Aetherial Annihilation (12 page)

I looked at the inert robot. "What about that thing?"

She opened an app on Beard's phone and pressed an icon labeled
Dismantle
. The robot stiffened. After a series of hums and clicks, it fell into a jumbled mess.

"Hmm," Elyssa said. "I suppose that'll do."

I took one last look inside the crater and opened my inner demon eye. The bright beam of energy blinded me for an instant. "I need to check one more thing."

Elyssa grabbed my arm. "Justin, don't do anything stupid."

"I'm not." I held down my middle fingers with my thumb, forming horns with my index and pinky finger. "Demon's honor, babe."

Her lips flattened. "Hurry!"

I walked to the edge of the crater and held a hand over the beam of aether. My Seraphim side instantly responded. I drew in the magical energy and channeled a thin beam of Brilliance into the sky.

Elyssa's mouth dropped open. "How did you do that?"

"The aether from the crystal is still usable." I looked up into the night sky. "Unfortunately, I'd have to stand in front of the beam to make use of it."

The shouts of soldiers drew closer. I relished the touch of magic washing over my hand for a second longer and tried not to cry when I pulled it away.

I sighed. "Let's go."

Chapter 10

Our little gun battle had caught the attention of someone in charge. Before we were a hundred yards to the west, I spotted a line of soldiers slowly and deliberately marching our way. We weren't getting to the river that way.

We turned south and found more flashlights bobbing in the dark.

Someone shouted, "They killed everyone!"

"It's a noose," Elyssa said. "And I they're going to blame us for killing those soldiers if they catch us."

"Let's climb a tree. Maybe they'll go under us." The idea was hardly out of my mouth when I noticed someone shining a portable spotlight into the branches of every tree. A startled squirrel chattered angrily at the intrusion. "Okay, bad idea."

Elyssa looked around and spotted a boulder just wide and tall enough to conceal us." Our only chance is to break through the line with speed and force." She pulled me behind the boulder with her. "When I give the go, you follow me." She gave me a stern look. "And don't trip."

My nerves twisted at the thought of plowing through a line of heavily armed soldiers. Even if they didn't have supernatural reflexes, they'd probably launch a hail of gunfire after us, and neither of us were faster than bullets, especially not in the woods.

Crunching leaves and heavy footsteps grew closer.

"Corner check," someone shouted.

Someone issued a command. "Weapons ready, spotlight on mark."

Elyssa made a face. "Damn, they're thorough." She extended the armor over her face.

I followed her lead. A bullet in the head wouldn't be very pleasant.

Her muscles tensed. She held up a fist, ear cocked at the approaching sounds, then motioned forward.

We burst from cover and plowed into two soldiers cautiously approaching the boulder.

"What the hell?" a man shouted.

Shots rang out. "Hold fire! Hold fire!"

We flashed through the line of soldiers.

"About face!" came another command.

We were about twenty yards away when the dreaded next command came.

"Weapons free!"

Tracers zinged through the night air like lasers. Bark exploded from trees and dirt flew up all around us. Something nailed me hard in the back and I lost my footing. Elyssa grunted, spun, and landed hard. She shook her head as if to clear it and rolled behind a thick tree.

The shooting stopped for a moment. I heard the clicks of fresh magazines being inserted into guns and a fresh salvo commenced, once again lighting the air like New Year's Eve.

A spotlight found me as I peeked around the tree and the bullets converged on my position.

"Cease fire!" The last whine of a speeding bullet faded. "You are surrounded. You have no avenue of escape. Give yourself up."

I knew this was our chance to escape, but one look at Elyssa told me something was wrong. Without the armor's HUD active I couldn't see through her mask, but her head lolled. I wondered if a bullet had hit her in the head. That had happened to me once and even though the armor blocked most of the pain, it still knocked me silly.

"Elyssa, are you okay?" I hissed.

She held up her hand and then gripped her head.

Boots crunched on leaves as the soldiers approached. I had to buy some time. "Wait, stop! I'll give up."

"Halt," the commander said. "Show yourself."

I stepped from behind the tree, hands in the air. "Don't shoot."

