Death Drop (14 page)

Bertie saw the top of the vent shaft begin to collapse before the first boulder smashed into him, and he searched for every ounce of energy he could wring from his already taxed power core and sent it to his treads. The sides of the passage cracked and let out a sound like rolling waves in a frenzied sea as enormous pieces of the walls crumbled inward and met each other. The hunks of rubble blocked out the sunlight above them like the stony gates of a heavenly fortress sealing itself against the black foulness from the depths below.

Bertie smashed through the last six feet of rock with an earsplitting crash. His momentum blasted the collapsed slabs from the mouth of the tunnel and launched him airborne in their wake, spinning from the unbalanced position of his treads. He lowered his left track so it was level with the right and continued to spiral through the air as gravity pulled at his battered chassis and he sped back toward the ground. He was still spinning slightly to his right when he hit the ridge. The edge of his right tread kissed the dirt and he cut another, shallower, arc through the air, turning completely over until the bands of linked metal on his left side touched down on their edges and rocked the rest of him to the ground in a cloud of silt and a clunk of strained metal and jarred cogs.

The frantic whine of his core died as he decreased power. His arms, gouged and scraped, hung loosely from the table, his knuckles barely hovering above the ground. The front of Bertie was so thoroughly dented and crumpled he couldn’t elevate his table to let Otto and Doctor Blink out of his inner chamber. Instead, it took almost every ounce of power left in him to simply lower the rear retaining wall to the channel so they could crawl out.

Otto moaned in pain as the compartment by his feet fell open with a metallic thud. Just moments ago, in the blackness of the vent shaft, he had longed to have the sun wrap its warm beams around him; now it stabbed without pity at his eyes until they watered, weeping for mercy. He flopped dizzily to the ground, bowed his head low, and let the smell of the cool soil fill his nose as a mist of Banzium dust floated in the mid-morning rays around him and clung softly to his whiskers. His body ached from the tips of his small ears to the claws on each of his toes, but despite feeling like he actually
had
been crushed to death, Otto staggered over to Bertie’s closest hand, still dangling limply at his side, took it up and squeezed it in gratitude.

Otto was happy to be alive. It was a hard emotion to process. Less than sixty seconds ago, he knew with absolute certainty that he was going to die a horrible death; crushed to a goopy mess or, even worse, battered and broken and unable to move, gasping for air until there simply was none left. But there he was, every inch of him bruised from tumbling around inside Bertie as he smashed his way through six feet of falling rock and boulders then spiraled through the air and crash landed on the north ridge. There he was, wringing Bertie’s hand with what little strength he had left and feeling the warmth of the light like a soft blanket covering him. The morning breeze drifted cool and lazy across his back, tickling the underfur on his neck before meandering off to explore a thick copse of trees to the east that overlooked the valley. He was just about to smile. The deep recesses of Otto’s mind that housed the strongest and most basic of all instincts, the will to survive, were pulling their primal rank and holding all other emotions and consideration hostage. The unevolved savage in him let the slightest of smirks turn the corner of his lip until the sound of Doctor Blink’s terrible shrieks sent a wave of reproach crashing onto the shores of his civilized mind, washing away his self-appreciation and revealing only the deepest sorrow and guilt in its retreat back to the dark sea of his cerebrum.

“Malo! MALO!” Blink had rolled out of Bertie and plopped unceremoniously onto the soft dirt of the ridge shortly after Otto stumbled to Bertie’s side to express his thanks for saving their lives. Instead of embracing the life Bertie had gifted him, Blink could only think about the death that crept through the darkness of the collapsed vent somewhere below their feet. He scampered as best he could toward the mouth of the tunnel, wobbling dangerously as his body tried to find its equilibrium again. “MALO!” Blink was shouting as he found his feet and bounded over rocks and darted between boulders strewn across the landscape by Bertie’s explosive exit.

Otto looked on as if in a trance. He watched as the little doctor frantically navigated the labyrinth of loose rocks that dotted the path between where they had landed and what used to be the opening of the vent. He saw the scene unfold as if his consciousness had separated from his aching body and now floated above the action—seeing everything from its perfect vantage and absorbing the details as if time itself had slowed down. He watched with rapt curiosity at first.

