The Deian War: Conquest (5 page)

   The Phantom laughed derisively at him. “Honour?
What do you know of that, Apossstle?” It lolled its head to one side at such an angle it looked like it would fall off if it went any further. “You are imperviousss to our weapons…You cannot be slain, yet you demanddddd usssss to fight you, an immmposible enemy?” It chuckled again.

  
My honour is in honest combat. I do not choose my strengths, nor am I to blame for them, but I do not wait until the end of a battle to reveal myself to my enemy.

   It clacked at him
like a parent scolding an ignorant child. “You are foolish to think me a coward, Liiiion” it seemed to emphasise the first syllable of his name, as though accusing him of some crime. “Thissss ambushhhh was planned. If my agentsss had done their work properly, your
slavesss
would have been too late to interrrrvennnnne…and your precious wolf would be deaddd, and you witthhh her.”

   Lupus paced back and forth as the Phantom explained itself, his patience wearing thin with every word it dared to utter. He was incredulous to think the Phantoms could believe themselves capable of sl
aying Apostles. Their dark god and infernal master was indeed an equal to all twelve combined, but his armies were little more than irritant pawns to be controlled and exterminated.

  
Nothing as pathetic as you could harm an Apostle,
he replied. He was growing tired of the wall in front of him preventing his kill.

   It clacked at him again. It served only to make him more furious. “Mmmmm perrrhapss not all Apostlesss….but
you
….you’re easssssy to slayyyyy…” it professed. Its head swayed to the other side, its shiny grey skin apparently ready to decay at any moment yet simultaneously prepared to morph itself into something entirely different. Half of this Lupus knew from his instincts, the rest he could simply read from the creature’s presence as though it wanted him to know exactly what it was.

  
Pathetic
and
stupid, then
.
How are you suddenly convinced you could wound me, an
‘impossible’
foe?
He asked, helplessly curious about its claim. He saw Sabre and a handful of Guardians begin to move around them, ready to strike at any moment, but a growl from him stayed their hands. The Phantom either didn’t notice them or didn’t care. With its ambush ruined, it seemed to accept it was only a matter of time before he killed it.

  
It shifted its blank gaze on him, trying to weigh him up and gauge his next move. Then it gave its answer. “Annny task can be imposssiibbbble until the solution is made accessssssible,” it licked it lips, “You jussssttt have to know what pieces of the gammme are requireddd to be…
removed
” it grinned, both jaws filled with ranks of pyramidal teeth and flicked its head to what was behind Lupus; the fallen tree trunk and beyond that, Calla.

   As it dawned on Lupus what the Phantoms’
full intentions had been all along, not just to kill Calla but to do it only as a means of getting to him, a rage exploded inside his core, a fury so intense it teetered on madness. With the pure strength of his will, his anger intensifying his own psychic potential, limited though it normally was, he shattered the barrier holding him back with a single, mountainous thought of murder.

   His reaction, though provoked by the creature, was beyond its expectation and it recoiled in a level of
alarm that only made Lupus satisfied. Even monsters could be afraid, he laughed inwardly. As he closed the gap between them, the Phantom regained its focus and waved its arms at him, an invisible wave of energy striking at him with every airy gesture. Lupus waded through the attacks as though they were nothing more than water, his ire more than a match for the Phantom’s power.

   The creature’s eyes shrank in realisation of its imminent death.
Lupus came three steps closer. It attacked again, but he took yet another stride forward through it. The salvoes weren’t painful; they were merely designed to blockade him, but they were having little effect.

Though the Phantom was aware of
his invulnerability, its instincts refused to believe that Lupus was unstoppable. However, that was his foe’s problem and it didn’t prevent him from tearing it apart limb by limb. Grey, arterial blood washed into the soil all around them and its death throes were long and painful to the ears of the legionnaires. It shrieked in bitter defeat, its head intact for only a second long enough to make the noise before it was crushed between the jaws of the Apostle it had attempted to assassinate.

   Standing victorious over the ruined body of the Phantom, Lupus revelled in its destruction. He was covered in its ichor, but he paid no heed
to that. Content with his work, he turned to see his legionnaires approaching him cautiously, wary of the full extent of his temper and ire they had witnessed properly for the first time.

  
Be not afraid, I am calm again…
he assured them, though it took his reversion to human form to convince them of it. Gaia approached next, a perfectly healthy Calla next to her. Apostles healed quickly, even with grave wounds and there was no longer any sign that she had been as hurt as he feared. He was confident she had recovered long before he had finished off the Phantom, but he was nonetheless gladdened to witness that fact with his eyes and not his heart alone.

   “We are victorious…” he smiled,
but a sudden tiredness was overwhelming him. He took a step forward and faltered. Another step would have brought him to his knees if it wasn’t for the lightning-quick reaction of Sabre who rushed to support him.

   Everyone, even Calla, was looking at him with mystified expressions. “My energy escapes me…” he breathed. Sabre was struggling to hold him up and the two Apostles came forward to take his place, carrying Lupus with his arms over their shoulders.

   “What is it, what’s happening?” Calla fretted. This was not like him, not at all. Were Sabre’s words earlier more true than he could have realised?

   His world now blurring with darkness, Lupus looked to his left at Calla. “
I’m tired, Calla…
so
tired
…” he managed to say before his eyes finally gave in and sleep claimed him.

Chapter 2

THE ECHOES OF weapons exchanging fire filled the streets in the capital city of Kraxus. Akurei, Commander of the 77th Fireblades legion, winced in annoyance. The sounds she heard now were the same as those that had filled her life for the last thirteen and a half months. Pulsar bursts. Gauss grenades. Screaming, both of the enemy and her men and women. The steady, devastating barrages delivered by squadrons of Warhounds as they sought to deny the enemy their claim on this world. She longed to hear a different pattern, anything that would break the stalemate they all found themselves in. 

