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MILA
“Kahanga!” Mos shouts, his voice sending his soldiers screaming and running with him. “What’s the plan?” he yells at me.
“There is no plan,” I shout back. “Don’t stop moving. Take down Vedmak any way you can—just don’t kill him and watch your fire. Husniya’s life is at stake.”
Above, Vedmak throws down the plasma rifle in favor of the old-fashioned bolt-action weapon. Working the action one-handed, he shoulders and braces across his forearm, taking aim on me. The rifle cracks once. The round zips past. He works the action and fires again, but I keep running, fearless, a heart full of reckless purpose.
Vedmak shatters the old rifle on the ice barrier at his feet and flings the parts over the wall. With a wave of his arms, more men pour from the gap—but the others now loosed upon us are not Graciles.
Dear Yeos, he’s using stimmed Rippers like mindless attack dogs.
Far to the left, Faruq leads his Baqirians forward. A host of old Soviet RPGs whistle from their launchers, whining toward the humming strike ship. The Gracile pilot jerks the ship left and right, dodging the rockets, but there are too many and he’s not fast enough. The ship receives a blow to a wing and spins out of control, crashing low through a portion of the ice wall.
Husniya is above that section.
The craft distorts with the screech of tearing metal and comes apart in a ball of flaming debris. Vedmak severs Husniya’s bonds with his plasma blade and hoists her into the crook of his stumped arm. He jumps from the wall as it disintegrates beneath his feet. Snagging a section of severed support cable, he falls. It snaps tight as he drops out of sight on the far side of the wall.
How the hell was he able to do that?
I focus on the formation blocking our approach, a veritable wall of armored biological perfection.
“Carve your blades into them. Do not stop!” Mos shouts.
His men howl their response, machetes in the air. The few rifles they have pop, well-taken shots dropping the last of the deranged Graciles still carrying plasma weapons.
The launcher snugs into my shoulder and fires. A tattered blue cloth beanbag sails from the muzzle, laying a Gracile’s nose flat. The armored soldier sinks to his knees, his hands flying to his blood-drenched face. Then I’m on him with a spinning back kick that catches him right in the same spot. With a howl, he crashes against the snow, clutching his disfigured features.
The lines of Kahangans, Baqirians, and Resistance collide with the possessed Graciles, screams of fear and death filling the air.
A Gracile comes at me headlong. Not toe-to-toe, Mila. Work to their disadvantage.
I deflect a sword meant for my head with the barrel of the launcher, slip beneath, and rise again. A crippling stomping kick to my attacker’s knee breaks it inward with the sound like snapping firewood. I follow with a crucial blow, slamming the barrel of my launcher into the base of his skull, sending him tumbling into the snow. Immediately, another is there, attempting to smash me into the ice with a cudgel. Deflecting the strike, a roundhouse kick to his ribs yields nothing but a grunt. I give him another in the same target area. This time he winces and steps back, his face twisting with fury.
From seemingly nowhere, Zaldov drives into the armored Gracile. The Creed clubs him to the ground, then pivots and engages multiple Graciles at close range with his plasma rifle. Their gray powder is snatched away by the wind.
“Thanks,” I huff.
Zaldov’s rubbery lips stretch into a smile.
Forging ahead, I load another bag into the breach, shoulder, and fire. The lead shot-filled projectile drops the Gracile charging Mos. My friend grins at me before drawing Svetlana, the .44 magnum, from his belt and blasting a Ripper through the chest.
The Gracile ranks are powerful and they leave their mark in blood, but our sheer numbers are superior. The lives spent here are the terrible price we must pay for victory. Splitting the ranks and driving the few remaining Gracile warriors to the outside where they are isolated, we clear a path to the gap in the wall.
A second strike-ship slings snow in all directions as its jets whine, preparing for takeoff. Before I can scream for someone to take it out, a thin cloaked figure runs from beneath the belly of the aircraft and disappears into the whiteout of the storm.
Was that ...? A fiery flash precedes an incredible concussive blast that rends the strike-ship in half.
Oh, Yuri, I could kiss you right now.
Inside the wall, the short incline opens up. Faruq’s forces and the monks flood in through the breach left by the fallen strike ship, the Kahangans and my people fan out.
There’s a host of screaming. More Rippers. But these are different.
Through the blizzard and the sounds of war, the Ripper chief from Vel appears. Are they here to help?
His minions yelp and howl, flying onto the battlefield to our left and into both Faruq’s ranks and the ranks of Vedmak’s forces. A stone sinks in the pit of my stomach. Good job, Mila. I invited them here and they’re going berserk—on everyone. It’s a bloody free-for-all.
Vedmak’s Rippers and the chieftain’s Rippers clash and spill each other’s blood, Faruq’s Baqirians drive into them with the full weight of his forces. A section of the Rippers breaks free—some are Vedmak’s and some aren’t, but they’re not fighting each other anymore. They’re coming at us. At me. There’s still a mark on my head. They won’t stop until it sits on a pike. The distance between us vanishes as they close.
“We’re trapped,” I call out.
I can’t seem to move, my body frozen by the sheer madness of war.
“Not yet,” a strange voice calls back.
Past us charges a massive blur of orange and black, a whirlwind of flying claws and fangs. The Rippers shriek the sounds of terror and death.
“Ussuri!” I shout.
The massive tiger swings his head in my direction, jowls foaming with blood. Mounted atop the great tiger’s back is Anastasia, wearing a strange headdress of colored silks and black feathers.
“What are you doing?” I shout.
“Buying you some time. The Vardøger must be stopped.” She pivots on the tiger’s back, facing off against a band of regrouping Rippers.
“How did you know to come?”
She flashes a wild grin. “Logosians aren’t the only ones with whom Yeos speaks.”
Even in the throngs of war, she can throw a veiled insult. One I perhaps deserve. “May His hands be upon you, Soufreit.”
The wanderer bares her teeth and yelps wildly. Grabbing a handful of Ussuri’s fur, she sends him leaping into the front lines of the Rippers with astonishing speed and breathtaking power. The Ripper chieftain and his brood are stalled. Many of them drop their weapons and run screaming. The chieftain backs away, mouth agape, as the great beast savages another section of his men.
My head won’t go on a pike just yet.
There’s a crackle of electrical white noise, and the shimmering VME bubble growing from within the lillipad undulates and swells. It’s growing fast. No time to waste.
Between us and the fallen Gracile fortress beyond, Vedmak stands defiant. There is lust for blood in his eyes as his sputtering scythe lops heads and limbs from the first resistance and Kahangan fighters to reach him. He points his weapon at me with an evil sneer.
Behind him, a huge Gracile darts into the lillipad, Husniya flopped over his massive shoulder.
Don’t stop, Mila. Don’t you dare stop now.
