Reality's Plaything 4: Savants Ascendant Read online

  Daena pulled her hands away from her ears, which she had reflexively grabbed in response to the roar of the mecha’s weaponry firing. She glanced over the balcony rail. “Damn. What does Quasar need us for?”

  Hiram’s massive head pivoted and he swung part way around to look at her. He raised an eyebrow as though surprised she did not know the answer to the question. “We are not very effective against the science your folk call magick.”

  “Ah.”

  “Well,” Bannor said. “We better get—spit!” He lurched back as an enormous figure shimmered into being right by them.

  The tattooing and dress were those of Baronian, but his flesh looked to be made of golden metal. The intruder was big even for one of the aliens with disproportionately thick arms and legs that made him look like a giant that had been trapped in a box so it could only grow wider instead of taller. The juggernaut’s face was covered with a black featureless mask with only square holes for the eyes and mouth. A flare of red light erupted in the mask’s slots and it pulled out two weapons that looked like huge cleavers with saw-tooth edges.

  Despite its mass, the creature moved with hurricane speed, and it lunged before Bannor even had a chance to think to dodge. Hiram caught the beast in mid-leap with one of his swords, smashing the blade home in its torso.

  The Baronian monstrosity slammed down on the balcony with an impact that made the floor shudder. Despite the brutal power of Hiram’s attack, the thick creature rolled back to its feet with an angry roar that echoed through the slit in its mask.

  The Kriar healer whirled into the Baronian with both weapons. Blade met blade and sparks flared as the two creatures clashed. The resounding of metal made Bannor reel back clutching his ears in pain. Hiram scored again on the big creature with a hit strong enough to cleave a dragon in half. The Kriar metal simply flared and sparked as it rebounded from the gleaming gold skin of the marauder and knocked it back.

  Daena raised her weapon and began firing. The shots whined and rasped as they deflected from the thing’s shiny skin. Bannor raced into the chamber, grabbed one of the weapons off the rack, cranked the power, and added his attacks to Daena’s.

  His shots, like hers, did nothing to slow the creature as it leaped at Hiram. Weapons clanged together and the behemoth smashed the Kriar healer back with a heave. Hiram dug in with his clawed feet and fought back.

  “Daena, blow it off the balcony!”

  The girl raised a hand, bluish light flickering across the surface of her skin. “They’re too close. I’ll hit Hiram too!”

  This was not good. He thumbed the comms on. **Need help on the balcony! Something new, it’s big and inside the shield. Nothing hurts the blasted thing!**

  He heard several acknowledgements but everyone obviously had their hands full.

  Damn, this was going to hurt. He drew a breath, focused, and grabbed for the creature’s threads. His nola hit, pinched down—and rebounded.

  Bannor staggered back gripping the side of his head. “Spit. Even its threads are armored!”

  The behemoth waded into the hail of blows that Hiram launched. The Kriar healer struggled valiantly to pierce the creature’s impossibly tough hide but his attacks were having less and less effect. Hiram threw down one of his swords and thrust a massive hand into the juggernaut’s face. The two weapons on his shoulders whined up to speed.

  Bannor grabbed Daena and yanked her aside as the Kriar mecha’s weaponry unleashed at close range, tearing not only into the Baronian but Hiram’s gripping hand and arm as well. Blasts of energy rebounded, tore through the balcony, shredding and pulverizing everything around the two combatants.

  With a terrifying bellow, the bloodied Baronian monster thrust through the hail of energy and grabbed the spinning weapons. Hiram screamed as his guns detonated in a hail of fragments, knocking him to the floor of the blast-cratered balcony. The creature leaped on the already injured healer, ripping, tearing and pummeling.

  The healer cried out, flailing with its severed arm and trying to kick and swing with it’s blast riddled arms and legs.

  “No!” Daena thrust herself to her feet, threw down her weapons and clenched her fists. Sparks flashed around her body and her skin bubbled and frothed, turning from its normal dusky color to the silvery hard sheen of battle shape.

