Chapter 5
Kay squatted at the front edge of the conn tower. Jayce stood behind him; his hold on the plastic grip creaked as he rolled his hand backward and forward. High thunderclouds filled the horizon, the tops stretched into anvils by high-altitude winds.
“You good, Jayce?” Kay licked an eye.
“Huh, what?” Jayce shook his head like he’d just woken up.
“You’re mad at me, yeah?” The amphibian alien lifted his feet off the conn tower and flexed his toes. “I didn’t know it would be so . . . weird.”
“Thanks, Kay, really appreciate that,” Jayce said with little sincerity. “Let’s see if we actually get paid or if we get fed to the neko-fish at the bottom of the flotilla.” He looked back to the engines where Carotan was alone. The Syndicate boss kept touching his jacket where he kept the Veil stone.
“See, this is when it’s good to be friends with me. You? You’re going off-world. No one’s going to look for you. Too easy to drop you for neko food. Me? I go missing and my clan comes looking for me. Problems for the Syndicate. Questions asked. Questions that need to be answered. A cut to the big boss that wasn’t paid. Cheaper to let me live. And you. You too.”
“At least I’ve got that going for me,” Jayce said. He stood up on his toes. “Flotilla, ho!”
The tops of distant stacks and lights from the vice barges appeared in the distance.
Syndicate members came onto the deck and began readying ropes and preparing to dock.
“Strange clouds,” Kay said. “Too dark for the weather.”
“Odd.” Jayce peered at a dark mass in the storm clouds over his home flotilla. “Something’s casting a shadow in the storm.”
“Port authority’s not coming up.” Gorgi leaned out of the conn and tapped a headphone over one ear. “Your float not know how to do their job?”
“My clan works the comms. We take pride in our work,” Kay said.
In the distance, the clouds broke around the shape, revealing the prow of a ship.
“Is that the Farnham? Is that your ride out of here?” Kay asked.
The clouds cleared and Jayce made out weapon emplacements that a merchant ship like the Farnham would never have carried. This was a warship, one larger than the flotilla it hung over. The hull was a dirty egg-shell color, marred by battle damage and scars of rough slipspace exits. Turrets along the ventral hull slewed to aim turbo laser batteries at the ships lashed together.
Giant blast doors opened slowly. Dark shapes of fighters swooped out and flew through the sky.
The last of the clouds blew past the ship, revealing a symbol on the hull made from shattered fragments of defeated ships.
Ice ran through Jayce’s chest.
“The Tyrant is here!” Kay shouted, hopping up and down. “They’re going to kill us all and turn us into—”
A bullet snapped over Jayce’s head. He ducked down level with Kay, who’d lost interest in hopping. Carotan ran up to the conn, pistol barrel smoking.
“Gorgi! Turn us about and make for the Mackanara flotilla. We’ve got plenty of charge in the engines—”
A shadow roared overhead. The wake slammed the clipper a heartbeat later, sweeping water and spray into Jayce.
The ship turned away from the flotilla toward an escape. A pair of bright yellow plasma bolts slammed into the water ahead of them. Geysers shot up and rained down on Jayce and the conn.
A Tyrant fighter, the wings fashioned to resemble stretched flesh, hovered over the ship, the prows aligned. The fighter swung toward the flotilla, pointing the way for the clipper.
“Gorgi . . . take us in,” Carotan said. “They’re not here for the Veil stone. They spent more than that to get here from their territory.”
“How is the Tyrant here?” Kay hugged Jayce’s knee. “I thought he was killed years ago.”
“You can tell them that when we dock,” Jayce said. “They’re not supposed to be here . . .” Jayce thought to the photo of his father in the Tyrant’s uniform back in his hovel. It had come through the Net the last time he and his mother ever heard from him.
The clipper rumbled forward through choppy water.
“All of you listen up,” Carotan addressed the crew. “Let me do the talking. The Tyrant’s survivors aren’t idiots. They know better than to mess with a Syndicate world. Our two stars have them by the throat.” He touched the patch sewn into his sleeve at the shoulder. “We keep the Governance from moving on the sectors they still control, they abide by our rules in our space. Same as everyone else. They pay the vig or we take it from them.”
