The sonic scream from a series of lightrake projection beams rattled the glass panes of the few windows remaining in the northeast-facing facade of the rooftop courtyard. The glare-shine from the light impact beams threw an expanding lemony yellow brilliance across the ash-colored gloom that had settled down over the roof, temporarily blinding any combatants nearby who were unprepared for the flare.
"There's a route out of here through the HVAC booth's service entrance. You should use it, because we're not going to make it if we stay..."
"NO! DON'T you dare say that! They'll come back for us." The ferocity of her response gave him a moment's pause. He was unused to hearing her express such volatile emotion.
"No, they won't. To do that would be suicidal. It's an unavoidable truth. We've lost what little element of surprise we had, they've brought up heavier weaponry we have no defense against and we're seriously outnumbered. Their squad leader has dispatched even more militia in heavy tactical armor..."
"I won't leave you! We stay together...!"
"Don't be an idiot. I'm damaged and barely ambulatory. You're still unhurt. You can survive. You need to get away from here, as quickly as you can. Do it now."
Pnoom-Aig tenderly took her brethren Kodespawn's face in her slender hands, tungsten carbide-titanium alloy hands that could crush carbonado black diamonds into powder, and she stared hard into Pnoom-Ogg's calm, clear eyes. His pragmatic, academic demeanor in the face of their violent, desperate predicament was maddening.
"You are not abandoning me to live my life alone with the humans," she said. "I won't do it. We stand, or fall, together. We are halves of the same machine, you and I, and we have weathered all manner of tragedies and triumphs. We are survivors. We will survive this."
"No. No, we won't. My internal bio-nanite repair system cannot undo the damage I've sustained. I've already calculated the odds of our continued survival in the face of a prolonged attack and the math does not support a hopeful outcome. We both will fall if we stay here. You need to go, Aig, you need to leave me -- I can cover for you, create a diversion while you escape. But we have to do this now...!"
The pair had taken momentary refuge behind the down-angled slope of a tall electronic utility shed on the streetside corner of the roof, completely across the way from the observation deck/rooftop plaza onto which they'd originally descended. The space behind the spot the electric facilities shed occupied was barely large enough to accommodate a trio of grown men kneeling, but, for the purposes of the synthetic gene-'bots known as the Duality of Kohra'andum, it was a bunker offering welcome respite from the heated assault of The Dragon's minions. The electronic utility shelter was an isolated outbuilding containing multi-breaker power panels, computerized bridge-router switching racks and fiber-channel cable conduits the width of an adult human body. The structure had been made to withstand the harshest elements of climature, the possibility of a major inferno, and to retain its structural integrity in the event of a building collapse. Disruptor ray, plasma beam, and lightrake projector gun discharges could not so much as scratch the utility shed's ruggedized surface.
"So tell me, what are they doing out there? I can't get a reading on anything not in my immediate field of vision. My external proximity sensor projection field is offline. No doubt due to damage from those multiple sonic-concussive blasts I took," he said. "Auditory hyper-scanning is still operable, but I can't accurately gauge the numbers of my attackers with that. It's like being half-blind. I don't know how humans manage it."
Pnoom-Aig blinked slowly, concentrating and laid the palm of her hand tenderly on her brother gene-'bot's broad chest for a moment while she expanded her perceptive senses.
"Eighteen opponents down. All fatalities. Five more who are ambulatory in the immediate vicinity, skulking about the rooftop perimeter. Another eleven men have been called up from the Conference Center via their squad throat-comms for reinforcement. And there are still seven members of the building's in-house facility security team who, though they aren't officially assigned duty to The Dragon's assault detail, are blocking general access to the roof to anyone not in the saurian militia."
Pnoom-Ogg breathed heavily and shifted his muscular bulk as he performed a physical examination of his lower limb stress joints. His internal telemetric forensics were offline due to his injuries, so he could not pull up an updated damage report from his bio-microprocessor analytics. Either way, though, he knew he was in dire straights and he did not want Pnoom-Aig to make the mistake of relying on him for backup assistance.