The doctor was the epitome of the educated man; reserved, intellectual and quiet. But now Otto’s detached mind was amusing itself with the puzzle of contradictions Doctor Artemus Blink had become in the panic to escape the Berzerkers. He noticed Blink’s once meticulously pressed, white lab coat and how it now flowed in dirt-streaked tatters behind him as he dashed with reckless abandon across the open expanse of the ridge. He could hear labored breathing as Blink struggled to feed his lungs between the deluge of foul curses that poured from his rubbery, slackened lips.

Prior to today’s events, Otto was certain that Blink had been the kind of man that would consider stooping forward to walk or run on all fours to be a regression in his evolution—the act of an uncivilized heathen animal. But there he was, scrambling about and kicking up clouds of silt and dust as he raced toward the cave-in. Otto’s consciousness continued to float effortlessly above the ridge, riding the thermal drafts that pushed up from the valley below and watching the mad little doctor with detached objectivity as he rushed to the crater of the fallen tunnel then jumped in and vanished.

“ARTIE!” Otto’s howl brought his senses flooding back to his pounding head. His bruised muscles exploded and burned in protest as he darted around rocks and made for the imploded opening of the vent shaft as fast as his legs could carry him. “Artie!”
His
breaths were now ragged and a curse escaped his lips and the cynical little voice inside of his head chuckled at how catching madness can be. His breathing was constricted by terror and the fight for air burned inside his chest as he sprinted across the ridge.
“What the hell’s he thinking?!”
Otto thought.
“What would drive him to sacrifice himself when it was so obvious that Malo was dead? What in the hell has gotten into him?!”
Otto’s mind raced faster than his body and he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

So much had happened in the last eight hours and none of it was good. Talfus Zandre, one of the Dissension’s best soldiers, was murdered by a member of a race bound by honor to protect the universe and one of the Dissension’s greatest allies in the war against the Durax. The Serum may be failing. Graale and Abalias were dead or, worse, taken prisoner by Berzerkers. A large number of the fleet’s best ships were destroyed. Malo was dead—crushed to death in the very tunnel they used for their escape. And now Doctor Blink had lost his mind and thrown himself down the collapsed vent shaft.
“What else could possibly go wrong?”
he thought as he skidded to a stop on the precipice of the vent opening and peered down into the jumble of fallen rock. He paused, staring wide-eyed into the indention, and tried hard to comprehend what he saw.

Chapter 15: God of War

K
illikbar watched as his ghouls descended on the two figures standing by the large hole Gyumak had accidentally blasted in the north wall of the shipyard. Gyumak would pay dearly at the hands of Killikbar’s phantoms for his carelessness—a mistake that gave the Dissenters cover and a partial reprieve from the attack. But it was only a momentary respite and soon any remaining enemies would be dragged from their hiding places and destroyed. They had nowhere to run. Killikbar could feel his pulse quicken as his Berzerkers closed in on the two standing in the open. He saw the icy one toss his weapons in a futile attempt to invite leniency.
“Weak, pathetic fool,”
he thought.
“I have no mercy to give.”
He was breathing in heavy, bloodthirsty grunts and his huge teeth glistened as he salivated at the thought of seeing his enemy torn limb from limb.

Twenty yards to go and he let out a snarl of rage, encouraging his army to hasten their advance. He wondered how long it would take his forces to subdue the two Dissension soldiers. He had seen them both endure blasts from Gyumak’s mighty cannons and they seemed to be uninjured. The thought of breaking them intrigued him, and he secretly hoped they wouldn’t succumb so he could use his tools of death to make them beg for their pitiful lives before he annihilated them.
“We shall see,”
he thought as he waited anxiously for the chaos he had orchestrated to reach its bloody pinnacle. He didn’t have to wait long.

