The Last Cycle Read online

  “And the Vincere?” Sax says. “Won’t they just destroy the Meridia from space?”

  “You would not be attempting this if you had no plan for that, I hope,” the Amigga says. “If you don’t, then this whole mission is folly.”

  So Sax mentions the Priority Beam. Shares his goal. The Amigga agrees. Provides Sax with access to the main lift all the way up. As the golden Flaum puts away the screen, showing the Oratus scrambling into their new lift, Sax does the same. Rushing back through the caves, having made a promise to a creature that should’ve been his greatest enemy. But he does it anyway, slipping inside the lift the Amigga calls for him.

  Suction sounds as the lift pressurizes and begins its rocketing assent to the very top of the tallest tower. Towards one more chance, one more leap to save his pair, his cause, and himself.

  19 Human Spirit

  The lift descends for a long time. Far longer than any of our other rides, and down enough that I feel heavier. I suppose if you have a tower that goes all the way out of the atmosphere, the gravity might change too. Malo and I keep our metal bars in opposite hands, and keep our others held. If we’re going out, we’re going out together.

  This level is far different from the research ones we’ve been exploring up till now. A large central area comes clear as soon as the doors whoosh aside, and dominating that, standing atop a dark crimson floor that bears a startling number of scratches, is a white-formed chair holding Viera. She’s tied, with some sort of metal bands, around the chair. T’Oli, its two eyestalks giving the Ooblot away, is wrapped around Viera’s chest, offering its hardened armor to my friend.

  Surrounding Viera, from a distance, are large glass walls behind which glow plenty of terminal lights. Machines I don’t recognize loom tall in the the shadows, some throwing pinpoints of red light at us, at Viera, like unblinking eyes.

  “Ready?” Malo asks, speaking in Charre.

  “Ready.” I take the lead, and feel a slight sadness as my hand slips out of his. “Viera! Are you alive?”

  The Lunare’s ash-haired head jerks up at my words. Her face has a bloody scratch on one cheek, and as I get further into the room, I can see she’s sporting a few more wounds too; the clean silver suit she had coming off of the Nunilite has splotches of red all over to go with tears along the shoulders - she’s been dragged. It’s enough to make me angry.

  That anger doesn’t help me catch the mirrored Oratus waiting inside, to the right of the lift. I only get the smallest warning from Viera’s eyes, from her mouth starting to form the words, and then the Oratus strikes. I try to raise the bar, but the creature ignores me and pounces on Malo instead. The warrior gets a single frantic swipe in, one that the Oratus catches with a midclaw. As the creature’s tail cuts Malo’s legs out from under him, the Oratus tears away Malo’s weapon and throws it to the side.

  I don’t even get in a swing before the Oratus has its shimmering claws to Malo’s throat.

  “I think that’s quite enough,” Ferrolite announces, floating into the central room through a door in the glass. The Amigga’s added a new array to its floating microjets - a pair of spindly metal arms, both of which end in what look like miners. “You understand the terms, human? Say your Oath, and all of you go free. Fail to do so, and your friends pay the price.”

  “That wasn’t the deal.” It’s a weak comeback, but with Malo one slip of a claw away from instant death, I’m having trouble thinking clearly. “You didn’t say—”

  “No, I didn’t,” Ferrolite cuts me off. “That’s the way the galaxy works, Kaishi. You always have a second plan.”

  The room’s frozen while Ferrolite basks in its apparent victory.

  “Kaishi, don’t do it,” Viera says this time, and her voice carries all the pain she’s in. “We’re gonna die anyway. Don’t give that blob the satisfaction.”

  “Oh, you’ll say the words,” Ferrolite says. “Because if you don’t, I’ll make sure Earth gets razed to nothing. It’ll burn. We can’t have rogue species polluting the galaxy.” Ferrolite pauses. “Wait, doesn’t Earth have a moon? I think Kolas could use one more test of his little toy, don’t you?”

  I drop the bar to the floor. It clangs loud, which at least gets Ferrolite to shut up.

  “You want me to talk? Show me where, because I’m guessing you’re not the one that needs to hear it.”

