Resolution (98 page)

Again, Tom checked the status displays, the simplified overview of the Chaos that the planners were working with in the control centre. He continued to gesture, directing the planners’ efforts at the highest level, while they modulated his instructions according to their own interpretation.

‘Are we
still
holding our own?’ Tom asked, then answered his own question: ‘It looks like it... but only just.’

The attacks were coordinated enough - perhaps - to require all the Anomaly’s attention to combat them. That was all they could hope for.

Tom used urgent control gestures to attempt communication with Avernon, who was on board one of the orbital shuttles himself.

‘Come on. Come on ...’

Nothing. But even if Avernon would not talk, Tom could still See.

Shift.

Avernon stares at the feedback images.

‘Sir?’ The shuttle pilot calls back to him. ‘Down to our last thousand modules.’

The copper spray continues to port and starboard.

‘Stand by,‘ Avernon says to a waiting tech, ‘to resonate.’

There was nothing more Tom could do: not to help those in orbit. Either the modules would shift into optional alignment, or they would fail.

But the battles down below were another matter. There, his ability to See the Enemy and coordinate action might be of use.

Blue flames licked across Tom’s body, were gone.

Shift.

Kraiv leads a company of carls sweeping down from a ridge. At the heart of a deep cavern, they meet the Enemy with morphospears unslung and moaning for blood.

‘Blood and Axe!’

Berserkers roar, and the battle is joined.

Shift.

A thousand lev-bikes hover, quivering in the air.

‘Are your people ready, Captain?’

‘Yes, Viscount.’

Trevalkin gives a slow, ironic smile. ‘Then go.’

They fly forward like arrows, and fall like hail upon the Enemy.

Shift.

Thylara of the Clades Tau throws her scarlet arachnasprite to one side as a graser beam rips through the air. Up ahead, her fellow TauRiders swoop in from either side, into the mass of black-bronze beasts and their dreadful talons, avoiding the Dark Fire that flickers at the great hall’s rear.

Then Thylara spins her arachnasprite in place, whipping half of its tendrils outward as weapons, beheading three Enemy soldiers before they can blink. She raises her hands overhead, brings them down to either side, firing grasers into the Enemy’s midst.

A questing beam blows her torso into liquid spray.

Shift. Before Tom could react, his vision had changed.

Anomaly-controlled fighters leave the ground, heading over a mountain range to intercept the free forces just as a long-dormant caldera explodes hundreds of metres into the air, a spume of yellow-hot magma that splashes and melts and burns and takes the aircraft down.

The Crystal Lady is wielding her influence.

Shift.

A quake from nowhere. Deep in occupied territory, ceilings crack. Tonnes of broken stone descend upon the inhabitants: broken dark metallic wings protrude from the rubble when the dust begins to settle.

Shift.

Lava sprays horizontally from a sudden split in an ornate marble wall and an Absorbed human, once Lord of this demesne, falls screaming.

Shift.

Absorbed humans, by a decorative lava pool, swing up their weapons, ready to kill the rag-tag army of old people and children who have crawled up from the lower strata with nothing more than knives and bludgeons and bare hands to fight with.

The Absorbed take aim.

Then something huge moves in the pool, a hexagonal fluke bigger than a man rises from the lava, and molten Chaos falls upon the Enemy.

Tom gasped, breaking Seer-trance.

Thank you, my Lady.

But there could be no communication with the Crystal Lady now. The force of Nulapeiron’s native lifeforms was on the loose, overwhelming and magnificent, and nothing Tom might say or do could control them.

Shift.

A bronze talon reaches for Zhao-ji and he yells, brings up his graser pistol already firing, and then a team of 49s, Strontium Dragons warriors, bursts in through the side door and lays down heavy fire upon the single Anomalous creature that dares invade their territory.

Shift.

It is hand-to-hand fighting now, and Trevalkin whirls and stabs his long blade with devilish accuracy into an Enemy soldier’s eye.

Shift.

In the depths of Sable Ocean, armoured mantargoi crewed by Grey Shadows fighters fire grasers through the dark waters. Metallic beings face them, return terrible fire of their own.

Then an ocean vent opens, spewing superheated steam, and the Anomalous creatures writhe.

Shift. And twist.

At submicroscopic dimensions, long-outlawed smartmists and femtoviruses battle each other for control in a blaze of microwaves and subatomic predation.

Panting, Tom wrenched his attention back to his surroundings. The young soldier was looking upwards, weapon ready.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing, sir. Warlord. The proximity detector, I thought— Nothing.’