The Path to Loss (Approaching Infinity Book 4) Read online

  Enzo’s Godsort drew back and drove its fist into Isleyna’s room. Years of peace and an impressive ego had spawned an even more impressive recklessness in Enzo.

  “Enzo! What are you doing?” Stol cried, both over the radio and through the external speakers.

  Just as Stol arrived, though, his cousin’s Godsort recoiled from the Citadel, its striking arm disintegrating violently as it stumbled backwards. Stol caught Enzo, halted his backwards progress, and steadied him.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Stol cried, again using the radio and speakers.

  Enzo screamed back in the same manner. “Your sister, Stol. She’s dead. I saw blood, drums of it, and I couldn’t let that little grave raper get away.”

  “You were too reckless! You don’t know she’s dead.”

  “Did you hear me? Drums, Stol. Several and gushing. How explicit do I have to be?”

  Stol paused while Enzo’s words finally sank in. “My sister? Did he kill. . . Isleyna?”

  There was silence then as Stol regarded the man who pretended at being a skeleton and who sat atop his sister’s fresh corpse.

  “Stol?” Enzo tested, but all that was audible was Stol’s labored breathing, building to a crescendo until the familiar words boomed from him.

  “High Formation!” Stol cried. Twin nozzles, some fifty centimeters above and behind him, like a pair of horns aiming down at him, snapped audibly, and he felt the sharp work of the pneumatic pumps as they drew a fine mist of blood from a wide dispersion of specially treated pores across his bare shoulders and upper arms. The pumps fed the blood in two streams to the one meter cube of green light outlined with steel—the Godsort’s Kossig Engine—at his back, causing the light to shine brighter and brighter. He felt the merger between man and machine powered by the infinity of getnium rays, his human senses melting away to be replaced entirely by those of his Godsort. He felt like a god and like a god he would judge the guilty, condemning to death those not worthy of mercy.

  But first he would marvel firsthand at the power of the skeleton man.

  Stol had never been hit so hard, been disoriented so fast. And then an even greater impact rocked him, nearly robbing him of consciousness. He shook his head, blinked the fuzz from his vision and found that he’d been forcibly relocated a kilometer away and somehow made to crash into the wrecked hulk occupying the middle of Memorial Square.

  His Godsort was essentially undamaged, but it took Stol a moment to free himself from the mess of ruined machinery in which he found himself. He shrugged off the last of the wreckage, a net of girders and cables, made unusually strong, he realized, by strange vegetable nodes which somehow worked seamlessly together with the metal. He glanced to his left at the giant stalk that, in spite of all Raohan La’s efforts, had taken root in Stolom’s soil of the present. He couldn’t help but think of the nodes as nerve centers with cables serving as the actual signal conductors. The Godsorts worked on a similar principle. They were machines, but their onboard Kossig Engines enabled them to be so much more.

  Stol stepped clear and once again made for the Citadel. He noted that Temmus was moving with some difficulty. Once again, Stol used the radio and the speakers. He didn’t want to be out of contact due to a malfunction of any sort. “Temmus, are you injured?”

  No response.

  “Temmus!”

  “I’m fine,” came a curt reply.

  But with his integrated Godsort’s senses, he could now see otherwise as he closed the gap between them. “You’re not fine. What did she do to you? Temmus, stop. Isleyna’s dead. I won’t have you throw your life away today, too.”

  “Isleyna’s dead?” his tone was desperate for the answer to be no, but he didn’t stop. Then in a higher pitch that seemed on the verge of breaking into tears, “She’s dead?”

  “Temmus, I want you to stop.”

  “No, Stol. I can do this. I’ll show you that I can do this.”

  “Your power flow is irregular. Your joints are barely holding together. Your left knee is about to let go of the lower leg.” Stol was gaining on his little brother, but Temmus was very nearly to the giant skeleton serpent. “Temmus, stop!”

  “No.”

  His reply was stretched out over several syllables, so much like a petulant child’s, and Stol was painfully reminded of how young his brother really was, how soft living, even with Raohan La’s warning, had prepared him for none of what would happen tonight.

