Bane of the Dead (Seraphim Revival Book 1) (31 page)

Jack gazed down the cylinder, and his seraph’s computers quickly counted fifty-five cities stacked one on top of the other. Many of the cities were in ruins, but some of the more advanced structures remained standing, frozen in false serenity.

Over a hundred passages led out of the tiered chamber, some ending in cul-de-sacs, others proceeding deeper into the planet.

Jack hovered near the top. His drive shunts sputtered, and he fell like a rock.

“Whoa!” He angled his wings and flooded them with power. The shunts glowed briefly, cushioning a landing on a third tier spanning bridge. Vierj touched down next to him.

“I am having trouble flying,” she said.

“Same here. The Gate must be close.”

“Yes, but behind which passage? There are too many to choose from.”

“No time. Above us!”

Two Renseki seraphs entered at the top of the chamber. Their wings gave out, and they landed with graceless stutter-steps on the highest tier-city. One aimed its fusion cannon and fired, but instead of focusing the warhead into a coherent beam, the seraph’s arm exploded.

A nuclear detonation leveled the highest tier-city. The Renseki fell back, its arm and part of its chest missing. Debris rained down from the top tier, fell past Jack, and tumbled into the dark chasm below.

Seven more seraphs emerged from the top: another four Renseki, a sleek blue Aktenai seraph, an EN seraph with command bars on its shoulder, and Seth. They all landed clumsily on the blasted remains of the uppermost tier-city.

The EN seraph ran to the ledge and launched a spread of six tactical seekers. The projectiles darted out and passed through tiny black triangles. Frigid debris rained out the other side.

“I will disable their weapons.” Vierj raised both hands, palms up. She released a cluster of hair-thin cords that whipped out like angry snakes. They latched onto the enemy seraphs, cutting through swords, disabling launchers, and ruining cannons—but wherever they touched a seraph’s skin, they stopped.

Seth stepped forward. He grasped one of the cords and pulled it taut. The cord snapped.

“Ah!” Vierj gasped painfully. The other cords vanished.

“This is going to be messy.” Jack tried to light his sword. Small particles of blue light gathered ahead of his left forearm but refused to coalesce. “This is going to be very messy. Do you know where the Gate is yet?”

“No. I need more time.”

“Then we stand and fight.” Jack clenched his fists.

“Agreed.”

Two Renseki leaped down and stuck hard landings onto the third tier bridge. This deep within the planet, gravity had lessened to half Earth’s, but seraphs remained massively heavy machines. Their impacts left a pair of craters in a thick bridge.

Without weapons or daggers, the Renseki charged in for the only remaining course of action: direct physical contact.

They paired off, one rushing Jack, the other going for Vierj. Jack threw a kick into the Renseki’s stomach and catapulted it back across the bridge. The Renseki crashed through a row of buildings near the edge of the tier.

The second Renseki grappled with Vierj. She slammed her fist into the Renseki’s side. Barriers flashed. Armor crumpled, and the Renseki fell back, clutching its bleeding chest.

Someone kicked Jack in the small of his back. He skidded across the bridge and crashed into support pillars at the far end. The blue Aktenai seraph raced towards him, followed by the EN seraph.

Jack shook out his wings and rose from the rubble. He clenched his fist and struck the blue seraph with a swift uppercut. It flew up from the force of his blow.

The blue seraph lit its drive shunts, but only a faint mist of energy exhausted out. It hit the edge of the second tier and fell away, crashing into bridges and tiers as it rattled down the dark abyss.

Jack had no time to dwell on the pilot’s fate. The EN seraph rushed in and punched. Jack swept his arm up to block, but the enemy’s fist slid past and hammered his face. His barrier flickered. The armor underneath bowed, and the side of his face sizzled with heat.

“Damn!”

Jack clubbed the EN seraph’s arm away and snapped a kick straight into its crotch. The strike sent it flying upward. The EN seraph hit the bottom of the second tier and fell in a heap in front of Jack’s seraph.

Jack grabbed the downed seraph’s wings and threw it off the edge. The EN seraph spun out of control through the dark chasm, crashing into bridges, tiers, and buildings before it careened into the abyss.

“And stay down there!”

The seraph did not speak.

“Damn it!”

