As the flight capability of Nairom’s fighter continued to decrease, though, its course became more and more erratic. Lieutenant Nost struggled to keep in step with the wounded ship without it slamming into them. Eventually, House Feillion’s pilot had to admit defeat and broke off. Still rocketing towards Magron’s citadel, the security cannons now logged their silhouette, took aim, and started their barrage of fire. Lieutenant Nost knew his paces and avoided what he could, but two converging beams soon hit them in an uncritical area. Within seconds, their trip through the stronghold’s ring of fire was over. They were already close enough that they were flying under the range of the citadel’s weapons.
The blur of reddish-brown mountainside suddenly transformed into black stone as they now weaved through the citadel’s towers. Nairom gained enough control that he could point his plummeting craft towards a large patch of green within the stronghold’s walls. Lieutenant Nost glued them to his tail once again.
Nairom was braking with every thruster he could, but there had been obvious damage to the retros clustered around the fore of his ship. His fighter hit the ground hard and fast, digging into the citadel’s courtyard and splintering as if it were a wooden spike hammered into concrete. The impact threw up a mound of dirt and debris, which swirled into the air amidst a plume of black smoke that rolled up from the gashed hull.
Lieutenant Nost braked hard and left, just in time to avoid a collision of his own, and touched down fifty feet behind the broken fighter.
CHAPTER 44
The hatch of the captured Zenzani fighter popped and pressurized atmosphere hissed out. Achanei released herself from the cockpit first, and without hesitation, took off towards the smoking hunk of dug-in steel that had been Nairom’s fighter.
The massive wedge-shaped splinter that was the main hull had sunk amidships into a mound of churned-up earth. Debris from the crash littered the citadel’s courtyard. Shattered glass, chunks of metal, broken sensor arrays, and hacked-off weaponry covered the ground. Parts of the ship were already ablaze with electrical fire.
“Achanei, wait for me!” Aiben called after her, but the adrenaline rush had already driven her forward. “Lieutenant, get back up in the air and complete your mission. There are ships up there still counting on you to take out the shield.”
“But, sir, how will you…”
“Go! The best way to help us will be to let the rest of the fleet in.” Aiben didn’t have the time to argue, so he waved off any further rebuttal and dropped out of the cockpit. He knew it meant there would be no escape for him or Achanei if they failed, but he would do what Tulan needed him to. Their safety no longer mattered now in the grand scheme of things.
Achanei was already well ahead of him in her race for the downed fighter. He directed his molecular familiars to energize his muscles and set off after her. He didn’t wait to see if Lieutenant Nost would follow his orders, but within moments, he heard thrusters pound the ground behind him. The lieutenant lifted the stolen Zenzani ship from the courtyard and thundered overhead. The fighter sped between the black towers of Magron’s stronghold and disappeared from view, focused energy stabbing in its wake.
As Aiben ran, he saw a gate had opened in the far wall of the courtyard and armed troops were pouring out of it. The soldiers were lining up in five columns, five troopers deep. Once the formation was complete, they parted, the echo of their precision steps bouncing off the stone structure behind them.
An armored giant and a crooked figure passed between their ranks. A mail hood, which flowed around his head as if it were alive, obscured the warrior’s face. Aiben knew it was Magron Orcris, the reincarnation of Tulan’s brother. Curiously, he looked much larger in stature than Nograth had been.
Electrocuting pain in his arm threatened to bring him to his knees, but the cybermancer willed himself on towards the twisted ship without stumbling. Behind him, the ground shook as the third fighter, their pursuer, planted his fighter in the courtyard.
Achanei was already there. “Hurry, Aiben, help me!” she yelled. The electrical sounds of the crackling and spitting hull almost drowned out her voice.
Nairom’s body was halfway out of the fighter already. He wasn’t wearing his armor and one of the hatch’s struts had crumpled in on his legs. Blood oozed from somewhere underneath the crushed steel. He was pushing, his face gaunt from the pain, and Achanei was pulling, her face red with exertion. The twisted metal groaned, but it remained immoveable. Aiben looked from his bandaged arm to Nairom’s, where the stolen nanomechs had almost completed their exponential assembly and recreated the intricate pattern of im shalal on his forearm. He froze for a split second with resentment, but Achanei’s renewed plea for help shook him out of it.
