The aeternum chronicles.., p.98
The Aeternum Chronicles- The Complete Trilogy, page 98
part #1 of The Aeternum Chronicles Series
“Somethin’s ‘appening down there,” Seamus said, peering out the open side of the flying hover-trans.
Ryland and Tess looked down out of the other side. The ground was littered with gray protectorate body armor. There looked to be weapons as well.
“Where are the soldiers?” Ryland asked.
“There,” Tess said, pointing.
“Where?”
“There,” she said again, “and there…and there.”
Ryland saw, and understood. They were no longer in any kind of formation. In fact they looked to be wandering aimlessly in a hundred different directions. “Where are they going?”
“Hard to say,” said Seamus.
“Maybe home…” Tess suggested.
Ryland kept watching the ground, and soon they were flying over thousands of people, overflowing the main streets and crowding between buildings. They all seemed to be moving in the same direction, toward a large tunnel opening up ahead. Beside the opening, piles of stone and wood looked to have been moved aside.
“This area was under heavy protectorate control when we first passed,” Tao said from up front.
“They’ve all boilin’ up and gone.” Seamus was smiling in disbelief.
“It was Gabrial,” Ryland said. “He did this. He made them disperse.”
Seamus and Tess shared a look of concern.
“Now lad, it might be a bit early to be—”
“No, it was him,” Ryland asserted. “I saw him…what he was capable of. I…was him. For a time. It’s hard to explain.”
Boil it, Ryland thought. He hadn’t really planned much beyond getting Gabrial free. In hindsight, he considered that maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to pull a gun on Hatch.
“Can I speak with him?” Ryland asked. “With Hatch, I mean”
“About that,” said Tess. “The delator’s not exactly happy with what—”
She stopped mid-sentence.
“What?” Ryland asked. “What is it?”
Tess pointed to the ear piece resting on his shoulder. He hooked it into his ear, and a voice buzzed through it.
“…are to exit New Arcadia by whatever means necessary. Once outside, you will receive further instruction on how to proceed. Repeat, all non-essential evacuation personnel are to exit New Arcadia by whatever means necessary, effective immediately.”
The flying hover-trans banked suddenly as they changed course, heading for the steel walls of the colony.
34
Pinched
Streetlights blurred past as Clementine lowered her body, lying flat on her hover-bike. The smell of smoke filled her nostrils as she rolled on the throttle, matching speed with the seven strike team agents riding around her. They accelerated to mind-boggling speeds—far faster than Clem had ever thought possible in off-track mode. They’d no doubt have to slow down once they cleared the outer sectors.
Columns of thick black smoke, barely visible in the ambient light of the city, rose skyward and pooled in the atmospheric dome high above. It looked like all hell had broken loose further into the city—exactly where they were heading. She just hoped they weren’t too late.
In the back of her mind, Clem wondered where Oren was at that very moment. Was he alive? Did he need her help? For the thousandth time she pushed away that line of thinking. She had something important to do, and distractions like that weren’t going to make her job any easier.
As she traveled deeper into the heart of New Arcadia, she began to encounter more signs that things in the city had grown out of control. As predicted, they soon had to slow down in order to avoid flaming dumpsters, overturned vehicles, and random chunks of debris.
The shatter of glass drew her attention as they passed a stretch of road lined with darkened shops. Clem turned back to see a group of people with their faces covered, jumping in through the broken window.
Clem shook her head. Won’t do you much good if you’re dead, she thought. She and the strike team turned left as a group, avoiding a section of road that had been completely obstructed. Clem had come very close to abandoning them and continuing on alone. If the signal to go had come two minutes later, she likely would have. The thought still crossed her mind…she could easily lose them by turning down a side street and gathering to bend the dim light, concealing herself.
She decided to at least wait until they got closer to the core. There was a good chance they’d face enemies more dangerous than protectorate soldiers. Enemies that could sense gathering, for example.
They continued down a broad street, which was also littered with debris, though not so badly they couldn’t glide over and around it. Clem frowned and stood up on her bike’s foot-pegs. Up ahead, the road appeared different. As they approached, she saw it was littered with small white objects. The group slowed. Thousands of pieces of protectorate body armor and weaponry were strewn across the roadway. It looked as if an entire battalion of soldiers had stripped them off, and dropped them where they stood.
Very strange, but not a threat. The strike-team leader raised an arm and pointed forward with two decisive motions. They continued their journey to the core without further delay. As they continued deeper into the city, things became more and more chaotic. Fires had broken out, and they were forced to take more alternate routes around blocked roads.
Clem was growing increasingly impatient with the delays, and began to consider whether it might be faster to abandon the bikes altogether.
They’d finally made it to sector two, when they hit another dead end. One of the tall buildings lining the road had almost entirely collapsed across it. The pile of stone, glass, and steel was at least twenty feet high.
Boil it! Clem cursed. It was almost as if someone, or something, were intentionally obstructing their path.
The strike team began to turn around when Clem took off her helmet, looking up at the rubble.
