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

  “You still feeling it, Jav?” The voice was Raus’s, cutting in via Artifact.

  Jav cocked his head at the sudden communication, but didn’t respond immediately.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes’ then.”

  “It’s almost always the same, Raus,” Jav finally replied through is Artifact. “Just before planetfall, it’s like something inside me snaps. This time was no different.”

  “It keeps you sharp, though. You said so yourself.”

  “No, I said it makes me mean,” Jav corrected.

  This time Raus didn’t have an immediate reply. Finally he said in a tone incongruously grave, “Someday you’ll know the answer, Jav, and you’ll be able to do something about it.”

  Jav was puzzled by Raus’s response. There was something cryptic about it—something knowing?—that kept him from letting it go immediately. He had to force himself to banish his annoyance and to remember that there was no possible way Raus could be responsible for what he was feeling. He hoped there would be fighting soon. That always helped to appease the anger inside him. Well, that wasn’t true exactly, but applying his fists was one of the only ways to effectively release that anger, if only temporarily.

  By the time the Viscain column had neared the base of the mountainous outcropping of rock upon which the castle sat, a retinue of eight hundred men had descended the winding road leading from it, and filled the space that joined the road to the baked plain. Though arrayed with swords, spears, and some crude, long-barreled firearms, all of the locals were bronze-skinned and naked except for metal ornamentation in a variety of styles. Three men at the head of the throng were further adorned with willowy sheaves of brightly colored silk and were either leaders or diplomats.

  “Are you really going to speak with them?” Hilene said to Jav.

  “Yes, Hilene. I’m curious about that energy signature, and I’d like to give them a chance to display it. An occasional challenge is a welcome change, don’t you think?”

  She shrugged.

  “Well, as First General, I say it is. It’s a good exercise. Striking before the opposition has a chance to defend itself is an effective strategy, but not one we can count on every time. Striving makes you stronger. And you might learn something.”

  “Yes, General Holson,” she said.

  Her acquiescence, so hard to come by for most, was not lost on him.

  When they were still fifty meters away, Jav halted Gran Mid, leapt down easily without a break to continue walking as if he’d simply stepped down from a low stair. Hilene moved to accompany him, shoulder to shoulder, but still didn’t touch the ground. Gran Pham and Gran Lej sidled up alongside Gran Mid’s right and left respectively. Neither Raus nor Icsain stirred from their places. Nils Porta hovered in the air above Jav and Hilene, ready.

  One of the local leaders, who was covered in pale yellow silk, broke away from the contingent of men to approach Jav. Close at his back were the other two—one in pale blue, the other in green—who, despite the look of welcome upon their fellow’s face, were unabashedly suspicious.

  “Greetings,” the man in yellow said with open arms and a smile. “I am Gim Peshil, the Light Smith. Welcome to my territory. But these are strange Shields you possess. Where do you come from?”

  Jav didn’t respond immediately, and Peshil’s smile fluctuated. The word shields, which his mind accurately translated, having made sense of the local language prior to landing through intercepted broadcasts, turned over like a molasses whirlwind, slow, sticky, and inescapable.

  Before Peshil became too flustered, though, Jav recovered his wits, not at all sure what the mental lapse meant, and thrust his thumb back over his shoulder, pointing to the Vine.

  “I don’t know what shields you’re referring to,” Jav said, unconsciously emphasizing the word, “but surely you can see that we’ve come from out of the sky. We’re here to take your world.”

  Peshil’s face settled back into a tentative smile. “Well, if you can do as you boast, perhaps we might strike a deal.”

  Jav replied to Peshil’s meaningful pause with more silence.

  “You-you see,” Peshil said, “we all have many rivals here on Thrax Palonis. Alliances are critical to successful politics. I’m sure that we can give you something that will make it worth your while.”

  Jav shook his head. “Didn’t you hear me? We’ve come here to take your world. The Viscain Empire knows no politics.”

  “I don’t understand,” Peshil said, shaking his head.

  “Enough of this,” cried the man in green, to Peshil’s left.

