The Revenants Page 22

  “You could say that,” Gatticus replied.

  Yuri nodded, and his bright blue eyes found Trista’s once more. “I would like to extend an invitation for you to join my organization.”

  Trista snorted. “And become a terrorist like you? I don’t think so.”

  Yuri rolled his head from side to side. “The Cygnians attacked and seized your home world with no provocation. There is no longer any distinction between terrorists and freedom fighters. Now, there are only two sides: those who stand with us, and those who do not.”

  Trista shook her head. “That sounds like a familiar tune. Just because some people aren’t actively fighting the Cygnians, doesn’t mean you can steal their cargoes and commandeer their ships.”

  Yuri conceded that with a nod. “I admit we have been forced to do some disreputable things to survive, but now that is coming to an end. Word of Earth’s fate will spread, and as it does, entire star systems will flock to join the Coalition.”

  “The Coalition?” Trista echoed with a knitted brow. “You’re part of the Coalition? I thought the Union wiped them out years ago.”

  Yuri smiled. “The Coalition Fleet was wiped out, not the Coalition itself. So, what do you say? Are you ready to fight back?”

  “I am,” Gatticus said.

  Trista glanced over her shoulder to find him nodding.

  Yuri flashed his pointy white teeth in a grin. “Having an Executor on our side will add great legitimacy to our cause.”

  “I’m not a citizen,” Buddy said. “Can I still join?” He was perched on the back of his seat, his claws digging into the material to keep from floating away.

  “Of course,” Yuri replied. “All are welcome to join the Coalition, not just those the Cygnians deem worthy of inclusion in their Union.”

  “Then I’ll join if you do, Tris,” Buddy said.

  Trista turned back to Yuri with a frown. “What if I say no?”

  “Then we’ll drop you at the nearest Union station or planet.”

  “Without my ship,” Trista guessed.

  “I’m afraid there’s some confusion as to its rightful owner.” Jaxon chuckled at that, and Yuri grinned once more. “Regardless, we need every ship we can get, so I’m afraid we cannot allow you to keep it—especially not after risking all of our lives to acquire it. Look at it this way, if we hadn’t come after you, your life and your vessel would have been forfeit. Now you are only losing the latter.”

  Fekking thieves, Trista thought. But Yuri was right, he had just saved her life—even if that hadn’t been his primary concern. Besides, she couldn’t keep or sell her ship now—not after using it to attack a Cygnian transport. Come to think of it, since that vessel was registered to her, and not Jaxon, there was no question as to who had fired on that transport. She was an outlaw already, whether she liked it or not. Yuri’s invitation to join his gang was just a formality.

  “All right,” Trista said in a resigned voice. “Count me in.”

  Yuri grinned and held out one four-fingered hand. She hesitated before shaking it.

  “Welcome to the Coalition,” he said.

  Chapter 33

  —FOUR DAYS LATER—

  The Osprey shivered and shook with the turbulence and friction of atmospheric entry. The clouds parted, and Darius saw the surface of Cratus appear—a vast planet-wide ocean speckled with dense clusters of crescent-shaped green islands. The islands formed familiar patterns—partial circles of varying sizes. Tanik explained that the islands were actually the partially-submerged rims of impact craters. Asteroid impacts were an on-going threat, which was why the planet remained uninhabited and had never evolved intelligent life.

  Cratus’s proximity to Cygnus Prime, at just three light years away, made it worth the risk to establish a forward base there.

  As Tanik flew them down to one of the larger islands, Darius noted that it was surrounded by pristine white beaches and sparkling blue-green water. It looked like one of the Caribbean islands from Earth.

  “Wow!” Cassandra said from the seat behind his. “Now this is my kind of planet! You think the ocean is safe to swim in?”

  “Perfectly safe,” Tanik replied. “Shallow, too.”

  “Mega snaz! I’m going to the beach as soon as we land!”

  “After your training,” Tanik corrected.

  Dyara flashed a smile at Darius. She was sitting across the aisle from him on the other side of the cockpit.

