Baleful Betrayal (34 page)

On the top deck, the Seraphim crew leapt off the sides, spreading their wings and gliding away. I saw Shelton and Bella helping a wounded Seraphim from beneath a section of broken decking. Grim-faced Templars held onto the railing, knowing their journey would soon end.

I raced over and tossed the carpets on the deck. "Get out of here!"

Shelton's eyes flashed with gratitude. "You came for us, man."

"Yes I did, now shut up and fly!" I dragged an unconscious Templar onto a carpet as his comrades boarded the other ones and began to take flight. "How many more onboard?"

"Twenty soldiers trapped on the third deck," one of the Templars answered.

I jabbed a finger toward the remains of the
Kjala
, its prow wedged in the hull of the Pstra. "Rescue survivors over there."

The Templars each took a carpet and flew toward the other ship, grabbing the wounded from the deck. I snuffed my wings and raced below deck. A section of deck two had collapsed into the level below, blocking the way for escape. I channeled a wave of Stasis, turning the tough crystal into brittle glass and punched my way through it.

Part of the hull broke free, revealing the forest floor looming even closer. This entire ship would be a heap of shattered crystal within the next minute.

Chapter 31

The ship fell in slow motion, but not slowly enough. I didn't have long to rescue the trapped Templars. Fear renewed my efforts. I rammed through more debris and found the stranded soldiers.

"Follow me!" I turned and ran back up the ramp toward the top deck. The Templars followed in orderly fashion, carrying their wounded and keeping calm, as if this was something they did on an everyday basis. I showed them the pile of carpets.

One soldier raced to the pile and handed them out quickly. Someone paired with wounded and the carpets took off one-by-one. The last soldier hopped on a carpet and looked at me expectantly. "Sir, are you coming?"

I shook my head, suddenly realizing I hadn't even thought to get on one myself. "Yes." I hopped onboard and the carpet lifted off. We flew free of the wreckage and watched as the
Pstra
and
Kjala
, hulls locked in a deadly embrace, crashed into the trees with a tremendous boom.

Dozens of other carpets floated nearby, some of them bearing five people, far more than their rated load and unable to rise any higher. We drifted close to one and took one of their passengers. Other carpets followed our example until most of the weight was evenly distributed. Small crystalline boats with the markings of their mother ships hovered nearby like life rafts. A lump formed in my throat when I found Shelton and Bella waving at me from a nearby carpet.

Hot tears stung my eyes and I waved back. So long as I drew breath, I would do everything in my power to save my loved ones.

If only I could have saved Nightliss.

"Thank you, sir," one of the Templars said, a broad-shouldered man with a scar across his cheek. "You saved a lot of good people."

I saw the grateful looks on the faces of people trained to face death and suddenly couldn't speak.
Great, now I'm going to cry in front of Templars.
A few deep breaths melted the knot and I hoped they took my silence for grim resolve or heroic stoicism.

We flew up to the
Evadora
and Elyssa ran over to hug me. "How many ships?" I asked, not wanting to hear the answer.

"We lost nearly half," Elyssa said, voice breaking.

I looked out over the railing. Four ships looked undamaged and had docked with other damaged ships to keep them afloat. Our once mighty fleet was reduced to a pale shadow in one fell blow.

I'm going to kill you, Serena.

Where Daelissa had once ruled with brute force, her former lapdog attacked with ruthless deceit. At least with Daelissa you could see the attacks coming from a mile away. My face burned with anger, but my heart sagged like lead in my chest.
Why didn't I see this coming?

Was Serena really so much smarter than all of us? After the attack at the mansion, we should have been prepared for anything. How had she remained a step ahead?

Elyssa seemed to know what I was thinking. "Justin, nobody could have foreseen something like this."

"How could she hijack Fjoeruss's gray men?" My fists clenched painfully tight. I wanted to smash and break things, but Serena had already done that for me.

Behind us, I saw the three airships we'd left behind on Kdosh slowly catching up with the fleet, the battle bot containers swaying gently beneath them. The first airship came to a stop over the
Evadora
and paced us. A container thudded onto the deck and both ends slammed open. Battle bots poured from both ends, gears and motors whining in syncopation.

