held her hand up to him, ready to fire.
But she couldn’t.
Kei shook his head, and then fell.
Re’lien snapped out of it. Her vision blurred, and then she saw him. James, a bloody pulp in the centre of a circle of scorched geradite.
‘No,’ Re’lien whispered. She crawled to him, pulling herself along. Blood trailed behind her. She kept moving. Broken glass pierced her arm. She kept crawling.
‘No.’
She pushed a corpse out of the way and continued forward.
James’ face was still recognisable, locked into a shocked and angry stare. His eyes were blank. His chest was ripped open. Eviscerated.
Re’lien’s vision blurred and she felt stinging in her eyes. Then tears.
‘No.’
She crawled over, and lifted James’ head.
‘Don’t you vokken die on me!’ she shouted.
Tears fell onto James’ face, melding with the blood and the ash.
‘James? Please…don’t die on me. Don’t do this.’
Re’lien clutched James’ form close to her chest. And when she received no reply from her friend, she shouted. She screamed. She begged.
He didn’t move.
And when Re’lien’s voice grew too hoarse and stopped altogether, she placed her head on his, and wept.
“Battles may be won with weapons, but wars are won by the will to use them.” – Gert the Agitator.
Chapter 19.
Spontaneous Order
Th
e firelight painted shadows on the walls, playing a puppet-show that didn’t resemble their physical counterparts. The fire emanated from a valathene gas tank, placed under a metal frame bearing kindling. On top of it all was a hanging pot. It was bubbling, letting loose the homely smell of flame-cooked veggies, meat and stew.
Around the fire sat a human, an enque, a vacaraptor and some grays. More like them sat around other fires across the mountainside. Many more stood in the dark, shouldering rifles, or leaning up against rocket-lances, trying to stay awake.
One of the grays was clutching a banner in his arms. It was hastily stitched together. Definitely not by any tailor. Bagash, the gray, said he was going to find a professional to fix it when he could. It was strafed with holes and scorch-marks. Even so, it was the gray’s prize possession. Blue lines, criss-crossed over a black background. Derk wondered how it hadn’t been hit by an incendiary round or plasma blast. Bagash and many of the others took it as a sign. A testament to their destiny.
The vacaraptor, Mul’gu, ladled the stew into some tin cups and handed one to each person around the fire. She handed one to Derk, who thanked her with a nod. Eventually, she sat down and began eating the stew herself, lifting it up to her elongated crocodilian mouth and gulping it down like water.
‘So…’ the enque began. It wasn’t eating. It had already filled itself on bugs earlier in the day. ‘How did we all get here?’
Here, Derk thought. An Imperial occupied town in the arse-end of the galaxy. The place where the Troopers didn’t care about. Only shadow corps and skites like Zerian to push people around. Only them, and now Imperials. But no longer.
‘We answered the call,’ Bagash said, tightening his grip around his banner. His fellow grays nodded. ‘Grag-Po has been reborn. The Ancient Empire awakens, and we will see it liberate our people, and all people.’
Mul’gu nodded. Despite her predatory reptilian visage, she managed to look warm. Friendly.
‘But how did you get here?’ the enque insisted.
‘Warships bearing the blue X, brother,’ another gray replied. The rest nodded.
‘Like the rest of us,’ Mul’gu added.
The enque blinked its big black eyes. ‘And you, sister-lizard. Why are you here?’
Ascension Page 29