"Too many," he said decisively. "Time is not on our side. You need to get moving..."
"We made a promise to one another..."
"Yes, I remember. We were Second-Stage Chrysalid-Units then, nothing more than pampered adolescents in an antiseptic, cloistered environment. Lab rats. We were safe. We didn't know enough about the larger world around us to make informed choices, like the kind of choice you make when you bond together to share a lifelong 'promise'. Well, now I free you from that promise," he said trying to keep the roughness born of desperation from out his voice.
"You're my family. Don't ask me to do this, Ogg, please..."
"Believe me when I say I am in no hurry to discontinue my existence. I admit I've grown very fond of the surprises each new day brings. But do you have any suggestions as to how we survive the next wave of their assault? Just one idea, no matter how impossible or insane. Anything?"
Pnoom-Aig, eyes wide, her normally nondescript mannequin's face unusually drawn and pale as she fought off the onset of grief, stared disconsolately down to the rooftop and shook her head. Pnoom-Ogg felt an unfamiliar and unaccustomed stirring of strong emotion well up from within himself as he sympathized with her plight. He had not expected her to react so ... humanly ... when he had formulated the conclusion the situation had forced upon him. Her sorrow was as palpable as the noise and smoke from the battle around them.
He sighed and then reached over to grab her firmly by her shoulders. "So, there's no other way. Do this thing. For me. Survive, my sister Kodespawn, survive!"
A quintet of loud sonic reports, whistle-shrieks from ionic phase blasters, punctuated the night air as The Dragon's team of assassins drew closer to their cover location and grew bolder in their efforts to bring them down. A sudden cluster of small, but nerve-jarring, explosions of heat and light accompanied the blaster fire as the directed-energy discharges peppered the outer shell of the electronic utility shed rattled and shook under their impacts.
Pnoom-Ogg sighed and made a face reflecting his overall distaste towards the entirety of their situation. "Did I ever tell you how much I really hate most organic humanoids, whether reptilian or mammalian? No? Surprise, I do. They're SO goddamn annoying..."
And with that he groaned and then surged up, drawing his unsteady body erect despite its injuries, and as he stood he set the ultrahuman musculature of his body into position for running. He promptly lunged out from behind cover into a fusillade of energy beam fire and, moving full-tilt at over ninety-seven kilometers an hour, streaked across the rooftop towards his enemies...
"RUN NOW, GIRL, RUN NOW!" she heard his voice trailing in the slipstream behind his flashing figure.
And Pnoom-Aig, her trembling hands raised and bunched into fists on either side of her face, screamed her frustration and rage upwards, into the depths of the inky sky, towards an uncaring Greater Power, to a celestial deity who didn't give one single damn about the Fates of Synthetic People, no matter how great their courage.
* * *
No one could see him, even when they looked up into the open spaces between buildings into the sky, and that was a good thing.
Considering the madness and mayhem of the events currently gripping the streets of Ometh Nastreq, the sight of a flying man would have created yet more hysteria and alarm.
He wove a complex horizontal path in and out through Ometh Nastreq's aerial traffic lanes, taking great effort to steer clear of open revealment as he zipped past windshields and portals, but simultaneously taking a risk here and there as he rocketed along the air lanes and wind paths above the pilot housings and passenger cabins of flitterships, jet-hoppers, ornithopters and other skycraft.
The flying man in purple armor mentally adjusted the rate of his directed descent without any conscious effort. Flying came as naturally to him as running did to normal healthy humans. His body moved through the atmosphere, air currents slipping up and over his shoulders faster than the air rushing under him, over his chest and abdomen, and with a shrug of his shoulders or his arms, he manipulated the lift quotient keeping him aloft. Propulsion was the real secret of his levitational skills, though. His body did not emit any chemicals to induce thrust nor produce rocket blasts to move him through open space. Instead, his extrasensory mental abilities locked onto the electromagnetic aura surrounding his corporeal form and created a powerful attractive or repulsive force allowing him to airstream his body through a tunnel of solar-charged particles relative to the planet's invisible lines of magnetic force, geomagnetically jetting from one spatial location to another.
