Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (57 page)

Xia was still watching him. She put her feet against the bottom of the console and wrapped her arms around her thin knees. "I know," she said. "Me, too. I don't know what the future may hold, but…"

Duaal gave Xia a sidelong look. "But we're not about to let Xartasia take away our right to that future."

"Even if that means prison or death?"

"You know me," Duaal said. He picked an imaginary spot of dust from his red velvet sleeve. "I don't do anything halfway. If the world's going to end, I don't just want front-row seats. I want to be up on stage."

________

Logan stroked Maeve's hair. There were more white strands in the inky black now, forming silvery streaks at her temples. Far more eloquent marks of her queenship, Logan thought, than her glass crown had ever been. Maeve's gray eyes fluttered open.

"How long?" she asked.

"Twenty-seven hours until we reach the edge of Axial space," Logan told her. "Three hours more until we get to the planet."

Maeve brushed her fingers against Logan's cheek, over the rough stubble. "One more day," she said. "Only one more."

Logan caught her hand and kissed the fingertips. "I would rather have one day with you than my whole life having never met you."

She smiled, but the queen's silver eyes were wet. Logan curled his glass fingers under her sharp chin. The only light was the shifting, multi-colored radiance of the stars racing by outside the Blue Phoenix. Spots of color played across Maeve's graceful, naked body like dancing butterflies.

"Is this truly the only way?" Maeve asked. It was not the first time and Logan wished he could give her a different answer.

"We can face Xartasia directly," he said. "But she's got better numbers and we're barely armed. The Devourers will massacre your people, dove. And that doesn't even take into account any of her own people that are in fighting shape. We know she has some. Remember Calathan."

"I do." Maeve sighed and pulled herself into Logan's lap. Neither of them wore anything but starlight. "I do not fear death, enarri."

"I know, dove." Logan kissed her and traced her delicate spine with one hand. "You're afraid for the Arcadians we're bringing with us. This shouldn't be their fight."

"But it is." Maeve bowed her head and placed her small hands over the twisted scar in the center of his chest. "It is your fight. It is the entire galaxy's fight. We must convince the Alliance of that, even if it costs us our lives."

Logan kissed her again. He didn't want to die, not when life felt like this: his heart racing in his chest, his whole body aflame with desire, when it tasted like Maeve's lips against his. A year ago, he would not have given death a second thought. When life meant nothing, neither did death. Now life was full of tears and longing, fears and joys. Now that Logan didn't want to die, he probably would. Maeve may not have feared death… But Logan Coldhand finally did.

"I don't ever want to leave you again," he told Maeve fiercely. "Never. I love you."

"I love you, my hunter," she said, every word burning just as hotly as Logan's. "I will never give you up again. I will give my life, but never you."

________

Anthem Calloren knelt alone in the darkness. Tomorrow, the Blue Phoenix would reach Axis. Tomorrow, so would Xartasia.

Titania, my love.

My enarri.

My enemy.

A single lock of black hair lay curled in his hands.

________

Smoke rose from the White City. Queen Titania Cavainna pointed a single pale finger at the black plumes. The knights closest to the throne flinched visibly. Their glass armor was smeared in ash and darkening red blood.

"How have they breached the imperial city?" she asked in a ringing voice. "Have you lost control of the Waygates?"

"No, my queen," said Sir Syle. "But the dryads know the land better than our knights. They march even now on the city's heart."

"What of the west shore?"

"The nyads are massing in the river," Syle told her. "We cannot fight them at that depth."

The queen rose suddenly from her birchwood throne. Her red-trimmed golden armor glowed around her like flame. Aes' bright light smoldered in her glass crown and violet eyes. "Cavain's empire has endured for ten thousand years," she declared. "The dryads and nyads will not tear down our towers! They will die on the end of our spears and blades. I will finish what divine Cavain began. These sons of stone and daughters of water will join the pyrads in death. The White Kingdom will belong to the Arcadians alone! This is our world and we will not give it up!"

Syle rose with a shout and banged his spear against the white flagstones. A hundred thousand knights echoed his drumbeat, filling Illisem with thunder. Titania siezed her spear, trimmed all along its length with red ribbons that made the weapon look like it was already dripping with blood. She raised the spear over her head. A hot, smoky wind lashed her long hair into twisting streamers just like the smoke. The dryads had numbers and knew the land, but only the Arcadians had armor and weapons stronger than wood. The nyads could not hide in their rivers and lakes forever. When they emerged, they would find the Arcadians waiting with sharp glass.

Tears burned in Titania's eyes. Anthem Calloren's rebellion would follow him into death. The queen of Arcadia had already killed her enarri's new little lover and her brother, slain Maeve and Caith with her own hands. Thieves and rebels and traitors all… Now Titania would finish the job. They would die. She would reduce the White Kingdom to ashes, if she had to, but those ashes would be
hers
.

Queen Titania strode down from the dais and spread her wings, leaping into the air and leading her people to war.

"Welcome back to Axis. Our home away from scattered homes."

– Tiberius Myles (232 PA)

Commander Kharos jumped down from the shuttle before the bullet-shaped craft had even shut down its engines. A private jogged across the empty street toward him. The young Axial streamed sweat in his dark 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 Alliance citizens with them – an Ixthian, some humans – and some other big-ass thing we've never seen before."

Commander Kharos shouldered his laser rifle. "Hostages maybe. Are the Arcadians armed?"

"Some of them, sir," the ensign answered. "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 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 pounded 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. A tall steel gate stood open and Kharos could just make out black blastphault beyond. Haven Field, the only private landing field in this part of Level One, Kharos' computer informed him.

And 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 hard to count them through the overlapping feathers, but Kharos' computer was making quick work of the task, picking out targets from the crowd and marking them with bright green crosshairs. The targeting computer recognized the other CWAAF transponders and superimposed red silhouettes over each of the other soldiers. There were two thousand, one hundred and thirty-eight Alliance soldiers surrounding thela sector, according to a 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 private was right… Only a handful of the fairies were armed. Even fewer wore armor; suits of a strange sort of plastic or glass platemail that Kharos had never seen before. No matter. Kharos keyed up the audio controls and switched over to general broadcast.

"This is an illegal assembly," he said. Kharos' 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 just 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 the humans, too, that Kharos had already been informed about: 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. There was the Ixthian, as well; a woman carrying a white satchel over one shoulder marked with a medic's quartered circle.

The last, moving reluctantly and nervously, was like nothing Kharos has ever seen. He – the creature seemed to be male – was even taller than the Hadrian commander and almost twice as wide. The alien monster wore oversized pants and a shirt stretched tight over his huge shoulders. Where his skin showed, it was a thick, rough-looking brown a few shades lighter than Kharos' own. Except for the creature's 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 jerked their weapons up and aimed at her, but she did not seemed fazed. White ribbons streamed from her upraised weapon. A white flag? 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? What are you doing here? Is this some sort of protest?"

It seemed unlikely. The Lyceum was almost halfway across Axis. Why would the Arcadians be protesting thousands of miles away from the legislature? The tiny winged woman shook her head and then looked 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 had not raised her voice, as far as Kharos could tell, but it was suddenly surrounding 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.

"Stop whatever it is you're doing," Kharos ordered.

The boy's jaw just set in a grim line. He did nothing. The Arcadian – Maeve – took a half step closer to Kharos, still holding her spear aloft like a banner. Kharos swung his rifle toward her. She stopped.

"Something terrible comes," she said and glanced down at the name and rank stenciled onto his green armor, "Commander Kharos. Xartasia is coming to Axis and she brings the Devourers. There is a Waygate far below us, on your planet's surface, commander. 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."