“Wait,” she said, turning to them. “Let’s leave the bikes. Our grav-suits will get us there faster at this point.”
The strike team agents paused, looking toward their team leader—the same tall, stubborn agent who’d blocked her from leaving earlier.
He removed his helmet, and after a moment nodded.
Finally, they see reason, Clem thought.
She was half off her bike when a sickening, tugging sensation turned her stomach.
“Breaker!” she shouted, drawing her twin daggers.
The other agents drew their weapons, standing defensively.
Clem looked in the direction she was being pulled and found not one, but three breakers standing atop the rubble. They looked down at her with large white eyes, their black, hooded robes hiding everything else.
Throaty, guttural clicking noises echoed off the surrounding buildings, and soon there were twenty, maybe thirty more shapes standing alongside the breakers.
Hasai, Clem thought. Boil it all! We don’t have time for this!
She turned, considering a quick escape on the hover-bike. There was just one problem. More than one, actually. Three more breakers had moved across the road behind them. They too were joined by a host of hasai, eagerly awaiting the command to attack.
Pinched, Clem thought.
The strike team stood back to back, in a defensive formation. Clem gathered, allowing herself to be suffused with kai. She stood alongside them, and a string of curses ran through her head.
A gust of wind blew, stirring the dust on the road.
The brief moment of calm died in a chorus of angry whispers as the hasai charged, scrabbling down the rubble toward them from one direction, and across the asphalt from the other. Their slight, bald gray bodies moved more like animals than anything human. The breakers were also advancing, gliding forward, closely behind.
We’re too exposed, Clem thought. She looked side to side at the tall buildings.
“Clementine, it’s time for you to go on without us. The rest of you, aim for the heads,” the lead agent said calmly. “Anything else will only slow them down.”
Clem bent the light around herself, lensing out of sight.
One of the hover-bikes launched down the track toward the hasai. They easily leapt out of the way. It exploded in a massive ball of blue flame, sending hasai bodies flying through the air.
A split second later, the agent’s shock-dart guns discharged with a series of clangs, firing as the hasai came within range. They activated their grav-suits and launched upward in seven different directions.
Clem wasn’t about to wait around by herself. She sheathed her daggers, and pressed her fingers to the palm of her right hand. A quick stomp of her foot launched her fifty feet up into the air toward the high-rise on her left.
She reached the apex of her jump near a fifth story windowsill, and grabbed hold. She hung there, still invisible, and surveyed the battle below. The agents had drawn swords from the sheaths on their backs. They leapt with incredible speed between the buildings and the ground. Many of the hasai were armed with black-bladed weapons, but they were no match for the speed and agility of the strike team agents.
Their eyeless heads flew, and soon after reverberations boomed like a sporadic drum beating out of time. The ground was becoming littered with stasis spheres materializing around the dead hasai. A human scream drew Clem’s attention to a breaker down below. Its arm was upraised, and above it one of the agents was suspended in mid-air.
The breaker was clearly straining, trying to crush her, but something in her grav-suit was resisting. Clem cursed, released the windowsill, and pushed off from the building toward the captured agent. She realized too late that a second breaker had joined the first, adding its strength to the effort.
Clem crashed into the agent, knocking her free. There was just one problem—she’d taken her place. She was immediately assailed with crushing force. It pressed down on every inch of her body. Unable to concentrate, Clem lensed back into sight. Her eyes bulged, and her head throbbed from the pressure.
She fought desperately, but couldn’t move an inch. Closing her eyes, Clem did her best to shut out the pain, and gathered. Not because she thought it would help, but because it was the only thing she could do. She drew in more energy than she’d ever attempted. It rushed into her like a raging river, until she began to see the world through her closed eyelids. Glimmering tendrils of kai made up the ground, the buildings, and even the breakers working to crush her.
As energy extended out from their hands toward her, Clem’s mind grasped on to something odd about them. Both were surrounded by a thin dark outline, where none of the glowing tendrils of energy were present. The outlines stood out starkly against the glowing backdrop of kai flowing through virtually everything else. It was as if the light were being bent away from them.
Darkness began forming at the edges of her vision. She had to act.
In an epiphany born of desperation, Clem focused all her concentration on folding the light back in on the darkened outline surrounding one of the breakers. The pressure on her body lessened slightly, though it was still unbearably painful. Clem grit her teeth, and then concentrated, pouring all her energy into the effort. The breaker before her shimmered and warped, then re-solidified. It bared its teeth, and the pressure returned. A scream rose in Clem’s throat as she pushed with everything she had left.
The breaker shimmered again before exploding into a sphere of a billion tiny particles. They coalesced for a brief moment, then imploded. Clem was flung backward across the road by an enormous shockwave of energy.
As she slowly lifted her dazed head, she saw the agent she’d rescued moments ago plunge her sword through the chest of the second breaker, withdraw it, and slice horizontally across its neck.
“Look out!” Clem shouted, but it was too late.
A third dark, cloaked figure with glowing white eyes attacked her from behind. It gripped the agent’s sword arm in one of its twisted claws, and her torso in the other. Her scream nearly drowned out the unsettling tearing sound of her arm being ripped from her body. Nearly.
