Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (59 page)

"And maybe a ship," Bizax finished.

"Tarno, you're closest to Bizax's location. Move in to reinforce him," Dhozo ordered. The commander's voice fed directly into their brains. "Khozan and Jahav, prepare to follow."

"Yes, sir," came several hissing, growling replies.

"The primary infiltration has met little resistance," said Dhozo. "Continue the assaults. Destroy and consume everything. The Glorious have waited long enough. Eat well."

________

"We've got to go, dove," Logan said. "Maeve, come on!"

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. Every nerve in her body sang to fly, to fight the Devourers. But Logan was right. The black ship sitting at the center of dozens of raking, blade-tipped tentacles and red laser beams were not the reason they had come to Axis.

"Yes. We must reach the Waygate before Xartasia," Maeve agreed reluctantly. She turned to her people. "Find shelter now, my brave Arcadians! You have done what I asked of you and more! We have given the Alliance some chance against our enemy, however small."

She gestured behind her with one wing to the Alliance fighters circling the Devourer ship, raining ordinance down on it. Flames bloomed and then were swiftly swallowed in black storms of nanites. The two thousand CWAAF soldiers that had surrounded Maeve and her Arcadians just minutes before were all shouting and scrambling to move in on the new threat. Transports swooped out of the sky and skidded across the road. Armored men and women leapt inside before they even stopped, team leaders gesturing urgently to pilots in the direction of the spreading jet-black storm of the Devourer warship.

Maeve looked at her knights. Ballad and Anthem crouched low, spears gripped tightly as they stared after the scrambling Alliance warriors. Even at the fall of the White Kingdom, they had never faced such monstrous horrors. But each of Maeve's knights was ready to fight for Axis. She waved Panna over.

"Take our people and find somewhere safe," she instructed over the noise of engines and boots on the pavement. "I wish to see no more Arcadian blood today. Duaal, we must reach Axis' surface quickly."

"Way ahead of you, Your Majesty," Duaal said. He grinned and jerked his thumb back at Haven Field. "Remember those ventilation pipes that lead down to the illegal landing fields? The ones Tiberius wouldn't let me fly?"

"Let's go," Logan said.

"There's no time like the present," he agreed, grinning like a madman.

"Yes, there is!" Gripper said. His voice cracked with stark terror. "There's later! It's just like the present only… you know, later!"

Maeve laid a hand on his elbow, as high up his long arms as she could reach. "We must go," she told Gripper.

There was no more time. Maeve looked back over her wing at her gathered people. Panna was already speaking to them, organizing them so much more efficiently than she ever could. Duke Ferris stood at her side. He scowled at the wingless girl but did not argue with her. Anthem caught Maeve's eye and saluted, one wing folded across his chest. The other knights repeated the gesture.

"We are with you, Maeve," Anthem said. "To whatever end awaits us."

Maeve saluted in reply. They ran back across the road, through Haven Field's gate to where the Blue Phoenix squatted on a gray blastphault strip. Duaal opened the ship's cargo ramp with a wave of his hand and sprinted up the stairs to the main corridor. Logan was right behind Duaal, taking the steps two at a time. Maeve soared up to the catwalk and followed them to the cockpit while Anthem arranged the knights in the Blue Phoenix's cargo bay.

Duaal jumped into the old pilot's chair. "Let's fly!" he crowed.

Logan buckled himself into the copilot's seat and toggled control of the Blue Phoenix to his station. "This isn't a game, Duaal. Sit down and strap in," he said. "Just give me the location of those vents."

"What? Oh, come on!"

"Now!"

The Blue Phoenix lifted from the field and angled up into the sky. The Devourer ship hung in the air above them like an inky hurricane. Its massive swarm blotted out the sun. The smoky clouds solidified into immense chains and ropy limbs, snatching ships out of the air and punching into formations of Commander Kharos' men and ships. Maeve clung to the welded doorframe, spreading her wings for balance as he banked the Blue Phoenix sharply. They banged into the walls of the corridor and Maeve staggered. Logan rolled the ship away from a tentacle as large around as a building, but a contorting offshoot barb knocked the old freighter nose over tail. Logan swore and fought to steady the Blue Phoenix.

