Bane of the Dead (Seraphim Revival Book 1) (23 page)

Vierj flew up and stopped directly above the portal. A continuous barrage of fusion beams deflected off her invincible barrier. A black cord spilled out from her open hand, whipsawing back and forth until it came to rest just above the armored doorway.

The tip of the cord expanded, grew larger with frightening speed and became a square five kilometers to each side. The square sank down into Aktenzek and splintered a set of ten armored doors, each a kilometer thick.

They were in.

***

Seth folded into Aktenzek space and gasped at the scale of combat before him. He hadn’t seen a fleet engagement this big in twenty years since the last battle at Earth. No one had.

The
Resolute
’s full complement of seraphs folded in around him. Quennin and the six silver Renseki seraphs appeared to his left. Jared’s combined squadron folded in to the right, a total of twelve pilots out of an original twenty four.

“The fleets appear to be evenly matched,” Quennin said. “Even with their archangels providing cover, our seraph squadrons and Aktenzek’s defenses will eventually thwart this attack.”

“They don’t have to win.” Seth sent the others coordinate data for a huge black square opening up near the surface of Aktenzek. “Look there. Near the surface.”

“What is that?” Jared asked.

“The Bane has returned to the Forsaken who created it,” Quennin said.

“We’re going in. Follow me!” Seth descended towards Aktenzek’s surface. The rest of the Alliance seraphs followed him in.

“Sir,” Jared said, “even if we catch them, what can we hope to do? All our attacks against the Bane have failed to penetrate its barrier.”

“We’ll stop it,” Seth said. “No barrier, however strong, is truly invincible. We keep hitting that monster until it falls.”

The formation of seraphs flew in as space boiled over with cannon beams and torpedo explosions. The Aktenai and Grendeni fleets engaged each other in bitter duels. Aktenzek fired salvo after salvo from its surface cannons, tearing into the approaching Grendeni ships. Nearly three thousand archangels and hundreds of seraphs meshed in battle throughout the dying fleets.

Zo transmitted a set of coordinate data. “Seth, I am concerned about our fleet’s positioning. Grendeni ships are moving into a gap in Aktenzek’s orbital defenses. If they succeed, they’ll be able to screen approaching archangel squadrons.”

“Yeah, I see it.”

“I suggest you send Pilot Daykin’s squadron to seal that breach while the rest of us continue after the Bane.”

Seth knew that wasn’t the real reason. He stole a glance at the blue seraph flying in formation near Jared’s EN command seraph. But even knowing Zo’s ulterior motive…

“Good idea,” Seth said. “Pilot Daykin, take epsilon squadron and seal that gap. I don’t want any more archangels reaching Aktenzek’s surface.”

“Confirmed, sir,” Jared said, perhaps a little too quickly. Twelve seraphs broke formation and headed for the cluster of Grendeni ships.

Seth, Quennin, and the six Renseki continued onward.

“Thank you, Seth,” Zo said privately. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“I understand why you asked all too well. Believe me.”

“Archangels folding in directly ahead,” Quennin said.

“Break through them!”

Seth rocketed out of formation at a speed none of them could match. Quennin and the Renseki opened fire. The twenty archangels were still reorienting themselves when seven fusion beams slammed home and obliterated five archangels.

Two archangels survived the hits, their barriers flickering weakly.

Seth ignited twin chaos daggers and closed with the stunned archangels. He cut through fragile wings and torsos with a pair of clean slices. Yellow fluid pulsed from deep gashes.

Seventeen more archangels closed in, but Seth did not stand against them alone. A second volley of fusion beams pounded into the archangel formation, vaporizing three more before the opposing forces collided. At full strength and in close quarters, the archangels would have struggled against eight fully functional seraphs, perhaps willing to accept a kill or two for their loss.

But this archangel formation had been utterly decimated, and the survivors found themselves dueling the elite honor guard of Aktenzek’s Sovereign. The fight was over in seconds.

“Form up!” Seth said.

They pressed on towards Aktenzek, leaving the wreckage of twenty archangels in their wake.

“Grendeni dreadnought moving to block our path,” Zo said.

“Take it down!”