He flushed his muscle tissue with oxygenated nanomechs and dug his fingers under the bent lip of the strut’s broken joint, rooted a foot against a side panel and put his full strength behind it. He clenched his jaw and pulled until his temples spasmed and his ears rang with the blood-pounding effort. It felt like the veins in his head would burst before the metal would give. Nevertheless, the nanomech-enhanced strength of the three cybermancers working together was enough to pry back the twisted wreckage from Nairom’s tortured legs. There was a blood-soaked gash in one of them.
Achanei and Aiben helped Nairom extricate himself. Each one supported an arm as his limp leg scraped over the hull and hung to the ground. Nanomechs would have already started suturing flesh, knitting bone, and clotting blood. Before long, Nairom would be able to support himself again, but for now, he leaned on his rescuers.
“Thank you,” Nairom muttered.
The picture of his friend in a bloodlust, standing over him with an energy pistol aimed point-blank at his head, held Aiben’s tongue.
“You’re welcome,” Achanei said.
The sound of armored movement drew their attention. Aiben looked up and was surprised to see Magron and his henchman were approaching them alone. They were no more than a hundred paces away now. Across the courtyard, the troops that had escorted them were funneling back into the black-stoned stronghold. Their armor clacked loudly as they went.
Strangely enough, instead of fear or panic, Aiben had the same thought as before. Magron’s body was not Nograth’s. The musculature, the height, they were all wrong, but then his mail hood liquefied and melted back into his armor. The face that was revealed bore an unmistakable resemblance to him. It was the face of Tulan’s brother atop a genetically engineered giant. Beside the mock colossal, the bent-over figure wrapped in a cloak, which shimmered and writhed like black fluid, was rummaging inside of a pocket.
The rhythmic thump of feet hitting the ground from behind abruptly reminded Aiben, albeit too late, of the third fighter he had heard landing. He chanced a look behind them and recognized the man who had come upon them, panting and pointing a humming energy pistol. It was Hezit. He felt his friend’s arm slip from his shoulder. Nairom had drawn his own gun and was pointing it right back at his fellow rogue cybermancer.
“Nairom is a traitor, Agar Hegirith,” Hezit said. “He’s been plotting with the Cybermancer Guild to overthrow you.”
That was all the man had time to say before an energy blast shot him to the ground. A hideous hissing and stuttering, the sound of a man choking and laughing at the same time, followed. Magron’s twisted companion clenched the weapon that had dropped the master cybermancer. Now the gun took the place of Hezit’s, pointing at Aiben and his companions. The creature’s other hand slid back the cowl of his fluidic cloak. Nairom swallowed a moan of disgust. It was surprise that grabbed hold of Aiben. He recognized the traitor, Selat Teeloo, from Tulan’s Haman past. The sour stench of rotting flesh forced him to stifle a gag. Achanei wasn’t as lucky.
“This is not the time and place we agreed on, Nairom, but I guess Hezit didn’t know that when he shot you down, did he?” Selat’s eyes were round, blood-shot orbs searching the pattern on Nairom’s arm. “Still, everything’s going well en
ough. Have you learned how to use it yet?”
“Yes,” was all Nairom said.
“Then use it!” Selat hissed.
Nairom swung his arm towards Magron, his fist drawing a line to the man’s chest. The silver flecks of im shalal’s numberless nanomechs, glinting in the sunlight like tiny metallic prisms, had fully painted the design on his skin now.
Magron actually took a step back in surprise, but then started towards Nairom, hate burned into his face. Nairom reoriented his arm on Selat instead. Curiously, Magron stopped and watched. The creature’s cloak shifted rapidly from its fluid, cloth-like state into a hardened shell, but a stream of nanomech-rich, liquefied metal sprang up from Nairom’s arm and spearheaded straight into Selat Teeloo’s chest. It easily ate its way through his protective armor. Selat collapsed to the ground, hissing and kicking, spraying saliva as his eyes bulged, and then he fell unconscious.
