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

Автор книги: Doug Rickaway

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Текущая страница: 20 (всего у книги 21 страниц)

SEVENTEEN – Hit Reset

The ground beneath Bayorn’s feet began to vibrate, and a strange, bloodcurdling howl filled the air. Cheers were replaced by looks of confusion and mounting terror.

A nearby manhole flipped open, and the hideous, malformed head of a mutant appeared. Bayorn looked around him, and saw more mutants pouring forth from every direction. They came from manholes and drainage ducts, scrambling to force their bodies through the small rectangular orifices, tearing the flesh from their own backs; they rushed from the buildings and climbed over the walls. It was as if a dam had broken, and wave after wave of mutants washed over its remains.

And then, a great explosion shook the very earth underneath their feet. The city streets were lit with plumes of fire that rocketed hundreds of feet into the air. Buildings all around the city center toppled and fell, and a wagon wheel of fire incinerated all who were unfortunate to be too close Many of the mutant creatures perished, and Bayorn counted each of their deaths as one more notch toward victory.

But despite the sudden chaos that had overtaken the battlefield, the Jolly Roger continued his withering fire on the army of Tarsi, hammerheads, and Eursans below. Among the smoke, cinders and ashes, the mutant creatures continued to swarm. Bayorn’s heart sank as he surveyed their numbers. The explosion had taken many of them, but there were still more than enough to outnumber the remaining fighters in his charge.

Bayorn hunkered down next to Maka, bullets spraying over their head, sending chunks of concrete in all directions. “That must have been Letho,” Bayorn said, nodding toward the smoke and fire that surrounded them.

“Yes, it is no doubt the work of our Eursan friend. But it does not help us against the metallic beast above.” Maka said. “And our weapons are ineffective against him.”

Just then a low rumble filled the air, and a great starship emerged from behind the palace. Abraxas’s ship. A brilliant red flash filled the air as the fabric of space-time was torn open—and the ship was gone.

“What?” Crimson Jim shouted in obvious confusion and anger. “Hey! Come back here!” Abraxas’s guard could be heard uttering similar sentiments. As if Alastor could hear them. He was gone.

“What an asshole!” Jim shouted, throwing his hands up. “Who needs him. Let’s finish this!”

The Jolly Roger cycled up its twin cannons and began to chew away the cover Bayorn and his troops cowered behind. He didn’t notice that the remaining Mendraga warriors were now abandoning him, disappearing into the temple entrance.

People were dying all around Bayorn. The Jolly Roger’s fire had begun to find soft spots. Bayorn watched helplessly as Eursan and Tarsi alike were torn to pieces.

The Jolly Roger was unstoppable.

Then the warbirds swooped in.

They turned their withering fire on the walking tank who stood on the temple steps. The stream of fire laid into the Jolly Roger, setting fire to the air around him, driving him to the ground. Maka cheered as pieces of the metal beast began to fly in all directions. The Jolly Roger tried to raise an arm cannon to fire back, but it was cut off by the angry storm the warbirds rained down on him. Jim shrieked, his mechanical body coming apart under the relentless assault.

Crimson Jim’s body, which had previously looked like a cross between an action figure, a jet, and a tank, now appeared to have a large helping of smoldering ruin thrown into the mix. He turned and fled. The curtain of molten lead followed him, pulverizing the ornate facade of Abraxas’s temple.

“Press forward into the temple!” Bayorn shouted.

“You want us to follow the Jolly Roger?” Maka said.

Bayorn gestured toward the endless mutant swarm. “We stand no chance out here in the open—we have no choice!” Bayorn said. “Move!”

All ran for the safety of the great temple as the swarm of gray, twisted bodies surrounded them, blotting out the ground as far as the eye could see.

****

“Hey, you gonna stand there all day, or are you going to get me out of these cuffs?” Thresha asked.

Letho turned, his face drawn. He summoned his strength again, and broke her cuffs.

“Thanks. You all right?” she asked, reaching to embrace him.

“I’m fine.” He allowed her to wrap her arms around him, but he didn’t reciprocate the gesture.

“Letho,” Saladin reported, “I am picking up communication from the sleepers. They are requesting your presence. It is urgent. Mutants are storming the temple. Your friends are in danger.”

“Let’s go then,” Letho said.

But before they could get going, a clanking and crashing commotion arose, and Crimson Jim emerged into Abraxas’s former vestibule. His massive metallic body crashed directly through marble, metal, and wood, blasting through doorways that weren’t designed for his size and girth. He cut an imposing figure even though he looked like someone had thrown him into an industrial sized-compactor, and then tossed him into an even larger wood chipper. Parts of his metal body were missing entirely, and the surface of his chest plate had been chipped and chewed away. His faceplate was gone altogether, and Jim’s green-smoke face, constricted in a snarl of terror and frustration, was on full display.

