CAUTIOUSLY, SABIRA CHECKED the corners of the cross passage. All clear. Staying low, she took cover outside the balcony archway and scanned the heart cavity. Daggeira and Atu Madzo remained suspended in the center, floating above the strange geometry. The sphered-diamond shape rotated, issuing an ominous low pulse.
On this upper level, two more overlooks extended from the cavity walls. The three balconies formed a triangle around Daggeira. A warseer stood guard on the balcony to her left, a servant on the right. Both armed and armored. Both had a clean kill shot on Sabira the moment she stepped out on the balcony. For now, all their focus was on the fight below.
Screams, clanging metal, and the sizzle of plasma bolts echoed from underneath. The warseer on the left advanced to the balcony’s edge and took aim below.
You don’t see me, but I see you.
Sabira took a knee, aimed for the visor, and fired. Hit him in the neck, slamming him backwards. Sabira opened up, hurling bolt after bolt from behind cover. The screaming warseer fell from the balcony, scorched and flailing.
Return fire erupted around Sabira. A chunk of the archway blasted into shards. Terrible heat burned her midsection, slamming her on her back. Kicking the air from her lungs. She checked her armor, afraid to see a smoldering hole where her guts should be. Her suit was blackened, but intact.
The servant on the third balcony fired relentlessly. Crystal exploded overhead, erupting into showers of hot cinders. Struggling to catch her breath, she rotated, rolled prone, and returned fire as plasma bolts seared overhead. Orbiting spheres of gods bones and a thick haze of smoke obscured both their lines of sight. Each of them hard targets trying to score the decisive hit in a chaotic crossfire.
For a split second, the smoke parted. Sabira and the servant faced each other across the open cavity—visor to visor, if not eye to eye. Sabira’s node swooped and crashed into the servant’s palukai as they both fired. The servant shot wide. Sabira didn’t. Her opponent’s head snapped back in an explosion of heat and vapor. They dropped flat, black smoke rising from their helmet.
That left the High Godseer unguarded. And right in front of her.
Atu Madzo licked ahns lips. “Apostate. Trickster’s blight. Your deceptions and blasphemies have led you straight to me. Mother of Life has no mercy for you, and neither do I.”
“Mercy? You don’t understand a godsdamned thing, Ihvkuhn-Lo.” Sabira pushed to her feet, abs stinging in protest. “You already had my mercy when I left you all behind. You had my mercy when I didn’t burn the whole drilling Unity to ashes.” She took aim, finger on the trigger.
“See me now. My name is Sa—” Blue-green light smeared over her vision, freezing her a hair’s breadth from obliterating Atu Madzo.
While she had been pinned down in the firefight with the servant, a swarm of drones had zoomed in and circled the High Godseer like a halo. Now one of those drones hovered directly above Sabira, holding her in its snare field. Her vision began to darken.
The High Godseer’s cackle reverberated throughout the cavity. “Oh no, little apostate. You are the one who will see. All these infidel worlds will burn. You will see them fall, one by one, subjugated to Divine Will—to my will—before I show you the mercy of sending you to She Who Waits. Behold! For I am Their fury and Their . . . What’s that?”
Sabira’s node neutralized the drone that snared her. Before even catching her breath, she pulled the trigger. Light and heat flashed. Dark vapors clouded the air. The High Godseer clutched ahns chest.
And cackled again.
The halo of drones had encased ahn in a godsdamned energy shield. Atu Madzo patted where the plasma bolt would have struck, licking ahns bloated lips furiously.
“I am seen by the Gods!” Ahn shouted and raised ahns hands in praise.
Sabira cursed to herself, took aim, and blasted the drone that had snared her.
“Thanks again. See if you can disable that shield.”
She peered over the edge. Just below, on her right and left, were two of the mid-tier balconies. The rotating geometry and orbiting spheres blocked her view of the third. Farther down, the lowest tier of overlooks extended a few meters above the cavity floor. Orion must be down there by now, but he and the vat holding the remains of his father’s body were both blocked from her line of sight. Abomination Zika was hard to miss, however, as they stomped a warseer’s head to green pulp on the cavity floor.