"Remove your mask and identify yourself," said a young man, the apparent leader of this squad. The patch on his breast read,
Glover.

I didn't lower the mask, just in case someone had an itchy trigger finger. "My name is Justin."

"Arrest him." Glover motioned the others.

I picked up the computer and held it over my head. "This is a bomb and I will detonate it if you come another step closer."

The squad leader's eyes flared. "Step back!"

The soldiers were way ahead of his command, already backing away.

"Justin, explain why you have a bomb." Despite the concern on his face, he didn't seem overly frightened—a fact that made me respect him.

"I'm part of a team tasked with discovering how to disable these crystal meteors—"

"I haven't heard of a team tasked for that," he said.

"They're extremely dangerous." I looked to my sides, hoping I wasn't being flanked while I talked and also to check Elyssa. "I need to warn you about them."

"We're under orders not to touch them," Glover said.

"That's good, because if you do, you'll die." Murmurs went up from the other soldiers nearby, so I pressed my slight advantage. "These things soak up massive amounts of energy. Destroying them will cause an explosion similar to a nuclear bomb. Touching them will irradiate the person."

"Jesus," someone said. "I was standing next to that thing all day."

"I don't think standing near a crystal will irradiate you," I said. "Only touching it will."

"Did you intend to blow it up?" Glover asked.

I shook my head. "I sneaked in here to investigate it, but a group of mercenaries beat us to it. They planned to steal the meteor with a helicopter."

His face darkened. "Are they the ones who killed my people?"

I really didn't want to tell him. "Yes. If it makes you feel any better, I killed most of the mercenaries."

His lips peeled back from his teeth and curses rose from the other soldiers. I had a feeling they wanted to kill me right then and there, bomb or not. I felt a hand on my ankle. Pretending I was looking around for other soldiers, I glanced at Elyssa. She gave me a thumbs up.

Glover stiffened. "We'll need to take you into custody and sort this out."

"I can't let you do that," I said. "I've got to save the world."

"You're delusional," Glover said. He narrowed his eyes. "And I think you're bluffing about that being a bomb."

I still held enough aether in me to channel one spell. "Close your eyes," I whispered to Elyssa. Without waiting for confirmation from her, I held my right hand palm out toward the soldiers and willed every bit of Brilliance to flow into that hand. It coalesced into a bright white star in my hand.

Shouts of disbelief rose from the soldiers. Before they could fire on me in panic I squeezed shut my eyes and dispersed the energy in one massive flash. It was so bright my eyelids barely helped. People hollered and weapons fell to the forest floor. I opened my eyes and saw the soldiers staggering around blindly.

I grabbed Elyssa's hand and we ran.

"I guess we failed the stealth test." I lowered my mask as we finally reached a wide tract of land cleared for power pylons.

Since losing the soldiers, we hadn't seen any signs of pursuit, though I heard the whumping of a chopper somewhere in the distance.

"No, we passed that test. It was the damned mercenaries that lost it for us." She lowered her mask and rubbed the back of her head. "Can you believe they nailed me in the head twice?"

"No wonder you were out of it." I felt two large bumps on her scalp and winced. "I can't believe you recovered so quickly."

"It wasn't quick at all." She groaned. "God, I have a headache." She kissed my cheek. "Good job stalling them. I'm just glad they didn't open fire on you when you threatened them with the bomb."

"Yeah, about that—" I held up the computer box. It was riddled with bullet holes.

"Well, bring it anyway. Maybe we can recover the data."

Two helicopters zoomed over the trees and shined spotlights toward the area we'd probably be if we weren't supernaturally fast. Thanks to our speed, we'd covered a lot of ground, even with the treacherous terrain.

We headed due east then headed north to circle the state park. Several hours later, we finally reached the car. Though most of the crowd from earlier had dispersed, a few people with tinfoil hats held signs about alien intruders and marched around, demanding access to the meteor.

By the time we arrived at the Ranch, I was ready for beddy-bye night-night time since it was already midnight, but I wanted to check in with Shelton first. We took the computer to the war room. Thomas wasn't there, but Shelton and Bella huddled in front of what looked like a computer monitor.