I waved my arms at the airship. "Hey, we don't need help now!"

"What is Victus doing?" Elyssa said. She touched the comm pendant on her uniform. "Airship Delta One, we do not need battle bot assistance. I repeat, we require no assistance."

The whining electric motors of the bots stopped as the last one stepped into formation, shiny chrome bodies absolutely still. The green lines in their wide visor-like eyes zigzagged up and down like a heart monitor leaving a jagged graph in its wake. The lines flashed yellow.

"Oh crap," Shelton said from beside me. "You've gotta be kidding me!"

The tone in his voice amped the dread factor and it dawned on me that these bots weren't here to help. The lines in their electronic eyes flashed red. "Everyone take cover!"

"New targets acquired," the bots said in cybertronic monotone. "Battle bots attack."

I channeled a blazing sword of Brilliance and sliced off the arm of the closest robot before it could activate the laser cannon mounted on the wrist.

Shelton slammed his staff on the deck and raised a shield an instant before a flurry of lasers slashed the air, leaving trails of smoke and an acrid scent in the air. Two Templars went down with smoking holes in their chests. The rest pressed the attack.

Bella whirled her staff behind the protection of Shelton's shield. "Caliente!" she shouted and leveled the focus toward the closest battle-bot. A lance of green light met the bot's arm cannon just as the robot fired. The arm exploded, throwing the bot back into its comrades and knocking them out of formation.

I leapt over sizzling beams of energy and channeled a massive sledgehammer of Murk in my left hand, wielding it like Thor and crushing a bot with one blow. The blazing sword still in my right hand, I slashed the head from another robot, lashed out with a foot and sent another bot flying back into a group of metal soldiers. Before they could recover, I went berserk, cutting them to scrap metal with my energy sword.

A whining hum caught my attention. Looking up, I saw the blimp's bottom laser cannon swiveling toward the deck. The whine reached a fever pitch and went silent an instant before a ball of red energy exploded from the muzzle and slammed into a group of Templars. Bodies scattered and wood splintered. The airship was too high for me to reach so I raced for the flying carpets.

Black vines slithered up through the air and wrapped around the laser cannon. With a loud screech of metal, the weapon tore free. I saw Cora staring up at the airship, eyes blazing with unbridled fury. The vines wrapped around the engines and pulled the blimp lower and lower.

So intent was she on the airship, she didn't see the battle bots converging on her position. I raced across the deck, ducking and weaving through enemy fire. The enemy bots detected me, torsos swiveling in my direction, arm cannons flicking up. I channeled a sheet of ice and slid on my butt beneath a torrent of laser fire. Whirling my energy blade, I sliced the legs off the bots and then decapitated them to finish them.

Cora looked shaken. "Thank you, Justin."

"No problem. Can you get me up to the ship with a vine?" I asked.

"Not necessary." Choked with vines, one of the airship's engines sparked and exploded. The blimp listed but the tether of vines kept it from drifting away from the
Evadora
. Vines snaked through the holes in the cockpit. The airship drifted low off the port bow. The enemy crew screamed as thorny vines slithered down their throats and tore out their insides.

"Don't kill them all." I gripped Cora's shoulder. "I need someone for questioning."

She nodded. A vine gripped the last crew member and pulled him from the cockpit while the rest of the vegetation released the vessel and let it plummet toward the ground.

The battle bots lay in ruins, bodies now heaps of newly formed scrap metal. One of the sky ships to our starboard keeled hard to port, spilling shiny battle bots into the valley below and slamming into the attacking airship. The diamond fiber container crashed through the railing and pierced the nacelle of the enemy blimp. The vessel spiraled in a drunken loop and plummeted out of sight.

The Seraphim crew held fast to rails and decking with strands of Murk until the sky ship righted itself.

"Smart," Shelton said, breathing heavily.

Elyssa looked at the last remaining airship as it battled with the
Krjast
. "Get us over there!" The crew of the last blimp seemed to realize it was sorely outnumbered and turned away from the sky ship. Engaging its twin turbine engines, it jetted back down the valley too quickly for us to pursue.

The
Evadora
pulled up near the
Krjast
. Battle bots lined up mid-ship, firing volleys of lasers at the Seraphim crew.

