Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy)
Read Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) Online
Authors: Erica Lindquist,Aron Christensen
Tags: #bounty hunter, #scienc fiction, #Fairies, #scifi
Reforged: Book Three
Erica Lindquist and Aron Christensen
- Smashwords ebook edition -
Copyright © 2014
All rights reserved
ISBN: 1492901393
ISBN-13: 9781492901396
eISBN: 9781301565160
Cover art by Rowena Wang
Edited by Andie Letourneau, Amber Presley, Lacey Waymire, Mara Joya, Mitzie Renville, Cedar LaBrie, Kathy Lindquist and Sean Emerson
This is a work of fiction. All characters and events in this book are fictitious. All resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
________
Books by Erica Lindquist & Aron Christensen:
The Reforged Trilogy:
Anvil of Tears
Sword of Dreams
Hammer of Time
Forged: 4 Reforged short stories
In the House of Five Dragons
The Dead Beat (a short story serial)
volumes 1 - 3
Fireflies (a short story collection)
My Guide to RPG Storytelling (nonfiction)
by Aron Christensen
Xartasia is still out there somewhere, with the Devourers by her side and some design that Maeve can only guess at. She has pled their case, but the Alliance isn't listening to rumors and ghost stories of monsters more than a hundred years gone. So it falls to Maeve, Logan and the crew of the Blue Phoenix to stop Xartasia. But how can they stop the unfolding of a plan they know nothing about?
________
Chapter 11: Red Star, Red Sand
Chapter 12: What Falling Is For
Chapter 34: The Song and the Blade
Chapter 43: May Never Be Again
For Chris and Elaine Christensen
You taught us to build cities from sand
Special thanks to Renée Chambliss
for giving voice to our songs
And thank you to our amazing volunteer editors and
beta readers for all of their support and enthusiasm:
Andie Letourneau, Amber Presley,
Lacey Waymire, Mara Joya,
Mitzie Renville, Cedar LaBrie,
Kathy Lindquist, Tony Lavely
and Sean Emerson
Hammer of Time
"Memories are stones cast into the river of time."
– Maeve Cavainna (234 PA)
Maeve stood alone in the rippling, overgrown grass of her homeworld. The long green blades whispered around her ankles and buzzed with insects. Broken glass towers cast shimmering shadows like frozen flame across Illisem.
What has been can never be again. What is done is done and each moment is unique, new and never to be repeated. This is the law of time, the music of life's endless dance and its unfaltering beat. How many moments had led to this one? How much pain? How much loss?
The warm, gentle Arcadian wind tugged at Maeve's white-streaked hair and tangled it around her shoulders. A red and blue veilwing landed on the shoulder of her armor and crept on six delicate legs across the curved glass. Finally, the insect decided that Maeve's bright armor was not a flower and fluttered away once more.
What if any one of those moments changed? Any one of billions? Would everything really be different? Could a single moment rewrite entire histories? Reforge those dearest to her into people that Maeve would not even know? She knew the answer. She had
seen
those other lives and deaths. Time could be wounded as deeply as any knight and the twisted scars left behind were terrible.
The three white-robed figures were close, walking through the emerald grass toward Maeve. Now it was time to go. It was finally time to end this war.
What has been can never be again.
Glorious
"Each new dawn is born of red fire."
– Titania Cavainna (233 PA)
Xartasia stood at the window, her arms folded into her white sleeves. Her feathered wings moved restlessly and filled the Oslain'ii's small observation deck with a faint rustling sound.
"Do you not wish that you were out there, commander?" she asked. "With your men? Surely you hunger."
Xartasia could see his reflection in the smoothly curved glass. The oil-slick black nanite armor curled up from his skin, rippling in the ship's recycled air like smoke and momentarily obscuring his shape. A moment later, the swarm of microscopic machines settled again onto Dhozo's knotted, muscular body. The Devourer bared his wide mouthful of sharp white teeth.
"My men will bring the best of the kill to me when it's done," the alien commander rasped. "They know better than to lie to me."
It was not really his voice, Xartasia knew. Dhozo's own voice was that deep growl almost outside hearing that sounded like the rumble of thunder. The snapping, grating voice was the Devourer's nanite swarm computer translating his words.
"Why not take it for yourself?" she asked.
"I trust my men, aerad. I don't trust you."
Xartasia shrugged at his reflection. She did not trust Dhozo and his Devourers, either. Xartasia returned her attention to the scene outside. She had to squint. The Oslain'ii maintained a safe distance from the silvery oblong enormity of Koji Far-Orbit Station 144. Another gout of searing white flame flashed from one of the station's large airlocks. The thick fibersteel door folded across the middle like a discarded mycolar wrapper, crumpled and then vanished, yanked inside by an unseen force. Unseen, but not unknown. Dhozo had dispatched seven Devourers to take the station run and protected by over a thousand Alliance personnel.
KFO Station 144 was tearing in half. Of the twelve starfighters that protected the installation, only two now remained. Another Devourer stood on the station's humped back. Xartasia knew the aliens' ugly names but she could not tell them apart, not at this distance. The Devourer fired a pair of red particle beams that seared black lines of char across one of the fighter's engines. The thruster flared and then went dark. A long barbed chain as thick as Xartasia's waist lashed out from the Devourer and wrapped around the cockpit before the fighter could spiral further into the void. The hooks tore through the canopy as the Devourer pulled the fighter down. The Devourers required metal and minerals, but what they craved was meat.
"You truly deserve your name," Xartasia said quietly.
Her words were not meant for Dhozo, but his smoky black nanites heard her and sent the audio signal straight to the monstrous commander's brain. "Devourers?" Dhozo filled the air with a grating sound like scraping metal. He was laughing. "That's not our name."
A burst of static echoed from the direction of Oslain'ii's cockpit and controls.
"Sections eight through twelve have lost pressure! What the seven hells happened to the airlocks?" The frightened voice on the com was distorted. Men and women shouted over the Alliance frequencies.
"Something's cutting through the bulkhead!"
"I can't raise operations–"
"Where's the fire? The core is full of smoke, but I can't see any fire. Fire suppression–"
"There's something in the smoke!"
Screams echoed through the Oslain'ii.
"You are ensuring that those will not be received, yes?" Xartasia asked. "Jamming them?"
Dhozo nodded. He did not look at the Arcadian.
Somewhere inside the Alliance outpost, a vital support gave way. The station's blunt nose twisted and tore, collapsing in on itself. Bulkheads blackened as though burned and crumbled. A long-limbed shadow moved through KFO Station 144. It appeared small, but only from a distance. The Devourer was almost twice Xartasia's height, she knew, and five times her weight.
Hooked black tendrils tore through the ruined metal that used to protect the space station. The flames guttered and died as their oxygen vented into space. But even the swiftly freezing gas was not wasted. Barbed nanite nets flared out like wings from the indistinct black shape of the Devourer and raked through the pale cloud of frozen gas.
"Calling any CWAAF forces, please respond. Please!" The voices from the Oslain'ii's cockpit overlapped and blurred together.
"–But we'll breach the hull!"
"Those things are tearing right through! Return fire!"
"Please respond!"
"I've put two batteries of laser into that thing–!"
"–eating them! Oh God, they're eating them!" It might have been the static, but Xartasia thought that she could hear the thick wet sounds of tearing flesh. The screaming did not stop.