New Olympus Saga (Book 3): Apocalypse Dance (36 page)

Aboard the FLS
Liberty Ship
, Jupiter’s Orbit, February 7, 2014

Olivia O’Brien had been mourning quietly in her quarters when the attack began.

After their initial barrage had shown to have no effect on the anomaly, First Fleet had withdrawn to a respectful distance, with the exception of the
Chung Cheng
and the
Liberty Ship
. Olivia had been allowed to recuse herself for the time being, and she’d enjoyed a few minutes of privacy. Her tears had run out some time ago, as she struggled to come to terms with her loss. Larry had been trying so hard these past few months; that brief time had been like a second honeymoon, and she’d begun harboring hopes for the future. Yes, their relationship was still stained with distrust, and that wouldn’t go away easily or quickly. She’d forgiven him, but she couldn’t forget. For all that, they had smiled at each other before sallying forth to battle the Genocide, and their last kiss had been intense and fraught with the knowledge it might be their last.

And so it had been.

The sirens tore through her grief, and forced her to set it aside.

Alarms blared as the swarm of shadowy entities flew towards the
Liberty Ship
. Missiles, railgun rounds and energy weapons reached out to engage the attackers, and flashes of light in the distance marked direct hits and showed brief glimpses of more amoeba-like dark masses heading their way. A full third of the initial swarm had targeted the Neo ship; the rest veered towards First Fleet.

She had never eschewed her duty, no matter what, and this time was no exception. Olivia checked the status screens and heard the frantic orders to redeploy to face the hordes emerging from the anomaly. All space-capable Neos were being directed to form up around their ship, to cover those spots the
Liberty
’s weaponry couldn’t reach. Olivia rushed towards the launch catapults, and then dutifully waited in line behind the heroes who’d arrived before her. She spotted Dawn Zhang, code name Dawn Windstorm, two places ahead of her in the line. The young Legionnaire was wiping her eyes and trying to compose herself. Olivia knew the woman had been Larry’s last indiscretion. Were those tears for him? A part of Olivia seethed at the possibility: what right did that tramp have to grieve for her man? She quickly dismissed that unworthy thought, however. Things were never simple, and whatever Larry and the young woman had shared had been more than purely sexual. Olivia left Dawn alone and didn’t say a word. A few seconds later, it was her turn, and she was launched into space.

The normally-empty vacuum around the
Liberty Ship
was blazing with destructive energies. Many of the vessel’s weapon systems were powered by Neolympians with assorted ranged powers, firing from hardpoints designed to channel and enhance their destructive capabilities. As Olivia flew towards her designated spot, she saw the relentless barrage of electrons, photons, telekinetic force, plasma and dozens other energy wavelengths reach out in a dizzying variety of colors. Dozens of the shadow entities burst into flames or broke apart into rapidly dissolving fragments.

Hundreds more followed in their wake.

Olivia cast twenty flaming spears in half as many seconds. Unrestrained by the confines of an atmosphere, the missiles flew at relativistic speeds and unerringly struck the fast-approaching targets. To her dismay, only half of the hits resulted in outright kills; the rest clearly damaged the entities, but they pressed on, and as she launched the twentieth spear, long tentacles of pure blackness reached out toward her. Her shield flared up, consuming the first pseudopod, but the entity’s follow-up attacks pushed through it, drowned out her fires, and struck her.

Unimaginable pain almost paralyzed her. Her protective aura sputtered and died, and she felt the cold kiss of vacuum on her skin. If the tentacle hadn’t been so badly damaged, she would have died right then and there. Instead, the dark tendril dissipated shortly after hitting her. She willed her shield and aura to reform, calling forth more energy from the Source, and just barely managed to burn off the next two tentacle strikes. A desperate burst of unformed plasma dealt with the attacking entity once and for all.

It had taken all she had to deal with one of things at close range. Given the disparity in numbers, they wouldn’t be able to hold off the attacker for very long. She glanced at her HUD and saw a dozen Neos nearby had already fallen; their icons were red and blinking, indicating a cessation of their life signs. Below her, the
Liberty Ship
was covered by dozens of black spots, like a carcass being beset by devouring ants. Here and there she saw clouds of vapor indicating breaches in the ship’s shields and outer hull.

