SABIRA DUCKED. NOT fast enough. The long blade sliced open her helmet and sent her spinning. She hit the floor hard, dropping the palukai. Electric jolts stormed from the back of her head. Another wave of excruciating heat slammed into Sabira’s chest, cooking her inside the armor, broiling away her breath. Blinded by pain, flat on her back, and fried by point-blank plasma bolts was not an ideal way to start a fight, but at least her head was still attached.
The helmet squeezed her throbbing skull like a vise. Each rapid clack of the forma molecules sealing the gash rattled her skull. Everything else sounded muffled, like she’d buried her head in a pile of tunics. The High Godseer’s maniacal laughter was reduced to a distant murmur. Deactivating the helmet into the collar offered some relief, but not much. She tried to breathe deeply, but that godsdamned hurt, too. Something heavy slammed down on her chest, crushing the remaining air from her lungs and puffing up an ashy cloud of her charred armor.
The initial eruption of agony passed and Sabira’s sight cleared. A servant stood on her chest that she vaguely remembered from the Ihvik-Ri. Attendant Bolta loomed incredibly tall and fearsome. She held her palukai in rifle configuration, pressing its long bayonet to Sabira’s throat. Her right boot crushed Sabira’s heartbeat, heavy as a boulder. Though covered in boarding-and-defense armor, her head was bare—what remained of it. Sabira’s shot had come within centimeters of killing her. The bolt had blasted through the attendant’s visor and incinerated the right half of her jaw to a grizzly, melted ruin.
Only the blue yarist gem strapped to Attendant Bolta’s brow enabled her to stand and fight. Between that and the yarist gems servants had threaded through their under-armor jumpsuits, her strength and endurance had to be insanely elevated.
“Yes, yes, Attendant Bolta! Yes!” The High Godseer’s voice reverberated through the cavity, engulfing Sabira. “Does Gohnarus Conqueror not look down from the Gates of Heaven and smile? Bring me the apostate’s head, and I shall raise you up as the new Handmaiden.”
That’s why Bolta hadn’t killed her yet. With Sabira downed, injured, and disarmed, she no longer posed a risk. And as a servant, Bolta wanted—needed—to first be seen by the High Godseer. Recognized and praised. Now that Atu Madzo specifically asked for her head, Bolta would finally land the killing blow.
The attendant raised the curved bayonet. The moment she reached the zenith of her motion, her center of gravity at its highest, Sabira bucked and twisted with all her remaining strength. Her boot slid off Sabira’s chest, and she caught it between her ribs and right bicep. Sabira rammed her left forearm into the back of Bolta’s knee. Felt like hitting a pillarwood tree. She didn’t fall, but was thrown off balance enough for Sabira to jump to her feet, head swimming.
Where the hell was Sabira’s palukai?
No time to find it. A blur of motion forced Sabira to jump back. Bolta’s palukai chopped out a hunk of the wall behind where Sabira had just stood. The attendant pressed forward, a crush of muscle and armor, blade and gun.
Sabira dodged and pivoted and dodged again. She still wore the nihkazza sheathed on her back. Forced to stay on defense, she never had a chance to draw it. Meanwhile, the back of her skull screamed. She focused through the pain and tracked the palukai blade’s deadly arc, its muzzle’s line of fire.
They transitioned into the corridor encircling the upper tier—Bolta charging, Sabira retreating, Atu Madzo’s laughter echoing. The brutal heat of each plasma bolt’s near hit baked Sabira’s scalp, singeing her ears. Each deflected strike battered and bruised her arms, and would have shattered bone if not for the armor. Bolta never let up. Never gave Sabira a chance to regroup or counter, only dodge, block, and retreat.
And watch. Look for the signs. The slightest gap between attacks. The heavier breath accompanying each ferocious swing of the blade. Any hint of Bolta starting to tire.
There it was. The faintest hesitation between strikes. Between her long limbs and weapon, Bolta had the reach advantage to keep Sabira out of striking distance. But that brief hesitation finally gave Sabira an opening. Sabira plowed forward, trying to get close enough inside to nullify Bolta’s attack, wrap up her legs, and exploit the armor’s gap at the knees. She realized too late that the attendant had feinted. Set a trap.
Bolta fired point blank when she took the bait.
Searing heat washed over Sabira, stopping her momentum. Ashy bits of smart-matter scattered into the air, leaving the already battered torso armor in charred ruins. Bolta caught Sabira across the belly with the follow-through. Her blade sliced exposed flesh. Sabira gasped and staggered, covering her wound with her hands. Blood poured through her fingers. It was bad. Deep drilling bad. But not a death blow.
She barely evaded Bolta’s powerful downswing, but stopped short when her back hit the wall. Screaming with animalistic rage, Bolta swung for her neck. Sabira dropped, and the bayonet hacked into the wall over her head. Bolta breathed deeply before pulling back.
That split second was all Sabira needed. Instinct and training took control. As she had practiced over and over in the sanctuary, Sabira sprang, drawing her nihkazza. The curved ritual dagger, meant for godseer hands to slice human hearts from human chests, found the weak spot between gauntlet and forearm.
