SABIRA’S REALITY SHIFTED between one heartbeat and the next.
The armored servant dropped stealth veils only a few meters in front of her. While Sabira skidded, desperately trying to stop in the low gravity, she absorbed details about the servant. Rifle-configured palukai in the right hand, muzzle down. Fresh scars across gray-black armor; cracks at the thigh. Large and imposing. Big enough to be Grandfather Spear, but didn’t stand like him.
Her skid finally ceased within striking distance of the unveiled servant. Neither of them moved. Neither spoke. Sabira’s face gazed back at her in the darkened reflection of the helmet’s visor. If it wasn’t Spear, then it had to be her. It didn’t make any sense that she had gotten so godsdamned big in the few weeks since Sabira’d last seen her.
Instincts urged Sabira to shoot now. Shoot first. To be ruthless in the name of protecting herself and her people. To not make the same mistake she’d made when she stopped Orion from firing on the talon. Still, she hesitated, and so did the servant. Each waited for the other to make the first move.
Green light splashed from behind Sabira.
Two more armored figures suddenly appeared. A servant and a warseer.
The one directly in front of Sabira twitched her right hand, but the palukai’s muzzle remained down. An ungainly tremor moved up the servant’s arm, and Sabira took a step back. If she reached for her pistol, she may still have a chance to outdraw the servant, but not likely.
The visor cleared. Daggeira’s ice-blue stare replaced Sabira’s reflection. Her eyes were tense, hinting at some unseen struggle.
“Run,” Daggeira whispered, voice muffled by the helmet. A moment later, her eyes lost their cold focus. Her shoulder twitched, raising the palukai.
Sabira pivoted away from Daggeira’s line of fire and tapped on her shield. Daggeira’s arms jerked gracelessly, and Sabira stared down her rifle barrel. Everything flashed red. Raw heat spilled over her face and chest. Plasma bolts sizzled, flaring against Sabira’s energy shield.
Streams of return fire from Sabira’s flanks seared into Daggeira’s armor, spurting small tongues of greenish flame where they hit. Daggeira stumbled back. Bursts of laser and plasma fire erupted around them. Steam filled the frigid air, aglow in the strobes of ruby and sapphire light.
Sabira pulled her pistol at last. She couldn’t miss Daggeira at this range.
But she couldn’t pull the trigger, either. Something wasn’t right, like it hadn’t been Daggeira’s choice to shoot.
New movement caught Sabira’s attention. Something big arced over the rising steam, illuminated by flashes of weapons’ fire, and descended out of the vaulted heights. Thoom! A monster, splaying wide its many cruel arms, landed heavily behind Daggeira. The impact rumbled through the wide vault and sent tremors through Sabira’s legs. It attacked, shearing the crystalline floor where Daggeira had just stood. Splinters of dark crystal needled through the air.
A fraction of a second before impact, Daggeira’s typical grace and dexterity were restored. She jumped high into the low gravity, twisting as she leapt, and turned her rifle on the monster.
Now Sabira fired without hesitation. Her lasers, rendered sapphire blue in the fog, sliced into the monster’s many limbs and sulfurous glowing blisters. Each hit ignited gouts of flame. But that only drew its attention to her. She and the monster got a good look at each other. It wasn’t a beast. It was a machine. And it raged. Taller than a grank, and faster, it attacked Sabira with crushing limb after crushing limb hammering into her energy shield. Sabira dodged and fired, dodged and fired. For every limb she blasted, another came swinging hard and fast, forcing her back. For every diode vaporized, another glowing blister tracked her movements. Overwhelmed, Sabira struggled to keep her feet.
Daggeira suddenly attacked the giant metal monster from behind, stomping one of its leg hinges as she fired hot plasma bolts into its core. It teetered, leg buckling under Daggeira’s boot, but kept its balance and twisted with the momentum, scything limbs toward Daggeira and Sabira both.
Old disciplines triggered Sabira’s movements. Her attack fell into a complementary rhythm with Daggeira’s. Firing, dodging, firing again, distracting, firing. Sharing a syncopated dance of violence.
