The Lost King (66 page)

My lady?

Maigrey closed her
eyes, weak with a relief she was extremely careful to keep hidden.
Adrenaline, apparently, had reestablished the link between them.

My lord!

Where are you?

God only knows. No,
I take that back. He probably doesn't. I can't see a damn thing now,
but before the lights went out it looked as if I was in some sort of
salvage hangar—where they bring planes to scavenge.

I'm in the same type
of place. I have the impression I'm near you, my lady. Can you sense
Dion?

Yes. I can sense him
and you, my lord. You seem to be nearer to me than he is. The boy's
some distance away and . . . and he's in terrible pain, Sagan.
They're torturing him.

The quicker we move,
the quicker we'll reach him. For the time being, we must concentrate
on each other. Our thoughts hnk us and will guide us together.

Like iron to a magnet,
Maigrey thought.

Set your plane's
controls to self-destruct in thirty minutes if you don't return to
give the shutdown command.

So, that's your
strategy. That's how you plan to destroy the mothership and us, too,
if we don't succeed. Maigrey rigged the computer. Sagan's thoughts
came to her. "Mark five, four, three, two, one." She
repeated the countdown and on "one" set the computer's
clock to read 1800, ticking downward. Her inner clock in her brain
registered and began ticking along with the computer.

1799. 1798.

Before leaving, Maigrey
inserted the needles of the bloodsword into her right palm. In her
left, she could either carry a lasgun or a grenade. She'd never been
that good a shot with her left hand, and so opted for the grenade.
Pulling herself up out of the hatch, she dropped down over the side
and landed heavily on the deck below.

The darkness was a
living, breathing entity. It wrapped around her, smothered her. It
had weight and form, and she involuntarily stooped and ducked her
head, though she knew perfectly well that she was standing in a vast,
wide-open hangar. The starjewel shone brightly but did not
illuminate. She activated the bloodsword. Guided by its pulsating
light, she made her way through the wreckage.

Cables, like snakes,
wrapped around her ankles or dangled from the overhead. Sharp bits of
twisted metal jutted up out of the wrecked deck. She moved as quickly
as she could by the sword's dim light, not daring to cause it to
shine brighter for fear of expending too much of her own energy.
Consequently she stumbled and tripped and once stepped in a sticky
substance that clung to her boot.

"Dead Corasian!"
Maigrey almost gagged and, with a final lunge, reached a doorway.

Here she halted to
catch her breath, shake her hair out of her face, and reconnoiter.

A long, wide corridor
with smooth decks designed to accommodate the wheeled robots
stretched off to her right and to her left. Sagan was to her left,
she sensed, and moving toward her. Dion was somewhere to her left and
straight ahead, within the heart of the ship.

The corridor was empty,
and Maigrey was puzzled. She had expected Corasians to be whizzing to
the hangar deck to investigate the explosion. But then she
considered. No, why would they? To them it must seem nothing more
than a malfunction of one of the dead planes they'd salvaged. As for
loss of life, a few cells of the massive body had simply winked out.
The enemy had other, more urgent problems—such as the attacking
fighters, the bombardment of
Phoenix
, and the torturing of
captured pilots.

Dion was still linked
to the bloodsword. Through it, Maigrey shared his pain and fear and
suffering. It was dreadful, and it took all of her discipline to
shove it into a corner of her being and firmly ignore it. Risking a
little more light so that she could see where she was going, she
began moving rapidly, warily, down the corridor.

Nothing blocked her
way; the deck remained level, the corridor bent around at a slight
angle. She was moving nearer and nearer Sagan; she could feel, in
fact, his mounting impatience for her to reach him. The corridor took
a sharp turn to the right. She followed it and nearly collided with
two Corasians emerging from a doorway.

Maigrey had the
advantage. Although taken by surprise at the enemy's sudden
appearance, she had been expecting trouble and was prepared to fight.
The Corasians were caught with their wheels locked, as the saying
goes.

The bloodsword slashed
a blue streak and a robot head went hurtling through the air, struck
a wall, and blew up. Maigrey's return stroke cleaved the plastisteel
body of the second Corasian, but not, apparently, before it had found
time to sound the alarm. Klaxons dinned in her ears. She could sense
Sagan fuming.