He was presently following a faint trail of electrical frequencies particular to Kodespawn cybernetic neurograms. He was on the hunt for Synthetic bio-signatures.
On his return to the Aerieakon after retrieving a wounded Vandessha'Jai from off the streets where he'd had his lethal showdown with Geh'wan Shryke, Emaris Staurqe had been reluctantly drawn into reviewing the ship's crew's wildly unstable situation, a discussion led in Rae'vynn Wyyng's absence by the trollish, red-bearded Durkka-jan. Staurqe had no vested interested in the state of the intrigues that had brought the Aerieakon's outlaw crew to the brink of disaster in the long-simmering war between Ometh Nastreq and Peravendath and he cared little for Captain Wyyng's political rebellion, but he did acknowledge he owed the airborn pirates a debt of sanctuary. They were risking far more than they knew by taking him into their fold and Staurqe's somewhat indefinable code of honor wouldn't let him take that for granted. But he'd made it clear to Durkka-jan and Vandessha'Jai that he was not going to be forced into taking sides in a shooting war between the Saurian and Mammal populations in the coastal fortress-cities. Humans were going to do whatever it was humans were going to do, regardless of logic, and Saurotetramorph warriors were too bloodthirsty to be predictable by any sane means, so he wasn't going to get overly involved in any of it.
But the renegade Alpha Progenitor gene-'bot became very alarmed when he'd been informed that his old nemesis, Warhound-General Mahrkath Serundi, was a principal player in Zhe'Kae-Chah's ruthless power play.
Then Durkka-jan had told him that Pnoom-Ogg and Pnoom-Aig had joined Captain Wyyng on her impromptu, ill-advised surveillance probe mission and that the mission had quickly fractured into a violent mess, resulting in the covert group being essentially trapped behind enemy lines. That had decidedly caught Staurqe's attention. The reckless actions of Captain Wyyng had, to his mind, needlessly endangered the lives of his Kodespawn brethren. That was not something that could be tolerated.
So Durkka-jan had dispatched Staurqe to lend whatever support he could to expedite getting the covert team safely back home and aboard the Aerieakon.
His enhanced hearing had isolated and recognized Pnoom-Aig's mournful shriek from amid the clamor of air traffic and the persistent babble of human voices throughout the metropolis, nearly half a nautical league distant. It was a pitiful sound. A human sound. For any event devastating enough to tear that sound from her synthezoid soul was something that instilled a powerful outrage in Staurqe. Her ragged outburst of emotional turmoil was an unwelcome, uncomfortable spur that goaded him into urgent and decisive action.
His mind speedily autolocated on Pnoom-Aig's voice and launched into an immediate series of complex navigational calculations, allowing for altitude, topology and topography, traveling air speed, windage, inertial adaptation, and variations in obstructive structural architecture along his flight path. Locking in on the scream, he increased his airspeed by a third and rocketed across the night-wrapped skyline down towards the complex of administrative buildings near the palatial Olympidrome.
There. He could see her right there... where bright flashes of energy beam fire threw strobe-light shadows across a battle-scarred, debris-strewn rooftop plaza.
Staurqe saw that his fellow gene-'bots were in deep trouble. Outnumbered, outgunned, and outmaneuvered, they fought on with a coldly efficient ferocity, but their destruction was only moments away. It looked like Pnoom-Ogg had already suffered severe, near crippling damage. He could see they were prepared to give their all in defense of a cause and a crusade to which they were exempt because of their computerized cybernetic birthright. And the entirety of that sacrifice would be for the sake of humans, humans who predominantly held them and their kind in disdain because they saw Synthetics as "soulless" and as somehow lesser beings than themselves...
