Dusk (60 page)

A rage built up in Six like kiln. He turned
to face the man who had put the gun to his head, but the elbow Six
had delivered as the freefall began had separated them by half a
meter. Six’s turn had shifted his weight away from the man’s left
hand, the hand that had held the first gun, and the man was now
pulling his other gun around to aim at Six. Six used the momentum
of his spin to bring his legs around, and he planted both feet into
the man’s chest. The gun fired and Six felt the whip of wind as the
slug coursed past his cheek.

The man’s body rolled as it floated away and
Six twisted, planted his feet against the wall, and launched
himself toward the opposite, burning wall as another shot
ricocheted behind him. Six flipped the gun into the proper position
in his left hand and returned fire, but the ship shimmied again.
The ship’s velocity or angle must have changed because the burning
wall lurched toward them as Six fired. He missed dramatically and
braced himself as the fiery wall smacked into him, jarring the gun
from his grasp. The gun flipped away to the opposite wall, but Six
ignored it because the barrel of the gun in his attacker’s hand was
now just a half meter away—and it was pointed at his left eye.

Taeryn of Four took her obligations very
seriously. As the left-tenant of Paeryl’s van, and the drawer of
the Justice card, she had developed a reputation for being exacting
and callous in battle. So when the glimmer ship emerged from the
bay doors beneath the pyramid, she descended on its holo-imager
signature like a fritzed-out uberhound on an abusive master. Flying
the mining ship that Cyrus and his van had appropriated from the
Miasma was like trying to pilot a lev gurney by standing on it, but
the mining lasers equipped on the front were a weapon the Echelon
neither would expect, nor could defend against. Even as the glimmer
ship powered up its glimmer drive, an action that would have
rendered it virtually untraceable under the Miasmic sky, Taeryn,
unseen to them thanks to black paint and Jang’s spoofing program,
activated the four mining lasers on the façade of her craft.

She had practiced this technique numerous times, and
here, above the disappearing fighter obliviously coursing into her
firing path, her practice paid off. The bright flash of the lasers
illuminated the cockpit as she pulled back on the controls and
shaved the back end, including the glimmer drive, from the fleeing
Echelon stealth craft. She smiled at the imager as a hologram of
the severed rear end of the ship flew over the apportioned Echelon
craft that sped from the doors of the pyramid escorted by two light
fighters.

The blast had hit Cyrus like an unsuspected
kick. When his body had snapped backward, it felt as if his brain
had shifted in his head. He couldn’t tell whether or not he had
closed his eyes, but he knew he could not see or feel a thing as
his body had spun through the air until it collided hard against
the wall. He was surprised when he did not bounce and the wall had
pressed against him as if he had hit the ground instead. Then, as a
tongue of flame licked at his ear, his body had quickly snapped
back to its senses. Vision flooded back into him and he realized he
was still carrying Tanner’s Bible.

It felt as if gravity was pressing him
against the wall, so he used it, and he pushed himself away from
the flames on all fours. The flames were unimaginably hot, but they
did not seem to affect him in the Comptex. Even though his right
shoulder throbbed as if it were on fire itself, the bullet had not
penetrated the Comptex. He worried his bandages could catch flame,
but they were evidently too saturated with blood.

And then, Cyrus noticed Six was incredibly still,
and he knew something was wrong. Cyrus reached up and grabbed the
doorframe, realizing gravity, once again, had little effect on his
orientation. He ignored the excruciating pain that came as he
tensed his arm, and he snatched himself forward with all the
strength he could muster.

If Euston could finish the bald-headed manpunter in
front of him, he might stand a chance. The pressure the wall
exerted on his left shoulder kept his pistol steady, but then, just
as he steadied the gun at the Apostate’s face, the pressure shifted
away from his arm. The bald man moved, and his motion was so quick,
Euston was not sure what had happened. Suddenly, Euston’s arm was
hit from underneath and he fired into the ceiling. Then the bald
man’s body moved away from the wall revealing the Knight of Wands
flying through the flames. Euston tried to bring the gun back down,
but it was too late. Something collided with his chest, forcing the
air from his lungs as the burning wall retreated from him.

As Six moved toward the opposite wall, he saw
Cyrus speed past him and collide with the Eurydician soldier. The
wall had stopped pressing against him, and Six’s apparent
weightlessness sent him all the way to the other wall. Cyrus’s
attack sent the man back-first in the same direction as Six. The
Eurydician moved faster than Six, and as he passed, Six tapped the
switch to open the door to the room beside them. The man passed
into the room, and Six dove away, but as he moved back toward the
burning wall, Cyrus yelled, “Look out!”