  Stol’s stomach sank when he heard Temmus cry the words. He shook his head, seeing what his brother clearly could not. He steadied himself and his voice as much as possible. “Temmus, listen to me. You’ve got to manually cancel the High Formation. The pump safeties are offline. You’re going to get a lethal draw, especially if you use the. . .”

  Stol didn’t want to finish. He didn’t want to plant the suggestion that would ensure his brother’s death. Losing both his brother and his sister this night would unhinge him. “Please, Temmus.”

  “I can do this. I can get her.”

  Stol saw the skeleton man suddenly appear near the waiting serpent and the ghost woman that Temmus had been chasing. Enzo had broken into a run from the Citadel towards them. Too many things were happening at once, and neither Stol nor Enzo could do anything to stop what was about to happen.

  “Temmus. . .” Stol whispered.

  The Getnium Flare flashed longer and brighter than Stol had ever seen it. All of the Godsort’s power was pumped into the Flare, and with it, every drop of Temmus’s blood. The spent Godsort became a black statue, the power lines forever dimmed, burnt out by the sudden, extreme output.

  “Temmus!”

  Stol and Enzo arrived at the scene almost simultaneously. The serpent had sprung to life, writhing with surprising agility and fluidity, given its size and appearance, and attacked Enzo, prompting him to engage the High Formation.

  Stol regarded the skeleton man hanging in the air, an affront to nature with his defiance of gravity, his pretense at a mastery of or over death. He cried out, giving himself fully to the Godsort’s divinity. It had been years, but the rapture came, familiar and welcome as ever. None could stand against a Godsort, not in High Formation.

  • • •

  The final effort to bring himself back to Hilene’s position was dizzying. Jav regarded the one-armed Godsort still behind him. With a tired nod, he sent Gran Mid after it. He still knew who the enemy was, but other things were not quite so clear to him. His head was a muddle of manic anxiety, and a single alternating thought repeated ad nauseam: it’s happening again, which brought rage, and it’s happened again, which brought crushing, dread-laced sorrow. Tears threatened, but his vision was blurred due to another, more pressing threat.

  Hilene closed the short distance that remained between them. “Jav? Are you all right?”

  “Jennifer?” He shook his head. “You’re not her, but. . .”

  “Jav, we’re running out of time,” she said, suddenly feeling the truth of her words. She was exhausted, weak. “The green light, Jav. We have to find the source and destroy it or it’ll kill us all.”

  The blank sockets of the Kaiser Bones just stared.

  “Jav! Do you understand me?”

  He jerked as if slapped. “Green light. Destroy it. Yes, I understand.

  “You could almost be her.”

  In spite of herself, Hilene returned to normal, moved beyond reason by the naked, hopeless honesty of Jav’s words and the sentiment they conveyed. She cocked her head and drew closer, with her arms outstretched. But she couldn’t ignore the thunderclap steps behind her. She could feel the radiation build-up permeate her every cell and knew what she had to do.

  She smiled at Jav but her eyes were sad. “Find her. Find her and be happy.

  “I love you, Jav.”

  She was still intangible, but struck him with the flat of her hand in the middle of his chest and sent him streaking backwards. As she retreated from him, he could do nothing but watch what happened next. H
is already fractured mind recorded it, as if in slow motion and in excruciating, unforgettable detail.

  The Godsort reached out for her, the antenna-like protrusion from its palm harmlessly passing through her back and chest. The nozzles along the antenna belched out jets of supercharged gas, creating an incandescent sphere of green light so that it looked as if the Godsort was holding a ball, ready for sport. Inside the sphere, vividly revealed by the light in spite of its intensity, Hilene swelled and burst like a balloon. Her blood, organs, and shattered bones rained down in a liquid stream to spatter the ground below and Jav Holson lost what was left of his mind.

  There were voices, or maybe it was just one voice. Jav couldn’t tell for sure, nor could he comprehend the words. Rage filled him, at first to the point of inaction, leaving room for nothing else, but the other Godsort, the one not occupied by Gran Mid, had arrived and had tried to engage him immediately. Jav dodged the initial attempt and the next that followed, but as his rage acquiesced to combat reflexes, his body was able to respond less and less due to plain fatigue and steady getnium poisoning.

