Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) (57 page)

“I doubt Mephistophilis wants a history lesson,” said Jaren. “What else will he find at Tzimtzum?”

“The Words of Creation,” said Elena. “The Working that kindled our existence.”

Jaren looked behind him. Elena stood under the archway, her rose-colored eyes fixed on Teg's corpse. Her train of cables snaked down the steps as she entered the ruined sanctuary, and he wondered how far the things could reach.

“How do you know Zadok's Working is at Tzimtzum?” Jaren asked.

Elena knelt beside Teg and laid her hands on his chest. “Because I was there,” she said.

Jaren’s brow knotted. “I don't follow you.”

“You understand,” Elena said. “You just don't believe.” She lay down and rested her head over the corpse's heart. Elena’s eyes closed, and Teg's opened.

Jaren’s cry of alarm joined with Nakvin’s as Deim fell prostrate on the slick stone.

Teg sat up. His bewildered face was still Sulaiman's, but his wounds were gone. Looking down, he saw Elena pressed against him. He gathered the girl in his arms and buried his face in her hair to silence the sobs that racked his muscular frame. At length he released her and stared at his four companions. “I was dead,” he said as though trying to convince himself.

No sooner had Elena left Teg's embrace than she was caught up in her mother's. “Do you hate me?” she asked, averting her gaze from Nakvin’s.

Nakvin’s laughter conveyed more shock than humor. “Why would I hate you?”

“I killed my father,” Elena said.

Nakvin gently turned Elena’s face until their eyes met, giving her silver irises a muted rose cast. “That's not who you are.”

“It is,” Elena said. “In my beginning, and forever.”

“Forever hasn’t happened yet,” said Nakvin.

Elena seemed about to speak, but she held her peace.

“You're a goddess?” Jaren asked.

“Not exactly,” Elena said. “I have Thera's soul, but not her power.”

Jaren pointed at Teg. “Then how did you do
that
?”

Elena cast a guarded glance over her shoulder. “I borrowed the power,” she said, “but whoever reads the Words of Creation won't need to borrow.”

Jaren's face hardened. “We have to stop Mephistophilis.”

“Yes,” Elena said. “We do.”

It seemed to Nakvin that every fiend of hell took wing to bar her flight. The lady Steersman found new reserves of courage and skill, forcing the
Exodus
through maneuvers she’d never dared to attempt in the
Shibboleth
.

Below the Wheel Jaren, Teg, and Deim turned the ship’s guns on the teeming horde whose numbers never seemed to diminish.

“Why bother with this?” asked Teg. “Can't Mephistophilis just throw us out?”

“No,” Elena said. “He can’t.”

Nakvin looked askance at her daughter. “You blocked him?”

“The oracle hates its maker. Controlling it takes most of his strength.”

Everyone started when a huge winged demon broke through the ship’s aura only to smack against the bridge window, leaving it streaked with black gore.

“I
am
keeping the devils out,” Elena said.

“It really would've helped if you'd done that the
last time
this happened!” said Jaren.

“There was no need to,” Elena said.

“Something’s happening!” said Nakvin. “The Circle’s tearing like paper.”

Jaren rushed to the foot of the Wheel. “It has to be Mephistophilis,” he said. “Can you tell where he is?”

“There’s an incredible force acting on the central ring.”

“Follow it,” said Jaren.

At Nakvin’s urging the
Exodus
plunged into the swarm of fiends, dashing them against its aura. Nakvin almost overshot her mark. She reduced speed and soared over the city that filled the central ring while its denizens bombarded the ship with Workings and their own claws and teeth. The ether-runner fired back, cutting into the fiery heart of Mephistophilis' domain.

Nakvin scanned the burning cityscape below. “I don’t see a gate,” she said.

“The bastard sealed the way behind him,” muttered Teg.

“Can you take us to him?” Jaren asked Elena.

“The ether doesn’t touch the Ninth Circle,” she said.

“That's all right,” said Nakvin. “I can handle it now that he's gone.”

The Steersmen formed a shape in her thoughts, and the Circle bent itself to her will. Rock rings several miles wide sank into rivers of magma, while others rose like new semicircular mountain ranges.

The upheaval started slowly but soon gained speed. Within seconds, the first dozen rings had turned several degrees from horizontal. Nakvin concentrated to maintain the delicate balance between rearranging the rings and maneuvering the ship between them.