Maker.
A dim shadow passed overhead, and Clem looked up to see a hasai falling toward her. Its black blade was pointed down, aiming right for her chest. She had time only to raise her daggers in a desperate attempt to deflect the blow.
A powerful gust of wind blasted her as a large dark shape blurred past directly above. The hasai was nowhere to be seen.
What was that? Clem wondered. Her attention was promptly drawn to the rippling white eyes of the approaching breaker. It had finished with the agent. Clem regretted never learning her name.
She struggled to get to her feet, but only managed to reach a knee. The breaker glided forward, its lipless grin of crimson teeth growing wider by the second. Clem gathered, but she was nearly spent. There was no way she could pull off that same trick in her current state.
“Now,” it spoke in its deep, gravelly voice, “You will pay for—”
The same large dark shape blew past, accompanied by another gust of wind. It crashed into the breaker, sending it flying down the road toward the collapsed building.
Clem squinted after it.
Is that…?
She focused on the shape zipping through the sky. The other breakers had noticed it too, she realized, as their white eyes turned upward.
Clem looked around for the rest of the strike team. She found only two left standing, one of whom was bent over, holding his side. More hasai were cresting the rubble.
The dark shape wheeled overhead, and Clem could see it was preparing to make another pass, only this time at half the speed.
Maker I hope I’m right about this.
Clem fought the rest of the way to her feet, and looked upward. As the dark shape grew closer, she pressed her fingers to her right palm, and stomped her foot down. She was immediately launched directly upward into the night sky. As she rose through the air, she looked down and saw it approaching—four outstretched wings, a long neck, and a tail trailing behind.
It rose up to meet her descent. She landed awkwardly on its back, slipping over the side when someone grabbed the straps crossing her chest, steadying her.
Clem pulled herself back up, gripping black feathers with white knuckles.
“Anzien?” she said in disbelief.
“Hold on.”
The kiraeen banked suddenly, then began a near vertical climb. It pumped its wings, and the world turned upside down. Clem felt the pull of gravity—more than the normal amount. The breakers below were attempting to drag them to the ground.
They flipped back over. Clem clung tightly as the kiraeen pumped its wings.
“We’re not moving!” Clem shouted.
She looked back and saw two more breakers with their arms extended upwards. Behind them, a lone agent remained, disarmed, and completely surrounded by hasai. Judging by his height, Clem was almost certain it was Kenner. He launched forward suddenly toward a tall building lining the street. As soon as he hit, he ricocheted off, back toward the breakers. He turned his body sideways as he collided into the malevolent gravity benders, sending them tumbling in a mess of black cloaks and pale limbs. Clem immediately took back all the bad thoughts she’d had about him during mission prep.
The kiraeen shot forward, freed from the unnatural bonds of gravity. They quickly climbed over the city, out of the breaker’s reach.
Clem’s eyes grew wide as she took in the expanse of chaos and destruction below. Countless fires burned, looters ran in and out of broken shops, and hover-trans vehicles flew down the streets at reckless speeds. She watched in awe as one lost control, flipping off the track. Sparks flew as it slid across the road and smashed into a nearby building.
The kiraeen continued to climb, wheeling around toward the core.
“You alright?” Anzien called out over the wind.
“I am now…thanks to you,” Clem called back.
“What was it you did back there?” Anzien asked. “That breaker…”
Clem thought back, recalling the crushing pain, the kai surging through her, and the dark outline surrounding the breakers. The way it had shimmered and distorted. She’d seen that happen once before, back in the Wyrewood near Tectum Caverns. It felt like ages ago…Magdalene had done the same thing to the Shao Mah that had been about to kill Oren.
“I’m not sure exactly…I think it’s called impelling.”
“Neat trick,” Anzien replied.
“How did you know to come for me?” Clem asked.
“I didn’t,” she said, glancing back. “I was on my way to the core when I saw the fight breaking out below. Figured six breakers and a host of hasai wouldn’t be out to stop just anyone…decided to take a closer look.”
“I’m glad you did,” Clem said. “I’m heading for the core as well.”
Anzien nodded.
Clem leaned over, looking around Anzien. The Pillars of Ascension were coming into view. Even flying as high as they were, they still hadn’t climbed above the massive buildings.
“What will you do once you get there?” Clem asked.
“I’m placing General Graves under arrest,” she said.
Clem’s eyes widened. “What for?”
“She used civilians as fodder, and hindered the evacuation effort so she could more easily take the core.”
Clem frowned. She hadn’t known the ins and outs of the attack plan, but she trusted Anzien’s judgment. “There’s something you should know,” Clem said.
Anzien Glanced back.
“Jin Liao, the scientist she’s sending in to deactivate the weapon…what he plans to do won’t work. That’s not all. If he deactivates the redistribution circuit as planned, he’ll trigger the weapon. After that, nothing can stop it.” Clem wondered if maybe Jin had known all along; if maybe he’d never really stopped working for the Ministry.
Anzien didn’t respond.