“The Tyrant kidnaps the living and turns them into no-mind cyborgs.” Kay clutched Jay harder. “I’m too young to be forced into the army!”
“Shh!” Jayce put a hand on Kay’s head. “That’s just a rumor. Let’s just stay calm. Isn’t this why the bosses always tell us they get a cut? Because they run interference for us and keep raiders away.”
“There’s nothing but slime eels in the tanks. What does the Tyrant want with that?” Kay asked.
“Tyrant’s dead. Everyone knows that . . . so what are they even doing this far from the Core?” Jayce said. “How do they even have a battleship?”
“Do you want to ask them?” Kay slunk behind Jayce’s legs.
“No . . . but I’ve got a bad feeling we’re going to find out.” Jayce spotted a navigation buoy and made a long, multi-pitched whistle. Crew went to work prepping their arrival.
“What’s the boss man going to tell the Tyrant’s men? That we were out fishing?” Kay asked.
“Hold’s empty.” Jayce shrugged.
“Maybe we’re bad fisherman. We’ll tell them the big one got away, yeah?” Kay mumbled as the clipper motored into the piers beneath Carotan’s barge. Tall soldiers in black-and-white armor and long battle rifles waited for them at the docks.
The uniforms echoed the simple high-collared tunic his father wore in the last photo he ever sent home. The soldiers’ armor was dented and scratched; the mail bodysuits under the plates had different styles, like they’d cobbled together a full set from different manufactures. The black-and-white bands of armor were woven together to give them the appearance of skeletons from a distance.
The soldiers’ silhouettes looked human, except for the one crouched on the edge of the pier, clawed feet gripping the rusted wharf. Long arms that ended in skin the color of an old bruise and glittering nails that scraped against metal. The lurker’s helm had an elongated snout and bared teeth worked into the faceplate.
The soldier’s eye slits glowed red.
“Oh boy.” Jayce swallowed hard.
“Hello!” Carotan put one foot up on the gangplank. “How can the Syndicate assist yo—ah!”
The feral-looking soldier grabbed him by the front jacket and threw him to the pier.
Coil rifles whined and targeting dots appeared on the crew’s chests as the soldiers edged toward Carotan, who had his hands up.
A waft of cold air hit the back of Jayce’s head. He felt something touch the side of his neck. He glanced down and saw a long blade coated in frost perilously close to his exposed skin.
“Be a dear and step off,” a voice whispered in his ear. It was heavily modulated and soft. “No heroes. No trouble.”
Jayce turned to look at who was behind him on the conn tower but the cold of the knife stung him without drawing blood.
The voice tsk-tsk-tsk’d at him.
“Moving,” Jayce said quietly. He hopped off the conn tower and landed on the pier. He joined a line of the rest of the crew. The soldiers formed a loose perimeter around them. The wolfen soldier kept one clawed hand on Carotan’s chest, drumming nail tips against his jacket.
A blur moved off the conn tower and hit the pier without a sound. The smear of light collapsed into an ivory-and-gold stone nearly identical to the one they’d recovered from the Shrine.
A lithe figure materialized behind the stone. His armor was matte black, with small horns on a skull-fronted helmet. The Veil stone glimmered until the soldier pressed a palm to it. He raised his other hand and leveled the frosted short sword at the crew.
“Which one is it, Reman?” he asked, his voice skewed by his full-faced helmet.
“They all reek of the Veil, Master.” The Draug soldier removed his mask, revealing a lupine face. One cybernetic eye glowed from a dull metal plate over one side of his face that stretched partway down his snout. Cybernetic muscles flexed on one shoulder. Reman sniffed the air.
“I am Lahash, sworn officer in the Tyrant’s service.” The skull-faced soldier walked slowly around the crew. His sword grew longer; the tip scratched out a line on the dock. “All artifacts of the Realm Beyond belong to him by right. All those touched by the Realm Beyond will serve the Tyrant by right.”
Kay, next to Jayce, began sweating, leaving an oily sheen on his skin.
