Dimension Fracture (18 page)

“We getting close or what?”

Amber shot me a dirty look. “It's just a little farther. A hundred meters or so.”

“Fine, fine.” I fell silent and amused myself by trading googly-eyed glances with my fiancee. I hadn't seen Misaki look this positively lovey-dovey since the night she proposed to me. You'd think I'd been gone for years the way she was acting, but I suppose it made sense. If the situation was reversed, I'd be feeling the exact same way.

“Wait. Stop!”

Amber's harsh whisper came as a bit of a surprise, jolting me out of my careless mental detour. I stopped and tightened my grip on the “borrowed” assault rifle. The swordswoman gestured toward the trees ahead. They thinned out after about ten more meters and opened up into a small clearing.

A clearing that wasn't empty.

“The LZ is overrun,” she muttered, her tone low and furious.

“How many?”

Amber glanced at Meilin and sighed. “Forty of those black-armored soldiers… and a tall man in a nice suit with a Spell Engine on his right hand. Looks around forty, slender, blond, clean shaven and wearing glasses. Sound like anyone you know?”

Misaki and I shrugged, but Meilin stiffened and nodded mechanically.

“Well, out with it then,” Amber snapped.

“I don't know his real name, but his code name is Nergal. He's AEGIS's vice-director of crisis management.”

“Oho, a genuine VIP, then, huh? You think we should—”

Meilin shook her head. “No. He knows we're here. Any attack we make, he'll just deflect it—I'm sure he's got an active barrier up if he's wearing a Spell Engine—and order his people to cut us all down where we stand.”

Misaki glowered at the clearing. “I could incinerate every last one of them before they even get a single shot off.”

“I know you're happy that your powers are back,” I told her, placing a hand on her shoulder, “but I don't think we should be attacking them. I don't think they're here to kill us
or
recapture me.”

“Those are a
lot
of guns pointed at us,” Amber reminded me.

“Yes, but why would this Nergal be out here, of all places, even with forty soldiers protecting him?” Meilin turned to me and frowned. “I think you're right, Karin. I think he's here to talk.”

Amber looked dubious. “About what?”

“There's only one way to find out.”

I started to walk toward the clearing, pushing branches and brambles out of my face as the trees began to thin out. As I stepped out of the forest at the edge of the clearing, forty assault rifles swung down and aimed directly at me. I hoped my theory was correct. Even having unlocked the latent magical ability within, I would have no chance of survival at all if they really
did
want to kill me.

“That's far enough, Ashley.” The man Meilin identified as Nergal started to walk toward me, closing the distance until he was about ten meters away near the edge of the clearing. His soldiers surrounded him, set up in a defensive phalanx with the first row crouching and the second standing behind them.

“You aren't going to kill me,” I observed. “That much is obvious, else I'd already be filled full of holes. So what
do
you want, Mr. Vice-Director?”

I expected him to at least look a little surprised, but Nergal's expression didn't change. “Our wayward daughter Star must be among your group. I was quite disappointed when we discovered she murdered her observers and disappeared from our view.”

“Assassins, you mean,” Misaki snarled.

“Semantics. Had she followed her orders, I would have had no reason to chastise her.” Nergal shrugged as if it didn't matter. “Regardless, what is done is done.”

“You still haven't told me what you want,” I pointed out.

“What I want is unfortunately no longer possible.” The Vice-Director's expression soured. “You were
supposed
to remain unconscious until we could discover how the Relic was fused with your spirit.”

“Well, you know what they say—you can't always get what you want,” I said, a smug note coloring my tone. “Especially when what you want involves kidnapping me and holding me against my will, away from Misaki.”

Nergal ignored my retort and his eyes settled on Misaki. “You will tell me how your Relic spirit survived long enough to come to your rescue.”

I shrugged. He wouldn't believe me anyway, so why not?

“It was an accident. About half a year ago, Misaki set up a healing link to help me recover from the thrashing I got when fighting Isao Tsukimura. The nerve damage took a lot longer to heal than we'd expected, so she just made it sort of permanent.”

Nergal stared at me with narrowed, disbelieving eyes. “An
accident
?”

“Or luck, if you want to call it that. This whole series of events came together in a wildly improbable way, but you already knew that. That's why you wanted to keep me for study, wasn't it? Because something like this has never happened before.”

“Partially correct; it's never happened before
under our observation
.” The vice-director's disbelief faded slowly and still he made no aggressive moves. Yet, anyway. At least Amber and Meilin remained hidden in the forest on the off-chance this peaceful talk went to shit.

“Your unique circumstances offered us a rare chance to study the consequences of a Relic fusing to the spirit of its wielder. Had we been successful, we would have been able to realize a wealth of data critical to the safety of humanity.”