Jack checked the third tier bridge and found it littered with Renseki limbs but nothing else. The fighting had moved elsewhere. He checked down the abyss and spotted Vierj fighting Seth and three Renseki about six tiers down.

Jack took a running leap off the bridge and fired his drive shunts to aid the descent. He landed chest-first against a tier’s protruding edge.

The tier buckled under his sudden weight, but held together. Jack pulled himself over the edge and ran into the tier-city. Three Renseki turned and faced him. Beyond those seraphs, Vierj and Seth fought a brutal duel.

Jack dodged the first punch and grappled against the Renseki. With a quick sidestep, he pushed the Renseki past him and elbowed its back. The force of his strike sent it skidding across the ground. The Renseki groped for purchase, flew off the edge, and disappeared into the abyss.

“Honor guard? Ha!”

The last two Renseki tackled him to the ground. One of them kneed his side. Burning pain branched out from his ribs.

Jack headbutted one, causing it to stagger back. He threw his leg out and tripped the second Renseki. It flew off its feet, hanging motionless to his accelerated, chaos-infused senses.

Jack rose and smashed his fist into the Renseki’s back. Its armor imploded in. The seraph’s endoskeletal spine snapped, and the Renseki folded back onto itself unnaturally. It collapsed into a ruined heap. Rents in the armor spewed pressurized fluid.

Jack grabbed the downed Renseki and whirled it around like a club. He hit its comrade and sent them both flying. They crashed to the ground twenty cities down and did not get up.

Jack limped into the tier city.

“Ah, crap.”

Dozens of yellow and red indicators appeared on a mental image of his seraph, each with lengthy repair estimates. His endoskeleton was warped at several points and the artificial musculature was torn in his leg and chest.

Jack ignored them and rounded two blocky structures, emerging into some sort of city square.

Vierj was down with Seth standing over her, raising his fist. A severed arm from her seraph hung over a building, and two of her broken wings lay on the ground. Black oil pooled underneath her.

Seth was also injured. Conductor fluid bled from his torso, and his armor looked like someone had beaten it with a mallet. But he was standing, and Vierj wasn’t.

Jack staggered in from the side and threw a punch. Seth backpedaled and caught his fist, but Jack swung a second punch and connected with Seth’s battered chest. Purple barrier energy crackled, and the armor tore open, but Seth held his ground and lashed out with two quick punches to Jack’s abdomen.

Two of Jack’s arterial lines ruptured, and blue fluid spluttered out.

“Just give up already!” Jack shouted.

He raised an arm straight up, then brought his elbow crashing down onto Seth’s head. Seth dropped to his knees, the seraph’s head warped out of position. Before he could recover, Jack slammed a knee into his chin.

Seth fell back and landed on his side. He rose slowly, armor mending itself, fluidic lines closing off and rerouting. Then, with a sudden burst of speed, he gathered his fists into a ball and pounded Jack’s knee.

Jack staggered to the side and fought to regain his footing. He grabbed Seth’s arm, lowered his stance, and threw the black seraph over his shoulder. Seth crashed through four buildings before finally coming to rest.

He didn’t get up.

“Vierj, you okay?” Jack limped back to Vierj’s downed seraph.

“Yes… a little… disoriented. I am not accustomed to such sensations.”

“The Gate. Do you know where it is yet?”

“Yes. I will guide you to it. Come closer. This machine is ruined.”

Mnemonic skin peeled away near the seraph’s cockpit hatch, and Vierj climbed out. Even though the tier-city existed in a vacuum, Vierj needed no pressure suit and wore none, unlike Jack. Black wings unfolded from her back, and she rose above the wreckage.

Jack held out a hand and let Vierj land on it. He wanted to crush her, but even at peak performance he doubted it would be any easier than squeezing a diamond with his bare hand. As Vierj stepped onto his seraph’s palm, he could feel the temporal barrier around her body, almost as powerful as ever.

Almost
, he thought.
It has weakened. This can work, but I need to get her closer.

Vierj held up nine fingers, then pointed down.

“Nine levels down. Got it.”

Jack walked to the main chasm of the tiered cities and spotted a ledge on the opposite side nine tiers below.