  “I do not know how to swim,” Gakram growled. Darius couldn’t see him, since he was sitting at the back of the cockpit beside Cassandra, but he could imagine the Banshee’s four black eyes squinting speculatively, and his lips curling away from six-inch gray teeth in his version of a frown.

  “It’s easy. I’ll teach you,” Cassandra said.

  Darius didn’t like the idea of them spending any more time together than they already did, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Gakram and Cassandra had forged an unlikely friendship over the past several weeks. Darius wasn’t sure what to think of it. He tried not to judge Gakram by his species, but it wasn’t easy. Cassandra was training to join a war with Gakram’s people, and somehow Darius was supposed to believe that Gakram didn’t mind? Then again, Gakram was also training for that war, and he wasn’t the only Cygnian being placed in that position.

  There were more than fifty Cygnian Revenants aboard the Harbinger alone, and over a thousand of them scattered throughout the Revenant fleet. What did they think of Admiral Ventaris’s battle plans?

  In theory, they would only attack if their threats and ultimatums failed, but from everything Darius knew about the Cygnians, he doubted threats would be enough. Where would the Cygnian Revenants’ loyalties lie if it came to a fight?

  A pair of Ospreys roared by trailing bright blue tongues of fire from their engines. They reached the landing zone, stopped, and hovered down into a green field with scattered black-trunked, red-leafed trees. Tanik brought their Osprey down beside one of the trees. The wind produced by their landing jets sent leaves raining down all over the cockpit canopy. They looked like rose petals.

  “Beautiful,” Dyara whispered, peering up as rose petals fluttered down from a clear blue sky.

  The Osprey touched down with a jolt and a muffled thud-unk, and the roar of the transport’s engines faded to a ringing silence.

  Tanik released his harness with a loud click and turned to face them as he stood. “Welcome to Cratus.”

  * * *

  Four hours later, Ospreys and shuttles were still roaring down from orbit. The grassy green field that was their landing zone had disappeared under white rolls of habitat canvas. Large white domes sprouted like mushrooms.

  This time it wasn’t just the crew of the Deliverance who were setting up camp, but a full complement of 4,560 Revenants from the Harbinger as well.

  Darius and the other Acolytes had spent the last four hours helping to set up camp, but now, after a short break for rations and water, Tanik pulled them aside for training. He took them down a gentle slope toward the water, getting some distance from the noisy bustle of the camp.

  Before long, beads of sweat were streaming down Darius’s back and face and soaking through his jumpsuit. Cratus was a hot world. At least we’re not wearing suits of armor like the other Revenants. Trainees weren’t given armor because Tanik said they might be tempted to rely on it instead of their ZPF shields, which would be a deadly mistake. Darius had never really bought that excuse. He would have liked the added buffer against the threat of dismemberment and death, but now, he was glad not to be wearing any extra layers. Unless those suits are air conditioned... They probably were. All the Revenants he’d seen on the surface so far had been wearing their helmets. There had to be a reason for that. Keep the cold air in, Darius thought, with an accompanying flash of jealousy.

  Tanik stopped walking and turned to face them. They were at least a kilometer from the ocean, but here the grass thinned out to scraggly clumps, and sand was mixed liberally
with the dirt.

  “Break into your usual sparring teams, and spread out,” Tanik instructed. “Now that we have some real space to work with, I want you to practice what I taught you aboard the Deliverance—jumping, running, and kinetic attacks.”

  People broke off into their usual pairs: Dyara went with Seelka, the white-eyed Vixxon. Arok, the black-furred Lassarian, went with Flitter, the flying, bat-like Murciago, and Cassandra went with Gakram. That left Darius to face Tanik—as usual.

  Tanik gave him a snarling grin. “Perhaps this time you will be able to offer more of a challenge.”

  Darius drew his sword and summoned a shield to envelop both himself and his blade. Tanik did likewise, and they began circling each other at a distance. Darius reached out into the scrubby field, using the ZPF to look for any loose rocks he could throw at Tanik, but all he found were pebbles. He was just about to give up when he felt something much bigger than a rock. It was a rotting log, lying far away on the beach. Darius picked it up with his mind and sent it sailing toward Tanik. Because of the distance, it took a few seconds to reach Tanik. By the time it did, it was moving so fast that it was nothing but a blur.

