Three years ago
Higo, Sahqui-Mittama
Baiyren ran through the castle’s smoldering courtyard. Explosions erupted all around him and he kept his head down to avoid shrapnel and falling debris. The mah-kai’s hangar was close, closer than any other building, tall and wide, with its doors thrown open. Hurtling over falling stone, he stumbled inside, found his footing, and sprinted across the ground, weaving through a thick crowd of men determined to reach their mechs and get them airborne. He spotted a dark-haired and dark-eyed man in a loose fitting tunic of crimson and gold. Beside him, another lord strapped himself into his mah-kai and closed the cockpit.
A small group of pilots gathered by the far wall. He ran over. Regan stood with the guard, her dark hair and pale pink eyes unmistakable in the light. Noting his approach, she nodded and promptly dismissed her pilots. As one, they broke apart, some heading to waiting mah-kai, others to small fighters, command posts, and maintenance sheds.
Regan was already striding over before the first pilot reached his craft. She stopped a few inches away and slipped her arm through his. “Your brother attacked from the west, my lord,” she said in low tones. “Several sections of the city are on fire.”
Baiyren nodded his understanding. “Do you know what he’s after?”
“We do.” Regan pulled him behind a stone column and gripped his shoulders. “He came for your mother, Baiyren. Less than ten minutes ago, a raker was seen leaving her bunker. Mah-kai broke through the defenses. We still don’t know if they had help from the inside, but we think so.”
The news sent Baiyren to his knees. He didn’t remember falling, didn’t remember much of anything before Regan’s eyes found his. Her hands were on his arm, helping him up, her body shielding him from his men. Leaning against the cool stone, he closed his eyes until his breath evened. “I need as much information as you can give me. Full battlefield conditions, possible escape routes, and the location of every safe house between here and Haven. They couldn’t have gone far.” He stared past the hangar doors, through smoke and fire and on to the edge of his sight. There, imagination detailed what he couldn’t see. Castle walls aflame, a gash in their fortifications, as real and as black as a hole in the universe. “Send word to my father. Tell him I’ll rescue the queen.”
“As you say, my prince.” Regan bowed deeply. “Our forces are airborne and scanning for the fleeing raker.” She placed a hand on his wrist. “They won’t get away.”
“As long as they haven’t brought Zuishin we have the advantage.”
“The Nan-jii say the other mah-zhin is still dormant.”
Baiyren nodded thoughtfully. In waking Yohshin he had an accomplishment Kaidan couldn’t match. “Get Seraph in the air,” he ordered, turning from Regan and sprinting for the hangar doors. “I’ll catch up as soon as I can.”
“I’m sure you will,” Regan said wryly. They both knew how fast Yohshin could fly.
New explosions shook the ground. The world around him blurred, then came back into focus as he skidded to a stop in a wide launching area. Yohshin! he called. It’s time to go.
An answering rumble rolled across the pitted yard. Light flared in Yohshin’s battlement. His world became a blinding silver curtain and he felt his body dissolve like sugar in water. In seconds, he looked down at the burning palace through Yohshin’s eyes.
He saw a little girl in a white dress with flowers in her hair steal kisses from a boy preparing to defend the castle. A few blocks away, a mah-kai burned inside a wide factory while the company’s owners sank to their knees, at once thankful and aggrieved. Priests in the city’s churches sent the soldiers protecting the buildings off to save as many as they could. Flames painted Sahqui-Mittama’s buildings with an oily orange glow, soot staining the remainder black. He tried not to think about the people who lived there or those who died in their homes.
They’ll pay for this, he vowed. Once my mother’s safe, we’ll break every Rider we can find.
He searched the skies for targets and found a raker fleeing the castle grounds. A distinctly feminine mah-kai with wide shoulders and an assortment of weapons led them. Its helm tapered into a conical peak that ended ten feet over a bronze faceplate forged in the likeness of a young woman with tilted eyes and cruel lips.
“Mindori?” Regan’s voice hissed through Baiyren’s thoughts like leaking steam.
Mindori had been one of his teachers – early on when he first arrived at the military academy. Like many other nobles, Mindori vanished sometime during his second semester only to resurface at Haven with a full pardon.
Baiyren raised Yohshin’s arm to block Seraph’s advance. “We knew this could happen. Kaidan doesn’t have a weapon strong enough to counter Yohshin, so he’s using Mindori to out-think us. She’s the best tactician he has.”
“She taught most of the men in the Royal Guard. She knows our weaknesses. This won’t be easy.”
She also taught psychological warfare and was ruthlessly good at it. Baiyren remembered how much Regan hated those classes. Dishonorable, she called them, an affront to God, king, and man. Regan vowed to abolish the practice if she ever became the captain of the Royal Guard. Kaidan had no such reservations.
Yohshin scanned the surrounding area for anything out of the ordinary: a glint of metal in the stone buildings, a gun barrel disguised as a pipe, a carefully laid ambush. Finding nothing, the great armor exploded after the Riders, outpacing Regan, who did her best to keep up. A much slower Gunnar trailed with his squad in a tight formation.
Ahead, Mindori led eight heavily armored mah-kai away from the castle. An old but sturdy prison transport trundled inside the Rider’s blockading formation. Its turrets – two in front and two aft – came about and prepared to fire.
Hunter. Baiyren recognized the ship, one he thought destroyed several years ago. Its former owners included pirates, renegades, and criminals, most of whom a former king caught, convicted and executed. The barge itself was sparse, plain, and cruelly built. Its captives spent most of their time in cells too small to accommodate them; light and food became luxuries, the guards who brought them, heroes.
The resurrected vessel now held Higo’s queen in its cells. Hold on Mother; I’m coming for you. Yohshin dropped onto the main deck. Metal clanged, and plate shivered but held.
