THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 39: Axis
“Welcome back to Axis. Our home away from scattered homes.”
– Tiberius Myles (232 PA)
Commander Kharos jumped down from the CWAAF shuttle before the bullet-shaped landing craft had even shut down its engines. A private jogged across the empty street toward him. The young Axial streamed sweat in his green body armor. He jerked to a halt and saluted.
“What’s the situation?” Kharos asked. Behind him, the rest of Ground Team 288 poured out of the shuttle.
“We’ve got about a thousand Arcadians gathered in thela sector. There are a few CWA citizens with them — an Ixthian, a couple of humans — and some other huge thing we’ve never seen before.”
Commander Kharos shouldered his laser rifle. “Hmm. Hostages maybe. Are the Arcadians armed?”
“Some of them, sir,” the ensign said. “Less than five percent, we count. Isn’t Central kind of overreacting?”
“We’ll find out. What do they want?”
“We were hoping you could tell us, sir.”
“Did you clear the streets?”
“No, sir,” said the ensign. “They did.”
Kharos nodded. He raised his hand to the rest of his team. They jogged together down the road. Axis’ bright sun gleamed brilliantly from the graceful glass and steel of starscrapers. The street running between them was eerily empty. But not quiet — the pale blue afternoon sky was full of stars and a mechanical flock of fighters and helicopters.
A glowing yellow wireframe lit up across Kharos’ display from the computer in his helmet and projected across his polycarbonate visor. A blinking arrow pointed the way to thela sector. Kharos and his team turned between a pair of needle-shaped business spires, their boots pounding against the white concrete sidewalk. There were delicate-looking green and pink bushes planted to either side that did little to disguise the huge vents in the ground that funneled processed air up to Level One. The shrubbery rippled in the artificial breeze.
The corporate starscrapers parted almost suddenly as Kharos followed the glowing arrows on his display overlay and he found himself running through the lavender shadows of expensive condominiums and penthouses. Arrows flashed and they came around another corner. Thela sector. That was not what the locals called it, of course. A tall, thick wall ran along the road’s far side and the tall steel gate stood open. Kharos could just make out black blastphalt beyond. Haven Field, the only private landing field in this part of Level One, Kharos’ computer informed him.
There were the Arcadians. The road was full of them. Hundreds of the alien fairies stood in rows, filling six lanes with small bodies and white wings. It was difficult to count them through the overlapping feathers, but Kharos’ computer was making quick work of the task, picking out targets in the crowd and marking them with green crosshairs. The targeting computer recognized the other CWAAF transponders and superimposed red silhouettes over each of the other soldiers to prohibit friendly fire. There were two thousand, four hundred and thirty-eight Alliance soldiers surrounding thela sector, according to the readout that popped up at the corner of Kharos’ vision. More than twice as many as there were Arcadians in the large road. He swiped the information away with a flick of his gloved hand.
The ensign had been right… Only a handful of the fairies were armed. Even fewer wore armor — suits of plastic or glass platemail that Kharos had never seen before. No matter. Commander Kharos keyed up the audio controls and switched over to general broadcast.
“Attention. This is an illegal assembly,” Kharos announced. His voice echoed inside his own helmet and boomed from the circling aircraft. “Surrender yourselves and we can end this now, before anyone gets hurt.”
One of the Arcadians stepped out of the crowd. Kharos magnified his view. She was a tiny thing, with white-streaked black hair that didn’t seem in keeping with her pretty, youthful face. She wore more of the strange glass armor and carried a spear. A larger group followed a step behind. One of them was another Arcadian. This one was a man, also armored, with long hair worn in braids that fell nearly to his waist.
There were some humans, too: a Hyzaari kid, a slender blonde girl and a much larger man, probably from Cyrus or Prianus. There was something terribly wrong with his left arm. Below the elbow, it was ghostly transparent and threw a halo of rainbows onto the road at his feet. Kharos spotted the Ixthian that the ensign mentioned, too — a woman carrying a white satchel over one shoulder marked with a medic’s quartered circle.
The last member of the strange group moved down the road reluctantly and nervously, but looked like nothing Kharos had ever seen before. He — the creature seemed to be male — was even taller than the Hadrian commander and nearly twice as wide. The alien monster wore oversized pants and a shirt stretched tight across his massive shoulders. Where his skin showed, it was a rough-looking brown just a few shades lighter than Kharos’ own — except for the creature’s thick forearms, which were covered in a shaggy coat of green fur. He had long ears and a wide mouth that sagged into a frown at the corners.
“My God,” Kharos gasped. He was still broadcasting. The words echoed across thela sector.
The black-haired Arcadian woman raised her spear. Kharos and a thousand other soldiers snapped their weapons up and aimed at her, but she did not seem fazed. White ribbons streamed from the fairy’s upraised weapon. A white flag, maybe? Was she surrendering? Kharos closed back down to a private band and told the rest of his team to keep sights on the Arcadian. He lowered his own rifle and strode cautiously closer.
She stood in the center of the street. Processed air rumbled up from deeper within Axis’s massive superstructure, stirring the Arcadian woman’s dark hair around her shoulders.