  Jav cocked his head, his earlier annoyance at Raus’s comment tickled and rekindled by the man’s tone. Without seeming to move, Jav was back and sideways of the man in green, his right and the other’s left shoulders forming a ninety degree angle. He paused there as if listening to what the man might have to offer, but all that came was a change in the man’s face as it contorted with rage at being mocked. The semi-transparent image of something alien began to emit from the center of the man’s brow.

  Jav raised the index finger of his right hand directly before the man’s face as if to bring up an important point. He sighed, deciding. “Not for you.” The fingers of his right hand snapped into bent, rigid claws. While Dark, he had no nails, no need of any. His claws consisted solely of his impossibly strong, curled fingers.

  There was no wind up for the backhand. With a strange dull popping sound, Jav’s hand caved in the man’s face with splash of red and gray which obscured and extinguished the image of the beast coming forth. Jav’s mastery of Approaching Infinity, or AI, enabled him to create space—where there was none—with his mind, almost instantly build up momentum which approached infinity, then eliminate that space to strike with a mass that was supernormal. This was augmented further by his ranking of 30 standard gravities and further still by the Kaiser Bones.

  “Hilene,” Jav said calmly, “that was. . . impetuous of me. As I said, I want to give them a chance to display whatever it is that Scanlan detected, so you are to stand down.”

  “Yes, General Holson,” she said with no hint of anything but obedience.

  “Impetuous?” Peshil’s remaining comrade cried incredulously.

  “Nils!” Jav called.

  “Sir!” Nils responded from above and dropped down slightly.

  “Now hold on, hold on,” Peshil said, waving his hands.

  “You’ll not hold on to your territory like that, Gim Peshil,” the other said backing away hurriedly, taking his eyes off of Jav and Hilene only to glance at Nils. He wasn’t retreating though. From the center of his brow, just as with the other, the image of a beast began to pour out. “I am Baro Suunts, the Many-Scaled,” he shouted, “and I will not tolerate insolence of any order!” The image took on solidity as it grew to gigantic proportions until the Generals of the Viscain were face to face with what could only be described as a dragon.

  Baro Suunts stood thirty meters tall with his great, lashing tail doubling his overall length. He was, uniformly thick of body, probably fifteen meters broad at the shoulders and haunches, and was sheathed entirely in slate-blue scales like dinner plates. Sword teeth overflowed his elongated maw, and crusted ridges shadowed his electric blue eyes with their vertical yellow slits. Spines connected by a gray, vein-laced membrane fanned out from his back to form undulating wings. The men that had accompanied Peshil and Suunts backed away to allow Suunts more freedom and to avoid being crushed.

  Suunts stepped over Gim Peshil towards Jav and Hilene, neither of whom budged. He made as if to swipe at the two invaders with the talons of his gnarled paw, but those were sheared away when they came in contact with Nils Porta.

  Besides converting his bone to alloyed steel, Nils’s Artifact enabled him to spin his four-pointed middle and outside sections independently along the horizontal axis of his inhuman body, turning him into a mobile, three-bladed buzz saw. Suunts snatched his paw away, blood streaming from the stumps of two digits remov
ed farther down. Porta zipped forward and rammed his whirling blades into Suunts’s broad, reptilian face, but buzzed ineffectually there. Suunts had closed his eyes and though Porta had some success casting away scales and a thin spray of blood mixed with underflesh, a strange reaction was taking place where the blades dug in. A gray substance foamed out as fast as Porta cut through, but soon Porta’s blades were mucked-up and slowing down.

  Porta thought that the heavy bones of Suunts’s face were mostly responsible for preventing him from crushing through to shred the brain beyond, so he backed away, spun himself clean of the hardening gray substance, and proceeded in a powerful arc into Suunts’s belly. He met with the same luck there, however. Worse, the gray foaming substance coated him to such a degree now that he could no longer maintain his spin. For a moment Porta remained there, stuck in the expanded bulk of Suunts’s stomach which bristled with fresh, hardened scales, until his own weight dislodged him and he collapsed inert to the ground with a heavy clang.

