Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (52 page)

The machine focused its optics upward, staring at the giant black monolith towering over the city ruins. It was the Collective, it was where the Scion was, and its electronic gaze zoomed in longingly on the beam that shot from the top.

Every exertion seemed to drain its life force, it could feel its thoughts slowing. Soon, its colors would fade, but before then it would defeat the shells of as many Mas’Shinra as it could. It would help the Guardian reach the Scion. And maybe, just maybe, it would feel the warmth of the Nexus once more.

Ambassador saw a new sight. Grayish shells, with four legs, leaping and attaching onto the speeding train.

Mas’Nashana.
It doubled its momentum, rushing eagerly to aid against the new threat.

Then a voice ripped through its mind, distorted, weak … and in pain; amplified somehow, as if it were connected to the Whole, which should have been impossible. It recognized the voice, felt new energy as her unique colors blossomed in its consciousness.

Scion,
it projected.

Ambassador
. There was surprise and joy in the sensations.
I need you.

Ambassador could feel the Scion’s pain … and it understood. They were hurting her. They were
forcing
her. Anger swelled inside it, a thirst for vengeance. Mas’Shinra must
fall.

It thundered forward, blowing through a pack of five Mas’Nashana, as it looked for the two it knew it would need.

*   *   *

ONE OF THE SMALL,
gray walkers exploded as Avril’s Lancet punctured it. She rolled along the top of the rumbling train as another landed behind her in a blast from its jetpack. She aimed and fired …

… then watched as the machine launched upward again, falling right at her. She rotated, readying herself to—

Two thunderous blasts blew the machine backward in a torrent of sparks.

Avril saw Quade above her, shotgun in his arms, among the other Menagerie. He stared down at her, offered his hand. “You should really get a different weapon.”

Another gray walker landed next to them … right as an Antimatter crystal cleaved it in half. Dasha gave Quade a contemptuous look as she moved past. “What for?”

Quade stared after her as she flipped back into the fight. “I like her.”

Avril started moving again, headed for the front, trailing behind her two camps of fighters, Menagerie and White Helix; each seemed eager to outfight the other. She was caught between worlds, and when this was over, it would be her last day in one of them. Then again, who was she kidding? Most likely it was her last day in both.

She stared at the furious fighting. Bullets and grenades, explosions, Antimatter crystals, Helix and Menagerie and Regiment fighting the gray walkers, groups of silvers pushing outward, engaging the larger Assembly. Whenever they fell, no Ephemera appeared, they were truly gone, while hundreds of the glowing Assembly entities filled the air behind them, floating back to find a new machine and reenter the fight. The odds were stacked so completely against them the outcome was certain.

Two walkers landed in front of her, clamping onto the train, one more behind.

Avril fell flat, felt the heat of the plasma bolts sear past and spark into one of the machines, sending it flying off the train.

She launched a crystal. A second walker exploded, falling away.

The third she cut in half with her Lancet, then lunged to the side, spinning, looking for—

A plasma bolt caught her arm, sent her sliding dangerously close to the edge. She grabbed on just in time, rolled back up. There was blood, but she pushed the pain away. There wasn’t time.

More walkers were appearing, the air burned with ordnance from both sides. She watched the last of the silver rebels engage two blue and white Spiders stuffed between buildings, saw Helix and Menagerie deploying off the train, engaging on their own, trying to buy the rest time. They were virtually defenseless now, they had used most of their pieces.

It was then she felt something unexpected. The train began to
accelerate,
leaving the deployed troops and the silvers behind. Avril looked ahead, and her eyes widened. The base of the Citadel was less than three blocks away, stretching out of sight and towering over them. The train tracks dead-ended right
into
it.

The Assembly had placed the structure on top of the tracks, not to mention a hundred or more streets’ worth of city real estate.
Sorcerer
was going to ram into the thing.

More of the gray jump-pack Assembly landed, and Avril spun back into the fray. Bullets from the Menagerie sparked into the walkers, as more and more piled on. Without the silvers running interference, it was clear they were about to be overwhelmed.