“Is this your surrender, miss?” Kharos asked.
“No,” she said. Her voice was heavy but musical. “I am afraid I cannot. Not yet.”
“Who are you?” Kharos asked. “What are you doing here? Is this some sort of protest?”
That seemed unlikely. The Lyceum was almost halfway across Axis. Why would these Arcadians be protesting thousands of miles away from the legislature? The tiny winged woman shook her head and then glanced back at the Hyzaari boy in the elaborate clothes. He nodded.
“My name is Maeve Cavainna. I am queen of these people,” she said. “We are here to fight, but not against the Alliance.”
She hadn’t raised her voice, as far as Kharos could tell, but the sound of it suddenly surrounded him and seemed to fill the whole city block. There were shouts and shocked cries. Several CWAAF soldiers looked up, searching for the source of the voice they all heard so clearly. The Hyzaari kid just smirked. Kharos snapped his rifle up to point at the boy.
“Whatever it is you’re doing, stop it,” Kharos ordered.
The boy’s mouth set into a grim line, but he did nothing. The Arcadian — Maeve — took a half step closer, still holding her spear aloft like a banner. Kharos swung his gun toward her. She stopped.
“Something terrible is coming,” Maeve said. She glanced at the name and rank stamped into the plates of his green armor. “Commander Kharos, Xartasia is on her way to Axis and she brings the Devourers. There is a Waygate far below us, commander, on your planet’s surface. If Xartasia reaches it, she will unmake you all.”
Kharos stared. Was the fairy girl insane?
He spoke into his helmet com. “Carson, you and Sanders get on the line with sector police. Find out what they know about this.”
“Yes, sir,” Carson answered.
Maeve watched Kharos and he held out his hand.
“Hand over the spear, Miss Cavainna,” he instructed. “You and all your friends are coming with us.”
Maeve stepped back, an unhappy expression on her face, and Kharos raised his rifle again. The armored fairy man spread his wings and whipped his own spear to one side. The human with the strange hand — it seemed to be glass as well, Kharos thought — drew his big, ugly laser pistol from a hip holster in a blur of motion.
A warning light blinked in the corner of Kharos’ display as two thousand guns aimed at Maeve and her little band. Kharos was in the line of fire. He pulled back, bracing his rifle against his shoulder. The big ogre thing flinched and then glared at Kharos.
“Please stop!” he shouted in a shockingly boyish voice. “Xartasia is coming! She’s already wiped out Arborus. She’ll turn your entire planet into a ruin and then just erase you!”
“Easy there, big guy,” Kharos said. “Nothing like that is going to happen. There doesn’t have to be any bloodshed if you and your friends just put down your weapons. Hold it!”
This last was directed at another Arcadian man. He appeared to be wearing black scarves and strips of leather under his glass armor and had been side-stepping his way slowly around Kharos. The fairy scowled and made a gesture with the hand not holding a spear that Kharos assumed was supposed to be obscene.
“We cannot stand down,” Maeve said with terrible finality. “Xartasia must not reach Level Ten. You will be ready to do battle with her, Commander Kharos, one way or another.”
The Arcadian woman spun her spear and leveled it at Kharos. He hooked his finger over the trigger of his sleek silver rifle.
“Don’t do this, Miss Cavainna,” Kharos told her. To his surprise, he found that he meant it. She was obviously suicidal, but Kharos didn’t want to kill the strange fairy woman. “Everything will be fine if you all just come with me.”
Maeve didn’t answer. Instead, she shared a lingering glance with the human man by her side. His pale blue eyes were hard, but he nodded once. One thousand Arcadians murmured musically, but didn’t run or fly away. Largely unarmed and unarmored, they stood their ground as CWAAF soldiers inched closer, lasers held ready to burn them down where they stood. Some of the Arcadians held hands or embraced each other. An old fairy man was down on one knee in the road, apparently praying.
What the hells were they doing? Kharos could not guess, but it was not his job to question. His orders were to round up the Arcadians and get them off Level One.
Did these fairies actually believe the lunatic things their queen said? Were they willing to die for her…?
“Get down on the ground,” Kharos instructed on the broadcast channel. His order echoed through the street. “Hands and wings above your heads.”
“Stand fast!” Maeve said. Her voice shook, but carried somehow to every single ear. “Fight to your last. We need every moment that our blood may buy.”
The Hyzaari boy nodded grimly. His hands closed at his sides and then opened again, red-gold fire burning impossibly between his fingers. The blond Prian with the glass hand trained his laser on Kharos.
“Hurt Maeve,” he said in a flat voice, “and you die first.”
The other man’s eyes were as cold as polar ice. Sweat beaded on the back of Kharos’ neck and rolled down his spine, tickling under the layer of body armor. The warm, refined Level One air was taut with impending violence. A squadron of CWAAF fighters hovered overhead, ready to fly down any escaping fairies. It would be a bloodbath. The Arcadians were only committing elaborate suicide.
Kharos would have to act quickly. If he could take the Arcadian queen down, the rest might lose their nerve and let themselves just be arrested. But as soon as he moved, the three men would be on him. Kharos was certain that his body armor could easily withstand a broad swing from the Arcadian’s spear, but a good thrust could probably punch between the reinforced plates. And that laser pistol in the Prian’s hand might have been ugly, but it looked powerful. There was no way it would miss at this range.
