Regan swatted at a large boulder with Seraph’s arm-mounted shield, blasted a second with helm cannons, and rushed ahead. Instead of tumbling from the sky, the rubble rolled toward an enormous stone ring. More stones followed, forcing her to navigate through debris at high speed. Explosions sounded ahead and behind. Above and below. Some came from the ring itself, others from the Guards’ attempt to clear a path through the rubble.
“What the hell happened here?” Gunnar’s voice filled her cockpit; he sounded more baffled than fearful.
“Yohshin,” Regan said without clarification.
“You sound like you’ve seen this before.”
Regan nodded. “Last time I was here, the mah-zhin uprooted mountains and threw them at the Riders. I meant to ask Baiyren how he did it, but I never had the chance. Maybe he learned during his exile. He always said he needed time to study the thing.”
“You also said he’s different in the mah-zhin, more aggressive and less careful. Unless you’ve heard otherwise, we can’t assume he’s changed.”
Regan conceded the point. A tap on a crystal to her right widened her view; a second tap shared it with Gunnar. “All we know for sure is that Baiyren has isolated the Go-Rheeyo. The ring itself is the primary boundary, and the wall of incoming rock is the deterrent.” She highlighted the space between the Riders and the Go-Rheeyo’s last known position. “The stones in this area are much closer together, move at a greater velocity, and eventually fuse together. As strong as they are, the mah-kai can’t get too close without getting caught.”
“Baiyren’s trapped the Riders between his attack and our incoming forces.”
Regan nodded grimly. “We need to press that advantage. The less support Kaidan has, the better the odds for Baiyren’s success.” Her thoughts drifted back to the Go-Rheeyo. She wondered how Baiyren would maneuver once he was inside the ship. Yohshin was a two-hundred foot-tall behemoth. Outside of the hangar, cargo bay, and engineering, no deck was more than ten feet tall. Had he thought of that? Was he thinking about anything other than Juno Montressen?
Regan hesitated. Should she break the Riders’ line and cover Yohshin’s inevitable approach or support it from a distance? The latter meant light, probing attacks designed to harass the mah-kai and keep them occupied. The former demanded a more significant and prolonged strike.
This wouldn’t be easy.
She closed her eyes, and the strange sensation of touching rock, earth, and soil returned. Disillusionment brought dizziness, and for a moment, she didn’t know who she was or what she was doing. She pictured boulders soaring upward and then saw them in her view, huge rocks pulled from the Earth and hurtling toward the Go-Rheeyo, climbing into the sky, wrapping around the ship. Shielding it.
Fear seized her. She’d always been in control. Now, she didn’t know what was happening – either to her or the world around her. She felt as if her consciousness entwined with another, coexisting force. Hope and determination filled one part of her soul, despair and heartache the other. Eventually, they would separate like oil in water. If they didn’t, they’d destroy each other. Nausea filled Regan’s stomach. Her hands slipped from Seraph’s controls and she felt the mah-kai dip.
“Regan!” Gunnar’s urgent call hit her like a hard slap.
Her eyes flew open, and she cursed. Somehow, she’d let Seraph drift into the debris field. Broken earth stormed up from below like inverted rain. Several Riders, caught between the new barrage and Baiyren’s wall wilted beneath the onslaught, crushed and pummeled into amorphous lumps. One, a squat mech designed to withstand extreme ocean pressure, crumpled as easily as a tin can. The elegant falcon-inspired armor to her left backed away, only to have shrapnel pierce the ordinance on its back and explode. The two Riders had broken away from the main force and stalked toward Regan and her Gaurdsmen. How close were they when the wave hit? Fifteen hundred feet? Less? They were close enough for Regan to see the first cracks in their armor, the leaking fluid, the thin, bloody streams. Rock, dust, and earth swallowed them. She should have been dead too.
Only she wasn’t.