  With cry she plunged forward and smashed home a room-shaking blow into the side of the Baronian’s head. The force tore the creature off Hiram’s battered form, driving it through the racks of weapons, shattering furniture and impacting the thick metallic wall with a boom.

  The monster dropped to its knees with a rumble, shaking its head and thrashing around. Even that assault had only angered it.

  Daena made a hugging gesture. The metal weapon racks and all the scattered weapons gathered into a spherical mass with a crackle of energy. She thrust her hand forward and the makeshift missile shot forward with a shriek and hammered into the beast with a crunch.

  “Damn you! Damn! Damn! Damn!” Daena yelled thrusting her fist forward and drawing it back, making the construct pound and grind the creature against the wall as it raged and struggled.

  Such punishment should have reduced the creature to a bloody smear, but instead it tore through Daena’s battering ram and launched itself across the room at her.

  Bannor could only look on in horror as the thing crashed into Daena. In battle shape, she weighed tons and the juggernaut knocked her down as if she was made of wax. She fell with an impact that shook the chamber, her mass making a divot in the metal floor. The Baronian swarmed on her, giant fists raining down like a blacksmith’s hammer marring and tearing the young immortal’s steel-like flesh.

  Daena fought back, but she simply couldn’t match the pure naked ferocity of the brute.

  **Damn it, we need help now!** Bannor screamed on the comms.

  He whipped his axes from their sheaths knowing he was going to regret his foolishness, but he had to get that monstrosity off Daena before she died.

  He focused on the thrashing behemoth and the chunks of its flesh that had been torn by Hiram’s energy assault. In his mind, he called out to his brothers and sisters, calling on their strength to fortify him. He aimed his axe at a bloody division in the beast’s armor in the middle of its shoulder and whipped it home with everything he could muster.

  The mithril-headed axe rammed home past the blade with a bone-scraping thud and a spray of hot blood. The beast howled in pain, clutching at the axe lodged in its shoulder. Given an instant of respite, Daena hurled the creature off her onto the far end of the open balcony. The girl turned and swatted the monster with the repelling power of her Nola.

  With shriek of tearing metal the Baronian shot off at an angle, blasting through the balcony railing, smashing into side of the tower and toppling toward the ground a thousand paces down.

  A battered and shredded mess, Daena collapsed to the floor with a thud. “Ugh, owww…” She moaned. “Th—thanks for the—the save.”

  Bannor knelt beside her and gazed in her threads. Her life-force was diminished but steady. He put a hand against her face. “Daena, you need to be more careful.”

  She laughed, then groaned. “Urgh.” She pulled her legs up and hugged herself. Still wincing she raised her head and looked toward Hiram. “Did he…?”

  Bannor rose and went to the Kriar healer. The artifice’s face was mashed and disfigured. Chunks of his armor had been torn asunder and the softer material underneath crushed and rent. The one arm was melted off at the elbow and portions of his legs and torso were perforated and burned where shots had ricocheted back against him. A white pasty substance like blood wept from many of the wounds.

  Hiram’s one good eye tracked on Bannor and blinked. He tried to raise his arm and his form only shuddered. He made a sputtering sound, and white liquid splattered across his metallic lips. “I—I am—sorr…” The voice faded in mid word.

  He felt a hitch in his chest and his guts twisted. Part of him said it was just an artifice—a
machine. Still, it had acted like something alive—something noble. It tried to protect them, and sacrificed itself when it saw no other alternative.

  “Bannor?” Daena asked.

  He let out a sigh and shook his head.

  The girl rocked her head back with a thump.

  “Hey, are you guys—” Tal called landing on the balcony with Eclipse behind him. “Okay?” His voice trailed off as he looked around the demolished chamber. “Damn.”

