Dusk (57 page)

Another figure emerged from the darkness with
a knife screaming something about painting the floor with bowels,
but Milliken’s head was pounding, and the sound of “We’re coming!”
across the earwig overwhelmed his hearing. The man trying to choke
him leaned, trying gain leverage to pull Milliken off his feet, but
Milliken bent his legs and dropped his weight. When the man
steadied himself to yank again, Milliken planted his feet beneath a
body on the floor and allowed himself to fall. An arm or a leg must
have tripped the man choking him because they both fell forward,
barreling toward the man with the knife as Milliken let out a fury
filled scream. The man with the knife lifted it and lunged,
catching Milliken across his hipbone. The pain sent cracks of agony
through Milliken’s body, but it abated his scream. What must have
been perceived as a battle cry or frustration to the men in the
ship had not been an emotive reaction, but a calculated and acute
distraction used to conceal the activation beeps of the Valois
Squib Milliken had just activated. And though the pain and warmth
from the stab wound, and the man gaining leverage and tightening
his hold behind him were both disillusioning, the fact that the man
who had stabbed him now had an active explosive device magnetically
stuck to his gun gave Milliken the poise he needed to lift both his
legs, fold his knees to his chest, and kick out with all the
strength remaining in his body. The man, evidently unaware of the
Squib in his belt, tried to resist, but when Milliken connected,
the strength in his legs, after months of training in Earth’s
gravity, sent the man reeling backward into the wall.

Milliken lifted his arm to shelter himself from the
bright flash as the ear-splitting whine pierced the air in the
room. He felt the man behind him press into his body as they hit
the wall. His grip loosened, but as Milliken tried to step away
toward two more men emerging from the flickering shadows, the wound
in his hip protested, and he found himself stumbling into a
stronger chokehold, without his hand to protect his neck.

Septangle Fennon Thurber was about to
reactivate the laser-bit when the bulkhead began to slide upward on
its own. He placed the bit on his belt, raised his sidearm, and
took a low defensive stance. Halber and Ori dropped to the ground
on either side of him to cover the jetway from beneath the rising
bulkhead.

As the bulkhead rose, it revealed an empty
jetway. The visor on Fennon’s mask revealed a pathway that seemed
innocuous other than a strangely low oxygen count. Octad Dunhill
moved forward, observed the jetway, and then pointed to five of the
seven men under his charge. With two fingers, he waved them forward
to the airlock door on the opposite side of the jetway.

They made their way gingerly across the floor
until a metallic thud shook the entire jetway. They turned and saw
the bulkhead shut behind them, separating them from the Octad and
two others as chatter began spreading over their earwigs. Gherig
carried the other laser-bit, and in only a matter of minutes, they
could cut through the bulkhead. But as the airlock door before them
slid open, Fennon wondered if they may actually have the minutes
they needed. He took two forced breaths to trump himself up and
barked through his microphone, “Sharpen your elbows!” as they all
focused on the rising bulkhead that slowly revealed a solitary man
wearing a gas mask and holding a wooden staff. Even through the
mask they could see it was the man they had come for, the man who
called himself the Knight of Wands, the man that had roused so much
trouble that he had flushed them out of hiding.

“Set down your weapon!” Fennon yelled, his
mask amplifying his words through speakers mounted on it.

“Come and take it from me,” the man said,
holding out his staff.

They all raised their guns, training a bead
on this man who was either completely off his day-counter, or knew
something they did not.

“We will count to five, then we open fire,”
Fennon bellowed through his speakers.

“Might I suggest…” the man began saying, but
Fennon interrupted him with a resounding, “One!”

“…that while you count to five…”

“Two!”

“…you check your methane reading.”

This man’s calm in the face of their phalanx
was unnerving. They were protected with Comptex battle suits,
lightweight, bulletproof, and certified against chemical and
biological agents as well as radiation. As far as they knew, there
were at least two malfies inside the ship, but no more than four or
five. What could he possibly think could save him? So Fennon
subvocalized the command to switch his mask to atmospheric analysis
so he could at least see what this man, the father of the Sword
Scourge himself, had in his medicine bag.

