Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1) (30 page)

“Yes, Captain,” Taki said with a smile.

She grimaced, buried her face in her hands, and then laughed out loud.

“Fine! Any objections?” Lotte said with a grin. She wiped at a glob of mud on her face, only to end up smearing red on her jaw.

“Nope. Just regretting that there’s no historian to record it,” Draco said, chortling despite himself.

“Oh, fuck everything. Sure,” Hadassah said. Karma rolled his eyes and nodded.

“Very well. Then we will resume battle as ‘Tirefire the Lesser’. Put it in the ledger, Major,” Lotte said.

“Idiots,” Hecaton sighed, and tossed her cigarette into the mud.

Taki did not want to look over the lip of the rocky cliff to see the battle below. At such a height, he feared being taken with an irresistible urge to throw himself off rather than complete his mission. From what he could see, the front lines remained static, though increasingly filled with burning vehicle hulks compared to the morning. A cloud of rubbery-smelling smog clung against the coast and blocked his view of the water. The seething mass of the Imperial Army clogged the shoreline and the lowlands in the distance.

Any final misgivings he possessed about unleashing certain, suicidal destruction were stifled by the sight of the quarter-million-strong Imperial vanguard. No matter what Aslatiel had promised him earlier, Taki knew that when invading armies trampled through fields and homes unopposed, it meant only rape, pillage, and murder. The massacre at New Petrovic would be repeated again and again, and the rub was that it would all be justified in Imperial eyes. Soldiers, on the other hand, went to war knowing death was part of the job.
Mass-murder I can take pride in. Ha! I’m so fucked up.

“Natalis, it’s up to you,” Lotte said.

“Yes, Captain. Deploying now,” he said. He pulled the Behelit out of a satchel and thrust it at the Liberation Army below. Fingers brushed over the rubber of the buttons and he tensed his abdominal muscles in anticipation.

“I advise you not to do that, young man,” Chronicler said. A smirk thinned his lips and gave him the appearance of a predatory fish. Taki’s eyes widened and he clutched the Behelit to his chest, as if trying to hide mischief from a parent. The others readied their weapons, now aware of the rest of Alfa Gruppe emerging from the shadows.

“Of all the bad luck...It’s the wife.” Draco sighed as he spied Lucatiel. She circled warily, and her swords glinted with infused prana. Their points traced random, glittering paths through the air to deny her enemies the chance to predict her attacks.

“You know, girls don’t like to be stared at. If you want to ask her out then just do so already, mouthbreather,” Hadassah said. She shifted her grip on the handle of her war-pick and spat on the leather wrapping to keep it sticky against her fingers.

“Don’t make the mistake I did.
Never
stick it in crazy,” Karma said, earning a quick stomp of her heel on his foot.

“You again,”
Hecaton said. Her eyes narrowed at her former husband.

Chronicler was behind Taki, blocking out the light of the horizon. The boy’s outline broke and blurred against a miasma of writhing shadow, as if he were being digested. Like a father would gently pry a toy from a newborn’s fingers, Chronicler took the Behelit. He peered closely at the device with curious disdain.

“Give that back,” Taki whimpered. Chronicler ignored him. “I said—” he continued, but stopped. The quavering of his voice filled him with hot shame. The fact that his legs refused to move also angered him. Was he truly that pathetic in the end? He had openly confronted a minister of the Dominion, and yet he could not challenge some wizened old man? He did not wish to insult Amilia Gillette with such incongruity.

Taki’s brow furrowed in concentration and he stared at his legs. He ordered one of them to move. It twitched at first, and then took a step, dragging his body along.
Just like a newborn, dammit.
But he was almost out of Chronicler’s shadow. He shifted his efforts to the other leg. He needed just a few more steps, going one leg at a time.

He lurched forward, coordinated like jelly escaping a sieve. Once out of the old man’s eclipse, he quickly found his old strength. He drew a dagger and leveled the point at Chronicler’s face. Taki still trembled, breaths painful as frostbite and heavy as lead. His arm burned to heft the little blade, but this only made him strengthen his grip in response. Chronicler blinked.