Killikbar’s dark eyes widened as green flames erupted from the stone creature’s crown and eyes and bathed the rushing Berzerkers in their immaculate emerald glow. Killikbar couldn’t be sure over the din of clattering pikes and swords and the rumbling of hooves and feet, but he thought he heard words from the stone creature’s mouth—although he couldn’t make out the language. But he did see its mouth move as the green light grew brighter until it blazed with white-hot intensity. He was certain this new magic would burn his army to cinders and leave him and his giant, Gyumak, to face the remaining Dissenters alone. His vicious mouth curled in a cruel smile at the thought as his rotten, black heart yearned for it to be so. He tensed, ready to rush them after his army flickered to ash, but instead of incineration, the green comet burning above his enemy yielded an even greater magic. A magic beyond any he had ever seen. A magic that Killikbar had to have at any cost.

The vent gave out a deep booming wail as it fell. Killikbar watched in awe as the cave behind the Dissenters shook mightily and then crumbled, spilling its stony guts onto the shipyard floor in a terrible crash of rock and rubble. Waves of dust tumbled and cascaded into the cavern, curling through the air in sparkling billows. Killikbar’s heart leapt into his throat, and the filthy fur covering his body stood on end as his skin tingled with evil rapture at the power he beheld. His mind became awash in the fantasy of owning such power and using it to enforce his will and rule the universe. He doubted even a Mewlatai warrior could contend with the enslaved soul of the stone one. He rumbled a wicked, snarling laugh at the thought. Killikbar’s next phantom would make him an unstoppable god of war.

Killikbar was so intent on the vision of his ultimate invincibility that he didn’t notice that the entire cavern had began to tremble. He stumbled with the quaking ground and was wrenched from his trance. His army approached the Dissenters from two sides now and had drawn within striking distance.
“The stone one means to kill us all,”
he thought as he grumbled in disgust at coming so close to controlling such power, only to die by the very weapon he would have used to crush all those that stood against him. He wondered how he could stop him from collapsing the cave…and then he remembered the guns.
“The ice king had tried to surrender!”
Killikbar unleashed his most fearsome roar. The growl blasted through the cavern and threatened to accelerate the seemingly inevitable collapse. He hoped he had given his order in time. He hoped for all their sakes, but mostly—just for his own.

***

Graale opened his mouth and the green aura spilled from between his lips as he began to speak the words that would bring the entire shipyard crashing down on itself.
“Tuktalum uu bellum, kelapstumak…”
His vision had left him, replaced by the green embers that burned like emerald fire from his sockets. If he had been able to see, he would have beheld a horrid, gangly creature covered with gnarled horns and bumps, sickly white with sharp, rotten teeth bared viciously as it led the pack of Berzerkers to the kill. The beast had a huge, curved sword in its clutches that was raised impossibly high above its dreadful head, as if it was reaching for every bit of hate it had to help carve through Graale’s rocky shell. The beast was so close Graale could smell its putrid stink and feel its fetid, hot breath as it roared just inches away from his face and prepared to bring its jagged blade down in a sweeping arc of destruction.

“GROWWWLLL!” The roar from behind the Berzerker line charging from the east was awesome. It boomed across the chamber like cannon fire and swept through the advancing army like a deadly shockwave that slammed into the rampaging beasts, stunning their appalling bodies and freezing their ghastly faces in masks of pure terror. Except for heavy rasping breaths, they suddenly stood silent—arms poised to strike, hands clutching ragged blades and all manner of blunt, bone-crushing objects that hung quivering in the air. They did not dare go against their general’s order or his wrath.

The roar and the sudden silence shocked Graale, who had ceased his incantation to take stock of the situation. The shipyard was dead quiet and none of the Berzerkers were moving—save one. The pale beast who led the attack had dashed with mad fury toward the enemy, hoping to be the first to run his blade through the Dissension scum, and his need for death had driven his body into a frenzy his mind was not quick enough to stop. Now his bloodlust had betrayed him.

The green light faded from Graale’s eyes and mouth just in time for him to see the muted glint of the beast’s sword edge slice down and land between two of the spires jutting from his head. The face of the gaunt monster swinging the weapon was terrified; as if it didn’t belong to the pale arms that rippled with malice as they slashed the sword down Graale’s cheek and onto his chest and stomach. The blade spit seething sparks as it gouged and scratched across Graale’s gritty hide and the light that burned from the meeting of metal and rock reflected the pure, astonished horror in the Berzerker’s eyes.