  Eclipse showed the first alarm he had ever seen in the impassive male’s expression. He landed beside Daena and bent down. **Medic to the penthouse balcony,** he called on the comms. He focused on Bannor. “Dark, what did this?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know what it was. Something nearly indestructible—something—” He swallowed. “Savage…”

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Juggernauts

  « ^ »

  Little the Baronians do surprises me anymore. They fight to win, heart, spirit, and mind. As such, I ain’t got issues with that, that’s just being a good warrior. Sometimes it’s just tough to kill guys fightin’ their guts out knowing they don’t have any choice. Them not havin’ a choice means I don’t have one either. Sometimes life just reeks that way…

  —Talorin “Tal” Falor,

  Beta Class Protectorate Enforcer

  Bannor’s ears were still ringing from the vicious battle with the creature he could only call the ‘savage’. It had been something alive, made of flesh, but in many ways it was less alive than healer Hiram who had sacrificed his synthetic being to protect them. As he had thought before, the Kriar ability with artifices was truly like magic, to create something so alien and hostile appearing but capable of acting in such a benevolent way.

  He drew a breath. “Eclipse, we have to watch ourselves.”

  The Kriar looked over at him. “Of course, they are pressing us hard. We must return to the fight.” He leaned down to Daena. “Lie still. I called another healer for you.”

  The girl nodded. Despite her battered face, she forced a smile. Her gaze found Bannor. She blinked. “I’ll be okay.”

  The look in her eyes made his chest ache. He smiled for her then focused back on Eclipse. “No, there’s danger from that creature. Falling from this tower, even as hard as Daena threw it, wouldn’t kill it.”

  “Yer kiddin’,” Tal growled walking back to him. The big man winced as a blast expired against defense screens protecting the balcony. He leaned down by Hiram and touched the twisted metal of the healer’s armor. “What did this thing look like?”

  “Half again as big as the Baronian elites, distorted, extremely thick. Its skin was covered with gold metallic armor.” He looked to the corpse of the dead healer. “Even Hiram’s energy weapons up close barely cut it.”

  Tal drew a breath and rocked back like a heavy weight had dropped on his shoulders. “Frell. A coven dreadnaught.”

  Eclipse turned to the other warrior. “You know what this was?”

  The broad shouldered fighter gave a weary nod. “Yeah. Seen a couple. If they got one, they got more. Remember how Quasar was crowin’ about how the ‘ronians could only send so many over at time?”

  Eclipse nodded.

  “Well, take ten or fifteen elites and combine ‘em into one creature. See where I’m going?”

  Eclipse blew out his cheeks. His glowing eyes dimmed and he rubbed at the white crescent mark on his cheek. “Unfortunately.” He thumbed the comms on his neck. **The Baronians have a new weapon on the field.** He glanced over at the Shaladen warrior. **Tal calls it a dreadnaught, it looks like a big Baronian with gold skin. Do not engage without backup.**

  Bannor heard a host of acknowledgements.

  “Where did you see these things?”

  “Karanganoi homeworld,” the big man answered. He glanced up as the building shook under an impact. “At the time, I think they were new. We clashed with one. Hittin’ it with regular weapons was like trying to break a wall with a willow switch.” He drew a breath. “A shaladen hurt them, but even using two we weren’t real successful—” He rubbed the back of his head as though the memory pained him. “We got thumped bad.”

  “That was my—my experience,” Daena groaned.

  Bannor walked over to the wall where she had tried to crush the monster and picked up one of the fragments in his hands. Her nola had fused all of the metal together into a solid object. The creature had torn through a hundred stone steel ball as if it was a flimsy wooden door.

  Outside attacks continued to pound around the tower. Somehow they had lasted this long against an unknown number of Baronian enemies. The aliens would not give up though until the task seemed impossible.

  He heard a whining clunking sound and saw another metal creature bow and enter the chamber through the inner doorway. It looked similar to Hiram but had a more female aspect to its appearance. The armor looked more stylized and had been polished to a mirror sheen. There was no way to conceal the weapons built into its back and shoulders or the broad cleaving swords sheathed at its waist.

  As it entered, the huge head swiveled and wide blue eyes focused on him. That startlingly human face cast in silvery metal smiled at him.

  “Here,” Eclipse said.

  The healer turned to the Kriar and strode forward with its thud-clunk gait, dragon-like feet planting and pushing off.

