A.R.Yngve
DARC AGES:
City Of Masks
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Chapter 11
When the second pulse from the harbor tower struck the palace, Threo and Okono had joined Awonso in the hallway. The dwarf was there too, hiding behind a column. All four were covered by plaster dust, and with their powdered hair they resembled a company of bewildered lost elderly people.
They covered their heads as a section of the front gates came crashing down over the entrance steps.
The dwarf coughed up dust and said: "I can make a white flag if you want to. Your rifles are quite useless in all this dust."
Kiti-Mo's oblong head peeked up from beneath a fallen column. "My lady? Shall I make a suicide charge against the enemy targets and self-destruct, thereby injuring as many as I can in defense of your life?"
"No," she said.
A voice from outside called for their surrender.
"Give yourself up," Threo told her. "Please."
Okono's eyes, when she faced him, were bottomless pools of black set in luminous whites against the plaster dust that covered her face and lips.
"You said our sense of honor is twisted, doctor. Let me show you precisely how twisted." She stood up, a rifle in each hand, but their weight seemed to drag her down and her resolve was undercut by the trembling of her legs. Tears made dark smudge tracks down her dusty cheeks. "Will you come with me?" she asked Threo. "Or live without me?"
Threo wanted to cry then, so as not to seem unmoved by her bravery, but his eyes were dry and his stomach a tight ball of fear. He tugged at her robe and pulled her back into cover behind the doorpost, and in protest she uttered some ancient curse from the land of her ancestors.
Then the third pulse impacted on the palace, and the entire guest wing collapsed in a cloud of smoke and flame. The smoke billowed down over the stairs, and out through the haze two figures tumbled down the steps, one living and one dead.
The living figure slid on his belly down the stairs with a clattering noise, like a silver statue unmoored. He clutched the banisters and broke the slide, swung around and landed feet-first on the floor at the base of the stairs.
The motors and hydraulics of his armor hissed and whined as he held the banister for support and struggled into an upright stance. Both Awonso and Okono had seen more impressive armor, and better entrances. Always late, just like his father, thought Okono.
"Damn this dust," said Kensaburé's loudspeaker voice from the helmet. "It blinds me. Wipe it off, someone - anyone."
Awonso rushed past the open gates. A salvo of laser pulses from the courtyard flickered through the air and missed him by inches. He wiped the thickest layer of dust off the glass section of the knight's helmet.
"Thank you." The knight clamped away to a corner, picked up a large oak table in a pincer-like grip, and held it like a shield before him. "A good man died for my sake today. I have to win this fight, if I am to grant his last wish. Anyone who stands in my way, dies."
He stomped in long strides out the doorway with the table in front of him, and was met by a smattering hail of laser pulses. They perforated the tabletop; splinters bounced off his armor as the table caught fire and disintegrated piece by piece in his hands.
It took him about ten seconds to march up to the line of firing soldiers, and by then the table had been reduced to a glowing piece of charcoal.
The line of soldiers broke up, as men wearing tin helmets, face-masks and breastplates tried to run; one was brave enough to stab at the knight with his bayonet. The bayonet broke off. Kensaburé grabbed him by the arm and tossed him into the cluster of other masked soldiers. The man screamed and his mask came off as he landed on his comrades' backs.
Kensaburé noticed that the soldier's face was not deformed at all, and yet he reached for the mask as if his life depended on it. Kensaburé pressed the control buttons underneath his toes, and red warning lights lit up inside his helmet; from the outside of his lower arms, two giant razor-sharp scythes slid out.
Then he began to weave his arms from side to side as he marched forward, literally cutting through the opposition - a harvester in the killing fields. Awonso looked away; Threo wrapped his arms around Okono and shielded her eyes from the gruesome sight.
Body parts thudded against the courtyard with a regular rhythm, and the soldiers' screams were silenced one by one, until there was only the thumping noise of Kensaburé walking down the courtyard. Then his jetpack came alive. He took off and soared above the canals and rooftops, shimmering in the sunlight.
"There are two big guns," the dwarf said in an exasperated voice. "Even he cannot make it against the both of them, and I have heard what happens when these knights run out of energy. The citizens will tear him apart to protect their secret."
Okono pointed one bayonet against the dwarf's face, and he would have gone pale if the dust had not already done the job. "The power plant!" he pleaded. "Just shut it down, and the turret shuts down!"
"Show me where," Awonso said, and lifted the dwarf onto his shoulders. "And why haven't you done that already?"
"What, and leave us defenseless against attack? Do I look like a fool? This way, behind the big stairs. Mind my head!"
The dwarf ducked in the doorway, and they disappeared downstairs.
"Should we help them?" Threo asked Okono. "They could face some resistance down there. Or would you rather face down those towers?"
"Which is the most dangerous choice?"
"Both. Death by radiation or laser, you choose."
She checked the battery cartridges in the remaining rifles, pulled them out of their sockets, and pocketed them as spare ammunition.
"I have never been underground," she said. He pulled her against his chest and they shared a kiss, knowing it might be their last one. Then they followed the path of the dwarf and the scholar, into the bowels of the city.
Outside, in Vanitia's maze of streets and canals, Kensaburé took jet-powered leaps in a zigzag path, each leap two hundred meters long, touching down on chimney-tops and bell-towers, bounding off them with the power of his hydraulic knee joints.
The gun tower rumbled as its enormous laser cannon rotated in a feeble attempt to trace his path. One shot fired into the air and continued into space.
The warning lights in his helmet told him that he had all but used up his jet fuel, and he landed by a fountain one block away from the harbor. The two bloody scythes slid out from his arms once more, and the city crowds reeled back in horror.