“What the hell?” Letho said. Instinctively, he dove to the side just as a blast of chain-gun fire chewed through the wall where he had been standing.

“I don’t have time for this!” Letho shouted as he jumped and rolled, moving too fast for Jim’s tracking systems.

After a moment, Jim’s gun began to click, the barrels glowing red, smoke pouring off of them. Jim’s other gun was gone; only a stump of rent metal and exposed wires remained.

Looks familiar, thought Letho.

He smiled, rising from cover.

“Damn,” Jim said.

Thresha grinned. “Out of bullets?” She fired her rifle at him, bullets ricocheting off Jim’s metal hide and passing harmlessly through the green smoke that was the obscene manifestation of Jim’s soul.

“I ain’t going down that easy, sugar,” Jim said. “Besides, I owe you one.”

He moved toward Thresha, the chain-gun on his arm folding back and splitting apart. Twin chainsaws with gigantic steel teeth emerged in their place. They spun up, sputtering black smoke as they growled. Jim charged forward, swinging his saws, aiming to take Thresha’s head off. This new Jolly Roger was faster than the previous incarnation, even in its current, mangled state, but it was still nowhere near the speed and agility that Jim had possessed in his former body. His swings were heavy and slow, and Thresha easily avoided them.

Saladin, give me a scan, would you?

Right away.

Suddenly everything went monochromatic red. Letho could see right through Thresha, and he marveled at her skeletal structure as she pirouetted past Jim, firing another blast into his faceplate. When Letho turned his focus to the Jolly Roger, he could see every rotor, every wire, every circuit board.

Then he found what he was looking for: a box in the center with a brain suspended in some sort of fluid. It was magic—or was it science? It didn’t matter. With Thresha providing a distraction, he leapt over the broken chunks of ceiling he had taken cover behind, landed nimbly right behind the Jolly Roger, and with one thrust, drove Saladin into the Jolly Roger’s back.

The blade pierced Jim’s brain, and he screamed, a jet of noxious green gas shooting up and dispersing across the ceiling like a geyser. Letho saw Jim’s snarling face materialize in the green cloud one last time, and then it was gone.

“Awwww, I wanted to kill him,” Thresha said, grinning.

Letho favored her with a blank stare, saying nothing.

“Letho Ferron, please report to the elevator at the end of the hallway. Your presence is required in the sleepers’ den.”

“Let’s go,” he said, turning to leave. He didn’t wait for Thresha’s response.

Shrugging, Thresha followed this strange automaton that seemed to have replaced Letho.

****

Letho stood at the entrance of the sleepers’ den. The hologram deck hummed to life, and a three-dimensional representation of an old man appeared before him. Before Letho could say a word, the man spoke.

“Our time is short, and there is much that I must convey to you, so I will do my best to keep it brief. My name was Chancellor Elan Steigen. I am responsible for all that is transpiring now.”

“I’ve seen your name before,” Letho said. “You issued the official decree on the Fulcrum recall.”

“Please, let me finish. Even now the citizens of this city are fighting for their lives. The fate of the Eursan race hangs in the balance. The man known as Elan Steigen no longer exists. Abraxas killed him. I am a virtual construct, a copy of his mind that exists only in the computer attached to his pod. The people in these pods are business leaders, politicians, engineers, doctors, artists. Long ago, when the world began to fall to ruin, when the resources that powered our cities began to run dry, those with enough influence, money, or desirable skills were placed in stasis in the pod bays you see before you. The hope was that we could preserve the tenets of our culture, the vast collective knowledge of the Eursan race. In this vulnerable form we needed protectors, people to keep our machines running so that we could maintain order. So we manipulated the genetic code of the people that chose not to board the Fulcrum stations. We molded them into creatures with strong backs and resistance to diseases and the elements. And we enfeebled their minds so that we could control them. Under our command they walled off our city, making it inaccessible to outsiders.

“You created the hammerheads,”

“That is correct. Within a few birth cycles, we had what we needed.”

“You bastards,” Letho growled.

Undeterred by his outrage, Steigen continued. “Nanomed technology was one of the greatest breakthroughs our species had ever known. We were able to use nanoparticles to speed up the evolutionary process and control the end product. We created the working caste, the ones you call hammerheads, to sustain us. In turn we sustained the city’s infrastructure, keeping the water running and the lights on.