Under their combined attack, its core split open amid showers of sparks and screams of wrenched metal. The two halves tumbled apart, rolling on the stubs and joints of its remaining limbs. Sabira stared down the length of her gun barrel directly into Daggeira’s palukai muzzle.
“More of those abominations are coming.” Daggeira’s eyes were focused, tight—her own again.
“We can take them.”
Daggeira smirked. “Conqueror see us.”
The firefight had gone still around them. When the monster had pounced into their midst, everyone else had stopped shooting and watched the two of them take it down.
The warseer stood about ten meters back, her gaze on the two of them. She raised her open hand in their direction and clenched her fist. “Third drum!”
Daggeira’s smirk disappeared. The blankness crept once more into her eyes. Her arms trembled and jerked.
“I see you,” Sabira said.
Everything went red hot as Daggeira’s plasma bolts crackled against her shield. The firefight roared back to life. A chaotic menace of searing reds and blues strobed and flashed. They were all out in the open. No cover. No place to hide. They could only run and shoot and get hit and see whose armor gave out first.
“The warseer!” Sabira screamed, taking aim at Zika as she ran. “Take down the warseer!”
But another servant hurried to block Sabira’s line of fire. Even if she hadn’t already known it must be him, she would’ve recognized the powerful agility of his movements. She’d been trying to imitate them all her life.
She wanted to see Spear’s eyes, but his visor was dark. She saw only the crimson glare of him blasting at her shield. Someone opened fire on Spear, forcing him to let up his barrage against her to take on the new attacker. Chunks of his armor burned away in tongues of green flame. If Sabira opened fire on him too, he was done. But she had a different target in mind.
Even though Grandfather Spear had grown considerably larger, the Gohnzol-Lo he covered was larger still. Sabira aimed over Spear’s head for the warseer’s visor, the weakest point, and caught Zika in the neck. A good hit, but not the quick kill shot she hoped for. Zika spun back, screaming.
Grandfather Spear lost his footing and stumbled. From the corner of her eye, she spied Gabriel kneeling behind the steaming corpse of the abomination, lighting up Spear with relentless, precisely aimed shots.
The urge to command Gabriel to cease fire hammered within Sabira’s chest. She hated part of herself for not giving in to it. But she would hate herself more if she let Spear hurt anyone. He was the most dangerous of them all in this godsdamned alien maze. That fact couldn’t be ignored.
Neither could the two new giant monsters arcing down toward them from high above. Their heavy landings thudded echoes off the vaulted walls. Thoom! Thoom!
Everything stopped as Sabira and the others turned their attention from trying to kill each other to facing off with the new arrivals. They looked similar to the robot they’d just fought but bigger, with even more deadly arms. One held a strange biomech in its pincers. The beast flailed its sharp limbs, but couldn’t slice free of its captor’s grip. Like snapping a branch, the giant tore the biomech in two and threw the gory remains aside.
Grandfather Spear moaned, breaking the tense silence.
The two new abominations attacked, a relentless onslaught of buzzing limbs.
Sizzling with plasma and laser fire, the steam clouds grew even thicker as they all turned on the two new attackers. The monsters didn’t falter. Twin storms of spikes, claws, and hammers, the giants charged in one direction and then the next. Attacking one group, then another, then back. Switching places with the other, then converging to spin out in new angles of assault.
These drones moved faster than the first abomination. Too fast. Most of Sabira’s shots missed, some barely grazed a metal arm. They didn’t miss her, slamming limb after limb into her protective shield as it flickered and whined. The shield would be drained soon.
Sabira tried to back away from the closest abomination. The thing seemed to sense her vulnerability and pressed forward, a whirlwind of long, battering arms. She blasted streams of laser fire while trying to free her left hand from its glove. But she needed two hands to undo the seal. Trying to buy some time, she holstered her pistol and ran. It followed, pounding viciously at her shield.
At last, she pulled the godsdamned glove from her hand and threw it aside. Drawing her gun, she turned to face the abomination. It was on top of her, whirring and clanking, smashing from all sides at once. Blinded by the glitchy visual static of her failing energy shield, she probed her utility pouch, trying to undo the tunic wrapping. It needed direct contact with her flesh in order for it to work. With her other hand, she fired point-blank at its core.