  “Ignos really did a wonder with you humans. So perceptive.” Ferrolite gestures with its miners towards the chair Viera’s occupying, and as it does so, those metal bands looping between Viera’s arms, legs, and the chair snap open. “Sit there, and look straight ahead.”

  Fine. I head over to Viera, reach down to help her up, when a red bolt from Ferrolite’s miner hits the space between us.

  “No helping. She can crawl,” the Amigga says.

  I throw Ferrolite a glare.

  “Don’t,” Viera whispers through gritted teeth. “Not worth it. I can move.”

  Viera falls forward, putting out her arms, catching herself on her elbows as she leaves the chair. T’Oli, for its part, swirls around Viera to help her lift her arms, her knees, as my friend crawls over to the glass wall and sits back against it. Her face is drained, and those red marks are larger.

  The chair’s empty now, so I sit in it. Press my back against the white. I keep my arms and legs, though, out of the binders. Something Ferrolite probably notices, but the Amigga doesn’t bother commenting on it. Instead, the creature floats in front and to the side of me, makes sure I can still see those bright red pinpoints of light leering down from the glass wall.

  “Now, put on your best face,” Ferrolite says. “This is going to go out to the entire galaxy. All of civilization will hear your Oath. Are you ready?”

  “Is that a question?”

  “I suppose it isn’t. When the little lights turn green, the words to say will project onto the glass in front of you. Repeat them exactly, or your friends will die.”

  My legs are loose, my palms are sweaty. I’m breathing, but it’s short and shallow. This is it. This is the moment.

  The lights blink green. Sharp, grass green. Like magic, wisping on the plain glass surface, white letters form up into a set of simple sentences. Five lines, and that’s it. Humanity’s a thrall to a species I despise, an organization I hate.

  “Are you ready, Malo? Viera?” I say in Charre. “I’m not going to say the words.”

  “In our standard language, please,” Ferrolite says to my right. “It’s important we be able to understand you.”

  Viera, keeping her head down, mutters, “I’m with you.”

  “Me too,” Malo echoes, his voice stretched with the claw at his throat.

  T’Oli, for its part, doesn’t understand what I’m saying but seems to get the gist. The Ooblot slimes off of Viera and blinks its eyes at me.

  “When I say,” I shout as Ferrolite continues to yell at me for talking in the wrong tongue. “I’m going to go for the Amigga. You three handle the Oratus for as long as you can. If this is being recorded, it will show we didn’t give up. We fought to the end.”

  “Kaishi!” Ferrolite’s booming its voice from all the speakers now. “Stop, or I’ll have this one kill your friends anyway!”

  “Just a prayer,” I say to the Amigga in words it understands. “For us, on this new journey.” Then I take a breath, this one full, until it feels like every inch of me is tight and ready. “Go!”

  I burst off the chair towards Ferrolite, who responds with a startled shout. I don’t see what happens to Malo, but given the sudden angry hissing erupting from behind me, I gather my warrior isn’t dead. That’s all the attention I can spare him, though, because Ferrolite’s floating back and trying to get its miners angled at me. Unfortunately for the Amigga, I’m small. Fast. And I’ve had plenty of practice juking around trees and out of lines of bow fire.

  Ferrolite’s trying to get back to its glass door. I jump and one of its miner shots streaks by me, the mask keeping me safe from any harm,
and I tackle the Amigga. Hit its metal arms and shove its floating body out of the doorway and back into the glass wall. Shrieks abound as Ferrolite’s exoskeleton scratches the wall’s surface. I’m hanging on it now, looping my left arm around Ferrolite’s right side, and my hands are grabbing for the miner gripped in its holster.

  The Amigga’s saying things too, threats and commands and shouts, but I don’t care. The miner’s all that matters. But I can’t get it. I’m trying, tugging and pulling and it’s not coming out from its socket. Ferrolite spins, puts my back against the glass wall, and then presses me against it. The Amigga’s gray-blob form is so ugly up close, and I try to look away but it’s hard when the creature has me pinned. When it’s crushing the air out of me.