A gray walker advanced on her, its three-optic eye locking on …

… then it shuddered as a spray of plasma bolts knocked it away.

All around her, the gray walkers were being blown to bits by plasma bolts, and it wasn’t coming from Ambassador’s forces. It was coming from
blue and white
Assembly. And reds. And brown gunships. And every other kind of walker she’d ever seen—and they weren’t just firing at the grays, they were firing at
each other
now.

If the streets had been a war zone before, they were now complete chaos.

The sound of a massive explosion rattled down from above and Avril looked up to see a plume of fire blow out from the side of the Citadel. She saw gunships engaging one another high above, streaks of light in the sky.

The Assembly, it seemed, had turned on each other … but why?

“Everyone hold on,” Mira’s voice shouted over the radio.
“Tight!”

Avril saw the base of the Citadel looming, felt the train accelerating. She grabbed the roof as
Sorcerer
rammed into the Citadel.

The impact jarred everything violently and Avril held on as best she could.

*   *   *

MIRA SLAMMED INTO THE
wall of the train car at the impact. Max flew toward her, and she barely caught him. The added hit knocked the breath out of her, and she collapsed to the floor, the world a blurry, dizzy mess of strange, slow-motion sounds.

It was dark. She could hear screams and explosions, gunfire, the sizzling of plasma bolts.

The Assembly were closing in. Now that they weren’t moving, everyone outside would be overrun in minutes. There was only one thing that could save them.

“Mira!” It was Holt’s voice, nearby. “How do I turn this thing on?”

Holt groggily kneeled in front of her artifact. Apparently, he was thinking the same thing.

“Open…” she started, trying to form words. “Open the pocket watch. Then get
back.
”

With distaste, Holt flipped the watch open. The black, squirming light bubbled into the air … then was sucked back down into the combination. Mira felt the floor vibrate.

A flood of disgusted projections came from the Assembly outside. She could feel them pulling away, back into the streets.

Mira sighed. The artifact still worked. For now. Whenever it finally faded, everyone down here was going to die, but that was a problem for later.

Max barked wildly, moving for the exit, and Holt helped Mira stand up. “You okay?”

She gave him a look. “I haven’t been okay since I
met
you.”

“Fair enough.”

They jumped out of the train, Max leading the way, bounding off into the dark toward where the two giant locomotives had come off the rails and plowed into the ground. When Mira saw them, her heart ached. The engines were dark, she couldn’t feel the entities inside anymore. Two more sacrifices in a long list she promised never to forget.

The only real source of light came from the hole where
Sorcerer
had punched through. Through it, she could see the rear half of the train, most of it still on the tracks, and the battle raging around it outside. Its cannons were firing and recalling their crystals nonstop. She could see gunfire coming from the cars too, and from the buildings all the way down the street where the Menagerie had deployed. White Helix flipped through the air, engaging the Assembly directly.

Walkers of all kinds moved outside, firing and blasting not just the silvers and the Helix, but each other, confirming the strange sight she’d seen before. Something had happened to turn them against each other. Whatever it was, there was no doubt it involved Zoey, and it only made Mira more desperate to reach her.

Mira studied the darkness, could see what was left of the old city ruins—streets, traffic lights, the entrance to a subway—stretching out of sight into the shadows, and there was something eerie about how the Assembly had just built over the remains instead of demolishing them, like they didn’t even exist.

Giant support beams ran in a gridwork all through the dark, stretching up out of sight. It was clearly the foundational superstructure of the Citadel, and the horrible thought occurred to her that there was nothing to climb. No ladders, no foot rungs, nothing to grab at all. There was nothing here to use, because the Citadel was simply not built for humans. How were they going to get
up
?

“We can defend this,” Isaac said, his buggy rumbling through the debris. “For a little while.”

Around him were the remainders of the Regiment, White Helix and Menagerie, including Avril. Mira suddenly wondered what had become of the Landships, and felt guilty for only remembering them now. She knew the most likely answer, and tried not to think about it.