You're wasting time,
my lady!

What the hell was I
supposed to do?

The first Corasian had
toppled over. Still alive, it was unable to operate its body and was
rolling helplessly about like an overturned turtle. The second,
however, had broken free of its split case and was oozing out of the
plastisteel. Its orange, fiery mass moved at alarming speed,
slithering across the deck for her feet Maigrey slashed at it with
her sword and was astounded to see it keep coming. If anything, it
flamed more strongly!

"Sagan!" she
gasped, stumbling backward.

Change the polarity!
Negative energy! Switch to the shield!

Of course. She should
have thought of that. But then it'd been seventeen years and she'd
never actually fought one of these creatures face to face.

Maigrey activated the
sword's shielding beam and, at its touch, the Corasian blackened and
hissed and began to smoke.

To your left, my
lady! Sagan instructed. I've found a corridor that leads to the boy!
Swiftly!

Maigrey dashed down the
passageway and saw, suddenly, to her right another corridor opening
into hers. It was lit by orange light reflecting off the metal
walls—an orange light that was growing rapidly brighter. She
could hear the whirring and clicking of robot bodies. To reach Sagan,
Maigrey would have to pass the opening of the corridor. She would be
an easy target with no hope of cover.

I see them, my lady.
Come to me.

Side by side. I'll be
with you. Trust.

Hiere was no time, no
choice. She caught her breath and lunged forward, running headlong
down the corridor, straight toward the approaching enemy. Flicking on
the grenade, she hurled it into the corridor as she sped past. The
shattering explosion nearly blew her off her feet. She was thrown up
against a bulkhead. Pushing herself away from it, shaken but unhurt,
she saw, out of the corner of her eye, that she had killed some but
not all. The orange light was still hideously bright. The robots
fired. Flaming bolts flared around her. A flash of pain tore through
the flesh of her left arm.

The iron to the magnet.

A strong hand caught
hold of her and pulled her close within the circle of a protecting
arm. Sagan raised his sword, the shield activated, deflecting the
blasts. Maigrey pressed her body against his, giving him room to
maneuver the sword, careful to deactivate her own. Sagan's arm
tightened around her almost convulsively. In a moment, they would
have to fight. He would release her and she would take up her
position at his side. But for this brief instant they were once again
each other's best comfort, each other's best hope.

Maigrey could hear his
heart beating in his chest, feel the lean hard muscles of his thighs
taut against her, the bone and sinew and muscle of his encircling
arm. And the enhancement came back, enveloping them, surging through
them, bursting around them like a glittering shower of stars.

Well, she thought
shakily, so it hadn't been adrenaline that had linked them after all.

"Across the
corridor!" he ordered, somewhat breathlessly, and almost shoved
her away from him.

Maigrey acted on the
split-second of his thought and was ready. Her bloodsword flared to
life. Sagan leapt forward, charging the enemies, and Maigrey was at
his side. She never touched one, she swore it, but a concussive blast
shattered the plastisteel robot bodies bearing down on them and
suddenly the corridor was silent and intensely, blindingly dark.

Maigrey caught a
sobbing breath and waited impatiently for her eyes to adjust,
although she knew it wouldn't make any difference. It would still be
just as dark. A flash of pain that wasn't her own made her flinch,

"Dion!" she
whispered. "We're . . . losing him!"

Sagan caught her by the
elbow. "This way. Down the corridor. I found it . . ." He,
too, was short of breath.

. . before you brought
the . . . army down us."

Another passageway
opened up to their right and Maigrey felt, like a cool wind blowing
against her cheek, a sense of the boy emanating from it.

But, behind them, the
darkness was growing steadily brighter.

They ran for it.
Maigrey's legs ached, her breath burned in her throat and tore
through her lungs. The mystical power, it seemed, enhanced the mind
but not the body, and there was only so much strength the mind could
lend to muscles that had been doing their duty for forty-plus years
and seemed to think they deserved better than this.

The knowledge that they
were nearing Dion and her own determination not to let Sagan know she
was in any way weak spurred Maigrey to keep up with the Warlord
nearly step for step. If she noted that he was running slower than he
used to or heard him begin to labor for breath himself, she was too
scared, too exhausted to register the fact.