  Right before the log could slam into Tanik, he leapt over it, flying at least twenty feet into the air. The log plowed into the field behind him with a thunderous roar, pushing up an impressive bow wave of sand and dirt.

  Tanik landed lightly, laughing. “Nice try.”

  So much for that, Darius thought. He circled closer, realizing he’d have to rely on swordplay to win this fight—not that winning seemed possible.

  Tanik’s free hand twitched, and Darius stopped advancing, wary of a trap. Thick clouds of sand and pebbles floated up all around them, shimmering in the sun until they blotted it out and blocked Tanik from view.

  Groping in the sudden twilight and choking on sand, Darius used his awareness to look for Tanik—

  Just in time to see him come soaring down directly overhead. Darius blocked a heavy swipe of Tanik’s luminous sword, but his knees buckled with the sheer force of the attack, and he was forced to use the imparted momentum to roll out of the way. As he did so, clouds of pebbles and sand battered him on all sides, driven by howling, hurricane force winds. Soon pebbles began breaking through his shield with bruising force. The pain was enough to break his focus and collapse his shield entirely. At that point things went from bad to worse. The pebbles beat him senseless and sand dug into his skin in fiery waves.

  The attack ended and Darius lay there stunned and bleeding, gasping against the pain, and wincing up into a blinding yellow sun. Tanik’s shadow fell over him a moment later. His glowing sword swept down for the kill. Darius focused on shielding himself once more and brought his own blade up just in time to avoid being cut in half. He lay there, furious from the pain, and pushing feebly back with both arms as Tanik pressed down with all of his weight. Darius tried to knock him away with a kinetic blast, but Tanik was ready for it, having rooted his feet to the ground.

  “You disappoint me, Darius. Perhaps I should just kill you now and rid myself of the burden of your training.”

  Darius gritted his teeth and shook his head. “You’re bluffing.”

  “Am I?” Tanik smiled wickedly and pressed harder, pushing Darius’s own blade down to his chest. The luminous white edge touched the very same shield that enveloped it, and created some kind of a feedback loop that roared with deafening force. Moments later, Darius felt the sharp bite of his own sword slicing through his skin and cried out in pain.

  The weight on his sword abruptly lifted as Tanik whirled away to block some unseen attack. Darius pushed himself up on one elbow to see Cassandra locked in a frantic battle with Tanik, her sword flashing against his in a frenzy of strikes. She was actually pushing him back.

  Darius scrambled to his feet to help her, but as he did so, a cloud of sand and pebbles rose shimmering into the air. Darius imagined Cassandra being pummeled with sand and rocks until she was a bloody mess like him, and a flash of fury burst within him.

  He dropped his shield and sword to better focus his energy into a kinetic assault. Darius found Tanik inside the hovering cloud of sand and pebbles, picked him up, and threw him as hard as he could. Sand and pebbles fell in a clattering rain, and the air cleared as Tanik lost his focus.

  Cassandra stood with her sword frozen in mid-parry and confusion written all over her face. Tanik had disappeared.

  Darius whirled around, expecting a surprise attack from above or behind, but none came. Reaching out in the ZPF, he found Tanik—a luminous white speck sailing down into the ocean with a visible splash.

  For that plume of water to be visible at this distance, Tanik had to have hit the water hard.

  “Did you do that?” Cassandra asked.

  “I...” Darius trailed off, shaking his head. He could feel Tanik’s mind, but only dimly. The man was sinking below the waves. “Grak it, I think I knocked him out!”

  Darius ran to the beach, drawing on the ZPF to go faster. He heard footsteps pounding after him as the other Acolytes followed.

  As Darius reached the water, he used his awareness once more, and found Tanik drifting in darkness, some five hundred meters out. Darius grabbed the man with his mind and carried him swiftly over the waves to the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge.

