Текст книги "Hastrom City Rising (The Adventures of Letho Ferron Book 2)"

Автор книги: Doug Rickaway

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

A raised cylindrical pedestal stood in the center of the entryway. Adum stood before it, and a 3D representation of a beautiful young woman sprang up from it.

“Hello, Adum 04129. How can I help you today?”

Adum took a moment to drink in the sight of the sleepers’ receptionist; they didn’t make them like that where he came from. His eyes traced up the swell of her hips and became stuck in the deep blue of her irises. He imagined that she was somewhere in this room, in repose until things got better above.

“I am here to see Chancellor Steigen.”

“One moment; I will get him for you.”

Adum was sad to see the beautiful lady wink out of existence. She was soon replaced by the aged visage of Chancellor Steigen.

“Adum, how good of you to come.”

“Steigen. You have summoned me.”

“Yes. I have a very important question to ask you. And you must answer truthfully.”

“Of course. Adum does not lie.”

“Do you share my distrust of the god-king Abraxas and his Mendraga warriors?”

“We do not like the Mendraga. We do not like Abraxas. He does not listen to the things that the Corpus Verum tell him.”

“Good. Well, what if I told you that there might be a way make him leave Hastrom City?”

Adum’s eyes grew wide. “What is this way that you speak of?” he asked.

“If your men and the Tarsi that live among you were to rise up, perhaps you could ove throw his army and gain control of your sector.”

“We are strong, and we know how to fight, but we have no weapons. The Mendraga would kill us all.”

“You have strength in numbers. There are many more of you and the Tarsi than there are Mendraga warriors. Abraxas keeps the number of Mendraga very low so that there will be a plentiful supply of people to feed on. It is true, many would die, but you could overpower them and take their weapons. And then you could use those weapons against them.”

“Yes. This is possible. But the others do not like me, because I am strange to them.”

“I promise you, Adum, if you do what I ask, they will come to think of you as a hero, and they will follow you. Do you trust me?”

“Yes, Steigen, I trust you.”

“Then you understand what I am asking you to do, and the sacrifices that will need to be made?”

“Yes. We will die if we must. All will fight.”

“Good. You must go and speak to the Tarsi and gain their assistance. They will fight. They despise the Mendraga more than anything.”

“How will I know when it is time?”

“I will send you a sign when the time has come,” Steigen said.

Adum nodded.

“So then, our agreement is sound? What guarantee do I have that you will keep your word?” Steigen asked.

“We are not wise like your people, but we are not animals. We will do what must be done, and we will honor the pact,” Adum said.

“Very well. Take this. It will give you access to a weapons stockpile at the checkpoint near your living area.”

Adum fought the urge to sneer. “Living area” was a euphemism for the ragtag collection of tents and plywood sheds where his people lived. He hoped that things would be different when the dust settled, that the sleepers would keep their end of the bargain.

A small drawer opened in the wall near the pedestal. Inside were an ID access card and one of the fire shooters that the Mendraga carried.

“Good luck, Adum.”

“Thank you, Steigen. May Je-Ha watch over all of us.”

“Yes, that would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

TWELVE – Money Changers

Letho and Deacon fell in with a line of people entering the temple. Awful music played in the background, and the people’s footsteps matched the tempo of the song’s dismal andante.

Like the exterior of the temple, the inside was ornate, full of statues and tapestries that detailed the great deeds of god-king Abraxas. Again Letho wondered who had created these artisanal masterpieces. Were there former Fulcrum citizens who possessed these talents? Letho thought it unlikely, but at the same time he couldn’t imagine that the hammerheads he had seen were capable of creating such fine art.

“Lively place, eh, Letho?” Deacon said.

“Shhh. Let’s try to keep a low profile, okay?” Letho replied.

“Okay, fine. Sorry,” Deacon said, none too quietly.

“Shut up already!” Letho whisper-hissed. A person in front of them turned and placed a finger to his lips.

“Sorry,” Letho said.

They took a seat on one of the benches, surrounded by Hastrom City citizens. Letho couldn’t help but notice that carved into these citizens’ cheeks was the letter “A”.

