Dusk (67 page)

Fenrir and Chandra instantly emerged from the
crowd and fired their assault weapons, but the bullets only flashed
against the astrapi shields on the Ashan fighters. The laser nodes
on the front of them began to glow, and the Apostates still in the
cargo area fell to the ground and covered their heads. There was
the whine of a laser strike, and Jang had expected showers of
sparks in the cargo bay, but the sparks only danced across the top
of the closest fighter. There were two more bursts, a bright flash,
and then the two fighters piloted by the Ace of Wands and Taeryn
descended to take the place of the fallen Echelon fighters. As
Taeryn and the Ace of Wands pulled into the cargo hold, Jang began
to exit his own lev, but as he opened the door, there was a strange
static in the air that raised the hairs on his arms, neck, and
face. Instinctively, he checked the rear view on the holomonitor
and his worst fears were realized. A vaguely lev-shaped blur grew
in the monitor as sparks flew from the base of the cargo bay. A
green lev faded into view through the distorted image of sky and
ground behind it.

A door opened and automatic weapon fire rang out,
sending the Apostates to the floor again. Someone was hit, and
Jang, without shutting his own lev off, realized Uzziah had not yet
activated the grav-compensators on the main ship. Jang disengaged
the compensation thrusters on the dragon lev, engaged the z-drive,
and dove from the pilot’s seat.

As Six held down the head of one child, he saw
another child take a bullet in the arm, and he felt as if his own
heart had exploded in his chest. By the time he realized what he
was doing, Six was already charging forward, spear in hand, dodging
between levs. Suddenly, as he had moved behind the dragon-shaped
lev, it lifted up from the cargo bay and Taewook of Cups flew out
of it. The lev moved away from both of them at an alarming speed.
It collided with the now visible glimmer ship with a screeching
crash, sending two soldiers to the floor and the others back into
the ship as it slid toward the cargo bay door. The head of the
dragon flew off as the lorry flipped and flew out of the bay to
roll across the barren Ashan plain. The glimmer ship slid to the
edge of the hold, screeching the whole way, but stopped just at the
caution line before the door. The men stood to fire again, but Six
was already between them, impaling one through his stomach and then
bringing the other end of his spear up beneath the assault rifle of
the other. Six twisted the spear head inside the first and then
snatched it out and around, flinging bits of entrails through the
air as he brought it across the other’s face. As they fell, Six
turned to the door leading inside the glimmer ship, but there were
already two assault rifles pointed at his chest.

Cyrus had to push two women and a child out
of the way as he burst through the doorway to the cargo hold. As he
ran across the large cargo bay, he could hear whimpering children
and adults as they crawled and stumbled toward the main hold of the
ship. A man’s leg buckled and he collapsed as Cyrus moved past him.
The gunfire stopped, and Cyrus drew his sidearm as he ran toward
Six, who was cutting through the two men who had initially opened
fire. As Cyrus ran, he saw Six jump to his right, flipping his legs
over his head in an aerial, and Cyrus instinctively dropped to the
ground into a slide as rifle fire erupted again. The screaming and
cries had died down now, and Cyrus assumed most of the Apostates
had made it inside. Six rotated further away from the door as Cyrus
slid to a halt. Cyrus balanced his right wrist over his left arm
and fired two single shots at the doorway. One hit the side of the
ship, but the second sent one of the gunmen back into the darkness
of their craft. More gunfire came from the doorway as someone moved
up to take the place of the fallen soldier. Cyrus rolled across the
ground behind Taeryn’s fighter as bullets hit the ground behind him
and then tracked toward him, sparking across the edge of the lev.
Then he heard a scream echo out of the glimmer ship through a pause
in the gunfire and a clatter against the metal of the cargo bay
floor. When he peeked around the edge of the fighter, Cyrus saw the
tip of Six’s spear stabbed through the wrist of the man who had
replaced the fallen soldier. The spear pinned the man’s arm to the
inside of the glimmer ship door frame. Blood spurted from the
wound, and the soldier next to him slipped, but managed to reach
his rifle around the edge and fire. Six’s body buckled as his leg
and wrists must have taken hits. He grunted and stumbled. The rifle
fire, at that range, would have shattered bones and damaged vital
tissues, even if they did not manage to penetrate the Comptex.

