Pride x Familiar (58 page)

I closed my eyes, welcoming the darkness, and
concentrated on what I could
feel
around me.

One object hadn’t moved away.

It hadn’t darted about like a frightened
fish.

In fact, it was almost as though it was…watching
me.

Or was it waiting for me?

I focused my Awareness on it for a moment, then
opened my eyes.

I was certain I was looking in its
direction.

I pictured myself surging toward it, flying like
a hero character would in a children’s holovid drama.

Again, it was strange to think of myself as
moving but I
knew
that I was moving.

It moved toward me.

I stopped, and it stopped.

I opened my mouth and shouted, but no sound came
out.

Instead, it felt like I was shouting inside my
mind.

Hello? Can you hear me? Can you help me?

The object didn’t move.

Then I sensed other objects around it, and I
felt as though I was being caressed by invisible fingertips. It was
such an incongruous sensation, especially in a place like this.

Then those fingers penetrated by skull, and a
sharp headache struck my brain.

I groaned and grabbed my head but it wouldn’t go
away.

It felt as though my eyeballs would burst.

I screamed in agony and the pain moved down my
body.

Now I
really
screamed in agony.

It felt like every cell in my body was being
squeezed and stabbed at the same time.

Was I going to rupture? Would I suffer an
aneurism and die here, forever floating inside this sea of
nothing?

When the pain disappeared it took me a long
while to realize that it was gone. Every inch of my body ached, and
my ears rang in the silence that followed.

I was too late to notice the object interested
in me was now racing toward me, while the others stayed behind.

I was too late to do anything about the wiry
mass heading in my direction like a writhing silver cloud.

I opened my mouth to shout at it.

It plunged down my mouth and into my
esophagus.

I choked – fear and desperation making me jerk
about violently.

I tried grabbing the silver, wiry mass of thread
but it was frictionless and slipped easily through my fingers.

And then it was all inside me, burrowing into my
body not unlike how the Symbiote would spread through to every
corner of my innards.

It burrowed into my brain, and I quickly lost
complete control of my body.

I could feel my limbs moving as though they were
being tested out.

Then I felt my body run through various
contortions that were painful at best.

My spine felt like it would snap, and my insides
rupture, but my body held.

It felt as though a hundred fingers were
massaging the inside of my head, feeling about inside my mind.

Then the sensations faded away, and I noticed I
could move again.

I was back in control.

But I was still stuck inside the Vault, and now
I had this unidentifiable silver thread inside my body.

Did my situation just go from bad to worse?

Without warning, the white space around me
turned dark. I was reminded of when I attended a public screening
at holovid center. The theater would go dark, and then holovid
would start.

But in this case…the holovid was all around
me.

And it wasn’t a holovid.

It looked real. It
sounded
real. It
felt
real.

I was floating high above the ground with a
massive cityscape stretching out below me to all four points of the
compass. Clouds floated above me, and the sky was full of objects
zipping about like mosquitoes. Thousands of mosquitoes.

But they weren’t mosquitoes.

They were fighter craft of some sort.

Agile, nimble instruments of destruction,
chasing each other down, hunting for new prey as soon as they made
a kill.

Thousands upon thousands of them. Some of them
would dive low to the city, and dogfight in the canyons formed by
the immense buildings. The populace ran, looking no larger than
grains of shifting sand.

I looked up and saw a number of massive,
cylindrical objects hanging in the sky, well below low orbit. They
resembled dumb bells though the weights at each end were long and
tubular. Surrounding the center bar, and connected to it by
numerous arms, were six to eight pods reminiscent of corn ears.

Are they starships or carriers of some sort?

I’d never seen a design like those but I wasn’t
all that knowledgeable about starships in general.

But from the way the dark mosquitoes emerged
from the corn ears, I had to assume those ships were indeed
carriers and loaded with thousands of fighter craft.

But who are they fighting? Are they an invading
force?

I looked down at the city, and noticed several
dozen large airships floating above it. They reminded me of the
images of zeppelins I had seen in the history archives of ancient
Earth. But these things were enormous, and they were launching
fighter craft as well.

My Awareness screamed at me.

A squadron of mosquito fighters was headed my
way, lighting up the sky around me as they approached. But I was
unharmed by the incoming fire, and when the fighters swung by I
raised an arm that clearly wasn’t my own and blew them apart with
beams of crimson light.

Drones. Those mosquito fighters were drones. And
they hardly resembled mosquitoes at all.

I understood that now, but I also realized I was
attached to some kind of black and white skeletal biped with limbs
shrouded in angular armor. My legs and thighs were encased in thick
leg armor that attached to the biped’s thighs, but the rest of me
was free to move about unhindered, including my arms. I had the
unshakeable sensation that I was growing out of this machine.
Suddenly a mental image of what I was
wearing
flashed into
my mind and I could see it clearly. Its limbs were connected to a
rigid spine by a number of chains that resembled interlocking
chevrons. Hanging off the back of the machine were seven wedge
shaped wing-vanes that reminded me of giant leaves. They attached
to the rigid spine by more of the chevron linked chains.

The arm I had moved and aimed at the drones
belonged to this machine, and I saw a pair of angular, narrow vanes
attached to both forearms. It was from these vanes that the crimson
light beams had emitted.

What the Hell is this?

*Ravana
.

Huh? I blinked and realized something had spoken
to me from inside my head.

*Warlord, type Rho-Khan…Ravana.

A flurry of information flashed through my
head.

Hah. So that’s what this is. How could I have
forgotten what it was…?

I frowned to myself.

Wait—how could I have forgotten any of this?

This city. This world. This battle.

How could I have forgotten what all this meant
to me?