Six turned to see the man hanging from the door
frame by his right hand and lifting the gun toward them with his
left. Then suddenly, there was a snag at Six’s shoulder, and as the
gun discharged, Six found himself outside the path of the bullet,
heading toward the bulkhead warning line, and he heard Cyrus yell,
“Activate the halon system, now!”

The mining lev piloted by Taeryn pulled up in
front of the stolen Echelon fighter as both crafts closed the
distance on the ship that had fled from the pyramid. The fleeing
ship looked like it was sitting still as Tanner reached for the
submachine gun stowed on the wall next to him. The two short swords
he had brought along, meticulously forged by Fenrir, caught his
eye, and he remembered why he had brought them—the mesh weave of
Comptex could stop a round-tipped bullet, but did very little to
stop the linear slice of a blade. He stood, forgoing the gun for
the two swords, while Aerik, his own leg bandaged, began attending
to Milliken and Toutopolus’s wounds.

Taeryn’s lev sped ahead, momentarily
disappearing in the darkness and then reappearing, illuminated by a
bright blue glow. There were sparks of electricity across the back
of the fleeing Echelon craft as a largish chunk of misshapen metal
flew free from the rear of the craft and through the astrapi
shield. Tanner cringed as Taeryn fired, afraid the precious cargo
inside would be damaged. But his fears were quickly allayed as
Taeryn’s precision and poise had been honed in the training
simulator that Jang, Uzziah, Paeryl, and Darius had developed–she
was Paeryl’s lieutenant for a good reason.

The lights on the front of their fighter came
on, illuminating writhing figures inside the craft. The light
caught a glimmer of gilded angel’s wings as Tanner pulled the
swords from their sheaths. The grips felt oddly warm in his hand,
but he realized the warmth was not coming from without, but within.
He could feel it swelling throughout his body. It was a familiar,
although estranged, felling, but this time, as the fury he had
tried to hide from most his life filled him once again, he welcomed
it.

These heathens had held this relic for far too long,
but he was determined that at the end of this exchange, whether
breath still filled his body or not, they would not hold it for one
minute longer. Uzziah retracted the windshield of their fighter,
and they collided with the rear of the stealth craft, and Tanner,
to Paeryl’s loud protesting, lunged forward and vaulted over the
console and through the fissure in the rear of the other
vehicle.

Cyrus had planted his feet against the wall and had
launched himself past Six as the Eurydician fell into the room. But
the man had caught himself and had fired again as Cyrus snatched
Six with him toward the bulkhead. Unable to focus in the smoke,
Cyrus had yelled the command to Jang. He had turned in the air to
grab Six with his right hand, and the snag, although slight, sent a
wave of painful heat through his whole side. As they floated toward
the bulkhead line, the ship shuddered again. The wall came to meet
them again and the closing bulkhead seemed to retreat as red
caution lights and an alert siren filled the hall. Six and Cyrus
fell against the wall again, harder this time–Cyrus on his back and
Six on top of him. The cut on Cyrus’s back scraped against the wall
and he could feel what must have been the flaps of the wound
separating as the bandage slipped. His whole body tensed and a haze
washed over his eyes. But even through the haze, as Six used the
pressure of the wall to stand against it, Cyrus saw the crazed
Flying Monkey prop himself against the door frame and dive toward
them as he lifted the gun again.

Six felt Cyrus’s body stiffen beneath him as Cyrus
mumbled something that came across the earwig as gibberish. At
first, Six assumed it was the pain of falling on his wounded back,
but as Cyrus started to point at something behind Six’s back, he
knew it could be only one thing. So despite the fact the pain alone
might knock Cyrus out, he grabbed Cyrus’s collar and dove toward
the closing bulkhead as the cold gas spread around them. Then
another vibration sped through the ship, and the hold the wall had
on them was gone. Cyrus mumbled again, but this time, Six glanced
over his shoulder to see the pistol only a half-meter away from the
back of his head.

As soon as Tanner’s feet hit the corrugated
steel floor of the stealth lev, it was as if time itself had slowed
down for everyone except him. Before he had pulled his feet beneath
him, he had already cut two men who had been reaching for either
guns or grenades.