Six grabbed a panel to maintain his fottling,
but the panel fell away from the ship. He pressed the panel to the
ground, halting his own descent with it. As he propped himself up,
he saw the panel had revealed a hose leading to the rear of the
glimmer ship. A gunshot rang out from behind Cyrus, and then
another, and the man who had shot Six fell back into the ship.

Cyrus didn’t even look to see who was firing.
He leapt from behind the lev and ran toward the glimmer ship, but
another soldier stepped forward. Six tried to move, but his leg
would not support his weight. Six grabbed the hose to steady
himself, but as Cyrus ran toward him, he realized Six was not
trying to gain leverage at all.

From what Cyrus had heard, the glimmer ships
needed an immense amount of power to create the illusion of
invisibility. The domes of Eurydice and Druvidia that the glimmer
ships mimicked used the light that they absorbed during their day
cycles to power the interference waves they created during the
night cycles. But these ships, tiny in comparison, would have
needed to be able to play their tricks of light even in complete
darkness, and that expenditure would have taxed their fusion cores
to the limit—but they would still need to move, often while they
were cloaked. So when Six snatched the hose away from the ship,
steadied himself with the end of his spear, pulled his sidearm from
his waist with his other hand, and jammed the barrel into the tube,
Cyrus knew exactly what he was doing—and it horrified him.

Even through the explosion, Cyrus heard his
own scream. And then the shockwave took him off his feet as a gust
of hot wind washed over him. Six’s body was consumed in flame and
he was thrown back into the cargo bay as the glimmer ship lifted
off its side and rolled out of the bay. Cyrus hit the ground and
slid as Six, holding his spear in his hand, flipped through the air
as if he was in free fall again. Six hit the ground, his limbs
flopping uncontrollably as his smoking body slid to a halt in a
twisted, awkward position. An Echelon soldier hit the ground a few
meters from Six with a Valois in his hand. The soldier rolled and
then stopped face down. He lifted his head and the Squib, but
before he could activate it, a volley of alternating gunshots
knocked his body left, and then right, and finally back to the
ground in a shower of blood.

Cyrus was already up and running to Six as
the Squib clattered harmlessly on the metal floor. Six coughed and
dark smoke issued from his mouth and nostrils as Cyrus approached.
When Cyrus got to him, it seemed as if Six was smiling, but it was
hard to tell because much of his upper lip had been burned
away.

Six coughed again and tried to speak, but his
voice was gravelly and came out with a wheeze. “Works better… with…
Spellcaster,” he breathed, and the tears came before Cyrus could
stop them. Cyrus sobbed and held Six toward tightly, his flesh
smoldering under burned away holes in the Comptex. And then Six
grabbed Cyrus’s shoulder and pulled himself upward. One of Six’s
legs twisted awkwardly beneath him, but his grip, even in the last
throes of death, was Herculean. Cyrus could smell bile and
hydrocarbon fumes equally mixed in Six’s breath as he wheezed
again, “A real… king… needs… an edged… weapon.” He pulled his other
arm around, but could only set the spear to rest on Cyrus’s leg
before his body finally released its last gram of strength.

Cyrus held Six in his arms, weeping as
footsteps approached from behind. He could feel what must have been
their hands on his shoulders, but it was hard to feel anything
except the void that had been left inside him. Everyone had been
hinting at it since the escape. Tanner, the other scientists, the
Apostates, Six, Paeryl, even Winberg—they all wanted something from
Cyrus, and deep down, he knew it was always something he had wanted
others to want from him. It was what he had wanted from his wife,
but she didn’t know how to give it. It was what Kalem refused to
give, and what had driven him to madness. And even though Cyrus had
traveled across the ether for hundreds of light years in search of
it, it all seemed worthless as the feeble heaves of Six’s body, in
desperate refusal to go easily, finally ceased in Cyrus’s arms.

And then one of the hands on him became
firmer, and the earwig shattered his miserable solitude, “We ain’t
out of this hound pit yet.”