  Hilene shot Jav a glance. He stood there, arms folded and impassive, acknowledged her, but gave no indication to move.

  Porta exploded. Suunts threw his head back in coarse, booming laughter, unaware of Porta’s particulate mass rising up to enter his open mouth. Suunts choked suddenly on the grit rubbing against his throat, and coughed several times. He cocked his head, sensing something not right inside him. He glanced down at Hilene then at Jav, whose imperious posture made his horny features settle into a frown. His eyes went wide suddenly and blood began to seep from the bottom lids. Then it began to run from his slit nostrils and the narrow holes that were his ears and finally from out of his mouth, his lower jaw slack and hanging open. Suunts swayed. His eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed, not to move again. His eyeballs disintegrated as Porta’s Cloud of Gnats poured out of both sockets to recombine into the Porta Fighter.

  Hilene turned again to face Jav. “May I, General Holson?” she said, referring to Gim Peshil.

  Jav shook his head. Our Mr. Peshil is no longer here. Jav relaxed his arms as Hilene glanced back and forth between him and Peshil. She shot forward for Peshil and passed through him, which was not unusual for her, but he merely flickered.

  “A hologram?” she blurted. “But their technology…”

  Jav had never seen Hilene quite so flustered. Without looking, he leapt up and back, landing squarely upon Gran Mid’s brow. “He called himself the Light Smith, remember? Clear the way, Hilene.”

  She moved through the air to join him.

  With their leaders killed or impotent, the eight hundred men milled about, unsure of what to do. Not a one with a firearm put it to use. Jav addressed the unmoving, strangely stoic image of Peshil, standing more or less where he had been before Suunts had attacked.

  “Peshil, I don’t know if you can hear me, and it doesn’t really matter. Your planet is doomed. You are doomed. Summon all the help you like. It won’t make any difference in the end.

  “Gran Mid! Fire!”

  Gran Mid raised its ivory head, spread its jaws, and belched liquid fire out through massive, inward-curving fangs. The fire washed over Suunt’s giant corpse and engulfed every last one of Peshil’s group, blasting the meat from their bones almost instantaneously.

  A light shone in the pits of Jav’s hollow skull eyes, giving rise to the tell-tale, high-pitched whine that initiated his control of the dead. None of the charred skeletons fell. All stood straight as if suspended by invisible marionette strings. Their weapons, no matter what they had been, were restructured by the Kaiser Bones into uniform pole swords, weapons that were ninety centimeters blade and ninety centimeters hilt. The group of them shifted into a perfect column of ten across by eighty deep and proceeded up the road they’d come down, back up towards the castle.

  Suunts left no remains. Jav noted that it probably wasn’t because of having borne the brunt of Gran Mid’s fire, either.

  Jav turned to address Raus on Gran Pham and Icsain within Gran Lej. “You two stay here and ensure the Palace’s safety. Porta, you’re with them. Hilene and I will go on ahead to clear out Peshil’s residence.”

  Raus nodded. Gran Lej waved in response.

  • • •

  Gran Mid slid steadily behind the group of blackened skeletons, themselves a single unit and serpent-like. As before, Hilene flew alongside Jav who stood atop Gran Mid’s head. As they climbed the road to the castle and their vantage improved the vast lava sea opened up below them to their left. Viscous glowing orange bubbles of molten rock popped with a slow but inevitable repetition and sent a fine mask of smoke into the air. Looming ahead was the castle itself. Its spindly black arms of porous volcanic rock made it seem frail, but as they neared, the sheer size of the castle dismissed this impression.

  “How did you know?” Hilene asked. “That Peshil was gone, I mean.”

  Jav shrugged. “Practicing AI makes me sensitive to spatial relationships. I felt him leave.”

  “General Holson, I have asked before, but still you have not answered me. Why will you not teach me Approaching Infinity theory?”

  “Not this again,” Jav said, sighing.

  “And why not?”

  “Hilene, I’ve seen you use the Spear Hand at practice and on the field. When you use it, your technique is excellent. You would make a very good sparring partner, in fact. But your martial prowess, while impressive, is moot. You can breach any barrier, bypass any armor, and kill effortlessly. There’s no need to teach you Approaching Infinity. Besides, it makes me feel a little safer to know that I have some defense against your otherwise indefensible power.”