Of the millions of nanomechs that were im shalal, half set to shredding the synaptic connections in Selat’s brain that gave him the Haman mind-linking ability, while the other half blocked the production of the biochemicals responsible for creating those mental bridges by destroying the genes that gave Haman thoughts the power to enter hyperspace. Selat would die from the shock.
Words echoed in Aiben’s thoughts. The mind killer. Im shalal.
He had almost forgotten how it would bring death not just to the mind, but to the body also. Tulan and the Haman had been so appalled at destroying a mind that a body hadn’t mattered much to them. Bodies were things almost transient when a race possessed a power like hazarat shal. Not even Aiben’s own body had escaped that fate. He found himself disgusted by such views now, although not long ago, he had tried to convince Ballis otherwise.
“I guess you knew, Nairom, who your real enemy was after all.” Magron’s laugh pierced like a steel sword in bare flesh. “You do deserve to be the Protectorate’s Supreme Commander.”
“Yes, Agar Hegirith, I do deserve it, and so much more. The Moolag on Mora Bentia had an information net full of security holes. It was the perfect place to find some very interesting details. There were bits of information like his fascination with genetic research and those who paid him for his knowledge. A few facts, married with some supposition, and a bit of gut feel, and I figured out Nograth’s plan. It would have been that simple too, if the plan didn’t change from moment to moment and person to person. Magron didn’t know about the arrangement to set me up as Supreme Commander, remember?”
Magron smiled. It wasn’t a pleasant look. “You have been paying attention, my boy. Did you know you are the only one of my cybermancers that I don’t control with the nanomechs? It made this game we’re playing all the more fun.”
“It is my destiny to rid humanity of you, Nograth. And then, I take your precious empire for myself. I have earned it. It hasn’t been given to me by some old man with a vendetta.” Nairom’s face was full of lust for the next murder he was about to commit. His arm oriented on Magron once again, but the Agar Hegirith said something so unexpected that it caused Nairom to hesitate for just long enough.
“Kill them both!”
Achanei dropped to the ground like lightning, brought Nairom off his feet with a sweep to his injured leg, dropped onto his chest, and wrenched the arm embedded with im shalal away from Magron. She battered his other arm until the energy pistol fell from its grasp, and then pinned both of his arms to the ground with her knees. He struggled against her, but her strength had increased tenfold. He tried to wrap his legs around her waist when he couldn’t pull his arms free, but that met with failure as she pinched pressure points with her knees and drove her elbows into his thighs. He screamed as increased pain shot through his wounded leg. Having subdued him within seconds, she scooped up the discarded weapon and pointed it at the man she loved.
Aiben had been too stunned to react, but now he could see the torture on her face as she fought the actions her body was taking and failed. Her hands were shaking, her eyes trembling, but her finger squeezed the trigger.
A nano-meter thin sheet of liquid metal flowed rapidly across the ground, oozing from Nairom’s pinned arm, and sprang up to block the ray of searing energy. The azure glaze of the beam danced across the flowing metal’s surface and then broke up into thousands of tiny sparkles as its power was absorbed.
Fingers of fluid metal broke away from the shield and snaked towards Aiben. He watched in fascination, and wondered at the intelligent act from the hive of molecular machines whose original purpose had been nothing more than to interface with Tulan’s nanomechs and become im shalal. Magron Orcris interceded before they could touch him, however. The giant forcibly hauled Aiben out of their path and the ribbons of im shalal fell to the ground and were lost to sight in the grass of the courtyard.
“We can’t have that, Tulan, my brother,” Magron snarled. “You know you can’t destroy me with your mind, so if you want to kill me once and for all, break your sacred morals and do it with your bare hands and raw emotions. Don’t use some abomination of technology!”
“You’ll find that I’m no longer the pacifist I once was,” Aiben shot back. He knew he felt this way, not Tulan, but that didn’t matter anymore, he was in control.
Magron let his armor completely melt away and he engaged Aiben in a flurry of hez alim. Im shalal had disappeared and so Tulan’s clone had to fight Nograth’s clone with nothing more than martial training and hypersense. Hands intercepted strikes, feet deflected kicks. They fought close in on each other, utilizing every striking and blocking surface of their bodies. Aiben’s eyes closed halfway, trancelike, as he felt where Magron would move, and met him there in return. The intensity of the block and parry rhythm increased, but in the end, Magron’s advantage of size, strength, and ferocity made the difference.
