Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (160 page)

Siamek simply stared at the great, hulking shape which moved towards them like an enormous dung beetle which had decided it wanted to eat them for supper. Pareesa had fought the sky canoes once before, but this was Siamek's first time seeing one up close. His brows were furrowed in an expression of disbelief, as though any moment now, he expected to wake up screaming. In the air, the jagged arm which looked like a beetle's armor rotated around and began to emit small, blue sparks of lightning at the tips.

"I think it's about to shoot its lighting again," Siamek said.

A dark shape detach itself from the roof immediately beneath the beast and flew straight upwards into the underside of its belly. She blinked, not certain she had just seen what she'd just seen.

A great bolt of lightning shot out of the arm. It was horrible and blue, as if an entire thunderstorm had been consolidated into a single lightning strike, and then the gods had channeled and narrowed it, before aiming it at them like a single shot from an arrow. The lightning reached the ally where the Assurians had set up their barricade. It exploded, scattering fiery debris straight up into the air. Pareesa shrieked and put her arms over her head to shield herself from the falling wood. Small sparks of fire burned into her arms and shawl and filled her nostrils with the stench of her own burning hair.

With a blood-curdling war cry, the enemy warriors pushed through the shattered barricade.

"Here they come!" Siamek shouted beside her. He let fly the first of his three remaining arrows.

The enemy sky canoe hovered so close it felt as though a tornado had caught them all up in its sandy vortex. Pareesa pulled her firestick and aimed it upwards, but Mikhail had said there were only so many places you could hit such a target to take it down, and she, silly girl, didn't happen to know any of them. The wall of lizard men rushed closer, firing at her as they ran with their own blue-rays of lightning and death. The arm-of-lightning on the bottom of the sky canoe rotated around and, with a mechanical whir, it took aim and began to charge, its sharp nose pointed right at
her.

She shut her eyes and prayed to the Cherubim god as she aimed her firestick, not a formal prayer, but the plea of a frightened, thirteen summer girl.

'Bishamonten … HELP! Where am I supposed to aim?'

~ * ~ * ~

February: 3,389 BC

Earth: Village of Assur

Mikhail

Mikhail's wings pounded in the rhythm his species had been bred to beat, a heartbeat, a war cry, the beat of a war drum as old as the Alliance itself. Get the gunship. Get the gunship. Get the gunship so he could disable it and use it to go and rescue his wife.

He was a dark shadow flying through the alleys, not an eagle but an owl. He knew the lizards would be watching for him, so he skimmed the streets like a hawk searching for a rat. It had been his intention to sneak behind the Sata'anic gunship and sabotage it further so it could not get off the ground, but the roar of impulse engines echoing through the valley warned him he was out of time. The enemy gunship rose above the hill like a lion peeking its head above the grass, sniffing the air before it charged its prey.

The enemy was coming to
him
… 

He dropped onto the nearest roof and began to creep, wings stretched out flat behind him to make him appear like a roof-mat. The gunship came closer, flying on one and a half engines by the heat-stream which came out of the afterburners, one side strong and white, the other weak and pink. He noted the trajectory and then crept around so he'd be lined up with the strong port engine when it floated overhead. And then … he waited, thankful the lizards were acting cautious with their gimpy engine.

This place he had chosen to call his home was difficult terrain for a species of soldier bred to hide amongst the clouds. White-winged or dark-winged, the clear, dry cloudless sky rarely afforded an opportunity to wait for a gunship to pass overhead, unseen by both their radar and their cameras. They had heat-seeking cameras, of course, but with so many Assurians on the rooftops, so long as he blended in, they would mistake him for just another human. A
primitive.
Somebody easily overlooked.

An image danced into his mind of a game he'd once played with a childhood friend so good at hiding that he'd needed to use his other senses beyond the normal five. He flattened and spread his wings as
she
had done, making them appear uneven, making them blend into the roof even though it was now broad daylight. He thought of her lately often, though he didn't know why. It was the only part of his childhood he could safely remember without arousing the fury the Cherubim had told him he must always keep suppressed, a little girl and a game of hide-and-seek.

He eyed the shadow of the gunship as it crept right up to him, praying they would not see him, praying they were fixated on the Assurians in the square. The heat from the VTOLs caused the rooftop to become uncomfortably hot as it glided close enough to provide cover fire for the enemy soldiers.

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," Mikhail whispered to the gunship as he waited, waited, waited to do what his species had been bred to do.

The wake of the port VTOL passed directly overhead, so close that he feared his feathers might ignite.

Now!

He leaped straight upwards, behind the wake of the engine, and darted sideways just in time to avoid being scorched by plasma streaming out of the afterburners.

He grabbed onto the metal and pressed his wings flat against the underside of the ship. His heart pounded and he waited to see if the lizards had spotted his leap into their blind spot. He whispered to himself the Cherubim focusing meditation until his heartbeat slowed and his breathing gradually eased. Ever since he'd woken up from his coma, his concentration hadn't been what it had used to be. Thankfully, it appeared nobody had spotted him.