The Grendeni dreadnought lumbered about. Torpedoes and seekers belched from its armored carapace, targeting the approaching seraphs. Seth and the others executed practiced evasive maneuvers, their conformal wing pods automatically ejecting clouds of countermeasures. Some of the seekers and torpedoes zeroed in on the countermeasures, exploding vainly in empty space, but others impacted against seraph barriers.

A short spasm of discomfort rang through Seth’s leg as a torpedo found its mark, but he pushed relentlessly through the expanding nuclear fire. The dreadnought was directly ahead: as powerful and invincible a craft as Aktenai and Grendeni science could achieve.

It didn’t stand a chance.

Seth fired six torpedoes from his leg weapon pods. The torpedoes activated their overloaded gravity drives and joined the others fired by Quennin and the Renseki. Forty-eight torpedoes wove their way through the thick layers of defensive fire. Railguns, lasers, and defensive seeker ports all contributed to the protective blanket of fire around the dreadnought. It shot down over half the torpedoes.

Twenty-two small suns erupted across the dreadnought’s massive length, heating, cracking, and even vaporizing sections of the mnemonic hull. The dreadnought shuddered, its weapons and drives failing for a moment. Internal systems restarted. The armor cooled and began to close under carefully programmed forces.

Seth and the others fired eight fusion beams through gaps in its armor, precisely cutting into delicate vitals. The hull cracked at a diagonal, and the dreadnought broke apart. Each piece would continue to fight to the last, firing seekers and torpedoes and lasers until every last compartment was dead, but the threat of its centerline beam cannons had been destroyed.

Seth dove towards Aktenzek’s surface, reached it, and skimmed across it. Vast fields of fusion towers passed underneath, all firing at the Grendeni fleets above.

“Archangels and exodrones are breaking through to the surface,” Zo said. “Grendeni carriers are ramming their way through our defenses and actually crashing into the planet.”

Tallies for the archangel forces on Aktenzek’s surface came up. Nearly three hundred archangels had already made it through.

“That’s a lot of archangels and a whole cursed swarm of exodrones,” Quennin said. “Some are getting close to the breach in the armor shell. We can’t let them get into Aktenzek.”

Seth opened a channel. “Pilot Daykin.”

There was a short pause before Jared replied, his voice strained and quick. “Go ahead, sir!”

“As soon as your squadron is free, I want them to blockade the breached entry portal.” Seth sent coordinate data. “Keep the Grendeni out of Aktenzek.”

“Confirmed, sir! We’ll finish off the last few dreadnoughts breaking through and head down.”

Epsilon squadron dove for the surface several hundred kilometers ahead.

Seth skimmed across the surface and came to an intact entry portal. The first of ten heavy mnemonic doors snapped open. He dove inside, followed by Quennin and the Renseki. The surface door sealed shut, and the nine doors below it opened. All eight seraphs rushed through.

Seth descended into Aktenzek, flying through rings of light and darkness. He cut around a sharp turn, flew straight for several kilometers, then dove into a massive abyss.

Unlike in the past, the interior of Aktenzek was far from defenseless, and the further down invaders traveled, the more kill zones they faced. Corridors often made sudden turns into armored doors edged with fusion cannons.

But for all these traps, Aktenzek’s primary defense still remained its outer shell, and while formidable, the inner defenses were incomplete. Even after twenty years of buildup, Aktenzek’s inner defenses had yet to be finished, since the full force of the planet’s industries had focused on completing Zu’Rashik.

Seth linked with Aktenzek’s security grid, bringing up the Bane’s position.

“We’re falling behind!” He flooded his wings with fresh power and surged forward.

“Seth, we can’t keep up with you! Stick together!” Quennin said.

Seth forced himself to slow down, staying in a tight single-file formation with the other seraphs. A single barrier door opened just long enough for them to speed through. They passed the checkpoint and turned down a sharp descent. A row of armored shutters parted and then snapped closed as they flew down.

They turned at the bottom and entered a narrow horizontal passage, finally linking up with the Bane’s path of descent through Aktenzek.

“They’ve already been through here,” Quennin whispered, surveying the demolished kill zone. Armored doors and fusion cannons floated weightlessly in shattered, frozen pieces.

“We need to keep moving. Come on!” Seth shouted, descending further.

The other seraphs swept in behind him.