He jumped and fired what little energy he could from his wings. The seraph landed and stumbled forward on the ledge protruding from the target level. All around him, the ancient structures on this tier seemed to blend together, not so much a collection of tightly packed buildings as one super-building. From his palm, Vierj pointed straight ahead.

Jack lurched forward, walking more easily with time. Repair systems had bent some of his endoskeleton back into shape, and the skin ruptures had finally been sealed.

Vierj motioned for him to stop. She spread her wings and floated down to the tier’s surface.

A narrow passage existed directly ahead. But as far as he could tell, it ended in a small cavern-habitat.

Jack knelt and segregated himself from the seraph. The cockpit widened around him, and he took a careful moment to check the seals on his pressure suit. He pulled his sidearm out of its holster, clicked the safety off, and set it firmly back in place. Satisfied that everything was ready, Jack linked the outer hatch open. The seraph’s zero field disengaged, and Jack found himself under a moderate gravitational pull.

The darkness was absolute. Jack summoned a point of chaos light above his hand and let it float upward.

He climbed down the seraph, dropping first to the seraph’s left hand, then the right, and finally to the tier surface.

Jack walked over to Vierj, who motioned to the narrow passage ahead of them. But before Vierj took her first step towards the passage, she whirled around and looked up.

***

His body would not move.

In Seth’s mind, he saw the red indicators all across the seraph’s frame: endoskeleton cracked, muscles torn, and two arterial chambers punctured. He didn’t have time for repairs.

Seth commanded his body to stand, but it remained still. His connection to the seraph felt distant, slippery. He pushed, prodded, and willed it to stand. Chaotic influx surged weakly through his body. He began to move.

Rubble sleeted off his back. He pushed free, grabbed a nearby building, and pulled himself upright. Indicators across his legs blinked red. They needed more time to repair before they could safely support his weight.

Seth stood, not smoothly, not steadily, but he wasn’t on the ground anymore. He limped towards the edge of the tier-city and spotted Jack’s powered down seraph. He zoomed in and for the first time saw the Bane. She was looking straight at him.

A woman?

Seth had never given the Bane’s appearance much thought. Everyone knew it had once been human, but he hadn’t expected a young woman who didn’t look any older than Yonu.

A body protected from the ravages of time,
he realized.

The Bane and Jack had left the safety of their seraphs, but Seth had no functional ranged weaponry. He hobbled over to a building, tore a heavy column loose, and flung the chunk of debris.

The column arced towards Jack and the Bane, its aim true, but the projectile never reached the intended target. A black rectangle materialized in front of the Bane, expanding like a shield of darkness. The column smashed into it and shattered like glass.

Jack and the Bane turned away and headed for a narrow passage.

I need to get down there.

“Pilots, status,” Seth said.

“Uhhh, that hurt,” Yonu said. “I’m fine, but my seraph is trashed. I can’t even connect to it anymore. Pilot Daykin is down at the bottom with me.”

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Jared said. “I’ve lost most of my conductor fluid, though.”

“Same goes for the Renseki,” Zo said. “We’re all in poor shape. Looks like you’re the only one still standing.”

“Barely standing.”

Seth eyed the drop. He test-fired his drive shunts, but the wings generated insufficient lift.

He walked back to the chamber wall, took off at a sprint, and leaped off the edge. The joint in his right knee blew apart, and his leg flopped loosely below the joint. He sailed over the chasm and dropped away, falling towards the ninth tier below.

He almost jumped the full distance.

Seth reached up with both arms and grabbed the tier’s edge as he passed underneath.

“Ah!”

Musculature snapped loose in his left arm, but he held on with the right. With one arm, Seth pulled himself up, managed to get one leg onto the ledge, then the other, and finally rolled onto its back.

Seth took another look at his repair status. In his mind, the seraph was solid blob of red indicators.

He disconnected from the seraph effortlessly. His real body had suffered a few nasty burns, but his i-suit had the injuries under control. Damage was minor compared to the thrashing his seraph had received.

My weakened connection to the seraph must have acted as a buffer.

Seth checked the seals on his i-suit and made sure he had his sidearm. He didn’t know why all the seraphs had lost power, but chaos energy was chaos energy. The Bane’s own abilities
had
to be suffering. Perhaps, just maybe, Seth would be able to kill the creature.