The pulse cannon gave a high-pitch whine as it rotated around and tilted downwards to aim at the frail Assurian barricade. Should he take out the pulse cannon and hope he might somehow be able to overpower the crew? Or should he shoot out the port engine so the ship could not fly at all?

He must take out the port engine first. If he only took out the pulse cannon, it would fly away before he got on board. There was no chance, from here, he could cut his way into the ship and overpower the crew. He crept sideways like an upside-down crab, using his arms to cling against the underside of the ship and not his wings, the flapping of which would show up in their aft camera.

Slowly, he worked his way to the hull plating which covered the port engine of the gunship. The plate was gouged, as though it had been hastily removed and then replaced. He found a decent handhold near the one spot
all
such ships were vulnerable if you only knew where to aim.

Static electricity crackled along the exterior of the hull as the lizards charged their pulse cannon and prepared to fire at the barricade.

'Get out of there,' Mikhail prayed for the people behind the wall. 'Back up. You can't defend against this, and I can't take out both the pulse cannon -and- the ship.'

He let go just long enough to avoid being electrocuted by the static discharge. He flapped his wings, and then clung to his perch once more the moment the plasma ceased licking the hull with its blue, greedy tongues. Thankfully, the occupants were more interested in the fireworks display as the barricade in front of them blasted into the sky than they were in the flat, dark shape which clung to their port engine.

The gunship came to a dead halt. The VTOL engines aimed straight down. The arm of the pulse rifle whirred as it spun around to take aim at the people huddled behind the final barricade below.

Mikhail pulled out his pulse rifle and pressed it straight into the hull plating.
This
time, his pulse rifle had a nearly-full charge.
This
time, he hoped it wouldn't render him unconscious or drop him into a sea.
This
time, he prayed he didn't damage the gunship so badly that he couldn't salvage it and use it to go and rescue his wife.

'This one is for you, Ninsianna,'
he thought as he pulled the trigger.

His pulse rifle fired.

He
was catapulted backwards as the hull plating vaporized and, rather than an explosion, the pulse-charge melted neatly into the carburetor beneath the plating without causing it to explode.

'Yes!'
Mikhail clenched his fist in a victory motion as he flapped his wings to remain airborne. It was a perfect sabotage. A perfect shot. If he was back in the Alliance, the Emperor would have given him a medal.

The gunship lurched.

The pulse canon went awry. Instead of blasting the wall where the Assurian defenders crouched, it fired harmlessly into the empty space where Chief Kiyan's house had once stood.

'Drop here, drop here, drop here,' he prayed. 'Oh great goddess, please let it drop -here- so I can steal the thing and fix it, and go and rescue Ninsianna!'

The
whoompf
of a second pulse rifle firing caused his head to jerk around just in time to see the lone, slender figure, which stood, legs spread apart, both arms braced as she fired the pulse rifle he had given her uselessly at the ship.

An explosion rocked the opposite side of the gunship.

The ship lurched, and then bits of blue hydrogen dripped down towards the ground. Flames from the burning barricade below licked up the drips, towards the already-wounded starboard engine, into the carburetor housing, and then it gave a miniature explosion.

"No!" Mikhail shouted as the entire gunship lurched sideways like a man who'd just consumed too much beer.

The engine
he
had hit burned brighter as the pilot increased the throttle to try to compensate for the other wounded engine and overcorrected, causing the gunship to spin out of control like a child's top whirling on the ground.

"No no no no no!!!"
Mikhail shouted as the damage he'd wrought caused the port carburetor to completely melt down.

He flapped his wings to get clear as the gunship entered into a death spin. It just barely skimmed the rooftops as it descended down the hill until it lost so much altitude it crashed into the outermost row, the ones perched on the edge of the cliff that fell straight down into the river, took them out, and then toppled over the hill, ship, houses, and part of the earth those houses had been attached to.

The engines exploded.

"No!" he shouted as his visions of rescue went down the hill along with the gunship.

He landed on the edge of the cliff and looked down as the flaming gunship sank into the seething waters below.

'Stay in there,' he prayed. 'Please float. Get it to shore, so I can salvage something once the river recedes.'

A Sata'anic soldier's first edict was to make sure their weaponry didn't fall into enemy hands. Black smoke and flames poured out of the gunship as it floated out into the middle of the river, and then the lizards blew the hatches, causing it to sink in the deepest, most muddy part of the river.

"Damantia!"
Mikhail shouted in frustration. He shook his fist at the sky. "How am I supposed to rescue her if
you
don't give me a break once in a while?"

She-who-is did not answer him, of course. She never did. She expected him to protect the village, retrieve his wife, and oh, while he was at it, why not protect the Alliance, the universe, and defeat the Evil One for her, but she never
did
seem to want to give him any help!

Feeling defeated even though he had just won a great victory, he grabbed the first Assurian he found and told him to capture whatever enemy soldiers made it to the shore, for they would cause much mischief if they were allowed to roam the countryside, sabotaging the village the way that
he
would sabotage
them
if the roles were reversed.

He took to the air and made his way back to the final battle for Assur.