Warp Wraith, page 19
She shook her head. “No sign of that. They appear to be reorganizing as reinforcements come up.”
“Then we have time.”
“Time for what?” Edie asked sharply.
Malik folded his arms and regarded her for a long moment. It is her, he knew. Those eyes. He sensed the discomfort of the others as the silence between them lengthened, crackled with tension. Looking away, he scanned the others before saying, “Counterattack.”
Gasps from a few broke the quiet and murmurs started up. Ingrid smiled knowingly. Edie’s expression went suddenly unreadable.
“Attack them?” one of her Hardcases squawked, a large, filthy looking man with the confusing rank patches of the partisan band that made him some kind of officer.
“The Theocracy force is still disorganized by its repulse,” Malik replied, meeting the guerilla leader’s glower. “And their reinforcements will actually worsen that state for some time, as they sort themselves out. They won’t be ready for another attack for hours.” He paused, again locked gazes with Edie. “It’s the perfect time.”
Muttering and then silence answered him; neither acceptance nor defiance, and more than a little shock. When that wore off, there would be argument. But Malik would already be in motion by then.
He turned to Ingrid again. “You sent those probes into the catacombs like I asked?”
“We did,” she replied and touched the holoprojector again. The map changed to a twisting layout of passages and chambers. The sprawl of the catacombs under Reyes—what look like it might have once been more than it currently appeared—was impressive. “They got far enough to find an exit.” Ingrid touched the terminal point of a long passageway. Doing so caused a second map to appear, showed a blinking icon out in the rolling hills south of the Kraggar Pass. “Here.”
Malik nodded thoughtfully, considering the position. “That would put a party off the Theocracy right flank and hidden by this spur.”
Edie was shaking her head and spoke up. “That’s still almost two kilometers to cross, through rough, wooded terrain.”
“We will make good time,” Malik replied, almost dismissively; the woman hadn’t seen Ingrid and her Furies move. He turned his attention back to the catacomb layout. “This is quite the maze.” He looked up at Edie. “Do we know of anything else stirred up by your ally’s meddling?”
Her eyes narrowed. “I wouldn’t know.”
Malik didn’t believe that, could feel the squirm of a half-truth at the edges of the woman’s aura. “We’ll speak with her, then,” he declared. “Ingrid, assemble a strike team.”
She shot to her feet, grinning widely enough that it exposed her lengthening fangs and her feral other-nature. “I’ll have plenty of volunteers.”
Ingrid’s movements stirred the Revenants in the room. The Hardcases rumbled uncertainly, exchanging glares and all of them looking to Edie.
“Captain,” Malik raised his voice, determined to break the partisans’ resistance in some way, “take me to the girl.” He looked around the room, willing all to see his determination—but also the implacable force of his will. “The rest of you, make ready.”
The gathering broke up with haste Malik did not miss. Ingrid lingered as Hutch deactivated the hologram, eyes following Edie as she crossed the room to join him. Nostrils flared, as though she were scenting danger, but a glower from Malik dissuaded what was obviously her desire to join him.
Following Edie to the back of the room and the doorway to the cellar, he paused as she unlatched it and pulled the it open. But when he started for the stairs down, she reached out blocked his way with a hand upon his chest.
“You’ll need at least little local guidance, out there,” she told him. “My Hardcases know the area.”
Malik barely heard the words. Her unexpected touch had sent a blast of imagery coursing through him. He froze in place as that damnable flashback filled his mind. Fire and screams and this woman, who time and hardship had aged more quickly than her years, but was still recognizable as the girl Malik had spared, rather than slaughter—as he had so many others.
He gave himself a shake, panicked for a moment when he didn’t know how long his fugue had lasted. “Are you volunteering, Captain?”
“Maybe,” Edie replied, not having seemed to have noticed his moment. Her brows crinkled. “Why did she call you ‘lord’?”
“What?”
“Hutch. She called you that.” She dropped her hand from him and shook her head. “I’ve been with her a year, now, seen her stand up to things others bolted before. But you show up and it’s like she’s around a...” She trailed off, lips pinching in something else.