Everywhere masked faces looked at him from corners, windows and canals; he simply could not believe that a whole city afflicted with the Plague had persisted for such a long time, when other cities would have collapsed from despair and isolation.
And the masks! He had seen similar disguises during the celebrations after the Spring Joust or on New Year's Eve, but this - little children wearing masks as if it were the most natural thing in the world, even infants carried by their mothers to be suckled! It was insane.
He strode down the street while stones and vegetables bounced off his armor, tossed by angry citizens. Not the hero's welcome he had hoped for; he bit his teeth together and pumped his arms with the rhythm of his thumping feet.
The power pack had enough energy left to last him about half an hour. Then he could eject himself from the suit - and perhaps find a boat for their escape...
His arrival in the harbor, wielding the bloody scythes, was greeted with panic. Workers scattered in all directions, ships disembarked in haste - and the giant chain was hoisted across the mouth of the harbor, blocking all ships from escape.
Now the two gun towers began to take aim at the harbor itself; the giant guns slowly dipped downward, and their tracer beams floated silently across the parked ships and shallow waters, seeking out the single knight.
Kensaburé headed south along the wave-breaker, so close to the southern tower that he passed below its lowest angle of fire. He kept an eye on the northern turret, and saw the tracer light slide southward, a bright-red mark of death, past fleeing sailors and toward him.
Then the dot was chasing him, moving only slightly slower than he could run. He stopped by the end of the southern wave-breaker, at the base of the southern tower. Here the blockade chain emerged from a concrete bunker's low porthole and hung just above the low tide, freshly greased. Moving quickly, he ran for the chain and raised one scythe to chop it off.
In one brief moment, the red tracer-dot was reflected in the raised scythe blade - and he took one quick step away from the chain.
A near-invisible pulse shot out from the northern tower, and hit right where the bright red spot touched the ground. The spot burst into a blue flame, and the great chain snapped with a resounding bang. The whole length of chain splashed into the water and sank to the bottom of the harbor.
Kensaburé laughed and held up the scythe blade at the northern tower, imitating the ancient obscene gesture, and shouted through his loudspeaker: "Sit on this!"
He did not stay around for the tower to respond. He ran for the giant doors he had visited earlier, with the archaic lettering above the entrance - it was his one chance to enter the southern turret and maybe, just maybe turn the battle in his favor...
The gates were shut, as he had anticipated. The tracer from the northern tower kept chasing him. Kansaburé took to marching back and forth in front of the doors, hoping that the unseen gunners might fall for the same trick twice.
He had seen battles won because of stupid enemy leaders. He also had personal, painful experience of serving under bad leaders, during his father's brief alliance with Tharlos Pasko. Once one had come under the spell of the wrong leader, foolish strategies would be carried on much longer, even when they were obviously wrong.
He was not disappointed. Another pulse from the northern gun narrowly missed him and punched right through the door with an echoing blow. Then he dug his armored feet into the ground, pushed against the doors... and they gave way. The shot had blown a crossbeam bar to smithereens.
Kensaburé walked in through the open door and marched down the corridor leading to the southern tower. Power cables hummed on the wall beside him, and water gurgled through pipes to keep the cannon from overheating - but if he cut the cables, he would still be defenseless against the other tower.
He thought briefly of his friends, and whether they still lived. Then a small garrison of soldiers came rushing at him from the stairwell leading up the tower, and he knew what to do. The two scythes slid out with a rasping noise caused by the friction of dust and dried blood.
Kensaburé weaved his arms in front of him, and the soldiers fired. The laser pulses failed to penetrate his breastplate, and before the men could retreat he was upon them, doing his bloody handiwork.
Heads rolled. Masks were cleaved in half. Some of the faces revealed were perfectly normal, others hideously deformed. It did not matter to him. He had a debt to pay.
A shadow fell on the floor from behind him, and he heard a loud, burring motor noise. Slowly he turned, restless for the armor to move faster, and faced a dark shape hurtling through the air...
Too late did he make out the shape of the object: the heavy hook and block of a crane, rattling down from its chain as it was pulled along a ceiling rail.
The crane hook struck his breastplate with the force of several tons: he felt the plate buckle and the pressure change knocked the air out of his lungs. He toppled, slipped on the bloody mess on the floor, and slammed onto his back.
Kensaburé coughed and gasped for air, but the dent in his armor was pushing in against the breastbone and choking him. Warning lamps lit up around the insides of his helmet, and he tasted blood in his mouth; his vision started to blur.
Years of training took over; he pushed all buttons with his feet three times, and set off the emergency mechanism. Explosive bolts went off on the sides of the torso, arms and neck; the armor pieces came loose and his helmet clattered against the floor, while the coolant tubes whipped out of the power pack. He drew a gasping breath and his vision cleared.
Now he saw and heard the city lord's cloaked "robots" as they came charging at him, their metal masks impassive in the gloomy lighting, their legs moving stiffly in a parody of a robot walk.
But he could also hear the echo of their heavy breathing.
Kensaburé crawled out of the armor's legs dressed only in his coolant suit, tubes dangling by his sides, and reached down inside the backpack. He turned the hidden self-destruct switch, grabbed a rifle from the floor and hurried up the stairwell to the tower.
When the three cloaked men dressed as robots arrived at the armor's power pack, it detonated.
The blast knocked them over but was not strong enough to kill them. One "robot" lay moaning on the floor with a metal splinter in his body, while the other two struggled to get upright.
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DARC AGES (c)A.R.Yngve 1995, 2000, 2004, 2006. All rights reserved. May not be copied without permission.
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