Jayce frowned at his friend, who shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
“I feel it,” Lahash said. “Something fresh from beyond the Veil. It’s delicate . . . in need of curing to be put to proper use for the Tyrant’s glory. I do not wish to damage it. I want the stone and I want the one . . . who called it forth.”
“This world is under the Syndicate’s protection,” Carotan snarled. “There’s a deal between the Tyrant and the Family. You can’t just—urk!”
Reman squeezed Carotan’s throat.
Lahash took his time as he walked over to Carotan as the man went blue without oxygen. He raised his hand and shuffled two fingers against each other. Reman loosened his grip.
“Does this situation”—Lahash glanced up at the edge of the warship’s hull visible over the pier—“feel equal to you? The Tyrant takes what is ours. The pair of freaks running your little operation agreed to that. Now . . . give me the stone and give me the Attuned that called the stone into our realm.”
“Sh-she lied to me!” Carotan laughed nervously. “The witch was never Attuned. That’s why the Weeping Saint punished her. She’s nothing but dust.”
“Liar,” Reman snorted. “The Attuned is here. One of them has the power or has the stone. You feel it?”
“I do.” Lahash raised a hand and Reman hauled Carotan to his feet. “Where did you hide the stone?”
“It’s mine!” Carotan canted his head to one side to glare at Norva, then one hand brushed against his jacket.
Lahash flicked his sword and the blade slashed across Carotan’s chest. He cried out in surprise as he fell back onto the dock. His sliced jacket flew open and the box holding the stone taken from the Shrine flipped open. There was a glint in the air and a stone landed in Lahash’s palm. The Syndicate boss pawed at his torso, but there was no injury to him.
“Now that wasn’t so . . .” The skull-faced enforcer held up the stone. Its luster faded in and out. He squeezed it between his fingers, and it shattered into chalky bits and a tiny battery. “It’s a fake . . . disappointing.”
“What?” Carotan slapped at his jacket pockets. “No! I saw it come straight out of the Veil. Which one of you bottom-feeding trash—” He tried to sit up but Lahash stepped on his chest and pinned him to the deck.
“The stone isn’t worth your life . . .” Lahash raised his sword and the blade grew longer, hissing as the metal edge seemed to build itself. “Who called it forth?”
He ground his heel against Carotan’s chest.
“Sh-she’s dead!” Kay stammered. “The spirits on the other side cursed her and—”
“Another liar.” Reman snatched the Chorda by the collar and hoisted him up. Kay croaked and kicked at the air like he was trying to swim away. “There’s an Attuned among you and they’d better . . .”
The wolfen sniffed hard, then swiped metal edged claws through Kay’s flank. He kept his hold as the alien cried out; blood spurted from the gouge as Reman snatched something out of Kay’s body. He tossed Kay aside like he was nothing more than garbage.
Kay rolled across the dock, leaving splotches of violet blood like footprints, and bumped into Jayce’s shins. His old friend looked up at him, Kay’s bulbous eyes wide with shock and disbelief.
Jayce knelt next to him and pressed his hand into the wound. Blood flowed over his fingers with each beat of Kay’s weakening heart.
Reman shook one hand and Kay’s torn clothes fell to the deck with a wet plop. He pinched the true Veil stone he’d ripped out of Kay between two claw tips and held it high.
“Kay? Stay with me, buddy,” Jayce put a hand atop Kay’s as the light went out of his eyes. Jayce lunged toward Reman but a kick to his back sent him flat against the deck. A boot against the back of his upper back pinned him down. He felt the cold muzzle of a coil rifle against his skull and he stopped struggling.
“It wasn’t that one.” Reman snorted at Kay’s body on the ground and moved toward Lahash.
“That cheating bastard,” Carotan snarled. “Wolf boy did me a favor! The Syndicate stands for honor. Brotherhood! If I was the float boss on this rust bucket I’d . . .” He gave Norva a quick glance. “Why, I’d want . . . blackjack!”
The rest of the Syndicate crew burst into action at the code word. They tackled the Tyrant soldiers and drew hidden coil guns.