Kinetic energy seeped through her shield, knocking Sabira to one knee. More brutal force leaked through the shield, pounding her to the floor. Unable to flee, she lay on her back and fired up at the monster, her laser searing away its blisters and slicing its joints. It didn’t relent. It had her trapped and knew it. Light and movement, static and vapor. A blinding storm of up-close violence. Until, finally, she found what she was looking for.
The tips of her fingers slipped past the inner folds of the old tunic. Sliding her fingers around faceted edges and smooth, hard planes, Sabira clenched the yarist gem in her fist. The surge began as a warm tingling in left her hand, before radiating up her arm and igniting her heart. Bones and muscles grew denser, stronger. And deep in the center of her chest, a sleeping rage stirred. She got her feet under her and launched shoulder-first into the abomination’s center mass. Sent it tumbling backwards.
Sabira planted her feet and faced the huge drone. Her sharpened senses tracked its blurring cuts and jabs more clearly. The monster stabbed a spinning drill bit at her gut. She fired, hitting an exposed joint. The laser severed through in a shower of sparks and flame, and the drill flew clumsily away.
The abomination’s follow-up clawed away the last gasp of her shield. Staticky light crackled, then stuttered away. Its pincer snapped her pistol into pieces and sent her sliding across the floor.
The abomination pounced, sharp limbs rising above its monstrous core like vicious horns. A blur of other limbs spun and coiled around it, about to smash and slice every one of her bones in one final onslaught. It charged right into a sapphire blaze of laser fire.
Zonte rushed toward her, double-fisting pistols, and threw himself between her and the drone. Its strikes bounced off his shields. He shot the primary legs out from under it, and the monster toppled forward.
Sabira hopped to her feet. The gem’s power and rage continued to surge through muscle and bone. Battle fury drove her forward. This time, she was the one who charged. Screaming, she leaped over Zonte’s head, down through the mechanical tangle of arms, and pounded into its core. She drove her knees and fists into its sulfurous blisters. Swatted away its oddly bent arms. The yarist gem glowed cobalt blue in her fist.
With her free hand, she pried her fingers into its open gashes and tore free chunks of metal and wire. Viscous fluid poured out as she ripped free another handful of its robotic innards. With ash and oil seeping from its many wounds, the huge drone shuddered, then stilled beneath her.
Panting, Sabira rose to her feet, ready to strike the moment it twitched again. Instead of twitching, it emitted a series of popping cracks. What remained of the abomination broke apart, disassembling into a dozen smaller pieces that scurried away like snakes down a tunnel.
Sabira grunted to Zonte, “You saved my life.”
“My vision . . .” he said, obviously still in shock from the surge of violence. “Just like my vision.”
“Not deep bad.” She tried to smile, but it felt more like clenching her jaw.
Sabira no longer heard the sizzling whine of plasma bolts or the heavy clattering of the attack drones. She looked around to get her bearings. The fight with the abominations had moved them to a section where a cluster of passages converged. Vaulted arches, some small enough that a mine rat would barely fit, others large enough to ride a grank though, intersected the towering walls.
Gabriel was not far off, but her attention went straight to the next threat. The other abomination stood about twenty meters away, motionless but for the wisps of vapor drifting up from various wounds. Why wasn’t it attacking? Or doing anything at all?
And why was no one attacking it?
Sabira spied Grandfather Spear and Zika slouching away toward the far wall. The warseer rested one of her arms on his broad shoulders. Spear supported her while twisting backwards, covering their retreat with palukai raised, ready to open fire if they were attacked again. His visor turned transparent. He met Sabira’s gaze through the steam-shrouded distance.
And then he and the warseer were gone into a small tunnel.
Where was Daggeira?
Sabira spun to look behind her. Daggeira stood beneath an archway set in the opposite wall. The muzzle of her palukai steamed in the cold air.
“See me now, apostate.” Daggeira turned and ran down the passage, taunts trailing in her wake. “I’m going to win.”