"Stop!" Sagan
came to a halt so suddenly that Maigrey stumbled into him. He
steadied her, his arm around her waist. "Listen, I hear him."

Maigrey leaned against
the Warlord, straining to hear above the pounding of blood in her
ears. It wasn't a cry, but it might have been a silent scream. She
wasn't certain whether she heard it in her head or in her heart.

"There!" She
pointed down the corridor to a half-open door on their right. "That
room."

"The one with the
bright orange glow," Sagan said.

The light behind them
was growing brighter, now that they had stopped, and she could hear,
too, the whirring of wheels.

"Can you see him,
my lady?"

Maigrey closed her
eyes, trying to calm her fear and excitement enough to concentrate.
The vision came to her almost immediately, however. She'd forgotten
about the enhancement.

"He's lying on a
steel table, like a surgical table. There are four . . . no . . .
seven Corasians in the room with him. Two at the foot of the table,
two on his left, one on his right, and two at the head. His feet are
toward the door."

"Four will have
their backs to us." Sagan reached to his belt, detached a
lasgun, and handed it to her. "Aim high. I hope to God the boy
won't sit up."

"I don't think he
can," Maigrey murmured. She glanced at the gun and shook her
head. "I'm not a very good shot, voa know."

Sagan looked down at
her. She could see the starjewel glitter in his eyes that were darker
than the darkness. "I don't think it will matter," he said,
and she felt the power heave and surge and tremble between them.

Maigrey reached for the
gun. Their hands touched. A burning sensation shot through her arm,
hurting her worse than the Corasian laser. She snatched back her
hand.

"And don't forget
to change the polarization," Sagan admonished.

"I wasn't going
to!" Maigrey snapped, trying to convince herself that she was
telling the truth, though she knew she was so keyed up and strung out
that she would never have remembered. Hurriedly, hands shaking, she
reset the gun and gripped it tightly.

Back pressed against
the wall, hoping to escape immediate observation if one of the enemy
happened to stick its sensors out the door, she eased forward. Sagan
was by her side, a grenade in his left hand. Maigrey saw that he wore
several attached to his belt and she cursed herself for not
remembering to do the same.

After all, it'd been
seventeen years!

Reaching the door, she
paused, drew a deep breath, then lunged into the room. A quick glance
showed her the boy still lying on the table. She raised the gun and
fired four times in rapid succession, aiming high and in the general
direction of those she was supposed to take out. Plastisteel
exploded. Maigrey had a vague impression of a blast in the corridor
behind her.

The four Corasians were
no longer standing around the table; two were lying dead at her feet,
a third was helpless, and a fourth was crawling out of its shell.
Maigrey fired twice more and ran into the room.

Sagan plunged after
her, the two never speaking but reacting to each other's thoughts,
moving together in a chaotic dance to a music only they could hear.

Maigrey fired at the
two standing at Dion's head. Sagan's sword whistled. He cut down the
one standing on the far side of the steel table. Another Corasian
that Maigrey hadn't seen emerged suddenly from behind some sort of
diabolical machine.

Left
! his
thought came to her.

She turned, set her
foot on a piece of something, and lost her balance. Her shot went
wide. The Corasian aimed for her, point-blank. Sagan lunged at it,
caught hold of the robotic body in his hands, lifted it, and hurled
it against the machine. Fire spurted, electricity crackled, smoke
spewed out. And. for the moment, they were safe. 1040 and ticking.

Bone of my bone, and
flesh of my flesh.

Genesis 2:23

Maigrey ran for the
boy. Sagan returned to guard the doorway.

Metal clamps secured
Dion's hands and feet. Maigrey sliced through them with her sword,
casting Dion worried glances as she worked. The bloodsword's blade
burned with an eerie luminescence, giving the boy's pallid face a
whitish blue cast, turning the red-golden hair purple. A black stream
of blood trickled from Dion's mouth, but, Maigrey determined swiftly,
it didn't come from any internal injury. In the extremity of his
pain, he'd bitten through his tongue. She could find no other wounds
on his body.