Nakvin looked with pride upon the vast gyroscope she’d made of the Eighth Circle. She threaded the
Exodus
safely through the rings, but many of the demons failed to match her skill. Rotating landmasses ground some to red paste. Lava flows suddenly lacking their channels liquefied others. Nakvin shuddered when the city ring turned upside-down, spilling its occupants into nothingness.

The ether-runner hovered before the central ring, which now framed a tunnel leading into darkness. The Steersman had seen other gates, but this passage radiated a pitiless cold and despair more daunting than any before. A rime of frost lined its jagged rock throat, and a bitter wind howled from its depths.

“Take us in,” Jaren said.

The
Exodus
emerged into a stark domain of saw-toothed rock and ice ridges. Though the frozen massifs equaled the Fourth Circle’s tallest range, they were merely the foothills of sheer peaks that mounted the horizon like giants on the shoulders of dwarfs. Above, brooding grey skies pelted the ship with sleet and hail.

“This place feels different from the others,” Nakvin said.

“Yeah,” said Deim. “It’s more…
real
.”

“Is Mephistophilis here?” Jaren asked.

The lady Steersman winced. “Someone's trying to punch a hole in the world.”

“The oracle,” Elena said, and the far horizon turned to incandescent flame.

The flash that lit the sky nearly blinded Nakvin’s Wheel-sharpened eyes. She recovered just in time to avoid shearing the summit from a nearby mountain.

Below the Steersman’s dais, all hands stared at the luminous point cresting the horizon. The ominous sign cast a pall of silence over the bridge.

Nakvin was the first to speak. “I think it’s a gate.”

“Hold course,” Jaren said.

The
Exodus
soared into the gate's outer aura. White light poured from the pulsing nimbus, washing out mountaintops for miles around.

Nakvin looked down at her friends and loved ones. Her fear for them strained her resolve, but the lot was cast. An unknown force seized control of the Wheel, and the ship lurched ahead. White light flared through the window, bleaching out all color and obscuring every shape.

Sight returned with shocking suddenness. Nakvin rubbed her eyes and peered at the world outside, half eager and half afraid to behold the forbidden realm beyond the gate. A blue-green sphere quickly grew to fill the starry curtain of space.

“Slow us down!” Jaren cried.

In control of the vessel once again, Nakvin hastened to comply. Everyone grunted in unison as the sudden stop made them lurch forward.

“That's Mithgar,” Deim said, sounding as though he’d been cheated.

Nakvin’s fear and confusion gave way to the recognition of a sight she’d seen a thousand times. Somehow, the gate had deposited the
Exodus
in high orbit over the First Sphere.

“Can someone please explain this?” Jaren asked.

“Sure,” Nakvin said. “Either Mephistophilis tampered with the gate, or Mithgar was the starting point of the universe.”

“The cradle of existence would have better liquor,” said Teg.

A tremor coursed through the deck as something struck the ship.

“What now?” Jaren growled.

“There's your answer,” Nakvin said, pointing to a region of space above the northwest continent’s east coast. There, hundreds of oblong metallic shapes swarmed amid bursts of light that might have been thunderstorms but for their altitude.

The captain shot a frantic glance at Teg. “Try to raise commercial traffic control at the Ostrith Guild house.”

“You want their local dining guide?” Teg asked. “We did skip lunch.”

“Just the date!”

“You're the boss.” Teg opened a text only channel and scanned Ostrith CTC's reply.

“What day is it?” Jaren asked.

Teg slowly turned, all mirth gone from his face. “It's Wellday, Germinas First.”

“A month,” Jaren said, pounding his fist on the console. “We've been gone for a month!”

“I've got eyes on the battle,” Nakvin said. “The Guild's eating the navy alive.”

“Something's wrong,” said Jaren. “Time moves slower in hell, but that doesn’t account for a missing month.”

“The baal’s stalling us,” said Teg. “He’s got Tzimtzum all to himself.”

“We can worry about that later,” said Jaren. “Right now I’m more interested in why those Guild ships are ignoring us.”

“Didn’t you feel that impact?” Nakvin asked.

“They’re taking potshots,” Jaren said, “but we’re a far bigger threat than the navy, and the Guild knows it. They’re waiting for something.”

“Say the word, and we’re gone,” said Nakvin.

“I think you should consider Nakvin's proposal,” said Teg.

“I made a promise to Randolph,” Jaren said. “He might already be dead, but his men are dying while we sit here and watch.”