• • • • •

—
Dada, after we all get to Asha, do you think
we’ll ever come back to Earth?

—
It’s hard to imagine what would have to happen
to make us come back.

—
Do you think we’ll mess up Asha as bad as we
messed up here?

—
Well, that’s part of the point of why we’re
going in the first place. Why do you think I make you erase your
deck essays and just start over sometimes?

—
Because you’re a homework despot?

—
Despot? Who teaches you these words?

—
You do, Dada.

—
Fair enough. But no, it’s not because I’m a
megalomaniac. It’s because sometimes the best way to correct your
mistakes is to just wipe the slate clean and start all over
again.

—
So Asha is like a way for us to start over
again?

—
Yeah, kind of.

—
Are you going to miss us Dada?

—
Terribly.

—
Uncle Xander says you’re the best in the world
at what you do, and that’s why you have to go. I can understand
that, but I feel kinda selfish.

—
Why selfish Dari?

—
Because I think you are the best at what you do
to, but I don’t want to share you with the rest of the world.
Forgive my mouth, but I don’t give a damn what the rest of the
world wants from you—I want what I want.

—
I understand that Dari, but whether I’m here,
there, or in the world to come, you, and you alone, will always
have that from me. No matter what I choose to, or not to, give to
anyone else. Above all else, you remember that there is nothing in
this world or the next that means more to me than you do. Not the
Unified Department of Science, not my job, not even Uncle Xander or
your mother. Maybe, I shouldn’t be telling you that, but you are
smart enough to see it already.

—
If that’s true, then why are you leaving me for
them? For the damn Uni? For this Asha place?

—
Believe me Dari, it’s not for them. One day,
probably not today, probably not tomorrow, but one day, you will
understand that sometimes, even though he cares more about someone
else than even himself, a man has to do what he knows he has to do,
because if he’s not right with himself, he can never be right with
anyone else. And I would do anything, even leave you, if staying
means I can’t be what I said I would in your eyes.

—
So you’re leaving for my own good? That’s
houndshit.

—
Dari, I understand you’re angry. I’m angry too.
But we will see each other again, and by then, I’m sure, in your
own way, you’ll understand what I mean.

—
What if I don’t?

—
Dari, you are too much like me not too. Maybe I
need to leave so you can figure out how to not make my
mistakes.

—
Maybe you’re running away.

—
You could be right. But if I am, it’s not you
I’m running from. And there isn’t a force in this world that can
keep us apart for long.

—
Well, if the world does take you away from me,
one way or the other I will find a way to make it pay, and pay a
lot.

—
Look around you Dari. The world has already paid
for its sins. The question is whether or not each of us has paid
our due. Maybe my leaving is a form of penance.

—
For what?

—
Wrath, maybe. Maybe pride. Maybe for what I’ve
done to your mother.

—
So I have to pay for your sins too?

—
Sometimes that’s the deal Dari. I don’t like it,
but regardless of what creed you subscribe to, sins have to be paid
for, whether it be the father or the son. Honestly, if I leave,
maybe our collected debt won’t be so great.

—
What if I mess up and increase the debt.

—
Then I will go wherever I need to go to set the
books straight.

—
Even if it means coming back here?

—
If it’s within my power, yes.

—
You know if it did happen, it wouldn’t be on
purpose right, Dada? I may not care about the rest of the world,
but I would never hurt you because of something I wanted, even if
you did it to me.

—
You know, maybe you are a better man than
me.

—
I love you Dada, more than anything.

—
I love you too Dari—more than you know.

• • • • •

Tears still filled Cyrus’s eyes as he stepped into
the bridge. This ship was designed, probably like most of the other
ships in the Ashan fleet, to reach interstellar speeds quickly and
without a slingshot. It could reach fold speed, the speed at which
its quantum drives could squeeze it below Planck’s length for the
infinitesimal fraction of a second it took the ship and all its
contents to forget that they were beholden to the laws of the
universe reserved for any object larger than an atom. It was a
magnificent piece of technology, spawned by miraculous
breakthroughs in astro and quantum physics, and yet all of it would
be useless if the five fighters, coursing toward them from the
darkening dome of sky, were allowed to have their way.