My eyes widened in astonished anger. “And so you kidnapped me, betrayed Meilin, you threw my fiancee away like she was garbage
and
told her she was going to die. I don't understand; you could have just
asked
for my participation in your research.”

“You would not have survived the process.” Nergal's smile was cold.

“That's not all of it, is it?” I glared at the man. He was tall, well-built and attractive in a sort of plain, guy-next-door sort of way, which only made his cold disposition even more chilling. “There's something more, isn't there?”

Nergal shrugged as if it didn't matter. Maybe it didn't. “A great darkness approaches. If your friends had not disrupted our plans, we might have been able to stop it before the process becomes inevitable.”

“Great darkness, huh?” I smirked at him. “Are you naturally this vague or do you practice?”

He ignored my verbal jab. “Your meddling will result in the suffering and death of billions. Let that thought resonate in your mind as you leave this place.”

Looks like I was right; he was just going to let us go. I suppose now that I was awake again, I'd lost all value as a research sample.

“Yes, you are free to leave—all of you. We have no way to compel your cooperation and I don't wish to needlessly waste lives trying to bring you and your formidable companions to heel. Your impulsive actions were only a minor setback in the grand scheme of things. We will find another way to halt the coming darkness.”

“I'm sure you will,” I murmured, my voice barely audible. For some strange reason his proclamation shook me more than it really should have.

The trees rustled slightly as Amber, Meilin and Misaki emerged, standing protectively around me. The four of us watched in silence as Nergal turned and disappeared into the woods, the forty black-armored soldiers following in his wake like a deadly shadow. The clearing was unnaturally quiet.

“Our ride should be here in a bit,” Amber commented.

“You warned them off?”

“Of course.” The swordswoman stretched her well-muscled arms over her head. “Two of those soldiers were carrying portable rocket launchers. They would have swatted our gunship out of the sky. I told the pilot to go hang out until I called him back.”

“Why did they let us go?” Misaki wondered. “Did he think he was outmatched?”

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“I think it's a lot more complicated than that.”

maelstrom

“We're coming up on the compound now,” the pilot's voice came over the intercom. I tried to shake away the sensation that something profoundly
wrong
was going to happen, but I couldn't.

Misaki was asleep, her head resting on my shoulder. I, on the other hand, felt so wired I felt like I just sucked down an entire pot of coffee. Probably had something to do with being directly jacked into a source of tremendous power.

Amber held the Shattered Sword in her hands, cleaning the blade in a very unusual manner. The Relic I used to have never seemed to get dirty, but I suppose Amber's was different considering what happened to it. Blood and dirt was caked on the blade; to clean it she would push tiny amounts of mana into the weapon, causing it to send a skittering of fine sparks down its length. Then she took a small brush and scrubbed into the deep fissures and fractures.

“I'm glad I never had to clean mine,” I commented. “It always looked brand-new every time I called it to my hand.”

Amber shrugged. “The Shattered Sword has been like this for long before I was born.”

Misaki stirred slightly on my shoulder. I was both amused and unsurprised to see the fabric of my “borrowed” jacket dark beneath her cheek where she'd drooled all over me. I think if it had been any other girl I'd be slightly grossed out, but with Misaki it was just another part of what made her cute as hell.

“So how did you end up with your Relic in the first place?”

Amber glanced at Meilin—there seemed to be something between those two that I wasn't aware of—and quickly turned back to me. “Luna picks the most skilled with the sword and grants them custody of the Relic.”

“That's a little simpler than I was expecting.”

Her lips twitched in a slight smile. “Unless you're asking me how I ended up in Luna to begin with?”

“I wasn't, but consider it asked.”

“Fine,” Amber muttered, casting an indecipherable glare at Meilin. My former boss seemed to be paying considerably more attention to the conversation than she had before. “Right after I graduated high school, I enlisted in the military to get away from my family. Things weren't great at home, money was tight and the Army was offering a lot of monetary incentives.”

I grinned. “Sounds a lot like how I ended up working for AEGIS.”

“Funny how things parallel like that, huh?” Amber's expression became thoughtful as she continued. “Anyway, I enlisted and got put with a tech team because I'm a 'delicate little feminine flower,' as you can plainly see, and the old guys running the show didn't want any precious little ladies getting shot up on the front lines. I saw a little action overseas while rigging comm/sensor towers for the tactical forecasters, but mostly I spent time on a base in Germany.”

The more this woman talked, the more I liked her. I
was
a little curious as to why Meilin seemed so absorbed in the discussion—I figured she should know this stuff by now, but I guess not.

“Moving right along… one of the things I did in the service was fencing. Saber, mostly, but I did some epee, too. We had lots and lots of downtime, especially when deployed, and not much to do with it. Mostly a lot of boring waiting around interrupted by frenzied bursts of working our asses off while being shot at. You know, the usual.