Outside, Commander Kharos' men fired in regimented groups, coordinating their blasts against the boiling banks of Devourer armor. The Alliance had called out heavier weapons, too: laser canons and NI machine guns, but to little effect. The ordered fire was too predictable, too easy for the Devourers' computers to forecast and block. The hungry Devourer warship did not form lasers of its own and instead sent a black cloud of nanites into the streets that dissolved men like acid. The fighters above had switched from EMPs to lasers and NI cannons, but their perfectly executed strafing runs met the same impenetrable defense.

Something flickered in the corner of Maeve's vision. She leaned over Logan's shoulder to squint through the Blue Phoenix's old glassteel viewports. A monstrous shadow loomed up on the southern horizon, long and predatory. Another Devourer ship was closing in on Kharos' position.

"Logan!" Maeve gasped, pointing.

"Damn it," he growled. "Duaal, I need the com."

The Hyzaari captain threw the switch to open the ship's intercom. "You're on."

"Gripper, those Alliance troops are wasting time they don't have," Logan shouted. A shattered piece of fibersteel cracked against the Blue Phoenix's hull and bounced away before a glittering whip of black snatched it from the air. "Can you get into the military mainstream? Send them everything we learned about the Devourer's nanite armor and how to fight it."

"They wouldn't listen to us on Mir, Hunter. I don't think they're going to now," Gripper said.

"Then tell the computer you're a general or something!"

The curving rope of nanites finished its metal meal and shot through the smoky air toward the Blue Phoenix again. Logan dove under it and between a pair of starscrapers. Debris rattled on the hull as the Devourer's huge tentacle slammed into and then through the building. Concrete, glass and thrashing bodies flew in every direction. The black swarm plucked struggling coreworlders from the wreckage and tore them to bloody rags. Maeve felt ill.

"Here!" Duaal shouted. His voice was strained and he stabbed one finger at a scuffed old display. "We need to get down this vent!"

Maeve was Arcadian, born to flight, but even her stomach flipped as Logan banked sharply around a huge, shining pyramid of glass and steel, rolled the Blue Phoenix and then angled the nose down to the ground. They plummeted through the shadows between starscrapers, straight down through one of the layered skyways that connected Axis' many levels. NI vehicles blared their horns and swerved around the starship diving between them. A bridge suddenly rose up in front of them. Duaal gasped and Logan yanked the controls, jerking the Blue Phoenix to the side. He angled around the bridge and gaping pedestrians clutching the rails, then dropped again.

"There!" Duaal cried.

Steam and swirling white gasses billowed from a circular opening in the floor of Level Two. Logan nodded. His glass hand left dents in the yoke as he wheeled the Blue Phoenix up and over control and security pylons, then plunged down into the ventilation shaft. Darkness swallowed the Blue Phoenix.

________

Panna could still taste Ballad's kiss on her lips.
Be careful, dove,
he had told her. She hoped that was still an option.

With Duke Ferris' help, Panna managed to get the Arcadians back into Haven Field. Logan had paid the Lyran manager a fortune in phenno. A pair of wolfin technicians slammed the gates shut behind the fairies as the street outside filled with running, screaming people. Panna did not have the heart to tell them that it would not help at all. She grabbed one of the techs' sleeves.

"We need one of your hangars," she said. Panna shouted to make herself heard over the other Arcadians. "The biggest and strongest you've got."

"Yeah, sure," the jumpsuited Lyran answered. "Hangar A. It's over there."

He pointed distractedly to a huge hemispherical building on the other side of the smooth black blastphault runway. Panna nodded. "Gather everyone you can and get in there with us!"

"What?" the tech asked. "Why? CWAAF is out there, lady. We'll be fine."

"They have no idea what they're facing out there. Those are the Devourers, the same aliens who destroyed the White Kingdom and devastated Arborus. This is their homeworld!"

A vast black shadow fell over Haven Field as the Devourer ship rose up, miles-long tentacles spreading like colossal snakes preparing to strike. The Lyran stared. "Arianna won't like that," he whimpered.

