A Shadowed Face
T he Cygnus Stronghold loomed like a festering wound on the planet’s surface.
Jagged towers of obsidian steel jutted skyward, their tips crackling with energy pulses.
The entire structure pulsed with an eerie glow that distorted shadows across the scorched ground.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, a rumbling roar that mingled with the ever-present drone of machinery.
Overhead, the Cephei hovered, cloaked in stealth mode, waiting to strike.
Kisan stood at the helm of the gunship, his fingers tightening around the controls. The throb of the ship’s weapon systems filled the air, vibrating through the plating beneath his boots.
Beside him, Sax leaned against the bulkhead, his belt loaded with enough firepower to level a small city.
‘I’ll secure her, then you can make it messy,’ the Sarabaite growled.
‘Do it. Give her a hint on what I’m about to fokkin ’ attempt so she ducks in time,’ Kisan growled.
‘She’ll have the heads up, brother.’
The shrouded warrior strode away, sliding down the stair rails to the rear platform.
The airlock yawed open, and the wind rushed the interior.
From there, he launched himself into the unknown without hesitation.
Metal and debris rained down like jagged hailstones, accompanied by the deafening roar of the blast.
Samira’s Corilians guards abandoned her, fleeing toward their emperor.
She flinched as chunks of steel and concrete slammed into the ground around her.
She found a hiding place under a fallen column as shrapnel and rocks fell.
The acrid stench of burning wires filled the air, mingling with the oppressive heat radiating from the broken ceiling.
Where had the breach originated?
That’s when she heard a distinct growl above her.
She whipped her head up to see a ship throbbing overhead.
The Cephei.
Thank fokk.
Through the smoke, dust, and chaos, a shadow dropped from above, landing with a thud into a crouch next to her.
With deadly accuracy, they hurled two sleek, curved, radiant knives from his girdle. The blades found their marks, severing the power cores of two advancing cyborgs, preventing their rush toward Samira.
She jolted.
‘Well, don’t you look like hell,’ came a lighthearted growl.
‘Sax!’ Samira exclaimed, relief hitting hard.
‘Miss me?’ he grinned, tossing her a modified blaster from his glowing meta-belt.
‘Now that I think of it, not one bit,’ she shot off, taking hold of the weapon. ‘ Sante for the save, but it’s another that I miss.’
He stuck a tongue in his cheek. ‘I still don’t get why Kisan hankers for such an ungrateful, acidic tongue.’
She shoved a finger in his face. ‘ Fokk off.’
‘Can’t, blessed one, need to get this party started.’
‘Where’s Kisan?’ Samira shouted over the din.
‘Doing what he does best,’ the cassocked warrior rasped, jerking his chin toward the Cephei, now positioned over the stronghold.
Through the swirling dust billowing around the bridge port, Samira just managed to glimpse her lover’s silhouette high above. He stood in Cephei’s control room, his meta gaze on the chaos below.
He appeared to sense her, swiveling his head to lock eyes with her for a moment.
She sensed the kinetic jolt he sent and blew a kiss before tearing away to focus on the fight.
‘Duck, he’s about to let all hell lose.’ Sax helped the Vaelorian woman scramble under a fallen boulder, their eyes fixed on the Cephei.
The Sarabaite lifted a hand and gave a thumbs up.
Kisan must have received his message because the growl of his gunship’s Alcubierre drive reached a crescendo.
Seconds later, the Cephei unleashed fury in the form of a weaponized pulse, wielding it with surgical precision.
It tore through the stronghold’s uppermost tower, shattering more of the throne room roof.
‘Hell yeah,’ Samira yelled as a flurry of activity exploded around her.
Her fellow Vaelorian fighters surged into the vast space, rappelling, jumping, and firing from fast-moving skimmers and flyers.
With the Cephei providing cover, their kinetic-enhanced lasers cut through the attacking android guards.
The air filled with the sharp hum of energy bolts and the metallic clang of crats collapsing under the assault.
Samira joined the fight, her blaster emitting precise bursts of kinetic beams that disoriented the enemy’s bio-electric systems.
One cyborg lunged for her, its claws gleaming, but she ducked and rolled, firing upward into its chest. It collapsed in a heap of sparking metal.
Sax, meanwhile, was a whirlwind of motion.
His belt’s metanoids shimmered as he moved, deploying small explosive capsules that detonated with controlled precision.
When an enormous android charged him, he activated the kinetic barrier in his amulets, deflecting the attack before countering with a well-placed shot from his long gun.
A second ripple of kinetic energy from the Cephei surged outward, focused on the throne room below.
The wave hit like a tidal force. Cyborgs froze mid-motion, their limbs seizing as their bio-electric systems short-circuited.
Sparks erupted from their joints, and many collapsed outright, their mechanical components inert.
Emperor Marius staggered back into his grotesque chair, clutching his head as the pulse overwhelmed him.
His robotic appendages twitched uncontrollably, and a guttural groan escaped his lips, unable to fight the onslaught.
‘You think this will stop me?’ he roared, his voice distorted and filled with static.
But his body betrayed him, writhing against the invisible force that scrambled his inner workings.
The Cephei fired again, the dynamic shockwave expanding outward in a cascading wave.
Each fallen cyborg’s released energy amplified the surge effect, feeding power back into the wave as it cascaded through the throne room.
The entire citadel trembled under the rolling, incessant relentlessness of the assault.
The kinetic surge spread beyond the throne room, rippling through the fortress and the surrounding landscape.
Cyborg frigates and fighters in the vicinity dropped from the sky, their systems fried.
Skimmers crashed into the ground, their pilots rendered inactive.
The once-imposing Corilian forces were reduced to powerless husks, scattered and broken.
