Bane of the Dead (Seraphim Revival Book 1) (7 page)

“Scary.”

“The Bane cannot be permitted to exist,” Seth said. “This is our Great Mission, the mission to which all Aktenai are dedicated, the mission the Grendeni abandoned long ago. And though our Earther allies may not believe in our Great Mission, your belief is not required. The Bane is real. The Great Mission is real, and one day we will be called upon to face that monster again. Let us continue to fight side by side. Let us continue to strengthen our Alliance. For together, we shall face and defeat any foe.”

Chapter 5

Fallen

Assistant Administrator Dominic Haeger breathed in the fresh air from the delicatessen’s balcony, two hundred stories high. Though he could take on almost any human male’s appearance, he had not used the ability since returning to the Grendeni twenty years ago. With his handsome, likable face and blond ponytail, old “comrades” in the EN SpecOps would still recognize him.

From the balcony, Dominic gazed across the vast habitat cylinder within the Grendeni schism
Righteous Anger
. All around him, buildings of the northcity reached up towards the central axis of the schism’s enclosed cylinder. Nothing so crude as rotation provided gravity in the habitat, and the northcity buildings could reach up and almost touch the very center of the schism.

Further north, the buildings rose until they finally met, sealing off the habitat cylinder from the northern factories and space docks. Dominic thought it resembled a giant geode, one made of metal and glass instead of crystal.

A cylindrical landscape stretched out before him, capped at the opposite end by the southcity. The interior simulated life on a planet in ways similar to the habitat discs within the fortress planet Aktenzek. Lakes, beaches, villas, gentle grassy hills, and emerald forests filled the schism with lushness and visual splendor. A long axial tube ran through the center, generating daylight.

The
Righteous Anger
, like all other schisms, glided gracefully through the voids between star systems, hidden from the Aktenai and anyone else who would dare harm them. The Grendeni were a nomadic people, constantly on the move, and schisms were their vessels. No single person knew the location of every schism, and no accurate census of the Grendeni had been produced in thousands of years.

Administrator Gurgella sat at the balcony’s only table, devouring the last of the meat lathered in a tangy brown sauce. This short, bald, and rather ugly man commanded the
Righteous Anger
. The right breast of his green jacket bore the gold sigils of his rank.

“You should really try some of this.” Gurgella munched sloppily on the avian meat.

“I am not hungry, administrator,” Dominic said, though he knew the bones to be brittle and quite tasty.

“Come now. Even freaks like you have to eat.”

Dominic said nothing, but thought:
You do realize I could rip you in two, you bloated, worthless bureaucrat.

“Come, Dominic.” Gurgella wiped at his mouth and hands with a napkin. “You are avoiding the issue.”

“The archangels are not ready. I have made my opinion clear on this. It doesn’t matter how many times you ask me. I will not change my mind.”

Gurgella set the soiled napkin down on his empty plate. “I understand your position, Dominic, but I am receiving considerable pressure from the Executives.”

A green-liveried servant came to his side, his platter ready with steaming rolled towels.

Gurgella selected one and unfurled it with a snap of his wrist. “The Executives want the archangels deployed as soon as possible.”

“Where have I heard that before?” Dominic muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“They aren’t ready!”

Gurgella shook his head. “I understand the desire to perfect your weapons, but we have already invested considerable time and resources into this project. The Executives are eager for payoff.”

“And they’ll have it, but I need more time.”

“Time is something we do not have, Dominic,” Gurgella said. “Every moment sees Aktenzek strengthening its seraph squadrons. Every battle sees those accursed machines tearing through our fleets. The Executives haven’t launched a meaningful offensive in years, and we lost every major battle before that. Is any of this getting through that thick head of yours?”

“It doesn’t change any of the facts. We should not deploy them.”

“Come now, Dominic. We’ve produced hundreds of archangels in this schism alone.”

“Yes, we have the archangels. But the
pilots
, administrator. The pilots are not ready. There are reasons why the breeders keep calling them berserkers.”

“They seem stable enough.”

“They’re borderline psychotic!”

“As long as they’re psychopaths that kill seraphs, I see no problems.”