This might not be the best place for me to be.

Then a door opened from behind the altar and a man came forth wearing flowing robes and a golden headpiece that resembled the head of the Abraxas statue that Letho had seen outside the cathedral. The man’s face was framed by the jaws and sharp teeth of the headpiece, as though he were peering from inside Abraxas’s own mouth. As he stepped up to the altar, he raised his hands with a flourish and began to sing along with the music, which changed from a dirge to a rousing canticle. A mechanical bass thump emanated from an unseen speaker in a pulsing tempo like a heartbeat. The congregation stood, entranced by either the music or the dancing, headdress-wearing priest. Some of them raised their hands into the air as if they were trying to touch something floating just above their head. Others shook as though an electric current was surging through their bodies. Letho just stood perfectly still, unsure how to behave. He looked to Deacon, who was trying not to laugh.

What. The. Hell? Deacon mouthed.

The song went on for several minutes, and at its closing cadence the people returned to their seats with eerie synchronization.

“Today is a glorious day, is it not?” the priest said.

The congregation, likely numbering in the hundreds, cheered.

“Our glorious savior has returned, and brings life back to our broken city. He saved us from our wandering, returning the Fulcrum stations from deep space. Cry out for the the good news!” When the priest’s mouth opened wide, Letho could see the feeding appendage behind his teeth.

A Mendraga priest. Wonders never cease.

The crowd cheered and shouted praises to their god. How anyone could worship a creature that fed on the blood of its congregants was completely beyond Letho.

“And now the time has come. Our kind father has chosen one to join him. To receive his gift. Will you please step forward?” the priest said.

One of the congregants stood and walked up the center aisle with stately poise, a serene look on her face.

Sila.

Letho shook his head. It wasn’t Sila. It couldn’t possibly be her. But the woman did look quite a bit like her, which made it feel like a gut punch to see her walking to the altar to willingly receive Abraxas’s gift.

When the woman stopped in front of the altar, the priest stooped behind the altar and withdrew an ornate bottle with a gold dragon curled around it. The woman knelt before him, her face upturned, her mouth open. The priest began to tilt the bottle.

Sila…

Something came over Letho. It was the wrongness of it all. The beautiful girl who looked just like Sila. About to accept the gift, just like his beloved had, perhaps not knowing the brutal history that had brought this foul chalice across the void of space and now to her lips, nor the true costs of the choice she was now making. He was outraged that these people were worshipping the very being who had sentenced Sila to death at his own hand; the very being who even now enslaved them.

Galvanized like never before Letho stood up. Fiery righteousness spilled into his body. His left arm became the sword of Gideus, his right held the triumphant horn of the arch-being Gabrus, which would sound the clarion call to end all things.

“NO!” he shouted. He threw off his cloak and leapt over the pews and people, landing directly in front of the priest. The female congregant screamed and began to scramble away.

“What is the meaning of this?” the priest cried. “Who are you?”

“I’m Letho Ferron, and I am here to… to…” Letho trailed off.

I got nothing.

He grabbed a standing candelabra tipped with flickering halogens meant to imitate flames, and he gave the priest a forceful mouthful of it. The priest collapsed in a heap of flapping cloth, the candelabra embedded in his face.

Letho then ripped the headpiece from the priest’s lifeless body and crushed it between his hands. The congregation gasped. Letho kicked over the altar and threw the crumpled headdress at a wall, where it embedded itself in the wood. The people began to scream and clamber over one another in panic.

“Silence! Be still!” Letho shouted. His voice ricocheted off the walls like a baritone shotgun blast. As if a fire had struck him from the sky above, he was now filled with righteous fire, and he now had plenty to say. He would breathe fire on Abraxas’s congregants.

“You will listen to me. The creature you call your god is an abomination! He and his hand, called Alastor, murdered many people from my Fulcrum station. And he has murdered countless others. You mustn’t worship him. You must rise up against him, and fight! Retake your city!”

Letho smiled, quite proud of the rousing speech he had just given. Deacon gave him a thumbs-up.