   Yet, for all that the war had engulfed
Khasib, the capital of Kraxus, the sprawling fields of factories that made up half the city continued to operate at full capacity. The planet had been one of the key assets for the human colonisation forces in the early Gothican Empire’s expansion into the east and northern parts of the galaxy. Where before it had produced the vast quantities of weapons, vehicles and ammunition for the Empire’s armies, it had now been repurposed by the legions for their own equipment.

   Akurei couldn’t deny the truth of what that meant, however. Though the Guardians undoubtedly needed replenishment and they had forbidden the humans from taking part in the Deian War, the reality was that they had taken control of the human world for their own use. Even if that ultimately allowed them to protect the humans, there was still a part of her that said the legions’ purpose was too similar to the Phantoms’; they were using the
Gothican world as a means to an end, noble as theirs was, which meant removing the humans from their homes to achieve it.

   Taking shelter in the se
cond storey of a factory in the periphery complex, near the western edges of the megacity, she looked out the shattered bay windows and tried to ascertain the campaign’s latest status. In the distance she could see the interplay of deadly firepower between elements of her legion and the paradigm hordes of the enemy forces.

   
Something caught her attention. “Hand me the sights” she said to the squad of legionnaires arrayed around her. To her left, Fabia passed them over.

   “What is it, Commander?”
Fabia asked her.

   Akurei wasn’t certain, which was why she needed the sights to begin with. She held them to her eyes, two tubes fixed together with a digital centre that would allow her to change the zoom and type of vision the sights provided her. “Something’s happening” she eventually said.
The answer was so vague that Fabia wondered if her Commander had finally cracked.

   As
Akurei panned her view and found what she was looking for, she bit her lip in consternation. Amidst the ruined outer edge of the western flank, the 77th had dug in firm, holding back the enemy for over a year now. She knew they could hold out for another year, perhaps forever if they kept their hold on the factories, but something had changed today. Maybe the enemy had received reinforcements. Was it possible that the Ninth Apostle had finally failed to blockade their fleets?

   In any case, the staggered retreat of the Guardians that was evidently under way without any clear explanation
, or even communication to her, meant something she had refused to believe possible; the Phantoms had broken through the stalemate and the factories that would increase their war efforts a thousand-fold were suddenly under real threat. Right now, she didn’t need enlightenment over the miraculous event. She wanted a response.

   As Commander of the Fireblades, what she really wanted to do was find a way to rewind time.
The tide of battle was changing before her eyes in an instant and she could scarcely believe what she was now seeing; instead of the denial of the Phantoms’ advance, she saw the deaths of her legion.

She wished she knew how to stop those Warhounds from exploding into fireballs of death, to safeguard her troops from
the slaughter of the enemy. Yet, she had no tactics ready, no way to make those desires come true. Today was supposed to go the same way as all the others had done; defend the city, hold back the storm, rinse and repeat until the enemy stops coming.

    The storm chose today to disagree.

   “Florian,” she urged, prompting the wizened legionnaire next to her to switch his attention from monitoring the comms channels to her. His eyes were already asking for an order as his ears became filled with the reports from the frontline. “Get me the Apostle. We have to alert Phoenix about this”.

“THIS WAR IS changing,” the Apostle of the 906th Dawntreaders announced.

They were gathered
alone together in the control room of the main factory complex at the heart of Khasib. During the campaign to save Kraxus from the control of the enemy, they had used this place to co-ordinate their strategies and military might. The room was pitch dark, as it had always been from the damage wrought by stray enemy artillery, but the glow of the woman on fire next to him suffused the gloom with her warming light.

   When Oz turned his head to look at her, waiting for a response and wondering why she had yet to say anything, he reminded himself for the hundredth time that she wasn’t on fire. She
was fire itself. When she brought her gaze upon his liquid form, the elemental opposite to her own, her golden eyes shone like miniature suns. Brushing her smouldering hair from her molten cheek, she revealed a birth-mark that could only have arisen from the Blessing; a small, etched bird that burned a deep yellowy-red against the bold orange of her skin.

   Her voice was as uplifting as it was strong and powerful. “Changing
, Oz? What do you mean?”

   Somehow, Oz managed to drag his attention away from the enrapturing mark on her skin, one that he thought beautiful but knew plagued her self-perception. He walked closer to her, feeling himself turn his body’s temperature lower, almost until he was ice so that he didn’t melt away in her presence. He kept his distance though, unwilling to g
et too cold. He knew it would hurt her to see what he would have to do to come nearer when she was like this.

   “This isn’t about numbers anymore
, though it never has been. The enemy is starting to think, I mean truly
think
, about how to fight us” he answered, his breathe visible in the air as vapour.

  
Her brow furrowed. “What draws you to this thought?”

   Oz
thought about how to explain himself. He decided to be as honest and open as he could be. He would use her human name too despite how familiar it might be, because unlike him he knew she only liked to be called by her Apostle name when there were legionnaires around. “I can feel it, Novus. In my gut, in my soul…something’s changing. Something bad is about to happ-”

   Before he could finish, a small resounding note filled the room. It was emitted from the circular device on the floor situated between them
, a physical marker that set apart their different natures. Oz had used it as a reference point for knowing where the middle ground was, knowing that if he stepped over to Novus he would have to use all his power to stay in his Apostolic form. The trouble was that they had fought for so long now that to be human was akin to being weak, though neither of them liked to see it that way.