“You simply won’t listen.”

Gurgella stood up and tossed his towel onto the table. He tugged his jacket down, pulling out the creases. “The Executives will not wait years while you tinker with your breeding programs. Now, let’s have a look at the latest batch.”

“Of course, administrator.” Dominic picked his jacket off the railing and pulled it over his white tunic. He was still buttoning it up when he followed Gurgella out of the delicatessen.

“Unless the pilots truly cannot perform, I see no reason not to deploy the archangels.”

“Administrator, the—”

“I’ve heard enough of your excuses. Frankly, I’m sick of them.”

Dominic followed Gurgella in silence.

Do you even realize who you’re talking to?
he thought.
We have our first true chance to gain the upper hand in this war, and it’s all because of me. Who are you to question my decisions?

Nearly twenty years to the day, Dominic had escaped Aktenzek with an intact seraph and the first pilot captured alive, allowing Grendeni technicians to reverse-engineer its secrets. The mechanisms within that great machine disturbed Dominic even to this day, and the ethical cost of the Archangel Project continued to be paid in the blood of innocents.

Gurgella and Dominic boarded a private tram. It floated through the northcity’s vast urban sprawl and ascended. Dominic glanced back, watching the tall spires of silver and glass recede as the gravity tram accelerated diagonally towards the schism’s axis. The tram’s walls and ceiling were transparent, providing a spectacular view of the northcity.

They sped towards the northern factory zone.

“Are they really that unstable?” Gurgella asked.

“We end up putting down about one in five,” Dominic said. “We’ve tried everything we can think of to stabilize them. Drugs, cranial implants, mental conditioning, and so on. Everything we do neuters their piloting talents. We simply don’t understand how the ability is passed. It’s hereditary, but not genetic. Clones possess none of the original’s talents. Artificial insemination also doesn’t work. The talent is only passed when pilots mate naturally.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” Gurgella said with a dismissive wave. “But one in five?”

“They have a habit of becoming uncontrollably violent towards the other pilots.”

“Only other pilots?”

“Yeah. Curse it if I know why.”

The tram flew along the schism’s axial tube and entered the northern cap tunnel. They bypassed the tunnel’s congested traffic lanes and glided into the northern factory zone. Here, the entire inner surface of the schism cylinder was one giant factory: over six hundred square kilometers of concentrated manufacturing power. The tram sped past towering mechanized edifices that almost reached the axial tube.

“Ah, there they are,” Gurgella said, looking through the glass bottom.

Ten cargo haulers rose from the archangel factories. They slowed and hovered, forming a line for inspection.

The tram settled into a parallel path and stopped near the lead cargo hauler. Dominic and Gurgella occupied a small glass box next to the immense humanoid weapon.

Dominic’s mouth quirked up in disgust as he recalled seraph pilot Mezen Daed’s “contribution” to the Archangel Project. The man was “persuaded” to impregnate one hundred females as a precondition of his release through a prisoner exchange with Aktenzek.

These pregnancies were manipulated to have an unusually large number of fraternal and identical offspring, sometimes as many as a dozen children. The children were then surgically altered to mature in less than two years. Once capable of mating, they were interbred with each other as well as bred with suitable candidates from the general populace. The current berserkers were the tenth generation result of those experiments.

Not as good as the real thing, but plentiful and expendable.
It all made Dominic sick to his stomach. Or rather, it would if he actually could become sick to his stomach.

Grendeni engineers had designed the archangels around similar principles, producing a crude, plentiful reflection of the seraph’s technical mastery.

The archangels possessed no armor, relying solely on their pilots’ feeble barriers for protection. Their giant bodies resembled copper skeletons packed with machinery. Only two slender wings extended from their backs. Each skull-like head contained twin scanners like large black lenses, giving them hauntingly human faces.

“What sort of trials will you be holding today, Dominic?” Gurgella asked.

“We will continue testing the newest sword variants. The last few batches have had an unacceptably high number of defects.”

Unlike seraphs, archangels possessed no beam weapons. The repeatedly fatal attempts to reproduce the miniaturized fusion cannon technology had burned through too many test pilots. But this obstacle had led to an unprecedented Grendeni breakthrough: the chaos sword.