No, that he would not allow. This day he would let no Kodespawn fall to the darkness of death.
Staurqe came streaking down out of the sky like a missile, punching explosively through the reinforced concrete, stone masonry and metal bulwarking of no less than five skyscrapers between himself and the Pnoom siblings. The numerous impacts along his downwards trajectory created a thunderous cannonade and massive eruptions of debris and shrapnel spewed out in blossoming clouds.
The cacophony of his meteoric approach caught the attention of The Dragons mercenary assassins, startling them into momentary inaction as they slowly became aware of what was happening. They were stunned. What they saw was not possible. A flying man. It was as if one of the legendary Elder Gods from the mythological pantheon of their pre-industrialized, pre-technological racial history had come to angry, vengeful life. And then it dawned on them. They were looking at something real and thus far more frightening. They were watching the bombastic approach of an "Offworld non-human, hybridized evolutionary alternative". They were, for the first time in their varied, violent and storied military careers, seeing an Alpha Progenitor in action. That realization chilled them to their bones...
... because in their hearts they knew they were already dead.
* * *
The ship was screaming as it careened through the sky, skirting the topmost turrets of Peravendath's shadow-enwrapped skyline.
Vandessha'Jai, his squinting eyes copiously watering against the onslaught of cold air rapidly sweeping past him, had wrapped his fingers tightly around the nearest set of fiber-cable conduits as the pilothouse atop the the Aerieakon's elevated bridge platform rocked under the persistent percussive assault from Zhe'kae-Chah's massive fists. The huge airship was canted at an awkward angle of thirty-eight degrees off vertical as it flew a meandering horizontal path across the city-fortress' upper airspace. The Wavehammer engines were straining, emitting audible squalls and squawks as they revved and detuned in their fight to stay aloft while the attack on the ship's aerial integrity raged. The ship's inner hull wall had been savagely breached as The Dragon had ripped his way through the fuselage's skin of armor plating into the skycraft's for'ard bow nav-array compartment. Gale force winds surging into the ship through the rent in the hull tore at his clothes and threatened to steal his breath away.
Durkka-jan, swearing an unending stream of hot, bitter invective, was at the helm, his thick muscles straining as he fought with the rectilinear skycraft to keep it aloft as it dipped altitude and began to pull towards the streets far below.
The goddamn hulking reptile-mutant was tearing the ship apart. Three members of the Aerieakon's remaining crew aggressively clashed against the merciless warrior-woman, Ptoleria, who had flown directly through the gaping opening in the hull to battle at her King's side.
Jai quickly blinked away cold tears and sighted along the long barrel of his portable, hand-held beam weapon at the jerking, writhing mass of tangled limbs a dozen body lengths from him: Rae'vynn Wyyng was still viciously hacking and hammering at the body of the immense saurian mutant yet only inflicting minor superficial damage, managing to further enrage the already murderous, bloodthirsty creature. The fight was so fierce and so frenzied it was hard to tell who was doing what to whom, Jai was repeatedly frustrated as he tried to get a clear bead on Zhe'kae-Chah without risking the shot hitting Rae'vynn. What disturbed Vandessha'Jai most about the scenario was the sound of The Dragon's ragged, feral laughter as he clawed and tore his way through the aft-end of the vessel. He was enjoying the mayhem he caused. He was enjoying his brawl with Captain Wyyng. It was apparent the violence was affecting him like a drug. It was patently obvious the creature was unhinged, mentally unbalanced, and that there'd be only one way in which to stop his rampage.
To hell with it. Vandessha'Jai fired three times in quick succession...
The concussive light emission from the barrel of the ranged directed energy hand-weapon streamed across the distance faster than the blink of an eyelid. The visible beam of brilliant light, a pulsed electrical discharge that sizzled at 3100 degrees Fahrenheit, was surrounded by an invisible, interwoven-helix field of electron-shell disrupting radiation. The beam punched high into the pectoral region and intercostals of The Dragon's right upper torso. Smoke from burnt tissue and steam vapor from boiled blood promptly issued from the sweeping elliptical wounds, but, right before Jai's disbelieving eyes, even as the light swept across the saurian's side, the crisped edges of the scars began to stitch back together and miraculously heal.