“Most children know better than to point a weapon at me. What is your name,
basang?
”

Taki pushed back the desire to kneel and shut up. No, he was not a subservient child anymore. No, he did not have to raise his hand to speak let he be chastised. No, he did not have a career, a future, to consider.

“Corporal Taki Hagiochristophorites Natalis, of ‘Tirefire the Lesser.’ And you are my enemy. So I will point whatever I please at you.
Sir.
” It had come out somewhat higher-pitched than he had hoped, and he was sure his voice had cracked a bit, but it was better than silence.

Chronicler laughed and his remaining eye opened fully to reveal a ringed pupil. When he saw it, Taki collapsed to one knee, his earlier resolve now completely forgotten. It was only logical that he toss away his weapon and offer his neck so Chronicler might see how sincerely sorry he was. A scream erupted from his chest and he swallowed it back. After all, he did not want to anger anyone. He had his standing to consider. He was a good student. Good students sought forgiveness for their sins.

“Well spoken, young man,” Chronicler said with an indulgent smile. “However, I cannot honor your request. You will be happy to know that there is no need to massacre you and your companions. Your bravery is noted, however, and I will mention your name to the padishah. Corporal Natalis, a hero of the Dominion.”

He turned and started to stroll away. Taki shivered wretchedly and started to sob. His gut roiled and he vomited brownish green on his leggings. It tasted of sweat and failure. He wanted to simply lay down and sleep, to forget this nightmare.
At least you’re a hero,
Hecaton’s voice whispered snidely in his ear.
A hero like the duke
, he thought.
Someone who made a deal and survived.
He remembered Pristina
.
Remembered New Petrovic.

“No!” he hissed. The damnable major had it all wrong. He was no hero. He had seen what a “hero” of the Dominion was capable of. He was a killer, and a coward. But he was not, and would never be Gul Hekmatyar. His teeth chattered.
How dare she? How dare he? How dare I accept this?
He squeezed his eyes shut and grasped his saber tightly, opening all of his prana gates. Clarity washed over his consciousness and he shakily rose to his feet. The air around his body started to mist and haze.
“A hero?”
he roared in the old man’s direction.
“Just who the hell do you think I am?”

Aslatiel’s mouth opened in warning when the ground under Taki’s feet shattered. Taki blinked out of sight and re-emerged no more than an arm’s length from Chronicler, with steel leading the way. He aimed right at the base of the neck, where Hadassah had once poked him for reference. With a furious shout, he drove the blade home.

Chronicler rolled his eyes, parried the blow with the palm of one hand, and planted the other on Taki’s chest. A thunderous report shattered the stillness and the boy flew back through the air like a doll flung by an angry child. A mist of blood erupted from his orifices as he tumbled freely before coming to land on a patch of evergreen.

“Alna shuu, Shastirch!”
Hecaton bellowed. The sky blackened into a mass of thunderheads and instantly plunged Thermopylae back to night. Chronicler clenched his teeth, his chest constricting as if his breath was sucked from his body. Gouts of ejaculated lightning streamed from above and lanced the fields. One of them caught Hecaton fully within its discharge. Instead of being burnt, she seemed to draw vigor from it before she leapt at Chronicler with incandescent fists. She cared not for the fate of nations, but to see him execute one of
her
subordinates was a mark of the deepest disrespect.

“Attack!” Lotte shouted despite empty lungs, and fired a gout of lead at the Alfa. Gleaming brass shells and pieces of belt-link flew from the ejection port but did not land on the ground. They danced in midair, laws of gravity and magnetism pushed to the wayside. Aslatiel dove away from the stream of .50 caliber rounds while the others blasted away at Lotte and forced her to roll out of the line of fire. Karma’s spatha sparked and rang against Lucatiel’s jian as they clashed on the edge of the cliff, twin-swords against twin-swords. Irulan tried to flank Karma, who merely doubled his quips about women chasing him. Cackling, he danced through the air to avoid lethal steel wire and a hail of bullets and knives.

