Starbreaker: Volume 4, page 34
“Malachai.” Sylvas gestured down the slope. “Would you mind...?”
“Not at all, just a moment,” the man said as he stepped forward and unleashed a sickle of darkness from his scythe that skittered and crackled all the way down the slope until it bit into the meaty sacs suspended from the walls and ceilings. In places, they were leathery, in others, solid and calcified, but worst of all were the parts of the egg sacs that were entirely transparent and showed the shikari embryo developing inside. If they had the time, Sylvas would have loved to study all of this further, learn about the lifecycle of the shikari and how the queen could produce so many eggs that they were hatching en masse every few hours. But they did not have time. They had a mission to complete.
At the next level, as the others complained of their ears popping from the change in air pressure, Sylvas considered the two ramps leading deeper down. One to the left, one to the right.
Kaya strolled up next to him. “You doing that thing where you act confident so we don’t worry?”
“Not at the moment.” Sylvas smiled.
“Oh, so you actually do know which way to go?” She nudged him with her elbow.
“Mira does.”
Kaya stopped elbowing him abruptly.
“Ah, okay then. Whatever she says is fine by me.” She sauntered away, trying to act casual. “Better than fine, even. Glad there’s a woman in charge of this whole venture.”
Left once more, darling.
There were more shikari after the initial ambush, but not in any great numbers. At the very periphery of his senses, Sylvas could sense massive movement down beneath them, which was surely where all of the shikari that were unaccounted for could be found. But there were more eggs, so many more eggs that it soon came to boggle Sylvas’ mind. He refused to leave any of them behind him, in case they were to hatch and block their escape route later. Before, he’d wondered how the queen could be hatching dozens of shikari at a time, and now, seeing the extent of the laying that she’d done over however long she’d been down here, he wondered how the whole planet hadn’t already been overrun with them.
His slate had little information about shikari queens, beyond the idea that they were much more physically imposing than what the textbooks described as the ‘drones.’ There was no indication that they couldn’t be killed, just that few people could fight through a whole hive of these murderous creatures to get to the queen and then take her down in addition to that journey.
They had struck out first thing in the morning, just after the dawn attack, to maximize their chances of getting to the queen before the next wave of shikari attacked, but they had not accounted for how deep this tomb had been dug. They heard them and felt the vibrations coming long before the shikari themselves came into sight, and through those vibrations, backtracked through the gravity map of the place, Sylvas was able to trace the route all the way down to wherever this fresh batch had just hatched from. Where it was safe to assume the queen had situated herself. He was grinning over this success when he noticed Rania staring at him. “You know the shikari are coming, right?”
He nodded tersely, trying to lose the smile.
She shook her head, smiling to herself now. “Crazy.”
There was plenty of warning before the tide of shikari came. The sound of their approach was deafening, even if they weren’t letting loose their customary battle cries just yet. There was no roaring, hissing, or snarling, only the steady beat of feet on stone. They rounded a corner straight into Sylvas’ gravity well. It didn’t seem appropriate to call the miniature black holes that he conjured now simple gravity spikes; they were deeper, their draw so much more. The archaeologists and Malachai had to cling to Kaya to resist its pull, and in turn, she had to dig spikes of steel deep into the stone beneath to keep herself in place.
The first rank plowed headfirst into it, and they were torn apart by the forces of gravity at work, skin sheared from muscle, blood spraying the walls. It was the ones that rounded the corner next, with some forewarning, that were of interest to Sylvas. They dug in their claws, they scrabbled and fought the pull of the inevitable, and they slipped and skidded in their kin’s blood. But still, inexorably, they were drawn in. All of them were drawn in, and Malachai unleashed a single sickle blade to dispatch every one of them.
Normally, Sylvas would have just allowed a spike like that to dissipate, but this time, he took more care, easing gravity back to normal, feeling the walls and ceiling inch back closer to their usual positions. Repeating that trick would be a mistake if they wanted to keep this structure from collapsing, and he’d known he was pushing his luck trying to do it even this one time.
The real fighting would come down at the bottom of the spiral of ramps. When they reached the lowest chamber, where the queen and vault surely resided. Sylvas wanted to say that he was dreading it, that the idea of it made him anxious or at least concerned for the safety of the others, but there was no room in his heart for both fear and Strife. It was all that he could do to stop himself running alone to get a head start on them.
“Stanzbuhr.” Kaya nudged him. He blinked and then turned to look at her. She was exactly the same as the first day he’d met her, apart from some new scars. The very same person, unchanged by everything that they’d been through. He didn’t know if that meant she was stronger than him or just slower to adapt.
He pushed those thoughts out of his mind, too. “Are you ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
He glanced back at the rest of their group, “Are they?”
She chuckled at that. “Is anyone?”
He looked down at his hands and saw that the claws were already there, enveloping his hands, warping gravity around them. Strife was ready. Mira was ready. It was time to do what they’d come here to do.
“Stick together,” he called back to everyone. “And if you can’t keep fighting, fall back to the door.”
Rania racked her rifle. “Let’s finish this.”