“However, there were complications. The creatures that you call mutants are products of our machinations as well. Pitiful beings, aren’t they? They are members of the working caste that experienced adverse side effects from the nanomed treatment. Something we didn’t anticipate—some genetic complication caused them to become malformed. They were cast out of the city, where they continued to breed for centuries, further complicating their maladies as they mixed their broken chromosomes together. The end product is the creatures that you call mutants, who even now threaten our doorstep.”

“They exist because of your experiments? How could you?”

“I do not ask for your forgiveness, Letho. We are not blind. We see the consequences of our actions. The weight of or mistakes weighs heavily upon us, for in our attempt to preserve our race, we have brought it to the brink of annihilation.

“There is, however, something that can be done to make this right. The nanomeds that permeate our bloodstreams are also in the bodies of the mutants outside. There is a command that can be issued which will cause these nanomeds to turn on their host bodies, consuming them in an instant. A failsafe. This action will cause no pain, just instant oblivion. I would do it myself, but another failsafe is in place to prevent any member of the Corpus Verum from initiating the procedure. It can only be done externally, from that panel over there.”

Failsafes to prevent failsafes.

Letho scoffed. It was an empty sound, like an engine trying and failing to start.

Steigen pointed at a wall panel and it seemed to spring to life at his command, with text running down the screen. Letho couldn’t read all the text at a distance, but three words were visible at the bottom.

Yes or no?

“You must do it, Letho. Every single mutant in Hastrom city will be put out of their misery in an instant. No pain or suffering.”

“You said these nanomeds are in your own bloodstream,” Letho said. “So won’t they turn on you, too?”

Steigen nodded. “Unfortunately, yes. All of the sleepers’ bodies will perish, though I doubt you will shed a tear for us. However, although our bodies will die, our consciousnesses will be transferred to Hastrom City’s server bank. All the knowledge and cultural heritage contained within our collective minds will be saved, so that it can be utilized by all citizens of Hastrom City.”

“You’re seriously saying you want me to wipe out all the mutants and all the sleepers in a single stroke?” Letho cried. “And what of the hammerheads? Will they die too? Why not just wipe out all known life while you’re at it?”

“The members of the working caste—the hammerheads, you call them—will be unaffected. When Abraxas began harvesting blood from the working caste, I implemented a protocol to purge the nanoparticles within them. They will be immune to your actions.

“Do this for us, Letho. Help us to right the great wrong that we have created. End our suffering once and for all, and stop the cycle that has been perpetuated over so many centuries.”

****

Bayorn, Maka, and Adum stood atop the palace steps, watching the mutant horde sweep toward them. Swarming like locusts, the creatures covered the ground below, scrambling over one another as they rapidly ascended the steps like a wave of diseased flesh. Deacon and his fellow pilots hovered above, and so far had managed to keep the beasts at bay with their cannons. But they could not shoot all of them, and they had to be running low on ammunition. The mutants were already close enough that Bayorn could see the whites of their eyes. It wouldn’t be long now.

Bayorn fired a burst into the throng below, and his rifle clacked dry. He tossed it aside, and roared. The Tarsi and humans exchanged knowing glances as the horde cleared the final step.

“It’s been an honor, Tar-san,” Maka shouted over the din.

“Indeed. I will see you in the halls of our forefathers,” Bayorn replied.

The first of the mutants to scrabble over the final step surged toward Maka. He swatted the creature away, sending him tumbling down the dogpile of writhing bodies. But more mutants came after the first, waves of them, an endless sea of wrongness, unchecked and unrestrained. Maka went down under the weight of a great pile, and Bayorn roared.

The fell creatures roared back, and Bayorn was surrounded, grasping, diseased hands dragging him down as well.

Then, as if smote by the hand of the creator, the mutants collapsed, and their limp bodies tumbled down the side of the temple.

****

“The procedure is complete. The genetic anomalies have been eliminated. Databanks are stable. I am reading solid communication from the hive mind.”

Genetic anomalies? Bastard.

“The nanoparticles will dissolve the genetic anomalies’ remains. The city is safe. Thank you, Letho.”

Letho stared at the holographic representation of a dead man. He thought of the lifeless bodies in the pods, dissolving as the tiny machines in their bodies broke them down into bits of carbon dust.

Congratulations, Letho, you’ve just murdered thousands of poeple, his copilot whispered.

But it’s what they wanted. They wanted to be free.

“Come on, Thresha. Let’s go find our friends.”

****

Letho and Thresha found Maka and Bayorn on the top steps of Abraxas’s temple. They embraced and laughed, ecstatic to see one another still alive. Deacon landed his ship on the street and rushed to join the reunion. Maka and Bayorn even greeted Thresha with open arms. She had proven to them, at last, that she could be trusted. It was one less thing that Letho had to worry about.

