Armageddon (12 page)

Farah gave no reply, just a short gasp followed by a
scraaape!
of gravel.

“You okay?” Destra asked.

“Fine,” Farah replied, cursing under her breath. “Just saved myself from a nasty fall at the expense of a few fingernails.”

After another few minutes of struggling up the tunnel, Destra heard a new sound, something besides the constant crunch and scrape of loose gravel. Somewhere up ahead she heard a large object dragging across a smooth surface. Destra marveled that her hearing had become so acute now that her eyes were blind.

But her blindness didn’t last. No sooner did she hear that new sound, than she saw
light,
glorious light, come pouring into the tunnel up ahead. Atta became a bright silhouette as Torv climbed out of the tunnel, his bulk no longer blocking the light source. Destra could see her hands now. They were bleeding. She grimaced and hurried on. Atta crawled out, and then a strong, corpse-gray hand reached in and pulled Destra out, too.

She stumbled to her feet. Her knees ached sharply from the constant pressure of crawling on them, and her hands stung with myriad cuts. Destra ignored the pain and tried to figure out where she was.

Like everything else she’d seen in the Sythians’ bunker, this room was made with familiar gray alloys, not the glossy black materials that Sythians seemed to favor. The lighting, however, was dim and lavender-tinted, pouring out from kludged alien light fixtures. Another alien feature was the contents of the storage room. The walls were adorned with racks of Sythian armor and weapons. Torv went to the nearest suit of armor, and activated it by placing his palm against the obsidian breastplate. The suit shimmered and writhed as if it were alive.

Destra heard footsteps behind her, and she turned to see Farah come stumbling out of the tunnel, shaking out a numb leg.

A tug on Destra’s sleeve drew her attention back to the fore. It was Atta.

“Torv wants us to put on the armor.”

Destra blinked stupidly at her daughter. “Right,” she said, heading to the nearest suit of armor.

She glanced at Torv in time to see the suit he’d chosen begin wrapping itself around him, automatically conforming to his size and shape. Individual pieces hovered into place on tiny grav lifts. Destra shook her head, marveling at the technology. She placed her own palm against one of the suits of armor and watched wide-eyed as it shimmered and writhed to life in exactly the same way. Spongy, sticky wet pads pressed against her palms, and a solid weight flattened her breasts. Then a skull-shaped helmet with glaring red eyes floated up past her nose and slipped over her head. There came a
hiss
of air pressurizing, and Destra saw the world turn a bloody red as she was forced to look through the helmet’s visors.

Destra spent a moment listening to the sound of her breathing reverberate inside the helmet. Alien displays flickered to life, taking up small hexagonal sections of her view with strange symbols and diagrams. She wished the helmet’s visors would be a normal color. But even as she wished that, they became clear. Destra blinked, and her skin crawled with the realization that the suit had somehow read her thoughts.

Feeling watched, Destra spun around. The suit moved with her, aiding her movement and making her feel stronger and faster than usual. She saw Torv, still recognizable from his size, now checking his forearm gauntlets. Glowing red and blue apertures appeared, sliding up out of his armor with soft metallic clicking sounds. Then a pair of larger red apertures glowed to life in his palms.

Integrated weapons.
Destra wondered briefly about them, and suddenly another pair of alien displays appeared projected inside of her helmet. Something began moving against her arms and tickling her skin, and then glowing red apertures appeared in her own gauntlets.

Torv looked up at the sound, and pointed at her. A loud hiss sounded beside Destra’s ears, and she jumped with fright. A second later she realized it was Torv speaking to her over comms, and she felt like a skriff for being startled.

Easy, Des,
she told herself.

Torv pointed to himself and held up his forearms, rotating them for emphasis. The glowing weapons disappeared, and the air around him shimmered. Then he disappeared, too. Torv had cloaked.

Destra got the message. They needed to use stealth, not brute force. But how would they coordinate with each other while cloaked?

Even as she wondered that, Torv reappeared, this time as a contoured shadow, as if he and his suit were somehow made of brackish water. Destra thought about cloaking herself, and in the next instant her own armor shimmered and disappeared, replaced with the same contoured shadow as Torv’s. Destra spent a moment wiggling shadowy fingers in front of her eyes. Once she was satisfied that the ghostly apparition was really her, she turned to look around for Atta.

