Airith- the Kentilan War Page 17

  Then an image of herself, groveling on both knees, mouth wide and eyes bulging.

  Mother disconnected instantly with a loud cry.

  “Mother!” Vidmantas worried.

  She did not respond, but basked in the simmering silence, shaken by the anger that engulfed her.

  “I will kill him; I will kill all of…”

  The words escaped her mind as something new registered in her consciousness. A fly caught in her web. Her head snapped in that direction. Nothing was there, and yet she felt the presence so strongly that she needed to examine it. With an unfamiliar command, she sent thick tendrils of indigo Magija springing forth from the Life Pool. It surprised her. She waved the tendrils about and they followed her will, like extra appendages. Her face contorted into a grin. The presence flickered again, and her attention snapped, sending her invisible friend crashing into a wall. Its body flickered with indigo light as it took form. Mother’s whip wound around the intruder in another swift snap. Her captive struggled, its lithe form tense and helplessly in Mother’s grasp. She tightened her grip, relishing in the collapse of her intruder’s resolve to escape. Its body stiffened and had almost taken full form.

  Mother blinked. Phara. Her child. Mother flinched, her grip slacked, and Phara dropped in a painful thud, rasping for air.

  “Bring her to me!” Mother cried, the valves of her mechanic heart constricting.

  Vidmantas rushed forth to grab Phara, but Phara saw him coming. And in that moment, she disappeared.

  “Bring her to me!” Mother’s scream burst forth in a frenzy of wild, slapping tentacles; huge whips that tore at the walls and sliced clean through one of the pillars. The structure collapsed in moments, spilling debris all around them. The Three dodged to escape the avalanche, but some of the Valdovas were not as lucky.

  “Remic, after her!” Vidmantas coughed from the swirling dust. “She wouldn’t have gone far! Take a unit with you.”

  His brother moved to obey, but his motion was cut off by a loud crack in the atmosphere. All looked up as a hail of fire descended from above. The heat lash slapped Vidmantas onto his back and a few soldiers screamed. Above them, the first fleet of the Emperor’s army hovered closer.

  “Remic! Go after my child, now!” Mother screamed as the Life Pool oozed forth in a viscous, rushing wave, flooding the room and ascending the walls. It peeled away halfway to the top and spread out over their heads, enveloping them.

  Remic bowed and disappeared from Mother’s sight, closely followed by a small regiment of Valdovans. They went through the shield just as easily as the Emperor’s fire bounced off of it, the shield dulling the sounds of more Kentilan ships arriving. They fired down on her, and Mother roared in laughter, the cackling of a million snickering voices as she watched the fireworks display over her. She was in unison with the shield and yet not able to feel a single hit. The power was a marvel. Somewhere in the web of consciousness, the Emperor was seated at the edge of his seat, watching the horror unfold, fear unmistakable in the tortuous lines on his hollow face. But he was still far away. And still she could feel his mind searching for a solution. It delighted her. She needed to demonstrate her superiority. It was time.

  Beneath her, her engines roared to life, a million levers pulled at once, and a million cogs responded as the suction pipes drank from the ever-filling Life Pool, delivering crude Magija to waiting distillery bowels. The engine’s sheer efficiency swept waves of giddiness through her as distilled power was delivered to the valves in her waist, the essence diffusing into her bloodstream, traveling millions of vessels to her beating heart. Her skin glowed a bright indigo and her organic half tingled all over.

  She roared, and with her cry, a thousand monstrous tentacles emerged from the shield, snapping and whipping, swatting at the massive airships like flies. They collided and went up in tall pillars of fire and smoke. The airships diverged, trying to evade her slapping limbs, their screams and horrors ripples that echoed through the strings that wound around her mind. It was ecstasy. It fed her rage, and like a god, she willed her appendages as weapons. They sliced and diced, whipping and lashing till the skies came alight with firing and burning debris.

  *

  “She’s too powerful now!” Phara gasped as she fell out of nothingness into the sand before them. Rapha put his arms under her head. Her skin was burning up and the skin around her eyes was tender. Her breaths came in short gasps and indigo light flickered all over her.

  “Phara, what did you see?”

  “Mother is using the Life Pool.” It was Airith who answered. She was on both knees, looking at the battle unfolding. “She’s now ten times as powerful as Phara. The Emperor doesn’t have a chance.”

  This was bad news, and Rapha tried desperately to come up with a bright idea. “Well, I guess we can rest assured Mother won’t die tonight. Makes hacking this Skyfire a serious priority now.”

  “Th- th- the- e- ey…” Phara stuttered. Her eyes flicked open, filled with terror.

  “They? They who?” Airith asked.

  The crack of a gun firing sent chills down Rapha’s spine. He yanked Airith down by her hair as bright light lit the air above them. A few rounds of machine gun fire sounded out and Airith rolled into action, her sword bared and her battle scowl on her face. Her sword sliced once, and a soldier screamed. His head rolled in the sand. The Valdovan face stared back at Rapha.