Chapter 44
“Eventually, everyone fails you. Whether through betrayal or weakness, they cannot take the next step with you. It is the nature of being more that others must be less. It is the nature of seeking greatness that others pale in comparison to you. Feel no shame, it is simply the way of things.”
—The Necessity, Valtoris Blackstar
They burst into the lowest chamber, moving faster than the eye could follow. Sylvas led them, as he always had, enveloped in a gravity shear that deflected the first barrage of shots from the enemy. The ballistic shikari were clinging to the walls, the strange stinger-like organs erupting from their backs aimed directly at Sylvas and entirely ignoring the rest of the party. The irony was, even if one of their venomous shots made contact, he doubted it would have any effect, except perhaps on his clothes.
While the rest of the Aion construction had been basic, smooth stone and scant engravings, now that they were in the main chamber where the vault was held, things were different. This chamber was vast, with a ceiling so high above them that Sylvas doubted any of the others could even see it. It was coated from wall to wall with eggs, most hatched already, but some still pulsating and ready to release their lethal occupants.
Black sickles of death magic sliced out, passing cleanly through the gravity shear to strike down the shikari lining the walls, but those that were gathered in a shield wall of flesh between them and the other side of the chamber where the vault lay remained untouched. The impact of the gravity shear colliding with them pushed some aside, but there were others there, reinforcing their position, latching claws into flesh to hold the line.
Sylvas strained with all of his strength against the shikari, pouring more and more weight into his feet so that he could maintain a grip on the flagstones shattering beneath him as they tried to drive him back. He couldn’t hold them all, not forever, not with his shear spread so wide to encompass the whole breadth of the room. It wasn’t a matter of mana, but of physics.
But he went on pushing against them all the same. Holding them back so that the rest had their chance to make an impact before everything became bloody chaos and screaming. Malachai’s spells picked off their positions around the walls, and he turned his attention to the distant roof. Hector might have been able to sense the shikari by their life force, but Malachai’s senses ran in the opposite direction. He could feel them because of the shadow of death clinging to each and every monster.
As some of the shikari slipped past the shield, the archaeologists and Kaya leapt into action, casting their most destructive spells and hacking into the mangled but regenerating flesh of those that had managed to squeeze through the impossibly small gaps. Still, the shikari pushed back with a strength born of desperation. There was something more than animalistic instinct guiding them here. The queen commanded, and they obeyed.
He began to slide backwards, losing inch by inch to the inexorable tide pressed against the Shear. They’d cleared almost half the room before enough shikari massed to stop him, and in the time that he had held them, everything on Sylvas’ side of the shield had died. The bombardment from the walls had been stopped. The monstrous creatures ready to drop down on them from on high had become stillbirths, dropping dead and useless with whatever spark animated the living already stripped from their bodies by Malachai’s death curses.
“Shield is going down!” Sylvas managed to bark out a warning between repetitions of the Aion words that held it up.
Then he let it go, and the battle truly began. Each and every one of the shikari had seen what was unfolding on the other side of the barrier holding them back. They had watched Malachai slaughtering their brothers and sisters without pause or remorse, yet it was Sylvas that they all attacked. He had done nothing more than hold them back, but somehow, they sensed he was a greater threat.
His vision blurred as the shield fell away. He recognized Mira’s influence but not her purpose, until all of the possibilities of the next few moments became visible. The directions that the shikari would deflect from each other to attack him. The claws and teeth that would come for him, and when they would. This was all a dance with pre-determined moves, and all that he had to do was follow the steps.
He raked his claws down, intercepting the first leaping shikari, rending its skull wide open to the air, but before he could land a killing blow, he had to throw himself aside as another set of huge jagged claws ripped through where he’d been standing. A kick sent that shikari spinning off course, knocking the legs out from under another as it coiled to pounce at Kaya. Without looking, he reached out a hand to where Malachai stood and yanked him forward a step with kinesis, just enough for the skull-cleft shikari that he’d left behind to miss when it tried to body slam the necromancer.
Rania discharged her rifle into the gap in its skull as it slid to a halt beside her, a blaze bright as sunlight firing from the enchanted device before she had to rack a new rune etched shell into place. Kaya stepped on the rear hump of that same shikari, her heel spike piercing through its hind brain before she launched herself at one of the others in flight, slamming a massive hammer of solid metal down to shatter the teeth it was trying to close on her.
Everything flowed, from one step to the next, from one spell to the next. Each time one of the shikari came close to one of the others, they found themselves pushed or pulled out of its reach. Every time that Sylvas cast a spell, it seemed to do nothing at all until suddenly a new front of the battle that nobody else had foreseen opened up and was immediately intercepted. Some shikari tried to mount the walls to get past the claws and blades of the front lines, only to find that the ceiling of the chamber was now their down. The impact of that fall wasn’t enough to kill them, but when the spell cut out a moment later and they plunged back down to hit the real ground again, their bones were shattered enough to buy time.
Without having to look back, Sylvas already knew when Malachai had found a clear line of attack and was unleashing a vast arc of death at the enemy. He matched it with his own gravity’s arrow, aimed higher, so that when all the shikari leapt to avoid one shot, they were sliced in half by the other. The monsters drowned their spells in bodies, throwing themselves into the path of the spells that might make it the distance across the chamber, to protect whatever was there. If Sylvas had been alone, he would have flown up and over their lines, gone to whatever it was that they were trying to keep safe and take it from them. But he was not alone. He was here, with friends and allies, and he would not abandon them.