A moment later, yet another Outsider was upon her, and her world narrowed down to her own personal life and death struggle.

* * *

“Prepare to repel boarders!”

The command was still echoing in Chastity Baal’s ears when her section of the ship was penetrated and exposed to explosive decompression. She and her squad swayed on their feet as air rushed through the opening the shadow monster had created. Fortunately for all concerned, every crewmember, Neo and human, was wearing a sealed suit of battle armor. Chastity’s suit was merely an extra layer of protection. The six members of her squad wore powered armor with integral force fields and heavy weapons. She hoped they would suffice for the task ahead.

The shadow thing was like a bubble of ink surrounded by dozens of limbs that reached out in all directions. “Open fire!” she shouted, and followed suit.

Her personal weapon spat out rapid bursts of charged particles. Next to her, Sergeant Chevalier cursed loudly in his native Haitian patois as he cut loose with a 20mm railgun, and off to his left the heavy weapons specialist went down to one knee and used his plasma cannon as a hose, plying the constant stream of superheated gas over the entity. The energy blasts of the rest of the squad joined in the ensuing conflagration.

The creature withered and died.

A moment later, however, another black tendril punched through the ship’s hull and wrapped itself around Sergeant Chevalier. The soldier had time for a brief scream before his power armor dissolved into a cloud of metal, plastic and flesh. The heavy weapons specialist’s panicked reaction sent his plasma stream into the pseudopod, destroying it but also widening the hull breach. The squad scattered in every direction to avoid being bathed in plasma. The new shadow thing, a much larger version of the one they’d just destroyed, recoiled from the heat and disappeared from sight.

“Cease fire!” Chastity shouted, and the specialist regained his composure and shut down the weapon. “Cover both breaches, and stay away from the exterior hull!”

The squad redeployed just in time for yet another blob of darkness to push its way into the ship. It was met with a storm of fire that tore it apart.

In the quiet that followed the third entity’s destruction, Chastity was able to check on the ship’s status through her comm system. There had been over a dozen breaches, but so far they had all been contained, and the ship’s shields had been brought back online with enough strength to push the creatures away, where they could be engaged by the close-defense systems. She glanced through one of the holes on the hull and saw streams of energy and railgun bursts hitting the tentacled things pushing against the force fields keeping them at bay. Most were destroyed outright, but some lingered for several seconds, surrounded by the coruscating energies of the shields as shadow and light consumed each other. The entities’ mere touch was draining the shields, and as she watched, more of them arrived and struck at the energy barriers keeping them from the ship. Sooner or later they would get through again, this time in numbers the crew wouldn’t withstand.

“Check weapons and reload,” she said unnecessarily; the squad was already working on that.

It was just something to say, to fill the quiet before the end.

* * *

Cassius Jones raged against the dying of the light.

The brief moments he had spent as a captive of the Genocide had almost managed to unhinge his mind. At one point, he’d almost let the Taint inside of him free to do with him as it willed, as long as it allowed him to escape. Luckily, Christine Dark had managed to do what Cassius had not, and destroyed the Genocide. Cassius had barely survived the alien’s death throes, but survive he had. Now he had the rest of his life to figure out what to do next: confide in Christine and hope she could cure him? Flee once more into the vastness of space? He didn’t know.

In any case, the rest of his life was likely to be a matter of a few more minutes.

Unlike the Genocide, these Taint-creatures could not stand against him. He destroyed them by the score, and for a while he vented his rage against the entities and single-handedly kept an entire section of the
Liberty Ship
free from attackers. Their numbers seemed to be endless, however, and he was being surrounded by more shadow monsters that he could slay.

He didn’t give up, drowning hundreds more in a torrent of radiant golden energy, but his reserves, still recovering from the battle with the Genocide, were beginning to fail. Sooner or later the monsters would batter through his defenses, and he would either die… or join them in the dark.

He prayed he’d have the strength to choose death.