In the distance, near the center of the city lay
an enormous palace – a gleaming white fortified citadel that was
kilometers in diameter and thousands of feet high. Smoke billowed
upwards in various places along the base of the citadel. It
exchanged fire with the carriers hanging below low orbit – bright
bolts of crimson light dotting the sky like perforations on a sheet
of paper. One of the carriers flashed brightly and smoke broke out
along the length of its hull.

I watched the vessel slowly lose altitude. In
minutes it would crash to the ground, and tens of thousands of
people would die.

I focused on the distant citadel.

How could I forget where I needed to go?

She was there in that palace – the seat of power
for the Human Empire. The last bastion of their resistance.

Before I knew it, I was flying toward the
palace.

I had to get there in time.

I had to reach her in time.

I had to move
faster
.

Clenching my jaw, I willed Ravana to fly at
greater speed, and soon I was cutting a fiery path across the sky,
blazing away at any drones that crossed my path, heating up the
atmosphere as drag built up around the effect-fields protecting the
Warlord.

Onward to the citadel I flew, and soon I was
oblivious to battle raging around me.

I had only one goal in mind – to save her.

#

(Celica)

She was fast.

So very fast.

I was over-clocked and pushing the envelope of
what I could achieve.

Yet I could barely hold my own against her.

A Shar-Khan against a Seer-Khan.

Warlord against Warlord.

Familiar against Familiar.

Around me the habitat spun crazily as I rolled
and twisted the Black Camellia out of the line of fire. My
wing-vanes oriented and re-oriented by the millisecond, altering
the shape of the levitator fields; narrowing and angling the
inertial fields.

The Black Camellia felt like it was gripping the
very fabric of space, pulling it and twisting it for purchase as it
darted about the inside of the habitat.

She entered my field of vision, and I fired upon
her again.

And again, my quantum reaction fire warped
around her.

Damn her inertial field was strong.

She was warping space to protect herself beyond
what effect-fields and reaction barriers could achieve. It was one
skill I hadn’t mastered.

I knew there was a lot I had yet to master.

During the month I’d spent with Crescent, the
month during which my team was held captive while I played the part
of Falken’s mistress, I had practiced piloting the Black Camellia.
Crimson Crescent wanted to observe what the Warlord could achieve,
so I operated it for them. Thinking back now, it was unbelievable
that Falken and Crimson Crescent would place so much trust in me.
At any time I could have used the Camellia and escaped at my
leisure. Even if it meant leaving my team behind, the mission
priority had been the Camellia. Everything else was a secondary
concern.

Yet I hadn’t left.

I couldn’t leave.

I was falling in love with him.

I was willing to betray my precious comrades and
my superiors for him.

If my team members hadn’t decided to fight their
way out, Falken would have released them eventually. He had already
agreed to do so. All I had to say was ‘yes’ to his proposal.

And I did say ‘yes’.

But then it all went to Hell, and I had to use
the Camellia to secure their escape. I had no choice but to leave
with them.

No, I did have a choice, but I couldn’t leave
Caelum behind. I wanted to take him with me. Even if he hated
Crimson Crescent and the Aventis, I was certain I could make him
understand. I was certain I could ease his hatred.

So that’s why I returned home to Pharos.

That’s why I betrayed Falken, for the sake of my
family.

But learning I was pregnant changed
everything.

Now it wasn’t just Caelum that was my
family.

Now I had a baby inside me to consider.

I blinked.

Over-clocked or not I could hardly afford the
distraction of reminiscing through painful memories.

Four beams of golden light razed the space I’d
occupied a moment ago. They struck ground and burned away a large
apartment complex. I didn’t have time to wonder if it was occupied,
but I glimpsed people running on the street and emergency
lev-vehicles shepherding them.

I shot upwards, aiming for the habitat ceiling.
I needed to draw her fire away from the habitat buildings.

The habitat interior had a peak height of two
thousand feet. But there was a gap in the middle between a thousand
and sixteen hundred feet where the artificial gravity was almost
non-existent.
Induran
had made use of this gap in the
gravity fields, keeping airborne with ease, while diverting power
to its effect-fields and whipping up a storm about itself.

As I raced for the ceiling, I glimpsed the
starship descending toward the academy buildings. It needed to
descend low enough to pick up my teammates. With the Avienda
distracted, this was
Induran
’s chance to recover them.

Flipping end over end, I aimed the Camellia’s
feet for the artificial sky above me. In several areas, the mimetic
field projectors were damaged, so there were swathes showing the
rock ceiling rather than a blue sky broken with puffy white
clouds.

I was upside down now, flying feet first toward
that sky. The Warlord’s feet touched down on the rock ceiling,
landing between an ensemble of gantries and walkways hidden by the
mimetic sky field. These walkways were used by maintenance staff to
gain access to the light rigs and the mimetic sky projectors. With
the Black Camellia standing upside down on the ceiling, its legs
thigh deep in the sky field, I felt I was standing in a pool of
shimmering blue water.

I looked up, or rather down at the habitat
cityscape above me.

The Avienda cut a path across the sky, angling
toward me.

I aimed all eight of the Camellia’s quantum
reaction cannons at my opponent, but I held my fire when she veered
away and chose to land on the habitat ceiling a couple of hundred
feet away.

The Black Camellia recognized the Seer-Khan as
the Avienda. It was stronger than my Warlord. Faster too, and its
pilot knew how to draw out its potential.

But she lacked the combat skills I’d honed
during many years as an Artemis. Even if I only had a month’s
practice with the Black Camellia, I was able to draw on my Artemis’
experience to balance out the difference in power between our
respective machines.

Compared to me, that girl was a child cutting
and swinging wildly, throwing punches that came close but failed to
connect. The Avienda took my cannon fire and weathered it, but she
had yet to land a single hit on me, and I could see it was
beginning to frustrate that child.