"Honey, I'm home," I said when we walked inside.

They turned around, worried eyes filling with relief.

Shelton blew out a breath of relief. "We figured you guys were in jail or something."

"Elyssa, dear, you look awful." Bella put a hand on Elyssa's cheek. "What happened?"

Before we could answer, a third figure rose from the chair in front of the computer and turned around.

"Justin, it is good to see you again." Cinder spoke in his typical monotone voice, but the smile on his face looked genuine.

"Cinder!" I gave the golem a hug and backed away. "Your smile looks great."

"Thank you." He adjusted the smile to something a bit smug. "Though I have yet to master it, I no longer frighten children." He laughed stiffly, making it obvious he still had things to practice.

I also noticed the peach tone of his skin instead of the sickly gray that gave the gray men their name. "Did Fjoeruss teach you how to color your skin?"

He nodded. "He has also been teaching me how to create golems."

"Creepy," Shelton said. "We're gonna be overrun by the soulless things before we know it."

"That is not my intent," Cinder said. "However, it would be nice to have someone of my kind who can appreciate life with me."

Elyssa's eyes widened. "Cinder, are you going to make yourself a girlfriend?"

He tilted his head slightly. "I had not considered that, but it sounds like a good idea. It is obvious from my observations that having a kindred spirit to converse with is healthy, as is daily copulation, though I'm not certain if that is possible with my kind."

Shelton snorted. "It's so romantic when you put it like that."

The rest of us burst into laughter.

I slapped Cinder on the shoulder. "I've missed you, man."

He tried to laugh again and only succeeded in drawing grimaces from the rest of us.

"Found anything with the OTA footage?" I asked.

"Meh." Shelton went back to the computer and fiddled with the mouse. "I hate these things. It's so much easier just telling an arctablet what to do."

"Show him the hole," Bella said.

"Hole?" I wrinkled my forehead.

Shelton clicked on a video and enlarged it to fit the screen. "It ain't in three dimensions, so we had to cut out the angles we wanted. Thankfully, Cinder knows his way around these things."

For a moment, only blue sky appeared on the screen. Suddenly, a rift split open several hundred feet above the camera's perspective and a crystoid fell through. Though it was difficult to tell how large the meteor was from this distance, it swelled from the size of a watermelon to the size of a small boulder within seconds, growing larger as it plummeted past the recording ASE and toward earth. The ASE locked on and followed the meteor through a hole it punched in a cumulus cloud as it went traveled down.

The video flickered with static and the crystoid pulled away from the ASE. Still hundreds of feet from the ground, the video went black.

"Most of the recordings are like that," Shelton said. "We think the crystoid sucked the aether from the air as it traveled."

"That's probably why it grew so fast," Bella added.

Shelton nodded. "Yeah, and because the ASE was in its wake, it ran out of its aether charge."

"Makes sense." I pointed at the computer. "Do we have other angles?"

"Yeah." Shelton searched and clicked on another one. The rift was barely visible from the angle of the camera, but it was apparent from the way the crystoid seemed to appear in midair that it hadn't originated in space.

I stated the obvious theory. "Someone must have used omniarches to launch these things."

"Looks like it." Shelton closed the video and turned around. "Here's the way I figure it happened. Someone took a flying carpet, snapped some pictures, then used an omniarch or several of them and just dropped the crystoids through, let gravity do the rest."

"Devious and efficient." Elyssa quirked her mouth in a way that told me she was impressed.

"Man, I wish you guys could've grabbed a chunk of the one you went to look at." Shelton walked over to the conference table and grabbed a cookie from a plate. He took a bite and crumbs scattered down his duster. "I need to analyze—oh wait. I don't have magic so I guess I can't." He cocked his arm as if to throw the cookie on the plate, seemed to reconsider it, and gulped down the rest.

"Yeah, well breaking off a piece is risky at best." I told them about our little adventure.

"Malaether zombies and robots?" Shelton shook his head in disbelief. "Man, we can't catch a break, can we?"

"Do you think the noms could have made a robot?" I asked.