Forward Operating Base
Democracy
, Asteroid Belt, February 7, 2014

The USSS
Ticonderoga
became a short-lived star, a rapidly expanding sphere of fire and flying debris. The Star Destroyer had been the Outsider swarm’s first target, no doubt attracted by the vessel’s size and energy signature. Adam Slaughter-Trent watched helplessly while the flagship of First Fleet self-destructed after the alien horde overwhelmed its last defenders and were about to enter the engine compartment. The last words of the
Ticonderoga
’s chief engineer as he drove all fifty fusion reactors into a critical reaction had been “See you Hell, motherfuckers!”

“Second Fleet has reached optimal firing range and is engaging in support of First Fleet.” That was one bit of good news: Second Fleet tore into the flank of the steady stream of shadow entities and allowed the decimated ships of First Fleet to withdraw and redeploy into a defensive formation, jagged echelons of ships firing in close support of one another. The initial engagement had shown that once the creatures managed to enter a ship in numbers, it was all over unless there were enough Type Two or higher Neos to stem the tide, and most Neos had been out with the
Liberty Ship
, which was holding out but just barely.

Most, but not all Neos. FOB
Democracy
held most of the reserve, some seventy Neos Type 1.8 and higher. They would have to do.

“Sancho, my armor,” Adam muttered. He laughed, and his laughter sent shivers down the backs of everyone in the Situation Room. A moment later, the Brass Man armor suit grew over him, transforming him into a metal-clad warrior.

“Pardon, sir?”

“I will lead a sortie with our parahuman reserve forces,” Adam said. “Please take over all command and control functions, Admiral Perez.”

“Yes sir.”

There was no argument. It was clear that the two fleets needed every bit of help they could get. The battle had drifted too far from the
Democracy
for it to be of any direct help; the base was moving towards the engagement, but its engines weren’t powerful enough to accelerate its mass to a useful speed.

It was time to march toward the sound of the guns.

Nothing he could do would achieve much except to buy some time. He could only hope someone would put that time to good use.

Aboard the ROCSS
Chung Cheng
, Jupiter Orbit, February 7, 2014

One would have expected a dramatic pause as hero and arch-villain faced one another on the bridge of the dying ship, followed by a brief monologue, an exchange of taunts and even a teachable moment or two before the final clash of arms, to win or lose it all.

One would have been wrong.

As soon as Christine and Mr. Night spotted each other across the burning bridge of the spaceship
Chung Cheng
, they went at it hammer and tongs. There really was nothing either of them wanted to say or hear, except maybe a dying gurgle.

Kinetic blasts smashed through shields or were swallowed by Outsider darkness. Christine landed a couple of good shots that sent atomized blood flying from Mark’s body, a sight that hurt her almost as much as it did her target. A moment later, Mr. Night tackled her and used Mark’s fists to pummel her, which hurt even worse. She bit her lips and choked out a scream of pain, and batted him away with an invisible force mallet. As they exchanged blows that turned the inside of the spaceship into a floating junkyard, she reached out to Mark with her mind.

Christine lied. Before she could say anything else, a brutal punch caved in her left cheek and loosened several teeth. In return, she broke one of Mr. Night’s arm in three places and surrounded him in a force bubble, which bought her a few seconds of peace while he struggled to break free, time enough for her injuries to heal – insta-growing new teeth was an indescribable sensation – and to continue her conversation.

Christine chided him absently as Mr. Night broke free from the force bubble and got ready for more violence against women. She was so done with the punching and kicking stuff.

she screamed, pushing with her mind as Mark and his friends pushed with theirs.

Dreamland, Mr. Night version. A place of grayness, black shadows, desert and ruins. She and Mark faced their nemesis on top of a hill overlooking a dead city. Screams of terror and primal suffering echoed faintly in the distance. Here in Dreamland, Mr. Night looked like his old self, a thin old man in a black suit, smiling out of one side of his mouth. He wasn’t wearing his usual sunglasses: his eyes flared with evil intent, and there were
things
moving behind his solid-black eyeballs

Mark looked like his old faceless self; that was who he was, take it or leave it, and even his time in this hellish dimension hadn’t changed him very much. His soul was tattered and stained by the Outsider stuff, but for the time being it was still his own. And her? Christine had expected to show up in her Snipe persona, but this time she looked downright normal; no superhero costume, no gaming character outfit, just her, wearing jeans and a shirt, much like she would on her way to class, back when she’d been on Earth Prime. She was going to win or lose this as herself, not what other people wanted her to be, or the fake shells she’d used to hide who she was. She felt the power welling up inside of her, and she accepted it. That power wasn’t something she’d wanted or asked for, but she had it; her choices were limited to what she would do with it.