She found Farah instead, not yet cloaked. The other woman tapped her helmet with one armored hand, as if trying to get her comms to work.

“Hello?” came Farah’s voice.

A small shadow appeared behind Farah, and Atta’s voice bubbled over the comms, “You have to
think
about what you want to do.”

Farah jumped and spun to face Atta, but instead of seeing her, she began looking around the storage room as if she were blind. “Atta? Where are you?”

“In front of you,” Atta said, de-cloaking right under Farah’s nose.

“Frek!” Farah jumped back, springing a few feet higher than she should have been able to jump. She landed with a noisy
thud
.

An angry
hiss
slithered into Destra’s helmet, and Torv began gesturing at Atta and Farah impatiently.

Atta explained the Sythians’ intuitive technology for Farah’s benefit. Moments later, Farah’s armor shimmered and she became a watery shadow, too.

“We have to go,” Atta said, pointing to Torv as he slunk off toward the door. “He’s going to rescue the other Gors before we escape.”

Destra tried a reply, “Can you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” Farah said.

“Good.” Destra hurried after Torv, her footsteps whispering against the castcrete. She found the Gor staring at the door, as if he could see straight through it, apparently waiting for something.

Suddenly his hand shot out and stabbed a key on the control panel. The symbol didn’t correspond to either Versal or Sythian. Destra guessed that Torv must have experimented with the controls earlier to know how they worked now.

The door slid open, revealing a dim hallway. Torv held up a hand in front of her face. She had to wait. Then he crept out, crouching low, but moving fast. Destra poked her head out the door to see Torv rushing up behind a pair of armored Sythians. All the Sythians she’d seen so far were the size of adult humans, but these two looked like children, and they waddled strangely as they walked.

Torv reached the first one and snapped its neck with a vicious twist. The Sythian crumpled to the floor. The second one sprang away, its legs unfolding to twice their length. A pair of papery black wings spread out from the alien’s back, and the Sythian
flew
down the corridor, quickly putting distance between it and Torv.

Destra heard the Gor
hiss
over the comms, and then came a sharp crackle of weapons’ fire. A shining purple beam shot out of Torv’s gauntlet and the flying Sythian fell with a clatter of armor.

Torv turned to them with glowing red eyes and waved them over. Destra grabbed Atta’s hand and ran. Farah brought up the rear once again.

Torv didn’t wait for them to catch up. He raced down the corridor, a blur of inky blackness.

“So much for stealth,” Farah said as they passed the fallen Sythians.

“He didn’t leave any witnesses,” Destra replied.

“That doesn’t mean someone isn’t watching this corridor.”

Destra shook her head. “This isn’t a Sythian facility.”

“They installed lights, why not surveillance?”

“Well, it’s too late to worry about it now,” Destra said.

Torv skidded to a stop as the corridor reached a
T
. He held up a shadowy hand once more, and they stopped behind him, watching as he peered around the side. A dazzling purple beam sizzled by in front of his face, and he leapt back, hissing.

“Told you,” Farah said.

Destra shook her head, feeling dizzy with despair. The walls seemed to be closing in on her; the air inside her suit was suddenly too stuffy and hot. She tightened her grip on Atta’s hand and turned to look behind them.

No one there. Not yet.

“We need a plan,” Farah said. “Atta, tell Torv—”

But the Gor was already de-cloaking and jumping out into the corridor, weapons blazing. Bright purple beams flashed out from his palms, crackling like electricity as they were released. She heard armor clattering in the distance. Return fire shivered back, tracking Torv in a blinding stream, but the Sythians’ shots weren’t as focused as Torv’s. Only one beam found a glancing mark. Torv hissed with the impact and fired back in a steady stream. Armor clattered once more, and the enemy fire grew silent. Torv raced down the corridor. Destra grabbed Atta’s hand and ran after him. They came to a staircase with no less than half a dozen Sythians lying crumpled on the steps. One of them was still moving, and Torv stomped on its neck with a sickening
crunch.