Carotan thrust one hand up at Lahash and three of his fingers locked out straight.
Lahash tightened his grip on his hilt and the blade stretched out into thin vanes that whipped around him.
Hidden coil launchers snapped a trio of bullets at Lahash. Each flashed against the spinning strands and joined the moving shield as red-hot ingots. Coil-gun bullets from the rest of the fighters didn’t pierce the defenses either.
“Alive!” Lahash shouted.
Jayce hugged the deck as Reman leapt over him in a blur and swiped claws through Norva’s wrist. Her severed hand arced into the air before she even knew she was under attack. Reman loped forward and punched another Syndicate member in the lower back so hard Jayce heard the spine snap.
The fighting died out almost as fast as it started. The crew lay groaning across the deck, their arms and hands broken or severed. The Tyrant’s soldiers kept them subdued with boot heels.
“You’ve made this far too difficult,” Lahash said to Carotan. He flicked the hilt and one of the captured bullets shot straight through the boss’s forehead. The sword returned to its normal shape. Four bullets hovered over his knuckles, spinning rapidly.
“I want the Attuned.” He gave Kay’s lifeless body a quick kick. “I want the location of the Shrine where you found the stone. The Tyrant is merciful to those who join his great plan. Those who act against him are his enemies. You can give me what I want or I can find it for myself. Bring one.”
The soldiers grabbed the spine-broken Syndicate sailor and dragged him over to Lahash. The injured man was panting, his eyes full of faux defiance. Reman tossed the true stone at Lahash. It froze in midair and began a slow orbit around his helmet.
“Where did you find it?” he asked and reversed the grip on his sword to place the flat of the blade against his forearm and pointed the pommel at him. The captured bullets aligned toward the man’s face.
“Screw you,” the man snarled.
A bullet snapped through his skull and sparked off the deck. The guards dropped the twitching body. Jayce felt the vibration of footfalls as Lahash approached him. The foot on his back lifted and a kick to his shoulder rolled him onto his back. Lahash aimed his pommel at Jayce’s face.
“That one doesn’t even have their colors,” Reman growled. “Local trash. Don’t bother.”
“You’re close, Reman, but you missed something. Watch.” Lahash tightened his grip on the hilt and one of the orbiting bullets flashed at him.
Jayce flinched back . . . and didn’t feel a final jolt of pain. The bullet bounced off his nose and bounced across the deck.
Reman’s ears perked up.
“This one has the touch. Here’s the Attuned,” Lahash said, “but he doesn’t know. Do you feel his potential?”
“I’m not like you. Not yet.” Reman bared his teeth and sniffed Jayce. “His scent’s different than yours.”
“Well, no one’s like me.” Lahash touched the bottom of Jayce’s chin with his sword tip and lifted his gaze up.
Memories of the cave came to Jayce; the star chart flashed across his vision several times. He imagined the stars in the wrong spot and clenched his jaw.
“He’s seen it . . . this one has potential,” Lahash said. “All will serve the Tyrant.”
“The Tyrant’s dead!” Jayce snapped.
“We are loyal to him beyond death.” Lahash brought his sword to his chest, point down, in salute. “Just as he is loyal to us. Don’t worry, you’ll learn what it is to serve his glory . . . alive or as something greater.”
Reman raised his snout and sniffed hard.
“Something’s off. Something’s coming.” The wolfen drew a coil carbine from off the mag-locks on one leg and extended the claws farther on his other paw.
“Shunt!” Lahash flipped his sword around and put one hand to the side of his head. The stone fell to the deck and rolled away from him. “I can’t stop—”
A sheet of white light opened like a window overhead. A figure in dark blue armor fell through and landed a few yards from Jayce and Lahash. The new arrival snapped up; an ornate blade glowed with pale white light in one hand. His armor was contoured to his body. The body glove beneath the plates was made of a stretched light fabric that crackled as he pointed his sword at the Tyrant leader. The vision slits on his full-faced helm were dark orbs. Lines of light ran down the sockets to the jaw line. A crest of neon blue bristles shimmered with light from the dimensional opening overhead.