And that’s when the congregation attacked.

****

“What do you think that place is?” Bayorn asked.

“Not sure. Dad said something about a Corpus Verum. I think it’s the government people or something. They live down there. Maybe it’s a bunker like the one we have,” Saul said.

Just then the group of hammerheads filed out of the front entrance. One of the Mendraga kicked the last in line, causing him to tumble and fall. Bayorn growled, his lips pulling back, exposing menacing fangs.

“Easy there, hoss. Let’s not kill any more guards unless we have to, okay?”

Bayorn took a deep breath and nodded.

Saul and Bayorn followed the group of hammerheads, careful to not draw the attention of the Mendraga guards. When they felt they’d gotten a safe distance from the guards, they picked up the pace and approached the hammerheads.

Six of them did not react to their presence at all. But the one in front, the one with intelligent eyes, recoiled in fear.

“Easy. We mean you no harm,” Bayorn said.

“You are a big Tarsi. Your teeth, they are sharp,” Adum said.

“That’s right. I am a true Tarsi. The way we were before our civilization fell.”

The smart hammerhead’s brow furrowed, and he placed his hand on his head as if in pain. “Your words. Too many, too fast,” he said.

“I am sorry. I will speak slower. My name is Bayorn, and this is Saul.”

“Hello. My name is Adum.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you. You know other Tarsi?”

“Yes. They live with us. They work with us. They build things good. They are good to the hammerheads. Help us reach things we cannot. Help us lift things we cannot.”

“Can you take me to the Tarsi?”

“Yes. I will take you to the place of dwelling.”

The air filled with the ear-shattering honk of alarm klaxons. They all winced, from both the shock of it and the physical pain it caused.

“That has to be Letho’s doing,” Saul shouted. “C’mon, Bayorn, we’d better go.”

“You go. I must find these Tarsi and speak to them,” Bayorn said.

“Are you crazy? I can’t leave you here!” Saul shouted.

“You must. It is my destiny to free these Tarsi. To restore them. So that they can fight.”

“Letho’s not going to like it.”

“Letho will understand.”

“Okay, you crazy bastard. But be careful!”

“You too. Now go!” Bayorn shouted.

They parted ways, Bayorn following the hammerheads, Saul heading back toward where he had last seen Letho.

****

Thresha jumped at the sound of the alarm. Alastor leapt up, drawing his sword, and moved toward Abraxas.

“Girl, come. Now!” Alastor shouted.

Thresha obeyed. Together they leapt down from the balcony and cleared the distance between themselves and Abraxas in a blur.

“What is going on?” Abraxas asked. His tone was almost nonchalant.

“I do not know, sire. I have ordered no drills. Perhaps mutant creatures have breached the perimeter,” Alastor replied.

Just then a sentry burst through the door. “Lord Alastor, there is a disturbance at one of the temples.”

“What sort of disturbance?” Alastor asked.

“Someone has attacked and killed one of our priests.”

“Who would dare such a thing? I will have them flayed for it,” Abraxas said.

“I know of someone who might do such a thing, though I can’t imagine that he would be such a fool as to show his face in my city,” Alastor said.

“Your city?” Abraxas said, sitting up straight from his reclined position.

“Forgive me, master. Your city.”

Abraxas nodded and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Go, see that this person suffers greatly.”

“At once, sire. Thresha, come with me. It is time for you to prove yourself.”

Thresha, too, knew who might be willing to cause such a brazen disturbance, and she feared what came next.

****

“Deacon, get out of here! Find Bayorn and Saul!” Letho shouted. The throng was coming at him all at once, piling atop one another not unlike the herd of mutants that had taken his arm. But those had been mindless monsters, and these were people with intelligence. And misguided though they may be, they were once Fulcrum citizens nonetheless.

The first citizen to reach Letho was a large man with a thick beard and a mouth full of yellow teeth. Letho grabbed him by the collar and heaved him aside, being careful not to throw him hard enough to kill. Then, before the next attack could reach him, he leapt high above the crowd, grasping a chandelier and swinging out over the advancing horde. He let go and landed on the other side of them, among the benches that were still warm from having been sat on moments before.