“Do you really think we can win this one?” asked Teg.

Nakvin watched her captain deliberate in silence. She knew his decision before he announced it.

“All hands to gunnery stations,” Jaren said, rushing toward a weapon console. “Is Randolph's ship in sight?”

“I see it,” Nakvin said. “It's in worse shape than when we left.”

“Move us between the
Gambler's Fallacy
and the Guild fleet,” Jaren said. “Fire at will on the enemy.”

Dilar rushed about the auxiliary bridge, doing his best to manage the chaos. There was plenty to be managed. The rebels had emerged from the ether to find a Guild force twice their number waiting over Mithgar. The shock had hardly subsided before heavy damage forced the bridge crew to evacuate.

The commander had stayed to help the wounded, sure that it would mean his death. Instead, the delay saved him from the lift fire that claimed Randolph and four other officers.

Defying the archetype of a ship's master coolly directing his men from the eye of the storm, the commander stayed on his feet, ordering—and sometimes physically pushing—crewmen too stunned by the carnage to execute their duties.

Dilar finished entering a firing solution for a stupefied gunner, and was dashing across the bridge to help extinguish an electrical fire, when his steersman's voice cut through the din like a tolling bell.

“I see it!” she said with near-religious euphoria.

The commander set down the canister of fire suppression foam and turned toward the Wheel. “See
what
, lieutenant?”

The woman's expression alternated between bafflement and wonder. “I don't know, sir. It's huge. I think it might be…” The steersman trailed off as though voicing her hope would extinguish it.

Dilar didn’t need to hear the rest. His first impression of the black ship had been quite similar. “Get us a better look,” he said.

The view through the forward screen whirled away from the dense line of attacking craft toward the ironic serenity of the star field beyond Mithgar's orbit. Something colossal was moving toward the sphere, its coming told only by the vast swaths of stars eclipsed in its path. A pallid green circle that might have been a dead moon shone at the head of the dark mass.

The clamor on the bridge stilled as the
Exodus
overshadowed the wounded dreadnaught. It advanced past the rebel line, imposing itself between the
Gambler's Fallacy
and the Guild fleet.

Dilar saw a series of bright flashes partially obscured by the giant vessel's bulk. The constellation of explosions that rocked the Guild ships a moment later outlined the
Exodus'
angular hull in sharp relief.

No cheers went up from the dreadnaught's crew. The commander knew that they were too battered for thoughts of victory to take root. Every face looked on in silent awe as the ship that many considered a phantom out of sailor's lore took up their fallen banner.

Dilar wore the same astonished expression as the rest, but his thoughts kept turning. Several of the scattered navy ships were rallying to the black ether-runner. The Guild vessels, surprised by their new foe's arrival, seemed ripe to break formation—if the rebels could reform their own line before the enemy launched a counterattack. Dilar had always distrusted hope, which seemed little more than wishful thinking, but seeing the
Exodus
wade into the Guild's front line brought faint stirrings of optimism.

Then he saw the dark shapes approaching from the moon and hope fled like a shadow.

Had Nakvin not been forced to divide her attention between piloting and gunnery, she might have noticed the net drawing around her sooner. As it happened, she didn't see the huge curved arrowhead and its escort of four smaller dreadnaughts until they’d nearly closed to port.

“We have a serious problem!” she shouted.

“Turn us to maximize fire arcs bearing on those targets!” said Jaren.

Nakvin spent every ounce of her will urging the
Exodus
to turn. The black ship was fast for its size, but unwieldy. It swiveled toward the enemy with the striking yet deliberate motion of a breaching whale.

The dreadnaughts fired. Three warheads impacted behind the port wing, punching a tight pattern of flame-ringed holes into the tail section’s ventral side. The sympathetic shock drove Nakvin against the rail, and a sleeping terror stirred.

“Are you all right?” Jaren asked.

“It feels like someone took a hammer to my back,” Nakvin said with a groan.

Nakvin followed the battle half through her senses and half through the Wheel, which seemed to host its own growing awareness. Teg dashed from the starboard gunnery station to a port-firing weapon while the
Serapis’
aura absorbed Jaren’s shot. Deim alone maintained a semblance of calm, and when he fired the port turret three out of four incendiary spheres hit home, turning the leftmost dreadnaught’s hangar into an elemental furnace. The battleship listed in its death throes, but its sister ships and their monstrous leader pressed on.