And then he saw; the methane count in the air
was well beyond safe levels. Fennon expected the Knight of Wands to
give them some sort of demands, to tell them to stand down as he
retreated into the ship, but he didn’t. He merely took an emphatic
step forward and dropped into a fighting stance as the airlock door
closed behind him.

Ori’s grip tightened around his weapon. “Punt
five, I’m going to burn him rightforth!”

“No!” Fennon yelled, dropping his own gun in
an exaggerated motion as he tried to clandestinely slide his left
hand behind his back. “If we cast slugs in here, it might blow.
That’s what he’s gambling on.”

“You going to stand here in the poot gas all
day, old man?” Fennon asked, moving his hand further behind his
back slowly.

“No. I only need three… more… minutes.” The gas mask
shifted on his face as his eyes squinted behind the visor and
Fennon was sure he was smiling at them. Fennon grabbed the hold-out
knife from behind his back and took a step forward, but the ground
shook beneath them, and the stars outside the window of the jetway
jiggled as if the entire universe was being rattled. And then the
Knight of Wands, that deranged lunatic, rushed toward the five of
them with no visible weapon except a wooden staff.

As Cyrus’s feet moved him toward the five
armed guards, he could not help wondering how his life had gone so
wrong that this seemed like a good idea. But the charges set in the
space elevator disintegrated three of the tether cables, and the
centripetal force of the planet itself sent the J.L. Orbital
wrenching against the remaining cable. As the cable caught, a wave
rolled through the jetway floor and seemed to propel Cyrus forward.
The guard who was apparently the leader of the black-clad, bug-eyed
men drew a combat knife from his back—most likely some kind of
resonating blade. Cyrus slid the staff up through his left hand and
swung the left end of it forward. Even in their Comptex suits,
these men were fast—just as Cyrus had expected. The jetway lurched
beneath his feet as the man to Cyrus’s left caught the staff.

Cyrus planted his feet and threw his legs
forward as the leader brought his knife around, aiming at Cyrus’s
ribs. “Invert the G-drive now!” Cyrus subvoced.

The man who had grabbed the staff wrenched at
it, but it was too late. The gravity waves around them flatlined,
and the kinetic energy that Cyrus had built before the inversion
sent his legs into the man with the knife and the man next to him
with concussive force. Something scraped against one of his ribs,
and as Cyrus extended his legs, he saw the knife that had cut him
spinning across the jetway trailing hovering droplets of blood. The
two men flew backward, bowling into the man directly behind them,
and spinning another off balance, knocking his feet from beneath
him. The man who had grabbed the staff had stiffened his body to
pull at the staff, and now, thanks to his own tension, was rising
off the ground. Cyrus held on to the staff with his left hand,
planted his right hand on the edge of the jetway, and let the
slight resistance from his kick send him back toward the wall like
a feather. As the man who had grabbed the staff tried to reorient
himself, Cyrus pushed off the wall and brought his legs toward the
man’s chest. The man tried to block and Cyrus forced the staff back
into the visor of his mask. His head snapped back, and as Cyrus’s
feet connected with his arms, he spun into a flip.

The largest lurch yet rocked the jetway.
Cyrus pulled his feet underneath him and used the momentum of the
wavering jetway to launch himself at the soldier who had been
twisted. The soldier was now pulling his feet to the floor as he
activated magnetic clamps on his boots.

Cyrus pulled the staff back into his right
hand and snapped it around as the man’s rubberized boots stuck to
the jetway. The man lifted his own knife to advance on Cyrus, but
must not have expected Cyrus, or Cyrus’s staff, to be right in his
face. Cyrus brought the staff across the man’s throat, twisted his
own body over the staff as it stopped on the man’s neck, and pulled
against the staff as if he were trying to stop himself using the
man’s chin for leverage. The motion stripped the man’s mask from
his face, and as Cyrus’s momentum slowed, he twisted again in the
air, carrying the man’s mask with him. Cyrus flung it from the end
of the staff at a man next to the bulkhead who was trying to
activate his boots.