In the Cephei’s bridge, Kisan’s glowing aqua eyes narrowed as he focused his energy, pushing the pulse outward. The ripple traveled like a silent wave, dismantling the final remnants of the Corilians.
Below, in the throne room, the silence that followed was deafening.
Marius sagged in his chair, his psionic shield flickering out.
His mechanical limbs spasmed weakly as he struggled to rise, his expression twisted in pain and rage.
With a roar, he pitched forward, rolling down the steps until he slumped at the bottom of them.
Around him, the Vaelorii began to cheer, their voices echoing in triumphant waves.
Their cries reverberated through the shattered bastion.
The air was thick with dust, raised by the crumbling infrastructure of the citadel, which had been devastated by Kisan’s kinetic pulse.
Smoke hung close to the surface over the Cygnus Stronghold, drifting between the jagged, blackened towers as the last cyborg soldiers collapsed.
Sparks shot from their broken bodies, their once-imposing forms now twisted heaps of alloy and flesh.
The Cephei hovered over the torn space.
Kisan’s suited silhouette descended from it using his mag boots to hover down.
His gaze was fixed on Samira, who stood amid the palace ruins, her eyes on him.
The second he touched down, he raced toward her, his steps crunching on the debris-strewn ground.
Her hair was windswept, her face streaked with dirt and defiance, and his heart clenched at the sight of her alive, whole, and still standing.
Without a word, he pulled her into his arms, his grip fierce and unrelenting.
Their lips met in a kiss that was equal parts relief and desperation, the burden of their ordeal rolling over them.
‘You’re safe,’ he groaned against her mouth.
‘I am, kralji , sante for the pick up.’
They stared at each other in disbelief as Sax and the Vaelorii sifted through the damage.
Abruptly, with no warning, something began to stir.
A shadow crawled from the crumpled cyborgs, tendrils of inky murkiness seeping out of their shattered forms.
The black streams coalesced, twisting together like smoke caught in an invisible current.
They spiraled upward, gathering above the palace into a swirling mass.
The thundering of wild energy intensified, a guttural reverberation that resonated deep in the bones.
‘The fokk ?’ Kisan growled.
They all turned their eyes skyward as the cloud commenced to take shape.
It stretched and expanded until a grotesque, shifting face emerged from the darkness. Its features were distinct yet extraterrestrial, its eyes glowing with an unnatural red light.
The air temp fell, the scent of burning wires mingling with something more primal—something ancient.
The face tilted downward, and the gaze swept across the stronghold as if appraising the destruction.
A wild wind whipped through the space, and from it came a guttural voice.
‘ Si U Illu, ’ it roared in an alien tongue, the sound not so much spoken as sensed in all their minds, accompanied by a diabolical potency that vibrated through the stone and steel.
The words appeared to rent the air, each syllable reverberating with otherworldly power.
Before anyone could respond, the cloud shifted again, collapsing inward with terrifying speed.
The energy it carried condensed into a single, searing arrow of flaring, roiling darkness, which shot upward from the center of the palace.
It pierced the atmosphere, leaving a gaping void in its wake, and disappeared into the stars. It left a sickly afterglow, casting the stronghold in a dim, eerie pall.
For a moment, no one moved.
The silence was oppressive, broken only by the crackle of dying fires and the distant groans of crumbling structures.
‘What in Devansi hell was that?’ Sax broke the hush, his voice tinged with incredulity.
He gestured toward the sky, where the last traces of the beam lingered like a scar.
‘People,’ the Sarabaite rasped. ‘Are we just going to pretend that didn’t happen? Because I’m not feeling confident about—’
He was interrupted when Sharin tracked to the cassocked man, swung her weapon from her anterior to her spine, and planted herself in front of him.
‘ Fokk whatever it was! You’re alive, Sarabaite, we’re all alive. ‘Tis all that matters.’
He arched a brow in surprise as she reached for his head, grabbed his dark head, and brought his mouth down on hers.
When they pulled apart, Sax huffed. ‘Well played, woman. Let’s explore more of that later,’ he grinned.
Meanwhile, Kisan’s lips crashed once more on his woman’s, the kiss searing, desperate, and full of emotions he didn’t dare to utter.
Samira melted into him, gripping his shoulders as if anchoring herself.
The chaos around them fell away momentarily, leaving only the warmth of their embrace. Her pulse raced, matching the frantic beat of his heart as she clung to him.
Samira pulled back, her forehead resting against his. ‘I thought I’d lost you,’ she whispered, her voice cracking.
‘Never,’ Kisan murmured, cupping her face.
Standing a few feet away with an arm around Sharin’s shoulders, Sax raised an eyebrow. ‘Anyone want to discuss what we all just witnessed? An ass-hole shadow face declaring war on this galaxy? If that thing comes back, I’d like to be ready with a bigger gun.’
Samira huffed, her hand still entwined with Kisan’s. ‘I don’t doubt it for a moment, Sarabaite.’
Kisan straightened, his expression hardening as he gazed back toward the sky. ‘Mirage, please track that anomaly.’
‘Already have,’ came the dulcet tones of the AI emanating from his helmet. ‘It’s pushed through to space and fast-tracked to the System’s edge before punching out. It’s long gone, but I’ll keep sensors looking for it. It appears to have been an alien form of systems and network control. Fokkin’ dangerous. It must have an agenda, but we can only sit on the Corilians who’ve survived to give us some insight.’
The Rider turned to Sax. ‘Got your answer?’
Sax sucked his teeth, unconvinced. ‘Not really, I’m only part relaxed because that monstrous obscurity is no longer in this quadrant of space. Still, we need to plan on not letting fokk -face get the last word.’
Kisan smirked, his hand still resting on Samira’s waist. ‘You did good, brother.’
‘I always do,’ Sax growled. ‘Now let’s get the hell out of here before some other alien storm face decides it wants to whup our asses.’