The image of the remembered-her superimposed itself over the present her for a disorienting moment. “A what?” he pressed.
“One of them.” Edie’s jaw worked. “An Immortal.”
Malik held very still. With the gentlest nudge of telepathy, he brushed her mind with his, sought again the sense of her half-truths. Did she know? Did she remember him? But he found nothing—not resistance; literally nothing. It was as if her aura simply blanked—like that of the dead.
“Reputation is its own immortality,” he said at last. “And many of these people have been with me in this fight a long time.”
Edie stared at him for a lingering moment, searchingly. That his answer didn’t satisfy was clear in her dismissive shrug. She gestured down the steps. “That way.”
Descent into the cellar was lit feebly from below by a single light wand. Malik wouldn’t have needed it. Where he was having difficulty even confirming that Edie had an aura, the witch-girl’s was as piercing and potent as a newly-risen sun. What remained of his face under the mask quirked into a grim smile; the Sisters always crackled with energy that was both wisdom and defiance.
The witch sat on what had to be a chilly floor in the dusty space, cross-legged with one of the Hardcase’s fatigue jackets draped over her narrow shoulders. Eyes snapped open at the creak of the stairs and a knowing smile curved her narrow, cracked lips.
“You’re here...together.” The smiled widened to show bad teeth. “It is as they said.”
Malik turned to Edie as he reached the bottom. “What is she talking about?”
“No idea,” the Hardcase leader replied, joining him and glowering at the girl. “She’s been rambling about that since we found her.”
Malik looked down at the girl—Greta, Edie had told him. “You are a Circean Sister.”
“Obviously.”
“You knew the formula to break the bonds of the entities.” Malik folded his arms and reached out again with his mind, not so much searching as sensing—seeking any truth from the young woman. “But you didn’t know how to control them.”
She winced. “There were originally three of us.”
“Fool,” Malik snapped. “That still would not have been enough.” He took a step closer, towered over her. “Were there more down in that complex?”
She glared back up at him. Fear danced for a moment at the corners of her face, then smoothed away. And whatever hints of her mind Malik could find instantly closed off. For all her youth, she was no neophyte; the Sisters had prepared her well.
“I don’t know.”
Malik nodded and turned to Edie. “Then there may be others quickened, wandering loose.”
“You could control them,” Greta said.
“I could not,” Malik insisted, whirling back to her. “Whatever else you’ve heard of me, my learnings of Flux did not include dabbling in demonology.”
Greta’s smile returned, hinting at some small triumph. “But you are learned.”
This was the same prodding Magda Bauer had attempted; testing his knowledge, his skills. “Enough to know my limitations,” he answered noncommittally. “When we go out again, you will go with us, just in case.”
“We’re going into a fight,” Edie protested. “She’ll be worse than useless!”
“She’ll go no further than the catacombs,” Malik replied, waving a hand to stave off further argument. “And she’ll make sure they remain open behind us.” He fixed Greta with his stare and his other-senses. “Yes?”
“Of course.” She smiled serenely. “You’re here to free us. Together, you will free us all.”
Malik sighed and rolled his eyes, turning to Edie and the stairs up out of the cellar. “That must get truly annoying.”
“Really, it does,” she replied, following him.
“The Flux has told us,” Greta called after them. “We listened in Silence, and it told us.” She raised her voice, a hint of desperation ringing in it. “Ask her. She’s a Sister, too. She knows.”
Malik knew, too.
He said nothing as he emerged from the basement, said nothing as he strode through the command center to the front door. Someone might have attempted to get his attention, but he ignored it, swept out of the main room and into the night. He stopped only when he was clear of the building and far enough into the square that he stood alone. Fires crackled in the wreckage of Reyes up into the Pass. Sulfuric-tinged fumes hung about the black-spires of the cathedral. The air felt thick with tension and portent.