  “Peace,” it said in a deep female voice. “Combat medical technician Yamah responding for aide.” Bannor saw its gaze turn to the hulk that used be Hiram. Her features hardened. It leaned down to Daena and smiled, and began examining her.

  After a moment of probing it said, “You will need to revert. I cannot treat you in this body configuration.”

  “B-battle form is all that—that’s holding me together,” Daena muttered.

  “I will stabilize you,” the creature said putting a huge hand on the girl’s arm.

  Daena let out a breath, closed her eyes, and dipped her chin close to her chest. Light swarmed around her limbs. The metallic sheen of her skin bleached out and slowly became its normal dusky color. The moment she transformed she groaned, blood spilled from gaping gashes, twisted metal became bruised and torn skin.

  Yamah worked fast, pressing something that hissed against the girl’s neck, then quickly sealing the young savant’s wounds from something sprayed from the end of one of her many jointed fingers. She straightened out Daena’s body and played a purplish light across her torso from something in her palm.

  Tal folded his arms and looked away from the healer. “Them things would be so much easier to handle if they looked like a tea-kettle or something.”

  “That would be demeaning,” Eclipse told him with a frown.

  “The fact they can feel demeaned is the problem,” Tal grumbled. “This guy,” he looked down at Hiram. “He was hurtin’. You can see it in his face.” The big warrior turned a hard expression on Eclipse. “Machines ain’t supposed to feel pain.”

  Eclipse’s brow furrowed. “I suppose pain should be unique to born creatures?”

  “I ain’t arguing philosophy with ya. It just don’t feel right. He’s a made thing, his role and destiny were predetermined—he had no choice than to be what he was. Why should he hurt too?”

  Yamah looked up from its ministrations on Daena. “I have a choice,” she said in her echoing hollow voice. “Hiram had a choice. Our only absolute directive is to value life—especially our own.” She focused back on Daena. She shined a green light from one of her fingers on some of Daena’s lesser wounds causing them to bubble and seal up. “The ability to feel pain is also the ability to feel pleasure is it not?” Yamah’s big head pivoted and looked up at Tal, its round eyes blinked and the corner of its mouth creaked up in a smile. “What life is worth living if it cannot be enjoyed?”

  Tal scrubbed his face. “Well, there ya go. Bad enough that born things can have screwed up lives and rotten days. Let’s make mecha that can suffer the same way. Marvelous.”
/>   Yamah grinned and nodded. “Indeed.” She turned back to Daena and placed a hand across her forehead. “You are fully functional, but give the regenerative a chance to firm the wounds so they do not tear.”

  The girl nodded. “Thank you.”

  The healer straightened to her full height. The weapons on her shoulders whined out of their enclosures and she drew her swords. “Beware.”

  The mecha had completed half a step to the balcony when three figures smashed down on the platform. The hulking gold-skinned shapes were nightmarishly unmistakable. A fourth figure faded in behind the nearer three, the bloody form of the black-masked dreadnaught that had attacked earlier.

  Yamah moved to block the creatures but Tal lunged forward with a yell. “No!” He grabbed the mecha and pulled it off balance so it fell with a crash behind him. At the same time he whipped his shaladen from the sheath and slashed from one side of the balcony opening’s upper edge to the other and whipped the tip to the floor and drew it back across just as the dreadnaughts charged.

  A thrum resonated through the room and Bannor’s ears popped. A shimmering flickered across the opening as the lead creature roared toward them. It hit the surface of the distortion and seemed to be slashed in half before vanishing entirely. The other three creatures slid to a stop in time to avoid being completely engulfed by whatever it was Tal had done. Tal who stood only a sword length inside the opening seemed to pose an irresistible target. The monsters roared and thrashed at him. As their arms and bodies hit the surface it looked as if a knife slashed down through them and they were pressed up against a piece of glass. As they finished their swing and drew back, their bodies were whole.

  Yamah had already righted herself. Tal jumped behind her and thumped her on the back. “Now get them!” He ducked down and covered his ears.

  The mecha leaned forward, its clawed feet clamped down on the metal decking, her guns whined up to speed and blared.