  Finally, the Godsort caught him, not with one but two of the gas jet spheres. Something like electric current shot through Jav’s body, isometrically flexing every muscle and shorting every nerve except his pain receptors. The Kaiser Bones rippled with sweeping waves of popping blisters, until finally bubbling to a congealed gray liquid and pouring off of his body, still naked from his tryst with Hilene. And then the Godsort’s hands clapped together, blotting out the vile green light between them.

  • • •

  Upon their arrival to just beyond the foot of the Vine, Raohan La knew that things had gone from bad to worse. The injured among them did not fare well on the short jaunt, due to the stress of transport or to the exceedingly high intensity getnium rays or to the combination of both. Three of them liquified on materialization. One succumbed to extreme cellular division, budding nearly full-grown offspring from its hide in rapid succession. These all struggled to escape their host in different directions and many strove to tear themselves free before division was complete, much to their own detriment and that of their unfortunate parent. Another of the wounded, likely with vegetation jammed within its wounds, had its DNA merged with that vegetation. Shoots of sinewy vine, writhed and coiled like snakes, seeking purchase in the ground to root and take sustenance, twisting the reptile and snapping its neck in the process. The last just stood, staring up at the sky, but Raohan La knew that its mind was gone, a stroke of luck maybe, since it likely meant that it would not turn savage and attack at random.

  Others were also starting to succumb to the getnium rays. They had little time and Raohan La wondered what they might accomplish in what was left to them. He set his mind to work on enveloping the base of the Vine, but could feel the getnium rays scratching at his power as if his telekinetic force was laced with oversensitive nerves. No matter.

  “Siskus La,” he called out with his mind. “Add your crushing thoughts to my own. We will uproot this weed and cripple its thinking center.”

  “Yes, Raohan La!”

  “Everyone! Hear me! Do what you can to bring this weed to ruin! You cannot rely on aid from your fellows. Each of you must strive to do this on your own. If we stop to show concern for a fallen comrade, we have lost any and all advantage.”

  The Godsorts piloted by Stol’s cousins had arrived, but just in time to encounter active resistance in the form of two giants, both larger than Godsorts: a great, tusked beast and a strange composite man composed of thousands of smaller men, all of which were some obscene hybrid of cellulose and an unidentifiable synthetic. It was a waste to have probed them, but they themselves and the way that they were perfectly integrated to make a larger, flawlessly-moving figure had intrigued him. Despite his ability to make war, he had always been a thinker, inquisitive and eager to understand all that he encountered. The one exception of course was the Vine before him. Destruction was all it warranted.

  Several of the reptiles had begun to apply their skills to the base of the Vine. Arwan La and Koros La shot funnels of flames from their brows. Dacan La supplemented their efforts by fanning the flames with his mastery over air. Others manipulated the environment further to bring down lightning strikes upon the dark, olive surface of the Vine. Oily black smoke rose variously from their efforts, but Raohan La, suffering still from his machine infection, despite renewed efforts to fight it, could not find in himself even a modicum of optimism. Along with Siskus La, he continued to wrap his mind around the Vine, which he found unusually slippery for some reason, hoping still to uproot it and squeeze the life out of it.

  • • •

  Vays couldn’t understand why he felt so tired. He had done nothing of significance since planetfall, so why was he plagued by lethargy and a growing knot of nausea in the pit of his stomach? It probably had something to do with the strange green fog. He kept glancing nervously to Gran Lej and kept telling himself to stop it. Like his fellows, he didn’t, in general, trust Icsain, but with Scanlan scurrying back at only half his proper size and both Jav and Hilene likely exhausted from their encounters with the giant reptile, he would have to trust that the enigmatic wooden man would do his part. He was less worried about Kapler. What Kapler lacked in skill, he, along with Gran Pham, more than made up for with brute strength and endurance.