And the one thing she wanted most was to kick this rat bastard’s ass.

The fight started almost like a dance, everybody moving with incredible speed and grace. Mark charged Mr. Night while Christine tried to skewer him with her patented psychokinetic spikes. The object of their affection pirouetted nimbly and dodged their attacks. He stayed on the defensive for several seconds, avoiding their deadly strikes with seemingly effortless ease. Was he toying with them? she told Mark, and smashed Mr. Night with her also-patented colliding planes of force. No dodging that: Mr. Night’s form crumpled for a second under the devastating attack but recovered a moment later, and then it was his turn.

Waves of black energy poured out of him. When they touched Mark, he screamed in pain, and she felt the darkness inside of him grow stronger. She used her shields to protect herself, and had to channel all her energy into them to prevent the Outsider stuff from burning its way through and touching her.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mark pushing through the onslaught, getting closer to Mr. Night with every step. He was beginning to burn once again. It was happening just like the last time, and in many ways it was her fault. She’d given her more power than he could safely handle, and combined with his rage, he was headed for destruction.

Mark knew all of this, and he didn’t care, just like he hadn’t cared during the battle over the Hudson. He would risk everything, as long as he got his hands around Mr. Night’s throat. Killing the creepy old man was worth his life and soul as far as he was concerned. His only regret would be losing Christine, and he gave her a brief glance as he kept going.

Mr. Night’s expression never changed, but she felt his gleeful certainty begin to waver as Mark came closer. He shifted his energies away from Christine to deal with the more immediate threat, and he managed to check Mark’s advance. Which gave her just enough of a breather to act.

She had a plan. There hadn’t been enough time to put it to work before, and she wasn’t sure if she had enough time now, or even if it would work, but it was better than watching Mark kill himself. She couldn’t go through that a second time. Christine put her shields on autopilot, spending just enough power to keep the waves of darkness from touching her, and she reached out with her will. She took the Word of Power and used it as a conduit to reach the Source from the Genocide’s home world, the now-untapped Source that had nobody to empower and nowhere to go, fresh from cleansing the taint from its last charge, and eager to do more.

As soon as she touched it she was struck with a wave of sorrow and loneliness: Sources were meant to be in constant communion with the life forms they had been created to guide and uplift; unable to fulfill the reason for its existence, it would die soon. Christine’s touch provided only a temporary reprieve. It couldn’t work with a human host, not for long; the mental and spiritual wiring were all wrong.

Christine didn’t need to remain in touch with it for long, however, just long enough to give it a final target, a temporary host for all its power, and another Outsider infection to burn clean off the face of the universe. She coaxed the alien Source gently and sent it forth towards Mr. Night.

It manifested in Dreamland like a bolt of pure white lightning that smote the Outsider servitor like the Wrath of God. Mr. Night had been able to keep his otherworldly essence apart from the Source’s primal energies while inhabiting Medved and then Mark; he’d skillfully kept the incongruous forces apart while making use of them both. He couldn’t handle the full power of a disconnected Source that had nowhere else to do than to search out and obliterate the Outsider stuff that made up what passed for his soul. It was worse than what happened to the Genocide: unlike the alien, Mr. Night was utterly in the thrall of the Outside. That made him the perfect target for the Source’s rage.

The waves of darkness stopped, and Mark stumbled to his knees, a few feet away from his goal. For a moment Mr. Night stood motionless, his lopsided smile still on his face. His mouth opened, wider and wider, well beyond what normal human jaws could extend.

A torrent of light speckled with flecks of blackness came rushing out, like a visual scream.

His eyes exploded and more light burst out from them, like a Jack-o’-Lantern stuffed with a magnesium flare. Mr. Night threw his head up; his body began to convulse and burn.

Christine reached out and dragged Mark toward her, away from the Source energies that might target him next. she told him.

A lot of work.

