Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (63 page)

He pointed through the bloody mud to where Xia knelt. The Ixthian doctor had her medical bag open and worked frantically, wrist deep in Duaal's abdominal cavity. Not far away, Gripper pulled on his long ears. Big, glistening tears rolled down his dusty cheeks. Xia did not look up.

"Don't stand there staring," she said in a ragged voice. "Make Duaal's sacrifice worth something. Keep moving!"

"Silver…" Gripper began, but the Ixthian shook her head and the young Arboran turned away.

________

Dhozo stood at the edge of the throng of aerads. They gathered around the ancient Projector in widening concentric circles, all kneeling in the blasted dust of eons. Years and disuse had buried the Waygate, of course, but Dhozo and Orix made short work of the layered dirt and stone, even the ancient metal and ceramics of their own long-lost cities, blasting them away in minutes to open a deep hole into Axis' surface to reveal the Waygate. It was here on Kahazzek, the homeworld, where they had built the first fully functioning device. From here, they swarmed out into the galaxy, past the furthest colonies, taking what they needed from the worlds they found and building the greatest empire that had ever existed. Glorious.

Xartasia had frowned at Dhozo and Orix as they devoured their own history to reach the Waygate. She had no appreciation for history's proper place, Dhozo thought. The White Queen wallowed in her past instead of using it. The Projector rose up on a white ziggurat, a multi-colored ring on top that shone with blue light like low-burning flames. More than ten thousand Arcadians swayed in ordered rows radiating out from the towering stepped pyramid, all singing as their queen stood before the primeval Waygate. Dhozo had long since turned off his swarm's translation of the triumphant song. It was almost over now.

The Waygate pulsed with azure radiance as it sorted through the memories of the gathered Arcadians. Orix paced like a caged beast beside his commander. The nearest ranks of Arcadians hesitated, their song turning sour as they recoiled from the angry Devourer. Several of Xartasia's knights – positioned at the circles' periphery – warned Orix back in lyric Arcadian. The Glorious tech snarled at the Arcadian guards.

"Orix…" Dhozo warned.

"No!" he growled. "No! Your precious little slave queen is down there, doing just what she's wanted all along. And she's given us
nothing
, commander!"

"Enough. We wait, Orix."

"We've waited enough!"

"Age flavors the meat," Dhozo said in their own language. The nanites did not translate for the aerad knights that encircled Orix. "You've yet to learn focus, lieutenant."

"Your patience has gotten Tarno and Bizax killed! Your own men are fighting up there for what? So we can bow and scrape to a slave?" Orix screamed.

"Xartasia's work is delicate," said Dhozo. "Easily interrupted. That's
our
technology she's using."

"How long will you wait? Until she's knifed you in the back like she did that old human man? No, I'm not waiting anymore!"

Orix whirled on the Arcadian knights surrounding him. The young Devourer deflected one spear against a nanite shield, but two others slid under his guard and gouged faintly glittering grooves into the black armor. Orix roared in rage. Nanites swirled around his huge hands, coalescing into a pair of glowing red lasers. He raked the beam up one of the knights. The glass armor dispersed the worst of the laser. Until it reached his face. The Arcadian had no time to scream before the laser boiled through his skull and scorched the man behind him. Orix's nanites reformed into barbed chains that lashed out, wrapping around three of the other fairies. A fourth barely managed to slip out of the constricting hook, but not before one of the blades slid behind the knee of his armor and blood spattered the floor. Arcadians scrambled away, streaming red across the torn ground.

"Orix!" Dhozo shouted.

The other Devourer had already torn the wings from one knight's back. The aerad's armor dripped with blood and he screamed in pain. Orix's nanites curled inward on the knight, devouring flesh and bone and glass within heartbeats. Dhozo bounded forward, his own nanite swarm forming a long, saw-edge blade that extended from his right hand. He sliced through the hook-covered black chains that held the remaining two knights bloodily captive. Dhozo's sword sheared through the nanites, but they did not require a physical connection to Orix to carry out his commands. The midnight chains tightened around Xartasia's knights.

"Let them go," ordered Dhozo.

Orix's face was invisible behind the smoky cloud of his armor. "No!"