  I bring up my knees and kick out against the Amigga’s spongy-soft form. Microjets might be good for floating but they’re not much for resistance, and my kick gets me enough leverage to let go of Ferrolite and drop to the floor. Almost at the same time as I hit the ground, I see Malo fly across the room, red lines slicing his chest, and slam into the glass wall opposite me. Cracks form where Malo’s shoulder hits, and he’s slow to get up, but he’s lying near my old metal bar. As Ferrolite re-orients my way, the mirrored Oratus snatches T’Oli off its back and opens its toothy maw.

  “All this fighting, and you’ve still lost,” Ferrolite says. “Instead of your loyalty, everyone is seeing your failure.”

  I stare at the green lights behind the Amigga. If every one of those lights is an eye through which the galaxy is seeing our last moments, then they’ll see that humans won’t give up.

  “Yeah, well, you’re ugly.” I push myself away from the wall and spring at Ferrolite again. “Slide it now, Malo!” I say the words in Charre, hoping the warrior can hear me, can still act.

  To the side, I see Viera make a swipe with Malo’s metal bar, knocking aside the mirrored Oratus’ Ooblot-clutching foreclaw. My reward for the glance is a shot to the chest, one my suit catches, and partially absorbs. Burning pain ripples from the spot, but given how close I’ve come to death before now, it only makes me laugh.

  This time, I go below. Duck beneath Ferrolite’s shooting arms and snag the metal bar as Malo slides it towards me. Ferrolite wheels itself around, expecting me to go completely underneath its bobbing body. Instead, I back up, using my feet and their grip to get behind the Amigga and line up for a hard swing. I connect, delivering as strong a stroke I can muster. The blow sends the Ferrolite careening forward into the glass wall near Malo, and the Amigga gives off a howl of purple rage to match its bruising skin.

  Advantages shouldn’t be lost, so I follow up the swing with a three-step approach, raising the bar above my head and planning to bring it down on what should be a final, destructive blow. Instead, just as I catch my own face reflected in the glass, the mirrored Oratus slams me with its tail, catching my stomach and flinging me, metal bar and all, back across the room. I hit the glass hard and things go hazy for a moment, with a few crystals falling around around me.

  When I shake the blurs loose, I get a grim picture: the mirrored Oratus is helping Ferrolite get itself turned around. Malo’s still on the ground, though he’s at least sitting up. Viera’s motionless over by the lift doors, and T’Oli’s sliming my way, but the Ooblot’s sporting a series of new dark lines on its cream-colored skin, and one of its eyes is gone entirely, the stalk waving with nothing more than a bloody stump on top.

  Looks like this is it. I get to my feet, brace against the wall to stand, the metal bar in my left hand. T’Oli gets to me and, without a word, slithers up and brings a sword to my right.

  “We’re not giving up!” I muster a broken shout. “You will not win!”

  “No,” Ferrolite responds, synthed voice tight with pain. “But neither will you.”

  The mirror Oratus echoes its master’s words with a deep hiss. I’m ready to accept the end, and give one last look of what I hope is determination to those green lights. Let them see what I’m dying for, what I’m fighting for. We will fall, but we will fall free.

  Ferrolite bids its minion to attack first, and the Oratus is happy to oblige. It reads my new weapon though, and takes a cautious approach. Its talons step near one at a time while I circle towards the center. Try to give myself enough space. Ferrolite could shoot me, but it seems content to watch as its Oratus rends me to pieces. Or maybe the collisions with the wall damaged its miners. Either way, it’s me against a giant lizard.

  “C’mon.” I spit at the beast. “I’ve faced worse.”

  “Don’t think that’s true,” T’Oli patters quietly.

  I’m as surprised as anyone when I laugh at the words. One last joke from the Ooblot. As I wipe away a sudden set of tears, the Oratus makes its move.

  Its tail comes first, snaking around my right and driving me back a step, and while I’m retreating, the Oratus cuts its strike short and jumps at me. I try to stop, try to reset my feet to stab forward, but I’m off-balance and the swing comes too slow. The Oratus clubs me with its fore- and midclaws, sending me flying back to the ground in front of the lifts. Before I can move, the Oratus jumps again, this time landing with its talons near my legs, their claws putting pressure into my ankles.

  I’m trapped. I’m dead.

  The Oratus hisses, looks at me and opens its jaws.

  Which, for some reason, make a whooshing noise.