A stone similar to the one on the deck glistened from a socket on his upper chest.
“Again?” The new arrival twisted his sword at Lahash. “How many times do I have to kill you?”
“Maru . . . Traitor!” Lahash launched at the other warrior and slashed at his neck. Their blades met with a flash of sparks and an electric squeal.
Jayce spotted the stone and crawled toward it as the duel continued; the blades glowed with so much power that the afterimage stung his eyes. He reached for the stone . . . only to see it skitter away from him.
The stone bounced off a boot toe and then up and into the hand of a young woman. She wore similar stretched light-and-plate armor, but her face was exposed and her blond hair was bound tightly behind her head.
Amidst the chaos, Jayce was dumbstruck by the sight of her for a heartbeat.
“Sarai! Get us out of here. Shunt by three!” The other warrior ducked a leaping strike from Reman’s claws and poked his blade into the air where his head had been. The tip struck the Draug’s forearm and cut down to the elbow.
Reman let out a bark of pain and shoulder-rolled to a stop, one limb clutched to his body.
Lahash slashed at the warrior, landing a glancing blow against his pauldron that let off a flash of blue light.
“What? That’ll kill him!” The woman gripped the stone tightly in one hand, then thrust her palm toward the rest of the Tyrant’s soldiers. Coil shots sparked off a force field that retreated toward Jayce and her with each strike.
The energy wall set Jayce’s teeth on edge and sent tiny shocks through his scalp and face as it neared him. He rolled toward her and bumped against her shins.
“Do it!” The warrior punched Lahash in the face and sent him stumbling back, his mask twisted part way around.
“If you die, it wasn’t intentional.” Sarai pressed the stone hard against Jayce’s chest. He sucked in a breath as a deep cold stabbed through his lungs. “Uusanar! Shunt by three . . . yes, three!”
Hemenway vanished around Jayce, replaced by a white abyss that flowed into the sky. Jayce felt his body unravel into the light. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t fight. Everything he was had become something entirely different from what he could fathom.
The afterimage of dueling figures stayed with him, but they were different—as tall as the sky, and every clash of weapons between warriors of light and dark sent stars flowing into the endless void.
Lahash ripped his damaged faceplate away and swung blindly behind him. The warrior was gone. Along with the boy, the stone, and the girl.
“How bad is it?” he asked Reman. Lahash’s voice was deep and sonorous without the mask.
“It is only pain and blood.” The Draug licked the long gash down his arm. “I wouldn’t let that bastard send me to the Grip. I have more to give.”
“He’s not one to—Stop him!” Lahash shouted as Gorgi slunk toward the end of the pier. The clipper pilot leaned over the edge to fall into the waters, but Lahash’s sword flew through the air and impaled him through the calf, pinning him to the dock.
Gorgi cried out in pain.
Lahash yanked his sword out and flipped Gorgi over. Gorgi recoiled from the horror of Lahash’s face and stammered out prayers to several different gods. The Tyrant’s champion grabbed the sailor by the front of his dirty tunic and jerked him up.
“You were with them. You know where they found it?” Lahash asked.
Gorgi nodded rapidly, then squeezed his eyes shut and turned his head away.
“You will take me there, won’t you?” Lahash moved the flat of his blade between their faces. Its glow darkened, then the edge glowed white hot.
“Yes! Yes! Please, I’ll do anything! Just don’t steal my soul!” Gorgi pleaded.
“Not quite how it works. But, can’t have you bleed to death, now can we?” Lahash raised his sword, which danced with flame, and hacked Gorgi’s bleeding leg off at the knee, cauterizing the stump instantly.
The man stared at the stump and his dismembered foot twitching on the deck. A tiny needle-tipped strand snapped out of Lahash’s wrist armor and jabbed Gorgi in the neck. Shock stopped overtaking his body but all the pain remained.
“What about the traitors?” Reman asked. “We can never let a Paragon survive.”
“We’re not here for them.” Lahash looked at the battleship hovering over the flotilla and touched a communication panel built into the back of one glove. “But they won’t get far.”
More hangar bays opened and fighters swarmed into the sky.