Dhozo was on him in a heartbeat, pinning Orix's thrashing limbs with barbs and blades. The other Devourer howled deafeningly and thrashed against Dhozo. Orix wrenched himself against a black spike driven through his shoulder, tearing bone and muscle. His own nanites drew together and lashed out at his superior.

"Command override," Dhozo said calmly.

The nanites halted their vicious attack, swirled like leaves in the wind and then abandoned Orix entirely. They floated almost gently to Dhozo and joined his own swarm, leaving Orix naked and bleeding on the ground. Dhozo flexed his expanded nanite swarm and then tore into his lieutenant. The Arcadian knights scrambled back as bone snapped and flesh tore, but not a drop of blood spilled onto the parched ruins.

With his meal done, Dhozo straightened. Xartasia's knights remained gathered around him, gripping spears tightly. Dhozo turned away, ignoring them. He magnified his view of Xartasia. The White Queen stood in the circle of the glowing Waygate, her arms thrown wide as though to welcome a lover. Blue light rippled like water over her, turning a poisonous-looking indigo at the edges.

Orix was right. The Glorious had waited long enough. It was time to take what he needed from Xartasia. And with the rest of his squadron dead or fighting far away, the power would be Dhozo's alone. Only he would be able to use the Projectors. He would open the way to every world, every time, and he would have the best of every meal. And Xartasia would be the first cut.

Dhozo strode through the circle of knights and toward the White Queen. A shining winged shape shot like glittering white laserfire high over the torn crater that contained the Waygate. Black hair streamed out behind her. The endless song wavered and the Arcadians filling the artificial valley gasped. The other princess, Maeve Cavainna. She flew through the murky shadows in the direction of the white pyramid and the Waygate on top. Xartasia did not move, but stood in the Projector's shifting glow.

Dhozo snapped his arm up, aiming a rapidly assembling particle beam at Maeve, but several more armored Arcadians poured over the crater's edge, followed closely by a tall blond human. They charged at Dhozo. Power signatures identified a hand-held energy weapon and cybernetic body parts. One of the degenerates of Anzhotek cowered behind the human. Dhozo was unsure how one of them had escaped the burning of their planet, but his lips curled in a snarl and the Glorious commander promised himself that none of those disgusting herbivores would survive.

"Gripper, go help Maeve!" the human shouted.

The Arboran nodded and ran, scrambling away as the human covered him. Xartasia's knights launched themselves into the air, spears flashing and wings filling the air with feathers. The human raised his laser and fired at the aerads fanning out to surround him. Dhozo's computer monitored every position, feeding data directly into Dhozo's thoughts. He saw everything. His swarm reacted immediately to the laser, forming a reflective barrier to minimize the loss of nanites, but the human shifted his aim and fired again. The computer analyzed the shots and found no pattern. They swirled in confusion.

But Dhozo had just appropriated Orix's swarm. The random shots might have been enough to overwhelm and confuse a single swarm, but the resources of two was more than equal to the task. Dhozo coalesced a thick but flexible layer of black against his skin and there were more than enough nanites remaining to attack. He raked at the human with yard-long serrated claws. The man threw himself back and Dhozo sent barbed spikes darting out from the cloud after him. One of them slashed a deep, bloody wound across the human's thigh.

Dhozo's swarm showed him two aerads breaking off the fight against Xartasia's knights. They dropped on him from above, spears thrust through the gaseous armor but they were slow-moving and easily predicted. Nanites deflected the attacks and lashed out in response. Dhozo crouched and formed the swarm into a seething urchin of thrusting spines. One of the aerads – a male with frayed golden braids – leapt away, but the other was not fast enough. Dhozo knocked her clattering to the ground. She raised her voice in an urgent song and flame roared between them. Dhozo smothered them with a sheet of black, then poured the nanites between the glass plates of her armor and ripped through the soft flesh inside.

The human rushed in again, firing his random shots into Dhozo's doubled-up swarm. The shots were wild, but they didn't miss. Dhozo leapt at the blond man. His armor extended into a bladed spike longer than the human was tall. He shifted to bring the most heavily armored parts of his body into their attacks and slashed his blade in a flat arc.