Maka and Bayorn introduced Adum to Letho, Thresha, and Deacon. They took to the small man right away, drawn in by his unabashed kindness.

But Letho found that he could not share in their joy. Images of Saul’s head, ripped open by the fire-talk of his hand cannon. It was different thing to kill a human being.

A brother, his copilot reminded him.

“Well, it looks like we did it,” Deacon said, extending his hand to Letho.

Letho took his friend’s hand in his own and shook. Then he looked at Deacon like he didn’t recognize the man. Deacon recoiled a little, searching Letho’s face for the meaning of his expression.

“It is not finished,” Letho said. “Abraxas and Alastor are still out there. Who knows what their plan is?”

“Well, you could still celebrate a little, you know. This wouldn’t have happened without you,” Deacon said. Letho felt a slight stab of emotion as he saw the disappointment and confusion in his friend’s eyes.

Without responding, Letho turned and walked away. He felt no emotion, no joy in their victory, just a gnawing emptiness. The combined gain and loss of his father still weighed heavily on him, and he expected that that loss would always be with him no matter what happened or where he went. Cruel fate had dangled this new morsel in front of him, and just as he had taken the first sweet bite, had glimpsed the warmth of a kinder future, that morsel had been snatched from his jaws like he was a lowly dog. He thought of Saul, whom he had dispatched as though he were cattle to be slaughtered.

He stopped at a balcony and looked out upon the Tarsi below, free at last of their burden, returned to their original state; he saw former Fulcrum citizens embracing. All that was missing was a sea of drifting ticker tape and confetti. But they, unlike him, had not been forced to kill one of their own. It was different killing Mendraga, for they had made a choice, had become something different. Letho had killed a friend. A brother. It hung now upon his neck like an anvil. Something he would have to carry with him as long as he lived.

When he turned back, he saw Thresha and Deacon embracing, and an involuntary rage welled up inside him. In an instant, he felt a psychotic urge to strike them. It was then that he knew that he had to get away. That perhaps what he had become was not fit to live in this new world he had helped create.

Deacon looked over and smiled and waved, as did Thresha. But Letho did not return the gesture. They stared at him, confused, and a knowing worry spread across Thresha’s face.

I have to get out of here.

Letho felt something thrumming inside him, some untapped well, something new and powerful. Without really knowing why he was doing it, he crouched down on one knee and placed his hands on the ground. He pressed with both his hands and feet, as hard as he could, and launched himself upward.

The ground shrank beneath him at alarming speed, and the people below him became insect-like as he plowed through the air. The wind roared in his ears, drowning out the heavy thoughts that burdened his mind. From up here he could not see the fearful expressions that some cast upon him. Though he had fought tooth and nail for the people below, he knew that many of them regarded him as an aberration, a freak. One not to be associated with.

Soon he reached the apex of his climb, a height where only eagles dared fly, where the atmosphere became thin. And from there he looked down at the spectacle below. It was much like what he had seen when he had first pierced the atmosphere of mother Eursus. She bore many scars, all of them from wounds dealt by his race. He felt shame that such majesty had been diminished by his people, and for such trivial pursuits.

And then gravity took him, and the ground began to grow again. The earth below approached at an alarming rate as he rushed toward his fate: becoming a splattered red paste across the planet’s surface

But as the ground grew closer and he could make out streets, buildings, and wasted vehicles, he remembered Abraxas’s invisible, crushing fist, and he wondered if he could wield such a power. He tapped deep into himself, and there it was—power. He willed himself to be lighter, to slow—and somehow, it happened. His body crashed to the ground heavily, but not hard enough to shatter his bones or liquefy his flesh as he rolled across Eursus’s rough hackles. He gained his footing, surveying his wake, then crouched and pressed his hands to the earth again, imagining that he was shoving the planet away from him, altering its cosmic trajectory. And he bounded again and again, until Hastrom City was but a mere twinkle in the distance.

****

“What the hell?” Deacon shouted. “Did anyone know he could do that?”

“The gifts of the chosen one are not recorded by our people. We do not know the extent of his powers,” Bayorn said, looking up at the pristine night sky.

“He just left us. I can’t believe it,” Deacon said.

“Our friend Letho is very troubled. He needs time alone,” Bayorn said.

“Don’t worry, Deacon. He’ll be back. I know he will,” Thresha said.

They stood together on the moonlit landing of the temple, their skin and fur resplendent in the milky glow. And all above them a ring of twinkly stars—the Fulcrum stations—watched the people below like silent sentinels.