  He was nervous about Brin, as well, but for different reasons. Inside the Palace she was as safe as possible, but he hoped that they would have power back soon. She could help if they did, and he had a feeling that this time, more than any so far, even more than with Garlin Braams, they would need every bit of help they could muster.

  Twenty- to twenty-five-meter-tall reptiles began appearing out of thin air all around the base of the Vine. Some didn’t seem to survive the process that brought them, though, succumbing to spectacularly messy fates. The rest, Vays guessed, were unaffected by the trip as nearly all of them began to assault the Vine with their control over the elements and other ways unseen. Two, who were close, were sending fifty-meter jets of flame from their foreheads to scour the Palace.

  “Get ready,” Vays said through his Artifact. “Brin, how’s the power situation?”

  “Should be available in minutes, but only enough for basic systems. No Lightning Guns.”

  “The PA?”

  “You’ll hear me,” she said.

  He sensed the smile in her reply and grinned as well beneath the glittering faceplate of the Titan Star armor. He drew the Titan Saber from its cradle within his brow and began walking forward towards the nearest fire-producing reptile.

  “Let me test them first,” Vays said. “They’re only flesh and blood and they can’t all be like the one who’s caused so much trouble.”

  “Fine with me,” Raus said. “We’ll likely need to counter the non-flesh-and-blood variety that will be arriving shortly.”

  “Icsain,” Vays continued, “be ready to support with the flesh-and-bloods. If you can turn a few, so much the better.”

  Silence.

  “Respond,” Vays growled.

  “Yes, Mr. Vays, sir.”

  Vays ground his teeth at Icsain’s indignant sarcasm, but proceeded, breaking into a run. He held the Titan Saber out before him, in a straight-arm posture with the tip of the blade pointing skyward. He Knocked the blade with his mind instead of his fist—something not even the founder of the Single Element Ghost Sword system had been able to do, and which Vays had only learned to do in the last twenty years—and began to build a Union Blade.

  He altered his stride slightly to crouch and spring, shooting up and forward along an unwavering diagonal towards the pyrokinetic reptile. He brought the Titan Saber back, and cried out, “Union Blade!” as he brought it across and through the reptile’s neck, at a point roughly halfway between its head and torso. The flames stopped abruptly, but even before Vays could begin the downward arc gravity demanded, he and his victim’s head were caught up in a localized tornado and cast ba
ck with more force than he imagined possible with mere wind.

  Vays managed to cling to his sword, but was otherwise helpless, sent sprawling like a rag doll, completely at the mercy of the driving wind, and unable to regain his bearings for the twisting, turning ride it provided. He finally crashed down to the hard ground, bouncing and skidding to a halt two kilometers away. He rose, shook his head, took two unsteady steps and sighed with relief at the welcome sound emanating from the Palace.

  Brin Karvasti’s voice boomed out loud and clear from the Palace’s public address system. “Greetings from the Viscain Emperor,” she said. “Those who have no affiliation with the Viscain Empire cease your aggressions against all things Viscain. Turn upon your fellows. Rend them with tooth, claw, and force of mind.”

  • • •

  The effect of the woman’s voice was immediate for those who were susceptible to it. Raohan La shrugged off her power of compulsion with mild effort, but he looked on in horror as many did exactly as she had instructed. Her power spoke to the mind, and she was not unskilled in its use.

  Stol’s cousins arrived in their Godsorts and had either been out of range of the woman’s influence or were somehow immune to it even though none had initiated the High Formation as yet.

  The giant composite man ignored the La clan members closest to him and moved with surprising agility for Karstus Kossigan’s Godsort, grappling with it immediately. The tusked beast, which Raohan La now saw was not really animal at all but a combination of machine and unnatural plant matter, adjusted its footing to position itself so that it was facing Hostur Kossigou’s Godsort, then exercised a remarkable skill. It seemed to disappear and reappear an instant later crashing its steel-braced tusks into the Godsort with alarming violence. This attack could be anticipated and defended against, but if the target were taken by surprise, could prove fatal. Even without augmentation, the Godsorts were sturdy, but the damage was considerable. Not crippling, however, which was a relief.