  “Guess we chose the right floor after all,” a second hiss, this one deeper, angrier, comes from behind me. “Get off.”

  The voice doesn’t wait for an answer. A giant red-black Oratus flies over my face, colliding with the mirrored Oratus and driving it off of me. The red Oratus grips its enemy with all four claws and whips the creature into the weakened glass wall on the right, and the whole thing comes down in a shower of glistening shards.

  I start to stand when another shape whistles by above me, green scales catching in the sparkling lights of the fallen glass. Even as the mirrored Oratus struggles up, tries to untangle itself from the mangled machines, its eyes on the red Oratus in the room’s center, the new, green Oratus scales the wall behind it. I feel a gentle pressure on my shoulder and a soft hiss at my ear, “Stay down, little human.”

  The hiss has a verve, and as I sit back, my eyes are drawn to that green Oratus, now jumping from the wall as the mirrored enemy gets up on its talons. At the motion, a name clicks through my stunned mind, and I know its Lan making the dive down at the mirrored Oratus, know it’s Lan wrapping her tail around my enemy’s neck, pivoting and, with her momentum, flinging the mirrored Oratus out of the pile and right towards the red Oratus.

  Who makes the most of the opportunity, catching and clamping down on the mirrored Oratus with her claws, holding the beast steady. Bas jumps over me, goes three long lunges, and uses a swift snap of her jaws to take care of the trapped monster. And that’s it. With a clamp of those jaws, the fight is over.

  Which is when I notice Ferrolite is gone.

  20 Apex

  With a hiss and the clicking clank of opening locks, Sax reaches the top of the Meridia. Gravity here lessens its pull on Sax’s talons, so that when he steps through the door in the Meridia’s topmost chamber, Sax floats a brief moment before touching down on the black metal floor. There’s no cushion, no concession made to comfort.

  Instead, effort seems to have gone into looks. The floor vanishes away beneath him, a wave of shimmering dark tiles broken only in the center where, like a perfect bubble rising from a lake of tar, sits the Priority Beam. On its curved, domed surface, small nodules jab in pinks and blues. Fluorescent, short or long and always with a rounded, metallic top. They point out in all directions including back towards where Sax stands now.

  What draws Sax’s eyes most, though, is the view above.

  The top of the Meridia soars above Aspicis’ atmosphere. Kissing space itself. As if in celebration of their hubris, the Chorus capped the Meridia with a clear shell. Transparent, and yet magnetized, electrified or in some other way t
he Sax doesn’t know, it’s enhanced to block the brutal cascade of harmful radiation and potential debris strikes. A faint white glows at the very edges where the glass comes into contact with the black walls surrounding Sax, which rise just over his head.

  The Chorus use the view they’ve created, too. Dancing, luminous red bolts arc back and forth from one long antenna to another through the space overhead. A light show, a promise of Chorus power and resources. The display blazes and obstructs the view of the cruisers and starships assembling above the planet. Obscures the pops of fiery explosions as some of them fight each other.

  It seems not every Vincere band is siding with the Chorus. Evva may even have sent a short-wave message to friends she has in the system. But that’s not what Sax is here for. What he needs to do, with this beam will let him do, is tell the rest of the galaxy to come. To help them. To win.

  What Sax is looking for as he goes into the room is a terminal. But there isn’t one. The floor itself gives a hint of something - tiles are easy to retract and shift around, but there’s no clue how.

  Perhaps the Amigga down below might know. Sax casts around his eyes, looking for a camera, something that he could use to send a message to that unlikely ally. The walls of this level, though, are bare.

  But, as a click and grind announces, these walls are not simple.

  One of the black pieces behind Sax slides away, and then another and another until several meters worth of doors open, revealing a glaring white room opposite the lift were Sax arrived from.

  Filling the new space, floating, spinning its shiny silver rings, is the First Chair. Two rings of microjets, swirling to keep the Amigga aloft, while the weapons on two others settle on Sax. Still another covered in buzzing communications devices comes to life.

  “We built a bunker here for this purpose,” the First Chair says in its distinct, calm monotone. “There was always a chance that the Chorus would need to call for help, and the Priority Beam makes for a good final refuge.”