"She'll like being torn apart and eaten alive even less. Get everyone into that hangar!" Panna shouted. "And bring your welding gear. We're sealing ourselves in until this is over… one way or another."

________

"Where are the ships?" Kharos bellowed into his com. "We needed bigger guns!"

Military lasers were exempt from the sound generator laws, but the explosions of missiles and the shriek of tortured metal as the alien ship tore starscrapers into shrapnel more than made up for them. Even through his helmet's filters, the cacophony was deafening.

"The defense fleet is mobilizing now. Estimated arrival in seven minutes," came the barely audible response.

"We're not going to last seven minutes!" Kharos barked back.

"I'm sorry, sir! These things are all over Axis and most sectors weren't as prepared as yours."

So far, Kharos and his men had been able to contain the huge black ship to thela sector, but the ship itself seemed invulnerable. The dark clouds that swathed the vessel hardened into glossy black shields under laserfire and CWAAF had yet to score anything like a critical blow. The dispatcher was right. It was the same all across Axis and the body count was rising swiftly. But not as high as it could have already been… It was lucky that Kharos had such a large force already assembled when the aliens attacked, able to get eyes and sensors on the threat and send information back to Central Command.

No. Not luck, Kharos realized. The so-called Arcadian queen had known. She had lured CWAAF to arms.

A huge, glittering black spike plummeted from the sky and slammed into the side of an already buckling starscraper. The sharp, conical thing spun like a drill into the building's side. Humans and Ixthians in suits streamed from inside, many bleeding, and ran screaming into the CWAAF soldiers. The black spike – twice as long as Kharos was tall – fired streamers of smoky darkness at the fleeing civilians. A pair of the shadowy tendrils seized a Mirran around the neck and waist. They began pulling the shrieking woman back. Kharos shouted an order and Ground Team 288 opened fire on the long black spine. They raked laserfire across the tendrils holding the Mirran woman. There didn't seem to be anything solid enough to damage, but the tentacles dropped their prisoner and snaked instead toward Kharos and his team.

"Shit!" he shouted. "Concentrate fire!"

Lasers seared through the air and into the black needle, but the thing's dark surface coalesced into smooth, glossy black armor. A report flashed up on Kharos' display. He almost waved it aside, but something arrested his attention. Targeting information, but not the sort of strike orders that the Hadrian commander had ever seen before. It was a report from Central, stripped down to its essential information: These Devourers' armor was controlled by a central computer, one that could be confused by rapid and randomized fire. Enough unpredictable shots would open gaps in the otherwise impenetrable defenses.

"What the hells?" Kharos growled.

He didn't recognize the name tagged to the report – Admiral Anandrou Gripper – but it was
something
. Kharos snapped orders to the rest of Team 288. They spread out their fire across the black spike's glossy surface. The nanites swirled like oil, struggling to be everywhere at once, to predict the suddenly erratic laserfire. Kharos held the trigger down on his rifle and cut a wild zig-zagging pattern across the uneven armor. The lashing tentacles withdrew, retreating to cover the weapon's main body, but there were not enough. Team 288 sliced the massive, writhing harpoon into several large chunks that fell to the ground in a seething, half-liquid form that burned several inches into the concrete before finally going still.

"Spread out your fire!" Kharos ordered into his radio. "Teams one through sixteen, randomize your attack patterns. Seventeen through twenty-five, take out any targets you can find!"

Unit commanders relayed orders to ground and air forces. Concentrated beams diverged and spread out over the ship. Fighter wings fanned out, ignoring their automated targeting systems. Razor-edged limbs whipped up from the huge black ship, cleaving a fighter in two before its ruptured engines exploded. The remaining Alliance ships loosed their payload as they streaked past. The storm cloud of nanites condensed into a shield here and another there. Missiles exploded harmlessly against the slick black plates, but others flew into the cloud to detonate on the hull, scorching the gleaming metal. The giant black blade of the Devourer battleship began to list and sag, red and orange flames blazing from inside like divine fire.