"We need to get over there," I shouted.

Cora flung out her hand. Vines shot across the gap between the ships, forming gangplanks.

Shelton's eyes went wide. "Dude, we're pirates for real!"

I held up a fist. "Avast, mateys! Keelhaul the landlubbers!"

Elyssa's forehead wrinkled. "What?"

I clarified with one word. "Charge!"

Templars, Seraphim, and Arcanes ran across the gangplanks swords and staffs raised, a mighty battle cry roaring above the fray. Within minutes, we'd destroyed the enemy robots and secured the
Krjast
.

"Man, that couldn't have been any more epic," Shelton crowed.

Adam compacted his staff into a rod and wiped crusted blood off his forehead. "I think swinging across from the other ship would've been pretty cool."

Shelton tapped a finger on his chin. "True, but these ships don't have masts to swing from."

"I can't believe you enjoyed yourself," Bella said angrily. "People died and the fleet is crippled!"

A sober look came over Shelton's face. "Yeah, I know. Just trying to find a silver lining in this mess."

I choked up a little because my silver linings were standing all around me. My friends had survived, and the woman I loved was by my side.

I'm so selfish.

It was a shortcoming I'd just have to accept. I'd move heaven and earth to save the ones I loved. Much as I wanted to savor the moment, I didn't have the luxury. I took Elyssa's hand. "We've got some loose ends to tie up." We returned to the
Evadora
and found the traitorous crewmember from the airship. Cora had left him bound to the railing.

I already knew the answer to my question, but I had to hear it for myself. I looked down at the bruised man, saw the fear in his eyes. "Why did Victus betray us?"

"You betrayed us," he said in a trembling voice. "Victus discovered your alliance with Cephus. He showed us your plans to take over Eden with a Seraphim army."

Elyssa's mouth dropped open. "That's a lie! Why would we fight off one Seraphim invasion only to turn around and do it ourselves? It makes absolutely no sense."

Something about the man suddenly changed, a flicker of oily black in his eyes, and the distinct odor of brimstone rising above the stench of burnt flesh and wood. He roared and broke free of the vines. Fingers extended like claws, he dove for Elyssa. "My master sends you this parting gift!"

Elyssa deftly sidestepped the charge, flipping the man on his back and then pinning him down with her knees. He snapped his teeth like a rabid dog, unable to arch his neck enough to bite her.

I gripped the man's head and pressed it down. "A demon."

"Just like the crewman from Frankenberg's secret Antarctica base," Elyssa said.

"Victus and his demons." I glared at the possessed man.  "He's been playing against us all this time."

"No wonder Serena was able to penetrate the mansion defenses," Elyssa growled. "Victus probably took the portal blocker offline so she could plant the fake bomb."

"She didn't kill us because that would have delayed our departure to Seraphina." I tapped a finger on Elyssa's wrist-mounted lancer. "Knock him out."

A silver dart sprouted in the man's neck and he slumped.

"Serena's note in that crucible makes sense now," Adam said. "She wanted to piss us off, make sure we went to fight Cephus as soon as possible so they could ambush and kill us."

The fleet's flagship, the
Uorion
docked to the
Evadora
during our brief exchange with the possessed man. Thomas and my parents strode across the gangplank.

"What in the blazes is going on?" Dad asked.

"A gray man tried to destroy our ship," Mom said, a look of disbelief on her face. "I can't believe Fjoeruss would betray us."

Thomas gazed at the destroyed battle bots. "What happened?"

"Serena hijacked the gray men Fjoeruss sent." I pounded a fist on the deck. "We were betrayed from the start."

Mom's forehead furrowed with confusion. "How did Serena get the gray men?"

"Because the real mastermind behind this plot helped her." I kicked a robot head and sent it clanking across the deck. "Victus has been in on this from the start and now I think I know why."

Thomas didn't seem surprised. "When we saw the airships attack, I suspected betrayal."

"I knew Victus was ambitious, but did he really expect to kill all of us with the exploding golems and battle bots?" Dad said.

"Therein lies the rub." They weren't going to like what came next. "The gray man on this ship had a message from Serena. After our forces went through the Alabaster Arch, Victus and his people captured and disabled it. According to her, we can't return to Eden."