A Seeker Betrayed

9. Talon's Attack

The city Eminence stood on the far western shore of the continent called Ginnie, and it was the perfect spot for a port. Further south a wide peninsula housed one of the only remaining hubs of advanced AI, in the integrated city called the Jitae, where Shamahan lived and studied and should be returning as soon as this job was done.

Aya floated high above, contemplating the scene below. He was deeply concerned now, and he watched as Shamahan's uncle Ro'bard stalked off under the plane to the cargo access. 'Watching' was not the right word for it, because in his current, sheet-like state, what Aya was doing was more like 'absorbing' the activity that was going on at ground level. He himself was spread out in the sky, which was the most strategic position for him to be, sans corps, or without his body.

Like an enormous satellite dish, what there was of him was spread thin and wide and curved slightly to pick up information from the atmosphere.

Rain pelted relentlessly on the hangar's metal roof. Aya picked up the vibrations, attentively monitoring the situation as Shamahan tipped his head back to enjoy the sensations from the storm. There was a low calling of thunder, and for just a moment a thick energy spiraled across the ground and landed at his feet. It was clear that Shamahan didn't notice.

Aya cursed to himself. Ru Tchan and Ru Davi are worthless.

Anger filled him as he tried to gauge the strength of the black energy. If he had been in his human body, he would have spat. No wonder they survived the war.

Which was true. All the other young people that had been embedded with 'Rue' cores the way they were, had died in battle. The Ru Twins had either been held back or had avoided going into battle, and either way, that was the only reason they were still alive centuries later.

If their cores were effective and actually armed, they would be the first defense against what Aya was seeing.

On the other hand, the tech the Twins were carrying was so low-level, that both pieces - human and core - had to be working together in order to be effective. Right at the moment, the Twins' human forms were off in the distance somewhere - it was just the thin sheets of core technology that were traveling the sky.

Aya was getting set to launch himself at the dark intruder that was hovering near Shamahan, when the wind picked up. Even though the hangar opened to the leeward side the forceful blast churned through the space, pummeling the far wall and knocking over a chair. Shamahan turned away from it, towards the platform where his transport sat.

Aya searched frantically, trying to locate the wisp of dark energy. That must be what the yagi was really interested in, and it must have been what had caused the Ru Twins to be involuntarily traveling so far from their home. Aya lost track of it momentarily, but then it reappeared, illuminating the entrance to corridor he had just traveled through.

It was spreading out - he monitored the speed, which was much faster than anything the human eye was designed to pick up. Had it noticed him already?

He felt it pulling in energy from the atmosphere, sucking up some of what the Ru Twins had let out when they created the thunderstorm, and he made a choice: if it was taking time to gather itself up, it must not have noticed him yet. Because if it had... it would have attacked him already.

He held on to that idea as it made its first move - if he could stay behind it, he might overpower it before it noticed him.

It took everything he had to restrain himself from engaging with it. The technology he himself had been embedded with had been designed to attack relentlessly when such an intruder appeared. This place - the planet Ellydis - wasn't his home, and therefore protecting it shouldn't be his fight.