Another Arcadian had joined the living knight, this one younger than the first and wearing black animal skin wound beneath his glass armor. The aerad in black jabbed his spear into Dhozo's shoulder. The nanites swarmed up the glass and carbide haft, devouring the minerals, but the sudden thickening of his armor around the joint pulled Dhozo's yards-long blade to one side. The gleaming obsidian edge threw sparks from the side of an ancient building. His swarm yanked the spear from the younger Arcadian's grasp. The fairy grinned and jumped back, raising balled fists covered across the knuckles with gray strips of fibersteel.

The human fired several shots into Dhozo's swarm and the older aerad risked his fire to slash a beribboned spear at Dhozo's neck. The Glorious commander stepped back. He extended arms bristling in hooked blades and slashed at both aerads. The one in black raised forearms and fists to parry the blows, even as Dhozo's nanites left brittle, cloudy streaks in the glass armor. The force of Dhozo's blows drove him to the ground, but before the Glorious engineer could complete the kill, the human stepped in front of the fallen aerad.

His laser raked the uneven ground on high-output. It drained the power quickly, but the crumbling floor of ancient walls and roofs disintegrated rapidly and one of Dhozo's legs tore through, catching in the hole. Dhozo growled and pulled his swarm into tentacles that heaved him up out of the ragged gap. One of them swept the human's feet out from beneath him and shoved him into the hole he had just created. The older aerad leapt at Dhozo, whirling another glass-bladed spear and carving glittering grooves into his armored skin. Dhozo swiped up with a huge claw and snapped the weapon in half. Broken pieces fell into the dust. The aerad in black grabbed the human's hand and hauled him up out of the ground.

"You hungry, hawk?" asked the young Arcadian.

"Always," Dhozo snarled.

The three smaller aliens surrounded him, jabbing and slashing and firing. The aerad in black ran at Dhozo, leaping into the air and beating his bloody wings hard to throw punches and jabs at the Devourer's face. With each blow, Dhozo's nanites stripped away more of glass and fibersteel armoring the aerad boy's hands until blood streamed down his arms, but the little winged slave would not stop. A hard punch shattered Dhozo's nose and red ran down his face, into his mouth. Dhozo tasted his own blood running down his face and his stomach rumbled. He licked his lips.

Dhozo grabbed the Arcadian boy in both huge hands, growing twisted claws that bit deeply into the fairy's flesh. Dhozo opened his mouth. He was going to bite the aerad's head off, glass helm and all. Let the other two watch their friend die.

"Logan!" the aerad shouted.

The human aimed his ineffectual laser and fired a single shot into Dhozo's open mouth, through the roof and into his brain. The swarm's computer superimposed medical readouts and triage information onto Dhozo's optic centers, clinically notifying its master that he was dead.

________

Ballad fell to his knees, blood pouring from his lacerated arms and hands. Anthem took Eranna's spear from the red-stained ground while Logan helped Ballad to his feet. The Prian fairy wrapped ribbons from Anthem's shattered spear around his wounded knuckles. Logan raised his Talon-9 and checked the battery. The power was low, but there were a few shots left.

"Can you still fight?" he asked Anthem and Ballad. They nodded grimly.

"There is nothing left now but to end this song and begin anew."

– Titania Cavainna (234 PA)

Maeve dove between a pair of Xartasia's knights. They swooped after her, but Allados fell on them from above, clearing the way for his queen. Maeve heard him scream once as the other knights turned on him. She folded her wings close against her back and plummeted at the Waygate.

"Xartasia!" she cried.

Thousands of Arcadians knelt below, heads bowed and wings outstretched as they sang, remembering the White Kingdom as it was. As it would be again. Maeve called out to Xartasia again, but if her cousin could hear her at all, she did not look up. The White Queen – she truly was a queen, regal and powerful in a way that Maeve had never managed – stood in the center of the ancient Waygate, wreathed in writhing blue and violet light so intense that it left spots swimming across Maeve's vision. She was sure that the visible light was only a tiny part of the energy that blazed through the Waygate. Xartasia's long black hair and flowing white gown swirled around her, whipped by the very forces she had sung into existence. She raised one perfect white hand and thousands of Arcadians sang together. The Waygate rang like a struck bell.