When he landed, two men were moving toward
him from either side of the Ark but he didn’t hesitate. Tanner
lunged toward the Ark, stabbing on either side. One soldier dodged,
but Tanner must have moved too fast for the other. Something hit
Tanner from behind, but as soon as it touched him, he was spinning
away from it, finishing off the man he had stabbed. An assault
rifle swung at his head, but he was already under it, continuing
his spin, and he brought the sword underhanded into the attacker’s
hamstring. Tanner followed through between the man’s legs and
dragged the blade back through his sciatic, spraying out blood with
force. As Tanner stood, he saw someone on the other side of the Ark
taking aim. Tanner let the sword from his left hand fly. It impaled
the man and slumped him against the wall. Tanner spun again,
bringing the other sword across the back of the wrist of another
soldier reaching for his sidearm. The man’s body reeled away
involuntarily, and Tanner moved into him, bringing the sword up and
across the man’s neck just before kicking him away from the Ark.
Tanner was now at the front of the craft by himself as the
remaining soldiers in the ship were drawing their weapons. One
turned to fire to keep any one else from advancing through the
fissure. Tanner dodged to the side as the pilot, now up from his
chair, tried to stab him in the back. Tanner kicked backward and
spun, bringing his sword around in a backhand across the pilot’s
eyes. The sword jostled in his hand as it passed through the nose
cartilage, but Tanner held on. He dove toward the man impaled with
the sword, who was still feebly trying to pull the blade out when a
gunshot rocked the metal chamber. Tanner expected to be thrown back
by the force of a bullet, but he kept moving anyway. There was
another deafening shot as Tanner snatched his sword from the man’s
belly with his free hand, and dug the freed blade into the ribs of
another soldier. Tanner saw the man who had fired into the other
fighter was now gone, and the one taking aim at him was now
collapsing to the ground. Tanner snatched the sword across the ribs
of the last soldier he had stabbed as he tried to remove the blade.
Tanner kicked him toward the back of the ship, and as the soldier
hit the edge of the fissure, the front of his head exploded with
another gunshot.

The body stumbled a bit and then slid down
the edge of the fissure, revealing Uzziah and Paeryl both with the
smoking barrels of their assault rifles trailing smoke. Tanner
finally felt the steaming gore that covered his hands, his thighs,
and the right side of his head and torso. He could barely hear the
bellow of, “Tanner, are we winning?” over the pounding of his own
heart. Standing there, the blood of others dripping from his hands
once again, he wasn’t sure of the answer until he lifted his head
and saw the gilded cherubim shimmering in the light streaming
through the fissure.

Cyrus tried again to yell, “Look out!” but
as Six dragged his body through the pressurized air of the ship,
the pull of his collar against his throat only allowed a garbled
mumble the earwig network could not translate. Six turned, but he
was holding Cyrus, and he had too much momentum pulling them
through the closing bulkhead. As weightlessness returned and halon
gas spread around them, there was nothing Six could do as the
Eurydician soldier, with better leverage on his leap, advanced on
them with his slug pistol.

The man’s finger tensed around the trigger, but he
was too close, and Cyrus, already curled into the fetal position
after full freefall had returned, extended both legs into the man’s
midsection. Cyrus sent the man backward into the halon-filled hall
as the gun fired into the bulkhead that closed between them.

The ship felt like it was falling apart. The
controls were vibrating and half the stabilizing systems had
overloaded. The thruster controls kept speeding up and slowing down
the ship, and even if Jang had issued the voice command to
reactivate the gravity stabilizer, it wouldn’t have worked because
the systems that routed energy to them had malfunctioned. It took
every bit of strength in Jang’s arms, and some leverage on the part
of his legs, to keep the ship inside the pipe, and having to
activate and deactivate systems to save Cyrus and Six was not
helping. Now, a glimpse at the holomonitor revealed the man who had
waylaid them flailing his arms and gasping for air, consumed in
thick gas that robbed the hallway air of oxygen as the ventilation
system shut off the airflow to that part of the ship. Then, as the
black rings on the HUD disappeared, the dimly lit sky gave way to
the brilliant wasteland of Asha. As the ship slowed, Jang watched
on the holomonitor as Cyrus and Six settled on the floor of the
hall beyond the bulkhead. They shakily regained their footing and
began shambling back toward the bridge. The ship continued to
shudder, but it moved smoothly as Jang leveled the x-axis and
cruised toward the sunside crater they had designated as their
rendezvous point. Jang had just received word that “Johnny received
his fiddle of gold,” from Paeryl, which meant that he and Uzziah
had retrieved the package, and so long as the spoofing system held
up, Cyndyl should be waiting for the Paracelsus at the rendezvous
point. They might be able to power up the vehicles stored in the
garage bay of the Paracelsus to make their escape, but this flying
disaster was not going anywhere after it landed in that
crater—assuming it made it there at all. Besides, Jang had expected
to reenter with a ship with a much smaller footprint, and the
programs that he had phreaked into the Echelon network would not be
able to hide a ship this large for long. So as Cyrus and Six, both
battered and limping, entered the bridge, Jang just shook his head.
Six was carrying the Agamemnon unit and Cyrus was carrying a large,
hardbound corporeal book.