There was a wet heat building in Cyrus’s
midsection now, but he had to keep going. Cyrus moved his feet to
the ground and bounded again. The Orbital must have broken loose
from its tethers, because the lurching had stopped completely. He
stretched out and reared the staff back to swing again, but he
stopped abruptly. The man whose mask he had snatched off was
holding his ankle. The man gagged as the thickening methane
assaulted his lungs, but using his magnetic boots as an anchor, he
yanked Cyrus’s ankle back and slammed him against the wall.

Cyrus had twisted the staff as the man had
swung him toward the wall. Cyrus planted it against the wall as he
collided side-first into it. The staff slowed the collision, but
his shoulder, even though the Eos had healed it, took a wallop.

Cyrus leaned against the wall and threw his
free foot at the unmasked man. The man dodged, but Cyrus brought
the end of the staff back into the man’s knuckle. He wailed as his
hand released Cyrus’s ankle, and Cyrus quickly pulled his knees to
his chest and placed his legs between his body and the wall. The
three men against the bulkhead had activated their clamps, and
there was a bluish line of fiery light from the laser-bit spreading
from the floor on the bulkhead behind him. Cyrus was running out of
ave, and three minutes was a lot longer than he had
anticipated.

He launched himself toward the three as they
reached for weapons. The two on either side of the leader reached
for their knives, but the leader, who had dropped his knife, was
reaching for something else. Cyrus held the staff out with both
hands, hoping one of them would grab the end of it, but they would
not fall for the same trick twice. The two men stepped to either
side, their magnetic clamps mechanically activating and
deactivating with the natural motion of their ankles. The leader
turned as he moved, pulling some sort of rifle or shotgun from
behind his back as Cyrus collided with the bulkhead.

Something slashed against his back, sending a
bolt of pain through his entire left side, but Cyrus kept moving.
He drove the staff downward across the switch on the boot of the
man to his right and quickly snapped the staff upward under the
man’s chin. The boots disengaged, and the man flipped as Cyrus
heard a familiar, yet hard to place, whine. The gas that filled the
room, invisible before now, swirled and caused the lights in front
of his face to bloat and tweak.

The Spellcaster. Its nickname made more sense
now as the whine began to rise in pitch. But Cyrus knew if he let
his fear of the weapon get the best of him, it would all be over.
There was only one way back home, and it did not include that gun
pointed at his head. Plus, if what Aerik said was accurate, at this
range, it would hurt both of them just as much.

So Cyrus took his chances, brought his elbow
up beneath the barrel of the gun, and as the leader resisted, he
used the leverage to bring his foot down across the side of the
leader’s boot, deactivating the magnet. Cyrus pushed against the
bulkhead with his other foot and dropped his staff. Cyrus
simultaneously reached for the leader’s gun hand with his right,
while grabbing a strap on another man’s shoulder with his left.
Cyrus’s palm collided with the leader’s hand and he squeezed. There
was a low oscillating whirr, and then a sudden thump that expanded
the air and spun Cyrus like a turbine blade. There was a snap, like
a plant being snatched up by its roots, and the jetway spun around
him like a malfunctioning hologram. His legs collided with
something with enough force to send a shockwave of pain up to the
base of his skull. Cyrus had to focus to fight back the spasms in
his esophagus as bile filled his throat. His head pounded, and when
his vision cleared, he saw the man to his left slumped awkwardly
against the wall of the jetway, feet still pinned to the floor, and
another man vomiting blood in the corner as he clutched at his
chest. Cyrus now held the Spellcaster in his own hand, and was
holding a floating slug thrower by a strap that had globules of
what could have only been blood floating behind it.

“We are set to go,” chorused over the ringing
in his ears as Cyrus regained his equilibrium and looked to see who
was left. Cyrus turned slowly and saw the unmasked man gagging in
the thickening methane. But there were at least two men still
active in this room.

Cyrus pulled the slide back on the
Spellcaster, and he heard a muffled thump, but before the gun began
to whine he was blindsided. The leader had reactivated his boots,
and Cyrus hadn’t seen him until his own body had twisted and
smashed into the bulkhead. The metal of the bulkhead felt like it
caved in slightly, and for a moment, Cyrus thought he had imagined
it. He then realized the fissure in the door was nearly complete
and had caved in under the force.