Destra winced and turned to see if her daughter had seen the vicious move. To her dismay, she caught Atta staring in morbid fascination at the dead Sythian under Torv’s boot.

Torv interrupted Destra’s thoughts with another upraised palm. She saw him staring off into the distance again, and she guessed he was using sensors to scan for more enemies.

Suddenly he spun around. Echoing footsteps reached Destra’s ears, and then a dozen Sythians came boiling into the corridor from the other end. Bright purple pulse lasers crackled out, lighting up the gloomy corridor. Destra just stood there, frozen in horror and shock, until strong hands dragged her away.

“Come on, Destra!” It was Farah. “Snap out of it!”

Farah threw her around a corner and pinned her against the wall. Torv stood in front of them, flattening himself against the opposite wall as a torrent of lasers flashed between them. Here the corridor widened just enough for them to shelter from enemy fire.

“We have to fight, Des,” Farah said.

“Mom, I’m scared,” Atta said, squeezing her hand.

Destra turned to her. Seeing Atta standing there in
Sythian
armor, with a deadly battle raging around them, Destra felt suddenly faint, and her eyes drifted out of focus. She wondered if this were all just a bad dream.

“Mom?”

“It’s going to be okay, Atta,” she said. “We’re going to wake up soon…”

“Destra! Don’t fall apart on me now!” Farah said.

Laser fire screamed through the corridor, washing everything a dazzling lavender-white. Torv was still not cloaked, and his black armor gleamed wetly in the laser light. Destra wondered about that; then she noticed the ragged hole in his side—the source of the wetness.

Torv’s glowing red eyes were locked on hers, as if in silent condemnation of her cowardice, but maybe it wasn’t condemnation. Maybe it was pity. Destra couldn’t decide which was worse.

She wasn’t a soldier. She wasn’t cut out for war. The Gor inclined his head to her, as if acknowledging her weakness, and then his palms glowed to life, two bright red apertures to match his eyes.

The torrent of pulse lasers streaming between them quieted, and Torv jumped out, palms raised and flashing with dazzling purple stars—miniature pirakla missiles.

Destra heard those tracking packets of energy slam into walls and explode with a thunderous roar that shook the entire compound. Castcrete trickled down from the ceiling, and residual vibrations came rumbling underfoot like an earthquake. Farah sprang out next, firing bright purple lances of light and screaming incoherently.

Return fire crackled back, and Destra cringed, her eyes slamming shut to block it all out. She squeezed Atta’s hand tightly. Torv gave a
hissing
scream, like a giant shellfish being boiled alive. Farah panted raggedly, cursing and calling Destra a coward. Destra willed herself not to hear any of it. Then a few stray crackles of laser fire silenced both Farah and Torv.

Silence rang like a crystal bell, and for a moment Destra dared to believe that it was over, that they wouldn’t find her or Atta.

Then footsteps sounded on the stairs—
clack, clack, clack
. Destra opened her eyes in time to see two armored Sythians picking a path through their fallen comrades at the top of the stairs. Destra’s heart leapt into her throat.

Those two were followed by another two, and then four more. Glowing red eyes found them, somehow seeing them despite their cloaking shields.

One of the Sythians raised his arms, and glowing red apertures appeared in his palms. One arm aimed at her, the other at Atta.

“Run!” Destra leapt in front of her daughter just as the sharp
crack
of laser fire sounded. The world flashed lavender-white. A searing pain erupted in Destra’s chest, and she crumpled to the floor, suddenly unable to breathe. Another
crack
sounded, and a small shadow clattered down beside her, alien armor flickering blackly as the cloaking shield failed.

Tears filled Destra’s eyes, and her mind wailed impotently. She had no air to scream. Then came another crackle and flash of lasers. The searing pain in her chest exploded into blinding agony, but a spreading numbness quickly took its place, and her vision grew hazy with encroaching darkness.

Destra surrendered to it.

I’m going to wake up now,
she decided, her eyes drifting shut. That thought chased her down a dark tunnel toward a dazzling white light.

“So beautiful…”
she whispered as she raced toward the light.

Chapter 12