Attendant Bolta stepped back, wailing, palukai clattering to the floor. Blood spewed from her severed left wrist.
Sabira wiped the attendant’s gore from her face. With her left hand, she held her stomach wound as her tunic grew heavy and wet, and with her right, she pointed the ritual dagger at Bolta.
“Stand down. We can . . . heal you. You can still . . . live.”
What remained of Sabira’s smart-armor began knitting itself back together. A gel oozed from the armor and into her cut, plugging the blood flow.
“Apostate.” Bolta’s voice was as mangled as her face. She clamped her right hand over her wrist, blood spurting between her fingers. “I’ll never . . . Conqueror . . . Conqueror see me!”
Bolta charged.
Sabira tucked in with her blade up. Bolta slammed her into the wall, cracking her head. Stars exploded into black supernovae in Sabira’s vision.
Blood. Blood sprayed everywhere. Coated the walls. Streamed down her armor. Dripped from the ceiling. Its scent sharp and metallic in the back of her throat.
Sabira caught Bolta across her ruined jawline with the nihkazza. Bolta’s own momentum pushed the blade through and out the back. The upper half of the attendant’s head lay in a pool of viscous scarlet, blue-gray eyes staring directly at her. The fire of righteous anger faded from those eyes slowly, slowly.
After the spark of life guttered out, Sabira took the gem from Bolta and headed back to the balcony. She placed the band over her head, the blue yarist firm on her brow. Remnants of the attendant’s blood seeped from the strap and fell in thin rivulets down her scalp. The white-hot pain in her belly and the screaming in the back of her skull subsided to angry mutterings.
“Attendant Bolta, did you do it?” High Godseer Atu Madzo called out. “Did you bring me the apostate’s accursed little head?”
Sabira stepped onto the balcony. Atu Madzo let out a squeal.
“Want my head? Take it yourself.”
“Impossible,” ahn said. “Impossible.” The hover platform drifted back through the air toward the far balcony.
“Nodes,” Sabira grunted. “Feedback.”
Whatever data Jiddu had given Orion worked, amplifying and feeding back the signals from the biomech implanted into Daggeira’s spine. The mitre shone a fierce blue as the High Godseer shrieked, eyes squeezing shut. Atu Madzo dropped to ahns knees and grasped ahns head. The hover platform halted its retreat.
Even with Sabira’s powerful legs, the distance between the balcony and platform was too far. Now that a yarist gem touched her skin, the furious strength coursing through her veins made it almost possible. While Atu Madzo whimpered and sobbed, Sabira stepped back to the far side of the passageway, ran to the balcony’s edge, and jumped. Landing on one of the orbiting spheres of holy ore, she sprang again.
Made it to the platform by the tips of her toes.
Atu Madzo pulled the mitre from ahns horns and cast it over the edge. Cowering at the far edge of the platform, ahns eyes darted everywhere, desperately looking for a way out. The High Godseer clutched at the multilayered finery of ahns garments.
“You don’t belong here, Human. This is a sacred space. You have no right. You . . . you monster! You have no place in Divine Will. No purpose for your being . . . You are nothing.”
Atu Madzo licked ahns lips. “But I could . . . I could give you everything. Anything and everything in the universe! We could be unstoppable. Not even the Divine Masters could stand in our way. Anything you want—sex, power, riches—it’s yours! Bow before me now, and it’s yours.”
Sabira eyed Daggeira’s nude body suspended from the ceiling, and the biomech cables connecting her implant to Godsfall and the rust-colored pyramid.
“You put that shit in my grandfather’s brain. You stole the only thing he had to give. You took advantage of Daggeira’s body while she hangs helpless as a rack of meat. You dare come to Humanity’s stars—Humanity’s home—and wage war on those who’ve never harmed or threatened your precious Unity. And you . . . you call me monster?”
Sabira studied her ritual dagger, still dripping with crimson. “You are right about one thing, Ihvkuhn-Lo. I am nothing. But I do have one thing. One thing you could never give me.”
Sabira plunged the nihkazza into Atu Madzo’s chest, cleaving open ahns heart. Each fading, ragged beat shivered through the blade. Dark green blood gushed, covering them both.
High Godseer Lonno Atu Madzo slid from the ritual dagger, ahns many fine robes soaked with gore, and fell over the edge. Ahn tumbled down the slope of the polyhedron, arced out into the open air, and landed with a wet crunch.
“Nodes, bring the platform back where it was.” The platform glided through the air to Daggeira’s body. Her huge muscles hung slack and useless. Her eyes jerked crazily beneath closed lids. Sabira took a deep, painful breath and rested the curve of her blade on Daggeira’s neck.
“For Zonte.”
Sabira pulled back the nihkazza to open her throat with one brutal slash.
Daggeira’s eyes snapped open, pale blue and full of wrath.
Blaring yellow light saturated the heart cavity, freezing Sabira mid-swing. Consuming her mind and body completely in its radiant agony.