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Chapter 84 - Hope
Archie
The aerial reinforcements accompanying Erebus remain in the shadow of the south-eastern mountains, too distant to be attacked. Floella is struggling to tally the Slaver horde disgorging from them, so Suleiman demotes me from table-top hero to chalkboard zero.
The simple addition and subtraction doesn’t strain my brain, leaving me time to worry about Paysha. I’d seen her struggling to descend from the eagles’ launch point, her swollen abdomen too obvious and her backpack too heavy. She and Mai had made their way through the Panoptiki’s massed ranks to join the General in the allied vanguard. Why, Paysha? Why does a pregnant woman need to be at the pointy end?
The ops room door has been shut and under guard since the General departed for the frontline. He’s just ordered the Solar Army to advance. There’s nothing I can do to help my sister. Realigning the heliostats to immolate the enemy, like scurrying ants under a child’s magnifying glass, would only risk our own troops. My argument that instant vaporisation is preferable to the agonies of slow starvation or Slaver subordination falls on deaf ears.
I feel sick as the battle’s noise crescendos, audible even within this fortified eyrie. I snatch a look through the periscope whilst Suleiman converses with another ops room inmate. An eagle wheels above the heat and dust of the battle. A wave of wing-suited airborne cavalry flare like flamingos to land on our left flank. Emanating from Diamorpheus’ seed is a flickering, crimson dome, a hellish version of the one we witnessed at the Spaceport. Another arises from that original, unlikelier source, its desert-coloured form pressing with unnatural, coruscating fire against the other. Paysha and First Daughter remain invisible, lost in the maelstrom. Then another hemisphere of influence lights up and expands, this one pale green. Fireflies of light, as if from a stone cutter’s saw, erupt where each bubble intersects the other. This eyeglass glimpse of the battlefield’s carnage and its unworldly, inexplicable forces only amplifies my unease a thousand-fold.
As the battle’s tumult waxes and wanes, I vent my frustrations at Floella and Suleiman. I’m desperate to escape this claustrophobic room, no matter the risk, instead of being trapped like a desert rat. But they ignore my pleas to be dismissed and risk my life to help Paysha.
I chance another furtive glance through a window slit and freeze. The enemy’s flagship has emerged from the distant escarpment and is descending at the edge of the battlefield. Images of Erebus dominating over the Spaceport reservoir flash through my mind. Lewey won’t remain aboard. He’ll want to reunite with his favourite Stinker. To taunt her, to kill her – and our unborn child.
The aerostat’s latest garbled report is lost in a familiar rumble of ancient engines coursing across the chloride plain. I rush to a window. Allies and enemy alike scatter like vermin in advance of its subsonic passing, choking on dust-laden vortices. A turbulent knight indeed. There’s a resounding roar from the Panoptiki troops, echoed by cheers within the ops room. It’s Salt Glider, and Yuri couldn’t fly any lower. I instinctively duck as a tortured howl of blurred metal cleaves the battlefield. Their heading implies he’s already lost his head. From the radio I hear a battle cry: “Fuck you, alien!” His valiant steed doesn’t veer from their target as armoured ekranoplan and a courageous Yuri impact the immobile, devilish Seed. Earthbound and alien-forged elements erupt as one to form a gigantic, fossil-fuelled bloom of suicidal orange fire.
The ear-piercing blast wave resounds across the battlefield in a rapidly expanding sphere of light and noise, further cowering every combatant on the Lake of Light. Within the ops room, several operatives grab a colleague in panic as the Panoptik’s walls shake, raining ceiling dust onto the map table.
But this unexpected thrust to the enemy’s heart fills ours with hope. Yuri’s impromptu death matters more than most. The destruction of the enemy’s Seed might lead to the defeat of our singular foe.
Via slit windows, periscope and aerostat the reports come in. Each confirms the other and are stabs to our collective heart. The enemy’s controlling umbra is gone but the Seed, Diamorpheus’ infernal shield, remains standing. Salt Glider’s crushed and burning remains lie at its feet and the Slaver army and its warped allies’ attacks continue unabated. Yuri’s death was in vain.
Suleiman’s handset blares static as the General and his commanders rally disbelieving troops and prevent disarray. I refuse to consider defeat and try to bury thoughts of Paysha lying in agony with a hundred other fallen troops on the blood-soaked sand. I can’t give up now, after all that’s happened, even as the fear in my gut overpowers diminished hope.
Then I hear First Daughter, her chopped, distorted words sounding urgent, almost panicked: “Suleiman. Paysha is not…she has been injured. She asks for her brother. Tell Archimedes to meet my mother at the main gate. Now – he must come now!”
My mind and stomach are churning as Suleiman commands the ops room to be unsealed. The nightmare I’ve dreaded for so long is cutting through my skull, like the blades I’ve imagined slicing my sister’s flesh. Hold on, Paysha. Please, hold on. I’ll be with you no matter how this nightmare ends.