A sword was twice as expensive as the archangel wielding it and nearly as large, but the weapons elevated each archangel to their intended roles as pure, dedicated seraph-killers.

“Very well,” Gurgella said. “Proceed with the test.”

Dominic opened a neural link but was interrupted before he could send.

“Administrators,” a schism control officer said. “We have two unscheduled vessels folding in ten thousand kilometers off the schism.”

“Can you identify them?” Gurgella asked.

“One moment…” he said, then gasped. “Administrators, they’re seraphs!”

“What?” Dominic said.

“Fold!” Gurgella shouted. “Get us out of here!”

Dominic linked to the
Righteous Anger
’s active scanners and perceived the seraphs in a small pocket of his mind. The visual distortion of their fold points made details sketchy, but there could be no mistaking the silhouettes.

Two seraphs approached rapidly, one white and one black.

The
Righteous Anger
folded space on a small standby charge, emerging five light-minutes away.

Dominic spread his mind into the
Righteous Anger
’s control network, analyzing fold engine propagator status, fold trajectory, and point of origin. But it was a pointless exercise. A craft as massive as the
Righteous Anger
could never outpace seraphs fold for fold.

We have only moments before those seraphs follow us,
Dominic thought.
But why are they attacking a civilian target? Do they know about the archangels? If so, why only two seraphs?

“Fleet has been notified,” the schism control officer said. “We’ll be reinforced in ten minutes.”

“Fold again as soon as the engines are ready,” Gurgella said.

“The two seraphs have followed our fold trajectory. They’re coming in!”

Dominic shifted his primary mental focus back to the seraph visuals. The black seraph must have employed some form of stealth technology. Even under maximum resolution, he could see nothing besides its black silhouette. He shifted his focus to the white seraph.

Oh no. No-no-no-no-no. Not
him
!

Dominic’s heart threatened to punch through his ribcage. How could he ever forget that terrible white seraph? Blue Aktenai letters blazed across its limbs and wings, proclaiming the litany of their false mission. Even after so many years, its silhouette evoked palpable terror in him.

“Jack…” Dominic whispered. “I’m going to die.”

“One of the seraphs has latched onto the hull! It’s inside our fold envelope! We can’t get away!”

The white seraph walked across the
Righteous Anger
’s barren exterior. A blade of pure blue energy ignited out of its forearm.

With two deliberate strokes and a strong kick, the seraph breached the schism’s outer hull and flew into the northern space dock. From within, the schism was totally defenseless.

Except for…

“Dominic.” Gurgella rubbed his sweating hands together. “We don’t have a choice. Launch the archangels.”

“It won’t matter,” Dominic said, his voice quiet and unwavering. “Not against this one. Not if we had a hundred could we survive this attack.”

“Curse your stubbornness! We have a seraph inside the schism! Launch the archangels!”

Dominic closed his eyes and sighed.
Well, if I’m going to die, might as well go out fighting.

He linked to the cargo haulers. “Release pilots from stasis. Activate archangel squadron twenty-seven.”

One by one, the pilots awoke from their artificial slumber. Vent-like shunts on each archangel burned with yellow inner light. Mechanical restraints snapped off their wrists and ankles. Each archangel twitched alive and climbed free of the cargo haulers. The closest one picked up a sword as long as it was tall. When its hands gripped the hilt, one edge of the blade glowed faintly and brightened.

Dominic guided the tram towards the factory surface. He didn’t want to be anywhere near them.

“The seraph has broken into the factory zone!” the schism control officer said. “It’s inside!”

A distant white speck flew out of a depressurization tornado. Mnemonic alloy along the schism’s skin quickly closed the breach.

The seraph swung around and headed straight for them.

“Release archangel scanner blinds,” Dominic linked. “Designate the white seraph as primary target.”

The archangels pulled away from the cargo haulers and caught sight of their enemy. The group spread their wings and accelerated towards the seraph. One archangel lagged behind on purpose, raised its sword, and cleaved one of its comrades in two.