Lotte brought her machinegun up to defend herself from slashes of Aslatiel’s kriegsmesser before swiping at him with its mass. She tried to smash his face in with the barrel, but instead he caught it with his bare hands. Undaunted, she jerked it to line up the muzzle with his chest and squeezed the trigger. He twisted to avoid the discharge and wrenched the gun away. It sailed over the cliff edge, lost forever. Lotte drew her flamberge and hefted it with feet firmly planted on the ground. Aslatiel nodded to her. She nodded back and took a swing at his head.

Hecaton and Chronicler brawled, each of them piling hammer-blows on each other without regard for defense. Two juggernauts matched in skill and now reliant solely on strength and endurance. Their hits pocked the stony ground with deep craters, vaporizing rock and sending deep splits into the mountain face itself. For every blow Chronicler landed, he paid dearly with a lash of electricity. Lightning seared him mercilessly and caused his body to lurch when he touched her. Hecaton, however, buckled and gasped under every crushing punch and kick. Boxing gave way to grappling, where Chronicler had the advantage. Taking Hecaton by the arm, he savagely spun and threw her. She sailed through the air and almost took Lotte’s head off. Before she could right herself Chronicler blinked right up against her and planted a foot on her stomach. Prana exploded from his heel and flung her further. Her eyes bulged and she sailed over the edge of the cliff. Energy lanced from her body as she fell to the battlefield below and was swallowed by smoke and fire.

“Fuck! Major!”
Lotte swore as she pushed Aslatiel back. Draco realized what had happened as he glanced off the edge.

“You asshole!” he shouted, and charged Chronicler with his fighting iron. Nonchalantly, Chronicler caught the weapon’s head in one hand and pulled. Draco flew and smashed into a boulder. Armor and bone crunched as he broke stone to pieces with the impact. Lotte let out a roar and her flamberge swung for a decapitation strike, only to come to a clanging stop against Chronicler’s forearm. Her eyes widened in surprise, and he smiled. A thin line of blood made its way down from a small cut and dripped from his elbow. He gripped the blade and wrested the sword from her hands, and lightly tapped the pommel against her chest. Her plate armor crumpled like tissue under the impact and she hurtled through the air into a tree trunk with a sickening thud.

Hadassah dropped her war-pick and grasped at the hilt of the longsword impaled in her midsection. Her pistol fell to the ground with a metallic clank, its slide locked back and magazine empty. One of the Alfa men, an albino, jerked his arm back and pulled the blade away, splattering gore on the dirt and spinning her to the ground. She reached for a grenade only to feel his boot stomping on her wrist. He leveled his pistol at her head, and she stared back at him, refusing to close her eyes.

From the chaos below, a dark, massive shape shot up in the air and crashed to the ground. The detached, flaming turret of an Imperial main battle tank smashed into Chronicler’s head. With its massive smoothbore gun gripped like the shaft of a hammer by an enraged, sooty Hecaton, twelve tons of steel swallowed Chronicler whole. Hecaton lifted the shattered steel from the crater she’d made, hefted it again and swung at Aslatiel. He flew through the air, propelled by the overwhelming force of the giant club against his attempt to block it. Lucatiel screamed and charged only to be punched in the gut and sent rolling in a heap. Karma lunged at Irulan and smashed the pommel of his broken sword into her head. She collapsed, as did he a moment later.

With a snarl of disgust, Hecaton released the burning, twisted mass of metal. Chronicler shot up from the ground, tackling her in a chokehold. His arms were covered in blisters of blood and bubbling lymph, and his head was missing some of its hair. She raked him with current again, but he drew his fist back and slammed it into the top of her head. Hecaton collapsed and did not move again.

Taki groaned and coughed as an object collided with his blood-crusted brow. How he was alive was a mystery. He was pretty sure his heart had ruptured, but it was not important right now. He tilted until he saw what had bumped him. It was the Behelit. He took it, pressed the buttons, and aimed it at Chronicler’s chest. A brilliant, pulsing red flower of light lanced out and the device buzzed and clicked in mechanical joy. Even if whatever it summoned didn’t destroy the entire Imperium Army, it would at least take their most dangerous soldiers out of the fight, and especially the old man. Perhaps the Ursalans would have better luck. They seemed the lesser among monsters now.