Mr. Night was going to be consumed in a very energetic reaction in a matter of seconds. How energetic? Probably enough to create a fireball a couple or three astronomical units in radius, which would be bad news for everyone in the vicinity. Even worse, if Mr. Night went up while still inhabiting Mark’s body, Mark would be toast, although all things considered that’d be somewhat irrelevant given the aforementioned multi astronomical unit-wide fireball, which in scientific terms translated to a whole lot of toast.

Solution: take the essence of one Mr. Night, remove it from its current host, gift-wrap it and deliver it via express mail to the other side of the Gate where his Masters waited. Sort of a big Fuck You present. Of course, doing it was a little bit tricky.

Unstapling Mr. Night from Mark’s body was the worst part. She had to go in there, forge a link with Mr. Night almost as intimate as the one she had with Mark, and start cutting stuff off, which was sort of like peeling wallpaper with your fingernails, if wallpaper could bleed and scream as you peeled it off, while also burning the skin off your fingers.

Along the way, she learned more about Mr. Night than she’d ever wanted to.

Once, he’d been a man. He had been seeking immortality by dabbling in the occult, which for the most part was nothing but superstitious nonsense. Unfortunately for him, there were bits and pieces of twisted wisdom among the nonsense, and he’d made contact with the vast alien intelligences lurking in deep space. The results were what anybody who’d read even the lamest Lovecraft pastiche would have guessed. There were still little fragments of Michael Engelbert Night floating in there, screaming in endless terror and pain. They were part of the package, unfortunately, and Christine sent them off along with the rest. Maybe those human bits would find peace after this was over, although she very much doubted it.

She held on to the Hell construct he’d created, along with the thousands of souls he’d trapped there, hoping that Mark’s plan would work and she could save them.

Doing all of that had a cost, of course. She was burning out, much like Mark had done, tapping more power than she could safely handle. There were going to be consequences, and she probably wouldn’t know what they were until they bit her in the ass. And there was still more to do.

First things first. She visualized Mr. Night and all his works, and the ticking time-bomb-supernova, as one big colorful beach ball wrapped in pink ribbon with a bow at one end, and she fired it off. Sensors from
Liberty Ship
captured the scene: a gigantic beach ball wrapped up in pink ribbon with a bow at one end erupted from the ruins of the
Chung Cheng
and flew towards the Outsider anomaly, incinerating several thousand shadow entities along the way before disappearing into the pool of darkness. Two seconds later, there was a flash of light; the anomaly and all the Outsider creatures disappeared a fraction of a second later.

She wasn’t aware of any of that. There was Mark to deal with first. Cutting Mr. Night and the Outsider taint off Mark had meant cutting off bits of his soul as well and she had to fix the damage she’d inflicted or he’d end up insane, dead, or worse. Christine had hacked right into Mark’s soul, still beautiful to behold despite everything he’d gone through. This time, however, she had full sysop privileges; she could literally rewrite his source code as she saw fit.

She could change him any way she wanted.

It was so tempting, to reshape him as if he was made of wet clay. Take his anger away, once and for all. Smooth all those rough and sharp edges that often cut those who got too close to him. Relieve him of his pain, dull the bad memories, make him gentler, kinder, better. She could do all that and more.

And what would that make me?

You know what
, her brain replied. A brief memory of Dark Christine and her living toys flashed before her eyes.

Eff that
. She was after one thing, and one thing only: the Outsider taint. She cut those bits off, poured Source energy into them as if it was bleach, and burned them away. It was tough, and some of Mark’s soul got damaged along the way; she felt his agony as parts of him were burned off, but she did what she could and did what she had to, and hoped the price wouldn’t be too high.

Eventually, she was done. The evil pollution was gone. Another mental presence touched her: Mesmer’s ghost joined them in Dreamland. The disembodied psychic had been standing by, inside the body of a brave woman aboard the
Liberty Ship
. He would shepherd the lost souls out of the fading mindscape Mr. Night had created, and lead them into the weird psychic realm known as Comatown, or at least he would try to. She would help…

Something broke inside of her.

It didn’t hurt, but it felt like something had exploded in her head. She was back in space, floating among the remains of the Chinese spaceship. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel, to a pinpoint of light.