  “Do you fear me then, General Holson?” She sounded hurt.

  “Hilene, you are the only thing I fear.”

  “You’re serious.” Her voice was low and breathy. It was right and appropriate for others to feel this way, but she would have to show Jav Holson that he had no need of any such concern.

  “Well, then,” she said, coming out of her reverie and brightening, “perhaps I could be your sparring partner.”

  Jav had the sense that there would be no escaping her. This both pleased and annoyed him. He liked her, and he couldn’t deny a sense of pride at being the focus of her attention when so many others received nothing but disdain. Though he hadn’t given up women after Mao Pardine had died forty-four years ago, he had never again allowed himself to form attachments. He felt like his well of affection had dried up and been steadily filled with something dead and rotten. “We’ll see,” he said.

  • • •

  Once they’d reached the castle, Jav sent the skeleton troops into any and all openings accessible from the ground, ordering them to kill on sight. Jav hopped down from Gran Mid and, together with Hilene, entered the castle through the main gate—there was little in the way of defensive fortifications.

  The interior of the castle was a like a warren, with natural tunnels crisscrossing, opening into small chambers and vast halls. Jav and Hilene had taken their course alone, unaccompanied by any of Jav’s skeleton troops. The deeper they went, the smoother the walls were. Jav noticed, too, that the walls were reflective, and he wondered with grim foreboding if this might be all Gim Peshil needed in the way of defensive fortifications.

  “You are not welcome here,” Peshil’s disembodied voice echoed through the corridor.

  “No,” Jav shouted back, “but we are here nonetheless. You cannot undo what has been done, Gim Peshil. The Viscain Empire visits extinction on every native culture and civilization it encounters and has without fail for nearly eleven thousand years. It will be no different with yours.”

  The corridor brightened then. Jav had enough time to raise his right forearm to guard his face, though this was perhaps unnecessary, as laser light bounced off the Kaiser Bones covering his arm.

  Jav turned to Hilene, saw the smooth oval faceplate of her oversized, egg-shaped helmet light up with its Head Mounted Display, or HMD, attempting to identify targets. Whenever her HMD was active, the face
plate turned semi-transparent to reveal her pretty face. Behind his own skull helmet, he grinned at the look of intent determination plain on her features.

  “It was weak,” Jav said in a low voice. “Either he is weak, or too far away for the light to remain intense enough to be a real threat. Well, a threat to me, anyway.

  “Hold on. The number of skeletons has just been reduced by nearly twenty percent. Come on.”

  Jav broke into a trot and Hilene floated after him. After two significant bends, the corridor opened into a great chamber, that Jav reckoned may have been at the very heart of the castle. The chamber was like the inside of a gargantuan gem, a hundred meters across, all faceted and brilliant. At the top of the chamber, another hundred meters up, was an aperture at the bottom of a faceted parabolic dish designed to collect the light of the sun and funnel it down. Tunnels, just like the one from which Jav and Hilene had emerged, opened at intervals all around the base of the chamber, while at the center was a crystalline mass that stood three meters tall, was a meter across at its widest point, and which spun lazily by inscrutable means upon a fulcrum. Tending this crystal was a creature that shone like the sun. The beast was similar in gross outline to what Suunts had become, was just as broad, but stood taller at forty meters, was wingless, and had the ephemeral appearance of being constructed of pure light.

  “How dare you!” it thundered with Gim Peshil’s voice. It pointed its right taloned paw accusingly at Jav as it cried this and the arm stretched interminably to become a coherent beam of light.

  Jav was gone in a vaguely man-shaped puff of smoke. Gone but not destroyed. Using the Ghost Kaiser, the displacement technique he’d practiced to perfection during his initial training with Kimbal Furst, Jav stared death in the face and avoided it, but only his five decades of experience with AI enabled him to perceive the approach of light before it struck. The beam of light continued harmlessly down the corridor from which Jav and Hilene had come.