Chapter 15

Tyrant and Destroyer

Jack descended deeper into Aktenzek’s interior. Once again, he took a sharp turn into a waiting kill zone. Four fusion cannons opened fire, searing his barrier. Tight strands of plasma ricocheted off and hit the walls with tremendous force. He grunted, raising his shield to protect his face. Hot needles prickled his armored skin.

Vierj rounded the corner and unleashed a thin black cord from her hand. The end bloomed outwards into a square, passed through the fortifications, and reduced them to frozen dust.

Jack sped through the demolished kill zone and turned down into a shaft blocked by a thin mnemonic door. He smashed a kick into its center.

The doorway split open down the middle. Its panels tore free of their moorings and tumbled into the great chamber beneath. Jack flew down into one of Aktenzek’s habitat discs and then stifled a curse. Even though it had been twenty years, he hadn’t expected new cities this close to the Core.

The habitat disc measured twenty-five kilometers across, its interior space shaped like a fat coin with a ring-shaped lake and wide central island. Along the edge of the disc rose the vast ringcity, extending sideways towers out of the wall. The lake stretched out from the edges of the ringcity and gently caressed the beaches of the central island. Towering spires of polished stone and glass rose from the island’s center, forming this habitat disc’s hubcity.

Jack glanced at the ceiling and saw a perfect simulacrum of a dark-blue sky and orange sun peeking over the horizon. Here in this habitat disc, it was early morning.

Vierj descended into the habitat disc and stopped.

For a moment, Jack thought she would destroy the city simply because it was there. She’d done far worse in the past, and he’d witnessed some of it.

Instead, Vierj summoned a point of black light over her open palm and dropped it. The point splashed into the lake, expanded into a seraph-sized triangle, and sank through the lakebed. Water drained out of the habitat disc, forming a whirlpool on the surface.

“You seem tense, Jack Donolon. I can feel it in your aura.”

“The Core is close. We need to be careful.”

“Are you, perhaps, concerned for the inhabitants of this city?”

How did she guess that?
he thought.

“Sometimes I find it difficult to understand you,” Vierj continued. “These creatures are so far beneath our notice as to be insignificant. What does it matter if they live or die? They present no obstacles to us, and so they live. If they impeded our progress, I would sweep them aside without a second thought.”

“I used to be one of them, you know. It puts things in perspective.”

Some brave soul ran out of a small wooden hut near the beach and fired a shoulder-mounted laser at her seraph.

Vierj sighed. With a snap of her fingers, the man turned to ash.

“Let’s keep moving,” Jack said.

“Of course.”

They dove into the lake, water foaming around their seraphs. Jack flew out of the new kilometer-high waterfall.

Fortifications grew denser and more deadly as they pressed on, but Vierj made such obstacles trivial. In between the kill zones, they passed vast industrialized fields, long corridors choked with hovering cargo containers, and empty mined-out chasms.

Jack dropped into a dense field of giant mechanical silos that formed part of Aktenzek’s vast artificial gravity network. The chamber stretched out in every direction, curving gently around an unseen spherical center.

Vierj reached out with her talent and cut open the floor. They dove through the breach and slowed.

The Core loomed before them: a smooth, white planetoid within the fortress planet, hovering in the center of a great spherical chasm. All along the ceiling, tightly packed mechanical cylinders buzzed with stored energies: the massive drives and fold engines of Aktenzek.

“Vierj, I’m not detecting any access to the Core’s interior. Can you make an entrance?”

“A thin barrier shrouds the entire Core. It would be extremely taxing for me to use my talent here. I will focus on finding a more traditional entrance.”

Jack felt a powerful spike of influx from the planetoid’s surface and spun to face it. The Sovereign’s Palace sat on the Core like an immense mirror-sloped pyramid. A lone seraph ascended from its peak.

This seraph resembled the Renseki, with elegant curls flowing up the limbs, torso, and wings. These stylized shunts glowed with brilliant red fire, but unlike the Renseki, its body shone with gleaming gold armor.

Vorin Daelus, Sovereign of Aktenzek, ignited his chaos dagger.

“You will go no further, traitor.”

“Is that so?” Jack readied his sword and shield. “Stand aside, Vorin. You can’t possibly defeat us.”

“We shall see about that.” Vorin spread his wings wide. Their edges flashed with crimson energy, and he raced in.