  Darius reached Tanik’s side and fell on his knees to check for a pulse. The others arrived and clustered around.

  “Is he dead?” Dyara asked.

  “He’s not breathing,” Darius replied.

  “He’s just pretending!” Cassandra scoffed.

  Seelka shook her head. “I cannot sense him.”

  “Quiet!” Darius snapped, struggling to remember his CPR training. He turned Tanik’s head to the side and yanked his mouth open. A stream of water poured out. As soon as it slowed to a dribble, Darius turned Tanik’s head back to the center, pinched his nose shut, and blew into his lungs several times in a row. He leaned back to check for a pulse, but didn’t get one, so he went back to blowing air down the man’s throat.

  About halfway through his third breath, a gout of warm water leapt into his mouth, and Darius recoiled, spluttering.

  Tanik was awake, coughing and gasping for air, his whole body spasming with the effort to clear his lungs. Gakram and Arok helped turn him on his side, but he slapped their hands away, and vomited all over the beach.

  Tanik stumbled to his feet and opened his mouth. A stream of water gushed out and splattered on the sand, pushed from his lungs by unseen forces. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Tanik’s green eyes narrowed in a scowl and flicked to Darius.

  Expecting an attack, Darius began to draw on the ZPF to shield himself, but before he could, Tanik smiled and said, “Very challenging indeed.”

  Chapter 34

  After Tanik’s brush with death, he declared the training session over and led them back to camp. He and Darius both recovered their swords along the way.

  The Acolytes followed Tanik up the long, gentle slope to the grassy field of the landing zone. As they crested that rise, a gleaming city of white domes sprawled out before them, arranged in a large circle with streets radiating from the center like the spokes of a wheel. The Ospreys had all been moved to a dedicated landing field to one side of the camp, along with a few squadrons of Vulture and Shrike fighters.

  It looked like all of the habitats were set up at this point, and Darius couldn’t see or hear any more transports coming down from orbit. Tanik led them down the other side of the hill to the edge of camp. They passed a pair of perimeter guards and started down a street of trampled grass. A pair of six-wheeled rovers rumbled down the street ahead of them, kicking up grass and dirt. Revenant soldiers in silvery armor worked along the sides of the street planting metal poles in the ground and stringing lights between them with the ZPF.

  Side streets branched off between the habitats periodically, but Tanik showed no sign of changing course. He was heading straight for the center of camp, where a parti
cularly large habitat rose like a mountain above the others.

  “Where are we going?” Cassandra whispered, finally breaking the silence.

  “To the command center to get our hab assignments,” Tanik replied.

  They walked on for at least two kilometers, passing hundreds of habitats along the way. As they drew near to the large habitat module in the center of camp—what had to be the command center—Darius noticed two six-wheeled rovers parked out front, and a pair of armored guards stood outside the doors. To one side of the command center, another half a dozen rovers were parked in a cordoned field, facing four two-legged mechs with nine-foot versions of the Revenants’ swords.

  Darius wondered about those mechs. The Revenant version of a tank? He slowly tore his eyes away, just in time to see Tanik come to a sudden stop. He held up a hand, indicating for the Acolytes to do the same.

  Darius sent Dyara a questioning look. She shrugged and shook her head. A moment later he had his answer. He spotted a group of six giant Cygnians in black armor advancing on the front doors of the command center. From their massive size and the fact that they were walking on two legs, rather than six, Darius assumed they must be Ghouls rather than Banshees.

  The two Revenant soldiers standing guard outside the command center adopted a wary stance and turned toward the incoming Ghouls.

  Just then, Admiral Ventaris burst outside. The doors of the command center flapped restlessly in the wind of his passing before resealing themselves along a magnetic seam. The admiral was a giant of a man, at least six and a half feet tall, with broad shoulders and a thick chest, but the Cygnians were a head and shoulders even taller than him, and far more impressively built. They stopped a few feet away and glared down on the admiral with the four glowing red eyes of their helmets.

  Each of them wore four short swords that dangled from their chests and hips, and they stood with their hands either resting on the hilts or with long, curving claws twitching restlessly beside them.