The clouds and rubble that crushed the mah-kai blew past. Again, she felt commands hurled into the ground. Unlike before, she recognized the source. This time she knew the orders didn’t come from Yohshin; this time, they came from her. Her thoughts and reflexes merged, her subconscious manipulating the Earth, parting it until a wall similar to the one surrounding the Go-Rheeyo cradled Seraph, protecting it. Protecting her.
“Regan? Are you all right?” Gunnar sounded desperate.
“I’m fine.” Regan lifted her hands and turned them over, examining them. A faint silvery light shimmered from her wrist to her fingers before winking out. In her view, Seraph mimicked her movements. Lowering her arms, she turned to face Gunnar. “Just lucky.” Drawing herself up, she pointed to the wall surrounding the Go-Rheeyo. The rocks holding it together had thinned until only a fine powder swirled between them. “Ready the Guard. That wall will make the Riders nervous. They can’t cover the flagship as long as it’s up. Hurry, Gunnar; we don’t have much time.”
Fifty miles to the northeast, Yohshin cut across the horizon like a golden comet. Friction boiled the humid air around the outer armor into a tail of vivid steam. The mech pulled out of its dive moments before hitting the ocean surface and continued to skim the turquoise seas. Displaced water flumed into the air before returning to earth in a fine, showery mist.
The mah-zhin’s passing carved a wide trough in the bay. The ripples grew into dangerous swells that pounded sandy beaches and island cliffs, eroding the former while cutting the latter’s foundations. One island, little more than a slender spire of gray rock dotted with spindly trees, cracked at the base and toppled with a large splash.
Yohshin continued on in a fury of rainbows and seawater. The armor plate behind one shoulder opened as it approached a tower of rock. With one swift motion, Yohshin drew a massive chain mace from a hidden sheath. A single swing sheared the island in two. The peak teetered but didn’t fall. Gravity reached for the top, grasped at it, and missed. Instead, the cloven limestone shot toward the Riders, swept through their ranks, and headed for the Go-Rheeyo like a missile. More islands exploded and more chaos filled the air, filtering light, hiding Yohshin.
“That’s it!” Regan cried. “That’s his cover. We have to move. Now!”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Gunnar protested. “Deep scans can still see him.” He paused abruptly. When he spoke again, confusion and disbelief filled his tone. “He’s gone. I don’t understand; he was just there. We saw him; our instruments identified him.”
“He’s found a way to make the armor look like any other metal. It’s why he’s throwing so much into the air. The more we trace him, the harder he is to spot.”
Regan grimaced at the thought. She didn’t know where it came from, or why, but a window to her soul had opened. Information and understanding flowed into her. Baiyren kept saying how much he hated using Yohshin’s power. Finally, she understood what he meant. Could she do what Yohshin did? It seemed impossible, and yet, a part of her thought she could.
You already have.
Again she saw the debris deflected from Seraph. She shook her head, wrestling with the idea, denying it. Burying it. Her thoughts turned to the forces arrayed before her. Caught between Baiyren’s rock wall and Regan’s Guard, the Riders swarmed aimlessly around the shielded ship like homeless insects. They couldn’t protect the Go-Rheeyo, and their enemy eluded them. She had to hit them before they regrouped.
“Yohshin isn’t gone, Gunnar,” she said. “It’s camouflaged. Baiyren’s fooling their scans, but they can still identify him visually. We can’t let that happen. Ready the Guard. We’re charging the Riders on my mark.”
“Charging?” Gunnar was incredulous. “You’re asking the Guard to fly into that?” Saizhen stabbed a needle-like finger at the flying rock. “Those boulders will pulverize us. We should hit them from here. Our weapons have the range.”
“A frontal assault will only push them back. We want them as far from the Go-Rheeyo as possible.”
Gunnar wasn’t convinced. “The wall’s behind them. The Riders can’t go anywhere.”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t try. They’re duty-bound to protect Kaidan. The worse their situation, the harder they’ll fight.” Gunnar grunted his concession, and Regan widened her communication’s channel to the rest of the Guard. “Form up! I’m leading you through the debris field; I want all Guardsmen in a single line with no more than ten yards between each of you. Once we’re beyond the rocks, fan out and engage the Riders. We need to pull them as far from the Go-Rheeyo as possible. Is that clear?”