  “Incoming!” Airith warned as more rounds of fire sizzled past and around them. One hit Rapha in the shoulder and he flew back into the sand. Warning windows popped up in a frenzy inside his head. He shifted them to the side and rolled back onto his feet, only then realizing the numbness in his right shoulder. That repair was going to cost a fortune. He strained his eyes to find Airith. He heard her cry before he saw her, an airborne peril with her sword raised her and her target reacting too slowly. She cut him in half, then grabbed his upper torso and used him for a shield. Rapha couldn’t conceal his pride.

  Then pattering in the sand caught his attention. He saw the steel before his attacker could raise it and lunged forward, the air swooshing where he had just been. His attacker moved like light, his sword a blinding arc. Rapha escaped its harrowing slash by only an inch. But he compensated this with a kick to the gut. His attacker barely flinched, and instead elbowed him in the face. His head snapped back in pain and his body jolted. The vulnerability was almost fatal, for the sword hacked down upon him. Rapha barely stopped it with his damaged elbow, offering up his mechanical side. The blade wedged deep into wiring and shaft. When his attacker tried to pull it free, the sword tore deeper. Rapha screamed and landed a wicked blow to his attacker’s gut. His foe responded with a kick to the face and Rapha flew onto his back again. The pain throbbed in his face and shoulder, accompanying the blare of caution alarms in his head, and yet the moon was beautiful, floating peacefully up in the sky, away from the chaos beneath it. It threw out its light and Rapha could see his opponent clearly. He was trudging closer, his sword up and ready.

  Rapha sighed in awful displeasure. “Remic. For God’s sake man, grow a pair of balls.” Rapha reached for the jutting sword in his shoulder, knowing his mechanics like the circuiting on his motherboards. He deftly maneuvered the sword from its roots. “You kick like a pussy.”

  “Your Skyfire. I will rip it off your corpse and wear it as mine.” Remic drew closer.

  “Er, I doubt it.” Rapha yanked the sword free and swiped wildly for Remic. It was a dull and unplanned attempt that was easily countered by a playful kick from Remic, and the sword flew from view. Rapha stared after it, until Remic’s heavy boot stomped down hard, pressing him into the sand.

  “That was shameful, brother. You have grown weak.” Remic snickered, unsheathing a dagger from behind his head.

  Rapha feared this was the worst time to build up to a Skyfire appearance. He only had a second between him and a slit throat.

  “Mother’s child. Where is she?” Remic leaned in.

  The question sur
prised Rapha and his eyes crawled slowly to where Phara had lay. But she was gone. Remic followed his gaze, was disappointed, and slammed the pommel of the dagger into Rapha’s face.

  “You’re fucking breaking my nose!” Rapha grimaced.

  “Where?”

  “Do you hear yourself? You call her Mother’s child like you are some reject.”

  Remic raised his dagger to bash him again.

  “I’ve always wondered what this fight would look like,” Airith said.

  Both men turned to her. She was standing not more than a few feet away, wielding her sword in a steely double-fisted grip, her hair splattered in glistening sweat across her face and blood coating her sword.

  Rapha felt the blade press against his skin. “Make so much as a slight move and he’s dead.” Remic laughed, his tone bordering on amusement and awe. “I’ll ask again. Where is Mother’s ch—”

  A splinter as large as a man’s foot and as bright as the Life Pool impaled him, squeezing past his entrails and slowly writhing its way further through him.

  “Here I am,” Phara said loud and clear, before withdrawing from him.

  Remic dropped on both knees, with a smile on his face, and crashed face-first into the sand.

  *

  The bone pressed white against the skin of his knuckles, as did every muscle in his body. His thoughts were a jumbled mess, collecting the visual before him and not being able to process logic.

  “How is she able to do that? How is this whore that strong? What is that?” he asked no one in particular. The last person he had asked was a serving onboard cadet who now lay in a puddle of his blood, with a ridge run through half his head and his brains splattered beneath him. Slowly, the Emperor’s twitching hand moved, the smoking mine gun rising and drifting across the engineers in the room.

  The silence in the room was deafening, as every other man prayed.

  “You answer my question!” he said to no one in particular, his gun aimed in the direction of one of his subordinates.

  “Why do you hide aboard your ships, if you have longed to kill me for so long?” disembodied voices said, snickering and mocking as the filled his head. Fear spun through him and his gun haphazardly went off, one of his subordinates going down. The rest of the cadets peeled away in silent panic; terror written in their faces.

  “Who just spoke?” The words crept from him as his gaze spun around the room, willing it to be one of his servants, though his mind acknowledged that it wasn’t so.

  “I am just before you, you whoring coward, unfit for a king. Come and claim your prize, or I will slice through your armies until you are mine,” the voices bantered, pressing into his mind from all sides.

  Valdova. Her voice stood out over the legion, clear and formidable, like the leader in a horde. The whore that revisited his thoughts every now and then. The rumors had come to him after the Creator left to build his most prized possessions. The Emperor’s whore was the Creator’s lab rat. A smile crept across his face, masking the rage underneath. And now she was a formidable obstruction before him, swatting down airships as easily as flies. And not only that, she was meandering through his head, speaking to him as she pleased. The insult was a cold dose of water and fueled the madness bubbling under the surface.