The crackle of Edie’s footsteps on the battered paves caused Malik to look over his shoulder. Of course, she had followed him. “Is that true?” he asked. “What she said?”
“I was born into the Sisterhood, yes,” she replied with obvious caution. “But I left that all behind a long time ago. The Cause and my Hardcases are all that’s mattered for years.” She sniffed. “Not that it’s any business of yours.”
“You’re right.” He turned to look back into the night. “It’s not.”
“And what about you?” she asked at his back. “Obviously, you understand the Flux. She said so.”
Malik snorted. “I would think a Sister would understand the silliness of believing anyone ‘knows the Flux’.”
“I said I was born one,” Edie retorted. “I didn’t say I ever learned a damned thing.”
Malik turned to face her once more. It was impossible not to see the girl from the vision in the woman before him now. “I think you know more than you’re letting on.”
The intensity of his stare was clearly effecting her. She squirmed her shoulders a little before answering. “My mother was particularly sensitive, I guess you’d say. So sensitive, it drove her mad. The older Sisters said there was nothing they could do for her. Sometimes she was with it; sometimes she was a psychotic wreck.” Her eyes flashed as she looked straight back at Malik. “I got away from her and them as early and often as I could. But they’d never let me go for long.”
“Eventually, though.”
“Eventually,” she conceded, “they caused the Theocracy enough trouble that they decided they had to do something about them. They sent their Shock Troopers and killers during one of the Sisterhood’s high festivals—the Conclave.” She shivered. “It was a massacre. I escaped. Wasn’t exactly the freedom I had in mind, but I haven’t looked back.”
“The rest were slaughtered.” Malik knew. He’d been there.
“My mother’s tribe, yes,” Edie went on. “Several they were allied with, too. A few of the tribes weren’t there—” she chortled bitterly “—there’d always been in-fighting. But they were never many.” A sigh escaped, trembling from her chest. “The Old Ways haven’t been the same since that night.”
And that had been the Theocracy’s goal; break the quasi-religious hold of the Sisterhood on Circe. The Immortals had believed—wrongly—that the rebellious character of the Circeans had its roots in the witches’ malign influence. They’d been too arrogant to understand that some people would just not be conquered, would never roll over and accept their lot as the food of the would-be gods.
Malik had believed that, too, until that night, when his Sacred Band swept out of the dark to annihilate the witches—and found the costliest, most horrid fight they’d ever experienced.
And then been betrayed by the Theocracy, themselves.
“I’m sorry.” And, truly, it was no platitude coming from him.
Edie nodded, ignorant of all of that, and taking it as just words. “I’m not,” she said bitterly. She patted the blaster rifle strapped at her shoulder. “This is a better tool for freedom than any of that mummery.” She shook her head. “You saw that thing that got loose! Greta couldn’t even control it! They’re crazy, the ones that are left. They play games with things they don’t understand.”
“You’re not wrong,” Malik agreed and turned fully to face the woman. “But it was a Sister that taught me...a new way of accessing the Flux.” He had found the wisdom of Circe only after his own gods had abandoned him. “It has been my guide ever since.”
Edie’s lips quirked, as though she’d bitten down on something foul. “I suppose she’s dead, too.”
“Quite.”
She snorted. “That’s where all this ends, when all’s said and done; death.” She looked out into the wreckage of Reyes, its guttering fires lighting her features in an infernal hue. “The crones in camp used to mutter about the Flux being the reservoir of all life force in the galaxy, but it’s just destruction.” She shook her head, hard. “It’s a way to hurt your enemies or screw over the gullible.”
“It can be,” Malik conceded with regret that rang through the metallic tones of his mask.
Edie patted the blaster again. “This is what I know.” She faced him with chin held high and eyes blazing with hate. “This is all I need.”
Chapter 11
CALLISTO’S SENSOR PANEL pinged and winked with icons at the edge of scanner range. He tensed, then relaxed as the icons blued to friendly—four of them, screened by clouds of lesser light-motes. One of the contacts pulsed with a transmission and he reached out to touch it.