Another warseer from a low balcony blasted at them, vaporizing bits of machine and undead flesh. They crouched under the relentless fire, seemingly overwhelmed. Before Sabira could target the warseer, Abomination Zika sprang, leaping from the cavity floor to the low balcony. The warseer fired and fired, but Abomination Zika was unstoppable, completely unheeding any damage. They crashed into the warseer, cracking the grank-plated armor. The Gohnzol-Lo would have been pummeled to gore if another drone hadn’t snared the undead cyborg mid-onslaught. Saved just in time, the injured warseer crawled away. Another warseer on a low balcony opened fire, searing bolt after bolt into the trapped monstrosity.
Sabira spotted the drone snaring Abomination Zika and slagged it. Before she could find her next target, ash and steam geysered around her. Barrages of plasma fire blasted up at her balcony from multiple directions. Splinters of smoking crystals pinged off her armor. She was at too low an angle for the warseers to get a clean shot on her, but she couldn’t return fire without exposing herself. She stepped farther back and returned her attention to Atu Madzo. Better eliminate the snare drones haloing the High Godseer while she had the chance. Her node could only nullify one drone at a time. The others zoomed around too quickly for her to hit. Working with her node, she took out two before the incoming fire from below finally ceased.
Sabira dared a peek over the balcony’s edge. On the mid-tier overlook to her right, the charred and smoking form of Abomination Zika picked up the remaining warseer and slammed him into the wall again, and again, and again. Sickening crunches reverberated through the cavity with every smash.
Sabira scanned for more targets. All the warseers were mangled and lifeless, strewn haphazardly about the cavity. Still no visual contact with Orion. Smoke coiled darkly up through the air. The remaining drones zoomed over to protect the High Godseer, reinforcing ahns energy shield.
“Orion,” she transmitted. “Still with me?”
“Till the end.” A video image appeared inside her visor. He was right where she expected, directly below the floating geometry, next to his father’s vat of pink goo. Weird cables were spliced in and out of his forma body.
“Can you spare some nodes to help mine finish this thing?”
“Crunchy. Here they come.” Two nodes that had been circling him spiraled out around the width of the rotating polyhedron and curved toward the High Godseer at the top.
“I’m syncing in,” he said. “I’ll take care of the inside. You clean up outside.” Orion-lem slumped against the vat and his comms cut out.
She spotted Abomination Zika kneeling beside a dead warseer on the mid-tier balcony. Dark blood, oils, and fumes seeped out of the blackened ruin of flesh and machine, coating the overlook. They wheezed one last time, went limp, and toppled forward.
The diode blisters illuminating the heart cavity stuttered, strobing the scene back and forth between total darkness and sulfurous light, before finally returning to fill the cavity with their pallid glow.
For the first time, Sabira paid attention to the golden dodecahedrons suspended near each of the vertices. The dark one below Daggeira remained stationary, while three more orbited in sync with the polyhedron’s rotation. Inside each hung the desiccated, half-alive bodies of the Old Nahg. Their many long arms were tangled in knots around their withered, conical frames. Sabira shivered.
The electric hum of energy shields fizzled and stuttered. Three nodes and three of the snare drones hung in a staticky, quivering balance over the High Godseer’s head. She took aim and blasted the remaining drones, one by one. Atu Madzo flinched at every shot. Ahns round cheeks quaked with fear, until finally, all of ahns protection was gone, reduced to ash. The sound of the High Godseer’s whimpering was barely audible over the pulsing wwaawuum wwaawuum. Atu Madzo turned ahns three swollen eyes to Sabira. It was her turn to lick her lips with satisfaction.
“Nowhere to hide, Ihvkuhn-Lo,” she said. “Your Gods have no mercy for you. Neither do I.”
Sabira stood tall, raised her palukai to fire . . . but something was wrong. Missing. The servant on the upper balcony—where was the body?
Shit!
Sabira spun to check behind her. But not in time to deflect the blade arcing toward her neck.