  “My armor! Fetch me my armor!” he yelled to the huddled crowds. They all rushed to heed his request. “Oh, I’m coming for you, you whore.” He laughed, shaking his head, an amused tutor.

  “M- y- y L- o- rd- d?” the sergeant nearest him said. “General Brigantas is requesting to patch through.”

  The Emperor’s lowered lids jerked and the man before him went pale. “Put him through.” He lowered his gun and every man in the room breathed a sigh of relief.

  Then a large holofeed morphed before him, and with it, the sinewy face of a white-bearded man with small, almost minute eyes.

  “My Lord, we have lost about ten of Mother’s ships and fifty deployed ships already. We’ve tried every weapon on that thing. It’s not coming down. Dropping a nuclear wormhole on it could mean our deaths as well.”

  “There will be no need. The whore has asked to see me. Apparently, she’s missed me. I can’t blame her, though.” The Emperor threw his head back for a laugh. “I want you and two of my best generals to accompany me,” he said as servants brought him parts of his armor. “Down to this brothel.”

  His general’s face darkened, and his heavy brows rose. The Emperor had seen that expression countless times and knew its meaning.

  “Yes, I heard her in my head. If you insinuate anything derogatory, I will have the man standing next to you murder you in cold blood,” the Emperor boomed. “Now, prepare.” He winked.

  *

  The machine’s gut slammed open and closed as new and augmented Valdovas stepped through. All mechanic, with no faculty consciences. Robots of her design. They stepped forth and marched to assume their places in her already growing regiment. The fireworks above them had abated, but the din of whirring engines still hung close. Mother could hear their frantic thoughts and knew they were watching the greatest army being born. History was being made right before their eyes. Too bad they would not live to tell it.

  Her thoughts focused on the Emperor. He had been uneasy ever since she violated his mind. She could see him now, descending in one of the smaller airships, flanked by three of his generals. The ship stopped feet from the edge of her shield and the trio alighted and waited for her to meet them.

  She moved, detaching herself from the great engine. Its hearth lost its fire and died out, its moving mechanics coming to a halt and its doors closing shut while Mother’s six-legged prosthetic crawled to receive her. She moved herself off the rim of the engine and into the latch of her arachnoid lower half, her eyes holding the Emperor’s. The twitching in his lower lids signaled disgust, but the tension in his shoulders and the darkness in his eyes showed that he meant to devour her. Her graceful legs tapped softly across the great room until she was towering above the three men by a good four feet. Her lips could not stop pursing with the delight at the view.

  “Filthy, as you have always been, Valdova.” The Emperor spoke first, with a wide, mocking grin. He was still the same disease-ridden, pale-skinned and gaunt organic anomaly he had always been to Mother, but now he was five feet taller, weighed down by a two-ton artillery integrated into his armor and two cannon blasters attached to his hands. His smug look was orange behind his helmet’s mask, and it told Mother he felt protected; he felt invincible in this primitive contraption he called armor. His generals wore lesser armor of the same design. Men trapped in their solutions.

  Mother drew closer, allowing his words to bounce off her back. Her smile was tight-lipped. “Do you wish to come in?” She stepped away from the shield as it peeled away in front of her, creating a passable archway. She saw surprise flit across the Emperor’s facial features, and then his dark mask crept back up. His eyes stared past her, asserting and analyzing. Behind her, her elite Valdovas had their plasma guns raised and aimed, in crescent formation around her.

  “Don’t worry. I give you my word that I will not draw the first blood,” Mother’s voices said.

  He snorted something in return and his generals exchanged worried glances as he stepped forward and again, and again, until he was passed the barrier line. They followed after him, into her abode.

  The shields snapped shut behind them, like a valve. The whip sound fazed his generals, but not the Emperor. Did he understand how vulnerable he was in this instant? Maybe not. His eyes shone with malevolent exuberance, and she realized that he was certainly unaware. It twisted something in her gut. Her metal fingers itched to strangle the life out of him.

  “Did you call me here so you could look upon me again in tragic nostalgia? Or are you willing to surrender unconditionally? I promise, your execution will be quick. I should have rid this planet of your stench many moons ago; the stain I’ve had to look upon from the majestic view of my palace. Listen closely, Valdova.
You are nothing now, as you were nothing then. You are the Creator’s birthing cow, pumping out soulless children like the one still in your belly. Surrender now and—”

  Mother noticed sharp movement from the corner of her view. Her mental web lashed at Vidmantas and brought him to a sudden halt, paralyzing his twitching finger before it could pull the waiting trigger, his cannon aimed straight into the Emperor’s face.

  “You fool! Do you really wish to claim my glory?” Her eyes conveyed wicked threats and Vidmantas shuddered. The Emperor turned slowly to eye Vidmantas in disbelief.

  “You do not speak to Mother as you please.”

  “Valdova, what is this thing?” The Emperor laughed, slowly examining Vidmantas.

  Mother looked at Vidmantas, her eyes conveying an unspoken order, and the muzzle of his gun fell to the floor.

  “I will be sure to have his head,” the Emperor sighed. “Remind me, Brigantas.”