“I got good at it. Real good,” she went on, her tone swelling just slightly with pride. “For a little while I was seriously considering trying out for the Olympic fencing team, but then the big mess in Russia started and I got shipped off to go get shot at some more. Got shot at, but didn't
get
shot, so that was good.”

My eyes went unfocused for a moment as I considered her words. “I vaguely recall that whole thing in Russia, but we didn't get a whole lot of news about it here.”

Amber snorted derisively. “The whole thing was dumb as hell, but apparently I did a good job there and someone took notice—both of my service record and my fencing. A man who claimed to represent a private security force offered me a job.”

“I bet he didn't think you were a 'delicate little feminine flower,'” I put in, my tone becoming bone-dry.

“No, he didn't. I was intrigued, the job paid a little better, and my two year mark was coming up fast. At the time I'd still been unsure whether I wanted to stay in for another two years or go career, but when I got the offer, I decided to put in my papers.”

The Shattered Sword buzzed faintly as a ripple of cascading sparks ran down the length of the blade. Amber put her brush to work again, causing the dried blood to flake off.

“After a bunch of nonsense paperwork, I was let in on the whole big secret. Arcane houses, magic, spirits and specters, Relics, all that good stuff. The 'private security force' turned out to be Luna, the modern incarnation of the ancient Order of the Moon, but the job was exactly what they said.”

“So you were part of the regular security force?”

“For a while, yeah. Luna tests all of their combat people regularly, running these crazy competitive sword tournaments. I was a champion fencer, so yeah, I was all about that. I loved it, but I didn't know they were holding these things because the previous Swordlord passed on and Luna needed to select the next wielder.”

“Swordlord, huh?” My expression reflected a mixture of curiosity and amusement. “Catchy little title.”

“In the past, when Luna was still the Order of the Moon,” Amber explained, “the Swordlord or Swordlady who wielded the Relic was also the literal commander of the Order's army. We don't have an army now, though, just a small but well-trained and equipped security force, and it's led by a different person.”

I smiled and leaned back in my seat. Misaki shifted a bit but continued to sleep peacefully. I brushed my fingertips across her hair, wondering just what in the hell I'd done so right to end up with her.

“I know you're going to say something,” Amber remarked and I could tell she wasn't speaking to me. “So just come out with it.”

“There's nothing to say.” Meilin's tone was surly. I raised an eyebrow at the unusual exchange. There was definitely
something
between those two, and before I could ask the obvious question—I'm sure it was plastered all over my face anyway—Misaki opened one eye and yawned.

“Amber is Meilin's sister,” Misaki informed me. She sat up and wiped her mouth, stretching her arms high above her head. The crash seats were so snug that she couldn't wrap her tail around the small of my back as she usually did, so instead the fluffy thing just flopped on my lap.

“Half-sister,” Amber snapped.

“Well, I figured that much. I mean, not many other ways for it to work except for straight-up adoption.”

Meilin ignored Misaki and me, instead focusing on her half-sister. “Why didn't you ever tell me any of this? I knew you were in the Army, but all these other details—”

“Can we
not
do this here?” Amber's expression became shuttered.

“Where shall we do it, then, little sister?”

“Stop it, you two,” Misaki growled, already coming fully awake and clearly in no mood to deal with any of their family quarrel bullshit. “Wait until we get back and then you two can just go into the training hall and punch it out.”

“Since when do you advocate punching as a means of resolving family arguments?” I wondered, arching an eyebrow in her direction.

Misaki made a frustrated sound in the back of her throat. “Since those two don't ever stop trying to needle the other.”

We both rolled our eyes as the two feuding sisters glared daggers at each other. If we hadn't been in the gunship flying thousands of meters above the ground I'm sure they would have started the punching right now.

“Swordlady, we've got a problem,” the pilot's voice came over the intercom, breaking the tension building up between the two. Amber frowned and unsnapped her harness, picking her way through the passenger compartment and opening the hatch leading to the cockpit. Her body went rigid and she turned around before I could even ask what the problem was.

“The outer ring sentries spotted demons. A
lot
of demons. They're making a direct path to the base; it's obvious we're they're target.”

Misaki's ears flattened back against her head. “How many?”

“The count's tentative, but the sentries think there's at least twelve, maybe more, all massed together as they crash through the forest. The outer ring's been harassing them, trying to force them away from the base, but they're flat out being ignored.”

I frowned. “Demons? You mean those miasma-infused beasts we fought with that creepy mage?”

“Luna calls them demons,” Misaki explained. “Fitting name, right?”

“How long do we have before they arrive?”

“None.” Amber's voice was very slightly strained. She sounded almost eager. “They're already there.”