Nonetheless, the King of the Saurotetramorphs was hurt. Jerking convulsively as he tried to escape the torment of those blast beams, the winged reptile-man screamed...
* * *
Her mind reeled. She'd never before experienced anything like it. His strength and power beggared description. She could scarcely conceive that any living organic creature could possess such physical brawn and vigor. But those attributes only frightened her half as much as did his now-unrestrained homicidal mania.
The discharge from Rae'vynn's thermalwave-pulse autopistol was beginning to fade, dropping the power of the ray blast lower and lower no matter how high she set the intensity-emitter's amplification. She'd expended almost all the power cell's energy and The Dragon was no less the worse for wear. Her back ached and her shoulders were burning wearily from the persistent assault she'd waged on the giant saurian monarch... she herself was breathless and drenched in perspiration but she would not concede defeat. She couldn't. These were Life and Death stakes so there wasn't any alternative for her but to fight on, to let her frustration and desperation fuel her depleted energy reserves as she battled. She found herself weeping soundlessly, gulping in great draughts of air as she hammered at The Dragon's broad back and her body was shaken and jarred as he ignored her assault and breached the hull of the Aerieakon.
And then things got worse. Ptoleria flew in past her, zipping through the expansive rent in the damaged skycraft's fuselage, courtesy of her blazing liftjet-boots and with the assist of her gravity-deflection vest. The Dragon's warrior-consort and court-assassin launched into the interior of the Aerieakon with an explosive fury as she was immediately confronted by defending crew members armed with electro-javelins and shock-pistols. A savvy and extensively experienced fighter and soldier, Ptoleria had descended upon the quartet of ship's defenders with a deadly display of martial arts techniques that speedily nullified their numerical superiority.
Realizing she was accomplishing next to nothing in her futile battle with Zhe'kae-Chah, and ducking under his voluminous wings, Rae'vynn reluctantly leaped from off the reptile-lord's back and into position between Ptoleria and her crewmen. Her men were clearly no match for the Captain of the Dragon's House Guard. She was inarguably a superior breed of warrior. But Rae'vynn, too, was an experienced fighter with elite training. Rae'vynn stood taller than Ptoleria by a full head, but her lithe and lean body could not match the shorter woman's clearly defined, densely-packed musculature.
Ignoring the pair of them, Zhe'kae-Chah lumbered off deeper into the skycraft, hissing and squalling as he waved off low-level particle beam strikes from hand weapons. Ptoleria briefly watched him leave and then quickly turned to face Rae'vynn Wyyng as Wyyng's men, bruised and wounded, drew back and away from her. The Hyaenirax killer smiled frostily as she imperiously looked the corsair-captain up and down.
"The rebel captain. The so-called 'ruthless enemy of the state'. Inept, ineffective and inferior. Do you really believe you are any more ready to fight me than you were him?" she sneered.
For the moment, Rae'vynn did not speak. She simply squared her shoulders and, with the thumbs of either hand, pressed the palm-based release switch in her gauntlets. There was a rough clacking noise as the blades of her fist-daggers extended to their full length, stretching from the backs of her hands far out over her padded knuckles. The blades of the fist-daggers were cruelly serrated, the saw-teeth sweeping backwards away from the blade tips.
Ptoleria nodded appreciably. "Ugly weapons. I'll enjoy taking them from you and killing you with them."