This is too easy. Baiyren smirked. Kneeling, he, drove a fist into the barge’s hull. Silver light bloomed around Yohshin’s golden hand. He struck again, harder this time, luxuriating in the mah-zhin’s strength. The ship groaned; the hull, though reinforced, split. Armor plating opened, layer after layer, until a gaping hole appeared in the metal. Smoke wafted into the air, staining the beautiful blue sky.
Regan’s voice screamed at him, shouting something about caution and deceit. Baiyren knew he should listen, but he was too angry, too close to rescuing his mother. He saw her in his head, watched her suffer in horrific conditions. Probing the breached hull and finding no resistance he was about to dive into the ship when a blast erupted behind him. Another came, and then more.
Yohshin rolled to keep the incoming fire from Hunter and his mother. A squad of Riders approached from the north, fifteen in the lead, another group trailing. Mindori took point, and though Baiyren knew her to be a skilled pilot, she flew erratically. One moment she came on straight as an arrow only to fall several hundred feet, turn, readjust, climb, and accelerate.
Baiyren stood and drew his mace. Power flooded into the mah-zhin. Mindori raised a hand in answer, but the movement was stiff and awkward. A crystal-powered lance blazed in her right hand, lifted, dipped, and lifted one last time before firing.
The shot grazed Baiyren’s armor and skittered away. A second stray bolt careened wildly past, another slamming into the barge at his feet. Flames roared upward, sparks showering the sky. He aimed his hammer at Midori but didn’t fire. Something was wrong. Mindori wouldn’t miss this badly; the greenest cadet could do better.
He waited, waited for the mah-kai to slow or swerve or retreat. Only it didn’t. It flew on, if struggling, in an overt attempt to ram him. Baiyren smiled. Mindori was another chance to use his power, another enemy to bring down. His first shot severed the mah-kai’s hand. The next blew off the head. When the third pierced the chest, Yohshin went cold. Dread filled the armor, clawing its way into Baiyren’s soul.
Against his will, Baiyren gazed into Hunter, shooting past its torn and shredded decks, past smoking corridors and empty cells. Wide girders had fallen atop a body, blood pooling beneath, dark hair splayed to hide the face.
Panic rolled through him. He held his breath and asked Yohshin to keep back and not show him whose crushed form lay beneath the pile. Yohshin ignored him. Baiyren fought, but the harder he fought, the more Yohshin probed. He saw her at last, glimpsed Mindori’s high cheekbones, upturned eyes – now closed – and long aquiline nose. The sight released a held breath. He relaxed, but only for a moment. Why was Mindori here? She was supposed to be inside her mah-kai. What happened?
And then he knew.
Shooting down, he followed the trail Mindori’s wrecked mah-kai left in the air. The vapor was easy to track, the burning and melted metal leaving a clear path. He passed the head, then an arm. He reached the torso last, the ruined armor tumbling from the sky like a wingless bird.
He knew what he’d find inside the cockpit, knew enough to keep from scanning its smoking remains. He wished he could block Yohshin’s thoughts from his, knowing what the link would show him. A quick scan of the debris identified traces of the queen’s genetic makeup. His armor located a transmitter that allowed Mindori to pilot her mah-kai remotely. Last of all, the Yohshin showed him his mother’s broken and bloody body.
Baiyren’s world crumbled. He threw Yohshin into a catastrophic dive. Behind, the air’s moisture sizzled and condensed into streaming trailers, while ahead Higo spread out before him like a warm and comforting blanket. Ready to wrap him in oblivion and end his suffering in a blaze of explosive light. Regan screamed at him, Gunnar too. He ignored everything but the rising earth. Bitterly, he wondered why God put a spirit so unfit to rule into a prince’s body.
He closed his eyes, and a part of his mind noticed Yohshin’s decreasing momentum. Another part drifted – lost, tormented, and rudderless. Time passed. At first he didn’t know if he was dead or alive. Seconds seemed like years, the moments becoming an infinite storm that blinded him to the outside world. He thought it lasted forever, but when it finally cleared, his eyes opened, and he stared at a statue of his god inside the Ridderroque. Did Yohshin bring him, or did his subconscious somehow find its way here? Head shaking, he lifted his eyes to the statue, seeing it differently than he had all those years ago.
Tall, stern, and imposing, it stood watch over Lord Roarke. The god’s face remained impassive, distant even. Baiyren didn’t expect anything different, not from carved stone. Still, after what Baiyren just did, what Mindori forced him to do, the indifference in his god’s stone image riled him. He wanted accusation and disappointment – anything but apathy.
“How could you do this to me?” he cried. “You could have made me anything… anything but this.”
Something glittered on the wall behind the majestic figure, a silver outline inside which ancient runes stretched from left to right. The words blurred then focused and, incredibly, he understood them.
“The Pathways,” he said aloud. The priests rarely spoke of a little understood passage in the Zhoku that mentioned routes to other worlds, perhaps the same route Lord Roarke traveled to Higo.
Baiyren walked toward the shining letters. Yohshin’s hand came up, its fingers splayed, reaching for the tablet behind the statue.
“Baiyren!”
He turned its head.
Seraph stood several yards away, knee deep in the water, droplets glistening over its pastel-hued armor like stars.
“Go home, Regan,” Baiyren said.
“Not without you. What happened today was a tragedy. You shouldn’t be alone. Come with me. We can sort this out; we can grieve together as a family.”
Yohshin turned away. “I destroy everything important to me.”
Regan shouted something, but he no longer listened. His mind closed, and he put Higo behind him. His hand reached for the etched stone, felt light explode from the wall. A corridor ran from the opening toward infinity. Resolutely, he stepped into the glowing hall without looking back.