He didn’t notice a shikari slithering out from under one of the fallen ones; he didn’t notice it leaping for his back. His premonitions gave him no warning of it or the pain that would have been sure to follow. He didn’t need to worry about it. One of the archaeologists—her name is Lass, for goodness’ sake, Sylvas, do try and remember—had fired off a missile that took it through the spine when she spotted it coming for him.
Inversion flung the front line of shikari up into the air, and his orbitals and spears of blood held them there long enough for Malachai to slice them through. They had numbers on their side, hundreds of shikari had swarmed out of the alcoves lining the sides of the chamber, but those numbers were not enough to overcome Sylvas’ foresight or the skills of those who’d come with him.
Ducking and rolling through the melee, claws lashing out almost absentmindedly to gut a shikari or slice a tendon to put a stop to a pounce or charge, Sylvas moved in a dream across the battlefield. Wading deeper and deeper into the contested territory. The shikari had abandoned their assault on the others now, simply suffering the barrage of magic being flung at them from that direction so that they could focus exclusively on Sylvas. They had numbers on their side, yet they couldn’t bring those numbers to bear. There was only so much physical space around Sylvas for the shikari to occupy, only a half-dozen could attack him at any one time, and even when those attacks were perfectly coordinated, he was always, somehow, just slightly out of step with them, moving before he could possibly know that he needed to move, lashing out with claw, gravity, or a spell.
There was a maelstrom of blood around him by the time he reached the far side of the chamber. And it spattered across the wall there when he drew too close. There was no vault, no queen, just a vast chamber full of shikari intent on slaughter. He turned back to the room, to his distant friends engaging in their battle from a distance, and the verminous tides of shikari all pouring towards him, and he didn’t understand. Not until the claws raked down his back, shredding even his reinforced flesh as if it were paper. The force of the blow knocked him to his knees, but at Mira’s shrieking insistence, he did not stay down. He rolled forward, using the force of the blow as momentum, and came up to find a shikari emerging from the solid wall, passing through it as though it were not there.
His blood was on the shikari’s claws, and as it raised them to strike again, it discovered that his blood did not become less lethal for being outside of him. Each drop became a needle, and each needle shot up into the shikari’s face. It staggered back to the wall and could not retreat through it. Another shield like the one guarding the entrance. Sylvas surged forward, throwing his body around like a bludgeon. His claws dug through the body of the shikari, his arms disappearing inside it, then tearing out the other side. With these claws of war and gravity, he had been able to rend anything, stone or flesh, but this shield did not give beneath his blow. He spread his arms apart, ripping the shikari in half and letting the parts tumble to the ground, and then he turned back to face the rest of the horde. The reason that it seemed like it was endless was that it was. More shikari continued to flood in from the other side of the impenetrable wall.
“Rania, I need you,” Sylvas called out over the tumult of battle.
She looked genuinely terrified for the first time in the entire operation. “What?”
He had soared over the top of the shikari to reach her, and now all of them were turning to head back in this direction. The dwarf with the helmet—you’re doing this on purpose now, Kegel—was missing an arm, and the other two looked bruised and battered, but they were all still standing. Kaya and Malachai stood apart from them. Her guarding him as he cast; him striking down foes before they could reach her. Perfectly in synch, the way that she and the traitor never had been. “The far wall is another Aion shield. I need it down.”
She looked uncomfortable. “Not sure that’s the best idea. Last time I took one down, it activated the orbital defense platforms and—”
“The past doesn’t matter. Here. Now. We need to get through. Can you open it, or were the Consortium wasting their money on you?”
He saw the spark in her eye, not of anger but excitement, once more. She liked being challenged. “Maybe you’re my kind of crazy. Get me over there?”
Chapter 45
“Supposition: Aions were bipedal or quadrupedal and displayed body line symmetry. Just as humans count in base ten because of the number of our fingers, almost everything that we learn of the Aions implies a fixation on symmetry and balance. The solutions to so many of their traps has been to apply equal but opposite pressure to what is already there, their architecture, where it has any commonalities almost always has symmetry, and if you’re looking for the button to push, it’s almost always bang in the middle, even if that would put it in the way of normal day-to-day use.”
—Selected Daybook Musings, R. Clarendon
Wrapping his arms around her, he launched them both back across the room. The tide of shikari stopped and turned once more, trying to follow his movements. “Where?”
“The center.” She pointed. “The Aions loved symmetry.”
He set her down as close to the middle of the room as he could manage, then pulled all his orbitals back in from where they’d been hitting shikari around the room, setting them to spin around her, keeping her at their center. It wouldn’t stop a shikari charge, but it might give him enough time to react before they tore her apart. He didn’t dare move more than a few feet away from her in case another one of the shikari came through the wall right there, but neither could he stay beside her. He needed room to fight, and she’d get caught up in that fight if he stayed too close. He couldn’t think of many worse situations to fight in.