“Aim for the entourage,” Kharos instructed his team from the privacy of his own helmet. “I need that blond knight and the Prian down before Maeve hits the pavement.”
“With pleasure, sir,” Sanders said into his ear.
A green pinpoint of light appeared on Kharos’ display and lit up in the center of the armored Arcadian male’s glass-helmeted head. Sanders was an ass, but he was the best shot on Kharos’ team. The virtual sight — invisible to anyone not wearing a CWAAF display — didn’t waver. Somewhere in the distance, there was a deep booming sound. Kharos ignored it.
“On three,” he told his team. “One, two–”
A red bar flashed insistently across Kharos’ display. Incoming transmission. Urgent.
“Hold!” he barked, then swiped up the message with one glove.
“What the hells–?” Sanders shouted, loud enough to be heard outside his armor.
Maeve exchanged a wide-eyed look with her Prian.
“All teams, we’ve got an incursion in orlon sector of Level One!” a dispatcher shouted over the com channel. Not the same one who had called Kharos out to Haven Field. “Thena sector… another one — no, two — in cyron sector…! We’ve got one coming into thela, too!”
Thela sector? That was where Kharos and his team were now. He looked up, jerking his weapon with him. All he could see at first were fighter jets and helicopters circling wildly as they received the same broadcast. And then something boomed, shaking the ground and making sensors bleat inside the soldier’s armor. A ship plummeted toward Axis. It was long, angular and absolutely black, like a tear right through the star-studded sky of Level One. But the blade-shaped ship streamed black smoke as it fell.
“Xartasia,” Maeve said. She stared at the ship, too. “My cousin is here.”
Kharos looked down at the fairy woman. She was only barely more than half his height.
“Is that what you were so afraid of?” Kharos asked. He pointed. “That ship is crashing. Look at the smoke!”
“That isn’t smoke,” the Prian said grimly.
Suddenly, the gray-black cloud changed. Kharos never figured out how exactly to describe it. The smoke went somehow… rigid. In an instant, it changed from a dark gas to something terribly solid, still spreading out through the clear, starry blue Axis sky. And then it split open like a monstrous black flower.
“What in the three hundred hells is that?” Kharos asked.
“A Devourer ship,” the Prian answered.
Lines of darkness vomited out from the ship. The sinuous black filaments must have been halfway across thela sector, but Kharos couldn’t stop staring. They twisted, writhing like impossibly huge snakes, and then speared toward the ground. Something dark rose from Axis’ surface — real smoke this time. A moan loud rose from the street full of fairies and the soldiers surrounding them shifted their weight uncomfortably.
“Thela sector teams!” a dispatcher shouted into Kharos’ ear, the same woman who had given him the first order to apprehend the Arcadians. “Does anyone have eyes on that… thing?”
“This is Sky Team 713,” answered another voice. A pair of the fighters above had turned on their tails and soared off in the direction of the black ship. “We’re approaching now…”
“We have civilian calls coming in all across the board,” said the dispatcher. Commander Kharos heard more voices shouting in the background. “Local law enforcement is trying to get close, but that thing has punched right through the upstructure and down into Level Two.”
The pair of CWAAF fighters were quickly dwindling specks in the azure sky, but one of the huge black tentacles was all too visible as it darted toward them. Something that big should not move so fast. The slithering spar of darkness slashed through the air and impacted. The two jet fighters exploded into shrapnel and momentary balls of red flame. Then there was only more smoke billowing into the sky, obscuring the silvery twinkle of the stars.
“Our enemy is here,” said a quiet voice. It was Maeve Cavainna, the tiny fairy queen. She was in a low crouch, her wings spread and her spear clutched tightly. “You can waste your time trying to arrest us, Commander Kharos, or we can fight them together.”
“Damn it,” Kharos said. He switched his suit mic back to broadcast. “All teams, we’re moving in on that landed ship. Arcadians, I can’t spare the soldiers to detain you. If you’re smart, you’ll get the hells out of here.”
“With all due respect, sir… What the hells?” Sanders asked over the team com channel. Kharos saw the lieutenant’s targeting sight still centered on the armored Arcadian man. “We can’t just let them go! These bird-backs aren’t supposed to be here!”
Sirens sounded out across Level One. Kharos turned to Sanders, grabbing the younger soldier by the front of his green armor.
“That thing just swatted two of our fighters out of the sky like flies,” Kharos shouted at him, not bothering with the microphone. “We’ve got bigger problems than a few fairies. Now move!”
“What about us?” asked the blond girl that Kharos had noticed earlier. “We want to help!”
“Axis is an Alliance world,” Kharos said. “And we’re the Central World Alliance Armed Forces. It’s our job to protect this planet and that’s what we’re going to do. You just stay out of our way!”
Kharos clenched his gauntleted fist, sending the move out order to two thousand men. He turned on his booted heels and ran for the shuttle. The bladed black shadows spread like a storm across Axis’ bright sky.