“I say we put our pieces in position outside, do as much damage as we can, and when your artifact wears off and they start pushing, we fall back here.” Isaac studied the hole where
Sorcerer
had punched through, nodded in grim satisfaction. “They’ll bunch up, we can drop a whole lot before they get in.”

“And when they do…” Mira said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Avril told her. “We’ll hold this ground as long as we can, buy you time to get Zoey.”

“Getting to her’s the problem,” Holt said, staring into the dark interior above. “Can you spare some warriors? Masyn jumped me and Castor up about three stories’ worth of height back at Faust, maybe they can do something similar here.”

Explosions rocked the ground outside. They could see a group of silver Assembly pushing forward, clearing a path, and when it was empty, one barreled through the hole toward them.

Ambassador. Its armor was smoking and dented, she could see where one of its legs was crumpled. She sensed a desperation coming from the entity, and it worried her.

“What is it?” Mira stepped toward the machine.

The Scion,
it projected.
She fades.

The sensations brought to life a similar desperation inside her. “There’s no way up to—”

We see her,
it interrupted, and Mira understood. Ambassador was linked to Zoey somehow, he could
teleport
them right to her!

She looked at Holt. “Zoey’s in trouble. Ambassador can take us.”

Holt nodded and looked at the others, he couldn’t help it. He and Mira were leaving … and everyone around them, new friends and old, were going to die so that they could.

“Go,” Avril said, next to them, staring pointedly. “Finish it.”

More explosions echoed in from outside, the Menagerie and Helix were moving to join the battle. Mira looked at Avril one last time … then pulled Max tight against her. She closed her eyes and reached out, touching her consciousness and Holt’s, and merging them with Ambassador’s.

Colors exploded in her mind with prismatic brilliance, and she felt energy wash through her. There was a sound. Like a powerful, punctuated blast of static noise, and a quick wave of heat. Max howled. Mira’s stomach clenched … and then they were somewhere else.

47
MISTAKES

THE ROOM WAS HUGE,
with strange black walls, and a domed ceiling of hundreds of sparkling panels that glowed with golden light. In the very center, a giant column of flickering energy rose upward, each particle drifting slowly through the ceiling.

It all would have been amazing, beautiful even … if not for the massive burst of static that ripped through Holt’s head. He had never felt anything like it, it was like razor blades rending his consciousness. He crashed to his knees, and it was all he could do to not fall all the way over.

Looking up at the glowing panels, he had an idea where he was. He knew transmitters when he saw them, and the ceiling was covered in them. This was where the Tone was broadcast from, and he had a feeling if he hadn’t been Heedless, he would have Succumbed the second he stepped inside. Heedless or not, it didn’t make the pain any less.

He made himself focus. As he studied the room through the haze, he saw something that made his heart stop, something a part of him thought he might never see again.

Zoey.

She was strapped into some kind of machine and her face was a mask of pain and exertion. Energy sparkled off her body like lightning. Crystalline entities were floating toward her, and there was a woman in front of her, one hand holding Zoey’s, the other grasped onto the machine. Her body was covered in the same arcing energy, and her expression was just as pained.

Mira struggled next to him, trying to stand. The only one who seemed unaffected was Max, and the dog barked wildly as three strange Assembly machines entered the room. Four legs, with thin bodies that had tendril-like arms, each painted blue and white.

Ambassador rumbled and charged, smashing them to pieces, as the static grew in Holt’s head. He wasn’t going to last much longer.

A desperate idea occurred to him. What he needed was to short this place out, and if those things up there really were transmitters …

His hands shook as he unstrapped his Sig, aimed upwards … and made himself pull the trigger.

The weapon flashed to life, he felt it kick wildly in his grip.

The panels above exploded. As they did, the light around the machine Zoey was plugged into blossomed brightly. A violent chain reaction took place, and every panel in the ceiling ruptured apart in brilliant bursts of sparks that fell everywhere like a meteor shower.