Deacon had taken advantage of Letho’s distraction to slip away to the doors. But just as he reached them, two Mendraga warriors came striding through. Without hesitating, Deacon quickly elbowed one in the throat, grabbed his rifle, and dispatched both Mendraga with terse rifle blasts.

Letho leapt again, landed next to the fallen Mendraga, and took the other one’s rifle. He pointed to the doorway.

“Good job, Deacon. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

Outside the cathedral people were succumbing to their instinctual reaction to frightening stimuli: they were running in all directions, climbing over one another, just trying to escape, even if they didn’t exactly know where they were trying to escape to.

A strange keening whine filled the air as several Mendraga arrived on hoverbikes. They quickly dismounted and unslung their rifles.

“Deacon, take cover!” Letho shouted.

“Yeah, no shit!” Deacon said, diving behind a vegetable cart just as the Mendraga began to fire.

In truth, Deacon could have stood directly out in the open, for it was clear that the Mendraga only had one target: the Eursan known as Letho Ferron. Bullet after bullet struck him, but he was undeterred. The hot lead shredded his flesh, tiny pinprick entry wounds that blossomed into exit wounds the size of saucers. The pain was unbelievable, but he forced it down as he charged the attacking Mendraga. As he ran directly at them, he could see their eyes widening in terror, their uncertainty growing. These were men and women who had once been Fulcrum citizens just like him. But they had made a choice. They were standing on the wrong side of the line in the sand. He might have felt some empathy for them before, when this whole journey had begun, but his compassion was running a little thin these days, especially for people who fired automatic weapons at him and his friends.

More bullets perforated his chest and arms, and then he was on top of them. He grabbed two of his attackers and slammed their skulls together so hard that their heads ceased to exist.

Too easy.

But as he turned to dispatch the others, he felt a bullet pierce the back of his skull, and for a moment, everything went black—a taste of oblivion. It was sweet.

But then the lights came back on and he was once again awash in the pain of living, of fighting to survive. He turned and grabbed the nearest Mendraga’s rifle and pulled. As the Mendraga stumbled forward, Letho placed his rifle in the Mendraga’s face and obliterated its head. Another Mendraga took the place of her fallen brother, and he ended her service in Abraxas’s army with a single swipe of his clawed hand.

“Letho!”

The voice was familiar. There was no other sound, just the reverberation of that singular utterance, a deep, rich voice that lingered in the air.

Letho turned to see Alastor disembarking from some sort of floating skiff.

And Thresha was with him.

Part of Letho wanted to run to her and wrap his arms around her. The other part of him wanted to wrap his hands around her neck and squeeze.

“Well, well, well!” Alastor said, clapping his hands, “This is quite a mess you’ve made. I’m impressed, really. You’re that foolish boy that got between my sword and Fintran on the Centennial Fulcrum, right? The same one that tried and failed to rescue the citizens I kidnapped?”

“Yeah, that’s me, asshole,” Letho said.

“You’re quite a marvel, Letho. I can’t quite figure it out. I was certain I’d killed you in the town square years ago, yet here you are, obviously alive. Perhaps you really are the supreme being the Tarsi are always babbling about. Lord Abraxas says it’s a cosmic impossibility, but I’m starting to come around. Letho Ferron himself, come to rid the world of the evil Mendraga race!” Alastor laughed.

Letho spat in the dust. “That’s the plan. Why don’t you come down here and see what I can do?”

“You have no idea how much I would love to do that. But I think I will let my associate here handle it instead,” Alastor said, smiling. He turned to Thresha and issued a simple command: “Kill him.”

Letho was unprepared for Thresha’s incredible speed. His mind was still reeling from the realization that she was actually attacking him when she drew two small daggers from her belt and spun them out in an arc toward his throat. He dodged almost absentmindedly, as if he were far away from what was happening. But even while locked in his own stunned mind, he was fast enough to avoid her attacks. Either that, or Thresha wasn’t trying her hardest.