Magron had beaten Aiben to the ground and was on the verge of crushing the cybermancer’s neck in the vice grip of his arm. Aiben struggled against the mounting pressure, but Magron had such control over him that his trachea was shocked with choking pain each time he tried to break free. Rapidly, a sense of disorientation took hold of him and his life began to parade past his eyes as it seeped away.
Aiben relived the arguments of morality with his brother in the river of thought, the memories of sending his beloved Jerekiel away with the mind killer, the pain of Nairom leaving him in anger, the sacrifice of Oand-ib so that he could fulfill an engineered fate, the sight of Ballis dying for him in Achanei’s arms. Darkness gathered at the periphery of his vision and began to close in and smother him.
As the Agar Hegirith concentrated on severing Aiben’s life, Achanei became more and more disoriented and weakened during their fight. Pure adrenaline exploded inside of Nairom as he took advantage of the situation. Using his superior ability in hez alim, he turned Achanei over and pinned her to the ground instead. She tried to twist free, but he hammered a fist into her temple and rendered her unconscious. Next, he turned his attention to the fight between the man he had once called friend and the man he had once called master.
He brought his arm to bear on the Agar Hegirith and a jet of metallic liquid sprayed forth. Im shalal’s fountain of nanomechs drilled into Magron’s back just as Aiben sputtered out his penultimate breath. The dictator of the Zenzani Protectorate fell to the ground, lost to the conscious world. Im shalal’s nanomechs disconnected his mind from ever using shalal hiliz again as they began to tear him apart one synapse and one gene at a time.
Nairom stumbled over to Aiben’s side and helped him sit up as he fought to breathe. Aiben coughed and spit out the blood that was pooling in his mouth from a broken tooth. He cleared his throat and tried to speak. What came out was little more than a croak. “It looks like you got what you wanted after all. Was it worth it?”
Nairom was breathing heavily, his steel-gray eyes unfocusing and refocusing, as he fought to stay conscious himself. The wound on his leg was bleeding again and he couldn’t hide the pain of supporting himself on a weakened limb.
He dropped to the ground next to Aiben.
“The fight, the exertion, the energy it cost me to use im shalal, it has all taken its toll on me before my nanomechs could completely heal me from the crash.” He motioned for Aiben to hold out his arm. A stream of fluidic metal sprouted from Nairom’s halifi and planted itself back into Aiben’s arm. Im shalal was where it belonged once again, inside of Aiben with Tulan’s nanomechs. Nairom then fell unconscious.
“Thanks for saving my life, Nairom,” Aiben said to the oblivious cybermancer. He might not have said it otherwise. “I guess you fulfilled destiny after all. The strange thing is, I’m not angry, or jealous, like I thought I might be, but just sad for you.”
Achanei stirred and moaned a few feet from him. He got up to go to her, but im shalal’s nanomechs burned in his arm, as if they were trying to warn him of something. He tried to prepare himself, but his attacker was too fast, being cyber-enhanced himself. Nairom’s boot came up to plow into Aiben’s chest as he turned around, knocking him to the ground again. He rolled and came up out of Nairom’s reach.
“I’m tiring of this, Tulan.” Nairom’s steel-gray eyes pierced Aiben with hate, but the soul that peered out was no longer Nairom’s. His premonition from that first mind-link was literally coming true. Nairom was now Nograth; he knew and could feel it, and the truth toppled onto him like a pile of rocks in an earthquake. Nograth was using hazarat shal in its traditional Nograthi’aak sense!
“So, you took Selat and wore his body until it fell apart. Magron, I assume, was nothing more than a genetic puppet, a distraction. Maybe you thought the ruse would save you, but Nairom found out and succeeded in crushing both the puppet and puppet master. Now you have fled from Magron to Nairom in one last attempt. Your desperation is starting to look pitiful.”
“Ah, Tulan, aren’t you ever the moralist? Are you so different from me? Clone or not, what choice do these bodies have other than to serve as mere vessels of flesh for such great minds as ours?”