No one responded; they simply saluted and moved into position behind Seraph without comment. Regan wet her lips. Her men trusted her judgment more than she did herself. What they were about to do was crazy. Battles were unpredictable enough. Minimizing that unpredictability was what won or lost them. The best and longest surviving soldiers were both audacious and cautious, planning yet accounting for as much as they could. This didn’t feel like planning; it felt like desperation.
Reckless, she thought. Irresponsible. Reason screamed at her, told her to stop. She ignored her doubts and focused on the path ahead. Dust clouds swirled, and broken monoliths roared past to block her way. She swallowed, uncharacteristically nervous.
Regan’s sweat-slick palm connected with Seraph’s control crystal, and Seraph inched forward. Staring into a storm of rock and dirt before her, Regan searched for a gap and found none. Adrenaline heightened her senses. Her mind opened. Again, she sensed the world below and the uprooted fragments between the Guard, the Riders, and the Go-Rheeyo. Yohshin’s thoughts rippled through both, Baiyren’s consciousness coating the mah-zhin’s mind like temporary varnish. The armor’s ability and control took her breath away. It wielded elemental solids as if they were part of its body.
Sensing Yohshin’s power, she watched Baiyren control the airborne debris, learned what he did, and how. An image formed in her head – one of clearing sky and shielded paths. Regan fixed the picture in her mind and looked on as the flying wreckage parted. A tunnel appeared. Faint, silvery light bathed the inner lining while, beyond that, Yohshin’s detritus launched into the air unabated. Regan drove Seraph into the flying maelstrom, her Guard following, their line perfect. Her forces broke apart as soon as they hit the eye and fanned out.
Regan’s thoughts drifted to Baiyren. How much time did he need? They didn’t have any cover, and they couldn’t retreat. The Riders outnumbered them three to one. She thought about the flying stone behind. Could she wield it like Yohshin? Was it worth it? She might succeed in throwing it at the Riders only to watch it ricochet into the Guard. Or worse, plow right over them.
This was the helplessness Baiyren had told her about. The confusion. He knew Yohshin possessed incredible power, but he couldn’t predict what would happen when he used it. Too often, his plans spun out of control.
Regan couldn’t afford that. The Guard couldn’t afford that. And neither could Higo. Better to use what she knew and let her training take over. She’d studied the Riders, both during her time at Tsurmak’s military school and since leaving Haven’s city limits. She knew them. Their tactics hadn’t changed, and she expected them to come at her in a wedge formation, fake battering her line, and then whip the edges past to surround her. She watched them from a distance, her view zooming in to catch their movements.
Downdrafts buffeted the calm seas below. Whitecaps formed, and the water churned ominously. Twelve objects flew in from east and west, and Regan shifted the view. Between them, the lead mech – a sleek metal suit, fashioned in the shape of an elegant dagger – drifted ahead. A gilded crossbar cut across its chest to form a hilt. The lower three quarters of the armored ship tapered to a fine point, their titanium sides as sharp as any blade.
Brother Shimono.
Regan had trained with him; he was a gentle man, pious and quiet and easy to like, especially after he brought her into the magnificent garden he’d spent his life tending. Facing him in battle sickened her. He had a large family, children and grandchildren. How many times had she fought the Riders, and of those, how many had she faced him?
None that she remembered. Regan was still a trainee when she left for Sahqui-Mittama. Her former classmates, if they made it into the Riders at all, would still be lower-level soldiers. Her stomach twisted.
Slowly, regretfully, she ignited Seraph’s lance and lifted it high into the air. Silver light shimmered around the cold blade, pale green suffusing the glow. The blazing aura didn’t faze Shimono. His mah-kai hefted its great iron sword over its head and, completing his salute, lowered it respectfully.
Regan nodded and, returning her hands to Seraph’s controls, ordered the charge.