“Fight me, damn it!” she snarled under her breath.

“What?” he said.

“Fight me for real, or we’re both dead,” she said.

“With pleasure,” Letho replied.

Thresha swung her knife down, intending to sink it into Letho’s breast. Letho grabbed her wrist and squeezed, and her bones snapped as though they were kindling.

Thresha screamed and slammed the other knife into Letho’s side repeatedly, spattering both of them with his blood. Still holding her wrist, Letho slammed his clawed fist into her jaw, rocking her head back so hard and fast, it was a wonder that her neck didn’t snap.

What the hell am I doing?

Things were getting hazy. Letho’s body had already taken a lot of punishment. Blood was spurting from gory fountains in his side, spurting in time with his thumping heartbeat. The wounds were closing, he thought, but slowly, and he was still a little hazy from the headshot he had suffered earlier.

If anything good came out of this sordid mission, it would be that. He knew he could survive a headshot. As long as it was one that didn’t blast his head to pieces, he presumed.

He staggered back, and through his rapidly diminishing sight he could see that Thresha was falling, blood streaming from her mouth and nose. He heard shouting, more gunfire, and then the sound of the hoverbikes roaring to life. A firm hand grabbed him and threw him on the back of one the bikes, and then chilling wind was blowing through his hair, drowning out all other sound with its white-noise roar. The bracing cold air brought him around a little, and he saw that the bleeding from the stab wounds had stopped.

“Hey, you awake back there?” Saul shouted.

“Yeah, for the most part,” he shouted back.

“Think you can take care of those Mendraga on our tail?” Saul said, passing back a rifle.

Letho took the rifle and raised his head to see where he was. To his left, Deacon was riding his own hoverbike, occasionally turning to fire behind himself. Behind them were about ten pursuers, not far back and closing fast.

Letho brought the rifle to bear and gazed down the sights. He longed for Saladin’s assistance; the sword’s targeting function would have come in handy.

You’re getting spoiled, Letho. Just aim and fire.

Letho fired his first shot and hit a Mendraga pilot in the hand, transforming it into a red cloud and causing the Mendraga to lose control of his bike. It plowed into another hoverbike, which in turn plowed into another, and the three of them crashed into the hardtop, sending the riders hurtling through the air and the bikes themselves spinning and shattering, casting parts and shrapnel in all directions.

“Nice shooting!” Saul shouted.

Letho ignored him as he lined up his next target. This time he hit his mark where he intended to, and the newly headless rider slumped in his seat while his bike crashed into a concrete pillar. Deacon fired a few more shots, and managed to take out one of the riders as well.

It was enough. The remaining Mendraga turned and headed back toward Hastrom City, choosing to face the possibility of death at the hands of Abraxas over the certain death they would face if they continued to pursue Letho Ferron.

****

“Where’s Bayorn?” Letho shouted.

“He’s with the Tarsi and the hammerheads,” Saul said. Letho shoved him in the shoulder with just enough force to cause him to stagger a bit.

“You left him? Why the hell would you do that?”Saul took two steps toward Letho and shoved him hard in the chest with both hands. Letho staggered back, and then was back in Saul’s face.

“Hey guys, cut it out,” Deacon shouted, trying to separate the two, but Saul pushed him back.

“He wanted to stay! I tried to get him to come with me, but he wouldn’t. He said you’d understand. So why don’t you crawl out of my ass, get over yourself, and help me ditch these bikes? They’ll be sending patrols out any minute now, and we need to be long gone like ten minutes ago.”

Letho hated to admit it, but Saul had a point. He took a deep breath. “You’re right,” he said, “I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

They rid themselves of the hoverbikes by tossing them into a ravine, and then they began the short hike back to the razorback. It was just as they had left it, save for a set of dragging tracks made by misshapen feet. Muties had been here, and Letho and company were just glad that the beasts hadn’t stayed.

Saul, Letho, and Deacon piled into the razorback and began the trek back to Haven—without Bayorn.

The ride back was a quiet one, for each man had a lot on his mind.