Rae'vynn's response was to lunge powerfully across the wide gap between Ptoleria and herself and drop to her knees, folding her arms across her chest and then lashing out as she slid forward, opening her arms wide as the momentum of her charge forced Ptoleria to hop upwards in an attempt to dodge the strike. The blades struck the insides of Ptoleria's knees, hitting the armored cuff of her boot tops, creating a flurry of sparks on contact. The impact knocked the warrior-consort was thrown off-balance by the attack and stumbled, yet did not fall, quickly regaining her footing and widening her stance to fend off another slash from Rae'vynn's bladed gauntlets. She struck awkwardly downwards at the pirate captain, the swing of her machete-sized dagger swinging into space between her own legs and the reflexive untargeted blast from her sidearm searing a smoking scar in the ship's floor -- missing Rae'vynn.
Rae'vynn leapt up to her feet, spun and launched a kick at Ptoleria's upper chest as the woman danced backwards, but Ptoleria had anticipated the move, blocked it with ease and countered with a series of rapid, abdomen-targeting slashes with her short-saber while punching forward with the butt of her pistol. Rae'vynn was able to evade the saber slashes, but took a hard blow to the shoulder-clavicle from the gun butt. She grunted softly and twisted to stand sideways, her left side facing her foe, while she cocked her right arm and then lunged forward again, with the fist-dagger at arm's length forward. She slashed down and then up, flipping her gauntleted hand so that her fist, though closed, faced palm upwards and went for the side of Ptoleria's exposed throat. Rae'vynn missed, but that was part of the plan. The attack was a feint. Ptoleria dodged, leaning away from the serrated blade and threw up her arm, using her armor's forearm guard as a shield.
That move was exactly what Rae'vynn had anticipated.
The Aerieakon's Captain stood tall, drawing her legs together and spun with both her arms outstretched... the fist-dagger blades raked across Ptoleria's face, ripping into the soft flesh of the left cheek. As the woman reacted, Rae'vynn then kicked up and straight out with her right leg, the heel of her foot perpendicular to Ptoleria's torso, and she planted the stamp-kick square into the smaller woman's unprotected sternum, knocking her back and down. Ptoleria hit the floor heavily and scrambled to rise, but, moving nimbly, Rae'vynn had straddled her back at that moment and drove down with both the fist-dagger blades. The effort brought an involuntary cough from her and pain flared up her arms rebounding from the force of the blow. The daggers punched through armor-plate, past the underlying metal mesh, and ripped into and through Ptoleria's back muscles, on either side of her spine, where they then sank into the softer flesh of her torso. Rae'vynn pulled backwards with all her upper body strength and the saw-toothed edges of the blades locked into Ptoleria's flesh, impaling her.
She should have won. Against almost anyone else that assault would have been instantly fatal. Ptoleria screeched in agony and bucked like a wild bull, the fist-dagger blades digging even deeper into her as she went berserk. She stood and her rise was unstoppable, carrying Rae'vynn high enough fast enough to throw her completely off balance. She reached over her shoulder and then around her own waist as she tried to slice and stab the pirate captain with her short-saber, but missed making contact. Despite that, the forcefulness of her movements tossed Rae'vynn around like a limp doll. Rae'vynn pressed the gauntlet controls in her palms and released the fist-dagger blades, spring-ejecting them, feeling warm blood flow over her hands and then she staggered back away from Ptoleria as the woman whipped around to face her. She lurched, teetering, and blinked spastically, wheezing as she unsuccessfully tried drawing a full breath, the saw-blades still in her back. She dropped her gun from numbed fingers. Her open mouth worked like that of a fish that had been yanked out from water. Arms trembling, she raised her short-saber, the keen blade tip wobbling...
It was a pitiful sight. But mercy was not an emotion of which Captain Wyyng was any longer capable.
Rae'vynn stepped gingerly across the space between them and picked up Ptoleria's pistol. Without hesitating, she then aimed and fired once, twice, three times, the sizzling particle beam punching into Ptoleria's face.
"What was it you said you were going to do to me?" Rae'vynn said breathlessly, coldly staring down at the scarlet ruin of the warrior-woman's charred skull.
She summarily turned away from the twitching corpse and sped down the corridor in the direction she'd last seen The Dragon rampaging.
* * *