“Slayer One-One, this the Peltast,” a raspy woman’s voice said as the connection was made. “We see you.”
A globular hologram popped out beside the pulsing icon, showed a grainy image of a Revenant officer with short-cut gray hair and a scar running down from her left eye. A second hologram appeared beside this, showing a diagram of her ship, an Imperial-era retrofit, like the Vengeful, vaguely nautical in lines, save her bow, which swelled to a hammerhead bristling with turbo-blaster cannon.
“Brula,” Callisto called, “good to see you.” He eyed the ships accompanying her as his sensors scanned them and more schemata detailed their configuration. “I’m a little surprised you brought so many.”
In addition to the Peltast, another craft of Imperial vintage accompanied, this one long and narrow, like a minnow, except weighty with armor and spikey with weapons—the torpedo frigate, Mauler. And flanking this came a pair of broom-shaped hulls, clearly heavily-modified and with extra weapons suites; Watchmen-series corvettes. Originally built for private security firms as convoy escorts in the lawless years following the Empire’s collapse, Revenant engineers had up-gunned them to serve as light cruisers.
“The Old Man felt it was better to send too much,” Brula explained. “If it’s a scout force coming on, we can overwhelm them. If it’s more—”
“It’s going to be more,” Callisto insisted.
“Then we can force them to deploy before falling back,” Brula replied. “Everild stands by to break orbit, if that’s the case, with the Vengeful and her escorts.”
Callisto’s long-range sensors gave a blat. In the aft arc, at the very extreme edge of the scanners’ range, a pair of red icons faded and then vanished as the Orloks that had stalked the retreating Slayers since the earlier skirmish broke off.
“Roger, Peltast,” he answered.
“Second and Third Squadron are in support,” Brula said. “First is relieved to Circe for repairs and rearmament.”
“Good. I’ll send them on and take command, here.”
“You’re relieved, as well, Commander.” Brula’s lips pinched, the woman obviously expecting resistance. “Everild’s orders.”
“I’m Wing Commander, Brula!”
“And you’ve been in the cockpit for hours—”
“Not the first time, that!” Callisto scoffed.
“I have operational command,” Brula leaned forward in the screen and holographic light winked across the pins of her superior rank. “Commander.”
Callisto held in an outburst. Truth be told, he was exhausted. But he hadn’t risen to lead the Revenant starfighter command by not being at the forefront, every time.
“I’ll be back,” he grated.
“I certainly hope so,” Brula replied. “We may need the help soon.” Her scarred features smoothed. “Relax, DC, I’ve handled my share of holding actions.”
“As you say, Captain.” He worked his jaw for a moment. Then, grudgingly, “Good luck.”
Brula flipped him a casual salute and her hologram vanished.
Callisto tapped his helmet mic. “First Squad, with me.” He switched channels and touched one of the oncoming lesser icons that his computer had helpfully highlighted as a squad leader. “Slayer Two-One; Kylie?”
“I’m hearing you, DC,” an annoyingly chipper voice replied.
“Take care of the kids for me.”
The woman commanding second squad—and senior for both the squadrons screening Peltast and her consorts—laughed. “We’re all grown-ups, here, Dee!”
“I know it,” he replied and sighed. “Be seein’ you!”
Callisto nosed his Slayer for the still-distant marble of Circe. The oncoming ships were glinting off his port wing as they came into distant view. What’s the Old Man thinking? He seethed inwardly. He’d never known him to hold back in a fight, but here he was parceling out the Revenants in dribs and drabs. If he could get him on the line, there were going to be words between them, sure enough.
“We’re not staying?” a familiar voice crackled from his earbud.
“You weren’t staying, either way, Kreeve,” Callisto replied, glaring over his right shoulder at the battered Slayer to starboard.
“It’s just burns, DC! Medkit has it all patched up. I’m fit for another round.”
“I doubt it,” Callisto snorted. “And your Slayer sure as hell isn’t. We’re going back. Me, too, for what it’s worth.”
