The first man through the nearest breach was hit with a golden bolt and knocked backward, dead. As was the second man. The third edged the muzzle of his weapon into the breach and fired blindly for several seconds on full automatic. The God-killers worked in teams of two — one man with an automatic weapon, the other with a sword. A strange, but necessary, combination in order to fight the Airlia.
Her name — Donnchadh — meant eldest daughter of Donn, who had been one of the first rebel leaders. He’d died at the hands of the human high priests who served their alien overlords, crucified on the wooden X, pinned to it by straps of wet leather that dried and squeezed the life out of him over the course of many hours. She’d watched him die over two years ago, as had thousands of other herded by the high priests and Guides who served the Airlia into the open plain in front of the very wall they had just blasted a hole in. The high priests and Guides were all dead now. There was just this last pocket of Airlia to kill and they would be free of the alien influence.
The next pair of God-killers threw themselves through the breach. The firing must have worked as there were no more golden bolts. Donnchadh scrambled after them. The man with the rifle was shooting as he leapt over the body of the alien who had been firing the golden bolts from a long spear clutched in its hands.
The creature was taller than a human, almost seven feet from the top of its head to the soles of its feet. Red hair framed a thin face with ears that had long lobes that stretched almost to its shoulders. The eyes were not human, but catlike and red. The hands that gripped the spear had six long, pale fingers.
Blood was still seeping out of the wounds in the alien’s chest and, from experience, Donnchadh knew they had about five minutes before the creature came back to life and the wounds healed. The second God-killer with the sword was there to ensure that didn’t happen. He swung the weapon with an experienced hand and sliced through the alien’s neck, severing head from body. It was not simply that the head had been removed that prevented the creature from coming back to life. There was something on the edge of the sword, stolen from an Airlia armory, that cauterized the wound and prevented the cells from regenerating as they would from the wound caused by a human-made weapon.
Looking left and right, Donnchadh could see that there were other holes blown in the wall, and more God-killer teams were pouring through them. The prize of the mothership was directly ahead.
The man with the rifle was hit by a golden bolt from an Airlia standing near one of the cradle’s legs. He was knocked backward and went down hard. Donnchadh darted forward and scooped up the rifle. She put the stock to her shoulder and fired as she’d been trained. The recoil of the gun felt satisfying, almost as much as watching the Airlia stagger as the rounds tore into its flesh.
The aliens were trapped. The mothership could not take off because the humans had already taken over the Master Guardian and isolated the ship’s controls. They had destroyed the mothership’s warships, the Talons, one by one over the course of the Revolution. It had cost billions of lives to get to this point. The planet was ravaged, the environment destroyed. Better that than slavery. But Donnchadh believed they had once last chance to make things right, to save her people.
Donnchadh reached the cradle leg and pressed her body tight against the metal. The arc was ten feet wide and deep, towering overhead to the bottom of the starship. The God-killer with the sword met her there, pausing to finish off the alien she had shot. He was a large man, solidly built, with long black hair that hung down almost to his shoulders. His face was like a block of granite, marred only by the fracture of a scar that ran from the corner of his right eye down to his chin.
“Gwalcmai,” he said, introducing himself as he searched the metal with his free hand.
She was doing the same. “Donnchadh.” She found an indentation. “Here.” She grabbed the medallion around her neck and pressed it against the spot. The outline of a door appeared, eight feet high by four wide. It slid open and an elevator beckoned.
“Wait for help,” Gwalcmai advised.
Donnchadh shook her head. “We cannot wait. They may destroy the ship. If it explodes, it will take the continent with it. We have to find out the truth. And the Grail should be inside.” She went into the elevator. Gwalcmai followed without hesitation. The door slid shut and they began to move up the massive strut.
“Too slow,” Donnchadh muttered.
“Be ready.” Gwalcmai nodded toward the door.
They came to a halt. Gwalcmai cursed as the wall behind them opened, catching them by surprise. Both whirled about to face an empty corridor. They edged forward cautiously. The corridor curved slightly to the left and they could only see about fifty feet.
Donnchadh kept the stock of the rifle tight against her shoulder as they moved ahead. The corridor straightened out and they both paused. The corridor extended as far as they could see, apparently running the entire length of the mothership. There was nothing moving. They could also see cross corridors intersecting at regular intervals.
Having been at the lead of a massive army, the two suddenly felt quite isolated. Donnchadh reached into her shirt and pulled out a rolled-up piece of paper. Gwalcmai watched the move, then hurriedly shifted his gaze when she noted him watching. To her surprise, after so much battling and death, she found herself blushing. She brushed away the feeling quickly.
“One of your kind died getting this information,” she said as she unrolled it.
“Many of my kind have died,” Gwalcmai said as he knelt next to her. There were not many God-killers left, so many having been killed in the line of duty. Fighting at the forefront of every attack, as they did, most God-Killers did not expect to live long lives. Either Gwalcmai was very good at what he did or very lucky; most likely both, in order to be alive.
“The engines are centrally located and below,” Donnchadh said as she ran her finger along the map they had captured from an Airlia outpost. “The control room forward.”
Both knew that any surviving Airlia would set some sort of self-destruct, taking out not only the ship but all the humans around it.
“Since we cut off the control room,” Gwalcmai said, “any destruct would have to be done manually.”
Donnchadh stood. “The engine room.”
They ran forward, both slightly hunched over, expecting to be ambushed from one of the side corridors that in their haste they could not take the time to clear. Donnchadh was counting the passageways, trying to stay oriented.
She skidded to a halt and pointed right. “Here.” A short corridor came to a dead end.
“Where—” Gwalcmai began as they moved forward, but he cut off whatever else he was going to say as the section of floor beneath them suddenly began to descend.
Unlike their trip up the strut, this elevator moved swiftly, straight down into the bowels of the ship. Black walls on all four sides sped past. Without a word the two went back-to-back in the center of the platform. Through her sweat-soaked combat uniform Donnchadh could feel the heat of Gwalcmai’s body. A drop of sweat from a strand of his long hair dripped onto her neck.
Their knees flexed as the platform suddenly decelerated. The surrounding walls disappeared as they entered a large open area. The curving bottom of the ship was below them. The chamber was almost a half mile long by a third wide, the bottom slice of the ship. All along the inner edge of the hull running the length of the chamber were long machines — the engines, they had to assume. The surfaces of the machines were striated, composed of long metal strings that had been twisted together.